WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 You all right? We should be. Should, uh, be live. Now, I've got a fun announcement for you guys. At first, let me talk about the seven deadly sins. 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:01:22.000 Doesn't sound like a fun thing to talk about, but, um, all this stuff's interesting, and there's an element of fun in that because it's just relevant to the truth about God, the truth about ourselves, the truth about spiritual things, the truth about eternal things, the truth about that deep, really important stuff that we so often forget about. So the first question for today, while you guys are loading your questions into the live chat, is, I've heard people refer to the seven deadly sins, but I haven't been able to find that sort of list in Scripture. Are, uh, those sins especially deadly, according to Scripture? If not, where did that list come from? And actually, the origin of the list is pretty interesting. Um, the seven deadly sins, we trace back to Gregory the Great. Uh, the Gregory I, the Pope. He was a pope at the time, and we're talking like 500s. So he came up with this list, but he didn't come up with it on his own. So the list we have today, it's like his list. So it's pride, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, or wrath and envy. That list we've got that Gregory had. But there was a monk before Gregory that had a longer list that included stuff like sorrow. 3 00:01:22.000 --> 00:02:11.000 Sorrow, which it strikes me, and I haven't looked into the whole history of what he meant by that word or why he used that term or what even was probably using Latin or something. What was the word he used there. But the idea that sorrow itself as a sin, it sounds strange to me. Um, Jesus was acquainted with sorrow, right, as Scripture says. At any rate, what are the seven deadly sins? Um, on a popular level, a lot of people think of the deadly sins as, here's things you do that you will then lose your salvation. Like, if you are saved, you do, uh, one of the things on this list, the deadly sins, and you lose your salvation. I don't think that's actually what the seven deadly sins is supposed to be about. It's related to that in Catholic theology. It's connected to that. But it's not just that. 4 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:20.000 You might even call it the seven temptations or the seven things that open the door to deadly sin in your life. 5 00:02:20.000 --> 00:07:21.000 And I think that's how the orthodox couch it. Their list is slightly different, but they call it the eight Passions, uh, the eight deadly passions or something like that. And so the idea behind it is. And here's the positive of it. This is a list of things for you to think about and evaluate in your own life and make sure that you're not doing that, you're not yielding yourself to. Right. These are serious issues. Pride is a massive issue. Pride is obviously one of the, biblically speaking, one of the worst sins to fall into and one of the easiest to fall into. I deal with my own pride all the time. You deal with yours or you don't deal with it. It's just there we have pride. Pride is a massive, massive problem. It opens the doors to all kinds of horrible sins. Proverbs has this neat section I've taught on this elsewhere, but where it talks about all these things that a fool does, and it just lists, a fool is like this. A fool is like this. A fool is like this. And then it says, but if you meet a man who's wise in his own eyes, he's worse than a fool. That pride, that arrogance, uh, it's something we have to guard ourselves against because truthfully, it does open the door to all kinds of other problems in our lives. Lust, um, opens the door to all kinds of. Now, lust can be a sin. When you give in to lust and you fantasize, right? That can absolutely become a sin. Um, and, uh, it opens the door, though, to things that are sprung from lust, that lust starts that. Then these activities of adultery and fornication and pornography all come from that. Then we have gluttony, a very neglected sin issue we don't often think about or talk about in our very gluttonous society. Uh, we have a blind spot on gluttony. Greed, sloth, um, sloth, laziness. Um, at least that's how we think of it as moderns. I understand tHat. I guess ancients would have thought of sloth as being a broader category that included other things. Um, anger or wrath, um, and then envy. So these are all the seven deadly sins. And, uh, here's what's right about this, in my opinion, even though it's not in Scripture, you don't have this list anywhere in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible is there a list of. Here's the seven deadly sins, right? There's this vague statement in first John. And I'm not saying it's unimportant, but it's vague. It's without specifications. It's given there saying, if someone sins a sin that leads to death, don't pray for him. But if they sin a sin that's not leading to death, then pray for them. And so then there's this big debate about what does that meant? Are these mortal sins that Catholicism talks about? Are these the deadly sins? Um, and I think what we shouldn't do is take my short answer on that because I'm going to move quickly today and get into a bunch of stuff. Then I got an announcement I want to share with you after I answer this first question. Um, I don't want to take a whole theological grid, a whole sort of list of theological commitments, and then read that into the first John passage. That's rather vague. And then say, ha. First John said sin unto death. Therefore, the entire mediatorial system of Roman Catholicism is therefore validated by this claim in first John. And that's what's called isegesis. Reading into the text of Scripture a lot that's not there. It's like in, uh, LDS or Mormon theology, when they read that passage in one Corinthians that talks about baptizing for the dead, he's like, hey, if the dead don't rise, why else are you baptized for the dead? And they go, uh, ah, see, we do this ritual baptism for the dead, and they have a whole big theology based upon it about witnessing in the afterlife and about the Gospel of Mormonism, this foreign to the New Testament. And they seek to take this vague phrase, baptism for the dead in the Book of First Corinthians and then validate this whole system that is not actually being taught anywhere in the Bible. That's called isegesis, taking a challenging passage of scripture, adding a whole bunch of weight and baggage to it that it doesn't have, and then using it to validate stuff that it's not even talking about. So I don't want to do that. I want to have a sober awareness of sin. I want to be fully aware that my sins bring all sorts of pain and suffering and problems into my life and the lives of others. There's a benefit there. But I personally never talk about the seven deadly sins. You've probably never heard me bring it up. Um, most likely I can't remember having brought it up if I have, and I avoid it deliberately. And here's why. Because on the sort of, uh, level of normal people, when you bring up the topic of seven deadly sins, it just immediately segues into all of the baggage of Roman Catholic theology. Because they have a belief, though it's not entirely the same as the seven deadly sins. They have a belief in something called mortal sin and then something called venial sin. Venial sins or they're thinking, venial is like, here's a sin. That's a lesser degree, it's a lesser sin. And if you do this, you're still saved, right? It messes you up, but you're still saved. You commit a mortal sin. You do that, you've lost your salvation, you've lost sanctifying grace, and you need to get, like, resaved effectively, because if you die in that state after having committed one of those sins, before you get over to, say, perhaps one way of doing this, get over to the priest and get this mortal sin dealt with before you do that, if you die, you're going to hell. 6 00:07:21.000 --> 00:08:18.000 So when you say seven deadly sins, I think it invokes this imagery. I think, at least amongst the community that I live in, I think it stirs up those ideas. And I don't want to stir that stuff up. I don't think that mortal sin, um, in particular. Well, let me put it this way, because I'm trying to give a shorter answer, then move on to your guys'questions. I do not believe, and I think we can be very coNfident, that the Roman Catholic system of mediators between Pope and priests and bishops and cardinals and stuff, and the idea of them needing these go betweens between us and God is unbiblical, um, unhistorical. Not from the first century, not from the earliest time of the apostles, there were none of these things going on. And it ends up really diminishing the work and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. So I don't want to do anything that feeds into that. I avoid that terminology for that reason. Let me make sure that we're all good to go here. 7 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.000 Just a second, y'all. 8 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:23.000 Oh, there's no. 9 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:44.000 Let me. Okay. Let me tell you, I'm not going to put the counter up because I've already begun. And it would literally be me getting up and hooking up wires and stuff. But here's my quick announcement for you guys. Um, I have just finished recording the next women in ministry video. The longest video I've ever recorded. The hardest video I've ever done. It took me like a year. 10 00:08:44.000 --> 00:09:35.000 Yeah, took me like a year between having, uh, long Covid issues. That really slowed me down significantly and other problems, uh, that really delayed things. I started recording, and then very sadly, um, my mother had been diagnosed with, uh, pancreatic cancer. She had been given, they said, three to six months, but obviously they don't really know, especially with that kind of cancer. And we had some wonderful times with her. Over the past two months since she was diagnosed. And then the last three weeks or so, she required just continual care. Um, and maybe I'll tell you guys about it sometime. I'd rather not, to be honest. It was incredibly difficult for everybody, especially her. And, um, there's some beautiful things that came out of it, some good stuff that came out of it. God was gracious in the midst of it, but, man, it was brutally difficult. 11 00:09:35.000 --> 00:10:11.000 So I started recording the women in ministry final, not final video, but next to last video, um, on one Timothy two. That the ultimate passage, right. This is the passage people argue about the most that more scholars have argued about and written on and debated and more hotly debated than anything else currently in scholarship, as far as I know, this one passage. So I started recording and then I had to stop and drop everything. And I just went to my mom's house and didn't leave for, uh, quite a while, many days. Just taking care of constant needs and, um, try to just be honor my mother. 12 00:10:11.000 --> 00:11:35.000 At any rate, um, Lord took her home. Some time has gone by. We've been dealing with all the other things that you deal with when that happens. And I started getting to record again. I just finished the recording yesterday, finally. And I just started editing it this morning. And it's going to be a lot of editing. I hope to have it out soon, like hopefully before Thanksgiving, God willing. I'm excited about it. It's the longest video by far, I've ever done. There's timestamps. You can skip to the conclusion if you need to. Whatever you need to do, it's going to be there. But, yeah, it's finally happening. And the next video after that will come a lot quicker. You won't be waiting that long for it because now things have been getting better. The other positive thing, praise God, uh, my long COVID issues have been getting so much better over the last month. My energy level is much better. My focus, attention just, uh, my general health has been improving significantly. Thank God. Good timing, too, because otherwise I couldn't have been there for my mom the way I was. But that being said, um, the final video is going to be coming out not too long from now, which will be just a short summary of the whole series, drawing out the principles, the main points. Right. None of the debates, none of the arguments, just the main points. Boom, boom, boom. And then asking a ton of hard questions about how we apply these issues in our lives today, specifically in different ways in which men and women do ministry, not just in church, but on things like YouTube and podcasts. Anyway, we'll get into all that, all the hard questions. 