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Tell Me More is a weekly podcast hosted by Katy Reed Hodges and Luke Stehr, where they unpack the Sunday sermon with Dr. Dennis Wiles. This podcast is designed on the premise that Dr. Wiles always has more to say than can fit in a 35 minute sermon - so we have fun discussing it here each week. We hope that in listening you are educated, encouraged and more connected to the pastor and his teaching!
Welcome to another episode of Tell Me More. We are here in the studio talking all things Ephesians chapter 1. It's a great conversation. You don't wanna miss it. So stay tuned for the rest.
Speaker 1:And we're holding to it.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Tell Me More. We're in the studio, and doctor Miles has just said that he's not gonna watch Jurassic Park until next sabbatical.
Speaker 1:But he said it's his goal to watch it his next sabbatical.
Speaker 2:So here. You heard it here
Speaker 1:on the record.
Speaker 3:That. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 2:what else we're gonna talk about today, but I needed to get that on
Speaker 3:the record.
Speaker 2:Oh, Hey, guys.
Speaker 3:Hey, Katie. We missed you Sunday.
Speaker 2:I wasn't here yesterday. I was at the Hantz family reunion. Wow. Brands, friends, family reunion.
Speaker 1:It's a good place to be.
Speaker 2:Every 2 years Yeah. In Austin, Texas.
Speaker 3:You take the children? Oh, yeah. You you do now.
Speaker 2:We took the children. It was worth it. It was worth it. Yeah. But it was very You survived it.
Speaker 2:My husband not that we need to talk about me the whole time, but my husband who obviously I've had friendship with for, like, 12 years, we started dating 10 years ago. We were married 5 years. He said, I think that's the most stress I've ever seen. I mean
Speaker 3:and he's seen you in all kinds of cities.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, I mean, we don't have to recount all the hard parts of my life, but like, we've been through stuff and he's like, I've never seen you like that. That was that's how the weekend went. Ain't that crazy? There you go.
Speaker 2:It's just triplets. It's just
Speaker 3:trip lips.
Speaker 2:It's triplet toddlers.
Speaker 3:And we missed them on fresh start Sunday.
Speaker 2:I know I texted Casey because I was like, that's enough. You need to know if we're there or not. For especially for the 8:30 worship care. Yes. Because that's where we make up, you know, significant percentage of the kids.
Speaker 3:So We missed them.
Speaker 2:Well, we missed them.
Speaker 3:Their Sunday school. I don't
Speaker 2:like I mean, I vacation's important and rest and Sabbath, but I don't really like being gone because by the time next Sunday rolls around, it's been 2 full weeks and I feel really disconnected. And so I'm happy to be back today.
Speaker 3:We are glad you're back.
Speaker 2:We are. Thank you. But I hear you preach. Church went on without me.
Speaker 3:You know, I did. We we went ahead and had it.
Speaker 2:I wanna say
Speaker 3:Wasn't the same?
Speaker 2:No. It couldn't have been. It couldn't have been. No. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:And we all know that Mhmm. Any of us are replaceable, and the church can go on without any of us. And we've proven that. We had a a Sunday about a month ago, and I realized no PLT members were there just by circumstance. Barry had a new grandbaby.
Speaker 2:Kurt was on vacation. Doctor Wells, you were on study leave. And and that's happened before when y'all were in Rome and and and Barry was out for something. Mhmm. But it's not often.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And it's, we're we're okay. Yeah. You know? It's not the same, but we can make it.
Speaker 2:So but I did wanna highlight one thing yesterday before we get into the sermon is Luke has this new initiative, and he's introduced a class that I will be a part of. I just wasn't here yesterday, but Kurt and I and Luke, it's called First Steps and it's for new guests to find their way further into life at First Baptist. And so, Luke, you experiment with that? Can you tell us just a snippet of how it went? I mean, just
Speaker 1:Yeah. We had a really we had a good turnout. Not everyone who came to the class joined, and some of that's we have people who are coming from different, Christian traditions and so having to, you know, ask questions about, you know, I was baptized as a child. Do I wanna get baptized again? What does that mean for me and my relationship with my family?
Speaker 1:So for some people, it's a more complicated choice Yeah. Joining our church.
Speaker 2:But this is a introduction to that path. Yeah. Even if it's the first step. Right?
Speaker 1:It is. Wink. And so wink, wink.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:First steps at First Baptist Arlington. I like it. Planned it.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty excited. And, so a few people in your realm, 1, you had, like, 18, no. 21 people join yesterday. 18 from your thing. Right?
Speaker 1:No. 18 total.
