Bible in A Year: Episode 35

Intro • 00:00
Welcome to Read the Bible in a Year with Matt and Hannah, a weekly podcast from Fairfax Bible Church where we explore scripture together, uncovering its themes and design patterns. We’re glad you’re here. Now, here are your hosts, Matt and Hannah.

Matt • 00:16
Okay, it is Read the Bible in a Year with Matt and Hannah. I still think that’s a little bit of a long title. I mean we’re in it. We’re c we’re committed to it now.

Hannah • 00:24
Yeah, it’s too late.

Matt • 00:25
Yeah. I s I still wish it was just Read the Bible with Matt and Hannah. Uh I lost I lost that argument back in January. But that’s okay. We’re here. We’re we’re reading the Bible. Hannah, this is episode thirty-five.

Hannah • 00:37
Mm-hmm.

Matt • 00:38
Uh you know, I like to come with a fun fact about 35. It is very often a uniform number from a sports person.

Hannah • 00:46
Yeah.

Matt • 00:47
Uh your dad came through for us. He was the MVP of the previous episode.

Hannah • 00:51
Yep.

Matt • 00:52
Walter Payton’s is a great one. Um I don’t have a fun uniform number for thirty-five.

Hannah • 00:58
Okay.

Matt • 00:59
I had to actually look this up. Kevin Durant, his uh NBA player, wears thirty-five, I guess.

Hannah • 01:04
Okay.

Matt • 01:05
But I didn’t realize that. Um, but I do have a fun fact about the number 35. Do you want to hear it?

Hannah • 01:11
Yeah, I sure do.

Matt • 01:12
Okay, so if you were to type out the sentence This sentence is 35 letters long. It is literally 35 letters long. This is called an autogram sentence.

Hannah • 01:32
What?

Matt • 01:33
Isn’t that great?

Hannah • 01:36
Oh okay.

Matt • 01:39
Yeah, so if you type out this sentence is 35 letters long and then count the number of letters.

Hannah • 01:46
Now are you spelling out the word 35?

Matt • 01:49
That’s correct. Yes, you would do that.

Hannah • 01:51
Yeah. Okay. All right.

Matt • 01:54
Now the hyphen doesn’t count.

Hannah • 01:56
Oh, okay.

Matt • 01:57
Yeah, so it’s just the letters, but if you if you type out this sentence is 35 letters long. It is literally 35 letters long.

Hannah • 02:06
Okay. Wow. And how did you realize this? Google just told you this?

Matt • 02:11
Yeah, I did a Google search for interesting facts about the number 35. There’s some math things that are uh I don’t really understand, so they’re beyond my ability to explain. Uh 35 is the product of two prime numbers. That’s kind of fun. Five times seven. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Um, and then thirty-five, I mean, I people know this about me that I get nerdy about presidents. You do need to be at least thirty-five years old according to the Constitution to serve as U. S. president. We’ve we’ve not had a president that young Um but if but you know, you’re coming up on age thirty five here in the next three years.

Hannah • 02:48
All right. Don’t don’t speed up my age too much

Matt • 02:51
No, I’m just saying I got a few years to go. Yeah, I’m just saying if you want to campaign, um, you know, now’s probably the time to get started.

Hannah • 03:00
Okay. That was not in my uh plans for the near future.

Matt • 03:04
So Okay, well, you know, maybe God’s speaking to you. Hm.

Hannah • 03:09
Maybe for the next election. Not not the next not the upcoming one.

Matt • 03:14
Okay. All right. That’s fine. Um Oh, and uh update. Last week I uh talked about my sort of observation slash complaint that the book of Acts is the only book that we have in the canon that tells us about the early days of the church and we lose some of the characters. So we lose some of the people that we were hanging out with, Matthew Thomas. Um I was getting some cosigns at at over the weekend from people I was seeing at our men’s event at church. People are like, yeah, yeah, what did happen to those people? So if there’s an upsurge in like uh books ordered from Amazon in the 22030 zip code. I like to think we can take credit for that.

Hannah • 04:01
Yeah. Maybe we should start like an Amazon list. And we can get a little commission for books we recommend.

Matt • 04:11
Okay.

Hannah • 04:13
That’ll fund the rest of our podcast.

Matt • 04:15
Olipop never came through with the sponsorship.

Hannah • 04:18
Yeah.

Matt • 04:19
I did try an Alipop. Did I ever tell you about this?

Hannah • 04:21
Oh no.

Matt • 04:22
I tried the Orange Dream. Oh, okay. It’s um it’s not my thing.

Hannah • 04:28
Oh.

Matt • 04:28
I’m willing to try Ali.

Hannah • 04:29
You should have tried one of the more traditional uh like soda flavors that they have.

Matt • 04:35
Like a cola or something?

Hannah • 04:36
Yeah, cola. Or if you like root beer or they have like a seven up kind of lemon lime soda.

Matt • 04:43
Okay.

Hannah • 04:44
Yeah.

