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13. Bonus #1 Q&A
Episode 13 • Bonus Episode • 25th April 2024 • Stories of a Faithful God • Dave Whittingham
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In our first ever bonus episode, Dave has a Q&A with pastor Andy Martin about the Gospel authors, Christian leadership, God's name and podcasting.

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Transcripts

Dave:

G'day, and welcome to our first ever bonus episode of stories of a faithful God.

Dave:

It's really exciting.

Dave:

We're going to be answering some questions

Dave:

today and looking at some things that have come up in Exodus, and I'm particularly

Dave:

excited because we also have our first ever guest, Andy Martin.

Dave:

G'day, Andy.

Andy:

Hi, Dave. You can tell I'm feeling slightly intimidated.

Andy:

That's scary to be the first ever guest.

Dave:

Have you ever done a podcast before?

Andy:

No.

Dave:

Ok, well, me either.

Dave:

And I've never interviewed anyone on a podcast

Dave:

before, so we're both working it out as we go along.

Dave:

Andy is the minister at my church, and you've got a different accent to me, don't you, Andy,

Dave:

can you give us a bit of background to where you're from?

Andy:

Yes. Yeah. I was born in London and grew up in a bit of.

Andy:

Bit of time in Kenya and then in the UK.

Dave:

Okay. And now you're in Australia.

Dave:

What happened there?

Andy:

Yes. So I had the good fortune to marry an Aussie girl from Orange, and two years ago,

Andy:

we thought we'd make the move over, come and live in Australia for a bit and give our two

Andy:

girls a taste of what it means to be an Aussie.

Dave:

Fantastic.

Dave:

There are plenty of people in church who just

Dave:

love listening to your sermons.

Dave:

Yes, because of the Bible stuff, but also

Dave:

because of your accent.

Dave:

But you keep pointing us to God, so that's

Dave:

really good.

Dave:

Thank you very much for coming on.

Dave:

And we're going to start with a question that's been sent in by Becky.

Dave:

Thank you so much for sending it in, Becky.

Dave:

Becky wanted to know some more information

Dave:

about the gospel writers.

Dave:

Who are they?

Dave:

Where have they come from? Can we trust them?

Dave:

Has anyone else told us about them so that we can have a bit more information?

Dave:

Do you want to kick us off with some things there?

Andy:

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Andy:

I guess, first of all, this is such an

Andy:

important question, isn't it? So, Becky, thanks for asking this question.

Andy:

The gospels are our primary source for knowing who Jesus is.

Andy:

And so I guess we've got to ask that kind of question because we need to know that what we

Andy:

read in the gospels is true and it tells us the true things that Jesus said and did so

Andy:

that we can know Jesus.

Andy:

So that's why it's so important.

Andy:

We've got four, haven't we? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Andy:

And two of the writers give us a really specific answer to how they wrote it, what

Andy:

they were doing.

Andy:

So at the beginning of Luke's gospel, Luke

Andy:

says very clearly, he tracked down eyewitness eyewitnesses to what Jesus did and said,

Andy:

because he wanted his readers to be absolutely sure that what they were reading was the

Andy:

truth.

Andy:

And actually, that gives us a window into what

Andy:

the four gospel writers were doing.

Andy:

Three of them were eyewitnesses, Matthew, Mark

Andy:

and John.

Andy:

And they saw Jesus in action.

Andy:

They heard him, and they were so convinced by what Jesus said and did, they came to believe

Andy:

that he really is the son of God, the eternal word of God, and that they wanted to follow

Andy:

him.

Andy:

And John tells us at the end of his gospel,

Andy:

again, that he wrote this all down so we could know the truth about Jesus and follow him,

Andy:

too.

Dave:

Yeah. It's so good, isn't it, that they've left this legacy for us as they grew

Dave:

older.

Dave:

They knew that we needed it, that they

Dave:

wouldn't be around for so long.

Dave:

So you've got Matthew, who's one of the

Dave:

disciples of Jesus.

Dave:

John, also one of the disciples of Jesus.

Dave:

One of the really close disciples.

Dave:

He had his twelve, obviously, but there were

Dave:

the three, weren't there, that sometimes Jesus wandered away with.

Dave:

And John was part of that.

Dave:

Mark.

Dave:

You said Mark was an eyewitness, Mark, yes.

Andy:

It's a little bit trickier with Mark.

