Welcome to the Love and Context podcast, engaging in unscripted conversations with your hosts,
Ben and Spencer.
Whether you're tuning in from your car, your office, your home, or anywhere in between,
we are so happy to have you join us today.
Our mission is simple, to explore the Bible through a powerful lens of love.
Together we'll uncover fresh insights and gain deeper understandings of how we can love
God and love the people in our everyday lives.
So buckle up and join us on the spiritual journey as we discover timeless wisdom that
is just as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Welcome to the Love and Context podcast.
Podcast.
With Ben, who I am not.
And Spencer, who I am not.
That is the intro for today.
Yeah, that was good.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Super excited you're here.
So we have started, last week we started talking about the book of numbers.
If you have not read that, go read that.
We're like eight and six, seven, five, three, zero, nine.
They were all there.
Now I'm not talking about, don't just go find a book that has every number listed numerically.
Can such a book exist?
Because numbers are technically infinite.
I know.
I know, right?
I wonder how much money you could make selling a book like that.
Not much.
I was just curious.
You want me to put a number on it?
Yeah, you were just making fun of my ADHD and I was like, ah.
It's like I'm just going to dive right into it.
Just going to dive right in there.
All right, so we're going to be in numbers five through seven today.
If you have not read those chapters, go read those chapters specifically.
And just to kind of recap a little bit, just really briefly, numbers has a lot of really
tough stories.
And so you got to understand that we are going to be talking about some tough things throughout
this series.
And if you remember, our main takeaway in the book of numbers is this book is about
making sure that people count.
Yes.
That they're remembered.
Yes.
That they're not marginalized.
We see that with the daughters at the end of the book of numbers, that they are not forgotten.
Their legacy is not misplaced.
There's going to be three major points in today's episode that we want to talk about
in five through seven.
There's this conversation about the test for the unfaithful wife.
And I want to include this because I feel like this is one that people wildly misinterpret.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
And then the last thing we're going to talk about is a Nazirite vow.
And we're going to talk about some things having to do with later on in the books of
the Bible, in the book of Judges, there's going to be a guy by the name of Samson who
takes a Nazirite vow.
Yeah.
And then the last thing we want to talk about is the Aaronic blessing, because I think that
we need to talk about how we need this more in our churches.
Yeah.
Without further ado, let's talk about unfaithful women.
Who is more qualified to talk about that to guy?
I don't think that there is anybody in the world more qualified than you or I to talk
about the plight of unfaithful women.
Nope.
No.
No person more qualified.
So let's just take a look.
I want to read this really quick here.
It is in Numbers five.
So we're going to start this in Numbers five verse 11.
And the Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to the people of Israel.
Suppose a man's wife has gone astray and she is unfaithful to her husband and has sex with
another man.
But neither her or neither her husband nor anyone else knows about it.
She has defiled herself even though there is no witness and she was not caught in the
act.
Okay.
Let's pause there real quick.
But you might ask, you're like, okay, what does it matter if it was caught or not?
Because there's specific laws if you're actually caught cheating.
We've already talked about those in Leviticus in order to maintain relationship with people
inside of the community, right?
In order to like look different than the rest of the world.
So this is specifically if you are sneaking around and nobody knows what happened.
You know the whole thing about like everybody's a saint while people are watching.
Yeah.
What you do behind closed doors matters.
Absolutely.
This law is actually stipulating that that what you do behind closed doors, whether or
not people see you do it or not matters.
Yeah.
Picking up in verse 14, if her husband becomes jealous and is suspicious of his wife and
needs to know whether or not she has to file herself, the husband must bring his wife to
the priest.
He must also bring an offering of two quarts of barley flour to be presented on her behalf.
Do not mix it with olive oil or fraconsense for it is a jealousy offering, an offering
to prove whether or not she is guilty.
Okay.
Let's pause there again.
You hear that and you're like, oh man, this is really, this is really tilted against women.
Here's the issue.
Once again, we want to look at context of the cultures.
