"Adulting Over Here"
EPISODE 199
Put Your Faith in Jesus
“If the Messiah is here, the Romans don’t matter—anything is possible now!” The AV Club is back with a Chosen episode that challenges us to hold onto our faith when life’s problems overwhelm us and we don’t understand God’s commands. From all-nighters to Matthew’s unique outlook, the episode sparked a lot of questions and a few Deep Thoughts. Simon Peter’s story is so relatable, with his bold personality, his doubts and fears, and his powerful conversion. We hope you walk away from this talk reaffirming your commitment to do what Peter did, leaving behind who you were to follow the One who changes everything.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Faith isn't faith if we keep it separate from the issues and questions of our lives.
Episode Transcription
He's worried about his business, his family, these dangers from Rome, paying his taxes, all that. He's like adulting over here, right? Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 199. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. 199, it feels like it's almost there, but not quite. We are going to get into a different conversation here on the episode. We teased it like weeks and weeks ago, and then we put it on hold for a while. And now we're back, baby. We're doing Bible Geeks AV Club, season one, episode four of The Chosen. The Chosen, season one, episode four, the rock on which it is built. Again, the passion in her voice. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And yeah, we're a little obviously behind. Season four is about to come out and we're on episode four, but you know, we're, we'll make our way and not everybody is watching it as it gets released. As I am not watching it as it gets released, I'm slowly making my way through it. So I thought this was a fun episode. I just watched it today with all of my kids and we had fun watching it. It's a good one. Yeah. I think this in the progression of all the episodes, we'll talk about it obviously here in a little bit, but I think this is about when it starts to get real. Oh yeah. This is a story about the ministry of Jesus. This is about where that starts to happen. So it's cool. Before we get there though, we got an icebreaker. Let's lighten the mood a little bit. Yeah. So the episode has some all nighters by Simon, soon to be Peter out fishing. So our question here to get us started is when's the last time you pulled an all nighter and how did it work out for you, Bryan? I used to do this all the time in college, but more recently, I love my sleep. It is really something that I've come to value and if I'm not getting seven and a half to eight hours a night, it's going to be a bad day for me. But I do remember there was a time when I was at work, a particularly stressful time and I had to pull an all nighter to meet this deadline. Our team, we basically came in and we found out that the demo was canceled until the next day. And it was like, okay, well, we spent all this time and we got the thing working and now it's not even needed. So that's kind of a depressing, I suppose, in that moment, having to commit all that time basically for no purpose whatsoever. But how about you? Yeah, well, last week, actually, our family got away and you guessed it, we went to a cabin, which we just talked about last week for a few days, it was Nadia's birthday and that was what she picked. And Adrian and I stayed up until, I don't know, we didn't check the clock. It was probably like three in the morning, just talking, which is not that unusual for us as we get going. And I would say it worked out well because it's a good conversation. Although with four kids hungry for breakfast, I didn't get to sleep in at all. So it's not like that seven and a half, eight hours you're talking about that didn't happen. But I was on vacation so I could be lazy in the afternoon. Yeah, cabin life. So I did that last real all nighter, like no sleep was probably on a Saturday night sometime in the last few years. I don't really remember, it's always a blur whenever you do that anyways, but I know that I have done it. Usually I like to get up really early, five in the morning on Sunday mornings. And sometimes I end up like thinking about things late into the night, even laying in bed. And then sometimes I just get up, like what is the point of laying here? And I go and I prep. And so sometimes when there's a particularly difficult Sunday, challenging the day, some a lot going on and things I want to get accomplished. And it usually works out okay for the day, but then Monday, Sunday night, Monday I'm trashed, which is not something I really want to do. And Adrian's ready for me to take over the kid duty by Sunday evening. And so I need to have some energy for that. Yeah, I know this about you, that you are a person who likes to burn the night oil, but I am definitely not that way. So it's probably one of the big differences between the two of us, I would think. But yeah, let's get into our first real segment here, the substantive conversation that we can have. And that is like the teacher, we're going to look from Luke chapter five, verses one to 11 here. And this verse really highlights, I think some things that happen in this episode of The Chosen, season one, episode four, where all the crowd is pressing in on Jesus. They want to hear what he has to say. He's standing out by the lake and there's some boats out there. And one of the boats belongs to Simon. And he asks them