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Relational Discipleship · The Rhett Palmer Show

0:00
SPEAKER_01: He is the great I am.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: His first friend was Abraham.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: Surely said to Abraham, I am that I am.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: That's almost as good as uh riding in cars with comedians.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: Coffee in the cars are comedians.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Move over, Jerry Seinfeld.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what kind of coffee they're drinking, but I know this morning we are drinking a very sweet coffee from Rwanda.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Rwanda.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: It is a pea berry coffee, meaning that uh the coffee cherries uh usually have two seeds in them that turn into our coffee beans, but the pea berry only has one.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: And as a result of that, it has a different shape.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: It's more rounded on the ends, and it is much denser than a typical two bean cherry.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: So there's a s a lot more flavor packed into that pea berry than just a conventional coffee bean.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're drinking this morning.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
1:14
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
1:14
SPEAKER_02: I like it.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, coffee is the friendship drink.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: What are you tasting?
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Tell me what you're talking about.
1:22
SPEAKER_02: First of all, it's not bitter, which I really like because I don't like bitter.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: It seems to be smooth.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Very smooth.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: There's uh nothing uh but smoothness in this coffee.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: Now, you got into all of this to open coffee shops to uh collect your profit goes towards your missionary trips with your wife and children.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: What happened was when our school project that was in uh and we started in Honduras among refugees from uh Nicaragua, uh Mosquito Indian refugees, uh and communities along the Rio Coco, which is why our business is called Rio Coco uh Cafe Rio Coco Beads.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: What do you love with that?
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Just a wind blown hair look.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: It's a good one.
2:08
SPEAKER_02: I forgot to put on my hair cook today, you know.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: I look bad enough.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: No, you're you're okay, you're okay, Red.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: It's bad enough being 72.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't need any more help in looking terrible.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: So uh when the war ended and the refugees uh crossed the river, literally the Cocoa River is the border between Honduras and Nicaragua.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And uh we thought when Violeta Chimoto was elected uh president in the election in 1990 that uh we would be going back to uh Maui and get on with our lives with the new Minister of Education, uh Huberto Belli, uh coerced us uh through his uh friends.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh Juan Pais is the guy that we met with down in Porta Cavesa and convinced us that we needed to dismantle our schools on the Honduran side and rebuild them on the Nicaraguan side of the river and be the community school.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And that caused us to go, wow, okay, this is now going to be a long-term project.
3:08
SPEAKER_02: Do this or be shot?
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, no.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: It was like he said basically our economy is so strapped.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is after the Sandinista Contra War.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: The country was in shambles, and the economy was destroyed by the Marxist government.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they basically destroyed the economy of uh Were you down there with your wife and four children?
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Um my son, uh no.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any kids born at that point when uh but uh they came shortly thereafter.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: But so we ended up crossing the river, uh re rebuilt our schools.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Eventually we had 14 schools along the uh Nicaraguan side Nicaraguan side.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: You had an enrollment of about sixteen hundred kids.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: You're kidding.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: You and your wife did this?
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, we had a lot of help.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of friends and supporters.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I wrote a check to you long before I knew you.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: Really?
3:58
SPEAKER_02: Buddy Tipton's church, right?
3:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: They sponsored you.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: I remember getting the thing and go, I don't know who this family is, but it was very little amount.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it was might have been a hundred bucks at best.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, what happened was uh a couple a year or two went by and we met Jim and Sarah Hornsby, who were uh the Americans that came to Nicaragua in the 70s and started Young Life Ministry, which is a uh very effective uh reaching out to high school students, starting Bible clubs, and they bought property high in the mountains above Montagalpa, which is the premier coffee growing region of Nicaragua.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Their far their camp is at uh over 5,000 feet, and they invited us to come up, and so we came up to visit them, and it was uh in July, and everyone's wearing long sleeve shirts because it's cool.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: We're living living out on the Cocoa River.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it sincerely is cool up in the mountains?
4:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: It was uh, you know, it's uh three and a half degrees per thousand feet is the uh standard uh temperature differentiation.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: So you go up five thousand feet, you know, you got an almost twenty degrees uh difference in uh so if it's ninety degrees at the base of the mountain, it's seventy degrees at uh 5,200 feet.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I was thinking, wow, what a place for missionaries to come.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, I noticed they were growing coffee and they uh used their coffee uh sales to fund kids coming to their camp.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: And so that gave Laura and I the idea of well, we should get some of this Nicaraguan coffee and get it to the U.S.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: and get it roasted and make some money to pay our teachers, because at that point we had about fifty-four teachers that we were paying a couple hundred bucks a month.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: We had a big budget then.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: So in 2004, uh we started Rio Cocoa Beans as a for-profit business, uh a humanic business.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean, humanic?
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, we we wanted to come up with a word uh to define our coffee.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh our coffee was high altitude.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: That's a very important criteria when it comes to coffee because uh above 4,000 feet in the tropics, because of the cooler temperatures, the growing season is a month or two longer than just coffee at lower altitude.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: It gives an ability for it to put what into the seed.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: It makes the seed denser.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: There's more fats and protein in the seed.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: So there's even a classification uh in uh coffee uh culture, strictly high grown, SHG.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: You'll see that strictly high grown.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: And then it's uh the beans are much denser, so you have a lot more to work with.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, I have a friend uh in Nicaragua that runs a farm called Selva Negra, and his farm is at about maybe 2,500, 3,000 feet.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: But I can take a handful of his coffee, and I can take a handful of coffee from the Lyung Life farm, the Vita Hoven.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the Vitahoven coffee is noticeably much heavier because it's a denser bead.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: SHG, strictly high ground.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: Don't presume people know that.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: I would put I would I would put it.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: Even me as a nobody, and if I saw it up there, what does it say?
7:12
SPEAKER_02: What's the wording?
