20 Questions with Pastor Mike (Episode 30)

we are live this is 20 questions with pastor mike i am uh mike i'm not the questions you're bringing the questions you're loading them right now we're going to get to question number one right now and just you guys know there are time stamps down below in pretty much all of my 20 questions videos this is episode 30 it's the 30th time i've done this and we do it on fridays at 1 pm pacific time but more importantly here's question 1 from tanya in south africa by the way i will know we've got our question counter up there i'm going to actually be able to put down the number of the question we're on because that's fun all right tania in south africa asks dear pastor mike there's so much debate going on amongst me my family and friends regarding watching movies that use the lord's name in vain like saying oh my g or when they get angry and say jc could you shed some light please so the question is is there anything the bible tells us if this is wrong or right to watch these movies even if we ourselves are like we're not using the lord's name in vain but we're watching movies like that and she also says that movies and series are full of using these phrases and we're not able to filter out or silence them so thank you so much for your channel it's been a blessing to me my husband that's awesome tanya say hi to your husband for me and here's my i admit it ahead of time my answer here is insufficient because why why do i say it's insufficient because i'm not satisfied yet on this on this topic and this question and i'm like it seems weird to really wrestle and struggle with this issue here's some of my fears going in in all honesty very i'm i'm very much human a lot like you and um and one of my worries is i ask a question like this is it okay to watch movies that have and fill in the blank or shows that have and fill in the blank some of these questions it seems very easy to answer right like um if it has uh pornographic content like the answer is like yeah don't watch it like that's not okay but other ones are harder um for me because part of the reason is i like these movies like i want to watch these shows like i enjoy them i don't enjoy them taking god's name in vain but i enjoy a show there's lots of shows i just want to watch or movies i want to enjoy and watch and they may have elements in them that are compromised and those elements might be sporadic and then i'm like well how much is too much or how much of the focus is that or ask questions like how does it affect me and those around me and if i'm thinking well i'm mature and it's not really stumbling me i feel like it's not you know messing with me the way it would if i was 12 and watching it or perhaps i say but how does it affect god and then all of a sudden it gets harder to answer that question how does god feel when his name is taken in vain i don't think he cares for it very much i do think in scripture there's those who say and some of you will already be thinking this is your many of you are you know you've been around the block theologically so you understand some of this stuff they'll say you know in scripture when it says not to take god's name in vain that's not really about saying like you know god right in the context of like an empty statement or saying god's name in a frivolous way or a light fashion the way people use it almost like a cuss word or an emotional expression um but i i would disagree okay so in the text of the say the ten commandments for instance not taking god's name in vain it probably has to do with taking oaths not taking oaths in god's name and then failing to fulfill them or lying in god while using god's name to try to like you know it's like when we i swear on and you you name something the bible or on my kids or on god or god's throne or something and it's true that it would apply to that but i think my opinion is while that's true and you could talk scholars can talk about how in the context of genesis and in the context of exodus when these things are being circulated circulating with the israelites that it's like hey this is about o's but does that mean it's only about oaths see that's a good observation it's about ohs but is it only about o's it's written very generically it's it don't take god's name in vain is a very very broad statement and so personally i'm operating with the assumption that this does apply to just casually throwing out god's name in an empty fashion now you could say well that limits it to god's name which i would say in scripture is yahweh or jehovah or jehovah someone pronounce it okay so does that mean i can take i can say god and say that in vain no right because this isn't just about the technicalities we're talking about this is about honoring god and who he is and saying his his name or speaking of him always with honor always with appropriate humility with appropriate like love adoration towards god at all times that is to me the heart of this thing what's the heart of this command and so somebody who throws out god's name as a cuss word is definitely violating the love of god our number one command right to love god with all our heart soul mind and strength so it does apply to that is what i'm saying i think it does apply to casual empty statements about god um mockery uh just just vain or empty ways of talking about god i think it applies to all of that stuff so then the question that says okay well if that's the case you know here's the things i wrestle with um and forgive me if i don't have the right answer for you guys on this one when i watch a show i'm not just observing it i'm actually helping promote it right people are making money because i watch it because either advertisers are paying them or i'm paying a subscriber a subscription thing or i download it off some website that has ads that i'm using to monitor to watch this thing um i or maybe i pay for a service that gives me access to thousands of movies and shows but they monitor which shows people actually watch and so effectively there's money changing hands because i'm partaking in the entertainment of this stuff there's some kind of money changing hands going on which means that i am financially supporting the things that it took to make this product now if there's somebody who's like say drunk on screen they're not actually drunk usually they're not literally drunk so i'm not supporting drunkenness it's a portrayal of drunkenness for whatever end is it glorifying it is it good is it bad but when they speak god's name in vain it seems like there's no context uh there's little context that makes this justifiable it's true that in scripture sometimes people blaspheme and scripture records it but it records it for a good purpose and so there could be a good purpose of recording a person saying god's name in vain right because it's part of a story that you need to tell and it involves this i i don't think that is truthful truth in my opinion i don't think it's truthfully in vain because there's a purpose and an intent that's actually good um you know as you communicate the story so they blasphemed christ in the in the gospels but we don't think that the authors of the gospels did wrong for recording it right there was a good purpose behind it so there could be some context where it's good it's generally not okay though right uh most of the time we're looking at stuff that's just wrong all that being said can i watch a show that i know ahead of time let's say it caught you by surprise let's just set that off off the table for now that you know ahead of time you're watching the show you're re-watching a series you're watching a movie you've seen before and you know 15 times in this two-hour program they're going to take god's name in vain and there's no contextual justification for it that you can think of is it okay to watch it i want to say i want to say yes because i want to watch it but so far i can't think of a good justification and if you tell me it doesn't affect me mike then i'm like good i'm glad it doesn't affect you but it's not about you it's about god and his name and so maybe maybe the reason why i struggle answering this question is because i don't want to fall into this super strict category of i can't watch this and i can't watch that but perhaps i'm the frog in the kettle i'm the person who's who's sitting here saying i've got so many reasons why i don't want to restrict my own behaviors here that i'm the problem evaluating this question and that may be the case i'm not really sure the right answer here i want to say take some liberties follow your conscience but in reality a hard time justifying that maybe maybe it's time to rethink my own enjoyment of entertainment for the sake of loving god and not just having strict rules for my life but of loving christ of honoring god and all that i do and i don't know maybe maybe i can readdress this at some other point i just want to take a moment and say hey guys i'm sorry that i've got some dropped frames again this happened last week when i did some other stuff i'm gonna continue with the stream i did some speed tests i thought my internet was doing all right i hope that you guys aren't having problems there maybe you could let me know in the live chat if if you see me clearly or if there's pauses and drop frames going on i would just like to know let's move on to question number two since i i'm still struggling personally with question number one i need to think about this some more felicia uh ciosiola i'm not sure how i pronounce your last name there sorry but felicia says in a video you've you said some things that have been provided on the cross but not fully finished one of them was being free from the enemy's power isn't that finished colossians 1 13 and acts 26 18. um so let me as an example of this kind of category of something that i you know i i'll use the terminology here provided on the cross but hasn't been finished yet um i i wouldn't probably use the word finished i don't think that's the best word to use there i would say you've prov it's been provided for you because of the cross in virtue of the cross but you have not yet fully experienced the benefits of it i would probably put it that way to be more careful so eternal life is one of those things i have eternal life now but i but the eternal life the quality of life i live in glory for all eternity you know in the presence of god like i have the ability to enter into the presence of god like the right to do so by right of the cross by jesus giving laying his rights down and taking my sin and then giving me in a sense some of his rights okay all that that great exchange i have the ability to come into the presence of god unashamed but i'm not actually in god's presence in the fullest i mean he's he's within me but i'll be with him in a bigger way in a closer way in a dearer way in the future when god himself is our light and he's with us and in us and through us and all around us in even greater capacities so that's one example of something like that but you mentioned colossians 1 13 and acts 26 18. let's look at those passages he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son okay this verse you're this is something that god has already done for us he's delivered us from the domain of darkness right he's transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son okay that's true this relates to your question because you were like um being free from the enemy's power is that finished are we are we fully completely and utterly in every capacity free from the enemy's power um sort of but let me let me read another verse before we we talk about this acts 26 18 to open their eyes so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of satan to god that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me so this is what's going to happen to this is jesus telling paul what he's going to be doing as he preaches the gospel to others so that's why it's red letters here right but we're delivered from the power of satan is a christian delivered from