Welcome to the Love in Context podcast, an unscripted conversation with Ben and Spencer.
So glad that you could join us today, whether that's from your car, office, home, church,
or wherever you're at.
If you want to contact us, you can email us at loveincontext.gmail.com.
Also follow us on Instagram at loveincontext.
Welcome to the Love in Context podcast, a conversation with Ben and Spencer that may
or may not be unscripted.
It's definitely unscripted.
It very much is, yes.
Either that or we're terrible at reading our lines.
One of the two.
I would make a horrible actor because they would hand me a script and I'd be like, no.
Yeah, no thank you.
No thank you.
I actually, I think my son is going to be a thespian of sorts.
Okay.
Because he, so he really likes Pokemon, right?
Yeah.
And so he'll be like, can we play pretend Pokemon?
And so he's like, throw a ball.
So I throw a ball at him.
He goes, he goes, ah, you didn't catch me.
I busted out.
But it's just so dramatic, right?
That's so great.
Yeah.
So once again, we are here with a new episode.
We are now in Exodus.
We're out of Genesis.
If you remember at the end of Genesis, God's people are in Egypt because Joseph has risen
to power there and he brought his people there, brought his family there because there was
a famine in the land.
So now they're in Egypt, but there's going to be a huge time jump between now and then.
Yeah.
But before we get into that, I just want to throw a resource out there for you guys because
we're not going to be heavy into the intellectual side.
We're going to talk about context, but we're also going to refer you to the intellectual
side because we want to have a conversation about how do we apply this Christian living.
So Rabbi David Foreman, alaphbeta.org, great resource, but also he wrote a book called
The Exodus You Almost Passed Over, which is great.
Check out that.
It's really good.
Yeah.
We're only going to spend eight episodes in Exodus.
So if you're looking for a deeper dive into Exodus, check out Bama Discipleship Bible
Project has some stuff on it too.
So check those out.
We are doing a flyover.
We're going to hit some key points, but we're not going to be doing the deep intellectual
dive into it.
Right.
So with that being said, let's jump in.
We are in Exodus 1.
I was at Genesis 1 and I was like, whoops, not that one.
Nope, nope.
Not that one at all.
Yeah.
So and we're only covering one chapter today.
So if you have not read Exodus 1, I'd encourage you to pause the podcast unless you're driving
and then go read Genesis 1 or go open your Bible, have it open while we are walking through
this.
I said Genesis 1.
I meant Exodus 1.
Go read Exodus 1.
It's too late.
You said it.
It's committed to the ethernet.
Go read Exodus 1 and or just have it open, study it as we talk about it.
By the way, anybody who's listening, I do know I said ethernet and that's a kind of
cable, not the internet.
So I'm actually stating to you my joke and just inviting you into it.
So there's a lot that happens here in Exodus 1.
I think we often skim over this passage and just think that like, okay, it's just kind
of setting the stage for the birth of Moses, all that, which it is, but there is actually
a ton of things that happens here.
A couple of things that are really interesting is there's actually two passages of time.
So your first passage of time is Israel growing into a nation.
So Israel goes from being however many people were with Jacob at the time, couple hundred,
couple thousand to hundreds of thousands.
That takes a lot of time.
For those of you unaware, it takes at least 10 months to grow a child and birth.
So it was like, no, it takes nine months.
No, it takes 10.
Go back to biology.
And so that takes a lot of time.
It was at that point that Egypt was like, all right, we have a problem, we're going
to enslave these people.
And then they were enslaved for a second passage of time for 400 years.
And so when you're looking at this passage, you're actually looking at, I don't know exact
numbers, but anywhere from six to 800 years, maybe longer.
So let's just deal with that first group of time.
So Joseph and family are in Egypt.
Now we're going to fast forward to the time that they're dead, but they're not in slavery
yet.
So it says in verse eight, it says, then a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing.
Now let's just stop there.
That's weird, right?
Like can you imagine, so America has been around 200 plus years, right?
Can you imagine if we were talking and we're like, then arose a generation that knew not
who Abraham Lincoln was.
Like that's weird, right?
Yeah.
Like, cause we're literally talking like a hundred, 150 years ago, you know, like of
history.
Yeah.
I mean, this isn't 600 years yet because they're going to be in captivity for a while.
So this, this is weird.
