20 Questions with Pastor Mike (Episode 46)

all right and welcome this is 20 questions with pastor mike i'm pastor mike and you're bringing the questions today our first one uh by the way we do this every friday at 1 p.m pacific time and although not normally my cat is super uh she's on my lap right now she might be making noise because she's sometimes she goes through these phases where she's a little bit extra affectionate okay so the first question is from uh gabriella piolini who says hello i'm a christian and it's been important to me to understand why the lord jesus didn't mention to the apostles or anyone that paul would be coming to enlighten the way for his church this question hasn't been addressed in any of the studies i've researched nor by any of the pastors i listened to but isn't this question a most serious matter since paul wrote the majority of our new testament so little factoid for you gabriella um luke wrote more than paul as far as quantity goes paul wrote more letters more individual letters but luke actually wrote more quantity wise and so that's kind of an interesting thing oh i almost forgot our little question counter in the back over my shoulder there so this is question number one now let's um let's walk through this first let me mention this um this is a bit of guesswork okay so there isn't a clear answer from scripture to your question so what we're going to do is we're going to pull biblical principles out and biblical teachings out and use that as kind of like a a grid a skeleton so to speak upon which we can sort of try to fill out a potential answer sorry everyone smile my cat goes through these like stages where she's just like really affectionate for like 10 minutes or so she's like super like pet me i need to be in your lap right now and uh uh that right now is one of those moments usually it doesn't happen during a stream so um if i don't if i push her down she'll uh she'll just scream um okay so first thing i want to do is say this it's possible that jesus did say something about paul we don't know that he didn't like think about this for a second jesus said lots of things that that were not recorded this is what john says at the end of his gospel there's all kinds of stuff jesus said that was simply not recorded is it possible he said something about paul the apostle yes is it possible he said something that prepared the other apostles for paul yes now he doesn't need to say that to us right because we have affirmations in the new testament that paul is definitely an apostle that peter not only not only gave him the right hand of fellowship we read about in galatians 2 but that peter even this is this blows me away peter calls paul's writings scripture if that's not the the highest kind of endorsement you can possibly have i don't know what is you know peter's refers to people who read paul's writings and some of them twist it because there's things that are sometimes hard to understand in paul's writings hello that's true of course and some people do twist it that's true as well this is a perennial truth but then he adds on this phrase as they do also the rest of scripture in other words paul's writing is part of this category called scripture so that's a pretty big deal um in the book of acts they they recognize that he is he is god's anointed person to go particularly to the gentiles to have a gentile focus ministry so definitely the holy spirit revealed at least progressively to the apostles that that paul was to be one of the apostles and particularly called to the gentiles this is something the holy spirit revealed acts talks about it i think acts 13 talks about it and also acts 15 and other various places um galatians 2 and in is it first peter i believe where peter mentions this so they did accept paul but also here's now let me let me say this uh let's suppose jesus didn't hypothetically jesus never mentioned something about paul um this is possibly because they weren't ready for it one of the things that and and this is taken from the bones of scripture here because jesus tells the disciples there's many things i'd like to tell you about but you're not ready for them yet and so he tells them the holy spirit is going to come and will guide them in all truth so there will be jesus does say there's going to be stuff that he hasn't told them about yet that they will be told later through the holy spirit so that is the thing that jesus prepared them for was for more information to come later and in acts there is a theme and this connects to paul in a very special way there's a theme in the book of acts that is the issue of jewish and gentile um division and finally inclusion and connection in christ and so the question in the book of acts that gets answered slowly over several several chapters i mean like 15 chapters worth is are the gentiles really partakers of jesus christ partakers of messiah without becoming jews and the answer to this question is yes they are but you have like things like acts chapter 10 where peter is is com compelled by a vision a revelation not something he learned directly from jesus although it's consistent with that but a revelation he got where he has this whole vision about the different foods and unclean and clean and all that and then he goes to cornelius a gentile and he preaches the gospel he watches the holy spirit come upon them and they speak in tongues and peter's like i guess they can be saved just like us and this is a revelation to peter why how does that connect to paul because paul is the apostle who carries that the weight of that message forward for the gentile church what i'm suggesting is just like the revelation about the gentiles was the the seeds were laid by jesus but it was progressively understood more in the book of acts through the work of the spirit just like jesus said so paul is part of that work it's understandable that he was not fully understood early on or even made aware people weren't made aware of him early on so i think that that is uh the bones of the answer that i would give right there um i don't think it should concern us in the sense that some people do try to suggest paul was not really a legitimate apostle and this is a very dangerous dangerous and heretical thing to say um i don't say that because i'm like you know angry or something you guys you guys know me i mean red flags should be going off you know firing alarms should be happening in your head when you hear somebody suggest that paul was not legitimate what they're doing is they're wanting to remove large portions of the scripture so that they can replace it with their own unbiblical teachings this is the case every time so we know paul is an apostle we have this in various books of the bible and if peter's an apostle then paul is because he affirms paul's apostolic calling so i don't think these things should concern us gabrielle and i hope that my answers have helped you in some way let's go to question number two this is an anonymous question and it says is god male thank you for your ministry and my answer would be um as i understand male to refer to like a physical quality right the answer would be no and yes and why are we asking this question so let me explain those three things no because god is spirit he is not human he is not human and nor is god then when you refer to god in a masculine sense which he's very consistently referred to in a masculine term with masculine terms throughout scripture so but when you refer to god in masculine terms it's not to suggest he's male it's it's i think meant to suggest his his authority his headship and his um yeah he's in charge is is part of the connection that's going on there and the reason why i would say he's not male is because this implies more than just masculine terminology to describe god it implies like males have certain parts and things like that now that's why i say no but then i say yes because christ took on human form and he took on the form of a man and jesus is god he's god and he's man and his in his humanity he's male he's he's male right so the father is referred to in male terminology the spirit is referred to as male terminology in scripture and jesus is comes as as an actual male there your answer is yes is god male well jesus is male but that was not because of his innate nature this is because he took on a nature he took on a new nature a human nature that nature is male so when we get to the oh and then i say why are we asking this is because our culture is super weird about male female stuff um and i'm going to give you my my opinion about how this relates in the scripture it's not controversial to be male or female and it's not controversial to think that those those things have implications now some they're they they're reacting to oppression right in the past and they're thinking that the very existence of different roles is oppressive if you're going to have that view you're going to have a lot of awkward moments when you encounter things like god being consistently referred to with masculine terminology you can find um him sometimes referring to himself with a with a feminine analogy so god would say like he's like a mother hen gathers her chicks jesus refers to jerusalem only gather you like a mother and gather gathers her chicks gather your children and so there's there's that that's a feminine terminology um but that's not to say that this is supposed to weigh in on whether god is referred to masculine or feminine or something like that it's just not this is not a controversial issue in scripture we make it controversial in our current pop culture if we're going to try to understand um and and not sort of hijack scripture for our own purposes then we're going to see that there's a male terminology there because there is an authority being represented in god if that bothers you i think you're the one with the issues and so something you should be slow down and try not to be so stuck in your own culture that you can't understand the biblical world view all right number three this is brandon figueroa who says how can someone be banished and yet not cast out from god i'm referring to what the woman of toccoa said in second samuel 14 14 is it only within that context or can it be applied transcend transcendentally okay i'm i'm totally confused by the question but that's because um probably because i don't know what you're referring to here's like how it connects let's let's go to the passage this is um i went to first the second samuel 14 14. i'm gonna back up a bit and get some context context is good all right we're gonna back up a ways here um okay i'll just start from verse one now joab the son of zeruya zaruya knew that the king's heart went out to absalom and joab sent to toccoa and brought from there a wise woman and said to her pretend to be a mourner and put on morning garments do not anoint yourself with oil but behave like a woman who has been mourning many days for the dead go to the king and speak speak thus to him so joab put the words in her mouth