Ep 1025 | Jase Nearly Gets Stoned to Death, Phil’s Most Off-the-Wall Advice & a Heavenly Movie Screen
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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. All right, we ready? What are you looking for? Hey. How did I lose my hair? He had them on his head. You're funny. Funny guy right there. I am unashamed. What about you? No.

Welcome back. It's a shame. So there was quite a kerfuffle going on across my way over here, my 12 feet away podcast. I'm going to confess something before we tell this embarrassing moment. I have spent this past year, because now we're in a new year, just looking for stuff. I keep forgetting, losing things. I mean, Missy had to call my phone this morning like 10 times, and I had just had it. Yeah. But...

For some reason, I've never had this in six years of podcasts. I get a message that says, wear a solid shirt to the podcast. And I thought, oh boy.

Have we gone down there? So I was trying to- No, first you left out the first part. The first part said, my shirts didn't come in. Yeah. So wear a solid shirt. Zach was supposed to provide a shirt for some- But Zach, look, Willie tried to do the same thing at Duck Command. He tried to get us all to wear uniforms. That was not my intention. I am not wearing bowling outfits with our name tags.

I'm not going to do it. I'm just telling you that right now. So having said that. That's just a nice polo, just wear khakis. He said many times that we'll do two podcasts at a time because that's all that my brain will allow. Y'all want to do more, but I have a smaller brain, even though it hasn't been scanned. But I could not find my earphones. But I didn't move during the transition. Y'all had to get up and do a potty break.

Where's my earphones? I was looking and I was grabbing the cords and I thought, I've lost my earphones and I haven't moved. And Maddie, she was not giving any help. She was just like, well, that's you. You lost it. They were on Zach's head. Exactly.

I look down to see my earphones right here. Oh, I got them on my head. That's like when you're at dinner and you take somebody's fork or, you know, you eat the nice dinner set or you drink out of their glass of water. That's what that deal was. And then everybody, because I do a lot of banquet speeches. And so then you got to think, okay, which way were we going, right or left? I always forget.

Yeah, I don't know, but if I got to figure that out. That makes me nauseated. I'm kind of a germ freak on that. I don't know why. I did change my hat, too, by the way. Y'all didn't notice for the last podcast. Oh, the wardrobe changed. No, I noticed. That just shows you when I had this one on. Yeah, that was on the last podcast. Now I got this corduroy hat.

Does that make him look better or worse? Well, it just shows you that deep down we listen to what people think. We do. I said it was a positive. I was bragging on you that the orange hat said, please don't shoot me. This hat makes you like, look, I'm warm and fuzzy. I'm a nice guy. But what does the hat say though, Jace? Well, my dad told me too far away from me to read. It says arise, kill and eat. However, that was a quote from,

From Acts chapter 10, when Peter saw the first, what would we call that, motion picture from the production? It says a sheet. Phil describes it as a movie screen. Well, because it was let down out of heaven. So I think Phil's more right on that. It was the first...

Look, the production was heavenly productions. Yeah. And it was. And unlike all the eternal references on earth, this really was from eternity. This is. Yeah. And y'all think this is planned, but there was no plan. I didn't know Zach was going to make a comment about his hat. But now that you've asked me, I'm going to tell you, because I know what you were trying to do there. You were changing your image by the hat. And so you have this famous quote from Peter who feel that,

basically made that the quote of duck commander that was the mission statement there were all of his early speeches that was his open yeah well here's the problem so you wore that and you're like okay because phil he really resonated with that that's right but you're missing one key rule that phil had what's that he told me when i was a small boy and he reminded me many times he said i

and I'm not even sure I can pronounce it, but he said, 'cause I was not allowed to even mention it. He said, "Never wear," what is this called? - The hat? - Corduroy. - Corduroy. - A corduroy. - He said, "Never wear that."

So see, when I saw the hat, I thought, oh no. He has a quote that resonated with Phil, but he put it on something that Phil said. I didn't come up with this hat, but I will tell you what's interesting. I wonder why dad had a never wear corduroy. He told me to never wear that. Because he used to have some corduroy pants. He maybe had a bad experience. No, he burned them. He burned them. What's funny is I had, so the shirts I ordered, and I'm not kidding,

I'm not kidding. The shirt I had ordered for you was a corduroy shirt. I'm not going to be able to wear that. Thank the Lord they didn't. And it was this color, and it was a corduroy shirt. I thought that looks, you know, it's out. My dad would not allow me to wear that. Couldn't wear a corduroy. And I don't know why.

