Bible Q&A • Episode 57

God doesn't think in terms of religion, okay? God is simply God, and He always has been, and He created mankind, and mankind creates religions. Hi, everybody, we're back with some more of your Bible questions, and we're glad to be back with you. You've sent in some good questions that we're gonna tackle in this episode. What do we have, Suze? Well, we'll begin with Victoria. Okay. And she says, in Matthew 5, 21 to 26, it talks about anger between brothers. Is this talking about believers being angry at other believers, or is it only more of a general statement about anger? Well, you know, it can certainly be a general statement about anger, but whenever the Bible uses brothers or brethren, it is referring to fellow believers, and so it should be taken in that context, first and foremost, but as I said, I think there's some great wisdom there that's going to apply in any situation, even if you're dealing with an unbeliever. Here's the reason why he puts it in the context of brothers. It's because these are the people that we ought to be having the best relationship with, and it is, in fact, our relationship with one another as children of God that he said would be kind of the revealing sign of our faith in Jesus and our connection to him as the family of God. Right. Yeah. Very good. Jennifer says, didn't Priscilla, along with her husband, teach Apollos the scriptures? Wasn't Deborah over Gideon and Israel as a prophetess and judge? Could it be that what Paul said was just for those women because of their culture at that time? And I assume she's referring to a question you previously answered about women in leadership and women pastoring. From Paul's letter to Timothy. Yeah. About, yeah, okay. Let me clarify something again. What Paul said to Timothy is, I do not allow a woman to teach, and in so doing, take authority over a man. Yeah. Okay. He was writing to Timothy about what happens in the church. Okay. So first of all, the argument that she's making about Deborah, God never said that women couldn't be leaders. There's no prohibition against women being leaders from the standpoint of taking a role of leadership. What Paul forbade in the church was a woman taking a position of authority over a man in teaching and instruction, okay? We have to keep reiterating that. So, you know, essentially when she brings up, you know, Priscilla and Aquila, did not Priscilla and Aquila sit down with Apollos and talk to him about a greater understanding of the gospel of Jesus and so forth? Yes, they did. They did it together. And this was not in the church. This was not something that was going on where a woman was standing up in the church service and saying, all right, open your Bibles, I'm going to instruct you. And again, I want to reiterate that the reason that Paul made the prohibition had nothing to do with culture. It had to do with God's order in the family and in the marriage. Because in Ephesians, we are told that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. And so there is a position of authority and leadership that God has called the husband into. If a woman gets up in church and begins to instruct the men, that takes that leadership structure that God created in marriage for this age, and it flips it on its head. And Paul believed that that was inappropriate. He thought that that was contrary to, and he was right. It is contrary to basically what God has given us in this order in the family. It doesn't mean that women aren't good teachers. They're fantastic teachers. I'm married to one. And so it's all about instructing and taking authority over someone in that instruction. So again, what Priscilla and Aquila did was not in the church. They did it in the privacy of their home. We don't even know how much Priscilla talked. But whatever she did, she talked right there with her husband present, and they were talking together, and they were just explaining things. They were just explaining, because Apollos had, at that time, an incomplete understanding of several aspects related to the gospel, particularly the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit. So they spent some time. They sat down and discussed it together. But that's not the same thing as a woman getting up and taking that position of authority over a roomful of men in the church service. Right. Okay. Good. Babita is from Nepal. Okay. And says, I have a question regarding biblical evangelism. Okay. If we are commanded to preach the gospel, is it sufficient to simply share the truth of God's word with our personal testimony in a sincere and ordinary conversation with someone who is willing to listen, or is it necessary to receive formal evangelism training and follow a structured approach? Well, yeah, I see where this question's coming from. There are a lot of evangelism training methods out there, and I think it can start to become, or at least seem mandatory. There's nothing wrong with getting instruction and getting help and learning perhaps how to share your faith. There's nothing wrong with those things, but they're certainly not required. What we see in the Bible are people just sharing their faith organically and naturally as the Lord led. As the Holy Spirit opened a door, they walked through it and ministered to the people to whom they came in contact with. So, again, I think training is fine. I do not think it is mandatory in any way. And the thing you have to understand about evangelism, it's