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Welcome back to Unashamed. I feel like part of me is somewhere maybe in Arkansas. I drove in last night from San Francisco.
The great state of Illinois, and I've learned something, Dad. There's a big difference in northern Illinois and southern Illinois. Is that right? Yeah, and they reminded me of it because I said something about their state.
Which is, you know, obviously that's where the DNC was this year. So I brought that up when I was speaking. I thought it was Chicago and then Illinois. Well, that's pretty much Chicago is Northern Illinois. So that's the deal. But down South, I mean, they're 90% red state, they said. And it was really interesting because it was just like,
People here, people that you'd run into, great people, farmers. Yeah, we've duck hunted in southern Illinois. It's been a while. There were a bunch of duck hunters there, Jason. They had their duck calls. They were blowing them. Really? Yeah. Did you give them a duck call session? No, I'm not really into duck call sessions. Isn't that something, how Phil, you had four sons, and really I was the only one that felt
Kind of resonated with me. Jep's better than me and Willie, but he's not great either. That's a little relative on that. Only one got the actual ability, though, to do it. I can't control the air with my tongue. I can't do it. I tried for years, and I gave it up. It's fairly difficult. Can you control your uvula?
Be careful, Zach. Zach, when you say it, just own it. I just got to say, uvula. What is it, uvula? I don't know, but it doesn't sound right. Phil had the greatest line on that when he said, it sounds nasty, but it's not. There's a little piece of meat hanging in the back of your throat. Back of your throat. But, Phil, I think you had a profound point.
Because for years, the scientific world, since we deal mainly looking at things from a God perspective, and I believe he is science. He's the greatest scientist ever. And this, on your point you made, they were trying to figure out the function of the uvula. It was like my daughter, she was born without one. Yeah. And she's...
functioning fine. And she can sing, so you'd think... But I had to break it to her. I said, your papaw has discovered the reasoning for God making the uvula, because if you flutter it, you can get the exact sound of a pintail drake. You can actually sound like multiple pintails. We are physically... Clinically insane. A human body is a work of...
Art? Science? So here's my question. Before 1975, what was the purpose for the Eula? No, pintails. Because if you have a whistle, do we not have the duck call? Well, hold on. Do I have my duck call? You were told to never leave home without your Bible, your woman, or your duck calls. That was one of them. I have my duck call. A duck call session.
Has arrived. Has broken out here. Yes. Once again. And you know we planned all this, right? You know, this is how good we are. We actually did now. I know. So Phil invented this call from a something Tiny Tim's horn set. Which was actually the idea for this, Zach, was in the movie. Yeah, it was. You kind of had the...
I got a question about that. Well, let me say this. Their movie, some things were changed for dramatic purposes in that movie. Well, I got the present. I got the gift when mom got it at the church. It was mine. I picked it out. And then when it gets home, it's Jace's. How did that happen? Somehow it transferred. He had taken it from you. Oh, that's what it was. They took three stories that were true.
Well, Kay said it was 85% accurate. So that's pretty good. You know what mom's beef was? When I was sitting next to her the first night we watched it, she was sitting in bed reading Life magazine. And she looked over at me and she said, I would never read Life magazine. That's funny. Okay. So if you don't have a uvula and you put air in,
And if you're still not sure what that is, go to a mirror. Open your mouth. Say ah, and you'll see it. It's kind of hanging down the back. Use your phone for a light. Some people are boring without them. So if you don't. Mine won't flutter. If you don't flutter it, you just put air. Beep. Beep.
Which, that's a green-winged teal, Drake. Yeah, a green-winged teal. Drake. That's good. I can sound like that. Oh, yeah. I can do that. Or it's, what did you say, Phil? It's heavy machinery backing up. Yeah. Which is a talent. Yeah. You could go to some kind of freight yard and play along with this whistle. Yep, yep. But when you flutter it. That's a spring. You have a pin tail. It does sound just like him. That is one of the greatest.
introductions of anything. Do the dove on that. Bill got excited. Because there's like six of us. Well, you can do the dove, but you know, the problem is when you're dove hunting, doves aren't as talkative as other birds. I mean, they'll say this, but usually it's kind of like the wolf. When they're sitting on like a limb. All right. So if I'm out here in the middle of a field full of bait and I'm acting like I'm sitting on a limb going,
All you do is you cover up the end. That sounds just like one. The multiple sounds you're getting out of that. Yeah. I mean, it took me about within an hour. I remember it. I remember when you did it. A little children's horn set. Yeah, a little Fisher-Price horn set. But everything has to be cut.
