Episode 32

Pastor Paul LeBoutillier Pastor Paul: Thanks for joining us. We're here to answer some more of your Bible questions that you've sent in. I'm Pastor Paul here with my wife, Sue. And actually, Sue, the first question is for you.

Let's hear it.

And this kind of came out of our recent Thanksgiving episode where we answered nothing but personal questions. And, of course, that generated some more personal questions from people. And somebody wrote in, and I have to assume this is a woman saying,

Probably not.

“What a transition and it's beautiful. I would love to hear how you decided on this and what led you to cut it.” Did you cut your hair?

We'll talk about that. That's an interesting question, what led to your decisions. In life, some decisions are just made for us. We don't really get to pick and choose through them. They're just made. And that was the case with my hair. That decision was made for me. And some of you know, some of you don't know, but in 2024, I went through cancer treatment. And I had a fairly aggressive cancer that seemed to be a good candidate for chemotherapy. And you may know that sometimes that really does a number on hair. So that decision was made for me. We were just going to have a reset and start over. So this is probably about almost a year's worth of growth for me. So when I run into people from my life and they look at me and they say, Sue, you cut your hair. I really don't want to get into a conversation, but I'm tempted to say, actually, I'm growing new hair. I didn't cut the old hair.

Right.

So that's what led to that decision. And I normally would not want to talk about my hair on a Q&A video at all. But it also occurred to me that I don't think we've ever talked about the devotion book that I wrote during my treatment. And this is actually a good time to talk about that. During those 35 weeks, I wrote a weekly blog post that was devotional in content, also an update on my body, my church body, friends and family. And at the end of that, I compiled it into a book, and it's called Leaning into the Presence of the Lord: 35 Devotions for Challenging Times. It is not a cancer book, although it could be very useful for someone going through any health challenge like that.

Absolutely.

But it's really a great devotion book for someone facing any challenging time in their life. And one of the things that started off the thinking in this book was when Moses was about 80 years old and the Lord spoke to him through the burning bush and basically said he had a task for him. Well, that wasn't a tragedy or anything in his life. That was a challenge of, I have work for you to do, but it instilled a lot of fear.

He didn't really want to do it. He didn't want to go through it.

He kept putting up roadblocks based out of fear. And each time he did, three times in Exodus, you hear the Lord say, but I will be with you. That was God's answer to us facing a situation where we say, I don't think I can do this. And God's answer is, but I will be with you. So, the title of this devotional book, Leaning into the Presence of the Lord, is sort of based on learning through our difficult circumstances, how to lean into God's presence and his sustaining power. So it is on our website, Life Bible Ministry. You can also pick it up through Amazon or you can ship it to a friend from Amazon or whatever you want.

Just search for your name.

Search for my name. And also a lot of women's groups have bought a bulk of them to give out at a retreat or something like that. And if that interests you, you can send a note to our office and we can help you get going with that. But it's still only barely a year old, it's still relevant. And I think someone might be blessed by it.

It's a great book. I would encourage people to get a copy. Let's see what else we have for Bible questions.

Let's start with Callie. She says,

This is a really common question. And it has led many people to deduce that he has to be a Jew, because in order for them to accept this man as their Messiah, I mean, obviously there's been all these prophecies about the Messiah, and they've always known that the Messiah was going to come up from the house of David. Here's the deal though. And this is what people often forget. All of the prophecies concerning the Messiah's first coming have all timed out. Nobody today can fulfill those prophecies. They had to be fulfilled by someone in the day and age that Jesus came upon the scene, and that's why he fulfilled them so perfectly. So that's the first thing you have to understand. The second thing is that I think when the Antichrist comes on the scene, he's going to propose some answers to some very challenging Jewish problems that are going to be so acceptable to the people, and they’re not going to care where this guy comes from in terms of his cultural background. The other thing to keep in mind is that the majority of Jews living on the earth today are atheists and don't even believe in their own Hebrew scriptures. So I think that all those things taken together leave us with the very real possibility that the Antichrist could be of a different cultural bent other than Jewish and would still be acceptable to them as their savior.

People will accept all kinds of things when they get in a bind.

Oh yeah, for convenience, for comfort.

That's what it will be like in that moment.

They will accept just about anything.

The next person says,

I don't think it's wrong to say, I'm bored at church.

Don't you feel like there's two possible directions of this? Church might be boring.

It could very well just be boring.

It might be legitimate and everything that he mentions here or her, whoever it is, everything mentioned, it's true. It's dull and it's not. And then the other possibility is that the person themselves is maybe not in the best place.