when the woman of toccoa came to the king she fell on her face to the ground and paid homage and said save me o king and the king said to her what is your trouble she answered alas i am a widow my husband is dead which was a lie and your servant had two sons and they quarreled with one another and in the field there was no one to separate them and one struck the other and killed him and now the whole clan has risen against your servant and they say give up the man who struck his brother that we may put him to death for the life of his brother whom he killed and so they would destroy the air also thus they would quench my coal that is left and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth then the king said to the woman go to your house and i will give orders concerning you and the woman of toccoa said to the king on me be the guilt my lord the king and on my father's house let the king and his throne be guiltless now she's like hey here's the reveal i was lying to you but she's going to try to then use the words of joab here in her mouth to try to help uh absalom the king said if anyone says anything to you bring him to me and he shall never touch you again then she said please let the king invoke the lord your god that the avenger of blood kill no more and my son be not destroyed he said as the lord lives not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground boom that was probably the pivotal moment there then the woman said please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king and he said speak and the woman said why then have you planned such a thing against the people of god for in giving this decision the king convicts himself and as much as the king does not bring his banished one home again we must all die we are all like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again but god will not take away life when he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast um okay so this is this is all bartering for absalom and that that that sort of internal turmoil the royal family drama that is david's you know lineage um we got we get something from the context there but what let me read verse 14 again and i'm going to read the question again and let's see if we can all get on the same page as um brandon here so we must all die we are all like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again but god will not take away life and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast this seems to be um god's preference not because god takes life but it's they seems to be in my mind a preference that god has to restore as a instead of judge this is old and new testament god would rather heal you than curse you he'd rather bring you in than cast you out so he devises me so that the banished woman will not remain an outcast okay so this is about like bringing absalom back from being banished now let's read the question again from brandon and i'll we'll see if this relates to the context or not how can someone be banished and yet not cast out from god i'm referring to what the woman of toccoa said in second samuel 14 14. is it only within that context or can it be applied transcendentally okay so um the actually said transcendentally not transcendentally that just you all know so the um uh the question is is there like an allegorical application of these verses um hey you know here's a guy who's cast out but but hey let's bring him back and this is literally he's been he's been sort of banished or cast out like he you're rejected from the kingdom can we the kingdom of israel can we relate this to salvation can there be someone who's cast out like like out of god's kingdom right but they're not actually cast out from god i i i'm just gonna say brandon i think that we're we're trying to relate it we're trying to draw an allegory too strongly that's probably not here i just wouldn't i just wouldn't go down this road in my bible study i just wouldn't go down that road at all because what we're trying to do is operate with a category in our head that there's somebody who's outside of um i'm trying to read your terminology here again they're banished but not cast out from god banished would only be banished from god's kingdom in your analogy in the allegorical interpretation of this being banished from god's kingdom as opposed to the nation of israel which is not you don't have to be part of israel to be like nationally to be considered part of god's ultimate kingdom in that sense that's a that's a hairy subject what i suggest is that we're just pushing too much of an allegorical thing here um we can get from this passage this idea that god has a preference right that even those who are currently out because of their sins might be restored there's a preference there but that's as far as i would draw that analogy or that that allegorical reading actually it's not even my reading's not even allegorical i don't think i think i'm just saying look this is speaking of god's preference that people be brought back in that's as far as i would go with it and i'll move on to the next question so sometimes this is what bible study is you guys you you read a passage and and if i'm right brandon maybe you've got more to say on that and that's fine maybe maybe i'm missing something but if i'm right um what happens a lot of times in bible studies you open a passage you get an idea you really like and you're like oh that's really beautiful that's really cool i like that but the connection to the passage is a little bit weak and you have to really ask yourself how much am i willing to lock in my belief in my interpretation because i like it when the connection seems kind of weak now i'm not saying that's what brain is doing because i have no idea what's going on brandon's mind but i'm telling you what my experience is as a bible teacher over and over and over again part of being a good bible teacher is learning to cut off interpretations you like that are simply not well established in the passage and refusing to use verses out of context for those things that is a lesson that many never learn because it quote preaches well all right number four anonymous question says i've been struggling with ocd vows recently ocd vows such as if i don't say this in prayer i'm not saved many places online say let it go you can't make a vow out of fear how can i look at this biblically oh man i wish i understood better i wish i could sit with you and ask you you know more questions about what you're what you mean what you mean here by vows if i don't say this in prayer i'm not saved okay let me just talk about that for a moment the idea that there's certain formulas you must not can say in prayer but that you must say in prayer out loud in order to be saved is i think not biblically supported let me talk about my own experience with salvation um when i first went i was i was probably about 12 when i first got invited to church not that my family had never gone but i don't really remember attending with my family so when i did go a friend invited me and i won't get into the details of my family life because i care about my family i don't want to say things that might embarrass people many years later so i was very happy to get out of the house any any reason get out of the house i was pretty happy with and so i went to just get out of the house i went to the church and to a youth group thursday night youth group over at uh cypress park community church in cyprus which doesn't the church doesn't exist anymore somebody else is in that building now but i went there with with a friend and there i heard the gospel i had conviction of my sin and i remember an incredible sense of relief when i realized that jesus had because because i was thinking i had to be good enough for heaven i was gonna like earn my way and then i had this incredible sense of relief when i realized that jesus had had like paid for my sin that his death meant that i could be forgiven and that's what i remember i never was led in prayer to my knowledge years down the road now my life changed my life changed and i experienced like closeness with god like relationship with god like god with me and i'd felt so alone before and now i felt that god was actually with me and a beautiful and life-changing thing you know so then i started going to church all alone without my family and for years just thursday nights to youth ministry um anyway there's a lot more to that story but years and years later i remember thinking um like maybe as like a 17 18 year old thinking that was i really saved because someone hadn't led me through the prayer right the prayer which is more of a of a cultural thing it's not bad okay i'm not against the idea of a sinner's prayer but setting it up as the standard by which you get saved this is the way and so someone came and spoke at our church and he was like hey you know maybe you've never maybe you've never um prayed the sinner's prayer and you're like uncertain about this well i'm just going to lead you through it like you're not doubting what god has done for you you just want to have that sense of peace and i remember him leading us into prayer this was me as an immature christian and he's like hey let me just walk you through this he led us in a prayer and then i felt better because i had like checked the box now even years later as a more mature christian i realized two things one i was saved before that i was saved when i believed when i trusted in christ even though i had not said it out loud and i know roman says like um you know the confession happens with the mouth and all that but this is obviously not meant to be like a policy you drop on everybody like as if a a mute who can't use words is unable to be saved um that that's just that there's a genuine confession is the idea and um and the second thing i realized was this scripture does not generally have people being led through a sinner's prayer there just is a response of the heart to the gospel message of turning to god and then the only public display and this is key the only public display is baptism baptism where you where you go and you publicly proclaim this is this is the way in which you proclaim your faith and trust in christ in public so if you're looking for something to do right as a way of just declaring your salvation declaring your trust in christ get baptized if you haven't done that yet but your salvation itself happens when your heart turns to christ and trusts in him don't look for prayers that you can sort of lock in your salvation with when those things are not supplied biblically because and maybe this is the reason why because a sinner's prayer while it can be a beautiful genuine thing it can also be a totally fake thing where someone's like well i prayed the prayer so i'm saved and then they go and live any way they want and they haven't really had a heart that's turned to christ they just wanted something they could check a box to feel like they're saved and i don't think scripture gives us that although i'm not opposed to leading people into