20 Questions with Pastor Mike (Episode 25)

here we go welcome to the friday live stream this is a q a i'm pastor mike when you're trying to answer your questions to the best of my ability give you uh my best attempt at helping you learn to think biblically about everything because i am truly convinced that i mean i've seen it in my own life i've seen it in countless lives that when you really learn to think biblically about things it changes everything about your life it affects and impacts all areas of your existence in your relationships in your relationship with god and your sense of peace and comfort and confidence in christ and a bunch of other good things so we're taking live questions from you today from the chat the first one i've already got ready to go and this is coming from taste remains that's the youtube channel and uh the question here is what is the meaning of the parable of the dishonest manager in luke 16 verses 1-13 i was having a bible study with a friend over discord and we were wondering about this thanks so this is actually you know some of jesus's parables strike us as odd and i i think that that's a good thing uh my thought is that when it's or i've heard another another people put it this way is that when if it's weird it's important if if something strikes you though as being strange or odd then oftentimes it's because you should emphasize that in the scripture you should look at that more carefully you should examine it more thoroughly because often there's really interesting things there it's the same passages that are odd are what people will use to try to twist to their own destruction the scriptures but they're also these same passages that are like have really neat things for us so here we go luke let's read the parable luke 16 this is the parable at least in the esv they call the parable of the dishonest manager and i'll admit because i scan through this because i just got this question a few minutes ago um but i scanned through this passage and uh the esv is it feels a little awkward the way that they word it but here you go uh he also said to the disciples there was a rich man who had a manager and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions and he called him and said to him what is this that i hear about you turn in the account of your management for you can no longer be manager all right so he's a bad manager and the boss finds out he's gonna fire him verse three and the manager said to himself what shall i do since my master is taking the management away from me i'm not just i'm not strong enough to dig and i'm ashamed to beg so if he's not a manager he he can't be a good laborer because he doesn't have that skill set and he's ashamed to beg i have decided what to do so that when i'm removed from management people may receive me into their houses okay now this is the crooks of the parable he's like i'm gonna lose everything i have no plan for the future i'm going to take this moment i've got while i'm still manager and i'm going to do something that you might think is crazy but it's going to set me up for the future then verse 5. so summoning his master's debtors one by one he said to the first how much do you owe my master he said 100 measures of oil he said to him take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50. this is this is bad behavior okay this is what's the weird part about the parable jesus is using an example of a guy with bad behavior and then he's gonna encourage you to be like him in some way in some way that's the important part let me get there let's patiently read through it he said 100 measures of oil he said take your bill right down 50. so he cuts his debt in half because he's still the manager at least temporarily then he said to another and how much do you owe and he said 100 measures of wheat and he said take your bill and write 80. the master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness for this now it doesn't mean that the master liked the guy he was like wow that was pretty shrewd like i got it i got to give it to you that was pretty shrewd and jesus goes on for the sons of this world the sons of this world is an insult the sons of this world are wicked people are people that are still lost in their sin this is all of us apart from christ when we are when we were living our lives of rebellion we're sons of this world so jesus is not endorsing the man he's not saying what the man did was good he's using the man as an example of one thing right he's more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light the the lesson is the man knew that everything he had was going to perish like that his position was gone and his future was empty there was nothing in his future and so he decided to do something that would seem crazy and outrageous because he cared about his future not just his present experience and so he did this shrewd thing then jesus goes on and i tell you make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings that's the part that's like wait what does he mean so here's a couple possibilities one possibility is that when jesus says make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth he doesn't mean literally use money to make friends as a christian it may it may not be that it may be that he's talking about the parable he's saying parabolically make friends with yourselves with unrighteous wealth of yourselves so when you are um when you are living in this life you know it's all going to burn it's all going to perish you're living this life with it with a mind of all that matters is who's still around who's still my friend after we die and so i'm obsessed with pr uh presenting the gospel and i'm gonna use whatever i've got in this life the time i have the talents i have the treasure i have and i'm going to use that to present the gospel to get people to know jesus christ and so there's like a sense of urgency a sense of it's all this is gonna going to come to a stopping point and then there'll be nothing here my god crying over there quiet i don't know if you could hear her what is she crying for so alison just left right she just left the house because she she's working and um sometimes one of our cats usually it's moxie will cry because my wife leaves the house and she'll walk around the house and cry a little bit and i mean it's funny but it's not something i want on the live stream at any rate i don't know if you could hear it but um but that's the idea that that it's possible jesus is not saying for you to actually go and use money to make friends um that it's just parabolic about using everything in this life that's perishing to bring people to christ right to get them into that eternal home that's why he mentions that they may receive you into eternal dwellings so i want to get them the gospel of christ and i'll use whatever i've got whatever influence i've got whatever power i've got i've got an agenda and ambition to to present the gospel to the world that's good because they need jesus they need salvation they need this this eternal dwelling other people would suggest this actually is about almsgiving and jesus is telling them you should be giving money donating to the poor in particular and that this will in some way cause you to have people who will receive you into your eternal home um this that could be that's possible right that that there's something about the testimony of the church being generous and taking care of the poor this was a big deal for the early church that we take care of the poor among you i i have to be really straight with you guys um i think that our western churches uh we don't think about this enough taking care of not that none of us do okay i don't want to paint with too wide or brush like like there's a lot of people out there who are like well here's what's wrong with the church and really they're just heartless gripers and i'm not interested in falling into that trap but i do think that there's um there's for many of our fellowships there's not enough attention to taking care of the poor and when i say the poor i mean the christians who are poor in your community first and then an extension of that to other people in your community who who are who are hard up um to say there's not enough doesn't mean there's no attention on it but it does seem like the early church had more focus on it than we do remember when paul was met with the disciples and they were like telling him just remember the poor remember the poor and that should be something for us to be thinking about it increases our witness before the world a lot of the early church as we read church history a lot of the very early church there were a lot of poor people and paul even writes in corinthians like not many mighty not many rich not many wealthy there aren't that many of the high ups that are coming to christ because they're so satisfied with this world right they're getting along fine in this world at least in their minds so there's less um focus on future spiritual things and so it's interesting that there's this emphasis on the poor so that could be in that parable as well i tend to think that it's just a reference to living your life in this world with real ambition to share the gospel of jesus christ with people around you and thinking shrewdly about it if i do this if i do that like not just going and shouting on a corner but i mean that's fine too not knocking that but thinking truly about it as we read the rest of the verses that you asked me to read here uh taste remains one who's faithful and very little is also also faithful in much and one who's dishonest and a very little is also dishonest and much if then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth who will entrust to you true riches and if you've not been faithful in that which is another's who will give you that which is your own no servant can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other you cannot serve god and money here um this gives a different flavor of the parable at the