Matt • 04:44
Alright. Olliepop, you have one more shot. I’m gonna try your product. Come through for us. Yeah, I have a road trip this weekend. Go and see my daughter in North Carolina, so maybe I’ll grab an Olipop for the road. Yeah. Yeah, you know my daughter, Lexi. You are my daughter Lexi’s mentor.

Hannah • 05:01
Yep, I sure was.

Matt • 05:03
Yeah.

Hannah • 05:04
Lexi’s the best.

Matt • 05:05
She’s really great. Shout out to Lexi. She doesn’t listen to this podcast, so she’s too busy

Hannah • 05:12
She’s no longer the best.

Matt • 05:15
Okay, I’ll put a I’ll put in a plug. I was like, Lexi, I’m gonna need you to listen to the podcast. All right. Well we should talk about the Bible. Um we’re working our way uh uh working our way through Acts. We got almost all the way through Acts last week but we left a little bit hanging so we’ll finish that up and then we’re turning the corner we’re sort of leaving the classic narrative books and moving into the epistles or the letters we’re going to start with romans If you attend Fairfax Bible Church with us, as I think most people listening would do, Romans is very familiar. We’ve been preaching our way through Romans. in the year 2026. Uh and so we’ll try not to rehash too many things that Pastor Matthew has talked about, but just give a little bit of fresh perspective. And um and yeah, so we’re in it. So why don’t we sort of pick up the string with Paul as we talked about last week, the early part of Acts, we’re kind of in Jerusalem, we’re with the twelve that we had become very familiar with. But the sort of focus on the characters gets narrower and narrower and narrower. And eventually it shifts to this man that we meet as Saul. And then he be he starts using his Roman name Paul because he’s hanging out among Gentile people more often than he’s hanging around um uh Jerusalem. And it’s really interesting that Paul becomes the sort of central figure here, um, especially since we’re gonna read a lot of his letters. I I was thinking about this and I’d I’d I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, Hannah. You know, I think for somebody to play tour guide for us in terms of helping us understand how the story and person of Jesus really is highlighted uh in the Old Testament. I really can’t think of a better person than Paul. Maybe there were people around in the day, but I I think it uh God knew what he was doing. by raising up Paul. One of the things we learn about Paul is he was a um he was part of the Pharisee group, so he was steeped in the Hebrew scriptures. He would have had the equivalent of a PhD, maybe even multiples of them, knows the scriptures inside and out. So to have somebody explain, like This verse in the Old Testament or this passage in the Old Testament, here’s how this explains Jesus to us. I mean he’s probably the best equipped person for that role.

Hannah • 07:27
Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. Yeah, as a Pharisee he would have been a complete expert in the Hebrew scriptures. So Yeah, he can I you know set his Bible studies, I’m sure, were second only to Jesus’ own Bible studies that we see in Luke chapter 24.

Matt • 07:44
Although it’s a bit wordy.

Hannah • 07:46
Paul, yeah.

Matt • 07:47
Yeah, he’s a bit worried. Like the story where the guy falls asleep while Paul is talking.

Hannah • 07:52
Oh man. How embarrassing would that be if you’re talking? During your sermon someone falls out a window because that’s how boring your sermon is.

Matt • 08:02
And and Paul’s just like, oh well, let’s just bring him back to life.

Hannah • 08:08
Oh, wow

Matt • 08:09
Yeah, I mean I I don’t speak super often. I speak it at our church, I don’t know, what twice a year or whatever it is. Um I don’t think people go to sleep when I’m speaking. They might and I just don’t happen to notice. But if they did and they like fell over and hurt themselves, I I have I got nothing for him.

Hannah • 08:24
Yeah, yeah. The stakes are higher.

Matt • 08:27
Yeah. So Paul’s super smart. Um, great communicator, but like, you know If it’s at night in a hot room and he’s just kind of keeping going, you know, get some fresh air in there or something, yeah.

Hannah • 08:45
Yeah. Yeah, I mean you you can see in his letters how long his like run-on sentences are, so I c I can only imagine in person without Be like, you know, live when you’re speaking live, it’s gotta be a lot less polished than these letters that he spent a lot of time polishing. So he’s gotta have way longer run-on sentences in person.

Matt • 09:08
Yeah Yeah. All right, well let’s get back into the text. So when we last left, he had gone on a bunch of missionary journeys and he’d even uh kind of worked with a couple different partners. He was working with a guy named Barnabas for a little bit. They had a conflict and so he uh they broke fellowship and then he took up with this guy named Silas. And of course he has all kinds of wacky adventures. He’s put in jail a couple times, he’s beaten. Um he is uh stoned by mobs. I mean he really goes through it. You talked a lot about how he talks about persecution being the path to joy. Like there’s a certain kind of joy, a certain level of joy that we can only experience through persecution, which still m melts my brain a little bit. But um yeah, and Paul go I mean he speaks from his experience. He’s in jail a couple times. He’s stoned. He’s and so he’s finally goes back to Jerusalem, uh, where he’s gonna take an offering back to the Israeli believers, the Hebrew uh believers there. And while he’s there, he’s arrested. and put on trial and then you found an interesting pattern in his trial experience um that I want you to tell the people about

Hannah • 10:16
Well, I mentioned this at in the last podcast too, um, when we were talking about all the connections between the books of Luke and Acts that The author, Luke, particularly, is trying to draw out these connections between Jesus’ own life with the life of his followers. Um, and so uh and I I didn’t discover this on my own. There was a a book that I was reading for a seminary that pointed out that Jesus uh like makes his defense, uh goes on trial four times, and three of those times he is declared innocent. by the person that he’s standing before. And then uh in the book of Luke. And then in Acts, the same thing happens for Paul, where he makes a defense before four people, and three of those times he’s declared innocent. I couldn’t tell you the exact references, but That’s all right.