Speaker 2:18 total. Now that we added the 3. Yeah. We don't know
Speaker 3:about 18 joined Sunday.
Speaker 2:Which I think that's just terrific. I mean, that just shows
Speaker 3:that That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know what I mean, it shows health. I guess that's the quickest way to
Speaker 1:It's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Exciting. I think it's exciting for a lot of us. And the next one is September 15. If you're listening and
Speaker 1:And you know a new person. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly. If you are a new person or you know one
Speaker 1:We'd love
Speaker 2:to have you. We're gonna keep rolling with that. So, anyway, I'm I'm sorry to have missed that, and I'm sorry to have missed a wonderful sermon.
Speaker 1:It's a great sermon.
Speaker 2:We're walking through Ephesians.
Speaker 3:We are.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit like I made fun of how long is it gonna take us to get out of Mark 1 in June. We got
Speaker 3:Took a while together. Ephesians 1. We
Speaker 1:got You're after 1 guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I love I love page 1.
Speaker 2:I love page 1 of any book. Absolutely. We got through the first two verses last week.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And now, man, you We
Speaker 3:ran we ran hard on Sunday. Big time.
Speaker 2:So I know Luke, you have some questions. I have some questions. So where do you want to hop in?
Speaker 1:I think let's start with talking about, I think it is a fresh perspective on these, all of the new Testament epistles, but Ephesians, especially
Speaker 2:to think about
Speaker 1:the fact that these are really just ragtag bands of house churches that they're meeting in someone's home. There may be 8 of them. They are a minority in an oppressive majority culture. That's dominantly pagan. At least emphasis in Jerusalem would have been dominantly Jewish, but dominantly pagan cultures.
Speaker 1:They are trying to figure out what it means to be the people of God. How did you come to, you don't hear people preach about Paul's letters very much in that way. What kind of brought you to that point of thinking through Ephesians as you've got this ragtag minority church in a pagan oppressive culture?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, you know, it goes back to when I when I first started seminary, I was, taking a new testament class and, our professor said something like, when I interview new students at Southwestern, a lot of times I ask them, what do you wanna do with your life? And they will say, well, I wanna pastor a new testament church. And he said, so I've gotten where I asked them, well, which one? The one in Corinth, the one in Philippi
Speaker 1:I'll take Philippi.
Speaker 3:And so I was sitting there, you know, I'd been in Less trauma. I'd been in Sunday school, you know, most of my life. I'd I'd grown up in the church, but I was a science major in college. I was getting ready to go to medical school, so I didn't really give a whole lot of thought to that kind of stuff, you know, the New Testament church sounded really good to me. I would admit at that time I probably had in my mind the New Testament church kind of glowed in the dark.
Speaker 3:They were the ones who had it right, you know, and we've all been trying to be just like them all these years later. So that's kind of where I was introduced to, to that idea of, that's interesting. So I remember going home that very night and talking to Cindy and just said to her, I never thought about the fact that there are all these different churches in the new testament, and they all have different makeups and issues and challenges and contexts, and that was really a new thing to me.
Speaker 2:To look at them each Yeah.
Speaker 3:And their own lives. Individually, yeah, and having different struggles, and and so that introduced that to me, and so just all through the years, I guess that's just something that I've had on my brain. I think probably where where has been where it really came alive for me was my first time to go to Rome when, we actually had a family in our church where, they're really good friends of ours, and the wife and the family died, one of Cindy's best friends here. And so when her her husband was ready to get remarried and, met just this wonderful lady who ended up coming to our church, and she was reared Roman Catholic and decided to convert to protestantism, and I ended up baptizing her. So when they got married, we had a waiting ceremony for them here, but he asked if I would do some type of marital blessing in Rome to surprise her at Saint Peter's, so which we did.
Speaker 3:So he he took Cindy and I and Josiah. So it's our first time to go to Rome. Mhmm. And we were at Saint Peter's Basilica, which is the really the largest physical church in Christendom, and it'll hold 60,000 people. I mean, it's a massive if you've never been there, it's just I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker 3:It's just whatever over the top is, it's that and then some. But, I was I was there, and Josiah and I were having a conversation, and and it just occurred to me, I said, well, you know, son, the early church in Rome looked nothing like this. Well, that was very intriguing to him. He was, like, what do you mean? And I said, well, you know, there were just small groups of people, and who knows where they were.
