Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - BONUS: 2023 Wrap Up and What's Next in 2024

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

You made it through the New Testament! Join the TMBTeam as they discuss their biggest takeaways from a year in the New Testament, unpack what TMBT is studying in 2024, share some exciting news. Thanks for an awesome year, and we'll see you in 2024! Oh, and if you want to know what the hosts are trying to pronounce, it's "Ketuvim." Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here.

Hey, we got the whole TMVT game together, which we only do maybe once a year, if that. And we want to look back on 2023 and look forward to 2024. But just personally, there have been some things that have changed on our team. Like, for example, we have a new guest host. It can be a mystery for you that Tanya is going to tell you about. But Jensen, you had a big life change this year, didn't you? I did, yeah. Tell us.

I had a daughter this year. Oh, wow. I don't know if you noticed I disappeared there for a hot second in the summer. And people were worried about you Jensen. People asked questions, is she okay? I was not. I'm better now. They should have been asking the other hosts if we were okay.

Because that was a hot mess trying to do that many episodes on a consistent basis. You took on a lot so that I could also take on a lot in a different way. That's true. 2023 was also the year y'all bumped up to five episodes a week. Yep. That was a change. Oh my gosh, was that just last year? Yeah. Do you guys remember when you only had to do four?

It was nice. I wouldn't have done that if I had known Jones was pregnant. So, Jason, this is second child? Yes, my second child, Florence. And how old is she? She just turned five months. Okay. Yeah, had to think about it for a second.

Can you anything happen in your life? Didn't you have two kids with broken legs at the same time? Oh. It was knees. Yeah, ACLs, two ACLs back to back. Wow. That's worse. One ACL per child or one child with two ACLs?

Two children, two different ACLs. two weeks apart. Whoa. But one of them has had multiple ACLs. Yes. Don't you only have two? I think I have four kids,

but I think they all have two legs. I'm saying, doesn't a person only have two? Oh, yes. Yeah, but you can keep injuring the same leg. Yeah. Tanja must have bad genetics. That's, yes.

I should stop having children. So, Tanya, you haven't stopped? I think so. I think about 13 years ago. Okay. So why don't you, introduce everybody to our new mystery guest host.

Yes, Jeff is here. We're very excited. So this summer when we were all feeling a little overwhelmed because Jensen was gone, you're welcome. We did this nationwide talent search and we asked Jeff to guest host. And he did so well, of course, that he is now coming on as our fifth host. Hi, Jeff. Good to see you across the table.

Jeff, I hear it. Yeah. All right. So just to get everybody to get to know you a little. bit. It's clear Keith doesn't know Jensen at all. He's asking him about children's names. He doesn't know my child's name. Were you not pregnant? I was. You know, it's tough to tell. Well, I'm sorry that Jensen doesn't call me. I'm at her first phone call when she finds out that she's he was the third. He'd on the stick and two lines showed up, you know? So, Jeff, to let everybody

get to know you just a little bit. We thought it'd be fun to give you some questions, a little lightning round here. So does anybody want to go first? Yeah, I want to go first. Oh, Keith. Jeff, what's the most millennial thing about you? Oh, what's not millennial about me? You did want to wear a plaid shirt today. I did want to wear a plaid. I love flannel. Oh, wow, I don't really know where to stop with... I feel weird because I'm kind of...

I feel like a little bit of an old soul, but also I'm so stereotypically millennial that's kind of figuring out the mid-30s life. You have your quarter life crisis? Yeah, yeah. Good. Who else you got a question? I have a question. Oh, go Jensen.

This is a hot debate in my household. So important how you answer this. We like to ask everyone. Would you rather go on a month-long... all expenses paid trip to Europe or go to the moon once and then come back. This is a hard question? I feel like this is a little hard. I think it's a hard question.

Is it just me? Does my family get to come to Europe with you? Yeah. But they can't go to the moon. They can come to the moon with you. It's way more attractive if your family isn't coming with you too. Okay. You don't have to bring your kids.

Okay. Just a quick clarify. I know I'm drawing this out. But I can go to Europe later if I want to. I just don't get it all paid. Yeah. You can always go back to Europe, but you would have to pay for it. For a month.

I want to go to the moon. You have a lot of kids. It's expensive. I wouldn't take everybody in the moon. Patrick would go to the moon? Because we can say month, month, but. What is Keith one? I want to go to Europe.

