Bible Q&A • Episode 55

Hi, everybody, and welcome back. We've been away for a few weeks. We haven't been doing some Q&As, and we're back from our vacation, and we're back doing more of your Bible questions and our answers. So I'm here with my wife, Sue. I'm Pastor Paul, and we're going to carry on with some more questions that have come in.

We sure are. The first one, it's from Melinda. She says,

Well, you know, that's a good question, but she's kind of right. When we have a fear of death, it does kind of mean that our faith is lacking. And what, let me start this way, a fear of death is very common. In fact, I would even call it somewhat universal, okay? It just means that you love the life that the Lord gave you. And frankly, we don't fear as much death, I think, as we fear the unknown. And we don't really know. God hasn't given us a whole lot of information about the immediacy of our presence with Him after death. We know that that is a biblical fact, but we don't know much about it. So it creates some fear, you know, and trepidation in people's hearts and minds. I believe that the Bible is very clear about the fact that death has been conquered, that death, actually, the Bible tells us, belongs to us. Strange comment, but it's in 1 Corinthians. And that Jesus has taken the sting out of death. These are truths that I feel that people like Melinda and others who may struggle with the fear of death need to really just bathe their heart in. They need to go into the Word of God and find out what it says about what God has done to conquer the death, or death rather, and the fear of death. And so we need to just really be convinced of the Word, in the Word, that death is an enemy that will no longer terrorize us, because we're in Christ Jesus, and He has given us the promise of eternal life. Now, obviously, that's not going to change the fact that our bodies are going to come to an expiration date, and that's not fun for anybody to think about. I think there's also an element here where you have to train yourself just not to think about it, and even to pray, Lord, help me to trust you in this. And not to fixate on this inevitable issue of death, but instead to say, Lord, I choose to trust you, even in this. And it's just something that has to be conquered by faith and with some self-control.

Well, I think you used a real key word there when you said, trust in the Lord, because I think fear of death is one of just a whole spectrum of things that we fear as human beings. We fear suffering. We fear grief. We fear loneliness. We fear a lot of things that we feel like are there. Here's the thing, God doesn't give us the ability to meet those until we need to. For example, suffering, let's move the subject to that. It's something that is something that a lot of people might face, but God doesn't give you the grace for suffering until the need. The same thing with death. We can fear that it's out there, but God, I believe, gives grace. We can trust him to give us the grace to face that when the need arises.

Yeah, when the time comes. Otherwise, we'll just spend 40, 50, 80 years of our lives tied up in a bundle. When God will give the grace, we can trust him to give us the grace in that moment.

I think that's excellent advice. Our next question comes from Robin. She says,

Well, the original Hebrew can be singular or plural. So that doesn't help. That really doesn't help. The Hebrew word is just simply ben, you know? Jesus would have been referred as Yeshua ben Joseph, you know, Jesus the son of Joseph. So it can have a singular and it can have a plural connotation depending on the context. And so here's the context, and it has both. What's interesting, and I honestly don't know why it is plural in verse 22 and, excuse me, singular in verse 22 and plural in verse 25, except to say that in verse 25, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the Latin translation of the Old Testament both have the plural usage. They put in the plural word in those. And for some reason, and I don't know why, because again, it's the same Hebrew word. So it's one of those weird sort of textual things that it can mean son or sons. In the context of the narrative, it really refers to one son being killed. So I tend to go with that. Not every translation, as she mentions, does use the plural in verse 25. So I tend to go with the singular, and I think that's probably correct, but it's just one of those quirks of language.

Alright. Michael says,

Those are good questions. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't give us insight into either one of them. We don't know what's... This is going to be a time when we're going to be spending time with the groom. We are the bride of Christ, and how much the Lord is going to enable us to be aware or to watch the seven-year tribulation, we don't know. And we don't know if when people are martyred for their faith during the tribulation, if they're suddenly going to appear among us. I mean, our assumption is probably yes. How that's going to play out, we just don't know. The Bible doesn't give us any insight. But those are interesting questions, and I can understand someone asking them. It's just one of those things the Lord hasn't given any revelation on.

Alanna says,

No, it does not. The Apostle Paul was writing to Timothy about the church and women teaching men in the church. I get the question all the time, can women be pastors? That's not the issue. That's not the question you should be asking. Here's what Paul says. I don't allow a woman to teach men because that is taking authority over those men. Anyone who teaches the Bible is putting themselves in a position of authority. And they're saying, now, you sit there while I teach you and instruct you. Paul believed that that was inappropriate for a woman to do because there was already an order that had been created in marriage. And if a woman were to teach or to instruct a man in the church service, that would be a reversal of that order. So that was the reason for the prohibition. But there's nothing in the Bible that says a woman can't be a pastor. We may not refer to her as a pastor, but that doesn't mean she isn't truly shepherding other women and children. In the book of Titus, Paul writes to Titus and encourages him to have the older women teach the younger women. So we know that women can teach as long as they're teaching other women, and we know that they are encouraged to teach. Now, in a very real sense, when a woman teaches, she begins to shepherd, okay? So honestly, if a church, you know, wants to affix the title pastor in front of a woman, that's kind of their business as long as she doesn't teach men. I don't believe it is appropriate for a woman to get up on a Sunday morning and teach the whole congregation. That would be a violation of what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2. So yeah, that's the deal. As far as a woman teaching school, yeah, she can teach, of course. A woman should teach other women and children. I think there is a point when a young man reaches a certain age, and you know, probably right around 18, when his teachers should be men now.

But you're talking biblical teachers, not chemistry teachers.

