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Marriage being sinful is like, what are you talking about? This is preposterous. Like, who's even thinking of this?

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But you are just unaware of how very strong the thrust is for Christians and even non Christians just around the world to think that mixed marriages are evil. And, uh, I'll say interracial marriage for the sake of everybody knowing what I'm talking about. But, you know, I mean, people with different ethnicities or different skin colors, um, and cultural backgrounds and that kind of thing. Is that sinful? We're going to get into the scripture and answer, does the Bible respond to this? And I want you to understand that it is a rising problem. And let me first frame it this way. I think we think of this problem like white Americans.

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So let me explain what I mean by that. I'm not trying to trigger people, but we're going to get into this. Uh, is mixed marriage biblical?

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Um, the thing that occurs to a lot of people who are Americans, especially white Americans, is mixed marriage biblical. What we tend to think is, oh, do you mean, do white people think it's okay for white people to marry non white people? And they think that's the question. But I would recommend to you guys, I would suggest that even in the United States, the polls show that the actual community or the group of people who are the most opposed to interracial marriages are actually black communities, black people.

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Does that surprise you? But it doesn't really surprise me too much, um, because I know enough people.

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Let's just say I know people. Um, but I also know that racism is a huge issue in all communities. It really is. It always has been and always will be. But here, let me add this.

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The issue of interracial marriage being something that people are opposed to is far stronger outside the United States than it is inside of it. You're going to get a lot more strongly, consistently people opposed to it in Japan than you are in the US you're going to get more opposition to it in Korea than you are in the US or in you name, the other country. Pick a country.

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Um, this is just to help us understand that this is not a question about white people and white racism. That's obviously part of it, uh, or at least potentially, but it's really, it's much bigger than that. And it's predominantly.

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The US is like one of the better countries on this topic, generally speaking. But we should talk about the issue because it is skyrocketing right now, the opposition to mixed, uh, marriages. So is it biblical? What does the scripture actually Say we're going to look at the verses themselves.

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I'll show you, like, some of the stuff that people will use to try to say, hey, here's the reason why you shouldn't.

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And one of them is actually Acts 17:26.

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Put it on your screen here.

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And this is speaking, uh, Paul speaking here says, and God made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. Now you might be thinking, but Mike, that's like a verse that's basically implying it's okay for people to marry anybody as far as another human being goes. Because, you know, as long as it's a male with a female, uh, because they're all made from one man. And so we're fundamentally the same. We're all made in God's image. We all trace back to Adam and Eve. But you're not actually seeing the part that they will highlight. I would agree with that. But here's the part they'll highlight. Having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places, they interpret this passage. Some people do, some of the, uh, ethnic purity groups where they want everyone to be its own group. Like, I want the people who are in, uh, Uganda to look Ugandan. Always let them mix marriage. And then they lose this quality they have. They don't want anybody to change.

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Um, they act like this is a permanent thing. That's how they interpret this passage. As if Paul's giving an outline here of God's eternal determination of allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place.

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Uh, that I think is a misunderstanding of God's providence in Scripture, even in the Old and New Testaments. Here's the reason why. Because this is not meant to be like eternal and immutable, fixed allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place. Uh, these things change all the time. God is moving nations around. Nations rise, nations fall, nations get mixed, nations get absorbed into other nations. And this is all by God's providence. And that's included in this. Their allotted period in the boundary of their dwelling. When they all get deported and brought over somewhere else. When, like, say some country comes in and takes over another country, um, those things change and the culture changes and the people change. And the way people look over time changes as well. That's just part of that. So that would be, I think, reading too much into the text. There's another one though, and it's Deuteronomy 7:3. And man, if you just read, just read verse three. Let's only, let's break the cardinal rule of Bible study where you read verses in context. And let's just read verse three and see how powerful this is against mixed marriages.

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You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons.

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Boom. Case closed. This is, uh, a very strong passage or, uh, verse, at least on that topic. You will, however, notice that this is a comma, not a period at the end of this verse and that the entire sentence actually says more. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, but for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods.

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That is the purpose clause is present in the Deuteronomy 7 passage. The reason why God didn't want the Jews to intermarry with. Specifically, he's naming all of these, um, Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hittites, the Ammonites, all the groups that were inside the land, that were being driven out. These are very evil groups. They're full of paganism, they're full of evil. And God is getting rid of them, right? And so he says, don't marry them. And we see the intermarriage with these groups bringing in idolatry into the, into the people of Israel. Later on we know Solomon does it. He marries a bunch of foreign women and then starts putting idols all over the place for them, allowing them to bring those things into the land of Israel. We also have.

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I might have the verse wrong. I'm trying to remember now.

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Um. Oh, yeah, here it is.

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Malachi 2:11 says, Judah has been faithless. An abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign God.

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It's not just the idea. There's a lot going on in this passage here, but it's not just the idea of, um, intermarriage. It's interfaith. Marriage is actually what's being forbidden here. And how can I say that? Isn't there anything I can give to support that? Well, consider for a second the story of Ruth and Boaz.

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Ruth is not an Israelite.

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She marries a Jew who travels to another land because of famine and all that. And then she marries this guy and he dies. And then she goes with her mother in law, Esther, back to the land of Israel, and she says, my God will be your God and my people will be your people, but she has no Jewish blood in her.

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Then there's this romance story where she marries Boaz and becomes the ancestor of David and of Jesus, and she's even listed in Jesus genealogy.

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What about Rahab? Rahab is also listed in the genealogies. Why? Because these ladies, they left their foreign gods and their religion changed to truth. They worshiped the true God. And then it was not that big of a deal.

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So this was not an ethnic based thing, this was a religion based thing.

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That's what I see in the passage. I think that's a fair interpretation of it. And there's a couple more passages I want to give you guys.

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Um, first I'll point out though, that in the Old Testament, one of the ways you can see this is something, I think people should think about this more often, to be honest. Uh, as you're reading your Old Testament, when you see God give a command to Israel, it's fair to ask, was that for them? Was that for a time? Was that for those that were under the law? Or was this something that was more transcendent and you wanted it for all people, for all time?

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Um, that's a great question to ask frequently as you're reading through God's interactions with Israel, especially with the law.

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One of the ways you can answer this question though, that will help you get at the answer is you look at God's statements through prophets to the non Jewish nations around Israel. So Isaiah, uh, prophesies a lot to these non Jewish nations. And, and if God has standards he holds them to, then those must be universal standards, right? Like he's holding. You can't say it's just the law because God's giving it to them as well.

