Bible Q&A • Episode 51

Hi, everyone. We're back with some more Bible questions and answers. I'm Pastor Paul. I'm here with my wife, Sue, on this lovely June sunny morning. It's going to be hot, I think, today. That's okay. Bring it on. Bring it on. Yeah, we love summer. And so we're going to see what Bible questions we have this time.

Alright. Our first one is from Wendy, who says,

No, there's not. Short answer. So if she's looking for scriptural response, I can't give her one, because really the Bible doesn't give us instructions like that. The only instructions we have concerning communion are to do it in remembrance of Jesus. And I think women should be completely free within the context of their own meetings to offer and to receive communion.

I'm glad to hear you say that, because I've done that for years.

Good. Yeah.

Okay. Lynn says,

Well, that's the question of the hour, I suppose, for a lot of people, particularly unbelievers. I mean, even believers sometimes struggle with that question as well. And it's not a super easy answer, to be honest with you, because you know, the Bible tells us that sin is the root cause of disease, death, evil, and all the things in the world that we don't like. So sin is the root cause. The Bible also tells us that sin entered into the human experience when Adam and Eve committed rebellion against God in the garden, and ever since then, it has just been kind of a wild free-for-all with sin. So the question comes, why would God let these things happen? Okay, so we have to kind of back up a little bit when this question is asked. And we have to say, okay, let's say God is going to do something about it. Well, if He's...and He says, I'm going to get rid of the cause of cancer and death and physical and emotional abuse and all the other ills, I'm going to get rid of them, right? Tonight at midnight, it's going to happen, we're just going to get rid of it all. Well, what people fail to realize is if God's going to get rid of all of the effects of sin, He has to get rid of all sinners, and that includes everyone. So in other words, God would have to wipe out all life on earth, okay? God is allowing these things to happen because, first of all, we chose them as human beings. We are free will agents, or free moral agents, I should say, and we chose to go in the direction of sin, and sin is playing itself out in horrible, tragic, deplorable ways every single day. But that's why God sent His Son. That's why God sent Jesus was to, first of all, pay the penalty that really we deserved. We should be paying that penalty, but He came to pay it for us. And then He's giving time now for people to come to faith in Him before He does close this whole thing out and say, that's it, no more. Because once He closes the door, there's no more opportunity for people to come to faith in Jesus. So the Lord is bearing with the difficulties of this world. We can't blame those things on God. We can't say, if God is this or that or the other thing, why does He let these things happen? That's a way of putting blame. The fact of the matter is, the blame is ours. But instead of blaming us, God chose to send His Son to take the blame. And that's using very crude terms to describe what really took place when Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross. He took our blame. He said, listen, I'm not to blame, but I'll take your blame so that when you come to me, your sins can be wiped out and we can live together for eternity. God is going to turn everything around. I want to be a part of that. So instead of blaming God for the way things are, I'm going to accept what He did for me and know that my sins are forgiven, and I know that I'm going to be around to enjoy when all that junk is gone.

Yeah. As far as a Christian observing someone asking these questions, I think it does take a lot of discernment to know whether or not to answer, because here's the thing. All the sin, all the conflict, all the chaos in the world could really potentially cause someone to say, so where's the peace? Where do I find? And could lead them to know God, to understand God, or it could cause them to just throw up the roadblock and say, and turn away. And so in our response to people, we almost need to just kind of wait a little bit and find out, are they curious or are they just roadblockers? Or are they just throwing up excuses because they never intend to come to Him anyway?

You know, that's where being led by the Spirit, and like you say, being patient, determining what's going on in this person's heart. Because I gave an explanation that may not work. You could sit down and explain.

You gave a very good explanation.

Here's the question. It's truth. Is that nugget of truth going to go anywhere? Are they ready for the truth?

Right. Yeah, that's right. That's right. The truth is hard. There's no question about that. The truth is hard. And it doesn't always make sense to me, but you made some very, very good comments.

Oh, thank you.

Bridget is from Zimbabwe. She said,

Yeah. The reason that it mentions gods, and what I can see that she's concerned about, is that the Bible says that Nebuchadnezzar said it looks like a son of the gods. Yeah. Well, was he right? No, of course not. He was a pagan. He believed in a multiplicity of gods. The reason Nebuchadnezzar said what he said was because he believed in many gods. And all he was saying from his limited perspective is, that fourth person in there doesn't look like a regular human being. He looks different. And of course, he came up with the best explanation.

Using his vocabulary.

