“So Much Spaghetti”
EPISODE 224
Rejoice in the Good News Today
We're back at it! After a long break, we’re ready to dive into some exciting updates. On this episode, we chat about vacations, personal projects, and how we’ve been revamping the website and resources. In typical Bible Geeks fashion, we explore our themes for the new year, honing in on how the gospel brings clarity and resolution. Then we share our “Favorite Things” from the off-season and introduce new podcast features like video episodes and the chance for you to submit audio questions! Tune in as we Find Jesus in the Bible and celebrate the good news.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: It’s good to be back for another season focused on the gospel of Jesus!
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Ryan: There's never an end to the plans.
Bryan: So much spaghetti and so many walls.
Welcome Back!
Bryan: Well hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks podcast. This is episode 224. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy.
Bryan: And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. We are back after an extended break We're back. It's springtime and welcome back Ryan.
Ryan: Welcome. Thank you for this gracious welcome back into our podcast.
Bryan: Oh
Ryan: It is good to be back. It's good to get back into some of these projects that we have going. We've been busy for the last
Bryan: Oh man.
Ryan: bit working on different things. We sometimes get so busy with the actual episodes and then the other things we've got going on that we don't get to work on all of our projects that we aspire to.
So that's been good. And then I was able to take a couple of weeks of vacation.
Catching Up After the Break
Ryan: What about you? What have you been doing?
Bryan: I did a metric load of power puttering around the house it was amazing I got so much done holidays obviously family went up to northern Arizona a few times and we went to go see Andrew Bird in concert in Austin Texas which was amazing yeah
Ryan: Oh, that's awesome.
Bryan: just like using the time right it's it like you said there's so much of our podcasting winds up being like recording editing producing writing publishing and then repeat right and and we have had some time to also work on some things like behind-the-scenes things for the podcast that nobody really sees but We see andthat's been good to get some of that stuff taken care of
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, I mean, We haven't really touched our website in forever, lot of the old projects that we've done, we've left alone, and so that's been good. But yeah, I mean, having been refreshed, it's time to be back at it. So let's dive in.
New Year Goals and Themes
Bryan: transition to the new year, we start talking about goals and themes and things like that. And because of the way that the break landed this time, we didn't really get to have that conversation. What are you guys doing over there at North your theme for this year.
Ryan: Our theme is "Take Time to Be Holy." So last year, we, taking from another hymn, we talked about, "Is my heart right with God?" And so the focus on the heart, and that led right into, our elders talked about how there are things that we need to do to tend to our hearts. And so that led to another hymn, "Take Time to Be Holy."
So real holiness focus, and then thinking through different practices and things that let us slow down and focus on,the different kind of set apart people that we're meant to be. AndI'm preparing a bunch of classes and lessons for that. I'm diving into the priesthood and being a holy nation this week in my lesson.
I'm going to be teaching two sessions on Ezekiel here coming up. So I've been working on that, which goes with the priesthood and holiness. We just finished up our men's weekend last weekend,
Bryan: Yeah.
Ryan: we also, Adrian and I, have been working through a lot of things, you know, the best year ever stuff and, uh, we had a little cabin time and a little staycation as well, so that's been good time to slow down and reflect on what this year needs to be for us.
Bryan: you know, our podcast was kind of born like right after a transition from the new year and one of the first things that we started talking about like in the first few episodes was goal setting and intentionality and a lot of that stuff that you think about like in January, you know, end of December kind of time frame.
And so I do kind of feel like we missed out on some stuff as we took a break during that period of time here this year. But,
we said we'd be back in February maybe, but like February was super busy, dude. [ laughs]
Ryan: Well, yeah, I think that there are some calendar reasons for making sure that we're back in it by March as we'll start to talk about and you'll see in the next episode.
Finding Jesus: Acts 10:34-43
Ryan: But I think it's time to move from what's happening with us to finding Jesus somewhere in the Bible.
Bryan: That seems like a good transition. It's like you've done this before.
Ryan: Yeah, so we are going to try to find Jesus. It shouldn't be hard. In Peter's words to Cornelius and his household in Acts 10:34-43. Peter, he jumps right into who Jesus is. He says, "I understand that God shows no partiality, having seen the signs God has placed upon Cornelius's family."
