"From A to Z"
EPISODE 170
Appreciate Biblical People of Faith
Who’s your favorite figure of faith? This week we build an A-Team of Biblical royals and prophets, priests and disciples, all for an event we call the Bible Bracket. Don’t worry if your March Madness bracket’s busted, we have something better than basketball (at least for a Bible geek)! And after listening to us build the bracket, you can vote for the first round of match-ups at biblegeeks.fm/bracket or on our Facebook page. We hope the bracket leads to some fun and edifying conversations about these encouraging examples!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: God preserved the stories of the faithful so we can reflect on them and learn.
This Week's Challenge: Vote for your favorite figures of faith in our upcoming Bible Bracket.
Episode Transcription
Interestingly, we started this whole thing with an A in Abraham, and we ended the whole thing with a Z in Zerubbabel. So that feels fitting from A to Z. Wow. Yeah, that's a good observation there. I like that. [MUSIC PLAYING] Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Bible Geeks weekly podcast. This is episode 170. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in. We are off the heels, I guess, of our Ask the Geeks series that we were doing a couple episodes ago. Hopefully you all got your questions in, and if you had a question that you submitted that we answered, hopefully the answer was satisfactory as we went back to the scriptures. It's kind of a pressure-filled series of episodes back there. - Well, it's definitely heavier than what we're doing today. (both laughing) - Yeah, if you could call that like the opposite end of the spectrum. Today, we are gonna go a little bit mad with some March Madness Bible bracketing going on and we'll get into maybe explaining a little bit of that here in just a few minutes But I think it's probably important as we get this thing started for us to actually break the ice and ask each other this totally Unimportant question which is how do you feel about the other March Madness tournament that's going on right about now? Oh, there's another tournament besides the Bible bracket is oh, you know just one of those things Oh, oh right the thing that the NCAA puts on yeah the the basketball tournament is definitely a highlight for me. I don't pay any attention to college basketball most of the time until the tournament starts. But so my bracket is just nonsense. It's just, I'm just guessing based on numbers and stuff, but I love the way that you can just have a rooting interest for teams that you have no involvement with because your bracket matters so much. And I love that you can watch game after game of like the last two minutes, the only part that really matters and everything can swing back and forth in those two minutes. I love it. I think it's really fun. How about you? Do you get into it at all? I honestly don't. I probably watch the tournament as much as I do during the normal season, I suppose, which is to say not at all. But I have gotten involved in brackets in the past and drafted a few teams and all kinds of things like that. And I've, I think come close to winning a couple of times just out of sheer luck, but I'm really not a huge college basketball fan, but I can definitely see the appeal. It is pretty intense, especially with all the rivalries and the backstories. And I guess maybe that kind of leads into our Bible bracket that we're going to do here. There's going to be a lot of depth and context and backstory with a lot of these people that we're going to be drafting here in just a few minutes. And I could see how that definitely parallels with college basketball for sure. I mean, there's always a David and Goliath story in March Madness. - Exactly, yep. - And maybe we'll have a David and Goliath story that shows up. Maybe not Cinderella story, but something like that. There's maybe some interesting little corners to the connection between these two brackets. But that's interesting, I didn't know that. I knew you were a big Phoenix Suns fan. That's basketball, but you don't get into the college thing too much. - Not as much, yeah. - Yeah, and that's our basic stand on brackets and this March Madness thing that's going on. Before we get into doing really the meat of this episode, which is gonna be building a Bible bracket for this year, let's get into something that Jesus said as a way to start this thing out. And as we used to do and as we've been doing, I guess here recently, we've been springing on each other a secret Bible verse having to do with Jesus. So what do you have for me this week? Well, I liked how last week, instead of a Jesus said, you did a finding Jesus, which is another one of our segments that we do to start the show sometimes. And so I have a passage for you that goes, I think very well with this Bible bracket of Bible figures that are heroes of faith. And I want to