HOTLCAST
HOTLCAST
The Power of Words: Exploring Hebrew, Faith, and Community
Join the HOTL Cast as Cyle, Matt, Jared, and Mark dive into the meaning of Hebrew words, the beauty of faith, and the importance of community accountability. With humor, real-life stories, and deep insights, this episode unpacks how language shapes our understanding of scripture and connects us to a bigger story. Perfect for anyone seeking inspiration, biblical wisdom, and a few laughs along the way.
Hello and welcome to the HOTL Cast. I'm Cyle.
I'm Matt. I'm Jared. And I'm Mark.
And we are here to talk about the Aurora We are here. Jared, how was the Aurora?
dude Number one. You don't have to rub it in that I didn't see it 'cause I'm in Lansing. Okay. I was not invited to the Aurora parties down here, so.
It's, if it makes you feel better, I couldn't see it from here either.
Oh, okay.
And you live in Brooklyn, which is really
surprising. I know. I'm literally right across the street there. Nothing, I could not see a single thing
that is crazy
across the
street from what
this, the church building. Did you use your's house?
Did you
use your phone?
No. I tried to use my eyes.
You had to use your phone.
Wait, you, you couldn't see it with your own eyes. You
could, you could see it. It was very light
in
the up. You
could, in the up could. It was very light. But you could see the sky was red and pinkish and green.
I couldn't at all,
very lightly.
What time did you go out?
Like nine 30.
10. 10 o'clock was like the best.
I think part of it is also I was blinded by the parking lot light that's across the street that peaks right over. That's the reason
you couldn't see it. Yeah. You're not supposed supposed to look into the light.
Well, I didn't try to.
Well,
you can go towards it. Yeah, but
I just felt probably not right now. I to do. I just saw it and I was like, that's true. Did you look
to the north?
I looked in all the directions. I didn't see anything. Wait,
wait, wait.
It was just north.
Only looked north that you didn't you, your apartment faces. You can't see North America.
It's,
it's not in a
park condominium.
It's, yeah.
Let's, I live in a condo.
Let's, let's on today's
episode of Preachers and Sneakers.
Yeah. We love all of you who live in condominium. His balcony didn't see anything in long back inside.
Mark asked me if I was in my bathrobe. I can't say that on the podcast.
Nevermind.
Yeah, so like, it's not like the P Phil, like you had to go out and stand out there for a while. The groundhog. Do you not know what Groundhog Day is? Probably not. He's he's that generation.
I know what Groundhog
Day
is.
What happens when the groundhog comes out of the cage? He eat it.
Number one, he don't come out of a cage.
He comes out of a hole.
It's a cage,
isn't it like.
Wait,
wooden
stumps. A wooden stu stump. If he hides, that's really the, just because it's movable. No, no, no. It's the shadow. No, it's the shadow. If sees his shadow and he hides it, winter keeps going. No,
you can't hide from your shadow. You come out sound, see your shadow.
You've never seen Peter Pan. You can't hide from your shadow.
Okay. Number one, I've seen Peter Pan. I had a childhood. Okay, let's not do that. I didn't
watch Peter van.
Well, you did. That's not a surprise. That
doesn't surprise anybody here or anyone listening really. Okay. We love you, mark.
Speaking of lives in a hole.
Oh,
well, welcome to the podcast. Uh, um, no, but like Sati Phil, if he sees his shadow, who is that? It's six weeks of Winter Six. It's a, it's a Brown Hall. Brown Hall. The Gar Hall has a, has a name. Yeah, it's like pxi filled like 27th or something. What?
And oh, well, no, according to their legend, they keep giving him the elixir of life and he continues to live on forever and ever and ever.
I just knew
there was a groundhog.
Yeah,
that groundhog
died. But, uh, it's not just the one in Paw either. There are other other states that have adopted their own groundhogs. Like for where? Near where you used to live. Oh, Buckeye. Chuck is the one for, never
heard of that.
Yeah.
Really?
Do we have one here? A bunch of people.