end because keep in mind there's a master and the master has all this wealth and the manager realizes it's all going to be gone so he sacrifices his master's wealth for the sake of the future in this sense the master is money itself in your life your master is perhaps money and jesus is saying give that to the lord give that to the purposes of god give shrewdly and thoughtfully donate and support ministries and outreach and targeted evangelism and that kind of thing so that that master won't control you but the lord will control you and you and you will be a good steward and be rewarded so i i guess um all that being said it does seem like this parable is very much about finances i hope that answered your question walking through it with you susan l has a question is it bad to hope that jesus doesn't come back until after i have died not knowing when the rapture will come pre-poster trib causes me anxiety oh um that's an interesting thing susan so let me let me forgive me first off if i assume anything wrong about you susan anybody listening don't assume things about susan because i'm going to try and answer the best of my ability what you've said here it sounds to me like you have anxiety about your eschatological views when is jesus coming back you don't know the answer for sure and it worries you're worried he might it might be here it might be there it might be there pre-med post-trib um and so you're thinking this would be easier for me if jesus just wasn't coming back until after i died right because then i go to be with him and then i don't have to have anxious anxiety about these issues i would encourage you that there's a there's another thing that i would want you to be thinking which is this you aren't meant to know when jesus comes back you're not meant to know this is this is important and this is this is part of my teaching in eschatology is you're not meant to know the sign the one sign to look for is the abomination of desolation right and and i don't know if that's gonna happen in this in this generation or in a thousand years now you might be like mike a thousand years that's ridiculous things are so bad it couldn't be a thousand years but you know what people a thousand years ago thought that too have some humility have some perspective jesus doesn't have to come back in your lifetime or mine he might he might not he hasn't done it yet we all wait one life for jesus or less right this is how it's gonna be for all of us he's the one waiting two thousand years he's the one waiting for for all i know three thousand years right for thirty five hundred years ten thousand years i have no idea whatever it is i want to be ready to live a life of fully serving christ this is what i would encourage you to as well uh susan is to live a life fully serving and knowing and following jesus christ rest in his plan but know that most generations have all generations before us have had to live out their whole generation and if you're not ready to do that you're being unwise as a christian you should be ready for retirement and you should also be joyous if he returns right now that's that's the only way i can do it because i'm not meant to know the day in the hour no man knows the day or the hour well if it's i don't know if it's let's say you don't know if it's pre-poster or mid-trib or whatever for the rapture then that's not really relevant you don't have to know you don't have to worry about it you worry about serving jesus right now and i'm sorry for anything i shared that was not targeted to you personally and your things are going through hopefully that's helpful though uh our fish has a question it says how do we respond to someone who says that we can claim all the promises in the bible for ourselves because we are grafted into israel or because god is no respecter of persons um okay well let me take those in reverse so let's take the no respecter of person's idea so if someone says i can claim every promise in the bible because god's a respecter of persons this is this to me i'm gonna be real straight i think that's nonsense like i think that's legitimately garbage thinking so i'm sorry if i've offended anybody you kind of need to be a little bit shocked at your own lack of depth on this issue if you think god's not a respecter of persons so then i can claim because of that i can claim any promise he gives to anyone well then satan can claim all the promises of christ because god's no respecter of persons yeah that doesn't work then god can't actually promise anyone anything when he says abraham you know i'll come back to you this time this time next year and you'll have a kid you know what so joe joe schmoe down the street can claim that promise too because god's no respecter of persons like that's not what it means that god's no respecter of persons that's not what that means at all let's take the other one that's a little more theologically grounded which is the idea that you're grafted into israel and therefore you can claim the promises to israel um that that i i think there's several problems with that perspective for one let's look at the promises themselves that you want to claim because nobody wants to claim all the promises to israel nobody not even israel right there's a lot of promises in there that are things like and if you turn from me then i will send in the pestilence and the devourer and i will take you away from your land and all these bad things will happen those are those are promises and not only are they promises they're promises that are specifically related to being under the law and we're not under the law so there are prom there you know we use the word promise a little too broadly here maybe in my opinion there's promises to abraham and then i'm grafted in to the benefits of some of those promises but that doesn't make me the recipient of every promise to all of the people of israel throughout time so if god gives them a land and then tells them they're going to dwell in it i can claim that like i can go move to jerusalem be like hey this is my land this is just a very vague super broad generalization as if being grafted in means i can claim every promise or as if saying that some promises about the messiah that those apply to me thinking that then i can claim every single promise i want given to israel and nobody wants to claim all of them because there are several that are very negative yeah so um so i think it's just more complicated than that a a vague statement like we're grafted in so we can claim the promises this is this is vague theology that doesn't doesn't survive a careful reading of scripture because if you just just read through the through the law through the old testament and and just try to claim every promise and you'll realize wait this isn't how it works this isn't how it works i get i get in christ i get the benefits of christ that's the promise i get to keep i get to claim the benefits of jesus christ and his sacrifice and being grafted in into that it's not me becoming israel taking everything that belongs to israel that that is a replacement theology thing that i think is incorrect um and i would encourage you to check out my roman series if you want more info on this romans chapter 11 i have a few different teachings and they got very few views on this because they're all like israel's future prophetically and things like that that people aren't interested in and uh but it but it's in the roman series where paul talks about this and i get into it in more detail hopefully that's fruitful and helpful for you next question is from silas abrahamson says i'm afraid that i'm just partaking in confirmation bias for theism but i find that most atheistic arguments are just straw men and ad hominem attacks are there any good thoughtful resources um yeah so on the internet we are regularly accused we meaning everybody and their grandma is regularly accused of confirmation bias and um what's the other one people people love to use nowadays is um cognitive dissonance and and they you can almost feel the the arrogance of people that they that they even know these phrases like well that's cognitive dissonance you're seeing right there and that's confirmation bias the thing about these phrases cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias is their psychological assessments of people you don't know um it's possible that that somebody has confirmation bias that's quite possible but you just just just acknowledge that you're making a psychological assessment about their mentality and that itself is very prone to confirmation bias you catch that like sometimes people are accusing others of confirmation bias because of their own confirmation bias you disagree with me that's because you have confirmation bias okay well maybe you only think that so confidently because of your own potentially confirmation bias i try to avoid like the psychological assessments of people when i deal with their arguments and that's kind of what you've talked about a little bit silas you mentioned um the most atheistic arguments are stroman and ad hominem attacks these are not psychological assessments of people these are assessments of arguments and that's very true there's strawman meaning that's not even what christianity teaches there are ad hominem attacks like um well i don't like god then if he exists i don't like that he did this i don't like the gospel and trying to make it look ugly and let's just be real like that is what we see more often than not so if you have in your head logically their arguments are failing but i have a vague fear what if i have confirmation bias well that's not a good enough reason to disbelieve something it's like logically speaking the fear that you might have confirmation bias is not a good enough reason to believe something i think that there's a thing that happens with people where they almost feel like they have to change their beliefs in order to be valid in their beliefs like i have to start at point a and i have to end up point