So there's no, if you're a, I'm going to go down there and talk to C. Phil tomorrow. I said, I'm going to ask him and see if he, not sure that memory is going to be there. We're going to find out. Sometimes the old stuff is there. Tony told you that he was. Tony sent me a note Saturday, which was encouraging. And I wish I had been in town because I'd love to gone out and seen for myself. But he was like, your dad is on point today. He seems like. I went and saw him yesterday. So I'll give a Phil report. And I do think, uh, you know,

He's doing better. He hasn't been in pain for a while now. Overall, look, the conditions and diagnoses are the same. You got to keep it in mind. It becomes a perspective thing. But he's feeling better.

And like you say, some days he does seem more normal. Yeah. Having said that, I walked in and it felt like a meat locker in there. Oh, my goodness. Oh, cold? Yeah, it was so cold. When I went in the other day, it was 80. And I was having trouble breathing. That's why I'm fixing to tell you. So my mom was on the couch with about six blankets. And she said, does it seem cold in here to you? And I'm like...

No, it doesn't seem cold. There was no transition from outside. So I went over and looked at the thermostat. I think it said 48. Oh, God. Yikes. I said, well, here's your problem. And she's like, well, what? I was like, you've turned the heat off. It was just off. So I flicked it on. Well, then my mom started griping about Phil. And I was like, okay, fine.

He might have turned it off, but all I did was come over here and turn it on at your house. So she was a bit grumpy about it. But then Phil got up and I mean, it was pretty late in the day because I started talking real loud because she said he was asleep and he got up. He's like.

It's cold in here. I was like, yep, see right here. And so I was like, I think you turned off the heat. So we have that kind of stuff going on, you know, which is, I guess, not abnormal for their age, but it's part of it. Yeah. But still, I'm glad I went down there because I was like, it's pretty chilly in here, but he is doing better. And we do appreciate the prayers and we were on a pretty good regimen.

for just trying to improve his health with the conditions that he has. Yeah, and the letters we've gotten, so many of you, and emails, it's been quite the encouragement for me personally as well. I do want to give a shout-out to Lisa. Yesterday we talked about Zach's birthday. Today is Lisa's birthday, and she probably won't hear this because she's like, Missy, she doesn't listen to our podcast, but...

Happy birthday to her. She was, to show you how influence and impact works, she was showing houses yesterday. It was a young couple, engaged. They were looking for their first home. And so, you know, for her, that's part of the reason why she got into selling real estate. She sells most of it down in Alabama. And so she was up in the Sarah Land area, which is in the Mobile area. And so I was on my way home. And so she called me and she said, I don't believe this couple is

I was showing this house to that. And she said, they loved it. They're going to buy it. And I said, that's great, babe. And she said, and he loved to hunt. So he was talking about hunting and his email has something to do with fishing. And she said, if I, I mean, they've been together for an hour or two looking at houses. And she said, well, you know, do you know what family I'm from?

And she said he looked kind of sheepish. And he was like, yeah, they told me, but I just didn't want to bring it up. I didn't want to make it weird and all this. You know, he said, I love your family and I've always loved Phil and big impact on me. And so it was pretty neat. Then he said, and my parents came over to Westman, you know, at some point in the last decade and your dad, your, your father-in-law baptized my dad and Al baptized my mom. Of course, you know, we baptized a lot of people. So I didn't remember exactly, but,

who she was, but he said, you know, your family has helped really shape my family. I just wanted to say thanks for that as well as helping us find this house. So I just thought about it. You know, we do what we do and you don't think about the impact of it just in everyday life, but it makes a difference. I mean, it spreads out over time. I've always said, I thought the first, um,

I don't know how much time, when you think about eternity, when we kind of have an ability to see the whole thing. Chase, you compared it to seeing video clips. When we have a chance to really connect all the dots, because we'll have that capacity, that eternal capacity,

I mean, isn't it going to be neat to find out people that were impacted by this podcast or by some other thing? Maybe just you sharing with somebody on an airplane one time and maybe it didn't hit until three or four generations down some influence. I mean, that's going to happen. I always go back to this John 20, which is, was a catalyst in me taking Jesus serious, being the son of God, which is what the book of John is about. Yeah. Uh, and, uh,

A couple of podcasts ago, you know, the fascinating thing about John's letter and just Jesus in general is that at that last moment, as far as post-resurrection, the last moments of his letter, you see these three characters, you know, Mary who's crying, but she actually was the first person that got to announce Jesus had been raised from the dead through her tears.

