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1:20
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:24
Let's get into it. Welcome back to the forging table.
1:28
The mission of Undaunted Life is equipping men to push back darkness,
1:31
with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:35
At the forging table, you'll see a group of regular guys forging spiritual
1:38
resilience by digging into God's word.
1:40
And we're welcoming all of you to come along on that journey with us.
1:43
Now to my right is Ryan Horne, a veteran of the forging table.
1:46
But the last time you were on here, I kind of set you up poorly because I put
1:51
a couple of rookies across from us.
1:53
This is the third time.
1:54
Third time?
1:55
Third time I've got new rookies, because the last time was Zack and Russell Moore.
2:02
Yeah, not D Russell Moore, but A Russell Moore.
2:05
Now he's the Russell Moore for me.
2:07
There's a couple of strangers across the table.
2:09
And I don't know how I feel about that, but we got a long ways to go here.
2:11
So we got Caleb Martin and Robert Lewis.
2:13
Guys, welcome to the forging table, happy to have you here.
2:16
But as a baptism by fire here, the way that we get you interested or get our audience
2:22
interested in you, we have you answer three questions and you got two minutes total
2:26
to answer all three of these questions.
2:27
So Caleb, you're going to go first.
2:29
So it's, how do you become a Christian?
2:30
How do you like to study the Bible?
2:33
And how does your mind work?
2:34
If you forget one of those, it's all good.
2:36
But two minutes to answer those.
2:37
How do you become a Christian?
2:39
How do you like to study the Bible?
2:40
And how does your mind work?
2:41
Where grace at go, Caleb Martin.
2:44
You know, people talk about, did you grow up in a Christian home?
2:46
And the answer to that for me was I thought I grew up in a Christian home.
2:52
And then, you know, I'm young and people are like, no, I think you just celebrated
2:57
the Feast of Tabernacles.
2:58
I'm pretty sure you're Jewish.
2:59
So yeah, so grew up in that thought I was a Christian home.
3:04
Turns out my parents when in the 70s, when cults were in vogue,
3:08
they got involved in one, if you want to go down to Google Rapid Trail,
3:12
it's Herbert Armstrong.
3:14
Oh, I'm literally good.
3:15
Yeah, this is the first time we've had a member of a cult or a cult family.
3:19
What was the name of it?
3:20
Is this the Philadelphia brother?
3:21
Yes.
3:22
I know about the Armstrong Center is right up there, up the street in Edmond.
3:26
Right down the road.
3:26
Yeah, that place is a cult, dude.
3:29
I can tell you all about it.
3:30
Oh, man.
3:31
I'm surprised you're not married off.
3:32
We're going to meet up afterwards.
3:33
I feel like I need some kind of text.
3:34
No, I don't know if I want afterwards.
3:36
I think we may need it here.
3:37
Like we may break the two-minute rule, but we need some time with Nehemiah,
3:41
but we may have to get back into that, but go ahead.
3:43
So anyway, I always remember my dad not going to church,
3:46
and but I always remember him reading his Bible.
3:50
So long story short was one of the dates that this guy predicted Christ's return was 1985.
3:56
Okay, I was born in '83.
3:58
My parents were living in Oklahoma.
4:00
Obviously he did not come back.
4:01
So my dad was like, I'm out and we moved back to Wichita.
4:06
And he just decided I'm going to figure this out on my own.
4:08
So he starts reading his Bible.
4:09
And the Lord speaks to him, obviously, through that.
4:14
He starts going to a non-denominational Christian church when I was about 12,
4:17
and kind of gradually one by one, the Lord found my family.
4:20
And I found the Lord found me when I was 17, and it was either go play junior college baseball
4:28
and live that world or do something different.
4:31
So I decided to come to OU and start over where there were no expectations.
4:36
So I found Lord found me, like I said, when I was 17, 18, and then went from there.
4:43
So there's been a lot of unpacking over the last many years for that.
4:46
And we can talk about that all you want.
4:49
Okay, well, now we have study the Bible and how's your brain work?
4:52
Okay, so when I got to OU, I got involved with Campus Crusade.
4:56
And the way they taught it was kind of the, I believe it's called inductive,
5:00
which is the OIA is the way I looked at it was the observation, interpretation, application.
5:05
So that's what I've always done was just the first way that it was kind of
5:09
described to me on how to do that.
5:10
And that's how I study it.
5:12
So I like to write.
5:13
So I'll write down my prayers and things like that as well.
5:16
And then how I learned, I'd say I learned by doing pretty visual, but then also, yeah,
5:24
just learn by doing things and teaching people other things.
5:27
So are you a quick processor, slow processor, like whenever you get information, how do you like to do that?
5:32
My wife would laugh at that question.
5:33
I'm a slow processor.
5:34
Okay, yeah, a little bit of a slow processor.
5:36
She's quick.
5:37
I'm slow.
5:37
Okay, very good.
5:38
Well, that's why I'll work well together.
5:40
So that's Caleb Marnell, Robert Lewis.
5:41
Same thing.
5:42
How did you become a Christian?
5:43
Well, I always forget my questions.
5:45
How did you become a Christian?
5:46
How does your brain work?
5:47
That's the third one.
5:48
And then how did you study the Bible?
5:49
There it is.
5:50
Yeah, yeah.
5:50
I became a Christian whenever I was pretty young, but fell away from the faith.
5:55
Family was in and out of church whenever I was younger.
5:57
And I, I don't know, around 12 just started going down a rough path.
6:03
And it took quite a while for me to, you know, make sense of it and get on the other side of it.
6:07
And, and it was really just a transformative experience that led me to be able to just rededicate
6:13
my life.
6:14
And from that point forward, it was just God got a hold of me.
6:18
And it was everything I could do just to be relentless in the pursuit of being able to follow
6:21
after him and business and personal faith.
6:24
And, you know, and, and it just kind of ethos as a person and the way in which I interact with others,
6:28
you know, just, and, and so we're 25 years later, you know, here we are.
6:35
So that's kind of a compressed version of a really long story that we've had.
6:39
Very compressed.
6:40
Talk to talk about before.
6:41
Yeah, for sure.
6:42
Like to study the Bible, there's a method years ago, buddy of mine, Stephen Hall,
6:45
came back from a 10 year missions trip in Morocco.
6:47
And we went through a year long, just intensive Bible study with a small group of guys.
6:52
And there's this here method, this highlight, whatever your, you know, whatever you're reading on,
6:57
just highlighting that particular passage of it, letting that be at the forefront,
7:01
explaining it, taking a way to be able to explain that.
7:05
And how does it apply to my life would be the next part.
7:09
And then just moving it forward.