b i have to end up disagreeing with something to be valid like in my own christian walk i've changed my opinion on different things and somehow psychologically i'm gonna evaluate myself here not you this is you can evaluate yourself all you want and for some reason the areas where i've changed my mind i tend to feel even more confident about but the areas where i haven't changed my mind there's this there's this like like thought okay what if i'm just con you know what if it's confirmation bias but unless you can put a a logical you know finger on it i think you should ignore it so i changed my mind on the topic of alcohol i used to think alcohol was basically sinful just the substance itself was sinful this is what i what i thought and then after studying scripture and really looking at things in a lot of detail i was like man i was just i was wrong and it took me for it took me forever to kind of bring my heart around to feeling that truth and not just mentally thinking it was true and and i feel really confident about that you know i used to think the king james version was probably the only real trustworthy bible and maybe the new king james because it followed the right texts and i was very suspicious of other things when i did my actual research on how we got our bible and how we you know how modern translations are made and stuff i found that i was totally off that i was following like conspiracy theories from from back in the day i mean literally that was it might be angering somebody right now but that's what i discovered i changed my mind and i really feel very strong and confident about using a variety of translations and that modern translations are by and large very good and they aren't trying to take jesus out of the bible that's that's just um that's a strong man and an ad hominem attack so i feel pretty confident about those things you know but there are areas where i haven't changed my mind at all like should i just doubt that because i didn't change my mind maybe there's like a disconfirmation bias that we can experience too where where we think if i change my mind then i'm really right but if i haven't changed my mind i should always doubt the thing i believe but that's kind of silly because your your most core beliefs your most in the area of like how we know things like they call it epistemology those most core fundamental things that are holding up all the rest of your knowledge those are things you've probably always believed and you believed without any justification because it's just like you believe that your senses work and that you're really interacting with an actual world around you like that's pretty core for all your other beliefs that that's actually happening you believe that you can form true beliefs that you can observe things and think and come to logical reason reasoning and true beliefs and that's pretty core and there isn't a lot of justifications just kind of we just look at and go that's just how it is like this is just the world we're in god explains that well because he could create us with this ability to know things evolution has a harder time explaining that at least atheistic evolution or naturalistic evolution has hard time explaining that but these are things you've just always believed like so do you get what i'm saying is is this is not good epistemology or good good self-reflection to think that i'm afraid i have confirmation bias therefore i should doubt something that's not that's not smart that's not smart some of the most important and basic beliefs are things um that you're you you just believe as weird as that sounds you just believe now you can test them later you can you can ask for arguments against them you can look for arguments for them and that's where christianity shines the theology of it the idea of god the testimony of scripture fulfilled prophecy the the unity of the text just the i'm rambling now but just forgive me but just the unity of the text of scripture this was an argument i heard years ago and i would hear people argue well the scripture has unity and this is a great evidence of its inspiration by god and i always thought like unity what does that even mean but after i've spent thousands and thousands and thousands of hours studying scripture in depth and in detail i see the unity there that simply does not exist in other collected works it just doesn't exist maybe a collective work by the same author can have many of the elements of unity but not a collected work by such a variety of authors on different continents in different generations over a thousand years apart in many cases this the from the prophecy and jesus in the old testament to the revelation of christ in the new to the historical verifications of christianity we have a mountain a we have a planet full of mountains of support for the truth of our faith we can be very confident all right so um next question comes from drd who says i've been a follower of christ for about three months now and my girlfriend of two years who i would say is lukewarm is hesitant to abstain how should i handle this um i think drd i'm gonna give you encouragement that you um because your relationship with god is the most important relationship in your life that you you absolutely abstain and if this means you lose the relationship with her then that's the that's the risk you take that's the risk you take so i have a friend who he was he was you know he looks back and goes was i really a christian or was i not a christian but at some point his life became very serious about jesus christ and he was very honest and real about i want to honor know christ i want to follow christ i want to live for christ and he was sleeping with his girlfriend at the time so he told her no more we can't do this anymore and he was fully convinced she was just going to dump him but what happened is that that was part of what caused her to get serious about the lord too because he was engaging in this compromise behavior with her on a regular basis you know and so that that wall being put up caused something to change in her life too now over time what ended up happening is she got on fire for the lord she and they both end up serving with me in ministry and um great couple good friends and the neat thing is is then they got married a little while later i don't know if it was two years later and they got married and they said that when the adult moment here guys but they said when they got they got married it was like it was like they had never been together it was just so new and so wonderful and so pure and so great what i'm saying is whatever the cost of following jesus it's worth it but i also want to encourage you that there's benefits of following christ in those areas as well and those things are absolutely worth it don't be afraid of what you might lose jesus is like hey take up your cross and follow me whatever you lose you'll gain more right even eternally you'll gain more but oftentimes even in this life there's great restoration so my encouragement yeah you're a follower of christ for three months now and no matter what the cost you lovingly graciously say i love you and because i love you i've realized something about our relationship that was sex but wasn't love not the way it's supposed to be and she may or may not understand but you you'll do your best god bless you have courage derek beeler or beller um i'm guest bueller maybe says can you give your interpretation of the golden chain of redemption in romans 8 29 and 30. oh man i'm honestly going to have to refer you to like my actual teaching on that passage so in my roman series i go through that specifically and i'd much rather you because this is like a hairy complicated um not just complicated but an issue where all the all the trenches are dug and there's well-defined interpretations that are on say the calvinist side and then on the other side there's probably a variety of interpretations um so i'm not going to try and answer all that because that's like spend 20 hours of research studying and being and sitting in it and then speak to it when i have all those different views in my head so i can make sure i answer correctly um i'm just going to read it to you guys so you at least are comfortable familiar with the content and you guys can check out my roman's eight passage uh teaching on this topic just type mike winger romans eight and you should find it for those whom he foreknew that this is considered a golden chain or a step-by-step process god whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and those whom he predestined there's that now second chain comes up again right second link he also called and those whom he called he also justified and those whom he justified he also glorified and so these are all the links in the chain it's for new uh predestined called justified glorified and this is generally seen by calvinists as being like this is like calvinist theology or this is tulip this is the idea that you aren't making choices here they're gonna take four known to be for chosen to be someone who you don't just know about someone ahead of time you don't know about their free will choice to trust you you you chose god chose them ahead of time so they take fournota before chosen i disagree with that interpretation um and then the predestined to be conformed to the image of a son i'm going to say that i we would agree with each other on there calvinist and myself but the fact that we disagree on foreign that is going to be significant because i think god's foreknowledge includes among other things it includes the free will choices we make among other things it's not just a simple foreign view for those who are deep in this debate but it does involve god's foreknowledge in order that he might be the first born of magnetic brothers and those whom he predestined he also called they're going to suggest that jesus the calvinist would say jesus didn't here's my best understanding i never tried to misrepresent anybody here the