Latest / The Rhett Palmer Show / Words Matter

Transcript

Words Matter · The Rhett Palmer Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: He is the great I am.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: His first friend was Abraham.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Surely said to Abraham.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I am that I am.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hallelujah.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: Hallelujah.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Hallelujah.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome to another episode of A Cup of Friendship.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Michael Bagby, and I'm here with my friend Rhett Palmer.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we are enjoying a cup of uh coffee that was I roasted yesterday at the Rio Coco Cafe from Rwanda.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Rwanda.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh by the way, we have a coffee company we've just started with specialty coffees called um Cup of Friendship, and that's gonna be uh those coffees.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be three uh blends of coffee that Rhett and I have tried and approved, and we're gonna have those available.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm thinking maybe this should be one of them.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a delicious coffee, isn't it?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I've noticed, I told my wife, I said I'm I'm cultivating a palate because I've always been, you know, a Dunkin' Donuts guy.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a Starbucks guy, but you know, whatever.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, you know, at first this is like, oh, it has, you know, it's a strong flavor.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not dark, it's not burned.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can go to realcobeans.com, our our coffee business here in Vero Beach, Rio Cocoa Beans.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that money supports his missionary ministry.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the uh and so you can buy that, or you can buy the uh what's the other one?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the cup of friendship blends will also be available on the Rio Cocoa Beans website because uh we're roasting it and processing it all there.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So Rhett, you mentioned to me a couple of times that you've been to Israel.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever go to Bethlehem?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I went to see the movie on Jesus there, too.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which one?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: It plays twenty-four hours a day, at least back then.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Back then, uh the the Jesus movie, which word for word, I think the Book of Luke.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Did you see that one?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, nice.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I sticks to the scripture.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I lived in Gilo, which is the neighborhood next to Bethlehem.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's that south suburb of uh Jerusalem.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when we first took our three Mosquito Indians uh leaders from our school project in Nicaragua, we lived in an apartment.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: You flew them to Israel?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We took them there.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how cool.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, nobody from that ever c from that culture had ever been to the biblical places.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Were they in leadership positions of society?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: They were the running our school project.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was Truman Cunningham.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: What did they think of that?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was it was for uh for these guys.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they had all been through the Sandinista Contra War.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: They'd become refugees.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and when the war ended, they basically became the leaders of the lower Cocoa River as far as the community leaders.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And actually uh Truman and Augusto became elected to the regional government.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, they were uh they were greatly impacted by this trip.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody from the culture, and in in this area of uh Central America, Christianity came in the late uh 1800s to the coast.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Moravian missionaries brought Christianity to the coast of Nicaragua, and a Moravian pastor came up to the Cocoa River, a guy named Reichert Watson, uh, who was a mosquito boy, and he was made he married Mabel Sinclair, whose father was an English guy that lived in uh by down by Bluefields, and he had a union jack in his front yard, and uh Mabel uh was very blonde, and uh so uh Rikert took her up to the Cocoa River and he uh started a school and he started a church, and that was 1928, and so Christianity came to the Cocoa River in 1928.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I came in 84.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't that much time difference.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: My mother was born in 28.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So relatively new.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh the Catholic pastors came and followed the Moravians, and so all the communities on the lower Cocoa River all had a Moravian church and a Catholic church.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, Rhett, there was no difference between the two.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Catholics didn't really uh follow the traditions of the church uh because the priests that were running the mission were really good Bible teachers.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh they didn't withhold the Bible from the people.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, no, they emphasized the Bible.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever we would have a pastor's conference, uh the uh all all the pastors was from the Catholic pastors and the Moravian pastors, and then Church of God uh started uh uh planting churches in that area, Pentecostal, and uh Baptist churches also uh started uh appearing.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So all the pastors came.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great uh body of Christ experience.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing against the Catholic Church, but I do have a friend in town, his name is Tim, and he became a count commissioner here in town for quite a while.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he had been a Catholic all his life and a devout Catholic and uh was prosperous in the building business and traveled around the world to see world leaders.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, I don't know, something happened, some the the the things got upside down in his life, I think a divorce.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, he stops in in Georgia to this little church which had all these motorcycles outside, bikers, and he goes inside and there's a call uh to receive Jesus.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now he was a Catholic all his life, but he goes forward and he gets gloriously born again.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I you know, I I believe there are Catholics that are born again and don't know it, and then there are people, of course, in all churches.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's people that go and sit in a pew and they may not know God.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know I know people that attend Baptist churches, Pentecostal churches, uh Nazareth, uh Nazarene churches, uh Angela.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know who knows the heart.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can uh you can put on the uniform and show up.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like uh go out to the airport, for example, on Saturday, and you'll see guys walking around.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're wearing a uh hat with an airplane on it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: They might have a shirt with some sort of airplane on it, and they're they're watching uh the airplanes take off and land, and they're they're uh uh coming.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and then uh when I uh engage them in conversation and I ask them about their own flying experience, I'm not surprised to find that some of them have never flown an airplane.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But if you just looked at them, they would you would think these guys are pilots, you know.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think Christians are the same way.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think we can we can look like a Christian, but I think the reality is, as Jesus told Nicodemus, we have to have that spiritual birth, that born from above experience.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're fortunate that many of our uh Catholic brothers and sisters, uh the priest and the nuns that have worked on the Cocoa River, have been dear, dear, dear brothers and sisters, uh spirit-filled and uh so they must have been astounded to go to you know, I just want to just a little insert.