13 00:11:35.000 --> 00:12:21.000 That being said, it is Time to go to your questions right now. Here we go. This first one comes in from Lucas Sullivan. Our second one. So here's question two for Sarah, for your editing purposes. For timestamps, I'm just going to hold up some fingers and wave them for a second, and hopefully that helps you shortcut how long it takes to put timestamps up, because I don't have the counter. So, question number two. Lucas, uh, says, I absolutely love being a new youth pastor. Great. That's wonderful, Lucas. However, I often find myself going over my students'heads. A small group of them tell me they're thrilled to actually learn something. I'm conflicted on whether I should simplify my messages in an effort to hold as many attention spans as possible or keep going in deeper waters to continue feeding those that seem to be benefiting from it. Thoughts? 14 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:38.000 Um, this is sort of an answer to your question, but let me share with you my experience. Right. So, 13 years as a youth pastor, um, also many years of doing youth ministry before that, before I was ordained and was in that role. I'd been doing Youth ministry for many, many years. 15 00:12:38.000 --> 00:13:39.000 But my first year as, like the guy teaching every single Sunday, every single Wednesday, um, I learned a hard lesson in that first year. And what I ended up doing was I kept focusing my messages and my teaching on those borderline kids, those kids that were just showing up to church. Maybe they liked the social aspect, but they really were not serious at all about following God. And I focused so much of my teaching on them that I had these hungry disciples who wanted to feed and grow and learn in Christ. And I was neglecting them because I thought, they're doing okay. I'm going to emphasize these borderline students, these Backslidden students. And so I kept trying to bring them around when really it was their heart was the issue. And me explaining things a million times wasn't doing a whole lot. After a year of ministry, I was praying about it, I was reflecting on it and decided, know, my job is to focus on these disciples that actually want to grow. Jesus didn't go around spending all of his time dealing with people who would reject the message. 16 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:45.000 He sent it out there, he put it out there, and those who received got more. And so I started teaching that way. 17 00:13:45.000 --> 00:15:14.000 I think it's okay to present your ministry not to the intellectual elite of your community, but to those who are. Who are spiritually focused and aware and, uh, want to be discipled. I think that's a healthy way to do church. If you don't do that, you never disciple the people who need it. And you're constantly just trying to get people to make it a one time commitment. And that doesn't mean you never preach the Gospel or you never bring an invite to those people. It means that the focus of the ministry is on the hungry and, uh, that a piece of it is going to be on those who are borderline and backslidden and that sort of thing. Now, this is different. If you're doing outreach, you go on the street to do outreach. That's all about drawing people in to know Christ. Initially, that's the purpose of outreach. But if every Sunday is that, then you never disciple these youth. And four years, eight years, however long they're with you, depending on how your church has things set up, they just don't get discipled. They just stay surface level and other things will come in and replace that hunger they had for that discipleship. So I don't think you want to shoot for the, uh, intellectual, uh, elite. You want to break things down so everyone can understand it to the best of your ability. I teach on a higher level here in many of my videos than I would in youth ministry because of the age of the students. But I would always try to challenge them. My thought is, if you can handle this much, I'm going to give you a little more than you can handle. And that's kind of how I personally would approach things. I pray the Lord gives you wisdom there. 18 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:42.000 But if you look out and you say, hey, the hungry students, the ones that are willing to receive, how well am I meeting their needs? And Let that be a measure of how you answer this sort of question. All right, so let's go to question number three. Tim Cole, question number three. He says, I hear some make the claim that God doesn't love everyone. If God doesn't love everyone, how can God require that we love our neighbor, our neighbor defined as Jesus defined it in Luke ten as ourselves. 19 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:46.000 Yeah, um, I think God loves everyone. 20 00:15:46.000 --> 00:16:13.000 So, Tim, I'm with you on this one. Uh, God. I think God loves everyone. I think some people have a difficulty with this. Um, and I don't know their full answers on this. So look, I'm not here trying to speak for, say, Calvinism on this topic. I looked into this a while ago. I don't have it fresh in my mind, but at least some Calvinists. Here's what we should all agree on. I think at least some Calvinists struggle with this because they think God doesn't really have the same love for everyone. 21 00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:26.000 Um, because since God is the one who effectually causes the salvation of everyone who believes on Calvinism, God is the one who simply unilaterally simply makes you a believer. 22 00:16:26.000 --> 00:17:33.000 He regenerates you, and it's irresistible grace. You can't resist it. So now, I'm not a Calvinist, so I don't have that view. But if you have that view, then you would say, why is one person saved and another person not. Well, it's not in the person, it's not in their reaction to the gospel. It's not in their disposition of whether they would want to receive the gospel or not. Rather, even their desire to receive that traces back to the work of God in their life. So God gave them that desire, God regenerated them. And that's why they believed God didn't regenerate the other guy. That's why he didn't believe. When you say that, you go, okay, so then the only difference between the believer and the non believer ultimately is God simply didn't choose that one. Well, if God loves all people and wants all people to be saved, it would imply that they would all be saved. Universalism, then. So at least some Calvinists, maybe they have other ways of reconciling us, but Some Calvinists, they would reconcile this issue by saying, God just doesn't love everyone that way. He has maybe some sort of, and here's what I have heard some say, Calvinist, uh, he has like a general love for all his creation and for all people in a sense. But he doesn't have that salvific love for all people. 23 00:17:33.000 --> 00:18:14.000 Um, now I will be the first to admit that if I was convinced by scripture that Calvinism was true, I would absolutely believe it and defend it. But not being convinced that it's true, I can admit that this seems sketchy. Okay. I can say out loud, oh, that seems pretty weird. Um, the kind of love that God has for non believers as a category, as a broad spectrum category, whether they end up being saved later or not, is Jesus on the cross. It's that kind of love. I think, according to Scripture, God has that sort of love. Jesus on the cross love for every single person, even those who reject him. 24 00:18:14.000 --> 00:22:03.000 I don't think that we should say his Jesus on the cross love, to use my terminology here, only applies to the people who got saved. So, Tim, my answer is God, um, does love everyone, and he requires that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves and that Jesus is an example of this. Um, I see no problem with that. I can understand how some people, particularly with Calvinism, at least some of them are going to have a struggle with this. I think their best rescue, uh, if I just was a Calvinist, my gut reaction would be to simply say, hey, you know what? This is all above my pay grade. God obviously has some kind of love for all people and he doesn't save all people, but he calls me to love all people and be an example of what Christ has done for me and hasn't. Christ loved me, so shouldn't I extend that love towards others? I would probably say something like that and say, hey, if that doesn't seem like it makes sense to you, then just get over yourself and do it anyway because God tells you to. That would be my answer, but I can understand why the question comes up. Let's go to question number four. Question foUr. This is Don Miguelio. Hey, Don Miguelio. Um, and it's a question about Ezra. Ezra, chapter eight. So he says, shouldn't Ezra have been practical and used the resources available to him? Isn't it unwise to just assume, hope that God will provide divine protection? Interesting question. Let's look at this passage. Ezra, chapter eight, verse 21. If you're new here, by the way, my name is Mike Winger and I try to help people answer hard questions about the Bible and Christianity. I do this not just out of curiosity, but out of a passionate conviction that Jesus is true, that God is real, that the Bible is in fact God's holy word, and that the goodness and the benefit of Scripture have been radically underappreciated throughout history, but hopefully not in your life. So here we go. Um, Ezra 821. Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children and all our goods. For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him. Reading onto verse 23. So we fasted and implored our God for this and he listened to our entreaty. Um, so, yeah, uh, let me say this, Don. Um, I agree with you in principle that, and I'll quote you here, it's unwise to just assume or hope that God will provide divine protection as opposed to being practical and using the resources available to us. I agree with you there. I think that is a good general rule. That is a good general rule. Uh, it's like the old story of the man who, um, during a flood, he's there in his house, and they come and they're like, hey, we're doing an evacuation. Do you need help getting out? And he goes, no, God will protect me. And they go, okay. They drive away, and the flood rises. And the flood is now rising up into the house. And the guy is climbing up into his second sTory, and he looks out the window of the second story and a boat rolls by. And the boat rolls by and says to him, man, get on the boat. We're getting people out of here before the flood gets too high. And he goes, no, I do not need it. My God will protect me. And so then the flood keeps rising. So the guy gets up on his roof, and there he is. He's on his roof, and he's thinking, God's going to protect me. God's I have faith. I'm trusting in the Lord. I saw what faith looks like because Kenneth Copeland showed me. And so he's there on the roof, and a helicopter rolls by. And the helicopter, you know, you grab the ladder and they drop a ladder down. Grab the ladder and get up onto the helicopter. You're going to die, sir. The flood is coming. And he goes, no, no, my God will protect me. And he feels, feeling his faith. He's feeling good about how confident he is in God. So then he drowns. 25 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:16.000 And the story is obviously made up story, and he stands before God and he says, God, I thought you were going to save me from that flood. Like I kept telling everybody that you were going to protect me. 26 00:22:16.000 --> 00:26:22.000 What happened? What happened, Laura? I had faith. And he says, well, I did. I sent you a truck that you didn't get in and a boat that you didn't get in and a helicopter that you didn't get in. And so, yeah, it's not an either or thing. God protecting you doesn't mean not using, say, medicine or not using some sort of savings, um, to plan for your own retirement or, for instance, not avoiding doing certain things with your car or motorcycle that are dangerous or whatever, and just saying, well, God will protect me. Jesus kind of went through that a little bit with his temptation by Satan. When Jesus was tempted, throw yourself off of this mount and the angels will take charge, and he won't let you dash your foot against a stone. And Jesus says, don't tempt the Lord. Your God. So, yeah, there's a truth to the idea that God will protect you, but this doesn't mean you should be foolish and you should be unwise and actually tempt God in your folly. How is this different then? How is the Ezra situation at all different from the situation I just described? Because Ezra, as I understand it here, Ezra, is this book about leaving the captivity and control of these pagan rulers and moving back to the promised land and God revealing that he is, in fact, still loving his people and he will receive them back. It's a gracious and wonderful time, but there is a sort of cosmic display of the difference between God's power and control versus the authority, power and control of these pagan nations. It was a big deal that Ezra was able to say to the governor, to the king, God, watch. You'll see. You'll see not about us, but about God. You'll see that the God of Israel, not your pagan gods, the true God, the creator of all things, will protect and take us back. Now, Ezra knows this is true. It's not hubris. He's not just claiming things by faith. He's trusting in what God has actually revealed, all the way back from Jeremiah, that after 70 