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First question today is about challenges to the cross. Uh, but before I jump into it, I'm going to talk about, like, four, I think, challenges to the cross, serious challenges. Demonizing the cross, actually, um, that I've heard from people who say they're christians as well as non believers. But before I dig into that, I just want to encourage you guys in something. Just take this in for a second. Because sometimes we stare at things we're so familiar with them, we miss out on, like, how amazing they are, including forgetting. Take your earbuds out. But in addition to that, the resurrection of Jesus is remarkable for, uh, a crazy number of reasons. But one of them is this. The apostles, his closest followers ran from Jesus, fled from Jesus, denied. In many cases, even knowing him, like Peter, um, tried to hide themselves. They were not willing to die with him. Truly at that moment, even though they had said they would be. They wanted victory. They didn't want to see a suffering savior. And this is, this is historically strongly supported, even for those who don't believe the Bible is the word of God. They look at this and they go, you know, historians will go, you know, this seems very likely true. Even us who are going to sort of chop the Bible up into parts we trust and don't trust, we're going to go, this part's pretty legit because you don't record embarrassing moments of your heroes, like denying Jesus three times, like fleeing from him, like losing faith. Like Thomas, I won't even believe unless I, unless I see and touch him. You don't record that stuff unless it really happened. It includes, it increases the likelihood of it being historical. So they fled Jesus. They were, they lacked faith. They were done. The death of Jesus was, was going to be the end of the, of the Jesus movement. But those same disciples were willing to die for Jesus, suffer for Jesus greatly, because they confidently believed in his resurrection. They saw, according to their ideas in their head. Even if you're not a Christian, you can affirm this. They believed that they saw Christ risen from the dead. And they're not the kind of people to just throw their lives away on promises they haven't seen fulfilled because they fled from Christ. They denied Jesus when he went to the cross, but then they were willing to die for Jesus after they saw him resurrected. You know, the same Thomas who said, like, I won't believe unless I see him. He was the one who then was willing to suffer and die for that risen savior.

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This is amazing to me. When I did my historical research, like, a long time ago for my own sake digging into, um, what evidence is there that Jesus really rose from the dead? Cause this is the linchpin of all Christianity, the resurrection of Christ. I was amazed that there was actually really good historical evidence for an event that took place 2000 years ago. You'd think there wouldn't be any evidence left. Anything that happened back then, you just would expect there to be zero. But there was such good evidence to support the resurrection of Jesus. I think it's very impressive. The apostles were willing to suffer and die because they believed that Christ had risen. And this is the same group of apostles that was not willing to do so earlier.

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The resurrection of Jesus best explains the change of heart and the courage that the apostles had. I think that's pretty cool. Question number one is, um, about the cross. And this comes in from Karen, who says, I'm a believer who needs help responding to the objection that Jesus voluntarily going to the cross was suicide. And I know. I don't know if people are always worried about YouTube censoring things. I don't know if me using that word is going to cause there to be a censorship. Hopefully not. Obviously, I'm not discussing things in a way that would harm people, but at any rate, was that an act of suicide because he voluntarily went to the cross? And she goes on and says, I know this isn't the case, but I'm having a hard time expressing it. And I think that this one's actually pretty easy to answer, Karen. So I'm going to offer, like, a quick response, a quick answer, and hope that, um, that it just clinches it for you. I went to you to imagine a scenario. You guys, a lot of you saw the first Captain America movie. And to weed out and find out if he had any courageous people in his military. There was like a general or whatever who took a dead grenade, a dud, and he pulled it, pulled the pin on it, and he tossed it into the midst of a group of soldiers. I don't recommend this sort of stuff, but what happened is Steve Rogers character, this sort of, like, scrawny little guy, he had such courage, he jumped on the grenade and covered it with his own body, ultimately ready and willing and giving his own life to help save the people around him, because he thought it was better for him to die and sacrifice himself than for all those other people to die. And so this is a great example of the type of thing Jesus did on the cross. Um, although what Jesus did was even more than this, but it's a good example. You wouldn't say, of a soldier who jumped on a grenade. And this has happened in real life, to my knowledge. There's been soldiers who jumped on grenades to protect their fellow soldiers. Would somebody really come back after the fact and accuse them of committing suicide?

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Would you? Would you really do this? Like, how jaded and dark hearted of a person do you have to become to call a self sacrificial act to save others an act of suicide? If a firefighter goes in a building, rescues some people, goes back in, rescues, goes back in, and finally he dies from the fire. Do we say he committed suicide? Like, this is just to spit in the face of an act of love? Jesus, he said the following. Right? John 1513. Jesus says greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. Jesus died for us. He didn't. He didn't commit suicide. So this seems like an odd question, but it seems to come from a desire, perhaps, uh, I say perhaps here because I could be wrong, but it seems to perhaps come from a desire to devalue the cross, devalue this incredible act of love that we talk about as Christians. And it's not the only way people do this. Let me mention a few more before we go to your questions today. And, uh, I'm Mike Winger. I answer questions that people have about the Bible and Christianity and try to help them learn how to think biblically about everything. That's my agenda, and that's all my agenda is. I'm not asking for anything from you, just that you think.

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But in the way of thinking about the cross and about the goodness of the cross and the fact that we don't have a suicidal Jesus on the cross, that that's just all that is, is that's, I think, generally a heart that's responding to something they don't like about Jesus, about God, and then coming up with weird things. But this happens as well. There's others who say that the cross was child abuse. I don't know what it is. It's like there's something in my eyeball.

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It's a spec. I need someone to get it out for me. Please, just deal with your plank and then come fix my spec, would you? Because obviously, planks are only other people. Never. Never me. Never you.

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Only other people. Anyways, here's several other things. People would say the cross was suicide. Some others would say it was child sacrifice or, uh, child abuse, rather, child abuse. Others would say it was a bloodthirsty God. The, um, God was just angry. Wrath just had. He had to hurt something. He was so mad about sin, he just had to punch something and he punched Jesus. Um, others would say it was irresponsible and insulting. I've heard all these claims about the cross, that the cross was irresponsible and insulting. You know, you should deal with your own problems, not have God deal with them for you. You should be accountable for your own issues, not try to put it off on God. I've heard all of those things. I've also heard it's too easy for Jesus. So I'm going to quickly run through these other four objections to the cross fast speed answers and then I'll go to your guys questions. So the statement, it was child abuse. This usually comes from progressive leaders, progressive christians like, uh, uh, guys that I would, I would call progressive Christian, like Brian Zahn. He says he's nothing. I think that his, his reasoning is the same as the progressive stuff and they use him. So I would put him in that same camp as far as the, uh uh, not claiming the label, but as far as him holding to some of the same principles. In that sense, he is, uh, uh, Steve Chalk Brook c k. These are guys who would present and, and suggest that a biblical view of the cross, and I'll use that word biblical on purpose here, is uh, uh, child abuse. And the first thing I would acknowledge is I have a whole playlist of videos on this topic. I'll link down below. I, afterwards, I forgot to do it before on, um, the doctrine of the cross, of how the cross works and that it involves a penalty, um, that is the penalty for our sin, a substitution, that is Jesus taking our place on the cross and atonement. That is, it brings us into right relationship with God through dealing with the judgment that we deserve from God. Uh, so that's a doctrine called penal penalty, substitutionary atonement. I have a playlist of videos on that where I deal with this issue. But the child abuse thing, a, Jesus is not a child, right? Like I'm my parents child, right? But I'm a grown man, okay? So hurting me is not, not child abuse. I'm not a child. Don't be weird. These people are being weird. Child abuse that you're being. You're being weird and childish, ironically. Um, but. So Jesus is not a child. Um, this stirs emotional responses when you call it across child abuse. And it stirs an emotional response based on distortions, which is like the majority of what we see in the political sphere going on in our world today. Uh, Jesus is an adult. He's also not just a child or just a person. He's not even just a human. Jesus is God in human form. This is God.

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The triunity of God is such that God himself comes in human form to offer himself for us so we don't picture some abusive father hurting his child.

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I struggle to find acceptable words, not even, I'm not attempting to use cuss words, but acceptable words of this is dumb. This is actual dumbness. But it, but it is the stuff that's promoted by guys like Brian Zahn and Steve Chalk, other progressives who are pushing people away from a biblical view of the cross. So, yeah, um, it's also not pointless. It's not like, you know, you hurt your child just to hurt them or you hurt a person just to hurt them. This was a vicarious atonement. Jesus goes to die for our sins. So this is to distort the cross in order to create an emotional response against what God has done in the name of Christianity many times. This the, the next objection, this will actually be the third one we're tackling today is that the cross, it involves a bloodthirsty God.

