WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.840 Mahler. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:44.000 I'm still Woe. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.600 On today's Stone Choir we're going to be doing another episode on 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:49.440 listener feedback. 00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:52.240 We did one of those a couple months ago and we wanted 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:54.000 to get back into it because we have a few more good 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.200 questions uh and because we both been busy last week. 00:00:57.200 --> 00:01:00.480 Uh in the show notes we will give a link to the 00:01:00.480 --> 00:01:04.880 myth of the twentieth century podcast with Adam and Hans uh Corey 00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:08.080 and I both joined them last week and that was that aired 00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:09.120 this past Monday. 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:12.640 So there's actually some extra Stone Choir content out there for you. 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:15.360 You'll just have to go somewhere else to listen to it. 00:01:15.360 --> 00:01:18.400 On the subject of listening to Stone Choir, uh just is a 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:19.920 little bit of housekeeping. 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:22.320 Spotify has delisted one of our episodes. 00:01:22.320 --> 00:01:23.520 Probably won't be the last time. 00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:29.040 Eventually, probably some or all the podcast listings will delist us entirely. 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:34.240 We are immune from that as broadcasters, as podcasters. 00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:38.240 You are not immune from that as listeners unless you take some 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:39.920 affirmative steps. 00:01:39.920 --> 00:01:43.200 So the stonehyphen choir.com 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:46.080 website will always be there. 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:48.800 As long as we can keep the lights on, that will be 00:01:48.800 --> 00:01:50.640 a place where you can always find us. 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:54.000 Which means that worst case you can always stream the episodes you 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:55.280 know, on a w in a web browser. 00:01:55.280 --> 00:01:57.120 That's not a great experience. 00:01:57.120 --> 00:02:00.800 Uh if you are an iOS user, you should be using Overcast. 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:04.560 Uh from Overcast.fm, uh you can find it on the App Store. 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.520 If you're an Android user, you should also be using a podcast 00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:08.240 uh player. 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:11.040 I've been told the podcast addict is supposed to be pretty good. 00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:13.680 Uh so if you're an Android pour, you should be using one 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:16.960 of those or your favorite one. 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:20.880 But the the reason that I specifically want to say use one 00:02:20.880 --> 00:02:26.000 of these or a similar podcast player is for this specific reason. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:28.240 Podcast is based on RSS. 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:34.640 There's it's a standard that lets content be distributed without using the 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:35.680 web, basically. 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:39.840 It's there's complexity behind the scenes it's a protocol on the stone 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:43.040 but website at the very top of it you can find the 00:02:43.040 --> 00:02:47.760 rss feed for stone choir the reason that is relevant is that 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:53.040 you can paste that rss feed into Overcast or Podcast Addict or 00:02:53.040 --> 00:02:57.200 a similar high quality podcast player, and you'll automatically get all the 00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:00.000 new episodes without doing anything. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.800 And that will be done in such a way that it cannot 00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:04.000 be censored. 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:06.640 So it won't matter if somebody comes along and delists us or 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:08.640 cancels us or any of that other crap. 00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:12.640 You will always be able to find our episodes on your device 00:03:12.640 --> 00:03:15.040 automatically without having to think about it. 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:15.840 And that's the whole point. 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:18.160 Like this should be easy for you as listeners. 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:20.880 As more and more of the services try to come after us 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:24.960 and shut us down, as happens to pretty much every decent podcast 00:03:25.040 --> 00:03:26.800 in the dissident, right? 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:27.920 We'll just start vanishing. 00:03:27.920 --> 00:03:30.480 So if you want to keep listening and you don't want it 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:34.320 interrupted, I would highly recommend you take a few minutes today, use 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:37.440 one of those podcast players and get the RSS feed from the 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:41.360 website and then just add it manually as a source and then 00:03:41.360 --> 00:03:43.600 Stonequire will just always be there for you and you don't have 00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:44.480 to think about 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:45.200 it. 00:03:45.200 --> 00:03:45.840 Uh 00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:50.080 thank you to everyone who's been you know leaving reviews on Apple 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:51.360 Podcasts and elsewhere. 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:55.920 Obviously it helps to spread the word and help keep spreading what 00:03:55.920 --> 00:03:59.120 you know you all are finding valuable and and what we do. 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:01.680 A special thanks again to to Andrew and to the other folks 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:03.120 or sorry to Adam. 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:05.600 As and you know I was thinking Andrew Torba as well, who's 00:04:05.600 --> 00:04:07.440 been a big booster of the uh of the show. 00:04:07.680 --> 00:04:08.720 We really appreciate it. 00:04:08.720 --> 00:04:12.400 You know, it's without you sharing the show with others, no one 00:04:12.640 --> 00:04:13.440 hears about it. 00:04:13.440 --> 00:04:15.600 And if everyone stops caring, that's fine. 00:04:15.600 --> 00:04:16.560 This is a hassle. 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:19.520 I mean we d we had to fight audio gremlins for an 00:04:19.520 --> 00:04:21.520 hour just to get recording today. 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:24.400 This is this is this is like punching ourselves in the face 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:27.760 sometimes. We do it because it's important. 00:04:27.760 --> 00:04:31.920 Today we're gonna be discussing a grab bag of issues and uh 00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:35.360 so it won't be a real overarching theme, but we wanted to 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:37.680 get some questions people had. 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:41.360 Uh the first one will address a specific question, then we're gonna 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:45.440 go into a more general question about how to read the Bible 00:04:45.440 --> 00:04:48.320 in general and which Bible to read, which Bible should I buy, 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:50.640 you know, if you don't have a Bible, or if maybe you're 00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:53.920 thinking you should have a different Bible, we'll give you some ideas. 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:54.240 Um 00:04:55.200 --> 00:04:59.280 spoiler alert, we are not supremacists for any particular translation. 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:02.000 We'll talk about translations a little bit and why they do and 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:04.240 don't matter and what to do with it. 00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:08.000 So I think a lot of today's episode will be just about 00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:11.120 how to read the Bible and which Bible to be reading. 00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:12.720 And it's not going to be specifics. 00:05:12.880 --> 00:05:15.520 We will have some links in the show notes to a couple 00:05:15.520 --> 00:05:20.480 of Bibles that we have had friends recommend uh is is very 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:23.920 good reader Bibles, another one that will be uh uh specifically a 00:05:23.920 --> 00:05:25.600 good Bible for a study Bible. 00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:29.920 We'll talk about the differences because there are different ways of reading 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:30.560 the Bible. 00:05:30.560 --> 00:05:32.000 You know, do you read out loud? 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:33.680 Do you read to yourself? 00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:35.600 Do you're reading to others? 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:39.440 Are you doing, you know, a systematic study of a word or 00:05:39.440 --> 00:05:44.480 a subject versus just reading, you know, pages and pages. 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:48.720 Those are all fundamentally different tasks and when we don't treat them 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:50.320 as discrete tasks, it can 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:54.320 make it not as obvious whether we're using the right tool for 00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:55.040 the job. 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:57.760 Ultimately, you should probably have you know at least two or three 00:05:57.760 --> 00:05:59.200 different Bibles. 00:05:59.200 --> 00:06:02.080 And I mean, you don't have to, you know, it's not a 00:06:02.080 --> 00:06:05.360 rule, it's just that they're they're different benefits to different styles of 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:09.840 Bibles. So uh when we start with that question, we deal with 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:13.680 the uh translation specifics and then get in some of those generalities. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:14.080 So 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:17.440 when it comes down to it, we have the good fortune of 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:21.920 living at a time when there are a lot of options for 00:06:21.920 --> 00:06:23.920 reading scripture. 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:29.440 Our ancestors would be incredibly envious of the wealth of materials to 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:31.520 which we have access. 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:36.960 Now, that being said, one of my primary and first recommendations for 00:06:36.960 --> 00:06:41.280 reading scripture is pick a version, one that you can actually read 00:06:41.280 --> 00:06:43.760 and understand, and stick with it. 00:06:43.760 --> 00:06:47.360 Part of the reason for that is that that's how you memorize 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:49.120 things is repetition. 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:53.200 And if you're constantly switching versions, you're going to have a harder 00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:58.160 time memorizing scripture, and it's important to memorize some of Scripture as 00:06:58.160 --> 00:06:59.600 you go through it. 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:02.960 This is one of the big things that Luther actually comments on 00:07:02.960 --> 00:07:08.160 when he is speaking to teachers, pastors, and others in the church, 00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:14.480 he specifically says pick a version of your teaching and repeat it 00:07:14.480 --> 00:07:16.880 every year word for word. 00:07:16.880 --> 00:07:20.000 And that's why we have people, for instance, memorize the small catechism. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:22.400 That's why we have children memorize one version. 00:07:22.400 --> 00:07:25.280 We don't hand them a different version every week, because then you're 00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:30.240 going to have unending trouble actually recalling specifically what it is you 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:31.120 were reading. 00:07:31.440 --> 00:07:36.560 And so if you pick the ESV, stick with the ESV. 00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:39.600 If you pick the new King James, stick with the new King 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:44.480 James. I and Woe will both tell you, do not use the 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:49.680 KJV. It's not because we think the KJV is a bad translation. 00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:52.560 The KJV is a very good translation. 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:58.320 However, the KJV was written in English that was deliberately archaic 00:07:59.440 --> 00:08:03.600 when it was published centuries ago. 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:08.560 English is a language that has changed significantly in the past handful 00:08:08.560 --> 00:08:10.080 of centuries. 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:13.760 If you think that you can just pick up anything that's written 00:08:13.760 --> 00:08:17.360 in English, in quotes here, perhaps, and read it, go try to 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:20.240 read Chouser in the original English. 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:21.440 It's in English still. 00:08:21.440 --> 00:08:25.520 It's a different English from our modern English, but that's the point. 00:08:25.520 --> 00:08:29.360 The King James is also a different English from the one we 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:31.200 are speaking here. 00:08:31.200 --> 00:08:34.560 You can understand me because I'm speaking modern English and you know 00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:35.520 modern English. 00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:40.080 If I were speaking Middle English, there'd be a language barrier. 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:43.680 And so don't use a translation just because someone told you all 00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:46.240 this is the perfect and the old and the exact. 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:48.480 If you want to make that argument, just go learn Greek and 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:50.880 read the Greek. 00:08:50.880 --> 00:08:55.120 But on the note of the Greek, God made a very important 00:08:55.120 --> 00:08:58.640 point very early on with regard to translation. 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:04.240 He caused the Old Testament to be translated into Greek. 00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:09.360 The best version of the Old Testament we have is the Septuagint. 00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:13.200 It is less removed from the originals, it is closer to the 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:17.520 originals, and we aren't missing intermediate steps as we are with the 00:09:17.520 --> 00:09:21.120 Masoretic. God caused that to happen. 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:26.000 So he's telling us very clearly: translations are fine. 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:29.600 It is fine to use a translation of his word, translation. 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:31.840 are still God's word. 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:35.520 And so use an English translation, or if your first language is 00:09:35.520 --> 00:09:38.560 another language, use one in your your first language. 00:09:38.560 --> 00:09:41.680 There's no reason you should necessarily use one in a foreign language, 00:09:41.680 --> 00:09:45.120 even if you know it fairly well, unless you're using scripture to 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:48.560 practice the foreign language, which is historically one of the ways that 00:09:48.560 --> 00:09:53.360 our ancestors learned a foreign language, but pick a translation that you 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:55.840 can read and stick with it and read it. 00:09:55.840 --> 00:09:57.760 And as I said, they're excellent options. 00:09:57.760 --> 00:10:00.960 I have an ESV reader set that I like quite a lot. 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.920 It's sitting over on a shelf in this room. 00:10:03.920 --> 00:10:06.800 Biblioteca is another one that we'll link to. 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:08.720 It's more expensive. 