Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. Each week, I'll sit down with one of our preaching pastors to discuss their Sunday sermon. Cut for time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Alright. Well, another week, another cut for your time with, half a voice. Well, between you and me, we have a voice and a half. Joey, I'm just thankful that I don't have to do I don't have to MC like you're MCing or preach like you preach just because it would not work well for me.

So why don't you give us a rundown from your sermon on Sunday? Yeah. You would've been you'd be out for for months. Alright. Well, last, last Sunday, we were covering this passage of Paul, before the Sanhedrin.

So people remember we're still in this point in in the story of Paul where all the the stuff that's happened because of this riot in the temple precincts is still working itself out. Paul is still in custody, still in Roman custody, the tribune, the guy in charge is still trying to figure out what happened, what's going on, what laws did Paul break. Because it was in the temple, he's appealing to the Jewish religious authorities, you know, whose jurisdiction is the temple to say what did this guy do? So he takes Paul and puts him in there. We have this great interaction between Paul and the high priest where Paul starts to defend himself.

High priest orders him slapped and then Paul's like, you know, you're you're a hypocrite judging me according to the law while you're breaking the law, smacking me before I've been declared guilty. And, oh, you you get a are you really gonna revile this guy, the Lord's priest, high priest? I don't know. Somebody like that could be a high priest. And, you know, and it's there's this back and forth and then it stops.

And then how before this group, the Sanhedrin, these 70 guys which is made up of two main factions, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There's more Sadducees than Pharisees, but with these guys he kinda drops a bomb and just says, hey, the whole reason I'm here is because I believe in the resurrection. It's a huge point of theological controversy intention between these two groups. So they start fighting and then the Pharisees have Paul on like, they're like, we're on Paul's side and they're against the Sadducees and he's about to get ripped apart. You know, like, one group is wanting to pull him take him into custody and other groups trying to, you know, hold him and take him to freedom and the Tribune has to bust in again and rescue Paul from this mob, this crowd.

And what struck me about as we're studying this this passage and going through it, what struck me about it this time is is Paul does not know what we know about the end of the story or that Jesus is good, you know, gonna show up in a in a verse or two or any of this stuff that we know. He's taking it a day at a time or an hour at a time here. And when Jesus does show up and says, hey, you've testified to the facts about being Jerusalem. You will do the same in Rome. I think that's that's Jesus is saying like, I'm not rescuing you from all of this.

Like, I'm with you through it. And so for us, just understanding that God very rarely rescues us from our struggle. He's with us in our struggle. And, that's, I think, important because every single one of us is struggling with something that we wish God would just show up and take care of or fix somehow. And yet, he doesn't, and he doesn't often, but he is with us in the struggle.

Totally. Yeah. In your sermon, you said that, like, Paul changed tactics. Right? And he's like, alright.

Well, that's not working. I'm gonna throw this just, like, bombshell on them. What do you think he, like, thought was gonna happen? Like, why do that? What's what's the tactic?

Like, I'm gonna cause an uprising and, like, distract them from thinking that, like, I'm the center. Like, I don't know. Like, obviously, he still needed rescuing. So, like, what did he think was gonna come of that? Mhmm.

Mhmm. I think what he was trying to do was to define the the terms of the accusations. Essentially by saying, I'm the reason I'm here is because I believe in the resurrection. It is designed to get this group to argue about Jewish law and Jewish belief. And to really raise it as like the problem with Paul is that he agrees or disagrees with different Jewish readings.

Like internal to Judaism stuff. Not anything having to do with Roman law. Because Paul is being held by Romans. He needs to show that he is innocent of having broken any Roman law. And so by raising the question this way or raising the issue this way, he's basically planting ground for what actually happens later which is where this tribune writes a letter that basically says this is just a debate about Jewish law.

This has nothing to do. He has not broken any Roman laws. I think this is where kind of that first movement is happening. So we've got a few questions texted in. Yeah.

So one of the controversies in the biology world today is monism. Did I say that right? Yeah. Monism. Yep.

Monism versus dualism. Is that similar to the fight between the Sadducees and the Pharisees in Paul's day that we're seeing here? Yeah. If I, if I if the definition I have for those terms in my head is correct. Monism is essentially the belief that human beings are made up of one thing, one substance.