If a man suspected his wife of infidelity, he could just divorce her or kill her in a
lot of cultures because women were not valued for what they're actually worth.
Yeah.
We were speaking about a patriarchal society where you're valued for what you can produce,
not because of the nature of whose image you're made in.
But what is happening here is God says you can't do that.
You can't just willy nilly and be the side, I don't want to be married anymore.
Or she definitely quote unquote cheated on me.
She's no longer my wife.
You can't just cut people off and make and take away every protection that they have
in society on your whims.
So you have to actually bring it to a priest, which is a significant step.
You have to involve a priest, which is a big deal.
It doesn't sound like a big deal because everybody's like, oh, there's pastors and priests all
over.
In this society, it's a big deal because you're bringing for an offering.
Not only that, you have to actually bring the offering for jealousy to actually bring
this accusation.
What's that going to do right away?
It's going to cut down on a lot of frivolous accusations.
So go back and listen to one of our episodes in Exodus and it talks about the importance
of being a priest.
It was a sought after, it was a royal position.
So to put this in context, it's not like, oh, bring them before your pastor.
It's like, bring them before your local governor and see what he says about this woman who's
may or may not have cheated on you.
That would be kind of local context, but that's what the Lord's commanding here.
Waking up in verse 16, the priest will then present her to stand trial before the Lord.
He must take some holy water in a clay jar and pour it into the dust he had taken from
the tabernacle floor.
When the priest has presented the woman before the Lord, he must unbind her hair and place
her hands on the offering of proof.
The jealousy offering will determine whether the husband's suspicion is justified.
The priest will stand before her holding the jar of bitter water that brings a curse to
those who are guilty.
The priest will then put the women under oath and say to her, if no other man has had sex
with you and you have not gone astray and defiled yourself while you are under your
husband's authority, may you be immune to the effects of this bitter water that brings
the curse.
But if you have gone astray by being unfaithful to your husband and have defiled yourself
by having sex with another man, at this point, the priest must put the woman under oath saying,
may the people know that the Lord's curse is upon you when he makes you infertile, causing
your womb to shrivel and your abdomen to swell.
Now may this water that brings a curse enter your body and cause your abdomen to swell
and your womb to shrivel.
And the woman will be required to say, let it be so.
And the priest will write these curses on a piece of leather and wash them off with
the bitter water.
He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings the curse.
And when the water enters the body, it will cause bitter suffering if she is guilty.
All right.
This is a strange story.
Okay.
But I want to try to add some context around this.
Okay.
Once again, women are valued for what they can produce in this culture.
Yes.
Not necessarily whose image they're made in.
Yes.
Okay.
If you are a woman and your sole value is placed on whether or not you can produce children,
this is going to be a terrifying curse for you.
Yeah.
If your husband suspects that you're stepping out, that it's going to actually bring about
infertility.
Yeah.
This is a terrifying thing for you.
Now, on a very real level, can we just talk about water and dirt's not going to do anything
to you?
No.
And we know that.
Mm-hmm.
Like we can look at that as something like you can put dirt in water and you drink it,
it's not going to do anything.
It might make your movements a little dirtier.
Mm-hmm.
That's about it.
But dirt will flush through your system.
Yeah.
So if you are a woman who knows that you didn't act unfaithfully, you're like, well, take
me to the priest.
Mm-hmm.
I'll drink the water.
Mm-hmm.
I didn't do it.
So like I'll take this.
And now guess what ends up happening is that the man is actually dishonored because he's
brought a baseless accusation.
Yeah.
And it's written down in the annals of history for the entire nation.
Mm-hmm.
Now, you hear that and you're like, okay, Ben, why does that matter?
Because it gives them recourse.
It actually gives them an avenue where they can't just be accused of doing wrong and have
no avenue of reproach.
Mm-hmm.
Because they're not just going to get divorced.
They're not just going to get kicked out.
They're not just going to be disinherited.
Any of those things that kind of go with it, they're like, hey, I didn't do anything.
Let's go to the priest.
