WWUTT 2515 Q&A K-Love's Mary Movie, Did Rahab Lie, You Need a Little Jesus

Thanksgiving, Listener Questions, and the Little Rubber Jesus

Have you seen that K-Love made a movie about Mary? Is it biblically accurate? What's with that little rubber Jesus some people hand out? And we come back to this question today, did Rahab lie to protect the spies?

The answer is when we understand the text.

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary in the Word of God, that we may give thanks to Him for the salvation we have been given in Christ Jesus. As always, we thank you for listening.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome.

Psalm 717. I will give thanks to the Lord. I will give thanks due to His righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High. Happy Thanksgiving, babe.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Did you have a great Thanksgiving?

Oh, it was lovely.

Yes.

Absolutely wonderful.

This is my favorite day of the year for staying home and not doing anything.

But we always go somewhere.

No, we don't.

Yes, we do.

On Black Friday?

Oh.

Okay.

I was thinking Thanksgiving.

Yeah, right, right.

Because you said Happy Thanksgiving. And so I was more stuck on Thanksgiving Day than Black Friday. But yes, I totally agree.

We're recording this on Thanksgiving Day.

This is true.

But it's airing on Black Friday.

This is very true.

The day that I don't leave my house.

Right.

Right.

Unless someone in the church is sick or dying.

Right.

I stay home.

Yes.

I avoid the traffic and all the hubbub that happens on Black Friday. We just stay at home.

It's like we had the one day of Thanksgiving. Now we're all like, again.

Yeah, right.

I was thankful yesterday. Now I need stuff today.

I need it.

Yeah.

I found this picture. This is from Jeffrey Perry. Jeffrey is in Rowan County, North Carolina. He posted this on X, and he said, the green bean casserole is ready to go. You ready to see it?

Awesome.

What?

It's a...

Like a drawer full.

Right.

It is a refrigerator drawer full of green bean casserole.

Yes.

You just put it all in the drawer.

There you go.

Put it in there to cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

Then take it out and scoop it out.

Scoop it.

That's so strange because I always eat it warm. Like once it cools, it loses its magic.

I know.

I know. You got it.

I wouldn't say it loses its magic. It's just better warm.

It is. It loses its magic.

This must be microwavable.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Because it's not... Put it in the oven. Let it warm up. Get it out hot. Set it on the buffet table. People are going by, scooping up their green bean casserole. I'm so thankful we had green bean casserole yesterday.

Oh, it was amazing.

It was. And the best sweet potato casserole I think I've ever had.

Oh, yeah.

That was amazing.

That was good.

Our thankfulness to the Timmers.

Amen.

For inviting us over to enjoy Thanksgiving with them. It was fantastic food.

And fellowship.

Food and fellowship.

Oh my goodness.

Can't go wrong with that on Thanksgiving. Sitting outside, talking about what we were thankful for.

Oh, it was lovely.

Thankful to God for His many blessings, especially the salvation that we have in Christ.

Yeah. And He even... What do you call that? Not charged you, but...

Charged me?

Yeah.

Like...

Well, like I said, that's the wrong word.

I'm trying to find...

You're making it sound like we had to pay to be there.

No, no, no, no.

There was a door charge.

No, no, no.

Cover charge when we walked in.

Like a... Like giving you a gold...

An exhortation? Was He exhorting us? Is that what you're saying? He charged us with something. He exhorted us to do something. Is that what you're saying?

Maybe. I don't use that word, so I don't know.

Unimperative.

Okay.

Do this.

Yes. Yes. Okay.

I exhort you.

It was a challenge. That's what I was thinking.

A challenge.

Okay.

He challenged us.

Yes.

He challenged us to be grateful for something each day of the year, not just the one.

365 days of thankfulness. That's right.

Yes.

And so I think that's great for everybody to hear.

Yes.

A challenge is good, but exhortation would have been properly applied in that way as.

Well.

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you applied it.

