What If They Asked You Why You Believe?

Good morning. Somebody's gonna ask. Somebody's gonna ask why you believe what you believe. How do you believe? And what what again? Do you believe? Somebody's gonna ask you. They're gonna ask, why you believe what you believe? Maybe it's already happened. Kid at the dinner table. Could be them. Maybe it's a maybe it's a coworker. Maybe it's somebody who's they've watched you. They've watched you maybe for years. Somebody who finally asked the question you've half expected and never quite prepared an answer for. Why do you do this? And why does it matter to you? Look, uh, I'm not going to be presumptuous here, but I guarantee you that many, many listening right now, many have uh not become followers of the way because they're afraid of that question. They say, hey, look, I'm I I can't I can't answer that question. I can't answer those questions. What why do you believe what you believe? Why do you do this? Why do you do these traditions that you do? Why does it matter to you? They just avoid it altogether. Hey, I'm I'm gonna avoid this altogether. I'm just gonna avoid, and I'll just I want to be a believer, but I'm just not sure that I could pull it off. I get it. I get it. God knew, he knew that question was coming for Israel, too. I mean, generations before it would ever get asked. And he didn't leave his people to fumble for an answer in the moment. He gave them the answer before the question ever came. You know, one of the hardest faiths, in fact, I would say the hardest faith, to join it is the Jewish faith. They don't have an evangelical arm. It's intentionally difficult. There are many challenges. But God didn't leave his people to wonder, how do I answer this? You know the question's coming. I don't know, I just do. Nope. Too thin. God gave the answer. You just may not like it. And I'll tell you, you know, a faith that can't explain itself to the next generation, it doesn't survive the next generation. Shalom and welcome to everybody. Uh, I see the the live chat is vibrant this morning, and if you're listening on playback, you can click on it and set your settings to read it. It's there's a lot of gold in there. Good morning to everyone. I see a whole bunch of folks. And sound is good. Thank you, Miss Colleen. She is the unpaid sound technician. Welcome. Welcome to you all. Linda and Susan, I was thinking of you. I don't know. Uh I don't know if Wes is gonna have a home going or or Don. I don't know any of the arrangements, but I figured you and probably Miss Gloria might go to that. I know you all got a lot going on your own selves. Welcome to everybody that wakes up super early in the morning. Welcome to those of you who are listening, and it's long past bedtime. Welcome. Means a lot to me. Salem. What is it? Salah 312. Welcome. We're glad to have you. Jesus is indeed Lord. What is this? This is true word, faith for life with Dr. Sean. I'm, as you might have guessed, Dr. Sean. It's day 66, Exodus 12, verses 14 through 28. This is a tricky one. Yesterday the blood went on the door. Today, today, God turns this, this one night, turns it into something meant to outlast everyone who lived through it. Everybody. Hey, by the way, my book, True Word Faith for Life, it's available now. Uh, there's links in the show description. There's links, there's a store on um Trueword FaithforLife.com. It's all free. The book's not free, but it'll last you a lifetime, probably more than one lifetime. And uh I just uh, you know, I know it'll help you. Get a copy for yourself, get one for somebody who needs a faith with real answers underneath it. So today's question: What will your children ask you? So let's go in. Good morning, Tammy. Good morning, Linda. By the way, uh, Sela uh 312, wondering how you learned of this uh podcast, this channel. We'd love to know. I'm always curious about it. You're listening on um Do you like to eat PS4 controllers? It's my favorite. Margie Basin. I have no idea what you mean. But hey, you do you. What will your children ask you? That's the question of the day. Seems like it wouldn't be a hard question, but it is. It is very much a hard question. What will your children ask you? What will the children ask you? What will your neighbors ask you? What will that person you bump into every time you go to the grocery ask you? Friends, that's reality. How about the text? God turns immediately from the night itself to something that has to outlast the night. A memorial. A memorial. This day shall be to you a memorial day, he says, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. Seems like a long time. Seems like we would be involved in that whole forever deal. You think? Thank you. Selah 312 says, I heard you from YouTube Live. Well, it's good to have you. And Margie, it's good to have you too. For seven days they're to eat unleavened bread and remove all leaven from their houses completely. Get it out of the house. Whoever eats anything leavened during that week is to be cut off from Israel. The first and seventh days are set apart as holy. No ordinary work except what's needed to prepare food.

Wow.