years of captivity, they'd be heading back into the land. So Ezra knows it's the time God has told them he's going to do this. It's not presumptuous and to say, we're going to go and we're not going to ask for your protection, because your protection traces back to your gods and traces back to your ungodly things. This is unlike, say, using modern medicine. Modern medicine doesn't trace back to paganism, no matter what people make of the coal. Like snake symbolism that's there. Um, it doesn't trace back to that. It's just medicine. Medicine is good, right? Well, it's good when it's done well, which is like, 20% of the time, it's really good. Um, so, yeah, this is what I think is happening in the Ezra passage. This is why he's ashamed to ask the king, because they told him, the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him. This is meant to be a demonstration. It's similar to that pinnacle moment when Elijah was there at Mount Carmel, and he's demonstrating the difference between Asherah and Baal versus the true God. AnD he says, hey, yeah, put your sacrifice on the. Yeah, yeah. Why don't you pray more? Why don't you cut yourself more? And he won't use anything to aid in this miraculous moment where God will burn the sacrifice himself, he in fact adds water to make it more difficult. This is not something you normally do. This is something you do when the hand of God is truly upon you, when God is truly trying to make a distinguishment between himself and false gods, and you are simply obeying and walking in that in faith, this is exactly the kind of thing Kenneth Copeland pretends he's doing all the time and never is doing. That would be, um, my short answer there. All right, so let's go to question number five. Kristen. Richard says leaders at my church say that when God killed or did something bad, it was always Satan thoughts. I think this is blasphemy. Uh, yeah, that's blasphemy, Kristen, uh, to declare that something the Bible says God definitely did was actually Satan, it's blasphemy and lies on multiple levels. Right? Because not only am I saying that something God did was evil, that's what I mean when I say Satan did it. I mean to say that that thing that God did was actually evil. But I'm also saying that the Bible itself is lying to us about who God is. 27 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:48.000 Or maybe you're trying to get around it. I'm not saying the Bible's lying. It's the cruciform hermeneutic Greg Boyd has recommended. This is where God's simply allowing himself to look bad, but it's really just not him doing it at all. And it ends up being this really sketchy, um, wrong way of interpreting the Bible because the people who say these things, they hate God's wrath. 28 00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:53.000 Here's a question. Does the Bible hate God's wrath? No. 29 00:26:53.000 --> 00:28:08.000 The Bible makes it clear that the wrath of God is a good thing. It's not fun. I'm not saying it's something you're like, whoopsie Doo, it's the wrath of God. Yay. No, but it's a good thing, morally speaking, that when God judges the Egyptians, that that was a proper moral judgment he brought down on them, when he judged and punished the Israelites for their rebellion against him, when he refused them coming into the promised land because of their unbelief, that was a morally good thing. When God kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden, that was a morally good thing. When God says the soul who sins shall die, that that's a morally good thing. But those who reject hell and reject God's future judgment and reject the fact that universalism is not true, when you reject these things, you then look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, even all the way to revelation, and you see God judging and punishing sin. You have to explain this away somehow. So some progressive, some progressive Christians, whether they're real Christians or not is a question. But some progressive Christians have said, ah, ah, solution. Every time I see God do some judging in the Bible, it's not real either. A, God didn't really do that. Satan did, somebody else did. Um, or b, it only looked like God was judging people. 30 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:16.000 Um, it was actually. He was just judging their sin. He was delivering them from their sin. He wasn't actually punishing them for bad things they did. 31 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:28.000 Which of course, both can be true at the same time, but certainly part of it is that God actually has wrath against sin. God's wrath is good. We get a sense of this in our own lives. 32 00:28:28.000 --> 00:29:07.000 Sometime in your life, you found out that someone you loved was hurt really terribly. Someone you loved was violated sexually, was abused, was mistreated, was serially taken advantage of, scammed, conned, and you got mad, and you got rightly mad, and you felt that right. Most of you have experienced this, and you were angry at that horrible person who would do this to your loved one. That's when we realize that wrath against sin is proper. We also can realize we don't do it right. I don't have the right kind of wrath. I don't get triggered by every wicked thing. I just get triggered by certain ones because I'm just kind of messed up. 33 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:39.000 I don't have God's righteous judgment. But at least I can get a flavor that when I hear about a two year old girl that was abused by some caretaker, that she had some babysitter, that I'm like, that person deserves such harsh punishment, and it's right. In fact, it's immoral and wrong. If we do not punish them, it's wrong. It's a travesty of justice. And so too God. If he doesn't deal with sin, it's a travesty of justice. The problem is that the sin he has to deal with isn't just out there, it's in here. 34 00:29:39.000 --> 00:30:21.000 If he's real about my sin, then I have God's wrath coming at me. You have God's wrath coming at you because you've done a whole list of things that are abhorrent to God. And this is why Jesus goes to the cross, to suffer and die and deal with God's own wrath towards my sin. He deals with all of that on the cross. He deals with it, and he takes the penalty for my sin, when he suffers, is publicly shamed and dies for my sin. So that it's all this beautiful, deep story that takes sin deadly serious, but shows the incredible love of God at the same time. It's the lowest lows and the highest highs, all demonstrated on the cross and the church. You're going to denies this? 35 00:30:21.000 --> 00:31:13.000 That's blasphemous. And I'm so sorry to say this. I'm sorry because you may have people you love at this church and relationships that are deeply important to you at this church. But if I was at that church, I wouldn't just leave. I'm, um, just being honest with you here. I would leave loud. I would leave loud. Not angry, not like screaming. I mean, when I say leave loud, it's a metaphor for I would leave and try to take as many people with me as I could to a good church. I would try to go through and expose the error of the theology that's going on in the church, and then I would revoke all support that I've ever had for that fellowship. Unless they changed, I give them a chance to reform, but if not, I'm out of there and I'm taking as many as I can with me. And I would recommend you do the same thing. That's extreme stuff, I know, but I think that that's the right move. And I think to do something else would probably be a mistake. So. Yeah. KRisten, God bless you. God give you wisdom and help you through that hard time. 36 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:17.000 You'll need it. Um, all. Ah, right. Let's go to question number six. 37 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:38.000 Question six. This is from Tim M. Tim M. Says, considering Satan is not omnipresent or, um, omnipotent, is it realistic to state that he tempts us or does much of anything directly? Wouldn't it be more orchestration of demons who act? Uh, Tim? Okay, so the second point you make, I'm 100% in agreement with, um. 38 00:31:38.000 --> 00:32:57.000 And the first point, I guess I'm in agreement with it, too. So let me just say, moving backwards from the second one, wouldn't it be more an orchestration of demons who act? I think so. Satan is the ruler of the powers of the darkness of this age. Scripture calls him that. So he is. If you look at the forces in rebellion against God, the one at the chief, the one at the head is Satan. Satan is the one who's exhibiting not only an attack against the truth of Christ and against the people of God, but he's orchestrating control in those who are not on God's side. So that's Satan's thing. He's got a level of control in those who are not on God's side. So when one of these demons or other entities that is part of that rebellion, when they do know attacking the work of God, coming against the truth of Christ, you can say Satan did that in the same way that you could say, hey, um, in our current times, as politically heated as this statement is, Biden sent money to Ukraine. Well, it wasn't like actually physically took money and brought it over there. Exactly. That's not required for us to say that. We could simply mean that while he has this chief influence position in our government, the government did it, and so we trace it back to him. 39 00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:01.000 We do this all the time with other things as well. 40 00:33:01.000 --> 00:33:50.000 We give, say, um, credit to a publishing house. We give credit to the things that they're working on to the president of the publishing house, that kind of thing, I think that means it's actually safe to say, yeah, Satan did that, but doesn't mean he directly did it. And that's where we don't want to fall into believing that Satan is, um, omnipresent. He's everywhere. He hears everything, sees everything. He's individually tempting you. But Satan can tempt you in the sense of his kingdom, and his rebellion is part of what's influencing you. I think that's a, uh, perfectly appropriate and biblical way to approach it. Scripture does talk about Satan tempting people's hearts, right? Lest Satan deceive you. But it doesn't mean when Paul writes that, that he's thinking Satan's personally there deceiving you. 41 00:33:50.000 --> 00:35:11.000 Could be, but he doesn't mean that. It could just mean any sort of entity in his organization, to put it that way. All right, let's go to the next question. Phil Agape, question number seven. Phil Agape says, does reading the Scripture. Oh, this is a, uh, seven here, Sarah. I'm putting my fingers up for you. I hope this helps you out when you're doing timestamps. Does reading the Scriptures aloud in the power of the Holy Spirit count as prophecy? It's speaking forth the word of God. Also, Scripture is called prophecy in two. Peter 119 to 21. Thank you. I think a few things are happening here with this. Those who have been involved in some or at least somewhat charismatic circles will know there's discussions on what does prophecy really mean? And this is not a dead discussion. This is a live discussion about, hey, the thing that guy just did, or the thing I just did, or the thing I'm about to do. Does it count as prophecy? Let's say that I'm singing a worship song and I'm a worship leader, and, uh, it's just suddenly it's just on my heart to really play and do a specific song. And I think that maybe God is telling me to do this song for someone for a specific reason. Does that mean that I'm singing prophetically? Or do I couch that into just some other category? Or is there no category for it? It just means I was being led by the spirit, assuming that it was in fact the spirit leading me to do that and not just an idea I had in my head alone. 42 00:35:11.000 --> 00:36:11.000 Um, so what is prophecy? Well, some people, uM, some charismatics, the churches will consider teaching the word of God to be prophetic. And you're like, well, but you mean like the gift of prophecy? Yeah, like the gift of prophecy. Some churches will say that literally, just the teaching of God's word or even reading a passage can be prophetic. And this can get a little bit, just a little confusing as to in what sense is that prophetic? So the Bible itself is prophetic. Every book and every verse is prophetic in a sense, because it's an utterance inspired by the Holy Spirit. Okay? That's the Scripture. And when I read the Scripture, I'm reading an utterance inspired by the Holy Spirit. So you could say that every time I read any Bible verse, it's prophecy. But I think the problem with this is that's probably not how they meant it in the New Testament when someone was getting know, Philip had seven daughters who prophesied, right? Scripture talks about his daughters who prophesied. They probably weren't just reading. 43 00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:21.000 Probably this word by itself meant something other than just reading the Bible or even reading the Bible because you feel really strongly that you should read the Bible at that moment. 