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[01:00:13:03 - 01:00:17:15]
Chris
 That's why we've got to know God's word. And my theology really, truly does matter.

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Chris
 Why I love to preach God's word and why I try to do it so passionately, because it's not just facts or things that don't really matter to the day-to-day of our lives. They literally matter in everything we do, every environment. We live every relationship that we are in.

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[01:00:42:00 - 01:00:45:05]
Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm.

[01:00:46:13 - 01:00:51:05]
Brenton
 This week, it's a little different. We have Matt Mitchell here with us. How's it going, man?

[01:00:51:05 - 01:00:53:06]
Matt
 Hello. I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.

[01:00:53:06 - 01:00:58:01]
Brenton
 Yeah, for sure. So we did actually have two people preach this week. We also

[01:00:59:02 - 01:01:07:17]
Brenton
 preached in Burlington and Danville, but he is under the weather at the moment, so he's still at home, I guess.

[01:01:07:17 - 01:01:08:18]
Matt
 I feel so bad for him.

[01:01:09:18 - 01:01:13:15]
Matt
 I wonder if it has to do with the fact that he preached three times and I just preached once.

[01:01:13:15 - 01:01:14:08]
Brenton
 It could be.

[01:01:15:10 - 01:01:21:00]
Matt
 Oh, he's not envying his task, but that's a big task for the ones who are going back and forth between Danville and Burlington now.

[01:01:21:00 - 01:01:23:15]
Brenton
 Yeah, that's a lot. Maybe you'll get your chance.

[01:01:23:15 - 01:01:24:16]
Matt
 Yeah, we'll see.

[01:01:25:18 - 01:01:28:21]
Brenton
 All right, so this week, yeah, we covered all of Genesis 13,

[01:01:30:03 - 01:01:43:15]
Brenton
 which is just a huge job to cover a chapter of scripture, but it is a narrative, at least, so you can kind of walk through the story. How would you say sermon prep went for you this week?

[01:01:44:19 - 01:01:52:12]
Matt
 Yeah, great question. So at first read, I kind of thought to myself, how am I going to preach a message on

[01:01:53:18 - 01:02:06:07]
Matt
 these 18 verses? Like my ESV, my Bible just has one heading over chapter 13, Abram and Lot separate, that's it. And that's basically what happens in the old chapter. But

[01:02:09:03 - 01:02:25:00]
Matt
 by God's grace and in His goodness, as I sat with it longer and was meditating and studying more, it became obvious. No, there's so much more in this passage than just Abram and Lot separate, and that's what turned it into a message worth preaching and

[01:02:26:21 - 01:02:37:09]
Matt
 I don't know if you'd call this flyover reading, but I was looking at some of my previous Bibles, and I had a lot of notes on chapter 13, but I didn't sit with it as long as I did this week, and I'm glad I did.

[01:02:37:09 - 01:02:43:16]
Brenton
 Yeah, well, it certainly has implications for later on, too, that we'll get into later. But yeah,

[01:02:44:23 - 01:02:52:13]
Brenton
 so for anyone who wasn't at the Fort Madison campus this week, can you kind of walk us through how you handled the text?

[01:02:53:14 - 01:02:58:06]
Brenton
 Like what was-- just give us an overview of your sermon, I guess, is what I'm asking.

[01:02:58:06 - 01:03:02:10]
Matt
 Yeah, so I was just seeing this theme of

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Matt
 Abraham--

[01:03:06:14 - 01:03:35:19]
Matt
 I'll use Abram and Abraham interchangeably in this. It's hard. He doesn't have the name changed officially yet. Yeah, we're dealing with that, too. I was fighting for that in my sermon, saying the right name. But Abram has this comeback, so to speak, because his rise is in the beginning of Genesis 12, where this amazing promise of grace-- God appears to him, promises him, I'm going to bless you. Your offspring, everybody on the earth is going to be blessed through you, Abram.

