20 Questions with Pastor Mike (Episode 15)

welcome to the friday q a i'm pastor mike winger i try to help you learn how to think biblically about everything that doesn't mean that i think perfectly biblically about everything but it is definitely like a major life obsession and goal of mine and one of those goals is to equip others to do the same thing and so i'm taking your questions today in the live chat the first question that i've chosen ahead of time that was sent in by one of the viewers is married couples well the big question is this should we be fruitful and multiply is that command in genesis still applicable to us today be fruitful and multiply and i think to really the hardest part of this question for me is should married couples should it be considered okay for them to just choose not to have kids at all so not just single people married people that's the hardest part but i'm going to try to walk through several of these issues today and while we're doing that you're loading your questions we're getting the rest of the the other 19 so i'll do 20 questions today as always this is actually the last live live stream that i have planned for 2020 definitely the last friday q a the next one will be january 1st i will do a new year's day one i'll try to make that special somehow brainstorm on what we can do to make that special but yeah this is this is the last live stream i have at least scheduled unless i on a whim throw something else together we will see that may happen at any rate married couples not having kids at all okay the command is in genesis chapter one most of us are familiar with it but it helps to look at it because sometimes what we're familiar with we don't pay attention to so genesis 1 28 it says and god blessed them and this is his statement to adam and eve and by extension i think it does apply to all mankind but let's think about how he says be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and he has dominion over all the living things that live on the earth and so be fruitful and multiply that's the command it involves multiple things as you'll notice it involves having kids it also involves filling the earth so filling the earth now the word earth back there it that could just mean the area um it or it could mean the globe but because the context here says have dominion over the fish and the birds and over every living thing that moves on the earth the the impression is that there aren't really boundaries to this command to fill the earth go ahead antarctica you know wherever go wherever you want and um it does involve that so having kids filling the earth subduing the earth as in you're in charge of the earth that's actually a good thing biblically speaking it's good that humans are on the top of the food chain that they're in charge just like it's good that your kids have more authority than your pets and they probably should right maybe maybe when they're two it's different but not when they're like 13 they have they have certainly more authority than your pets that's appropriate that's right this is not parasitic evil human beings taking over things they shouldn't uh no we're given the earth to have dominion over it so my first conclusion genesis 1 i'm going to try to move through this kind of quickly i could spend a whole video on this an hour long video on this one issue but i'll try to move kind of quick so i can get to your guys questions as well and welcome if you're just joining us now we're asking the question of if uh is be fruitful and multiply does that apply to each individual person and if so like how so my first conclusion is this this is a command given to mankind that should apply to mankind but that if you try to apply it to each individual of humankind all of us then i think you make a mistake right god has some people that are just infertile like they can't so then you're going to suggest that they're rebelling against this command so if you try to apply it to each person i think you're making a mistake but if you apply it broadly to all people i think that that's appropriate mankind is supposed to fill the earth and subdue it so this is like a general overall mission statement for mankind the command is repeated later on in genesis 9 in genesis 9 and this this is important um there we go genesis 9 1 god blessed noah and his sons and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth so he's re-upping that command now it applies to noah and his kids then in verse seven we get it again be fruitful and multiply increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it so yeah i want lots and lots of humans all over the place this is considered a good thing now in our culture this is like almost like it's a bad thing that there's lots of humans that's a weird cultural thing that's going on i think it has to do with the devaluing of human nature right and there are major concerns about pollution about mankind mistreating nature and creation and that sort of thing those are real issues but when you start treating humans like they're parasites and they're like just another animal i think that's a serious problem and it's definitely not biblical i want to notice this though both of these commands genesis 1 and 9 they come at a time when the population of the planet is incredibly low we're talking noah and his family or adam and eve so be fruitful and multiply is in context of a very low population planet i'm not going to argue against those who suggest that there may be some point where you go look hey we're we're kind of filling the earth like we're kind of doing our job here i don't really know that i would argue against that because it does correspond to there being a low population but that might be different than being a married couple who's purposely intentionally never going to have kids that just feels like a different story to me than you know than that so both these commands come at that time when population is low jesus gives us insight into this as well he seems to take the command um pretty uh well let's just say this he doesn't take it like some people do some people will will will confront other christians and they go you guys you haven't had kids you know you're rejecting god's command i i think that that's problematic because of jesus so jesus recommends singleness as actually a way of serving god he says some make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom and if you want to accept that accept that do that if that's what the path you want to take so that means no kids that that commitment to singleness means no kids jesus thought that was a a noble path of serving god paul says the same thing in first corinthians seven he suggests that you know staying single is actually a positive thing it's a it's a nice thing this is first corinthians 7 verses 32 through 38 would be the section i'd recommend you look at for homework i'm going to move quickly here so i can get to your guys questions and spend lots of time on those as well but basically singleness is better for the sake of the kingdom if there's a huge if for single people if you use that singleness for the sake of the kingdom and not just to pursue your own pleasures singleness doesn't mean you could spend 12 hours a day playing video games or that you could just pursue what you want all day long singleness means i can serve god that much more with my time i'm i'm the volunteer staff that's like at every event i'm able to put in more hours because i don't have those family concerns that's that that's the way singleness can serve god so a view that everyone is supposed to have kids is impossible to hold if jesus lauded singleness and paul did as well as a way of serving god then telling everyone they're supposed to have kids is wrong so again we have to look at this as an umbrella thing mankind is to have kids now there might be um times where you don't want to have kids perhaps as a married couple like you could try to build a case for this although you'd be hard-pressed to say that the bible like commands that or the bible like reinforces that strongly but it may be implied when jesus is talking about like woe to those who were nursing babies and pregnant in those days there may be certain days where you're like hey we're in extreme hardship this is not a good time to become pregnant we're going to avoid that for our family right now i think that now i'm not talking about abortion that's