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Transcript

The Principal Approach · The Rhett Palmer Show

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: First friend.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Should we say well?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got a cup of friendship coming from here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: He probably has rebellious people.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's been given a bill.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: We're trying to discuss actually what the uh four minutes should be of uh this uh discussion that Red Men are having, and we came up with blah blah blah blah and then we had blah blah blah blah gum.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Remember there was a show uh years ago called the gum show.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Remember these guys thinking that they would do mandacious things.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then at a certain point, someone ran up and banged the gung.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: So uh read it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Last uh session we finished.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um we'd been talking about how verses in the Bible had been misinterpreted, uh misunderstood, and misused.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And just last night I saw this young lady was very upset because she was told that she was bad because she had tattoos and it's evil to have tattoos.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, no, no, no, no.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna rectify that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you know someone that has tattoos or you have tattoos, you're gonna want to listen to this broadcast about this.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we talked about it on the last one.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh my friend Webb on the Utella that uh told me uh he heard a pastor say, if you had tattoos, you're going to hell.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, let's look at the verse.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's in Leviticus 19.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: It says, Don't cut the four locks of your hair, don't uh mark uh make marks on your cut your body or make marks in worship of the dead.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Don't trim your beard, also.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that was because.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there was uh God bringing his people out from a Egyptian culture and uh they had tattoos and cut their hair.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the Egyptians uh worship the dead by making marks on their body.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so what's the what's the the the commandment here?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's not n having a tattoo, it's having a mark on your body that is for worshiping of the dead or worshiping false gods.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's the commandment.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: Don't don't be like the Canaanites, don't be like the Egyptians.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: So tattoos are okay.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Be holy, yes, tattoos are okay.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in fact, I told you the story of my friend Geronimo, who was our waiter on uh board a cruise ship uh on this was years ago, a guy from Goa, a Christian.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: He's an Indian, but he's a Christian.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: And when I asked him uh if he was um Hindu or Muslim, uh it was kind of a trick question, because once I figured out he was from Goa, which used to be a Portuguese colony, chances are he was a Christian.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I asked him, he took off his glove and he put his hand down on the table between my son Lucas and I, and there was a cross tattooed right here on that area between his thumb and his forefinger.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, uh he said, No, I'm Christian.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Do all Christians in Goa have that mark?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, That's what makes us Christians.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: So in his culture, having a tattoo identified him with Christ.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's the same thing in a lot of uh South Pacific Polynesian cultures.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um tattoos are made to uh proclaim faith.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody has parked their car so that the sun is going right into my eye.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we also talked about head coverings.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um I told you the story of uh working on the Cocoa River in Honduras and Nicaragua and the Mosquito culture.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um women wear little lace doilies on their head when they come into church because in Corinthians chapter 11 it says women's heads should be covered.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: And there have been many times where women are standing outside of the church and they won't come in because they don't have the lace doily on their head.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: They think they need it to get inside the church building.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think Paul wrote that.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we discussed the whole uh concept of having short-haired prostitutes from the temple of Aphrodite being converted into uh becoming followers of Jesus.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: And perhaps Paul was just uh not wanting people to get confused by seeing prostitutes or ex-prostitutes with short hair coming into the Christian meetings.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, the other possibility is uh in Greek culture, a woman's hair was the most sensual thing about her.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh people try to do things to make themselves agreeable with God, thinking they have to earn it.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's like in this movie I told you about Whitkoff, George Whitkoff.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he made friends with Benjamin Franklin.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Benjamin Franklin had all these virtues.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Whitkoff had almost killed himself when he initially became a Christian because you're talking about George Whitfield?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Whitfield.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Whitfield, okay.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: When he first came and became a Christian, he tried to uh uh uh starve himself for 25 days, and he was so felt, and his friends had to pull him aside and said, No, no, no, George, you you don't have to do this to yourself.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're um you're uh that's yours right here, I believe.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do this to yourself because Jesus did it for you.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to accept the gift.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And Franklin, uh Benjamin Franklin had all these virtues, and he's trying to convince him to be saved, you must be born again, and then Jesus, you you can't it must be very difficult for you to try to live out all those virtues.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and but uh Ben Franklin became one of the biggest supporters of George Woodford's ministry.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't but um that's what that movie's about.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a wonderful movie.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Over the years, so many verses have been misconstrued and misunderstood.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Man's interpretation.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: And um we finished last on our last session talking about how Ezra decided he was going to study the Word of God, put it in practice, and then teach it to the people of Israel.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: Ezra chapter 7, verse 10.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the challenge is, uh, as Paul Hebert points out in his book that really impacted me, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, he said that we uh if we're going to bring a message to a foreign culture, first of all, we have to understand the Bible in its historical and cultural context.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you're reading a document that was written uh in the first century to the uh 1500 BC, during that time, speaking in different different languages, different culture, different thought patterns, um, you really need to understand the message in that context.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the other thing is really you really need to understand the people that you're talking to, and uh you because you really want to reach them.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So uh And by the way, Mike is a biblical scholar and uh a coffee roaster also.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And a coffee roaster and uh one cup of friendship, it will be available very soon if you go to our website, which is yet to exist.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we did a lot of uh testing yesterday, taste testing, uh came out of the case.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: We got another name for the show and had to call an attorney, so now we're getting another name.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um That doesn't matter to these people.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: What matters is they can wear tattoos.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: They can wear tattoos.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: But the whole uh I think the thing we have to come to grips with is we who read the Bible in the 21st century often just because we understand the words, it doesn't necessarily mean we understand what's being said.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: And let me tell you uh an example of that.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: My friend Randy Smith, who we work with and do study tours in Israel.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: Randy was an archaeology student, and he was living, I think, in the Sisters of Anne Convent, which is on the Via Dolorosa.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he's living in an apartment on the top floor.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And there was an Arab uh lady that came by and kept the place clean, and occasionally she brought her 15-year-old daughter.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so Randy, being a young, you know, student, uh, oftentimes would converse with this young lady.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: And one day he was standing there looking on uh over the old city, and he got talking to her, and he mentioned that he had seen a great uh movie at the cinema the night before, starring John Wayne, and and the young lady uh said to him, Well, uh, she said, I've never been to a movie.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: And Randy, in his very uh polite way, said, Well, look, we can go tonight.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'll take you to the see that John Wayne movie tonight.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the young lady looked at Randy, was surprised, turned around, and walked away.