Greater than Religion

Today is Tuesday, December the 13th. I'm Ryan Hill.

I'm John Galantis. And you're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for future topics on episodes, you can send us a text at 252-582-5028.

You can also email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com. That's right. You can help us keep this conversation in the airwaves by supporting the podcast, sharing it online, leaving us a good review on iTunes, and just keeping the discussion of Jesus Christ alive. That's so important, those reviews.

We mention them every week. I feel like people just sort of shrug it off like, oh, whatever, someone else will leave a review. Right. But it really is so important.

Take 30 seconds. Take 30 seconds to go and leave a review on iTunes, and you won't believe how much that kind of stuff helps. It really, really does, because that's how the algorithms work. They read those reviews. I know they don't read the reviews, but they see that reviews have been left.

They look at the ratings, and they bump up conversations that they feel like are actually happening. So the world is talking about so many things. Why not talk about Jesus?

That's right. And we read the reviews, so please say something nice. Yeah. Speaking of talking about Jesus, you want to hear that?

They affect my self-esteem. Please. You can't imagine how much. John 10 and verse seven, this is the verse of the day. Jesus said, I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever enters through me will be saved.

He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.

I love that comparison side by side with what the thief does, with what the enemy does. And then Jesus says, I've come that they may have life. Now, not just have life, but have it to the full.

Yeah. Have life and life more abundantly. That's his whole MO, as it were, is to give us life. But not just life to survive, not just life to kind of get through it. Life abundantly. Yeah. That's the gift that he gives us. Absolutely.

Amen. Speaking of gifts, I was playing a gift last night on the Nintendo Switch. Now, is this a hint for an upcoming gift, like you want a Nintendo Switch? No. No, we have two Switches. Right. Two Switches? Well, we got five kids.

Oh, my good gracious. Two Switches. Two Switches. You know, when I was a kid, I got Switches, but they meant something completely different. Not the same thing.

Not at all. And I noticed that you were online last night. I was online. I was playing some Luigi's Mansion 3. That game has been out. Very nice. Yes. That game came out in 2019.

It's now 2022. I've only now just played it for the first time. Hashtag too spooky for me. Why is Luigi scary? Why am I scared to get up and get a drink of water in the middle of the night because I played Luigi's Mansion? It does feel a little silly that Luigi has jump scares in it. Like of all the silly, cartoony things, I should not be afraid of this. This is Mario, for goodness sake.

This is four children. Why am I being, why are ghosts jumping out and scaring me, asking for my money? Yeah. What were you, so what were you playing?

I was playing, I was, uh, I know I'm late to the game because Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are out now, but I was playing a little Pokemon sword. That's like two generations ago, wasn't it? Or one generation ago?

I think it was one generation ago. Okay. Okay. So how are you liking it? I like it. You like the open world Pokemon? Yeah, I enjoy it. It's a different concept than of course what I grew up with because I was like OG Pokemon back in my day. My Pokemon were represented as sprites and we were grateful.

Yes. And you were just little pixels side scrolling on a screen. Now you're like spinning a camera around and I mean it's a different, a different concept, but I'm liking it. I'm enjoying it.

And Noah and I can kind of play simultaneously. So that's fun. Those were the days though, just going through Johto, going through Kanto and uh, especially going through Johto in gold and silver and then getting to the end of the campaign and then realizing that there's a whole nother, you can go back through Kanto and then going up and ascending Mount silver most, I would say 80% of the radio audience has no clue what we're talking about. I am interested to know how many people are listening and are like Pokemon fans from way back. So at this point, yeah. At this point, Pokemon is like what, 25 something years old. Yeah. So I mean it's not like we're talking about the new hip thing. Like this is very well established pop culture.

Very well established. Years. I mean I was playing Pokemon, let's see, I got Pokemon red and blue and like third grade yeah. Something like that. Third grade, fourth grade. I remember when Pokemon cards were uh, at school and some kid, I'll actually, I don't know if I should say his name here.

His name was Chris. What if bleep it, if you want to, I don't know. I don't know what the chances of, I guess probably bleep it, but, but I remember he brought a holographic Charizard to school, got ripped off at lunch, went home, told his mom next day Pokemon cards were banned at school and uh, same thing happened at our school. Yeah.

