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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and a mystery has been solved as to the origin of the myth of us limping like chickens to the Promised Land.
I don’t know if you know this, Dear Listener, but there’s a number of listeners who are very dear to us who thought for years that we were limping like chickens, rather than limping like Jacob, the grandson of Abraham.
I saw our dear friend Trish the other day and she said, “I have to show you,” and she pulls out her phone and starts playing Episode 20 of the podcast from 89 BC or whenever we started recording this. Our microphones were not as good then, and I think I might have also had a cold, but I really can’t blame it on too much because it sounded like a podcast and it sure did sound like “chicken.” So I apologize for Episode 20 on the Trinity where I started the myth. I apologize.
Today, to bring us back to present day, we are in Acts 6:9. We’ve just had the ordination of the deacons and they’ve been anointed with the Holy Spirit, and we are about to hear about Stephen.
Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen.
These are Hellenistic Jews. They’re Jewish by descent but they speak Greek and they’re from originally Greek colonies scattered about the Mediterranean, and they start having disputes with Stephen.
And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. Then they suborned men [gave them money to lie], which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.
And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council [to the Sanhedrin] and set up false witnesses, which said [this sounds familiar], This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the law.
Boy, this really does sound familiar – “He said he’d destroy the temple and build it again in three days.”
It’s very parallel to where they could not resist Jesus either in his wisdom, and then they have to bribe people to find witnesses. It’s again all about, “You’re trying to undo Moses and the temple.”
For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.
The thing is, Stephen might well have said something like that, because Jerusalem was under a death sentence and they had a generation – 40 years at the outside – before Jesus would come and destroy that place. As for changing customs, yes, with no temple the customs are going to be changed.
Also the nature of the customs in the Old Testament tells us that they were not meant to last forever and ever and ever. Stuff wears out, the stuff that they were supposed to use would wear out.
The big question is whether saying those things is blasphemy, because that’s the primary accusation. “He said these things and we know that that’s blasphemy.”
We’ve had a rash here lately with my pre-schooler that when I say no to something she’ll be like, “But a long time ago you let me.” “Yeah, that was a long time ago. This is today.”
This is something that classic Dispensationalism really had a problem with. Even when they were willing to admit that for the New Testament era the dispensation of grace, the temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices would be gone, they could not get over, “Well, they’re mentioned in the prophets so obviously God’s going to bring them back again.”
“Have you read Hebrews?” When God said something, and by its very nature or by his own external word says, “This is temporary,” that kind of means it’s temporary or it’s going to be morphed into or blossom into something far more beautiful under God’s hands.
Yes. And if you read the prophets you find that, for instance, Jeremiah says, “The ark of the covenant – they’re not going to do that anymore. That’s going to be gone. Every place will be a place to offer incense to God. I’m going to take of the Gentiles for Levites.” Let’s read the whole thing and not cherry pick verses that support our traditions.
Anyway, that’s what the Jews did. They had read the prophets. They knew the words. They just didn’t understand the words, and they had their own mindset as to what it had to mean, and what it had to mean is nothing is really going to change. When Messiah comes he’ll set up his political kingdom, and all this other stuff will run as it always has, because we cannot imagine it being otherwise.
Unfortunately, classical Dispensationalism was very much of the same mind. “Jesus will come and set up a local kingdom, and there will be a temple and sacrifices and priesthood and all that.”
And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.
We don’t know exactly what that means, presumably serenity, peace, power, absolute confidence in God. Whether or not he glowed is something else. Angels are not particularly said to glow.
Once you explained yourself, you just gave carte blanche to say whatever he wants. Because this is not a commentary-based podcast, I really don’t want to go through the whole thing line-by-line, but my first observation is that most people when they get to this find it dull, boring, and irrelevant.
He’s on trial for his life. You need something like the book of Hebrews to explain why what he said is not blasphemy and heresy, and why it is in fact what God said. That’s not the tact he takes, in two regards.
First, at first glance it sounds like a history lesson, which it is but it’s interpreted history, which is what the prophets always were. The former prophets, those who wrote Samuel, Kings, Judges and such, they were writing history but it was always in terms of God’s covenant, so that’s what Stephen is doing.
His focus is sort of on what he said, that the outward forms of the old covenant are not essential, but more than that he is pointing his finger directly at the covenant people saying, “And you’ve missed this over and over again, if you even really cared. But what you’ve been great at is persecuting God’s prophets, and that hasn’t changed, has it?