7:13
SPEAKER_00: SHG.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Strictly high grown.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: Strictly high grown.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: If I saw that on the top of a bag of coffee, I would go, oh, obviously that means something, and it means this is better.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: I think I want to buy this, even if it's a few cents more.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Well that's what I would think.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh the other uh criteria is is the coffee hand-picked strictly high grown.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Or is it uh a machine that goes through the strictly high grown, hand-picked.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:36
SPEAKER_02: And is it all that?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, what happens to a coffee plant?
7:40
SPEAKER_00: It starts off as a flower that turns into a green fruit, and as the fruit ripens, it turns yellow and then turns red.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And when it's red, the pulp is very sweet.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And so if you only pick the red cherries, and they're about the size of the end of your finger.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the the pulp is very sweet and it's loaded with antioxidants, very nutritious.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: So if you seriously, we're drinking we're drinking a nutritional nutritional drink.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: So you may live longer by supporting uh the ministry by buying a cup of friendship.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: A study was just done by a couple of universities in England and I think in Germany.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Rhett.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: They can they did a s uh very serious uh study of a number of thousands of people.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: If you drink two cups of coffee or more before noontime, your chances of dying that day are 70 percent less than someone who doesn't.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: They just did they just did this survey.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh my word.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: So you drink two cups of coffee or more in the morning before noon, your chances of dying that day are 70 percent less than a person who doesn't.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell, but your chances of dying after 8 p.m.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: of course are increased by 50 percent normally.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm only kidding.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: All right, let's get down to our show here.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, the point is high altitude coffee hand picked.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: This is great.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: That should be in small right on top, right up at the bob the logo.
9:13
SPEAKER_02: Don't worry, don't worry.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: Because that's I like that.
9:15
SPEAKER_03: And don't presume people know all of our coffee is strictly high grown, hand picked.
9:21
SPEAKER_03: Strictly high what strictly high grown.
9:23
SPEAKER_03: Strictly high SHG.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: So um that's what our the that's the high altitude.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: The quality of the strictly high altitude.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: Well, uh we'll we'll get it to where it's high because high grown means, yeah, man, they get out and they smoke some pot and they pick it, you know.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: Strictly sorry.
9:45
SPEAKER_02: This is where the 1960s.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Let's get back on the road here, okay?
9:51
SPEAKER_02: He loves that bell, folks.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: So um it's a polite way to get back on the track.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: Now our show is called Cup of Friendship.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: And we uh Michael, by the way, is a biblical scholar, went uh went to Europe to study uh to study history.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: I did say that.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: You've been to uh to Israel about 273 times.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: You lived there at least 273 days, at least.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you lived there for a while.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: How many years did you live there?
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, just uh over between uh 1997 and 2023.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Probably um uh course uh probably 12, 13, 14 months scattered over the city.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: All right, now what are we going to discuss today?
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, we have had some conversations about the Great Commission.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: The Great Commission.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: Go ye into all the world, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not how quite how it goes, right?
10:48
SPEAKER_02: It's that's respiration.
10:50
SPEAKER_02: What is the respiration?
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the Great Commission is uh this is recorded in Matthew chapter 28.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the last things that Matthew records uh that Jesus said to his disciples.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Which was.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: And just think about it for a moment.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: The last things that you say to a friend, like you're at the airport and your family's dropping you off, you got one moment to say something.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: By the way, I'll never say this again, but I love you.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's the last things are very significant.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: The last things that are spoken.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, they say that when you're giving a speech, the first thing you say is important, and the last thing you say is very important.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh Jesus said, as Matthew records, and I'm sure he said some other things, because we know Luke records some, and we know in the book of Acts uh he records some.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: But Matthew thinks it's important that we know that Jesus finishes his ministry by saying this All authority has been given to me on heaven, in heaven, and on earth.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a guy that was just crucified, who claimed to be God in the flesh, and proved that he was God in the flesh.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: By three days later, he's out of his tomb.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: Now, this is after the resurrection.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: But he said, All authority has been given me, which means the devil is no longer the authoritarian on this earth, which a lot of Christians think he is.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, um Jesus makes a reference to a temporary condition where uh the God the God of this world is Satan, because us mankind gave over our dominion over this in the book of Genesis in the Garden of Eden, we gave it to Satan.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: By eating off the tree of knowledge, and therefore thorns and thistles grew out of the ground.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: That's why he had to wear the crown of thorns.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh well uh that may be, but the the uh the uh one of the powers to be on this earth right now is Satan and his uh demonic forces.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: And remember the Bible says uh in Revelation chapter twelve that there was a war in heaven.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: The great dragon, Satan, fought against uh Michael and and the and the archangel, and Michael came and forced uh the uh dragon and a third of the angels onto heaven where they wage war against God.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: We're taking over from God here, and we're gonna be God and I mean the whole thing sounds preposterous, doesn't it?
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the reality of the spiritual world that we live in.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus said after his resurrection, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, this is my translation proceed on the journey that you began with me and disciple all the racial and ethnic groups that I place you in, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that I commanded you, and remember I will be with you as you do this.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: We had a conversation uh a couple weeks ago about the four verbs in the Great Commission.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing and uh disciples.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Now the command verb is only one in the Great Commission.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: It's Matateos, make disciples.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: And what does that mean?
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is what I think we can have a uh discussion about because there's often a lot of confusion about what making disciples actually is.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Jesus told us to make disciples.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: A disciple is uh defined as a learner under discipline.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: Discipline is disciple.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: Discipline, the word discipline.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: So we are to be a we are to be about the business of bringing the gospel that I'm a discipleton.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: Instead of a simpleton, I'm a discipleton.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was I don't want to dwell too much on the simpleton aspects of what you just said, Red.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Hey, look, those of us who are a little stupid, we're blessed because God expects less from me.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: So uh so uh here's the question: how do we make disciples?
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Um if uh you ask that question to a number of our fellow followers of Jesus, they might come up with all sorts of answers.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh what when when I ask you that question, Rhett, what what would your uh response be?