Exactly. Exactly. Right.

Yeah. And that's a very good point to make. A very important distinction. So yeah. Alright. Melinda says,

Okay. First of all, no children are going to wind up in hell, okay? That's the first thing I want to say to this person. God is not going to judge your son as a child and send him to hell. Second of all, what did she say? He's five years old?

Right.

Listen, kids respond to the gospel at different ages. I wouldn't be concerned if my child hadn't responded by 12, 13, 14. That's not the point. That's not the issue. The issue is helping them to understand the gospel, period, and encouraging them along the way to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. It's not about getting your child to recite a prayer. It is certainly not about getting your child to be baptized in water. Those aren't bad things in and of themselves, but they don't guarantee that your child is saved. There have been a lot of kids that have recited a prayer because they were told to recite a prayer. There have been a lot of kids who were baptized in water because they were told to get dunked. That doesn't mean they're born again. So I would encourage this mom to relax, to pray. Pray for your child. Talk about Jesus every day. Remind your kids all the time what Jesus did for them on the cross. Help them to grow with a natural, inherent understanding of the gospel so that when they get older, there is a natural move toward embracing the salvation that is theirs in Jesus. That is more important than getting them to recite a prayer, or to say, to repeat the sinner's prayer, something like that. I don't put my stock in those things. I want my child's heart to know Jesus from their earliest days. I want them to know the word of God. I want them to know the good news from their earliest days and let the Lord work on their heart as they grow. Would you agree?

Absolutely. The bottom line is that Melinda can rest assured. I love the verse from Genesis that you often quote. We've probably quoted it a dozen times in our Q&As. Will not the judge of all the earth do right?

Amen.

So just, yeah, to trust in the Lord. Okay. What's next? Margaret says,

If you can stay with all that.

Sure. Yeah.

Well, you know-

I think there's a movie in there.

Yeah. Yeah, right. You know, this is something, again, that the Bible doesn't speak of. It is true. God dwells in the timelessness of eternity. For Him, all things have passed, I guess. He sees the beginning from the end, the end from the beginning. I wouldn't go around telling somebody to pray about something after the fact. I wouldn't stop them either. The Bible assumes that we're living in the present and looking toward the future. It doesn't assume that we're thinking in the terms that are being expressed in this question. But that being said, you know, if somebody came to me like this person and said, this is what I do, I mean, I wouldn't stop them. I would just go, oh, that's interesting. But be sure and live in the present and think, you know, toward the future in your prayers as well.

That's good. Miranda says,

Well, it ties into the Bible a lot, you know, particularly in the Old Testament. You see this over and over in the Psalms. You find it in the book of Lamentations, I mean, all through the Bible, people lifting their hands. There is an exhortation in the worship of David and the psalmist, lift your hands unto the Lord, right? There's even references of lifting hands to the commandments of God. And in the New Testament, Paul says, I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands without arguing and disputing and so forth. So it was a common form of worship expression. There's nothing magical about it. There's nothing mystical about it. It's something we do as a pointer to express our heart and devotion to the Lord. It's thoroughly biblical. But if someone says, I'm not comfortable doing it, I wouldn't rebuke them necessarily. Although I would say, well, you know, okay, but it is a biblical thing, you know.

And it's biblical, as you said. It's also just relational, it's built into us. What do we do when our little grandkids will come walking through that door?

Yeah, we put our hands up, they put their hands up, it's relationship.

That is a very good point. I like that too. I would encourage this person to read through the Psalms, do a study through the Psalms, maybe write down or circle in your Bible, how many times it says to lift your hands to the Lord.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Okay. Dosh is from Kenya.

Okay.

My husband and I like your teachings. Should communion bread be leavened or unleavened? The prohibition against eating leavened bread is connected to the Old Testament, and specifically the celebration or observance of Passover, which was connected to the feast of unleavened bread. And of course, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, leaven was given to the Jews as a picture, a word picture to describe the pervasive influence of sin and how it can work its way through a community or a family or something like that. In fact, those pictures, those metaphors are continued in the New Testament to describe how sin works its way. So it was a picture given under the Old Covenant. It is not a prohibition that has carried on in the New Covenant because we don't observe the feasts that were given necessarily to Israel because Jesus fulfilled those for us. And so by faith, we keep the feasts of Passover and that sort of thing. But leavened and unleavened bread don't have the same meaning today. So if someone pulled out a loaf of bread, leavened bread, and began to break it up and hand it out to the people with something to drink and said, we're going to observe communion, I wouldn't see anything wrong with that at all.

Sure. Good. Victor says,

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. It might also be seen as a way of reaching out to an unsaved individual and keeping the doors open to potentially sharing the gospel. You have to pray about those kinds of things. There's not a one size fits all answer. You got to pray and you got to do what the Holy Spirit's telling you to do. What is the Spirit telling you? Is he giving you a red alert, stop, don't go? Or is he saying, no, I want you to go like just as Jesus went and ate with, you know, notorious sinners. Is Jesus telling you the same thing through his spirit? do in this case. You have to follow the leading of the Lord. This isn't an open and shut sort of a case.

Yeah. Good answer. Yeah. That's the last answer.

That's it for that episode. Okay, well those are the questions that you sent us, and we've got more, right? We've already put together a group for the next week.

Yeah, so and and we're always happy to get your questions. Some of them are just really thought-provoking and they are all very good and worth asking. If you have something on your heart, send us an email at questions at lifebibleministry.com and we will get to it as soon as we can.

Until next week, God bless you. Have a good rest of your day.

Bye-bye.