There’s a strange contradiction in God’s promises to the Jewish people.

In Genesis 12, God makes a covenant with Abraham to give him the land of Israel. In Genesis 17:7, God told Abraham that His covenant with him and his descendants would be an everlasting covenant.

But then in Leviticus 26, God warns that if the Jewish people break His commandments, He will kick them out of their land.

And then we know from our studies in the book of Ezekiel that that’s exactly what happened. In fact, in Ezekiel 16, God even tells us that the covenant was broken.

This was in the 500s BC. But God had said He was making an everlasting covenant around 2000 BC. So since when does “everlasting” have an expiration date after 1500 years? How can God say that a covenant can ever be broken if God had already promised it was everlasting?

And does this mean that the Jewish people actually have no right to the claim of the land of Israel today?

Now, I actually believe there are NO contradictions in God’s Word, and that when we think we’ve found one, we actually just need to rightly divide the Word of Truth to figure out how it all fits together.

And that’s what we’ll do today as we finish up Ezekiel 36 on the Cross References podcast.

0:00 - Introduction

5:30 - v28-30, The Return

10:35 - v31-32 True Repentance

18:00 - v33-38, The Regrowth of Israel

23:25 - Two Covenants (with Craig from Awaiting Christ)

31:50 - Closing Thoughts

If you want to get in touch with me, send an email to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com

Trying to figure out the next step in your life's journey? Today, I chat with Chris Pace about his new book Level Up. As I tell the story in this episode, I actually met Chris recently while on vacation, and he gave me a copy of his book. This interview will share several insights with you about discovering God's will. Here is a link where you can find more about Chris' book: https://chrispace.org/

I will also paste my Amazon review below...
I was incredibly blessed to come across this book by Chris Pace! It spoke directly to some issues I have been dealing with in my own life. I really took my time with it because I wanted to soak it all in. Sometimes I didn't even read a full chapter before I put it down because it gave me so much to think about.

I highly encourage this book to people who feel "stuck" at their current place in life and want direction on discovering what God may have next for them. If you want encouragement, are feeling aimless in life, or you need a recalibration of your calling, this book can give you the tools you need to reset yourself.

I also encourage you to finish it, because I found that the book became better and better the deeper I got into it. This surprised me because many books try to put its most important information first and then they kind of drag out the rest to increase the page count. Not this one. Every chapter got more engaging and practical, all the way up to the very end. I couldn't believe some of the insights I was still discovering even in the last 10 pages of the book.

I think anyone who reads this book will find something helpful! Easily 5 stars.

Today, I am sharing an episode from my other podcast, Weird Stuff in the Bible. Each week, I dive into a different weird topic regarding bizarre things in scripture. Hear more by subscribing to this podcast as well! And tune back in on Cross References next week to hear an interview with Chris Pace of Messenger International about his new book, Level Up.

On a recent episode of this podcast, I was discussing a weird story about Moses in Exodus 4, I came across another pretty odd verse that generates some confusion among Christians: Exodus 4:21.

Now, I didn’t want to stop and analyze that verse because it would have taken me on a rabbit trail, and I was already trying to talk about a different weird thing, and I would have had to go down a weird-ception of weird-within-a-weird. So I decided to come back to it this week.

And what does Exodus 4:21 say? Well, it’s as Moses is on his way back to Egypt, and God says

(Exodus 4:21)

“When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

So that’s strange because it raises the question of whether Pharaoh even had a choice about how everything was going to play out. Because if you know the story, Pharaoh doesn’t want to let the people go, and he pays a pretty steep price for it.

And yet Pharaoh never relents. All throughout the story, his heart is harder than your grandma’s fruit cake at Christmas.

But this claim that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart makes it seem like Pharaoh wasn’t even really able to let the people go if he wanted to. So what gives? Did Pharaoh have free will?

And perhaps more importantly to us: do you and I have free will?

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to Exodus 4, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

2:40 - What is a Hard Heart?

6:20 - God vs Pharaoh

9:40 - Is Anyone at Fault?

13:40 - Next Time

15:25 - Would God Harden our Hearts?

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

Last week I talked about how I did my parental duty and instilled the love of star wars into my child.

Now let me talk about one of the stupidest things in star wars.

And it comes from the same place that all of the stupidest things in star wars come from: the new Disney movies.

This one is flies right into the face of common sense.

It comes from the inner turmoil experienced by the villain of Episode 7: Kylo Ren.

Kylo is on the dark side. He seeks to prove himself a true, fully committed disciple of the dark side throughout the movie, and throughout the film he makes some comments. One of them is:

Forgive me. I feel it again. The pull to the light.

Throughout the film, Kylo is dealing with this “quote-unquote-temptation” to turn good, and this is one of the lines he uses.

Now, to write a line like that betrays any understanding of how the human heart actually operates. We want to be good, but we wrestle with the temptation to be bad.

Like it says in Galatians 5: the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh…to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

The Bible says we “want” to do good, but it’s our sinful desires that pull us back. But Kylo wants to be bad and wrestles with a temptation to be good. It’s completely backwards. It’s like saying, “Pray for me, I’m really tempted to eat this salad when I know I should order a double cheeseburger.”