And he says, "In every nation, whoever fears him and does what's right and acceptable to him," he brings this good news of peace, he says, "through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all," parenthetical statement that's pretty important. And then he talks about what Jesus did, how he went from Galilee, from the baptism of John, through the work that he did through the Holy Spirit, doing these great miracles.
He says, "We're witnesses of all these things." And kind of closes up the sermon by saying, "To him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. So were you able to find Jesus anywhere in that passage?
Bryan: Like, I guess this isn't like a finding Jesus he's obviously here, right? The whole passage is about Jesus.
The Good News of Jesus
Bryan: SoMy big insight here, though, is clearly, you know, as you look to Jesus, you see good news, right?
This is all about good news. This is the good news of peace through Jesus Christ. And yeah, that parenthetical, "He is Lord of all."
Yeah
last season we kind of started talking about evangelism as a theme for last season.
And this season, I think we really want to focus on the good news, the gospel of Jesus as a theme. And it fits because we're gonna be talking about square one in a lot more detail. We're looking at the story of the Bible, looking at all the things that happened.
But why is Jesus such good news? Like, what is this about preaching good news of peace through Jesus that makes such a difference in my life? And this is going to come out of left field probably, but recently my wife and I, we were watching a movie. Have you seen Roman Holiday? You know that movie from back at...
Bryan: Yeah, okay. So yeah, Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, right? Like '53. I hated the ending to this movie. I cannot, like I cannot express to you how
much I hated the ending to this movie.
I had never seen it before and we watched it for the first time and it's like they love each other. She can't leave. She's a princess, right? He's like a reporter from America and they spend this entire amazing day together But she can't like stop being a princess and she can't leave to go be with him And so at the end of this amazing day where she like runs away and spends time with him She has to go back to being a princess again, and it leaves you feeling so Unfulfilled in the end of it
it's like a song that has like a dissonant chord at the end of it It doesn't resolve. there's no happy ending He just at the end of this movie just walks away. woke up in the middle of the night being so angry about this movie. And I think about the story of our lives. as you think about this verse and what Jesus came to do and what God accomplished in Jesus and his death, if Jesus wasn't a part of our lives, our lives would end in that kind of dissonance, that lacking resolution. we would be paying the price for our sins, obviously in that case, when Jesus steps into the scene, it's good news because we find the happy ending. We find a peace between us and God, a relationship that can grow and thrive. there's no longer like a wall between us or a barrier between us anymore, Jesus breaks that down and creates peace.
Ryan: And what a great sermon from Peter, where he just paints this hopeful picture of Jesus paying the ultimate price for our sins and freeing us from all the terrible things that we would face without him. And that is good news. like that that theme of resolution at the end of our story our story has a real ending I don't know why it is that some filmmakers seem to think if you just chop off the end of a movie That like that's somehow more complete. I've I've been frustrated by the I hadn't it's been a while since I saw Roman holiday So that one hasn't stuck with me like it did you but yeah, you know gone with the wind that one always bothered me Remember at the end of, did you ever see that movie Castaway where Tom Hanks talks to a volleyball and at the end of it, he's like at a crossroads and you don't know where he's going to go.
Like,
Bryan: I hate that ending too.
Ryan: Just give me an ending. All right. Just let me know what happened. I don't, I understand what you're doing. I get it.
Bryan: And
Ryan: him and Wilson lived happily ever after. I Well from resolution to reduction, very similar thinking that you and I had about, going back to the gospel, and I was thinking about reduction sauces, okay? Like a strawberry or a cherry reduction sauce on a dessert or something. You know what I'm talking about.
Bryan: do,
Ryan: That like, yeah.
they're delicious.
You've taken something good and literally boiled it down to concentrate the flavor. And sometimes people are only reductive in a bad way whenever they reduce a long, complex set of ideas down to like just something way too simple. But here, this is a really great reduction, I think. What Peter does here, we have the essence of the gospel in a few sentences.
