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PODCAST That's a Good Question Mystery of the Nephilim: Decoding the Giants of Genesis May 21, 2024 Jon Delger & Cheyenne Werner Listen to this Episode So Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and a part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc. That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon, I get to serve as a pastor as well as a part of this show. You can always submit questions to peacechurch.cc slash questions. And today I am here with Pastor Mitch. peacechurch.cc/questions . And today I am here with Pastor Mitchell, as well as Cheyenne. Hello. Cheyenne is our women's ministry director at Peace Church, does an awesome job of teaching and leading there and excited for the three of us to get to have a conversation about a hot topic. So at Peace Church, we've been doing a series called the church never preaches on, we're just wrapping that up. And we've done six sessions where our church picked six topics that they wanted to hear about that the church rarely preaches on, at least from their perspective. And this one just about made it into the list, but didn't quite make it into the list. And so we're going to talk about it here today for this episode. It is the topic of the Nephilim. God bless you. Just kidding. I know what we're talking about. That was good. That was good. It does kind of sound like that. If you're not familiar with this topic, I'm going to read the text that it's from. It's from Genesis chapter 6, but people have very varying perspectives on what the Nephilim are, what this passage is talking about. Is it angels? Is it demons? Is it humans? Is it something else? So, I'll read the passage, and then we'll get into it. Here we go. Genesis 6, starting at the beginning. When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the face of the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown." There it is. So I think Nephilim is an idea, but really the question isn't about Nephilim, it's about who are the sons of God, right? That is true. Yeah, usually the question is, like the questions that came in to us were about who are the Nephilim, but you're right. You're right. The real textual question is who are the sons of God. Yeah, because there are three major ways to view this, right? The first and maybe the most controversial, but also maybe the oldest, is that the sons of God were angels. The second would be that they're from the line of Seth, and the third is that they are kings or royalty around this time. What about superheroes? Is that one of the... Superman, Batman, Spider-Man? Yeah, that wasn't any of the ones I saw from any theologians I read. No. Just checking. Yeah. Mighty Men, Men of Renown, it does sound superhero-ish. Yeah. If you ask the History Channel, maybe they're the ancient aliens, who knows? Oh, I saw that one! No, no, no, no! That's a real... That's a real one. That's a real one. I mean, I don't know how serious it is, but it's a real one. All right, so lay one of these perspectives out for us. So one of the views is that they are the angels. It comes from the Book of Enoch, which is a book outside of the canon. It's a book that we would not say is scripture. And the idea is that they—it spells it out in the Book of Enoch. Also then, the argument is built on that 2 Peter and Jude accept the story of the book of Enoch, and that 2 Peter mentions that God did not spare angels when they sinned. Jude, verses 6 and 7, refer to angels who did not keep their own domain but left their proper abode, similar to the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. And then we also see the use of the term sons of God referring to angels, particularly in Job, and then also this idea of the mighty men being in Psalms, the same Hebrew word in Psalms 29, 1, and then in Psalm 89, verse 7. Okay, I have a question. In Job, when it refers to angels and sons of God, is it angels or fallen angels that it's referring to? I'm just, do you know? I'm just trying to stitch together some big questions. It is a good question. Off the top of my head, I think we don't necessarily know because I think it's talking about the whole heavenly host. Because you got, I mean, your first glance would think that it's just angels, but then you got Satan is among them. Yeah. And he speaks up, and that's how we get into the story of Job. Job 1 verse 6 says, Now there was a day when the sons of man came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them." And so it seems... The sons of man? The sons of God. Oh, okay. Did I say sons of man? Okay. It's the sons of God. Okay, so we don't know... Yeah, so that's a big one that I hear, is that that's why people say in Genesis 6 the sons of God is angelic beings, because of what Job says. Yeah. Challenges to this would be the idea that angels having sexual relations is not part of any sort of Hebrew thought and it is not part of any there there aren't any parallels in scripture that back that up. So why would people feel passionately that this is that this is about angels about fallen angels? That might be the greatest that's a good question that I've ever had on this podcast. I don't know. That is a good question. Yeah. So what motivates people? So yeah, this is the major perspective. I think if you're going to... Yeah, what's important to them? Like, why is it important to them? Yeah. I think if you look up this topic on YouTube or on the internet, the major view you're going to find is people saying that this is fallen angels that somehow or another came onto the earth and had relations with human women and produced offspring. Now, honestly, actually, that's one of the questions I have is about how exactly that works, because I think you actually have to make a couple of jumps in the text to make that work, because it says that the son of God came down. You know, so it describes, so if you say that that's angelic beings, you kind of have to make another jump and jump to, and that's what some people do, is they say those angelic beings, actually demons, fallen angels, came and possessed human bodies and then had relations with women. So they had to kind of add that step in there in order to make it make sense, I think, biologically or whatever phrase we would use to describe that. But to your question, why do they want to talk about that? My guess is that they want to be able to talk about the spiritual forces at work in our world. And that's right because they're absolutely spiritual forces at work in our world. There are angels, there are demons, those things are totally real. Spiritual warfare is a real thing. Those things are absolutely at work in the world. Where we're going to land at the end, I'm going to say, I don't think you need to interpret this passage that way in order to say that. I think one of the things that you can focus on when you're reading this, and for me, it feels like you get kind of tripped up. It says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and so it seems like, oh, on the earth, as opposed to maybe they weren't on the earth before. And so maybe that phrase feels a little sticky, but I wonder if what it's actually the emphasis of that to be is the in those days and also afterward because numbers, numbers 33? I could be wrong. Yeah, I think it's 13. 13? I think there's a three in there. Talks about the Nephilim and that when the spies entered Canaan for the first time, they reported back and said that there were giants, there were Nephilim in the land. And so we're about to see that that mankind's gonna be wiped out by a flood, right? But here we see that the nephilim... Is this the same nephilim? I guess maybe that's my question is how did the Israelites interpret it? We'll be right back after this break. Hi, I'm Elizabeth, one of the co-hosts of MomGuilt, a podcast with new episodes every Monday. Mom Guilt is a podcast about the daily struggles of motherhood. Stephanie and I share real experiences of Mom Guilt and how we have found freedom from that guilt through the gospel. Listen to us on ResoundMedia.cc or wherever you find podcasts. Yeah, the most common understanding is that this was a metaphorical use of, in Leviticus, it was a, or in Numbers, sorry, it was a metaphorical use of that term Nephilim to refer to them as these giant people. Yeah. And not a literal Nephilim. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I think even going back towards, you know, talking about Genesis 6, reading this in context, I think is also really important. Like, what is the point of Genesis 6? Genesis 6, 1 through 4, and Genesis 6 right before the flood. The point is that mankind has fallen, right? And so it would be weird if this indictment against mankind also included these other It seems most consistent to think this is also part of mankind, that these Nephilim, whoever they are, are humans, and that's why they're included. I think that fits too with Imago Dei, you know, that we humans are created in the image of God versus angels or fallen angels who are not, that we have been set apart in that way. But I like what, I mean, yeah, exactly what you're saying, the whole context of Genesis, we have God creates mankind in his own image. Mankind falls, they rebel against God, and God gives this promise to Eve, to the serpent, to Adam, and one of those promises is that the offspring of the woman would be the Messiah, would crush the snake, right? And so even like going from there, you see she has her sons Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel. She had been thinking that one of her sons might be that offspring. And so she even said... I'd kill Cain if I were Abel. Oh boy, were you waiting for that? Were you getting excited for that as I'm talking about this? As a pastor, that's one of my favorite Bible jokes. I have not heard it before, so well done. I will remember that. But she even calls Cain, I have gotten a man. So she's thinking like, oh, shoo, now the curse can be reversed. Yeah. Jon, are you still chuckling to yourself? I'll try not to. I don't get to use that very often. Oh man. So Cain's no good, Abel's dead, and then she has another son, Seth. And Seth, she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him. And then you go into the, well you have two, you basically have two genealogies, right? Who loves to read genealogies? Does anybody love to read genealogies? I actually love... Do you? In Genesis I think it's beautiful, but I'm a nerd so that makes sense. Yeah, okay I kind of do too. Not all of them, but in Genesis I think that there's something here for us. I think that there's something here for us. So in Genesis 4 you see the genealogy of Cain and it's not looking great. It ends on Lamech, who takes two wives, not good, and is very violent and says, if Cain's revenge is sevenfold, Lamech's is 70-fold. You know, this is not... Bragging about murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not a good dude. And then right after that, you have the line of Seth. Yeah. And it says that in those days, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. So Seth is contrasted to Cain and then in Seth's, it's even interesting in Seth's genealogy. Sorry guys, that I'm going on so long about genealogies, but hopefully there can be something here that I think this is interesting. It talks about like, so and so fathered so and so he had sons and daughters and he died and so and so and it goes on this and he died and he died and he died. John, you're like waiting for the, like, where does this, where is she going with this? Right? Here's where I'm going with this. It's like that offspring still hasn't come. They still died. And in fact, it's gotten so bad now that we are in a dark and desperate place because the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. So really like the Snephilim, right, is I think I see it as the genealogies are pointing to this desperate place of intermarriage of the sons of God and the daughters of men and forgetting who God is and forgetting how God created and the need for God to step in about it. Yeah, to chase that even further, you know, the idea of genealogies, I think that the entire book of Genesis, if you think about what kind of genre it is, it's obviously historical narrative, but the more specific would be it's a genealogy of the line of this woman. And then we see the rest of the Old Testament getting ready for the coming of Jesus, who was the person who would crush the head of the snake, which is beautiful. Yeah. So all that is really important context for Genesis 6. So like you guys are saying, there's this big genealogy leading up to it, and then what happens immediately afterwards is the whole earth is destroyed by a flood. Yeah. So in a lot of ways we could say I think the point of the beginning of Genesis 6 is to say that this is this is like the last thing the predication before the flood. Yeah. This is what happens. So can I give one more smoking gun as to why I think that this is clearly not angels. Oh so you're gonna give away already we're out on this one. Are we past that? We're kind of giving away where we're at. Yeah, I think that. Okay. I'm coming down. I'm saying I don't think that these are angels. And my smoking gun for this is that Christ states that angels do not marry. Right. Matthew 22, Mark 12, Luke 20, all say that angels do not marry. And I think when Jesus says something as well as the rest of scripture. It means a lot, so I'm gonna put my- You think only the red letters mean a lot? No, that's not what I'm saying. That isn't what I was saying. Oh, okay. But yeah, I think for me, seeing that, I think we can see the rest of scripture helping us to interpret scripture. We see that this is not angels, and I'm ready for the emails. So, all right, so just to summarize. So one of the probably hottest or most controversial positions, but also I don't know what the, if it's the majority position is, but when you hear about the most, I think because it's so supernatural and, and, and epic and dramatic. Yeah. The most fantastic reading. Fantastic. That's a good word. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the most fantastic reading of the text is to say that these are fallen angels who who probably possess man's bodies and then have relations with women and produce offspring and those end up being these superhuman creatures. And eventually people say that like Goliath came from that line, stuff like that. So that is a major position. And I can see how people would get there, looking at Job and using that use of the word sons of God. You can look at other parts of scripture that talk about supernatural beings and even point back to supernatural beings existing around the time of the flood and that kind of thing. But there isn't any, you do have to add a lot to this text in order to say that. It doesn't say in the text itself that that's what's going on. And even these other passages that people refer to, 1 Peter 3, 2 Peter 2, Jude 6, Job, Daniel 3, just any of these passages people look at, you know, they don't, they still don't say this. You have to add a lot in, I think, to get to this interpretation. Yeah, and we're not against the fantastic parts. Like, we're not saying this because we're against the supernatural aspects of Scripture, right? But we're saying we don't also need to impose supernatural aspects where they probably aren't either. Right. Yeah. I think it's clear there is spiritual warfare happening here, right? Without having to interpret that in that way. Yeah, absolutely. All right, you guys want to lay out? What's another position? So the other one is that the sons of God are the line of Seth. I think that this is probably the most historically used one in terms of historic orthodoxy, that this is probably the most popular one. It's the idea that when it talks about sons of God, these people are, this is the line of Seth that comes from that chapter that genealogy. Yeah, the strongest, I think, evidence for this is that it's talking about the warning against marrying unbelievers, which is a theme throughout the Pentateuch. Does that make sense? I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah, so like Cheyenne outlined, Genesis 4 and 5, which are two passages, I think those are two chapters of the Bible that people were probably like, man, what in the world happens in Genesis 4 and 5? I remember before I kind of stumbled upon understanding what the role of those two chapters were in the story of Genesis, I couldn't have told you off the top of my head what those chapters were. But they're the progression of the two lines, Cain and Seth. And so given that context, you outlined it perfectly. That's the context, is that we've got these two lines progressing, and I think Genesis 6, it just makes the most sense to say, yeah, and then we see the ruining of those two. You know, we had a godly line, and then we had an exceptionally sinful line, sort of like the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, that Genesis 3 sort of forecasts. And then now they get mixed, and Genesis 6 is saying, yep, and corruption is just pervasive in the world. All human beings, there's no longer, you can't even say that there's this great godly line and there's this line that's turned away from the Lord. It's just, sin is everywhere. All human beings are infected. Sin has just pervaded the world. And now something dramatic is going to happen. Yeah. And that's what you see the difference that happens in 5 is from, at that time, people began to call upon the Lord, to these generations and generations too. And then very rapidly, something happened through those generations, right, to the point of the desperation. It was only evil all the time. Yeah. So you'd be in good company having this belief. Guys like Clement of Alexandria, an early church father from 100 AD, Origen from 184 480 and St. Augustine from the early 400s all believed that this was the correct way to interpret this. So, those are guys that knew a ton, really godly early church fathers. And so, we can draw from their wisdom on this. Good company to be in. Nice. Totally. I stand on that side of the room. Yeah, right. To add, so the sons of God, you know, trying to understand that phrase, some people make the argument from Job about it being angelic beings. Just to give counterpoints to that, here's a couple of passages that refer to the sons of God as being God's children, human beings like the people of Israel. Deuteronomy 14.1, Isaiah 1.2, and Hosea 1.10 all refer to sons of God, the children of God being human beings among God's people. Yeah, I think this is one that if you want to land on this, this makes a ton of sense. This is a great, a great way to understand this. Yeah, and I think for me, just the most basic reason is just that when you look at a text, I think look at the context. And if the if the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense. That's an adage I was taught early on in interpreting the Bible. And I think that's just that when you read Genesis 4, 5, and 6 in order like that and you just just look at them as a whole, as a connected story, I think this is the interpretation that makes the most sense. And if it makes sense, then let's not try to add in some of these other elements that maybe don't actually fit. But again, I'll just say this is one of those passages that I feel like I don't, I could be, I feel like we could get to heaven and I could be showing that I was wrong on this one. Now, I feel pretty strongly about where I'm at. I feel like this is the best interpretation of the text, but I could be wrong. Right. I feel pretty confident too, but I don't feel passionate to the place of feeling like people are unfaithful to the text to be real. There's one other way to understand this. Oh, another one. Yes. We keep going. I didn't even realize. This is that the sons of God are rulers or kings. This comes from ancient Near East texts and evidence that we find. The idea that these kings really commonly referred to themselves as the son of a divine being. And so the idea that this is how, like Pharaoh, another guy who did this goes far back as a guy named Angel. He referred to him the king, the son of his God. That was his inscription on his tomb. Sumo, Sumerian, really old civilization. You're just making up these words. No, I'm not. This is all real. But, you know, the idea, yeah, that this is coming from these men who were taking too many wives, really that this text would be condemning polygamy and saying that this is a place where these rulers were abusing women and not following God's order for creation and flourishing. Very interesting. So, what can we learn from this passage? I would say against polygamy. I think if you believe polygamy, you have to believe that Genesis 6 is talking about angels. You can't support polygamy and think that these are human beings. Interesting. Yeah. I'm against polygamy. I'm just going to come out there and say that on the record right now. That's great. The Bible's against polygamy. Yeah. I'm all for that. Yeah. I think that's one really easy one. But I think another way to look at it is to see that this is the line of a great people that ended up falling back into sin. And I think it's that narrative that we see all throughout the Old Testament that it is not within people to save themselves. There wasn't a way to find salvation, to find a way to crush the head of the serpent by themselves. That's the story of Genesis. I mean, it ends with us going, you know, none of these people are it. And really, that's the way the Old Testament ends is, we didn't find the guy. Right. One of the parallels, I wrote down the exact verse references. So Genesis 6-2 versus Genesis 3-6. So just the commonality even in language in those two verses about how human beings fell into sin. So the Genesis 3 references to Eve being tempted and falling into sin. The Genesis 6 references to the sons of God falling, being tempted and falling into sin. Just that, yeah, so even though in early Genesis there was this line of this family and generations of people who were trying to follow the Lord, they still fell into sin. Human beings are broken, we're sinful, we desperately need a savior. We can't save ourselves. Yeah, yeah. It shows us our, yeah, you know, was it verse 6 that says, and the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. You know, the idea of our sinfulness is grievous to God. And this is a story, this is just a snapshot of that evil. And if we think that we are any better than we are, are so wrong. Our sin grieves God. Yeah. And let me add another practical application to that, just thinking about even just the generations and families. If you think about how can human beings fight against sin and be faithful, and how do we – sometimes I think about it this way as a pastor. I think about how do we have a church that just remains faithful? How do I protect the church from future generations remaining faithful to the Lord? And there are things that I can do towards that and that all of us can do to contribute, whether it's in our family or in our church, towards remaining faithful in the next generation. But every generation is also gonna face its own temptations and challenges, and every generation has to fight to be faithful. I feel like that's another lesson of this, is that you can't lean on your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents. You can't lean on past generations in a church. Every generation has to be vigilant. Yeah. Has to remember that they have to stand up and fight temptation and fight sin and be faithful to the Lord. Yeah. I think, sorry. I think one of those ways is it matters who you marry. Mm-hmm. And we already alluded to that. But like that is- I think it's the second most important decision you make. You know, yeah. But that is what we see, the downfall of Israel and judge I mean, gosh, the whole Old Testament is like rinse repeat. That's the problem. It's just constantly they cannot stay faithful to Marrying other believers other other Members of the covenant community of God, but they continually are marrying people who worship foreign gods. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Going back to that, you know, generational aspect, you know, I think it's true because we can inherit a cultural context or a lens on how we see the world through our parents. Our parents could have done a specific thing, practiced a specific way of discipline or conflict resolution or you know, you name it, right? And oftentimes that goes unchecked. Just we file that away as like, oh, that's normative and that goes unnoticed and then that manifests in how we raise our children, how we handle conflict, how we, you know, again, whatever. And breaking that, going back to scripture, finding the scriptural basis for how we are ought to live. That's the job of every Christian. It's wonderful when we have Christian parents who can teach us the right things, but it is a great place for us to, as Christians, we need to always examine our lives against the text and change when we're in conflict. Well, hey, great conversation. Thanks so much, Mitch and Cheyenne. It's been awesome getting to talk about it. Thanks everybody for listening. Hopefully this has been helpful to you as you think about this crazy topic of the Nephilim, this thing in Scripture that is talked just a little bit about, but that does get some publicity from time to time as we think about what does it mean for our world. Does it talk about demons or is it actually talking about human beings and whether we stay faithful to the Lord or disembark into sin. So hey, if you have more questions, peacechurch.cc slash questions. You can find us at resoundmedia.cc. Again we are taking the summer off, but we'll do a few episodes here and there throughout the summer. Look forward to seeing you again in September. Have an awesome week. Have an awesome week. You can find That's A Good Question at resoundmedia.cc or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mitchell Leach Mitchell is the editor and producer of Mom Guilt podcast, That's a Good Question, and Live Leadership. He also hosts, produces, and edits his Retireing and Aspiring podcast on the Resound Podcast Network. Mitchell and his wife Elizabeth (co-host of the Mom Guilt podcast) live in Hudsonville, Michigan, and have three children. Most Recent Content from Mitchell Leach The News To The World Watch Sermon What Do I Do With My Guilt? Watch Sermon