Yeah. At the same length. You actually, Dad, went through two or three sets because you would cut one. It wouldn't be quite right. I actually capitulated to the God of heaven. Yeah. It'll actually do a widget also, which a widget break has a unique sound.
Yeah, basically all of the whistling ducks, that will do it. And you can even do a wood ear. Well, the drakes, you know. You can even do a wood ear. It's one of the most copied things out there. Yeah. They got all kinds of them that started coming out at the end. They just had something to go with. But you were the first. But you can also do a dove, you know, with your hand. If you get into a vine and you want to have a conversation with doves, you can make a trough with your hand.
yeah hands you can interlock yep so you if you're watching this you scrunch up your four fingers on your right hand yeah and you stick it into the pocket in between your left to create a pocket index and that has to be air has to be trapped and then your mouthpiece becomes your two thumbs yeah and then you just apply air
You can also do the song. Just think about the multiple sounds you're getting out of that. Yeah. Sounding just like wild ducks. Yeah. Multiple. And birds. Listen, I did it sitting in a chair. I just kind of started putting it together right there and made some adjustments, you know, to what I already had with the people that
You send them a pattern. Right. They'll start sending you. You'd already done the Mallard hen. You send them a pattern and a check, and they'll send you. But you can also. You can send them a big check. You can also do the theme song for one of the greatest movies ever, The Good, Bad, and the Ugly, which I do every day. You make this sound every day. Every day. I do this. What I'm fixed to do, the theme song.
Without any kind of instruments. Completely acapella, he does. Go in there, and I have two small dogs. And when they see my hands go together, they get up on their haunches. And they say, here we go. And I say, this is a little song I'd like to call the good, bad, and the ugly. So I'll go. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
About the time I get there, they start. They start barking? Synchronizing. No, they synchronize what I do. And I was like.
That thing has to be exact, Al. The thing itself, it has to be exact. I went off the rails there, but I just thought we were getting to know each other. For those of you in the south of Illinois that just heard me speak, now you know what I'm talking about. Are you not entertained? I do that every day. That's how we start the day off with me and my dogs because they do a really good job of alerting the alarm system.
Someone, when someone comes up in my yard, it's not a family member, which I don't know how they know that, I guess by their nose. If you're in the family, they'll just growl a bit. But if you're not in the family, it's the theme song of the good. Yep.
I hear Maddie laughing over there. You entertained Maddie today. So, Jace, there was a man, and he said his name. I can't remember his regular name, but I couldn't forget Bone Crusher. But when he walked up, he's a mountain of a man. I mean, he's about, I would say, 6'7".
And he's thinner now than he was two years ago. But, I mean, he probably weighs 300 or 400 pounds. But he's a massive man. Professional wrestler. Professional wrestler. Former. Back in the day. Are you ever really a former? Is that the one we filmed out in the yard? I think so. Because he – so here's how – I didn't – I wasn't here. You baptized him. I hope you had help. That may have been when you started having back problems if you baptized this man.
And he has changed his life, obviously. And so two years ago, I spoke at this place, Old Belt Christian Camp in Florida, Illinois. And he came up and told me the story of you baptizing. And he was telling me about him being a wrestler. We had, you in particular, had guided him to Christ.
He came in, and I was telling this story about wrestling with God. It's from Genesis 32. Yep, Jacob. Yeah, Jacob. It's a fascinating story. We talk a lot on the podcast about what we look at, what we put into our brain. We've especially been talking about that a lot lately, just not wanting to—
have evil things into our minds. And pornography, of course, is one of the great scourges of our time. I mean, it's been around a long time, but certainly it's a huge problem now, and mainly because of access. But would y'all agree that this is a scourge of evil? Yeah, it's just a trap. It is a made-up function that
you just get involved in and it takes up so much time and then it's altering your true perspective of how you're supposed to view your wife and women in general and vice versa. And it's just so false, you know, it's just none of it is real. And so it's a lot. Yeah. Our good friends at covenant eyes have been doing amazing work for the last 24 years to help Christians navigate the online world and,
And of course, we've guided you guys to go because they have accountability, great stuff on their website. But they also have a podcast called the Covenant Eyes podcast. And so it's a great resource for you, especially if you struggle with this for a while and haven't been able to get past it. We want you to let these guys help you to be able to do that.
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from the other realm. I'm not exactly sure who he was wrestling with. It was physical in the sense they were wrestling, but it was something of the other realm. So it was an angel, the man of the God, somebody. And so he was wrestling. I was telling this story. And really he was wrestling with his whole life because remember he was born, he was called the deceiver. And then he had tricked Esau out of the blessing.
