Curt Harlow [00:00:00]:
Hello, my friend, and welcome to the reboot.
Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Let's go.
Curt Harlow [00:00:04]:
Of the Bible study. We started this. What was it for you? You were not on.
Mark Clark [00:00:09]:
I wasn't even on staff yet. It was like before COVID maybe, or.
Curt Harlow [00:00:12]:
During COVID No, it was during COVID.
Mark Clark [00:00:13]:
Right in the middle of COVID What.
Curt Harlow [00:00:16]:
The world needed, right? Yes. Was zero agenda other than let's learn the Bible. So, you know, during times of crisis, I've learned this. Mark, I think you've learned this as a pastor. It's amazing to me the people that the Bible that has really gotten into them during that crisis, it will come out like, yeah, when times go tough. I remember the first passages the guys that were discipling me early on made me memorize.
Mark Clark [00:00:41]:
Interesting.
Curt Harlow [00:00:42]:
And so this is what this is. Let's get this stuff in there. So when life gets hard, we got a bunch of Bible in us.
Mark Clark [00:00:48]:
So it's good stuff. Yeah, I mean, to. To. To at any point to have a podcast that just focuses on. There's a lot of podcasts. Talk about a lot of things, but like, Bible, Bible, Bible. Get in India. Love it.
Mark Clark [00:00:59]:
Love it. Exciting.
Curt Harlow [00:01:00]:
We. We thought when we first did this, we thought, you know, we'll get a few base setters to watch it, and all of a sudden it blew up.
Mark Clark [00:01:06]:
Love it.
Curt Harlow [00:01:07]:
And it's amazing. People like the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:01:09]:
Crazy. You. Who would have. Who would have thought?
Curt Harlow [00:01:12]:
Hey, the weird thing about this time, though, Mark, is we're starting in Acts 16. We did it before 1 Corinthians. We'd started in 1st Corinthians, chapter 1. Why in the world are we starting the reboot of the Bible study in Acts 16?
Mark Clark [00:01:25]:
Yeah, well, you're the host of the Bible study, so you tell me. Well, Well, I mean, because it follows what we do as a church. So Bayside Church is going through the book of Acts. So we went one to 16 for, I don't know, three quarters of a year, seven years. And then we took a break over Christmas and did some series for the new year and are coming back now to Acts 16 and the second half. So it'll run probably till the end of summer or something like that. So. So the reason the.
Mark Clark [00:01:54]:
The Bible study podcast would follow along is because you're basically following along with everything we're preaching as a church. I think it's super helpful because can hear the whole sermon and then this is like a deeper dive with you and whoever you're bringing on as a guest.
Curt Harlow [00:02:05]:
The original idea. I know. I think it might have been Andrew, who had it. But we. We. If you don't know if you're. You're not part of Bayside Church, we have multiple campuses. We have eight, nine, counting Folso Prison.
Curt Harlow [00:02:16]:
And each one of those campuses has a communicator. And then we have several people on staff that rotate around and communicate. And we all gather every Wednesday and we beat up the passage we're in. And I've often just sat in the midst of, you know, these folks, Morgan May Trull, Kevin Thompson and Andrew McCort, and said, Man, I would listen to this podcast.
Mark Clark [00:02:38]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:02:38]:
And the problem with this, the. The great success of it is there's always just really great Bible study going on amongst those folks.
Mark Clark [00:02:47]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:02:47]:
The problem with it is there's never enough time on the weekend to cover all of it or to really master a part of the passage. So what we're going to do is we're going to just drag those folks in here. Like me, you. We're gonna get. I wrote it down here. And this is, by the way, in alphabetical order so no one gets offended.
Mark Clark [00:03:06]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:03:07]:
Andrew McCourt, Amy Sells droff, Brandon Short, Dena Davidson, Jason Kane, Kevin Thompson, Michael Medcalf, Morgan Matre, already mentioned. And we might even get the OG Ray Johnston.
Mark Clark [00:03:19]:
Oh, my goodness. To come be incredible. Wesley Town.
Curt Harlow [00:03:22]:
Wesley Town.
Mark Clark [00:03:23]:
All the crew.
Curt Harlow [00:03:23]:
The crew's coming in here.
