Episode 6

Pastor Paul LeBoutillier Pastor Paul: Hello everyone, and welcome back to our Bible Q&A. We're doing this weekly now and covering the questions that you guys are sending in to us through a myriad of means.

Right. They're always good questions.

They really are, and there's some good ones here today.

We'll start off with a question from Bailey, she says,

That is the challenge, isn't it? I mean, this is a really common question. People have been asking this for a long, long time. And I think there definitely is a balance, but that balance probably needs to be tipped, I think more toward trusting the Lord than trusting ourselves or making our own plans. When you think about how many passages there are in the Bible that talk about not only trusting God, but not trusting yourself. I'll just read a couple to you well known Proverbs 3:5-7 (ESV) and following “Trust in the LORD with all of your heart” and then this part, “Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him”. And that means to acknowledge the presence, wisdom and direction of the Lord in whatever thing, issue, plan, and direction you're working on. And it says, “He will make straight your paths.” But then we often don't tag on the next verse in that same passage, which says “Be not wise in your own eyes”. And so there are so many passages that speak about our need to trust the Lord and not trust ourselves. Proverbs 16:3 (ESV) says, “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established”. So you can kind of see what's going on here. It's more than how you go about making your plans. It's the hard attitude behind it. Because to submit your work to the Lord and to in all your ways acknowledge him, that's a hard attitude. That's a humility that says, God, you know best, and I'm not going to exalt my intelligence or my wisdom above you and your plan for my life. In the New Testament, James talks about this and he kind of reminds believers saying for those of you that are thinking to yourself, you know that today or tomorrow we're going to go over there, we're going to move and we're going to set up business there and we'll make money. And James goes on to say, you don't even know what your life is. He reminds you that you're a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes. And then he says instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills. And again, that all comes down to attitude. It all comes down to where the heart is at. Am I choosing to exalt and trust the Lord above my own understanding?

And her question began with the word how do you do that? And I think it's just like anything else practice. Every time that you tune into the voice of the Lord, more you listen, more you practice it, it becomes your habit of life.

Exactly. And what better way to practice is then when an issue comes up and you need to make a decision. And so you learn to pray about it and you learn to seek direction and you learn to figure out how to get a confirmation on the Lord's direction. That's another big question. How can I know that this is the direction of the Lord? Well, the Bible also says in Colossians 3:15 (ESV),

Very good. All right. Darla asks,

And the reason people don't have it straight in their mind is because there's so many teachers and Bible study leaders that misquote the Word of God and don't really take it as a whole. We have to remember the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians that

It's a comfort. It's a good answer. Here's a question that came from your teaching on Matthew 26. And they said,

Well the reason is, is because God did not tell us to keep the Passover as a memorial. He told Israel to keep the Passover as a memorial. If you look at Exodus 12:14 (ESV), the reference that this person cited, it says,

All right. That's great. Our next question comes from Sonia who asks

That portion of Psalm 139 is what we call an imprecatory Psalm. I talk about this and actually explain it in my study through the Psalms. It's one of many imprecatory Psalms. And what that means is it's a Psalm that includes a prayer to God to bring judgment upon the evil of the world, upon those who care nothing for the Lord and who are just awaiting punishment. It's basically a prayer that calls down judgment. So they're challenging sometimes to study in light of the New Testament reality that we've been called to love our enemies, pray for those who do evil and so forth. Anyway, let's take a look at Psalm 139:19-22 (ESV), the verses that she's referring to it, it reads like this “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!” You can hear that in that, can't you? “O men of blood depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.” There you go.

That's pretty rough.

Yeah, it's pretty rough. And the psalmists were always very passionate about taking up the cause of the Lord. Now to read that verse though, and to say, are we supposed to avoid unbelievers? Honestly, there are some unbelievers that we should avoid. When you go back to the beginning of the Psalms and you start with the very first verse of the Psalms, it starts off saying,

Well, I think about too, this morning I was in the Proverbs and a lot of warnings about being part of the companion of fools.

Exactly. So here's the real question. How should believers respond to unbelievers in general? That's really kind of the issue. Well, interestingly enough, this question came up in the Corinthian church, and it was a situation where Paul had written to the believers in Corinth and he told them to not associate with people who are sexually immoral, that was everybody. I mean, Corinth was known as a very sexually immoral place. So they heard this from the Apostle Paul and they were like, I guess he's telling us we shouldn't interact with unbelievers at all. So they wrote him asking about that and he came back and he said this in 1 Corinthians 5:9-11 (ESV) and following he says,

Wonderful. Here's a YouTube question that says,

Well, that's a Roman Catholic term, and it is used by Roman Catholics because they see the sacraments differently than I would say biblical Christianity sees the sacraments.

First of all, what are the sacraments?

Well, we're talking about community.

Because that's a churchy word.

