What is the Gospel? | Gospel Conversations E01

This is such an important idea that very often in our experience, we're not fleeing from who God is. Yeah. Yeah. We're fleeing from who He isn't. We have believed the lies. So the way I feel about myself, I'm imagining is the way God feels toward. Correct. Exactly right. So I feel shame. God must be the source of those feelings. Correct. And all time, He comes in the garden. What does it say in Genesis? Where are you? Hey everyone, this is gospel conversations, a lightbearer's podcast. My name is Angelo Grasso. In this series of unscripted conversations, I sat down with Ty Gibson and David Asherick to discuss all things gospel, and we had a blast. You're about to watch episode one, where we discuss the very simple question, what is the gospel? And it's funny because in the middle of this conversation, Ty said something that sent David into full on worship mode. You're going to love it. Yeah man, so I'm the only one who's not wearing vans here. Ha! So with that. Well, I do wear those shoes occasionally, but I've been wearing vans since I was 12 years old, and so I just can't make the break. I feel like I'm constantly retro, and then they became popular. I think it was me that popularized up to the whole world. I don't know that to be true, but I've been wearing them since I was a little kid. Well, you're a skateboarder, so it makes sense. Vans is just a skateboarder. Really? Well, once you get older, get a skateboarder. But actually, I didn't skate. Mostly I didn't skate in vans, but I just. What did you skate in? A lot of different shoes. I liked America's. I began skating in vans. Yeah. Yeah, I remember a little restore that opened up in Los Angeles where I was raised. The first store that opened up, and I was just like, "Mom, mom, mom, please, please." And they still do it, but back then, you could go into the store, and you could say, "Well, I want the front to be made out of swayed." You could still do it. Yeah, you could still do it, but you would just go in the store and tell them what the color combination is. And then they would produce an ugly shoe for you because you're not a good shoe designer. Do you own any vans? Never owned a pair of vans. I'm not good with skateboarding. I am a new balanced guy. Because of Boston. You're a Boston guy, also because they make wide shoes. You know, I've had several people say that to me over the years. They like new balance because they can get quite wide. Yeah. Well, I do wear Brooks, because I was a runner for a lot of years before I got IT band syndrome. And I tried new balance and they weren't for me. I, Brooks are good walking shoes for me. Yeah, I like Brooks. And you know, we could talk about sneakers for an hour, but oh, I couldn't talk about sneakers for an hour. Maybe a half hour. Yeah, I'm bored already. But we're going to talk about the gospel. Mm-hmm. And so I'm just going to throw this out here. It's the most basic question, but it's where we're going to begin. What is the gospel? Well, the first thing that comes to my mind in response to that question, and it may sound a little strange at first because of the way the gospel has been popularized in modern culture, which hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about that too. But this may sound a little odd, but the gospel is an announcement. It's a proclamation. Notice that the word gospel means good news. News is about something that's already occurred, or else it's not news, right? So the gospel is a proclamation. It's an announcement of something that has passed, has passed, has happened already in the past, something that has happened. And so the gospel is not about me, currently, in my experience, although my experience definitely is radically impacted by the gospel. But the gospel is not about me, my feelings, my experience. The gospel is about something that actually happened real time on the stage of human history in the person of Jesus Christ approximately 2,000 years ago. It's a thing that happened. And what happened in him is the news, and it's good news. It's great news. So the term the gospel, the literal word for gospel, literally just means good news. Yeah, well, on Gellien in the great-- Gellien. But here's the thing about the word. There's a historical backdrop. There's a historical grounding. For example, okay, so there's one time in the Old Testament when the idea of, of course, the Old Testament is Hebrew, largely some Aramaic, and the New Testament is Greek. So, so, Lung Gellien is not the word, that's Greek. But in the Old Testament, you guys take a look at Isaiah 52 verse 7. Somebody asked me one time actually they had read this text and they said, hey, Ty, what does the gospel have to do with feet? And why are the feet beautiful? Oh, that's kind of cool that we started talking about sneakers. Oh, yeah, just by chance. Yeah. So feet and beautiful feet. Because look at this text. This is really romantic. Isaiah 52 verse 7. So it says, "How beautiful." "Upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news." There's our word. There's our concept, good news. "Who proclaims. " You remember? You said, what is the gospel? I said, it's a proclamation, it's an announcement. "Who proclaims peace." I'll come back to that. "Who brings glad tidings of good things." "Who proclaims salvation." "Who says to Zion, your God reigns." Okay, so here's the historical setting. This is what we need to have in mind when we think of the gospel. And, you know, often we're not aware of this. But in the ancient world, there were no major communication networks like the internet, television, radio even. So when something monumental happened, the only way for people to become aware of what happened was by word of mouth. And what this means is that when there is a military victory, right? That military victory, all the people in, you know, the villages and in the towns and all the population, well, they're all what they did breath. They're on the edge of their seas waiting to find out, did we wait or lose? Did we win or lose? Are we victors in this war that we know that we'd been engaged in for the last year, two years, whatever? Are we the winners or the losers, right? And so the moment the victory was won in a military conflict, right? There was an individual who was actually designated because he had the vocal talent for it. He had the diaphragm for it. And they said, "Okay, we won the victory in the king or the general or whoever would say, "Okay, proclaim the news." And so why feet? So the guy whose job this was, who's also very cardiovascularly fit. Because this guy would go to the highest point in the area. That's why it says, "How beautiful are the feet?" On the mountains. Okay, so the feet are the guy who's doing the running. He's run to the top of the mountain. Get on the top of that mountain. And then he gets to the top of the mountain and you can kind of visualize the people down there, you know, the living spaces or whatever. And from that high point, he says, "Good news, Oongelian." And everybody knows what that means. Victory, we won. We won. And then everybody starts spreading the word. And then he, to the biblical concept, spreading the word. The spreading of the word. So now, you know, farmer Frank heard the voice of the guy with the beautiful feet on the mountain proclaiming the victory. And he says to his wife, Frida, "We won. We're victory." And she tells her friend, and now it's going viral, not with the internet, but voice to voice the whole thing's going viral because of the announcement, the proclamation. And the last