calvinist would say he whoever was predestined to know christ that's that predestination that's to salvation they would say and then he called the predestined meaning he doesn't call the other people only the predestined are called and yet i would say here my response to that quick response would be well that doesn't have to be exclusive there could be a call that goes out to all but he also he called the predestined but he didn't exclusively call them he called all people but obviously those who said yes have a special place in this and those whom he called he also justified i would say that these called are the ones who were predestined and called and they'll also be justified those whom he justified he also glorified anyway there's more that should be unpacked there that's kind of like a quick rundown if if you're one of the many calvinists who likes video responses to me go respond to my actual romans teaching rather than a quick q a comment i would appreciate that um just because i will cover probably some of your objections in that greater teaching and and i love you calvinist brothers and sisters i do not divide on those issues i'm just convinced that calvinism is not um biblical so i don't hold to it the next question is from a jesus loving scientist nice who says everything works together for god's glory but i have a hard time reconciling that with the idea that god creates people that he knows are destined for hell any thoughts god bless you and your team yeah i have several thoughts for you on this and one of them a jesus loving scientist would be um that in my view god doesn't create people that are he knows are destined for hell and that's see the thing is destined is a verb the way that in your sentence there the way the verb is functioning destined to something that happens to those people right here's me i have a destiny that destiny in this sense is like something that you're it's out of your control and i'm destined to hell and that makes these people basically look like victims of a destiny that is out of their control and they don't have any choice about and even in romans nine the very passage that a calvin because i'm not calvinist but the very passage of calvinist would go to to describe these these people who are some would say predestined for those who hold a double predestination they would go to this passage in romans 9 and say this shows that you know god is predestined but the nature of the verb is very important here active verb something i do to you passive verb it's not something i'm doing it's something that's just happening that's really significant here all of god's verbs over the saved are active uh has not the potter over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use what if so he makes one vessel for honor one for dishonor but what if god desiring to show his wrath and make known his power has endured with much patience right endured passive with uh god's just the one who's enduring with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction but they're not prepared by god that's the thing they're not it's not god doing the preparing something else is doing their preparing in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy which and then it gives personal pronoun here he has prepared beforehand for glory do you catch the difference those who are saved are prepared by god those who are reject god are not prepared by god for destruction they're not prepared by god for destruction his activity is only in the preparation of the saved why is that because his activity with mankind is to convict us of sin and draw us to christ and when we turn from christ then we do not have his preparation for glory we don't have his salvation we have our rejection of him now i think that god predestines those whom he knows will receive i think that that's part of his predestination i also would agree with a generally um i'm going to use a fancy theological term here molinistic kind of approach of how to understand these things and i do think that that's accurate more importantly like it's a view i already had before i heard of this whole molanism thing but i think it helps explain how the sovereignty and free will work together um and it's just part of it's the idea that god knew when he created them that they would reject him he knew when he created us that we would receive him but that doesn't mean he made them reject him that's that's the thing this is a huge deal god god picked a whole world ensemble he picked this creation of of all of us and knowing many many would reject him and he knew that so he endured with much long suffering with patience those who were prepared not by god but were prepared for wrath but he labored preparing the ones whose who listened to him who received him so god is actively involved in the saved he's passively involved in the unsaved because they're rejecting all of his work of salvation in their life i think that's consistent with this so when you ask your question let me read your question again and tell you how i would maybe change it um i have a hard time reconciling uh everything working for god's glory with the idea that god creates people that he knows are destined for hell i would not say destined i would say you'd have to reword it this way i think to be more biblical i have a hard time thinking everything works for god's glory and reconciling that with the idea that god creates people that he knows will reject him and end up in hell ah and then we have a different question the question isn't why would god make somebody for hell no they're made for him even the description of hell hell is made for the devil and his angels it wasn't made i mean god knew about the people but he still made it for the devil and it's just like he it's not for you he doesn't want you there this changes things so then i now have a different question in what way does god's glory come out of the judgment of a non-believer who lives a life uh with unrepentant sin and then dies and they stand before god and they're punished it's the same glory that comes when a when a good person deals with a bad person in any scenario of life and so a judge like stands before someone who's done a horrible crime and then they sentence them to prison we don't like that moment but we like that moment right like there's something terrible about it because the whole scenario that led up to it is bad but like when ted bundy got sentenced this murderer mass murderer like that was a good thing that judge did the right thing it showed a goodness in our court system that he actually got punished so courts are good when they acquit the innocent and they punish the guilty there's like a glory in that so god's glory is shown in his handling with with evil handling evil people the the problem this arises if we think that the people who are being punished for sin are actually good and they're merely victims of two of standards that are unrealistic or are bad and for that i think i can't help that person i i don't know how to help a person who thinks that god's holiness is not really the standard of goodness but that man's typical behavior is their new standard and here you have the criminals making the laws okay like if i gave the if i gave all of the laws to the criminals in prison and i said write our new laws they're going to write laws that keep them out of prison and this is what humans do when we make up our own version of morality well i think you should be able to have sleep with anybody you want all that matters is being a consenting adult right these are our laws but these are the criminals writing laws that keep them out of prison these aren't based on holiness and godliness and goodness so i don't know how to rescue that person if they're in that place um the next question is from jonathan hrovat who says given the multiple schools of thought on concepts like eschatology and calvinism each school has scripture to back up their contradicting views does that make scripture contradictory no i mean okay so here jonathan this is something i know a lot of people feel feel this heavy and and this is an objection to christianity um or to scripture to at least the clarity of scripture the the not even the perspicuity or the clarity of scripture but rather to the unity of scripture they're going to say the bible's contradictory because people look at the bible and then they support different perspectives that are contradictory to me this this argument has no power like i don't i honestly don't perceive the power and maybe it's because we've only applied it to the bible and we haven't applied it to other areas of life i don't know any important area of life where people don't disagree like look at republicans and democrats now republicans and democrats have very different ideas of how government should run and what government should even be in the business of doing does their contradicting ideas mean that there is nothing true about what government should be doing no somebody's just wrong right or they're both wrong this is this is just not powerful at all to me um i know there's there's there's pic pick an area of thing that you like you know you're you're a geek about lord of the rings and there's people who would debate um uh or how about i'll take another example star trek right i would always complain that luke skywalker was a complaining crybaby and then i uh then i heard somebody saying that luke skywalker no it's his character arc he starts out as a complaining crybaby and then he becomes this like sort of like thoughtful like wise like jedi monk type character and um and i i guess i just look at it and i go you know i don't think the ark worked that well um he still feels kind of like a complainer to me a lot of the time like it's he complained for too long the ark was it didn't do this it just was like and then maybe up at the end and so we can argue about does that mean there's nothing actually true about luke skywalker in this case and about his character arc of course