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: And Randy thought, What have I done?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it was a few hours later that the mom comes up and throws her arms around Randy and says, We are so happy that you have are gonna become part of our family.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: And Randy goes, What did I just do?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: So he goes and he asks his professor, he said, I invited this Arab girl to uh go to the movie with me, and now her mom thinks that I'm gonna marry her.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: And the professor says, Well, of course.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: The only person that that young lady will go to a movie, the only man that she'll go to a movie with is her husband.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: By your inviting her, you've just literally asked her to be your wife.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: And Randy said, Really?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: How did he back out of that one?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, here's just because he invited her to a movie, in English, let's go to a movie.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's nothing else uh behind it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: But in her culture, there was a lot behind it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh Randy said, Well, uh, how do I get out of this?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: And uh the press said, You got to be very careful because you do not want to dishonor this young girl.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you break off the engagement, she will remain single her entire life.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: So here's what I want you to do.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: I want you to go buy a gift for every one of her uh uh female relatives and take them to her and express how happy you are to be coming part of the family.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: So Randy bought a bunch of food and a bunch of other things.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: He went up to El Azzariah, which is up on the Mount of Olives where this uh family lived, and he said he went around the room and handed uh things to all the uh uh ladies and they were just celebrating, you know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then so Randy comes back the next day and he says, Okay, I did that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: What do I do now?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, the fresh said, do nothing, just wait.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: So a couple months went by.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: And the professor came to Randy and said, Okay, now I want you to go to the girl's mother and I want you to tell her that you just got a letter from your mom in the United States, and she will not allow you to marry this Arab girl.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: That will save her reputation and her honor.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, so Randy went and told the lady that his mother would not let him marry uh this girl, and everything was settled.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: So so this brings uh, you know, uh the point that we really need to understand uh not just the words, because uh literally we step out of our 21st century world and we go back to another time and another place.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it was, I think, Mark Twain who said, we know a lot of things that just ain't so.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: Have you heard that?
• 12:13
  unknown: Okay.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or who was the other things ain't what they used to be, and chances are they never were.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but we know a lot of things that just ain't so.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh I've heard Randy uh teach this uh many times to our groups, you know.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what does it mean to me, this passage and the um to me and my family in the 21st century as I face my life and all the issues?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: And the reality is this, Rhett, there is not one word of scripture that was written to me or to you personally, but every writ every word of scripture was written for me.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's not written to me, but it's written for me.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: So when God spoke, he spoke to a specific people at a specific time in a specific place to benefit you and me, but at a much later time.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: He said that things to them in a way that they would understand.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: So now I have to do something more than just read it and believe it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um Randy often uses the example of a teabag.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: He says it's like putting a teabag in the water.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you have to allow the scripture to permeate uh this water and challenge uh us by the principles uh involved in it.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: I've got to squeeze out the story of God and Abraham, God with Moses, God with David.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: What specific things?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Who's God in the story?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: What does he want from David and Moses?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: You see, it's the principle behind the cultural practice that we're after.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: What everlasting truth can I draw out of this story that's relevant and applicable to my life today?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here's an example to what we call the principle of approach to Scripture.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Leviticus chapter one, which is a book that many Christians hardly ever read.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: But chapter one begins with three verses.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to them from the tent of meeting, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd of the flock.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: If this offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer it a male without defect.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: He shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the Lord.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: So in verse one, we see that God is calling out to Moses.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: And from this I know that God often takes the initiative in his fellowship with us.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's an important principle for me when I'm feeling far from God.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: God calls out to Moses.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: God does initiate communication with his people.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: So at those moments when you're feeling far from God, God will speak.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great principle.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: In verse 2, God orders the people to bring an offering from their own herd or flock.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: And from this I can conclude that God wants me to return to him some of those things that he's freely given me.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: We call them offerings.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a great principle of my relationship with God and an important principle of God's economics.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: In verse 3, God says to bring him an animal without defect.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: And from this I can see that God wants me to bring my best.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: He's not going to be half happy with a half-hearted response from me.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: If he asked me to give$100 to the missionaries, he won't be pleased if I just give$50.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and let me give you one example when this first became very real uh to me.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, my friend uh Nick, who was part of our church in Maui, lived with a guy named Dan, and Dan was uh he was suffering from cancer.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: And Nick got the idea that we should paint Dan's bedroom and just brighten the house up.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought, great idea, I'll help.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: So we went down to the hardware store, and in those days, this was probably 1983.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we looked at you the Bible.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we looked at uh the paint, and there was the$7 a gallon paint, and there was the$11 a gallon paint.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: And Nick and I looked at each other, and for that, us, that was a lot of money at that time.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: And Nick said, Which one should we get?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, I don't know, Nick, what do you think?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Well, the Lord wants us always to give our best.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we dug, reached in and we dug out our$13 and we bought a couple cans of paint.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: So here we have in three obscure verses in a book, obscure book of the Bible, three principles that work for you and me today, 2026, in Vero Beach, Florida.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Three very important principles.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: That God will initiate communication with us and speak to us.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: That God wants us to return uh uh an offering to him as an acknowledgement of the things he gives us.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is a very important principle of his economy.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: And whatever we do for the Lord, we should give him our best.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: So these are uh principles that we can pull out of these commandments.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I try to do, Rhett, is uh as I read especially the Hebrew scriptures, I'm always looking at uh what's God really saying to me here?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like for uh for example, in Deuteronomy, uh God says, Don't wear a sh a garment made out of wool and uh cotton.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh don't plow your uh field with uh two different animals, don't plant two different seeds, uh two different seeds in that field.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now those seem to be very arbitrary cultural practices.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: But what's the principle behind that?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because uh Paul told his disciple Timothy that all scriptures inspired by God and profitable to teach me, to correct me, to reprove me, and to train me in righteousness, that I might be adequate and equipped for every good work, second Timothy 316.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Great memory verse.