SET APART
A podcast that combines Eastern and Western teaching/story from the scriptures to regain our WHY in God. The purpose of this show is to break down the severe disconnect in today's Church vs how God has called for this life to be lived.. We do this through the scriptures and our guest's stories with each episode.
The American Church teaches an extremely one sided evident driven view of the scriptures. In that danger you lose the poetry and art of story telling to where there is only half truths left. No wonder people are walking away from Christianity by the masses.
These eastern authors intended much more for our hearts with their writings that God inspired. Watch as these ancient truths give you a new/refreshing perspective that will change the way you live. Getting back to the Garden.
SET APART
Ep.4: The Blessed Curse
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What if the curse is not just judgment—but mercy? In this episode, we talk about Genesis 3, the slide from humanness into beastliness, and how the pain of this life can become the very thing that brings us back to God.
And we're back. Tyler and Will, Will and Tyler Set Apart podcast. Fun fact of the day. Did you know that our DNA is about ninety-nine point nine percent identical to every other human? What's up, dude? Hey.
SPEAKER_00How are you to how are you today? Well, now I know that I am not special. Oh man. With that fact of the day. That's a wild fact, isn't it? Yeah, and I'm actually very thankful for that. And forever gonna tell everybody that because man, I'm already gonna start monologuing. Uh, what a big old thing that we are always told how special. How special we are special you are. Just how different. How different. And it's like we um then all of a sudden become these different characters, uh, like a like a TV show when when we're in public or around other people. It is it is an extreme thing, but now to know uh that we are all wow, very similar. So so similar. Interesting. Maybe that will bring some more accurate unity in this life, and everyone stops trying to be individual and tribalistic, even with their own individualism. Ooh, that's an interesting thing. But how are you?
SPEAKER_02I'm great, yeah? Yeah, I'm having a great day. Having a great week. We are enjoying myself just in uh um I'm it it's nice. It makes you it it can make you feel actually not alone, right? Like let's put a positive spin on it. Like you are the same as everybody else. The fact, yes. I mean, how and we all have the we all have the same desires, we all have the same wants, same, same needs. I don't I don't know, I I don't know why it's so important for everybody to be so different.
SPEAKER_00Get this though, you're special to me. So and you know who else is special to me are tens and tens of listeners. Yes, and so we are thankful. Here's a here's a gratefulness, Mark. Very thankful for our tens and tens of listeners that maybe someday will be 20 and 20. Um, and very thankful for the 38 people who have clicked five stars on Spotify rating. That's a pretty big deal. It is a big deal. We'll take that. And if you can continue to spam it, I will not mind that. That'd be great. And hey, share this with a friend. Um, that is all my marketing that I will do. Because I just I come from the belief of if it is good enough, the people will listen to it. There's so many people that have approached Will and I on well, how are you guys gonna get it out there? How are you gonna do all this? This and people do that with me as a pastor. How are you gonna get more people? And all, and I'm like, you know what? I just think if it's good enough, people will want to listen.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll tell you what, as a marketer, because that's what I do for that's what I that's my skill set, the best campaigns have have never been because it has the best marketing, but it's be it's been because the product has been the best. Yeah, I mean because you can never ever do that, ever beat word of mouth. Ever. Because when you actually help somebody by providing a good service or by providing a product, and I know I'm getting into business talk right now, we don't have to do that, but people will talk about it because that makes you what?
SPEAKER_00Right set apart. Come on. So, uh speaking of set apart, this is the podcast, and we are adventuring through the first three chapters of Genesis, and we've done the last two chapters. Uh, the first one was unconditional acceptance, and that's Genesis 1. That yes, it is a literal creation story, but the Eastern Hebrew writers do not structure any type of writing through literalness or any type of absoluteness. Yes, they believe in that type of structured truth, but they do not believe that that is the most accurate way to get to truth. They believe that you must wrestle with it, adventure through it, journey. And that's like, uh oh, well, I only have this much time during my week to do that. Well, in in the West, that's a problem because we want to just give me the seven ways on how to do it. Give me the three-point sermon on the poetic side of Genesis one. Then, well, here's the deal. If you're gonna fast track that, then you're always gonna, you're, you're always gonna feel like you're so close with this relational dance with God, and then you're off. And then you're off. Because you don't know how to rest and live in your uh unconditional acceptance that God has placed. And we said he does that at nighttime. Your day with God starts at night, the evening morning, evening, morning. And then Genesis 2. Um, how to human, right? We were designed to be a human, made out of God's image, and go and create. And the first thing that he has Adam do in the dominion, in the mastership of humanness, is name the animals. He first addressed what? Loneliness. And he's like, hey, let's not have you be lonely. But what did he not do, Will?
