Ep 1069 | Jase Gets Offended by a Slang Term & Zach’s Hairdo Causes Chaos at Church
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I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. We were having conversations as we often do in between. One of these days we've got to have a podcast of the in-between conversations. They're quite entertaining.

But we'll do that when we get to the end because I won't have to worry about us getting cancer. Well, that's true because then you're worried about it. So we were talking about our old friend Cole Pryne who's up there with you who was one of our original guys that was with us way back when we did In the Woods with Phil.

And at first he was just kind of – I mean, he was very knowledgeable, but he was kind of working. He wasn't worn off. He was the OG. The OG. So you said that. And then Jason and I were trying to guess. We had many, I thought, pretty good guesses. I think we gave a dozen possibilities. Well, my first thing I said, I thought offensive guard, but maybe he lost weight after high school. Yeah.

I thought he played offensive guard. Yeah. I said official gentleman was another one. I tried to tie in the women's doctor thing, which got awkward. The OG. I thought, is he talking about birth pains? Was he the first born? Yeah. That didn't work.

So as Jason and I were guessing for like five minutes, you never heard a word we said. And you're like, oh. And so Maddie, of all people, Maddie knew what it was. OG, which I'm sure a lot of our audience will know. When she said the answer, original gangster, I thought, well, that's not it. I was like, these young people today. So Maddie got it. Sure.

She got it. Manny got it. Yeah. And so I then looked it up on the internet and confirmed it's falsehood nature because that's what it said it was. And so I thought, that's why you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. Yeah. Somebody just came up with that. And the fact that you're using it is embarrassing. Why is it embarrassing?

Original gangster? I don't even think a Christian should even use those two words. I'm deeming that a cuss word. It's not a cuss word. I'm a child of the 90s. If you grew up in the 90s, I graduated high school in the late 90s. That was part of the American folklore. It's part of the zeitgeist of our time. We grew up using that language, saying it.

What is the life expectancy of a gangster? Okay, I think that pause is all I need. No, but it's a metaphor.

I think it's, but I thought it was funny. I'll take up for Zach because there's nobody less gangster than Cole Pratt. He's, he's the, he's a 180 degree opposite from a gangster. So I thought he was doing it as an ultimate joke. Like, yeah, no, the, the, you know, original gangster like Cole Pratt, you don't get any more of a better dude than that. Well, I agree. But you guys remember that I went through a phase where,

With your brother in college where we tried to act a little gangster. Oh, I remember. I remember it well. How many Jesus activities did you do during that era? Not many. Not many. There was no Jesus. We got busted. And then you guys invoked this concept. Well, we dyed our hair white, if you guys remember. Jeff's is more orange because he has darker hair than mine.

And then we had our ears pierced. We were not living for Jesus. And there was what, I think there's a term, I didn't know until it happened, called tough love. When the families got involved, my parents, Phil and Kevin. Hey, Zach, even before it was an official intervention, you and Zach, I mean, you and Jeff strolled into our Sunday WFR one Sunday.

And with the bleached hair and, and it caused quite the stir because you know who you guys were and your families are there. Well, what's funny. I was, I was preaching the next Sunday and,

And so back in those days, I would do top 10 list. I kind of took them from letter. I was a big Letterman fan. But so I did a top 10 things overheard last week when Jeff and Zach walked in. Well, as soon as I said the title of the top 10 list, everybody started laughing. Because everybody knew it. Because we did. We came in a little bit late. And then we walked down the aisle all the way to like the front left. So the whole church...

you know, a thousand people. Like it was like captive that way. What in the world are Jeff and Zach? And everybody was pointing and I noticed it and I thought, okay, I'm going to get these boys next week. You're going to come in and interrupt my zone next week. You will get thrown under the bus. And so it was, I don't know if I can ever lay my hands on it. I have to read it. I remember one of the, one of them was, uh,

Which one is the elder son and which one is the preacher's son? Yeah, yeah. That was one of the things. So to your point, Jace, it wasn't living for Jesus when I was trying to be the OG. Me and Jet were trying to be the OG. So we repented. I do wear a flatbed hat sometimes, which I saw one of the brutal comments on the YouTube page told me to quit wearing costumes and the

He has a point. If you're going to read the comments, then read them with an open mind. I actually agree with that.

But that's not a flat bill hat. That's actually a Filson hat, which is a hunting brand. No, I think he was talking about the shape of the bill. Okay, well. I mean, look, I'm way more open because to me, when you talked about your mistakes, you listed things that technically none of them were wrong. You pierced your ears and you bleached your hair. You can do that for Jesus. That's fine.

We're not under the Levitical. You can get a tattoo. I think the things that y'all were doing in the dark behind the door...

