WEBVTT 1 00:00:07.000 --> 00:01:30.000 All right, this is, uh, taking on an atheist challenge that I recently was, uh, sent by one of you guys. And it comes from holy Koolaid. Holy Kool Aid is like an atheist channel that's been around for, I think, a really long time. Like, I didn't check, but just in my memory back there, this particular atheist youtuber has been going on doing stuff for a long, long time. Um, I'm pretty sure he's an atheist. And sometimes I get them mixed up and I haven't looked that much at their stuff recently. Past couple years, really. But, um, atheism on the Internet has sort of fallen on hard times. I think they used to have their heyday about 1015 years ago, and then it just sort of declined and has continued to decline. Um, I, however, would say that, um, holy Kool aid sort of represents a bit of a throwback into sort of the way they used to do stuff back in the day. So we're going to tackle the question whether this atheist youtuber, uh, successfully defeats Christianity or undermines Christianity with one verse quoting Jesus actually as the one who undermines Christianity. So I'm going to play you actual clips from his video. And I meant to link it, I will link it below so you guys can check it out in full yourself. I always do that just for the accountability of things. It's not that I'd recommend you watch this content, but, um, you're adults and you can think, and that's kind of important that we maintain that ability. And so this is the, the idea, um, first off, he's going to set the stage by showing you how big of a deal this issue is. In Christianity. 2 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:42.000 There is one core belief that is universally shared by every denomination that I have ever encountered. To question it is to smash a canyon sized crater through the ice of your christian faith. 3 00:01:42.000 --> 00:02:00.000 Okay, so the first, like, stage of this explanation is to say, hey, this is a high stakes issue. This one topic. If you were to, say, argue about modes of baptism, you're not going to destroy Christianity. But if you undermine this thing, you ruin Christianity. That's, that's how he sets the stage. Now let's look at the next clip. 4 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:05.000 And yet, it's an idea that Jesus himself took a sledgehammer to, and most. 5 00:02:05.000 --> 00:03:20.000 Christians don't even realize it, and Jesus himself took. Let's listen to the quote. Took a sledgehammer, too. I, uh, forgot to turn some lights on. Let me see if I can reach him. This is odd. My new setup is kind of weird. There we go. There's a light. At least one light. There's at least some light. I'll go with that. Um, Jesus took a sledgehammer to it. That's the idea. That's a very bold claim to say that Jesus sledgehammered. So I want to know that we're setting our sights very high here. Now, part of this, you might say, well, that's just YouTube, sort of click baity stuff. That's just the nature of trying to get stuff on YouTube. You have to be really strong. You have to get people's attention, like by showing them your cat. Right, the cat cam. There's the kitty. Why are you all blurry? Can the cat cam not focus all of a sudden? There it is. There it is. Ah. Ah. You have to get your attention. Get your attention. Somehow show you that there's a cat right here. Um, that's possible, but he'll continue this tone throughout. So it's not just hyperbole. The idea is that Christianity itself is destroyed by the very teachings of Jesus. So the stakes are very high now. What is the idea that he's leveraging? Let's look at that. Now. 6 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:32.000 It's the idea that Jesus death was necessary for God to forgive sins. If you ask any Christian why Jesus had to die, they'll tell you that without his death, we wouldn't be able to attain eternal life. 7 00:03:32.000 --> 00:05:05.000 Pretty much true. Um, yeah. So that is a pretty big idea. If you were to show you don't need Jesus to be forgiven, then you have definitely undermined Christianity in a very powerful way. Now, there are some who would say, yeah, but, Mike, I don't hold to penal substitutionary atonement. And they'll turn. And I saw people in the comments of his video saying this. Um, that's not the central issue. Like, there are those who don't hold to this doctrine called penal substitutionary atonement. I've talked about many times, have a whole playlist on it. You guys could just Google Mike winger penal substitutionary atonement playlist. You'll find it. But, um, even if you dodge away from that doctrine, you're not going to get away from the idea that Jesus death is still needful for mankind. And if you get to the point where you can say it's not needful, you have now, in the name of Christ, you are now moving into non christian faith. Like you're not really christian. You're just using Jesus to leverage something else. Okay, I admit the stakes are high here. Okay. If you don't need Jesus, what is Christianity? Well, its central claims seem like they're in danger at this point. Now, let's just remind ourselves of what he said in the last clip. Is it, is this because we, uh, need Jesus? Is this because the alternative is God doesn't have power? Like, you know, if you need Jesus, this because God is powerless to forgive you otherwise? Or is it you need Jesus because God simply insists that this is the only way, that there's different options there, that he doesn't sort of grant these various options. He just sort of implies the powerlessness of God. At any rate, let's listen to the next clip. 8 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:11.000 And yet three of the gospels recount the story of Jesus straight up dumping on this idea. 9 00:05:11.000 --> 00:07:55.000 I want you to again highlight how strong these terms are. Jesus, straight up dumping on this idea. The idea that Jesus is the only way, so to speak, Jesus himself straight up dumps on this according to Holy Kool aid. Now, if you go to his YouTube channel, you'll read the comments and you'll see, um, on this video that there's very little pushback. Very, very little pushback. And I see this commonly amongst all channels, mine included, there tends to be little pushback from the people watching videos. And I would encourage you all to just be more critical thinking and maybe even more open to saying, hey, here's some pushback you can offer. Thoughtful pushback, general pushback. I try to encourage that in the people in my audience, um, because I think that it helps you. Okay, it doesn't help me so much, but it definitely helps you in your ability to process things, to work through how to think biblically about stuff is to, yeah, work through it thoughtfully. Um, um. He's his extreme terminology. Nobody pushes back on it. To my knowledge. In his comment section, I scrolled through a bunch of the comments and didn't notice any. Anyhow, here's these three verses. What, what teaching is it where Jesus supposedly dumps? It's these three passages. It's, uh, the story of the paralytic. This is where you guys know the story. Many of you, uh, Jesus is teaching, he's in a house. They're surrounded by crowds. And these, these guys that want to get their buddy, who's paralyzed, down to Jesus, but they can't. So they dig a hole through the, through the roof, which makes sense in the way they did their houses and buildings back then. And they dig through the roof and they lower their friend down through the ceiling just to get them to Jesus. They're desperate. They feel like it's their only chance. Jesus then looks at this guy and instead of saying get up and walk, he says, your sins are forgiven. That's the interesting bit. This is, this is what he's going to hook on. Let me actually take us there. Um, in Bible software, this is, let's look at, uh, we'll look at Matthew nine two. Since Matthew is the shortest of these three gospels, the version of the story is the shortest. Here, just for trying to keep this intro part of the video, this first question, not quite as long as it's going to end inevitably be anyway. Then behold, they brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic son, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you. This is the emphasis, hey, Jesus forgave this guy ultimately for nothing. He just for, he just forgave him. And he's going to use this holy cool. He's going to use this really, this verse in particular. Right. Matthew nine two and the parallel verses in Luke and Mark to say, um, we don't have any, anything other than Jesus dumping on and ultimately refuting the idea that you need Jesus and his sacrifice in order to be forgiven. Okay, let's look at how he leverages it in the next clip. Clip number five. Yeah. 10 00:07:55.000 --> 00:08:05.000 Jesus doesn't heal the guy straight away. Instead he turns to the guy's buddies and it says, when he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic son, your sins are forgiven. 11 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:54.000 What, what he's doing entertaining stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. The side of it being entertaining, but it was a little ridiculous, though. Um, um, he's, he's trying to draw your, your own shock up. Like, wait, notice this verse. Jesus just forgives him. He just straight up forgives. How shocking this is. Is that straight up dumping, is this Jesus taking a sledgehammer to the idea that you need his sacrifice to be forgiven? I think that you have to do a lot of interpretation. You've done a lot of work on the back end of interpreting in order to try to suggest that Jesus saying your sins are forgiven is him sledgehammering the idea that you need to sacrifice. But let's look at how he does that work. This is the next clip where he's going to work out his logic in front of you. He makes basically three points. I want to listen carefully and then we'll unpack them and respond. 12 00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:00.000 Resurrection. According to the story, none of that stuff had even happened yet. 13 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.000 I got to replay it. Here we go. It was that easy. 14 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:14.000 He didn't need a human sacrifice. He didn't need the dude to confess some sort of statement of faith or to believe in Jesus death and resurrection. According to the story, none of that stuff had even happened yet. 15 00:09:14.000 --> 00:19:37.000 Okay, so there's basically a few reasons. One, when Jesus says to the man, you're forgiven, there's no sacrifice. No sacrifice has taken place yet. Jesus sacrifice hasn't taken place. Um, skeptics like to throw out the phrase human sacrifice I'm observing here, having seen them for many years, because it makes everything appear more barbaric, um, and more like pagan in nature than it is. God actually refuses human sacrifice. In scripture. It is just him offering himself as a human to represent all people. It's not just like God wants human sacrifice, because as a rule, he doesn't. It's just there's more details than that. If we're going to think clearly about it, we shouldn't, you know, be clumsy about it. Um, but Jesus hadn't sacrificed yet. At the point at which Jesus goes to the cross, this guy's already been forgiven. So therefore, the conclusion is you can be forgiven without the sacrifice of Jesus. We'll talk about that. The next thing is that there's no statement of faith or belief in the death and resurrection of Christ, and that's true. But people say discernment is not knowing the difference between true and false, but knowing the difference between true and almost true. Um, this would help if you're watching presidential debates, because the best you get there is almost true at any point in time. But learning discernment is. That is figuring out the difference between true and almost true. Um, yep. There wasn't belief in the death and resurrection of Christ almost true. There was certainly no rejection of the death and resurrection of Christ by this man, this paralytic, or his friends. But let's read what the text actually says. In Matthew nine two, it says, jesus saw their faith. He saw their faith. So there was some belief. Jesus is responding to some kind of belief. In mark two five, we see it also. Jesus saw their faith. That's when he said this to the paralytic. And then in Luke, the other passage where this is, uh, recounted the same thing. Jesus saw their faith, and he said, your sins are forgiven. Jesus is clearly responding to faith with a proclamation of forgiveness. So what was the faith in? Let's think realistically about it. It. Was it in the death and resurrection of Christ? Uh, no, they didn't really know about the death and resurrection of Christ yet. Was it in opposition to the death and resurrection? Nope. They didn't know about that. It wasn't. It was neither of those things. It was faith in Jesus, his person. That's why they came there. That's why they dug through the ceiling. That's why they lowered their friend down. They believed in Jesus. They didn't know all the details of what he would do as messiah. They didn't understand that stuff. They believed the Old Testament, but didn't know how it all played out in the life of the messiah. So they believed in Jesus. They had partial knowledge of Jesus, but responded with faith and then received forgiveness. This is hardly a sledgehammer to the idea of having faith in the death and resurrection, because if that same paralytic later on says, you know what? I believe in Jesus, but I reject his death and resurrection, all the early