read to you from the end of Hebrews chapter 11, commonly called the hall of faith and let you find Jesus here. So I'm going to begin in verse 32 and go through the end. I mean, it needs no comment really, because it's just such great writing and such powerful exhortation. So the writer says, the writer, by the way, which is not Paul and possibly Apollo, (laughing) if you are listening to last couple of weeks, but the writer says, "And what more shall I say, for time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with a sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from from us, they should not be made perfect." Such a great reading. So powerful, those words. But where do you find Jesus there? - Yeah, this is so good. I mean, to think about these people, and even the description as I was seeing how they were described here in this way that they were even in chains and imprisonment. They were sawn in two, they were stoned, killed with the sword, and it says that they were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. That language there, I mean, right off the bat was kind of a key for me thinking about the way that Jesus was treated even. Jesus would definitely have been in this list of people who was treated poorly, who definitely was not living this life for his own comfort and for the pleasures of the flesh. He suffered through all of these things so that he might rise again to a better life from the fact that he came back three days later to give us all a better life. And even these people that we're reading about here, Gideon, Barak, Samson, all these people, they benefited eternally from the thing that Jesus did there on the cross for all of us. And you think about these people who went through all of these things and there wouldn't be a happy ending at the end of their story had it not been for Jesus, had it not been for what he did for us all on the cross. And so yeah, they didn't receive the promise. They didn't even know who Jesus was because they came so far before him. But we see that they took great benefit from what Jesus did as well as we do. So if we follow their example of faith, even though they didn't see the end of the story, we certainly too can enjoy that blessing that they were promised someday, something better, something that they would rise again to experience someday. I love how you highlighted that to rise again to a better life. That doesn't happen apart from Jesus, like you said. And I made it a little more challenging because I didn't read the next two verses after that where it says, "So being surrounded by all of these witnesses, let's run with endurance and look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith," who of course set the ultimate example of all these things and who is therefore not allowed in the Bible bracket as we turn the page to that because Jesus is the winner always in that kind of a competition. I like it. Yeah, definitely not involved in this Bible bracket for sure. But as we talk about some of the rules of engagement going forward, let's get into this thing officially. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. So one of our favorite segments is the A-Team, and we're going to do A-Team style drafting for our Bible Bracket. And this year's bracket, our 2023 Bible Bracket, is all about favorite figures of faith. But maybe it's important for us to go back because we've done this before. We've done a bracket before, back in 2020. And I think this was definitely your big idea at the time. So what kind of motivated you to want to do a Bible bracket back then? For one thing, the big thing was that there wasn't an NCAA basketball tournament. There was no bracketology in March. This makes no sense at all because of course of COVID. And so since it was canceled, I thought this would be fun to do a Bible bracket tournament and put it out, let people vote for their favorite chapters of the Bible in that case to advance each matchup. So we would put a matchup there and say, "Okay, which of Paul's chapters do you love more, Romans chapter 12 or Philippians chapter 2?" And people have to vote and say, "No, I love this one." And of course, it's all God's Word, it's all beloved, and it was just about, it was about fun, but it was about a way of holding up God's Word too and getting everybody meditating on, well, what does John 10 say? Oh yeah, I do love how that gives me encouragement about my hope and things like that. So I think it was really fun. We had four different regions, the beloved Psalms, the oldies but goodies, looking back to some of the great Old Testament passages, Paul's greatest hits, and then the new classics, classic chapters outside of Paul's writings. And so what was our final four, Brian? So we had Psalm 19, Isaiah 53, Romans 12, and Matthew 6. Obviously, our listeners totally got the idea of what was going on here, 'cause those are probably four of the greatest chapters in the