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:10.080 It's a very nice version. 00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:12.160 If you have the money to spend on it, by all means 00:10:12.240 --> 00:10:14.560 grab one, it's an excellent set. 00:10:14.560 --> 00:10:17.840 But if not, there are great cheap options. 00:10:17.840 --> 00:10:19.600 So there's a wide range. 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:22.560 You can spend twenty dollars on a Bible, you can spend $500 00:10:23.040 --> 00:10:25.440 on a Bible set. 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:29.040 And they're very good options for reading scripture. 00:10:29.040 --> 00:10:32.960 So we'll link a number of those in the show notes. 00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:37.360 But the overarching point is pick a translation and stick with that 00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:39.520 translation. 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:43.680 And part of that is going to mean probably using the same 00:10:43.680 --> 00:10:46.720 translation that your congregation uses. 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:50.000 You know, so if everyone in your congregation is using ESV or 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:53.760 NKJV or whatever, and you have a different one, that's going to 00:10:53.760 --> 00:10:56.960 be a hassle because you're going to be able to follow along 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:00.240 mostly, but if you take turns reading and it's your turn to 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:04.320 read, you're gonna be reading slightly different words than they have and 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:07.280 you're gonna be following along and not exactly tracking. 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:11.360 So just for the sake of consistency, as Corey said, it is 00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:15.120 important to be on the same page because one of the key 00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:19.920 elements of just using and engaging with scripture is being able to 00:11:19.920 --> 00:11:23.200 have conversations with other people about it. 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:25.520 Now, an important thing to note there is that 00:11:26.800 --> 00:11:31.760 if you have ever said or if you're ever inclined to say, 00:11:31.760 --> 00:11:35.920 well, my Bible says this, please don't. 00:11:35.920 --> 00:11:37.840 That's d don't do that. 00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:40.000 that's bad theology. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.320 Because what you're doing is you're pitting one translation against another and 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:47.680 just assuming that yours is right, which is nonsense. 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:51.200 Maybe it is a better translation, but for you to just say, 00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:55.200 Well, my Bible says is just stupid because you haven't done any 00:11:55.200 --> 00:11:57.440 of the legwork to see if that's true. 00:11:57.440 --> 00:12:01.520 So if there are circumstances where your translation, the one you have 00:12:01.520 --> 00:12:04.720 in hand, says one thing, and then someone else's says something else, 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:07.120 that's an interesting question. 00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:08.320 What's going on? 00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:10.640 Don't assume one is corrupted. 00:12:10.640 --> 00:12:14.320 Don't assume that one is full of errors and that someone was 00:12:14.320 --> 00:12:15.520 up to no good. 00:12:15.520 --> 00:12:19.520 Don't assume that either one of them are exactly correct. 00:12:19.520 --> 00:12:20.880 Maybe they're both right. 00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:25.200 That's a property of translation, is that a word that has a 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:29.120 nuance in one language can split in a couple different ways when 00:12:29.120 --> 00:12:31.280 moved into a different language. 00:12:31.280 --> 00:12:33.840 So So as we've said in the past, one of the links 00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:37.040 in the show notes will be to Biblehub.com. 00:12:37.040 --> 00:12:39.760 One of the very valuable things about this website is you can 00:12:39.760 --> 00:12:45.280 punch in any verse and it will show you 30 odd translations 00:12:45.280 --> 00:12:45.920 of that verse 00:12:46.800 --> 00:12:50.480 in all the major common Bible translations. 00:12:50.480 --> 00:12:53.920 So you can see like here is how everyone else has translated 00:12:53.920 --> 00:12:58.800 this verse and whatever verse you pick, they're virtually all going to 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:00.720 read very similarly. 00:13:00.720 --> 00:13:04.800 See when we we have these very strongly held opinions about this 00:13:04.800 --> 00:13:08.080 Bible version is good and this one's really bad. 00:13:08.080 --> 00:13:10.880 When you pick a verse, not a random, but just the verse 00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:14.080 you're actually interested in, and you look at a bunch of different 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:19.520 ones, the translations that have any sort of decent reputation, there's some 00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:24.240 there's some crappy ones, but most of the common ones are pretty 00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:27.200 okay. Even if they're more liberal, even if there are places where 00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:29.600 they've messed with some things in ways that are 00:13:30.480 --> 00:13:34.720 undesirable, if not intolerable, most of the verses are still gonna read 00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:37.040 print pretty similarly to the rest. 00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:40.640 The other valuable thing there is you can click on the interlinear, 00:13:40.640 --> 00:13:44.000 and that will show you the Greek or the Hebrew text for 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:45.680 the verse that you're actually looking at. 00:13:45.680 --> 00:13:49.440 So you can see the original word order, you can see the 00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:52.000 original parts of speech, and you can start to get a sense 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:56.000 of what the translators were doing when they made those various choices 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:57.600 on the other page. 00:13:57.600 --> 00:13:57.920 So 00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:02.240 this is we've said this before, but it's worth reiterating. 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:07.280 When you're reading your Bible, pick whatever translation you want and just 00:14:07.280 --> 00:14:07.680 use it. 00:14:07.680 --> 00:14:09.520 If it you know, we'll we'll have a list of some that 00:14:09.520 --> 00:14:11.280 we like, it's not exhaustive. 00:14:11.280 --> 00:14:14.880 And I think an important thing when you're talking about translations is 00:14:14.880 --> 00:14:18.240 to acknowledge that they're all in error somewhere. 00:14:18.240 --> 00:14:20.880 Human beings translated every one of them. 00:14:20.880 --> 00:14:24.320 Every person has a certain bias that they bring to what they're 00:14:24.320 --> 00:14:28.080 translating. They're going to make editorial choices. 00:14:28.160 --> 00:14:32.880 That's not editing God in the sense of adding or removing things, 00:14:32.880 --> 00:14:36.560 but when you translate from one language to another, you're necessarily doing 00:14:36.560 --> 00:14:37.360 some editing. 00:14:37.360 --> 00:14:40.800 You're saying which direction, which nuance am I going to pick with 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:43.280 this word or this phrase? 00:14:43.280 --> 00:14:48.560 That is always going to impart your own biases, whatever they are. 00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:51.920 You know, as Lutherans, if we are translating something and there's a 00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:57.120 sacramental aspect to a passage, we will make sure that our translation 00:14:57.120 --> 00:15:01.280 is, you know, A faithful to to the original s words, but 00:15:01.280 --> 00:15:04.400 B, it's going to make sure not to miss out on any 00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:06.560 nuance that's sacramental. 00:15:06.560 --> 00:15:10.720 If someone has a completely opposite view of the sacraments, you're going 00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:12.400 to want to avoid that. 00:15:12.400 --> 00:15:16.480 So that's part of where some of these translations diverge is that 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:19.600 the men who are trying to do their best as they're translating 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:20.880 the words. 00:15:20.880 --> 00:15:23.920 You know, they're they're making decisions as they go and they're trying 00:15:23.920 --> 00:15:24.880 to be faithful. 00:15:24.880 --> 00:15:30.560 And obviously these are then doctrinal disagreements that flow subtly into the 00:15:30.560 --> 00:15:32.160 text that you have in front of you. 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:35.760 And so that should never be a source of you having your 00:15:35.760 --> 00:15:38.720 faith undermined and thinking, oh no, I don't even have the real 00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:39.760 word of God here. 00:15:39.760 --> 00:15:42.080 Yes, you do. 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:46.720 That doesn't necessarily mean that every single exact word captures all the 00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:48.720 nuance of the original language. 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:51.760 And you don't have to go learn Greek or Hebrew. 00:15:51.760 --> 00:15:55.440 Just be aware that when there are variations, there's something going on 00:15:55.520 --> 00:15:56.880 and that's interesting. 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:01.840 Another thing to keep in mind is that particularly now, like any 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:07.360 any translations or even newly published Bibles with new footnotes in like 00:16:07.360 --> 00:16:12.400 the last ten years, one of the big changes is entirely predictable. 00:16:12.400 --> 00:16:17.600 It's moving to gender neutral language, where even the Trinity, even the 00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:22.320 verses that refer to the Father and to the Son, some of 00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:25.680 the newest translations are messing with that stuff to try to make 00:16:25.680 --> 00:16:26.800 it gender neutral. 00:16:26.800 --> 00:16:28.000 That's blasphemous. 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:29.920 Those Bibles should be burned. 00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:32.400 And that's a Christian thing to say incidentally. 00:16:32.400 --> 00:16:36.400 There are absolutely Bibles that should be burned if they have absolute 00:16:36.400 --> 00:16:37.840 blasphemy in them. 00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:40.800 I think I mentioned this before, but one of the classic examples 00:16:40.800 --> 00:16:44.000 from history is the so-called Wicked Bible. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:48.560 This is a printing that inadvertently removed a knot from one of 00:16:48.560 --> 00:16:49.760 the Ten Commandments. 00:16:49.760 --> 00:16:54.960 So the commandment on adultery said, thou shalt commit adultery. 00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:56.640 It was it was an omission. 00:16:56.880 --> 00:16:58.800 Ostensibly, it was a mistake. 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:03.040 Almost every copy was hunted down and destroyed because it was treated 00:17:03.040 --> 00:17:05.920 as a very serious blasphemous error. 00:17:05.920 --> 00:17:07.200 A few copies remain. 00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:09.360 I've actually held one in my hands and seen it with my 00:17:09.360 --> 00:17:10.480 own eyes. 00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:13.680 It's called the Wicked Bible precisely because it's an inversion. 00:17:13.680 --> 00:17:16.160 Most translation errors aren't like that, but 00:17:17.440 --> 00:17:21.680 that approach, that that knowledge of this is a corruption of God's 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:26.560 word severely, this shouldn't exist, that's that's a holy thing. 00:17:26.560 --> 00:17:29.040 That that's a good thing because it is ultimately God's. 00:17:29.040 --> 00:17:33.040 And if someone's going in and changing fundamental things and saying that 00:17:33.120 --> 00:17:36.320 well God didn't really say that is no longer the Bible. 00:17:36.320 --> 00:17:38.480 Even if it's 99.99%. 00:17:38.480 --> 00:17:41.280 If you go in and you start messing with things that are 00:17:41.280 --> 00:17:46.880 removing key doctrine, you've created something wicked. 00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:50.640 Most of the time, the errors in translation are obvious stuff. 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:54.400 Like I said, the general neutral language is extremely popular. 00:17:54.400 --> 00:18:00.000 The uh I think the NIV 2011 and later has adopted a 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:01.600 lot of that. 00:18:01.600 --> 00:18:05.680 ESV, even some of the earlier versions, they are really weak on 00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:09.120 slave. We've complained about that before. 00:18:09.120 --> 00:18:13.360 The nice thing about you having just a random translation in front 00:18:13.360 --> 00:18:16.720 of you and working through it is that you already know just 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:19.440 sitting there before you even open the Bible you know anything about 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.320 it, you know what the weak spots, if there are any, are 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:23.440 likely to be. 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:26.320 You know that they're gonna be messing with sex, they're gonna be 00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:31.360 messing with things like power dynamics. 00:18:31.360 --> 00:18:34.160 You know, uh David and Bathsheba. 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:39.680 Places where today modern controversies get stirred up, what happens? 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:42.320 There's a tendency for men to want to go back into the 00:18:42.320 --> 00:18:45.760 text and subtly change it so that they can reinforce the modern 00:18:45.760 --> 00:18:47.280 point that they want to make. 00:18:47.280 --> 00:18:50.640 This is something that false prophets are continuously doing. 00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:55.120 So slavery, race, sex, all the obvious stuff, all the stuff that 00:18:55.120 --> 00:18:58.560 we talk about a lot in other contexts, the newer translations are 00:18:58.560 --> 00:19:00.560 going in and messing with those things. 00:19:00.560 --> 00:19:03.120 As I said, ESV in particular, which is the Bible that I 00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:07.120 use almost all the time, gets slavery wrong in a number of 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:09.920 places. It doesn't undermine my faith. 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:13.200 It doesn't cause me to doubt what the Bible that I'm reading, 00:19:13.200 --> 00:19:17.520 because when I see bondservant, I just automatically flip it to slave. 00:19:17.520 --> 00:19:21.200 And I'm gonna be wrong about that translation choice a lot less 00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:23.280 often than I'm gonna be right. 00:19:23.280 --> 00:19:25.520 I'm almost always gonna be right with ESP because most of the 00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:28.160 time when it says bondservant, it means slave. 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:31.440 So it's okay to use a Bible that has some of these 00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:33.440 errors as long as you know that they're in there. 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:35.360 And you don't need even like I said, you don't need to 00:19:35.360 --> 00:19:39.920 know the specifics of the translation team bec or t committee because 00:19:40.080 --> 00:19:43.360 you know the things that they're gonna want to mess with. 00:19:43.360 --> 00:19:43.680 So 00:19:44.800 --> 00:19:48.320 use the one that you have and and just read it faithfully. 00:19:48.320 --> 00:19:52.720 Uh another aspect of Bible selection has to do with how it's 00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:54.320 physically formatted. 00:19:54.320 --> 00:19:58.640 Um we'll link to at least one or two uh websites that 00:19:58.640 --> 00:20:03.200 review Bibles so you can see some specific examples of different styles. 00:20:03.840 --> 00:20:07.600 This is kind of fiddly typographical stuff that most people don't think 00:20:07.600 --> 00:20:10.720 about at all, but it has a huge impact on how your 00:20:10.720 --> 00:20:13.280 brain processes the written word. 00:20:13.280 --> 00:20:17.120 So, one of the most common Bible types that you've probably seen 00:20:17.120 --> 00:20:19.920 many times you probably own at least one of them. 00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:21.520 You have two columns. 00:20:21.520 --> 00:20:24.080 You have the you know the headings with the chapters and the 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:28.320 verses and their footnotes and then you know they're so their letters 00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:30.560 and numbers appended in the text. 00:20:30.560 --> 00:20:33.600 And a lot of times the the sides of the pages or 00:20:33.600 --> 00:20:37.120 the centers of the pages will be filled up with notes about 00:20:37.120 --> 00:20:39.840 what's in the text itself. 