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Here we go. Question number one for the q and a today is, how do you explain the existence of moral and virtuous people who do not follow Christianity? In other words, good sinners. Are there such a thing as good sinners yet, uh, still they seem to live as compassionate, ethical, and fulfilled as devout christians. These are kind of two different issues. Are they fulfilled? Is there true, like, happiness and contentment? That's there. And also, so are they truly ethical? Um, this is a bit of a conundrum when you think about. There's a simple, easy answer. I'm not suggesting that it's difficult in the sense of giving an easy answer, but when I say it's a conundrum, I mean, I can feel the tension people feel related to this question because on one side, they want to affirm as a Christian. Yeah, uh, everybody has sinned. And that sin isn't just like, a little small issue, but a major issue. And you need to be forgiven. You need the grace of Christ. You need the forgiveness of God. But I also want to recognize, like, a woman who curls herself over her child, cradling her while a building is burning down, and gives her own body to be burned so that this baby could be saved.

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That it's hard for me to say, like, that wasn't a good deed, that that wasn't an amazingly good deed that she did. So how do you explain these people's existence? Or some people might point to, like, say, gandhi. Gandhi. For some reason, everybody thinks of Gandhi, right? Gandhi is, um.

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He's like the go to for. Everybody knows Gandhi was a good guy. Everybody likes Gandhi. He seemed pleasant, and he seemed morally upright and good. Okay, so let's walk through the theology of this. My, uh, name is Mike winger. I'm here to, hopefully, God willing, help you learn to think biblically about everything. That is, not by telling you what I think about everything. Although it might sound like I'm doing that to some, um, but rather redirecting you to scripture on these issues. And so here are some scriptures to think about related to this issue. Let's start with Romans chapter three. So, romans one through three. That whole section is like a big old lesson on the nature of man, and it's not a positive lesson. It's a lesson that exposes the problems of man and the sin of man, and everybody's sin. In Romans one, he's like, yep, all those gentiles, they've sinned. But, hey, Romans two, even you Jews, you also have sinned. You all have fallen short. And that's kind of what comes and comes to a culmination, a climactic point in Romans chapter three about the sin of mankind. So this is something that's true of all people, myself included. It's just true of all people, according to Christianity. Romans chapter three. So verses nine through 20. I was going to read the whole section, um, but I'll just skim through parts of it, uh, because I want to move quickly today. So what then? Are we better than they? Not at all. What is this? Paul's like, hey, are Jews better than gentiles? No, we've previously charged, and this is like the conclusion, in case you missed his point, that both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. There's a category called under sin, and it applies to all humankind. We're all under sin. And then he goes on to explain it with a quote from the Old Testament that is, as it is written. There's none righteous. No, not one. Right? Verse eleven. There is no one who seeks after God.

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In other words, not fully, not truly. Are you really fully seeking after God? There's, uh, no one who does good. No, not one.

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Paul is taking this psalm and he's. Because of the context he's getting into. He's saying, hey, this applies to all humankind. Every human has sinfully fallen and that they are in trouble because of this. Let me read a little bit more here. It says in verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And, you know, ask, what did I fall? What do you mean people have sinned? You mean every single thing they do is evil? Completely and utterly evil. I didn't say that. They're all under sin and they all fall short of God's glory. When we're comparing ourselves to each other, it's easy to see good people and bad people.

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Um, you'll get phrases like, most people are good. Most people are good. Uh, the pope said this not long ago, most people are good. It's easy when you're comparing people to people, to find the better people and the worst people and put them on a scale so that they're being ranked amongst each other. And whenever you do this, it's like all these list videos that people get where they're like, okay, what's the top tier? What's the s tier? I think it's called, um, of the people. Like the most good people I know versus the lowest. I think it's f tier. The worst people I know. When you put people on a human scale, you'll always have somebody at the top who is the best people, you know. But when you add to that scale the glory of God, if God's glory and his holiness and goodness are the s tier or the highest on the scale, then all of a sudden you realize everybody is way down below. They're just different levels of f. They're all really low compared to him. So it's in comparison to God that humankind have all really, truly fallen short in comparison to each other. I can say, yeah, that guy is a good guy. He's a good guy. I mean, compared to your average person. And, uh, based on the things that matter to me, not even everything. So in John 834, Jesus says this, that those who commit sin are slaves of sin.

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Um, that there is a bondage to sin the moment somebody commits sin and who is sinned. Well, I read you Romans 323, everybody has sinned. Everybody is a slave of sin apart from Christ.

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Romans 718, this is the next. This is the downside. I'm going to balance this out with some other information in scripture. Romans 718, Paul says, in me, that is in my flesh, in my natural abilities. Apart from God, nothing good dwells, for the will is present with me. But how to perform what is good, I do not find.

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He cannot consistently, persistently, reliably be a good person in a genuine, full sense. He can't do that. It's not in him to do it. There's something flawed about his very nature. And, um, it's true about everybody's nature. So that we never truly do fully, perfectly good acts, even though we do on a different way of measuring, we do things that are at least somewhat good. Why do I say that? Well, also in Romans, Romans two talks about people doing good things. Let's go to verse 14 and 15. Romans two talks about here conscience, uh, meaning people's internal awareness of right and wrong, moral good and moral evil.

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And it says here that when gentiles who do not have the law, don't have the law of the jews by nature do the things in the law, what does those do the things in the law? He means like taking care of your neighbor, paying back what you owe, keeping your promises. He's like, sometimes they do that stuff. Sometimes gentiles do things, they don't fulfill the law. They're not perfectly obedient, but they sometimes do things that are in the law. These, although not having a law, are a law to themselves.

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I don't know how to read verse 14 without affirming that there are non believers who do good deeds, verse 15, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them. That is, God's given people. Uh, there's like a cool theology about the conscience here, but God's given people an internal awareness of right and wrong.

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And there are those who are not christians, right? They're not in this case, they don't even have the law. They're not submitted to the work of God. What God has done through Israel, or what he ultimately has done through Messiah, after that. But they do something good instinctively because there's a conscience and an awareness of right and wrong. So sometimes their thoughts accuse them telling them you did something wrong. Sometimes their thoughts excuse them telling them you did something good there.

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And God will ultimately judge the secrets of our hearts. You can also add to this that, um, Jesus affirms that people do good things sometimes. Right? Let's look at Luke, chapter eleven, verse 13. This is not only in the gospel of Luke, but he says, if you then. And, uh, I want to highlight. I always highlight this. Jesus is not talking to pharisees here. He's talking to just humans, just people. He says, you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? This is the, uh, statement of, like, hey, if a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? No. Dads usually take care of their kids.

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What if, you know, a nonbeliever and you're like, he seems like a good dad. He takes care of his kids. He seems like he really cares about his family. I really feel like I respect him a lot. He's better than a lot of christians I know. In that regard, Jesus is able to affirm two things in this verse, this section, really verse 13, though, he affirms people can do good and still be evil in their nature.

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That's the thing that I think brings balance to this issue. I recognize that in relation to God, I'm under sin, I'm enslaved to sin, I fall short of his glory, and I'm f tier in relation to other, the other people, to partially good works, you know, or like, I do something good for my kid, but that doesn't make me a good holy person in relation to God. That's kind of what Jesus is bringing that balance to. There's something perhaps lacking even in the good deeds of the. Of the people who are unsaved. I would say this though, now some are going to think, Mike, this is just christian elitism. You're acting like christians can do good works, but unsaved people can't do good works. No, that's, that's not it. Um, even my good works as a Christian, there is something lacking in them, in that I can still not earn my way to heaven. I'm still incomplete, insufficient, plagued by sin. I still fall short of the glory of God on a regular basis. Every human does all the time.

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Christ gives you forgiveness, he takes your sin upon himself and he gives you his righteousness. That's how you can be saved, but you can do something good. The Bible says that Cyrus did the will of God.

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That is, he did some things that were good, that were things that were considered morally good things that he did. That doesnt mean everything he did was the will of God. Uh, David was a man after gods own heart. Yeah, but he wasnt perfectly or consistently a man after gods own heart. But he was, compared to Saul, a man after gods own heart. He still had his error, his sin with Bathsheba, his murder of Uriah, her husband. We have David failing in various ways, um, his family. There were some very significant failures that went on there. So David is an example of a guy who did good things, but also was flawed even within many of the good things he did. I think that this is the case for us. We're a mixed bag. We're a mixed bag. But here's the problem.