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Where in the Old Testament, in all of the many repudiations of the sins and the debauchery and the idolatry and the evils of the Moabites and the Ammonites and all these groups where Jeremiah talks about them, um, all these different passages where prophets speak negatively about foreign lands, where in those passages does he ever rebuke them for intermarrying with other cultures or with people outside their boundaries?

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I'm not aware of it ever happening. Similarly, God never rebukes them for not obeying the Sabbath, which I think is also very important to recognize.

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Um, so yeah, there's. Okay, there's a couple more passages we'll look at. Numbers.

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Numbers, chapter 12. Um, just very briefly, I could read the whole passage, but, um, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses, it says here, because of the Kushite woman whom he had married. For he had married a Kushite woman.

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And this is Often used as a case for. Look, God didn't seem to care that Moses married a kushite woman, who would have been black, most likely. And, um, they're complaining about it here. They're griping about it. And God actually takes Moses side. He totally defends Moses. He's got his back here. And Miriam gets rebuked by God through leprosy and then end up being healed. So you can read through it here. Um, that is a good verse to be aware of. This was at least an opportunity for the Lord to offer some sort of critical word because of the sin of Moses, because he married a kushite woman or something like that. But we just don't. We don't see that in the passage. Instead, he seems to just be defended as though they have no right to bring such an accusation. Uh, so that's a bit of a softer evidence, but I think it matters. First Corinthians 7:39, though. Um, okay, this, to me, is a really important verse that always gets overlooked in these conversations about the whole interracial thing.

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You'll understand in a second why this is relevant. Okay. A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she's free to marry whom she wishes, only in the Lord.

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So this woman can marry whoever she wants. This is from Scripture. Whoever you want, as long as they're Christians, as long as they're in the Lord, they're in Christ. They have Jesus. That's the one restriction. So we know that the church consisted of Jews and Gentiles and people from all sorts of different places at the time. And he is giving her permission to marry anybody in the congregation who's from those groups. This seems to me like a very clear permission that from the Lord. This is totally okay to do mixed marriages.

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I think this is very clear. Now, you can add one more fact to this. Historically, that makes it even stronger.

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There are actually these Jewish documents that somebody would get. Uh, when, if I remember correctly, the circumstance was a wife gets a certificate that her husband had died. Um, and on the Jewish document, it says that she's free to marry anyone she wants as long as they're Jewish.

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So it's the same formula that Paul uses here, but where he could have put a restriction that would have been. It would have at least felt more restrictive as far as, like, whoever she wishes, as long as they are of her ethnicity or something like that. He doesn't. He ignores that and just says, whomever, period. As long as they're Christians. That's the standard. Christians are only supposed to marry Christians. Now, if you've married a non Christian, do the absolute best you can. Honor the Lord in that marriage. Be the best husband or wife you can be, the best friend you can to that person.

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Um, don't withhold any good thing in marriage from them because they're not a believer. You shouldn't have done that, but you did it. Now honor the Lord in it. Um, and hopefully God will use it. But yeah, you're not supposed to. That's what scripture says now. 2nd Corinthians 6:14.

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It also has something here.

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It says, do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

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For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what accord has Christ with belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God has said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

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So I think that it's very clear what scripture says about marriage. Um, anybody, as long as they are in the Lord.

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That's the thing. Now there's obviously some. You could be like, what about an 80 year old man and a 17 year old girl? Well, that's obviously a bad idea.

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We can always add in wild scenarios. Um, but I want to give a little bit of due to just speak very transparently on these things. Um, some people will say, mike, okay, I hear everything you're saying and I won't even argue with you on that. Okay, I'll say, yes, there is a permissibility to marrying anybody as long as they're in the Lord. And the ethnicity question is not something that should be some sort of moral requirement on anybody. But there are cultural issues, Mike. There are cultural issues that we're concerned about. And some cultures are very negative. And you wouldn't really want to have your kid, your daughter, your son, marrying someone with that culture, bringing all those cultural problems into the marriage.

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And, uh, that's true. Um, the difficulty is painting with too broad of a brush, because inside of a. When you have a culture, it's true, you can make statements about the culture generally, but I don't think that it's logical to then make conclusions about everyone in the culture inclusively.

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So there's a lot of things that are true about Americans in general that are not true about me individually. And to treat me based upon Americans in general would be unfair. That would be a kind of partialism, a kind of favoritism in the negative sense.

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This happens whenever I travel. You travel. People think you're rich because you're American.

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Um, and so you have to be careful. Like, you're more alert and aware that I'm traveling in an area where I might be more targeted because people think I'm going to have a bunch of money on me, and I don't.

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But again, this is just treating the individuals as though they are the stereotypes, and that is a problem.

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Now, let me answer another thing here. Um, is it wrong for somebody, Biblically speaking, is it wrong for someone to simply prefer their own ethnicity?

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I'm going to.

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I may take some flak on this, and maybe there's something I'm missing here, but I don't see a problem with that.

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And let me give you a counterpoint. If you think that that is a problem, that you shouldn't prefer your own ethnicity, um, where you just have a preference. It's not a moral thing. You're just like, I'm a white guy and I like white girls. Maybe that's what you think to yourself. That's just who I'm attracted to. Naturally, I don't have any objection to you. But let me flip the script on you a little bit and push it this way. Would you also say it's not wrong for someone to prefer a different ethnicity?

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For instance, uh, I know a couple guys that are white guys married to black women, and they just like the way they look. They just like the look. Okay? And that's just reality. I don't think that that's an evil thing. I don't think that's a carnal thing. Even you can be carnal about it, but I don't think you need to be it.

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I knew a guy who just. He liked redheads, married a redhead. I didn't have a problem with that. A moral problem with that. Um, so that kind of preference, where it's in the realm of, oh, I like a girl saying, I like tall guys, or I like guys that work out, like, that's not a sinful thing. These are just preferences. As long as they're not tied to a type of ungodly prejudice, which is possible, it could be tied to an ungodly prejudice. But if that's not the case, I don't think we should rebuke people for either of those.

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Um, for those who are opposed to mixed race marriages. I'm really curious to get in the comments your response to this question though.

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Two, um, questions. One is, do you believe your opposition is thoroughly biblical? Like this is clearly scriptural and Mike's just misunderstanding these things.

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Second one is this.

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What would you say to somebody who is a mixed race person? Who are they allowed to marry?

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So I've got people like this in my family where you've got somebody who's, let's say in your ancestry somebody was 50% Japanese and 50% German.