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I was up at s at at break of dawn this morning, and I don't normally get up that early, and I was looking outside, and it reminded me of the time I was in in Israel, and uh I got to go to Israel.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was a poor boy living in the ghetto of Trinity, like a poor young man, and uh uh very thankful to God, and that was gonna connect to something you were saying.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the in Israel in uh in Bethlehem it's uh it's on a Bethlehem sits on top of a very steep ridgeline that extends east to west.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so steep that uh I was driving a Mitsubishi van in this was summer and fall of ninety-nine.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And to actually get up to Manger Square with uh my family in this van, I had to downshift into first gear to actually make it up the steep uh grade of this ridgeline to actually get to the flat plateau on the top.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh people in Bethlehem lived in cave homes.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And archaeologists have identified at least sixty-four cave homes on this ridge.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you go to the church of the nativity, which maybe you did, you'll walk into that church.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: You walk into that church, and then you'll walk down some steps.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Put your hand in that hole or whatever it was.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, right.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: You walk down the steps and you're in the cave home that uh Jesus was apparently born in.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's a good chance.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if uh the cave homes all had basically three ch uh chambers.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: They had uh a uh wooden structure that was built over the opening of the cave, and this was the room that most people slept and ate in.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then they had a middle room that was kind of a storage room and a guest room uh for others visitors, and then the back room was where they kept the animals, the sheep and the animals.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the sheep had to go through the front room to get all the way to the back?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was uh uh you know, three chambers were in the uh most of the caves.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Rock f rock dirt floors.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So why do you think the animals stayed in the back room?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I would think that's uh I would think to put them in the front room because they're gonna smell a little bit, you know.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you put them in the back room and it's wintertime, now you have a cheap source of heat that's gonna heat the rest of the house.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Heat from the front of the house will waft into the back a little bit.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the they're they're in the back room, okay?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they're keeping the cave house warm in the wintertime.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're so you mean by giving off the heat, yeah, yeah.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: By giving off the heat.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I want to give you one more.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's continue down this track, okay?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, because we gotta get to the point.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's the point?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: The point is this words matter.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Words matter.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because Luke records that when Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem, the days were complete for her to give booth, and she gave birth, and she gave birth to her first sport son, and she wrapped him in claws and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the same region there were shepherds standing out in the fields watching over their flock.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: The angel of the Lord suddenly shone stood before them, the glory of the Lord shone around them, they were terribly frightened.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The angel said, Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you great news of great joy, which will be for all the people, for today in the city of David, Bethlehem, unto you, there has been born to you a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: This will be the sign for you.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what is a manger?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Manger.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a French word that means to feed or to eat.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: What does a manger doing?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's an eating trough.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: An eating trough.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that animals eat out of.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they would know it was the Christ because he would be lying in a manger.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now And and the village next door grew up.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: The village next door?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: They grew the lambs there, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in Bethlehem was the cartel that supplied all the lambs for sacrifice to the temple.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Passover.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the year, these were I say cartel, it was an association, and the priest had a deal with the shepherds in Bethlehem to supply them with uh acceptable sacrifices.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And also that he was born on a food trough, which would mean he was the food of life, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: The bread of life.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he was the bread of life.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: God makes no mistakes.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: The point I'm hoping What's the point?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: The point I'm hoping to make, Rhett, is when we read this in English, that he was uh there was no room for them uh in the inn, we suddenly get this image that Mary and Joseph are coming into Bethlehem.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: She's pregnant, they come in, and we've all seen the movie, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: She comes in, there's a crowd teaming around in the streets, they go to the first inn, they go to the Ramada Inn, and there's no room.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: They they go to the Hilton, there's no room.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's trying to be funny here, folks.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: They go to uh the Motel 6.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's not even any room at Motel 6.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we see finally the innkeeper's wife takes pity on this, getting more pregnant by the moment, woman who's sitting on a donkey, and she motions them, and they come back behind the the hotel, and there she shows them a stable where there's some cows and sheep and goats, and uh and that Mary and Joseph make themselves comfortable in the hay and eventually the child is born.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the image that we see in our Western culture.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the reality is archaeologists say there was never a hotel in Bethlehem during the time of Jesus.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: There were sixty-four cave homes.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the cave homes were split up into these three sections, and the middle room was called the Cataluma.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was the storage room, but also the place where guests stayed.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you read Luke's uh text here, he said there uh there was they laid him in a manger because there was no room in for them in the Cataluma.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Cataluma.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: The middle room.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he wasn't born the he wasn't born in a hotel or even behind a hotel.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: This was a setting of Bethlehem of cave homes, and because of the crowdedness, there was no room in the guest room, which is that middle room, the Cataluma.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And since it was when the shepherds were out in the fields with their flock, there was the animals were not in the innermost room, and they said, She's having a baby, let's put her back where the sheep and the goats are.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: At least she'll be protected from the elements back there.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now that tells us a little bit about when Jesus was born.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know where he was born.