← BibleThinker
BibleThinker
Are images of Jesus breaking the 2nd commandment? 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 73)
01:33:40
Answering questions from the live chat after the stream begins (not before). How the book of Acts handles Jews and Gentiles obeying the law and rituals of the OT: Click Here Here's the controversial bit from Jenn Johnson of Bethel Music: Click Here Today's Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro1. 1:08 {Images of Jesus: Idolatrous?} Are images of Jesus breaking the 2nd Commandment?2. 32:44 {Nathan: A False Prophet?} Did Nathan prophesy falsely when he told David to build the temple (2 Samuel 7), specifically when he says “the Lord is with you”?3. 37:43 {Bad Things: Always Spiritual Warfare?} How much should we attribute things to spiritual warfare? I know some who say almost anything bad that happens is warfare, especially when leading up to or following good things in life.4. 45:23 {Different Churches & Matthew 18?} With a narcissistic family member from whom I experienced abuse, if they deny wrongdoing and I don’t attend the same church, would Matthew 18 still apply? What would be the best path...
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:06]
A
All right, you guys should hold on. I have to make sure. Is this working? It says I'm live. Okay, here we go. We're live. Just so you guys know, this is going to be a complicated answer, but I want to simplify it ahead of time. Like, I'll give you my conclusion to the question. The first question, which is going to be, are images of Jesus idolatrous? Is it idolatrous to even sort of have any image of Jesus of any kind, any representation of him? And a lot of Christians would answer this with a simple yes. And I'm going to say they are dangerous, but they are not inherently idolatrous. So that's my conclusion, and I'm going to get into the details as to why. And I think I'm going to show you some scriptures that maybe have been right in front of your face that you haven't considered in relation to this question in particular. So, yeah, my name is Mike Winger. I'm here to hopefully help you as I learn to do so myself. Learn to think biblically about more and more stuff until we at least pretend we can think biblically about everything. That's our lofty goal we're always trying to reach towards. And the first question today. Yeah, are they idolatrous inherently? So what I want to do now is put on your screens some scripture. Let's look at the verses themselves and understand why people understandably think, hey, that's just automatically always wrong. So Here is Exodus 20, verse 4. This is the second commandment. It says, you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. That would be pretty self explanatory right there. You just don't do it. Now, taken outside of any context, this verse would actually prohibit not only images that would be of Jesus, maybe a painting, a drawing, something where you put, like you draw a cross and then you put a stick figure there to represent Jesus. Like that would be forbidden by this. But actually the cross itself would be forbidden. And actually when you draw a landscape, that's forbidden because that would be included in a very broad understanding of Exodus 24. Everything would be forbidden. Everything in heaven above, earth beneath. You draw a sunset, a painting of a sunset. That's forbidden. On my desktop right now, I keep setting my desktop background to black, but the computer does not stick with this setting for some reason. So right now there is a cityscape with a beautiful sunset. That's just like some Default thing. They keep changing my backgrounds, and I don't care enough to actually go fix it. But anyway, that would be forbidden, too. Actually, guys, right now you're watching me. An image of me on your screen, like, you're not really looking at me. You understand? Like, you're not in the room. You're looking at an image of me, a likeness of me that is just incredibly well made, and you're looking at that. So this would also be forbidden. YouTube itself would be inherently idolatrous on the most extreme application and understanding interpretation of Exodus 24. Okay. But it's understandable why people would read it that way. But I'm going to show you why that can't be quite the meaning. So verse 5. Let's add the next commandment. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. If you take these two in context together and. And the idolatrous context of the people of the. Sorry, I meant that to be on your screen of the individuals that are getting the commandments, the Israelites. If you take that context, it sounds more like this is a statement that you cannot do idolatry, not that you can't ever make any carved image of any kind for any reason that represents something on the earth. So, like, if I play Monopoly, right, Which I enjoy, or at least in theory, I enjoy. I think I liked it when I was a kid a lot. And now I'm always like, oh, that just takes too long. But if I was to play Monopoly and I get the little cannon to be my guy or the horse dude to get my. To be my. That's my guy. The horse guy, Right? The cowboy. Well, I can't. I can't do that because that's. That's idolatry. Even the houses that would be. They're. They're effectively carved images of. You know, you might say, well, they're not technically carved, Mike. And you're like, don't pretend. That's the meaning of it. You can. You can cast them, but you can't carve them. Okay, so that's one verse. I think that there's more to the context, but that's there now. I read an article that was on the Gospel Coalition that talked about this issue, and the other passage that it brought up was Deuteronomy. Chapter 4, verses 15 through 24. And let's read through that. And they're saying, this is commentary on the second commandment. And they're basically saying, yes, it's a very broad, brushed commandment. And now they're answering not just the question, is anything idolatrous? Is every. But. But specifically, is it idolatrous to make an image of Jesus? That's the question they're asking. But this is the passage that they referred to. So let's read through it here. It says in Deuteronomy 4:15, Therefore watch yourselves very carefully since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Okay? The preface is, there was no form that you saw when God spoke to you, so God did not reveal a form that you could then turn into an idol. Right. Beware, lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware, lest you raise your eyes to heaven and. And when you see the sun and moon and the stars and all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them these things that. Excuse me. And serve them things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. Here we are. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace of Egypt, out of Egypt to be a people for his own inheritance, as you are this day. So don't do those things. Don't make those images. Again, this is quoted, at least in that one particular article. There's plenty of good stuff on the Gospel Coalition, just like you may disagree with me on something. I think I disagree with this article, actually, and maybe I'm wrong. I know there's going to be a whole ton, like a significant number of believers who will push back on the things I'm sharing and the first question I'm answering today, and I'm welcoming that. Please offer your best reasons in the comments and I'll try and pay attention to it, actually, and say, hey, oh wow, I got that wrong and I'd be happy to change my mind here, but you'll see why I think that. I think that this seems pretty ironclad what I'm about to share with you. Okay, so quoting Deuteronomy. There you go. Yeah. Don't make any images of anything. And it would seem, if you take it with no more context, with no more details, it would seem pretty broad stroked so that not only images of Jesus would be wrong. And of course, images simply of God. Right. Not Jesus in his incarnate form, where he's human and he's God, but what you're showing is his humanity. That's what you're seeing. But also, not only would that be wrong, but also everything's wrong. Every image of any kind is therefore wrong. That would be the logic, I think. And I think that people who say that all images are wrong don't really carry this through because they're wearing clothes. Like they'll be wearing a shirt with like a little gecko on it or like, you know, a pair of pants that has, like a little emblem on it, or a belt that has a little icon on it that's an animal. You know, a bowl, like your leather belt, it's got a little bowl on it or something that's, you know, stamped into leather. That. That kind of stuff, too. That would be pretty extreme. You know, my hat has trees on it, right? My wife was saying we should have bought more of these hats than we could sell them because you guys are all like, where'd you get this hat? Well, I went to Muir woods up in San Francisco in the Redwoods, and I bought it in the store there if you guys want to get a hat. Okay. That's all I'm going to say about that. That's the statement. Now let's look at some more details. Okay. If you go through the rest of Scripture and you examine other parts of the Bible to look at how this played out in the text of Scripture, even in the very law itself, even in the books of Moses, you're going to find that interpreting these things as a complete and broad prescription against any kind of images is unsustainable. And what I mean by that is I can give you one really weird little example, which is Ezekiel. Ezekiel is instructed by God to make a model of Jerusalem. Now, it's not a nice model, but it is to represent Jerusalem. He creates a representation of Jerusalem, and he represents armies going around and attacking Jerusalem. That was something he was told by God to make, but that would be forbidden on a very broad understanding of these things. Then we have the tabernacle. This is probably the strongest example of this, is the tabernacle itself. Now, we read about God instructing them to, like, weave cherubs into cherubim, into the. Into the curtains, into the actual tabernacle itself. So that you'd see these beautiful. Or I'm assuming they were beautiful. I don't know what they looked like. But you'd see these heavenly images. They're images of heavenly beings that would be part of the tabernacle that people would see as they were entering into. So God made them create something that was in the likeness of a heavenly thing. Even on the altar itself, you've got these cherubim with these outstretched wings covering. And that's on the mercy seat in the ark of the covenant. And God told them to make that. He told them, make it out of wood, overlay it with gold. He told them how to do it. And. And then it says he gifted people with skills to be able to do this stuff well. So God's like, all over this. And that's in a context where he's telling them to make something in heaven. And it is connected, at least in some way to worship. I say in some way. That's doing a lot of work there. Okay. Because it's not connected in every way. They're not being worshiped. They're not objects of worship. They're