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Who are they supposed to marry? They're half and half.

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So can they marry a Japanese person? Are they supposed to marry a German?

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Are they only able to find other 50, 50 people or do they get in a new category of mixed race people that have their own race in your mind? I don't even like the word race. I think, uh, it implies that we're far different than we really are.

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But is that what we do? What do you do with. What if they're like 30% Irish but they're like 60% French and then the rest is mixed up? Some other stuff.

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Do they go French because it's 60%?

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Do they pick between the two? What are the rules that you make and how far back do you go?

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Because there are ethnicities now that are the result of mixes. Go to like Mexico and you're looking at a result of mixes between Spaniards and the natives that were there. Um, what are they? Do they count as an ethnicity or are they, what do you consider these people? I think you're just playing with stuff. You don't know what you're doing is what I'm going to suggest.

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So that's my answer is, um, we are of one blood. And that passage does relate to this. The only restriction for Christians is to marry in the Lord and even the commands to Jewish people in the Old Testament that was specifically about religious concerns, which I think is proven with Rahab and, and with Boaz and Ruth. I think that these stories give examples that prove the point that this was about a religious restriction, not a race restriction. So we're going to go to your guys questions in the live chat. My name is Mike Winger. If you've never seen me before, I am, um, here to hopefully help you learn to think biblically about everything. You can check this out. You can go to my website, BibleThinker.org everything on there is free. And, uh, I just have resources, Bible studies, all kinds of that kind of stuff. So let me go to your guys questions, and the first one's going to be from Eromai, who says, hey, Mike, thank you so much for your ministry. I've been told that you should build a relationship with someone before sharing the gospel with them. Thoughts? Um, I'm opposed to making rules about that.

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So my gut is to say, um, let me back up. Okay, I'll come back to the rule thing and why I'm opposed to that in a minute. But let's just go. You know, we think biblically about everything. Let's look at the examples we have in scripture. What are the examples of evangelism and of preaching the gospel that we have in scripture?

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It tends to be over and over again, immediately going to the gospel with people right away, like, you just go right to the gospel with them. You go out, you go out into the public and you start telling people about the gospel. You maybe do a segue like Paul in Athens. He has a segue over to the resurrection of Christ, but you go very quickly to the gospel of Christ. There's never a hesitation that I see anywhere in scripture where somebody's like, I won't tell them about this. I'll wait.

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Um, so the one thing I would suggest not to do is you're keeping the gospel secret, like in your back pocket. They don't know it. They haven't ever heard it. And you're hoping that years down the road you'll be able to get it out.

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Now, maybe what you can do is get the gospel out and then you can build a relationship. And now that you've already got the gospel to them, you've already shared it with them, they already know it's there. It's in the back of their mind in all your conversations, hopefully. And you then build the relationship that helps build the credibility and open the door for the gospel to get deeper into their hearts, I hope.

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Um, but here's where I'm a little bit opposed to, like, hard and fast rules on this stuff is because life is incredibly varied. Oh, I should have gone to question two. Sorry. Life is incredibly varied. We get really strange circumstances in life. And you may meet somebody and you know for a fact that they have heard the gospel many times, and they haven't heard it from you personally, but, you know, they've heard it many, many times, and they're very hardened to it. And there's just wisdom in that moment of going, look, they Know the gospel, they've heard it a lot. I'm going to come in the side door of friendship, and then I'm going to work on this person, helping them realize that that bitterness they have towards Christians in general, maybe towards God. Um, then maybe I can break that down by showing them what a Christian can look like in real life.

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Um, so I can see a wisdom in that. Okay, I can see wisdom in that. I don't think it's cowardice. I think it's wisdom. If you're withholding the gospel, though, because of cowardice and fear, that's where I would say, Christian, give yourself permission to stumble forward and just spit it out. And just spit it out.

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You tell them the thing that you're actually thinking, not the strategic thing that you've worked out. Maybe just tell them what you honestly think. Hey, I've been trying to think about a way to tell you the gospel, and I can't find a way in our conversations. But I really would love for you to be Christian. Do you mind if I just make sure you understand what the gospel is?

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Wouldn't that be disarming to a friend to just tell him really openly like that, where you're not. He doesn't feel you're maneuvering him. You're just open book right there.

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That's an approach you can take that might be useful for you.

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And we'll go to the next question. Um, this is coming from an anonymous source. Um, are we responsible if one is emboldened to disobey his conscience because of something we posted online? Romans 14. I wish to show games I like on my channel, but I'm afraid they may convict a brother. Good question.

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Uh, so there is a phrase I've heard, and I don't know for sure where it came from, but I thought it was useful. At least when I say it, I know what I mean by it.

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And that is, um, um.

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Oh, what is it called? The tyranny of the weaker brother.

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I think that's the phrase. The tyranny of the weaker brother.

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And here's the circumstance. Um, let's say that you play cards like poker, and you get together and you gamble. You do like $10 poker games once a month with your buddies. Everybody puts in 10 bucks. And it's like you figure out. It's like we're paying. If I lose, I'm paying 10 bucks for entertainment. And if I win, I'm getting the money back. And, uh, some more.

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Um, and you do that once a month and you have a relative who thinks gambling is utterly sinful. Okay. I think gambling can be sinful. I don't personally think it's utterly sinful. I don't think there's a biblical case for that. Um, um, not a clear, strong one, just weak ones. But anyway, that's another video sometime. Um, and I don't really gamble. I don't like gambling. So that's not me saying this because I like to secretly go gambling. I don't find it enjoyable, to be honest.

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Um, so this is something you do once a month, and then you have a relative who is extremely opposed to all this stuff, and they find out about it one day because someone posts online. Maybe you do. You post online. I had a great time playing poker with the buddies last night. And then they see this and they come up to you and they're like, you play poker? And you're like, well, yeah, I mean, I feel it. I don't think it was sinful. We did it this way and that way.

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Just having a good time with my friends.

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And, um, then they think, well, maybe I could join in. I can join your poker game. And so you go, well, sure, I guess so, if you feel okay about that. I thought you were opposed to that stuff. Well, maybe if you're doing it, maybe I can do it too. And then they start playing poker and they're violating their conscience, meaning that what they're doing is not inherently sinful, but what they're doing is an actual violation of their conscience. In their heart. They feel as though they're disobeying God, but they're doing it because it's like a peer pressure thing. They're kind of being brought along by you.

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Is that your fault? This is the question you're asking, is it your fault for posting it online?

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Had a good time playing poker with my buddies.