Sermon Discussion Questions 1 Title Sunday, December 8, 2024 Go Tell It On The Mountain Luke 1:39-45 The News To His Relatives 2 Overview Main Idea: The reaction of his relatives shows us the right response to Christmas is joy! Sermon Outline: ELIZABETH'S JOYFUL REACTION TO CHRISTMAS! 1. Elizabeth is moved by the Spirit (vv39-41) 2. Elizabeth is humbled by the moment (vv42-48) 3. Elizabeth is blessed by the Lord (vv44-45) 3 Pre-Questions When was the last time you experienced pure joy? What caused it, and how did it impact your heart and mind? How do you typically respond to good news? Are you more likely to celebrate, reflect quietly, or respond with caution? Why do you think that is? 4 Questions Elizabeth calls Mary “blessed” and points to her belief in God’s promises. How does recognizing God’s blessings increase our own joy? Reflect on Psalm 16:11, which says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” How can you live more aware of God’s presence to experience this fullness of joy? Joy is listed as a fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. What steps can you take to invite more of the Spirit’s influence in your life, especially during this Christmas season? How does your personal definition of joy compare with biblical joy that comes from the Holy Spirit? How does the Christmas story model the idea that joy comes from humility? Consider Jesus’ birth in a manger and Elizabeth’s humble recognition of Mary’s role in God’s plan. Reflect on 1 Peter 5:6, which says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” How does humility position us to experience joy? PDF Download

From Brokenness to Renewal Sermon Series: The Reversal Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: John 3:1-8 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, Amen. So we are in our Lent and Easter series right now. We're calling it the reversal as we look at just that. We look at how Christ, through the power of the gospel, brings about the great reversal. We're seeing how the gospel brings us back to everything good. Now listen, if you listen to me preach long enough, you probably realize that I don't typically gravitate towards preaching the more well-known passages and books of the Bible. I like to go to the places that are more what I call remote. But for this sermon series, we're looking at what is probably the most famous, well-known book of the entire Bible, the Gospel of John. So I'm stepping outside my comfort zone. If I can do it, you can do it too. So let's go ahead and just open our Bibles right now to the Gospel of John. Up and now until, from now until Easter, this is the book that we'll be in. But today we're looking at not just one of the most well-known books of the Bible, we're looking at one of the most well-known passages of the Bible. And that's when Jesus tells Nicodemus that we must be born again. But, but, but I'm really concerned about something right now. I'm highly concerned that many of us just tuned out because what Christian doesn't know the passage about being born again? Pastor, we learned that in Sunday school. Pastor, we know that story. If that's you, let me just say something in love to you right now. You have to open yourself up right now to the fact that the Holy Spirit may just do a new work right here and right now with an old passage. So even though you may know the story, you may be able to even recite this story. I'm telling you, by the power and presence of the Spirit, there is always an eternal truth to be mined whenever we come to the pages of Scripture. So maybe for just a moment, let's approach this passage with a humble heart, fresh eyes, and open mind to see what God has for us today. Now, common mistake, the Gospel of John was not written by John the Baptist. The Gospel of John was written by John the Apostle, the man who lived, walked, and talked with Jesus for three years, the youngest of all the disciples. And the Gospel of John records probably arguably one of, if not the, most famous things that Jesus ever said, that we must be born again. What that means, we're going to see this today, what that means is that we can be brought from brokenness to renewal. So jump to chapter three. As we look at the first three verses, or I'm sorry, the first eight verses here today. Now real quickly before we read this, because this is such a well-known, culturally well-known passage, I asked a bunch of my friends who are not Christians what they thought of if someone were to tell them that they were born again. I asked like four or five of my friends who are not Christians and they don't really know each other. And it was odd that they all basically said the exact same thing. I'll summarize. But I asked I asked four or five of my non-Christian friends, what do you think when someone tells you they're born again? You want to know what they said? They all basically said, well, I would think that that means that they are a religious conservative. I'll tell you right now, I'm not saying be ashamed of the fact that you're conservative, but I'm saying that is not the point of Jesus telling us to be born again. We're not born again to go from broken to religious. We're born again is, if that's what Christians are projecting to this world, that to be born again means that you are a religious conservative, then maybe you didn't learn the lesson in Sunday school. And maybe we need to look at this again with a humble heart, open mind, and fresh eyes. And so I'm gonna ask you, if you are able, would you please stand for the reading of God's word, the gospel according to John chapter 3 verses 1 to 8. Would you hear God's Word? Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Amen. This is God's word. Would you please remain standing as we say a quick prayer? Father of glory, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, would you please help us to look at this well-known passage again with a humble heart, fresh eyes, and an open mind. Help us to see the Sunday school truth that is here, but also help us to know the eternal truth and the eternal value that we may have missed along the way. Lord I pray that everyone here may know the beauty of the great reversal that comes when we are born again. For we pray these things in Jesus mighty name. And everyone said, Amen. Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. Very simple, short, beautiful truth for us here this morning. Our main idea is simply this. The gospel brings us from broken to religious. It brings us from broken to renewed, to born again. Not renewal as in you need to get the tabs on your truck renewed. Renewed as in we are born again. We are made new. We are reborn. But before we move on, the question's already being begged right here. Why do we even need to be born again? Well, I think you might know exactly why. Because you know when you look out in the world, things are broken out there. You know when you look in the mirror or even more, even more truthfully, when you look in your own hearts, you know that you're not perfect. But listen, it's more than just not being perfect, and it's more than just the world being a bad place. There is a deep, deep, profound brokenness out there, and in here, and the Bible calls this sin, and the scriptures tell us that sin, sin kills. Sin may seem sweet, but it actually is a killer. Sin leads to death. That for us who are in our sin, we are dead in our sins. Now listen, sins are not just actions against God. I think most people understand that. Sin is not just action against God. Sin, capital S, sin is the current state of things. Sin is the state of the world and is the state of any person not been made new by the blood of Jesus. We both have sin and we both actually sin and listen The solution to our brokenness the solution to the brokenness out there is so much more It's not about fixing things. I Think it's pretty clear. We've proven we cannot fix things No amount of receiving education or winning elections is fixing anything We cannot fix this. It has to be made new. That includes you, that includes me, and that includes the world. And this is what Jesus means when he says that we need to be born again. We need to be made new. We need a renewal to our lives. Most people in our world, in our culture, Christian, non-Christian, have heard the term born again. But let's ask what Jesus means. Let's go back to the source. So eight verses today, we'll look at three things from this passage. And the first one is this. As we consider going from brokenness to renewal, first thing is this. Go to Him personally. Go to Him personally. We just asked it. What does Jesus mean? Not what does the culture think, but what does Jesus say? We need to listen to him personally, but I will tell you right now, this is really hard in our world. There's a recent conversation that happened on a podcast between two people, and I really, really wanted to listen to this podcast. And it was a conversation that happened between a man named Charlie Kirk and Gavin Newsom. Charlie Kirk is among the most prominent young conservative voices in the American landscape. And Gavin Newsom, of course, is the Democratic liberal governor of the state of California. They sat down for a conversation and did a podcast together, and I really wanted to listen to their conversation. So what did I do? I jumped online and I tried to find it. But do you know what I found first? I found an infinite number of videos and voices all talking about the conversation, but I had a hard time finding the actual podcast. What I found was soundbites and opinions. What I found was reaction videos and commentary, but I couldn't find the source. Why? Because that's our world. We are more concerned with what people think about what happened than what actually happens. And we are told what to think and how to respond before we even get a chance to investigate ourselves. And in fact, that comes with a lot of suspicion in our day. If you actually want to investigate for yourself before you come up with an opinion, that comes with a lot of suspicion because the cultural leaders are telling us exactly what to think about everything that happens. And if you don't buy in, then you will pay the consequences culturally for that. But I'm telling you, go to Jesus personally. Because this happens in religion too. We're told what to think and how to think. But the beauty about the Christian faith is we will freely give you the source. We got Bibles here, we got plenty of Bibles here. If you don't have one, I will get you one today. And you can open it up and you can read this for yourself. I will tell you right now, don't believe what I say about Jesus. You go to Him personally. That's what Nicodemus does. Let's look at the first couple verses here. John chapter 3 verses 1 and 2. Verse 1. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. Right off the bat, we're given three important things about Nicodemus. Real quickly, number one, he was a Pharisee. Pharisees were the highly respected religious leaders of their day. Yes, Jesus calls them out for their hypocrisy, but you cannot deny they were respected among the people. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Secondly, his name, Nicodemus, that's not a Jewish Pharisee. So what happened was is during Jesus' time, Jews from the upper class would give their children both Greek names and Jewish names. But the fact that Nicodemus is going by his Greek name probably signifies his status or at least his affinity for Greek culture and Greek philosophy. It also says that he's a ruler of the Jews. Now what that means is he was part of a group known as the Sanhedrin. He was part of the Sanhedrin. This was the governing body of the Jews at that time. So let's put it into our context. Let's put it into a little bit more relatable terms. Nicodemus was a highly respected pastor who came from the upper class who sat on city council. Now I don't know if that makes you love him or hate him, But either way, you cannot deny the fact that this man had profound influence in his time. And yet, he comes to Jesus personally. Verse 2, this man came to Jesus by night. Didn't want anyone to see it, did you, Nicodemus? He came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him. Again, I tell you what, love him or hate him, Nicodemus does what so many people are unwilling to do, he goes to Jesus personally. But when he does, this is where the story takes an interesting turn. So this highly respected leader and influencer of the people comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness to speak with Jesus but was it really just to say Jesus we know that God is with you I think if you read this text you'll see that that seems like the sort of acknowledgment that was a setup for something else that Nicodemus wanted to say but Jesus doesn't give him time to say it because Jesus does what Jesus does. He's like, Nicodemus, let me stop you right there, my man. It's almost like Jesus is saying, Nicodemus, you're right in saying that I'm from God, you're right in recognizing my miracles, but stop right there because don't you dare think that I'm just a teacher. And this is where, when we go to Jesus personally, this is where we need to learn from him carefully. I just want to say real quickly, to my friends and people in the house right here right now who are not Christians, number one, I'm so happy that you're here. It makes me very happy that you're here. I pray I say something of eternal value to you. But if you're not a Christian, I want you to hear me. We Christians, we don't always get it right. We don't do it perfectly, and we're not all that we should be. But Jesus is. So look past what social media says about him, look past the cultural expectations that surround him, look past Christians who don't do it perfectly, and would you please just consider Jesus and learn from him carefully. All that Nicodemus can get out is, we know you're from God, and then verse 3 happens, and verse 3 again is among, if not the most famous thing that Jesus ever said. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of the, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So whatever Nicodemus was there for, this is the conversation he's now getting. And I can almost see the surprise on Nicodemus' face as Jesus not just takes control of the conversation, but he takes it in a new direction. Verse four, Nicodemus said to him, I'm sure with a little bit of bewilderment on his face, Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Listen, that may sound silly, but that's an honest and fair question. That's an honest, fair response to what Jesus just said. But notice, Jesus does not clarify. Jesus dives deeper. Verse 5, Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. So listen here, Nicodemus tries to get Jesus to make this teaching a little bit more palatable, but Jesus goes on to make it more profound. Unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Hold on a second, I thought this was the Jesus who welcomes everybody. Sure seems like he's drawing a line in the sand right now. What does this mean, being born of water and spirit? Water and spirit, now this is where our Baptist friends are going to get a little excited because every time they see the word water in the Bible they're going to think it means baptism. Not always the case actually my friends. You can't really get that from this passage. Jesus isn't speaking about baptism. When Jesus speaks of being born of water and spirit, I think if you look at the context, the context points more to the notion that Jesus is answering Nicodemus and he's trying to draw a distinction between natural birth and spiritual rebirth. It's like Jesus is saying, you can't just be born, you have to be born again. Unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is, verse six, that which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of spirit is of the spirit. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Meaning, Jesus is saying, you get to be part of the kingdom of humans if you're born of a human. But you can only be part of the kingdom of God if you're born of God. So here's the question. What does this mean? And also, how do we even do this? Well, this is where we must remember if you have a question on the Bible, the first thing you should do is not Google it. You got a question on the Bible, keep reading. You got a question on the Bible, just keep reading. Go to him personally. Learn from him carefully. And thirdly, as we think about going from brokenness to renewal, believe in him specifically. Jesus continues this conversation with Nicodemus. Look at verse 7. Notice this. I'm gonna pull something out here that I think is kind of fantastic. Verse 7, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. Verse 8, the wind blows where it wishes, you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. Now listen, this is where Jesus brings the conversation so deep that we're not just below the surface, we are in a whole new world, Aladdin. What Jesus is telling us... It wasn't that funny. We are. You need to understand what Jesus is telling us is something even greater than if he was opening and unveiling the secrets of the universe. It's even greater than that. What Jesus is doing is he's showing us how to enter the kingdom of God and that is greater. But what Jesus says here, this part always gets me. Sometimes you just gotta be a little bit more patient when you read the Bible. There's some interesting things here. This part always gets me. Jesus is like, don't marvel at this. And then he goes on to talk about how marvelous it is. This is what's so beautiful about this. He talks about how mysterious this is. How can we not marvel at this? Look at verse 7 and 8 again. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirits." It's like, okay, Jesus, what's going on here? But I'll tell you, this is what I love about the teachings of Jesus. Jesus just has this way of making the mysterious so relatable. He's like, listen, I know you may, you might not fully understand this, but there's already so much you don't fully understand and yet accept. You know the wind, you hear the wind, it comes over you, but you can't control it. In our prideful world, you know, we talk about harnessing the power of the wind. That's a joke. We don't harness the power of the wind. We can barely tap into it, but we don't control it. Jesus is like, just like the winds. What we are talking about cannot be seen, but that doesn't mean it cannot be known, felt, or experienced. To be born again is to be born of the Spirit. We're talking about spiritual truths here. This means that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be made new, we can be remade, renewed, reborn. Jesus is clear, we're talking about spiritual work here. Have you ever been there for the birth of a baby? They come out kinda gross. They need to be washed. Newborn babies need washing, but they don't wash themselves. And likewise, born-again Christians don't wash ourselves. This is the power of the Spirit in our lives, that spiritually we are washed of our sins so that we can have a renewed life before God. And this is done by the power of the Spirit and by the washing with the blood of Jesus. Now listen to me. If you've been at church for a long time, you just heard that and you just passed over what I just said. But if you're unfamiliar with what I just said, that sounds everything from weird to gross. Washed with the blood of Jesus? What are you even talking about? Here's what we mean when we talk about being washed with the blood of Jesus. That Jesus Christ, on the cross, died in our place for our sins. That his blood was spilt as a penalty that we should have assumed for our own sin. Christ paid it for us. And when his blood was spilled, that's what we mean, that we are washed by his blood. That through Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, through the gospel, my friends, through Christ, we are no longer lost to the brokenness of this world or to our own sin. That through Christ, we can be made new. We can be reborn. We cannot be fixed. But by the blood of Jesus Christ we can be born again and that's better. So my friends, here's the question, plain and simple. Have you been born again? Meaning, have you traded your old life of sin and condemnation and received the free gift of salvation that is only available through Jesus Christ who willingly gave up his life for you? Have you been born again? Have you accepted what God freely offers to you? I will ask you, I don't know why or how anyone could pass this up, what do you love more that you want to hold on to that over what God himself is giving you through the blood of his Son and through the power of the spirits. Here's my question for you, have you been born again? For me, this happened in November of 1997. I was a senior in high school and I had recently started attending a youth group with some friends who invited me. I was going to the youth group at TVC in Hastings. I was going to there for a few months and a few months of hearing the gospel, a few months of my friends sharing the gospel with me, and it was one night after youth group had ended. Youth group was over and me and my friends, we were hanging out there late at church. Like everyone had left, all the leaders had left, and we were just hanging out there. The 90s were a different place, I'm just telling you. That happened today. Somebody's getting written up. Like, we were just hanging out in the youth room, just me and a small group of my friends. And, uh, the janitor comes in because of course he's wanting to shut down the place so he can go home. So he, he walks into the youth room and he, me and my friends are sitting there talking and he walks in and he says, all right, boys, time to wrap it up. Time to head home, I gotta close down the place. So we were like, okay, yeah, so we get up and we're starting to get our stuff on and he says, hold on a second. He says, hold on a second. He says, I feel like the Holy Spirit is leading me to ask if one of you need to be born again. I'm telling you, this is the gospel truth story. And the hair on my arms went straight up. And I knew, I knew he was talking about me. He says, does someone here need to get born again? And I said, I think you're talking about me, sir. He looked at me and he said, I thought so. And he comes up to me, he says, son, do you know the gospel? Yeah, I know the gospel. He said, is it time for you to receive what Jesus has done for you? Is it time for you to be born again? I said, yes, sir. He said, take a knee. So he took a knee, we took a knee, he took a knee right next to me, and my friends all gathered around me. And I remember he looked at me and he said, boy, I'm gonna lead you in a prayer, but don't you just repeat after me. You make this prayer your own, you understand? I said, yes. He said, then repeat this after me. And we prayed together. And I don't remember like word for word the prayer, but it was something like this. He would say a phrase and I would say it after him. Lord, I know that I'm a sinner in need of a savior. And Jesus, that savior is you. And so I confess with my mouth and I believe in my heart that you died for me and you rose again. I know that I could not earn this salvation that you freely give to me now. By the blood of your sacrifice, I am now made clean and welcomed into the kingdom of God as a son of God with a place at the table prepared for me. Thank you for saving me. I give you my life now asking that you will walk with me all my days until the day you call me home in Jesus name By the power of the Spirit. Amen My friends I'm telling you there was no pastor there that night it was the custodian You don't need me to be the one. What you need is Jesus. Listen to me, it was the janitor that led me to Christ, but it was not the janitor that saved me that night. It was Jesus Christ and him specifically, because I believed in him specifically. And my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but holy lean on Jesus name That night by the power of the spirit. I was born again. I Was brought from brokenness to renewal well listen. Do you think I've been perfect since then? How do you know? What you're saying no for? Absolutely not Getting saved doesn't mean you automatically becomes perfect, but it does mean that the Spirit starts working in you. You will ever be sanctified, ever be made holy until that day that you are welcomed finally fully and forever into the Kingdom of God. And that promise that I received, I'm here to tell you, it's for you to receive here and now. Why would you ever pass this up? Jesus Christ died for you. More than that, He rose again so that you could have new life. New life forever. That very same resurrection life is available for you now and we call it renewal. You can't be fixed but you can be born again and that is better. Because the gospel brings us from brokenness to renewal and this is because of Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen? Amen. And with that would you please stand and let's prepare our hearts to pray. stand and let's prepare our hearts to pray. And with that, would you please stand and let's prepare our hearts to pray.