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, what is it in these verses in Deuteronomy that are going to teach me, correct me, train me?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the conversation in Deuteronomy starts off, I'm bringing you into the land of the Egyptians.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Don't be like the Egyptians, be like me, be holy, be kadash.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: So don't mix their culture with my culture.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Don't wear a shirt with uh two different fabrics in it.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: Don't mix it as a kind of an object lesson.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't know about your shirt, but I'm wearing a shirt today that is cotton and probably has a little polyester in it.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm actually violating the the letter of the law, but I'm really trying not to mix uh my uh current North American culture with God's culture today.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm trying to follow the principle behind the law.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: The are are are are you are we tracking here?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: The principle behind the law is well uh that's what the challenge is whenever we open separate we yeah, whenever we open scripture.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: But now they don't have to do that because we're not dealing with the Egyptians.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: But we're s we're dealing with North American culture right now that tells us all sorts of things that uh we could be doing.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: And um imagine um churches that have gone away from the Bible and are are um not holding on to the sanctity of marriage and just uh marriage has become a very blurred uh concept involving same sex or both sex.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we we have little regard for our unborn children, and our culture tells us one thing, but the Bible tells us that all life is precious.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you want to have a contract with somebody, that's your business, but don't call it marriage because marriage was created by God.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um the idea, right?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's um three problems that we have when we uh look at the Bible.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, we have a false division.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's a separation we make between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: We think that the Old Testament is old and out of date.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: And we're confused about the meanings of what the New Covenant is.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um That verse Old Testament comes from a passage and it's in Hebrews chapter eight where um the writer of Hebrews is telling his Jewish friends that are followers of Jesus that you don't need to go to the temple anymore and offer sacrifices.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because Jesus' sacrifice is done it once and for all.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: So this is really the main theme of the entire letter that's written in and in verse uh uh chapter eight he says uh some things are uh the old this portion of the uh Hebrew laws are old and out of date because they've been uh completed in Christ.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: But people have taken that now and label the entire Hebrew scriptures as old and out of date.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And yet the Bible is a complete unit.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you really can't understand the work of Jesus until you read about the prophecies about him in Micah and Isaiah, uh in Jeremiah, and even in Genesis, and you you can't really understand Jesus unless you understand the Hebrew scriptures.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: And how can you uh understand the book of Hebrews and uh and really understand it unless you know what's the content of the book of Leviticus is?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: These things go together like hand and glove.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: The other uh problem we have is uh we have a faulty interpretation.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: We try to fit the Bible into our old culture.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: We we have a concept that some things that uh Jesus says are for the time and uh are out of date and they don't really work in our culture, that we've progressed from those times.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: And we forget uh we have a false application, I think is the third issue, because we forget the the Bible was not written uh to us, but it was written for us.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's the principles that we're supposed to follow, and it's not just the cultural practices that are prescribed in the Bible.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: So when we come to the scriptures, it's like the questions for me are well, what does God think about me?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: What does he think about my life?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: How does he feel about the people around me?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: And how can I best fulfill my reasons, his reasons for my existence?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're looking at the Bible for these answers, and you know, Hebrews chapter four says the word of God is alive and powerful, it's sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting between the soul and spirit, between joint and marrow.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: So the Bible is God's method of instructing me, of training me, of keeping me on his track, of letting me know what he thinks about things.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: And most importantly, what we see, the theme of the Bible is God's great love for us.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh His love for us.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: So it's okay to have a tattoo.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: You don't need to wear a uh uh head covering on your head to go to church if for if you're a lady.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine if you come in without one.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, people try to make up religions, you know.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: No makeup, makeup, you know, everybody has to wear a white shirt, you know.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know Gandhi was turned down at a church, a Christian church in India.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to go in, and they said, Oh no, you're not properly dressed to come in here.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they turned him away, yeah.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I interviewed his grand his grandson.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was turned down.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine that?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's been our um focus is to have outward displays of our righteousness where ac actually it's God is really looking at our heart.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: He wants to know what's going on on the inside.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: So since we're talking about these Old Testament laws, what do we do with them?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um how essential are these laws that God gave to Moses in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to you and me, the New Testament Christian?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: How important are they?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: The laws?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, come on.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: You've been reading the Bible, right?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, which laws are you referring to?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think the law of love is important the first two is love the Lord and then love your neighbor as yourself.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you can ask yourself, do you know all your neighbors?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know my neighbors.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: I say hi, hi, Mike.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know his last name.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I can't sometimes I can remember his wife's name.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, God's saying, love your neighbor.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, you know, I thought the other day I was driving out of my neighborhood, I thought, a little gated community.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, maybe I need to just, you know, walk around and uh say, hey, if there's anything I can do for you, let me know.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so you're you're zeroing in on Love your neighbor as yourself.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's uh I think um Second Commandment, isn't it?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's Leviticus 1944.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh love your neighbor as yourself.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's Leviticus way back there.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um so that's an old testament law that you count to be a very significant in your life, right?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you might be surprised about the answer that Jesus gave to this question as to are these laws important for us?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: And he did it in in uh chapter five.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: He said of Matthew, he said, Do not think I came to abolish the law or the prophets.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: I did not become to abolish, but to fulfill.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: For I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until it is all accomplished.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: Whoever then annuls the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called in the kingdom called least in the kingdom of heaven.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: For I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and scribes, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what does that surprise you?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, because what he meant by that, he even said to the other people, he said, you know, the the prostitutes and the tax collectors are going into heaven ahead of you.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: It makes no sense.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's because when Jesus died and his righteousness became our righteousness, that righteousness is more righteous than our we can do all the good works from the kingdom come.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if when they learn that yeah, okay, so you got it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: So uh I think what Jesus is saying here is uh that the first of all that the Hebrew scriptures, the law and the prophets, have permanent validity to everyone in the kingdom of God.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: That would be you and me.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: They apply to us.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't necessarily mean the Talmud, but it does mean the scriptures.