BEMA 134: Session 4 Intro
Transcription Status
24 Oct 23 — Initial public release
4 Sep 23 — Transcript approved for release
Session 4 Intro
Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Welcome to the beginning of Session 4 in our continued journey through the New Testament. Today we begin to see how God’s people apply the reality of Christ into their own context. Let me begin by making a plea. If somehow you have stumbled into Session 4, and this is the beginning of your journey, let me just ask you, please return to the very beginning of Session 1.
Even episode negative one or zero, so you can understand what’s going on and go through the whole thing from start to finish, because we are going to be making a lot of assumptions in Session 4, about what you already know and understand and have walked through and have learned. If Session 4 is the beginning of your journey, it’s going to be a very strange and probably disconcerting journey. Start at the beginning. It’s the best place to start.
Marty Solomon: It’s very wise counsel. It’d be a weird place to start in Session 4, because four is not the first number, one is, so we want to start in Session 1. This whole thing—Session 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5—it’s a complete package designed to work on a linear journey. It’s really not designed to just jump in. I have some people, some friends out there that have done it. They jumped into the Gospels at Session 3. They probably were equipped with some tools that made it a little bit easier. If you were somebody who didn’t have some of those tools, or just stumbled into Session 4, it would be a weird place to begin.
We purposely, especially I as the teacher, crafted this material and my body of work to take you on the journey bit by bit by bit to give you new material and new ideas, hopefully at a rate you could tolerate. If not, you probably haven’t made it this far, and just bring you along, and not just assume everything up front but help meet everybody where they were at, and it’s designed that way by design. Come along that journey with us.
Brent: If you want to understand all of the references made in Avengers End Game, you have to watch all of the Marvel movies up to that point.
Marty: I’m going to have to do that.
Brent: Every single one of them is referenced in it.
Marty: I’m going to have to do that.
Brent: We’re doing the same thing.
Marty: I think I’ve seen two—I’m going to lose a bunch of listeners right here—I think I’ve seen two Marvel movies.
Brent: You’ve probably saved a significant portion of your life not thinking about it or worrying about it.
Marty: I have a feeling I’m going to have to do that at some point in my near future. There’s a big, huge marathon of catching up on Marvel lore. I think I’m just starting to give to that mentally and emotionally, getting ready for that emotional journey. Listen, speaking of emotional journeys, let me talk about support. Let me tell you, Brent, about some of our awesome listeners.
Our listeners have really shown up in a big way and helped support our ministry, my ministry, the ministry of impact campus ministries, in some really cool ways. There are three different ways that you can give and your support, your financial support, is the reason that we’re able to still do this and to finish this project and are looking forward to finishing this project and getting all the way to the end of Session 5. Aren’t we, Brent?
Brent: Absolutely.
Marty: Heck, yes. We’ve been able to do that because people have supported us and made it to where I don’t have to worry every single day about where my paycheck is coming from. That support comes from a lot of places, but our listeners have shown up in a really cool way. There are three ways that you can give. One of those is our general fund. The general fund of Impact Campus Ministries. That’s my job.
My job is not BEMA Discipleship. The BEMA Podcast is not what I do for a living. What I do for a living is I’m the president of Impact Campus Ministries. We plant campus ministries all around the country. We have 10 teams around the country that are doing campus ministry in different locations. My job is to lead that organization. It’s a nonprofit and people have given to the general fund listeners because I’ve asked them to.
Giving to the general fund is the non-sexy work of campus ministry. It’s the administrative overhead. It’s the stuff that we’re all aware needs to be done, but nobody wants to give to it because it’s not the boots-on-the-ground thing. It’s paying for the website and the credit card processing fees and bookkeeping and payroll and all that stuff that has to be done—costs money. That’s the general fund.
Brent: It’s the stuff that when it’s not done, you feel it, but you don’t necessarily think about it when it is done.
Marty: Exactly. Yes. We’ve had a handful of listeners really start supporting the general fund and it’s been a huge game changer for us. I want to say thank you to them. There’s a handful of you out there listening to this podcast that have. Man, you’re making a huge difference. It’s a big deal, bigger than you think it is. Thank you for that. Then there’s people that want to give to me, Marty Solomon and his family and help pay our paycheck and our health insurance and our benefit package and just the compensation.
