Bible Q&A • Episode 52

Hi, everybody. We are back with some more of your Bible questions. I'm Pastor Paul here with my wife, Sue. And this is the time that we kind of tackle the questions that come in to us through our website, YouTube channel, and so forth. So ready for number one?

Yeah, let's go. Number one is from Gloria. She asks,

Well, Gloria, I don't see that reflected in my Christian life either. So we're together on that one. There are groups over the years who have taught what we refer to as holiness doctrine. And there've been many groups throughout the years that have done that. Even the Church of the Nazarene still holds to that basic premise, although not all Nazarene churches teach it very strongly. But that holiness teaching essentially said that you could reach a point where you could expunge the sinful nature from your life to the point that you no longer sin. And it's not borne out in daily life, nor is it borne out in the Word of God. We know that the Bible tells us that when we sin, we have an advocate with the Father. And that's not a license to sin, that is simply an expression of the reality of the fact that while we live in these corruptible bodies, we will continue to struggle with the sinful nature. Now, the Apostle Paul tells us in the Book of Romans that Jesus has dealt a death blow to the sinful nature in the sense that it no longer holds dominion or dominance over our lives, and that we now have the choice to say no to the sinful nature. But we also are not perfect in that, and sometimes we choose to follow the sinful nature. People refer to it as fleshing out. And frankly, that's a good term. Because that's exactly what you do, you refer to the flesh. Instead of yielding to the Spirit, we yield to the flesh. So it happens, we know that when it does, we go to the Lord, we confess our sins, He's faithful and just, to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and we know that our salvation is not dependent upon never sinning again. Our salvation is dependent upon our faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. So we recognize that we do make mistakes and we sin from time to time. We don't minimize it, you know? We recognize that sin is not something we want in our lives. We recognize that God will give us victory over sin in our lives. We also simply recognize that we're not gonna be perfect this side of heaven.

Right, all right. Well, Tyson says,

Well, you know, in the book of Ephesians 4, the apostle Paul tells us that certain giftings were given to the body of Christ to be a blessing, to be an encouragement, and to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. And those gifts are apostle, prophet, evangelist, and then the pastor-teacher combination. And so a teacher is someone Jesus gave to the church. And the reason he gave it was because the teacher is operating in a gifting by the Holy Spirit to break down the word of God, to make it, as Tyson says, more digestible and understandable. And I refuse to subscribe to the idea that listening to a teacher is not studying the Bible. I think that as you're listening to a teacher, you should be taking your own notes, you should be doing some of your own cross-referencing with other Bible verses, you should be praying, and of course, test everything the Bible tells us, and that includes even teachers and what teachers say. But I don't think that that is a lesser form of studying the word of God, just because you're doing it along with a teacher. I think it is an approved and biblical form of studying God's word.

Very good. Bucky is from London and says,

The implications are that fasting is hard for some people, particularly staying away from food and drink for a period of time. Some people just can't do it from a nutritional, biological sort of a perspective. So I encourage people in those sort of situations to fast other ways. You know, when the Lord was going to appear to all of Israel on Mount Sinai, He told them to avoid intimacy among couples for a period of time. In other words, He told them to fast from sexual relations in the preparation for the appearing of the Lord. I believe that there are all kinds of ways that we can fast today. I think you can fast from the internet, from, you know, scrolling on your phone, watching movies, reading novels or other books. Fast from anything that you find to be a distraction, because really that is the essence of fasting. It was meant to free the person up to give their time, attention, and focus to the Lord. You know, we have to remember that food preparation in biblical times was not like it is today. You can't, they couldn't pull something out of the fridge and heat it up in the microwave. There was hours and hours of, you know, preparation that went into making a meal. I think the women were constantly making meals. So for them, a time of fasting was a real blessing to be able to focus on the things of the Lord. So fast in other ways, find other ways to give up certain things, or even certain foods, you know. There are people who will fast by not eating, but using juices and things like that to give them the calories and nutrients that they need so they can continue to function, but they know that they are fasting. And so that's what I would encourage.

I'm just thinking that I could see myself, had I been living in that time, to call for quite a few fasts.

Oh, yeah.

Just to get a break from the kitchen. As the mother of the family, I would say, this Thursday we're fasting everybody.

That's right.