SPEAKER_02He didn't bring him, he didn't bring a community group, didn't bring him a wife, didn't bring him uh, didn't bring him in any type of companionship. Why?
SPEAKER_00What do you think be uh about that stuff? I didn't really get to ask you that last week. So I think why not bring him those things right away?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think that if you if you have those things immediately, I think that they kind of mean nothing. Because then what are you? You're you're you don't look you don't learn to be a master of anything, just like the the same if you you you become a worker and not a thinker.
SPEAKER_00And and what happens is loneliness is gonna happen again in your life. And how many people do not know what to do with loneliness? Exactly. And how many people flee from the tension and and the um how do how do you say it? I I think, yeah, people will automatically go to this victimhood type of posturing when look when they might even smell loneliness approaching. And so God doesn't bring anything around Adam except for you need to know how to be a master in this in this state. And then once he saw this, once Adam found the fluidity of that, he was like, Hey, I'm gonna bring you a helper. And her name was Isha at first. She, meaning her her name was Isha before it was Eve, and we'll get into that today, the name change. And her name meant she who opposes man for his good. And this is where tension is introduced. Tension is not a bad thing. We look at it as a bad thing in the West. We we we we start 401ks to avoid tension. When when all reality is held up by tension, your body structure is held up by tension, the lamin cell, the the buildings are held up by tension, your car, everything is held up by tension. And in the the messianic rabbis teach uh Genesis 2 as these two planks that are together, and you have Adam and you have Esha, right? And if you take one of those planks away, the other one falls. But what is what are those two planks being held up by? Tension. Tension. I mean, it's this unbelievable force of good if we allow it to be, and God has made us powerful enough on that. And so those are the last two episodes. We have three total episodes. This is the fourth one, and the last one before we jump into the New Testament. And so, why did we do Genesis to get our feet wet with this left and right hand of the piano, meaning uh Western optic and an in a Hebrew mosaic, Eastern Optic, allowing the text be the context to get an objective view of the scriptures so that we have an accurate sense of spiritual formation. So, Genesis three today, and we have an interesting beginning here with an interaction between this serpent and Esha at the time.
SPEAKER_02Genesis chapter three, verse one. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. You will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we're not reading all of these chapters, every verse of the chapters, just for the sake of time and understanding what kind of society we live in, and uh kind of a fast food culture. Um, and hopefully we will leave that type of society. Uh, but with this, some of the ways that we've said that we're going to approach scripture is letting the text be the context. So, what do you have to do with that? You have to think Bible, you have to understand who's the author and what is the author trying to do, right? In the West and in cemetery schools, seminary schools, they they really only teach hermeneutics through a one-layer interpretation, expository, line by line, just be linear with it and not ask any questions. Well, there's a talking snake here, right, everybody, and it's not just Narnia C.S. Lewis movie stuff. And how many times have I heard this story? I'm 35, and I've heard this story since I was born, and never one time was I told, hey, Tyler, what do you think about the talking snake? And I'm like, that was first asked of me almost six years ago, and it changed my life. And so the reason why this is important is because what we just got done with with chapter two. Okay, the the scriptures are telling us here that there is a there there's a human interacting, but also with another very human-like thing. This this, but it's calling the scriptures, are making sure that we also know that it's an animal, that it's a beast. And what did Adam just get done doing with animals? He was naming the beasts, naming the beasts, meaning he was domineering the beast, he was commodering everything around him. Because why? That is what the human is created to do for the glory of God, made out of his image, in that you go and be the master. Especially here, the master is over your desires. But here comes this walking, talking, uh reasoning, thinking, knowing how to negotiate a type of animal. But the scriptures are making sure that we know it's not a human. And so I thinking Bible, what is Moses trying to get us to see here? It's the same thing on how to be a human blast week.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's why what's wild is because if you ask any person today what makes a human, they will only they the main thing that they will say is reasoning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which is just ridiculous. And so you you you have this um unbelievable interaction, and uh so many times, and and the reason why people don't stop and think about the talking snake is because one, it's the Bible, right? You don't question the Bible, just take it face value. Well, that's not how the Bible's written, the Bible is structured objectively for you to question it. And so here's a problem. We've all heard this story, and there's a phrase called the lullaby effect. It you you've read these stories so many times, you've read the beginning of Genesis so many times, that it's just a lullaby and it's put you to sleep. So, no way are you gonna think Bible? And if you're doing this in chapter three of the holiness of the scriptures, of the diviness and apparently what we all consider the majesty of the scriptures, if you're doing this and not thinking Bible and not asking why is there a talking snake or even knowing how to do that, where else are you doing this in your life? Uh-oh, that's a problem that no one knows how to self-audit. Nobody knows how to how to ask the questions and even realize how much of a lullaby effect that they're doing with the holiness of the scriptures. So if you're doing, if you have the boldness to do that with the scriptures, of course you're gonna be doing that with your life and other people uh around you in your life. And if you think that you have that type of awareness that you're not gonna do that and you don't think you have to do that with the scriptures, that you're fooling yourself. It's impossible. Taking your own interpretation and going against how the structure of the writing of the holiness of the word is is happening. That's just you, you're you play stupid games, you're gonna get a stupid prize that you probably have already gotten, but you're just a you're just disguising it as a as some type of good thing. So there's there's kind of the first addressing of what's going on, um, why we're not able to think Bibles, because we've we've done a very pious thing where we think we've had both hands at the piano, but we don't even know why there's a talking snake. And again, it's to emphasize of what we talked about in the last episode. The difference between a human and a beast. And what is the difference again? Knowing when. When to what go and what stop.