The things I need to travel around, the plane tickets, the hotel rooms—my job costs money and my paycheck costs money. I try to live with character and integrity and all those things and would hope that I could sit down and have a conversation to answer any of those questions that you may or may not have about who I am and what I do. Some of you give to that and that’s awesome.
Thank you for that because I haven’t had to wake up every morning and worry about whether or not I have enough support coming in—and you can give there, that’s fine. My challenge in this season, and I did this at the capstone lesson of Session 3, my challenge right now in this season of BEMA, as I’m looking for some of our listeners to come in and start supporting, become monthly supporters or annual supporters or quarterly supporters—regular supporters of BEMA Ministry.
What that does is that goes to helping us do what we do here with a podcast and working with students all around the country and visiting some of you and doing weekend events. My big project right now is I’m trying to get Brent Billings, who has sat here and given his time and volunteered his time for years now, I’m trying to get him paid for that work that he’s done on a volunteer basis for years, which he’s done. You’ve enjoyed yourself.
Brent: I will just say, let it speak to how much I believe in the story that we’re telling, in the work that God is doing through this ministry.
Marty: Absolutely. We get emails all the time and we love that. If you want to support that financially, I would love to help get Brent Billings on board with what we’re doing here. That’s if you were to give to BEMA Ministry. You can give to the general fund, you can give to Marty Solomon, that’s great. All that information is on our website. Brent will put a link to our donate tab in the show notes to this episode.
If you wanted to give to BEMA Ministry, specifically BEMA Ministry, you’re going to help us try to meet some of those goals of trying to help Brent Billings out and doing some of the things that he’s always helped us do for years and help build into a future because eventually we are going to run out of material and we’re going to start looking at what’s next. I need Brent Billings helping me out to do that. I’m good on the content and the poetry. I’m really bad on websites and podcast production.
Brent: We have some ideas, but we have a few more of these regular episodes to record before we get to do so.
Marty: That work is going to cost us money. Anyway, that’s all the spiel I’m going to give. It’s a big deal. I want to ask you guys, if you’re listeners, to consider—if you believe in what we do, as Brent does—help us, and help us get where we’re going.
Let’s just do a quick review. Let’s do our quick review. We did a long review at our capstone lesson for Session 3. Let’s do our quick review and get started in Session 4. Let’s see. We start with Torah. We split up our quick review. We took the whole narrative when you split it up into major sections. The first section we had was Torah. Brent, what was the one word we had for Torah? If we summed up Torah in one word, we said it was going to be what?
Brent: Partnership.
Marty: Partnership. We talked about Genesis being the basis of that partnership. It’s where we meet the characters that are going to be a part of the story. We said that Exodus is where God chooses a partner, and the partner chooses God. We said that Leviticus was where God defines the partnership. He actually draws out what the partnership’s going to look like. We said that Numbers was where God shapes his partner. He shaped his partner in the desert.
Then God asked his partner to remember all of the above, where they came from, and what that partnership looked like, and how they’ve been shaped, and who their partner is. That was the book of Deuteronomy. That was Torah. That brought us to the section of our review that we call history. How do we sum up history, Brent?
Brent: The entire history can be summed up by the redemption cycle that we first see in the book of Judges, and we see God’s patience coming back every time, bringing his people back into the fold.
Marty: Absolutely. That is what we saw in the book of Joshua. God places his people at the crossroads of the earth in the middle of the action for mission. Judges and Ruth, we saw God’s people struggle to walk the path and trust the story. Samuel and Kings, we saw God’s people struggle with identity and obedience. In Chronicles, we saw God’s people struggle with empire and becoming the anti-story.
If you want the longer version of this, remember it’s in your capstone from last session. That led us in—we went from Torah into history. And in the middle of history, God gave us what, Brent, in the wisdom literature?
Brent: He gave us tools to help us on our journey.
Marty: That’s right. He gave us tools. If we’re going to survive the cycle, we are going to need tools. We’re going to need things like songs in the Psalms, we’re going to need, let’s see, what did we actually say on our slide here? We said art and song for worship and expression. We need art. We need poetry. We need song. We need nuggets of conventional wisdom. That’s what we find in the Proverbs. We need purpose and a reason to get up every morning, that’s Ecclesiastes. We need relationships and intimacy with others—that’s Song of Songs.