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right, the scriptures.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: All the the Hebrew.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's just a commentary.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: So there are commentaries on the scriptures.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just stick to the scriptures.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, please.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then the second thing he says is the Hebrew scriptures should be taught and obeyed by the children of the kingdom.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that entrance into heaven is dependent upon an inner state of righteousness that's reflected in the teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Don't think I came to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Pleroo is the word, fulfill.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that word can mean to fill a hole, it means to it can mean to complete, but all my dictionary say that in Matthew 5, 17, it means to explain more fully.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to explain it more fully.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the context in the next few verses, Jesus five times says, you've heard it said.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you murder a person, you're uh condemned.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: But I say if you murder a person with your words, you're just as guilty.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: So there's five instances where you've heard the ancients say, do not commit adultery.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I say to you, now he's explaining it more fuller, uh, if you have lust for a woman in a heart, you've already committed adultery in your heart.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: As a male who's made for procreation, it's hard not to think about women that way.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's particularly young.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an old guy, it's okay, but uh when I was a young man or other young men out there.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So uh and how do you how do you listen to that and not walk around condemned?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa, whoa is me, you know?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's one thing, it's it's it's one thing to look at the attractiveness of a woman.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: But what do you do with the thought?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: But Martin Luther, but didn't he beat himself with the straps and stuff because he knew he was doing things wrong?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: No, I think you're talking about Jerome, maybe, who was a translator of the uh uh Vulgate, the Latin Bible.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: But uh scholars, uh guys that are a lot smarter than me, uh Rhett, have said, and this is a book that I have on the Bible from John Stott and Alex Motier.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: These are like classic uh Christian theologians.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: They say that there's three ways that we actually can look at these laws in the Hebrew scriptures.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: The first way is the theonomic way.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: It says that all the laws are still in effect and they must be obeyed to the letter.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I've I've got a lot of Jewish friends who are Christians, and I worked with them in Israel, and around lunch uh we would sit and we would talk about which of these laws should we be keeping and which ones shouldn't we?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now, obviously, don't kill, don't steal, don't uh covet, uh, you know, the Ten Commandments, and then there's a bunch of others, okay?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: As far as they're concerned, as Jews who are followers of Jesus, whenever it says, do these uh laws, do these things for all of your days, they consider those to be binding to them.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: And often we would discuss, well, if the rapture happens, are are Jewish Christian uh are Jewish followers of Jesus going to be raptured with the church?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: We had discussions like that.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: So theonomic.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's one way.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: You look at the laws of the Old Testament and you must obey them as best as you can.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a second approachable idea for a life, though.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, God, you're constantly wordwalking on eggshells.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did I offend God today?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the second uh manner to look at these uh laws is the cultural approach, which says that all the laws belong to their day and have nothing to do with our lives today.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: Now, one of my friends from a few years ago uh had a boyfriend who was, at the time she met him, she was involved in dealing drugs.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: And she fell in love with this guy, and uh and they were uh fully engaging in all the sexual activity that goes along with that.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: And um and then the guy had a someone took him to church and he had a conversion experience and he became a follower of Jesus.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: And and he said to her when uh he saw her, Robin, we we can't be having sex anymore.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, Why not?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: And she he said, Because I'm a Christian now.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, Well, I'm a Christian.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, You're a Christian and you we've been having sex?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because the Bible says if you're not married, you can't you shouldn't be having sex.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: And Robin says, No, I think it's okay for Christians to have sex outside of marriage.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: And Matt said to her, Well, just go ask your pastor.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: So Robin went and she uh asked her pastor, look, my boyfriend, he just became a Christian, and he says we can't have sex before marriage.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is that true?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what the pastor said?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Robin, you know that back in the Bible days, uh, they wore sandals and they rode camels, and we don't wear sandals and ride camels anymore.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: And all those laws are for those times and those things are out of date.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Of course you can have sex with your boyfriend.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he obviously knew by the spirit of truth.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had the same incident.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I knew that the day I got born again, I after that I I would you know, I said no, I tried to live like a monk for the next seven years.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't work out so well in the end either.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: But uh when you when you have the spirit of truth come in, you go, I don't think we're supposed to do this anymore.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right, exactly, exactly.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: So uh that's what happened to Matt.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh spirit of truth, holiness of God.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: So Robin comes back to Matt and says, uh well, my my pastor uh said it's okay for us to have sex.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think Matt said, he don't know crap about the Bible.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: So they got married.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: And their daughter went on a trip to uh Nicaragua with us.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's how I met these guys.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's all that went down, huh?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we got the theonomic, obey them as best you can.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: We got the culture, just ignore them.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: They're old and out of date.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then we have a third view called the principle approach.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the biblical interpretations technique that says behind each cultural practice there is a spiritual principle that is always relevant to our lives as members of the kingdom.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: Which one makes more sense to you?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Which one?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: The principal approach, right?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: If all scripture is inspired by God and profitable to teach us, then what in that passage of scripture in Leviticus chapter 19, don't cut the hair on your forelocks, don't trim your beard, and don't make marks to the worship of your dead or tattoos on your body.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: What's the principle behind that?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the principle behind that, since we're not Egyptians worshiping the dead, is we should not be involved in any worship of the dead, and we should be worshiping Yahweh only.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that song?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Talk like an Egyptian.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: So when Paul wrote this to his disciple Timothy, that all scripture is inspired by God, what scripture was he referring to?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: Think for a moment.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: What was he referring to?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that then it would be the uh Torah, the Torah.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: The Hebrew scriptures, right.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: So right now you and I have been issued a challenge.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: As we open the pages of the Bible and we look in that first two-thirds of it, and we're reading these stories, and then we're reading uh these laws that are given.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: We have now we have a challenge.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: What's behind this cultural practice that God is wanting me in the 21st century to apply to my life?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let's take a look at one of God's laws that's uh found in Exodus 23, 19.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: You shall not boil a goat in its mother's milk.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what do we do with this command?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but it's boiling goat in milk anyway.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know anybody that owns any goats?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you've seen a baby goat.