Bible, no doubt. But the big winner out of everything was Matthew 6. Matthew 6 came out to win the day, Jesus' great sermon on the mount, and so obviously, that's where we focused our attention. We actually did have an episode all about the results of the Bible bracket, which I think we're gonna do this year as well. And so let's get into it. This year, 2023, we're doing favorite figures of faith. We're moving from the chapters to actual people. And I think we had talked about how we might do this someday, even on that episode where we were gonna pit Bible characters against each other. And I think it's cool here to see that these figures of faith, they instruct us, they inspire us. And so that's really the whole idea here. And again, like we did that time, we're gonna do four different regionals with eight of our favorite people in the Bible. And so those regionals are prophets, priests, and patriarchs. And then we have small role, big faith. Those are people who might not play a huge part in the Bible story, but definitely made a huge impact. Then we're gonna go to the early disciples of Christ. Of course, that's self-explanatory. And then the last regionals category is the royals. I kind of love the way that we term this one. kings and queens and anyone associated with royalty, most likely in the Old Testament, but could be in the New Testament, who knows? - All right, so it's gonna be a snake round, which means at the beginning of each round, we'll switch the order. So we're picking the matchups, so whenever we go through it, the number one pick will ultimately go against the number eight pick in that regional and down from there. And we're voting in four rounds. Again, we're doing an ultimate of 32 figures, so four sets of eight. and then we're gonna have this all on Facebook and Instagram for you to decide. You vote and decide who the winners are. And does Adam or Eve or Josiah come home with the crown? You know, who's the winner? And so you can decide. Hopefully I didn't give away too many of our answers there. - But yeah, I think it's important too, as you've talked about the ground rules. Jesus is not allowed, of course. Jesus is gonna win any day, so he can't be involved. And one other thing is that we're not picking villains. We're not picking those figures who, like Goliath that we talked about earlier. Yeah, Goliath is not in this draft. So it's gonna be our favorite figures of faith, these positive examples, and maybe someday down the road, we will do a villains Bible bracket. That could be kind of interesting. So-- - That would be interesting. Or an A team? A B? A Z team? - A Z team, yeah, no doubt. Okay, so let's get into this thing and we're gonna flip a coin here. We're gonna ask our handy smart device to do this with us. Ryan, go ahead and pick the heads or tails. - Tails. - Alexa, flip a coin. - Okay. (bell ringing) Tails. - Tails never fails. - All right. - Cool, yeah, so Tails never fails. All right, so you get to go first here and we're gonna start out with the prophets, priests, and patriarchs. A lot of people that could fit into this category, so who's the first pick? I'm going to go with Abraham, number one. You know, we're seeding a bracket, so I've got to go with in a certain order that makes some sense for a number one seed. All right. So my second pick here, probably one of the favorite choices of Bible figures. I'm going to go with Moses. That is, that's a winner right there. I think the next pick is going to be Joseph. Yeah. Joseph. I think there's some lovers of the Joseph story and what Joseph was able to show us with his life. So what do you got for number four? - Okay, so you've got Abraham, you've got Joseph. I picked Moses, let's go ahead and go with someone else who's super popular here. I'm thinking of Elijah as a prophet. Elijah was maybe one of the greatest prophets. That might be debated, but I'm not trying to sway people's opinion here, but it's definitely Elijah or nothing here for me, so. - Right, right, yeah. He's the greatest and you're wrong if you vote otherwise, but no sway. All right, well I'm gonna get our first woman into this and I'm gonna go with Deborah. - Yeah, that's a really good one. Deborah, she was on my list for sure. Definitely one of those characters who should have been up in the tops of our list here because clearly a judge and a prophetess and a woman, come on, she's definitely gonna raise to the top of the ranks here. - I can't believe we, as I'm looking at my list, I just can't believe we're stopping this at eight. I've got so many, there's so many that we're not on here. So I can't wait to hear what your next pick is. - Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna go with Isaiah, just for the standpoint that he preached naked for a long time, and I don't think anyone else would do that, so Isaiah. - I love it, I love it. I'm gonna go Daniel for my last prophet, priest, or patriarch, but man, there's