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Does that make what they did your fault? Let's read through Romans 14 and let's try to analyze this, um, because the same can be said of things like drinking.

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Um, uh, other topics as well. The movies you watch, the books you read.

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Um, someone else might not be able to read that with a clean conscience.

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So do we just isolate that stuff entirely? You're not allowed to talk about the movie you saw like you saw a movie. I don't go to the movies. I think movies are sinful to even watch.

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Oh, well, then I guess I shouldn't mention movies in front of you. Okay. Or books, like books I read. Or how about sports? Well, I don't like sports. I have a conviction about Sports, I can't be involved in it. Don't like it. I think there's gambling associated with it. I think that people get too obsessed with it and it becomes idolatrous in their lives. And you're like, oh, gosh, well, I took a picture with that baseball hat, um, with my favorite team.

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Is that okay?

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And you can see how this can move into, like, a really restrictive thing. And that's the concern. So Romans 14 says, as for the one who's weak in the faith. Weak in faith, meaning that they can't participate in as many liberties because they feel bad about it. Welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. Your goal is not to change their minds. I'm going to do a really quick run through of Romans 14. By the way. This won't be a thorough teaching.

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Uh, one person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. Let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. This presupposes there's a knowledge between the two about their habits, doesn't it? It's something. I don't know if I've even talked about this in the past, but the fact that Paul's like, hey, don't despise the one who abstains, and don't judge the one who eats, implies that you guys actually know that you have these different habits.

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So in other words, Paul isn't here just counseling total secrecy. He's trying to give counsel for people who actually know about each other having different convictions, which is, I think, the healthier way to go.

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Um, let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. Um, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who were you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

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One person esteems, uh, one day as better than another, right? The Sabbath or New Year's or Christmas or Easter, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. This is a make up your own mind thing. Uh, these are issues that are not about sin, about liberty.

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The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the other one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

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For none of us lives to Himself and none of us dies to Himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. So the question for you, like with gaming or whatever, is, can I do this and give thanks to God for it? Is my conscience clear on this?

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For to this end, Christ died and lived again that he might be Lord, both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you. Why do you despise your brother? Right. If you're. If. If you're playing a game and someone's, like, bothered that you're playing that game and you're thinking, this isn't a compromise, I'm not playing a game that's like, you know, actually got really bad stuff that I'm participating in or something like that.

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You're just sort of bothered by games. If that's the problem, then why are they passing judgment on you? Or why do you despise your brother? And this is the despising thing is, I'm so sick of these people looking down on me for me participating in something that I know I have Christian liberty in. So you start to despise them. That's also the danger. Remember, Paul's like, he's the apostle of love. The guy's like, you need to remember to love each other. God has united you. For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God as it is written. As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.

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So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

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Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. And this is the restrictive part you're talking about.

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Am I putting a. So a stumbling block is not just them knowing that you're doing it, although it can be that it's possible. But the idea is that not, can I post this online or can I do this? It's just, am I harming my brother? Not, are they bothered by me? That is not the question. That becomes the tyranny of the week. I'm bothered by you wearing that clothing. I'm bothered by you having, um, your house is too big or your car is too expensive, or you celebrated Christmas, you had a Christmas tree. I saw you wearing a Santa hat. I'm bothered, bothered, bothered by all of these things. I don't think that Romans is counseling us in a way where, if any Christian is bothered, you have to change what you do.

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That would be a tyrannical type of thing. And it does happen, and that's why we need to talk about it. Um, but instead, I don't want to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I don't want to bring them actual harm. That's my concern.

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So I invite my friend over. Here's a good example that I invite my friend over. Um, this is hypothetical, right? And so I'm bringing my friend over to my house, and I was gonna. Um. Maybe there's like, a group of friends, five, six, seven of us. One of them is a former alcoholic. And, like, it's dangerous for them. And so we, out of love and care and to protect them, we were like, hey, nobody's gonna have any drinks. I'm not saying I bring people over for drinking parties in my house, but hypothetically, like, say it was. You know, you're like, nobody's going to drink because we don't want to stumble this brother. Now, on the other hand, if the brother. The reason why you were thinking none of us should drink when this brother's in the room was only because he was just a jerk about it. I don't think that is justification. It's not as though he's going to be stumbled, like, harmed. It's just that he's really hateful about it. That probably needs to have a discussion where you go, hey, can we talk about this? And maybe you still, out of gracious love, you don't do it, um, you know, because you feel like it would be somehow a hindrance or whatever. But the counsel to him is not. He gets to control everybody so that he doesn't judge them. You know, he's just told not to judge them.

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All right, I'll read on. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. But it is unclean for anyone who thinks it's unclean. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love, but what you eat. Do not destroy for the one for whom Christ died. Do what is for their good, not just what keeps them from being mad at you. Right? Do it is for their benefit. So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the holy Spirit, whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean. But it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. And that is such a beautiful thing, because here's where I go. I have liberty to eat this food or drink wine or whatever, and I will not ever allow that to harm and stumble my brother. I care about them too much. They're too important. So what I've seen in some churches, and I know happened to me in the past as well. But I, um, where the Christians who do drink have their own fellowship, and they can ostracize the one who doesn't, instead of just dealing with the elephant in the room and talking about it and discussing how they could work out and still fellowship together. Because their fellowship is actually more important than this issue of the drinking. And I mean drinking moderately, because obviously drinking is a blessing and it's also very dangerous. It's both. I have it video on the topic of alcohol. If I'm bringing that up in your mind and you want to know more, just type in my name and the word alcohol.

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Um, the faith that you have, keep it between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. That's the thing you want to avoid. You don't want to be failing in that area because you got emboldened because of maybe a Facebook post, Right? But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith, it is sin.

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All right, so your question. All that being said, your question.

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Are we responsible if one is emboldened to disobey his conscience because of something we posted online? And your specific example is, I wish to show games I like on my channel, but I'm afraid they may convict a brother.

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Let me say, obviously you have to ask the real question. Is the game that I want to show, is it really morally okay for me to play this at all? Like, that's the first question to ask and work through that. Be willing to set aside any game or anything if it's not something that a Christian should be, um, enjoying.

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Um, but beyond that, it seems to me overly restrictive for just putting stuff online and thinking nothing can go online that anybody would stumble from. It's just. It's so, so restrictive that shouldn't people at least have some self control?

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It seems to me they should have some level of self control. This is just hopefully wisdom coming from me to go.

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The alternative is that there are now so many things that nobody can do online that it becomes very like oppressive. Because it's not just righteousness. It's not just only righteousness online. That's already very restrictive as a Christian, and it should be.