murder let me just put that off the table i'm not talking about birth control that actually kills a living human being that's not birth control uh or that's it's not not having kids that's eliminating the kid you've already got so i'm not talking about those things um i'm talking here about uh people who decide not to have the kid in the first place not to become pregnant is the idea um so there may be a season for that but there's some things i want to just throw out there that i think our culture gets wrong and as christians we want to be biblically minded i want to be thinking biblically so here's things our culture thinks why they think that that every day is a good day to not have a kid that's often what's going on in our culture it's happening in many of the more um westernized and increasingly westernized countries right now and so they the idea that humans are parasites this is this is on movies and shows it's in our culture humans are basically the bad guys like we've been since i was a kid i've been watching movies about how humans are going to be punished because they're treatment of the world it's so funny is that this is this is sort of making nature god like nature is going to get you right nature's going to get you not you know because of your crimes against nature forget your sins against god that would be the more christian view it's like god's judgment is coming upon this world but to replace god with nature is to suggest that you know mother earth's judgment's going to come upon you for you mistreating earth humans are not parasites on this world our great sin is not um hunting or eating or eating meat or something like that that this is not the great sin of mankind not in a biblical sense not in that sense so i want to suggest that that's an unbiblical view that it's kind of seeped into many christians and and one way you see it is your view of murder versus uh animal cruelty i hate animal cruelty it gets it gets me going just like it does everybody else but if you think murder is like not as big of a deal as killing an animal murdering a person is not that big of a deal is killing an animal then um then you have a radically distorted view of humans it's not just that you like animals so much that you no no your problem is that you devalue humans and that's not a biblical view we're made in the image of god we have incredible value christ died to save us this is this speaks highly of our human value there's nothing immoral about just the fact that human kinds have spread around the world that's a fulfillment of that command so when you're like look there's a lot of people over there that's not just automatically immoral or bad that's like kind of a fulfillment we can mismanage the land right and i've already spoke to that and and gross pollution and things like this are sinful i think actually sinful so that is an issue but i think a lot of modern refusal to have kids is just selfish it's not for god's kingdom but it's to pursue our own pleasures it's to just do what we want with our lives i just want to do what i want with my life i want to have the freedom to do what i want and not be bound by a commitment to a kid and i'll say oh it's because i don't want to bring another kid into this difficult world and and in reality that's really just a lame excuse like it's it's paper thin and oftentimes it's like no i just want to do what i want with my life that's a concern that i see people think that life isn't worth living in this day and age and i think the problem they have is that they don't have a good value of life human life is kind of valuable and when you say life isn't worth living in this day and age i think your problem's not that you just think this day and age is hard it's that you think life's worth is really low and your your bar for what for making it worth living is is silly as a result so human life is ridiculously valuable uh we're made in the image of god um having kids is awesome now some people say well back then mike you know they were agrarian so having kids they helped work and now kids instead of bringing money to the family they're costing money and all i want to say here is you you're projecting a view of kids onto the past that's not true right you're acting like let's just be honest you're acting like kids should be had dependent upon their material value to you financially and that um again does not value human life properly you know kids cost money yeah so so anyway all right now i'm not i'm not saying that this means that you could never put a stop you know like a family has three kids and they go okay we're not going to continue to try to have kids i'm not even trying to measure in on that i am just helping us try to think more biblically about the idea of having kids be fruitful and multiply as a canopy sort of treatment to humankind it's a positive thing it's a good thing our culture has kicked against this by devaluing human life and i think that's a major problem and it does infect christians as well and i think that those are the things that i would want to speak to on that question so i'm gonna go to your guys questions um i dropped my phone on the ground and uh okay hold on um if i can do this real quick um i don't think i i'm yeah i'll have to do that some other time i can't turn slow mode on just now sorry mods uh it's just the nature of the way that i had to jury rig the stream together today um now i'm gonna go to your guys questions this uh is again the last q a for this year this is the last one even if i do a live stream later which i might um and as an update i'm i'm preparing for a stream i might do this year or it'll be in january on brian simmons false prophecy that this man brian simmons has actually uttered like false prophecy and i've got this on record in my study prepping for the um the passion project i was looking for quotes of brian simmons while he talks about his translation his techniques his tactics and the things he says outrageous claims so i could play these and then have scholars respond to those claims well i found hours and hours and hours and hours of footage struggled through listening to all of it in addition to finding what i needed for the project i found what was clearly false prophecy coming from the man this to me is incredibly significant so i'm going to be sharing video content on that pretty soon hopefully pretty soon soon as i'm able to pull it together it's kind of like when i get done with other things i can work on that so as my schedule allows i'm going to put that together and get it for you guys mel melanie holstein says am i being too legalistic by not wanting to sing hillsong elevation worship and bethel music due to the doctrines of their churches they're a part of not by any stretch of the imagination melanie here's an area where i want to say you aren't being too legalistic because you don't want to sing those songs but if you tell other people they can't sing those songs for the same reasons you have that's where i want to stop and say maybe you need to just give them a little space for their for their own conscience and their own obedience to christ because this is kind of like meat sold in the marketplace in my view so when paul deals with meat sold in the marketplace um it's just known that the people selling meat in the first corinthian in the first corinthian in corinth as he talks about this in first and second corinthians when he when they're selling meat those that meat was offered to idols it was like way before an idol a prayer was set over at a pagan prayer and then they're selling it in the marketplace and some uh some believers were like i can't eat the stuff sold in the marketplace so it seems that some of them were becoming vegetarians to avoid eating meat because of its connotations right it's it's not pagan but it's connected to something that's wrong and here paul's like hey don't judge each other on this issue don't go into the temple and participate in pagan rituals but you're just eating meat demons are nothing this stuff means nothing go ahead and thank god and you can eat the meat but don't violate your conscience that's kind of the rule now i'm going to suggest that the the music of bethel is like this as well that and and it's okay let me pause for a second some people can't think carefully about these things i'm not suggesting either that bethel is is the same as a pagan uh temple that's not what i'm suggesting uh nor am i suggesting that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the content and the music coming out with bethel i'm not just in either of those extremes it's a little bit more nuanced than that so here's my view if this might help inform your view take it or leave it the stuff coming from bethel is first off um it's coming from an organization that is pushing a false revival and fake i and i've done a lot of work to try to prove this in my video content on on bill johnson's teaching that is producing fake gifts fake prophecy fake healings i think that's very problematic i think it's going to cause lots and lots of trouble down the road for christians so that's what's coming that's bethel that's that's their their main export is false revival if i could put it that way mixed into that is some really awesome christian encouragement and some very questionable teachings and even some very dangerous teachings it's a whole mixed back there's all that in there now the music is not the same as bethel the music is just worship music but in some of the music some of those weird teachings are there and in other bits of the music none of it's there it's just good music it's just nice a nice worship song some people are like because of this music's association with bethel because people are using the music to try to get people over to the weird things i won't touch any of it and other people go well i could selectively sing one of the songs or not one of the songs or some people are even more tolerant and they go i can sing the song and just not that line or i have my own meaning i put on that here's where i want to give people lots of space to have convictions and to honor christ in their own ways but the one question i have is this knowing that the increasing dramatic issues that i'm that i that people are struggling with in dealing with the music that is connected to the movement it makes me think that it's becoming increasingly unwise to put that music in front of whole congregations because when someone's talking about their private worship experience they can partake of whatever they want but when they come to church i've prepared a meal so to speak of of meat from the market and i'm presenting it to everybody and that's what the worship is like in churches when you when you go there you're if there's songs that you know are going to cause significant numbers of your people to struggle or to have a hard time or to potentially stumble in some way you should avoid those songs as a worship leader because you're not preparing food for yourself you're preparing it for everyone there's my analogy of that um question number three full of shades says please can you talk about your view on netflix should christians cancel their netflix subscription here's another issue where i'm going to say um we don't have this like abundantly clear rule for christians like i don't see where i can see where biblical principles can guide us to make a choice to cancel a netflix subscription me and my wife can't we had our netflix subscription we cancelled it not too long ago and i they said why and i said because of the increasingly immoral nature of your programming and it wasn't just one program it's it's it's the trend it's been happening over years we've been watching this and getting more and more concerned about it and so we did make that decision do i think that um every christian has to do that too this is where we move from taking a moral stand to just infighting and that's a huge difference it's one thing to take a moral stand and say guys i feel compelled to do this it's something else to say you're in sin if you're not doing it too especially on an area where there could this could be disputes over doubtful things right this this could be disputes over doubtful things so at that point stand in your convictions hold to your convictions even you know talk about them but let's not divide and infight and this is what i'm worried about in fight amongst each other so that someone says like i watched this show it was great and you know that show was on netflix so you're hitting them you're still watching netflix wow you've really you're a really good example of a christian like this kind of thing happening in in inner correspondence online is um that is sin and so let's hold to hold our conscience while giving room for others realizing that there are issues that we're going to disagree on and we need to still have love and fellowship in the midst of that all right so sandra says why did the holy spirit leave saul and why did an evil spirit from the lord enter into him why in the world would god do something that seems to be evil i don't think it was well let me there's several questions here okay why did the holy spirit leave saul because saul had betrayed god and rebelled against god and did his own thing as king so when you realize the holy spirit came to saul as a not a um you are saved forever this is the indwelling of the spirit this is salvation that wasn't the mode of the interaction of the holy spirit and saul the holy spirit entered saul or came upon saul in a empowerment and enablement to be king because he was the anointed one called to be king when he continually rebelled the holy spirit departed from him they said i don't think this is directly a salvation issue i think this is about anointing to be king right this is this is the holy spirit empowering you for this job and that left and then as saul continued to rebel against god right then uh evil spirit came upon him and uh and you think well god's evil for allowing that well i don't i don't think so um i think that god allowing and when it says evil spirit i'm not sure that it was a a wicked spirit like morally evil or the word evil can also just mean as it does in the bible it can just mean uh bad or harmful harmful okay so there's that as well i'm not sure if the nature of the spirit that entered saul i guess i'd have to go look at the passage again to confirm that at any rate god allowing the enemy even if let's say it was a moral evil spirit allowing the enemy to attack you because of your rebellion against him is not an immoral thing on god's part rather this is consequences for sin and so when israel as a nation saul's like a microcosm of israel here when israel is a nation gets the holy spirit coming to the temple they rebel against god god's spirit departs from the temple and then his protection of israel falls and the enemies come in and destroy like nebuchadnezzar who is not a good guy he's a bad guy he comes and wrecks israel destroys the temple you could say well god used an evil person nebuchadnezzar therefore god's evil i think here that um i think that's wrong i just think it's wrong to say that there's no reason to think that god's evil he's the sovereign of all things he uses even even satan to accomplish his ultimate goals that doesn't mean that he's on the hook for what satan does he's he's not directly causally making the enemy do all those things right he is rather in his sovereignty working all things together for good including the work and the action of the enemy so there's a difference here between what god does directly and causally and what god allows and sovereignly controls and guides that's a quick answer i know there's a lot more to unpack there i hope it's helpful for you uh number five john earnest says shmuley beauty says that the new testament contains anti-semitic propaganda and that christians should reject those passages as forgeries what do you think i think that's a very foolish very very very foolish thing to say because now your real bible is shmuley beauty who is or botik i've heard his name before i think he's a rabbi is that right anyway um you're that's he's your real bible he's gonna now filter you know you grab the scissors and you start cutting out the parts of the bible that he doesn't like and what is his rule it's the crazy thing is it's not even like textual criticism it's not like he's going was this original did they really write this instead he just says here's my theology i'm just going to cut the bible into pieces to fit my theology like that's all that's really happening there so um now does the new testament have anti-semitic propaganda no no does it talk about the guilt of the jewish people for having reject rebelled against and rejected christ in particular the leadership yes it does is that anti-semitic well no because it's not based on them being jewish is it anti-semitic would be i hate you because you're jewish that would be anti-semitic not you happen to be jewish and you've committed a sin and you're guilty of the sin and god is gonna deal with you because of the sin but not because you're jewish i mean in fact the gospel goes to the jew first and also to the greek if anything if if you wanted to you could accuse the bible of being pro-jewish right you could you could say that uh the promises to israel are still remain in romans nine it talks about the the future uh fulfillment of prophecy coming to israel that all israel will be saved um in in romans 9 through 11 and this whole big long teaching that talks about this stuff jesus is jewish all the disciples are jewish all the initial disciples are jewish in the book of acts it's actually about how these jews are like can we really accept these gentiles into the faith they're kind of you know they're gentiles you know like that's the idea in the book of acts um anyways yeah shmuley beauty just the fact that he says this tells me very clearly false teacher stay away from that guy weird agendas do not believe the what he says about the bible that's and that's i've heard his name before but i don't know his teaching but john that would be enough for me to just be like get away from this guy um he has an agenda and the bible doesn't fit his agenda so he wants to cut pieces of it out tina says i was raised uh jw and baptized as a kid but not in the name of the father and the son and holy spirit how do i know what church to choose and who should baptize me i'm afraid of being misled okay so let me say this tina you were let me i'd like to change the way you think about church so you were raised jehovah's witness which means there's a good chance that you think that there are true church there's a true church and then there are false churches the jehovah's witnesses told you we're the true church we're the real people of god everyone else is very questionable everyone else is is apostate we're the real people now as you move over to true faith in christ and knowing jesus and the real jesus of creation of the bible of christianity you can carry over these like leftovers these these remnants of your jehovah's witness views that you don't know are with you i think you know you probably know this already like there's things you think and a year later five years later you go that was wrong that was jehovah's witness stuff that was still in my head i didn't even know it well one jw thing that might still be in your head is the idea that there is just like a true church and you have to find like that true church where you can just trust those people and you can follow those people and they're your real perfect guides kind of like the jehovah's witness have the governing body as their real perfect guides and i would say that those that doesn't exist what you have in church is you have people who are flawed people who are not perfect guides following the perfect jesus so what you really need to do is not go from being a jehovah's witness to being a member of a different church that is then perfect and guiding you perfectly you need to go from being a jw and following the governing body to being a christian who follows christ and recognizes that even a pastor even a church they will be genuine that's what you want you want genuine but you don't need them to be like the true church like the perfect church or the one that will guide and direct you you just need genuine christians they'll have flaws they'll the pastor will have some things that are wrong the leadership will do some things that are that are mistaken and that's okay because there's a genuineness that's there and here i'll say you have lots of options you have lots of options probably hopefully around you of some different um churches that will be around you that you could go to now if you're just like i'm really clueless mike i don't even know where to start well i mean i would if i moved to a new place the first churches i would look for would probably be like if it was a calvary chapel church i would consider i'm not saying i would just go consider going if it was a baptist church i would consider going um those are a couple of things i would look at it doesn't mean like they're perfect but they might be somewhere to start um now what about being baptized can i say this you just need um you don't need special people to baptize you just just find somebody even if they're not perfect even if you don't end up always going to their church forever that's okay find somebody who is you would just look up to spiritually and you'd think okay there's a stick of genuine christian and just know this that it's it's it's it's jesus who saves you and it's not even the baptism that saves you but that is that is an important part of what you need to do next don't worry about perfection there alicia huat says i have liberal christian friends who believe they are christians but also have many unbiblical beliefs and practices how should first corinthians 5 11 affect my relationships with them is that the unequally yoked passage there let's take a look okay here we go this passage it says about who we should associate with as christians it says but now i'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater revile or drunkard or swindler not to even eat with such a one now here this is talking about i think eat with um probably means in the context of communion they were having communion meals not just not just a service with a cracker and a little tiny cup but whole meals in their communion the you know love feasts that they might call them and so they would do this and be a whole meal and he's like they shouldn't even be part of your communion and i think the thing here is um they they call themselves a brother and he doesn't want the think of this is not individual this is this is this is the church as a whole that he's talking to i think in first corinthians 5. he doesn't want their local fellowship to be associated as if these people represent us and they're wicked and they're immoral here he's not actually dealing with theology he's dealing with life sin practices so when you say they're liberal i i don't know what you mean by that but if you mean they live a sexually immoral lifestyle they live a carnally greedy lifestyle like not like they just sometimes they struggle with greed but they're that's just they're carnal right they live carnally that's just how they live they're an idolater they're worshiping idols they revile their dru they're drunkards they just regularly get drunk they're swindlers then your local fellowship should do church discipline this almost never happens where they say you cannot be part of our fellowship until you get your life right you're living in constant continual rejection of of the lordship of christ and this is um something that is almost never done but i think it's biblical now as an individual could you you know what would your posture be towards them well if you're to treat them as unbelievers which is seems to be what paul ends up concluding here then you're out your your attitude towards unbelievers is you don't you don't think they're part of your body of christ but you always want them to be so you have a loving and gracious and inviting attitude towards them so it's not like i hate you now i i you know you are dead to me rather it's i'm just recognizing that your lifestyle is that of an unbeliever and you profane the name of christ if you are coming and representing jesus and so we need to draw a line here so then but i still eat with them when i get lunch with them like say three months goes by and i go hey man let's get lunch and i just i'm gonna check in how are you doing like i don't think that would be wrong but it's wrong if they're representing christ to the community around you they're profaning his name so how should this affect your relationship with them um uh i think that you may depending on how extreme their beliefs are alicia you might move them into the category of being a non-believer who says they're christians and you just and you and maybe you tell you're honest with them you say i i i question whether you're really a believer in jesus because of the things you say um and those are some tough things can you still love them can you still at least reach out to them perhaps it's more about a posture it's like i go from fellowship mode to outreach mode and there's just a this is how in my head i think of it i think of him as being in outreach mode okay not fellowship mode and outreach mode is still just as loving still just as kind it's just that the goals of this relationship are different the goals are different and i don't know if that if that helps you alicia i hope so i i feel i may not have fully answered that question so i'm sorry uh sydney asks what does the bible say about the role of the church should it be focused more on reaching unbelievers or on teaching believers who then go out and evangelize well i mean the role of the church if you say role of the church sydney and you're thinking of the sunday service i think the goal can be different in different locations and different seasons i think the sunday service should minister to the people that are there right so it might be more you know maybe it's on a spectrum like you know here's discipleship here's outreach and it's like you're here you're more discipleship and a little bit outreach or maybe you're in a season of revival lots of lots of unsafe people coming to the church so you're moving more towards outreach and then like a couple years goes by and now they need more discipleship so i think the pastor should be sensitive to the needs of the people discipleship always has to happen outreach is the more optional one on sunday mornings if you ask me uh it's not entirely optional you have to you need to preach the gospel obviously that's even part of discipleship so you're going to preach the gospel but how heavily do you emphasize that may depend on the season the church is in but that's just sunday service the church is the body of christ so the churches there's there's as much church going on as far as being the church on monday as there is on sunday so i think that the emphasis and the care and the passion that the that the individuals in the church have for outreaching to their neighbors and their co-workers and their communities that is the thing that's that that concerns and and scares me a bit when that's missing or when they think oh that's sunday my outreach is i invite someone to come to church on sunday and then the pastor has to preach to them i think now we're putting potentially putting a burden on pastors to do all of the outreach that is silly and not as effective either like people you know telling you about jesus is more effective than strangers you don't know telling you about jesus generally speaking i think so how much should the church's role be focused on reaching unbelievers i i think that a lot of it but i wouldn't put that on sunday morning i would put that all week long when you're interacting with the world when the gathering of christians comes i lean more towards discipleship personally but in churches where nobody does outreach and then the sunday morning becomes the only outreach event you know the only outreach thing that happens in that body of believers all of a sudden they start emphasizing outreach more there because it's like well it's the lifeline right it's not happening anywhere else so it has to happen here i think that that is because of a lack of personal outreach happening in the community uh samuel schuffler has a question do you ever plan to do a deep dive into the authorship of the contested pauline epistles i feel this would be a great resource for those in talks with more liberal christians samuel this is like one of those issues that i i like really want to do and i have it on like my list but if i'm honest about like where the priorities are it's pretty it's pretty far down the list but it's something i do care about um and in some of these things i'm kind of a patient person so forgive me for saying this it may be like four years out but i do want to do it eventually i think it's very important but i'm not the only resource in the body of christ i would love to do it and try to make it as good as i can get it there's other people who've done stuff on this somebody who's done work on this if you're interested is a guy named daryl bach daryl bach so just type up type up daryl bach b-o-c-k and um uh authorship of the pauline epistles or something like that and in search engine and you may find some resources there samuel george has a question what are the steps to take while dealing with psychological doubts where no amount of reason will help you feel better so psychological doubts whether where a reason doesn't seem to help i think the first thing to recognize is is having the humility to know that you're being unreasonable that's a big deal so i think that this happens for anybody who's dealing with believing lies is that humility is a major path to overcoming lies that we believe because so often what we're doing is we're just being and forgiving you guys but i'm speaking as somebody who's gone through it we're being arrogant and we're thinking well if i don't feel better it must not be true and that is actually a really that's actually a pretty arrogant view when you're standing in the face of all the evidence and you go oh the evidence supports supports this thing being true um i have all these good reasons to believe but i just don't feel it so i'm going to reject all that that is actually pretty arrogant at that point so what i'm going to suggest is soberly telling yourself maybe i'm just really delusional here maybe my my doubts are actually irrational and i'm being delusional and just admitting to yourself i'm irrational my feelings shouldn't dictate my behavior here because my feelings are based on things that aren't true i think this could actually be really helpful for lots of people i think one of the the things i've seen for people suffering with mental illness the friends i've had the people i watch struggle with mental illness is that those who have the humility to say sometimes i don't think right so i have to trust people around me when they tell me hey you're wrong here i had a buddy who was schizophrenic and he he told me mike sometimes um i feel like maybe you hate me um and you're mad at me and i i just i need you to sometimes just tell me that you're not and i was like okay i and he had such incredible humility to go i don't know how to get out of my thinking i'm just gonna trust you when you tell me that i'm just gonna believe you that that is actually a safety net for coming out of all kinds of mental struggles is trusting somebody so here i'm going to say trusting god is the cure and not trusting our psychological state and you go okay i'm irrational i'm fearful i'm doubting here but it's irrational i'm just going to trust god i don't feel better but it's okay because i'm not going to rely upon how i feel is that easy to do no is it valuable yeah is it valuable it's immeasurably valuable immeasurably valuable some of the people who struggle with the worst mental illness don't believe anybody else when they tell them how wrong they are and if they would just believe other people if they would just have some trust then it would it would go a long way to helping them navigate through the things they are thinking that are true and the things they're thinking that are false so here's where i i would say you've got reason and now trust needs to come in so psychological doubts the other thing i would do is i would say i would say quick fire things when you're having personal devotional time reading the word don't expect emotional confirmation when you're having times of worship or you're praising god do not expect emotional confirmation don't require it consider it an act that is worth doing whether you feel good about it or not and um when you have times of prayer don't look for emotional confirmation do you get the thing i'm suggesting over and over again here is stop asking your emotions to confirm everything that you're experiencing that's really healthy there's my my thoughts i do hope it helps samuel my heart goes out to people who are in that in that spot and i've been there myself peter solas says do you think the sda is a cult um uh i guess i do lean i lean that way but you know what what i want to do is i've had tons of you guys request that i do a whole thing on the sda the seventh day of venice and that is on my list it's higher up than the pauline epistles um and i'm gonna do that um hopefully next year i'll do a whole thing on the sda i can't promise how soon it'll be i've got so many things on my plate right now but i will dig into that i will dig into that um question 12 i'm not wyatt says i have a family that believes that jews will go to heaven even if they haven't been saved by jesus what should i say to them even when they say that uh how about romans book of romans um chapter 10 i believe the first few verses brothers my heart's desire and prayer to god for them is that they may be saved who's he talking about he's talking about jews and look at how he describes them here in romans 10 paul says for i bear them witness that they have a zeal for god there's a zeal for god right these are jews that love the old testament law they love the law of moses and they have a zeal for god and it's the right god like it's not like muslims who have a false definition of god right this is the jews who actually have the right definition of god like when when jesus said to the one at the well like we worship we know who we worship you don't know who you're worshiping like that the jews were actually worshiping the right god they had the whereas the samaritans had this occult effectively with the false god um so the jews have a zeal for god right but but they're not saved because his desires that they would be saved so according to romans as a jew that has a real zeal for god but and they're trying to obey the law but they don't trust in christ that that they're not saved right in particular these are jews that had heard the gospel so we're not talking about the ones who've never heard the gospel um who are before christ or something or have lived isolated in some sense from the gospel message i think god judges us based on what we know but he bears them witness they have a zeal for god but not according to knowledge right because they're being ignorant of god's righteousness and seeking to establish their own which is called self-righteousness that's that's the true nature of of legalism they did not submit to god's righteousness for christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes his heart breaks he could wish himself a curse from christ he'll say if if if that would save his brethren he wants them saved so i would say that people who hold this view jews have a separate path to salvation than jesus they have there's every everything that could be wrong with that view is wrong with that view it's hard to say things that are theologically more incorrect than that jews have a path to salvation apart from christ jesus is literally the jewish savior and so we're saying if a jew your reborn jew and you reject your savior don't worry you have a different path and that path is the law apparently right which galatians makes clear is there to condemn us to show us our need for christ everything possible is wrong with that view and how unloving i am to a jewish person if i don't tell them about jesus because i think they don't need their own savior the gospel goes to the jew first and also to the greek it doesn't just go to the gentiles it doesn't just go to the non-jews everything that could be wrong with that is wrong with that sadly amanda duke says how does god's will not infringe on free will what in this what in the sense of even praying for a situation or what is the sense of praying for a situation if it's already in god's will okay so how does god's will not infringe on free will um well god here's the short answer to the first question god allows us to do things he doesn't like god allows us so how does how does your your will and god's will interact in that sense well he lets you do things he doesn't will he doesn't desire and so that's clear in scripture many many many many countless times he's saying that people are doing things he doesn't want them to do doesn't will them to do yet he'll work all things together for good right because part of his will is you making free will choices that is part of his will and so even though he wants you to make good choices he also wants you to make choices so he lets you make choices but another in other sense he's also going to work all things together for good so he's going to use and you know basically work in the situations to bring about his ultimate plan his ultimate ultimate overarching plan for the universe is going to take place he says what's the sense of praying for a situation if it's already in god's will exactly that god might want to do it but perhaps he won't do it if you don't pray because he also wants you to pray like i'm just saying god's will can involve more than one thing he desires to heal this person but he also desires to do so through the agency of another person praying and another person prays and now it's not part now it's not fitting that desire so i i just think that um those who struggle with prayer because they're like well if god's gonna heal he's gonna heal him that's just not true it's just not true like otherwise every time in the bible where paul's like pray for me i pray for you this was like dumb and pointless that wouldn't make any sense when moses interceded for the people of israel god was going to kill him like they were going to die if he didn't intercede and god wanted him to intercede but if he didn't that would have been the end of them there's prayer is powerful prayers effective prayers impactful anything that attacks your prayer is a lie and a dangerous one because prayer really is an amazing thing where god does interact because part of his will is that we pray caleb has a question do you believe amillennialism is biblical and what arguments do you have for or against it uh no i don't believe it's biblical caleb although i couldn't i couldn't off the top of my head give you arguments for and against it um it's been a long time since i've focused on eschatology stuff so i know that's like one of the top things i'm asked for you know if i just did everything that was most asked for that would be one of the first things i did was i'm gonna teach revelation next and things like that but but i also have to pray and seek for wisdom and guidance and look for right things to do for the ministry so i haven't focused on that in years so it would be really old data if i was to try to summarize that stuff for you so i'm not going to try to right now caleb but yeah i don't think it's biblical it's not my view i'm more of a futurist i think we're pre-millennial i do think there's actually a seven year tribulation and that there's a thousand year reign of christ and um and if it's not exactly perfectly a thousand years it's close it's close enough to be rounding it out to a thousand years that would be my view could i be wrong yes it's possible am i open to changing my theology on that absolutely but that'll be after doing some real work on the topic um to double check myself bad wookie has a question i feel called to spread god's word further uh but i suffer greatly from asperger's syndrome is my fear of crowds public speaking and inability to convey a thought coherently a valid fear okay so the last one i want to highlight there bad wookie are you actually unable to convey thoughts clearly in front of crowds and if the answer is yes like i literally can't then i would look for other ways of of reaching and ministering to people why not you do a blog you write things out and then you share them why not interact in comment sections um that's where i started on comment sections and and forums where you're talking to people about these things you could do that as well if public speaking is such a difficulty for you but the fear of not being able to convey a thought isn't the same thing as i actually have reasons why i just can't do that so i tend to look at um fears set aside fears and just look at your skills and abilities okay there's things you're good at there's things you're not good at when you're serving christ take the things you're good at and use those to the most of your ability and try to make it so that your service to christ doesn't depend on all the stuff you're no good at because god's gifted you in unique ways and you want to lean into those gifts right so if you're if you're gifted at public speaking then you should lean into that and serve the lord in that but if you're gifted more at writing you should lean into that or maybe you're gifted at other types of service so you should come alongside or start your own ministry where it's all about service in other types of ministry there's there's different gifts that we have and we when we lean on those we can serve god better it's kind of like um like like for instance i i've always i've been a worship leader for a long time but i've never felt that worship leading was a particular gift of mine i did it because the need was there and i have some ability to do it never felt particularly good at it particularly gifted at it my gift has always been in my view teaching not because i want it to be but because as i look at the practical impact of it and my capability to do it i go out lord you've gifted me in this more so than in other things so i lean into that and that allows my ministry to have more of an impact giant mushroom tree says i got away with felonies years ago no one got hurt and i have confessed to god and repented is the godly thing to do to turn myself in i have ocd and i can't tell if it's ocd or conviction um giant mushroom tree i have to pass you on to a local leader in your in your fellowship in a church around you like find some godly pastor or just godly christian who you would see is mature and wise right that they aren't they don't just have good theology of wisdom in life and go and share your whole story all the details with that person and get their counseling advice i am too fearful to give you advice based on knowing so little about your scenario so i'm going to ask that you you reach out to somebody else number 17 maddie young's cloud art says if the angels weren't 100 safe in heaven seeing as they were able to be seduced by satan how can we be certain we will be safe in eternity with god once we go to heaven well i mean you can we can make it real simple and we can answer the question like this we're not angels and scripture says that we will be with him forever so if the bible tells me i will be with him forever then i won't fall away now now the question then is how does that work out like why don't i fall away why don't i sin why don't i rebel and it and it may it may well be for the reason that and now here i can theorize right it may be because you've already made the choice right you already went through the temptation you already had the opportunity to turn from god and you rejected it and now you're you're never going to make that decision in the future um so let's say that um we have multiple differences in eternity in heaven than we do when heaven will meter earth and all that but we um we have multiple differences between that and our current current state one of the differences i already made a choice another difference is i'm actually indwelt with the holy spirit to the greatest degree possible okay that that has a preserving effect on my life um another reason is that i have the experiences now of the fruit of those choices right i'm in the glory man i'm in the glory i don't live in the midst of a wicked people doing wicked sins all the time i live in the perfect world i live in perfection and so this will you know the environment will motivate positive continued positive choices another thing though that's hugely important and people don't probably notice so much as much as they should is i'm rid of the flesh this corruption must put on incorruption this mortal was put on immortality and when when the bible talks about our flesh you know that our sin nature within us is what's drawing us towards sin and then it describes our eternal experience not having sin nature like there's nothing in me that that's pulling me towards wickedness anymore so my eternal life in heaven i won't have that internal pull towards sin and how many of us have been praying for this for years lord i'll serve you just make me serve you just change my heart just i just want to serve you well listen that is exactly what heaven ex the heaven experience is i've asked for the change and he's finally granted it and so yeah there's another reason why we're not going to do that angels don't have that uh to speak for ryan howard has a question ryan howard man you're such a good producer i just want to say you do really good work um so i'm glad you're with us in our q a because i know it's the same ryan howard for sure hey mike i have recently gotten back into full-time ministry i'm dealing with online heresy hunters that badger me through email and such about my teaching how would you handle this kind of people well ryan stop teaching your heresy man what's wrong with you obviously you tell them you're they're right and you're wrong okay let's just assume that you're not teaching heresy and that what you're really getting is people who are they disagree with you and they have zero tolerance for you um my encouragement is don't spend all your time on that we can spend all of our time trying to impact the people who we have the least impact in and we're doing it sometimes to defend ourselves right i can be wanting to defend myself if you sense that there's part of you that's defending self don't even respond to people if you sense that however if you're thinking oh no i think i can help this person and you see a real avenue to helping assisting them then you can write something but otherwise i would say as you're as you're doing online ministry and you're getting feedback there's a there's a tipping point where you start to go wait a minute and i it took me a long time to get this but i realized wait i could spend the next six hours in my comments or i could spend six hours preparing a whole nother teaching i can help maybe maybe 50 people in the comments or i can help thousands of people with another video and so i start trying to gauge what's the best ministry use of my time and energy and that's another thing you want to consider ryan as you're moving from your job as a producer and film director over to full-time ministry i'm joking if you guys can't tell i'm joking sometimes people can't tell when i'm joking at any rate uh yeah ryan those would be a couple of things i would suggest if you are going to handle them i would say there's two issues with heresy hunters and some people say i'm a heresy hunter i well hey guess what i do like calling out heresy when i see it but there's two issues one is a general attitude that's divisive over over secondary issues and is uncharitable towards other people and you may need to address that right maybe that's what you address and you go hey man i hear what you're saying and you know let's just let's say i'm wrong about this um and you try to encourage them we're still brothers in christ we're still you know you want to encourage that kind of unity because that's super important that we have that in the body of christ um but the second issue is always be open to them actually showing you that you're wrong on something as you read those comments and and all this requires just a to just get rid of all self-defensiveness okay defending myself has to not be important at all i just want to be like is there truth there i can learn no is there help that i can offer no and then move on number 19. we got two more and we're done martin estevez says can you talk about why jesus allowed simon to help him carry his cross why did jesus allow simon okay well here we are guessing let's just acknowledge that we're totally guessing we don't we don't know why because the bible doesn't tell us why and i don't see any clear contextual reasons to see here's why he allowed simon to carry his cross um but now let me offer some possibilities one it may have been to demonstrate for all of us how beat up and how weak jesus was the fact that someone else helped him helps us identify with the suffering of christ we recognize how badly his suffering was two simon and his kids his kids actually get saved it seems as we read about them in later letters so this this event this he's randomly passing by he's asked to carry the cross this introduced him to jesus at least to a greater degree than before and he ends up being saved and paul i think it's in first corinthians maybe no no i think it's romans at the end of romans 16 where paul mentions it seems to mention his son his son now in my study on romans 16 actually talk about this issue in particular and so that might have been another reason now there could have been a picture here about how we're supposed to carry our cross we're supposed to imitate and emulate the thing that jesus did i wouldn't lean too heavily on that because i don't i think there's that's the truth i just don't see it clearly