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: When was he born?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: We celebrate Christmas uh in the twenty-fifth of December, and a lot of people think, well, Jesus was born on Christmas Day.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the reality is that the shepherds in Bethlehem take their uh sheep out in the fields in the spring and the summer, and the rains start coming in the fall and winter, and they also plant a winter wheat crop uh during that rainy season.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is when the animals are kept inside.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus was probably born in the spring or summertime when the a when the sheep and shepherds are out in the fields.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the point, I think, is we get this uh false impression of of the s events surrounding the birth of Jesus, and the reality is God entered the world in a most humble state.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And to think that the creator came into this world in the probably the lowest societal position that he was he probably could, and that when he was born, he wasn't laying in a crib or a bed, he was actually put in a wooden structure that or maybe it was uh cut out stone, and it was where the animals ate.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, can you imagine Jesus laying in that feeding trough?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course there's chickens, probably chickens around.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And chickens jump up on the feeding trough because that's where they peck and eat the things.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And can you imagine Jesus laying there?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've often had this visual.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's laying there, and this chicken is jumping um back and forth over the edges of the trough.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been around chickens?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: When we lived in uh Turkey, my mom decided to have a pet chicken, and she actually allowed it to come inside our house.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And one day this pet chicken was sitting on the back of a uh a chair, and all of a sudden he squirted out a squirt of poop that just splattered across our table, and that was the end of that pet chicken.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: He became dinner the next day.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm visualizing baby Jesus laying in that feeding trough and and this chicken hopping back and forth and wondering, is this chicken gonna poop on me?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: We had vomit earlier today.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have poop.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, may I say one thing here though?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Also, this is to be considered.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're writing a story, oh pride of man, oh man of pride, you're writing a story and a king is born, the king of all creation.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, certainly the angels would notify the royalty of the age and the kings and the emperors.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: The angels come to who?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: The lowliest position available was a stinking shepherd that smelled like sheep and sheep poop.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's out there in the night.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what is it?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: The angels make the announcement.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Unto you is born a child of God.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the message that Luke is trying to give us here?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it amazing?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is that Jesus is inviting everybody into his family, and it starts from the bottom and works its way up.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: We see it playing out in Jesus' ministry of him hanging out with drunkards, prostitutes, tax collectors, people that were not welcome in polite Hebrew society.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus, uh the angels didn't go to the temple and announce to the priests, it's only seven miles north of Bethlehem.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Seven miles.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't go there and announce it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't go to King Herod.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: His palace, the Herodian, is four miles east of Bethlehem.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the amazing thing.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have this contrast going on that Luke hopes you notice that the angels are coming not to the king, Herod, not to the uh priests that are running the temple, but coming to the lowly, as you pointed out, smelly shepherds.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you uh are sleeping in the fields with the uh sheep for a couple of weeks, you start smelling like them.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: But this this paints this picture.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the lights of the Herodian.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Herodian is a it's a cone-shaped hill.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did you did you go to the Herodian?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't recall.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's east of Beth.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was in Bethlehem.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's about four miles east of Bethlehem.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in the distance, when you're looking uh you're a manger square, and if you get out uh away from the buildings, you can see in the distance the Herodian.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a man-made cone, and Herod built his fortress right at the top and his palace in it.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Herod had four fortresses that were built that he could, if if things get went bad for him in Jerusalem, he could escape.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: His last fortress was Masada, which you probably went to.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that was his uh I didn't walk up it, but I was gone.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: But um imagine imagine the lights of the Herodian being lit up.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: The temple is seven miles north, and there's always sacrifices and lights there.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yet here's a cave home in one of the most humblest settings.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Poor folks and this is where our king and our creator entered into the world as a human.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible thing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now Herod was a paranoid guy.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was a classmate of Octavian in Rome.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: His father, Antipas, brought him to the region, and when uh Antipas died, uh, the Romans appointed Herod to be the king of the Judea, the Roman province.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was a very paranoid guy.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody that conspired against him, Herod immediately had them killed.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: He even killed his two sons, had them drowned in the pools in front of the Herodian because he thought they were conspiring against him.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: His favorite wife, Miriam, uh, he had her killed because she was conspiring against him.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: A very ruthless guy.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like Stalin did the same stuff.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when the wise men came and they inquired of Herod, where is the uh we've seen the star, where is the king of Jews?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's we know he's being born.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and the text in Matthew says, and Herod and all of Jerusalem was troubled because they knew that blood was going to come from this.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And of course we know uh when the wise men left, Herod sent soldiers and killed every child under two years old in Bethlehem and the area around, okay?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus chose to enter the world in the most humblest state he possibly could.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this sends a message.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that all of us realize that Jesus is reaching out not just to the powerful and the elite and the ones that are well off, but this is uh Why didn't they find Jesus?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't an angel appear and say, Get out of here, the enemy of the child is coming.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So they have to be a leadership, right?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph uh had a dream where an angel said, uh flee, and so uh he took his wife.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And remember the magi uh brought him gifts gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: So they were God revealed to them that the Messiah had come too.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And with these spices and this gold, Moses uh Joseph was able to take his family and live for the next couple of years.