Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 399 | Jase Meets a Goat Fighter & Zach’s Unexpected Houseguests

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

Jase shares the story of a man he met who fights goats. Zach is startled when his son alerts him to strangers in their back yard. Jase attempts to improve upon the previous podcast discussion on Matthew 24. Phil stresses the importance of understanding the replacement of earthly kingdoms with the forever kingdom. Al explains how man's efforts cannot obtain innocence in the eyes of God. And Jase and Zach discuss the lesser-known trinities outside the holy trinity. -- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? So I'm still in my enclave at the First Baptist Church in Gulf Shores. Thank you guys for allowing me to do my podcast here. We got Zach today. Zach, I've done my podcast. The podcast, we recorded a couple of podcasts ago. I tried a noisy place that wasn't so great. So the good folks at the church here have allowed me a quiet place.

They're jackhammering all the curbs. outside my house at the southern layer here. That's not good. It's provided, it has a lot of chaos. So speaking of chaos, so I've been to your house several times. In fact, a couple nights ago, two nights ago, I'm sitting there. All the kids are out except for Bear and me and Jill watching a movie. And all of a sudden I hear like this frantic knocking on my back door.

You know, you've been to my house and you know there's a pool back there and it's got a This time of year, you got a cover on it. It's like a, our cover's like a trampoline. It's got the springs on it. So it looks like a trampoline. You can't really, it doesn't look like a typical pull cover. It's like tight. It's pretty tight.

Anyways, I hear this knock on the door. And so if Bear goes to answer the door, and I don't know why, just me and Jill both at the same time, we got this like feeling that something wasn't right because the look on Bear's face. And so we run to the door, the back door, and we got like I think four or five steps down to the pool because our house is built up. Our house is over 100 years old.

It's built up on kind of pyramid. And there's this 80-year-old man who's just like with his hands just like, what do I do? He's trying to talk, but he can't talk. He's what do? And then there's a woman with him who's laying face down on the, like right there by my back door. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. I get up and like, and he's trying to tell me what happened. And I'm asking her, are you okay, you okay, you okay, you okay?

And she's, you know, she's like, I'm okay, I just can't get up. And so then I grab her and she's like soaking wet. And they actually fell in my pool. Oh, my word. 80-year-old couple. So I got them, but I'm telling you, it's like every single week we're getting people there. I got them, we got them dry and everything. But yeah, it's a little chaotic around my place for sure.

So they're all good day. Once we got inside, they were like sitting there and the guy was like, he said, he's like, where's the restaurant? I was like, sir, it's next door. He's like, he just put his head down and started to laugh. He said, well, we will have a good story to tell, won't we? Oh, my goodness. That's pretty wild, ma'am.

That's it. Well, you know, you've got a lot of teenagers that come to your house too, which I've always thought was a good thing because, I mean, you've got a lot of teenagers too, but your house is kind of the house where everybody congregates. But, you know, I've always thought about that. We all raised teenagers. You want your house to be the place where people are so you can have a good influence, you know, when you're a Christian family. So if they're all some other place and you don't know where they are and what they're doing, that's when things get a little bit frightening.

So I never mind in my house being the happening place, which is kind of like your place. No, some of my best friends were my teenage sons. They're friends that came over. We used to cook a meal every Wednesday night, the best that we could come up with. I mean, not sloppy Joes or whatever that is. But I mean, steak, shrimp, and jambalai or whatever. And they would show up. Catfish.

Yeah. If you feed them, they'll come. And I'd give a little two minutes, two minutes, spiritual motivation. And it was on Wednesday night. So we would always go be meeting somewhere for, you know, a worship service or a Bible class. And we'd invite them. Well, a lot of them would come. Some of them came to the Lord, but they were friends.

We were mainly friends with them and fed them good, and then we just got to know them. I think you have to do that on purpose, though. But I'm even saying that with my daughter now. Her friends, they come over because she's into, she's musical. And they'll do little, I don't know what you call them, but they'll just start playing the piano. And one of them will bring their guitar and they're writing music. and sometimes when you see the early stages of that, you're like, because they can't get the notes right.

But then all of a sudden they come together and it's like awesome. So, yeah, I like it. But, Jace, you're right. It's a mindset because, look, it's not, you know, you're cooking, you're having to listen to, you know, running around kids, you know, what teenagers do. Screaming and hollering. Screaming and hollering.