7:13
So me just getting a chance to really do a deep dive in one particular passage has been what I've
7:18
done in the past.
7:19
My daughter asked me to kind of go through this year long Bible study with her.
7:23
And so we've been going through that at the same time here recently.
7:25
So that's been kind of just a different approach that we've been doing.
7:28
This chronological approach of going through the Bible here recently.
7:31
And my mind works.
7:33
I don't know.
7:34
Sometimes I think it just works too fast.
7:36
And I probably need to be a guy that slows down a little bit more.
7:39
But man, I am a hundred miles a minute and I'm all over the place.
7:43
I just got so many things that are always going on.
7:45
So yeah, yeah, I'm just like a shotgun blast most of the time on how my mind works.
7:50
That's how you and I get along is because we're both that way.
7:53
And sometimes our shotgun blasts like hit each other.
7:55
But then yeah, like with Caleb, it's like, you definitely you will just you will smile.
7:59
You'll flash your blue eyes and you will think about something for a very, very long time.
8:03
We're all just mesmerized.
8:04
We're like, what's you going to say 10 minutes later?
8:06
He hasn't said it yet.
8:07
But I do have a question for the table before we dig into name I 10.
8:10
So diagonal from me is Robert Lewis, who happens to be a purple belt in Jiu Jitsu.
8:15
I happen to be a purple belt in Jiu Jitsu.
8:17
So Caleb, Ryan, what's what exactly is the reason why y'all are so not dangerous?
8:22
Like what's going on here?
8:24
I'm dangerous.
8:24
Are you dangerous though?
8:25
Just buy yourself.
8:27
Dangerously good looking.
8:28
Okay, there it is.
8:29
Nice.
8:29
There's confidence at least.
8:30
I mean, come on guys.
8:31
I might get beat up, but I have confidence.
8:34
Well, because you and I like we have baseball in common, obviously, like the that's the greatest
8:38
sport ever invented unless you're a communist and then you don't like it.
8:40
But I mean, but you can't unless you have a bat, you can't use baseball skills to stop a wolf,
8:46
you know, an actual like human wolf, you know, from getting you.
8:48
So what's the problem?
8:49
I'll just wait until I turn 40 to get started.
8:51
Okay, what's funny, what's funny about that is there is a guy at our gym.
8:55
He's a one stripe white belt, which means he's been training for about six months.
8:59
He started training at the age of 50 and he went and he got an origin ghee.
9:05
He went, you know, he's got the jocko origin ghee and it's just like,
9:08
it is never too late to get after it if your body works.
9:11
And so Robert and I have varying levels of body working at the at the moment.
9:16
So he's coming off a couple of surgeries.
9:17
So am I, but it is what it is.
9:19
It had no surgeries. So it's probably because I don't let sweaty dudes.
9:24
We're all over me.
9:24
You're also weak like a baby.
9:26
Okay.
9:26
I look like a baby on a week.
9:28
Like, okay, we can, we can test that later.
9:30
Let's do it.
9:31
What does that with Father's Day coming up that if your father doesn't do to YouTube,
9:35
it's Mother's Day, you know, you're like, happy Mother's Day to your father.
9:39
I know Robert, Robert talked to my buddy Donnie.
9:42
He said he'll get a special plan together for us.
9:44
That's right.
9:44
Yeah, we can get that going.
9:46
Guys, don't worry.
9:46
We have all kinds of plans and speaking of plans.
9:49
How you like that segue?
9:51
Let's go into Nehemiah 10 because we're seeing, we're seeing a lot of really amazing things
9:56
because here's the thing with the book of Nehemiah chapter four seems like the climax
10:00
because it's talking about, you know, defending and, you know,
10:02
you got your sword in one hand and your work tool in the other.
10:05
And you might think these later ladder chapters are a bit of a slog.
10:11
Like, you know, what's going on here?
10:12
Like, how is this applicable to me?
10:14
But I think there's a lot here and you can even go back to our discussion of Nehemiah three
10:19
and see like, I mean, we've flowed on an hour and I had to cut us off.
10:23
And that's a book just full of names and gate names and different things like that.
10:28
But one of the first things I wanted to point out about Nehemiah 10
10:30
is from the very jump, the first 27 verses, they're talking about the people that sealed
10:37
the covenant.
10:37
Like, if you're reading through the ESV, that is the title, the people who sealed the covenant.
10:43
There are 84 names here.
10:44
So these are priests, Levites, lay leaders of different kinds.
10:51
But many of these people that are mentioned here in the first 27 verses
10:56
are not mentioned anywhere else in the book of Nehemiah, much less the rest of the Bible.
11:00
They're not mentioned anywhere.
11:02
Okay.
11:02
But what I think that this shows is that it takes all kinds of people
11:07
to do the work of God, like all kinds of people.
11:11
Like, that was one thing I thought about is it takes different parts of the body.
11:14
And, you know, we've, you know, you may talk about that in church,
11:16
like different talents, like some people have sexy talents, like they're great teachers or
11:20
expositors or preachers or something like that.
11:22
And then you have the non-sexy, but also very, very important talents
11:25
of administrative people or people that love to volunteer and be behind the scenes.
11:29
But right from the jump, that's what struck me as I'm just, you can just read through these,
11:34
these names, but these are real people, you know?
11:37
I think that's pretty cool about this.
11:38
And what I love about Nehemiah 10 is like all the wisdom that's in it.
11:41
Like, hey, we're looking at names right now, but the rest of the chapter is chockable of wisdom.
11:45
But I noticed something that was pretty crazy is that you don't even see Ezra's name.
11:50
And right, Nehemiah is the first name listed as the governor, but yeah, it is interesting.
11:54
You don't see Ezra's name.
11:55
And you're like, why don't you see Ezra's name?
11:57
And it's like he already brought the covenant to the people.
12:00
He already showed them where they were going wrong and what their, what their past family members did.
12:06
And so he fulfilled his work.
12:08
And now it's the rest of, you know, Jerusalem finding a way to seal their new covenant with God.
12:16
Because mainly, I don't think Ezra ever lost that covenant.
12:19
He'd still tried to try to do what he needed to do.
12:21
Well, I wonder if what you guys would think about this, again, we don't exactly know
12:26
why Ezra's name is not mentioned, but it's like, please.
12:29
Is it almost like he's done his part?
12:33
We don't need to, you know, put his name on a brick and put it in the road.
12:37
Kind of a thing.
12:37
Like basically what I was saying.
12:38
Yeah, like that's, but that's an interesting concept because we live in a time where you
12:42
have to be the guy blowing your own trumpet.
12:44
There was a portion of the, maybe the commentary that I had read through the Dake study Bible
12:50
that I talked about, Ezra at one point in time, Ezra Nehemiah was just the book of Ezra.