And mistaken identity. Remember, she thought he was the gardener, you know, which makes you think, is this going back to the Garden of Eden? Or, you know, you have that kind of element. And then you have, you know, Thomas through his doubts. He once he saw, he said, I just have to I just got to know which then John would say, well, this is kind of written for those who don't see and believe. But there was doubts. He was the first one, I believe.

who said, my Lord and my God, which kind of takes you back to the first verse. It says God, he was with God, he was God, but he's distinct from God. And he's like, my Lord and my God. And then Peter, who had denied him three times, and even in that conversation was a little bit bizarre when you look at the actual Greek language, because he was like, do you love me? Which he was, Jesus was using the

full extent of the sacrificial love. And Peter's like, I love you. He was using the word of, yeah, we're friends. Of course I, and, and so even in his denial and him not really getting it. And in the moment there, he uses that, uh,

To use them anyway and to forgive them anyway and to then start a mission, kind of give you that idea of this is what the church is going to do. You're going to go out despite your tears, your pain, your doubts, your failures, and I'm going to use you, which I think is very powerful. But in John 20, when he has those that, to me, that come and eat breakfast,

I just really think that when people say, well, I don't know what heaven's going to be like, or what are we going to do? You hear all that. It's like the number one question. Every time I get in a Bible study, it's like, well, I mean, what are we going to do for millions of years? And I just want to like shout because I really had an epiphany reading John last night preparing for this. We're going to live. Did you know how many times the word life is mentioned in the book of John? Oh, it's a lot. Yeah.

36, three dozen. To put it in perspective, because I did the math on this, in all of Paul's writings, I mean, how many books did he write? 13, maybe 14. 13. He only mentions it 37 times. Wow. 36 times. So I'm like, this is about living life.

eternal life. And that little scene of Jesus post-resurrection sharing a meal, and not only that, orchestrating the whole fishing expedition, that memory, that moment. But this was, he's post-resurrection now, and we're going to be like him. I just think it's going to be more real life than we're thinking. ♪

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We had a disembodied view of eternity. It was out there. And I think if- Yeah, gaseous mist floating around. Yeah, it's just like a- Doing something like exploring this-

like space travelers with all gaseous myths somehow. Even the sayings like, this person is on cloud nine. Yeah. Meaning like you're just ethereal, like you're floating out into, you know, you're not a real person. Yeah, and a harp. And even the people that like, well, we're just going to worship for millions of years.

I mean, look, I'm sure we will be doing that in some capacity, but I'm just based on what I'm reading. But what is it? Look, life, why is he doing that? Just stop and time out. Why is he doing this? Why is he catching some fish with these earthly beings? Was it people said, well, it was just a sign that he was like, had been raised. Okay. But I mean, he had fish on the charcoal.

And then he said, bring me some more fish. She's like, why? Because there's more people here now. We're going to have a meal together. He's like, come, let's have breakfast. If you don't think that that's some kind of, you know, mirror into what we're going to experience, I just think you're crazy. It's like what you told the woman that time in the roundabout. I'll never forget that story you told on the podcast.

She was on her phone texting. She didn't realize she was at a full stop in a roundabout. And you rolled your window down and you went, live. Yeah, you've stopped your life in a roundabout. You've got a phone in one hand, a cheeseburger in the other. And all of life has stopped here. To your head.

You're no longer living, you're in fantasy world. You're in a vortex of just like the mindless, numbing dopamine hits of a phone. But if you ask this question of 10 people, you go around West Monroe and you go to 10 different churches, because we're in the Bible Belt right here, and you ask this question, what did Jesus die for? If you ask that question to 10 people,

I bet you that all 10 of them will get the same answer. And the answer will be that Jesus died for my sins. And while that is true. We're tracking. I was literally fixed to bring this up. You were? Well, because we're also just getting my sins taken care of. Yeah. But I was going to say.

He became a human for humans. He died for me. What is the problem with me and God? Okay, sin, but the problem is we're not living together anymore. Listen to this. I'm actually preaching tonight at the Hub. You need to preach this. I am. This is what you're saying is the totalitarianism. You know what we call this, Zach, when you're not here, when you're in North Carolina? We call this sermon prep.

Sermon prep right here. Yeah, we're prepping right now. We're prepping, but we're tracking because it's amazing that we did not confer with what we're talking about today. And we are in the same lane.