sinner's prayer i'm just opposed to thinking of it as as that box checking device number five this is uh jonathan beckham who says is the soul as an eternity as an eternal entity more of a greek philosophical idea or confirmed in scripture do you have any biblical references for an eternal soul thank you for your ministry john jonathan beckham this is um a tough subject like legitimately tough subject um i am let me tell you my i'm of the persuasion i'm i believe that the eternality of the soul is true um but i've heard the pushback from those who hold to like the conditional immortality position and they're not all heretical jehovah's witnesses some of them have arguments that i have not yet considered and so while i am not persuaded by them and what i have heard from has not convinced me i'm just aware that there's this sort of like empty spot in my research right where i haven't looked into that so i tentatively hold to the idea of like yes like now here's my starting point i'm gonna trust scripture on this um there are a few things that we could um that we could look at you know like when i look at the the scriptures it seems to indicate if if nothing else at least that at least that the soul outlives the body so when the body dies the soul doesn't die so physicalism i'm very much thinking that's seems to be clearly not biblical look at samuel being brought up after his death being brought up in some spirit form to rebuke saul we read about that we we look at a number of other cases where there's something like that going on jesus's whole story about lazarus and the rich man even if you think that's a parable you still have these um like you know people who are existing beyond their death so in other words it's not just when they're resurrected that their souls come back and the soul dies with the body and ceases to exist i don't think that that's the case i think there's a lot of problems with that view so i would push back on that i've given you a couple examples i should definitely could give you more in revelation there are the souls under the altar that are crying out they're desiring to have their bodies be so in other words i'm suggesting is the soul lives beyond the body the other um more challenging question is eternal is it eternal so i'm inclined to think yes and my understanding of scripture would say yes but i haven't fully vetted that fully vetted that issue so i'm at least open to hearing other views so jonathan that's my brief thoughts on that um that deserves a very thorough study and a much longer teaching on my part someday in the future number six kevin smith do you think any of the people that died in the flood above the age of accountability may have been saved or will not go to hell okay kevin this is man this is this is hard for me um okay younger version of me would quickly answer this question no they all they all go to hell like okay you you know probably kevin that i believe there is such a thing as a uh we can call her an age of accountability but i'm going to refer to it like as a degree of accountability and there's a there's a point in which someone has no accountability on a counter they have no ability you like that um but there's there's instead a um another question you're asking which is okay but what about those who were old enough to know better and they died in the flood okay generally speaking we can say the answer is no like the scripture is clear on this like the thoughts of men's hearts are wicked all the time like let's let's go to genesis 6 and let's look at the description of the people of the time obviously this is not talking about a one-year-old obviously um but uh the lord verse five the lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually now this is this is the motive for bringing the flood the wickedness of man is is at such a degree and it's so widespread okay so then my my like i said my younger answer younger version of me would have just said no they were none of them were saved they were all they all fit this description of wickedness but when i think about it a little bit more detailed i'm like is the scripture trying to tell me that every single individual every single person was fitting that description or that it was such a massive number and i i don't know the answer to that question so i don't know how to answer your question kevin is it is it possible that there's one guy named jeffus who lived wherever right jeffers from the lesser known er and and jeffers he he you know he got caught up in the flood like everybody else but he had at some point he had he had really trusted in god and he was really trying to live to live live a godly life and he was rejecting the idolatry of his people is it possible um well i mean i think it's at least possible and then god would have brought him right into um into you know comforts and and not not not punishment or anything like that but on the pushback to this let's work through it the pushback to this would be but wait mike like when god destroys sodom and gomorrah he's like i'm not going to he he's going to make lot come out first right and and the ark fits this too noah it seems as though noah is the only one because he's the only one who makes it to the ark to get saved so there's a there's a good point to make there it may well be that the the ark itself having noah just noah and his family is commentary that there was nobody else righteous there was nobody else who um was was not fitting that description not even an individual he god brought two by two all these animals to the ark wouldn't he have brought jeffers you know over to the ark too and that seems like a pretty good argument so i would lean towards the answer being no um none of them were saved beyond the age of accountability but i would also just recognize that trying to extrapolate general statements about you know the world to every single individual is just a difficult task number seven kevin lionel says you said people who've never heard of jesus need to respond to natural revelation to be saved can you give an example of how a woman growing up in saudi arabia would respond to natural revelation um so i've heard stories about this sort of thing before so i'll give you um an example excuse me so um when we're growing up inside of your area let me tell you guys a story a true story this is about a guy that called up my my church um while i was still on staff on the church and not not doing this full-time and he wanted to talk about jesus um and he lived in um let me just say i don't want to give too many details about him because you'll understand in a minute um he lives in another country that was across the atlantic and the um the situation is this he wanted to call and talk to someone about jesus and you're like why do you call an obscure well you know not that big of a church in bellflower california and the reason is because he lived in a very muslim community within this country and he had been raised and everybody's pretty dogmatically islamic in his community and in his family and he started getting interested in jesus so you say saudi arabia saudi arabia is going to be a muslim country that has access to the quran that has information about jesus although not a lot they have some and it's not it's not actually accurate but he just started getting fascinated with jesus it was just like the work of the holy spirit in the man's life and he starts asking his family and friends because i'd like to know more about jesus i'd like to think more about jesus and they started feeling threatened by this he kept pressing though he felt a spiritual need to understand more about jesus well after his family started realizing that what was happening is he was slowly doubting islam about jesus and putting his trust in christ even though he wasn't really being exposed to christian literature at all his family beat him up radically beat him up until the point where he is now he is now um crippled and he's not capable of getting around and getting around all by himself so he calls across the atlantic to some obscure church very very far away from where he lives because he's scared because he happened to see that i had some videos online when i just started my youtube channel and probably had like three subscribers or something or more than that but not very many and he calls and we talk on the phone and we talked regularly for a series for season of time and i sent him resources and he eventually became very bold very bold and his family threatened to kill him but he just said you know what jesus saved me i it's worth dying for him he saved my life and um and anyway it's a long story to know all about this gentleman but there's an example of somebody who just in an isolated community very hostile to the gospel of christ where the spirit just starts working in the man's life he's got no access that he's you know to these things he had to call somebody across the country across the world to just talk more about who jesus was he just became fascinated with christ it was just the work of the spirit and we see this in guys like abraham abraham is in a an ungodly idolatrous nation certainly less information about god than is in the islamic communities and god calls him and he and he turns from the idolatry of his family of the past and all that and he's worshipping the true god we see god is at work in people's lives we even see in the flood that the spirit was striving with man and god says my spirit will not strive with man forever because god is actively working so i mean christian missionaries and bibles and tracts and things like that they go out and they do carry the message of the truth of salvation but to think that this is the only way that god communicates to people it is the authoritative way it is the most reliable way but to think it's the only way would be to not pay attention to the things we read in these very pages and so um so yeah i mean in a sense i could answer your question a little bit by saying hey kevin god is at work in people's lives and the bible affirms this with saying that creation declares the glory of god and that conscience tells us that we've sinned so that we all stand in a knowledgeable place of guilt before him that gives us something to react to and that if we seek the lord we'll find him so if the person's responding to that then i'm trusting that god's going to reach out to them as well it may not be simplistic in the way it actually plays out but seems to me that it'll happen there's a few thoughts on that kevin i obviously am just a man right you're just asking my opinions on these things um i trust that that god he loves people and who wants them saved and if they will have him i think that it seems likely he's going to be sending them something to help number eight janita morris says pastor mike please explain what is meant by the mysteries of god in ephesians 3 5. oh the mysteries of good okay this is an interesting um don't ask me why i just did a really bad accent um this this is a really great question