And, you know, they're just being. teenagers, but if you don't have the mindset like that going in, you only look at it like, well, this is disrupt in my peaceful place or this is disrupt in my life, then you're going to miss a huge opportunity to provide security, accountability, all the things that teenagers need, because I can promise you this, there are places they could be that will be bad news bears for everything going on. That's a good example of what we've been discussing, and we kind of ran over it pretty rapidly. as we would discuss in Matthew chapter 24.

An interesting thing, they were using that. Jace was a meal, young people, to get the gospel preached to them as members of the kingdom of God. Since we are the kingdom of God on planet Earth, one of the things we kind of just ran over pretty quickly was that in the middle of the discussion in chapter 24 of Matthew, and the gospel of the kingdom will be put. preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. Then the end will come.

Well, it's pretty interesting that in the book of Colossians, by the time Colossians was written, this is pre-Colossians. Colossians, I'm not sure, Jay, so Smitty and I might have said it out. When did they say that it was written late 40? It would have been at least another 20 years after this. 20 years.

And an interesting little statement, that when the Apostle Paul in Colossians 1, continue in your faith, not moved from the hope that's held out in the gospel, this is the gospel going back to Matthew 24 that you heard and that has been proclaimed by the time Colossians was written to every creature under heaven.

So when all those people speaking in all these different languages in Acts chapter 2, when the kingdom was established, when they took off from there out, that barrier or the language barrier was done away with, and they reached according to the Apostle Paul in Colossons 1 about verse 23 or 24 in there, they preached it to the whole world like Jesus said what happened. That's pretty interesting, in my opinion. What do you think? Yeah, it is.

No, I agree. And it shows you the importance of the work that was being done over those four. 40 years after Jesus left planet Earth to try to get the gospel out so that everyone would know. That was part of it wasn't. Yeah. It wasn't just the Jews, of course. It started with them. The first 10 years, it was just to Jewish people.

I mean, that was about 10 years before we ever get to that point where Peter had that calling to go and talk to Cornelius. So that last, you know, 30 years were crucial timing to get the gospel out. But as you said, Paul said, look, it's gone to the known world. Everybody's had the opportunity. And Jesus predicted that when he spoke about that back. And that brings in the languages that they were used. And they were just in everybody was saying, these people are not from where we're from. How do they know our language?

They were wondering about it because when those disciples took off, I mean, language was not a barrier of which it could have been. You have to learn for years the language you're going to visit over here, this country, in that country, well, they just went right ripping out across there. God gave them the ability to communicate with people without a translator. That's pretty awesome. And by the way, for those that say, well, look, if the gospel's already, you know, in the first century, you got priests to the whole world, then why should we worry about it now? Well, the world's gotten a lot bigger, if you hadn't noticed.

And a lot of people didn't obey it. That's right. And there's quite a few new world relief. He didn't say they all obeyed the gospel. He said they all heard it. There's a lot of new war of religions that weren't around in the first century that has since cropped up. Tell me about it. I think our job security to continue the Great Commission has not stopped.

Well, there are some people groups that have not, you know, the gospel or the Bible has not been translated in their language, which is kind of interesting. There's a group called, I think it's called Illuminate. It's a group of philanthropists that came, Christian philanthropists that came together and said, we want to, I think there's like 10 different Bible translating organizations, nonprofits, and his group of money people came in and said,

hey, what would you guys do if you didn't have to fundraise? Because would you guys work together? And they were like, yeah, we would. So these money people said, tell you what we're going to do, we're going to handle all the money. Here's the only rule.

You guys got to work together. We want the Bible translated in every, language in the next however many years. And they're all working on this. And I was reading this other day. And they're predicting that they're going to have the Bible translated into every single language by like 2030. So that's kind of interesting. You know, to think about the gospel really penetrating every single tribe in the world in the next, you know, 20 years or next that's it. Oh, and I went to Greece, you know, we talked about what I did. I was, I shared Jesus

in the through an interpreter to the underground Persian churches but I had about 40 there but all our all of our check baggage we decided

because there was three couples that went and we used all our luggage as Bibles that had been translated into Persian

that wasn't the name of the language I can't remember off the top of my head. I need an interpreter. But I just thought, no, but I mean,

it was something, whatever they call their language, but I can't remember. Farsi? Farsi, that was it. Yeah, so we had, of course,

they were heavy, and it was, you know, I felt like it just had, it felt like I was doing something illegal because the bags

were right at the weight limit. Of course, they're all, they're all bibles, but we're, lugging these things around but there was something also very inspirational about it that i thought now this is making the difference here i mean because it was i forgot how many it was i think we had 150 maybe but i thought man because not only are we sharing jesus just that they may hear the

language but we're also sprinkling these around in the place which i'm not sure how they were smuggling them into the country. I was out on that, but we had them there, and maybe they were just going to use them for the refugees that came from there. But somebody had been doing some work. Well, and, you know, the beauty of it is people continue to have that vision.