the power of satan or not well yes we are but we're still in the world and i think i would i would consider this um it has to do with our wills right and whose kingdom we belong to when you're in the kingdom of satan you're in the kingdom of darkness then you are blind to the truth of the gospel of christ you're not aware of the truth of the gospel of christ you're also not aware you're not receiving it it's not part of you know your your faith and your beliefs but you're also um you've got some other things going on you've got the forgiveness of your sins whereas in in satan's kingdom you're part of the condemnation that satan experiences as well as all who are in his kingdom part of the rebellion against god so you're delivered from that rebellion you're also delivered from the power and the control of satan but that doesn't mean there can't be any influence of satan in your life as a christian so i can be delivered from that kingdom i'm not part of the corporate kingdom of satan but it doesn't mean there's absolutely no influence that satan can have in my life now that might seem like a strange thing to say um let me let me let me look for a specific verse for you here um i'm thinking of galatians let me see if i can find it and then i'll take you guys to it i'll go to second corinthians 2 corinthians 2 11. um so this passage um i'll just start reading from verse 10. uh oh hold on let me go with the bigger text second corinthians 2 11. backing up just a bit uh anyone whom you forgive i also forgive indeed what i've forgiven i've forgiven anything if i forgive anything has been for your sake in the presence of christ uh right now it seems in second corinthians two what paul's talking about is bringing people sort of back into the body of christ after they have they had ongoing rebellious sin they were like rejected from the fellowship as a result but in the hopes that they would repent and return so not like an angry mean thing but a hey there's consequences for your decisions then they come back and he's like forgive them i forgive them welcome them back hold nothing against them they've turned from those things verse 11 he says so that we would not be outwitted by satan for we're not ignorant of his designs so he realized there's an ongoing struggle the church has with satan still and now satan meaning that satan himself was bugging the corinthians no probably satan's kingdom right this is part of that whole kingdom mentality of those who are fighting against the gospel fighting against christ satan's sort of the puppet master behind a lot of that but he's not necessarily the agent doing everything that the bible says satan does because he's like giving credit right now um if if if the u.s army does something then with president biden in office you could say biden does it even though he's not the one actually doing it right because he's he's the one who's like the chief the commander-in-chief um so yeah we we have an ongoing struggle with satan right we're we're actually to put on the armor of god in ephesians because we have a struggle against satan that we still have like it's a legitimate battle that we go through and um uh let me take you to uh the armor of god right be strong in the lord ephesians chapter six and in the strength of his might put on the whole armor of god that you may be able to what stand against the schemes of the devil race because what we don't wrestle against flesh and blood people but we're wrestling against all these spiritual realities and battles that are going on so are we freed yes are we still in a battle that's ongoing yes the way in which we're freezing we switched kingdoms but we're still part of the battle between the kingdoms which by the way is a red rover battle it's sort of like the old kids game red rover it's kind of like that in that we're trying to see people from from satan's kingdom come over to our kingdom we're not trying to destroy them we're against the powers controlling the people but we're for the people trying to see them transferred over to the kingdom of light i hope that answers your question and um we'll move on to number three so our fish has a question thank you for your dedication to helping others understand scripture i've learned a lot from you thank you are ronald fish i don't know what your first name is but um the the the the messages that we get like this about the impact it's had in your guys lives is very encouraging very very encouraging to me i'm grateful for that uh could you explain the difference between the aaronic levitical and melchizedek priesthoods usually it's called the melchizedekian priesthood but yeah let me talk a bit a little bit about that so the aaronic priesthood usually refers to well let me start with levitical priesthood the levitical priests are those who are doing the stuff you read about in leviticus they're priests in particular operating in the temple in the in the tabernacle depending on where you are in the old testament at the time or the temple and there they're doing the sacrifices they're or i should say they're more preparing the the sacrifices preparing all the sundry things moving the tabernacle here and there doing all sorts of tasks that priests have and they're spread throughout israel they're also meant to be i think teachers to the people they're supposed to learn and understand the word and be able to help teach it to others the aaronic priesthood is kind of like a subcategory because the name levitical priesthood gets gets their name from what tribe of israel they were they were the levites so technically the entire tribe is the levites they're levitical in a sense and the priests are those who are of a certain age and they are doing certain tasks to help out with everything related to the temple in that whole system the aaronic priesthood is like a subclass within the levitical priesthood they're all levites but specifically they're descendants of aaron aaron is the guy right when moses you know parts to sea when he does all this his brother aaron is right there with him he's the first high priest of israel and from aaron's descendants that's where you would get the high priests and that's where you would get the priests who would do more of the like more important roles in the tasks of the temple more of the sacrificial stuff going inside of the actual tabernacle itself this is more ironic priesthood so they had like um they're they're a class within the priests levitical priests and then aaronic priests these get to have the highest most important jobs in the temple that they they all represent christ in a different fashion but the aaronic priesthood represents christ in the greatest fashion he's our one person who goes before all people and um and represents us before god but then the melchizedekian priesthood is very different than the other two so melchizedek we read about in the book of genesis he comes up very briefly abraham his the story is that lot and his uh family are taking and other people around him are taking captive a bunch of people and abraham takes basically an army a militia of men and they go and they rescue lot and his people and there's a bunch of spoils from this war from this battle that went on these five kings that they fought and they're on their way back to deliver you know these people back to um to their homes and on their way back abraham meets melchizedek melchizedek is he's not jesus i don't believe he's jesus i have a whole video on this you could look up mike winger melchizedek it should pop right up so if you want more details this is just a quick answer melchizedek is the king of salem right or or good chance this is modern or you know modern jerusalem is where salem was there's more than one salem so there's some debate on which location it was i leaned towards thinking it's jerusalem so he's the king of salem his name melchizedek means king of righteousness and he's a picture of jesus in a number of ways so here's a few of them real quick right melchizedek he is brings bread and wine to abraham and abraham gives him a tithe of 10 of all of the spoils from this battle and this is to say that hebrews uses this to say so abraham is somehow showing that melchizedek is greater than abraham is abraham's lesser than melchizedek why is this he's just this random dude he's a king and he's a priest interesting and he's greater than abraham i guess i'm getting i'm going to get too long in this so i'll give you the short answers okay melchizedek's like jesus because he's the king of king of salem or the king of peace as jesus is the king of peace also he's the he's the king of kings reigning from jerusalem right so jesus is the king of salem in a very literal sense also his name means king of righteousness well jesus is the king of righteousness and he's the righteous king melchizedek is a high priest he's a priest right he's also a king jesus has both roles priest and king and he fulfills son of david right and the aaronic priesthood are both fulfilled in christ we also have the tithe being given because just as melchizedek is better than abraham so jesus is greater than abraham and hebrews points this out from abraham come the levites and come the whole priesthood system melchizedek is of a different kind of priesthood order that's better than what's in the law that's really important because jesus he's the next melchizedek this is from psalms uh 105 is it 10101 104. 110. it's right in there uh where it says that milk that jesus the messiah he's going to be a high priest according to the order of melchizedek okay so jesus and melchizedek are the only two people that are of the order of melchizedek the order of melchizedek is is following the pattern of melchizedek it's not like the aaronic priesthood where every son of aaron had the potential of being an ironic high priest is not like the levitical priesthood were every son of levi melchizedek is not genetically connected to jesus rather melchizedek is a model a type of what christ will be like and this is embedded in genesis so that we would know there's a bigger plan about the ultimate messiah that's bigger than even the law and the law only speaks to him the priesthood only speaks to him he's the priesthood after the order the priest after the order of melchizedek so that's melchizedek melchizedek's primary role is typology he doesn't have a genealogical ancestry of a bunch of melchizedekian priests modern-day mormonism thinks that they have the melchizedek mechizedekian priesthood that they are priests according to the order of melchizedek there are 17 year olds that come to your door 18 year olds depending on whatever age they are they come to your door they believe they are priests according to the order of melchizedek but that's like an unbiblical thing there's only two people melchizedek and jesus that fit that bill all right let's go to the next question number four and um jay uh uh siansa or chiangcha says giancia i don't know how does one justify god's directive to kill the oh just skipped to kill the amalekites specifically the children and even infants in first samuel 15 3. this is a question i've received a bunch of times before i answer this i want to say no more questions for today we have all 20 already loaded i've got them now from you guys that we just picked up i'm gonna answer as many as i can and i hope hopefully it's of great benefit to you so how do we justify god's order to kill the amalekites specifically the children and even infants in first samuel 5 15 3 there's a couple different approaches people take to this passage i'm going to mention a couple because i'm not entirely sure which one is correct now here's the verse now go and strike the strike amalek and devote to destruction all that they have but do not spare them but kill both man and woman child and infant ox and sheep camel and donkey so every every living thing um let me see there's a paul copan c-o-p-a-n you can look him up and you can find him online doing lectures and talking about this passage he's devoted he's a scholar