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 this 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.
We're back!
You thought we were done, but we're not.
Season 1 is ending off with another Q&A.
It's Q&A number 2.
Oh yeah.
People have been looking forward to this for tens of days.
Oh man, technically one of the things I...
The people you mean 2?
Yeah, 2 or 3 people.
Like, the people who sent us questions, maybe.
One of the things I always like to say is I like to say tens of days or tens of numbers,
and people are like, oh no, it's way more than that.
I was like, well technically any number you can divide by 10.
Because I'm that guy.
Yeah.
You're welcome.
Well, I mean, I worked with high schoolers and I had one who was...
He had to do metric math.
And he was like, this is so confusing.
I was like, what do you mean?
Well, it's just all different.
I was like, well it's all divisible by 10.
And then as soon as I said that, he was like, oh.
And then metric is actually super, super simple.
But I also have this desire to never do it.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Incidentally, we did not mention, but I'm Ben.
I'm Spencer.
And this is the Love and Context Podcast.
And so periodically every 20, 25 episodes in that area, usually twice a season once
in a middle and then once at the end, we're going to try to do a Q&A where people ask
us random questions and we answer them.
And you know, in the process probably upset some people.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah.
Once again, we're going to make content.
You're welcome to make all the comments you want.
And I think one of the things we say a lot that we need to say again is if you disagree
with us, that's okay.
We just need to be able to have unity despite our disagreements.
Right?
Yeah.
Unity does not mean conformity.
And I think we often get those two mixed up.
To be unified means we're moving in the same direction together.
But that does not mean we're going to agree on everything.
So a good example of this, Ben is wearing a Christmas sweater.
Ben loves Christmas.
Right?
Christmas is off.
The only thing I love about Christmas is celebrating the birth of Jesus.
Everything else, I'm like, yeah, I could leave it.
Ben and I have very different opinions on that.
Yeah, it's very different.
There's the right one.
Which is mine.
And the wrong one, which is Spencer's also.
He has both the right and wrong opinion.
So why don't we just jump into our first question here.
The first question that was submitted to us is how do we apply in our church culture today?
Deuteronomy 15, 7 through 11.
So Deuteronomy 15, starting in verse 7 says, if anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites
in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God has given you, do not be hard hearted
or tight fisted toward them.
Rather be open handed and freely lend them whatever they need.
Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought.
The seventh year, the year of canceling debts is near so that you do not show ill will toward
the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing.
They may then appeal to the Lord against you and you will be found guilty of sin.
Give generously to them and do so without holding a grudging heart.
Then because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything
you put your hands to.
There will always be poor people in the land.
Therefore I command you to be open handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor
and needy in your land.
Okay, so in this section it's specifically talking about how we're supposed to treat
poor people.
Yes.
And so if we're going to talk about how we treat people in our church today, I think
we actually talked about this section that was when Pastor Sarah was with us.
The goal of all these laws in this area is for us to be generous people.
Yeah.
And I think one of the first things we have to learn as a church is how to be a generous
person.
Yeah.
Right?
Like having a generous heart and generous attitude.
I'm going to speak in a general term.
So I want to make it very clear that there are plenty of people who are very generous
in the church today.
Yes.
In general, the American church is very selfish.
Yes.
It's about what am I getting fed?
What am I getting out of it?
Where do I go?
What is my role?
Right?
There's a lot of me that happens in everything that we do.
Is my money being used correctly by the church?
Mm-hmm.
Well, and let's go a little further on that generosity is not just money.
It doesn't involve just money.
It can involve time.
It can involve giftings that you have.
Right?
I mean, an example, like you don't work on your cars, right?
Never.
You had a feeling that an auto mechanic shop was like not being fully honest with you on
what you need on your break.
Correct.
So you asked me who worked on cars if I could check it out, and I did, and I swapped the
brakes out and saved me.
Say $800.
Yeah.
Right?
Because that was something I could do.
Yeah.
You can be generous with your time as well.
So like this whole generosity of don't forget the poor doesn't necessarily mean just give
them money, but also like how can you come alongside them and help them?
Correct.
Now, if you are a person who's been blessed with a lot of money, maybe money is the most
crucial ingredient that people need, and it's the best thing that you can offer.
Absolutely.
But if you're somebody who doesn't have any money, but you care deeply about the poor,
you can go and volunteer.
You can do what you can to meet their needs and not forget them.
The point is that just because somebody doesn't have means, they don't have title, they don't
have opportunity, doesn't mean they get forgotten.
In fact, you're specifically instructed not to forget them.
And tying this back into Torah too, then I think we can get some modern applications,
but tying this back into Torah, when Israel were slaves in Egypt, they were poor.
My mom is going to listen to this and she's going to be like, yeah, no duh, because that's
what my mom does.
And now she's going to call me later.
I hope she emails us just because I'd love to see that email.
Yeah.
She's going to listen to us and be like, yeah, of course you're poor if you're a slave.
But oftentimes we overlook that because we think of Israel as this nation with wealth
and things like that.
And then we're like, oh, well, when they were in Egypt, no, when they were in slaves in
Egypt, didn't have a nickel to their name, God saw them.
Well, to be fair, they also didn't use nickels.
Yeah.
God saw them.
I'm just going to brush past that.
God saw them.
Yeah.
He heard their anguish.
Yeah.
And he brought them out.
Yeah.
In fact, God took care of the people who were in slavery and toppled the richest nation in
the world.
Yeah.
At the point.
Yeah.
The other thing that I think is particularly interesting in this particular set of verses
in verse 11 is there will always be poor in your land.
Now, if you're really good with your text, you would notice that that's actually something
Jesus says in the New Testament.
Yes.
There's a story about this woman who comes to worship of Jesus, takes an alabaster jar
of perfume and she breaks it over his feet.
Yeah.
And many people in the room had issues with the waste of wealth.
Judas just happened to actually think it.
Right.
I like, we always throw Judas under the bus, but like they just pointed out that Judas
actually had these thoughts about because he was dipping into the money bag.