Dad, do you remember a few years ago, you and I had the privilege of speaking at Saddleback out in California in Orange County? And we were having dinner with Rick Warren like in between when we were speaking. And he said, you know, I just feel, I just had this, you know, I got to thinking I've read the Great Commission my whole life, you know, go and make disciples of all nations.

He said, it just hit me thought, you know, our church here, we've got a lot of means and methods to do a lot of things. We should be trying to plant a church in every country in the world. And so they just started praying about it. And then they just did it. And remember he told us? I think it took them like seven years. to finally accomplish it.

But they planted teams and started churches. And I think he told us it was 220 or 218 countries or something like that at the time. And the last one was some little bitty island country down the Caribbean. And they had just finished. And they had this book he gave us, you know, showing all this work they had done over seven years. But I thought, man, what a idea that one day you just reading that passage is now.

Let's just go do this. Let's go make sure that our church is at least planted one new church in every country in the world. I mean, that was inspiring to me. I don't know if you remember that. Oh, I remember. Exactly. Well, I'm skipping ahead. I'm not sure where we're going to get today, but in that, in chapter 25 of Matthew, because it made me think about this, having the Bible translated into all languages as a goal. But, you know, he got to 31. It said, when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate the people one from another

as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats which is ironic because in our culture we tend to separate based on your nationality or what you look like or how you speak but he has this illustration that he's like separating the sheep from the goats you're in you're in two classes. He's either your shepherd or you've decided to be a goat, which I have some goats, and they're just not real bright. But I think from the illustration, hey, Jason, let's take a break. I think from the illustration, the sheep are the good ones, the goats are the bad ones. Yeah, that's, that's, well, and they just, they're so hard-headed. And their, you know, their favorite hobby is to bang their head up against things that don't move. You know, I told you,

I met this guy. I mean, I was in the backwoods of Kansas, and I met a guy who had fought goats, you know, with a boxing glove because you can't beat a goat with a boxing glove. I mean, you can hit him as hard as he want. You're not going to hurt the goat, you know. That's what he does. He'll run wide open and slam into a tree and then look around and then go do it again.

So I don't know. It was kind of a disturbed guy. I thought, you know, that's his thing. But I just thought to my... Was this a close friend? No, it was an acquaintance of a close friend. And he started telling us how he boxed his goats. And I wasn't sure if it was true or not.

But I thought, well, it makes sense. Because he said, the goat always wins. And I said, do people watch this? He's like, oh, yeah. I mean, this is kind of what they... I mean, it's kind of a backwoods bunch. Yeah, I would think. We don't condone that, just so you know.

Just so you know, the Unashamed podcast does not condone I didn't say I condoned it. I just said that's what he said his hobby was. I said, what do you do? He said, I box goats. I mean, my first impression was not to call the law. My first impression was I need to call somebody in the mental health. I'm not saying I condone it, nor do I believe it's true.

But I thought maybe it's a joke. Well, this was in Kansas. Oh, it was. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was in Kansas where he said this was happening. But he said, I've never won. He said, they always win. Because what they do is they run at him, and then he runs. So you got the boxing goats and the ones that bash their head against everything.

But then you've also got the ones where you yell at them and they just fall over like they're dead. Yeah, I had one and he never went. I couldn't get him to faint. Now I know why Candice has a reputation of being hard here. You'd have to have a hard head to do what he's talking about. But my point was I was going to read 34 where it says, then the king of 25, then the king will say to those on his right,

come you or her blessed by my father, take your inheritance. The kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world, which goes back to our last podcast, Zach, you weren't here. But we were, we tied based on what, Matthew wrote in Matthew 24-15 of this prediction that Daniel made hundreds of years ago that this

kingdom was coming. And now Jesus is describing that and the transition that would take place from the old law and the old ritualistic worship that happened at the temple in Jerusalem. And it thus being destroyed in AD 70. So we tied that together. But here, you know, it made me think of that as far as being in Jesus or acknowledging Jesus. Because if you don't have that, what do you have left? I mean, you're basically like a goat banging your head against a tree with no plan here. That's it. So, but I do. To your point, it's a lot less division from what we currently see if you just put it down to Jesus or no Jesus, you know, which is what he concerned. So Zach, give us, you weren't here, but, but we were,

talking before you came on about your take on Matthew 24. We basically made the assumption based on our study that in everything we've done in Matthew up to now, that he was referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24. And there were some reasons why I went into that. What's your take on Matthew 24? Yeah, I think I would agree with that. I mean, there's, obviously, we were talking about kind of the controversial nature of when you get into the topic of eschatology, or end times stuff and what does it all mean and the book of revelation. No, define this eschatology for those that I'm representing. I was going to say the people who don't know what that is, but I have no idea what that is.

Yeah, it's like the study of the end times, what's going to happen after we die, and the Lord comes back in heaven and kind of the afterlife and what does all that look like. So you got like the book of Revelation, and there's obviously, different views, different theological perspectives on what that means. There's a millennial, which is there's not a thousand-year reign at all, post-millennial that we're in it now, pre-millennial, which is that it's going to come and Christ is going to set it up and dispensationalism. And there's all these different terms, preterism and a lot of big words.

But for me, when I get into the idea, I like to see kind of like a meta-narrison. of scripture? Like what is the, is there like this overarching theme that we can, that you can see the whole 30,000 foot view from the Bible. And I think you can, you know, the first time I ever read through the Old Testament, I was doing the chronological Bible in a year. So every, every morning you read a certain amount of scripture, but it's, it's, it's, the Bible's put in a chronological order. It was really neat to do. But the first time I did it, it was cool because I got to the end of Malachi. So you get Genesis, Old Testament is Genesis all the way to Malachi. And you get this story of these people who are God's chosen people and they want to be with God. God wants to be with them.

He tells them, hey, I want you to build this tabernacle and you're going to carry it around with you wherever you go and it'll be kind of my house. And this is where I'll come in, God's saying this, I'll come and my presence will be in the tabernacle. You guys can come in. We can get together. You could be in my presence, and it's just going to be amazing. And then later, that became known as the temple, when he gave all these really detailed instructions to build this temple that was built, and that became the place that God would come and he would dwell with his people. And the story of the Old Testament is this.

It's that God's people would be in the presence of God in the temple or at the tabernacle. God's people would get entitled or whatever, and then they would make a mockery of God's house, and they would kick God out, and he would leave, and then death and destruction and mayhem would ensue, and then they would be like, oh, my goodness, what have we done? And then we'd go back and beg for God's presence to come back. God would come back, restore them,

then they would do the same thing again. And this goes on pretty much throughout the entire Old Testament, until you get to the book of Malachi, and you get to the end of it, And you're like, I just don't feel this. Anybody that would read this would say this is not going to work out. It's not going to work out because they keep messing it up.

They keep kicking out God's presence. And then 400 years of silence, nobody says anything, no prophets, nothing. And then this guy comes on the scene named Jesus, who claims to be the son of God. And I think what he's claiming here, and we've said this throughout this whole study on Matthew, you is that he what he's saying is is that your system your your your whole system is I'm about to

annihilate all of that and so I don't think it's it's coincidence that at the end of Jesus's life just a few years later in 8070 that the temple the temple was destroyed and burned forever and God establishes his kingdom which then becomes the church the church is synonymous with the spiritual Israel we are now the temple of who God and dwells. So I think it's this more and more evidence of what this is. So yeah, that's kind of my take on the whole thing. No, that's good. And that's right in line with what we were talking about and the idea of why it was so important. And you're right, I love the way he laid it out because really all of the Bible, everything that was written up to this point pointed to this event

as in the transition, Jesus coming, his time here on the earth, and then of course after he left, until this event happens in AD 70, which basically makes totally obsolete the old covenant, because now there's nothing to go back to. And so we talked about the importance of the timing of that as well. I was going to say, I think part of the problem is, is not, you know, with knowledge comes pride. And the simplicity of all this is not to be taken lightly. I mean, when you think about a lot of people just have a problem, even in just, you. Jesus' story that I read well ago about the sheep and the goats.

People don't want to be a sheep because they seem vulnerable. And a lot of people who represent the goats, you know, when we were joking about being hard-headed, I mean, when they hear that the king, of this eternal kingdom that would crush all kingdoms and it would last forever and ever and be the most powerful thing the earth has ever on, well, he comes riding up on a donkey. You know, we just read that two chapters ago. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, the goat says, no. That's right. And that's why even in our society now, the intellectuals in the universities and Hollywood, and they look at our belief system, putting our faith in Jesus and meeting on Sundays and singing songs. They're like, this is the most stupid. well they they they they they they're just like that's for people that don't have any kind of intellect you know I mean deep down I'm thinking well you're a goat and so they'll they'll challenge the evidence of this

and y'all read an interesting story you think about how simple this is hang on jose let's take a break we tell that you know a lot of one of the most trusted manuscripts that where we get the Bible we were talking about earlier translating it into all languages. You know, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd who was looking for a lost goat. I mean, here's a guy out there, lost his goat, he's looking around, he starts looking around in some caves, and he discovers the Dead Sea Scrolls, which I think are probably the most famous place where we, you know, get the scriptures. So you tell the intellectual that, and they're like, that's what you're putting your faith in

trust, you know, some guy just happened to be going around and he found a bunch of scrolls, which I'm looking at it like, one of the odds, hundreds of years in that cave that somebody wrote down the Dead Sea Scrolls, which basically validated all the other places where we get the scriptures. And it just happened to be a shepherd looking for a goat. Then I'm reading in Matthew 25, and I'm like, yeah, that's the way God works. It's just the simplicity of it all. I like that.

To me, that's the power of God. Look, don't think of yourself more highly than you all. We have a hard time wrapping our brain around this, but if we could wrap our brain around it, well, God wouldn't be that spectacular. That's it. Well, the irony of it is, too, that you mentioned people don't want to be a sheep. because they don't want to serve. They don't want to, that's a position that's humiliating in their mind.

But I'm just reminded of the old Bob Dylan quote that you got to serve somebody. Like everybody, you're going to serve that. And that's Paul's point in Roman 6th. Like you're going to, you're going to be either be a slave to sin or you're going to be a slave to righteous. Isaiah brought it up when he said when they crucified Jesus, he was like a sheep going to the slothiest. order. He did not open his mouth. Just let it, let it, let it go.

Well, that's the kind of God that saved us. Yeah, but then you read that passage in Revelation. What is a joke to the world? We look at it. We say it's the greatest thing to ever happen. Well, it's like people, Phil, I was telling you about this crazy guy. I'm at the boxed goats. But you can whip a sheep.

You're not going to whoop a goat unless you have a weapon. Yep. You know, and people deep down want to be a little. a goat because they're like, I'm tough. I can do this myself. And so I think that's where you see really the contrast. Because you think about what does it take for you to be a disciple of Jesus? Well, you've got to surrender.

Surrender. People don't want to, nobody going to tell them what to do. And we all go through that stage in our life. What they call weakness, we're calling strength. But I'm reading even from our culture, what I read about the sheep and the goats. I mean, here he brings all people to. together, which is what is trying to be accomplished in our culture. If we could accomplish that, that'd be the greatest thing ever.

And here Jesus does it. And then he does it in a way that he's like, well, the king, he only talks about being a king. And then he's like, for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I need clothes. All of a sudden, this compassion comes out. and then he in turn tells that's what he wants from his disciples. Well, I was telling that story about being in Greek.

Well, in Greece, the whole thing, the ministry started of Jesus being shared in all these radical countries. Well, it all came from a guy and his wife from Oklahoma saying they went over and visited Greece, and here's these refugees that don't have anything to eat. and I don't have any clothes to where they're trying to escape these atrocities in their countries and the rules and the restrictions and these anti-godly establishments. And they start off just helping people, feeding them, giving them shelter, giving them clothes to wear, and they share Jesus. I mean, to me, I'm reading this, and I'm like, it goes back to sheeps and goats.

Yeah. You know, can you say sheep's? Sheeps? Yeah. Sheeps? Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking that passage in Revelation, I think four or five when John has this vision and he starts to freak out because he realizes that there's nobody worthy or able to open this scroll

that he wants to look inside to see whose names are written in there and to find out who's in, who's in, who's not. And so he starts to weep because he realized. uh-oh, we got, we got a problem. Nobody's worthy to open the scroll. And as, as he's weeping, um, he says that a, uh, uh, I think it says an elder put his hand on his shoulder and says, behold the lion from the tribe of Judah. He is worthy to open the scroll. And so you got this picture of this sovereignty, you know, this, this lion, this powerful figure of, you know, I think about, um, in the, in the movie, uh, Narnia, you got Aslan, the big lion, you know, that C.S. Lewis wrote. And so you get this picture of power.

And I love the next part when John turned over his shoulder to behold the lion from the tribe of Judah. It says that he saw a lamb that looked as though it had been slain, but it was standing. And it's a reference to Christ. I mean, I think like when you start thinking about the insanity, it's human and it's insane to us as humans, the ridiculous nature of a sovereign Creator that would submit himself to allow people to get their hands on him, number one, and put himself in a human body that would become a weak lamb and allow himself to be killed is crazy. But I think the vindication comes from the fact that lamb was, he was standing.

And I always say it like this, God is a lion by nature, Jesus, but he became a lamb by choice. And I think there's something in there for us, man. The gospel speaks to that and just this idea of submission. Well, the thing is, it was the only way we could be saved. And God and His Infinite Wisdom, even before he created us, according to Ephesians 1, they hatched that plan. I mean, he and the son and the spirit, and they said, the only way that our creation will have an opportunity to be saved

is for the lion to become the Lamb. and to give himself as a ransom for many. And so really the whole gospel message is that's where it's all wrapped up into that picture. Let's take another break. Yeah, I was going to say, I preached a sermon on that one time. I had the lamb, the sheep, and the goat. But I said sheep's because what I made a joke about goats, the plural of goat is goats. You have individual goats, and they're all, you know, different.

but the plural of sheep is sheep. And my point was because the only individual that you're worried about as a sheep is Jesus, the lamb, because we're all, but, you know, one. But people don't like that. The reason they want to be a goat is because they want to be an individual. They don't want to be a part of that flock because sheep are viewed as weak and in need of care. But if you really look at yourself as an individual and a human, you realize the weaknesses that you possess, which is what we always go. That's why we usually start off before you share with Jesus.

You start with the weaker things. Even people, the atheists who are defying and are making fun of us, and we're like, well, what's your plan for life after death? Because you're trying to get them to think about their weakness. What's your thoughts on how we all got here? We have a story. What's yours? Yeah, because in the end, you're weak. I mean, you can act like a goat, but the hard truth is goats die just like sheep and just like people.

Well, Jason, you remember Paul's statement to, I mean, Jesus's statement to Paul in 2nd, Corinthians 12, to your point, Paul said, you know, I'm weak in an area and I keep asking you to take it away and you won't do it. And he said, Jesus directly told Paul. it's in my power that you're made perfect, but only in weakness. In other words, if you don't have a recognition that you can't do this without me, then my power never gets to its full extent. And so that's really interesting. As long as you're, whatever you're holding out for yourself to do, you know, you're not going to realize the four power of Christ in your life as long as that's what you do. That's what I take out of that picture. So it's just to what you're saying. We have to

realize we cannot do this ourselves. Well, that's the whole point of Jesus' kind of teaching in Matthew is these people were putting their faith in the system of God. And they were, I mean, it was definitely from God, the law and all that, but they were putting their faith in that, thinking that they could somehow achieve salvation. They could achieve their, whatever, immortality through these things. By work. By work. Yeah, by what you do.

And, you know, Jesus shows up on the scene. And I was thinking of Jason, when you were talking about earlier, about these goats, they want to maintain their own autonomy. I think about these Pharisees, they want to maintain their own autonomy, that they're going to run the show. They're going to keep their little structure together. When Jesus comes on, they've been waiting on the Messiah, right? They've been waiting on the advent, the arrival of the Messiah,

and the reason why they're waiting on him because they wanted to make Israel great again. And they're thinking, well, make Israel great again. They're so obsessed with the earthly political structures that that's where they were focused on. And Jesus comes and his basic message is, you're thinking too small. You're thinking way too small. It's way bigger than you can ever imagine.

In fact, I'm going to destroy the thing that you put your hope in in 80-70 will be gone. The book of Hebrews talks about this priesthood and you think about the priest, even the priesthood of the Old Testament is illegitimate. because all the records are burned in 8070. How do we know who's from the tribe of Levi? How can we trace back a legitimate priesthood? And under Jewish law, to be a priest, you have to be a member,

and it has to be, you got to show the documents that you came from the tribe of Levi. Where are those documents? They were burned up in 8070. So the whole structure just literally came crumbling down right after Jesus ascended to heaven. And I think that's his point. It's not, you're thinking too small. You keep, you keep, you keep trying to put me in a box. You can't do that.

Because really there's two trinities in life when you think about it. So you got one that we know, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. And y'all know the other one? Have I stumped y'all? The other trinity. Oh, yeah, I know. I know what it is. Me, myself, and I.

I thought you were going to say, I thought you were going to say, bell pepper celery and onion oh that is that's the Cajunity yeah cooking so so what you're saying though three trinities so so so Zach what you're saying is Jesus should have come wearing a red miga hat m IGA make Israel great again and then he would have had a lot more popularity that's funny you know it's funny that you say that because it's I think that this is not popular but I think that there is a cult on the right and the left that we're worshipping earthly kingdoms, I do think there are people that we put America in a place over the kingdom of God. And it's clear from the, I think y'all referenced, I didn't listen to the podcast yet,

but the Daniel reference that all these kingdoms, they all fall. All of them. America will fall. Do we love America? Yes. Do we want to build culture here? yes, so we care about freedom and liberties, yes. But at the end of the day, that does not take priority over our ultimate allegiances to the kingdom of God, which is a kingdom, Daniel says,

that cannot be shaken nor destroyed. I'm putting my hope in that because I know it can last. All the rest of this stuff, we do what we can do, but it's not our ultimate allegiance. And I mean, I think that's why Jesus was so offensive. He made the Romans mad. He made the Jewish people mad, the system of Judaism. mean everybody upset why what did he do he was just said don't put he was attacked he wasn't even attacking his kingdom was the problem the problem as it turns out since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of god the jews 80 70 all the way to to modern day because they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of god god gave them over to a deposition

pray of mine to do what ought not to be done. It's here. We see it. It's sad, but we preach Jesus, him crucified and raised from the dead, and move on. Yeah, my hope, Phil, is that we're going to see God's people emerge. I think they are emerging. I think there's a lot of people. I don't think we're the only people that think this way. I think there's a lot of people who are not outraged. Now, are we upset. Yeah, but we're not living lives that are just, we're just mad all the time. That's right. We have the hope and joy in Jesus. And we're not, we're going to do what we do. We're going to fight for the things that we believe in. But we're not, I think there's a lot of people like, man, I'm not on either, either side of this, you know, political, whatever this thing

that's happening is, like this, you know, this, I mean, I think it's just like populism or I don't don't even know what you call it, but it's like it's an identity of politics. And my politics is my identity. I think I think there's a lot of kingdom people right now. My identity is Jesus. Yeah, we got to get above it. Let's take our last break. So just to bridge the gap in our last segment here, so we we pretty much clearly laid out what we believe Matthew 24 is talking about. I think when Jesus gets to Matthew 25 and Jace referenced the end of it, He basically gives three illustrations of why you need to be ready. And I think the immediate application in all three of those would be to what was going to happen in Jerusalem.

I think you could easily make the same application to end E&D time judgment of when he's going to come back the final time. The first one he does is a big event. It's a wedding. And he describes culturally what would happen at a wedding in his time. But I think you can make the same application to a wedding. today. I mean, everybody pours in it. The four of us would know much about this, but I can guarantee you if we had one of our wives on this podcast and we asked them about weddings, they would tell you about why it's a big deal to the bride and the people participate. So the end of the story, he says,

you need to be ready because some people missed out they weren't ready. The next one was a business illustration where he talks about the talents, you know, a person got, which was money in their time. One got 10, one got five, one got one got one. the 10 and the five guys, you know, they made an investment and they made their money grow. In other words, they did something with what they had. The guy with the one, he varies it. And basically, Jesus says that's not the guy you want to be, is someone who has been given a gift and then do nothing with it. And I think the application to the Jews, they had been given everything.

They understood the Messiah. They understood he was coming. What did you do with that? And for the ones who wouldn't embrace Jesus, they did nothing. Therefore, they become a goat, which takes you to the last illustration, which we've talked about today, ultimately it's sheeps and goats. It's those that decide to embrace Jesus, him being the lamb, him being the line of Judah, and those who are saying, no, we're going to do this ourselves. And he closes that out by saying they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. So just to kind of set that stage, I think it applied in the first century in 8070, but it also applies to the end of time in terms of what you do with what you've been given.

Interestingly, after they did that in Matthew 25, the first statement out of Jesus' mouth when he had finished talking, eternal punishment, but the righteous eternal life, then he reminds them on how this is going to happen, true righteousness. is when Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, Matthew 24, Matthew 25. Now we're in 26, verse 1, 2. As you know, the Passover is two days away. And again, he says, and the son of man will be handed over to be crucified. So he brings it back to a head on what's fixing to happen and what one has to believe, which at the time he said that was a hard sale, Al. Well, today it's still a hard sale. Jesus and him crucified.

It is. And think about this. When you talk about the end of Matthew 25, you know, we got two definitions of, we got a definition in Second Thessalonians chapter one of what eternal punishment looks like. Yeah.

Which it says it's shut out from the presence of the Lord. So people say, man, what is hell? Ultimately, what's hell going to be like? I don't know all the details. I do know this. I do know according to Paul at first or second Thessalonians. It will be shut out from the presence of the Lord. And then Jesus gives up a definition of eternal life in John 173 when he says,

the eternal life is this to know the one true God in Jesus Christ's son whom he sent. So heaven is heaven because you're in the presence of God. Hell is hell because you're cast out of the presence of God. And so when you look at these parables in Matthew 25, I mean, ultimately what he's getting at there is, like, start preparing your life through spiritual disciplines like now. Like be prudent. Be like, prepare for the coming of Christ, the second coming. You know, don't waste your talents. Like live your life here now to become like Jesus because ultimately heaven is not eternal existence.

Heaven is eternal life because you're with. God, you're in his presence. It's what they were looking for in that temple that got burned in 8070. They were looking for the presence of God. He says, I'm not in there. I want to come into you. I want to live in you. And then eternity will be us together forever. I like it. Yeah. And Ted, to your point, you know, he's been mentioning that almost every chapter. Every time he talks to the disciples, he's saying, remember, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This started a few chapters back. He does it again that he's going to be the Passover Lamb.

But here's what's interesting. This is almost like if you were watching this in a movie form, it would be like, meanwhile, in the evil lair when you get to verse three, because this is going on simultaneously when he's telling his disciples that he's going to be the Passover Lamb, the chief priest and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caifus, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way. kill him. But not during the feast, they said, or there may be a ride among the people. Man, what a bunch. And so while Jesus is saying he's about to give his life to save everybody,

including all those chief priests and all those teachers and campus and all of them, while he's saying that, they're plotting over in the palace, you know, of what they're going to do to him. And I think it shows the sinister nature of our enemy. Even when Jesus is saying, I'm going to give my life, you have this group of people plodding to say, how are we going to take his life? That's it. You know, not even realized that he was going to give it all along. Amazing.

Amazing. A couple thoughts. One is Jesus seems to endorse the stock market with the rebuke of the guy who should have given his money to the banker. I was wondering if you missed that. I threw that in there for your benefit. No, I couldn't get a word in edgewise. But since I only have a minute before we're done, I'll give you an interesting factoid.

Did you know? Now, this is according to something I've looked up on the Internet, so it could be right or wrong. But I thought this is interesting. The reason sheep, one of the reasons, sheep and goats are separated because they have different fighting styles. When the two goats fight, especially male goats, they will tend to stand on their hind legs and come down and butt heads. Sheep simply back up and ram each other, others' heads straight on. Now here's what I'm getting to. If a sheep and goat fight, crazy enough, the sheep will often win because it hits the goat while the goat is still.

posturing. That's pretty good. There you go. That'll preach. So while they're like, look at me, look at me, wham! Yeah. Because I was going to say, you know, you don't have any kind of sports team that calls themselves sheep.

You know, we're the sheep. No. Because that's, oh, yeah. But actually, you know, the Rams can be a goat or a sheep. Mm-hmm. So the sheep usually win. The sheep always wins in the end. That's what we need.

We need to start a new football team, the sheep. I'm sure to be a big hit. All right, so next time we'll come back. We'll pick up in 26 because now we're getting into that transition of the preparation for the passion, which is pretty powerful. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes. And don't miss an episode by.

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