there's things that are true about it it just shows human's ability to debate and argue about everything and then to build structures and whole organizations of thought around things that we might have wrong so yeah um given the different perspectives on things like eschatology i or let's say calvinism um i think calvinism targets in on some very important things i think and i've talked about this on calvinism i think one of the major flaws of calvinism is that functionally they will treat this is very important that people understand what i'm saying here because i i have a video where i talk about this and all the time the comments revealed that either i didn't speak clearly enough or people aren't hearing me um when i say functionally calvinism will sometimes treat faith as a work that's a very specific claim i'm not saying that if you go to a church a calvinist will get up in the pulpit and say everybody faith is a work like that's not going to happen but functionally they will treat faith as though it is a work when arguing why they're principles of god's glory of feed a right all right of solar glory um did i say that right solo gloria glorio anyway i forget my latin is a doesn't exist so the five solas they're going to go through these and they're going to say applying these consistently we have to have regeneration that precedes faith because if you do faith on your own you're doing this good deed on your own see i think they're they're calling they're treating faith functionally as if it's a work and that means you can't have the act of faith or they'll say well why did you choose and they didn't with something good about you because right because faith is being functionally treated as if it's a work so then the philosophy of calvinism and it is if it is a theological philosophy it it it tins more towards um uh total depravity meaning that you can't believe you can't even believe the gospel because that would be like a work um anyway i know people are still not gonna understand me on that i i give up but yeah my point here is these this is a a function i can point to a specific error in thinking that i think leads to the difference between us and that error is not scripture scripture doesn't treat faith like a work it contrasts the two completely this is a human error in areas like eschatology i would say part of it is that this is such a broad and vast thing to study and look at that there's so many moving parts and pieces that people just tend to fall into schools without fully understanding even why they're in that school i would say most primal post mill amil that they don't fully understand even their own views it's just a complicated issue which tends towards different opinions so in some places it might not be contradiction it might just be complexity or in some in some doctrines even lack of clarity even in scripture i'm just not sure god has an opinion i just don't know for sure what it is here um but anyway i've rambled on that one long enough um i don't think it at all is a case for contradict scripture contradicting because people who believe scripture contradict each other look the missing thing is people people contradict each other it's just the way we are brianne taylor says please give advice on what to say to my 16 year old year old who has told me he's an atheist he can barely defend his position he has basically fallen victim to internet atheist no longer wants to go to church um brianne i i like if i was his youth pastor i've done this before i would just take him out to lunch and i usually here's how i would start i would be very calm i'd let him know hey i love you i'm not mad at you i'm not upset with you let's just talk about this help me understand your thinking here and i would start to just dig i would gather the reasons and you've already obviously known some of this but i would gather all the reasons so why are you atheists what what and in his case you might be looking for like specific arguments for atheism and you may have already done that and fine they're not there so then there's there's other reasons why why um chances are at that age he found an atheist who's outspoken that he likes um sadly that's there's a good chance of that so i would want to know who who he's watching online who he's listening to who who's influencing him it could be a musician it could be a friend at school also at 16 with hormones and all this the idea of atheism is very tempting for a young man because a a 16 year old does not contemplate death right but they do contemplate all sorts of other things that they would like to do that the flesh wants and atheism gives you reason to do all that stuff and so i would i would here's where i would i would recommend like somebody else other than a parent because i don't know what kind of relationship you have with your kid but me as a youth pastor i could i could pull the guide aside and i could just be like yeah so tell me what atheism does for you how does that change your life in positive ways and i would just dig i would dig what about girls how does it change your relationship with girls and i would just dig because probably honestly it's probably a sin thing and i would want to find out and i want to help him see it i would do it all in the in the environment of love and care and respect but i would want to see what's really going on in his own life in his own heart and when someone's an atheist and they can't defend their position and they don't really know exactly why they're an atheist it's because you're looking for reasons but instead there's there aren't reasons there's just motives right if i have no reasons all i'm all i'm left with is motives so find out what the motives are and address those that would be my encouragement to you abby d has a question how do you know when you truly have forgiven someone in your heart can i say the words but i'm unsure if my heart has changed yes i absolutely believe so i think that we can make decisions that our hearts don't agree with and you can still make that choice i think that i can choose to be loving to my wife even if i'm not in a good mood and feeling like it at the moment and that that is a great way to honor the lord it's it's just and i don't know how to cut a line here but there's a difference between a choice to do something like i'm going to choose to forgive them lord and my heart here i'm just gonna die to myself i'm just gonna say i don't care what you say about this like you're gonna have to just come around um and then the other thing that you don't want is faking right where you just lie um but the difference i guess is uh when i'm lying i'm i there's my will is not there i'm just saying i forgive them i forgive them but i'm really not my it's not my heart that's not there it's my will it's not there so i'm just gonna suggest that your will and your heart or your will and your emotions i'll put it that way your will and your emotions are two different things that you can treat separately and say i can have an attitude of i'm gonna forgive you i forgive you i'm gonna struggle with the heart issues that i'm dealing with the emotional issues that i'm continuing to deal with and i'll pray with i'll pray about those things forgiveness isn't always for us as humans it doesn't feel like it's always a line in this in the sand where it's like boom i've forgiven everything's fine sometimes it's kind of like i forgive you i forgive you but there's still like a recovery time that my heart kind of needs but you're not holding a grudge you don't want you don't want them to be suffering for it you don't want them to make them pay you want them to be repentant and and to change but you don't want there's no bitterness that's left and so those would be my encouragements to you um for all of us just to remember this your heart does not have to agree with your will or your emotions do not have to be in line with your decisions right away that's very encouraging to me right because i don't need to be led by my emotions i need to lead them because they go in strange places and they take me to down dark alleys i need to lead my emotions and not be led by them and this is part of what it means to walk by faith this is why paul could say we're we're persecuted right but we're not uh we're not forsaken we're struck down but we're not destroyed he he talked about being grieved but how he wasn't completely wrecked right because he still had hope he still confidence and this is this is where christianity comes around and says hey heart there are some limits you need to observe and that's a good thing um even uh scripture saying you know our hearts may condem us but god is greater than our hearts and knows all things yeah let's see ephosa osagi morgan says the bible indicates that the mystery of god's plan for salvation was kept hidden for ages until after the resurrection could that mean satan is omniscient when jesus had to rebuke peter all right let me read this again and we'll think through this okay the bible indicates the mystery of god's plan for salvation was kept hidden for ages until after the resurrection okay i would i would agree with that it's now been revealed uh it was hidden the but that doesn't mean there was nothing known about it but it wasn't fully understood so it was so it was hidden in that sense it was it was there was something still mysterious about it like what is going on here this means that when jesus was walking the earth the demons didn't know what was going on and and this might play into your idea is satan omniscient because he had to rebuke peter i don't think uh theologically satan's not omniscient um but also philosophically like or theologi another which is kind of another form of theology i guess um satan can't be omniscient omniscience is equality that god has and god alone has full knowledge all knowledge is something only god has not satan he doesn't have all knowledge but there's also something when jesus encountered demons we read about this in mark