Latest / The HighDive / Ep. 17 | In The Beginning | Light, Dragons, and the Art of Biblical Meditation

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Ep. 17 | In The Beginning | Light, Dragons, and the Art of Biblical Meditation · The HighDive

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We look like we're working.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: The story of my life.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, we're both with our laptops out today, which tells me we've got a little work to do.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, also suggests we're kind of maybe gonna dip in our toes into the water of some questions that we might need to not all have it here, so we may need to search a little bit.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is that fair?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Just to have it at our fingertips.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which truthfully was part of a like, for example, um are dragons real?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh depends on how you define dragon, but I think so.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you have bones on something, you kind of have to think that it exists.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, can I can I have light without a sun?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do can I have light without a source?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good question.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, there we got some good questions to discuss today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as we're navigating through this, and I hope we leave ourselves in a place where we're encouraged to study and pursue and kind of meditate on scripture.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you're finding us for the first time, I'm Ricky.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is Alan, and we are here at Calvary Baptist Church.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the High Dive Podcast as we're navigating through Genesis.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is now episode two in our Genesis study and series.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this past Sunday, we kind of dug into Genesis one more broadly, verses three through 24, and then over the next couple of weeks, we're gonna kind of go back and laser focus on a couple of the ideas throughout that.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um look forward to this.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe maybe a good way to start today is uh initially Genesis is ancient literature and literature has categories or types.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It has been said or suggested that Genesis is meditation literature.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of talk to us about what that is, what that means, and what difference that makes.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll work backwards.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you pick up Ephesians, it's an epistle, it's a letter.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, right.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So not to suggest that you you don't need to read it over and over again, but when you read it with one plain, it has sort of a plain meaning, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what Paul is saying.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you look at uh Acts, which is kind of like a history sort of text of style, it's it is written fairly straightforward with here's what's happening, here's what's going on.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when you get to the Old Testament, the Old Testament is ancient Hebrew meditation literature.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and what I mean by that is baked into the very style of the text.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is written in such a way that it has built into it little puzzles, it has hyperlinks, it has you'll you'll read something at one point and you'll be like, Well, I feel like I'm missing something.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then you'll keep reading, and down the road you'll get something that unlocks that was in the past.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then it, but it's it's not accidental, it's designed that way.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is designed to be the kind of literature that you read and you go sit under a tree and think about for a while, and you you come back and you read it again, and you take a long drive and you think about it for a while, and you read it again, you go, Oh wow, that connects to that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've missed it for 20 years.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's designed to have this.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: This this is what Psalms says.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I meditate on it day and night, right?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it is it is literature that is actually designed in its structure to not just give you the information outright, it is designed to cause you to have to dig below the surface to really gain the deeper insights of what the text is saying.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: If we as Westerners just read the Old Testament like we read most every book we read, you know, the what's the Theo Vaunt, the Theo book that's out right now.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you just read this wonderful book.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, the Theo of Golden.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: The Theo of Golden.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: You read Alan Levi's book and you read it and you say, Oh, it's great, and you put it down, you just talk about it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's good literature, but ancient Hebrew literature would be like you read it and you gotta put it down, go think about it for a little while.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Come back.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's it is intended, it is structured, it is designed to cause you to have to meditate and think and reflect on things.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all right, let's let's go back to Theo of Golden.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've not read it yet.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love Alan Levi.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Alan Levi.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever listen to this podcast, you're welcome to come be a guest anytime.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I think if you even talk to a modern author who is writing this story, Alan would say, yeah, this isn't just about some guy who's getting out pictures in a coffee shop and going them to hand to people.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like for Alan, I think he would even say the there's a meaning that's deeper or a moral to the story.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So even modern modern books and literature do that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh in in response to scripture and meditative literature, it might be helpful to think through from an ancient rabbinical thought.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um like let me let me enter to the conversation this way.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So in modern Protestant church culture, we talk about inductive Bible study.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, read, observe, interpret, apply.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to push for that, like read it, ask some questions, who, what, where, when, why, do the cross references, and we we've kind of systematized this process.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a similar process in Hebrew literature, so it would begin with the Peshat.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is the direct, plain, literal meaning of the text?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just on the surface, love your neighbor, you know.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that Peshat has a lesson in it, but the intent is to find the remes.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the remes a lot of times would be a deeper meaning, but more importantly, where have I heard this before in the text?