PODCAST That's a Good Question Are We Still Sinners After Salvation? December 2, 2024 Jon Delger & Mitchell Leach Listen to this Episode Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on the show to resoundmedia.cc/questions . If you find this resource helpful, do us a favor, rate and review the podcast. That will help more people encounter the life-changing truth of God's word. Also, if you know somebody who could benefit from learning more about this topic, this passage, these questions, do us a favor and share it with them so they can learn and grow from God's word as well. I'm Jon, I get to serve as a pastor, and I love being a part of this show and getting to answer questions about the Bible. I'm here with Mitch. Yeah, and that is what we're gonna be talking about this week, and I'm really excited. I'm excited to be a part of this podcast because we get to answer hard questions about the faith. And this week is no exception. This week, we have a question on Roman 7, which is a highly debated passage in scripture on whether this is, Paul's talking about someone who's already saved or who isn't saved. And I'm really excited to jump in this passage because it's been debated really since this has been been written down. Yeah, and we're gonna do some Bible study on the show. Absolutely, and it's got a lot of application, practical application for our lives and how we view our walk in Christ. And so this is very important and so if you're listening to this, buckle in. This is gonna be awesome. Yeah, for example, does the Christian still struggle with sin? Yeah. You know, the Bible says that we are saints. The Bible also says that we're sinners, which are we only one of those? Are we both of those? Yeah. Do saints in Christ still struggle with sin in the Christian life? And how do we struggle with sin? Yeah. So, really important for us to think about as we think about the practical Christian life. Also brings in, if you've ever heard the word, sanctification, we say that's the process that you're in as a believer of becoming more and more like Jesus, more and more holy. We are justified when we become Christians. We're declared righteous because of Jesus' righteousness, because he saved us by grace through faith. But then, you know, even though Jesus is perfect and now we have his righteousness, we've got to live this life in which we know, you know as a Christian, that day to day you are not perfect like Jesus is perfect. And so how do we live this life of growing more and more like Jesus until the day when he returns or we pass into glory? And so all those things come into play when we talk about this important passage. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are so many important questions that come from this topic within this passage, right? Many Christians say things like, we are holy. I remember even just a few years ago going like, you know, I struggle with thinking about myself as holy because I know that I'm still a sinner, but you know, how does it all work? You know, and then on the other side, if I'm seeing myself as only a saint and not a sinner, you know, how does that play, how does that affect how I live out my Christian life and my identity in Christ? Getting that wrong can be super detrimental to our faith, and so that's why this passage is so important for us to understand. If you lean too far into, well, I'm a saint and not a sinner. Well, then I would worry that you are missing. You're maybe not realizing how much you actually sin on a day to day basis. I think you're I think you're missing something about just reality. Yeah. If you fall too far on the side of, well, I'm a sinner and not a saint, then I think you're missing some of the gospel truth that you've been saved in Christ, that he has taken away your sin. Yeah. So to err too far on either side, you're gonna run into problems. You gotta be able to embrace both of these things in tension, and I think that's what we're talking about here in Romans 7. Before we jump into reading this passage, I think giving some context of what this passage is about is really important. Could you do that for us? Who's the writer? Yeah. What was his upbringing? How does that play into how we understand this? Yeah, so the Apostle Paul is writing, and you might remember him, he was formerly known as Saul. He was a Jew, he was a religious leader, he persecuted Christians until Jesus got a hold of him. He came to know that Jesus was his Messiah, his Lord, his Savior. He embraced him and then he became a church planner, a teacher, a preacher, and now he's writing this letter to the church in Rome to give them some instruction. Verses 16 and 17 of chapter one in this passage, or in this book, are really the thesis statement. He says that I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God for salvation. And he spends the rest of the book, he talks about some bad news about us as human beings in the first three chapters, and then he gets into some good news about us being saved in Jesus, and then applying that, and what does that all mean for us? And so that's where we find ourself, right in the midst of those arguments. Yeah, I think a lot of people are probably listening to this right now. Maybe aren't they don't have Romans 7 memorized. So would you read it for us? Yeah, we can Understand. Yeah, so I'm gonna read just the part that we're talking about today Which starts in verse 14 for we know that the law is spiritual But I'm of the flesh sold under sin for I do not understand my own actions I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate now If I do what I do not want I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." Yeah, there it is. Here's the question for today on this passage. Who is the person in Romans 7? Is it someone before they're saved or is it someone after they're saved? Yeah, great question. So there's lots of disagreement about this. I'm going to advocate for the position that this is Paul talking about his experience as a Christian. So this is post becoming a Christian Paul, not pre-Christian Saul. There are many that argue the other side. I think that we're friends, this is something that I think you can come to this text and disagree about. I think it is important and that's why we're gonna talk about how to understand it, but you can disagree about it. So I'm gonna try to make that case and we're gonna just talk through kind of both sides of it a little bit and how that all works. Let me just start making the case a little bit and then we can kind of talk about it. So I think one of the things that as you're reading the book of Romans and you're going through, there is no indicator. Paul doesn't stop and say, well now I'm going to talk about the old me. I'm going to talk about the past. You know he continues to use the first person pronoun I. He continues to talk in the present tense. You know he doesn't all of a sudden start using the past tense. I think that's just kind of a literary argument for it. But then also let me, let me just highlight, here's some things that Paul says in this passage that I think can't be true if he's not a Christian at this point. I think it's really challenging to think of how could Paul say these things if he wasn't a believer? So, so just let me give you some examples. In verse 22, he says, I delight in the law of God in my inner being. Okay, in verse 25 he says, I serve the law of God in my mind. Okay, those things, loving God's law, serving God's law, those are things that believers do, right? That their heart has been changed. The Holy Spirit's converted them, been at work inside of their heart. Otherwise, you don't like God's law, you don't wanna follow it, you don't wanna serve it. Yeah. Think about verse 15. He says, I do the very thing I hate. He's talking about sin. Hating sin is a uniquely Christian experience. When you're living in sin, you don't hate it. You're just doing it. You're just living in it. You don't really see the problem. This is clearly someone who's convicted by their sin. Yeah. When we read Scripture, we said conviction of sin is a gift of the Holy Spirit. That's something we experienced when God's working in our hearts. I could go on here one more and then we can talk about it some more. So verse 18 he says he distinguishes his flesh from the rest of him. Okay. So he's making a distinction about like two sides within him. I think that's also a uniquely Christian thing. I think of what CS Lewis said, right? Uh, there's two dogs that wage war within the one I feed is the one that wins. Right, this is a picture that we often paint of the Christian life, that there are sinful nature inside of us, fighting with what we call our godly nature inside of us, our old self, our new self, another way to talk about it, think about it. Right, this war only happens once you become a believer, otherwise, you've just got the one, you've just got your flesh, right? You don't have something else waging war. So more arguments I can make. Let's start with those. Yeah. Thoughts, questions? No, it sounds a lot like a lot of the, you know, this is a position that a lot of the reformers took. Sure. And it sounds a lot like Martin Luther's experience. You know, he was convicted by sin, tried to defeat it himself and realized, you know, I have to be made new. There's no fighting. There's no way to become completely sanctified without Christ. Right. When I read it, and maybe when you hear it, I just identify with the experience. Now, let me be quick to say that when we're interpreting the Bible, the first thing we need to do is understand what the text is saying. We don't want to read our own experience back into it. But there is something to it. I mean, Scripture reads us, right? It's talking about our experience of battling against sin, trying to follow the Lord. So when I read things like, for I do not understand my own actions, verse 15, I do not do what I want, but I do the thing I hate. I think, yeah, I identify with that. When I'm living in sin, when I give in to sin, I think, man, you know, I hate that. I didn't want to do that, but obviously part of me did and that's why I did it. And that's the battle. I think especially, you know, maybe somebody battling some kind of particularly addictive sin, whether that be pornography or alcohol or, you know, whatever it is, gossip, you know, sure, yeah. All kinds of things, right? You're, you become aware of the sin that you're doing, you hate it and yet you, you know, hopefully you're growing and yeah, you're, hopefully you're, you're progressively beaving it. But you know, you still fall into it sometimes. And I think that's, that's how you feel, right? I think this is a descriptor of that. Yeah. And I think regardless of what side you come down on this, that has to be the takeaway that we're gonna launch into is that the Christian life is not devoid, is not void of like, of sin. We are still sinful people trying to live into further and further sanctification. And I mean, the rest of the New Testament is so clear on that point. Right. Right. I think of even in the next chapter, Romans 8, which is not a debated passage about what it's about. I think of a passage that I've thought about a lot that actually there's a great book called The Mortification of Sin written about this one verse Romans 8, 13, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And in that book, John Owen spends an entire book expounding about how you get the flesh versus the Holy Spirit and how you're supposed to put to death the flesh is a Christian battle. This is kind of what we sometimes describe as the already-not-yet theology, that on the one hand you and I have already been saved by Jesus. He died for our sin, we've been declared righteous, we have a legal status before God that we wear Christ's righteousness, we are justified, we're righteous. That's what justification is, is that by the law you are no longer seen as a sinner but as someone who is perfect, right? Right. But in reality, you know, the rest of the Bible talks about that there's this other process called sanctification, right? Right, exactly. So you've been justified, you've been declared righteous, and one day when Jesus returns, or when you die, you know, you will be righteous, but in between, that's why we call it the already and the not yet. It's already true that you're saved, that you're justified, but it's not yet true that you're fully and completely righteous actually. We live in this in-between state. Like you said, we call that sanctification, progressive sanctification. We're growing in holiness over the course of our lives, but we're not there yet. So I think that's the messy middle that we live in as New Testament Christians, post the cross of Jesus, pre the return of Jesus. That's kind of where we're at. Yeah. I think that's even true in, you know, we are Reformed pastors at Peace Church. We believe in Reformed theology. One of those pieces is this idea of the order of salvation, right? You know, there's this whole idea of there's conversion, right? There's preservation that we're held in a true belief. There's repentance, there's justification, then there's sanctification, and then at the end of our life is glorification, right? These things, there is an order to this, right? And we don't go right from conversion, justification, to glorification being perfectly sanctified. Right, actually, so we did, if you want to check out some more resources on Resound Media, we did a whole video series, it's called Foundations of the Gospel, and three of those episodes are called Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. I forget which one, or maybe it's all three of them, but in one of those episodes I share kind of a chart that I've used to teach this before, that justification is where life starts as a believer, then glorification is where it ends or where the next part of it ends. Yeah, the beginning of the end. But then in between, you've got this line that goes up and down in holiness. And so that's the life of the believer. It's not a perfect straight line. You don't jump all the way up to perfection, nor do you have a perfect diagonal that just you're consistently every day, you're more and more. Well, you have some ups and downs. It should be an overall trajectory upward, more holy, but you have some ups and downs. Yeah, and that's, you know, there's two perspectives on this too. There's two errors that you can go in in this way. You can see yourself as never ever only going up and never ever having any sort of sin. That would be wrong. But then I think the Catholic way of viewing it is that, you know, these ups and downs are not just part of our sanctification, but they're part of our justification, right? That if we make too many big mistakes, all of a sudden we're off the plan of salvation. That's not true either. That we are still battling the flesh. We still, we aren't yet glorified. We aren't yet fully sanctified. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Let me, let me bring in another passage that I think relates to what we're saying. Galatians 5, 17, I think in a lot of ways has some parallels to Romans chapter 7. And by the way, I want to, I want to just give credit where credit is due here. Some of the references I'm making, I've learned a lot from Pastor John Piper. His series, Teaching Through the Book of Romans, I think it was over the course of like four years. Great set of sermons, I've got them on CD from back in the day. Oh wow, what are those? I know, right, you have to explain that. Cookie and Cocoa Dispenser, we watched the Santa Claus that movie last night, so that's. No, so I've listened to those sermons many times and so his teaching on Romans 7 here is influencing me a lot so I just want to give credit where credit's due. Another passage I think it was Galatians 5 17 Paul says, same writer, Paul says, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh for these two are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. So here it's saying what we've been saying about this battle between our sinful nature and our godly nature, the flesh and the spirit. But then it closes with that line that sounds so much like Romans 7, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. That sounds like Romans 7. So just, you know, there's no question in Galatians 5 that Paul is talking to Christians about the Christian experience. So I think that's just making the case again. One question that I think somebody could ask. Is in verse 14, I think they could ask the question, how could you describe a Christian this way? Let me read it, it says, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin. So I think somebody who's objecting to what I'm arguing for about the interpretation of Romans 7 would say, how could you think that that describes a Christian? Of the flesh, sold under sin. And I get that, I understand why you might think that. I think, again, I think this is the conflict of the Christian life. I think what Paul is saying or alluding to is that when we lived just in sin, when we didn't know Jesus, we were slaves of sin. Now as Christians we are supposed to be slaves of righteousness, slaves of Christ, but I think the reality of the Christian life is that even though we have a new master, we keep going back to the old master. This is the already not yet, right? It's legally, officially true. We have a new master. We shouldn't go back to the old one and do what he says. But unfortunately, sometimes we do. Until Jesus returns, we will unfortunately sometimes crawl back to our old master. Yeah. John, do you think it's possible that Paul could be blending the timeline here, that he's kind of talking in first person, maybe looking back a little bit during his pre-Christian conversion, during his time trying to save himself, and then also kind of seeing himself in maybe more of a sanctified lens, seeing himself as someone who has now the Holy Spirit. How would you wrestle with that question? Yeah, I think – and there's some other parts of Romans that I would say I think Paul is a little – he's just kind of talking about his experience without being really specific about the timeline. So I get that. I'm sympathetic to that idea that he might be talking across both experiences. I think that's possible There are some things that I think maybe lean against that which would be in a couple of passages in Scripture he talks about a lot of Confidence and zeal that he had for the law. I think of like Galatians 1 Philippians 3 Yeah, and he doesn't really talk about him feeling a war within himself. When he talks about his pre-conversion Saul, religious leader, Jewish guy, he seems to talk very confidently about, yeah, I was the best, you know, I kept the law, I nailed it, I had it all set, and I was zealous about it. So he doesn't seem to talk about himself having that conflicted experience, I don't think, until he encounters Christ. Now, again, I could be wrong about that, but that would be kind of my first reaction. I think that's interesting that he might be blending the timeline a little bit. All right, so let me make one more argument from the concluding verses of the passage here. So when we look at verses 24 and 25, he says, who will set me free from this body of death? Um, again, I think that's a, I think that's a uniquely Christian cry. You know, that's, that's us, right? When we sin, we think, man, God, just please free me from this. And in one sense, he has, but in another sense, we're not fully there yet. And so I think that's a Christian cry. But then in verse 25, I think we've got a summary statement that to me, it would be challenging to think of Paul saying this, looking back as a pre-conversion person. So let me read to you. Here it is. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, if he ended there and that was the end of it, I think I get it, right? You're saying, okay, he concludes with victory, now I'm a different person, but he goes on. So thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. So verse 25, if that's his summary concluding statement, I think he lands on saying, yeah, this is a battle. I got my sinful flesh. I got the law of God. I got the Holy Spirit. And these two are still at war in me. One of the people who is a great resource for this, a commentary by John MacArthur, lays this argument out really well. Because I've laid it out horribly. No, no, you did a really great job with it. But that was a segue into talking about Moody Publishing because they're the one who published his commentary. And if you're interested in getting his commentary, I'm sure you can get it on moodypublishers.com and you can use code RESOUND40 to get 40% off. They've got other great resources besides John MacArthur's commentaries, Bible studies, tons of other great books, anything to help you dive deeper into your walk with Christ. I highly recommend them. I use their resources quite frequently. John, I know you do too. Yep, for sure, agreed. Yeah, check it out. 40% off is a great deal. Yeah, great resources at Moody Publishers. We've had some great interviews with some of their authors this month on Resound as well. Yeah, why does it matter if we get this wrong? Why does it matter if we go in some of these maybe erroneous views of this passage? Yeah. So let's start with the one if you lean too heavily on the sin. So to me, the two sides are leaning too heavily on either that we're just saints and not sinners or that we're just sinners and not saints. That's maybe an easy way just to paint the picture, even if it's not entirely fair to each position. But let's start with the first. So if you lean too much into a defeatist mentality, that man, I'm a believer in Christ, but see, you know, I'm never gonna win. I'm just gonna admit defeat to sin right now. That is not God's design for you. That is not God's call for you. Yeah, and I think that would be really leaning into legalism, right? We're adding something to this passage that isn't there. Right? We're saying, Paul's talking about that there's sin in our lives, I have sin in my life, and therefore, I cannot ever be free from this. That's not what this passage is saying. It's adding something to there. You know, that's one of the ways to have an erroneous view of this passage. Totally. So, when I think of this tension between saint and sinner, I think of some passages in 1 John. 1 John is kind of tough. It says some things that seem like they are opposites, and yet we have to hold them in tension and figure out how they go together. So here's one. Here's 1 John, chapter 2. He says, My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. So I mean, it seems kind of crazy that he would say, if anyone does sin. Right? So he's, he's going so strong on the side of, man, you're, you're a saint, not a sinner. You got to fight the sin. You got to, if anyone does sin, he paints the picture almost like, almost like it's possible to achieve perfection. That's another topic we can talk about, but I would say it's not possible to achieve that in this life. We will achieve that when Jesus returns. But he, but he's saying so strongly that we need to fight against sin. We need to grow in holiness. We need to be like Jesus. So if anyone does sin, who says that? So that's the one side. So would you say it's wrong for a Christian to say that they are living a life without sin actively right now? Yeah, it seems harsh, but... Like if I were to ask, if I were to tell you, John, in the last year I haven't sinned, could I say that to you and be truthful? I think the answer is no. My challenge to you would be if you think that you are living a life that's perfectly without sin, now again, there is lots of room that we can grow in holiness. So I don't want to give a defeatist mentality. You can fight sin, you can have victory, you can have less and less sin across the course of your life. And put some sins in your life to death. Yes, you can kill some sins. But yeah, if you were to come to me and say, I have no sin over the last year, I would challenge you and say, I think you need to think more carefully about what the Bible says about specific, about sins of maybe not, you know, actions, words, thoughts, your heart. You know, I think of... What about just the greatest commandment, right? Can you love the Lord your God with all of your heart? Right? There are commandments to not do something, right? But then there are a lot of commandments to do something. And we don't often think about those as being sinful when we don't do those, right? So the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. I think that's a pretty hard thing to do. Like I don't love the Lord with all of my strength very, very often. It's very, very rare that I'm using all of my strength. Sure. Right? Yeah. Or I think of, yeah, along those lines, I think of Romans 14, 23, whatever is not from faith is sin. Yeah. Okay, so that's dialing down past the actions and the words, even the thoughts, to the motivations, to the intentions of your heart behind what you do. So even if you're doing the right thing, do you do it with the right heart? Yeah. So I think that's the thing. I think if you think that you've achieved perfection, then I think you're not grasping just how deep God's call to holiness goes. Yeah, and the depth of how sinful we are too, right? Right. So to give to the other side now, so we've said, all right, we don't want to have a defeatist mentality, right? You don't want to live saying I can't have any victory over sin because absolutely you can. Jesus Christ overcame the grave, He overcame sin, the Holy Spirit lives within you, you can fight and win against sin. Don't give up on that fight, you can. And it's a battle worth fighting too, right? If we believe that we're gonna live in perfection. Why wouldn't we want to spend our life trying to pursue, to be as close as we can, purifying our heart and our mind, getting us ready for our eventual state, eternal state. Yeah, right. If you're gonna live that way for all of eternity, start now, right? Yeah, so practice. Yeah, totally. So to go to the other side now, so if you're on the other side saying what you just said, which is having a vision for too much, you're thinking of yourself as having more victory than you actually have. You're a saint and not a sinner. So here's another passage from 1 John that I think addresses that. Verse eight in chapter one. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 10. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." Okay, there John says very clearly, you can't say that. You can't say that you're perfect. You can't say that you have no sin. If you do, he says, you're making God a liar, because God says that you have sinned. So you just can't err so far on that side. I think that's, to me, again, that's one of the challenges of 1 John, is he says some things that seem contradictory, but they're not. They're things we have to hold in tension. Right. And that would be going on the other side of that line, right? You know, seeing yourself as having no hope, right, that's adding to Scripture. The other side is taking away from Scripture, right? It's not seeing the reality of your sin, right? That's, we'd call that licentiousness. Tim Keller calls that illegalism, or somebody called it illegalism. I like that. It's the opposite of legalism. And that's just good understanding for us as we're people who try to understand the Bible. There's two ways to mess up a passage. Either add stuff to it or take away from it. The reality we want to be on is what does this passage say. Yeah, amen. So, brothers and sisters, as you're waging war against your sin Here's a passage keep coming back to 1st John chapter 1 verse 9 right in between the two pet two verses I just read if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness So that's the hope of the gospel is that yeah, we still have sin in our lives Yeah, one day we will be righteous as Christ is righteous, but in this life right now, we still have sin, but we can receive forgiveness. We can be cleansed because of what Jesus has done for us. Not what we do, but what Jesus has done for us. Yeah. I want to plug, if you have questions about this topic, write them in at resoundmedia.cc/questions . Write in your questions to us. We'd love to hear them. And those questions will probably end up on another future podcast. We'd love to jump back into this subject and dive deeper into it. So thanks for some questions on Romans 7 and on the challenge of are we saints, are we sinners, are we both. Love that, appreciate that. An important thing for us to think about as Christians. Thanks everybody for listening. Have a great week. Do us a favor, like, follow, subscribe on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Helps us get the word out so more people can benefit from teaching of God's Word. teaching of God's Word. you