12:56
Right.
12:56
It was just all one.
12:57
And then later it divided up into being the book of Ezra and then Nehemiah.
13:01
And it was interesting whenever I was reading through Nehemiah, how little that Ezra was
13:05
mentioned at one time with them both being written by and at the same time or whatnot.
13:09
But even stylistically in both books, it comes, it switches and vacillates between
13:15
first person and third person, like different times, like, you know, Nehemiah is referring to
13:20
himself in the first person and then other times in the third person.
13:23
So it's kind of interesting how that that comes in and out as well.
13:26
Sounds like me when I was 23.
13:27
Oh, I used to refer to myself in the third person.
13:30
Ooh, it was really bad.
13:32
You're like Donald Trump.
13:33
Oh, man, it was worse than that.
13:34
Donald Trump does this.
13:35
He's called myself the horn.
13:36
Oh my gosh.
13:38
That's the use of met your wife though, right?
13:41
It is a year.
13:41
I met my wife.
13:42
No, no.
13:42
Yes, it was.
13:43
I met my wife.
13:44
I was a, I was a gross.
13:46
Yeah, I was, oh, I talked to the third person.
13:48
I had a jar that I had to put money into that my roommates would make me put money into.
13:52
Whenever I said something, you know, I don't know.
13:55
Schmidt-ish, I would say, from a new girl without, I know this is a kind of a family
14:00
program. I don't want to use the D word.
14:02
So, uh, I don't know what word you're talking about because I don't watch a new girl.
14:06
You don't watch the new girl?
14:07
Does anybody else at this table that is over three in baseball terms?
14:11
That's all right.
14:11
I watch the new girl.
14:12
I was too busy watching.
14:14
I don't know.
14:14
I'm trying to think of the girl.
14:15
You'll more girls or something.
14:17
Oh, really?
14:17
I guess.
14:17
Okay.
14:18
No, no, but, uh, I did talk to the third person.
14:20
It was really, it was really bad.
14:21
I got to be honest.
14:22
I'm so glad I met you in your mid 30s.
14:24
Yes.
14:25
Because if I met you in your 20s, like there's a zero percent chance
14:28
that you had great accountability even in your early 20s to have friends that were
14:32
trying to hold you accountable to the point that you had to put money every time you were.
14:36
And then they bought pizza with it at the end of the week.
14:38
But, but did it help?
14:39
It didn't let you eat.
14:40
Like, so, yeah, you know, Robert's making the very adult point that, yeah,
14:43
that's good to have friends hold you accountable, but did it work?
14:46
It didn't.
14:46
They all end up moving out.
14:48
I own the house.
14:48
You said they all moved.
14:49
So you kicked him out, basically.
14:52
No, no, no, they were like, they were like, man, this guy's a D bag.
14:56
I'm going to go ahead and move.
14:57
But no, I met my wife and literally started talking in the first person.
15:01
And sadly, that's why I think I probably keep the weight on as I lost a ton of weight.
15:07
And I just became this person I did not like.
15:10
Okay.
15:10
So to that point, I need to lose weight though.
15:12
That sounds like an excuse to not lose weight.
15:14
Oh, but wait a minute, wait a minute.
15:16
I'm going to detour from my own point here.
15:17
I got an email the other day that it was so funny, but it also made me really, really mad.
15:22
And I haven't talked about it on the show yet, but it's this guy.
15:26
He's got a really good friend and they all used to kind of work out together.
15:29
And we're totally getting off me in my 10 guys, but we're coming back.
15:32
He said that he has a friend that has decided that he is going to stop exercising entirely
15:40
because he wants to spend more time in the word and studying and prayer and all that.
15:46
And so at a univariate analysis standpoint, it's like, oh my gosh, this guy is so holy.
15:52
But my immediate response to him is like, yeah, your friend's a turd.
15:56
He's full of crap.
15:57
Like, that's not why he's doing it.
15:59
He's doing it because working out is very, very hard and has diminishing immediate returns.
16:03
Meaning if you work out really, really, really hard today and then you take the rest of the year off,
16:08
that really, really hard work you put in today does not last you the rest of the year.
16:13
It doesn't last you till tomorrow, really, right?
16:16
You might be sore, but the benefits are basically gone at that point.
16:20
And I was like, your butter, your buddy better become the next Billy Graham.
16:23
But what it sounds like is it's an excuse that he's cloaking in this air of holiness.
16:29
So it's like, oh, yeah, when I was, you know, smaller, you know, I talk this way.
16:32
And so now I'm this size, even in college, hang on, hang on.
16:35
Even in college, every time we would need to do a presentation, you would wear a suit.
16:39
And I'm 20 years old and my girlfriend at the time, now my bride.
16:43
She's, I mean, she was very straightforward with me.
16:46
She's like, yeah, every time you wear a suit, you're just kind of a jerk.
16:51
Because just when you wear a suit, you're fancy shut your mouth.
16:54
No, it's not true.
16:56
But like, you know, you got a tie on everything's real buttoned up.
16:58
And she's just like, you, you just you treat people differently.
17:01
You're kind of rude.
17:02
And I was just like, oh, no, I think about that.
17:04
Every single time I put on a suit and tie to this day, that was almost 20 years ago.
17:10
And it's just like, because it had that level of impact on me.
17:13
Well, I wait, didn't really have that level.
17:16
You know, I just lost weight and thought I was really cool and drove a BMW,
17:20
you know, I just was a young, stupid kid.
17:23
So luckily I fell my wife and well, Kyle Thompson thinks that's a really,
17:27
really good thing that you've gotten past that because Kyle Thompson's a smart guy.
17:30
Kyle Thompson.
17:31
Yeah.
17:31
The horn.
17:33
I really don't want to get too far off of it.
17:35
But let's just go.
17:36
We're already so far off.
17:36
It's a trap that a lot of men get into is they try to be disciplined in an area,
17:42
but they forsake so many other areas in their life that they need to have a discipline in
17:46
at the same.
17:47
So as an excuse, he's saying, I need to be more disciplined in my time in the word,
17:52
but who would ever say, I'm going to spend less time with my wife,
17:55
or I'm going to spend less time mentoring my kids, or I'm going to spend less time
17:58
giving my best effort at work, or whatever that development may be.
18:02
But God calls us to be men that live a life of discipline, and holistically,
18:08
and not just compartmentally in one area.
18:10
So two things.
18:11
Number one, the slow cooker in the corner, I think it said two words so far.
18:14
So at some point, I'm going to ask you a direct question so that you can hop in here.