44 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:48.000 For me personally, I'd rather have prophecy be something clear and distinct as much as possible. I'm not going to argue with people about it. This is just my opinion for you to consider. You can have your own opinion, Phil Agape, and you can consider what environment you're in if they have a slightly different understanding of it here. Right. Because there's, what's clear about prophecy. God gave me these words to tell you, boom. That's a prophetic statement. 45 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:59.000 What's slightly unclear, kind of on the, on the border of that would be God told me to read Luke 15 three to you right now. 46 00:36:59.000 --> 00:37:11.000 There's a verse of some kind. They're like, told me to read that to you. Right now. Okay. Is there a prophetic element to that, if indeed God told them to do that? Yes, there is something prophetic. What I call it prophecy. 47 00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:42.000 I wouldn't worry about it. I would stick to the more clear teaching of what prophecy is and not worry as much about that. Sort of, hey, it may have been an inspired moment. It may have been an inspired thing to do. I don't need to then call it prophecy and then say, well, therefore, you use the gift of prophecy and all that sort of thing. Um, uh, that's just my personal preference. Others would have different ones. I wouldn't bother arguing with people. If someone said that was prophetic, I would just be like, okay, I'm not going to argue with you about it. 48 00:37:42.000 --> 00:38:24.000 Scripture is prophecy. The only thing I'll push back on is Scripture itself is prophecy. But every time I read Scripture, I'm not engaging in a prophetic gift. I'm simply reading a prophetic work that was printed earlier. Otherwise, when Donald Trump reads a verse of scripture from two Corinthians, he's speaking as a prophet. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me. That's definitely not the case. I mean, Satan is a prophet, then if that's the case, because he quoted Scripture to Jesus. All right, let's look at question. Ah. Number eight. Number eight. I'm going to run out of fingers real quick here. This is from Tyler Bird. Is there a difference between being married in the eyes of the church and the eyes of the state? 49 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.000 Yes, there is. 50 00:38:27.000 --> 00:40:06.000 Um, generally speaking, the church, and I would say most Christian organizations and gatherings and groups of people, will honor any marriage that the state has had performed, not because the state did it. Right, but because the state requires a commitment of vows that fits our understanding of marriage, generally speaking. But the state also has now redefined marriage. Our federal government has redefined marriage to mean, uh, a woman and a woman or a man and a man. And to call that marriage and the church proper does not recognize that at all, regardless of what vows are made, not because of a lack of commitment on the part of the individuals, but because the concept of marriage is not that. So you guys may remember from a few years ago, the Obergefeld decision where the Supreme Court of the United States said, hey, we've redefined marriage. And catch this. They didn't say, marriage has always just been a commitment between individuals for lifelong love. And so, of course, it's always meant the same thing as it means now. And of course, it can be applied to men and women. They did not say that they said something very different. They said, throughout history, marriage has always been defined as a man and a woman. And we are now redefining it as if our arrogant federal government can overturn human customs and even religious customs that go way above and beyond their head. It's just crazy that they did this. So they redefined marriage, right? This wasn't about gay rights. This wasn't about any kind of rights. This was about the definition of what marriage means. 51 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:09.000 This is kind of like in the newest, um. 52 00:40:09.000 --> 00:41:45.000 I don't know if it even came out or if it's still on its way out, but there was a new Peter, uh, Pan movie. I think it came out. I haven't seen it, where the Lost Boys, many of them were girls. And so in the trailer, which I saw the trailer, one of the girls is sitting there as a lost boy. And someone, maybe Wendy says to them, but you're not all boys. And she just like, well, that's just redefining what it means to be a lost. Like, at least everyone knows we're deliberately, purposely redefining something. Now, I don't care that much because Peter Pan, Peter Pan, it's just a story. It's a fun story. A lot of people like, you're redefining lost Boys. Well, when you do that and then your movie flops at the box office, you can reap the results. Um, but in the end, when you do this with marriage, you're messing with something sacred. God creates marriage. Genesis one, Genesis two. Genesis three. He makes male and female. He says, for this reason, a man shall leave his father, be joined to his wife. The two shall become one flesh, male, female. That's what marriage just is by God's own definition. So any state, any government that redefines marriage is not actually successfully redefining it. What thEy're doing is lying about it. So it's the church's obligation to reject those as not being true. Marriage. This will be, uh, the source of future persecution, most likely. This will definitely be the source of lawsuits and has already been to some degree. Uh, don't care. We have to hold our ground about truth. And we can't say because you're going to get mad about it, I'm then going to believe your lies. 53 00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:51.000 Marriage, biblically speaking, male and female, one man, one woman. 54 00:41:51.000 --> 00:43:07.000 That is the ideal of a marriage. Biblically speaking, when we get into a male and male marriage, we're not only denying what God's done, we're denying human history and custom throughout history. We're also undercutting the central fabric of society, which is family, not government, family. And we're undercutting that, and we're pretending that it just doesn't matter. And it's just causing a slew of, like, a big snowball of other issues that are going on, because healthy, happy, functioning families are not the center and the ideal in our current culture. And so as a church, we have to stand up and say, no, they really are. They really are. That'd be my understanding of that. I think it's very biblical. So, yeah, um, the church should rightly recognize and accept any marriage that involves a genuine commitment between two people that isn't some violation of the idea of marriage, but, um, doesn't have to happen in a church. Pastor doesn't have to do it, but it has to be consistent with the actual concept of marriage that we have in Scripture. All right, let's go to the next question, which is number nine. Yeah, number nine. All right, nine. And there are no more queues today. I've got all 20 questions fully loaded up. I'm sorry if you guys have tried to get a question in and are unable. 55 00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:48.000 We, um, do our best to get as many as we can done as often as I can, which is not very often, I admit, but it's just what I can do. So this question is anonymous. Number nine. Uh, hi, Mike. What do we do when apologists we trust are proven wrong or discredited by critics? Can we still trust them and their work? Well, I mean, this is painting with a pretty broad brush, so there's plenty of people out there who will make mistakes, me included. Okay. And, uh, there's plenty of videos trying to prove me wrong that I think were unsuccessful. But of course, there's going to be times where someone makes a video and goes, Mike, you made a mistake here. Boom. And they're right. And I've made a real mistake. And have I then been discredited? 56 00:43:48.000 --> 00:44:03.000 Well, it depends on the degree of the mistake, the frequency of the mistakes, like those types of things. And that's a question you have to evaluate and ask. Does this demonstrate a pattern of behavior where the person becomes untrustworthy, or do they just get something wrong? 57 00:44:03.000 --> 00:45:20.000 I know that. Um, like, say, gosh, who can I think of? Um, Sean, uh, McDowell, who I think is a great apologist, and he does really good stuff. There's times where I think he makes mistakes. Um, Gavin Ortland, who I love and respect and really appreciate his work, he especially has done a lot of stuff on Catholicism, and I think he's just done phenomenal work. Okay. He knows way more than me about the topic. I'm not pretending that I know more. Um, I do think there's times where he's made some mistakes, but I think, say, in both of those cases, Sean McDowell, Gavin Ortland. I don't think the mistakes that I've noticed, the minority of those situations where there were mistakes, that those things affect their overall credibility. Then there's other people who, like, say, Kent Hoven, who has made a series of mistakes in his apologetics, defending his views that demonstrate that he is just an unreliable human being and someone who should not be relied on for anything. And there's someone who, their mistakes, the quality and the frequency, rise up and the uncorrectability rise up to the point where I just would say, don't listen to this guy at all. Um, and I would say that's someone who falls into that category for sure. Then there's, um, someone, uh, like Ravi Zacharias. Now, Ravi Zacharias had a lot of really helpful apologetics. He did. 58 00:45:20.000 --> 00:47:15.000 But then he had moral mistakes. Massive, massive, life destroying moral compromise. And as many of you know, I did a video about that, a very sad video that I didn't want to do and all that. But Ravi did some pretty horrible stuff that discredits him personally, even though his apologetics, in many cases, was pretty good stuff. So what do you do? Well, in that case, I think because he has an ongoing influence and his ongoing victimizing of other people that happened, we should set aside his work, if possible, and realize something important about, say, Ravi. None of his arguments were original. I don't think Ravi came up with one original argument in all of his apologetics. I don't know of anything he didn't get from someone else. The only thing he did that was really sort of his own signature, is he added a lot of poetry in, and his delivery style was very much his own thing. And he used a lot of poetry and quoting different sources and quotes. But I don't think he had a single argument for Christianity that was his own. So if you set aside his influence individually, you're literally not losing a single argument for God or for Christianity. You're just setting aside one individual as a spokesman for those things. I don't have a problem with that, and I think that we should do that with Robbie's stuff because of his ongoing victimization of individuals. But this can be a slippery slope, because you're going to find moral flaws in every single apologist. You're going to find mistakes they make. And so you've got to have some sort of awareness that you can't expect superhuman godliness and perfection from every single person before they can do anything for the kingdom of God. Instead, there's obviously, at some point, we say, okay, that's too far, but we must have a certain amount of grace with each other and recognize we all make mistakes. Those are my thoughts on that. I hope that that helps you out. 59 00:47:15.000 --> 00:49:01.000 Not afraid to give you guys specific names and examples of people. Um, to the best of my ability, you can date the video, right? This is as of Friday, November 17, 2023. Those are my thoughts on the people I just talked about. We'll see if something changes in the future. Uh, this is coming in from, uh, Sunnell Mateo. Sunnell Mateo says hi, Pastor. Your ministry is a huge blessing, and thank you so much, Sunnell. And, um, let me say something I've been meaning to mention for a while now. You guys have known me as a pastor for many years. I'm ordained. I'm ordained for life. That's how that works at Hosanna, my previous church, which I'm not at anymore, um, where I still have friendships and love and connection and brotherhood with them, but we're not there anymore physically, and I'm no longer doing physical ministry there. I'm just attending a church called Grace Evie Free in La Marada. Beautiful, fantastic church. Wonderful. Love it. Love, um, the ministry philosophy they have, but I'm not on staff there, and I'm not doing any official pastoral duties there. My online ministry has taken over my ministry. I mean, I might minister to individuals. I'll pray for somebody after church or something like that, but nothing that any other person wouldn't do. So, that being said, I'm at this awkward moment where for many years, I was like, I'm, um, functioning as a pastor in a local church, and now I'm