not being given. They're not having attention directed to them. They're simply there to represent what things? Well, basically, the tabernacle was meant to be like, you're walking into heaven, I think a picture of Christ himself. Because on the outside it was, like, dingy and like these skins and stuff. And on the inside it was just beautiful and, like, heavenly. And so Christ, God and man, you see his physical body, but he is also God, so really cool. However, God instructs them to do this. Now, when Solomon picks up and builds the actual temple and. And he does this with God's permission and with God's approval in the text of Scripture. And we read about some of the stuff he does in 1 Kings 6:23. Look at what he does and see if you can sustain the strictest interpretation of the second commandment. It says, in the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olive wood, each 10 cubits high. Five cubits was the length of one wing of the cherub that's very big, and five cubits the length of the other wing of the cherub. It was 10 cubits from the tip of the wing to the tip of the other, tip of one to the other. The other cherub also measured 10 cubits. Both cherubim had the same measure and the same form. The height of one cherub was 10 cubits. That's massive. And so was that of the other cherub. He put the cherubim in the innermost part of the house, and the wings of the cherubim were spread out so that a wing of one touched the one wall and a wing of the other cherub touched the other wall. So we get the measurements of the size of the room in the middle of the house. They connected. And he overlaid the cherubim with gold. All around the walls of the house. He carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers in the inner and outer rooms. That's a lot of specific images, right? Likenesses of things on earth and things in heaven that was created in the temple. God instructed for this kind of thing to happen, right? And of course, some say, well, Solomon, but he took it to the next level. Yeah, but I don't think Solomon was in sin in doing this. I think they built a glorious house for the Lord. I don't think it was a sinful thing. God blessed it. He told David, you can't do it. He says, your kid Solomon's going to be the one to do it. And he builds it, and God gives him wisdom. And God gives specific empowerment to people who are creating the thing. Look at what he does in 1 Kings 7:25. He talks about the bronze sea. This was like a big container full of liquid water, right? Part of the rituals. And you have to use water. It says, though it stood this big, giant, oversized bowl, the sea stood on 12 oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. The sea was set on them and. And on their rear parts were inward, and all their rear parts were inward. So they're facing outward. The bull's faces face outward. And then it talks about more details about it. I could go on, right? There's more examples of this sort of thing as well. Then we have another example, and this is again at God's instigation in numbers 21 8. 9. Numbers 21 8. And we want to submit ourselves to Scripture, right? And Scripture does interpret Scripture. Scripture shows us what God means when he says things, because he says something and he does something. And you put it together and you go, ah, I get what you mean. And numbers 218 says, and the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. This becomes not only an image of a bronze serpent, but metaphorically an image of Jesus Christ. I say metaphorically, right? So in the typology of things, right, Jesus in the Old Testament, he says, as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, right? And the thing is, the bronze serpent is the people are sinning. These serpents come in as punishment. They bite them, they die. Okay? So the ones who sin die, and then the bronze serpent is lifted up as, like something you look at and you can be healed. What does that even mean? It's a picture of Jesus. Jesus himself says so. And then he comes and he takes on our sin, our rebellion against God, all the satanic, evil things we've done, all the times we failed, we've sinned against the Lord. We've lied, we've cheated, we've stolen, we've lusted, we've murdered, we've hated, we've everything. And he embodies all of that, in a sense, being like this, representative of sin and judgment, lifted up, and that's the cross. And we just look to him, we just trust him, and we're forgiven and saved. And this bronze serpent was. God was telling Moses to make this. So I don't know how we can get around these things in any way other than saying when the commandment comes out that says, don't make any of these images, it's like the commandment that says, thou shalt not kill. If you look at it more carefully, you realize, well, you don't murder. It's not that any killing is wrong right now. The majority of killing is wrong. The majority of it is. But not every and all killing. If God commands it, then God has authority over human beings and their lives and their deaths. Anybody who denies this, any Christian who feels a twinge in your heart when I say that there's an unbiblical belief that you've got in your heart, probably more of an emotional belief. That's not a judgment against you, but that's just. We gotta assess ourselves, right? But God has the right to give life and take life. So if he commanded someone to be killed, that would be just. Now, I don't trust any of the yahoos out there going, God told me to kill somebody. No, you're probably crazy. You almost certainly need help. Satan will probably try to tell you to kill people too. But it still stands as true that thou shalt not murder is more limited than the immediate context would make obviously clear. And we can see that by looking at other things in Scripture, I think that the commandment about images is about making images that might then be used as objects of worship or in some way as a replacement of God or to some way represent, almost not a representation. Like, nobody was supposed to walk into the temple or tabernacle and see the cherubs and think, those are real cherubs. They're here and those images are them. And then I look at the cherub and be like, I honor you, O cherub. Like, that would be great sin to do that. It was representative, it was not replacement, and it was not conduit. Those are the three words I'll put out there. These images were representative of truths, of things that are important and valuable. They were not replacements for those things, and they were not conduits to those things. I'm not getting to an angel through this cherub creature. Sorry, the image, it's not really a creature. I'm not getting to something spiritual through the use of this thing. Like, it's a conduit. And those are the things that I think where it becomes really dangerous. And the bronze serpent that Moses, he made, that's a perfect example because it was years down the road where it actually becomes an object of worship, the bronze. Because again, I don't think that these are forbidden. Images are all forbidden of every kind. Many of them should be destroyed. Many of the images inside of the Orthodox Church, inside of the Catholic Church should be destroyed. They should be. That's right. And they should destroy themselves. I don't mean we go and break down their doors and destroy their stuff. Not everybody's Gideon with your dad. So I'm not trying to soft pedal this in any way, shape or form. I just want to have a good biblical analysis of it. So, yeah, after Moses builds it, it becomes an object of worship, and then he destroys it and he grinds it up and just ruins it. Because these things are genuinely dangerous. They can be good and they can be bad. And an example of this, I'll come back to Jesus in a second. As far as that question of representing the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, with some sort of image or even an actor, I don't know that I fully have my head wrapped around that question. It's just so odd to my brain that I don't fully know how to answer it. But I'll try to with you guys, think biblically about it. But when you. Oh, I lost my train of thought. Okay, I'll just give another example. I was going somewhere with that and everything was good. All right, so let's say a church has stained glass. Stained glass windows. And you walk in, and in there is like a scene from Paul, or in fact, my church. I don't know if I have a bulletin. We have a wonderful artist at our church that does artwork for series and bulletins and stuff like that. And I'll show you one. So there's just like, some art that's made. Okay. There's a. There's nothing on that particular one. You could pause it and go back, but there's nothing. Especially just a tree that's there. But at the bottom of the tree, maybe you can see it. There's. There's what I think is a nativity. I think it's supposed to be like a nativity type thing. So this was like a Christmas one. There's another one here. Let me see if I can find. You guys might find this interesting. Another bulletin. So Exodus, we're going through Exodus, right? And so at the time. So this is Moses burning bush, artist representation. So there's a Moses, There's a landscape. There's even the fire and the bush. And someone could say, well, I mean, is that an image of God? Well, no, it's fire. The fire isn't God. But those kinds of things, I think, can be useful to people. I think they can be helpful to people. And I don't think that they're biblically forbidden. In fact, in the temple, it's kind of commanded to be done. However, man, people are idolatrous. It's so, so bad. We are so bad. It's a continual problem in the Israelites. It is a constant issue. Even the bronze serpent God told them to make, they start worshiping the thing. Just the worst. They make images. They made images of God. They made images of other things. They start worshiping angels. They start using images as conduits. Images as like, enhancing their spiritual worship experience. Not just as like an image to remind you of something. You could say those are the same. But there's obviously a line somewhere, right? Because Moses makes the bronze serpent. But Moses also destroys it. Or not Moses. But it also gets destroyed years later destroyed and smashed to pieces because they began worshiping the thing. You see, there's obviously a line somewhere. And that line is, I think, in the commandment where he goes, don't make these things, and then says, don't bow down and worship them. This cannot be part of your worship where it's directed to any of these images. All right, let's talk about specifically about the idea of Jesus, though, when it comes to images of Jesus, and if you don't agree with me on this stuff, please feel free to not agree with me. Maybe I'm wrong about it. Maybe there's something I don't see here. Certainly there's times I'm wrong and I'd like it to be pointed out to me. But when it comes to images of Jesus, let's ask the question, not can. Is it Jonathan Roumie play as a Jesus character in the Chosen? Let's come back to that in a second. Let's come back to any of the Jesus films that have ever come out. I'm not interested