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, a lot of Jesus taught from the Psalms and prophets a lot, so the Peshat would have been that initial ethical lesson, but for those hearing it, it would have been the remes says, Go back here on the cross, yeah, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the Peshat, wow, Jesus felt abandoned and all the emotions of his family there and separated and all the pain.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to be learned from that.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The remes takes us back to the psalm, yeah, and then the darash causes us to dig into homiletically with what's going around that remes, what's happening in that story, and sometimes that takes us back even further.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, the the ancient rabbinic thought is ultimately it's leading to sold or spelt like sod.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is the meaning behind all of this?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: What is the personal reflection?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is the meditation?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the image of if I'm digging into a gold mind, I just I ask questions to dig for gold, and that leads me to asking more questions and more questions because God is unsearchable and his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts, implying that there are some things that we wrestle with, we're never gonna fully resolve an answer that answers everything.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, and that's okay, and that's okay.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we're because we're we're reading a text that is attempting to describe the relationship of an infinite God with a finite being.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: We are the finite being, and he is the infinite God.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in trying to put those things together, when we try to begin to understand the character and nature of God, words are limited with what it can, how it can accurately describe him.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so you begin to use ways to create metaphors and allegory and principles and ideas to kind of capture, and so it's when we think about the Old Testament, Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, all of it, um, it's not written in such a way that you just read it and you get it, and you're like, oh, that was really cool, true.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I or here's what I got out of it.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's really intending you to dig deeper, ask questions, continue to look for things because it's structured that way.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's intended to be thought of as little word puzzles sometimes.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a there's a challenge and a sense of freedom in that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge is um I gotta constantly be asking questions and digging for more.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But uh the freedom is it's okay to not feel like I have an answer to everything.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that's okay.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I also want to interject, I have said from time to time, like there is a there's this beautiful passing of ships that occurs when in our modern understanding of the gospel, and uh this isn't even a a Protestant thing, it's just in our understanding of scripture, and now that we have seen a little bit more, um, you know, we always like to look at the story even beginning in Genesis and look forward.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: How do we see how we see Jesus?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do we see the gospel and transformation and this reconciliation of God with humanity unfold all the way to the conclusion?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so we're reading forward with momentum.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the Hebrew thought, it's always looking the other direction.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're looking, we're looking toward the cross, ultimately toward in the presence of Christ in glory.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the Hebrew thought is no, let's look backwards through Peshat, Rames, Derosh, souled, answering these questions that are actually going to push me more back into the word to Genesis 1, 2, and 3.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's where all of those remes end up.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just an interesting thing to meditate on.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it is uh it gives you the ability to spend a whole lot of time in one set of passages without feeling like you've exhausted it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So with that being said, let's meditate for a moment.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-oh.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you about light.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Genesis 1, I got it pulled up here.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1, 3.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let there be light.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there was light.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if he saw the light was good, he separated light from darkness.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we get all that.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then if I scroll down to where I'm uh here, verse 14, let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So seemingly on in verse 3, day one, he's creating light.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: He is not creating the sun until verse 14.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Day four.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But he's already, we already got plants.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Day three.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So in my world and understanding, photosynthesis, that plant needs some light.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it needs the sun, right?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't have the sun yet.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So help me understand and meditate this whole idea.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've got light, correct, but we don't have sun.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: This feels like a quandary.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is one of this is a verse in a statement that I have meditated on a lot, and I don't have, I don't have a good answer for my own self.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I just keep thinking and pondering.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we know from the previous verse that darkness covered the face of the deep.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So in this initial state of nothingness, the chaotic waters, the spirit is hovering over the chaotic waters, and there's darkness.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so on day one, the first thing God does is he creates light.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Creates light.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there's darkness and light.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then it says that he separates the light from the darkness.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I don't know what that means.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know how you like when you turn on a light switch, darkness automatically, like it is it is the nature of light to propel darkness in our understanding of light in cosmology or physics.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something that's being stated here that I think is important to meditate on, and I don't quite yet have a good answer for it.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I do understand that what God is doing is He's creating light.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in our modern world, light is a spectrum.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's visible light, which is the light we can see, but then there's on both ends of the spectrum there's light we can't see.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's cosmological radiation, which is a type of light that you can only see with X-rays or certain types of filters.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But we're told that it's light that creates day and night.