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well But w gold you can you can buy things with gold.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh myrrh uh uh is a very valuable spice, okay?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Frankincense, a very valuable spice.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: These are valuable commodities and they're small, and you could stick them in your bag and carry them.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now they have the economics.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: They lived off of that down in Egypt.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: In Egypt, okay.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I it's my speculation, but I just look at what did they bring what did they bring them.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm trying to fit myself into the story, into the culture, and have understanding.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality of Jesus being born in a cave home in the middle room, that understanding that word helps me understand the reality of Jesus coming in a manner that everybody was welcome.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true to this day.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's true to this day.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Words are really important.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you work in another uh culture with another language, if you mix up words, sometimes the result can be very hilarious or sometimes very tragic.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we had a young girl uh named Maria Belinda, a friend of our fa family that we bought all of our school supplies from in La Saba, and she wanted to learn English, so she came out to our refugee community in Alca, and she lived with us for four months and where she could learn English.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a pet spider monkey at the time.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Oogly.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we got the spider monkey when he was just very young, and uh he became our pet.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so Maria Belinda was uh picked up Oogly and was holding him, and suddenly Oogly got startled and he reached down, uh, or he just leaned down and he bit Maria Belinda right here on the right forearm.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And blood started coming out.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in my excitement, I grabbed Oogly and blood is really coming out of her arm, and I meant to say, Are you afraid?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: But instead the words that came out of my mouth was, tienes, tienes mierda.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Which means Do you have poop?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of have, do you have fear, do you have poop?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as I said that, Maria Belinda stopped crying and she started laughing because she realized what I said, and she's laughing, and blood is still kind of coming out of the swoon.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Yes, Mike, I have poop.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was hilarious.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Maria Belinda went on to medical school, university, and she went to medical school or to a dental school.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I see Maria Belinda.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: She actually has worked on my teeth, and and she's taken the wisdom teeth out of uh Michaela and Lucas.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Where does she live now?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: In La Saba.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm in La Saba and I see Maria Belinda, she still has that scar right here on her forearm.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're talking and I'm greeting her and her family, now she'll look at me and she'll say, Mike, I still have poop.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so words are really important, okay?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you've covered all the bases today.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Next to the church of the nativity in Bethlehem is uh a cave home where uh the scholar Jerome came, and this was 385, fourth century.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Remember um Is one of these mine?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Remember uh the uh Constantine became the emperor.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um he uh at the Battle of Mulvirian Bridge, uh he was given the a vision, put crosses uh on his uh the shields of his soldier in the sign you shall conquer.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um as a result of all of that, he became the emperor, and uh eventually he became a follower of Jesus.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: His mother, uh Helena, became a follower of Jesus, and she came to the Holy Land and she uh started looking for all the places that Jesus had lived, and she came to Bethlehem and she built a church, the church of the nativity.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jerome a few years later comes and he wants to do a translation of the Bible into Latin.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so he gets the Hebrew scriptures and he sits in a cave, home there in Bethlehem.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you can go to that cave where Jerome did his work, and he translates the Vulgate.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the version of the Bible that uh many in the Catholic Church use.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible work.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And according to Augustine, he was he was uh translating directly from the Hebrew text, and uh it's it's a good rendition.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Vulgate is a really good rendition.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one passage where Jerome chose a word that caused a major way in the way that we see Moses.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 34, when Moses came down off the mountain after spending time with in God's presidence, verse 30 says, So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin on his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Hebrew word for shine is the word Quran, K-A-R-A-N.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember in Hebrew language you have the consonants, and the vowels are little tick marks that that uh indicate which vowel you should use next to those consonants.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Quran means to be uh K-A-Q-U-Q-A-R-A-N means to be radiate to emit light rays.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the appearance of a glow of a face that is supernaturally beaming light.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: The very next word in the dictionary is the listed Keran, Q-E-R-E-N, which means a horn, a bony growth from the head of some mammals.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, Jerome had a choice of what word he was going to use, and he translated it that Moses, when he came down, had horns on his head.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: So later when Michelangelo was doing the uh the Moses statue for the tomb of Julius II, which is in the church of St.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: San Pietro in Vitoli in in Rome, he chose to put God's catch me.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: He chose uh to put, here's the picture I have in my notes.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: You see the see the horns on uh Moses' head?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you've seen that picture before, right?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so forever now people are coming and they're looking at this incredible statue that Michelangelo uh sculpted, and you see these horns coming out of Moses' head.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so our view of this biblical hero is forever altered.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think sometimes these uh our translations of Hebrew and Greek words shape not only our biblical views of biblical characters, but they do of events and even doctrines.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, Don't think I came to abolish the law or the prophets, I came to fulfill it.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my Greek dictionaries identify this word as pleo, and they translate it to complete, to fill a hole in, but in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17, my dictionary say it means to give true meaning to.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of people read this verse, and they think when Jesus says, Don't think I came to abolish the law of prophets, I came not to abolish, but to fulfill, they conclude that Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the Hebrew scriptures, and therefore we don't need to read them, nor study them, nor even understand them because we're new test New Testament Christians now.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there's people to this day that think that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: That think that, okay.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at the context of what Jesus was saying and you understand the word he was saying, I came to explain it more fully, not to abolish it, but to explain it.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the context, he says five times you've heard the ancients say in the following paragraphs, don't commit adultery, for example.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I say to you, if you look at a woman with lust, you've already committed adultery in your heart.