So this being the Friday edition of When We Understand the Text, we take questions from the listeners and you can send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com or send us a voicemail to wwutt .com.

Go to the website, click on the voicemail tab, record it from your phone or your computer, and we'll play it on the broadcast if I catch it. Sometimes I've noticed that when, what's it called? What is our voicemail service called?

It's called SpeakPipe. So sometimes SpeakPipe will send me an email notifying me that I have a new voicemail message, but if they've come successively, it'll give me three emails in a row and I won't see the previous two.

I'll only see the most recent one that's given. But if I go to the SpeakPipe website, it lays out, like, here's all your recent voicemails.

Oh, interesting.

So I can't just go off the email, I actually have to visit the website and make sure that I've caught them all. So hopefully I haven't missed anybody's.

Let us know if we have.

Yeah, right.

First two messages that I have today, one voicemail and one email, have to do with what we talked about last week. So first of all, remember the little rubber Jesus question?

Right.

Yes.

Now, the fellow who sent us that question has since emailed back and said, this is what I was talking about with regard to rubber Jesus. I thought he was talking about, like, the little bendy Jesus.

Okay. Yeah.

That's what we, that's the way that we approached it anyway. There are little, like, stretch Armstrong Jesuses you can get at some Christian bookstores. So that's what I thought you meant by little rubber Jesus.

But he sent me the picture of what he was talking about. It's a little tiny rubber Jesus.

Right.

Right.

Like a rubber ducky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I said in the first place.

That's what you said.

Yeah.

Okay.

Then I totally missed that you said that.

Yeah.

But anyway, it's fine. No worries. What do you say?

Just clarifying.

Oh, explaining.

And people will give those out and say, have a little Jesus.

Oh.

Here's a little Jesus for you today, right? It's a pun.

Yeah.

Here's a little Jesus. Chris, in North Carolina, we've had on the program before he sent us a voicemail and he, too, caught the, you know, that I wasn't talking about the right thing. And here were his thoughts that he shared.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Pastor Gabe and Becky. This is Chris from North Carolina Catholic Church. I wanted to chime in here to talk about James from West Virginia's question related to the little rubber Jesus.

Now, what I'm thinking he's referring to are these little little they're literally called little Jesus figurines. And they were created by a pastor of a church in Georgia, South Carolina border. I don't remember the church's name.

But he goes around promoting this stuff on social media, basically saying along the lines of everybody needs a little Jesus or a little Jesus goes a long way. These kinds of just kitsch sayings. And my family recently came across these things in person at a local trunk or treat where they were given these things out and they're telling the kids, look at this little Jesus and remember that Jesus loves you.

And at the moment, I wasn't really prepared to confront that. But after thinking on it, meditating on it, and what the scripture says about graven images, it just struck me as very irreverent. And we just could not go there.

My time is up. So I got to cut this short. I'll talk to you later. Thanks.

Bye.

Thank you for your thoughts, Chris. And thank you for catching my error and clarifying even where all that came from. I really I've never caught this. I've never seen this before. So this is a new thing to me.

But immediately, you know, I'm looking at the little Jesus rubber figure.

Hang on.

Let me let me bring it up. I can. But you said you've seen him before.

I think so.

Yeah.

Right here.

Oh, not like that.

No.

I was thinking like, anyway, it's fine.

You thought it was a little bigger than this.

Yeah.

Because you said rubber ducky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, this I did. This is the size of a little Lego figure. And it's funny that I even mentioned that last week. I said something about little Lego Jesus or something like that.

Yeah.

But that is that is the size of a little Lego figure. It's a little rubber Jesus. And you hand these out to people and saying, you need a little Jesus today. Now, I'm not a real strict Second Commandment violation guy.

You know, you've heard me talk about this before. I don't automatically see depictions of Jesus and assume that's a violation of the Second.

Commandment.

Right.

You shall not make a graven image. I think it's unwise to have such images in a place of worship, like inside the worship area of your church, inside the sanctuary or worship center or whatever you happen to call it.