There were some things. Where the gangsta lifestyle was presenting a problem. It turned out to be a cry for help, Jason. That's what I'm saying. That's the sign. We're confusing the sign with what. I didn't want to air the dirty laundry on the podcast, but, I mean, yes, there were other things going on.

that I will not speak up today. But yeah, there was some... Well, let me... In the spirit of Phil Robertson, let me read you a verse. Dasher, everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. Yes.

So that was a cry for help. Well, you know what, Jace? I actually went into that setting before I kind of went off the deep end. I went in as a missionary to help your brother, and he ended up captivating me with his sinful lifestyle.

So it's really Jep's fault. I really want to blame it on Jep. And he's not here to defend himself, so I have to have him on the podcast, let him defend himself. But I went in with good motives. But, you know, the Bible says be careful when you rebuke someone. I do not believe that is true. I will say that is not true because Jep has never been much of a leader. He's a follower. So you may have been leading him down the lane, but I do not see that at all. Exactly.

He was more of a leader than you think. He had a little following. Time tends to justify bad behavior. But I will, you know, AI, which our producer, the lovely and talented Maddie, she sent me this, which is from AI, which is actually artificial. So look at the, Zach, I need one of your big words here. Look at the irony here.

You can take the word irony and make it bigger. Artificial intelligence is going to give you some nuggets about what it means to be authentic. Crickets.

Artificial intelligence is going to give you some nuggets on what it means to be authentic. So I want to read this. Original gangster or OG is now used more broadly to describe someone or something that is the original, authentic, or highly respected in a particular field. So they just said this is a positive thing. Yeah, that's how I meant it.

Yeah, but it's artificial. Yeah, I didn't mean that Cole was originally selling drugs and gangbanging. He's never been in a gang. Well, you're missing my point. This is like you going to a fake tree because they make them, and they're actually – I have been mistaken many times –

especially from my wife, I'll look and say, oh, she put a little tree in the house. Well, it's not real. But that would be like you going to a fake tree and asking it to describe how to produce fruit. Because you're saying that definition came from artificial intelligence about how to be authentic, which by the very definition that it came from, artificial intelligence means it's not authentic. Yeah, and the real point is they just took what somebody else said, which was real,

So they're not called AI. So AI is not OG is what you're telling me. Yeah. There you go.

Jace, what inspires you about people who have come through persecution, whether it's in the Bible or even modern day persecution? Well, it's one thing to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and it's another to give your life rather than deny that the resurrection of Jesus happened, which is sad that we live in a world where

That's a thing, but it's going on today. But it's also inspiring because we know at the end of the day, this really is true. And when you and I were young in the faith, I mean, that was something that really motivated us. It's like the, you know, the disciples and the first century folks, they didn't turn away. And so that meant a lot. Our good friend, Todd Nettleton, who is the voice of the Mars radio host, has written a book called When Faith is Forbidden. For

40 Days on the Front Lines with Persecuted Christians. And basically, this book is a journal of 20 years of traveling to restricted nations, as we call it, meaning that if you're going to go there and you're a person of faith, that there's danger for you to even go there. And so these stories about people that live in these places stand up for Christ, no matter what the cost and no matter what the consequence is.

Each stop of this journey along the way is going to inspire us to be able to live our lives totally unashamed and outspoken for Christ. So we don't want you to miss the opportunity to be inspired by these amazing stories. And it's free. You can request your free copy.

of when faith is forbidden by calling 844-463-4059. That's 844-463-4059. Or you can visit vom.org slash unashamed. That's vom.org slash unashamed. But AI is the biggest oxymoron that's ever been put out there. How can you have artificial intelligence and be intelligent? Well, it's not real. It's not real intelligence. It's not real.

There's a bigger discussion around AI that we need to have at some point. I think that this whole transhumanist kind of movement that's emerging, and it's kind of scary. I think it has implications on— Well, you need to read your Bibles. AI has been discussed in the Bible. It was a city in Canaan, later destroyed by the Israelites under Joshua. I think that should tell you something right there.

It's all coming down. That was a joke. You didn't get it? I got the joke, yeah. There's a city in the Bible called Ai. Called Ai. Didn't end well. And we brought it back 2,000 years later. But I will say this to start to nudge us to play the field role here, nudge us back toward John 5, because we got into a really good discussion on the last podcast.

because I want to bring this up before, is every, I feel like for thousands of years now, we're talking about several cultures and empires. We talk a lot about Daniel, where he laid out these different empires. There's been this attempt to create empires

God in flesh. I mean, you know, the Greeks had it with the Greek guys, the Romans had it with the Romans guys. Even when you come across the middle centuries, the idea of the monarchs, they were supposedly God in flesh. In other words, their word was all encompassing. Of course, you know, we just saw failure after failure. And it's interesting because when you come along to our era, we have it too.