legit scholar who devoted a lot of time and energy to this very topic he has a book called called is god a moral monster another book that's just recently come out that also addresses this issue which i'll plug for this is dan kimball's book how not to read the bible you can see the subtitle here which you might find interesting anti-women anti-science pro-violent pro-slavery this is this is the opinion people have of the bible and he's going to talk about all those types of issues so those are books i'd recommend i'll give you my off the top of the head answer which is um pokemon's approach is that this destruction is is hyperbolic language and that sounds convenient to people when it's convenient that's really convenient it's not really literally killing man woman child infant oxen sheep um but paul copeland actually builds a case for this and there's there's a reason to think it might be hyperbolic because it will say that they killed they did this they fulfilled this and all the amalekites are gone and then we have more amalekites like a couple chapters later okay so there's some hyperbole going on here of some kind it seems and they'll say this was normal this was typical language if you if you use this language it's a language of destruction or destroy that town so that's possible um another possibility is that and they would point this i think polka pence says the same thing that um this location these amalekites this location is not a town like you're thinking of it's more of a military depot okay so it's it's a it's a military target that's also possible as but i want to back up one step from all this and i want to suggest this something that i think many people today are going to find extremely that we we lose our genuine reverence and fear of god that's appropriate and proper so i think humans who say i'm gonna go and just kill fill in the blank that that's wrong and we know that that's morally wrong but god is not us god is not a man he's not a human and he's not limited by the things that limit us i think that god has a right to do what he wants with his creation this is something i truly believe i think it's irrational i think it's immoral to suggest that he doesn't have a right to do what he wants with his creation including judging corporately groups or individuals and he doesn't seem to even have to feel like he's got to explain it to us always i'm going to do this because it's what's right and what i'm going to do i think that god has that right and that if you don't believe this about god that god who created the universe who created you designed your dna who made you like you're a living soul because he made you if you don't have this in your mind then you're going to have a hard time trying to go and evaluate what god has done or at least what scripture gives us about what god has done in the past i know that this is an unsatisfying answer for some people i think there's a lack of respect for god in this in this case let me add a few other details that might help um infants who die like you don't have a right to kill him i don't have a right to kill but i think god does actually like that's that's the you i mean like we used to say this phrase like who do you think you are god because behind this phrase is the idea that god has a right to do what he wants with his creation so but infants who die um according to scripture i believe that this group this biblical teaching is that they go to be in the presence of god so that while he was judging a community and he's judging a culture yet these individuals are being brought into his presence for all eternity and they will see that they were they were the collateral damage of judgment that was to show god's righteousness and to to deal with sin in the earth but then they're ushered into god's presence forever so like here the thousands of years in god's presence or thousands of years with with peace and a moment of of terror truly to show the wickedness of sin i think that that makes sense i i would i don't have a right to call out when that's supposed to happen i'm not god but i think god does and that's honestly is my answer to you i think this often comes down to [Music] not the issue of understanding the judgments but the issue of whether we think we have a right to tell god that he's wrong god is perfect he's morally good he's holy but he also has a moral right to do what he wants with his creation and if he decided to just nuke the entire planet earth right now with all of the people on it that would that would be his prerogative to do that i think that's the fear of the lord and i think it's the beginning of wisdom and it's going to be hard to answer tough questions like this without the beginning of wisdom in our lives so how does one justify god's directive in a sense i don't i i say i want to understand it better but i don't have to justify it because god has a right to do what he wants with his creation that's it now the only thing i'll add to this is you know this much of the story right you know this much of the story you don't know all the surrounding issues you generally people don't want to know the surrounding issues because they often want to use these these passages to like demonize scripture and others may answer this better i know dan campbell gets into more details i read a section of his book where he talks about this you might check that out how to how not to read the bible um and he's not paying me to say that all right so i'm going to tackle the next question which is going to be from ricardo sierra hello pastor mike my question is what would be your opinion on well sound on well slash sound doctrine pastors who share stages with false prophets will they be considered guilty by association uh ricardo that's a tough choice to make so like i get invited to speak at a lot of things now and i actually just say no all the time because i know what i'm focused on and i'm going to stay focused on that but there's times where i'm invited to share or go do something and i know someone would share a stage there and it would be someone i disagree with and then i've now that i've been the guy in that spot being offered that role to be able to talk i i wonder i might do it just to reach people like i'm reaching here's a community that i think there's there's issues in but they're still my brothers and sisters but there's problems but i could bring light i could bring help i could bring you know understanding and yet if i share a stage with this person perhaps it will without me even saying it perhaps it will lend my support towards them people will think i'm endorsing them because i just happen to be speaking at an event they're also speaking at and this is probably not usually the case most of the time speakers who are speaking at an event they don't endorse everybody at that event they just think they can bring some benefit to the people there so i think for us we might tone down and tone it down a bit and go you know just because you share a stage with somebody like at an event like you might not even know when they were there maybe you didn't know they were there and you had other reasons why you thought it was worth doing i wouldn't judge people too much for who they share a stage with now it's different if as a pastor i bring somebody into my church that implies my endorsement of what they're going to say because i brought them there but if i'm the guest and you're the guest i don't want to pretend that we're endorsing each other we're both just guests we're both invited to be part of it so i think we should have a little bit of grace towards that um one of the dangers in my view with this stuff is there are those of us who care very deeply about doctrine like me and you and uh we can start to be like there's so many teachers out there i just want like a list of who's approved and who's not approved and this can become a little bit hazardous because what we do is we go okay well i know this person's no good who's everyone he's ever done anything with okay they're definitely no good okay now who's everyone who's done anything with any of those guys okay now they're not any good and so pretty soon we start calling people uh heretics or false teachers or false prophets because of their second and third tier association with somebody else who we think is is false and in all this life is complicated we just have to let it be complicated um i would rather judge a teacher based upon what they teach not who they share this stage with that's my short my short answer on that uh stephanie draggers said dragged gerb but you guys have some hard last names today dreider says hebrews 12 verses 5 through 6 it quotes proverbs 3 verses 11 and 12 why does the end of verse 6 say scourge not correct i get the first part but to say god brutally whips every believer sounds like a misquote why does it imply that thanks let's look at this together shall we um proverbs first let's look at proverbs proverbs 3 3 verse 11 and 12 and we'll talk about how the new testament quotes this my son do not dis despise the lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof for the lord reproves whom he loves as a father the son in whom he delights okay let me this is the esv let's look at these same what are the words being used about the reproof okay don't reproof don't despise his discipline then we have here's the nasb different translation my son do not reject the discipline of the lord or loathe his reproof whom the lord loves he reproves okay so it's in discipline reproof are the words being used here let's look at the say the niv my son do not despise the discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the lord disciplines those he loves as a father the son he delights in all right now we're going to look at hebrews chapter 12 verses 5 and 6. he says have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons and then quotes proverbs my son do not regard lightly the discipline of the lord nor be weary when reproved by him for the lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives now that's the word chastise is probably that stands out here because chastising implies like like some sort of punishment that you feel okay in the analogy of of a father and son let's look at the nasb of the same one have you forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons my son do not regard lightly the discipline of the lord nor faint when you are reproved by him for those whom the lord disciplines loves he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives okay so this one's probably even more clear scourges verse six is really the the interesting verse here niv says chastens everyone he accepts as his son now oftentimes what you've got to try to explain this what you've got in these new testament passages is a quote of perhaps a septuagint or the greek translation that was available to them at the time they're writing in greek in hebrew in the book of hebrews right and so when they go to quote a scripture they may be quoting a greek translation of the old testament they had available at the time so actually quoting the hebrew they're quoting a translation of the hebrew into greek that may be the reason for the differences here now what's interesting to me this is really such a side note it's interesting to me that the authors of the new testament don't seem to be too hung up on translations the they do care about them don't get me wrong it's not like we shouldn't care like the passion translation is a bad translation right the message is not a reliable source for really accurately understanding the text right generically understanding it perhaps but not really accurately carefully in my opinion but um but it's interesting to me that the new testament authors thought it was like okay that translations they record things slightly differently and this wasn't like a big hang up for them now on other in other places now i don't know if this is a direct quote from the step two i'd have to actually go look it up in in a commentary and try to find out