Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Welcome to The Bible Guys, everybody.

Jeff:
Here we go, Chris. We are super excited about this one.

Chris:
Yes, I am too. Yeah. It’s good to be back this week. Why are you excited about this one?

Jeff:
Oh, because I think we’re going to do our very best to get it above mediocre today. All right.

Chris:
That’s the goal, people.

Jeff:
In order to ensure that, we’ve got an ace in the hole, and that is that Desiree has us set up for a dad joke competition today.

Chris:
Dad joke competition, which by the way, is a lot of people’s favorite.

Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. I love dad jokes. They just bust me up.

Chris:
Okay. I read some of these. Some of mine. I haven’t read yours. Some of ours are pretty struggling. But I like one or two of them. So here’s my first one. I get a joke about pizza, but it’s extra cheesy.

Jeff:
Okay. That’s a good one. All right. Okay. I’ll give you two wheezes.

Chris:
Okay. Yeah.

Jeff:
There you go. All right. Two artists had a fight. Yeah. It ended in a draw.

Chris:
Oh, wow. That’s pretty good.

Jeff:
I like it. I didn’t even get one wheeze. Not a single wheeze out of you. Yeah. Because that’s the best part about the jokes is when you start like with your smoker’s cough laugh.

Chris:
But I don’t smoke. I know. Just to be clear.

Jeff:
It just sounds that way.

Chris:
I told you this. I think I told this from stage a couple of times. Every time I go into the doctor and they say, do you drink? And I was like, no. They’re like, do you smoke? And I’m like, no. And then every time they go, really? Really? every time Okay, so number two What happened to the man running behind the car? I don’t know he got exhausted.

Jeff:
Oh, no That’s a one wheezer. No. That’s an oh. No didn’t get a wheeze. I’m gonna revoke my wheeze Give you no no okay, okay? I’ve decided excuse me. I’ve decided that from January 1st. I’ll only be watching videos in 1080p or higher It’s my New Year’s resolution Okay, that’s rough Oh, I got, I got two.

Chris:
Yeah, you get a weeze. Okay.

Jeff:
Yeah. That was weak.

Chris:
Yeah, it was pretty weak. All right, here we go. I like this one, actually. What do you call a redheaded baker?

Jeff:
A redheaded baker?

Chris:
Yes. I don’t know. A gingerbread man.

Jeff:
Yeah. You got to put the emphasis on the right spot. He’s a gingerbread man. Cause he’s a baker. So he’s a bread man.

Chris:
I know, but it’s clever for you to figure that out.

Jeff:
Yes. Okay. The adjective for metal is metallic, but not so for iron, which is ironic.

Chris:
Oh, that’s pretty good. That’s clever. That’s a clever word thing.

Jeff:
That’s a really clever word. But it didn’t get a wheeze. It got an oh.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff:
Okay. So we have some oh’s.

Chris:
Not every dad joke is a wheeze. Okay. Okay. How about this one?

Jeff:
I was just trying to keep score and so far we’re not able to do so.

Chris:
No, we’re not able to do so. All right. How about this one? I am proud to announce that I’ve completed the very first item on my bucket list. I have acquired the bucket.

Jeff:
All right. You got a bucket. Okay. Well, mine goes along the same lines. Oh, wow. All of my friends have such expansive bucket lists, but mine is a little pale in comparison. I like that one. A little pale in comparison. Do you have a bucket list? I have a little pale in comparison. I got it. I got it. Okay. I thought I’d try to sell it.

Chris:
Okay. Studies conclude that six out of seven dwarves aren’t happy.

Jeff:
Seven out of six dwarves aren’t happy.

Chris:
Six out of seven dwarfs are happy.

Jeff:
Yeah, I get that because there’s only one happy. Yes.

Chris:
I really like that.

Jeff:
That’s a good one. That’s your best one. You brought that one. Yes. Okay. Here’s my last one. I bought my friend an elephant for his room, but when he tried to thank me, I said, don’t mention it.

Chris:
Oh no.

Jeff:
Don’t mention the elephant in the room. Right, right, right. I like that one. So I’m going to give that one several laughs and a deep belly laugh.

Chris:
How about that?

Jeff:
Several wheezes and a deep belly laugh.

Chris:
Two of yours were actually quite clever. They were? Yeah.

Jeff:
Yeah, you had to use your brain. Oh, yes. Which is how most of my humor is. It’s very sophisticated.

Chris:
Oh, yes. And I’m just, I’m just dumb, dumb humor. That is not what I said.

