Outloud Bible Project Podcast
Mike Domeny, actor, author, and founder of Outloud Bible Project (outloudbible.com), reads the Bible out loud in a conversational and approachable way so you can read the Bible like it makes a difference! This isn't simply an audiobook version of the Bible! Every episode offers helpful context so you won't get lost, and a brief takeaway to help apply that reading to your life.
Want to invite Mike to read Scripture at your event or gathering? Visit outloudbible.com.
Starting with episode 279, the Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® https://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved
Outloud Bible Project Podcast
Living Outloud: Matthew 22-25
We explore how Jesus's teachings in Matthew 22-25 challenge us to focus less on predicting His return and more on loving others in His name while we wait.
• Jesus warns against trying to predict the date of His return (Matthew 24:42)
• The danger of rapture date predictions is causing new believers to fall away when dates pass
• True readiness for Christ's return isn't about knowing when, but faithfully serving while we wait
• Urgency in evangelism should come from people's mortality, not speculation about the rapture
• Jesus bookends His teachings with the greatest commandment and the sheep and goats parable
• We demonstrate love for God by how we love and serve others
• Beware of self-serving Christianity that focuses on personal spirituality at others' expense
• When Christ returns, He wants to find us actively loving others in His name
• Reading the Bible on paper rather than digitally can help minimize distractions
• Our "faith journey" should be less about ourselves and more about who we're loving in Jesus's name
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Check out outloudbible.com for helpful study resources, and to discover how to bring the public reading of God's word to your church, conference, retreat, or other event.
Hey, welcome back to Out Loud Bible Project Podcast. This is Living Out Loud with Mike and Kelsey. Hello, that's Kelsey and I'm Mike. I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 1:Hey, we are going to sit down, like we do every Friday here on Living Out Loud, to talk about what we read in this podcast earlier in the week, to talk about just taking it a little bit further and doing something about it. We hope every time we open the Bible, that we don't just try to take in information, but we seek out transformation. We want to be changed by the Word of God. We want to have it affect how we live our lives. So we're sitting down and I hope you are too. I mean, if you're listening to this as you're driving, hey, drive safely, get to your destination. That's great. That's awesome If you're able to just sit down with a Bible and join us in this conversation.
Speaker 1:I think that's awesome. We've got our Bibles open so you may hear us flipping some pages. That's cool. By the way, get a paper Bible, get into it. The Bible on the phone is super convenient. It's great for pulling something up on the fly when you're out and about. But if I can just challenge you a little bit, if you're not already? Use a paper Bible, a physical Bible, for your daily reading and your daily devotion. Reading the Bible isn't going to notify you about something else. It's not one or two taps away from other things that you love. Just allow yourself to be interrupted by the Holy Spirit, but that's the only interruption that matters.
Speaker 2:And I don't know about you, but my phone gets me into scrolling mindlessly mode, so I don't want to scroll mindlessly through the Word of God, and so that really is for me why I prefer reading in a paper Bible, because even reading the Bible on my phone, I just kind of get into that, my thumbs swiping up right, and I'm just kind of mindlessly taking it in, as opposed to remembering what I'm actually dealing with, which is the Word of God.
Speaker 1:Scrolling through the long chapter of Matthew 24 feels the same as scrolling through your Facebook feed or Reddit. It's like the same action, so let's just separate it.
Speaker 2:Setting it aside and making it holy right. Holy by definition meaning set apart. Let the holy Word of God, the set-apart Word of God, be set apart from how you're doing the rest of your life and how you're engaging with the rest of the world and content. So paper Bible, here we go. Here's your plug.
Speaker 1:This week on the podcast we covered chapters of Matthew chapter 22, 23, 24, 25. And there's a lot going on in Matthew. Jesus is really getting quite serious here. It's toward the end of his life and so he's just saying some of those things that are like I mean, I could have told you this earlier, but you weren't ready for it, it didn't apply to you as much as you're ready to receive this and do something about it now. So he gets kind of serious.
Speaker 2:I have a red letter Bible where Jesus's words are in red letters. And like all these pages are just all red.
Speaker 1:There's just a lot of Jesus teaching.
Speaker 2:So for us to think that we can dive into and have a discourse on how to apply and live out loud the words of Jesus in these four chapters would be ridiculous. For us to claim that we're going to get through everything. We've got like 15 or 20 minutes you know.
Speaker 1:So we're not going to cover it all, but I will start with a conversation that I had, just yesterday actually, with a friend of mine. He's a teenager and he texted me and he said, hey, what's going on with like the Christian rapture thing? Like it's on TikTok and there was a kind of a little buzz around school about it, something about a rapture today. What's up with that? And so it was very fitting because it ties directly to what Jesus talks about here Matthew, chapters 23 and 24, about the end times and was able to reassure him. He's a new Christian, he's trying to figure out what everything's about.