00:20:39.840 --> 00:20:42.240 Those are typically called study Bibles. 00:20:42.320 --> 00:20:44.400 If it has you certainly if it has the extra notes and 00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:45.920 stuff, those are study Bibles. 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:48.400 There's a lot of value in a study Bible, and then it 00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:52.320 helps you who is you know just getting into the Bible, you 00:20:52.320 --> 00:20:56.240 don't have a perfect knowledge of the thing because nobody does. 00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:59.600 The study notes help you to say, oh, well this verse here 00:20:59.600 --> 00:21:03.360 is a reference back to this thing from, you know, 38 books 00:21:03.360 --> 00:21:06.880 ago. You probably wouldn't remember that yourself, at least the first time 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:10.320 through. So it's very nice to have someone who has the expertise 00:21:10.320 --> 00:21:13.200 and you know You know, this this knowledge has been built up 00:21:13.200 --> 00:21:17.120 over many, many centuries of men, faithful men paying attention to the 00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:22.080 stuff, I mean thousands of years, correlating one verse to another verse. 00:21:22.080 --> 00:21:24.160 So it's nice to have that stuff. 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:29.760 On the other hand, those visual distractions really rob your ability to 00:21:29.760 --> 00:21:31.600 actually comprehend what's on the page. 00:21:31.600 --> 00:21:34.160 It doesn't seem like it when you're reading through it, but all 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:38.000 that visual noise, it's basically graffiti. 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:42.720 Because as Corey said in a past episode, when you're reading, you're 00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:45.920 not looking at the letters, you're looking at the shapes of the 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:48.720 words, and then the shapes of the words build up to a 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.720 sentence and your so your brain is processing chunks. 00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:56.960 It's processing chunks of text on the page, not the individual characters. 00:21:56.960 --> 00:22:03.280 What that means is that when these additions include numerals and subscript 00:22:03.280 --> 00:22:06.320 and superscript letters with footnotes. 00:22:06.320 --> 00:22:10.800 All those things disrupt your ability of your brain completely apart from 00:22:10.800 --> 00:22:12.160 your comprehension. 00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:15.520 The ability of your brain to completely comprehend what it is you're 00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:18.960 reading without constantly tripping over, oh well that's different. 00:22:18.960 --> 00:22:20.560 And there's something else going on. 00:22:20.560 --> 00:22:22.640 So there's a ton of distraction there. 00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:24.400 And there's no way to be immune from it. 00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:26.640 It's like, oh well, if I'm really smart, I can handle it. 00:22:26.720 --> 00:22:28.000 I can't handle it. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:30.080 I I need to go to a Bible that doesn't have that 00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:33.280 stuff to be able to actually concentrate on the text. 00:22:33.280 --> 00:22:36.320 And if you think that that's not the case, you're you just 00:22:36.320 --> 00:22:37.520 haven't realized it. 00:22:37.520 --> 00:22:41.360 So we'll give a couple examples in the show notes of something 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:42.640 that's called a reader's Bible. 00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:46.560 As Cory mentioned, the bibliotheca is a fantastic one. 00:22:46.560 --> 00:22:50.240 Readers' Bibles omit all the appendages. 00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:52.640 So there won't be any footnotes, there won't be any of those 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:55.920 end and indentations with where they are in or in inserting extra 00:22:55.920 --> 00:23:00.080 facts. They also will generally omit the verse numbers. 00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:04.080 We'll link to a New King James that per puts every fifth 00:23:04.080 --> 00:23:07.680 verse number in the side of the page just to kind of 00:23:07.680 --> 00:23:11.520 help you, because on one hand, there's a tremendous value in a 00:23:11.520 --> 00:23:14.560 reader's Bible of being able to just read. 00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:18.800 You start sit down and start reading the book of Isaiah. 00:23:18.800 --> 00:23:24.400 And without the demarcations of chapters and verses, you'll just read, you 00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:27.520 know, five or ten pages the way it was meant to be 00:23:27.520 --> 00:23:30.560 read without realizing how much you've gone through, because your brain's not 00:23:30.560 --> 00:23:31.600 being distracted. 00:23:31.600 --> 00:23:34.000 It's a fundamentally different experience. 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:37.920 On the other hand, if you want to look at a particular 00:23:37.920 --> 00:23:40.880 verse on the page that you've read and said, hmm, I wonder 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:44.800 about this, there is additional burden for you to go find that 00:23:44.800 --> 00:23:46.000 in something else. 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:48.240 So the nice thing about a reader's Bible that has at least 00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:50.560 a few of the verse numbers off on the side is that 00:23:50.560 --> 00:23:53.760 it helps you be able to context switch to another Bible or 00:23:53.760 --> 00:23:56.400 to, you know, another website or something where you can see the 00:23:56.320 --> 00:23:59.600 see the specific verse that you're talking about and figure out you 00:23:59.600 --> 00:24:02.480 know what whatever question came to mind. 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:04.480 So that's one of the differences. 00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:07.840 If you're if you're trying to study a subject, a reader's Bible 00:24:07.840 --> 00:24:09.600 is probably gonna be more helpful. 00:24:09.600 --> 00:24:14.640 If you just want to read, having fewer of those visual distractions 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:15.600 is crucial. 00:24:15.600 --> 00:24:18.960 And one of the nice things is because readers' Bibles are specifically 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:25.680 focused on readability, they tend to have nicer font choices, which again 00:24:25.760 --> 00:24:29.520 is the the font is forms the shape of the words. 00:24:29.520 --> 00:24:32.240 So I personally I really love type typography. 00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:34.000 It's a it's a big deal to me. 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:37.840 Even if you know absolutely nothing about typography, when you're using something 00:24:37.840 --> 00:24:41.840 that has a really nice serif font where the characters flow really 00:24:41.840 --> 00:24:46.480 nicely and every word has a distinct shape, it's easier to read. 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:49.680 It's easier for your brain to process and therefore to understand. 00:24:49.680 --> 00:24:52.560 So these small details that you don't think about normally. 00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:54.000 You just pick up a book and you read it. 00:24:54.080 --> 00:24:54.720 You don't care. 00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:56.640 You know, typesetting, typography, whatever. 00:24:56.640 --> 00:24:59.040 That crap is not interesting to most people. 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:01.760 But when it's done really well, it makes it easier for you 00:25:01.760 --> 00:25:02.080 to understand. 00:25:02.320 --> 00:25:05.120 And when it was done poorly, it can actually detract from your 00:25:05.120 --> 00:25:07.360 comprehension, not simply your enjoyment. 00:25:07.360 --> 00:25:10.240 Like I'm not talking about the aesthetics of the thing, although the 00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:11.760 aesthetics are also better. 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:15.680 But when you completely lose yourself in the word if things like 00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:19.600 those little niceties are done better, your brain is going to have 00:25:19.600 --> 00:25:24.400 an easier job processing and absorbing the word of God, which was 00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:27.360 the whole reason you're reading it in the first place. 00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:34.720 To specifically address the question that got us on this particular subject, 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:39.200 the question was over some of the changes, as it were, in 00:25:39.200 --> 00:25:42.000 more modern versions of certain translations 00:25:43.040 --> 00:25:47.760 where essentially they mess with the word that is translated as Jews. 00:25:47.760 --> 00:25:53.440 And to directly address that, the problem with translating it as Jews, 00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:58.560 as we've mentioned in previous episode, Eudios, the word being translated here 00:25:58.560 --> 00:26:03.520 from the Greek, is the Jews didn't exist at the time. 00:26:03.520 --> 00:26:08.240 That is a modern term that has a modern connotation when used 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:10.080 by modern English speakers. 00:26:10.080 --> 00:26:13.760 And so to translate it as Jews is misleading. 00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:15.920 It should be Judeans. 00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:20.880 And also it is worth noting, they were Judeans, because remember, as 00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:26.480 we have discussed in previous episodes, Israel had been destroyed, which is 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.360 to say the northern kingdom, was gone. 00:26:29.360 --> 00:26:35.200 So the only Israelites left were in fact Judeans, and so that 00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:37.840 is the term that is what is meant, that is what is 00:26:37.840 --> 00:26:40.080 referenced by the Greek term. 00:26:40.080 --> 00:26:42.560 And so that's how it should be translated. 00:26:42.560 --> 00:26:46.240 We have the same issue as we've mentioned the Elsewhere, and as 00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:50.480 Woe just mentioned with Dulos, the word for slave. 00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:54.000 Bond servant is more of a nebulous term. 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:57.760 It's not really a term that we use in modern English, which 00:26:57.760 --> 00:27:00.400 is why they used it, of course, because then the reader can 00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:03.360 impart his own meaning into it. 00:27:03.360 --> 00:27:07.840 But slave is a better translation because everyone immediately knows what slave 00:27:08.080 --> 00:27:15.200 means. So yes, some translations play these little games, but as 00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:19.360 long as you understand what is being said in the text, or 00:27:19.360 --> 00:27:22.320 if you need to, you can go back to the Greek and 00:27:22.320 --> 00:27:23.040 look at it. 00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:26.480 You don't have to know Greek You can go to Bible Hub, 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:29.440 you can look at the inner linear, you can see which word 00:27:29.760 --> 00:27:32.960 was there in the Greek, how it was translated in the English, 00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:36.640 and then you can pull up strongs or some other concordance and 00:27:36.640 --> 00:27:38.800 look at exactly what that Greek term means, and you don't have 00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:40.800 to know any Greek. 00:27:40.800 --> 00:27:43.600 All you have to be able to do is identify the Greek 00:27:43.600 --> 00:27:46.720 letters and be able to click a link. 00:27:46.720 --> 00:27:50.400 Which anyone listening to this show can certainly do. 00:27:51.440 --> 00:27:57.360 And to comment additionally on the issue of Eudios, some modern exegetes 00:27:57.360 --> 00:28:01.280 will call them attempt to argue that it means the Jewish leaders, 00:28:01.280 --> 00:28:04.960 and not the Judean people. 00:28:05.440 --> 00:28:07.200 That's false. 00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:10.480 It meant the Judean people, generally speaking. 00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:14.320 Yes, there were those who followed Christ, but most of them didn't. 00:28:14.320 --> 00:28:17.280 And part of the reason that we know this is that we 00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:23.040 have a contrast between the leaders and the general people using the 00:28:23.040 --> 00:28:28.240 word Udilos in Mark seven, where it says for the Pharisees, those 00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:31.680 would be the leaders of the Jewish people, and all the Jews, 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:35.120 in the wording of the ESV, do not eat unless they wash 00:28:35.120 --> 00:28:35.920 their hands properly. 00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:38.480 Well we have both terms right there. 00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:41.440 And in the Greek that is the term for Pharisee and the 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:42.720 term for Judean. 00:28:43.360 --> 00:28:49.120 Similarly, when we have modern translations that try to play games with 00:28:49.120 --> 00:28:53.360 gender neutral so called language, well we know that's false because we 00:28:53.360 --> 00:28:59.280 have from the very mouth of Christ in Matthew twelve, both the 00:28:59.280 --> 00:29:02.080 word Brother and Sister 00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:05.920 Adilfas, chi adulfe 00:29:07.040 --> 00:29:12.080 Brother and sister, We have that from Christ, and so if Scripture 00:29:12.080 --> 00:29:13.280 wanted to use 00:29:14.560 --> 00:29:17.840 gender neutral language as it were, the option is there in Greek. 00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:20.080 You can use both brother and sister. 00:29:20.080 --> 00:29:24.240 And so when they attempt to insert that in various other places, 00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:29.600 they're playing games with the text that are not warranted 100% due 00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:32.400 to their modern priors. 00:29:32.400 --> 00:29:34.240 And so avoid those translations. 00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:38.480 If you see one that starts translating every instance as brother and 00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:42.720 sister, if that's not there in the Greek, it shouldn't be there 00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:44.480 in the English. 00:29:45.040 --> 00:29:47.920 And that is something that like I said, that's that's pretty much 00:29:47.920 --> 00:29:50.720 only in the last ten, maybe fifteen years that that started to 00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:51.840 really happen. 00:29:52.080 --> 00:29:52.960 You know, I 00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:58.160 personally I don't think there should be more than one new translation 00:29:58.160 --> 00:30:00.720 in a language every two hundred years. 00:30:01.520 --> 00:30:04.880 it's nonsense to have such a proliferation. 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:06.720 I understand the reason for it. 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:10.560 You know, for one thing, books have gotten much cheaper to publish, 00:30:10.560 --> 00:30:15.520 and as these doctrinal disagreements have occurred in the past, churches, you 00:30:15.520 --> 00:30:18.560 know, who are you know trying to faithfully hold to their own 00:30:18.560 --> 00:30:21.440 doctrine are going to make sure want to make sure that the 00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:25.280 Bibles they're using aren't corrupting what they're worried about. 00:30:25.280 --> 00:30:28.800 So So if their priors are good, then their translation's gonna be 00:30:28.800 --> 00:30:31.920 good, but if their priors are bad, their translation could easily go 00:30:31.920 --> 00:30:33.360 off into the weeds. 00:30:33.360 --> 00:30:36.160 It's less of an issue for with the ones that existed prior 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:37.760 to the twenty-first century. 00:30:37.760 --> 00:30:41.360 As it stands today, I think you can pretty safely avoid most 00:30:41.360 --> 00:30:44.000 new translations, certainly anything from here on out. 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:47.360 Like, you know, anything after like if if you paid any attention 00:30:47.360 --> 00:30:51.200 to the decay of Hollywood, I mean Hollywood was always toxic, and 00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:54.720 yet still in the In the last 10 years, you know, eight 00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:58.000 to ten years, movies have gotten significantly worse. 00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:00.000 The same as true of Bible translations. 00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:01.760 Like it's it's everything. 