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Was Jesus Married? Live @ Liberty - Season 3: Episode 15
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Tennis greats, dancers, mudders, and a teacher of the year! Why people don’t stay (and how you can change that). Was Jesus married?
Welcome back into live at Liberty. We are down to three Musketeers today. Apparently everybody else is busy. Yeah. So that either means we need something to do. We need to get busy. Oh, we we got nothing better to do than this podcast, right? But uh hey, we've got some important things to talk about in this podcast. In this episode, we're gonna answer the question: was Jesus married? And if he wasn't, did he experience the full brunt of temptation, including sexual temptation? This is kind of the part of that uh truth over trends we had this question sent in. That's a pretty good one and kind of brings up some old arguments. Um, so we're gonna cover that one. Uh, Liberty has a teacher of the year. Y'all know that? We got a teacher of the year. We got a lot of teachers, and I'm gonna tell you. Apparently, we got some uh pretty awesome tennis players in this church. I'm gonna tell you about them, and we got a pretty good dancer. So I'll I'll tell you about them in a minute in news and notes. We're gonna get the softball update, and then we got a busy month of May as we turn the corner getting into the summer. So let's roll here for a minute. Man, we uh not only is the church busy, but the Branams are busy, right? So this weekend, Kylie gets married. Last weekend, I uh did a marriage uh conference in Birmingham. So I went over there on Thursday night because I was on their podcast on um Friday morning. And by the way, they were talking about our podcast with about anxiety last week. Even they had seen it and was like, wow, that was that was pretty impactful. So um a lot of people have been talking about that one. So their podcast is at 7 a.m. on Friday mornings.
SPEAKER_02Do you have to watch it live?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they film it live. That's the way they do it. So yeah, it uh I am thankful for this one. We film these at 10 30 a.m. on Tuesdays, and it's not live. But man, I was thinking, you know, I'm driving uh through downtown Birmingham at 6:15 in the morning. There's no traffic in a city at 6.15 in the morning. So I thought I'm the only one out at this early going to this podcast, but they uh they do a thing that was really good. Uh good friends of ours uh from Birmingham to get to see the dollars again. But uh yeah, that's an early podcast. So did that podcast on Friday morning, and then between Friday and Saturday, I did four messages for their church, and then Sunday I showed up here with message number five in two days.
SPEAKER_01You ran out of words.
SPEAKER_00I told somebody I said you about to get scrambled eggs. That's that's what the message is gonna be. But I do want to bring up something that I said um in that in that message. And you know, at the end of Colossians chapter four, Paul finishes out with this list of names and he brings up this guy, Onesimus, who was a brother to Paul, but he was one of the Colossians. He says, Man, he's a brother to you. And so I I just kind of surmise from that that Onesimus is a connector. He is he's the one that kind of brought people together. And I made a statement that I want to talk about a little bit and maybe get y'all's input on this, but I really want to encourage our church. We don't have any issue getting people to attend liberty. Man, our I I tell you, in the 14 years I've been here, I don't think we've had a better start to the year than this one. It's just in baptisms and attendance and giving and just the energy and excitement of the church. Um, so that's never really been a problem.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it has always seemingly been a problem to get people. Some people will stay, but there's a lot of people who haven't. And um, one of the reasons I said that, I didn't say this specifically on Sunday morning. You got a diverse crowd of people that are there. We did have a woman here Sunday from Arizona, and she and going out the door, she goes, If if I was in, if I lived here and uh she said I would be an onisimus and I would be in this church. And I was like, That's awesome. That's awesome. Move to Georgia, right? So I love that. She but she had a great experience on Sunday. But I have in the last couple of weeks had a couple of comments. One was from a couple who's been here for six months, and someone invited them to a life group and they attended, which is good, but they told me, they said, that's the only person who's invited us to a life group in the six months we've been here. Wow. And then I had a lady about three weeks ago, she just came by and she wasn't trying to be critical. She's like, Hey, I just want you to know this. And this has happened before. She said, I've been coming here for two or three weeks and hardly anybody has talked to me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and I I've always thought that liberty is a friendly church. Man, you look around, people are talking and the foyer's full after the service and all that kind of stuff. I've always wanted to challenge the church, though, to become a friend church, man, to look to make friends and to help people stick. Because here's what I truly believe. If we had that onisimus kind of a spirit and some people who are helping new people to connect, man, there's nothing harder than to be new, right? Yeah, yeah. But if you had some people that were helping people to connect, man, I we would have, I think we'd be a thousand people in this church. It's just like so many people come, but we need to get people to stay. So I wanted to just kind of run down some things and some suggestions of maybe why people don't stay. What are some things that we could do to kind of be an onesimist, be a brother to both and bring them in? Kind of what's some of y'all's thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_02I think what comes to my mind, man, is I I just have to get out of my comfort zone sometimes. And and it's easy, especially from a staff perspective. Like we all have things to do and and we tend to want to go to our post. I know you and I were even kind of talking some it was either this week or last week, just about how how easy it is just to just to do your thing and take your same path and talk to your same few people and and then just kind of go about your day. But um I mean I I just think from my perspective, I I think I just need to be more intentional about, you know, when