It could just be that their own heart is not in the best place for various reasons. If you can genuinely say, I feel like my relationship with the Lord is growing and vibrant, and yet I find church to be boring and I'm not really getting anything out of it. I think we ought to get something out of church. I think when you go to church, you ought to walk away feeling encouraged. And if you're not feeling encouraged, then you probably just need to look for another fellowship, a place to fellowship. And if that's coming hard, pray about it and don't give up. Meanwhile, I always encourage people, when you're between churches, fellowship is still needful during those times. So consider inviting some believers over that you know just to have a time of fellowship, stay in fellowship. That's a really important thing to do during times like that. Because it's so easy to get out of the habit of going to church.

Yes, it is.

And if your church is kind of a problem, if it's not really meeting your needs, and maybe they're not even preaching the gospel and you realize I need to go somewhere, then stay with it. Really be diligent about looking for a new fellowship, prayerfully looking for a new fellowship.

And if we were counseling this person face-to-face, another question we would ask them if they said, I just feel not so bored at church, we would also ask, how are you serving at church? Are you serving at church? What are your spiritual gifts? And how are you employing them in the body of Christ? Because that's another possible missing link.

It is. If somebody is going to church merely to receive, we call those consumer Christians. And church is going to get boring because you can only sit there for so long if you're not involved, so get involved.

Hugh says,

So he's talking about both extending forgiveness for people who have hurt him and asking for forgiveness from people he has hurt. That's what it sounds like in that note. That can be very, very challenging. One thing I would say to Hugh and anyone else who is dealing with this issue of being convicted by the Lord to deal with unforgiveness, whether it's an unforgiveness someone's holding against you or you against someone else, is that we are commanded to forgive, first of all. If someone has hurt you, then we are commanded. We are to forgive as we have been forgiven. If someone has been hurt by you, Jesus said, if you are getting ready to head to the altar with your sacrifice and you remember that someone has something against you, just leave your sacrifice there and go and be reconciled to your brother. Now, whether there's going to be reconciliation after that forgiveness, that's another issue.

That's a separate matter.

That's a separate matter. The Bible says, insofar as it is in your power, live at peace with all men. Sometimes all you can do is what you can do, is to try to reconcile. There are times that other people just don't want to. They refuse, and they're like, no, I don't care.

Well, the other party could be dead. They could be in jail. They could have moved far away and not really in your life.

Or you lost contact with them.

Or as this almost implies here, they could be a dangerous person.

And if that person is still toxic and dangerous and hurtful, then reconciliation might not be a good idea, because you might be putting your family in harm's way, or yourself for that matter. So reconciliation, let's put that aside. But forgiveness is a non-negotiable. We're to forgive others and to ask for forgiveness regardless.

Connie says,

This creates a difficult situation. But we have to remember something about the law. And we're referring here to the Law of Moses. God never gave the Law of Moses to the Jews as a means of salvation. So if there are Jews that this person knows, and they're hoping by keeping the law that they're going to make their way to heaven, they need to consult their scriptures because God never promised that. That was an assumption that the Jews came to at some point. But God never promised that they would go to heaven if they kept the law for their obedience. Paul gets into this in the New Testament in various places, particularly the book of Romans and in Galatians. In Romans chapter 3, he reminds us that no one will be declared righteous by keeping the law. So what we're really dealing with here when we talk about Jews who are doing their best to keep the law and hoping to be in right standing with God because of that, we're basically talking about people who have rejected God's means of righteousness. Because we know that we are righteous before God, not by doing good or keeping the law, but we are righteous by faith. That's what Paul tells us in the New Testament. Now a righteousness by faith has been revealed to which the law and the prophets testify. And this righteousness comes by faith. So we have to remember something. The Bible makes it very clear that there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. There is only one way. Jesus said it this way. No man comes to the Father except through me. Nobody! You don't get there by any other means. So the question is moot when we refer to someone, whether we say that they're a law abiding individual from the standpoint of the Law of Moses, or just a moral person from the standpoint of living in the world. People say that all the time. I've met someone who's a very moral person and you're telling me they're going to go to hell. No, I'm not telling you anything. I'm telling you that Jesus said he's the only way. No man comes to the Father except through him.

So you divide up the entire population of the world into two groups. Those who trust in what Jesus did for forgiveness of sins and those who don't.

Exactly. And those who are either rejecting it or trusting in themselves. And frankly, someone who is a law keeping individual is trusting in their own ability to be righteous enough through the law. And that's just not going to happen.

So Connie should pray for them.

Absolutely.