I just want to let everybody know. Oh, anyway. Sophie says,

Water baptism is an expression of humility. It is an act of obedience. And you are going to look like a drowned rat. And if you care about that more than the other aspects of walking out water baptism, it's going to be a problem. It's part of the dramatization. The dramatization is dying with Christ. And as we die, we don't look all that great. Usually, you know. The point, I think, for Sophie is that she needs to understand that water baptism is something that we are commanded to do. We are to be baptized. And it is to make a public expression. It's a huge encouragement for the people that are watching, too. You know, she says, I don't want to talk in front of people. Well, you know, there's nothing in the Bible about talking in front of people. That's something churches have added. So perhaps Sophie can go to her pastor and say, here are my issues with being baptized in water. Can we work together to make this happen, but also address some of these issues that I have? I would really encourage her to do that. And I would also encourage her to be obedient to the Lord and to be baptized, you know?

Yeah, and there's a message in this for church leaders as well.

Yeah.

And how they go about doing baptisms, because like you said, there's nothing in the Bible, there's nothing scriptural about someone giving their testimony and speaking in front of people. And so, as church leaders, we always want to be removing barriers that we have maybe accidentally created. And I know that you removed those barriers in a certain way when we were baptizing people by just having them write a brief answer to the question, why I'm being baptized. And of course, we projected that along with their picture while they were being baptized and eliminated that whole...

Eliminated the whole need to speak in front of people. That worked in our culture, in our system, in an auditorium with projection and all that. I wanted to remove the barriers that people might have for being baptized. You can't remove the fact that you're gonna be dunked in water and you're gonna look like a drowned rat. You can't remove that part of it. That's fine, but everybody goes through it and everybody survives. But there are things that people struggle with that, frankly, are not part of scripture, are not biblical. And one of them is speaking in front of a crowd. There's nothing to say you have to do that. So I would, again, I would encourage Sophie to go to her pastor, talk to him about it. And if he says, well, this is just the way we do water baptism, then you might need to do it somewhere else, you know? So there you go.

Or accept it. Yeah. All right. Kim says,

This is a good question, because we know that sin, well, we know where the sin that mankind generated came from. It's given for us right in the Bible. Genesis 3 lays it all out, and then the rest of the Bible tells us how it played out. But we don't know how sin actually began as it relates to Satan and the fallen angels who became his demons. We're not told. We're not told. But the question that she's asking here is, how could that happen in the holiness of heaven? Great question. I wish I knew the answer. Where did that come from? God created angels with a free will, obviously. I don't believe God created Satan as Satan. I don't believe God created demons. I believe they literally took on that role through a free will act of rebellion against God in heaven. How that could happen, I have no idea, because the Bible doesn't explain it. And so we accept several things that the Bible communicates to us without knowing the details.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Joe says,

The believers are with the Lord. Wherever the Lord is, that's where we're going to be. I understand the question. It's like, well, if the heavens and the earth are going to be destroyed... Those are the only two places we can live. Well, there's the only two places we know about, you know? But you know, the heavens were created by God. The earth was created by God. God existed before the heavens and the earth existed. And so obviously it wasn't a problem for Him, and it's not going to be a problem then as well. We're going to be with the Lord. We're not told precisely, locationally, where we're going to be when the heavens and the earth pass away and the new heaven and earth are being created. We're just going to be with the Lord.

Yeah. That's all we know. Sure. Austin says,

Well, we're never justified, you know, for stealing anything. The fact of the matter is Jacob didn't have to steal it. You know, Austin is absolutely right. God did tell Isaac and Rebecca ahead of time, at least as much as they could understand from the statement that the Lord gave them, that the older child, the firstborn, would serve the younger or the secondborn, and that was the case. Esau was born first, Jacob came minutes later, but Esau still technically had a right to what was considered to be a birthright of inheritance from his father, and the blessing of the Lord that goes along with that. However, the Lord obviously said, it's not going to be that way. I'm going to do it, I'm going to turn it upside down, and Jacob is actually going to inherit the birthright, not Esau. Now, so what Austin is doing here is he's looking at this really from a human perspective, an earthly perspective, and saying, well, as this thing played out, you know, why was all this deception necessary? Why was, and why did Isaac favor Esau in giving him the birthright, even though the Lord told him that's not the way it was going to be? Well, over the years, Isaac generated a favoritism toward his firstborn son. We know that. The Bible says it. He liked Esau better, kind of like the Smothers brothers, you know, Tommy and Dickie, mom always liked you best, you know, but it's a reality, and Rebecca kind of favored Jacob, and that happens in families, in family dynamics. You try to not have it happen, but it happens, naturally, because different people appeal to our own personal likes and dislikes, and sometimes those likes and dislikes begin to trump the word of the Lord. That's why those things happen. But Jacob was not justified in his deception. That's why the Lord eventually had to deal with Jacob, related to his deception. He put him in a place where he was being deceived by someone else, his future father-in-law, you know, the father of Rachel, Laban. Laban was a deceiver too. And so God put Jacob in a position where he had to kind of take his own medicine. And you know, there was a period of time over Jacob's life where he came to the understanding and the realization that he had lived his life working out his own issues, manipulating people. And after he was manipulated, he eventually came to a place of much greater surrender. It had to actually eventuate in him wrestling with God physically, which is what people who deceive do by their deception and their manipulation. So no, it wasn't okay, even though it was God's will. Jacob didn't have to deceive. It would have come about somehow. We don't know how. But what God did is He used the circumstances of their lives to bring about the perfect will that He had planned ahead of time. And that is a great mystery that people struggle. I struggle to understand. How does God work through fallible people, sinful people, to bring about His perfect will? Well, He does. Because He's sovereign, because He's all-powerful, and because He sees the end from the beginning. And that's what He did in the case of Jacob and Esau.