they asked jesus we know who you are right you're you're the lord we know who you are but are you here to torment us before the time this gives us insight into the demonic realm and it shows you that they they knew who jesus was but didn't know why he had come they weren't sure what was going on they knew that that that god had taken on this human form and was dwelling there in in israel this is one reason why maybe there's so much demonic attack that's going on there because they want to they're battling it out now um satan knows it's an opportunity to try to mess with jesus try to mess with god because god has taken on a weak human form so he tries to mess with christ and ultimately seeks to get him killed if satan had known right that what paul writes is that if they had known if the if the the world rulers but also the demonic powers had known what god was up to they would not have crucified the lord of glory that's what scripture tells us so if satan had been omniscient he never would have crucified christ because this was only helping accomplish the salvation of the world he just saw the weak human form of jesus and thought he had an opportunity to attack god in a way he never could before and which was true but it would backfire so satan definitely didn't know the plan um then you get to the last part of your question which is well then why does jesus say to peter when peter's like not so lord about being crucified peter's like get behind me satan i don't think that peter was possessed by satan right it was satan himself later on who entered the heart of judas to get jesus killed to betray him he wanted jesus killed why does jesus call peter satan he's calling him the an adversary he's caught he and he's doing it in the harshest possible terms because he's showing that you fighting against the cross you fighting against the the death right that is the antithesis of what you think you want to support me you need to you need to embrace the cross and even carry your own cross and follow me and this is the idea that that is um at the center of christianity and it's something that every christian has to embrace is the idea of the cross of christ and what he hidden him dying for you but you also you also dying to this world taking up your cross and following jesus every day i'm living for christ this world is not my home like i'm just a pilgrim passing through this is something that's very important for all of us so i don't think that that says anything about satan's knowledge because the whole agenda there was to undo the the cross he's called satan because this is like an adversarial idea but we know satan's actual agenda was to get jesus crucified because he didn't know what was going on um the good book has a question and i'm going to move quick now because i'm going slow today we're doing 20 questions i'm only on 12. so i'm going to move fast the good book says why does matthew 10 16 through 24 have the olivet discourse wording same wording as mark 13 9-13 it does not seem to fit here or makes sense and this is not found in the parallel verses of luke 9 1-6 and mark 6 7-13 i'll say this for the sake of a q a to have four different passages of scripture that you've obviously spent some homework on um and i'm familiar with the with the issue you're bringing up i'm not gonna be able to put all those up in front of everybody that alone would take about 20 minutes just to like show you guys all the issues but basically you know the what some people would say is that matthew took what what was said by jesus and the olivet discourse and just moved it he moved it over to a different place and some people would say that that's okay um i think that like mike lycona would probably say that that's okay that this was like a standard thing that um that historians and people who were writing would do back then where you you would take they're really the words of somebody you're just transposing or moving the speech to a new location others would say that's a problem this is lydia mcgrew would say dr lydia mcgruder said that's a problem like that's that's not that's not something they would do and it's not something that would be accurate um my thought on this for what it's worth the good book would be that jesus just said something with almost the same wording and that that this is because there's a connection between christ's first coming and christ's second coming there's a connection between the mission he was sending sending them on temporarily while he was on the earth he's like go do this for now there's a there's a connection between that mission and then the ultimate mission of the church who's doing these things until christ returns so that this could have been a very deliberate purposeful thing so that we would see there's a connection because we want to look at the disciples and see a microcosm of us following jesus in this world today that would be my my thought on that um and the fact that you say it's not found in luke 9 and mark 6 i i don't have a problem with that i think that there's lots of things jesus says that would not have been found in various locations jesus was with him for years and we have this tiny little chunk of information about him in matthew mark luke and john so there's going to be tons of stuff that none of them recorded i'm not concerned about that personally so yeah there's there's my answer i would i would keep looking for more answers and you don't have to take mine as like the whole end all be all of everything um yeah faithful way number 13 says i enjoy mindful meditation for mental health reasons and want to involve god in this but i've heard this type of prayer is wrong why couldn't i memorize a psalm and repeat it in prayerful thought faith away i'm not entirely sure what you mean by mindful meditation so i'm afraid to comment on whether it's appropriate or inappropriate um yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna pass on this because i here's the thing i'm not gonna answer your question let me talk about meditation the idea of meditating or like old school meditation the word meant thinking at least that's my understanding of it right as you read the word itself it means like in in you know in the bible the word means to to chew the cud this is just like the the original meaning of the idea of the word chew the cud like an animal like i don't choose cud puts it down brings it back up choose it you're actually working on thoughts you're working on ideas so we would use the word thinking right like when i say i'm meditating i'm thinking but in eastern religious circles and which which america has been infatuated with for some time in the western world has like this little fantasy attitude towards eastern meditation it's it's sometimes taken as though it's a spiritual exercise not just a i'm thinking but it's like a spiritual exercise where you're like sort of doing things that are hard to explain and you're contacting things and you're accomplishing things that's where i get concerned i don't know what that is i don't know what that's about i think it's great to meditate in the biblical sense of like thinking about things and pondering things and i think it's fine to even think of this about the same thing over and over again i think that that can be okay if if you're actually our your thoughts are engaged in some sense i think it's okay to go out and sit on the grass and look at the sky and hear the birds and listen to the wind flapping the leaves against each other and to just be like god you're amazing and just sit there and be like god this is beautiful here i just like it here and just sit there and be peaceful and maybe you're not even thinking much but when it gets connected to weird eastern spiritual practices that's when i get concerned what you mean by mindful meditation i'm not entirely sure what you mean by that so yes can you memorize a psalm and repeat it in prayerful thought i suppose yes just don't be weird sorry if i'm not helping david celayo says what are some good resources or good sources to look at to start studying apologetics okay there's two different in general two different kinds of resources for apologetics maybe i'll give and i'll give two okay there's general resources this is a great starting point general resources so you go and you look something up and you see what like the got questions article says i like got questions i think they have great content i don't agree with everything they don't agree with everything i think they have great content i would definitely recommend checking your stuff out so you get the got questions and answers a few paragraphs answering your question you need these general resources these are important because you when you start get started apologetics you have a million questions then there's the more in-depth resources and the more in-depth resources is like somebody writing a whole book on one issue you can't read all of these so here you find there are some issues you really care about some issues that you think you need to be better equipped in those are the ones where you want to go for the more in-depth resources and so online you can find a lot to this stuff like i mentioned got questions is there um that's like a real it it's not dumbed it's not a bad resource it's like a good resource but it's not the depth okay but if you want to get into like say um what's wrong with um the scholarship that wants to cut the scriptures into little pieces as if as if the gospel authors are just compiling a bunch of random things that didn't really all happen and they're venting a bunch of stuff like i think richard bockham is a good resource for that but it's like you can read your read a whole 300 page book 400 page book on that one issue so there's those two different kinds of resources general resources are easier to recommend okay so like i do think i like a lot of norm geisler's stuff okay he has he's like every there's a book that has the word skeptic in the titles i have it back there