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Mixed bag is not a good way to appeal to God and say, God, I'm a good person, receive me into your righteousness because he's perfectly righteous. Isaiah puts it this way. This is a really cool, like, visual for understanding the good works that we can present to God apart from being Christian. Isaiah 64 six.

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It says here we are all like an unclean thing and all our righteousness are like filthy rags. And I can get into the detail of the word here and all that it means. Oh, sorry, I'll put it on your screen. But my point is simply to say this. Um, a filthy rag is to say I want to present somebody something clean. And maybe it has spots that are clean, but it has dirty spots on it. Like if I see a rag or a hand towel or something and it has like nasty, disgusting things on it, but it has pieces that are clean.

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I could always point at the clean bits. I could fold it in a way that shows only the clean bits, like an Instagram version of my righteousness. I'm just going to show the clean bits, but it's still a, uh, soiled, icky thing. I don't want to touch it. I don't want to give it to somebody. If I present it to them as here's my righteousness, it's not going to work. When God evaluates us in our goodness, he doesn't evaluate it in pieces the way we do with people's social media accounts. He doesn't evaluate it like, where I fold up my righteousness and just show the white bits to people so they can see the good parts of me. He evaluates everything about us. Our internal thoughts, our desires, our, uh, failings, our secret sins, the things that you would be embarrassed if anybody knew about you because it would ruin their image of you.

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God sees everything, so you can't present to him a whitewashed version of yourself. You're going to be right there in the open. And Isaiah presents it like that. Yeah. My righteousness, even the good things I do, ends up being tainted in some sense. Doesn't mean it wasn't good. It means it wasn't good enough to, like, make me presentable before God as a holy or good person to be approved by him.

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Um. Man, there's so much other scripture I could give on this about how we are actually saved. Um, the scripture says that God imputes his righteousness to us. This is kind of cool. So I don't. I don't actually, as a Christian, I don't live. Look, I have a white shirt on to demonstrate this. I guess today, unintentionally, I just have somewhere to go later on, so I gotta wear a button up. Um.

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Um.

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The thing I don't do is I don't present my righteousness like this white shirt is something I have created, have done perfect good things, and I present myself to God like that instead. The way scripture talks about it, God takes away my filthy rags, my sin soaked garments, so to speak, metaphorically. He takes away my sin, he puts them on Jesus, then Jesus wears my sin on the cross, is punished for what I've done, and then he comes alongside and he hands me a new piece of clothing and this new piece of clothing. It's his righteousness. It's his righteousness. And so that I'm christians are good only in the sense truly good only in the sense that we are clothed with the works of Jesus and the righteousness of God. You might think I'm making that up. Let me show you some scripture. Okay. So this is, um, second corinthians, chapter five, verse 21.

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It says here for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. That's Jesus taking my sin upon himself. He never sinned. He became sin for me. He took on my sins that we might become what? The righteousness of God in him. You don't become righteous like it's the righteousness of Mike or, uh, the righteousness of whoever's listening right now. You know, Phil, put your name in there. You. Instead, you become the righteousness of God, so that it is God presenting his own righteousness to himself through Christ. As you're in Christ, so now you enter into his presence because you're as holy as him through imputation, through him imparting his righteousness to you.

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This is the only way you're ever going to make it, the only way you're ever going to be good enough. So Christians aren't better in that. In the sense of, oh, we live perfect, holy lives. No, we're made righteous by the righteousness of Jesus. And apart from that, we all would be lost. We all would be lost. Like the old saying, you know, one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. And, uh, Jesus is the bread of life.

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There is also romans 1013.

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Um, that's a great verse, but it's not the one I was looking for. Ten three.

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Um, good for you to memorize that one right there. Okay. Ten three says, for they. This is people who are unsaved, people who try to present their own good works to God. Like God, I'm a good person. I'm good enough for you. They, being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. What is this? So if I'm saying, God, look at me, I'm a good person, then I'm ignorant of his righteousness because I'm only comparing myself to other humans. Hey, my rags aren't as filthy as that guy's. I feel like I'm a good person, but once I stand before God in his holiness, I see my sin for what it really is and I go, wow, I'm really lost. Like, every evil thought, every bad thing I've said, every deceitful thing, manipulative thing, even when people thought I was being good and I was really just manipulating them for my own agendas and own goals, every single thing I've ever done wrong is on record. And that's my righteousness that I have to present to you. I'm in a lot of trouble.

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Motives, actions, words, all of it.

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Once you stand before the holy God, you realize that you are no longer ignorant of God's righteousness, right? You realize God's righteousness is perfection. And if you pretend it's not, if you act like he just wants you to be fairly good, then you will try to establish your own righteousness. You'll try to be like, yeah, I'm a good person. Look at me. I feel like Gandhi doesn't deserve to go to hell. Gandhi doesn't deserve. Who said that? Like Rob Bell said in his video, he goes, Gandhi's in hell. Who? Who said that? How do we know that kind of thing? And he really challenged these things because he thought Gandhi was a good person. Because Rob Bell, like many others, if you guys remember Rob Bell, he's kind of irrelevant now. But, um, at least to the reach he used to have, he's relatively irrelevant now. We all will be eventually. That's not an insult, just acknowledging that you may not know who he is. Um, but Rob Bell, you know, he was pretty, pretty influential at the time, before he kind of became apostate, uh, or maybe revealed that he was apostate. Um, so they're ignorant of their own righteousness, of God's righteousness. That's when I say, oh, isn't Gandhi good enough for God?

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I mean, what sin could he have? Look at the man. He's so self sacrificial. He's so godly. He's not even Christian. There's the quote from Gandhi. I always hear. Gandhi says, I like your Jesus, but I don't like you christians. And it's like, okay, well, there you go. So, Gandhi, there's one example of self righteousness that he's fighting with and dealing with there. Um.

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Um, yeah, just a sad situation. I'll talk about Gandhi in a second. But seeking to establish their own righteousness, to say that Gandhi is a good person, so he's not going to go to hell. This is also rabel or someone else's way of establishing their own righteousness, too. And I'm a good person, and so I don't need to have faith in Jesus to be saved. This is unnecessary. I'm good enough. Jesus, I appreciate your offer to pay for my sins, but trust me, I got the. I can pay the bill on this. I can pay for my own sins. I'm a good person.

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I can deal with it. And so it's. It's a pride that rejects the righteousness of God, and then you haven't submitted to the righteousness of God, which is. That's when Jesus gives you God's righteousness. It's this doctrine of imputations, this beautiful, powerful thing. So speaking of Gandhi, um, and there's a verse I have for Gandhi right here. I'm gonna share with you in a second. One Timothy 524. But Gandhi, well, um, known for many good things that he did. Okay? Most of us, we know a little bit about the guy, and we just know he has extremely positive reputation, and we assume the rest of his life matches that. Um, this is one example among many. Gandhi was not that great. Okay? Most of our heroes weren't as great as we think. Martin Luther King Junior, uh, was not as great as you think. Martin Luther probably wasn't as great as you think. I. That I'm not as great as you think. If you think I'm great, I'm not. And, um, all of us, we are all desperately in need of the grace of God. We really are. Gandhi would not sleep with his wife. This was a rule he had, which is an abandonment of his marital responsibilities. We would say that is a sin, is an ungodly sin. Because of his weird religious views. He wouldn't sleep with his wife. But one thing he did do, he said, and you could check on this on your own, he said that he felt he should be tempted and test himself in this area of abstaining from sexual stuff. So how would he tempt himself? He would grab young women, relatives, even, like a niece, I think it was. A cousin, a niece, I think it was, and sleep naked with these, as he was an older man, with these young women in his bed as a way of testing himself, because he felt like that was something that was good.

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This is nothing other than gross perversion and abuse and inappropriate. Like, you should be arrested for what he did. Like that you should get arrested. These young, underage. I, uh, don't know the exact age, but they're certainly morally inappropriate, what he did. This is something that we know about Gandhi. What else do we know? We don't. We know that he, like, had this weird fetish with dying while fasting. He, like, wanted to die. It was like a weird obsession he had. Um. Um, whereas, you know, Paul's like, you know, I don't want to die. I want to go to be with the Lord, but I don't want to just die. I don't. And it's not healthy for people to have that desire that's there to die. That's. That's something unhealthy. Was. Am I saying Gandhi's all bad? No, I'm saying, let's be realistic. People are a mixed bag. The best guy, you know, has issues you don't even know about, and I'm not the best guy, you know, because you don't know me that well to be able to say that. But let's pretend it was me. I have issues you don't know about. We all have sin. We all have petty, selfish, carnal things about us, every single one of us, and we desperately need the grace of God. So can there be, uh, good non christians by comparison to other humans? Absolutely. Absolutely. Can they be genuinely good in the sense of appealing to God as I'm a good person, receive me? No. None of us can. Every one of us fails. We're just different degrees of failing at that point. You got an f. Good job, buddy.