it's a very commonly misunderstood concept and so i'm backing up a little bit because we like to get context a bit so let's let's look at ephesians chapter three we'll read the first several verses for this reason i paul a prisoner of christ jesus on behalf of you gentiles assuming that you've heard of the stewardship of god's grace that was given to me for you how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as i've written briefly when you read this you can perceive my insights into the mystery of christ which is was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit okay so what is the mystery well let me we have some clues so far that the mystery relates to paul's stewardship from god of god's grace which is to say god paul's saying god by his grace has called me and he's given me a job to do and my job is to be faithful with this mystery this this the knowledge of this mystery well what's the mystery well it was made known to him by revelation well we we read about that when paul talks about how the gospel was communicated to him directly by jesus christ that's how he got his knowledge about the gospel itself also he says when you read you can perceive his insight into the mystery of christ ah so it's all about the identity person and work of jesus that's the mystery and you start to realize the mystery is not a mystery anymore this is connected even to the words that paul's using this greek word is talking about something that was a mystery but has been revealed so there's no secrets it's not something that you read this and you're like i wonder what that was no no you know what that was read the book of romans that's where he explains this mystery he also does it in ephesians but in verse five he specifically explains what he means uh the mystery which was not made known excuse me verse six uh to the sons of men and other generations but has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit that is those messengers in the first century carrying the message of the gospel out that's the mystery verse six this mystery is this mystery is now you find out that the gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body and partakers of the promise in christ jesus through the gospel paul's focus on the mysteries is twofold one is you are saved by grace through faith right this is ephesians chapter two he just explained it notice how he says as i've briefly written you already ephesians 2 he's talking about how we're saved by grace through faith apart from works um but that's that's one part the second part is and and this connects i mean they connect to each other because of this fact the gentiles and jews can be joined together into one body where there is no longer a separation between them that was a big deal in the first century the jewish gentile issues we all are part of christ we all in christ are brothers and sisters and partakers of christ and part of the same family of god and that's the mystery so here's where people get weird right they read the word mystery and then they start to make up like they act like oh there's there's things that are true about christianity that aren't in the bible they're these mysteries and then they come up with their own weird teachings and then they try to say that was the mystery paul was talking about but obviously that's not what paul's talking about paul uses the term mystery because the fullness of the gospel was not understood in the old testament times even though it was discussed even though all the groundwork was laid it's later you know when when jesus shows up that he kind of provides the decoder ring for understanding all that stuff in the old testament and for understanding the fullness of the gospel hey you can you can have your sins forgiven you can be joined to god's people the law has a special function in driving you to christ but christ is the one who brings us all together not the law not becoming jewish in that sense edward schaefer has a question says did the new covenant start when the temple which housed the ark of the covenant was destroyed so edward this is a debate i don't know if i know the right answer but i'll talk about it a bit for you guys the debate is when did the new covenant begin um jesus clearly brings in a new covenant the old covenant is is is that of the law and the nature that this whole um language of old and new covenants for those listening is um is if i could summarize it kind of simplistically the old covenant like the law of moses that has to do with if you obey me if you do everything the way i tell you to you'll you'll be my people and i'll bless you and if you disobey me i will curse you and that's meant to teach us that we're not good enough it's not just to say hey you have to be super good to get to be saved it's rather you're just not good enough the continued failings of israel it's a message about all of mankind that we fail we stand before god falling short of his glory like this is so this hits home so hard when i just think i'm aware of right and wrong and my awareness of right and wrong never matches my life i never live up to my own standards of what's right and wrong and if i had to stand before god and i was judged based on my works i would be doomed honest honest self-reflection brings us to that point and the law the old covenant was meant to teach you that but it was also meant to draw all these pictures and prophecies and stuff to show you that it was leading you to christ that was showing you're condemned but demonstrating there's a way out and that's through jesus through the sacrifice of christ so jesus brings the new covenant the new covenant is hey i'm going to wash your sins away and rather than giving you rules you have to obey i'm going to give you a new heart that longs to serve me a heart that desires to follow me i'm going to make you a new person from the inside out and this again takes place in sanctification in the christian life as you progressively you know god willing you yielding you become more and more christ-like and more and more godly through the work of the holy spirit in you not through the rules that you're learning so when did it start though when did the new covenant begin well that's a tough question to answer um you could say well it starts when jesus dies on the cross right okay some people would say it happens at the moment of christ's death on the cross and then there's some debate over what was the was the thief on the cross saved under the old covenant or under the new covenant because he he believed in jesus before his death but but he died after jesus death and some would say the new covenant begins at the resurrection of christ and others would say the new covenant begins in the giving of the holy spirit others would say the new covenant begins at communion when the when the bread and the wine come out and jesus gives them he says this is the covenant in my blood and now now that's the new covenant which means the covenant began before the death of the one instituting the covenant um i don't know the right answer these questions but let me let me throw this out there the thing that i think is a little sketchy is thinking that people who died before the new covenant weren't saved under the new covenant that's the part i want to push back on so romans 4 comes up a lot for some reason in q and a's and it's where paul talks about how abraham was saved and that abraham himself was saved right through faith that it was the same faith that abraham has that you have that you'll be saved by nobody was ever saved under the old covenant the old covenant was the school master leading us to christ and then we have jesus and we are brought into the knowledge of the new covenant but so i think the knowledge of the new covenant and being and what covenant you're saved under is a separate discussion i think that anybody who's ever been saved was saved under the new covenant it just wasn't um fully understood and fully in place and as far as i can tell in scripture i don't know of a clear point that tells us this is when the covenant begins if you look at the gospels and then the book of acts it seems as though there is like in the book of hebrews which we'll get into in a couple three months we'll be getting into the book of hebrews verse by verse i'm gonna do the whole thing you you see that there seems to be have been not have been like this immediate constant like there's the shift old covenant here new covenant here but rather a revelation of the new covenant uh in some an institution of a new covenant right but a fading of the old covenant that the old covenant didn't just stop it was it was more like there was a slow fading process that happens throughout the book of acts and the hebrews talks about this too so that the jews who obeyed the law and were under the law they still lived according to the law in the book of acts even guys like peter for the most part they did and then paul who lives according to the law when he's like with the jews because he wants to use that as evangelism to them and when he's with the gentiles he's not living according to the law isn't that interesting so in other words he doesn't have to because he realizes the law's place in pointing to christ so um wherever the exact you know switch is flipped on the new covenant whether you put it at the death of christ the the communion the resurrection of christ the giving of the spirit it's all pretty close to the same spot um but that doesn't mean anybody was saved outside the new covenant all of us are saved through the new covenant even if we weren't yet aware of it weren't yet fully cognizant and then the old covenant seems to fade slowly in the book of acts and in the book of hebrews and then with the destruction of the temple that was sped up quite a bit as well if a jew today was like mike i'm a jew and i follow jesus i follow my my my yeshua you know my messiah but i also observe all of the you know as many of the commands as i can um i wouldn't have a problem with that as long as they knew it wasn't salvific so i yeah it's complicated all right number 10 fox dot dude says you've said miracles in other religions are false signs from satan why would other religions have reason to think these signs are from satan couldn't a muslim say the same thing to a christian yeah um okay so fox dot dude um let me think through this a little bit here with you um so miracles in other religions are false signs from satan i i mean that doesn't sound like the way i would word things but but i would generally agree with at least the principle that if if supernatural activity takes place in a false religion there's a there's a good chance you should conclude that that is not from god but from some other supernatural source which could be satan his kingdom that sort of thing that makes sense but notice my preface how i get there if it takes place in a false religion then i conclude it's not from god it's from satan that's the reason so i'm not saying your s your supernatural signs are from satan therefore