And I think people, it's almost, it's difficult to have the conversation because if I tell you, what did Jesus die, if I ask you the question, what did Jesus die for, and you say my sins, you're not technically wrong. Well, right. The problem is it's not complete because if you fast forward to John 6, Jesus says this, he said, John 6, 47, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life, to your point of the word life, right?

repeatedly used in the gospel, John. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. So when you read John 6, it's

Yes, Jesus died for my sins, but probably more fundamentally in the end of that is for the life of the world. That's why Jesus said he gave his flesh, for the life of the world. And so the payment for our sin, it's not the end of it.

The payment for our sin is a means to an end, and the end is what you talked about. It's union with Christ. Christ is the prize. He's the ultimate. God is the God. Why become a human? So people will answer that, well, he had to do something for our sin problem. Okay. We're not disagreeing with that, and we will preach that on a daily basis. But he became a human to save humans. Humans need a

And it's not just an example. And you're like, well, why do they need a Savior? So we can dwell together. Heaven and earth coming together. God...

in humans meeting. - And why can't we dwell together? It is, if you wanna make the case that it's because God can't be with us, that's a case you can make and I'm not disagreeing with it, but it's not all of the case because what he says here in 1 John 4, which is there's a term about payment for sin here, this big word called propitiation, it says that in this is love, not that we love God, this is 1 John 4:10, but that he loved us

and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin, to be the payment. But he goes on to say this, Beloved, if God so loved us, we are to love one another. No one who has ever seen God...

Excuse me. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. So the idea is that it's the union with Christ. The reason why Christ paid for our sin is so that, like you said, we could be in his presence. And the reason for that is the word life. That's why if you back up to verse 14,

right before he says that, he says, in this love, God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son in the world. He said, why did he do that? Here's why. So that we might live.

live through him and i think so often the gospel that we preach is a gospel of death it's only about death it's about jesus died for our sins yeah he died for our sins but to what end so that we might live with him that's the the the end of it is life with christ yeah can i read something yeah so for what he's saying so let's just read galatians we read that jay's propitiation

I always like to look upwards because that's a biblical word there in Zach's translation. The act of appeasing a God, spirit, or person, atonement, especially that of Jesus Christ. So just throw that in there. So if you think, what is the point of this? Because I've used this verse many times saying, you know, Christ died for my sins. But watch what Zach just said in this little section. This is Galatians 2, 17.

If while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. So you immediately think, okay, we're talking about Christ has justified us by his death on the cross for our sins. True. For what? Read the next verse. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I'll prove that I'm a lawbreaker.

For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live for God, which is exactly what you just said. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up.

for me. There's a lot of living here. There's a lot of life. I was sitting there thinking when you were describing that, it's like a person, you'll hear a lot of young people say, well, you know, I got married. So, you know, now I don't sleep around. I don't do this. I don't do that. As if marriage became just a reason for you to stop some bad habits.

No, marriage became a covenant relationship for you to live with another person for the rest of your life. Now, it will cut off some of that bad behavior, but the bottom line is that's not why you get married. You know, on a practical thing, so if you go to Ephesians 4, and like when he talks about not stealing, you remember what he said? That was at the end. In 428 says, he who has been stealing must steal no longer. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Why? But he must work. Well, why? Does that have something to do with not stealing? No, he then tells you why you must work. Doing something useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those in need. That's good. The whole point was not so much about stealing. It was about sharing. It was about sharing.

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- This is John 1:1. I'm gonna read the first five verses. "In the beginning was the Word, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "He was in the beginning with God." So he's talking about a person here. "All things were made through him, "and without him was not anything made that was made." And here's what it has to do with it, verse four. "In him was life."

And it was life. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So you say, what does this have to do with the whole Gospel of John? He bases the entire arrival, the entire advent of the Christ, the logos, the word that came in the flesh, the entire thing is rooted in this concept that in him, in the word, in the logos, in the Christ, is life, and that the life was

was the light of men. So you say, what am I looking for? Yeah, I want life. And so a good question to ask is, well, what is life? What does that actually mean? You know what I mean? Yeah. It's not, I'll tell you what it's not. It's not isolation.

Life is not being alone. It's not Mad Max, every man for himself, anarchy, consumption. That's actually a description of hell. What life is, life is something that's shared. I love that you said that verse, it's shareable. It's that scene at the end of the wedding, you know what I mean, where you're sitting around, the kids run around the yard. It's good wine, great food, wonderful fellowship with the people that you love and telling the stories to your belly laughing.