That seems big. But then God does something utterly remarkable. He doesn't just command the ritual, he scripts the conversation. I want you to think about this. I don't want you to miss it. He scripts the conversation that hasn't happened yet. When you come into the land, I'm giving you, I'm giving you, and you keep this service, and your children ask you, What do you mean by this service? You shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover who passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt. When he struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses, but spared our houses. The people bowed their heads and worshiped, and they went and did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. Three things in this passage matter more than they first appear. First, notice the timing. God gives Israel a permanent generational ordinance before. Before the actual night of deliverance has even happened. That's not premature. That's God. That's God building durability into the look building durability into deliverance from the very first moment. You have to know how big that is. A remembered, explained, repeated practice does not fade. And now, you are learning why the Jews have been so faithful over generations and keeping the traditions and the word. We owe them our faith. Yeah. Without them, we would not be here. Selah 312, you ask, how long have I been saved? Uh, since I was five years old. I'll be 61 in September. I know. I you can't believe I'm looked at, I don't look like I'm 21. Lil, all right, I'll say it, 41, but I'm 61. Look, we uh we owe the Jews our faith because without their diligence and obedience, we'd be aimless. Or perhaps even non-existent. Second, the leaven. God zooks the leaven. Removing it isn't a light suggestion, it's a command. It's total. Search it out, get rid of it completely, and whoever keeps eating it while claiming to keep the feast is cut off from the community. That's the thing. Leaven works through dough quietly, invisibly, and a tiny little bit. Good morning, Susan. I'm glad you figured it out. I knew you would. Good morning, Dragon Three Wings. Good to see you. Good morning to all of you. Joe, I think I'm going to see you a little bit later. Robbie, good to see you. Awesome. Nicole. I imagine you might be having your cup of tea or coffee as early as it is where you live. Look, leaven, a tiny bit, you barely see it. Ruins the whole deal. Spreads throughout the whole. Throughout Scripture, leaven becomes a consistent picture, sort of a metaphor of sin's method, not a dramatic invasion, but a slow hidden spread through something that used to be pure. God he isn't asking for a partial cleaning, he's asking for a total one. Third, I hope you're ready. This might be the most important detail in the entire passage. God doesn't just give Israel a ritual, he gives them an answer. When your children ask what this means, here's exactly what you say. Are you ready? Youch. Faith that comes with a scripted, true, specific answer survives contact with a child's honest question. Now you know. Now you know why structured study of God's Word to man. The Bible, the scriptures, and worship in the community of believers is so important. Is church perfect? Nope. Nope. Why? Because we're in it. Have some humility when you walk through the doors. Some churches are great, other churches not so much. Look, put together, this passage says something worth sitting with. God was never interested in a one-time emotional high. He was building something that could be explained, defended, and handed down on purpose from the very beginning. Can you be trusted with it? Can you be trusted with it? Here's where this gets really personal. Because most of us have never actually rehearsed the answer that we give. If someone we love or someone that's important to us, if they asked us why any of this matters. Can you explain why you believe what you believe? Seems like God has already given us a foundation. The question is, do we use it? And why don't we? Why? Why don't we? Are we lazy? Is it that we're lazy? I don't know. I don't know the answer. Some people avoid their Bible like it's on fire. Like it's got acid all over it, even believers. Some just read certain passages and they don't read others. The biggest note I get, for the most part, is, you know, why are you stuck in the Old Testament? The biggest one I get is, are you a Jew? Are you trying to be a Jew? The anti-Semitism in the church is sickening to me. The lack of knowledge, the internet university people study, and they come to believe things that are a hundred percent untrue, provably documented untrue. They still believe it. Man, I'm telling you, that gets on my nerves. That gets on my last nerve. Have you answered? I mean, how much study have you done? Is it important to you enough to actually touch your Bible? Well, I don't like to read. So what? You're the very one that God will give revelation to. Look, your your spouse can't give it to you, your neighbor can't give it to you. Even the person in your small group that seems to, their Bible's all written in and they got notebooks, and they're into it. And they're your friend. You have coffee. They