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All right. I don't know about you guys, but I am tired of something in particular. I'm tired of, um, seeing Christians avoid taking stances on certain topics because they're so politically charged. And yet on those topics, we have a biblical commitment that should inform our stance. Now, I've done this over the years here and there. Politics isn't really my thing. I don't focus on it. I don't intend to start focusing on that. But in my attempt to think biblically about everything. Sorry. I want to think biblically about any issue that relates to politics as well. Like, it's all inclusive. Everything kind of means everything. So I have a video on, for instance, the death penalty and why I think Christians should absolutely support the death penalty. Now, I made that video knowing it would be unpopular even among my own audience, that you, the majority of you, will disagree with me on this. Even the people who do follow my content, even those who are, like, conservative Christians.

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Well, I think that you're wrong. And so I think Scripture does speak clearly on this issue. So I made a video on it. Well, today we're going to take the topic of immigration, and I can't speak as clearly on immigration as I can on the topic of the death penalty, but I think I can give you guys some stuff that scripture says about it, and we're going to talk about that today. That's the first question. What does the Bible teach about immigration?

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I'm going to do a bit of a longer little thing here. I do this a lot, so it's common for most of you who follow my content. You know that every Friday, I do a Q and A. I start with a little teaching thing, and then I get into your questions, uh, in the live chat. Um, and you're used to my long videos. I just put an hour and a half video Bible study out two days ago, continuing the Hebrew series. But I want to start with this question. Yeah. Uh, what does the Bible teach about immigration? I very commonly hear people distort the teaching of scripture on this topic, quote one verse as if that's the entire teaching that they get. And I hear it on both sides. Okay. You hear the more liberal side say, um, you know, the scripture says to love your neighbor, treat the stranger and sojourner as the native among you. Boom. And what they mean here is completely, uh, open borders, unfettered immigration. And that's their verse that they use for it. And then on the conservative side, you have a book. In the super, super far right side, you have, um, a quote from the Book of Acts, that God establishes the boundaries of nations, of their people dwelling places, and that therefore you're fighting against God. When you try to migrate from one nation to another, you need to not do that. And boom, that's their one verse. Well, there's obviously more the Bible says about it than that. So we're going to dig into this today. Um, let the chips fall where they may. I want to be biblical in my assessment of things going into it. I know that as I'm talking now, I'll be talking about the Old Testament a good amount. And the law of Israel is not, despite what some people say, is not a parallel for the laws of all nations. They're a covenant nation with God. Right. They specifically have a covenant with God. Now, all people should honor and worship God, but not all nations have this kind of covenant relationship with God that Israel has. It's very unique. And so their, their laws are structured around that. But the stuff they say about immigration does give us some things that at least in principle, you can say, hey, you can't say it's wrong to do what they did in principle. In principle, if they limited immigration or if they allowed immigration, you can't say that either of those things was wrong if in fact God instructed Israel to do it.

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I, um, think that that's the case in most situations with the Old Testament law. Um, there can be exceptions where God simply is regulating something that is a bad practice, like with divorce. But I don't think that's what we see here. So, uh, first, it's hard to get out of our own culture. Let's try that first. Um, there are different categories in the Old Testament. Um, there's like the sojourner or the person who's sort of traveling amongst the Israelites. They've come to the land of Israel and they're sort of hanging out there long term. They're, they're usually. When the Bible's talking about this group of people, it's people who have immigrated in the sense they now live here in this new country of Israel. They're becoming part of that nation. Now there's another group which are just sort of the travelers passing through. Maybe they're doing commerce. They come and do commerce and leave, or they're passing through for some other reason. That's not about them being part of the community. And those are different categories. The one we're gonna talk about is mostly the sojourner, the one who has to stay in your land. That's really what the immigration issue is about. Anyway.

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There's also. Thirdly, there's a third category, invaders, who, um, are there to steal, pillage, take territory. So if you've come to commit crimes, if that's your agenda, you're an invader category. You're not a immigrant category in that biblical sense.

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Um, all right, let's dig into some specific examples. Um, the Bible. The overall thrust of scripture on this topic is a thrust of compassion and care. That is the general focus on those who are coming to dwell in your midst for the people of Israel. So Exodus 22, we're going to go to several scriptures on this.

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Exodus 22, I actually wrote hex. Hexodus is not a book of the Bible. That's some sort of. Some sort of evil witchcraft manual. Oops. Uh, okay, here we go. Exodus chapter 22, verse 21, says, you shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him. For you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

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That's a big deal. This is actually the thrust we'll get in the text is the people who are coming, not just traveling through your midst. Obviously, you're not supposed to sin against them either. But the thrust, the focus here in the Old Testament is going to be, don't wrong them. Some. I've heard 36 times the Bible says not to mistreat these different people groups. Another one is in Exodus 23:9. Now, if this is the only verse you quote and you get your whole theology of immigration from it, you are making a mistake like you're hijacking scripture for your agenda. We're going to quote several things. You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner. For you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. It's not just counseling them to care about these people, um, or to not hurt them, but to actually have compassion upon them, to understand their affliction from their perspective. They know what it's like. You know, what it was like to be this minority, oppressed class. That's what. That's what the Israelites were, uh, in Egypt. And so you need to be aware of how these immigrants who are in your land can be a minority, oppressed class, too. And I know I'm using the phrase minority and oppressed. I don't define the word oppressed the way that, like, critical, uh, race theory does. I mean, biblically, the word oppressed comes up a lot. We need to have that term in our vocabulary. We just need to not use, uh, it the way I think that critical race theory has changed, uh, these categories so that males are oppressors and females are oppressed just by very nature of like their gender. That's not a biblical thing. Um, and so, yeah, yeah, this is, this is the thrust in scripture. 36 something times it says something along these lines. God really warning them not to and really counseling his people to have compassion upon them. Leviticus 19:34. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself. For you are strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

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Oh, you got to treat them like the native among you. Now let me start this by this survey of biblical teachings. You don't have to think biblically. Thanks to Rachel for sending me this shirt. I thought it was something. I'm going to wear that on Friday. Um, I'm not asking everybody to send me M shirts though, because most likely I won't wear it if you send me one. But uh, at any rate, the, um, first thing I want to mention is that I live in Southern California. I've known plenty of people who are immigrants, legal and illegal. Lots, um, of kids who are first generation Americans and their parents are, uh, sometimes legal, sometimes illegal. I've also known that if I go to the kitchen of m. Almost any restaurant, not all of them, but the majority of the restaurants in my area, I'm going to find that there are Mexican descent people in the kitchen doing all the cooking. It doesn't matter if it's the Thai restaurant down the street or if it's the sushi restaurant. If there's a kitchen, there's probably Hispanics working in it. That's typically the case. Now. Sometimes they're not Mexican descent, sometimes they're not. But more often than not, uh, in my area that's the case. Meaning that they're immigrants or their family wise. It deeply affects our area. Like where me and my wife live. I live in LA County. I don't want to be too specific, but specifically where we live, we don't live in a great neighborhood and we are, um, as far as crime goes and that sort of thing. Uh, some people think we're rich and stuff.

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No. Um, but uh, we also, uh, are in an area where we're a minority. Like I'm the minority where I live. Okay. That being said, the treatment of immigrants in California in particular is that they're often hired for jobs where they are paid a lower wage than the other people around them and they're Given the money under the table. And so that there's a lot of corporations, businesses, business owners who are taking advantage of, and I think violating this, taking advantage of the aliens, uh, whether the legal or illegal, you're taking advantage of the sojourners who are among you by paying them less than the wages that they would normally get. This affects everybody else as well, because, um, if you have a certain class of people you can pay less, it's going to impact everybody, actually, including other people who might have had those jobs. It hurts everybody all around.

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So that's something I think the scripture definitely comes against. If you're a farmer and you're hiring a bunch of people to work in your field, and you're like, mike, this is the only way I know how to make it work is by taking advantage of this vulnerable populace of people, I think what you're doing there is immoral. I understand that you feel like you have no other financial plan, but you need to find one. You have to come up with one if you're a follower of Jesus.