SPEAKER_02And I think this is so interesting because people will people will be so obsessed with the answer and just have no affection for the journey whatsoever, but the journeys where you change, the journeys where you learn about God, the the journeys where you learn nuance on on on how to do go, on how to do stop. And I I I hope that through things like this, people can start growing their faith so much that they're not afraid to question these.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. If if you if you're able to start doing this, this is why the Bible exists. My gosh. Is for us to be doing it there so that then watch what happens in your life so that you're not addicted to the finish line. And then once you get to the finish line, you're obsessing to go back to the journey because you weren't present, you were anxious, you were depressed, cloudy days were moving you. How movable we all have become, how impressionable we all have become, where even the slightest little beastly thing that isn't even a human is gonna dominate you. That's crazy, it's craziness. And one of the last, one of the last affecting things is of um uh rabbis talk about, and we'll move on to verse 10 here. But rabbis say that Adam committed the first sin by adding on to the commandment to Eve about God never said you're you're not allowed to touch the tree. You could have had a nice book and go sit up next to the tree and lean up lean up against it. God never said if you touch the tree, you'll die. But who told the commandment? Who did God tell the commandment to?
SPEAKER_02Adam.
SPEAKER_00Adam. Who did Adam tell the commandment to?
unknownEve.
SPEAKER_00And so Adam adding on to the commandment to Eve already is showing the lack of humanness, the lack of looking at the tree in the garden and and not being able to know when. And you're looking at the tree and being like, oh, I think God's withholding out on me. When the tree is in all of our gardens every single day, to look at and say, God is not withholding out on me. I can trust this process, I can trust this journey so that I may be present and not just finish line driven with everything in my life. Because that's only going to produce shallow living. That's it. All right, let's go, verse 10.
SPEAKER_02Verse 10, 10 through 12. He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. This was Adam. And he said, Who took and God said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The man said, The woman you put here with me, she gave me some of the fruit from the tree, and I ate it.
SPEAKER_00So hilarious deflection right away, obviously. Um, and we're gonna see the same exact deflection, even though we're not gonna go into this chapter, chapter four with Cain and Abel. Cain is gonna say the same exact thing to God that his dad said about Eve. He's gonna say, Am I my brother's keeper? Yeah, he's gonna do the same exact deflection, and which is an unbelievable study to go into. But with this point here, with this interaction with Adam and God, especially at the beginning here, um, where Adam says, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. Well, what's the problem with that, Will? Naked is their design. Yeah, they were made that way. They were made that way. So why are you all of a sudden now ashamed of that? Why all of a sudden are you uh uh going away from that? Because and this is this is today, right? This is where we don't, your humanness is today's nakedness, and the beastliness is the one that you're trying to cover up what you're doing. The the I'm gonna make myself garments, and then God says, Who told you that? In the original Mosaic text, it means it says, What other voices have you been listening to? So when God says in this, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat? He's saying the the original of this is saying, What other voices? Your soul is only designed for one voice. What voices are you listening to? And man is that happening all over within our friend groups, within our relationships, our families, everywhere. And and what the weird thing is, we all will praise God and sing about God. We want you to be the singular voice. You're our singular direction, you're our singular counselor, you're our singular obedience. You singularly have my life, but what bull crap that is! How do I know it's bull crap? Because of the results. Look at the results of what's going on in this life. How boring everything is. Look at this empire. This is what we've come up with an addiction to every four years, an addiction to needing a camera out every time we serve somebody on Sunday or throughout the week. This is what God's saying. What other voices are you listening to? You don't even know how to go transcend it in the Christ consciousness. You don't even know where I'm moving. You're all trying to start your own stupid things with your stupid garments, and you don't even know how to make clothes. You look dumb. Because of the addiction, I want to hear more voices. Why? Because maybe one of those voices will want to hear my voice. And the love of needing to hear my voice, screw that. That needs to die in all of us. We need to take this warning from God that is still living, still active today, because we're not home. If you're listening to this, we ain't home in heaven. And so this curse, which is this curse bad or good, it's not done.
