Brent Billings (2:37)

Yeah, that's where it is for the people who do listen to that. We do get a lot of loving feedback for those last couple episodes of Session five, where we just kind of bring everything home and kind of feel out where we are in the world and where we are in God's narrative.

Marty Solomon (2:53)

Yeah. And you've made a good point. This is the right session to do that. Like, we're taking it kind of halftime in session 10. Like, this is a great time to go back and catch up on seasons you missed or episodes you want to revisit or any of those things. Right, Brent?

Brent Billings (3:05)

Yeah. Because starting after this episode, we're going to the every other week release schedule. Maybe some exceptions here and there. We're not going to make any, you know, totally definitive decisions. But for the most part, starting after this episode, we're coming out with a new one every other week for this season of mourning that we are doing.

Marty Solomon (3:23)

Yeah. And we talked about that in the intro, if you missed that, the intro to this season. We discussed why we're doing that just for this season. And we've got reboot on session two coming out. So all those things are happening. But it's a great time to catch up if you've got a little extra time because our production schedule is a little slower. Use it, use it. Don't abuse it. There you go. Absolutely.

Brent Billings (3:44)

So how did this idea of four pillars come about? Marty? You talk about the four pillars of Hellenism, but I feel like that even has a story behind it, too. Where did this whole idea come from?

Marty Solomon (3:53)

Yeah, and I don't think I've really ever told it. I remember going on my trips in 2008, I went with Ray RVL, we call him Ray van der Lijn, went with him to Israel. And then in 2010, I went to Israel and Turkey and had these incredible experiences. And I just had this question when I came back. And sometimes it was a question that was being asked of me, but it was even just an internal question like, how do I boil down? Like, Ray literally gave me his body of work, like his. I wouldn't say it was his whole canon by any stretch, but he gave me a really big chunk of his teaching on those trips. And how do I take this thing that, I mean, Ray just blew up my world. And how do I take that and take it with me in a way that I can understand? I want to appreciate the entire catalog, but I also want to have something that's pocket sized, if you will. I want to have something like, how do I summarize? Like, if I were to take RVL's catalog, how would I summarize it and how it impacted me? And it's also just kind of how my brain likes to synthesize information.

Brent Billings (4:54)

Yeah. This is one of the things that you talk about when we come back from a trip. Like, hey, you need to have a story of the trip ready. And one of the versions of the story that you need is like a 30 second version.

Marty Solomon (5:04)

Yep.

Brent Billings (5:04)

Because a lot of people you encounter, that's all the time you're going to get to explain what happened.

Marty Solomon (5:08)

Yep.

Brent Billings (5:09)

So having these ways to boil this down is really helpful.

Marty Solomon (5:12)

Yeah, absolutely. And I can remember one of the things I was really grappling with and wrestling with was the idea of Hellenism that had just smacked me straight in the face. And I was like, oh, my goodness, it revealed some of my own idolatries. And I was wrestling with that. And so I think that was kind of top of my mind as I was trying to think about how to summarize this experience. And I thought to myself, if the Greeks could change the world with four pillars, so can we? Why not? I can change the world of four pillars. We can change the world of four pillars. I felt like there were kind of four ideas that were kind of swirling around in my brain. And so I set out to try to articulate those. And we do we talk about these at the end of session five. We'll put that episode in the show notes. Whatever episode that is, we really summarize it with four big ideas. One of them is text, meaning the scripture, the word of God. One of them is community. Like, one of the big things I took out of my time with Ray was a new understanding of how the early church community embodied community and fellowship. The third was discipleship, a particular method of raising up leaders within the people of God. Not for everybody, but for a select few that are chosen to do this thing. And God calls to be something set apart and different. That's something we see all throughout the Texas discipleship and Then all of this was kind of like swimming in the waters of wrestling. Like, one of the things that I experienced growing up was I wasn't encouraged to wrestle. And around every corner of everything I was experiencing in Israel and Turkey was this, like, this movement, this internal and external movement that. That was not encouraged in the world that I grew up in. I was not encouraged to ask questions. I wasn't encouraged to wrestle. And so those were the four pillars. Text, community, discipleship, and wrestling. And so that's what we're going to do for this series here. We're going to take three weeks. For each pillar, I'm going to share. I'm going to start off each pillar myself. So the opening episode for each pillar is going to be me sharing just where are my thoughts today? Like, if I were to go back and say, okay, I got a whole episode to talk about this one idea, because back in session five, we talked about all of them as a part of an episode. But if I were going to go back and say, let me spend a whole episode on this idea in year of our Lord 2026, what would I say today? And so I'm going to start, and then for each one of these pillars, we will also hear from Reid and from Elle, and sometimes I'll be with them, and sometimes they'll do that on their own, but we will essentially get three different conversations, and they will be different. It reminds me, Brent, when we did. Was it season seven, Session seven, Right.