We look at those things, ah, that's crazy, these myths and all that. But then we've created our own superheroes. It started with the Supermans and the Marvels and all this stuff.

Same thing. With God qualities. God qualities. Right. And so you take Superman, who was not from this planet. He came from outer space. He came here. But what does he do? He's got all these abilities. He can fly. He's indestructible. His eyes can burn things and all this stuff. And yet he falls in love with the reporter and

And, you know, then there's the tension of his humanity versus his superhuman strength. I mean, it's just a continued attempted recreation of who Jesus is. To me, it's the greatest form of flattery you could have is imitation. All the Greek gods, too. Think about all the stories of Zeus and Apollos and all these Greek gods.

But what they, where it's different is there, it's like, yes, there's like a deity to it, to these gods. And then there's a humanity as well. But their, their humanity, well, two things that stick out to me is one, their deity is not like all powerful.

They're limited in their power, all of them. Superman was limited in his power because Kryptonite could take him down. But the God of the Bible is unlimited in his power. He's unlimited in his sovereignty. He's unlimited in his self-sufficient, self-sustaining, self-referential authority.

fully aware of himself. He's holy other than, he doesn't need anything. He can't be defeated. He can't be conquered. So that's missing in all the other gods. And then on the humanity side, they tend to focus on the fallen nature of humanity. So you have a God that's limited in power mixed with kind of the corruption of humanity. And in the God of the Bible, you have unlimited power in

embodied in a body that is completely pure. There's no sin. There's no depravity. There's no moral and no immorality. He's completely moral and good and perfect.

That's like a crazy contrast because you have like the transcendent and the imminent in a way that doesn't make sense to the human mind. Which I think is why they create, back to my original thing, they created Batman because he's a person of the night and the dark. And he's sort of this shadowy figure that you're not, is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? I mean, he's doing good things. We don't know. So the whole ambiguous nature of this story

superhero. And in one of the movies, I think it was the one he was in with Heath Ledger. He said, we're going to get you down in the mud with us for a while.

And I just, you know, it's this idea that somehow we can get God down at our level and we can show him how to operate. You know, it's just, I don't know. It seems clear to me as the same humanity kind of continues to run these same patterns, culture after culture, you know, dynasty after dynasty. Well, it's because they don't, that's why they don't want to do pictures anymore.

in films about God, because if he's all powerful and there's no weakness and all that, well, then you got to surrender to him. Yeah. Wouldn't, they don't want to do that. No. So, you know, that's why the Christian people have risen up and they're the ones, you know, doing quality shows about God. It's a good point though. When you think about the, the, the story of, of humanity, um,

We read back the Old Testament and the New Testament even, and we think, man, look at these idols, look at the things they worshipped. And we're like, man, that sounds so stupid. But it's only because we are looking back with hindsight this 2020. But if you think about where we're at now in our current world,

a cultural moment, we've just gotten more sophisticated at basically building the same exact structure. It's like the Tower of Babel over and over and over again. We've just gotten more sophisticated in how we tell that story. And I think right now maybe this transhumanism movement seems very sophisticated, but it's really just the same old thing as humanism, which is really just the same old thing as idolatry from the Old Testament. It's the same thing. It's just that we want to be in charge of

And we don't want to submit to Jason's point to this God. And I think that's why John 5 is so powerful because where Batman said, you know, we're going to get you in the mud with us for a little while. Jesus does get into the mud with us, but he doesn't do it to conquer us. He does it to allow us to conquer him, which is, that's the thing that just blows your mind when you read the gospel is

It's a God that condescends and then suffers. This is Philippians 2. And then ultimately dies, and not just dies, dies on a cross, which was not an honorable death. And then he went and preached to the spirits in prison. So you think about the descent that Jesus went to, it's absolutely mind-boggling that that's

the method through which victory would come? Yeah, when he obviously had the power. I mean, we started off with this story, which he heals a guy, which I didn't really give my take for years when I read this story. I mean, he heals the guy. 38 years, we had touched on that podcast before last.

on how long 38 years is. Yeah, you did some trends from 38 years ago. Yeah, and I never finished my thought because I was going to give you my take on it. So when I first read John 5, because I looked at it like it seemed so strange because Jesus healed him, and he didn't even...

even know who he was. Now, granted, he had to believe because when he said, get up and walk, well, he got up. Yeah. Which, so something in there, he thought, well, but, you know, in my mind, I thought, what do you got to lose? You try to get up and you can't get up. So he gets up because then they asked him, the religious leaders are like, well, who told you to get up and walk? And where does it say?