if he could get out onto the boat, stand there and preach to the people. And once he gets done teaching, he then turns to Simon and tells him to go out and go fishing. And Simon said, "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word, I will let down the nets." And obviously at that point they took this huge catch of fish and Peter falls to his knees and says, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man." It's this amazing story of Simon and his relationship, his budding relationship with Jesus. And he said to him, "Do not be afraid from now on, you will be catching men." This is a great story. And this really, I think is the basis of this episode here on The Chosen. So what do you get from this story as you see Jesus standing there on the boat and preaching a powerful sermon? It is a great story. It's brought to life wonderfully in this episode. But as amazing as the miracle is, the most striking part of the story always for me has been Simon's response. What do you do when you realize you're in the presence of someone like Jesus? And he knew he was in the presence of a holy agent of God, at least. He probably didn't realize it was God the Son or all that this means. But in recognizing the connection of Jesus to God, he saw himself, he saw his sin. And in fact, that was the most pressing issue for him. And that's just what happens. Jesus was so great that Jesus needed to leave. And that is the counterintuitive, profound, bittersweet, heartbreakingly relatable kind of response. It takes you back to Isaiah's call in Isaiah 6 when he saw God's glory and could only say, "Woe is me, a man of unclean lips." And Peter just was overwhelmed with thinking about who he was and how unworthy he was to be in the presence of Jesus, much less to be a follower of Jesus. And yet Jesus calls him. And that tension between those two truths that I am sinful, Jesus is holy, yet Jesus seeks me, Jesus wants me, Jesus brings a gracious call to me are at the heart of all of our conversion, right? That's at the heart of following Jesus, at the heart of certainly this episode, this story. I'll probably bring it up again. But Peter and his business partners, these sons of Zebedee, correctly respond to Jesus' call with faith and obedience. And so it's not just get away from me because some people I think end up staying in that spot of, "No, I'm too awful. I can't follow Jesus." But Peter ultimately does respond correctly in faith and in obedience and in following. And what begins as guilt and fear and that humble unworthiness eventually becomes faithful following. And may we all have that same response to the Lord. So that's what really jumped out at me. What about you when you looked at this story? I think for me, it resonates with some stuff that I've been studying about recently. And it's just how odd, I don't know that there's probably a better way to say that, but just how confusing sometimes the commands of the Lord can be. You look at this story and it's like, this does not make any sense. Jesus, don't you know we've been out all night and we've been trying to catch fish and there are no fish out there. We've been doing this over and over again. This is useless. It is very much similar to all the times when God tells the people to do some really ludicrous things in the Old Testament. Like go march around the city walls a whole bunch of times. Or like when you take a city, don't take any of the spoils, just destroy it all. Or like, hey, go wash in the dirty Jordan River to be healed. All these things. It's like, of course, this is just a really powerful story that helps us to see that what we know on the surface, what we see with our eyes is not all that there is. This is a test. This is putting it to us to say, will you follow me in spite of whether or not this makes sense? And from Peter's standpoint, what do they say is the definition of insanity when you do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result? That is exactly what's happening here. Because Peter's going to go out and do it again, knowing that it's not going to turn out any different. But he does decide to go to his credit, right? He does get out there and he does go take the boats, put the nets in the water and do the thing that he's been doing all night long. Yet this time it's different because this time Jesus is behind it. And so, I don't know, it just makes me think about our last two episodes on goal setting and how big are my aspirations? Like how much am I willing to trust that God can do the seemingly impossible things in my life? Am I limiting what I think I can do, what I think I can accomplish, what the Lord has promised that I can accomplish? Or am I really just willing to give myself, like Peter was, to doing some things that I don't understand how it's going to work, but I'm going to do it anyway, knowing that he's behind it. So I guess that's just a good reminder for me looking at this. Am I going to be like Peter and do it anyway, even though it doesn't really make a lot of sense? Yeah, God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. No human being might boast in the presence of God. Yeah. 1 Corinthians 1. Yeah, that is a really good lesson whenever you're thinking. There is a logic to the way the world works, a logic to what makes sense to me. And there is a directive that goes counter to that. Or at least, I don't have all of the answers about why I would do it. And that's Hebrews 11, right? That's all of the stories of faith. That's our