That's life. That's what Christ came to offer, his community, life in him, partakers of the divine nature. And the opposite of that is things that would lead to isolation, despair, loneliness, which is if you look at any sin, that's ultimately what it leads to. And to your point, even beyond the sin side of it, it's like,

What the throughout 2000 years of history with the idea of the monks, we just need to go somewhere on a mountaintop where we remove ourselves from everything in culture. And man, look at the relationship we'll have with Christ. But where do you get to share that? Then if you're isolated in a hilltop, you know, building, uh,

For your whole life, trying to get closer to God, you'll miss the most important part of life, and that's relationship with other people. So you can't do that either. You can't isolate yourself even in a religious fashion. That's right. Good point. So I had a guy reach out to me. He was giving his testimony and said, I want to know what you think. Good friend of mine, known him for years. And we share a lot of common tragedy. I've been knowing this person for years. So I read it. It was absolutely beautiful. Made me cry.

about, you know, just what happened in their life, Jesus saving them. It was all beautiful in that all the shame and pain that Jesus had taken away. And it was a lot of the, you know, before Christ and just out crying to God. I mean, it was really beautiful. So I read it all and I thought there's something missing here, even as beautiful as it was.

And it kind of culminated with, you know, Jesus on a cross, you know, for all this shame, sin. And I guess the more I thought about it for about a day, I sent a text and said, let's have a conversation because it kind of hit me. What was what was missing? And I was like, it was a difficult thing because as beautiful as it was and I disagreed with nothing in it. And I thought it was a powerful testimony that.

I said, I feel like the missing part is the resurrection was never mentioned. And so it got kind of weird because we started talking about the resurrection, but it was like, well, how do you put that in the testimony? And I kept thinking about 1 Corinthians 15, although I didn't bring it up, because it was a delicate situation. Somebody pours their heart out. Yeah.

and you're reading it and it's all fantastic but i thought there's if i was going to give a testimony or into a public audience because that's this person was fixed to give this i just kept thinking what does the new self look like this is all about jesus taking care of the old self

But what does the new self look like? And I thought about this 1 Corinthians 15 to go in with Zach's point. It says, for if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you're still in your sins. Why is he making this bridge of the resurrection?

and sins. So the reason I brought up that Ephesians 4, you know, that was right after he said, I'll have to look exactly where it is. He was describing this not stealing, but working to share. You remember he was describing the new self. And that's where the resurrection comes into play. You know, think Romans 8, 11, if the spirit of Christ is living in you,

Not only will he give life, not the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, if it's living in you will also give life to your mortal body. So that we immediately think, well, that's going to happen later. But that if the spirit of Christ is living in you, there's it's the name of your podcast. Yeah.

There's two things happening. And so back to the Ephesians 4 when he says— And both things can be true at the same time. Think about it just like with the cross was powerful, but unless the Spirit reanimated Jesus' body and for him to be glorified flesh forever, I mean, the Bible tells us that that's a deposit for us.

That's a great point. Think about this. If you want to take it, like, if you really want to like raise the stakes of the conversation, if what we're talking about is only a future reality, then what is the point of the Holy Spirit? Exactly. Well, exactly. And that's the key to everything. That's why I think the Hebrew writer went through the, he went through the whole hall of faith. All these people died. We got to have faith. And, and,

It shows all their faith. But then he gets to the end and he says, but they didn't even receive what was promised. Only together with us would they receive what had been promised, which is kind of a difficult passage because you're like, what does that mean? Jesus, when he died, did it go backwards? Yes. But it also goes forwards.

But then you realize, then when you start talking about the resurrection, because chapter 12, which I don't think should have been a break in the chapter, it says, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily tangles. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. But I'm saying you can't.

Just have the death of cross there without the resurrection, because what happens in our life? People die. Yeah. And people die who we don't think they should have died. Right. From babies to warriors in the Lord. I mean, things happen. Well, if you don't have the resurrection or the spirit of Christ in you, what are we going to do with that? Everything stops. Yeah.

I think that's when the resurrection becomes real and it's a part of our new self where if we all die tomorrow, I'm talking about everybody in this room, I would think because other people have the spirit of Christ and they know that this is all about life, they're going to just put our names in the margins of Hebrews 11, which the first person who told me that was Mack Owen. And, you know, our grandpa had died. We were upset. I was like,

Well, I'm pretty sure he made it. Why am I so upset? But he, in his encouragement, he wrote in his margin, you know, my grandpa. And boy, I'm telling you, that had a profound impact on me. Because I thought, now, is this real? Or are we just faking it?