• 30:51
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard the ancients say, do not murder.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I say, if you've called somebody a fool and murdered them with your words, you're guilty of the same crime.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So what Jesus is doing is actually he's now explaining the law much more fuller, okay?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I realized that now, no, Jesus is telling me that I really need to study the Hebrew scriptures.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really need to know them.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: As we talked about a couple of days ago, Rhett, the Bible is a complete unit, it is something that goes together.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have really an understanding of the day of Pentecost until you understand what happened on the first Pentecost at the base of Mount Sinai, it's recorded in Exodus 19, 20, 21, in that section of scripture.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is having the conversation with Nicodemus, he is uh he explains uh about the spiritual birth, and he says, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's referring to a passage in uh Numbers chapter 21 where snakes were biting uh the people in the camp.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were injecting poison into their veins, they were dying, and Moses uh was told to make a snake out of bronze, and anybody that looked at the uh snake with faith would have and had belief that God could heal them, would in fact be healed.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I now uh was uh now on a path.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really need to understand the uh Hebrew scriptures as well as the uh Christian scriptures, but I really needed to understand what words were being used because in English we get sometimes some mistranslations.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And my experience with Maria Belinda is I chose one word that caused her to laugh, and it had a completely different meaning than the word that I wanted to choose.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: So in his explanation of the Hebrew scriptures, he finishes off that section in chapter five by saying, Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you read that, Rhett, what is your thought?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: You must be perfect.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now who's he addressing this to at this point?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Sermon on the Mount.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that I have time to I think the only way we become perfect is he was talking about what was to come, and what was to come was when he would make the sacrifice, then we would be perfect.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just like he said, I tell you, you religious guys, the whores, the prostitutes, the tax collectors are going into the kingdom of God before you, and that meant because they will believe in Jesus upon his so, in other words, the the uh he even said John the Baptist, though he is a holy man, he is the least in the kingdom of God because John the Baptist came prior to the sacrifice that brings us to perfection.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Is that concur with your thoughts?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think what you what you just said is some things that you could have if you read this word in English and you understood it to mean perfect, which is without error.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Without blemish.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Without blemish.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can come to all of these different conclusions, which you just expressed one or two of them.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: As I read it in English, my conclusion would be uh that uh Jesus is telling me that I have to be error free in my life, that I have to be sinless, sin free.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And Red, I've actually met some uh people that call themselves Christians that say um they think they are they are living a sinless life.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that to me is just really absurd.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: The the the key to this is what is the Greek word here that uh is uh being used?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is the Greek word?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: What is the Greek word?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the word teleos.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Telios.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Telios can be uh perfect, complete, or genuine, but all my dictionary say and references say in this verse of uh verse 48 of chapter 5, it means mature in one's behavior.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that changes everything.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes through and says, You I didn't come to abolish the law or the prophets, I came to explain them fuller, and he goes on and gives an explanation of five different areas making oaths, divorce, uh murder, adultery, and then he says, You must be perfect, you must be telios as your father in heaven is perfect.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Mature.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: You must be fully mature.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this is Jesus proclaiming that we must grow up and become adults in our spiritual faith rather than just children.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And didn't remember, the Christian life is all about change.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Paul said uh you you know you have the milk of the word and the meat of the word.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, to that means a lot of people get stuck.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that Jesus said they'll be forever learning, never coming to the knowledge of truth.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yet Paul said the meat of the word.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the the milk of the word is when maybe you have an experience and you get born again uh and and you come to the Lord, um uh, you know, uh you hear what you hear the words, but a lot of people get hung up.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for instance, um, you know, I'm going to be attending a class on the book of John uh up in Pennsylvania at a what do you call that, a seminary?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: And last night I was reading this literature they gave me of the seminary.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I never read anything where people are so full of themselves and their intellect.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, I'm sorry to say I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but there are really intellectual idiots out there because ever learning, never coming to the knowledge with me that the milk is, I tell you, go feed the hungry.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know the law, feed the hungry, clothe the naked.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, okay, the meat of the law is go and do it.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just like I have to reprimand myself.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: I go, oh, big talker, Rig Talk.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: When's the last time you made a meal for a homeless person?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think what Jesus is telling us here, Rett.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry to go off like that, but it's something about is that we should uh strive to become mature.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And even Paul echoes this in his in his lesson lesson, uh, in his letter to the Ephesians.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: He says uh in chapter four, he gives, he's talking about uh people that have been given to the church.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: These are gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the teachers, pastors and teachers.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: That word is actually hyphenated in the Greek.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: And these are pastorals.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor teachers.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the body of the body of Christ.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son, we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: We will no longer be immature like children.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm reading Matthew chapter five and I get to that part, you must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect, I might think that I should be at a place where I'm living a sinless life.