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I think the christian theology of it, um, there's also a fact that sin can permeate even some of our good deeds, even some of the things we do that are good.

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It can be that I take my kid out to the game and I read them a book every night so that I can feel like I'm better than these other dads. It can actually be a non love motive for doing things that habitually look like great loving habits. I'm not saying people do this. Everybody who's doing something good is doing it for a bad motive. Not saying that, but we should acknowledge that we're complicated people. For instance, and here's that verse, let's say, give you a verse about Gandhi. Uh, some men's sins are clearly evident, preceding them to judgment, but some, but those of some men follow later.

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Likewise, the good works are the same way. Sometimes you see a person's good works, you can see exactly what's on display. So, uh, much of my ministry is right there on display. So you. So you. This is why people would think too highly of me. I think, in general, people probably do. Either. Either they think too lowly of me, they hate my guts for all these reasons, or they think too highly of me because they see me exercising my gifts and being a blessing to the body. And that's all they know about me. So inevitably, they'll think too highly. It's just most people are like that. But, um, hopefully me saying things like this gets you to realize this, that you shouldn't do that same thing for your pastors and for other leaders and stuff in your life. They're just people.

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But, yeah, the, uh, sins of some are evident. You know, some people whose sins are super obvious, and others, you found out years later you found out about the affair they had, uh, like ten years after they passed away.

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You never found out about the issues that were going on. The bottom line is, as a Christian, you don't have to say everything you do is evil, but you can say it's complicated, right? You have a moral conscience, but yet you do fall short. You are a slave of sin. Scripture says you do need the righteousness of God because if you're going to compare yourself with other humans, you'll think you're good. The second you look at the creator, you will know you desperately need to believe in Jesus. He is the only way you can be forgiven and deal with your real sin issues. Stop pretending you're as good as God because that is his standard, perfect, complete, holy goodness and motive in action every single time.

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Otherwise, we're slaves to sin, which we are apart from Christ. All right, we're going to go to your guys questions today and, um, thanks for joining me. We do this every Friday as I'm getting ready to read the next question. Every Friday at 01:00 p.m. that's Pacific time or, you know, whatever time it is in California, because we switch an hour. We do daylight savings and stuff. So at Pacific time, 01:00 on Fridays. Here we go. Question number two misses t says, who is supposed to call out false teachings and teachers and how I'm struggling to find scripture. Thank you for your ministry and for teaching me to think biblically.

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Um, who is supposed to call them out? Um, does scripture give us this kind of clarity? Let's think about this. Let's try to think of some examples in scripture. Um, I know many of the prophets call out false teachers. And so obviously, if God has called you, uh, to, you know, I'm calling you to go and confront these people and deal with their issues. You should call out the false teachers.

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Um, so many of the prophets do this. Jeremiah does this and plenty of other ones do this. Um, you know, woe to those who say to my people, peace when there is no peace.

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Then you've got, um, Jesus. He definitely does it. Jesus in the gospels, he calls out false teaching, and he does it with the pharisees. He is very confrontive towards them. And we get in these issues about, like, should we name names? Should we not name names? And people come up with all these policies. I think it's just kind of one of those things where wisdom is justified by her children. The, uh, Lord give you wisdom on when you should call out names, when you should not. There isn't some simple, hard and fast three point test for this. There's, life is complicated and you, at least that's how I look at. I address the situations as they exist. Um, but Jesus, obviously, he can call out false teachers. What about the apostles? Um, yep, the apostles called out false teachers. Lots. Uh, of the epistles are them calling out and dealing with false teachers, even sometimes naming people. I mean, Alexander, these different people that are even named. We also have, uh, Jude that seems to extend this because we might think, okay, it's just. Just leaders then, right? Like, leaders can call out false teachers, but not.

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Not normal christians. Normal Christians should stay in the pew and not say anything.

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Um, I do not believe that is the case. Now, there can be decorum and there can be a right way to do it, right time to do it. But anyone who wants to suggest that a normal, everyday Christian cannot do that, I think is incorrect. So let's read here from Jude, starting in verse three. Only one chapter in Jude. So, verse three. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

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He wants them to contend. This is fight for the faith they're to fight for. Now, physically fighting? No, he's talking about arguing and debating and discussing and calling out things. How do I know? Well, look at verse four. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation. Ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.

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He says, I want you to fight for the faith. Why? Because you have people who have crept in who are perverting the faith.

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This has to mean that Jude is calling random regular pew sitters just normal christians. I mean, pew sitters are kind of like an insulting term, if you ask me, because we do a lot more than sit in pews. Right. Um, but he's calling normal christians to actually stand up and speak truth and contend for the faith. If you see a Christian in error, you have the ability to talk to them about it. Obviously, you don't correct every single error you can find.

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Um, that itself would be an error. Right? You'd be an error if you're correct every single error. Every single time someone says something that's incorrect, the question is like, is this error perverting the grace of God into sensuality? Is this error something that God is, like, condemning, or is it like, ah, this is not really great, but it's not that big of a thing. I'm not going to confront it. He's talking about major big issues. If you see, like, the gospels at stake, every Christian has the right to call that out. We do. Um, we want to not be obnoxious. We want to be thoughtful and wise about the way we do it. We want to consider ourselves lest we also be tempted. Uh, Galatians talks about that. A verse I often quote on this topic says, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you are spiritual, should restore him in a spirit of gentleness, keeping watch on yourself, lest you to be tempted. So I'm to consider myself first and go like, let me think about me. This is not a selfish, consider yourself first. This is a, let me evaluate my motives and my method here, and then I'll go and address the person and I'll seek to restore them. If they're hurting others, well, then I'm going to call it out even more. Um, there can be wisdom in saying, hey, this, um, happened in a small group meeting.

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Um, the leaders right there in that meeting, they should call it out. And I try to give them space and I want them to call it out. And if they won't, maybe I will. If it's a central issue to the faith, you call it out more loudly, more instantaneously. The further out the issue gets, the more grace you will have on tertiary or really non, uh, issues where you think. I think you're technically wrong here, but it's also not going to affect much of your theology or much of your practice. Then I'm not going to make a thing about it. We have to be able to agree to disagree on certain issues.

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Um, every Christian is empowered to stand for the gospel, be representative of the gospel, and fight for the faith. That is the core doctrines of christianity. Every Christian, yeah. Try to do so without, um. Maybe this is good homework.

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Go on. When you're, when you're online, look at the way people are calling other people out. Ask yourself what you think is effective and useful and helpful versus what is so soft it didn't even, it wasn't even heard, or felt so rude that it wasn't heard either. And try to find a balance where you can, where you can actually be persuasive. Our agenda is not. This is also important. I think we realize that our agenda is not to call out like, oh, I called it out. My job is done here. Our agenda is to fight for the faith. I'm presenting the faith, I'm preserving the faith, and I'm giving it to others, not just labeling, that's bad, that's bad, that's bad. And I run the other way. I'm trying to actually have an impact. I think sometimes people who will call out stuff, um, against, like, false gospel things. So progressive Christianity is very much something you have to call out, um, for the most part.

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It's not like they're wrong about every single belief they have, about everything.

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But the core of it is very much against the gospel of Christ. Um, at least that's my perception of it. I've looked into it a good bit, so you have to call that out, of course. But, um, I just lost my train of thought. What was I started thinking about progressive Christianity and the different beliefs and the different camps they've got. Um, what was I going to tell you? Something really I thought was going to be helpful.

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It might come to me later. I don't know. That's me. Call me out for being lame. All right, but I'm going to go to the next question. So this is going to be question number three coming in from evangelist Robert Mansour, who says, um, hi, Mike. I really enjoy your teachings. Do you believe that in Luke 21 20, Jesus is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem for today's time? Ooh, tough question, actually, for a few reasons. Luke 21 20.

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So I do think the gospels, the four goddess, the three synoptic gospels, um, especially, um, well, I guess Matthew, Mark and Luke all handle this in a different angle, different way. Luke in particular seems to handle it with a specific focus, meaning that he recounts some of what Jesus says. Neither of them are giving an exhaustive accounting of every word of Jesus, but he's recounting what Jesus is saying about future judgment coming. And he seems to have a specific focus. So let's back up and ask just what is Luke's focus? Okay, we're going to read the passage.