Brent Billings (7:57)

Yeah.

Marty Solomon (7:57)

And we talked about spiritual disciplines, and we didn't know. Like, when we drew that series together, we were like, the problem is, I'm not going to know what Marty shared. And we said, that's actually the point. Like, the beauty of it is, I don't know what Marty said about his spiritual disciplines. I just get to say what I would say with a blank slate. And that's what a lot of the series will be. They won't know necessarily what I shared. They might see notes if I did it before they did. But we'd get to hear from Reid and Elle, their perspectives on each of the four pillars as well. So that's how the series will function. Anything you want to add to that before I dive into the first pillar?

Brent Billings (8:30)

Just that I reserve the right to share any of my comments along the way.

Marty Solomon (8:34)

Very good. Everybody would. There would be a mutiny if you didn't. All you'd have to do is tell people that you were being. Your conversation was being throttled, Brent. And the behemoth community would rise up.

Brent Billings (8:44)

I can Promise the listeners, if I have anything to say, I will say it.

Marty Solomon (8:49)

He can always edit whatever he wants to say right into the middle of that episode.

Brent Billings (8:52)

That's right, yeah.

Marty Solomon (8:53)

Brent has the absolute power. All right, well, the first pillar we're going to get into is that first, I always start with this pillar. For me, the text. We're going to start with text today, and I'll tell a little bit of my story and then we'll spend some time in the text because it would just be weird to do an episode without any text on the text. That would be weird.

Brent Billings (9:10)

Absolutely. Yeah.

Marty Solomon (9:11)

And then we'll try to bring it home with some conclusions, some practical application points. But let me just tell a little bit of my story. I had these great mentors growing up. A couple of them that I can think of. Steve. Steve Edwards, Bill Westfall. These were guys that found me at a critical point. I was in college. I'm getting a job leading a church. I'm kind of becoming a leader. But I'm also really young. But you don't think you're young when you're 22. You don't think you're young. You think you're awesome. And I definitely thought I was awesome. I had not yet encountered my own narcissistic tendencies and traits. I was a real dangerous person. These mentors came around me then. They, like, discipled me. Yeah, they really loved me. And they were people. They were not scholars. They were not the people that taught me the things of Bama. What they taught me was prayer and contemplation. They were more mystical in their posture. I might even at times call them mystics. Like, if they were going to talk about the people in Christian history that had impacted them, they would be the people. Nobody can see the screen, but Brent can see me pointing to a bookshelf up above my head behind me. That's my mysticism shelf. And a lot of those people were the people that shaped my mentors, these early classical era Christian mystics that taught us how to pray and how to pursue Jesus. And what they really did. They weren't Bible nerds. They loved the Bible, but they taught me about the personal Jesus and they taught me how to make space for him. And they taught me how to pray and how to pursue a personal relationship not with a historical figure that lived 2,000 years ago, but with the resurrected Christ that is alive and well today. And I'm very, very thankful that I had those mentors when I had those mentors.

Brent Billings (11:02)

And they're the type of people the type of teachers, if you want to call them that, that you wouldn't necessarily be drawn to, but they saw something in you and they. They pursued you.

Marty Solomon (11:13)

Yeah. And there was something. And even though I wouldn't have, like, as we built a relationship, I was drawn to them in some weird way. And it's because they knew Jesus really well.

Brent Billings (11:21)

Yeah. Yeah.

Marty Solomon (11:21)