But many people had the thought about the wasteful nature because that could have been
sold to feed people and it could have been done, you know, for X, Y or Z. It was an extravagant
gift.
And Jesus says, you will always have the poor among you, but I will not always be here.
What she did is a great sacrifice.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now I have heard people use that.
Did they say the service of Jesus is as paramount and that we shouldn't be consumed with extra
curricular activities of taking care of the poor?
Like that's important, but it's more important that we preach the gospel.
And to an extent, I will agree with them.
Except that quoting from Torah says there will always be poor people in your land.
Therefore I command you to be open-handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor
and needy in your land.
Therefore the implication is that there will always be poor in your land.
So if you're like, oh, there's always going to be poor in your land, so you don't need
to do anything about it.
No, it's actually the opposite.
You need to do something about it.
You will always be generous.
And more so, more so if you physically cannot do something about that, you need to find
people who can and assign them the task.
Correct.
And in Acts, there was actually this issue of food distribution between the Hellenistic
and non-Hellenistic Jews.
Yeah.
And they brought it to the apostles and the apostles, it's a very interesting story.
They're like, well, we need to not be distracted by this.
So what did they do?
They appointed people to take care of the issue.
To your point.
Okay.
Because I want to respect the person's opinion or conversation about preaching the gospel
first.
First of all, I'm going to push back on it for a number of reasons.
You express your love for God by the way you love other people.
First and foremost.
So how you love other people is actually going to be how you put the gospel on display.
How you love other people is going to tell me whether or not you follow Jesus or not.
So the gospel of Jesus Christ is, repent for the kingdom of heaven is here.
His death, burial and resurrection give you access to that kingdom.
Right?
Okay.
So with that being said, now in pursuit of God and honoring God, you should love your
neighbor and that is going to be your first line of testimony in the way that you act
towards them.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's the first way that I had pushed back.
Is that when you're talking about the sharing of the gospel, the proclaiming of the gospel,
which by the way is not the role of the pastor.
It's the role of the church.
The role of the pastor is to equip the church for a service.
And if you're actually talking about proclaiming the gospel to people who don't know Jesus,
you actually know whose role that is?
The evangelist.
Paul talks about them in the book of Ephesians.
He gave you first apostles and then prophets and then evangelist teachers, pastors, right?
They all have different roles that they're supposed to be doing.
Now this is actually going to come up later in our conversation about what is a pastor.
Right?
Now in our modern context, a pastor is a person who does all of those things.
And that's not actually what a pastor's role is supposed to be.
A pastor's role is supposed to be to care for the people around them, like the idea
of the deacon.
So in the book of Acts, when the apostles were bringing heaven to earth, they're coming
and establishing a new culture.
They're bringing the things of heaven to earth and instructing people on how they're supposed
to be living.
They said, we can't stop being apostles.
So we need to get some people who are going to take care of this and they're going to
be the pastors.
They're going to care for the flock.
We often look at this like, wow, this is really profound.
I was like, actually, in one sense, yes.
In another sense, you have a growing enterprise, the church, and you need more people involved
to keep that growth going.
Yeah.
So the actual proclaiming of the gospel to people who are outside of the kingdom is actually
not done by the pastors.
It's done by the evangelists.
And the evangelists are actually equipping the people to go and do this.
Yeah.
And so to get back to the question, which how do we apply this in our church culture?
Yeah.
How do we apply this in our church culture?
Start with love.
Start with loving the people around you.
All right.
There's always poor in our community.
Right.
So start in those places where you have, where people are outcasts, where they're poor, where
they're in need, and figure out how you can just come alongside them.
Can I actually even challenge you even a step before that, before you even go out into your
community, there are probably marginalized inside the walls of your church.
Oh yeah.
Mm-hmm.
And somebody needs to reach out to them.
Yeah.
And remember them.
Yeah.
The whole idea of this commission, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and to
the very ends of the earth.
You got to make sure your Jerusalem is taken care of before you step out.
Yeah.
So if your home base is church, there's marginalized in your church.
Make sure they're being addressed.
Yeah.
What about in your house?
Are there marginalized in your house?
Yeah.
At your work, in your community, in your neighborhood, in your city?
Yeah.
I always think it's interesting, like when we talk about, there's political questions
about, oh, what should the nation do?
I got news for you.
You and I, not deciding what the nation is doing.
No.
But you know what we can control?
What our community does.
Yeah.
That's definitely a good thing.
We got to be learned to love people well.
Yeah.
In the position of love, we also need to learn to be generous people.
Yeah.
Now, generous does not mean being foolhardy with your money.
Please, please don't misunderstand that.
It means that your money has no control over you.
Yeah.
Do your research on organizations you support.
Do your research, get to know the people, be good stewards.
The Bible calls that to it, calls us to do that.
However, once you give them the money, guess what?
It's not yours.
And it wasn't yours before.
Yeah.
It's, but it's also not your responsibility to dictate what they do with it.
And if you, and if they start doing stuff, they're like, I don't like, you can always
pull it back.
Yeah.
That's so good.
There's a, there's a bunch of ways we could have applied that, but just take a few of
those.
I think that you guys can probably go do some work and, uh, service to God is service of
other people.
How you love other people is how you serve God.
That whole thing with, there will always be the poor among you.
Yes, you need to give extravagant gifts to God, but the most extravagant gift you can
give to any father is to love his kids.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it brings us to the next question.
Question two.
All right.
The phrase be careful not to forget the Lord is often found in Torah.
How might we forget the Lord today?
I honestly think that's, that's really applies to our last question as well.
When you forget where you come from, when you forget what God has brought you out of.
Yeah.
When you walk with superiority.
Yeah.
I was having a conversation about meekness the other day and meekness does not mean it's
not a, it's not a position of lack of strength.
No, meekness is actually a position of strength that chooses to be, to lower themselves below
the weaker party.
Meekness was often equated with horses and especially in Egypt.
Yeah.
So the horses for their chariots.
Yeah.
That's, they were often, they would equate, we want like strong and neat horses.
They're powerful horses that are under control.
Yeah.
Samson is a good example of not a meek person.