15:25
SPEAKER_00: How do we make disciples?
15:28
SPEAKER_02: Well, um of course the w uh the uh the word of God, you know, uh faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Reading the word?
15:36
SPEAKER_02: Reading the word, that's that's a definition.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: He is the word, was the word in the beginning was the word, dwelt among men, they knew him not.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so we're the word, and also going through space and time, uh learning the disciplines of uh hopefully an observation of the person in front of you, if they're a good disciple, and I see how you handle uh how you handle someone who maybe uh might have a loud voice or blah blah blah.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: So I go, okay, so Mike is the uh rabbi teacher here, and I see how oh look how he responds.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: So I should do uh like imitate you.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's uh those are good aspects.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Um a number of people m formalize the process, I think, and say, okay, if you're gonna be a disciple, come to our church building, take some classes where we're going to teach you Christian behavior of what you should do.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you attend our meetings and then start acting like we act.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh do the thing.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: In most cases.
16:40
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: Um let me ask you this.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: There's the guy, the thief on the cross, who suddenly he's picking, he's mocking Jesus, and then he turns around and he says, Hey, what are you doing, mocking this guy?
16:52
SPEAKER_02: He did nothing.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: We deserve to be here.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: This man's innocent.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus, remember what Jesus said right before him was um, Father, forgive them, they don't know what to do.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: So this guy is melt, his heart melts because of what Jesus said.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: Then and Jesus responds to him melting and says, I tell you this day, you will be with me in paradise.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: Now that guy never never knew knew uh the disciplines, never got baptized, nothing.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: It's just Jesus says, You're coming because of your the your faith of what I I said, you're in.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's the starting point.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: The starting point uh What happens to a guy like that in heaven though?
17:29
SPEAKER_02: Because he didn't have time to get the disciplines, you know.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's uh if you're up on the cross next to the Savior of mankind, and you're watching and you're hearing the things that he says, and there's something going on, and you're uh suddenly aware of it, the guy had an experience.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just like all of us.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: Just like you did in my living room.
17:54
SPEAKER_02: I still can't get over.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: I wonder what happened that day when I surrend finally surrendered, use the words, I surrender the rest of my life to you, boom, and I was like, oh my word, you're real, you're real, and that peace that passes understanding.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I said, This is why people do drugs.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: That's the counterfeit.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: This is the real McCoy that they're searching for.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh so the the discipleship starts off with that experience uh that Jesus is describing at Nicodemus.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he said, Nicodemus, uh, you must be born from above.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: You must have a spiritual birth.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: How can I get back into my mother's womb?
18:28
SPEAKER_00: So he he didn't have understanding of that, but he said there's got to be, Jesus says there's got to be a spiritual birth.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And when Nicodemus doesn't understand that, Jesus brings him to a couple of scriptures that prompt uh his thinking.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: What are they?
18:45
SPEAKER_00: One is from uh Proverbs chapter thirty, where the writer of Proverbs says, Who is it that has gone up to heaven and come back down?
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Who is he and what is his son's name?
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
18:57
SPEAKER_00: What is his son's name?
18:59
SPEAKER_00: So this is Proverbs chapter thirty.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And Nicodemus uh obviously had memorized that.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that was in Proverbs.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs thirty.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And then he refers to something that happened in the desert when the uh during the Exodus, when they were coming from Egypt and coming into the land.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Escaping slave slavery, where um they were murmuring and complaining against Moses, and uh God allowed snakes to come into the camp, and snakes started biting people.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: And don't be a com don't be a complainer.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: Because I've gone there.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: Don't be a complainer against God's anointed.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh the people started dying from the snake bites, and so they come to Moses and they say, Look, we're sorry we said those things.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Could you talk to us?
19:42
SPEAKER_03: We're sorry we said those things.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Can you talk to God and uh gets get him to do something?
19:45
SPEAKER_00: And so God said, Moses, make a snake out of bronze, put it on a pole.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who looks at that snake with faith that I can heal them will have that poison taken out of their bodies.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: That's a foreshadowing of Jesus on the wooden cross.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: The snake was on a wooden pole.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says to Nicodemus, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, and and Nicodemus knows exactly what he's talking about, Numbers chapter 28.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: So too the Son of Man shall be lifted up.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is is pointing the picture, making a picture that I will be on the cross, I will be redeeming mankind, freeing them from their bondage to sin, and anyone who looks at me and believes me and the message and what I'm doing, they shall live and he have eternal life.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: That's quite a promise.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a promise.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: And Paul and it is written in the scriptures, God is not a man that he should lie.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus said, No liars unto the kingdom of God, for the devil is the father of all liars.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well uh the I think the point is that um we need a spiritual birth.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: And Paul describes to his friends in Ephesus and this uh chapter one of his letter, and when you believed, God sealed you with his Holy Spirit.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: Now the process I could I could weep and cry right now, just thinking about the reality of that, knowing what happened to me.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: No one else might be able to leave me, but when it's happened to you, you know it.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: So the the the process of salvation is uh it's a pretty simple one.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: God is continually pursuing us, he's tapping us on the shoulder, he's saying, Hey, look at me.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: I want friendship.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Look at my creation.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I I am an amazing, uh, an amazing guy.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm I am an awesome creator.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And he's a giver.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: He gives us breath, he gives us life, he gives us flowers, he gives us beams.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: And I have the best things for you you could possibly have.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: I should say so.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And uh so there's all of these pursuing us.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh Christianity is very different than world religion.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Religions, because world religion is mankind trying to make themselves acceptable for the deity, for the God.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: If you do this and cut yourself, or yeah, all the behaviors die for me, and Jesus, no, no, no, I died for you.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: I died for you, right.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: So God is pursuing us, and at a certain point, it's a process, we we will suddenly be aware of this, and I think we are suddenly aware of our own sinful state, and we're suddenly aware of our need for God in our life, and so we pause in our walk, we consider our ways, and we consider God and what he's offering to us, and we repent, which literally means we turn and walk another way.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: We we turn around and walk the other way.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: We're walking now toward God, and we receive with sincerity what he's offering us.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And for for me, it was a moment on the beach, Waikouli Park, just north of Lahaina on Maui, where one day I said, Jesus, I think you are who you say you are, so I'm gonna follow you.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: And what happened at that moment?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: At that point, I sensed that something in me had changed.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: That exact moment.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: At that moment.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Now the clouds didn't part, I didn't hear the hallelujah chorus, but something had changed.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And uh this is, I think, the process is when God sees the sincerity of our heart, then he receives us into his family, and he gives us his Holy Spirit as a down payment of what's coming up.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul says.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: So so I had that experience.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: I went back to my apartment in Lahaina, and my habitual behavior was to take out my bong and do a few bongs, smoke a little bit of weed, and go watch the sunset with my friends.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: But that day when I pulled out the bong and smoked, I didn't get high.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Really?
