00:00 Introduction and Greetings

00:08 Cyber Monday and Black Friday Deals

00:24 Bible Memory App Discussion

03:08 Pet Talk and Personal Stories

04:33 Pulpit and Church Furniture

09:03 Financial Stewardship in Ministry

13:44 Old Testament Principles and New Testament Applications

15:44 Head Coverings and Authority Structures

19:42 Communion Practices and Unity

20:37 Closing Prayer and Farewell

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Learn more about our Bible Reading Plan.

Questions or Comments? Email us podcast@compassntx.org

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Introduction and Greetings

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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Merry Christmas and Happy Cyber Monday. Si. Yes, today's the day. Yes.

Cyber Monday and Black Friday Deals

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Go out and get your cyber things, which, what's the difference anymore between Cyber Monday and Black Friday? I don't know that there is, and the reason why is because Cyber Monday, black Friday deals are offered basically for all of November.

Yep. So it's lost its meaning. But I think there's still stuff out there I see. Occasionally. Cool.

Bible Memory App Discussion

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In fact, I was just texting with Steve Yang and he was asking about the Bible intelligence feature on the Bible memory app. Yep. It's their AI thing and it's lifetime subscription for $50. And I bought it at a hundred dollars.

So I'm like, yeah, absolutely. That's worth it. I liked it. I enjoyed that feature. It's on sale. I don't know if it's on sale today. It was on sale when he and I were talking. But I love that app. It's one of my favorites. I've been using that app for years. It's great. That's the one I use as well. You should use it.

He knows and he's just waiting for the right time, the right feature set. I'm not sure exactly what he's waiting for, but I do hope maybe this lights a fire underneath him. Is it gonna be cross-platform compatible? I sure hope so. I would imagine so. Because I mean, I don't have that confirmed though, because I know he, an Android might be that he's an Android, he's a green bubble.

That's true. It's not Jason Cooper. Hm. Yeah, I will see. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. No, the, you're right there. There are I just was referring to the fact that everybody does their shopping online, like Black Friday. It used to be you had to go to the stores and some stores are still doing like in-store only, doorbusters, this, that and the other.

And the only reason I know that is because I personally price track. Yeah, you do. I use camelcamelcamel.com. I will use, hold on a second. Back up. You use what? camelcamelcamel.com. Okay. It's to price track Amazon items. Okay. So you can say, I want you to track this item for me. So I notice things, yeah.

I will track it all year to get the price that I want if I really want something and. I do notice those, but I also saw videos where, and I think this was Target, they were selling Christmas trees for, some insane deal, or at least that's what it presented as. But the stickers they had on the boxes of the Christmas trees were covering the actual price.

Yeah. Which was. The same price they were selling it for Same price. Yeah. See that's the stuff that, that causes people to be like, oh man, I don't know if I can trust this. Yeah. You just gotta do your homework and make sure that you are really getting a good deal. Yeah. I think the positive thing is if things like that will slow the roll a little bit.

Pet Talk and Personal Stories

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Did you get anything? You know what we actually, I did I bought a family gift.

Oh. Record player had the cord frayed on it. Because my dog chewed it, and so, oh, Patrick, I be a new record player, so Oh, right. I a record player. Well, let's, I didn't, I forgot you had Patrick. Yeah. How's he doing? You know, he's doing okay. His name's Maverick, but you know, aside from that, he's doing okay.

How big is he now? Is he bigger than Josh? I mean, he, does Annie ride him on two feet? He's bigger than Josh. No. Wow. No, he's a medium sized dog. I mean, he's not a punt dog. He's not one of those drop kick dogs that. Like are the little yap. How yappers, how dogs have you dropped, kicked? Just rough and dirty.

I mean, tempted to or ha have I actually, yeah. Okay. No, I've, I grew up with golden retrievers and now we've got him. But drop kicked yellow lab. No, no, because they're normal sized dogs. They're not the dogs that you put in your purse and go to the grocery store. Have you done that before? That would be awkward with Maverick.