can't do it for you either. Nobody can. Only you can. Why does any of this matter to you? I want you to think about the people watching your life, the ones that watch it the closest. If you have children, it's your children. Maybe it's a younger relative, niece or nephew. It's somebody who's genuinely curt. I'll tell you what, maybe it's your neighbor. And you don't even know your neighbor's watching what you do. My neighbor said to me, I notice you go to church. This is before the building program started and we were meeting in a gym, but I noticed you, I noticed you go somewhere every Sunday. Where do you go? So I told him. Somebody who's genuinely curious in your life. They're genuinely curious. You may not know. But maybe they haven't worked up the nerve yet, yet, to ask you. Are you a friendly person? Do you smile? Are you grumpy all the time? Are you a curmudgeon? Why do you actually believe this? They won't ask you. They won't ask you if you if you're the type of person that's like hugging a cactus. You'd kind of laugh about it. You say, well, that's just who I am. No, it's not. No, it's not. That's who you've allowed yourself to be. You have the love of Christ in you, you have redemption in you, you should glow. I don't care. I don't care if you're not the type of person to glow, you should glow. You've gotten the greatest gift of all eternity. Why in the world would you be? Just so dour and unkind and not smile at least. Smiling is free, it's easy. But what if what if that person, whoever they are, what if today, what if they asked you today plainly? What if they they asked you they asked you straight out, why do you actually believe this? Why do you actually believe this? I don't understand it. What answer do you give? What answer do you give? Would you even have an answer as clear and specific as the one God scripted for Israel? Or would you fumble about for something vague about how church makes you feel without ever landing on the actual event, the actual God, the actual reason? Faith that isn't explained doesn't get inherited. And listen, if you can't explain your faith, you're not studying enough. Faith that isn't explained doesn't get inherited, and it gets abandoned quietly by the next generation, the same way leaven gets abandoned to spread unnoticed through a house nobody bothered to search. And speaking of leaven, here's the harder question. What have you let stay in your own house? Because getting it all the way out felt more like more than you wanted to deal with. Not the obvious sin, the quiet one. The small compromise that's been sitting in the corner so long, you stop noticing it there. God didn't ask Israel for a partial search. He asked for a complete one. What would a complete search of your own life actually turn up? What would a complete search? I don't know where my phone is, but what would a complete search of your of your phone or your laptop or your tablet? Your search history, what would that reveal? What would it turn up? What would it turn up? Are you a serious enough person about your faith that you'd search the whole house? That you'd find your Bible. If you don't have one, you'd get one. I can help you. If you don't have one, I can help you. Look. It won't happen if you if you don't do it. It's not osmosis. I love worship music as much as anybody. As much as anybody. But you can't you can't get what this is calling for through listening to rousing worship music. You can't. It doesn't happen through osmosis. Listen, Yeshua is in the text. Jesus is in the text. This chapter is where Passover and Yeshua become impossible to separate. Paul writes to a church, the Apostle Paul Shaol writes to a church that was tolerating open sin. They were living wild. They were wilding out all the time. Crazy stuff. And you see, if you if you want to doubt the veracity of the Bible, the authenticity, you might say, well, they wouldn't put that stuff in there. They'd leave out the bad stuff. We saw that in Genesis. We saw that in Genesis when we started this. We saw it. We walked through it. The foundations of our faith, the people who led it, the men and the women. Sometimes messy. It's still that way today. But Paul, the Apostle Paul, he was. He was writing to a church that they were trying, but they were whack. Just open sin. Living wild, stuff going on in church, and no business even being around the church. Reaches straight back to the exact passage. This exact one, a little leaven, leavens the whole lump. Clean out the old leaven, he says, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. My friends, Paul isn't making a loose comparison. He's reading Exodus 12 as a pattern, as the pattern the church is still living inside today. Yeshua himself, and what we call the Last Supper. He took this exact feast, unleavened bread on the table in front of him, and he turned it toward himself. This is my body given for you. He said, Do this in remembrance of me. The very question God scripted for the Israelite children. What do you mean by this service? Well, it gets its final answer at the table. This is the lamb who was sacrificed once, so that everyone under his blood would be passed over completely.

Oh, breathe that in.