[01:03:37:14 - 01:03:49:02]
Matt
 But then just not too many verses down, a famine comes up, and he doesn't inquire of God. He just goes to Egypt. Like thinking, Egypt's better, it's greener down there,

[01:03:50:22 - 01:04:01:01]
Matt
 they'll be able to take care of me. And so he does, but then it goes really poorly for him. And if you've been listening to the podcast of the previous sermons, it mainly comes down to Abraham's really selfish decision to

[01:04:02:23 - 01:04:08:02]
Matt
 tell his wife to pretend to be his sister. And we know how that goes. And

[01:04:09:06 - 01:04:16:18]
Matt
 Pharaoh finds out, and they've got these plagues that are in Pharaoh's house because of that. And then he kicks him out and says, get out of here with your wife.

[01:04:17:23 - 01:04:42:20]
Matt
 So then he comes back to the promised land. And this is kind of his comeback in his second chance. But what's cool about it is he goes back to the beginning, back to the place he made an altar at first, where God at first called on him. And he calls the name of the Lord again. And we just see this kind of going back to the place he started. And then the rest of the chapters, he and Lot separate. He chooses this

[01:04:44:03 - 01:04:45:00]
Matt
 selfish,

[01:04:46:07 - 01:04:46:18]
Matt
 kind of

[01:04:48:02 - 01:04:53:23]
Matt
 bleeding with his stomach type choice of choosing the Jordan Valley, closest to autumn in Gomorrah. And

[01:04:55:04 - 01:04:58:10]
Matt
 Abram gets the promised land, but he gets God.

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Matt
 And God reaffirms his promise with him again and says, hey, look and see

[01:05:06:16 - 01:05:18:13]
Matt
 the promised land, what I'm giving you. But arise and walk through it. And I just took that language and tried to apply it to us and our relationship with Jesus on this side of the new covenant.

[01:05:18:13 - 01:05:26:13]
Brenton
 Yeah. You opened by talking about comeback stories. Why frame this as a comeback story?

[01:05:28:04 - 01:05:33:04]
Matt
 Yeah, it's just because it's so obvious that Abram starts off well, but then

[01:05:34:06 - 01:05:44:11]
Matt
 he flubs and goes down to Egypt. But then God's gracious gives him a second chance. And he's successful again or thrives again, is blessed again

[01:05:45:15 - 01:05:47:02]
Matt
 because he

[01:05:48:10 - 01:05:49:17]
Matt
 seeks the God of that blessing.

[01:05:49:17 - 01:06:21:04]
Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah, it reminded me, you talked about how we need to come back to God essentially is what you're saying. But it reminded me of a quote out of "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. It's kind of long, but I wanted to read it. It says, "We all want progress, but progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road,

[01:06:22:07 - 01:06:55:19]
Brenton
 progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road. And in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There's nothing progressive about being pigheaded or refusing to admit a mistake. And I think you look at the present state of the world, it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on." So that came to mind that

[01:06:57:02 - 01:07:01:01]
Brenton
 sometimes we get heading in a direction. And

[01:07:02:04 - 01:07:08:05]
Brenton
 that's always stuck with me that progress in this case is going to look like turning around, right?

[01:07:08:05 - 01:07:10:08]
Matt
 That's a great quote.

[01:07:11:14 - 01:07:26:03]
Matt
 Yeah, now I'm frustrated you didn't email that to me before my sermon so I could say. No, it really is. Yeah, Lewis hit the nail on the head. It's the opposite way of how God works. And He opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And

[01:07:27:18 - 01:07:34:07]
Matt
 yeah, if we humbly go back to the place we got off, we're going to find God there. And so that's a beautiful thing because

[01:07:36:09 - 01:07:41:18]
Matt
 it's the opposite of the way the world tells us to go forward. Yeah, for sure.

[01:07:44:03 - 01:08:15:02]
Brenton
 You contrasted a lot pursuing what looked good with Abram, trusting God, and walking in his promises, blessing and protection. What exactly should a Christian expect God's blessing and protection to look like? These are terms that are thrown around a lot and there are promises in scripture for these things. But what should we expect those things to look like? And maybe what should we not expect those things to look like?