Good. Alanna says,

Well, we don't know for sure that there was a need for the tree of life. The tree of life was just there. She's making an assumption here that there was a need for it. We don't know. God doesn't explain the purpose of the tree of life, frankly, until we get to the book of Revelation. It talks about the tree of life again. It talks about how the leaves of the tree of life are used for the healing of the nations. We don't get that. It's like, what is that all about? We're going to have to wait and find out. But the tree of life was simply there. God created... Well, this is what we know. God created man not to die. That's what we know for sure. And we know that sin introduced death. We also know that death is an enemy. The Bible tells us that the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. So we know that it was not part of God's original creation because it's called an enemy. And God would not create an enemy and then call it good. And after he created man and everything around him, it says God looked at all he had created and saw that it was good. Death was not part of that original plan. So why was the tree of life in the Garden of Eden? I don't know. I don't know. We do know that God said that we need to keep Adam and Eve out of the garden after they sinned. lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever. And what that means is we gotta let them die so that they can be saved. Otherwise they will live in this perpetual state of sinfulness for eternity, and God wouldn't allow that. So that's why he banned them from the garden and from the tree of life, but why it was there to begin with, we are not told. And I think we've got to be careful not to make assumptions that it was required.

Yeah, not to build a case. Char says,

Yeah, Char is absolutely right. And when parents allow sports to be elevated above faithfulness to church attendance and to Hebrews 10.25, they communicate in no uncertain terms to their children. This is of lesser importance. This is not the greatest important thing in your life. To be in fellowship, to be in prayer, to be worshipping with other believers, and to sit under the teaching of God's Word. They're saying that, and I think parents get caught up. And so how should one approach, Char says, this ever-increasing dynamic with prayer, praying for families, praying for moms and dads. You can't go to somebody who isn't open to hearing it and just confront them. That doesn't work. Their heart has to be made ready to hear the truth. And unfortunately, many parents don't see the error of that sort of a thing until their kids are adults and they realize that their kids aren't going to church. In fact, they've stopped going altogether. Well, that's what you taught them, you know, when they were young. You taught them it really wasn't that important. You can see how passionate I am about this. I mean, as a pastor, I think it's very important to show our kids how paramount it is to be obedient to the Word of God. The Bible specifically tells us in Hebrews 10.25, don't forsake this thing, this assembling of yourselves with other believers. It's important. It's important because we are the body of Christ, and we are to operate as a body. We are to be accountable to one another. We are to pray for one another, encourage one another, and even more so as we see the day approaching. So, you know, pray. Pray for parents.

Yeah, pray for parents. And as well, we Christians can have an influence on clubs. We can have an influence on these things. When you and I were growing up, you'll remember there was never a basketball game or a football game on Wednesday night. Never. It was just, it was protected time.

Yeah. Not anymore, though.

That was the culture. Not anymore. But I'm saying that we can still have an influence. And to influence wherever you can, I think is a good thing to do. Now, if there are any pastors who are watching this Q&A, you have an opportunity to exhort the body of Christ.

Sure.

And I'm not talking about getting up and pounding the pulpit and, you know, being mean. But you can exhort in love. You can exhort parents and say, think about what you're doing.

Yeah.

Think about it. Think about what this is communicating to your children. Sports are great. Our kids were involved in sports.

Yeah.

Every one of them.

Yep.

But we never put sports above the responsibility and the calling that they had to be in church.

Right.

So, yeah. And that is our last question.

Oh, that's it, huh?

That is it.

Wow, that went pretty quickly. Well, those are the questions that you sent us for this episode. We hope that somehow in the answers that we gave, you are encouraged and built up, and we are planning on being with you again, because we know that you've sent more questions, because we've already received them. We're already putting them together. And we've got another episode coming up for you next week. So join us then. And until then, God bless you.

Bye bye.