The feast God gave to Israel to explain to their children became the table Yeshua gave his disciples to explain to every generation since, including us. The answers never changed. He never passed over us because of the blood. Removing the leaven isn't just an ancient dietary rule. It's what Paul says it always pictured, a life cleaned out. Because somebody already paid for the cleaning. They lived out loud enough that the next generation has something real to ask about. If nobody's asking you about your faith, if nobody is asking you about your faith, what in the world do you have a faith? Is that real? Is it real? Is your faith real? Is your practice real? I'm not saying you have to become a theologian. I did, but that's what I was called to. I believe I was called to this. You may argue with that, but I believe it. Somebody somebody already somebody already paid for the cleaning out of your heart. Somebody did it big enough and bold enough. That people are still asking about it today. You say you want a way to obey concretely. First, write down your actual answer. Somebody asks you that question, write it down. Imagine, pretend, get a pad of paper, write it down. The physical act, neurologically, a physical act creates a neural pathway. Write it down. Write down your actual answer. If somebody you love or somebody important to you asked you today why any of this matters to you, what would you say? Write down specifically, not vaguely. Not a bunch of church words either. Somebody said to me, Well, you don't sound very well educated. I intentionally use the language I use. What would you say in real time? If you had to sit down with them and say, hey, I'm glad you asked me that question. Because the storms of life are coming. Not just for you, but also for them. And none of us know. None of us know what's coming. Some of you are living it right now. The storms of life are coming. And I'm telling you, they will rock you. I've lived a very kinetic life. And now I'm in this stage of trying to stay alive, to manage things, so I can keep doing this. The storms that are coming, not just for you, but for people that would ask you that question. Do you have an answer for them? Is the news oh hey, what about your faith? Tell us about your faith. I understand you saw something, you experienced something. Tell us about it. News at five. What are they going to say about your question? Don't wait until the question gets asked of you to catch you unprepared. Second, do a real search of your own house, the way Israel searched for Lebanon, not some surface glance, an honest, complete look at what's been quietly spreading somewhere that you stop checking. Third, say the answer out loud. Say it out loud. Stop being quiet about your faith. For such a time as this. Why? Because there's a vacuum of truth. There's a vacuum of authenticity. And it's up to you. It's up to me. It's up to us. Say the answer out loud. Say it out loud to somebody this week. Even if nobody's asked yet. Listen, if nobody's asked you about your faith, maybe you're a bit ashamed. Maybe you're a bit timid. You say, Well, I don't know how it answered. Remedy that. Remedy it today. How many people have been watching you and you don't even know? You don't know how to smile. You don't know how to be kind. You don't know how to reach out to them. You're just all mired in your own world. Reach outside of yourself. You say, Well, I got to get me fixed first. Listen, I got a news flash for you. We'll never be fixed until we cross that threshold and go through the veil. And we face Yeshua face to face. Only then. Only then. Say it out loud to somebody this week. Live your life in such a way that's authentic. I'm not talking about pretending, I'm talking about being real. Practice explaining what this means to you before the question catches you off guard. And as you might imagine. If your children or your nieces and nephews or your neighbors' kids or someone, if they're watching your life closely, if they asked you today, why does this actually matter? Would you have a real answer already? What leaven have you let stay in your house because a full search felt like too much? Are you building a faith that can be explained and handed down? Or one that's quietly depending on nobody ever asking. It's quietly begging, please don't ask about my face, please don't ask about my faith. Please don't ask about church. Please don't ask about the Bible. Please don't ask about God. Please. And you live quietly. If you have a garage, you drive your car in and you close the door behind you. You don't interact with any neighbors. You don't you don't interact with anybody at the grocery. You don't interact with any with anybody. You try to avoid everyone. You say, I got a lot of stuff on my mind. I got a lot to deal with deal with here. So do we all. You have no idea what some people are dealing with. You have no idea. No idea. I had somebody come to me one time in a handicapped spot. And this is this is, you know, before I got these walkesins, and and um, so I had to use I still have to use walk aids, but supposed to. But I had, you know, cane, and I've had walkers and all that stuff. And and but I parked and handicapped and I have a handicapped tag, permanent and forever. And the person that had the audacity to come up to me and say, Well, I don't see a handicap. I don't see a handicap. I thought about in the moment, of course, I thought about punching them in the face, saying, My handicap is anger. I have uncontrolled anger. I happen to be a good fighter, so that's my handicap. Sorry, but I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I want you to know no matter what the news says. Listen. I thought about what if they asked me about my faith? Have you ever thought about this? You know how we walk around? We walk around with our phones. Face