somewhere norm geisler has a resource on that that's like great um hard sayings of the bible there's another general resource about the bible but to be honest i've not found that super useful um anyway look for the general resources and then for special resources then it just depends on the issue it just depends on the issue if you want to dig deep on the kalam cosmological argument you can look up william lynn craig and his work on that um for instance if you're going into other issues it just it just turns into like a thousand names for a thousand different issues and that's so yeah i can't just give a resource uh because there isn't one when you want to go deep um bu barkley says is it sinful to be inspired by historical people in and outside the bible should i instead be exclusively inspired by the holy spirit who enable believers by or by the father um no man be inspired by people hebrews 11 let me encourage you this hebrews 11 gives a list of people that are meant to be inspiring right you know the passage it's the hall of faith right by faith abraham did this by faith this by faith that person and just gives a list to them then it gives you encouragement that they should inspire you okay so hebrews 12 verse 1 where it says therefore since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses that cloud of witnesses is not people watching you from the afterlife weird teachers say this stuff that's not it there's no one watching you from the afterlife in hebrews 12 1. the cloud of witnesses is the lives that these people lived where like abraham left all that he knew and went out to a land he didn't know to follow god uh rahab hid the spies and she honored god in that even though that was a very scary moment for her there's these these powerful witnesses and examples their life witnesses to you an inspiration to do what to lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so easily so closely to us or so easily to us and let us run with endurance the race that set before us looking under jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endure the cross this is the inspiration now here's my encouragement it's okay i think to find a business leader who's done a really good job and say i find that inspiring it's okay to find a who's outside the bible who uh someone who's a really good father and you find them very inspiring but if their eyes weren't on jesus then there's an element of their life that is the opposite of inspiring and you just need to know this you can't have the model for your life be somebody who does not know and follow christ because they're modeling for you a life apart from christ so even if they have skills and they're good in some areas you really need witnesses that help you set your eyes on jesus that's very important for you uh that's really important we become like our mentors we look up to these people and so yeah i would i would encourage you with just that just that idea you can learn something from anybody and that's a that's a that's a wisdom thing i should be able to learn from even the fool can teach me lessons right um but my mentors or my examples or my inspirations ultimately need to be believers they don't be pastors they need to be christians who have their eyes on christ and where on earth even am i catherine your question is a loved one of mine a believer is going through a season of mental anguish what are some practical ways that i can help and encourage them my first encouragement is to try not to feel like it's your responsibility to fix them i like the way you word your question uh what are some ways i can help and encourage them and i would say that uh giving them help and encouragement that doesn't require response that that's that's kind of like a no pressure scenario where you're there to help and lift them up and encourage them but but they're not expected to perform for you that's really healthy someone who's going through major hard times it's healthy if they have people that they want to lift them up they want to raise them up they still want to have that high goal right for their lives but they're not requiring a performance they really want to see people improve and help them in some way and there's just like a different mentality that comes when we approach people like that in my opinion i think that proverbs helps us with this when it says like that a man's only a man's heart knows his own sorrow that there's there's there's stuff that people go through that um that you just don't you just don't understand and so coming alongside to assist and help like saying lean on me it doesn't mean i'm the heart surgeon who knows everything that's going on with you and i'll fix you it's more of a lean on me thing um that might be a better way galatians puts it this way bear one another's burdens and so fulfilled the law of christ that this is we're going to bury each other's burdens like hey can i can i bear some of your burden so maybe for your friend this means just listening to them maybe it means getting together with them and not talking about the issues giving them like someone to hang out with who isn't going to talk about the issues everybody's different and i would just try to look at their needs and meet their needs and if you take fixing them off the table then there's no anxiety on your part trying to force things you're just trying to identify and meet needs and bless people that would be my encouragement um if you can encourage them with scripture that gives them help without burdens and expectations that's a really great thing to do if someone's especially weak i would just want to encourage them i would just want to encourage them and not talk about their performing if that makes sense i hope that's good wisdom for you those are my thoughts for what they're worth uh 17 jay toulos says how is it that when jesus feeds the 4000 in mark 8 the disciples don't seem to remember him already doing the same thing in mark 6 the 5000. um i think that might help with what might help with this is between mark 6 and mark 8 who knows how many meals there were so i imagine when jesus broke the bread that the very next meal they were like wondering is it gonna do it again wouldn't you be you're like i'd be wondering like wait do we need to get food or is jesus just gonna do that every time now but what probably happened between mark 6 and mark 8 was a number of meals where jesus did not multiply the bread giving people the impression that that's just not something he's normally going to do so hence into mark 8 and that scenario they may have realized i don't want to put an assumption on him of what he's going to do here so that might be uh might be the situation in addition to that when jesus feeds the first group they're jews right their jews are probably on their way to passover when jesus feeds the second group there's a lot of gentiles and it may have simply been the jewish expectation that the messiah is not here to feed gentiles think about that there may have been like a kind of a bias that was there the messiah right he feeds us like the bread in the wilderness like that's for the jews the jewish people but jesus is showing the extension of his ministry to all people that he's the bread of life for jew and gentile for everybody so there may have been that assumption there as well angela budoyen says hey mike thanks for your awesome humble and humorous ministry it is awesome and humble and humorous isn't it if jesus was beaten unrecognizably how can we be sure they checked the right tomb um oh bode beaudoin she gave me her pronunciation at the end there her name is pronounced bode bodewin all right angela beaudoin i should know it's bowed bow anyway i should know that but anyway so angela bodwin um how did they know it was the right tomb if he was beaten unrecognizably um the the the i've several answers that are all flooding into my head all at the same time here let me try to organize them real quick so there's one issue is this did they have to know it was the right tomb to know that jesus had resurrected and the answer to that actually is no because you actually had jesus alive with them right so if you have a real jesus who's living and breathing and alive then you don't even actually need to know that the tomb is important historically speaking that we have an empty tomb but for them in the first century they have jesus alive um you could also then just go on and check various tombs you could just check different tombs okay so that's that's important as well the however how do they know um the gospel of mark in particular tells us that it was these women who witnessed okay here's here's the background quick background in the first century women were not seen as good reliable witnesses it was actually embarrassing to the early church that the first witnesses of christ in the empty tomb were women this was embarrassing um this is seen by many as evidence that it's historically what really happened that the that it was women who discovered the tomb empty that that's because that's just what happened let me add some more details there that might help as well in mark peter seems to be the primary witness for for mark and for his writing here and mark historically we have evidence from the church fathers that mark actually traveled with peter he was his interpreter and then and then several of them say he wrote down what peter had said so peter seems to be the primary source but mark acting kind of like a guy doing history he seems to indicate in his gospel who his different witnesses are for when peter's not around because peter wasn't always around and one very important moment where peter was not around where we're going to want to know who who witnessed this is when peter betrayed christ denied christ and he went off and was weeping and then when jesus dies we have the women being mentioned by mark he mentioned several of them then when joseph takes jesus's body and lays him in the tomb who's alongside the women the same women that mark