lives, ultimately, if we're walking in surrendered faith and obedience to the Lord. So that's a really good highlight there. Awesome. So let's move into our second segment here on the episode. And that is, Here's the Story. Here's the story. So we're going to do a quick recap here of where we've been and where we're going in this chosen season one. And here we are in episode four. How did we get here? Where have we been so far to catch us up? Yeah, so far we've seen some glimpses of Jesus as he casts out demons for Mary Magdalene at the end. He shares a Shabbat meal with her and a few friends. He teaches a group of children in the last episode, which was a wonderful moment. My kids loved that episode. But we've also gotten to know the backstory of some soon to be disciples. And we start to see that coming to fruition in this episode, most notably for this episode, a scheming fisherman named Simon, his concerned brother Andrew, and this ostracized Jewish tax collector named Matthew. Peter and Matthew, or Simon and Matthew, are such striking, compelling figures in the show and it really makes you relate to what it means to be called by Jesus. So the fisherman and Matthew both have these complicated ties to the Roman soldiers that are occupying Palestine. Simon is in trouble with his taxes and he promises to help the Romans catch some tax dodging Sabbath breaking fishermen. So there's this whole scheme that's in the backstory when we start the episode. And then Matthew doesn't trust Simon any further than he can throw him and he's helping the Romans. And that's where we start off. Yeah. And so moving through this episode, we see here that the Pharisees in the beginning of the episode, they're talking about John the baptizer. You don't see John at the beginning of this episode. You don't really get a sense of what's actually happening, but you do see the religious leaders talking amongst themselves about this guy who's been preaching out in the wilderness. He's you know, this weird stranger who's out there saying some things that he shouldn't be saying. And here we see Shmuel who is Nicodemus's student and he's recalling all these meetings that he's having with John and the conversations that he's been hearing. And apparently John's been calling the religious leader snakes, which doesn't really sit well with them. I mean, rude of vipers. Yeah, it just for sure. But we see that they're really quite bothered by all these events. But all the while Nicodemus seems very curious about this man, John. And while the other religious leaders are ready to go out there and do something about it, you get the sense that Nicodemus is actually really interested in going and talking to him, which by the end of the episode, that's exactly where we'll find Nicodemus. He's going to be sitting in the jail cell with John talking to him about miracles. And so obviously we know that from the last couple episodes ago, how Nicodemus was witnessed to this amazing miracle with Mary Magdalene, how the demon was cast out of her. And he didn't understand how this happened, but now he's starting to investigate for himself. So they think he's a troublemaker, but Nicodemus wants to know a little bit more. But then we also see here the story about Matthew and how Matthew is being given a job by the Romans to go effectively spy, as you were talking about, spy on Simon to get some more information about what's going on there. So a lot of details in the beginning of this episode, but we definitely see that the Pharisees are pretty curious about what's happening. Yeah, absolutely. And Simon decides to let his loyalty to the sons of Zebedee, James and John and Zebedee himself prevail. And he doesn't help the Romans as he was planning to. There's some interesting back and forth between the Romans and Simon and Zebedee and all these things playing out. And then as Simon is so stressed out about what's going to come of his business, as he's buried in this tax debt, as he's thinking about his mother-in-law who is sick and people are wanting her to come and live with him, there's all these different pieces. And so Simon is stressed and Andrew, his brother, comes and says, "We found the Lamb of God." And so he cites John the baptizer's designation of Jesus as the one who removes the sins of the world. In the biblical account, this all is a little bit quicker than it plays out here. Andrew actually brings Simon to Jesus, but I did appreciate the incredulous response here as Simon heard from Andrew this thing that the Messiah is here and Andrew's so excited and Simon can't match the enthusiasm. And many of us can probably relate to Andrew and maybe even to Simon at some points in some conversations when someone is bringing this passion and this enthusiasm and you maybe want to plug into it, but you're having a hard time with it. So that's an important moment. Of course, it's recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter one, verses 35 to 42. And then it gets fleshed out here more. Definitely a relatable character here, at least in the episode, if not definitely in the biblical account, like you said. That's where we move into Luke chapter five, verses one to 11, those verses that we did earlier in the episode where Jesus performs this amazing, miraculous catch of fish. This is about the time in the series where stuff starts to get real, where we really start to hear Jesus speaking to, let's just be honest, speaking to a group of adults. In the previous episode, he was