And Esau gave up his birthright over a bowl of soup, which the Bible still talks about him in Hebrews. It was a bad exchange. So then this wrestling match, he loses the wrestling match, which I guess you would because he got injured.
His hip, he got a hip flexor from the injury. Or a hip pointer. Or a hip pointer, there you go. And it ultimately, he submitted himself to God through the process. It was really interesting, kind of one of those strange biblical stories. And right after that, by the way, he patched things up with Esau, with his brother.
But I was using that as an illustration. So old bone crushers are out there listening. So he came back the next day, Jason. He gave this to us. He said he knows we grew up watching wrestling. This is an actual belt.
from the NWA World Wrestling Championship. And it's heavy. I mean, it's like leather. And it's got all kind of cool stuff on it. But he gave it to us. And he just said, as an appreciation, which I thought was really cool. I mean, he said, do with it whatever you want to. But it was his gift to us for sharing Jesus with him. Well, we went through the wrestling stage. You know, when I first started watching it, I was one of those defenders that, hey, this is real. Yeah.
So that's how much we were into it. Well, it was real with us because we just did their moves on each other. And Jay's had about three broken bones and all kind of issues. We're talking about bone crushers. I've broken many bones in wrestling. It was very real to the Robertson boys. So that made me think in honor of the bone crusher doing this, because who knows how many bones he's crushed and had crushed.
During his career, and I'm looking for this verse off the top of my head. Oh, yeah. Well, Ezekiel 37 is kind of a vision of things to come. Prophecy. Yeah. It would be fulfilled. He kind of goes through the spirit being poured out, I think in, where is that at? I'm doing this off the top of my head. I think 32. Yeah. In 32. But in 37, he's,
Ezekiel, he was led out by the Spirit, this is verse 1, and set me in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. And here's the question in honor of Bone Crusher. The Spirit asked him, Son of man, can these bones live?
I said, sovereign Lord, you alone know. That's pretty good. So the vision actually is, yes, they can live because God can resurrect bodies. And spoiler alert, the bones came together by the power of God in the end of that story. Lots of verses about that particular subject. Yeah. A lot of subjects. Yeah. And I think if you're ever speaking to an audience where most people are over 60, you
This is a great icebreaker. It's a good one. You just read that verse. Yep. Because they wake up every morning and say, can these bones live? I love it. I'm crowding 80, but I'm still on it. Yeah.
Yeah, just soup your bones up. The answer is yes. And it's because of the text that I just read. So, Jace, I'm so glad you brought this up because I'd forgotten to, there's a men's conference here. And you know what the name of it is? Dry Bones. Really? Men's conference. There's a flyer for it right there.
It's in Monroe, and this Joby Martin, who's a pastor down in Florida of a huge church down there, is actually going to be on our podcast, but he's their main speaker. So it's September 22nd on a Sunday night at 6 o'clock here in Monroe. We'll bring that up. Yeah, if anybody wants to come. But yeah, I mean, that's pretty amazing that you talked about that. This was another gift I got. You know what this is? I see the gospel signal. It looks like a walnut hole. The guy gave it to me. He said, here you go, the gospel in a nutshell.
Oh. Which I thought was pretty good. Is that a walnut? Yep. And he put the gospel symbols, which, by the way, they're everywhere now. Gospel in a nutshell. I'm just now getting there. It took you a second. Zach, you got it. I was thinking of that Austin Powers. The guy who converted me has now 10 years after his death. Maybe 15. It's been 15 now. Yeah.
He was 86, by the way. That's also, when you're asking that question about the bones, can they live, the time also speeds up very rapidly. That's right. Yeah, he came up with those symbols as a way to visually illustrate the story about Jesus. And those things are everywhere now. And, of course, we had J.D. Malone. He had it at the Olympics, and he even made NBC, which is so funny. Well, last bit of frivolous...
chatting well i guess we're getting to know each other getting to know i need a report because uh some of the people that i fraternize with mainly in a worldly way i mean i'm trying to portray jesus in a positive light and you're not going to be able to do that if you're not around anybody and you were trained from that when you were a brand new christian because the the pastor took you to the pool while you told us so that's still that ministry is still going on but uh
They evidently have been secretly listening to the podcast. Let's see. Positive sign. Positive. Positive. They're listening today. They're listening. You can go to Ephesians and say, hey, don't be partners with them. Well, there's a difference in being a partner and sharing Jesus. Right. So they're listening, and you would hope that they would hear the Bible studies and turn their life to Jesus, but no.