Speaker 1:Person 80.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Tripping in Tryptopha. Just this handful
Speaker 3:of people that you know really well. And, and that's just been in my mind ever since. Just that what must have been like for them to get a letter from Paul, and there they were in Rome surrounded by this imperial authority, and and and so, and for Paul to say in that letter, that, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because the gospel is the power of God, and he was he was writing to a church that was in the seat of power. So So that's kinda where all that came from me, and so as I have been in recent days just spending some time in Paul's letters, I just can't help myself. I'm trying to imagine these people in the first century getting these letters and, you know, having them read to them.
Speaker 3:I will say I hadn't thought much about the, kind of the, I guess, the the reading and reflection and conversation about the letters, until I went to hear NT Wright again and he just talked to us about Tychicus, you know, and kind of imagining how does all this play out and and and g Wright just said, so I'm just imagining Tychicus showing up with this letter and sitting down and reading it to everyone. Mhmm. And and while we were sitting there, I just started making notes. Well, Phoebe, you know, has been taking this letter to the church at Rome, and Tychicus took the letter to the church at Colossae. I mean, and just the fact that he was going from house to house or from shop to shop, you know, just, hey.
Speaker 3:I've got a letter from Paul, and listen and listen to it tonight. And so I don't know. Just that whole thing, that imagination just kinda went crazy for me a little bit.
Speaker 2:So can I ask more about, the cast of characters, these 5 or 8 people in a home? Yeah. Likely new converts. Mhmm. I mean, there was no such thing as old.
Speaker 2:I mean Yeah.
Speaker 3:This is
Speaker 1:all Some of them would have been coming out of Jewish backgrounds.
Speaker 2:So they have the Well
Speaker 3:well, little heritage.
Speaker 2:Little Right. So they have the what we call the old testament. They have the the Pentecost and all that. What new
Speaker 3:It's not like they had one in their home.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's what and what of what we know is the new testament Mhmm. Would they have had? Would they have had a perhaps a whisper of a gospel? I mean They think about the timing on all this, would any is it Mark been written in this? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Like, what do they even know about Jesus at
Speaker 3:this point? I I I think it would've all been preaching and teaching is probably what I'd say.
Speaker 2:Just word-of-mouth at that point. I mean,
Speaker 3:that's what I I mean, you could probably argue, I mean, when Paul wrote, what, AD 60, if I mean, that's what I think when he wrote Ephesus, give or take, maybe Mark, but, I'd say Mark is probably a little In
Speaker 2:high circulation. That'd be dicey to make that claim.
Speaker 3:So there been fragments. I'm probably there who knows? There might have been some collections of the sayings
Speaker 2:of Jesus' past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past past would have
Speaker 3:gone around.
Speaker 2:Or they wouldn't
Speaker 3:be Christian.
Speaker 2:I mean, right, that they need to know something about
Speaker 3:proclaiming it.
Speaker 2:The death, resurrection, forgiveness of Jesus.
Speaker 3:And the Holy Spirit really depend on the Holy Spirit. Yeah. If you think about it.
Speaker 2:Well that's true.
Speaker 3:Because if you're spirit filled.
Speaker 2:Right, but yeah.
Speaker 1:This is a church with no Bible.
Speaker 2:And you think That's right. Yeah, and not even
Speaker 3:That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Parts of it. You know? I mean, it's just a
Speaker 3:And so here they are trying to sort all this out.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. And all they have is and I I say they weren't a written cult. I mean, oral.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They're primarily illiterate. Some of the Jews may have been trained in writing. Preaching,
Speaker 2:but it's,
Speaker 3:but then uncommon or
Speaker 2:But they wouldn't. Yeah. I mean, this is one, what a gift we have of this whole thing that's bound in front of each of us. That's right.
Speaker 3:So we have we deal with that in some of the places where we work in West Africa, you know, some illiterate culture, they're oral learners. And so what we, a lot of times, use for them are audio bibles, you know, little solar powered, stories of, you know, usually we have one gospel, usually in an indigenous language, and that's what we end up trying to use, and, of course, Mark's the shortest one, so that's kind of helpful, you know, but, yeah, so I think about this, you know, and and not only that, the Romans were so nervous about unrest, and so,
Speaker 1:And Ephesus had high levels of unrest when
Speaker 2:Christianity came on the scene.
Speaker 1:You can read about that next.
Speaker 3:And you have A lot of foment,
Speaker 1:you know? Yeah. It's tumultuous place. I mean, Christian riot caused a riot.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Paul Paul was there. In fact, see, NT Wright believes Paul was in prison during that riot and that's where he wrote Ephesus from. He would be in the overwhelming minority of New Testament scholars who believe that. I don't believe that, But, yeah, you know, you think about how the Romans were so nervous about these gatherings of people, they just wouldn't let they wouldn't let 50, 75, a 100 people gather.