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But now it's convictions. I must follow the lowest common denominator of convictions in all of my online stuff. So for instance, some Christians think sarcasm is sinful. They really believe sarcasm itself is sinful.

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Are you going to be like, I better not use any sarcasm online.

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I think that's too restrictive. That's my personal thought on that. So, yeah, I'll take your guys questions, uh, here in the live chat. Uh, we do have all 10 questions for today already queued up.

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The next one's from Donna Gramillian.

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Uh, says is calling people by a church title like Pastor Biblical? Nowhere in the scripture is anyone referred to by anything other than their first name.

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Matthew 23:7 12 seems to forbid it.

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Um, I think I would differ with you on the idea that nowhere in scripture is anyone referred to by anything other than their first name.

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Um, they're frequently called the apostles.

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That very often, um, they're called the apostles as a title. Or, uh, in John, it's the disciples. He uses the word the disciples to refer specifically to the 12.

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And that's a title. Um, Paul introduced himself. He says, I'm Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, um, the Apostle Paul.

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So I don't think that that's entirely accurate to say that nobody gets those titles. But the passage you brought up is Matthew 23:7 12. And it's understandable why you're bringing this up and why you would be like, hey, doesn't this make it look like we shouldn't be using those titles?

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Um, I'll back up a bit so we get more context. Jesus warning against the Pharisees and the scribes, it says. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, Matthew 23:1.

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The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you.

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Notice he uses the title scribe and Pharisee. He still uses their titles. Right? Um, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with a finger they do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. These are like little boxes with Scripture in them. They make them bigger, uh, on their heads and then their fringes or garments even longer, so that it was just like this outward performance religion.

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Um, and they love the places of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. They love it. Now, the word rabbi means teacher.

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Jesus actually was called rabbi many times. He was called teacher.

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Um, so I'll read on. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father who is in heaven.

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Neither be called instructor, for you have one instructor, The Christ, the greatest among you, shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who, uh, would enter to go in. And he gives them more woes, Woes, woe, woe, woe, woe.

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How restrictive is Jesus meaning to be here with this? Does he mean, like, you literally can't use the title teacher for anybody, which would mean that, like your teacher in school, you cannot go teacher as you refer to him.

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Call no man your father on earth, you know, But Paul talked about how he. How Timothy was a son in the faith to him. He was like a father in the faith to Timothy. He had that, like, spiritual relationship with the guy that was real.

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What is Jesus really against here? Is he really against us being called even teachers at all?

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We can't even call someone an instructor.

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I think that what Jesus is getting at here is an example or a, uh, rule that relates specifically to the example he just gave, right? They love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogue. So they like being exalted above people and greetings in the marketplaces. They like being singled out as special and being called rabbi by others.

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This is what Jesus is being opposed to, is this idea that we have a special cast of m. More honorable, more important people.

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As Christians, we are all sons and daughters of the Most High. Actually, Galatians does this great thing where it refers to every Christian as a son of God. And the idea here is that sons actually had the highest possible status, right? So the daughters would get a different inheritance than the sons. So, so Christians are all sons, meaning the highest possible status. We're all kings and priests, not kings and queens. Right. And priests and priestesses. We're just kings and priests. We're like this incredibly high status that we have in Christ. And anything that diminishes that because of the way we look to another leader and we go, oh, uh, man of God. Oh, great, man of God. Um, which diminishes you, that's a problem. Now there's a really good illustration of how this has happened in church history with the term Father.

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Call no man your father on earth, for you have one father who's in heaven.

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When you refer to the priest as your father, that is of which most of you don't. Right? But let's say that, um, let's say you're Roman Catholic and you have this, or you're orthodox, and you have a cast of individuals who are priests.

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These priests, they have a physical, spiritual function of go betweens between you and God. They are conduits of God's mercies and grace to you.

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They are an in between person between you and God. Doesn't mean you can never go to God on your own. I'm not saying that. But that is their function, right? That is their function. They mediate.

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That's a problem because what that has done is that has taken away the priesthood you have with God and it has given it over to someone else. And now you were going to them for their priestly intercession and not seeing yourself as on the same exact footing as that guy.

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So that has happened in the real world, um, of those that are called Father often in the Catholic Church.

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But can you refer to like, you know, if you can't say rabbi, if you can't say instructor, and if you can't say father, then you'd think you can't say elder. Right?

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That's what you would think.

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But we get these definitions.

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The office of overseer is described, and then Paul simply refers to the person as an overseer, uh, or an elder, um, elder overseer, presbyter, these are all the same thing in scripture that is very clear in the passage. This is how they mean. I know in church history they started taking on different meanings, but in the text it seems very, very clear.

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So an overseer must be above reproach.

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We get a description of these people as being, uh, talked about using their titles. We also get this with deacons. Deacons, likewise, this and that and this and that.

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So they're Overseers, they're deacons, they're elders. Paul meets with the elders in Ephesus.

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But maybe one difference is, um, the habit of going up to people. This is where I have an open question myself on this. The habit of going up to people and using, um, their office as their first name, as though that is just their name.

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That seems to be an area where I'm like, I'm not so sure this is a great idea for Christians to do on a regular basis. Sure. Paul introduces himself as an apostle.

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I don't know that people walked around going apostle, apostle as they were talking to Paul.

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People seem to call him Paul.

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And that kind of is a good humanizing quality, I think. Now, at the same time, I also reminisce about an older time in our own cultural history where people were often called Mr. And Mrs. Frequently M. Mr. So and so, Mrs. So and so. And I think that there's something about that that elevates, but that elevates everyone, right? That kind of elevates everyone culturally. When I, when I refer to the pastor as pastor. Hey, Pastor. Hey, Pastor.

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It at least feels like it's going to be easier to turn into this sort of self exaltation type thing.

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So for whatever that's worth, I know I'm a little bit on the fence on this.

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My pastor, when I was a teenager and I first started really going to church, um, the, uh, pastor's name was Norm. I just called him Pastor. As far as I was concerned, Pastor was his name. And no matter where he went, he was carrying that office and that designation. Now, he was not an arrogant guy and he was not like big headed. And he wasn't, to my knowledge, seeking after any kind of accolades or special place or special treatment. So it wasn't really a problem. But I know I've seen so many churches where it is a problem. So I don't know, it would probably be clumsy to make a rule like, don't ever call someone just pastor. Like that's the only name you use for them is pastor.

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It's probably more of a vibe. Okay.