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So there is, in response to this, um, what I would call Love abuse, the LGBTQ stuff. They frequently use this. The more politically, uh, liberal as well as the progressive Christian category. They will, um, and I do use air quotes on that because oftentimes progressive Christians aren't Christians. Sometimes they are. It's complicated. But that sort of conglomerate of people will often abuse this idea of love and compassion. And they'll suggest that it means, well, therefore, we have to have completely open borders. We have to have all this other stuff. Um, Leviticus, Exodus. These other passages are more emphasized. Don't take advantage of them, don't oppress them, don't abuse them. It's not saying you must create, like, an entire socialistic welfare system for the immigrants, whoever. And unfettered, uh, immigration that comes into your country. That's certainly not what's being taught there. And that's not what they did in Israel. That's not what it was commanded or obeyed. So the LGBTQ terminology we often hear is where they grab the term love and they stretch it out so that its entirety of permission and, um, approval. Approval of whoever, you know, picked the category, and they always pick what they consider to be an oppressed group as their category of those you have to love so that, you know, like, um, a transgender person, you're not approving of their identity, you're not supporting them. You must hate them. If they end up hurting themselves, it's going to be your fault because you didn't embrace their identity, that sort of thing. This is love abuse. This is abuse of the word love and abuse of the concept of love. Scripture helps us against this by saying, love doesn't rejoice in evil, doesn't rejoice in iniquity. It doesn't take delight in those things. And so, yeah, we shouldn't do that. But imagine, for our logic, think of it this way. Imagine someone breaks into your home while you're asleep. You're sleeping. They break into your house, and you have an empty room on the other side of your home. And they get into that room and they grab their stuff and they move it into that room while you're asleep. And the next day you wake up and they're like, hey, I'm here. I'm going to live here now. I'm going to enjoy the air conditioning. I'll be using the bathroom here and there. I'll try to stay out of your way. I might eat some of your food, but I'll try to provide some of my own. Um, but the Bible tells you to love the stranger, so you have to just let me stay in your home.

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I don't know of very many people, even the most extreme open border positions, who would allow this and say that this is okay. But there is some connection to this and the idea that you have to open your borders to the point where anybody and everybody comes in and you have to just give them whatever they want, you know, as far as property and benefits and things like that, that you might give to someone else.

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That goes beyond. Is what I'm saying, that just simply goes beyond what we have in the text of scripture. And it certainly is an abuse of the love terminology in the Bible where it says to, uh, like Jesus says, give to him who asks. But if somebody came to you, knocked on your door and said, I'm. You know, the Bible says, give to him who asks. Jesus said it, can I have your house? Can I have your car?

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Maybe Can I have your wife? No, no, I mean, that's too far. I'll just. Your house and your car and everything in your bank account. Give to him who asks. That is an abuse of that teaching. We shouldn't be dumb when it comes to the love language of scripture.

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But generally in the Old Testament, um, they could live among the Israelites. They could live among the Israelites, okay? There was such a thing as a border that was allowed to be crossed. Okay? Borders existed, but also they crossed. And it was not considered inappropriate or intolerable or disruptive to Society inherently, though it could be, um, Leviticus 25:35, if your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you.

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That's interesting. Now, if you read on, it doesn't this looks like socialism to some people? Let me take back the Bible from your political agendas here for a second. Um, the Bible doesn't teach that anywhere. Um, even in Deuteronomy, where it talks about the poor, one of the ways you would support them is, I think it's Deuteronomy 15, is by loaning them, but by doing it without interest. So they did have to pay back the debt, but you would loan them without interest, at least to keep them, um, clothed and just basic needs taken care of. So you would loan. You wouldn't just give. You wouldn't redistribute the wealth. You would offer a loan. There's a difference there. If you want to use the Old Testament as your example.

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So, yeah, the idea that strangers and sojourners are inherently to be just like none of them should be allowed in our country, well, that doesn't make sense. With a command that if your brother becomes poor, support him as though he were a stranger and sojourner.

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You get that they can live with you. There was not a closed border in that sense. Not fully closed. When I use the term closed border, I mean we, uh, allow zero percent immigration every year. That's what I mean.

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That was not the case in the text of Scripture. Is it commanding us to have a closed or open or not open? No, no. I'm just looking for the example and how to relate it to our situation a little bit. I don't know much about immigration in the modern sense, admittedly. I'll focus on the text of Scripture here. So there was no broad opposition in the Old Testament to immigration as a whole. Broadly, there are encouragements to love and not mistreat sojourners, those who are coming into your land to dwell in your midst. And m, we know that from the beginning of Israel, many Egyptians actually did do this. Like when they left the land of Egypt, there were already a bunch of non Israelites with them. A mixed multitude also went up with them with very much livestock and flocks and her and herds. And you could read on in Exodus 12 about that. So they went with them, this mixed multitude. It wasn't just only the Jews, only the descendants of Abraham. There was. There were Egyptians who were like, we're going to believe in the God of Israel. Now, they did have trouble down the road because of this mixed multitude. We're not calling it an ideal exactly. We're saying it happened. And it wasn't forbidden. It wasn't even pushed against.

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To say that some headaches came along with it later on is definitely true.

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Um, so this. Let's, uh, go. Let's look at Leviticus 19:10. Here's another verse.

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Few people actually look up more than one or two verses on this topic. That's what this video is for. Help you understand that there's more on the issue. I'll give you. I'll round this out. You might think I'm very liberal so far. Well, you probably don't. But I'm going to round it out with some pushback against over applying the things I've already said. In a moment. Uh, Leviticus 19:10. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare. Neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am, um, the Lord your God. This is specifically. And I'm going to be balanced here. This is specifically about providing food for people who are. And we say poor, we mean impoverished. They're not like, I'm poor. We couldn't afford to. Everyone in my house have their own cell phone. I mean, food is a problem. You don't have food.

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That's actual poverty.

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They were commanded to provide for them.

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But this is not socialism. This is not limitless socialism. This is not redistribution of wealth in that sense. It's something very specific and nuanced. And it's actually pretty cool the way it worked. A farmer would go out and he would gather his crops, but he wouldn't gather the grapes that fell naturally on the ground. And they also wouldn't strip, uh, them bare. So when they were. Whether it's grapes or if it was also wheat. There's other places that the scripture talks about this. It was left. The edges of the field were left sort of unharvested. Why was this? Well, because the poor would come and they wouldn't get a check, and they wouldn't get a food stamp or something like that. This is a little bit different than those things. This is whether you like this or not. The poor would come and they would have to actually labor by gathering in.

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They would do the harvesting for themselves so that there was actually some work associated with even the helping of the poor. I think that's neat. I think that's cool that there's this element of labor. I think that if it was me getting the handout, I would actually feel better about the handout knowing that I had worked for it somewhat. Um, and it's good. It seems like it's healthy in a few different ways to do it that way. But also they were limited. They couldn't just gather in massive amounts. They were only supposed to take in what they needed for themselves and then go on.

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But it says the sojourner got this treatment as well. So this is interesting. The sojourner was given the same treatment. Now, this is not just some random person running through your land taking food. This is rather the sojourner, meaning the person who is living in your midst, who is being accepted as being brought, uh, into the nation of Israel to live there long term or permanently.

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They were able to get that same treatment.

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They were not hated because they were simply foreigners. They were in fact, protected. It says here in the law of Moses. I think that that's pretty significant. That's definitely different than some of the stuff I hear of discussions online. But, um, from the more of the, um, stronger conservative side of things, which I don't think the Bible is going to fit perfectly either image here, um, and why should it.