Susan says,

So what's the deal? What's going on here? It appears like a contradiction. And there's even another verse, John 3:17, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save it. So a lot of people read that passage in John 9 and they're like, oh, Jesus said to the Pharisees, it is for judgment I've come. But you have to understand, first of all, that the word judge, judgment, judging in the Greek, just like in the English language has many, many shades of meaning. We can use the word judge to refer to someone who sits on a bench and decides cases in our court system. We can use the word judge to describe condemnation. I'm judging you for your behavior. We can use judge to speak of discernment. For example, when someone goes to the grocery store, they have to judge what they're looking at in the store as to whether or not it's worthy of their money. When they go through the produce section or fruits and vegetables, they often will pick them up and squeeze them and smell them or whatever, and look at the color, and they're making a judgment. Now, that's not a condemning judgment. It's a discerning judgment. It is a declarative judgment. I judge this fruit to be good, or I judge this fruit to be bad. When Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders there in John chapter 9, he is judging them from the standpoint of making a declaration that they are blind, even though they claim to see. And so he's not making a condemning judgment at that point. When the Bible says that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, he means that's not going to happen in the first coming. He didn't come to pronounce judgment in the sense of condemning people for eternity. That is going to happen after his second coming. Jesus does come to judge after his second coming. So we have to remember the differences in the meaning of judge and judgment and that sort of thing and apply it properly. You have to look at what John 9 says in the context of the conversation that's going on.

That's helpful. Marcia says,

If you go to Nahum and really read it carefully, you will see some things that the Lord says about why judgment is falling upon the Ninevites. And that's really what the book of Nahum is all about in the Old Testament. But you have to remember that Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria. And so you might need to broaden your search a little bit. If you do a simple Google search, and I would recommend something like, show me the extra biblical sources that talk about the morality and culture of the ancient nation of Assyria. It's kind of a verbose search, but that'll bring up results. There are tons of extra biblical sources that you can read about. There's been archaeological finds, documents from the ancient Assyrians. They even mention Israel. And there are things that help us to gain a better understanding of the ancient Assyrian people. They were incredibly cruel. I mean, just to the max. And I won't get into the specifics because it's kind of graphic, but there are many extra biblical sources. I would encourage her just to do a Google search.

This isn't part of her question, but when you said that, it just reminds me that we often, it seems like I often fall into a conversation with someone who will talk about this world and how terrible it is, as if it's never been this bad before. And you know we kind of lose grip of history and how some of those cultures were just, I'd rather live right now than in ancient Assyria.

They were brutal. The ancient Assyrians were brutal.

All right. Robert from South Carolina says,

I think so many people struggle with this idea of God allowing Satan to do something negative in the life of a believer because it just seems so inconsistent with the heart and the love of God.

It does.

We emphasize and talk about so much about the love of God. This seems inconsistent. And so we read this passage where the apostle Paul says, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, which he calls a messenger of Satan to torment me. In fact, it was so problematic to Paul. He tells us in that passage that he cried out to the Lord on three separate occasions, begging the Lord to take it from him. But of course, the Lord declined saying that there was a purpose. That's the key, I think, to understanding this. And that's not the only Bible passage where we see the Lord giving permission to the enemy to bring about a buffeting of someone's life. Job in the Old Testament, God allowed the enemy to do some horrific things in Job's life. In the New Testament, Peter, you remember that conversation during the Last Supper when Peter is boldly proclaiming that even though all the rest of the disciples are going to desert Jesus, he certainly won't. And Jesus said, Peter, listen, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. And we know that that very night, God allowed that sifting to take place. It was horrible for Peter. But of course, it was used by God in his life to help Peter see who he really was and to become the man that God wanted him to be. But it is something that we have to just reconcile ourselves to, that God will use the even the work of the enemy at times to bring about his purpose of holiness in our lives.

