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God Speaks Our Language · The Rhett Palmer Show

0:00
SPEAKER_00: He is the great I am.
0:02
SPEAKER_02: His first friend was Abraham.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: Surely said Abraham.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: I am that I am.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: Hallelujah.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: Hallelujah.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, rat.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, Michael.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Nice to see your smiling face more than you know.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're here for another episode of A Cup of Friendship.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: And we're having a cup of friendship together right now.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: It tastes so good.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: And you can support us by purchasing a cup of friendship.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: It's a we're a specialty coffee company that Michael owns.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: And tell us all about that coffee.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a high-altitude, hand-picked specialty and premium grade coffee, which means there's a lot more fats and proteins that when we roast it, we get a lot more flavonoids, and we roast it slowly to develop those tones.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: And delicious coffee.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: And you bake it yourself, but you don't call it baking it.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: What do you call it?
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Roasting it.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: I know when I'm outside your shop.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: You have a couple shops here in America.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: You also have your missionary shop down in the UTLA in the Bay Islands of Honduras.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: When that stuff is when it's baking, when it's roasting, ooh, it smells so good.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: It does smell good, and it's delicious.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: What's our subject for today over couple friendship?
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell Well, you know, let me ask you this question.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever have communication issues with your wife?
1:38
SPEAKER_01: It's your tone.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: It's your tone.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, they do say that the tone is I don't know, it seems like an exaggeration, but I've read where I've done a number of places.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: 80 percent of what's perceived is tone, not even the words you say, but tone.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Tone, tone.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: And for women, that seems to be uh a big issue for us.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really uh factor too much into what's actually being said, but I have communication issues with my wife.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: First of all.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: This is confession today.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, okay.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: I married a woman that uh grew up in Hawaii.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, she's fourth-generation Japanese.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh her native language is not uh English, it's uh pidgin English, which is a mixture of uh Hawaiian, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, uh some Korean words, uh, and along with some English words.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: But Laura graduated Magna cum laud from the University of Hawaii, so she's a very high honored.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And she loves you, that's for sure.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh her uh she told me she's sitting across the table from her dad, Ron.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh whenever she's with her family, she speaks what they speak, which is kind of uh a mixture of these languages and oftentimes uh with words left out.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh Ron uh leaned across the table and he said, Hey, Laura, I'd never send you to college to talk like that.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: So I have communication.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: These people had speech impediment when I first met them.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: So it was pigeon.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that meant.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Well i it's it's just a mixture of Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese words.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Is there anybody you can understand other than the immediate family?
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell If you live in Hawaii, if you grow up there, you speak the language.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: But with me, when I met Laura, uh I realized, first of all, uh she's a local girl.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh she's uh only been off uh the island a couple of times.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh and went to England for haircutting school, and she's gone to trips to Scotland and other places.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: But first of all, the communication I have with her, there's barriers.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, first of all, she's a woman, okay?
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Just like you said, tone is to women a big deal, right?
4:01
SPEAKER_00: And it it can uh you can suddenly lose any coherency in the conversation because the focus now gets sidetracked on tone.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, when I'm urgent with my wife, like, okay, Laura, it's time to go.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: We've got to get to the airport.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: She thinks you're yelling.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: She thinks I'm angry.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the bee.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
4:23
SPEAKER_00: It's just the way, you know, and I can never honk my horn sitting in the driveway.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Because that really uh now I'm really angry.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, all I'm trying to be is just urgent.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Thank God you've given me peace today.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: So you go through that too.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: It's like I said, I'm trying to be got to do this, this, JB, C.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: Why are you yelling?
4:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm not yelling.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to be tough on myself because I lack discipline.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: And if I say I got to do this, this, this, and this, it's like trying to commit it.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Rhett, wake up, no laziness.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be tough on me.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Do you have to be tough on yourself?
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, it's just the way we're wired.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: I believe it is.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, the second thing is the other barrier I realized is my wife grew up living on an island, the island of Oahu.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: And there nobody knows north, south, east, or west.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: They don't know directions.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Everything is either mountainside, Malca, or Mackay, ocean side.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's either Honolulu side or Eva Beach side.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: So if you're describing something, you say it's uh Eva Eva Malka side of that street, that intersection.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's mountainside or the water side, or whatever communities you're in between.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Um this is the way that people in Hawaii uh give directions.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: The third uh barrier that I have with our red is this pidgin language.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the language itself, there's an actual uh Wycliffe Translators did a uh a translation of the Bible in Pidgin.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: It's a very uh nice version that they did.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: But um the language leaves out certain words and sentences uh that are understood within the culture, like when she says to me, Hey Mike, try wait.
6:09
unknown: Okay.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Try wait.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Try wait.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: She's saying, be patient.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Can you wait for just a moment?