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I have seen them.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, adorable little guys.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and our number one eating meat in the world, though, is goat?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's it's very tasty.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: I've been to restaurants in Mexico.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh tasty, okay.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: I wish we didn't have to eat our animal friends.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: If I had to kill the cows, I had friends of their missionaries like you, and they had a beautiful bull outside West of Town, and that bull would come running towards me and he'd lick my with a scratchy tongue, would lick my arm, and I'd just love that bull.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'd come back in a few months, where's the bull?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the refrigerator.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want my bullfriend.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't, how much was he?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: 800 bucks or though?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I would have given that to you to keep him alive.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'd I could I can't look in those big brown eyes.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't just, you know what I mean?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, I had a conversation with a uh friend of mine that's a vegetarian about this yesterday.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: This is a little sidetrack here.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, it's it's humans that are made in God's image.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: And uh animals are not made in God's image.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there's two different natures there.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh God says to uh eat the eat the animals and eat the uh plants and and and you have dominion over all.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: But we're in a fallen state.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe before the fallen state we didn't eat our friends, I don't know.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: I can't really address that.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: But um we're not goat farmers.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: But the commandment in Exodus 23, 19 says don't boil a calf or a goat in its mother's milk.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you do with that?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: So what do we do with that?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh summer of 99.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we moved to Jerusalem.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're living downtown uh on Rabi Akiva Street in an apartment right next to the uh park, a big park in downtown uh Jerusalem.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: A couple blocks away is the McDonald's.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah I could not wait to take my family to the McDonald's.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so we walked over one morning or one midday.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why couldn't you wait to go there?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's American food.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm eating schwarma, I'm eating falafel, I'm eating hummus, I'm uh, you know, I'm in this uh it's a different night.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we walk over to the McDonald's and I look at the menu and I don't see a Big Mac.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't see a cheeseburger.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so I order a quarter pounder.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: Now, my son Lucas, all the way at the end of the counter, about 15, 20 feet away, it's a long counter, is another cash register.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And Lucas is ordering a McFlurry, a milkshake.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: And as soon as they make that McFlurry, there's a guard standing there with a door, it's a glass uh partition with a separate room.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: He opens the door and he directs Lucas to go sit in that separate room.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: And he's only seven, and I look at him, I go, No, Lucas, come here.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: But the guard said no, he must sit in here and uh drink his milkshake.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I went back and uh I asked uh my uh teacher, you know, Randy, I said, So what's up with the no cheeseburgers in McDonald's?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: He says it's a certified kosher restaurant.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, what does that mean?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: He said, Well, it means uh that you don't mix dairy and and meat.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of the kosher laws.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Where does that come from?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: He said, from Exodus 23, 19.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: Don't boil a calf or a goat in its mother's milk.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Really?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's where they get that from?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but that's what they do.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh on our first trip to uh Jerusalem in 97, I was standing uh with Craig and Kathy Ingler, our pastors from our church on Maui, uh, and our three uh mosquito friends, Truman, Augusto, and Enofre.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: And we were in line uh down in uh Zion Square at a place called Bonkers Bagels.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: And as we're standing in line, I hear this voice behind me say, Hey, are you guys from Maui?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: I turn around and look, and it's my friend Suzanne.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: She's a girl that I met uh early in my time in Maui.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: She was uh lived in Hana.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: She was really good friends with my cousins.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I knew Suzanne later on.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh she had kids, and I met her mom, and she was involved in one of the churches at uh HANA, uh, was really involved in the ministry there, and then she disappeared.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't see her.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: And even when I was living in uh Honduras in the 80s and 90s, and just wondered where she was, she's standing behind me, and she recognized Craig and Kathy.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: So uh she said, Yeah, I emigrated here.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Why you immigrate?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: She says, Because I'm Jewish.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I never knew that about her.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, where's your uh daughter?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: Where's Sidra?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: She's the one serving you.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: She's uh she's grown up now, and sure enough, I looked and it was her daughter, Sidra, that was making our bagels.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, eventually we got invited over to her house, and she had two refrigerators.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Suzanne, why do you have uh two refrigerators?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: She said, Well, my uh I have my meat in one and I have all my dairy in another because you can't mix meat and dairy.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, I'm really trying to reach out to my uh neighbors, and they will not come and eat with me unless they know that I have a kosher kitchen.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I have two sets of silverware and two sets of plates and bowls.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so we only uh serve Letter of the Law.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: So but this is kosher.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it all comes, this particular aspect comes from uh the uh verse.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: Do you refute this for today?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're gonna uh uh di discover it.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: But one thing about Suzanne that I always liked about her, I always respected her.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: She lived in uh San Francisco before she came to Maui.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: And her her next door neighbor in her apartment was Carlos Santana.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, the guitar player.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: And he would play his guitar loud enough where Suzanne could hear it, but he would keep playing the same riffs over and over and over and over and over again to the point where she would bang on the wall and she would yell, play something different, Carlos.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Was he famous yet or no?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he that was before uh one of the great guitarists of our time, right?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's how he became great.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's how he over and over and over again.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: So um So what do we do with this uh boiling a calf or a goat in its mother's milk?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: Do we obey the law, the nomic?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: Or do we view it as a cultural law and just uh ignore it?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Or do we look for a principle behind it that might express something important to God that might be relevant to our life today?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: What was going on in Moses' time that might provoke God to issue such an injunction?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a good question that we would have to investigate.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: You can't just dismiss it.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to look past it if we're actually going to believe that all scriptures inspired by God and profitable.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: To teach me.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: Alright?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: So first, first thing I always do is I look at the context of a verse.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: What's around the verses that might help me understand the meaning?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in this particular case, in Exodus chapter 23, here's the verses that are before don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: And this is God saying, Each year you must celebrate three festivals in my honor.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: First, celebrate the festival on unleavened bread.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's Passover.