PODCAST That's a Good Question Cohabitation, Compatibility, and Christian Commitment October 3, 2023 Jon Delger & Ryan DB Kimmel Listen to this Episode JonHey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church. This is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon, I get to serve as one of the pastors at Peace Church, and I also get to serve as the weekly host of this show. Our purpose here is to help people grow in their knowledge of the Bible and their walk with the Lord by answering their questions. And today I am here with Pastor Ryan. Hey, Pastor Ryan. RyanHi, Pastor Jon, how you doing? JonI'm doing good. RyanI'm the lead pastor here at Peace. That's right. Excited to join you for today's discussions. JonThat's right. We've got some great questions here So we're gonna jump into a few different places in scripture and answer some awesome questions, but we'll start with this one All right. Here's a question. Is it okay to give 10% a tithe that split between church and other Christian organizations? All right. I know there's a ton we could say about this. Let's split it into a few different questions Pastor Ryan. First, What does the Bible say about the tithe does the New Testament talk about a tithe? Question #1: What does the Bible say about the tithe? Does the New Testament talk about a tithe? RyanSo yeah, I'd say that is a multifaceted question that they asked there. So I think what you see in a very general way, and there's different ways you can begin to dive deeper into this, but generally speaking when you go back, the tithe belongs to the Lord. The tithe is holy to the Lord. Tithe obviously connected to the word tenth, that we are to give God 10% of what He's given us back to him in praise and worship. And so that is kind of a very broad general principle that you pull from the Old Testament. The question begins then, does that translate then into the New Testament? I think it's kind of what you're getting at, right? And so, does it translate into the New Testament? Not as a mandated law. No. Part of what Christ has done for us through his life, death, and resurrection is he's freed us from the law. He's freed us from a faith that's bound by a legalistic approach to our faith that we have to do certain things in order to maintain salvation or favor with God. So the tithe is no longer a legal spiritual requirement for believers in the New Testament, like all the Old Testament laws, Christ has released us from that. So, the question that I think is, is, okay, so what is the place of financial giving in the New Testament? JonIs that kind of, I think, where we're going? Yeah, totally. So, just to say a little bit more about even just the Old Testament part of it. So, Genesis 14, first passage in the Bible that talks about a tithe, Abraham gives a tithe. And then it's talked about in many places throughout the rest of the Old Testament. And I'm sure we'll get to this as we talk more about this, but I would also just add right away, it's important I think for Christians to realize that in the Old Testament, the tithe was only the beginning of the giving that Israelites gave to others. So the tithe was 10%, they usually gave that to the temple, but then there was alms and other things. I've heard it said that the Israelites probably gave more like 30% of their overall income. Yeah, as well as 20%. Yeah, to the work of the temple as well as to the poor and things like that. RyanSo, well, yeah, like you're saying, it's not a specific direct law that might carry over, but the principles there are valuable and important and point to even more giving than 10%. Yeah, and we see this a lot in the in the ways that certain laws translate into the New Testament that the law doesn't carry but the principle does in many ways even even heightens and so like you know not only are you not supposed to you know not hate your neighbor, you love your neighbor. Right. Or you're not supposed to not just hate your enemy, you're supposed to love your enemies. Yeah, Jesus takes it up a notch. Jesus always takes it up a notch. JonYou've heard it said, don't commit adultery, I tell you the truth. You know, if you even look at a woman lustfully, you've committed adultery. RyanRight. Yeah, exactly. So there's principles that carry over and not just carry over, but often expand. And so when we talk about financial giving in the New Testament, I think we all, you know, immediately want to go talk about what are some Bible passages that give us some direction for that? And I think some of the, two of the most profound ones come from 2 Corinthians, chapter 8 and chapter 9. Paul is talking about the generosity of another church, the Macedonian church, and how even in their poverty, they gave extravagantly. And that sets a standard for Christians that if we believe the gospel is the message of salvation for the world, how can that not take priority in our life in every way, including our giving? And so, you know, so to talk about just I and here's I just need to always say this whenever we talk about money and talk about tithing there, I can never and I'm telling you that I've gotten a thousand on this. I can never talk about money without getting some sort of response from people the next day, if not even after the service. You talk about tithing, you talk about people's money, they always want to talk about it. They always have a follow-up. I've said this to you before, I could talk about the flames of hell and I won't get a single follow-up the next day. But I talk about someone's money and they've got a lot of thoughts they want to share on that. JonWell, with that in mind, you can send your complaints to Pastor Ryan. RyanYeah, no, Pastor Jon, yeah. Our producer Mitchell over here can take some of them, too. So, I mean, what are some of the other angles you want to take on that question? JonYeah, so let's dive in a little bit to some of the texts of the New Testament talks about giving to the church. So one of the ones I think of is Matthew 23, where Jesus is critiquing the Pharisees, and he's saying, you know, you tithe on your dill and your mint and your cumin. He's saying you tithe either on these plants that you pick out of your garden. And then he says, you ought to do more of the latter, but also do the former. So you ought to do the other works of the law, or the works of justice, while not neglecting the first, the tithe. So Jesus does talk positively about the tithe, that it is important that Christians continue to give. RyanAnd so... Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Matthew 23, 23, when Jesus talks about, yeah, you guys tithe even on your spice rack, but you've forgotten the weightier matters of the law, such as justice, love, and mercy. And so, like you're saying, Jesus spoke positively of the tithe, that we are to give what God has given us, we are to use for His glory. I also think one of the bigger ones is when Jesus is observing the widow and she gives her last penny. And you know, He's with His disciples and He says, that woman's given more than anyone else has given. And it's because she gave all that she had. She literally gave her last penny. And what's important to note about that is she didn't give it to the poor, she gave it at the temple as a form of worship and Jesus affirmed her because she didn't get 10% she gave 100% and so as we're talking about things the pattern that you see is that the collection happened at the local gathering of believers and in the New Testament when Paul's gathering offerings and tithes and in financial gifts it's always in the company of believers it's always in the company of those you gather and worship with. And those monies were always used for ministry purposes. And so while there is no mandated law of giving 10%, I think what you see is a pattern established in the Old Testament that the New Testament continues to expound on and strengthen. And I have no problem being open about this because we believe that from scripture. My wife and I, we give way more than 10% of our income, but our first fruits that we talked about earlier, our first 10% is always going to be to God through the local church because I think that's the clearest example that you see in the New Testament. So our first 10% is given because that's what we've prayed and believe God's calling us to give. First and foremost as our first fruits, we give that to the local church and then on top of that we continue to give over and above 10% to other Christian organizations, to those in need, or maybe continuing to the local church. And again, that's because we want to live the standard that we think that the Bible sets so that we can be an example to others. JonRight. Yep. And that's kind of what I think we're trying to balance that emphasis of. On the one hand, we don't want to be legalistic and say that. RyanBecause that's what happens as soon as you specify a number, your people either will naturally fall into legalism or you'll be accused of a legalistic approach. JonRight, so that's what, yeah, we're trying to dance the line here. But on the one hand, we don't want to be legalistic about that 10% number. And yet, on the other hand, we don't want to ease it and just say, oh, you know, totally up to you. You do whatever, you know, whatever you want. RyanCause we know, we all know the human heart, our human heart is looking at how can we give less? Yeah. No one is coming to this question saying, how do I give more? Where can I give more? Um, or what, what biblical justification is there that I get to give more, you know, people, people in their heart of hearts, they want to figure out how can I give less or they find excuses to give less. I don't, I don't like how the church uses the money, therefore I'm not going to give. And usually I say to those people is if you think that your church is mishandling money, or not using it rightly, then you need to find a new church. But I think what often happens is the heart of heart of people is that they try to find ways to give less and less. When I think the standard that we see is that we have to give more and more. Christ gave every ounce of his blood. We see Jesus give it all. We see the disciples go and give their lives for this. How could we not give more? And given, let's just say that the 10% was the standard of the Old Testament. How could we in the New Testament or New Testament believers who are on this side of the cross, how could we not want to give more now that we know the clarity of the gospel? Now that we know the clarity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he lived, died, and rose again, how could we not want to give more to see that work continue? How could we not want to see our local church be financially, not just like making it, but thriving? And again, like we are nowhere saying like if you give, God's going to bless you financially back. That's not part of it either. That's the flip side of this that I think it can get real dark real fast. Yeah. JonWell, yeah, let's talk about that for a quick minute. Yeah, so we, you know, we don't have a money back guarantee on our tithing here at Peace Church. We don't get up and say you get your money back if you don't get a blessing out of it. And so, yeah, like you just said, we don't, it's not like, hey, oh man, I, you know, I've heard people tell these stories that I gave to church and then the next day I found a $20 bill and I had only given $15 to the church the day before. So see, the Lord, the Lord blessed me more than I gave. Well, I would say that you will absolutely be blessed when you give because I would say that all Christians are blessed by the Lord, they're blessed with the Lord's presence. So hear me when I say that, I think, you know, in scripture, the word blessing does not just refer to financial things. So you will be blessed. That blessing might not come until you're in heaven with the Lord or that blessing might come in a totally different way than financially, there is no guarantee that you will be financially, that you will receive a financial reward for giving. RyanWell, I think that's actually what you are doing, is that when you do give, you're storing up treasures for yourself in heaven. Right. You're kind of sending your money ahead of time, is kind of what the treasure principle talks about. I was also going to say, and I can say this from my own personal experience, and I know what this is going to sound like to people, but I have to say it, because it's absolutely true. I cannot out-give God. Like, I cannot out-give God. It is like every single time we up our giving, God finds a way to bless us abundantly. And I'm not saying that's a one-for-one correlation that's gonna happen in anyone else's life. But I am saying that when we move forward in faith, and we financially trust God, and we give abundantly, He blesses us abundantly. And maybe that's just through our giving that God's given us the eyes to see how he already was blessing us. Maybe. I'm just telling you with honest to God truth and I have to say this because it's a testimony that's been true. God outgives my wife and I every single time we up our giving. And I'm not saying it's always in the almighty dollar, but I will say it's always in some form, some material form. Whether that's food or maybe it is money. We cannot out give God. It's literally like, I don't want to test God, but it's almost like I want to give it all away and see what God does, because he's already proven to be so trustworthy in all this. And the blessing is, I get to be a part of the group that says, we're going to make sure that the church is financially stable. That's a blessing to be able to say, I'm part of the company of people that are ensuring that God's church remains stable. And it doesn't mean because we gave ex-ima, it's because we gave faithfully. The single mom that gives faithfully out of her poverty is part of that company too. It's those who in their wealth are stingy and find reasons not to give who should be concerned. JonYeah, so you shared a little bit about from your own personal experience, so I'll share that too. I think as Stephanie and I, as my wife and I look at Scripture and look at the Old Testament, we see that tithe principle that, you know, whether we view that as an absolute requirement in the New Testament or not, we see that as an important principle. And so for us, that's the start, is that we say even before taxes are taken out, 10% goes to the Lord, that that's not like a bill we pay or that's not stacked up among other expenses, that we just see that as, hey, that belongs to the Lord before it gets taxed, before it comes to us, any of that kind of stuff. And then, by God's grace, he's given us enough that we also get to give to some other causes that we like and appreciate, but it's beyond those things. So when we go back to the person's question, the person's question, right, is, can I split my 10 percent between the church and other causes? So we've already said, all right, let's not get legalistic about that 10% number as if it's a bill to pay and you get to split it between a couple of different causes. Let's not view it that way. Let's think about New Testament, kind of heart of generous giving. And then as we think about those causes, I again would go back to just that Old Testament principle of the tithe and that, I think the Lord has called us to give that 10% to his work, his unique, specific gospel preaching work in and through the church, as well as giving to others. RyanTotally. And if you go on social media, you're going to find a whole bunch of Christians out there railing against the tithe. They say, stop tithing, stop tithing. And if you watch the video, it'll say, you need to discern from the Lord an amount to give. I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to diminish a legalistic approach to giving, which I can appreciate. They're also pushing back on all these televangelists who have been so deceitful and robbing people of money, calling them to a biblical mandate that's not actually biblical. So I mean, I can appreciate that, but we need to stop listening to cynical voices. We need to stop listening to voices that, how do I say it? I mean, just that really aren't helpful, opinionated. We need to stop listening to opinionated voices and start seeking the counsel of your local body through the word and figure out what this is gonna mean for your life. And so, yeah, I don't know if there's anything else I can say at the moment. JonNo, that's really good. That's really good. Like we've said a few different times, we're trying to balance that way between we don't want to be legalistic, but we also want to be clear about kind of the principles that scripture calls. RyanYeah, so what I was going to say was it's not that we're trying to avoid this person's question. It's just the premise is faulty. That we've got this 10% God's called me to give exactly 10%. What's my way to give that that's still faithful? And we say let's go back a moment and just examine this whole notion of 10% and just say is that really the mandate that Scripture is requiring of you or is that it's principle that we see and now we get to follow? Now what does it mean to follow that principle? Good. Yay. Money. Yay. Always a fun topic. That's right. Man this is gonna get a bunch of comments right now. Whenever I speak on money, like, and it just only gets proved more and more true, especially the bigger we get, every stinking word is examined. Yeah. Seriously, I'm not like I can talk about hell and how your pet, I could say, I could say your pets go into hell because Jesus didn't die for animals. I could say that and no one would care. Like I won't get a comment. But I talk about how Christians are supposed to give and man, I tell you what, you get a thousand excuses about why this person doesn't feel, yeah. So, all right, so let me just take a second and say this. When a person tries to argue giving less than 10%, I've never had a person come to me with that mentality who, for me, felt like they were trying to get out of something that they knew they should do. Or they were trying to... it never felt right to me. Now there's been times people have come to me with that and said, you know, the Bible says that we can give more, that we're supposed to give more, we're supposed to give a lot. Then I'm like, yeah, okay, and that, yeah, absolutely. Then, yeah, the 10% is a great base to build from and starting point, right? It's not the finish line, it's the starting line. And so there's that aspect of it, but many times it's people are like, well, I don't have to give anything. Bible says I don't have to give. Jesus died so I don't have to follow the law anymore. JonYou know? Well, the main one I was expecting people have in their minds is, does my Christian school tuition count as my tithe? RyanOkay, dude, I'm telling you now. JonThat's what I was expecting in my mind in there. I don't know if we should even talk about that or not. RyanBut, well, so, okay, so I think the answer is that's a faulty premise. But let me just say this, my most memorable moment in seminary is when I saw, oh yeah, you've told me this before, yeah, when I saw two, a person said that. They said, it was a gal who was seeking an MDiv, she wanted to be a pastor, and she said in the class, because we're talking about tithing, she said, my husband and I do tithe, but it's our children's education to Christian schools. And it was like, I'd say two-thirds of the class were like, yeah, yeah, because I went to a, I went to Calvin, I went to Calvin, you know, CRC has a big emphasis on that. Or at least in West Michigan I've heard. And so, um, but there's a few of us in the class were like, wait, is that, is that true? Like, is that, is that actually okay? And then the professor looked at her like, I have to address this now. Like, Oh crap. I have to like, I have to push back on this is what's wrong he's like like no that's that's not that's not your tithe that's that's a wonderful thing that you do I fully affirm it I think it's worthy worthy to sacrifice other things to see that happen for your family but you cannot say that that's giving to God so okay okay so here's one of the things I think is a really a great thing about Peace Church is that we don't shove one form of education down our throat and down anyone's throat. We've got people here who do public school, homeschool, charter school, private school, Christian school, and we say, God bless you, discern from the Lord what's best for you and your family. And I want, no matter what a family chooses, I want them to know that as long as I can ensure that you've sought the Lord on this, and you are engaged in your children's education, because I think you can check out, you can send your kids to Christian school and check out, you can send your kids to public school and check out. As long as you are prayerful in your decision and engaged in your education, then I trust whatever God's led you to do. And so, I don't want people to hear us say that money given to your children's Christian education does not count as a tithe. I don't want them to hear that as, that we don't bless their decision to send their kids to Christian school. I think that's an admirable, sacrificial, wise decision for your family. But I don't think you can say my money given to that expense counts now as the tithe. I mean, we know people who believe so much in going to peace church for their family, they gave up getting support from their local church. Yeah, totally. Like they stayed at the local church, they would have gotten money to help with their Christian education. They gave that up because they believe that God's called them to the ministry of peace. And so that's why I'm just really cautious to like, I want to make sure it's really clear that while I don't believe you can say money given to your Christian's education counts as your tithe or to the Lord, I do still affirm people's decision if that's what they feel like they're right call is for their family. Jon Yeah, yeah, totally. All right, hey, next question. Is it okay for Christians to live together before they get married? Where in the Bible does it address this? Question #2: Is it okay for Christians to live together before they get married? Where in the Bible does it address this? Ryan So that notion of cohabitation I don't think is like directly addressed, that it wasn't a thing Back in those days, but I will say that I think you see that notion put the rest in Genesis a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, right? not not a man boy to venture out on his own and Moving with his girlfriend While they figure out life together. Sorry, that's not see if they're compatible. Yeah. No that's uh, so I'd say and then also you get you things like, um, you know in Hebrews talks about Keeping the marriage bed your thing. That's a language find it. Yeah, and so that notion like yeah You don't you don't get into the marriage bed unless you're actually married Yeah, or even in Scripture other words like sexual immorality or fornication or words that you know, they specifically include things like sex outside of marriage Yeah, absolutely, whether that's temple prostitution or whatever. And so, yeah, this whole notion of cohabitation, I think you also just see, I mean, not that you need this, you don't need this to affirm what the scripture said, but the studies constantly are showing those who live together before they're married, their marriages don't last or they're very unhappy marriages. It's not the way that God's designed and that's proven to be true when people step outside God's design. It does not benefit their life. In fact, it wreaks havoc on their life. And I would say by extension, the culture at large. I think this is probably why, part of the reason why you see such rampant brokenness in marriages and families is because people don't value marriage, they don't respect it before they get married and they try to act like they're married before they actually are. And so I'd say for me that's just, I'm sad about how prevalent it is among Christians. That does make me sad. And so just to go back I think while you don't see thou shalt not cohabitate written in Scripture, I think what you see is from the very earliest pages a principle is set that's good and right and beautiful and glorifying to God and good for one another that a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. JonI think that was an awesome great full answer if I may I've got just a couple of real quick ones which I just want to hit first one is is this what do you say to that that argument that we have to figure out if we're compatible? RyanI would say then okay that you certainly do but you don't do that by living together and sleeping together. That's right. You don't do that by playing marriage when you're not actually married. You do that by spending quality time together, having gospel, God-centered conversations. And that's how you do that. You do that, yes, through spending time together, but you don't do that through living together. JonYeah, that's good. One other one. If somebody were to come to you, and I've actually heard this before, if somebody were to come to you and say, well, but what if we live together, but we don't have sex? RyanAgain, I would say a man shall leave his father and mother, aka move out of his house and be united to his wife. And so for me, it's the proclivity or the attraction or the temptation for sex is part of the reason why you shouldn't cohabitate. Yeah. That's not the only reason you shouldn't cohabitate. JonYeah. And when we when we do premarital counseling here, we actually if a couple is living together, we say you've got to you've got to separate. Yep. For the period of your premarital counseling. Now, until you get married. And I've often I've I've offered a couple of times to guys to come move in with me if they got to. I mean, you got to you got to separate. You got to get away from from that in order to reestablish. RyanYep, same thing. That's what I do. That's the standard here. We don't marry people who are living together. Because if you want one of our pastors to initiate your wedding, it's because you want to have a gospel, Christ-centered marriage. And that starts in your engagement. So, as we talk about this, let me just add one thing. For those who are listening, who maybe are spending too many nights in a row at their boyfriend or girlfriend's house. By doing this, number one, studies show you're ruining your future marriage if you are going to marry this person. You're not setting your marriage up for success. And I'd also say, secondly, and even more importantly, you're in sin. God's not going to bless this, and you can't be pursuing the Lord and willfully living in this pursuing this much sin. So our loving encouragement would be to say God has something so much better for you. He wants you to be in a relationship that's flourishing that's centered on Him and that's not going to happen if you are going against His will and you're living together or sleeping together or spending each other the night at each other's house. So my encouragement for those who are cohabitating or who have a temptation to be spending the night at each other's house or who are sexually active, stop. Stop because you're actively choosing what's not good for you. You're choosing what's less for you. God has something greater and better for you. And if this person is somebody that you want to spend the rest of your life with, then start now and making by making your future marriage better, and that at least study-wise says stop living together, and scripture says God's not gonna bless that. God's gonna bless the marriage that seeks him above all else. JonYeah, totally. And we say that because we love you, we care about you. 100%. And if you're a parent or a close friend listening and have somebody in your life who you wanna share that truth with, make sure you do so with love and with much prayer, but you gotta share it if you care about them share the truth. RyanYep, you should be and also I mean and on the flip You should be with someone who wants to call you to a deeper level of faith Hmm and to get closer to God and if they are sleeping with you or living with you or asking for that or vying for that And they're not seeking what's got God's best for you. They're seeking probably selfish desires If they really want what's best for you And if you really want to marry a Christian person, then they're going to be pointing you and calling you to the standard that Jesus has set for us, which is good and right and beautiful. JonAmen. Thank you, Pastor Ryan. Thanks, Pastor Jon. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Great to get to share and talk about God's Word together. If you have questions, please submit those to peacechurch.cc/questions. You can also rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and be sure to share with a friend so we can help more people grow in their walk with be sure to share with a friend so we can help more people grow in their walk with Jesus. be sure to share with a friend so we can help more people grow in their walk with Jesus. Thanks everybody.