No doubt as he started there were probably the mixed reactions of, “Well, yeah, we know this. This is good old comfortable Bible history. Not a problem here.” Others would be like, “Really? Like we’re kindergartners. We know this stuff. Get to the point here.”
Well, he’s got to prove his credentials in some manner. I think the first accusation they could level at him after blasphemy is, “You don’t know a thing that you’re talking about.” He has to prove that he does know the covenant history. He does know the story that God has revealed in the scriptures, that they all should know as well.
And here, where things happened is almost more important than what exactly happened – not in general, but for this argument. He was in Mesopotamia before he came to Charran. Abraham, when he was called of God, first moved to Charran and was there until his father died, then moved into Canaan. So when God first appeared, he’s living in the heart of darkness. He’s living in the shadow of Babel. He’s living in a realm wholly given to idolatry.
He oddly seems kind of slow to go where he’s supposed to be. God had said, “Leave your home and your kindred,” but dad insists on coming along, and that slows them down and even stops them, and it takes a while. They’re not in the Promised Land. What’s with that? The father of all who believe and he’s hanging out in Sodom and Gomorrah, as it were, or San Francisco and LA – take your pick.
Eventually he comes out of the land of the Chaldeans, which is where Israel eventually ends up in bondage, and he dwells in Canaan. But we’re told that when he got there he didn’t receive any inheritance, not so much as to set his foot on, even though God promised it all to him.
So Abraham came out of this pagan land, and it took time and a stopover, and he comes and God says, “It’s all yours” and doesn’t give him a thing. He actually has to buy land to bury Sarah because he’s dwelling in tents and tabernacles, a pilgrim in the earth. Maybe you people who are listening aren’t getting this, but let’s proceed.
What God tells him is that he’s going to have a son, but immediately there’s no son. God says, “That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years,” the 400 years being from Ishmael mocking Isaac – Ishmael was the son of an Egyptian – until the exodus.
Again, even when they’re in Canaan they’re under Egyptian domination, and eventually they end up in Egypt for a very long time, and they still don’t have the land. Where’s God promise in all this? Well, he promises that he’ll bring them back and that they’ll serve him, and he gave them the covenant of circumcision but no land, no temple.
God told Abraham that his seed would eventually descend into Egypt, but in the meantime covenant life goes on. Abraham begets Isaac, circumcises him – Isaac has Jacob and circumcises him – Jacob begets the patriarchs.
“The patriarchs moved with envy…” this is a key point in Stephen’s argument. These are the fathers of Israel. What did they do? They turned on the faithful son and sold him into Egypt. They could not later justify and say, “Well, we knew God was going to take us there, so we figured this would be a faster…” – no. It specified, envy. At this point this is Israel. These are the patriarchs.
This is the fountainhead and they betray basically the Lord’s Messiah, because by the time Joseph has lived out his life he’s going to be sentenced to death, put in the earth, brought back out, put at the right-hand of power, and save his people. He is the Messianic figure for the last part of the book, and he got this way because Israel betrayed him. But God was with him and delivered him out of all his afflictions. Israel wasn’t with him. The people of God weren’t with him, but God was with him.
And yes, the things I’ve said gave him favor with Pharaoh and so on, made him governor, and then came the famine. The patriarchs found no sustenance in Canaan. Jacob heard there was corn in Egypt and sent them there.
I’ve wondered about this, and suddenly I get it. “At the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren.” Why bring that up? Because Stephen is stressing the delay, and the delay, and the delay. You would think, “God’s in a hurry. He’s got the family back together. Let’s get moving!” No, we’ve got to wait here. Why? Because. Because why? Because Joseph doesn’t trust his brothers one little bit. The patriarchs are not to be trusted by the Messiah.
Yes, there’s still more room to fall, and Joseph needs more than he’s got so far from them, and we’re not sure where this is going in the real story.
Then finally he brings Jacob and the whole family down into Egypt, and they’re there.
So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers, and were carried over into Sychem and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money…
Abraham didn’t own the land. They didn’t own the land except for this one little patch that they’d bought as a burial ground, so again where’s the promise? Oh, look!
But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, till another king arose which knew not Joseph.
“And he tried to kill our fathers and kill the children, but then Moses was born.” Here’s the next Messiah figure, and this time the world’s out to get him, but he’s rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, schooled in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.
“Wait, is this the kind of leader we want? He went to secular universities, and he’s raised in a godless household. He surely can’t be the one.”
And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel.
