Latest / Relish: a Christian podcast / “Who Actually Recognized the Messiah? Christmas, Prophecy & God’s Plan”

Transcript

“Who Actually Recognized the Messiah? Christmas, Prophecy & God’s Plan” · Relish: a Christian podcast

• 0:01
  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
• 0:05
  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
• 0:08
  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what
• 0:11
  we bring to your table today might add some spice
• 0:14
  to your life welcome back to another episode of relish i am your host ron miller
• 0:20
  this is don patterson don how are you doing good yeah yeah i was able to take
• 0:27
  nourishment at lunch and uh Yeah, it went well. That's good.
• 0:32
  Good to be here. So it is. I enjoy this. Yeah.
• 0:37
  Where are we at? Yeah, especially when I don't have to prepare.
• 0:40
  All I have to do is answer questions. This is easy.
• 0:45
  We'll see. We'll see. We'll see how easy the questions are. Oh,
• 0:48
  okay. Should we do yours first? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 0:51
  Still forgetting. How would you like to serve God when you're older?
• 0:55
  And you're about there, aren't you? You had a birthday.
• 0:59
  Yep. You are now legally adult, weren't you, 18? Yeah.
• 1:03
  Got some more rights, but. Yeah. Okay.
• 1:08
  Yeah. Cool. So how would you like to serve God when you're older,
• 1:12
  since you're already there?
• 1:15
  Yeah. Older, I don't know. I think.
• 1:20
  Hopefully part of it, hopefully be financially, like definitely don't have financial
• 1:27
  resources as much now, but yeah.
• 1:32
  But I look around and there's like you and Josh and have always,
• 1:38
  I've always admired there and like the willingness to serve.
• 1:41
  And you'll ask them and as long as they don't have anything else,
• 1:45
  then they'll pick it up and serve. And even if they do have something,
• 1:49
  they might move their schedule around so it works for them. It's been known to happen. Yeah.
• 1:54
  Yeah. So I think just being willing and just accepting things that come up.
• 2:02
  They do come up. Yeah. So true. Yeah.
• 2:07
  All right. We'll start with, since Christmas just happened, we're just coming off of that. Yeah.
• 2:14
  This came up in discussion with my family after reading the Christmas story.
• 2:20
  What characters in the Christmas story would have known about Old Testament
• 2:24
  prophecy of a virgin birth of Jesus?
• 2:29
  Well, Zachariah, yeah, Zachariah would have known being a priest and all the,
• 2:39
  you know, being taught that way.
• 2:41
  Joseph might have a little bit, but not to the extent Zachariah would have known,
• 2:47
  depending on how much it was talked about.
• 2:51
  And we have to realize that as the rift increased between the Romans and the Jews,
• 2:58
  I mean, they were basically occupied for a long period of time there,
• 3:02
  and the angst got more and more, and it would actually culminate in 70 AD after Jesus was gone.
• 3:10
  As that angst wanting to get out from under Roman rule accelerated,
• 3:15
  the momentum to go back and look for the messianic prophecies probably increased as well.
• 3:22
  And so John would have, yeah, he would have grasped it mainly because of where he was educated as well.
• 3:31
  Not only in his home synagogue, but he actually was part of the Essene community.
• 3:37
  And they went back in the old testament uh and studied and in fact some of our
• 3:43
  uh most recently extent role of uh scrolls of isaiah came from the essene community
• 3:51
  called the dead sea scrolls,
• 3:53
  oh i've heard of that yeah yeah and so uh we know that john was educated in
• 3:57
  that in that group of people.
• 3:59
  Okay. And so he would have known, but at the point of Joseph and Mary coming
• 4:08
  to Bethlehem, Zechariah would have known. He might have been,
• 4:14
  Pretty much the only one of those characters. Right.
• 4:20
  And then you had Herod, and he didn't know, but he asked the wise men or the
• 4:26
  magi, and they seemed to know.
• 4:29
  Well, he asked his priests in Matthew chapter 2.
• 4:39
  He called together all the people's chief priests in verse four of chapter two
• 4:43
  and teachers of the law and asked them where the Christ was to be born.
• 4:47
  And so, yeah, you're right. He didn't know.
• 4:49
  Herod didn't have a clue. Yeah. Which, yeah, there's probably several reasons
• 4:54
  for that, but he knew who to call.
• 4:57
  Yeah. And so knowing who to call is a great, great way to get information, you know, and he used it.