followers of Jesus, including Jesus himself, would have said, that's not really what belief in me means. This is about partial knowledge, not about the rejection of something that God has revealed. So that's the first aspect of this. Um, let's ask the question, though. Why is it that Jesus can forgive a man when he hasn't sacrificed yet, the cross has not happened, but hes already offering forgiveness? How is that possible? And I think that the easiest way to explain this, because I know that I talked to somebody who was like, yeah, thats a good question. That actually kind of makes me, gives me pause, like, uh, how was it possible for him to be forgiven apart from Jesus cross? And I think my response would be, nobodys ever been forgiven apart from christs sacrifice, but they were forgiven before christs sacrifice. And theres a distinction here that actually matters. The easiest way for me to think, to explain it is using an analogy of going to a restaurant. If you go to a restaurant and order food, I mean, most restaurants I've been to, you know, and if you're in America, uh, I don't know if other countries all are the same, but you typically will order your food off a menu. When you're at a sit down restaurant, they'll deliver your food. You eat the food, and then after you eat it, you pay for it. How do you eat the food before paying for it? Can I say? Because, like, if you use the Huli Kool aid logic. Holy Kool aid. Did I say hooli? The holy Kool aid logic. Um, the implication is, hey, you don't have to pay for food at restaurants. Clearly you don't, because, look, people are eating without having paid, so you don't have to pay. It's the same logic, right? Jesus is forgiving without having died. So he doesn't have to die. When you eat at a restaurant, the reason they give you food is because there is an unspoken promise of future payment. So you eat on behalf of the future payment of the food. It's the same with Jesus's cross. There's a promise of his eventual sacrifice, and on behalf of that future payment, he can offer forgiveness. This is why we see forgiveness funneling through Jesus, because he's the one who will sacrifice to pay for their sins. It's a. It's a beautiful thing, but it's also really simple. This isn't. There's no law of logic that says you cannot, uh, forgive before the payment for forgiveness is given to, like, there's no law of logic that says that there's. There's. That is completely artificial. Um, so that would be an assumption brought into the text, brought into the. That you don't apply when you go out eating at restaurants like nobody you know. Holy cool. Holy Kool aids. Not telling people, dine and ditch. Dine and dash right where you eat and then run before paying because you don't have to pay. Obviously, that's the logic of the world. That's, uh, not the case. That that would be silly. So scripture, however, does say the opposite of holy kool aid. Uh, he says that Jesus is saying ultimately, effectively with his interpretive grid, I don't have to die for your sins. I can just forgive you. Mark 831. Let's go to actually, what Jesus actually said in the actual gospels. He began to teach them. Jesus, right, that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed. And after three days, rise again. Does jesus think he has to die? Well, he says he must. The word isn't should or will. It's must. In mark 1045, we get it again. This is in the earliest of the gospels. This isn't some later, 30, 40 years later tradition, uh, that just started to develop. This is on the lips of Jesus. Now, you could say, well, the Bible. I don't trust the Bible. Yeah, well, then don't use the Bible to try to tell me what Jesus thought. If you don't trust the Bible for, uh, even the son of man did not come to serve. Come to be served, but to serve and to what? To give his life a ransom for many. Jesus says it's actually the purpose of his coming is to give his life as a ransom for many. That's mark 1045. That's a big deal. What about Mark, 1424? Here it says, jesus, speaking of his coming death and resurrection. He goes, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. Assuredly. I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until the day I drink it. New in the kingdom of God. That phrase, shed for many ransom, uh, offer his life for others, death, uh, and resurrection. All this stuff ties to the Old Testament. Jesus is steeped in the Old Testament. The apostles were the Jews of the first century were. Absolutely. And hes actually alluding to, um, Isaiah 53 when he talks about these things, which is where theres an atoning sacrifice to pay for the sins of all the people that they can be forgiven. You know, by his stripes, we are healed. Uh, he makes his soul an offering for sin. It's amazing stuff, but it's clearly on the lips of Jesus, on the mind of Jesus. In the text of scripture, you'd have to come up with a special version of Jesus where you just pull one verse out, you ignore all the others, and you can, you construct your own Jesus, that which is what holy Kool aid has kind of done here, I think, to do this. This isn't him. Digging deep in the text of the Bible is probably honestly what we see a lot online. Somebody finding, um, an article or a webpage or a video and going, ooh, I like that. I can use that. And they grab that one little out of context bit and they leverage it against Christianity. Um, and they can do it smart. They could do it in a very learned way. But that doesn't make it any less wrong when they do it. But it's not just in Mark, and it's not just in those verses I shared with you. Jesus speaks of, um, himself, again, in terms of Isaiah 53. He talks about how, um, when he's talking the gospel of John, about how people can be saved. He says, no one comes to the father except through me. Calls himself the way, the truth and the life. That's exclusionary language about Jesus himself, saying, I am the way, the truth and the life. But it wasn't just Jesus. Here's a cool thing in the scriptures that you can look up on your own, but John the Baptist is a guy who goes around and holy coolid might have, might have used John the Baptist the same way too. If he. Maybe if you thought about it, John the Baptist goes and baptizes people in the Jordan and he tells them that they're going to repent, they're going to be forgiven. And the implication if you take holy cool, a logic is that John is saying, you don't need the temple, you don't need the sacrifices. You just got to be like, I'm sorry, and you're maybe get baptized and you're forgiven. But John the Baptist, that's not the whole story. While he did sit out there in the wilderness, away from the temple offering forgiveness, that was not part of the temple sacrifices. That wasn't the whole story. He also said that he's the forerunner, preaching about somebody else who's coming after him, who's greater than him. And when he sees Jesus show up, he gives him a definition that every jew in the world would have understood. He says, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So that when Jesus comes on scene, he's introduced as what? A lamb of God who takes away sin. A lamb, a sacrificial animal who's going to die. To do what? To take away the sin of the world of all people. The context of you can be forgiven freely is because he will make payment for your sins. That's the text. That's the teaching of scripture. That's the teaching of Jesus. It is absolutely the case. So what is going on with holy kool aid? And why is it that his comment section is full of people who just affirm and are like, yeah, oh, yeah, I reject that whole idea. Even some christians in there who. I'm a Christian, but I reject the, uh, you know, penalty and substitutionary atonement of Jesus because. Because we need to get back to scripture. People just need to read the Bible, read it in context, read it carefully, and understand what the text is actually saying. Instead of just picking camps, which is what we. We often do, we just pick camps and we live out. We live in those camps. There's more, though. There's more, though. Here's the next clip about how God would be powerless. 16 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:50.000 The entire narrative that Jesus. God is somehow powerless to forgive our sins without some kind of a blood sacrifice is absolute, according to Jesus himself. 17 00:19:50.000 --> 00:24:31.000 You see how he took Jesus saying, son, you're forgiven, and he interpreted it as Jesus just literally declaring it's baloney sauce to say that God can't forgive you. Apart from the sacrifice of Christ, um, I think that God's power to forgive here is more of a moral limit than a power limit. It's not as though forgiveness just requires, like, some sort of force wielding power, or you have to level up to level 100, and then you can forgive. But rather, forgiveness is a moral decision. I forgive you. And it would be moral for me to forgive you, forgive others, forgive all kinds of people. Why can't God just forgive us the way we forgive each other? But when you're the judge, you enter into a new realm. So imagine if I forgive someone for committing murder like you committed murder in my heart, I forgive you for this horrible thing you did. But then the next day, I go to work and I'm the judge, and I'm standing in judgment in the case where this guy committed murder and he did something that I would be wrong to forgive him for as the judge, right? I have different roles in life, as a father, as a friend, as a son, as a brother, as a. As an uncle, or something like that. These are different roles you might have. When you have these different roles, you have to act differently. Your own son, you could forgive him for doing something wrong, but then he could stand in your courtroom, if you were the judge, if they allowed this to happen, and you would still have to bring punishment for that sin, and some would say, well, no, we don't bring punishment. We only bring restitution. We only bring restoration. That's the goal of the justice system. I just. I fundamentally disagree. But the more important point here is Jesus didn't have that view. The Bible doesn't have that view. That's your view. And Holy Koolaid's point is, it was Jesus's view. God doesn't just forgive us because what we've done has put the, uh, ripples of moral sin and injustice into the world. And God will make everything right. Now he loves us and he wants to forgive us. So Jesus goes and he suffers and dies for our sin on the cross. And this way, justice and mercy can both meet together. Like the Old Testament says, justice and mercy have kissed. That these two have come together, that God can be both just and the one who justifies us in Christ, the one who deals with sin and shows himself morally upright, and the one who shows himself full of love and compassion through Jesus. The cross is the center point of the universe, so to speak, when it comes to morality, because in it, God reconciles everyone to himself without simply letting people get away with doing wickedness and therefore propagating sin and wickedness in the world. It's a moral thing. It's a moral dilemma. And you can say, well, I don't like that dilemma. I don't agree with God. Um, or if you don't believe in God, because I don't agree with the Bible, you can say that all you want, but at least grant me this much Holy Kool aid. Is drinking his own Kool Aid here. This is, he is just making up a version of Jesus that disagrees with the Jesus you read about in scripture and leveraging that against Christianity for YouTube videos or whatever the reason is. I don't, I don't need to postulate that. Uh, the point is that it's not accurate, it's not reliable, it's not reasonable. That much I think we should be able to grant. If you don't agree with God and his justice, um, I think that that's another discussion we could have some other time that, uh, God knows what he's doing and he is just. So let's look at what else we got. Um, okay. According to Jesus himself, must God. I've already given you some verses. I'll give you another one. And we'll go to back to mark 831 where when Jesus began teaching that the son of man, that's him, must, that is, has to suffer many things, he's going to be rejected, die, rise again. The thing that happens next is really surprising in this regard. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. So he's like saying, no, Lord, you're not going to die. Uh, that can't happen. Your death can't be a thing that happens, you being killed and rejected. But when he turned around and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, get behind me, Satan. For you're not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men. This whole section right here where Jesus says, I have to die. Peter's like, no, you don't. And Jesus goes, you're being satanic right now. You're being adversarial to the purposes of God, is to show that in this, in the same gospels where he, where holy Cooley quotes Jesus to refute this idea, Jesus is actually teaching this idea. Let's look at the next. Oh, uh, before I do, I'll just remind us. When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, he asked the father, if there's any other way, let this cut pass. This is partly just to teach us there's no other way. Jesus has to die for our sins. That's the message. That's Jesus teaching it to us right there through his own prayer life. Now let's look at the next clip. 18 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:38.000 The entire after the fact that you've got the works of Paul and the other epistles claiming that Jesus death was somehow necessary for humanity's sins, to be. 19 00:24:38.000 --> 00:27:38.000 Atoned for that's a huge claim. I just shared with you, a bunch of verses and ideas and reasons why you should think that this was the plan all along. I've linked below a video where I go through the gospel of Mark about how Jesus unveils the nature of the messianic role and that his job is going to be to die for our sins. I have a video like a real Bible study, verse by verse study about that in the links down below. But his claim, holy Kool Aid is now going to grab the New Testament epistles and put them against the gospels and go, it's the epistles that say Jesus has to die for you, not the gospels. This is like conspiratorial type thinking here. It's not represented in the text of scripture. It is. It is not represented in real history. Um, um, the. The death of Christ for sins was first in the mind of goddess. It was first expounded and explained by Jesus, and it was then echoed and elaborated on by the apostles. That's how it really works. I'd say this is really, really bad. Um, but some people want to affirm the Bible has contradictions, and let's not think that they're without bias. Those who say, I believe the Bible has no contradictions are frequently accused of having bias. Um, I would be accused of this all the time. Well, that's just religious bias. You just assume there's no contradictions and all this. Those who then say the Bible does have contradictions are often seen as being unbiased. But if you actually dig into our lives, you'll see there's major differences here. That I am one who tries to seek to obey the scripture and tries to seek to follow it, of course. But there are those who will say the Bible has contradictions, and frequently they're going to grab verses they like, they're going to agree with those. Then they're going to grab verses they don't like and go, yeah, that's a contradiction with this other stuff. And they'll pick, uh, they're still doing a pick and choose. They'll accuse us often of doing that ourselves. I read Paul talk about justification. James talk about justification. They'll say, you're picking and choosing. You're choosing Paul, someone else chooses James. I'm just saying they both disagree. I lean towards James or something like that. Or maybe they reject both of them. Um, they're often, though picking and choosing just the same as they claim other people are. This is where, uh, there's a scholar, skeptical scholar, he's like a mormon, almost atheist guy, kind of a weird situation who will say that we negotiate with the Bible, we negotiate with the Bible and he accuses others of this. But I think he's really describing himself. He's picking and choosing. I would have more confidence in the person who says, I'm going to trust that all the scripture speaks univocally, that it speaks in agreement with itself on these topics. I'm going to gather all the teaching on it. I'm going to find all the nuance there and follow it. I would trust that person's measure of the word of God more than I would the person who's like full of contradictions. I pick this, I reject that, and I'm claiming you do the same, but I'm clearly doing it myself, that um, I think that's just something people don't pick up on. Okay, let's go to the paralytic again. Back to the paralytic. Before we move on to your guys questions, here's the last clip I'll share with you. This is where Jesus forgives the man and it seems like no big deal. This is holy coolid's interpretation, implying that. 20 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:44.000 If it's that easy for him to heal paralysis, then forgiveness of sins is something of a banality to him. 21 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:45.000 I gotta, I gotta redo that one. Sorry. 22 00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:53.000 Implying that if it's that easy for him to heal paralysis, then forgiveness of sins is something of a banality to him. 23 00:27:53.000 --> 01:40:37.000 There. Um, I meant to have this as a longer clip. Let me just explain it to you guys here. I'll take you to the text. Um, so let's go to Matthew nine. And Jesus has a conversation with the leaders where after he says your sins are forgiven, they spaz out of at once. Some of the scribes said within themselves, this man blasphemes. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, there we go. Why do you think evil in your hearts for which is easier to say to you? This is the key verse. Your sins are forgiven you. Or to say, arise and walk. Holy Koolaid's interpretation of this is that Jesus is trying to say forgiveness is easy peasy. It's a banality I could forgive. Easy. Watch, you're forgiven. Boom, you're forgiven. Forgiveness. That's the implication that he gets. Um, I think rather that we should interpret Jesus more thoughtfully here. What's easier to quote, say, not to do, to say out loud? Which one's easier to say? Yes, it's easy to say you're forgiven. That's one way of viewing this. But if you say, because if it, if you say it and doesn't work, nobody knows. You're just claiming people are forgiven. You have no proof. But if you say get up and walk, if the guy doesn't get up and walk, everybody knows that you're a fraud. And so in a sense, easier to say is be forgiven, but easier to actually do. I think the miracle of getting someone to walk is not as hard to do as forgiving them in the eyes of God. So these things are not equal. But then Jesus says that you may know the son of man has what power on earth to forgive sins. Then he says, arise, take up your bed and go to your house. And the guy gets up and he's walking. This is not a banality. This is a demonstration of amazing power. Amazing ability on Jesus's behalf is that he can forgive sins. It's the opposite of what holy Koolaid says it is. Um, anyway, there's a lot more we could get into and all this stuff, uh, he then will go on in the video, holy Kool aids video, which I'll link below as soon as the stream's over. I just forgot to put it there. Um, to say that the Bible actually is full of contradictions. And that's, again, that's a whole other issue to get into next week. We'll talk more about that next Friday. I'm going to do a skeptics Q and a before I go to your guys questions right now. I'll do a skeptics Q and a next Friday. That means I want questions from non believers or questions the kinds that non believers ask. You can be a believer sharing a question that you've received or heard from a non believer. That's fine. But I want them to be skeptical questions. And I'm going to start the video next Friday with answering several, uh, supposed contradictions in the Bible from an atheist website that I recently ran into. And then I'll go to your guys questions. Speaking of which, your guys questions, let's do those right now. Okay, we've got all ten of them loaded up for today. And the first one I've got coming in from you guys is from Mark, who says, what's your take on Preston Sprinkle? Some christians like him. Others call him a heretic or side B Christian. That's a phrase, side B Christian. This issue. Issue seems to be about him not thinking same sex attraction is a sin when not meditated, slash acted on. Um, some of this stuff is super complicated. Uh, I haven't looked into his stuff enough to know to answer that question of what I think of Preston sprinkle. Um. Um. So I remember seeing. I'll tell you guys, this is just me being. I'm gonna ask you to be thoughtful for me, okay? Like, hear me out. Cause there. There are some who freaked out when I did this earlier, not because they misunderstood. I saw a video where, um. Um, Sean McDowell interviewed Preston Sprinkle, talking about the topic of homosexuality, the issue, to my memory. And maybe I clicked around the video. I don't remember. To my memory, the issue of. Is same sex attraction a sin or under what circumstances is. It didn't come up in that video. It was more of a discussion of, like, greek language and biblical texts. And so when it came to, in particular, the, uh, discussion of, um. Oh, what was it? It was a greek term they were looking into. It might have been porneia. No, no, no. It was, uh, arsenicoitis, which is in one corinthians six, Paul uses the term, uh, arsenicoitis. That was the section that I thought was really interesting, and he shared some stuff there that I thought was helpful. That was effectively saying, uh, Paul is talking about homosexual behaviors of any kind. In one corinthians six nine or nine six. I mix numbers up all the time. I think it's six nine. This passage, um, is one that pro gay, pro lgbt theologians who are trying to say the Bible supports this stuff that they have used many times in the past, uh, to support their views. And that's absolutely true. But, um, Preston's analogy or, uh, analysis of it at the time was very, I thought, good in that video. So I commented on that video and was like, hey, that was pretty good. Maybe I'll check out his work. That was the first time I ever heard of Preston Sprinkle. Don't know anything about him. Yeah, that's his real name, I think. At any rate, didn't know anything about him. I commented, didn't like one of these hit page YouTube channels. Made a whole video about me endorsing Preston Sprinkle, who I know nothing about. Since then, I've tried to pay a little more attention to the guy, and he definitely seems like a mixed bag. Um, well, I don't really know exactly what he teaches about same sex attraction, because he speaks, and sometimes he'll speak in terms of what he doesn't teach. And I've seen a video where he talks about it, and I go, I still don't know what you believe. And that is a concern to me. When you speak on an issue for a while, and we still don't know what you actually think about it. Um, for a lot of believers, we go, uh, I'm leery of that, at least. Okay. So I'm a little bit leery about it. Um, that one analysis of arsenicoitase seemed like a good analysis. Maybe he's completely off the wall everywhere else. I don't know. Um, I know that, um, he seems like he finds the middle ground. If you had here on the extreme right, you've got those who are very hard and strong on their statements about homosexuality and there being such a thing as homosexual sin, and that that is never appropriate. Like, it's only male and female is the only intimate, romantic type relationship you can have. Then over here, you have the pro lgbt side. People affirming like Brandon Robertson, who's like, being queer is holy. He says, um, polyamory is okay. He says, basically, there's no biblical rules anymore. There's just sort of like Disney rules, like, love the one you love kind of logic, um, of relations. Then you've got in the middle, these debates. Side a, side b, Christianity, which I fully have not wrapped my head around. Um, site a is like saying, hey, let's not even use the term gay to discuss who we are. Let's say you're same sex attracted, but you refuse to call yourself gay because gay. In our culture, and I agree with this, in our culture, gay has become an identity. Claim that when you say, I'm gay, you're either referring to I'm actively engaging in homosexual activities, or you're referring to, I have an identity that is part of my nature. It's part of the makeup. And the way I consider myself a human is I am designed or set toward same sex relations sexually. Um, I can see why a Christian would go, I'll never say gay, meaning that, or lesbian or whatever else meaning that, because that's affirming. See, the Bible is saying that my nature is actually not that. That's my temptation, not my design. But often people use the word gay to refer to design. This is why they'll say, like, and then I realized I was gay. What they meant is, like, they found out that it was part of their nature, part of their design, of who they were, not just a temptation. Um, so I reject that. Of course, then others would use the term gay to refer to people who are just actively in the lifestyle. But if it either means identity or lifestyle, well, then neither of those belong in the mouth of a Christian, because a Christian won't be living that lifestyle. And a Christian won't be claiming that identity. And there's, like, the side b side, which they seem to be more inclined to use, use the terminology for gay christians. And they maintain a gay identity as they're following Christ, not just as a temptation, but as, like, uh, an identity of, like, almost like a class of Christian, like a class of person. And I don't, I don't doubt that they would still continue to be tempted, but that doesn't mean that that's their identity. So I would lean towards this idea. If that's the debate, there's other stuff they discuss, too. Uh, some of the side b people, and I think Preston sprinkle rejects this. Right. Just m just speaking openly with you guys about this stuff. Okay. Because these people all have public teachings. It's not like we're talking about their private lives or gossiping. This is their public teaching. To my knowledge, Preston Sprinkle rejects this, I think could, uh, be wrong, um, that a man and a man can, say, move in together and stay in a covenant committed relationship where they're simply not physical. In the home, they don't act like a physically married couple, but in every other way, they live like a married couple. They have a covenant. They maybe even do vows. That is a, um, absolutely no question about it. That is an absolute perversion of marriage. That is meant to imitate as much as you possibly can of what Christ and the church pictures between a man and woman, but without the physical intimacy. I don't think that's okay, uh, under any stretch. Um, I think that's a bad