And the man can't just divorce her without taking her to the priest.
So whether or not he wants to get rid of her or not, it actually has to have happened.
Yep.
This is a big deal.
God is once again protecting his people.
Yeah.
And protecting the honor and the integrity of women.
Because I think that we know very well from the last few decades that people say things
about other people and they completely damage their reputation and authority on baseless
accusations.
100%.
And usually, history proves that that's the case.
Is it weird?
Of course it is.
Of course it is because we're reading into a different culture and different understanding.
In fact, there is a thing that comes from, I believe, is Hadarami's Code, right?
Where they said that an unfaithful woman, she has to jump into the Tigris and if she
drowns then she's guilty, but if she survives it, she's innocent.
This is a very similar thing, except that from a very real level, when you look at this,
nothing's going to happen.
I also believe that in this situation, if you were unfaithful and you drink this, then
God's going to let the curse come upon you because you're willingly accepting this.
Because if you drink the water and you stepped out, you know exactly what's about to happen
to you.
You should never even let it get to the priest.
So do you understand this law?
It seems super counterintuitive.
It seems like anti-women.
It's actually pro-women.
It's pro-giving them some rights, giving them some recourse, especially if they're innocent.
And it is cutting down on these baseless accusations that are bound to happen when you're wandering
the desert for 40 years.
Yes.
Wandering the desert in a relatively small community.
Yeah.
That was a lot of reading in that one.
It is a lot of reading, but it's also that's the law.
Yeah.
And it just takes a little bit to get through.
Yeah.
There's so much going on in there.
So once again, if you have issues with some of these laws and numbers, like we were going
to say what we said in Leviticus, what we're talking about today may not satiate you.
And that's perfectly fine.
Go read the Bible.
Go check out some commentary.
There is conversation, and I just want to dispel this because I think this is a very
perverted use of scripture, that they suggest that this combination of dirt and water is
an early form of abortion.
No.
Correct.
It is not.
Yeah.
That is not what's going on here.
You need to be able to take a step back and look at this and look at it through the eyes
of God, through loving God and loving other people.
What is the purpose of this?
It's to cut down on frivolous accusations, which do happen all the time.
So I'm going to let people know a little bit about me that they're like, oh my gosh, Ben.
I have a tendency to like to watch daytime judge shows, specifically Judge Judy.
I did not know this.
Oh yeah.
I just found this out right here, folks.
Yeah.
I literally, I always try to like-
Are you 80 years old?
Yeah, I'm like 80 years old.
But I always watch these small claim court cases.
And of course it's played up for TV and all these things, but some of the lawsuits that
they're bringing in, I'm like, you won your TV back and you're going to court?
What's going on here?
Or my favorite one was the person suing for the price back of their concert tickets because
they didn't like their seat.
Oh, that's hilarious.
I know.
That's hilarious.
And so it's hard not to watch.
And it's I can see the train wreck coming.
I love it.
These are like the small claims things.
I can't help it.
I love it.
I was like, so I have a tendency to be like, oh, these kind of frivolous things don't happen.
Listen, I've been in church for 36 years.
These kind of frivolous discussions happen.
Right?
Yeah, they do.
And they even happen to be husband's wife.
Is somebody out there has a therapist and you work with married couples?
Like how often are you dealing with this thing of nothing actually happened between the couple,
but the other person believes the other person is doing something.
Yeah.
Right.
Because they're not communicating.
They're not actually having conversation and actually dwelling on life together.
Now that's in our modern, egalitarian, like working together society.
Right?
Now port that back 4,000 years to desert wandering value for what they can produce.
Don't have any inherent value according to the surrounding nations.
And God's like, no, no, you can't just throw your wives under the bus.
This is if you want to bring a frivolous lawsuit, you got to bring it to the priest.
Yeah.
And to be fair to God's like, and there are going to be consequences if they are guilty.
Yeah.
But you can't just throw around accusations.
That's not cool.
No, like that is, that is just not cool.
And so I hope, I hope you see that in this law.