Andy:

So many folk think that there's a young man

Andy:

mentioned in Mark's gospel who is Mark himself.

Andy:

When Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, when he's arrested, this young man is

Andy:

described as running away.

Andy:

He was there with Jesus disciples, but he runs

Andy:

away, leaving his cloak in the hands of a soldier.

Andy:

But we do have a letter from a guy called Polycarp, who he was writing around really

Andy:

just after the turn of the first century.

Andy:

Polycarp, we think, knew John the apostle

Andy:

himself.

Andy:

And he wrote a letter talking about the four

Andy:

gospels in a way that suggested these gospels had been accepted as reliable and authentic

Andy:

very early on.

Andy:

And he says in them that Mark wrote down

Andy:

Peter's account.

Andy:

So actually, we think that in Mark's gospel,

Andy:

we have Peter's eyewitness account written down by Mark to preserve it for us through the

Andy:

ages.

Dave:

I love just in what you've said about all these different people, we've got

Dave:

everything that we might want say in a court of law, so we've got eyewitnesses.

Dave:

We've got people who spoke to the eyewitnesses and checked what they said.

Dave:

So Luke went around.

Dave:

He didn't see it himself, but he wanted to be

Dave:

confident and he wanted other people to be confident.

Dave:

And then as the generations went on, you start to get people, you know, those generation die,

Dave:

but you've got someone like Polycarp who says, no, no, I can still tell you the connection

Dave:

for these people.

Dave:

And so we've got that ongoing connection, and

Dave:

so we have a legacy that can be trusted, not just from one person, but from a bunch of

Dave:

people.

Dave:

And we can say, yes, this really is the Jesus

Dave:

who walked on earth.

Dave:

Isn't that exciting?

Andy:

It's incredibly exciting.

Andy:

And perhaps one thing to add to that is that

Andy:

as you read the gospels, and scholars have done lots of analysis on this, too, there's a

Andy:

chap in particular called Richard Baucum at Cambridge in the UK, wrote a book called Jesus

Andy:

and the Eyewitnesses.

Andy:

And he looked at names that crop up in the

Andy:

gospels.

Andy:

He looks at places, and all of this, he says,

Andy:

fits exactly with that first century palestinian context.

Andy:

So the names are the right kind of names you'd have expected for that time.

Andy:

Details that are thrown in are precisely the kind of details you'd expect from an

Andy:

eyewitness.

Andy:

And in fact, he suggests that those people who

Andy:

are named specifically in the gospel accounts are named because they were some of the

Andy:

eyewitnesses that could back up what the gospel writers were writing as well.

Andy:

So that if you heard Peter or sort of John or Matthew later on talking about these things,

Andy:

you could have tracked down Rufus, let's say, or Alexander, other folk mentioned by name in

Andy:

the Gospels.

Andy:

So again, all of that gives us confidence that

Andy:

this really is eyewitness testimony to the events, the words, the deeds of Jesus.

Dave:

Oh, that's fantastic.

Dave:

Can I. I wanted to say thank you.

Dave:

Thanks again, Becky, for sending in that question.

Dave:

Hope it's helpful.

Dave:

If there are other questions, keep sending

Dave:

them in.

Dave:

Can I change track a little bit here?

Dave:

In the episode that we released earlier this week, we looked at Moses and Moses meeting

Dave:

God, and Moses is not in those chapters, at least.

Dave:

Moses is not the great man that we sometimes think of him as.

Dave:

In fact, he kind of begs God not to make him go back to Egypt and lead the people out.

Dave:

And it got me thinking about leadership and church leadership and christian leadership.

Dave:

You're a church minister, Andy.

Dave:

Can you give us some insight when you read

Dave:

those sort of things about Moses, what does that make you think, make you feel about

Dave:

church leadership and your own leadership?

Andy:

Yeah. Thanks, Dave. And thanks, whoever might have asked that question.

Dave:

It's.

Andy:

I think many of us who are in positions of church leadership find Moses a really, a

Andy:

really helpful character to think about.

Andy:

I all too often feel inadequate to the task.

Andy:

It's hard and in Moses, I see someone who says he couldn't speak very well, he didn't want to

Andy:

do it, and yet God still used him to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt.

Andy:

So I take great confidence that I don't need to be an expert at everything.

Andy:

I'm not the one really who is responsible ultimately for the growth of God's church.

Andy:

I trust God to be at work when I do things as best I can, in my weakness, in my inadequacy.