part of this, which is really cool, if you think about it, it says that the message is, "You're God of reigns." That's a military bit of language, right? Training, conquest, victory. So then fast forward from that. Jesus comes in to the world, right? And this guy named John the Baptist says to the people in Matthew 3. I think it's in verse 2. He says to all the people gathered around. He's got beautiful feet. He's got an audience. He positions himself. And he says, "Repent." Because the kingdom of God is here. That's in chapter 3 of Matthew. Then Jesus makes his public appearance. And literally the first thing that Jesus says when he starts his public ministry, he said things, you know, in the first prayer, you know, in personal conversations, of course. But the first public thing is an announcement. It's a proclamation. He looks at the people. He says, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," which is to say, "It's here in me, in body to me." I am the thing. - Yeah. - Me. I'm about to launch something. It's really quite remarkable when you see it in that historical setting. - Yeah, it's incredible. - Because we, and especially in American evangelical culture, the gospel has been reduced to my personal salvation from hell with the promise of access to heaven post mortem. - Well, that's not what's going on. - That's a shrinking. - That's a big time shrinking, you know, of really what's going on. - I do wanna talk about that. One thing that's quite interesting is that, and I know you know this type, but you'll find that's fascinating, just to think about it, when Paul in Romans, years later, years, centuries after Isaiah says what he says, how beautiful are the feet of those that bring glad tidings, this great announcement. When Paul quotes that, he actually quotes that passage and I'll read it to you here. - Where's your end? - Romans 10. I'm gonna read a few verses here just to set it up. So I'm gonna pick it up in verse 13, which was one of the great classic passages where Paul says, he's actually quoting from an Old Testament passage there as well, quoting from Joel. So Romans 10 13, it says, "For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Amen, amen. Verse 14, "How then shall they call on him "and whom they have not believed?" It's a great question. "How shall they believe in him "of whom they have not heard?" Another great question, "And how will they hear without a preacher, "without an announcer?" - A proclaimer. - "Without a proclaimer?" Now look at this, verse 15, "And how shall they preach unless they are sent "as it is written?" And then he quotes Isaiah 52.7, but watch what he does here. "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach?" What? - The Gospel. - The Gospel, the good news. "You and De Leon, now this is the Greek word." The good news. The good news of peace who bring glad tidings of good things. So I might be wrong about this, but I think this is the only time that Paul quotes the Old Testament and uses the word good news. In other words, he uses the word gospel because that passage, Isaiah 52.7, that he's translating effectively, he says, "Okay, what?" There's an announcement. There's good news. There's glad tidings. Well, the word is gospel. - That's right. - So when you ask the question, Angela, right out of the gate, what is the gospel? Ty has hit several things here that are crucially important. One of them is it's an announcement. It's a past event, something has happened, right? And it's something that is of such a qualitative good news that people need to be told about it. Now we can ask the kind of further question, okay, well, what specifically is the good news? - Yeah. - But an answer to the question, what is the gospel? It's the good news. The announcement of the good news and what Ty you said there is contained bodily in the person of Jesus. I like to say it this way. It is the holy history of the man Jesus Christ, which includes his incarnation, that's his inflashing, his incarnation, his teaching, his healing, all of the things, his judgment under pilot, his death on a cross, his burial, his resurrection, his post-mortem appearances to the disciples and others, his ascension, his enthronement, all of that holy history, which is, you said, took place roughly 2000 years ago. Of course, Jesus is alive today, he reigns today, but that's what happened. That's the good news and our God reigns. - Yeah, yeah. - That's the gospel. - That's phenomenal. - If I could read Luke chapter two, where I first hear of the proclamation of what you described there. Luke chapter two, starting in verse 10, it says, "Then the angel said to them, the shepherds in the field, do not be afraid." - Wait, wait, what verse are you in? - Luke 10. - Luke 10. - Luke 10. - "Then the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people.' For there is born, thank you Jesus. - This day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord." And so there you see the connection of this idea of the glad tidings of great joy now being connected to a savior who is Christ the Lord. And in this case, the angel's feet are beautiful. The angel is the one that should be announcement. And I'll just say this about that. The, and we're gonna have a lot of these conversations and so we don't wanna run ahead of ourselves, but I just have to highlight that the angelic announcement is that the gospel is not just good news for a certain group of people, a certain geography, a certain race, a certain ethnicity, a certain people that existed at a certain time in history. It's good news for all people. - Yeah. - We have to feel the weight of that, the beauty of that, the profundity of that. The gospel is good news. It is a, I like that you said, I think you said it's an artifact of history. And it's unchangeable. You know that the historians use the language, the ink of history is dry. - Yeah, you can't change it. - We can't change it. It happened. - It's a thing that happened. And then of course a whole cascade of questions come from that, well how do I receive the gospel and how does the gospel impact my life? And we're gonna have conversations about that. But to run ahead, and I think that's what we often do. We wanna immediately run ahead and say, okay so, but what about me? But what about my faith, my belief? Okay, but let's just dwell on this idea of what's taking place in the gospel itself. God became a human being, came, lived, taught, healed, traveled, walked, was killed, rose again. I mean, we have to ruminate on that. You can't just, oh yeah, yeah, I grew up around that. I heard that in Sunday school or satischool and now let's talk about, no, that's the thing. - Yeah. - That is the thing. Everything else that sort of clusters around that is interesting how it impacts me. And we can have conversations about the impact of the gospel, but the gospel is the holy history of the man, Jesus the Messiah, who lived 2000 years ago, who conquered sin, who conquered death, and who is amazing. - Yeah. - So can I ask you guys a question then, staying in Isaiah 52, which you quoted earlier, how beautiful upon them now, and how the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, and glad tidings of good things, who proclaim salvation, who say design your God reigns. So I wanna focus in on the word peace and salvation. The fact that those words are in there, it implies if we're proclaiming peace, it implies that there is a condition or state of war. If it's saying proclaiming salvation, it implies some sort of state of bondage or oppression. - Right. - And so what I'm wanting us to think