or look up the septuagint itself and see does it use the word chastises in proverbs 3 11. but um a broader point i want to make is this translations are okay translations are okay i'm looking at multiple translations you can look at multiple translations now the word chastises is not the same it seems identical to the word that's being used in the hebrew in proverbs but is it is it a fair representation of it and i think the answer here is yes so as a father disciplines his son so the lord disciplines or rebukes or reproves those who who he loves the only reason why a father and son imagery is being brought into place in proverbs is because fathers actually punish their kids right you don't do the same kind of discipline towards other non-children people in your life but towards your kids you discipline them proverbs definitely speaks of discipline as being physical discipline right when when a kid's small there's like an actual physical discipline you know the phrase spare the rod spoil a child now we react to this like oh that's abuse well it can be abuse it can be abused but the same bible is telling us to love people and this is our primary call so we're not talking about that we're talking about appropriate fatherly discipline to children so something our culture doesn't like but is a good thing i think contextually the the proverbs passage it's implying chastening or scourging in that same fatherly sense not the way that jesus was scourged right that's a different kind of scourging we're talking about a father disciplining the son whom he loves we're not talking about rage we're not talking about wrath those are all modern ways of just demonizing the text of scripture but now let me go back to your question and read how you worded it because i think the way you worded it is concerning a little bit here so let me just be straight with you about it um stephanie says i get the first part but to say god brutally whips every believer sounds like a misquote what does it imply thanks so scourging can be what jesus had when they ripped his flesh apart with these catalyning tails type device or it can also be a spanking like a a an appropriate age-appropriate non-violent like not abusive spanking that's possible too and and so that obviously is what's implied because in context it's a father who loves his son and out of love providing the proper discipline so it's not brutally whips that's not the context like that's a translation that i think even the apostles would say that's too far so that there you go hopefully that helps uh kristin linker has a question or did i skip one or did i just forget oh i did skip one i did them out of order because i'm switched six and seven i did them out of order ricardo sierra has a question this should have been number six hello pastor mike my question is what would be your opinion on well or no i already did that what did i miss did i just not hear the button whatever i'm going to eight kristen linker says james 1 15 ends with and sin when full grown gives birth to death if we're in christ what does he mean by death is he speaking about unbelievers any insight to this verse is helpful yeah powerful verse okay james chapter 1 verse 15. it talks about the origin of sin his main point here let's not miss the main point his main point is let no one say when he's tempted on being tempted by god don't blame your temptations on god this is actually part of a the well gosh it's part of a lot of movements today i want to pick one but it's actually part of several movements i'm this way because god made me this way um so like i know the atheist and mythicist richard carrier came out as polyamorous not too long ago he's like i'm polyamorous i'm not designed to be faithful to one woman i'm supposed to have lots of ladies um right here's what i would say let no one say when he's tempted i'm being tempted by god like this is how i was made now he's an atheist so he doesn't think god made him that way but this is the progressive christian version of it is god made me this way so i'm supposed to act it out well that's what james 1 13 seems to be pushing against don't say it's god who who's doing this to you here's your right perspective on temptation god cannot be tempted with evil he himself tempts no one but each one is each person is tempted when he's lured away and enticed by his own desire this is why a healthy christian worldview will will look at desires as a potential problem not always a problem right because i desire to honor god i desire to to be a good husband like those are good desires but i'm tempted when i'm lured and enticed by my own desire so i realize my heart's a mixed bag it gives me good things it gives me bad things any a view of humanity that doesn't acknowledge that my heart can be the source of temptation for bad things is gonna lead me into a train wreck of a life and a lot of our modern sexual ethic in particular side note here is based on the idea that what your heart really really wants is something you should really really get that's dangerous and that's definitely not a christian worldview it's not consistent with christ it's not consistent with scripture there's no version of christianity where that works but each one is tempted when he's lured away lured and enticed by his own desire then it talks about the progression so that's temptation you have not actually sinned yet you've been tempted you want something you have not sinned just by wanting it like you're you're attracted to that person over there you have not sinned yet then when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin now the debate here for some people is like what does it mean when desire is conceived and i would suggest that desire is conceived when it like joins to your will there's like a joining of i want something in my heart and now i'm making a decision to yield myself to it now it gives birth to sin now it creates sin so i treat those desires as something that's happening to me not something i'm willing i'm choosing to yield to once i choose to yield to it whether it becomes fantasy or i take actions based on it now it becomes sin then there's the passage the statement you asked about here and sin when it's fully grown brings forth death sin when it's fully grown brings forth death when my sin grows up i die it's interesting that sin when it has its fullest life brings in me death when it reaches its greatest level of maturity i die that's just such an interesting like and stark contrast because when we feed our sin it does feel like we're in we could feel like we're giving life to something in us that we think is wonderful but the end result of this thing is going to be death now the question you have is how does this apply to believers is sin gonna is is death here gonna be like like death death like um the second death like judgment or is it death of something else um well james doesn't really specify i don't think i mean i'm sorry he just doesn't seem to specify he could be talking about when you when you fully give your life over to sin you finally end up you know apart from god forever like that's a possible understanding of this but it's also possible he's just saying sin kills things it's it's going to bring forth death into your life it's going to bring death and harm and suffering into your life and that could also be true right like your your sin killed your marriage your sin kills your reputation your sin kill you know so there's an element where you could say okay it could apply to that i don't know how often they would use the word death in that kind of context you killed this thing in my life that was important to me that's possible too it could also be that you um well what i'm saying here is there's an ambiguity here the point is that sin kills sin kills that's the point if you want to say i'm going to apply this to like whether believers can lose their salvation or not i think you're going to have to read that into the text i think it's not clear what the text is saying about the potential fate of believers versus non-believers this is one of many passages when it comes to once saved always saved where you're going to take the beliefs you already have and you're going to read them into the passage that's just what you're going to have to do because it because it leaves ambiguity here it just doesn't answer your question so my recommendation is you go to other passages to establish the your beliefs about once saved always saved and then you you go i have this biblical grid now i apply it to this passage as well to clear up the ambiguity and on that issue i don't have uh i don't have more clarity for you on that so going to number nine um arrivederci five says i'm struggling with trusting and wanting christ how do you stop keeping the holy spirit at arm's length distance spiritually um well arrived this is a very important question it's a very deep question but it's also like a super personal question my my best advice to you is have this conversation with somebody who is older in the lord than you and who is mature and who you think you can trust with the details of what's going on in your life have this conversation with them like just really honestly please survey in your life who is available to you and reach out and and and pick the best option you've got and tell them the details you're dealing with i will give you some encouragement though because i'm not trying to leave you high and dry i'm just letting you know this is going to be insufficient because you need some back and forth you need some one-on-one back and forth and i can't do this because of there's too many uh requests for it it's impossible for me so uh here's here's the thought um you said i'm struggling with trusting and wanting christ how do you stop keeping the holy spirit at arm's length distance spiritually um you can you can you can make decisions about your will you can't make decisions about your heart like you don't actually get to pick what your heart's gonna do um but you can make decisions that will eventually affect your heart the analogy i give all the time someone gave me years ago is that you're like a train and the the the um the engine car that's in the front of the train this is like your your faith and your will these are the choices you make and then the caboose of the car is like your heart now if you let the caboose drive the train you're gonna be in a lot of trouble because the heart's gonna go all over the place but if you make decisions based on faith you'll turn a corner right in your life but your heart doesn't feel it yet eventually if you just stay steadfast on that path this new direction of drawing near to god of obeying god in your life of choosing to trust god eventually the heart will make around the corner as well almost dropped that this is my this is my remote by the way this is how i make the numbers go up and down i feel like i'm gonna set off a bomb every time i push the button so that being said um stop focusing on what you want and how you feel and instead this is my counsel hopefully it's on target for you focus on just doing right things just doing right things and honoring christ in behaviors and actions that's a will thing i'm just going to do this because it honors christ i'm just going to get in the word i'm just going to pray i'm just going to worship whether i feel it or not i am just going to turn from this sin and engage in this godly behavior instead and so you you move it away from trying to fix your heart and you instead fix your focus upon christ your life upon christ and you let your heart work itself out over time be patient you'll get there having my counsel and i have lived through that myself i believe it's true uh tony ocean oshikunlu says does luke 12 44-48 teach purgatory there are four servants the faithful one sent to unbelievers and then two others that only receive punishment not casting out let's look at the passage luke 12 4 24 through 48. this is probably a really good example of a tough passage to respond to um which i like