00:31:01.760 --> 00:31:02.080 So 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:04.880 just keep that in mind. 00:31:04.880 --> 00:31:09.680 We will link to a CSB Bible that is a reader's edition 00:31:09.840 --> 00:31:12.320 that doesn't even have any verses. 00:31:12.320 --> 00:31:15.680 Uh a number of my friends use the CSB. 00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:18.480 One of the things that they really like about it is another 00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:21.760 aspect of reading the Bible that we haven't discussed yet, which is 00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:26.960 reading it versus reading it out loud, because it's very, very rare 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:31.200 for a man's voice to work equally well in the written word 00:31:31.360 --> 00:31:33.280 and the spoken word. 00:31:33.280 --> 00:31:36.400 And this will come into play in translations. 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:40.880 Some translations, like for example the ESV, is more of a literal 00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:45.680 translation, meaning that it tries to stick closer to both both the 00:31:45.840 --> 00:31:49.520 the words and the sentence structure and the word order of the 00:31:49.520 --> 00:31:52.960 underlying language that it's being translated from. 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:57.200 So if you're just reading it and you're studying it, it's going 00:31:57.200 --> 00:32:00.400 to tend in most cases to give you a better sense of 00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:02.480 what the Greek was trying to do. 00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:05.280 On the other hand, that also means it's tends to be a 00:32:05.280 --> 00:32:08.480 little weirder and a little more wooden to read in some places. 00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:11.680 ESV is that is harder to read out loud. 00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:13.600 This matters if you have a family. 00:32:13.600 --> 00:32:15.680 If you're a father and you're reading to your wife, if you're 00:32:15.600 --> 00:32:19.120 reading to your kids, if you're doing daily devotions. 00:32:19.120 --> 00:32:22.480 Having a Bible that's easier to read out loud and therefore to 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:25.920 understand when when heard does matter. 00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:30.000 So this is, you know, it's it goes back to the standardization 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:32.800 question. I don't think it's a great idea to have, you know, 00:32:32.800 --> 00:32:35.680 three or four different translations in the mix as part of your 00:32:35.680 --> 00:32:36.880 daily life. 00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:40.160 On the other hand, w in the show notes, we're going to 00:32:40.160 --> 00:32:44.320 give three or four different translations as different examples of different types 00:32:44.320 --> 00:32:44.960 of Bibles. 00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:47.520 So like I said, the CSB will be a reader's Bible. 00:32:47.520 --> 00:32:48.080 It's really nice. 00:32:48.080 --> 00:32:50.320 It's like 35 bucks, hardbound. 00:32:50.320 --> 00:32:54.800 It has really nice typography and no visual decorations at all. 00:32:54.800 --> 00:32:59.520 It's just a straight Bible in a faithful translation that reads really 00:32:59.520 --> 00:33:00.800 well out loud. 00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:03.440 Uh we'll link to a new King James that has some verse 00:33:03.440 --> 00:33:08.240 numbers and the the sidebars so that's easier if you're cross-referencing when 00:33:08.240 --> 00:33:10.080 you want to do additional study. 00:33:10.080 --> 00:33:14.800 And I think we'll link to the Concordia study bible from CPH, 00:33:14.800 --> 00:33:16.960 that is a it's a really good study Bible. 00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:20.480 Most of the notes are faithful, uh certainly useful. 00:33:20.480 --> 00:33:22.480 It's also really expensive. 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:26.320 One recommendation, one thing to consider when you're looking at Bibles is 00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:27.520 the print size. 00:33:27.520 --> 00:33:30.480 If at all possible, when you're looking online, try to see if 00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:34.080 they have an example that will show you the actual size on 00:33:34.080 --> 00:33:34.800 the page. 00:33:34.800 --> 00:33:39.040 Uh reason I'm mentioning this is that for the Concordia Lutheran study 00:33:39.040 --> 00:33:42.480 bible, the footnotes are tiny. 00:33:43.040 --> 00:33:45.520 Even if you have good eyesight, they can strain it. 00:33:45.520 --> 00:33:47.680 As your eyesight starts to fade a little bit as you get 00:33:47.680 --> 00:33:49.840 older, they'll be really hard to read. 00:33:49.840 --> 00:33:54.000 I recommend for absolutely anyone, no matter how young and cool you 00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:57.520 are, get the large print version of the study bible because it's 00:33:57.440 --> 00:33:58.320 not that much larger. 00:33:58.320 --> 00:34:00.400 You know, when we say large print, we're not talking about like 00:34:00.400 --> 00:34:02.320 fourteen or sixteen fies. 00:34:02.320 --> 00:34:03.760 It's a little bit bigger. 00:34:03.760 --> 00:34:07.040 And so it's definitely easier to read, especially in those footnotes and 00:34:07.040 --> 00:34:09.040 the the end notes and stuff. 00:34:09.040 --> 00:34:11.520 But it'll make a difference today. 00:34:11.520 --> 00:34:14.400 It'll make a big difference 20 years from now because your eyes 00:34:14.400 --> 00:34:17.360 will will eventually get worse and you'll it's still be nice to 00:34:17.360 --> 00:34:19.440 use the same Bible. 00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:22.880 So that you have to consider, you know, as you're looking at 00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:26.960 a Bible shopping, if you can only have one Bible, you have 00:34:26.960 --> 00:34:28.480 to decide what's the most important to you. 00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:29.280 And I can't tell you. 00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:33.280 I I don't I don't personally I would tend to want to 00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:38.320 avoid a study Bible vers my my soul Bible, I think, simply 00:34:38.320 --> 00:34:41.840 because all those distractions make it seem like the Bible is a 00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:43.840 lot more complicated than it is. 00:34:43.840 --> 00:34:45.200 Same with the King James. 00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:48.560 It was Corey was saying, I also like the King James is 00:34:48.560 --> 00:34:52.720 beautiful. I would never, ever, ever recommend anyone read it, not as 00:34:52.720 --> 00:34:54.000 their first Bible. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:57.120 And if someone has told you to read it and you've tried 00:34:57.200 --> 00:34:58.640 and you're struggling with it. 00:34:58.640 --> 00:34:59.440 That's why. 00:34:59.440 --> 00:35:02.400 It's because there's not a magic Bible language. 00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:07.360 It makes me so frustrated when guys are like, okay, I want 00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:08.960 to get into this Christianity stuff. 00:35:08.960 --> 00:35:10.240 I just want to find out what it's about. 00:35:10.240 --> 00:35:13.600 And someone hands them the king James and then they're fumbling around, 00:35:13.600 --> 00:35:15.760 they don't know what's going on on the page. 00:35:15.760 --> 00:35:20.000 That sort of confusion is the exact opposite of what God wants. 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.640 And so the visual confusion of a study bible is similar in 00:35:24.640 --> 00:35:29.680 that it detracts from your ability to just consume the raw word. 00:35:29.680 --> 00:35:33.200 If your brain is doing any sort of additional processing, whether it's 00:35:33.200 --> 00:35:37.680 ignoring extra characters and numbers and letters, whether it's having to translate 00:35:37.680 --> 00:35:41.360 archaic language, you've probably never heard some of it before in your 00:35:41.360 --> 00:35:44.080 life, trying to figure out what does that even mean. 00:35:44.080 --> 00:35:49.040 That's wasted mental energy that should be spent on consuming the very 00:35:49.040 --> 00:35:51.520 text that you're there to learn about in the first place. 00:35:51.520 --> 00:35:51.840 So 00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:58.240 Personally, I generally recommend that someone get some sort of more basic 00:35:58.240 --> 00:36:02.080 reader's Bible to just to start reading because the most important thing 00:36:02.080 --> 00:36:04.560 you can do is to read the thing. 00:36:04.560 --> 00:36:07.520 To read the Bible, to read it regularly, to study it, and 00:36:07.520 --> 00:36:09.760 to consume it. 00:36:09.760 --> 00:36:12.480 If you get more into it, yes, you do probably want some 00:36:12.480 --> 00:36:14.240 sort of study bile or other resources. 00:36:14.240 --> 00:36:16.880 And there are a ton of those online and you know, lots 00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:18.480 of places you can find them. 00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:22.320 The Bible industry is a I'm sure it's a multi-billion dollar industry. 00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:23.920 That's frankly that's part of the problem. 00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:26.080 That's part of why there's so many Bibles. 00:36:26.080 --> 00:36:29.280 Is that everybody has this demand for like well, I want something 00:36:29.280 --> 00:36:32.160 new. I want the woman's Bible, I want the little kids' Bible, 00:36:32.160 --> 00:36:36.240 I want the single man's Bible study under 25 who weightlifts Bible. 00:36:36.240 --> 00:36:36.960 Like what? 00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:38.240 Just read the thing. 00:36:38.240 --> 00:36:41.040 What's all this extra stuff about? 00:36:41.040 --> 00:36:45.920 But you know, worst case, you buy a Bible you don't want, 00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:49.120 or you know, it's mismatched versionally with one of your others, give 00:36:49.120 --> 00:36:51.280 it to a friend, give it to a stranger, give it to 00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:51.920 someone else. 00:36:51.920 --> 00:36:54.720 There's no such thing as a wasted Bible in your house unless 00:36:54.720 --> 00:36:55.840 you're not reading it. 00:36:55.840 --> 00:37:00.080 So you know, be budget sensitive and that's why there's no one 00:37:00.080 --> 00:37:01.200 size fits all. 00:37:01.200 --> 00:37:03.440 Um there are some incredibly nice Bibles. 00:37:03.440 --> 00:37:06.400 Uh you can get some that are two hundred dollars that are 00:37:06.480 --> 00:37:10.640 you know wrapped in goat skin and calf skin and have just 00:37:10.640 --> 00:37:16.160 absolutely impeccable printing and paper and everything and they're truly heirlooms that 00:37:16.160 --> 00:37:18.320 you would want to pass on to your grandchildren. 00:37:18.320 --> 00:37:22.080 That's very nice, but you certainly don't need that for your first 00:37:22.080 --> 00:37:26.160 Bible. And frankly I'd be very cautious about beginning in a place 00:37:26.160 --> 00:37:29.520 that's fancy because whatever bible you get is going to be in 00:37:29.520 --> 00:37:30.480 a translation. 00:37:30.480 --> 00:37:33.600 And so say you get a New King James and then you 00:37:33.680 --> 00:37:35.920 read it for a while and you actually I'd prefer the ESV 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:37.520 because that's what I use most of the time. 00:37:37.520 --> 00:37:41.040 Well, now you get a $200 Bible, it's in the wrong translation 00:37:41.040 --> 00:37:42.320 relative to what you want. 00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:44.240 And again, like it's not a wasted Bible. 00:37:44.240 --> 00:37:46.960 You can you can sell it or give it to someone, but 00:37:47.120 --> 00:37:49.920 if you're going to be looking at an investment in something that's 00:37:49.920 --> 00:37:54.560 truly special, like that, make sure you like the version of it 00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:57.440 first. And as Corey said, then you know stick with the rest 00:37:57.440 --> 00:37:59.760 of your life and it will it will pay dividends. 00:37:59.760 --> 00:38:02.720 I've said before, most of the verses that I know by heart 00:38:02.720 --> 00:38:03.840 are King James. 00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:07.040 Uh, the reason for that is that growing up the uh the 00:38:07.040 --> 00:38:09.760 hymnal that we used in the Lutheran church used to be based 00:38:09.760 --> 00:38:10.720 on the King James. 00:38:10.720 --> 00:38:13.920 My uh believe my my catechesis was also based on the King 00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:16.960 James. So I do not disparage. 00:38:16.960 --> 00:38:18.480 I do not dislike it. 00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:20.640 There's some incredibly beautiful language. 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:24.480 I twenty third Psalm should only ever be spoken in the King 00:38:24.480 --> 00:38:25.440 James English. 00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:25.840 I I 00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:30.880 completely reject any other version because it's not necessary because the the 00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:33.840 the problem that we're talking about with not being able to understand, 00:38:33.840 --> 00:38:38.560 everyone understands that because it's such foundational English that it it has 00:38:38.560 --> 00:38:41.760 shaped the rest of our knowledge of our own language. 00:38:41.760 --> 00:38:44.080 So again, it's not that it's bad or it's terrible. 00:38:44.080 --> 00:38:48.480 It's just that it will impart confusion where a modern translation would 00:38:48.480 --> 00:38:49.760 not impart confusion. 00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:53.760 And that concerns me as someone trying to introduce someone to scripture 00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:57.840 much more than you know the textual variants that are involved in 00:38:57.840 --> 00:38:59.520 the translation decisions. 00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:02.400 It's fine to get into those fiddly things later on if you 00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:05.840 want to be invested, but as we said earlier, if you want 00:39:05.840 --> 00:39:09.600 to get down into the the words themselves, the individual words you're 00:39:09.520 --> 00:39:12.960 looking at, you're gonna be looking at least in a concordance, looking 00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:16.800 at you know an interlinear to see what was the underlying language. 00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:18.800 And what you'll learn when you do that, again, we're not saying 00:39:18.960 --> 00:39:21.760 like, oh, you're gonna be a junior Greek scholar. 00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:23.040 No, that's not the point. 00:39:23.040 --> 00:39:26.400 When you start looking at all the other applications, you realize there's 00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:27.600 a lot going on here. 00:39:27.600 --> 00:39:29.760 There's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of history. 00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:31.600 Well, the nice things on Bible Hub when you go to the 00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:34.720 interlinear and then look at all the other examples of where the 00:39:34.720 --> 00:39:39.120 same word is used elsewhere in scripture, is you get a lot 00:39:39.120 --> 00:39:43.040 of of nuance, you get a lot of texture around okay well 00:39:43.120 --> 00:39:46.400 here's all the other ways that word's been used and sometimes you'll 00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:49.200 make very interesting connections just in terms of questions. 00:39:49.200 --> 00:39:52.080 I'm not saying be a you know junior splunker where you're gonna 00:39:52.080 --> 00:39:54.720 discover some secret Bible mystery. 00:39:54.720 --> 00:39:56.560 Guys have been doing that for thousands of years. 00:39:56.560 --> 00:39:59.920 You don't need to worry about finding anything new, but it is 00:39:59.920 --> 00:40:03.920 very enjoyable to go discover stuff and then to learn more about 00:40:03.920 --> 00:40:07.200 those discussions because as we said on the myth of the twentieth 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:12.160 century recording this past week the entire Bible is interconnected in ways 00:40:12.160 --> 00:40:15.760 that can only possibly be inspired by God. 00:40:15.760 --> 00:40:20.480 No human being could have ever created the number of correlations from 00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:22.480 all the different books to each other. 00:40:22.720 --> 00:40:25.200 Only the mind of God could have done that. 00:40:25.200 --> 00:40:28.880 Because of all the different physical authors, the the different men who 00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:32.720 were recording with their own hands and their own voices in many 00:40:32.720 --> 00:40:36.960 cases those books, only God could have kept it all together. 00:40:36.960 --> 00:40:38.640 They there would have been disagreement. 00:40:38.640 --> 00:40:41.760 There would have been like it's just uh it's the example I 00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:43.440 made there and I'll make it again here. 00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:46.080 If Corey and I were to write one hundred page book about 00:40:46.080 --> 00:40:48.560 the stuff that we know really well and we hash out and 00:40:48.560 --> 00:40:51.920 we're in complete agreement, it would not be as internally consistent as 00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:55.840 what the Bible manages to do across thousands of years with dozens 00:40:55.840 --> 00:40:57.200 of human authors. 