18:18
But the second thing to your point, Robert, is it's the people that you know,
18:22
because again, we speak the language of Jiu-Jitsu.
18:24
They're a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, but they're a white belt in relationships, right?
18:29
So because we know guys that are dangerous, really, really solid,
18:34
competitive level, brown belts, black belts, but they haven't had a relationship work out.
18:39
Maybe they've got some kids in that they don't really see or don't have a great relationship with
18:43
them. And I mean, you guys can fill in the blanks with all these other scenarios.
18:46
And it's like, if you look at every part of your life as a
18:49
belting system, so in Jiu-Jitsu, it's white belt beginner, and then blue belt, purple belt,
18:54
brown belt, black belt. And in Jiu-Jitsu, it's like, it's like a real martial arts.
18:58
Like, if you train all the time, it'll take you 10 years to get your black belt, right?
19:01
You don't get it in a year and a half by, you know, some Wing Chun guy down by the airport.
19:05
Like, it's like a legit, hard martial art to learn and to advance.
19:09
But think about it if you thought about your marriage in that way.
19:12
How you study the Bible in that way. You know, for me, I feel like I'm a white belt in prayer,
19:16
which is what do you mean? How can you be a white belt in prayer
19:20
and run a Christian company and like do all these different things? But it's like,
19:24
it's you're giving yourself a grade, and it's not an A through F, it's A, B or F, right?
19:29
Because you can't really get by being a C or D in prayer, right? That type of thing.
19:33
So Caleb, I need you to start talking in three, two, one, go.
19:38
All right. So thanks for giving me that time to think about this.
19:41
You're welcome.
19:42
So the thing that stands out to me right here at the start is, you know,
19:46
we're talking about a wall that they were working on for what was it? 52 days, I think.
19:51
Yeah, it's like 30 to 40 feet tall, nine feet wide, two and a half miles around roughly.
19:57
And he names 84 people. So, you know, you got to think like 84 people didn't do that.
20:02
No. You know, I mean, he's talking about he's talking about the priests, the Levites, the leaders.
20:06
He's talking about people that stood out. I'm sure he could have easily made this list
20:11
250 people. You know what I mean? So these are the people also that raised their hand and said,
20:17
we're going to we're going to sign this covenant. You know, we're going to sign this document. So,
20:21
I mean, you think about the all the covenants that you've made in your life, and it's a pretty short
20:25
list, I would think, especially covenants that mean what this meant. So to me, those 84 names,
20:32
I mean, not only is he recording history, obviously, but he's pointing these people out that these
20:36
are the faithful ones. You know, these are the ones that they were there, you know, sign up to
20:41
sundown 52 days in a row, and we can lean on them big time. So that was the thing that stood out to
20:47
me. And also just kind of the wrap at the end of chapter nine is I think it was eight and nine
20:53
that they're kind of, you know, they're talking about all the things that God did for them to get
20:57
this to this point. And it wraps up within view of all this. And then they go into this chapter of
21:04
this is the promise, right, that they're making. Right. So when you point out Caleb, like,
21:08
covenant that we don't use covenantal language and modernity, as evidenced by the fact that
21:15
you go before God and you make a covenant of marriage, and the divorce rates outside the
21:21
church are basically identical to the divorce rates inside the church. And even inside the church,
21:26
we basically ignore that part of the Bible where Jesus talks about if, you know, you marry someone
21:31
that's divorced and wasn't divorced for adultery or death or something like that. And you have so
21:35
many Christian pastors blessing second, third, fourth marriages. And you know, even violative of
21:41
wearing the light dress when they've already, that was a sign of virginity and purity and all that.
21:47
And how many women actually make it to the altar with that intact. And it's a, it's just an interesting
21:53
thing that this, and we'll talk about a little bit more when we get down into verse 28 and from there.
21:58
But we don't think in terms of covenants anymore, everything's like, and I don't know what that is,
22:04
I'd be curious to hear what y'all, which I'll believe about this, because it's like, we have
22:08
so many contracts now, like, you know, so all of us are in some level of business, right,
22:13
at different levels. When have you ever done a deal on a handshake? And I don't mean you shook
22:19
a guy's hand and said, Hey, I'll see you next Tuesday. But like an actual handshake deal to buy
22:24
something or to start something or a division of revenue or, you know, split or something like that.
22:31
We don't do that anymore, because we're not a covenantal people. And we're also we just
22:35
overall lack integrity as a group as well. What do y'all think?
22:39
I'd agree with that. I think I like how you brought up marriage. Marriage is a covenant.
22:44
I mean, it took my wife and I probably like six years to figure that out. We actually
22:49
went through some tough times in our marriage and went to a weekend to remember. And that's
22:53
when we kind of learned what God's, you know, design of marriage was, which is crazy being
22:58
in church for almost like 15, 20 years at that point. And you didn't even know what God's design
23:03
for marriage was. You had to go to a special event to do that. And so we learned it was a
23:08
covenant. We were treating our marriage like a contract. It was like, all right, 5050 here,
23:12
7030 there, and it's not 100 100. And that's what a covenant is. It's God giving his 100.
23:20
And the Israelites giving their 100 and the Israelites in this point are not giving their 100.
23:25
So or we're not giving it 100. I think too, it's a shift of our perspective and covenants.
23:30
Like it's very clear that in Nehemiah, they were making a covenant to God. But at the same time,
23:36
they were making a covenant to each other to continue to guard and protect the city to keep it
23:41
kept up to be able to continue to expand it. Whereas the flip for us is, I think in marriage,
23:47
we have a covenant with our bride, but we fail to realize that that covenant really is to the Lord.
23:53
And our promise that we made to our wife is a promise that we made to God that we would guard
23:59
and protect and love them. And so I think we've just moved this shift away from the covenant with
24:04
the Lord, like Nehemiah, they clearly had. And we've attached it to people that so easy for us to
24:11
sometimes emotionally, your convenience pulls us apart or maybe if it's a business agreement and
24:19
we're not making the profits that we thought we were going to make that we could pull away from.
24:23
But when we commit to something that's far beyond one, Caleb, you've got the most kids at this
24:28
table. You have four, you have four boys. It's kind of interesting. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's
24:33
right. My math is terrible. So they got eight kids on the other side of the table, dude.
24:37
I've only got five on ours. They're not rookies at everything, apparently. But the interesting
24:44
thing about kids is we almost have an innate covenantal connection to our kids, but we don't feel that
24:52
way about our brides because how many times have you seen this? Yeah, you know, things just aren't
24:57
working out with the kids, mom, like, you know, we're getting a divorce, but I'm just going to do
25:00
everything I can to be there for the kids. So wait a minute, you're going to do everything you can.