an interesting dynamic, because we're told in the Bible, all of us to do the work of the evangelist. And that means we should all be prepared. And Peter says this. He says, be prepared, work it out, think it through, and be prepared to give an answer to anybody who comes along and asks you and says, okay, this Jesus guy, why do you have your hope in him? Peter said, be prepared to give an answer. That's a word for all of us. At the same time, evangelism or the evangelist is a spiritual gift. So we're all told to do the work of the evangelist, meaning to share our faith, but there are people who are specifically called and gifted to do that. I think of Billy Graham, and many other evangelists of the past. Greg Laurie is primarily an evangelist. So there are giftings. And we who are not gifted in evangelism can learn from those people. I've listened to Billy Graham share the gospel. He just, it's so effortless. And I've listened to guys like Greg Laurie and other evangelists share the gospel. And I can learn, pick up tips, because I'm not gifted as an evangelist, but I'm told to do the work of an evangelist. So training can be good. It is not necessary. But it's a good thing to learn from people who are gifted. Sure. Yeah. That's good. I feel like I need to apologize for butchering foreign names. Foreign names are tough. I sometimes wish people would give us a phonetic spelling. Yeah, that's a good tip. Sometimes I have looked them up ahead of time and I didn't do that this time. So I'm just gonna guess on this Zimbabwe name is Fungai? Maybe? Anyway, I apologize. Does God answer imprecatory prayers? And are we as believers allowed to pray such prayers? First of all, let's define imprecatory prayers. It's probably not a word people use on a regular basis. The word actually comes from some of the psalms. There are a group of psalms that are called imprecatory psalms. And that is because David and or the other psalmists pray that God would judge sinners and those who are contrary to the Lord and those who are attacking God's people. And you can read those psalms and they're pretty in your face. It's kind of like Lord, knock out their teeth, you know? And whenever you see that in the psalms, that is called an imprecatory psalm. So this person is saying, is it okay to pray imprecatory prayers? Meaning praying against the enemies of God, praying that God would judge them, that the judgment of the Lord would fall upon them and so forth. I, you know, this is a really good question. It really is. But I believe that Jesus has come under the new covenant, and He has instructed us how to pray for our enemies, those who use us, those who persecute us. And He told us to pray for them, to love them, to bless them, and not to curse. And I believe that the word of Jesus supersedes anything we've seen previously as it relates to how we may react and or pray about our enemies. And so I really believe that Jesus is the final word. Pray for those who persecute you, love your enemies, bless, and do not curse. So that's what I got to go with. Sure, you know, all of those imprecatory prayers in the Psalms, I don't think that I ever had a reason for them to resonate with me. No one has ever wanted to kill me that I know of. But the summer that I was going through cancer treatments and I was reading through the Psalms, all of a sudden they meant a lot because now I had something that wanted to kill me. I was doing treatments and I had something out to kill me. And all of David's Psalms in that way of judgment and that sort of thing, I was able to take those and make them useful. Apply that kind of to the cancer. Exactly. Say, Lord, kill it. Yeah. You know, that is a good point when you're dealing with something that, you know, is not a human being. Because you know, we're told in the New Testament, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against spiritual powers. Okay. And so, but when you're dealing with something like cancer or even sin in your own life, it's like, I'm feeling jealousy, I'm feeling bitterness, I'm feeling anger, fear. You know, I have actually used imprecatory Psalms to speak to the fear or negative reactions of my own heart and said, Lord, kill this. Right. And there are things, there are forces that are trying to kill us, trying to kill parts of our lives that, and you know, I think that they serve a good purpose. Anyway, it sure came to life for me a couple of years ago. No, that's a very good point. I like that a lot. Good. Okay. This is a YouTube question. I want to know what the Bible says about wives correcting their husbands. I know it says we should be submissive to their leadership as head and priest of the home, but does that mean that we are not allowed to speak up? My husband has not come to a saving knowledge of Christ yet, so there are many things I'm learning are out of order in our home and I find myself jumping to correct them, but is this my place? Oh my goodness, that's delicate. Yes, that is, isn't it? Because not only is she dealing with the issue of talking to her husband about things that she sees that are out of order, but he's an unbeliever. And so she really needs to, this woman really needs to tread carefully because it could cause a backlash against him even coming to the Lord if she doesn't walk in the power of the Spirit and walk with wisdom and grace. And you know, women are going to see things and they're usually going to see things that the men either