All of the sermons in Acts, to me, help me find the center of the story, right? Like, there's so much to the story, as we'll talk about throughout this year. We'll kind of look at the big picture and zoom in. In fact, I always love that. I like to look at the big picture and I like to look really close. In between is less helpful, but let's zoom way in and look big.
Anyway, this really helps us see the big picture. The story of the good news boils down, as Peter says it here, to Jesus' story. He really summarizes from Jesus' ministry in Galilee, John baptizing him. I love the phrase, "He went about doing good and healing the people that he even says, who is oppressing people that Jesus is healing and freeing."
It's the devil who is oppressing all of these people, not just with demon possession, but with all of the sickness and all of the things that are happening. ultimately, this is the product of the fall that has brought about all of these things and Jesus is bringing life, he's bringing that better thing that God always intended for us.
And then of course he gets to his death on a tree, which is important from a Old Testament perspective. Cursed is everyone who dies on a tree. And then his resurrection, his resurrection appearances. And Peter emphasizes, we saw all of this. I'm a witness of this. and I ate with the risen Jesus. You know, this happened, we were interacting with him.
But as we said, he opens the story, declaring Jesus Lord of all, the one who brings peace. And he ends it by declaring him the judge of all, the one who brings forgiveness to all those who believe. And so these are the essential facts. This is news worth sharing. And there's a lot more we can delve into, but the sweetness and power still hits you.
All the flavor boiled down for maximum impact, like a cherry reduction sauce. That's just kind of full of all of the, essence of the goodness of the story. I love that. I love these summaries that way.
Bryan: Sometimes we have a tendency to make things too complicated, right?
Like to talk about all the details that don't really
matter.
No.
Ryan: [laughter]
Bryan: You know and then like you said sometimes we over reduce things and don't give enough meat to the details behind some powerful idea. But for Peter to be able to express the story of Jesus, the good news of Jesus in such a simple way,
a pivotal transitional moment, in the kingdom, but to see it kicked off by just such a simple message is even more powerful, I think
Ryan: Yeah, I'm gonna talk about this a little bit later, but the idea of the gospel not being for a chosen few but everyone is the essence of the story. And this moment in the story the church is when that started to kick in and to spread.
Bryan:
Favorite Things from the Off-Season
Bryan: All right, so let's get into our second segment here on the episode and that is favorite things. So it has been a minute since we've heard that song and uh, we're going to talk about some of our favorite things that happened this off season. I don't know.you know, we've been gone for a little while so let's kind of review some stuff that we've been up to, some things we've been doing for the podcast, some things we've been doing for our work with the churches that we're at, all the other things that have been going on, what is your first favorite thing?
Bible Reading Plans and Resources
Ryan: I'm citing, I guess, a practice here, Bible reading, and these will largely tie in with things we've been doing here in the podcast, but we are going back at North to our Into the Book reading plan. We do a reading plan every year here, and we've done reading through the Gospels four different times, or reading through the Book of Psalms a couple times.
We've done a lot of different plans, different ways of doing it, but now this is, I think, the third time that we've done the Into the Book plan, which I'm very familiar with. Of course, we put this together, and it's been really good for me to get back to that. I am not good at Bible reading. It's kind of a weird thing for Bible geeks.
I love Bible study and I love meditating on the Bible and Bible reading. I'm sure I've talked about this before, but it's a challenge for me to do the checkbox kind of approach where I'm going through and I'm much better at doing giant chunks. like read through the Bible in a shorter period of time is actually easier, but there's this benefit having this consistent taste of the scriptures every day.
And to be able to take these big chunks, we end up doing three chapters of the Old Testament, a chapter of the New Testament every day, a Psalm just about every day. And so you've got these bigger chunks. And it's what I talked about earlier with the reduction sauces. There's like concentration, and then there's big picture.
this kind of a practice really gives me that big picture approach to be able to see connections that I sometimes miss. It's sometimes you see something new, but more so it's seeing, oh yeah, Isaiah says this, and this was in Genesis, and then Romans picks the same idea up. And I had not put together all these pieces.
And because you're in a shorter time span getting breadth, really helpful. And I've really come to appreciate that plan. We have put that plan up on our website in a better way. You've put some good work into that. We're updating some more stuff for the Old Testament. and hope to have more and more resources to support that.