[01:08:16:03 - 01:08:18:11]
Matt
 Yeah, that's a great question.

[01:08:20:00 - 01:08:20:13]
Matt
 I think

[01:08:21:16 - 01:08:42:16]
Matt
 Pastor Chris's sermon from the first two weeks does a really good job of laying some of this out. Of like, even the themes of Abraham, he doesn't even do it all well. He keeps messing up, which is similar to us, the connection there, but God is still like faithful to His promise, not to just

[01:08:43:23 - 01:08:50:23]
Matt
 Abraham's obedience. And he talks about protection and blessing. But we know protection and blessing isn't

[01:08:52:06 - 01:08:59:06]
Matt
 being absent from pain and suffering because if you read the Bible, especially if you read the New Testament,

[01:09:00:22 - 01:09:19:01]
Matt
 the life of Paul, the life of the apostles, the life of Jesus, there's always suffering involved. Suffering does not equate the absence of God's blessing. Sometimes you can be right in the center of God's will and suffering is going to be taking place because of

[01:09:20:07 - 01:09:41:05]
Matt
 evil, because of sin, because you're being persecuted for righteousness sake, like the beatitudes say, but we're blessed. I was like, how can we be blessed in that? But we're standing with God. And so not an absence of suffering or pain, but that God will be with us in the suffering, in the pain that we deal with.

[01:09:43:06 - 01:09:50:13]
Matt
 And I think I just put it this way too. If an unbeliever experiences something good or avoids tragedy,

[01:09:52:05 - 01:09:56:13]
Matt
 there's kind of like, like relieved, coincidence, grateful.

[01:09:58:07 - 01:10:06:12]
Matt
 It could have been worse or whatever, but a Christian will notice these different circumstances in life and know that God is gracious, God is good.

[01:10:08:19 - 01:10:14:19]
Matt
 And he's also good that when we do mess up and get it wrong, that he helps lead us back to the place we got off.

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Brenton
 Yeah, that's good. I think that's so often, and maybe it's not as explicit as it could be sometimes, but so often these promises are used in the pursuit of this prosperity gospel that God doesn't want us to suffer. And this isn't a new topic to this show either, but how can we kind of

[01:10:41:00 - 01:10:43:18]
Brenton
 not give into some softer version of

[01:10:45:01 - 01:10:53:05]
Brenton
 that prosperity gospel that, no, God really wants us to escape some of this trouble or suffering.

[01:10:54:18 - 01:10:55:04]
Matt
 Yeah.

[01:10:56:06 - 01:11:01:06]
Matt
 I mean, I love that we take shots of the prosperity gospel on the podcast as we should.

[01:11:02:21 - 01:11:05:13]
Matt
 It's such a mockery and it's not good

[01:11:06:15 - 01:11:09:14]
Matt
 that it gets, would be preached in any book or pulpit.

[01:11:11:06 - 01:11:33:18]
Matt
 I will say this though, it's kind of a paradox because I think all of us have experienced not following God and the repercussions of that and the hard knocks of that. But then we do follow God and it's like, there almost is this smoothness on the road in certain circumstances, like with this immediate obedience. I'm going to do it God's way.

[01:11:35:16 - 01:11:39:04]
Matt
 And I'm not done yet, but just

[01:11:40:14 - 01:11:47:07]
Matt
 with finances, not handling our finances the way that scripture would command us and reaping the bad results of that.

[01:11:49:02 - 01:12:07:14]
Matt
 But then doing it God's way, and then it's like, oh my goodness, things are going better than they ever have. And you just see this immediate line drawn from obedience to blessing. And that is biblical. However, where it gets unbiblical is when we think all we'll ever experience is just kind of this easy road.