Not, I mean not the same card, but same exact thing. That little twerp was a pariah for the rest of the year because you ruined it for all of us. You ruined it for everybody. I remember specifically the, um, the fury that we all felt. Oh yeah. And so now I guess being able to play the games as a 32 year old. Yeah.

Yeah. It was, you know, around that age, third, fifth grade, something when, when, uh, when the games came out. So now that my son is around that age too, it's, it's very fun for us to kind of play the games simultaneously to play the card game together.

It's fun to kind of like watch him walk through what I went through. So I'll be honest. I really thought Pokemon would have died out by now. Me too. I did not expect it to last almost what going on a quarter century.

Yeah. Well it dipped in popularity and then like suddenly it's, it's resurged. I remember when diamond and Pearl came out. There was a big, um, I was in high school, there was a huge resurgence. I feel like maybe, maybe not, maybe, maybe, maybe the dip in popularity wasn't as big as I thought it was. But I remember by generation three, Ruby and Sapphire, I was getting really burned out of it. Yeah.

But then I came back in strong with diamond and Pearl. I was like, this was a slammer. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, in today's episode we're talking about, uh, you know, we're, we're continuing our, our series on Christmas. We're talking about the arrival of Jesus. We're talking about how Jesus didn't come to fit into our religious traditions, right? He didn't come as a puzzle piece that is going to fit in with what, what, what we have. He came to bring us into a relationship with God.

Jesus came to tear down the curtain and the Holy of Holies from top to bottom and make a way for us to come into the throne of grace. Beautiful. Beautiful. So we're going to bring Dr. Shaw in in just a few minutes to talk more about that. But if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028 or visit us online at clearviewtodayshow.com. We'll be back after this.

Hey there listeners. My name is John and I'm David and we just want to take a second and talk to you about Dr. Shawn Nicole's new book, 30 days to a new beginning daily devotionals to help you move forward. No matter who you are or where you are in life, you're going to get stuck.

You're going to have goals that you just can't seem to reach and you're going to be looking for some new way to start over. Unfortunately, life does not have a restart button, but here's the good news. God's mercy is new every day, right? And so that means every day is a new chance for you to start over. Now Dr. Shaw and his wife Nicole have written a new 30 day devotional in their 30 day series designed to give you practical tools for starting over.

No matter where you are in life's journey or what pitfalls you've encountered, this devotional is going to help you move forward, refocus your mind on God's truth and meditate on his word. And you guys can pick up a copy right this second on amazon.com. Unless you're driving.

Yeah. Don't shop and drive unless you're driving, in which case wait till you get home. But we're going to leave a link for you right here in the description of this podcast.

So it'll be waiting for you when you get home. That's 30 days to a new beginning, daily devotionals to help you move forward. And for the remainder of November and all through December, we'll be sending a free copy to anyone who supports the podcast by visiting us online and donating to the show at clearviewtodayshow.com.

That is a very, very good incentive gang. That's 30 days to a new beginning, daily devotions to help you move forward by Abaddon and Nicole Shaw. Thank you guys so much for listening. David, you want to jump back into the show? Let's go.

All right. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abaddon Shaw, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at clearviewtodayshow.com, or you can send us a text at 252-582-5028. Dr. Shaw, welcome to the studio this Tuesday. It's great to be here. I hope you guys are doing well. Hey man, doing very well. Doing very well. Hope you guys out there listening are doing well. If this is your first time ever tuning in, we want to remind you, Dr. Shaw is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, a professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor and the host of today's show.

You can follow all of his work over at his blog site at AbaddonShaw.com. That's right. And on today's show, we're continuing through our December Christmas series. And today we want to take a look at how we have all these traditions. We have all these kind of acceptable practices, things that are on the forefront of people's minds, especially here at Christmas. But Jesus did not come to fit into the mold of our tradition. Jesus is greater than our religion.