Yeah. I'm going to go to Europe later. I'm going to go to the moon, get a space view of Europe. And then I'm going to go to Europe later. What are you going to do on the moon? You guys want to do what literally millions of people do. They don't have restaurants on the moon. You and Elon Musk are going to go to the moon.

You guys are such normies. No, he could join what, I mean, how many people have stepped on the moon? Like 12 people? Yeah, that's great. No, I want to do what everybody else has done in trump around Europe. And you can still do it later. You can be from space. Here's the thing.

You could not pay me enough money to get inside of a rocket ship and go up in the air. Airplanes are good enough. Did you ever read the book Mars by Andy Weir? No. Yeah. You didn't? Nobody did. It was a bestseller.

Yeah. It would make you not want to go to the moon. I think we should stop and text Christine and tell her that Keith wants to go to Europe before the moment is over. That's probably true. All right. Jeff, I have one last question for you here. It's really profound. It's deep. I can't wait.

Is a hot dog a sandwich? It's a good one. These are the hardest questions, but I love these questions. Yeah. This says a lot about you. Okay. I'm going to say a hot dog is sandwich adjacent. Cop out.

We need a clear yes or no. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to disappoint the sandwich people, but I'm going to say it's not a sandwich. Oh, it's for sure not a sandwich. Yeah. Traditionally, a sandwich has bread and meat. betwixt it. Yes. This is true. So there are things that should be, but I feel like if I'm

sitting at Kauffman Stadium or any, you know, ballpark and famed, you know, MLB history, and I say to my friend, hey, do you want me to go get you a sandwich? They are not going to think that a hot dog is one of the options. Then you come back with a hot dog. They're like, I didn't say, I didn't ask, does the world in general consider hot dog sandwiches? I asked, is it a sandwich. Yeah, but I think that the consensus of the world is unanimous. Nobody's going to expect you to bring them a hot dog where they ask for a sandwich. Plus it's one piece of bread. You need two for a sandwich. So if I cut the hot dog in half and the bread in half, it becomes a sandwich. Yes. Okay. There we go. It accidentally becomes a sandwich once it falls apart. Yeah, because that happens

my hot dog's all the time. All right. Well, you sometimes eat a hot dog sandwich. Well, we wanted to come together today to talk a little bit about what we all learned this past year. As you know, we've been in the New Testament the whole year. We went through the whole thing. I put a lot of work on other people to go through most of it, but we're excited. It was fun. And so we just kind of wanted to share a little bit about what we learned as we went through the New Testament. You know what I learned about this whole process and going through the New Testament this year is that I would never have done something like this without accountability. That's what I learned. You learned something about yourself.

Yes. Do you just read through the New Testament in a year on your own? Yes. Yes. I'm a pastor. I'm a pastor. That's true. That's true.

No, I liked the structure. I liked the accountability. I liked that we had a plan in place and I knew where we were going. and I like that I did it and finished it. And that's what I learned. I loved having just gone through the Torah in 2022, following it with the New Testament and seeing how much the New Testament points backwards to those five books. I feel like, one, we kind of set ourselves up well because we did some of the legwork to prepare for 2020 in 2022.

And also just getting to see those, yeah, cool connections that make the whole text deeper and richer. And you pulled out some of those in the newsletter. It was one of my favorite segments to do for sure. And Alun, would you say that what you learned from the New Testament is even more about the Old Testament? I think so definitely. And, you know, Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. So to sit in the law, in the Torah, and then to read about Jesus' life and read about the church that he established. It's cool to see that fulfillment starting in the old and continuing in the new. I think one of the things I learned, and I kind of felt guilty because I felt like I was repeating it throughout every single podcast.

I have to say something different here, is the way in which the cross really sits in the center of the entire New Testament. I found myself again and again, whether it was Paul's letters or it was the book of Revelation or it was the Gospels, highlighting the ways in which Jesus calls us to take up our cross to emulate his self-sacrificial love, but also highlighting how his self-sacrificial love is transformative to us, that when he gave himself to us for us, it changed us from the inside out. And I feel like I saw that in a way, this is the case if you go through any big section of scripture in a year, things that you haven't seen previously. But it really didn't matter where I was at. I kept seeing it. And so really, this is just an apology to everyone who heard me talk about self-sacrifice,

