Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible> hello and welcome
Speaker 1 00:00:07 To village church, sermon Q and a pastor Craig here with pastor Michael and pastor Alex. We did a message yesterday on what it means to be a good neighbor. So we're going to discuss a little bit about what that means in practical terms today. So the first question
Speaker 2 00:00:19 Goes to pastor Michael, and here's
Speaker 1 00:00:22 Your question best for Michael? Why is there an old Testament law about boiling a goat in its mother's milk? Okay. Have you ever had the impulse to boiler
Speaker 2 00:00:33 Or to boil any animal and its mother's milk only? I think in that there was a regular temptation, right? One of my favorite things about laws. And when you really start reading through old
Speaker 3 00:00:41 Testament laws, they're actually hilarious. When you think about them through the lens that every law there was somebody tempted to do that then. So there's like enough people I'm here. This, this command shows up three times in Torah in the law, three separate times. And I'm thinking to myself, like in what world is somebody tempted to do this?
Speaker 2 00:01:04 So apparently they live in a very different culture, a very different time and we'll just know something we don't
Speaker 3 00:01:08 Write. Let's just read the verse here. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Okay. Now questions like come from this, which is what is the go to life? Um, is the mother watching the goat? You know, so we had, uh, it was, it was interesting yesterday, no, two days ago, whatever day this is, we were cleaning out my shed and uh, you know, those flower pots, they're plastic and there's like little, you put little flowers in them and there's like, 16 of them. They're all in rows. Well, there was one on a shelf and I was cleaning all this out and I pick up, um, there's something on top of it. I pick it up and this little mother mouse goes, Ooh, it looks around and goes down. And I, I screamed and
Speaker 2 00:01:48 My wife who is petrified of mice, she screams back at, what was it? Is it alive? Is it big? Like she's barraging with questions and I'm just thinking like, okay, so I'm thinking, all
Speaker 3 00:02:00 Right. So I I'm trying to figure out how to get this thing in. So as I empty out the, the mouse, okay, there are seven babies attached to it, right. This got real. Then I screamed again and all my kids now are watching and they're like, what is it? And I'm like, you can't, you can't see this. No. And then they are insistent like absolutely a hundred percent insistent. We have to see this. So I show it to them. And my daughters are like, we have to keep all.
Speaker 2 00:02:33 And so now I got these little girls with their
Speaker 3 00:02:35 Mom instinct kicking in. I got this little mama mouse and who is obviously built an entire home for like all of her mice. And we live by woods. So we'd go out, we'd dig a hole. We're trying to like, recreate like a home for them. And, and, uh, as we kind of, we gently put the mice in into this, whatever, and they're all still attached. It was like a really traumatic whatever. But then I was, it was so interesting because when the mother was in the bucket, um, she was gathering all of, all of her little mice babies around her and just watching, even just this animals, maternal instincts to protect her babies at all costs was really striking. And then when we put them in there, um, she, she started to run off and then a half of them were attached to her and a couple of them fell off and she is now having this tension. The reason I say this is because the maternal instinct, uh, is powerful all throughout creation. And all of my kids had this dilemma, like, what do we do with th what do we do with this? I get fee
Speaker 2 00:03:34 Everything about what we're doing is unnatural. Like it was a violation
Speaker 3 00:03:38 Of everybody and I even felt guilty. I'm like, do I just like, let these mice live? I mean, they're going to destroy my shed. They're going to get into my house and then they're gonna get trapped anyways. You know, like all these quandaries. And
Speaker 2 00:03:49 So it's interesting. I know you're like I have no issues. This whole thing is about being a good neighbor. And you're just saying, you just let a whole colony of mice is your neighbor.
Speaker 4 00:04:04 Where'd it go? So that's good
Speaker 2 00:04:08 Point in saying that is like, okay. So my point in saying that is like, there is something very unnatural, right? Very broken
Speaker 3 00:04:17 About taking anything, living right. In taking its baby and then boiling. But this, so it's interesting when you look at this on the surface, if you just take a moment and think about it, it is dark unnatural, and it's actually just a terrible thing to do that to an animal. And God has actually a lot of like, like protection over animals. Now take this to another level. Uh, apparently, uh, Canaanite religions were known for doing this. So like, why that, why would they do this? So here's what we do know about a lot of them, um, part of their ritual sacrifice was to take their first born, put it onto a big bronze statue. I think it was at a calf lit on fire and incinerate their baby live in front of everybody as an offering to the gods. And it's like, okay, well, what do you do if you don't have a baby?