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While, uh, some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings. He said, as for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here, 1 st upon another that will not be thrown down. Okay, we know that this actually happened in 70 AD. Okay. Those stones, those exact stones that they were looking at, that they were talking about, Jesus just says, days will come. Then they ask him, teacher, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when these things are about to take place? Now, here's where Luke is different than Matthew or Mark, I believe. Definitely Mark, I think Matthew as well, if, uh, memory serves.

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So the question that Luke doesn't talk about is when they asked and what will be the sign of your coming? That's not here in Luke as a question they're asking, and that's a difference. Luke is not focused on that. He seems to be focused on what Jesus is saying about the destruction of the temple. That's the emphasis in Luke, whereas St. Mark, I believe, is giving a much broader focus on not only the destruction of the temple, but also the second coming of Christ. For those who don't know, I'm not a preterist. I do not think that in any sense the second coming happened in 70 AD.

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Um, or the son of man coming, or some coming of Jesus happened in 70 AD, coming in judgment, or those other types of things that would relate to when the son of man returns or comes. I don't think that at all. For those who are aware of that debate, um, anyway, verse eight. And he says, see that you are not led astray. For many will come in my name saying, I am he, and the time is at hand. Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified, for these things must first take place. But the end will not be at once. Right. This is now he's talking about not being deceived by those who say Jesus has come. That's interesting to think about that. That Jesus consistent warning about in times is, don't believe people who say that I have come.

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Then he said, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes in various places, famines and pestilences, and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. But before all this. Before all this.

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Before all this. Okay, so, um, all this stuff's happening later on. This is some distant stuff. Before this, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you and deliver you up to the synagogues and prisons. And you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness. Settle, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. What a. What a wonderful thing to think about.

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Um, you will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my namesake, but not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance, you will gain your lives. This is. He just says, this is cool. Side note thing. Some of you will be put to death. They will literally be killed. And then he says, but not a hair of your head will perish. What does he mean? He means that even if you die for Christ, even if you suffer and die, even if they burn you and all your hair is burned up, the resurrection is coming, and you will be whole and complete and preserved. And no one can take that away from you. They can only kill your body.

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But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, okay, here's something that is something they can look for on the horizon, in a sense. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let those who are in the city depart. And let not those who are out in the country enter it. For these are the days of vengeance to fulfill all that is written. Alas. And he goes on, women who are pregnant, and you can go on. Then he talks about the coming of the son of man, and he talks about a whole bunch of stuff happening. Signs and distress of nations. Is this 70 ad?

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Um, okay, my view in a nutshell. And I will find. I have a video where I go into detail on this when I was going through the mark series, and I talk about this. I will try to find that video and link it in the description below. And I go through verse by verse, compare each of the gospels in detail. In a nutshell. My view is this, that the verses you referenced are, um, have a type of double fulfillment, that they speak in a way that warns them of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. And not 1 st will be left. But there is an application as well, a greater fulfillment that is going to be talking about a second type of event, and that is in the future. That is Jerusalem again. That is the destruction again. That is part of the end times. The temple will be rebuilt. And. Okay, I could be wrong in my eschatology.

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I do think this is correct. It's my understanding of it. Um, but I could be incorrect here, because eschatology is a very challenging subject. We're putting together so many different texts of scripture that, um, yeah, I just want to acknowledge that and have some humility there.

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But, yeah, there's this time coming where there's a seven year tribulation, there's a rebuilt temple. Then there's the attack on, uh, the Jews, as well as the temple, as well as just anybody who's going to not take the mark of the beast and all that kind of stuff. I think that stuff's still coming. Jesus is speaking in a way, then that protects the people who were listening to him right there. So when the destruction of Jerusalem comes, they flee in 70 ad, but also speaks more directly and more fully to the final destruction of the temple. And what's interesting is you can kind of see him do this with an event that took place, um, called the abomination of desolation.

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Basically, um, Jesus gives us reason in these very passages in the same section where he's talking here to see a double fulfillment, or you might say partial and then total fulfillment of prophecy as something that he's using even as he talks about these issues. I know that's probably a lot to get into for the q and a. Um, Jesus does this a few times, though. He says, um, John the Baptist is Elijah who is to come.

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What? Well, I mean, he's not the reincarnation of Elijah. He stands in the place of Elijah, doing the thing of Elijah, which is preparing the way of the Lord. But the people are like, isn't Elijah supposed to come before the coming? Well, Jesus has two comings. We're first and second coming. And his first coming, John the Baptist, represents Elijah calling people. But yet there's a future second coming where another Elijah figure shows up and he maybe Elijah himself, in this case, um, not reincarnated, he just shows up on earth and then that's conjecture. Okay, possibly. But he's going to be preaching and doing amazing things. We read about that in revelation, this other Elijah figure, and he will come before the day of judgment. So there's like a, uh, already and a not yet. Elijah did come, John, but he will come because he didn't fully fulfill all that Elijah will do because Jesus didn't fully fulfill all that Jesus will do. He did everything he was intended to do in his first coming. And there's more prophecy about his second. This partial total thing is kind of a theme with the very arrival of Jesus. He comes as a suffering servant, he comes as the lamb. Later he comes back as the lion. That's two things. There's a destruction in 70 Ad, but there's also a future destruction that's connected to the final judgment of the world, the return of Christ and all that. Does that make sense? You see how, like, I'm not just making up this partial total fulfillment thing. The New Testament definitely trades on this idea. And there's. I can give other examples, but I'll try to find that video and link it down below. For those who want more details there. Uh, let's go to the next question. This is number four from Meg B. Who says, how can we pray for our enemies biblically, especially those actively trying to kill those you love. Okay, these are true enemies. These are, um. Let's suppose you're in a war torn environment, um, or in a fairly lawless environment, and there are people actually actively trying to murder your loved ones. How do you pray for them?

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Um, so there's a. There's. For me, when I do pray for enemies, I think that it has a profound impact on my attitude and my heart towards them and towards the Lord. Even when I pray for them, it changes.

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It stirs up love within me, the kind of love God has for his own enemies, because I'm an enemy of God apart from Christ.

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So how do you pray for them? Well, you can't pray for their success, right? Help them be successful in all their endeavors. You can't pray that their endeavors are evil. You're not going to partner with evil like that. So what would I pray for? What would be their. What would be to their benefit? My enemies here, in this case, who are trying to commit murder? No. I pray that they get caught. Is that not to their benefit? Accountability and stopping them from continuing crimes, that that helps them, too, actually. I pray that they realize the error of their ways. I pray that even as they persecute and attack other people, that those people, whoever, whichever of them are christians, would be witnesses to them. Bye. Demonstrating their faith in Christ and their confidence in the Lord. So that it would be like a light. It would be like Paul kicking against the goats. You get. Get that? I pray that every act they take right now would be like them kicking against the goats like Paul, and that it would lead them to Christ. I do pray for their salvation, but there's nothing wrong with you also praying. But, Lord, I pray you'd stop them. I pray you'd stop these people because they're hurting others, they're actively bringing harm to others. I pray that you deliver my loved ones from this person and that you, by your divine hand, would stop them. But I ask that you would give them a chance to receive Christ. But you know, Lord, you know what's going to happen. And whether you take them out or you just slow them down enough that they might maybe get saved, I give it to you. I think that's a good way to pray for your enemies. I think a test for this is, um, think of the person who you consider your enemy and ask yourself, would you pray for their salvation? And if you go, oh, I don't want them saved, then you have to. You've got to. This is a very significant issue in your heart between you and God. It's not even just about you and them, you and your relationship with God. You should be praying for them. You should stop and pray, Lord, please save them. And keep in mind this, if God saves them, every man who's in Christ is a new creation. The old has gone away, the new has come. That person will become new in Christ. They will be renewed in Christ, and it will be a wonderful story of God's redemption, just as your life is. Let's go to the next question. Um. Oh, there's. There's more follow ups I could do on this about imprecatory psalms and things like that. It's also, you know, it's okay to pray that God would deal with, even judge people. There are. This is like, again, to quote Jesus wisdom is justified by her children. Then pray for them. But you can also pray that the Lord would stop them because they're actively committing evil. And, um, I.