His power was not under control.
Yeah.
Jesus was the most powerful person that ever walked the earth.
Yeah.
He was meek.
He washed feet.
So learning to be meek and humble, which does not mean to be less powerful.
You should absolutely walk into the power that God has given you to accomplish his will.
Yeah.
But you need to walk with humbleness and understand that your power is meant to serve and not
to rule.
Yeah.
And I think as soon as we start to forget the story, our walk with the Lord, the story
that he has put on our lives, where he's brought us from, that's when we start to forget the
Lord.
So this is coming on the end of Torah.
So how many times through Torah has Moses reminded them or God reminded them that they
need to celebrate festivals?
Yeah.
To remember.
In fact, Deuteronomy, remember, remember, remember, remember.
Who you are.
Let's go from Lion King.
You have to remember where you come from.
The festivals are meant to help you remember.
So I do think that there is an obligation in our Christian existence to set up guide
stones for us to follow that actually remind us of where we come from.
Yeah.
We don't celebrate Shavuot.
A lot of the churches that I go to now celebrate Pentecost, but like they don't celebrate it
in a way of remembering.
Right.
So we celebrate Christmas and a lot of times it's a huge holiday, but are we actually spending
the time to remember the story?
Yeah.
Easter, do we remember the story?
You know, like we need more festivals that we celebrate like on a regular occasion that
we celebrate and remember what God has done for us.
Not just learning to be meek, learning to be humble, remembering where you come from,
but actually setting up posts in our lives so that we don't forget.
Because we are frightfully forgetful people.
We are.
Frightfully forgetful.
You are.
All right, here we go.
So, like, can a person be good without being spiritual?
That question was really interesting to me because I had so many follow-ups for it.
You know, like sometimes people will send you a question.
I'm like, I have so many follow-ups on what you mean.
I'm going to define this a little bit just to try to explain how we're going to answer
it.
Yeah.
We're going to be defining good as following after God.
So in the past when I've been asked questions like this, it's been more so around the question
of can a good person get into heaven?
Okay.
I saw this reel that I thought was really good and I'm just going to kind of steal from
it.
I forget who the guy was, but if we remember, we'll put credit later.
Yeah, if I remember, I'll put credit.
I just can't remember right now.
But what he was saying is that you want to go to demand to live in a rich person's house
just because you've been good and you don't know them.
You're not going to go.
I'm not going to go to Elon Musk's house at the end of my life and knock on his door and
be like, Hey, I'm going to live in your house now because I've been a good person.
Chances are I'm not going to get into that house.
If we're talking in that context, yes, you can be good.
You can do good things.
But if you're talking about knowing Jesus, being good and not knowing Jesus, then the
end result is still going to be a life without him.
A lot of times in faith, we draw a lot of absolutes that aren't necessarily written
in the Bible.
So I want to just come up with, explain this idea.
In the fall, what we've basically said is that God, we wanted to find good and evil
on our own terms.
We don't want to define it inside of yours.
And God says, well, this is my world and this is the way that it's meant to operate.
So if you do want to do that, you're going to have to go somewhere that I'm not.
Now we would typically call that place hell.
And so people say, well, God sending us to hell.
He's saying, no, I'm telling you that if you don't want to be where I am, you don't want
to be part of the family, this is where you have to go.
You can't be in this world and part of God's world without being part of his family.
They do not coexist.
It's like, well, I like darkness, but I want to be in the middle of where the flashlight
beam is.
It doesn't work.
Like darkness can't exist where light is.
You can want it all you want, but unless you're willing to actually step into the light.
So it's not a thing of like God is, is God doesn't send people anywhere.
In fact, he offers to adopt everyone.
So back to your analogy of Elon Musk, right?
Elon Musk is if he adopts me, I absolutely am entitled to walk into his house.
Not because of anything I've done, but because of something he has done.
Elon Musk, I do not want to be adopted by you though.
Just FYI, like you seem like a nice enough fellow, maybe a little eccentric, but I do
not want to be adopted by you.
You're also in your thirties.
I'm also in my thirties.
So it'd be kind of weird.
Like the invitation is, do you want to be part of my family?
Yeah.
And we are the ones who say no or yes.
So I'm actually going to come back to the question that says, can you be good without
being spiritual?
No, because actually the goodness comes from the spirit of God coming upon you.
We're not good in and of ourselves.
Now I think if you go back to Genesis four, you know, sin is waiting at your door, waiting
to devour you, but you must conquer it.
You have the ability to do the right things, but you're not necessarily, your nature is
not going to be driven towards righteousness.
That doesn't mean you can't do the right thing occasionally.
Yeah.
And I think you have to define the difference between doing good and being good.
Sure.
Because you can do good in one context and be a complete jerk in another.
Sure.
Yeah.
And the question here for me is it also feels like what's the bare minimum that I have to
do to be part of God's family?
Mm-hmm.
Which if I want to answer to that is say yes to Jesus.
Yeah.
The problem is the bare minimum of saying yes to Jesus is he gets to be Lord.
That's the bare minimum.
Now people struggle with that.
We talked about how like all the land doesn't get conquered at once.
That is for your benefit that it happens slowly over time.
And when you say yes to Jesus, like there is an invitation, there is no commandment
for you in your outside of Jesus, which by the way, Christian church, we need to stop
trying to legislate righteousness.
But if you want to say yes to Jesus, you want to get rid of your pain, rid of your anger,
rid of your bitterness, rid of your sin.
That's great.
And there is no cost for that.
Yeah.
But there is a giving up of command.
Yeah.
And now you belong to Jesus and he says, you're going to love each other like I've loved you.
Yeah.
You do not have Jesus in your life, but you're like, I'm, I still serve at the homeless shelter
or I work in a field or work in a field that works with underprivileged families or whatever.
Right.
These are, those are good things, right?
Those are good things.
But if you're doing them apart from Jesus, what are you doing them for?
Chances are deep down there is still a part of you is doing it for that for your self
recognition or you're actually being drawn to these things because you're being drawn
to Jesus.
Yeah.