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it has to be visible light, and there has to be a way for there to be a place on this world for some part of the world to be in light and some part of the world to be in darkness.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you have this light without something producing the light?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the answer to that question.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: But what it does suggest to me by its here's one of the things I've met a ton of is it suggests to me that this place that has been created is a sphere and not flat.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because um I have something that if you how do you if I have a flat surface and I push light, have light onto it, I have no way to separate light from darkness.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if I have a spherical object and I have light, then I can have a side with light and I can have a side with dark, which means I've separated the light from the darkness.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it that feels to me that what this thing that we're dealing with in this cosmological creation is something spherical in nature, not flat in nature.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which is theoretically consistent with some pictures I have seen taken from outer.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's that's some meditation out of this to me.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: That maybe we're dealing with something that's spherical.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, an argument that I see a lot of people make, and I've read, you'll read this online, is that God is the source of light.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's there's consistency with that idea.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: God is light, and in him there's no shadow, right?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Revelation 22.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is consistent all throughout scripture for sure.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: God is light.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And in in in Revelation 22, when we have this new heaven and this new earth, it's described that God is going to be the light.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: There will no longer be moons and suns and stars, because he will be the light that carries.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not saying that can't be the case, but the thing that I struggle with with that idea is it says, let there be light.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if God is light and he's already here, what is what is he letting there be?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: In our conversations, you had an interesting thought that I hadn't considered in this relationship of so in terms of meditating on this thing.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I meditate, I I think the idea of God being light and the source of light ultimately is consistent from beginning to end.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I see that consistent from Genesis to Revelation.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I have no problem wrestling with uh I think the simple response that many in the theological realm would say is well, God was the source of light.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was radiating and giving the light needed for these plants to grow before the sun.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: How he did that, not a hundred percent sure, but I have no problem believing that here would be uh just a thought experiment.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's an interesting connection from the word used for light in verse three and the word used for light in verse 14.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the same word.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, and my my Hebrew pronunciation is not fluent, but uh day one, verse three, the Hebrew word is or transliterated O-R for light, and verse 14, it is mayorot.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the root word of or mayorot, right, which more literally means like a luminary or a light bearer.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it is to me consistent with the full narrative scripture, plausible to say, okay, even if God said, Let there be light, this is I'm revealing part of myself.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the source of light is me, and I'm gonna reveal.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did he have to create something like x-ray type?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know that kind of light ray stuff.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did he have to create something for that?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or does the thing that he created a portal so that that could be revealed on one side of the sphere while it's dark on the other side of the sphere?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it just him just allowing part of himself to be revealed?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I that was a thing I think you said earlier that I thought was interesting is that the let there be light is is almost this idea of him re entering into this world that he's creating.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Which is again consistent with the story.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then as you mentioned, as you kind of talked about verse 14 with these things that bear that, again, it feels like a precursor to what's going to happen in a few verses with humans.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: That they're going to be image bearers of the of the Father, of God.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so there seems to be, I don't know, I like a lot well where the light comes from, I don't know, but it yeah it's an interesting thing.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: To me, to me, I am content with the consistent conclusion personally that it's coming from God.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: How He is projecting that light, I don't know.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it to me that allows for if I got a sphere instead of flat, so that I can have light on one side and dark on the other, I get the establishment of night and day.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: This sphere can still be already rotating to constitute what is a day at this point.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because that'll be important later.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on one's view of the age of the earth.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, it's okay, that speed and revolution is the same.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we also we know, and we have addressed this on our sermons, we'll continue to repeat this.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if if it was formless and void in day one through three, he's giving it form, and days four through six, he's filling it.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, part of the form is okay, I've got to interject this source of light of myself.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when I begin to fill it in day four, I need to create these luminaries or image barriers that are gonna hold my light and then be this what we would understand in modern day language, the sun is the source.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think that it's I think that part of what's happening in Genesis 1 is a conversation culturally.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: The Egyptians, the Israelites have come out of Egypt, so they're Egyptian by their culture.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the Egyptian culture, the sun was Ra, the the god in the sun god, Ra, and he would travel through the sky and at night he would go into the underworld.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have songs, by the way, in the Prince of Egypt movie that come in when you say By the power of Ra.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: But but Ra would then go into the underworld and he would fight his way out and resurrect in the next morning.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in the Egyptian cultural perspective, if you're a good Hebrew who's come out of Egyptian culture and you look up at the sky, you see the sun, and you see that as a god.