"That’s What Friends Are For!"
EPISODE 214
Bring Others to Christ
What do Jesus’ miracles have to do with our greatest problem? And why is faith so hard for some people to get their minds around? We’re discussing one more episode of the Chosen before launching a new guided study next week. This week we watched Season 1, Episode 6 — “Indescribable Compassion” — then connected the dots from the plotlines to the gospels. In Luke 5, the leper, the lame, and the lost all find hope in Christ and we learn lessons from all of them. We hope you’re blessed by the conversation and look for session 1 of our evangelism study, “Getting to Square One,” next week!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: We find hope and comfort in Christ’s compassion for the lost.
Episode Transcription
Yeah, a real friend who will go and destroy somebody else's roof for you. That's what friends are for. Well, hello everyone and welcome to Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 214. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in. You guessed it, we are back with another Bible Geeks AV Club episode. The Chosen, season one, episode six, indescribable compassion. This is a good episode. As so many of these have been so far, it feels right that we're sitting down talking about this TV show about Jesus and his life and the people who followed him. It's such a beloved show and I definitely think when you get to episodes like this, you see the reason why. Yeah, I've just come to appreciate this show and the work of the creators of it more and more. What a blessing, you know? I'm just so glad it's in the world, that it exists and whatever. We have our disclaimers and it's not even trying to be like, this is exactly what happened. It's just a wonderful illumination to some of these truths. You know, good storytelling is so helpful and just being able to meditate together on these moments in the life and ministry of Christ. Really fun. So yeah, I'm just more and more excited about it. Of course, this is the last episode I've watched. I'm just watching them as they go, unlike you. So, you know, my mom was telling me she's finished season four or whatever it is that they're on now. I'm like, yeah, I'm done season one. I'm about to watch episode six before we record. So I'm just going to stick with this pattern. I think it's kind of cool. We have those two different approaches, but yeah, this is really enjoyable and I hope other people get something from us kind of bringing it back to the scriptures then and connecting the two and just having a nice conversation about it. Well, instead of bringing it back to the scriptures, can we start off the episode with an icebreaker and have really just nothing to do with the scriptures? Oh man, this is as far away from the scripture. I think that maybe you were jumping off of the response to the leper at the beginning of the story and our icebreaker is what sense leads you to your biggest gross out moments, sight, smell, sound, touch or taste. Yeah. So of course, as you get into this episode, you start to see this interaction between the leper and all these people and just the disgust that exists on people's face. And when I think about the things that make me gross out the most, it's mostly having to do with sound, sound gross noises. Oh, my daughter loves to watch those ASMR videos on YouTube or, oh, I cannot stand those things. Oh, it's so disgusting listening to somebody's like mouth noises or like, you know, squishing slime or silly putty into the microphone. Oh, I can't even handle it. What about you? I mean, I get it, but I got to definitely go with smell. You know, it's just built into the revulsion response in your body. Last night, one of our girls had a case of the ick and just like, you know, I don't know what she's dealing with, if it's flu or something else is going on, but I had to clean it up multiple times through the night. Yeah. The smell instantly repulsed me. And then almost as bad was the Lysol smell that follows that as you're spraying it and you're just like walking back into the bathroom the next morning and like, oh, now I just smell Lysol and that's, you know, even worse almost. So that's, those are our gross out senses going from there into the scriptures of what did Jesus say that goes with all of this. Okay. So obviously when we get into the episode and describing what happens, all this conversation will probably make sense, but if you haven't seen the episode, season one, episode six, indescribable compassion, the scene starts with this passage from Matthew eight verses one through four, the whole scene is setting up this man who was a leper. And so here in this passage, Jesus is coming down from the mountain and in the scriptures, it's talking about how there's a great crowd around Jesus, obviously following him everywhere he's going. The leper comes down, kneels before Jesus and says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And we see that play out here in this episode pretty faithfully to the account. Jesus in the scriptures stretches out his hand and touches him. Just a shocking thing for him to do anyway. But then he says, I will be clean four words, four little words that blow up the, the Jews identity as holy people who don't touch unclean things. And immediately this man's leprosy was cleansed and Jesus basically then tells him, go off and you know, don't tell anybody about this, but go to the temple, offer the priest your sacrifices. And we see that story in Matthew eight verses one through four. So what do you learn from what Jesus says here? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've talked before about the contagious holiness of Jesus where touching a leper should make someone under the Torah unclean, but instead Jesus touch makes the leper clean. And you know, there's so much to say about that. And that just is so telling about the nature of Jesus. But the other striking part of the story that gets to the nature of Jesus and our response to him is that if you will, you can, that the leper says, and then Jesus response that you just talked about and that if you will, you can, it's not even a request. It's not a prayer. Like if you will, please clean me. He just says, if you will, it's the statement of fact of faith. You know, if you want to, you can cleanse me. Like that's a fact. I believe it. I know it to be true. So there's an implied question to you have the desire because you have the power. Then I think there's something that we can learn about faith and prayer from this leper, you know, God, you can do this that I know. And if we add to that trusting submission to God's goodwill, whatever it is, and we're like, you have a formula trusting that if God wants this, then it's good. And if he doesn't, then we don't want it either. We're surrendering to that. You know, if you put those two things together, that faith and that trust, then you have this formula for surrender and for peace for this peaceful, prayerful experience of whatever we have to go through. And obviously that's easier said than done. Like you can say that in a sentence, but it's like a whole life of working through how we approach God and trying to see God clearly as the one who is always doing what's best and who always hears us and who always can act and wants what's best for us. But it really does get to the heart of the issue. I know God is able, I know God is good. Now what does the Lord will? Yeah. It reminds me of James one verse six, right? Where he's talking there about asking in faith without doubting. And if we do doubt we're like the surf of the sea tossed to and fro by the wind. And like you said, he's not really asking for anything here, but he definitely is confident. He has that resolute confidence in what Jesus can do. If this is what you value, if you value my wholeness, I know you can make this happen. And I love this story too, because it's stories like this that remind me just how differently Jesus approaches the law than anyone else could or would. I know you talked there about that, the uncleanness that would happen, right? If somebody else under the old law would have touched a leper who was unclean. And obviously you go back to like Numbers chapter five and passages like that in the old law where it talks about taking these unclean people and putting them outside the city. And you square that with what's happening here. And it's like the reaction to the people in this episode and really the reaction of probably anyone seeing Jesus touch a leper must've just been shock and horror, right? Because this was not something you did. The law explicitly prohibited this kind of touching of unclean things. And so is Jesus like breaking the law here? I don't think he wanted his disciples to go running up and touching this unclean man, but that's where Jesus comes in. He knows that he can heal this man. And so in my brain it's like, why would Jesus do something that seems so completely against the law? It's because he made the law and not only did he make the law, but he has the power to change somebody's situation to go from this uncleanness to cleanness again. You don't get after the person who's able to clean up the situation for stepping in and getting their hands dirty. You appreciate those people who are able to do the thing that you could not do or would not do, or maybe were unwilling to do. Jesus is doing that for this man. And yeah, he's got to get a little bit messy to make that happen, but he knows he can make it better. And just the relationship that Jesus has with the law and the instructions of the law, like it wouldn't have been lawful for anyone else to do that. But for Jesus, he knows he's got the power to make this situation different. So I just feel like when Jesus says, "I will be clean," it's like that "I will," Jesus is taking on the role of somebody who can fix the situation. And man, what a cool thing that Jesus does just in a few words and in a simple statement, like to just flip the entire understanding of the law on its head. Yeah. And it's really helpful, I think for us, once we get that we can't make Jesus unclean, like we're not going to get any of this on him. He's going to get some of what he's got on us if we come into contact with him. And that's kind of at the core of this whole episode and also what the gospels are doing and all of these stories that are woven through this episode. Jesus has come to touch people, not just physically, although I love the moment where he's hugging that leper at the end of the healing, but to touch their lives, to change their lives with his goodness and his