He says, first he doesn't acknowledge. He said, the man who made me well said, pick up your mat and walk. So they asked him, well, who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk? Because they're not focusing on the man being healed. They're focusing that he was carrying his mat. Carrying his mat. On the Sabbath. But the side story is, if you really look at the story, because I put myself in that guy's position, right?

And this is kind of lowbrow where I'm going, but I'm just going to be transparent here. Verse 13, it says, the man who was healed had no idea who it was. I found that very strange. Yeah. He didn't know he was the son of God. He never even thought about that. So Jesus just healed him. So Jesus is making a point, okay, for doing it on the Sabbath because we're fixed to read that him and his dad, his father, is working. He's like, we're working here.

I'm like, what? Are you equal? You're saying the father? Yeah, I'm working. He's working. I'm his son. What? All right, Jace. Al and I have been eating very healthy. I don't think you have been. So what's the most unhealthy, indulgent thing that you've eaten lately? Things that are not green. Yeah.

Yeah, probably some kind of pie. You said you ate like three quarters of a pie the other day. That's not good for you. One and three quarters of a sweet potato pie. All right. So here's what you need to do. You got some field of greens on the table right there in front of you. I'm telling you, you need to do it. I drink this stuff. Drink a delicious glass of field of greens. It's like nutritional armor for your body. You're going to need it if you're going to eat a pie and a half.

Each fruit and vegetable was carefully selected by doctors for a specific health benefit. There's a group for heart health, lung health, kidneys, metabolism, even healthy weight, which is what Al and I are working on our weights. I personally love the energy that I get when I take this stuff, field of greens. It's amazing. But most of all, I don't have a cheat day, but if I did, if I grabbed a burger or something like that, I wouldn't feel as guilty if I'm taking my field of greens because it gives my body daily nutrition that my body needs.

And only Field of Greens makes the better health promise, which is this, that your doctor will notice your improved health or you get your money back. So let us get you started today with our special discount. We got you 20% off your first order to get you started. Just use code unashamed at fieldofgreens.com. That's promo code unashamed at fieldofgreens.com. So verse 13, the man who was healed had no idea. All right.

For Jesus had slipped away into the crowd. So then when it gets to this 14, because I never really got an explanation of this, later Jesus found him at the temple and said, see, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. So when I thought that, when I read this for the first time, of course, I looked up what scholars think.

I didn't get a conclusion. It was all over the place. It was. They said maybe he had a lifestyle that led to him getting injured and all this stuff. But the way my simple mind thinks, one is a scary thought, but the other thought is, now look, if you had been laying there in Invalid for 38 years thinking about, it's kind of like you being on a deserted island and waiting to be picked up. You're thinking, boy, if I get back,

Here's what I'm going to do. Or like being into some kind of military situation that's terrible, and you're like, if I ever get home. Or being in prison. You're like, boy, if I get out, what's going to happen? Well, I'm thinking if he could get back going again, the first thing I would think is, boy, I'm going to find me a woman. I mean, if I was in that situation and I wasn't a believer in God, wouldn't you be thinking, hey, I'm back working again. I'm well.

So I'm just thinking. Maybe he had been an OG. He was an OG. Well, that was my thought because he's like, evidently you're not handling your new body well.

And so whatever, flirting, hitting on the chicks, or taking all the credit, or whatever he's doing. But then I think where he says something worse will happen to you, well, that's scary. Well, it could be worse than being...

crippled for 38 years, laying around. Lose your soul. Exactly. And I think that leads into the resurrection. I mean, I think that's the key point. It's like there's a way not only to get yourself out from under one of the worst suffering situations on the planet. If you die without me, that's way worse. So then the man went away. And I think this is profound.

And told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. So to me, that's where the conversion happened. It's like now he's like, okay, what am I thinking here? The guy who healed me said, look, something's worse. What could be worse? I think he thought dying and then dying without being in good standing with this fella. So I'm going to go...

I'm going to go proclaim Jesus as the healer. Which kind of, you're right, you're right, Jason, really kind of paints the picture that we look at the physical realm and we see the things we face, but Jesus brings in this heavenly idea to us that there's something way bigger.

You know, then everything we see. And so that's kind of what he gets into with the idea of resurrection now as a possibility of living a new life in him with the Holy Spirit and then looking forward to the ultimate resurrection, which is all things may complete anyway. Which the ultimate point is it shows you that a miracle and a sign didn't really save him. It was the acknowledging of Jesus.

