After a bit of a break, Pastor Nate and Jeremy sit down to recap the life verse series and also talk about some future teachings coming up at Restoration.

Hey, there, podcast listeners.

Welcome to the brand new series called.

Behind the Sermon, the reimagined.

We're back from summer vacation.

Summer vacation.

And differing schedules and honestly, just taking a little bit of a breather.

We've had a.

A lot of adjustments and things we've been working on as a staff, so I think we've all caught our breath and we've caught up, and we're rolling full steam ahead.

So we're sitting down.

Yeah.

And podcasting up again.

Sometimes when you're like.

When you have a long list of things you need to work on, the last thing, you're like, you want to pause for an hour and just talk?

It's so hard to, like.

Well, I don't know right now.

So, yeah, we're back.

It.

We're gonna end up doing a whole sermon series recap.

Yeah.

In today's episode, which I can hardly.

Remember two weeks ago, just in life.

So it's gonna be a hard recap.

Yeah.

And I don't have a laptop open to go through all my sermon notes.

That's all right.

But we also have stuff coming up to talk through.

This.

Sunday's fair food Sunday.

We start sidekicks, and we got water baptisms in a couple weeks.

There's been.

Yeah, there's just been a lot going on.

Pastor Steven told me there's been five salvations the last two weeks at the Bethlehem location.

Wow.

One of those people I know signed up to be water baptized on the 13th already.

Yeah.

It's so much to recap, it's hard to even.

Yeah.

Hard to even know.

Remind me your name again so I can tell that.

Where are we?

No, I'm here with Pastor Jeremy.

And I'm Pastor Nate, in case you're joining in on the first time or you don't remember our voices, we're.

Yeah.

Pumped to be here.

The life verse series was one that we changed, I think was like, a week and a half before we were supposed to start our next series.

Yeah.

And, yeah, we just made the change.

Felt like that series that was gonna be there, we'll use it in a future time, but this was the one for right now.

And then only six weeks later, we made the right choice.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that was an impactful, impactful series.

A lot of salvation's this series.

I mean, there's the five in Bethlehem.

There was, I think, four through this series in Dover.

Wow.

I think that's right.

Yeah.

And.

Yeah.

So, a lot of salvations, this series.

We don't normally count salvations because it's like the raise your hand.

Right.

And we don't count raised hands because we want to know that people have actually made the decision to follow Jesus.

So we have a higher emphasis on baptisms because baptisms can get you martyred around the world.

Right.

And it costs something.

And to stand in front of the church to have it put online to invite your unsafe friends and family.

We know 95% of the time those people are serious about following Jesus.

So we know, like, hey, these are disciples we're disciple making.

Yeah, that's good.

But when people are at the altar crying, I want to follow Jesus.

Oh, no.

And plus the three at fuse.

Yeah.

Okay.

No, I just remembered one of the four.

Dover.

I thought I was making up the four number, but no, because we had a parent get saved on water baptism Sunday.

Yeah, well, that's something that, again, we don't normally count, but people are coming up to us.

Right.

Yeah.

With tears in their eyes.

Like, hey, I need.

I need.

I need this.

I.

Right.

I need to give my life to Jesus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're not saying, like, baptism is the end all.

It's not like I preached and the piano's going and I'm like, raise your hand.

Right.

Yeah.

Because there's no.

There's nothing fully behind that besides the, like, the start of the journey.

Cause even most of the time, it's like everyone's eyes are closed.

It's really easy to be like, sure.

You know what I mean?

Like, all right, no one's looking.

If I move this arm, the person that invited me won't feel that I moved my arm.

And I remember back in the old days, there'd be people who'd raise their hands every week.

Still.

You still kind of count it.

Who are we to judge whether they meant it this week finally or not?

So just keep counting it.

Yeah, that's funny.

Yeah.

One, I think this last week, I've never seen a guest speaker know so much about our church and not feel like a guest speaker.

Jeremy Yancey did such a good job.

Yeah.

Like, for him to recap the series, I was like, I've never heard a guest speaker put such an emphasis on, like, the series itself.

So it was even.

Even ending the series.

Like, he did such a good job closing it, which I just.

I've never seen a guest speaker do.

I was like, wow, he watched all of those.

He must have.

Unless you just send him notes.

Sometimes we have a guest speaker in and we're like, yeah, you can come in.

We need you to preach in this series.

And we didn't do that to Jeremy Ansey.