• 5:05
  They would have been up to date on that. Yeah.
• 5:09
  So this, at this time, there was the word and the actual scriptures themselves
• 5:16
  are being more available to actual believers at the time, or?
• 5:21
  No. It's still just among the priests? Right. Okay.
• 5:26
  The, the scrolls, I mean, you and I wouldn't have owned our own scroll. Right. Likely.
• 5:31
  The scrolls would have been extant in the different synagogues.
• 5:37
  There's different.
• 5:39
  And schools of thought of, you know, were these traveling scrolls from synagogue
• 5:44
  to synagogue, or did each synagogue have an complete Torah, at least, the first five books?
• 5:51
  Books like Jeremiah and Isaiah were not widely circulated, but they would have
• 5:59
  been, you know, I have several copies here and there.
• 6:02
  They would not have had an entire scripture, any of those synagogues.
• 6:09
  They would have existed at the temple, all of them, but not at synagogue level.
• 6:16
  So they were written on...
• 6:22
  Leather, papyri, which is a reed that is sort of raked out and made into paper.
• 6:32
  Skins, yeah. It's very interesting because we have paper today and they didn't
• 6:37
  have anything like that at the time.
• 6:39
  Papyrus is as close as they got. And it was plant-based.
• 6:44
  And there are pieces of papyri that exist until even today.
• 6:52
  But boy they don't hold together can you imagine 2,000 year old paper no that
• 6:57
  doesn't hold together very well see and I even had to you notice I got a different Bible,
• 7:04
  it's the same Bible same translation same year but the pages weren't turning very well anymore,
• 7:12
  so we had to update I noticed that a lot of times when you went up for a sermon
• 7:17
  I wasn't sure how long you had it but I noticed it the last time Yeah, it shines.
• 7:22
  See, it shines. Yeah.
• 7:25
  So, yeah, the knowledge base of who would have understood would have been pretty small. Yeah.
• 7:37
  And I imagine that sentence that it says in Matthew 2, and Herod was grieved
• 7:45
  and the whole town with him, probably was very, very true.
• 7:51
  Because to imagine that this messianic prophecy would be coming true right then,
• 7:57
  and Herod was a scoundrel.
• 8:00
  Yeah. Boy, you talk about scoundrel. He's scared.
• 8:04
  Yeah. Well, he killed his brothers and killed his sons and my goodness, he wasn't a nice guy.
• 8:14
  So information like this would have definitely troubled Herod.
• 8:17
  And if Herod was troubled, everybody else would be too.
• 8:23
  Yeah. So do you know around what time the scriptures became available to the
• 8:31
  actual members of the congregation or people outside of the priests? It really didn't.
• 8:38
  They were all handwritten until around 1500. Yeah.
• 8:44
  And around 1500, all of a sudden there was this printing press,
• 8:48
  and they could print things off, multiple copies at a time.
• 8:52
  And just the fact that they could do 10, 15, 25 copies of one page at a time,
• 8:58
  it sounds terribly slow to us. Right.
• 9:01
  Because we have Xerox machines. Well, they're even inkjets now.
• 9:08
  So it sounds terribly slow. But to them, rather than doing it letter by letter,
• 9:13
  it was extremely fast to do a page at a time, especially if you could do both sides.
• 9:20
  And it was the invention of the printing press made all the difference in the
• 9:25
  world that didn't happen until 15,
• 9:30
  1536, 1525? It was, yeah.
• 9:36
  And then the printing press wasn't all available.
• 9:39
  I mean, it's not like the all of a sudden built 1500 of them, one at a time.
• 9:47
  That being said, there were groups of monks in monasteries who would copy by
• 9:55
  hand, letter by letter, the manuscripts to continue making a Bible at a time.
• 10:02
  And that's how they did a Bible at a time, page by page.
• 10:07
  They're called scribes, equivalent to the scribes that were alive at Jesus'
• 10:12
  time. And that's how they got the manuscripts made.
• 10:15
  And that's, I would say, scribal errors probably make up for the most, uh,
• 10:26
  boo-boos in our translations because that, you know, doing it letter by letter.
• 10:33
  I don't know if you've ever written letter by letter, something that somebody
• 10:37
  else has, uh, when I was a kid many years ago, I mean, really it has been a long time ago.
• 10:44
  We had to do, if we did something wrong, we had to write, I will not do that
• 10:49
  again a thousand times, you know, or a hundred times you're five.