That's right. And a lot of times at Christmas, we try to fit him into our celebration when really he is the celebration. Yeah, it's almost like there's an underlying understanding of what Christmas is supposed to be. And so now our job as good and faithful Christians is trying to fit Jesus in there somewhere. Yeah.

Yeah. Dr. Shaw, where does this idea come from that Jesus is greater than our religion? Well, I mean, we were just talking about traditions all over the world and I made a list of this one time and I shared in a sermon with the same title actually, where we talked about how in different parts of the world, they have different kinds of traditions. So in Norway, believe it or not, they hide their brooms on Christmas Eve. I don't understand that because according to tradition, witches are out on Christmas Eve.

It's like a Halloween Christmas hybrid. I'm kind of honestly here for it. Hide the brooms. I'm here for that. I like that. In South Africa, children look forward to fried caterpillars or Christmas caterpillars on Christmas day. All right. Nevermind. Christmas caterpillars. Nevermind. Yeah. That's going to be, that's not on my Christmas list. Now in India, you know this one.

We sang Christmas carols all night from door to door of every church member on Christmas Eve. Right. Right. I remember it being no missed houses.

That's right. You don't ever miss somebody's house. If you miss somebody's house, they're calling the pastor, they're going to complain.

And it happened once or twice and it was not good. But these are traditions and sometimes, you know, traditions are great. I'm actually not against traditions, but sometimes they can get in the way or overshadow the truth and we end up with religion and not reality. Right.

Right. So again, listen, if you have traditions, great. If you don't make some, but just know, don't let any of those religious, any of those traditions or religious traditions supersede the truth of the gospel.

How do you, how have you seen this play out in people's lives? Like, have you, have you seen some examples of this where people have had traditions that sort of step on Jesus at the holidays? I mean, for one, I would say, uh, you know, we're talking about this year, Christmas being on Sunday, right? Immediately you hear, Hey, that's family day. Yeah.

And I get it. I understand totally what that means because you want to, you know, get your kids up early in the morning, run up to the Christmas tree and, and all that stuff. But see what we're doing here is we're allowing our traditions to supersede the commandment to, you know, don't forsake the assembly of ourselves together, you know, still come together and overseas most Christians or, you know, whatever you call their stream of Christianity, they go to church on a Sunday on a Christmas day, you know, Sunday or not, they go to church. But here, uh, we've made our own tradition and now we're like competing these traditions.

So like, I don't know for sure if I'll be there. Isn't that odd? Isn't it odd that they're like, no, we're, I mean, look, I know that y'all do a lot for the community, but that's asking way too much. We're going to celebrate Jesus's birthday our way.

We're not going to his house to celebrate his birthday. We're not, we're not doing that. Sometimes I wish you could just take those as sound bites and just play them back for people. Like, did you hear what you just said?

Did you listen to the words that came out of your mouth? I really feel like Christmas is a time for family, not, not Jesus, not the church. What? You're not going to Jesus's house on his birthday to tell him happy birthday?

Come on, man. So it's, it's something that I think, uh, going forward with all that's happening in our world and our culture, in American Christian families, where our young people are not as in touch with their faith as we were hoping that would be, or as we were raising them to be, uh, then I think maybe we need to redo some of these traditions and rethink his family more important. Exactly.

Exactly. And when I think about like traditions getting in the way of the truth of God's word, I always go back in my head to the, like the religious authorities of Jesus's day. They were, they were so focused on this, and I know we're going to talk about this a little more in depth tomorrow, but they were so focused on keeping the law, keeping tradition where the tradition was the ends, like, you know what I mean? That was like the end goal, keeping it and making sure that we do it without fail while ignoring the truth of God's word standing right in front of them.

That's kind of what I always go back to. Yeah. And of course you're referring to the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the priests, the Levi's, those religious power brokers. They thought they were the tradition.

They decide the tradition and Jesus came and disrupted their traditions and didn't like that one bit. So what is the, so what is this, this, um, how does Herod get them on his side? He brings them in and is this, is this part of the plot to kill Jesus or is this kind of- It's headed that way.