It's almost like this, this king is willingly ignorant of history.
By the way, if anybody wants to know, willingly ignorant is slang for dumb on purpose.
So the king, he makes a statement says, look, the Israelites have come, become far too numerous
for us.
Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous.
And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.
Okay.
I was having a conversation with you about how this really strikes me as conversation
that takes place in the garden.
Right?
So in Genesis, the serpent comes and has this conversation with Eve where he talks about,
Hey, did God really say, and Hey, you know, what about this?
I think you're being held out on it's a position of fear and manipulation.
Right?
Yeah.
And this king, he comes here and he says, look at the Israelites around us.
He doesn't understand that the only reason Egypt exists as a nation at this point is
because Joseph saved them.
Joseph interpreted the dream and Joseph saved them.
He says, he says, if we don't deal with them and they become more numerous, and if war breaks
out and they join our enemies and they fight against us and they leave the country, like
this is like a perfect storm of a lot of things happening.
Yeah.
Like this is like borderline, like paranoia, fear.
Well the interesting things here on this is that the Hebrews are so numerous that the
powerhouse nation of the day is worried.
Like the powerhouse nation, this is like the world's supreme power right now is Egypt.
Right.
Hebrews at this time, they are so numerous, so numerous that the powerhouse nation is
like, okay, we got to put them in check.
Otherwise we're going to lose our status.
Right.
Well, and the whole position of fear, right?
Like he's dealing from a position of fear because what else could he have done?
Yeah.
He's dealing from a position of fear, like a partnership with Israel, right?
Welcome them into the nation because all these people are living here.
This is their home as well, and it's going to be their home for another 400 years.
I mean, I'll be at, after a while, not want to be their home because slavery is not great.
I've never been a slave, but I'm assuming it's not great.
Haven't heard good things about it.
Yeah, not good things about it.
Yeah.
Especially when you have to do things like build pyramids, right?
Not great.
But there's a position of fear, and I was like, rather than actually finding a way to
work with people.
Now, what happened at the end of Genesis?
They have all this grain, they have all this wealth, they have all this stuff that's production,
and Egypt actually uses that to parlay into the growth of the kingdom, but also to unite
a lot of nations into themselves.
Yeah.
But this guy doesn't know Joseph.
So what does he do?
He falls right back to the thing that we always do, which is fear, which can we just pause
for a second and talk about learning from our history?
It's so important.
Right.
Like, yes on a national level, but on a personal level.
Yeah.
So you have siblings.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
And you're the youngest, right?
I am.
Yeah.
So did you ever watch your older siblings and be like, hey, that was a stupid thing they
did and then avoid doing that?
Okay.
So, yes.
Sometimes.
You said that with hesitation.
Well, the thing is, boys tend to be just not smart in general.
It's true.
I'm not going to resent that.
Yeah.
So even though I saw some of the stuff my brothers did, I definitely walked into the
exact same pitfalls.
And I may have eluded capture a little bit longer.
I know for me growing up, I watched what my older siblings did, and I would analyze, okay,
what is good, what is bad, and then I would try to do what was good and not do what was
bad.
I was a guy, and I just still did some stupid stuff.
That's just how it went.
I would look at my siblings, and I would try to emulate what was good and not emulate what
was bad.
Right.
Learn from not just my history, but their history as well.
And that's kind of the point that comes up in a lot of things.
In a Christian church, when you're building a church program or a different thing, people
have tried to do a lot of different things.
One of my favorite things that I've heard is said to you, right?
Because you work in youth ministry, right?
Back in my day, we used to.
It's like nails on a chalkboard.
That phrase right there.
Now first of all, you're fully aware of a lot of things I used to do.
I think a better position for that conversation, by the way, if anybody's listening and they're
like, oh man, I really want to be able to share these things, you say something that
was really helpful for me growing up in the church.
That's a different position.
One of the reasons you don't do things a certain way is because you know history.
And you also have seen it played out over and over again.
And so it's like, people are like, oh, hey, we should go and do this.
And you're like, it doesn't work.
And the other reason for that is times change.
What students relate to changes.
When I was in middle school, high school, you didn't have social media.
You didn't have, you couldn't go watch TikToks all day.
People weren't listening to podcasts.
They were starting to come out, but they weren't very popular.
And so yeah, times change.