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So they like to say stuff like, um, who's the one who says this? Um, what's his name, the open theism guy. Um, he has a cruciform hermeneutic that he talks about. You guys know I'm talking about his name escapes me at the moment. I'll remember it in like 30 seconds. We'll see. Anyways, this guy, man, I watch what's his name? Someone's gonna know. Anyway, um, he'll say that the idea that God is punishing our sins in Christ on the cross is because God is bloodthirsty. That what we're trying to teach is that God is so mad about sin, he just has to find something to punch. He has to find something to hit, he has to find something to kill. And so they'll grab the parable of the, of the prodigal son. There's so much false teaching out there in the world, right? This is just one little tiny piece of it. They'll grab the parable of the, um, prodigal son and say, when the prodigal son came back, imagine the father instead of the parable the way Jesus tells it. He says, oh, my son has returned. And he decides he's going to go and find some random innocent person and just beat them to a bloody pulp so he can feel better and then go welcome his son back. And this is the way they characterize the cross. Because the Bible does talk about Jesus taking the punishment for my sin. Very clearly, romans is very clear in its like, like moral legislation, like sort of penalty, that this is judicial. Um, um, retributive justice is a term for it. It's very clear about that. Uh, um. So yeah, they'll picture God here as doing it because he's angry, because he's petty. Now, uh, God does have anger. He does have wrath. But his wrath is always righteous and perfect. It's never petty. To paint it as petty is to be petty about goddess. To paint this as child sacrifice is to be childish about the sacrifice. This is all wrong. The, the scripture does say it pleased the Lord to crush him. Ah, Christine, uh, with a c said it. It's Greg Boyd. Greg Boyd. That was the guy I was looking at thinking, thinking of rather. I was just looking at it right now in the comments. Um. Um.

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Yeah, Greg Boyd. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You did it. It just took a while for the chat to catch up. I'm like just like 2030 2nd delay in case of, uh, buffering issues. So, um, it pleased the Lord. Isaiah says to crush him. It was about appeasing God and his wrath, but not his petty anger. It's God's righteous and proper indignation towards sin. It's good to be mad about sin. When there's a child molester, you're supposed to be mad about that. When there's a rape, you're supposed to be mad about that.

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When the sin of the world comes upon Jesus. It is something God's angry about. Not that he's angry at Jesus, but angry at us and our sin. Yes. And directing the rightful wrath away from us and ultimately on the cross towards. Towards Jesus. Um. Um. Is he actually mad at Jesus? I think that's a, a wrong way of putting it. I think that's a very wrong way of putting it. But there is a wrath of God that is expressed in the punishment of sin and I think that that's appropriate. So there's a, um.

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Ah. More on this, on Isaiah 53. And I'll tell you guys, there's a yemenite website. I'll link in the description below if you want to know more on this. I wrote an article that is just going up, I think, today on this topic on Isaiah 53, on clear Truth media. It's a new website and I, I think it's clear truth media is the website. I'm trying to remember exactly it. Anyways, down below there's a bunch of different contributors doing stuff. I'm doing stuff on there too, and you guys are welcome to check it out. The, um.

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The article is about Isaiah 53 and how it speaks about the prophecy of what Jesus did on the cross. It's beautiful and amazing. Check it out down below. I'll link it afterwards. Or go to clear truth media and check it out. New, new thing you guys want to check out, see if you like clear truth media. It's a, um, bunch of basically conservative christians coming together to produce content because some of the old institutions that we've looked to in the past have become more and more, like, compromised with critical theory and other things that are just unbiblical worldviews is the real issue here. Instead of a commitment to a biblical view on things, holding fast on hard issues like LGBTQ stuff and, um, marriage and, uh, God's order for male and female and all those kinds of things that are really tough issues nowadays. And christians need to be tough on tough issues. If we're weak or we flop on those things, we end up flopping on everything. All right, so that's clear truth media. The website. Maybe the website will change over time. I'll put a link down below in case it has, um, the next one is that the cross is bad because it was irresponsible and insulting. This is usually said by the person who. I've met people like this. Have you? You know, that's good for you. You need Jesus. That's fine for you. I'm glad you found him. And the subtext is, you pathetic individual. But I'm good. I take responsibility for my actions. I handle my own issues. Um, this always, always stems from a place of pride, a place of not realizing how bad your sin really is. And so you want to stand before God and face up for your sins because you don't want to be humbled and come to the savior. And that's, of course, your choice. But when you stand before God, you won't be here. This is super important. You won't be accountable for the sins you think you've committed. You'll be accountable for the sins you've committed. Do you see the difference?

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You have pride in your heart, which means that you perceive yourself as being better than you are. But there's going to come a day where you stand before God and he holds. He's holy. He holds you up to a holy standard. So one time I jokingly with my wife, I had cleaned the bathroom or something. I don't remember even all the details. Many years ago, um, back the last time I cleaned the bathroom, I cleaned the bathroom and I told her, I was jokingly boasting. I was like, it's so clean you couldn't find any speck of dust. I was joking. And then she went jokingly and grabbed a white glove or cloth and ran it along like the windowsill or something in the bathroom and found all kinds of dirt.

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This, which of course was embarrassing for me because I was like, I shouldn't have joked. Um, at any rate, this is the thing about my judgment before God. I stand before God and I go, look at my life, Lord, it's pretty clean. Pretty clean. And he's going to come through. And he doesn't compare my life in my cleaned up version to like maybe how it was dirty or a week ago or a month or a year ago. He compares it to his Holiness. He brings it in a white cloth and he wipes it around and he goes, look at all this filth. And I think, but that's just a little dirt. I don't care about that. And he goes, you don't understand how bad this stuff is. You don't understand how evil this stuff is, how evil you've been. And so you were insulted by the gospel, but it was the thing that could save you. And your pride kept you blind to your own issues and arrogant about your goodness. Until you stand before God and you realize he doesn't use your standards, he uses his standards. And that would just be my encouragement to anybody who feels that way. You feel the cross is irresponsible and, um, insulting. That's only to your pride. Um, it's the only way you'll be saved is through the cross. Others would say it was too easy for Jesus. Um, and I've talked more about this elsewhere. I'll just mention everything briefly here. They'll say Jesus just goes to the cross, he gives up a weekend. I've heard people say it this way, he gives up a weekend.

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This is, um, another childish way of dealing with the cross, biblically speaking. This, uh, is a hypothetical that supposes that Christianity is true, that Jesus really died on the cross. And then you insult that by saying he gave up a weekend. Eh, how lame.

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Jesus dies on the cross for your sin. Have you ever felt shame and guilt, like tremendous shame and guilt when you were fully exposed as being totally wrong? Imagine that shame and guilt being magnified to, I don't know, like the shame of everybody and the guilt of everybody and all they've done and having to feel that. If you think the cross was nothing. Why do you think Jesus was sweating drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane? Because this presupposes Christianity is true. This objection.

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Why would he be sweating great drops of blood if it was nothing? You're just in denial. You're just acknowledging the cross but denying what it meant to go through death. And Jesus didn't just die on the cross and suffer. He came in human form and lived in it as a human. He dies, he rises, and he's forever human. He is divine, but he's also forever a human. A lowly innocence human. There's a sense in which he's exalted, but there's a humanity in God now. It's amazing. It blows my mind, but it's a permanent thing that God has done. To be able to identify with us, to save us, to say he gave up a weekend is merely to use mockery and sarcasm and to blind yourself to the stress, the pain, the suffering, the sacrifice and the ongoing commitment that Jesus has to us as humans. And suppose you were right.

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It was easy. Jesus saved us and it was easy. How is that a complaint?

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Like, imagine Superman saves somebody from death, and then the person turns to him and says, you know, I'm really bothered, superman, because that was way too easy for you.

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What kind of objection is this? These are irrational objections to the cross. Just get saved and stop complaining of my encouragement. Um, the final one is the cross. Um.