Nativity scene. I'm not strictly opposed to that. But you don't want it in a place where you're worshiping and be tempted to look at that and then maybe worship that. So I don't automatically dismiss appearances of Jesus as Second Commandment violations.

But if I ever was going to label that a 2CV, Second Commandment violation, right. This is really close.

Yeah.

This is silly and it's very irreverent. So you're handing a little Jesus figure to somebody and say, have a little Jesus today. It's treating him like a rabbit's foot or a good luck charm.

Yeah.

I mean, that's terrible.

I liked how he said that, I mean, if you're going to use it in any way. I liked how they said, you know, look at this and think about being grateful. But at the same time, that kind of puts it as a graven image.

Right.

It does. You're looking at the graven image and being thankful to the graven image.

Well, I mean, adults might be able to separate the two. I can't say that for sure because, you know, the Golden Calf story, but, you know. Yeah. But anyway, but children would definitely get confused.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Well, you see people that will drive around with their little Mary figures hanging from the rearview mirror. There was a song by All Star United 20 plus years ago. This was when I was in high school when this song came out.

Okay.

Contemporary Christian music song called La La Land. And in one of the verses in that song, it says, my Jesus decal is quite a trick. Right above the dashboard, I stick it. A good luck charm keeps me from harm and saves me from speeding tickets.

Oh my.

I mean, he's making fun of it.

Yeah.

Because Ian Eskalin, who was the lead singer of All Star United, he's making fun of the way that we will get all kitschy with our Christian stuff.

Sure.

I'm living in a La La Land.

Yeah.

It's the whole premise of the song. But yeah, we will treat these things like good luck charms. You think if I have this with me, then save me from speeding tickets.

Right.

I'll get a better parking spot today because I have my little Jesus. Good luck charm. People do this.

They do.

And I've heard this.

Yes.

And the little Saint coin things that you can stick on your visor.

Oh, yeah. Right.

Yeah.

While you're driving. Yeah.

While you pray to Saint Jude or something like that. While you remember to look at this and pray to that Saint.

Yeah.

This is idolatry.

Yeah.

I just, I don't understand how you could use this and utilize it and it not become something idolatrous.

Well, forgive the pun.

That's a tall order right there.

Forgive the pun.

Forgive the pun.

However, I'm going to wait until you're done smiling. That it very much belittles Jesus.

It does.

Okay.

Now I see what you're saying by.

All right. All right. All right.

All right.

I thought you were saying, have a little Jesus. I thought you were talking about that pun.

No.

Excuse the pun. That's where I thought it was.

Me.

Yeah.

My pun coming up.

It belittles Jesus.

Yes, it does.

Literally and figuratively and no pun intended in that either.

Yes.

It is silly. It's utterly ridiculous. Remember that when, since you brought up the golden calf moment.

Yeah.

Remember that when Aaron presented the golden calf to the children of Israel, he said that it was Yahweh. Behold your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt. This was supposed to be a physical manifestation of Yahweh.

Right.

That's the way they were honoring it, the way they were worshiping it.

As a cow.

As a little calf, little golden calf.

Yeah.

And you would think if you were to address the children of Israel at that time and you were to ask them, is that God? They would have sworn that they were honoring God with that golden calf image. Now they were behaving sinfully on top of.

Definitely.

On top of the idol that they had just made. But they believed that to be a depiction of Yahweh. Judges chapter 17. So toward the end of the book of Judges, you'll remember that the last line in Judges is that there was no king in those days and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Right.

Well, as you're in the closing chapters of Judges, it begins right after the story of Samson, you have the story of Micah and the Levite, and there is a man who had taken silver from his mother and then he restored the silver to his mother and his mother praised God.

And she said, take this silver and make for it an image. Make from the silver an image. And so they made an image that they believed was a depiction of God and they worshiped.

It.

But Judges refers to those images that he made as household idols. They were idols. It didn't matter whether they thought that this was our picture of God and we're worshiping God through these graven images that we have.