But I wouldn't have, in my mind thought, like, oh, that's the person I'm looking for. But they loved me. They invested in me. And as I just spent a little bit of time, I was like, oh, there's something very attractional about this thing that Jesus is doing in their life. And the problem with all of that was I loved all that. The problem was I struggled with it. It was like speaking a language that was my second language. It was like. And I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Prayer has never been something that has come easy for me or that I just fall into naturally. Contemplation goes against my very cerebral book nerd nature. And so I struggled, but I pursued it because I knew what Jesus had done in the life of my mentors. They had helped me see what Jesus could do in my own life, and that's where I was. And then I think. I think. I mean, I'm not going to speak for God, but I feel like when I was ready, God was like, okay, let me introduce you to Ray van der Lijn, and let me send you over to Israel and Turkey. Now that you know what the resurrected Jesus is like in your personal life, let me give you all the nerdy, crazy stuff. And so I went over there and I can remember the lesson that changed my life was up above the ruins of Qumran, which is where the Essene community, we call them the Essenes, the Qumran community, whatever you want to call that group of people. There's a group of people, the sons of Zadok, that went out to the desert. It's where we found the Dead Sea Scrolls. And there was this big lesson on the text. And you can go back and listen. We can link the Essene episode in our show notes Brent, if people want to go back and review it. But there's this amazing episode, amazing lesson that Ray does up above Qumran, and it's all about the power of the text, and it's all about this community that gave themselves to, like, they were going to learn the text when nobody else was going to know the text. They were going to know the text. And when the world decided it was important enough to know the text again that they started asking. When they stood at the crossroads and they looked for the ancient paths and they asked where the good way was, they would ask. And there was going to be a group of people that was going to be ready, and they were going to say, we know because we've given our whole life to this. We know what the ancient paths are. They literally preserve the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like, we literally talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls today. We talk about them for the gift that they are to us. This group of people, they committed themselves to knowing and to preserving and to writing down and to walking the path. And I remember Ray, I don't want to ruin the lesson in case anybody ever gets to experience it in person, but essentially, Ray gets to a point where he's like, where are they? Like today? Where are the Essenes? Where are the people that are that committed to being people of the text, to not just knowing about the Bible or reading books about the Bible or knowing a lot of theology? Where are the people that want to memorize the Bible, who want to know, who want to get the Bible in them, who want to plant those seeds deep and let them grow? Like, where are they? And I remember a few of us were just very moved. I remember one of my. One of my friends and co pastors standing at the top of the mountain, shouting into the valley, I want to be an Essene. And that's not my style. So I didn't shout at the top of my lungs, but Brent would probably laugh because he knows that I do shout at the top of my lungs. But I didn't that day. But I sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks saying, yeah, me too. I want to be an Essene. And I had a bunch of conversations with Ray about a lot of things. And eventually those conversations revolved around my own Jewish heritage and my own Jewish identity. And as I wrestled with this over those two years, Ray. I can remember Ray, we had a conversation over a meal. We had a conversation in an airport. And at some point, Ray said, marty, this is the mysterious call that God has between himself and his people. And then he stopped and he said, between himself and your people. This is your story. This is who you are. And this role that God's given you is something special. And it's a special role that nobody else has. And he says, you are this person who is supposed to know his text. Like a gentile should be able to walk up to you and grab you by your beard and Say, tell me about Torah, and you're the person who should be able to tell them anything they need to know about. You should know Torah. And I remember talking to Ray, like, wait, is this prayer? Like, it's not the kind of prayer my mentors taught me, but if I'm a part of a special thing that God's doing in the world, could this be prayer for me? Is this prayer? And Ray essentially had his own ways of saying, yes, this is what prayer looks like. This is what prayer can look like for you. I came back from those trips with a personal ownership and a fire that I've talked about in other episodes. When I talked about my spiritual disciplines in session seven, I talked about what that looked like. But this journey for me of the text has been this weird combination of my own mysticism, my own Jewish identity, which is my own and not everybody else's. My own story is not your story, but it was my story. My own belief in the spirit of God and how the Holy Spirit works, my cerebral nature, my contemplative belief and experience with prayer, and my commitment to scholarship, whether that's rogue scholarship or formal education, like what I'm pursuing now, when you put all of these things together that make me me. The text is where all these things collided, and I just found, like, this deep resonant, oh, this is who I am, and this is who God made me to be. And so the text has become the pillar for me, and I could just probably just ramble, and I should stop rambling. So we should get to the text. Brent, I gave you a list of my favorite text texts. How about that? Does that make any sense? My favorite text texts?

Brent Billings (17:22)

Sure, yeah. Whatever you want to call it.

Marty Solomon (17:25)

These are my favorite passages that I often think back to or I go to, and I think about the texts. We just have a whole list here, and Brent's going to read them, and I'll give just the briefest little commentaries about them, and then we'll see where this leads us for a conclusion by the time we're done with our episode today. But, Brent, give us Romans 3. The first few verses of Romans 3.

Brent Billings (17:44)

What advantage then is there in being a Jewish? Or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way. First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God. What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all. Let God be true. And every human being a liar. As it is written, so that you may be Proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.

Marty Solomon (18:10)

Yeah. There was that passage that Ray was referencing in that day in the restaurant where he said, this is a special call. And he quoted that verse, I think it's Romans 3, 2. Like God has entrusted to the Jews the very oracles, the very words of God, depending how your translation, this is something like they are. Ray told me that day, you are the keeper of Torah. You're the one who protects it and keeps it and knows it. You can be the Essene that you want to be. And part of this is because of who I am as a Jewish follower of Jesus and my Jewish heritage. And that's not to say that it doesn't apply. If you're a Gentile listening to this, probably most of you, that's not at all to say that this can't also be true of you. I'm not speaking to you or about that. I'm simply speaking from my own place in my own story. If you're also listening to this and you're like, oh, man, that just doesn't resonate with me. Okay, that's fine. That's totally fine. I think God's doing something with his people. God's doing something in the body of Christ. We're all given tasks. And I'm not saying that this can't belong to a Gentile, nor am I saying that every single follower of Jesus should have the same passion that I have. But for me, there was the sense of God gave his Jewish people the Torah. He gave them the words of God, the very words of God. And that is their passion, that is their commitment, that is their special call that they have in the world. And I remember just walking away from that conversation that day, just deeply reflecting and owning that and being moved by that. It moved me. But how about Isaiah 55, Brent?