So a lot of things I experienced in high school ministry growing up doesn't actually relate
well.
Right.
I think the tendency when you're listening to what we just said is you're saying, oh,
I thought you said knowing your history is important.
It is.
Because you need to know what things worked and what things didn't.
In the case of this guy in Egypt, he clearly doesn't understand that God had his hand on
the Israelites.
Right.
He just saved an entire nation.
The guy who saved him was an Israelite who was brought into Egypt.
This is what happened.
But then he sees it as a challenge to his power.
But here's the funny thing.
He only has power because Israel came.
Right.
Like, that's the only reason he has power anyways.
Otherwise, Egypt might not be the nation that it is at this point.
And don't go too hard on Pharaoh because what's our natural tendency when we step into a place
of fear?
Right.
It's to step in and try to control the situation.
It's not, okay, so this isn't going my way.
Let me put my hands on it and mold it into what I want it to be so I have control.
Right.
I agree.
And so like in one sense, Pharaoh is just doing what is natural to him.
Right.
And falling into his natural tendencies of, okay, I'm scared.
I'm fearful.
I'm going to try to control the situation.
And he tries to control it by enslaving an entire nation.
Right.
I agree with you completely because my next thought was, how often do we see this in the
church?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So one of the things I was having a conversation with our worship pastor about, right, and
I said, I said, hey, things are going really well.
Here's the deal.
We need somebody in their 20s.
And he's like, oh, yeah, we do.
Now, if you're asking me why I said that is because most of the worship team is in their
30s or 40s.
Okay.
And while we're still a relatively young team, we recognize that we're not going to be around
forever.
But what I have seen in the church, churches that I've been a part of and other churches
that I haven't been a part of, is they don't plan for the next generation.
We tend to think spur of the moment rather than generationally.
Well, we don't plan for the next generation and we wonder why the next generation falls
off the map.
Correct.
And, you know, and what I'm trying to do in my generation is learn from our past and make
some changes, probably going to make some mistakes along the way.
And we're going to want to take note of those and do it differently in the future.
But I was having this conversation because thinking generationally, right, we don't know
when Jesus is coming back.
It could be literally while we're recording this episode, right?
We don't, he didn't ask me for the timetable.
So we don't know when Jesus is going to come back.
So we always live like Jesus could come back any given day, right?
But we also live like Jesus isn't going to come back for a thousand years.
And it's our job to continue his rule and reign every place we go in the world.
And so when I see Pharaoh, when I see what's going on with Pharaoh, I see a man who's controlled
by fear and that is a natural response.
Guess what?
You're not natural anymore.
You're filled with the Holy Spirit and you're unable to act differently.
We want to call that out of us because the world is going to say someone is threatening
my power and God says, Jesus says, I'm going to go get on a cross and that's going to be
my coronation event.
Yeah.
And good question to ask about the Israelites at this point is why were they enslaved?
I don't know about you, but this was often skimmed over when I was in church.
They're always like, okay, and then a new king came into power and they were enslaved.
So why were they enslaved?
And the reality is, is because they became so numerous.
So what they were doing is they were actually multiplying like the Lord had commanded them
to do.
They were actually becoming a nation.
Like saying there's another, there's another Genesis reference there.
Oh yeah.
Crazy.
Yeah.
So they were actually multiplying.
They were becoming a nation just like the Lord had commanded them to do.
And so then they get thrown into slavery because this king gets fearful, takes matters into
his own hand.
And then you look at this in verse 12, it says, but the more the Egyptians oppressed
them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread and the more alarmed the Egyptians
became.
Yeah.
So my translation says the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.
Yeah.
So you're like, Hey, we're going to stop them from multiplying.
So we're going to put oppression on them so they can't rise up against us.
And then like the exact same thing you're trying to stop.
Yeah.
They're like jokes on you.
Yeah.
That's the Spencer translation of the Bible.
And yeah.
So you, you have this, you have this happening where the Israelites become oppressed.
They keep multiplying.
So then the Egyptians decided that they're going to oppress them more.
So that still doesn't work.
So the king of Egypt actually comes to the Hebrew midwives.
Now first of all, I want to point out that they're actually both named in this.
Why is that significant?
Because women typically aren't named in the Bible.
This is the only place they show up and they're significant enough that they're named.
It's not common for women's names to actually be in the Bible.