you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of times across the episodes. But it really stood out to me in a different way this time. Yeah, it's funny. I also repeated a lot, sorry, but I was thinking through the idea of Jesus' kingdom coming, that he came to announce his kingdom. And so often, so much of the New Testament points forward to that hope, the hope that we have. In Revelation, especially, I was really like focused on this idea that like Jesus is bringing a kingdom. It's coming back and we can look forward and hope for that. And in the Advent season, I'm thinking more about that too. But it was just exciting to read passages of scripture and see how we as Christians have this really joyful hope that we can look forward to something bigger than

ourselves, that we can live for something bigger than ourselves. And there's a true reality. There's resurrection coming. There's a kingdom that's being built and we get to live there one day. So I said that a lot. Any other big takeaways? Keith didn't learn anything because he reads the New Testament every year. Oh, stop, stop. There's so many things you could say. It's called Old Hat. One small thing is just how all those genres are so different.

I mean, when you read the Gospels and Acts and Paul's letters and revelation, they're just so widely varied in the kind of text that we were looking at. So we had bounce around the ones that we were in charge of. And I'm like, wow, this is going to be challenging. But I also was just kind of thinking how much our lives as church today doesn't exactly reflect the New Testament. there's so much kindness and gentleness and love and kingdom orientation and self-sacrifice like Patrick was saying. And then you kind of look around at my life or people's lives, Christians' lives

or the national scene and how Christianity is portrayed. And I'm like, wow, our lives as Christians really need to conform more to the New Testament. But we're a little ways from that. Yeah. All right. So in 2024, we are going to keep exploring the Bible by going through the writings. Now, the writings might be something new to you in thinking about this portion of the Bible this way, but it encapsulates quite a few important books of the Bible. So first and second chronicles. Can you do this in song form? Like can you...

Do I get to sing it like I did? Oh, growing up? You're a pastor's kid. Yeah. One and two chronicles. But so many important parts of God's word, like all of them. But first and second chronicles, Ruth, Daniel, Ezra Nehemiah, Esther, the entire Psalter. So the Psalms, Lamentations, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and everybody's favorite to read with your kids before they go to bed.

Song of songs. Brown chicken, brown cow? Oh my God. Who's in charge with that one? Yeah, who gets that one? Song of song. I don't know.

I don't get the bad ones. Jensen's definitely getting song of songs. So, wait, what do you mean, Jeff, when you say you're calling them the writings? What do you mean? Yeah, well, this is something I want to lean on other people in the film as well. Jeff, now is the time to pretend like you're more confident than you are. Or you could blow a trumpet and say it's a private school Patrick moment. part of the story though when we're addressing the writings this way is that we are addressing and

engaging with the Bible in a different kind of order than most of us are used to reading our Bible through right yeah so if you open up your Bible and you look at the table of contents or if you were like Jeff and Jensen and Tanya who grew up in church you probably learned songs that helped you memorize all 66 books and those books come in an order and you might assume the Bible has always been ordered in that fashion but it hasn't and actually one of the interesting places where we see this is in the story of Jesus walking on the road to Emmaus with his disciples. He's died, he's resurrected, his disciples don't realize it's him. They're going back to Amaius, rather disheartened, and incognito Christ shows up to give him a lesson on the Bible. So someone

to read this passage really quick. He said to them, how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. Okay, so I hope people caught that. There's two different divisions of the Bible that Jesus refers to, Moses and the prophets. And you might assume that covers the whole of the Old Testament. It doesn't.

But let's explain those really quick. So, Anna Lynn, you've already been talking about the Torah. Let's talk about what Moses is. Yeah, so Moses traditionally, historically, is credited with writing the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament. So that's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which is what we studied in 2022. And that lays out God's law, the way he wants his people to live. And then you've got the prophets. The Hebrew term for that is the Navim. So that includes both the former prophets, which we often

think of as history books. So it's like Joshua, first and second Samuel, first and second kings. So it's telling the history of Israel, but it's God's prophetic word telling that story for our good and our, you know, building up. And then it also includes what we consider the prophets today, like the major and minor prophets. So the ones who are, delivering this word from the Lord to Israel. Yeah, so Jesus divides the Bible into two sections, Moses, which is the Torah, the law, and then we've got the prophets, the Nevi-eem, which is both the historical books and Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, all the normal suspects.

But he leaves one section out. Now, it's not because Jesus doesn't think that this section belongs in the Bible. In the traditional way of ordering the Bible, you had three sections. The two we've already mentioned, and the third being what Jeff's already brought up, the writings, which is pronounced everybody with me, ketuvim. Catuvian. Wait, Annalen says it different. I thought we were all going to do that.