Brent Billings (19:48)

And I was going to do this from memory, but I realized that the portion I have memorized is only a small chunk of this. So I actually have to look this up. But I know this is a good one. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for He will freely pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and, and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater. So is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush will grow the juniper, and instead of briars the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign that will endure forever.

Marty Solomon (21:06)

Yes, one of what I think is Isaiah's best passages, this poetic, beautiful refrain of this call to let the wicked forsake their ways. Let the unrighteous find God's righteousness. And if they will like, he will forgive them. Because he's not like us. He doesn't hold grudges like us. He doesn't judge the way. Like if they want to come back, if they want to come home, if they want to leave their wickedness and come and walk in his ways, he's ready to forgive them because his ways aren't our ways and his thoughts aren't our thoughts. And then in the middle of this whole thing, because it ends with like, when you do this, the trees of the field will clap their hands, life will come to dead places. All this beautiful stuff that God wants to do in the world will take place in the middle of all of this sits this passage about God's words. Like somehow in the middle of this whole thing, the power, the generative, spirit filled power that's going to make so much of this happen is the word of God which goes forth and never returns void. And you can call it a weird mixture with my mysticism that my mentors gave me a little bit of my contemplative, maybe stir in a dash of my fundamentalism from my childhood, but I really do believe there's something supernatural about God's words. I really do. I've been shamed in more scholarly circles for suggesting such things, but I really do. I think God's words, there's an efficacy to the Word of God. The text that a blog post, that song that we've composed just doesn't have something about the text and the word of God. It always does its work. It always accomplishes its purpose. Oh, how about this one? How about Ezekiel, chapter 40, verse 4? Brent, this is a fun Little verse in the middle of something else.

Brent Billings (23:05)

The man said to me, son of man, look carefully and listen closely and pay attention to everything I am going to show you. For that is why you have been brought here. Tell the people of Israel everything you see.

Marty Solomon (23:17)

So I am not enough of an expert. Someday we'll have to get Ellen here to talk about what she sees in Ezekiel 44. But there's a rabbinic conversation that Ray taught me and us on both trips where he said, in the grammar of the Hebrew, Here it's inconsistent. If we were to put it in the English we would expect, and the translation we just read kind of fixes this. I feel like the old NIV 84 used to preserve what Ray was referencing, but I can't remember. But he said, if you were thinking about it in English, it would be look with your eyes and listen with your ears. Or it would be see with your eyes and hear with your ears. There's a more intense expression, and in the English, it kind of feels a little different. But in the Hebrew, hearing Shema is a much bigger concept than simply listening. I can listen but not hear. I can look but not truly see. So you would expect look and listen, or you would expect see and hear. But you're mixing the grammatical intensities to say, look and hear, look with your eyes and hear with your ears. And Ray told me that there's a rabbinical conversation about that's what God's always wanted us to be. We need to use our eyes. We're going to use our eyes. But what we need to be really good at is to be people of the ears. We love to be people that see and listen. But we're called to be people that look and hear. Like, we want to trust what we can see and kind of let it be supplemented by what we hear or listen to. But the call of God is to don't trust what you see. Trust my word, trust my word. And for me, that rings and screams text to me. I want to know God's text. It's going to teach me how to be a person of the ears. I don't even have this in your list. But there's another passage. I think it's in a psalm that says. The psalmist says, God, chisel my ears. My ears you have pierced. And the idea of piercing there is the idea of chiseling. And the rabbis connected that to Jeremiah, where it said, is not my word, my text like a hammer. And they said, oh, if your ears are stopped up like stone, well, the way that you would chisel them open, the way that you would chisel your ears is you would get into the text. Because God's text is a hammer. God's word is a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces. Jeremiah said, just some fun intertextuality there. But how about Deuteronomy 17, Brent? This is a passage about the king, the future king of Israel. What is this king supposed to do

Brent Billings (26:05)

when he takes the throne of his kingdom? He is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

Marty Solomon (26:36)