And I believe that these are actually placed here in order to honor these women because
they stand up for what's right in the middle of absolute chaos and destruction.
Yeah.
So they, the king of Egypt says comes and he's like, Hey, listen, if you get a baby
boy, just kill him.
If baby girl, you know, dilate the dream pool, cause you'll have more women and then they'll
marry him with the Egyptian eventually.
Like the idea is that you no longer have Egyptians and Israelites, you have one nation.
Right?
Yeah.
Shrewd planning, terrible, terrible thing.
Right?
I mean, I think, I think we can all agree.
I think we can all agree that killing baby boys underneath at the age of two years old
is a bad thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right?
I think we can all agree on that.
But who are these midwives?
Because they're like, no, we're not going to do that.
Right?
And where have you seen God show up in the story yet?
So you have these midwives at this point, you're at least two, 300 years into the mix.
Right?
So they have like, presumably you haven't seen God show up in the story for two, 300
years.
There's been, there's been a time of silence from the Lord and these midwives are like,
no, we still fear him.
Right.
And obviously in this context, fear is not, I'm afraid, but I have a appreciation of reverence.
Appreciation, reverence.
And I do think the fear is appropriate in some circumstance, but it's not afraid like
I'm afraid of the dark.
No.
It's more fear.
Like when I see a moose, I don't want to go stand next to it because those things are
dangerous.
Right?
But they look cool.
You're just reminding everybody we live in Alaska.
It's the same thing.
Like we could be, we could be in Canada.
We could be.
Yeah.
I mean, same thing.
Like when I'm out and about and I see a bear, my demeanor changes.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm not necessarily like pee my pants scared of it, but it's more like I'm much more cautious,
much more aware of everything that's going on.
Yeah.
That kind of reminds me of a C.S. Lewis talking in The Chronicles of Narnia where they were
as line is the personification of God.
Right.
And they say, well, is he a safe line?
Well, of course he's not safe, but he is good.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
He's a wild lion.
He does what he's going to do, but he is good.
So the midwives fear God and they're like, nope, God is way more powerful than King of
Egypt.
Right.
Yeah.
I love this conversation that comes back because he goes back and he's like, Hey, why aren't
you doing what you're supposed to be doing?
And they're like, man, the, the, uh, Israelite women are just so stout that when they give
birth, they get, they, they give birth and the baby pop out before the midwives even
get there.
Mm hmm.
If they're walking in a field and it's already there before we can get there.
I don't know what to tell you, Pharaoh, King of Egypt.
Sorry.
He's not the Pharaoh yet.
This is interesting because this is like, you can tell that this is blatantly not true.
Right.
You can, you can look at this part of the story and be like, eh, that seems a little
farfetched, right?
But that's what they went with.
And where is, where is God, where do you see God chastising them for, for telling this
lie?
Well, not even, not even chastising.
It says in the next verse, God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and
became even more numerous.
Yeah.
And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Yeah.
Which is a thing of blessing.
Right.
Yeah.
Now this is interesting by the way.
So it's been King of Egypt, King of Egypt.
Look what happens in verse 22.
Then Pharaoh.
Did we have a person shift or is this the same guy?
Mm hmm.
Like that, I legitimately don't know.
Yeah.
If you're listening who has done some research and whatever, feel free to shoot us an email.
We're not going to get stuck on that because I don't think that there's a good reason to
sit here and just nail that down.
But if you have something to share, we might just throw it off for your podcast.
Yeah.
And on the, on the different types of passages of time that happened in this story, they
never specify how many years, when or where that it's important to note that there is
a passage of time.
So you're aware of that, but let's not get hung up on how many years they spent where,
how many years in captivity or what Pharaoh was in place at what time.
Because if they were in captivity for 400 years, presumably more than one King or Pharaoh
ruled during that time.
So that's actually where we're going to be done for the verses today because Pharaoh
goes as disruling.
He says that every newborn boy is going to get chucked into the Nile and he's going to
let the girls live.
Yeah.
Which by the way, spoiler alert for the next episode, they do technically put Moses in
the Nile.
Mm hmm.
And also put him in a basket.
You know what I mean?
So I just, I like, they do actually obey Pharaoh in this.
Those are my type of people where they're like, I'm going to do what you said, but I
am going to stretch it to the utmost.