But favorite thing number one for me is I guess just the spiritual discipline of reading larger chunks of the Bible, or as I often do, listening to chunks and thinking through it, and then kind of like making a note and coming back. And it always leads to other studies, but you're getting this listening to the story play out.
Bryan: It's the whole idea of like not breaking the chain. You know this again goes back to so much of like the New Year's kind of resolution ideas just stringing together one day of reading with another day of reading right after it and that consistency that whole idea is always something that I aspire to, but it's such a challenge to actually put into practice.
So don't worry, I'm totally with you. Like I am the same way. It is a challenge for me to just commit to that and actually show up every single day for it. I wish I was better at that, honestly,
So that's cool that you guys are doing the end of the book plan again. So you're doing the New Testament and the Old Testament and the Psalms all together as a church?
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, what the elders said is they really want everybody, you know, take time to be holy, right? Really want everybody to focus on reading the Bible more. And they gave everybody the choice, you know, everybody's got to figure out what they're going to do. Either focus on reading the whole Bible or reading one of the
Bryan: it.
Ryan: Testaments through the year.
But yeah, many of us, I know at least are going through the whole thing. And The elders encouraged us to each find a reading buddy to hold us accountable, talk it over with, think through things. One of the brothers here has started scheduling every few weeks, like, " Hey, you want to get together at Wendy's for coffee and, you know, talk about the Bible reading kind of a thing.
And that's, that's kind
Bryan: coffee at Wendy's
Ryan: I just said a, like a thing to, to Bryan there, but yeah, going and, and sitting somewhere and, uh, and talking over it, you could bring your own, uh, gourmet coffee, Bryan, your own personal roast or whatever.
Bryan: All right. So
my first
favorite?
thing fits right alongside that, I think, and this year, as we've been off in February was the six year anniversary of the podcast starting. we kicked off back in February 7 of 2019. A year before the pandemic hit, you know, we were big into talking about things that were kind of, I don't know, maybe like reiterating here on this episode a little bit.
But, know, we did a lot of work there early on. And I honestly, I don't know about you, but like I don't I never imagined us being where we are now, like back when we first started. Yeah, I never imagined us having like all these resources and things that we've done all the daily download videos that we made overthe years, all the reading plans like you just talked about the guided studies everything else like I never really imagined us being at that place.
But I don't know if you're the same way, but like when I start a project or do something, I throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall. trying to see what sticks, you know, here with the podcast, we've come up with a lot of cool stuff.
But I think over this break, it's been helpful to just go back and revisit some things and clean some stuff up. our website over this break, cleaning up and reformatting things, getting back into our guided study pages, setting them up to look a little bit cleaner and more like online courses you might be familiar with. We did a lot of work just kind of putting together the end of the book page, the cross training page, all these things, making all the resources that we've built over the last six years available in one place.
So that's been really fun. And obviously, I'm not the only one doing that, Ryan, you've played a big part in helping clarify some of those decisions as well. Has that been like something that you've been looking forward to for a long time? Because as soon as I started it, it's scratched a very particular itch for me.
Ryan: Oh yeah. That has been really nice to start to see some of these things. I mean, we've had some retreats that you and I
got together and planned and envisioned many things that we then did not have the life space or resources to actually, yeah, time to really make happen. And so it's been really good. I appreciate all of your power puttering as you've carried the
larger, by far the large load here, but it's been really good to think through all of that see some of these things be made available, because it's always been there but kind of buried deep down in.
So yeah, I'd encourage folks to now and even more so as we keep working things to check out biblegeeks.fm and see some of the things that we have there. We have that reading plan I mentioned, We have all of our guided studies and the podcasts and a lot of other stuff
Podcast Updates and Future Plans
Bryan: Well, it should be said that we are doing something a little bit new now. we over this break had clarified some things and realized, "You know what we really need? It's just a blog. We need to have a straight-up place where we can throw written content, off-the-cuff content, things that people might be interested in throughout the week, and just throw it on a blog."