Evidently, when they heard that you were trying to lose 60 pounds in 60 days. No, by the time I turned 60. Oh, I forgot the riddle. But they have it. 60 by 60. There's now been created a big whiteboard with a betting line with odds. I feel like Deadpool. And I feel like since I'm trying to make the segue from worldly activities to Jesus activities, I figured it was worth 20 bucks.
For me to put 20 on me, but 20 on you. But then all of a sudden it changed the odds because I'm your brother. They were trying to explain to me. They're like, well, we got to change the odds now. And I was like, what do you mean? Cause I'm not familiar with Betty. I'm not a gambler. Yeah. And, uh, so I said, well, I think he'll do that. Cause I've, I know my brother, once he sets his mind to something. So, uh,
I was so curious because when I came in this morning, Jay said, how's your 60 by 60 going? I thought, look at Jay's. He's so concerned about my health that he's asking about me. Well, I have invested in you. And evidently- That helps me, Jay. That actually gives me more motivation because I want you to win. Well, they- Because that means people are betting against me. Well, I had four to one odds.
Which tells you, Al, that they're not believing you. That's what it sounds like. But when I bet 20 bucks on Al, I only have three to one odds now. I'm probably getting hustled here. So Al, if you can do this, I will make.
I don't even know what that means. Will I make $60? $60 if you have three to one odds. You have gambling tendencies. Gambling tendencies. If I put 20 down and I have three to one odds, do I get 60 bucks or do I get 60 plus my original 20? So you're saying you put 20 down, three to one odds, you will get-
The fact that no one knows this is a good time. It's a 60 total. So included the 20 you already put in. Well, wouldn't that be? It only went forward. Wouldn't that be two to one? No, two to one. Double your money. But you're tripling your money. You're putting in 20 and you're getting 60. But I already had 20 in it. That didn't triple. Yeah, it did triple. Your 20 is gone. Yeah, you put the 20 in. But it was mine. Yeah.
But I will say, they're right. The odds are against me because when you reach a certain age, it's hard to lose a lot of weight. Yeah. I mean, your body just doesn't burn it as much. Trust me. How far down are you? What's the...
Well, I can't reveal that because that's now. There are people betting on this now. That's right. Now I'm not telling anything until we get to the end of the thing. January 5th is the final way down. You know what's developing here is a reality TV show. You're going to see Al in the neighborhood. I'm behind him saying, run, Al, run. We'll call it my 60-pound life. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, jump that noodle. You don't have little noodles. Oh, this would definitely have been an episode on our show. This would have been a good one. You know.
I think it'd be pretty good. Jace is out here and I'm thinking the whole time he's like really pulling for me because he's my brother and the whole time he's got money bad on him, which that would be the big reveal at the end. Yeah. Yeah.
We just wrote an episode. Is that it? There you go. I would bet my money would be that you'll lose it. I've seen. Well, y'all know me. Y'all know how determined I am once I make up my mind. You know what this is called, Al? A side bet. Now, I would not bet that you'll keep it off, but I will bet that you'll lose it. We're not going to bet on that. That's like what I told Willie. What was this, his 50th birthday we had to roast? Yeah.
Which, by the way, his whole roast was about how fat I am, which I thought was very hypocritical. It's not like Willie's been a skinny mini his whole life. Yeah. But he certainly ripped me. My roast of him was that he has collectively gained and lost 1,200 pounds in the last 10 years. That was a good line. I think that's impressive.
I mean, it is. It's the same weight, but it's been done that many times. Oh, he can drop 60 pounds in four months. Well, I used to do that too. The problem is when you get older, it just will not fall off like it used to. You can push it, but you've got to really be consistent. That's why I gave myself a four-month runway. Well, at almost 80, I'm hovering around 160 pounds.
Yeah. That's my weight. You need to eat anything I want to and big plates full of this and that. I do all that. You're not really eating big plates. 160. Yeah. Well, they say you return to where you started. Right. You know, when I was a teenager, I was involved in, not for money, various eating contests, mainly between you and me and my brother, really. And I have to admit,
He won more than I did. But I mean, we would like... Well, what y'all didn't know then, which is what you know now, is that you had the better metabolism. You had dad's metabolism and Willie and me and Jep all have from
from mom's genetics, which is not good. Yeah. It's harder for y'all just burn it quite quicker. You know, y'all never came up with the late season. Y'all never been heavy. Uh, the late season spare tire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That one just eluded me. I was trying to, I was trying to find a spare tire there. It's more like a little bicycle tires. Yeah.