can't see or choose not to see. And that's just kind of the way, I think women are more perceptive, I really do. Men are less perceptive and that's by God's design, so as not to kind of get high centered on issues. They can lead a much simpler life. Yeah, men do and simple is a nice word, right? So women are going to see things. The question that really comes into focus here is when a woman sees something, and this is going to apply even to a wife who's married to a believer, when a woman sees something in the home or in their relationship, in their family that is out of order, how is she to approach that? Well, the one question that she asks in that is, she says, is a woman never to speak up? Oh, I believe it's totally a woman's right to speak up. I think she needs to speak up because I can say as a husband, I need you to speak up because I don't always see things. And so I need that insight. The issue is how you speak up. The issue is how you bring things to my attention. And it obviously needs to be done tenderly, cautiously, respectfully. You know, the Bible says that in marriage, when you go through Ephesians and you look at the role of the husband, the role of the wife, you can see what is most needed in a marriage relationship. And a husband needs respect. It is something that God put in him. He requires respect. And so if a woman speaks disrespectfully to him about something that's going on in the home, family, etc., it's going to be a problem. He's not going to receive it as he should. And he's more likely to get angry and just reject it out of hand. And then you've ruined it now, you know, because what you brought up is legitimate, and it needs to be addressed. But now it's not going to be because we've kind of ruined it sort of a thing. A woman needs to pray it through. And I'm going to let you speak to this too. But I believe that what the answer is, is she needs to pray it through. She needs to ask the Holy Spirit to not only give her the right words, but to speak to her about the right time to talk to her husband about these matters. Timing is critical. When he gets home, he's exhausted. It's probably not a good time, you know, to bring up something like this. And how she brings it up, how she communicates those things is so incredibly important. He needs to feel like she's not being disrespectful. She's not being critical of his leadership, but he needs to feel like she's coming alongside. She's coming alongside to help. And he needs to feel that. He needs to have that understanding from his wife that I'm here to help you. We're going to do this together, and I love you, and we're okay. But there are things that need to be dealt with. And I think that that's so important is for a husband and wife to always move forward as if they are a team. And I wrote about this in my recent book on Proverbs 31, about just us against the world. And so the input, the collaboration that a team puts into things, as you say, respectfully on both sides, means a lot just to be able to talk through things. Now, I would also say to a woman in this situation, look, your church world is going to mean a lot here because you need to be rubbing shoulders with wiser women. You need to be rubbing shoulders with women in the next season of life that you can maybe even dialogue with and say, you know, help me through this. What suggestions would you offer that confidant? And I know I have learned a lot in my life by just observing older Christian women. I have learned by sometimes, you know, asking questions. And so this is where the body of Christ really comes in handy. It really means a lot. Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right. Sharina says, Hi, Pastor Paul and Mrs. Sue. Hope you guys had a wonderful road trip. We did. We did. Enjoyed it. If a woman is the pastor of a church or preaches to men in a church setting, is she disobeying God? Would God bless someone in the ministry if they were living in disobedience to his word? This is a really good question from the standpoint that what Sharina is really asking, and I edited down this question a little bit. She had a larger kind of information that went along with it. And one of the things she mentioned was, what if a woman basically kind of says or communicates that the Lord gave me this message? The Lord opened my heart and deposited this message in my heart to give to you. And yet she's asking the question, isn't that inconsistent with the fact that a woman is not supposed to be, you know, speaking to men on that level? The thing that people need to understand about the giftings that God gives to people is that the Bible tells us that they are without repentance or they are irrevocable. What that means is God gifts people to either be a teacher, exhorter, preacher, whatever the thing might be. And in answer to Sharina's question, yes, a person can be anointed, empowered, and be doing it in disobedience. This messes with people's minds, but, you know, we've had unfortunate examples of events— evangelists who have been humiliated because a lifestyle that they had kept hidden came to light at some point in their ministry, and they had to back away from the ministry. And there are a lot of Christians out there who scratch their head and they'll say, but he was so anointed. He would get up to share the gospel and people would come to Christ by the hundreds, and yet he was living this darkness behind the scenes. How is that possible? I say easy. It's