about is, when we talk about the gospel as this event, what necessitated this event in history, what necessitated the incarnation of Jesus, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, what is the scene that Jesus steps into that gives us the opportunity to even proclaim these things? - Daniel, we, all of us, you, me, David, every person here on the cameras, every person you see at a grocery store, the police offers you that pulls you over to give you a speeding ticket, all of us, we were all born to a battlefield. So the setting that we find ourselves in is we're in a war zone. So all the language that there's, you know, the theologians use a term to describe this and the term they use is a Christus Victor. This is a perspective on the gospel that is specifically referring to Jesus as the one who intervenes in human history and gains victory for the world in some kind of transcendent cosmic sense universally. So as far as like, what is the context? You know, you're saying, well, he's bringing peace, salvation. What's the point? - In fact, I made a point that it's military language, your God-ranked. - Military language. So the context is go all the way back, just rewind, all the way back to the beginning of the biblical narrative. And what you have is you have God creating, this is Genesis, chapters one and two, creating a beautiful state of affairs in which all there is is relational harmony. There's no conflict, there's no competition, there's no rivalry. The man and the woman are created in a very specific psychological state of being in which Adam exists for God and for Eve. He is fundamentally in his psychology other centered in his orientation to reality. Got that? - Beautifully said. - Eve is fundamentally other centered in her orientation to reality. All she's conscious of is God and she's deeply in love with God and she's conscious of Adam. She exists for him, he exists for her. This is Genesis one and two, it's called Eden. - And then they're going to have children and they're going to have children. - And they're going to perpetuate this peaceful state of being in which each one exists for all the others. Well, then we have what is called sin. The word sin isn't actually used. in this early part of the account, what it's actually a description of something that happened. And what happened is a foreign invading force, an entity enters this peaceful setting. - Edenic environment. - Yeah, and he comes and he approaches with enmity, with an intent to deceive and to conquer. - And with subtlety, the Bible says. - With subtlety, this is now we're out of Genesis one and two. We're in chapter three. And here's the interesting thing. When Eve and then Adam believe the propaganda, let's stick with the warfare terminology here, he's spewing propaganda. He's lying about the one who is their ally that he is framing as an enemy. That's God. God made them. And he says things about God. - He says this, he's effectively saying, Ty, I don't want to cut you off the roof. He's basically saying, the state of affairs that you think you live in is not correct. Let me tell you what's really going on. This is classic propaganda. And it's undermining everything. It's literally pulling the foundation out. God isn't what you think, the situation isn't what you think. You're not going to surely die. That God is looking out for himself. And all of this is emotionally, psychologically, and totally disorienting to Eve. And what's amazing about this is the economy of words with which this is all communicated. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say, the whole of scripture is largely a commentary on the first three chapters of the Bible. Genesis one, two, and three, everything that follows from Genesis four revelation is largely commentary on what's embedded, contained, embryonically with such an economy of words there. But I just wanted to make that point, Ty, that this must have been so profoundly disorienting and you get that from the text. Because the woman tries to find some sort of stability. She's like, well, no, God's it. And no, no, no, that's not. No, no, no, no. And all of a sudden, she believes this new version of reality. And then that, a bunch of things cascaded from that. I didn't want to cut you off. No, no, no. I just think it's so important to kind of get how disorienting this would have been. Because she's hearing things that are contravening, contradicting what she thinks is happening in the world. Who she thinks she is and who she thinks Adam is, and God is in the world. And now this smooth talking subtle serpent has persuaded her that actually reality is quite different than what you had thought. And then what happens is that peace that they had, by the way, let me just make apparent theoretical statement about peace. The word peace in modern vernacular is often kind of a synonym for personal tranquility or something. Like I'm at peace, a lot of-- I can be at peace along in a room. When the Bible uses the word peace, it's not talking about me being in a peaceful state of serenity along in a room. And as long as nobody enters the room, I'll be fine. But the moment somebody enters the room, I'm not at peace anymore. The Bible's idea of peace is specifically social. - The Hebrew word Shalom. - Yeah, it's specifically social. It's Shalom, and it's the idea that we're in a room together and we're at peace. It is relational harmony. It's a lack of conflict and rivalry and war, basically. So when it says in the Isaiah text, you know, that the proclamation of the gospel is one of, "Hey, there's peace now." Well, there was war. And now the war is one, there's victory. So now there is peace ensues. But going back to the-- - Because you're God reigns. Anyway, I have a-- - But my mind is spinning right now. - I want to talk a little bit about that. So I think when you think about a baby who's a perfect peace, a baby is a perfect peace in the context of its caregivers. So I would describe it as, "I am be held and be loved." - Of that. - So I have the context. - The hell like seen. - In the context of this, someone else who is beholding me. - Yeah, yeah. - So I am in relationship by others who see me as I am and I'm be loved. - I love that. - I like that. - Like holding the loan. - That's the defalbie ripping that off. (laughing) - That's the false state of human. Like that's what God designed us to be at our default level. That's what's deep inside of us. When he says, "Let us make men and our enemies." - To be seen, to be known, and to be loved. Deeply inside of us, that's what it means to be human. Come on now. - Yeah. - When the enemy made war against humanity. - Yeah, it wasn't thanks and grenades and swordsy. It was to rip us from our humanity, which was relational. - Yeah, yeah. - The text of soul and so profound. - Yes, yes. - I love that. - The hell and the love. - Yeah. - Okay, so back to the kind of question that you got there because we went back, which you have to. I mean, you can't get to this and I love your word earlier, type intervention. - Yeah. - Right. The incarnation, the gospel is an intervention. - An intervention. - Right, human history is going down at an incredible pace. This is why in the immediate context, for example, the flow of Genesis, Cain, Mersable, and then shortly thereafter, there's a flood. Like the whole thing, the wheels are coming up. - Yeah, yeah. - And to stay in kind of a larger biblical story, after the flood, there's a tower, and then God calls this guy Abraham. His name is Abraham at the time, but his name will later be changed to Abraham. And God makes