I at the end of the service um or or maybe even before it starts, just get out of task mode and just kind of be with people for uh uh just a few more minutes. And I think you know, we're all just one person, but if everybody takes on that mentality and you just make make it a point to have a minute and a half of conversation or just say hello or welcome somebody, tell them about something going on in the church that they might be interested in, then you know, if if every one person does that, that really kind of changes the whole culture of the church. So it's not it's not really anything other than everybody um just deciding to stick go out of their way a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, there's so much activity, so many things go and you can walk out of here and think, man, I talked to a whole bunch of people, but it's the ones that you miss sometimes, right? And so it's kind of the mentality of I want to talk to the people that I haven't seen all week, but if if everybody would adopt also the mentality of every Sunday that I'm here, I'm gonna find somebody I've never met. Because man, they're all over the place. Just seek out one of those people. Space issues may be uh one of those issues. Man, we've got some space issues right now. The auditorium's pretty full on Sunday mornings. Gabe uh let me know. His is kind of an empty nester class. They have 30 people in there on Sunday, and we just moved them to a new room, and so now it's like they're out of room again. Uh, you know, and you know, I'm one of those people. If I walked in there and there's 30 people and we're all crammed in there, I'm a German phobe. I'm probably not going back, right? Stephen Cochran's class, which is kind of our couple's class with kids of school age, they've outgrown their room. They're in the fellowship hall now. So, you know, some of it could be a space issue, which we are gonna, we are gonna have to address. Um, but think about you know, we've had Stephanie Kelly uh on the podcast before, man. You think about her testimony, if they were here for a few weeks, it was kind of in their mind this is the last time we're going to go. And then somebody invited them to a life group, and now, man, their testimony has been just one of a powerful one of redemption. So it's just, man, look for that person that that you've never met and extend an invitation uh to them. I know CR, y'all work really hard in the CR leadership on how do we make how do we make new people feel welcome? What are some of the things y'all do on Thursday?
SPEAKER_01One of the things that we do is is so this coded message for all the leadership is is everybody gets a name tag, but we have two different colors. So if you get a blue name tag, that means you've been here before. If you get an orange or a red name tag, it means you've never been here before. So we put a priority on that person. And so I wish that on Sunday morning we could hand everybody a name tag, but but we can't. Uh but but just to just to be aware of I remember what it was like to walk through the door for the first time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Not to know anybody, to to feel all the insecurities of not being able to fit in, not knowing what's going to take place, and just to to have somebody come and man, to welcome me in and go, hey, this is what's about to happen. I you you know, I I know what to expect now. Yeah. And it kind of eases the anxiety that I get uh walking into a new place. And so for us, we we put a priority on, hey, if you if you don't make the newcomer, it's all about the newcomer. Yeah. And so, man, you put a priority on that person that's their first time, or maybe you've seen them once before, especially during the mealtime. It's it's really important that that's when you really can see the people that aren't here because they don't sit at a table with somebody, they're off to their self. They yeah, they they look like they're fish out of water, really.
SPEAKER_00If you look around, you can find them. Oh, yeah. Whether they're wearing a name tag or not, you you can find new people that they're like, hey, they're just kind of standing there wondering where to go, you know, all those sorts of things. You know, um if if you one of the couple of tips I'd give you, if go in the guests are in the auditorium first, they're the first ones into the service. Our life groups. Sometimes, man, life group ends, everybody's hanging around talking. You guys are finished with the first song, we're ready to go to prayer time, and then it's like there's 50 people in the auditorium, and then here comes 250 more people just in this rush, right in that one moment, and you don't have an opportunity to talk to anybody. So, man, if the life groups could get on up there, get on in there, catch them in the foyer um before or after the service. Um one of the things I would tell people, uh so we have our parking lot team. We we don't have guest parking just because we want our guests to have a good parking spot. We we have guest parking, it's kind of like your name tag. Yeah. That lets us know hey, this person's new. And Robbie and Scott make sure to meet those people, bring them to me after the service. I would encourage all of our folks to have that every member's a greeter mentality. And then after the service, you know, Shannon and I are always standing out there, and this is why I want to say this on the podcast and not on a Sunday morning. But we have some people, you're here every Sunday, and and hey, God bless you. I know there's things going on in your life, but man, if we could take 10 minutes and make it a priority on the guests, you know, I I know you got things happening, but we talk every Sunday. And what happens is that one person will come right after the service and start telling me a story, and the guests are leaving. They they're the first ones out. They're the first ones in, they're the first ones out. And I'm just standing there watching them leave. And and if we could give it 10 minutes, make sure the guests uh get to meet Shannon and I, then tell us, you know, the story or whatever's going on. But uh, hey, and then another one I would say is man, disciple one of the people getting baptized. Use that Liberty Journal, set up a time. Hey, let's meet twice a month, let's meet uh once a month, let's at least talk on the phone every week or something. But we've baptized 73 people this year, and we've got so many people who are new walking in here, not knowing one about the church, yeah, but not knowing how to navigate the Christian life. Yeah. So, man, just a disciple one. You got anything to add to that?