And maybe you've just seen a poor reflection or a poor picture put together by the American
church and it's time for you to learn who the authentic Jesus is.
Because my suspicion is if you enjoy helping people in homeless shelters and you enjoy
helping people on the street and you like taking care of the, of the outcasts and the
widow that you're going to love Jesus.
And the reality of that is that you're made in his image and part of his image is still
flowing out from you.
It's part of your, your basic identity is connecting to him and is drawing you to him.
So, so you can say, well, I'm doing this because of the goodness of my heart.
I'm like, actually, I think you're probably doing it because of the image of who you're
made in.
And maybe it's time to just come back to the father and be like, Hey, maybe you were right.
And it's time for me to come home.
Amen.
And guess what he's going to do?
He's going to run out.
He's going to throw the cloak on, give you a ring, butcher the fat and calf, butcher the
fatted calf, and then have an awkward conversation with your brother.
I knew that was coming.
Oh man.
I knew that was coming.
All right.
So I think this is a good one because this is almost directly connected.
So what about the contradictions of the Bible?
Okay.
This is a very broad question that doesn't get into anything specific.
Okay.
So I'm going to take a couple of different ones.
I'm going to just talk about the gospels first.
So people often talk about the gospels not agreeing completely on everything that's being
said.
It's said slightly differently.
Okay.
So one of the things I will tell you is in eyewitness accounts, if everybody says the
exact same thing exactly, please look at it as a statement.
That's definitely not true.
Because you shouldn't remember things exactly the same because each person is going to focus
on different aspects of what happened.
Yeah.
The second thing is this.
We've talked about this a couple of times is that there are different literature styles
throughout the Bible.
In the gospel presentation, each author has a different agenda in what they are trying
to help you understand.
Yeah.
Matthew is clearly written with the outsider in mind.
Yeah.
To a Jewish audience with the outsider in mind and helping them understand that those
that are outsider welcome in.
Yeah.
The gospel of John is clearly written to people who are struggling with the identity of what
did Jesus say and do.
Yeah.
That, in fact, John doesn't even like shy about it.
He actually writes it in his book.
He's like, I wrote this so you had a confidence in who Jesus is and what he did.
Yeah.
This is why I wrote this, this account.
This is why we wrote it.
Yeah.
I think where some people get into trouble is we use these things and I don't dislike
them.
So please don't mishear me.
But we have these harmony of the gospel where we try to harmonize all the stories.
Yeah.
The problem is the authors didn't want them to harmonize.
They're not supposed to harmonize.
They're supposed to represent specific stories and instructions for you to live.
So there's a really good book on this.
It's written by Mark Strauss.
It's called Four Portraits, One Jesus.
That's great.
We'll link that in the show notes.
Yeah.
Really good book on it.
And I think just a little bit on him, he's actually on or was, he might still be on,
but he was on the translation committee for the NIV.
So if you want to talk about somebody who knows, who's likely qualified to talk about
language, likely qualified to talk about language and literary writing style, he's one.
And so that's a really good, really good book to, if you're wanting to learn more on that.
And I always think it's good to stress that just because somebody is a scholar doesn't
mean you're necessarily agree with their conclusions.
I don't get their work.
Yeah.
What does their work actually teach you?
So that's, that's a one contradiction that I hear very frequently.
A lot of contradictions that I have people like they bring up also have to do with literary
styles and not realizing the Bible is not one literary style.
Some of it has to do with translations because every time that you translate from Greek or
Hebrew into English, it's an act of interpretation.
So the only way to actually get to the basis of what's going on is to actually go back
into the Hebrew or Greek.
In fact, we're going to, we're going to talk about one of these later.
And I'm going to mention a study from Tim Mackey back in Genesis three.
So contradictions in the Bible.
I believe that the Bible has always said what it's meant to say.
We can textually pull things, pull things and don't use them correctly.
Yeah.
And then it becomes ingrained in the public psyche of church.
Yeah.
I think, I think the other thing too is you also have to look at the regions of which
these books were written to.
So the one of the other contradictions I hear a lot is the contradictions between the writings
of the epistles.
So Paul's writings versus Peter's writings versus John's writings versus writing to different
audiences in different areas.
And so you have to know the people that are writing and the people that are writing too.
So like an example of this, we've talked about this some, but James was written to the 12
tribes of Israel scattered amongst the nations, right?
Galatians was prominently written to a church that had Jews infiltrating it and being like,
hey, this is actually what this is about, trying to change the narrative.
And Paul was like, no, you're missing the whole point.
So you have two different books because if you look at those different books, Paul and
Galatians is very much, it's by faith.
It's by faith.
It's not by your actions.
And then James is like, here's all the things you have to do.
Well, he's writing to two, those are written to two different groups.
One is a group that grew up knowing Torah, knowing the word, knowing all the laws.
The other is a group that's like, I know Jesus sounds like a cool dude and I want to follow
him.
You had that contradiction that comes up frequently between specifically that one where people
talk about, well, James says that you're justified by what you do.
I was like, no, he actually doesn't.
He says you're actually justified by what you believe.
It's what you do that demonstrates what you believe.
Yeah.
What you do is what shows that you're actually living out.
And maybe we did it with our church, but maybe we should do a walk through Galatians and
really have a deep, just a three episode where we did it about Galatians.
But in Galatians, what ends up happening is that they are taking these people who accept
Christ on faith are filled with the spirit.
And then the Judaizers are coming and saying, well, you're not going to participate in the
kingdom of God or the kingdom to come unless you become circumcised and observe Torah.
And Paul's like, listen, if that's the case, then what Jesus did for you is worthless because
you've already received him and the spirit.
So then if you have to have something else, that means it wasn't worth it.
Yeah.
It's a very big deal.
Yeah.
And I think today it's actually what happens a lot of times in churches today.
I'm going to tell you this.
We have people who come and they say, well, what you heard is not quite right.
You need this, this correct doctrine to correct your poor behavior or else you can't really
be saved.
That happens in a lot of conservative theological churches where they say, well, you grew up
in a, in a Lucy goosey church.