Just, I, I actually don't know the answer to that. Is there one
issue? We have a Wolverine. And if it comes out and malls a Buckeye, then it's six weeks,
six more losing seasons,
right? Yeah. So, no. Um, oh, I don't even how we got to Ponic Phil. So we have Oh, Aurora. Oh yeah. I tried to Google
and it Google's not a, they're our groundhogs in Michigan.
There are groundhogs in Michigan.
That's our answer guys. There are. We have one
in the courtyard. Well, that's true. True. I would say the Aurora is. It's phenomenal. Like 40, it was like the first, saw the aurora two years ago, but 44 years of life to see in Aurora, and I always wanted to see one. It was cool.
Yeah, it was cool two years ago. It was cool. This year, uh, it'll probably happen again this winter. You're 44? I'm 46, but two years ago is 44. Oh,
okay.
I I was doing that math.
Hashtag math.
Yeah. So, um, but I ultimately, I think the Aurora is one of my favorite things. The eclipses that we've had, we've had two eclipses in the last five years.
Yeah, those were cool. And we've had the Aurora, like those are things like. You only gonna see. Maybe once in a lifetime, but we've gotten lucky to see 'em quite a bit here. Did you
do path of totality at the last one, or No?
I did Path of totality for both of them.
Nice.
I actually went to Todd's church, who used to pastor here and now is at Ohio.
Oh yeah. Bree and I drove down to Ohio, went down there. It was pretty cool.
We went to Niagara Falls to be able to take Caleb up for
path of totality. That would've been a cool one.
Yeah, that was awesome.
When the fall stopped running for, for a moment,
Bri and I barely made it to the spot where the totality was.
Did you know that mark the, the gravitational waves from the. The sun and the moon passing over each other is ultimately like, stop Niagara Falls.
Okay, well that's just not true.
Wasn't the, wasn't the Doomsday
movie. Mark was literally like trying to figure out, and you're like, oh, that's not true.
I'm sitting here trying so hard not to smile.
His eyes, his eyes are going like, is this real?
It's like that, the meme where the math problems are happening behind the scenes melting. See,
the problem is I'm never in the seat, so I can always see Mark. He was, his brain was melting for a
second. I, I was like, that's not how that works.
Got some real brain rock going on,
is it?
No, it's not. I know the moon effects waves in tidal forces, but not like that immediately.
Yeah. No, no. But yeah, the Aurora was great. I mean, eclipses are great. We don't have any eclipses coming anytime soon. Um, so we, we kind of gotta see the ones we could see for the next, I think, 10 or 20 years. So. But if you never gotta see those, it's always worth seeing.
Like, try to see the Aurora, it's always late, it's always cold. That's kind of how it works. But, um, it's always no winter at some point.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, when you get to see 'em. But, uh, we've just been blessed with the opportunity to see. I don't know what that means since you know, my whole life, I never gotta see 'em.
And then now I do.
The first time I saw, it was like a year and a half, two years ago, and it was in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and I have not seen them here yet. So I'm still hopeful that there will come a time soon. But
you gotta, you gotta go to some, the great thing with the lakes is you can see over the lake.
So you see the horizon really well. Yeah, I went down to Somerset, uh, to Mission Lake and saw it over the lake with the cross. It was pretty cool.
Ooh.
Yeah, it was pretty deep. But
that does sound nice.
Well anyways, uh, that's has nothing to do with the Hebrew, but what we're supposed to be talking about is Hebrew.
We're in a series called Hebrew and we talked about, um, Hebrew words the last couple weeks. This week we did a different Hebrew word. Anybody know what Hebrew word was?
Oh, I know. Uh, was it ruach?
Yeah, I was,
yeah,
you gotta, you gotta get that gutter all.
Well, I don't wanna spit all up on mic. Ugh.
Ruok. Yeah,
RUOK little pH flam in your throat.
Yeah,
a little gross.
Um, so we talked about ruok ruok, which means,
oh, uh, hold on, hold on. I edited the video. Uh, is it holy? No wait, no wait. It was wind right. It was wind. Uh, and. Waves
not wave.