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so what is happening in Genesis 1 is this there's a there's a challenge to that idea that the God, this Ra, this sun, actually is a minor character in the creation narrative.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: The actual source of light is the Elohim that is the source.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's also Some play there with how it's shared and presented.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: But we have day and night, and we have an evening and a morning and the first day.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Egyptian perspective, you measure time by the sun.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: It got up in the morning and went down at night.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was one day.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the sun was the measure.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're doing evening and morning as a day, the earth is the measure.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: The rotation on the axis is the measure.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm sitting there's so there's several things I think happening in the text that is challenging an Egyptian perspective or a Egyptian cultural theological perspective or a theologi or a cosmological perspective that is being challenged in these verses in the way that it is structured.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: That, oh, the sun, no, that's just a thing that God created.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's not God.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's not your God.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was a thing God created.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: On the light, that's just something that's all that's been here because it's God's God's self-reveal.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: God revealed himself to us.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and this sun and these moons that you think are deities are actually created things by the Elohim of Yahweh.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Which again, Yahweh Elohim.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: That meditation is consistent with where we even started last week that the intent of this was to help us see who God is.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: God's character nature.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I think it's it's safe to say there's a lot to meditate on as you're listening to this.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, well, what about this?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or here's a question.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Shoot us an email.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're at the end of the day, we're giving you some plausible explanations that are uh reasonable and consistent with the narrative of scripture, but it's something just continue to explore.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I think that's interesting.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So any more on the sun before we go to my next question?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think so.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that Okay.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing to meditate.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um are dragons real?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are dinosaurs real?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any reasonable meditation of scripture to suggest that they were real?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I yeah, I think so.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Fire breathing dragons, I don't know about that part.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Flying dragons with wings.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Flying dragons with wings.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about that part.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ride the way the saddle of the dragon and reach?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and and uh and command this dragon.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um that I don't I don't know.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm confident in is there were large creatures that were reptilian in nature that lived on this earth.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm confident in that because we have bones of these large physical evidence, reptilian creatures.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we have biblical text describing what would be understood as these kinds of creat this kind category of creature.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think scripture is is definitely open to that idea, and it suggests it to us.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there were two things that you just specifically said that are noteworthy.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason the timeliness of the text that we studied last Sunday, where we can even have fun with this question.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Genesis 1, 20, and 21.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heaven.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So God created the sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind, and God saw that it was good.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So two things there.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: We got we got sea creatures, great sea creatures, great sea creatures.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Great sea creatures.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's it.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's a uh adjective.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every every living creature in the water that moves, um birds in the air.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we get categories of creatures, but not specific uh species of creatures.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: There we thank you, science man.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we get um okay, birds, but not specifically, and God created parrots and crows and the whipper will.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you like if you just jump quickly down to verse 24, God continues that train of thought by saying, Let them reproduce after their kind.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so what God is describing in the creation of these creatures is he's describing kinds of creatures.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a category of things that exist within a space.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Something that flies, something that swims.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: These are categories of creatures that have the ability to reproduce with one another.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So following the logic here is okay, so categories rather than individual species.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: But as it relates to the water, yeah, he he associates separately great sea creatures and every living creature that moves in the waters.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: So now there's okay, well, is one could argue, well, yeah, it these are the um the swarming schools of fish as opposed to the sharks and whales.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that yes.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I could logically argue that.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: However, the word here used for great sea creatures is tanin.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And tanin, t-a-n-n-in- is the transliteration from Hebrew to English, uh comes up all throughout scripture, and when we see it elsewhere, it is suggestive of a larger creature.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some examples, okay?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna consult to my um in Genesis 1 and in Psalm 148, it's a uh Tannin related to some great sea creature or a sea monster.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus 9, it's a serpent-like creature, same word.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 74, Isaiah 27, a dragon or a chaos monster.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this may not help us initially, in Ezekiel 29, same word is used to apply to uh metaphorically to a powerful earthly ruler such as Pharaoh.