• 10:53
  I've never heard about that.
• 10:55
  You haven't ever done that? I've never done that. No kidding.
• 10:58
  This is why my penmanship is like it is. Yeah, it's quite nice.
• 11:03
  Because I had so much practice, you know?
• 11:07
  Oh, man. So that's how it was done. And you know, after you do it a while, it's not even.
• 11:14
  And not everything's right. And you forget a letter. Or you put a mark where
• 11:19
  it shouldn't be. and that affects the manuscripts that came down through the centuries.
• 11:27
  That being said, when we got to, when the NIV, the RSV, CSV,
• 11:34
  we have newer manuscripts, I mean, we're able to go back farther.
• 11:40
  The King James was working from basically a manuscript that was coming off of a certain...
• 11:50
  Ah, Erasmus. It was a certain manuscript they used that was actually Latin in base.
• 11:58
  And so they weren't going back to the Greek. So it's like you go from Greek
• 12:04
  and Hebrew, and then they were going to Latin.
• 12:07
  There's one version that takes and translates the Old Testament into Greek, Septuagint.
• 12:15
  Okay. And so you've got all these old versions that, you know, would predate 200 AD.
• 12:20
  But it's pretty old, you know? And they were using those manuscripts to do like
• 12:26
  the German that Luther was doing.
• 12:28
  Actually, Luther's Bible was very good, good translation, because he got back
• 12:33
  to the Greek and the Hebrew.
• 12:37
  But yeah, most of our errors or inaccuracies between our translations before
• 12:44
  that have to do with the fact that –,
• 12:48
  it was using the Latin instead of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.
• 12:53
  For instance, in the book of Acts, if you go through the book of Acts,
• 12:57
  and if you've ever been, somebody has the New King James and somebody has the
• 13:01
  NIV or CSV, you'll notice the names of the towns are different.
• 13:06
  Interesting. And that's because the King James is using the towns that they've
• 13:11
  always used, but that comes from a Latin manuscript instead of a Greek manuscript,
• 13:17
  and so the towns are different. Interesting.
• 13:20
  Is that where you're hitting? Same town, but it's just named different.
• 13:23
  Named different because it's coming from the Aramaic and Greek,
• 13:30
  Aramaic to Greek, Greek to Latin, Latin to whatever translation.
• 13:35
  And then if you are able to bypass the Latin and go back to the Greek or even
• 13:42
  back to the Aramaic, then you get more accuracy in those towns.
• 13:48
  And it's just funny. Yeah. Just different. Yeah.
• 13:52
  But if you ever end up in a Bible study and somebody says, well,
• 13:55
  my version says, that's probably why your version says.
• 14:02
  Interesting. Did I get to your question at all? Well, we started with the characters
• 14:07
  knowing the Old Testament prophecy or not.
• 14:11
  Yeah, it just flowed into that.
• 14:14
  And went down the rabbit trail. Okay.
• 14:19
  So in Ephesians 1.11, what does the word predestined mean?
• 14:24
  Oh, man, you're there. Yes.
• 14:29
  So this is a question that Paul brings up, and he brings it up because in his
• 14:36
  mind, there's a plan ahead.
• 14:40
  So if the plan ahead is a really...
• 14:49
  I have a plan with a lot of details.
• 14:53
  Was the plan made before or is it emerging as?
• 14:57
  So in him, we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan
• 15:02
  of him who works everything out in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we,
• 15:08
  who were the first hope in Christ, might be the praise of his glory.
• 15:13
  Okay, so in this passage, and
• 15:16
  we have the idea of predestination coming up in Romans 8 and 9 as well.
• 15:23
  So the question then is this predestination saying that it's all laid out ahead of time.
• 15:28
  You don't have to worry about nothing. It's all laid out.
• 15:35
  Or does God have a purpose in his will? That's the end of verse 11.
• 15:43
  That we need to understand that we are part of his purpose and rest in our faith
• 15:49
  in him that we've got a spot chosen.
• 15:53
  We've got a role to play because it's basically saying, we were also chosen
• 16:00
  having been predestined, predestined according to his will.
• 16:08
  And I think we think of predestined as sort of static terms in that,
• 16:14
  okay, that's the way it is, and we will not deviate from that plan.
• 16:19
  Is that what Paul means by saying it's predestined?
• 16:25
  Or that God has an understanding of what's going to happen? It doesn't mean we can't.