because sometimes it's the challenging questions that help us really flesh out our understanding of topics so luke 12 44 truly i say to you he will set him over all his possessions but if that servant says to himself my master's delaying is coming and begins to beat the male and female servants and to eat and get drunk the master of that servant will come on a day he does not expect him and in an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful and that servant may have lost my spot and that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will or receive a severe beating but the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating everyone to whom much was given of him much will be required and from him to whom they entrusted much they will demand the more um okay so let me read the question again and see how you've interpreted this past this is the end of a parable jesus tells i won't get into the whole parable i think a lot of you guys are familiar with parables in general you could look it up luke 12 starting in verse 35 i guess so you say there's four servants the faithful the one ones into unbelievers and then two others that only receive punishment not casting out okay um i don't know that there actually are four let's just read the whole parable okay let's just make sure we get this right stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes truly i say to you he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table and he will come and serve them if he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them awake blessed are those servants but know this that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief was coming he would not have left his house to be broken into you also must be ready for the son of man is coming in an hour you do not expect peter said lord are you telling us parable for us or for all and the lord said who then is the faithful and wise manager gives him another parable in response who then is the faithful and wise manager whom the lord will set over his household to give them portion of their portion of food at the proper time blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes the idea is we should be found faithful faithfully serving god faithfully blessing others when he returns truly i say to you he will set him over all his possessions and there's like a future uh government of god and you'll be in it and your your role in it seems different based on that faithfulness but if that servant says to himself my master is delayed in his coming and begins to beat the male and female servants and to eat and drink and get drunk the master of that servant will come on a day he does not expect him and so at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful the implication here is that there may be in my mind there may be people who are serving like they're even in positions of authority in the church he doesn't say whether they were saved or not saved but they have roles of authority in the church and they're abusing the people of god and then they are cut into it you know cut in pieces in the analogy they're given judgment is what it seems right there these people are not ultimately saved but the idea is is not about i think who saved and who's not saved i think the idea is about there's a reckoning about how we handle our our lives and how we obey christ one day and that servant who knew his master's will now these are not i think two different categories of servants you have the faithful and the unfaithful servant i think rather this is about how extremely will we be judged this is not two additional people in the parable this is rather a new lesson at the end of the parable and that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act so this is with knowledge according to his will receive a severe beating okay because you knew it and you didn't do it you're gonna get a severe beating you know there's greater here's here's the bottom line the beating is is an analogy what's the beating well whatever god does to fulfill that but the point is you knew what to do when you didn't do it it's going to be worse for you judgment's worse for you but the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating in other words judgment is proportional jesus is now talking about future judgment and his lesson here is it's proportional that's all i get out of this it's proportional future judgment's proportional um somebody who it they they face god they stand before god on judgment day and they were largely ignorant of the gospel of christ they lived a life where they sinned and they just kind of like you know there wasn't this obvious act of resistance to god but there was sin they did they did reject the revelation of god in creation they rejected what god was telling me with their conscience they they didn't honor god in their life there's going to be suffering for that then there's a person who like actively went out there to to destroy the gospel of christ even though somewhere in their mind they kind of knew it was true but they just hated it right like they're going to get much worse judgment they knew and they did it um yeah to everyone who to whom much is given of him much will be required and from him to whom they entrusted much they will demand the more so i i just don't know that i would go beyond that um let me look at your question one more time here before we move on there's four servants the faithful the one sent to unbelievers and then two others they'll only receive punishment not casting out see i would disagree i think there's two servants then there is a discussion about degrees of punishment based upon knowledge and i would interpret the parable that way so therefore is it about purgatory um no um because the the state of those people whether they're saved or unsaved is not mentioned we don't know what's going on with those those two they receive different beatings okay those could both be condemned they could both be people who are in hell ultimately and they suffer depending on the pun this the sins they've committed and the knowledge they had which means degrees of punishment that are equal to what they've done this may have nothing to do with purgatory now the one thing i'll add is this a lot of people will try to find purgatory in a passage where it doesn't actually teach purgatory so what i kind of want is the bible to teach me that there is a such a place as purgatory then i could i could say it's an option for a passage like this but because the bible doesn't actually give us purgatory anywhere it's hard to like we're doing our theology backwards we're going that could happen in purgatory and i'm like well technically it could but the passage didn't say anything about purgatory you'd have to assume purgatory to put those guys in purgatory if we're just talking about two destinations heaven and hell then i wouldn't that would imply that um those people are in hell so to speak in at least at some point all right let's look at the next question number 10. did i do it again number 11. wolfpack says hey mike a lot of classical art has nudity in it like the statue of david how should christians approach this art is it okay to like it or to make art similar to it thank you and god bless wolfpack i have given this some thought and um i haven't really changed my opinion all that much over the years i think classical art well let me put it this way we all should agree that pornography is wrong morally wrong that viewing naked images of other people that you're they're not your spouse right and you're not like father taking care of your little baby or something like that but looking at naked images of other people is wrong this is something that's wrong this has to do with the fact that man man is still in a fallen state and we need to not do this um it's considering considered a shameful thing an embarrassing thing you know it's a wrong thing but what if they're really really artfully done naked images like i just i just have to admit um at least you're asking me my opinion here my opinion is there's no substantial difference between high quality pornographic images and low quality pornographic images when it comes to morality i don't see the moral difference here and so i what i see is man is sinful man wants to do sinful things this is this is you know we're going to sell clothing okay we'll get the most attractive woman we can to be in our clothes because it's gonna cause more sales because that's the way it works we'll make our clothes more low-cut we'll make our clothes more revealing we'll make them more and more and more and more and more and we'll make it high art but we'll do high art now and i i just honestly can't conceive of any significant moral difference between low art taking pictures of women with my phone drawing naked women with my hand versus high art you know a great skilled artist makes a naked person out of marble like now it's okay and i can tell you i remember being a 12 year old boy 12 year old boy doesn't see no difference between those two told your boy's not like this is high art right that's what the boy thinks is he's looking at this shirtless woman sculpture yeah he's just thinking this is this is different this is art no he's not he's like whoa i like that that's just our carnal nature so i see i honestly see no difference there i think that what man does is we take our sin and we dress it up in the in the prettiest image we can we call it art and this has infected a lot of a lot of the art of our world um my honest thought on that i do believe that that's true and yeah number 12 i'm having trouble understanding the morality of deuteronomy 22 28 and 29 some say it's consensual but this contradicts second samuel 13. i'll go to these passages how do you interpret it and justify the morality of this law let's just look at the first two passages and try to figure out what this dilemma is really all about deuteronomy 22 verses 28 and 29 if a man meets a virgin who's not betrothed and seizes her and lies with her and they're found then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman 50 shekels of silver and she shall be his wife because he has violated her he may not divorce for all his days um and then i'll come back to that in a second and then let's look at the first samuel second samuel passage second samuel 13 verses 14 through 16. we are full on questions just so everybody knows i'm just running through the ones we've already received for today you have to come back next friday to try to get one in you got to come right at the time it starts i apologize if that's inconvenient for your schedule we have to have a way of doing it uh but he would not listen to her and being stronger than she he violated her and lay with her then amnon hated her this is amnon who rapes his sister his like half-sister and um he's the son of david and they're in the royal you know homes or whatever uh then after he rapes her it says he hated her with very great hatred so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her and amnon excuse me amnon said to her get up go but she said to him no my brother for this is wrong and sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me but he would not listen to her and so he he kicks her out he refuses and side note amnon rapes his sister his half-sister because he loves her he loves sick it's actually literally the pastor says he's love sick and then um then he hates her immediately afterwards and i think that this is a really good red flag for us if um if we follow our hearts oh but i'm just in love i'm in love and love is justification for then doing things with people that are before the time then what amnon did was was only wrong because she didn't consent but notice that what he did he then hates her because he's embarrassed he's ashamed this is what we can do a lot a man will say sin with a woman and then he hates the woman he sinned with because she's a reflection of his shame now and this is this is what i call mismanaged guilt i don't just hate myself for what