"Unfiltered The Bible We Don't Talk About" Week 1

Week One of "Unfiltered: The Bible We Don't Talk About" came in strong as Jeremy Ruiz, Next Gen Director, unpacked the raw and riveting story of Phineas. This message confronts complacency head‑on and reminds us that passion for God isn’t passive—it’s bold, decisive, and transformative. If you’re ready for a series that doesn’t shy away from the hard stories, this is the perfect place to start.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Oh, come on. That was just Heather and Heather alone. Good morning, man of church. Alright, there we go. Thank you, worship team. They'll be back up in a little bit. Hey, I want to give everybody a disclaimer. We're starting a new series called Unfiltered. So we're going to talk about some stuff. Middle school parents, I'm giving you like two minutes. Make up your mind. Maybe you want to step out for a little bit. I'm just giving you a little disclaimer. We're going to talk about some fun stuff, but I'll give you like one to two minutes to make up your mind. If you don't know me, I'm the next gen director. Um, and I think two weeks ago, we took some kids out to North Carolina. I don't know if anybody knew, but there was a hurricane uh that hit Asheville and that area two years ago uh in September 2024. On September 27th, early in the morning, there was a storm passing, and the night before it rained all night. So the ground got super, super wet. And if you know Asheville, it's all mountains. So the ground got super, super wet, and then Hurricane Helene came in and swept almost everything off the mountaintops down uh down into the city of the place of Batcave. That's a real place we learned. It's called Batcave, and uh it's really cool, and I have some photos to show you. You all pied me in the face like three months ago just to send these kids on a missions trip. So I figured we'd show you some photos. Asher, you could put up day one. Day one, we partnered with Convoy of Hope. Um, we've done some mission uh trips with them, we've done some serve days with them, we've bagged groceries with them, and actually they're right now boots on the ground in Venezuela doing um disaster relief. So we actually got to partner with them and some small ministry partners to do a bunch of uh boxes. They were they had these big pallets of Amazon products, and we were told to bag 500 bags of just random essentials. And our teens are so crazy that they went and did 800 and blew everybody away. It was crazy. The next day, day two, we got to help a man. Asher, you could put that up. This man right here, this old man next to Dinah, he lives on the mountainside. It's literally just like mountain, his house, mountain, a little like it steps up and down, and that night during the hurricane, it went and swept away part of his house. That rock is literally the edge of his house. He said he had two feet left after the hurricane was done. Two feet of front yard, and then he would have gone straight off a mountain. So we helped him build his retaining wall and uh build a little thing so he can see the edge of his driveway and the edge of the cliff. Day three, we went into chimney rock, the heart of where all the disaster was, and we actually got to help uh help this inn be restored. I remember Ben Houth, six foot tall, in this hole, just slinging gravel, trying to level out this basement. It was really cool, and we got to see that big peak up there. You'll see a view from up there, but we spent a lot of time in the heart and got to see all the destruction. Day four, Thursday, we went around and we helped uh just a bunch of people that were in need. We had no plan except to go and help the people. So we went up top of this mountain. We helped these couple that have not been back in their house yet. It's been almost two years. They had no walls, it was just all outer, outer walls, no insulation. They took everything out due to mold. And uh, we helped them, and on our way down, there was this cool little mill market. It was like an abandoned market. So we went to take a photo in front of that, and this guy in the back, all happy, he came out and he's like, Hey man, you want to take a photo in uh in my backyard? I got myself a nice waterfall. And we're like, You just bought that? And what you can get that at Costco? So we went in his backyard and it had this great waterfall. So we got to actually pray for him. We got to pray for the people above him, and we just went around to a couple places, and and the teens really stepped out of their comfort zone and got to pray for people. And day five, we got to clean out the warehouse that we were working at, but then we got to go on this amazing hike on top of chimney rock. It was crazy long. I commend all the teens for making that hike up and the two-mile hike to a waterfall. Uh, good job, everybody that went. And this house that we passed, I saw it, I couldn't get a photo of it, but I found a photo. It's almost two years later, and the destruction is still there. Rocks are in the middle of the road, there's boulders everywhere. Houses are still destroyed, but in all that, we kind of noticed one house. Asher, you could put that house up. It's got no backyard anymore. And in the front, it says, still here, still standing. Your students got the opportunity to be a