Because we're all going to die. So all I'm saying, that was a long rant, saying that I think there's a reason the death, burial, and resurrection culminated all of the gospel writer's stories. And when you start trying to apply it to your life...

It goes together. We are thankful that Christ died for our sins, but we just don't end it there. We're like, hey, he came back from the dead. This is about humans living a new life here and then a new life through eternity because then we'll have a new body.

To back to the question, though, of when you ask it, what are we going to be doing in heaven or in eternity? One of the things I think we miss in this, too, when we have that disembodied view of eternity is we forget. And I just read a commentator on this who says that the main one of the main ways that we're made in the image of God, you

you know, first Genesis 126, 127, God made us in his image, is that we have dominion. And you see it in the garden, by the way, when he says, go be fruitful and multiply, go subdue the earth and rule over it. So that's called the cultural mandate, which was essentially the instruction from God to man. This is pre-fall, this is pre-sin, was to go work, like go take the Garden of Eden and

and then expand that garden through your work and through your effort across the entire globe. In other words, go create culture, go create art, go create gardens, music, food. Take this garden and spread it throughout the entire earth. And so man and woman, mankind, in the garden was given dominion

And when you think about that pre-fall, that was meaningful to us. And we kind of see it now. If you look at little kids running around, like if you look at a little six or seven year old kids, like when our kids were growing up, they played this game called the game. They called it life.

And they literally would pretend like they were adults and they were creating businesses. They had ledgers. They played this game. Every time the cousins got together, they would play this game. And they're playing what I hate to do. Like they're playing work, but they're enjoying it because

Because they haven't really got- My grandkids still play it. They still do it. And so they're not corrupted yet. So initially, work was created as something that was good. And then the fall was what? You'll work, Adam, but by the sweat of your brow, you're going to till the soil and it's going to produce thorns and thistles for you. So the curse was not work.

The curse after the fall was that work is now going to be difficult because it's going to produce thorns and thistles for you. So when you think about all this, why does this matter? Because part of what it means to have dominion, and maybe at its core, biblical dominion is not about domination. It's actually about sacrificing, meeting the needs of others.

others, which creates the whole thing we call commerce and economies and all that. It all comes out of this, right? I sacrifice to you, you sacrifice to me. We have an exchange and we create culture that way. So I think when you try to imagine heaven, we're not going to be floating spirits.

floating around, we're actually going to have meaningful work to do. We're going to be building things together. We're going to be inventing things for the glory of God. It's going to be a place that's tangible, that you can put your fingers and you can touch it. You can eat fish and we're going to have all kinds of new fish recipes, all that. It's going to just be an eternity. Well, wouldn't that be a description of a new heaven and a new earth? That's exactly what it would be.

I go back to the Genesis one where he created the heavens and the earth. Yeah. And then he sends Jesus, and all of a sudden you see that there's a possibility to be born again. Yeah, because that's the whole deal. He brings life. He brings new life.

And that's the point. Well, when we get to John 3, I'm going to lay something on you that will knock your socks off. And I don't even know if you're going to agree with it. You've already got me nervous about it, but don't bring it up yet. Let's hang on to it. Well, I'm not going to bring it up yet, but you will, the required reading will be Ezekiel 36 and 37. Because that John 3, you know, John 3, 16 gets all the headlines. Right.

But Jesus tells, you know, it'd be like telling one of your religious leaders in the country, not just at your local church, hey, you need to be born again. Wait, what? And so there's been so many books written about what he meant and where that went. And people go to Ezekiel 36 and 37 because it's a prophecy about this

kind of new birth here that uses the same language, just to give you a little hint. In Ezekiel 36, 26, this Ezekiel given this prophecy says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And that comes on the heels of him saying in 24,

I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. And then he says, I'll give you a new heart, new spirit. I mean, what do you think this is pointing to? Can we just agree on that? Yeah.

There's a son of man. There's a savior coming. God's coming to the earth. And we know where this is headed. Yeah, definitely, Professor. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because when it says, I'll give you that heart of flesh, I was like, what exactly does he mean? Well, then when he gets to the next chapter, it's a famous chapter. It's a valley of dry bones.