going. I'm not really functioning that way. To some of you, it's as though I'm a pastor right now for you. But pastor, to me, is synonymous with elder and elders have a particular role in the local body that involves a certain authority that I do not have in my local church now, nor am I looking for it, because, uh, my plate is full doing online ministry. My life has shifted. I'm not doing less for the Lord. It's just in a different category, right. The online stuff I'm doing is impacting more people every day than I could have in a year. 60 00:49:01.000 --> 00:50:23.000 I'm, um, having more impact for the kingdom of God in a day than I could in a year before. So how could I not make this my full time thing and devote myself to it entirely? That being said, am I pastor? So there's, like, a, uh, discussion I've had over this. I even talked to a couple of the elders at Grace, because I want to be in submission to the leadership there. And one of them was like, yeah, I don't think you should call yourself a pastor there. Exactly. Another one. No, no. I think you're doing pastoral things. I think that it's legitimate for you to call yourself that. And so I am shying away from calling myself that. I tend to read you saying, hi, Pastor Mike. And then later I think, oh, I should have skipped the pastor part, because am I really functioning that way? Um, that being said, I just wanted to be transparent, throw it out there. Maybe in the future, um, especially as my health improves, maybe I can do more ministry things. Will I be considered a pastor officially at some point? I don't know. Um, I'm perfectly fine just being considered, Mike. Um, and that's fine by me. So, anyway, Sunnell, Mateo, question number ten. You said hi. Your ministry is a huge blessing. I am a minister. I do ministry. That's definitely true. Is it technically a pastor? I don't know. Um, I lean towards. No, actually on that. At any rate, can you please help me think biblically about going to secular concerts like Taylor Swift's Eris tour? I know, like, nothing about Taylor Swift. Um. 61 00:50:23.000 --> 00:51:40.000 Um, that's a really interesting question. I've never been to a concert like that. I don't know much about them. I have friends, family that have gone to concerts. A friend says that, we're going to this concert, we're going to Willie Smith or something. Um, I just stay out of it has been my normal thing. So when you ask me to weigh in on it, I have to say, um, I have an intuition, just as a person, as a human, as a man, as a Christian. That's just like, oh, it's like celebration of secular music with a bunch of bad ideologies and philosophies in it. But then I also recognize that a lot of people, they go to those concerts the way that they might watch a TV sHow, a secular TV show, and they say, I enjoy this aspect of the show, but of course, I don't like that part and that part. But I'm just trying to enjoy the parts I can enjoy while I discern and reject the parts I don't enjoy. And I think if you're doing that and you feel like you can walk through that without yourself being influenced in negative ways, then maybe that's not an issue. Secondarily, um, is this concert exposing you to an environment where you're more inclined to sin or more inclined to compromise? And if you answer those two questions, um, basically it's about, is this in some way compromising you? Is it in some way drawing you towards sin? Then I would throw the question back at you and say, decide for yourself. 62 00:51:40.000 --> 00:52:05.000 This is one of those areas that I would not make a decision for other Christians on what they can or can't do unless there was some obvious sin that they were falling into that was related to this stuff. Um, yeah. Um, and then, of course, the question of what kind of clothing are people wearing and how are they dancing on stage is obviously something to be concerned about, but I'll just move forward. So question number 1111. 63 00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:25.000 This is for Sarah. All right. LV says, why didn't Greek spread through the Christian world like Arabic did through the Muslim one? Both Revere holy books, yet Greek didn't become widespread. Surely, um, it would have made understanding the Bible easier. Um, Greek. 64 00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:56.000 This is a good question for a linguist I can only speak to like, this much. I would know about this particular topic, which is way too little, but I know that Greek was the common language at the time the Bible was written, just like, say, Daniel has sections in Aramaic, which was common at the time. Common language at the time. Um, so we have Greek being common language, and even the kind of Greek in the New Testament is called Koine. Greek. Koine is a word that means common. So the New Testament was written in the most accessible language at the time. 65 00:52:56.000 --> 00:55:49.000 What we're sort of asking here is not about why wasn't the Bible written in a more accessible language? Because it was written in the most accessible one there was at the time. What we're asking then is why didn't perhaps God orchestrate the future of languages so that Greek stayed the most accessible and constant language? And for that, that I say that's over my head. I just know it was Greek then. Latin became the common language for the New Testament and for the Bible and for discussions about those things. It even became, like the official sort of language. Um, I should say the constantly used language for, say, Catholicism. Uh, Orthodox continued to use Greek. Then you have Islam, and as you have nations that take over, languages tend to follow. Right. That's why Greek became so common. Alexander the Great took over a massive chunk of earth and he brought in Greek to be that common language that united everybody. When Islam came over and Arab nations came over and took over areas, they would have brought their language with them. So, um, yeah, maybe that's more about nations and who conquers who. I don't know. Um, here's a cool response to that, though, is that you don't need to know Greek to understand the New Testament or Hebrew to understand the old. It can help answer hard questions. But, uh, uh, especially in modern times, even an English speaker who doesn't know any of those languages has so many resources at their hands to be able to understand these issues, including great translations. And we know from the very earliest the Bible was being translated, we have ancient translations of the, of the Bible into, um, Aramaic or into Syriac, into all sorts of Gothic, into all sorts of different languages, Coptic, that reveal to us that language is not a barrier to stop the Bible. Um, the Bible pushes forward into all sorts of languages and so it ends up not being the major problem that you might think it might be. Yeah. Um. Would it be easier if we all spoke the same Greek as the Bible? Maybe. I mean, but then you'd ask a new question. You'd be like, why is it that in 2000 years, Greek has changed so much that our modern Greek doesn't mean the same things as ancient Greek did? I should say coinage. Greek did. And then we'd be arguing about why language changes over time and that, that seems this inevitable sort of thing that just happens. And we would still need help understanding those things, at least in some cases. Okay, so, in fact, you probably have a modern Greek translation where you just update the words of the New Testament. If that was in case. In fact the case, let's go to question number twelve. Number twelve, timestamp number twelve. What can I say to a cessationist brother who calls me heretical for simply believing in the miraculous gifts of the spirit? Can there be unity? Um, no. Just give up, man. Just give up. Okay. Cessationists, for those who don't know anybody listening. 66 00:55:49.000 --> 00:56:16.000 That's a term for people who believe that the gifts of the spirit, like speaking in tongues, speaking prophetically, that kind of thing, that, that has ceased, what you might call the sign gifts in particular, have ceased. So they're actively working in miracles, that these happening at a frequent level at least, have ceased. So I use that word ceased because they're cessationists. They believe they've ceased. Hey, Cat, how you doing? You want to sit down on my lap? 67 00:56:16.000 --> 00:57:21.000 Then there's the continuationist, and that's the camp of those who believe that the gifts have not ceased, they, in fact, continue today. Now, within those camps, there's kind of this sort of muddy, almost middle ground where there's people who believe the gifts potentially continue, but they don't have high expectations about how frequently they'll see them in a local church. That's actually where I'm at currently. Right. So I can understand someone who believes that the gifts may have lessened in their degree and intensity in areas especially where the Gospel has gone out and has become well established. Um, but not by any stretch of cessationist. I don't think there's any biblical, real, solid biblical support for that position. And I'm surprised because there's so many really, um, godly, wonderful Bible expositors and teachers who are cessationists. And I still wonder why, because as I studied the Scripture, I just don't see any warrant for that kind of a hard stop on, um, the gifts of the spirit at any point. In fact, it seems the opposite is quite true. 68 00:57:21.000 --> 00:57:56.000 So how does this happen? WV, here's my theory as to the situation you're in. You say, what can I say to a cessationist brother who calls me heretical for simply believing in the miraculous gifts of the Spirit? Why would they call you heretical? Um, there are those who are cessationists who look at what we'll call hypercharismatics, and they see the crazy, weird things that are being done in the name of Christ, and they're highly offended, as they should be, at the fake miracles of guys like Todd White, at the lying, uh, fake faith of guys like Kenneth Copeland. 69 00:57:56.000 --> 00:58:08.000 They're highly offended at these types of people and the stuff that they're doing, or they see the weird things that go on sometimes it's a Bethel reading. And I'm just being honest with you guys, because you're living in the space where these things are happening, too. 70 00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:18.000 And they say, that is so wrong, and they get their ire up. Understandably, I get mine up, too. 71 00:58:18.000 --> 00:58:22.000 Now, some find it to be the safest thing to just preach cessation. 72 00:58:22.000 --> 01:00:08.000 If there's no gifts of the Spirit, then we don't have to worry about any abuses of the gifts of the spirit, any overuses, any sort of manipulations, or these sort of arrogant people who get up and they draw crowds after themselves because they're pumping themselves up like they have some sort of spiritual insights they don't really have. Right? Like the passion translation Brian Simmons that comes from his hyper charismatic stuff. That's where it really comes from, where he thinks he's getting secret insights into ancient words by some download God downloads. God keeps giving him in his head, and really he's just making a bad translation, um, in my opinion. And so, safest thing to do, just cut off all of those gifts of the Spirit entirely. Now, in those camps where you start to feel that, just cut it off completely, they're still my brothers and sisters, right? But you start to see anyone who uses the gifts of the Spirit as part of the same problem. And so you say things like, if you speak in tongues, it's not from the Lord, but it is coming from some other demonic source. Or if you are saying, God showed me this, and you'd say, God showed me this thing, you're not just mistaken, you are blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And I've heard some say this, okay, not all. Not all say this. I've known plenty of cessationists who wouldn't say this, but some of them say this. This might be why your friends are saying this to you. They're like, hey, look, if you say to me, God told me this, and God didn't tell you, that means you took something that you are Satan have said, and you claimed God said it. This is evil. This is like the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And so then you elevate it so that anybody who speaks in tongues or proclaims something prophetically or does something like that is not just mistaken, is not just possibly wrong. 73 01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:18.000 They're actually evil. So then you ask the question, what do I do with my brother who calls me a heretic because I believe in the gifts of the Spirit? 74 01:00:18.000 --> 01:00:20.000 I don't know. 75 01:00:20.000 --> 01:00:29.000 I don't know. I've tried talking to individuals who are on this camp, and, um, that's a really good question. 