i've done i hate you because you're a reflection of my shame and this is one of the many problems with amnon okay but what's the question what's the question here what's the dilemma um in one passage we're told um hey if if if a man seizes a virgin and lies with her and they're found now the debate is okay is it consensual or not let's set this aside is it consensual or not uh maybe it was maybe it's not and then the man who lay with her she'll give the father 50 of the young women 50 shekels of silver he has to be obligated to take care of her now i think that the second passage gives us interesting context to this right look at her attitude she's like this is wrong you know not only have you have you laid with me but now you're sending me away so now i will simply be one who has like lost my virginity who's been slept with and then is less interesting to other men whether it's because they think i'm not going to be faithful or because it's just a cultural stigma the point is that she actually preferred like she actually preferred that he just become her husband now this is because they have different values than you have right we don't value marriage the same way that they did and we don't value the same things that they do like our value of marriage is extremely low in our culture marriage is entirely a self-serving you know feature of humanity in in pop culture not in christian belief not in real biblical views but it's just a self-serving thing you get married because you want to it's about feeding yourself satisfying yourself bringing joy to yourself uh we've removed all the stigma of divorce you've had divorce you've had three divorces we don't want you to feel bad so we've devalued marriage we've made divorce not a big deal so we look it through through this this through very western and eyes and in some cases that can be helpful and some it's harmful realize this what this passage does to me i'm not really entirely sure um where your concerns are here tyler but what this passage does to me is it tells me that it was in the woman's interest that the man was forced to marry her and he couldn't leave her it was in her interest now we read on and they could refuse this the point is the man had no rights the man was required to marry her give the give the money over which is part of the normal deal there for when they joined the families together and then to stick with her and he couldn't leave her the man lost his rights because he violated her rights do you get that he lost his rights because he violated her rights and that the woman very likely was going to say yes i i do prefer this but she could also refuse so the father is the one who speaks for her in this culture and he could say no i do not want this this man so the father being someone hopefully who has wisdom and loves his daughter i don't know why people imagine jerk dads who don't care about their kids making these choices but if you're going to follow the whole of the law then the dad's obviously caring very much about his daughter and so he's going to make a choice that's going to hopefully be the best for her i think this would work in that culture and so i get why it's weird in our culture um but it seems like it's trying to make the best of a really bad situation and that's a lot of times what the law does the law isn't always this is what's best it's more like well this is what's best with the mess that has been created by the sin of man and that's sometimes what we have to deal with what's the best thing to do now that all this big disaster has happened jesus acknowledges this too when he talks about the laws about marriage and he says they go why did moses allow us to divorce our wives and he goes because of the hardness of your hearts so we find that even the whole teaching about divorce is only allowed because men and women create messy sinful situations in life and so it was allowed because of the hardness of hearts and so i would look at laws about like say slavery being allowed because of the hardness of men's hearts laws like this being allowed because this is a real situation that's going to happen and they're they're being given you know the best way to deal with the disaster that has been caused that might give the woman the most rights and take the rights away from the guy actually so that's how i would look at that um some say it's consensual but this contradicts yeah so okay one thing you did say tyler is you suggest that deuteronomy 22 is about specifically rape non-consensual sex the the man rapes the woman and this is because in second samuel she's like you should you should take me now. um i don't think that's a strong case um i guess i'd have to look at the greek or the hebrew and spend some time on it for the for if deuteronomy is about that i just wouldn't say deuteronomy is about rape because second samuel is about rape right because if deuteronomy is about just a man sleeps with a woman who is you know in this situation like then um if that's the situation then it would apply to rape or non-rape right so it would still apply if it was a more of a generic thing to second samuel it may be that it's about rape i don't remember it's been a while since i looked at that in more detail and off the top of my head i don't have it so all right we'll go to the question 13. lovely day to serve the lord that's a nice youtube channel name hey pastor mike we're talking about self-worth in a young ladies group and i wanted to ask what is the biblical view of self-worth um i will say it's complicated and it's extreme my understanding of the biblical view of self-worth is that each of us is made in the image of god and this gives us amazing self-worth the value of you like you are more valuable than a dolphin a monkey a dog a fleet of trucks like you're more valuable than so many other things like one human soul is more valuable than the entire organization and structure of apple right or of large corporations or something or in a sense an individual's bigger and better than a nation so our value is very high but but we're also sinners and we're in the mud and so we've taken this image of this person in the image of god and we've committed sin and we have sinful temptations and sinful tendencies and foolishness is bound up in the hearts of of us from the beginning it says in scripture so my heart's deceitful and desperately wicked so like i'm valuable but i'm not good that's a problem and so it's extreme value way up here goodness like not very high at all and so often times when we want to talk about self-worth we want to speak of how good we feel about ourselves and how good we are and christianity brings us to humility and humbleness to realize like you're not good you're not good not by comparison to god by comparison to people perhaps but but you know if i walk into a prison and i ask who's a good prisoner and i'm only comparing prisoners to prisoners like who did the lesser of the crimes i'm not really measuring goodness here right i'm just i'm just measuring how they you know compared to each other and um as scripture says uh in in one rather long verse that uh comparing ourselves to ourselves is not wise so um the uh yeah the the worth is way up here we have incredible value but we're also in the mud with our sin and we're not good and so christ redeems us but then we become children of god so we go to this roller coaster great value but i'm a but i'm a sinner who's lost and then i give i put my trust and faith in christ he washes me clean now i'm forgiven all that un-goodness is forgiven now i'm adopted i'm a child of god i belong to his kingdom but we're never to let that humility leave us and this is something that uh i think is missing in a lot of the the teaching that goes out to like especially women's groups i don't know why but for some reason in women's groups there's such a desire to feel good about self that we skip over some of these difficult things like if we talk about how we all fall short it's always like um it means the opposite of what scripture means it's like you know we all fall short as in it's no big deal but scripture is like well fall short it's a really big deal we should have a great appreciation for god and him creating a center image we should have an incredible awareness of our humility being brought low because i'm a sinner who's who's lost apart from christ i don't think arrogantly about myself i don't think that my opinion is automatically the best one i don't think that i deserve i deserve i deserve because what i really deserve ends up being some not good stuff because of my sin but then i come to christ and i then i stay humble but my value is restored completely so we have these two extreme views two extreme views and we've got to hold both of them together of the lowness the humility that comes in christ but the great value that there is in our redemption and our initial creation that i think is a biblical value of self-worth and i'll add more to this which is to say that same self-worth applies to every other person right because every other person is is creating the image of god is sin has sinned and fall has fallen short and has the potential of coming to christ and becoming a brother and sister in christ and so i i look at them and i go my self-worth is nothing to do with me comparing me to you we're the same here with the glory and the humility and the mud and all of it mixed together um usually what we see is um i want to feel good about me and that ends up being by comparing myself to others and feeling better than them that's not christian by acting like i'm not a sinner i don't have major issues in my heart that's not a christian thing either that those are the things i'd want to avoid let's look at question 14 and i'll move a little quicker because wow i'm going along today silas abrahamson says how do you deal with pride i find it paradoxical i often get proud of how humble i am and when i notice my pride thus leading to more pride it just gets into an infinite regress of layers of pride um well i'll say this if you're proud of how humble you are you're not really humble at all because humility means that you think rightly of yourself so there's nothing to be proud of with actual humility humility just goes like it's like opening your wallet and saying i got seven dollars which is not very much money and realizing that it's not very much money and then feeling really good about yourself because you acknowledged how little money you have so if you feel good about how how humble you are i would i would argue that there's a good chance that you're not actually being humble you're pretending to be humble and you feel good about how well you're faking it i could be wrong forgive me if this doesn't apply to your life okay so silas i'm sorry if this doesn't apply to you this is just my thinking on the on the issue if i think goodly about me because i'm so humble i'm not really humble like i never was i just was putting on a good act a good act and i started feeling good about how well i was acting man look at how much i'm not taking credit for how good i am i'm doing a really good job there but wait if it's just honesty if humility is just accurate self-image is just seeing me for who i really am not thinking more highly than i should then there's literally nothing to be proud of like true humility doesn't create pride fake humility creates pride because you never really thought that lowly of yourself you were pretending to and you felt really good about how you were treating yourself less than you deserve because you really are great but boy i always treat myself poorly there i was pretty good um there's my thought on that dude joel has a question joel holmberg hi pastor mike in what ways hi joel can we love our neighbor or is it hoel holmberg probably joel right last name holberg i'm guessing is joel not oh well how can we love our neighbor and the lives and live lives that honor god in times like these when many of us can't congregate and instead spend a lot of time at home god bless