All right. Another viewer said,

Certain sins do not prevent people from being saved if they repent, come to the Lord and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. They can be saved regardless of what sin they're committing. But there's a deeper question going on here. If someone is involved, and by the way, the Bible knows nothing really of being gay. It doesn't use that term. In fact, it's sexual immorality. And the Bible doesn't use the word alcoholic. It uses the word drunkard. And those words aren't usually, we don't like to use them because they seem kind of impolite. But the Bible is not terribly concerned with being polite. So what the Bible is talking about, when it talks about people who are involved in a lifestyle of sexual immorality, and people who are involved in a lifestyle of drunkenness, not inheriting the kingdom of God, it's making the point that those people have not come to the Lord to be transformed, because the gospel transforms lives. And I'm not saying that a person who's involved in any kind of sexual immorality can't come to the Lord. They can. And I'm not saying that a drunkard can't come to the Lord. They can. But I'll tell you something. If they genuinely put their faith in Jesus Christ and invite the Holy Spirit into their lives, he's not going to leave them the same. And he's not going to leave them to sit and wallow in their sin. And he's going to continue to work in their lives to set them free from that sinful behavior. It might take a while. And that's where Christians usually jump in and begin to judge while that work of sanctification is just going on. But here's the deal. A genuine believer will be transformed. They will be. Jesus is not going to leave you the same that he found you. It's just simply the way it is. So I think we need to think of this correctly here. If somebody continues to confess Christ but lives in an unbroken lifestyle of sexual immorality and drunkenness, then there's no transformation going on here. And whether or not that person is saved, here's the question I get all the time. If somebody never stopped sinning, does that mean they were never saved in the first place? I don't know. And neither do you. We love to judge. And we say, we're fruit inspectors. I get so tired of hearing that. We don't know if somebody got genuinely saved and just resisted the Holy Spirit until they died, but still had a foundation of faith in the finished work of Jesus. But if they put their faith in Him and surrender to Him, there will be transformation. There will be transformation.

Excellent. Our last question is from Katie, “My husband and I have been married for 25 years, and I have been growing closer to Jesus and studying the Bible. He has always told me and still does, that he believes John 3:16 that Jesus is the Son of God and died for his sins, so he is good to go. He gets so angry if I ask him to read the Bible with me or on his own. I have stopped talking about anything spiritual with him as he gets angry and irritated each time. He does take us to church but I don't know if I should be worried about his salvation.”

Well, I wouldn't advise you to be worried. I would advise you to pray. He says that he believes in Jesus and he believes that Jesus saved him from his sin. It could be that you're dealing with a husband who's just lukewarm, and he needs a heart revival. So I would encourage this, dear sister, stop bugging him. Don't do things that are going to make him mad along those lines, but pray for him and trust the Lord to do a work in his heart. I think women largely ignore the power they have to convey godly messages to their husbands through their behavior. This is what Peter talks about. He says, women, if you have a husband who doesn't believe the Word, which could mean he's just even stumbling over the Word. Peter goes on to say, let him be won over without words when he sees your life, your respect, your holiness, your devotion to the Lord. And I think that women largely misunderstand or fail to recognize this. I think, as a man, one of the most convicting things you can do as a wife, or any wife can do, is just to carry on with her walk with the Lord and show that devotion on a day-to-day basis. Let him see you up early having your devotion time with your Bible open, your notepad, and so forth. Let him see that. Let him see you having Bible studies with the kids. Let him see you going to church being cheerful about it, even if he's not coming with you. Let him see that. Let him be convicted by that through the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit's going to do a far better job than you can do of reaching his heart and meanwhile pray for him.

It's not just those disciplines of devotions in church and those sorts of things, but it is the inner strength that a woman can display when she truly trusts in the Lord for life, for things that are going on and all the little nuances of life. When a woman doesn't freak out and flip out because this is happening and that's happening… Pastor Paul: Or not happening.

Or not happening, it must speak volumes to a man that level of trust, that quiet trust in the Lord.

I want to particularly for wives who are married to unbelievers, is he seeing in your life a faith and trust in the Lord? A woman who nags her husband to go to church, that's not trusting the Lord. She's putting pressure on her husband. She should be spending that time in prayer for her husband and then wait for an open 1 Peter 3:1-2 (ESV) Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. door. So I would really encourage this gal just to walk on with the Lord. Do it what the Lord has given her to do in the home, in the family and entrust her husband into the hands of God and know that God wants him even more than she does sure to really come to a real place of surrender. I think that's it for our questions, right?

Yeah.

Before we take off I want to talk about another book if I could really quick. We have a dear friend who lives in Israel, went to school there at Hebrew University, came away with his doctorate in ancient Hebrew studies, and he has written a devotional which we think is just delightful. It's called Crumbs and his name is Jeremy Bajema and you can find it on Amazon. Jeremy is a deep thinker. He's a smart guy and he likes to use what he knows about the Hebrew language to bring out all kinds of wonderful treasures about the Word of God. So I want to just give a little plug for Jeremy's book, Crumbs.

Excellent Pastor Paul: See if somebody might find that helpful.

And it also proves we have smart friends.

We have smart friends, too. We're not smart, but we have smart friends.

We don't look like it, but we have smart friends.

We'll be back with more of your questions next time. Until then, God bless you.