Purely physical, purely material. And dualism is that there is a that we have two we are made up of two substances. That we are both physical and spiritual. And where it kinda comes up in biology, evolutionary biology especially, is the question of how does a physical thing, a human body give rise to consciousness? How is the mind connected with the body?

The mind is distinct from the brain. Consciousness is distinct from the brain's functions and like how does all that work? So, there are some similarities except Sadducees are dualist. They believe that there is a body and a soul or spirit. Pharisees are dualist.

They believe there's a body and a soul or a spirit. They would agree on that. But Sadducees believe that when the physical body dies, the spirit dies as well or the soul dies as well. And so that both parts of you, both of your substances or essences die at the same time. Pharisees believe that the body dies, the soul continues to live on as a spirit or an angel or something like that.

And then at a later point in time when there's a physical resurrection of your body, that spirit angel soul thing, whatever it is, is reunited with the body and you become you again. Okay. And next question. Oh, sorry. You've quit.

No. I was just thinking, like, I hope I got the the original definitions right or else the question, you know, doesn't make any sense. So or the answer doesn't make any sense to the question. So we'll find out. People can text back in again.

It's totally gone off. If we did it correct. Yeah. Some biologists and evolutionary biologists can correct me. In your defense, I gave you no heads up whatsoever.

Usually, you know, they're fine. Exactly. Usually, you know these questions are coming, and I did not help you out. And I'm so sorry. Well and in theology, monism means something else.

Something just a different thing, different problem or controversy than, than it does it, in biology. So alright. So next one. Do you think that Paul may have had another vision of Christ when he spoke about going to Rome after the controversy in Ephesus in Acts nineteen twenty one? And I'll read that really quickly just so people have a reference.

Now after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem saying, after I have been there, I must also see Rome. Yep. So question is, was there maybe a another vision of Jesus? So Sure do they. Yeah.

And we don't know. So there's a number of considerations that come into play here. First is, I think, even earlier, he had his sights set on Rome. You remember when he was going west across, Asia and we said, like, he pivoted south. He got off the main road when he went to Berea and we're like, but if he was going to Rome, like, he was on the road headed in that direction.

So so there there was that. I think he wanted to go to Rome much earlier than this. This particular verse, nineteen twenty one, has an interpretive question that we have to answer. And when it says in the spirit, does that mean the Holy Spirit or Paul in his own spirit? So Paul resolved in his heart, we might say colloquially, to go to Rome or does it say Paul resolved, you know, Paul resolved in the spirit of God to pass through Macedonia and Kea and go to Rome.

And that's a that's an interpretive dis decision because you would use the same Greek words for either one. That the ESV English standard version that we read from capitalizes the s in spirit. I see that. Yeah. To to and so their interpretation is that it is in fact the Holy Spirit.

But it's a we don't know. So it could just be saying here, you know, after these events, Paul was like, in it. He's resolved in his heart. Like, I am okay. I'm going through Macedonia, Hechaea.

Gonna go to Jerusalem. And then after that, I gotta get to Rome. I gotta finally get there. That's where I wanna go. Or it was the spirit telling him go do these things and then go to Rome.

I would lean towards the former personally that he he resolved in his own heart. This is what he wanted to do. And we see that that kind of dream being honored. Maybe honored, maybe it was just the whole like from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. Like that means Rome.

It's about as far away as you can get. So I mean, you could go further, but Rome is the center of the end of the ends of the earth. So Right. There's really just no way to know. So that's all I can say, I guess.

Okay. No way to know. Yeah. What did you have to cut for the sake of time this weekend? Yeah.

Well, you know, the whole thing about Pharisees, Sadducees, the belief in resurrection, what happens between death and the resurrection, all of that, I would have loved to have dug into way more, and talked about so in Christian theology, we talk about the intermediate state, which is the term we use for that time between death and resurrection. Now, we're not Christians are not Sadducees. We don't believe that the soul most Christians don't believe that the soul dies after, after or after or when the the body dies. So there's some, groups or or, cults or do not or sex that believe that, like, in soul sleep, your soul sleeps, or soul death, that your soul actually dies. So we believe there's a resurrection, a general resurrection at the end of time when all are raised again, to face judgment.