speaking to children and the whole time you're just like, wow, this is really amazing. But now we're getting to see adults reaction to Jesus preaching. And obviously at the beginning of this little account, we see how Peter and all of his friends are out there all night long. They pulled the all nighter and nothing seems to be working. Everything is going poorly. They can't catch any fish. They're not going to be able to pay back this amazing, huge tax debt that Peter has accrued. And so they're dejected. They get back, they have nothing to show for it. And so you can see this looming failure on the horizon, but then Jesus shows up and that's when it all changes. Andrew, by the way, recognizes Jesus. Andrew is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. That is the Messiah. And he's pointing to him and you can just see Simon's reaction is not much better than it was earlier when he's basically like, okay, fine. But then he starts to hear him speak and he starts to hear this interaction between the two of them. It's really powerful that Simon starts to have the, I don't know, the scales fall from his eyes a little bit. He starts to really understand what's going on. And they listen to this final parable when Jesus asked them, Hey, can I borrow your boat to preach to everyone out here on the water? So he goes out there and he, he preaches to this group of disciples sitting on the shore. And he's talking about how the kingdom of heaven is like a net and he is asking them, what does a net do? Well, it gathers. And so he's talking about how the angels are going to separate the evil from the righteous. And then he turns them all and says, do you understand? And then after he dismisses the crowd, after this really powerful story, he then sends Peter and his friends out one more time to go catch the fish. And of course, at that point, it's a huge catch of fish. The music changes. Everything is exciting. They're just overjoyed. And you can see at that moment, Peter realizing exactly who this is and what he needs to do in response. Yeah. And, and that brings us really to the call of Simon and Andrew and James and John, and Luke gives that full story of the miracle, Matthew and Mark, Matthew four 18 to 22 and Mark one 16 to 20 give a little bit of a simpler account, but they have Jesus seeing them casting the nets and saying, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. And they dropped their nets and just follow him. And I thought there was a neat moment in the show where James and John asked their dad Zebedee basically for permission to go and they say, Hey, is it okay if we like point to Jesus and look at the dad and he says something like we've been waiting our entire life for the Messiah. And now you're worried about being late for supper. Just go, I'll find somebody else to fill your spot in our business on the boats. And so they go and follow him. And, and, and that's how the story goes. That's how it happened was Jesus called and they just went, there's this abruptness to the departure from the life they had before this line of demarcation. And so that was neat to see. Yeah. I, it's a really cool episode. It's pretty long in comparison to some of the other ones, but let's get into our next segment here, which is deep thoughts. And now deep thoughts. So what do you have here as your first deep thought after watching this episode? I was thinking about how the miracles of Jesus somehow in some ways point to or make me at least think of the greater work, the spiritual transformation that Jesus brings. He brings this successful catch of fish that is just more than they could ever catch without his help. And then Jesus says, I'm going to make you catchers. I'm going to make you people catchers. And with Jesus help, they're going to catch lots of people. And so this, this giant catch of fish points forward to this giant catch of people that you think of Peter preaching a sermon on the day of Pentecost and acts two and all of these fish that are going to be jumping in the boat with Jesus, even though Jesus has ascended into heaven and just this work that they're going to do. And then I was thinking about this moment that happens in the episode, not something that happens in the gospel's accounts, but where Peter's ear gets cut by one of the Roman soldiers. And I'm sure they got the idea for this plot point from the fact that later on in the garden of Gethsemane, Peter is going to slice someone's ears to defend himself and defend Jesus. And there is going to be a miraculous healing of this ear that Peter slices. And I was just thinking about how Jesus does a work in the listening of Peter also. I mean, it's not a miracle healing his ear. It's a transformation where when we can hear God, when we listen differently, whenever we start to tune in to the word of God, there is a transformation. And of course that's our choice, but, but Jesus then begins this change that comes through the healing of our ears, so to speak, and the healing of our hearts and the healing of our eyes to see and our willingness to look. And as Ezekiel puts it, have a heart of stone turned into a heart of flesh and be transformed. These, all these miracles that you think of, there's these profound connections, many of which are highlighted in the gospels. You think of how Mark connects the healing of the blind man and the healing of the ears to what Jesus wants to do to help those who have ears to hear and eyes to see to actually start perceiving what they need to