What was the motion? You
just been out?
It was the title. Forces of the
Niagara Falls. The gravitational waves. Right?
Like no Spirit. Spirit. See, that's what I said is spirit, breath and wind. So wind was, Ken was gonna Right. That's the least of the ones that use it gets translation.
Jared, weren't you here for all three services?
See,
we go over for this every podcast. I'm out here. Yeah. Yeah. So it's spirit, breath and wind.
Yeah. And, uh, of, it's, when you see those words, the Old Testament, that's generally what it is. There other words can also be translated that, but that's generally the words you'll see or translated is, is, uh, ruach, which is those things. And then we see it in the New Testament. Uh, in Greek we see different words, but also mean spirit, and we kinda see the continuation of how God moved through creation, all the way through empowering David to empowering his prophets all the way into, um, basically saying, this is my son Jesus, all the way to leaving the Holy Spirit for us, which we now are vessels of.
And so I, the reason we're doing these series. Uh, it's not to just teach a Hebrew word, but it's really to help people understand the Bible is really, really intertwined. Mm-hmm. More so than you probably think at the, just in English, reading the Bible. You go, yeah, the Bible's connected. But if you go to the core of it, it's connected through and through story after story detail, after detail.
I mean even down to the words they use and the reason why they use them. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's, it comes to the point of like, these are 40 different writers spread out over hundreds and hundreds of years who did not know each other. They were not contemporaries of each other, a couple of them were.
Mm-hmm.
But for the most part, they didn't even know the other person's writings even existed. So. Especially the times of New Testament. Those guys may not have seen each other's letters, but yet they were consistent. Yeah. Uh, and so that's the crazy thing when we say that, like it's the word of God, breathe through man to be written down for us.
That's what happened. I mean, the consistency in scripture is astounding, and that's where scholars look at it and say. How do you get a consistent message like this overall, this time and expanse when people didn't even have access to, to each other were like, yeah, you could do this with, with an AI right now, or Google, but like you.
They didn't have Google. They didn't have ai. They didn't have transportation. They didn't have telephones. They didn't have any way to really communicate with each other other than the written word. Who might've got lost in a storm, might've got, you know, someone got, might've got killed on the road and the letter never got there.
So it's just amazing to think of how God's word is so profound yet today, when it, that's how it came together. And so when we go to the core of it, then we look at it and see how. Just time and time again, we see God's word. You know, proving itself to be true, uh, connecting stories to each other. I think that's why we're trying to share this story, to encourage people that you also are part of God's story.
'cause the story is to end with us. It ends with Christ returning and reclaiming everything. And that's just a continuation really. There is no end. I mean, there is no beginning, there is no end. It's a continuation, but we are part of a bigger story.
I had heard a pastor say one time something to the effect of, you know, why are the things that are in the Bible?
In the Bible? He was asking from, you know, the skeptic's perspective of how each thing was chosen and how it all kind of came together. And he said, you know, so many people think that, well, it's in the Bible, so that makes it important. He said, no, that's not how it works. He said, it's actually the other way around.
He's like, you don't put something in a safe, and then all of a sudden it becomes valuable. It's. In the safe because it was valuable already. And the same is true with the Bible. Those letters were preserved and saved and then placed into the Bible because they were something that was important, something that mattered and that we wanted to make sure we had a record of to be able to keep for whatever the future may have held for instruction, for teaching, for learning, for studying, for examining, but ultimately to be able to have God's people be able to connect with God in a way that you can't just by.
Regular, average, everyday study talk or learning. Yeah.
Mm, no, it's good. Um, the interesting thing, even I was doing a little bit of studying on ancient Egypt, um, and just different things like that. And I saw actually on Facebook, 'cause you know how the internet be listening to you nowadays. It does. Um, so on Facebook, it w it pulled up this, this cup.