• 16:32
  See, my thing in the midst of this is, if God created us with free will,
• 16:37
  as we go back to Genesis 1 and 2, and he created us with the ability to decide,
• 16:44
  yes, we're going to follow him, no, we're not going to follow him,
• 16:48
  or we're going to be ornery once in a while and following the rest of the time.
• 16:54
  If we're given that priority prerogative to say no, then we can also say yes.
• 17:02
  Then what does that have to do with predestination? Does that mean God already
• 17:07
  knows we're going to say yes or no?
• 17:11
  Does that mean—because this gospel that Jesus brings, this thing that we respond to as Christians,
• 17:21
  we respond out of our connection with God.
• 17:27
  Okay. How can God give us that freedom on one hand?
• 17:36
  And not on the other.
• 17:42
  So he either prescribes it for us and we live into it, which he knows from the beginning. Right.
• 17:52
  And if he knew it from the beginning, why wouldn't he stop us if we aren't going the right way? Yeah.
• 17:57
  So a lot of these questions come out of it. So the way I approach it is God's got a plan.
• 18:03
  Notice at the end of this passage, it says, works everything out in conformity
• 18:09
  with the purpose of his will in order that we, verse 12,
• 18:14
  who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. Okay.
• 18:22
  I love my wife.
• 18:26
  That's not negotiable. Right. And I would go out of my way for her.
• 18:33
  And it is my going out of my way for her that helps her understand my love.
• 18:42
  Yeah. You love God. I love God.
• 18:47
  Our obedience to what we know he wants from us is a way that we can share towards
• 18:56
  him that we care, that we're going to live for this will.
• 19:05
  Conform to the purpose of his will. I'm going to live for his will.
• 19:09
  And that's why in Matthew 6, we pray in the middle of that prayer that God's
• 19:17
  will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 19:21
  So there's no longer, I got to have it my way. It's, it's, I live for God's way.
• 19:29
  And that met is measured by my personal decision, isn't it?
• 19:35
  I have to decide that every day. I'm my decision by decision.
• 19:40
  I'm, needs to be made in the way it reflects on God's purpose, His will. Okay.
• 19:49
  So I would say this predestined word, that's a nice word.
• 19:53
  It's a pretty word. Look how nice it is. It has a P in the beginning, like Patterson.
• 20:00
  But I'm not sure it is as cut in stone as some people would like to have it.
• 20:08
  And I prefer to not have quite such a hard edge. Right. Because I think,
• 20:14
  I look at the Old Testament stories of how God worked with people,
• 20:19
  like Gideon. We talked about Gideon one other time.
• 20:23
  And he works with Gideon. Gideon's not perfect. Gideon has doubts.
• 20:28
  And he's got this fleece he puts on.
• 20:31
  And, well, okay, I'm not really sure about this, Lord. How about we make the
• 20:35
  ground dry and the fleece wet?
• 20:37
  And then let's make the fleece dry and now the ground wet.
• 20:41
  And, okay, yeah, I'm listening now.
• 20:47
  The patience God has with us is amazing.
• 20:52
  So I think he's still working that way. So this predestined thing,
• 20:57
  I don't think, has the hard edges that some people would like to put on it. Yeah.
• 21:02
  And there's so many other references of that point to free will, predestination.
• 21:09
  Yeah. That being said, you know, God isn't willy-nilly.
• 21:14
  And he's not a God of chaos. And so I do believe that if he doesn't have a note-by-note
• 21:22
  plan, he does have a will and a purpose.
• 21:27
  And I think that's why Revelation sets at the end of the New Testament so that
• 21:32
  we are given an insight into the fact that God has a plan. Hell is real.
• 21:40
  His salvation is also very real.
• 21:43
  And this is the way it's going to play out at the end. And so you get to chapter
• 21:47
  20 and you see the white throne and you know that if your name isn't in the
• 21:52
  book of life, salvation isn't yours.
• 21:59
  And hell and fire happen. And I think when we almost,
• 22:09
  if we throw out the word predestined and remove it,
• 22:19
  We almost throw out the fact that there's going to be a hell,
• 22:22
  and there's going to be an answer that each of us has to make.
• 22:27
  And we can't do that, folks. That is in Scripture.
• 22:30
  There is a hell. There is a consequence to not believing in God,
• 22:36
  in the same way that there's also a heaven for those who do,
• 22:40
  and who have followed that, like 1 Corinthians 3, 11-15.