Zach, how is your liver doing today? My liver's back to normal. I got sick with COVID, had a liver issue, took some of our supplements, and everything is functioning very well now, Al. Thank you for asking. Yeah, well, I'm always concerned about you, Zach. You know, I had some high liver enzymes as well. Mine wasn't from COVID. I had fatty liver, is what they call it, and that tends to go along with fatty everything.
unhealthy. And the American Heart Association says that adults with fatty liver are three and a half times more likely to have heart failure than those without.
The American Liver Foundation says that 100 million Americans have fatty liver. So obviously this is affecting a lot of people. A lot gets thrown at your liver. It's kind of your body's filtering system. And so that's why many of us have a sluggish fatty liver that makes us gain weight and lose energy. Your liver has 500 key functions a day. And we have a solution. Zach mentioned our supplement, Liver Health Formula.
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Try liver health formula and receive a free bottle of blood sugar formula to reduce sugar cravings. When you order today, try liver health formula by going to get liver help.com slash unashamed. That's get liver help.com slash unashamed and claim your free bonus gift. All right. So where are we at in Ephesians? All right. We're in Ephesians five. I mean, we've gotten all these, uh, I guess now the guy who saw it, the golf course can, uh, fast forward to start telling stories again. Uh,
Yeah, there's a guy named Joel. He's a big listener. He said he's our number one fan. But he fast-forwards the Bible study to listen to the story. He says, Jace, he talks real loud. He's like, you need more stories. Whenever y'all start getting into the Bible, it gets over my head.
So that was for Joel. Joel, it's good. I hadn't seen you in a few years, but I'm glad to hear that you're listening. And Jace, now that's my number one line when I'm meeting folks like I just did in Illinois and Missouri. I always ask them as kids, you know, if they listen to the podcast, I always ask them, I say, do you think Jace is ever going to run out of stories?
And every time they say, nope. I hadn't heard of one yet. I said, yep, one day he's really going to come. Here's why I love Joel, because he asks the same questions to me every time. He says, what's wrong with Willie? Which is kind of like an eternal question. I don't even have to answer that. He just says, hey, Jase. He'll holler across the driving range. What's wrong with Willie? And laugh and laugh and laugh.
And then he's like, why is other question? Why is Cy the only normal one in your family? Oh boy. I said, Joel, that says a lot about you right there. Oh man. That's when Cy is the normal one. I don't know what that, what does that mean, Zach? I'm not making this up. That's what he says every time. I said, that may be a cry for help, Joel. It is funny. All right. So we're in Ephesians five. I think you kind of introduced us.
We talked through a lot of this text the last time we were together. Well, Al, I thought it was a little more than an introduction. But I noticed in your notes that you had an introduction. And I thought that was the sermon. But I will say this, because Phil's already brought up where we're headed with husbands and wives. And look, we're going to talk about, I think, the things that most couples fight about.
And this is the preview, the introduction. Yeah. Is you have sex, you have money, and that translates greedy. Yeah. And you also have impurity. And then it calls in 5.5, it says, such a man is an idolater. And just to set up in case you didn't listen to the last podcast, you know, the first three chapters, this is what God has done for you. Look at his love, his plan, his grace. Yeah.
The church is the body of Christ. Jesus at the right hand of God. It's kind of, I think Ephesians is looking at it from Jesus at the right hand of God perspective. Yeah. Let's embrace that. It really changed my view of this whole book. Because it's like, what's he doing now? Most religious conversations are about what Jesus is going to do and what we're doing.
going to have happen. They phrase it as where we're going. He's going to come pick us up and save us. But Ephesians is talking about what's happening now. We're the body of Christ. When? Well, yeah, we're going to be the body of Christ and we're going to spend eternity together, but we're the body of Christ now. But I'm saying, since we all know that we're getting there, and I would say, wouldn't you say this is probably the most
One of the most argued and controversial things in the church is the roles of husbands and wives. Very much so. And I would add to that, even the view of God and God's people by the world.
This is a very offensive text for people in the world because it seems like you're saying you're demeaning people in this process. And so these texts are very – Which is not true. It's not true because they're not studied in context. They'll just throw the word patriarchy on there and just turn it into a huge negative. Isn't that true, Zach? Yeah. What you're saying culture-wise? I mean, and so they kind of missed the whole point. Yeah.