easily possible. A pastor, teacher, evangelist, whatever, can be living in sin and powerfully be moved by the Holy Spirit to minister. Now I'm not saying it's right or good, and ultimately it's very bad because when things do come to light, many people are shipwrecked because of that. We've seen this with pastors who have fallen into some sort of sin or whatever. People are devastated, but don't ever doubt the anointing of the Holy Spirit. God said in his word, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. In other words, he's not going to take them away because somebody has decided to dabble in sin. He just doesn't do that. He gives the gift to someone, and they're gifted, and they can be gifted while they're sinning. I know that it is a paradox that people struggle to embrace, but it's just the fact of the matter. We've seen it play out in so many people's lives, and it has that biblical element to understanding it. All right, Dave says, A brother in Christ and I have debated the issue of thoughts versus actions regarding sin as in Matthew 5, 27 and 28. And this is where Jesus is saying, if you have committed adultery in your heart, in your thoughts, whatever, it's the same as having committed adultery. He agrees that thoughts can be sinful, but not as sinful as actions. He justifies this sliding scale of sin on Exodus 34, 6 through 7, so he can minimize the guilt he carries for his thoughts because he is only missing the mark, not being wicked. My explanation to him is that in God's kingdom, there is no distinction. All sin comes from the heart. Is God making a distinction between wickedness, rebellion, and sin? No. All wickedness comes from the heart. It all originates in the heart. Jesus said, from the heart of man, the mouth speaks. It is the origin point, if you will. And when we say the heart, we're talking about the sinful nature, which generates thoughts and temptations and desires that are contrary to the will of God. Jesus made it very clear that if you're angry with someone, the potential is that you have actually committed murder in your heart. And God sees that as just as serious. There is no degree of seriousness here. Sins of the heart are just as relevant and dangerous as physical acts of sin. Simple as that. Well, with regard to the Matthew passage, I always like to say, you know, anger contains the seed of murder. And lust contains the seed of adultery. But there is something about, like, when you have a thought, I don't think that we can say our thoughts are all sinful, because you're driving down, you know, a thought comes into your mind. The question is, what do you do with that thought? Well, now we're differentiating between a thought and a temptation. Well, and that's his question here, the issue on thoughts versus actions. No, I see, I put thoughts and actions together, and temptations are different. A temptation is a brief, momentary consideration, right, of sin, but a thought is when I dwell upon it. Ah, okay. And so there's a difference there. Well, that's an important thing to say, because to me, a thought is, hey, this thought came into my mind because I saw a movie or something like that. What do I do with it? Yeah, yeah. Someone once told me, and I like this illustration, that you cannot control the birds that come into your tree. Okay, they're going to come. Those are our thoughts. Yeah. They're just going to come. They come from all over the place. You can't control that. Yeah. But you can control whether you chase them away immediately, or whether you let them build a nest and poop all over your patio. Entertain them. And entertain them. Yeah. And just put out a bird feeder. Yeah. You know, and so that's- Exactly. ... how we differentiate between temptation and thought. So we know that a temptation is not sin, because the Bible tells us Jesus was tempted in all ways, but was yet without sin. So a temptation is that fleeting opportunity that presents itself to commit a sin, but we have to run after it. We have to embrace it. And that's where the thought process, if someone says, you know, I've never committed adultery with another woman, but boy, I've entertained the thought, and I've gone through it in my mind what it would be like, that's a thought process that is in fact sin. Okay. And so how would you relate that to the process of anger and murder? What is the temptation? Because I think that's something super relatable. Yeah. Especially, you know, as parents, you know, kids make us angry sometimes. Yeah. So- Yeah. Well, it's the same thing. Yeah. It's entertaining the thing. Right. Just like your picture of the birds. Yeah. You know, when a temptation comes, I have to chase it away. Right. I have to, in the name of Jesus, I have to say, no, no, no, no, we're not going there. We're not going to do that. If I embrace it and go, oh man, wouldn't that be nice to just, you know, sort of thing. Okay. Now I've gotten into sinful thoughts. Right. Yeah. And live a constant habit of just letting it flourish. Exactly. Letting the bird stay. I just, I'm an angry person. I always get angry. I'll always get angry. I just let the birds live there. Yeah. And so the more you do that, the easier that becomes. Sure. That's enough of that. Okay. Angela says, Google claims that Hinduism is the oldest religion still being practiced today. Yeah. So how did religions such as Hinduism come about and how did different religions develop? Also, where does Jesus Christ fit