He chose to.

But we'll have a guest speaker.

Hey, we need you to preach in this series.

And then they're like, yeah.

Today in their series marriage, open your bibles, and we're gonna talk about the altar of Ebenezer.

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

Yeah.

It must just be that a culture thing.

They just.

That's normally their church vibe.

Right?

Like, I'm just preaching off of the scripture I'm reading.

I don't know, for the guest speakers.

Yeah, for the other guest speakers.

I think for some, they just have a message that they preach, that they bring, and so they're not.

This is not true for everybody.

But some are.

They just have a message that they preach.

So that's pretty common.

It's not bad.

There are some who are like, every message should be brand new.

But the way.

I don't know who talks.

Who's talked about this.

You know, you like to eat your favorite meal.

Yeah.

So that was Jeremy Ansi.

I was thinking it was.

Yeah, that was Jerry Yancy.

Like, why was it your favorite meal?

Because you had it often.

Yeah.

So there's some messages that should be.

Yeah.

Refed, which I agree with.

We've done two or three series.

We've re breached them.

Yeah.

Updating them a little bit, but repreached them.

I don't remember all of them.

But we've done it a couple times.

We'll do it again.

And there's been, like, our core values messages.

Right.

I mean, you can't.

You're trying too hard.

I think if you're.

If it's new every and every Christmas, it's the same thing.

Right?

You're.

You're preaching Christmas.

It's no surprise.

But you also, I know, have the tension of.

You had said once.

Cause normally when we pick a sermon series, we always pick a story in the Bible and a person in the Bible, and there's still that tension of, I wanna make sure I'm just not preaching one scripture to my church 24/7 right, right.

Like, that's my family.

We ate chicken dive van like every other day.

What is that?

It's great.

I don't know.

My mom's gonna listen to this and be like, what?

But it's like chicken.

Every frozen vegetable you could put in there and cream of chicken.

You top it with cheese and breadcrumbs.

You bake it.

And I think it was just quick and easy.

But I swear we had that every other night, and that wasn't a favorite meal because it was like, this is too much of one thing.

Yeah.

So I don't even know if that's what it's.

That's what my family called it.

Chicken dyvant chicken.

Devon chicken.

I don't know.

I don't know either.

There you go.

Wow.

We'll put the cooking recipe in the show notes.

Thanks for the great idea.

People listening like, that sounds awesome.

Not every day.

So, yeah.

One thing I loved about this series is you took a lot of verses and put context back into them.

I mean, that was, like.

I wasn't thinking that that was what the series was gonna do.

I just thought, we'll pick a verse and we'll.

And we'll break it down.

But you really had a goal in a lot of them of, like, this is how we're misusing this scripture.

I mean, you focused a lot on that in I can do all things.

Yeah.

And Jeremiah 20 911.

Fear plans to prosper you, not to harm you.

It was a similar thing where in the.

What was the one you just said?

I just read what you wrote, so I was looking.

Oh, I can do all things to crash these strengths.

Yeah.

That one is underused.

Yes.

Like, it's so much more powerful than we use it for plans.

Jeremiah 20 911.

That one.

Comment.

Comment.

You know, social commentary is it's used too much, and we shouldn't use it.

And my point on that one was, no, there is even greater truth.

Yeah.

And so you should be using it.

Don't use it less.

Don't let people peer pressure you to not using it.

They were in terrible circumstances, and God reminds them, this is the plan.

So it's the plan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so good.

It's so good.

I'm trying to think through.

There was something else that even that you had hit on and that Jeremy Ansi hit on, too, that I really liked of.

I swear, you hit on it as well.

But he had talked through, like, the idea of some of these scriptures.

We always put ourselves as the hero, but a lot of them are pointing a lot towards Jesus.

And you had shared, like, this scripture is not a verse about you.

It's a verse about his kingdom.

Like, all of those things.

I thought that was really interesting.

And then when he shared, too, of, like, we're not David fighting Goliath.

We're the terrified person in the background, like, shaking at the knees, and Jesus is the one fighting the giants again.

It just throws everything, like, it's crazy how many almost, like, cultural versions of scripture that we just take in of, like, oh, yeah, that's what it means.

Because that's what people keep using it for.

Wall art or something else.

You know what I mean?

And our.

I don't know.

I've never done any research on this, but I assume this is pretty recent in our culture and maybe just to american culture.

But what does this scripture mean to you?