Speaker 3:It is they're just nervous about that because that they would see that as an insurrection. So unless you were a part of something that they already trusted, so like guilds, you know, they they allowed those kinds of things to function, and they did allow the Jews to meet. That was one exception they made and that was you know, they allowed Judea to kind of be allowed religious freedom in the Judean colony, which was, which was kind of fascinating if you think about it, Go all the way back in time, they were willing to do that, but they understood, the, at least in in their best moments, they understood just the Jewish culture. You had people like Caligula, you know, who were just crazy, who, you know, he wouldn't have his statue put in the temple in Jerusalem, so you had you had crazy people occasionally, but generally speaking, the Jews were allowed to to gather. So it wouldn't bother the Romans if, you know, 500 Jews showed up to worship in the temple at a time that Of course.
Speaker 1:They heavily taxed it. Of course.
Speaker 3:And and they guarded it. You know, you had you had, you know, Herod built a palace so he could look down inside the goings on in the temple, so but still, but for for church, for a new movement, you could not do that at all. So these people had to meet in really small groups, and, but it it it, it it began to spread, and it it pretty much an alarming rate, I would say, for them. And, and so I think Paul just had this sense of kind of what we're what we're talking about right now, what all do they know, Well, how are they going to know if we don't write some of this down? You know, and I don't think Paul I think it'd be a mistake to think that Paul was was, you know, like when you read John Calvin or Martin Luther, Calvin probably more than Luther.
Speaker 3:You know, Calvin wrote the institutes when he was in his, what, thirties? I can't remember now. Or late twenties, I guess. And then he just kinda just kept rewriting it. He would think about it, he would ponder it, and he would kinda add to it.
Speaker 3:Well, that's that's not what Paul was doing. Paul's not writing a systematic theology. It's not like every 6 months or so, he goes, you know, I probably ought to address the atonement, or maybe next time I'm gonna talk about eschatology. That that's not really what Paul was doing. Paul was trying to answer this right here.
Speaker 3:What do these people need to know? He's a pastor. He's a pastor. I need to get this to them. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or I'm in prison. Okay. I don't I I don't have time to write a really lengthy treatise. Okay. I tell you what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna get this right here done, and let's go ahead and get it out, you know, and so you read in Colossians, Paul said, well, now y'all go ahead and read these letters now, the one to Laodicea, and I'll make sure that y'all circulating these these notes that I've sent you. It's a very pragmatic approach to theology, if you think about it, and, now granted Romans Romans is a pretty lengthy treatise, a little bit unusual, but think about Corinth, think about all the ink that was spilled in Corinth, but, well, because Paul was so concerned about that church, he just kept writing them. He couldn't help himself, himself, you know. They couldn't help themselves. But I think this letter, what I love about Ephesians though is you just don't have any of that, and so when I first started studying Ephesians, I think I was a little bit mistaken.
Speaker 3:I took it as, okay, this is the ideal church, and that's not really it. It's it's not the ideal church, so to speak. It's the church that God is intending. I think that's really a better way to look at it, but I think Paul is saying, this is really what God is doing.
Speaker 2:Church as God intended.
Speaker 3:Right. This right here. Now, the church at Ephesus is going to struggle, we know that. They're going to have issues. Paul is going to have to write Timothy and go, okay, you've got this stuff going on in worship, You you've got these women, these really strong willed women coming out of these after Diana cults, and they're starting to evidently dominate some in worship.
Speaker 3:Okay. You you gotta you you gotta address it. You can't we're gonna have to somehow be an insurgent, force in the culture, but at a certain level. We can't we can't do it in such a way that all of a sudden it just eradicates the the validity of any of it. Well, Paul knew that, and so he, you know, he he was very practical, I believe, in his theology, and so the church at Ephesus wasn't perfect, you know, they even get addressed later in the book of Revelation.
Speaker 3:So it's not that this was the perfect church, it's this letter is describing the church as I think God intended it to be, and so that's the beautiful thing about it. And it's so encompassing, this letter is, and I think that's part of the attraction of it. Because on the one hand, you know, we read Ephesians 1, and Paul says, you know, in Christ, he's going to sum up everything that is the entire cosmos. I mean, the the, heaven and earth are merging now together, and then he has this incredible picture, if you will, of the of the new temple. This is actually the people of God.
Speaker 3:You're you're actually the body of Christ in this world. So he has to describe who Christ is so you'll understand what his body is supposed to look like, but then He goes it's like He says, okay, now in order to make that happen, the church is going to be filled with all these gifted people. You know, this can't just happen on the shoulders of 1 group of people, so look what Jesus has done. He's he's he's he's given gifts to the church, So you've got pastors, and you've got evangelists, you've got you've got these prophets, you've got these apostles. So he's outfitting the temple, so to speak, so it can play its role.