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: For seven days you the bread you eat must be without yeast, just as I commanded you.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Celebrate this feast annually at the appointed time in the early spring in the month of Abib for the anniversary of your departure from Egypt.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: No one may appear before me without an offering.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: Second, celebrate the feast of harvest.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: This is Pentecost, when you bring the first fruits of your harvest.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Finally, celebrate the festival of the final harvest.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: This is tabernacles, at the end of the harvest season, when you have harvested all the crops from your field.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: At these three times each year, every man in Israel must appear before the sovereign the Lord.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: So here's a passage of Scripture commanding all Jewish males to show up three times in Israel, uh in Jerusalem to worship the Lord.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then it continues You must not offer the blood of my sacrificial offerings together with any baked goods containing yeast, and don't leave the fat from the festival offerings until the next morning.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: You must not cook a goat in its mother's milk.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: All right, now is this a dietary law or is this a worship and offering law?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: The context says it's all about offerings, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about dietary.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: So God is saying, when you bring your offerings to me, these are very specific for offerings, don't mix the blood of the offering with any baked goods with yeast, don't leave the fat from the animals overnight, bring the best of your harvest, and don't cook a young goat in its mother's milk.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: So what was going on in the culture of the time that God would say this?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, actually, it doesn't take much research, but if you're a goat herder and a sheep herder, which most people were, how are you going to get wealthy?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: Think about it for a moment.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: If you and I own goats and sheep, how are we going to become wealthy people?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: If we have a herd, and everybody else has a herd, nobody wants our herd.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: No, well no.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: If we have a herd, well what are we getting from our sheep and our goats?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: We're getting milk.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're making cheese, uh we're getting clothing from the wool, and we're getting meat.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: So if we want to get rich selling meat and clothing and milk, we need more sheep and more goats.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that all now depends on fertility of our herd.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we need a good stud and we need a bunch of very fertile ewes, right?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we need a good season where there's lots of baby goats and sheep that are going to grow up and produce wealth for you and I.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: Now, in Canaanite culture, in Egyptian culture, it was the gods of fertility that controlled your flock and the the uh the offspring and the birth birthing season.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: So offerings were made at the beginning of that season for uh the gods of fertility to bless you with fertile animals.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: And in Egyptian and Canaanite culture, the very best offering to the gods of fertility to ensure the fertility of your herds was to take a newborn lamb or a newborn goat, kill it by boiling it in its mother's milk, and then the family would stand around and each would drink from the broth and they would dedicate themselves to that god for that season.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where that all came from.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now, you think this is an unusual practice?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: A few years ago, Lucas and I were visiting our school in Klampa on the Cocoa River.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we would uh occasionally go and uh visit all of our schools, work with our teachers.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: And while I'm talking to our four teachers in Klampa that day, Lucas is standing and looking at the field behind the uh school, and he says, Poppy, what's that guy doing?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I look and there's a guy that's obviously the owner of the field, and he's got the Sukya, who he's the spiritual guy in the community that connects you with the the spirits or the demons that control things.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: And they had had a chicken, they had the chicken's head cut off, and they're sprinkling blood around the edges of the field, and uh offering a sacrifice to the gods of fertility that he would keep the rice seed, uh the what the beans, I think he was uh planting beans, that the beans would grow and be abundant, that the flood would uh be held off, and that they would have a great harvest.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: Now God said, Don't bring me a sacrifice like this.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: It has nothing to do with dietary loss.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_03: And the principle is don't trust the gods of fortune for your economy.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: Trust me.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's the principle.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: And Jesus echoes this principle in Matthew chapter six when he says, uh why do you worry about what you're gonna eat and drink?
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: Look at the birds, look at the flowers.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: Seek first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same principle in Exodus 23, 19.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: So you know how I apply this principle today when I live here in Florida?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: When I go into one of the convenience stores, if I'm buying gas or buying something, what's one thing you see at all the checkout counters?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: The Florida lotto tickets, right?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: And when I see those lotto tickets, you know what I think about?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: Not boiling a young goat in its mother's milk.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna trust the gods of fortune and buy a bunch of lottery tickets?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: Or am I going to trust God for my economy?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's yeah, and if you want to do that, but you can also say, see, I believe the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is in charge of everything.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not I'm not sure.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was a time I didn't buy lottery tickets, and lately I have, because I figure, hey, God, uh I'm gonna give you the opportunity if you want me if you want me to prosper here.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and I I think that's uh I think that's a viable course.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but if you found yourself spending most of your money buying those lotto tickets, there's one thing to to walk in and buy a couple, like Laura goes to uh one of her dance classes, and uh the owners of the business give out uh lotto tickets and so Laura can't wait to go to publics and get it scratched off to see if she won, you know, and she won$13 one day.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I you know, people people uh, you know, there's a lot of evangelicals that are anti-Catholic.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I can understand that when you first come in and you're born again, you go, well, what is this religion where they never told us to you needed to be born again?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you get a little umbrage against the Catholic Church.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: You also say, Well, I really don't believe in praying to saints, and you kind of dismiss the Catholic Church.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Later in life, I've realized there are people sitting on, first of all, there's people sitting in churches everywhere that are born again, that don't even know they're born again, and there's people sitting there that don't know God at all and they're sitting in the pew.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, so I so I I try to be lenient and going, well, it's kind of like if people get dunked or they get sprinkled or they get doused into a river, uh, which one is really truly baptized?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, I think if if God gets technical on judgment day, we're all gonna be in a heap of bunch of trouble.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's he looks at the heart, and I will say this there's a Catholic, I know of a New York Times bestselling author.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: She sold 240 million copies of her books, very successful.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: Her cousin is a Catholic nun.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: She gets uh it's she's 60 years of age as a teacher.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: They say you have to go now.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: After 60, you can't work for us.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever the situation.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the specifics.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: So she moves to Florida and she gets a job teaching down near Miami.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: She gets fired.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why, but she gets fired.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to have a relationship.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, so she's living in her car.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: She's in her 60s and she goes, Lord, she said, I gave you my life.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is this what you had intended for me?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: So she goes into a 7-Eleven and gets a cup of coffee and buys a lottery ticket.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: $33 million.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, I asked Debbie what she did with that at Debbie McCammer, and she said, Well, she gave most of it away, of course.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, did God have his hand in that?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Of course he does.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm just saying this for me, for me, as somebody that's looking at why is there not a cheeseburger at the McDonald's in Jerusalem?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is an abomination right here, okay?