So I want, I want to come back to this thing on, on the midwives.
Let's just be, say being flirtatious with the truth.
Okay.
Because I think sometimes we have this tendency in Christian culture, right?
There is right, wrong and anything strays it, but there is actually ambiguity.
Okay.
Before you start writing me an email, I want to talk to you about World War II.
Okay.
So there's a, there's a lady by the name of Cory Ten Boon, wrote a book called The Hiding
Place.
So Cory Ten Boon writes about her experience in World War II living in the Netherlands.
So first of all, if you haven't read that book, you should.
It is a very difficult read in parts, very difficult, but it's dealing with something
very similar to what we're dealing with in Egypt as well.
Like where you're having subrogation and eradication, right?
Just horrific events that happened on a national level.
But in Cory Ten Boon's book, if you haven't read it, so what the deal with The Hiding
Place is, is that her dad had a watch shop that where they would, they would work on
like timepieces because it wasn't digital watches.
It was like gears and things that had to turn and work in a very specific way.
And they had a space that they had that was hidden from a public view and that had to
be accessed certain ways and was difficult to actually find.
What they would do is they actually took Jews who were hiding from the Nazis and they would
put them into the hiding place.
And so whenever a patrol would come by looking for them, everybody would hide and they would
run business as normal.
And they were in the process of getting as many people out of the Netherlands that they
could, right?
The goal was to actually be part of like an underground type of railroad to get people
out.
And Cory Ten Boon was partnering with this.
So here's my question here.
So they frequently came in and they would ask her, are there any Jews on the premises?
Now if you want to be legalistic, what's the answer?
Yes.
Right.
And by the way, if that's where you fall on how you interpret the law, guess who also
agreed with that?
The Nazis, because they told her, you claim to follow Jesus and he says to tell the truth.
So if you lie to people who are in authority, and he quotes from Paul where it says to respect
the authorities and all these different things, he knows the scriptures and he uses them to
try to manipulate them into revealing people that they are going to exterminate.
So here's the thought that we just need to talk about.
Is there more weight on part of the law than others?
Because this is a very common rabbinic debate in the time of Jesus.
Yeah.
Right?
In fact, one of the things that Jesus actually does is he comments on a conversation between
two rabbis named Shemai and Hillel and he agrees with one of them.
So an expert in the law comes to Jesus and he says, what are the two greatest commandments?
And Jesus says, what do you think they are?
He says, love the Lord your God with our heart, so many in strength and love your neighbor
as yourself.
Jesus says, you've answered correctly.
Right?
So what Jesus has just said is he says, everything by which you interpret everything in the law
and prophets hangs on these two commands, loving God and loving others.
Now that's only significant if you know that Shemai says that it is observed through loving
God, everybody who's about that, and obeying the Sabbath.
It's love for God and obedience to the rules.
Right?
Jesus says it's about how you love God and how you love the people around you.
So are there things in the Christian walk that are of greater weight than others?
I think there are personally, and you guys can write to me and disagree with that.
That's totally fine.
But I think there are things that hold a greater weight than others.
Like I find if I'm operating outside of loving God and loving people, but still going through
the motions that I need to actually back up and focus on, okay, God, how's my relationship
with you and how am I loving the community around me?
Well, right.
And if I'm not doing those two things, we have an issue.
And one of the verses that keeps coming to my mind lately is Proverbs 11 25.
What talks about is it's like, hey, you're actually refreshed when you bless others.
When you help refresh other people, it actually refreshes your soul as well.
Right?
It's almost like we're made for community.
Yeah.
It's almost like we're made not to do this alone.
Yeah.
It's almost like when man tried to do it by himself, God says, that's no good.
You need a netzer connecto.
You need a suitable helper.
So what I don't want you to walk away from is being like, okay, well, that means it's
okay to lie.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
If somebody walks into a doctor with a knife in their side and headaches, you need to address
the knife in the side first.
That doesn't mean the headaches aren't important.
It just means that there's currently a knife sitting in their side and that needs to be
dealt with.
Yeah.
Right?
And so I think that we often have to walk in nuance with this.
I think that it's important to be morally correct to walk the law out, to embody the
Torah as Jesus did.
Yeah.
But at the same time, we need to always emphasize the greater points of the law.
Yeah.
Now this comes into when we take people who come from the outside and they're trying to
find Jesus.