Right. The wise men come, the Magi, more specifically the Magi, the Magos, Magoi, they come and they're asking for how, where is he who has been born King of the Jews, talking about Matthew chapter two. And they talk about a star they saw in the East and now they've come to worship him. And when Herod the Great heard this, the King heard this and he was troubled. Of course he's troubled because he's thinking, is there an uprising? Is there something going on? Are these spies?

What is happening? Right. And it's kind of odd that he was not aware of this. I think they were aware of it.

They just didn't expect it to happen. All Jerusalem was, was up in arms over this, these Magoi, Magi that's, that are swarming all over Jerusalem. I don't think there was just three.

I think there were probably three, 400 more. Yeah. I think it was a bunch of them because, you know, there's a prophecy that sort of hits on that, talking about all the dromedaries will cover the land of Israel, which means there was tons of camel riding Magoi that showed up. By the way, camels and dromedaries are different, so please don't say any letters. My phone is blowing up right now with text messages about the dromedaries. By the way, just to just a quick word, they're really dromedaries, not camels anyways. Yeah.

Go ahead. I was just going to ask for the sake of our listeners and viewers, where did this, I guess tradition of three wise men come from? If we don't have a determined number, where did this addition come from? I mean, the gold, frankincense, and myrrh is what I'm thinking. The three gifts. Yeah. The three gifts is what I would say is, is how they became three. Yeah. That's true. Cause there's no, it never says there was only three.

It doesn't ever give a number. It just says they brought three gifts. Yeah.

One's holding gold, another's frankincense. Another one is myrrh. Yeah. So it's just three.

But I think it was probably a lot more. Yeah. So how can you have the land covered with them if it's only three guys?

That's true. Just a giant fleet of dromedaries behind them. Just here we go everybody. Yep. They're, they're here.

Wow. But I think one thing that's interesting is that they don't go with the wise men. They don't go with the Magi.

The, the talking about the Pharisees, the, um, the scribes, the Sadducees, all of these religious elite, the, the, the King of the Jews has just been born and yet they don't go. You know, we have a very poor or misguided understanding of ancient times. We tend to look at ancient times as like, based on some of the movies, I think it is some of the medieval movies, you know, people living in these, these wet muddy swampy things that people are running through in Europe. You know, we think everybody in the world lived like that. There's always mud. It's always raining.

Someone's coughing in the background. You're a hundred percent right. Because I mean, I mean, just, just unironically, that is where we get our, our knowledge and I'm using air quotes there. It's from media.

Somebody in horseback is chasing down some peasant. That's pretty much how it comes down to. Hollywood writers pretty much dictate what we think.

I hate to say that, but it's a hundred percent true. And we're in the distance in the fog. Do you see the castle? Oh yeah. I see it.

Okay. There it is. That's the history of the entire world. Amen, brother.

Amen. The end. Close the history book. No need to read anymore. We'll tell you what to think. I'm tired of this, grandpa.

Oh, you're going to, what is it? That was from holes. That was holes. Oh, okay. But, but, but the point is this, I think it was far more intricate and complex than that. Imagine today if, if a delegation showed up in Washington DC from say some country like Senegal and they are talking about where is he who's born the next president of the United States, you know, how would people respond to that? Yeah.

I mean, America is far more advanced, a different world, modern modernization, but just imagine the same kind of complexity in politics and power and distribution of power. Imagine that happening in Jerusalem, all of a sudden, you know, people are looking at Herod. Is he, how are you going to respond to this? Is he going to be angry? Is he going to be frustrated? Is he going to be insecure and send out an entire army, you know, of soldiers look for this baby or is he going to act regal and kind of like dismissive?

Like whatever. It's, I'm not worried about that. It was some baby somewhere, but internally he's very paranoid and scared. I think, I think this was happening there. Yeah. So, so he gives that impression, like you guys go and check it out.

Let me know. Go and go and y'all, y'all find it and let me know, we'll see, we'll come worship him. And so on one hand he's being dismissive, like you go and go figure it out. Right. And on the other hand, I think he is nervous and scared. Like, wait, what, what's, this is really true because it says right here, when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. I mean, he didn't know.