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So mass immigration is not what we're reading about here so far in the Old Testament. I'm going to share with you several other verses. Mass, um, immigration is not taking care of the sojourner among you. Mass, uh, immigration, like a huge number of people being brought into one community would probably have been seen by anybody at the time of Israel reading these texts. And, um, after the time of Joshua, when they're having the land, they would have seen this as invasion. Naturally. This is just a natural way to look at that thing. Mass immigration. Now where do you draw the line? Like, at what point does immigration become. Now it's mass immigration, now it's invasion? I don't know, and I'm not going to try and weigh in on that, but I want to just acknowledge those categories exist. There is such a. If 300 million people flooded into the country, you wouldn't go, love the neighbor, you know, care for the sojourner. You'd be like, we're being invaded. Like, at that point you'd say it. How many millions equals invasion? You guys tell me.

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I just don't want to pretend like it doesn't exist. And it can happen in different ways. Um, Islam has in recent years been taking over much of Europe and portions of England. And it should be common sense to know that this is the Case meaning that their immigration was a part of subverting the culture and the religious background of the environment that they've come into, not as being a sojourner in someone else's land, but as in sort of, uh, basically creating a new culture and a new environment and a new, um, almost a new kind of nation from within.

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We definitely should say that these things can happen. Like, let's not be blind and ignorant to what happens when we throw open our doors and call it love. Like, we should be aware of this stuff. Um, there needs to be some balance that's there. And certainly Israel felt this. I'll share with you more scripture to help you understand it, but let me show you Deuteronomy 7. And my point here is to show you that not everybody was welcome in Israel. Actually, Deuteronomy 7:1, when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you're entering, to take possession of it and clears away many nations before you. Already we've got the fact that Israel was. Yes, they were sojourners, but they came in and they cleared out a whole people group.

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This was an invasion. This was a population replacement. And it was totally God's intention and plan. This was what God wanted. But it was not.

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It was based upon the idea of that here's an identity, a nation that has an identity. And we're going to get rid of these nations and their identities to create this one. To either drive them out or, if they refuse, to fight against them. So the names are given, Hittites, all the ites. You guys know the ites. And when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to them to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods.

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What is a limit to the intermingling of one culture and another?

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I think that this is. This is. You have to be really delicate here.

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Um, I can't say that America is this sort of like, Christian nation. I know some people like to say that, um, only Israel can really claim to be the kind of nation of God that it is. Like, I don't know how anybody else claims that other than Israel, they have the covenant from God. You can claim things about our American past. You can say that we've tried to have these Christian values in our nation. That's true.

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But there's nothing I know of in America, at least currently. Maybe, uh, I'm wrong here. Nothing I know of in America that suggests that we have to require people to be Christians in order to be part of the country. I don't think that that's a value of the country. I don't think that's something that's there or that's something that we can say. Um, and me, as a Christian, I'm not saying that, but there is something to some, something to be aware of here. Israel is a covenant of a religious. It's a people with a religious covenant between them and God. Like, remember when they read the Bible, read the end of Deuteronomy, and they go through and they're like, we commit, Lord, we're going to do this. We're going to follow you. And they would require the strangers who came among them to also follow God to an extent. They didn't have to do everything the Israelites did, but they had to do a lot of it.

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I think the principle here is if the connection between your people in your nation and another people in another nation, or immigration, if it is destabilizing or threatening the integrity of your nation in some way, then you naturally have barriers and limits in that relationship. Does that make sense? I think that's a way to generalize what I'm reading here.

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Some people want mass immigration for the very reason that they know it will threaten the integrity of a nation. They hate that nation. And so they want tons of immigration because they know if they do it enough, it will destabilize and change the culture of the nation in a way that they like. So we should be aware that this is an actual thing.

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Um, let me talk to you about priorities, uh, too.

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We should treat the immigrant according to the Old Testament here the way that the Israelites did, with compassion and love. But there are categories of priorities that Christians need to be aware of. One Timothy five, eight.

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Um, I realize how unpopular some of the stuff I'm going to say is to people on all sides.

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Um, there's part of me that actually makes me want to say it even louder because I think that the fact that it's unpopular is because there's these categories people have. My team says this. Well, my team says this.

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And a Christian must have a stronger obligation and commitment to Scripture than we do to those teams. And this is the very thing that helps us be not worldly in our thinking is conforming to Scripture. Well, here's something to conform to that you may not have noticed.

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Scripture gives our first priority being the home. If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he's denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

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I first must take care of my own family. Out of the overflow of that, I might take care of others. I may provide for strangers, but I won't say love the stranger while my child is starving. If there is a stranger who's starving and my child is starving, I need to take care of my kid first. That's not cruelty. That's recognizing my realm of authority and responsibility extends out in concentric circles that go first. I need to take care of my family. In fact, if you don't take care of your own family, you can't even be, uh, a leader in the church, an elder in the church. So it's take care of your family first. And then beyond that, I want to take care of and bless and minister to my local body, local Christians. That's right. Christians are actually supposed to prioritize taking care of Christians over non Christians. I know that sounds counter because most of the time when we talk about ministries helping people, we think about it as. We think about it as outreach.

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My ministry is going to, um, sell stuff and get money to provide clothing and food for the community.

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And they think the unsafe people in the community primarily, and this will evangelize them. But that's not actually the biblical mandate. The focus in Scripture is, yes, help everybody as you have opportunity. If you don't have the food to give, you don't give it. But, uh, do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. I actually prioritize like my own physical family. Then I prioritize my spiritual family, the church around me, the people around me. That is, here's how I apply this to the immigration issue. And I think this is fair. You guys tell me what you think. I'm still working on. This may change my thoughts on some of these things, but at least we can try to be thinking biblically about it, be in that same direction. So feel free to disagree if you want.

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If I have. Here's my logic. If I have a priority to take care of my family and then in extending beyond that to take care of God's family above and beyond even taking care of, say, like a stranger who's not a Christian, if that's. Now I want to take care of all of them if I can, but I certainly have a priority list.

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How could I be against a country who says, let me Take care of my own citizens. And then out of the overflow of that, I will take care of other people. And immigration and things like that. I think it only makes total sense. Uh, a father who does not feed his own kids, but he is feeding the neighbor's kids, you would say, hey, stop it. What is wrong with you? A country who does not take care of their own citizens, but then feeds and takes care of other people's citizens is abandoning a stewardship and responsibility to take care of the people that God has placed in that sphere.

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I think if it is true of families and.

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And fathers, it's probably true of governments, uh, and their citizens.

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So that actually says, yeah, we can't just abolish the idea of borders and of considerations about, um, um, if I'm injured, if I'm suffering, if I'm hurting, it's like, who do I belong to? Should be a question I ask. And not just let anybody and everybody come in. And if you do let any. Let's say in America, you let anybody and everybody come in, and then the financial burden upon the state is so extreme that it impoverishes a ton of people in the country, as well as depleting the resources that might have helped the immigration that you did have. You've overstretched and overreached, and you've definitely not prioritized. Well, that would seem to be the case to me. Okay, I know m. I'm just imagining all the comments I'm going to get from people, but, um, I want to think biblically about everything. And I'm in a unique place where I can speak into your life. Not being, uh, the pastor of your church on Sunday morning, who will have even worse fallout if you disagree with him. Let me put my neck on the line. We'll see what happens.

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Let's talk about assimilation. Okay. We're not even done yet. Because assimilation is a principle when it comes to, uh, immigration in the Old Testament, Assimilation is a very important principle. Let me talk about this 1249, Exodus. 1249, it says here, there shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.

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The one law, you might say, oh, equal protections under law. That's true. There's an element of it that's there. But the one law Exodus is talking about here is about feast days and offerings being presented to God and things like that. Meaning that they couldn't just do their own thing in the land of Israel. They had to become similar to the Jews. Did they have to get Circumcised? No, but it was recommended, it was encouraged, and there was a direction of assimilation that was pressed upon whoever was in the land of Israel. That was normal there. Um, so.

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Yep, you'd punish criminals. You don't let them get off. That's government's mandate from God to punish criminals. They're supposed to do that. And that would apply to immigrants as well.