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Something had changed in me.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And I noticed in the next days and weeks, I stopped using some of the colorful language that I used.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh the F-word just dropped out of my vocabulary.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: You you and I parallel lives.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: So I knew something had changed.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I think this is a process that we all have to go through.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: And quite honestly, Rhett, I know there are many people who are church members who consider themselves followers of Jesus, but they haven't yet had that experience.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: And if you don't know that you've had it, you have not had it.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus said, make sure you are born above, born from above.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: You're born once of your of water with your mother.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: You must be born spiritually.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: And wow, once you get once you go to the other side, they go, Oh man.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, I think there's some things that happen that are kind of evidences of it.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Like uh my friend Laney uh told me.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that day after we drove back uh from that meeting, it was actually Phil Driscoll meeting that uh I met him.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: That's a horn player who used to play with Earth, not Earth Windows.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: No, no, he was yeah, uh Phil and I were friends, and he actually offered me a job as his pilot.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: I met him in Honduras when he was when he was doing some work with refugees.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: What a humble guy.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: So um we exalted.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: So Laney said, driving back from that event, she said, and and Phil uh he had an altar call, and people came up and and her and her husband Tim, and they went up and they received Jesus.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: She said, you know, the sky was so much bluer, and the and the and the trees were so much greener, you know.
25:44
SPEAKER_02: And uh it's hard to explain that to people.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And and just a few months ago on the island of Utilla, where we have a Rio Cocoa Cafe, we had a guy named Ethan, who's uh uh from uh New York.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Ethan came down, we had some conversations with him.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh Daniel and Jake uh encouraged him to really start asking the questions.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, are you real?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh and Ethan started asking the question.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: And during a flight on his way to Santiago, Chile, he had a conversation with Jesus and said, Okay, I receive you as my Lord and Savior.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: And he sent us this voicemail.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Um he said, I just received Jesus as my Lord, and all of a sudden everything is so intense.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: I've got so many questions.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: I I just uh something has changed in me.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there you go.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: And I remember my daughter Moselle when she came back from an encounter that uh we were having at our church, and I think she was probably 10 or 11.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: She came back and she looked at me and she said, Everything has changed.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: This is your daughter.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Everything is changed.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: How old is she?
26:50
SPEAKER_00: She was probably 10 or 11.
26:51
SPEAKER_02: She got born again at 10 or 11.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: And she has consistently walked that out.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: But she but th those were her words.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: She just looked at me with all sincerity.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: Everything has changed.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that wonderful?
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And what I notice is to see your child.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:04
SPEAKER_02: Born again.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: I notice another thing that happens to people is suddenly life becomes very dramatic because they realize they're living in a spiritual world where these all the people are being pulled away from God and and there's eternal uh uh destiny at stake here.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: So those who like Star Wars, this this is the real Star Wars, the dark force.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: This is a very, very real.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: So uh there's things that happen.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Um I think one thing that I noticed is um there was somebody that was nudging me.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was like the the Holy Spirit was constantly, there were thoughts coming at me that were not coming before.
27:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like somebody was kind of messing with me.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, my normal flow of life was suddenly interrupted with these other because now I was connected to the consciousness of God.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: I had his spirit in me, and now I'm knowing God's thoughts because he knows my thoughts.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: And and so I think this is a common experience that we have.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: The other thing I noticed too is I did not mind spending time alone talking to God.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's really surprised me.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, well, I keep bugging them.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: I talk to them constantly.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: I'm saying, look, I want a closer relationship.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: This has got to get closer now.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: And I notice another thing is that people start thinking not just about themselves, but about more about the people around them.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell Well, our joy comes in serving each other, right?
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is something that was totally foreign to me.
28:36
SPEAKER_02: Serving.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: You said something the other day, and I was uh every time you say something, it's amazing because you said you thought, oh wow.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: You know, it says in the Bible, not many noble, not many royal come to know the Lord.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: And you, like I arrogantly thought, oh well, you know, I mean, these are these Christians, you know, these these weirdos that are like frankly, yes, that they were less than.
28:57
SPEAKER_02: That I felt that I was superior somehow into the R.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: I think what I said was, Rhett, that when I became a follower of Jesus, I felt like he had made a good choice to have me on the scene.
29:07
unknown: That's what I felt.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: And then I realized uh later, wait a minute, no, no, no.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: See, we had somebody from India once to know where we are.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: We are in Vero Beach, Florida, and we welcome you to our broadcast.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: Um it's uh it's uh ma M-A-H-M-U-D-A Sultana miss you.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: Great.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: She's in Bangladesh.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: In Bangladesh.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, aloha.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: What does aloha mean?