in just talking about the Chosen. Any of the Jesus movies that have ever come out. All of those we'll address in a second. But first let's ask, in Sunday school or in children's ministry in your church, are they allowed to use felt boards that show the water and a boat and Peter and Jesus, he's walking in the water and Peter comes out and, oh, no, he starts to sink and he comes out. Is that idolatry? I think that the felt boards are a really good example of a purely helpful use of images in a church setting. Purely helpful. I've never seen anybody start worshiping the felt board. Maybe there's some weird person out there who stole the Jesus one and put it under their pillow and thought they were closer to the Lord. And that is idolatrous. But I think that that's one example of. You're like, yeah, how do I argue against that? How do I suggest that this is inherently wrong? So if we're going to be consistent and say it's Jesus himself, you can have any representation of him. You're like, well, the felt board represents Jesus. And it does it in a way that's like, not even good. It's just useful. It's not like, wow, that's quality. And maybe that's what makes it more innocuous, because it's not so skilled in the art of it that nobody would turn and think anything special of it. They would just see it as useful and helpful. Maybe that's the case. But then you graduate to the idea of, say, a painting representing Jesus. On the thumbnail. For this video, I put a painting that's really one of the most ancient artworks about Jesus that we've got, but it's Jesus, and half of his face looks one way and half the other way, and one eye is bigger and other eyes smaller. And it was to represent his deity and his Humanity. It was a theological painting. It wasn't poorly done. And that's when you go, okay, now we're in bronze serpent territory. This can be helpful and useful. I love the painting, actually. I like it. I think it's useful for teaching theology about Jesus. And even though it's all symbolic representation and stuff, it's not like Jesus actually looked that way or that that somehow makes you closer to Jesus. Or if you find yourself praying and you start turning toward that image, or even the cross, if your church has a cross on the wall or on the stage, if you're worshiping and praying and you start kind of directing that worship at the cross, thinking, and you start treating it like it's a conduit, like, stop, stop. You are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. God is transcendent above and beyond all those things. Don't do that, you know, so images of Jesus. Yeah, that's when it starts to get a little dangerous. And it's dangerous as well. With actors, I think, portraying Christ. I didn't say it was evil. I think it's potentially dangerous. And I think that even the people who are part of these productions recognize that it's dangerous because they know that when they go around, they're treated people like. It's not like they just are meeting a famous person. It's like they're meeting Jesus. Right. Or they're walking around and because you're the actor playing Jesus, people call you Jesus. Like, you walk by and they go, Jesus. And I'm like, dude, that's weird. That's creepy weird. I wouldn't want to be that actor. I wouldn't want to be experiencing that strangeness. And there's no upside to that. There's no positive to that experience. So that's where it becomes potentially dangerous and potentially wonderful as well. And it's like this sort of like a. Like a knife. A knife is potentially wonderful, potentially dangerous. It's both of those things at all times. And so all that to say, I still don't have it all worked out. But images in general, or even images used like in a church in some way, I don't think are inherently wrong. I know the early church was extremely anti image and understandably so, because people were starting to worship him in five seconds, they start worshiping images in 10 seconds, they start like creating priesthoods that don't exist. Biblically speaking. That's people, people doing their thing. They just immediately start paganizing Christianity. That's the best word I've got for it. Because what We've done is we said, hey, my pagan background, we always had priests, okay? Now we're all priests. We're a kingdom of priests. Challenge you on it. You just tell them, oh, this came from the apostles trust. Trust me. Uh. Oh, did you guys lose me? No data. Let me just double check. We may have lost Internet. Hmm. That was very. Okay, you're buff. We're buffering here. I'll give it a second. I'm going to give it a second, guys, because there's more to say and I'm going to answer your questions and all that. Of course, YouTube is not receiving enough video to maintain smooth streaming. As such, viewers will experience buffering. Okay, well, yeah, let me know in the comments. Is this messed up and frozen for you guys? I don't know. It must be. Maybe they're working on our Internet service around here. I really want that error to go away, but it's not yet. So here's the thing. If it's really buffering bad, what YouTube will do is after this video goes up, it will cut out that really bad buffering glitchy section. And so, okay, the notice went away. It's back to excellent. So my neighbor stopped stealing my Internet. Is that what happened? I don't know. I don't know. I think Sean Foyt did it. Actually, I think it's Sean Foyt. Clearly, Sean Foyt messing with my stream. It's not gonna stop me. Sean. Okay, so where were we? At the deity of Jesus? Let's talk about the conundrum. Not conundrum. That's a poor word to use here. But the question of the deity of Christ. So one thing that we know, they were never, ever to make any image of. Of any kind. I think that this seems clear is you don't make images of God at all. Not only because you don't make images of things in a way that becomes idolatrous or that leads towards that, but because God uniquely isn't like anything you can create with an image. He's unlike all those things. And so that logic in scripture makes a second reason why you don't make images of God. That is in addition to the reason why you don't make images of other things. And that when it comes to Jesus becomes. Here's an open issue to talk about. Christ is God with us now. Christ is also human. He's also man. He's truly man and truly God. You can make a statue of a person or maybe like a stick figure. Let's just say you do A simple kid stick figure drawing of a human being. It does represent something that's actually real and physical. Now that God is incarnate in Christ, can you, in whatever way you're allowed to make an image of a person, like a photo or a painting, can you do that with Jesus? Is that a thing you can do with Jesus because he has physical form and all you're showing is his physical body in the image. You're not showing his deity, which cannot be physically shown. You can't physically represent that. You can physically represent his body and he came incarnate. So the logic of don't make an image of God, some take that as okay because you don't make images of God. Jesus is God, therefore you cannot make an image of Jesus. And then others, including myself, would go one little step further and say, you don't make images of God because nothing actually looks like or represents God. And then I would say, but Jesus does represent God, does look like what God looks like on earth in human form. But you're not representing his deity with those images. And so now you go, is Jesus off limits or is Jesus not? As far as the felt board in your Sunday school, that represents Jesus, that's an image of God. By that logic, now there's plenty of churches that would say, yes, it is. I would actually counsel them. Follow your conscience, do not violate it. Don't make any images in that sense of Jesus then. Not even a felt board. But I tentatively follow along the line of for my opinion. And you guys can please feel free to disagree with me on this. I mean, you should always feel free to disagree with me on things. Anything. But the idea of like, no, I think a felt board is representing Christ's physical body. And that's not in any way touching the violation of creating a representation of God, of his deity essence, or whatever you want to call that. Right? Like transcendent above and beyond and through and all this God omnipotent, omnipresent. I don't think we're representing that. We're representing his physical body. So I'm okay with that in principle, but in conclusion, and I'll go to your guys questions after this. I think you can't get away from how dangerous it is. It's very dangerous. And I didn't say evil or wrong dangerous. Skydiving is dangerous. I don't think it means you can never do it, but oh my goodness, you better have all kinds of protections and safety going on if you do it. And that's what this is about you put images into churches or you put images of any kind, whether it's a painting. For some reason, I think statues are more dangerous than paintings. And things I can hold, like necklace icon stuff I can hold seems just in a pragmatic way more dangerous than stuff that I can't. Something that's up on the wall is less dangerous than something that's at eye level that I can approach. Something that's in front of the altar type area. Churches don't have altars, but let's call it that. The stage. Not really. Don't really have alters. Some say they do, they don't. But if it's on the stage area, that seems like inherently more of a concern than if it's like in the hallway or out in front of the building or something like that. So the easy thing is to never do any images at all. Then you're totally safe of any kind. The dangerous thing to do is to do some which I think is permissible, but treat it like skydiving. Those are my thoughts. Appreciate your guys thoughts. Pushback on that. Did I miss something? Is there some text of scripture that I misinterpreted or I didn't think to apply? I'd like to learn more too. All right, going to your questions. This is from Logan Blom. Sorry, I was going to say Bloom. Sorry. Blom. Logan Blom. Who says, did Nathan prophesy falsely when he told David to build the temple? 2nd Samuel 7. Specifically when he says, the Lord is with you. Thanks for all the ministry does. You're very welcome, Nathan Logan, let's go to the question about Nathan. So 2 Samuel 7. I've wrestled with this one as well. Like how do you process it? Let's see now. When the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, the king said to Nathan the prophet, see, now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent. And Nathan said to the king, go do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you. Okay, let me read more. Then I'll come back to verse three. That's the pivot point I think is verse three. But that same night, the word of the Lord came to Nathan. Go and tell my servant David. Thus says the Lord, would you build me a house to dwell in? And the emphasis is on you. Would you build me a house to dwell in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel. From the Egypt. From Egypt to this day. But I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling in all the places where I have moved with all the people of Israel. Did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, why have you not built me a house of cedar? Did he? Did God request it? No. Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. So he was following sheep. I like the way he phrases, you followed the sheep, and I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off. I want to just point out, he acknowledges actually what Nathan said, the Lord is with you. He has been with him. I've been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I, and will plant them so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. So God's the one that's going to build the house for them, the place for them, and violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house, right? He goes, I want to build God a house. And God goes, I'm going to make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and when you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your own body. And I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, that's Solomon. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with a rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men. There's Christology actually in here. But my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you, and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. And then he tells all this stuff to David, so he doesn't get to build the house. He gets a blessing, but he doesn't get to actually build a house. Now, let's go back to verse three. What was the part that you're like, hey, Is Nathan prophesying Falsely. Here, let's look at verse three again. It says, nathan comes and David tells him, I dwell in a house of cedar. The ark dwells in a tent. So clearly David's like, I want to. I want to build him a house. Right. He's implying that. And he says, and Nathan said to the king, go do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you. I don't take this as him prophesying, okay? That's my simple answer to the question. Is every statement from a prophet a prophecy? No. Prophecies are prophecies. Other stuff. Like in this, it looks like he's just reasoning. Like Nathan in his own mind is reasoning, hey, here you are. You've been established. You're in a good place. You look and you see the tabernacle and you think, we could do so much better. I want to do this for God's name. And he's like, yeah, go do what's in your heart, for the Lord is with you. Now, God affirms later on in the response to what Nathan said, I have been with David this whole time. Tell him, I have been with you this whole time. So the Lord is with him. The part that Nathan got wrong was telling him to go do all that is in your heart. And God corrects that. But that does not seem tied to a specific prophecy to me. So that's my resolution of that, is that Nathan is a prophet. But that doesn't mean that everything a prophet says is true. It is an issue of, did he say this was from the Lord? Did he say this? Now, he may have been. He was an error. Don't get me wrong. He made an error and he rightly got called out. And Scripture recorded it for all time for everyone to see. His error was in presuming something. He probably should have sought the Lord first before saying this, but he was maybe just caught up in thinking, but this guy's so godly and God's blessed so much, and we're just. We can do no wrong. It's a good word for humility, for us to have all of us. Okay, let's go to the next question. This is from Kinsgrinds, who says, how much should we attribute things to spiritual warfare? I know when. I know some who say almost anything bad that happens is warfare, especially when leading up to or following good things in life. Yeah. So there's errors on both sides. Right. Because if I call everything spiritual warfare, I tend to be the kind of person who takes little responsibility for my personal issues. That just Tends to be the case. I didn't get fired because I kept showing up late, because I had a bad attitude and because I wasn't very good at my job. I. I got fired because I'm a Christian and they knew I was sharing the light of Christ with workers and customers. And then I got fired. And it's spiritual warfare. You see, like. Well, meanwhile, like, your friends or your family who depend on you are thinking, like, dude, if you don't start going to work on time and working hard and not just talking when you're supposed to be working and making it spiritual, then we're going to starve. That obviously happens. But on the other side, there is acting like nothing is spiritual. Nothing. Spiritual warfare, Right. So the error of that is that we fail to put on the full armor of God. We fail to stand against the tactics of the enemy who seeks, goes around looking for whom he can devour. And so we are engaged in regular and ongoing spiritual warfare as Christians. But maybe the thing is, when we assign that spiritual warfare, I know what caused this. And I see this worse. Worst. The worst in guys who present themselves as, like, these spiritual superheroes, but they're actually very compromised, and they have a lot of deception that goes on in their ministries. And then anybody who comes against them, it's spiritual warfare. So, like, Sean Foyt's doing this right now. He's going out everywhere he goes, it seems to me, anyways, everywhere he goes, he's talking about the Pharisees, the spiritual Pharisees. And he even. We always get new spirits. When you're doing work where you're exposing evil in charismatic leaders in particular, others would maybe, you know, obviously, if I was exposing evil in, like, political leaders or like a cessationist church, they wouldn't use these phrases, right? But here's the phrase that you'll get when coming at Shoenfite, if your name is Mike Winger. He started talking about the spirit of Michael. It's the funniest thing. Sorry, I don't take it very heavily. I take it seriously, but it's not heavy. It's hilarious to me. He's talking now in multiple times. He talks about the spirit of Michael. The spirit of Michael. It's like he's dropping seeds because he knows I'll have a video coming out about him and has utter corruption. At least I believe it to be the case. And lies and manipulations and all of this. Anyway, so this guy starts telling people about the spirit of Michael. And of course, the implication is that this Connects to me because I have been one of those who, even though I haven't even made a video about him explicitly yet, specifically just him, some of the stuff I've done has definitely touched him. And I've posted some stuff on social media. When he lied about firebombing, getting firebombed, he said he dodged a firebomb. Good thing I was looking. So he like dodged a firebomb and then the video comes out. It's like that gender reveal smoke and someone tossed it on stage way to his left and way to his right. He dodged nothing. So he just lies. He just makes stuff up. And lies, just lies, lies, lies. Constant lies. And some will be like, mike, you're really going off hard. Yeah. Because you don't know. You don't know the details. Like, I'll make a video, you'll see. It just appears to be a pathological liar. But I have the spirit of Michael because I'm criticizing David's dancing and she's criticizing him. And he wants to present himself as the one who's just in the Lord. And he's just dancing, he's just celebrating. He's just doing great things for God and spirit of Michael is trying to slow him down. No, no, I'm not upset with you for dancing, bro. Pathologically lying and abusing ministry funds and other things that it looks like you're doing. And there's plenty of witnesses to say it. So, yeah, that's the thing you call things spiritual warfare. It does that. But if you say nothing, spiritual warfare, and you don't realize that when you are getting into a disagreement with your spouse and then you're upset with them and then because you're mad at them, doing something that's really undermining to your marriage enters into your thoughts and I'll do this. That seems like spiritual warfare to me. Now, I'm not going to say your spouse getting mad at you is spiritual warfare. The results of humans doing things caused a spiritual warfare moment where you were battling with the flesh. You may have had the enemy shooting fiery darts at you to try to put it into your mind to do things that would be extra harmful or destructive or whatever. So spiritual warfare is real. When you go to church and you're starting to get involved and then someone just comes up to you and they go, well, you're like, oh, I like pastor so and so. He's such a great teacher. I'm so blessed. And that person has baggage with that pastor, maybe, understandably. And they just throw out A seed, a little, oh, wait till you get to know him. No one lasts long thinking that about that guy. Maybe it's true. Maybe they're warning you in a good way that you need to hear. And maybe they're just spouting their bitterness and it gets into your mind and it's like, you can never see that guy again. And you don't, even though it was just somebody just said something like, I don't even know the details. I don't even know if it's true. And it forever affects your opinion of somebody. If that's not spiritual warfare, I don't know what is. Because it's affecting your fellowship, it's affecting your commitment to your church, your willingness to be involved, your desire to invite other people. And obviously if the guy's really corrupt, that should be dealt with. But most pastors need a lot more support, not a lot more criticism. I think. So, yeah, that's spiritual warfare. All these things are spiritual warfare. If you're doing ministry and you find yourself feeling competitive towards others that you're ministering with, I've seen this happen for years. I've seen this kind of thing happen. And instead of uniting, they start creating very separated ministries. They can't really work together because one or both of them feels threatened by the others. And then they start diminishing the amount of fruit that can come through the ministry. And then you start finding like, oh, are you one of so and so's people? Are you one of so and so's people? And the second you've got that, you have like massive high level spiritual warfare going on in your fellowship and it needs to be dealt with. But I wouldn't blame it all on Satan. That's the part I don't like. Like even Judas, Satan enters him and he betrays Jesus. That's what the text says. Satan entered Judas and he went and betrayed Christ. But Judas is still blamed for it because it's not as though he was like out of control completely or he couldn't have repented or turned to Christ at any point in time in that mix. So the use of spiritual warfare to remove my personal responsibility, that's the thing I'm weary of. But we probably have more, not less spiritual warfare going on than what we tend to acknowledge. That would be my short answer. And I think that that's consistent with scripture because when you read about how consistently they will assign spiritual warfare going on in the midst of other things that are happening in believers lives, it's really consistent. Read