SPEAKER_01Man, I I think that you know it the the wall out there represents, hey, you have a great opportunity to just depict somebody. Like even if you don't have it all together, you don't have to have it all together. Yeah, you you've been here long enough that you can give them enough information to get them pointed on the right track where they can, if you're in a life group, you can get them in a life group. It it's just this thing to get them in the right places to where they can ask the right questions and grow themselves. Um, and I I think just to be aware every Sunday that today's not about me. Right? Today is about one worshiping Jesus, Jesus, and then the other is is looking for somebody that man is new or or is just new to the faith and and helping them grow to the place uh where they can be uh the same uh inviting people. I think I think of Pinky, she man, she's one of those that she she is one of those that man, she's always grabbing somebody. She's an Andrew.
SPEAKER_00Andrew is always bringing somebody to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Always, always grabbing somebody and saying, hey, look at what I found. Look at what I found, come and be a part. And man, just to have that excitement, uh, because Liberty is an exciting place. It is all the things that are going on here, but to have those people to look around and go, hey, come with me, come with me, every Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_02And I think again, just to kind of piggyback off what you said a minute ago a little bit, where would any of us be had somebody not extended that invitation or that warmth or that you know had not reached out to us at some point, you know. I mean, even from the standpoint of, or I guess especially from the standpoint of being saved. Yeah. I mean, had somebody not shared with us or or invited us at different points in our lives, we've all got different stories and how we got connected to the church. But um, you know, we've we've got to carry that on and and continue to to bring people into what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00It's a part of discipleship, man. If we can just have the mentality to be guest focused in that me just doing a simple thing of welcoming somebody here may set them on a an eternally life-changing track. So very good. All right. So um let's talk about some birthdays. Uh, we've got a bunch of birthdays. Kathy Hall, April 28th. Isn't that today? Is it today April 28th? I think so. I don't even think I know what day it is. Birthday, Kathy. Yeah, that's the way I feel right now. Also, Asa Smith's birthday is on the 28th. Jenny Hendricks on the 29th, Melissa Ketchum on the 30th, and then here we go in May. Jeff Bell on May 1st, Amber Cross, April Harwood, and Cody Malone, and uh Emily Banks all on May the 1st, and little Emily will be three on the first. So happy birthday to little Emily, and then Keely Harrison, May the 2nd. That is the granddaughter of Robert and Susan Harrison, and then Haley Pelfrey on May 3rd. So happy birthday to all of them and and to Haley Go Braves, right? Yeah. So uh anyway, uh no anniversaries, but man, we do have some news and notes. Here's what I'm talking about our dancers, our teachers, and our tennis players, right? So congratulations to Ethan Thornton, North Murray Teacher of the Year. All right, Ethan, man. That's pretty awesome. That's really cool. So congratulations to Ethan. Maybe you does that mean he gets a great parking spot next year at the school? He should have been. For one year, you get to part right at the door. So there you go.
SPEAKER_03You need to get something out of that, right? 20 extra minutes on your teacher.
SPEAKER_00Uh and then what, hey, how about this one right here? You talk about some people with some energy, some people that are tough. Jeff and Christy Bennett completed the Tough Mudder, which is a 15K obstacle course mud run that takes three hours. That's 9.32 miles. Wow. They did that on Saturday. I didn't even know that existed. Man, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Wow, congratulations.
SPEAKER_00I uh I rode my bike like 12 miles yesterday. I thought I was pretty awesome. I took the trash. This is what they did. So, hey, way to go, Jeff and Christy, man. And I think they've done that multiple times. They uh Jeff sent me a message. He said, Hey, we're doing this on Saturday. You want to come? And I said, I gotta work.
SPEAKER_02It's anything like trying to run on the beach in the sand. That's what it sounds like. No bueno for me, man.
SPEAKER_00Man, you know, Corbin and all them used to do these mud rags, and I'm like, I'm I just I'm at the point where it takes too long to heal. So you know, but hey, I tell you, man, way to go, Jeff and Christy. That's pretty awesome. Congratulations to Taylor Long. That is uh Tim and Peggy Osmus's granddaughter. She just uh accomplished her 500th strikeout as a pitcher at UTC. Wow. Yeah, threw a no-hitter earlier this year, man. She is an incredible pitcher. Um, and then Jake Carver, here comes our tennis players. Jake Carver uh plays tennis for uh Northwest. They competed in the state tennis tournament. Sadly got uh eliminated in the first round. Kesra Jones, uh Murray County, plays this week to see if they go to the state finals. So way to go, Kesra. And then Callie Stanfield at Young Harris. Uh Callie is uh and her sister Katie Rose, they're incredible tennis players. They just completed a 13-0 regular season uh in Conference Carolinas as the conference champion. Yeah, and this is her senior year, so that's really special uh for her. Her sister, Katie Rose Stanfield, who plays at Truett McConnell, uh, has uh made the all-academic team. So not only is she an awesome tennis player, but she's way smart. So way to go, Katie Rose. And uh Owen Barrett is has been nominated at Christian Heritage School for a Jewel Award, which is um, you know, in uh New York you have the Tonys, um and then you have uh Golly, it's left my mind. Right before the Tonies, they actually have one that's for high school students, and the Jewel Awards is a step to that.