It's a very strange one, but it's, it's so good, but it's so good.
So good.
All right.
So then continue on in chapter six, we're going to read the Nazarite vow here.
Okay.
It says speak to the Israelites and say to them, if a man or woman wants to make a special
vow, a vow of dedication to the Lord as a Nazarite, they must abstain from wine and
other fermented drink and must not drink vinegar made from wine or other fermented drinks.
They must not drink grape juice or eat grapes or raisins.
They're very specific about like, yeah.
As long as they remain under their Nazarite vow, they must not eat anything that comes
from the grapevine, not even the seeds or skins during the entire period of the Nazarite
vow.
No razor may be used on their head.
They must be holy until the period of their dedication to the Lord is over.
They must let their hair grow long throughout the period of their dedication to the Lord.
The Nazarite must not go near a dead body.
Even if it's the own father or mother or brother or sister dies, they must not make themselves
ceremony unclean on account of them because the symbol of their dedication to God is on
their head.
Throughout the period of their dedication, they are consecrated to the Lord.
If someone dies suddenly in Nazarite's presence, thus defiling the hair that symbolizes their
dedication, they must shave their head on the seventh day, the day of their cleansing.
Then on the eighth day, they must bring two doves, two pigeons.
So there's like this law about taking on a vow.
So this is talking about a Nazarite vow.
If you're like most people in the church, you're like, what is a Nazarite vow?
So a Nazarite vow is a non-permanent vow.
And I'm stressing that because we're going to talk about a story coming up.
Yeah.
There's a non-permanent vow that you take that is specifically about becoming close
to God.
Yes.
There are specific instructions that says if you want to separate yourself for a period
of special communion with God, these are some things you need to do as part of that vow.
And like visually, it's going to tell a story right away, but it's also going to be things
that remind you that you're part of the Nazarite vow, like that you are focusing on communing
with God.
Yeah.
In the Nazarite vow, one of the things it does is it takes trust away from man-made
entities and puts your trust more in God.
So let me give you an example of this.
So there is verse three.
It says they must give up wine and other alcoholic drinks.
Now we look at that originally and we're like, okay, like giving up alcohol, that's a good
health choice, right?
Drink less, good health choice, except for there was no sterilization, filterization,
or anything of what little water they had.
And I don't know if you know this, but if you let water sit and it's not actually constantly
moving, it actually will go stagnant and go bad.
So oftentimes what they would do is they would actually make wine because it would preserve
the water longer.
And so it wasn't, now there's arguments on, okay, was it like the good tasty wine we have
now, or was it just slightly fermented, little alcoholicy?
The answer is probably yes.
Probably yes, right?
They had both.
Yeah.
They had both.
But to say I'm not going to drink wine is partially to say I'm not going to drink cleansed
water or clean drinking water.
Yeah.
I mean, it's an expression of trust.
And the modern equivalent of the Nazirite vow in just society would be like, you know
like these monasteries where monks go and they take a vow of silence.
They stop speaking so that they can spend more time listening.
They reserve themselves from the world.
They're not actually involved in, like they're off in retreats and in their rooms and they're
in meditation and thinking.
And this is the same type of thing, the Nazirite vow, except you're still part of a desert
wandering community, so you got to stay with everybody.
And if somebody is desiring to do this, now this is optional.
This isn't required.
Yeah.
And it's not meant to be forever.
If you read the law, you can see it indicated in the law.
It's not meant to be forever.
It's meant to be for a period of time for somebody to grow close to God.
Now something that is very similar to this that we do as a modern practice as disciples
of Christ is fasting.
Yeah.
It's not the same as a Nazirite vow, but it's a similar concept.
Yeah.
You take something out of your life and you replace it with focus on God in focusing on
growing closer to God.
That's the purpose of fasting is not to deprive yourself, but to grow closer to something.
And whether that's fasting an item in your life, like whether it be like fasting from
your phone, fasting from food, fasting from coffee, fasting from whatever it is.
Something that is-
You don't fast from coffee.
Yeah.