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PODCAST That's a Good Question Should We Stand With Israel : Unpacking the Enigma of End Times, and Christ October 24, 2023 Jon Delger & Ryan DB Kimmel Listen to this Episode JonHey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church. This is the place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. You can submit questions at peacechurch.cc/questions. I'm Jon, I serve as a pastor, and I also get to serve as your host on this show, and I'm here with Pastor Ryan. Ryan Hello, I'm the lead pastor here at Peace Church. And we are excited to have a conversation today, answering some specific questions about a very specific topic going on in the world today. So today is a special episode. JonSo today is a special episode, because a couple weeks ago on October 7, the Hamas terrorist group surprised the nation of Israel with an attack using thousands of rockets and many armed individuals and at least 1,300 people died in Israel as a result of that attack. Many more were injured, some were kidnapped, some were raped. We've had many people in our own church ask us to speak to this. We've been praying about this in our weekly worship service, been praying for justice and for the protection of human life, but we'd love to have a chance here to answer some questions from those people, especially people in our own church, about this situation. So we said last week, and I'll say it again, that we are not political commentators, we are not military strategists, we are pastors. So what we'd like to do is address some questions about this situation, specifically as it relates to the Bible, theology, Christian worldview, the church, Christian life, and those kind of things. So with all that being said, we got a couple questions from people. Here we go. Here's the first one. So some people are disagreeing about who the bad guy is in all this. Is it Hamas because they attacked Israel or is it Israel because they have maybe not been so nice to Palestinians? So the basic question is, is there a bad guy? Who is it? And why? RyanYeah, again, as we go into this, I also want to underscore kind of what you said. We're not political commentators and even when it comes to interplaying the world events with what's going on, interplaying what's going on with world events versus not just biblical, but specifically end time stuff. I do not come from a background that spent a lot of time talking about this. I know many of our people in our church did. In addition to that, I also come from a reformed trained background and for all the wonderful strengths of Reformed Theology, a grand emphasis on delineating how the end times are going to play out is not a hallmark of Reformed Theology. And so I venture into this as a student and a lover of the Bible, and I want to look at this stuff through the Bible. But when we look at this, the more immediate question of, you know, is the question, who is the bad guy? Or how do we know who the bad guy is? JonIs there a bad guy? Who is it and why? Question #1: Is there a bad guy? Is it Hamas or Israel, and why? RyanYeah, it's Hamas. Period. Without question, Hamas is the bad guy. Now that doesn't say that Israel is doing everything perfectly or that God's not going to hold them to account for certain actions. But when we talk about the current conflict, what's happening, Hamas is the bad guy. I mean, their charter talks about eradicating the Jewish people and the Jewish nation. attacked people, not soldiers or their military, but everyday citizens, and even went on to do horrendous things like live streaming the kidnapping of families, parading around dead bodies, capturing women and children. I mean, without question, Hamas is the bad guy. They're the bad guys in this player. Now we can have conversations about the appropriate response to that and if Israel is taking that or not, but is Israel justified in defending their nation and seeking to ensure what happened on October 7th never happens again? Just from a political standpoint, just from a world event standpoint, I don't know anyone who denies that Israel is justified in some form of response. Putin himself said that. And so the question is, is who are the bad guys? Hamas are the bad guys. Now, I think what's happening in America, especially among the populace, is it seems like a lot of favor towards the Palestinian people and trying to highlight some of the stuff that they've dealt with. And we can have a conversation about that, but I think that ends up turning into anti-Semitic rallies. We've even in our own state of Michigan, a, I think she's a director of a synagogue was murdered a couple days ago, stabbed because of just the the the public frenzy that's now happening in support of Palestine and against the Jewish people. But when you look what actually happened, and you remember, remind yourselves of the events that played out. Hamas plans for a long time this attack. We know that now they set up residential mock residential areas and practice this and They went and they attacked families women and children murdered people kidnap people and and even in their charter says that they're there one of their goals is the eradication of the Jewish state and Jewish people and so I Got no problem saying Hamas is the bad guys because they are. JonYeah. Yep. Yeah, agreed. So coming at it theologically, all human beings are sinners. None of us is perfect. Israel, Hamas, everybody. And yet, this is not like a war between two nations over scarce resources or something like that. This is not two militaries going back and forth. This is a terrorist group whose design is to cause terror and pain and suffering. It has come in and killed civilians. RyanSo we're talking about Hamas as a terrorist group. We know that they are the ruling governing body of at least the Gaza Strip, and they were elected to that position in 2006 or 2007, but they haven't held an election since. They have not at all given people a chance to usher in a new government whatsoever, it's clear that they've kind of had a stronghold grip on the Gaza Strip and the people who live there. And so, I just want to clarify, when we talk about a terrorist group, people might say, well, they were voted in. Yeah, in 2006, and they haven't had an election since, and their charter talks about the eradication of other people. So, I'm not sure what else qualifies for a terrorist group. JonAll right, so the next question we got is this. There are many things going around right now about Israel being God's people. Aren't we all God's people now by adoption or is the nation of Israel more special to God? Question #2: Aren't we all God's people now by adoption, or is the nation of Israel more special to God? RyanThat is a multi-layered question I think I hear a lot of Dispensational influence in that question, and I think when we look at it even in reformed circles like ours Conservative reformed circles you probably have people who would nuance things differently in all the time I've known you pastor Jon and all the theological questions we've had, I don't know if me and you have spent an incredible amount of time talking about end times and how that's going to play out. JonRight. I mean, I think you said at the beginning that that's one of the marks of Reformed theology, is usually that we, I think, are a little bit more focused on just the mission before us, and not thinking as much about exact, precise things about the end times. RyanOr trying to decode how it, you know, the world events versus biblical prophecy. JonYeah, Reformed Theology in general has said, I mean, don't get me wrong, they have said more than what I'm about to say. RyanRight, yeah. JonBut to paraphrase, I say Reformed Theology says, Jesus is king, he's gonna win, and that's like the main, and he's coming back, and that's the main thing we need to know. RyanRight, Jesus is coming back, so do what he's told you to until he comes back. So as far as the question of is Israel special, was that one of the first things? Are they more special? More special to God is how the question was asked. I guess I'd say more special than what. Here's the thing, the Bible, even in the New Testament, does talk about Israel in ways that it doesn't talk about other groups. We talk about the Gentiles, which is like everyone who's not Jewish. So on the one hand you can say, the Bible kind of lumps everyone else together and then talks about Israel in a unique way. You can't deny the place of Israel in the biblical story. I mean, the covenant was given to them, God called them out, the law was given to them, Christ came through Jewish heritage. So yeah, on the one hand, the Bible does hold Israel in unique regard. I think the question that we begin to think about now is like, okay, well, now that the church has been established and the new covenant is for God's people as part of the New Testament church, what then about Israel? And that's where you start to have a lot of conversations and a lot of different opinions. Like Romans 8, 9, 10, 11 speaks to this, and it's like, even what Paul says to the Romans, people can take in various different ways, you know, when even some of the other letters, what does Paul mean at the end of Galatians when he talks about the Israel of God? Is that something special? Other places, I think it's Romans 9, 7, something to the effect of, you know, not all Israel are Israel. So this notion of God's, and this is where we think covenant theology is such a helpful way to understand Scripture. JonAnd there's so much we could, I'll just interject real quick. So if those categories are new to you, the two different ways of viewing the overall grand storyline of the Bible, and it especially has an impact on how you think about end times, is these two ideas of dispensationalism and Covenant Theology. Those are kind of two different schools of thought when we read the Bible. There's so much we could say. At church, we've had some different classes on this. We could talk about that more a different time. Those are kind of two different schools of thought that you could search and read some books on and find out more about. But yeah, as Covenant Theology people, it's kind of Reformed Theology in general, it's covenantal. So we're looking at Scripture and looking at the progression of through the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was considered God's covenant people. But all throughout the Old Testament, it was looking forward to a time, even going back to Genesis 12, the foundational promise with Abraham, a blessing to all the nations. There was always this trajectory of it wasn't going to just be the nation of Israel. It was going to be all nations. It was going to be the whole world who's going to hear the gospel and become God's people. And so we would say that the church is the fulfillment of those promises, that the church is now not just Israelites, not just Jewish people, but people from all nations receiving Jesus and following him. RyanBecause this is what Jesus, part of what he did, he built the church. He started the church and he ushered in the new covenant, placed it to the people who would follow him. And so when we talk about what's going on on the world stage versus biblical events and Israel's unique place in this, this is where I think people begin to think about what's happening on the world stage as it relates to Israel and biblical prophecy. What prophetic passages of scripture are currently being fulfilled through this attack in Israel's war with Hamas. Do we have, I mean, have you had people, I don't know about the question. JonThat's actually one of the ones on the list here. You're jumping ahead of me. That's okay. That's awesome. RyanIt's just because we know, I mean, you know, we know what people are asking and talking about. It's whether or not they actually asked the question on the website. JonYeah, the basic question was, is this, is today's events, is what's going on right now, a fulfillment of biblical prophecy? Question #3: Is what's going on right now a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy? RyanI would say that since Christ's ascension into heaven, we've been in the time of longing for Christ to return. And whatever you think about how the rapture plays out or the tribulation or any of that sort of stuff, what we all agree on is that Jesus is coming back. And that's what we long for, that's what we look towards. And so, is what is happening going on part of biblical prophecy? Here's the thing, maybe, maybe not. We don't know. That's the thing. You can spend all the live long day trying to figure out what player on the world stage fulfills what character in biblical prophecy. And here's what I'd say to people who are super zealous for that. How are you gonna know? You spend a lot of time talking about this, how are you going to know? And I'm not saying you just ignore it, but on the one hand I am saying you kind of focus on what Jesus told us to focus on. And for me it's, you go and make disciples of all nations, you glorify God, you love your neighbor, you build the church, you use your gifts, love your neighbor. Like, for me that's what I think we should be spending our time focusing on until Christ returns. So, right now, do we pray for Israel? Absolutely. We pray for them as a nation, pray for them as a people. I pray for the Palestinian people who are caught in the crossfire. I saw a video the other day of a, I think he was like a five-year-old Palestinian boy who was woken up because like three houses down were bombed. And this kid was just shaken up and it absolutely destroyed my heart. I mean, I was just heartbroken. It just, it reminded me of thinking of like my little boys and just being like, this is just terrible what's happening. Like, war is horrible. And I want a swift end to this. And I think, I mean, this sounds like a pipe dream, but I mean, I think the best way for this end is for everyone to repent and come to faith in Jesus. This is why I think the church's mission needs to be primary, that we're out there sharing the gospel, spreading the gospel, not spending all of our time trying to decode biblical end times prophecy with what's happening on the news. Is there a conversation for that? Yeah, but I'm more interested in having the conversation of claiming the gospel, reaching a neighbor, seeing people repent and place their faith in Jesus and reaching the nations for the gospel. JonAnd so, yeah. Well, yeah, to add on that, so I read a number of articles and getting ready for this and made a little bit of a list here from the articles of just, and from scripture, just thinking about different, a conflict in Israel is not new. If you list the people that Israel has been in conflict with over history, the Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Midianites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Amorites, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Romans, just to name those, getting up to the New Testament. Israel's neighbors have frequently sought to destroy them. Not that that's okay, but it has happened. This isn't the first time in history. It's a Nacarib king of Assyria, Haman official of Persia, Hitler, leader of the Nazi Germany. So, you know, if you're looking for clues that this is the end, well, we've been seeing these clues for a long time. And it's true, you could say that every one of those has is we're closer to the end. It's true. Now, we don't know how close we are to the end, but it is coming and we're headed that direction. RyanHere's what we can say, every day we get closer. Right. Every day we get closer. Here's what I can guarantee you, everyone who's listening to this podcast, I'll put this clear, everyone who's listening to the podcast in the year 2023, can't say about the future, but one thing I can promise everyone who's listening to the podcast in 2023, I guarantee you within 100 years you're meeting Jesus. You're standing before his throne and you're going to give an account to your life. Whether or not he comes and does that here or you go to his throne room, you're meeting Jesus. So trying to figure out, you know, when's he coming back? It's like, you know, either within your life or at the end of your life, you're coming face to face with him. Like, don't think this is maybe some distant thing. This is going to happen for you either before you die or the day you die. Yeah, right. So you're saying that people in the future, they might have longer life expectancy. I'm just no, no, no. I'm saying people in the future, it may be longer than 100 years. I'm saying within 100 years, I can promise everyone who's listening. JonYou are. Yeah. Or maybe you're just really optimistic and you're thinking somebody might be listening to this podcast in heaven. Oh, so actually, they're coming with it. RyanSomeone could be listening to this podcast. That good. Yeah. JonWell, that's going to go on. RyanThat's the other thing is that is I see I'm watching a lot. I'm listening to a lot of sermons right now as pastors. Can their pre-planned message and sermon to focus on this? And I'm just, I'm not gonna make, I'm not gonna make any prophetic predictions. I'm just not gonna do it. I don't feel that call. I don't, I'm not that confident. I just don't think that's appropriate for the time we're in. And I get people wanna respond to it. And... JonYeah, so let me, so let's just, I looked at, there's a lot of texts that people will refer to just to try to say that like what's happening right now is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. I picked just one to look at and think about, Jeremiah 30. So, Jeremiah, especially 30 verse 7, talks about the time of trouble for Jacob, the time of trouble for Israel, God's people. And there's people right now that are pointing to verses like that and saying, see, this is it. The nation of Israel is going through a time of trouble, and so that's fulfillment of this precise verse in the Bible. The end is coming, and what's going to happen is Israel is going to go through a hard time, and then things are going to get way better, and there's going to be peace for the modern-day nation of Israel. Whereas we would look at that, and we would say, I think when I look at Jeremiah 30, I see a couple of things going on. I think there's sort of short-term fulfillment in 586 BC when Persia comes into power and when actually the North and South nations of Israel and Judah kind of come back together. There's temple rebuilding, there's people coming back to Jerusalem, there's that. And then I think ultimately, you know, the very next chapter of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 31 and following is about the new covenant, the ultimate promise that God has for when his people will be united to him, they will be freed from sin, they'll have eternal relationship with him. And so I think on the one hand, we see sort of a historical fulfillment of that in 586, but also we see a long-term fulfillment of that in people coming to meet Jesus and having eternal life. That's how it's ultimately fulfilled. So just to give an example of kind of how we as Covenant Theology Reform guys would look at a passage like that and say, well, is it really specifically speaking about this modern-day situation or is it talking about some kind of a historical trajectory and ultimately a fulfillment in Jesus? RyanYeah, that's definitely, yeah, that's typically how I approach what's going on on the world stage as far as it relates to biblical events or biblical prophecy. The other thing I'd say is that one thing that we can say is that what's going on in the world stage, there's also a spiritual counterpart to this. That there is a spiritual battle happening, that the enemy is working against the forces of the church and I think you can say some of this is being played out. That the enemy has sway over the lost and unrepentant world, and you're seeing some of that come to fruition. When people don't have Christ as their Lord, this is the inevitable outcome. It's war and strife and terror and heartache and brokenness and broken families and death and destruction, and this is why Christians need to be focusing on ushering in the Kingdom of God through people coming to faith in Jesus and us sharing the gospel. JonAwesome. Hey, last formal question I got for us, and we can say a little bit more, but if Israel is not special, why have we been praying for them in church? Question #4: If Israel is not special, why have we been praying for them in church? RyanOh man, okay. So if Israel is not special, why have we been praying for them in church? JonSo we've already talked about that first half, right? We've said on the one hand, they're historically special, and that they're the people that the Lord originally chose in the Old Testament that the Bible was delivered through, that the Messiah came through. And then we've also talked about the flip side of that and how the church is the real covenant people of God now, the inheritors of God's promises. So, you know, whatever our take is on that, that we've already talked about, why they're specifically talking about at Peace Church, why have we been praying for them? We've spent some time during congregational prayer. I've been the one who's gotten to do it. And we've just prayed for people in the nation of Israel. We've prayed for justice, we've prayed for the protection of human life. So why have we done that? RyanYeah, I would say if they're not special, we're praying for them because they were the ones who were attacked. I think they're the ones who were justified in some level of response. You know, their approach has been so much more, I'll just use the term godly than Hamas is. I mean they gave people warning saying hey we're gonna bomb these areas so get out of town versus Hamas doing his secret you know sneak attack. So on the one hand because we believe that they're they're the ones who were attacked and they're the ones who are on you know defending themselves that's that's probably what I'd say is like you know why if Israel is not special why are we praying for them? Then that's probably how I'd say that but I would also go back to say, well, on the flip, I think there is a unique call to pray for Israel. The Bible, again, Romans 8, 9, 10, 11, really, really focuses on a specific detail for Israel. And so those are part of the reasons that you can't deny the fact that they do have a unique place in the history of redemption, in the history of the biblical storyline. And so it's out of respect for that, that we'd also pray for them. JonYeah. Well, and also, I would add, we often, whenever there's a major world event like that going on, we do usually mention them in our prayer. Just our congregational prayer time at church is a chance for us to pray as a church. It's also a time, I think, for us as pastors, just to get to try to set an example, just kind of try to model for people how to pray through situations. And so, like when the Russia-Ukraine thing was going on, we were praying for Ukraine and for protection of human life and for justice and all that good stuff. RyanYeah, I was gonna say, it's not like we're only praying for Israel. We're not praying for Hamas to have victory, but we prayed for the humanitarian crisis that's happening. We prayed for the protection of innocent life on both sides of this war. And so it's not like we're only praying for Israel, not praying for those who are affected by the war. We're praying for both. JonYeah, and typically we've ended those prayers by saying something, and most of all we pray for Christians in these places, that they would show the love of Jesus and that they would speak the gospel so that ultimately people can receive eternal life. RyanYeah. On the day after this attack happened was also the launch of a significant campaign for our church. Yeah. And I specifically said in the opening, it didn't make it to the podcast because it was kind of like a prelude, but I said, you know, there's somewhere between a thousand and thirteen hundred Christians in the Gaza Strip. And I specifically said we need to specifically pray for them. We're praying for everyone, but they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. And we're praying for a unique protection on them that they would be able to be, get out of there safely or be protected. And, but again, we pray for everyone that's over there, but they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We pray for our family in ways that we don't pray for strangers. We pray for the world. We pray for everyone to come to know Jesus. But when we look at the pages of the New Testament, there's a unique call to do good to everyone, and especially the household of faith, as Galatians says. And so, you know, when people ask, why are we only praying for Israel? I would say listen to everything we're saying because we're not only praying for Israel We're praying for the entire conflict. We're praying for protection of life We're praying for the Christians who are affected over there and your ultimate we're praying that Everyone comes to faith in Jesus if both sides repentant place their faith in Jesus. They would no longer be enemies They would not only longer be friends. Do they not be family by the blood of Christ? How amazing would that be? That's what we're praying for, too, ultimately. JonAwesome, awesome, good stuff. Just to kind of close down on this major theological topic that we've talked about. So if you're if you're thinking about that and asking questions about that in your own mind, I would encourage you to read Romans chapter nine and chapter 11. Those are key passages. They're also really tough passages, but they're key passages on this topic. Galatians chapter three has some really important stuff on this topic as well. And then again, unfortunately, I aren't able to go super deep on all that in this episode, but maybe in future episodes can go even deeper on that. RyanYeah, I also just say, for those who are really immersed in the prophetic aspect of this, you know, what is playing out prophetically before our eyes? extreme clarity on this side of the equation. And so while it's interesting to try and discern all this, what I would say to people is don't let that distract you from the specific commandments and commission that you have to glorify God, love your neighbor, share the gospel, reach the nations with the gospel of Jesus. Don't spend so much time going down the prophetic rabbit holes or rabbit trails that you forget to actually announce the gospel and share it with the lost world around you because my eschatology is not very particularly sparse sparse out but what I can say and what I do believe is that Jesus is coming back his first coming is proof and guarantee of his second coming as is the resurrection and so for me it's like I'm working for that end not so that I can be proven right that I guessed all the nations correctly in their code words for who they are in the biblical prophecy. When Christ comes back, I don't want to be hunkered down in a prophetic rabbit trail. I want to be out on the front lines sharing the gospel with the lost world. And so what I'd say to people out there is like it is an interesting and fascinating discussion to talk about biblical prophecy. But I'd say really be balancing that with actually living the Christian life as far as sharing the gospel with your neighbors and your family that's lost. Does that make sense? You get what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. It is something that our dispensational friends and brothers and sisters in Christ have a hyper focus on and there is no shortage of the internet exploding with videos about that. But my loving caution to our church, to the Peace Church family who's listening is don't spend so much time immersed in that that you forget to actually share the gospel with your neighbor. Jon That's good. Awesome. Thanks Pastor Ryan. Ryan Thanks Pastor J. Jon Thanks everybody. Great time. Be sure to review and rate and share this podcast so we can reach more people and help them. Ryan Maybe not this episode. JonAre we keeping that in? He said that. Because we want to help people grow in their knowledge of the Bible and their walk with the Lord. RyanNo, you can't say that anymore. I do want to say one more thing. Here's the other thing I want to say about this is while, you know, there are people who are totally willing to make certain claims and declarations right now about what's happening, for me, it's like so much is unfolding so fast. It's not that I'm just going to sit and wait and watch. I'm going to watch and pray over what's happening as we continue to announce the gospel, as we continue to see the church build and as the kingdom expand. So we're not just sitting on our duff doing nothing. We are doing what God calls us to do, what Christ commanded us to do, as we pray for the unfolding of the events that's happening out there. JonYeah, so you're saying we watch the news, it's not like we've got our heads in the sand. We know, we care, we pray, but we also keep our eyes on what's right in front. RyanYeah, yeah. JonThat's good. Awesome, thanks everybody. Awesome, thanks everybody. RyanHey, thanks.