SPEAKER_04Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00So uh that's a great accomplishment for Owen to be nominated for that. Man, if he wins, he'll get to go to New York City. Wow. And uh yeah, and he will be on a Broadway stage uh before the Tony Awards. Amazing. Pretty incredible. That's awesome. The Jimmies, that's what they call it, the Jimmies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I think Nora actually watched that last year or somehow they tuned in to uh Norrin Val did because there was a student from I think Ringold High School that was at the Jimmy's.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so they were checking out who was gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00A couple of students from Christian Heritage that have been on there. One of them was uh one of Kylie's buddies, man, and she just went and she got in the finals and sang, and it was incredible. But yeah, Ringold always has. Yeah, they didn't have all that when we were in school there.
SPEAKER_02And boy, they do now. We didn't even have driver's ed, man. They were just like, you're on your own.
SPEAKER_00And then they built a theater that's pretty awesome up there. Yeah, I was about 13 years too late for that. Yeah, man. It was it's really impressive what they do. And then the spring fling at uh Spring Place, how'd that go?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, it was the students got a lot of compliments um because they they led some worship uh under the overhang. Um and so they they did five or six songs and all good things. So they're actually gonna one it's interesting how the timing of this worked out. Um some of the songs that they practiced, a couple of those or or that they played at Spring Place, they're gonna uh sing this Sunday night at the prayer service tonight. So um just been trying to prepare them a little bit for a couple months and maybe get them out of their comfort zone because man, they do a great job, but nobody gets to see other than the youth and and the the volunteers and the small group leaders on Wednesday night. So um I'm excited for the church to really see more of what they do and and how they serve and how they lead.
SPEAKER_00It's good. Um yeah, the Spring Place campus uh is over there in the Spring Place mobile home community, and really that campus has become a centerpiece of that community. And Mark and Tammy have this vision of putting on the Spring Fling event. Melissa took all the little animals out there. Uh Levi preached the gospel. I saw uh the fix, I wasn't there. Saw great pictures, really well attended.
SPEAKER_01So they gave a lot, they gave away a lot of clothes. Um so just just being able to feed the community, give back to the community, um, let them know that hey, we love them and care for them.
SPEAKER_00It's a great deal. Become a really good annual event out there. So uh Liberty Sports, the only one we got going on right now is softball. Um the games were canceled last night. They didn't have enough umpires. So apparently we need some umpires to to uh get trained and sign up. Uh but But uh the week before uh apparently played in so you hear some of these softball names, and I'm like, okay, is this one of these teams that really isn't a church, but we're gonna put one together anyway? Absolutely. I think we got two of them in this list. So the first one is God's house. Yeah, yeah. I've heard about this. Yeah, but we only lost by one, right? So uh play kind of went toe to toe, had a couple errors in the end, uh, lost that one. But in game two, and listen to this one, we uh run ruled, got Jesus.
SPEAKER_01I think they put that on a t-shirt one time, didn't they?
SPEAKER_00Okay, I don't know, man. But got milk.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So uh anyway, we uh we eliminated them in four innings. So uh apparently the team is three-and-four on the season, and uh they play on Monday nights at Heritage Point Park. Next Monday night would be a good time to go because that's the last regular season games, and then it goes into the tournament. So there you go. Uh, and then we got a lot of announcements. Man, in May, we've got parent-child dedication, we've got Graduate Sunday, we've got kindergarten graduation. If you want your child involved in any of those, all the registrations are on our Liberty Baptist Chess Works app, and you can just click the button on the uh the what's what's happening at uh Liberty. It's all right there. Um this Sunday is the first Sunday prayer meeting and fellowship meal, and because next week is Cinco de Mayo, Cingo de Mayo, right? We're gonna get some um some uh Mexican food in here. So we are uh I understand we're getting the meat, right? All anybody that has to do is like bring their favorite Mexican side. So those fellowship meals, it's not a you know, the food's always great, but man, it's just the time to hang out and get to know people. So that's on Sundays, the prayer meeting and the uh fellowship meal. Uh we're getting ready for vacation Bible school right there at the beginning of June. One of the parts of that is the adult class, the Bible boot camp. Uh the uh students will be in Phobia Island. So uh that's going to be a good week right there, uh, coming right at the the as we turn the corner of May, get into June. And then uh the ladies on Wednesday night just started a new series on heaven. This Wednesday night in Man Church, we start a five-week series called The Missing Man, which is which is some some roles, some powerful roles that a man can't go missing if he's to be a biblical husband. So we're gonna start talking about that on Wednesday night. So, guys, join us on that. And then CR golf tournament got ready.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Saturday I woke up and I thought, did I make the right call because it wasn't raining? Oh no. I thought, it's showing that it's raining on the radar, but it's not raining. And I thought, it's gonna be one of those. I should have had it. And but no, it about the time we would have started, the bottom fell out of it. Oh, really? Okay, yeah, it makes you live better. I live I live about I live about five minutes from the golf course. So uh the bottom fell out of it and it rained really hard for about an hour, and I thought, eh, I made the right call because 70% and I looked into this Saturday and it's only 30%. That's a pretty better chance. So that's 40% less. Yeah, so we moved it, we moved it to this Saturday and uh still got 23 teams. That's good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, awesome. Yeah, man, it's really good. So, hey, if you couldn't play last week, can play this week, right? Can they still get in there? Yeah, they can still get in there. Come see me. Okay, yeah, there you go. All right, so man, there's a lot of things going on. So let's now get to the topic at hand, and that is was Jesus married? And if he wasn't married, did Jesus truly experience every temptation as we do, which is what Hebrews 4.15 says. But that would also include sexual temptation, right? So let's talk about this, kind of break it down. And first of