You don't fast from coffee.
I have before.
We are true Northwest boys.
We like our coffee.
I actually have a funny coffee fasting story.
This is a little tangent.
Yeah.
Let's do it.
It's great.
Okay.
I know a guy who for Lent was like, all right, I'm going to give up coffee.
Therefore he took the, I don't have to give it up on Sundays very seriously.
So he would go like the whole week, massive headache, rough time.
And then he'd finally like Friday, Saturday, get to a point where headaches go away.
This is great.
And then Sunday he'd drink like four cups of coffee.
So he was fasting except on Sunday.
Yeah.
Through Lent because like technically Sundays don't count.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Okay.
Technically Sundays don't count on the fast through Lent.
And so Sunday would come, he'd have a four cups of coffee.
Terrible idea.
He'd go right back to where he started.
Yeah.
Right as his body started to detox, he gets to right back into it.
Uh-huh.
That's super funny.
So that's the idea behind this Nazarite vow.
So the first thing is talking about how not bringing frivolous lawsuits.
I'm just going to call it that because that's like a good equivalent for us.
Baseless accusations.
Yeah.
It's more serious.
If you want to spend time like getting closer to God, here are some things that you're going
to do.
Yeah.
Now it's very like God says, you don't have to do this.
This is just something if you want to get close, if you actually enjoy hanging out with
God, here are some things you can do to show me that you're serious.
Yeah.
So there is one story in the Bible, at least one, of somebody actually taking the Nazarite
vow.
And that shows up in the book of Judges by the guy by the name of Samson.
Except he's the worst at taking the Nazarite vow in the world.
I'm going to link a book, and I love this book because I think it's really good.
It's called Make Your Mark, Getting Right What Samson Got Wrong.
And it's by Brad Gray, and it's an examination of the story of Samson.
And I think it's great.
I just love that book.
So if you don't know the story of Samson, the story of Samson is-
He has everything you're not supposed to.
Everything you're not supposed to, except cut his hair.
You have the story of Samson and his parents.
He's raised up as a judge for the nation of Israel, but he's told that he has to take
the Nazarite vow as he's serving as judge.
And one of the first things he does is he finds this animal carcass with honey inside.
Okay?
I don't know if you guys caught that.
Honey inside of an animal carcass is probably fermenting too, because so is the animal carcass.
So he scoops the honey out of the animal carcass and he eats it.
Because of course you do, right?
And so not only is he touching dead bodies, but he's also touching base with fermented
drink.
And he's drinking a lot, which you're not supposed to be doing on a Nazarite vow.
And one of the things that comes up very frequently in this conversation with Delilah, she's like,
where does your strength come from?
And he tells her a bunch of different things.
He believes it comes from his Nazarite vow.
And I don't know if in his brain he's thinking, if I don't shave my hair, at least I'm keeping
part of the vow.
And so God keeps giving me strength.
I don't know.
I do think that one of the things we see in the story of Samson is God working in spite
of us, not because of us.
Samson is a good story to take a look at of how God can use you even when you seem to
want to do everything wrong.
Yeah I think there's one part that the biblical authors left out in that story, is the amount
of times God put his head in his hands.
The face palm.
Just shook his head at Samson.
Yeah and it's very clear throughout the story of Samson, the Nazarite vow is supposed to
do what?
Draw you to God.
Show devotion to God.
He doesn't even talk to God until the very end of the story.
It's crazy.
I, incidentally, we're going to link one more episode because Baymaw talks about the Samson
story.
And I think that Marty Solomon has a great teaching on not escalating retaliation between
society, about learning how to put down the jawbone.
And it references the Samson story.
Because we're talking about it, I'm going to link it in the show notes.
Yeah, the thing about the Samson story that just cracks me up is it's a popular children's
church story.
That's what cracks me up because it's like, here's how you do everything wrong in your
life.
Here's how you mess it up regularly.
Oh, but by the way, come to God at the end, you're good.