Matt • 11:11
People can look them up. Yeah. Look look em up, people. Use your skills. Yeah. But that is really interesting. And and as we’ve said, when we do see a pattern like that, especially when the numbers are the same, it’s almost certainly intentional.

Hannah • 11:25
Yeah, and because there are so many connections between Luke and X, like if it was just one kind of weird coincidence or two You might you might think it was not intentional, but when there’s so many explicit connections, then we can see how Luke was trying to parallel the lives of Jesus and his followers to show how in tune his followers were with him and committed to his life and his ways that they start to look just like Jesus.

Matt • 11:57
Yeah. Yeah, and and it is, um, you know, we s uh we talked about this last week, so I I don’t wanna uh belabor it too much, but that that idea of um suffering and persecution, but it producing joy, it’s really striking. And and I often think, oh, I’m not I’m not sure I have the stomach for that. I have a very nice, comfortable m American middle class existence and some of the stuff that they experience was like, yeah, that’s a lot.

Hannah • 12:29
Yeah.

Matt • 12:30
Yeah. But I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna put on my cloth put on my work clothes tomorrow. I’m gonna go to work and do my thing. We’ll see what happens. So I don’t know. Um, all right, so the book ends or the book of Acts ends, uh uh not anticlimactically. But a little bit with an open an open ending, as it were. So Paul finally makes his way to Rome. Although we do have to note on the way to Rome, he did make a certain stop. Acts 28. 12 says that he put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. Shout out to the orange. So for people who don’t know, I went to Syracuse University. Uh so we love that verse at Syracuse. My senior year, was that right? Yeah, my senior year when we went to our annual Campus Crusade Conference, we all had t-shirts that said Acts 2812 on it. So so yeah, we had a lot of fun with that. So Syracuse, it’s in the Bible.

Hannah • 13:29
Your favorite shout out.

Matt • 13:31
Jesus isn’t fan of the orange, yeah.

Hannah • 13:35
Well Paul is at least.

Matt • 13:43
Football, eh. But Paul really wants the orange to be better at basketball this year. Come on. Come on, Coach Mac. Let’s do it. So anyway, okay, so uh so he gets to Rome and he doesn’t go on trial right away. He’s just kind of hanging out.

Hannah • 14:00
Yeah, he is like uh on house arrest in Rome. And I think he’s there for like two years. Is I I don’t know that we get that. Um, because he the book of Acts ends while he’s still there, but that’s the the belief is that he was there about two years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt • 14:20
And then I yeah, there’s a couple different I think versions of the story. This is when my ignorance of early church history shows itself, but I think there’s a version where maybe he leaves Rome but gets arrested again and comes back. And that’s when he’s executed. Um but yeah, he finishes his life there in Rome. Um so yeah. If you’re curious, I’m sure that there are resources out there that will help you. But in terms of the story of Acts, it just is him in Rome. He’s under house arrest, so he’s not moving around, but people are coming to see him, and he’s just talking about Jesus, preaching the gospel to them. So exactly what we were told was going to happen at the beginning of the book. where the good news was gonna go out from Jerusalem and Judea to Samaria and then to the ends of the earth. This is approaching what would have been the ends of the earth, uh, to people in in that part of the world at the time. So you can see that Paul’s sort of living out that pattern.

Hannah • 15:15
Well I also wanted to talk about the um uh when he is defending himself there’s a interesting pattern of um how he expresses that he has hope oh the reason he’s on trial um so he says this both uh when he’s on trial before two different people, I don’t remember who, but in chapters twenty-six and twenty-eight. Um, and so he in chapter twenty-six He says that he’s on trial because of his hope in the promise that God made to uh uh his fathers, like you know, the fathers of Israel. And then in chapter twenty-eight he says that he’s in chains because of the hope of Israel. And so he is seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of everything that Israel has been hoping for. And specifically in both of those chapters, he goes on to explain specifically from the Hebrew Scriptures how Jesus fulfills these promises. So in chapter 26, verses 22 to 23, Paul says that the scriptures say that the Messiah will suffer, rise from the dead, proclaim light to both. Israel and Gentiles. And so he’s explaining from the scriptures those things that he believes is Jesus fulfilling that hope. And then in Acts 28. Uh verse 23, he tries to convince a large number of people about Jesus based on um the Old Testament scriptures. So when Paul says that he’s on trial for the hope of Israel, he’s talking about the promises that God made. to his people for this restoration. And I think it’s really powerful that Paul is proclaiming this hope while he is on trial in particular. um facing whatever consequences might be put before him, um, showing that his confidence is rooted in The assurance that God has already defeated death through Jesus and that one day uh God will raise his people to new life. And so that’s the hope that Paul is um f is secure in.