Now some churches have loose theology.
I will agree with you and correcting that is not a bad thing, but you're like, I got
saved out of X movement.
No, you were already saved by Christ and you just were able to fill in some of the theological
gaps that you had.
We need to be really careful the way we talk about other Christians and other denominations
because if they trust in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, they are now brothers and
sisters and we cannot address them like they are outside of the faith.
Yep.
Otherwise we end up in a field arguing and that didn't end well for Cain or Abel.
No, good now.
Sure worse for Abel, but a lot worse.
It's not for us for Abel.
All right.
Speaking of, speaking of contextual things, I'm going to mention this really quick.
It's actually here.
What does the Bible say about women pastors?
Okay.
Contextual things, right?
So contradictions in the Bible.
The last Q and a you're getting, you're in prep.
I see you.
We talked about the passage for first Timothy, right?
Where Paul says, I do not permit a woman to have authority over a man.
Now I want to, want to go ahead and just specify right here.
Like we talked about, you should go back and listen to the argument because we made a long,
much longer argument.
But what Paul is addressing is in the worship in Ephesus, women take a prominent role to
the men because they are women.
Women are the ones who are supposed to lead the worship in Ephesus, not men.
And so men are supposed to take a subservient role.
Now what Paul is addressing here is now there are men who've come to faith in Ephesus and
God has appointed to be leaders.
And he's saying, just because you are women, you don't get to usurp the authority of men.
And it's a word that's not used anywhere else in the scripture.
And it's meant to literally take advantage of or usurp or, or take over overthrow mutiny
as well.
I would probably use it as right.
Yeah.
And the reason we know what it means is because there's other literature written around the
same time that uses that word.
So Paul uses a very specific word to say, I don't will permit a woman to mutiny authority
from a man.
Yeah.
So your gender does not entitle you to lead just because of the parts that you have.
Now the flip side nowadays, what we've done is now we've said, okay, women, you are not
allowed to lead simply because of your gender.
You're not allowed to leave.
What have we actually done?
We've taken the thing that Paul was using to address a deficiency in Ephesus and we
flipped it.
And instead of it being applied against women, now it's being applied against men.
Yeah.
I mean, because I am a man, I have more authority to speak than a woman because of my gender,
not because of the gift of God.
So and you need to bat like every, every time we have this conversation, I've had this conversation
where they're like, well, it says this in verse Timothy two.
I'm like, okay, you also need to back up a few verses because a few verses before that,
Paul's like men raise your hands.
Yep.
Like step it up.
Yeah.
Be involved.
Quit standing on the sidelines.
That's the only part of that chapter that people actually are up in arms about.
Huh?
I said up in arms intentionally because now we're not going to get super deep in this
because pastor Sarah is going to come back.
We're going to have a three episode where we're talking about women in the Bible and
church.
So I don't want to get super into this, but once again, context actually matters.
Do you understand how, if you don't actually know the history or context that a piece of
literature is speaking into, you may speak and like just say, I'm going to apply it to
modern law or modern context.
And it's wildly misinterpreted.
Yeah.
This is one of the things we've talked about too, where if you're talking about women should
or should not be pastors.
Yeah.
Okay.
I was like, then take the whole of scripture on the side that you stand and apply all of
that.
I have some friends who are more on the apostolic side of things and they take the whole of
it and they apply all of it and they say, hey, women can't be pastors, but they also
need to have head coverings.
They also need to make sure they're not wearing clothes that draw attention to certain parts
of their body, all this stuff.
And they apply that and then they'll cut the ends of their beards and then they apply the
whole of that.
Right.
And then the men's take the things of don't wear hats, all that stuff.
They apply the whole of that.
Okay.
It's like, okay, I can actually respect that.
Right.
What I actually have a struggle with is when churches are like, hey, women can't be pastors,
but then you go look at their missionary board and it's all women and they're like, oh, it's
okay.
Cause they're a teacher.
I'm like, so you're supporting them to teach in that country.
Is that what you're supporting them to do or are you supporting them to share the gospel?
Well, and we're going to get way too deep on this because I'm already feeling it.
This is a hot button issue for us because listen, I actually don't, if you actually
believe that women shouldn't serve in ministry, like that's okay.
Like I'm not going, I like it.
You're allowed to believe that what you are not allowed to do is then to use that for
a basis to disfellowship with people who disagree with you.
Yes.
And so what our conversation on this is helping you understand that there is actually a nuanced
conversation about this.
It is not cut and dry, black and white.
And if you have been holding that strategy, then you need to drop it and love your brothers
because you actually need to learn how to love people.
Well, yeah, it is, it is not okay to just have those mentalities and use it to beat,
beat up other people.
Ben knew as soon as that question hit the sheet of paper that is that's, well, it's,
it's, it's not surprising.
It's one that came up.
I mean, cause we, we had Sarah on it.
We, we really emphasize like her pastoral role.
That's not surprising to me that we got that.
So we'll be doing another series on that.
You'll probably hear Spencer.
And it is, it is like I said, it is perfectly acceptable to disagree.
It is, and I'm okay with people.
Like they're like, well, I just don't believe that women should be pastors.
Okay.
And I'm like, so, so now what are we not going to be friends?
Are you not going to fellowship with a woman who says that she's a pastor?
These are the issues that I have.
You don't have to recognize authority.
You don't have to go to the church.
I have, so I'm afraid to love them.
Well, I have a friend, I have another friend who's a woman pastor.
We're not talking about Sarah, but she, her son was like, he came, came to faith and was
reading his Bible.
And then he came across these verses and he was like, well, mom, Bible says he can't be
a pastor.
And so then she like laid out, laid out the other side of the argument.
He laid out the other side of the argument and went back and forth a little bit.
And so after about five minutes, she just stopped him and said, Hey, is this a salvation
issue?
And so I'm thought about it.
And he's like, well, no, it's not a salvation issue.
He's like, okay, maybe we should agree.
Disagree.
Yeah.
And that's what they did.
And, and they have a great relationship.
Yeah.