Andy:

I trust God to be at work by his spirit and through his word.

Andy:

And I guess lots of us, maybe you've experienced some of this yourself, but lots of

Andy:

us can expect our church leaders to be perfect, to have everything sorted, to do

Andy:

everything some churches do.

Andy:

All the work seems to be done by the minister.

Andy:

But actually a really healthy view of leadership is that we human leaders are, we're

Andy:

weak, we don't have all the answers.

Andy:

There's lots that we struggle with and it can

Andy:

be tiring and exhausting work.

Andy:

But it's God's church and it's God who builds

Andy:

his church, and he does it using weakness.

Andy:

Sinful people like me.

Dave:

Yeah, it's funny, I've actually made that mistake both with myself and with other

Dave:

people.

Dave:

So with myself, I've sometimes gone into a

Dave:

ministry thinking I am great, I am awesome, I'm going to change the world.

Dave:

And God very quickly reminds me that I am completely incapable of doing that.

Dave:

But yeah, the same comfort of saying, well, actually it's not about me, it's about God.

Dave:

But I've also made that mistake with other church leaders where I think I've put them up

Dave:

on a pedestal and then been surprised when they haven't been as perfect as I've wanted

Dave:

them to be.

Dave:

And God's not shocked by that.

Dave:

He knows they're not perfect.

Dave:

He doesn't expect them to be perfect.

Dave:

The only person who was shocked was me.

Dave:

And so I've got to keep reminding myself who's

Dave:

God and who's doing God's work, but, but is not actually God themselves and to be a bit

Dave:

generous with other people and with myself as well.

Dave:

So, yeah, that really struck me again as I read about Moses.

Dave:

I also said in the last podcast that we do a bit of explanation about the name Yahweh.

Dave:

We talked about how that is related to the name I am or he is.

Dave:

It usually gets translated in our bibles in Lord in capital letters.

Dave:

Do you want to give us a bit of the history of how we've ended up with that as the

Dave:

translation.

Andy:

I'll certainly do my best.

Andy:

Yes.

Andy:

So, way back, I think it's exodus, chapter three around there, isn't it?

Andy:

God tells Moses his name in the Hebrew, I am who I am.

Dave:

Just saying, I could never have said those hebrew words.

Dave:

So thank you very much for saying that.

Andy:

Thank you.

Andy:

A pleasure.

Andy:

The he is bit is yhya.

Andy:

And that became sort of linked in with his

Andy:

name, yahweh.

Andy:

It was the vowels.

Andy:

Y hwh.

Andy:

Sorry, not the vowels, the consonants.

Andy:

Consonants, y hwh.

Andy:

But for the jewish people, God himself is so

Andy:

holy and his name represents him, and so they treated God's name as holy.

Andy:

So they didn't want to actually say the name Yahweh.

Andy:

They didn't even want to write it.

Andy:

Now, hebrew letters, hebrew words are made up

Andy:

of consonants and then the vowels are actually just little dots and dashes above or below the

Andy:

consonants.

Andy:

And so what they did was they used those four

Andy:

consonants and they just didn't write in the Dots, the vowels, so that essentially,

Andy:

whenever God's name was written in Hebrew, it was the y h wh down the track.

Andy:

What happened was they wanted to put in some vowels and they used the vowels from a

Andy:

different HebRew word, adonai, which means lord.

Andy:

And so at the consonants of Yahweh, you have the vowels of AdOnai.

Andy:

And that then was.

Andy:

So that was God's name in the Bible, but it

Andy:

wasn't actually pronounced Yahweh.

Andy:

They said Adonai every time that comes up in

Andy:

the Hebrew.

Andy:

That's where we've translated it as Lord in

Andy:

capital letters.

Andy:

Interestingly enough, for some early readers

Andy:

of the Bible, not sure when this really started, but if you take those consonants and

Andy:

add the vows from Adonai, you get what people read as Jehovah.

Andy:

So Jehovah is actually a kind of made up name that's not really in the Bible, and it was

Andy:

never God's name.

Andy:

It's the consonants of Yahweh with the vows of

Andy:

Adonai.

Dave:

Yeah. I actually met some people who said, oh, no, your Bible is lying to you

Dave:

because it doesn't have this word Jehovah in it.

Dave:

But actually, that was never how it was meant to be pronounced, was it?

Andy:

Hmm.

Dave:

I guess it's interesting.