a lot on the table. - All right, all right, so maybe make this interesting. I don't know if this definitely doesn't fit in the order of favorites, but I'm gonna throw Noah in there just because, yeah, Noah's gotta be in the OG patriarchs here. - Oh yeah, oh yeah, how did we, yeah. - That's right. He was third on my list here. I just skipped right over that and went to Joseph. - All right, so we're going into small role, big faith, and this category is definitely a huge one. I know there are tons of people in the Bible that maybe don't come to mind immediately, but there's a lot of people who could fit into this category. So my first pick is going to be Rahab, who is obviously in the line of Jesus and clearly was a huge figure of faith back in the Old Testament, even to the point we talk about her in the New Testament. So that's pretty cool. - I love it. That's an awesome pick. I'm going to go with another woman, Ruth. - Yeah, Ruth was gonna be my second option if Rahab had already been taken. So that's a good one. - Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I had. Ruth Rahab was my order for my top two. So same kind of thinking there. Who you got number three? - Okay, connected to another really super powerful woman was Mordecai. Definitely made a huge impact on the health and wellness of the children of Israel, even though we don't really think about Mordecai very often. Definitely a great man of faith, although he didn't have a huge role in the Bible. - Okay, okay. - A small portion of chapters in the Bible, really about this guy, but pretty important known figure, Jesus' cousin and precursor, John the Baptist. - Oh yeah. (both laughing) Okay, so John the Baptist is your choice. How about we throw in there, I'm gonna say Cornelius. - Cornelius, who obviously was converted along with his household, and what a huge impact he made as the first Gentile convert to Christ. big change in the direction of the early church. - That's good, I had him in a later regional, but I'm gonna go, just to talk about not mentioned option, like maybe a couple verses in the whole Bible. Let's go with Enoch. - Oh, I had Enoch on my list, yes. - To walk with God for 365 years and was taken. (both laughing) - Yeah, Enoch is good, I love that option there. So maybe in the vein of Enoch, I'm gonna go with Melchizedek, which, you know, - Definitely people who made a huge impact, even to the point of the Hebrew writer having to spend quite a lot of time talking about Melchizedek and understanding who he was. So yeah, that's gonna be my pick. - That's a good one. He was on my Royals list. - Ooh, yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, could've actually fit in the - The King of priests and patriarchs list too. - That's right. - That's right. Okay, well, I am going to go with, as a closer, man, I've got three different women to choose from or a couple, I'm gonna go with Tabitha. - Ooh. - AKA Dorcas here. And man, yeah, I like that pick. She was the kind of lady that people missed when she was gone, and so they just brought her back. (both laughing) - Oh man, just can't get enough. All right, so. - Can't get enough. - Now we move into our early disciples of Christ regional here. All these figures are gonna come straight to mind, obviously, but since I started on the last one, go ahead and take the first pick on this one. - Okay, I'm gonna go Peter. - Okay, yeah, of course. - I mean, who doesn't relate to a figure who, as great as he is, also tends to put his foot in his mouth quite often and lose his way, but find his way back? Peter seems to have some possible pairings that would go with him. Are you gonna pick one of those or somebody else? - I will not, and I am going to replace your suggestion with my own, and I'm gonna pick Mary, the mother of Jesus. - Oh, I like it. - So you have to talk about the earliest disciple of Christ. It's gonna be his mom. - That's really good, that's really good. Okay, then I'm gonna go with Paul. - Ah, yeah. Okay, you got the heavy hitters here. Yeah, Peter, Paul, and I picked Mary. So Peter, Paul, and Mary right off the bat, off the draft. - Peter, Paul, and Mary. We're putting together pop groups and a bracket here. - Okay, so if you've got Paul, that's gonna leave me with, I'm gonna go with Luke, who was probably one of the greatest writers, at least, of the New Testament, and just the way that he documented everything, and he was following around all the disciples, including writing his own accounts. What a great servant of the Lord's he was, right off the bat. - That is a good one, that was high on my list. I am gonna go with what I'm just gonna give away right now. This is gonna be my vote throughout the whole bracket. My favorite early disciple of Christ personally, Barnabas. - I knew you were gonna pick Barnabas. I knew it. - I'm surprised you didn't sweep in there. - I was thinking about it. - It's gotta be. - I was thinking about it. How