mentions then visiting his tomb the next day who do we have the women and they're not just present women are present but their names are given now richard bachmann talking about apologetic stuff richard bockham did his book called jesus and the eyewitnesses where he does a ton of scholarly homework on this to try to suggest long story short when mark records unnecessary names it's because he's trying to tell you this person is my eyewitness behind this account that's why most blind people don't have names unless it's blind bartimaeus because he was probably still accessible to the to the people of the time the names that are given are probably of people who are accessible to the original readers and hearers of mark's gospel and the names of the women are given this is like a first century historical connection to the empty tomb we also have in matthew a record that they actually sent guards to the tomb to the tomb which means that people are monitoring the death of christ monitoring where his body is it wasn't only joseph just uh joseph of arimathea and the women nicodemus but there was also others so yeah the tomb was then verifiable and was able to be looked at later and if they thought they had the wrong turn they could just pop open every tomb they want until they find the body so there's some answers for that i hope that you find it helpful you don't need to recognize jesus as like i saw him yesterday and i saw him today and that's the same guy you can also just recognize what they did to him it's not like they had a whole bunch of crucifixion victims that were fresh from that day right there was just three people and two of them had their legs broken and one did not if you went to a tomb there was a broken crucifer or a dead body that had been crucified with no broken legs you'd be like that was jesus it was actually easier than identifying him other ways all right tabitha littman says if eating from the tree of knowledge is what gave adam and eve the knowledge of good versus evil how could they have been expected to know that disobeying god was evil before they ate the fruit yeah tabitha i don't take it as being that broad personally so i've given this some thought myself as well and i i'm just like you i go wade like if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good if you don't know what good is then you don't know moral right and wrong if you don't know moral right and wrong then how does it make sense when god goes don't do this why are you like wait because that would be wrong like it wouldn't make sense so i think that the knowledge of good and evil is a much more um is much more about going from innocence to sinfulness so there was an awareness of some sense of right and wrong but it was like a child who has never stolen anything right like there's a sense in them even like i shouldn't do that i shouldn't steal but then when i when i do steal it's like now i've now i've done it now i've been there now you know now you know and i think that that that's an element of what's going on personally i think that with the tree they eat of the knowledge of good and evil they've not only have they eaten of the fruit that were forbidden so this is the thing that's going to bring death but there's been like an experience of true and genuine rebellion against god and perhaps the way that they were they were raised and wired this was the only potential bad thought or wrong thing that would ever have even occurred to them to do because there was that much innocence but now perhaps it's the flood of every potential impure activity and temptation and thought and it's just all of man is just messed up uh mason leggett says yo mike love your ministry thanks man appreciate it i appreciate appreciate all you guys being here for our q and a's um i'm sorry i can't get to everybody's questions we have questions every day every week every day and i'm not able to answer even most of the emails that we get nowadays and that makes me sad okay i'm sad that i can't do that um but but i appreciate you guys every one of you and i'm grateful that you are um you're just watching and being blessed and here's what excites me can i tell you my secret agenda is that this might sound arrogant but i certainly don't mean it that way because this is based upon my confidence in scripture in the word of god and the truth of christianity i think that if i help you to learn to think biblically about things and to love the word of god and to and to want to follow god that much more in your life that you will be the one who changes the lives of people around you and so i think by changing one we change we change 10 or 100 and i think you guys are the ones and you're gonna go and change the tens and the hundreds and the thousands because it does change your life you get excited you get confident you you get serious about the things of god all right question is i was wondering if you had anything to say about secular music is it okay to listen to what draws the line of something a christian shouldn't listen to or watch i i used to think secular music was basically bad um and it was even to the point when i was a teen i was i was like 20 21 where i felt like conflicted about things like bach or beethoven although oddly enough i didn't know the time right bach was um was a was a christian and so um but some of these guys that i just felt like conflicted even listening to any of their music and what the ironic thing is it never occurred to me that when i was watching movies i was hearing secular music like the majority of the film and but i didn't notice it because i wasn't focusing on it but i wouldn't have turned on a secular station i wouldn't have listened to any secular music um and then combine this with a genuine and proper concern with things like the ungodly messages coming from music because we have to like let me give you the summary i was wrong to think that all secular music was evil okay but the counterparts who were christians that i knew who didn't care what they listened to it could be gangster rap full of foul language talking about murdering people and they were like well just music that is also wrong and i think that what seems clear to me is if you ignore the genre of music secular versus christian and instead you focus on the message of the music it becomes a lot easier to decide what you'll listen to and not right so like there's and i don't listen to much music uh so i can't give many examples here but there's clear examples i'm sure you guys can think of where it's music like this is just it's it's preaching and and promoting wickedness and sinfulness like it's just put to music i like well how is that not just sugar coating sin okay that that seems clear to me why would i listen to this um but then on the other side you know like you're watching toy story and they're saying like you got a friend in me and i'm thinking like no that's not christian i can't listen to you got a friend in me i'm like what i can't listen to that or i want to sing lean on me and i'm like well is that a christian song is it lean on me when you're not strong like i don't know if i can say that or sing that is that and i think that this is like what am i worried about here that's like saying when a secular person person says good morning it doesn't count because they're not christians like look if you could be a secular person write a great love song that's like a good love song a healthy proper love song and we can celebrate that and we can enjoy it you can cook food and you can do all these things the thing that makes music different than like other things like building bridges or you're buying a car made from someone who's not a christian or something and you don't care is that music carries messages and so i'm going to say if the message is wicked then we probably should avoid that if the message is positive then it's great if the message is neutral right like the happy birthday song it doesn't really positive it's just the thing you know um then who cares enjoy it go ahead if it's neutral if it's not positive or negative then i consider it part of the creation god has for us to enjoy and that's my current perspective on it and i think that my previous idea of christian music only not secular that that kept me safe in a sense but it also made me a bit judgmental of other people who were perhaps actually using more wisdom than me because i was just i was erring on the side of safety and then it in some cases caused some divisive kind of attitudes between me and other christians that i i think was unhealthy um oh we're not going to invite mike to that thing because you know but we want to we want to play um secular music and you know we want we want we don't want him there for that reason and that kind of divide division is actually a pretty serious problem in the body of christ people are dividing over their convictions this is what romans 14 says not to do so we should be careful about that but yeah those are my thoughts take it song by song not genre by genre it's not cr they're christian songs christian songs that are not good morally speaking and so um those are my thoughts mason um it makes life complicated because you have to take it one issue at a time but sometimes life is complicated all right y'all thank you so much love you very much appreciate you and i will see you monday i'm doing oh man this monday the mark series um i'm handling a pretty sensitive issue it's an issue where i think that calvary chapels have made a pretty big mistake in the past and i'm going to try and talk openly and honestly about that issue and um hope i don't lose any friends so i'll see you guys monday at 1 pm if you continue doing eschatology stuff in the gospel of mark

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 59,169

Keywords: 20 questions, BibleThinker, Mike Winger, question and answer, think biblically, episode 25, part 25

Id: d2ZsSlUsQuU

Length: 76min 12sec (4572 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021