In this episode, Nate offers some reflections on Esther, which we're almost done with, and Mark, which we've just begun. On the app (find NewCity on Church Center), you can find links to a bunch of old episodes on Romans, as well as introductions to Mark and Esther.
In this episode, Nate offers some reflections on Esther, which we're almost done with, and Mark, which we've just begun. On the app (find NewCity on Church Center), you can find links to a bunch of old episodes on Romans, as well as introductions to Mark and Esther.
Welcome to another episode of the Olive Life Podcast. I'm your host, nate Claybourne, and we are here once again to talk about the McShane Bible reading plan. We're almost a month into it at this point. If you are reading this plan along with us, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email at podcast at NewCityOrlandocom. I'm particularly curious about how people may have modified the plan, whether you're just doing one of the reading cycles or two or three, or whether you're doing all of them and just loving it. You can either send us an email you can find me at church on a Sunday morning, I'm not that hard to find but just any feedback would be helpful because it will help us tailor what we do in these episodes or just other ways that we engage the plan publicly so that it's connecting to the way that you're reading.
Speaker 1:When you think about the books that we're in, today's episode is mostly going to bookmark a bunch of other content. That's not always going to be the case, but as I was looking at things that we are either books that we've just finished getting ready to start, or started yesterday even, and then looked at previous podcast episodes, we have a lot of material. Now, some of that is because we spent two spring sermon series in Romans, and so, as part of that I think it was when we started Romans was when the Sunday morning Bible study space got started, and so, over the course of spring of 2022, I was teaching that Sunday morning Bible study. I was also posting previews of the text, and so, actually, for today's text as you're listening to this, it's chapter two there's two separate podcast episodes because of how we split the text up for preaching, but really, through Romans eight for some reason, there's not any for six and seven, but for two through five and then most of chapter eight there's little preview episodes related to some of the content we went over in the Romans Bible study. So, if you missed that, or you want to go back and revisit it, or even if, as you're reading this plan, if you really wanted to dig into Romans, maybe that's the one cycle that you're doing right now there's a lot of supplementary material on that. We'll, and we'll have links to this in the show notes and in the app as well.
Speaker 1:As far as bigger picture things with Romans, yesterday's reading was very infamous in Romans one, especially the last part of it versus 18 through 32. And I recorded a lengthy podcast on that with Mike Allen back when we were preaching through Romans. That, I think, really gets at some of the controversial issues that are brought up there but situates it in the history of Christian thought as it relates to Romans one, mike and I also recorded just a big overview of Romans one through eight. We have an episode on the history of redemption in Romans. We have an episode on the order of redemption in Romans. Mike was able to record an episode with his friend Dr Jonathan Linebaugh on Romans three and four and then towards last spring, mike and I recorded on Romans nine through 11, kind of giving you some handles for getting through those three chapters and then also on 12 through 16. So there is no shortage of episodes on Romans. And even if we go back to the original way this podcast got up and running, which was doing Bible introductions, kind of what we're doing now, as we went through a reading plan, we were dropping episodes related to it. There is a introduction to Romans circa, I think, probably 2019, maybe that you can listen to that we'll have a link to. We also have an intro to Mark recorded around the same time, and then there are a couple episodes that Ben and I recorded on, specifically Mark, chapter one, and Mark chapter six. And the Mark chapter one episode also talks about a chapter in Job that we're going to get to, probably late next week, the Esther cycle. Once it finishes Esther, it moves on to the book of Job. So we'll be talking about Job some more in coming episodes, but you could check out those episodes where there's an intro to Job as well that we'll post in here that you'll have for later this week, because you'll finish Esther before the week is out. I didn't comment last week, I think, on the intro to Esther that we've recorded, but we also have that available.
Speaker 1:Esther is just a very interesting story just all around it's. I believe it is the only or one of the only books in the Bible that doesn't mention God, which seems a little problematic. But if you think about it and I don't want to steal too much thunder from the intro that I think I recorded that with Josh Kessler. I want to take too much away from that because I think we talk about this there. But there's something about Esther that actually helps map onto our current situation, and what I mean by that is we often don't know for sure when God is at work or behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:In our daily lives we trust by faith that he is, and we pray and we expect God to be at work for us, for our good, but we don't necessarily see it unfolding. Sometimes we don't even see the results that we're looking for. Sometimes we're wondering where God is, and when we're reading the book of Esther it's almost from the perspective of that. You're not really sure if God is hearing you or at work, and so you really do have to trust and be patient. And so it talks about them praying in Esther, but it doesn't mention God specifically. There's not a prayer recorded in the same way, at least, that we have, like in Nehemiah. You may have noticed how often Nehemiah is praying through the book of Nehemiah. And so we're dealing with Jewish people who stayed behind in Persia who are still trusting in God, but they are. I don't want to say that they're nominally religious we don't know enough to know that but we do know that they didn't go back to the Promised Land when they had the opportunity to, so it didn't seem to be super pivotal to them to be able to be near the temple, to be able to be near the sacrificial system, but they've retained something of their trust in God even as they've stayed in a foreign land.