Speaker 3:But then he says, but you know what? Y'all are all living your life, you know, Monday through Saturday in your neighborhood, you know, and they're all watching you, You know? You can't help yourselves. Okay. So now when you get home, do this right here when you get home, you know, because let your neighbors see this, because your neighbors have never seen anything like this.
Speaker 3:They've never seen marriages like this. They've never seen people treat one another inside of a home like this, so do this. So I love how Paul goes from this colossal cosmic conversation to an everyday conversation about a couple sitting at home trying to figure out how to manage their life on Monday night. You know, it's just it's just beautiful. I mean, that's that's one of the reasons I'm I'm so drawn to Ephesians, you know, particularly at this point in my life, it's interesting to me,
Speaker 2:but Can you can you expand on me? Do you want to expand on me?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's probably because I'm also thinking about what do I think it really ought to look like.
Speaker 2:You know, I've
Speaker 3:been doing this a long time.
Speaker 2:What's God's full intent for
Speaker 3:church? What's really the Lord want for the church? You know, what would I say at this point in my life after watching it for all these years and and and being a part of it and helping shape it, most particularly helping shape this one, you know, for the last 23 years. Sure. I've got on my brain right now.
Speaker 3:How how should it really be? What should y'all be thinking about and be buried deeply in the DNA, in the soil, and kind of the life of this church, if it's really going to be the church the Lord needs it to be in this next era? So that's probably why I'm going to come down
Speaker 2:with Ephesians. Easy easy thought process.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Straightforward.
Speaker 2:Clear cut answers.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:You brought up
Speaker 3:was just clear.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You brought up Ticket Kiss a few times now,
Speaker 1:and I was wondering, what do we do we know any more about him?
Speaker 2:You seem kinda captivated by him.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm, here's the thing. The reason I like this is
Speaker 2:Tychicus. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's the well, it's just that that we get so enamored with Paul and Peter and John and and and y'all dude, honey, come on.
Speaker 1:Yes. We should. To reason.
Speaker 3:I mean, they're apostles. My goodness.
Speaker 2:But they're not the only people in the New Testament.
Speaker 3:That's right. Right. You know, and think about all the just regular people that just gave up everything to try to help make this movement be what it was. And so I've just gotten a little bit infatuated with that of reading about all these other different people and I guess also, I've been humbled by the fact that I haven't given enough I haven't, in my opinion for me, given enough attention to some of these people. I mean, their names, they actually, they're in the bible.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. I mean, you know what I mean? They're actually in the bible. So why are they in the bible? Why why do why do we have to have their names?
Speaker 3:Well, because human beings matter, you know, and and all these different roles are important, and so maybe you had a house church, awesome. Maybe you didn't write the gospels, No. You didn't. But you know what you did do? You actually provided a space for this movement to get launched.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:You walked Yeah. The letter of Ephesians across the continent.
Speaker 3:Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for that, you know. And so I'm just kind of, I want to give them all their due, you know. And I think we And they're
Speaker 2:named for a reason.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We just pass over them so easily at the end of Paul's letters, you know, Alexander, Dumas, like I said, Tychicus, all these folks, oh, yeah. Apathroditus, oh, yeah. I kind of heard his name. Well, actually, these were pretty strategic people, you know, and to me, it speaks a word to the church in general.
Speaker 3:What you're doing matters, your role that you're playing. You're not Paul. Awesome. That's great. Nobody you don't have to be Paul, but you can
Speaker 2:be aspirationally, maybe not best.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Don't try to be Paul.
Speaker 3:You know? But but what if you're a Sunday school teacher? Yeah. Well, guess what? Thank you.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And think about all the time and energy you've poured into people's lives, and you've helped keep the church going. Well, thank you. You know? So that's why I keep mentioning his name.
Speaker 3:That's
Speaker 2:the minor characters. Yeah. Good. Yeah. They're valuable.
Speaker 3:And I thought it was so funny when this past weekend when I'm at Pioneer Drive and the pastor's kinda giving me a tour of the church, We're just walking. They're getting ready to do a launch of campaign, you know, and I walked by 1 Sunday school room, and this is the ticketus room, and I just said, that's an awesome room, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I administer the Dorcas Fund on behalf of our church.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Dorkus mentioned once, as far as I know. Mhmm. Just
Speaker 3:I think not
Speaker 2:a great lady. Not a throwaway line, but something like But
Speaker 3:she was taking care
Speaker 2:taking care
Speaker 3:taking the care of the poor, taking care of the needy. So was she wealthy?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Perhaps. You know? But either way, that's
Speaker 2:what she chose to spend.