And it was really interesting because they were saying it's one of the, um, artifacts where it's actually like written on the cup. It was ancient Egyptian. So I don't, I couldn't read it personally, but, um. It was talking about, talking about Christ like on this cup. And it was like, it was really, really interesting because like even, even back then, like we're saying, all those civilizations were like all intertwined in that way.
And I think it's so cool that even the ancient Egyptians were, you know, talking about that and it's, it's actually inscribed on things, so it just, you know, brings it to more validity. So,
yeah. No, I, I, I love when we see history and science support scripture because we see the truth of scripture, uh, evidenced in the world.
And I think that's, that's where. Um, you know, we, we dig deeper and we, we look deeper into things like Hebrew so we can get a fuller understanding of scripture. And so trying to figure out what's the best context. 'cause English, you know, we talked about there's 14,000 words in Hebrew and a million words in English.
And so those, those Hebrew words are deep and they're rich and they're profound, and so. It would be really hard to translate some of those verses and say, well, the spirit of God, also the breath of God, also the wind of God, like it would just get really confusing for people. Mm-hmm. When you know that that word can mean all those things and you can see how it's used in different instances where God moves in those ways, you can see the power of God in a way that really English, I think at times fails to allow us to see the fullness of it at all times.
The interesting thing about that too is like, as I was kind of thinking about your sermon. Is like spirit, wind and breath, like none of those things you can see, which is really, really interesting to me is like, you know, it's like when you feel, you can feel the wind, but you can't see the wind, you can see the effects of the wind, right?
You can see the effects of your breath when you breathe and you see like the cold air coming outta your mouth and you can also see the effects of the spirit and the Holy Spirit like in your life. And so, I don't know. I don't know. I was just thinking that was really interesting during your sermon as well, so.
One of my favorite resources for doing bible studies or for, you know, looking things up for when preaching to get more information is Blue letter Bible. Oh yeah. And if you haven't taken a look at that, it's absolutely incredible because it gives you the opportunity to. Pull up any given verse in whatever translation you happen to be reading it in.
And you can refer back to those original languages and break it down and be able to see, oh, hey, that's what this word means. But I've, you know, maybe seen it used somewhere else. Does it mean the same thing here? And you can kind of cross reference stuff for the people that would maybe want to go on a little bit of a deeper journey into studying scripture and being able to kind of dive into that stuff.
I recognize that not everyone is a word nerd, where you wanna kind of take that time and dig that deep into it. But if ever you did, blue Letter Bible is absolutely a great resource for that.
We were actually talking, Jerry and I were talking about the blue.
I can't say it.
You got it.
Blue letter Bible last week.
We were, and
yeah,
I just like how you can see, 'cause yeah, shout out to the blue letter Bible. I like, I like how you can see all of them at the same time. Yeah. Like, you know, like I can put the Hebrew next to the Greek, next to the message Bible, next to the NIV or ESV, you know, like. Don't look at me like, don't I seen that message again?
He's,
no, it ain't even that. Like I've only preached once here, so, you know, there's a reason. But yeah, no, I think it's really cool. So I do love that ad.
No, I, I, I, my hope is that people will just be more intentional about going further in their studies. They, you don't have to learn Hebrew, you don't have to learn Greek.
But maybe you'll get a resource that'll help you figure those things out. Maybe you'll read. Some books where people kind of parse those things out and try to teach you what that means. There's a lot of scholars who are great authors and, and studys like of Hebrew, ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and they know it, that share their thoughts about the, those deeper meanings.
So I think that's where, as a church, we want people to dive deeper. I mean, I'm, I say this quite regularly, like go and read the Bible yourself, like. Go read the passages from the sermon and see if, see if I'm right. See if you can get a deeper meaning out of it. Like every time I read scripture, I get new fresh meaning and understanding.
For scriptures I've read hundreds of times. And like, 'cause your life situation changes, your, your financial situation changes, your time, availability changes and, and your perspectives change, your relationships change. And then now you're finding deeper meaning in a verse that maybe I've read this so many times, but now God is speaking to me through this verse in a way you never spoke to me before.
And I think that's where the profoundness of scripture, that doesn't, I don't, I can't do that with other books.