love and his purity and his holiness. It reminds me of Isaiah chapter six, Isaiah's call, whenever Isaiah says, "I am a man of unclean lips," and then God takes a coal from the altar and purifies his lips with it. Or when Peter says in the boat, "Get away from me. I'm an evil man." And Jesus is there to change him, not that Peter's uncleanness can change Jesus. So, I mean, I think we can sometimes have that same response to Jesus when we misunderstand this truth. When we say, you know, like, "I'm not the Christian kind. I'm not good enough for you. I'm not," you know, whatever it is. And then we have to see what Jesus ends this. The story we'll get to later in Luke five of, you know, Jesus didn't come for a perfect person. He came for you, the one that's messed up. Yeah, you. Yeah, me. And he came to work with us and to touch us to make us clean. - I love that this episode starts out this way, but then with the stories that are woven throughout this episode of The Chosen, it definitely puts together a lot of really similar concepts that we're going to talk about here in our next segment, which is here's the story. So we're going to tell the story here of The Chosen, season one, episode six. We're going to go through really quickly and briefly and recap all the stuff that happens here in this episode. And the episode again was called Indescribable Compassion. - Yeah, before we got to this episode, we've gone through five episodes. We've met a collection of characters. There's these skeptics like Matthew and Nicodemus, but there's also believers who already have been changed by Jesus, Mary, Peter, Andrew, you know, and others. And they're still keeping the news quiet, trying to control its spread, but his fame is building. People are working through what it all means. And that's kind of where we pick up the story. - Yeah, definitely trying to keep it quiet, because as we see later on, the crowds are definitely going to find out about Jesus and that makes things difficult for him in his ministry. But here right off the bat, we see this leprous man in this episode. And the episode really starts with this leprous man like trying to sell his tools at the pawn shop. He can't work the way that he wanted to. He can't live in his community the way he wants to. And so he's trying to make some money by basically taking what he has and selling it at the pawn shop. And the pawn shop owner realizes who he is and what's going on. And he calls him a marked man. And so obviously, you know, going back to Numbers 5 and all these other passages, you could see why in the society, a leprous person would be viewed as an outsider, because literally they were supposed to be outside the city. So fast forward here in the episode, while Jesus, he was having a conversation with an Egyptian woman. And it's almost like a zombie moment, like when, you know, the leprous man walks out from behind the bush or whatever, and everyone is just afraid to even breathe the same air. And so obviously he falls to his knees and the scene really plays out fairly closely to that of Matthew 8. These moments here, which is so hard to describe, when you watch the scene and you see Jesus, the character portrayal of Jesus here just looking at this man with such compassion while everyone else is horrified. That love, that there's a different look there that Jesus has towards him. And the Egyptian woman sees this and she'll become important in the story a little bit later. She will. That's a cool thing about these episodes is you get to watch people watch Jesus. And so you're watching Jesus, but sometimes part of the experience is just seeing their response and you get to experience that with them. Peter and Andrew see Matthew, they greet him with a "tax man!" and tell him to go home and leave them alone. But he says, "You know, I'm not here for you. I'm here about the man at the shore." And Peter gets protective of Jesus, but Matthew's struggling through whether he can really believe his eyes. Matthew strikes me as the kind of guy who has carefully constructed a logical ordering of how the universe works. And, you know, he saw Jesus' miracle with a catch of fish, but it doesn't jive with that logic of the universe, you know? It doesn't make sense. And so Andrew says, "Why would you believe us if you don't believe yourself?" And he's asking, "You know, did it really happen? Why are you going to believe what we say? You don't trust what you know to be true, basically." And boy, does that get to the heart of wrestling with faith too. That response actually very closely mimics Nicodemus and his conversation with Shmuel in the synagogue, where there's Pharisees there. They're all getting together to meet, and Nicodemus is basically telling them, like, "Hey, this John the Baptist guy isn't a threat." You know, this is after John and Nicodemus have had this conversation, you know, in the previous episodes, and how it seems like Nicodemus is really starting to understand that John, you know, he's not a bad guy. And in fact, he's got some information about Jesus, who Nicodemus is really trying to get to know and get to meet. And so he has this conversation though, realizing that Shmuel, his student, has turned John in. He's the one who got John thrown into prison. And so in Isaiah 40 verse three, Nicodemus has Shmuel