about we go with another Mary to round this thing out? How about we go with a Mary Magdalene? - I like it. Now you left me with the choice. Do I go with a Martha? or do I drop somebody else in here? I am going to put the beloved disciple John as my last of the early disciples of Christ. - John, yes, of course. If Jesus loved him, then obviously we should too. (laughing) Oh man, yeah, when you think about how this is gonna play out, John is gonna go against Mary, Jesus' mother. - Yeah. - That's gonna be a weird one. (laughing) - That's a throwdown, yeah. The one that Jesus turned to to say, this is your son, this is your mother, Now they're many, many years later, have been put together by two crazy guys to be in a throwdown in a bracket style tournament. Weird. - Yeah, I think I'm gonna then round this thing out with, oh man, there's so many good ones we could pick from here. I'm gonna go with Andrew. Just from the standpoint of you picking Peter off the bat, I'm gonna pit him against his brother. Let's see what happens here when Peter and Andrew go head. - I love it, I love it. - Thinking matchups here. And the one that brought Peter to Jesus. Hey, I've found the Messiah. That's really cool. That brings us to the Royals, and you get first pick on the Royals as we close this thing out with our last regional. - All right, I mean, if we have to pick the most popular and our favorite, I am gonna pick David as the top royal because really in terms of kings, he was the first good one. So David's my first pick. - Absolutely, that is the correct answer by everyone except the women in my house who would say Esther is the dominant favorite, all of my daughter's favorite person in all of the Bible. So we'll go Esther number two, what do you got number three? Esther as the queen is a pretty great one there. You know what? I am going to go with Solomon here as my second pick. Just from the standpoint that he wasn't a great king. Obviously he had like some real issues in his life, but he did some amazing things and he brought great prosperity to the people. Yeah, although that didn't really turn out so well for them after that, but Solomon is gonna be in my end list here. - How grateful are we for the book of Proverbs. - And the wisdom. - And some of the other, yeah, some of the wisdom we received. So that is a great choice, I think. I am gonna go Hezekiah. - Ah, he's on my list. - I'm thinking of, yeah, I'm thinking of that chapter, I think it's Isaiah 39 and 40 when he prays. First, he prays for more years of service, but he also prays for the Lord to save Jerusalem as they're surrounded by a foreign nation and God delivers all the people. Really cool example of faith and prayer. Who you got number five? - All right, so for number five, I am gonna pick, let's go with Josiah. one who brought the people back to some semblance of normalcy in terms of their faithfulness to God. The people didn't exactly turn around as much as they should have, but Josiah had some really good motives as soon as he found the book of the law that had apparently been lost for a really long time inside the temple of all places. But yeah, Josiah was a great example of somebody who threw the gauntlet down and said, "No, no, we're going back to what we should be doing here." - Yeah, I love the stories of Josiah, And I am going to go with another queen, Queen Abigail, one of David's wives and somebody we talked about not too long ago in an episode. - Abigail, yeah, that's a good one. Definitely in the pantheon of famous queens for sure. How about I close out my last pick of this whole thing with somebody who wasn't a king or a queen, but who was a royal, and that was Jonathan. From the standpoint, I don't know if I can break the rules ever so slightly here, but Jonathan, Saul's son, definitely had a really important place in the life of David, so I'm gonna put him there as my last pick. - Interesting, okay. So as not to stretch the rules too much here and bring in somebody from a royal court, I'm tempted to bring in a royal counselor, but let's go with another person from Jesus' line that isn't talked about too much, But let's talk about Zerubbabel, who is of the royal line of David and was the governor, is held up as this figure of the Messiah in connection with Joshua the high priest in Zechariah and some of the prophets. So that will say, I feel bad for Zerubbabel pitting him against David, this poor guy. But we ended it, interestingly, we started this whole thing with an A in Abraham and we ended the whole thing with a Z in Zerubbabel, so that feels fitting. From A to Z. - Wow, yeah, that's a good observation there, I like that. So let's just recap here ever so quickly where we're standing now. So in the prophets, priests, and patriarchs regional, we have Abraham versus Noah, Moses versus Daniel, Joseph versus Isaiah, and Elijah versus Deborah. And then when we get to the small role, big faith regional, we've