00:40:57.200 --> 00:40:59.920 And that's because the ultimate author is God. 00:40:59.920 --> 00:41:03.360 And so it's it's a treasure to be able to delve into 00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:05.920 scripture and to find those inner connections. 00:41:05.920 --> 00:41:09.440 And that's really it's one of the most enjoyable parts of studying 00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:12.240 the Bible is you're down in it. 00:41:12.480 --> 00:41:15.280 you're not just like it's not just an advice column. 00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:18.320 It's not just it's wisdom, but there's a lot more to it 00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:20.800 than that because it's part of a much greater whole. 00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:23.600 And the more you learn about that whole, the more you realize 00:41:23.600 --> 00:41:27.200 how how infinite the whole is that the whole is greater than 00:41:27.280 --> 00:41:29.920 than the universe because it's it's God. 00:41:30.160 --> 00:41:33.600 On the subject of delving deeper into the text, I will also 00:41:33.600 --> 00:41:38.080 include a link to two applications, at least two, maybe a couple 00:41:38.160 --> 00:41:39.120 others, but two applications 00:41:40.160 --> 00:41:46.320 for studying God's Word, one that is excellent for just reading God's 00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:50.240 Word, and the first one is the Literal Word app. 00:41:50.240 --> 00:41:51.360 It is free. 00:41:51.360 --> 00:41:55.520 It has currently four translations of scripture in it, although one is 00:41:55.520 --> 00:41:59.760 the King James, so probably stick to the other three, which would 00:41:59.760 --> 00:42:04.800 be the NS ninety five, the LSB, and the ESV. 00:42:06.400 --> 00:42:09.680 But this one is a very nice application to use just for 00:42:09.680 --> 00:42:10.480 reading scripture. 00:42:10.480 --> 00:42:13.440 It has a clean interface, it's just the text. 00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:15.920 I believe it has a reading mode. 00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:20.800 And you can also hit a button in the app, and then 00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:23.440 it will underline the words that you can click on and see 00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:26.320 the underline Greek in the New Testament. 00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:27.280 Which is great. 00:42:27.280 --> 00:42:31.200 Unfortunately it doesn't yet have the Septuagint, I don't believe, for the 00:42:31.200 --> 00:42:35.920 old testament But it's a great app just for reading scripture, and 00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:38.000 the other is Logos. 00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:41.520 Now the drawback of Logos, and I will be completely upfront and 00:42:41.520 --> 00:42:43.520 blunt, it's expensive. 00:42:43.520 --> 00:42:46.000 The app is not, the app is free, and there are some 00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:48.960 free resources in Lagos. 00:42:48.960 --> 00:42:55.120 But Lagos is an expensive proposition once you start getting into actually 00:42:55.120 --> 00:42:56.400 purchasing the resources. 00:42:56.400 --> 00:42:59.840 So this is something Is something if you're going to be teaching 00:42:59.840 --> 00:43:03.440 classes at your church, consider grabbing logos. 00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:06.800 If you're just going to research the word for yourself to some 00:43:06.800 --> 00:43:09.840 degree, go ahead and grab it and use the free resources, maybe 00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:13.360 spend ten dollars here or there on something. 00:43:13.360 --> 00:43:15.760 Don't invest into the big study packages. 00:43:15.760 --> 00:43:17.360 You'll probably never use most of it. 00:43:17.360 --> 00:43:18.560 And they're expensive. 00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:21.280 Hundreds or thousands of dollars for some of these. 00:43:21.280 --> 00:43:25.760 So I'm just going to include that because that way you sort 00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:27.120 of have a range of options. 00:43:27.120 --> 00:43:30.880 You have the free option and the potentially very expensive one. 00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:32.000 The same as scripture. 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:35.520 We'll include some options in the show notes that are very budget 00:43:35.600 --> 00:43:36.480 friendly, and then 00:43:37.360 --> 00:43:40.400 as Woe was mentioning, some of the nicer Bibles I'll link to 00:43:40.400 --> 00:43:43.440 Skylar as well, which is one of the options for the two 00:43:43.600 --> 00:43:47.600 hundred dollar goat skin or calfskin Bible. 00:43:47.600 --> 00:43:50.880 Don't feel that you need to jump in in the deep end. 00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:52.880 That's totally unnecessary. 00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:54.960 Start out with the free resources. 00:43:54.960 --> 00:43:57.760 That is how this is supposed to be. 00:43:57.760 --> 00:44:00.720 The word of God is not supposed to cost you money to 00:44:00.720 --> 00:44:02.000 have access to it. 00:44:02.240 --> 00:44:07.360 Which is perhaps hearkening back to our earlier episode on copyright and 00:44:08.480 --> 00:44:11.840 Paywalling God, the title of that episode. 00:44:13.200 --> 00:44:16.640 So the next question that we're going to address in this episode 00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:21.360 is a question about the Sabbath, and whether or not Christians are 00:44:21.360 --> 00:44:26.080 supposed to keep the Sabbath or a Sabbath, what are the rules 00:44:26.080 --> 00:44:31.120 for us in the New Testament with regard to the third commandment, 00:44:31.120 --> 00:44:35.200 as we number it as Lutherans. 00:44:35.200 --> 00:44:38.640 And I want to start off with two bits of scripture. 00:44:38.640 --> 00:44:41.680 One was included in the question, so I'm I will give credit 00:44:41.680 --> 00:44:45.520 to the questioner, even though we're not reading the question itself, but 00:44:45.520 --> 00:44:47.840 that is Colossians two sixteen. 00:44:47.840 --> 00:44:50.960 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food 00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:53.920 and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon 00:44:53.920 --> 00:44:55.200 or a Sabbath. 00:44:55.200 --> 00:44:57.600 And the other one, there are a few other verses that are 00:44:57.600 --> 00:45:00.080 important too, but the other one of the two that I want 00:45:00.080 --> 00:45:05.520 to use for this answer is Romans from Romans 14. 00:45:05.520 --> 00:45:09.600 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems 00:45:10.160 --> 00:45:11.440 all days alike. 00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:14.640 Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 00:45:14.640 --> 00:45:18.080 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the 00:45:18.080 --> 00:45:21.360 Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since 00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:24.960 he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in 00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:28.320 honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God, for none of 00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:32.160 us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself, for 00:45:32.160 --> 00:45:35.280 if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, 00:45:35.280 --> 00:45:36.800 we die to the Lord. 00:45:36.800 --> 00:45:40.240 So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the 00:45:40.240 --> 00:45:45.360 Lord's. These two verses, and some others as well that you can 00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:49.680 cross reference certainly a little bit of a homework for the show. 00:45:49.680 --> 00:45:51.920 These give the general answer 00:45:52.800 --> 00:45:57.920 for the Christian observance of the Sabbath, for Christian compliance with the 00:45:57.920 --> 00:45:59.600 third commandment. 00:45:59.840 --> 00:46:04.080 I would also draw out, I won't necessarily read the verse or 00:46:04.080 --> 00:46:07.760 quote it here, but we are instructed in many places not to 00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:10.880 forsake the gathering together of the saints. 00:46:10.880 --> 00:46:16.240 So this forms the framework within which we as Christians keep the 00:46:16.240 --> 00:46:21.280 Sabbath. We are supposed to gather together, but we are not commanded 00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:27.200 to esteem any day as better or more important than any other. 00:46:27.200 --> 00:46:30.720 And so we do not get to tell people, oh well you 00:46:30.720 --> 00:46:32.960 went to church on Saturday, so you're a sinner. 00:46:32.960 --> 00:46:34.480 No, that's fine. 00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:39.120 If you go to church on Saturday, because your church meets on 00:46:39.120 --> 00:46:41.280 Saturday, so be it. 00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:45.200 Now, if you're doing it because of a Judaizing reason you believe 00:46:45.200 --> 00:46:49.840 that Saturday is the Sabbath, that can be a problem 00:46:51.440 --> 00:46:56.880 Now, if you're totally convinced in your own conscience that what you're 00:46:56.800 --> 00:47:02.880 doing is what Scripture commands you to do, then it's a more 00:47:02.880 --> 00:47:04.400 complicated matter. 00:47:04.400 --> 00:47:08.480 Because on the one hand, scripture is very clear, each one should 00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:11.200 be fully convinced in his own mind. 00:47:11.200 --> 00:47:15.200 But on the other hand, if you are fully convinced of false 00:47:15.200 --> 00:47:19.040 doctrine, so if you think that it is absolutely necessary for Christians 00:47:19.920 --> 00:47:24.800 to maintain the Saturday observance of the Sabbath, you should be rebuked 00:47:24.960 --> 00:47:26.560 with regard to that, because that's false. 00:47:26.560 --> 00:47:28.720 We are no longer required to do that. 00:47:28.720 --> 00:47:34.800 That was for the Israelites that was not for Christians generally. 00:47:34.800 --> 00:47:39.280 And so the reason that we meet together on Sunday and meeting 00:47:39.280 --> 00:47:41.760 together on Sunday is of course fine. 00:47:41.760 --> 00:47:44.400 The reason we do it there a number of reasons. 00:47:44.400 --> 00:47:48.880 One, it's so we all know when to meet, because that's just 00:47:48.880 --> 00:47:49.760 what we do. 00:47:49.760 --> 00:47:51.920 You have to actually have a day when you meet so that 00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:54.640 everyone can show up. 00:47:54.640 --> 00:47:56.880 Two, it's the day that we have off. 00:47:56.880 --> 00:47:59.360 It's modernly it's the weekend. 00:47:59.360 --> 00:48:02.640 Historically, Sunday you had off so that you could go to church. 00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:06.720 That was a big part of the reason that Europeans closed everything 00:48:06.720 --> 00:48:07.760 down on Sundays. 00:48:07.760 --> 00:48:10.080 Because all you did on Sunday was you went to church and 00:48:10.080 --> 00:48:11.600 then you went home. 00:48:11.600 --> 00:48:14.880 Or you went out for a beer with friends, depending on where 00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:17.680 you lived. 00:48:17.680 --> 00:48:20.240 Because it is still the day of rest, it is important to 00:48:20.240 --> 00:48:23.440 have periods of rest, and that is something that again a godly 00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:28.000 government has a duty to oversee, to institute, to maintain, So the 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:31.440 old blue laws and things like that were in fact godly forms 00:48:31.440 --> 00:48:34.480 of governance, they should have been maintained, and where they are it's 00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:35.680 a good thing. 00:48:37.280 --> 00:48:40.560 So essentially it it boils down to the real reason why we 00:48:40.560 --> 00:48:45.120 observe the Sabbath on Sunday, why we've made the Sunday our Sabbath 00:48:45.680 --> 00:48:46.400 is order. 00:48:46.400 --> 00:48:48.640 It's good order in the church. 00:48:48.640 --> 00:48:51.440 Because there are things that you must do and there are things 00:48:51.440 --> 00:48:52.800 that you may do. 00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:55.840 You must hear the Word of God, you must gather together with 00:48:55.840 --> 00:48:57.120 other Christians. 00:48:57.120 --> 00:49:00.720 You may do that on Sunday, you may do that on Saturday. 00:49:00.720 --> 00:49:05.360 If we had decided to do so it could have been Wednesday. 00:49:05.360 --> 00:49:11.200 But Sunday has a symbolic aspect to it that is part of 00:49:11.200 --> 00:49:14.800 it that we should really teach more explicitly in the church to 00:49:14.800 --> 00:49:20.160 let people know we meet on Sunday because of the symbolism. 00:49:20.160 --> 00:49:24.160 And the symbolism of that is the resurrection. 00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:31.040 And in addition to the resurrection, the Sabbath is metaphorically and symbolically 00:49:31.040 --> 00:49:34.960 in Scripture, that seventh day, it is the day of rest. 00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:38.240 And so we meet together on the seventh day because we are 00:49:38.240 --> 00:49:44.640 looking forward to that ultimate rest that is in paradise in Christ. 00:49:44.640 --> 00:49:48.320 And so for the sake of symbolism and order, meeting together on 00:49:48.320 --> 00:49:51.680 Sunday is what we have done historically, and there's really no reason 00:49:51.680 --> 00:49:53.600 to change that. 00:49:53.600 --> 00:49:56.960 Now I don't say that we shouldn't have, say, a Saturday service 00:49:56.960 --> 00:49:59.440 for some people who cannot make it on Sunday. 00:49:59.440 --> 00:50:00.320 That's understandable. 00:50:00.320 --> 00:50:02.480 There are people who have to work on Sundays. 00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:06.400 If you are working in an emergency room or your police officer 00:50:06.480 --> 00:50:10.480 or a firefighter, or any of a number of these occupations where 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:13.840 you can't really have a day off. 00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:17.680 Someone at least has to be working every week on that day. 00:50:17.680 --> 00:50:21.600 Then it's understandable to have another time when those people can meet 00:50:21.600 --> 00:50:23.920 together. That's entirely fine. 00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:28.240 Because again it is not required that we meet together on Sunday. 00:50:28.240 --> 00:50:31.120 It is required that we meet together. 00:50:31.120 --> 00:50:37.200 Sunday is part of symbolism and good order in the church. 00:50:37.280 --> 00:50:39.120 And I think one of the important 00:50:40.320 --> 00:50:45.200 distinctions that comes into some of these arguments today is in current 00:50:45.200 --> 00:50:49.520 year, when guys are saying, Well, I read something online and I 00:50:49.520 --> 00:50:52.560 heard this guy who said that you didn't have to do this 00:50:52.640 --> 00:50:55.040 and it's okay to do this other thing. 00:50:55.040 --> 00:50:59.280 One of the questions is you know the traditional stonequirk question, what 00:50:59.440 --> 00:51:01.360 problem are you trying to solve? 00:51:01.360 --> 00:51:02.640 But there's also 00:51:03.520 --> 00:51:07.360 the important question that every Christian has to have, which we also 00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:12.000 bring up frequently, why are you breaking with tradition? 00:51:12.480 --> 00:51:15.920 In other words, if Christians have always done this, which is the 00:51:15.920 --> 00:51:21.680 case, Christians have always gathered on Sunday for two thousand years, with 00:51:21.840 --> 00:51:24.960 exceptions, but they were exceptional. 00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:28.720 Why do you in current year think that you have Christian liberty 00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:32.560 just to do whatever you want in the face of what everyone 00:51:32.560 --> 00:51:34.240 else is doing? 00:51:34.240 --> 00:51:38.960 And so the question is not are Christians imposing a law on 00:51:38.960 --> 00:51:42.320 each other by saying you must gather on Sunday. 00:51:42.320 --> 00:51:45.840 The question is why someone would rebel against, as Corey said, just 00:51:46.080 --> 00:51:48.240 order. Like here's where it is. 00:51:48.240 --> 00:51:51.360 Churches on Sunday morning. 00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:55.040 Yes, there are reasons why you might have a Wednesday night or 00:51:55.040 --> 00:51:57.200 Saturday night or Saturday morning or whatever. 00:51:57.200 --> 00:51:57.840 That's good. 00:51:57.840 --> 00:51:59.520 Having more church is good. 00:51:59.520 --> 00:52:02.640 The it used to be that church occurred every day. 00:52:03.040 --> 00:52:05.440 When Corey says, you know, they went to church on Sunday, they 00:52:05.440 --> 00:52:06.720 didn't go for an hour. 00:52:06.720 --> 00:52:08.800 It was a most of the day affair. 00:52:09.120 --> 00:52:10.480 they were there for hours. 00:52:10.480 --> 00:52:12.000 Sermons were long. 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:16.320 There was it was a very much more involved process. 00:52:16.320 --> 00:52:18.080 So that was that was their world. 00:52:18.080 --> 00:52:19.920 It wasn't like you check in for an hour in the morning 00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:23.280 and you still get home in time for the the NFL kickoff, 00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:27.440 which is frankly one of the major pressure points on pastors today 00:52:27.440 --> 00:52:29.040 to keep their sermon short. 