There's all those things where, like, where, where she recognized it, like, Hey, this is
actually not going to go down a healthy road if we just keep bickering about this.
Right.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, no, I agree with you.
Maybe at some point we'll, we'll that I would love to invite somebody on who, who loves
people well, even in the, in the women pastoral roles, but disagrees with it.
Yeah.
To have a, have a real conversation.
Yeah.
The problem is that I have a lot of times is when I talk to people who are really, you
can be immediately opposed to it.
It immediately goes to, well, let me tell you about why you're not following the Bible.
And how bad of a person you are.
I was like, okay, we're, so we're not actually having a conversation as brothers.
You're trying to proselytize me.
Yeah.
But that is, that is not, you know, it's, it's one of those things where we're not accomplishing
anything.
So it's better for me to just shake the dust and move on.
Yeah.
You know, so to get to your question that you asked earlier, how are we defining pastor?
Yeah.
So we talked about Ephesians, apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors, evangelists.
So what does the pastor actually do?
And, you know, cause in first Corinthians, the women are prophesying.
In other words, they are proclaiming the gospel in the assembly.
Yeah.
They're also leading worship.
Philip had four daughters, all of them prophesies, right?
Prophecy, depending on how you define that in charismatic or non-charismatic world is
proclaiming the word of God to the people.
So did Philip had four heretic daughters?
Text doesn't say that.
And then you think about people like Priscilla and Aquila, her name is listed first.
That's significant in the way that it's written.
Once again, understanding literature.
So she was instrumental in the education of Apollo.
Does that mean that every person that Apollo taught afterwards was taught incorrectly because
he was taught by a woman?
What does pastor mean?
One of the questions that I actually see here, what does the Bible say about women pastors?
I said the Bible actually doesn't say a whole lot about women pastors.
It also doesn't say a whole lot about male pastors.
The passages that you're thinking of talk about authority.
They're talking about authority and they're also talking about when you're trying to find
qualified people for eldership.
And there is some gender assumptions in there, but they're not concrete commands.
These are guidelines for how you find people that are worthy of the call.
The two questions that I've asked a lot when it comes to this topic is one, what are you
defining as pastor?
Sorry, three questions, three questions.
One, what do you define as pastor?
How are you defining church?
And what are you defining as preaching?
You really have to know those three.
You really have to have a definition for those three things before you can define whether
someone is eligible or not based on scripture.
So for me, this is the one I always bring up is preaching.
So is pastor and preaching.
Let's pick on preaching for a bit.
So what is it to preach the gospel?
And usually the answer I get is well, to proclaim the gospel of Jesus to individuals or a group
of people.
I'm like, okay, well, what defines a group?
What defines a group?
Is there a number attached to that?
Okay, so if they're preaching to a group of 50 or larger than their quote unquote preaching,
or if they're proclaiming the gospel to someone on the street, where is that?
In reality, once you push back on that, you begin to see those are the same things.
So if you're saying, well, women shouldn't preach, are you saying they shouldn't talk
about Jesus?
So it's like, you really do have to, and I'm not gonna go into what I think your definition
should be.
And we're gonna talk about this a lot in our mini series.
So I don't wanna beat a dead horse.
The thing is, you have to parse language, you have to put things in context.
There's a reason our podcast is called Love in Context.
And when people are having that nuanced conversation, I find that they're a lot more amenable to
have real conversations.
The main issue is that we wanna read things to defend, don't read the Bible to defend
your position, read the Bible to understand God's heart.
One of the things I'm gonna bring up in our mini series is going to be, you need to see
from Torah and from the gospels, like when Jesus talks, help me understand what their
perspective was on what a pastor should or should not be.
Whether or not gender was a fortune of that.
And when you're reading the scripture to understand God's heart, let your position change when
it needs to.
And it's okay for you to wrestle with that, it's totally fine.
And once again, we're actually okay with people disagreeing with us.
Okay, speaking of this, because I think this is a great question, why is the Bible so anti-women?
It's not, it's not.
If you actually listen to our podcast, you're gonna notice that we repeatedly point out
that it's not.
Let's go from Genesis.
So man and woman together are made in God's image.
So I told you I was gonna mention this whole Tim Mack equip thing, right?
So did you know that in chapter three, when we get to the section that people typically
call the curses and we talked about how they're not really curses because God only curses
the land because of the man.
Okay.
And he curses the serpent to crawl.
But the woman and the man actually never get cursed by God.
Remember that from our episode.
So the man says the curse is the ground because of you.
You're going to strive and work and sweat of your brow, you're gonna produce fruit.
And then it says that the woman, your pain and childbirth is going to be increased.
Did you know that it's not actually childbirth is not the word because there's a word that
shows up throughout the Bible that is childbirth and it shows up repeatedly and that's not
the word that's being used there.
In fact, the word that is being used is the word for to get pregnant.
So you need to actually hear this is that so the man in a patriarchal society, just
hear this, so a man would typically be in charge of the field producing fruit and a
woman is going to be responsible for the home and children and producing fruit from her
womb.
Yeah.
Now, if both of them are having difficulty producing fruit, in other words, he's having
difficulty harvesting and she's having difficulty in getting pregnant, which by the way is where
Israel struggles the most in their service of God because they keep serving Asherah for
fertility.
Not when actually in childbirth, but for actually getting pregnant because fertility was a big
thing.
So what God says is that here they actually have circumstances that are the same.
The man and the woman are both dealing with difficulty in being fruitful.
It's not about the pain and childbirth.
It's actually it's going to be harder for you to get pregnant.
And all throughout Torah, it's interesting that God says whenever you follow me, your
glands will produce fruit, your wombs will produce children, and your herds will reproduce.
It's always about the fruit is going to be flowing when you're actually with God.
You should be seeing these imageries.
God says, this is your choices are putting you here.
But if you come and follow me, this is actually what's going to happen.
It all keeps coming back to Genesis three.
Yeah.
So good.
Right.
So other treatment of women in the Bible, I want to there's Deborah, there is the test
of the unfaithful wife, which is actually adding equity for women.
There is the divorce rules where you can't just divorce women for nothing.