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Yeah. All right, let's do number five. Anonymous question. A church in town opened a coffee shop in the foyer. Some say it's akin to a marketplace in the temple. And others say since it's run at cost or even below that, it's fine. What are your thoughts? Um, I don't have a hard and fast judgment on this. I would just want to say the prerogative of a local church. If they want to open up a little coffee shop and they're not doing it to take advantage of people, then fine. Um, there's pros and cons, okay? There's cons in that. You might feel that, hey, we're devaluing, uh, the sacredness of the church gathering. We're gathering in the name of Christ. We're gathering to worship God almighty. We're gathering to sit under the teaching of his word, to pray for one another. And there's a certain. This is a potential con. There's a casualness that is associated with a coffee shop and bringing your coffee around and drinking and sipping, that can diminish the glory of the church service. That's. That's a legitimate potential con. Maybe, uh, you. Maybe you curb it. Maybe you're like, hey, there's coffee here. But guess what? Don't bring into the church. Oh, so they, after church, they get coffee. Well, then there's a pro there, because guess what? People get coffee. They hang out more, they fellowship more, they talk more. So here you are sipping coffee, and then all of a sudden you guys are praying together and you guys are making more fellowship connections, and that's hugely important in the body of Christ. So potentially that's a great benefit. Um, there's other pros and cons that you could weigh. Is it, however, what some people said is putting a coffee shop in the foyer of a church, or adjacent to the church in some sense, is that, um, was the term you used. Some say it's akin to a marketplace in the temple.

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Um, I don't think it's akin to that now. It could become that, okay, you start shilling all these different materials and you start making it about money. And, um, the marketplace in the temple was a marketplace where one didn't belong, um, inside the actual sanctuary, if you start buying and selling stuff and unnecessary stuff. So in the temple, you would come and you would purchase animals for sacrifice. And at least it's been said. Okay, I've tried to verify this. I haven't been able to. Okay, so this may be the case. It might just be one of those things that every pastor keeps repeating. So I would want to verify, but it's possible that, that this was the case, that a person shows up to the temple and they have a dove to offer, which was, by the way, like an offering for a poor person. And then the person at the temples inspects it and they go, oh, no, no, this dove's not good enough. I see a little blemish. Here, here, here. Buy one of my doves and they sell him a dove. They take his dove, they milk that guy for money, and the next guy shows up and they sell him the dove from the last guy. And so they're just, uh, robbing people and there's money, uh, changers who were like, yeah, you want to give, you need to use the approved temple currency. And so we're going to charge you an exchange rate. So they're making money off of every gift that comes to, to the Lord. Imagine your church having their own currency and then offering, asking you for an exchange rate for every, uh, you know, dollar that you bring. It's going to be like a 50 cent exchange rate. So. But you have to give a certain percentage, which you don't have to. But let's say that they teach this. You have to give a certain percentage, and then you have the exchange rate. So now you're giving, like, more. Maybe you were going to, maybe they tell you have to give ten, you're giving 15, you're giving twelve, you're giving 18. And maybe you're poor and guess what? These people are stealing ultimately in the name of God. Like, the marketplace was wicked in that sense. It also became, and, uh, this is important to ask if you have a coffee shop in your foia. Is this changing the focus of the ministry in any way, or is it assisting it? Is this coffee shop coming alongside of our goals and our agendas to glorify God, to build up the church, to be a place of prayer, worship, study iron, sharpening iron ministry, the gospel being proclaimed? Or is this a trend that connects to us becoming more and more watered down?

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Uh, it could go either way. Okay? It could go either way.

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I don't think that it's shallow thinking to just go, you guys have a coffee shop, compromise church. That is shallow thinking. It's convenient, it's easy, it preaches well, it goes viral on social media, but it's shallow thinking.

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Just like, if someone's like, hey, your youth group got pizza. For some reason, a few years back, they started just ripping on any youth ministry that had pizza. Like, as if pizza is not just like, this morally neutral thing where youth leaders just like, yeah, well, I mean, we were, uh. I was youth leader who did pizza all the time, and I used to think about this going on Friday nights, we do pizza thinking, going, m. We feed these kids. That's why they hang out here. And then we do Q and A's, and we talk about the Lord every Friday, just like I'm doing right now. And we talk about God, and we get really serious about this stuff. But the pizza facilitated ministry. A purely facilitated ministry. It was funny because I would see online people who generally were not in youth ministry, never been in youth ministry. Oftentimes senior pastors ripping on youth ministries for buying pizza. And I'm like, look, youth ministries have all kinds of problems. Pizza is not the problem. Let's focus on the real problems. Same thing with the coffee shop. Don't focus on what you think is a symptom. See that, and then evaluate the real issues. Is there prayer? Is there the glory of God? Is there a seriousness about which we do our ministry? Um, is there any advantage being taken of the people of God for financial gain here? Those are good questions to ask. Is this serving people and facilitating ministry, or is it milking people and hindering ministry? Those are. Those are good questions. It depends on how you do it.

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Question number six. Helene says, why was Paul annoyed with the possessed female slave in acts 1616 when she was actually telling the truth? And he also said, what about Philippians 118? Which I'm not sure how that relates, but let's go to acts first. We'll go to acts. Acts 1616.

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Um, they just taught through this at my church and recently, and I was thinking about the same thing I always think about it because it always stands out to me. So let's, uh, read this section as we were going now, it's a we passage. So Luke is here with Paul. Okay. This is part of the travel where Luke is there. And as we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling. Okay, that tells you all you need to know about her. She has an actual demonic spirit. And this spirit is impersonating a, uh, good or holy or righteous being, and she gives information.

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So some of these psychic people are just purely fake. Other, uh, ones are actually demonically empowered or some mixture of fake and demonic. At any rate, there is a demonic thing going on. But what she does is weird. She followed Paul and us, crying out, these men are servants of the most high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation.

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What? Why would a demon do that? Why would a demon emphasize the goodness and rightness of the message? Why would a demon say that Paul is a servant of the most high and that they proclaim the way of salvation? Why?

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She kept doing this for days, for many days.

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And then Paul, at some point, I, uh, like this, he becomes greatly annoyed and he turned to her and said, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ. Excuse me. Said to the spirit, not even to her. To the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out of her that very hour. And boom, her job is ruined. Her owners aren't going to make money off her anymore. So it says her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, and they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.

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Boom, cousin, now, now you're in trouble. Okay? Why wouldn't he let her just follow him around? Think about it in a really practical way. You're out there preaching the gospel. These people don't know the gospel. They don't know God. They don't know the truth at all. And you're proclaiming Jesus, and there's this demon, demon filled woman following you around, telling everybody you're men m of God, and you preach the message of salvation. What could possibly go wrong with this scenario?

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Let's suppose that they get saved. People hear and they receive, and they get saved. And the next day they see this woman walking through, and they go, and they say, you were right.

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I received Jesus through them. And it was amazing. And she goes, yes. And here's more information I have for you.

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This is satan trying to get into the church. He can't stop it, so he wants to get into leadership in Ithoodae. That's the agenda. I think this, this woman, uh, and ultimately the demon has with this woman is to get into the leadership. I am a reliable person. I'm going to proclaim Jesus enough to hijack Jesus. We see it all the time. There's all kinds of movements that do this and groups that do this. They use the name of Jesus to lead people away from Jesus.

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And so I think that that's what's happening here. Um, she becomes an authority, a spiritual source of information for people because they receive. And at the same time, she's following Paul around. Um, it muddies the waters. It confuses things for those who maybe have a little bit more discernment that they're like, um, why is this demon possessed girl saying that you guys are legit, right? Maybe they. Maybe this even causes them to doubt that Paul's for real, because it looks like it's fake.

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So basically, she's causing problems. We don't need Satan's help to do ministry. And that's, that's, I think, why he gets annoyed and why he, he casts her out. She's saying what's true for a bad reason. Satan, scripture says, disguises himself as an angel of light. And it's no wonder his minister, his ministers, he just disguises his servants as though they're servants of Christ. He absolutely does this. So we have a great example in acts 16 of realizing that just because someone says Jesus proclaims Jesus, it doesn't always mean that their motives are right and that they are, in fact, helping and not a plant from the enemy. I don't want to become paranoid, but there's absolutely plenty of people who do this. I was just recently thinking about, uh, uh, someone who's done this. Uh, John Shelby, Sponge Spong. He was a bishop, and he was ultimately, he was against core christian teachings and doctrines. He was opposed to them, but he would wear the white collar, and he would go around and do lectures and speak and go on tv and be interviewed, and he would always present this unchristian version of Christianity. So he would call himself Christian and he would do that. But it was always ungodly. There's an example of this. There's others too. We see it on tv all the time. If you notice this, they almost never will interview or showcase a godly, reliable Bible gospel preaching Christian. It's always someone who's a bad representative, a bad example. Like, if NBC News was covering Paul in his ministry, they would have been like, well, we got this new preacher in town, and, uh, and we were talking to one of. One of his, one of his teammates, uh, one of his ministry leaders, um, this demon possessed servant girl. And they would interview her. That's who they would put on tv, because Satan knows what he's doing. All right, let's go to the next question. Number seven. This comes in, uh, anonymously, and you guys can always ask anonymous questions. Just put a in q. I will not read your username, but, you know, you're online, you can just make an account that has a fake name and always ask that way, too. So the question here is, um. Hey, Mike, thank you so much for your ministry. You are very welcome, anonymous person. It's been a great help to me. Um, that does mean a lot to me. I'm very encouraged to hear that, really, genuinely. Um, so it's been a great help. And you say, what does Philippians 129 mean when it says that God grants us belief in him? Is this deterministic?