That was the transforming thing in his life. Yeah. Because he wasn't living right now. I mean, the scholars seem to be going back to saying the sin caused the first thing. But I'm like, I mean, Jesus said stop sinning. It seems like a present occurrence to me. Well, plus, I couldn't really buy that, Jase, because when we get to John 9...

Jesus, when the disciples ask him about the man born blind, he says the exact opposite. Exactly. But to me, my take on it, which is, you know, I'm not a scholar, but seems to fit with that. He just didn't respond to this miracle. I mean, he literally, this is better than winning the lottery. The man's been crippled for 38 years and he healed him. And then you're like, oh, I don't even know who he was.

And then you're doing, you're probably doing what most people would do. You're having a worldly party. You're having a gangster party down here, drinking way too much, you know, trying to find you a prostitute or whatever, you know, may have had one under his arm. And Jesus is like, Hey,

You're well again, right? Yeah. Well, you need to shut this down or something worse. And he's like, oh, hang, whoa, who is, I need to know who this fella is. Well, it's interesting because to kind of bolster your point as a possibility, he's

He found him at the temple, which I'm assuming because this guy had been crippled, he couldn't go there because they would have believed he did sin. That's why he was like this. So now all of a sudden he can get back in right with the Jewish leadership and the people that are there. And so he's gone to the temple to make it right. But you're right.

I don't think that's probably affected his mindset until he runs back up on Jesus again. It gives him a much dire warning. Yeah, who knows what he's doing? I mean, you're just speculating, but Jesus seemed to call it sin. So, you know, and he had cleaned out the temple earlier two chapters before, you know. Yeah, it's kind of funny because there's kind of like two types of people in the world. Like if I'm in this, you think two types of people in this situation, they see this man get healed.

I think everybody's going to probably ask the question, who is the guy that healed you? But there's two different ways you can ask that question. Who is the guy that healed you

Because I want to go meet that guy because I want to get healed. Or who's the guy that healed you? I want to go and shut him down because he's messed up the apple cart. So it's the motivation of wanting to know who Jesus was. And really, it goes back to they wanted to know who was it that was disturbing and disrupting their authority structure?

That's the thing that's happening here is who's messing this up? Which is why they say because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. And in defense, Jesus said to them, my father is always at his work, at his work to this very day, and I too am working.

And so for this reason, they tried all the more to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. And if you think about like, what is this? Like, does this happen today? I mean, we've all been in ministry long enough that if you're in a church, I've been in churches and in ministries where the Holy Spirit started to move.

And it starts messing up things like traditions. It starts messing up, you know, whether you have a, you know, my grandfather paid for that pew in, you know, 1947. And y'all want to read the dumbest stuff that people will get mad about. But you see it. It's like it's like a move of the spirit. And then we get people get nervous. Religious people get nervous about that because we lose faith.

We lose our power. We lose our authority. We lose our our own air quote sovereignty. Yeah, we lose that. I think it was interesting that, you know, N.T. Wright in his commentary, he had an interesting illustration talking about this moment being a heavenly apprenticeship is what he called it. That that text you read in the last podcast, Zach, in 19 through 22 says,

where he talks about this idea about watching the being a part of the father and then coming to earth. And I just thought it was really interesting. I hadn't thought about it before that Jesus becoming flesh was in essence, you know, a heavenly apprentice to the father, uh,

And the idea was then he would train generations after him to follow in his footsteps. And he talked about in his family, N.T. Wright did, that there were six generations of, he didn't mention what it is, but some sort of work that his family had done.

This is like physical labor, but they had trained son to son, son to son. But when it came to him, he was a thinker, you know, and so he wound up kind of going the scholarly route. But now he was his sons were like him. And so he was training them how to write and all this stuff. And I thought, well, that's what happens in human terms. We kind of fork off.

in different directions. But from a heavenly perspective, there's only one son of the father who then taught his disciples, who then established the church, who then have trained foundation after foundation of foundation that have gone forward. And here we are 2000 years later, we're still talking about the same thing because we are our printed, we are heavenly apprentices as we live our life here on this earth. And it made me think about our family, Jace, because, you know, dad had a nobody before him, uh,

I mean, I guess his uncles and his, you know, duck hunted, but nobody really had the ability to make a duck call until dad just did it. And then he trained you how to do it.

who then trained Stone how to do it, who was just a guy we met, who then became a brother in Christ and learned how to do duck calls. And now we're three generations into duck call builders. And I thought, this is exactly how he works. It's the idea of seeing something and then being trained in it to impact. And I just love the idea that we are the heavenly ambassadors. That's what we do.

We want to talk to you about Liberty University. You know, we kind of have a long history with them. Zach, you've got some experience with Liberty as well. Yeah. Layla went there for college for a year and then Max did their online program when he was in high school. Yeah. And that's exactly what my grandkids have done. Carly graduated from there.

