Hey there, internet. My name's Matt Whitman. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, where we pick a book of the Bible and then we chip away at it a little bit every weekday in 10-ish minute chunks until we're done. And then we pick another book of the Bible and we start working on that. I know that lately there have been a lot of new folks jumping in, and I just wanted to take a minute on the front end of this episode to say welcome. Thanks for checking it out. Glad you're here. It's kind of weird, internet, because well, it's there's no rush. We we just, like I said, we chip away at a book of the Bible. Historical rabbit trails are welcome. I find that every book at the Bible that we look at takes us to all these other different parts of the Bible as well. So it's I mean, it's just a great launching point to go and explore. Church history and larger political history and culture and art, and most of all, and especially the Bible, which I think is from God. I know not everybody in the conversation agrees with me on that, but I think it's from God and I think it's reliable, and I treat it as such, and as we work through it, I treat it as as though it is what it holds itself out as being and as though it is what I believe it to be. I like the fact that we have people from lots of different traditions here, lots of different places in their journey of faith, but I also think it's really important to just disclose hey, here's what we do and here's how I'm coming at it. So if you're new, welcome. If you're not new, welcome back. Nice to see you here as I'm recording this. The school year is ramping up. So the uh that means a lot of us are getting back in rhythm, and this is a cool way, I hope, to make the Bible a part of your daily rhythm. Okay, one more bit of housekeeping here on the front end. I know that if you're just jumping in, it's probably really intimidating that we're coming up on like 2,000 episodes, and this is the seventh season, and you could easily be like, I just overwhelmed. I don't even know what to do. You guys got too much water under the bridge. You probably have all this inside joke stuff, and I'm never gonna get it, and I'm gonna feel like an outsider. Nonsense! You can just jump right in, it'll be great. You'll figure it out really quick. None of our jokes are actually all that sophisticated. And it's also really easy to go back and pick up at the beginning of this season on the Gospel of John or any of the other seasons we've done. It's weird, but the easiest place to do that is actually on YouTube. I've got my normal YouTube channel, it's Matt Whitman. That's my name. Nice to meet you, by the way, if we're new with this. There's another YouTube channel called the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. Every video on that channel is just the audio of these episodes. And there's like I'm not on camera or anything, it's just a picture of the logo of this podcast. And you know, for this John season, it just says John. So it's very straightforward. A small percentage of the people who listen to this program listen to it on YouTube. That said, you know, it's it's a pretty solid contingent of who we have here. And that, you know, they're good listeners, good commenters. So there's a little bit of conversation going on over there in the comment section. But the big advantage of YouTube is that it is the best place for organizing playlists by season. If you just want a really clean, easy-to-work through collection of season one on the book of Matthew, the YouTube channel makes that very easy. If you're listening on Spotify, which is my top recommendation for a podcast listening platform, it helps the program when you listen on Spotify. It helps the program a lot when you comment on Spotify. And there's a nice conversation going over there as well. Uh, that's a, I mean, that, yeah, we're starting to get like actual chit chat happening on Spotify, which I think is kind of fun. But despite the fact that I like Spotify for a listening platform, at this point, as I'm recording this podcast, YouTube is a great place to go and get it all divided neatly out into playlists. So if that has been a frustration for you, you might want to check out the YouTube channel. At any rate, welcome, everybody. Glad you're here. For those of you who have been here for a while, you know that I jokingly do not recommend anything from the world of media. It's far too volatile and offensive. But you also know that I will intrepidly and sacrificially wade out into the world of television and film to consume potentially objectionable content so I can come back here and report to you on how bad it is. In that spirit of things, I would like to not recommend an older film to you called The Usual Suspects. It is offensive and bad, and you should not watch it. However, some bad people I know who watched it and then told me about it told me that it's the movie that most epitomizes the idea of a flashback where everything snaps into focus and things that you didn't understand before, but that you'd stared at for a long time, suddenly all makes sense. Likewise, in John chapter 3, I think we are getting a moment like that with Nicodemus the Pharisee as he is listening in a private conversation to Jesus of Nazareth talk about who Jesus is and what he's doing. Right before, I mean, literally, like the two verses running up to the most famous verse in the whole Bible, which I would argue is John 3.16, at least right now, in the verses that tee up John 3.16, Jesus says to Nicodemus, the expert in the Old Testament, the expert in the law, he says, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. And that sets up this great big grand because statement, this follow-up. You know, if the natural question is like, Whoa, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the son of man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. I mean, a natural question that isn't in the Bible that but that one might ask there would be, why? Why would God do that? Why are we lifting up the Son of Man? Why does that equal eternal life? Well, the next word is for, which is a little different than a because clause, but similar. Well, here, right? Here is why. Here's why this is necessary, here's why this flows naturally out of what we just said. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. All of this is very important. The context clues tell us that. You've got this big tee up that's a reference back to an important story from the Old Testament, Numbers chapter 21. Then you've got this doubling down. I mean, the tee up says everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. The doubling down says that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Those are back-to-back verses that are drilling down the same point. So it must be very important. So it merits a little bit of zipping around the Bible, trying to get it and internalize it more for you and me. There is this theological through line that runs through the whole Bible very clearly, that is the idea that God is the one who does the saving. Humanity can't do it. We're finite, we die, even when we mean to do good things. A lot of times we don't because our flesh is weak, we're forgetful, we're distractable. Sometimes we're just downright mean and nasty, but a lot of times we're just inept. Humanity cannot save humanity. But the whole story of the whole Bible, which is kind of summarized in John 3:16, is that God can save. And further, God will save. He wants to, he will do it, he will redeem it. Well, that's exciting. How does this happen? Well, we got a hint right here in this tee up and payoff in the middle of John 3. Somehow Jesus is to be lifted up. It if we read the larger context, or just remember what we know from being around Christianity in the Bible, he's gonna go to the cross, he's going to die for the sins of humanity, and he's going to be raised again to confirm that the whole thing was real. And then anybody who believes on his name is going to have life. But again, the question remains: how does it work? What is actually happening when Jesus goes up on the cross? Well, the short answer is biblically a lot of things are happening. But the sum of all of these things that are happening is that there's forgiveness of sins and that people can have life in the name of Jesus. But let's look specifically at some of the passages in the Bible that really overtly talk about what Jesus is doing on the cross and therefore what would have started to snap, to click rather in the mind of Nicodemus as he hears Jesus reference this story about snakes in the desert and being lifted up that would have caused Nicodemus to go, oh, just like the usual suspects for the first time ever. I get it. It all just snapped back into focus. So Mark 10, let's start with 45. This is Jesus talking. He says, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Well, what's a ransom? Well, it's a buying back. The Old Testament book of Hosea gives us a great and poetic and tragic example of the cost of one who shouldn't have to buy another one back, buying another one back. So the idea is that somehow, when the Son of Man, Jesus, is raised up, that is, when he goes to the cross, when he dies on the cross, this is a ransom. This is a buying back of people who were dead. Now in the Gospel of Luke, we get the story of the prodigal son. And when the dad receives back the son, he uses the language of the son of mine was dead, and he's alive again. That death to life theme associated with what happens to us when we're in Christ runs throughout the Bible as well. John 10, verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And then uh he doubles down on this in 15. Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. That sounds very voluntary. Those are the words of Jesus right there. In Romans 3, now this is the writing of the Apostle Paul to the very legally minded church in Rome. Rome was the legal headquarters of the world at the time that the New Testament was written. Latin was a language that summoned to mind legality and court proceedings and guilt and innocence and all of this. So Romans, I think, has a little bit more of that undertone to it, since it was written to make sense to a Roman audience. Romans 3, 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Simple point being, everyone is under this curse, everyone is guilty of sin, intentional and accidental, everyone is in need of redemption, only God can redeem, and the only way to that redemption, to being justified before God is through Christ Jesus. Paul goes on in verse 25. God presented him, that's Jesus, as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. So something about what's going to happen on the cross is reminiscent of what happened in the Old Testament with the sacrificial system. Christ is the substitute for a penalty that was directed at us. What exactly does that mean? Well, we're going to look at a whole bunch more verses about this tomorrow and try to round that out. This topic, what is meant? What happens when the sun is lifted up, when Jesus is lifted up? And how does that result in life for those who believe? This topic has been one that has been debated in internet circles as traditions from around different parts of the world have collided in internet discourse in recent years. This is a good thing that different Christian traditions talk with each other. Sometimes it gets a little feistier than would be my preference, but I appreciate that we live in a time where we're looking at the scripture together with Christians from other traditions and comparing notes. What I want to try to accomplish here with today's episode and continuing into tomorrow is to try to lend a little bit of biblical clarity through just a sheer volume of biblical testimony about what it is that Jesus is doing. And I would say, again, as I did earlier, the cross accomplishes multiple things, all to the same end. The glory of the Father and the salvation of those who believe. We will unpack more of that tomorrow. Again, if you're brand new around here. I don't know if this episode was reflective of normal or not. It's fairly normal. This is the kind of thing we do. Normally I don't take, you know, like three or four minutes on the front end to explain what we do every time. But yeah, I just wanted to make you feel at home. So if you're new, once again, thank you for being here and checking it out.
SPEAKER_00If you've been here since forever, as always. Hi, good to see you. See you tomorrow when we'll keep doing more of the same thing. Okay, I better go. Bye. I'm Matt's 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.