SPEAKER_01This ain't done, thankfully. So sanctification still needs to be happening.
SPEAKER_00What other voices are you listening to right now? Think about that. What other voices are supposed To be a singular voice, and do you actually what does it look like that you to accurately agree with wanting to listen to just God's voice? Do you want to? Does it satisfy you? Is it contentful? Do you know how are you trying to define what that looks like? Are you is it conditional? How circumstantial is it for you to listen to God's voice? Do you need it to sound just right? Do we kind of love our anxiety a little bit too much? Do we kind of love the rush of and the dopamine of the depression? Of the, or do we kind of love being addicted to being action, action, action?
SPEAKER_01What do you want to be known as? Not to me, not to Will, not to anybus, but to God.
SPEAKER_00When your name pops up on his phone, what is he feeling? And don't you we we cannot assume it's this lovey-dovey goopiness. Because there's so many scriptures where he promises I wish you would stop calling me.
SPEAKER_03Nakedness.
SPEAKER_00And at the end there, you have Adam uh uh the the first affliction. Well, it's this person that you gave me. God, if you would have known, if you would have been, and and this is what we do, right? If I would be like this with my brain cancer, which I've struggled with, I didn't ask for this, God, didn't didn't want, didn't whatever, and not seeing the allowance by God in the partnership to join in on this whole thing with the Holy One. What an adventure! But I'm gonna have the audacity and the nerve to be like, well, if you would have known better, God, again, this is what not knowing how to be a human, not resting in unconditional acceptance in living by other voices will do to you. Where else are you? Do you have the lullaby effect going in your life?
SPEAKER_01And you don't think you do? All right. Well, what are we doing next? We got 20. Verse 20, 23.
SPEAKER_02Let's go to verse 20, everybody. This is this is my one of my favorite parts. Yeah. In in it, because God is so good. This is a good one. Um, Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So yeah, a really heartbreaking scene.
SPEAKER_01Cause you gotta think, we we used to take walks every day with God.
SPEAKER_00Every single day. In the cool of the day, we would meet him, and then one day we didn't show up. When he was ready, when he was ready, and he can't, it's the cool of the day, and he's like, Oh, I can't wait. Let's go walk with Will and Tyler.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01And we and we and we didn't show up.
SPEAKER_03And I I think that we skip over the heartbreak of God over the from this all the time. From what we did. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then what he did in response was the clothing us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because we we do we do skip over the heartbreak, and we we kind of think it's this really angry deity, dad kind of thing, and he's just angry tone. And in the crushing, I mean, in Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 3 through 5, it says, I remember how you used to look at me as a bride. What did I do wrong to your fathers that you have gone so far for me? That is a think about the most heartbreaking, gut-riching thing. And how do you know this? How can you bet on that? Is because he looked at them. And it talks about in other verses on that the angels were talking about. Let's just start over. But he walks away and he sheds blood for the first time. Sure, we can foreshadow that to Christ, but that's not right now, that's not the ultimate point right here, letting the text be the context, because no one knew that that was gonna be happening outside of God. And he sheds blood for the first time and he clothes them. He doesn't take the sword to the neck, he doesn't restart with the angels, he doesn't do any of that.
SPEAKER_03He's like, I'm gonna make this right. And he does an unbelievable thing.