Yeah. And then wrap my car with it, you know, and say, compass Bible Church, people would love that. Come to Compass. Look what happens. People would love it. I could preach with Maverick on my back and then we could wrap the car with that. Dude, that would be such a great sermon illustration. Are you carrying burdens that you just gotta let down, come to Jesus, lay your burden down, and you put Patrick on the altar maverick?

Yeah, same difference. And we would need an altar too. So this is one interesting sermon that we're doing here. I mean, we go all out.

Pulpit and Church Furniture

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Hey, I'm gonna throw it out there, we don't love the pulpit that we have. I mean, it does the job, but we don't love it.

If you are somebody that has a desire to potentially be creative on constructing something, no guarantees here. We may offend you by saying thanks, but no thanks on that. But if you want to throw something at us to say, Hey, I could do this. You know what? We're not gonna turn you down. We yeah.

Huge. It's amazing. Massive pulpit. Now here's the challenge. Challenge though. Yes. We don't have a place to put this thing That's true. So it would need to be portable. It would need to be very portable and light ideally. That's part of the problem with this pulpit. It's massive. It's heavy. And it's very heavy and unwieldy.

It's not like it's heavy and it's like, oh, you can just carry it in a certain way. Right? This is weird and awkward to carry. So it would need to be something that's light, easy to access, easy to put up, take down. Yeah, ideally wifi, Bluetooth capable, that'd be great. With the cell signal. So in case you don't have access to those things and not one of these like single pillar down the middle, like skinny post.

Fiberglass pulpits? That, that I, no. Weren't you flirting with the idea of preaching from a music stand though? I mean, I was But that's same idea. That's d No, 'cause it's different. It's different. It's not as gaudy as the the crystal cathedral glass, fiberglass pulpit, whatever. Okay. Yeah. Those are different.

Let's get to the Bible, first Corinthians nine through 11, first Corinthians nine through 11. And so in First Corinthians chapter nine we're continuing, like I talked about in yesterday's episode, this subject of freedom and what it looks like for us to exercise our freedom as believers. And Paul's gonna say, look, as an apostle, I am indeed free.

In fact, he's even gonna somewhat imply that he's got more freedom perhaps than anybody because of his position and the Lord's. Commissioning of him, and yet he is going to say, you know what I want you to understand what I'm doing and follow my example. Paul's gonna talk about the right that he has an as an apostle to take up offering from people to make a living, basically.

And so Paul says I didn't make right use of that right. Again, I had the freedom to, I chose not to. But he's gonna say in verse 14, lest you be saying, well, should we apply that to all pastors today? He's gonna say in verse 14. In the same way the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

So the idea of a vocational pastor, a full-time pastor it has scriptural warrant here. But Paul's whole point here in chapter nine is saying, I did everything that I did in order that I might. Make sure that the gospel was as fruitful as it could possibly be. Now, Paul knows that he doesn't have an ultimate say or an ultimate bearing in whether or not somebody chooses to believe in Jesus Christ as is the Lord and Savior.

That's God's lifting, not Paul's lifting, but Paul's gonna say, as far as it depends on me, I'm gonna do everything I possibly can to remove any obstacles, to see as many people come to faith in Christ as possible. And that's where he gets to in the end of chapter nine here, which is another well-known section of one Corinthians when he says, Hey, you know what?

This is chapter nine verse, actually verse nine, chapter nine, verse nine. For it is written in the law of Moses, and then he quotes the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. And is it for oxen that God is concerned? This is a proof text, not just a proof text, but a very helpful text to say, okay, God doesn't just want us to read the Old Testament law and say, okay, thank you for that.

I'm gonna walk away. The law is there for us to learn from it and to understand that there are principles baked into them that God expects us to learn from even under a new covenant, which is what Paul is speaking to here. So he says, when you're looking at God's law under the old covenant about not muzzling and oxman, it turns out the grain.

So it is. Right and good to pay your pastors.

Financial Stewardship in Ministry

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There was a guy recently you might've heard of, he was on several podcasts making the case that any pastor who earns money from the congregation is inevitably gonna be eaten by the machine, and he's gonna, he's gonna be tempted to, to be stingy and greedy and be all about the ties and offerings and to lose side of the mission.