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Um, and there was one law for them. I'll talk more about assimilation in a second, but let me, because it's actually pretty important, I think. Um, let me just mention, with modern immigration, we've got, um, and many of you know more about this than me. Okay. I'm just trying to add my voice because my head's in the scripture. I'm trying to open my eyes to immigration for a moment to apply it to it. Um, but when it comes to immigration in the US we've got, um, good and bad. We have good and bad. And some of the, some of the people focus only on the bad, some only on the good. Well, I've already talked a lot about protections, a lot about caring about and opening things up to people. But there's also in the US sex trafficking that is, uh, in a large part pushed forward through our current state with immigration. Sex trafficking, um, that's a really big deal. Uh, drugs, cartels pushing all kinds of drugs and stuff into our country. That's also a really big deal. And to just say, yeah, government's, um, role is to enforce laws. And if in some sense immigration is creating a violation of laws, then certainly government has a role in limiting and protecting people from those acts and from those things. That seems like a no brainer because there's one law, whether they're a stranger or sojourner.

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Then there's the jubilee. Now I don't fully know what I think about this, to be honest, but I'll share it with you guys.

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Numbers 36, nine. You guys know, every 50 years, if you had sold land, you would loan the land. You would sell the land knowing there was like a temporary lease. Like if it was, um, 10 years from the year of jubilee, you'd sell it for 10 years, effectively. But every 50 years, the year of jubilee comes up in the land of Israel. And then the land goes back to the tribe and to the Jewish ancestry that it was originally in. And it would protect then the tribal borders because there was multiple tribes in Israel and each one had its own territory and it would go back to the territory of the tribe that it had had originally. When Joshua Entered the land. That was the agenda. That was the goal. We can read about this in numbers 36, 9. It says so no inheritance shall be transferred from one tribe to another, for each of the tribes of the people of Israel shall hold onto its own inheritance. This is in the midst of a story that's interesting about the daughters of Zelophehad, but you can read that on your own.

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Here's a thought.

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Land in Israel was tied to tribes. Now it's possible for an immigrant to become part of the tribe, but the land itself always stayed as part of the tribe. That's a very interesting reality.

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Land ownership for especially first generation, um, immigrants was difficult in Israel. Can I put it that way? I'll just say it was difficult. Now there's more details to be shared. But it was at least challenging. Uh, later on down the road things were seems, it seems more easy if they were closely identified with the tribe of Israel. Fully assimilated is the word I'll use. Then it was easier for them to be part of and connected to the land.

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But um, the land wasn't even to transfer between tribes, let alone to transfer the land away from the Israelites to like, um, tribeless immigrants. That was simply the way it is. Like this is where the more progressive Christians only quote select verses from the Old Testament because they don't like this stuff. So yeah, immigration with assimilation seems like it was a positive thing. I even think it was kind of an ideal for the future. Immigration with assimilation. Ezekiel 47. Check this out.

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This is not a present reality. It is meant to be a future reality. Prophetic thing, like an ideal. So you shall divide this land. This Ezekiel speaks of like an expanded land.

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An expanded land of Israel. Bigger land, um, an expanded temple. Big temple. Everything's bigger, right? And there's more people involved. Part of it is because of this prophetic thing about it being all nations, not just Israel. It's kind of cool. So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. Now they would have had to be associated with a tribe because it goes to the 12 tribes in verse 21, but it goes to them too. They shall be to you as native born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.

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This seems prophetic, kind of about um, it's my understanding of Israel and the relationship between Israel and the church. Israel has, has not been Forsaken forever. And God is going to revive and bring them back. And we will be together in Christ as effectively part of the 12 tribes, all of us. But it's not replacement theology. There's just a pause button on God's. God's amazing collective redemptive work among the people of Israel.

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But we can argue about that some other time. I've got plenty of other stuff to argue about with you today. So there is balance. Let me show you some of the balance. Uh, Nehemiah 13.

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Actually, I won't read through this, but Nehemiah in his reforms. You can read Nehemiah, chapter 13. He creates clear separation between them and the foreigners as they're reestablishing the nation of Israel. This is interesting. So they get deported, they are out of the land. They get brought back into the land. And when they come back in, it is very important. Do not mingle with them, at least for a season. I do not want you. I want to create a clear distinction between the people of Israel and the non Israelites. Why?

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My interpretation, Mike Winger's understanding currently on this is that in the time of Nehemiah, Ezra, these guys, there's a danger to the integrity and cohesion of the nation of Israel. And when that is going on, it makes sense to have stronger walls, metaphorically speaking, between them and non Israelites. And so they're protecting their inheritance. There's nothing inherently wrong with making distinctions and protections to secure your country. Israel did it. It seems like it was perfectly fine.

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Some cultures were, in fact, considered more dangerous than others to the people of Israel. I'll show you some examples. Deuteronomy 23:8, it says here, children, I, um, guess I'll back up a little bit. You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he's your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land. Don't hate them. Uh, but children born to them in the third generation may enter the assembly of the Lord. They had to be, uh, the grandkids, the grandkids or great grandkids of the initial immigrants before they could join the assembly of the Lord, which was part of, like, a religious gathering that the Israelites are doing. They were treated as not fully assimilated. Why? Because these groups in particular seem like they're something of a threat to the cohesion and integrity of the nation. And it was okay for them to acknowledge that. Let's back up to Deuteronomy 23:4.

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Speaking of, um, I guess verse three. No, Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the 10th generation, not 3, 10. None of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way when you came out of Egypt, because they hired against you Balaam, the son of Beor, uh, from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. So they were particularly problematic. The culture they come from was especially problematic. The people that they were was especially problematic. So we're going to make them wait even longer. We're going to, you might say, one effective waiting 10 generations is they make sure that they are thoroughly separated from their previous cultural and national commitments. They're assimilated. Now, assimilation seems like a good thing, at least in Israel, when it comes to the law of Israel, the law of Moses, assimilation in that sense, was a good thing. Now, at the same time, when Israel was temporarily taken out of their land and they were brought into the book of Daniel, assimilation is a bad thing because they're told, do not partake of these things, do not change your ways, but be good citizens there. But the reason for this seems to be that Israel was always planning on coming back. Israel had a permanent land from God. They were always going to come back to it. So don't assimilate, don't lose your identity, because you're going to come back. And they did. Remarkably, they've always come back.

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What else we got? Um, there were some differences.

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Ezekiel 44:9 talks about this. 44:9.

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Sorry, I'm just typing it wrong. Here we go.

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Um, thus says the Lord.

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And notice it's specifically a specific kind of foreigner. No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary.

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You might just say, if I was to generalize this, he goes, hey, if people want to come into the temple, you got to be fully assimilated.

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You could be a foreigner living amongst us, fine, you're not circumcised, fine. But you cannot come and be a full part of everything that Israel is, um, in the temple. And so, yeah, if you're living among us, but you're not fully assimilated, you're still uncircumcised in heart and flesh. You're not following then you can't even enter. Now, it's true, lots of times Israel was uncircumcised in their flesh or their heart, usually their heart more, um, and they were violating these very principles. So ideals and reality don't always match up. But the unfully assimilated couldn't join in. Deuteronomy 14:21, it says that the alien resident, uh, can eat things that die naturally, but the Israelites cannot. That's interesting. Huh? Huh. So that the laws were slightly more strict for the. You just. You could say full Israelites versus the ones who were aliens in their midst. There were slight differences. Most laws were the same, but they were slightly different. Immigrants, for instance, couldn't be kings in Israel. Deuteronomy 17:15, they couldn't be a king in Israel if you were an immigrant.

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Among other things, that assures the nation can't be hijacked by other nationals, other nations. Concerns. Preserves a concern and commitment to that nation.

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I'm just reading what I see here. I want to let Scripture guide me now. There are those who say, um, that on the extreme right of things, who say, the following verse shows that there shouldn't be any immigration at all.

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He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

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Um, I've heard this quoted before to say that God wouldn't want anybody changing borders, going from one nation to another and living there, and that that would be inherently bad. Now, don't do that.