got Rahab versus Tabitha, Ruth versus Melchizedek, Mordecai versus Enoch, and then John the Baptist versus Cornelius. - That's quite a four-five matchup. - No doubt. - And then in the early disciples of Christ, we have Peter going against his brother, Andrew. We have Mary, the mother of Jesus, going against John, the beloved disciple. Then we've got Paul going against Mary Magdalene, and Luke and Barnabas facing each other in another big four-five throwdown. - That's tough, yeah. (laughing) - And then we have in the Royals regional, David versus poor man, Zerubbable. Esther versus Jonathan, I think that could be interesting. - Yeah, yeah. - Solomon versus Abigail and Hezekiah versus Josiah. - Wow. - Two great kings, yeah. - Again, I think our four fives are really where this thing lands pretty hard. - Yeah, it is. And it'll be interesting, of course, after these first matchups, Then you'll have some big heavy hitters against each other, like a four, five going against a two, seven or something. So it'll be interesting. - All right, so just to recap for everyone, over the next couple of weeks, we will be dropping four requests for you to vote in our Bible bracket here about the favorite figures of faith. And so we'd love it if you'd get involved in that. And that actually leads us to our challenge this week. - I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. - So our challenge this week, It's not a profoundly spiritual challenge. We just want to encourage you if you have the time and the opportunity to vote for your favorite figures of faith in this upcoming Bible bracket, I think it's a fun way to kind of highlight for everybody, maybe get your family involved. Hey, who do you think you would choose between Esther and Jonathan? You know, who's your vote between Mary and John and get everybody involved and share it with your friends, and let's see who wins as the champion favorite figure of faith here at the end of it all. - I like it, yeah, I think this is gonna be fun. I also love the idea of pitting Bible characters against each other. Obviously, they're all on the same team, so just gamifying it ever so slightly and making your favorite Bible person the winner of this whole thing, that could be really cool as well. - Barnabas. - Yeah, so here's the thing, and we will be doing a follow-up episode on this, hopefully in the next coming weeks. And once the voting is all done, we're gonna actually go through and recap the top four winners and then your favorite figure of faith, we're gonna highlight them as well in that episode. So this is also seeding our future episodes so we can have some content and things to talk about 'cause figures of faith are always fun to cover, especially if maybe we can do a whole bunch of, here's the story or hello, my name is segments. - Yeah, hello, my name is the winner of the Bible bracket. - Exactly. All right, so on the next two episodes, just a heads up for everyone, we are gonna be doing our Bible Geeks Book Club. We talked about that a few weeks ago. We're gonna be reading and talking through Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster. That book is something that we recommended and we're gonna read through it. Maybe there's stuff in there, of course, disclaimers apply, but we're gonna go through and talk about some of the meat of that book. And so we're gonna do that on the next couple of episodes. And yeah, I'm looking forward to all the next few weeks. We've got a lot of stuff here going on, especially during March Madness. - Yeah, we had talked about having guests on, and we are lining those up. We've got several good guests, but we'll see when those end up dropping. But we've also wanted to just thank everybody as we come back around to the two episode, Ask the Geeks that we just had. We got some new questions from folks after those episodes aired, and we wanna thank you for those questions. Looking forward to, at some point soon, getting back and taking on some new questions. - Yeah, yeah, and so, you can obviously reach out to us at BibleGeeks.fm/contact to give us any of those questions that you might have, and if you've got any thoughts for upcoming Bible brackets or anything else that we might be doing in the future, please get in touch and let us know. Thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in to the Bible Geeks Podcast. You can find us on our website at BibleGeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or a Biblegeeks.fm/170. You can also find a link there to go to the Bible Bracket to vote. Biblegeeks.fm/bracket is actually where that's at. And we will be posting on social media not too far off in the future. So stay tuned for that and vote. Vote often, tell your friends to vote and stay tuned to find out the winners in a couple of weeks. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Until the next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you alone. [MUSIC PLAYING]