And Bailey Kay is going there now. And, you know, they live up to their name. Liberty is freedom. Their mission is training champions for Christ with a world class Bible based education, which is fantastic. They have over 700 residential and online degrees.

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Yeah, and I think the point, the reason this caused problems is because you have to get in the mind of who he's talking to and their history. So I think what caused the problems, because you're like, why are they so upset about it? Because when you first read this, like when I was a young Christian, I thought, what are you talking about? Hard-hearted? The guy's healed? And you can't celebrate because...

He did it on the day we're supposed to rest and he's picking, because it really wasn't about him even being healed. If he hadn't said pick up his mat, they would have had a problem. They'd have just been running around. But so that's why I think when you first read it, I think a lot of people that are not Christians, they're like, well, this is the dumbest story because it doesn't seem realistic. So everybody would say that's a good thing. But the problem was,

The way Jesus words this, when he starts talking about my father is always at work. So you have to go back to the creation story. Well, God rested on the Sabbath day, which is where the whole idea of the Sabbath came from, this day of resting.

But they knew that they couldn't work because it's a time of rejuvenation and celebration, which is what they should have been doing. I mean, we have rejuvenation here, and it should have celebration. But somebody has got to sustain the earth, which is God. So they concluded, and you can read all the Jewish literature about this, it's okay for God to work on the Sabbath. It's just not...

right for the people to be working because you have this day of rest symbolizing God rested on the seventh day. So then all of a sudden when here's a human Jesus saying, well, I'm work God's working, which was okay because someone has to sustain the earth, right? Well, when you say, well, and he's my father, they're like, but you're a human. And so that's why I said it gets into this, uh,

These people who are not looking at Jesus becoming a human, this story wouldn't make sense here. He's a human saying, God is my father. That's why they got so angry, because now he's calling himself equal with God. And don't miss the thrilling part of this is that God is working.

He's working. He's not way off like a million miles away like our culture thinks, that God's just oblivious to all what's going on. Oh, he's working. He's just working in us now through his spirit. Well, and there's something too, Jase, about this concept of resurrection that he brings up because he's going to get into that pretty heavy here. But remember, he's already alluded to it actually twice. One was in John 2 when he said they were looking at the temple.

He said, you know, if you destroy this temple, you know, God will raise it up in three days, of course. And then John tells us he was talking about himself. He was talking about his body. He was talking about being resurrected. And then it's interesting when he tells this guy to get up is the way the NIV puts it in verse eight of chapter five. The word there is the word rise.

And it's the same thing he tells Lazarus. You know, it's the same thing that's referred to St. Gregor. It is when he rose. The idea is rise up. And so in essence, it's almost like a resurrection, which he's going to get into a little bit later, that there is both resurrection now and later, which we've referenced already. So I think it's interesting that he chose this moment.

in an argument about the Sabbath to really zone in on the idea of the resurrection, which is, which is a much bigger point, a much finer point that he was talking about. And I look back, you know, there in the other gospels, um,

All three of those highlighted two other instances. One is, you remember when he healed the guy with a shriveled hand? Yeah. That was on the Sabbath. And then also another time he got into it with him was when his disciples were picking heads of grain as they're walking along on the Sabbath and eating.

And they said, they can't do that. You know, that means they're working because they're picking these heads of grain. So the point is, Jesus has done this multiple times throughout his ministry. And those are just the ones we see recorded. This concept that we weren't made just to be law keepers. The law was made to benefit us. The fact we couldn't keep it wound up being our downfall. But we had the cart before the horse, right?

If we're trying to somehow focus in on law, because I would argue you could make the same statement when he said that, you know, man was not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath for man. You could say the same thing for any law. They were made for our benefit and our good.

But the fact we can't keep them doesn't mean that somehow we can hold the law up as our salvation. It never works. Well, and he's eventually going to get to that when he says, you know, you put your faith in Moses, but you don't believe what he said about me, which most people then go Google what Moses said.

said about Jesus, and you start getting crickets because AI can't figure out exactly what that is. And, of course, because they're missing the whole point about the glimpses of Jesus being predicted or fulfilling the very things that was given to the people. I mean, Jesus, remember when he said, I didn't come here to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it.

Yeah. Which you get the Sermon on the Mount, which is so awesome once you put it kind of in the proper context, because he's like, you're justifying everything you do, saying, you know, I haven't killed anybody. And Jesus is like, yeah, but if you want to, it's just as bad. That's right. And they're like, oh, wait, what? Who is this guy? Which winds up being the whole point. You're right, Jess. I thought the same thing about the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, the idea that we...