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Great question, Philippians 129.

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For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

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So we have the idea that there's an external granting. Right. God is giving you something.

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And some, maybe. Maybe some Calvinists, I think probably a lot wouldn't use this first. I'm guessing. A lot wouldn't use this first. I don't know. I don't remember. Um.

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But some might say, look, what is God granting? He's granting to you to believe, so he's giving you faith. And they might say that this is Calvinism, because very much at the core of Calvinism, this is not me, uh, saying it's right or wrong, at least for right now, I'm just assessing what even is Calvinism. Right. Calvinism is a belief that, among other things, but very much at the core is regeneration precedes faith.

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That is, at least logically speaking. Don't argue with me about the nature of time, please. At least logically speaking, you are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and that is the thing that causes you to have faith. And that's why you get, like these calvinism, the tulip letters. So you have total depravity because you have to be regenerated before you can believe.

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You, um, have irresistible, um, grace. Because when the Holy Spirit regenerates you, of course you believe. You automatically you believe because it's been given to you to believe you've got all these things. You have a limited atonement which is connected to that. You have, um, perseverance of the saints because you're regenerated by the spirit and because it's sort of a purely a work of God to make you believe in him.

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Um, it's going to last anyway. There's other stuff there, too, but this is really at the core, and I'm not making this up. Like Rc Sproul said it himself, if you want to understand Calvinism, understand the one, this one, one thing. Regeneration precedes faith.

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I do not hold that view. I'm m not a calvinist. Um, so how would I respond to this verse? If someone was to say what I just said about it, that it's been granted to you, right, to believe, I would say, just read the other words. Okay. So it has been granted to you that this is what's been granted. You don't just grab the word believe, teleport it over to the word granted and then say that's what has been granted. It says here it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him. That's not causing belief, that's just connecting what has been granted to you to the idea that this is going to be for the sake of Jesus. Let me just read the verse. It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also. And here's what's granted, suffer for his name.

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What's been granted to you is that you can suffer for Christ. Paul considers this. This is a really amazing thing. With Paul's writing, he considers it a privilege to suffer for the sake of Christ. Now, Paul, again, doesn't want to suffer for the sake of suffering. He doesn't want to die just to die for a cause. But he knows that when he suffers, the reason is because it's for the sake of Christ. And that is an amazing gift that I even get to be one who, uh, the reason why I'm suffering is because of the sake of Jesus Christ. That's an amazing privilege and honor. I wear that like a crown. Okay? I wear that like a wonderful thing. I get to suffer for his name. That's what's being granted here. This doesn't have anything to do with Calvinism. I don't believe. Um. I don't think that the verse says that at all. What has been granted to you that you suffer for his sake. Now if the text did say, um, belief is granted by God, there is a way in which you can be a non Calvinist and you can absolutely say belief is granted by God. Because we are not saying here your belief is irresistibly caused by God. That's different than saying it's granted or gifted by God. It would be to simply say belief. The fact that you can believe the act of you believing is something that God has given you, but that doesn't mean he irresistibly caused it, right? How would God have given it to me? Well, he gave me capacity to believe. He gave me, uh, Jesus Christ dying for me. So that gives me the opportunity to believe. He gave me a situation wherein I could respond in faith where the gospel was preached to me and the Holy Spirit was drawing me towards him. So all of that is all the work of God. And me being given this chance to believe, that's one way in which I know, I know. Calvinists, you're watching. You don't agree with me on this, okay? But we can at least go for clarity there. There are non Calvinists who will say that they think faith in that sense is a gift. It's just not an irresistible gift.

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That would be to say if you find a verse that talks about God giving faith, it doesn't necessarily mean it's irresistible.

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You need other scripture for that. And if it's not irresistible, then you don't have regeneration preceding faith, at least not based on the reasoning I just gave.

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Yeah. Calvinists, I love you. I go to church with many of you.

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So this is, uh, an in house discussion among brothers and sisters who agree on so much stuff that, um, hopefully we can have that discussion without conflict.

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Okay, let's go to the next question. That is number eight and comes in anonymously as well. Do you have any specific advice on how to deal with emotions when reading the Bible recently, I can't even get through a few verses without feeling overwhelmed with anger or frustration.

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Um, I think you would need. I think you need a brother or sister to come alongside you in the middle of this. Um. Um, I've not dealt with this issue particularly, so I don't have kind of like that experience where I can sort of grab onto my own experience of this. But it sounds like a very real spiritual battle that you're going through. That is not to say that demons attacking you. I have no idea what's going on there, but to say that there's spiritual consequences to this battle that you are going through. And, um, you. You shouldn't feel overwhelmed with anger or frustration whenever you read scripture. And the question that I would have if I. If I had you with me, if we could just go get a cup of coffee in the foyer of a local church, um, would be to say, um, why?

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And just let you talk for a while. So think about this.

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If I could walk you through some self counseling, um, write down, maybe. Maybe write it down if this would help you.

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You don't have to show it to anybody, but you can. It'd be great if you find one person to show it to, but write down, why am I frustrated? And write every. Every reason you can think of and dig deep.

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What is it about when I open the scripture and I'm getting frustrated or angry? Why write it down? Is it. You're dealing with doubt about scripture and you're mad. It's. You're mad because you're frustrated. It's not written in a way that would maybe help you out so you wouldn't doubt so much. And you're feeling that. That sense of anxiety and anger. Is it your doubt or is it because of, um, you read a verse of scripture and you think, um, I was told I would get healing if I had enough faith, and then I don't have healing, or my kid didn't have healing or my friend or whatever, and had some horrible thing happen. And so I'm reading these verses that seem to be telling me something that's not real, like, is that it is. There's an unbelief that you're fighting as you're reading the scripture and you're still trying to read it, which I'm glad for you that you are. Then you got to address those issues. You got to deal with that issue. You got to deal with what was a false teaching about healing that you received. And now you're mad at the Bible, but really, you should be mad at this false teaching you received.

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Um, the Bible doesn't promise that, uh, maybe you need to resolve some apologetic doubts that you have about scripture and then answer those questions and patiently look for those solutions. Because I know plenty of people who've been frustrated about the Bible because they didn't feel like they had good answers to their questions.

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Maybe it's something else. I don't know. Uh, Lord knows, you know, hopefully, you know? But I encourage you to get with some other believers, talk to another Christian who can help you through this situation. It's definitely not okay the way it is. You can't just give up, and you can't just sit there and writhe in anger over scripture.

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So God has grace for you in your situation. There's absolutely enough kindness and understanding and help and grace from God and forgiveness for anything you need. But you've got to start tapping into that in faith, and maybe someone can come alongside and help you. So please seek out a godly believer who you could tell your story to. I am not available for personal counseling, you guys. There's just obviously no way. We've received so many requests all the time. I just say I can't do it. Um, um, I'm not. I'm not available for that. Um, not. Not for online stuff. And it's. And it's not fruitful anyways. Online people are not going to be good counselors for you. You need people who you can see face to face. You need somebody who counsels you. And then next Sunday they're in church next to you, and a year later they're still there. You really need people that it doesn't have to be a pastor, but you need to find a godly wise person in your local church and ask them, can we talk? And if it doesn't work out, at least you tried something good. Uh, please, please do that. All right, let's go to the next question. Um, number nine. Yeah, number nine. Inferno. Voltage says, exodus 21 ten says, a man married to multiple women shouldn't deny them conjugal rights. Isn't each instance of intimacy in that situation adultery against one wife? Yes. This is a polygamy related question. Exodus 21 ten. And I delved, um, into the topic of polygamy. I don't know, maybe I'll do another video on that if you guys think I should. If I do another video on it, it's going to be based upon the outright lies that polygamists have been told about Greek and about the translation of a verse and about the meaning of a context here and there. There's a lot of, like, exegetical, like, witchcraft going on in there, and I see it in my comment sections. They're like, well, the first corinthians seven says each woman wife have her own husband, and the word own there means, like, she's actually owned by him. And that's what the word really means in Greek. And you're like, this is totally bogus. Like, totally made up, fabricated stuff. And then people were just cutting and pasting commentary, not commentaries but lexicons, they don't understand how to read, and it's really bad. That seems to be rife in the polygamy movement. So maybe I'll do a video on that. Um, the exegetical stuff.