Communion, water baptism, that sort of thing. When I say we, I have to just say biblical Christians, we believe that the sacraments are a picture, not the reality. So when we look at water baptism, we don't look at it as a means of salvation. We look at it as a picture of the reality, which is the work that Jesus did on the cross. Same with communion. We don't look at the bread or the cup as a means of saving us. We see that what Jesus did on the cross is the reality. Communion is the picture, and we were given communion as a memorial in remembrance, not as an effective means of grace, which is the way the Roman Catholic church kind of defines those things. So that's the difference. Roman Catholicism sees communion and water baptism and things like that as having an actual effect on the individual whereas we see him as pictures.

All right. This next question is from a YouTube comment that says,

No, I'm not saying that at all. First of all, when somebody confesses Christ but shows, as this person says, no change of behavior that we can see, we don't know whether or not that person truly got saved and they're just sputtering as they kind of start their walk with the Lord. A lot of people that I have observed over the years struggle to get traction in their walk with the Lord. They come to Christ and there's a genuine work of the Holy Spirit in their heart to believe by faith in what Jesus did on the cross. But they have gathered in their flesh many addictive and life controlling behaviors that just dog them on their walk with the Lord to the point where they struggle to really let those things go. And we see from the outside. So we're looking from the outside and we're looking at that person. We're thinking, I don't know if they really came to the Lord because they're still smoking, they're still doing this, they're still doing that. They still let those zinger, obscene words fly from time to time and, and we're all kind of thinking, I don't know. God knows. So I would never say that a Bible believing Christian and by the way, I wouldn't even refer to them as a Bible believing Christian. I would simply call them a true born again believer. So a true born again believer cannot be possessed by a demonic spirit. Now, there can be people who would say to you, if you ask them, are you a Christian? They would say,

Very, very impossible to make that call.

Yeah, it really is.

All right. And our final question today is another YouTube question, “I've heard people say that since God never changes and is the same God of the Old Testament and the New Testament, therefore we should try to live according to the Law of Moses, remembering that not one jot or title shall pass away. What do you think?”

Well, I think that those kind of statements are filled with ignorance and legalistic tendencies. So there you go. I really do. I honestly do. And here's what's worse. When people say things like that, they say, he's the God of the Old Testament and the God of the new so we need to keep and follow the Law of Moses. You run into all kinds of problems because, first of all, you miss the entire point of the new covenant. The new covenant is something that God spoke about prophetically even in the Old Testament, in the book of Jeremiah. The passage goes like this,

I've heard people say to you and ask, so are you saying that I don't need to keep the 10 commandments? And I think when they say that, don't you think the law giver in your heart is going to lead you exactly in that direction to be keeping all of that, it's just a matter, it's a heart issue now.

That's exactly right. And it also is a denial of what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 6:14 (ESV) when he said

Well, as evidenced by the fact that we gather plenty of questions to even talk about these different things, we have so many new issues related to that.

So the question is, how do you get answers for those things just based on the law? Well, you can't because the law is finite, but the law giver is infinite and his ability to respond to you spiritually, His Holy Spirit to your Spirit is infinite. And He can tell you anything. He can answer any question that you might have. And so many Christians fail to understand this. Like you said, they often will hear about this and they'll say, so we're supposed to reject the law. Do you know that's exactly what the Apostle Paul got accused of? So you're saying that people shouldn't keep the Law of Moses? No, I'm saying the law giver is now living inside of us by faith and that when we follow the leading of the Spirit, we are following the leading of the Lord and people, that's an upgrade. We understand that term today. Our computers get upgraded, they get faster, they get better and they can do more. Well, listen, the Holy Spirit living in you is an upgrade to the Law of Moses. There's nothing wrong with the Law of Moses. A person does need to discern the differences in the Law of Moses between moral law and ceremonial law. We know that Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial aspects of the law and when we read things in the 10 commandments like, keep the Sabbath and we know and understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Sabbath and we're resting in him for our salvation. And there are other things as well, but we understand that morally what the law projects morally, it's perfect. And Paul explains that in the New Testament. There's nothing wrong with the law. What's wrong is with us because we just can't keep it. But now we have an upgrade to the law and He's living, He's living inside of believers and He's speaking if we would listen. If we would follow the leading of the Lord. And that's the message when you read through the letters of Paul, Peter, John, the other New Testament authors, it is follow the leading of the Spirit, be led by the Spirit. They don't say be led by the law. They say be led by the law giver. And that is the Holy Spirit living in believers like you and me.

That's awesome. So however your week is going this week, there is a happy thought. You have been given an upgrade. Your body might be falling apart, but when you became born again, you have been upgraded. So we're going to walk in that.

Amen! Exactly. Well, that's going to take it to the end for this episode, and we're going to be back next week with some more of your questions. If you have something burning on your heart, just send a note to questions@lifebibleministry.com and we'll do our best to get to your question just as soon as we can. Until then, God bless you. Have a good rest of your day.