25:06
You're going to empty the tank for your kids, which is two thumbs up good, but you don't have
25:12
that same stamina for your bride that you supposedly made a covenant before God to care for whom you're
25:20
supposed to be with as well after the kids are no longer living in your house. I'd like it's,
25:26
I don't know if that's just a deeply societal problem or if that's just something, again,
25:31
it's that innate connection to kids, but not to our bride somehow. But I think if you, I mean,
25:35
that's that's nothing but a cop out. Yeah, obviously. I mean, if you think about your kids for longer
25:40
than about 30 seconds, you realize that the best thing you can give to them is a mom and a dad that
25:47
live in the home together and modeling a healthy marriage. Absolutely. I mean, even if even if
25:52
your relationships with your kids aren't great, still the best thing you can give to them is a
25:56
great relationship with your wife, right? So, I mean, I think that, you know, we get away from
26:02
covenantal language because if you think about contracts, I mean, I'm not an attorney, but I feel
26:06
like there's, I think it's called indemnifications, but there's like the section that basically gives
26:11
everyone an out from a contract. And that doesn't happen in a covenant, right? Yeah, there's no
26:16
prenups in a covenant either. Yeah, a covenant is a promise period. That's it. So, you know,
26:21
contracts give us outs. I mean, I think that we're, we're in a, in a time that's full of kind of the,
26:28
I've got to, I've got to make sure to get mine. I've got to make sure that I'm happy. So, if I'm
26:34
going to be happy over here, then I need to get out of whatever it is that I'm, that I'm committed to
26:38
air quotes. Yeah. I think there's some foreshadowing in this chapter in regards to that in marriage.
26:43
It's like, how do we look at our marriage? How do we look at the people that we're marrying?
26:47
Where are we at in regards to that? Because we're going to go further in Nehemiah
26:52
about how we shouldn't be unequally from where we're at, so with who we're marrying. And so for
26:58
building that contract, and we're building that, not contract with that covenant, we want to make
27:02
sure we build that covenant with what's what glorifies God. Yeah, you like you have the right pieces
27:07
to make the right, the right house. And I know there's a lot of construction and building stuff
27:12
in Nehemiah, but we're talking about that kind of in a higher level. But again, I don't want to,
27:16
before we move on, I don't want you guys listening to this to miss out on those first 27 verses just
27:21
buzzing through it. And we'll probably talk about this in latter chapters that we have coming up.
27:26
These were real people. So we don't know their names right now, but just think about in the
27:31
community that you live in, whether you're super connected, go to the chamber meetings and, you
27:36
know, you participate in local elections. There are people in your community that are not known
27:41
outside your community, but they do heroic things. You know, you think about, you know, the baseball
27:48
coach in middle school that took a liking to one particular kid that's kind of having a rough
27:54
go of it puts a little bit more effort into, you know, the jujitsu coach that sees that kid that's
27:58
going down the wrong path. And instead of handing him, you know, a bag of weed to sell, you're handing
28:03
him a ghee and telling him, you know, hey, I'll see you, you know, four times a week. And it's
28:07
those, those unsung heroes. This is a list of unsung heroes. How do we know they're unsung?
28:12
This is the only place that most of these people are mentioned, right? And again, how many people
28:18
this goes back to your point earlier, Caleb, like how many of these people were not like,
28:24
we're not mentioned here, we're not listed here, because 84 people didn't build that wall. It was
28:28
at least hundreds, right? If not more. There's a continuation on that too, is that these men
28:34
specifically were their names were written down 2500 years and we're still saying their names
28:40
or trying to say their names. But how many was there a dozen people that were underneath each one
28:47
of these men? Was there a hundred? Was there a thousand? Yeah. But these men, whether they were
28:52
born into a place of influence or whether their leadership skills earned them a place of influence,
28:59
there were countless men and women that were underneath them that did that work. But their
29:05
names were the ones that were chosen to be written down that we're still reading 2500 years later.
29:10
And what was it about them that caused them? What leadership skills did they consistently put out
29:17
there that allowed their names to come to the forefront of this covenant document to be able
29:22
to be written down? And I'm just causing us in our own lives to be able to go, is it our family of
29:28
six that are underneath us? Is it the businesses that we have? Is it the community of friends that
29:35
we have? Is it our Sunday school? What is the group of people that are underneath us that we are
29:40
boldly leading, caring for, protecting that we're almost held accountable for? The covenant that
29:47
was made, their names were the ones that were written down. I think that's a great point.
29:51
And I think as men, we tend to diminish the breadth of our impact. And we don't think about it. We
30:00
think about our immediate family sometimes. But maybe we don't think about it like, okay, I'm teaching
30:05
this lesson to my eldest. So he won't be a knucklehead. But then he's going to carry that lesson with
30:10
him to school or to the team that he's on or to the church group. And because kids don't know
30:16
morality, right? They don't they can view it, they can learn it, but they don't just just know, oh,
30:23
this is right, this is wrong, or this particular situation is bad. This one's good. We have some
30:27
innate feelings, but they're going to be an extension of the morality of your household.
30:33
Oh, when your kid has offered a drink, when they're very, very young, why are they going to drink
30:38
that or why are they not going to drink that? Is it an immediate nose? Is it a delayed nose?
30:42
Is it a delayed yes? Is it an immediate yes? All that is kind of the residue of what you've
30:47
taught them inside the household. Yes, they are beings that have free will that can do whatever
30:51
they want. They can choose to make whatever decisions go down, whatever path they want to.
30:55
But again, at this table, I know a little bit about y'all's individual stories.
30:59
There's residue of the decisions that you made growing up. That is a direct
31:03
like descendant of the family that you were raising. I mean, Caleb, right from the beginning,
31:08
you talked about how your family was basically following a cult that had to have some impact on
31:14
you, on your marriage, on how you talked to your kids, whether it's like you're trying to be the
31:18
photo negative of that exact worldview, or you're trying to like model it, if that makes sense.
31:24
Yeah, absolutely. And you think about the way this actually kind of reminds me of verse,
31:29
I think it's first or second Timothy at the beginning is that the things that I've taught
31:33
you, Paul's talking to Timothy, the things I've taught you, take them and teach them to others so
31:38
that they can pass them on. The thing that's so cool about that verse is that you're talking
31:42
about four generations, right? It's the things I've taught you that you can teach somebody else
31:48
to pass them on. Even if you can't name the person who did the initial lesson.