God's word calls them idols. And by the way, this is the Roman Catholic killer as well, Judges 17 through to the end of the book, where these idols are used to show how quickly Israel's hearts had gone away from God.

Oh yeah.

They were not honoring God. If they're making images of him, they're not loving the Lord, their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. So disobeying the first commandment and then the second raising up graven images.

Yeah.

You know that the Roman Catholics will have depictions of Jesus and Mary and Jesus, and they will honor them. They will kiss them. They will bow down to them. They will pray to them, but they will say that it's not to that image.

It's really to God, but like you're missing the whole end of the book of Judges when you're making that excuse. And there were people in Israel who made graven images that they called God, the God. They thought he was the one true God.

We're just honoring Yahweh through this image that I have made. And the Bible is clear that that is a violation of the second commandment. And how do you do that with this little rubber Jesus? How would you be able to hand this out or look at this or use this to remind you of Jesus and it not turn into something idolatrous?

Yeah.

That's what I was wondering.

Yeah.

You're playing with fire here. This is silly and should not be done. And shame on that pastor who came up with this, but yeah, irreverent is certainly like at best, at best you would call this irreverent.

At worst it's idolatry.

That's crazy.

And so avoid, avoid, avoid. But yeah, thank you James for asking the question and then Chris for giving the clarification.

On that.

Then this next email that we got goes back to the question that we answered last week about Rahab and the spies.

Okay.

Remember that? Okay.

So this is from Dave. He says, good day, Pastor Gabe and Miss Becky. I want to thank you for your ministry. I recently had to teach the story of Rahab to my Sunday school class as well. And I came to a different conclusion than you did.

One that embraces that in the plain reading, she lied. I'm wondering what you would think of this understanding.

Okay.

Before he goes on with his explanation, remember that the way that we read that story and that I gave an understanding of that story is that this was a wartime scenario. And so in a wartime scenario, just because you don't give the facts about something in order to save a person's life, doesn't mean that you lied.

God doesn't equate that with lying when we see that in scripture. Now, let me say though, it's never explicitly said in the Bible, this is not lying, so it's.

Okay.

Right.

It doesn't.

It never says that.

It doesn't clarify.

So I'm coming out of that inferring from the story of the midwives in Exodus chapter one. And then as we read last week from Joshua about Rahab hiding the spies and then diverting the guards away, like, oh, they've already left.

If you hurry, then you'll be able to catch up with them. You wouldn't even be able to take her answer and try to find the facts in it somehow, but she was just being shrewd. She was clearly diverting them away from where the spies were by telling them something that wasn't factual.

I was very deliberate about either calling it true or factual. So it wasn't the facts, but she was saving the lives of those men by diverting the guards away so that the men could then escape and live.

And she was honored for this. God honored her just like he had honored the midwives when they told Pharaoh, well, we can't deliver the babies. The wives, the Hebrew women are too strong, and they give birth too quickly for us to do anything about these babies.

And God honored them. And there in Exodus one, it explicitly says that they were blessed by God. So anyway, that was the angle that we took on it last week, that though she wasn't being factual, it wasn't lying because it was saving the lives of people who were sent by God to Jericho to do this thing.

Okay.

So anyway, going on with Dave's explanation, I had two principles guide me as I was studying the passage. Number one, God uses crooked sticks to make straight paths. And number two, narrative, especially Old Testament narrative, doesn't equal normative.

Rahab was a very crooked stick that the Lord used to deliver Israel. Not only was she a prostitute, but she also grew up a Canaanite. She would have grown up around idol worship and not grown up with the law as the law was most likely only given to Israel right before she was born.

Her moral compass would have been all out of sorts, but she believed in Yahweh and had faith that Yahweh would save her. Rahab's lying to the king's men could have been a much more minor thing to her at that time, given her upbringing and culture.

Regardless of her imperfect actions, the Lord used her and commends her for her faith. The application I made for this was that even though she lied, we don't need to copy her in her lying, but that God will save imperfect sinners like Rahab and us if we have faith.