How often are we trying to address their symptom rather than their cause?
Yeah.
Right?
We do that all the time if we're real.
Right?
I think one of the shameful guys as we have in ministry, and I want to tread lightly on
this one, but we talk about, okay, we want to have a safe place.
And I'm like, no, we want to have a transformational place.
Correct.
There's nothing safe about following Jesus.
The things he's going to call you to, the things that he's going to ask of you are going
to lead you to places where you're like, this might be a community I shouldn't, where you
feel like you shouldn't step foot in.
This might be a person that you're like, I don't know if I should have a conversation
with this person.
Right?
Okay.
Jesus wants us to step into a place of transformation.
He doesn't want us to step into a place of comfort.
And in fact, he often pushes us outside of our place of comfort so that we can step into
that place of transformation.
That actually reminds me of something that I wrote a while ago on my blog when I was
talking.
It's actually Exodus 2, which is really funny because we're going to be talking about that
soon.
But I talked about that being a bearer of the image of God is difficult.
Right?
Being partners with God requires setting aside condemnation.
Living by the Spirit means that we have to live by forgiveness for all people, especially
those ones we don't like.
Right?
Being a part of the Exodus means that sometimes you have to leave your home of 400, 600 years
to go into the desert for a long time.
Right?
And it's not meant to discourage people because it's actually meant to encourage you.
Right?
The road is very difficult, but it's sweet and it's rewarding.
Life with God in the kingdom is amazing.
But it's transformational to your point.
It's not safe.
And we do people a disservice when we tell them that it's going to be safe because it's
not.
Jesus got crucified on a cross.
Paul got his head chopped off.
Peter got crucified upside down.
John got tossed in boiling oil and then exiled to an island.
Right?
Like these people did not have great lives.
No.
Now that's not to say that God wasn't with them every step of the way.
Right?
And I don't even know that that's something that God's going to call you to because those
are the apostles.
There was a lot of people who followed God in that day, followed Jesus in that day, who
had very prosperous lives.
The thing is we don't get to choose what the call is.
We don't get to choose the assignment.
Yeah.
The question is, are you going to follow the call that the Lord's put on your life in the
good times and the bad?
Yeah.
Because so often we'll do it in the good times and when the bad times roll around, it'll
be like, my life is horrible.
And don't get me wrong.
There's like, we can lament to the Lord.
I want to be clear on that.
Right?
But you look at Israel, when the good times were there, what were they doing?
They were multiplying.
As we say later, they're doing not great stuff.
Yeah.
Later.
Okay.
In Exodus 1.
Exodus 1.
Yeah.
They're multiplying and then they go under oppression.
What do they do?
They multiply.
They're fulfilling the call that God's put on their life in both times, in the good and
the bad.
Right.
And we're seeing this example in this moment of what we should be doing.
And so the question comes is when it comes to our life with Jesus and our life with Christ,
are we being faithful to the call he's given us in the good times and the bad?
Yeah.
Well, and with that, you're going to have a different call than the person next to you.
Yeah.
Right?
And so if I can encourage, I actually really want to throw this out here for our listeners
that are in North America.
Okay?
We live in a very wealthy nation.
Yes.
Absurdly wealthy.
Our poor are loaded.
Right?
It becomes very, very important that your money doesn't rule you.
Yeah.
That you live with generosity.
Yeah.
What I am not telling you is that you can't have a nice house, have a nice car, have nice
stuff.
Please don't hear that.
But your money is a tool for the kingdom of God, not for you to build your own kingdom.
Right?
So, like to come back to a couple of weeks ago, are you going to build a name for yourself,
build a tower for yourself, or are you going to build into God's kingdom?
Are you going to scatter, multiply, build, subdue?
This is the call of the Torah and ultimately the call of the gospel.
Because instead of it being a kingdom of priests, which is what's going to come up in Exodus
later, God is now going to open it up to the entire world.
And now we're going to be a chosen people, a royal priesthood, to quote 1 Peter.
We're going to be spiritual stones being constructed into the Holy Temple, the dwelling place of
the Holy Spirit, which we're going to talk about in Leviticus.
Like this is going to be our call.
So with what you've been given, what are you going to do to for the kingdom?
If you're great with money, good for the glory of God, that it benefits those who listen,
that the kingdom grows.