your religion is false no i'm saying your religion's false therefore the supernatural signs that you claim are coming alongside of it are either not real or they're satanic signs because i do think satan has some degree of power there though it doesn't match god um so then in response to that you say why would other religions have reason to think these signs are from satan um that's a good question let me come back to that one couldn't a muslim say the same thing to a christian a muslim could say the same thing they could say mike your religion's false therefore your supernatural signs are from satan but here's where it gets complicated um first off they would have to first establish the falseness of the religion to then conclude that the signs are false okay right so we're skipping the important part of whether the religion's true or not i'm not i'm not like you have miracles therefore you're false like that's not what i'm saying um but also we have problems that come down to simply saying like yeah okay let's take let's pretend you're in the scenario where a muslim says to a christian the supernatural signs in christianity are false therefore christianity therefore it's it's satanic um the problem here is that that islam tries to borrow christianity to establish its grounding it's its groundwork the foundations for for islam because they believe that jesus really is a prophet and so when somebody in the in in the name of jesus is following jesus is proclaiming jesus when they're proclaiming the resurrection of christ the apostles islam is in a confusing moment because they in some places islam says in the quran right that the the bible is from god the new testament as well it says that jesus is a prophet but then it denies that jesus is god's son and then it also um demonizes anyone who says that jesus has risen was even crucified two key things in the bible in the new testament so you see that islam has an internal contradiction that's going on it's like we want to build on a foundation that we're gonna we're gonna shoot out from under ourselves um so that's a little confusing and hard to deal with the islam example um basically though what i would do if i was encountering someone who's like look mike in a more charitable way it said hey i've i've seen supernatural things happen in this religious group that i've been part of i would want to then build a case for why i think those supernatural things were from satan i'm going to try to go back to the root of but your religion is false for these reasons because christianity is true for these reasons and therefore you can't conclude that these signs are false signs do you see that the difference we're we're just skipping the whole stage of demonstrating what's true as a way of deciding whether that sign is legit or not um anyway the other question that you had embedded in here was why would other religions have reason to think these signs are from satan i believe in the work of the holy spirit in a person's life so i do think that there is like this consciousness awareness type thing that goes on with people that would be hard to put your finger on but that would be a hope of mine is that they would see things happening and be like and some people have come out they're like man i knew it was wrong all the time others they've come out they've been like i was totally deceived i was totally deceived so we pray for them god open their eyes show them these things are not from you show them the truth of christ it's a spiritual supernatural thing that's going on there so fox.dude the important thing i want you to know is this i do not conclude start with this presumption those signs are from satan to get to the conclusion therefore your religion is false that's not my my logic process there number 11 gozalia ikramova says is it okay to not attend church at all i live in russia and christianity here is very unbiblical i've tried a lot of churches and i don't feel comfortable there your ministry has been a blessing so gazalia the the um the dilemma you have and this is why i'm a little hesitant on answering how i answer some of these questions because i realize that what we unintentionally do is we assume people have our scenario and we're ants and and i've seen pastors do this and like pastors who might be watching me like why don't you answer the way i want you to mike like i want you to think for a minute about the fact that you know here's gazalia who lives in russia and it's a very specific scenario and so you could just be like well you need to be in fellowship gazalia go to church what's wrong with you you know don't forsake the assembling of ourselves together well okay is that the right application for that verse i think from your description gazalia my application's a little different you're saying these churches are very unbiblical like not just they have a little bit wrong but the churches around me really really really problematic can't really fellowship there so gazalia my counsel to you would be if our instruction is don't forsake the gathering of ourselves together gazalia labor to find other like-minded believers wherever you can continue to seek to find them and start your own gathering doesn't mean you're trying to lead the church it just means you're trying to gather together with believers and then pray that god would help you guys start if it's an underground church fine help you guys start your own thing because the church there's going to be other believers around you that desperately need fellowship and encouragement and teaching and to be a community of believers in a biblical good environment so because all you might counsel to you is not that you just go to a really bad church but that you pray that god would help you be part of bringing together and making a good church a good gathering of believers that would be my my advice to you god guide you and bless you in it and turn you and other believers around you into magnets for each other so you can you can find one another number 12 cindy liz says new believer watched a christian cartoon with my son and it depicted god as a santa looking man and he asked if we were breaking the second commandment is it a sin to depict god in any way oh interesting question cindy by the way guys no more questions we have all 20 in so thank you so much for throwing them in there we'll answer all the ones we've already got loaded um can only do so much but we do it what we can um so god looks like a santa looking man um is it breaking okay is it a good idea probably not okay characterizing god as a man generally a bad idea i think right the uh mormonism does this they think that god god is is a man um he he has a physical body he's like i don't know 13 feet tall or something like that 10 feet tall he's really tall and he really is an old man in the sky um but um biblically speaking like let's talk about the temple real quick uh not only is the second commandment you you shall make no image representing me and you to bow down and worship there's that but that that's a little more limited than some people think um so artistic representations of of things is not all bad exodus 24 is talking 20 verse 4 is talking about um worship related images right so making an image of an angel and worshiping it bad but in the same temple there's two images of angels made out of gold on the on the mercy seat in the holy of holies there with their wings outstretched and a space between them to represent the presence of god so this is interesting but the thing is the the jews never worshiped those angels those angels were never the objects of worship of any kind so that's really important so it's not that we can't do artwork or even artwork that represents heavenly things because we see that in the temple read the description of the temple in detail there's lots of stuff in there but when it came to god even in the temple there is no image there's no likeness that's made there and one of the reasons for this is it seems to me because god doesn't want us to be confused about his identity he's not part of creation and he's not like creation he's so transcendently bigger better and more than all of this finite stuff that using something to represent him like an old man is a false representation of god god is better than that god is more than that and so for that reason it there's there's um there's my pushback here is that angels can at least be represented because they're at least part of creation god is not and you cannot take santa claus and turn and act like that represents god so i think it's a bad idea to do that it's one thing to describe god coming in some sort of theophany but it's something else to to just give god as though this is his form right when god comes and interacts with us in in a in a form that doesn't mean that that just is his form okay then you have um uh the the um is it ascended to pick god in any way um it's at least well it may well be um now now let me let me back off of this a little bit and suggest that what if what if in the cartoon they just depict god as light is okay well would i say that's a sin i mean they depicted god but he's just light there's just a light source and you know that's happening in scripture sometimes god is sort of described isaiah describes the seeing god in isaiah but but you what's interesting is he doesn't describe god much he's like describes the train of his robe notice this he's staying away from the actual description of god so there's a certain like holiness and reverence i don't want to lower god's magnificence by representing him as something so much smaller than who he truly is now the exception to this would seem to be jesus right jesus comes and he's the image of god right he's god with us and he actually comes in human form but that human form is meant to be seen as a contrast to god's nature right not as encapsulating all of the all that god is instead we look at jesus in human form we see god's humility we see the humility of the son he comes and he's represented as a human a weak lowly human and we should see this as a stark contrast to his divine unlimited glory and power so i don't want to use humans to represent god in that way unless i'm keeping that contrast present in the in the context of the art or whatever it is you're doing so yeah got to be wise about that sort of thing um yeah there's my thoughts on that cindy i hope that that helps a lot of times people who are producing these cartoons for kids and stuff like that i don't want to rip on them too much sometimes they get the short into the stick because people it's so easy to criticize the work of others who are working on often very very small budgets trying to kick out this content that it might help other people and they have various concerns and not perhaps thoroughly vetting the theological implications of everything they do and i just want to be gracious to them but also you know we'd like if they did better all right number 13. koolbob says bible says that those who diligently see god will find him