[01:12:08:22 - 01:12:15:00]
Matt
 God's going to make it easy for me because I'm obeying Him. And I think that's when more mature Christianity

[01:12:16:00 - 01:12:18:11]
Matt
 or like these deeper

[01:12:21:06 - 01:13:12:05]
Matt
 levels is not the right word I'm looking at. When our roots grow deeper in the Lord, we start to realize, oh wow, suffering is involved as well with following Jesus. Bearing a cross is also involved with following Jesus if I want to experience the life. And that's where I'd put the prosperity gospel fall short because they try to grab those obedience to blessing and magnify it. And they have no other ministry except for that. They have no place for suffering. And that's just not biblical Christianity. But then beyond that, it's like, okay, I'm actually participating in suffering. But that's what Paul promised. That's what Jesus promised. We're actually the most like our God if we actually suffer and endure it and continue to look heavenward. And so,

[01:13:14:01 - 01:13:19:22]
Matt
 yeah, we kind of, we had to sift through a couple things that are going on with what blessing looks like.

[01:13:21:15 - 01:13:48:02]
Brenton
 No, I like the way that you frame that. I mean, there are natural consequences to our actions, right? And sometimes those are good things. Like the money example, like as we follow wisdom, we can expect that some good natural consequences will come from that. But to stretch that into, if I obey, God's going to do this for me. Or if I have faith, God's going to do this for me is completely a biblical.

[01:13:50:20 - 01:13:54:05]
Brenton
 We did have a few submitted questions.

[01:13:56:05 - 01:14:04:19]
Brenton
 One of them was Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the lush Jordan Valley and chose it without consulting God.

[01:14:06:10 - 01:14:18:23]
Brenton
 He asked, what are some modern kind of Jordan Valley's things that look good on the surface, but lead somewhere spiritually dangerous? And I think it's a good line to go down just because we're

[01:14:20:09 - 01:14:29:16]
Brenton
 going to see a lot as we progress through Genesis about Lot and the results of his decisions. And it keeps getting darker and darker and darker.

[01:14:29:16 - 01:14:30:00]
Matt
 Mm-hmm.

[01:14:31:04 - 01:14:34:17]
Brenton
 But I guess just to answer the question, like what

[01:14:35:21 - 01:14:41:04]
Brenton
 are some of those things that we could point to today that we see people going down?

[01:14:42:22 - 01:14:45:07]
Matt
 Oh my goodness. It's everything.

[01:14:46:14 - 01:14:56:02]
Matt
 I don't know if there's any Pilgrim's Progress fans out there if they've read the book, but it reminds me of Vanity Fair, not the magazine. But

[01:14:57:12 - 01:15:11:03]
Matt
 same concept. There's this city called Vanity Fair that's just all this vanity, all these things against God. And it's just all about on the surface and money and material things and attraction.

[01:15:12:23 - 01:15:23:23]
Matt
 The Pilgrims on the journey towards the celestial city get stuck in Vanity Fair, and sometimes they don't leave because they're drawn in by these temptations. But it's just anything the world is just like, you've got to have this. This is the next thing.

[01:15:25:06 - 01:15:35:16]
Matt
 Don't be content. A lot of it comes down to that, almost everything. It's these temptations like your house isn't good enough, your car's not good enough, your spouse isn't good enough. Go find a different one.

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Matt
 You need more money. You need this. What are we treasuring in our hearts

[01:15:44:08 - 01:15:51:12]
Matt
 and not trusting God with? It's easy to think about Lot and be like, "Well, I can't believe Lot is so selfish. He chose the Jordan Valley

[01:15:52:15 - 01:15:59:11]
Matt
 over Abram." Right. We do that kind of junk all the time in our marriages or as a

[01:16:00:23 - 01:16:04:06]
Matt
 child with a parent, a teenager with a parent

[01:16:05:17 - 01:16:08:18]
Matt
 in relation to things we buy and want and desire.

[01:16:09:23 - 01:16:10:17]
Matt
 Do we

[01:16:12:01 - 01:16:13:01]
Matt
 even take a second

[01:16:14:16 - 01:16:21:09]
Matt
 guess? Do we look back to God and His promises and what He has for us and what He might be calling us to? And

[01:16:23:08 - 01:16:26:00]
Matt
 yeah, it's the same language for Lot and Abraham.