And so that's what we did. We actually built a blog this break as well. And it's also, you can sign up for a newsletter. We're kicking that thing off again. we used to do a newsletter way back in the day, but we're going back out there with a newsletter, we've got stuff thrown out on our blog. know, just trying to make things useful for people and discoverable for people in whatever format you might be looking for it in.
Obviously, we talk about many things here on the podcast, but, you know, having a spot where you can go and read on your own is something that we also think is helpful for people. So yeah, like Ryan said, go check us out on biblegeeks.fm. There's a lot of new stuff there, so let us know what you think. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
Ryan: There's never an end to the plans.
Bryan: So much spaghetti and so many walls.
Ryan: I think sometimes that I'm the one that dreams up stuff and then you find a way to make it happen and make it work. So I feel like I have the more enjoyable job on that, but there's so many cool ideas that we have that I just can't wait to get into.
We have a bunch of... good things that we want to do in the future, and I can't wait to get into it all. And looking back at some of the resources, you were talking about how you're preaching through cross-training, the cross-training stuff, the square one stuff we're working through has been really helpful as I've tried to think through different studies, different ways of presenting fundamentals to some of our newer Christians.
We've had a few different newly baptized people who come from a background where they don't really have a lot of context in the scriptures. So thinking through where do you start? How do we lay a foundation that is not going super deep, but is rather getting all of the main ideas they need to know about a particular topic.
So I've been thinking about systematic theologies, different resources that give us kind of a system of thinking through here are some of the basic topics an organization of just the fundamental about baptism, about the sacrifice of Christ, about holiness, you know, about the Holy Spirit, about whatever topic it is and trying to encapsulate and explain those fundamentals in a way that isn't overwhelming, but then also taking from systematic theology to a biblical theology and helping people think through those things.
If you're not familiar with the difference between the two, I think it's really important to utilize both approaches in your study, a systematic theology approach where you're looking at a topic and collecting all the biblical data, looking at all the information that the Bible has to say about one of those topics and seeing it organized.
a dictionary, the Dictionary of Bible Themes, that's a really basic kind of a simple organization device for that. And then a biblical theology approaches it differently. It looks progressively through the Bible as it goes, as scripture has through time and through different authors and for different purposes and different audiences shared these different truths.
And so it will look at the book of Leviticus as a piece of literature and look at the flow of the book and then look at that book and its structure and its themes within the context of the rest of Pentateuch, the rest of the Torah, first five books of the Old Testament, and then look at its flow all the way through to Christ and watch how those things play out.
And so kind of looking at things from those two different lenses is a favorite thing and so I don't want to list a billion different resources here.
Bryan: Well, we have show notes. We can throw it in
Ryan: I will just note something that I've been enjoying studying through here recently, a resource, a series of resources that's been really fun. On the biblical theology side, there.
is a series called New Studies in Biblical Theology that DA Carson edits and I've really enjoyed a bunch of these really through the years but diving in here recently to some of these I wanted to throw out that recommendation.
There's a bunch of different books and you can find you know what is interesting to you to get a hold of if you use Logos we've recommended that before highly recommend that software all available on there, so
Bryan: is your zooming out and
zooming in approach
I can see coming out here.
Ryan: Zooming in. Exactly. so what's your second and final favorite thing?
Bryan: Yeah, you know, obviously we've been doing this for like six years and it's been great. We're doing things ever so slightly differently than we used to do them a long time ago. If you go back, I don't recommend this, but if you go back and you listen to episode one of the podcast, it will sound terrible. There was a time many, many years ago where Ryan's microphone was actually pointed backwards.
Ryan: These are a few of Bryan's least favorite
Bryan: Audio trouble. Yeah, we've come a long way, let's just say. And I think it's always important for us to stretch, I think, to make our time together more useful, more fulfilling. And you know, kind of speaking about some more spaghetti throwing. We're going to try and do some more stuff here on the podcast and see what fits.
You and as we speak, we're going to try video. You know, we've been posting our podcast episodes, the audio of our podcast episodes on YouTube for a very long time. And also on Facebook, you know, we've got these going out there on social media and it's basically just like a static image with our audio over the back.
And we would like to attempt if everyone's equipment is behaving at any given time, we'd like to attempt to do video and throw those kinds of things. out there on YouTube and Facebook as well. So you can judge us on whether or not we successfully accomplish that goal by whether this continues. But I'm kind of excited about that.