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think if we if we start in Genesis 121, it's hard for me to think that's just a whale or a shark.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: When how it's used in other places, right, when I'm interacting with that word in other places for other things.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: So is that evidence for dragons and dinosaurs?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is my question.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um evidence.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I would say evidence.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it provides us with a with a box within which to put them.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that these, because it refers to it as the great sea creatures, right?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as opposed to great sea creatures or every great sea creature.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: The the fact that there is a the in front of them make us an emphasis.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to I'd have to dig, do some more meditation on this.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: But by putting the that the in front of this gives us an indication that maybe we're talking about something specific as opposed to something super generic, because we talk about the birds, and let it just says, and let birds fly, and let living creatures that move, and let water swarming creatures, right, and let winged birds, but when it talks about this one, there's this the great sea creature.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's an it'd be worth spending more time thinking through, not saying either anything.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: But this word also provides us with a category of creatures that show up in lots of places to, as you've just said, like with Isaiah and some of these others, to sort of suggest a really dangerous, ferocious thing.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes when it's talking about Pharaoh, for example, it's using it to talk about this person who's doing these big, dangerous, ferocious things.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you find this creature in Job, and you're like, hey, where were you when I made the great creature?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this thing.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you find it in Psalms where God describes it as this thing flopping around in the water, and you find it in so it's it's it's a category of creatures that we would look at and go, that's a pretty big ferocious creature that's living in the water, which is consistent with our perceptions of what these sort of sea dragony creatures might be.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it provides us with a category for them for sure.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I okay, and here's some tension.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think categorically it suggests some type of big creature like that.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily, though, in the lane of how modern fantasy depicts it.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've already said that, I think that's worth repeating.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not specifically dinosaurs, but could be correct.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it certainly could be, but I I think here's just attention to it, and this isn't scripted, by the way.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're just talking through this as we think it.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is clearly defined in Genesis 1 as, and that's good.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, this is a good thing, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the rest of the narrative, we just refer to uh Job and Psalms and Isaiah, where there's reference in a negative sense, like this is um, what are some let me look up?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um Psalm 74, 13 and 14.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: You did you divided the sea by your might, you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the water, you crushed the heads of Leviathan.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 27.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um, granted, you got singular versus plural.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Job 41 is like, can you draw Leviathan, this sea great sea creature, out with a fish hook and press down him, his tongue with a cord?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: These are pretty large, seemingly ferocious creatures.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, uh in Genesis 1, God created whatever this is and called it good.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Psalm 74, Isaiah 51, Isaiah 27, and then Job, it's it has become this image of um power that God can control and that God can defeat.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and that is under God's authority.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I and um a couple notes to include on their our thought process here.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is a sea creature, right?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's something that lives in the waters, kind of like Loch Ness, a Loch Ness monster.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is Nessie.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that's an important distinction of this particular creature, something that lives in the waters.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's also important to note that all of the animals, if you go down to the ones that are all the created on day six with all the land-dwelling animals, um, beasts of the field, bird, you know, all these things, um, God calls them good.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in that category are lions, tigers, and bears.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my, right.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh what is interesting, a reality is that when God created these creatures, um land-dwelling creatures, water-dwelling creatures, he created them and they were good.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the consequence of the fall has corrupted all of creation.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is something that causes us to look at these creatures after the fall and go, that's a bad creature.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's an evil thing, that's a vile thing.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: The pre-fall, post-fall, fall.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting that plays into that perception of some of these creatures as well.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: So here's an you're talking about the sea.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm just reading this and we can react to it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Answers in Genesis did this really interesting article about Tannin, this sea serpent.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so it's interacting with this question of okay, was it sea or land?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Was it limited to sea?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says: whether or not Tanin lived in the sea or on land or both is another area of debate.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: So something to discuss and explore.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some passages clearly place these creatures in water.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've already seen that.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 121, the great sea creature.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Job 41.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, Job, uh, Isaiah 27, this creature that lives in the sea.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the passage also, though, uh, Exodus 7, Deuteronomy 32 refer to this as in a in a land dwelling.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Exodus 7, 9 through 12, Aaron and the Egyptian magicians are able to turn their respective rods into tannin.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so um, which mirrored the sign that God had given Moses.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I've I've often pictured that story just as a snake, but Tannin could be more than just a snake.