We want to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Yeah. Not because we want to know how close to the line can I possibly get without crossing it. That's the way a legalist thinks. He's like, no, no, we got to back up way before that. You've been resurrected. You've been made new. That's why Paul would make the point in Romans 6. He was like, how do we go on living a lifestyle that we've died to? I mean, we left that dead.

What's been raised is now spirit-driven, not flesh-driven. Yeah. And that's why this thing gets kind of complex when you start making it practical. Because there is kind of a spiritual resurrection, and then there's going to be a physical resurrection. Correct. And your heart is going to change, and the body will come later. But it's inevitable change.

If you're trusting in Jesus, what do you want to go through these similarities? He may, uh, to him. What are you going to say? Is that right? Uh, I was just gonna say, yeah, I think it's good to think about when this, when he says that the son's going to give life, it's just, the son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. But life is not just a description of quantity. It's a description of quality and how we relate and get to actually be in community and,

with the triune God. We're getting invited into a relationship that's perfect and pure and holy and good. And that's the vibrancy that we're all, that's the connection. That's the, that's, he is the prize in the end. So I think that, um, that's why it's not just, can't just be contained to like, you know, living forever. Cause it says here about the, about the, um,

about the resurrection. If you notice that what he says here is that there's two types of people that will be resurrected. That's in 28 and 29 and 30. Yeah, in 28, he says that the resurrection, one will be raised to judgment, the other will be raised to life. And so,

that's important to think about. It's not just the resurrection. It's what is the quality of life that you're being saved into. Life is defined not as existence. Life is defined as knowing the one true God, being in relationship, being connected, being whole. I think that's the hard thing that we're trying to accomplish in our study of the scriptures is to try to see—

The way the Gospels seem to describe eternal life, it's not something that I say a prayer, check, boom, I had the magic password now, and I get into eternal existence. That doesn't seem to be the picture that the Scripture is pointing to. What the Scripture is pointing to is I have a deep God-shaped hole in my heart and a longing that I can't satisfy yet.

Except for the fact that God enters in and says, I will fill that hole in your heart because only I can fit in there. And I'm going to come and live inside people now. That's the picture of life. I want to read you this one thing, Jace. I think this is just kind of overview and then we can get into the weeds of it. But one of the guys I read, Chuck Swindoll, he had outlined this text in a way I had never seen or noticed before. Something that pretty amazing happens.

Here's how we broke it down. These are the claims of John 5, 19 through 30. The Son of Man is equal with God, which, of course, was one of their bigger problems. That's in 19 and 20. The Son of Man is the giver of life. He says that in verse 21, which makes sense because think about it. How could you talk about it unless you were the one that created it? The Son of Man is the final judge, 22 and 23. The Son of Man will determine the eternal destiny of humanity, verse 24, and

And then the son of man will raise the dead 25 through 29. And here's, here's what I never noticed before. The last one, he says, the son of man is Jesus who always does the will of God. Cause every up until verse 30, he's used himself in the third person. I'm at the son of man. When he gets to verse 30, he just goes ahead and puts it out there. But by myself, I,

I can do nothing. So now he's using pronouns for him. I judge only as I hear. And my judgment is just for, I seek not to please myself, but him who sent me. And I never thought about that before that he, he talked about the son of man with, you know, they can agree with all that stuff until he gets to the fact that he says, and I am that son of man. Yeah. I mean, I am the word in flesh. And so when he says that all of a sudden, wait a minute, which is why then he shifts over and talks about the testimony and,

that's been around that says he is who he says he is. So I just, I had never seen that before. I'd never noticed that, but I thought that was a pretty good take on who Jesus is in this text and the fact that he's putting himself out there fully, which is why he went down this road.

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This language that he's using comes from Ezekiel and Daniel 7 about this son of man. He uses it in both instances. And in Ezekiel, which, you know, we're not going to read Ezekiel 34 through 37, but I recommend reading it because all of a sudden, this stuff that we're talking about this not yet now, or now not yet, it really...

shows itself once you read ezekiel 34 to 37 because and that's the just off the top of your head everybody i think knows the story of the valley of dry bones where ezekiel goes out there and sees all these dead bomb it's like almost like a movie in your mind and all of a sudden they start rattling and flesh gets on the bone and they come to life you know and the

Then God breathes life into them and the Spirit is poured into them. But when you read all that, you see that really he's predicting that there's going to be this great shepherd that's coming and it's going to pour out this Spirit on the nation of Israel. And it's basically going to resurrect Israel itself. I mean, Ezekiel 37 and verse...

Where was we reading that earlier before? I think it's verse 11. Let me just read 11 through 14. He said, Son of man, there's that phrase, these bones are the people of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We're cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says, my people.