If you are terrible with money, but you're good with service, good.
For the benefit of the kingdom, for the glorification of God, that it benefits those who are around.
It doesn't matter what you are good at, go and do it for the kingdom.
Right?
Yeah.
And don't try to make other people look like you.
Church, just stop it.
Right.
Stop that.
Like it does nobody any favors whatsoever.
If I was to tell Ben that his life needed to look exactly like mine, I would make Ben
miserable.
Right.
If Ben was to tell me that my life was to look exactly like his, he'd probably make
my life miserable.
And so don't, don't do that.
Right.
Instead, learn where each other's giftings are and be like, okay, how can we build up
the kingdom in our community together with the gifts we have?
And I feel like there's like a really clear connection back here to the midwives.
Right?
They stand in the middle of chaos.
Yeah.
And there's somebody powerful breathing down their neck and they look at it and they go,
no, they're like, pass, pass.
We're going to do what God has us doing, regardless of how that falls back on us.
Now God bless them in the middle of that, but I can't believe that if Pharaoh had decided
to come out and kill all of them, they would have budged one iota.
That's not who they were.
They say, we're going to follow God.
We are a stubborn and stiff necked people and we're going to follow God because it's
better that we honor him than that we would have our life.
Yeah.
By the way, that's a theme you see with people throughout the old Testament.
Right.
I wish that we as a church could be that stubborn with our love for one another, our unwillingness
to take up arms against each other.
To be like, hey, I know we disagree, but that disagreement's petty and we're going to set
it aside and we're going to love each other and love the community well.
So we talked about learning our history, right?
I read a book called Church History in Plain English, Bruce Shelley.
And I thought it was a well handling of like church history, but you know what the reoccurring
theme that came to me from like Jesus on?
We're having the same fights they had a thousand years ago.
Yeah.
Nothing has changed.
For all of our enlightenment and our growth and our understanding of the Hebrew language,
we still haven't recaptured that fire of love God and love others that happened in the first
century.
And when we say nothing's changed, I just want to preface this a little bit.
You might be like, well, arguments have changed a little bit.
There might be some different topics we're handling.
I was like, yeah, but the heart hasn't changed.
Correct.
The heart of I want to be right so that you are wrong is still there.
And then we hold this up in the guise of, well, I'm just standing up for truth.
Speaking truth and love might be one of the most grating phrases on my ears.
You're speaking something.
If you say you're speaking truth and love at the end of like ripping someone down for
15 minutes and you're like, oh, but that was just me speaking truth and love.
No, it wasn't.
There's better ways to do that.
Let's go.
Let's just, I'm just gonna dive into this.
You ready?
Let's do it.
All right.
So I can, I've heard this argument so recently.
Well, Jesus confronted the religious leaders of the day, the people who were in charge
and he had words for them and blah, blah, blah.
Guess what?
That's the churches of today.
That's where the religious leaders of the day and his harsh words.
First of all, he engaged them in their rhetoric and frequently he didn't seek them out.
They sought him out and he had a conversation with them and he's like, nope, you're wrong.
This is what Torah actually says.
And he engaged them on their text, their rituals, their traditions and show them that God was
a God, not who they thought he was.
And do you know what Jesus did after he engaged them?
Many times he went and had a meal with them.
Yeah.
Like he would go sit at their table.
He would enjoy their fellowship.
This is the invitation.
Like understanding Jesus in his context matters too.
Now we've been going through Torah and we're going to keep going through Torah and some
of, some of what we're saying, like we're going to be jumping forward to the gospels
frequently because that's what the reality we're living in.
But these themes that start in Exodus and Genesis and Leviticus, they continue all throughout
the Bible because Jesus was Torah made flesh.
You have to understand that.
Like that is what John says in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word
was God, he was with God in the beginning.
Every Jew who hears that knows he's saying Torah.
And then they said that the word tabernacled among us.
Right.
And they go, whoa, hold on a second there, John, what do you mean Torah was made flesh?
I'm laughing over here because if you were to hear that about somebody in the Jewish
day and age, she would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to back up.
You're making some bold claims right now.
Yeah.
So when Jesus is Torah made flesh, right?
He is the summation of the law and the prophets and Jesus goes and puts it on display.
And our tendency, when we see Jesus is fulfilling the law, we say, oh, he did it.