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Just saying that God determined the boundaries doesn't mean that there are boundaries that no individual citizen in those countries can cross. This is just a really clumsy way of taking Scripture. It doesn't mean that. Um, yeah, plus it says determined allotted periods. And we know plenty of times in the Old Testament where God actually does move people around, and so he would violate that very rule. If you think that's the rule. I'm not sure there's other arguments you can have about this verse, but just make sure you're using it right then. Um, there's legal versus illegal immigration in the New Testament. We do have things weighing in on this. Obviously in the Old Testament, there's times where they just said they had legal illegal right, because Nehemiah is like, hey, get out. And then other people are like, hey, welcome in. So they had a difference between allowable and disallowed immigration and rules for immigrants. So they had that in the Old Testament law. But Romans 13, 1st Peter 2, they tell us that we should be obeying the laws of the land. That should be our default position. This is super hard in churches where, um, Lots of churches. I've been part of churches where there's this whole Spanish church that's part of a Sister church to our church. And we gather together at the same, um, some of the same gatherings, but also in the same buildings, just sharing them at different times.

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Some of those churches have, um, many of them have illegal immigrants that are part of their and very beloved part of the congregation. Healthy, happy part of the group of people that are there. And this is hard. Now, I'll mention a few things. Um, I don't have my head fully wrapped around this. Um, I think it is hard. I think it's a complicated issue, and it's difficult. How does a church handle an undocumented immigrant that's part of the church? I don't have the answer for you today.

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I'll just say one thing that's helping me as I'm processing this, which is to say there's a difference between, um, laws and law enforcement. And there should be a difference between laws and law enforcement. We do this in America. Let me give you an example. Speeding laws are pretty clear, right? Nobody go over 45, but people go over 45 all the time.

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However, cops just let them blaze by and they use discernment, and the police will use their own judgment and discernment on when, okay, now I'm going to enforce the law. The law gives them enforceability, but it doesn't require them to enforce it. And this is where it goes wrong sometimes, because we started installing in our area. I remember in Cerritos, uh, in particular here in Southern California, there was this traffic camera near the Cerritos Mall, and it's right by the 605 and South Street Cerritos Auto Square. There's like all this activity, constant traffic there. And they put a traffic camera right by there, and it was going off constantly. You'd see the light flash every time I was there. I would see at least one ticket given out every time I was there. Whether it was ticketing, speeding, or more likely, people barely missing a red, you know, turns yellow and it's just barely still red and they go through.

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A cop would not pull those people over. A cop would not give those people tickets. But this traffic light gave all of them tickets and hundreds and thousands and thousands of tickets until finally the outcry from the people was enough that they just took the thing down. And they've actually went from putting up all these traffic lights to taking them down. They did this in Arizona, too. When visiting family in Arizona, I got ticketed. I got two speeding tickets in one day driving down the freeway trying to get home. And I'm like, I'm only driving the speed I normally drive on this freeway. But the tickets, they enforce the law to the letter. Not to the spirit, to the letter.

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Well, Arizona knew that this was going on. They never even sent me anything for the tickets. They never actually charged me. They just flashed me and then it went away. Because again, they're getting outcry going, guys, this was not the intention of the law. This is not a fair usage of the law. And that makes this immigration question balancing and difficult for me. When you deal with people in your congregation who are they might be illegal immigrants, uh, maybe they weren't initially. Maybe they had a visa for a time and they don't now. And you're like, is this the kind of thing that they would even want to enforce this particular person's life and situation?

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I think there's probably a time to tell someone, hey, you're here illegally, you should go and go back home. That would be obeying the law like scripture tells us. But there's other times where you can become the traffic light ticket where you just zap, zap, zap, zap, zap. And you're over applying something in a way that's hurtful to people and you don't want to do that as a Christian.

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So I'm not entirely sure, um, I know that to my knowledge, I, as a private Christian, as a private citizen, do not have any obligation to the law to report illegal immigrants. Um, it's not like I'm violating a law by just not saying anything about it. And that's probably intentional, right? Anyways, I don't know all the answers there. I'd like it, I'd like to understand it better and appreciate if you guys would, you know, help me understand it better. Help us in the comments understand it better. Genuinely, I'm not saying that for more, more comments. It's not going to give me that many more comments. Um, but if you have some help to offer, please do. Um, some of us will be looking for it. Here's some conclusions before I go to your guys questions. I know I've been going for a really long time. I knew I would. I'll do quick your questions quick though, today. So I think we should allow immigration. The US does and always has allowed immigration. We have more immigration than any other country in the world. That's absolutely true. And people talk like it's either or. Um, we need to love and have compassion on people who are immigrants and treat them as people in the image of God and give them uh, the same, um, kind of protection we would to anybody else that's a danger for some right wing people is to stop caring. And that's actually the thing. God over and over again, dozens of times commands Israel to care about them. Like remember when you went through that, care about them. The uh, immigrants I know personally have had a very difficult path to citizenship. And people talk about immigration reform being needed in our country. It seems like it is. It's just a lot of that stuff's over my head. I'm not going to try and make this video about that. So that seems to be the case. That's unfortunate. And um, yeah, um, we should. If you're going to follow Israel's model here, if you consider it a model, um, you would allow immigration, but you would require assimilation and the rule of law. Deporting criminals would seem like a no brainer in that case. Sustainable immigration would be required to protect and preserve your responsibility to your own citizens. It can't just be unfettered. Um, and it wouldn't be to replace populations and stuff like that. Like that would be effectively like a passive aggressive assault on a community.

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So we can obviously limit immigration. Israel had policies that protected the integrity and cohesion of their nation. And at times they were more limiting than at other times. And it depended some people groups they targeted. Hey, look at the Egyptians versus the Ammonites. They're different, let's treat them differently. Their cultures are different. Their effect on our culture is also different.

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That's not popular. But I think that that is, there's a biblical example that's there. Um, many people don't consider the effect of mass immigration on the people that they love. Right. They just think about loving the immigrant but they don't realize you're to love multiple groups of people. And they do, they do come in different priorities and orders. That's true. That immigrant, they have another people group and they're supposed to love them first as well. And that, and if we all do our job, it obviously makes that whole thing easier.

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Um, oh, there's more. Um, my Christian mandate is not about immigration or any of this stuff. My Christian mandate is to make disciples, go into all the world, beyond any border, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. And so while I want to think biblically about the topic of immigration, I want to make sure it is also in its correct priority, is that I have a much higher priority with preaching the gospel, sharing the gospel of Christ, being known as a Christian. And I only jump into this issue because I do think Scripture weighs in on it and very, very few Christians are aware of how. I hope that that's helped. Oh my. That was long. Very long. Let's go to question number two. Um, from Noble Penguin. I'll go quick through the next nine questions. Noble Penguin says I'm a 30 year old woman in SoCal, financially dependent on my Muslim parents. I've studied for years and I'm now feeling called to Christ. I fear being kicked out. Any advice on how to tell them I'm Christian? Um, okay, let me come back to that one second. Okay, last thing I'll say in question number one is there's a book down below that is a short book and it's free. It's an ebook. And I'm not saying I agree with the whole thing because I don't, but it does try to point you to a bunch of different verses in scripture that talk about this topic. If you want to do more research on immigration, there's an interesting and handy free resource. There aren't too many of those around. Okay, I'm going to read your question one more time. Noble Penguin says I'm a 30 year old woman in Southern California, financially dependent on my Muslim parents. I've studied for years and I'm now feeling called to Christ. I fear being kicked out. Any advice on how to tell them I'm Christian?

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Um, I think that there's two things I would encourage you with. And one is whether or not you risk being kicked out and take a stand for Jesus and tell them that you're a Christian. And I think the answer there is yes. That seems very clear in Scripture. Um, Jesus warns that he will be the source of division between homes and families even. And this hits you and my heart goes out to you. Don't get me wrong, it's not callously saying this. I'm just saying it's clear. It's not easy. It's just clear in Scripture you hold fast to the faith no matter what the cost, no matter what experience you have as a result, no matter what financial pain you suffer as a result, you hold fast to that cost. I'd encourage you to read Hebrews chapter 11 all the way into chapter 12, the first, like several verses of chapter 12 as something to prepare your heart for this.