read this passage, and it's the one about the voice crying out in the wilderness. Nicodemus is trying to get his student to see, like, "Look, this is John. This is what he's doing." And whether or not we actually see this realization happen in the actual Nicodemus of the Bible is probably immaterial at this point, but it would appear that some people may have seen that John was who he said he was, and John was the person who was the forebearer of Jesus in preparing the way for him. But he's open-minded, and that's really the heart of this. Like, Nicodemus has seen things. And so, like Andrew is saying to Matthew in that previous account, "Why would you believe us if you don't believe yourself?" Nicodemus is starting to believe, and he's wanting his student to believe. And what a cool interaction that they're having, but you just see Shmuel's hard heart. He is not open-minded. He does not want to see it. And the scene sort of ends at the end of this, where there's a big crowd gathering and word is spreading that there's somebody out there preaching. Nicodemus wants in on that action, for sure. Yeah, we're going to talk later about characters we relate to. And as you're talking about that, I'm seeing how much I relate to Nicodemus, too. You know, and just the place he's in with trying to teach people, but trying to open their perspective and their minds and their hearts. It's a complicated thing that he's trying to work through from his unique place in the Jewish society. And we see on the other side of that equation, you know, we see Jesus then with a bunch of his disciples who already believe at Zebedee's house. And he's reasoning with these friends at the table. And as he does, the crowds start to gather at the window of the house to hear the teaching. And he speaks some challenging words about not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing. The words that, you know, Matthew records as part of the Sermon on the Mount talks about whether we can judge someone's sinfulness by the bad things that happen to them. You know, we read about a story like that in Luke. And I love the line from Mary Magdalene as Zebedee's wife. She tries to scrounge up some bread to feed the crowd. And she says, typical, they're already being fed. Yeah, no doubt. They're already being fed. I love that. You know, Jesus teaching is nourishing them with the bread from heaven. This is a really cool part of the story. As you just see, like, this is how these moments would have played out, right? It wouldn't have been immediately like a giant crowd. It's like a slow roll. It's like, oh, what's going on in there? You know, what are they? Oh, that's interesting. What are you talking about? And like, hey, come and listen to this guy. He's telling us about this story about Pilate and the, you know, you just, you know, this would have been how it would have happened. You can definitely start to see here as the crowd begins to gather why Jesus in the beginning of this story tells that leprous man, hey, don't tell anybody. Cause things get kind of difficult when there's giant crowds around all the time. But here we see as the crowd has gathered the scene from Luke chapter five that we'll talk about in just a minute really does play out. The Egyptian woman from earlier in the episode, she brings Jesus this paralyzed friend of hers. And she says in the episode, you know, he has no hope, but you. And that's just such an expression of great faith. And in the conversation Jesus has with this woman, he says, your faith is beautiful. And of course that never actually happened. Like in the scripture, we don't read about that, but in the account in Luke, that is almost exactly what Jesus says about their faith as the friends bring this paralyzed man in. And so yeah, of course they lower the man in through the roof and the healing goes pretty quickly after a conversation about this man's sins and forgiving his sins. And then really that's not the whole focus of the scene here though, because as the scene is going on, as the man is being healed, there's someone outside the house who's watching these things intently. And it's almost like he's the main focus of this part of the story, which is kind of neat. Yeah. Again, the witnessing all of this is you're seeing it play out through their eyes. You have Matthew who doesn't really belong in that group, especially in his mind and, you know, in Peter's mind and others. And so he's watching Jesus from a roof with some children. He's kind of found a place to be a distant spectator. It kind of reminds me of another tax collector, Zacchaeus up in the wee little man, up in the tree. And, you know, he's watching Jesus and Jesus calls Zacchaeus. Well, similarly, we see him watching. And then there's this moment where I think one of the kids asks him, are you lost? And he says, yes, yes, I'm lost. Of course, you know, a lot of what this series does well is talking about one thing, but it means something more as the Bible often does. And then as he climbs down, he and Jesus look at each other for a moment from across an alley. And that moment, you know, right before he sees Peter and Andrew and he kind of starts to hide behind a wall, like, you know, I don't belong. And then Jesus running off with them turns around, looks back and it's like with Jesus, everybody