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a Hawaiian greeting for uh hello, goodbye, and love.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: So it's a multidimensional word.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: We love you in the Lord Jesus.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: So the so I think if you have not experienced these things, the the trees greener, the flowers more beautiful, the sky bluer, somebody's messing with me.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh wow, I don't mind spending time alone.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Life is more intense, there's a spiritual battle going on, I'm in the middle of it.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: All these things indicate you have had this born-again experience.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly your thinking starts to change.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of people in our churches that have never had that experience, but they consider themselves church members because they've been told if you come to church, if you read the Bible, and if you uh, you know, do good things, you go help out uh in a building project, you give money to the missionaries, you you uh take time to go feed the homeless.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: People can do that, but that's just behavior, and without the Spirit of God driving that, it becomes religious behavior.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: So religion, this is very important.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: Religious activity will not save you.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:51
SPEAKER_02: You want some more coffee, Brent?
30:52
SPEAKER_02: Yes, please.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: This is delicious.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: It's from Uganda.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: No, no, Rwanda.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Rwanda, excuse me.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the Have you been to Africa?
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I have.
31:01
SPEAKER_02: I went to Zimbabwe, you know, gave a concert there years ago, and I used to travel around a little bit.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: Not like you.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: You're you're a real missionary.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm I was a pretend missionary.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: I'd only go for a couple of weeks at a time.
31:13
SPEAKER_02: Went to Haiti a couple times.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, we welcome you in Rwanda.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: She says, I'm working as a second position at DXN International Company to keep myself healthy, okay?
31:22
SPEAKER_00: So that's the starting point.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: The starting point uh to be a disciple is um this experience with God.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: As we talked about um just uh a few days ago, right?
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: We talked about when Jesus spoke out the Sermon on the Mount and did that teaching, that he started off with the Beatitudes.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: And the first one is blessed is the poor in spirit, for they shall see.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: Not poor in pocket, but poor knowing you had need of a savior, knowing need of a relationship of the Creator.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Right.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: And so we talked about how the beatitudes really are not individual uh virtues, but in fact describe our process of being poor in spirit, recognizing our need for God, of mourning and mourning the effects of sin in our life, and getting angry at sin.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: That word pratis, blessed are the gentle, it's uh or the meek, it's uh it's a Greek word that means getting angry for the right reason.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Where do you find that word?
32:19
SPEAKER_00: In my uh Greek lexicon and uh it's in blessed are the it's the third uh beatitude is blessed are the meek or blessed are the gentle.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: See, this is a big thing for me.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: The revolution I've had over the past revelation over the past.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Gentleness.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: And so me knowing that you're desperately in need of God, you're mourning the effects of sin in your life, you suddenly get angry at sin and decide to do something, and now the the fourth element, the blessedness, is you're hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Because now you want to do it God's way.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: And the fifth uh characteristic is you're merciful because you look around and realize that everybody's in the same boat that you are, so you're not judgmental anymore.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: And while this process is happening, the next uh ingredient is a purification of your heart because there's a transformation going on, and there's finally you recognize this peace that you have with God is something you're compelled to take it to the people around you.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so the beatitudes really describe, I think, the initial uh process of us becoming disciples.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and some what's the third the third uh beatitude?
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh meek or gentle.
33:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay, but say the whole thing.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the meek or blessed are the meek or the gentle.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's translated uh meek or gentle.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: Because it is written in Samuel, thy gentleness hath made thee great.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: So I was thinking about that.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: So um anyway, this is the beginning of discipleship is recognizing our desperate need of God, this the effects of sin in our life, mourning those effects, desiring God's righteousness, looking around and not being judgmental because everybody's in the same boat we are.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: We're realizing that there's a transformation that's going on in our hearts.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: We're becoming a new creation, a conosquistis, as it says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
34:17
SPEAKER_00: New creation, a previously unseen biological creation that comes from God Himself.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: That's what canosquistis means.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: And so this is the beginning.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: This is when we actually can have the assurance that we are in the family of God and that we have made Jesus the Lord of our life.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, what do we do with that, Rhett?
34:40
SPEAKER_00: What do we do?
34:41
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to know.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Okay, well, the Bible tells us, Jesus tells us very clearly, the first thing that he addresses in the Sermon on the Mount is you are to you are the salt of the earth.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: You're the light of the world.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And salt preserves.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, salt gives flavor and salt preserves, but in the biblical mind, salt means loyal, faithful, unoffendable friends.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: Loyal, faithful, unoffendable friends.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Friends, friends, loyal, faithful friends.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh we get that because when God makes a salt covenant with the Levites in Numbers 18, he says it lasts forever.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: It does not change.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: But let me hold a second.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: But I have not been loyal.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I got born again, and remember we both said we were cured of swearing.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: And for a year I didn't swear.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: Then suddenly I thought about swearing, then I I did it deliberately, and so I went backwards.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: But but Brett, let's talk about this process.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: And I went backwards with a lot more than swearing.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: So we can No, but this is for the people out there that feel like me.
35:47
SPEAKER_02: We kind of, you know, feel self-condemned and we know that we're not, you know, perfect.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: Well that will be a topic for our next discussion.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: But I think I think it's important that we recognize that the that the disciple this word disciple starts off with an experience of being born from above.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: And there are certain characteristics to that experience that we can identify.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm asking and you all to consider who are listening, has any of these things happened to you?
36:21
SPEAKER_00: If you have not seen the trees greener and the sky bluer, if you've not felt like you're suddenly uh life is more dramatic, if you don't enjoy spending time alone with uh Jesus, if you uh don't feel like somebody is messing with you and nudging you, if you don't have the Holy Spirit giving you inputs, if these things aren't going on in your life, if you haven't become more other-centered and you're still living a more of a self-centered life, other centered, then I then I would ask you to take a moment and to really ask the Lord, Lord, do I need something here that is going to really connect me with you?
37:02
SPEAKER_00: And I was just listening to uh uh one of my favorite teachers, uh Tim Keller, last night.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about the the marks of revival and and what he sees historically happening uh when revival takes place.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: And he said a couple things that were uh pretty significant.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: First of all, he sees three things that happen uh in a in a true revival.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: The first of all, that the Christians who are dozing off suddenly get wakened up and they recognize their calling, they recognize the situation that they're in, and they're recognizing how God wants to use them, and they start allowing themselves to be used more.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that happens is a lot of people who are church members that have never had this born-again experience, they have a born-again experience.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: They have an experience with God.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: See, this is what everybody needs, Red.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: You've got to have an experience with God.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: It's gotta be a personal experience.