SPEAKER_00And the first time that he ever touches a human, he clothes them. And you know what's crazy? The last time that he ever touches a human is who? Moses. Moses. And what does he do with Moses? He buries Moses after he dies, he buries Moses himself. So the only two times that God of the entire universe, the creator of all things, touches man, physically touches two acts or both mercy and benevolence. That is unheard of. So you have a God in chapter one who starts with you at nighttime with your values, your humanness, then he not only that, he gives you the mastership of this entire world out of the Imago Day, his image. And even after we wrong the partnership and fail the partnership, he still says, I still want to be next to you. And yeah, we left the garden, but who also came with us? God. Unbelievable. He didn't stamp void on the contract. Not only did he not do that, but he closed us. No one else is doing that for me in my life. No one else is doing that for you. No one else will ever be able to come close to that type of love.
SPEAKER_01To to not take the sword and the death that we deserved right on that spot. He's like, come here. Let me give you these clothes. Let me I have you. And yes, there is a curse.
SPEAKER_00But what is the point of the curse? And a lot of people don't even know how to ask this question because we automatically in the West just think curse is bad.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But that's not the point. Thinking curse is bad is not that that is a that is a kind of a pious kind of thing. Because who came with us? God did. And so what is the what's the point then? Maybe the point is to stay close to him. If he put it on to us, and one of the first byproducts of the curse is him clothing us. I'm gonna think that this curse is gonna probably shape out for our good. And now one of the unfortunate things that happened is in verse 20 of Adam changing Isha's name to Eve. And in the names of the Bible, your name is your identity, it's your career, it's your destiny. In the West, we named kids Apple and Blue, which is unfortunate. Maybe we'll get back to reverence of naming children. Uh but Isha, remember, was she was just I looked at and loved because of her presence, her beauty, her, her, her, what she is just is as an existing human. And then Adam, because of the curse, because of what he partook in, and the reality that was brought over his eyes. God never told him to do this, but he changes her name to Eve. To now I'm gonna look at you based off of you, what you can do action-wise in this life, which is not okay. Not okay. And look at what we do. We look at everything in this life, and we disguise it like we're not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Looking at it based off of action. Imagine, imagine if we can get a better relationship with a curse. If we can get a garden intent living in Genesis 1 and 2 in the West. And we can. The tomb's empty. Jesus has broken the curse. We're in the already, but not yet. Yeah, we're not home, but we have the living God inside of us. So heaven is now. So you don't even have to mess with Genesis 3. You can go back to being the essence and treating people and giving meaning, just based off of their value as a human, which God sets. So it should be the highest thing ever. Come on, guys. We can do this. We can do this. Why are we not?
SPEAKER_01Because we don't know how to think the Bible. We don't know how to think God.
SPEAKER_00But may this change. This can change. We just have to look backwards. We have to look that there was a way we that that all of this is, and the Bible is true. So we can't just continue to try to act like we don't want the fast food culture, even though we're addicted to the fast food culture, uproot that, maybe go through some conditioning of uh uh bringing back some journey, some adventure, wrestling with God. If you're not wrestling with God, what the crap are you doing? What are you doing in this life? Does God care about what you're doing? Is he gonna be actually able to tangibly pick up what you're doing at the end of this life? Do you even care about what you're doing? Would you do your job for free? Or are you just stacking cash because having a family nuke because this is what you think you're supposed to do? Where does it say God? Where does God say this? And do you have both hands at the piano and letting the text be the context of what he's saying in that part? Come on, y'all. We got to get this. We have to have a sense of urgency and coming back to Genesis 2. Coming back to the garden.
SPEAKER_01We need to do it now. We have what, 99%? What's the fact of the day?
SPEAKER_0299.9% of our DNA is all the same.
SPEAKER_00Okay, we're family, everybody. We're family.
SPEAKER_01Let's get this going.
SPEAKER_00All of this is for our good. My goodness, what mercy. His first and last act ever in mankind was mercy. Physical acts are mercy.
SPEAKER_02God is good.
SPEAKER_00God's good.
SPEAKER_02I was thinking that all this morning.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's all I got for thank you for your time, bud. When you got God is good, that's all man I got. We can get this. We can get this.
SPEAKER_02Okay. You want me to pray? Please. Father God, seated at the highest place in heaven. Thank you for who you are. We love you so much. Uh, I pray for every every mind and every heart and every spirit that hears this. Um, and also who doesn't hear this, but grow their faith, move their heart towards you. Have them live in the garden. Have them not have to go through the through the voluntary suffering of this life, the the the suffering that that we choose to go through because of our decisions, and have them just come back to you. Thank you for Tyler and his words. Um, it's so helpful and gets our minds swimming. Thank you for the person who's listening to this right now. Um, may your face shine upon them. May you bless them and keep them. And we love you again. Thank you for your son, and in his name, Jesus Yeshua. Amen.