belongs if they're, if they're open to him. And so he, they, they just, it's just a look, but it's almost like that look captures the call that we read about in Luke five and elsewhere, even though there's those words, follow me are not expressed there. I just love so much about this episode. It ties in things so intricately together and even in ways that like probably didn't happen, but you know, really all of the stuff we actually know about the things that happen in Jesus life surrounding some of these events kind of give some color to it in the way that the chosen does so well. So let's move into our next segment here, which is our scripture du jour. What is the soup? It's the soup of the day. That sounds good. I'll have that. So we've covered Matthew chapter eight and here in the episode, I think this story from Luke chapter five is worth talking about in a little bit more detail. The story, of course, with the man who is paralyzed and who's lowered through the roof. And there's so much to talk about in this story. But again, I think I go back to what Jesus in the chosen episode says to the Egyptian woman is the same thing that he says to the friends in Luke chapter five, when he saw their faith, the reason why he does the miracle that he does is because of their faith, because of their friends faith. Why go through the trouble of carrying a guy all the way up to the roof of a crowded house, opening up the roof, lowering him down. If you weren't really convinced in Jesus power, like in that story in Luke five, why would you even do all that stuff? Why would you go through that much trouble? If you didn't think Jesus could do something about it, you would just wind up looking silly, but you'd expend a lot of effort. You'd break apart a house, you know, for no apparent reason. And I just love this moment here where Jesus acknowledges someone's belief in him. And it happens so often, right? It happens so many times in the scriptures when somebody shows their faith and Jesus marvels or Jesus acknowledges that they have the kind of faith that he's looking for. And what a cool thing that as he sees their faith, he goes off and does this. It's because of their trust in him. And it was his compassion for this man that led him to do the important work first. It didn't start with healing because that was the easy thing for Jesus to do, but clearly the forgiveness of sins is the thing that nobody can do except for Jesus. And so he's going to prove that he's going to prove his power to forgive somebody of their sins, but he has the compassion to take care of this man's holistic condition, right? It's not like he leaves him forgiven of his sins and still unable to walk. Like he takes care of the whole thing. Thinking about this man's friends and the faith that they have and how Jesus is doing this work because of the thing that their faith started. It reminds me of back in our two by two conversations earlier this year, how the power of friendship like these friends are definitely there for the outward support, the helping you move and all the things we talked about in those conversations, all the outward show, but it's the deeper down internal work, like the faith, the encouragement, the conviction, the challenging relationships that we can work through together with our friends. It's all that stuff, the deeper stuff. That's what we need our friends for. And I just, I see this whole story in Luke five and it makes me remember how important not only being a person of faith is, but how important it is to have friends like this. Yeah. A real friend who will go and destroy somebody else's roof for you. That's what friends are for, you know, just, yeah, I mean it is, that's a great point about their love for him, their faith in Jesus and their commitment to his wellbeing. And I think that is the story here. That's the big picture that when Luke tells this story in Luke five, it's kind of a middle movement of a three-part story, kind of like a triptych of portraits capturing Jesus' work. And it starts with cleansing the leper and then it ends with the Pharisees asking a question about Jesus calling Levi or Matthew, which is part of this episode and eating with sinners. And Jesus says, well, the well don't need a doctor. I am not here to call the righteous. I'm here to call sinners to repentance. And so these three stories all build to that connecting forgiveness and healing. Like you said, it all goes together from number one, cleansing the leper's body, which already had associations with holiness, you know, for the old Testament, that idea of the lepers, it didn't mean that they were sinful and that's why they got the sickness. That's not what it's about, but there's this connection of sin and disease and death. Sin is what brought all of this in. And so it's, you know, all the ceremonial cleanness stuff, you touch a dead body, touch a dead bug even, you know, like you are unclean and you got to go outside the camp and it's just building these connections. So it starts with that cleansing the leper's body and then number two, cleansing the paralytic sin first and then his body. And so that becomes this bridge cleansing the sin and cleansing the body and then calling Levi cleansing and healing a sinner. And so you go from the body to the body and the soul to