[01:16:28:00 - 01:16:42:02]
Matt
 One of the commentaries I read just pointed that out so clearly. They said in Hebrew, it's just crystal clear. It's the same exact thing. "Lot lifted up his eyes and saw." And then, you know, the Jordan Valley. But then after Lot leaves, the Lord tells Abraham, "Look,

[01:16:43:09 - 01:16:51:01]
Matt
 lift up your eyes and see." And it's just, honestly, it's something to meditate on. It'd be a really good thing in our

[01:16:52:04 - 01:16:53:19]
Matt
 personal time with God or

[01:16:54:20 - 01:17:02:23]
Matt
 out and about on a walk or driving in the car. "What am I treasuring? What am I looking, lifting up my eyes and seeing and desiring?

[01:17:04:04 - 01:17:05:06]
Matt
 What's the Lord have for me?"

[01:17:05:06 - 01:17:22:00]
Brenton
 Yeah, that's good. There was another submitted question. It said, "What would it look like practically for someone today to go back to the altar?" Uh, the last place they remember genuinely seeking God.

[01:17:23:04 - 01:17:23:09]
Matt
 Yeah,

[01:17:24:17 - 01:17:45:09]
Matt
 that's a really good question too. I think Clay did a really good job in his message. I went back and listened to it about going back to the altar. And I remember in his message, the first thing he mentioned was going back to the cross or back to the gospel, which is the center of our faith and what God has done for us in Christ.

[01:17:46:18 - 01:17:50:10]
Matt
 But when I preached this part of the message, I was thinking like

[01:17:52:11 - 01:17:57:23]
Matt
 some of us here today have stopped coming to church, stopped coming to church

[01:17:59:00 - 01:18:15:07]
Matt
 and it wasn't our long-term goal, but then it turned into years or decades maybe. And it's like, do you need to start coming back to church on a regular basis? The answer is yes. Like that, you're going to be fed so much and God is going to minister to you by showing up on a weekly basis to worship with His people, hear God's word be preached,

[01:18:17:08 - 01:18:36:07]
Matt
 participate in the one and others. But also like, you used to be a Bible reader and now your Bible is just collecting dust on the shelf and like your smartphone has just taken over as its claws into you. And your Bible is still sitting there and you can return back and like draw on the

[01:18:39:00 - 01:18:40:01]
Matt
 Lord in His word.

[01:18:42:12 - 01:19:03:15]
Matt
 I'm trying to, I thought I gave another example. Oh, just hanging out with the wrong people or somebody who's kind of pulled you off. And, but there's still those people in your life most likely that if you pursued them, like they love Jesus still and they would welcome back. Like I would say those are all like returning to the altar

[01:19:05:21 - 01:19:09:14]
Matt
 gestures and actions, but

[01:19:11:00 - 01:19:15:00]
Matt
 church attendance, Bible reading, Christian community in themselves,

[01:19:16:15 - 01:19:22:04]
Matt
 those don't bring change and growth. The Lord does, but the Lord uses these things to draw us close to Him.

[01:19:22:04 - 01:19:24:04]
Brenton
 Those things will point you back to God.

[01:19:24:04 - 01:19:26:15]
Matt
 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[01:19:27:20 - 01:19:53:12]
Matt
 But, and it's just so true. How many people do we, have we met on a Sunday or is this our own story where it's like we leaned back in with the Lord, started reading the word again, started attending church on a regular basis, like got involved in a community group or CR or something. And it was like, Oh my goodness. Like things are different now. Like I'm back on track and it's not a self justifying thing, but it's like, I've got the peace of God in my life again. And that's what we want. That's what Abram had.

[01:19:53:12 - 01:20:04:02]
Brenton
 Well, these are means of grace, right? That God has given us to for our good. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. All right. Again, go back to natural consequences. Like there are,

[01:20:05:13 - 01:20:09:18]
Brenton
 there are, there are good things will, will come from your involvement in those things.