Philippians he'll talk about it from the lens of what's the spiritual warfare that's going on here Anyway, I think that that's a healthy thing as Christians. Just don't do it to absolve personal responsibilities. Number four. This is from Ross Missions 19. It says with Matthew 18 and a narcissistic family member from whom I experienced abuse, if they deny wrongdoing and I don't attend the same church, would Matthew 18 still apply? What would be the best path? So life is complicated. Matthew 18 is simple. There are times when Matthew 18 needs to be not simply applied to complicated scenarios. Let me give you an example. Let's say that a believer in my church is mad at me because of my YouTube videos. And I don't know it. He's grinding his teeth, he's really mad at me. And after church he jumps me into an extreme scenario. This has not happened, nor do I suspect it will. Maybe I'll report back later if it does, but jumps me and just starts beating the tar out of me, right? Breaking my ribs and breaking my nose and breaking my jaw and all this. And then I, I go to the police and I file a report and I get a restraining order. And then someone comes up and they go, mike, have you tried Matthew 18? And I was like, well, no, I haven't. I haven't gone to the man one on one alone to address what happened. For obvious reasons, you know, I didn't do that. Is that what you think I should do? Because Matthew 18 says, you know, if there's offense, go and be reconciled. Let's look at it. Let's look at it. There's more details I should probably cover. Best thing to do is just look at Matthew 18. Matthew 18 is one of the most abused passages of scripture when it comes to dealing with holding people actually accountable in the church. So if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. And if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Okay, Step one, you go alone because he sinned against you. Very broad. If his sin was attempting to murder you, if his sin was abusing one of your children, you don't do this. It's obvious you don't do this. You don't go to him alone. You don't even go to the church. They broke the law. You go to the law, you tell your church, let them know about it, but go to the law, call the police. That's what should be done there. But if he does not listen. Right. The goal here is they are of course part of the same church, which you're saying you guys are not. They're part of a community that sees themselves as one church. I'll put it that way. Because they may not go to the same home fellowship, but they're part of a community that sees himself as one church. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. This is to gather evidence because then we can take action down the road code. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he won't listen to the church. So they're supposed to group like group intervention. They try to correct him. Then you treat him like an unbeliever, gentile tax collector, whatever. He's like an unbeliever. That's great. For matters where church discipline is appropriate. If there's some situations where it's not. So if the guy will not submit to the local church, then going to the local church to ask him to submit is a moot point. It doesn't. It doesn't make sense. If the person. Now maybe you think they might submit, they might not. Let's find out. If the person is like, I've tried this. There's a guy, a pastor, who online, who said some stuff about me that was not true. I tried to correct him and he doubled down and I said, I'd like to contact your church elders. I'm going to talk to him about this. And he never gave me their info. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do? I don't want to blow it up even more. I didn't want to make a video about it. I just wanted to talk to his church elders because I thought this was something that should be addressed, you know, and then he refused to let that happen because he was a punk. So it's not going to happen. Now let me read your question one more time and we'll see if maybe there's some sort of guidance. Obviously, I don't have a lot of the details, but I have some. There's a narcissistic family member from whom I experienced abuse. Okay, that word abuse does a lot of variety of things there. Let's suppose it's extreme abuse and not just cruelty, but not extreme. I don't know how to guess on what it would be if they deny Wrongdoing. So you've already confronted them. There's a deny, they lie about it and you don't attend the same church. Would Matthew 18 still apply? I think that at the stage you're at right now, my counsel would be whatever church they do go to, I would consider going to the elders of that church and saying, I'd like to involve you guys. He's a member of your church. You're supposed to hold him accountable, here's what he's been doing and then escalate it in that regard. That would be my next move. Now maybe there's some circumstances that make that an unwise move. Maybe it makes it unsafe for somebody. Maybe you know that the church is heretical and there's no chance of real accountability happening there. I don't know if that avenue looks like it even might be fruitful. I would probably do that next. That would be my counsel to you and to do it. Attempting to bring correction, not just accountability, but attempting to bring correction from the local elders and local church members that he might actually be changed. That'd be the hope, that'd be the goal. And then accountability is the fallback option. Always. Alright, number five. My 11 year old son refused to create a a poster in school on a Greek God, feeling it was too idolatrous and speaks out for Jesus in class. I love his boldness for Christ, but would you consider this idolatry? Well, I would consider it. As far as violating his conscience goes, say Romans 14, he should not have made that poster if he's going, I think this might be idolatrous. I can't in clean conscience do this and he should not have done it. I don't know the nature of the poster or what the poster was. If maybe it seemed like it was glorifying the thing. I don't know, I don't know the details. So I would encourage people not to violate their own conscience. I would be concerned about that. There's video games that actually have mythology, characters that you can play or encounter. More questions. The world of media games and movies and shows, it really creates these circumstances, these questions. When I first was a Christian, I remember trying to wrestle through some of the stuff that I'd already been doing for years. Really well, I mean I really, when I was 16, 17, I started getting really more serious about the Lord and around that time wrestling with some of this stuff and going like, I don't think I could do that or participate in that because of these kinds of issues. So yeah, that's a challenging One, do not violate your conscience. I'd support your son in not doing that then, if there's any question about it. But I don't know enough about that particular situation to call it idolatry. I just don't know. What was the poster, what was the assignment? What was the nature of it? I don't know. All right, number six, question number six. Jesus loves you, says people quote Ezekiel 44, 24, Zechariah, and give me three passages of scripture from Ezekiel, Zechariah and Leviticus. So Ezekiel 44, 24, Zechariah, 14, 16, 21, and Leviticus 23, 41. And people, they quote those and say, we will continue to celebrate the appointed festivals in the millennial kingdom, so why would we stop now and celebrate Easter, etc. God bless. Let's look at just the Ezekiel one for time. Ezekiel 44, 24. Make sure I got the right reference here. So the latter portion of Ezekiel, a significant part of it is a matter of debate. I don't mean here, nobody knows what it means. I just mean to acknowledge that there's different camps. People interpret this in different ways and have different camps. Not that nobody's right or whatever, but just. Just that it's true. And the last portion, it's going to be interpreted very metaphorically by a lot of Christians. And the feast days are going to be probably seen as metaphorically fulfilled in Christ. And so we're keeping the feasts, but we're keeping the feasts through Jesus. So let me read it. In a dispute, they shall act as judges, and they shall judge it according to my judgments. They shall keep my laws and my statutes and all my appointed feasts, and they shall keep my Sabbaths holy. That's the one that often people do think you have to do still is not work on the Sabbath. But then some people will say, well, the new Sabbath is actually Sunday, which is. Always thought that argument was really weird. Yes, I'm familiar with it. I still think it's weird. So Ezekiel has this section where it talks about the reconstructing of an amazing temple. And it's like a mile square and it's this massive, amazing structure. And people from not only Jews, Gentiles too, everybody's coming to this. They're all worshiping God there. And then here they're told they're going to keep the feasts. And you gave two other passages that we could talk about that as well. I think they're not related to the Ezekiel thing though, at least the Leviticus 1. I think is just, I think might be disjointed as far as including it here. But you're saying why would. If we're going to keep the feasts prophetically. So let's say that you're premillennial and that you take the view that's a view of eschatology over the end times where you believe that there's going to be a thousand year reign of Jesus and that Ezekiel temple stuff is going to happen during that thousand year. It'll be this sort of glorious golden age of the earth and where there's going to be this reconstructed temple. And then the implication is that we're going to be going there and there's going to be memorialized sacrifices that we do in honor of Christ. Now I'm okay with that if that's what the Lord wants to do. I know a lot of people instinctually feel like, no, no, that would be evil. But I will link a video below where I deal with this in more detail. The question of how was ongoing involvement in the temple and with sacrifices and stuff, how was that handled in the early church by the apostles and the early Christians? And I deal with that in a video where I go through the Book of Acts and here's where I'll answer your question and give you the short version, but I'll link the video below afterwards. There are Jews who were already part of the temple activities who continued to be part of those after they became Christians and continued for some time, okay, maybe, maybe until 70 A.D. i don't know, until the temple was destroyed. But they continued for a good while. We even have guys like Paul who's like, I want to be in Jerusalem for Passover. Like he wanted to be where? Jerusalem for Passover. That's a Jewish feast. Like he was participating not just in a Christian celebration of Jesus, fulfillment of Passover. He was participating in Jewish Passover. He probably brought a lamb. He did the whole thing, did the doorposts, did the meal, all the stuff, and did it knowing it represented Christ, did it knowing what it meant in honor of