Is a flawed question to be asking.

And I think because we ask it so much, we just put our own meaning into it.

Philippians 413 means, I'm gonna.

I can.

I'm gonna.

I can do my graduate program.

Yeah.

And so I can be a doctor.

Okay, sure.

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah.

But it's so much more than that.

And that's the.

Well, I just don't believe that means that.

Well, it doesn't matter what you've said.

I don't think it means.

I don't think that means sin.

I don't think it means hell.

I don't think it.

Well, it's not about what it means to you.

That's why we study.

We have Bible colleges and we have pastors and we have teachers and we have scholars, and we have written tradition, and we have early church fathers, and we have the word right, because it has nothing.

You don't have get to have an opinion.

Yeah.

On what it means.

Just based off of what you're reading.

We need to study it and try to understand what it means.

But even in our study, we miss it.

And that was part of.

Yancey talked about the.

The messiah, Jesus Christ.

Jesus, Messiah.

And they were reading scripture, right.

Jesus is hitting one prophecy after another, and then they're like, it's not what.

I wanted it to mean.

Nah, he wouldn't die.

He wouldn't do this.

He wouldn't look like this, he wouldn't act like this.

And so, no, he's not.

He's not the messiah for me.

Yeah.

Now, the.

But there was some.

Would you say that there's, like.

I forget what study method.

It's called.

Soap.

No, that's scripture.

Application, observation.

I can't say application prayer.

But there is one.

So there is one.

What is it?

Speaking to you.

Yeah.

Is a better.

I had heard one that you read it and you write.

It was like, their time, my time, and, like, all time.

It was like this thing of, like, first you read it put it into their context, write out what it means for them, and then it's.

So what does in that light mean for you?

Right.

So that's a different thing, because they're starting with, what does the scripture mean?

Yeah.

So what does the scripture mean?

So, now, how does this verse apply to me?

What do I think that, you know?

What is this verse speaking to me?

I don't remember the flawed question.

They even opened with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I only half a cup of coffee this morning.

Yeah.

What is.

What does this verse mean to you?

Yeah.

So it will mean the wrong thing if you don't know what it means.

Yeah.

So I'd be like, oh, my word.

I came home and it was so romantic.

Someone wrote on my mirror, you're next.

I'm so excited.

How.

I don't know.

And then it's a serial killer.

It was written in blood.

It was not right.

You did not get the meaning behind that.

No, you didn't mean that.

They weren't gonna kill me.

They meant they're gonna take me.

Whatever.

Yeah.

For the lottery.

I'm next.

Yeah.

I think we do that with scripture.

We just say, well, I think it means this.

Yeah, and.

Sure.

But now you get a study.

It doesn't really mean that.

Yeah, yeah.

Too much of one way.

Right?

Like, there's a cool thing on, like, the dwell app where you can say, like, they have these playlists.

It sounds stupid now that I'm trying to describe it.

They have these playlists called I'm feeling, and then it's these tempted, guilty, shame, depressed, whatever.

And then it's a playlist of scripture, but, like, too much of just that.

It makes no sense because they are literally just pulling a bunch of scripture out and putting it in a playlist that, like, should speak to your mood.

And, like, I don't know, I think there are times where it's really good to just have that.

Have scripture going on, but you need, like, a good balance of both in your study.

Cause the other way, like, I went on such a huge binge of, like, bible project teachings, which I love.

I still love them, but they're all context and absolutely zero, like, application for you because he doesn't wanna lead people to, like.

He wants them to find their own conclusion, I think.

But if that's, like, all you listen to, you end up just knowing a bunch of stuff and having no connection to your life.

You know what I mean?

So I feel like you need the both, but.

I feel like.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Something just popped to mind, based on what you said, but I can't source it from my mind to know where it came from.

Search.

Search.

Yeah.

Anyway, we can do that with all lots of different things, and we can use it to allow ourselves to have faults.

One thing that came to mind while we were talking is you always hear, like, it lists all the people in the Bible's failures.

And I think, like, hey, everybody fails.

Everybody fails.

One of them that's always listed is, Noah was a drunk.

Noah was a drunk.

I always hear it.

Well, Noah got drunk one time.

Yeah, one time.

And he, you know, he lived several hundred years.

Yeah, one time.

He was not a drunk.

Right.

And he did witness the entirety of the human race.

And we don't even know, like, if it was on purpose or not.

Right.