It seems to be what Paul's teaching, what Jesus is teaching, what, Revelation is teaching, you know, John's writing there. But one of the things I think that we as as kinda modern Western Christians, sort of mistake is that we think the ultimate goal of salvation is for us to leave our bodies behind and for our, you know, our true essence, our spirits or our soul to go to the place where God is and to live with him there forever. There is a famous misattribution to CS Lewis that supposedly he I don't think he ever actually said this, but supposedly he said, you know, you are not a a body or a soul. You have a body or something like that. It's not true.

Christians are all people. People are in Christians' beliefs that people are body and soul. We are embodied souls. The the body soul unity is core to who we are. We are not souls with a body and we're not bodies with a soul.

We are both. That's the two parts that make, make us up. And so the intermediate state when we are when our soul is existing apart from our body which has died is not the end goal. It is not how we are supposed to be. At the end of all things, when God reunites souls with bodies, he comes down to live with us.

So this actually just came up. I'm I'm up in Chicago at a conference, and we just had our pre conference session. It was three hours on the nice scene. It was phenomenal. So good.

And, one of the one of the points the guy made is that salvation redemption is always a downward movement. So the the creed says that for us people in our first and for our salvation, Christ came down from heaven. And then the, you know, the spirit comes down at Pentecost. And in Revelation, Jesus comes down to earth and then ultimately God the father comes down to the new Jerusalem to dwell with his people on the reconstituted new earth. And heaven is, by definition, it is where God is.

It is God's space. And so ultimately, at the very end, heaven comes down to earth and comes back to earth. So when we think of spirits, disembodied spirits floating off into the cloud somewhere to hang out with God, we think that's heaven. That's actually just the waiting room. That's the intermediate state until we are finally reunited with our bodies and we live on the in the new earth with God dwelling with us.

So the new heavens with us, God dwelling with us. That's the Christian story. Even though most Christians tend to believe that are the popular imagination of what we're doing here is we're trying to escape our bodies and escape this world and go up to heaven. Now we're waiting we're waiting and longing and anticipating heaven coming back to earth. So anyway, I'm could have talked about that.

So I know in half hour, but I Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And I'm, like, thinking of questions I could ask you, and I'm, like, there's no way you would know, Joey, because you'd have to die to be able to tell me. What is the intermediate state like?

Yes. I'll yes. Will we know that we're in the intermediate state? Yeah. Will we know?

Yes. Because Will we know how long it's hap how long it takes? Oh, will we experience time? Yes. Yes.

So there are some questions I I I mean, I could take quick stabs at. One is, absent from the body is present with the Lord. So there is no, like, you go to sleep and then suddenly wake up and it's the very end. You're just present with Jesus. Will we know?

Yes. Because human bodies and souls are within time. We experience time as succession of events. That doesn't change. We don't become omnipresent, omniscient or external to time when we die.

We are human beings created within time. So we will still experience time as a succession of events even in the intermediate state and in the final state. Yeah. K. So, yeah, fun stuff.

I'm amazed you can be so short because, I mean, like, I hear you and, like, it sounds so solid, and then I'm like, but we don't have to die. We have to die to find out. Well, yes. And I I get that. I I totally understand that.

You're like, yeah, but no one's been there. So how do you know? But when we die, we don't cease being human. So the things that are true, fundamentally true of a human being are still true of human beings after death and true of our souls. And if our souls, currently experience time as a succession of events that we don't become a different thing when we die.

If we do, if we become a different thing when we die, we are no longer human and we are not being saved as humans. We are being turned into something else. That is not Christian salvation. Christian salvation is not that we become angels or become gods. It is that we as fallen human beings become redeemed human beings.

That's right. That's right. So the fundamental attributes of humanity persist. Yep. I get that.

I do. I get it. And I understand your theology behind it. There's just that, like, 2% that's like Yeah. But what it yeah.

Oh, yeah. I get it. And thinking doesn't get us a % of the way there. Philosophy doesn't get us a % of the way there. Fake does.

So Yeah. We are fake. Yep. Totally. Alright.

Thank you, Joey, for your time today. Yeah. Absolutely. This is fun. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time.

If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcast@faithliveitout.orgorg or text them into our faith church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.