Matt • 17:40
Yeah. Yeah, and it’s such a different hope than I think may have been common at the time, where they’re very they’re hopeful for a you know, maybe a political or military leader to sort of overthrow the the Roman occupation or you know, economic hope or something like that. And you know, Paul’s talking about a dead man who came back to life. Yeah, it’s it it it’s it probably sounded as strange then as it does to us sometimes now. Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah • 18:10
Yeah.

Matt • 18:11
Yeah. So that’s Acts. So we did we did the Gospels and we did Acts. And so now we’re gonna turn the page, so to speak, and we’re gonna spend most of the rest of the year in what are sometimes called the Epistles. or or letters. Uh and see there’s these are letters by sort of early church leaders out to different churches uh around the world at that point, sort of explaining some of the uh common struggles, this is you know uh disagreements, clarification. Um so before we do that though, it’s probably worth spending a little bit of time What uh we’re gonna do Romans specifically because that’s where we start. But just in terms of reading the letters, Hannah, what are some things that are helpful for us to know?

Hannah • 18:58
Yeah, so I think we need to keep reminding ourselves that these are letters, so we’re like reading somebody else’s mail. That’s kind of a good thing. Yeah. And they’re like two thousand years old too. So um we should be aware of who the author is, who the audience is, what the particular context is there’s typically always a specific reason that the author writes to the audience, maybe a certain conflict or question that came up from the church or the individual. And so um if we can do a little bit of work to kind of dig behind the scenes to understand the context and then Um remember that even though the scripture is written for us, it wasn’t written to us originally. So there’s plenty of um benefit, plenty that we can learn from these letters, but we are not the original audience. And so when the letters say you, you, you, like who is that you that the author is talking to, that can help us to interpret. what the author meant to his original audience, and then we can contextualize that for us today. So that that would be the main thing I would say to keep in mind with letters.

Matt • 20:24
Yeah, you know, there’s something interesting I just learned a couple years ago. You might know more about this, but um so the the the work of the person who is actually doing the lettering. on this, like the scribe. So Paul would very often sort of orally uh you know say what he wanted to say. And then there’s somebody whose job it was is to like literally sit down and and write that out. And that was There was like a whole there was like a whole economy around this at the time, which I I think is I hadn’t heard that before and I think that’s really fascinating.

Hannah • 20:55
Yeah, letter writing was actually a super expensive thing to do. I uh oh I wish I had my notes about this, but there’s there’s something I want to say that like the letter of 1 Corinthians would have taken roughly the equivalent of like $1,400 to write

Matt • 21:13
Wow.

Hannah • 21:14
And I don’t even know if that’s like accounting for inflation or anything like that, you know? Um but materials were super expensive. Um, and then yeah, you would have to hire a scribe who is specialized in writing very, very small in order to preserve materials because the papyrus or whatever you are writing on You want to use as little as possible for cost reasons.

Matt • 21:40
Yeah. Well, and plus th they don’t have whiteout or they can’t fix mistakes.

Hannah • 21:44
Yeah. There were certain ways that you could reuse like um, I don’t know, leather. You could kind of like rub it off and rewrite on it. So Paul might have like written all his notes out on one type of material and these letters were very intentionally formed. So he would have written like a rough draft. and edited it. A lot of times he wrote with some of his coworkers and they’re named in some of the letters, like Uh I think Timothy and maybe Silas or someone else with an S name. I can’t remember. But um so they would have maybe contributed to that process too. And then once they had the draft, then they would have the scribe write it very precisely. And in a couple of the letters at the very end It’ll say, uh, Paul will say something like, you can see with what large letters I’m writing, which like for the very last sentence, he would say, Let me write it in my own handwriting so they know that I really sent it. Yeah. Um so that’s what what those sentences mean, which is really fascinating to me.

Matt • 22:55
Oh, it’s so cool.

Hannah • 22:56
Yeah.

Matt • 22:57
Yeah. I I love that point about like this would have been a very uh labor intensive process and a really expensive process. Yeah. Um so not a casual thing. Like he’s not doing this sort of in the back of the bus or something like that. It’s a lot of attention. It’s a lot of forethought. Um and he’s actually hiring somebody with a who’s highly trained and skilled because he he that’s that’s his deep care for the churches that he’s writing to. He wants to get it right. uh and he’s willing to invest not only time but a lot of money to make sure that they get this um the way that he intended. So yeah, it’s It’s we can sometimes read them sort of casually um but there is so much going on behind the scenes to to have it written down on paper so that we can see it all these years later um is a very, very intentional effort.