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Try wait, okay.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: So uh with my wife Laura, it's adventures and communication all the time.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, the Bible says that a soft and tender spirit in a woman is of great value in the eyes of God.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: And just yesterday I was sitting at an outside cafe and a truck went by.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: Went by, you know, uh like a big Titan with this the special mufflers.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, and I couldn't see in the darkened windows, and I said, I wonder if a female's driving that.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And I said, highly, highly unlikely.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: And then I thought about women in today's world and the happiness of women because they're natural, they're naturally inclined to a more peaceful uh lifestyle, tender.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: Like I like I said, the Bible says a tender and gentle spirit in a woman is of great value in the eyes of God.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And when they step out of that and have to be aggressive, mostly because men have abdicated the throne that God gave them, of having authority to serve their families above self, um we have an unhappy world.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: An unhappier world.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, for us, when we uh approach the Bible, I think we have a very similar uh communication barrier.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: Because literally we step out of our twenty-first century time.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: We're in another world.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: They speak another language, uh they think very differently than uh we do.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: I find in my work in Central America, I'm dealing with people, especially in mosquito culture, that they think differently than I do about things.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And for me to say the words, I'm not I realize I can say the words in the language, but I'm not really communicating the thought just because of their culture.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: And one of the books I read early on was Anthropological Insights for Missionaries by Dr.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Paul uh Hebert from Fuller Seminary.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And that really helped me understand culture and cultural symbols.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: But uh Paul says that when we come to the Bible, it's the same problem that we're dealing with people from uh different culture, different language, and we have to really uh, first of all, understand the Bible in its historical and cultural context, because that's a uh uh uh completely different way of thinking than than we do in many cases.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And we have to understand the the culture of the people that we're speaking to.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell you've been into you've been to Israel multiple times and studying history throughout uh Israel.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh you also went to school to study uh the history.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: I was uh European history major at Miami University and uh went to their uh branch campus in Luxembourg for a year.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: So I was I was very fortunate.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: This is your wheelhouse.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, um I was always interested in history, and uh I went on uh went to college on a Navy ROTC scholarship, so I knew I was gonna serve time in the Navy, and I knew I probably was gonna go to flight school.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: So when they asked me first day of class to declare a major, I just thought, well, I was always always been interested in history.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Turns out it was the best thing choice I could have made.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: We're benefiting from today.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: Today.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: From it today.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: But um I think if we really want to understand the message of the Bible, we have to step into their world, step into their context.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And remember, as we read the Bible, what are the pr two primary cultures that we have in the Bible?
9:39
SPEAKER_01: We have the Hebrews.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrews, and then we have the Greco-Romans, right?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Two different uh cultures.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, and they think differently, uh the words are different.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Did you ever read Shakespeare plays in high school?
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Not not much.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, no.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: When I read Shakespeare plays, there were so many times I was so confused as to actually what was going on.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's written in uh uh 15th, 16th century English, right?
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And for me, reading Shakespeare in high school was so difficult that I would uh have to get the Cliff Notes.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Cliff Notes?
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Just Okay, I know what the plot line is.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's see what these words are Let's see what these words are uh uh actually in meaning in my culture.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: But um when we come to the Bible, I find that God always speaks to mankind in a way that they can understand.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: God jumps across this barrier, this cultural barrier.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a comforting thought?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: It is that we look in the Bible and we see God speaking to the characters in ways that they would understand.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: And that tells me that he's gonna speak to me in ways that I understand.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: And both of us are dealing with issues right now of various relational, health, financial.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh we all are at some point dealing with these issues and we're asking God for wisdom, and then God speaks to us in a way that suddenly we know it's him speaking, right?
11:16
SPEAKER_01: I love it when he speaks.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: So for us to really um get an understanding as we open the Bible, uh, we have to kind of step back and understand the cultural setting.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: And uh I want to talk about one example today is Abraham.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Because in Genesis 15, we see God making a promise to Abraham, and Abraham's faithful response.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Abram, you're gonna be the father of uh many nations, uh many people.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Yours, your children will be so many.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Look at the stars.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: They will be so many that they will you can't even count them.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And uh verse six of chapter 15 says, And Abram believed God, and God reckoned to him as righteousness.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Here's how the text reads that God took Abram outside and said, Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you're able to count them.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: And he said to him, So shall your descendants be.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: And then Abram believed in the Lord, and he reckoned to him as righteousness.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees to give you this land and to possess it.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And now Abram asked a question, O Lord, how may I know that I will possess it?
12:30
SPEAKER_00: So he said to him, Bring me a three year old have for a three-year-old female goat, a three year old ram, a turtle dove, a young pigeon, and he brought all these to him and cut them in two, and lay them half opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: Now this is already getting weird to me.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: The birds of the prey came down upon the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And God said to Abram, As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: You will be buried at a good old age.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And it came about when the sun had set that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, what a bizarre scene this is.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: What is going on here?
13:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
13:28
SPEAKER_00: You cut animals in half and spread them out on the ground, really?
13:31
SPEAKER_00: There's got to be something more to this story.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Because what did these split carcasses have for the people of Abram's time?
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Any ideas?
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Any thoughts on that?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's he's God's the question is, God, how am I gonna know these promises are true?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And Abram says uh and God says, I'm gonna show you.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Get me these animals, cut them up, spread them out, split their carcasses.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And Abram's okay, I'm doing that, and he's watching, it gets very dark, and all of a sudden he sees a flame or what's described as some sort of box with flame passing between the split carcasses.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And Abram knows that God is gonna uh honor his pledge.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
14:20
SPEAKER_00: So, what's the significance of split carcasses?
14:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, we get a clue to the meaning of this uh steaming, seemingly strange practice from Jeremiah chapter 34.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And listen to what God says to the uh through the prophet Jeremiah.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: I will give the men who have transgressed my covenant, who have not fulfilled the words of the covenant which they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: The officials of Judah and the officials of Jerusalem, the court officers and the priests, and all the people of the land who pass between the parts of the calf.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: I will give them into the hand of their enemies, into the hand of those who seek their life, and their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and beasts of the earth.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah's explaining in those days that businessmen, politicians, and friends, they made pacts, they made covenants by cutting animals half in half, walking together through the split carcasses, pausing in the middle, looking at each other and say, if I don't keep my end of the deal, may I become like this dead animal?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Because there were no city clerks or there were no notary publics at the time.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: But these covenants had to be made in some manner.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: So imagine you decide to sell me a la a piece of land, and I we agree on the price.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the way that we would seal the deal.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: I give you my shoe, that then?
15:50
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: We we would cut an animal in half.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
15:54
SPEAKER_00: We would spread it out on the ground.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: You and I would walk and s together and stop between that split carcass.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I would look at you and I'd say, Red, if I don't uphold my end of this bargain, may I be as this animal.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And you would say, Mike, if I don't uphold my end, may I be as this animal?
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And then we would walk through and the deal would be made.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a severe handshake.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: It's a severe It is a severe handshake.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: So uh what caused Abram to believe God in this one?
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Now remember the scene.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Abram's sitting and he's he's after he split the carcasses, he's keeping the birds away, okay, from eating them, and then suddenly he sees this flame, this oven box of flame or something, passing between the carcasses.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: It's God passing between the carcasses.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and Abram covenant with Abram.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And Abram knew that it was God passing through.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: And he knew that even if he didn't keep his end of the bargain, God was gonna keep his.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
17:32
SPEAKER_00: How did they think?
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, one distinct manner is function versus form.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, Rhett, you got a nice coffee cup here.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna hold it up to you and describe to me what this coffee cup what is it?
17:48
SPEAKER_00: What describe it to me.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you're looking for.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: It's it's got some multiple colors on the outside, it's black in its interior with a white bottom.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's small.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's small.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you have given me a form description.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: You've told me what it looks like, right?
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, if I'm a biblical Jew, you know how I would describe this?
18:12
SPEAKER_00: I would say, with this, I drink my coffee.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I describe it in terms of function.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Greeks think in terms of form, Jews think in terms of function.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Now we know that I'm Greek and not Jewish.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's kind of a thing.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: So the Greek's going to tell you the the color as you did, the shape, which is exactly what you did.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh what it looks like, uh, but the Jews gonna say, with this, I drink my coffee.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Greeks think in terms of what how it appears, Jews think in terms of what it does.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: That's why the Greeks are visual artists, right?
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: So this is a super helpful uh principle to understand when you come to a very particularly confusing passage of scripture found in the Song of Songs.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And here the writer is describing his beloved by describing her belly or her body.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: And when he gets to this verse two in chapter seven, he says, Your belly is like a heap of wheat fenced about by lilies.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Now, Rhett, if you said that to Barbara, your belly is as a heap of wheat.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Would she smile and put her arms out and give you a big hug?
19:31
SPEAKER_00: No, she probably wouldn't, okay?
19:35
SPEAKER_01: Wheat stands for harvest.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're we thinkers.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I want you to think, okay, okay.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Your belly is as a heap of wheat.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what's he describing?
19:43
SPEAKER_00: What comes from the belly of a woman, of your beloved, a baby, okay?
19:49
SPEAKER_00: So fruition.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Harvest.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: So what this lover is saying to his beloved is from your womb are gonna come many sons and daughters.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: And in our old age, they will provide us with all the food and care that we need.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: And that is a beautiful thing.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: You see, he's thinking in terms of function.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and not in form.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is why the Jews will say, Oh, you make ten million dollars, you still just buy a Volkswagen.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: It'll get you to the same place.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: Save your money and invest it in a business.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're thinking in terms of functional, okay.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, God is uh of always talking to Jewish people in the Bible in functional forms.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm the Lord you God who brought you out of Egypt, okay?