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At any rate, um, I care about the guys caught up in that movement. Okay.

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But what's one thing that's shocking is the amount of pride that there is just permeating that movement as well, at least from the guys I've. I've interacted with online. And it's pretty much almost all guys.

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Just the amount of arrogance that's there. Um, arrogance will blind you. You won't. You won't see your own flaws. That's the nature of arrogance. It puts. It puts blinders in your eyes. Okay. Anyways, this verse, exodus 21 ten, it talks about a man who, um.

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I guess we'll just do verse ten. If he. This man, takes another wife to himself, a second wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And marital rights there does also include conjugal rights. You guys know what we mean there. Um, and if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing without payment of money. Um, that means she doesn't have to pay, right? She goes out for nothing. So she was a servant who then got married. And this protects her from sex, um, slavery, where a guy just kind of, like, adds another. He's like, the servant. She'll just be like, my play thing, and I'll just make it okay, because I'll make her my concubine. And instead, what Exodus 21 is doing is it's taking a bad situation, both with polygamy being bad and slavery being bad, and it's protecting the woman's rights. In that scenario, you can't diminish her rights. She has to be treated as a full wife, no matter what. Knowing this, it would prevent men from abusing women with various forms of sexual slavery. And if you don't do these things, she goes out. You can't hold any debt. She might owe you a billion dollars. Doesn't matter. She goes out with. With. With no payment. And, uh, anytime a servant left, they had to leave with supplies. Supplies. And, um. Okay, so here's the question. You had.

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Um. Where is it?

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You said, he's married to multiple women. He shouldn't deny them their conjugal rights. Isn't each instance of intimacy with these different wives in that situation, adultery against one of the wives? I think my answer to your question is going to be logically, if polygamy is, in fact, wrong, monogamy is what's meant to be. Then each instance of sleeping with a second wife, a third wife or whatever, is an act of adultery against the other wives.

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It's also because these marriages, I think, I think, now let me give you some things. I've worked on this a lot, actually. Uh, I think these polygamous marriages are real. You are actually married. And so it's also an act of faithfulness in that marriage. The marriage he has with wife number one, when he's with her, he's being faithful to her. He's not being. I shouldn't use the word faithfulness here. It's going to make you think I mean something I don't mean. It's an act of appropriate marital relations and obligation when the two of them are intimate together. But then when he does this with a different wife, his act of appropriate marital relations and good marital relations is also an act of adultery against this other wife. It's complicated. It is both a good act and an evil act at the same time, because the context has made it this way. If I had two families, immorally, I have, down the street, there's another house, and I have another wife, and I've got kids there. And then I leave here to go visit them. Visiting them was good because I do have obligations to them, but it was bad because I just abandoned my wife.

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Coming back was good because I came to, but then it was bad because I abandoned my obligations to them. Sin makes life ridiculously complicated, right? Monogamy keeps life simple. Polygamy makes it very complicated. And yes, being with one wife versus another versus another is both a morally good and morally evil thing because you created a situation wherein that is the case. Um, furthermore, the man commits adultery, right? But the, that particular woman, she's only ever slept with her husband. In a polygamous relationship, it's usually more often, not almost always, it's one man with multiple women, also known as polygyny, um, which is just a certain specific form of polygamy. So a man's with multiple women who's committing adultery. In this scenario, this woman is sleeping with her actual husband. They are married. So she is not committing adultery, but he is because he's sleeping with someone other than his other wife. Yeah, they're married. But that's not your, your actual first wife or that's not your second wife, whatever. You're just sleeping with somebody who is not this wife. So you're, you're both, um, doing something that is appropriate in marriage and doing something that is adulterous. And this is why I answer the question of, like, should a polygamy get polygamous, get divorced? With the answer, the short version is the wife has a right to divorce because that man has committed adultery against every one of those wives. So they have a right to divorce. The husband does not, because those wives have not done that to him. M they've not been unfaithful to him, he's been unfaithful to them. So they have the ability to divorce. And this is. Polygamists are going to hate this because, um, the manosphere polygamy movement versus the liberal, the liberal side of things. They just think you can make any arrangement you want. There's no rules of any kind. The manosphere, it's very much about rules. And so they're like, um, uh, they want the man to be in charge, the man to have all the power in the relationship. So for me to say the women in a polygamy relationship have a right to divorce and leave that man because of the polygamy. I think that that's a biblical thing to say based on scripture. I will link a video down below where I get into that in more detail. It's like an eleven minute clip where I talk about this in great detail. What if a polygamist gets saved? Should he leave his wives? Do they get divorced? Do they stay together? How do you counsel them? I, uh, read a whole, like, long paper. Uh, was it a dissertation or was it some kind of research paper that was written by a missions organization in Africa who's dealing with this stuff all the time. And they were like, this is a real tough issue for us.

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So, yeah, that, I think, is how we hold all our principles together. The man's married to multiple women. He shouldn't deny them their conjugal rights. Says it right there. Now, he also shouldn't marry multiple women. But the reality is it does happen. It does happen. And so God gave protections for women in that scenario.

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Let me know if you guys think I should do another video on the polygamy stuff addressing their actual exegetical arguments. Um, not, um, the name calling.

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So petty. Okay. Number ten, Brian Mercill. Merci, Miss M. Mercier. I don't. I'm sorry, Brian. I don't how to pronounce your name, but probably nobody else does and you're used to it. What is the biblical purpose of the church? And do you believe in modern Christianity? Do you believe that modern Christianity is fulfilling that purpose today. Okay. What's the biblical purpose of the church?

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Anytime you try to have, like, a one note answer to something like, what's the purpose of fill in the blank? It can be pretty challenging, and you can spend a lot of time, you know, worrying and working on trying to get that answer down correctly. Um, the biblical purpose of the church, I mean, you could just simply say, and this is a safe answer, is to glorify God, right. Um, he's redeemed us that we might, we might glorify him. I think there's a great answer there. Um, but you could also say the purpose of the church is relationship with Christ, right? We are his bridegest. Okay. But those aren't really separate things, are they? Because having a healthy relationship with Christ involves glorifying him. And glorifying God involves properly glorifying God, at least as it fits. The purpose of the church involves having a relationship with him as the bride of Christ. I think that basically the purpose of the church, though, is, um, seen in maybe the act of communion. It's the idea that you and me, as Christians, are united to Jesus Christ, communion, and united to each other in fellowship and love. So m if we look at it with the love aspect, love, receiving the love of God, loving the Lord back in deep personal relationship, as well as loving each other.

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Right. These three remain, but the greatest of these is love. I think love is probably the purpose of the church in that sense of, that's a eternal purpose of the church, isn't it? Because what I've described is all stuff that lasts on into eternity. It goes on forever. But the church has a mission on the earth of evangelism. That is to bring in more people into that body of Christ that does not carry on into eternity. So it's not part of our eternal purpose in that sense. But it's very much, Jesus says, go out into all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples.

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So I guess maybe it's just Brian, maybe it's the way that I think about these issues that I have a hard time saying a, that's the purpose. Don't call it anything else. Other answers are wrong. It's, this is, uh, there's probably a lot of ways to answer this question, but might I just say the agenda of the church is evangelism, sanctification, mutual upbuilding, and glorifying God with all that we've got. Like, these are the purposes right now of the church. Um, do I believe modern Christianity is fulfilling that purpose today?

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This is also tough for me. To answer, and I'll tell you, um, the reason why. Um, how many churches do you personally know? And I mean, you know, know, you know, the pastor and what they teach or pastors or elders, you know, the people and the lives that they live both in the church and outside of when they're in fellowship, you know them well, so that you actually could assess the health of that church. Count on your hands. How many churches do you know that well?

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Maybe one.

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For almost all of us, the answer is going to be one or maybe zero.