Am I drinking to drown my sorrows?

Like, God drowned?

That's sinful.

Are drinking for that?

Am I drinking, like, there is some study that he just.

They ran out of rainwater.

It was all salt water.

And all they had left was.

Everything was different.

It was a new climate.

It was new.

And, yeah, it could have been.

It hit you harder on top of the mountain.

It reminds me of when one of my siblings in laws gave me kombucha.

That was definitely fermented way too long.

Yeah, yeah.

Not quite kombucha.

And so maybe this guy's friend's mother in law gave him kombucha, so he ended up being drunk, but he was just trying to have gut health.

Right.

That's what it is you're talking about.

I didn't get drunk, by the way, just in case I implied that.

Right.

You're talking about, like, the meme that was going.

Or, like, the.

The picture that's going around.

Right.

That shows all of the failures.

Well, no, it.

What?

I'm not sure of the current one.

I just know it's a talking point.

That's, like, a thing people do if.

They'Ve been doing it for 20 years.

Got you.

Yeah.

They're still going strong on that.

You see stuff like that all the time.

And the one thing I don't like it is they put these guys failures as their identity.

Yeah.

That was not their identity.

Yeah.

Not at all.

They had sinned, but they repented.

Right.

Their identity is Christ.

My identity is not drunk.

Right.

Post Jesus.

That's not my identity.

Right.

After repentance, that's totally, like, they're just.

Trying to lower the bar.

Like, that's what it feels like.

You're not too bad.

Like, look at all these people we think are awesome.

Which is such a lowering of the bar.

Yeah, yeah.

Which of the.

Which of the weeks or what point from Jeremy's message.

Is there anything that stuck with you the most?

Yeah, let me.

Let me go through my notes.

I mean, there's a lot of it that did.

I mean, that was, like, so much packed into, like, it was a longer sermon than we've probably had, but so.

Oh, I should talk about that.

What?

That.

I think he preaches 70 minutes.

70 minutes at his church.

I definitely watch messages of his that he went that long, so I knew he was going to have a hard.

Time in the 25.

Yeah.

Which he's not supposed to talk that long at his church, either.

And so he's like, the kids workers and the parking lot workers are always so mad at me.

Yeah.

Because I'm just messing up yet to get people out so the next crew can come in.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

But.

But it was so good, right?

It was like 50 minutes, which, yeah, we can get over when he wasn't dragging it down in stories that didn't make sense or, like, back.

Back at this church.

Like, whatever.

It wasn't anything like that.

It was so jam packed with so much.

So it's hard to pull out.

Like, oh, man.

How much did he prove?

But I'm hoping, like, that sermon in general, there's a lot of people that struggle with trusting the word of God that I know.

Haley and I are sending this message to, like, hey, here's a lot of really deep thought about it.

Like, him.

You know, I've always heard from a case for Christ that whole thing of, like, the.

The history we teach in schools has less backing than the scripture.

Yeah.

Like, there's so many more shreds of evidence of scripture.

So I just thought it was cool that he was just completely, like, blowing through all of these.

All of these analogies.

I think that was the best one.

And then just his opening question, too, of just, like, what is your final authority on life?

Is it the people around you?

Is it your friends?

So all those things, like, yeah, it's just.

I loved how jam packed it was.

It's definitely one you have to, like, you have to revisit because it was, like, apologetics 101 just, like, gone through.

So I think that was a big standout for me.

Like, it's such a good resource now to have, like, just a quick send of, like, here's why we entrust the Bible.

Yeah.

So that was.

That was great.

What about for you?

I, you know, the statement he made what point was it?

But the Bible has survived all attacks.

Yeah, that was his last point.

The Bible survived all attacks.

And to think about for.

I'm trying to think, when was the first copy of the Old Testament?

I think the oldest written book we have is job.

But then the Pentateuch after that.

So how long have those been attacked to be discredited?

Yeah, so true.

Erased, destroyed.

And then the New Testament, you know, the roman government tried, the jewish leadership tried hard, and the chinese communist party tried it.

The Russian, the Soviet Union tried it.

There are other countries currently trying it.

And yet it's still going.

Yeah.

It's still being.

Still going.

It's still growing.

It's still being found.

It's still changing lives.

Miracles are still happening.

You can't stop it.

Yeah.

It cannot be erased.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I loved, I loved his point to of like, the years between when it was written and our earliest copy.

Like, him talking through that because he brought that up.