Jeff:
I didn’t say that. You take everything I say and project it to you. The world doesn’t revolve around you. What? It’s not all about you. What do you mean? Just because I said something about me didn’t mean I was making a statement about you.

Chris:
Everything revolves around me.

Jeff:
Yes. Oh, I keep forgetting that.

Chris:
Okay, so today we’re in Matthew chapter 20, verses 17 through 19, and this particular story or passage is also recorded in Mark and Luke. There you go. Three gospels today. Yes.

Jeff:
Okay, so here we are, Jesus is predicting his death, and this is the third time, and the disciples still don’t like it. That’s pretty much how this goes. Okay, so it says in Matthew chapter 20 verse 17, as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, remember he’s kind of been hanging around Jerusalem, mostly. They headed back up to Galilee, just briefly, come back down, he’s been hanging around. Jerusalem says as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem reason why it says up is because everything is No matter where you’re at right your slums up from everything. It’s on a hill He took the twelve disciples aside privately and told them what was going to happen to him. Listen He said we’re going up to Jerusalem where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law They will sentence him to die Then they will hand him over to the Romans to be mocked flogged with a whip and crucified But on the third day, he’ll be raised from the dead

Chris:
That’s really clear, by the way.

Jeff:
Yeah, that’s super clear.

Chris:
That is really clear. Yep. And then on the third day, he will be raised from the dead. Yes. Third day. How could they not expect it? Yeah. On the resurrection Sunday?

Jeff:
I think that they were just in shock. Maybe. Yeah. Then Mark 10 tells the same thing. It says, now they were on their way up to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking ahead of them. The disciples were filled with awe and the people were behind, were overwhelmed with fear. Taking the 12 disciples aside, Jesus once more began to describe everything that was about to happen to him. Listen, he said, we’re going up to Jerusalem where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. And they will sentence him to die and hand him over to the Romans. And they will mock him and spit on him, flog him with a whip and kill him. But after three days, he’ll rise again. And then Luke 18, it says it this way. It says, taking the 12 disciples aside, Jesus said, listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true. He’ll be handed over to the Romans. He’ll be mocked, treated shamefully and spit upon. They’ll flog him with a whip and kill him. But on the third day, he’ll rise again. But they didn’t understand any of this. The significance of his words was hidden from them and they failed to grasp what he was talking about. So there you are. Even from the very beginning, they didn’t grasp it.

Chris:
Yeah. And, and, you know, there’s, I think there’s only a few applications that it feels like to me that there’s only a few obvious applications that apply to me. But the most obvious one is, is that sometimes when, when Jesus says something that’s very plain, like a promise for us, right? The promises that God gives to us today, we either don’t believe it or we hear it and we ignore it. And in the in the midst of, you know, crises or, you know, emergency or whatever, we just we somehow forget that his promises are true. I remember one time my friend Chris Driscoll, who, by the way, just passed away not even last week, was a really good friend of mine. But I remember he was one of my best friends. And We were trying to figure out how to get all these kids to camp, right, financially. We’re like, oh no, you know, we were trying to, you know, move around, you know, Peter to pay Paul. And I remember him looking at me and he goes, you know, it’s not as if God’s on the throne saying, oh no, how am I going to do this? Right. It’s not like God’s going, Oh no, I’m so scared. You know? And he says, he goes, you do understand that, like, you know, we believe that this is supposed to happen. And, you know, and again, it’s just one of those things where that’s, that’s one thing, but when a promise is given, that’s a whole other thing. Right. You know, to have faith is one thing, but to, but to actually remember a promise to have faith in that, Uh, you know, it’s, it’s pretty obvious that when Jesus says it, we should believe it.

Jeff:
Yeah. I also think that the fact that they didn’t pick up on the fact that he declared at the end, the resurrection really showed where they put their priorities. Words matter. And when we listen to somebody say words, we tend to fill in the gaps, right? With the thing between what we understand and what we don’t understand. Oftentimes we’re guessing what the other person really means, right? And so then that really has an indication of what our bias is and what our true belief system is. There’s a note here that I think highlights that in Mark chapter 10. in the Life Application Study Bible. It says, Jesus’ death and resurrection should have come as no surprise to the disciples. Here, he clearly explained what would happen to him. Unfortunately, they didn’t really hear what he was saying. Jesus said he was the Messiah, but they thought the Messiah would be a conquering king. They were looking for a different kind of Messiah still. Even though he told them, they were looking for a different one. He spoke to them of resurrection, but they heard only his words about death. Isn’t that amazing? You tend to hear what you’re listening for, you tend to see what you’re looking for. Because Jesus often spoke in parables, the disciples may have thought that his words on death and resurrection were another parable, and that they weren’t astute enough to understand. But Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection show that these events were God’s plan from the beginning, not accidents. They may have gotten in the habit of stopping to ask.