Mark Clark [00:03:25]:
Yeah, he comes right at the end. OG I love it. It's going to be great. And all these people just have in, you know, care about the. The kind of technical things about the. The text. They care about the theology that comes out of the text, and then they care about application. So it's.
Mark Clark [00:03:41]:
That's a. It's going to be awesome.
Curt Harlow [00:03:42]:
Okay, really quick, just one more question. What would you say to someone who says, why would I jump in at Acts 16? Why don't I just wait until you guys get on to your next book study?
Mark Clark [00:03:53]:
Right.
Curt Harlow [00:03:54]:
What is it about Acts 16 that makes it worthy to jump in right here?
Mark Clark [00:03:58]:
Well, I. I think that the actual chapter is incredible. It starts to move into this. Like the Apostle Paul and his companions are doing some crazy great ministry and preaching. I think almost. I don't. I might. I might be overstating this.
Mark Clark [00:04:12]:
I think almost every chapter in the book of Acts has a sermon.
Curt Harlow [00:04:16]:
I know there's like 18 sermons.
Mark Clark [00:04:18]:
Yeah, something. Okay, so almost every. Almost every chapter. So 18 sermons. Lots of great sermons. And the Apostle Paul starts to, like, experience this push back to these sermons. So he starts to critique culture, critique theology. So what we Start to get.
Mark Clark [00:04:30]:
Now on the second half of the book is a lot of theology, which is great. You know, the first half, some great stuff. But it's like, you know how like. So here's one of the. One of the Bible study principles. It's like you can derive theology from story, but sometimes you force theology into stories, right? So it's like, oh, I put out my cloak, and I tried to figure out whether the dew arose in the morning. And then we go, I need to make a decision about what school to go to. Let me take my shirt off or whatever.
Curt Harlow [00:05:00]:
Is the bathroom mat wet on one side and not on the other?
Mark Clark [00:05:03]:
Yeah, exactly. So it's prescriptive versus descriptive. And the problem with descriptive stuff is we can sometimes go wonky with it. We're like, look, he walked into the right. That means we always need to walk to the right. It's like. It's silly. Whereas now we start to get, like, actual theology.
Mark Clark [00:05:16]:
It's almost like more of, like, the epistles, where you get narrative. It's beautiful. But then you get these pauses for, like, Paul unpacking, like, Mars Hill, the sermon on Mars Hill, or what areopagus in Acts 17, where he just unpacks all this cultural connection and all this theology of God made you and he put you here, and he did this, and here's who he is, and he's knowable, and here's how to know him. So the. The second half picks up. It's almost like to make a movie analogy, Godfather 1 is the first half. Now we're getting into Godfather 2. Now it's getting.
Curt Harlow [00:05:45]:
We're going to Lake Taho.
Mark Clark [00:05:46]:
It's going. We're going to Tahoe. We're going to Cuba. All right, We're. We're killing Fredo. This is where. Sorry, if you haven't seen it. It's pretty rough ending.
Curt Harlow [00:05:55]:
There is no. There is no. Paul doesn't kiss Silas and go, I know it's you. Yeah, exactly.
Mark Clark [00:06:00]:
So that doesn't happen.
Curt Harlow [00:06:02]:
I love it.
Mark Clark [00:06:03]:
Is it start. It's. It's just gets. It's better almost. I mean, not that the scripture, it's all the same, but. But the second half just picks up this great steam and it. And it goes.
Curt Harlow [00:06:11]:
Here's what I. Here's what I love about the second half. So Paul goes on the first missionary journey. And. And here's one of the wonderful things. If you share and, like and listen to the Bible study, you're going to learn the geography of the Bible, which is so critical in The New Testament especially, I think.
Mark Clark [00:06:27]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:06:28]:
And so Paul goes on this journey and it's all over Asia Minor. What's that? It's modern Turkey. This is Paul's hometown. He, his dad's delivered tents to these cities. He knows these, he knows who's in charge of the town, who's the top Jewish guy there, who's the top Gentile guy there. He gets everything about this culture. And so he's successful. They plant a bunch of churches in Asia Minor, but then they go back and say, hey, let's go say hi to all those churches.