Is that true? No. In fact. You know, it's probably one of the areas that I could be better at in, in preaching the importance of giving and what that is. I'll be honest it makes me uncomfortable because so many people have gone before in other denominations and perverted and abused, that office and you.

Think of the televangelists and you think about this, the, yeah. The dirty side of that, but giving is a good thing. It's a right thing. It's something that is, is commanded by God in the church. And yeah, part of the giving does go to support the pastors, but that's one of the reasons we talked about in yesterday's episode.

Right. We've got an external board. With guys that have a lot of experience under the belt financially the two of the guys that are not pastors on that board are guys that have spent a lot of time in the financial world. That's their background. That's their training. Yeah. So they're making shrewd, wise decisions, cost of living, things like that.

What does it look like? They're helping us in that process. So if you're sitting there wondering, Hey, who's making the financial decisions behind the church? On the day-to-day operation, we're spending the money that we've been budgeted to spend right here. We're not asking for permission from the sending church to do those things.

Mm-hmm. But we have oversight to make sure that we're not abusing all of that. And so if you've got a church where you're following your pastor because you trust them morally you're following your pastor because you trust that they can exposit the word well, hopefully you would be at a church where you can follow your pastors, be and trusts that they're being good financial stewards at the same time.

You have pastors that are doing that and they're working hard to do that. Lemme just say this, I don't think they're more effective in that. I think they're less effective. And here's the reason why. The reason is they have to be divided in their attention. They have to be divided in their duties.

They have to go work at UPS and deliver packages for eight hours a day and then, work as a pastor at the time that they've got leftover to do that. And if while they're on the Trek truck delivering pastors, somebody has an, a family emergency or somebody's in the hospital or somebody has marital issues, they can't just leave their.

Other job and go to it to tend to these matters. You add to that, the fact that that's eight hours, let's say on a Wednesday, for example, I spend eight hours focused on sermon preparation. If I had a second job, I wouldn't be able to spend that time studying the scriptures. I wouldn't be able to spend that time diving in.

'cause otherwise that flock can't support them in some instances at least, but where the flock can support them. I think the flock is better off to have pastors that are fully devoted to the work of the ministry than being divided in a secular job and a vocational job. Some really helpful common sense.

Advice and input. Let me just remind you guys, as you're listening to arguments being made on different podcasts or platforms, remember, something that is possible isn't necessarily the same thing as something that is necessary. Necessary and possible aren't the same thing. It's possible, right? That ministry can corrupt a man and make him money hungry, and make him constantly about the ties and the offerings and all those things That's possible.

I would just say, listen carefully with a great deal of discernment. Totally any, no matter what it is. Anytime we're picking up our broad brush to make a paint, a stroke with a brush, stroke with, we gotta be careful with that. We don't do that in other professions. We don't look at a CEO who falls morally and just assume, well, all CEOs are corrupt and they're all gonna fall morally.

And yet because of the church and I think the world and the attacks of the enemy against the church too. I think the church is in a unique position where a lot of times it's assumed if this is true, then. It's true of all churches and all pastors everywhere. We need to guard against that because that's a, that's not a fair assessment of things either.

Old Testament Principles and New Testament Applications

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Chapter 10 you mentioned to the fact that we look at these Old Testament principles and we say, okay, we can interpret them beyond what maybe the initial glance is there. And I think we see Paul referring to that more in chapter 10. He says, some of these things in the Old Testament were written down for our instruction.

Make sure that we don't do the same things that they did. The writer of Hebrews does this in the book of Hebrews. We'll get there eventually, but he in a, what is essentially more of a sermon than a letter, he appeals back to the Old Testament multiple times and says, Hey, they did this. Don't do it this way.

They did this, don't do it this way. And so that's what Paul is saying. The Old Testament is there in part for for us, so that we will live lives in devotion to the Lord. And that's really where he gets to here as he returns back to the idea of eating again at the end of chapter 10. And he's saying, look.

He's saying. In the end, whatever decision that you make, whether you eat or drink, do everything that you do for God's glory, not for yourself, not for your own satisfaction and passions, but for the glory of God. And that really limits the things that you do do as well, because if you can't do it to the glory of God, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

So even though you're right, the context is greater than what you're initially reading, people think like, oh yeah, I guess what I eat and drink. That's really granular. I should think about those things. And that's true. But the point in the context is really helpful whether you eat or drink, whether you partake of the meal or whether you withhold from the meal because of your religious convictions.