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It's probably more of a vibe. Is this guy loving it when people call him pastor? Is this guy loving the greetings in the marketplaces? Is he liking the special seats or, oh, I sit up at the front.

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That is where the real risk lies. All right, I'll go to the next question.

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And this comes in from Emily Baker. Oh, wait, no, I skipped ahead. We're going to question number five.

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Yeah.

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All right. Najee Simmons says abram's father, Terah, set out for Canaan, but stopped in Haran, where he died. Later, God calls Abraham to Canaan. How do I know if something like this is a coincidence or meaningful?

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Yeah. Um, so that's a good question. How do we know? I mean, it just seems, uh, we know that God called Abram to leave his father's house to get away from his family. His dad actually comes with him for a certain distance to Haran, and then he gets called, goes out to Canaan. It just seems at least significant that he ends up going to Canaan without his dad. Right. He ends up going the final step without the dad around. And that somehow it was him separating from his family was important.

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And I think that, personally, I think the connection here is, um, God was going to raise up a new people with Abram, Abraham, and they were going to become their own, a nation that God would call to himself. And so even though Abraham had this national history, this ethnicity, you might say, he then gets called out and God's going to start something brand new with him.

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Um, so separating from that familial relationship to some degree seems actually, it helps draw that picture.

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But what else can we say? You always look for, uh, clues in the text that your suspicions are confirmed, that God is interested in the same thing you are in that passage.

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So there's a decent amount of reading between the lines you might say, when we say too much about this.

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Um, so I'll just leave that there. I think that it's an interesting question. All right. Number six. Emily Baker says, do you think it's biblical that women who have abortions should be legally judged the same as someone who commits murder?

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Um, I think that I have given this some thought. This is not something, I'm just saying off the cuff.

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Um, I'll say several things in my opinion on this.

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Um, Biblically speaking, The killing of people is murder. Killing of innocent people is murder, and murder should be punished.

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Now, the circumstances of that punishment do change depending, um, was it accidental? Was it manslaughter? Um, there's various different circumstances where you could say, okay, well, maybe the punishment can be nuanced, but murder is murder. And the basic idea behind what you do with someone who commits murder in Scripture is they get the death penalty.

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Um, the only reason you could say we don't. Well, there's maybe two reasons. The first one is that you could say we don't want to have that same penalty on women who commit abortions is, um, because we're going to make a Distinction where we're going to not call it murder. We're going to act like this isn't a living human being being intentionally killed.

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We're going to pretend that that's not what's happening. And that's something that's intolerable to me. And it should be intolerable to every human in the world, where you just say, no, I'm not going to treat the baby in the womb as a different kind of entity than the baby outside the womb.

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This is exactly what got us into this problem in the first place. And so for that reason, you would think, well, then you should prosecute. You should pass laws and prosecute. Now, I don't think you can prosecute for laws that didn't exist, but you should prosecute. Pass laws. There should be.

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I'm going to say I think this is 100% true. Um, guys, I'm open if you think I'm wrong on this.

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But I think that as a Christian, I'm committed to certain moral truths that affect my opinion of political stuff.

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I think there should be a federal ban on abortion and that there should be federal, uh, prosecution for those who commit abortions for the reason that. That we are guaranteed inalienable rights as Americans.

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I have certain inalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Right. That life.

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Right that belongs to the baby in the womb as well, and that should be extended to them, which would make it a federal issue, not a state issue. I get that there are reasons why people think, but if we move it to the state, we can actually get more ground. We can work better towards, uh, abolishing and getting rid of abortion that way.

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I at least think what it should be. Now, tactically, maybe there's tactics that we should push out and do all kinds of things and do everything we can to stop abortion. But I think that the end result should be a federal ban on killing our own babies because they're human lives, just like there should be a federal ban on killing anybody else.

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Um, now, the other pushback you might get is. But, Mike, it's complicated.

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Uh, a woman goes to get an abortion. She goes to a Planned Parenthood, and they routinely lie to her, and they tell her that she is, uh, just. It's just a clump of cells. There isn't even a living person there.

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It's just a clump of cells. And then we'll use dehumanizing terms like fetus, which is just a description of a human at a particular stage. Right? So, like, you've got, um, Infant, toddler, young adult. Um, you've got adults, you have elderly. These are all names we have for different stages of human development. And all of them are fully human and have full human rights. And so whether it's zygote or embryo or fetus or whatever you want to call it, that's just a name for a stage of human development when you're talking about people.

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Um, but the concern though is, are we going to prosecute women who didn't even really know what they were doing?

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I know a woman who, she went to an abortion clinic.

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She was talked, uh, I wouldn't say just talked into it because she was scared. She was there because she was scared. And she was not ready to have a kid. And they basically lied to her about the nature of what was going on in her body. They told her to take a pill, she took the pill. She passed her child after it was killed and starved. And then she saw, they told her, don't look in the toilet. This is what really happened.

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And then she turned and she looked and she saw what was a tiny little human being. And it broke her heart.

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If someone had showed her that picture of what her baby looked like at that stage of development, she never would have taken that pill.

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So do you prosecute her the same as you would someone who is shouting their abortion? They're like, yeah, I know it's a person, but I don't care. I do what I want with my own body. Da, da, da. And there's like a callous malice that's there. Well, we have laws for this already, don't we? We have laws for premeditated murder versus manslaughter versus depraved indifference and all these different things. I mean, I'm not a law guy, but we should look at all the nuances. Okay, that would seem to be necessary.

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But yes, uh, as a Christian, I think that our long term goal should be prosecuting anybody who commits abortion.

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Male, female, doctor, mother, father, anybody.

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And I know that this is opposed to our current cultural vibe that we've got right now, but I think that it's just the darkness on our hearts that keeps us from seeing it. We look at an abortion and we think that the woman is the victim of the abortion. And I'm like, dude, the baby is always the primary victim of this. Always. And even if there is in some sense a woman's being victimized, it's not as bad as what's happening to that baby.

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So there's my honest answer on that. Yeah, we should do that. I can't think of any reason not to. Can you?

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Can you guys think of any reason.

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Good reason not to?

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I'll fight. I'll see your comments, I'm sure. All right, let's go to the next question. Number seven.

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As a Christian, how do you balance ambition and contentment?

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Oh, um, um. Ambition, in a good sense, is what you strive for, what you push for, what drives you.

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And in a bad sense, it creates bitterness. It creates a discontent with the things that God has given you, with what you end up with. You end up being upset. Um, contentment is about what you have. Ambition is about what you're trying to accomplish or do. Now, ambition is not a bad thing.