Right. So who was it? You know, there are many people who believe that it was a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus, that it was God the Father, that it was an angel. We're not told. We're not told. We know that God sent a fourth person. And I believe personally that it was the Lord Himself who came and walked through the fire with them and kept them from harm. But you know, the Bible doesn't specifically say. But don't let Nebuchadnezzar's comment whack you out, or to think that somehow the Bible is teaching.

Sure.

Because remember, this is a narrative.

Right.

And narratives can say all kinds of wacky things. Good grief. We've got the words of Satan in the Bible.

Yeah.

So you got to be careful in a narrative to say, oh, well, the Bible says. You know, I actually had someone tell me many years ago that they believed that witchcraft was okay, because the Bible mentioned in the narrative that there were witches, you know, in Israel at the time of Saul and David and that sort of thing. Well, and again, that's taking a narrative. You have to understand in the larger context of the Bible, you know, witches, which in the Old Testament, witches were those who consulted the dead on behalf of the living. They were forbidden. And the Bible very clearly says that. But if you don't read that, and you just read the narrative, and you think that the narrative is speaking doctrine, then you're gonna get confused.

How often have we both said in a teaching, the Bible narrates. It doesn't necessarily condone.

Exactly.

Oh, it narrates horrific human activity. I mean, the book of Judges is hair-raising in some places, but that's not telling us to live like that.

Exactly.

Well, randomly, the next question is from a Daniel, and he says,

I like this question because he's doing what we're told to do. We're to test everything, and that's a very important thing, particularly when someone, if someone were to walk up to you and say, I have a word from the Lord. I think that we should listen politely if somebody says that. We should hear the word. We should take note of what it says. Maybe even after it's over, write down some notes, but then test it. Test it by Scripture. Test it by the Spirit within you, you know. Do you have peace about that? Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, and is it going to be borne out in time? Many words, prophetic and otherwise, need to be simply borne out by time. If it's from the Lord, it will be fulfilled. There's no question about it. If it's not from the Lord, it won't. I've had words given to me that were not from the Lord.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, I can say this now some 40 years later, it hasn't come to pass, and so, you know, you have to test everything, but one of the greatest tests, not the greatest, the greatest is the Word of God and the Spirit of God, but one of the best tests is time.

Right. In my personal experience, you know, I had a word given to me in the 80s, and it was heard, and it was subsequently forgotten, and it took about 24 years. And all of a sudden, the fruit of it is like, this is what the Lord said two decades earlier.

Yep, I remember.

And so it was just time passing.

It was time.

I think it's important that we don't assume either way. We leave it open, and you know, this person said, I'm praying about it. Keep praying about it.

Sure.

Don't put a time limit on your prayer. Don't say, if God doesn't answer me in this amount of time, then, you know, I feel like God has answered me in all of the areas where people have, where I've put those questions to the Lord. But this person is obviously saying, I don't think I've gotten an answer yet. So keep praying.

Sure. Yeah.

Alright. Sharina says,

Well, yeah, there are other scriptures. First of all, sola scriptura is a Latin term that simply means Scripture only. And that is a way of saying, in essence, I believe that the Word of God is the revelation of God to man.

So we won't add other books or teachings equal with that.

Exactly. It's only the Word of God. So that's what that whole thing means. So really, sola scriptura is a term that reflects what the Bible already says about itself. So I don't think there's anything wrong with using that term. I wouldn't go around actually using it.

A Latin phrase?

Yeah, a Latin phrase because there's a lot of people that don't know Latin or don't know that Latin phrase. And I would just tell people, I believe the Bible is God's revelation to man, and it's the only one. And that's really, frankly, all you need to say.

Pretty much every doctrinal statement of an evangelical church begins with, we believe the Bible is the written Word of God and is singularly the revelation of God to man. And so that is extremely common. And yes, we believe it, and there's nothing wrong with saying we believe it.

Very good.

The next question comes from Mumbai. It's Joaquim. Says,

Yeah. So God knows everything, He's all-powerful, and yet He allows people to be created even though they may end up in hell. There's all kinds of questions along these lines. If God knows, then why?

Right.

And so this question comes in many different flavors and forms. You know, God allows humans to procreate, and He gives humans, every human, the opportunity to come to faith in Jesus. There is not one human being on the face of the earth who will have ever lived that didn't have the chance. There's not one single person who did not have a chance to respond to God. So, you know, that's the way you have to look at it. God gives everybody a chance. The Bible says very clearly, God is not willing that any should be lost, but that all would come to repentance.

Yeah.