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is a misconception that I get from reading the words in English.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I think words matter.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that we, if we're going to uh actually uh rightly handle the word of God, as Paul says to us in 2 Timothy 2.15, show yourself approved as workmen that accurately handle the handle the word of truth.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: That we are to actually spend time to examine.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we're translating from Greek and Hebrew into English, sometimes we choose words that give us different ideas as to what God is actually saying.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this is one for me that maturity is the goal for me, is to be spiritually mature.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, have you not attempted to do that?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: The reason we're doing this together is it's rare to find it's uh you can find people that can quote the Bible, uh, but to find out the um what's the word you use when it's in the middle of it?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: The context.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Changes everything.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so understanding the words really help us um I think get the message of the scripture.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of the things that all Christians should be aware of, and probably we are, and maybe many of us quote, is the Great Commission.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with the Great Commission.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Go ye into all the world.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So as it reads in Matthew chapter 28, Jesus came up and spoke to them and said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nation, baptizing them name and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo, I am always with you even to the end of the age.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you read that in English, what is the command there for you, Rhett, as you read that?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: To uh get my feet moving and go into all the world.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I just heard one word you said today disciples.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Make disciples.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not just converts, but disciples.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you would say the command is to go into all the world.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now I had this experience, Rhett, where uh I read this verse in English.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when a few weeks later I went to a conference of with Youth with a Mission in Lahaina, I was a pretty new Christian at the time.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they were and uh they showed a video of a singer uh named Keith Green, and Keith had been killed in a plane crash a few years earlier, and one of his last recorded concerts, and it was actually one of Keith's last albums, was titled Jesus Commands Us to Go.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so the emphasis on this uh Youth with the Mission uh event was Jesus commands us to go, and we have lots of opportunities in our ministry with Youth with the Mission.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have bases uh being established in many countries in the world.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: They had a um uh a ship uh called Mercy Ships Ministry.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so this was a recruiting event for YWAM.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so excited.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so the next day, literally the next day, I saw my cousin Keen Salzer.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was the former marijuana farmer that was really responsible for bringing me into Hope Chapel and spending a lot of time.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then he but he gave up the farming of the marijuana farmers.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so uh Keen, uh very wise man, uh, ended up uh teaching at Biola University, uh teaching screenwriting for a number of years.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: But uh so I said to Keene, hey, I said, Hey, I went to this YWAB conference yesterday, and Keene, I'm gonna go be a missionary because Jesus commands us to go.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Great.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: How would you like to go to an island in the middle of the Pacific where less than 5% of the people go to church on Sunday?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at him and I said, Let's go.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he said to me with a smile on his face, you're standing on it.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized Yes, less than five percent of the public.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, 1982, less than 5% of the people on Maui were attending church.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's closer to 30 to 35 percent.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've done our work there.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've done some work.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, wait a minute, I'm standing on it.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You're already there.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now that caused me to think about what I had heard the day before at the Youth with a Mission conference.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went and I started doing my study because I want to know what the Bible says.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: So when you look at this passage called the Great Commission, there are four verbs go, make disciples, baptize, and teach.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now you told me that the command is to go.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: So which of those four verbs do you think is in the command form, and which is in the continuous action form?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which one do you think?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: You tell me.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the word g go is uh Greek.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Verb poremori, which means to proceed on a journey, to make a journey.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: An actual journey.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that is actually in the continuous action verb form.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: The next verb is matateos, which is to make disciples.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is in the imperative errorist uh verb tense.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is the command.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching and uh baptizing is in the continuous action form.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's only one command in the Great Commission.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it is make disciples.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my understanding of the Great Commission in my own study, I would say it like this Jesus says, All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, proceed on the journey that you began with me, proceed on the walk that you have with me, and make disciples of all the ethnic groups that I bring across your path or I place you in, baptizing them in my name and in my Father's name and in the Holy Spirit's name, teaching them to obey all that I commanded you, and remember, I will be with you as you do this.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I give you the power to forgive sins?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Great Commission.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now the command form is make disciples.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this changes, this takes um the onus off of me to having to go somewhere because I think most of us are already where God wants us to be.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: So right here in my community in Vero Beach, I am commanded to be about the business of making disciples.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: And whoever God brings across my path, I am to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world to them.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm to be a loyal, faithful, unoffendable friend.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm to uh provide them with acts of service so they will see God in me.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you doing this for me?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you being so generous?