Speaker 1:So, as we're reading Esther, there is a lot there that I think we could connect to in our day and age and maybe it's something we revisit in later episodes or in some other spaces. As you're, I'm kind of working backwards, but as you're getting into the book of Mark, you might notice it is a little jarring to go from the way you were reading the Gospel story in Matthew to all of a sudden in Mark. Everything is very to the point, very there's not a lot of. We don't get as much of Jesus' teaching. I mean, we think about the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, that Matthew takes three chapters. We get Jesus' teaching in Mark but we don't get a three-chapter sermon. Mark is almost half as long as Matthew and we're talking about 16 chapters instead of 28. But it does give us a good contrast, and so one thing that's helpful as you're really reading the Gospels back to back through the spring here is sometimes the question comes up why do we have to have three Gospels or four Gospels really in total?
Speaker 1:I'm thinking specifically of Matthew, mark and Luke because how similar they are. But as you're reading them you may notice they're really highlighting different aspects of who Jesus is. They're written for different audiences at different times and it's, in some sense, it's actually remarkable that they still tell the same essence of the same story. So even as they have their differences, they're not so radically different that the basic parts of the story are obscured. So in Mark, for instance, one of the things you may have noticed as you started it out is it just starts immediately, and immediately is also a key word with Jesus preaching, teaching, going about his business. We don't get a birth narrative, we don't get a backstory.
Speaker 1:Really, you'll notice as we go along, there's less interest in connecting things back to the Old Testament, whereas in Matthew that was a very prominent theme. This happened to fulfill this prophecy or this happened in accordance with what this Old Testament passage said, and Mark is less interested in doing that for us. One of the things that we can draw from that is, mark's audience was probably less interested in those sorts of things. So Mark is most likely written to a Roman audience. Tradition has it that Mark is actually recording Peter's memoirs, so as Peter is relaying the things that he remembers about being with Jesus. Mark is the one writing them down in Rome, and so that audience there is more concerned with what Jesus did less about. Does he connect to the Old Testament, whereas Matthew is writing to a predominantly Jewish audience who needs to see how Jesus is the fulfillment of these Old Testament prophecies. We'll talk about Luke more when we get there in a couple weeks, but Luke even tells us at the beginning of his gospel who he is writing to, what he's doing. He's trying to present an orderly account and it's based on eyewitness testimony. He's most likely has a Greek audience in mind that wants to know whether this could be substantiated historically. So that's just something to keep in mind as you're reading through these chapters.
Speaker 1:Why do we have four gospels? Why are they different? What's going on here? It is interesting to read them back to back. So, having just read Matthew, now you're into Mark and you kind of heard Matthew had a certain feel to it that you were aware of as you were going through it a chapter a day, and Mark has a different feel to it. She's going through it a chapter a day and there's something to not just that we have the two, but that they're placed in the New Testament in the order that we have them in. So, matthew it's significant that Matthew's first, because Matthew connects us back to the Old Testament in a way that Mark doesn't, even though Mark was probably written first and Matthew may have had access to Mark as Matthew was composing his gospel that's. I mean, that's almost definitely the case that both Matthew and Luke were able to write their gospels with Mark's gospel nearby, or at least they knew what was in Mark's gospel. But they're ordered in a certain way in the New Testament. They're not just sort of haphazardly thrown in there, and it's important to start with Matthew connecting backwards. Then Mark is kind of looking forwards. We'll talk more about that maybe down the road, but I just wanted to comment on the contrast that you're experiencing there.
Speaker 1:Genesis we're right in the thick of the story of Abraham's family and how all of that is unfolding.
Speaker 1:Jacob is having his dealings with his uncle Laban, and so we're hopefully you're noticing there some of the sibling rivalry theme that started all the way back in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel, and then you see it also downstream.
Speaker 1:You have issues with Noah's sons, you have issues with Abram's sons, with Isaac and Ishmael, and then you have Isaac's sons, jacob and Esau, and now you have Jacob's sons, and then you're just gonna kind of see this sort of familial discord, all kind of tracing back to the effects of the fall in Genesis 3, but you're really seeing it in HD as you're moving through the book of Genesis that even as we're focused in on how God is fulfilling his promises to Abraham's family, there are still relational issues and things that need to be worked out there. But we'll talk about that more in future weeks, but for now I hope you're enjoying and benefiting from engaging with this Bible reading plan. We would love to hear what that's been like for you, what your experience has been, how you're utilizing it, and we will continue to move on into February and get farther along in these books, and we will talk again next week. We'll see you then.