I may have said this in a previous podcast. I can't remember if I've said it before. I know in private settings that probably as you get into a verse like this or a text like this and you, you're, you're reading it in the context that there's a whole thing around this, that you have to understand about who God is and his very nature. And, but if you don't interpret it in a, in that framework and you take it over into like a Western worldview, you,
that's not Christian and doesn't have all this background of who God is and that idea of sacrificial love being the centerpiece of how God expresses himself to humanity, and you try to interpret it in a dog-eat-dog world, well, yeah, it's going to sound horrible because you're not fully seeing the picture here of what the totality of
of the scripture is teaching us about who God is. And so it's very difficult for like conversations about things like this, for us to move forward in them, because to really see the beauty in it, you have to see the beauty in who God is. Yeah. And man will leave his father and mother be united to his wife. And the two will become one flesh. You dig into that and you say, but I think that's a profound thing. It's a,
Marriage, you can't throw out the in Christ angle here. Also, 36 times in the book of Ephesians. You are correct. 36 chapters. This is talking about in Christ. What that looks like. So when you have two people in Christ, a male and a female, who are married,
There's something that happens there in a powerful way that I believe the way that functions and you being faithful to each other is literally evidence that there is a God and he is creator. You are correct. So that's a very profound statement. And to know the more you know God, the more you understand passages like this, when you only know about God,
You view him completely differently. The world has just obliterated the husband and the wife and the church. They're looking at that. And why not? I mean, why not if you don't? The opposite of what I just said is true. If you don't understand this. If you're not faithful to each other, if you're a consumer and it's about sex and how many people you can have sex with, there's no faithfulness.
Well, it's the exact opposite of you believe in what happened in the garden is actually the origin of life. Because we're not just throwing this out of thin air. He actually quotes that statement in 31.
We're going back to Genesis when he said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. That's a quote from Genesis 2, 24. So the bad is, is at the beginning as you can get. So, you know, abortion, I guess since the seventies has been a major topic, a big political back and forth. Um,
And you even see it now in the current political crisis. But we've known, you know, since we were old enough to know better that taking the lives of innocent children is never good. It's a human rights and moral issue for us. And our good friends at Preborn have a network of clinics. And that's exactly what they have realized. If you can bring this to the reality of knowing that there's a young woman here and we're trying to help her.
who's in a situation where she has an unplanned pregnancy, the best thing she can do is to meet her child in her womb. And when she does that, she's probably going to choose life. Even if she can't keep the baby, the baby goes into adoption or whatever. So that's what they do. They position themselves in the highest abortion areas around the country.
They're on standby to protect and love mothers who are facing these unplanned pregnancies. I love that about them. They walk with these women for up to two years after as well. By introducing a woman to her baby through ultrasound and showering her with God's love, the baby's chance at life doubles.
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To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250, keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash unashamed. So here's what I wanted to say, though, before we get there, because we're just itching to. Al, I believe your outline of chapter 5, verse 1 through...
Al sends us a little outline. It's not very wordy. It's just a little simple statement. Right. But it's actually, the more I got to reading it, I thought, well, this is what a marriage should be built on. That's a great point. And the reason I'm saying this is, this whole illustration that he uses about husbands and wives is,
He's also saying the greater point he's making is the illustration that we're all, male and female, married to Jesus. Yeah. So everything is woven here in the family dynamic into us being the bride of Christ and the body of Christ. You can't get along with your own wife if there's not a bond there.
You'll never understand the church. Exactly. It's true. You won't get it. Right. I want to bring up something before we get to marriage, because this was profound. So I read this in verse three, because when you think of sex as a follower of Christ, you should immediately think of what happens between you and your wife, or if you're a woman, you and your husband.
So evidently, when he says live a life of love in verse 1 and 2, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, there's your pattern to the church, we're married. Then he says, but among you there must not be a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity or of greed because these are improper for God's holy people. So we know what sexual immorality is, right, if you defined it.
That would be any sex. That's not a husband and wife. That's not a husband and wife. So a hint of that. Now, there's sex and immorality, and then there's a hint of sex.
Sexual immorality. I don't know. What does your version say, Zach? Yeah, mine says, but immorality, sexual morality and all impurity or covenants must not even be named among you. Oh, it doesn't say, yeah. All right, well, let me. So there's that. And then there's greed, which is, you know, we know what that is. Right. Coveting or envy, greed, usually around money. But that word, any kind of impurity, I looked up the Greek word. Fascinated.