Speaker 3 00:05:04 Oh, I know I'll take a goat, a baby goat, boil it in its mother's milk. And maybe that'll do it. You know, like the kind of demented perversion that it actually takes. So it already violates like this, this human instinct to have compassion on animals. Um, and then it takes another level. And really this is about, um, God's saying, listen, your temptation to basically dabble in the religions of the place you're going is so strong that even something as ridiculous and dark and backwards as taking a baby goat, taking the time to get all the milk, taken the, I mean, this is a, this is a long process that God's like, listen, it's all dark. And this is what darkness does. And don't dabble with that because those religions will destroy you. Um, follow me and you'll have life. And so, yeah, it was, it was just a dark practice. So here's a question for you guys. Um, what are practices that are explicitly that Christians are tempted to dabble in that are from either a different religious system or a different religion in general? What would you say? Well,
Speaker 5 00:06:06 I mean, I could tell a story. Uh, I, when I was in college, I lived in a suite with other guys, you know, we all had our different rooms and, uh, I was the only, uh, Christian or the only, you know, uh, evangelical Christian. Like let's just call it that. Um, and this group and, uh, the group of guys wanted to in the middle of our suite, you know, get a Weegee board out and, uh, you know, start using it and whatever that looks like, and you know, oh, this is fun. This is funny. Like, it's not a big deal. Right. But I understood that this has connections to the occult and I was like very uncomfortable with it. And I essentially set, like, I, I can't let you guys do that in here. Right. And there was a temptation for me to just like, kind of go along with the flow, like this is what the group wants to do. Okay. Yeah. I guess that's fine. But, um, but yeah, I just was not comfortable with that happening in, in our dorm
Speaker 1 00:06:57 Room. Yeah. This actually might be, you asked a question at the beginning when we first got in here and, and, uh, it actually, won't be more common than we think. I mean, if you think about, uh, anything that we dabble into the spirit world in order to tap into a, a strength or power, which is exactly what this is all about, tap into a power that we think we need, or we don't have now, anything that takes our reliance on something else and off of God's got our future. Don't worry about it. Um, would go into this category, like what horoscopes are speaking with the dead. I mean, that's one, I don't know if you remember, but there used to be shows on TV where these guys could speak to the dead and people would come in and, and, uh, they were extremely good at it.
Speaker 1 00:07:37 Uh, they're probably shysters, you know, that, that we're able to, you know, look at somebody and get, or maybe they were actually speaking with spiritual world, but we know that to be absent from the body is to be absent from this. I mean, you're gone. And, um, so they're, if they're talking to somebody it's not God. And so anytime you dabble into these kinds of things, and I think that might be why it's in there three times. Yeah. And I like what you said, especially it's like, this takes a lot of time to get that much note to do the boiling. There's, there's a devotion to get into this in some level where you are spiritually, um, bereft, where you need to tap into something where you are not able to trust
Speaker 3 00:08:19 God for it. Yeah. The amount of intentionality. Yeah. And that is crazy when Jesus, you know, the table turning event and he's like, has a whip or whatever. It's interesting because the text says that he, he, he didn't just show up with a whip. He went, sought, left, made a whip, came back and it's like that level of intentionality. I think we forget like all of these things, how much work it takes. Yeah. I remember I was like nine or 10 years old and Mike's house down the road is six houses down from me. And, and, uh, he would regularly have Weegee boards and I would never do it. Cause my mom was like very clear, like, don't touch that. Well, they had a sands one day and nobody knew what they were doing. It was more like, like get some candles, everybody's sit in a circle and everybody just champs. Right. Dabble. And I remember I sat there and I was like, I was like so uncomfortable and I didn't do anything. And I just had to get up and leave because my spirit was just so like, oh, I'd like, but my Mo my mother's voice was in my head. So don't ever don't ever do that. Um, and so she had a list of things that like were in my brain, like these are, these are evil practices, but all these kids, they didn't know any better. Right. And
Speaker 1 00:09:18 I think that's a, it's a, it's an effort of the evil one to tap into the innocence of our children. Totally. And once that door gets opened, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I've, I've talked with several people who have challenges with faith, trusting God, or even challenges with demonic presence in one way or another. And you can always draw it back to, you know, plan with, you know, chanting and mirrors or, you know, the, you know, whatever it is that they get into, including Weegee boilers. Right. That, that door just needs a little crack to open. The invitation is out there. And, and it's hard to say what comes in the doors,
Speaker 3 00:09:52 The supplies, the neighbor laws, because, um, you're not supposed to take mice and release them out into the woods. Let's, let's make that a lot.
Speaker 4 00:09:59 That a lot. I'm glad you're not my neighbor. Yes. Sorry, Tom, love you. Yeah. Well, it's been a
Speaker 1 00:10:05 Privilege having you with us. We've enjoyed talking about this. Hopefully it's been helpful to you. Join us next time as we tackle another question on our sermon Q and a.