Now I think it's interesting because I've heard people teach on the book of Judges and
they're talking about Samson and they don't realize there's actually a section that talks
about the Nazarite vow.
And sometimes people say some things and I was like, you should probably actually go
back and read that.
It's kind of like in Deuteronomy where it talks about if you have a king eventually,
these are the things that they should do.
And they list all these different things, like not import horses from Egypt.
And then you read in Chronicles, I think it's Chronicles, it might be Kings.
But when Solomon takes over, he does this list of things.
And they're exactly what you're not supposed to do in Deuteronomy.
Now if you're familiar with the text, you understand exactly what the author just did.
Yeah.
And to be fair, me as a kid, when my parents were like, hey, don't do that, I was like,
I must do that.
I must figure out how to do that.
What do you mean about when you were a kid?
That's still today.
I bet you, I bet you, your dad is coming down to visit.
I bet you, in fact, his dad's going to be on an episode very soon.
I bet you if he told you, he's like, Spencer, you can't do this, you'd be like, watch me.
Yeah, you're not wrong.
I just, when I was a kid, I was more subtle about it.
And as an adult now, I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to do it, dad.
In this area of numbers, once again, these are things that are specifically designed
for community, about making sure that people count.
So you dealt with frivolous accusations.
And now, hey, I want to actually spend more time with God.
I want to be devoted to God and the things that are going on here.
And there's this Nazarite vow to focus on our relationship with God.
Now on the tail end of that, it says, God says to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this
is how you are to bless the Israelites.
Okay.
I want to pause there before we even get into blessing.
The implication of that sentence is that you should bless the Israelites.
Yes.
Okay.
The implication is that you should bless the Israelites.
Priests, you are to bless your nations.
Yes.
You are to bless your churches.
Yes.
You are to bless your people.
Yes.
And this idea, in fact, I think Brad actually talks about it in the Make Your Mark book.
He talks about blessing is like bending the knee.
If you're taller than somebody, you actually bend the knee to see them eye to eye.
In other words, to put them on even playing field with you.
Blessing is to enrich or lift up those around you.
And the whole idea of blessing is that the person around you is supposed to be fulfilled
or prosperous.
Their life is supposed to grow in what God has them to be.
And I think it's really important that we as pastors, we as teachers, we as Christians
understand that our role as priests, the chosen priesthood is to bless.
Bless.
And it says that you say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
So they will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them.
So good.
Can you read that in your translation?
Yeah.
It says, may the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.
I read one more translation just here.
One other translation here.
God spoke to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the people of
Israel.
Say to them, God bless you and keep you.
God smile on you and gift you.
God look you full in the face and make you prosper.
In doing so, they will place my name on the people of Israel.
I will confirm it by blessing them.
This is huge.
Okay.
I, in my blog, I spent a day talking about this because I think it's a really big deal.
One of the things that we struggle with as a church is speaking life into each other.
I think it's much easier for us to speak condemnation or degradation.
I actually, so I think speaking life into people is really easy.
I don't think we, I don't, culturally, I don't think we as a church are used to doing it.
Right.
And that's my implication.
That's what I mean.
I think, I think the tendency, the, the more like the offhand responses to speak destructive
things into people rather than constructive.
Yeah.
So it's from a mentality of if I don't have it, then you, if you have some, then I don't
have any.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's, it's so tough because it's, when you're talking about speaking life into people,
sometimes what it means is you might see someone and you might see all the flaws and you're
like, no, I need to find the one thing that's going on in their lives.
That's good.
And speak into that.
And it's, but it's easy to look at it and be like, oh, you're screwed up.
You've messed up.
You've sinned this way.
You've fallen short this way.
You don't, your life doesn't look like this.
Which I think it should look like this blah, blah, blah.
And then condemn them for all that stuff.
When reality is they might have all those things going on, but Hey, it's their fourth
week in a row at church.
I think a lot of times we have a tendency to not look for Jesus and bring that to the
forefront.
Yeah.
Or what we think Jesus should be.
Yeah.