There is not something naturally inside of us that pulls us toward righteousness and away from evil. What is inside of us pulls us to the flesh, to our natural instincts, toward selfishness and evil, toward…the dark side.

We aren’t tempted toward the light. The decision to pursue the light does not come from something within us naturally; but something that is given to us by God.

To be drawn toward the light requires God to put a new heart and a new spirit within us.

Which sounds like what we’ve been studying as we go through the book of Ezekiel, and it’s something you’ll find out about today on the Cross References podcast.

0:00 - Introduction

3:00 - The Spirit

11:00 - The Spirit Empowers You

14:15 - The Spirit Seals You

17:30 - The Spirit Guides You

27:00 - The Spirit is a Point of Connection Between You and God

32:00 - Next Time

34:15 - A Note about Hearing from the Spirit

If you want to get in touch with me, send an email to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com

Poor Nicodemus. That guy really gets a bad rap.

Nicodemus was the Pharisee who famously came to Jesus by night, because he was afraid if he approached Jesus during the day that people might see, and people might talk. He was a wise man, a religious man, a scholar.

And it’s a good thing that he comes to Jesus in the middle of the night like this because if anyone did hear what Nicodemus was saying, he’d never hear the end of it. When he was told that he must be born again, in

John 3:4, he replied to Jesus,

How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

And if this were a sitcom, modern people will stick the laugh track right here and we’ll all high-five and laugh at the dumb question. So Jesus makes this statement:

(Verse 5)

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus is still confused. He says to Jesus,

“How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”

Now the laugh track probably goes off again, but we should stop and consider this question. It’s actually kind of a tricky one. Jesus expects Nicodemus to know this.

But why should he be expected to understand this? Why should Nicodemus know about concepts like “born again” and “born of water and the Spirit.” It’s not like the Old Testament teaches about these things.

Or does it? You’ll find out today on the Cross References podcast.

0:00 - Introduction

2:00 - v24, The Return

4:20 - v25, Cleansed by Water

13:00 - v26,

19:30 - A Note on the Future

23:40 - Closing Thoughts

If you want to get in touch with me, send an email to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com

A lot of people misunderstand the third commandment. The third commandment says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”

Most Christians think that means you shouldn’t say OMG. Now, you probably shouldn’t say OMG, but that’s just one part of what it means to break the third commandment.

The third commandment means to misrepresent God. Now, you may say, how can taking God’s name in vain be a way of misrepresenting God? The reason is, because when you are a follower of God, you place God’s name upon yourself. Therefore, the way you behave will be a signpost of God to the world.

For example, we followers of God today are most commonly known as Christians. Now think about this: what are the first six letters of Christian? Christ. When you’re known as a christian, you’re seen by unbelievers as a representative of Christ.

That means when you show love as a Christian, you are showing people that God sees them and loves them and wants to know them.

Likewise, if we show hate or malice toward people as a Christian, it gives the impression that God is angry with them and doesn’t like them, either.

And that’s the essence of the third commandment. Yes, we shouldn’t use God’s name as a swear word. We shouldn’t tack God’s name onto things as a marketing strategy. We shouldn’t speak of God in a mocking way. That’s all part of this commandment. But misrepresenting God is the main way we take His name in vain.

And what we’re going to see today is that God is not as laidback as Joan Jett when it comes to giving him a bad reputation. Turn to Ezekiel 36 as we continue that chapter today on the Cross References podcast.

0:00 - Introduction

2:15 - For the Sake of His Name

18:45 - Secondhand Embarrassment

If you want to get in touch with me, send an email to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com

Is prophecy meant to be taken literally, or is it all symbolic? And if it’s both, then how can you know the difference? That’s the question we’re going to answer today.

Because we Christians find a lot to argue about on the subject of prophecy. How can we know if the Israel of today is the fulfillment of prophecies in Old Testament Scripture? How can we know if the Millennium is something future or something happening now? How can we know if it is 1000 actual years?

It’s the “how-can-we-know” questions that I want to settle for you today. And the best way to understand how future prophecy should be interpreted is to examine how past prophecy was fulfilled. And you’ll learn about that today on the Cross References podcast.

0:00 - The Taylor Test

4:45 - v1-7, Thus Says the Lord

9:15 - v8, Timing of the Return

20:05 - v9-15, Restoration of the Land

26:30 - Closing Thoughts

If you want to get in touch with me, send an email to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com

We’re coming up on three years since I started this podcast, and when I started it, I didn’t know that by the time we got done, Israel would be attacked in the largest one-day massacre of Jewish people since WWII. I didn’t know Israel would be engulfed in a literal war with the Palestinian terrorists who have been seeking to overthrow it for decades. And I didn’t know we’d be seeing Ezekiel 35 being repeated so vividly right before our eyes.

But that’s exactly what’s going on. And the battle you see playing out in the Middle East right now is a battle that started- not on October 7, 2023, but- all the way back in the book of Genesis.

So how did all of this start, and where is all this going? I can’t wait to tell you about it today on the Cross References podcast.

0:00 - Introduction

4:30 - v1-4, The Identity of Mount Seir

13:50 - v6-9, The Sins of the Edomites

20:30 - A Brief history of Edom

33:33 - The Origin of Palestine

40:10 - v10-15, Edom’s Doomed Future

If you want to get in touch with me, send an email to crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com