• 22:46
  They've built their lives on Jesus Christ. And on top of their commitment to
• 22:51
  Jesus Christ, they've invested with gold, silver, and precious stones.
• 22:57
  So that when fire comes, they still have those things that they've built.
• 23:02
  Now, the wood, hay, and straw stuff goes away.
• 23:06
  But they still have that precious piece. I do believe God has a reward for those
• 23:10
  who get through life and have built for the kingdom.
• 23:20
  I believe that intensely. So, you can't get rid of it, the predestined,
• 23:28
  and set it to the side and say, well, we don't have to worry about that.
• 23:33
  Because so many times when you do that, and you've also forgotten that there
• 23:37
  is consequences, there is a white throne judgment, there is a plan that God has.
• 23:45
  Yeah. Yeah. Very good. God is not a God of chaos, but I don't think he micromanages.
• 23:55
  Yeah. So is this one of the main scriptures that people would use to argue for predestination? No.
• 24:02
  Actually, Romans probably is as often used as any other word.
• 24:12
  Where in romans is this romans around eight okay see i thought this was going
• 24:17
  to be a lot easier to get these pages turning and it isn't.
• 24:37
  Acts, Romans, yeah. I know Romans is in there. There we go, 15.
• 24:42
  I thought it was going to be a lot easier, and it ended up just about as hard
• 24:45
  as it was with the other. Now I won't have my marks. Right.
• 24:50
  Okay, so in chapter 8, verse 29, for those who God foreknew,
• 24:56
  he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son,
• 24:59
  that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
• 25:02
  And those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified.
• 25:05
  And those he justified, he also glorified. Notice that progression.
• 25:10
  So, there's that predestined piece. It almost sounds like what we looked at
• 25:15
  in Ephesians 1.11 and 12.
• 25:19
  So, it would have predestination there.
• 25:23
  But if you look across and you go to the first part, there's no condemnation
• 25:32
  for those who are in Christ Jesus, chapter 8, verse 1.
• 25:37
  Because through Christ Jesus, the law of sin and death have been set free from the law of sin.
• 25:44
  Because through Jesus Christ, the law of the spirit of life set me free from
• 25:50
  the law of sin and death. Oh.
• 25:55
  That's very, the mind of sinful man is death, mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace.
• 26:02
  So it sounds like we have a decision and we make that, that's our way of making
• 26:10
  that decision for Christ or not.
• 26:14
  And then sinful nature, spirit is all in there up until calling ourselves,
• 26:21
  we are God's children. And now if we're children, then heirs,
• 26:24
  heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
• 26:26
  Well, it sounds like that's something that we grow into with that progression.
• 26:37
  So, is it predestination?
• 26:40
  Maybe not just as hard as edges as we, yeah, it's not willy-nilly.
• 26:48
  I also don't think that God has a plan that Rowan will do this at 3 o'clock on Friday morning.
• 26:55
  And I don't think it's that way.
• 27:00
  So God has a plan. He does not micromanage unless we really need him to. and.
• 27:11
  Basically he wants us to live in a relationship with him that is responsive to his call,
• 27:19
  And that call might be, okay, I call you to the ministry, or I call you to make
• 27:25
  sure you rub shoulders with Micah on Monday night.
• 27:30
  I've got that appointment for you, if you will, because he needs to hear from
• 27:38
  you and you need to hear from him.
• 27:40
  I do believe he has those divine appointments for us once in a while.
• 27:44
  But I don't think he micromanages what comes out of it. Mm-hmm.
• 27:49
  Very good. Yeah. Well, I hope, you know, anybody, if, if, if that's not clear
• 27:54
  enough, just give us a holler. Right. Yeah.
• 27:57
  Give us your feedback. We definitely need to. Gladly take it. So. Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:01
  Thank you, Don, as always. Hopefully these, these weren't too hard for you and
• 28:05
  you actually enjoyed it.
• 28:06
  Oh yeah. More than preparing ahead of time. Yeah. Yeah. That's all right.
• 28:10
  I, sometimes I get frustrated. I can't give more scriptural basis, but we'll do some.
• 28:16
  All good. We can always do better.
• 28:20
  Thank you guys for joining us and we'll see you next time. Thank you for joining
• 28:23
  us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this ministry by sharing it with others.
• 28:28
  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
• 28:31
  and is calling to us in our daily lives.
• 28:34
  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.