And I, and I mean that for both believers and non-believers, like when we encounter
people on the street, like there's already a work of the divine in them.
Please understand that we have a responsibility to share the gospel and to love people and
bring them into the kingdom.
But we are by far not the first ones out there.
God has been greasing the wheels for decades.
Yeah.
And he has been, he's been moving in people's hearts.
And it's interesting, like very frequently when I've had these conversations with people
when they're really, really discovering God for the first time, I started talking to them
about things in their life and they're like, yeah, when I was 10, like this happened and
blah, blah, blah.
Like something that dramatically shifted as like something that's like seared in their
brain and they're like, you know, when I was 17, like this happened and, and made me like
start to think like this.
And I was like, you start seeing like, where has God been imprinting himself on their life
to get to this point?
And, and I could focus on all the things that are wrong with the person.
But what I'm actually doing is I want to go and find Jesus and pull that to the forefront.
Yes.
Amen.
Because he is the one that actually transforms people.
And with each other, I've had this, I had this word spoken over me.
And if you're not in Pentecostal, please just bear with us.
I had a word spoken over me many years ago.
And he said that that your role, my, one of my roles in life is to be a Holy Spirit excavator
that I find the golden people and I bring it out.
Yeah.
And, and one of the reasons that was so poignant to me is I've always cared deeply about people.
But one of the, one of the things that gets told to me had been told to me frequently
serving in the church is that I was a bulldozer that my, my personality was destructive.
Now my wife hates it when people talk about me like that.
She's you like bend over backwards to work with people.
And she's you were like the farthest from a bulldozer that you, she's you're just not
movable and they can't push you around and they don't like that.
And, and it took me a long time to receive that from her.
And so then this guy spoke this word of something that God's been telling me all along.
He's you are not destructive.
You're, you're creative.
You're actually pulling the good out of people.
And I believe as Christians and as believers in Christ and as conduits of the mercy and
grace of God into this world, we should be pouring that into each other.
In fact, Jesus says in the, in the New Testament, when he sends his disciples out to go and
preach.
Yeah.
You're going to encounter bad stuff.
It's going to happen.
That's what he tells them.
Get ready.
But when you go to a house, speak a blessing over it.
If they receive you and the blessing lands, then it's on them and you'll be received.
But if they don't take it, it's going to come right back and hit you.
Now that sounds like a pretty good deal.
Yeah.
Either I bless people or I get the blessing and I'm going to say some good blessings for
those houses.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And, and what Ben's referring to is a Matthew 10 where Jesus is like, bless the house.
And if they receive you, stay with them, bless the house.
If they don't, it's going to bounce right back at you and then just shake the dust off
your feet.
Yeah.
Just shake it off.
You'll be good.
And then he gets to this point in Matthew 10, verse 10 28, where he's, hey, don't fear
the one who can just kill you.
Instead, fear the one who can condemn both body and soul.
He's, he's, in other words, he's saying, Hey, when you're doing this, the worst thing that's
going to happen to you is you're going to die.
Yeah.
At which point you get to spend time with God.
Yeah.
Take that Nazareth vow full time.
He's at which point you get to spend time with God.
Instead of, instead of fearing that maybe we should have some more awe, reverence and
fear of the one who's gonna, who, who has the right to, or has the ability to condemn
us.
Yeah.
I think that it is, it is a profound responsibility to speak blessing into each other's life,
to, to, to step in as a conduit of God's mercy into each other's lives.
Yeah.
Now, however you equate this and whatever background you come from, like God is always
speaking through us into other believers and he is building them up so that they're equipped
to do what God has them to do.
Right.
And so I think it's interesting when people are like, Oh, I just felt from God that you
need to stop being a worthless sinner.
I was like, I feel like God's not going to have a problem communicating that to me.
I was like, you know what?
I have a hard, harder time receiving from God.
I want to bless you and I want to work through you.
And I see this piece in your life that I want to grow.
Yeah.
Cause I tend to look at myself a lot more negatively than God does.
Yeah.
God sees my potential and I see my brokenness.