Whatever you do, everything that you do, whether you drive, don't drive, go to the gym, don't go to the gym, eat Turkey, don't eat Turkey. Do well to the glory of God. I think that's still a really helpful principle for all of us to live lives by.

Head Coverings and Authority Structures

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On chapter 11, he's gonna get into some body life issues that were taking place here, and he's gonna begin by talking about the structure of authority.

And wives are called to be in a position of submission to their husbands. And here in this culture at this time it was normative for a wife to cover her head as a symbol of her subjection to her husband's authority and leadership. And so Paul's gonna tell wives, you need to do that. You need to have a covering for your head.

Now the question is going to be begged. What about today? Why don't we do this today? And isn't this the same as a woman preaching or as the headship issue? Couldn't we just say that that's cultural as well? And I would say the answer is no, because one is about the structural elements of a relationship.

The other is about the external appearance that represents the structural authority in the relationship. The principle that remains today is the headship. The principle that remains today is the authority structure. What's different today is how that's expressed. And so today in our culture, in our time it's not as, as common to see a woman wear a head covering as an expression of her submission to her husband.

How would you feel about someone making the comparison between head coverings of. This timeframe to wedding rings of today's context? The wedding ring doesn't quite say I'm subjected, but it does say I'm committed. Sure. And so if a woman chose not to wear her wedding ring, or a man chose not to wear his wedding ring all over the place, it would be a form of dishonor to your spouse because you're at least giving the impression that you're not married when you are.

Is that similar? Is that the best kind of parallel we can make? Yeah, I think I, I can see that, I could see some connections there for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably the closest thing that I came up with that I think could be somewhat similar. Although there's, it's not equally parallel. It's not one-to-one but it does have a symbol.

Mm-hmm. So why do they choose to go that way? What about this context? Or is there any context here that would give someone the impression this is more than a first century kind of situation and that it transcends the first century? Is there anything. He does appeal to, to, to nature here. And he says, you know, nature even testifies to these similar things.

A, a woman by nature has long hair. A man by nature has shorter hair. Yeah. And so then he compares that to the covering element there. So that's probably where they're going to say, I think this is more than just cultural, that there's a natural element there too. And I think some of that still.

Even exist in churches where they're not requiring head coverings. Even just in the attire that women wear to church and how they dress and how they conduct themselves in a feminine manner rather than in a masculine manner is even going in line with what Paul's talking about here still in today's context.

Think about pants versus skirts, right? And there was a time when women would only wear skirts and to wear pants was to appear to be male or to have a masculine trait. That's not the case today. It was very feminine to wear jeans. Sometimes those jeans are very tight and perhaps too tight, but. You get the idea here?

Yeah. Culture changes times change, but the word of God doesn't. The principles that the word of God speaks to, those don't change. And so the point for us is that we want to appear that we are subjected to the right authorities and that we are honoring the distinctions that God Himself has created.

Yeah, absolutely. Rest of chapter 11.

Communion Practices and Unity

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You hear this once a month when we do the Lord's table together or communion together, and this is the instructions regarding communion. And so Paul is addressing here something that was happening that was not good, and that was that they were showing up and they had turned the gathering for communion into a kind of self-centered potluck.

So much of his letters about the unity of the church, and this is another example where is something that was meant to bring them together? Communion, even there, it's in the word. Something that was distressed and emphasize the community of the body of Christ was being perverted to become something that was about the individual.

Thing that was self-centered. Something that was about satisfying the fleshly urges and pulsing this ought not to be. So instead, this is what I received from the Lord. This is how you ought to go about doing this, and this is the way that you should take communion together.

Closing Prayer and Farewell

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Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.

God, thanks for your word and the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, the Old Testament principles that we can glean and learn from, and the examples that we see there. I pray that we would be attentive to those, that we would give ourselves over to trying to understand as much as we can there.

So we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep bringing your Bibles tuned again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

Bernard: ​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.

PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said