Hannah • 23:52
Yeah, and I think one implication of that is sometimes we feel like when we read Paul’s letters that they like bounce all over the place. And he has a lot of tangents and sometimes it feels like that, but knowing that this is not just the first rough draft, that this has been revised and very intentionally designed. We should be looking for what the intentionality is behind those things that seem like they’re bouncing all over the place. Um, there is a unifying thread and like usually a main idea that Paul or whoever the author is is trying to communicate. And I think when we look at the letter as a whole, we can see what the main message and the main purpose is a lot clearer instead of getting lost on all of the tangents and just assuming that Paul was scatterbrained or something.

Matt • 24:47
Yeah, it’s such a good point. Because we tend to um maybe if we sit down to read them we might read them all the way through. But if we’re Doing say a series like whether it’s a sermon series or if we’re discussing like in our small groups or something like that, we break it up and we do it in chunks. But they almost certainly would have read it all the way through every time that they read it. So I mean you think about when you get a letter or an email or something from somebody that you know You don’t read a paragraph and then be like, okay, what’s the the implications of No, you read the whole thing.

Hannah • 25:18
Yeah.

Matt • 25:19
Um, you know, I think about, you know, summers when I would be away from my family, I would get postcards or I would get letters from home. I would read the letter all the way through Um and in in that way it’s very much like that. So they would not have read it one paragraph be like, okay, so let me let me do my observation interpretation application of this. No, they’re they’re reading it. It’s a le Paul, their friend, their Their father in the faith, their mentor, this person has a lot to say to them. Yeah, what’s he have to say to us? Let’s read it. Yeah.

Hannah • 25:45
Yeah. Yeah. And most people would have actually just been hearing the whole thing read aloud to them. Most people were not literate and so when the letter was delivered, the person delivering it would have read the whole thing out loud to the church. And you know, they probably kept it and maybe read it again out loud every so often or something like that. Um but yeah, you would hear it read aloud from start to end.

Matt • 26:11
Yeah. And and apparently some of these were shared letters. There’s a little note in one of them where it’s like, hey, I sent one to the Laodiceans, which we I think we understand to be Ephesians. Hey, go get that one and read it too and share this one with them. So there was something happening where yeah, he’s writing to an audience, but there are there are things that he wants more than one group of people to hear. So he wants them to circulate them a little bit

Hannah • 26:34
Yeah, a few of them. Yeah, that are like Ephesians in particular is pretty well understood to be a circular letter because it’s pretty generalized. Yeah.

Matt • 26:46
Yeah. All right, so the first one we’re gonna do, actually, and this is worth noting too, in the version of the Bible that we read and experience, the letters are organized from longest to shortest.

Hannah • 26:58
Yeah.

Matt • 26:58
Um which if we were if we were doing the canon today, we may make a different editorial choice. We might do them chronologically. In fact I’ve I’ve seen somebody who Challenges people to read Paul’s letters chronologically because he uses language about himself in a much different way. Um, so I may tweak my Bible reading plan for 2027 to do that. It’s not 2027 yet, so I’m getting ahead of myself. But I I I like that notion. Um but we’re gonna do them the way that they are in the Bibles that we experienced. So we’re gonna go longest to shortest.

Hannah • 27:31
So as we go, we’re per author.

Matt • 27:33
Yeah.

Hannah • 27:33
So like it’s all of Paul’s letters longest or shortest, then the next author, longest or shortest. Yeah.

Matt • 27:39
Yeah. So as we go, we’re gonna be jumping around time periods and places a little bit so it won’t tell the story maybe in a mo most natural way but that’s okay we’ll we’ll work it out as we go. So we’re gonna start in Romans. That’s the longest one. So Hannah what’s what’s happening in Romans?

Hannah • 27:56
Yep, so we know that Paul is the author and he’s writing to the church in Rome. We understand that he’s never been to the Roman church yet. Um, but he’s hoping to go in the future. And he says that in the letter. Um the the church in Rome was made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers. But at one point the Roman Emperor Claudius expelled all of the Jews from Rome, and I think it was like five years later that they were allowed to return back. And so this was just shortly before Paul probably wrote this letter that the Jews came back and uh noticed that the church in Rome had become very non-Jewish in custom, um, and that caused a lot of division in the church. So Paul is writing uh specifically in this context of trying to reunify the church around the gospel.

Matt • 28:58
Yeah. Yeah, there’s a a book that I have heard a lot about, but have never actually read, by a guy named Scott McKnight. I know you know who Scott McKnight is. He’s a very in in theological circles, he’s very, very well known. Um, but he has a book called Reading Romance Backwards, um, which sounds fascinating to me. I should just pull the trigger and buy. You know what? I actually have a little book budget as an elder. I should just I need to talk to Reagan. Reagan Reagan, if you’re listening, I need you to order me this book. Okay, sorry. Um Matt Trolls for Books on a podcast. Um But yeah, so his and he really uh the apparently the premise of the book is really based around that idea because spoiler when we get to the end of the book He’s talking Paul’s talking a lot about the importance of unity, reunifying people, and he names names. And there’s this interesting thing where like there’s a Greek name and then a Jewish name and then a Greek name. So It’s it’s really interesting. So we’ll we’ll talk more about that when we get there. But so McKnight’s point is when you read the end of the book first and see the application Paul is going to. are going for, then it brings more context and understanding for reading the rest of the book. So when he’s really breaking down the gospel message and some of those things, that’s an important part of the context. So Um so if you’re curious, uh maybe that’s a book you check out. We’ll put that in the uh Amazon link when we get that uh up and running.