do and be spiritually healed. That's a lot to chew on. I love the idea of the foreshadowing that he's starting out something small, but eventually, obviously at some point in the future, it's going to be big. And I was thinking here in my first deep thought with how John the Baptist was working. And I don't always think about it, but when you see it in an episode, it becomes just really clear that while Jesus was ramping up his ministry at this point in the series, very, very small in the work that he's doing, just one-on-one doing things behind the scenes, he really does not have the attention of the Pharisees or religious leaders right now, but John the Baptist does. John the Baptist is all over the religious leaders radar. And so you can definitely see that in scripture. This is not just something that we see here in this episode, but Jesus is getting started and John has been going for a while. And so he's active. John's gathering disciples. John is teaching. John is poking people in the eye and calling them snakes. It's like John is fiery while Jesus is still just getting sparked. And so it's not really that John is performing a lot of miracles or anything like that, but people are interested. And you can see, especially with Andrew, and I believe this is found even in the biblical account that Andrew is seeing the importance of Jesus. And so you can see why he is telling his brother to come and see Jesus because that's what he's learning from John. And so I think while the religious leaders were so distracted by John, Jesus gets his ministry started and this amazing relationship that John and Jesus have, even though they really aren't in the same place very often, they're doing this work together. And it's one of the reasons why I love how in John 3, John the Baptist says, he must increase, but I must decrease. This is something he's excited about that his work is leading to Jesus work. But the way that they're working together is just really cool to see. And it's not something I always think about. It is really interesting. Yeah. How in, in the gospels, you see them working in different areas and have a different style and a different purpose, but they're working in conjunction. And then there's these just a few moments where you see their paths cross. And it's like these two Titans of God's work just sparking together, where John says, look over there, you see this guy walking by, that's the lamb of God who comes to take the sins of the world away. And then of course, whenever he baptizes Jesus, those profound moments where these are not two opposing forces. These are two who are completely in harmony. And John really in, in subjection to the one who's sandals, he's not worthy of tying. So that's a cool thought. I was thinking this is in some ways the opposite of what I said earlier about how these physical things point to a spiritual reality. But the idea that sometimes people want to separate the spiritual and the physical or like real problems from religion. Oh yeah. And Simon has a hard time seeing what faith has to do with his wife, Eden's sick mother. He patronizingly smiles at his brother, Andrew. When Andrew tells him the Messiah has come and that means anything is possible if Messiah is here, right? Simon has real problems. He's worried about his business, his family, these dangers from Rome, paying his taxes, all that. He's like adulting over here, right? He has this long prayer or complaint against God when he's out there fishing by himself. He finally takes a moment to address God and it's just, you don't care. You do. Why are you so distant? You know, he thinks that God is not involved in these real problems. He's, it's not something a pragmatic realist should really look to for things that actually matters. And I feel like that's something I've maybe not heard outright, but heard implied sometimes whenever I talk to some people, like there's God things and there's life things and never the two shall meet. Like dreamers and children can talk about some unseen realm, but grownups have to focus on getting the job done and paying their bills. And I don't know, maybe I'm over exaggerating it and maybe that's all been in now. I don't think you are. Yeah. Okay. Well, all of life is about God. All of life has to do with faith and the truths that scripture reveals and when we work and when we pay taxes and when we're sick, we don't always know the answers, but these truths and beliefs change how we address these issues. And God is with us. And as Simon says, if Messiah has come, anything is possible. Everything is different and he has come. And it's not just in a miraculous catch of fish. It's in just life. It's in how am I going to get through the, this, I was talking to a friend Wednesday night about how her bills had an extra fee on them. And she wasn't sure how it was going to be taken care of. And she didn't know what would the Lord want her to do. Should she go in and fight them for it or should she, what should she, how should she work it out? And in the meantime, and so I was working through it, but she said, also, I wanted to tell you the end of the story. She came back after services cause we were interrupted and said, I want to tell you the end of the story. All the people in my apartment complex gathered together the money to pay for this fee. And I was like, you know, God is taking care of this. It doesn't mean you can't, you know, make a request and say, Hey, I'm concerned about this or whatever, but you don't