Okay, that's the heart of God. He has bent over backwards to make sure nobody ever has to be in hell.

Yeah.

We go there because we choose to, not because, you know, God said, I'm gonna make some people and some of them are gonna wind up in hell. But what the heck? You know, that's ridiculous. That's looking at it from such a human, crass kind of a standpoint. No, God loves every single person and has made provision for every single person to be saved. And we're the ones who choose to say, no, I don't want that.

Right. And God, in his wisdom, allows us the dignity to make that choice.

That's very good.

Ray says,

Yeah, Paul does say that. He talks to the people in Corinth and says, you know, and I'm paraphrasing, you guys are, you know, believers, you're born again, unless you believed in vain. He actually says that. And the word vain means empty. In other words, he's saying, unless your faith was empty. And that's a way of saying, unless you really didn't believe at all. Okay. So that's what, that's all he's saying. You guys are believers, unless somebody has made a false profession and they really don't believe. That's never something to worry about. You know, the person who makes a false profession is not going to worry about it. They're doing it because they want to, you know, the person who worries about having made a false profession is the one who truly believes, but they're just given to fear and that sort of thing. So again, Paul is saying, you are the children of God, the saved, unless your faith wasn't real.

Yeah.

Well, what is unreal faith? It's someone who really doesn't believe Jesus died on the cross for their sins. I really don't believe it. You know, I might say I do. I'm a Christian, but then you question them and well, do you believe, you know, in Jesus? Well, I'm not exactly sure there was a Jesus and I'm not really sure he died on the cross for me. And I don't think he died for anybody, frankly. Well, their profession of being a Christian is, Paul would say empty, you know, because there's nothing behind it. There's no real, true, genuine faith behind it.

Right. Paul was saying. And in our culture, in Western civilization, which still has a Judeo-Christian ethic, we have all kinds of churches where it's pretty easy to join in and to be one of those people.

To be a part.

But there's no true faith. A lot of times when people have come up to talk to you after a service, and you ask the question, if you died tonight, how do you know that you'll go to heaven? And these are people who've sat in church, but they say, well, I don't know for sure. I hope I've done enough good things. And so you can tell the belief is empty yet. It's as yet empty.

Now the other thing that Paul could be referring to when he says, unless you believed in vain, is someone who put their faith in Jesus and potentially then removed that faith. In other words, came to a place of saying, I once believed, but now I no longer believe. People will ask me the question, do you believe that's possible for someone to do that? I don't really know. I mean, I've never met anyone personally who said, I once believed that Jesus died for my sins, and now I no longer believe that. I have to think in my heart that there's at least a possibility of that, although I've never met someone. But that could be also what Paul is referring to.

It could be, although this was a pretty young church and not that much time had passed. So we don't know.

Monica says,

Whoa.

Yeah. You know, I've actually gotten this question and different variations of it. Many times throughout the years, I wrote about it in my book, Pastor, I Have a Question, and gave an answer there because it is such a common question. I would say to this individual, you know, you're already honoring your parents.

That's what I was thinking as I read that, yeah.

You're taking care of them in their old age. They have kind of frittered away their income, their wealth. And now she says they're completely dependent on her and her husband. You're already honoring them. Now she's saying, what do the boundaries look like? Because they really haven't changed their lifestyle. And all the things that got them into trouble are still a part of their life. Well, you have to protect your family. You have to protect your marriage. You have to protect your children. So if you're taking care of parents who are unrepentant and still living a very worldly lifestyle, you have to walk that very difficult tightrope of loving them, honoring them, but also protecting your direct family from their influence. And that's hard. And you got to pray that through. You got to talk to your husband. You got to say, are we doing everything we should be doing to make sure our kids stay safe and so forth? And also that we don't bleed our finances dry and our children suffer because we're pumping all this money into this black hole over here. It's a rough thing. It's a difficult thing, but there's nothing wrong. Let me say this. There's nothing wrong with choosing to protect your family, your immediate family, your spouse, your children from a wayward family member who's continuing in their waywardness, even though you feel the need to reach out and help them somewhat. You do have to put up barriers. You do have to have boundaries. What those boundaries look like are going to depend on what the Lord, your specific situation and what the Lord directs you personally. You just got to pray it through.

Follow the Holy Spirit.

Yeah. Yeah. That is for sure.

An anonymous viewer asks about Psalm 23.

Yeah.