38:00
SPEAKER_02: It's got to be a lot of religious activity.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: No, it's got to be the that moment when suddenly you recognize He is real, he has saved me because one of the other criteria of this born-again experience is all those things that you heard about Jesus on the cross and all those stories in the Bible, they suddenly make sense, where before they didn't.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: And so we need this experience because this is the beginning and what will propel us.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: So Tim said sleepy Christians wake up, church members actually have a born-again experience, and then some of those radical people that you never thought would be saved, like me and you, like that 15-year-old Buddhist girl that was selling weed to her friends in Honolulu, that suddenly we've become part of the kingdom of God.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: So these are true marks of revival, and I think for us, these are marks that, yes, we can be assured that we are members of the family of Christ.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: So once we're there, Rhett, Jesus says now, here's what I want you to do.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: First of all, I want you to be known as loyal, unoffendable friends.
39:12
SPEAKER_02: Loyal unoffendable friends.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Because when God makes a salt covenant, as he does in Leviticus uh um and Numbers 18, and in Leviticus 2, he says, sprinkle salt on the offerings as a sign of our relationship, i.e., it doesn't change.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: He makes a covenant, salt covenant with David, your descendants will be on the throne of Israel forever.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: In biblical culture, you only eat with your friends.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And and so being friends and being a salty people.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: If if I am talking to a Middle Easterner and I want to express there's friendship between us, I could say there's salt between us, and he probably would understand.
39:55
SPEAKER_02: What about this?
39:56
SPEAKER_02: This is something very interesting you said.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: You don't break bread.
40:01
SPEAKER_02: You want to expound on that?
40:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, in biblical culture, you only eat with your friends.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: So when you invite people, this is see, this is the next part that uh we're gonna get to of what Jesus was doing.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was constantly eating with tax collectors, with prostitutes, with drunkards, with people that were unclean, according to the Pharisees.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: He was making a statement just by having a meal with them.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: But that's not doing the biblical thing then.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: You said what you said.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: There's a con there's a conflict here.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: No, there's no conflict.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: First of all, he wants us uh to be loyal, faithful friends doing acts of service.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: Let your light shine through your deeds, good deeds, so people will see.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that I look at is Jesus wants me to be salt and light to the people around us.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: The next thing is he w as a friend, I'm going to take opportunity to engage the people around me and develop relationships with them.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
41:05
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at the Jesus model.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: Let's look what he did.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Um Jesus.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: So in other words, we are to break bread with strangers.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Of course, yes.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: But you just said you're the biblical thing was you're not supposed to break bread with strangers.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: If I said that, I apologize.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: But not with strangers, but with the people that are not like minded.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: That's what the religious Pharisees are.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay, you're divine.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: So I was taking this on thinking, oh, from now on, I'm not breaking bread with anybody that's not.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: I take everything literally.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: You have to be careful with Jesus.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was quite the opposite.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so this is the pharisitical belief is you don't break bread except for those.
41:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh, this is probably why the Jews, like in New York City, there's a business where they have all these Jews that sell electronics, and they're not proselytizing at all.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: They don't really smile, they don't really proselytize, and they don't want to have friendship.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: They want to sell us a good camera.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: We might get the idea, Rhett, that's sell us a good camera.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: That's I've gone to BH photo and Manhattan.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: How did you know that's what I was talking about?
42:11
SPEAKER_00: I've gone in there and I've bought cameras.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: I've I've bought from those guys for many years.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: I I was in a photographer.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: I was in the business.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: I bought all my equipment from BH and from another couple, and they were all Jewish guys.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: I used to have a dark room when I was eight years old.
42:25
SPEAKER_02: So stop bath and fixer and all that stuff.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: Folks, stay with us, okay?
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Stay with us.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: We uh we're uh we're a stream of consciousness thinking today.
42:41
SPEAKER_02: Give me that bill of diplomas in gold.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: And put it on the wall.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: We if we read the book of Matthew, for example, we might think that Jesus gathered his disciples as it's described in chapter 4.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: One day Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: He saw two brothers, Simon, also called Peter, and his brother Andrew, fishing with a net.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: They were commercial fishermen.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: Jesus called out to them, Come, be my disciples, I will show you how to fish for people.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: And they get into a catatonic state.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: A spell came over them.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: They became like zombies.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: They dropped their nets and at once went with him.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we might get that.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I'm adding a lot to this.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: But if we read Matthew, he's just describing how Jesus is walking along the seashore and he sees Peter and Andrew, and he calls them, and they drop their nets and they follow him, which is in fact what they did.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: And then a little further on the shore, he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their fathers Ebede, mending their nets.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: He called to them, and they immediately followed him, and they left their boat.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: Now, remember, Matthew is his.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: His object is to tell us what Jesus said.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: When you read Matthew, we're going to read Jesus' words.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: There's like five sermons that are connected.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's not interested in the action.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: He wants to tell us about what Jesus said.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: But Luke, on the other hand, has a completely different approach.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: Because Luke starts off his gospel by telling this guy that is, I may be funding his project.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: He's insomuch as others have taken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, as they've been handed down to us who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, it seemed fitting for me, Luke, the physician, as well, having investigated carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, O Theophilus, that you may know the exact truth.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: So Luke is a logical Greek guy, and he's now going to give us the exact consecutive order of what happened.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: So here's what Luke says.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, verse 31.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: Jesus enters Capernaum.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: He begins teaching at the synagogue.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: He's healing, he's cleansing demons.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: It's all happening at the synagogue.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: And then in verse 38, he walks over to Peter's house, which is within voice range.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: It's just literally a stone's throw away from the synagogue in Capernaum.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Peter's mother-in-law is sick, and he heals her.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: And she gets up and prepares a meal.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: Thus starts a relationship between Peter and Jesus.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: And that good Jewish mom is now probably inviting this young rabbi over for many meals.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: And it's so close to the synagogue.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Then a few verses later, chapter 5, verse 2, Jesus is down on the seashore, and he's teaching to a group of people.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: And Peter just has pulled his boat in because he's been fishing all night.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Look, Peter, can I just stand up on your boat because I'll be able to see the people and speak better?