PODCAST That's a Good Question Jesus vs. Culture: The Hard Truth January 14, 2025 Jon Delger & Mitchell Leach Listen to this Episode Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc/questions . If you find this resource helpful, please rate and review the podcast so more people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know somebody who can benefit from today's topic or has questions like the ones that we're answering, please share this episode with them. My name's John, I serve as a pastor, I'm here with Mitch, who's also a pastor, and we love to answer some good questions. Yeah, we do. And today we've got some really good ones. I'm actually really excited about this. We're not so much following a specific topic, but we're just gonna be kinda bouncing all over the place, and I'm really excited about these questions. So let's jump right into it with the first one. This is a question that we've had before and we get quite often. And so we're gonna answer this again. It's an important question. Here it is. Did Jesus descend into hell? And that question comes from probably that phrase in the Apostles' Creed. What would you say to that, John? Right, that is a question we get asked all the time. Actually, I would say that usually I'm watching the Q and it stacks up probably three or four times before we answer it because I think we've answered it like once a year for the last couple of years, and so we try to not answer it over and over again. Maybe we should, we love answering it. Yeah, totally, always happy to answer it. It's a really good question. It's an important one to understand and know. One of these days, we're gonna have to create like a frequently asked questions library where all those can go. Yeah, okay, so did Jesus descend into hell? So going back to the Apostles Creed, so if you're looking at the Apostles Creed, if you're reciting it in a church service like we do before we celebrate communion each time, you probably read that line or actually for us we substitute a different line that is that does have history as well. He descended to the dead. So even to start there, so in the Apostles Creed, some of the earliest copies of the Apostles Creed that we have. We don't have the original. It wasn't actually written by the Apostles. It was written by people following them, but early on, first or second century, somewhere in there. John, for those people who maybe are unfamiliar with the idea of a creed, what is the Apostles Creed? Why is it important? Yeah, good question. So it's, so creeds and confessions, we say, are helpful tools. They're not the Bible, but they're helpful tools that help us either explain the Bible or answer important questions about the Bible. So like the Heidelberg Catechism, for example, is in question-and-answer format. It asks questions like, what is faith? What is baptism? Things like that. Questions that we answer on the show, actually. People have been asking for hundreds, a couple thousand years, you know, it's not new stuff. Yeah. So yeah, the Apostles' Creed was a very early creed that was designed just to help Christians be able to recite. These are some core things that we Christians believe. Yeah, and they usually come out of some sort of theological controversy, right? There's some sort of question about Christianity and then Christians come together, they form a consensus on that, whatever issue it is, to bring clarity for people. And so that's why this question matters a lot. Did Jesus go to hell? Because I think it really raises the question of, did Jesus accomplish it all at the cross or did he have to go somewhere else and accomplish more? Because at the cross we're talking about, at the cross Jesus pays for our sins. That's what we're professing, confessing. So did that all happen at the cross or did Jesus have to do some more later? So when it comes to this question, we at Peace Church, where we get to serve as pastors, we when we recite this, we say he descended to the dead rather than he descended to hell. Yeah. And the reason for that is because we believe, looking at scripture, that Jesus suffered it all on the cross. Yeah. There was no more hell to be suffered after what Jesus did on the cross. He says on the cross, it is finished. He says to the thief next to him, today I will see you in paradise. Okay, so both of those things tell us that Jesus pays the entire payment for our sin on the cross. And then he says that he's not going down to hell. He's actually going up to be with his father in paradise, paradise and hell, two very different things. Yeah. Not the same thing. Right. So, um, we do have some passages in scripture. I think at first Peter three, there's a very tricky passage there. I'm preaching through that book and come to that passage. Very tricky. Um, about maybe Jesus, Maybe that message is telling us that Jesus went down to Hades or hell or Sheol to declare his victory. If he did so, maybe he did so, but if he did so, he didn't go there to suffer anymore. That's the key thing. So maybe Jesus went and declared his victory to the souls who were dead already and there, but he definitely didn't go to suffer further. He was finished on the cross. Yeah, I think that's also a really important thing about how we understand and interpret scripture, right? There are some pretty clear passages that you just mentioned, like the idea, or the statement that Jesus made about that him and the thief on the cross will be in paradise. That's pretty clear, right? The passage that you just talked about is a little bit more murky, right? And so it's important for us to use the clearer parts of scripture to help us understand the parts that are a little bit more confusing, right? So it'd be the wrong way of going about it is saying, let's look at this murky piece of scripture that isn't super clear about what happens when Jesus is doing this and say, okay, now let's form doctrine around that in a vacuum and not looking at the rest. Yeah. Right. Totally. And that can be easy to do, but it's an important thing for us to look at the most clear parts of Scripture first and then go from there. So I can imagine somebody listening saying, well, I'm concerned that we're moving away from what I was taught was the original reading of the Apostles' Creed. So I can understand that concern, and that's why I bring up the history, and hopefully that helps just to understand that we're not actually deviating from the quote-unquote original reading of the Apostles Creed, that we have copies that say several different things. Some that have none, nothing, you know, just simply no line at that point. Some that say he descended to hell and some that say he descended to the dead. Yeah. So we've got multiple options there in the history of the Apostles Creed itself. And then of course, more importantly, the Bible, God's Word, the true authority, tells us some things that tells that Jesus did not suffer further in how he actually bore, not just physically, but spiritually, the wrath of God. The wrath of God was poured out on him at the cross for us. And actually, we usually, when we look at it, there's not like a verse that specifically says this, but usually, you see in the story, in the narrative, that time when it goes dark in the middle of the day, usually we kind of think of that that's probably the time when in some sort of spiritual way that we can't fully understand that when God the Father is pouring out all his wrath for the sin of his people on Jesus and he's bearing it. And that's traditionally understood as Jesus symbolically taking, not even symbolically taking, the wrath is suffering hell, right? That's what hell is. It's suffering the wrath of God for sin and for evil, and that's what Jesus does on the cross, is that he literally takes hell for us. Kind of off of that idea, then is it wrong to say that Jesus descended into hell in church? Say that there are pastors here listening or other church leaders, is it wrong to say descended into hell? I think if you're going to say, if you're going to use that version of the Apostles' Creed, I think mentally you've got to kind of think of the other thing. You've got to kind of think, I believe that he went there to declare his victory. And again, we can talk about that passage is kind of, I don't know, it's really tough to understand exactly what's being said. But I think if you're going to say it, you've got to kind of mean that in your mind. So I'm not saying everybody who says it is, is that that's awful, but you should probably clarify for people what that really means. Because it can be confusing. Yeah. That's why we get the question. And that's why we use the version that says he descended to the dead. Yep. Because he certainly did that. That's a little bit ambiguous as to what exactly that means, but he certainly did that versus the hell component of it. Yeah, that's good. All right, let's jump into this next question. Here it is. The Bible seems clear on prohibiting same-sex interaction and and marriage. What do you have to say about this topic? What should our approach be to those who are struggling with either same-sex attraction or pushing for full acceptance from the church on this topic? Yeah, great question. Another one of those that we get quite frequently, we have it in episodes about, but want to try to provide another concise answer for people who are asking. So the Bible is clear, like the the question asker mentioned, the Bible is quite clear on this topic in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Think of passages like Leviticus 20, think of passages like Romans 1, like 1 Corinthians 6, where it specifically names out homosexual behavior as listed as something that is against God's will, that is something that is not something that God prescribes for human beings. So the Bible is quite clear about that. So then the rest of the question is, then how do we treat those people? People who are struggling with same-sex attraction, right, I think is what the listener asked. Yeah, well, can I ask a question here, quick? What would you say to people who say, you know, here you say those verses, and say, well, those are the verses that everyone uses, the church always uses against the homosexual community, LGBTQ community, that they're kind of bully passages. What would you say to that? Well, all of scripture is God-breathed. So, you know, do we repeat ourselves in quoting some of the same passages? Yes, but that's because they say it. It's because they're the relevant passages, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to try to find a different verse for each time that I talk about the topic, right? There are some key verses. I think we could go further and talk about all the positive, so those are some negative ways that the Bible talks about homosexuality. We could also talk about the positive ways that the Bible talks about heterosexuality. The Bible's prescription from beginning to end is that a man and a woman together forever is God's design for marriage. So we could talk about it in a lot of different ways and see that the whole Bible is consistent about this from Genesis to Revelation. But if we want to jump to just which passages are explicitly clearest, that's why we keep jumping to those because they're really clear. Yeah, it'd be like saying, if we're gonna talk about lying, it's not wrong for us then to quote parts of the Ten Commandments. Right. This is where the Bible talks about this. It's not unloving against liars. Sure, right. We want to hold the truth in love, right? So we got to hold to what's true. We can't, you know, compromise on what's true and we want to do it in love. So go on to the second part of the question then of how do I believe. Yeah. Sorry Andrew. No, it's good. You know, how do we treat people who have an attraction to people of the same sex? So that's another thing we have to talk about, right? Is there's homosexual behavior, which the Bible says is sin. But then there are people who struggle with a desire, an attraction to people of the same sex. And so, you know, how do we care for those people? How do we love those people? How should those people then live? You know, I think when you look at the Bible, then they've got to be able to say, hey, I've got this desire and it's out of sync with God's design for me, for men and women, for marriage, for sexuality, right? And so that's really hard, and yet, to other degrees, all of us have that to some certain extent, right? All of us have some desires that are against God's design, because after Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, broken, fallen world, unfortunately we have sinful natures. So all of us have desires that are against God's design, and we have to fight against those desires in order to live in obedience, in accordance with God's will. Now, I wanna just say right away, for the same sex-attracted person, I can't imagine the difficulty of that, fighting against that desire, knowing that that's not God's will, and yet that's God's call for his followers, his disciples. And so for us as a church, then, we wanna love and support, if they're Christians, those brothers and sisters, and say, hey, brother and sister, we wanna come alongside of you, help you fight against those desires, help you live in accordance with God's design. We're here for you, we want to support you, pray for you, give you a helpful friendship as you fight that fight. And for those who are not yet followers of Jesus, we want to communicate the truth and do it in love. So we want to, I want to, just like I'm doing now, I want to be open and honest and say, yeah, the Bible says that that's not God's design, that's actually not what's best for you or for others. And so I want to actually invite you into what is better for you, which is God's good design. Come to Jesus, put your faith in Him, receive Him as your Lord and your Savior, walk with Him. Yeah. I think sometimes we are so, like, sometimes we dance around this so much because there's such a pushback from people on this issue. That, you know, I think it's fair to say, just because something is hard, just because something is hard does not mean that then we can go against God's word, right? The desire for same-sex attraction is bound to be very difficult, but that doesn't give us a license than to just say, well, it's hard, so I can do what I want here. You know, there are, with any number of sins, people who genuinely struggle. You know, I'm sure that there are people who genuinely have difficulty with gossip, right? But it would be wrong for us to say, well, we know that this is hard, and God, or you know, that maybe you even feel like this is the way that God's designed you to be prone to gossip, to want to gossip, that it's natural for you. It would be wrong for us as a church or for us as pastors or Christians to then say, yeah, let's just, you know, it's hard for you, so it's okay if you keep doing it. Sure. You know? Sure. Yeah. One of the other questions I've heard raised is, why do Christians pick on the LGBTQ? Because, you know, maybe the fact that we're addressing this question explicitly right now, or the fact that we sometimes do talks on this, they say, you know, why are you talking about that, and why don't you talk more about gossip, like, you know, example that you brought up. Yeah. Well, hopefully we do talk about both, right? We should address both, we shouldn't, you know, no sins are okay. Yeah. You know, all sins are outside of God's design, so we should talk about all of them and address all of them. One of the interesting and unique things about the LGBTQ, the homosexual conversation, that part of it, is that I don't know many people that are gossiping or lying or stealing or murdering and saying, this isn't bad, this is great, and in fact, the world should accept it, promote it, and embrace it. Or even the church, right? To say, you know, Brian and I, our producer, we were talking about this earlier, kind of an idea for a video. Imagine someone coming in and talking with a pastor saying, hey, I really want to be a Christian, but I also really want to continue to steal. Yeah. And like our response would be, no, no, like the Bible says this is wrong. We'd go to scripture, show them where it's wrong. That wouldn't be unloving. We'd say, this is something that you need to repent of. If you want to follow Christ, you can't continue to do this regardless how much you like to do it, regardless how good you are at it. It is something that the Bible says is wrong. And that wouldn't be unloving. That wouldn't be wrong for us to say, again, regardless of what it is. Yeah. Jesus says repent and believe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that's I think that's what's unique about, yeah I think the tail end of the question, right, ask the question about what about those who are advocating for... Yeah, for full acceptance from the church on this topic. Gotcha. Yeah. And that's one of the situations where, you know, that question that that were acceptance I think is an interesting one because, you know, I try to be careful around it. Are we welcoming? Yes, we are very welcoming. If you are living even an openly homosexual lifestyle, please, you are welcome at the church. Please come and hear the gospel and hear the good news. Learn what this Christian faith thing is about. But are you affirmed in it? No, just like none of the rest of us are affirmed in our sin, right? If I come as a liar, a gossiper, a slanderer, whatever it is, none of us are affirmed in our sin. All of us are welcome, none of us are affirmed. And so that's the thing is that, yeah, we talk about it and it's a little unique because there are so many advocating for it to not be called sin. And that's the thing. That's why we have to talk about it, be really clear about it because it is sin. Yeah. Well, what about churches who are affirming, right? Isn't that confusing for Christians? Sure, then you get that whole, yeah, yeah. That's very confusing. Because there are churches, there are pastors who say, this isn't wrong, you're welcome here. You know, how do we deal with that? How do we, how should Christians understand that? Yeah, and that's why we go back to the Bible, right? The Bible is the authority for the Christian life. It is God's word to us. So, you know, we as pastors or whatever, we can't just declare, we don't just declare what is true and what's not. We are people who teach what the Bible says. So that's where we as Christians come back to. And so that's how we explain the difference, that there are some churches that embrace it and it's because they're out of sync with the Bible. Yeah. And I think that can be a scary phrase for people, but there is value in understanding how has the church understood this over the life of the church, right? It's only within the last couple of decades that churches have been open and affirming and saying that this isn't sin. Right. Anytime you're teaching something, so churches have been around for roughly 2,000 years, right, since Jesus resurrected and ascended. If you are coming out saying, here's this new teaching that the church has never said before, and here it is, you're probably in the wrong place, right? That's usually not good. There's nuances that we learn over time, things like that, but there's not like brand new, nobody's ever said this, thought this before, that's not really something that's happening. So when you come out and you say, hey, you know, just recently, now suddenly the church does embrace this and the Bible never actually said this and all that kind of stuff. Watch out. Yeah, it's also a crazy way to view God, right? It would be such an unloving thing for God to say, hey, I've given these people this doctrine for 2000 years, but they've screwed it up, they never understood it. They've mismanaged this idea, and 2,000 years later, then I'll correct it. Then I'll teach them what's the right way to live and the right way to do church. I mean, I think that would just be such a crazy way to view God that he's like, you know, I'm just gonna let them really genuinely hurt people. I mean, if this is true, if this is okay, I mean, the church then has done something very, very wrong for 2,000 years against a group of people. And for God to be like, yeah, I'm just going to let them do this whatever, but we're going to correct it 2,000 years later, would be such a hard way to view God. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I mean, we're always reading and better understanding scripture, but like we said, a major, I mean, that would be a royal screw up. It would, yeah. And, you know, and that's the whole thing, right? Everybody, you know, we don't believe only pastors can interpret the Bible. We believe everybody has the opportunity to read the Bible and interpret it. There are, you know, methods that you need to understand, you know, we call it the historical grammatical method, you know, which is basically just reading a book as it was designed to be written. You know, understanding the context, not just plucking random verses, you know, all those kind of things. So read it according to that way, but I'd encourage you to just go read those passages, think about it. I think they're quite clear. Yeah. If no other church fathers have said this before, it's probably a bad thing for you to start adopting it. Sure. All right, enough on that. Let's jump into our next question. Here it is. Is it wrong for a church to say the Pledge of Allegiance or to sing the National Anthem in church? This is a really good question. Yeah, yeah. And there's another one of those again, but I feel like we get asked, I know I get asked at least a couple times a year. So I'm glad to get to answer it. So let me start by saying this. Before we get into that, the question is, do you think the National Anthem is a hymn? I've heard people say that, that it's in a hymn form. Hmm. What makes something or doesn't make something a hymn? Whether or not it has a chorus. Really? That's the definition of a hymn? I am not a very musical man. It's not really relevant to this conversation. I don't know. I have no idea. It's a song. It fits in that category, right? That's all I got. Yeah, I wasn't a music major, so. Nope. Yeah, I got nothing. Yeah. So, should we do the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the National Anthem in church? Yeah, so great question. So, let me start by saying this, is that I love our country absolutely dearly and- You were never a communist. That's true. You were never part of the Communist Party. No, no, very much no. So, whenever I'm at a sporting event or something like that and I get to sing the national anthem whenever I get the opportunity in the right places to do the Pledge of Allegiance I am honored to do so I love to do so I get tears in my eyes I get a lump in my throat when the Star Spangled Banner is getting played so I love our country and I'm so thankful for those who have bled and died to protect our country protect all the beautiful things that we get to enjoy and be a part of in this country yeah so all those things are true. It's not wrong to do that as a Christian, right? We should love the place that we live and have a firm affinity and love for our area. There's nothing wrong with patriotism. Absolutely. Yeah, loving your country is a great thing. And the church is not a national organization. It's a transnational organization. It spans across many nations. When we come together as the church, we don't come together under the flag of any one country. We come together under the banner of Christ. So that's the thing is that every Memorial Day, every Fourth of July, every sporting event, I love to sing the national anthem and I get teary-eyed about it. But when I come to church, I think the only appropriate songs to sing are about Jesus the King of Kings. That's what that gathering is designed for. Yeah. Alright, explain that a little bit further. Why is it okay to do it at a sporting event but not at – why can't we do that at a worship service on Memorial Day weekend? Yeah, well, because, you know, as Christians we are parts of several kingdoms, right? We're part of, all the time, most importantly, we are part of God's kingdom. Yeah. And so, and, you know, the church is his body and a reflection of that. But we are also part of these other kingdoms, or we call them nations. Yeah. Right? And so it's okay to have multiple loves and even allegiances, although you always have to have the ultimate allegiance, your highest allegiance is to Jesus. You know, I have different allegiances in my life. I have them to my family, to my friends, to my workplace, to my country, to my God. You know, I have all of those allegiances and yet there is an ordering to them. And there are certain places, different places where I acknowledge them in different ways. Yeah. Right, so yeah, at the Memorial Day Parade, which we, every year we love to go to the Memorial Day Parade, we have our kids come with us to the cemetery afterwards and get to sit to remember in that way, those who died to, and sacrificed to protect the freedoms that we have in this country. And extremely thankful for that. So we have that moment where we get to celebrate that. And then we have when we come together as a church and we're remembering Jesus' sacrifice. So, you know, we do do things in church like we pray and give thanks for the freedoms we have in this country. We do pray and give thanks for those who have served and sacrificed and died. But in terms of actually, you know, having a song or a, what would you call it? The Pledge of Allegiance is kind of like a liturgy, I think those got to be just focused on Jesus when we're gathered as the church. Yeah, right. And there have been questions about this for a long time, right? A lot of these questions that we have aren't new. In Reformed theology, this is called the regulative principle. Please don't shut off the podcast yet. I'll explain this. That principle really just means we should worship in the way that God has called us to worship. Not just called in the general sense of like, I feel called to be an electrician or whatever. How he's expressively told us to worship him in the Bible. In his word. Right, so things like we should always preach the word. That's part of what he's commanded us to do. We should always sing, we should always pray, we should always tithe, we should always have, you know, it's always appropriate for us to do the sacraments, right? Those are always good things for us to do. But it doesn't talk about calling us to do something towards a nation. And I think that's an okay thing for us to say, you know, that would be an inappropriate time for us to do that. If you want to do a community event later, or even something outside the church, I think that's a little bit different, but if you're calling this a worship service, probably shouldn't do something that is only- Let's say that, the idea, we call it a worship service because it's designed to worship Jesus, right? That's what we gather for. Yeah. Yeah. All right, our next question is this. If someone says no to the Lord so many times, probably what they meant is very many times, can he or she still be saved? Yeah, so scripture has some pretty strong warnings about this, I think of Hebrews chapter four, Hebrews chapter six, I think of where Jesus talks about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So there are some warnings in Scripture about repeatedly walking away from the Lord, repeatedly denying his power, repeatedly rejecting calls to repent and believe in the gospel and the good news. So you know that is an extremely serious thing to hear the Lord's call and to say no. Because that's what I'm assuming when I hear that question is that there's somebody who's hearing the Lord's call, they've got a friend or a pastor or somebody who's sharing with them the gospel message and inviting them to respond and they're saying no. I think Scripture lays out for us, gives us examples that that just makes our hearts harder. The more that we hear the invitation of God and say no, the harder our hearts become because we're fighting and running away from God. Now Scripture also tells us that God in his grace and mercy runs after us. So all of us are born with rebel hearts that want to go against God, that want to run away from God. And so God in his mercy and grace runs after us. So in that way, I mean, nobody's beyond the ability of God to reach them, right? God can run any one of us down and save us by his mercy and grace. Praise God. And yet, so that's kind of the tension, is I guess my answer to the question is, no, you can't become beyond God's grace, and yet repeatedly rejecting the Lord is not a good thing. That's bad. Yeah, when I hear this question, I hear the heart in it, where someone's saying, if I've witnessed to someone so many times, is there a point, maybe this is what they're saying, is there a point at which I should just say, you know what, I've done this so many times, they haven't accepted this, you know, I can stop now. Right. And the answer is no. The answer is no, because we believe God is sovereign over salvation, that God is the God of salvation. He's the one who decides, he's the one who changes hearts. So maybe it's gonna take three times sharing the gospel, but maybe it's gonna take 300. Yeah, that's one of those things that it's not, it's the beautiful part of the gospel that it's not on us, right? And as pastors, that's even more affirming, more comforting, especially when you make a call for people to accept the gospel and then nobody does. Sure. I've felt as a young pastor or a young person in ministry doing that and going like, man, I must have sucked. But the truth is it's not on me to change hearts, right? God is the one who does it. The Holy Spirit is the one who does that. It's our job to proclaim the gospel, to share the good news about Jesus, and let the whole community. We've got some great examples in the scripture of, right, the prophets repeatedly went to people, shared what God told them to share, and they were rejected. Right, the prophets suffered so much rejection, and so, yeah, we don't get to give up. Right, on the onset of his call, God says, you're gonna go and do this, and nobody's gonna listen. And yet it was still his call to do that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if somebody's heart does become harder and harder and harder, that's between them and the Lord, that's not for us to discern and say, well, I'm not gonna share the gospel with them then. It's always our call from God to share the gospel and to pray for the Lord to do something with that. Yeah. Don't be discouraged in your evangelism and your call to share the gospel. Yeah. We've got three questions left and let's kind of lightning round these. Here they are. Was it Jesus' suffering or his death that actually paid for our sins? Hmm. Yeah. Interesting question. So I think in some ways both, right? It's really both, but ultimately death is what had to be paid. Yeah. So, yeah, he couldn't have just suffered, he had to also die. Yes. We see throughout the Old Testament, right, the sacrifices, death is what had to be paid for sin, right? That's kind of the penalty, that's the price, and so, ultimately, while both of them contributed, ultimately, his death is what pays for our sin. Yep, absolutely. Second question, what are hedge laws? How could this occur in the church today? Yeah, hedge laws, so we're thinking of the Pharisees, right, the Pharisees built a hedge, an extra layer of protection, although ironically, have you ever seen a hedge? They're not very protective, right, it's just a bush. But they try to build an extra fence around the law. So can that still happen? Yeah, people can still try to draw fences around the law. Any examples? Off the top of my head, one that just kind of obviously comes to mind, and I hate to pick on this one, but it is there. When people say that Christians can't drink any alcohol, that that's against the law, that that's sin, that's not actually the case. The Bible says that drunkenness is sin. But can you have some alcohol? Yes, you can. So when people say no alcohol, never, none whatsoever, that is kind of fencing the law. And I'm sure there are other examples as well. And it stops you from drinking orange juice. Orange juice is a naturally fermenting thing. So it's just, that would be hard. I like orange juice. No problem. Yeah. All right, last question. How do people get into heaven pre-Jesus? Yeah. Or pre the incarnation, I assume. Yeah, great question. We're actually gonna do a longer episode kind of related to this topic, where we're gonna talk about the relationship between the Christians, between Christians and the law in the near future here. But the short answer is they got saved in the same way that we get saved. They did not get saved by their works. They didn't get saved by following the Ten Commandments or Moses' law or through the sacrifice of bulls or goats. The book of Hebrews tells us, Hebrews chapter nine, that those did not actually take away sins. Those were symbolic, that they were foreshadowing, leading towards. So actually, Old Testament believers were saved by the life-death resurrection of Jesus. They just didn't know that his name was Jesus. They didn't know what exactly he would be like, but they were looking forward to the coming of a Savior who would die to take away their sins. And so they died, or they were saved by that same faith. They were just, it was, they did it before Jesus. We do it after Jesus is coming. Yeah. And if you're looking for a verse for that, Romans 3 lays that out that but it was in his divine forbearance to pass over former sins. So Jesus comes, saves those in the Old Testament. Yeah, it's awesome. Great stuff, great questions, great conversation. Awesome, well hey, thanks everybody. Do us a favor, like, follow, subscribe on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. Resoundmedia.cc. Have an awesome week, everybody. Have an awesome week, everybody. the next, video!!