what about the muslims hindus and all the people who are diligently seeking god but never find jesus and stay in their religion well let me just point first that there are many muslims many hindus and many people who are diligently seeking god and they leave islam and they leave hinduism and they leave mormonism and they leave paganism and they leave atheism and they there are i mean if people didn't if if people didn't find god seeking him i don't it'd be hard to explain the existence of christianity like if christianity's true right then you are seeing it happen all over the place as you know my ancestors would would have been like druids or something like that in ireland you know and here's me worshiping the god of israel so definitely there's a lot going on there um the power behind this question cool bob is the idea that there are these hypothetical individuals that are seeking god so hard and so pure-heartedly but they're not finding him and the power of this depends on how much you believe that depiction of people i don't really know that i believe that depiction of people that there's people out there that are just seeking god with all their heart and not finding him like i have a really hard time swallowing that that's like a real scenario i really do don't get me wrong there are plenty of people who are going to be there's going to be muslims hindus christians every atheist who all will tell you as loud as possible that they are seeking with all their heart to know the truth about god but this may have more to do with our own self delusions about our own sincerity and goodness right um proverbs says uh let me let me take you to a proverb proverbs 20 verse 6 that's the verse i want to find for you here most men will proclaim each his own goodness but who can find a faithful man if i went around and i grabbed 10 random muslims 10 random hindus 10 random christians at least people who say that they're each of these things 10 random atheists 10 random i'm not religious i'm spiritual people if i just grab 10 random people from each of these groups and i just went through each of them and said are you sincerely seeking god are you sincere and your desire to know the truth about god i i imagine that almost all of them would say yes but i just don't believe that to be the case and one of the reasons i don't believe that mike you're such a cynic is because i know my own heart and i know that there are times when i think i'm seeking god and i look back and realize that i was really seeking my own desires and wanting god's approval for them and i didn't at the time recognize that that was what i was doing because we inevitably think we're the good guy in our story right we have um you guys i'm gonna share something with you that i'm gonna i'm just gonna say is my opinion and it could be it could be incorrect but it's something i've noticed with the the massive exposure we have to um movies and tv shows nowadays that obviously other generations never had and i'm gonna call this the pro the problem of the protagonist's perspective let me just please just make up a name for something so it sounds more official the problem of the protagonist perspective and this may relate to cool bob's question when you're watching shows you you find yourself magnetically drawn towards rooting for whoever is you know whoever the perspective of the show is being represented by so if the show represents the perspective of a criminal you find yourself rooting just magnetically drawn to root for the criminal and those who come against the criminal are seen as being obstacles or or antagonists and those who are for or helpful to the criminal are seen as being protagonists and we tend to judge others in the in the world of the show or the movie by how good they are to that protagonist to that lead character of the show this is an interesting phenomenon i find it's true even in me i watch a show and i'm like i'm like i'm like rooting why am i rooting for this guy like this this is a bad guy he's about to get caught or his plans are about to fail and i'm like part of me doesn't want them to fail what is going on that is so weird if this was real life i'd be like lock him up you know and there's there's something weird going on there that's that people have acknowledged who look at um at storytelling it's the problem of of the protagonist it's i when i see life or see the world through the lens of this character i am i automatically think this character is the good guy now i need to translate this into your life you've been living your entire life for 23 years for 57 years for 19 years for 13 years however long you've been living you've been living through the lens of one person and you've been seeing the world through the lens of how people treat you and you tend to feel like you're the good guy like when someone comes against you that makes them bad in fact you'll even think people are good or bad not based on their actual character but based on how they treat you is that person good well they're good to me yeah they're good i like them they're good is that person bad well they were maybe they're like objectively good in some other sense but they were rude to me so i hate them right there's this problem of the protagonist so when you go to the person who's lived their entire life seeing the world through their own eyes and you ask them are you sincere and you're seeking of god and they're like are you kidding i'm the hero of this show of course i'm sincere are you kidding i'm the protagonist of course i'm genuine and um this this is why proverbs tells us that most men will proclaim their own goodness and yet romans is going to tell us that that all have fallen short of the glory of god and these this creates a problem for those preaching the gospel because they'll go to someone and be like man you need to seek the lord and they'll just be like of course i seek the lord i'm the good guy in this show don't you know that all right number 14 im imrad says if you struggle with sin and there's a true condition true contrition excuse me there's true contrition but you still keep repeating the same sin and asking for forgiveness will god still forgive you imrad this is a super general question and you're probably talking either about yourself or or someone else's super serious situation and generally speaking i i can only offer broad strokes here because i'm not trying to make it here's the danger of making generalities is that they can be applied clumsily to different situations okay so um in general if there's a person who as is a christian and they still battle and struggle with sin on a regular basis but there is a genuineness in their in their fight against the sin and a contrition that's there that's you would say a true contrition okay like i i i keep struggling with this the temptation doesn't go sometimes i fail sometimes i succeed i am not going to want to kick them while they're down okay personally i'm going to want to encourage them in the lord and in his grace and his kindness and and then have a second glance at their life and say hey what is it that you haven't been trying to fix this problem that would seem obvious to everyone else you know um so i want to i want to say that that that i'm i'm my tendency is to want to encourage and strengthen them on the other hand there are those where their their continual sinful lifestyle may be evidence that they're just simply not genuine in their faith in christ now here's where it becomes really challenging for me in imran and this is this is where i i i fall short and but maybe i'm supposed to in this area um it seems to me that when scripture confronts these scenarios particularly in the new testament that the answer is not given it's just a question that's asked so when when paul writes to people he'll he'll say sometimes things like man i wish i could have confidence about you but right now i'm in doubt he's in doubt what does that mean he's in doubt is he saying they're not saved because the way they're living no he's not he didn't say that did he he said he's in doubt he means he has uncertainty he means that when you're and here's my application of this is when your life is so inconsistent with your christian commitments it doesn't mean you're not saved but it does mean there's doubt about it and so while my tendency is to want to encourage and strengthen those people and lift them up lift up the weak i am also aware that there are some who are going to be like this is just revealing or not really saved so i want to take perhaps the same posture at least that i think i see in scripture which is to say um you know realize that there's there's a question of doubt there's a confusion there's there's a problem here we need to address maybe someone's overblowing they just think the fact that they're tempted means that they're backslidden or something like that and that's silly and we can address that but someone just keeps committing sin i want to have a varied response i want to be like look is there humility right because pride to the proud goes the warnings and the law to the humble goes the grace and the kindness okay is there humility or is there pride about this very issue of sin if i sense pride i'm going to lean more towards a harsher response if i sense humility i'm going to be more towards a gracious and kind response and ultimately um a super general answer to your question may not suit all those situations i hope that helps you guys i'm sorry if i'm making things harder for you i'm just trying to be as real as possible number 15 laura clark says i recently converted to christianity our church does baptisms which which is great by the way laura thank god for that our church does baptisms once a year but my husband has coveted and can't attend i want him to be there but i also want to get baptized asap what should i do can you like stream it on a phone so he can watch is that possible have someone come up on stage and just bring the phone right there and just be like they're the stand-in so your husband can be part of it i mean that seemed like a good solution to me or you could ask somebody to come over to the house to do it or you could give your husband a a big giant bubble that he comes to church in okay obviously that's not a solution uh but laura i'm just i'm just brainstorming with you here laura i'm excited that you're a christian i definitely think you should get baptized not as like a uh i'm scared i better get baptized or else no no but it has like a go for it you know plug in and be part of it um i think that's the thing to do as soon as possible i mean can you video it can you stream it for your husband and you come home and you guys can watch it together and celebrate maybe maybe that would be a good option i don't know but we're excited for you laura that's awesome thank god number 16 richards 98 says can you explain the gap between the early churches in the new testament and the first protestants like martin luther it depends on what you mean by the gap so let me just