Goodness. So of all the things, there's like two paragraphs here about what the king is and is not supposed to do and of all the things he's told, what makes the short list is I want him to write down, I want him to write down Torah. It's part of what I started doing when I came back after learning about the Essenes and considering this passage. I thought one of the disciplines I'm going to do is I'm going to write the text. So I just started typing out a page of the Bible every day as I record this, Brent, I'm just wrapping up the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. I'm just wrapping up 2 Chronicles, which is the last book in the Hebrew Tanakh. It's been quite a little journey of almost shoot 18 years but page a day. I travel a lot, so I haven't, I haven't necessarily could have been done a long time ago, but I'm getting ready to wrap that up. But this idea of all the things the king could do, I want the king to be well acquainted with the text. I want him to know, well, shouldn't the king be worried about more? Like, isn't there more important things for the king to do? Like, isn't there like, there's got to be kingly things, there's got to be like administration stuff to. There's got to be like more important things. And God says, no, I. Of all the things he could be doing, I want him to make sure he stays close to the text. There's wisdom and there's life here. How About Joshua one, we have the story of conquest. We wrestled with that. We're actually going to talk about some Joshua and judges in this season with El in the next series. But at the very beginning of this story, like, at the very beginning, like, what is the foundation that God wants to lay? Like, of all the things that God's going to tell this warrior, conqueror, Joshua, like, of all the things he's going to give him, of all the tools he's going to have him put in his toolbox, what is one of them going to be? Go ahead and read the middle of Joshua, chapter one. Brent.

Brent Billings (28:25)

Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Marty Solomon (28:57)

So here's some more passages about leadership. Whether it's the king in Deuteronomy 17, whether it's John Joshua in Joshua 1, like, God wants his leaders to be very well acquainted with His Word. And I think, in my opinion, the reason is because his Word is powerful. If his king, if his leaders will have His Word in them. I'm not talking about, like, if our leaders are, you know, memorize their Bible verses, it automatically equals that. Their spiritual giants. Nope, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying a person who seeks the Lord and gives himself to God's ways, and knowing his ways and knowing his Word, that word has this power to do things in their heart and in their life. I don't have any passages for you to read here, but I think of Ezra and Nehemiah, which are on the back end of the story, but as another story of leadership. And we talked in those episodes about how Ezra and Nehemiah, they're different kinds of leaders. But you know, what's consistent in both of their stories is that at some point in the middle of, like, absolute community dysfunction and crisis, somebody gets up and just reads Torah. Like Ezra gets up and we're told, reads Torah all day in the rain, which is moving to even just think about. But, like, of all the things they needed, somebody's like, just be quiet and listen to the word of the Lord. And they just. The text, like, the text always plays this unbelievably important part for leaders. And here I was, I felt like. I feel like God calling me to a place of leadership. And there's something that God calls us to as leaders. It's very, very difficult. And in our culture, we typically get wrong and we pursue all kinds of other stuff and platform or celebrity or. And God says, I want you to pursue humility. I want you to know my text. I want you to let my ways change you, and I want you to lead from that place. So there's that. What were some other passages I thought of? Oh, I thought of Hosea 14. Brent, read us some Hosea 14. I may be making too much of this one, but I just love this verse. I love it.

Brent Billings (31:15)

Return Israel to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall. Take words with you and return to the Lord.

Marty Solomon (31:22)

All right, start over and read it one more time. I want you to read the whole chapter, but just read that first two verses. Let's just hear it one more time as you read the whole thing. Take words with you. Listen to this.

Brent Billings (31:31)

Return Israel to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us. We will not mount war horses. We will never again say our gods to what our own hands have made. For in you the fatherless find compassion. I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel. He will blossom like a lily, like a cedar of Lebanon. He will send down his roots. His young shoots will grow. His splendor will be like an olive tree, his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon. People will dwell again in his shade. They will flourish like the grain, they will blossom like the vine. Israel's fame will be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols? I will answer him and care for him. I am like a flourishing juniper. Your fruitfulness comes from me who is wise. Let them realize these things, who is discerning. Let them understand the ways of the Lord are right. The righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them.

Marty Solomon (32:51)

That is a beautiful chapter, like this beautiful picture of what God's people can experience and who they can be. And it starts with this admonition to take words with you. Take words with you. Now, some might say the words that Hosea is referring to is what comes in the next couple verses? The confession. Like, take your own words of confession, your own words of repentance, go to God and tell him your repentance. But it feels like in those same verses that what they're saying is, it's not actually our words. We don't want to offer him simply the fruit of our lips. We want to also walk in such a way. So the words that they are taking. I have always heard this passage. I feel like it's this beautiful passage referring to not our words. It's not our words we're taking with us. It's God's words that we're taking with us. At the end of the chapter, let the wise man discern and understand this. What are we taking with us that helps us become the people that God wants us to become? I think the words we're taking with us are God's words, but I could be biased in the way I read them. Here's another passage. This passage never actually references the text directly itself, and yet I think in a Jewish mind. I don't know if you're thinking hardly anything else as you hear this, but one of my favorite passages, Proverbs chapter 2. I signed all my first books asking better questions of the Bible. My signature always has. A lot of people can't read it. I've signed so many. It's just scribbles at this point. But some people are like, what did you write there? It's Proverbs 2:1 through 11. I want you to read the whole chapter. But there's this passage about being willing to ask questions and to wrestle and to pursue. But where is wisdom found? Tell us, Brent, from Proverbs chapter 2.