a promise to Abraham and to his descendants. And the essence of that promise is basically, I'm going to, in fact, can we just look at it? - Yeah, yeah. - They showed it, go to Genesis 12 because I think you can make a-- - And then we have to go back to Genesis 3 though. - Okay. Well, let's do that first then. - You sure? - Yeah, yeah, let's do that. - Okay, let's do that. - Let me do it run ahead. - Yeah, no, let me just tie off that point. - Okay, okay, so check this out, you guys. When what we popularly call the fall of mankind occurs back in Genesis 3, right? What happens is the moment that Adam and Eve sin, they are fundamentally changed in their psychology. And what that means is suddenly, Adam is now in a position where he wants to put blame on Eve. And Eve is insecure now in her relationship with Adam. And now this is the birth of rivalry, the first between Adam and Eve, right? And when you come to chapter three, God says, wow, some really horrible things are going to happen now and he describes some of the horrible things are going to among them, you guys are going to kind of not get along as well as I intended for you to get along, there's going to be rivalry between the sexes. Well then, that rivalry when you come to chapter four is between siblings. - It's embodied. - Yeah, it's between the two brothers now, Ken and Abel. And then the whole story unfolds from there with people who are not at peace with one another. This is the beginning of tribalism. Everybody was God-made people so that each one would be for the others and now each one is for himself, right? I exist for me, you exist for you and now we're all in a turf war over space, resources, everything, it's in world war. - Can I ask a question about that? Do you have an idea tie or Angelo as to what's the mechanism whereby that shift became so saturated? Like what happened? And in other words, what you're describing there, what we call in sort of theological speak, the fall. Okay, the fall of humanity, the fall of Adam and Eve. Okay, great. I'm on board with that and human history, there's this out. But what you just described, survival of the fittest, to use it in the drawing term. My question is, why? - Yeah. - What was the switch that was flipped, the code that was hacked in Adam and Eve that caused their offspring and their offspring's offspring to be oriented this way? Essentially the devil said, God isn't looking out for you and your best interests, so you better look out for you and your best interests. And so the way I've described this is that the sin problem or the fall was the introduction of the selfishness principle into human psychology. And say that one more time. Sin is the introduction, the fall of mankind into sin was the introduction of the selfishness principle into human psychology. And this is provable from the biblical text because the word sin is defined in scripture in 1 John chapter three as transgression of the law. And the law is defined in scripture as love. So selfishness displaced love in human psychology. In human psychology. I think that's what's going on. There's a moral bug in the computer system of human psychology and that moral bug is I am now oriented toward me. You are now oriented toward you. Angelo is oriented toward Angelo. We're all, you know, I don't mean this as a diagnostic statement. I'm not a psychiatrist. And I'm not using this in the mental health sense. But in some kind of broad sense, all of us are by nature narcissistic. We are egocentric in our natural orientations. And one of the things that the gospel seeks to rectify is that egocentric orientation. And if you track in your spiritual experience, And I know you guys do track, you know, you can look back to when you first encountered the gospel and where you are now. And I can guarantee you if you just pause to think through your experience, you will notice that you are gradually through your experience with Jesus, you have become more and more oriented toward others and less and less oriented toward yourself. And it's liberating. Yeah, it's liberating, you know, it's liberating to be married to a woman and for her to actually be first for you. It's liberating to be have children that you value more than your own existence. And things. Yeah, isn't it? I mean, that's what's happening inside of us. The code is being, the scripts are being rewritten gradually. And that's the language there, the language for that which we'll have plenty of time to talk about later is the language of being born again. You can't, you cannot use a more fundamental phrase than the idea that you have to start over. Completely. Something's broken. Not just in human history and the kind of broad, you know, theological swaths that we've been talking about here in Genesis, but you're broken, you're broken, you're broken. And we need a reset. We need a restart and you have to be born again. This is when Jesus said to Nicodemus, you literally can't imagine language that would be more fundamental, more orienting than that. We're going to start over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's what we need. We need a reset. So I want to add some language here. So when in Genesis, chapter three, we see the introduction of these two emotions, shame and fear. And so Adam and Eve, why did you, why did you hide? I was afraid. I was naked. I was afraid. Yeah. So I was a huge, they were shamed by their nakedness and they were afraid. But let's talk a little bit about shame. So when we talked about the default human position when God created Adam and Eve, it was be held and be loved. So joy is being, is joy is the feeling that a little baby gets when their mother walks into the room and a huge smile comes across their face. Yeah. So joy is the emotion of being in the presence of someone who's happy to be with you. And so God, the devil say that again. That was joy. So is the experience of being in the presence of someone who's happy to be with you. I get that one. I'm with you, Angela. So I'm having that right now. I knew that in order to create alienation, the first thing he has to do is plant seeds of doubt into God's posture towards the people who he created. Correct. So the lie that he sets to, like you said, evil evil is based on two lies. One is that God is not for you. Right. And the second one is God won't be with you. God doesn't really want to be with you. So when Adam falls when they fall, they believe the lie. What the shame experience then is the experience of someone who walks into the room and they're not happy to be with you because you may have done something to take the smile off their face. And so when a baby does something and they would their they're so accustomed to their mother smiling, but with a baby doesn't mean to take the smile away from their mother's face, they instantly feel I have a visceral reaction of shame because they said, I've done something to take away my mom's smile. Now the in good parenting, what the mother will do is not take advantage of that shame and use it to make them feel worse, but they'll even come closer to them and they and help them come back to that. That's the with part and that's what Jesus was trying to do. That's what God was trying to do when Adam and he fell. The very next thing that happens in the text is they heard the sound of God walking in the garden, pursuing because he was coming into their presence, but here's the problem. They didn't believe that he was coming to restore relationship with them. They thought he was coming to just they were expecting the lie to play out. Exactly. Because they were expecting