all, let's let's talk about this idea of was Jesus married? And I want to kind of say this this is gosh, we've dealt with a bunch of topics this uh this season. Um every one of the topics that we have dealt with are are things that that we were talking about when I was at Tennessee Temple 30 years ago. None of this is new, um, especially the one we're about to talk about right here. And so I want everybody to understand it's like the Bible says, there's nothing new under the sun, the same deceptions, the same conspiracies. Sometimes they come with a little different seasoning on them, but it's really the same old game, right? So um let's talk about this idea of was Jesus married? Where does that come from? One, it's an argument of a cultural reading of the biblical text. Um culturally, at Jesus' time, most all the men were married. They were expected to be married, so why wouldn't Jesus be married? The Bible calls Jesus a rabbi. The rabbis were most often married. The Bible never explicitly says that Jesus wasn't married or that he was. So it's kind of a it doesn't really say. So that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't say he wasn't married, and then a lot of people say his wife was married Magdalene, right? So that's kind of the argument. So here's my response to that part. One, an argument from silence is never a strong argument. No, this argument um stretches the cultural norms. There are plenty of Jewish men who were not married, the Essenes, which is a group that was dedicated to the Lord. Um, you see that in the Bible when when Jewish men are really dedicated on a mission uh to God that they didn't marry. So it was a common practice that we see even in scripture. Paul. Hey, Paul, I mean, he comes right out and says, Hey, I wish you could stay like I am, and that means single. He's just, man, he's gonna be bound to the gospel, and that was the focus of his life. He says, if you can't, then it's better to marry, right? Um, John the Baptist wasn't married. We're not really sure John the Apostle was married. Uh the reason I bring him up is because when you see him in the gospels, he's very, very young. He's probably like 13, 14, 15 years old. But then we also know he's the longest living apostle. And so you have the book of Revelation, which is written 60 years after the resurrection, and there's no mention of a wife. So you would assume it's either not an important part of his story or whatever, but it's not like no, there were no single Jewish men. That's yeah, that was not, it was uncommon, but it it did doesn't mean it didn't happen in that um culture. Also, if you go back in the ancient um documents, not all the rabbis were married uh at Jesus' time. And so that is a fringe reading of the biblical text that when it is scrutinized by scholarship, it doesn't hold up. And that would be true not just of Christian scholars, but also of Jewish scholars. I mean, even Jewish scholars who don't believe in Jesus even say, hey, there's no, there's nothing of any uh there's nothing of any integrity to suggest that he was. So by the way the texts are written. So let us go into some these other extra-biblical texts, and this is where a lot of people go, aha, right? Yeah. And what I'm about to read to you was popularized by the Da Vinci Code. Y'all remember that movie, Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code is a book, and then it was a movie. My church had me hating that thing, and I had no idea what it was about.
SPEAKER_02I don't get it. The church that I grew up in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's I just liked Tom Hanks, and I was like really sad that that my church, and it's like I can't watch this movie, but I like Tom Hanks. I'm still looking forward to Toy Story 5. Come on, Tom.
SPEAKER_02It's been enough time that has elapsed since I was mad at Tom Hanks as a child.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So yeah, I'm gonna I'm about to give you some of these documents, and this is kind of where that myth of in the Da Vinci Code that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene kind of comes from. So you've got what's called the Egyptian papyrus, which it was an Egyptian papyrus called the Gospel of Jesus wife. It was unveiled in 2012 and it contains the phrase, Jesus said to them, my wife. That's the only reference in there. Then you have the Gospel of Philip, which is a Gnostic text that was found in the Nyakamadi library, which was was found in 1945. Um, it is 13 documents that contain 50 Gnostic texts. So it's like a little library, right? Of these Gnostic Gospels. It says that Mary Magdalene was a traveling companion of Jesus, and so there are some scholars who say that must mean that she was a traveling companion and they had sexual relations. Joseph and Asynth. That this is a coded text, which means it's really a story about Joseph, the uh code of many colors, Joseph in the in the in Genesis, and his wife, a synth, and the allegation is that this was really kind of a it was written in a code so that they wouldn't really know who they were talking about. But if you decode it, they're actually talking about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There's an article, I'm gonna read an excerpt uh though that I found on the Huff post uh from a guy who wrote some books about this, and and this will help you understand a representative of this argument. It says, This brings us to our lost gospel. It appears to be a sixth century Syriac Christian Aramaic text that is uh translation of an earlier Greek text, fourth or second century. That's really important to listen to. Fourth century that would be uh 300 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Uh even second century, that's a hundred years after Christ. Uh that Professor uh Barry Wilson and I believe preserves a first century tradition. Now that's that's where you're trying to reach and connect it, right? The text in the rare manuscript section of the British Library for the past 160 years is ostensibly about the biblical Joseph of multicolored coat fame and his obscure wife, a synth. So that line means they've been hiding this from you. It's always been there, but they put it in the library and didn't want you to know, right? So here comes that this it's almost goes back to what Satan said to the woman in the garden. God knows that when you eat of this fruit, that you'll know what he knows, right? There's something they're always hiding from you, right? That's always the indentation that's in there. It's like the movie National Treasures. Always another clue. We went in this library, we found this document, right? So he goes on to say this. Um, but in the Syriac community from which the gospel emerged, Joseph was a stand-in for Jesus and Jesus and a synth had many children by the crucified, which is uh kind of what the text says. Clearly, we are dealing with a very thinly encoded text concealing a gospel that would otherwise have been destined for the bonfire. So, in other words, he says they didn't use the name Jesus because they knew if anybody ever found this text they would destroy it, right?