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you helping me?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the command is to make disciples.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to be true to the command, and I don't have to get up and leave and go to some foreign country to uh fulfill the Great Commission.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can do it right here.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say this.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: God took me to a foreign culture.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're a missionary.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: You've been a missionary for over 40 years.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what I realized to a foreign land.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: What I realized was that I'm a missionary to my community on Maui, just as much as I'm a missionary to my community on the Cocoa River, just as much as I'm a community to the community that I have in Israel, to the same community that I have in Vero Beach.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever God places me, He wants me to be about the business of making disciples.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to say this.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, I uh I was in Zimbabwe, short-term missionary, and then I was in uh Haiti a couple of times as a short-term missionary.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: I won't go into details, but a miraculous occurrence happened the first time I flew into Haiti and uh a visitation of the holiness of God, and I realized I said, why am I having this experience when these people out here are dirt poor?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought it chewed on it for years because he was confirming to me, you're going in my name.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I think there's a blessing when you go in his name.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, and I think a short-term mission is a great opportunity to do something very effective in a uh church setting to help a local church body.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have building teams that go and build right now.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have friends of ours that are in Uganda that are working with an orphanage there.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yesterday I heard they were painting the walls of a building.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is super effective.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I think if we read the Great Commission in English, we might get the same um uh interpretation that Keith Green gave me in that video concert that I should buy an airplane ticket and go somewhere.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: What was the title of his album again?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Commands Us to Go.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Keith was a great uh speaker and he was a great musician, but as far as a theologian, I think he misunderstood that.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe we're interpreting he just said go.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't see maybe it's your interpretation.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't necessarily mean go.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was on the cover of the album.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: What was?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus commands us to go.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the cover of the album.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Go to your next door neighbor though, knock on his door, and say, by the way, I've been converted.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: You should check this out.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: This guy's real Jesus.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think I got a misunderstanding of that because I took the emphasis to be on going somewhere.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't realize, as my cousin had pointed out to me, I was already there.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's excellent what he said.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's so good.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: That caused me to actually open some Greek dictionaries.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what is this word that is uh used here?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what is the most importantly, what is the verb tense, which is the imperative command form?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a clock.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Dolan, could you put up the clock, please?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a number of passages in scripture that when you read them in English, they get misunderstood because we're not understanding either the the Greek word or the Hebrew word, or we're under not understanding the verb tense.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Great Commission, the verb tense, the imperative, aorist, command form verb is mateteos, make disciples.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: So wherever you are.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that changes everything.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you're born, you're living on the sad side of town, you can go out and uh people are hungry for truth.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's move to another area that's a bit controversial in our culture right now.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: But as uh my work in Central America, I participated in many churches that were pastored by women.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: And women in leadership didn't really seem to be an issue there.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I got back from Maui in Central America.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I got back to Maui, uh there was a controversy in one of our churches that we planted when they were getting ready to appoint a woman as one of the elders.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I had one of my friends call me up and asked me, Well, what did I think about women in leadership?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't really know what the Bible says, but I've been in churches in Honduras, in Nicaragua, and in the Bay Islands of Honduras where uh women are pastors.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it I guess it's okay.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then uh I got quoted this verse here from 1 Timothy chapter 2, and this is a verse that's uh widely spoken.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the famous sit down and shut up.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is that Paul Paul?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is a man of Pharisee, a man of the law.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is But this is Paul speaking to his disciple Timothy.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the famous sit down and shut up verse for women that's used to uh in many churches to say women cannot be teaching in a public setting, women cannot teach men, and even some churches in Sunday school, women can teach young boys until they uh reach the age of twelve.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: But after twelve, women are not allowed to teach Sunday school classes with boys that are older than twelve years old.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to say this, and I'm an easy guy and I'm a modern guy, but I have to say I have uh uh you know, just like I was born heterosexual, I thank God I love women.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I do not I will not sit under a woman as a pastor.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then what I'm about to say very abrasive to me.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: What I am about to say might enlighten you.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people smarter than me that know the Hebrew scriptures and and the uh Greek.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, I know with the Hasidic Jews, if you you're married, you have children, the wife dies, after a month they take the child out of the house, and they say the children cannot return to the father, don't do that to the father, until there's a new female presence within the house.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's so the woman is highly regarded with the Jews.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's put ourselves in the room.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be with Timothy when he gets the letter.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have Timothy read the letter to us in the Greek language.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: What would we hear if we're hearing what Paul said, not in English, but in the Greek language?
