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- Today, we are talking about the Super Bowl. What does this have to do with an expositional
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- Bible study podcast? Well, this actually does tie into what we've been reading in Romans when we understand the text.
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- This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.
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- Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. And today we are talking about the Super Bowl. I don't expect a whole lot of people are going to hear this because I'm posting it late.
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- I haven't had a voice all day. I didn't have much of a voice all weekend. In fact, God gave me just enough of a voice to get through a sermon yesterday and then it was gone.
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- I wasn't able to get ahead on any of these episodes. So I'm taking this a day at a time.
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- I'm recording this one and also the next one at the same time. So for those of you who do hear this episode, the
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- Super Bowl is the topic of discussion and this does have to do with where we're at in our study of the book of Romans.
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- So scripture does tie into this. I promise. Did you get the chance to watch the Super Bowl yesterday? Congratulations to Broncos fans.
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- We have a lot of Broncos fans in our congregation, in fact, which is kind of weird. We're two hours from Kansas City and eight hours from Denver.
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- Yet we have way more Broncos fan than we have fans than we have Kansas City Chiefs fans. The reason why this is my theory anyway.
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- The reason why is because of the military influence on our congregation, our proximity to Fort Riley.
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- And we get a lot of folks that come over from being stationed in Colorado and they bring their fandom of the
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- Broncos with them. But nobody gets stationed over by Kansas City. So we don't we don't gather a lot of Kansas City Chiefs fans.
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- Even locals aren't really all that big a Kansas City Chiefs fans. We either become Broncos fans or Cowboys fans.
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- I'm a fan of neither nor the Kansas City Chiefs. I just like a good football game. And I really thought yesterday was a good football game.
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- I read some articles about how it was one of the most unproductive Super Bowls ever. Well, honestly, it depends on what side of the ball you're on.
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- I love defense. I love a great defensive game. I'm not one of those people that thinks that that high flying offense is the way to watch a football game.
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- It's fun. Not saying I don't enjoy it at all. I've loved watching Peyton Manning in his career. I was a huge Joe Montana fan when
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- I was a kid. But I think that way too much emphasis is placed on the quarterback and the running back.
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- They don't need to be winning all of the MVPs and the Heisman trophies.
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- I mean, there are guys that play defense that do their position better than some of the quarterbacks and running backs that end up winning those awards.
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- So it was great to see somebody on defense get the MVP yesterday. That was pretty awesome.
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- And I love the the defensive battle. Both teams really produced some good defense, not just the
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- Denver Broncos, but also the Carolina Panthers. But the Broncos just got the benefit of the bounce.
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- Quite literally, five of seven fumbles went the Broncos way.
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- And so sometimes the way that oblong ball bounces, it just goes one way more than the other. And yesterday, it just happened to bounce toward the into the arms of the
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- Denver Broncos. We'll put it that way. You know, when it comes to the kind of emphasis that we place on the quarterback, it feels sometimes the way that we'll place the emphasis on a pastor in a church.
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- I'm going to draw a weird correlation here, but there's going to be a point to this. You don't have to have a quarterback to have a good offense.
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- It's kind of a myth to think that a quarterback has to be on a football team to even make a football team.
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- But my brother played for a state winning high school football team. They won the state championship and never had a quarterback all season long.
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- They didn't even have that position or anyone to fill the position. They mostly ran the wildcat.
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- The ball was handed to either the halfback or the tailback or the running back. Sometimes they would throw passing plays, but there was not a person that was designated the quarterback.
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- It was kind of weird for the fans at the start of the season because they're getting the programs and looking to see who the quarterback is going to be.
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- And there's no quarterback on the roster. And yet they were gaining four or five, six yards per play and just grinding out clock.
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- And when you're able to get that many yards per time that you're snapping the ball, you're going to get a first down every two or three plays.
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- You just keep on pushing the line until you get down to the other end of the field and score a touchdown.
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- And it may not be the most exciting way to watch football. You love seeing that ball go into the air and you hold your breath waiting to see if it's going to fall into the arms of the receiver.
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- And when that's not happening a whole lot, you just kind of think of football not being much of a game to watch at all.
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- But it wins championships. It won a championship for that team, and they did not even need a quarterback.
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- So here's the thing. A church does not need a pastor in order to be a church.