SPEAKER_02So, again, the conspiracy theory which is just not how the rest of scripture reads and not not how the Bible works. It's not how the inspired word of God uh informs us about anything. Yeah, find the code, yeah. Explain I know when I was uh in high school, I think some people tried to find the letters that stacked up from one line to the next to figure out who was the Antichrist thing. People are doing things like that in numerology for a long time. It's it's not you know, nothing new that people are easy to do.
SPEAKER_01There's these magic glasses, and you can put lemon juice on it, and there's that is magic treasure.
SPEAKER_02That is magic treasure. It sounds like you need to go home and watch a certain movie tonight.
SPEAKER_00But man, you know, going to what you said, it is true. These people, there was some books that came out, I think back in the 90s, and the Bible code and all these kind of things, and the numerology. And I'm like, man, if you just do what the Bible says, it's a whole lot more interesting, too. Yeah, simple stuff, right? That would be uh that would make a life-changing difference in your life. So let's go to the gospel according to Mary Magdalene, which is another one of these Gnostic Gospels. Mary had an unusual authority according to this document that mainly centers in revelation she received after the resurrection of Christ. So she was kind of like the go-between between the resurrected Christ and the apostles, trying to tell them what to do. So, man, how do you deal with all that kind of stuff? One is none of these things have ever held credibility in scholarly circles, but it was popularized by the Da Vinci Code, and it kind of gets stirred up on the internet every few years. These texts were written centuries after the Gospels. They'll portray to you that the Gnostic Gospels are hidden gospels that they eliminated from the Bible. Man, the last book of the Bible to be written is the book of Revelation, which is written in about 90 A.D. These are written in like 300 A.D. That's a long way, right? Um these texts contain obvious contradictions in errors. Uh we were talking before. Uh if you you can go online and read any of the documents I just mentioned, they are weird, man. I mean weird. And I mentioned that to really understand them, you probably do need to be smoking something. I mean, they're that strange. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've I've uh I've read a couple of them and I thought, man, it gives you an eerie feeling. Yeah, the guy that wrote that was he was really smoking some weed that day. It was a strange.
SPEAKER_00And here's the thing, man, when you read those texts and you read the Bible, it's it's so obvious right out of the gate. They're nothing like this, right?
SPEAKER_01Nine day difference. Yeah. So it goes, it goes back to that whole, like, there's something inside of all of us that Satan knows that if if I can get them to question, did is that really, did God really say that? Did God really say? Is that really truth? Or is or is God holding something back from you that you don't know? Man, it and and that's something that's in all of us, that that the moment that the interest is piqued, man, we will go down every rabbit hole, every trail, and we will be more confused and more lost than if we just plainly read the Bible for what it is.
SPEAKER_00People want to I think people enjoy having questions more than they enjoy getting the answer. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So Well, the truth requires you to do something. Yeah, yeah. It requires you to take action, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And chasing rabbit holes, you know, that there's no there there's no conviction.
SPEAKER_00Back to kind of the encoding thing. Hey, listen, it's kind of like you said, if you just do the things that are plainly written in scripture, scripture's not written in a code. But even if you go to that text and you put it up under textual criticism, it fails archaeologically and textual criticism, and other every other way. Here's something really interesting, too, about all those documents that I just read. None of them explicitly say Jesus and Mary were married. That's an that's even that is a stretch from those texts. Um, and if anything, hey, this is classic not classic Gnosticism. Gnosticism, uh, and I can tell you how far off doctrinally these texts are. Gnosticism says that Jesus was a divine spirit trapped in a human body. And because of that, whenever they went to crucify him, his spirit escaped. So what was crucified was this body of Jesus, but it really wasn't Jesus. So the Gnostics say that Jesus wasn't really crucified and he never physically resurrected from the dead. So if that's the case, uh who he married, I wouldn't get my advice from them. Yeah, it's it's so much conjecture. And then we have what's called the Talopot tomb, and this goes back to that Huff Post article again. So this is another argument they make. What does archaeology have to say about a married Jesus? In 1980 in Talipot, just outside of Jerusalem, archaeologists discovered a 2,000-year-old burial tomb.
SPEAKER_04Hmm.