It says,

Yeah, that is a tough question. Psalm 23 says, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want or be in want. I think the first thing that is important to realize is that the statement that David makes there about saying, I will not be in want, is not necessarily the same thing as saying I'm going to have this overabundance all the time. It is more expressing an attitude of the heart that says, I choose to be content. The Lord's taking care of me. The Lord is my shepherd.

Yeah.

It's his responsibility. So I'm not going to sit and fuss and that sort of thing. Now here's the deal. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul talks about the fact that he had actually learned to be content and he said, I know what it is to be in want. He said, I know what it is to hunger and to go without, and I've learned the secret of being content, whether I have food to eat or whether I'm hungry, whether I have an abundance or whether I have very, very little. And I don't think the apostle Paul felt that his circumstances were a contradiction of what David had expressed in Psalm 23, because again, it comes down to a hard attitude. Am I willing to be content with what the Lord has and to trust the Lord? You know, I think back on the early days when you and I started the church in Ontario, and we were just telling our children last night.

Right. We had a family dinner and we were all sharing stories about this.

Yeah. And we were telling them how lean those early years were. And, you know, I think back on those years and we didn't have an abundance. Sometimes we didn't know how our bills were going to get paid. You know, it's not like there wasn't an abundance. There wasn't enough. It was negative.

It was negative for a few months and it was perplexing to us.

It was perplexing.

Because we've never been going into debt people in our lives, before that or after that. And yet that was just a very short trial that we went through. So if we had lifted that, I shall not be in want, we clearly would have said to ourselves, we're out of the will of God.

Depending on how we interpreted, I will not be in want.

Exactly. That's what it comes down to.

Exactly. And one of the things I think that this individual said is that some translations render this as, I shall have no lack. Well, I'm not exactly sure that's a good translation, you know, given the whole situation. David had lack from time to time. We all do. In the timeframe that you and I were just describing, the Lord was teaching us to trust Him. The Lord was teaching us to rely on Him and not to rely on self and to pray about things and know that the Lord would take care of us. You know, Jesus in the Gospels, you can read this, where Jesus says, you know, He tells His disciples, think about the birds. Do you see them getting all nervous and wringing their hands? He said, God provides, He says, your Father provides for the birds of the air. How much more valuable are you? And so here's these statements given us in the Bible, where we're told in no uncertain terms, God will take care of us. So you know, when our circumstances seem to contradict that, my personal feeling is the last thing that I should do is question God's Word. The first thing I should do is probably question myself. Am I trusting the Lord? Is my heart attitude right in these things? Am I simply needing to be more content with what the Lord has given rather than complain about what has not been given? Am I being faithful with the money that the Lord has given, right? Am I following biblical precepts and guidelines with how I'm using the Lord's money that He's given? Do I truly consider myself a steward of the things the Lord has given? Or are they mine to do as I see fit? See that's, you know, there's plenty of questions that should be directed toward me. And none, frankly, that should be directed toward God. God, why aren't you doing this? You said you would do this. You know, I'm not going to do that. I'm always going to question myself first, you know, and because there's always plenty of adjustment that I need to make as a believer.

I think that there's just kind of sum this up. There's a narrative that I think gives us a picture of this. The Lord is my shepherd. The shepherd is the one who watches over. He is with me. And I've so loved the story of Moses in that way in Exodus chapter three, where God calls him into ministry and Moses has a lot of objections, but I don't have this. I don't talk good, this and that. And God always answers him three times in that chapter. He answered him, but I will be with you. And as the story goes, God didn't give him all the playbook, all the instructions, everything that he needed. It was a, there was a lot of perseverance, but yet what did God give him? The promise, but I will be with you. That's the heart of the shepherd. That is what the shepherd is to us, but I will be with you. There, you will need to apply some perseverance. It's going to build your character. It's going to turn you into the person I intend you to be. And along the way, there may be some severe dips with regard to these things, but I will be with you.

When I look back on the years that we had that were very lean, we had children and not nearly enough money coming in to pay for everything. I look back on that time now, and I can say God was faithful. He faithfully saw us through. We didn't go under. We didn't have to, the kids had three square meals a day. God was faithful. He saw us through, even though we were concerned, worried, and befuddled from time to time about our situation. Trust the Lord. Trust the Lord. Put your hope in God and trust the Lord and be faithful. That's my best advice.

Yeah. And that's a good question to end on.

I think so too. Well, that is episode 51. We hope that there was something there that the Lord will use in your heart to minister hope and grace. And we've got more questions and hopefully more answers. So we'll be back again to do this. Until then, God bless you. Have a good rest of your day.

Bye-bye.