the lie to play out, they then they then embodying survival mechanisms, hiding, covering in order to protect themselves because the lie told them that you're on your own. Like when you fall, you're on your own and no one's going to be there for you. So you have to survive on your own. That creates alienation alienated from God. Then they became alienated from from each other like you described. They began blaming each other and finally they became alienated from their environment. Correct. And so here we're talking about the mechanisms. The mechanisms are that what happens with sin and with the lie of the devil is that the lie created a miss ordering of our emotional of our emotions. The miss ordering of our emotions. So there is a place for all of our emotions, but when our emotions are connected to lies, those emotions begin to move. That's what an emotion is. Emotion literally needs to move. Right. So when our emotions become disordered, they move us in directions that we never wanted us to go. Which is why the very next thing that happens with Cain and Abel is murder, which is crazy to me because I would think that, okay, you eat an apple, then maybe your son commits larcen. There's like a lot of stuff. Larceny, but not murder. They go straight from eating it. They've been referred to murder. Right. Because there are these primal fears that are now working themselves out inside of the human heart. And the bit our greatest primal fear is that we are alone in this world. Yeah. And the enemy, the enemy succeeded in planting that lie into the heart of humanity. And like you said, it's been playing up. It had been you know, it just came to my mind. You guys in here. I'm going to say this and I don't know if you know what this is from. The dwarfs are for the dwarfs. No, I don't know how that sounds. I don't know what that is. All right. Alley laughed. Alley knows what I heard. I heard a laugh over there. Alley, what is it? The last style of the rival. Oh, I'm embarrassed. I didn't know that the dwarfs are for the dwarfs. You know, for some reason I had snow white. As soon as you said the word dwarf, I was like in the white white. But the point is what you're describing is each one now exists for himself. I don't need like if if somebody told me, you know, Ty, I heard Angelo saying something really bad about you and you think he's your friend, but he really doesn't like you the way you think he does. He's actually like pulling something on the side. And he's not he's not for you. He doesn't he doesn't like you. Well, Angela, the next time I see you, even if it's not true, and I know it's not true, but but you get my point, lies are powerful. Yeah, that's right. You can't unclear the link. You can't hear that. So the next time I step into your presence, I'm going to have trepidation. I'm going to wonder. So and I'm going to be probing now and I'm going to be insecure in your presence because I think that may be true. What's the doors are for the dwarves thing? That's that's essentially that that tribalism. Oh god. It's it's it's it's a tie for tie, not for David. Yeah, I got it. You know, my group is I'm only looking out for number one. I got those who are with me. Those that are with you and like you. That those are with me and like me. I want to come to that in a second, but I also want to just you said so many things there, Angelo, and I I want to just say this. I love the way you think. Because the way that you think and the way that you talk is quite different than the way that I think you just said several things that were consonant with what I believe and what I've always believed about Genesis three, for example. But in language that I don't use and in language, some of which it was kind of new to me. And so I like that a lot. So I want to ask you a couple questions. If that's all right. And then I'll come back to the tribalism thing, Ty, because that's where the sends up, you know, because we're still we have the Abraham part still on hold, which we'll get to. But God's call of Abraham is a response to the tribalism of the tower of Abel, which will come to you in a moment. But I want to just ask you said something there. I might have missed the link or I just want to hear it again. Actually is what it is. So the sequence there that you went through and it was a fairly fascinating and kind of an involved sequence. But at one point you said something about something led to isolation alienation, the alienation something led. What was the thing I missed the link there. Yeah. What what's the thing you feel alone red, that's the alienation. What's the thing that led to that. So so you feel the the negative emotion. Okay. God, I don't I don't like the idea of negative emotions. I don't think negative emotions exists. I think every emotion has a purpose. But maybe an unpleasant emotion. So they're feeling the unpleasant pleasant emotion that results from their behavior. And then when they hear God coming to them, the lie has been implanted in them. Basically what are what their brains are doing. And this is often what our brains do when we feel in unpleasant emotion is we're trying to figure out where's that coming from. Like what's the story. We're storytelling creatures. So when we experience a negative emotion, our brains are trying to figure out what's the story behind this emotion that's allowing so that I can mitigate this emotion. The story that they believe is God's God's not for me. And that creates further alienation because then we spiral into survival mechanisms in order to help us survive this feeling. Because that's what when he when Adam and you've experienced that negative emotion, it led them to move, but not to literally move away from God from God. Yeah. story that they believed. They hid themselves. Yeah, so here's what I have concluded is that shame is not really the problem. The problem is lies that lead to alienation. And shame is the result of that experience of deceit and alienation. And shame can do a good work to the degree that it's connected to the right story. Because then now when I experienced shame, I'm like, oh, I've done something to take the smile away from the person's face next to me, but that doesn't mean that they're abandoning me. What it means is I need to do, I need to do what it takes to restore that disconnect. I need to come back into relationship with the person who loves me. But when shame is connected to a lie, then what that story is telling you is they're never going to love you. So, Angel, this is fascinating. What you're saying is this, I like that a lie. Maybe this is from a psychological standpoint, the origin of the salvation by work's orientation. So, so if I believe a lot, the lie about God, and that generates a sense of alienation and he's not for me, and he doesn't want to be with me. He doesn't want to be with me. So I need to look out for number one because he's not looking out for me. And you talked about how, you know, the smiles removed and I need to bring it back. So now I need to appease. I need to figure out ways to bring that smile. That's where God's favor. I need to cover myself up. And here's the weird thing. God didn't change. All the changes occurred in them. Yeah. Is that weird? The language that I have used, which is now with Angelou's further clarification, which has been extremely helpful, because it's again not the way my mind thinks. The language that I have used is that Adam and Eve were not fleeing from God. They think they were fleeing from God. If you would have asked them, they said, "What are you running from?" Let's just