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Oh, I guess. No, that was the fun one. It was too easy for Jesus. Yeah. So the cross, I would say, is the most beautiful act of love that anybody has ever done. It is the crowning act of the revelation of God's heart for us. It shows us both how bad sin is because it's punished there on the cross. It shows us also that God is righteous and he will punish sin because he requires even himself to deal with our sins. There will be payment because he's good, because he's not unjust. Uh, like, there's this. Have you guys seen this judge? I've seen little viral clips. This judge, everybody who comes before him, they're like, I, uh, couldn't get to work that day because I was this and that. And here's the reason why I got the ticket. And he goes, ah, don't worry, you don't have to pay it. And he sends them away. That's nice, because he's dealing with petty offenses. But imagine a judge doing. I mean, we feel like it's nice. I don't know if it's really just or not. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. Probably mixed bag, but imagine doing that with, like, a murderer. And they're like, yeah, I killed him. But, you know, I'd really like to go free. I go free. Forget about it. We would know that this was unjust, right. Justice has to be dealt with because God is holy and good. His goodness cries out for judgment against sin on the cross. Sin is judged on the cross. God's love for humankind is seen. He identifies with us, he becomes human. He then dies for our sin. Um. Um. And the door is wide open. It means that the only requirement you have to get saved is Jesus. It's beautiful.

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And we're going to go to question number two. So that was question one. I hope you thought something smart about it. Um, um. Hopefully I did, too. All right, question two. How are we able to sin if the Holy Spirit is in USDa? Thanks. Um, so this is, uh, interesting. I just want to make sure we understand the question. It's not a question of can we sin since the Holy Spirit is in us? Because the Bible very clearly affirms that you can. Um, right. When the Bible says things like, forgive one another, this is because we sin against one another. If it says that someone sees a brother sinning, bring him back from the air. So there's brothers that we can see who are sinning. There are those who are in sin, they get rebuked, we bring them to correction. If they don't receive it, we can move towards excommunication. Eventually, the walk in the spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Or Paul writing about the carnality of the Corinthians. So it's clear in scripture over and over again that Christians do actually sin. They do actually sin.

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Um, Paul calls out Peter in Galatians two. And Peter is certainly filled with the spirit, but he calls him out for a sin against the gentile believers. And he says, your actions were not true according to the gospel. If that's not a sin, I don't know what is.

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So Christians can sin. The question here from KM is, how are we able to sin if the Holy Spirit is in us? How does that work? How does that work that I can sin if the Holy Spirit is in me? Um, I think that even if I can't explain how it works, it still does work. We know it happens. Um, but I think that the scripture in Galatians, which tells us about the war of the spirit and the flesh and how they fight against each other, I think that kind of brings the example is that you have mixed motives in this world. You have the spirit, you have the flesh. And these two things are not in agreement with each other. The. The spirit, um, is against the flesh. The flesh is against the spirit. The two are fighting one another for control. And you. You have a will, and you choose what to yield to this. To walk in the spirit or to walk in the flesh. You can do this so that we, um.

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Gosh, let me. Let me show you some. Some scripture here. This is actually relevant, even though it's not what I was looking for. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. So, brothers, we can be caught in transgressions that, in fact, can happen.

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Um, uh, the fact that a christian can. Sin is clearly taught in scripture. But the thing that I wanted to get you guys to is, um. Just a moment. Sorry.

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Let's think about this. And if it answers our question that we have.

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There we go. Um, so in Galatians five two, it says, look, um, actually, I want to go to 516. Here we go. But I say walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

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This reveals to us the solution.

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The way you'll avoid sin is by walking by the spirit.

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But it also reveals the battle that you have the spirit, the Holy Spirit, who's pushing you towards good, guiding you in right and truth and holiness. Then you have the flesh, which is drawing you towards carnal desires, self satisfactions, uh, things that are just about indulging in what the flesh wants, what that sinful nature, sinful side of you wants. And he explains, for the flesh, the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. There's the answer to your question. How are we able to sin if the Holy Spirit's in us? Because my flesh is in me too. And the Holy Spirit is not a puppet master. I have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. I'm filled with the spirit. But he's not a puppet master. Uh, in a way that he takes over my body and controls me so that I'm merely a vessel without a mind or a will. I mean, I'm a vessel, but not one without a mind or will. He joins to me. He doesn't take over. So I need to choose to follow him, which is a greater act of love. To choose to follow Christ, to choose to walk in the spirit, it's a decision you make.

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And now, if you do sin, if you do choose to walk in sin, you're going to receive different degrees of corruption and harm that's going to cause to you in your life. Uh, you will reap what you sow. This is the scariest thing to think about. For me, for anybody. I think anybody who's serious about it, I reap what I sow. I reap what I sow. Whatever my sin is, I reap what I sow. Doesn't mean I will go to hell over it, but doesn't either mean that I will be unaffected by the decisions I make. Uh, it's pretty powerful to consider. Sobering hope that answers your question, km. Um, let's go to question number three.

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Uh, Gardefeld says, hi, Mike. Hi, gardefel. Uh, how can we define inerrancy biblically? Even the writers of the Chicago statement seem to hold slightly different views on harmonization. For example, according to Mike Lycom, um, inerrancy is a super challenging thing to talk about in detail. It's easy to talk about it in general because you're like, oh, the Bible doesn't get stuff wrong.

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You could say it that way. And for most people in the pew, that's good enough. That's good enough. But when you talk about inerrancy in great detail, it can get challenging. And I don't know what specific issues you've been talking about. I know Mike Lycona has a view of inerrancy that, um, strains the definition of inerrancy, in my view. Um, but, um, the writers of Chicago statement might hold slightly different views on harmonization.

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That's fine. And I think we can accept that christians have slightly different views. You can just say kind of like two questions. Are they under the broad umbrella of legitimate inerrancy? Like, is what they're saying, basically, yeah, that basically is really inerrancy. The Bible doesn't make mistakes, doesn't get stuff wrong. Or are they scooting out from under that umbrella? Maybe they still call themselves inerrantists, but they're kind of scooting out from under it. I think that's an important thing to realize, because those who do tend to come out from under it will sometimes just continue to say, no, I believe in inerrancy. And then they'll do commentary on a particular passage in scripture and be like, yeah, Matthew made a mistake there. That didn't happen.

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Um, that's a problem. I'm not saying Michael Kona does that. Exactly. I haven't looked at his stuff in a while. Um, I'm just saying that some people do that.

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The questions of, like, harmonization. I get how this stuff can be challenging, um, because you have. And this is one thing Mike talks about a lot, is literary, uh, devices. Um, and I think he goes too far with it. Okay. This is just my opinion. He's much more studied in this topic, in this area, than I am. But we all have our thoughts and our opinions on these issues, and we should. We should think about them. I think he stretches those things too far, at least in his work. A few years ago, when I was looking at his work. Um, but there's things that people do with literary devices, you might say, or there's ways of writing people have where they say they truncate a large story, they make it a short story. They just skip stuff out. They skip out on stuff. They don't give all the details. Um, others that are questionable are things like, can you relocate an event? Can, you know, did Jesus, um. Um, cleanse the temple twice right at the beginning and end of his. Of his ministry? Or do we give credence to the idea that the writers of the gospels may have moved events around because that was okay for them to do according to literary devices of the time? Like to talk about something that happened at the end of Jesus ministry? Did John maybe move it to the beginning of Jesus ministry because he's a theological point? He wants to bring out the beginning of his gospel? Or do you simply say, well, John's not even really trying to be chronological here. And then you have to argue about the specific statements in the text. These are things that you can discuss within. Within the umbrella of inerrancy, but you got to be careful about it, right? Because eventually you're like, well, wait a minute, are we making up a real. Are these real. This is my fear with, say, Mike Lycona stuff. Just being straightforward with you guys, is that in some cases, it may not be a legitimate literary device that he's talking about. In which case, if you say. If you bank your theology on, you know, here, Matthew's doing special effects when he talks about the dead saints being raised. Okay, that's an example that Lacona has given, um, that the bodies. The tombstones were open and the bodies of saints, several saints came out. It may have been three or five, I don't know how many. Um, and Lacona has said, well, that's like Matthew doing special effects, and that's just simply accepted and known it's a literary device of the time. Now, if he's wrong about that, as I suspect he is, then underneath that claim that it's a literary device is another claim. It didn't happen the way it looks like it happened. So if he's proven wrong on the literary device, all of his work is going to be going to show that Matthew is just making statements that aren't true. You see how that can backfire and that can just bring someone out from under the umbrella. I hope that makes sense. This is a complicated topic. There's a lot going on with it. Um.