00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:31.920 And to make sure that church doesn't go too long. 00:52:31.920 --> 00:52:36.240 Because when it's football season, you better not have a service that 00:52:36.240 --> 00:52:37.680 runs over. 00:52:39.040 --> 00:52:42.960 that's not the right Christian approach to anything. 00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:46.400 That's not the way we should be ordering our lives, worrying about 00:52:46.400 --> 00:52:49.600 things that are not only less important but actively evil. 00:52:49.600 --> 00:52:53.360 You know the the NFL games last Sunday and the end zone. 00:52:53.360 --> 00:52:55.440 It said end racism. 00:52:55.440 --> 00:52:56.800 Huh. Well that's neat. 00:52:56.800 --> 00:52:59.520 There are probably a lot of pastors who preach the same sermon 00:52:59.520 --> 00:53:01.200 and the as the NFL. 00:53:01.200 --> 00:53:02.240 You know what? 00:53:02.240 --> 00:53:05.760 Yeah. In that case, if your church is preaching NFL sermons, I 00:53:05.760 --> 00:53:07.120 would say yeah, go to the game. 00:53:07.120 --> 00:53:09.040 You're gonna have more fun at the game than you are at 00:53:09.040 --> 00:53:12.160 church and you're practicing the same religion either way. 00:53:12.160 --> 00:53:13.840 But it's not Christianity. 00:53:13.840 --> 00:53:18.000 If you want Christianity, you go to church with other believers and 00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:22.480 you hear what God says and not what the NFL and MSNBC 00:53:22.640 --> 00:53:26.080 and the World Economic Forum and all these other places say. 00:53:26.080 --> 00:53:30.400 Because those are the two competing religions, as we always say. 00:53:30.400 --> 00:53:33.520 The other aspect of the Sabbath, and Corey touched on it, but 00:53:33.520 --> 00:53:35.360 I want to point to something. 00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:37.840 I don't have a lot to say to flesh out the details, 00:53:37.840 --> 00:53:42.800 but it's something that was definitely lost between the Old and the 00:53:42.800 --> 00:53:45.520 New Testament, and it's something that it is i is we were 00:53:45.600 --> 00:53:51.120 talking before recording, Luther doesn't do a great job addressing in some 00:53:51.120 --> 00:53:52.880 of what he says about the Sabbath. 00:53:52.880 --> 00:53:57.120 As Corey said, one of the important things of the observance of 00:53:57.120 --> 00:54:01.360 God's day of rest is gathering together with the faithful to make 00:54:01.360 --> 00:54:05.440 sure there's one day a week where you're devoting some time to 00:54:05.440 --> 00:54:10.160 the study of the Word of God together corporately with other Christians. 00:54:10.160 --> 00:54:13.040 There is also the pattern of rest. 00:54:13.040 --> 00:54:14.160 Day of rest 00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:19.520 is not the same as day of going to church when God 00:54:19.520 --> 00:54:23.680 rested on the seventh day, which the Sabbath is patterned after. 00:54:24.080 --> 00:54:28.080 When God ordered that there be Sabbath years and that there be 00:54:28.080 --> 00:54:34.160 Jubilee years, where the animals, the livestock, the fields, were given days 00:54:34.160 --> 00:54:36.480 and years of rest. 00:54:36.480 --> 00:54:42.240 That is much more fundamental to creation than Bible study and sermons. 00:54:42.240 --> 00:54:44.400 It's a different thing. 00:54:44.400 --> 00:54:47.040 So I think one of the things that we have lost sight 00:54:47.040 --> 00:54:50.880 of as Christians, again, this is not, I'm not trying to be 00:54:51.200 --> 00:54:55.200 proscriptive and saying you are forbidden just as the Pharisees did. 00:54:55.200 --> 00:54:58.800 This occurred in Jesus' ministry, where he performed a miracle and they 00:54:58.800 --> 00:55:02.000 got mad at him, and he said, If your ox fell into 00:55:02.240 --> 00:55:04.480 a ditch on the Sabbath, would you not pull it out? 00:55:04.480 --> 00:55:07.360 Yeah. If someone fell into a well on the Sabbath, would you 00:55:07.360 --> 00:55:08.480 not pull them out? 00:55:08.480 --> 00:55:11.280 So their argument that oh well you can't do work, you did 00:55:11.280 --> 00:55:15.600 work, was their misdefinition of work as certain types of activity that 00:55:15.600 --> 00:55:17.600 weren't worship related. 00:55:17.600 --> 00:55:21.040 That is not at all what I am advocating. 00:55:21.040 --> 00:55:25.280 On the other hand, when God rests and does nothing on the 00:55:25.280 --> 00:55:29.280 seventh day of creation, and when he commands that animals give be 00:55:29.280 --> 00:55:33.040 given a day off of the week off, and man, and that 00:55:33.120 --> 00:55:37.120 fields be given every seventh year, and then the Jubilee was arrest 00:55:37.120 --> 00:55:40.560 of incidentally for debt, as well as the land, as well as 00:55:40.560 --> 00:55:42.160 the people. 00:55:42.160 --> 00:55:47.920 That has significance even outside of sin, because it harkens back to 00:55:47.920 --> 00:55:51.680 creation, the six days, the seventh day of creation, before sin entered 00:55:51.680 --> 00:55:52.480 the world. 00:55:52.480 --> 00:55:57.360 So the idea of resting in opposition to working, not only is 00:55:57.360 --> 00:56:01.360 it commanded by God, but it has no bearing on 00:56:02.320 --> 00:56:06.160 salvation. In other words, the fact that you are saved, the fact 00:56:06.160 --> 00:56:10.800 that you're a Christian doesn't free you from the obligation of needing 00:56:10.800 --> 00:56:14.480 rest. No, when I say obligation of needing rest, I'm not making 00:56:14.480 --> 00:56:15.760 a law of it. 00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:17.120 You have to sleep. 00:56:17.120 --> 00:56:20.160 You have to sleep every day, or you will go insane and 00:56:20.160 --> 00:56:21.120 you will die. 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:24.800 You can kill someone with sleep deprivation. 00:56:24.800 --> 00:56:28.080 Working someone to death is a very real thing too. 00:56:28.080 --> 00:56:32.720 This was a common case in certain kinds of horrific slavery around 00:56:32.720 --> 00:56:36.720 the world where, you know, the African slaves that were taken into 00:56:36.720 --> 00:56:40.080 Arabia, there are no black people there now because A, they were 00:56:40.080 --> 00:56:42.000 castrated and B they were worked to death. 00:56:42.000 --> 00:56:44.880 They only lasted a couple of years and then they died because 00:56:44.880 --> 00:56:50.400 they were used not as humans who were to be treated properly, 00:56:50.400 --> 00:56:53.280 they were just used as machines and they were chewed up and 00:56:53.280 --> 00:56:55.200 spit out and replaced. 00:56:55.200 --> 00:56:57.440 You can kill someone with work. 00:56:57.440 --> 00:57:01.600 And God is specifically forbidding us from doing that to ourselves. 00:57:01.600 --> 00:57:04.080 And there are a lot of people today, you know, the one 00:57:04.080 --> 00:57:08.240 of the misnomers of the Protestant work ethic, where somehow you have 00:57:08.240 --> 00:57:10.800 to be constantly go, go, go all the time. 00:57:10.800 --> 00:57:14.480 This came up in in Stone Choir chat last week where someone 00:57:14.480 --> 00:57:16.800 expressed you know kind of guilt or just confusion. 00:57:16.800 --> 00:57:19.920 What do I do on on you know on Sunday? 00:57:19.920 --> 00:57:22.080 I I feel like I should be doing something. 00:57:22.080 --> 00:57:25.120 I think that there's something really twisted about our culture that a 00:57:25.120 --> 00:57:29.040 man who's idle for an hour feels like he's sinning, like I 00:57:29.200 --> 00:57:30.720 gotta be doing something. 00:57:30.720 --> 00:57:33.840 That's at some point that becomes neuroticism. 00:57:33.840 --> 00:57:37.840 Now not advocating for laziness, but when God takes a whole day 00:57:37.840 --> 00:57:40.080 off, you can do the same. 00:57:40.080 --> 00:57:42.160 Again, it's not to say you can't do anything. 00:57:42.160 --> 00:57:44.080 You know, if you want to go do some woodworking in the 00:57:44.080 --> 00:57:47.680 garage because it's soothing, if there are chores around the house, like 00:57:47.920 --> 00:57:52.720 we're not being proscriptive around saying you must sit perfectly still in 00:57:52.720 --> 00:57:55.920 a certain place and you can't lift your arm above this height 00:57:56.080 --> 00:57:58.880 and your food has to all be prepared before sundown the night 00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:00.400 before. None of that. 00:58:00.400 --> 00:58:02.160 Just give your body a break. 00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:03.520 Give your mind a break. 00:58:03.520 --> 00:58:06.640 God actually designed us that way. 00:58:06.640 --> 00:58:10.560 And another part of the observance of the Sabbath that was lost 00:58:10.560 --> 00:58:15.440 in the certainly the modern version of what we view is the 00:58:15.440 --> 00:58:16.800 notion that resting is 00:58:17.680 --> 00:58:19.760 salutary and it is. 00:58:19.760 --> 00:58:23.520 I know when when a man feels like he's doing something bad 00:58:23.520 --> 00:58:27.040 by being idle for a time, he should spend some time thinking 00:58:27.040 --> 00:58:30.480 about that and maybe studying some of what the scripture says because 00:58:30.560 --> 00:58:32.160 that's not healthy. 00:58:32.160 --> 00:58:36.240 You should be able to sit still and sit quietly and sip 00:58:36.240 --> 00:58:39.840 some coffee and pet your dog and look out at the sunset 00:58:39.920 --> 00:58:43.520 and not feel like you're betraying yourself as a man or your 00:58:43.520 --> 00:58:47.280 creator or your family or anything, like God created us to rest 00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:50.880 too. You know, six days of work, one day of rest. 00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:52.080 There's a ratio there. 00:58:52.240 --> 00:58:53.600 I think that's important. 00:58:53.600 --> 00:58:58.320 So again, like we're we're not giving like here's your ICAL reminder 00:58:58.320 --> 00:59:00.800 to rest, or here are the days and the hours to do 00:59:00.800 --> 00:59:01.680 this and that. 00:59:01.680 --> 00:59:06.640 Christian freedom is not prescriptive in that sense, but we're creatures and 00:59:06.640 --> 00:59:08.080 creatures need rest. 00:59:08.080 --> 00:59:13.280 So don't let your observance of the Sabbath end with, okay, I 00:59:13.280 --> 00:59:14.160 went to church, I'm done. 00:59:14.160 --> 00:59:15.040 Now I gotta go to work. 00:59:15.040 --> 00:59:18.160 I gotta do eight hours of work and go go to to 00:59:18.160 --> 00:59:20.000 sleep exhausted tonight. 00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:23.600 If that's your life at seven days a week, you're hurting yourself, 00:59:23.600 --> 00:59:26.320 and I think that you you should be concerned that you're doing 00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:28.240 something God doesn't want you to do. 00:59:28.400 --> 00:59:32.960 Part of what plays into the lack of commentary on rest in 00:59:32.960 --> 00:59:37.280 the small catechism, the large catechism does a better job, which notably 00:59:37.440 --> 00:59:43.360 the small catechism was designed for children and those who are incapable 00:59:43.360 --> 00:59:46.640 of learning more than the small catechism contains. 00:59:46.640 --> 00:59:51.440 It is sufficient for salvation because it contains the core of the 00:59:51.440 --> 00:59:52.800 Christian faith. 00:59:52.800 --> 00:59:56.640 If you knew only the content of the small catechism, you would 00:59:56.640 --> 00:59:59.440 be a Christian if you believed it. 00:59:59.440 --> 01:00:04.160 However, the large catechism is for fathers and teachers and others to 01:00:04.160 --> 01:00:08.720 then instruct those who are themselves learning from the small catechism. 01:00:08.720 --> 01:00:10.240 But the issue is twofold. 01:00:10.240 --> 01:00:11.280 That's the first aspect. 01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:17.440 The second aspect, Luther lived in a culture where observing a day 01:00:17.440 --> 01:00:20.640 of rest was simply part of the culture and it was not 01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:26.080 optional. If you opened your business on Sunday in 01:00:27.200 --> 01:00:32.320 historically Christian Germany, or the German principalities as existed at the time, 01:00:32.320 --> 01:00:34.960 the Holy Roman Empire, they would have come and shut down your 01:00:34.960 --> 01:00:37.040 business because you were not permitted to do that. 01:00:37.040 --> 01:00:39.840 The day of rest was mandatory. 01:00:39.840 --> 01:00:42.640 Now you could go ahead and go work on your farm if 01:00:42.640 --> 01:00:43.360 you were so inclined. 01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:45.280 They weren't going to stop you from doing that. 01:00:45.280 --> 01:00:46.560 You should rest. 01:00:46.560 --> 01:00:48.160 God commands you to rest. 01:00:48.160 --> 01:00:52.240 Resting is part of what Christians are supposed to do. 01:00:52.240 --> 01:00:55.600 But the society itself was structured in such a way that it 01:00:55.600 --> 01:01:00.640 was incomprehensible that you would engage in commerce, that you would engage 01:01:00.640 --> 01:01:03.920 in business and work on the Sabbath. 01:01:03.920 --> 01:01:07.280 And so Luther didn't have to address it, because this was something 01:01:07.280 --> 01:01:08.880 that was so out of the ordinary. 01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:10.880 It just was something that did not happen. 01:01:10.880 --> 01:01:14.640 Now he addresses some of this elsewhere in his writings, but addressing 01:01:14.640 --> 01:01:19.200 it as a core matter for instructing Christians was not something he 01:01:19.200 --> 01:01:20.160 needed to do. 01:01:20.160 --> 01:01:22.560 And we have to bear that in mind when we are reading 01:01:22.560 --> 01:01:27.040 older authors, be it Luther or someone else, some of the problems 01:01:27.040 --> 01:01:31.920 we have today are not problems that they had in their day. 01:01:31.920 --> 01:01:35.760 In fact, some of the problems we have today are so outside 01:01:35.760 --> 01:01:41.920 the norm, so outside Christian experience, that these older authors never even 01:01:41.920 --> 01:01:43.200 thought about them. 01:01:43.200 --> 01:01:47.040 They didn't think they were a possible issue that could arise. 01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:50.560 Now Luther comments on the abuse of the Sabbath in some places, 01:01:50.560 --> 01:01:53.600 and so he did raise that issue, because obviously you had the 01:01:53.600 --> 01:01:57.040 Pharisees and others who were creating specific rules and abusing the Sabbath, 01:01:57.040 --> 01:02:01.120 that's addressed Specifically explicitly in scripture. 01:02:01.120 --> 01:02:04.720 But he would have never addressed the idea of men proclaiming to 01:02:04.720 --> 01:02:08.080 be women, or women proclaiming to be men, or someone saying that 01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:11.200 he's actually a dog in a human body. 01:02:11.200 --> 01:02:14.960 That's just something that they wouldn't have addressed, and so just because 01:02:14.960 --> 01:02:19.120 as a matter is not addressed in the ancient authors, does not 01:02:19.120 --> 01:02:22.960 mean it is something about which Christians have nothing to say. 01:02:22.960 --> 01:02:27.760 And we get that today sometimes, where the left, the Marxists, will 01:02:27.760 --> 01:02:30.960 try to argue, well, this isn't addressed in any of the ancient 01:02:30.960 --> 01:02:31.760 Christian authors. 01:02:31.760 --> 01:02:36.240 Well, of course it isn't, because it's so inconceivable that this would 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:39.280 ever be permitted to happen to happen in a culture. 01:02:39.280 --> 01:02:43.520 It's so inconceivable that anyone would even have these thoughts that there 01:02:43.520 --> 01:02:45.520 was no need to address it. 01:02:45.520 --> 01:02:49.120 Because those men back then, the thought would have never even crossed 01:02:49.120 --> 01:02:53.520 their minds because it was so outside the norm, so outside their 01:02:53.520 --> 01:02:56.640 experience, it was literally unthinkable. 01:02:56.640 --> 01:03:00.160 And so just because a thing has not been addressed by the 01:03:00.160 --> 01:03:04.320 ancient authors does not mean it is not a matter about which 01:03:04.240 --> 01:03:08.400 About which Christians should speak, about which Christians should have an opinion, 01:03:08.400 --> 01:03:10.480 and on which we should have policies. 01:03:10.480 --> 01:03:14.960 And so that includes the issue of the Sabbath. 01:03:14.960 --> 01:03:20.400 We should want to live in a society which enforces these days 01:03:20.400 --> 01:03:25.120 of rest, which enforces periods of rest for workers, and Luther does 01:03:25.120 --> 01:03:31.040 rightly comment that this is primarily a matter for laborers because those 01:03:31.040 --> 01:03:35.200 who are in the upper echelons of society will typically have more 01:03:35.200 --> 01:03:36.640 opportunity to rest. 01:03:36.640 --> 01:03:38.160 Now that doesn't mean they'll take it. 01:03:38.160 --> 01:03:42.880 We have plenty of workaholics in our society today who make vast 01:03:43.120 --> 01:03:46.480 sums of money who are members of at least the upper middle 01:03:46.480 --> 01:03:50.320 class, if not the upper class, and still work themselves to death. 01:03:50.320 --> 01:03:54.080 You can work yourself to death as an executive in a Fortune 01:03:54.080 --> 01:03:56.880 five hundred company, just as easily as you can work yourself to 01:03:56.880 --> 01:03:59.360 death, digging ditches. 01:03:59.360 --> 01:04:02.160 It's part of it as a mindset. 01:04:02.160 --> 01:04:06.800 But primarily and historically, the reason we have had these legally mandated 01:04:07.040 --> 01:04:11.280 Mandated periods of rest is for the protection of workers. 01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:15.680 Because ultimately the executive, if he's high enough up in the bureaucracy 01:04:15.680 --> 01:04:18.800 anyway, is beholden to himself for how many hours he works. 