Because I thought, what does that entail? I was trying to, you see, I was getting the categories. Well, here's what puzzled me, or I'm going to throw it out here. So that word right there that's used in the Greek, if you're not familiar with what we mean, you know, they taught in Greek. And sometimes the best way to define exactly what a word is, is to see where also that word was used. In other places. In other places. Yeah, and that's how they basically interpreted the whole Bible. This is going to be kind of shocking for you. All right.
You know where that's used? When in the four gospels, when Jesus would cast out unclean spirits or demons, same word. So I was like, oh, it's a little bigger word than I was anticipating. You know where it's also used in the book of Revelation, where if you look at what we believe, as in there was an Adam and Eve that God created, and that was the foundation for creation.
And even in Genesis, you see that where it says, and Eve became the mother of all the living. That's Genesis 3. Yep. So, and then you remember the sin with the evil one. He was involved. And then this promise was made. And look, the woman actually became the hero twice.
Because if you think of the Genesis account, which I think all this is going to be background for what we're going to do with husbands and wives, but it's very important. You remember when God made Adam, what did he say about that before he made Eve? What was his comment on that? He said it's not good for man to be alone. This is not good. This is not good.
Because a lot of people, when they jump to Ephesians 5 and it says wives submit to your husband, they're like, well, God, he doesn't like women. Well, that's not true because basically in the garden, he was like, this man is useless unless I...
Get him some help. You got to keep in mind that that verse, I just had this conversation with my son, Max. He's writing the paper on how we reflect, how understanding the nature of God
and how we reflect his nature, how would this play out in your, in like a, in an every, like everyday life. And we were actually got this conversation, but I made the point to him, like when, when the Bible says it's not good for man to be alone,
This is pre-fall. Sin has not entered the world yet. You got to keep that in mind. All that exists is the Father, Son, Holy Spirit and his creation of man. So it is a profound thought to think, okay, to be a human, God looks at that and says, when man had a relationship vertically with God, but had nothing horizontally with anyone else,
God looked at that scenario and said, it's not complete yet. This is not complete. And it wasn't complete until he made man and woman, which that's the reflection of who God is in his very life. He is a relationship himself. And so I think that you're seeing in the creation of male and female, husband and wife, you're seeing a picture of the triune God that when these two
come together in a sexual union, which is the climax of intimacy, that actually results in the procreation of more life. And it's such a beautiful picture of who God is. And I think that's the trajectory here is we're asking the question, what is the trajectory towards life? And it's who God is. And so that's why this passage here says,
I mean, to your point earlier, Jace, it's not really even about husband and wife. It's actually about us at the church and who God is. Freshly made ravioli or hand-pulled ramen noodles. When you dine with Chase Sapphire Reserve, either will be amazing because it's the choice between a front row seat at the chef's table while getting a live demo of how to make ravioli or dining family style as you hear the story behind your ramen broth. This weekend, it's ravioli. Next weekend, ramen.
Find the detail that moves you with immersive dining experiences from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphirereserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member of FDIC. Subject to credit approval. I want to finish my thought on this. So in Revelation, it contrasts that through these prophecies of wrath of people who...
put their faith in the earthly powers which was rome at the time but you have all this symbolic language without doing a deep dive in revelation but a lot of times so in like revelation 3 you see the spirit of jezebel come up in one of the letters to the churches and you're like what was that all about well here was a a woman who was not uh and if you look at all the qualities of a godly wife she was the opposite she used these kind of things greed
and idolatry in the name of religion as a weapon to control not only her husband, but a nation and to receive power for herself. And she especially had it in for the people of God, the prophets. Exactly. And then there's another frightening illustration of this mother woman
Babylon in the spirit of Babylon ship where her in, in conjunction with the evil one produces offspring that are terrorizing the church, which is what was going on here. And then you put in the fact it still is. Yeah. Then you put in the fact that this is where the temple of Artemis was and
You know, and you had all these Egyptian goddesses who, if you read the history of all this, what was going on in their time, they were making this play to, you know, get equality with men. And so they had Egyptian goddesses and you go and there's, there's a, what is the word for all these gods? Polytheism or whatever, where you have all these gods and you're doing all these rituals and sacrifices, mainly immoral acts, right?
The sacrifices were immorality, murder. I mean, all this sinful stuff. All this is backdrop, but I found it fascinating that that word is used there. It's like a demon. We butchered the concept of this as a nation. But I brought up that word because it's kind of a demonic spirit.
that represents the other side, not the spiritual forces of God and good, but of evil and earthly powers. And so I hate that I'd never seen that till now, because I just thought, you know, I read any kind of impurity and just thought, well, who knows what he's talking about?