Dave:

They were so careful, whether they were right

Dave:

or wrong in using, mixing up those words and things.

Dave:

They were so careful to honour God's name, weren't they?

Dave:

They didn't want to bring it into disrepute.

Dave:

Yeah.

Andy:

It is really important, isn't it? I think so.

Andy:

Often I hear people, and many christians just using the phrase something like, oh, my God.

Andy:

We've tried to teach our girls not to speak of God like that, but to treat his name with

Andy:

honour.

Andy:

And I think that comes in when Jesus teaches

Andy:

us the Lord's prayer, doesn't it? Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Andy:

And that's not a prayer to say, God, make yourself more holy, because God couldn't be

Andy:

any more holy.

Andy:

He is already holiness itself, perfection

Andy:

itself.

Andy:

It's a prayer that people would treat God

Andy:

himself and God's name with respect and with love.

Andy:

So while we don't avoid naming God or speaking of God like as God, we do want to treat him

Andy:

with honour and love and adoration and treat his name with respect.

Dave:

It's funny how ideas get attached to names, isn't it?

Dave:

Because I could throw out a few names and you'd immediately have some sort of response

Dave:

or emotional connection.

Dave:

So if I throw out the name Adolf Hitler,

Dave:

you're going to think of a whole series of things.

Dave:

If I throw out the name Abraham Lincoln, you're going to think of a whole bunch of

Dave:

different things, aren't you? So names carry this meaning.

Dave:

We associate a whole lot of things with a name.

Dave:

I was teaching a group of four year olds once and I said, hey, does anyone know what the

Dave:

name Jesus means? It was close to Christmas and I just wanted to

Dave:

see if anyone knew.

Dave:

And a girl threw up her hand and she said, oh

Dave:

yeah, that's what you say when you're really angry, because that's how she'd heard the name

Dave:

Jesus.

Dave:

Not with respect and honour, but just like a

Dave:

swear word, which actually means that's how she thought about Jesus.

Dave:

We want to treat God as holy and honourable and so use his name in that way as well.

Andy:

Well, Dave, thanks for inviting me on to answer, try and answer some questions.

Andy:

And Becky and others, thanks for your questions.

Andy:

Dave, can I, just as we draw things to a close, ask you how you're finding podcasting.

Andy:

So I know this is a new venture for you, a new project.

Andy:

How are you finding podcasting?

Dave:

Yeah, look, I'm loving it.

Dave:

It's lots of fun.

Dave:

No one ever interrupts me.

Dave:

No, but it's been really exciting to be able

Dave:

to do a deep dive into God's word and share that with other people, to see people start to

Dave:

come on board and be listening and be helped by it.

Dave:

So that's been heaps of fun.

Dave:

One of the great things is seeing that grow

Dave:

all around the world as well, because the Internet can reach anywhere.

Dave:

Well, lots of places.

Dave:

There have been some hard things.

Dave:

So, you know, I'm used to working in churches and schools and so seeing people face to face,

Dave:

that's been a little strange.

Dave:

Just sort of talking into a microphone and

Dave:

knowing that there are people out there but not meeting them.

Dave:

But it has been.

Dave:

Yeah, it's been exciting to be able to share

Dave:

God's word with people.

Andy:

Well, Dave, as we finish, then perhaps I could just encourage our listeners again to

Andy:

consider giving, to support Dave in this project.

Andy:

It is an exciting project.

Andy:

I know that I've really enjoyed listening, and

Andy:

my girls have enjoyed listening, too.

Andy:

And it does take effort and it does take

Andy:

financial support as well.

Andy:

So if people wanted to give, and let me

Andy:

encourage you to do that, Dave, how can people give?

Dave:

Well, they can give on faithfulgod.net, comma, on the website faithfulgod.net, comma.

Dave:

There's even a link in the show notes.

Dave:

Thanks for mentioning that.

Dave:

Yeah, I want to be able to keep doing this and keep sharing this with people.

Dave:

So that's really helpful.

Dave:

Andy, thank you so much for coming on the

Dave:

show, for being our first ever guest.

Dave:

We may do more of these bonus episodes in the

Dave:

future.

Dave:

If you have questions, if things come up in

Dave:

our podcast, but also if there are other things that you're thinking about and that

Dave:

you're struggling with, send them in and we'd love to talk about them.

Dave:

Thanks, everyone.

Dave:

See you later.

Andy:

Thanks, Dave.

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