SPEAKER_00In the tomb were ten ossuaries. The ossuaries are like little burial boxes where they put the bones in. Six of them were inscribed. One of them had the Hebrew Aeronamic Jesus, son of Joseph, scratched on its side. Another one, Maria, yet another one, Yose, which is a nickname referred to in the Gospels belonging to one of Jesus' brothers. Um a fourth ossuary was inscribed with the name Matthew, and a fifth, the only one in Greek, with the name Mary Amne, a Greek version of the word Mary associated in all Greek literature with one woman only, Mary the Magdalene. Even more disturbing for Pauline Christians, a sixth inscribed ossuary apparently of a child named Judah, the son of Jesus, carved on it. I remember when this came out. And boy, this article, it just flew around. This was kind of a little bit before the internet was really popular and fanning the flame social media like it does now. And man, it was disturbing to a lot of people. It's like, oh no, because they're thinking, hey, what are the chances you got all these biblical characters all buried together and it's a family tomb? Is there something the Bible's not telling you, right? So they ran all these statistics and they said statistically the probability of this not being the biblical Jesus is slim to none. And so you just go, oh my goodness, right? Here's the response to that. None of those names are uncommon in Jesus' time. Right. Yeah. I go back to my sermon on Sunday. There's a guy in Colossians 4 named Justice who they call Jesus. Paul mentions, yeah, right. So I think a lot of people think there's only one Jesus. There's a lot of Jesus at the time of Jesus. That was not an unusual name. I know a Jesus now. I mean, hey, there's some Jesus in our town that's got some paint companies. I mean, I mean, yeah. I mean hey, listen, I'm gonna tell you when when you see Jesus coming to paint your house, it's gonna be good. Oh yeah. Casso. Well, we do. So you know what's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_02I guess I'm just realizing this and not to trail too far off. But I when I was coming up and you know, I had my first kindergarten class, I I showed up on day one and there was like four Austins in it. And I kind of feel like Brian is the Austin of the 70s. Oh, yeah, there's so many Brian's uh kind of kind of your age, and there's so many Austins, but nobody names their kid Austin. I don't know about Scott. How many Scots are there out there?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I but here's a fun fact. Not so common. So several years ago, there was uh Scott Young that lived in Murray County that was about my age. Yeah, he passed away. Oh, and got a lot of phone calls. Are you dead? No, I'm answering the phone. Just checking today.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna tell you, and you go into the barbecue joint, you know, and everybody's put their card up there for their business, and you say that Jesus is gonna build something, it's gonna be good, right? So uh that that's a reliable contractor right there. Too far, but it just made me think, you know, names are names are common. Oh yeah, yeah. And it was it was the same in the body. So when I went to Egypt, um, you know, in Egypt, you're either Islam or you're Christian. That's it. And you're named after what your family tradition is. Man, there's a lot of Marys. Uh man, there's a lot of Muhammad's, right? So you uh you kind of see that even today. These were not uncommon names at all. What another one that you could uh bring up is that the Bible says that Jesus borrowed not a family tomb, but Joseph's tomb, right? And then even if that were true, my question would be then why didn't it get brought up early? If you have this resurrection account that's circulating around and there is a family tomb of Jesus that everybody knows, then why didn't somebody go and hey, this is this is where his family is buried?
SPEAKER_01So um, you know, you see that if you read the Bible, I mean you see like there they they go and say, Hey, put some soldiers there just in case they come and they take the body and you know they say that he's resurrected. So there was already this idea of conspiracy like floating around. So I mean, it would it would have been easy, it would have been fuel for the fire for them to use something of that nature to discredit any kind of resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, and then man, you go back to the old argument. Why would the apostles die? Because man, they were cowardly before the resurrection. Why would they die for a lie? Yeah, the the nature of those men as they were represented in the gospels is they did not have that kind of courage. So um the name Mary Emne was extremely common. It wasn't just tied to Mary Magdalene, and this claim has been heavily refuted both statistically and archaeologically. So now that brings up the idea, okay, then when the Bible says in Hebrews 4 15, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. What does that mean? So if he wasn't married and he didn't go, did he have the same temptations that we do, especially sexual temptations? Um, and so here's what that means. For him to be tempted in every point as we are doesn't mean that he was tempted in every scenario as we are. Man, we've got all kinds of temptations and mechanisms of temptations that exist now that didn't exist then. Absolutely. So it does mean, though, that he experienced the full range of temptation, which would be physical, spiritual, emotional, and especially the temptation of the pressure of suffering, right? In general, we can conclude that Jesus, who was a male, who lived 33 years in a world full of women, lived in a real human body, that biologically he experienced everything humans experience, including puberty and sexual desire. He had a real human body. Yeah. Jesus was different in that he didn't have a sinful nature, though, due to the virgin birth. So we would put it like this. Could he sin? Yes. Would he sin? No. That's the best way, those convergences of natures there. This is called the doctrine of impeccability. Jesus' physical nature made his temptations very real. His divine nature made him capable of not sinning, right? So the temptations in the wilderness. Um, you know, when you when you read those temptations in the wilderness, turn a stone into bread. I don't have a problem with that. I've never in my life looked at a stone and go, boy, I'd like to get a burger out of that. You know what I'm saying? So when um you look at, hey, jump off the temple and let an angel rescue you. I'm afraid of heights. That's not a temptation for me. And to um, hey, takes him up on the mountain. Remember, Satan takes him up on the mountain, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world if you'll just bow down and worship me.