Speaker 1:I said, okay, so every once in a while there are people who try to figure out when Jesus is going to come back and they say, oh, I think he's going to come back on this date. I don't know how they get that date, but sometimes those dates kind of stick and circulate and get a lot of people thinking about that particular date. And the thing is, this is not anything new. Like just because it's on TikTok does not mean that it's a new thing or a new trend Like this has been happening for well since Jesus said he would return. So like 2000 years. People have these ideas of oh, I think he's going to come back this time or this date or whatever.
Speaker 1:And when we were growing up there were posters on like telephone poles around town that would say the rapture is coming. And I just remember it like a red cross with blue letters or something like that, and it was a date that came and went and then the poster sat there on the street corner looking silly for days, months sometimes, until it was taken down and inevitably replaced with some other poster with another date. That has since come and gone. But we're able to kind of talk a little bit about like what to do about this, because there's a problem with proposing dates that the rapture is going to happen and buying into the whirlwind of it.
Speaker 2:Because Matthew 24, 42 specifically says be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.
Speaker 1:That's the truth From.
Speaker 2:Jesus's mouth? We don't know.
Speaker 1:No one's going to know from Jesus's mouth.
Speaker 2:We don't know, no one's going to know. Whenever I hear, like whenever I hear someone claim that they know the date Jesus is coming back, the date of the rapture, I'm like, oh so that day's off the table, then Great, yeah, come on, you ruined it, we can plan a wedding for that day, because that day's not going to Jesus won't come back.
Speaker 1:Don't cancel your doctor appointment for the next day Like just keep it. And also I'm just like come on, guys, jesus could have come back that day.
Speaker 2:But now he won't, now he won't, just to spite you.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's how he thinks, but you know, my friend was saying like there's TikTok influencers, evangelist-type people saying, hey, repent before Jesus comes back on this day. And the danger with that is that you may have some new converts who are like, oh, I don't want to get left behind, or whatever, who convert. But then the date comes and goes and then they have a lot of good reason to just abandon this whole Jesus thing because it's like, oh well, that didn't happen, that wasn't true. What else isn't true? Probably the whole thing. And then they leave and it's going to be a lot harder to win them back for Jesus later. And that's the real danger.
Speaker 1:And as Christians it's not our responsibility to either initiate or circulate or buy into these dates of when Jesus could come back. Our job is to know the truth. What does it say? In this section of Matthew, chapter 24 especially, Jesus says A you're not going to know the date. No one knows the date. The angels don't know the date. He even kind of implies he doesn't know the date. Only God, the Father, does. To make the point, you're not going to know when it is. By the way, this is a good thing. Christians can and should look forward to Jesus coming back, but we have responsibilities in the meantime, and Jesus says in the meantime be ready, Live basically every day, as if I am coming back today and live faithfully, be ready. The rapture should not be the thing that we're like this is giving me urgency to win people to Christ.
Speaker 1:No, every day should have that urgency. You don't know when their last day is.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:The more important that's. The more important thing is you don't know when someone's going to die, right. That's, I think, more of a threat to their salvation than Jesus coming back, because, depending on your eschatology, you may believe that people will have a chance to be saved after the rapture does happen. That's a whole other discussion, so there is urgency to it, but the more urgent thing is we're not guaranteed another breath, and that should give us urgency, day by day, to reach more and more people with the truth and the gospel. So the fact that Jesus is coming back, it's definitely something to look forward to and it should give us some sense of urgency, but that's not the motivating factor.
Speaker 2:I think it should give us a sense of responsibility. Yeah, Because Jesus talks over. Like his parables here that he's using in this chunk of scripture are like a servant left in charge while his master's away and the master's coming back. And what is the master going to find of the servant when the master comes back? Right, and so like there is an urgency, but like I agree with you that the urgency really is that people are dying and they need to know Jesus before they die. That's the urgency. The fact that Jesus is coming back gives us responsibility. We have something to do while he's gone and when he comes back, what is he going to find of us?
Speaker 1:You know what is he tries to really bring home in his parable of the 10 virgins, the bridesmaids, the parable of the talents and just his teachings of being ready. So what does it look like to be ready?
Speaker 2:And I think that answer is really book-ending this chunk that we're in this week between chapters 22 to 25. That's convenient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it works together. In chapter 22, jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all of your soul. This is the greatest and foremost commandment. The second is, like it, love your neighbor as yourself. That's chapter 22, verse 37 through 39. Then all the way in chapter 25, the end of the chunk that we're talking about today is the talk about where Jesus is talking about separating the sheep from the goats and saying whatever you have done to the least of these, you've done to me. However you have taken care of, however you've loved your neighbor has been like you've been doing it to me. These verses could almost be right next to each other, but instead of being next to each other, they're bookending these other conversations about the end times. Jesus is coming back. Be ready.
Speaker 1:You don't know when.
Speaker 2:It's also bookending. In the middle of this section is the talk about the Pharisees living very hypocritically.