um maybe i'm being too simplistic here but my answer and i'm trying to move quickly here is um you know loving your neighbor is you have a million opportunities now like here you are online you know you're in you're in social media right now you're typing in the live chat you have a lot of opportunities to love people right now and you have opportunities whether you're sending letters or you're i mean just imagine if you lived in remote alaska whether and you have no neighbors around you for miles and miles you can still love your neighbors you just can't interact with them as often as you would have liked so it's more about like our maybe our attitude for how we do treat people when we encounter them when we go out of our way to be a blessing to them than it is just how often we run into them i would argue that you know sunday morning congregating gathering for sunday church isn't the best opportunity to love my neighbor it's a good opportunity to gather together in fellowship but oftentimes loving my neighbor is like the opportunity how i treat my neighbor when they park in front of my house and i don't like it i mean loving my neighbor in that sense might be like when you when you see people going through a hard time and you try to come alongside an aide and help and assist in some fashion um i i think there's plenty of opportunities to still love our neighbors even if we're not in our normal routines we're probably just not seeing them because we're not perhaps thinking about them we're maybe thinking that opportunities to hang out with people equals loving our neighbors and that maybe that we're just thinking too narrowly about it i'll take the next question aaron rampersad says what do you think about the claim that jesus christ was uh that jesus christ was based off of jesus ben ananias in josephus jewish war oh man um aaron if i've looked into this it was a while back um so let me offer a couple thoughts um jo uh jesus ban been ananias man i'm trying to remember the details about him i have to look him up but i'll just say this um nobody thinks that that's what i'll say like when you look at historians actual legitimate historians like this isn't like a theory that's going to be floated because the reason why it's vague to me is because it's one of many many many theories where they're like jesus is based on and they try to fill in the blank these things are generally ridiculous and i'm going to approach it that way now i say that i've earned the right to say this because i've looked into jesus is based on homer and and jesus is based on um there's like a dozen other different figures that jesus is supposedly based on like he's osiris and he's based on mithra and jesus is really and that's why christmas this and that or jesus is based on um uh one of the videos you've got some of you guys have probably seen because it seems like it's done really well is um uh what's his name um uh something or other i totally spaced on it right now at any rate i looked into enough of these to know a couple things one is they're always bunk they're always lame they're always really bad they're always really thin on evidence they're just vague claims people make they make a couple little connections well this is like that and this is like and then they just move on um i so i know this that when you examine the claims carefully when you look at the timelines when you look at the characters when you look at the writings of the gospels i mean how is it that in first corinthians 15 we're getting like jesus the gospel being preached the death and resurrection of christ is being preached within a few years in jerusalem within a few years of the events happening at minimum i mean probably within days in reality right but for sure historically within a few years yet you know that jesus spent in ananias and josephus jewish war at least his jewish war wasn't even written yet right like he's still a little boy he's like he's like a baby or something at this time so i think um like that stuff just historically doesn't work but also when i've actually looked at historians like legit historians and i don't mean richard carrier he's legit in the sense he's credentialed but he's he's uh a really bad source for people he's he's he's like a premier one of the premier jesus mythicist tim and uh robert price who i think you can safely just not listen to um but but when you look at actual historians talking about you know things we know about jesus you look at like bedrock facts like stuff that atheist christian uh jewish just agnostic historians will say is historically true about jesus even if they don't believe the bible's the word of god then you come up with a big list of things that show that jesus is not a copy of anybody he's like legit like there just really was a jesus like let me give you some examples of historical bedrock facts that you're going to get like consensus of scholarship across atheists and all of the groups that agree right jesus was a real historical figure he really um was born in nazareth he really had 12 disciples who followed him he was really known i'm not kidding i'm not making these up these are like consensus beliefs about jesus from even non-christian historians that jesus was known to perform miracles and do exorcisms whether those were legitimate or not legitimate is not part of the bedrock it's it's just this is what he was known for this is what people believed about him that that jesus then preached and considered himself this is a really interesting one god's eschatological agent that's a fancy way of saying jesus thought he was fulfilling prophecy from the old testament this is something jesus thought about himself this is where he uses the phrase son of man which they think isn't authentic even the most liberal scholars think jesus did call himself the son of man and this did connect to the old testament and prophecy they believe that jesus died by roman crucifixion under pontius pilate over at passover specifically at passover they believed that jesus's disciples did betray jesus and actually turn their backs on him excuse me and shamefully fled then they believed that jesus and his disciples excuse me and others had experiences that they believed were the risen christ they genuinely believed they had seen the risen christ alive from the dead and then they were willing to suffer great harm because of this proclamation they went from terror and fear to faithfully proclaiming the resurrection of jesus because they believed they saw him alive from the dead this is kind of a lot of stuff to have as bedrock facts about jesus so when somebody comes along and says maybe jesus was based off jesus ben ananias then i want to say that's bunk like that's that goes completely against the consensus of historical research on who the authentic jesus really is that's even if you don't take the bible as god's word right so this is this is what i'm saying like the internet is like 300 years behind in research when they promote these types of views and it's good stuff we got so much so much evidence for christ that it's um it's good all right question 17 healthy bleach says i've felt cut off from the lord when i pray i wonder if i'm talking to myself and if everything i hold dear is wishful thinking why won't god help me when i'm crying out to him healthy bleach listen please please please get a believer around you who's gone through this before like try to find someone not just a pastor but somebody who's gone through the kind of thing you're going through find somebody you know just ask him you ever gone through a hard time like where you just you felt this way cut off from the lord like you wondered if you were if everything you held there was wishful thinking you felt like you're talking to yourself in prayer find that person who's gotten through it overcome it and has grown strong because of it and let them help you through this please do not do it alone and don't just ask any random joe schmo who's never gone through what you're going through because they're probably not going to be equipped to help you very well most likely i will say this i have felt that way i have felt not cut off like rejected but cut off like i wonder if i'm talking to myself and if everything i hold here is wishful thinking just like you my short version of this story because we're running out of time here at least the time i've allotted for today is that i because of sin in my life it opened a door to doubt doubt started and it snowballed and it turned into a just a big landslide of doubt and then i started digging into apologetics trying to find tough answers to all my tough questions and i had a lot of very serious tough questions and i slowly got all my answers i mean i got all the significant answers i just checked them all off all the major biggest issues and i was like i was shocked there was so much evidence to support christianity but the problem is after all that after all my intellectual answers were received i still felt doubt and i remember thinking to myself because i was very honest with me and i thought i can't think of good reasons to doubt but i still feel the doubt i don't understand why and i realized this is a will decision i will trust the lord no matter what i remember one time driving to the beach with my guitar in hand i'd well i wasn't having my hand in the car while i was driving but i had it in the car and i drove to the beach and i get out and i'm there and i'm just gonna have like a time of worship i'm just by myself just sitting there on the beach singing to the lord and i was like i was trying to do something spiritually to just lift the the angst and the difficulty that i was having this is a true story this is just exactly how it all happened and i drove there and i'm there and i'm worshiping and i feel nothing i believe it's true up here i think i trust the lord but i'm not sure what's going on my heart's so confusing right now so i worship you know i do it for a little while i don't feel any better it really bothered me i wanted to feel better you know and it had been this way for months and this one particular day i did you know doing things that i think might help me feel better i just want to feel better that's all i care about right now to be honest and um and so finally i i remember praying around the beach and just stopping and praying god um i don't feel any better but i'm at least mature enough to know this i'm going to trust you anyways and even if i don't feel better i'm still going to worship you even if i don't feel any better i'm still going to trust you i just choose to trust you even though my feelings aren't any better i walk back to my car and here's where i thought on my walk back to my car maybe because this felt like a turning point like this choice to trust god because i knew it was true i i trusted i really but i just didn't feel i don't know what was wrong with my heart i felt like maybe this will be the turning point maybe now i'll feel better i walked back to my car and remember reaching for the handle of the car door thinking i still don't feel any better and then i and that was when i thought to myself but i meant it i'm going to trust even if i don't feel better so i put my stuff away i drove away i still didn't feel any better it was a little while after that i was reading in genesis and it was very uncommon for me just real life story reading in genesis and i'm reading in genesis about the flood and it says that the flood waters began to recede and it was i felt like the whole this is very rare i felt like the holy spirit spoke to me right there and told me that this is a flood i've been in i've been in a trial it's a great flood but that the waters are now beginning to recede and that my crazy heart and this all this doubt and struggles and emotional craziness that i've gone through like losing sleep over it and stuff that it was gonna slowly recede not suddenly go away which is what i was hoping for but it would slowly recede and then i felt like the lord told me it'll never get