Brent Billings (34:39)

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver, and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He holds success in store for the upright. He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless. For he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand what is right and just and fair. Every good path for wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you. Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who have left the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words, who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God. Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. Thus you will walk in the ways of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the unfaithful will be torn from it.

Marty Solomon (36:21)

So this idea of if you seek, if you search, if you dig, if you pursue, you'll find wisdom. And the question is, like, well, where are we seeking? Like, where are we digging? Where are we pursuing? Where are we going to find this wisdom? I don't think, especially back in the days when the Proverbs were compiled, that they were talking about engaging in some lofty philosophical. This isn't just a search of philosophy. This isn't sitting back in a vacuum and trying to dream up wisdom on my own. There is a place we're digging. There is a place that we're searching. There is a way that has been laid out for us. There is a path. God's word is the path. God's word is the light unto my feet on that path. The place that we dig, the place that we look, the place that we seek and scratch and claw and wrestle. It's scripture. If we give ourselves to that, we find wisdom. We find wisdom and we find righteousness and we find wholeness and goodness. It makes me think of the whole New Testament. Like your whole New Testament is these Jewish disciples, these Jewish apostles who have spent time with Jesus, whether it's Paul or Peter or the 12 or John or James or Jude or whoever they might be the writer of Hebrews. Like these are people that have spent time with Jesus or been connected to those who did. And the thing that they do is they take God's text, they take God's words because they believe that they never return void. And they very poetically, powerfully, artistically, strategically apply them to their own unique contexts. So they know their Bibles. And they don't just quote their Bible at people. They use their Bible to speak life into places that have despair. They use God's words to shine light into places that are dark and need illumination. They take text and they put it to context. They don't just talk from a place of logic or reason, although they don't shun logic or reason. They're purposely anchoring what they're doing and what they're giving to God's people in God's words that have been there for centuries and centuries and centuries. We started in Romans 3 where Paul says that God gave Torah to the Jewish people, like he gave his words, the very oracles of God to the Jewish people. And there's a relationship. They don't just keep Torah to themselves, at least not on their better day, not when they're doing the thing that God wanted them to do. They're not just supposed to take God's word and go hide in the corner. They're supposed to take God's words and give it to the nations, shine and walk the way and be a light to the Gentiles. And God gave them words. And those words are supposed to bring order to chaos in a very pagan, non Jewish world. There's a relationship between the Jew and the Gentile. There was a relationship between what God wanted the Jews to be in the world and the world in which they occupy. There's a relationship there and there's a relationship that's connected to the text. The text plays a part, a very, very strategic, very direct part in that relationship. So I wanted to go to Romans 11 and I may interrupt you a little bit, but we'll. Right before our conclusion, Brent, we'll do this one last passage here. Romans chapter 11. It's not going to directly be about what we're talking about, but it's going to really indirectly keep bumping up against this thing that we've been referencing. So go ahead and read us some Romans 11.

Brent Billings (39:59)

I ask then, did God reject his people? By no means. I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people whom he foreknew. Don't you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah? How he appealed to God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left and they are trying to kill me. And what was God's answer to him? I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works. If it were, grace would no longer be Grace.

Marty Solomon (40:40)

All right, now we have to kind of port ourselves back to session four where we went on a verse by verse journey through the book of Romans. But Paul has been talking about here, Romans 9, 10, 11. God's doing something in the world, and he's using his Jewish people as covenant people to do it. But he's also preserved these vessels who were doomed for destruction. He's actually strategically saved them so that they can be a part of this thing that God's doing. So the Jew and the Gentile are a part of this larger story. The Jew who's been given Torah is designed to actually bring it to the one who was supposed to be destroyed because they're pagan, gross, icky, Gentile idolaters. But God actually chose not to destroy them and instead to save them because his grace is that awesome. His grace is that good. And so this relationship between Jew and Gentile. And so what does Paul quote? Paul quotes the story of Elijah like, what more perfect of a story? It's the story of Elijah who's like, oh, these pagans. These pagans with their idolatry. And if you remember, like, Elijah's like, I'm the only one that's left. Like, I'm the only. Like, imagine how Jews felt in the first century. Like, we're the only ones. Like, look at these pagan. These gross pagan idolaters. This Greco Roman, Hellenistic world. I bet they resonated with Elijah. And Paul says, remember Elijah's lesson. Elijah's lesson is that God was doing something. God had preserved seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to baal. What could God be doing even in our own midst? Go ahead and pick up where you left off.

Brent Billings (42:11)

What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened. As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear to this very day. And David says, may their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see and their backs be bent forever.

Marty Solomon (42:37)

All right, so God's committed to working this plan out. This plan is supposed to work in a particular direction. God does not want it to be usurped. He doesn't want it to be manipulated. He doesn't want it to be, what's the word I'm looking for? He doesn't want God's people to take and to appropriate, maybe is the word I'm looking for. He doesn't want his mission to be appropriated for some other religious cause. If this isn't going to work towards bringing the whole world back together and bringing shalom to chaos, he's going to blind the eyes of the people who claim to see. He's going to this very thing that they hold so dear will be the very thing that they stumble over until God brings it about. Keep reading.