Now I know why the word ‘full’ is there. Why not 20? Why not 30? Jesus began his work at 30. Forty years is a generation. God’s not in a hurry – deliberately not in a hurry.
For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them, but they understood not.
We’re not told how Moses knew that. Probably some things his mother said. “You were a very special child. We saw that.” How? Every time we’re told about it we’re told he was a goodly child, he was fair to God – what did they see in this child? They would know the 400 years were about up and that God would be providing a leader.
It’s interesting because this, like in Acts 2 with the sermon about David, both demonstrate a greater understanding of what’s going on in the Lord’s plan than we think they should have in the Old Testament before the time of Christ. Both of these, and others such as the book of Hebrews, are very helpful when we’re reading the Old Testament because they interpret the stories for us, instead of us trying to give meaning.
I think many people would not give Moses these intentions. They would say, “He was just rash. He was a violent fellow because he had lived among the Egyptians. He was making a false attempt at being a Messiah. He was a murderer. He didn’t understand what his job was supposed to be,” and yet Stephen gives him very positive motives here.
The next day he shows himself to two who are fighting and he tries to be the reconciliation peacemaker. “Why do you wrong your brother?” And the one who was responsible says, “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Will you kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?”
“You weren’t so upset about me killing the Egyptian, but you don’t want me to stop you from beating up on your friend. You don’t want me to interfere with your sinful pleasures. Who made me a judge and a ruler? In the order of the world, Pharaoh. In the order of God’s kingdom, God. Don’t you see how all the pieces are coming together? Don’t you understand how I’m the one that God is raising up? I’ve been prepared. I’ve been given all these incredible things so that I would be the right person at the right place at the right time.”
No, they didn’t see that. All they knew is he was messing with them. “You want to kill the Egyptians? That’s great. Leave us alone.”
If you compare this with Hebrews, at first it seems a little unclear as to what’s going on. We’re told in Hebrews that he left Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king, but here it seems like he was bothered by the saying. The best solution I’ve seen is that it was not that the man said this, but that it became a saying.
That is, this was not just one soul and everyone else was shouting him down – “You idiot! He’s here to help us.” No, everybody started picking up this chant. “Who does he think he is? He’s an outsider. He’s one of them. This is just another Egyptian ploy. He’s messing where he doesn’t belong,” and all of those kinds of things.
It’s not so much that Moses is afraid of the king, but he expected some kind of support and response from God’s people, and they failed him. So he leaves because under these circumstances there’s nothing he can do. Where there is no faith in God’s people, then sometimes the pastor has to move on and find somebody who will listen. In this case it will be sheep, appropriately enough. He was a stranger in the land of Midian, where he begat two sons.
“I’ve been a stranger in a strange land. God has made me forget all my household,” or am I crossing over to Joseph now? Is that Gershon?
The point is that in having the sons and naming them, he’s settling down. He’s not in any big hurry to go back where he came from because he’s been rejected. God’s people, Israel, has rejected Messiah again.
I’d like to insert one thing because I was looking back in Exodus to find about his sons, and I saw the title of the second half of chapter 2 where the whole incident happens with the Egyptian. My Bible titles this section, “Moses tries to redeem by murder.”
So another example of why you shouldn’t trust the titles of your sections.
Sorry, I just had to add that because I’d never noticed that before and it suddenly was very shocking.
And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.
So the whole burning bush thing. God calls him and reveals himself. Notice, they’re in the land of Midian. They’re in Arabia, and God reveals himself to Moses. Israel is back in Egypt. He doesn’t go there. He goes and follows Messiah – Moses – and reveals himself to Moses. He’s going to work through the man he’s ordained, and Israel is going to have to learn to deal with that.
I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt. This Moses whom they refused, saying Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer [because the one who delivers is the one who rules] by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.
Stephen does not come right out and say, “And that angel was Christ,” but they know it’s the angel of the Lord. They know it’s Yahweh, Jehovah, so they must be thinking, “Hmm.”
He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years.
Forty years and we’re still not back in the Promised Land, and that whole generation dies. But back to Moses.
This is that Moses [like we don’t know which Moses, but he wants to say something very specific]…
Moses in his farewell sermon, or nearly final, in Deuteronomy 18, says, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me. Him shall he hear.” So a greater prophet is coming. “This is he who was in the church in the wilderness,” again emphasizing Moses, the church in the wilderness – ecclesia. Yes, there was a church in the Old Testament.