that bad again and i wrote it in my bible i put a date on it i don't think i even have that bible anymore the whole bible but i put a date in it to mark the day and a question mark because i thought am i hearing from god for real right now because i'm going through so many weird things you know well months go by and it recedes and my joy was restored and my hope is restored and my confidence was increased and all those things came as i patiently just chose to trust in god no matter how i felt and i'm encouraging you to do the same thing and if you have intellectual questions about god seek out those answers they're there i've got tons of stuff from online this is why i do apologetics because i did it for me first and then i just started sharing it with others but um but that choice to trust has to happen sometimes regardless of how we feel about it that's a difficult and hard life lesson but since then god has turned that hardship into an online ministry where it helps other people because i know what it's like to go through that so i hope that's a blessing to you and i realize it might not make you feel better but it might give you direction and that direction might be the right direction trust the lord with all your heart lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him he'll direct your paths that's you giving your heart to god lord this thing's not working but i'm going to trust you with it until it is question number 18 zane potter says is a will to fight for this country in opposition to a faith in jesus furthermore is there provision in scripture for self-preservation from things such as home invasion foreign threats etc i think script i'm going to give a super quick answer now i think scripture does give you justification for self-defense though there are times where you lay that aside as a witness of the gospel of christ and you just suffer anyways but i think there is justification for self-defense in scripture and i think we have an obligation to defend others who are innocent around us that's actually an obligation so that someone breaks into my house and they're not just stealing my stuff right but they're threatening the life of my loved ones to shoot them attack them i think is appropriate and right and good it's not fun i don't like it i don't enjoy it i think it's the moral thing to do um when it comes to like fighting for your country i think that there is a question of whether it's just or unjust particular act okay so yes like yeah you because fighting for your country can be the same thing on a larger scale just like a cop can chase down and and tackle somebody because they're they're stopping this per snatcher from getting away they can also abuse their power right so the question here is when you you know anytime you're using violence is it truly justified and that's going to be individually assessed um i do think it's wrong to say i can kill anybody my country tells me to kill because i'm following orders that's what some of the nazis said after world war ii i was following orders but they should have obviously said i refuse this is immoral this is murder so i think there's i think there's such a thing as a just war i think a lot even in a just war i think a lot of unjust things happen but there is such a thing as doing you know violence because it's the right thing to do in that scenario and it has to do with protecting the innocent with uh defending um defending those that need defending and uh and uh true oppression from happening that's my short answer i know you want more scripture on that but we're just for the sake of time we'll move forward um i think scripture supports all of those things uh jody wainwright has a question why does it seem jesus lied to his brothers in john 7. i already know what you're looking at verses 8 through 10. john 7 verse 8 okay they want jesus basically jesus brothers mocked jesus like they did not like what he was doing um they kind of were ridiculing him in this passage and um jesus is like he's done the you know the wedding at cana he's done these different things he's done various miracles and his brothers are hearing it and they're like what what is going on who does he think he is and they don't believe he's the messiah they don't believe he's the lord so the jews feast of booze was at hand so his brother said to him leave here and go to judea so that your disciples may see your works the works you are doing for no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly if you do these things show yourself to the world now this sounds like they're supporting him jesus go show everybody how great you are but it's all mockery because verse 5 says oh there it is on your screen verse 5 says but not even his brothers believed in him so they don't really believe him they're mocking him they're mocking him oh go and show yourself to the world like tell everybody which would actually just get jesus in trouble which is what eventually happens when he shows himself to jerusalem publicly very openly crucifixion so they're not concerned for jesus they're irritated they don't believe him jesus then says his response my time has not yet come but your time is always here the world cannot hate you but it hates me because i testify about about it that it's works or evil you go up to the feast i'm not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come okay after saying this he remained in galilee for a little while at least his brothers they went up to the feast then jesus went up not publicly but in private is jesus lying when he says to his brothers i'm not going up to this feast i think what um the context gives us a greater context of go what going up to this feast means when jesus does officially go up to the feast jerusalem he goes up and he's sitting on the donkey and they're shouting hosanna and he's showing his works and his goodness to the world and he's claiming his messiah he's showing he's the son of david this is him going up to the feast in the very public sense in which his brothers are suggesting go and show yourself show jerusalem show all the jews who you truly are he does this in the final feast in jerusalem so when he says i'm not going up to this feast it's not he doesn't mean i will never go up to jerusalem i'm going to skip the feast altogether i think he means i'm not going to go up in this open public show myself to the world sense that's what he's not doing in this particular context so then he goes up after they go up and he doesn't go up publicly but in private so i would suggest yeah he's um he's just saying i'm not going to go publicly and i think the context supplies us with that extra information there then we have the next question number 20 which is from craig burnett who asks what is the difference in the gifts of the spirit in a christian and a non non-christian is displaying the same gifts such as patience gentleness peace etc yeah this is actually an interesting question uh so we have like a list of the gifts of the spirit like love joy peace patience gentleness faithfulness goodness self-control um uh gaming skills wasn't there one more what am i skipping and um and and we have all these these gifts but it's not as though unbelievers never show any of these things so it's possible to have things that are fruits of the spirit in your life but not as a result of the fruit of the spirit right not as a result of the holy spirit the difference is the source i am this way because of the spirit of god in me so i'm exhibiting a patience that's coming from the work of christ in my life i'm exhibiting i'm exhibiting a love and a joy that's coming from the work of christ in my life so it's more about the source than it is just the quality of the thing you're doing i think that unbelievers can love i think that you can love somebody you're not a christian you can really love people i think it's weird if christians are like unbelievers have no joy have no peace have none of those things right patience goodness faithfulness there's no there's no unbeliever that's ever faithful no i would say that there are there are sometimes differences in the joy okay i have the joy of the lord you don't have that joy unbelievers don't have the joy of the lord that's true okay but it doesn't mean they have no joy of any kind they rejoice in all sorts of things they don't love the lord they don't love perhaps as self-sacrificially as as christ does but more to the point they don't have that joy as a result of the work of the spirit they don't have that love as a result of the work of the spirit there isn't the relational outflow of the work of the holy spirit in their life bringing these things into into their lives into their character that's the point that's the point um so yes it's not as black and white as maybe some would make it right like as if unbelievers just simply have no love for anything gosh paul rebukes demas demas is a guy who abandoned him and he says demas has left me having loved the world and paul uses the word agape there so if you want to say agape means like this like self-sacrificial love well demons felt that kind of love for the world he agaped the world that's pretty interesting isn't it demas agape he loved he just loved the wrong things loved it in the wrong way or we love people but outside of god like babel there's you know the tower of babel represents a bunch of humans working together doing great things together but it's all in rebellion to god absent of god ignorant of god rejecting god and so all the teamwork and the compassion and stuff it's in the context of not loving god so then there's a problem with the love and that's that respect as well all this to say i think yeah life is complicated i think scripture gives us the ability gives us the tools to tackle that complexity so yeah it's about the source not just the gift and it may also be about the quality of the gift the kind of patience a believer has is about waiting on the eternal promises of god that he's given us unbeliever doesn't have those promises to wait on so they can't exhibit that kind of patience the love is in the context of god's love for me i love him the way he loved me i love others because of the representation of christ the example of love that he gave the joy i have can't be taken away by anything that happens in this world because it doesn't depend on anything that happens in this world so yeah there's some there's some things to think about y'all thank you so much for joining i will be with you monday for a live stream at 1 p.m on the topic of the gospel of mark we're continuing we're going to be approaching the garden of gethsemane pretty quickly here then i will be with you tuesday interviewing vocab malone on the topic of black hebrew israelites which is a religious group a religious group they're called the black hebrew israelites and we'll talk about them they believe that they are the true israelites vocab alone has spent a lot of time learning about them and he'll be kind of the guy answering my questions to understand them better and then um i think we have more stuff coming next week too i'm trying to think what else is it we'll see we'll see and the passion project is going to be getting another keep your eyes on christ remember that um life is complicated but it is the simple truths of god's word it is the simplicity that's in christianity that i think gives us the tools for navigating the complexity of life and honoring christ in all that we do you're going to have a million reasons to get your eyes off of the lord to get distracted to get self-focused to get discouraged but put on the arm of god right run with endurance the race go back to those things and keep it simple that's it lord bless you

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 54,956

Rating: 4.9287643 out of 5

Keywords: 20 questions, BibleThinker, Mike Winger, question and answer, think biblically, episode 30, Q and A, part 30, ep 30, why did God

Id: 9ODk1zYV_k8

Length: 90min 48sec (5448 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021