have to be anxious. You don't have to fight or be bitter or whatever, because God is taking care of us. And you don't always know how it's going to happen, but God looks after his people and that's a promise. And so there's a lot of different ways that these two things come together, but real life and God exist in the same reality. And we bring everything to our faith, everything before God. Yeah. Just even thinking about Simon, who would later on face the literal storm as he was looking away from Jesus. I mean, yeah, real life things and God things are all intertwined for sure. So that kind of leads me, I think, to my second deep thought here, which I know this is a fictional retelling of the story, and we emphasize that on basically every conversation we have in these series, but you know, it really does make me wonder why Matthew was such an avid writer in this story. We start to see why Matthew was writing all these things down. As you can see it at some points in the episode, Matthew running around with a book and he's just writing stuff down. And it's like, why is he doing that? Well, the Romans were telling him to write down an account of everything that Simon was doing. And so it was like, oh, well yeah, that makes sense. I doubt really, honestly, that was why Matthew was writing all this stuff down, but it is an interesting thought process to think about somebody who is probably fairly hated by the Jews. You can definitely see that Matthew as a tax collector was probably not appreciated all of the time, even by Jesus' own disciples. And here he is running around with a book in his hand and he's writing stuff down. And obviously we would learn later on, as you look at the entire gospel of Matthew, that he was writing to a Jewish audience. Luke was writing to Gentiles. Matthew was primarily writing to the Jews, giving them examples after examples of how Jesus fulfilled the old law and how Jesus was really the fulfillment of everything that we read about in the Messianic prophecies and all of these things. Every time I see this actor's portrayal here of Matthew, I think it's just so clear how he would have been different, how Matthew would have been curious, but super awkward and just viewing things from a distance and writing it all down for other people to read. I know it's not really a concrete, actionable thought process, but every time I read Matthew now, I'm really going to think of the curious outsider who not a lot of people really appreciated, but was just so detail oriented that he had to write these things down for his own people to understand who Jesus was. Yeah, that really does fit with some things that we do know. He had to be educated to a certain extent to be someone who is keeping record of all the things that were owed to Rome and to be put in that position or to purchase his seat as being in that position. And like you said, being an outsider, a lot of the best writers seem to be on the outside watching and observing and able to make these reflections and observations that you wouldn't see when you're just going about the busyness of life. But when you pay attention, then you're able to see things differently. And like, I like what you said about the scriptures, somebody who maybe was not very welcome in the synagogue now has this almost like redeeming of the Old Testament scriptures as he comes to more fully understand them and what they're really pointing to and the salvation that Jesus brings, not that they ever actually needed redeemed, but like in his mind, maybe he's thinking he has no place in the story of God or in the story of the Jewish people. And now he's realizing the Jewish Messiah has called me and he's doing something very different than what I may be perceived before. And so then Matthew is all full of these wonderful allusions and references to all of the Old Testament scriptures. It's a neat thought. Yeah. All right. So let's move on to our final segment here on the episode. And that's where we get a little bit more personal as we reach out. All right, Bryan, what moment did you connect with when you watched the episode? How did the episode affect you? How did it shape your thinking? What really jumped out at you? Yeah. So obviously there's a lot here in this episode and there's a lot of really interesting people that we start to learn a little bit more about. I think what struck me the most here in watching this again was how Mary was sitting in the crowd of disciples listening to Jesus while he was out there. I know the emphasis is really on Simon and everything else going on there on the boat and on Jesus and his teaching. And you just get this little picture of Mary sitting in the crowd. It's never mentioned. It's never like, oh, look, there's Mary or Jesus comes and pats Mary on the shoulder or anything like that. No, she's just there. And I think tying in from some of the things that we've seen in the first few episodes, you definitely see that Mary had some amazing things done for her and she was so grateful for what Jesus had done in healing her of these demons that basically she's giving it all to him. She's going, she's following him. And really she's one of the very first noteworthy disciples that we see following Jesus around from the very beginning in these episodes and now here in episode four, she's there. And I don't know specifically whether she was there at that moment in real life, but you have to imagine that she was the kind of woman who wanted to be where Jesus was based