Yeah. And they said to him, listen to this, this is very interesting, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, but you Bethlehem and the land of Judah are not the least among the rulers of Judah for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. So what is Herod's response? And Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, so he doesn't in front of them decide or say anything. He sort of is very dismissive, regal, okay, well, this is the next order of business. Is the aqueduct still working, you know?

Okay. What are we going to do with Caesar? Are we still meeting with him next month? But at the same time, he's inside going, I don't care about any of this, I want to know about this. Who is this king?

Yeah. And so he calls the wise men over secretly and determined from them what time the star appears. Imagine him in this room, maybe it's a dining hall, I don't know what it is, but they lay out their maps or whatever, and they're showing him, it was here, the star was here. I mean, he's trying to understand this, how this is working. And he's looking at his wise men, his leaders and saying, do you guys understand what these magi are talking about? And then it goes on and he lets them go and tells them, go find him.

And when you find him, let me know, I'll come worship him. So on one hand, he's a little dismissive. On the other hand, he still wants to know. But how in the world is he going to keep track of, let's just say a thousand or four or five hundred camels or dromedaries making its way towards Bethlehem?

He doesn't, he can't. So it's kind of like, put one or two guys on their trail. Well, we don't know where they went. I mean, there's so many of them. Some are going here, some are going there. We don't know.

Yeah. You see, when you really put all the fill in the blanks in the story, it's far more complex than just a sleepy little town of Bethlehem and three camels moving along. Why can't hair see that? Maybe it's more complicated than that. I think you're right.

I think another thing that at least comes to my mind, because I don't ever think of the scribes and the Pharisees, I don't even think of them coming into the story until Jesus is a fully grown man. They didn't do this until he was an adult. But at the same time, they don't go. And I think that's interesting because you just like you just read Dr. Shaw, they gave the right answer.

Right. They gave Herod the right answer from that prophecy. So either they didn't believe it or more likely, like they didn't want it to be true.

I think a little bit of both. I think they didn't want to believe that it's actually happening. But then again, from these Magois, you know, Magi were not looked up to back in the day. They were looked down upon.

Right. But was it because they were from Persia? They were from Persia. They were a strange bunch. They had some strange customs.

So it's like if you get a bunch of, I don't want to say gypsies, but they just were weird. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and typically, rulers didn't like them because they were known as kingmakers.

They would come and anoint you and you're the next king, whether you were or not, you know, making money off of you or whatever it is. I don't know. Right. That makes a lot of sense then.

So if you're already, if you're already an authority, if you're already a king and these dudes roll up on the scene, you're like, hey, who are you trying to put in my place? Yeah. What's your points? What's your angle?

What are you up to? It's like a Rasputin sort of thing. Yeah. Where it's just like who, like you've got the nobility. I would say that.

That's a great example. Yeah. Like you've got the nobility. Strange, mystical, like.

Yeah. It's just weird. You've got the family, you've got the counselors and advisors, you've got these like hobo looking dudes coming in. It's like, no, we are creepy. You don't know what they're up to.

But you've got people in high places being like, trust me, these are the guys like, wow, I don't get it. I don't get it. Yeah. Rasputin is a, that's, that's a great example. Thank you.

Thank you. Imagine a bunch of Rasputins showed up in DC. I mean, what would you do?

I'd do, I'd be like, so can someone please get the cops out here and get a bunch of homeless guys just like surrounding the baby Jesus. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much what they look like. Yeah.

That is crazy. So you've got the priests and the Levites. They're there. I mean, are they corrupt at this point or is it later on? Well, keep in mind, you know, the old Testament priests belong to the tribe of Levi and they were descendants of Aaron. And along with the Levi's, they were the ritual specialists. As one scholar says it, ritual specialists and mediators between God and people. And then you had the Levi's.

Levi's were the ones who are in charge of music and supervision. These would do more than running the temple and carrying out the sacrifices. But unfortunately, you know, about the time of Jesus, a hundred years or so before the coming of Christ, you know, they were buying the position. You know, the high priest position was bought by a man by the name of Jason. You know, he bribed Antiochus Epiphanes who was a Seleucid king coming from Persia. He bought the position from him. Wow.

He was buying the position of being the priest of the Jewish people. Yeah. Wow.