thing. There's no room for accepting that. There's room for understanding people and having compassion on those who are in circumstances like that or have committed sins like that. But that doesn't mean there's a room for approving. Approving of it. That's a different thing. What else is there? I don't know. Um, there's more on him. He seems like a controversial guy. For personal preference. Um, there are some teachers who talk for a long time, but they never really explain exactly what their view is. They throw criticisms at this and criticism at that, and then they use vague language. I just think we're supposed to really be, um, loving, but then. But they're not being clear on what they mean. That sort of thing is not my favorite. Um, and so I'll just leave it there. Yeah. I wish I knew more. I really don't. So, yeah. Um, my take is he's probably not as. Probably not as bad as people make him out to be, but he's probably not as good as he thinks he is in these things. That's my impression, is that he's trying to carve a path where one doesn't exist. So he ends up compromising in some ways, but he is also, and we should give him credit for this, trying to hold fast in many ways to biblical teaching on hard issues, but in every way. Uh, no, probably not. Um, there seems to be some degree of compromise that's there. I hate to speak so vaguely, but, uh, yeah, that's all I got to say on that. Uh, number three, this is an anonymous question. My church teaches that a couple must continuously have as many children as they are able, and it's seen as selfish and a sin resulting in church discipline if they use any form of family planning to stop. Many of them have twelve to 18 children. As a result, leadership says God wouldn't give more children than a couple can handle. Is this biblical? Uh, we already have five children. Um, it's okay. So let's answer this question in two different categories. One, what is the biblical requirement for us to have kids? And is it like, you have to have as many as you can, you can't do any sort of family planning? Is that biblical? And then the next question is, is it a matter of church discipline and church teaching where you can actually say like, hey, congregant, you, you better not do anything to minimize the number of kids you have. And, um, those are two different issues. So the first issue is, and one issue kind of answers the other, I think. Right. The first issue is, is it biblical? So there is actually no scripture saying clearly that this is the case. Now, somebody might think, and, um, I've talked more about this somewhere else with more detail, but some, somebody might say, but the Bible says be fruitful and multiply. Ah, it does. But we have to be intelligent about things and take the scripture in its full context. God made Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Is that command carried on to every single couple and every single human throughout time? And is it taken to a degree where you not only have to be fruitful and multiply, you have to do it unendingly with no limit to how many kids you have? That's a whole other claim, isn't it? What was said to Adam and Eve then is projected to all humankind and it is given no limit. 15 kids, 18 kids. Get married at 18, have kids till you're 40, just do it. Is that what is meant? That's not to my knowledge. Uh, not to my knowledge. And we often see families in the scriptures who are, uh, more likely than not considered good guys. Do they have 18 and 20 kids? Not generally. Now, maybe there's reasons for that. I'm just observing. They don't have that many kids. I don't even know how many people can do that physically. I don't know if that's even physically possible for women to do. Most of the time, I'd be surprised. But there's more to it than this. Okay, so you have that one idea. Be fruitful and multiply. Now, in Jesus time, as I've studied the first, the history of the first century, this came up when I was doing my divorce and remarriage research for the big video I did on that topic and the other video, subsequent videos I did on that issue. I, uh, found out that in Jesus's day, it was actually considered very important for people to have kids. Jews considered it their solemn duty that they were obeying Adam and Eve's command. Uh, they commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. They had to keep having kids. Now, I think having kids is good. Uh, and it's a should. Humans should have kids. Is it a have to? Every human has to. That's a different question, isn't it? Yeah. Jesus enters into an environment where. That's the jewish setting. Everybody has to have kids. It was considered wrong if you didn't. The Romans were like this, too. Surprisingly enough, the roman soldiers had to be replenished, and you needed roman citizens to be able to supply soldiers and to be able to supply people so that there were even roman laws. Do you know this? There were roman laws that if, like, you, your spouse dies, you have to get remarried within a certain period of time so that you can keep having kids, because you have to supply Rome with. With kids, so to speak. Isn't that interesting? They're very different than our culture nowadays, where it's considered, like, you know, you have eight kids, you're. You're given. Looks like you've done something wrong. Like, you walk into the grocery store and people look at you like you did. You sinned against humanity by having all these children. It's insane. It's crazy. If you have eight kids, that's great. If you have 15 kids, go for it. Uh, we're asking if it's necessary, not if it's good, or if it's something that we can say, good for you. Um, so Jesus enters into this scene and there he has a teaching that kind of weighs in on this. Um, let me see. I'll find it for you. Um, here we go. Matthew 19. Yeah, Matthew 19. This is. This is a good spot. Let me take you guys there. So Jesus comes on this scene, um, and he gives a hard teaching about divorce, and he's like, hey, divorce and remarriage, you guys have made it easy. There's basically no fault divorce in the New Testament in the first century. Among some, they were like, you can divorce for any reason you want, although it was only the guy who would initiate rare, rare circumstances. Could a woman do that at the time? Um, but they kind of had no fault divorce. And he goes against this. He goes against this very hardly. And he's like, yeah, you can't just divorce anytime you want. So in verse ten, his disciples say, if such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry. Now. Not marrying means not having kids. Right? Let's just follow the logic, right? Doesn't it? I think that's how it works. Not marrying means not having kids unless you're living in sin. But he said to them all. All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given. That is, some people can handle that. They cannot be married. For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb. That's probably people who. We're not talking about born gay. If you twist the scripture into that to your own destruction. This, uh, is people probably, who were born physically incapable of having kids or of even intercourse. Right. So that their physical issue, an intersex person would. Would potentially be this. And there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men. Yep. That has happened. There are those who. That has been done to them. That's not approving of it. But there are some who've gone through that. And there are eunuchs who have been. Who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. Now, this people have taken to be, um. There. Obviously, this is not really a question for kids. I should have said this earlier. I wasn't thinking about it. This part is not for kids. Not for little kids, at least. There are those who make themselves eunuchs. People imagine that these are men who have castrated themselves. Um, not so the term eunuch in the first century, at this point in time in history, is being used of people who simply choose celibacy so they would be fully physically capable of doing all the stuff, but they choose not to. They remain celibate, and they do it for the kingdom of heaven. There's some pursuit they have, or they're going to serve God, and they don't want to be held back from that with marriage and family. And so they choose to be eunuchs, or at least those who do not sleep with anybody. Now, there was even kings who would employ eunuchs who had a vow of celibacy but could physically do stuff. There are kings in the past who would actually castrate their eunuchs to ensure that they couldn't do anything with these women. They were taken care of. Um, but by now, by this time, the term had taken on a wide meaning. Okay. It refers to basically celibate people. He, uh, who's able to accept it, let him accept it. Why do I bring all this in? It's this verse right here. He who's able to accept it, let him accept it. You want to. You want to be a eunuch? You guys, it's better just to not get married. Then. If you don't want to get married, that's perfectly fine. You're welcome to do that. This was not jewish belief, common jewish belief. This was not roman belief. This is Jesus showing that staying single for the kingdom and not having kids is a real option. Meaning that our, uh, earlier question, the command to be fruitful and multiply, does it apply to each individual person such that if you don't get married and have kids, you are sinning against God? The answer is no, that is not the case. Jesus couldn't say, hey, if you want to serve God single, you want to be celibate, go for it. First corinthians seven. Paul talks about it, too. Hey, you want to serve God singly, that's great. Go for it. If the requirement to have as many kids as possible was this biblical demand upon every human, you couldn't have these verses in the Bible. And if it's not required on every person, then you have to back up and say, well, then I guess I'll just say you can stay single and not have any kids, but if you do get married, you have to have as many as possible. And that just seems like I'm making stuff up. So, bottom line, um, we don't have, and I would be careful with my words, I don't think we have biblical warrant for telling people they have to have as many kids as they want. Now, this comes against our current culture, and I got to push back on even that and say, but kids are awesome. Your quiver is full. So to speak children are a gift from God. It's a beautiful and wonderful thing to have kids and have lots of kids, but to place it as a. As a requirement, as a burden upon the body of Christ such that you find out a family has three kids and they're going to stop. And now they're going to. Maybe they're doing scheduling, their monthly scheduling. They're going to plan things out so they don't have more kids, and you're going to call them sinners and threaten them with church discipline based upon no clear teaching of scripture. Um, all that to say, this extreme church control is not representative of biblical Christianity in this case. I'm sorry you're going through that. Um, if you show me a scripture that says people have to have as many kids as they possibly can, and to do less than that is sin, I will 100% support it. But you can't show me that in scripture. You show me kids are great, kids are good. Part of God's design, something that humanity is necessary that we have kids. But to dump that on every individual and put numbers on it is not something that's biblical. It's just not. It's extra biblical. So you shouldn't make it a point of church discipline. Um, that's a tough thing to talk about. Um, if you did, you have five kids, if you had more, you'd be happy. I'm sure there wouldn't be. It wouldn't be a curse upon you. But your church is overstepping their mandates from God, I believe, on this. Let's go to question number four. Just Vicki says, mike, are we there yet? Are we there yet? The Bible says it will be as in the days of Noah. In the last days. Have we arrived at the pinnacle of wickedness yet? Thank you. Just Vicki, this is a tough question. When I was younger, I would have thought, yes, um, I would have thought, yeah, we got to be right there, right? We got to be like this close to the final last days because of how bad everything is and how bad everything's getting. During the sexual revolution in the sixties, I wasn't alive, but you would think, that's got to be it. I started to learn more about history, though, and this kind of gave me pause. Um, I learned about how wicked things were even in the first century, or how wicked things were, like, in the middle ages. Um, how, like there was a. There was a series of events going on in the Vatican under the name of Christianity that it was so bad, it's literally been called in history the pornocracy you could check that out. I mean, this is bad stuff that's gone on. You're not going to get pictures when you say that this is historical accounts of things that were going on, but this stuff is so. This stuff has been so bad. The black plague, you would have thought that this was the end if you were under the iron curtain. Um, you would have thought like, surely this is it. This is the beast in his power. Um, if you had seen the Holocaust and lived through that, um, you might have thought, surely this is the end. I think that we lack perspective. Um, when we say, this wickedness that I'm seeing in my life today must be the end. And there's a problem with this. You don't have biblical warrant for saying, here's my clear indication that the end has come. But if you believe that, you know, the end has come and that the. And specifically that the world is, is