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Um. I know that I'm hesitant. I'm leery of where Mike Lacona is going with this kind of stuff and have been for quite some time. Doesn't mean he's not my brother. And, uh, I know, and really, honestly a wonderful guy from everything I can tell. I don't know him well, but we've talked a couple times and seems like a really nice guy. Seemed like he'd be a great guy to have as a friend. But I'm leery and have been for quite some time with the way he's handling these issues. But I also recognize, as you maybe do and others do, that they are complicated.

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And we do have to recognize that we don't have the same writing, um, expectations that the gospel writers did 2000 years ago. For instance, when Jesus is quoted in scripture, there's no quotation marks in the Greek, and he'll say something one way in a gospel, in a slightly different way in another gospel. And you got to ask which one of these is word for word what Jesus said. And my thought on this, honestly, is, um, I don't think we have to worry about that because I don't think they were trying to give us a verbatim quote. They were trying to tell us what Jesus said under the inspiration of the spirit, with reliability that's there. But it doesn't have to be a verbatim quote. This is, that is, I don't have to, like, worry about that too much. That's a fair thing to do. I don't think that affects inerrancy at all. These are the kinds of things that you do have to wrestle with. It does get complicated because we're looking into texts that are 2000 years removed from us and we do have to ask, like, how much accuracy. Um, there's a discussion right now about in the Old Testament, is there deliberate exaggeration of numbers or are they meant to be exact numbers? Now, our culture, if you say there were x number of troops, say 50,000 troops. You mean there were 50,000 troops? Like, very close to that exact number. Very close to that. 52. Could have been 51, but it was very close.

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There are some who would suggest the weird Col. I'm not sure. I don't know where I sit on this, but the weird cultural reality of the time is that if you said, if there were, say, 5000 troops and you said 5000, people would assume you really meant there was like 1000, and if you said 50,000, they'd assume you really meant there was like maybe five or ten. That people normally exaggerated to such a degree that you kind of had to exaggerate or they misunderstood you. That sounds pretty sketchy, but I'm just saying. Here's a discussion people have. If you can show me it's a real literary practice that they have at the time, then I need to be open to it, but I don't want to be so open to it that I fabricate literary devices that don't exist. It's a challenging issue for those of you who are like, what are you even talking about? Don't worry. I'll go to question number four now.

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All right. Vanessa Parvin says, hi, brother. My 16 year old daughter was wondering why with the fall in Genesis, shame is associated with being naked. What's the correlation between sin, nakedness and the fall? I didn't really know. Yeah, um, that's a good question. So I can give you my, my thoughts on this. I don't know for sure if this is right, if I might have more to learn about it, or maybe I've got something wrong. So, um, my thoughts on this is that if you go back to before that, when it says they were naked and unashamed, like, that's what the text actually says earlier in Genesis.

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This is. That's the context. Um, the fact that they were there and they were, um, prior to the fall, they were going around and they were not clothed. And I should say it shows that they were naked and unashamed. Then after they eat of the fruit, now they cover themselves, which is an awareness of some sort of inappropriateness, of going around unclothed.

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I think it's meant to tell us that they went from a state of just such purity and such innocence to a state of this sort of moral awareness on a deeper level, not only of just being aware that there was such a thing as right or wrong or something like that, because they knew they weren't supposed to eat from the tree, they knew they were told not to do that, but of something else, something personal shame. There's a sense of personal shame. Um. Um, you could imagine, like, when kids are really tiny, you know, there's like a four month old baby, and you're, you're not that worried about them. You know, they don't need to worry about covering themselves up. Obviously, for the sake of adults, especially certain people, you wouldn't want your kid to be unclothed around them. But there's no shame in their nakedness. But for me as an adult, there is shame. If I was to go around that way.

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They're moving into that place of being aware that they have moral issues in their lives. I think that's the picture we're getting with them clothing themselves and them hiding parts of their bodies. Whereas before they didn't. Is not only that they're aware of moral goodness, but they're aware of their own. Like, something's wrong with me. Something's wrong with me. Like, oh, I shouldn't look, do this or be this way. Um, and you could connect it to our awareness of sexual sin. But just, I don't know if it's specifically that, really, because we're talking about Adam and Eve, husband and wife, but there's a moral awareness.

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Now they know there's something wrong with them.

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Now they know there's something wrong with them. Now there is something wrong with them. Um, I think that's the bottom line. And it's just a picture. It's just meant to be a way of showing us that instead of just telling it to us. So let's go to the next question. This is question number four. And it comes in from.

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Sorry, guys, my my software is just being a little fuzzy. Okay. Um, I guess that was question four. Oh, that question five. I was looking at the delay. Number five.

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Yohane Samuel Malonenda.

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I'm so sorry. Yohane Samuel Molinetta Perez. I butchered your name. But you probably used to it, I imagine. Um, okay, so, hi, Pastor Mike. Do you know how biblical authors recorded events, conversations and moments that transpired despite being in private? Or in a one man scenario perhaps, like Judas death? Uh, thank you for your ministry. Oh, yeah. Well, thank you. Um, yeah, so, interestingly enough, let's let's let me offer a couple thoughts on this. I think this is a really interesting question.

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Um, the gut reaction a lot of christians have is to say, well, the Holy Spirit just gave it to them. Like, obviously the Holy Spirit just gave it to them. That is entirely possible. Like, the holy spirit can just give you information. Absolutely. We know that, like Elijah, he just like knew stuff about what was going on in the private lives of kings and things like this. Like the whole God just gave him information and that is absolutely possible.

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But that's not typically how we should assume. Everything comes as though the entire Bible and all of its contents came directly through divine revelation of information. Like new info. Rather, inspiration is that the writers were guided, were led, were used by the Holy Spirit. But they often wrote things that they knew of. You know, in John, he's like, I saw this stuff at the end of the gospel of John. He's like, I saw it. I witnessed these things and now I'm writing them to you. So we, we do see eyewitness evidence. You know, we see things like Mark, uh, has all these telltale signs that it's the eyewitness account of Peter as recorded by Mark. Really neat stuff. Um, I have a video on that I'll link down below on who wrote the Gospel of Mark. Tons of like neat research about these little evidentiary elements about who wrote this and how can we trace it back to Peter. And, um, you know, it's a unanimous view of early history was that it was written by Mark, um, through Peter's teaching.

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So we have reason to think like, yeah, these are things that they sometimes see that they're aware of. We shouldn't just assume the holy spirit gives it to them.

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We also sometimes assume that when they write what someone gave a speech or something that they're doing it perfectly verbatim. And I don't know that that's the case. Now the, the accuracy of it would be there. But, but how perfectly accurate is it? You know, like I say, I'm six foot tall. That's accurate. But how per. I'm not exact. I'm not actually 6ft to the, the microscopic nanometer. No, of course I'm not. I'm rounding. So there's a certain rounding privilege that I think an author has. That's reasonable.

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Um, but we also have, let me add another layer on top of that. We have the idea that they're in an oral culture and oral meaning they tell stories orally. They do not read them. They do not. Generally, most of the people are not reading even when they gather together. Maybe one person reads and the rest listen. They're in an audible culture. They're listening to things and they have to memorize and remember stuff so much. You know, I used to have so many phone numbers memorized. You guys remember that? Are you old enough to be like this, where you had your number memorized, your parents numbers memorized, your. Your friends, all your friends numbers, you had them memorized. You had these ten digit number, area code, and seven numbers. You had it all memorized. Now I don't remember any, except for, like, me and my wife. And that's it. That's the only numbers I have memorized.