Chris:
Yeah. And none of that, but that’s actually a pretty good perspective. Like, like, you know, he’s like, well, I know, remember, remember what they said about Lazarus when he says, do you believe that he can rise? And she said, oh yeah, everybody will rise in the last day. And so she was thinking that Jesus was referring to something spiritual down the road, right at the end. And, and so it could be that as well. Yeah.

Jeff:
Right. Yeah. That they were guessing what he meant because this time they don’t ask.

Chris:
Right.

Jeff:
Remember just the other day, was it last week when we were talking and he gives the parable and they come back and go, well, you know, he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Right. And they come back and go, well, then who possibly could ever go to heaven? Right. So they’re still asking questions at that point. But they’re not asking a question here, literally just a few days later in their schedule. And they’re not asking this question. They just take it. They accept it. I think that when we stop asking, we stop learning. When we stop learning, we stop growing. And so they were not prepared, even though Jesus was preparing them for what was happening next. As a matter of fact, we’re going to turn the page and it’s going to say like in six days. You know, he’s hitting the Passover and we’re right at the very end now. And he was preparing them, but because they didn’t ask the questions and they stopped learning in this moment, they weren’t prepared. They weren’t prepared for this really difficult time.

Chris:
You know, we’ve talked about this before in the past, but some of my favorite parts of the New Testament are when his disciples would pull him aside and say, would you please explain this parable to us? What are you talking about? Right. Because, you know, some of his parables were, you know, they were, you know, a little, little confusing. And so, uh, in fact, some of them, I still have a hard time understanding exactly, maybe perhaps what they, what he meant, but, um, but, uh, the idea that they would pull him aside and say, please tell us more, you know, uh, you know, what, what does this mean? And then when he goes back and explains it, it’s like, oh, that’s so that’s of course, that’s what he meant. Right. And it’s so obvious, you know, the purpose of the soils, right. It’s just so unbelievably clear after you use that explanation, you know? So, yeah, I just, I do love that. And so I think that that’s transferable to us because, you know, the inquiry, uh, you know, having an inquisitive mind, uh, you know, how many of us, we listen to something like a podcast like this, or we listen to a sermon on a Sunday morning and we hear something and we think, huh, I wonder what that’s about. Then we just go or, Go our way. Just leave it. Just leave it, and we don’t press into it, right? Right.

Jeff:
It might be the most important thing. Right. Here it was.

Chris:
Right. Right. Well, for sure. For sure it was here. It’s kind of a big deal. Yeah. That’s so good. So, hey, I want to read this note in my Life Application Study Bible that talks about Roman whips and scourges. Oh, yeah. It says, Jesus predicted that he would be scourged and crucified, Luke 18. Scourging was particularly a brutal punishment, and the Romans usually reserved it for slaves or foreigners, as well as those who were condemned to death. Normally criminals were scourged after they had been condemned to death, and it is therefore unusual to find the scourging of Jesus taking place before his condemnation. Pilate may have hoped to soften the people’s hearts by Jesus’ suffering so that they would not demand the death penalty, but Jesus’ scourging just added to his suffering. After being beaten with whips and with metal barbs to tear open the flesh, he suffered crucifixion. So it’s an interesting thing to understand the practices of the Romans, because we’re about to find out that Pilate did not want to put Jesus to death and he felt political pressure to do so. Yeah. Right. And so maybe perhaps his reasoning to offer him being scourged was to satisfy the people’s anger. Right. Yep.

Jeff:
Which totally makes sense. When I read that note, I thought that that totally makes sense to me that that was because it was out of order. He hadn’t even been convicted yet. And beatings came. after convictions. So this one’s before. I think that’s what it was, is he was trying to get the, because remember he disagrees and we shouldn’t over-talk about this because we’re going to talk about it in a few weeks, but he disagrees essentially with religious leaders that Jesus doesn’t need to be executed. So this may have been his attempt, but I think it’s interesting. Jesus is predicting these things, but they’d already all been predicted. So Psalm 41.9 predicted that Jesus would be betrayed. Psalm 22, 16 through 18, Isaiah 53, 4 through 7, both predict his crucifixion. Psalm 16, 10 predicted his resurrection. So Jesus is predicting things that had already been predicted. What he was doing was he was aligning himself with what scripture had said would happen to the Messiah. But there are some things that the predictions, you know, all of the prophecies about the Messiah, some of those things if you decided you wanted to be the Messiah, you could have chosen some of them. You could have decided to make your ministry focus in Galilee. If you want to, you move to Galilee and just start focusing there, right?