I don't think anyone actually needs to see us while we're talking, but some people like to do that. So why not? It's easy enough to throw that in there. And then secondly, a thing that you and I have talked about doing for a long time, and we're going to kick this off in this upcoming year and hopefully going forward.
We love it. Absolutely love it. when people chime in and give us questions, give us feedback, reach out to us in any way. We absolutely love that. And of the things we've wanted to do for a long time is actually get more voices involved on the podcast. And that's hard sometimes because people don't have the time commitments or, you know, they don't really feel comfortable talking about things.
And it's logistically a challenge sometimes. But what we'd like to do is start having not like a call in show, but we would like to have people submit audio questions so that they could, find their way onto the podcast, ask their questions, or make their comment. And if that's something that's interesting to you, you should check out our website, because we've got a spot on biblegeeks.fm/podcast at the very top of the page where you can go click and submit your question.
We've also got a spot on our contact page for the same thing. So if you want to ask a question, ask the geeks will hopefully be, you know, wrapping all of those up, maybe into an episode or two or just, you know, sprinkling them in here and there as we go about. But it could be good to get some more voices here on the show.
So if you or someone you know would like to join in on the podcast and throw your voice into the mix, we'd loveto have you. So just a couple of things about the podcast video audio that's uh scratches a particular itch for my nerdy brain for sure
Ryan: I mean, I think that even though no one needs to see our faces, as you said, it's got to be more interesting than just looking at a blank screen
while you're if you're going to have video have video right
Bryan: look he just picked his nose oh wait no
Ryan: well and I was thinking about how you made this connection between our early episodes where I had audio trouble to this new video thing and how much we've learned and I was thinking about how we just spent 40 minutes trying to get me set up with the most basic aspects of video so Bryan is still my sherpa through all of this.
And yeah, and I can't wait to hear the Bible Geeks Call-In Show begin. You know, first-time caller, long-time listener. Can't wait to hear questions, comments, insights that anybody likes to share. And so we'll get that going here pretty soon.
Reach Out: Rejoicing in the Good News
Bryan: For sure. All right, so that has been our favorite things for our off season. Let's get into our last segment here on the episode. And that is our reach out question. So we're gonna ask each other this question here to close out the episode. Ryan,why are you rejoicing in the good news today? The gospel has obviously changed our lives in so many different ways, but what is one aspect that you've been thinking about recently?
Ryan: It's a pretty thought-provoking question.
Bryan: I would hope so, since you wrote it. So, it's a lot. but Oh yeah.
Ryan: I wrote it and then I left it out there for you to figure out how to answer. I didn't know what to say. I was just thinking through this idea of how can we say something meaningful and personal and insightful about the gospel because there's just so much to it. And so this gives us a little chance to find a corner to talk about.
And the thing that came to mind as I was thinking about this, of course, I'm knee-deep in dad life, right? And so I was thinking about Peter's words in Acts 2, 38 to 39, where he famously says, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And then he says, "For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." And there's a lot to verse 39 about how the The Gospels reaches the Jews and the Gentiles. We talked about that with Cornelius earlier, but also it reaches from generation to generation. And the promise is not just for us. It's not just for me to know
the gift of forgiveness, the gift of the Holy Spirit, but for our kids to know that. And that's a pretty cool and reassuring thing to think about. a fundamental part of being a parent to, I don't wanna say be anxious and worried because that's not something we should do as Christians, but to carry a heavy weight of concern over every single aspect of your kids' lives and their future.
And there's a verse in a song that I like, You know that song, "Because He Lives," and there's that verse, you know, "How sweet to hold our newborn baby." This child can face uncertain days because he lives, because Jesus lives. And as we start looking to the future, it's just so reassuring to have hope to pass on to our children.
Jesus conquered death. He rose from the dead. He reigns from the right hand of God. And who knows what my kids will see that I won't, but if they hope in Christ, He will see them through their lives and into a beautiful eternity. And that is good news. That's a promise for all generations. And so that's what I've been thinking about lately.
What about you?