So now we don't have to.
No, no, no.
Fulfill means he showed you what it was always supposed to look like.
Torah was always supposed to look like the incarnate Christ in person.
Do you hear me?
Like that's what Jew observant, Torah observant people were supposed to look like in their
society.
They were supposed to look like Jesus.
They set captives free.
They healed the people who were sick.
They did not look like everybody else.
They put on display a God who is completely different than all the other nations.
We've already seen that in Genesis.
We're going to see it in Exodus.
They just cloned you in.
You're going to see in Leviticus too.
God is different than you think.
But even in our day, all of us are looking at God like he's like he's an angry God.
And as I postulated a few weeks ago, maybe we're just interpreting through an angry lens
and maybe Jesus knows what he's talking about.
Yeah.
Just maybe, just maybe, just maybe kind of throw some sarcasm in here.
Yeah.
Maybe Jesus knows what he's talking about here.
Spoiler alert.
He does.
Yeah.
He's real, real good.
Yeah.
I just want to come back to the idea of are you serving God in the good times and the
bad times?
Like one of the practices I've been trying to put into my life and the Lord's given me
plenty of opportunities lately to put this practice into in my life.
But I'm like, you know, I'm going to start thanking God for his provision before his
provision comes because it's coming.
He's always provided for me.
Not always how I've wanted him to or how I thought he was going to, but he is always
provided.
And so why am I waiting until after he proves himself to be like, oh, by the way, thank
you God.
It's like, no, I'm going to actually step up and I'm going to be like, right, Lord,
I know this is the need.
I know you're going to provide.
Thank you for providing that.
Even though it hasn't come yet.
All right.
The Israelites, they have a promise over their life still.
Right.
They have a promise of that the Lord's going to make them a great nation and he's doing
that in their midst.
Right.
But that promise hasn't fully come to fulfillment yet.
That's still in works.
They're not in the land that they're supposed to be in.
Okay.
But in that time of good and in that time of bad, they're still fulfilling the call
that the Lord's put on their lives.
Absolutely.
And, and don't mistake.
And I want you can look at you interpret this two ways.
There's a general calling.
There's actually a book called Calling and Clarity by Doug.
That's definitely his name.
Yeah.
His name is Doug.
Like Colossus or something like that.
So there's this book called Calling and Clarity and we'll link it.
We'll link it in the description for you guys.
But it, he talks about the different types of calling that they're finding found in the
Bible.
And one of them he talks about is general calling.
Like we all have this call to be more Christlike, to love our neighbors, to love God with everything
we have.
But at the same time, the Lord's actually placed specific giftings and callings in your
own personal life.
Right.
And you're supposed to lean into that.
Right.
Not everybody, not everybody in the story is a midwife.
Right.
You're supposed to lean into that calling and that gifting that the Lord's given you.
Because when you lean into that and you serve your community with that gift, that's when
communities are changed.
When you're loving God, loving people and leaning into who he's called you to be.
Love it.
So our big takeaways from this story getting in here, you got to know your history.
You got to know the pitfalls.
You got to know the successes.
You definitely should know whose shoulders you're standing on as you look towards legacy.
Like all of you who are of faith, that your parents were of faith, you do realize that
you get to stand on their shoulders.
And hopefully our kids get to stand on our shoulders and go further than we ever could.
Like that's the hope.
That's what I hope is true for my sons.
And I hope for their sons that they go even further than my kids go.
Because it's about forwarding the kingdom of God.
And the other side of it is this idea of the midwives.
In the middle of the chaos, are you going to embrace the call of God in your life and
respect God more than man?
Like in the middle of the chaos, who are you going to be?
Are you going to hold to the weight of your portions of law or are you going to fall to
the opinions of men?
So I can tell you what I'm going to do, or at least what I'm going to try to do, is to
always listen to the voice of God and love people first and then deal with everything
else subsequent of that.
So if I'm going to deal with somebody's moral failing, I'm going to love them first.
If I'm going to deal with somebody's anger, I'm going to love them first.
If I'm going to deal with somebody's unbelief, I'm going to love them first.
Because that's the position of Jesus.
It doesn't mean that we're not going to address the other issues.
But I'm going to lead with love and introduce them to who the Father is.
Amen.
Well, thank you guys for listening today.
You can find us on Instagram at loveincontext.
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