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There's a belonging I have to Jesus that is bigger than my belonging to even my family. But that doesn't mean you don't love them or care for them. And that's where my second answer comes to you. I'D say, come at them with wisdom. Come at them with understanding. Come with them with grace. Try to make this as useful of a way as you can of you telling them it's not your rebellion against them, it's your compassion for them that makes you tell them, um, think about how to build that bridge as best you can so that if they burn it, you're like, I did everything I could to preach and share and give you this in the most like, daughterly way I could as a way of yielding to my respect for you, my love for you, and me holding out Jesus to you. So think about how to do that in the best way. Spend time thinking about how to do that in the best way, in the best setting, and prepare yourself for what you think your dad will say in response and your mom will say in response and how you might respond to them. Don't let them trigger you into responding angrily.

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Walk in the spirit, right? Walk in the spirit. Throughout that whole experience. Pray a lot ahead of time, and we pray that God would enable you and empower you and bless it and even if it goes really sour at first, that eventually the Lord will bring fruit from this and point them to Jesus Christ.

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All right, let's go to question three. This is from, uh, Nathaniel Brill.

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Nathaniel Brill says, should we hold to eternal begottenness of the Son, which seems to suggest the Son was caused. It seems orthodox, but wrong to say of God.

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Um, that's a tough question that I don't think I'm able to really weigh in on. I'll talk about it a little bit for you guys. Um, so the orthodox position, traditional Orthodox Christian position, lowercase O, is that, um, Jesus was eternally begotten. And so that he's. There's. You might call it. The other people call it the procession of the Son. The Son always proceeds from the Father, and so that he always had the second person, the Trinity. He always had a, um, Fromness. Okay, I know that's a weird word to use, but there's a quality he has where he's always from the Father, not just when he enters the world as the sun, but from all eternity past. And an example people use is, like, sunlight and light, such that the sun is shining and the light from the sun is, um, of the same nature in some. Don't think of science now. Think of just analogies. Okay? And the light. The light. The sun itself. And the light from the sun is extending. It's always extending as long as that sun is there. And it is The Sun.

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I'm speaking not of some analogy of the sun. The Sun. The sun's like the Father. And as long as it exists in that state, it is always projecting and pushing out the light, which is like the S u n or the S o N. Uh, don't follow my spelling, but follow my analogy here, if you would. Okay, so the Son, like the Father, as long as it's in existence, like if at any point it's not shining, it's simply not this, not the glorious solar body that it is. Um, but it's always, always shining. And so there's a sense in which the Son is said to have always been proceeding from the Father for eternity, not just for a long time. But no, no, in fact, we're not speaking here of time. We're speaking of a relationship that the Father and Son relate to each other in a way that the Son has always had a Fromness.

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Yet this is why we go on to respond to. But people naturally think next. Are you saying the Son was created? No, no, no. Always. As long as the Father has existed, the Son has existed, but he's existed in a relationship with the Father that has a fromness to it. Do I understand that? Not exactly. Does not mean I can't comprehend the basic idea. I just don't fully understand it because I don't know, it's hard for me to understand the timeless, eternal, transcendent nature of the God of all creation. Like, I'm not surprised that as I'm studying God in his very nature that eventually I hit a wall beyond which my intellect doesn't perceive. It doesn't mean I'm seeing contradictions.

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I just have questions I don't know how to answer. And that if I ask him and God tells me, I go, I still don't understand. And he goes, yeah, you're just too dumb for it. That's all. That's the problem. I'm hitting the limit of my intelligence. Um, and that may well be the case when it comes to the biblical teaching about this.

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It's not, in my opinion, is not super clear. And so that's why I don't want to teach you more about it yet. Maybe one day I'll study it more and maybe I'll feel even more confident about this sort of from ness. Um, and, uh, um, I'm fine with it, but I don't haven't. What I like to do is sometimes I'll take a doctrine or a theology or a topic and I'll really go deep on it and Then I ground myself in it that much more than I come and teach it to you guys. I haven't done that yet on this issue, so I'll. I'll say, um, for sure, the Son is, um, is in relationship with the Father 100%. The Scripture teaches that eternally and before his incarnation, he's the Son is with God. He's the Word is with God, and the Word is God. So there's a withness and there's a being God quality as well. And there's only one God. Those are 100% clear in Scripture.

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This from this thing. I have more to learn on that myself.

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Excuse my coughing here. I guess you didn't hear it. Anyway. All right, question number four. Ricky Nix says, hey, Ricky. Uh, says, hey, Mike. William Booth says we ought not consult feelings, but do our duty.

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How does that not then become drudgery? How do we be disciplined like Daniel, yet not mechanical?

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I think that I would. I would just say you might be. And I don't. I don't know much about William Booth, but you might be taking his quote a little further than what he intended. All right, so I'm going to do a verse by verse study of this quote from Booth. He says, we are not consult feelings, but do our duty. So in the circumstance where your duty thing you should be doing is something you don't feel like doing, he's saying just do it anyways. That's a principle I can absolutely get behind. It's one of the pieces of advice I give to men in general. Women, uh, too. But for, uh, some reason, it stands out in my mind towards men is, um, do what you're supposed to do without asking whether you feel like it or not. I mean, I've said this myself. I just didn't know William Booth said it.

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I think that's good advice. You said, how does it not become drudgery? Um, yeah. There's nothing here about sabotaging your own feelings, hating your own feelings. It's just don't. When you know you're supposed to do something, don't hold back because you don't feel like doing it. That's incredible advice in life. I think it's really good. How do we. How do we be disciplined like Daniel, yet not mechanical? Yeah. If you have other issues you're dealing with, with your emotions and your feelings, you can still address that and you can still work on that. Try to learn how to delight in what's good and learn how to reject and repel what is evil. That's A healthy thing you can learn over time. You choose sometimes what you. You don't always choose how you feel, but you can choose what you direct yourself towards. Right. And then over time, your feelings improve.

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They don't necessarily get perfect, but they generally do improve if you're very intentional about it. Yeah. All right, let's go to the next question.

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Um, Rachel Ray.

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Rachael Ray's got a question. Says is 1 Corinthians 5, 9, 13 only for corporate gatherings or for private gatherings such as family meals. Should Christians hosting professing Christian family members.

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Oh, should Christians host or, like, have, like, Thanksgiving dinner with professing Christian family members who are living in unrepentant sin? I'm glad you asked this question. A good timing, too. First Corinthians, chapter five.

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And I'll. I'll point you to another verse in First Corinthians. Um, that might help us answer this.

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1 Corinthians 5, 9. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all. Meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters. Since then, you need to go out of the world. But now I'm writing you to not, uh, not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. Not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you were to judge?

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God, uh, judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.

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That section of Scripture is about church discipline. You're like, you will no longer be part of our community, part of our group. We won't associate with you the phrase don't eat with them. Not to even eat with such a one. Um, the question here is whether he's talking about communion meals or all meals of any kind.

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That's a debate. I don't know the right answer there. If he's talking about communion meals, he's simply saying, don't let them be part of your fellowship.

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Because I could. Then let's say I have a friend who is falling away from the Lord. And then, um, six, uh, months has gone by, and I'm going to check in on him. And I go, hey, man, let's get lunch. I'm like, wait a minute. I can't eat with him. It says it right there. Like, I can't eat with him. Not even to eat with such a one, Um, I don't think I'm violating anything in the heart of what Paul's saying. I mean, even if he doesn't mean communion, even if he meant don't eat with such a one, he means don't have them as part of your social community of we're a gathering of Christians. I think that that's the main point here. That's why he's saying this is a way of purging the evil person from among you. These are those who are inside the church. The thrust of this passage is if they're in ongoing, unrepentant, serious sin issues, you can't have them be part of the church.