part of that. Asheville, Chimney Rock, Batcave is still here and still standing, thanks to your partnership and all the students. So we just give a round of applause to the students wherever they're at. Good job, everybody. That was enough time. Parents, you've made up your mind. You're here. We're starting this new series called Unfiltered. And I think parents, uh, being a child once, a long time ago, you guys do a really good job of filtering stuff. Filtering stuff that your students see, your students hear, your kids see, your kids hear. And I remember um when I was growing up, I grew up in New York, if anybody didn't know, very different place than here. Like I just hear a lot of country music and stuff out here. We don't listen to that in New York. Listen to some rap. And I remember driving with my dad. I may have been Uriah's age, like I may have been fifth or sixth grade, and uh, I'm driving in the car, my dad turns on the radio, and Eminem is playing. And yeah, you might be like, ooh, but my dad knew that the radio would censor it out. Like there would not be any of those bad words, so he let it play and he introduced me, knowing the censorship that was coming. And I fell in love with it until I got this iPod shuffle. All these kids have no clue what that is. I had an iPod shuffle, and I was allowed to use LimeWire, also, you have no clue what that is, to download songs, and I and my my dad let me download a bunch of MM songs that were clean, that had no curse words in it. And for the longest time I grew up thinking that was the normal version. Like for some reason the track just stopped halfway through to like collapse and nothing else happened for about a minute and then it picked back up. I thought that was normal. And it wasn't until I was like fifth or sixth grade where I started like pushing for more and more songs. I remember I can't tell you the name, but I asked my dad and my mom for this song, saying confidently, there's no curse words in it. And I laugh at it now because it is so bad. But I was so censored that I didn't even know what curse words were. I was like, mom, dad, this has no curse words. And they laughed in my face when they went and heard it. And then finally, about sixth, seventh grade, I went and I was able to download my own music. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna get those songs that I once listened to, and I'm gonna make sure that little E is right there. And that rocked my world. Totally different song. It was a totally different song. And to be honest, it kind of filled up the parts that were muted. Like it kind of gave it a whole different meaning. Parents, you do a really good job at making sure your kids are censored, they know what's coming in and out. And I think, to be honest, we all do a really good job at that with the Bible. And sometimes that's not the best thing. I mean, veggie tales. If you don't know what veggie tails is, it's a cartoon about vegetables that tell you stories about God for about 30 years. And for about 15 years of my life, I honestly thought that King David wanted a rubber ducky on somebody else's roof. Until about 15, when I read the Bible, it wasn't a rubber ducky, it was a woman. And then King David had that husband killed for that woman. No rubber duckies involved. I dare VeggieTales to make a story about Sodom and Gomorrah. You will never see that happen. We've overlooked and over-censored the Bible so much that when we get to provocative and crazy stories like we're gonna read today in the next couple weeks, that we sometimes may have moved past it too quick or may have not understood, or maybe we just totally missed it altogether. But it's super important that we go back and read these stories, especially with a childlike mind. There's a verse in Matthew 18, 2 through 4. It says, He called a little child to him and placed the child among them. And he said, Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children. Say little children. Thank you. You will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I just want to encourage some people today as we go about these next couple weeks. Let's just have the faith of a child, the mind of a child. We don't know God, I am I, and he is he. So we're gonna read some crazy things, and you may not understand it, but God has a purpose for it all. Can we agree on that? Yes. So I'm gonna give you some background to what we're gonna read about today. The Israelites, they've been walking for about 40 years now. They're in their last year of the wilderness. Aaron has died, he is the head priest. Most of the unbelieving generation has passed. That was those who did not follow God, God's call to go into the promised land. They are all gone. Israel is constantly winning in the sights of man. Victory. They got food, they got water, they're constantly being provided for, but yet they are still at odds with God constantly. Like they're constantly attacking other nations, but constantly attacking leadership, constantly getting food from heaven, constantly complaining about food from heaven, constantly physically following God, but constantly looking at other idols. But yet God's provision still rests on the people. He still has favor on them. And through all that, they're constantly running back to what makes them comfortable, constantly