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- Believe it or not. You know, we read in Ephesians chapter four, verse 11, that God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for works of ministry for building up the body of Christ.
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- Now a pastor is is a shepherd. OK, so when it describes the shepherds and the teachers, that's where the the pastor would fall in.
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- But I have known churches that did not have a full time paid overseer.
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- They had a collection of elders and none of them really got paid.
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- I don't think any of them got paid. But eventually, ultimately, the aspiration for that church, the one that I'm thinking of in my mind in particular, their expectation was to eventually find a man to raise up as a pastor.
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- But it wasn't like their church ceased to be a church until they could find a pastor to teach their church.
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- There were men who were capable of teaching the word of God to their congregation. In fact, when you read in the book of Titus, Paul sent
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- Titus to the island of Crete to appoint elders in every church. So you're talking about churches that already existed, though they did not even have a plurality of elders or possibly even an overseer in that church.
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- You don't need a pastor to make a church. Furthermore, you can't have a pastor without a learner because the word disciple means learner.
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- So you can't have a teacher without a student of all of the emphasis that we place on the person who is teaching from the pulpit.
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- He doesn't make up the church. Those who are learning his teaching are the ones that make up the church.
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- Because again, as we have this description in Ephesians 4 11, God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
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- We have these pastors that get raised up as superstars, but we need to understand that the role of a pastor is really to serve for the benefit of the learning of the saints.
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- And so, yeah, that's my correlation between the emphasis that we place on a quarterback and a pastor in a church.
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- The role of a pastor is still very important. It's why we have guidelines in scripture for what an overseer of the church is supposed to look like.
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- And we need to follow those guidelines when it comes to appointing those overseers. But the pastor is not the church.
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- It's the congregation that is receiving the teaching from the pastor in addition to the pastor that makes up the church.
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- So back to the Super Bowl, I'm going back to football now. Oh, commercials. What was your favorite commercial?
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- I always talks about commercials during the Super Bowl. I loved the Doritos commercial with the lady in the delivery room expecting and the husband with the
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- Dorito is teasing the kid and you can see the kid on the ultrasound reaching for Dorito.
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- You know, the commercial I'm talking about, I actually saw this commercial months ago or weeks ago.
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- I want to say I saw it before Christmas. I really think it was that long ago because Doritos will take commercial ideas from their fans and they'll create those commercials and have the fans vote on them.
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- And then the commercial that wins gets shown during the Super Bowl. So I'm sure I saw this commercial a couple of months ago and it just turns out to be the one that they ended up showing during the game.
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- So I loved it when I saw it was hilarious. I showed it to my wife. Do you know that NARAL, NARAL for Pro -Choice
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- America, NARAL stands for the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.
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- They were so against the commercial and they said it was terrible that Doritos humanized the fetus inside the womb.
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- That was what NARAL was protesting after that commercial, that Doritos had humanized a fetus because that is a human.
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- That is a baby person, a boy or a girl inside the womb from the moment of conception.
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- And yet we have these protests that are going on contesting what was being displayed in that commercial.
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- You have what happened during the halftime show of the Super Bowl yesterday. My goodness, I did not even watch halftime.
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- I have not watched a halftime show in over a decade. I did watch the halftime where Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson did their thing.
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- Never watched a halftime since. I really wasn't watching halftime before that either. It's always been kind of a bore to me.
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- But anyway, it definitely more so after those kinds of things started happening, I just completely shunned the halftime show.
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- So I didn't watch it yesterday, but I did see pictures of it. Oh my goodness. Half the stadium decked out in the rainbow colors supporting same -sex marriage.
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- And of course, the climate or the culture there in that portion of California, heavy on the number of gays and lesbians that live in that part of the country.
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- So some crazy things did end up coming out of our Super Bowl that once again are a reflection of the direction that our culture is at or the place that our culture is in.
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- And from NARAL protesting that commercial to the things that were being displayed during the halftime show.
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- And that brings us to where we're at in our study of the book of Romans. Romans chapter 3, verses 10 through 18.
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- As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands.
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- No one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.
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- Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.
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- Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood and their paths are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known.
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- There is no fear of God before their eyes. And that's exactly where we're going to start tomorrow as we continue our study of the book of Romans.
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- This is a production of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find us on the web at www .utt