46:07
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Of course.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: They already have a relationship.
46:11
SPEAKER_02: And water is a conductor, and that's why speakers used to get on the water.
46:14
SPEAKER_02: It's important for people to know that.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Would you stop it with that bell?
46:18
SPEAKER_00: He's on the bow of the boat.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: It's pulled up on the shore, probably.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: And after he finishes his teaching, he turns to Peter and says, How was your catch?
46:30
SPEAKER_00: We didn't catch anything last year.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: We're out all night long.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: We didn't get anything.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Why don't you go out and let your nets down again?
46:37
SPEAKER_02: We were out there all night.
46:38
SPEAKER_02: We didn't get anything.
46:40
SPEAKER_02: As you say, Master.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, plus Peter knows that in the night the fish are coming up to the top of the lake feeding, but in the daytime they go to the bottom, and they're not going to catch any fish, okay?
46:50
SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus And they do re they do rep recognize him as being a rabbi or someone of intellect that they would disagree.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: And why do they re why because Peter already has a relationship.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: He's had meals with Jesus.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: He's heard him uh teaching.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: He's uh he lives very close to the synagogue.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: So they have a relationship.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: And he says to Peter, go out, drop your nets again.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: And Peter looks at him, thinks, and says, Okay, I'll do that.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: And they have the big catch.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: And when Peter has the big catch and he's pulling it in, he suddenly recognizes what Jesus is doing, and he says something that's very cryptic if you don't understand the relationship.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: Cryptic means what?
47:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's a puzzle.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: It's uh uh doesn't make sense.
47:36
SPEAKER_02: He falls to his knees.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You he says, I'm such leave me, I'm such a sinful man.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: I'm not worthy of tying your shoes or nothing, you know?
47:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, what Jesus is doing is He's confronted with the holiness of God.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is calling him to be part of the team.
47:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: And Peter realized, he says, You don't want me, I'm a sinful man.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said Jesus said, You're exactly the kind of guy I want.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: Now come and follow me, and we'll be fishing for men.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: Matthew tells us Jesus is walking along the shore, says, Follow me, we're going to be fishing for men.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: Now Luke gives us the understanding.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: It was based on relationship.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: Relationship.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus and Peter had a relationship, and at a certain point in that relationship, Jesus showed him the miracle, and Peter responded with, I'm I'm a sinful man, I'm not worthy.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, You're just the kind of guy that I want on my team.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
48:41
SPEAKER_02: So next, let's go get that little short guy that's a tax collector named Zacchaeus.
48:46
SPEAKER_02: He does pick out some odd fellows to be his discipline.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus went on from here, he saw a man called Matthew.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: He was sitting at the tax collector's booth.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew chapter 9, and he said to him, Follow me, and he got up and followed him.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: And it happened that Jesus was reclining at the table of the house.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: Behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and his disciples.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: So here's kind of the pattern that I see in the life of Jesus.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: Is first of all, he notices a person, or he notices a group.
49:19
SPEAKER_00: Because we see him spending quality time and extending his friendship with that person, like Matthew.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: He goes to his house and has a meal.
49:29
SPEAKER_00: In biblical culture, you only eat with your friends.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: By coming into his house, you honor the house.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: You are saying we're going to be friends.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, another example of this is when Jesus when Jesus is coming into Jericho and the hated tax collector, Zacchaeus, is climbing up in a tree looking over the crowd because he wants to see who he is.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: Everybody's talking about this guy who's healing people.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: Who is he?
49:56
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus astonishes all the people by saying, Look, Zacchaeus, I'm coming to have a meal at your house.
50:05
SPEAKER_02: They're baffled because here he's picking this known sinner.
50:11
unknown: Right.
50:12
SPEAKER_02: You know what he does in that?
50:13
SPEAKER_02: He create gave, he gave Zacchaeus Digneti.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: Though you are a sinner known, I'm coming to your house.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: Well, and once again, this melts the heart of Zacchaeus.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: So he's coming and having a meal, and in biblical culture, that's a cultural language.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be friends.
50:34
SPEAKER_02: And what does Zacchaeus say?
50:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, after the meal, he later says, you know, if anybody if I've taken money that I shouldn't, I'm going to give that back times for, and I'm going to, you know, I'm repenting of all my ways.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Now today, surely, now this is a son of the kingdom.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he is a true disciple.
50:56
SPEAKER_02: It's your kindness that leads us to repentance, O Lord.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: So I think the kindness that of being salt and light, being friends and unoffendable friends, and doing acts of service, this is the starting point.
51:11
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus wants us to engage the people.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to notice the people that he's placing around us, and he wants us to be friends with them.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: And the classic example of a willingness to uh extend himself is Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in Sakar.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: It's it's such a story here.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: Jesus left Judea and returned to Galilee.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: He had to go through Samaria on the way.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: Now normally people going from Judea up to Galilee walked along the Jordan River.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: It was the easy road.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a gradual climb up to the uh plateau in Samaria.
51:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean in uh Galilee.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: But now Jesus is going kind of through the hill country up through Samaria.
52:03
SPEAKER_00: And he eventually came to the Samaritan village of Sakar near the field that Jacob gave his son Joseph, and Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well around noontime.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Please give me a drink.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food.