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of my great sources for Greek language and Greek grammar is Dr.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Spiros Zodiades, who was a city uh born in Cyprus, came to the United States, got his uh uh a doctorate in theology and a doctorate in linguistics.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote over 200 books during his life.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: He died in I think uh eighteen or 2018, I think.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh half of those books he wrote in gr the Greek language.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this guy, uh, when I first uh encountered uh Spiro Zodiades was in a big, thick three-volume set called Keywords of the Bible.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you're establishing his credibility here.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's a learned man.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, very much so.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um one of the great resources that I have that I would highly recommend to uh anyone that really wants to understand language of the Bible is the keyword study bible.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Dr.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: uh Zodiades uh spends a lot of time giving you a guide to Greek grammar.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: He makes notations in the text as to the grammar, the verb tenses, the voices that are being used.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you've studied this.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've been using the keyword study bible and the keywords of the Bible uh dictionaries for the last 20 years of my life.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um That's what we call you rabbi.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's two words in this passage.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a woman must see receive qu instruction quietly with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Zodiades points out that the two words from uh woman and man are gunai and andros in this passage.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they may be translated man and woman, but Dr.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Zodiades believes that when these two words are used together in the same sentence and context, that they're better translated as husband and wife.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: Teach is a uh verb tense that should be uh translated teach continuously.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what I think Paul is saying here is if I could read it as uh doctor Zodiades suggests that we should read it, is I do not allow a wife to continually teach or exercise authority over a husband, but to remain quiet.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Remember First Corinthians chapter eleven, Paul lays out that Christ is the head of the church, and under him is man who's the head of the household, and under him is woman.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: A quiet, tender spirit in a woman is of great value in the eyes of God.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a great order here.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I think Paul is could be saying to his disciple Timothy is when it comes to public teaching, be careful about allowing a wife to exercise authority continuously over her husband in a public setting, because this is out of God's order.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Remember in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 3, one Paul says this there's one thing I want you to know the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's an order of things here.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: And a man should love his wife, be willing to lay down his life for his wife.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the point here is this are women allowed to teach in a public setting?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says to the church in Corinth, when women stand up and teach and speak God's words, they are to have their head covered.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in Paul's world, in the church in the church in Corinth, women were standing up in a public setting and they were speaking God's words.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just establish that historically women were allowed to stand up in a congregation of Christian men and women and speak, but Paul said, have them cover their head because well, I think in Paul's world, uh Corinth was a uh center of uh the worship to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and that prostitutes at the goddess of love, and there were over a thousand male and female prostitutes that you could actually walk up to the uh uh hill at the top of the city where the temple was, and you could sexually worship the goddess of love by having sex with one of these prostitutes.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the prostitutes had their hair cut short.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's one factor.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: Another factor is in Greek uh thinking and Greek culture, the most beautiful aspect of a woman was her hair.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was the most sexual thing to look at.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was the most alluring thing.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: So uh perhaps I don't know exactly what Paul was thinking.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can conclude that perhaps short-haired former prostitutes were coming into the Christian congregation, and Paul didn't want them to get the wrong idea, so cover their heads so they're not noticed.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or when you're standing up and teaching in front of uh people, don't be distracting by showing your hair.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: So cover your head so people are not gonna be looking at uh uh it'd be like us uh asking a woman to dress modestly to not show off uh the two things I want to bring up here.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I want to look at the man.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Men have abdicated the throne of authority.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, uh he said uh uh you're uh you know, a man shall love his wife as Christ loved the church willing to die.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how many men that's why men hold open the door more often for women than women men.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, we are to be in service of them.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, so men abdicated the throne being selfish, ungodly.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: So women have had to step up to the position that the men have abdicated the throne.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a factor.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a definite factor.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: And don't you pick on your wife.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: You get more godly, Bucco.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I think in places in uh like the church, the Methodist Church on Utilla is uh Esther is the pastor.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh her husband uh passed away from cancer.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how much I didn't know I never knew him, but I know Esther, and uh she's a godly woman and she's a good Bible teacher.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think pastor.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: See, now I have to say this.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting here listening to you, and the people who have you know Beth, Beth, uh who Beth and Donald?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know that Beth has been a great teacher in my life.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: She has, she is.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: And now I don't know it's because of I had uh some upsetting things happen in my childhood, and for some reason I maybe don't trust men.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I found my greatest teachers in my life have been females.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the thing So I can learn from a female, but I would not feel comfortable having a no, no, no, no.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not I don't want to have a woman as a pastor.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like I'm not advocating women uh to be pastors.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh all I'm trying to do is understand what is exactly Paul saying to his disciple Timothy, because words matter.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if I read in English, I might misunderstand it because a lot of men have.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: They become jerks.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have mistranslated.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have stood in front of churches teaching in Spanish.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have made wrong choices in words, people that start laughing because I have chosen the wrong word.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: My friends say, uh no, it's the wrong word.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: Say this word.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: In mosquito culture, the same thing has happened to me when I'm using mosquito words, okay?
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm ideal in a culture where we use three different languages.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you make a couple of things?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can make you can make mistakes, and people will laugh, but in theology, you can come up with wrong ideas.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: We are out of time.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, don't you have a book that deals with words?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the uh a lot of what we've been talking about.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not that here, but it's missing in action right now.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Yeah, let's see it.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: I put it back in there, but I didn't know.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: The vision behind the verses.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of what uh we've been talking about today and in these uh sessions, uh I wrote a few years ago, I think it was 2016, I published a book called The Vision Behind the Verses.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's available on Amazon, The Vision Behind the Verses, Michael Bagby.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so thanks for coming in today.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: And um there's a lot a lot to discuss here.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: A lot to discuss.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll continue with this uh a cup of friendship, and uh thank you for coming in today.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's that.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: Aloha to all of our friends.