76 01:00:29.000 --> 01:00:37.000 I just spent this whole time explaining the question to everybody. But what can you do? 77 01:00:37.000 --> 01:00:57.000 What can actually you do to say to the brother and just say, look, blasphemy of the Spirit isn't mean that, like, prove to me in Scripture that I'm a heretic. Show me clearly where it says in Scripture that I'm a heretic. Do you know any early church councils that are declaring that everyone's a heretic if they believe that the gifts of the Spirit are active today? Can you show me cessation in the Scripture? I will jump on board. 78 01:00:57.000 --> 01:01:05.000 But maybe this is a newer reaction to the hyper stuff, the bad stuff that we see in the movement. 79 01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:22.000 I think it's sad. The division itself is very sad. I want to be able to hold hands, both sides, with the continuationist and the cessationist and the hypercharismatics. I usually look at them as well intentioned, but not careful, and sometimes falling into serious errors. 80 01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:24.000 Not, um, always. 81 01:01:24.000 --> 01:01:59.000 So, yeah, there's stuff to think about. All right, let's go to the next question, which is 1313, anonymous question. Do you think deathbed visions of deceased relatives or Jesus are real or hallucinations? If real, do you think they are from God or Satan? I'm worried about being led astray on my deathbed. Okay. Um, two separate issues. Are they real or are they fake? The answer has to be the same as I would say about prophecy or about any vision or anyone saying, I have a dream of God. 82 01:01:59.000 --> 01:02:05.000 Maybe the answer is maybe. I don't see how we can paint with such a wide brush. What are you going to do? 83 01:02:05.000 --> 01:03:31.000 That we can declare, uh, this is Mika, by the way, Moxie's. I don't know where she is. She's hiding somewhere. Um, I don't think we can paint with such a broad brush that we can declare all deathbed visions, all deathbed sort of experiences of maybe a, uh, deceased relative or Jesus, that they're all always wrong. Now, I'm more highly suspicious of relatives because visitations from deceased loved ones, I think, are something that the enemy uses, that demons use to try to lead people astray frequently. Uh, I think that that in particular is a sketchy thing, but it doesn't mean that God can't do that. I'm not going to say he can't do that, but anybody who turns this into, like, a practice of the Church where we're expecting it on a regular basis, or even worse, even worse, please hear me out on this, because what I'm saying could be easily misunderstood. Anybody who starts seeking out contact with deceased loved ones, that. That is a major flaw that God has warned us against in Scripture many times. I get it, okay? My mother just passed away, and she into the presence of God, and I get the temptation to be like, oh, I want to try to talk to her. I wish I could see her. I wish she could hear me. I 100% understand this, but we have clear teachings in Scripture warning us against this, and I do think it opens us up to demonic deception by seeking those things out. I wouldn't rule out and say God can never do that, but I would say you can never seek it. 84 01:03:31.000 --> 01:04:00.000 And if it happened, I would be highly suspicious of it and very careful about it. What about Jesus vision of Jesus? Is there anything unbiblical about that? No, of course not. Of course not. There's not. But how will you personally be kept from being led astray on your deathbed? Well, you just have good, solid theology that you've learned from Scripture, and you know that any experience you have, I mean, maybe God's going to help you in that horrible, dark, difficult time that's worse than probably anybody has ever told you. 85 01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:13.000 In that time, maybe God will bring you some aid, some help when you're not able to find it anywhere else, and that'll be a beautiful, wonderful thing, and that'd be something that you should just be like. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 86 01:04:13.000 --> 01:04:46.000 But how do you keep from being led astray? The same way you keep from being led astray by false teachers or by anybody who shows up on the street to tell you God showed them something for you to know. You test it with Scripture. You say, uh, ah, I thought that was something God was showing me, or I thought that was someone, a, uh, deceased loved one, telling me something. But they led me astray. They were leading me anywhere other than the truth of what Scripture says. And so I know to reject it, because God's not going to change. He's not going to change his mind. He's given us protection in knowing his word. So I'd say, know his word, study the Scriptures, read the Scriptures, know what they say, and the Lord will guide you in that time. 87 01:04:46.000 --> 01:04:57.000 That's tough stuff. All right, let's go to the next one, which is, um, 1414 Il Cuccial. 88 01:04:57.000 --> 01:05:12.000 Il cucciao. I hope I'm not saying something bad when I read your name. Um. Uh, most of my longtime friends are LGBT. Okay. Most of my longtime friends are LGBT. I got saved three years ago and no longer support that ideology. 89 01:05:12.000 --> 01:06:30.000 But they don't know that. I feel convicted, but don't know how to approach the issues. Any advice? Um, yeah, uh, but seek advice from more than me. I have not been in your situation. I would say seek, uh, advice from someone who's gone through what you've gone through. And there's somebody. You could actually read his work. There's a guy named Christopher Yuan. Christopher, um, Yuan has a book called Holy Sexuality. Holy sexuality. And he was, uh, in the gay lifestyle, identified as gay and all that, and then he came out of it. But he writes in his book, some of his story, and some of how he went through those things, and it might help, uh, you understand how to communicate in a loving and gracious way, in my experience, just not having been deep into those relationships as much as you, at least, but having had some, definitely having had some, is that the minute people realize who I am, I'm a Christian, that I'm like a serious Christian, like one of those Christians, one of those annoying Christians. Um, and maybe if you're in the LGBT community, maybe m you can hear this. They tend to get mad at me and despise me immediately. They think I despise them. 90 01:06:30.000 --> 01:08:35.000 It's not true, but they despise me. That's been my experience over and over again. And so I find that I have a mountain to overcome, which is not my homophobia or LGBT phobia, but rather it's their response to me when they find out what camp I'm in now because I'm in the enemy's camp, I'm in the foreign, the weirdo, the ignorant, and the offensive camp because they have all this baggage associated with me. So affirmations of love can be good. It's like, hey, man, I love you, and I care about you. And statements like, I care about you in spite of all your issues, that ends up stirring up more of the animosity that's there instead of helping. Um, sometimes it can help if it does come out to say, I think that God has a better plan for you than this. I think that God has a better plan for you than this. That might be a helpful way to do it, but I'd say seek those other sources and recognize this, that there may not be any perfect way to approach this with friends. It may be that they're part of a group and a community that has so much animosity towards Christian truth on these issues that the minute they find out that you are part of the light, they're going to be pretty upset about it. That may just be the way it is, but make sure that you are not adding any offense to that. That is from you. That is from your bad attitude or your own issues. You're just loving and sharing, and you're invitational, and you want to draw them to truth, and you want to invite them to a church or to gather for a Bible study, or can I go out to lunch and tell you how my life's been changing recently? And just start by just telling them your story. These communities, LGBT communities, live off stories. Um, they're established often by stories. Let me tell you my story of coming out and how my story of discovering my true identity. That's kind of how they frame truth. Maybe you can use that as an open door to tell them your story of how you came to Christ and how God has changed your life. Maybe that would be a better open door than just telling them. These are the truths that now I want you to know. Anyway, those are some ideas. May God give you wisdom. May God help you in reaching out to them in love and to have really thick skin on whatever response you get. 91 01:08:35.000 --> 01:08:38.000 All right, question number 15. 92 01:08:38.000 --> 01:10:28.000 Anonymous question. I've been struggling with lust for a few years, and it weighs heavily on my heart. Every time that I think I can break away from it, I keep falling back into it. How can I finally break free? Um, there's obviously a number of things that can happen. There's, um. Awareness of the problem of sin is very helpful to a lot of people when they realize that lust and that their lust is a lie, is a deception. When they realize that their lust is actually stealing from them the very thing they're trying to get, that it takes away from them high quality, healthy, godly marriage relationships, but instead it sets them up for all kinds of failure in those exact relationships, uh, or just causes them to delay entirely. Like, we're living right now with the generation that is more into pornography than any generation ever has been in the history of the world. They're also the generation that is the most lonely and isolated than any generation in the world. Because in the pursuit of getting those lusts fed through pornography, they're finding that they mess up their ability to have actual relationships, quality relationships. And so the thing is, lust tends to steal from you, the very thing that it's promising you. So that awareness, when you realize that, you start to see it as not just bad, not just morally wrong, but also as something that's robbing you of beautiful, wonderful things in your life, of the desire that's good, that is connected to lust, is this desire for marriage and for intimacy and for love. And you're robbing yourself of the fulfillment of that very thing through sinfully engaging in lusts. That's huge. When you realize that, that can help. Another thing to realize is that by, I'm assuming, lust here is connected to pornography. When you realize that these women or men that you're viewing online, that they're abusing themselves for your entertainment and you're helping them get money by doing it. 93 01:10:28.000 --> 01:10:57.000 Think about the real dynamics here, right? The ad money, the revenue that they're getting from all of this stuff. I'm feeding into a system of abuse, self abuse, and a detrimental thing that's happening across our entire world. I'm helping spread a plague of sin in our world today by my participation in it. When you realize that you're not just secretly sitting there alone, engaging in something that nobody knows about and that isn't really affecting anybody, you're actively contributing to the problem. 94 01:10:57.000 --> 01:11:02.000 This might help, it's true as well, but it may actually help you. 95 01:11:02.000 --> 01:11:31.000 Another thing that may help you with these types of issues, lust, is to create regiments in your life. Regiments, by which I mean, uh, strict disciplines in your life that replace those things. Now, you may think of times in your life when you were on mission, you were busy with A-B-C-D. All that day. You were just busy taking care of important things. By the end of the day, you're like, boy, I hadn't even thought about that all day. Because you had regiments in your life that were making you preoccupied with good things. 96 01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:59.000 We have too much free time on our hands nowadays. And so fill yourself with regimens. Make more commitments. Commit to greater involvement in your local church, commit to more hours at work, commit to some more specific time. Spending time with just friends where you're like, hey, every Tuesday we're going to go out. I just have too much alone time in my life. I think regimens can help that you're filling your life with good things so there isn't as much open space for bad things to flood in when you just have nothing else to do with your time. 97 01:11:59.000 --> 01:12:02.000 And the last thing would just be, um. 98 01:12:02.000 --> 01:13:04.000 Catch sin early, early, early. Catch it when it's tiny. Catch it when it's small. It's easy to say no to a sin when it's a little temptation. It's very hard to say no ten minutes later when you've already been feeding it. You don't feed it 1 second. Don't feed it by watching a show that stumbles you because of this particular actor or actress that's on the show. There's nothing wrong with the show. It's me. Okay, I got a problem. I'm not going to watch the thing that's going to trigger my issues. Don't look up things and kid yourself about why you're looking them up or go places where you know you're going to receive more temptation. If you kill sin when it's tiny, it's very easy to kill. If you wait until it gets bigger, then you're like, why can't I overcome this sin? And it's like, well, because you fed it for 20 minutes before you decided to fight it, and then you failed. I hope these are things that help you. I know this is Going to be an ongoing struggle for you, but these are some things to be in your mind. Ultimately, God has not allowed you to be tempted beyond your capacity. He'll provide a way of escape that you can endure it. 99 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:06.000 Bye, Cat. 100 01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:14.000 My cat just left. All right, that was question number 15. Let's go to 1616. 