31:51
Right. Exactly. So, you know, I think about things like children and the way that we're
31:58
going to raise them, right? I mean, the decisions that we make is going to impact for generations
32:04
absolutely. So, I mean, even just recently in our personal life, there's a family that kind of a
32:10
bad decision on a marriage, right, that we'll see later, they're marrying someone that doesn't
32:14
align from a belief standpoint. And it's in shambles right now. I mean, it's going to be
32:21
generational impact, right? So, I mean, you know, I grew up in a moral home. We were not involved in
32:27
the truth at the beginning, but you know, at least the commitment, the covenant to a spouse was there
32:33
and praise God, they found the Lord together. But yeah, I mean, you know, we're seeing a lot
32:38
of things that you're in in chapter 10 that, you know, if we can live by these covenants and
32:43
then your family's going to reap the benefits of those for generations.
32:47
And we'll see more of that, especially as we get into the latter chapters, I do.
32:51
Just to set up for the next part. Yeah. I mean, that's the point of being a father is to set up
32:56
some sort of direction for your children. And I believe that's what we did in the past with Nehemiah
33:02
when they were going over the covenant and they were going over, you know, they had their
33:06
sackcloth and they were mourning what they've done in their past. And then they took that message
33:13
to the leaders and the leaders took that back to their families. And so we have to take that message,
33:18
the message that we have of Christ to our families, like we have to disciple our kids.
33:22
And I think that's what these leaders are doing here is they're discipling because we'll come back
33:25
when we come back into this and we start everything, we're going to talk about them knowing the law.
33:30
Now everybody knows the law. Everybody knows what is right because it's been said to them.
33:34
And then how do they take that and practice it? When we see that right when we get in,
33:38
let's go ahead and get in the next section, starting in the verse 28, verse 28 through the end of
33:43
Nehemiah 10. This is essentially the entire community that they're pledging. This is how it was in
33:52
the Reformation Study Bible. This is how they worded it. The entire community is pledging their
33:56
fidelity to the covenant. And you know, you see in verse 28, you know, they're talking about
34:03
demanding divorce from their pagan spouses to bring themselves closer to the covenant.
34:09
And then there was another group of people that just never married what they would call heathens
34:14
that were from an idolatrous people. And then as you continue on through the end of Nehemiah 10,
34:20
you see more of these standards that are set forth. But I'm going to go back to just the overall
34:24
idea as to what's happening here in the latter part of Nehemiah 10. This is an entire community
34:31
of people that are individuals have individual families, individual jobs, individual opinions,
34:38
wire rings, personalities, but they're all pledging their fidelity in a singular direction.
34:43
Now as we're going to see coming up in some later chapters, they did it somewhat horribly,
34:49
depending on the circumstances. But as of right now, we all live in Edmond, Oklahoma.
34:55
Okay, nice little suburb of Oklahoma City. We all like it here. It's safe. A lot of, you know,
35:00
there's high property taxes. A lot of people here have degrees and there's low crime.
35:04
And yeah, it's a great place to raise a family. It's been named by, you know, a couple of dozen
35:08
different, you know, periodicals that were one of the best places where the best place in America
35:12
to raise a family. Great. Is there any singular issue where the entire community of Edmond would
35:20
point in one direction without like default and attack that one direction in a covenantal way?
35:27
I can't think of one thing. Like, you know, you talk to statisticians, they're like,
35:31
you cannot get a hundred percent of people to agree on anything. Ice cream is delicious.
35:38
Rain sucks. Or just whatever the thing is, you will, you'll get 95%. That's kind of the ceiling
35:44
threshold. There's always going to be that 5% or more of people that are just not going to go
35:49
with the flow. But it seems like at least at the time of the writing of this part or the description
35:54
of the history of this part, that that's exactly what was happening in Israel. I find that incredible
35:59
actually. To your point, I mean, you see, like, even Edmond, right, how many churches do we have?
36:04
Yeah, you can't throw them off. You can't even agree, even if you set aside everybody that
36:09
says they don't believe, right? Yeah. Okay, now we're just looking at believers. We can't agree
36:13
on anything either. So, I mean, I think what's cool about this covenant and it, it does, to me,
36:20
it wreaks up a little bit of like, we just went to church camp and we're really pumped up. So,
36:24
we're going to say that we're going to agree to a hundred percent of the law, you know,
36:28
which obviously we see is not going to work out. But what they're saying is, in short, is that we
36:33
want to be, we know that we're God's people. We want to be set apart, right? We want to be held
36:38
to a different standard. And the standard is the law at this time. So, I mean, that to me is kind
36:44
of what what rings true. But even, like I said, even within the church, it's like, we can't even
36:48
agree on one that we want to be set apart based on a law, but then what is the law. So, I think
36:53
it's pretty cool to look at if you look at the Amaya as a whole and you're looking at the wall,
36:57
we're building a wall. And then after they read the covenant, they're building another wall within
37:02
themselves, a wall that's steadfast by God. That's good. And if you, if we look back at later chapters,
37:07
you're going to see that wall start to get cracks. You know, and I think that's something that we
37:11
have to look at in our Christian life. It's like, hey, man, we were at that summer camp. We were on
37:15
fire for God. And then we got back into regular life and the cracks start to form. And how do we
37:21
use God to cover those cracks? You know, not to put too much onto conditions, but I look at the
37:29
condition of the people at this time, and EMI, they were scattered, they were broken, they were
37:34
destitute. There was no safety that was there for the people as a whole. You know, what were they
37:42
facing? You know, did they own land where they were able to grow crops, they were selling their
37:46
kids to be slaves? I mean, there was so much that they were there, they had nothing. And then I
37:51
compare that to Edmund, we have everything, we have access, we have an abundance. We, there's no
37:58
scarcity of food, there's no fear of safety for the most part that's there. And I think it's
38:04
indicative to as our comforts increase, sometimes our dependency on God, sometimes it's easy for us
38:11
to just kind of pull back and we become lazy and we don't understand the importance of having a
38:16
covenant and being in submission to the Father and whatnot. And so I'm not trying to put too much on
38:21
the conditions at the time that caused them to have this, but also bringing it into the conversation.
38:25
No, I, I think you're spot on. And I don't think you could, you could be too forceful with that
38:30
point. And this is why how many people do you know that live in Edmund have ever had to pray the
38:35
prayer, give us this day our daily bread. And so I'm reminded again, the, the honorary fifth spiritual
38:42
member of this podcast is Joby Martin. So he talks about in sermons fairly often that he went to
38:47
Uganda. And it was him and some other American pastors and preachers and they were helping teach,
38:53
you know, members of the Ugandan church, how to do this, that and whatever. And the, the, the
38:59
conversation came up and here Joby is with his team and they're thinking, man, it's got to be just
39:04
so hard to be a Christian in Uganda. Like it's got to be darn near impossible and possible.