Brent Billings (43:17)

Again, I ask, did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all. Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring?

Marty Solomon (43:36)

All right, so God says, there's this thing going on where I'm bringing It's not either or, it's not the Gentiles have now replaced the Jews. That's how some people understand this passage. That's kind of ridiculous in context. Like, it's not that the Gentiles have now replaced the Jews, but it's not that the Jews are better than the Gentiles. It's that God always wanted to bring them together to this place of reconciliation and restoration. Like he wants to do this thing. And he's not going to let the plan be foiled. He's not going to let the plan be usurped. So until everybody's willing to buy into this, we're going to keep stumbling over this until we can figure out whether it's Gentile, whether it's Jew, we're going to keep stumbling over this until God says the light will shine in that dark place. So keep reading.

Brent Billings (44:16)

I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them them. For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy. If the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing SAP from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do consider this, you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say, then branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in. Granted, but they were broken off because of unbelief. And you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Marty Solomon (45:19)

All right, so Paul's saying there's this plan. God's bringing the fullness of this reconciliation. God's bringing the fullness of his plan. And that plan is deeply connected. It's rooted in this irrevocable, irrevocable call of his Jewish people. Like they play an irrevocable part of this thing that God's doing. But it's not just for them. It's also for the Gentiles. But Gentiles need to remember the part that they play. They're not the whole either. It's Jew and Gentile together. It's all of us coming together. It's Gentiles remembering that they were grafted into a tree. It's not their tree. It's not their root. It's not their nourishing SAP. It's not their story. But the Jews have to remember that their story was all about this same movement of reconciliation, the same inclusion of the Gentiles. So Paul says, don't let anybody think that this story is about them, because the story is about us, Jew and Gentile together. If anybody thinks the story is about them, they've lost the plot of the story. They've lost the gospel, because the story is about Jew and gentile together. Keep going.

Brent Billings (46:21)

Consider, therefore, the kindness and sternness of God. Sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature and contrary to nature, were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?

Marty Solomon (46:52)

All right, So I think that's good for now. I think that's for the sake of time, we'll stop there today. But there's this definite vision that Paul's giving us of the Jewish and gentile world coming together. And in Ephesians he'll call it a new humanity. Like Jesus breaks down the dividing wall, the dividing barrier, and makes a new humanity out of two humanities, a Jewish humanity and a gentile humanity. Jesus has brought them together in the cross to make one Jewish gentile body of Christ. And this same thing is exactly what he's talking about here in Romans. But I bring this whole passage up to make this point. What is the thing, according to Romans, that the Jews have brought with them into the conversation? When the Jews and Gentiles parted ways in the first and second century after Jesus, when we parted ways with the Jews, what did we lose? What was the thing the Jews were bringing to a conversation? And what did we lose when we left the conversation? When Jews and Gentiles schismed in early history, we talk about that in season five. What did we lose and what did they bring? My assertion is what Ray taught me, and that is that they brought the text. They brought the text in a very unique way. And if I can hand the text off to any of you Gentiles in a beautiful way, that you own it and you memorize it and you put it in you, that's beautiful. But if a part of what we're doing with the Bema Project is simply letting the Jewish Gentile relationship that we read about in Romans, that we read about in Ephesians, and if part of the BEMA Project is just doing that work, I suppose that would be enough. But it's why one of our foundational pillars is text. Not history text, not Jewish hermeneutics text. All those other things will play a part in it. But it's because we're gathering around. Why do we call this thing Bema? Because the Bema was the thing that sat in the middle of the synagogue where you read text from. The vision is that we would be people that gather around text. Text is foundational. Text is the thing that will guide us. And text is not the thing to be worshiped. Text is not Jesus. We're not trying to do what they call bibliolatry, where you make the Bible a form of idol worship. We're not raising the Bible to a place it shouldn't have, but we're making sure it stands in the place that it should have. And that's one of our commitments to text. And so I have some thoughts of conclusion to help us wrap up today. We talked in session one about creating a space. We said that if we created a space for God, God would fill that space. So the idea would be, when we think about text, and there's a lot of different space you can create, you can create prayer space, you can create fasting and feasting, you can engage in liturgy. There's a million different ways to create space. But one of the ways to create space is spending time in the text. And when you create space in the text, that space, that time, that investment will never return. Void. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm too mystical. Maybe I'm too fundamentalist. I just continue to believe in the power of the text, God to use the text to change our hearts and our lives. And so here are some thoughts of what that could look like, practically speaking. Here are some things to consider, what this could look like for you. Memorizing. Do you spend time memorizing the text? Like, even if you just memorized one verse a week? Brent, can you imagine if people just memorized one verse a week? That would be like 50, 52. I'll give you a couple weeks off for vacation. 50 verses a year. Just one verse a week. That's not even a paragraph a week. That's just one verse a week. Like 50 verses every single year. I just can't imagine how that doesn't radically impact your spiritual development and your growth in relationship with Jesus.