101 01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:18.000 Somehow, just doing this in my hands feels very complicated and difficult right now. 102 01:13:18.000 --> 01:13:42.000 Amir Smith says, hi, Mike. Thank you for your great ministry in Ecclesiastes 727 through 29. My fiance, who is new to the Bible, to Bible reading and study, wondered why this verse sounded, uh, misogynistic. Do you have any ideas? Oh, I don't even know what verse that is off the top of my head. So let's look it up and see what happens. Ecclesiastes 727 through 29. 103 01:13:42.000 --> 01:14:15.000 Behold, this is what I found, says the preacher, while adding one thing to another, to find the scheme of things which my soul has sought repeatedly. But I have not found one man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these, I have not found. See this alone. I have found that God made me, made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. Oh, it's been so long since I looked at this. Yeah, I remember now why this is a, uh, concern. The implication you're seeing is, like, one man among a thousand is that there's like I found. Out of a thousand men, I found one good one. 104 01:14:15.000 --> 01:14:51.000 But a woman, a good woman, I didn't. I couldn't find a good woman. That's how some interpret this. I'm not sure if that's what it. What it's supposed to mean. I don't know what Ecclesiastes 727 through 29 is in fact saying here. So I wonder. Let's read it in another translation. Here's like, say, new King James. Here's what I found, says the preacher, adding one thing to another to find out the reason which my soul still seeks. But I cannot find one man among a thousand I've found, but a woman among all these. I have not found, truly this only. I have found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. 105 01:14:51.000 --> 01:15:05.000 I wonder if. When he says, I haven't found a woman, if he's saying, like, I found some friends, they're rare to find a good friend, but I haven't found a wife that I thought was worthwhile among them. That maybe he's not saying about women in general. He's just talking about his own experiences. 106 01:15:05.000 --> 01:15:27.000 Here's what? The NIV has it in this passage. Let me get rid of that table of contents. Go away. No, you refuse. Ah. Uh. There we go. Look, says the teacher. This is what I have discovered, adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things. While I was still searching, but not finding, I found one upright amount of man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them. 107 01:15:27.000 --> 01:15:58.000 Uh, I'm going to look into this one. I'm going to get back to you on it. Okay. This is worth looking into. You'd think I would have already looked into this one with the series I did on women in Ministry, I don't remember spending any time on it, so I need to. So I'm going to dig into it, and I will get back to you on that one. So. Good question. Thank you for that, Amir. Keep watching. Maybe I'll include that in the next Q and A video two weeks from now. I will include an answer to that issue right there. So let's go to question 17. So, 17, anonymous question here. 108 01:15:58.000 --> 01:16:55.000 I heard you teach that it's a biblical principle for girls to make sure they wear only girl clothes and guys guy clothes. I'm a girl, but sometimes I wear zip hoodies and T shirts that are technically from the men's section, but with other women's items. I didn't think that was wrong. But is my attitude wrong? Um. So let me offer some clarity to that opinion. So it is clear in the New Testament, uh, in the Old Testament, women should wear women's clothes. They should not. Well, let me put it this way. A woman should not wear that which pertains to a man, and a man should not wear that which pertains to a woman. Obviously, there's some clothing that men and women can wear. When a man wears gloves or a woman wears gloves, sometimes they're more feminine, sometimes they're not. In modern times, but in ancient times, their gloves would have probably looked about the same, so that every single piece of clothing isn't really gendered. But the rule there is, uh, as a woman, you do not want to wear what pertains to a man. 109 01:16:55.000 --> 01:17:11.000 There are reasons, um, for this. It's not just a statement about clothing. It's about Roles, about women being women, men being men, and not having a society where these things are getting confused. And could this possibly be more relevant or needed than it is right now, today? 110 01:17:11.000 --> 01:18:03.000 This is no laughing matter. Like if I had told you 20 years ago, 50 years ago, yes. There will come a time where they'll believe that men can menstruate, that men can have periods and that, um, women can have male body parts down below, or they'll believe that men can give birth to babies and be pregnant. You would have laughed at me. You would have thought, Mike, you're just a conspiracy weirdo. You're just totally out there. But we're living in a world where the reality of gender, and by gender, I mean biological sex, right? That thing that's totally connected to biological sex, that the reality of that is being overturned and utterly denied. And what we find is that these teachings about men and women in Scripture, hey, maybe they were a, uh, bulwark against that very kind of thing happening, which destroys, ultimately destroys people and hurts society. 111 01:18:03.000 --> 01:18:13.000 And the people that get hurt worst are the ones caught up in it. The ones who are saying, I'm trans and I'm gay and I'm lesbian. They're the ones who are being harmed by these ideologies. 112 01:18:13.000 --> 01:18:59.000 That's a biblical view. That is my Christian understanding of things. I'm not going to back off of what I believe is true just because it's not popular online and because it's worse than not popular online. At any rate, um, what about you? Or, like, well, I got a zip hoodie and it was from the guys section, but I thought it looked cute. I guess the bigger question I would want to ask you is this. Are you doing this in a way that either intentionally or unintentionally has you, um, setting aside your feminine characteristics and your female status to try to adopt a masculine look? And if the answer is yes, either intentional or unintentional, that you're setting aside those female characteristics to adopt a masculine look, that that's when you want to say, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. 113 01:18:59.000 --> 01:19:14.000 Uh, the strictness of a policy that says men only wear stuff that comes in the men's section, women only in the women's section, and no crossing over of any kind. That could be a little bit too wooden. That seems pretty safe, but it could be a bit too wooden. 114 01:19:14.000 --> 01:20:06.000 I've seen, on a practical level, seen girls wearing a guy's T shirt or hoodie or something, and it looks feminine and cute on them. And so I wouldn't consider that to be really a problem because they don't appear to be setting aside those feminine characteristics either on purpose or not as they do it. So, uh, I think that I try to find the principle behind it, not just the strict wooden rule. That's my understanding of it. Um, I think that preserves what God is getting at in scripture, which is women are women and that's to be celebrated. Men are men. That's to be celebrated with a degree of modesty, but with a definite identity difference between male and female that we feed into instead of trading out, um, for sameness. All right, let's go to the next question. This comes in from 18. This comes in from TRX. So question 18. 115 01:20:06.000 --> 01:20:19.000 I can control my fingers. 18. TRX says, how do we best stand up for the persecuted people of Israel in the world today and effectively do our duty to glorify Jesus as the controversy of Zion blazes? 116 01:20:19.000 --> 01:20:27.000 Um, well, here's quick tips that I'm going to have for you. 117 01:20:27.000 --> 01:21:34.000 Become, um, very well informed. If you want to delve into these issues and these arguments and these discussions become incredibly well informed so that you understand the history of the situation you're talking about. Not just the talking points you hear from one side or the other, but the actual history. Dig into it. Don't just Google and find one article and then go quote it to everybody. Actually do some research on this stuff. If you want to weigh in on it and you want to argue about it, um, and you want to stand up for people and defend people, spend some time on it. I have not been spending that time. And so I'm not going to try to weigh in all these things because it's irresponsible of me. My voice is too big online for me to just weigh in on those kinds of things without being informed. Okay. As much as I know lots of people want me to. There's plenty of topics where I get pressured to say something about this, Mike, make a video about this, do this thing. And, um, not that those things aren't important or valuable or that they don't need to be done, but they need to be done right, and they need to be done in an informed way. So if you want to stand up for people, you need to get informed on the issue. Biblically speaking, I believe that the future of the land is that it will belong to Israel. 118 01:21:34.000 --> 01:23:03.000 The short term, the present state of things, though, can be more complicated than that. And so that's where I would need to be more informed. There was a season where God was like, I'm bringing the people out of and Babylon's taken over and Assyria is taking over the land, and you're out of here. And you could have been like, we have to fight to preserve it. But actually they were supposed to go with it. Then there were other seasons where God was bringing the people back to the land, and it would have been the opposite would have been true. It would have been wrong to resist them. And you should have supported them and give them some money and help them get established in the land, God's blessing them. And what season are we in now? And what is going on now with all the details? What is the history? I know where I lean, okay? But I just haven't been fully informed enough personally, so I'd recommend you get more informed on that topic if you want to really take a stand and dig into it. Um, I want to glorify Jesus as the controversy of Zion blazes. I think my number one issue is I don't want to make a misstep or Just feel like I have to jump into somebody else's camp and hold up their standards and their talking points. I want to understand from a Christian perspective how I should apply this. I wish I could answer the question better. I haven't done the homework and spent the time to be able to do that. There's plenty of other Christians that probably have. I defer to them. I will be trying to look for their resources on that as well. Let's go to the next question, which is number 19, 1919. Michael Dembitsky II says, can you help me understand the parable of the patches and wine skins at the end of Mark, chapter five? 119 01:23:03.000 --> 01:23:06.000 Well, let's talk about that. 120 01:23:06.000 --> 01:23:13.000 Let me scroll down here and get to the passage. 121 01:23:13.000 --> 01:23:38.000 By the way, I do have, um, um, a verse by verse study all the way through the Gospel of Mark, and you guys are welcome to check that out. I'll link it down below, and that will maybe give you more details on here. But I'm scrolling through here to try to understand exactly what verse you're referring to, because end of Mark Five is, of course, a whole big section. 