on what Jesus had done for her. She was giving it all. And I can just imagine so many people, maybe not specifically Mary, but so many other people who I'm sure were just always wanting to see Jesus following him around after the things that he had done for them. And you just imagine, like imagine Mary sitting in those moments, listening and watching these amazing miracles happen and having her in the back of her mind, probably just going, yeah, yep, he did that for me. And just I've seen that before. Oh, hopefully they respond like I did. You know, it's just this amazing picture of somebody who's dedicating their life to Jesus. We're obviously going to see that here with Simon and with Matthew and with Andrew and all these other people that will eventually follow him. But right off the bat, she's one of the very first people that struck me as someone who's obviously not out there looking for quote unquote the bread or a handout, but she's right there with him. And I would hope that I would have been like Mary was sitting there watching Jesus and just giving him my full attention. Yeah, that's a cool moment. I thought that too, as I was watching her and I asked the kids, is that Mary? Is that the one? That's what the gospels say. Luke 8 talks about Mary Magdalene and these other women just following Jesus and providing for his needs. And they become part of the catch of fish that are just with him everywhere. And it's just all these different faces in the crowd are not just a crowd to Jesus. He's changing all of their lives. So they're with him and he's with them. And that is the church. I like that thought. I have to just give an honest answer here. It's the happy ending is what struck me. Yeah, we were all excited as the catch of fish came in and I loved Andrew yelling, "I told you!" That moment where Jesus is laughing. It's just so cool. I liked how the actor portrays Jesus' laugh in all of these moments laughing and delight at the catch of fish, at these miracles, not the stoic Jesus that sometimes appears in my imagination. This feels like it is a plausible, possible at least, and probably plausible kind of a reaction that you might see that kind of joy and delight in being able to bless people like this and do these wonders through the power of God. And I think my favorite, I mentioned it earlier, was Simon's confession and after his confession when he is realizing who he is in the presence of Jesus. And throughout the whole episode, my youngest, Evie, just kept saying, "Why is he doing those bad things? Why is he doing this? Why is he angry?" And I kept saying, "Well, he doesn't know Jesus yet. He hasn't met Jesus yet." And so just building and making what we just talked about, he's making bad choices, but he doesn't know the Lord. This is why we need Jesus, right? And we kept going and he was getting really stressed out by Simon and by how he was misbehaving and he had a bad attitude and all of this stuff. And Simon is thinking about those same things. All the things that have happened in the first four episodes have led him here. And it mostly has not been good choices. He's made a few good choices being loyal to Zebedee, but as he kneels before Jesus with tears, he says, "Anything you ask, I will do." And Jesus, like you said about those great deeds that we might think and the counterintuitive way that Jesus calls us, Jesus just tells him, "Follow me." And he does. And again, it resonates with the experience of probably every disciple who knows Jesus grace in the face of our failings and want to go with him anywhere. So it's just like we talked about in the first episode, there's that moment with Mary Magdalene and the appearance of Jesus in connection with someone's life and how it changes them just fills your chest with that big, bold, sappy feeling that you're just like, "All right, I'm ready. This is so true." And it just reminds you of all the things that you hold Jesus to be for you. And so that was wonderful. I really appreciated that. And I think there was a moment there in that interaction with Jesus and Peter where all the words were there, like all the words that we read in that story from Luke 5, they were there, but it was some of the most like pregnant pauses that you've ever seen as Jesus basically stares at Peter after he says, "We've been out there all night." And Jesus just looks at him. There's no words. It's just look, right? And you start to see then Peter say, "I'll do whatever you want." You know what I mean? It's just, you can imagine that was probably the way Jesus interacted with people. You don't really get that sense from the text oftentimes, but man, I bet Jesus had in his toolbox just a pregnant pause and a look that would just motivate you to do exactly what he wanted you to do. So I appreciated this episode a lot. Let's put this one on the shelf. We will hopefully at some point in the future, come back and do some more chosen episodes. But for the next episode, it is going to be our 200th episode. And so we're going to do something a little bit different there in that conversation. We're looking forward to that. Thanks everyone for tuning into the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. Find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/199. You can also share this show with a friend, or you can get in touch with us if you'd like us to cover anything on upcoming episodes. We'd really appreciate that. And until the next conversation, may the Lord bless you and keep you alone.