sliding downward into wickedness and it cannot be, it cannot be brought back, it kind of cripples you with your evangelism, I think. And so I encourage you, don't be hopeless. And I would. I would wager this is something I've seen over time. The same people who I used to see 20 years ago telling me that Jesus is coming back any day now. And they were very excited about it, actually, Jesus came back any day now. And we see it look at Russia and look at its gog and Magog and look at all these sort of machinations in the political world and look at how many nations are part of the EU. And we get the toes, the ten toes in Daniel, and we got all this stuff and they were kind of tying in prophecy to current events in a way that was. Now that I look back on, it was a lot of presumptions are being made when they were making these connections. Those same people 20 years later are so doom and gloom, it's scary. I would see the same guys going, yep, we're in the last times. It's in the great apostasy. And they were basically giving up. I think that this was the backlash of them laying out these expectations. All this to say, I believe scripture, Vicki, here's just take his counsel from one brother to you. I believe in scripture. I believe that, uh, hard times will come. I just think we're making a connection of scripture to our current events without clear warrant in scripture to do so. And we're guessing. We're like guessing, well, this could be that and this could be that and this could be that. And this end times thing could be this and you, and you might be right, but you could just as easily be wrong. And how do I know? Because go back 40 years and you'll see that they did the same thing then, and many of them were wrong. And so you go, well, uh, yeah, go back even more and you'll see it's happened repeatedly in church history. We all are addicted to identifying the second coming as being within our personal lifetimes or just after. It's just we're repeatedly addicted to this. I remember people saying pastor. Because being part of Calvary Chapel for so many years, Pastor Chuck. That they. I remember people proclaiming this. Leaders, I don't think. I don't think Jesus will wait to come back till before or till after Chuck dies. I think before Chuck dies, Jesus is going to come back. I remember hearing this and thinking in my head, like, because you're part of this movement and you're like, this is. Yeah, okay. I can see that. Like, wow, God uses him so powerfully. But it was, looking back, it was just silly to say stuff like that. And it would cause people to think things like, why would I go to college? Why would I get an education? Why would I pursue, like, a real career? I should just go preach the gospel in my local neighborhood and have no plan for my future because it's going to happen so soon. All that to say Vicki, that's her name for anybody. Didn't catch that. Just Vicky is her YouTube name. Um. We're given a task to serve the Lord as though he could come back at any moment, or as though he might come back long after we've died. And I think we need to live in the place where both of those things are accomplished in our lives, where I live in a way where I will not be ashamed if he returns right now as I'm speaking, before I finish the sentence, or if he comes back when my great, great, great grandkids are getting old, I want to live for Christ, the fullness of my life. And don't go like this. Yeah. Though. Yeah. Things are so bad, the second coming has got to happen. You don't know how bad things were in history. If you learn more of that, you won't spaz out as much about the present either. Things are always bad. Um, all right, my two cent. Okay. When you bring this into scripture, Jesus says, no man knows the day or the hour when. When the apostles in the book of acts, when they see the risen Christ and they're like, hey, uh, are you going to set up your kingdom now. And he goes, it's not even for you to know. Just go be about the kingdom. He's, it's not for you to know the days and times the father set in his own authority. Just go and preach the gospel. We're to be about the work of the ministry, not about the work of predicting the exact time of the return. That's my conclusion on that. I didn't used to feel that way, but that was because I was part of a cultural group of christians who didn't feel that way. And the more I learned, the more I came back to. Yeah, this was not a good idea. So sorry, Vicki. I may have answered more than you asked there, but I hope it helps. Number five, pattern salad has a question. I learned that Bethel's prophecy teachings and those of storms, wimber, deer, Randolph, etcetera trace back to scandalous Kansas city prophets should all be ignored or can the chaff be separated? You know what? Um, I haven't looked into these Kansas city prophets, to be honest. I don't know that much about it. Um, I talk about some stuff I've looked into. I don't spend all my time doing that stuff. But, um, uh, storms is Sam storms. Um, I don't know that much about Sam storms. John Wimber, I know was the founder of the vineyard and, um, considered to be like, it's interesting because the amount of respect that he has in some circles compared to others is so stark and different. I'll see some charismatics talk about John Wimber as like, wow, such a great example and teacher of how to walk in the spirit and use the gifts of the spirit. And then in other circles you'll see. And again, these are people with public ministries. We're not gossiping about someone's private life. In, uh, other circles they'll say John Wimber is where things went off the rails. Um, and that was more, actually a little bit more of the Calvary chapel perspective on it. And I remember hearing how they had split up. You know, Vineyard was originally within the Calvary movement and they were more and more being experimental with spiritual things in ways that made others feel uncomfortable, felt like they were off the rails. And their churches started to do stuff like Anaheim Vineyard, which I visited when I was a teenager. It was one of the first churches I went to as a kid because I live in southern California. My friend took me to this church in Anaheim vineyard. Uh, let me just, I'll tell you my story. You didn't ask, but I'm, I think it might be educational for you. For you guys. Um, um, this is many years ago. So what, is Anaheim Vineyard like this now? I don't know. I would not assume that they are at all. Things change over time. Maybe they are. Maybe they're the same. Maybe they're different. Don't know. At the time, they had a youth pastor there who, um, um, I remember he was, he was leaving for some reason they didn't explain, and they just said it was God, um, which I'm not a fan of. When ministries have people leave and they just tell everybody, oh, God's leading me, but they're not telling you the real stuff behind the scenes. They're just putting it on God. I don't think that's very fair, unless it literally is. I was in prayer. Lord just led me, that's fine, but oftentimes it's something else, and they just say it was God because they're not being honest with the people. Um, I think that might be what happened there. But anyway, he left. I remember him doing a sermon where he just got up and all he did was read list of names, and he had students come from the youth ministry as I was visiting on a Sunday with my friend, and they all got up on stage, and he just got them all up on stage. One was my friend whose name I won't mention, who's my best friend growing up. And he gets up on stage, too. He's one of the ones gets called up. The youth pastor doesn't know me. He doesn't call my name. And he goes, I just. God's really bringing your names into my heart. Before I leave, I just want to pray a blessing over you. I want to show you guys, like, God's really got something amazing planned for your life. That best friend now is, uh, to my knowledge, is an atheist. Haven't talked to him in a long time. Um, at any rate, it just, looking back, it just felt weird, um, and irresponsible the way that they were handling that. But here was my experience with speaking in tongues when I was at the Anaheim vineyard, when I went there as a kid. Okay, so I'm like, 1314 maybe. Maybe. No, maybe. I was. Yeah, I was about 14, probably. Probably around that age. And I go to this church, and there one thing that I love there is the desire to know God was palpable, like, you just, there was such an intense desire to know God and to experience the truth and reality of God. Um, that desire was a good thing. Um, but the way it played out had some questionable things going on. So everybody was speaking in tongues all at once. There was girls brought on stage and she's twitching and shaking. She's going like this and she can't stop. And they bring her on stage and they put her in the microphone and she explains how she's been doing this all day, since yesterday. And it's God's spirit making her do this because she's so filled with the spirit. And some of you have experienced this stuff before, too. I might be touching a nerve, but I think it can be healthy to discuss this stuff in a. I believe there are brothers and sisters there, part of my family of God. But this, I think, had a problem with it. Um, her friends talking about how she was doing it, even in her sleep. Um, was she? I don't know, but they were. Everybody was very excited. And it made you feel like, I want that too. That was the feeling I got at 14 years old, approximately. I want that too. I just want God to touch me. And it never really happened. I kept praying, God, do this with me. I wanted like twitch and shake, and, uh, it just didn't really happen for me. And so I went up for prayer and I was, you're supposed to like, fall over. This is the slain in the spirit thing. You go up for prayer, they put hands on you. And I kept seeing people fall down and there was someone to catch them. There was always someone to catch them and they'd fall down. And I thought, I, I want that too, if that's what God has for me. I wasn't reading my Bible. I knew very little about God and Jesus. I knew that I believed, but I was very uneducated as a Christian and hadn't really read much of the scripture. I think I'd read some of proverbs at this point. Um, because I didn't get saved as a kid. I got saved. I was like maybe twelve ish, first heard the gospel, believed it and was on like, slow mode of discipleship for many years. Um, so I go up to receive prayer to be slain in the spirit, and there I'm standing there and someone comes up behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder and starts praying for me. And I'm waiting for God to knock me down because I just want to experience God. Very sincere. Okay, I'm not. I'm not well. Ah, no ulterior motive here. I just want to experience what God's doing. And I'm praying there with my arms out and nothing's happening and nothing's happening. And I kind of. I start thinking, like, what do I do? Maybe if I put my head up, you know, then I get more dizzy. So then I maybe I'll fall. And I'm like, no, I know I'm just letting myself fall on purpose. Like, if it's God, I want. Godd. Finally I hear the guy behind me as he's praying and stuff and standing there, and he goes. And it was clear to me he was frustrated that I was taking so long. So I got really, really self aware. And I suddenly felt totally embarrassed. Like, I'm not doing it right. I don't know what I'm doing. This isn't happening. God's not doing this with me. And now I'm super embarrassed because I'm standing in front of everybody. And I'm afraid to just walk back to my seat. Like it didn't work right. Like, that's culturally feels wrong for me to do in this environment. So what I do is I, um, um, I fall over. I look back to see if he's there. Ah. Or if he was in front of me or something. I don't remember. And then I come down. I fall down. I must have been in front of me because I fell forward. So I look, see him and I fall. And he kind of catches me and lowers me down. And do I am I trying to fake. I, um, mean, in a sense, I was this was, this was a total compromise as a 14 year old. I completely compromised here. And I did something I would never do as an older Christian. And I come down and I'm laying now part way on the ground, partway on the stairs of the stage. And my face under my face is a microphone cable going right across my cheek. It's driving me nuts. And, um, it hurts. And the longer I lay there, the more it hurts. And I'm laying there thinking. I don't I got up there. And I remember thinking. Because I just thought it was going to be God who zapped me or whatever. And I'm laying there thinking, I don't know how long I'm supposed to lay here. Because I just thought it would happen to me. And I would just be there. And then I'd get up. When I got up, I didn't think I'd be in control the whole time. So I'm laying there and I'm thinking, oh, I don't know how long I'm supposed to be here. But, man, this this thing hurts. But everybody else seems like they laid out for a long time. So, so I remember I opened my eyes and I quickly put my hands on the ground. I just went and I scooched over, away from the cable, and I was like, oh, I could lay here for a while. It's so embarrassing. Oh, man. Is that, is that a commentary on all of vineyard? All the vineyard is. No, that was just my experience. Um. Um, it was not good. It was, it was really lousy. And I remember first going to a calvary chapel when I was 18, was it? No, I was 17. I visited, first visited Kowri chapel. Just visiting in town, visiting relatives. And I went to a cowrie chapel out there, and the guy