01:04:18.800 --> 01:04:19.920 That's on him. 01:04:19.920 --> 01:04:23.440 For the worker, it is the duty of the godly prince to 01:04:23.440 --> 01:04:27.520 protect that worker from being exploited, and part of that is periods 01:04:27.520 --> 01:04:28.400 of rest. 01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:31.520 And this is a concern that we have in Scripture because God 01:04:31.520 --> 01:04:35.200 is concerned about how we treat our workers, how we treat our 01:04:35.200 --> 01:04:38.880 animals, how we treat our children, how we treat our slaves, all 01:04:38.880 --> 01:04:43.920 of those entrusted to our care, we are required to treat appropriately, 01:04:43.920 --> 01:04:48.000 and that does mean giving them periods of rest, not exploiting them. 01:04:48.160 --> 01:04:50.640 And I will amplify what Corey said. 01:04:50.640 --> 01:04:54.400 When I speak of not wanting to bind individuals' consciences about this, 01:04:54.400 --> 01:04:56.560 it does not go to policy at all. 01:04:56.560 --> 01:05:00.560 I would absolutely support any policy policy that said that if you 01:05:00.560 --> 01:05:05.040 open your business on Sunday, that business is taken and sold to 01:05:05.040 --> 01:05:07.520 someone else and you don't get a dime for it. 01:05:07.520 --> 01:05:10.000 I businesses should be closed. 01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:16.080 The only people who should even contemplate working on Sunday would be 01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:17.520 emergency workers. 01:05:17.520 --> 01:05:20.880 You know, if if you're a line worker and there's a storm, 01:05:20.880 --> 01:05:24.320 if you're a police officer or fire, if you're in a hospital, 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:28.880 Obviously, those things which are needed to sustain life, just as Jesus 01:05:28.880 --> 01:05:31.680 said, there's stuff that happens on Sundays too. 01:05:31.680 --> 01:05:35.920 It is entirely permissible morally for men to deal with those things 01:05:35.920 --> 01:05:37.200 on Sundays. 01:05:37.200 --> 01:05:42.400 However, commerce, trade, I would include, I don't think should be happening. 01:05:42.400 --> 01:05:45.920 I think it's entirely permissible for a godly prince to shut that 01:05:45.920 --> 01:05:49.200 down. And you know, there's a discussion on Twitter this week. 01:05:49.200 --> 01:05:52.400 I m my inclination is to say to imprison the owner. 01:05:52.400 --> 01:05:56.480 I think beatings and seizure of of assets is much more appropriate 01:05:56.560 --> 01:05:58.080 because prisons shouldn't exist. 01:05:58.080 --> 01:06:02.480 Historically prisons only existed for pretrial detainment and for torture. 01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:07.200 And once you were sentenced, you're either sentenced to lashes, to fines, 01:06:07.200 --> 01:06:08.480 or to execution. 01:06:08.480 --> 01:06:10.560 I think we should go back to that model for that. 01:06:10.560 --> 01:06:12.560 That's probably an episode for another day. 01:06:12.560 --> 01:06:16.560 But when I'm specifically talking about the Sabbath being kinda up in 01:06:16.560 --> 01:06:20.320 the air, it's so as not to bind consciences where scripture does 01:06:20.320 --> 01:06:24.160 not. However, this stuff shouldn't be happening because the day of rest 01:06:24.480 --> 01:06:28.320 should be enforced at the state level, as Corey said, to protect 01:06:28.320 --> 01:06:31.280 men who do not have power over their own lives. 01:06:31.280 --> 01:06:34.480 If you're an employee, you don't have the sort of power that 01:06:34.480 --> 01:06:35.680 an employer has. 01:06:35.680 --> 01:06:37.120 That's not Marxist to say that. 01:06:37.120 --> 01:06:38.880 That's a basic fact. 01:06:38.880 --> 01:06:42.480 You don't you don't need to to worry about power dynamics to 01:06:42.480 --> 01:06:45.680 understand that the guy who pays the bills and can leave you 01:06:45.680 --> 01:06:48.960 homeless, can make you do things that you don't want to do, 01:06:48.960 --> 01:06:51.200 or even things that you don't think are appropriate to 01:06:51.200 --> 01:06:51.840 do. 01:06:52.640 --> 01:06:56.240 Our next question is about something that we find in the pages 01:06:56.240 --> 01:07:01.680 of scripture, but we don't find today and so it ties into 01:07:01.920 --> 01:07:06.720 one of our earliest episodes, Neglected Matters, and the question is about 01:07:06.720 --> 01:07:08.480 foot washing. 01:07:08.480 --> 01:07:13.920 And we see in scripture the washing of others' feet by Christians, 01:07:13.920 --> 01:07:16.320 in fact by Christ. 01:07:16.320 --> 01:07:21.360 But we don't do that today other than some performative versions of 01:07:21.360 --> 01:07:23.840 it done for perhaps by the Pope with 01:07:25.120 --> 01:07:27.040 We can leave that aside for now. 01:07:27.040 --> 01:07:27.360 But 01:07:28.560 --> 01:07:34.320 why don't we do footwashing today and how should Christians view this 01:07:34.880 --> 01:07:40.400 to take those in reverse order, this ties directly back into what 01:07:40.400 --> 01:07:45.760 I said earlier about the difference between must and may, the difference 01:07:45.760 --> 01:07:51.280 between a command and something that is permissible or perhaps even recommended 01:07:51.280 --> 01:07:54.080 in some cases, but not required. 01:07:54.080 --> 01:07:57.120 Footwashing falls into that. 01:07:57.120 --> 01:08:02.960 Is it permissible for Christian denominations, for Christian traditions to have a 01:08:03.440 --> 01:08:05.360 foot washing ceremony? 01:08:05.360 --> 01:08:10.560 Sure. Should it be accompanied with right teaching to explain why it 01:08:10.560 --> 01:08:11.840 is being done? 01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:17.360 Absolutely. Is it something that is required, something that we absolutely must 01:08:17.920 --> 01:08:19.760 bring back into church practice? 01:08:19.760 --> 01:08:21.760 And the answer is no. 01:08:21.760 --> 01:08:24.800 Now, part of this is purely practical. 01:08:24.800 --> 01:08:30.400 Think about the state of basically everyone's feet back in those days. 01:08:30.400 --> 01:08:35.600 And notably it did not matter if you were extremely wealthy or 01:08:35.600 --> 01:08:36.960 very poor. 01:08:36.960 --> 01:08:40.560 Unless you were perhaps a Roman official and you were being carted 01:08:40.640 --> 01:08:45.280 around everywhere, in which case your feet never touched the ground, except 01:08:45.280 --> 01:08:48.880 inside buildings, then your feet were perhaps clean. 01:08:48.880 --> 01:08:50.880 At least cleaner. 01:08:50.880 --> 01:08:55.680 But back in the day, and this is even until fairly recently, 01:08:55.680 --> 01:08:57.440 your feet were filthy. 01:08:57.440 --> 01:09:01.200 This was more so the case in the context in which scripture 01:09:01.200 --> 01:09:06.400 took place, because almost everyone was wearing sandals or barefoot. 01:09:06.400 --> 01:09:09.920 If you wear sandals everywhere or you're barefoot and all the roads 01:09:09.920 --> 01:09:14.480 are dirt and everyone uses animals to transport everything, your feet are 01:09:14.480 --> 01:09:16.480 unbelievably filthy. 01:09:16.480 --> 01:09:19.040 And not just dirt. 01:09:19.040 --> 01:09:22.800 So you need to wash your feet when you enter a building 01:09:22.800 --> 01:09:24.000 that you want to keep clean. 01:09:24.000 --> 01:09:26.640 You need to wash your feet when you come home, or else 01:09:26.640 --> 01:09:30.800 you're going to track unmentionable things into your home. 01:09:30.800 --> 01:09:32.960 So just as a practical matter, footwashing 01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:38.080 was a big part of that culture because it was necessary. 01:09:38.080 --> 01:09:43.760 Footwashing in the modern Western world is just something you do in 01:09:43.760 --> 01:09:44.800 the shower. 01:09:44.960 --> 01:09:47.280 Or if you take baths in the bath. 01:09:47.280 --> 01:09:52.240 It's not something that is really particularly necessary just when we enter 01:09:52.240 --> 01:09:53.200 our homes. 01:09:53.200 --> 01:09:56.640 Now, if you are so inclined, perhaps you take off your shoes 01:09:56.640 --> 01:09:57.520 when you're in your home. 01:09:57.520 --> 01:09:59.280 I happen to do that because I don't want to track things 01:09:59.520 --> 01:10:00.640 things onto my carpet. 01:10:00.640 --> 01:10:03.040 It just helps with cleaning. 01:10:03.040 --> 01:10:07.920 But the state of your feet is significantly better than the state 01:10:07.920 --> 01:10:12.240 of the feet that were present in the New Testament scriptures. 01:10:12.240 --> 01:10:16.240 Because you aren't walking everywhere in sandals or barefoot. 01:10:16.240 --> 01:10:17.120 Most likely. 01:10:17.120 --> 01:10:22.320 And even if you are, our general environment today is significantly cleaner 01:10:22.320 --> 01:10:24.400 than their environment was back then. 01:10:24.400 --> 01:10:30.480 We don't have horses and depending where you are, donkeys everywhere. 01:10:30.480 --> 01:10:34.160 That's something that was a problem in that era. 01:10:34.160 --> 01:10:36.960 That was something that was an issue, a live issue in the 01:10:36.960 --> 01:10:40.720 Western world, really until the advent of the automobile, because then we 01:10:40.720 --> 01:10:43.280 didn't need horses to cart everything around. 01:10:43.280 --> 01:10:46.960 And of course paved roads also help, and sidewalks and concrete and 01:10:46.960 --> 01:10:48.560 all these things. 01:10:48.560 --> 01:10:52.400 So the practical matter is a big part of this. 01:10:52.400 --> 01:10:56.800 But as far aside from the practical matter, there's another practical matter 01:10:57.040 --> 01:11:01.600 of we don't have the setup to do this in the modern 01:11:01.600 --> 01:11:04.880 church. This is something where you really have to plan to have 01:11:04.880 --> 01:11:06.400 this as a ceremony. 01:11:06.400 --> 01:11:09.680 You're probably not just going to cart a rubber maid full of 01:11:09.680 --> 01:11:14.080 water up onto whatever elevated platform you have in your church and 01:11:14.080 --> 01:11:15.360 start washing feet. 01:11:15.360 --> 01:11:18.160 Now of course there are some churches that do that, and I'm 01:11:18.080 --> 01:11:22.720 not saying you can't do that, but you have to explain why. 01:11:22.720 --> 01:11:26.560 This is because you're you're taking on that role of a servant 01:11:26.560 --> 01:11:29.280 for your brothers and sisters in Christ. 01:11:29.280 --> 01:11:32.720 This is a matter of humility, it is a matter of 01:11:33.680 --> 01:11:37.920 a right view of oneself with regard to the body of Christ. 01:11:37.920 --> 01:11:40.720 Because regardless of what you are in the body of Christ, if 01:11:40.720 --> 01:11:45.200 you're a pinky toe or you're you know, the right hand, whatever 01:11:45.200 --> 01:11:48.240 you happen to be, you are a servant of the whole. 01:11:48.240 --> 01:11:52.160 And that's Christ's point when he speaks in these parabolic terms, when 01:11:52.160 --> 01:11:56.560 he's speaking in parables to the people, and when other writers of 01:11:56.560 --> 01:12:00.960 Scripture are teaching us about the body of Christ, all of the 01:12:00.960 --> 01:12:02.400 parts of the body are important. 01:12:02.400 --> 01:12:04.880 They must work together. 01:12:05.360 --> 01:12:10.080 if you are washing someone else's feet, It's hard to feel haughty 01:12:10.080 --> 01:12:14.320 about your position, even if you are in every way, shape, and 01:12:14.320 --> 01:12:16.560 form superior to that person. 01:12:16.560 --> 01:12:17.680 And you may be. 01:12:17.680 --> 01:12:21.040 You may be more intelligent, you may be more physically fit, you 01:12:21.040 --> 01:12:24.160 may have greater wealth, the list could go on and on. 01:12:24.160 --> 01:12:28.880 But in the body of Christ, every Christian is a servant of 01:12:28.880 --> 01:12:31.120 every other Christian. 01:12:31.120 --> 01:12:33.920 And this helps to reinforce that. 01:12:33.920 --> 01:12:37.120 And so this can be used sort of as an object lesson, 01:12:37.120 --> 01:12:40.960 instructing Christians in how they are to behave within the body of 01:12:40.960 --> 01:12:44.240 Christ, how they are to view themselves and others. 01:12:44.240 --> 01:12:47.680 And so could it be useful in the modern context? 01:12:47.680 --> 01:12:49.440 Of course. 01:12:49.440 --> 01:12:51.280 But it's not necessary. 01:12:51.280 --> 01:12:53.040 It's not something we have to do. 01:12:53.040 --> 01:12:55.360 It is something that is permissible. 01:12:55.360 --> 01:12:57.360 And so that's the right way to think about this. 01:12:57.360 --> 01:13:01.600 Think of it as not required. 01:13:01.600 --> 01:13:05.280 So it's a may, not a must. 01:13:05.600 --> 01:13:08.640 And just to reinforce, it was an immediate need. 01:13:08.640 --> 01:13:13.040 Yeah, when you're talking about walking in sandals the half a dozen 01:13:13.040 --> 01:13:18.080 miles through animal excrement and then you come into someone's home, the 01:13:18.080 --> 01:13:21.760 first thing you need to do is have your feet washed. 01:13:21.760 --> 01:13:24.480 And in order to do it well, you can't necessarily do it 01:13:24.480 --> 01:13:29.280 yourself. And so as Corey's saying, it's usually slaves or servants who 01:13:29.280 --> 01:13:31.040 were doing that sort of thing. 01:13:31.040 --> 01:13:34.240 And so the command within the early church, where it had to 01:13:34.240 --> 01:13:39.680 be done anyway, to say, you will wash your brother's feet, frankly, 01:13:39.680 --> 01:13:45.760 in addition to solving the the practical problem, I guess what Corey 01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:49.600 was saying at the end, if you have an issue with someone 01:13:49.600 --> 01:13:54.640 else in your congregation, if you've been harboring some grudge against some 01:13:54.640 --> 01:13:59.280 guy and you feel like you there's there's something there you you 01:13:59.280 --> 01:14:02.560 wouldn't even talk to the guy, and then you are forced to 01:14:02.560 --> 01:14:05.440 wash his feet, it's going to naturally bring all the rest of 01:14:05.440 --> 01:14:10.240 that to a head because the physical act of submission of being 01:14:10.240 --> 01:14:13.600 down on your knees in front of someone else doing something that's 01:14:13.600 --> 01:14:18.320 gross and degrading, your your heart's gonna stir up and you're not 01:14:18.320 --> 01:14:19.280 gonna do it. 01:14:19.280 --> 01:14:19.920 And so 01:14:20.880 --> 01:14:26.000 this was this was one of the wise things that that God 01:14:26.160 --> 01:14:30.560 instituted in that place to prevent those sort of things from percolating 01:14:30.880 --> 01:14:34.000 because you couldn't harbor a grudge against someone if you're gonna be 01:14:34.000 --> 01:14:35.280 washing his feet once a week. 01:14:35.280 --> 01:14:37.040 It's not it's not gonna last. 01:14:37.040 --> 01:14:40.640 That's and it's not that there's anything special about foot washing, it's 01:14:40.640 --> 01:14:45.680 just in that context, we all know that people aren't gonna be 01:14:45.680 --> 01:14:46.800 able to bite their tongues. 01:14:46.800 --> 01:14:48.720 They're gonna stand up and stomp out. 01:14:48.720 --> 01:14:51.600 Like that's that's in all of us. 01:14:51.600 --> 01:14:54.720 I would feel very uncomfortable to be in a place where this 01:14:54.720 --> 01:14:58.720 sort of thing were being brought back specifically because it is I 01:14:58.720 --> 01:15:01.760 I'm happy to be convinced otherwise theologically. 01:15:01.760 --> 01:15:03.920 I I I didn't do a ton of reading on this. 01:15:03.920 --> 01:15:07.200 We know from church history that for the most part this more 01:15:07.200 --> 01:15:08.080 or less went away. 01:15:08.080 --> 01:15:11.440 Like it's been preserved to some extent symbolically, but 01:15:12.400 --> 01:15:16.960 I think for us to bring this back doesn't make sense as 01:15:16.960 --> 01:15:18.480 head coverings do. 01:15:18.480 --> 01:15:21.280 Because that was something again that like we lost head coverings in 01:15:21.280 --> 01:15:24.160 the 60s and seventies. 01:15:24.160 --> 01:15:27.840 And it has an eternal purpose. 01:15:27.840 --> 01:15:30.960 This does not have an eternal purpose because there's as Corey said, 01:15:30.960 --> 01:15:33.360 there's no longer a purpose for washing feet. 01:15:33.360 --> 01:15:37.440 Unless I hike or you're riding a a horse for hours, my 01:15:37.440 --> 01:15:38.880 dogs aren't gonna be barking. 01:15:38.880 --> 01:15:41.280 My feet are not gonna be gross. 01:15:41.280 --> 01:15:47.040 So it's completely symbolic and loses all of the the inherent nature 01:15:47.040 --> 01:15:48.080 that it originally had. 01:15:48.400 --> 01:15:51.120 And so to Corey's point is it is a teaching moment, yeah, 01:15:51.120 --> 01:15:52.480 there's things you can teach. 01:15:52.480 --> 01:15:55.280 I think there are other things that could potentially be done in 01:15:55.280 --> 01:16:00.320 congregations that would teach the same things without reproducing this. 01:16:00.320 --> 01:16:05.120 Because it's not a law, it's an example of the church coexisting, 01:16:05.120 --> 01:16:07.760 as Corey laid out very well. 01:16:07.760 --> 01:16:10.720 Uh the next one we want to just do brush just briefly, 01:16:10.720 --> 01:16:12.320 someone asked about the 01:16:13.440 --> 01:16:17.200 uh conspiracy theory episode where we talked about uh the shape of 01:16:17.200 --> 01:16:19.760 the planet and the moon landing and that stuff. 01:16:19.760 --> 01:16:24.880 And he challenged us for not using scripture to justify that the 01:16:24.880 --> 01:16:26.480 earth is round. 01:16:26.480 --> 01:16:26.960 And And 01:16:27.920 --> 01:16:29.760 we did that very deliberately. 01:16:29.760 --> 01:16:31.920 You know, one of the things we talked about earlier was the 01:16:31.920 --> 01:16:36.080 the King James version, which uses the word firmament. 01:16:36.080 --> 01:16:38.560 No one knows what firmament means. 01:16:38.800 --> 01:16:40.880 I'm not I'm not trying to be cheeky. 01:16:40.880 --> 01:16:46.720 If someone says firmament in the context of flat Earth, there are 01:16:46.720 --> 01:16:50.400 men who will swear up and down that firmament can only possibly 01:16:50.400 --> 01:16:54.640 mean a frisbee shaped disc. 01:16:54.640 --> 01:16:58.880 And so that word necessarily implies the shape of the earth, which 01:16:58.880 --> 01:17:00.880 is just it's complete nonsense. 