The NXR Podcast - July 17, 2023


DAILY TRUTH - Who Are “The Least Of These” In Our Culture Today？


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

158.50998

Word count

678

Sentence count

38

Harmful content

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A Christian myth busting round about who are the least of these in our culture and what does the Bible say about it. Today we re going to look at what Jesus says about doing good to the "household of faith."

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 In less than a year, our podcast has gone from an average of 10,000 downloads a month to 50,000
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00:00:11.640 the more the algorithm picks us up, and more people are confronted by the law and gospel
00:00:17.060 of Jesus Christ. Help us press forward the crown rights of King Jesus by leaving us a
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00:00:30.000 Jesus said, man cannot live on bread alone, but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
00:00:35.600 You're listening to Daily Truth. 0.77
00:00:39.800 So real quick, a Christian myth buster round that is very, very necessary. 0.89
00:00:46.880 We might, you know, you might be aware of from time to time on the Christian Internet, you know, 0.72
00:00:52.120 that people ask questions, you know, like, well, who are the least of these in our culture?
00:00:56.540 you know and well the least of these in our culture is this category or that category
00:01:02.560 a lot of times one of the popular answers would be well the least of these in our culture um are
00:01:08.460 immigrants i remember um i believe it was stephen colbert this was a few years ago but he he said
00:01:15.620 exactly that he said well my faith tells me to uh to care for the least of these and and people
00:01:21.380 you know who are immigrants these these are the least of these and they're being underpaid to do 0.98
00:01:25.900 work that we don't want to do. And he's wrong. That's not what the Bible teaches. 1.00
00:01:36.140 And so I'm going to give you a balanced view by God's grace. I'm going to do my best this morning.
00:01:40.320 But I want you to understand what the Bible teaches. So first, Jesus says,
00:01:43.760 whatever you do for the least of these, my brothers. Here's the key word, brothers.
00:01:50.860 When Jesus says you visited me in prison, he's not talking about visiting someone.
00:01:55.900 who is in prison for theft. 1.00
00:02:01.660 And they're a pagan. 0.92
00:02:03.720 If you visit them, you visited me. 0.98
00:02:06.340 No, he says, whatever you've done
00:02:07.520 for the least of these, my brothers.
00:02:09.140 He's actually talking about a Christian 0.68
00:02:11.820 deliberately choosing to visit a Christian in prison. 0.72
00:02:16.740 The implication being, assumption being,
00:02:19.560 that they're wrongfully imprisoned
00:02:21.320 and being persecuted for preaching the gospel.
00:02:24.060 and other Christians at the cost to their own safety and security
00:02:28.960 are visiting this Christian who's locked up in order to care for them,
00:02:33.000 in order to bring them supplies, to pray for them, to commune with them,
00:02:37.400 because they are a Christian.
00:02:39.640 Whatever you do for the least of these, my brothers.
00:02:43.560 Another text to cross-reference, to give you more than just one scripture.
00:02:47.300 This is the same principle that we would find in Galatians chapter 6,
00:02:50.500 where it says, as often as you have opportunity, do good to all, but especially the household of
00:02:56.940 faith. That is to say, as often as we have opportunity as Christians, we should do good
00:03:03.040 to all people. We should, whether they're Christians or not, but especially, that is,
00:03:09.100 but prioritize the household of faith. Even the late great Jewish historian Josephus,
00:03:16.300 who was not a Christian, in commentating on the first century Christian church, he said,
00:03:22.400 it is a very peculiar thing that someone who was impoverished could become rich virtually
00:03:29.280 overnight simply by joining the ranks of the Christians because they shared everything in
00:03:36.840 common. They took what they had and they would lay it at the apostles' feet so that it would
00:03:41.520 be dispersed, not that anyone would have lack, but that those who had lack would have sufficient
00:03:47.780 provision. And the scripture in the book of Acts goes even further and says, and so there was not
00:03:53.920 one in need among them. Not one in need among them. Now, what's being said there? There was not one,
00:04:03.120 they eradicated poverty in the city of Jerusalem. No. There were still plenty of poor people in
00:04:08.960 Jerusalem. They eradicated poverty in the church in Jerusalem. The church was cared for.