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I was really good at remembering phone numbers. Very good at it. I was also good at remembering directions before I started using, um, like, Google Maps and whatever map app you use. I remember hearing a comedian talk about it, and he said, before I, um. This is a Mapquest joke back in the day. So before, I'll say Google Maps. Before Google Maps, uh, I could hardly get anywhere. And he says, now that I have Google Maps, I can't get anywhere at all without it. And that's the reality, is once you start relying on these things, you're not very good at the skill that you developed. I used to remember the directions. People would give me a list of, turn here, go here, left here, straight here for this long, and I just drive away remembering how to get there. And now I'm terrible at that. In an oral culture, you're very good at remembering what people say, because you have to do it all the time. You can't just take a note on your phone. You can't just record a video. You can't just go and google it and look it up later on. You're very good at this stuff because it's what you do all the time. Let me add another layer on top of that. Um, guys like Jeremiah the prophet, he had a scribe who would write stuff down that Jeremiah said. Not uncommon for spiritual leaders to have people follow them and just purposely write down what they say. Yep. Most of the people just had to remember it, but it's not uncommon for them to have one guy who just writes stuff down. You know, Matthew was a tax collector. It's been theorized that maybe he was writing this stuff down because that was kind of his job, was to record things, and maybe it would be more on his radar to do that sort of thing. So it may be that Jesus, uh, in particular had someone writing things down that he was saying. In addition to that Jesus. Let's talk about Jesus specifically. He would go from town to town preaching the same messages over and over. How many times do you think the disciples heard the parable of the prodigal son? It may have been many times. Or how many people talk about the sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain, Luke has a recording that's very similar to the sermon on the mount that's in Matthew.

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But they're different and they seem to happen in different locations. And I've seen people try to harmonize. Here's how you bring these together. They're really the same sermonous.

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I don't know if they're the same sermon. I think that I'm open to them just being different sermons and that Jesus gave the same message to different crowds over and over again. It's not like he uploaded a YouTube video and everybody in Israel watched it so they could all see it. He had to go and teach on a circuit. So I'm going to go to this town and I have the stuff I teach people and I'm going to go to this town, and it'll change a little here and there, but it will not be, uh, identical.

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The repetition of Jesus teachings for three plus years and then following Jesus means the disciples had a chance to really learn the material very well. They knew what Jesus taught, they knew the parable said this way, they knew it said that way, they knew how he interacted and they learned these things. So you combine all this stuff together and you go, yeah, we shouldn't doubt. Now, you mentioned the death of Judas. Uh, Judas death.

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Look carefully at the information we have. It says that he took the money they gave him and he ran into the temple and he threw the money before the people in the temple. They could easily have heard this, um, from either somebody who was there or from somebody who, uh, was involved with the purchase of the field of blood where Judas ended up killing himself. They ended up buying a plot of land there. Um, it was kind of like a tainted area. And they used the money from Judas. They bought it in his name. So this was a public land purchase done in the name of Judas. So this would all have been public info. Then we read in the text when Judas killed himself. We don't read specific details. He's bitter, he leaves, he hangs himself.

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Well, you don't have to be there to witness him hanging himself. You just have to have anybody find him later on. Then you read about him, you know, his guts pouring forth, bursting open. His guts fell out and it was gross. This is probably just part of what happened after they found the body, after he'd hung himself, that there was some sort of like, you know, I won't get into detail here, you can imagine, but this is stuff that happened biologically to his physical body. That would have been public as well. So your example doesn't require any special knowledge. It doesn't require any special eyewitnesses. It's information that would be pretty easy to find, actually on him. When you read about these stories, you frequently find this, that, um, say, Luke. Luke said he investigated things. He talked to many eyewitnesses, and there's evidence in his text that he does, that he talks to lots of eyewitnesses. So when he's reading about what happened, when Jesus goes into a room and he tells everybody to go out and there's a daughter that gets raised and, you know, it wasn't that nobody was in the room. There was somebody else in the room. And Luke had access to eyewitnesses and talked to them or on the way out, maybe people just asked, dude, what happened when you were in there with Jesus? Everybody wants to know the conversation between Pilate and Jesus. Well, someone close in Pilate's, uh, household was actually one of, uh, the people involved in Jesus's early ministry. So it would have been easy potentially for that conversation to come. There's lots of ways to answer these questions. That's what I'm getting at. Alright. Kind of getting a little into the weeds, but you guys, you guys probably don't mind that too much. All right, let's talk about number six.

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Fully known, fully loved, has a question. And by the way, uh, no more, um, cues. We've got all the questions for today. They're all fully loaded here and ready to go. When did the old covenant officially end?

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That's a, that's a tough question. So was it Christ's birth? Was it his death? When the temple veil was torn in two? Was it the resurrection of Christ? Was it Pentecost 70? Or was it 70 ad, the destruction of the temple? Or was it a gradual end similar to us slavery? It's a really weird thing to compare it to, but let's, let's tackle this. When did the old covenant officially end? Um, I've had this conversation with somebody at once and I sat and tried to think about it and I didn't see any clear determination. I'm not sure it's okay to say with some questions. There's not enough clear teaching in scripture to answer this definitively. And this is one of those questions. Um, when did the old covenant end? I think that maybe we can spin it slightly differently. Um, but before I explain how we would spin it slightly differently, let me walk through your potential ends. Okay. So Christ's birth, um, during Jesus ministry, I think we can rule this one out. Because during Jesus's ministries, he's walking the earth. He's teaching people to obey the law. He's teaching them to do all the things. And he's very much teaching jews to follow Judaism as it is in the first century, not modern Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism is a very different thing, but he's teaching them to follow that stuff. So if you're going to say the old covenant ended, why is he not doing more to demonstrate that it's already ended? Okay. Plus, Jesus hasn't yet fulfilled it. He's begun. He's in the process of fulfilling it. He says, I did not come to destroy the lot of the prophets, but to fulfill, but he had not yet fulfilled, so it couldn't end before that was fulfilled. That wouldn't make sense. Was it at Jesus death then? That was when the temple veil was torn in two, right when he died.

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Um, he also tells the thief on the cross, today you'll be with me in paradise. And even though he hasn't resurrected yet, it seems as though the payment for sin has already been accomplished on the cross. And that thief right then and there, he can be forgiven, um, and be welcomed by God. But the, I guess more to the point, the veil was torn.

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Certainly this would be an okay place to say that's when the old covenant was, you say ended. I would say fulfilled. Maybe you could say fulfilled. But then the resurrection of Christ to push back on that is part of the fulfillment of the old. So it is being fulfilled when Jesus dies on the cross. Is it, is it done being fulfilled when Jesus is done dying on the cross? Well, the resurrection is part of that, that deal. It's part of the promises of the lost, part of the things Jesus came to fulfill. He has to die and he has to rise again. So it'd be weird to like, separate the resurrection out. You could say Pentecost. Um, well, Pentecost, it seems to be like an initiatory moment of the new covenant, right? While he makes the covenant in his blood, he says, like, this is my body broken for you? It's a new covenant in my blood. Yet the new covenant, part of that is God putting his spirit in us. And so we see the, uh, fulfillment of the new covenant at, ah, Pentecost, when the holy spirit enters into Israel. So you've got these like, bookends. Jesus is fulfilling the law through his ministry. You could say it begins at his birth, but, but really on the cross, there's this apex moment, massive fulfillment of lots of what the old covenant's about then you've got the resurrection of Christ, that absolutely is included. Then you've got Pentecost, that's included too.

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So I would put like a larger blanket around those events.

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Um, but then you say, well, what about 70 ad?

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70 ad, the destruction of the temple in a sense is God divinely saying to the Jews, like, look, I've given you the new temple, I've given you the ultimate sacrifice, and you have rejected that. And now I'm taking away this thing that you're doing in rebellion, ultimately. Now, it wasn't before, but now it's in rebellion to Christ because you're denying him and you're continuing on as if nothing's happened and the temple is destroyed.

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You could say that, uh, I don't know if that's an official end of the old covenant as much as it's definitely connected to the idea.

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Um, now I told you how would you. So I put like a larger blanket around it, like it's an ending stage in the ministry. Life, death, resurrection and pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. And it seems to me that then the message goes out. And whether the old covenants ended in the eyes of God is different than this next question, which is, when did the old covenant move to the new covenant for individuals, not just for a nation or for like the plan of God, but for individuals. And I think the answer there is when they're confronted with the truth of Christ and they receive Christ, they move into that new covenant. You know, when Jesus died in Rose and all that, there was people who didn't even know about it. There was people who weren't around Jerusalem, even Jews who didn't, just didn't go to Passover that year, didn't even know about it. And when they found out about Jesus, they received him and they entered into the new covenant. And the old wasn't destroyed and demolished. It was fulfilled in Christ.