the calling of a sinner into discipleship and holiness. And so all of these connections, as you watch these three stories go together, just get deeper and deeper ingrained. Sin brought the death and disease. Jesus miracles are beginning to heal all the world. You know, he'll eventually cast out both the disease of sin and all of the ailments that it brought with it in this eternal kingdom. That's just now breaking into the world with his ministry and then with the church. And then someday will be fully revealed. So there's this beautiful picture, I think of what is at the heart of Jesus work that he's come to do is of course, dealing with our biggest problem, which is not leprosy, which is not, not being able to walk. It is this brokenness and this alienation from God. And this, as Matthew says, we are lost, you know, we are totally lost and we need the Lord to heal us of that. But let's not minimize the other problems that all of that has brought in. And if we had to pick what's the thing we would pick to be healed for our friend or for ourselves? Well, forgive us of our sins, you know, that has eternal weight. That is the, like you said, that's the harder thing. That's the harder miracle is the forgiveness of sins, but it's beautiful how this story ties all of it together. Yeah. I think it's really interesting. Like what you're saying there about the issue of sin being the deeper issue, right? And on the surface, it's like, well, why wouldn't Jesus have walked around all the time, just telling people all the solutions that he was offering for their biggest problem and just deal with that. And I think this story in Luke five really does highlight the reason why he's even doing these miracles in the first place. Like, yes, he absolutely cares about somebody's physical condition. And while the chosen does a really amazing job showing Jesus' compassion over somebody who is struggling with so much and how he actually is doing that physical thing for them, that means so much to them in the moment. In Luke five, he's explaining why he's even doing these miracles. He has to do these physical things so that people know that he has the power to do that thing that he's talking about doing that we can't see. It's like, why am I even going to heal this man and make him get up and walk? It's so, you know, that I can actually do the thing that I was really talking about doing. It's amazing how Jesus just ties it all together and he is absolutely the master teacher because he knows otherwise we're not going to believe him unless he proves himself in this way. Yeah, you gotta learn to believe your eyes, as we said with Matthew, but also then believe what you can't see. I see what you did there. Yeah. All right. So that's the story here of The Chosen Season One, episode six. Let's get into our last segment here, which is our reach out question. So on this episode, we're going to do something that we've done frequently in the past with these episodes and we're going to ask really a simple question talking about The Chosen. Who do you connect with the most in this episode and why? In this dramatization of Jesus' life and his disciples' lives, who is it that you've got in your corner here? Yeah, having two middle school aged kids just has been reminding me of how messy the social situations can feel through adolescence. Oh man. Why'd you have to go and ruin it for me? Well, same. Same both. Matthew is older than that here, but you know, he feels like a 12 year old to me. He has that youthful naiveté, that outsider awkwardness I felt as a sixth grader walking into a new school in a new state. And as one of the Romans says, "Matthew, you're so wonderfully odd." And he's hard not to love in his relatable oddity, even as he sometimes makes poor choices, but you know, he's trying to find his place and he doesn't quite fit in. He says one thing and people take it another way. Just so many things are happening that make it painful sometimes, but he's always lovable to me and always relatable. We've talked about this before. He's just such a connectable character and such a different thing than I would have ever seen just thinking about the stories in the gospels. Jesus is here to call the lovable outsiders also. And I think many of us can, at least at some point in our life, can relate to that. I love hearing about in a story centered around outsiders. I mean, from the very beginning with the leprous man to the man who is, you know, paralyzed and just these broken people in this story, you've got Matthew, who's also very broken. He's also an outsider and I can definitely see relating to Matthew. And I think that's one of the reasons why Matthew's character in this series, we all feel is us from time to time, at least those nerdy of us who have felt kind of on the outside as kids growing up. I appreciate what you're saying there about Matthew because it is absolutely, you can see why he would have stood out so much just from his past vocation and the relationship that the Jews had with the tax collectors. Why would this man even be following Jesus? Because Jesus calls the broken outsiders to follow him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to choose from, but where did you go with that question? Yeah, I picked a different one and I've, I don't know. I think I've probably