Curt Harlow [00:06:54]:
We'll encourage them, we'll build them up. It's a pretty good plan. Gets out on the road, God says, nah, nah, that's not the plan. And God tells him several times, don't go there, don't go there. Change your plan, change your plan. Then Paul has this wonderful, beautiful, incredible vision. At night, dream of the Macedonian man. And who's the Macedonian man? It's very simple.
Curt Harlow [00:07:14]:
He's a Greek. And he says, hey guys, I'm going to call you out of Asia Minor and the familiar neighborhoods of your life and I'm going to have you go down the Greek peninsula to Athens and yeah, yeah, I need you to go preach the gospel there. And I guarantee you, Mark, maybe I'm reading into the text too much, but I just put myself in the movie scene and I guarantee you, Paul gets up the next morning, Said had a vision, scrapping all the plans. We are going down, we're going to go to the Greeks, we'll end up in Corinth. And his team looked at him and said, man, there's no way the gospel works with Greeks. It works with these God fearing Greeks over here that of us know about the Old Testament. You're talking Corinthian Greeks. Yes, this is a whole nother crew.
Curt Harlow [00:07:59]:
And when they obey and they go, all chaos in a beautiful, wonderful way. And just to your point, all of that chaos that happens when they get out of the familiar, change their plan, follow God, it produces the New Testament. You see the epistles being formed in Paul. He writes Romans from Corinth. He's thinking about these Corinthians that are not transformed by the renewing of their mind. They're going back to the old Corinthian culture. And he goes, romans be transformed. So I almost go, you really can't understand the other epistles unless you get that pivotal moment where Paul said, going to be obedient.
Curt Harlow [00:08:39]:
I'm going to, starting in chapter six, I'm Going to head down towards the Greeks and then just fun ensues from there.
Mark Clark [00:08:47]:
Well, and what's interesting as you said that sometimes the audience might like because our brains are like all the names and we get all confused. So it was really helpful for me last year we went on that cruise with our church and it was around the Mediterranean, it was around all these places that Paul stopped on these missionary journeys that the second half of Acts kind of picks up. And what you realize is he's moving from the dusty roads of whatever we think in our brain and he's getting on these ships and he's going around the water. So what you gotta picture is if you've ever been on a Mediterranean cruise or in the Bahamas or something like that, you jump on this cruise and you're in the water and it's beautiful and there's islands everywhere and there's fish and whales going on. That's what when you're picture, when you're reading the second half of Acts picture that don't picture like you're just walking around the dusty neighborhoods yelling at people. It's like we're talking cities on the ocean edges. It's the most beautiful. And he's in the ships and sailing around like so the blue water.
Curt Harlow [00:09:48]:
Right, right, right.
Mark Clark [00:09:49]:
It's beautiful. So just picture that. And he's going into those settings, he's planting these churches and reaching these people. It's. It's great.
Curt Harlow [00:09:56]:
It is great. And I tell you, once you start that's that geography starts becoming three dimensional to you.
Mark Clark [00:10:02]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:10:03]:
So many pieces connect.
Mark Clark [00:10:04]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:10:04]:
Like I remember the first time I went over to the Mediterranean and we were going on these tours and I went, oh, I've been preaching this wrong for 25 years.
Mark Clark [00:10:11]:
Yeah, of course.
Curt Harlow [00:10:12]:
Yeah, I have. I had the image in my mind of my cultural suppositions right now. This makes complete sense.
Mark Clark [00:10:19]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:10:19]:
100 to me. So anyway, the point about all that IS Acts chapter 16, the second half of the book of Acts. We're going to bring all the Bayside communicator crew in here and week by week we're going to verse by verse, just have a free flowing conversation. Conversation like this. Bring your Bible to it. It's going to be about a half hour. We're going to take a chunk of pass. So not like three chapters a chunk.
Curt Harlow [00:10:42]:
And just for a half hour we're going to do exactly what Mark and I just did right there. What does this mean? What does this mean? What does this mean? And then what does it mean?
Mark Clark [00:10:51]:
To you.
Curt Harlow [00:10:51]:
How do we apply it? So share this. We're rebooting the Bible study A bunch of you know who was watching the last time we did it. So right now don't wait. Share it. Share it. Share it. Get the buzz going and let's see what happens when we all and listening to the Bible study. Love it.