PODCAST That's a Good Question Debunking "Live Your Truth": Navigating a Culture of Relativism September 10, 2024 Jon Delger & Mitchell Leach Listen to this Episode Hey everyone, welcome to season three of That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and a part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc. That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon, I serve as a pastor at Peace Church as well as a part of this show. You can always submit questions at peacechurch.cc slash questions. Today, I'm here with Pastor Mitchell. Yeah, I'm excited for season three. I think this is going to be awesome. This week, we're jumping into a series that we're calling Calling Out Cultural Lies. This is a series that we're covering as a church and as we're both pastors at Peace Church. And today we're going to be looking at the topic of live your truth. This is such an important and such a big topicthat whether or not you go to peace, this is still gonna be a relevant conversation for mantra you see all over the place. Yeah, so let's jump into this first question. In a real life conversation, how do I respond to someone who says this, live your truth? Yeah, and it's something you see all over the place. And so, yeah, talking about in a real conversation with a real person, so not just engaging with a billboard, but you're sitting there with somebody and you come across this phrase, this catchy mantra. I think the first thing you have to realize is the two different starting places that each of you is coming from, the two different world views that you're coming from. I think the underlying assumption when somebody says, live your truth, is that all truth is relative. I think that's the underlying assumption. It's just new packaging for this old idea of relativism. It reminds me of a conversation I had going back into high school. I remember talking even then with somebody who said, we were talking about Christianity and about ultimate truth and things like that. And they said to me, all truth is relative. And I said, and I didn't come up with this, other people have said this over the years. Actually, this is as old as Plato, Socrates, this is really old stuff. But I said to him, I said, is that true for you or true for me? And the person got pretty flustered and said, well, that's a logical fallacy. And I said, well, actually, it's not. It's just, you know, a statement has to be able to hold up under its own weight. It's a self-defeating statement to say that all truth is relative because you're making an absolute truth claim. You're saying it's universally absolutely true that all truth is relative. And those are contradicting ideas. You can't say both of those things at the same time. So if you're going to engage somebody who says, live your truth, I think you have to start with this understanding of where they're coming from. They're coming from an idea of things being, that truth is relative. All right, so let's get an example going. So you're sitting there with two other people at your workplace or at your school, and you're talking about something, and somebody puts forward an idea, and somebody else says, well, yeah, you do you, you live your truth. And then these two people look at you, and you're, you know, the Christian in the room, and they're kind of, you know, what is this guy gonna say? What's he gonna bring? And, and so you, you step out to engage that person who's just put forward the idea, hey, you do you, you live your truth. How do you how do you respond to that person? I think what I would start with, is asking a question that kind of makes them think about that worldview, that, that assumption and kind of question those ideas. So say, well, yeah, live your truth. You know, would that work if you were talking to a police officer who just pulled you over for speeding? You know, he comes to the door and he says, you were speeding. You say, well, you know what? My truth is that I was going 25 and he says, well, my truth is that you were going a hundred in a 25 zone. Now how's that going to play out? Right. I mean, you can't, you can't live your truth in that moment. Or you try to and you say, well, you know what, you live your truth, I'll live mine. And he says, okay, and he hands you a ticket and walks away. So you don't pay your ticket, you're going to live your truth. Well, then eventually, you know, you get arrested, you stand in a courtroom and you try to play out that same worldview, that same way of approaching life. It's just not going to work. And so I think just kind of helping people think through the trajectory, the logical end of the line of thinking that they're on. Yeah, I think that works for a lot of people who live in a Western context where there isn't a lot of places where they have to live in these kind of black and whites where there is a little bit of gray. It's easier to try to live in that reality, but for maybe for someone who's hearing this. What does this mean? Why is it that people say live your truth? Yeah. So so beyond the underlying philosophy or world that you're saying like what is the motivation for that? Because I think sometimes we can paint people as these like, you know, these people are just they have no clue what they're talking about. But you know, these are real people who have come to this understanding, and they're usually not trying to posit something intentionally evil to the world. So why are they saying this? Yeah, well, so two different answers. So one answer I think is the average person is saying this because they're hearing it from people that they trust. They're hearing it very popularly, whether it's on television or YouTube videos or whatever. They're hearing that from people they trust. They're hearing people say, live your truth. And so they're just adopting it as though it's true because they've heard it so many times. So I think so many people, they're victims, they're being lied to and they're just repeating that lie. You know, they didn't really sit down and think up and come up with this philosophy. They're just sort of repeating it. And so, you know, I feel bad for them. We want to rescue them from that by giving them truth, rescue them from the deception. So to go further, to go back to the people who are really propagating this idea, where is that coming from? What's their motivation? I would say that their motivation is probably they don't want to live under the moral standards of God or of Christians or society or, you know, put whatever authoritative figure you want to put on it. But I mean, I think that's the real idea behind relativism is to say, well, I don't want to live under those strict, certain, solid moral standards. I want to, you know, loosen that up. I want to be able to go my own way and do my own thing. Yeah. It seems like a short-term solution to maybe even feeling guilty of, you know, if you've done something wrong, it's easy to say, well, I'm going to live my own truth and then I can kind of just put it behind me. But how does living without concrete form of morality, how does that lead to the adoption of subjective moral standards and how can that shift over time? Like what are some of the potential consequences of those types of shifts? Long term, not just short term. Sure. Yeah. Specifically, if you're thinking of moral issues, I mean, you don't have an anchor. You're adrift at sea. You know, there's nothing to tie you down and say, well, this is absolutely true and this is always right or wrong. That's one of the problems of relativism in the moral world and in all other forms of knowledge and reality is that you're just not tied to anything. Everything can shift and change. You're not tied to anything staying the same. Yeah, I think a good example of that is in the 1970s, it was really maybe not popular, but it was widely accepted and kind of seen as okay that a college professor might sleep or have a romantic relationship with a student. And today we would say, not only is that wrong, but the professor would be fired. And I think that there's some danger there. We see, you know, something that, you know, just a couple decades ago, most of society would look at and say, OK, that's not a huge deal. And if you were to stand behind that and that if you were vocal about that back then, and someone pulled an audio clip of that today, you'd be seen as, you know, someone who's who's terrible. I mean, someone who would be propagating the mistreatment of students, of very vulnerable people. That cultural shift, I think, having moral relativism would only lead you to be someone who has to live in fear of, is this thing that's culturally good now, or seen as culturally moral or right now? Is that always going to be the way? Can I say something about this and then, you know, think about having a job in 20 years? Right. Yeah, right. That's the danger. It can always change and I would add on top of that, not only can it always change, it's kind of in the hands of whoever has the power, right? Whoever has the most influence. Whether that be governmental, like legal enforcement kind of power influence, or whether that be like lawmaking, or whether that just be popular opinion, whatever that is, it's in the hands of those people. And so they can kind of change it to be whatever they want. I would say in some ways we're seeing that right now. It's in different areas. You know, thinking of sexuality, for example, we're seeing, you know, 50 years ago, and not that the world was perfect 50 years ago, it wasn't. You know, we're not living in a perfect time until Jesus returns. But you know, 50 years ago, there's a lot of things with homosexuality, with transgender, all those sort of things that would have been the majority viewpoint would have been that that's bad, whereas the majority viewpoint, or perhaps not the majority, but the loudest viewpoint has shifted on that. Yeah. No, absolutely. What's the danger of thinking this way? If we're going to take this to the logical conclusion of this thought, living your truth, where does that lead us? Yeah, I think it leads you to ultimately the only authority in your life is you. You get to do whatever you want and you get to justify it because you say there is no absolute truth. I am my own truth and I do whatever I think is best. Yeah. What about in terms of even holding others accountable? Yeah, well, there's no more standard to hold anybody accountable. Yeah. Right, it's like, I mean, if you're trying to, you know, when you measure something, you use inches or you use centimeters or whatever, you know, there just is no more measuring tool. Yeah. There's no more standard if we all have our own separate truth. Yeah, I think that's super dangerous when we think about what that does to a society or to anyone who's trying to, you know, not let things go. Absolutely. Without any sort of order. Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, imagine a judicial, a judicial system without any sort of code or any sort of, you know, there just wouldn't be it. more judges and right. Anarchy. Yeah, be a phrase for that. For sure. I think of, you know, in Scripture when we encounter situations like that, I think of the book of Judges. Yeah. Where it says everybody did what was right. There was no king in Israel in those days and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. It was such a good book, morally positive, good example. Right, right, right, right. For those who don't know, the book of Judges is full of bad examples. You know, the nation of Israel is headed in the wrong direction during this time. They have cycles in which they get going in the right direction when a leader comes and he follows God's ways. But yeah, a lot of the book is there was no king in Israel. Everybody was right in their own eyes, and that was bad. Yeah, there's, it's almost like loops and the loops just kind of keep going down and down until you end the book in a really, really dark place. Right. Yeah. So this is where we come back. So the biblical worldview is very different than this worldview of relativism. So, think of passages like John chapter 8, where Jesus, well, it's a very popularly quoted phrase, the truth will set you free. Yeah. But there's a key phrase, the truth, the truth will set you free. Not your truth, not my truth, not a truth, but the truth will set you free. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, when Jesus is talking about, you know, I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? You know, I even think about going back to the Old Testament, going back to the Ten Commandments when we're commanded not to tell, not to bear false witness. That's God telling Israel about who he is, that he is truth, right? We see in Jesus that he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. The reason that we can't tell lies is because God is truth himself. And that's a beautiful thing. Right. Yeah. Right. So if you're looking for a definition of truth, what is truth? I think one of the, you can weigh in here too, but one of the simplest things I think you could say is that truth is that which corresponds to reality. Yeah. That which corresponds to reality. Something that's false, it's not real. It doesn't correspond to reality, but truth corresponds to reality. Yeah, and that's why we can say God is the ultimate truth, because he's the ultimate form of reality. He is ultimate righteousness. He's ultimate whatever it is. He is the definition of what good is, what truth is, what real is, what love is. Yeah, absolutely. And so God gives us sort of ultimate reality in that sense. And, but there's even, and God gives us all of reality. But when we're talking about this with somebody and you're trying to help them understand this, sometimes one of the best places to start is with other things that they already, they agree with you are real. If you're engaging with somebody about the live your truth problem, you are going to engage some, some Christians who are, who are kind of deceived on this topic. Yeah. But you're also going to encounter a lot of non-Christians. And so if you want to talk to them about this, I think maybe starting with something like science or math, two plus two equals four, like you can't live your truth when it comes to math problems. We were building a deck at my house the other day and we had to do A squared plus B squared equals C squared, figure out the triangles to keep this thing square. And it's like, you can't do A squared plus B squared equals C to the third. You have to stick to the formula. It's only true this way and it works this way. Yeah. C to the third does not work in that. Yeah. It probably does something else. I don't know. I'm no math whiz, but neither. Yeah. When it's a ministry not to do math. That's right. That's right. For sure. Yeah. I mean, and we've seen that even in recent culture, kind of a try to step away from some of those things, I think, because this is so pervasive. I mean, there have been school systems that have called math racist because they think that there's some sort of inequity in having some sort of object truth. And I think that's a really dangerous game societally we're playing right now. Yeah. All right. To jump away from racism in schools, what do you think about the idea of God's truth and how it relates to how we know God, the idea of truth and how it fits into that, how we know God? Yeah, so one of the things that's been said is that all religions are the same or all religions are basically the same or there's the classic parable of the elephant and that every world religion grasps a piece of God. But if we understand that truth is absolute truth, it's not relative, it doesn't change between people, then we realize that there is the world religions actually have competing contradictory ideas. And it sounds mean in today's world, but only one of them can be true. a story in a book about a guy who was in a debate and he was a Christian debating a non-Christian and the non-Christian got up and said, my opponent here has this crazy idea that Christianity is true and all other religions are false. And I thought that was quite the claim to make against him. And well, the Christian speaker got up and stood up and said, my friend here is a humanist and he believes that humanism is true and all other claims are false. You know, that's what people don't realize that actually all the religions and even humanism and atheistic perspective on life, they're all exclusive in that way. They all believe that they are right and everybody else is wrong. And that's the law of non-contradiction. We can't all be, we can't have opposite ideas and both be right in the same way at the same time. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? Like, the idea of something being narrow is actually a really good thing in most other fields, right? If you think about music, right? If you're playing a guitar, how many ways is there to play a D, right? There's one. And if you're off key, it sounds bad, right? And to have a narrow definition of what D is or what, you know, C or E minor is, is a good thing when it comes to making music. You wouldn't want to listen to music that isn't in tune or isn't narrowly in tune to what we've defined E minor. I think that's a really good example because it just reminds us that even in what we would consider the most creative of fields, which we would say there's some subjectivity, right? We all have preferences as to what type of music or art or things that we like the most. But even in what would be considered probably one of the most subjective fields of the world, there is objectivity. There is an order to musical notes and how all that works. I also just think this is a scary idea personally, to think about my spiritual reality that I'm going to just chase after my own version of God, my own version of whatever, right? Like that's scary. If there is a God, if there's one true God, like the whole idea is that I want to find who he is. I want to worship him truly. version is so nearsighted. It's so silly to think about that I would have, that I could manifest my own version of God or that he would change to me. No, no, no, there's one true God and our job is to not throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. It's to find who he is. It's to find the narrow way and to chase after it. Right, and especially as Christians we believe that because we know that that's where ultimate joy is going to be found. That's where eternal life is going to be found. Yeah. And this is why we care so much about, you know, so I could imagine somebody saying, well, why don't you just leave those poor people alone who want to quote unquote live their truth? It apparently makes them happy. Let's just let them do their thing. Well, but for us as Christians, we read the Bible. We know what God says. We believe that's absolutely true, and therefore we believe that there is such a thing as hell, that without Jesus, people are headed there, and that they need to hear the good news, the absolute truth, that Jesus Christ came and he lived a perfect life of righteousness. He died the death for sin on the cross for them, and he was raised to new life on the third day, that they could have new life too by putting their faith in him. We care about them too much to let them live in a lie. Yeah, it's because we were exactly like them, right? Moral objectivity and this idea of running after your own truth is not running towards God, it's running away from the truth. It's running away from God, right? And that's what we believe. We believe that all humanity is not running towards God and God's some cosmic goalie who's saying, no, you can't get in, you can't get in. But we see in the Bible, and this is what the Bible says, that we're all running away from God. Right. And that God in his good nature stops some of us and says, no, not you. As we're running to hell, he says, no, not you, and he brings us back to himself. We care for these people because we know, you know, from our own lives, when we were running and when we hated God, when we loved our own sin, but praise God that God's changed that, that we now love God and we hate our sin. And we want more and more people to experience that reality. As you're saying that, I'm thinking just right now off the cuff, another way of looking at this is it's almost like people out there are realizing the Christian truth that we don't measure up to God's perfect standard, but they're coming to the wrong conclusion. Yeah. They're saying, man, we have this internal conscience. We know that there's some objective moral standard out there and that we're not making it. So our answer is to say that there is no more objective standard. Our answer is to say, live your truth. You know, that's our way to avoid. We want to avoid the standard instead of finding an actual way to meet the standard and to be with God. Yeah. So, kind of grasp the, you know, in the heart of every human being, God has put that need for him, that desire, that drive to try to connect with the Lord and with what he's provided for us. But obviously, without the gospel of Jesus, they're missing it. So that's why we want to bring people the truth, even though it is hard, even though it hurts. So if you're encountering this at school, at work, in your neighborhood, in your home, wherever it might be, you wanna do it with love, but you do wanna bring people back to the truth. Yeah, and we're no better than these people. I mean, we all have areas in our life, we can't demonize these people who say these things that are misled. Our best way of doing this is loving them, helping maybe explain some things, like you've said, by showing them where this leads. But we've got to say, you know, this is someone who needs the gospel, just like the rest of us. Right. Jon, how would I convince someone that there is big T or capital T truth when they say that this would make you prideful or arrogant or bigoted or whatever they're going to say? Yeah, right. So you're likely going to encounter that. And when they say, live your truth, and you butt in and say, well, actually there is the truth, you know, they're likely going to get frustrated right away. And yeah, they're going to see you as arrogant, maybe bigoted, things like that. So, I mean, a few things to keep in mind is that, yeah. Truth is true regardless of your age, your gender, your race, your socioeconomic status. You know. Yeah. So I think when people are saying things like, well, that saying that there's if you claim to have the truth that makes you racist or bigoted or or arrogant or whatever. I think that still is coming out of that same world view that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Because so think about it. You know, if you believe that if you believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth, that all truth is relative, then your perspective must be that those who claim to have absolute truth are just doing it to control people. Yeah. Right. And that's something that we're hearing a lot right now. And I actually I actually think it makes sense if you have that worldview. Obviously, we think that's the wrong world view, it's totally incorrect. But if you have that world view, that makes sense, is that truth isn't real. Therefore, those who say they have the truth are just trying to control people. Yeah. So that's what they're assuming about you. But it's obviously not the case. Yeah. Can I ask a follow up? What about those words? What what moral weight is behind those words themselves? Yeah. I mean, you're saying like, you know, the sort of self-defeating idea there is that you're saying? Like the idea of arrogant, bigoted, racist, you know, what moral weight is behind those words? Yeah, I think you're – yeah, so those obviously come with a ton of moral weight, but for them who doesn't believe in moral truth, it doesn't have any weight. Yeah, so I mean that'd be – that's a – that'd be a great way to respond. It would be to say, well, actually, hey, so you're calling me arrogant, bigoted, whatever. You say, well, how do you know those are bad things? Yeah. You know, and let them try to explain what the foundation, now, you know, because you and I can say, we believe those are bad things because God's word says so, or we can say, you know, because God created all human beings in his image, and therefore we all are equal in value, and so, you know, racism is awful and doesn't make any sense, you know, bigotry doesn't make, you know, all those things we can, you know, we have an answer to that question, whereas they don't. Yeah. So yeah, that's a great point. Or to say, you know, well, your view of racism and my view of racism are different. And you know, that's my truth. Yeah, live your truth. Yeah. Right. I mean, it- Turn it on its head. Yeah, it's a little sarcastic, but you know. Yeah, so you can try to stick to a loving tone instead of getting sarcastic like we maybe are. But you're still you're helping them understand the flaws in the system, the flaws in their own logic. Yeah, it is very interesting that people who really hate the idea of some sort of strict morality or some concrete morality, often they're the ones who sling those moral statements. You know, this is wrong, you're racist. Right, they don't realize that there's no foundation for them to stand on to say those things. Yeah, yeah, totally. So speaking of which, one thing we didn't talk about was much was how do we know that God's word is the truth? So that's a whole different rabbit trail we go. We've done episodes in the past talking about that. We could talk about arguments for the historical reliability of the Bible, of the Old Testament and the New Testament. I think that's where you want to go, right? So, you know, if you say there is such a thing as truth and therefore we need to, you know, work hard to try to find the truth. Well, then you got to say, well, what are the criteria for finding truth? And you say, well, you know, is there evidence for it? Is there a logical argument for it? You know, those kinds of things are the questions you start asking. And then that's when you go to, well, for the Bible, there is, there is a lot of logical argument for, you know, if there is a God who created the world, this is, you know, he would, you know, want to communicate those kind of things. And then also there's the, you know, there's just the evidence for especially the New Testament, just the historical reliability of our New Testament manuscripts compared to other ancient documents, compared to other religious documents. You know, there's the testimony of the apostles and the fact that they died for the things that they wrote and said, you know, so then you can get into some of those kind of arguments. Yeah, there's, yeah, it's one of the most well-preserved books. It's almost silly to debate it, but it's unbelievably, you know, almost God's superintended type of thing when you study that. It's really, really cool. So for those of you who are watching this on NRB TV or on YouTube, if you want to go back, this is also a podcast on Spotify on a few different platforms, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can listen to that. So if you want to listen to that episode, you can go back and find that. It's a really good episode about that'll dive more into that topic too. But I even think the idea of God's word being trustworthy is such an interesting thing when it comes to his character. You know, God being truth, it's part of how we understand God's Word. What would you say to someone who may be struggling with that being able to even trust the Bible? Yeah, so if you've gotten past some of the arguments about, you know, the historical reliability and moved on to, okay, the Bible is from God, but is all of it true? Does it have errors? Those kind of things. So, you know, the category you're talking about, is the Bible inspired and is it inerrant? Those are kind of the theological terms for what you're talking about. And one of the most basic arguments we could go to is just the character of God. That God is true, God is perfect, and thus His word carries those traits. God's word is also perfect. It's also without error, just as God himself is without error. So God can't have errors, His Word can't have errors. So yeah, crazy as it might sound, we believe that every single word, not just the ideas, not just the concepts, but each and every individual word in the Bible is true and is without error. Yeah, it's because God himself is truth. That's yeah, and we see that again We've done other episodes on this so we could talk about this at length, but Jesus himself when he was on the earth So one of the things you can always say is that well, you know That was Jesus's view of the Bible Jesus throughout his ministry on the earth Referred back to specific verses in Scripture He even made arguments going down to specific words and even to the tense of different words, you know We're present or past tense. I think of when he's talking about the God of Abraham, he says, I am. Yeah. He makes an argument from the tense of a word. So, Jesus is getting down to the very letters of the text. Yeah, yeah. Not a jot or an iota, you know, like even the little parts of a letter, you know, he's saying that that's all inerrant. There's some really great boring books that talk about Jesus's view of scripture and how almost every act that he did in his ministry reaffirms that he believed that the Old Testament was not only inerrant, but it was revealed by God. It was from God. It was inspired. And I could go on forever about that, but we don't have forever. So how about if you're arguing with someone about this, if you're going back and forth and you're having a conversation and some of those names start getting slung back and forth or you feel yourself talking with someone who you're not getting anywhere and maybe you're getting frustrated, how do we respond to this as Christians? Where do we go from there? So you've tried to have the argument and you don't feel like you're making progress. That's likely. Usually, somebody's not won over in a single conversation. But don't give up. My goal is usually, in a conversation like that, is to try to give them at least one thing to think about. If you've left them with at least one thing to think about, then I think you've done great in a conversation like that. You want to walk away and be able to pray for them. You want to be able to go back into another conversation with them. So I think, you know, just at some point, if the conversation is just not being fruitful, to just say, hey, you know what? Thanks so much for talking. I've heard what you said, you know, I'm glad that you've heard what I've said. I can see that we disagree. I'd love it if you keep thinking about it and I'll have to talk about it again sometime. Let's maybe get together again and talk about it. Yeah, you don't want to say things that make it, so that way you can't have a follow-up conversation with them. Don't ruin your chance to go back and have another conversation. Yeah, and the beautiful thing is that they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting God's Word, they're rejecting God, and it's you doing your job of presenting this to them. You know, you don't feel like a failure if you can't win everyone over. Even the Apostle Paul didn't win everyone over. And so it's God's work to change hearts, not ours. Our job is to proclaim the gospel, to challenge faulty ideas, and to do it lovingly. Plant some seeds and let God do the work. Yeah. Well, thanks, Pastor Mitchell. Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for listening. It's been an awesome time getting to talk about God's truth, getting to talk about some absolute truth. If you have questions, we always love to hear them and get to answer them here on this show. You can submit them at peacechurch.cc slash questions. Have an awesome week. Can't wait to see you next time. Bye!