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the So you so you if you're buying a lottery ticket praying to the gods of lottery, you're gonna you're gonna you're God's gonna take umbrage with that.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I don't mean I'm your father.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't mean to make a dis um pejorative statement about people who are buying lottery tickets.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying that for me, the shock or the disappointment of not being able to buy a cheeseburger on that day caused me to investigate this.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: And when I started investigating, I realized that the whole kosher system is based upon a verse in the Bible that is uh all about offerings and not about diet.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we're there are dietary laws.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these truths are setting us free because when I first moved to this town 33 years ago and I went to Buddy's church, if I didn't go on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night, I thought God was really mad at me and I'd sinned.
• 54:37
  unknown: Right.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know how I got emancipated from that kind of thinking where I was, you know, Paul says, Don't get entangled again.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: So what you're doing is you're untangling people from stuff that they're and they don't even know why they're doing it.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the point is uh that uh that I hope to be making this morning is that we should be looking at scripture, not ignoring it and considering it to be old or out of date, but trying to look at when we come upon these cultural practices like boiling a calf and it's mother's milk, something we don't we don't we don't do that today.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: No, we don't have goats, most of us, okay.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well what what do we do with that verse?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we have to look behind it, and we have to ask ourselves, what's the principle behind it?
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's something in this passage that's going to equip me and train me in righteousness, right?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, what I get out of this one is I am not going to uh invest money that God has given me in get rich, quick schemes.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to trust him to provide me for my family and the ministry he's called me to.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: And he's done a super job of that, I gotta say.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when you're working for him, he does some of those pay bills, you know.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to encourage, uh encourage you and encourage all of us that the Bible wants to speak to us.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_03: God wants to speak to us as we open the Bible.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: And many times we get bogged down in the laws because we don't understand them and we don't think about uh how they apply to us.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_03: But I believe if we ask the question and we look at the context and we dig in a little bit and study the background, that we'll come up with some viable solutions and viable principles that will affect our life today.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, in Leviticus 18, see the there's cultural practices that are still relevant to us.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like what?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, like for example, in Leviticus 18, uh starts off with, give the following instructions to the people of Israel, I am the Lord your God.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: So don't act like the people in Egypt where you used to live, or like the people in Canaan where I'm taking you, must not imitate their way of life.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: And now, in the next verses, God gives us his view on sexual relationships.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a really interesting read.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_03: He says, Don't have sex with your mother-in-law.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's going to get you in trouble.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: Don't have sex with your sister-in-law, don't have sex with your aunt.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: Don't have sex with your uncle if you're, you know, a woman.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_03: Don't have sex with uh extended cousins, okay?
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, God's plan for humanity was the husband, wife who love each other and care for each other and their children that they train up and the children respect their parents.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_03: This was God's foundation for human society.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: And anything that uh threatens that or comes against that, he says, turn away from it, do not do it.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_03: So as he's going through this list of who you you shouldn't have sexual relationships with, you come to verse 22.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_03: And do not practice homosexuality.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_03: Having sex with another man as with a woman, it's a detestable sin.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: A man must not defile himself by having sex with an animal.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: A woman must not offer herself to a male animal or have intercourse with it.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's a perverse act.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here is a uh prohibition of some cultural practices, uh, but they have some timeless principles, okay?
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: Because God's design was for the husband, wife, children, family unit.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't for the man-man, uh, woman, woman.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's in God's eyes, that's not what he considers a family.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um God thinks that sexual activity is a uh great expression of intimacy.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_03: And if you read the Song of Solomon, you read Proverbs chapter five, uh, you see this these statements of let you be exhilarated in the love that you have with your wife.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: Let her breast satisfy you, you know.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you read the Song of Solomon and the description of the lover to his beloved, and and it just goes from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet of a physical description of her body, you know?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's obvious that God has given us sex as an intimate connection.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: It is the most intimate connection.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's very symbolic of our relationship with him.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: The marriage bed is not defiled.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so he says, keep this within the confines of a committed relationship, because think about it, Red.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you're just having sex with a person, you're giving them your physical self.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're not committed in a relationship to stick it out with them in the hard times, you're not committing your mental and your emotional self.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_03: And God says that it should be a commitment, a 100% total commitment.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um our culture has really gone away from that.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: 60% of all marriages, right?
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Divorced.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I think uh we'll read in some of these um passages from the Torah, we'll be reading these laws and asking the question how is it relevant to my life?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: And when it comes to these regarding sex, they're super relevant because the cultural practice co coincides with the principle.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: And how should we post what we've talked about today so someone can find it online in the future when they want to know about these laws?
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um What would be the title of that?
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_03: I I think um well, just go to Amazon and get a copy of the vision behind the verses, because that's where I'm taking it.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: The vision oh, your book.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: The vision behind the verses.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: But we want them to see the podcast, too, to go to the podcast.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: And how do how do we categorize that so they can find it, you know?
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let me just finish.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: Let me just finish off here with uh five thoughts regarding the law.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's very important what we've discussed here.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: People get all bound up, you know.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_03: Why why did God give his law to his people?