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You can assess that church, perhaps. But when you're trying to assess global Christianity or American Christianity or British Christianity, you're doing it based off of small bits of. You're seeing tips of icebergs and you're just sort of guessing at what's underneath. This can be a bit problematic. There are obvious problems, okay? There are obvious problems, but sometimes the icebergs you see are just like the standout megachurch or the rare example of a church that doesn't really match most. You know, most churches in the US are like less than 50 people. But whenever you think of United States churches, you probably think of like, Hillsong, New York or something, you know, and you're thinking of, like, these giant churches, and then you're evaluating them from this distance where you know very little about them, and then you're projecting that onto all churches in the area.

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I don't think that that's healthy.

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That being said, it doesn't look great.

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The modern church in the United States. Okay, it doesn't look great.

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It doesn't look great. Um. I just recognize there's a limit to how much I actually know about any of these churches. I'm evaluating. When me and my wife were looking for a new fellowship, and we took a long time to do it, we visited a lot of churches. We listened to their sermons, we read their statements of faith, we checked out their ministries.

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Um, and we were, at least where I live, okay, southern California. Um, I was disappointed in the outward ministry, at least as it relates to Sunday mornings. Now, I don't have an evaluation of the godliness of the individuals in the churches, the people, the fellowship there. My brothers and sisters, who I love, I don't have an evaluation of that. But as far as the Sunday morning discipleship and teaching that took place, I was generally disappointed. That was a pretty big bummer. I was like, man, I thought, I thought I. I thought that the landscape was better than it is because I'm going to like conservative churches that are more bible leaning and thinking.

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But it was just like, um.

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It wasn't great, um, in my opinion. Okay, so, yeah, it doesn't look that great, but I just want to have a little humility and realize that what I see are tips of icebergs, tips of select icebergs, and then I'm making judgments about everybody.

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Um, another downside of this is when you do evaluate the church like this, you can get. It's so easy to get doom and gloom. And let me give you. Let me give you a biblical example, okay? Elijah, he is a prophet of God who stands above so many others. He's an amazing man. God uses him so powerfully. Elijah. And there's a point where Elijah gets up on Mount Carmel and he faces off with the prophets of Baal and Asherah, by the way, people forget they were there, too. And there's the whole, like, fire, come down and cut yourselves. Or maybe your God's in the bathroom. Uh, call out loud. Or maybe he's on the potty and he's mocking them. And it's actually a pretty amazing story. It's funny, it's intense. It shows God's wrath and judgment. It also shows his truth and his power.

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Um, after this happens, Elijah gets totally depressed.

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I sometimes try to think, what was he thinking when he got super depressed after this happened? Like, he didn't want to eat. He's like, lord, just take my life. Just take me out. I'm the only one left. They've burned your altars. There's so many false teachers and false leaders and false prophets and all this stuff just. And this is in your. Your land, Israel, your people. Look how bad it is. Just get me out of here. I just. I just want to die.

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I sometimes think what was going on in Elijah's mind, you know, if you were. We think of Mount Carmel as this glorious moment of power. But if Elijah, when he left, he had to be thinking, I can't believe there were so many prophets of Baal.

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I can't believe how many worshipers of Asherah showed up.

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And, yeah, the people responded, and they slew them and they took them out because God showed himself. But these same people were worshiping.

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There was nobody. It was me. I was alone in this land of Israel. It was just me. I was the only one. And he felt like he looked at the landscape and was like, all the churches are apostate. Everybody's. It's doomed. Nobody serves God. Nobody cares. And this is how you maybe look at the christian church. Not you. Maybe you don't I don't know what you're thinking, but maybe somebody listening. You're looking at the Christians in the US or the Christians in your country, wherever you're at, you're in Australia, you're in South Africa, you're just seeing all the prosperity preaching nonsense. You're in England and you just see a lot more progressive stuff than you've ever seen before. And you can't even find a church that cares about these issues.

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And you feel like, Elijah, you feel like I'm alone. Lord, they don't care. They've torn down your views of marriage and faithfulness. They've torn down your views of sexual purity. They've torn down the exclusivity of Christ and the goodness and the trustworthiness of the word of God and the power that it has to change and disciple us. They just, it's all torn down. Nobody cares but me. When God came to Elijah at this point, Elijah says all this stuff, I'm the only one left. And he says, I have 10,000 people, 10,000 people who have not bowed their need of all. The problem is Elijah, you just don't know him. Like, you're in the conflict, you're in the ministry, you're in there doing this stuff and you see all the apostasy, but you don't see my faithful servants. They're there, you just don't see them.

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This is something I encourage myself with when it comes to the christian church.

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They are there, you just don't see them. The fact that people even follow my YouTube content like this is not content for shallow christians. This is not content for people who want, um, a Joel Osteen experience, okay?

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This is not going to do it for you. You are called to die to yourself, to set aside your sin, which you absolutely deal with every day and follow Jesus with all you have. This is you are called to nothing less than to know Christ and to share him with the world no matter what they do to you, persecute or hate you for it and to live for Jesus in this life. And the fact that I even have subscribers online is proof that I'm not alone.

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And you're not alone. So yes, it's discouraging, but don't get too discouraged. You're not alone. Don't you dare give up. Don't you throw in the towel. Don't you say I'm the only one. That's what, that's the mistake Elijah made. And, um, then God calls Elisha, right? The guy who came next, he's almost like, okay, Elijah, you're done. I guess. I guess I'm not done, but maybe. Maybe you're done. I don't want to be that guy. I want to be hopeful.

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I want to try to stir up what remains that is healthy and good and, um. But while being realistic that things don't look as good as I'd like them to. So. Yeah. Um. There, uh, was a question earlier I meant to get to with the verse. This will be a little bonus thing I'll do here. Um, Helene, in question six asked, you know, why was Paul annoyed with a possessed female slave in acts 1616 when she was actually telling the truth? I answered that question. But you said, what about Philippians 118? And I never went to that verse. I remembered later. So, Philippians 118 says, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that, I rejoice. Okay. Yeah, perfect. What does Paul mean by this passage? Um.

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Okay, he is. I'm gonna read a little more of it. I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. That's always what matters to Paul. So that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. Uh, they learned his imprisonment is for Christ. We'll talk about how in a second. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. The former.

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Why do they proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition? Not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment?

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My theory on what Paul's talking about here is as he gets up and he's standing, uh, in court to defend himself, people come up and they go, here's what Paul is preaching. Here's what this guy's doing. And they describe Christianity. They're doing it to get him in trouble.

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He teaches that Jesus is a king, a rival to Caesar.

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And Paul is sitting there going, I'm in the courts, and everybody here is hearing about Jesus, even though they're only mentioning his name to get me in trouble.

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I think that's what Paul is talking about there. He would still argue with them, he would still fight against them, but he would rejoice that Christ is proclaimed. Maybe part of that is the reason why he waited a few days before he finally rebuked that demonic uh, demonically possessed girl or rebuked the demon, I should say. Um, maybe that's why he waited a few days. Maybe that's the case. I'm not sure. We have to keep. So we want Christ preached and we will rejoice in it. Um, but that doesn't mean we can't confront false teaching or that we can't call out stuff that we see as unhealthy to the body of Christ. We have to have wisdom in those things. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, there's probably more we talk about there, but we're done. So let's pray.

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Father, we pray for hopefulness in our hearts. Um, Paul is such a good example in the new testament of one who has hopefulness in the midst of seeing a real heavy difficulties. Quite a lot help us to see a path forward in how to serve you in the midst of difficult times. Right now, for any Christian who's listening right now, that is feeling despair, that is feeling like, oh, it's all over.

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There's no great work of God coming. There's no point in me pursuing those things or hoping in those things. And we pray that you would remind us of Elijah and the 10,000, the remnant, that you would remind us of our calling to be light in a dark place. And that, uh, the fewer the lights are that are shining, the more important it is that some of them do shine. We ask for courage and strength that you build us up in Christ, that we might be, um, like actual evangelists and preachers and ministers to those around us, spreading the gospel of Christ because the world needs it real back in Jesus name. Amen.

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See you guys Monday. Monday. Next, Hebrews video. Monday, I'm going to talk about Andy Stanley.

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So Andy Stanley has this unhitched thing. I'm going to address it in detail, um, unhitching from the Old Testament because it relates to Hebrews. Hebrews one talks about the connection between Jesus and the Old Testament. So to offer a counterpoint, I'll show where Andy Stanley talks about disconnecting the Old Testament from Jesus and from Christianity. That, among other things, um, Monday at 01:00 p.m. but it will be live and then it'll be on the channel after that. So next Hebrew study coming up soon. All right, y'all take care.