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Can I still outreach to them? Um, can I still do Thanksgiving dinner with them? Yes, you definitely can. And when you add Thanksgiving dinner, you're probably talking about family. And family is a different category. He's talking about church membership. Family is its own category here, and I'll share that. First Corinthians 7.

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Um, let me see if I can find the verse.

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I think it starts in verse 12. Look at what it says about family here. Um, to the rest, I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.

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So wait, I'm supposed to not eat with people who are living in sin, but I have a wife who may well be living in all kinds of sin, and I'm supposed to not only eat with her, but live with her? Because family is a different category than church gatherings and church membership and church belonging. They can't belong to my church. I can't do things with them that say they belong to my church. But if they're family who's unsaved or family who's in rebellion or backslidden, they're still family. I'm still going to reach out to them. I'm still going to spend time with them because I have a familial commitment to them. They may turn their back on me, but I won't turn my back on them. But they can't be part of the church if they're going to be doing those types of things. Same thing for the woman. Um, she shouldn't divorce her husband.

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I think that we should consider family a separate category and that this whole not eat thing is not about, like the old school Jehovah's Witness shunning thing. It's about don't do things that say, you are part of our fellowship. I'M not going to invite you to the church potluck as if you're part of the church. But if it's an outreach thing, even still, like I'm, um, part of the church, they've fallen away. It doesn't mean I won't talk to them ever again. My whole goal in removing them from the body was to get them back in for real. Because right now they're just faking it. I want them back in for real. So I'm going to always be outreach evangelistic towards them. It's not about, um, hurting or wounding them or cutting them off. It's about restoring them. Is the actual agenda there? Let's go to the next question.

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Kaylee Smith or K? Is it Kaylee? Kaylee or Kayleigh? Uh, probably Kaylee. I'm m sorry. I'm just. I'm bad. I've tried so many times trying to quit vaping. I'm starting to feel like a bad Christian. Any advice? Thanks. Um.

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Um.

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Okay. Well, I guess there's. There's a question of assessing the problem. How big of a deal is this? You don't want to be brought under any other. Under the power of anything as a Christian. Okay? So having an addiction like that is not healthy. It's not good.

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Um, if by vaping, you're vaping like you're not taking, you're not doing substances that are altering your mind, you're not vaping something that's actually like a drug that's altering your mind, then I want to say vaping is unhealthy. Vaping is not good for you. It's harmful to you, but it's not like the category of sin, like adultery and things like that. I think that's important to recognize that. Kaylee, as far as advice, I don't know if I'm a great source for helping people, specifically try to figure out new strategies on overcoming old bondages, that kind of thing. I'm not really sure. Um, I would just encourage you ask yourself what you haven't tried yet.

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Not that you should do anything crazy, but just ask yourself, what is it that I've not tried so far? Um. Uh, and maybe try to find someone who can give you counsel who's been through this and who's gotten through it and can give you some advice. Maybe you've already done that. You said you tried so many times. Maybe you've already connected with some accountability partners. Maybe you've already done all the steps you know of. In which case, all I can think is you just do it again. Like, don't give up, do it again, start again. The discouragement when trying to overcome habitual problems, the discouragement is as big of a problem as the sin itself is. So don't get discouraged. Okay? Please get up, wash your hands, start again. And if you blow it again, get up, wash your hands, start again. That's all the advice I got for you, Kaylee. I hope it helps. I wish I had something better.

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Okay, anonymous question. This comes in, uh, from anonymous man or Anonymous. Anonymous. Who says, hi, Mike. I am curious about contemplative and listening prayer practices promoted in my church. Are they rooted in or influenced by Eastern mysticism or New Age ideologies?

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That's a challenging question. Okay. Because if you go into church history, you do find mystics and you could say, ah, uh, I'm not getting this from Eastern mysticism. I'm getting this from Christian mystics from the church history.

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But those mystics may have themselves been influenced by other things like Eastern mysticism or basically extra biblical things.

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Um, so, yeah, I would want to just say this. If your church is doing that stuff, just keep asking, where do I find examples of or this kind of thing in scripture?

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The idea that, I mean, I've heard many people say that the thing about prayer is you don't just pray, you listen. And then their prayer life opened up to them. And I. That is not my experience. Mostly when I pray, I pray now I do. Maybe this is what they mean. I do often have in prayer times where I'm praying about an issue and I immediately think about it differently. I don't take that as like, I have a prophetic revelation from God and some people would. But I'm taking here, I'm taking this moment, I'm praying about this issue, maybe this person that I'm, like, bothered by or something. And the Lord just uses that moment of prayer to change my attitude and heart towards them because it's the one I'm talking to.

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Imagine, uh, if you don't read your Bible very much and you went to go talk to your pastor about it and you confess to your pastor, you go, pastor, I really haven't been reading my Bible. I guarantee you it would hit you in a fresh and new way. Why? Because you're in front of the pastor who you respect and you look up to, and he reads the scripture and he knows the word of God. And so now, because you're in that moment talking to him, you think about it newly and differently. Now, I wouldn't think I told the Pastor, I don't read the Word, and all of a sudden I felt so convicted. It must be that the pastor projected thoughts into my mind to convict me. Well, uh, it can also just be that in prayer you address issues to God, the Holy One, you address through Jesus Christ, the one who loves sinners and loved you while you were yet a sinner, and you naturally start thinking differently about your problems. I'm just saying I don't want to overly spiritualize all my thoughts. In prayer, God can just radically hit me with a thought, but it can also just be the self correction that comes as I bring my issues to God. Anyway, I kind of went off on a rabbit trail there.

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Um, if your church cannot ground the practices in scripture, then they should do one of two things. A, set them aside, or B, teach them. As this does not come from the Bible, I won't pretend it's the key to your prayer life. It'll just be something you're saying. Like, here's something I think has been helpful to me. It doesn't seem to contradict scripture. You guys can consider it, but you can't teach it. Like, this is the key to prayer that the Bible just forgot to tell us about.

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You need to ground it in Scripture. Clearly not vaguely. All right, let's go to the next question. Number eight.

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Cameron Donaldson says, if verses like Exodus 21:10 aren't supporting polygamy but protecting women in a bad situation, why didn't God just outlaw polygamy outright? I agree with you, but don't know how to counter this argument. Um, yeah, Cameron, um, I don't feel like I have to answer that question. I think that's my advice to you, is you don't have to have an answer to that question. Why didn't God outlaw polygamy outright?

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I don't know. Does the fact that I don't know does that. Sorry, we should be on question nine, right? Just a second. No, no, I skipped ahead. Okay, Sarah, we'll have to switch eight and nine because I skipped one. I'll go back to eight in a second. We'll call this eight. Um, um. Why didn't God just outlaw adultery or outlaw. Excuse me, uh, divorce entirely in the Old Testament? Why didn't he just say, make your marriages work?

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Like I could guess.

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Like Jesus gives the answer in the New Testament. But let's say Jesus never told us. He never says, because of the hardness of your hearts, God permitted, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. If he didn't say that. If he said, because of the hardness of. If he hadn't said that, it would still be true, that God permitted it and we didn't know why. Like, it wouldn't change anything. If I don't know the answer to this question, it doesn't change the fact that we have the standard of Adam and Eve, one man, one woman that we have. I've given a whole case. I won't reiterate my whole case. We have situation after situation. We even have it ruled out that you cannot even be a church leader if you're a polygamist. Like, you can't be a church leader if you're drunk. And also if you have more than one wife. And as much as they try to wiggle around that with the Greek. Yes, that's what that implies.

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The man, um, of one wife, husband of one wife, absolutely rules out polygamy. Um, so, yeah, this is not a situation where you have to answer this question. Don't take the burden of thinking, if I can't answer every question this polygamist has, therefore they're right, I could just come up with questions they don't understand.