But he's talking about that kind of spirit that's working in powerful ways among people. And you know what's interesting is that, of course, I don't know this because I don't know the complete makeup of these other beings, but I'm assuming since Satan is a fallen angel that these –
all these demons and all this stuff like this. It's not like they can experience what human beings can. So it's almost like that makes it even more malevolent, Jace, is that they can't do this, but they can prompt us to do these things. I mean, that makes it even more malevolent.
Yeah. In pure and unclean. Just look at their children. Well, they become the victims of all this. But, you know, people ask you, well, how could God love me? But you were talking about how Zach was just talking about he created us as his children. Yeah.
And then we now can create life the same way he can love us. We mess up as the same way we love our own children. I mean, we created that child. We love them. And even though they may be hard headed, they may go off the reservation. You never quit loving them. You never try to nurture them and help them. Yeah, exactly. Same deal.
So I thought that was interesting. But then the other qualities that you had in the outline, and maybe you can go through it. I just wanted to bring that one point up. Well, I want to read one verse before we leave that thought about impurity, because I had this in a lesson this last weekend when I was in Illinois. And the way Job puts this is,
Now that you've said this about the word, it makes it even more amazing. This is an ancient guy, Job. Here's the way he described it in Job 31.5. If my heart has been enticed by a woman or if I have lurked at my neighbor's door, which we know what that means, here's the way he puts it. Then may my wife grind another man's grain.
And I always say when I read that verse, I don't even know what that means, but that sounds bad. Like you don't want your wife. And then he says, and may many other men sleep with her. So then he explains it. But that's how the idea about a hint. That's the way Job described it all those years ago when he said, you don't take your faithfulness to God and to your spouse lightly.
Yeah. I mean, you don't take that lightly. You don't throw that out there as possibilities to get into these things. And when you see it like that, in that kind of language, it makes it really pop. Oh, and in the real world, you know, you see the hints, you know. There's two people that are married, not to each other, and they're sitting on a couch kind of close to each other and giggling and looking at each other's phone.
You're like, well, nothing happened bad there. Oh, no, that's a hint. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Trust me, if the behavior continues, something will happen. Well, because that's why he gets into it's shameful to mention even what the disobedient does in secret. Look, every law enforcement and you talk to any of these kinds of people, when they're trying to interrogate somebody or investigate something,
Whatever you think happened is probably 10 times worse in how we got here and all these kind of crimes and sins. And cause that's just human nature. We're going to try to cover it up and, you know, pull the wool over someone's eyes, but we're just not very forthcoming with our, our failure. So that's why this whole idea is so tied into deceit.
You know, the common thing now, because I deal with this, Lisa, I deal with this a lot with couples, is the internet and social media. So you'll have these conversations going with someone who's not your husband or wife. And you're saying, well, is it really that bad? Because we're not physically doing anything. But now we're talking about what we're going to do or what we wish we could do. But they're excited about it. Right. It's the limerence. You're like, if you're excited about it, oh, it's a hint. And you notice this. They always hide it.
Yeah. I mean, it's the, it's the deceit thing you're talking about. That's what I'm talking about. It's always tied in with deceit. Who do you think's behind that? Oh, we know who's behind the liar from the beginning. But here's the thing is if you think about it though, what is he actually deceiving us? Uh, like what, what is the deceit? And the deceit is the same exact deception that he tricked Adam and Eve with in the beginning that if you eat this fruit, you'll gain some kind of knowledge of,
that will benefit you because the God who made you and doesn't want you to know about these things, He doesn't want you to know about them because He's holding something good from you. So the deception, it actually has to do with what we believe the good life to be. And we're believing that whatever the immorality that we're being tempted to engage in,
That we're walking towards. We actually believe there's something over there for us. And what the Holy Spirit's role in this is to say, nope.
That's actually a lie. That is the pathway to death. And so instead of doing that, once you walk in the spirit and by doing so, you will actually experience the good life. It's a it's a revamping of your imagination. It's never an advantage like this. Never an advantage to know evil. And that's exactly what the one tries to do. All right. We're out of time.
I'll pick this up before we get into the second part of Ephesians 5. I'll give you my outline right quick on the next. We never got, that was the introduction. To the introduction. We recap, we introduce a recap of the introduction. So let me, allow me to introduce myself.
At a later time. We did burn about 15 minutes talking about whistles. And that was totally unplanned. Totally unplanned. But very interesting. Were you not entertained? I think that's a noble thing. There are people stumbling around this planet wondering why they have a uvula. I mean, you need to title this podcast The Mystery of the Uvula Revealed.
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