moving back to what makes them comfortable, and it's annoying sometimes to read. Like, why are we still going back to this stuff? But to be honest, how often do we do that? Like, we hear what Pastor Jake has to say, and then throughout the week we go back to what's comfortable. We're gonna read out of Numbers 25. If you have your Bible, you can turn to that, or you can read the Bible in the sky. Numbers 25, verse 1 through 3 says, While Israel was staying in Shidam, told you he was gonna be provocative, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meat and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Pior, and the Lord's anger burned against them. It says the people yoked themselves. They bound themselves to Baal. He was a Canaanite god who required sexual sacrifices and worship to him. So the Israelite men they start sleeping with the women of Moab, and they gradually cross three different lines of relationships with them. The first one is they have crossed spiritual relationships. They have such a calloused heart towards God that they would turn to another God, another little G God. They move past spiritual relationships and they get into physical relationships. The men cross physical boundaries with women they were not supposed to cross. It was actually against the law to do this. They were all supposed to be just flat out without any more. They were supposed to be killed for what they did. Physical relationships then move to emotional relationships. Physical acts create emotional bonds. Ephesians 5 says that two join and become one flesh. The men aren't just invested in what they can get. They are now emotionally invested and then spiritually invested also. The Israelites, they start coming to adultery, they start committing adultery and sexual sin because they have already opened up their hearts to adultery against God. I think God is more upset in this moment when we commit adultery against him and we have a lack of reverence for our own sin. Like if God is not in your heart, then whatever is will pull you away further and further from him. So my question to you today is what is pulling you away from God? Maybe you're sleeping with somebody you're not married to. Maybe you're married and you're like, ah man, that doesn't apply to me. I'm not cheating on my wife. But are you following God? Are you committing adultery with God in your heart? Maybe I'm fine, like I'm fine. I'm following God. I come to church, I'm not cheating on my wife. What about your friends, your inner circle? Are they pointing you towards God or are they pulling you away? People with bad influences, bad values, bad godly character and judgment. This applies to everybody in this room, and we hammer it towards kids, but it doesn't matter if you're five or you're fifty, your inner circle will pull you away. Sin starts secretly. It forms in the depths of our hearts, and it's shaped by what we allow around us. But it slowly pushes the guides of our hearts and allows sin in. Not having God be the priority of our heart will let whatever else in and keep God out. And the Israelites have been slowly doing that over forty years. And now the Moabite women have made their way into the camp. And since the Israel Israelite hearts are so void of God, they allow whatever to come in. The Israelites have now built this culture of sexual sin with Baal, along with spiritual idolatry against God, and now God's anger is burning against them. Numbers twenty five, verse four through five. So Moses said to the Israel's judges, Each of you must put to death those of your people who have yoked themselves to the Baal of Pior. Spiritual adultery is now the culture of the Israelites. Physical adultery is happening. Emotional connections and spiritual bonds have been made. Baal is now the culture of the Israelites. God has had enough of this, and he commands Moses to kill the leaders of the people. God's response to sin against him is to judge the leaders of the people. The people who are supposed to keep you accountable, don't worry, I will now keep them accountable, kill them. And the people who are committing the sin, we're gonna see, I will judge them. You judge the leaders, I'll judge the people. Kill them in broad daylight. This is why leadership matters. Leadership is important. The leaders knew better, yet they they let the people just run astray and do whatever they want. So judgment needs to be made against the leaders. This could be a point where our adult brains are like, man, that's kind of harsh. Like, did the re did the leaders really need to be killed? Well, God told a nation what to do, and the nation is falling away. The nation of Israel needed to be accountable for what they're doing. And notice how God says, so that the Lord's fierce anger may turn from them. A lot of times when we read stories like this, we get caught up in oh, he's got to kill all the leaders. How about all the people he saved? So God's anger may turn away from them. Like he could have just totally done a Noah 2.0 style event and just wiped everybody out. But instead, God's justness says, You keep them accountable, the leaders, I'll take care of the people. Judgment needs to happen. And we see what happens. God sends a plague to strike the Israelites. In Psalm 106, it says they yoked themselves, the Bale of