01:17:00.880 --> 01:17:04.080 It's one of the biggest problems I have with the King James 01:17:04.240 --> 01:17:08.160 is that guys will hear a word, they don't know what it 01:17:08.160 --> 01:17:12.320 means, they're going to impart all of this other baggage to assume, 01:17:12.320 --> 01:17:16.320 well it has to necessarily bean this, and therefore I'm going to 01:17:16.320 --> 01:17:22.160 conclude things about reality from a mistranslation of scripture in such a 01:17:22.160 --> 01:17:24.640 way that are at odds with reality. 01:17:24.640 --> 01:17:28.000 So we ignore the Bible because the Bible doesn't say anything that 01:17:28.000 --> 01:17:30.080 dictates what the shape of the earth is. 01:17:30.080 --> 01:17:32.240 I don't need the Bible to tell me the shape of the 01:17:32.240 --> 01:17:34.800 earth. That's not what the Bible is there for. 01:17:34.800 --> 01:17:37.920 And it's part of the reason we ignored it was very explicitly 01:17:37.920 --> 01:17:44.320 to deny the efficacy of Scripture for delineating the shape of the 01:17:44.320 --> 01:17:46.400 globe or anything else. 01:17:46.400 --> 01:17:51.120 Where scripture is silent, our reason is what God has given us 01:17:51.120 --> 01:17:53.600 scripturally to ascertain things. 01:17:53.600 --> 01:17:58.400 You know, if I tell you dogs tend to chase cats, it's 01:17:58.400 --> 01:18:01.680 retarded for you to respond with, well, where is that in Scripture? 01:18:01.680 --> 01:18:03.280 That's not what the Bible is for. 01:18:03.280 --> 01:18:05.520 If you think that's what the Bible is for, you have much 01:18:05.520 --> 01:18:09.360 bigger problems than not understanding dogs and cats or the shape of 01:18:09.360 --> 01:18:10.480 the earth. 01:18:10.720 --> 01:18:13.600 Scripture is not a list of facts. 01:18:13.600 --> 01:18:17.760 It is not a list of things that just exist for their 01:18:17.760 --> 01:18:18.320 own purpose. 01:18:18.320 --> 01:18:22.320 It was God revealing himself in his work in the universe. 01:18:22.320 --> 01:18:25.200 And so when God says that he separated the waters above from 01:18:25.280 --> 01:18:30.240 the waters below and formed the dry land, that's it. 01:18:30.240 --> 01:18:33.520 When he says waters, does that mean H two O or does 01:18:33.520 --> 01:18:35.760 that mean some other sort of liquid form. 01:18:35.760 --> 01:18:37.840 I don't know and I don't care. 01:18:37.840 --> 01:18:43.520 You know, I don't need the chemical reaction chain from two parts 01:18:43.520 --> 01:18:49.120 hydrogen, one part oxygen, down to everything that exists on the planet 01:18:49.120 --> 01:18:51.600 in order for me to be able to believe that what scripture 01:18:51.600 --> 01:18:52.400 says is true. 01:18:52.400 --> 01:18:54.880 Because that's not what it's there for. 01:18:54.880 --> 01:18:58.880 What I know is that God revealed it, God took credit for 01:18:58.880 --> 01:19:01.680 doing the work, and then God gave it to us. 01:19:01.680 --> 01:19:04.320 And so all I have to do is believe God and trust, 01:19:04.320 --> 01:19:05.360 yeah, you did it. 01:19:05.360 --> 01:19:06.960 And here I am. 01:19:06.960 --> 01:19:08.880 And I'm on a globe. 01:19:08.880 --> 01:19:12.960 I am on a sphere that's twirling through space along with every 01:19:12.960 --> 01:19:14.000 other sphere in space. 01:19:14.000 --> 01:19:16.720 And they're all spheres, and they're all twirling. 01:19:16.720 --> 01:19:18.640 That's how it all works. 01:19:18.640 --> 01:19:23.280 Everywhere, at every scale, from the electron shell to the galaxy, it's 01:19:23.280 --> 01:19:25.200 the same pattern over and over again. 01:19:25.200 --> 01:19:27.120 The Earth is not the exception. 01:19:27.120 --> 01:19:31.520 We are part of a whole universe that God created to testify 01:19:31.520 --> 01:19:32.960 to his glory. 01:19:32.960 --> 01:19:36.240 We don't need to use the Bible and we shouldn't have the 01:19:36.240 --> 01:19:39.360 instinct to try to use the Bible to disprove reality. 01:19:39.360 --> 01:19:42.640 You're going to end up being Gnostic if you do that. 01:19:42.640 --> 01:19:47.440 Reality is real at the risk of an absurd tautology, but like 01:19:48.000 --> 01:19:50.000 what more can you say? 01:19:50.000 --> 01:19:53.200 You have a physical body, everything that we have, everything that we 01:19:53.200 --> 01:19:56.320 observe is is either a trick and there are things that you 01:19:56.320 --> 01:19:59.600 know, we've we've talked in the past about visu visual uh 01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:04.160 gotchas where your your mind is tricking you, where your eye sees 01:20:04.160 --> 01:20:07.040 one thing and your brain is piecing stuff together. 01:20:07.040 --> 01:20:08.400 Those sorts of illusions 01:20:09.360 --> 01:20:10.640 are also part of reality. 01:20:10.640 --> 01:20:13.520 Like light does weird things, our brain does weird things. 01:20:13.520 --> 01:20:16.640 That's not an assault on the fact that something is real. 01:20:16.640 --> 01:20:19.680 It just means that things are sometimes weird and complicated. 01:20:19.760 --> 01:20:22.560 But that's also it's still part of created reality. 01:20:22.560 --> 01:20:24.640 So I yeah, yeah you're correct. 01:20:24.880 --> 01:20:30.720 we did explicitly ignore it for this very purpose, because firmament doesn't 01:20:30.640 --> 01:20:31.440 mean anything. 01:20:31.440 --> 01:20:32.720 It just it's referred to 01:20:33.680 --> 01:20:36.720 the same thing that is used and it's said in all the 01:20:36.720 --> 01:20:40.000 other translations in other words that mean the same thing. 01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:41.760 There's stuff, there's material. 01:20:41.760 --> 01:20:43.840 It's talking about the material world. 01:20:43.840 --> 01:20:48.640 And I don't need to have above and below separated either spherically 01:20:48.960 --> 01:20:53.840 or as a series of layered pancakes in order to have the 01:20:53.840 --> 01:20:55.280 correct view. 01:20:55.280 --> 01:20:57.360 Scripture is in accord with creation. 01:20:57.360 --> 01:21:01.760 God gave us both, and they both testify to his glory. 01:21:02.160 --> 01:21:07.440 We have another question here that is about some of the issues 01:21:07.440 --> 01:21:11.760 we've covered with regard to Christian nationalism and the Jews, And the 01:21:11.920 --> 01:21:14.000 request is for additional reading material. 01:21:14.000 --> 01:21:17.360 Now I could give a very long list at this point, but 01:21:17.440 --> 01:21:22.480 I think we'll keep it short relatively speaking, considering what I'm about 01:21:22.480 --> 01:21:25.840 to recommend is probably five or six thousand pages worth of reading. 01:21:26.800 --> 01:21:28.640 So relatively short. 01:21:28.640 --> 01:21:32.560 But I'll include in the show notes some links the books that 01:21:32.560 --> 01:21:36.720 I would initially recommend reading, some of the the best options, the 01:21:36.800 --> 01:21:38.400 most accessible options 01:21:39.600 --> 01:21:42.320 That are just really statements of 01:21:43.440 --> 01:21:48.160 I won't necessarily say fact with no caveats because I don't agree 01:21:48.160 --> 01:21:49.920 with Solzhenitsyn on everything. 01:21:49.920 --> 01:21:51.600 He's one of the authors here. 01:21:51.600 --> 01:21:57.120 But these are very solid works that have great material in them, 01:21:57.120 --> 01:22:00.080 even if the authors themselves are not perfect, which of course there 01:22:00.080 --> 01:22:04.640 are no perfect authors except for the author of scripture. 01:22:04.640 --> 01:22:07.360 So the books I would recommend would be Two Hundred Years Together 01:22:07.440 --> 01:22:09.280 by Sultzenitsin, 01:22:10.240 --> 01:22:14.560 The Gulag Archipelago, also by Soltz and Itsen, and The Jewish Revolutionary 01:22:14.560 --> 01:22:15.360 Spirit by E. 01:22:15.360 --> 01:22:16.320 Michael Jones. 01:22:16.400 --> 01:22:16.880 Now E. 01:22:16.880 --> 01:22:22.000 Michael Jones is a papist, he has terrible, terrible views when it 01:22:22.000 --> 01:22:26.000 comes to Luther and the Reformation, but they're exactly what you expect. 01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:29.680 So skip over those sections, read them and laugh, whatever it happens 01:22:29.680 --> 01:22:30.080 to be. 01:22:30.080 --> 01:22:33.360 Otherwise his analysis is fairly good. 01:22:33.360 --> 01:22:36.800 So those are probably good starting places, and if you want additional 01:22:36.800 --> 01:22:41.200 reading materials, feel free to send another comment or email, and I 01:22:41.200 --> 01:22:43.120 can provide additional links. 01:22:43.120 --> 01:22:48.720 But those are good places to start. 01:22:48.720 --> 01:22:50.640 We have another question then about 01:22:51.760 --> 01:22:58.880 helping those with mental disabilities to to understand scripture and the Christian 01:22:58.880 --> 01:23:03.520 religion. We touched on this a little bit earlier when we mentioned 01:23:03.520 --> 01:23:04.480 the small catechism. 01:23:04.480 --> 01:23:07.600 Now I don't mean to say that the small catechism is specifically 01:23:07.600 --> 01:23:13.840 for those with developmental disabilities, for those who are mentally retarded. 01:23:13.840 --> 01:23:17.520 But at the same time, it is designed to be comprehensible to 01:23:17.520 --> 01:23:22.640 little children, and while little children are not mentally mentally retarded because 01:23:22.640 --> 01:23:28.080 they will eventually grow up and mature and gain capacity, they are 01:23:28.080 --> 01:23:31.760 actually roughly the mental equivalent of those who are adults and are 01:23:31.760 --> 01:23:32.640 mentally retarded. 01:23:32.720 --> 01:23:37.520 That is why sometimes in the psychological literature and elsewhere, you will 01:23:37.520 --> 01:23:43.840 compare an adult with disabilities to a child of a certain age. 01:23:43.840 --> 01:23:47.920 This is you know a child that is uh an exemplar of 01:23:47.920 --> 01:23:50.880 what children are supposed to be at that age, and so an 01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:55.200 adult may have the mental capacity of a five year old. 01:23:55.200 --> 01:23:58.480 And so the small catechism is a good starting place because it 01:23:58.480 --> 01:24:03.120 is aimed at children, so those with these disabilities, with these limitations, 01:24:03.120 --> 01:24:07.920 will to some degree be able to better understand the material as 01:24:07.920 --> 01:24:09.920 presented in the small catechism. 01:24:09.920 --> 01:24:13.680 And as I mentioned earlier, if you know only the small catechism, 01:24:13.680 --> 01:24:18.800 because it is a statement of the Christian religion from Scripture that 01:24:18.800 --> 01:24:24.000 is sufficient for saving faith, know the small obviously yes, you still 01:24:24.000 --> 01:24:24.640 have to have faith. 01:24:24.640 --> 01:24:27.440 I'm not saying if you just go Know the material. 01:24:27.440 --> 01:24:28.720 We've gone over 01:24:29.600 --> 01:24:34.000 the different kinds of belief before notitia, ascensus, and fiducia. 01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:36.720 You must have fiducia, but that is a gift from God, and 01:24:36.720 --> 01:24:40.160 one of the ways God gives that is through the word. 01:24:40.160 --> 01:24:43.040 And the small catechism presents the word in a way that is 01:24:43.040 --> 01:24:44.560 readily comprehensible. 01:24:44.560 --> 01:24:49.040 In fact, even some Roman Catholic missionaries will hand out the small 01:24:49.040 --> 01:24:52.160 catechism because there is no better version. 01:24:52.160 --> 01:24:57.040 It is the best short statement of the Christian religion. 01:24:57.040 --> 01:24:59.280 And so start there. 01:24:59.280 --> 01:25:02.080 But I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that 01:25:03.040 --> 01:25:09.760 back when the LCMS was a more serious church body, and ironically 01:25:09.920 --> 01:25:13.760 the publication date is nineteen sixty nine, so not everything that came 01:25:13.760 --> 01:25:16.160 out of the sixties was truly awful. 01:25:16.160 --> 01:25:19.600 But there's a book that was put out, you've probably seen a 01:25:19.600 --> 01:25:22.800 meme of it, if you've been in Christian online spaces for a 01:25:22.800 --> 01:25:24.960 particularly long time. 01:25:24.960 --> 01:25:28.960 And the book is helping the retarded to know God. 01:25:28.960 --> 01:25:33.520 This is back when we had people who were very concerned about 01:25:33.760 --> 01:25:34.720 reaching 01:25:36.080 --> 01:25:40.080 the neighbor, about reaching their neighbors with the gospel, with the word 01:25:40.160 --> 01:25:40.800 of God. 01:25:40.800 --> 01:25:44.640 And one of the concerns is how do you reach those who 01:25:44.640 --> 01:25:48.800 cannot truly comprehend the material you are presenting? 01:25:48.800 --> 01:25:51.120 And so I'll link to that book as well. 01:25:51.120 --> 01:25:54.400 But the small catechism is really where you start with this, because 01:25:54.400 --> 01:25:57.200 anyone can understand the small catechism. 01:25:57.680 --> 01:26:01.760 And let's say you're working with someone who is profoundly retarded, someone 01:26:01.760 --> 01:26:05.440 who's in in that category of mental disability. 01:26:05.440 --> 01:26:09.840 There are many good Christians who fall into that category? 01:26:09.840 --> 01:26:14.720 Because again, faith is a gift from God, and He promises to 01:26:14.720 --> 01:26:17.200 give that with His Word. 01:26:17.200 --> 01:26:21.440 Teach them the Word, speak the Word to them, the rest is 01:26:21.440 --> 01:26:22.400 not up to you. 01:26:22.720 --> 01:26:24.880 It's not dependent on you. 01:26:24.880 --> 01:26:27.760 God can work with that person as easily as he can work 01:26:27.760 --> 01:26:31.120 with you, and with regard to God, you are no different from 01:26:31.120 --> 01:26:34.720 that person because the space between you and God is still infinite. 01:26:34.720 --> 01:26:39.120 You are profoundly retarded with regard to God. 01:26:39.120 --> 01:26:42.640 So if God can work faith in you with his word, he 01:26:42.640 --> 01:26:46.240 can do the same thing for someone with whom you cannot really 01:26:46.240 --> 01:26:48.320 interact, someone you cannot teach. 01:26:48.320 --> 01:26:50.240 So don't worry about it. 01:26:50.240 --> 01:26:53.200 Do what you are able to do with the materials God has 01:26:53.200 --> 01:26:56.800 given us to do those things, God will do the rest. 01:26:56.800 --> 01:26:58.480 It's the same as 01:26:59.680 --> 01:27:06.000 early on in Lutheranism, there was a big concern about well, how 01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:08.320 do we reach the deaf? 01:27:08.320 --> 01:27:11.520 And this has been an ongoing concern for Christians in various traditions 01:27:11.520 --> 01:27:14.160 and denominations since the beginning. 01:27:14.240 --> 01:27:16.160 Because what does Scripture say? 01:27:16.160 --> 01:27:18.640 Faith comes by hearing. 01:27:18.640 --> 01:27:22.320 Well the deaf can't hear, so how do we reach the deaf? 01:27:22.320 --> 01:27:25.360 And so this has been a very big concern in the church. 01:27:25.360 --> 01:27:27.840 Of course, if you can teach them to read, they can read 01:27:27.840 --> 01:27:30.800 the word, and that is hearing it internally as it were, and 01:27:30.800 --> 01:27:34.080 so you can still, yes, of course, receive faith by reading the 01:27:34.080 --> 01:27:38.560 word. But these are legitimate concerns for Christians. 01:27:38.560 --> 01:27:42.800 If you take God's word seriously, if you take his promises seriously, 01:27:42.800 --> 01:27:45.600 because he says faith comes by hearing, well how do we reach 01:27:45.600 --> 01:27:48.560 those who can't hear in that sense? 01:27:48.560 --> 01:27:51.360 Well we reach them by teaching them to read so they can 01:27:51.360 --> 01:27:54.560 hear the word internally when they read the word. 01:27:54.560 --> 01:27:56.880 How do we reach those who are profoundly retarded? 01:27:56.880 --> 01:28:00.960 Well we rely on God's promises to be present in His Word 01:28:00.960 --> 01:28:02.880 when it is taught rightly. 01:28:02.880 --> 01:28:07.200 And so we speak the Word to these people, and we depend 01:28:07.200 --> 01:28:10.880 upon God's promise, we trust in His promise, that the Spirit will 01:28:10.880 --> 01:28:16.000 be present, that faith will be bestowed on these children or disabled 01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:21.200 adults, because the work ultimately is God's not man's. 01:28:21.280 --> 01:28:24.080 And I would only add that such a task should be a 01:28:24.080 --> 01:28:27.360 source of joy and not one of doubt or concern. 01:28:27.360 --> 01:28:29.840 As Corey said, God's going to do the work. 01:28:29.840 --> 01:28:33.840 So you if you have someone who's profoundly retarded, you you tell 01:28:33.840 --> 01:28:36.800 them that Jesus loves them, that Jesus made them just as he 01:28:36.800 --> 01:28:37.680 made you. 01:28:37.680 --> 01:28:39.360 They understand good and bad. 01:28:39.360 --> 01:28:42.240 No matter how retarded they are, they understand when they do something 01:28:42.240 --> 01:28:45.280 bad, they they get in trouble, just like we all get in 01:28:45.280 --> 01:28:50.400 trouble. And you can teach whatever you are able to teach them 01:28:50.400 --> 01:28:54.160 about forgiveness in those contexts and say Jesus loves you and forgives 01:28:54.160 --> 01:28:55.040 you too. 01:28:55.040 --> 01:28:56.640 And that's the gospel. 01:28:57.040 --> 01:28:58.000 that's it. 01:28:58.240 --> 01:29:03.360 the Christian life is not intellectual assent to a big list of 01:29:03.360 --> 01:29:05.440 of rules and ideas. 01:29:05.440 --> 01:29:09.120 It is submission to to God's love. 01:29:09.120 --> 01:29:12.560 I at the at the risk of sound like like a Muslim. 01:29:12.560 --> 01:29:14.640 Like it's it it's simple. 01:29:14.640 --> 01:29:17.760 And so it's it's God's gifts to all of us. 01:29:17.760 --> 01:29:20.640 And it's a blessing to be able to share your faith with 01:29:20.640 --> 01:29:22.160 someone who's been baptized. 01:29:22.160 --> 01:29:24.320 And you know, again, that's part of the reason we did the 01:29:24.320 --> 01:29:25.760 episode on baptism. 01:29:26.480 --> 01:29:29.520 when you have the confidence that they have received the Holy Spirit 01:29:29.680 --> 01:29:33.440 in that, you don't have to doubt that God is on both 01:29:33.440 --> 01:29:35.200 sides of the transaction. 01:29:35.200 --> 01:29:37.280 God is in them receiving God's word 01:29:38.160 --> 01:29:44.000 from your lips, strengthening and preserving their faith unto life everlasting.