We have Torah, we have the partnership, we see the history of that partnership where God takes the partner, and He says, “Okay, time for mission.” He also equips that partner with tools for the mission, because that mission is not going to be easy. That brings us, of course, to—because it’s not easy, it’s kind of easy to lose the plot of the story. God brings us to the section that we call the prophets, which is full of what, Brent?
Brent: We see a warning for the coming destruction and captivity that they will have to endure, and we’ll see the woes that they go through—but ultimately, we see hope.
Marty: That’s right, always hope. And so it does, we did see warning. God sends warning in the pre-Assyrian and the pre-Babylonian prophets; people like Amos and Hosea, Micah, 1 Isaiah. Zephaniah, 2 Isaiah—all of these are what I would call, me personally, I would call them warning prophets. Then we saw woe prophets as in, the time for warning is done. You’re now in the middle of it, you’re in the thick of it, you’re in the middle of woe.
God pronounces woe and judgment. Prophets like Jonah and Nahum, Jeremiah, Lamentation, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Joel—these are woe prophets. Then there are hope prophets. God gives hope and encouragement to an exiled people—Ezekiel, Daniel, Job, 3 Isaiah. That led us into the section that we called the remnant. We’ve bounced these words around a little bit, but what order did we have them in, Brent?
Brent: We have returning, and we have yearning, and then we have learning.
Marty: That’s right. We returned back home, at least some of them did. Some of them never returned back home, some of them stayed, but they returned back home. God’s people returned to rebuild and restore what once was, prophets like 4 Isaiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah would be voices here. We have a people that yearn for what used to be because we always want to go back to the glory days, so we can’t go backwards, we can only go forwards.
We see that in stories like Haggai and Zechariah, God pulling his people forward. Because you return, and you yearn, you also have to learn, you’re going to have to learn something new. God’s people learn that this new world demands a new approach. Prophets like Malachi and Esther are going to speak into that. Then we had two more additions in Session 3, we had silent years. What did we say the silent years were about, Brent?
Brent: It’s about the synagogue, then the education system that they establish, and this onslaught of Hellenism, this new culture that’s overtaking the world.
Marty: Then we had five responses to that Hellenism; we had Sadducees, we had Herodians, they were kind of pro-Hellenism in different ways. Sadducees, that was the corrupt priesthood, Herodians that was just the general populace. Both those groups, though, thought Hellenism was pretty great. Then you had Essenes. They were the priests that weren’t okay with it. They went off in the middle of the desert to preserve a more pure priesthood.
Then you had another two other groups, the Hasidim, the Pharisees and the Zealots, and they went up north to the Galilee to be devoted and committed to the way of God. Those were our silent years. Then we had one more slide that we get to add now and that is the Gospels, so what do we call the Gospels, Brent?
Brent: It is the story in the flesh.
Marty: Story in flesh; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Mathew’s agenda being the mumzer, Mark’s agenda being the Roman, Luke’s agenda being an ordered Gospel, and John’s agenda being grafted. That’s our short review, Brent. I think that gets us right to where we want to be. What kind of things do we have before we wrap this up?
Brent: Just one more reminder to check out the map that we have on our website. If you go to bemadiscipleship.com, go to the groups tab and look at the map. There’s groups all over the United States, as well as several around the world. If you’re not on that map, and you’re already meeting as a group, we’d love to get you on the map, get in touch with us for that.
If you want to start a group, we’ve got resources to help you start the group. It’s just great to be in a community and walking this journey together. It’s all about the partnership.
Marty: Those resources are on that “Groups” tab online, I get that email regularly. The resources that we have created are a small little guide that’s on that group tag, a little hyperlink there that says, “We have created a guide.” Just click on that.
Brent: Maybe I’ll have to make that link for the guide a little more prominent.
Marty: Yes, maybe.
Brent: Yes.
Marty: Maybe. It’s not deep, it’s super profound, It’s pretty general. We’ve kept this thing pretty grassroots because every one of your groups has looked different, started differently; it started organically. It’s been unique to your group, it needs to be that way. Like that’s what it needs to be, we’re not programming this, like I don’t have a program for how to start a group because that’s not what I’m trying to build here.
We’re not trying to build a BEMA Empire; we’re trying to say, “Hey, we’ve got some decentralized material and if it’s useful for you, you put flesh and blood on it. You figure out what it looks like for you and for your friends.” That’s what it’s designed to do, and some beautiful things that come out of that. Help us keep the map up to date. That’s one thing that I just really—our map is starting to get out of date if you don’t help us keep it up to date, so we need your help to do that. Yes, what else we got Brent?