Brent Billings (50:55)

I could probably start by expanding my memorization of Isaiah 55.

Marty Solomon (51:01)

You can start there. You could start anywhere. Because anytime you're putting God's words in you, it won't come back. But that's a struggle. But I submit that that would pay big dividends. How about just reading and meditating on that? Like just reading the Bible, Grabbing a youversion reading plan, Grabbing any kind of discipline where we just read the Bible every day and just meditate on it. Short little passages, maybe long passages. Taking time to spend time reading the word of God and really just sitting with it. Right now I'm not talking about study. I'm just talking about hearing the word of God and just sitting with it, just listening, not studying and researching and learning and being a student, just being a listener. And while we're here, I might as well say, of course study is good too. I just think we always default to study. And study is great. Please study. I study 40 to 60 minutes every morning. I spend an hour a day just studying the word of God. Like actually doing research, learning. That's a good discipline. But don't just do that. Or what about writing the text? What about doing what Marty does and sitting down and typing out a page of the Bible a day? My wife and my children, they hand write it. Almost all my disciples hand wrote this. Write out by hand in a notebook. They fill up notebook after notebook of just the Bible, just writing out the Bible because it's one way. It's what God told the King of Israel to do. It's what the Essenes did. There must be value there I promise it won't return. Void. What about just listening? Maybe you got that hour and a half long commute and your favorite podcast is only posting every other week. And so you grab an audio Bible and you listen to the word being spoken. I remember just listening to the book of Philippians, just, I don't know, 50 times in a week as I drove. That'll do something. After a while, that will really do something. My daughter. I love to watch my daughter. She turns the Bible into art. It inspires her painting or collaging or poetry or whatever she wants to artistically create, but it's. It's another way that she creates space and engages in the text as a discipline. But I promise, just as a closing idea, whatever you give yourself to, even the smallest of seeds, they won't come back. Void. It'll be like the kingdom of God, a little mustard seed. Once it gets started, you won't be able to stop it and let it just keep doing its work and bearing fruit. I keep talking more, Brent, but I think that's probably enough for today. That's my thoughts on. On the power of text and the role it plays in God's people.

Brent Billings (53:44)

Yeah, that sounds good. I love the idea of listening to the text, particularly not just because we're a audio podcast and that's. But the fact that for so long, that's how God's people engaged was by listening, because they didn't have all of the written stuff that we have. Like, you had to be the king to write out the Bible or a community dedicated to writing the Bible and the power of the words. Like what we were talking about, hearing the words.

Marty Solomon (54:13)

Well, and Brent, you were doing on Instagram, I think you're still doing this every week. You were reading the Parasha for a time, and now I've been noticing you've been reading a New Testament passage. But I'm sure that experience as the reader, but I don't know what you've heard from other people as listeners that have watched you and engaged. You do that every single week on a live stream.

Brent Billings (54:33)

Yeah, the last few weeks have been a little rough. As you can probably tell by my voice right now is a little more gravelly than normal. Awful lot of reading today for this situation, but drinking lots of tea and water. But yeah, I did that for me, sort of as an accountability mechanism just to force myself to do it regularly. And people say they like hearing me read the Bible, so why not just put it on Instagram? And I don't know how many people actually listen to that consistently. But sure, be part of that community with me if you want do with your friends and family. Be the read dent of your family and just read out loud to your family all the time if they will allow it. I try it sometimes, but I don't know.

Marty Solomon (55:18)

Absolutely.

Brent Billings (55:19)

I don't know. It's beautiful. There's just so many ways, so many ways to do it. Whatever you do get into the word

Marty Solomon (55:26)

some way, it's hard to imagine there's a wrong way to do it. Like engage it on some level in some way. There might be better ways than others, especially for you personally, but I can't imagine any investment done well with a heart seeking wisdom doesn't come back and pay. Just amazing.

Brent Billings (55:42)

Kingdom Dividends all right, so that does it for this week then. Marty People can find the show notes@behemothdiscipleship.com this episode. We have a few references to old episodes, even some other things like, you know, plenty of time to go back. But encourage people just to dig into the text this week. Don't worry too much about going back to old Bayma. Take these extra weeks of the text miniseries and spend some time listening to text. I think it's a great idea. Yeah, but everything we do is made possible by listeners like you who support our work. So we want to thank you for that. If you want to begin supporting our work, you can find that on the website, in the Show Notes in your podcast app. Lots of ways to find that. But thank you for joining us on the Bear podcast this week. We'll talk to you again soon.