Speaker 3:The point is, yeah, she found her way in the scripture.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You know? And,
Speaker 2:It was commended. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:It's a big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Also, thank you, church, for contributing to the Dorcas Fund.
Speaker 3:Amen.
Speaker 2:Every week, we make a difference in somebody's life. So that's a cool thing.
Speaker 3:So yeah. So patience, you know. There's plus, I love the fact that, we talked a little bit about this offline. I guess we'll talk about it now. But the fact that Paul is is a first century Jewish theologian, and so in the Judean worldview, you had messianic expectations.
Speaker 3:Now not everybody. I think you could probably argue that not everybody expected there to be a literal physical messiah. There are probably some Jews just like today who probably look more toward a messianic age, so to speak, but the overwhelming majority of Jews in the first century were looking for a messiah, and they had in their mind what he was supposed to do. There were differences of opinion about it. And, and so that's what I was trying to allude to Sunday morning that we just don't know our old testament well enough.
Speaker 3:We don't know our bible well enough to catch all of that. We just read right past it and just miss this incredible imagery that that's just in the text that you can't you can't ignore it, and and I think Paul would be stunned if he thought you missed all that, you know, because that was so much a part of their world. Mhmm. And not only that, here's what's happened to us. Every era of Christian theologians is addressing a different problem, a different concern, if you will.
Speaker 3:And so on the one hand, we have the been we're the beneficiaries of 2000 years of theological reflection. But on the other hand, we're also prejudiced by it. You know? Particularly those of us in the I I would argue in the protestant tradition because in the protestant tradition, all of us have a little bit of of a reformed view of theology in the scripture. And so even though I'm not a Calvinist, I'm still reformed in the sense that I'm a product of the reformation.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And the reformation the reformers were answering questions that were not necessarily the questions Paul was was asking and answering.
Speaker 2:No. It's a different set of different
Speaker 3:challenges. A different time in history. But but if you're not careful, you're constantly reading the, I'm sorry with that, constantly reading the scripture through those lens. So, for example, if you believe that the whole reason Paul wrote Romans was to explain the theory of atonement, well, then you you would miss what what was really happening in Romans, but if Martin Luther, then that's why you're reading
Speaker 2:And that's what he felt had gone.
Speaker 3:That's exactly. Right. And and John Calvin, you're reading Paul to answer the question, well, what about salvation? How do I stay out of purgatory, so to speak?
Speaker 2:It's kind of the very correction they thought was needed. They're looking for that.
Speaker 3:And they were nervous about ecclesiology, well, duh, They were living under the imperial authority of the roman church, so the last thing they were gonna do was paint a high Christology. A high ecclesiology? I'm sorry. High ecclesiology because it's like, well, we're not there. You already have that.
Speaker 3:That's corrective. That's making me nervous. You know?
Speaker 2:Do you get the sense that in our day and age, we have our own Sure. Heavy lenses? You know what I mean? That we that we move to the scripture, which obviously wouldn't be what Paul was trying to tell us?
Speaker 3:I think so. I still think that the whole conversation about salvation is such a big thing to us, which I get it, but it's almost an escapism
Speaker 2:Mhmm. How do I get to heaven?
Speaker 3:Approach. Yeah. Just how do I get out all of this? Yeah. You know?
Speaker 2:How am I saved from
Speaker 3:And and and I don't even need to care about all this because God has blessed me in spirit. I'll fly away. Realms. Yeah. Just I'm just not, you know, I'm bound for the promised land, you know.
Speaker 3:Whereas, I think I think Paul would say, no. You're in the promised land already. You know, heaven and earth emerge together in Christ. Wherever you are is the promised land. The holy land is the earth.
Speaker 3:The whole earth belongs to the lord.
Speaker 2:So let's make it
Speaker 3:That's right. Let's make it the very best it can be. Let's restore it. Let's let's let's let's begin the journey that we're gonna be on throughout eternity. So, yeah, I think we do that.
Speaker 3:And I think too, you know, you I mean, 20th century theology was so dominated by German liberalism, whether it was either it was either German liberalism in its full flower or reaction against it created so much foment in the theological world in 20th century. As much as I appreciate all the great minds, but you had guys like Bultmann. Bultmann's a Lutheran, but Bultmann, he had no appreciation for Jewish history. And so Bultmann's always looking for gnosticism or you know some kind of pagan something to explain why is Paul doing this or why is this in the scripture. When when when gnosticism didn't even exist when Paul was writing, you know, that was not an issue at all for them.