20:37
SPEAKER_00: To give you this land.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is what I'm doing.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm describing myself by what I do.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh David, for example, he often refers to the God as his rock.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 92, the Lord is just, he is my rock, there's no evil in him.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: And we naturally think, okay, well what does that rock look like?
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Is it big?
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Is it small?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Is it sharp?
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Is it black?
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Is it white?
21:06
SPEAKER_00: W what's it look like?
21:08
SPEAKER_00: But Rhett, what did David do with a rock?
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he slew the uh with a little pebble, a small rock, slew Goliath.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: He killed Goliath, right?
21:18
SPEAKER_00: And remember he was teenage boy.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: He went over and picked up five stones out of that uh brook that runs through the valley of Elah.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Smooth stones, and why five?
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Why five?
21:29
SPEAKER_00: The number of grace?
21:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Because Goliath had four brothers.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
21:36
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: Oh, just in case.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: He's thinking, okay.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: If I kill this guy, then uh think of what else that David is does with his with a rock.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: He grinds his uh wheat with it, he builds a wall, builds a fortress with it.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: David is thinking functionally.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is my rock, he's my weapon, he's He's the instrument that I uh make my bread.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that uh protects me.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: He's functionally thinking in this.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: So I wonder how frequently he practiced with that slingshot.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think of Caitlin and the way she plays uh basketball, how these people make these shots from halfway down the court.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: It just amazes me.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: But how many times did they do that and subconsciously they learned?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, you remember David had lots of time out in the uh fields with the uh sheep and the goats.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And uh when you're a kid and you uh that's just like Red, I tell you, the kids that I work with on the Cocoa River, they make slingshots out of uh they cut a branch of a tree, they'll get some pieces of tire or some elastic.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, these guys are deadly with their slingshots.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: I was uh down by the uh river one day, and there were uh yellow naped Amazon parrots flying around.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And uh this kid was sitting there with his slingshot.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And he just looked up, and there's probably about 50, 60 feet away was uh one of uh one of the parrots up in a tree, and he just picked up a stone out of the river, and he turned around, and without aiming, he fired and knocked that thing down.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: And then he went over and picked it up and plucked it and was gonna take it home, and that was gonna be lunch.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: A$400 bird, you know, that's what they sell for even more, okay?
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: But functional and form thinking.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: This is Greeks think in term of form, Jews term think in term of function.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is very helpful for us when we come to the uh book of John, because when we read the book of John, we hear John describing Jesus in terms of uh the seven I ams.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: I am the door, I'm the good shepherd, I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life, okay?
24:16
SPEAKER_00: See, these are images that John is using to appeal to his Greek audience, okay?
24:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm the bread of life, he feeds me.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm the light of the world, he illuminates my path.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: You see, we're getting the picture here, okay?
24:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm the door, yes, he opens the door to heaven for me, okay?
24:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm the good shepherd, yes, he cares for me.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm the way, he's my life journey, I'm the truth.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I can discover the truth through him.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: I am the life, yes, he is the source of my true life.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: So these are images that John is painting for his Greek audience.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: He's recording what Jesus said, okay?
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And I can see it through these images.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he is the good shepherd.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: He is the door into eternity.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: He is our sustenance, he is the bread of our life, you know, he is our way, he is the truth, he is the life.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: But along with the seven I ams, John also records seven miracles.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: He turns water into wine.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: He heals that uh royal official son uh from a distance when he's up in uh son is in Capernaum and he walks up to uh Cana, which is about a seven-hour walk up the hill, and Jesus says, Your son is healed, okay?
25:40
SPEAKER_00: He raises that paralytic that's by the pool, uh the Bethesda pool, and uh he then feeds the five thousand.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: He walks on water, he heals the blind man, man born blind in chapter nine.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: He raises Lazarus from the dead.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Now John's appealing to his Jewish audience here.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus does.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh turns water into wine.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can take ordinary people and turn them into extraordinary individuals.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh I can he can touch me even when I feel far away from him.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: He healing at a distance.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: The guy's laying there crippled by the pool, and he can't get to it when the water stirs, and he's not even looking for Jesus.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus comes up to him and says, You want to be healed?
26:33
SPEAKER_00: So even when I'm not looking for God, God's looking for me.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: That's an incredible image for me.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: An incredible thought.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: I know you brought that up before.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: He feeds five thousand.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: His his uh provision for me is limitless.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Brett?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: His provision for you is limitless.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Does that word have significance for you this morning?
26:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: It does for me too.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: I I'm in need of his provision right now in a number of areas.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think probably you are too.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And it's a good way to be, to be needful of God.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: It is, okay.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And then he's walking on water.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: I can do with with him.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: I can do impossible things.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And you and I both, we have done impossible things with him.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Look at your career and the things that you've told me where you started out, that God has allowed you to do things and put you in positions.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: You've talked to some of the most famous people of our time.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, how does that happen to a guy that grew up the way that you did, right?
27:42
SPEAKER_01: I was living in the ghetto of Troy, New York.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: High school dropout.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was thinking about that last night.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: How did you ever take this nobody?
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Why did you choose this nobody?
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, with him I can do impossible things.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: To God be the glory.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: When he heals the blind man born blind, okay.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Where I am blind, he can open my eyes to see.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's happened so many times where I am totally clueless about what's going on around me, with the relationship that I'm in, the conversation I'm in, the situation, and all of a sudden, illumination.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: I get wisdom.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: I suddenly I'm able to see, you know.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: And of course, when he raises Lazarus from the dead, he raised Lazarus?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: He's going to raise me.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus said, God, uh I God has given them to me.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: There's not one that of my sheep that I will lose, and I myself will raise them up on the last day.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: But was he referring to the disciples there?
28:44
SPEAKER_00: No, he's referring to us.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Are you certain?
28:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: It's one of my great promises, Rett.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And he then, after saying that, he raises Lazarus up, and everybody's watching.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: They know Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: His sisters say, oh, the odor from his decomposing body is going to be dangerous.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Don't go in.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Remove the rock.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus come forth.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine if we were standing there?
29:16
SPEAKER_00: What would we be thinking?
29:18
SPEAKER_00: With this guy, everything he said is true.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: And he raised Lazarus from the dead.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: He's going to raise me from the dead.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
29:28
SPEAKER_00: So you see, John is living in Ephesus.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: He's got a mixed audience of Greco-Romans and Jews that live in the city.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: He's writing his gospel.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to present Jesus in a way that the Jews are going to understand, functional thinking.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: This is what he does.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: But his Greek audience, form thinking, he's giving this image, the door, the shepherd, the way, the truth, the life, the resurrection.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, uh these are great images.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: And if we understand how Jews and Greeks think, then these images, I think, really come alive.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: They really come alive.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, another distinct difference in these two cultures, Jewish culture and Greco-Roman culture, is what I call and what my friend Randy Smith has often referred to as acceptance and obedience versus speculation and application.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: You see, the rabbis taught that it was the duty of God's people to accept the revelation that God has given them and then simply obey.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: They saw the pillar of fire and smoke on Mount Sinai, it was God.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: As to what was above that pillar of smoke, they didn't didn't not only did they not know, but they didn't feel they had the right to even speculate what was going on above that pillar of fire.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the right to speculate on God and his attributes and who he was.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: To the Jewish mind, God tells us what we should do, we obey.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: It's that simple.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: But Greeks are different.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: They have a thing called logic in their culture.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: And even today, uh Greek culture is that way.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Remember, these are the inventors of geometry, right?
31:18
SPEAKER_01: If we know A and Where does that pillar begin?
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Where does it end?
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want you to follow the thinking here, okay?
31:25
SPEAKER_00: So we know if A is greater than B and B is less than C, we can figure out the relationship between B and C, okay?
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh Greek thinkers believe that if they know some things about God, they can apply their logic and figure out the rest.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: You see the difference between the two?