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Theres a lot to unpack thats there. But um, the only question id follow up with for you or anybody else is are you leveraging your answer here on the difficult to ascertain moment of the changing of the covenants? Are you leveraging your answer there into some theological point that maybe I would disagree with? I would like to know what that is going to be and not to see someone grab this and pull it somewhere where they shouldn't. Um, but uh, Hebrews does talk about it fading away. It talks about it. It's in this process of fading. This sort of is a soft implication in the book of Hebrews that it's a gradual thing that's happening. Not a moment, even though it's based on moments, but it's a gradual thing how it plays out. All right. I feel like I'm really getting in the weeds today. Uh, let's go to question number seven. Anonymous question says, I often feel myself getting prideful, and I'm worried that if I don't get control over it, God will humble me. What are some ways to keep myself humble before God does it for me? Um.

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Wow, that was a good. That's a good start right there. That's an amazing start right there. I'm worried. I'm being prideful. What can I do?

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Um, some people will not recommend this. Um, but I will.

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I'd recommend you pray, God, help me. Be humble. Like, help me. And my preference is that the Lord just gently draws my attention to my pride. Like, because the thing about pride is it's like a. Forgive me, guys. This is just my years as a youth pastor. It's like a silent but deadly fart.

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Um, it causes a lot of harm, but you don't notice its arrival. And so the problem with pride is you don't notice it. You don't notice it until the stink of it is filled the room.

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Sorry, guys. This is years of youth ministry. And I think that, um, what happens when people get humbled, at least even in my own life, is it's not that something bad happened, and so I got humble. It's rather something happened that brought out my awareness of my pride. Like, I started to realize I had pride. I didn't realize I had it before. So pray that God would gently give you the awareness of your pride before life scenarios have to show you your pride. See, an example of this is Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Right. Uh, book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar has a stream about the statue.

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It's struck down and destroyed and all this other stuff. He's sort of shown through numerous things that happen through the book of Daniel. He's shown that the God of Israel is the God of all. And nonetheless, he makes a statue, he asks for worship. He does all these arrogant, prideful things, and then he gets stricken with madness. And his madness teaches him humility. The truth is, he could have learned it so easy if he just paid a little more attention in his life and just saw, yeah, I'm being arrogant and proud. The advantage you have is you have Christ. You're a believer in Jesus. You have access to God through prayer and just say, Lord, help me see my pride before my pride ruins me. Ask him to help you see it. Be open to others, too. Uh, let other people know. Like, you can tell me if you think I'm being proud or arrogant, or if you think I've overstepped in some way. Please tell me. Give them permission. Say, I won't get mad at you. I need you to tell me because you're saving me from hurting myself and others. Please come and tell me. Be humble and open yourself up to those things. So those are two steps I would absolutely take. A. But let me caution you against one thing.

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Um, and this may not apply to you at all. Use wisdom and discernment and apply it accordingly. But I have known some people who are always worried about pride, even when pride is not really present and it's something else that's present. And maybe what's present is some sort of thing that's keeping you from doing something good. And this may not apply to you, and that's fine, but I have seen it happen where someone says, I don't want to get proud, so I won't do this thing for God. That would be wonderful for his kingdom, but I'm not going to do it because I don't want to get proud.

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Don't be like that. That there's something, there's a good chance there's something else going on in your heart that's not about. Maybe it is even pride that's causing you to think you're not being proud. Whatever it is, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Like, do the things to serve the Lord. Don't cop out of everything you can do for God in his kingdom because you're worried about pride. Don't become someone who's stuck on the bench, not in the game, for the rest of your life, because you're worried that you might have arrogance. If you go into the game and you do something really cool and it has a really good effect, I'm like, you're just too stuck on yourself. Stop thinking about you and your player stats. I know I'm using a weird analogy. I'm torturing it here. Stop thinking about your player stats and start thinking about the fact that it's not really a game. People's lives and souls are at stake. We need every Christian in there serving the Lord, helping people, and then working through any pride that comes along with that, humbling themselves before the Lord before they get humbled by the Lord. But being active and serving is really important. So please don't bench yourself because of a false concern about pride.

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You get what I mean? There's a worry about pride. That doesn't inspire humble service. It inspires paralysis, and you don't want that. All right, we'll go to number eight. This is from Prince Joe King. Are you joking?

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I got it. Joe. I got your joke there. Um, hey, brother Mike, uh, how do we reconcile Exodus 3118 with acts 738, galatians 319, and hebrews two? Two.

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I'm unconvinced that scripture contradicts itself, but this lives in my head rent free, and I need a resolution. Oh, man, I'm gonna. Okay, this may not work out because I don't know what you're referring to, so I'll have to, like, look up these verses and try to figure out what you're talking about and then hope that I have an off the cuff answer. Okay, this is, like, a big risk. This may bore everybody, and then everybody's gonna, like, just leave, and that's fine. You guys can do what you want.

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But I'm m just warning you ahead of time. Prepare to be disappointed in me. Um, it won't. It won't hurt my feelings. Um. Exodus 30 118. And he gave to Moses when he'd finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony. Tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. Okay, that's Exodus 30 118.

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Okay, acts 738 is the next one.

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This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, he received the, ah, living oracles to give us.

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So is that meant to be in contradiction with the exodus passage? I don't see the contradiction. Um, I don't see a contradiction there, so I'm not yet picking up on what that would be. Galatians 319.

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Let's look at the next one. Why then the law. It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.

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Um, maybe you can put in the chat if you're listening right now. Like, what is. What is the. In just one short sentence, what is the nature of the supposed contradiction?

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Um, okay. Uh, maybe it's because there was angels. Was it angels or was it God directly? Is that. Is that. Is that the supposed contradiction? Maybe that's what you're getting at. Let's look at the Hebrews one, and then I'll go back Hebrews two. Two.

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For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. Okay, so the last three all mentioned angels, but the first one says he gave. This is exodus 30 118 on your screen. He gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai. The two tablets of the testimony. Tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. So was it angels or was it God? Is that the question?

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Um, maybe that is the question. I think the answer is it was both. Even here, we could have had an angel intermediary there. That's just not specified in the text. Uh, right. God was there, Moses was there. God gave to Moses. Does that mean there wasn't an angel that was involved in the process? No, it doesn't. But there's also more. Look at the Hebrews passage or the acts passage.

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This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai.

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God was with an angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai.

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That's interesting. Right. So there's an affirmation of both in acts 738.

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So in the, uh. The only thing I'll throw on top of this is that, assuming that I got the supposed contradiction right, is that, um.

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Uh, God spoke at Mount Sinai multiple times to Moses. And for long periods of time, he goes up for 40 days and nights. Right. He goes up multiple times. He also is there. He sees the burning bush. There's all these different things that happen, and there's a whole course of events. So it's not like God spoke to him in one moment and they're all describing one single moment. Rather, they're doing different things. When the tablet is given, that's one moment. But when acts discusses things is talking about sort of broadly, God spoke in general on Mount Sinai. Um, so, yeah, there were angels, there was God. The, uh, answer is all of the above. I don't see a contradiction there personally. And other than that, I hope I sussed out what you were talking about. And if I didn't, prince joking. Keep looking, keep searching. Don't give, um, up. There will be a resolution for your concern, I'm confident. Uh, Juan Diego has a question. Says hi. Mike. If Jesus is our final intercessor, why should we intercede for or pray over other believers needs? Is this related to the spiritual realm and prayer delays like Daniel? Okay, let's. Let's start with this Daniel thing, because this is fascinating. This thing that happens in Daniel ten. Daniel ten, you mentioned verses twelve through 14.

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Absolutely fascinating, it says here. Then he said to me, fear not, Daniel. Okay, I'm going to back up a little bit. Okay, I'm going to back up.

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Um, I. Daniel alone saw the vision. For the men who were with me did not see the vision, but great trembling fell upon them, and they fled to hide themselves. So I was left alone and saw this great vision, and no strength was left in me. My radiant appearance was fearfully changed, and I retained no strength. This was a vision that rocked him to his core. Cause major moderns would be like. Cause major psychological trauma as we, uh, we see through, like. I don't know. I don't know what we do, why we say things like that. Then I heard the sound of his words. And as I heard the sound of his words, I fell on my face in deep sleep with my face to the ground. And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. And he said to me, oh, Daniel, man greatly loved. Understand the words that I speak to you and stand upright, for now I've been sent to you. Now there was a delay. This angel came after a delay. He was praying and praying. There was a delay. The angel finally shows up. And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up, trembling. Then he said to me, fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard.

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God heard him from the first day, but he didn't come on the first day, he says, and I've come because of your words. Then he mentions a spirit. This angel mentions a spiritual battle he had with someone called the king. Uh, the. Well, let me just read it. The prince of the kingdom of Persia.