Speaker 3:Paul was not battling necessarily, Platonism. Paul was a Jew. Paul was trying to sort out this whole thing about the Messiah and God's whole plan for the universe. He wasn't really battling, you know, platonic idealism, you know. That's just fascinating to me that, you know, you get to the 20th century and that becomes a huge conversation and we've we've just been influenced by it.
Speaker 3:And so I have found myself challenging myself to somehow climb out of my current context and try to climb back into what was really going on then, you know, what were they really trying to address, and then how does that inform where we are today, rather than always letting where I am today inform how I read the text? Mhmm. Yeah. You know? I mean, so for example, again, you you just read some of these texts, you know, that that are that again, I just I feel like we just kinda run right past them, but they're but they're meaningful.
Speaker 3:And there were things Paul grappled with, You know? So like in, when you go back to the book of Genesis, when Jacob's blessing hit this is far afield, but still.
Speaker 2:Please tell me more.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:I don't have
Speaker 1:time to talk about
Speaker 3:it on Sunday morning.
Speaker 2:This is why we do this.
Speaker 3:So like Judah. Okay? You know that Judah
Speaker 2:So just to you are here. We're now in in Genesis.
Speaker 3:49 or something.
Speaker 2:Talking about Judah.
Speaker 3:That's right. Judah. Okay. We're called Paul. Just make a chart
Speaker 2:listen to people.
Speaker 1:I just point a person, not a place.
Speaker 3:A person. Judah. 1 of the kids of Abraham and and I mean, Jacob, rather. So here's Paul, who's this theologian, who was trying to figure out the line of Judah, the lion of Judah, the whole blessing of Judah, because that's woven through the prophets, it's in the promises of God, and so he's grappling with things like this where where this is what Jacob says to Judah. He says in verse 10 of Genesis 49, the scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff between His feet.
Speaker 3:So you think, okay, the the Messiah, the ultimate King is going to be from the line of Judah. And then he says, until he to whom it belongs shall come, and the obedience of the nations will be his. What does that mean? And who is that? Who who's going to have the obedient you you know the lion the lion and the lion of Judah are going to have the obedience of Israel.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. This evidently, this is the kingly line for us. What about all the nations coming underneath his authority? What does that mean? That's the kind of stuff Paul's grappling with, trying to figure out, okay, we're gonna have a messiah come to Israel.
Speaker 3:What's he gonna do? Mhmm. Rule over Israel? And Paul's like, well, no. That's too small.
Speaker 3:He's not not gonna rule over Israel. I mean, David did that, you know, so we've already had that, and it's a failed experiment. Look at what it got us into. Where's our king right now? Oh, we don't have one.
Speaker 3:What happened to our last one? Well, he was wicked, and guess what, we ended up babbling. So how's the king thing working out? Well, what am I supposed to do with the scepter that was given to Judah? That that's the kind of stuff Paul's trying to figure out.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, so he's he's he's viewing, his current reality all through the lens of those kind of questions. And now all of a sudden, Jesus shows up, and Paul has to be convinced that this is this is the guy, and once Paul's convinced, well, he's done. It's Katie, bar the door now. Is that what you said? How you say it?
Speaker 3:It's like, he's done. It's like, I'm all in. Yeah. All
Speaker 2:in. I got no breaks.
Speaker 3:I'm all in. Let me tell you who he is. The whole earth is his. As a matter of fact, all of heaven is his. As a matter of fact, you belong to Him now, and everything that was His is now yours.
Speaker 3:It's like he once he got on a roll, it's just
Speaker 2:Yeah, look out world, here he here Paul comes.
Speaker 3:So Christology, ecclesiology starts rolling off out of Paul's hearts. Like, he can't help himself.
Speaker 2:He's a studied man. Yes. And that's what you alluded to on Sunday, yesterday. It is Monday morning. That we don't know our bible.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's kind of the
Speaker 3:Yes. And so I read through Ephesians. I read this prayer of Ephesians. I go, man, this is a great prayer. You know?
Speaker 3:I mean, give me a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Yeah. I need that because I'm trying to decide whether to take this job tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2:Paul would have been writing that with a different a deeper intent. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You do need to decide whether to take this job, but you also need the wisdom of God so you can live the way Jesus would have you live and actually be his body on this earth and understand that heaven and earth have merged together in you and all the promises of God are now at play in you. And if you don't know that, well then there's no hope for the world. You need wisdom, you need revelation from God, not just to decide whether or not to take this job. Yes, you need that, but you need to make sure your eyes, your gaze is lifted to where you know who you really are, so that you can live as the people of God.