Pior, and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods. They aroused the Lord's anger by their wicked deeds, and a plague broke out among them. God already took action before he needed Moses to take action. He sends down a plague, and we don't know what it was, but we know the effect, and we're gonna go look and see the total effect it has. God is just, and he calls out sin through his actions, and now he needed to call it out through the actions of Moses. Numbers twenty-five, verse six, it says, Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel, while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Israel is assembled at the tent of meeting. This is where God would come down and talk to man. They are weeping and crying and begging God to stop this plague. The plague has been devastating, and people are desperate to get out of it. At least some people are desperate. And as they're crying out to God, this man pridefully walks through everybody in sight of everybody. He's so blind to what's going on, and he has this Mennonite woman, and he takes her to his tent. This dude knows that he's committing a sin with her. He knows he's committing a sin against God. And this dude knows what's right and wrong, but chooses to do so regardless. This dude, his name is Zimmery, he commits intentional sin against God. Like we know what God says, we know what the Word of God says. We have the moral law of God written on our hearts, but yet we voluntarily choose to sin against him. Romans one twenty one verse twenty twenty-one through twenty-five says, For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being, and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over to their sinful desires of their hearts, to sexual impurity. Sexual impurity for the disregarding of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen. Zimri is so calloused towards God and is calling for all of Israel that he just does whatever he wants. And God has given him over to his sin. Zimmery knew of God, he knew of the laws, he knew of the sin, yet he approved it anyway. That's a hard statement to think about, and it's a hard question to answer. Have we done that before? Have we done that before? Like we knew what we were doing, we knew what God said not to do. We were caught up in the temptation and ended up stumbling. Or maybe we knew somebody else was sinning. And we knew somebody else was being tempted, and we knew somebody else was stumbling, and yet we approved of it because we didn't want to get uncomfortable. Like the more down the path we get, the more we push away, the more calluses for God build up in our hearts, and we push him out, and we are more likely to commit intentional sin against him and approve others to do the exact same thing. Zimri knew the laws, yet he hardened his heart and committed intentional sin. Zimri's leaders knew what was going on. They knew the intentional sin and they let it happen. Anyway, are there people in your life that you have left intentional sin alone and by doing so you're approving of it? Zimri has just lost all sensitivity to God. And if we allow others to build up calluses and we approve of it, we will eventually lose sensitivity too, and so will they. He has lost all sensitivity to God's judgment around him, that he pridefully walks through the assembly into his tent with a woman. Numbers twenty five, verse seven through nine. It says, When Phineas, that is our main hero, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and took a spear in hand. Phineas, he's the grandson of Aaron, he's following in Aaron's footsteps. He's a priest. He sees this guy taking this girl into a tent. So he leaves everybody. He walks and follows them, and he grabs a spear. People are crying, people are wailing, and he just goes right past them with the spear. And he followed them into the tent, the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman's stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped. Phineas gets this burning passion for sin being brought into the camp against God, and he interrupts the moment that these two are having and drives a spear straight through him, straight through her, and into the ground. And immediately the plague stops. But sin comes with a price. Again, our adult our adult minds might be like, Man, why did so many people have to die from this plague? Like, wasn't the command to just kill the leaders not enough? Like, did God really need more? Oftentimes we read stories like this and we put our own judgment on the people, when we put our own mindset on the people, we assert our own type of justice into the situation. But God is merciful here. It doesn't say that God sent a plague and it killed three million people. So many were saved because of Phineas. Everybody deserved wrath, but only 24,000 got it. We underappreciate our sin and his mercy when we read stories like this. The darkness of the story just magnifies the redemption and mercy God has for his people, and sin needed to be dealt with. Until one man, Phineas, who had so much zeal, got up, stepped up when nobody else would, when no leader wouldn't, and kept the two accountable for what they were doing. Phineas had zeal for God. Zeal is just passionate. Passionate for what God is passionate for. Zeal, Phineas knows that God is passionate for his people. So