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Ambition is a thing.

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Selfish ambitions are bad. Do nothing out of selfish ambition. But in humility, consider others better than yourselves. So I don't want to have selfish ambition. But was not Jesus ambitious?

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He set out to save the world.

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Save the world. He gathered together a small group of apostles. He poured into their lives, and then he told them, go preach the gospel to everyone.

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And he changed the world. And those apostles, uh, went out into foreign lands. Like, talk about the ambition of Peter going out and preaching the gospel. The ambition of James preaching the gospel, even till he gets killed for it.

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Paul traveling all over where he could in the known world known to them anyways. And he preaches the gospel all over the place. And he gets up and he debates in synagogues. Apollos goes into synagogues, and he's debating with Jews back and forth. Other Jews. He's Jewish, right? Debating with them back and forth. Uh, bringing people to the Messiah.

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There was tons of ambition. We see in Scripture. There's a lot. But it's godly, right? It's focused. Uh, Ruslan has a teaching he does on this recently, and I heard it once, and I thought it was very good. Okay. And it's Godly. Ambition is, um, his thrust. I think that we should be very ambitious for the sake of the kingdom.

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What we don't want to be is very selfishly ambitious. Very selfishly ambitious. And contentment comes in with.

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When the great high things that I try to accomplish. When the end result isn't as big as I was hoping it would be. That's when you find out if contentment is something that's in your heart.

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Because it will never be enough. It will never be enough. As Proverbs says, the eye of man is never satisfied. You'll just never be satisfied. So you must become content. And the reason you can be content is because, um, In Hebrews, it says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. I can be content with whatever I have. Not because what I have is so great, but because I have Christ. And so this thing is so small compared to him.

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I hope that gives you some aid. All right, we'll go to the next question. Number eight.

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OceanFrank says, In Galatians, Paul says Jews from the sect of James were Judaizers. If the book of James was written before the Acts 15 Council, do you think James in his book taught faith plus works equals salvation? All right, great question. I'm going to read it again because I want us to catch exactly the terminology you used. And we're going to look at Galatians.

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Um, I believe it's going to be chapter two.

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And.

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Okay, here's the question again. Notice how you characterize this scenario of these Jews. Who are they from? What's their allegiance? Who sent them? Um, in Galatians, Paul says Jews from the sect of James, sect of James were Judaizers. If the book of James was written before the Acts 15 Council, do you think James in his book taught faith plus works equals salvation? So maybe you're postulating a possible, like, historical reconstruction where James writes his book, um, before the Acts 15 Council, and the Acts 15 Council was deciding. For anybody who doesn't know it was deciding, do the Gentiles have to obey the law in order to be saved? And the conclusion is, no, man, they get saved by faith in Jesus. Nobody gets saved by the law. We all just get saved by faith in Jesus. Right. So it's not law, it is grace.

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Then you've got James supposedly. What if he wrote his book and James chapter two, where he's like, we're justified, uh, by, uh, faith. And he talks about works, and he uses the word justified there. And I have answered this several times. So you guys can just Google, like, Mike Winger justification James or something. It'll pop right up. Google's your friend.

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But what if James wrote that and he really was saying you were justified by works, and later on during the council, he changes his mind. In Acts 15, he goes, you know what? You're right. You're right. My bad. I'm wrong. So this is. This is based upon an interpretation of James 2 that says it is faith plus works, and then a predating of James so that it's before the Acts 15 Council.

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All right, what does Galatians 2 say?

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Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation. Right. This is Paul talking here, though privately, before those who seemed influential. The gospel, uh, because of the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. Okay, this is about the Judaizers. But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet, because of false brothers, false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ so that they might bring us into slavery. To them we did not yield submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

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Ah, uh, false brothers.

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Who's he talking about? He's not talking about, like, Christians from James, is he? He's talking about false brothers.

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Let's read on. What else do we learn about them?

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Um, to them we did not yield submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And from those who seem to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality because he knew what the gospel was.

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Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised. For he who worked through Peter for his apostolic m ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles. And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave me the right hand of fellowship, David, the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas in me that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised only they asked us to remember the poor. The very thing I was eager to do.

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Now, let's read on. And here's where the mention of James comes in. But when Cephas or Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before, certain men came from James.

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Now we get the men from James.

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This is a different group of men.

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Before, we had a group of false brothers.

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These are not the men from James.

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These are the false brothers. Where are we at? Where is it? Um, I want to find the verse.

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False, uh, brothers secretly brought in. These aren't men from James. These are false brothers secretly brought in. They were like, hey, you guys have to all be circumcised. Everyone has to become Jewish.

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No No. Then we get a separate circumstance where Peter blows it in a very different way.

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These guys aren't saying everyone has to be circumcised to be saved. No, there's just a social pressure problem. So certain men came from James, then Peter is eating with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

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It doesn't say that they all believed that, um, you had to be circumcised to be saved.

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But they're all Jews who were not generally fellowshipping with Gentiles. Most likely there was a social pressure that was going on here.

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James, on the other hand, he has already in Acts 15, weighed in the Acts 15 thing already happened.

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It's after that fact that Peter then goes, and then people come from James after James says publicly in Acts 15, said, no, you don't need to be circumcised to be saved. Clearly that's the case. That doesn't mean there weren't still tensions in the church.

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The circumcision party still existed and these guys came as visitors from James.

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Um, and they were experiencing hypocrisy and God's still working it out.

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So I think that the error of Peter here is just eating with these guys alone sends a message to the Gentiles that something's wrong with you, you're not good enough.

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That's where he goes, that's not true according to the gospel. You're violating the gospel there.

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But I think that the idea that James book.

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Anyway, your theory I don't think works. And also I don't think there's any reason to think that James wrote anything before the Acts 15 Council. James appears to have been written, uh, much after that. So that's kind of a long answer to your question. All right, we'll go to the next one. This is number nine from Noah, Thomas who says, Jesus clearly says there's no marriage in heaven, but God established pre fall that it is not good for man to be alone and gave Eve to Adam despite Adam being in communion with God in the garden. Thoughts?

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Okay, so yeah, this could create a scenario, hypothetically where humans in heaven are in a not good scenario because we're all single or we're not, there's no marriage. And I'm going to offer two pushbacks on that to suggest that that's not the case.