…which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear. This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sinai [that would be the angel of the Lord, Jesus], and with our fathers who received the lively oracles [the word of God, the Torah and the 10 commandments] to give unto us, to whom our fathers would not obey…
…but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt…
So this is the wilderness journey, where on more than one occasion they said, “Let’s forget all this and let’s go back to Egypt. Let’s go back to bondage and to the worldly culture and the idolatry we’re used to.
You’re talking about the traditions of the fathers. Do you know how your fathers treated the prophets? Or how they treated Joseph and how they treated Moses? Oh, you want to talk about the priesthood? The first High Priest, that would be Aaron. What did he do? Set up idols while the Shekinah glory enveloped Sinai.
And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
And here is just a summary of what follows in the Torah and on into Joshua and Judges,
Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
The reference is from Amos 5. So that whole 40-year period they still were worshipping idols in their hearts. They had not given them up, and apparently if we take it at face value they actually were still carrying them around with them.
I did find Moses’ sons. What surprised me was how far apart they are. I could have sworn they were introduced at the same time, and Zipporah saves Moses’ skin with regard to circumcising both of them, but I only see Gershon before that.
It says that he brings his sons back to Egypt, so presumably the second son was there, but he’s not named until later.
And Zipporah said to cut off the foreskin of her son, singular with reference to Zipporah. But chapter 18 tells us Eliezer, meaning “The God of my father was my help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.”
You wanted to talk about ritual. Let’s go past the temple and let’s go all the way back to the tabernacle. Yes, they had it while they were making the golden calf, while they were worshipping Moloch and their other gods, while they were resisting Moses and wanting to go back to Egypt. Sure, there was the tabernacle there.
…as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen.
That is, he had seen a vision of heaven and was duplicating it architecturally.
Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David…
So God’s not failing. God’s keeping his promises. He just took a very, very long time. They’re in the promised land. They finally have inherited it. Joshua broke the resistance, but we have the whole book of Judges, another 300 years, then Saul, then finally David – so 300 + 40 + whatever.
…who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.
You can almost hear the crowd – “Get on with it. Get on with it. A temple, finally, all right. Took you long enough. I don’t know what all that was about, but yes, there was this temple.”
Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things?
It’s a building. It’s stone and gems. God doesn’t dwell in such things. It took God long enough to come up with it. We could do the math. It’s 430 years from Abraham to the exodus. Then it’s 480 or 490 to Solomon’s temple. It took them that long.
“We’ve got a temple.” It’s not going to last very long. It’s going to last for about 400 years before the Babylonians destroy it, but that’s okay because God doesn’t dwell in a temple made with hands.
Probably what’s happening here – we’re not told but Stephen seems to break off. “I could go further, but let’s hit the punchline.”
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?
He doesn’t bother going through Kings and Chronicles and all that. He just sums it up. “I don’t need the details. You know what your fathers did to the prophets.” In fact, Jesus would say, “You pride yourself that you would not have done what your fathers did. ‘If we had been alive in the days of our fathers we would not have killed the prophets,’ and yet you garnish their tombs. How fitting. They killed them, you build their tombs,” just before he pronounces the destruction of Jerusalem.
Upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
Stephen is basically again echoing our Lord. It’s the same argument. The gloves are off here. “You’re not listening, obviously. Let me just tell it like it is and get this over with. You, from your fathers to the present, have resisted the Holy Ghost and his revelation. You’ve resisted the prophets and persecuted them. You’ve slain them which showed before the coming of the Just One, all the prophets who prophesied of the righteous one, the Messiah. You killed them and now, concerning Messiah, you have now been the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the disposition of angels [angels helped deliver the law at Sinai], and have not kept it.”
“Basically, let’s get over this charade. You’re not caring about the holiness of God. You’ve all resisted the prophets. The land was never that big a deal. The temple was never that big a deal. And even when you had them, you worshiped idols right alongside of them, and killed everybody who told you where this was going, to Messiah. Then Messiah came and you killed him.”
“You want to blame me for blaspheming Moses? Your forefathers rejected Moses.”
His sermon, particularly his summary, is quite the argument for the continuity of the covenants and of the scriptures, because he calls them uncircumcised, meaning outside the covenant. They do not bear the true mark. They are not God’s people, but it’s because they reject the Holy Ghost, which means the Holy Ghost was also at work in the Old Testament bringing the same message. All the prophets spoke by him, just as we speak by him.