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The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days. And many think that this is like an angelic thing. This is not some human that withstood him, but this is some angel type thing. Um, the prince of the power of the air, that would be Satan. Uh, the ruler of this. Of this world, that's the enemy.

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There's a royalty that he claims that's there. Anyway, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me for 21 days. But Michael, one of the chief priests, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, multiples. And came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come. Daniel's really interesting book. Okay, so here's a situation where Daniel prayed and there was a delay in the answer because God wanted this specific angel for some reason to bring an answer and help to Daniel. But that angel was on task somewhere doing something in a, we'll call it a spiritual battle, whatever that looks like. And then Michael shows up, right? The archangel, he shows up, he brings aid and help, and then he's able to come and assist Daniel. He's like, hey, Daniel, I was delayed. He's like, gandalf going, like, I was delayed.

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You guys know the Lord of the Rings fans now, when Gandalf, like, was locked up in the tower and, uh, Bill Frodo was like, how? Where were you, Gandalf? We didn't see. We waited for you and you didn't come. I was delayed. Um, yeah, something like that. And then the eagles came and helped him. So there's Michael's the, in the analogy. Michael is the eagles. The eagles are coming. All right, I'll move on. Um, is that what our prayers are like? Um, that's a fascinating question and one that honestly, uh, we'd be foolish to say, no, our prayers are not, do not have events like that where there's no spiritual battle going on with angelic beings, where God's, like, not just miraculously answering prayers, but he's actually dispatching an angel to help. And that angel might be delayed or might have a thing to deal with before he can help. That can happen. Obviously can happen. It did happen.

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Should I, though, project any delay in prayer and say, ah, ah, there's an angel having a battle, and I'm praying, and then God dispatch more angels to deliver that angels come and help me? I'm m being presumptive at that point when I say that. I don't know when God delays his answers to prayer, I have no idea what's going on. I know it could be some angelic reality. It could also be just God saying, no, not yet. I'm just saying, wait. It could just be that God's telling me no on something that I want, or it could be. It could be, who knows what else? I'm in the dark. This is the hard thing about prayer, m. And I don't think that knowing that there's angelic battles is going to totally change this. It might help a little bit because you realize, hey, there's more going on than I'm aware of. Right. But, but one of the hard things about prayer is the simply the trust factor of I'm going to ask and then I'm going to wait on God and trust in God and rely on God and not know what's going to happen. That's a challenge. It's a challenge to my spirit. It's a challenge to my heart. It's a challenge to my confidence in prayer in general. It's a challenge ultimately, in one word, to my faith.

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Do I trust God? Prayer is an incredible way of seeing how much I trust God.

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And it helps to know there's things going on in the background. But I can't be presumptive, so I don't know what they are. I just know I have to trust God. You said, if Jesus is our final. Now, you kind of had something else you asked about that was a little different than what I've said so far. If Jesus is our final intercessor, why should we intercede for or pray over others? Believers needs?

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Um, Jesus as our intercessor, a doctrine that is frequently misunderstood.

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Jesus intercedes for us, and we think when we hear intercedes, we misinterpret that meaning. We think it means Jesus is praying for me the way that someone says, like, hey, Mary, pray for me, or saint whoever, pray for me. Or if I say to my wife, would you pray for me? I'm about to do a live stream, and I don't feel like I know anything ever.

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And so she prays for me. Um, that's not what's meant by the intercession of Christ.

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Now, it's true in John 17, he literally prays for them, right? Keep them from the world and all this sort of thing. Um, but when the Bible makes a big deal about the intercession of Christ, it's talking about something different. It's not about, I'm going to go pray for you. I'm interceding for you. Rather, it's like a priestly intercession. So the priests would come and yes, they could pray for people, and people would come to the priest probably for prayer. Imagine that happened in the Old Testament, too.

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But they had another task that is being highlighted by this intercession of Jesus. And that task was, I'm going to bring sacrifice. Like, you're a sinner, you come to me. God's. God's over here. He's in the holy of holies, and you can't get to him. Bring me a sacrifice, I will take your offering, and I will bring it into the presence and I will sprinkle it. They had a go between. Like, they would grab ahold of God with one hand, so to speak, metaphorically, and grab ahold of people with the other hand. And try to be the bridge between God and people, try to help people get right with God through the actions that the priest takes, which were all just a picture of Christ. Jesus is my high priest. That's what Hebrews talks about when it says he ever lives to intercede for us. Let me, let me take you guys there. Um, can I get there quickly, is the question.

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Um.

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Okay, here we go. In Hebrews 725, he is Jesus. Here. Therefore, he is also able to save them to the uttermost, those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Notice that this intercession is not about prayer. Like, I'm going to pray for you, but rather I'm going to be the go between who deals with your sins so that you can go to God.

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Jesus establishes your ability to pray through his intercession. It's not that he prays for you. I'm not saying that there's nothing like that ever going on with Jesus, but that's not what this intercession is about. Um, Jesus sacrifices as a high priest. In fact, if you just read verse 26, let's say for such a high priest, his intercession here it is, was fitting for us, who's holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens, who does not need to daily as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for those, for the peoples, for this he did once for all when he offered up himself.

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Jesus is our priest, our high priest, and he's the one who brings us to God. You could read on, read Hebrews seven and Hebrews eight, and you'll be like, whoa. His intercession is this deep theological truth about my forgiveness and salvation, that he died for me. It's, it's a beautiful thing. You can, when you pray, you don't come to God and go, lord, please listen to me, because I've been good this week. No, no, you go, Lord. I get to enter into your presence not because of my goodness, but because of the sacrifice of Jesus, who intercedes for me. And he didn't just sacrifice once, he sacrificed once and then lives forever as my intercession. Like, he's drawing me to God forever alive with the one sacrifice he made. It's. Anyway, it's deep stuff, man. Read Hebrews.

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That's the picture there. So why do we pray for each other? Um, um, there's a lot of people who ask questions about this. Then I don't know why we even bother praying for each other if God's just going to do what he's going to do.

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My short answer is, beware anything that devalues prayer in your heart. Like, you may not even know what you've got wrong, but you just know I must have something wrong because I'm literally devaluing talking to God. Imagine if I said to my wife, why do I keep talking to you? You already have heard every. And we've been married for like, almost 15 years. You've heard everything I've ever said and think, you know, I don't know, we shouldn't even really talk anymore.

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Whether I can explain why that's a bad idea, it's definitely a bad idea to suggest that I'm going to devalue prayer in my heart or in the lives of others, because I think, well, what's the point? God already is going to do what he's going to do, or God already knows. What I need, um, is to devalue my relationship with God and other people's relationship with God. God has definitely told us to pray for one another. He's definitely called us to pray for each other. We have an impulse to pray for one another, and I'm not letting anything bring that down. That's a dangerous, unhealthy habit to be that way. So, in short, there's your answer. Um, but in addition to that, I'd say that I think when more people pray, God does more things. And however you want to explain that, that does seem to be the case biblically, right? When the whole nation goes to pray, God responds.

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The more people pray, the more seems. Now, you're not pulling God around. You're not. You can't just make him do whatever you want. If enough people pray, we can have them do whatever we want. Everybody gets a Tesla. Long as everybody prays.

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That's not what I'm saying, but, uh, it does seem to matter, biblically speaking. All right, this is question number ten. Last question of the day. I have a bonus one coming. I haven't read it yet, but Michael, uh, Scoggins says. Sorry, Michael. For some reason, when I read scoggins, I was going to go, Scoggins.

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I don't know why I did that to you. Hopefully that wasn't annoying. Uh, what is your go to? Commentary. Thanks for your ministry. You've been so influential in this pastor's life. Oh, thank you, Michael. Um, I don't have a go to commentary. Um, I found that what I tend to do is I deep dive in specific books and so in a particular book, like, when I taught through mark, I find, um, different commentaries really useful. But it's not like that person who did such an incredible job on Mark actually has a commentary on the whole Bible. Because usually the kind of guy who teaches really, really good in a particular book, they spend so much time on individual books doing a good job, they couldn't possibly write a commentary on the entirety of the Bible. Like, it would just take 3510 lifetimes. So I tend to, you know, what I do is I load up my bible software, I scroll through, I look online, but I look for commentaries for books, not commentaries for the Bible as a whole.