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One of them will be the fact that when we think of heaven and go, there will be no marriage. We often instinctively think of, oh, we'll all just be Single people or something. We're actually going to be more united and more close than we are here on Earth. And I'm not talking about physical intimacy. We're going to be more united and more close and have more connection than we do here on Earth. I think that's absolutely part of it. And so there won't be that aloneness. You won't be like Adam standing alone in the garden with a bunch of animals. You'll be part of the body.

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The second pushback I would provide is the following.

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This pushback says there is a marriage in heaven. It's not humans, men being married to women. It is the bride and it is Christ.

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That marriage in heaven, uh, will be incredibly satisfying, and it's paralleled with humanity. But obviously we should keep this holy in our perspectives and understandings of what this means. But.

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But here we have such incredible connection with God, such unity to God, such filling with God at all times, at every moment, that you will not be alone. You will not sense loneliness, you will not sense lack. Imagine how comforting heaven has to be that it can be described as no more sorrow.

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It's just no more.

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Imagine how comforting God's full eternal presence and connection with him has to be that the Bible describes it as he will wipe away every tear from their eye.

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This is people who have lost a child, people who have had trauma upon trauma upon trauma, so that they despair of life. And they lack words to even explain how dark and deep their depression and their difficulties have become.

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And we have this incredible promise that this incredible union with God going to come and it'll be like it was nothing compared to the glories that I experience now. All the darks, all the depths, all the difficulty that I went through, nothing compared to the glory that I have now. And that's how Paul talks about it. He says the sufferings of this present time are not even worth being compared to the glory that's coming.

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So, yeah, heaven will be pretty good. Okay, number nine or number ten? Sorry, number ten. Last question.

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Is it wrong to reward myself for doing things I have to do? I worry that I might make my motivation wrong. But also, it's so hard to get myself to do things. Okay, so, um, in principle.

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Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with my throat. I keep having to clear it. Maybe I need more coffee.

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Uh, no, that didn't work. Maybe I need more.

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So is it wrong to reward yourself? Um, that's too blanket of a. To give a yes or no on that is just. It's too difficult. Right?

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The basic principle of you work six days, you take a day of rest. That we have this kind of in there baked in as this like ebb and flow of work and rest and work and rest. That, that's like a natural, um, a natural thing. And the day of rest is. It's not just like you sleep in. The day of rest is like, you don't work today. Well, what do you do then? You just, you do fun things, you do enjoyable things, you do family building things, you do things that are good that day being set aside for the people of Israel.

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It just justifies this idea of this, like, given this give and take with how much we do versus some blessings that we experience.

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However, it can get weird pretty quick if you are rewarding yourself all the time for things.

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And it can be like, maybe, uh, I don't want to theorize too much about people's childhoods and things like this. You're like, how did this get brought into your life?

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I remember when I first started working and doing like eight hours a day, um, of work.

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It was really difficult for me at first. I never had a job until I was like 18 and I was like struggling at first. I was like, I go to, go to the work, go to the job. I think my first job was Taco Bell. So I worked there for like seven months. Right? Um, and then I moved out of state for a few months.

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Taco Bell.

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I was working 40 hours a week.

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I was 18, but I was still in high school. So I was a senior. And I had only half day for a bunch of reasons. I had failed ninth grade. I did five years of high school because I was very, very bad student, um, because my life was chaos at home. And that's usually what happens.

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Um, but by my senior year, I'm working on like half day. So I get off at 12 when the lunch bell rings, I get off school and I would go to Taco Bell and I go to work and I work for like eight hours and like five days a week.

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Um, that experience was very difficult at first because I would clock in and it just felt grueling. It was hours and hours with like a 15 minute break or whatever. And it was just, it was grueling at first. And I remember coming to a place in my own life where I just accepted it. I just was like, this is just what work is. You work.

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And there was some switch that got flipped where I was like, okay, that is a switch. We all need to flip.

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Proverbs talks about It a lot. The hand of the diligent people who are late versus people who are lazy. The lazy man, he always has excuses. Oh, there's a lion in the streets, he says. And you're like, why does the proverb say that? Lazy man says, there's a lion in the street. He comes up with wild reasons for why he can't do anything.

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Oh, I can't. Oh, uh, there's this problem and this other problem, this other challenge. Everything's too difficult for me. And there's something in us that has to flip the switch of going, I work. Uh, I'm willing to work. I'm willing to put my head down and push through it. And when I hate it, I'm going to still do it. That's a very important principle that you have to get into. You. You do it anyways. You work and you labor hard, in a sense, rewarding yourself. Like, I have a day off.

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Um, I'm going to have something nice to eat and enjoy some.

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But if you are living for little cookies throughout the day, that can become a very unhealthy thing, which can lead you to be indulging too much in things that are not good for you.

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And it can turn into a crutch where you never flip that switch of being willing to work really hard because you're just never willing to say, forget it. I'll just do what I have to do. I got to do what I got to do. I'll, uh, work however hard that is, however much that is. I'm just going to get it done.

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That's something that's really healthy for us all to do. And so I don't know. I'm saying a lot of things because I don't know your actual personal situation. I've seen people who benefit greatly from going, like, I'm going to work hard, but, man, Saturday, I'm going to go surfing. It's going to be great. And it kind of helps them through the week. Um, I've seen others who constantly need something to indulge in in order for them to do anything that is unpleasant or difficult, and that can become very unhealthy. So God give you wisdom to know where you're at on that so that you can keep growing in Christ and you can keep growing your discipleship in Christ.

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Um, I hope that helps. I.

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Yeah, I don't want to be too restrictive. We just want to be healthy, healthy people.

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All right, guys, listen, that's the end of today's Q and A. I'm going to be with you next Friday again.

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And, um, I got tons of stuff I'm working on right now.

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Um, I'm hoping to kick it out soon. I'm going to stop announcing things. I will say one thing. I had a Todd White video. I had it recorded, I had it submitted to. I had to send some money letting a lawyer watch it, submit, um, it to various witnesses.

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And it basically, I have to redo the whole thing. So I don't know when that's going to be done. As soon as I can, I have to go back to the drawing board. So that's just like, uh, it's just going to take time.

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So I'm going to stop announcing videos like that because something happens. And then I'm like, oh, great. Now I have all these people that expect it because I was talking about it. And it's. I should just not create those expectations. I'll just go, surprise. Here's another video.

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All right, that's it. Uh, let's pray. Um, Father, we ask that you help us. Lord, have wisdom, have, uh, hearts that are willing to labor and work hard, knowing that our prize is, um, ultimately when Christ returns. And that's the ultimate prize. That's the thing we're ultimately living for. The ultimate reward. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Amen.

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Mhm.

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Sa.