Yeah,
and just could read a fantasy novel and be like, oh, this is transformed me now. Like it doesn't, it doesn't work like that, but the word of God can and will transform you if you allow it to.
One of my favorite sermons that you've done since I've been here was it's, and it's all Greek to me. You had gone through and taken one verse of scripture, just one, and then you broke it down across all the different translations and the ways that you could take that, and the ways that it could have been written and the ways that it could have been figured out.
And used, I absolutely loved that and I recognize that that's not something for everybody. But if you are one of those people who was really into that sort of thing, you can do study after study after study on that because it's great to be able to learn the history where how, if one translation has it, where there's a comma here, that might change the way one person reads it compared to another.
And it seems like something simple and insignificant for most people, but at the same time, whenever you start viewing it from that perspective, it can change your entire outlook on how a particular phrase or turn a phrase was used by Jesus speaking to one individual person.
Right. Well, and not just that the, the.
I love that. I, I wasn't here, I don't think, for that sermon, but, um, was I here for this? I don't think I was here for that sermon.
No.
I It would've
been close.
Yeah, it would've been real close. Yeah. Um, but I heard a, I was listening to a sermon, uh, yesterday actually, just on my car ride and the. Interesting thing the pastor said was like, hold me accountable.
Right? Because I could just add, you know, an extra line of what I want to add right at the end, you know? And you would never know. 'cause like if you don't read your Bible and you're not going home and actually like re-looking at that verse, you're never gonna know. I'm just adding whatever. I'm not saying we do that here.
We don't do that here. We keep each other accountable. But you know, it is something though, like
verse three says, give your pastor more money. Right?
Yeah. Like ask him. They'll
be like, oh really? The Bible says no, that's not
what it says. But it is interesting though, like I never thought about that, of like making my, and it makes your faith more personal.
Right. Um, and really not necessarily calling it fact checking, but for lack of a better term, fact checking. Yeah. Like, you know, I'm like, Hey, what does this mean to me though?
Yeah. I think people should, I mean, the truth is those of us, when we preach, even when we sing
mm-hmm.
We need people to hold us accountable.
Like, Hey, that's not what you said. This is what I heard. What did you mean? And, and you know, I, I went back and watched the tape a few times 'cause people come up and say, Hey, you said this and I wanna know about it. So I was like, well lemme go watch the tape and see what I said and then let's talk about it.
And so sometimes people just get a wrong perspective of what was said on stage 'cause they hear something different. But, but there's been a couple times over my ministry career where like people are like, Hey, you said this. I'm like, you're right. I said that or, or I, what? I said Sounds that way. And I could see it be taken that way 'cause it could be taken outta context in different ways.
And so, I'm sorry, that's not what I try to communicate. I'll make sure I clear that up when, if and when I say something about that again. Mm-hmm. And so I've, I've had to do that 'cause we're, we're, we're human. We're prone to making mistakes. We are not perfect. And so I admit to that. So I work hard to study and I know Matt and you guys that preach.
Mark, I know we work hard to study.
Yeah.
Jared appreciate
that. I, I wasn't making faces.
We work hard. We work hard. We're
definitely not making faces. I wasn't, no,
we work hard to deliver the message, but we're there, we're human and so the delivery sometimes, you know, might be. We might fail. And so we need someone to kind of say, Hey, that that needs to be corrected.
And so I don't think any of us are up against going up on stage and saying, Hey, last week I said this and it wasn't right. I just wanna clear it up. I've done it. Um, yeah, I mean you just gotta do that. So I.
I mean, I think you are maybe one of the most approachable people about that. Whenever that type of thing happens, because we have worked for other pastors mm-hmm.
Collectively that that is not the case, do not
challenge me. I'm
my authority. You will not challenge my authority. You know, it's, it's one of those things where there are some people where you don't have that level of accountability or being able to walk up to them and say whatever, but you're really.
Open to that. Yeah. And that is a great thing, and I think that kind of feeds into the system where the rest of us kind of land with it as well.