122 01:23:38.000 --> 01:23:48.000 I'm just scanning through the verses here. 123 01:23:48.000 --> 01:24:24.000 Yeah, I suspect that you put the wrong section there. Maybe someone can help me out with that. I'll give it a second. Someone help me out. I don't think that that's the section that you intended. Or maybe I missed it. Someone give me the exact verse references here for Michael's, uh, question, and we'll see if I can make sure to give you a good answer. I mean, I could just find a passage where Jesus talks about wineskins and old cloths and shrunken patches and stuff like that. Uh, but I want to make sure I find the verse reference that you're referring to. 124 01:24:24.000 --> 01:24:31.000 Luke. Michael, I see you wrote in there, Luke. Let me check that out. Luke five. 125 01:24:31.000 --> 01:24:39.000 No worries, man. No worries. Okay. 126 01:24:39.000 --> 01:25:25.000 Yeah. Okay, here we go. Jesus is questioned about fasting. At least that's the title put here. I'm actually going to go back to the ESV. That's just what I typically use just for consistency. And, um, they said to him, the disciples of John Fast often and offer Prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. But yours eat and drink. So here's a complaint that they have about the work of the Disciples of Jesus. They're not doing those outward things of fasting. And offering prayers doesn't just mean praying, but it means that there was like some sort of a, uh, ritualistic prayer offering that was happening more often. And Jesus'disciples don't. They eat, they drink, they travel around and know he heals people and stuff. But then when you actually look at them, they don't look like the normal religious leaders of the time. 127 01:25:25.000 --> 01:26:47.000 And John is especially known for fasting. He wore sackcloth and he ate, like, wild honey and locusts and stuff like that. So Jesus says to them, can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? I mean, obviously the answer is, no, you're not going to fast. It's a party time. When the bridegroom is there, it's like a celebration. This is time to enjoy each other in the company and food and all that. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them. And then they will fast in those days. Now, people miss this, but Jesus, of course, in this Passage is Referring to himself as the bridegroom. That's huge. That's a big deal. Um, John wouldn't have called himself that. The Pharisees wouldn't have called themselves that. Jesus calls himself the bridegroom because he's aware of his status, of who he is. That this is the Son of God. This is God, the Son who is there with them. So, yeah, this is a season when they're not going to fast. That's the point. He also told them a parable. And here's your question. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new. And the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wine skins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. And no one, after drinking old wine, desires new, for he says, the old is good. 128 01:26:47.000 --> 01:27:16.000 All right, let's tear this down. Um, no pun. It's pun intended, but it was not a very good one. All right, so no one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old one. Why is this? Because, uh, uh, when you get clothes, you put them through the wash and they shrink. So what you don't do is take a brand new piece of cloth, use it to patch an old one, then you wash it, it shrinks, and it actually tears and ruins the cloth. If he does, he will tear the new. And the piece from the new will not match the old. That's the second issue. The piece from the new is not going to match the old. 129 01:27:16.000 --> 01:27:59.000 You have an old, worn out garment. Why would you ruin a new thing and attach it to an old one? Why is Jesus talking about old and new stuff here? Because he's talking about the old Covenant and the New Covenant. He's talking about pre Christ and post Christ. He's talking about the situation of Israel being under the law, being, uh, brought to repentance, realizing they're in sin. And that's what John represents, right? He's sackcloth and ashes and fasting is like, we're sinners, we're sinners. We have to repent, repent, repent. Jesus brings the salvation, brings the new life, and he introduces us into a new thing where we not, of course, we do repent, but then we enter into the joy of the Lord, and we're in his kingdom, and we're celebrating him with him, and he's with us like the bridegroom. 130 01:27:59.000 --> 01:29:33.000 This is a distinction between the old and the new. The law brings the awareness of sin. It brings us to a place of repentance. Jesus brings us into the kingdom of God, and so we experience the joy of the Lord and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit and all of the blessings that we have in Christ. So that doesn't just get attached to the old. You don't just take Jesus and this new covenant and attach it to the old covenant? No, no. It's a new covenant. It fulfills the old. But you don't go back. You move forward, not backward. So no one puts new wine into old wine skins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. Now, I don't know much about the fermentation of wine. My understanding is that as you put new wine in, it's still fermenting and things are still happening, and stretching and moving will go on as it increases, uh, the capacity and stretches the wineskins so that wineskins that are old, they're harder, they're more firm. They're not flexible, that they're going to burst. And you lose the skin and the wine. And this is what happens if you take the Gospel of Jesus and you try to just say, just add that to your Judaism instead of seeing it as fulfillment. Uh, the Gospel of Jesus is Jewish, but it's not going into the law of Moses. It's stepping into something new. It fulfills the law and enters into a new covenant and a new kingdom, a, uh, new thing. So new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. And no one, after drinking the old wine, desires the new, for he says, the old is good. What's that last part about? That's these Pharisees. 131 01:29:33.000 --> 01:30:00.000 You see, they just think, no, I don't want the new Covenant. Ultimately, is what they were saying. Not fully aware of what they were doing, but that was what they were saying, in effect. I don't want the new Covenant. I got the old Jesus. I want you to be just like John. I want you to be just like the Pharisees. I don't want you to introduce us into this new thing. We want the Old. We want the typology of the Old Testament, but we don't want the one that it stood for. 132 01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:29.000 That was kind of where they were at. And so, um, yeah, I think this shows us our human desire to avoid change. We don't like change, but for so many of us, change is what we need the most. And when it comes to you and your faith in Christ, maybe you need to change. Maybe this is where you need to put your trust in Christ and let your life actually change. And not just let this sort of stubborn, I don't want my life to be different, keep you from experiencing these truths. Let's go to the last question. This comes from Peacechild. Question 20. 133 01:30:29.000 --> 01:30:43.000 Question 20. Peacechild says, how Do I truly trust God? I've been struggling with fear of dying in judgment. Fear that I don't have enough faith, or that salvation isn't really by grace alone. 134 01:30:43.000 --> 01:31:39.000 Um, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, that you really do trust in Christ. And that what you're struggling with isn't faith, it's fear, if that makes sense. It's not that you don't believe in Jesus or haven't entrusted your salvation to Jesus. It's not that you don't think that Christ died and rose again for your salvation, but it's that you just have this sort of resting sense of fear because of how important these issues are, how heavy these issues are. And there's an element that we can understand of this. Imagine if you were, um, heading into some sort of job interview where you knew you the best qualified person, and you had a buddy who was working there, and you thought you were pretty sure you were going to get the job, but you knew that this job was a huge deal and it was, like, life changing for you. You'd still have a sense of fear because you knew even though you felt confident you were going to get the job, you knew that it was a big deal and that if you didn't, it would change your life in a negative way. 135 01:31:39.000 --> 01:32:17.000 This is much, much bigger than that. You'll be standing before God Almighty and he'll judge you according to his standards. And you will either be covered by the blood of Jesus Christ and washed and clean, and God's own righteousness will be your key that brings you entering into his presence, or you'll stand and be judged for your own sins. It couldn't be bigger than this. Having a sort of sense of fear that just sort of sits on you is totally understandable. What I would like you to do is create a category in your head and call it, um, emotional doubt or emotional fear, or maybe even psychological doubt. Psychological fear. 136 01:32:17.000 --> 01:32:52.000 And this category is so that you can say, I have confidence in Christ. Yet of course, I have lingering emotions of fear or concern or worry, but my confidence in Christ is the thing I use to help me through that. You say, I'm worried that salvation isn't really by grace alone. Read Ephesians, read Galatians, read those books and see how much it's by grace alone. And then use that confidence in that to help yourself to realize I am forgiven. The battle here is just an internal emotional battle with fear. 137 01:32:52.000 --> 01:33:15.000 It's not unbelief. Perhaps there's a type of doubt that's there, but it's not unbelief. I'm not choosing to actually reject these truths. No, I'm trusting in you, Lord. You can say, like the Centurion said to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief or help this struggle I'm having. But I do choose to trust you. So you could be a weak Christian with weak faith, in a sense. 138 01:33:15.000 --> 01:33:23.000 Who says, but I choose to trust. I just have these lingering fears, but I choose to trust, and I believe that is totally acceptable to God. 139 01:33:23.000 --> 01:33:25.000 Your salvation is not in danger here. 140 01:33:25.000 --> 01:33:51.000 You're just going through a hard time. And so, um, for that person, I don't preach repent, repent, repent. No. For that person, I preach comfort and hope and help and God's goodwill towards you and Christ's sacrifice for you. And the fact that even a faltering, weak trust in Christ can be real trust in Christ that he receives, because that's what you ultimately choose to do, is to believe in him. 141 01:33:51.000 --> 01:34:37.000 I hope that helps. Um, peace, child, can I make one recommendation for you? And I promise I'm doing this for your benefit and not mine. Okay? Please go through my Roman series. I do a verse by verse series through the Book of Romans. A year, like 50 something studies through the whole verse of Roman. Whole Book of Romans, verse by verse. It's available online. I'll put a playlist down below of the whole Romans series. It's 100% free. I don't want anything from you for it. Uh, don't send me a check because you watch Romans. You don't have to do that, okay? I just want you to be blessed. The reason why I suggest this is because the confidence it will give you in the grace of God, in the work of Christ, in the salvation by grace, through faith, apart from works, is going to be tremeNdous, and I think it will help you, bring you peace. All right? So thank you guys so much. 142 01:34:37.000 --> 01:36:55.000 Um, thank you. For those of you who, um, prayed. I did a social media post, um, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, uh, saying I was helping a loved one go through the final stages of this life. I, um, didn't say at the time online that it was my mother, um, because she didn't want people reaching out to her on Facebook and stuff. It just made her feel uncomfortable when people she didn't know reached out to her. And so I want to respect that. Um, and since then, she has gone to be with the Lord. And I just want to say thank you for those of you who prayed, for my family, uh, for my mom, for me, my sister, those of us going through it, we absolutely 100% needed it. And I can say it was, uh, one of the hardest things we've ever been through, uh, that I've ever been through. But God's good and my spirit, my faith and all that is 100% intact and solid. And it's actually the thing that gives us hope and strength and courage in the midst of such a difficult and a hard time. So those of you who've gone through that, my heart goes out to you now. I know what you've gone through now. I know what that was like for you, not just in principle, but in actual practice. And, um, God is good, and he still remains good. And we don't mourn like those who have no hope. Thank God. So let's pray. Lord, thank you for your goodness and your kindness towards us. Thank you for the confident hope we have in Jesus Christ and his resurrection. That death, uh, has no victory, that there is no sting, ultimately, in it. It is painful, it is hard, but it is entirely temporary. It is momentary. And then life, the life we have in Christ Jesus is eternal. And we thank you for that hope that we have and that confidence that we have, that those who've gone before us, we will see them again. We are grateful. Lord, we bless you. Pray that you'd help us to grow in our confidence in Christ. Help us to think biblically about everything. Help us to fight and battle with sin, to not play a single game with sin, Lord, but to cut it off at its very. When it rears its ugly head at the first temptation. We would fight sin right there and live lives that honor Christ instead of wasting so much of our time here on this earth. In Jesus'name. Amen.