So that's that. Not all the Levi's and the priests were corrupt. I mean, you know, Zechariah and Elizabeth, you know, parents of John the Baptist, they were fine people.

Right. Sadducees on the other hand, you know, they were coming from the time of John Hyrcanus, which is about 135 to 104 BC. They claimed that they went all the way back to Zadok, the righteous high priest, you know, going back to that, the first millennium, they, again, they were also mostly aristocracy, but they control the temple.

You know, they, you know, whoever controls religion controls money. So that's who they were. So the Jewish people went to the temple, but at the same time, they felt like the temple was, you know, had gone off the deep end. I mean, you had the Sadducees, the ones who shake hands with the Romans controlling the temple. Why would I even go to the temple?

That's how they felt. And who are the people who led the charge and why would I go to the temple would be the Pharisees. Again, sworn enemies of the Sadducees. Pharisees were kind of a lay led movement that believed that it was known as table fellowship, that whatever you do in the temple should be done in your homes. Like if we were living back, then I would want to be a Pharisee because they believe that righteousness begins in each and every home and that, you know, you should offer a tithe of everything that you're eating as if you're in the temple. That who you eat with matters because you don't want to corrupt a sacrifice. So when you're eating, what goes inside of you matters.

So be careful. We clean it up and all that stuff. Now of course, Jesus let them have it because they were also a bunch of hypocrites. They were doing one thing and doing the other thing. I was going to say on the surface, on the surface, that all sounds good.

It sounds like, it sounds like they got the right message, wrong implementation. But the hypocrisy is there and it's, I mean, Jesus himself later in scripture calls them whitewashed tombs. They look good on the outside, but inside they're just full of death and decay. And then of course the scribes, you know, they were just like these experts on the law in every town and village. So these were the people who were so called in charge of religion. They didn't get along, but they were there, but they were united in one thing.

They didn't like Jesus. Yeah, I don't want to take away from the discussion, but just talking about the scribes, there was one thing that you said to me once that has always stuck with me because I always took the scribes to be like the, just the people who wrote down stuff, the people who were the secretaries kind of, they weren't powerful at all. But I remember one thing you said was, think about in that world, like you, you're reading and writing.

Yeah. You're very powerful. That's a very, very powerful position. Cause when I hear the scribes, I always thought like someone's just dictating it and they're just kind of like the court stenographer sort of taken.

But to be an authority over like written word in that period, like, yeah, that's a very powerful position. That's true. Anyway, that, that didn't have much to do with the conversation, but, but I mean, it's a good point. Yeah. It was something that I never, that I never considered. Yeah. Yeah. We have these, we have these religious groups that, you know, sort of rejected Jesus being the Messiah.

He didn't fit into their mold. How can we today, as we're headed toward Christmas in the, in the busy month of December, how can we guard ourselves from falling into the same trap? You know, we can pretend spirituality, but so far, that's true. And what we have to do is be real, be real with our struggles, be real with our pain with, be real with our needs and have a real relationship with God. We can pretend to be strong and powerful and in control, but so long. And these, these guys had mastered the art of, you know, presenting themselves a certain way, even down to fasting. I mean, they had, you know, you know, they had their whole makeup kit and Jesus said, no, don't do that.

Wash your face, act like, you know, normal people don't do that. So I would suggest having a real relationship with God and let him work in your heart and walk with him in, in, in integrity. What a great reminder for us.

Have a, have that relationship with God and walk with him in integrity. You guys enjoyed today's topic and you, or you have questions or suggestions for future topics. Let us know by sending a text at 252-582-5028.

You can also visit us online at clearviewtodayshow.com and don't forget on that same website you can support us financially. Every gift, every contribution goes to building up this partnership as we seek to impact the world for the gospel together. Dr. Shaw, do you have a quote to leave our listeners with today?

Yes, I have several, but I'm going to go with just one because our time is short. Samuel Johnson. Remember the Samuel Johnson, the literary critic, I talked about it in an amazing writer. He said, the true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. Oh yeah. I like that. That's hard hitting.

How do you treat people who can't give you anything in return? That's true. That's awesome. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear View Today.