say you could have gone into the garden there and say, "What are you running from?" They would have answered, "Oh, we're running from God." They actually weren't running from God. What were they running from? Who they thought God was. Wow. Oh, yeah. That's oh, man. They're not running from God. In fact, do this little thought experiment. If in that very moment, if somehow you could have just magically downloaded into their minds, the gospel, who God is over and against who he isn't, the lie, how would they have run? They would have run to God. So this is such an important idea that very often in our experience, we're not fleeing from who God is. We have believed the lie. Correct. Exactly right. So I feel shame. Correct. And the whole time, he comes in the garden. What is it saying in Genesis? Where are you? That's right. Not what have you done? Come out in miserable little rats. I'm going to. It's a beckoning. It's a wooing. Come on. I'm safe. You don't think I am, but I am. So I just on that when to kind of pull a couple parts of the conversation together. So when we where we started off with the beautiful feet, the announcement, the the the you and galeon from the mountain tongue, your God reigns, you then ask the question, Angelo, and that's how we've ended up down here. Why? Why did we need this intervention? Right? This this this break in human history, when God Himself becomes a human being, in Christ, lives, teaches, heals, dies, is murdered, is raised in a sense. Why? Why is this needed? And now we're getting into the psychology and the theology of Genesis one to three and four and beyond. But the snowball started rolling there. And it just kept rolling. And it kept rolling and it kept rolling. And God, of course, saw where it would go. He anticipated it. In fact, that's actually what it says in reference to the flood. When the flood is just getting ready, what does it say? God saw that the heart of man was only evil continually. Right? So what God is doing there is he's seeing where this is going. Right? I know where this is going. And then the fix of course is the flood. And we could spend time talking about the flood. But I just wanted to kind of set that tone there that that's why an intervention was needed. Now we can talk about, well, why did God wait so long? Right? Why why thousands of years later do we get the incarnation? And I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to talk about that in the gospel conversations. But just to sort of remind ourselves of how we got here. This is all an answer to the question, why did the gospel happen? Why did Jesus become who he became a human being? Why did he teach what he taught? And why did he heal? How he healed? And do what he did? And why did he die? And why did he ascend? Because humanity is broken. Yeah. David, where were we? Fundamentally broken. Where were you going to go with Genesis 12? But you also mentioned the Tower of Babel. So if you don't mind, rather than jumping straight to Genesis 12, can you go straight from the rivalry between Canaan Abel murder and then what's developing leading to the development of? Yeah. And then what's the what's going on in here? So here's how I read that. I'm super fascinated to get your guys perspective. I read the and I preach this all the time. I talk about this all the time. Here's how I kind of read scripture. The the macro view of how I understand scripture, how I read scripture, how I teach scripture. Genesis 1 to 11 is the introduction. Okay. Gen 2 is the introduction to the rest of scripture. Okay. It's setting the table. If you think about Genesis chapters 1 to 11, you're covering some 2000-ish years of human history in basically four events. Right. So what's the event of Genesis 1 and 2? Creation. The event of Genesis 3 and 4. Fall. The fall. The events of Genesis 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 flood. Then you have a genealogy chapter in 10 and then the tower. Right. So that's it. You have creation, fall, flood, tower. And all of that, talk about an economy of words, is a compression of thousands of years of human history, right? Or hundreds. I mean, centuries and millennia just compressed down into four events. And Moses, the writer of Genesis, is not he doesn't seem particularly interested in giving us a detailed entropology. And that's not what he's doing. He's setting the table to say there was creation, there was a fall, there was a flood, there was a tower. And then as soon as we come out, look in your Bibles. As soon as we come out of the tower and talk about tribalism, in Ty, because you mentioned tribalism, right? The dwarves are for the dwarves. Look at what happens in Genesis 11 because Genesis 11 sets up. So here's how I would describe this. And I think it's how Moses is describing it. By the time we get to and through Genesis 11, humanity faces two problems, two fundamental problems. We use the word broken. It's a vertical alienation from God. This is what you described. And it's a horizontal alienation from people that are not my specific family groomed lamb tribe. Okay. Right. So we've got this vertical problem, which we might call the problem of Eden. And we've got the horizontal problem, what we might call the problem of Bable. So vertical and horizontal alienation. Okay. Right? So far so good. And that is sort of communicated with the Tower of Bable with language and then geographic distribution. So by the time Moses gets out of Genesis 1 to 11, the language that I sometimes use and I'm preaching is Humsey Dumpty sat in a wall and Humsey Dumpty had a great fall and all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put it. It was wrecked. Yeah. It was wrecked. And God says, I can fix this. I can fix this. And he fixes it with a promise. And now look at this. Look at this. Genesis chapter 12 verse 1. Now the Lord, that's Yahweh, right? That's the one true God, the creator God. That's not all of the other gods because this is being communicated in a polytheistic context, in a polytheistic world. This is the one true God. Now Yahweh had said to Abram, and it's three verses here and I think there's a case to be made that this is one of the top five most important passages in all of Scripture. Bro, this is what the whole Bible is. This is what the whole Bible is. Yeah. Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house to a land that I will show you. And then a bunch of promises. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. And you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you. Now just imagine this. Imagine that that's where it stopped. I think you could fairly accuse God of some kind of favoritism. Yeah. Yeah. Because it sounds like favoritism, doesn't it? Like, hey, those those are bless you, curses. Yeah. Exactly. Those that are for you, I'm for those that are against you, I'm against. Except the last line. What does the last line say? And in you and in this promise that I'm making to you and your descendants, all the families of the earth will be blessed. So, so I say it this way. The call of Abram, God's going to fix the vertical and horizontal alienation in the world. The call of Abram is God's answer to the sin of Adam. The call of Abram is God's answer to the sin of Adam, and here's what he's saying. I can fix this. And fix it, and I can fix this. I can put people back together in right relationship. To myself and to others. Wow. Now, what's so incredible about this, so much could be said about Genesis 1 to 12, but Genesis 12, 1 to 3, excuse me. But notice how it comes hard on the heels of Genesis 11. Genesis 11 is