into this? Is Christianity the same thing as a belief in God? Whoa, there's a lot of questions. There's a lot of things going on here. And you have to understand that religion is a man-made term. It's a term that man devised. And God doesn't think in terms of religion. Okay. God is simply God. And he always has been. And he created mankind. And mankind creates religions. Okay. We can either recognize what God is doing or we can create our own. You know, people have been creating religions for a long, long time. You know, after the split of Israel, a man by the name of Jeroboam, we call him Jeroboam the first because there were other kings named Jeroboam in Israel. But Jeroboam created his own religion. He, you know, and he did it because he didn't want people to move away from the northern kingdom and go down into Judah. So he came up with his own religion to hold people. But it was paganism, basically. And he kind of came up with it out of his own head. And you know, good grief, Joseph Smith did the same thing with Mormonism. He came up with his own religion. And so, you know, this is where these things come from. But we have to understand something. She asks in there, where does Jesus fit into all this? Well, remember, Jesus is God. He didn't have a beginning. He had a beginning as a man, but he didn't, he's never had a beginning. The Bible says in the beginning, you know, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And Jesus said during his public ministry, before Abraham was even born, I am. And meaning I have always existed. So God, the God of the Bible, okay, the God who created all things, that's all there is for him. You know, he has revealed himself to mankind. It started with the nation of Israel, and then Jesus came upon the scene. And this was, it's all what God has been doing since the very beginning. And there's no religion, Christianity or Judaism and Christianity. I know we call them a religion, but we do that from a man standpoint, a mankind standpoint. It's not a religion as far as God is concerned. Right. The whole, from creation forward, it's all the unfolding story of God's redemption. Right. Yeah. That's it. And so all these other things, you know, where did Hinduism come from? It came from people's imaginations. Some of it probably was even demonically, you know, inspired. been coming up with religious persuasions since the very beginning, and of course there's an enemy of our souls that wants to be worshipped, and in fact is worshipped through many other world religions. But you know, when we talk religions, we're talking human to human, because we have to categorize things. We have to put it in a neat little package. But with God, it's just, here's me, I created all things, I love you, and I want you to be saved. And that's not religion. That is relationship, and that's knowing the God who created all things and who created you. That's good. And our final question is from Aaron in Indiana. How can we know the people who go to heaven or hell instantly when they die, or how can we know that people go to heaven or hell instantly when they die before Judgment Day? The Apostle Paul says the dead in Christ will rise first in the rapture, but how can they be raised up to Jesus in the sky if they're already in heaven? This is a question that stems from our inability to see ourselves separate from our bodies. And so people ask this all the time, how, you know, the Bible says we're going to be raised. Well, how can I be raised if I'm already with the Lord? Because resurrection only ever refers to your physical body. It does not refer to your soul or your spirit. Your soul and spirit are not resurrected. Your body is resurrected. So you're with the Lord upon death. We're told that in the Bible, okay, that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Well, if you're absent from the body, where is your body? Well, it's here on earth and it's either going to be buried or cremated or lost at sea or whatever. Right. But there's coming a day when Jesus is going to raise that body, that corruptible body, and make it an incorruptible body. And you're going to be joined with that. You're with the Lord if you're a believer, and you're going to be joined with that body at the time of the resurrection. But remember, you, the spirit and soul of you does not get resurrected. Only your body does. And that's the thing that we have to keep in mind. I think we could probably answer that question about a couple times a year. Yeah. It needs to be reminded. Yeah, for sure. But that's it. That's all we have for today. Okay. Hey, thank you for the questions. Very good questions. We're glad you sent them in. If you have one that's kind of on your heart, send it to questions at lifebibleministry.com and we'll get to it as soon as we can. We also try to call some of these questions from our YouTube responses. But the best way is to email us or to do it through our website. And we encourage you to get on our website at lifebibleministry.com because we started a new feature on the website where you can ask a question, any question, and it will go through all of my teachings and articles, and it will give you an answer. So consider doing that too. It's on the front page of our website, lifebibleministry.com. And I'd love to have you try it out. Maybe even send us a note and let us know how it went. So until we gather next time, God bless you. Have a good rest of your day. Stay close to the Lord.