Marriages Sermon Series: A Biblical Vision Kevin Harney Lead Pastor Shoreline Community Church Main Passage: Ephesians 5:21-33 Transcript You may not notice it and recognize it at any given moment, but you'll see the results of it There's a spiritual battle going on There's a real spiritual world and though we may not always kind of see what's going on or understand we see the outworking it in our world and Jesus was clear about this when he walked on this earth in John chapter 10 The beginning of verse 7 Jesus is speaking about this reality And he he talks about himself as the gate through which we come into eternal life. He talks about himself as the good shepherd. And there's a contrast to the thief, to the enemy of your soul, to Satan, who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So as you listen to God's Word right now, this is again from John chapter 10 verse 7 and following. It won't be on the screen, everything else I do will, but I just want you to listen and let this kind of soak into your heart and notice the difference between the enemy and our savior Jesus. Therefore Jesus said again, "'Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. "'All who have come before me were thieves and robbers, "'but the sheep have not listened to them. "'I am the gate, whoever enters through me will be saved. "'They will come in and go out and find pasture.'" That's the green pastures of the Good Shepherd. Now the contrast, verse 10. The thief, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. I am the Good Shepherd. These are the words of Jesus. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. There's a spiritual reality, there's a battle going on. And Jesus, who is the Good Shepherd, Jesus who is the gate who's opened the way to have a relationship with the Father. Jesus comes to give you life, and life abundantly, but the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That's true for every aspect of life. Jesus comes to give the best life, the enemy comes to destroy life. And so as you think about this, you look at our world, we see this happening. And there's different ways that the enemy will attack a church. And it was really interesting, yesterday when I was at the conference here, there were two breakout times and Sherry and I weren't speaking during that time. So I went and sat in on Pastor Ryan, your senior pastor's breakout. And he said at the very beginning of the breakout, he said, you know, there's different times and ways the enemy will attack a local church. He said, I think that the strongest point of attack of the enemy right now, the one who comes to steal and kill and destroy, is an attack on marriages. It's an attack on marriages to destroy the good things that God has given. And so Jesus, this is our prayer. As we're together today, many who are gathered are married at different points along the way, different seasons of marriage, different kind of health in their marriage. And Lord, all of us here have people we love and care about who are in a marriage relationship. So we pray we will see your truth and hear your truth and understand what you have to say living God About good healthy Jesus honoring marriages speak to every heart here. We pray in your name Amen Well as I open the scriptures today and also as we look at eight different Sort of practical ways to strengthen a marriage and make it honoring to Jesus and to make it healthy I want to let you know that if you're married all eight of the ideas that we'll talk about are going to be things that apply to you if you're not married but you have relationships with people six of the eight things can apply really quickly so if you're not married pay attention to all this is a marriage thing this isn't for me listen to God's Word because it will really speak to any relationship you're in and ways to make that relationship better and healthier if you have your Bible through your Bible apps would you go to Matthew chapter 19, we're going to begin in verse 4 and listen to these words that address the topic of marriage. There's at least four really distinct spiritual truths here that we're going to touch on, but kind of look for those as we read the scriptures together. Matthew chapter 19, beginning in verse 4, He answered them, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and said therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh what therefore God has joined together let not man separate there's at least four distinct and critical theological truth that we should know and carry into our hearts and our lives. Number one, marriage is ordained by God. Marriage is God's idea, God's design from the beginning in the perfect garden. Marriage, a man and a woman brought together by God in a covenant relationship to be fruitful and multiply. That's God's plan from the beginning. Believe that. Our culture may say in the enemy who comes to steal, kill, and destroy every good thing including marriage, the enemy will come and say, this is not a big deal. And God says, oh yes it is, from the very beginning. Second truth from this passage. Marriage is about a man and a woman, about a male and a female. And those two things are not interchangeable. And I know every family, every person in this world is going to connect with people that they get to know who have a different view on this or are living different than this. It's true in my extended family, it's true in my friendship circle. I know people that would disagree that marriage is between a man and a woman. But I'm talking about what the Bible says, not what culture says. And as Christians, that's what we hold to. I'm going to give you two really good theological words. You may have heard them before, you may know what they mean quite easily, or you might go, I've never heard those words. But I'm going to give you two great theological words. They're both about interpreting the Bible. The first word is exegesis. Exegesis is the idea that we let the truth of God come out of the text, exit the text, and come to our hearts and change us. So when you do exegesis, you let the spirit-breathed word speak to your heart. We get words like exit and exhale. It's the same root word. It comes out of. When you exit, you go out. When you exhale, your breath goes out. When you do exegesis, you come to the scriptures and you say, God, what does your word say? What is your truth? As it comes out, we let it change us. If my life doesn't line up with what it says, what comes out of the biblical text, I change my life to adjust to the biblical text in every area. Eisegesis is a different way to interpret the Bible. In eisegesis, I take what I think, what I believe, what I've learned in my culture, and I impose that on the Bible and I make the Bible agree with me. That's a really bad idea because you and I are wrong a lot of the time and our culture is wrong most of the time. So if we're shaped by the world and we bring that and we try to impose it on the Bible, that's not a healthy thing. So we should be doing, every time we read the scriptures, we do exegesis, we let the Spirit of God speak to our hearts, the Word come alive, and if we don't align with what the Word of God says, we change ourselves to fit the Word of God. Does that make sense? And we don't come and say, well, that's what I believe and the Bible doesn't agree, so I'm going to kind of manipulate and change the Bible to fit what I think is right. And let me tell you this, if you're doing exegesis, there's nowhere in the Bible where you can find the Bible giving a picture that men can become women, women become men, or that men should marry men and women should marry women. There's nowhere in the Bible. If you're coming up with that, you're coming with your preconceived cultural notions and imposing on the Bible. And this is a spiritual battle going on right now in our worlds. We can be gracious, we can be kind, but we have to stand strong on God's Word. Third truth from this passage. Christian marriage brings a spiritual change. When two people who love Jesus are married in a covenantal relationship before the living God, before their friends and family, and they make this covenantal commitment to walk together, to love each other. The Bible says the two become one. Something changes. When Sherry and I got married 38 years ago, 38 years ago, she was an individual, I was an individual. We're still individuals, but something happened when we got married. God created something new when the two of us came together and became one, and we're married in the sight of God. And God is doing something that would have never happened in my life because I'm married to Sherry in the same in her life. And so there's a deep spiritual reality that happens when two people are married in the sight of God. And number four, Christian marriage is designed to bring a husband and wife, a man and a woman, incredible joy. And Christian marriage is designed to bring incredible struggle. See what marriage is designed to bring struggle? Well, have you ever noticed that men and women are somewhat different? And when God says, come together, become one, and hang in there, that's going to bring challenges. It simply does. That's part of the journey. And so I look at it this way. If you if you want to make pure gold, what do you need? Heat, heat, fire, heat, heat, heat. And it refines and makes pure gold heat. If you want to make a diamond, how do you make it? Pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure over heat and pressure. It is. Can I get an amen from anyone who's married? It's like, is that okay to say that? But that's God's design because God's making something new and again, if you want to find gold, if you want a diamond, it's heat, it's pressure. If you want to become more and more like Jesus, one of the ways God may do that is ask you to get married because it will create that heat, it will create that pressure, it will create that place of learning and growth that will be powerful. We talked about, Sharon and I did the first session yesterday in the conference, was all about how we're uniquely different as men and women, but that's a good gift, because it grows us and it does certain things. We did a whole 40 minutes on that, and that'll be on your website if you want. If you say, I wasn't able to be here, but I wanna watch that and talk about those differences between men and women and how God blesses that. You can pick that up and look at that. A friend of ours, Gary Thomas, and Sherry and I have been friends with Gary and his wife Lisa for about 30 years, he wrote a book called Sacred Marriage. And the subtitle of that book was this, I think it's profound. Here's the subtitle of the book. What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? What if God called us into a marriage relationship to make us more like Jesus, more than to make us happy should being married bring happiness. Absolutely But if you if you if you're not married yet, you say well, here's my dream I'm gonna meet the perfect person and they're gonna meet all my needs. It's gonna be incredible. I can be happy all the time Wake up. Okay, it's not a It ain't gonna be like that there's gonna be amazing moments there's gonna be tough times When our boys were one three and five and we're trying to have this relationship, it was challenging. And so understand that God is doing something in us through marriage. And the people that you know that are married, pray for them, pray for their marriage because there's a huge attack on marriages. Another passage, Genesis chapter two, at the very beginning in paradise, before sin has come in. Genesis chapter two, verse 18, and then verses 21 to 24. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him." And then down to verse 21, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs, closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. And then the man said, and this is so intimate, and then the man said, this is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Here's the spiritual reality in terms of marriage. You don't complete me, you compliment me. Sherry didn't, when I married her, it was like, it's not the Jerry Maguire, you complete me, you make me whole, you make my life perfect. No, that's what God does. That's reserved for Jesus alone, all right? My wife compliments me. We work together as a team. She'll affirm me, I'll learn things. I am so much of a better person after being married to Sherry for 38 years because she's different than I am. I'm still fundamentally a direct, blunt person, but I'm much more gentle when I do it. That's 38 years in the furnace of this woman. Did I say that out loud? Okay, sorry. And you know what she just said? It's true. It's true. There's ways that God has made Sherry. She'll be more direct and more kind of express things that she's got to hold back on because she's been around me. God's doing things in us. We compliment each other, but listen closely. And those of you that aren't married yet, if you've watched too many Disney princess movies, if you've watched too many romance shows, you may be thinking, son, I'm gonna wait till I meet that perfect person. Doesn't exist. And then you say, well, when I finally meet that person, they're gonna make me whole, they're gonna meet my needs, they're gonna make me happy all the time. No, God will bring some joy in your life through them, but they're not the ones that make you whole. If you have two people that are made whole in Jesus, and God brings them together, you have a whole lot better chance of having a great Jesus-honoring marriage. And so understand that we don't complete each other when we get married, we complement each other. So what I want to do is I want to share with you eight different ideas for building a God honoring marriage. And these are very, again, six of these you can apply to other relationships, but two of them are uniquely for marriage, but I wanna walk through these and then just give you a few thoughts. I talked to probably four or five different people after the first service. One came up and said, we're hanging by a thread, but all eight things, I'm gonna try to do those things in my marriage. And I had a chance to pray for him. I'm not sure where you're at, but keep your heart open. Number one, how do you build a God-honoring marriage? By infusing prayer into your relationship. You need to infuse prayer, bring prayer into your relationship. Some of you married couples just don't pray together. Well, we do a prayer at dinner time, but I mean, pray together. Talk to Jesus together. You wanna honor God in your marriage, begin to develop this and grow this. And I'll tell you a little secret. I'm gonna share with you just one idea about prayer, but this has changed my and Sherry's relationship. For years, for a couple decades, I was really trying hard to like once or twice a week sit and pray with my wife because, you know, I'm a Christian man and a pastor and you're supposed to. And so I was working really hard at it, right? And something happened about 10 years ago and honestly, we prayed together probably four, five, six, seven, eight times a day when this changed. Here's what changed. I stopped looking for the right time and the right place for us to sit down with no distractions and have a prayer time together. We do that sometimes still, but what we do now is when we're just talking and walking through life and something comes up It's a joy. We'll just pray and thank God We don't even often times say let's pray. We don't change our voice to a prayer voice We don't you know, we don't we just start praying So we'll be it will be like driving and talk about one of our sons. We have a son, Zach, who lives in Idaho with his wife. And he and Christine have a little boy, Kel, and another child on the way. But before Kel was born, they went through miscarriage, miscarriage, miscarriage, miscarriage, and infertility. It was a long, hard road. So when they finally got pregnant the fifth time, we prayed through that whole thing. Well, if she got pregnant again, you better believe we started praying for this one. And it would be a different story, right? So we'll be talking as we're driving and we'll be talking and all of a sudden we'll be talking about you know that part of our family and Sherry might just just start like without it's anxious Lord Jesus be with Zach and Christine be with that little baby in her womb be with that child hold that child close bring that child and then when we're done watch this sometimes you don't even say amen it's true so does it count yes it counts you're talking to God and when we talk to God like he's right there with us. You know why we do that? Because He's right there with us, right? And so then maybe later on we're driving and we're talking about some friends of ours that have this real joy in their life. And I might just say, Lord Jesus, thank you for... we were talking about Don and Beth Porter the other day, who is the pastor of the church, Corinth Church, after I was the pastor, and we'll just pray for them and for their family. And then we'll just kind of keep driving, keep walking. And so, so prayer just weaves in and out of our day. So here's my challenge for you married couples. In the next 24 to 48 hours, as soon as you can, if you're talking about something that's joyful or there's a need, just roll into prayer. Just do it. Start praying. Don't ask the other person. Just roll into it. I'm starting to do this. We've been doing that for about 10 years now. I've been, it's become so natural. The five people I prayed with this morning, they're up here and stuff with me, I didn't ask any of them, do you want to pray? I said, grab my hand. I just started praying. Because Jesus is there, and he's part of our conversations, part of our lives. Try it. It 'll feel weird and awkward at first, but as you begin to do it more and more. My friends now, when they're with me, we'll be talking and they'll just roll into prayer for me, without even asking, can we pray? Because Jesus is there. And you invite them into the relationship. That's my challenge. Bring prayer. Weave it into your marriage relationship. Number two, saturating your minds and your marriage with scripture. Saturate your minds, saturate your heart, your marriage. Let scripture weave into your marriage relationship. And so here's my encouragement. Again, just one encouragement. Connect with God's word every single day. Either open this book and read it or listen to the Bible. Some of you drive a lot for work. You talk radio and stuff. Just put that off for a while. Say, I'm just going to listen for 10 or 15 minutes. You might find out you end up listening for a half an hour. You go, I listened to nine chapters of the Bible. Wow, it's amazing. You say, does that count? To listen to the Bible instead of read it? Yes, it counts. Do you know that for most of history and a lot of places in the world right now, people didn't read, people don't read, they hear the Bible read to them. On your phone, you can put in like the YouVersion app, and you can pick the version you want, you pick the passage you want, and at the top right corner there's a little speaker, you hit it, and your phone reads the Bible to you. Pretty cool. Right? Every day, get the Scriptures in your mind, get the Scriptures in your heart, and then, married couples. The rest of you can do this with friends, but married couples, try every day when you're listening to the Word or reading the Word, to find one thing that really touches your heart and share that with your spouse sometime during the day. You know, honey, when I was driving around for work today, I'd listen to the Bible, actually listen to the whole Gospel of John, but one thing that really hit me was this passage, and just share that with your wife. Do you know, some of you men, your wife would just be so overjoyed to hear her husband say, as I was listening to her reading the word of God, this thing hit me and I just want to share it with you. If you learn something each day and share it with each other, that weaves the scripture into your relationship. It's a great way to kind of just bring Jesus into all you're doing. Number three, blessing each other privately and publicly. You want to build a strong marriage you bless your spouse Privately you're in your home with your spouse every day You look for one thing that you can say. I love that about you. I so appreciate that Some way that you can verbally bless them with your words. And if you say I don't have anything to say, it's a blessing Look closer Men, there are so many things about your wife that are beautiful and praiseworthy, but you've gotten frustrated about this or that and you're not seeing it. Look closer, study your wife, get to know her, and find that thing every day you can bless. Wives, do the same thing for your husband. There's power in blessing. And then, bless your spouse publicly. I want to be really clear. If you've gotten in the habit, women, when you're with your girlfriends, where one says, oh, my husband, he does this, oh, I can't stand this, oh, he's like this, and the next one, oh, yeah, my husband, too, he's like that, oh yeah, and it comes around to you. What do you do? Usually, yeah, yeah, my, my, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, or, even worse yet, do that with your children. Where you vent about their dad or their mom to them. Don't do that. Find the good things and praise those things. Even when they're not there. And, and, and when you do, it will change the whole tone. So guys, you're with some of your friends, you're talking, so my wife did this, she's always and she's complaining about that, my wife is always listening, she doesn't appreciate it, and it comes around you say, and you say, you know, I'll be honest with you, we have challenges, but I'm crazy about my wife. I love her. And I don't really have anything bad to say about her. Well, you're not coming out with us anymore. So I guess you're gonna ruin the whole tone of the conversation, right? But just bless privately, bless publicly, and watch your words. Some of you this next week, you're gonna hear people talking negatively about their spouse, and you're gonna be so tempted to jump in. Don't do it. You think one of the things you really love about him or her, you know, about your wife or your husband, and share that thing. It'll change the tone. Maybe somebody else will say, well, you know, there's things that I appreciate about my wife too, about my husband too. But bless wherever you can. Number four, how do we build a God-honoring marriage? By serving each other joyfully, by finding a way to serve our spouse. Here's my challenge. Every day, find one little act of service you can do that they don't expect and they haven't asked you to do. Just identify something that you can do. I got like a master's class lesson in this in the middle 90s I was pastoring in West Michigan here and we took a group of men to the promise keepers event at the silver dome. This is a long time ago. And during this whole event there were all these different speakers. I don't remember a single speaker. I don't remember a single topic. I just remember one time where one of the guys at the end of his talk he said, man I want to ask you all to kneel. He said, all the men that are married, will you kneel right now? Well you're in the silver dome, the floors are gross but you just kneel down anyways, because you're the promise keeper thing. So I knelt down and we prayed. And then he said, just quiet your heart. And I want you to think about one way you can serve your wife when you get home. Just think about one way. So I prayed, everyone prayed, and we moved on from the conference. So we're driving home on the bus. And one of the guys says, hey, a couple of men, share what, you married men, share what you felt like you want to do to serve your wife. And so one of the guys says, well, my wife doesn't like unloading the dishwasher, so for the next week, I'm gonna unload the dishwasher every day. And all the guys are like, whoa, heroic, what a guy! You know, and it's kind of like, ugh, you know. Another guy, this is absolutely true, another guy goes, I'm gonna give my wife four coupons for a massage from me. And one of the guys goes, is that a gift for you or for her? You know, but anyways, it's like, and so, and I'm listening, kind of thinking, oh boy, I think I overshot. And somebody says, Pastor Kevin, what did you feel like God wanted you to do for Sherry? And I said, well, I felt like what he put on my heart was, make the bed every day for the rest of your life. And all the guys are like, oh man. But let me tell you something, I begin every day with an act of service. I begin every day making the bed. And that includes putting up, put the pillows in place that are the pillows you're allowed to use, and then the quilt up and doing it like Sherry would want, and doing really well, and then putting the back row of pillows that you can't use, and then the middle row of pillows that you can't use, and then the front little pillow that you can't use and it looks something like this. So here's what I learned. Here's what I learned. That act of service. Okay, Kevin, you're the guy that gets up and preaches the gospel.Yeah. But you know what? I start every day and I'm the guy who arranges the pillows. That's who I am. And as I make the bed, I pray for my wife. And God uses that to put me in my proper place. My first call is to be a servant. And here's what I did the math this week. I've made the bed close to 10,000 times since then. Really? I was double, I double checked my math on this. And even when I'm away at a hotel or something, I make the bed, even though they don't want you to, because I just, I make it and I pray for my wife and I also think I think I fluffed and straightened over 88,000 pillows I did the math all right but I've grown to love her as I do that what's one thing every day just look for make it part of your rhythm of the day that you could do this not asked for that's not expected small or large an act of service. The next thing we want to share, number five, I've asked Sherry, if she would actually share, and I asked Ryan's permission to invite Sherry to share this, because she understands it so well and has really given me a lot of wisdom in this area. So here's the next area. So we are now serving in California, but for 20 years we lived in this area when we were raising our boys. And one thing that we learned, as you all know, is that when you're in one season and you're nearing the end of a season, you start to think about what it means to prepare for the next. So in the fall, when you're nearing the end, you start thinking, what am I going to have to do to get ready for winter? Well, and we live in Byron Center, we have an above-the-ground pool, and so we would, you know, close the pool up and then we would rake really well because it was better in the spring if it if we did the raking really well we dispose of the leaves we put the patio furniture away and so those things that we did in anticipation of the next season really helped as we moved along in the calendar year well in the same way we can do that in our marriages and it's wise to prepare for the next season of marriage. We can do that as well. And so just like we have, you know, winter, spring, summer, and fall, we have predictable seasons in our marriages. We know there's the newlywed stage, and you know, some couples move into the young children stage and some couples, for whatever reasons, maybe they don't have children. That's a stage that they have to really think about and prepare for how will they engage in the next generation. Maybe it's through the church or with extended family members. But those families that have young children, they know that in that season the kids are more in the house and that has a certain way. But as you begin to prepare for the next season where the kids are in elementary school and at that level and moving on in middle school and high school ages, that is a separate season in of itself. And then you have what sort of is what the first empty nest stage when the kids go off to college, which soon turns into the empty nest stage. And then you have retirement. And for those people who are growing older together, they're looking at what this last season looks like in life. But so Kevin and I have gone already through quite a few stages in our marriage with almost 40 years of marriage and we found that there are some key questions that we consider as we're ending one season and we're moving in to another season of marriage. And we just wanted to share those five key questions that we have used in our marriage and they have served us well as well because transitional time can be where trouble can happen and so if you're a little more prepared ahead you have a better chance of living that God-honoring marriage and so here are the five questions to prepare you for the next season in marriage. Number one, dreams. What dreams does God have for the season for both of us? And so you talk about that. What is God gonna do in this next season? You approach the next season not thinking about your losses, you know, or your gains even, but you're thinking about what does God have for you in this season. So as we were anticipating that this season we're in and I wasn't pouring a lot of time into the boys' lives anymore, we determined ahead of time that I'd probably go back to work full-time, in which I did at the church. But that was thought of before we were in that season. Second key question, sacrifices. What sacrifices is God asking each of you to make as you anticipate the next season? And so just to apply it to our own life, as we anticipated the season of empty nesting and our boys all getting married, it was so good for me to think ahead. What does that mean? And what's the sacrifice that that's going to happen in my life and and and we go to the scriptures And as I read the scriptures the Bible is telling me that as I get to that season where my sons get married That what I'm supposed to do is allow him to cleave to his wife. He's to leave us Well, that was a sacrifice for me. I love my boys. I love hanging out with my boys. But that is not my place then. But it was in preparation of that time that I was better able to think about that and prepare myself and be led by the Spirit so that I am able to let go and they become a unit with their wife and I'm not getting in the way. God prepared me for that season with that question of what sacrifices is God asking me to make. Third, needs. What needs will each one of you have as you move into this next season? So you're thinking about that. Next question, time together. What do you need to do to make time together a priority? This is so important in every season of the marriage because when you have three small children, you have to work. You got to work at 15 minutes a day, right? But if you're anticipating that you can be better prepared in that time what happens in our season the empty nesting is You have all this time, but you have to be careful that you actually are still making the marriage a priority We've seen people at our stage of marriage. They haven't thought about what it means for their marriage, their time together to be a priority, even when they have all this time together. And then finally, the fifth area that we found it was important to address as we entered into the next season was just finances. And so, you know, in the beginning of our empty nesting stage, we had three boys in college at the same time, one in LA, one in Chicago, and one in Grand Rapids. Well, good thing we prepared for that ahead, because if we hadn't, there would be a lot of stress going on. And even now we have all our grandchildren in different states. And so we've thought ahead about how we're going to do a good job, even as the Lord has called us, at least at this season in our life, to be grandparents at a distance. And we've thought and talked and prayed about how to do that and how to do that in a God-honoring way. So just as we prepared for Michigan and and it went better when we in the in the winter seasons, so if you take this time during transitions to prepare and get ready for the next season, you can honor God more fully. So if you're married, what's your next season? You might want to consider these five areas and just begin, particularly if you're at the end, nearing the end of one season and just ready to transition into the next, spend some time talking about these five issues. Thank you, sweetie. Many of us, the way we go forward in our marriage is kind of like this. We just kind of wander ahead and just things happen and we just, what's next? But when you actually stop, say, what are we coming into? What are we stepping into? And think through it and pray through it and talk through it. It makes a world of differences. And like Sherry said before, we've seen through the years, the years that it's in those seams of transition when the relationship changes, but a couple hasn't thought it through, that seems to be the place the enemy comes in and attacks. And that's when most marriages tend to fall apart. The five people that came for me for prayer after the first service, three of them were talking about different seasons and how they're trying to figure out how to live into the next season. So be thinking and be praying about that. Continuing on, number six, how do you go to God-honoring marriage? Communicating consistently. And like Sherry said, in every season of marriage, as a married couple you have to talk. You have to block out some time for that. It could be five minutes, ten minutes, but you do it every single day, every single day. When our kids were little, it was when the kids went down at night. When our kids were out, we still had to make that time. And so I challenge you in your communication as a couple, do your talk. And when I say talk together, I mean the phone's off, the TV's off, all distractions are gone. If you have a watch that brings data in and you're constantly, it's my 15 minutes to talk with my wife and you're constantly, yeah, yeah, yeah, honey, I'm totally with you. Call me later. You know, it's like, then you're not totally with them. And so disconnect and connect with your spouse. If you do that every day for a smaller, large amount of time, it will make a world of difference. Number seven, build a God-honoring marriage by making room for play and laughter. Have fun together. Sometimes it's like, well, we plan every year, and we go away as a family for a week at this time, and go to the cottage, and then we have fun. The rest of the life is not fun. It's like, no, regularly, consistently. Sherry and I actually play cribbage or backgammon every night. Probably have the last 365 nights, probably 350 of them. And we make time, and the game takes like 10 minutes. But we found something that we both enjoy together. Find something that's fun for both of you, and weave it into your day, weave it into your week. Keep having fun together. Well, we got little kids, we can't spend any time together. You better figure it out, because someday they're gonna be launched, and you're gonna be staring at each other and saying, we haven't talked for the last 25 years. That's one of those scenes where the enemy comes in and attacks. And so make time, if you're not doing that, make it a priority, work on that together. Every day, every day, every day. And then finally, to build a God honoring marriage, forgiving and asking for forgiveness. Understand that you have to ask for forgiveness of each other and forgive one another. You will have a lot of practice if you're married. No one's closer to you. No one knows you better. There's no one else you've opened your heart to so much that when you do something, it hurts deeply because you've opened your hearts up. And so to look at your wife and say, Honey, I really messed up. I'm really sorry. Will you forgive me? This, on, two days ago, when we were doing our final preparation for the marriage conference, we had like this, just kind of gotten this thing, this little argument thing, and we kind of stormed off, kind of frustrated each other. About 10 minutes later, I was getting ready to go find Sherry. She walked in and she says, I'm really sorry. I said, I'm really sorry. Isn't it funny that we're getting ready for a marriage conference, we're having this, you know, but it's like, but we stopped, we actually prayed, and we moved on. What takes us about 10 minutes now, used to take us like an hour and a half or a day, but God's teaching us to get back. So be ready, and when your spouse asks you to forgive, here's what the Bible says, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. How did God forgive you in Christ? He laid his life down, gave everything. And so Jesus, this is our prayer. We understand this vision of what marriage is supposed to be. We understand this beautiful thing that you've created. But we pray right now that you would help us to take seriously the sacred call to build a God-honoring marriage. I pray that each person will take what the word, your word is said to them today and these these eight little areas I pray every couple will take at least a little step forward in each area they need to and it will grow them to love you more and to love each other more God we thank you for the blessing of marriage for those that are longing to be married someday will you prepare them and prepare whoever you have for them Lord to those who've lost a spouse will you comfort them and hold them close to those are in the middle of it all, being married, would you let them take the next step, knowing that you've said, let no one tear apart what you brought together. God, help us stand in your power. Lord, we pray for those that would love to be married, and it hasn't happened yet. Give them patience, hold them close. Let them know that someday you may give them someone that would compliment them, but not complete them. But help us honor this great institutional marriage But help us honor this great institutional marriage you've given to us we pray in Jesus name amen