Christ. So they're doing these things. Paul, even he cuts his hair off when he goes to the temple. In the Book of Acts, at one point he cuts his hair off because he just finished a vow and he cuts his hair off at the end of the vow according to Old Testament law, which means he also brought a sacrifice at the time he cut his hair off according to Old Testament law. So I don't think this was seen as a problem for Jews who were already participating in those things. But when Gentiles start getting saved, they put their faith in Jesus. And the Book of Acts is wrestling with this question. Are they supposed to observe the feasts? Are they supposed to do the things that we've been doing our whole lives? We know they point to Jesus, we know what they mean. But these Gentiles, to tell them they're supposed to come under something they've never been under, it's like saying they have to fulfill the law in order to be saved. And so the Acts 15 Council was convened to discuss this issue. And in Acts 15, they go back and forth, and James and Peter and God showed chapters, whole chapters of Acts are to wrestle with this question. And so they don't say gentiles should observe the feasts. And they don't say, Jews should stop observing feasts or stop doing these things. What they do say is, gentiles, you are under no obligation to do these things. Jews, this is implied. Okay, watch my video for more. You are under no obligation to stop doing these things. And Paul reinforces this in his letters when he talks about circumcision. And he goes, you don't have to get circumcised, and you don't need to get uncircumcised. I'm not telling the Jews, you have to stop having a Jewish identity. I'm not telling the Gentiles, you have to stop having a gentile identity by becoming Jewish. No, neither of you have these requirements. What you need to do is you need to know that Jesus is the fulfillment of all these things. So if, as a Jew, you walk into the temple and you offer a sacrifice and you're thinking, this is covering my sin, oh, you're making a mistake. You should think, this just represents Jesus who has already covered my sin. I'm doing this in honor of him to demonstrate what he's done. And that's how I would take the millennial stuff is like, there's a future time coming if you're premillennial. And if there's a big if, because not all premills do this. If you take Ezekiel as more literal than symbolic, then you would say, oh, this is in memorialization, commemoration of what Jesus has done, and it's a future thing we'll do in the millennial kingdom, your question is, after all that explanation, why don't we do it today? Why don't Christians observe the feast today? Because that issue was handled in the early church, and the verdict was they're not compelled to do it. And the danger of trying to get Gentiles to follow Jewish feast days, Old Testament feast days and all this stuff is that they get. It just happens, it just happens by osmosis. They just start becoming legalistic and start thinking that their salvation depends upon them doing these things. And it turns into an issue that was fought in Galatians and fought in Acts and fought in various places in the scripture. So Gentiles, Jews were equal in regards to salvation. We're the same. But Gentiles don't become Jewish in their practices and the Jews don't have to become Gentile in their practices. That's not a thing. And when it kills fellowship, both sides make some compromises, just try to come together. So in Acts 15, don't eat blood, sacrifice to idols, don't do these things, have fellowship with the Jews and the Jews don't require your Gentiles. Where God is called clean, don't you call unclean. But I still want to eat kosher. Well, you can if you want, eat whatever your conscience is before the Lord. But don't put that as a burden for you to fellowship with other people because that will divide the church. So there's my thoughts on that. I actually spent a lot of time on this issue. That's why I rattle it off pretty quickly here. I'll link the video down below. Let's go to question number seven. This is from an anonymous person. I will call them Jeff. Alright. Jeff says, is there a way to make scripture affect you emotionally so you become encouraged? Or do you just have to wait for God to do it, to do that in your heart? I think that we should, as Christians, we should take. Okay, what I'm going to offer you is my two cents. Okay? This is Mike Winger's two cents. I don't. I'm trying to think, is there a scripture that comes to my mind that helps answer this question? Is there a way to make scripture affect you emotionally so you become encouraged? Or do you just have to wait for God to do that in your heart? I think scripture sort of answers this question a little bit. Let me give you. I'll give you maybe just one example. Let me find it for you. Psalm, is it 37? Psalm 37. 2, sorry. Verse 3 and 4. It says, Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, delighting yourself in the Lord in this text, is it something that is done to you? Oh, I have become Delighted in the Lord, or is it something that you do in this? It's something you do. In fact, frequently in Psalms, rejoicing is treated as like a command and often treated as a decision one makes. Where the psalmist will talk about going through really, really hard times. And then he'll say something like, yet I will rejoice, I will trust, I will delight. And he makes these decisions. Isn't that interesting? There's phrases like, delight yourself in God. That's a decision you make and a movement you make. Now you might go, but, Mike, I try that and it doesn't work. I don't feel better. And I go, feelings are the caboose. This is an analogy I didn't come up with. It was heard it from Carl Westerland back in the day as a pastor over at Calvary Costa Mesa. And I thought it was great wisdom. And that's why I say it sometimes here and there. He said, feelings are the caboose, the will that drives the train. And so when you choose something, your emotions can take a long time to react to that. And so you turn the corner, the train caboose is not driving the train, the head car, the lead car, the engine car, whatever that's driving the train. And it goes, say, to the right. And that was you going, I'm going to delight in the word of God. And so what did that mean? That meant I'm going to read it more often. I'm going to appreciate it more. I'm going to choose to appreciate it more. I'm going to extol its virtues. I'm going to thank God for it. I'm going to spend time in it. I'm going to seek good Bible teaching and consume it. I'm going to do these things. And then after some time, the caboose doesn't always, but tends to come around the corner and join up with what the will has chosen after time. I know of a guy who was talking to married couples about marriage, and he said that he found if he told his wife she was beautiful, he then saw her as more beautiful. It had an effect on his heart, where he would perceive her as having more beauty because he would say she was beautiful. I think that the things we choose to delight in, we end up delighting in. You like sports, but when you go and you talk about sports with your buddy who likes sports, and you guys get all into it and you guys pump each other up, now you like it even more, we can do this with other things we can choose to delight in The Lord So passively waiting for your emotions to be affected or thinking that they'll immediately be impacted by decisions you make is not really going to work well. You'll be really disappointed all the time. That'll be the emotion you feel all the time, disappointment. But I would also say thinking you have to have a certain degree of emotion in order to have success as a Christian is inaccurate. Those are just feelings, like, I want to have feelings, and they feel good. But it's more about commitments and decisions than it is about the feelings. And the feelings tend to follow the commitments and decisions. They don't always. And that's okay. You can simply say, why are you cast down, O my soul, yet I will rejoice in God. And someone's like, well, that doesn't seem like joy. And you're like, this is the most important joy in the world. I choose to have joy in Christ, and I recommend that. So I think that's consistent with what we see in Scripture. Number eight. Cool, cool. Guard plays says in Acts 21, or, sorry, Acts 1, verses 21 to 23, the apostles select Matthias to replace Judas as the 12th apostle. Later on, Paul becomes an apostle. Was Matthias replaced as an official apostle, or were there then 13 apostles? This is like, an interesting question that can take you down kind of a rabbit hole. Let's just look. Well, first I'll talk about it. Then we'll look at the passage in question in Acts. So clearly Paul was an apostle. Clearly he was. He was especially appointed to the Gentiles. He was very much an apostle. He compares himself and talks. I shouldn't say compare, but he makes it seem as though he's the same kind of thing as the 12. Okay, but also, we have other people that are called apostles in scripture beyond the 12 and beyond Paul Barnabas called an apostle. And the interesting thing is the word apostle in the Greek is a word that could be used for like, hey, I sent an emissary. He's carrying a letter, and he wants to make a contract deal so that I can pay for you to bring sheep across the Nile river for my business. And that guy could be called an apostle because he was sent by someone officially. So you're like, well, wait a minute. You know, we use the word apostle as a unique term only to refer to the 12. But even in their time, they would have used the word apostle for many things. So there's clearly like, the 12. We get that phrase the 12 frequently. Then there is Paul. Is Paul included in the 12? When we get the 12. Is that referencing Paul? This is where we get into more of a conundrum. So If Paul is one of the 12 and there are only 12 apostles, and there are only ever 12 apostles, then we have to deal with Matthias somehow. And I know Pastor Chuck Smith, his theory was that in the book of Acts, the appointing of Matthias was a mistake. And he's not alone in this, but that's obviously he's in my background, in my training and stuff, so he thought it was a mistake. Now, I have never believed that, and so I would disagree with that. But let me share with you the reasons they would give and then push back on it because I love hearing both sides of it of a discussion. Right, so this is where Peter's talking about the fall of Judas and how he killed himself. And then he quotes a couple psalms, you know, may his camp become desolate and let there be no one to dwell in it and let another take his office. He quotes this passage here and he says, so one of the men, and he wants to replace Judas, and he has qualifications who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us. So someone who's been steadfast, they were there from the beginning, baptism. And they were there consistently throughout. They never turned their back, they never betrayed, right? They stay with us all the way to the right, to the ascension of Jesus. So one of them, one of these