picked Mary a lot. Mary doesn't play a huge part in this episode, but you know, she does have a couple of really solid one-liners, right? Like the, you know, they're already getting fed kind of statement that she makes, but here she's having this conversation with the paralyzed man and you know, she's saying, Hey, we don't want to interrupt the teacher. And she's almost playing like a Peter in this scenario. Like she's almost doing what Peter does with the parents who want to bring their kids to Jesus. Like, no, no, no, we don't want to interrupt the teacher. He's busy. And Mary's kind of playing that role here. The paralyzed man asks Mary, you know, what if you were me? And Mary replies to him, I was you once. It's like, Oh, Oh, it's so good. You know, Mary is the one who the whole series began with. And you know, when you really start to see Mary realizing what's going on, like she understands I'm, I am you. Like I was you. This is my story. Your story as you're laying there broken is my story. Cause that's where I came from. And man, I want to be Mary in this story. Like it's not really about her, but that realization that she has that she once was broken and troubled that she was an outcast was the thing that led her to take action. She then from that moment, at least in this dramatization, she's the one going off and like coordinating the effort to like bring him down through the roof. If only I were able to see my sins more clearly, the fact that I'm broken, the fact that I've done things that put me in the same position as everyone else. If I could see that stuff more clearly, I think that would make me more likely to take action. And it's kind of interesting here. Like, you know, when Jesus is teaching there in Zebedee's house, one of the stories he tells is that story from Luke 18 of the tax collector who was praying alongside the Pharisee. The comparison between these two men is stark, obviously, but it was the tax collector who wasn't fooling himself into thinking that he was faultless. And so if I'm honest, I really want to be Mary, but I think too often I'm like that pawn shop owner in the beginning of the story who is just like shocked that, you know, a marked person is in my presence. It's like, unfortunately that can be the way that I react more than I should. Just seeing that I have a connection with people around me who are broken is really powerful. And I think that's what Jesus wants us to see, is our brokenness relative to everyone else's. Yeah. Or like Mary at the beginning of the story you were telling, you know, like policing the area where Jesus is present, you know, like, like do you belong here? And, you know, we talked about in our evangelism launch episode here recently that quote, evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Yeah. And that idea of like, if I can look at everyone and, you know, see in their face this question, what if you were me? Yeah. So powerful. And realizing I was you once, I was you. And, you know, it's like that, you never mentioned him to me thing. It's just like, okay, I got, I got to, there's more, there's more I can do. So this is an awesome example. I'm glad you brought us there here at the end of the episode. All right. So that has been a conversation about The Chosen season one, episode six. We plan, if the Lord wills to get to the last two episodes here in this season of the show, but we have some other plans that we're leaning towards on the horizon. I think in the next few episodes, we're going to start getting into a conversation that should help us set the stage for this upcoming square one series that we're going to be doing about evangelism. And really what we'd like to do has more to do with preparing us to host these kinds of conversations, preparing us to sit down with our friends, our neighbors, people we love, and to talk to them about the gospel. I think as we get into a discussion of talking to people and evangelism in general, in the next few episodes, I really hope that all of us can come to the table with a little bit of humility and openness to think that maybe there's a different way that we can approach others with the gospel. Cause nothing else could be more important than telling other people about the teacher. Yeah, I'm excited about this and I hope that it helps us to take that merry attitude that we just talked about. I was you once and then to start to put together some tools that we can use, you know, some attitudes and some approaches that like you said, maybe it's a little different than some of the ways I've been trained in it over the years, but nothing you won't recognize once you start, uh, we start getting into it. All right. So this has been episode two 14 of the Bible Geeks podcast. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player or at biblegeeks.fm/214. You can also follow along with our upcoming series that we're going to be doing on square one and getting to square one and all of the things we're going to be talking about on our website, just head to biblegeeks.fm. You want to reach out and let us know something you'd like to hear on upcoming episodes. Please do that in whatever way that you can find to contact us. We'd appreciate that very much. And until the next conversation, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom.