20 Questions with Pastor Mike (Episode 2)

we should be live and we're live all right this is uh 20 questions with pastor mike i'm going to be answering your questions from the live chat but the first question i have today before anything else i took from twitter the rest are all going to be from youtube and the questions from jake teeter who says do 1st timothy 2 9 and 1st peter 3 verses 3 through 4 prohibit jewelry for example wedding bands necklaces and i don't know what ratings is anyhow um these different things does does the scripture you know say we shouldn't have these things and i think we should look at these verses themselves so the first one is first timothy 2 verse nine and uh for if you're watching this afterwards you should see in the um in the video description and in the first comment there should be a time stamp you know map where you can click around to the questions that you think are the most important for you to know about and let's dig into this first one first timothy 2 9 it says in malachi 3 2 hold on a second first timothy 2 9 and um there we go all right now this passage is where paul is writing to timothy about the conduct of men and women in the church in the body of christ this is instruction for christian conduct and he says likewise also that women so the talk the topic specifically is women now there's application to men but in the bible when we when we see um special instruction to women special instruction to men there's often application to the opposite sex but there's a reason why women are targeted here men are targeted here because there are differences between men and women and we do fall into different temptations sometimes and that's i think the reason for this likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel so they should wear respectable or other translations put modest apparel with modesty and self-control not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire but what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works and a few things i want to note real quick off the off the cuff before anything else is this if the bible does say that women aren't supposed to wear jewelry the way our culture responds is to say well the bible's oppressive and it's another reason to dismiss it i think that that's utterly foolish right if if if christianity is true then it's revealing this because it's god's will and desire for mankind and we should submit and rejoice that he has revealed to us this truth about jewelry i mean that's the only rational thing to do if christianity is false then what do you why do you care what the bible says and and consequently if you're an atheist and i don't understand why you care about jewelry in the first place where's the grounding for moral values and duties but that's another issue so what's really going on here though um i don't think it's a complete forbidding of wearing jewelry i think what we're getting in the text is not a strict either or but rather a tendency there's a tendency amongst humans and and women fall into this probably more often than men at least that's my opinion and i think that the scripture is written this way because of that the tendency is to value external things more than internal things in the sense of beauty i should say not just external things because guys do it too in different areas but to value external attractiveness and beauty more than internal character the old cliche of the shallow pretty girl right there's a reason why there's a cliche there because sometimes it's that it's that value of external beauty that causes you to become more and more shallow and more and more um yeah empty inside and so that's why he doesn't say um not with not with braided hair gold and pearls or costly attire but with regular clothes instead he says but with godliness like the thing that you want to clothe yourself with is godliness so i think what this is actually speaking against in first timothy is against the idea of of valuing external beauty and attractiveness as a replacement for godly holy modest christian character and this kicks against our culture big time because in our culture it really is um we think modesty is not even a virtue right modesty and humility these things are like considered oppressive to women and this is just an un it's just an ungodly way of taking a sin of pride and making it into a goal for women to have and this is doing much harm to women and all marriages and all sorts of people in our culture so the instruction to women is about not emphasizing external beauty but instead emphasizing internal things now does that mean that women can't wear you know any sort of um in any sort of you know pearls or say something a ring in the nose which was more traditional back then and um you know in the ears or necklaces or braided hair for that matter well probably the braided hair here according to the ivp commentary they give you like a bible background commentary that they have the braided hair is probably talking about hair that was braided with gold and it was a way of showing off the luxury and the expense that they had so in other words this is like the the modern day example of you have a 900 hairdo you have yeah yeah that's that's seen as an as a bad thing biblically i think and this is something we have to swallow and really digest this is like having a thousand dollar purse this is over the top costly expensive things now it's something else if you know i think a wedding ring doesn't fit it could fit into this category but i don't think it necessarily fits directly into it i don't think that pearls are automatically wrong it's it's rather to have some wisdom now you're safer if you just swear off all jewelry but then that itself could become an external show of your your your morality is shown by you not wearing pearls instead of the emphasis which is meant to be godliness so i think there's some flexibility here i think there's a certain amount of jewelry and of outward uh attractiveness that is appropriate but our culture goes way beyond way beyond we we we preach the gospel of hoochie mama in our culture that's just how it is we we emphasize obnoxious uh over emphasis on women's beauty and i think that this is even shown in our women's ministries when they gather together and and this is not every woman's ministry but it does happen right i've i've seen enough of this kind of thing to know that it's a thing that they'll gather together and their big emphasis to teach all these christian women is how beautiful they are and all the women that get on stage they are all just totally decked up like they're every like who knows how much time spit was spinning to make up an outfit before they got on that stage and then they tell all the women you're beautiful you're beautiful you're beautiful you're externally beautiful you're externally beautiful as this is kind of the preaching and we do this to young women even to teens i think that this is actually not a christian value the the christian response is to say the external beauty just doesn't matter that much like it's just not that valuable we're we're overvaluing external beauty it's not that important that's actually the message i think that women need to hear it's just isn't that important your real value is godliness modesty humility holiness in your life your devotion to christ and your character as a person there's the beauty you should focus on and you know the world focuses on outward beauty and uh it's just getting worse the other verse that you mentioned as well uh jake was first peter three and then i'm going to go to your guys questions from the live chat first peter 3 3 and let's see let's take us there and verse 4 where it says do not let your adorning be external but the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which in god's side is very precious for this is how the holy women who hoped in god used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands as sarah obeyed abraham calling him lord and a side note when she called him lord it didn't mean to them what it means to us today we use the term lord like in a whole different sense it was a term of respect it meant that she was yielding to his leadership as husband i don't think women today are supposed to use the term lord because it means something different than what it meant when sarah would have said it if it meant the same thing then you should continue using it but words change meanings but the meaning should be kept now first peter it's the same same thing it's almost almost you know you'd think it was a different translation of the same statement as we got in in first timothy so yeah i think that that's the uh hopefully the right answer no you don't have to swear off all jewelry um yes our culture is absolutely totally inside out and upside down on this issue and you do have to stop valuing external things so much and stop trying to compete trying to compete with other women and with the for the attention and the looks of the culture this feeds the lust of man and it feeds the vanity of women and this is all the kind of stuff that jesus calls us out of and yeah that would mean that a lot of christian women should change the way they view themselves and the way they make themselves viewable to others i i i think this is a an underapplied scripture for sure uh flora has a question hi mike i'm really enjoying the mark series could i ask why in matthew 21 verses one through eight there's a donkey and a cult two animals is it something to do with jesus and gentiles appreciate your thoughts um so first off let me share this i didn't mention this um for those who are this is your first time here my name is michael you're i'm a pastor in southern california i produce these videos teaching videos that come out once a week or sometimes twice and also q a videos and this is a friday q a every friday at 1 pm pacific time whenever it's one in california that's when i go live and i take your guys questions um so flora this is actually a famous famous uh issue in matthew 21 and i and it gets really complicated in the greek and all this other stuff and i just can't off the top of my head remember all of the answers but basically the thought is uh matthew is referencing two animals that jesus brings with him into jerusalem and whereas mark and luke and uh does john talk about this in detail it was mark and luke only reference one so the the question you have is is it something to do with jews and gentiles and i i think um if anything if let's say what could be the symbolic meaning of the two animals in matthew b if anything my gut is it's not about jews and gentiles like the jews are the donkeys the gentiles are the donkeys i don't think that's it if anything i i think it's the youngness of the donkey itself there's there's a there's a it's a young donkey that jesus rides and so this is the donkey no one has ridden it's a young donkey and this might have connotations about the sacrificial nature of jesus because he's the one writing another donkey because he is this the one who's come to serve so i think the donkey's more about jesus than it is about anybody else and that this animal is although you don't sacrifice uh donkeys but it but it almost feels like that has these sacrificial elements in the animal because it's never been ridden and it's it's uh it's young as well so that would be my my guess i wouldn't personally go with a jew gentile distinction there uh christian liang says can a christian who struggles with an addiction be considered born again can you be saved and have eternal life and not enter the kingdom of god and john 3 3 thanks mike see you for the sunday study um great looking forward to it and um it's going to be a 105 degrees in bell flower so yes i'm doing my sunday night study outdoors because we can't do it indoors you guys if you famous to come you can come it's at uh 16523 bellflower boulevard in belflower california and we're meeting at 5 pm our time in la there so here's the thing it's going to be like 100 degrees but i'm still going to be there me and like three people that decide to show up um now can a christian struggle with addiction be considered born again um i'm going to give you a quick answer yes um yes why not um can a christian who struggles with sin be born again i think is a question we should we should put it that way and the answer is yes christians struggle with sin there is such a thing as a christian who is who's behaving carnally as paul writes in corinthians he talks about them being carnal i don't think he's implying they're not saved i think he's implying that they're that they have carnal mentalities and that there's issues going on in the church he does require them to kick out one guy who's sleeping with his father's wife probably a stepmother that he's been taking up with and he's like yeah kick actually kick him out of the church but i mean this is this is to say that sin absolutely is going to be an expected struggle in the life of a believer i think that that's very true and i think that every christian i've ever known personally would agree there are those who would say no we don't sin i don't send but once you start asking them questions you realize they're playing all kinds of word games when they say things like this um okay so the next thing you said is can you be saved have eternal life and not enter the kingdom of god i don't no i don't think so if you're saved and you have eternal life you're going to enter the kingdom of god that's they're all part of the same package so i don't understand how that could how you could separate those two and then john 3 3 is the verse that you mentioned so maybe i spoke too soon let's go to the scripture that you mentioned and maybe i'll understand that question a little bit better here we go truly truly i say to you unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of god um and so he he's talking to nicodemus about a a rebirth he's becoming a new person this is this is him the the beautiful thing here is jesus is talking to a a respected leader of the jewish people he's checked all the boxes of the law okay he has checked them all and jesus tells him you have to be born again you need to be reborn and of course he's talking about when you put your faith and trust in christ and you become reborn this is this is the thing now can you be reborn and not be not go to heaven uh no if if you're born again you're gonna you're gonna be saved so yeah that the um the bigger issue of can a person lose their salvation and if so under what conditions i've every week i get that question i answered it in more detail last week you'll have to check that video as well um let's see here we have a question from ariane nisha ariane nisha nisha how do i pray for a believer who isn't truly walking in christ with growth and transformation in their life due to habitual sin and lack of intimacy in their relationship with god i think that what i would pray for for that person and my counsel if that's you is not you arianna i think it's not human if anybody's listening and you're like that's me i am the christian who is not really walking in christ like you don't see it in my life but i think i'm a christian maybe i am maybe i'm not i feel like i am i'm i'm confused though because my life is so compromised so backwards that i wonder and the transformation in my life isn't happening i've got habitual ongoing sin and i lack intimacy in my relationship with god if that's you here's my counsel and this is this is going to be my pastoral advice to you having counseled many people over the years my counsel to you is that you need and i could butter you up with all sorts of things but i i think honestly you need to radically repent and this would be my prayer for them is that they would radically repent that they would come to a place you know we talk about those who do have addictions as having to hit a rock bottom moment and rock bottom when we say that phrase what we mean is that they've come to a place where they say okay that's it i'm i'm through i'm through and addiction workers people who work with those who have addictions and and and that kind of thing they'll say hey you know it's not usually until you reach that rock bottom moment that we often see transformation and so they'll actually get in the habit and you could ask guys who work in these kind of fields where they size people up in 10 seconds they're like he's not ready to quit she's ready to quit because they just see that they've kind of hit that rock bottom now here's the iron the ironic deception about rock bottom we think rock bottom is like so it exists somewhere when this happens to me i will simply stop doing what i'm doing and then i will get better but rock bottom doesn't exist rock bottom is actually just another way of saying actual repentance and so it happens when you do it when you repent when you when you say okay i'm i'm just i'm done i'm done no more games lord i'm serious about this then it becomes rock bottom so my prayer for them is that they would actually radically repent because what they'll probably want to do is find patchwork little solutions where they make minor adjustments to their life to make it slightly better well hey mike i started reading the bible a little bit more that's good hey i started going to church once a month and so i think that's good right and i want to encourage those things those are positive but what i think makes the huge change in a person's life is when they actually repent of their um ungodly behaviors of their habitual sin that they're that they're living in of the lack of their intimacy and the relationship with god often what a person like that wants is isn't even a closer relationship with god they just don't want consequences for their sin and that in itself is the thing that has to be repented of where you say well you know what's more important to you just being able to do what you want without suffering or knowing god knowing god truly inclu and fully knowing god and if the answer in all honesty is well i just i mean i don't know if i want all that i just i just want to have both right i want to i want to be a christian i want to be saved i want to have salvation but i also want to live in my sin and not suffer for it and sometimes i feel guilty and then i feel like i want to repent but the next day i feel better and i'm back at it and i think this is radical repentance is the thing so pray for that pray that god would grant them repentance pray that radical repentance would enter their life and that the light bulb would go on and they would see that they've been playing games and if they see it for what it is maybe that'll be a moment of change um will kozab says when you ask for when you ask god for wisdom how do you expect a reply um how do you hear from god does he send thoughts all right will this is an interesting question and i'm going to do my best to answer it so when you ask god for wisdom so first off the scripture does indicate that like god gives us wisdom but there are different ways in which god gives us wisdom okay so one of the ways god gives us wisdom is in and probably the primary way is in the scriptures so the book of proverbs is literally a book that's meant to train you in wisdom like you study this book throughout your life and you're learning wisdom so that when you encounter situations god gave you wisdom and was his word that instructed you and that prepared you that you were thinking and meditating on and then you encounter a life and you go hmm i think i'll do this um so that's one way god gives us wisdom now that's not maybe the most exciting way to people because it's odd it's odd that we read something in the word we learn something we apply it and then sometimes christians feel like but god hasn't spoke to me and i'm like wait a minute you read his word you learned it you lived it he spoke to you but we maybe because in some churches we elevate the personal revelation thing so high that we don't realize that god's word is a revelation to us so that's the primary thing first go to scripture right the book of proverbs also the wisdom in the book of acts the wisdom in the gospels the teachings of jesus this is great wisdom we want to have that and the next thing that you can do is look at another way god might speak to you which is be internally just an internal revelation of wisdom so i think that the gifts of the spirit are are available today they're active today to some extent i i do think they tend to seem like they happen less than they did at the height of you know moments in the book of acts or when the gospel is going out to new locations it's and i'm just speaking anecdotally it seems like it happens more in new gospel environments you know where the gospel hasn't been preached but it doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all and so we have a word of wisdom a word of wisdom that scripture says god can give us and i think that that simply in my personal opinion is i simply am aware of of a wise thing and it seems as though god has revealed this it didn't come from me now i'm not going to run out there and be like thus says the lord because do i have that discernment to know like i'm totally positive this is something god has revealed to me or am i like i think this is wisdom i think i've got a word of wisdom here on this situation a information or an idea or concept that that we should go with so i've had countless times in my own personal life where it's happened this way i go to pray on an issue and i start praying for wisdom lord give me wisdom i don't know what to do and i mean in the middle of the prayer i just have wisdom i've i can't tell you like hundreds thousands of times that this has happened does it happen every time no no not remotely um but uh but it has happened countless times so i've had that occurrence as well but i still prioritize scripture and the what god has already revealed in addition to that he gives us wisdom through other people when you get counsel from other christians and um aj i'll need you to send some more questions that's number five i'm answering now and so uh hopefully hopefully you're on that the um uh the balance that i think i try to have being someone who believes in the gifts of the spirit that are ongoing today and yet who is very worried about hyper charismatic and reckless abuses especially if things like word of wisdom like oh god's showing me this i mean like i've been in those environments where someone says like god showed me and then i go i think you just i think you just want that to be true like you know and and i keep a track record i mean it's like i don't know maybe people don't want to tell me what they think god showed them because i'm like i'm going to remember that a year from now i'm going to still remember that you said that and we'll see if it happens and if it does i'll be like wow i have more respect for you and if it doesn't then i'll be like i don't listen to what you say anymore i love you but i don't respect what you say is from the lord so yeah there's some thoughts for you now let's see i have a question from dvgl805 who says my home church is holding an indoor wedding tomorrow despite the local government's current mandate to not hold indoor wedding ceremonies is this in accordance with god's word romans 13 first peter 2 13. this is a huge question basically like yeah are we justified in as christians in rebelling like this you know rebelling against our governor governor or government's orders to not meet indoors and i am like i'm like this so let me just talk to you about why i am still un con like i'm not confident and and then i'll tell you what what i'm doing because i'm not confident and i think probably a lot of you are in the same situation when it comes to information about covet 19 it is so polarized politically that everybody is just they don't care as much about truth as much as they care about what they're going to do with these truths and how they can leverage kovid and the things that are going on and trump this and biden that and pelosi this and all the different things that are going on right now politically i just feel like in in in our political culture what the politicians and and those who are promoting them have gotten so good at is is learning how to leverage everything that happens for votes and for some support for their candidates so they can get them in office and i view this as manipulation i just i think that we're being we get massive i'm not conspiratorial here i just think that we're being massively manipulated and the more they do it the more the other side does it so it's like trench warfare it's like they dig their trenches down and on the republican side and on the democrat side there's just more and more of this whatever happens all that matters is how we can leverage it to get more votes on our side especially during an election year and it's just chaos i i just look and i see um moral corruption all over the place and so then it leaves you in the situation where you're like well who am i supposed to trust who am i supposed to trust i'm not an expert on politics who am i supposed to look to and get wisdom from who is it's not that they're going to be unbiased okay no one's really unbiased but at least they're going to be honest like truly honest have integrity in the way they handle the information and for that i think we're all looking for somebody and we're all kind of scratching our head going like can i trust that person and then people send emails and you're looking you're like you just get sick of it that being said because of all this i don't really know the right answer to the question of is this um somehow wisdom or is it like say like john mcarthur suggests this is this is just oppression of the government oppression of religion now if john mcarthur is right that that covet is not really as dangerous as he thinks i'm not convinced one way or the other i i i'm not convinced and i'll tell you a second how i'm going to handle that because i don't know but if i was convinced like him then i would think it's the right thing to do right the the church is being restricted in the things god has called us to do so just meet anyways gather anyways suffer the consequences this is a peaceful peaceful protest every time we gather and and i would i would fully support it but because i'm not convinced and rebelling against the government's like a really big deal and my default position is to be obedience then i'm going to fall onto the onto the path of obedience until the time comes that i am personally convinced that yes this is just government oppression of religious freedoms it's not really about protecting people and keeping people safe but there are two things that keep me from doing that so far one is i'm not convinced that that that things are as safe as guys like even john mcarthur says like i'm just i'm being honest with you guys this is what i do fridays it's more off the cuff but it's also less filtered i'm not convinced that his recounting of covid19 and all that is accurate that the statistics that he's using them properly i'm not convinced that he is and people's lives are at stake here so i'm going to fall on the side of of the default position of submission and obedience which is why i'm meeting outdoors and 105 degree weather this sunday night and and i know everyone's polarized and some have their opinions but you know what i'm accountable to god and i'm gonna i'm gonna do what i think is best and i'm going to stand before god for that and so are you so that being said um i i'm not favorable toward the church doing that but yet because it's such a con confusing issue to me i would just say they're doing that lord you're their judge not me i'm gonna leave them to you and i'm not gonna create division on this topic which is i think also really important that we don't create a bunch of division on this topic of meeting indoors and outdoors and all that the church should be a model of of uh graciousness in disagreement on secondary issues and this is a secondary issue all right susan morales has a question hi susan shouldn't christians practicing polygamy have the same moral obligation to obey god's commands on marriage as divorced christians who should pursue restoration isn't polygamy a sin no matter what okay i'm going to read that one again but let me just catch you guys up i did a teaching on the topic of polygamy on if a polygamist gets saved should they get a divorce should they divorce their wives one of their wives like how do we handle that and i spent a lot of time on it i like a lot of time on it recorded it waited two months spent more time on it recorded another a new ending and i put the video up and that was just a couple days ago so this question kind of follows on the heels of that video you're welcome to check it out um it's on my channel there just type mike winger polygamy because i know you're all searching out there okay so shouldn't christians practicing polygamy so let's say that let's say you did it before you got saved and then you you got saved and you have multiple wives should they have the same moral obligation to obey god's commands on marriage as divorced christians who should pursue restoration um that i'm not sure if i understand your question susan it sounds like you're saying you're implying that um that if a polygamist has is separated they should pursue restoration but then your next statement is isn't polygamy a sin no matter what and i think that in that case i would say polygamy is like the scrambled egg of a marriage i i in my opinion it's a real marriage it's just a marriage that is mixed in with sin because there's more than one marriage going on in this man's life and in these women's lives and then that is marriage is still a thing marriage is still real to become one but you know what there's a constant compromise of sin going on inside that relationship and so you have a mixed bag you have a truly complicated moral situation where there is a desire to keep a marriage together and to preserve it and to continue that commitment infidelity and there's an impossibility to do that perfectly or rightly because there's multiple marriages going on you're gonna you're gonna be uh compromising somebody in some major huge relationship so there's no there's no simple solution so is polygamy a sin i think it's a sin yeah i do but does that mean we should just like ditch them and i answered that in that previous video so i'm gonna read your question one last time to make sure i didn't miss it shouldn't christians practicing polygamy have the same moral obligation to obey god's commands on marriage as divorced christians who should pursue restoration um still not for sure if i understood your question their season but i hope that i hope it helped maybe someone could help help us in the comments there sarah nordberg says hey mike can you explain to me what is meant with sin not leading to death and sin leading to death first john 5 16 and 17. let's go look at that passage together and here it says if anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death he shall ask and god will give him life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death there is sin that leads to death i do not say that one should pray for that all wrongdoing is sin but there is sin that does not lead to death so here's a question what on earth is sin that leads to death and why is it we're not supposed to pray about that now i think in roman catholicism you're going to find many people who point to this passage to show you a different difference between venial and mortal sins because in roman catholicism you have venial sins which are sins that you you're in trouble if you die you're going to have to deal with this in purgatory you're going to provide satisfaction through your suffering in purgatory and catholics listening yes that is your theology like read your actual counsels don't just go off of what some catholic apologist told you like you have to provide satisfaction through your suffering for the sin that you committed because jesus isn't isn't enough apparently um i think purgatory is one of is an atrocious teaching when you understand it actually what it really means the side note catholicism often nowadays currently will repackage purgatory as if it's something much more stripped down than what it really is in the catholic theology and they'll try to sell that to people we've seen that recently on youtube by the way but that's not even really the catholic doctrine of purgatory this is just a i think a a bridge building technique that compromises their actual theology anyhow um but is it that or you know versus versus a mortal sin on catholicism which leads to death which means that you commit this sin and now you've lost your salvation and you're you're toast you're gone well i obviously you you could interpret it that way but here's the problem um this there's very little to go on in fact you've got what two verses in first john that talk about this and there's almost nothing else in scripture that really highlights this issue so why are we bringing in all of this baggage of purgatory mortal and venial sin and we're reading it into the text but we're not just reading the text like if you didn't know about those things you probably wouldn't come up with them by reading the text itself here's another option is that a person who sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death that this might actually be talking about death that it might actually be talking about physical death so then it has a different connotation altogether there's sin that leads to death there's some sense people commit where they actually are they actually die as a result of these sins they they're um they're they're fornicating and they and they they get they get uh disease they they're they're committing adultery with somebody and the husband comes and kills the guy for it like these are sins that led to death they're rebelling against the government in ungodly ways and it results in their own them being shot or killed or something like that and in in that sense it may be that it's simply saying like look there there's no no longer an opportunity for them to repent so don't be praying about that i'm not trying to get you in which case it would backfire against catholicism because it's actually praying it's actually saying stop praying at the point at which people die in their sin it's too late there's nothing you can do for them anymore right but if they're still alive we're going to be praying for them we're going to be seeking their restoration for as long as we can as long as they still live we're praying for their restoration that's another perspective that you have on that verse um so yeah i anyway there's a couple thoughts for you i i actually would like to do a more thorough thoughtful study of first john 5 16. there's some other things that a couple years ago when i studied it that i had in my mind that i can't remember right now there's some things for you to think about jeff shoemaker says can you elaborate on hebrews 6 4 is it referring to backsliding or salvation and i'm going to do a study on hebrews 6 4 sometime so i'll announce this i'm considering after i finish the gospel of mark to doing a verse by verse study through the gospel of hebrew the gospel of hebrew not the gospel of hebrews which is actually an apocryphal or heretical or let's just say not a biblical book from uh you know i don't know second third century something like that anyway um no i'm thinking about going through the book of hebrews verse by verse after i do the gospel of mark and if i do that i will do a real study a little study project on the topic of losing salvation and i'll bring a careful teaching on that because everyone keeps asking me about it every day and which which i don't it's not that i find it annoying it's rather that i find it bothersome that i don't have better answers for those questions and it would be nice if i could bring them uh naomi yurkov says hi again i was wondering if you had any thoughts on what righteous anger is biblically if it if it is biblical regarding humans use of it and when it could be applicable for us thank you righteous anger um i mean righteous anger the very concept itself is pretty simple right it's right in the words righteous or good and and anger so it's when i'm angry angry and i ought to be and i think that we might want to expand that definition a bit to apply into our lives i would say righteous anger is is you know in a good way for christians is seen you see it in the life when it's properly caused and it's properly applied and that's where we get in trouble so righteous anger could be i'm angry over the evils of abortion i'm angry over the evils of racism i'm angry over the evils of you pick a topic but then do i apply it righteously or do i express that anger at the wrong people or in the wrong ways do i overreact instead of under react i think anger causes us to overreact you know like i don't close the door i slam it i don't say it i yell it i i don't just say um i have a problem here i exaggerate the problem so is it rightly caused and is it rightly applied that's righteous anger in a nutshell there you go and how do you how do you do it well um let's say that you are angry at the political spectrum of the things that are going on and so you go on social media and all you do is rant and complain and further isolate yourself from all those people whom instead you should be trying to reach if you're one who has wisdom and understands these issues well so instead of writing things that would help build bridges and help people understand them your anger causes you to lash out at everybody who doesn't see it the way you do which a lot of people don't because it's a confusing issue and so that was anger wrongly applied maybe rightly caused and wrongly applied so those are our those are our things uh if ephesians says it this way it says in your anger do not sin in your anger do not sin and that's the key your anger might even be rightly caused but don't fall into sin as a result and i have to i apologize to you guys there's no cat cam today i mean i have the cabinet on the cat she hasn't been sitting in the chair recently and part of the reason is because we got her her hair cut dramatically she basically looks like a little lion now moxie's covered in absolute fur and i know you guys like to see her when i have a chance to put her on i'll bring her back on once i can but i moxie come here kitty i just she's not so far she hasn't been coming and um she's part of it because her hair was so poofy when we cut it back she feels weird and doesn't want to lay in certain places and we'll get there maybe i'll bribe her with catnip next week um chris middleton has a question he says what are your views on communion and eucharist how much should the early church writings affect our view on communion and this is kind of like a hot issue right now i think in the evangelical um i want to say the image local world but it's not just that it's there's a certain cluster of people that spend a lot of time watching a variety of teachers on youtube and online and i think in that world it's more of an issue at the moment and um uh i think that i have one simple principle that affects my view on these things pretty dramatically and i think it would affect yours too and it's the idea that the bible is our authority and that everything else secondary to that is secondary and so it's not gonna it shouldn't jar me that much if i read in some early church writings something about the eucharist or something about communion it shouldn't jar me that much because i just see these people as not the apostles they're not the apostles and what i do see happening in church history is is fast well relatively fast i mean it may have taken a hundred years but from 2000 years later that looks fast okay but a hundred years i mean look at okay i'm part of calvary chapel calvary chapel started in the 1970s under pastor chuck smith and it has changed radically over the last 50 years it's changed a ton and if somebody wanted to look at um at let's say let's wait another 50 years a hundred years after it starts and look at the way calvary looks in a you know 100 years later compared to the way it looked when it first started i guarantee you there's going to be massive differences in changes that doesn't mean they're bad changes doesn't mean they're good changes it just means there's changes now if you have the word of god being delivered by the apostles then you're going to need to say we want the original and the original is in the scripture and the scripture teaches yes regular communion regular you know partaking of communion meals together it also doesn't teach the idea of the physical body of jesus the bread and wine turning into his physical body and blood john 6 isn't about that at all that verse is taken radically out of context i think the biggest issue i see in in the the exegesis of those who try to use john 6 is is basically they take an idea of communion and teaching on communion that has certain terms and words and then they read john 6 with all that in their mind and they don't realize john 6 didn't have any of that in in in the context of jesus and in the context of his teaching to the jews none of that was there there isn't even a last supper communion there isn't even a communion meal in the gospel of john so how is john trying to make this giant teaching about communion it's just not about that jesus himself says that his the flesh prophets nothing in john 6 in the very passage and so at any rate the the the thing that jesus is saying you have to do is you have to believe in him and that's how you partake of him that's by faith that's how you eat his flesh and blood you trust in christ so yeah because i don't because i realize soberly how quickly things change how they change over time and how we tend to formalize things that weren't previously formalized this is what happens and we then take we tend to take those things that have been formalized and we tend to elevate their importance that's just a natural human tendency so at first you know like calvary chapel here we are we're worshiping with guitars because we're just using the people that are getting saved you know before i was born but a bunch of hippies get saved and they're and they play acoustic guitar and they they use their music to to worship jesus and they're worried about coming against being being uh come against being challenged by those who say hymns not choruses hymns not choruses and so they're like come on guys we can worship god with all of these things and so kyrie costa mesa actually did hymns and choruses fast forward 30 years the year is 2 000 and now we're getting some new worship bands that are coming out with new stuff it's not that old like 70s you know calvary music style stuff now it's like you know a little bit more harder rock sounding worship and they're different bands and they're these young people and we don't really know if we trust them and so now it's no longer hymns versus choruses it's classic calvary music versus this new stuff man i just want the classic stuff like this were so much better before and it's the same thing that plays out again what we did was we just happened to have guitar music and these people play this kind of music because that's just what they were making we then turned it into an icon that was not to be challenged and then this just happens over and over again in the church i think what happened with communion historically is it went from happening every time people would meet then historically they moved it over to a different day and a different event and you had to have special access permission by the leadership to have communion and then it turned into questions about um you know the process like who who gives it to who who hands it to who and eventually you have in the in the during the reformation time the catholic church they actually only give the bread and they don't even give the wine because they think that if you drip one drop of this wine you have profane the name of christ you've dripped the blood of jesus on the ground so for fear that the laity the normal people would drip or spill the blood of christ will only give them the bread so then they have a theological answer well then that means that jesus's body and blood are both in the bread and they're both in the wine you get body and blood just by the bread but yet in the john 6 passage jesus said you had to do both eat and drink both so if you're going to misinterpret it to mean that literal physical body and blood of christ then you also have to have both but this is the doctrinal development within the catholic church so then they you know council of trent says hey just so you know like it's okay it's okay to deny the the bread now now they don't do that as much but uh you just see it developing over time so my answer is this i kind of went on for a while on that but my answer is this um you said what are my views on the community in eucharist i believe that it is not just an empty symbol i do believe that there's a powerful important and very real thing that we do that that god desires us to do that has incredible value having communion on a regular basis i do not think the early church writings should radically affect our view on communion just like i don't think that um what someone says in 50 years in the name of calvary chapel reflects chuck smith okay i have what chuck smith wrote like i can and by the way i'm not like i'm not like a follower of chuck smith i'm just trying to use this as an illustration i think we have the apostles and when we see development of doctrine over time and we see stuff 100 300 500 1 000 1500 years later we don't have the teaching of the apostles we have the teaching of others who are sometimes doing it in the name of the apostles and sometimes erroneously um andrej says is there any good reason to think that the rapture of the church will most probably happen during the feast of trumpets um i think that there's a subtle reason to think that that that could be the timing you know just because we we see with the life of jesus that that certain feasts were like really fulfilled like he actually seems to have fulfilled these feasts during his time on the earth but other feasts are not fulfilled and so we look at those and we say boy those unfulfilled feasts do seem to connect to the future prophecies about events that are going to happen you know at one time so that would be like oh well a feast of trumpets that sounds but jesus also says he also says that no one knows the day or the hour and so that makes me question whether or not we should attach that event to that time because no one knows yet if we're meant to think that it's at the feast of trump it's well we at least know something don't we so i guess there's my thoughts faith brooks says what's the difference between a feeling and a conviction oh i guess sometimes we use the term synonymously i just feel that we also use the term so so here's words where we use them in different ways right feeling i use to refer to my emotions um conviction i usually refer to you to i used to refer to like a firm uh belief a and a stance on some issue okay but here's where they merge a bit right when i say conviction and i'm talking about how i emotionally feel about the issue well now i'm using i can use either word because that's a conviction and it's a feeling at the same time but but yeah to separate them i would say conviction is affirm a firm stance on an issue an opinion that you have about this topic that's my conviction and it might just be applying it to me it might be applying it to others and then a feeling is ultimately emotional but it does because these convictions arouse feelings so i may well have strong feelings that go with all my convictions um let's see here joel larson says how much authority does a father have over his adult children does it differ between sons and daughters and the answer is um even in the old testament there's a limit so a young woman young woman the father could overrule if she made a bad vow and i think this is a healthy protection for for the for the girls i've seen i could give a dramatic example well i'll pass on that don't always share everything you know but but but basically a a young girl let's say that a girl agrees she's 14 and she agrees to do a job a modeling job for somebody and then the the father's like hey this is not the kind of thing you should be involved in this is sketchy and this is like inappropriate and i think that they're trying to get you you know to do inappropriate things and so he can overrule that that would be like the old testament principle where he could overrule it but my reason why i bring this up is because it applied to young women if i remember correctly which would imply that at an older age that that isn't there um so how much do you know adult children i think adult parents naturally move from total authoritarian to counselors and examples over time and it happens gradually so teen years is where this transition is taking place big time and that's a hard time right because they've been totally authoritarian to slowly moving into the position of being a counselor and i think that we naturally see as a person gets older they make more of their own decisions and they're responsible for them and it's perfectly good to see a gradual thing but an example here's an example i will share a man who is a grown man well he's in his mid-20s right he's working a full-time job and his parents went to him and told him we want you to co-sign this house for us now his parents have terrible credit and they've had bad money management through their lives and they say we want you to co-sign and he asks me he's like but you know the bible says i'm supposed to honor my father and mother they're asking me to co-sign and i said well you can honor them while saying no because in all reality this is your decision not theirs so when you're children it's not your decision it's your parents when you're adults it's your decision not theirs you honor them by giving them respect by listening to them by considering what they want and considering it highly because they're your parents but it's still your choice and marriage gives an example of this because the the father the husband is said to leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and so all the much more you can't be under your parents authority when you're married because it doesn't work anymore so authorities beautiful as a child it's authoritarian parents as an adult is actually ugly and i think it hinders you unless you have some incapacity to make decisions it's probably not a good idea all right david hinnebog says can you comment on michael heiser and his divine counsel theory so michael heiser who i am somewhat familiar with michael heiser let me first say this you asked you asked two things comment on michael heiser and his divine counsel theory let me start with michael heiser i actually really really appreciate dr michael heiser and his content um he is so good at uh breaking things down without dumbing them down and that's a skill that's a great skill to have he breaks things down without dumbing them down he gives people access to scholarship and really really thoughtful content he has a podcast he's got youtube channel all that kind of stuff and i'm i i will i will occasionally listen to his content and i'll just be like wow that was great man and someone who does a lot of research just finding the right paper is like sometimes takes crazy numbers of hours just to find the right paper where somebody thoughtfully address the issue you're looking for and helps you get footnotes that get you the content you need like just just that can take crazy amounts of time so having access to scholars who are familiar with the literature and who break it down in a simple way is absolutely fantastic he's also a believer he's a christian he loves the lord and all this stuff that's michael heiser divine counsel theory is a theory he has about um well it's a worldview theory and i don't agree with it personally um i don't agree with it but i don't have like teaching on the topic because i haven't done my due diligence to get to that point but he's he's basically saying that um god in his authority authority structure in the universe he has these other beings which i'll hear i'll i'll use the terms that'll freak you out a bit and then i'll explain them because everybody misunderstands michael heiser and he gets a lot of bad attention because they don't understand what he's saying but there's these other beings and these are elohim which are not they're not they're not god in the in the way you're thinking but they're elohim they're divine beings and they are actually sort of sublet out to rule and and control various nations and various things in the world and there's only one god there's only one god he's eternal yahweh is eternal he's unique but but that the word elohim can be used to refer to things other than god and that's actually very true the word elohim can be used to refer to this i mean samuel when he's brought up uh when saul wants to talk to samuel he's brought up in that interesting passage the witch of endor which sounds like a star wars movie um that passage he's called an elohim right because he's a disembodied spirit so he just calls him an elohim because the word has flexible meaning so sometimes it refers to god we use it in english we think of it as a lowercase g at any rate i um there's a lot more that can be said about that but the key passages deuteronomy 32 and psalm 82 i think it is those passages i don't interpret the way michael heiser does and i i think that he's got it wrong think he's got it wrong and for that reason i don't go down that road and i think that the um the whole idea of this divine council theory just it's it's weird theology to be honest i mean i think that he would acknowledge that too at least weird to most people so yeah the divine counsel theory i'm not inclined to think so i think i prefer other interpretations of those key passages and one day maybe i'll do a thoughtful response but michael heiser's work is so thorough on these topics that you really need to engage him in detail if you want to talk about these issues and not not do a casual off-the-cuff response so yeah yeah now i have the ability and maybe maybe you don't but maybe you should develop it the ability to listen to people i don't agree with on everything and to still learn from them and this did take time to develop but if you have that ability um and you know where your grounding is in theology and you know your trust and faith in christ and your beliefs about scripture then you can really learn a lot more because you're able to listen to different people and it's good for us to have multiple teachers folky has a question says what to say to people who claim that the old testament's not true because apparently in quotes there was never a biblical flood or exodus and the hebrews copied all cultures around them etc my teacher says this your teacher is i'm being honest here it sounds very misinformed and part of it is because of what became labeled in scholarship it became labeled as um parallelomania let me tell you what parallel mania is so in old testament scholarship in like i don't know the 1800s i think they were digging up these old like babylonian flood accounts or the the these various like egyptian records and stuff and some of these have overlap with some of the things we read about in the bible and so parallel mania came up when they started trying to parallel everything and they started to try to explain the bible as though the bible borrowed from all of these other accounts and this is simply not true um when you go into it in detail it it plays really well it's very easy to make a short little video where you're like well blah the babylonian gilgamesh blah blah blah um you know homer's ilya then you could you could say those things but when you look at them in great detail so if you pick one of these stories like say the inum elish and you read it in great like actually read it i've done this and you go oh my goodness this is not a copy of the biblical account at all nor is the biblical account copy this this is a conflicting account because they're trying to explain creation so of course they have creation stories and there are similarities because they're using talking about similar things but the bible's massively different than all those other accounts in some very important ways for one there's only one god for another he's he's a god from all eternity who creates all things he's not a part of the creation for another the things that are created are not beings the sun is not a god and is not the result of gutting you know some giant dragon and then the blood spills out and that creates the ocean or something like none of that no no god just speaks through his word and creates he creates an orderly universe chaos is not a theme in genesis these are just i'm just throwing bullet points out for you so these you shouldn't act like these are paralleled like that uh they're really not they they do have some similarities but they're explainable through um uh common common themes their creation accounts their accounts of creation okay so it's not like no one's ever thought to say how did it all get here the flood the flood issue and i'll talk about the flood and exodus now but the flood issue is different the flood issue if there was a worldwide flood i wouldn't be surprised or or even a human worldwide flood like it it it in other words so worldwide could be planet-wide but it could also refer to simply uh wherever humans were okay so if if either of those events happened there's this massive flood on humanity then you would not be surprised to find that different cultures preserve various accounts of that flood and that's what we see we see various accounts and cultures that seem disconnected from scripture that seemed disconnected you know they're not being influenced by the babylonians or anybody else they just have their own flood account why because there's some sort of human memory of an event like a flood and the the biblical event i would say would be biblical account i'd say is the accurate and true one okay but but just to say there's similarities if anything it just speaks of a human memory of a flood i think that's pretty significant now exodus exodus for a long time has been like a weak spot in the armor of of defending scripture not the book of exodus but the the exodus the leaving of israel the fact that they were in bondage and then they left and for a long time there's been a a general assumption by people that this this there's no evidence for it there's no evidence the israelites were ever in egypt there's no evidence that there was a great exodus type event there's no evidence for those things and that's actually not true and so um some of you guys know inspiring philosophy i know firsthand that he is working on a really good video like an hour long video on evidence that the exodus really happened and so that's something you can look for on his channel inspiring philosophy on youtube and i'm looking forward to that video i think you guys should check it out but also you can look up there's tons of content online um talking about whether it's the cities that are mentioned the the dating of the exodus the the wilderness travels of the israelites there's there's a lot more evidence that's there and i i've probably talked too long we're out of time but check those out and maybe i'll do an interview with somebody on this topic um in the future i think that it's worthwhile absolutely so uh i am out of time but i'm gonna take one more question because i can't help myself okay so let's see um floaty oh by the way last thing i'll mention to you folky um in my experience college professors who are not professors in the area they're speaking on they're often just repeating fairly thin things they've heard and if you can do some thoughtful research pick one issue and you can maybe talk to the professor about it you will often find that their knowledge is this deep um i remember professors saying stuff about the bible and i'm like wait a minute that's not right i had a music teacher who ripped on the reformation because he's like martin luther actually nailed his thesis to the door of a church like how messed up is that and then i was like yeah yeah that was like the normal way of doing public notices back then everybody nailed stuff to the church door it was totally accepted and he was just like oh you know and you know sometimes if you get a little bit more info you can uh you can get through there all right floatydoc says your teaching is a blessing thank you thank you um in genesis 6 and 1st samuel 15 god regretted his decisions how can god who knows all things make a decision that he later decides was wrong i actually have a whole video on this and you do need a whole video on it and it's called like why god repents and changes his mind i think that's the name of the video maybe one of my mods can find it and stick it in the live chat why god repents and changes his mind and i go through those passages and i go through a lot more information there this is one of those passages that open theists will use to suggest that god actually doesn't know what will happen in the future he only knows what could happen but he doesn't know what will happen and that is a a big problematic theology in my opinion i think people don't realize how problematic it is but but they use these verses of god repenting and so i'm going to reference here's my video handoff here at the end of the live stream please just go watch that video go check out the video about i think the title says wait god repents and then or the thumbnail says that in the title something like um the uh whatever i said it was a minute ago all right so you thank you guys um i will try and get my cat here on the next live stream and in the meantime i have an announcement to make a video coming out next well monday is going to be in you know teaching through the mark series um the next series in mark then wednesday i have a video coming out that was my interview with sean mcdowell on the topic of how to do you know be successful on youtube doing christian ministry stuff and so i'm going to put that video out um until it's an interview going into some detail there the week after that i got a video coming out i did with apologia on the mother god cult that has been up on their channel and it's on there right now i'll put it on mine as well and then we got more stuff coming after that so lots of content i'll be doing three videos the next few weeks three videos a week and i hope that it's a blessing to you in the meantime i hope that today has blessed you and not only giving you maybe answers but i hope somehow in in trying to give you these answers i'm hoping to communicate godly attitudes about questions and i hope some of the hope that we have in christ that you can rest in him that we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ because it is by grace is by grace that we access this this incredible peace that we stand in that we rest in that we in fact let me share with you i don't want to leave you without this verse okay romans 5. this is the verse that's in my head as i'm rambling here therefore since we've been justified by faith that is not works by faith you justify by just trusting in him you're made just righteous we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ you have peace because you didn't do anything to earn it because it's all by grace through him we have also obtained access by faith into what into this grace in which we stand so i am just standing in grace i am daily moment by moment living in the grace of god because of faith in christ and not because of any works i've done and that's why i can rejoice in the hope of the glory of god because i'm a partaker through his incredible grace so i hope that encourages you rest in christ today

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 36,396

Rating: 4.9045997 out of 5

Keywords: 20 questions with pastor mike episode 2, 20 questions with pastor mike, 20 questions, episode 2, pastor Q and A, Q and A, Question and Answer

Id: Pslye2Gzq6c

Length: 62min 22sec (3742 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020