I think he brought that up with job because he started with like, the oldest.

Aristotle was this year.

Yeah, but there was only 50 years, between 50 to 100, I think.

Yes, 50 to 100 somewhere around there.

And all of it.

Because, like the, the gospel of John and revelation, that was written by John, there's like 40 or 50 or 60 years between those writings.

He was much older later in life.

Right.

Revelation.

Yeah.

And those especially a lot of the New Testament, the years between are like, they're definitely people around.

That would be like.

I don't know about that.

That doesn't seem, you know, that's not what I remember.

So.

Yeah, I loved.

I loved that point.

It was a good cap on the whole series.

One thing that I loved about his preaching style, he reminded me of the guy from police academy.

Yeah.

He's so good at sound effects that we had some teenagers behind us that just went, man, why is he so good at those noises?

He was totally like that kid that just always was trying to learn how to make good sound effects.

And it totally works for him now to keep attention.

If you ever start to zone out because he's in history, it's like, wait, is he making that noise right now?

But his energy was something else.

Just such a ball of energy.

And then packed in so much wisdom.

Yeah, it was just nuts.

Nuts.

It was a lot of fun.

It was good to have him here all weekend.

It's possible he'll might come once or twice next year.

Oh, sweet.

And we'll keep that rhythm up for a little bit.

That's so great.

It was good to have him here.

Well, as we get close to ending our first podcast back the year, do you have any other things from that series that you.

No, I think, like, we shared, like, to really re listen and to get that deeper emphasis on those scriptures and even now to think through what's something that I would make a life verse.

And I feel like if you listened well in this series, you've been given, like, the tools to really dissect if you're using your own life verse.

Well, yeah.

And so hopefully, I'm hoping that's kind of a lens that.

I'm hoping people have a life verse.

Yeah.

Have one they cling to that they hold on to, for sure.

Yeah.

And a lot of those ones that are popular, that now they'll be substantial.

Yeah.

It's not just a painting on the wall.

It's an anchor in the sea to hold on to.

And, yeah.

It's so good to pull toward and to hang.

To hang on to.

To survive any storm.

I got a book recommendation.

Sweet.

Based on the series and the things we talk through, it's how to read the Bible for all it's worth, written by Gordon fee.

Oh, cool.

And so that teaches you, essentially hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is how to interpret.

How to interpret scripture.

Because different parts get interpreted differently.

Yeah.

The letters are pretty easy to interpret.

Right.

The prophetic is harder.

Yeah.

When he was going through, like, the genres.

Yeah.

If you don't know the genre that it's written in, you have no idea.

You have no idea what you're reading or how to read.

Right.

And if you think it's history but it's future, that'll be pretty confusing.

Yeah, yeah, very true.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, we got some exciting things coming up to what we talked about one already.

We didn't talk too much about it.

Yeah.

Fairfood Sunday.

Yeah, this Sunday.

It's a record high amount of fried things.

Just.

Just for the record, we've never had so many fried things for fair food Sunday because we were really worried about breakers here, circuit breakers with all the fried things.

So we had to, like, map out how to plug everything in.

And I was like, man, why didn't we do this last year?

And they're like, well, we only had two fried things last year.

We have, like, five this time.

I know.

We have fried ranch.

That's the only thing I've ever.

Fried ranch, french fries, fried dough, fried oreos.

How many did I just name.

Yeah, the fries.

Like, it's not like anything we advertised, but people just keep coming back for the fries.

It's such a classic.

And then sausage and I forget what else they're doing.

Cotton candy.

Cotton candy, all this stuff.

Wow.

That's gonna be fun.

Yeah.

I'm gonna open up sidekicks this series as well.

Yeah, me too.

I get to.

I gotta pick up my movie clips.

But we.

We've got.

We've got the whole sermon mapped out.

Yes.

Have to pick the clips to go with each part.

Right.

But, yeah, it'll be fun watching movies.

It's reading the Bible, eating food baptisms a week after that.

And I'm pretty sure for sidekicks at least.

No, we talked about it for all locations.

Pretty sure we're kicking off eating something special every Sunday from fair food until the end of this series.

We'll have food, the whole series for sure.

What we have, I don't know, but.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, no promises.

Minimally popcorn, I would think, right?

At the very least.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'll be fun.

Well, guys, thanks for not unsubscribing when we took our hiatus.

Thanks for being here and hope it was worth the.