Chris:
False Messiah. Right, right.

Jeff:
If you want to be, if you want to be a fake guy. But there’s several that you can’t manipulate. One of them being, you know, being virgin born, what family you’re going to be born into, the time that you’d be born, what city you’d be born in. You can’t, you can’t manufacture those. And then a couple of the other ones would be as powerful as the Roman government was, And Jesus is basically a homeless guy traveling around the country talking a lot and doing some miracles. Could not fabricate the spitting, the beating, crucifixion, right? He couldn’t fabricate those things. He couldn’t have made those things happen. And he told them, hey, these things were in the Bible about the Messiah. And let me tell you, in just a few days, because at this point it is just a few days, in just a few days, you’re going to see it happen to me. And then I’m going to rise from the dead. You certainly can’t predict that. Right. Anybody who predicts their resurrection and then does it, you should probably listen to him. Yes. That’s a big one. So I thought that was a huge one.

Chris:
Yeah. I love how it says they were walking up to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking ahead of them and the disciples were filled with awe and the people following behind him were overwhelmed with fear. Right? So, isn’t that interesting? There’s groups of people following him, and Mark 10 is what I’m reading, and it says that they were following him up to Jerusalem, and there were people who were fearful for him, and what was going to happen to him, and then there’s people… Well, he’d already been threatened so much, just, you know, we talked about it a couple weeks ago, but the threats were so strong, Jesus even chose to leave Jerusalem at the time.

Jeff:
Right. So his people are afraid. Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah. And, and, uh, and so it just, it just goes to show you like, uh, sometimes we, uh, we don’t really understand when things unfold and we get closer to our, our own circumstances as things unfold in our own lives. And we think, Oh no, Oh no. You know, like, like, like for instance, let me give you an example. Like remember when, uh, uh, way back in the Old Testament when Moses, uh, delivered the red people and he part of the Red Sea, God said, okay, here’s my plan. Moses, take them all up to the shore and camp against the sea. And then I’ll tell you what to do. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Like God didn’t say, but don’t worry. I know that looks like you’re going to trap yourselves because they’re chasing you and you have nowhere to run because you’ve actually you know, positions yourself against the sea. God says, okay, here’s my plan. Go against the sea. And then I’ll tell you what to do. And so what does he do? He goes against the sea. And I, you know, it’s predicted that there’s probably what, like a million of Israelites with Moses at that time? Maybe more or more. Right. Can you imagine, like, I’m sure the vision didn’t translate all the way down to a million people. What are we doing? Yeah, what are we doing? This is stupid, right? But yeah, God knows. God knows, you know, and all of a sudden Moses raises his staff. Boom. There’s a path that they have no idea was even there. Right. Right. And such is the same thing, right? So they’re fearful. They’re fearful of man. They’re fearful of politics. They’re fearful of threats. They’re fearful of, you know, their own circumstances. And yet God knows the whole time. that there’s something better and there’s something necessary. And this is, again, the most important thing he’s going to do. So it’s just, it’s another sermon in there where it just reminds us that as things unfold, just trust God, even though circumstances around us might not look good for us. As long as, as long as we’re faithful, as long as we, as long as we’re following God’s path, as long as we’re trusting that what God says is going to be true.

Jeff:
So now I had another thought on this passage. When you have somebody come to you and say, and I hate this by the way, when people do it, but when somebody comes to you and says, okay, I have good news or bad news, which do you want first? What do you ask for first?

Chris:
I always vacillate back and forth. I think it’s 50-50 for me. So it just depends on what mood I’m in, but I would probably say over 50, you know, how you have to buy 51% of the stocks. I would say 51% of the time, I’d probably say bad.

Jeff:
Give me the bad news. Most of the time, that’s what people ask for. Okay, good news and bad news. Because in their mind, what they’re justifying, even positive people would say, well, let’s get the bad news out of the way and then we’ll deal with the good news. Right. deep down inside, if they’re really knowing, what they mean is bad news is bigger than good news, almost always. And I think it’s because we’re hardwired to be aware of things that are dangerous to us. And then that might be why. But anyways, in this one, it ends in the greatest news, his declaration. They’re going to mock me, spit on me, flog me, whip me, kill me. And then the single greatest thing in all of human history is going to happen. Right. I’m going to rise from the dead.