The pattern of rejecting him has always been the case for unbelievers, and he’s simply saying, “You are like everyone else outside the covenant, not believing the oracles of God, and that leaves you in a state of complete judgement. You’ve resisted everything that would save you. You’re doing exactly what you want.”
This is an interesting verse that comes up when we talk about Calvinism vs Arminianism because people use this as an example of, “Look, you can resist the Holy Spirit,” but that’s not Stephen’s argument at all. It’s more, “You’re doing exactly what you want, and the Holy Spirit has been at work through all these things and it’s your fault for missing it. You’re not stopping his work.”
That’s the other point because all these things have continued on even without the current system being in place. Before Abraham, he received circumcision before he even had Isaac. He didn’t have a temple or a tabernacle or the law or any of those things, and yet he was in the covenant and a member of this whole community.
What I think is very important then in that context is to see the fact that in the book of Acts, the primary adversary to the gospel and to the church as a whole is the Jewish people. It’s not the Romans. They’re going to come later, for sure, but they actually end up saving key members of the church at key moments, particularly Paul in his Roman citizenship.
The Jews are the ones who are constantly either here, or even when Paul is out on his missionary journeys, that will be trying to stir up trouble most of all, and follow him around, and because of envy again, when they start seeing Gentiles come in, they can’t handle that kind of church.
And he always went to the Jews first before going to the Gentiles. He waited for them to reject him before he took the message elsewhere.
As we talk about the Jewish people, let me add one adjective, lest we be misunderstood – the apostate Jewish people. This is not an ethnic or racist issue of which race is good and which race is bad.
No, this has to do with formal covenant standing before Jerusalem fell. Here God is still maintaining the outward forms with his ancient covenant people. They have 40 years to figure that out, just as Israel did in the wilderness, and during that time God has a new people and he’s blending them together.
The door is still open to old Israel and God’s inviting them, and many do come in. But those who don’t, who dig in their heels and use their old covenant standing as a platform for rejecting the gospel, these are the ones who persecute the church, beginning with crucifying our Lord, and now here persecuting Stephen. He says, “And you’ve always done this.”
The greatest enemies of grace have always come from within the church. The Gentiles – sure, they bring in their legions and their crosses and their stakes and their lions and their colosseums, and the church knows exactly what it’s dealing with. “Oh, you’re the bad guys and you’ve come to kill us. Okay, well, this is easy. Let us tell you about Jesus before we die.”
But it’s those within the church who try to pervert the message, who try to bend things back to a covenant of works, which the law never was, but that’s how apostate Israel perceived it. It’s a question of having the right blood. Talk about who was racist, it was apostate Israel. They thought it was about blood.
John the Baptist told them, “No. Don’t say within yourselves ‘We have Abraham to our father.’ God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’”
“But that’s impossible. How could God make stones to be genetically descended from Abraham?” He can’t, but he can give them the faith of Abraham and that’s what matters.
At this point it’s about to get really violent. We have one more chapter of hesitation and then, after a phrase, all hell is going to break loose in the person of Saul of Tarsus. Apostate Israel is first going to try to destroy the church by outward violence, and then we’ll move to the Judaizers who try to destroy it from within. They’ll stir up the Gentiles where they can, and then preach a false gospel when that’s a better avenue. And that’s the book of Acts.
Aside from Roman officials being corrupt and taking bribes, Rome is not out to get the church yet. That will come later and we’ll get to that, because this is a history podcast and we want to talk about the Roman persecutions eventually.
We sure do. I’ve got to tell you, that’s not the greatest teaser to leave the episode on, although I think that is where we have to stop for tonight. So teaser – Jesus wins. We’ll end on that note instead, and let’s wrap up with some recommendations.
Read your Bibles. I started reading the Bible when I was 16. My parents had gotten me a new Bible, and a friend of ours, a Christian cartoonist, had put my name in really nicely in a cartoony sort of way. I thought, “I’ve always thought I should…” so at 16 I started reading. Until the year I married, I read it at least once a year. When I got married I got kind of lost for it, and it’s not my wife’s fault. I was just not disciplined with someone else in the house.
Yes, a shake up of routine, but then I saw her faithful in her reading and I thought, “I’ve got to get back on this,” so since then I’ve tried to read it through at least once a year. Of course, if I’m teaching in a particular book or something I will read that particular book more than once. And yet, we had evidence tonight that I forget things. I’ve read it 40-some times or more, maybe 50 times, and I still forget. That’s why we keep reading it.
With some people you ask them, “How about this book? You should really love it!”