Hannah • 30:23
So Yeah.

Matt • 30:25
Yeah.

Hannah • 30:25
Yeah, and the one other thing I would say is that like we just saw an axe Paul is very clearly seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures and Israel’s story. And we see that a lot in Romans. Um in um Just verse 2 of chapter 1, it says that uh Paul says the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. So like right there he’s saying the gospel is the fulfillment of all these promises that we saw in in our Hebrew scriptures. So just having that introduction up front, I think is interesting knowing what we just read in Acts and we’ll see that play out through all of these hyperlinks and quotes and allusions that Paul makes Back to the Hebrew Bible throughout this letter.

Matt • 31:22
Alright, so I know we got a couple threads we want to pull on. Can I make a confession right up front? Sure. I struggle with Romans a little bit.

Hannah • 31:30
Yeah.

Matt • 31:31
I know I know a lot of Bible nerds, like seminary grads and and highfalutin pastors, they love Romance. Like they just weep at the uh name Romance. I struggle. I struggle. Am I not a good Bible nerd? Because I struggle a little bit with Romans.

Hannah • 31:49
Uh it’s a dense letter. I I’m right there with you.

Matt • 31:53
It’s it’s Pretty dense and he makes some sort of shifts in logic or as he’s sort of working his way through arguments and he makes some shifts and I can’t keep up with him. I still struggle. I think we’ll get into this in a second. But I still struggle with that shift from chapter one to chapter two. So chapter one, he’s just sort of laying out um the sin of humanity and the broken, sort of going back to that spiral from the early chapters of Genesis. And he’s just sort of lays it out about how we all are just up to our eyeballs in sin and we’re in big trouble uh and we’re not righteous and we deserve condemnation. And then chapter two opens by saying, Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself And for the life of me, I cannot follow that argument. I that uh I every single time I have to be like, wait, what what just happened? I for me, that’s not a natural shift in logic, so I always struggle with that. Yeah.

Hannah • 32:51
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. My my initial thought was just that after Paul is talking about how um everyone, like this is the describing the fall of all of humanity. Like therefore you have no reason to judge because you are included in that, you know, that fallen nature. Yeah. But I’m right there with you with Romans is not necessarily my favorite letter either.

Matt • 33:22
Yeah, I I like a little bit more clear narrative. And I and I like some I like some good application. So give me Corinthians. Corinthians is juicy. Like it. We’ll get there when the time comes. But yeah, give me some Ephesians and Colossians. Like those. But yeah, Romans I struggle with a little bit. But that said, uh I’ve heard people say that uh like Romans and Isaiah have a lot of connections with each other And as we talked through, I sort of fell in love again with Isaiah this year, so maybe I need to give Romance a little little longer run here. I don’t know. Just me. If you’re out there and you’re like, oh, oh, Romans is hard, I’m right there with you. I find Romans to be uh a hard book to digest.

Hannah • 34:04
Yeah, totally.

Matt • 34:05
Yeah. Uh all right, so one of the big things um that gets established in Romans, and Pastor Matthew’s been talking about this all year, this word gospel is super duper important in the book of Romans. Gospel, as we’ve talked about, is a word that means good news. Uh and so he’s hammering this point, Hamma. The gospel, it’s the power for salvation, gospel, gospel, gospel, good news, good news, good news. I mean, okay. I understand that it’s good news, but like good news compared to what? Like what’s the problem? Why do I need to hear good news? What what what’s Paul trying to tell us there?

Hannah • 34:42
Well, yeah, I think that’s why Paul kind of starts off this letter. Um so starting in verse 18 of chapter one. talking about the problem. So Paul begins by retelling humanity’s failure and downward spiral because he wants his readers to understand the problem that the gospel has come to solve. So before he he does, you know, briefly introduce to us in verse 16 and 17 what the gospel is, which is the power of God to save. Um, but then he tells us the problem before telling us more about the good news that solves it. So yeah, you mentioned this is tracing this downward spiral. This is something Bible Project pointed out in the reading plan. that um this second half of chapter one is kind of creatively retelling Genesis three through eleven, which is like the original downward spiral of humanity at the very beginning of the Bible. So um in the beginning of the Bible, um in Genesis. Humanity is created in God’s image. We’re meant to reflect God’s character, but instead humans reject God’s wisdom and choose to define good and evil for themselves in Genesis 3. And so Paul describes the same pattern here at the beginning of Romans, saying that humanity exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator. So in uh in Genesis, um God gave humans dominion over the the birds and the the animals and the creeping things. But here in Romans, Paul says that now that created order is upside down. And so humans are worshipping images that resemble these birds and animals and creeping things. So we see that connection and that reversal there. Um and then we also see that Humans, just like in Genesis 3, humans seize wisdom for themselves rather than receiving it. So verses 21 and 22 of Romans chapter 1. um tell us something similar that claiming to be wise they became fools. So seizing that wisdom for ourselves rather than receiving it. And that reminds me a lot of Genesis 3. Yeah and taking from the tree. for for yourself. Yeah. Um yeah, and so then just just like chapters uh Genesis chapters four through eleven, that rebellion produces an increasing uh destructive set of consequences. And three times throughout this section in Romans, Paul says that God gave them over. to the consequences of their actions. And so um this is something we saw several times in the Old Testament too, that God’s judgment Often is described as allowing humans to experience the consequences of their own destructive path that they’ve chosen and rejecting God. So that’s the same kind of strategy that Paul’s using here.

Matt • 38:17
I’m thinking about Pharaoh. Yep. I’m thinking thinking about a couple of those examples. The the Israelites themselves in terms of what led to the exile.

Hannah • 38:24
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so we see this pattern playing out how all of humanity is in this downward spiral. And I think that helps set up how Paul starts to move into talking about Abraham. in the next few chapters because um, you know, we just looked at Genesis 3 through 11. Abraham shows up in Genesis 12 Yeah. And so Abraham is the vehicle that God chose to work out his plan to restore all of humanity. from this downward spiral. And so um when Paul turns the page to Abraham, it kind of makes sense with the same order that we saw play out in the Hebrew scriptures.

Matt • 39:06
Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. You know, chapter three is kind of one of these greatest hits chapters because it’s it’s got uh you know, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Some of these verses that we remember, but he’s it’s basically where he’s like, it’s dark. Sort of like that moment in sort of Genesis eleven, uh, where it’s just really dark. You know, we’ve had the flood, we’ve had um we’ve had the Tower of Babel. Um, and you just think, okay, where is the story gonna go now? And Paul’s not using narrative in the way that the the Genesis is, but he’s basically painting a pretty bleak picture. Um like there’s no hope. And and he’s he’s sort of um he’s he he would need to put a spoiler because he’s not shy about like uh except for Jesus, there’s no hope, but he’s he’s kind of staying in that that place.

Hannah • 39:54
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so particularly in chapter four is when Paul starts talking about Abraham and um how Abraham was justified by his faith. Um as opposed to his like obedience to the Torah or something like that. So that’s one of Paul’s big arguments.

Matt • 40:17
Abraham didn’t even have the Torah.

Hannah • 40:19
Yep, exactly.

Matt • 40:20
Yeah.

Hannah • 40:20
It’s like cent centuries before the Torah.

Matt • 40:23
And this is one of the reasons why I really appreciate Scott McKnight’s point so much is you can sort of hear the debates that are going on in the church. You can hear the Jewish people who have been separated now they’re coming back and they’re like, well, hey, you ha you guys have gotten away from some of the sacrificial uh rituals, you’ve gotten away from the kosher laws, you’ve gotten away from the practice of sir circumcision. We have to start doing these things. And we know and we have uh supremacy here because we’re the people of Abraham. And then you can see sort of Paul saying like, Well, the point isn’t to be followers or children of Abraham because you keep the rules or because you just have some sort of racial superiority, the thing that set Abraham apart was his faith. And the way you show yourself to be his true sons and daughters is when you respond in faith to the Messiah. Um and I can imagine that’s a hard message for them to swallow.

Hannah • 41:23
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Matt • 41:25
Yeah. Yeah. Still a hard message to swallow, I think. At least for me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ve talked about this before. I’m I was a church kid. I was a Sunday school kid. I know the rules. I know what you’re supposed to do. Uh, I’m really good at going to church. And so like when we get new people that are maybe not as skilled at going to church as I am, I can get a little bit haughty about it. I’d be like, don’t you know that church starts at 10 o’clock? And you should not be sacheting in here at like ten fifteen. But it’s not being on time to church that makes makes me a Child of God, it’s having my faith in Jesus. So if somebody shows faith in Jesus by being there at 1015, then maybe that’s okay. This is a terrible example, but yeah. Sorry.

Hannah • 42:15
Yeah, but getting down to what is actually important, what is actually central to the gospel, to receiving the good news. Yeah. Not following our little in our in our Christian perspective, like what you’re saying about showing up to church, that’s just an arbitrary like rule that that we’ve made up in our own heads about how we should structure the church gathering or whatever it is. Yeah

Matt • 42:43
And in fairness, that the the Jews would have been talking about something of more consequence than my silly rule about being on time to church. They’re talking about things that are deeply felt and deeply held to them.

Hannah • 42:52
Yeah.

Matt • 42:53
You know, traditions and practices that go back centuries even at that point. Um, and so yeah, it was a marker of being the people of God that you circumcised, that you kept the Sabbath a certain way. These and these things are not unimportant. Mm-hmm. But what Paul is sharing is, is these are all things that point to the work of Jesus. And it’s it’s not the things, it’s the way that they show us who Jesus is. so that we can put our faith in him. That’s where those rituals and things have power by showing us more about who he is. So get off your high horse about your kosher laws and your this and your that and just like Have a big open door to share Jesus with people.