And then all of a sudden he creates tendons and they have this flesh and they come to life. In fact. And he breathes life. He breathes life, which now we're going back to the creation story. And what I'm saying, I'm only introducing that because I want you to go read it. So when we get to John three, you might say, oh, I might've missed that at my local church when the person who was saying that all flesh is bad said,

And so it can't be meaning, you know, we can't have a new body when we come back from the dead, or we can't have a new body here when we have the Holy Spirit. Because I'm going to tell you, when you come to Christ, your life gets better and your life will become eternal. You will be eternally better, especially post-resurrection of your body. And so I really think that's a theme in the book of John. I'm glad we went here because he mentioned it 36 times.

I wanted to bring up something, Zach, for you to hold your thought. Don't forget it. Because you brought this up, Jace, earlier, and I think it goes in with what you're saying, Zach, because why we struggle...

with the idea of the eternal being in the here and now. You said something about Thomas being the first one to say, my Lord and my God. Was that accurate? I thought that was true. It is. And so here's what, then you're reading out of John 6 a minute ago, Zach, and it says, at this, what you read, at this, at that what you read, the Jews began to grumble.

about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. And they said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say I came down from heaven? And so it hit me when you both were talking about that. In the first century, when the people were there with Jesus, the hardest thing for them to embrace was his divinity.

The idea that he really was from heaven, he was the son of Yahweh, he was from God. And still is. And still is. But you fast forward 2,000 years and here's what's happened. It's easier for us...

I believe to believe in the divinity of Christ and much harder for us to believe in the humanity of Christ. That's good. Yeah. Which is exactly why shows like the chosen come out and religious people get up in arms because they say, Oh, that just seems like us too. It literally infuriates me. Yeah. And, but, but it's because it shows so much knowledge is the humanity of Jesus, but the humanity around there, their, their claim is, is that, that, that,

it's not the Bible. I'm like, well, neither is this podcast. Neither is your preacher sermon. Right. I mean, we all, we all use our illustrations. And what I'm saying is it's living. So Jesus was a human being. So for us, what we do is then we sanitize that to the point where we say, yeah, the only reason he came down here is because he was God and he had to get on that cross to wipe out our sins. And so we're only thinking about that.

Instead of the fact that he came and lived here for 33 years. Which is, that is the point of the first... Oh, we're not negating it. No, no. That's why a guy we all listen to has just been brutalized in the Western society, which is N.T. Wright, because he's like, look, he's not saying Jesus didn't die first. He's all for it. He's like...

There's just a lot more. Yeah. To your point at the end of John, John said, there's way more. We can't even write it all. I think N.T. Wright does kind of like to tweak his adversaries. Oh, I think so. That's probably why we like him. Well, guess what? So do I. But think about this. You know what's weird is this morning, because Missy, I don't know if she probably doesn't want me to say this, but she does a fast every year and it's very incredible to watch. But I'm so impressed by it.

because she just spends a lot of time in the word and i mean she's shrinking literally before my eyes because she you know she's fasting and it but she watches the chosen over and over and over and uh so we were talking about that day on why we like it which is crazy y'all brought this up and uh i said you know what it is it's these little things you know

seeing Mary shed a tear. You can read that, but when you picture it and see it, it's life is what it is, which I told her. I hugged her before I left.

And I said, see, this is life. I mean, she busted out laughing when I said that. I got kind of syrupy, you know. But I was like, I mean, it's picnics with people you love. It's going to see the grandkids. But when you put Jesus as an actual person you're watching and seeing all these little moments, it's not the big stuff, which is what the religious world, they're like, oh, this is not word for word. But I'm like...

But it becomes real that this God became a man and had conversations with other people. You know these little moments happen because they happen to us every day, which really makes life worth living. And I'm like, don't miss the thrilling aspect of God became a man. He lived life. We saw it. And they captured the big moments. It's like, well, yeah, but what about all those years before?

We don't have his childhood. That's why I think this is unusual because it's not a biography about Jesus because what do you have to have when you have a biography? They say, well, he was born and so, well, we got the birth. Then we skip over pretty much the majority of his life except for one instance when he was at his father's house, which I think that was...

Got birthed 12 years old, then we're at, what, 30? 30. 30 years old. Yeah. So it's mainly about the bulk of this whole thing is about three years of his life. Yeah. So my point, though, is— And most of it, the last two weeks. So my point is, what was the purpose of that? Well, the purpose was, this is not a biography. This is about God becoming a man. But you can fill in the blanks, because I'm pretty sure that he lived a pretty normal life for 30 years. Yeah.

Can you not explore that? You know, it's interesting, though, when you said that in the past we had maybe people had an issue with his divinity and now it's more with his humanity. If you strip Christ of his divinity, then you have a powerless messiah.