There's the rules that about if you try to claim that they're not a virgin, there's constantly
in all these laws that are happening in the in the Old Testament, it's giving Israel instructions
on how to add more equality, more equity, more justice for people that are being abused
to take from numbers.
So if you're talking about the daughters of Zelephah, Hades, but daughters, yeah, they're
not going to get forgotten.
It happens all throughout the Bible.
Now, this is just a section we've been in.
Even you go into Jesus's story, like there's the woman at the well that he that he meets
with grace.
There is Mary Magdalene, who's delivered seven demons.
There are the women who study at Jesus's feet, meaning their disciples.
There are the women who actually pay for Jesus's ministry.
There are women who are being elevated all throughout the Bible.
What we run into is it's a patriarchal book because of the of the time it was written.
Yeah.
But you need to read in what actually is happening in that society.
Yeah.
Matthew calls it out to genealogy of Christ genealogy of the people were Tamar, Ruth and
a few other women are mentioned in there.
So the Bible is not anti women.
What we need to women when we're interpreting this, we need to understand that the majority
of the cultures that the Bible was written around outside of Jewish context.
So for talking like the Canaanite culture, if we're if Venetian, Venetian, all that had
put zero value on women.
So anytime that zero or limited zero or very limited.
Right.
So anytime that there was a statute that said, hey, this actually protects a woman's right
for a law or something like that is actually adding value.
It was an incredibly progressive law of its time.
Now, we read the vidicus in a in a vacuum of today and apply it to modern laws and it's
not helpful.
Yeah.
But in its time, it was a it was a liberating law meant to bring freedom to people and health.
Yeah.
Life.
Goodness.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So hopefully that that may or may not have answered your question, but the Bible is not
anti women.
So this is a good one about tattoos.
I think it was related to our numbers episode.
What does the Bible say about tattoos?
I thought you weren't supposed to get them.
So we need to add some context.
So we need to understand that the marking of your body was something that you did to
pledge allegiance to something.
So particularly in the worship of the ball.
Yeah.
If you were like to mark your body or to tattoo yourself, quote unquote, what you were doing
is you were pledging allegiance to ball.
Yeah.
God is saying, hey, you're not going to be like them.
So don't do that.
And specifically, he's referencing in the way that you worship.
I don't want you to worship like they worship.
Yeah.
Where they're cutting their bodies.
I remember the story of Elijah on the mountain.
He said they're going around there like, he's like, well, maybe, maybe balls out, you know,
taking a dump.
You should just yell a little bit louder.
That's kind of what the Hebrew implies.
And so they go around there actually cutting themselves.
Well, this is the same thing of marking your skin, which is what's talked about in Leviticus.
I believe it's Leviticus for numbers.
And they're talking about that.
And we have taken it to be when people tattoo themselves.
No, that's not what's going on.
If you're, if you're getting tattooed as a form of worship of another deity, you're correct.
You should not get a tattoo.
Yeah.
Correct.
Or even in a worship of another person, like getting a tattoo where you're like, I'm going
to put, let's just say that you're dating.
You're like, I'm going to put my girlfriend's name across my heart because she always has
my heart.
It could be, it absolutely could be a, be a step into sin.
It's not because of the tattoo itself, but the reason that you're getting it.
So there's a lot of people who have tattoos and they get them because they remind them
of something or because they think they're pretty or for whatever reason.
Are we going to claim, okay, my wife, for example, she has across her ankle, she has
type in Greek, the masterpiece reminding her that we are God's masterpiece created in his,
in his image.
Do you think that's sin?
No.
Where she's like tattooing on her body to remind herself, which by the way, I don't know if
you remember that it says in Deuteronomy that you're supposed to bind the law to your head,
write it on your, write it on your arms, like carve it into, carve it into your, you know,
your identity, put it into your walls.
Right?
Yeah.
I have a friend who he has a cross tattoo across his calf as a reminder.
Now if you don't like tattoos, don't get them.
Yeah.
I, and I do think that if you're going to get a tattoo, you should make sure that you're
getting it for the right reason.
So I have another friend who you have a lot of friends.
I don't know if I believe this.
I do have a lot of friends.
I know a lot of people.
His daughter is in college now and she was recently like, Hey dad, would you want to
get matching tattoos with me?
He was like, yeah, I would love to do that.
And so they've been working on designs and they're going to make that happen at some
point.
But the point being is he's doing this because it's symbolizing the strength of our relationship
between father and daughter.
Yeah.
Which I'm like, that's, that's such a beautiful thing.
And I worked with a lady years ago who was just like, it was like every weekend, she's
like, I'm going to get a tattoo and I was like, why, you know, it be literally legitimately
came down to, Oh, you're addicted to getting these things.
Yeah.
And that's a problem.
And then that's a problem.
Right.
So it's, it's, it's more of a heart issue than it is an act, whether you get down.
Definitely if you're getting a tattoo to get a shock out of somebody else, then you're
getting it for the wrong reason.
Yeah.
So the Bible doesn't necessarily prohibit tattoos in the way that a lot of people would
like it to.
It actually really comes down to an attitude of the heart, which is the whole point of
what's being talked about in Torah.
God's going to give you a new heart.
He's going to circumcise your heart so that you're a different kind of person.
Yeah.
All right.
So we've got time for one more and I think I'm just going to close on this one here.
This is a great question.
I read this one.
I was like, man, this is so good.
Are we as a church, modern church, defaulting to what we think we know or are we following
God?
You said we're going to close on a quick one.
Well, I think I would definitely say as a general trend, I would say that it's the former,
not the latter.
So next season, we're going to have a few different mini-series.
One of them, we're going to talk about the spiritual gifts.
Yeah.
And we're going to talk about the importance of learning to hear the voice of God.
And we've talked about the importance of knowing scripture, having scripture in your heart,
meditating on it and actually knowing what the voice of God is.
We had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with Vashisara.
I said, when we talk to people and they say, well, I read the Bible all the time, I was
like, do you?
There is a high level of illiteracy in the church when it comes to the Bible.