Hannah • 43:33
Yeah. Yeah. And and a lot of those things were genuine ways that Um, the Jewish people expressed their worship and allegiance to God. Um, but the point is that those things are no longer the entry point into relationship with God. Jesus is the entry point.

Matt • 43:53
Yeah. And so when you have people coming into the church who don’t do those things or certainly don’t do these things as naturally as you do. Don’t feel superior to them. Don’t lord it over them. Don’t use that as a way to cause division and separate yourself and create these like levels of like Well, we’re a super Christian because we have a Jewish background and we keep the laws and yeah, we like you, we let you in, but you’re a Gentile Christian, so you gotta like sit in the back row or something like that. You can see some of this. Yeah. So I think Mike Knight’s work or or people that I’ve heard talk about Mike Mike Knight’s or whatever really highlighted that factor for me. You can you can almost hear them having the argument. And you can and so seeing Paul’s response of no no the children of Abraham are the ones who have faith. If you want to be like Abraham, have faith in Jesus. That’s that’s what he was really about.

Hannah • 44:45
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt • 44:47
But I like your little highlight about how um the story starts to turn in Genesis when we meet Abraham in chapter twelve. And here in Romans, the story starts to turn a little bit as Paul introduces uh Abraham to us. Yeah. I mean, he’s hinted at him a couple of times, but he really gets into it in more detail starting in chapter four. That’s a neat little pattern that I I don’t know that I but observed before.

Hannah • 45:12
Yeah.

Matt • 45:16
Paul, he’s a smart guy. Who knew?

Hannah • 45:18
Who knew?

Matt • 45:19
Who knew? Yeah. All right. So Romans, yeah. So again, we’ve been r doing Romans at church all year, and Romans is probably a book that’s familiar to a lot of us. Uh but I’m excited to uh go through this and read do some more reading this week, and then I think next week we’ll talk more about uh some of these uh sort of arguments and things that Paul lays out. And I think we’ll get pretty close to the end of it next week.

Hannah • 45:43
So we’ll look at how these people might finish.

Matt • 45:45
Oh okay that’ll be great because then we can do the synthesis piece. And be like kind of Paul hinted at it, but now look how he brings this together. And and we’re even at church we’re getting close to the end of Romans, so we’ll we’ll be on this little journey all together. It’ll be fun.

Hannah • 45:59
Yeah, we’ll finish it and and actually by next week we will have started the first two chapters of First Corinthians.

Matt • 46:05
Okay.

Hannah • 46:06
Yeah.

Matt • 46:06
I do kinda like Corinthians. It’s a lot of drama in the Corinthian letters, so That’ll be fun to talk about. Cool. Uh anything else on Romans?

Hannah • 46:16
I think that’s that’s it for the beginning of it. Yeah.

Matt • 46:19
Alright, yeah. So if you like me Uh find Robins to be a little bit of a slog, a little bit challenging to read. Just know that you have a friend. You can text me and I’ll cheer and I’ll I’ll I’ll be there with you. But let’s just keep going. Because it’s God’s word and it’s the gospel and it’s good stuff. So we’ll do it together. How’s that sound, Hannah?

Hannah • 46:42
Sounds great to me.

Matt • 46:44
Alrighty. Well why don’t I pray for us and then we’ll uh we’ll be dismissed. So Great. All right. Uh Heavenly Father, I don’t always understand what I need to understand to read your word. I know that your word is light to my path. I know that it’s a lamp unto my feet. Uh, but also it’s just hard sometimes. And so I’m reading Romans sometimes and I’ll just be like, wait, how do we make the shift from that thing to that thing? How did we get there? I don’t understand. And Lord, I’ve read Romans so many times now, even, and there’s still big chunks of it that I just don’t feel like I understand. But Lord, I trust you. I trust that this makes sense. I trust that your word is uh anointed, that it’s living and active, and that even for me, even though this letter wasn’t written to me, um that it was written for me to experience thousands of years later that I might know you better and know the work of your son Jesus Christ and give him worship and allegiance. in obedience. And so Lord, I trust as I read this book together with my friends and uh the people that we’re doing this plan with, Lord, that you will illuminate it through the power of the Spirit and we’ll be able to see your glory and your greatness and your goodness. Lord that we will appreciate the power uh of our salvation that is available to us through the gospel, the good news that Jesus came and suffered and uh died on a cross but then rose again. and that you will show us the power that that has to turn the world upside down and give us rich, full lives that we can live for your glory. So we trust that you’ll do that, Lord. And I’ll even just say, you know, the the church that Paul is writing to experienced a lot of division and Lord, I think the church that we are part of, Fairfax Bible Church. I don’t know that we have division the same way, but certainly the culture that we’re in, there’s a lot of division And people upset and lots of different things, or will we learn just like the Roman Church had to learn how to put our trust in you and be unified Through the power of the gospel, Lord. I pray that you would do this for us as we put our trust in you. So we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hannah • 48:43
Amen.

Matt • 48:44
Amen. Thanks so much, Hannah.

Hannah • 48:45
Thanks, Matt.