But if you strip Christ of his humanity, then you have a loveless Messiah. And I think that that's the point of John 1, verses 1 through 13, is that this God, he sets this up as talking about the supremacy, the sovereignty, the fact that he was the agent in creation, and he's building this up. But the whole idea is that that word...

became flesh. He put on flesh. And that's why we're hitting the importance of the physical universe. The reason why we hit that so hard in the physical nature of the kingdom, I heard a pastor once say, I can't wait to go to heaven and get rid of this meat suit. I'm thinking, well, that's not in the Bible. Ha!

A meat suit? I mean, that's how you, I mean. Flesh that God created? Yeah. But it's only Christianity that holds up the physical universe in very high regard and very high esteem. So what does it have to do with our current cultural issues today? Look,

Look, the whole transgender movement is a misunderstanding that you are not separate from your body. And Christ shows that. Christ comes in bodily form to say, no, your body matters. Your body, the physical universe is extremely important. And so I even thought this Sunday, we're singing, and I can't help it, I'm seeing this everywhere now, we're singing a very old hymn, Amazing Grace, and I'm all into it until the very last line. And I'm like,

I thought, is that true? The earth will dissolve like snow? I don't think so. I don't think the earth's going to fade. I don't think that's what the Bible teaches, that the earth just goes away and then we just float into the ethos. You know, no, the physical world matters because God said it mattered and he made it and he said it's very good. And not only did he say that, he also says,

I'm going to become human flesh. So when the Lord became flesh, when Yahweh, when the word of Yahweh, the Logos, became human flesh, he is saying it matters even more so with the resurrection. Oh, yeah, exactly. Which is why the resurrection just validates it. The new birth starts here. Yeah.

So we're not waiting just to die to be reborn. We've already been reborn. That's the whole idea about faith. Look, the one time I thought I was actually literally going to get stoned at a church building after I gave a sermon is when I literally thought I was going to get stoned in the parking lot. Because I said God was- You don't mean on drugs. You mean like rocks thrown at you. Yeah, on the church. Oh, I got- I mean, get out of here. Don't ever come back. What did you say? I said God is gender neutral.

And boy, here was the point I made. I said, even though he's referred to as, because back then there was a lot of controversy that God is the, his in Genesis, it's a masculine pronoun. Right. I was like, but he created in his image, male and female. Correct. In his image.

You get the connection here? Yeah. And they were the completion of his image, male and female coming together. Now, I made the point of one day that would be a sign that we would be married to Jesus. There's neither male nor female. I was like, it does refer to him as a masculine pronoun. But you would have thought, because all of a sudden it's like, well, that's what the liberal –

humanity is saying. And I'm like, I don't care what they're saying, but God is pro man and woman in his image. They both came from him. So in that light, I was saying he was gender neutral, which maybe I could have heard of that better. You weren't making a doctrine out of the whole thing. You were talking, I see what you're saying. I mean, you see that in prodigal son, Rembrandt's prodigal son. You should Google this picture. If you're listening, just Google Rembrandt prodigal son. It's a famous painting. And look at the hands as the prodigal son embraces the son. Yeah.

And you'll see one of the hands looks like a very strong, masculine, fatherly hand. And the other one is that motherly, sweet embrace. Well, one of the verses I use, remember when Jesus said, you know, I'm gathering around like a mother with children.

How long to gather you under my wing like a hen. Paul said that about Jesus. Yeah, about Jesus. It's also Matthew. How long? He said it to Israel. Oh, Israel. Paul says it too. So it's both. Yeah, he says it to him. Well, I was making the point that so much of people don't believe in God. They're like, well, the Bible's against women. And I was like, oh, no, no. And we said on the last podcast, Mary was the first one to announce that.

That Jesus had been raised. I mean, it was a special moment here. Your point is made pretty strongly when the verse says there is no longer male and female. Well, you know, you would think, but didn't like it. Didn't like it. But you, I mean, you're not saying that God doesn't, God does carry a masculine pronoun in all of Scripture. Well, I'm not saying that. That is the grammar. That's a, I would think if someone did a little research, they'd find that out. Mm-hmm.

All right. Well, we'll get into that and more next time. I want to close with this quote since we brought up N.T. Wright. He said, The book of John is a pool that's safe enough for children to paddle in, but deep enough for an elephant to swim in. Yeah. And I thought that's pretty good. Which is why we're doing this overview because that's what John did. Yeah. And the current is strong enough for a heretic to drown in. I just came up with that. Added by Zach. We'll see you next time on the show.

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