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Why is it. If polygamy is good, then why didn't God make Adam multiple wives? Why when he had to populate. If polygamy is good for populating the earth, why didn't. Now, if they had some other scripture that proved it was good, they wouldn't need to answer that question. But if you're going to go off the implications of scripture, Adam and Eve is pretty strong Anyways, I'm saying a lot. Um, quickly, I do have a video. Two videos on this. I'll just refer to those and I'll link them down in the description below. The two videos I did on the topic of polygamy, I'll read your question one more time, Exodus 21:10, and it's on screen. If a man takes another wife to himself, what's the rule? He shall not diminish his first wife her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.

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What is the purpose of this law? Here's a question to follow up. Now, I told you, you didn't have to answer the question. But I'm going to try to do it just for the sake of understanding. Um, the purpose of this law is to protect the woman. It's very clear the first wife is under dangerous threat by the second marriage. Potentially, this is where things go bad. Polygamy in Exodus 21 is treated as a possible problem for the first wife. The second wife is when he stops caring for the first wife. That's a potential problem, at least with polygamy. And if he doesn't do it, she shall go out for nothing without payment of money. Why? Because it might have been somebody who was a servant who got married, which she maybe partly agreed to marry the guy, the master, because it was such an uplift in her social status. And so she gets married, and then he marries someone else. And you know what this prevents? This prevents sex slavery. Exodus 21:10.

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What you could do is temporarily marry a servant, sleep with her, and then go, I don't like you anymore, and get rid of her, and then somebody else, and then somebody else. And you just keep temporarily marrying. And you might think, mike, you're making this up. Nobody does this even in Israel today. Not Israel. Excuse me, not Israel. In the Middle east today, there are some Muslims who do this, and they do this real quick thing where they temporarily marry, and then, um, it happens. So this, um, was meant to protect women. Everything about Exodus 21:10 and 11 was meant to protect the, uh, first wife, the initial wife, and protect servants from being abused in that way. It's pretty good, good law, if you ask me. Does, uh, that law do anything to say polygamy is good? Does it imply, like, say, you know, Adam and Eve? That does imply that monogamy is good.

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It seems to imply it. Right. It's stated as the ideal. Jesus appeals to that as the ideal for marriage. And that's how we know how he answers the question of divorce is just by looking at Adam and eve in Genesis 1, 2, 3. And so this, um, verse, however, does not suggest that polygamy is some sort of good or ideal. It actually provides protection for women who experience polygamy, not for men, actually.

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Um, they have obligations, not protections here.

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Okay, question number nine. Uh, this is an anonymous question. Hey, Pastor Mike. Um, not technically a pastor, currently serving in the church. I do little things in my church, just not, not, not an elder. There is Romans 14:23 about emotional doubt or intellectual doubt. For example, I'm mentally convinced that ham is okay to eat, but still doubt emotionally, which is my conscience to obey. Good question, man. That's. That's a very real struggle that you are not alone in. I mean, not with ham. I don't care about ham.

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But you're not alone with lots of other issues. Lots of people are like, I think this is okay, but I feel. But it feels wrong. Um, yeah. So how shall we address it?

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Whoever doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith, for whatever he does for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

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Now, what we've done is we've asked a question about emotional doubt. And that would require that this verse, I just put it on your screen, that it separates into two categories, emotional doubt and intellectual doubt. And you're saying, intellectually, I believe it's okay to eat this ham.

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Emotionally, I feel weird about it.

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If you're in that category and you're like, I'm not wavering here. Many, uh, people are like, intellectually, I think maybe it's okay, but maybe it's not, then I would say, don't do it. Uh, you're not there yet. Don't eat out of doubt there. But your faith and your emotions are different things. For instance, I trust in Jesus Christ, but maybe emotionally, I fear, what if the Bible's wrong about this? I don't intellectually, like, intellectually, I'm there. I believe and I trust. My faith is there, is committed to Christ.

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Emotionally, I'm not there yet.

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Do I really believe? I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go with. Your intellectual commitments trump your emotional feelings every day. And I think that's an important principle to have. So I'm applying that principle here to scripture in this case and say, um, if you are genuinely intellectually convinced, no, this really is okay, then you are free to eat. Now, you're not condemned. But if emotionally, let me caveat it with this. If emotionally you feel like you eat and then you find that emotion is starting to challenge your very intellectual commitment to this idea. Like, I know it's okay. It's all cleansed by faith in Christ, and all things are. Are, uh, available to me.

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But you start feeling like, but maybe not, because, boy, I just feel wrong and feel bad. Then don't. Okay, you're actually not intellectually convinced. You're wavering. Don't do it for your own sake. At that point, please don't. I don't want to embolden the weak conscience. If you're not strong in your conviction here, don't play games with it. Don't play games with it. Because what happens, I think, is, um, once we start playing games with our convictions, and let's say that you feel like, I can't listen to this music, I can't watch that movie. And then you start doing it because you sort of think it's okay, but now you're not really convinced, um, you'll find that it's easier to sin in other things too, because you're training your heart to do things that you don't actually think are okay.

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I hope that answers your question. I know it's a rough one. Um, there's nothing wrong with if you're in doubt. If you're wavering between the two, why not err on the side of abstaining? Because it's not going to hurt you to not have that ham or whatever. It's not a big deal.

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Why not wait there until you feel a little bit stronger? If you even do. You don't have to. In Romans 14, do you know this? You guys should read it. The weak brother is the person who's like. They feel convicted about things they shouldn't be. They're like, they can't do stuff that God doesn't care if they do. Um, and that's the weaker brother. Okay. But it never tells the weaker brother he has to change. He can continue to not eat all that stuff all day long. He just can't judge the people who do it. Right. That's his danger, that he judges the people who do it and the people who can do it and have that freedom in Christ. They're told not to judge and look down upon. Not to think they're superior to the weak brother, but to realize we're all. No, we're all doing this. Fine. Everybody's fine. You eat it, you don't eat it, right? You can drink alcohol, you can't. None of us getting drunk, none of us abusing. But you can drink. And you don't. And you can't. We will be in unison together. We will respect each other's choices there, and we will not be divided on the topic. That's the important bit of the scripture teaching there. All right, last question.

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Kaylee says, what does giving us a heart of flesh mean when flesh is usually negative? Um, yeah, so the Old Testament talks about this prophecy where God's like, telling Israel, like, I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

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That prophecy is specific. Normally, um, flesh in Paul's writing, for instance, in the New Testament, flesh is deemed. Not always usually spoken of as a negative metaphor. It's for, like, sin and sinful desires and evil nature.

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However, when you go to the Old Testament, it's using the word flesh here in a very different fashion. And, you know, because it's comparing it to stone. Your heart is stone. I will take the stone immovable, stubborn, um, dead heart out, and I will give you a heart of flesh that is a living and movable malleable heart so that you will be responding to me. So God's saying, I'm going to give you a heart that's responsive to me. I'll give you a heart that's soft to me. Um, that's what he's saying in that context. And here's where we just want to recognize different biblical authors will use sometimes the same words in different ways. A great example is Paul and James. They both use the word justified, and they both use it in very different ways. And if you don't notice that, you will get very confused as you read James in particular. You'll be like, they're just contradicting it. They're just using one word in two different ways. And we have to acknowledge that because we do it too, all the time.

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All right, guys, that's been. That's been it. Um, I'm open to more information on thinking biblically about immigration. I know I don't have my head fully wrapped around it. I hoped I could bring at least some fruitful data to you, some scriptures that people hadn't probably thought of or considered, like, oh, that actually seems relevant. And, um, enter into a discussion where Christians are often being asked to take sides on political topics. And we need more and more believers who will help us at least try to navigate a biblical position in the midst of these other sides. Not abdicate a position, but learn to actually find a biblical view on these topics and on these issues. So I'm not going to be afraid to talk about politic issues, uh, any of those types of things when they arise from my biblical commitment to follow God and follow Christ. And I'm not going to let politics go. This issue belongs to us. Shut up, Mike. Shut up, Christians. Shut up, Bible.

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You have no power here. No, that ain't the case. All right, let's pray.

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Father, um, we thank you for your holy word and pray that we would grow in our knowledge and understanding of how to follow you, how to apply your heart and your word into all of the complex issues of our lives. In Jesus name, amen.