was teaching through first corinthians about tongues and about how you don't all do it at once. People are going to think you're crazy and all this stuff. And I remember being shocked because I didn't read the bible enough and going, there's rules. There's rules for this stuff. Somebody has to tell those guys at Anaheim there's rules for this stuff. They didn't know. Oh, man. And then I, then I was like, wait a minute. They have pastors. They know. They have to know this verse. They have to have read this. They just don't care. And this is my big revelation. I realize now that it's a little more complicated than that. They'll, they'll have reasons why they think these rules don't apply, but they're not good ones. But at any rate, that was my experience. So what do I say? Do I say John Wimber is, is classed as a bad guy? No. Uh, um, he's gonna actually have a lot of teaching that's probably really good. And he's gonna have some teaching that led to the abuses and the strange things I saw happening in the youth ministry that I later had to grow out of. I'm glad I didn't get caught up so much in it that I felt like it was all real. Um, I don't think that I lacked the touch of the spirit. I think that the spirit simply was not doing that. And people were part of a social experiment, um, that wimber was doing. And others have taken over. Now Bethel and others have taken over that mantle and are continuing doing that. Um, other names you mentioned, I don't know as well. You say they trace back the scandalous prophets. Maybe, um, they do. Here's the thing. People are so individual that whoever, uh, Sam storms traces back to it doesn't mean that's what he is. And, uh, I once went to a vineyard and was part of that. And you could say that I once went. I mean, I went several times. I wasn't like a member of the church. I didn't go every week for years or anything like that. But you could say Mike winger traces back to vineyard. We should discount him as being hyper, ah, charismatic, when I'm clearly not. Let people be themselves. Um, you don't have to have a judgment on all these guys if you're not part of a deer, I think it's Jack dear. If you're not part of his ministry, you don't have to make a judgment on what he's doing if you're not affected by it, if it doesn't enter into your life. Um, let people be the mixed bag that they are. Learn the positive, learn the negative if you need to. And don't just hammer people because of their associations. There's times where it's right to hammer people because their associations. There's times where it's right, but a lot of the time, we shortcut our thinking. Um, I think the question about Preston Sprinkle is a good example. He associates with people who are, I hate to use this terminology, who are worse than him in specific areas. They're worse than the questionable things that maybe I'm aware of with him. They're. They're, like, out on a crazy limb. That doesn't mean he affirms all that stuff. Now, his association with them is. Is a problem, but it doesn't mean he's the same as them. We just have to use wisdom. I hope that helps. There's a long ramble story for you. Let's go to question number six. Catalina islands. Says, mike, I'm a mom of three young children. I struggle with a lot of fear over their safety. How can I give this to God knowing that it doesn't mean something bad won't still happen? Thanks. There's an old quote I've heard, um, and it kind of comes back to Jesus, but the quote is worrying. It turns out worrying actually works, because most of the stuff you worry about never actually happens. So, ha, it works. Your worrying is successful. You've successfully prevented all sorts of things from happening. Um, it's tempting to just worry and fear over people's safety and what might go wrong. Uh, Jesus own words on this were, which of you, by worrying, can add a single cubit to your stature or a hair on your head? You can't. Jesus is highlighting the fact that we worry about things we can't prevent, and that's the kind of worry that just causes frustration and harm. If you're worrying about stuff you can actually prevent, things you can actually do. No, that's fine. You know, hey, uh, make sure to buckle up. Like that's a, a preventable thing. I can put a. But I can't stop a car accident by driving perfectly. Somebody can still hit me. But I'm not going to worry about it everywhere I go because that worry, like if you're going to worry, you should worry about the harm that worrying causes because that's a real world harm that you're actually experiencing right now. And your kids will experience too, because if you project those fears on them, it will impact them negatively. We have to have a certain amount of courage in life to say, even if the worst happens, I will trust the Lord. And this is, this is for me on a very personal level. Um, I grew up like kind of phobic of earthquakes, um, live in southern California. I've been through some scary quakes. We had some stuff happen when I was a kid that was like scary earthquakes and no adults were around and I was scared and it kind of like stuck with me so that as an adult I realized I was still, I'm not like a fearful person but I was very much afraid of earthquakes. And um, then we, me and my wife, we first moved into a place in, uh, not, we've never lived in a great neighborhood, not yet anyway. We'll see one day. Um, but we lived in a neighborhood that was a little janky but near our house was this big dip and there were signs everywhere telling trucks, like trucks you're not allowed to drive on the street. If you're over 5000 pounds or something or whatever the amount was, you can't drive in it. But they did it anyways because it was like a shortcut to get them where they were going to. So all day long trucks would drive by, big heavy trucks and they'd hit this dip and our whole house would shake every day, many times a day. And it would trigger in me that fear, like, is that earthquake? Is that earthquake? And I remember thinking, this is good. I have to overcome this fear. Now. Some people don't ever work to overcome a fear that they have. Um, and I'm not saying it's one size fits all and it's easy for everybody, but in my experience, this was something I thought was good, would help me overcome this fear. I thought of it, I thought of it as an unhealthy thing that the fear itself was causing harm, that earthquakes were not even causing me. Just like the fear of your kids getting injured can cause you harm, that they're never going to get injured in that way. It's never even going to do anything. But you're being harmed by yourself and maybe harming them in some ways, projecting that fear and paranoia onto them, that can be a real problem. Um, so what I did was every time I felt like there was an earthquake, I would pray. I would pray, Lord, even if this was earthquake and the worst happened, I would trust you. And in my mind the worst is earthquake. I get hurt and injured and buried under rubble and I'm laying there stuck for days and then I slowly die. Okay? That to me was the worst. And I thought, Lord, even if that happens, I do still trust you. Can you say this about your kids? Even if something crazy happens, I still trust you, Lord. It doesn't mean it will stop the thing. Um, it's positioning my heart to not have to be worried about things I can't control. Even if that happens, I still trust you, Lord. Start praying that. Start saying that to the Lord between you and him. Start posturing your heart towards that. And if you find yourself going, I cannot pray that I do not trust God if that happens. That's actually the problem and that's the central issue. Um, that you don't at least have a heart that maybe you're not fully there, but you can at least say, lord, I, I am pushing in towards trusting you if that happens, I'm leaning into that. I'm trying to move towards that. I'm posturing my heart towards that, at least do that much. I think that that would help. But the problem with worrying is it causes harm while not preventing harm. So that's how I would give that to God. I hope that gives you some help. Um, psalms does this a little bit. It says, like, um, let me see if I can find the text because this might actually help you. Um, I think. Well, let's, let's look at psalm 46. There's going to be multiple that talk about this. I'm m just scanning through some, some results here. Um, let's go to psalm 46 though, and talk about this. All right, so psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength. A, ah, very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. What will they not fear? And look at the hypotheticals that the psalmist puts out there. Even though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling, what we will not fear, those are pretty extreme situations. Now, you could say, that's metaphorical for various things, like the earth is removed, all the stability of my life is gone. The mountains, all the things that protect me are carried away. And the waters roar and are troubled and the mountains shake with it. Swelling is like the enemy attacking and chaos entering my life. It, um, could be. It could also be like, basically the psalmist saying, even in the greatest harm I can think of, I will still have something that holds back the terror of my heart. And what is the thing? Verse four. There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the most high. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her. Just at the break of dawn, the nations raged and the kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice, the earth melted. Now God's the one moving the earth to save his people. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. This is. This is. Then it continues to go on. I'll just keep reading. It's too good not to come. Behold the works of the Lord who has made desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. The psalmist gives us an example of saying, in the worst case scenario I can think of, I will position my heart ahead of time to say, God, I trust you. You will be glorified. I am with you and on your side. I will eventually be with you in your kingdom where all the glories and goodness will be there and all the tears will be wiped away. I will trust you even if my child dies. I will trust you even if I get cancer. I will trust you even if all the bad stuff I'm scared of happens to me. Position your heart that way. Do it over and over again every time you fear. That would be my. My encouragement, my counsel on that. Let's go to question seven, uh, from Jennifer Bray, who says, healing is the children's bread. That's a quote she puts in quotes. Healing is the children's bread is taught by a pastor friend when he prays for the sick. He uses Mark 724 30 as a proof text. What is the bread in verse 27? Thank you. Healing is the children's bread so that he's interpreting the phrase children's bread as being a reference to healing. Let's look at the mark passage and see if I. See if I can understand it, um, in that context. Mark, chapter seven, verse 24. From there, Jesus arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and wanted no one to know it. But he could not be hidden. For a young woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a syrophoenician by birth. And she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. And she answered and said to him, yes, Lord, even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs. Then he said to her, for this saying, go your way. The demon is gone out of your daughter. And when she'd come to her house, she found the demon gone out of her out and her daughter lying on the bed. Um, so there was there was a. This isn't actually a healing. Just just an observation. This is not a healing. This is a demon being cast out. Those seem like different things, but, um, maybe they can happen at the same time, but they do seem different. This is not a healing. Um, let the children be filled first. It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. Now, in the context of the gospels, Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life. And he also refers that he's been sent to the jews, not to the gentiles. And the GospEL goes out to the jews first. When he commands, um, these all come together. When he commands the disciples to go out two by two, he sends them out only to the lost sheep of the HoUse of IsraEL, not to the rest. It was only after the resurrection of Christ that then he opens the DoOR and says, now go to all nations. And the book of act is acts, is the record of the gospel. Going out to other nations other than the jews. The children here are the Jews. The children are the Jews. They're the ones that God has called the people of Abraham. And he set them aside. He's like, you're going to be my people. He provides Jesus for the whole world. But he sends them first to IsrAEL for a number of great reasons. One of them is to fulfill promises made to Abraham. One other one is to show that God rescues those who wait upon him. Another one is to tie the meaning of the, of the ministry of Jesus into the Old Testament. If JeSus just showed up for everybody, it wouldn't have tied the interpretation of who he was to the Old Testament scriptures, which is super, super important as it is today. All that to say the children here is, are the Jews not real children. So, uh, a, ah, pastor who takes this and say healing is the children's bread. Um, is, um. I mean, I guess, I don't know. I'm not sure what he's doing with that at first. Let's say it's not children. It's ultimately we're talking about the jewish people. She answers, of course, even the little dogs. And I have a whole