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 32 equates Tannin with a cobra, which is a specific type of snake.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um Psalm 91, you shall tread upon the lion and the cobra pathin is the word, the young lion and the serpent tanin, and you shall trample underfoot.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it though?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because here's where my brain is going.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um if that word the sea creature, tanin, tanamine, tan, whatever it is, it carries carries more than just a water-dwelling creature.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it always carries with it this sort of serpent-like creature, right?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or not always, when it can be used to describe a serpent-like creature.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like a crocodile could be described as this tending to, right?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, or a hippopotamus coming up out of the water could be described as these like beamuth monsters.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: So this word is a kind of creature, not necessarily a specific creature.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it gives us a category of things.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if it if that category of creature, the great sea creature, also correlates to serpent-like creatures, it seems to me that we're also being introduced to a category of creature that we're going to see in chapter three.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm just talking out loud that if this sea creature character that we see in chapter one, where God says he created even the great sea creature, if that word, if that lane, if that vocabulary gives us this category of things, and in that category of things are serpent-like things that happen to be water or land-dwelling creatures, and we see that show up through the rest of the Old Testament as those kinds of things, yeah, then we may also be getting a precursor to other times where this creature brings about evil to the world.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just I I I have some thoughts on there.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wanna I want to hold them.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I have some thoughts too.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go too far into it.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I want to hold them.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not because I don't want to go too far into it, but we're when when we get into Genesis 3, um it's gonna be more appropriate to talk about them.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: So because there are some other different words or nuances in language that are used that could suggest a little bit differently.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's all I'm gonna say for now.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I I mean I would I'm gonna I'll kind of go back.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we talk about this word dragon.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: The word dragon we have connotations to it in our brain, uh like these long serpent-like things, sometimes with wings that maybe legs and spits out fire and this, that, and the other.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the the baggage that that word comes to us with may distort our understanding of how that how that creature may exist in the ancient world.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we say the word dragon, we think of um some mythical creature from Lord of the Rings or you know, House of the Dragon, or some TV show where you see these creatures or taming your dragon, whatever it is.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that may bias our perception of what the Bible is describing as a dragon because um you can also use that word to describe long, slender reptilian, four-legged creatures.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've seen a bearded dragon, right?
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Little bearded dragon, little desert dwelling creature.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to I don't want to suggest that that word is meaning that we have flying, fire-breathing, serpent-like leg, dragon creatures that are that our brain populates.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: I want us to kind of do our best to lean into what would the ancient what d what would they understand this creature to be when they're describing it within the context of their world.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because it would it would align with something they're familiar with.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um which I think opens up a lot of doors potentially both in the chapters one to eleven.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it opens up some potential conversations in the Psalms and in Isaiah and Ezekiel, and because you have this creature that we're introduced to in these verses that is specific and it's introduced to us in a way that none of the other creatures are.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: All the other categories are very generic categories, but we've got this the great sea creature that is a very important, like it seems like it's been carved out of the generics into something with a little bit more fidelity, yeah, that should make the reader go, that's kind of a weird detail.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh let's say this then.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's more that we can meditate on to circle in the content and the concept of this episode.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: We started with the reality that um Genesis is meditative literature.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: We walk through the process of kind of how that flows and should flow in our mind to cause us to ask questions that ask more questions.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've tried to model that today.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've answered some questions, but we've left some of it like, I'm not really sure.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, some of that's by intentional that spurs us, want to learn more, but also maybe to encourage you to do the same, like to wrestle and ask some questions and be okay with not tying a bow on the end of everything.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that being said, we will circle back to some of these things, especially when we get into chapter three.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe even, you know, uh in our next episode, kind of going back to where we started about types of literature.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, next next episode, we're gonna talk about chiasms and what they do and what they're what they're there for, and specifically what a major chiasm is in Genesis one and why that matters for the big story.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have more thoughts or I have more thoughts even about this, um, we'll bring them into next week's conversation and just talk about them.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: So understand um as as you prepare for next time, go study what chiasms are.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um because it was something that I didn't really get until later in my Christian life, my Christian journey study scripture.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but a chiasm is a key.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: That when you s understand how to use it and see it, it's like a key that lays or focuses your attention on what is the important part of the text.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be fun.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that being said, thanks again for checking out the high dive man.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about sun or the lack thereof, light, um, light bearers, um, dragons, dinosaurs, all the fun things.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've had a great time on this episode.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed it, leave us a review, share this with somebody, like, subscribe.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to check in next week.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back for more.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day and God bless.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.