Yeah.
And I think, I think that if we start engaging each other in potential rather than brokenness,
we might just see the whole attitude of a church change.
So pastors, teachers, Sunday school teachers, parents, like how many of you are blessing
your children?
And whatever you do, do not say bless your heart because we all know what that means.
Yeah.
And I'm not even saying that you need to say bless you.
I was like, because I think there's other ways you can talk about, Hey God, or you can
just invite the Holy spirit to move in your, in your family and, and in their circumstances.
I love this song that we do on a regular basis at our church.
It's got a possible.
Yeah.
And the whole chorus of it, and we actually prayed over each other and very frequently
say, I pray for your healing.
The circumstances would change.
I pray that the fear inside would flee in Jesus name.
And those are the kinds of things that we actually speak into each other's life.
It makes a difference.
And I was like, and also going back to our Leviticus episode and when chaos is there
and the fear is there, we're also going to walk it with you.
Yeah.
Let's be people blessing.
Yeah.
Bless the people around you.
Be blessed and be a blessing.
Yeah.
This is this and the numbers 11 are, are two of my favorite pieces that come out of numbers.
The Aaronic blessing is such a big deal because the, the person who's in charge of teaching
all the priest, how to be priest, that's going to teach the nation how to be priests.
You are supposed to bless.
You are supposed to bless and it is by this, they're going to know my name and I'm going
to bless them.
Yeah.
So if your church doesn't look to God as a person who's going to actually enact change
in their life, it may be because you've never actually taught them that God is actually
meant to bring blessing.
Yeah.
Now I think that we've talked about this plenty though, cause let's give the other end blessing
isn't for you.
It's through you to the world around you.
Yes.
We are not blessed to live in the land of the blessed ones.
We are blessed so that all nations would be blessed so that all God's kids could come
home.
So if you are living for God, you are in relationship with him, you are blessed and now you are
called to be a blessing.
Yeah.
Right.
And when you actually step into his life of being a blessing, you are going to take some
people off.
That's true.
There's going to be some people who will be like, there's no way that you can be that
happy.
There's no way that you can be in a spot where you are just giving beyond your means in one
sense, right?
There is no way that you can do that.
That's who we're called to be.
We are called to be a blessing.
And when we are truly living a life where we are blessing those around us, it is going
to not just transform you, it's going to transform the community around you.
Yeah.
So we're going to wrap it up here.
So this, this episode is a little strange because we wanted to deal with these three
specific topics because I think they're weird or not.
Like the first two are weird and we want to make sure like this is going to come up throughout
the Bible.
Yeah.
But we really wanted to land on this piece of blessing.
And so if you take one thing away from this episode, it's that God actually cares about
what happens with you on a daily basis.
He cares about the people who are placed on the margins.
He makes sure that they're valued.
And beyond that, he wants not only that for you, but he also wants you to be able to speak
that into other nations.
Amen.
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You can also email us at loveandcontext.gmail.com.
We just did a Q and a episode a couple of episodes ago, but we always need more questions.
Just keep softballing them in there for us.
Cause those were simple ones to answer.
Spencer, then that last one you got stuck on.
Oh, I did.
And we'll see what happens next time.
We might have other food that we're eating while we're talking again.
You never know.
We'll have other food that we're eating, whether we tell you about it, whether we tell you
about it or not.
All right.
Thanks for being with us.
Stay guys.
That's a wrap for today's episode.
We want to extend a heartfelt thank you for tuning in and spending your valuable time
with us.
We hope that you found today's conversation insightful and that you take something meaningful
from it.
If you have questions or comments, we would love to hear from you.
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for updates.
Go back and listen to one of our episodes and I thought Sneeze was coming on.
I don't remember that episode.
If somebody's a psychiatrist, no, what's the word I'm looking for?
Therapist.
And then also if you want to...
Do you think it's weird that in subtle we don't pronounce the B?
I think so, yeah.
You get your ADD moments, so do I.
Yeah.
...do you get those emotions going?
Hmm.