thing. Some people think Jesus is calling a, there are some people who accuse Jesus of being racist. He's calling a woman a dog, he's sexist and he's racist because she's not jewish. He's greek, syrophoenician and all this. Um, uh, I have a video on that. I'll link it down below in response to people who say those things. That's not true at all, of course, but the question here is, is it healing? Jesus refers to himself as being the bread. He brings healing, but he also brings what? Salvation, forgiveness. The teachings that are the word of God to the people. He brings a lot more than just healing. And so this passage is not just about healing because Jesus referring himself as bread, is probably referring to himself as the bread of life. The children is referring to going to Israel first, not just healing them, not specifically that, but inclusively that, along with a bunch of other stuff. And, um, and, uh, she's not, she's asking for Jesus to expand his ministry to gentiles before the big expansion comes later on for theological reasons. In Jesus ministry, Jesus honors, honors her and actually brings her healing because I think she recognizes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is to the jew first. You know, I'm just coming alongside. I'm not worthy. I can't claim that I have been a follower of the God of Israel and all this stuff. I just came over here to like, borrow from what you've done in their lives. Can you please heal? I give that respect. There's that, that's there. Um, so your pastor friend says this healing is the children's bread when he prays for the sick. Okay, so I get it. Um, it's a nice poetic thing to say while praying. Like you're praying over someone, you're like, healing is the children's bread. Give to your child the bread. Um, it's a nice thing. Is it a biblically accurate thing? I don't think so. Um, such is the case a lot of the time. Is it true that God wants to heal and loves healing people? Yeah. Is it true that he does it every single time? No. Or that we have promises every time? No, we don't. But God's good, and he wants to heal in a general sense and desires to heal us, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have reasons why he allows us to maintain sickness. Just like with Paul, I pleaded with the Lord three times, let this, uh, thorn pass from me. And hes like, no, no, my grace is sufficient for you. Theres times where, no, thats not the case. Epaphroditus, uh, didnt get healed. Timothy had medical issues with his stomach, and hes counseled to drink wine and not just water to help deal with it. So that, yeah, God is a healing God. Hes not a heal every single time. And then push ourselves into strange contortions trying to explain when he doesnt. I think I just accept when God doesnt heal healings. Um, the children's bread just seems like a little, a little bit stretchy. All right, let's go to the next question. That's my, my opinion. Doesn't mean it's a bad pastor. Doesn't mean he doesn't do many great things. I'm just saying there's a quote there that seems a little bit off. Question, um, number eight from twindwergey. Twindwergi. I don't know. Maybe it's like Bilbo's grand nephew. Um, does God care who does the dishes, cooks the food? Is the wife called to manage the household? What if both husband and wife work similar full time jobs? Then you gave a bunch of verses, proverbs 31, uh, which talks about the woman who's the virtuous woman. And you also gave Titus two five, which is where it says, um, here, I'll read Titus two five to us, actually, because that one you kind of quoted that women are to train other older women, to train younger women to be discreet, chaste homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. And I have a whole series on this women in ministry, in detail. If you're really itching to go deep into the debates on the topic, I'll link it down below. Check out the women in ministry series. Um, for those who need to know, I go deep into all the debates, all the greek words. What does this word homemakers mean in greek? What exactly does that mean? Um. Is it ever used of men? Is it used of men and women? All that sort of thing. It's despotes, if I remember right. Actually, um. Um, at any rate, the biblical command. I'm going to give you the summary instead of the study. Uh, the biblical command to women about making the home or being over their homes is not exclusively to women. It's inclusively. Men and women both have a responsibility to their home. Okay? They both do. They're not identical responsibilities because they both have different functions. One's man, one's woman. Those responsibilities are not clearly laid out in terms of who does dishes. And I have a video somewhere where I talk somewhere. Maybe someone can help me find it. Maybe the mods can. Where I talk about, um. Can, uh. Can the guy stay home while the woman works? And my own view is that we, um. Once you make a rule like this for all mankind, and you expand it to every single couple you've never even met, and you tell them, like, let's say the woman has this job and the guy's got this job, and he does tend to stay home more and she's more off at work, when you. Once you say that that is unbiblical and that she needs to quit her job and he needs to find a different job, and then that way and then changes their life around, you are definitely meddling with people's lives in very big ways. Just acknowledge this, like, what you're doing. You can say it because you feel passionate about it, but just recognize how much this impacts the lives of others. And then ask yourself how clearly you understand this from scripture and how much of it is just your opinion, your opinion about how to play out what you see clearly in scripture. Right? There's a big difference between the two. The Pharisees did this with their opinions on how to play out the Sabbath. The Sabbath rest is required. And they had their opinion on what that meant, on whether you could take wheat and rub it in your hands and put it in your mouth. They're like, well, that's work on the Sabbath. You can't do that. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. That's work on the Sabbath. You can't do that. They were 100% confident, but they did not have clear scripture. I lean towards having clear scripture. Looks like. Looks like Sarah put it into the, uh, live chat there, um, the video I was talking about. So I get into more of that there. Um, the proverbs 31 woman plays into this a little bit, because she does both. She manages her household, but she does so while, um, buying a field and while, like, overseeing basically business, like being a small business entrepreneur. That's what she is. She buys and resells stuff like that. She's doing this stuff, and obviously she doesn't have as much time at the house. Now, in ancient first century culture, this was not considered odd. If a woman was well off enough to pay for somebody to come alongside and help her with her household chores, it was considered perfectly fine for her to be doing other things. In other words, life is complicated. Make sure that your home is taken care of. Is the command. Man, is your home taken care of? Woman, is your home taken care of, or are you effectively not part of it because you're so busy with other things that those are questions that are valid to ask, but I don't want to put too strict of a, uh, thing on it. Um, yeah, anyway, so, yeah, Sarah put a link in there in description. I'll actually. I can pin it. Watch this boom pin message now. It's on the top of the live chat. You guys can find it real easy. Okay, let me see. I'm gonna read your question because I feel like I didn't answer all of it. Um, does God care who does the dishes and cooks the food? I, um, think doing the dishes, cooking the food are things that do lean more. I'm just being honest in a way that will make nobody happy. Okay. They lean more womanly in those tasks, but they aren't necessarily required woman's tasks. So they do seem to lean that way, but they're not necessary. And we need to, like, say that scripture gives us some bare bones that we should hold to. The man is the head of the household. He does in, uh, a sense, he wears the pants in the family. It's so insulting to people nowadays, but only because they're so far from respecting what God has actually said in his word. Never to be abusive, never to be selfish, never to be driving at his own desires, but to be able to honor God and love his wife as Christ loved the church self sacrificially. But he is the head in that home. But a woman is not without authority. She has very high authority in the home when she's told to not just take care of the home, but she's told to be the master of the home. So she has a very high authority. It's just that among the two of them, the husband has higher authority. That's the clear teaching of scripture as much as people mock it, deride it, and ridicule it, I see no way around it in the Bible. Um, so can the guy who's. Can a guy still wear the pants in the family or be the head of the household and do dishes? Is that really impossible? There was a leader at our church many years ago, many, many years ago at my old church, um, who taught everybody that what you had to do if you were the husband. I'm gonna kick my fan up a bit. It is summer. Um, if you were the husband, what you had to do was the books that your wife could not do the tax and accounting stuff. Like, she couldn't be the one punching in the numbers. You had to do that, and that was part of your role as being the head of the household. He taught this to the whole church so that all the men in the church either would say, I'm going to be the one doing this, maybe taking it from their wife, or they would, um. They would, uh, go against the teaching of one of the elders and the leaders in the church. These are the two options. This is the kind of thing I'm opposed to is putting too fine a point on it where you're sort of forcing people. You're, like, drawing out your sabbath laws, and here's what you do, and here's the things you can say to your husband. Here's the things you can say to your wife, and here's the. You're just getting too much into it. Interestingly enough, my wife has spent years doing accounting. She does accounting. That's like what she does, dealing with taxes and numbers and worrying about the laws related to all that kind of stuff. She's absolutely the best person to be over the finances in that respect. Now, I'm still in our marriage. I'm still the head in that relationship, and I can be like, hey, let's look at our budget here and think about these things. We're both savers. We don't really spend. We're not reckless spenders at all. So we don't really have to worry about our budget that much, because we just don't do that for the most part. Um, but there are those who would say that I am failing as the head of the home because my wife is the one doing the thing and she's better at it than me. Why wouldn't she do it? She's way better at it than I am. I'm still over it. I still look at the results and look at the numbers and all this stuff, and she gives it to me in that sense, but as two authorities looking at these things together, not as just a powerless person to a powerful one. Anyway, I think that's what the complementarian perspective tries to push on us, is that kind of awareness of things, and I hope that we do it well in our marriage. At any rate, you don't have any scripture telling you who has to do dishes, and you can call it women's work if you want, but if you make a rule out, if you can say that if you want, but if you make a rule out of that and dump it on other people, and you're meddling in other people's marriages without warrant, and that's not something that people should do casually. All right, let's go to the next one. Question number nine. Jim Crider says, I asked the youth how confident they are of salvation on a one to ten scale. One replied with a seven, citing that they still sin and don't read the Bible often. Can one be saved if they associate salvation with works? Bible reading is Galatians fitting here? Um, no. Okay. Um, let me be careful with my words. Associating salvation with works is not a problem. Claiming that you were saved by works is a problem. Salvation is definitely associated with works. There's an association between the two. It's just that it comes on the back end. When I trust in Christ genuinely, I get saved. I'm filled with the spirit. Works begin to flow out of my life because of two factors. I really meant it when I said Jesus was Lord. I was genuine in that faith, and that's number one. And number two, I'm empowered by the Holy Spirit so that I can actually live out the christian life. You got both these things in play. You're going to have good works that follow. So if someone says, I'm not saved by my works, but my works are helping to demonstrate my salvation, right, they're not the root of salvation, but they are the fruit of salvation. Then I can look at my life and you go, how confident am I that I'm saved? And I go, well, look, I see good works. Those don't save me, but I think that they show that my sincerity is real, that my claim to believe in Jesus is genuine. So this is what we get in James, chapter two. Um, I wouldn't complain about that kid associating these things as long as he understands it's not how he's saved, it's merely fruit that he's looking at. I think this is a sobering thing, but let's read it in James, chapter two. Um, I'll start in verse 14. Uh, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Notice it's a claim, he has Faith. Everybody in your youth group claims they