39:08
And the, he told that to one of the pastor didn't, he goes, no, it's almost impossible to be an
39:14
American, American Christian. Because like, you know, we don't have the same opulence that you have,
39:20
we don't have the same provision that you guys have like a just, you don't have to rely on God
39:25
at all. And just think about to the point you were making, Robert, it's like, okay, just think
39:30
about food. Just think about food. How many of us have killed an animal with our bare hands,
39:36
have taken the meat off the bone and have put it in some sort of preservation manner, whether
39:40
salting it or putting it in the freezer at our house. That's not something that everyone does.
39:45
There's a good amount of hunters around here, but not something that everyone does.
39:49
We, we go to a store that's air conditioned and it's perfect in there. It's 71 degrees,
39:54
no matter what time of year it is. And you go and the someone else has killed your animal,
39:59
they have cut it up, they put it into packaging, wrapped in cellophane and all you have to do is
40:02
buy it. And we're so disjointed from that. And I'm not talking about this in like a, you know,
40:08
prepper sense like, Oh, what if what if society, you know, falls down and now you don't know where
40:12
to get chickens? Like that's not the way I'm talking about it. But it's like, we have no
40:16
connection to the difficulty of life. And if you think about technology, you know, from the first
40:23
time you had AOL 56K modem and you had instant messenger to where we are today, every single
40:28
thing that the smartphone can do is to make our lives easier. And this is kind of an argument
40:32
against the people that are, you know, big into universal basic income and those types of things.
40:36
It's like, when life gets easier, we don't get better. Like we get dumber and lazier. Like we
40:42
literally have the totality of history and human knowledge to this point in our phones,
40:49
one Google search away. And we're also stupid. And we just we don't spend our time on the things of
40:55
God, we don't spend our time trying to build things that is going to lead to human flourishing.
40:59
And so I feel like I'm preaching now, but that's that's the thing that I see here. So I think
41:03
your point still kind of echo where you're at. There's this book, The Insanity of God by Nick
41:07
Ripken. It's an alias that he uses because when he was in those third world countries where it's
41:13
illegal to preach the gospel, they didn't want to use his real name as the provony. He has another
41:18
one that's the insanity of obedience. And I've never read a book that shifted my perspective more
41:24
of how the gospel flourishes in the most dangerous of environments, you know, where people are
41:32
persecuted the most, where, you know, they're up until death is where sometimes you will see
41:40
the most fervent faith where you'll see the most dedicated people that are the most passionate and
41:46
loving about spreading the gospel. And I wish I had some of the quotes right now from from his,
41:52
but it framed really, really well what you were talking about. It really means something, you know,
41:57
in places like that, that's, you know, and where there's where there's a lot of adversity. It's like,
42:02
that kind of blows up your worldview when when we're talking about, you know, a lord that
42:08
created everything that you can, that loves you that you can trust in and have eternal life, right?
42:14
I mean, that it doesn't, it doesn't have anything to do with like the circumstance. And I feel like
42:19
the like we're all talking about is the distractions just abound where we are. And I think that the
42:24
challenge when I think about this, I mean, I'm always thinking about my, my kids when it's
42:29
around this kind of topic. But then, you know, pretty quickly, I go right back to myself that
42:34
it's like I want to, I want to figure out how to get rid of, you know, screens and different
42:38
things for them so that they kind of understand how normal people live, right? Not like normal
42:44
people like, but how can we be set apart like in chapter 10, like they're, they're wanting to be.
42:49
So, you know, I come right back to myself on like, okay, if I'm going to ask them to do certain
42:54
things, then why am I not going to do those things myself? Like major gut check.
42:58
When I look back at this and seeing the certain things that they do, I mean, there's a purpose
43:02
behind the things that they're doing. There's a purpose behind why they want to not give their
43:10
daughters to or sons to the peoples of the land or take daughters for their sons. And it's because
43:17
they want to preserve their culture. You know, what we see back in Solomon's time is Solomon had
43:24
that harem of women and Queen Bathsheba came in and he started building temples within around
43:30
Jerusalem to honor the gods of his wife. And so these guys taking in wives who are teaching their
43:38
children not Hebrew, teaching them another language, you know, the only way to read the law is through
43:44
Hebrew. So, you know, if those kids can't read Hebrew or speak Hebrew, their law dies out,
43:50
their covenant dies out. And so then their people die out. And so there's a method to their madness
43:55
in this. Yeah, I think there's certainly a method, but also you bring up a good point as you describe
43:59
different things, certainly in the Old Testament, and Christians get this wrong as well. But this
44:04
is mainly a sword that is wielded by people that hate Christians hate the Bible, that type of thing.
44:08
Just because you see it in the Bible, that does not mean it's prescriptive. So there are certain
44:13
things in the Bible that are descriptive, but not prescriptive to you in in 2023 in America.
44:20
There are things in the Bible that were something from God that was to a particular
44:26
people group at a particular time for a particular purpose. And so there are so many things like
44:30
people use parts in Nehemiah morons back in the day to say, yeah, this is why we shouldn't have
44:35
interracial marriage. Look at the book in Nehemiah. It's like, okay, you're a moron. Yeah, like that's
44:41
that's again, I rail against univariate analysis all the time. You go one layer deep and then you
44:46
build out your worldview. And yeah, go ahead, right? I'm just saying like when you look at that,
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I don't look at that. I look at a descriptive. Yeah. But then I look at the prescriptive point
44:55
in the New Testament of 2nd Corinthians, 614 to don't be unequally yoked, right? With an
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unbeliever. And that's what they're they're basically unequally yoked with a person who doesn't
45:04
believe in God and believes in other gods. And so that's it's not talking about the race,
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right? It's talking about who are they serving? And again, this, there's a different thing
45:14
between race and ethnicity. And in terms of kind, like we're all part of the same human kind. And
45:20
but yeah, go ahead. If you look at the limalec, a limalec left and went to Moab during a this is
45:26
during the story of Ruth and took his sons and his wife. And he wanted to leave the there was a
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famine going on or or something like that. And so he wanted to leave. He left, but he didn't he
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did he went against what God had called out in this covenant. So he died his sons died because
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they married Moabite women. Well, look at Ruth who is a Moabite. She left with Naomi. I believe
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it's her name. I might be wrong. I believe it's Naomi. And went back to Jerusalem and served God.
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And so Boaz wasn't unequally yoked because when he met her and he married her,
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she believed in the God of the Israelites. That's good. Yeah, she was she was already
46:09
converted. Yes. At that point. Yeah. And so it had nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
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It had to do with an alignment with God and who does she serve? That's good.