SPEAKER_02I've got enough going on in my life. I don't want to rule the world. I was gonna say it's probably hard enough to keep track of us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sometimes pastoring a church is enough, right? So when you do read those temptations, and that is a central facet of the gospels, that Jesus went into the wilderness, the Bible says, led by the Holy Spirit to be tempted, right? Yeah. That he's 40 days, 40 nights, no man, he is at his physical weakest at that point, right? There, the body is screaming for nourishment and attention. Um, and then you read those three temptations, and that Jesus is tempted, tempted in every point as we are, you're like, none of those things are a problem for me. But we have to understand the nature of those temptations are really getting down to the nature of every temptation, and that is to shortcut the word of God. Yes. We want God's blessings, but we don't want obedience. And really, all those temptations get down to the core of everything that we that we struggle with. Um, turning the stone into bread. That's just basically defying God's word. The Bible calls that the lust of the flesh. Jumping from the temple is, and if you read that temptation, he's twisting God's word. The Bible calls that the pride of life, and then avoiding suffering. Man, I hey, listen, I'll give you the kingdoms of the world. And what Satan was really saying is why go to the cross? Yeah. If you want to rule the world, I can give you that right now, right? And that's the pride, the uh lust of the eyes. Look at all of this, right? And so the Bible always talks about really all temptations are the pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. And so Jesus experienced all of those. Now, here's kind of where we'd bring this down. Because of Jesus' nature, we can conclude that no one ever has been tempted to the extent that Jesus was. He he knew everything perfectly um because he had never sinned. I I would say that doesn't make his temptations less, that makes them more.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And because of his perfect nature, right? And so I love um I love the way Wayne Grudum, who's a a very well-known uh writer of uh theological stuff and a teacher, probably has one of the most readable theology books uh out there. But Wayne Grudum gives an analogy. He said the weightlifter who holds the full measure of the weight is the only one who truly knows the weight rather than the one who dropped it. So, man, you see these big weightlifters, man, and they're bearing up under the pressure of that weight. The guy who holds it the longest is really the one who understands how heavy it really is, not the guy who dropped it. So, what Wayne Grudom is saying by that is in Jesus living in a human body, having a divine nature, which means he knows everything perfectly, Jesus is really the only one who has ever truly known the full weight of temptation.
SPEAKER_01And not only that, you I want you to think about in in the garden, he he's about to shoulder the weight of the sin of the world. Yeah. I mean, I I I look at my own sin in my own life and and and how burdensome that is. But but to think about shouldering the weight of the sin of the world is like you see that in a garden where man, he just underneath that, you know, the flesh is like he tells his disciples to, you know, watch him pray because the the flesh is is weak, you know, but the spirit is willing. And so, man, just the idea of man, not fall into the temptation of the flesh to go, man, I don't want to do this. Yeah. Uh, but but being surrendered to the will of God and obedience to God's purpose and going, I'm gonna do this because I see the the the victory behind it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that Gethsemane moment is one of those where you really see those the natures of Christ in full view under the pressure of temptation and suffering. Anything to add, Austin?
SPEAKER_02Uh I just thought about that David Bowie song when you said under pressure. Ding ding ding ding ding. I just that started going off in my head. So not that that's gonna edify anybody right now. It's it's gonna be in his head all day long. But I just wanted to be honest about when you asked me. Distraction. That's what trouble focusing.
SPEAKER_01Maybe that maybe that'll be the song that closes out the podcast. Copyright. Yeah, it need to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we don't need to be kicked off of uh YouTube on that one.
SPEAKER_02I mean, just try to bring it back in here and and actually answer what you asked me. I think y'all both covered it super well. I mean, um, you know, I the the main thing in all of this as we talk about these topics and these fringe theories come back up is man, just stay in the Word of God. Stay what you know to what you know is true, um, to what's been tested, to what's very clearly inspired by the Holy Spirit. Because man, there's just such a huge distinction between just sort of these these things that, like we've said, um, are just always trying to bait us and suggest that there's something that God is not telling us or or that we have some sort of inside knowledge that you know we can we can finally come to know. It's just that's not the story that God wrote for us, and that's not how he laid it out uh for us to be able to understand. That's it.
SPEAKER_01I think it's a great close, right? I think the other thing that I would say is is man, it the word is inspired by the Holy Spirit. And and man, you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and and the word says that the Holy Spirit is our teacher. And so, man, if you if you trust in the Holy Spirit to guide you into truth of what you're reading, man, it it won't lead you astray.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. This right here is what you need to understand why the world is the way it is, why you are the way you are, what the plan of God is for the world, and how you can be saved. This is the info right here. And man, there's everything under the sun to distract us and deceive us and to get us off of this. I man, I'll I'll end this with the way I talked ended Colossians on Sunday. This is what really matters. Yeah. This is at the end of the day, this is what really matters. So don't get distracted off of that. Well, we've got two more episodes in this season. Then we'll take a summer break, and uh, I'm sure we'll come back in the the next season with some good ideas. Season four. That's hard to believe. We're this far along.
SPEAKER_02So I like that we do it like survivor seasons, you know, they do. And every time I bring that up, somebody's like, is that show still on? It is. Not a good season right now. We're in season 50, but it's been on for 25 years, but they got 50 seasons. There you go. So uh yeah, we're we're on that survivor season rhythm. We've been doing two a year. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Anyway. All right. So we will see you next week right here on Live at Liberty.