Yeah, I say it in a very American English way. Patrick's part Jewish. Anilin, how do you say, Keith? Catuvin. Small town, Catoovin. I got my catuvian and my pickup. Okay, I shouldn't do that.

You just made a lot of people, man. I know. I've already made fun of all kinds of access. That's your people. I'm winking at Jensen. We'll put these words in the show notes so you can read what they look like and you can say them however you want to. I like Ketchivem.

Ketuvim. Yeah, the Vim is important. I'm sorry. Ketchuvim. Sounds like ketchup. Ketchup. Ketchup. Okay.

Now, if you listen to the books that Jeff mentioned, it kind of sounds like a random grab bag. You know, with the law, it's all the books that Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy. The prophets kind of fit together, history, and the prophetic writings. But then you get to the writings, the Ketuvim, and it starts looking like a grab bag. You've got poetry, so you've got the Psalms and Lamentations and Song of Songs.

You've got Wisdom Literature, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes. You've got apocalyptic literature, Daniel. And then you have some history, too. First and Second Chronicles, which basically tells the whole shebang of the Old Testament. And then you have Ruth and Esther and Ezra Nehemiah. Now, I realize I'm just rolling through these and you might be getting lost. But here's the point. In our modern Bibles, we don't order it this way.

Instead, we took all of those books and we just sprinkled them all over. Sprinkled. That's what we did. We took the writings. We just sprinkled them throughout what would have been considered the prophets. And as a result, our Bibles look rather different. We end up having the Pentateau, which is first five books, the historical books, which we've already mentioned, the Psalms, the wisdom, and the prophets. And the writings just get sprinkled throughout.

So is this one of those private school, Patrick quizzes, like, you know, a test that doesn't really matter? You're famous for those. Yeah, why are we talking about the organization? Yeah, of all the things that we could be talking about. Oh, that's so good. Yeah, yeah, because it's interesting. No, I think it's... Is it?

But is it really? Well, I think it's interesting because it actually really matters. Annalyn brought this up, but when you think about the prophets, if all you think of is Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, but you don't think about Joshua and judges in these historical books as prophets, you read those historical books differently. You think, hey, I'm just getting a historiography. Like, here's a story. This is kind of what happened. But when you read them as a prophetic text, it's like, oh, no, this is God writing to his people. He's trying to challenge them to believe in the covenant and challenge them to resist idolatry. If I read the historical books, like I read Isaiah, I get a very different result.

It's like it matters for me, listening to it. It matters in a different way than I think it would otherwise. And I think the exact same thing matters for the Ketuvim, the writings. And that's because they are set in the setting of the exile. Yeah, so talking about the exile is super important. So remembering the exile happens in a historical context where the people of God and Judah break God's covenant. Babylon comes in, destroys the city in the temple near 586 BC.

It's tragic event in the history of God's people. They're carried off in exile. They are not at home. Life is not the way it's supposed to be. Eventually, Babylon becomes the Persian Empire. and some people come back in and live in Jerusalem under foreign rule. So you're kind of not really home, even though you might be in a physical location of Jerusalem. So other people are scattered throughout the world. You have the diaspora population of God's people. So when you're reading in

exile, you read documents differently because your lived experience is very pronounced. You're asking different kinds of questions. So here we're imagining Jewish people in Babylon and in Persia. They're struggling to remain faithful to Yahweh and make sense of their worst. of their lives of their identity apart from the temple and away from the land. So then what happens when we as 21st century people read the writings in the context of the exile? What does that help us with? Well, the interesting thing is that we have so much in common with the people in the exile because we too live in a land that's not our true homeland, that our home is in heaven.