in this particular passage so there's a couple of a couple possibilities that i think are biblically consistent even if i can't prove that i'm right um let's see question number 20. sola fnq says how much utility should we find in the church fathers i'm still protestant but want to be consistent with historic christianity so should we view the fathers with any extra credibility okay so here's where i want to say extra credibility is where i where i would draw the line i would just draw the line right there i would say except for very very very very early church fathers we're talking second century guys they give us insights not that they're more right than anybody else but they just give us historic data right so when when polycarp talks about the gospel authors okay he is so much closer to the time of those things happening that i should take his words with a little more weight than somebody who comes 300 years later when justin martyr is is talking about he mentions the memoirs of the apostles and stuff like these have real historical value but this isn't so much like the apostle the church fathers are our teachers but these like more apostolic fathers who they're not really apostolic we shouldn't call them that these are weird terms church fathers apostolic fathers i think these are strange terms i don't like them it's just historically what everybody uses um but the more the apostolic fathers that to use the term i think are probably more a window into early church history not perfect theology theology went awry pretty quickly in the early church and the new testament is our safe source for right theology the other thing i want to mention is this the church fathers are and this is a huge huge huge issue can't overstate it they're regularly quoted out of context to proof text for different doctrines and the protestants can do this and roman catholic apologists especially do this i mean it happens a lot church fathers are quoted out of context people when i was studying uh penal substitutionary atonement that doctrine people would quote the church fathers radically out of in fact here's a book major book by a legit scholar right this is christus victor and um gustav aulen is the author of the book and this thing right here let me just say the church fathers are totally abused in this text like this cannot so here's strung together quotes from the church fathers utterly misrepresented um and it ends up being one of the uh one of the works that helps move a whole group of people towards rejecting a biblical doctrine because of a misrepresentation of the church fathers i think that when people quote the church fathers they get us off of our safe ground right you've been reading the bible your whole life right or maybe just for a while but but you read the bible you don't read the church fathers so when someone says like um i've i read in this such-and-such church father um origen said the following and you don't know the historical context of origin and you don't know all of his writings you don't know whether he changed his mind and said something else later you don't know if this came from from where he got it from you don't know if it was greek influenced by other things other than the bible and so you can you can try to proof text the bible i check the context i quickly see if you're wrong when you proof text the church fathers it's like that process never happens that's what i see more often than anything is there value though in the church fathers yes there's definitely value is it the kind of authoritative value people usually promote i don't think so it's just value and if you want to read them i'd recommend reading start to finish right read a whole book don't just read a quote because then the proof texting stuff happens so there's my um uh there's my comments on those things i see christus victor is beautiful chip ludick says i actually think christus victor is beautiful if you understand it in a biblical fashion but if you do what gustavo lin did it you butchered christus victor as well as penal substitution utterly just just butchered those things it's total anachronism that sort of reading of the church fathers and chris if you see christus victor as an alternative to um penal substitution then you're you're not you're not historical and you're not biblical either one boom take that i spent so many hours on that particular topic and i do think it's very relevant and important which is why i have a whole series on penal substitutionary atonement and before you go you might want to you know i want to check it out i'll i'll link it in fact i'll put it up on an end screen and i'll link in the description my series on penal substitutionary atonement where i dealt with this stuff and i tried to quote the church fathers with a greater context and i did find value in it so thank you guys for for joining the stream i know we started really late today and which is why we've gone past the hour mark i'm gonna go back and edit out that really long botched intro where i was just checking and doing techy things and all that so that hopefully it will not be as sloppy as before but here's quick announcements on my passion project ah the passion translation ah the passion translation so so on the passion project what i've done is i've i've hired a number of scholars to review the passion translation i started putting up the reviews the first one tremor longman reviewing song of solomon or song of songs that has already been up the next one comes out in three days on monday and that's with dr nije gupta and he's reviewing galatians and he and it was a great review it was one of the best interviews i've done on this project and then over the next weeks my intention is to put one out every week probably mondays more often than not it'll be on a monday it might um if it goes into january i might move those to wednesdays because i'll be teaching on mondays as well but those things will come out i have daryl bach coming out and i have douglas moo coming out and i have um uh um who else uh craig blomberg coming out i've already done their interviews i just have massive hours of editing to do to put these videos together you wouldn't believe how long it takes to get them which is why i usually live stream everything all right so that's all i got to say thank you guys so much for joining a little i was a little thrown off by all the tech issues and glitches we had but i want to say thank you so much thank you guys for you who have um supported this ministry the people who have have donated i haven't truth is i have not asked for donations since april um and we're still being taken care of and so again i want to say this i'm not asking i'm just saying thank you for those who have decided to support thank you so much i'm just like grateful you're making this happen we've we've in this year we've got a new um assistant i actually hired someone for bible thinker and so sarah zimmerman's like my actual assistant hoping to move her to full time over the next year and the lord's totally providing and taking care of us and it's allowing me to continue doing things like this passion project and other things in the future i'm going to keep trying to put out at least two videos a week of real solid stuff that i hope is a huge blessing has a massive impact in your life and the lives of those around you helping you learn to think biblically about everything because i you can't overstate the value of that you just can't you just can't it's health to your soul life to your bones right read psalm 119 man the word of god is good it's sweeter than honey and so i'm very happy about that and so thank you thank you i'm just uh i'm just stalling now i guess i'm just having fun with you guys didn't want to leave so thanks for joining lord bless you guys have a great day and uh merry christmas i will see you i don't i guess you'll see me pre-recorded a couple times before the new year but january 1st is the next friday live stream i will be doing one on january 1st all right that is all take care

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 34,935

Rating: 4.9111109 out of 5

Keywords: 20 questions, Mike Winger, q and a, question and answer, think biblically, BibleThinker, are we still supposed to be fruitful and multiply

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Length: 63min 12sec (3792 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020