all buried in our phones. What if we walked around with our Bible? What if we held our Bible as much as we hold our phones? You say our phones link us to life. Our phones link us to our lives and our people and our blah, blah, blah. The argument could be made for your Bible. Look, I have for you today a challenge and a choice, and it's real. Here's the choice. Keep hoping the next generation absorbs something you've never actually put into words. Or get the answer ready today. Today. The way God got Israel's answer ready before the question ever came. Pray with me. Father, in the name of Yeshua, thank you for giving us not just a ritual but an answer, a faith that can be explained, a faith that can be defended and handed down on purpose. Thank you for the Lamb, the perfect Lamb who was sacrificed once. So the answer to every honest question would always come back to the blood of Yeshua, the blood of Jesus. Thank you. Father, I pray for everyone who's never rehearsed their answer. Give them words this week. Give them the words this week. For everyone who's been avoiding a full search of their own house, give them the courage to look completely in Yeshua's name. Oh, in the Blessed Redeemer, my Savior and King, in the name of Yeshua. Amen. Look, maybe, maybe you've had a real answer. Maybe you've had a real answer for why. But maybe you never have. And maybe you've never had a real answer for why any of this matters because you've never actually surrendered to the one. The one, the the whole feast, the one the whole feast was pointing to the whole time. I want you to pray this with me. Resolve it today. Place your faith in Christ, get it done, handle it. Will it be easy, peasy after this? No. A life in Christ, there's nothing easy about it, but I tell you what, oof, I wouldn't change it for the world. A lot of people died to bring you this. Nobody will die for a lie. You ready? I want you to pray with me. This is when your eternity changes, right here. Pray with me. Yeshua. That's right. Just talk to him. He's ready. He's eager to hear from you. Yeshua, Jesus, I need you. I believe you died for me and you rose from the grave. I surrender my life to you today. Forgive me, fill me, lead me. I'm yours. In your name. Amen. If you just pray that welcome to the family. Welcome to the family. How exciting is that? Look, you're gonna have a million questions. I understand that. And right now you're very nervous. You're kind of shaking at that cold sweat going on. What have I just done? What do I have to give up? The path is not easy. I'm gonna be real with you. It's not. But I love it. I'm here to help you. Go to true wordfaithforlife.com. Go to the contact button up top. There's a voicemail thing on the side, it's two minutes. It's your two minutes. It's free. Everything is free there except for my book. By the way, under the store, there's the Bible rebinding. They do amazing work. There's two more Bibles, the last two I'm having done. Um, Melissa is doing them at Mooseworks Bible, and I can't wait to show them to you. I have another one that she just finished that I I received. I'll show it to you. Not right now, but I'll show it to you another episode. Just contact me through TruewordfaithforLife.com. By the way, there's it's a repository for amazing things. Lots of stuff to read. It's written in plain language. There's study guides for whole the whole weeks. There's a study guide. For every episode prior to this series, there's a study guide for every episode. Yeah. Yeah. I kill myself writing this stuff so that you have resources that are free to you. You can't say, I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. I don't know, blah, blah, blah. I have all of these messages I've done, which I was like a bazillion. They're all they're all there at the True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Shaw and S-H-A-W-N. They're all right there for you. Watch them, they're free. Contact us and let us know. We want to walk with you from here. Look, if this is your first time with us, we've been walking through scripture chronologically since Genesis. Start at day one. Go back at day one. They're all there. Whatever uh podcast uh you listen to, whichever one it is. I'm on them. I'm on all the big ones and then the little tiny ones. I'm on all of them. Twenty-seven of them, I think. Twenty-three. Well, you can't say there's another way. You just search true word, faith for life with Dr. Sean S H A W N. Boom, there you are. You know, if you're already on Spotify or iHeartRadio or or uh Apple um podcasts or music or whatever it is, I'm there. Started day one. You can still listen to this as we're going. It won't kill you to do two. It's not gonna kill you. You'll catch up. Don't worry about it. One of those days you have a long drive, boop, just put them in the queue one after the other. Listen, God scripted the answer before the question was ever asked. It's the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. Who passed? Who passed over our houses? That answer hasn't changed in 3,000 years. It won't change. It won't change in 5,000 or 10,000. It won't change. It's the same answer. Make sure that answer is ready the next time somebody asks you why. If somebody you know has never had a real answer for what they believe, send them this one. Tell them the answer has it all, it's always been in the blood of Jesus Christ, in the blood of Yeshua Hamashiach shed on the cross, the vacated grave, the risen king. I want you to receive this blessing in his heavenly name. I'm gonna say it first in its original Hebrew. Why? Because that is the language of God. And then I'll translate it for you. Are you ready? May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Until tomorrow at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Shalom Bishem Yeshua. Shalom Shalom.