Speaker 3:You know, he's gonna put everything under his feet. Well, that's what Psalm 110 says. Mhmm. He's gonna fill to the praise of God's glory. Well, that's Isaiah 11, you know.
Speaker 3:The glory of God's gonna cover the whole earth. Well, how's the glory of God gonna cover the whole earth? He gonna just fill it with smoke? Is that what's gonna happen? No.
Speaker 3:It's us. Yeah. We're gonna cover the whole earth, and as we start covering the whole earth, we take the glory of God with us. So so, yes, just, you know, I I feel like we gotta we gotta we gotta spend a little more time with the revelation of God to understand who we are, you know. But, man, we're so busy right now, though.
Speaker 3:You know, we're so inundated in this information age, and, you know, it's like we gotta we gotta know everything about the Kardashians for whatever. Why why why do I need
Speaker 2:to know
Speaker 1:about them? Kept up with them.
Speaker 3:Listen. Why do I need to know about them? And I'm not I'm not dogging them. I don't know. I know very little about them, to
Speaker 2:be honest with you. Like with many things,
Speaker 3:you know. But I'm just thinking, okay, I can spend all of my time doing all of that. I mean, I can, and people do. But to what end? You know, on the one hand, I want to be informed.
Speaker 3:So I try to take in enough to be informed, and just make sure I kind of understand what's going on, and it's fun. I like it. I mean, just like last night, I thought it was kind of cool that Tom Cruise jumped into the Olympic thing, you know? And and, I mean, here he is. He's like I mean, he is I don't know if you look up, you know, classic movie star in the dictionary.
Speaker 3:Wh whose picture do you get? Yeah. At least he's in the he's gonna be one of
Speaker 2:the He's
Speaker 1:in the running. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So if you're gonna have the Olympics in Hollywood or LA, well, I'm not shocked that Tom cruise would do it. I thought it was kind of cool, but I'm not gonna hit my, I'm not gonna live my whole life today trying to unpack and figure out what all they did and how did all that work. I mean, it was great. It was fun. I loved it.
Speaker 3:It was fine. I loved it. I loved watching the Olympics. But, man, I've got so much that I don't know about what really matters. That's where I've got to spend my time and my energy because my because eternity's at stake for my whole world, and my world doesn't need me to be an expert on all things entertainment, you know, it needs me to be an expert on the things that that matter so that I can live it in front of them and communicate it to them, so, so, yeah, so I'm, yeah, I'm spending my time right now going back through some of these passages in the old testament and even asking myself, how did I miss that?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. How did
Speaker 3:I miss that right there? You know, I gotta go back and figure that out, you know. I mean, in Paul's language, even the way he uses words in Greek has caused me to do a little more Greek homework just like I mentioned some more in that word redemption, the word deliverance, which in the old testament describes Israel being it's an exodus word. Well, Paul's really smart, you know. Why would he use that word?
Speaker 3:Why would he paint the image of blood, you know, for forgiveness of sin? Well, because he's talking about Passover. He's talking about, you know, that what god's done in the past. He's doing what Jews did. He's recounting the past.
Speaker 3:That's what he's doing to praise God, and and we we have to learn from all of that, you know, and see it, so that we catch the richness of it. Mhmm. So,
Speaker 2:I'm excited to see where we keep going
Speaker 1:Yeah. As we study Ephesians because there's there's just a lot of great stuff ahead.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Next Sunday.
Speaker 3:Connor's preaching next Sunday. Oh.
Speaker 2:And the
Speaker 3:next Sunday we have is is all the new college students are showing up. So Connor asked, could I preach on that day rather than back in July? So I said, yes. So it's fine. And then I will bring it, at least, this leg of the journey to a conclusion the next Sunday when we get to Ephesians 56 where, you know, Paul keeps you in the cosmos conversation because he has to address the forces of evil.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. But he puts you in the common conversation because he talks about your house, you know, so those are juxtaposed. Fascinating. Yeah. It really is.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 3:Looking forward to that.
Speaker 2:Well, keep reading Ephesians.
Speaker 3:We're not gonna be done with it even going into next year because there are parts of Ephesians that will bleed into what we're gonna be doing in 2025. So Well, as
Speaker 2:part of our word and deed, we're asking our people to read Ephesians every week. And so So keep up with that. Listening, watching, don't miss it. It's really
Speaker 1:It is. Well, thanks for listening, everyone, and enjoy your week.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Tell Me More podcast today. You can subscribe to this podcast on your app of choice, or you can visit us at fbca dotorg to find out more information about the podcast and our church. Thanks for listening. Have a good day.