JOHN147 - I Will Give You a New Heart and Put a New Spirit in You

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Everybody, it's Matt.

This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast.

And yesterday we ran just one of the most bizarre hypotheticals in the history of this podcast.

Imagining a conversation between a national Shakespeare laureate, the national teacher of Shakespeare to all the people, and an outsider.

And in that conversation, we imagined what it would be like if the Shakespeare laureate missed on a super absurdity.

obscure Shakespeare reference that the outsider threw out.

And we considered how we'd probably give him a pass for that because Shakespeare wrote a lot of stuff and you're probably not going to remember every single thing.

But then we also considered what it would be like if the outsider ran a quote by the Shakespeare laureate in this hypothetical conversation.

There was something like to be or not to be.

That is the question.

What's the most famous quote from Shakespeare ever? And if the Shakespeare laureate didn't know that one, we would all question the Shakespeare laureate's credentials.

The question that we're really trying to tackle, though, is in John chapter 3, verses 5 through 8, is Jesus referencing something that is more akin to a super obscure Shakespeare quote that you couldn't expect any expert to know? It's just too obscure.

They could look it up and find it.

Or is what Jesus is saying there so obvious and so smoking gun that in the context of his conversation with Nicodemus, somebody who taught the scriptures to Israel, that in that context, it would be more like the equivalent of to be or not to be.

That is the question.

So here is Jesus remarks, the ones in question.

Here we go.