In him.

And he will also use imperfect sinners like Rahab and like us for the furtherance of the gospel. Living faithfully before God doesn't mean walking on eggshells because God is full of grace and loving kindness, forgiving us our sins.

As we grow in the knowledge of God, we will understand the severity of those little sins. I'd like your thoughts on this reading of the text, Love You and Praying for You, Your Family and Your Church, in Christ, Dave.

Well, Dave, I don't think there's anything wrong with reading the story of Rahab and encouraging people, but tell the truth. Like if you're teaching a Sunday school class of kids, say as much as you possibly can, you should always tell the truth.

We should not lie, but we should speak truth and know that God will take care of the results. So that's good. That's fine. But in this particular circumstance, here's the complication with the narrative itself concerning Rahab.

What would God have done with her if she had said, yeah, the spies are here, they're hiding among the flax on my roof? What would God have done with her? Would he have honored her for giving the facts?

Or would that have been seen by God as not being faithful to Israel and to his people, and she would have perished along with everyone else in Jericho when the children of Israel came against the city?

I find it really, really difficult to say that Rahab, in telling the soldiers, yeah, the spies are up on my roof, would be doing something honorable, and God would have actually.

Honored that.

Because I mean, how would we read the story? If we were reading that, would we have read that and gone, well, you know, she was telling the truth. Her hands were tied. There was nothing that she could do.

As soon as the soldiers show up and ask the right question, she's obligated to have to answer it with the facts. And would we have read that going, you know, but she did, at least she told the truth and God is going to honor her for that.

That's not the way we would read the story. That's not the way the Bible would speak about her in that particular scenario. Anyway, just putting that out there.

I'm trying to think of like a more recent circumstance that people lied to save lives.

Well, the one that often gets paired with this are the people that were hiding Jews during World War II. So when the Nazis were coming in to kill Jews, and you had even some Germans who were sympathetic to the Jews that would say, no, there's no Jews here.

So same sort of thing. Were they lying or was it a wartime scenario where, again, the way that I presented this last week was it's as if the soldiers are showing up to ask, are there people in this house for us to kill?

And the answer to that question is no, there's no one in here for you to kill, which is true. So it's the intent behind it, not exactly the words themselves that we understand the scenario through.

But at the same time, teaching children, this is a very difficult concept because, yes, you do want to teach them to always tell the truth. But there will, hopefully not, but there might come a time that they have to lie in order to do the right thing.

Well, see, I still would not call that lying. This is why I've been very careful with those words.

Teaching them, you know, tell the truth or you're lying. And if you don't tell us everything, then you're considered to be lying. So that's how we teach the kids. So in this scenario, taking it to the next step, you would teach them it's okay to lie in this circumstance, is basically what you're saying without saying it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

In their minds. Does that make sense?

Sure. Right.

Right.

Again, which is why I'm trying to be very careful with my wording.

Yeah.

So it just, maybe there is, you know, maybe we can be more careful with our wording and saying, no, this is different because this is, you know, different circumstance. This is not where they're being confronted with sin there, you know, like, what did you do wrong?

You know, that kind of thing or what happened, you know, that sort of thing. This is bad people coming to do bad things.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

And you're saving the lives.

Yeah.

Or the thief.

Yeah, sure.

I have my parents are not home.

Yes.

No, you wouldn't. He would say, no, we have nothing.

Bye.

Yeah.

My parents are home.

Yeah.

If somebody is trying to come into your house and your parents are not home and like, are your parents home? And a child responds, oh, yeah, just a second. Hey, mom and dad. And then the thief runs away.

Right.

Right.

I'm just kind of trying to throw another scenario out there. Something to that effect.

Well, I think that would make sense to them.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, Dave, I do appreciate what you said there, though, about narrative not being normative. So even though you and I are approaching this from a different angle, I still agree with you in that sense. This is a narrative and it isn't normative.