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Jews said, we received God's revelation, we obey.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: The Greeks go, well, we see this about a little bit about God, we can figure out the rest of him.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: All right.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: So when Greek thinking people came to the church in large numbers in the second century, theology was born.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: This is the speculation of who God is, what he's really saying, and how we are to respond at this point in time.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: Jews never really developed a theology of God.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: They didn't feel they had the right to do that.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: But what you see in early church history, especially through the third and the sixth century, we see councils, we see schisms, we see excommunications, because applying logic to God often had disastrous results, okay?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: When Constantine uh called all the bishops together at Nicaea in the fourth century, there were many survivors of the persecution under the last Roman emperor in that uh, I think it was uh 280 to 290 Domitian, uh severe persecution.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh many of those that survived that were present at and they were having dinner with the emperor.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And it was uh said that during that dinner that Constantine actually went over to one of those bishops who had lost his eye in that persecution through torture, and actually leaned over and kissed him on the where the the face where that eye used to be.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these bishops couldn't believe that, you know, years before the emperor was after them and killing them, and now they're having dinner with the emperor.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: They began their meetings at this council with as trying to establish official church doctrines, but they couldn't agree.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And many of them wanted to excommunicate it, to excu really excommunicate one another.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Because they all agreed that the scriptures were inerrant, but many believed inerrancy applied only to their logical interpretation of the scriptures.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: And finally Constantine had to force them to come to some agreement because this was the result of their speculation and their application.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: This is my friend Randy Smith uh calls it.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: This is a time when the church went through the Greek car wash and everything changed.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Um there was an effort on some of the uh uh Christians from Alexandria to move away from their Jewish roots during this time to a more uh philosophy approach to the Bible.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: And this is where the Hebrew scriptures began to be viewed as allegories.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: And there was one bishop named Marcion that uh really eliminated all the Hebrew books in the Bible that had any uh uh in the Christian scriptures, uh, any of the quotes of the Jewish uh prophets, he eliminated that.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And finally Marcion was left with uh a Bible that only contained the letters of Paul and some of Luke's gospel.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: And this eventually got carried on into 18th and 19th century theology in some German schools.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: So there's a difference between acceptance and obedience and speculation and application.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: This is how the church changed its character.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: There's a third distinction called tribal mentality versus individual thinking.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: See, Jews were in an environment where they were, they understood the collective, the good of the many over the individual, the good of the one.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: They thought of themselves first as family members, then as members of their extended clan, then members of the twelve tribes, then members of the nation of Israel.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: So they survived by being tribal.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: They're very tribal.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: And so for example, the mentality was what was best for the group is what's best for me.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: Moish, you're gonna do make the shoes.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna open up the jewelry store.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh thus the king could offer tax exemption to the families of the sappers.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: Remember, those were the guys that crawled under the walls of the cities of the enemies, and they they used uh sacrificing their very own lives.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: They used picks to try to uh knock the uh sewer pipes uh uh down to get the walls collapsed, and they probably were gonna die in this uh mission, but they knew that their families were gonna live tax-free for the rest of their lives.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, imagine you and I lived tax-free.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you and I lived tax-free for the rest of our lives.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
36:42
unknown: Yeah.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: But I still wouldn't want my family member to die for it.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: But this was their mentality.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: This was what's good for what's good for my family is good for me.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
36:51
SPEAKER_00: But Greeks are very different.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: They're individual thinkers.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Remember, their dramas and their literature often portrayed the lone hero who overcame great odds or fell prey to the schemes of the gods or his own failings.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: The importance of the individual in Greek culture gave rise to a unique form of government.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Democracy, right?
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Where individuals had the right to be the rulers of the city.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And these concepts, um democratic concepts, didn't really apply to Jewish culture.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
37:31
SPEAKER_00: So uh a theme of Paul's letters as he's talking to his Greek thinking friends, he talks a lot about the concept of the body of Christ.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that in his epistles?
37:44
SPEAKER_00: That we're all parts of a body, we each have a function to play.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have to tell this to his Jewish friends, he's telling it to his Greek and Roman friends.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: They get it.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: They survive by having a syndication.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I mean, he writes to his friends in Ephesus.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Each part does his own special work.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: It helps the other parts to grow so the whole body is healthy and growing more and full of love.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: You see, Paul knew that this collective tribal idea was a very uh foreign concept to the Greek thinking uh Christians.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And for us, Grett, think about it.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: It's also a concept for us Western thinking Christians, right?
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Because we often think of individuals, think of our own culture.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: Um the heroes of our culture are rugged individualists, the Marlborough man, right?
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Theodore Roosevelt.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh guys that can go and just uh do it all on their own.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: But if we look at the Bible, we have a completely different uh picture that we're part of a community, we're part of a body.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: And there is a reason, Rhett, that you see these verses that begin with or end with one another.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: There's 21 of those in the Bible that how we should love one another, forgive one another, serve one another, uh, confess our sins to one another, uh, all these one another's this is tribal body commandments.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, even Jesus said on that day, many will come to me saying they did this, they did that, and say, I never knew you, but to you, come in.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: You fed me when I was hungry, clothed me when I was naked, and visited me in prison.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: And they will say, We don't remember you, Jesus.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Who are you?
39:32
SPEAKER_01: When you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it unto me, come in, for your reward is great.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: And to me, that says he's relational, uh, but it also is tribal that uh Paul said, Esteem others greater than self.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, right.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: This is the Trevor Burrus, it's taken me a lifetime to learn my joy is when I'm giving more than I'm taking.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: That's when I'm happy as a person.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: This is a biblical concept that often is uh very different than the way we Greek thinking Westerners have grown up.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's I've got to accumulate.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I mean, literally the Bible, the main theme of the Bible is other centeredness, right?
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Yet we grew up in a world where we're told look out for number one.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: And we have the right to make our own decisions and do what we want to do.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: But the idea of being part of a community, uh, especially in our culture right now, we're seeing that that's a difficult concept to do not what's best for you, but what's best for my community.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: And if we actually embrace that, many of the situations in our Western culture would really disappear.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: So then there's uh um another concept here that um I just want to say one thing on the side.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: So this is maybe this is why this is this is only Rhett Palmer's per perception, but uh a lot of Jew I'm surprised with conservative Jews, though a lot of them are dem more democratic.
41:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, that would go in alignment with this because they believe safety is in the socialization and that everybody has their position.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: So though I've accumulated a lot, I don't mind if you tax me, but that can lead into a dangerous place if you get to a place of communism or you know, just I'm just thinking politically, why so many Jews tend to be, at least in the past, have remained democratic, and yet even though they're persecuted, you know.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: That might be changing, but I think the basis is the culture is one of let's stick together and do what's best for the our culture.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: And um it really plays out.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, go to any kibbutz in Israel, you know.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: And I've been there and you haven't probably multiple times.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh and you know, it's everybody's working and uh communist, right?
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's uh yeah.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a collective uh effort.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think the tribal thinking helps helps us be that way.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, why didn't it work with the pilgrims when they first landed the first year, Pat Robertson said they all tried to work together.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, you've got you've got uh Henry and the wife saying, Henry, you've worked you've tilled the land more than uh Billy uh over there, Billy Foster, so you you just stopped tilling.
42:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, supposedly they almost starved to death that first year, and then they then they divided the land up to private ownership.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: And so individualism uh succeeded.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh w why did this collectiveness work with the Jews but not with the pilgrims?
42:45
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm I can't really answer that, Rhett, but I do know what you're saying is true.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Um even in the Soviet Union, there was a group of uh called the Kulaks that Stalin was very brutal when trying to bring the whole country under his control, and he was very brutal with the Kulaks.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: He sacrificed a lot of Ukrainians uh with taking stealing their wheat and not leaving enough for them to eat.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: The kulaks though uh were uh very insistent that they would not turn their land over to the collective farms.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: And he Stalin fought them, and finally he granted this particular group the right, the privilege, to farm basically a hectare of land and uh for themselves.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
43:35
SPEAKER_01: Why did he give in?
43:36
SPEAKER_00: I wonder because they were so uh insistent and it was such an effort, and he finally said, okay, you can have this smart small parcel of land.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I was in the Soviet Union in February and March of '71, the land that uh was owned by the Kulaks was about four percent of the land that was farmed in.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: In the Soviet Union, but it was producing over 25% of the food eaten in the Soviet Union.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: Now think about that for a moment.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: When I was in Moscow, I was uh I saw people lining up on sidewalks and there was nothing there.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: And I was watching, and one day uh a couple guys got off the bus and they had suitcases and they set them down on the sidewalk and they opened them up.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: They were full of oranges.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: These are guys that had come from the south.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: They got on a uh the aerofloat, which had very cheap domestic flights.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: They brought their oranges up and people knew they were coming and they bought them.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: And it was like we'll be here next week at the same time.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: People were lining up on the street, and suddenly within 10 or 15 minutes, all the oranges were gone.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: They closed their suitcase, got on a bus, and off they went back home.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: But there is something about um the Bible tells us that uh we should be uh minding our uh flock.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: We should be managing the resources that God has given us.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: But I think a greater uh a greater commandment is as we do this that we should always be looking to benefit the people around us.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Thus, as you're harvesting your field, make sure that you leave some along the edges for the poor, the ones that don't have the ability to uh plant and sow and harvest.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Um this was a regular thing that the Jews did.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: They were always told not don't tell the land twice.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: The Bible even says to leave leave go go for your first fruits, leave the rest behind for the poor.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell Well, right.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: There was always this, and the foreigners that were in coming out, you know.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: So there was this concept of caring for the people around you, but also the concept of being responsible for what God has given you.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's so many uh proverbs about uh look at the ants, oh sluggard, you know, without any uh overseer.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: They work day and night.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: They work day and night, and uh a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: And poverty shall fall upon you.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: I do want to say this though.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: Here's mine.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Tell me what you think of this.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: So I'm uh I'm in I'm I'm in I'm in Russia some time during history, and I have toilet paper.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: So the people line up for toilet paper, and there's a big long line going down the street in Moscow.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: And finally, it's five o'clock.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm allowed to leave at five o'clock.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: You'll have to come back tomorrow.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: It's five o'clock.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: I get to leave now.
46:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm taking my toilet paper and going.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: Now, now I come back and all of a sudden I'm making a nickel profit off of each roll.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: It's five o'clock.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, no, don't don't crowd leave.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: Stay in line because I'm going to be here till 10 o'clock at night, till you all have.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: So the capitalism motivates me to work harder.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: So where is the where is the the so the special spot where both things work together?
46:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think capitalism seems to work.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, right, it does work.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: And we're told, especially in the Christian scriptures, in many places, especially the book of Colossians, whatever you do, do it as though you're working for the Lord.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: Do it to the glory of God.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: Do it uh in other words, do your best job, make your best product, sell it at the very uh favorable price for you and for the consumer, and then look around your community and see what you can do to help the people who don't have.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: So if you're gonna make a shoe, make a shoe like uh if you Jesus you were making it for Jesus, essentially, is what you're saying.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: How how what would you feed Jesus if he came to your house and he was homeless?
47:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh, whatever whatever I was eating that day.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: You know?
47:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh yeah, this uh you know, I think to me though our discussion this morning is very comforting in the fact that God speaks to people in the Bible in a way they can understand.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Spoke to Abram.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh John points out, speaking to Greeks, speaking to Romans, speaking to Jews, how the images of what Jesus does and what he looks like and what he says he is.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm the bread of life, I'm the door, I'm the good shepherd, but I'm walking on water, I'm feeding five thousand, I'm raising Lazarus from the dead.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: See, God is speaking to that cult those cultures in a way they understood the message.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm very confident that he's gonna be speaking to you and me in our culture in North America in 2026, 27, 28, 29 during this time.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: God will speak to us in a way that we can understand him.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: And that's a great biblical principle for me.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to uh worry that he's uh gonna say things to me that I don't understand.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Now he'll give me dreams, he'll give me visions and images, which will cause me to ponder and meditate and ask him what I'm seeing, and usually he lets me know what those are.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: But God is gonna speak to us in a way that we understand, and to me that's a great comforting principle as I opened the Bible.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: I had a dreadful fear of those weird beings in the book of Revelation for years.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, these odd things with sixteen eyes and fourteen arms, or whatever they are in the book of Revelation.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: So it always bothered me.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: I didn't say anything.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: We were up front at a church uh when Barbara had cancer and praying that thank God she's okay, uh, she was healed.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but um we were at the front of this church that had this meeting on Sunday nights about I believe you attended that church, and uh Pastor Tipton.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: And on some with this one Sunday night a month, you'd go for healing.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, we're up there praying for healing, and out of the blue, I know this will sound crazy to some, but it was almost like a wind blew through my brain.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: And it was like, I wasn't even praying about this.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: And it was like God said, you don't have to worry about those beings in the book of Revelation, Rhett.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: They're mine, you're mine, they're not gonna harm you.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: And all that fear was gone instantaneously.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: Of course, sometimes I go, okay, Pop, you did that.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: Could you do that with a few other things?
50:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, in other words, he could accomplish anything.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: Why are you leaving me in this valley for so long?
50:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's something you gotta learn here.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think it's also it's he wants us to really actively be seeking what he's saying and doing.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: You will find me if you seek me when you seek me with all your heart.
50:38
SPEAKER_00: He wants our attention, okay?
50:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like a lover giving attention to his beloved in a way that when she receives it, she knows that she's being loved.
50:50
SPEAKER_01: Well, how about you?
50:51
SPEAKER_01: You're a dad.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: Now you take a boy and you take him, give him a concept.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh women are more capable of conceptual and hypothetical situations.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: A voice and you say, okay, we're going to learn what a what a ruler is today and what 12 inches are.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't care about 12 inches, I don't care what a yard is.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: Take the same boy, you as a dad, you say, Hey son, come on, let's go back to the barn.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: We're going to build a table.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, dad and I are going to have relationship.
51:16
SPEAKER_01: Now, son, we have to learn about inches and yards.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I want to learn.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: I want to learn so we can build this table.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: So you can have know what an inch is and a yard is.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: See, it's it's so the whole thing is changed because now the boy's having a relationship with his dad.
51:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: And that's not is that what isn't that what the father wants with us?
51:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it says that he he created man for fellowship.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the whole point is he wants us to seek him, he wants to speak to us, but he wants us to be paying attention that we really get what he's saying.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: And not necessarily speculating on what we think he might be saying.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell It's like why are pistachios so tasty when they still have the shell?
51:56
SPEAKER_01: Because you have to work for each one.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: You take the pistachios and you sell them, it's not my favorite, nut at all.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, these are okay.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't really like them.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: But why when you're shelling them, you know, you have to earn each one.
52:08
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's a good analogy.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: The pistachio analogy.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: So God will speak to you in a way that you understand.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: All right.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so um, well, I guess that does it for today.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be discussing something in their future.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, tell them about the program that they're listening to and what the name of it is, and why that's the name.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: It's a cup of friendship, and it's uh discussions between two friends about important topics, and especially when it comes to hearing from God and understanding what he's saying.
52:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh a cup of friendship is uh we've developed a few um blends of some of our coffees, and they're available at our website, which we'll have up on the screen, and you can order and have them sent to your home and enjoy a cup of friendship with us as we're talking about these important things.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: Cup of friendship, yep.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for being here.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm Red Palmer.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm Michael Bagby, and we will see you soon.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: God bless you.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: Aloha.