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um Well, I think he wanted to give his people a standard, his standard for morality.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because they were heavily influenced by their environment.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they had been 400 years in Egypt.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: They were thinking like Egyptians.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: And they're coming into Canaan, which is a totally a demonic uh uh geographical place.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_03: And God wanted his people to be distinct, to be holy, to be standing apart in their morality than uh these people.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I think the second thing is, Rhett, I think God, through his law, wanted to give them an understanding of uh what sin was.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: His people needed to know that they had a need for forgiveness and that there was a price to sin and that ultimately they needed a savior.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think also God wanted to reveal his holiness to a people who had a very unique privilege of knowing him and uh being part of his family.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't want them to become presumptive and take lightly their mission or take lightly him.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: He he wanted them to understand who he was dealing with, not these Canaanite or these Egyptian self-serving gods of their cultures.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: But I think a fourth thing was think about this for a moment.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: If God if you have faith in God and He is your father and your Lord and He tells you to do something, it's a similar relationship that I have with my children.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_03: As when they were growing up, if I instructed them to do something, I could immediately discern the level of relationship that we had by their obedience.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_03: Because if they just if they trusted me and did what I told them to do, then I knew that we had a very healthy relationship.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_03: But if they didn't trust me or they were disobedient for some reason, then I knew that our relationship wasn't as strong as it could be.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I think when God gives us commandments to bring offerings and to come and worship, these are indications of our relationship with Him.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_03: And see, He already knows what that is, but sometimes our disobedience or our obedience shows us what our level of relationship is.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I try to tell people about tithing.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: I said it's not about being obedient to the tithe, like uh, you've got to give your money.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a relationship that if uh now it now I'm not saying you're like these characters on TV that if you give money, you're always gonna get money back.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I do believe this: if you give bring a tithe in there, you will be blessed of God.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: It could be salvation from cancer, it could be uh having another child that you wanted, it could be a multi, it can be financial prosperity, uh, but you know, it's relationship.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like, have you ever prayed for something and then doesn't make much sense, and then it comes to pass, and you go, wow, you answered my prayer.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh you go, oh, well, you know, now I feel I well, I feel more comfortable today.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know that I have a relationship with God.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, you know, God, why did God create man?
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_03: For a relationship.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it says we're in the Bible, for fellowship.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about obeying the laws, the letter of the law.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's that, you know, uh, here I am.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: I want to have I I mean, I mean, this this is my view.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just uh I'm just fool minded, common guy.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I try to think these things out.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: I say, okay, travel, go out into the universe, you know.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: William Shatner from that TV show said he went out in space, he said he got horribly depressed.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was so lonely and empty out there.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's a weird take on it.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: But he came back and and I thought, yeah, I mean, here's God traveling through the universe.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, let's make man so we can have you know fellowship.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: So he wants relationship.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's why he gives us free will.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he says, okay, you you don't want to do what I want to do.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, I'm gonna give you free will.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see how that, let's see how that works for you.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, plus, uh, you can't truly be a friend with someone unless you, by your own choice, are friends and not uh someone commands you to be my friend.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am el presidente of this area, and they say, You, Michael, shall be my friend.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't, I'm gonna put you on the guillotine and cut your head up.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm your friend, right?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: But you never whereas, you know, this is why we we have freedom.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh God wants genuine freedom, friends.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not gonna be a friend, he says, Okay, you can go your way.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the last aspect of this uh why did God give us the law?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: I was pondering this over uh Holy Week uh recently, you know, when we really were reflecting on the the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and I realized there was only one man who kept all the laws.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_03: Who was Jesus, right?
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_03: Even I I even pulled this verse up this morning, you know.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_03: I was like uh Jesus said to the those religious guys, you know, I speak the truth, but you don't believe me.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: Which one of you convicts me of sin?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_03: If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me?
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay?
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus said, which one of you convicts me of sin?
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_03: He's the only guy that was sinless.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he was the perfect Passover lamb to be sacrificed for our sins.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Without blemish.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_03: And now his righteousness, because of his sinlessness, has been imputed to us.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what about people that step on the cross of Christ?
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: Does it say something about that?
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: That you cannot be, Jesus cannot die twice.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's in Hebrews, he cannot go to the cross twice for you.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what I read there was that's because they started to sacrifice lambs again after having received Jesus, then they it's an abomination to God to Well, the whole right, you're right, Rhett.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_03: The whole uh letter to the Hebrews is basically uh saying that Jesus died on the cross.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_03: You don't need to sacrifice go at uh anymore.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_03: The those passages of the Hebrew scriptures are indeed superseded and now old and out of date because of what Jesus did on the cross.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, you're right, we don't have to do that.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: But um I have found, Rhett, that the Hebrew scriptures are such a rich source for me of God's wisdom.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I see interaction between uh people and God and people in each other, and I see how God responds, I see how people respond.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I just want to encourage uh any of you that find that the pages of your Bible are most uh worn in the last one-third, but the first two-thirds of your Bible is uh sometimes the pages are still stuck together because you've never really uh opened it.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_03: I want to encourage you that uh there's so many nuggets in the Hebrew scriptures.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: And how could we get through life without the stories of Nehemiah and Ezra and Esther and David and Jehoshaphat and uh all the prophets?
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the histories, uh the stories that are recounted there, incredible stories of men of faith, Rahab, uh Boaz, Ruth.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how could we uh not see the hand of God in the lives of all of these people?
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, they're given as examples for us of how are we gonna see these uh the hand of God in our lives.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: And to really understand who God is and what things are important to him, we see that through the laws that he gives us.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_03: And if we just disregard them and never read them, I don't think we're gonna get the fullness of our experience with him.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, this was always about a relationship, and these laws are more information about God more than they are legislation.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder why uh for a lot I don't I can't judge for you, but I can judge me in knowing that I don't know, I feel kind of goofy stupid in some ways because women seem to know early on that life is all about relationships.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we go, you know, uh we're like all about this achievement or acquiring funds or you know, uh hunting and gathering until you realize later in life, what is it all worth without relationship?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people build towers for themselves, they build mansions, and they go, Why am I so depressed?
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, you know, you you know, here you are, alone in your mansion.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: How is that working for you?
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we're created for.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_03: For friendship.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and relationships are the only thing that we can take with us.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_03: Relationship with God and relationship with each other.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, the Bible says very clearly that we uh will be with Him, that uh the our community of believers, we will be together.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_03: It'll uh the world will be restored to its uh original, pristine form, and God will dwell here among us now.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder what it was like here before the fall.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're gonna find out.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is just the skeletal remains of paradise.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_03: There will be a regeneration.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess we're done for today.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we're gonna say too to loo and uh another have yourself a cup of uh friendship, and uh we'll be back real soon.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Aloha.