That's where our citizenship is. Paul tells us in Philippians 3, and we are in exile here. First Peter tells us that we're part of the land. the exile. So these writings written in the exile have a lot to say to us. Yeah, so let me get some examples. What changes about the book of Psalms when we read it in an exilite context? Well, all of a sudden, these are songs that, for the most part, people are singing apart from the temple. They're not in Jerusalem. They're not in the land. So they're learning, how do I worship God far away from the Jerusalem temple? Which, back to Key's point, that's what we have to figure out. How do we worship and

love God apart from the heavenly Jerusalem, apart from the promise of heaven coming to earth. They can do the same thing with the wisdom literature. Again, you're imagining people living in Babylon and Persian, and they worship different gods and the Babylonians and the Persians do. And they're trying to figure out what's it look like for me to live a wise life here. I don't want to get executed by the empire. I want to make the empire flourish, but I also need to resist the empire because I can't be a part of it. So what's wisdom look like? And that's exactly the context that I think we find ourselves living in. I am not living in my home. And I have to figure out what's it like for me to be wise in my workplace, in my family, to resist the idols of the people

around me while also trying to bring flourishing. That's, again, if you read Proverbs that way, everything changes. Okay, so I think I understand. And then to carry that through, like, the history books, they take on a new purpose too, because it helps us make sense of this cycle, a failure and renewal that we still experience. Yeah. I think that's a really key thing, because Keith, you talked about how we fail in the modern day church to live up to the New Testament standards. And when you read these old historical books in the context of the exile, you realize there's nothing new about that. God's people have always gone through cycles of failure and idolatry and renewal. And then that renewal failing again. That's what we face in our own lives and our own church is the

call to renewal and the call to turn back when we fail. So the plan in 2024 then is that we're going to go through all these writings. And this is going to take us the whole year to do it. And here's the thing is that it's going to be cool for you to say, hey, I went through the Torah. I've been through the New Testament. Now I'm going to spend a year focused on the writings. Wait, does that mean next year we're going to do the prophets? I don't. I didn't want to say it, but maybe.

Maybe what's next. It might be hard, but it's kind of exciting to think you're working through the entire book of the Bible one day at a time. And you're reading along in the Bible reading plan that Annalin made. But here's the thing, is you're not just getting more information. I hope it really is leading to transformation, that you're seeing yourself grow in your faith. You're seeing yourself grow more humble, more kind. You have God's kingdom on your mind instead of your own kingdom. So you mentioned that Bible reading plan.

So that's a resource we started last year. And the idea is for you to know what's coming on 10 minute Bible talk. So when you plug in for the day to listen to the devotional, you have the opportunity to read that passage ahead of time. And so there'll be a link to that in the show notes where you can download that reading plan and jump right in with us. I love that part with the reading plan because as we know writing the podcasts. We can't always talk about everything that's going on in scripture. And so we're trying to take good nuggets of truth and make it applicable to you in your day. But it's awesome if you guys

get to go in and also see the full context to read all that scripture so that we really are going through all of the writings this year together. So I'm looking forward to this year. If you haven't already, again, just one more time, click the link in the show notes and download that Bible reading plan or you can go to 10 minute Bibletalks.com and we'll have it downloadable there as well. I hope that you will read through everything as well as listen to all the podcasts this year as much as you can. But we're looking forward to this, and I hope you'll join us on this journey through the writings. Can I just say one more thing is I think, like Tanya was talking about earlier, that she learned that having accountability is helpful. What if you got one or two people to do this

with you, a small group or somebody in your family, and you just sent them a link to this and they maybe downloaded it or maybe they just listened to the podcast, whatever, but it give you something to talk about, I think. Yeah. And if you can't think of someone in your life right now to do that with, we have... Do it with Jensen. Do it with me. No, I was going to say, we have social media. And Celia's working to create a community there where we share about other people reading while

other people are learning, how they're growing. And so if you feel like, man, I don't know who those people would be, follow us on Instagram, follow us on Facebook. And we're going to be sharing encouragement and talking about the reading plan and encouraging you to listen and learn alongside us. Yeah, I get the coolest stories coming in. in response to the newsletter about people who listen in the car together as, you know, a mom's driving her kids to school or who sit around the breakfast table each morning and do these

devotionals together. And people are really creative in how they're working this time with the Lord into their day. And that's kind of the dream for a ton of Bible talks. That's why we're here. Jeff, you still in? What are we even doing? I'm kidding. I love it. I can't wait. I love, like, just seeing, you kind of mentioned this, Patrick, with the New Testament, the cross is at the center. and you have a unique encounter with God's word with Jesus. And so in a similar way to this, to be building an anticipational longing for who Jesus is and what he does for us. So excited to dig into the writings. Well, I hope you'll join us this year for the writings or the Ketuvim if you want to impress your friends.

It's going to be a great year in a new part of the Bible. I promise Patrick won't say Ketavim every episode. It is very impressive. I can't promise that. Challenge accepted. Goodbye.