he gets this zeal, like, oh, these guys are committing sin against God. I need to go and insert myself in this situation where nobody else will. God is passionate about his people's hearts, and when they are directly being disobedient to God, we should all have a zeal to point people back towards God. Like we should have a stewardship moment where we need to point people back to what's right, even though it's uncomfortable. Where are some areas that God is calling you to have some zeal in? Like, where do you, where do I need to be more passionate about what God's passionate for? Numbers twenty-five, ten through thirteen, it says the Lord said to Moses, Phineas, son of Eliezer, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites, since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am. I did not put an end to them in my zeal. Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood because he was zealous for my honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites. God was ready to destroy everyone. But Phinehas stood in the gap. He stood in the way of sin and stopped it in its path with a spear into two people. God's response to Phineas is a covenant of peace, and all it took was somebody to stand up with zeal, with reverence for God. I want to give everybody some opportunities today, and that's why we did worship backwards. We're going to have worship after this. To think about where we all fall. Like if I'm being totally honest with you, sometimes I'm a Zimmery. And to be honest, I think at some points we all are there too, and we all can relate with Zimmery. Like, have you God so wrapped up in everything else but God that our hearts are hardened and we just engross ourselves with sin and we allow him what we shouldn't have. And in doing so, just like Zimmery, we don't see justice coming for us. Like today's the day, whether it's the first time you're hearing of this or the hundredth time you're hearing of this, justice will come. The Lord is just, and we all have something, some area that we've become callous to, and we just need to release those to God. We all have a part of Zimmery in us. So is there an area that you've become okay with sin? Today I want to give you guys an opportunity to allow God to remove some callouses from our hearts, my heart, your heart. And if you don't allow God to do the work, the only recourse is judgment. The only recourse, the only outcome is the way Phineas gives it to the people. So I have three questions for you, and I want to take some time and worship to reflect on these questions. The first one is ask God, where am I calloused? Like first, the very first thing, the very first thing we do is ask God, search me where I'm callous. Find those areas where you need to be open and to let God work and open for others to keep you accountable. And we hate that word, it's so uncomfortable sometimes, but that's what we need to be accountable. After that, after we have recognized that we are sinners and God has identified where the calluses are, we need to get around some people that will hold you accountable. When we have spots that are open, wounds that are open, we have to have people come around us that can help close those wounds. When we do all that other stuff and we allow other things to fill our hearts where God should have it, our hearts get harder and harder and more calloused and less open to God and more open to everything else. Like I've personally seen people who never hit this spot, who never got to step two, who never found accountability, and they go down the rabbit hole again because they didn't want people to hold them accountable. They didn't take it seriously, so they slipped and they fell even further than where they were at. Accountability is one of the nine healthy habits that we talk about in the first step. We absolutely need people in our lives to help us grow. And Satan really just wants all of you to think you'll be fine without it. That you can go alone. Because to be honest, that's what he did. Number three, after we have asked God where we're calloused, after we have found somebody to keep us accountable and we are in a healthy place, then and only then can we hold other people accountable. Hear me, we're not handing out spears at the door. That's not what we're trying to do here. We aren't handing out spears, but leaders, and we all are called to be leaders in some way, shape, or form. We need to keep people accountable. We need to hold people responsible for the people sinning. Where are the people in your life that have this intentional sin and they need accountability? As I talk about this, I guarantee most of you are thinking of someone, some way that this applies. We all are leaders to someone in some degree. And as leaders, we have we have to have zeal and call people out and keep people accountable. So can I just invite you guys to stand up? We did things a little backwards today, and that's because I believe we all have some work to do in our hearts, and me included. And we're just gonna get back into a time of worship, and David's gonna lead us in a time of communion. So as we go back into it, I pray that you guys would just open your hearts up, listen to what God has to say, and just surrender what is calloused to God.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.