talk i'll speak generally about it um so the gap i i suppose there's maybe a lot of people feel this way and richard it may not be you forgive me okay i'm not i'm not trying to mind read you at all but in my head i'm thinking how do people often wrestle with these issues they often think that we have um like these blocks like like church histories just in these sort of clean-cut blocks so you've got the book of acts and then that you know the end of acts there's a block and then you have the rise over you know maybe over the next 300 years maybe and more the rise of say roman catholicism over here and orthodox uh over here and then you have martin luther who shows up in 1500 that's another block boom 1500s martin luther comes and then the reformation and protestants and all that and they're like we did get back to the book we had to get back to acts and the implication is that like in between you know maybe maybe 300s until 1500s there's just like it's just all compromised and it's all wacky and messed up but the reality is that the history of it as i've been reading some of these history things on it it's super fluid and super complicated it's just it just isn't simplistic at all um you it's hard to even define a date when you could say roman catholicism officially this is when it begins because it's just so flowing and slow and incremental in many places and ways so that being said um the the gap can also be perhaps exaggerated because we would think um okay mike you have a protestant church you know your church is protestant you guys have like a worship time and then you have like a bible study and then you have like um maybe like a new believer's class right now right and like and we start to think that some of these things that are like just our structure that that that is what we're saying was happening in the book of acts and in the earliest churches that's not what we're saying um the protestant reformation is more about here's how i view it in the book of acts you have the church in its infancy and and while it still goes through chaos sometimes and there still is going to be like heresies that are cropping up that a lot of the new testament's written to refute those things and deal with that stuff so it's not like it's just pure but but what you have is the least amount of extra biblical tradition in the book of acts and in the early in the first century the least amount of extra biblical traditions now as time goes by any organizational group tends to take on more and more of man's traditions some of those are good some of those are bad and some of those are innocuous the protestant reformation came into what started in a time where there was an awful lot of those traditions that had accrued over time some of them good some of them bad and some of them innocuous and what they did was they said hey what would happen if we tried to divest ourselves of as much of these extra biblical traditions as possible and get to as close to a biblical stance as possible they weren't the only people to ever do it but they were very successful at starting a giant movement while doing it and so when you look at it like that you go okay so there's not church history there's a number of people who reject this or reject that i mean there was a there were councils in the catholic church um to reject the massive authority that the pope was gaining at the time and then later they said well that council didn't count so so like this stuff had been going on for a long time it's not as blocky as we sometimes think i don't know if that helps um yeah so now my response as a as a guy who considered himself protestant would be i'm not trying to get us back to martin luther but i agree with martin luther that we should get back to the text of scripture and so by pointing our arrow back to the bible and back to the first century and back to the new testament documents we have the best chance of shedding ourselves of unbiblical things that might be harmful and i think that that's a smart thing to do number 17 trevor doran says what why does the lord call gideon a mighty man of valor when he had many wives was this always a sin i'm confused about this honestly um you know what off the top of my head i'm not remembering if gideon had many wives at that time [Music] so judges 6 11. now the angel of the lord came and sat under the terabith tree which was in oprah oprah not oprah um which belonged to joash the abi abby is right while his son gideon thrushed wheat in the wine press in order to hide it from the midianites and the angel the lord appeared to him and said to him the lord is with you you mighty man of valor so at this point in gideon's life i don't know if he's married at that point in time i i guess i mean he's living in his father's house what he does reflects on his father he destroys his father's idols he i don't know if he was married at that time uh later on he definitely got married and here's the arc that a lot of the judges follow and this may help you as you study the book of judges trevor so in the book of judges a lot of the judges follow the same arc um it's like they're like a nobody god uses them mightily and then they fail like they tend to end on a bad note and the whole book of judges ends on a bad note that that actually follows the arc of judges well actually it's lots of arcs it's like that they're really bad they're doing lousy then they get better then they get worse and they get better then they get worse and god delivers them and they get worse and worse and worse but if you zoom out the book of judges looks more like this like here's the beginning god brought them in oh but they sin so they fell into stuff and they got better and they got worse and they got better and you notice it's actually they're getting worser and worsiest at the end until it's just a bunch of worcestershire sauce um cheesy jokes all day long so the um the point here is don't let it surprise you that these judges fail and that as you progress through the book of judges they fail more and more frequently and there's less good and more bad to say about them because that's kind of a theme of the book of judges judges is a is a is like a bad news report it's like spotlighting look at look at this it shows god's faithfulness israel's unfaithfulness it's a good case for the sin of mankind now back to the uh mighty man of valor stuff oh oh so as far as this before i get to that as far as gideon's arc goes gideon has a lot of these you know he's he's actually kind of weak and timid right he has a lot of these like really wonderful high moments and then the latter part of his life is all bad news all of it's bad and i would include lots of women that he gets with the fame he now has as being a deliverer for israel and he names one of them what uh uh son of the king abimelech son of the king he's not even a king right but his son's named abimelech that it's just it just gets weird okay when god came and says lord the lord is with you or he should be the angel of the lord comes who i do think is a theophany but he says the the lord is with you you mighty man of valor the question we have is what is meant by mighty man of valor i don't think it means you all that you do is righteous okay nobody would think this but this could be the impression you've got trevor when you're like how could it be said of him if he has multiple wives well he may not have had multiple ways but let's pretend he did already you mighty man of valor well this would not refer to somebody who is righteous a mighty man of valor in this sense is more of like a military term like you're a powerful fighter is the idea what's interesting is though is there's an irony here because there's nothing about gideon while he threshes wheat in the wine press that says he's a mighty man of valor first off he's threshing wheat in a wine press that is he's he's um he's separating wheat from chaff but he's doing it in a wine press with walls because he's hiding from the midianites because they would come and steal the wheat so he's he's trying to get food for his family in hiding um there's a certain braveness that's there but there's also a certain cowardice that's there right he's fearful of the midianites his response to god to show the irony here gideon said to him o my lord if the lord is with us why then is all this happened to us and where are all these miracles which our fathers told us about saying did not the lord bring us up out of egypt but now the lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the midianites he's not really a man of faith right now is he then the lord turned to him and said go in this might of yours and you shall save israel from the hand of the midianites have i not sent you and it's here's the irony what might gideon has no might he has no power he's he's just like kind of like a a woe is me and i'm hiding and and that's the point of gideon's story gideon then gets an army and god says oh your army's too big i want you to beat me to beat the enemy with fewer people in your army. and so god's like using gideon to show his might amongst the weakest of god's people so i think it's an ironic statement oh mighty man of valor is about what god's going to do with gideon although it's not because of getting it's all because of god's power so it's not a statement about gideon so much as about god and his ability to work through anybody to accomplish deliverance that's how i would take it number 18 daniel lazen says if god knits us in our mother's womb where did we get our sin nature um well i um the the the maybe the assumption because sometimes questions have kind of these hidden assumptions so daniel it might be that you're thinking if god creates us he can't create us like if he's if he's active in my in my um creation inside the womb then he i can't have sin i can't have something wrong with me because god can't produce something bad right um i i don't know that i would put that burden or that limitation on god that he can't produce someone who has a sin nature right that he can't actively be involved as though god has to be hands off but i also would suggest that the the psalm that says that god knit us together in our mother's womb isn't saying that each process of biological growth of a child is miraculous and not just like not all not a natural process in nature i don't think it's meant to be a comment on that i think what's happening here is god's being given credit for the incredible design that there is in the human body i think that's it i think that's what we're supposed to get from that passage let me see if i can take us there we'll look at it if i can find it psalm 139 13. okay um for you form my inward parts you knitted me together in my mother's womb i praise you for i am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful are your works my soul knows it very well so um the idea here is just giving god credit for the design that is in me and credit for all of creation obviously if god sets up the universe the way it is and even if there are some