fragmentation, dispersion, extinction, tribalism, and then what is God's promise? That I'm going to heal, not just Abram in his family, but all the nations. All the nations. And now go back to the angelic announcement that you read to us in Luke 2. I bring glad tidings, good joy for all people. All people. So God is not thinking ethnically, regionally, tribally, he's thinking globally and inclusively. And my reading of the text now is from Genesis 12. My reading of the Bible is that from Genesis 12, all the way through the rest of Scripture is telling the same story. It is. The Abrahamic story. God makes this whole thing. That's totally illuminating. It's so helpful. Now you can read the Bible and you know where you are. You know where you are. You know what's happening. And Genesis 1 to 11, the story wouldn't make sense without the fancy word is prologomena. You know this word. Prologomena means the word. The word prologomena, the word. So this is the story I'm going to tell. I'm going to tell a story about a man named Abraham and his descendants and how God made and kept a promise to him in Christ. But I got to set that story up. So you need to know there was creation, there was a fall, there was a flood, there was a tower. Now you're ready for the story. So there's a sense in which the story starts here. Exactly. And the author is expanded version starts there. But like we said earlier, embryonically, the story is in Genesis 1 to 3. like he's going (imitates box sound) - Exactly, now slow down now, now we're going to tell the whole story with our detail. - Can I show you something that will just blow your mind? - Please do. - It's in crisis. - Yes. - So I'm just gonna read Genesis 12, 1 to 3, one more time just quickly so it's in our minds. It's fresh. In fact do this. Do this. Go to Galatians 3, New Testament, all the way to Galatians. Go to Galatians 3. Go find Galatians chapter 3. And then put your finger there. Galatians 3. - Okay, I got you. - Okay, you got it there like that and that. Okay, now watch this. So Genesis 12, I'm just gonna read it again. We've already read it, and I want it fresh in your mind. Genesis 12, 1 to 3. And Yalway said to Abram, "Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. And in you, sit with me, all the families of the earth will be blessed." Now watch this, watch this. Go to Galatians 3 and check this out. Galatians chapter 3, and I'm going to read, we could start in verse, I'm gonna make it simple. I'm gonna start in verse 8. I'm just gonna read verse 8. And the scripture, you'll test it in the scriptures, for seeing, what is the word for seeing me? Anticipating. Anticipating, predicting that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the what? What did he preach? - Gospel. - He preached the gospel to Abram in advance beforehand, saying, and then he quotes what? - In you? - In you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. - 10 is this 12. - Paul understands. Paul's understanding of Genesis 12, one to three is that that's the gospel. - David, what a great exercise. - Yeah, that's the thing. - I mean, because there's a lot of words. Look at all these pages. - A lot of words. - These pages, but doing what you just did with us, it pulls it all together into a panorama. - Correct. - Now you're like, oh, okay, I see what's going on here. And now you realize that the gospel, the gospel was preached all along. It's about a New Testament invention. It's about an innovation. - Correct. - It's one narrative. It's one story. - Correct, correct. - The thing that's so thrilling about that to me, it's thrilling on a thousand levels. But one of them is, is it shows us how Paul understood the Old Testament. So how to read, this is how to read the Old Testament. - Yeah. - Come on. Number two, it lets us know that God never forgot about the Abrahamic promise. There's not like, sometimes people just, as you say, Ty, they don't know how to read the text. And so they're like, where am I? What am I reading? What's going on here? No, no, no, this is the text. God's gonna fix the brokenness of the world, Genesis 1 to 11. And he did it by making and keeping a promise to a man named Abraham. Now listen to these two words, in Christ. - Yeah. - God did that thing that he said he would do. And that's why Paul can call that. He preached the gospel when he said, in you, all the family-- - Christ is-- - Exactly. - Go for the Old Testament of the Abrahamic promise. - Exactly, correct. And just picking up on something you said earlier, Angelo, Jesus shows us what it is to be human again. - Yeah. - Yeah. We-- - We lost our humanity. - Exactly. - Yeah. - He's not only a fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise in the Israel Jewish covenant sense. He reconnects not only Israel with God, which is an important part of the story, which we can talk about. He connects us with our own humanity. We now see, oh, this is what it looks like to be a human day. Use your language tie, other centered. - Yeah. - Outward focused. - Jesus is conquering all the enmity in the world, in itself, and he's in himself. He is literally pulling together. This just came to me, David. Angelo, see what you guys think of this. So the promise in Genesis chapter 12, and then go to Ephesians, right? And Jesus is the one new man made from the two. What's the two? - Jew and Gentiles. - Jews and Gentiles. Jews and Gentiles. The promises made the Abraham and the promises in you, all the nations, the Gentile nations, of the earth will be blessed. Jesus is the one man who represents all humans. He is the last one in himself. - He is the second Adam and he is Israel. He's both. - Yeah. - Phenomenal. - How does Jesus show us, demonstrate force, and become that new humanity force? What is it about Jesus' life, death and resurrection, that allows that all to be experienced? - Well, this for me brings me back to, okay, so you remember when we began with the question, what is the gospel? We said it's an announcement, it's a proclamation of victory, right? So when Jesus comes in the world, he says in Matthew chapter four, he says, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Then he basically is in the process of launching that kingdom in the form of teaching rather than military conquest. So Jesus never, I mean, think about this, you guys. He doesn't assemble an army. He assembles a classroom. - People. - People together are a bunch of learners, because they need to be reoriented to their humanity. And so Jesus comes along and he says, phenomenal things as he's teaching the disciples. - And not just phenomenal, Ty, but things that no one could have made up. - You couldn't have made it up. This is the great thing about the story of Jesus. It's uninventable. It had to have happened because no one could have written this story. - So for example, if you follow the military metaphor through, right? When Jesus comes in the world, he says things like this. He says, this is John chapter 16, verse 33. I mean, think about weird of a statement that says, he's talking to the disciples and he essentially says, he says, don't be worried. No need for anxiety. Be it peace. - For I have overcome the world. - Incredible. - I have overcome the world. - That was happening. - Overcome the world? This is military language, but his overcoming, his conquest is not with weapons, it's not with swords and knives and guns and muskets and bombs and Jesus overcomes the world by teaching people what it really means to be in harmony with God, in harmony with one another. You could say it this way, he's overcoming the world system as