[01:20:12:02 - 01:20:22:08]
Brenton
 Okay. We'll wrap on this one, but we have a few things to cover. So your central application is to arise and walk in the promises of God.

[01:20:24:10 - 01:20:35:23]
Brenton
 That language can get used pretty loosely in Christianity. So how, how do we know which biblical promises are actually promises to us?

[01:20:37:06 - 01:21:10:00]
Brenton
 And maybe just to expand on it, like there, there are promises specifically to Abraham, to Israel, to David, to the apostles. Like these are things that we see throughout scripture, but how should Christians read those without either ignoring them or like claiming them directly for ourselves? Like if some of these promises were meant to the person, right? They were given. Sure. Some could be, you know, expanded to include us in the church, but like, how can we kind of judge those things?

[01:21:11:10 - 01:21:16:06]
Matt
 Yeah, this is a really valuable question. And I hope I can be helpful in this way.

[01:21:17:11 - 01:21:41:21]
Matt
 I remember I had a professor at Bible school in a hermeneutics class, which hermeneutics just means how to study the Bible. And I remember he said something and it caught me off guard because I wasn't quite for sure what he was saying, but then I understood. But he said, the Bible was not written to you. It was written for you. And what he was getting at was the authors of scripture,

[01:21:43:04 - 01:21:50:18]
Matt
 God is the author of scripture, but he uses men who are carried along by the Holy Spirit in these different time periods throughout history. But

[01:21:51:20 - 01:21:58:20]
Matt
 these authors wrote the scriptures to a specific audience and group in a specific point in time.

[01:22:00:04 - 01:22:35:19]
Matt
 Those letters were written to those people. However, we're Christians in 2026 and God's Word has been collected in these 66 books, preserved by our God all the way up until our day. We have our own individual copies of God's Word, which is remarkable, but God's Word is for us and should be applied in our lives and to our hearts. And so I would just say, we just need to be careful. We've got our favorite verses and there's one that circulate, you know, like on the Bible app or on Facebook or whatever, on a hobby lobby, you know,

[01:22:37:06 - 01:22:41:12]
Matt
 call them plaques. They're not called plaques. Some sort of decoration, some sort of thing hung in our house.

[01:22:42:14 - 01:22:51:19]
Matt
 The only way those would be bad, it's God's Word, so it can be bad, but we're not using it really faithfully and well. If we don't understand where that comes from

[01:22:52:19 - 01:23:09:12]
Matt
 or why it was said, we don't know the other verses or chapters around it, we could be using it poorly, then it is bad. But if we know God's Word and we're digging in and we understand who it's said to and why, then we can faithfully seek to apply it to our lives.

[01:23:10:22 - 01:23:54:06]
Matt
 And I hope that makes sense. And then in my sermon, I was concerned that in pop Christianity, you know, there's songs on the radio or different things where it's like the promises of God and claim the promises and yada yada. And it just seems so vague and it's like, what is this even talking about? And it's not some sort of like charismatic prophecy over us. Like, not that God can't speak through His people in some sort of way or prompt people by the Spirit. He primarily speaks to us through His Word, but I just didn't want people to be thinking about like, what are the promises? And I just landed the plane in my message with there's all these promises that are true for us in Christ.

[01:23:55:13 - 01:24:06:04]
Matt
 Like, I will never leave you or forsake you. I will take care of your daily needs. Like Jesus promises in the Sermon on the Mount, look at the birds, look at the lilies of the field. Don't worry about tomorrow.

[01:24:07:06 - 01:24:22:08]
Matt
 Our sin, He's dealt with our sin. He set up from the cross. It is finished. And you know, 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So if anybody's feeling beat up about their sin,

[01:24:23:10 - 01:24:34:08]
Matt
 like there's these promises that we can claim and look to, we can look and see Christ crucified and raised for us. And those things

[01:24:35:17 - 01:24:36:15]
Matt
 can pull us out of

[01:24:38:00 - 01:24:42:20]
Matt
 any dark day or season when we're doing that with the Lord and

[01:24:43:23 - 01:24:47:02]
Matt
 with the aids of His people and others to encourage us to.