natural forces involved god designed those and made those so he's like god you form my inward parts you needed me together he sees that there's a personal involvement of god in even the natural biological things that are happening does that mean i can't have sin nature no i don't know why i i just don't understand why so let me read your question again daniel if god knits us in our mother's wombs where do we get our sin nature i don't know why that's a problem even if god miraculously designed you like even if he poofed you to existence in the mother's womb without pre-existing dna you could still have a sin nature i don't know why god couldn't do that you're like well it would make god bad for making me bad well hold on i mean i don't think sin nature means you're guilty i think it means you have proclivities and god is going to fix those in the end of course if you turn to christ so yeah so i guess i'm not seeing the force of the question daniel i hope my answer's helped i feel like you you could get a better answer for somebody perhaps not me sorry buddy elijah hernandez says hey mike i believe in the trinity but there is someone who has used first corinthians 15 28 against the doctrine can you please explain this for me well i can read the verse and we can talk about it first corinthians 15 28. all right i'm gonna back up just a little bit um the last enemy to be destroyed as death verse 27 here for god has put all things in subjection under his feet under jesus's feet but when it says all things are put in subjection it is plain that he's he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him when all things are subjected to him then the son himself the son will also be subjected to him that would be the father who put all things in subjection under him that god may be all in all okay two things i'll mention here um the idea it seems to be the presumption seems to be that if the son is subjected to the father if there's a role difference where one is yielding and subjecting himself to the other then they cannot then the doctrine of the trinity cannot be true now here's what i want to say a lot of the arguments against the doctrine of the trinity they're not against the doctrine of the trinity like the doctrine of the trinity holds that there is um okay there's what we in fancy terms we call the ontological trinity and the economical trinity so the ontological is just like this is the nature of god three persons one being okay that's the short you know the father is god the son is god the spirit is god but the father is not the son the son is not the spirit the spirit's not the father that's that's the trinity in a nutshell ontologically the nature of the trinity but then there's the economic trinity this is the relationship which if there's three persons there can be relationship there and then there can be love god has love within his own being which is amazing um because there's multiple persons now the relationship these persons have can involve one yielding to the other one person of the trinity yielding to the other and this is what we see here the sun yields to the father right he's subjecting right himself to the father it like giving uh you know saying i'll be i'll be under your lead so to speak so i don't really have a problem with that that's not a this would be an explanation explanation of the economic trinity not a challenge to the ontological trinity the second thing i'd like to say is this um the solution this is so that god can be all in all now this is interesting the the the formula is everything is made subject to the sun and then the sun is is subjected to the father and that is how god can be all in all and i think that that last phrase while it's challenging admittedly it makes more sense if the son and the father are god right that the son is god i should say the son is god and the father is god i don't say arc god it might be confusing terminology anyhow um i don't see any challenge to the trinity in in noticing role differences role differences imply different persons um which is part of the doctrine of the trinity all right we're gonna go to the last question today this is this is from uh anonymous and says how can young people be a good be good ambassadors for christ when we also sin how do we make sure we do not conform to this world um you answered your question um uh don't conform to the world and don't send so like i mean in a sense this is like really simplistic but i also recognize this that sometimes the simplest questions are the ones that are driving us the most and we most desperately need someone to give us some help with and so um my encouragement would be this as a young person here's a few things for you it really helps when you can when you can sort of stand outside of your generation and look at them from a biblical perspective and what i mean by this is you can see the trends and the mentalities that everyone has and nobody notices that everyone has that i think is pretty important actually so when you look and you go hey you know young people are generally arrogant self-righteous quick to judge quick to speak slow to slow to think i mean this is not it's not true of every young person but these are tendencies in the generation um the desire for attention on self for appreciation of self for self exaltation and for for that that that's imp that's really present another thing young people have that i would just want you to step back and notice it's there okay because then you're going to say hey this is going to affect me too i want to process that as a christian another thing young people have i find is they're terribly afraid of other young people this is going to be after many many years doing youth ministry i realized that teens and preteens are more afraid of people their own age and more worried about what people their own age think than they are worried about just about anybody else and what they think you know when you're in class you're not worried that your teacher doesn't like you you're worried that the other students don't like you you're not worried that what you do will be looked at frowned upon by by adults around you well you don't like that what's even worse is that the people your own age will think you're ridiculous or foolish or annoying or whatever if you can stand outside your generation and see that these are perennial problems amongst youth pretty much every every generation then you can start to try to have a biblical mindset on those things and so one of the things i would encourage you to do is to say my identity i don't get my satisfaction for who i am i don't get my approval and i don't get my my sense of self-worth from the people around me particularly from the teens around me why on earth am i looking at them for affirmation i'm going to get my affirmation from god i am part of the kingdom of christ i am a child of god in christ and this is going to be where i find my satisfaction because then you will have the power to overcome the peer pressure to conform and to yield or to just become silent on important issues that are going on in the lives of people around you when you have that sense of of confidence that there is in christ like a humble confidence i think that's pretty powerful and will enable you to deal with some of the stuff you see going on around you uh consider reading the book of daniel and how daniel and his you know compadres shadrach meshach and abednego they were dragged from their jewish context into this babylonian context and there they were they were systematically um educated to be more like the babylonians but they refused it and this is what's really interesting is they're a case study for someone who has like a godly a godly culture at least what should have been a godly culture that they come from and they're brought into an ungodly culture and they're surrounded by peers who are generally ungodly and think they're weird because they're trying to live godly but they held their ground and they decided they would not defile themselves with the king's delicacies and things like that and because of that god was able to use them so i think that being able to not hate your culture around you not hate the other students around you but to be able to look at them and say hey i don't get my sense of self-worth from these guys i don't need them to approve of me i am not doing what i'm doing for them primarily i'm doing it for the lord primarily and i'd like to have an impact in their lives as well um i think that that's good if you can remove normal teenage insecurities from the equation and this is not meant to look normal totally normal most humans have a relatively high amount of insecurities about things i've realized this even about myself i just i just go that's insecurity i'm just not going to let that influence my thinking here i'm just going to push it aside and do it do the right thing regardless so normal teenage insecurities look to other teens to make them feel better about themselves this causes them to conform to this world in a lot of weird ways godly christian teens will look to the word of god look to godly christian leaders these people to help them to sense their direction in life their purpose in life and find their satisfaction in christ and then they can be separate from the world and not so influenced to jump off the bridge so to speak all right well that's my thoughts i hope that some of those things are helpful for you and um man read scripture just reread scripture listen to scripture soak in the word of god thank you guys for joining me this has been episode 46 of the um 20 questions that we do every friday at 1 pm pacific time that is whatever time it is in california and monday this monday i have commented for you guys the final teaching in the mark series over two years in the gospel of mark at least because of delays from covet stuff and we are now finishing it this is gonna be the last study in the series i am looking forward to it it's nice to be able to say wow that was done and look back at the you know the work the bunch of work that was there and it's just there for hopefully to bless people exciting for me and i hope it's a blessing to you i intend to continue just creating massive amounts of heavily researched content that it might just be a blessing and be accessible for free for everyone and hopefully hopefully it um hopefully it nurtures you draws you closer to christ not just in your knowledge but in your in your life thank you all so much thank you to the mods for being there thank you thank you thank you just looking for the buttons over here to stop everything there's no more cats she left she got her cuddles in she's gone um i think that's it i think that's it

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 52,297

Rating: 4.8880086 out of 5

Keywords: 20 questions, BibleThinker, Mike Winger, question and answer, think biblically, Q and A, episode 46, ep 46, part 46

Id: 7sc16m4UWnk

Length: 90min 8sec (5408 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021