have faith, right? They all say it, but what good is it if you say you have faith but you don't have any works? Can that faith save him? The kind of can the claim of faith, faith that never changes your life, faith that never results in you obeying Jesus in any way, is that real faith? James seems to think it's not. If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food. And he gives an example now, and one of you says, you say to them, just like you say you have faith in Jesus, you say, uh oh. Go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body. What good is that? Your claim that you want them to go away in peace and be warm and filled, but you won't give them what you have to make them warm and filled. It shows that maybe you don't mean it. You're just getting rid of them. It's lip service is the danger. It's insincere. Claims of faith is what he's getting at. So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, and they're going to complain to James, well, you have faith and I have works. And this is what people actually say about James. James is here teaching salvation by works. And James is like, no, I'm not, I'm not saying you get saved by works. I'm adding tons of my interpretation here. I've done the work to interpret it. But this is my view, right, that James is saying, um, I'm not saying you're saved by works. I'm saying you can't show your faith apart from your works. Works are the fruit, not the root. Someone will complain to James, you have faith in I have works, meaning the people he's talking about who are, let's say, easy believism people. And he goes, oh, yeah, you guys, you guys think you have to have, you don't have faith unless you have easy believism. M. And I'm over here saying faith plays itself out in works. So now I'm going to get accused of being having works based salvation. But that's not the case. I'm just saying you can't prove your faith apart. It's the faith that saves. But if it's real faith, it's going to be it's going to lead to works. So show me your faith apart from your works. Good luck with that. You can't. The only way to show you really believe is by living it out. And I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is, that God is one. You do? Well, even the demons believe and shudder. Right. So there's such a thing as an empty intellectual belief. I believe that there is one God. I believe that Jesus died and rose. I believe it all. I believe it. Believe it. That doesn't mean you're really christian, because mere belief isn't the same as biblical faith. Faith is a commitment. It is not just an intellectual proposition. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Right. What's useless? The faith, not the works. The faith. The faith itself that results in no life. Transformation is more like the easy believism demons believe. Even, um, was not Abraham, our father, justified by works? And now here. Justified? I don't think he means, in the theological sense that Paul uses it. I think he means proven true. Abraham who? But he believed God, but years later, it was proven that he really believed God when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar. That's how you know his faith was real, because the works he did. Works are fruit, not root. You see, that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works. It was demonstrated in the end, like, ah. Uh, there it is. That's proof that he's got real faith. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, abraham believed goddesse, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Yeah, because he had faith that was real. So it resulted in works. Um, and you can read on. Talks about, uh, rahab. Interesting story there. Whole other discussion, too. Um, so with youth, it's a balancing act because you want to promote for them to have real faith and to examine their lives to make sure that it's genuine faith, so that there's actual works that demonstrate that they really believe. They're not just being raised in church and repeating all the things they heard, but they're actually living it out. But the balancing act is because what you don't want to do is m have people move to a place where they start trying to work for their forgiveness. Um, I have to do more so I can be forgiven. That is the. You got the cart before the horse. If you're. If you're here, let me put it this way, and I hope. I hope this is clear. If your lack of works is a problem, it's a problem with your faith, right? You don't need to get more works so you can have better faith. You need to get better faith so you can have more works. Faith is the issue. Works are the symptom. And that's what James seems to be teaching. Faith is the real thing, the real thing in question. Do you, does your faith save you? Well, if it's played out in works. Now, if a youth is like, but I don't really follow God much at all. I don't really. Then you might have to say, well, what kind of faith do you have? Do you really trust in Christ? Are you really committed to Christ? Um, fix the faith and you'll fix the works. If you just try to add good works onto a dead faith, then that could, uh, uh, lead to other problems. So there's a balancing act that's there. I wouldn't say, though, that if someone's like, I feel like maybe I'm not sincere because I don't live out my christian faith. That's not the same as Galatians, where Paul's like, you guys are actually saying you're saved by your obedience to the law. And that's a different issue. Is it fruit or is it root? That's the question you got to ask. All right, let's go to the next question. Number ten. Cameron Donaldson says, what should we make of Paul saying, I, not the Lord? This is interesting. So, first Corinthians seven, Paul, he's like, oh, the Lord says this about this issue, and he goes, and now I, not the Lord. I say this, and I've heard some say, you can disregard this part because Paul is just giving his private opinion. Let's look at the passage. Um, first Corinthians, chapter seven. All right. Um, you put in verse twelve. It kind of comes in a bit earlier. Let's look at this. Um, um, uh, now, as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as myself. Um, um. He was single at the time, but each one, each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. He's, he's saying, hey, ideally for the kingdom, you know, it'd be cool if everybody was single, I wish. But that, it's interesting here, his, his personal desire is different than God's actual plan, but each one has his own gift from God. And so, yeah, we don't need to push everybody to be single and stuff like that. To the unmarried, he says, and the widows, I say, it is good for them to remain single. As I am not necessary. He just says it's good. If they cannot exercise self control, they should marry. Okay, that's a should. If you have self control issues, your desires are there. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. To the married, I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. Okay, really? It starts in verse ten. He's like, here's the charge. But, hey, it's not just me. This is coming from the Lord and the charges. The wife should not separate from her husband. Hmm. Where is this from? Is Paul in verse, uh, ten through eleven. He goes on and says if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and the husband should not divorce his wife. Is Paul relating, like, something in the moment as he's writing? And he's like, whoa, the Lord just gave me something and I'm going to write it down. This is from the Lord. And the next thing he writes, he's like, but this is just me. It's I, not the Lord. In verse twelve, is that what's happening? No. Paul here is referring to the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, where Jesus talks about marriage and divorce. Like Matthew nine, where Jesus is saying, you know, Moses permitted you to divorce because the hardness of your heart. But in the beginning it was not this way. It's. It's basically wrong. Divorce is wrong. By and large, divorce is just wrong in every single scenario. No, by and large, most divorces are immoral, and that's what Paul's getting at. Uh, the Lord actually weighed in on this, and he's actually quoting what the Lord said, which is an affirmation that Paul was familiar with the teachings of Jesus in the gospels when he wrote this very early letter, first corinthians, this was written very early, like fifties. Um, okay, so verse twelve to the rest I say I, not the Lord. Well, if we understand verse eleven is a reference to him having a direct quote from Jesus, then we understand that verse twelve is him having an apostolic teaching based upon his own authority. Not a preference, but an authority. It's just not something Jesus clearly laid out. Do you see the difference there? He's just differentiating. What's cool about it is, from an apologist standpoint here is Paul affirming that something Jesus said in the gospels was something Jesus actually said, affirming sort of the divine inspiration as well as the, uh, faithful, uh, account of the gospels about Jesus. But here in verse twelve, he says to the rest, I say I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who's an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who's an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. And he goes on and explains in more detail. But I think that he's giving an apostolic teaching here. Paul, the apostles teaching on this topic. Jesus didn't address it specifically. He didn't say, um, here is what to do when, um, your spouse is a non believer. Jesus didn't address that specifically. So Paul's addressing it, which is also to show that Jesus's general blanket, don't get divorced, isn't answering every possible scenario. It's a general truth. Divorce is wrong. I'm, uh, saying a lot of things there, but the thing is, these all tie in so much to that whole study on marriage and divorce. I'll link it down below. I've mentioned it already today. I'll link it down below. My three hour video on marriage and divorce. Everything the Bible says about it, it's really not about marriage so much as remarriage and divorce. And it's a very careful, thoughtful three hour video on it. For those who need that info desperately, you will find it there. So, Cameron, I'm going to read your question one more time. Make sure I answered it. What should we make of Paul saying, I, not the Lord, as if he's just giving his own opinion, while also believing that all scripture which includes this statement is holy spirit inspired? Um, I think in this particular case, on your screen now on verse twelve, when he says, I, not the Lord, he's saying it, I, Paul the apostle. He's just differentiating. This is not something that Jesus directly said. When we recognize verse eleven is a, it's not a quote, but it's a paraphrase of Jesus's teaching, clearly recorded in the gospels. Then this is one whom the Lord has found trustworthy, Paul the apostle, offering a teaching on that. Um, I would consider this authoritative. He doesn't say I have a preference. He could say that he did earlier. Um, I wish that all were my. Were as myself. I myself am. That's not a teaching of what you have to do. He's telling you about his desires, but then he's like, yeah, but that's not God's plan. So that's to nuance that carefully. But in verse twelve, he seems to be offering a straight up teaching. This is what you're supposed to do. And I'm saying this. And who's saying it? Paul the apostle, he's saying it as an apostle, so he's not meaning to devalue. He doesn't mean in verse eleven, this is inspired, and in verse twelve, this is not inspired. And now we bring up this controversial issue of which verses are actually inspired in the Bible. Uh, verse eleven is just a direct paraphrase of Jesus. Verse twelve is a, uh, teaching from Paul the apostle, both under the inspiration of the spirit. Hope that answers your question. All right, you guys, um, listen, next Friday is the skeptics Q and A. I want to tackle, and I will do my best. And if I don't know, I will simply say, I don't know. To tackle the best questions, even hard questions don't hold back. Bring hard questions. Um, from a skeptical perspective, whether you're a skeptic or, you know, a skeptic that's asking these questions, someone that the kind of things an unbeliever goes, this is what stumbles me. This is why I'm not looking to Christ. This is why I don't, you know, think that I can trust in Jesus. Um, let's tackle those questions next week. I'll do another atheist style Q and A. Skeptic style Q and A. It can also be from other religions, Muslim or Jehovah's Witness or something like that. I'm open to all that. So I'll see you guys next Friday. But otherwise, let's pray. Uh, Lord, thank you for your holy word. Thank you for the goodness of the scriptures and how you have answers for us in unexpected places. Um, for the challenges and the struggles we face. 24 01:40:37.000 --> 01:40:38.000 We. 25 01:40:37.000 --> 01:41:20.000 Right now, I'm just thinking back about that question about worrying and, ah, we pray, Lord, that you'd help us. The things we worry about, help us to see the stuff we can actually affect, and for us to continue to care about those things and take action to make a difference, not just worry about it, but take a step to make the situation better, but for the things we can't control, for the disastrous worries we have that we have no power to stop, we pray that you'd help us to start to really say, Lord, I trust you. Even if that happens, even if the mountains are removed, I trust you. Even if the worst thing I can think of happens, I still trust you. In Jesus name, amen. Mhm.