“Yeah, I read that,” meaning I read it once and I will never read it again, because why would you do such a thing?
I understand people who don’t love reading saying that, but you can’t say that about the Bible because the Bible is quick and powerful. It’s alive and full of spiritual power, and it’s what the Holy Spirit uses to change us and transform us. We have to read it with the goal of understanding and a goal to remembering; therefore, we keep reading it over and over and over again.
Honestly, a lot of the heresies that plague the church would disappear not in the light of systematic theology, but in the simple light of, “I can think of five verses that say exactly the opposite, because I just got through reading them over the last few months.”
Here’s another example of one of those things. I haven’t read through the Bible as many times as I’ve read through Genesis, because I usually start reading through the Bible and then fail somewhere in the middle, but I usually get through Genesis.
I was in Genesis at the beginning of the year, of course, and came to chapter 32, verses 1 and 2, and I was like, “These have never been here before. Who are you?” It says, “Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them he said, ‘This is God’s host,” and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.” Then he meets with Esau and everything.
Then later when he wrestles the angels it’s like the host of heaven has just been hanging out there. They knew the angels were there, but they’ve been there the whole time. It’s like, “What? This was never part of my mental picture!” So yes, read and re-read, because there’s always something that was not there before.
And thereby no doubt many tales. I don’t know how many times my wife and I have said to each other over the years, “I just discovered this verse. It was not there before.” We get sleepy, we get distracted. I don’t know what the official statistic is, but when you read something, half the time your mind is elsewhere.
Someone has actually argued that the reason we read is to think about what we’ve read. If the author is pulling us in and telling a good story or making a good conversation, constantly we’ll be interrupting with, “Wow, that’s interesting,” and our mind will go off. Then we’ll come back…
And our eyes are still going. I think this happened to me today or yesterday. “How did I get here? I don’t remember what just happened. I mean I know what happened, I don’t remember the words, though. Go back five verses…oh that! Oh, okay. Got that.” You never get too old.
There’s a story of a little kid who sees his grandpa on the porch in the rocking chair reading his Bible constantly. Grandpa is getting really old, and the little boy says, “Grandpa, why are you always reading your Bible?” Grandpa says, “I’m studying for final exams.”
Let’s all keep studying. God will make it plain, but let’s give him something to work with.
I’m going to double down on a really ancient recommendation from Bryan way back in the day. I believe at one point he recommended the band named The Arcadian Wild. I’ve listened to them kind of on and off for years, but I heard a new song of theirs in a concert recording. The song came to my mind at an important moment recently and I couldn’t find it anywhere. It’s not on Spotify, it’s not on any of their albums, so I was like, “I just need to hear the song again!” because it was important to me.
So I reached out to the band, went to their website and sent them an email like, “Here’s the story. Thank you for the song. Please can I listen to it again?” and they said yes. They sent me an email. I woke up to an email the next morning saying, “Thank you for sharing your story with us. Here’s the song. It’s not out yet. It’s unreleased.” That was super kind of them.
It was from the songwriter Lincoln and it was just a super sweet email and I really appreciated them. So it’s not only a great song that will be released eventually, but they’re also very wonderful people.
I’m going to give a recommendation from my husband, David. He has been exploring different young adult fiction series by Christian authors recently, and he came across one that he liked and it’s by someone that we’ve all heard of, not as a novelist but as a musician, and that is Andrew Peterson. He just finished the Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson and really enjoyed it. Apparently, there’s a show or something? We have not found that yet.
Recommendation: Wingfeather SagaYes. I think Season 4 was just released. It’s from Angel Studios. It’s supposed to be really good.
He said, “It is definitely for younger 8-12 year olds, and also his writing gets better as he goes on. The fourth book is definitely the best, which is the last book.” Overall he really enjoyed it, and he’s enjoying exploring some of these books as things he can recommend to the young people in our church. We have a lot of 8- to 12-year-old kids who want to read, but their parents don’t always know what to let them read, so he was able to recommend it to some of the parents this last week, and found out one of the families had already found that.
So if you have ‘tweens or if you just enjoy a good story and children’s books, you can go see a different side of Andrew Peterson.
We started reading those together at one point. It was just before we had kids and the style was just a little too young for me at that time. I was like, “I would really like to revisit these books and come back and try them again when I have a child,” so in a few years Gretchen and I will read them.
Thank you both so much for this conversation. It’s been a delight, as always, and I look forward to next time. A big thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband, and to our transcriptionist, who donates her time to make the transcripts available for you.
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