we have become accustomed to the world operating. The rivalry, the competition, the war, the discussion, the lies. - Yeah, the cutthroat approach to me being for me and you being for you, Jesus overcomes the world system, the world order as we are accustomed to it operating. And this is where you mentioned, so how does his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension? I mean, when David said that earlier, what clicked in my mind was that, okay, when Jesus, he's born, he lives, he teaches a new ethic, a new moral ethic of. - He heals. - He heals, he does all this beautiful stuff. In the whole time he's conquering the world. He's conquering the world. He's overcoming the world with a whole new way of being. And then he dies and Peter frames his death like this when he was reviled, he didn't revile back. When he was threatened, he didn't threaten back, but committed himself to him who judges rightfully. So Jesus dies a nonviolent death, a non-retellatory death. They're throwing punches, they're driving nails and he is submitting to their violence and not reflecting their image back to them. When Jesus dies on the cross, he's overcome the world. He is victorious over the entire system. Then, when he's resurrected, his resurrection is proof of that victory. Thank you. And then when he ascends, he ascends to the right hand of the Father, the victory position, of the Father. He now occupies the throne of the universe. And essentially, the gospel proclamation is now Jesus' deploys his followers and says, "Go now." You're God-rained, buddy. You know God-rained. You got beautiful feet, climb mountains, get on the internet. Make the announcement. Go on social media, get a stage, have a conversation in an airport, do whatever you got to do, but go and teach the victory that I've gained. And we know that's what he means. In the gospel commission, he literally uses the language of military conquest. He says, "This is Matthew chapter 28, verse 18 and 19." That's right. He says, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and earth. Go there for it. Therefore I put a conquest." That's the language of conquest. Yeah. What? And go on what? Go and go and be violent. Go and conquer with swords and knives and no, go and teach. Yeah, to say teach. Go tell a story. Go tell the story. I have to tell you the way I'll give you a second year, Angela, the way you just communicated that was so powerful to me. I had like a total like out of body moment there. I was just like, thank you Jesus. I'm tired of this world. I'm tired of the way it runs. I'm just over it. And I'm a part of it. I'm not externalizing the problem here. Right. It's been fixed in Christ historically. The announcement is being made. I'm dedicated my life to making the announcement, but I'm also kind of over it. Yeah. Like, I just want it to be done. No, every act of generosity is a proclamation of the victory. Thank you. Every selfless act, every time I prefer you over me, every time I, I, I, you give a gift to somebody, every time you say, thank you, please, every time you act within the moral paradigm of other centeredness, the gospel is proclaimed. It's proclaimed. It's proclaimed. Jesus says, go preach as a witness. So there is the articulating of the gospel. It needs to be articulated. But then there is the witness of the God, the living, the kindness, the generosity of living for others. I love that. I love that. When the Great Commission, he says, baptizing them the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. He doesn't say teach them to know. He says teach them to observe. Go with it. That's the coolest thing. So the difference between teaching someone to know something and teaching someone to do something. And in order for us to teach them to observe all things that Christ has commanded, the assumption there is that as his disciples, they're going to observe it in us first. Yeah, yeah. They're going to observe it in our life. And this, this idea of observing, I think is really interesting because we talked earlier how the evil is based on a lie. It's also leads to alienation. And so what Jesus came to do was to create an insurrection before He created a revolution. The insurrection was He came to undermine all of the lies that everyone believed about God through His teachings and the behavior. And that was the culmination of that was on the cross. Because if anyone, if anyone deserved to take themselves off of that tree and zap everyone who was persecuting Him, it was Jesus. And then He said that in the garden. Effectively, He said that. Yeah. Right. Don't you think I could call my father and he'd send a legion of the garden? Yeah, I could whack you if I wanted to. So I want to read a quote from one of my favorite authors, Ty Gibson. Oh. This is quoting Ty to Ty. I'm called "See with the UIs." And listen, this is so good. He says what occurred at Calvary was revelation, not creation, or revelation of something that already was, not a creation of something that had no prior existence. The cross unfolded the timeless identity of the Almighty. He won the victory by unfolding the true identity of who God is. I love that you are preaching to Ty right now. I'm writing that. Yeah. I'm just going to read one more text, Romans chapter. Okay. Okay. This is the first of many installments of our Gospel Conversation series. So I do. And then I'll give you the last word. And then we've got to, okay. So we're obviously coming back to this very point in our next year. Yes. As we've not even begun to exhaust, I literally have on my computer here three passages I wanted to get to and I didn't get to any of them. So let's go to "Honestly Romans 5" and you give us a closing word. Okay. Let's just this conversation, this part of God. Yeah. I love it. I'm a hinder for it. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His love, on love towards us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for the ungodly. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus, through whom we have now received the love of the Son. Thank you. Close us up there with the phrase "watch more" there. Why would I want to go anywhere but there? So this is amazing. My closing thought will be this, Jesus released a powerful new idea into the world. And that powerful new idea that He released into the world is the unconditional love of the Father, manifested and embodied in Him for everybody. For everybody. For everybody. It's good news for everybody. For all the world. For all the world. And there's nobody excluded. God literally loves every member of the human race, more than his own life than Calvary proves it. Amen. Thanks for joining us for Gospel Conversations. This podcast was created by Light Bears, a nonprofit on a mission to vindicate the beauty of God's character. We create Gospel-centered resources, including a growing library of audio and video messages, books, Bible studies, and thought-provoking articles that inform your mind and inspire your heart. We also offer a rise, our discipleship training program, designed to help people understand the story of Scripture, live on mission and make disciples. And each year, we host the Light Bears Convocation, a gathering where we come together as a community to refocus our faith and deepen our connection with God. This podcast is made possible through the generosity of people like you. We're incredibly grateful for our global community of financial and prayer partners who make everything we do possible. To explore our resources, join one of our arise programs or partner with us. Visit lightbearers.org. [MUSIC]