I'm going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people will know that I am the Lord. When I open your graves and bring you up from them, I will put my spirit in you and you will live and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord has spoken and I have done it declares the Lord. And so, uh,

My point is this language is all over John 5. Yeah. And when you fast forward to us, because you're saying, well, what are you saying that he's not talking about the final resurrection? And we've kind of touched on this, but let me just show you how Paul then. So if you go to Ezekiel 34 through 37, you go to John 5, then you go to 2 Corinthians 5 and verse,

and kind of get this not yet now, watch how we eventually get to the same topic. So you go to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 5, and it says, Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose. What purpose? So that in verse 4, he says that we may be clothed with our heavenly dwelling so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Well, he's talking about the resurrection here.

The final resurrection. Would you agree? Because he starts off saying, if we know the earthly tent. So he says, we've been given the Holy Spirit as a deposit. Then verse six says, therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we're at home in the body. Well, look at this phrase. We are away from the Lord.

He's looking at that being more with the Lord than what is actually happening to us. Sure, we're going to get a new body, but living eternally with the Lord, that is the thrilling part of this. We're going to be with the Lord forever. We live by faith, not by sight. We're confident and would prefer to be away from the body. And there it is again, at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him. Well, now we're getting into...

Some now stuff. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Same language as in John 5. Each one may receive what is done. I mean, do him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. But look how it transitions into now. Verse 11. Since then we know what it is to fear the Lord. We try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God. And then he gets down to, where does he say we're a new creation? Verse 16.

So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view, though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. What does a new creation mean?

You've been raised a new creation now with the Holy Spirit in you. And so what did we do? We realized the old is gone, the new has come. All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ. We are therefore ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.

So I read all that to show you there's glimpses of the fulfillment of what Ezekiel is saying in here. There's obviously these truths that Jesus is with God, in God, equal with God, but a different role, surrendering himself as a human.

But and he's offering restoration for Israel, which impacts us, because when you then go to Acts 2, which is what Ezekiel, what, 35 and 36 is talking about the spirit being poured out. You see all these groups of Israelites from all nations gathered up. A miracle happens. The Holy Spirit is poured out. Jesus is declared. They respond. They receive the spirit. Then what do they do? They go to all the nations together.

Preaching Jesus. So it is this not yet now flavor in John 5. It's the only way to wrap your head around it, in my opinion. And the only way we could do it was the way he closed that text in 2 Corinthians 5.21. God made him who had no sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.

So you couldn't do it. It's not something you could do on your own. So in essence, the way I like to say it is eternal life begins with internal life. It's that which has changed within us, the Holy Spirit, which then allows us to look forward to the promise that we're already living as we're here on earth. Yeah, the end of Ezekiel 37, if you look at the last verse, it has language that's very similar to this.

the indwellment of the Holy Spirit, the temple language that we use a lot, that God's going to make us home in humans now. He says that at the end of Ezekiel chapter 37. He says it's going to make us home in the people now. And so when you're reading it, you read about Israel. I think it's important to go back and also read Paul's words in Romans 9 to help us get a better understanding of what he means by Israel in the grand scheme of things. Paul says this in Romans chapter 9, and I won't pontificate it. I'll just read to you what Paul says.

In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.

It's the children of the promise. Which ties into that John 1 when he started off when he said, Yet to all who received him, those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. You know, when he gave his general thoughts of Jesus in that first chapter. Yes, it's a kind of a re-understanding of Israel because he said in verse 6 of Romans 9, It's not as though God's word had failed for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.

Nor because they are his descendants are they Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring shall be reckoned. In other words, it's not the children of the physical descent who are God's children, but the children of the promise. And so we start thinking about what does Israel mean? This is not replacement theology because there is like Jews and Gentiles.

Which is everyone. Which is everyone who are now God's children if you are a children of the promise, which means if you are a child of God.

of faith. We are saved by faith and faith alone. Which I think helps you understand John 3 when he went to Israel's teacher, Nicodemus. Remember? And he was like... He said, why don't you know this? Why don't you know this? For God so loved the whole world. You know, I mean, he's saying it's not based on... There's a new creation and it's not based on what country you're from. What does Paul say? In Christ there is neither...

Slave nor free. Greek nor Jew or Gentile or Israel. We don't make the distinction in Christ. And so I think that

That's wild. We're out of time. I'll close with this, one of my favorite verses, and it hits our overall theme, Hebrews 2.11. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.

As well, we'll close on the Unashamed Podcast. We'll pick it up next time. John 5. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed Podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And don't miss an episode by subscribing on YouTube. And be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.