People reading, they might even read every day, but they're not reading it in its entirety.
They're not reading the whole scope of what God has to say.
And they're definitely not taking time to actually read it in context.
I would say on this question, I think there's a couple of things that come to mind.
I think one, if you are truly reading scripture for the sake of following after God, that
your knowledge was going to increase exponentially.
Absolutely.
Right?
I think that's going to be something that's going to be there.
So I think there's also a knowledge piece where I think where we get in trouble is when
we try to enforce our knowledge upon somebody else.
Oh yeah.
And so when we become more of the theological police and we're like, well, this is what
we know to be true and you must follow this.
And then you try to enforce that on people who don't even believe in Jesus or follow
Jesus, then you get into trouble.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't stand for the truth.
You should stand for the truth.
But if you're standing for the truth, you're doing it in love because the nature of God
is love.
And so if you're following after God, I think the knowledge piece is going to come naturally.
And I think that's going to happen if you're genuinely following after him.
I think oftentimes the one of the mistakes we make is we go jump to the knowledge piece
and we're like, okay, I need to fall off to God.
So I'm going to learn as much as I can.
And I think part of that is we're just in America in particular, we're an intellectual
society.
Yeah.
You go, I think therefore I am, right?
Yeah.
And if you go to other countries where the value is much more on relationship than it
is knowledge, you will find that their approach to this is very different.
Well, and we talked about Eastern versus Western perspective, and I think we've referenced
the Baymah episode where he talks about a lot of this before as well.
But what you believe is actually in an Eastern perspective demonstrated by what you do.
Yes, what you do.
So your orthopraxy is much more important than your orthodoxy, or rather I should say
your orthopraxy demonstrates your orthodoxy.
So you can say you love God and love people all day.
Your actions are going to show whether or not you do.
Yeah.
Which is a troubling conversation that I've had with a number of pastors in my life.
It is a difficult position to be in where you say, oh man, I love Jesus and I love people.
But yeah, there's no but.
We got to figure our way through that.
And what I'm not saying is that you condone sin, that you marginalize sin, that you approve
of people's sinful lifestyle.
I'm not talking about any of that stuff.
But I remember when we had this conversation with Pastor Sarah, I said we talked about
the correction of a person.
If somebody has an odd against you, you go and talk to them.
Then you bring somebody.
Then you bring the elders.
Then you bring them before the church.
And if at that point they don't listen, you treat them as you would a tax collector and
sinner.
Yeah.
Which Jesus came to die for and to dine with.
Yep.
That's the attitude.
And so like when we have enemies, we're called to love them.
It is the most backwards upside down kingdom to everything that the way the world works.
We love to ostracize our enemies.
And God says, how about you love them instead?
How about you actually go like this?
You're talking about wacko battle plans of Jesus, the God, right?
He says, the way that I'm going to conquer sin and death is I'm going to come down and
I'm going to put myself up on a cross and let myself be beat, tortured and die.
And that's my victory.
Yeah.
Well, and he's not just going to come down.
I mean, he's going to come down as a baby, born to a virgin, to a poor family.
Like how he's going to work a good portion of his life as a, as a tecton.
Yeah.
As a craftsman.
I saw this comedic reel one time where this guy was like, where he was like, yeah, the
plan to send the Messiah into the world is these angels sitting around table.
They're like, okay, we're going to, we're going to send this mighty warrior down.
He's going to enter triumphantly and God's no, we're going to, we're going to send a
baby and then like, okay, well we're going to, we're going to find a mighty household
with that strong.
That's got lots of guards.
And he's like, no, we're going to, we're going to do this, do this through this high school
version over, over here.
Oh, okay.
Well, we're going to give him like the best followers.
The strongest guys, the smartest wise actually going to take a lot of fishermen and rejects.
And that was like the whole thing was just like, was this thing to show that like God's
way is far greater than ours.
Yeah.
I want to, I want to close with this idea because I think, I think sometimes we lose
sight of this.
Yeah.
I'm going to read something from the sermon on the Mount here because the kingdom is much
more upside down than you think because he said this in the sermon on the Mount, which
is his conversation on Torah.
And I feel like that since we're wrapping up Torah, this is probably the place to do
it.
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn for they have be comforted.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
They're going to be filled.
Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven.
And then he turns to his disciples and says, and blessed are you when people insult you,
persecute you or falsely say all things of evil against you because of me.
Yeah.
Rejoice and be glad great cause great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they
persecuted the prophets who were before you, but you are to be the salt of the earth.
Yeah.
And if you lose your salty, how can it out salt?
How can it be made salty again?
Amen.
You are the light of the world.
The kingdom is upside down and we win by losing by lowering ourself.
We become greater by humbling.
Yep.
This is the kingdom of heaven.
Yep.
So the answer to the question, do you think, do I think that we, uh, default to what we
think rather than what God says?
Yes.
And it's time for us to do the opposite to sit and wait and listen to the voice of God
to direct our path.
Amen.
That is the end of season one.
We're going to be taking a couple of weeks break and then we'll be back with season two
of love and context.
Anybody think we'd get this far?
Yeah.
I mean, I, I thought we'd get this far, but I was talking to somebody the other day and
they're like, you have over 40 episodes.
I was like, yeah, we do.
Yeah.
We'll have more.
We're going to have more.
So we'll be back.
And if you have topics that you want to see us discuss in season two, send us to our email
love and context at gmail.com.
Yep.
You can have this on Facebook, Instagram, tick talk, and you can listen to us on all
your favorite podcast platforms as well as YouTube and just not Google, just not Google,
not Google.
All right.
Thanks guys.
That's a wrap for today's episode.
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He's a best looking dude.
I know.
So note, we both did it jinx one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.
You owe me a coffee.
I don't want that coffee.
I wasn't giving it to you.
Are you ready?
Yes.
I'm not ready.
Because a lot of time and a lot of times we work in, I'm just going to give you lots of
editing.
I can't.
I don't.
You're being sarcastic, but I'm my brain is not brain.
So once again, we love having you here.
That's a weird thing to say.
So once again.