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Um, aside from that, if you just want, like, quick commentaries, um, for the Bible as a whole, there's. There's a, you know, a good study Bible does a good job. Um, and what's one I'd recommend? I don't know, man. Here's the thing is, I just dip in and out of study bibles. And so, like, I've used the ESV study bible and I've read the commentary and I go, I I basically like it, but I haven't read even 10% of the commentary in the ESV study bible. I'm worried to recommend it because I don't know what else you'll find there. And perhaps you'd be like, oh, that's kind of sketchy. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe the people say it's really strongly calvinist, and maybe it would be if I read more of the commentary and I just haven't noticed it. I don't know the answer to those questions, so I'm just not able to give you an answer. Yeah, I'm sorry, Michael. I'm so hesitant to recommend books to people for this reason. Um, even now, I was deep in the gospel, mark, for over a year, and I could have, at the time, told you exactly the names of my favorite commentaries, and now I can't remember the top of my head. Which ones were the best in mark. I just don't remember. So sorry about that. Um, yeah, yeah. Blue letter bible has a lot of great commentaries. Blueletterbible.org. if you guys are just looking for what you would consider generally safe commentaries, at least generally. I'm not saying I'd agree with everything in them. M I would go to blueletterbible.org. lots of free resources there that are generally good. I think it's the best I can give for you as far as a generalistic answer. All right, let's go to question number eleven. Which is, uh, the bonus question from Rachel Raydeh. Um, probably not the one with the cooking show, but maybe. I don't know. Probably not. After watching your women in ministry vids, I'd like to know if biblically you believe a woman helping her husband teach a co ed adult Sunday school class would be an elder type role and would be wrong.

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Um, I think a woman helping. Okay, my opinion here, um, but it's not an opinion I've come to quickly or rashly or without much thought. Um, you guys can check out, I'll link it below my whole women in ministry series. Some of you have watched five minutes of one of those videos. If you're interested. If this is a passionate topic for you, I really highly recommend you check out the whole series. Um, it's, it's shocking how bad the egalitarian side is. I don't mean they're meanies and they're, they're jerks. That's not what I'm saying. I mean that they're, the arguments on scripture are so, so bad. And when you get to the, um, generally speaking, not like they have nothing of value, because they do. And I always try to highlight that when they have something up that's accurate, that's good, that's valuable. But the foundation of the egalitarian movement within Christianity is unbiblical. Uh, views, bad Bible studies, bad hermeneutics, twisting the text of Greek, uh, and Hebrew, misrepresenting history, offering fanciful interpretations of all kinds of things. It's just wild.

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I was amazed at how, uh, I hate to say this, because I'm m talking about real people who've made a career out of promoting egalitarian views. Like, this is their job, this is, this is it. The books they've written and the position they got in the college, university or something, because they're egalitarians. They're so wrong.

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I can make a better case for open theism than I can for egalitarianism, and I don't think open theism has a good case, by the way.

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I can make a better case for an annihilationist view of hell than I can for egalitarianism. It's so bad. But you don't know because they use, um, statements about greek and history and Hebrew and cultural context that just go way over most people's heads. And they can't even check these statements. They don't even know how to research them. They're just like, oh, you say Ephesus was this feminist type thing, and that's Paul was really just dealing with this group of women who were attacking the early church with these false teachings. And it was just, it was the, it wasn't that there were women. That was just a coincidence. Um, um, all fabricated stuff to get you out from what the clear, so clear teaching of scripture is on this issue. Now, since I brought this up, I'll say, and this is a long bonus question, um, um. The patriarchalist side gets some things wrong, too. Like all women are the, that the Bible is teaching that women, as a rule, are more easily deceived than men, just as a rule. Like, I don't think that that's accurate, and I give a number of reasons why I don't think that's the case. Or those suggesting that women shouldn't be able to go into bible colleges or get the, get any degree of christian education that they want. Um, I understand not training women to be pastors. You don't see that women can be pastors, but I'm talking about just getting education as a Christian. Um, that there should be any limit to the theological pursuits of a woman is ridiculous. Unbiblical against Jesus himself. When he says about, you know, Mary and Martha, let her sit at my feet. This is an affirmation of that. Or when Paul says, let a woman learn, um, yeah, with quietness and submission and what Paul means by those things, but still let her learn.

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Both sides have issues, but, um, the complementarian and patriarchalist side are fundamentally right. It's just that. I'm just rambling now, but the patriarchal term is so broad that it encompasses unbiblical ideas as well as biblical ones. I think it's better to specialize a term to describe just the biblical view, which I would call complementarian. So back to your question. Um, do I believe a woman helping her husband teach a co ed adult Sunday school class would be an elder type role and would be wrong? Because I've just described Paul's rule as not just that women can't have the title elder, but they can't do the thing the elder does.

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That's the text of scripture. He says, don't allow women to teach or have authority over a man. He's not just saying that she can have the title elder or pastor, which I see as synonymous, but she cannot have the function. Okay, well, teaching a Sunday, an adult Sunday Bible school class seems to me like a pastoral elder role to me. And so I think your answer is no. Teaching facilitating could be different. If a woman is facilitating now, maybe the facilitator does ask questions and maybe occasionally explains things, and someone goes, hey, that starts to feel a little bit. Smells a little elderish like to me. And I'm like, I'm not going to sweat elderish, like ish, sort of ish. I'm not going to sweat that kind of stuff. I think, uh, we get to be like the Pharisees when they made all those rules about the Sabbath. You can only walk this far. You can't rub the grain between your hands. Hey, that's not work. I'm just doing this to eat some. I'm just hungry. It's a little snack. Now that, you know what? That's work ish. Labor ish type of ish. Like, you can't stretch the ish out too far or you create oppressive rules that limit and hurt people.

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I don't want to do that with this either. But I do think that a. If you are co teaching or singular by yourself, teaching an adult Sunday school class on Sunday mornings, there's. Unless it's a particular type of class. Let me caveat it this way. If you're going through the Bible, you're doing verse by verse teaching, you're doing a study of Ephesians, study of Galatians, study of Hebrews.

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That's. That's elderly. If you do, like, a parenting class that, uh, this is. This is. To me, I don't feel like this is the same as elder like. Okay. I would be open to that. Okay, well, a woman. A woman and husband and wife are co teaching a parenting class for six weeks on Sunday mornings. Um, I don't see any problem with that. I don't think this is uniquely eldership type things. They're not teaching that sort of thing. Plenty of people would disagree with me on this, and you're welcome to. And maybe I'm wrong. You asked me my opinion, Rachel Ray. There it is. If the. If the things they're teaching on Sunday are the things that elders are supposed to teach, then it seems to me that that's a.

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On Sunday morning, this seems a lot like, you know, these Sunday school groups. Unless the cultural dynamic in your church is very different than what I'm thinking, these Sunday school groups can become like little churches inside the larger church. And so it seems like, uh, too much like an elder to me. All right, that is all. Thank you guys for joining. I, um, do want to encourage you again. Go. There will be a link below as soon as I close the stream to clear truth media, which is a new group I'm part of. I'm, um, not getting anything for it. I'm doing because we're trying to gather together with a bunch of guys I do not agree with on everything, but we agree with on some really important stuff to help create resources for the. For the body of Christ. Because some of the old institutions, people evangelicals would look to for guidance and for direction are not as stalwart as they need to be on biblical worldview issues and have pandered too much. So there's the pitch. Check it out. Clear truth media. I'll link it down below. I think it's live today. I think the website just launched today. We'll be continuing to upload more and more articles. You know, I'll probably put up one or two things at least a month. There's a bunch of other guys too. Check it out. Use discernment. See if you think it's worthwhile. We'll see what God does with it. All right, let's pray, um, to Lord. Um, we just pray about this issue. The egalitarian staff complimentary. And I pray for peace in the body of Christ. On the topic, people get so angry, um, even though I believe that egalitarians are very wrong, um, fundamentally wrong, and that the view is harmful to marriages and stuff. Lord, we pray that you'd help both sides of us to build bridges with each other and show love and compassion and grace and show unity in the body of Christ as much as possible, even in the midst of a very difficult, important, contentious issue. We ask, Lord, that you'd help the church to wake up and realize that, um, there's a type of worldliness that has invaded our thinking that keeps us from embracing what the scripture says on these topics. Help us to see it. Help us to see it so we can not only see what scripture says about men and women, but that we can actually embrace it as beautiful and good and right and needful. In Jesus name, amen.