Yeah. Well, I mean, people get really mad like, well, you said that well. I mean, let's talk about it. Yeah. Okay. If I did, I'll, I'll make it right. I'll figure out the, the right way to do it.
I mean, papers do it all the time. They, they print erroneous information all the time and have to, it's called ADA and they have to go back and print it. Legally, they have to go back and print it because they go back and say, Hey, that article we said about this guy was not right. This is what it's supposed to say.
And so like, it's just, I think pastors need to do that more.
Yes.
Uh, and I think we try to be transparent. About that. Um, I actually, there was like a couple years ago, I had said the wrong character in a story, like over and over again. I got like, I think it was Mary,
I thought it was maybe when Moses loaded the art.
It
was like Deborah.
It was like Deborah or something. Yeah. It was
like, it was, I said the wrong name 'cause there were multiple, the story, but I kept saying the wrong name. Nobody confronted me on this from the audience. And then like five people in the lobby, like, you know, you kept saying that was her. I think it was Mary.
And I said, Mary, and said someone else. And I'm like, why didn't you guys just stop me in the middle of the sermon? Just raise your hand and say, Hey, it's not Mary. Because you could tell from the verse that I had just, I was just talking and rearrange them, you know? And it's an honest mistake. I was like, I was like, well, next time just call me out for, Hey, say Cyle, you know, that's not Mary is, is this one.
And I'm like, oh, okay. Then I'll, I mean, immediately that, that's. I mean, we're not so, and I know that at other churches, if you did that, you would be like.
Excommunicated,
literally like slapping the Lord in his face. But like, I hope people understand at our church, like, Hey, yeah, just, just say, Hey Cyle.
That's, that's not right. Um, you got the wrong, you got, you got the wrong person in that story. And oh, okay, I'll fix it. The big ones, Peter and Paul, they're easy to mess up. Scripture. Uh, it's easy to say Peter and Paul because they both wrote, you know, a bit of scripture, especially in the letters and, you know, it's just, it's an honest mistake.
So Clar, I'll be like, oh yeah, sorry about that. Let me clarify that. Let's go back and change that example, but. We need to have more comfortability to do that, and I think when the more you study, the more you understand the importance of trying to get it right. This morning Bible I was, I was teaching from Malachi and, which is funny 'cause Malachi is like one of the most sarcastic books in the Bible.
And uh, I'm like, you love sarcasm. Go read Malachi. I mean these Oracle of God speaking on behalf of the Lord. And he say it's pretty sarcastic things if you get it. The sarcasm, uh, about orthodoxy and basically giving poisoned sacrifices instead of your best. Um, you know, and so I think you can always find the Bible something for your own interests.
That you can dive deeper and really get to know God in a, in a more full way if you're really willing to dive in.
Yeah. There's biblical literacy. Being able to be aware we can hold each other accountable 'cause we're all humans. Mm-hmm. This is all our first time. Living on this earth, doing this life learning about Jesus and what who he is.
So it's what, what is the, what is the so, so mean Cyle messing Cyle been
here before I, I dunno, everybody.
Well, iron sharpens iron. You, we build each other up. Like as we all get more refined in our faith, in our walk and our understanding of who Jesus is, what we do. Um, that helps build one another up. As I grow, I can help somebody else grow and they can help me grow and we can build into one another and we can all do it together.
Yeah.
So I think that's such a healthy, important, vital piece that not just the people that are preaching are well versed, but that the people that are. Part of it are also
yeah,
aware and understanding and knowing.
We hope you, if you're listening and you, and you don't attend Heart Lakes, we, we'd love for you to check out one of the Hebrew series sermons and, uh, I'm excited about the last one coming up.
It's one of my favorite, favorite Hebrew phrases, uh, in the Bible. So I'm not gonna tell you what it is, but in like three weeks, we're going, we're gonna throw that one down.
Oh, it be great thought. I thought it was next week.
Three weeks. Three weeks. Uh, but we're excited. Thanks for listening to the HOTL cast, and we hope you enjoy reading your word.