Brent: Also on the website, we’ve got a tab for news and that’s the place you can sign up for the BEMA messenger to newsletter. We send out by email, every once in a while. We give you information on upcoming trips if you’re interested in going to Israel or Turkey on one of Marty’s trips. We’ve got information that we’ll be sharing about events that Marty is holding around the country. If he’s coming to your area, that’s the best and quickest way to find out that he will be there.
We just like to share stories about groups that are meeting around the world, what’s happening in the group’s success stories, changed lives, whatever. There’s all sorts of cool stuff happening, and we’d love to let you all know about it.
Marty: That’s right. Sign up for the messenger. All right, we’re going to keep this short and sweet. Brent, tell us where we’re headed. Our capstone lesson was plenty long, so we’re going to keep our intro to the session nice and short.
Brent: Capstone, long review.
Marty: Yes.
Brent: Intro, short review.
Marty: Short review, short lesson. Okay, so here’s where we’re headed, little roadmap where we’re going. We’re going to go through Acts; we’re going to take about eight or nine episodes and we’re going to go through the book of Acts. Acts is going to serve as our setup for Session 4, about the epilogue for the grand narrative. We’re going to walk through all of the extra—we’re not going verse by verse through the book of Acts.
Just be prepared. We’re going to skip around; we’re going to get back to some of that. We’re going to go through Acts, we’re going to talk about that, it’s going to set up Session 4. We are going to go verse by verse through the book of Galatians. I can’t even tell you what we’re going to talk about, because it would just open up a can of worms, so we just have to wait to get there when we get there.
We are going to go through Galatians. It’s maybe one of my favorite—in the last five years, it has become one of my favorite letters in the New Testament—not because of its content, I have other favorite letters for that—but because of what it helps us understand about the New Testament. I do believe it was one of the first letters written, a lot of scholars would disagree with that. I believe Galatians might be your earliest letter in the New Testament, earliest piece of writing we have. We’re going to start there, verse by verse.
We’re going to go through Romans verse by verse, just because when we start critiquing Marty’s New Testament theology, everybody is going to always respond all the time with, “But in Romans it says… but in Romans it says… but in Romans it says...” I am so tired of having to deal with that from the days I was in Bible college because Romans is like the Bible of all Bibles like we hold Romans in such high regard.
We’ll even interpret all of our Gospels and our Jesus through our Romans, so we need to fix that. We’re going to go verse by verse through Romans, that nobody can tell me that I’m not using every single verse in Romans. We’re going to go verse by verse through Romans, and then we’re going to bounce through letters.
Brent: This is going to be crazy.
Marty: Yes, it will. I’ve always had that commitment in BEMA. We’re going to go verse by verse because there’s no way I’m going to get accused of ignoring Romans, so we’re just going to do the whole thing. We’re going to bounce through whole letters at a time, we’re going to do 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians all that kind of stuff. We’re going to take some time through Hebrews, not a ton. We’re going to take some time through Hebrews. I don’t think we’re going to go verse by verse through Hebrews.
Brent: Two episodes planned for that.
Marty: Two episodes for Hebrews. Hebrews is one of my favorite books. We’re going to take our time through Revelation. I don’t know if I’m going to make an Every Verse™ guarantee, but we are going to go through Revelation, for the most part, in its entirety. It is a huge part of my material. I’m really big on Revelation. Revelation is one of the two reasons we go to Turkey on our Turkey trips. Brent, do I love me some Revelation?
Brent: Yes, absolutely.
Marty: Absolutely. We’ll definitely be doing the Revelation thing by the time we’re done—
Brent: Probably, the most significantly misunderstood portion of scripture.
Marty: It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. A lot of people think, “It’s just Revelation, who cares?” No, no, no—what we understand about how the story ends has everything to do with how we live in the story today. That’s a big, big thing that’s impacted theology, maybe more than anything. Man, I don’t know, but it’s been a big one. It’s been one of the top three impactors of New Testament orthopraxy, let alone orthodoxy. That’s Session 4, so welcome to Session 4 and, I guess, let’s just dive into the book of Acts.
Brent: Sounds great. All right—next episode; we dive in next episode.
Marty: First two chapters of Acts, next episode.
Brent: Alright, well, you can find all the things that we talked about at bemadiscipleship.com. Thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.