Bryan:
we've talked about themes here on this episode, you know, as we're getting into the new year, it's already March. So like, you know, talking about resolutions and themes and things like that seems like it's kind of passed already, But my theme this year is creating clarity.
And I'm really hoping that I can clear up things that not really put together thoughtfully in the first place. I've been thinking, like, what areas of my life am I confused about?
Do I not have clarity on? And every time I think about Jesus, and every time I think about the good news of Jesus, I have a picture of clarity there. There is nothing muddy or confusing about what Jesus has done and the foundation that he's laid. And it reminds me of this passage in Isaiah, chapter 28, verses 16 and 17.
And this same passage is echoed in Ephesians 2 and 1 Peter 2, but it paints a picture of Jesus as our firm and foundational cornerstone. And he says there, "Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. Whoever believes will not be in haste, and I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line, and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter."
That whole verse, the idea of that verse is like, we have this foundation, we have a cornerstone, we have Jesus as our standard, we don't have to worry about a confusing list of things that we're trying to field from everyone else around us, or we don't have to worry about a divided life ourselves. I think about that a lot.
you're trying to do what you want to do, but you're also trying to follow God. That's not going to work. Jesus would even say that in Luke 16, right? About the two masters. You can't serve two masters. but sometimes I lie to myself, sometimes I muddy the waters and think that I can do what I want to do and is convenient for me, but then also follow God and also listen to Jesus, And every time I think about the good news of Jesus, I just think about clarity.
Like, I have one boss. You know what I mean? Like, I have one voice that I listen to. I have one source, one standard, one plumb line, one thing keeping me in line. Not me, not what I want, not what anyone else expects of me. It's Jesus who lays down the standard. And that is super clarifying, I guess. As somebody who hates ambiguity, who hates having to toe the line of like, "Well, I don't know what to do in this situation or that situation."
Ryan: It's good news to have one driver in the driver's seat. It is bad news to have multiple people trying to grab the wheel at any moment and the gospel just like cuts the fog is light shining through the darkness is just a laser beam clear about what I'm doing and what's expected of me I love that. I think it goes back to idea of boiling down the complexity to the
Bryan: Yes.
Ryan: essence of the thing
and yeah, the reduction. You need that. We need that. We need clarity. has been heard, here's the end of the matter, right? Ecclesiastes 12. You know, we need something to give us clarity. And I see people in my life who have gotten lost in the complexity of life and the complexity of all the ways to be good, all the ways to pursue things you're going to enjoy, all the different ways you can define your life.
And,just becomes this swirl, this blur that you lose yourself in. And it is really helpful to be able to grab onto the thread. what's going to lead you, like a rope in a dark cave. Follow this and you'll come to the light at the end. And Christ is the thread. He is our Lord.
He is the one that directs us, His authority. Peter said in his parenthetical statement, which is the essence of the whole thing, He is Lord of all. He is Lord of all. Let me put in a parentheses the main point, and that was it. So that's a great place to, I mean, and that is the essence of the gospel.
Jesus is Lord. We have the King to save us and to lead us into life now. victory is his.
Bryan: I would say you could drop the mic, but that would probably not be a
Ryan: It's on a stand, so...
Bryan: As a podcaster, never drop the mic.
Upcoming Episodes and Farewell
Bryan: Alright, This has been a conversation all about sort of what we had been doing over the break, where we're going here in the upcoming season.
But on the next episode, you know what's coming up. This is March, you know what we're going to do. is draft time. We're gonna go crazy with the Bible bracket once again. And this year we are getting into our favorite Bible verses on the next episode. We're going to build out our bracket and we're going to get everybody to vote on their favorite Bible verses.
We're really excited for that. And then on the next episode after that, we're going to throw in a little bit of a bonus episode from our Getting to Square One series. We did three episodes in Getting to Square One. We're going to throw one more in there just to kind of round everything out.
We're excited about that conversation coming up. But thanks so much everyone for tuning in to the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website, as we've mentioned, at biblegeeks.fm. You can find the show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/224. You can also sign up for our newsletter or you can check out the blog there on our website for more details on even the content of this episode.
really excited to be throwing those things out there for everyone. And until next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you.