Speaker 1:Woe to these cities that like hey, jesus has been teaching and performing miracles and you weren't responding.
Speaker 2:There's all this conversation about what not to do, what it doesn't look like to be loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, what it does look like to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 2:As we see the end times approaching, knowing that Jesus is coming back, knowing that our master is returning, how is he going to find his servants serving self? As we see the end times approaching, knowing that Jesus is coming back, knowing that our master is returning, how is he going to find his servants serving? Well, we ought to be serving one another. We ought to be serving our neighbor. We ought to be loving our neighbor. We ought to not be living like the religious pious putting it on for show kind of people like the Pharisees were. We ought to be living and loving people and if Jesus comes back, finding us living a life that is serving the least of these, if he comes back and finds us loving our neighbor as ourself, while we love God with all of our heart, our mind and our soul, like then that's when he's pleased with what he finds, when he comes home, or when he comes back to take us home with what he finds when he comes home or when he comes back to take us home.
Speaker 1:I think that kind of struck me was the idea of serving here, in that Jesus's conclusion to the matter, here kind of combining the idea of the greatest commandment and the end times discussion, because I see the Pharisees as ultimately serving themselves, and we kind of have that phrase of serving yourself like as a arrogant or self-serving, like just I don't know, providing for yourself and making sure that all your needs are met, not caring about other people, which is true, but I think it's easy to be like, well, I don't do that. But I think self-serving also can look like helping yourself be set up for some future, that in the meantime, as you're doing that, you're not actually serving other people, like serving your own religious needs or serving your own spiritual needs in the sense of like, well, I'm going to do what I can do now to make sure I'm right with God. I mean, how else would you end up like a goat, being like ah, lord, here we are, please let me in. And for him to be like what?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't even know who you are.
Speaker 1:They're like. What are you talking about? I've been spending my whole life for this moment, like to be able to tell you that I'm here, like I've been. I've even been, you know. I've had you in mind this whole time. I've been living my life for this moment.
Speaker 1:But Jesus is making it clear. No, living your life for the moment where you get to meet Jesus face to face is less about getting all your spiritual ducks in a row and crossing off your religious to-do list and giving enough and serving enough and whatever. It's about loving him by loving other people. Like John the Baptist is like I need to become less. He needs to become more. And I think the more we obsess over our own rightness with God, I think the more off track we get when rightness with God comes from not thinking about yourself at all. Go read the Bible and let it drive you to loving and serving other people, and in doing that, jesus is like whatever you do for them. That counts. That counts as if you did it for me. If you're focused on what you can do for me at the expense of doing what I actually told you to do, then you're not doing anything for me. That's what we can do in the meantime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how can we be serving God and loving other people focusing less on our faith journey? Like I think in Christian circles we talk a lot about our faith journey and like it becomes very self-centered when it's like my journey with Jesus, my faith journey, my walk with Christ.
Speaker 1:Nothing wrong in and of itself, but it can easily slip into very well, like we were saying, self-serving right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:In a very Christian-y sounding right sort of way.
Speaker 2:Right, and so perhaps your faith journey, my faith journey, my walk with Jesus, is actually less about me and more about who am I loving in the name of Jesus, and that ought to be convicting for anyone who hasn't shared the gospel today.
Speaker 2:You know, as someone and I'm included in that boat right Like I need to be more bold with my faith.
Speaker 2:I need to be more loving of people by sharing the love of Christ with them and not just sitting behind a microphone, doing a podcast or teaching on a Sunday or speaking or writing books. But maybe those things that we're doing to help the church at large needs to take less of a focus than loving the people right directly in front of us and serving the people right directly in front of us, our neighbors, the people we meet in a grocery store, the cashier behind the counter just asking the Lord to help us love them and share the gospel boldly. And that's what I want Jesus to come back and find when he comes back for me, Whether I meet him because I die and I meet him up in heaven at the pearly gates, or whether I meet him because he's come back in my lifetime and he swoops me up whenever it is. I want him to have seen me loving him by telling people about him, not just loving him by doing things for him. That's a line I'm drawing today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Jesus is coming back and there is an urgency to introduce him to as many people as possible, not because he could come back today, but because all of our time is short and the emphasis that we see here in Matthew 22 through 25 is love.
Speaker 1:Love him by loving people, and let our love for him motivate us to do what we got to do and reach the people that he loves. And, yeah, when he comes back he'll find us faithful, because we're responsible with the time. Well, I feel like that's about as good as we can unpack in about 15 or 20 minutes of a conversation. There's obviously a lot more, but hey, dig into the Bible. I hope this is not your only interaction with the Bible this week today, and if something else strikes you, let us know. Reach out through the website outloudbiblecom. We'd love to hear what God's been teaching you and doing in your life as well, and we look forward to concluding the book of Matthew next week on the podcast and one discussion to kind of wrap up. The wrap up of the gospel of Matthew Should be a lot of.
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