[01:24:47:02 - 01:24:53:15]
Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah. I think I shared your concern around some of the charismatic,

[01:24:54:18 - 01:25:08:00]
Brenton
 more ethereal promises, kind of just grabbing at maybe random verses or maybe not even that. Some other claim on Revelation. But

[01:25:09:12 - 01:26:38:15]
Brenton
 one thing that we talked about a little bit before we started rolling today is like verses like Jeremiah 29, 11, right? So it says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope." And I think verses like this, there's many like it, but are used so often today as like, "Okay, this is something that was promised in the Old Testament, but now it's one-to-one, like it's also promised to me." And well, okay, let's maybe take a step back and like, you're right, like the Bible was not written to us, it was written for us. And so this had a specific audience, it had a specific fulfillment. And that is not going to be fulfilled for us the same way it was fulfilled for the audience of whoever, like whoever those promises were going to. But one thing it does for us is that it shows us God's character, right? It shows us His relationship toward His people. And so we can look at a promise like that and understand that like, God is for us, God I think does have plans for us obviously, but He wants good for us. Now, what that's going to look like is completely different, you know, depending on what God's will is in that situation. But yeah, I just think that that's probably a more of a helpful especially those Old Testament promises. Although I think, you know, as we've talked through,

[01:26:40:17 - 01:26:47:21]
Brenton
 you know, the covenant with Abraham and all of these things, some of those do find their finite fulfillment today too.

[01:26:47:21 - 01:26:51:17]
Matt
 So yeah. And I think

[01:26:53:03 - 01:27:17:05]
Matt
 when we read passages like that, you know, like the Jeremiah 2911 passage is like written, Jeremiah the weeping prophet preaching to the Israelites, that God is going to do something good eventually, but they're actually going into exile. And so it's like, this doesn't seem good. So it's not like, hey, you guys are doing good. I've got even more good, you know, my promises are my plans for you

[01:27:18:11 - 01:27:27:01]
Matt
 are just amazing all the time. It's because they're sin, they're going into exile, but it's this promise like, no, I'm going to bring you out of there. And this isn't ultimately to harm you.

[01:27:28:09 - 01:27:33:05]
Matt
 But yeah, when we know God's character, and we're harmonizing this with other scriptures and

[01:27:34:22 - 01:27:48:02]
Matt
 in God's word from Old Testament and new, and we're remembering that Christ is the fulfillment of all these promises. So like in him, we do have a future and a hope and goodness and great plans. And

[01:27:50:03 - 01:27:53:08]
Matt
 but even with that, it's like, yeah, I'm going to go through suffering, but

[01:27:54:13 - 01:27:59:07]
Matt
 I'm thinking about God's ultimate plan of returning, making all things right, the new creation.

[01:28:00:13 - 01:28:08:22]
Matt
 Like, this is the best promise of God. It's even better than God's plan to bring Israel back from exile. And

[01:28:10:21 - 01:28:17:09]
Matt
 God's promise has become sweeter and greater when we're good students of the word. And we're not just

[01:28:18:10 - 01:28:22:06]
Matt
 only fighting verses that sound good off of, you

[01:28:23:07 - 01:28:33:10]
Matt
 know, Facebook or somebody sharing something with us. But we know the greater context and and then we're just constantly taking that back to, what does this mean for us in Christ?

[01:28:33:10 - 01:28:41:13]
Brenton
 Yeah. Good. All right. Well, that's all I got today. I appreciate your work here and you coming in.

[01:28:42:23 - 01:28:53:21]
Brenton
 Also, yeah, Bummer Clay couldn't make it, but we'll get them on here again sometime. If you have any questions, ask it for the podcast dot com. We'll talk to you next week.