Chris:
Right. In other words, like bad news, fantastic news. Yes. But you missed the fantastic news.

Jeff:
The single greatest thing that ever happened in history, because without the resurrection, there is no forgiveness of our sins. Jesus is not who he claimed to be. Right. Right. He defeated death and sin and hell in the grave. He overcame all those things. It’s the single greatest event in all of human history. Right. And they could only hear, they’re going to spit on you and kill you. Right. And they’re afraid as they’re heading there. And Jesus is saying all those things are necessary. That’s what humans are going to do to me. Right. But I’m going to defeat all of it. And they couldn’t hear it. And they weren’t ready for it when it happened. Because again, all they focused on was the bad news.

Chris:
Well, you can’t really blame them. I mean, you know, that’s, that’s pretty scary. Sure. Right. You know, and, uh, you know, especially if it’s their, you know, their, their, I want to say rabbi, but in some cases people say Messiah, right. At this point, I would guess that the people around him would be thinking Messiah.

Jeff:
I don’t know.

Chris:
Toward the end of his ministry. I mean, certainly the disciples.

Jeff:
Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know that they really had that thought yet. I think that they were thinking Messiah political, not spiritual.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that there, I think is from, from what I gather, I think that even the people who understood a lot and anticipated the Messiah, the most, they still didn’t really understand the scriptures of what the purpose of the Messiah was. So it’s not like as if I think that people didn’t understand the scriptures, or no, it didn’t know the scriptures, they just didn’t understand the scriptures. They didn’t understand that the Messiah came to save the people from their sins, not to save the people from the Romans.

Jeff:
The reason why they didn’t understand is because they were reading it from their perspective only. What they wanted the scriptures to say is what they made the scriptures say.

Chris:
Oh, there’s another sermon in there.

Jeff:
We have to be careful about that.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, by the way, we do all the time. Oh, sure. Right? People do that all the time. They’ll read the verse and then they’ll say, that’s what this means. And you’re like, that’s not what that means.

Jeff:
How many professional fighters have, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me tattooed on their bodies? Right. That passage is on generosity.

Chris:
Right.

Jeff:
But they’re thinking, strong, I’m going to be, God, Jesus can make me strong. Because they read one verse, verse 13 out of Philippians 4, and they didn’t read the rest of the chapter, which has nothing to do with power or strength or overcoming. It has everything to do with generosity.

Chris:
But you could apply it to other things.

Jeff:
Be careful about taking the words of the Bible out of context, because then you wind up having false beliefs. I can’t do everything. I can’t. It’s not possible. Just like you can’t grow up to be president. I can’t do everything. I can do everything that Christ needs me to do in his strength, but that’s not what they’re tattooing on their body. Jesus is a good luck charm. He’s going to make me win my next fight.

Chris:
Right. And I can do it. As long as I put God as the formula. That’s right.

Jeff:
As long as God’s in my formula. And so sometimes we can misread the Bible and make it say what we need it to say, what we want it to say. God exists to make all your wildest dreams come true. Instead of understanding he’s on a mission and that we’re a part of his mission and his story. If we would read it from that perspective, we’d usually see it very different. But what they were seeing is the single most important thing was, Israel being freed up to become its own kingdom again instead of being, you know, under the oppressors of Rome. And so that’s mostly how almost everybody read the Bible and the prophecies of the Bible at the time.

Chris:
So, uh, we were down in Florida last week and, uh, oh, I don’t have time to tell this story. I was just going to say, there was a box of cereal that my wife bought with a verse stamped on it. And they were trying to claim like Old Testament formula and everything like this. And I looked at it and I’m like, why are they even claiming this verse? I don’t have time to tell the story, but it was hilarious. So it’s just one of those, it just reminded me of like, okay, we’re just grabbing something from the Old Testament, slapping it on and selling it to the Christians, right?

Jeff:
So what you want to do when you feel like you read a passage and you feel like that passage means something to you, pray it. Yeah. Believe it. Go to God and ask him for more wisdom. The Bible says if we lack wisdom, we go to God and ask him for it and he’ll give us more. Yeah. Right. And so the Holy Spirit’s your teacher. And so you lean into it. First time you read a thing, that’s not necessarily the answer. Spend time. That’s why he tells us to meditate on it.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. All right. Well, that is our time. So we’ll see you next time on The Bible Guys.