46:17
And that's I guess a caution to any listeners out there because maybe you you grew up in a family
46:22
that you thought was fundamentalist, but they were actually just really bad at reading the Bible
46:27
really bad at understanding it. And so maybe they again go back to several hundred years ago
46:32
when people were saying that the African slave trade shadow slavery in America was okay because
46:38
slavery was described in the Bible seemingly in positive light. It's like you only get there by
46:43
mental gymnastics. You'll only get there by literally exaging the scripture improperly,
46:48
which is to say that you're isolating it, you're putting your own opinion into the scripture so
46:52
that it comports with your worldview. And as we wrap up Nehemiah 10 here, I want to go all the way
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to the very last sentence of Nehemiah because I think this kind of puts a bow on everything that
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came before it. So from verse 28 through the beginning of verse 39, the very last words of Nehemiah
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10 are we will not neglect the house of our God. Now you might think of that in terms of like,
47:16
okay, let's say you have a commercial building. And there are things you need to do to upkeep
47:20
that commercial building. And you just got out of a staff meeting where you described, okay,
47:24
here's, you know, how often we're going to get the windows, you know, clean. Here's how often we're
47:29
going to have a plumber come out just make sure things are going good. Here's how often we're
47:32
going to do this, this, and this. And we're just going to end the meeting with, hey, we're not going
47:35
to neglect our building. We bought it. We're going to we're going to upkeep it. That's what people
47:39
will read this as and they'll be like, oh, they're just saying, yeah, you know, this is the summation
47:43
of our list moving on. It's way, way, way bigger than that. We will not neglect the house of our God.
47:49
The Reformation Study Bible said it this way, renewed spiritual commitment of the people to the
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house of God, renewed spiritual commitment. And then my ESV study Bible said this is fostering
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covenant faithfulness. Because it's one thing to list things and check boxes. And it's another
48:08
thing to point your spiritual commitment and faithfulness in a consistent direction. Again,
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not as a person, not as a company, as a people, which, which went far beyond the walls that Nehemiah
48:20
had just rebuilt. I guess that's a big deal at the end of this chapter. Well, I think it's when
48:25
you look at that, neglect the house of God. I mean, they rebuilt the temple. And so now that
48:29
during the book of Ezra, that's described, I think, Ezra six or seven. And so they've rebuilt
48:33
the temple. And so now they've enacted a temple tax of a third of a shackle. And if you think about
48:38
it, if you look back at the original law, and even at the time Jesus returns, it's now half a shackle.
48:43
But they were so poor and trying to get back into the city that they did a third of a shackle.
48:47
And that's to fill the storehouses. I mean, you've got to have burnt offerings. You've got to have
48:52
oil. You've got to have all these things and the goal of filling God's house and filling his temples
48:58
with the storeroom. You fill those storerooms. And we're going to see in in chapter 13, how they
49:04
neglect God's house again. When it comes to one of their own enemies, it's crazy.
49:10
I think there's there's there's so much good here in Nehemiah, or where you can say some are.
49:15
I was going to add on to it, just kind of wrapping up the neglect of the house of our God. When you
49:19
look through the actual covenant and the terms to the covenant, there's 16 terms to that covenant.
49:25
And maybe the first nine of them are all in reference to God's law, observe and do the commandments
49:32
of the Lord, keep his ordinance in his statues, not give their daughters and wives as foreigners.
49:37
Those are in alignment with relational. They have nothing to do with how to either
49:42
repair the house or to even keep it by tithing or to keep the first fruits coming in to feed the
49:49
people that are caring for the facilities themselves. You know, that the neglecting of the house of
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our God, the house of the Lord, that Tommy Tinney he had one years ago, it was a beautiful
50:00
rendition about the house of God. And but it talked about wherever the arc of the covenant
50:06
went was the house, you know, kind of because God's presence that was there. And so I think
50:12
that really wraps in not just it's easy to look at the house of our God and think of it as the
50:18
walled city that was there or the temple that had been rebuilt. But it really is that covenant
50:24
in alignment with God. One thing that and we'll see what what happens to you. I mean,
50:28
they talk about the house of God throughout these chapters. But one thing that I thought
50:33
that was pretty neat that stood out was, you know, we're talking about this covenant that they made
50:36
and there were 84 signatures on it. One of the commentaries I read that it's, you know, all these
50:42
and one of the things that we try and tell our kids to is like these, these stories all pointed
50:46
to Jesus, right? And this covenant required all these signatures. But they're the reminder that
50:53
that I read was that there's a new covenant coming obviously. And this points to Jesus in that way.
50:59
And it's the quote that I had here was that it would not require the signatures of a whole
51:02
community of people. It would require just one signature in the blood of Christ ushering in this
51:07
new covenant that would actually change their hearts. So I think that's just kind of a reminder
51:11
of like, listen, this is the this is the sins of people. This is the the gravity that we have that
51:18
we can't keep these covenants, right? But the new covenant is coming. So I see that 100% because
51:25
when you're looking at a lot of this stuff, like like Robert said, it's relational and how we can
51:30
create wisdom from relationships, but then it also goes over, you know, ceremonial law,
51:34
a lot of ceremonial laws taking place during this time as well. And that's what Christ came to
51:39
to be our last ceremonial sacrifice. Yeah, I just got to be honest with you guys. I loved this
51:45
discussion today because how much of again, this is a we've had a lot of guys. And this was never
51:50
actually the point, I guess, of the forging table, but it's kind of ended up being that way.
51:54
Guys all over the country are sending me messages. Hey, I started a forging table or I started a
51:58
study like your study. And no one at this table is a professional Christian. Okay,
52:03
we're all lay people. We have different translations of the Bible that we read. We have different
52:07
commentaries that we like different preaching styles and people that we listen to on podcasts
52:11
or whatever. And just think about everything that we were able to in under an hour, like pull out of
52:17
the scripture that at first glance, our first reading is like, there's some lists and all right,
52:23
they, you know, third of a shekel, I don't even know how much that is in modern day, like is that
52:26
like a third of a coffee or I don't know what that is. And this is how you can study the Bible.
52:31
So guys, as you're studying the Bible individually, but also in a group, just recognize that there
52:37
are things that you can pull out of the text that don't seem like they're there, that you're not
52:40
reading into it incorrectly either. So I think that this was a good idea of that. But we're gonna
52:45
have to leave the discussion for Nehemiah 10 there. But guys, come back here next Sunday where we're
52:49
going to dig into Nehemiah 11, we might even convince Caleb to talk a little bit about the cult that
52:54
his family was in, we might see if we can pull that out of him. But make sure you guys read Nehemiah 11
52:59
before we go next week. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
53:03
Adam Daunton life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges
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Guys, how do we pull off stuff like the forging table? How do we keep the podcast going? How do we
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
54:24
mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.