52:26
SPEAKER_02: And when a Jew would speak of a Samaritan, he would spit.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: When a Samaritan would speak of a Jew, they would spit.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: The woman was surprised, for Jews refused to have anything to do with Samaritans.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: And vice versa.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: And she said to Jesus, You're a Jew?
52:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Samaritan woman.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Why are asking, why are you asking me for a drink?
52:45
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus replied, If you knew the gift that God has for you and who I am, you would ask me and I would be giving you living water.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is now stepping across some cultural barriers.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: He's willing to extend himself, okay?
53:02
SPEAKER_00: But sir, uh you don't have a rope or bucket, and this well is very deep.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: Where would you get this living water?
53:11
SPEAKER_00: And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well?
53:16
SPEAKER_00: How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his cattle enjoyed?
53:21
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus replied, People become thirsty again after drinking this water.
53:27
SPEAKER_00: But the water I give you takes away thirst altogether, becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: Now notice how Jesus is engaging this woman in a very courteous way.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: Please, sir, give me some of that water.
53:43
SPEAKER_00: Then I'll never be thirsty again, and I won't have to come here to haul water.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: Go and get your husband, Jesus told her.
53:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a husband, the woman replied.
53:54
SPEAKER_02: A moment of honesty.
53:55
SPEAKER_00: Jenny said, You're right.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: You don't have a husband, for you've had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: Sir, the woman said, You must be a prophet.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it's here at Mount Gerzarem, where our ancestors worshiped?
54:20
SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: But the time is coming, and indeed it's here now, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: For God is spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
54:59
SPEAKER_00: The woman said, I know the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: When he comes, he will explain everything to us.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus told her, I am the Messiah.
55:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, notice I am he who used to be.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: First notice this is noontime.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: Normally women come to gather water, to draw their water in the morning.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: Why in the morning?
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Because it's cooler.
55:27
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: I work on the Cocoa River.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: I uh we I see women and young kids in the morning, they're going down to the river, they're filling their buckets up.
55:38
SPEAKER_00: Because she's shunned.
55:39
SPEAKER_00: It's cool.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: She's a sinner.
55:40
SPEAKER_00: So she comes in the middle of the day when no other women are coming.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: She's not part of the accepted social fabric of her community.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: She's a sort of an outcast woman.
55:52
SPEAKER_02: Just who Jesus is looking for.
55:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
55:55
SPEAKER_02: Are you an outcast?
55:56
SPEAKER_02: He wants you.
55:58
SPEAKER_00: Notice how Jesus reaches out with cons courtesy with this woman, how he brings the conversation to a spiritual level.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: He sparks her interest, and she responds.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: He he kindly commends her.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and then he gives her a word of knowledge.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't uh you know you're not married with the living the guy you're living with is not married.
56:18
SPEAKER_00: You've had five husbands, you know.
56:21
SPEAKER_00: He refers to her as dear woman.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: It's probably something that she has not heard in her community since she was considered really to be an immoral woman.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: Once again, his dignity As you point out, his kindness has an immediate effect upon her.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: Melts her heart.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: And soon she's convinced that he's indeed the Messiah.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: And she and Jesus have become friends.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: And she heads back to the village and she tells everyone about who she just met.
56:52
SPEAKER_00: And John goes on to say, Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had said, He told me everything I ever did.
56:59
SPEAKER_00: And they came out to see him and they begged him to stay at their village, and he stayed for two days long enough for them to hear this message and believe.
57:08
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus was willing to interact with total strangers in the hope that he would have an opportunity to give them this message of restored relationship with God.
57:22
SPEAKER_00: Relationship.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus trusted in his ability to speak truth into their life.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: And he knows that strangers respond to kindness and attentiveness.
57:35
SPEAKER_00: And in these encounters, we notice Jesus often steps across cultural barriers, and he did things like having meals with the unsaved.
57:45
SPEAKER_00: And even Luke records, tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he's associating with despicable people, even eating with them.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: See?
58:04
SPEAKER_00: Because according to those religious guys, physical contact with non-Jews and lower class unclean people made you unclean.
58:12
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, please.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: They think that they know Jesus.
58:23
SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't know him if he knocked on his door.
58:26
SPEAKER_02: You know, were to take in the poor, or to take in the homeless, or to take in the sinners.
58:31
SPEAKER_02: Well, as you said, you know, you said you said kindness and attentiveness melts their hearts.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: So we see that Jesus shared many meals with his disciples as well as strangers.
58:43
SPEAKER_02: We're out of time.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
58:45
SPEAKER_02: We are at yes, we have one.
58:47
SPEAKER_02: Listen, so you are listening right now to Cup of Friendship.
58:51
SPEAKER_02: Uh we uh make a specialty coffees.
58:54
SPEAKER_02: We have three.
58:55
SPEAKER_02: And you can find out about those by logging on to our show.
58:59
SPEAKER_02: You'll find us if you seek us.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: We're talking with Mike Michael Gag uh uh Bagby and Gagby.
59:05
SPEAKER_02: Don't gag me, it's Bagby.
59:08
SPEAKER_02: And he is a uh a biblical scholar, has studied in Europe on history and gone to Israel multiple times, and his gift is teaching.
59:15
SPEAKER_02: And we're doing this so we can have a conversational type uh of a show and uh and you to join with us in with a cup of friendship.
59:23
SPEAKER_02: And uh anything else you want to say before we say goodbye?
59:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's uh we're gonna uh continue this in our next discussion.
59:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay this whole thing about um discipleship.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: Discipleship.
59:35
SPEAKER_00: We've seen Great Commission.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: We've seen how Jesus reached out to strangers, how he spent time, and how he shared meals and he created an intimate moments.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna pick up the Jesus uh style here.
59:50
SPEAKER_02: God is traveling in the universe for all eternity and decided he wanted to make some real friends, but he gave you free will.
59:57
SPEAKER_02: You can either choose him or deny him.
59:59
SPEAKER_02: It's up to you.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Hey, who loves you?
1:00:02
SPEAKER_02: The Lord Jesus does.