men must become with us as a witness to his resurrection. And that was their primary goal, witness the resurrection of Jesus. And they put forward two, two guys Joseph called Barsabbas, who is also called Justus Matthias. And they prayed and said, you, Lord, who knows the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. And now is where it gets surprising to a lot of Christians. And they cast lots, which is like, like rolling dice, like random chance for them. And the lot fell on Matthias and he was numbered with the 11 apostles. Okay, here comes the argument that this was a mistake, that Matthias was never supposed to be an apostle and that this shouldn't happen. The argument goes like this. Number one, the timing of this being done is before Pentecost. Chapter two is Pentecost. That's when the Holy Spirit falls upon all of them in a powerful way. And so the idea is this was not a spirit led thing because they hadn't received the Spirit Yet. Okay, number two, Matthias doesn't show up. He's not significant. We don't read about him. He's not writing epistles, he's not even commented on. It's like he comes and then disappears. We don't even know which is an argument from silence, but it's a lack of significance. And then the casting of lots. Number three, this is the third argument I'm aware of because they cast lots for Matthias. This is showing that something was wrong with this. And they'll say, hey, this was the last time there was the casting of lots in the Bible before the Holy Spirit fell. And then now you've got the leading of the Spirit to make choices like this. You don't have casting of lots of now arguments on the other side. Number one, I gave you three. I should be writing this down because I'll lose my own thoughts because I'm thinking about 50 things at once here with my screen. So I'll just take them in reverse, I guess. They cast lots from Matthias. Is casting lots wrong? Well, no, there's actually other times in scripture where they cast lots. This is not disapproved of in the Old Testament. You're, you know, lots keep the mighty apart. Like it allows people to say, hey, we'll leave it up to the die. You know, this chance that's not under our control. But also Proverbs talks about every, every, every casting of the lot, like it's ultimately in the Lord's control. And so they're praying, they're asking God to guide and direct it, and they do it. Is that standard practice in the church? No, but you can't biblically say that that was just inherently wrong. You can think it's wrong intuitively, but there isn't. Where's your biblical case that that's actually was wrong? So they had two guys they felt were both qualified, and then they said, lord, help us pick between the two. And they cast lots, trusting that God would direct it. Now, the second thing I'll mention is that Matthias was not used in. You don't see him anywhere in the book of Acts. And that seems powerful to some people until you start trying to name all the apostles, because a lot of you don't even remember their names. And they were real apostles. And yet you're like, huh, where's. In the book of Acts, where do we see. We see Peter, James, who was the brother of Jesus. We see him not one of the original 12. Right. We see several of these guys, but not most of the apostles are just not talked about. Now, were they not active serving the Lord, witnessing of the resurrection? Oh yeah, absolutely. They planted the church. Look at us today. They changed the world. They're just not written about next because Acts is about specific things. It's not just a history of the church. It's not just here's what everybody did. It's following the work of the Kingdom of Christ in really specific ways. The movement from Jewish Messiah to Jewish Messiah for all mankind go into all the world. So that's what you've got going on there, I think. And so that's a non starter. You can't say these other apostles are unimportant or weren't real apostles because they don't appear in the book of Acts. That's weird and silly. Then there's the one about the Holy Spirit. That one I think gets the most traction with people because you say, well, the Holy Spirit wasn't given yet. Look, it was after Pentecost. They get the Holy Spirit. Now they're saying we have the mind of Christ and things like that. And combined with the casting of lots, that seems powerful. The problem is there's a few problems. One of them is there's nothing in the context that indicates something was wrong with this. Peter gets up, as he does many times, and he speaks for the group and he says, hey, we need to do the following. And they all seem to agree. They vet, they find a couple guys and then they pray and then they cast lots. And then it says he was numbered with the 11 apostles. There's nothing negative in there actually. There's no negative judgment. There's no hint of anything that I can see or perceive. That's other than this is what the apostles did. And they did it obviously in a way that was meant to glorify God. But also in the Gospel of John, speaking of the Spirit, he says he breathed on them and he said, receive the Spirit. In John's gospel, this is before his ascension and it's before Pentecost. Jesus imparts the Spirit in some way to a limited group, not the whole upper room of all those people, but in a limited group he says receive the Spirit. And so this sort of idea that we're going to say this was a mistake. They weren't led by the Spirit. I think we're adding a lot to the text of scripture all because we want to say Paul was the new 12th apostle. He was a replacement for Judas. I don't think we need to say that. I don't think we need to say that at All I think that God wanted an apostle to the Gentiles and he appointed Paul to do it. And just like Jesus mission was to the Jews exclusively during his life, after his death and resurrection, the mission expanded and he goes go into all the world and he appoints an apostle, a new one to go to the Gentiles. And I think that that's okay. And yeah, so my belief is that Matthias is legit and that Acts one is just recording, you know, what happened after Judas. So let's go to the next question. Question number nine. Great questions today, man. I'm really, I'm enjoying myself with you guys. So anonymous question here. It says, hey, Mike, I want to receive from Song of Solomon, but it's difficult for me because it look, the context is polygamy. Song of Solomon, 6, 9. What do you recommend? Song of Solomon 69. Let's see. I'm sorry, I need to put on your screen. I'll back up a little bit. There's maybe not like a ton. A ton of context is going to help. I will say Song of Solomon is a. I mean, it is a romantic book. It is. It is a romantic book. And I know in our modern culture we get like, it's weird the way we are with romance. To be honest, we're not very good at romance in our culture. We're really kind of lousy at it. And we are more focused on just sex than we are romance. And anyway, so these things, I don't laugh when I read Song of Solomon at all personally. And I think that people who laugh at Song of Solomon, I encourage you to try to approach it with a more mature, more grown up perspective. So when he says things like, your teeth are like a flock of ooze or ewes that have come up from the washing, all of them bear twins. Not one among them has lost its young. That actually is a really wonderful compliment. It's you and your culture that doesn't understand it. And so if you want to read the Bible, you need to get into the culture of scripture and try to understand it from that perspective. And if I giggle at Song of Solomon, this has nothing to do with your question, by the way. If I giggle at Song of Solomon, it's because I am not able to understand the text because I just see it and think it's weird. And I need to try to get into the minds of the original audience a little bit. Your cheeks are like halves of pomegranates behind your veil. There are 60 queens. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one is the only one, the only one of her mother pure to her who bore her. The young woman saw her and called her blessed, the queens and concubines also, and they praised her. So if we take this is then the debate about authorship and all this other stuff, which I don't know if I'm equipped to tackle personally, but if you take it in that context of this is Solomon writing. Because there are those. I don't hold this view, but there are those who try to say song of Solomon, actually Solomon is the bad guy and he has all these women and he's trying to take this other girl. And then there's another guy who is like, lowborn, and he's the one that's actually romantic. So there's like three actors, not two. And I don't think that that's the case, but you can see why some people would find that compelling. So you say, if. Let's say the context is Solomon, is it possible? I'm trying to think about this because I haven't spent a lot of time on this exact verse. I just want to think about it for a second. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one is the only one, the only one of her mother pure to her who bore her. The young women saw her and called her blessed, the queens and concubines also, and they praised her. I don't know how to interpret this in the sense of seeing it as like Solomon is saying, I have 60 queens and I have 80 concubines, and I have virgins without number. But you, you're the best one, you're the perfect one. That context would be. It would be. I think it'd be contrary to what we're seeing here. I'm only for you, you're only. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is what mine, Right? That polygamy is the opposite of that. I'm my beloved's and my beloved has 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without a number. That would be that whatever was going on with Solomon in the poem, she's the only one, and she's contrasted with all these others as she is the one and the only. Now, that's not polygamy. So is this all just a true story, or is this Solomon writing about an idealized understanding of what a male and female interaction would be, what it should be kind of like after he had all those Concubines and all those women. He writes in proverbs, rejoice in the wife of your youth. Let her satisfy you always. Just her physically, or let her alone. She's the only one. So he writes against polygamy after having experienced it. I would see this as being against polygamy, not something positive for it. So I'm going to. I'm going to sit with that. I don't know if that's helpful for you. I get why it would be difficult for you in that context. There's almost. There's people who would reject my explanation I just gave. I think because they're so worried that they'll have convenient explanations that they're almost. You get unbalanced scales. I'm going to just put this out there for anybody who it may help where proving something's wrong with the Bible requires a tiny shred of evidence. And proving that the Bible is sort of innocent of such an accusation requires a mountain proof. And I think those are unjust scales. I think that what I just read that text shows the contrast is. Let me go to it again. I'll put it on your screen. It's a contrast. She's not one among many. She's not one among. I have 60 queens, 80 concubines and virgins that number. And I want you, too. But there is no. There's no. I have. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins that number. These are the highest women in the land, right? These are the highest women in the land. Yet this one, my dove, who. She's like, I'm ready. I'm lowborn, effectively, I'm all that stuff. And he goes, you're my perfect one. You're the only one. And just like in the eyes of your mom, you're the only one. It's the monogamy of it is the thing that makes this powerful. So I think that that is how we should interpret it in that context. So then how do you compare that to Solomon? Well, maybe Solomon's writing is this idealized understanding of what it should have been, even though it's not what he did. And we know what he did was sinful, and what he did was against Scripture, multiplying wives, and it led him astray. And so since he writes against his own stuff in Psalm, in Proverbs, he writes against polygamy in Proverbs, why wouldn't he write against it in Song of Solomon? Because it is idealized. Okay, let's go to the next question. Sorry, I Need to find where I put that. I minimize something. There it is. Okay, next question. This is number 10, last question for today and then I gotta be done. Okay. This is from an anonymous person. Hi, Mike, I want to start a Christian YouTube channel. Do I need to talk with my local church? I am currently an elder intern and want to know if I should wait till they lay hands on me. Thanks. You don't need to get your churches. Okay. I am a Christian with a YouTube channel. When I started my YouTube channel, I did not get permission from my local fellowship to do it. I didn't even think to do that. But I never for a second thought I wasn't accountable to my local church. And even now, who cares how many subscribers I have or how well received the content is? I am accountable to this small group of people in my local fellowship. Well, in a sense, I'm accountable to the fellowship as a whole, but I'm also accountable to the leadership who would say, hey, Mike, I think you're getting off base here. I think there needs to be some correction. And there very well may come a time where they come and have those conversations with me and I'll be grateful. I'll probably need it. Because we all tend to do things weird and then we need people to come and correct us, you know, and the thing is, for me, when I do weird stuff, it's like everybody sees it. So it's just more dramatically weird. So if and when that happens. Now, that being said, I'm like, I don't think I have to have permission to start a YouTube channel from my local church. It's not their ministry. And them being elders doesn't mean they control all. You know, let's say I was going to go and I'm going to go street witnessing. Do I have to go get my church's permission to go street witnessing? Now, if I'm doing something that is connected to the church, that represents the church in some way, I want to have their permission. So if I'm doing that or it might be perceived that way, hey, this is seen as part of the church, then I want to have their permission and their approval before I do it, because I think that's appropriate. But if you're. Let's say I'm going to play Minecraft and I'm going to answer questions and talk about Jesus and like, okay, but now let's say you're like, oh, no, I'm doing a theological teaching channel where I'm going to do verse by verse teaching. Okay, well, this is look, life's complicated. Sorry for giving you complicated scenarios, but they all are. All the scenarios are complicated in a sense. Well, they're not all. But oftentimes, when I start my YouTube channel, I know I'm already approved to teach. I teach at my church all the time. I do all this stuff. I just knew this was separate from the church. It was its own thing. But I already know that they're okay with my teaching because I'm doing that in church. Are you planning on doing something online that your church leaders maybe wouldn't let you do even in your own church? Like you're thinking they might have a problem with me doing this? Maybe you're going to do theological stuff. Then you should probably head that off by saying, hey, let's have a conversation. Here's what I was thinking. But this doesn't mean that your ministry is under their absolute control. That's not what that means. That would be my encouragement to you. It does mean you are accountable to them. Sin in your life, compromise, major problems. Even in your ministry, you want to be accountable to your leadership. But that doesn't mean. When you go, oh, I'm going to start a new series of videos on my channel. I'll talk to my pastor and see if I can get his permission. I'll tell you what. Local pastors understand YouTube like, this much, and they will make decisions for your YouTube channel based upon what works in local churches. And it will ruin your ministry because they'll be like, oh, I thought you should do it this way and not that way and this. And they're right. If I was doing a home study, if I was doing a Sunday night gathering. But they'd be wrong about this because they don't know anything about it. And why should they ask them to tell a mechanic how to run his business? And they're not going to be able to give him the guidance on that because it's not their experience. So I've learned some of those things. I'll share that with you. Yeah, ask this question. If my pastors find out later that I did this YouTube channel, will they be like, yeah, we wish you would have talked to us about that. Well, then it would be a nice courtesy to have that conversation. At least that's a good way to process it. There. Will you find out later they're going to be bothered? No. Why not Be loving and gracious and talk to them. But I would be weary, wary, Leary. Larry. I would be, Larry, of falling into the situation where you end up seeking their approval. Of every little thing you do in your online ministry, don't put them in that role. It's not good unless they actually understand those things and have wisdom about it. Most of the advice I get from pastors is bad for YouTube. Most of it's bad because they don't do this work. So of course they don't. Off the cuff. No. Anyway, doesn't mean they're not great pastors. Just use wisdom. Okay, guys, that's the last question. I'm going to give you a little update now on some of the stuff that's been going on with. COVID up culture stuff. Okay? So here's a little cover up culture update for those who are interested. And I just had a. Oh, gosh, so much has gone on. I am grateful to God that charismatics are rising up in a good way. Not just angry, not just with pitchforks, but many, many, many are rising up going, I hate to say this, but I think there's traction here. And even if I disagree with Mike on some stuff, we need to address these issues. We need to push forward and deal with these issues. We need accountability, we need godliness and we need to get rid of people who are fakes and frauds in our movement. And I'm so, so grateful that this looks like it's happening and it's not just because of me. My whole point is that it's actually just because of you guys. It's because of random people, nobody knows names, nameless and faceless people who are out there going, we will have actual integrity in our ministries and we will not play games with it. And even if it hurts, we need to cut out the rot. Even if it hurts. And I'm like, thank you, God, that's happening. However, very few leaders are willing to really push forward and do this right now. Very, very few. Behind the scenes. I've had many conversations with charismatic leaders who tell me, mike, you're doing really good work. I really appreciate it. They'll often follow it up with, but I feel like you could do it a better way and this and that and all this stuff. And part of that's like, again, it's like pastors thinking they understand how to do things they've never done. Sorry, that sounds like years and years as a pastor, right? I guard myself against trying to tell people how to do things I've never done because everybody asks you for wisdom and you don't always have it. But anyway, behind the scenes, Mike, you're doing good work. You're doing good work publicly, not a Word. Not a cricket, not a noise. How is it that Patricia, Patricia, what's her name? Paula White. Sorry, not Patricia King. There's videos on that, blah, blah, blah. But how is it that Paula White has not been called out and exposed? Like, do I have to do a video about her? Really? Does anybody even have to do a video? Like, we all know. We all know or don't we? Don't we all know? If you don't know, you're part of the problem. Paula White, Corrupt. Okay. The accountability at Bethel has been, hey, let's be hopeful to oh no. To nah. Doesn't seem like it's actually going to be. It's going to be. We're accountable for as much as we have to be. That's what it looks like. And some will think I'm just casually throwing that out there. No. I've spoken with witnesses behind the scenes. I've talked to many individuals. I could tell you plenty of stories, but most people don't want their stories told. So I'm rejoicing for the individuals in the charismatic church rising up saying, we want to have real accountability and I don't care if it makes me look bad. I'm not afraid anymore. And then I'm bummed out that so many of the old guard is not willing to step up now. Maybe that's because they are also compromised or maybe that's because they just don't get it. They're just out of touch. They're just out of touch. And so there was just an interview that Jen Johnson from Bethel Music, she's Bill Johnson's daughter in law who runs Bethel Music. And they're very my reading of the situation, Bethel's very concerned. Bethel Music is very concerned that the biggest cash cow of Bethel, Bethel music, like $20 million in one year, they're making that they're going to be hurt. People are going like, time to get rid of Bethel Music. Stop doing Bethel Music because of all the stuff that's gone on in the years of COVID up that had absolutely gone on. It wasn't just Sean Bulls guys. It was a whole culture of COVID up. And until that's exposed, it's just going to happen again. But the response of Jen Johnson in a recent interview that went was starting to go. It was starting to get noticed. There was a section of the interview that was like around 12 minutes where she went on about the scandals and she said some stuff that was like wild. And then now that section has been removed, but some of us have a copy of it. Already got it quickly so that those comments from Jen Johnson revealed the same kind of thing for those who want the inside baseball. Same similar kind of things that Chris Valatin was saying during the first response to my video, where it was just really bad. Really bad. And to have her, Jen Johnson, okay, She's like a primary mover and shaker. She's part of the Bethel, like, you know the ones, right? President of Bethel Music. And have her saying this stuff, wild, wild. And it makes you think maybe the accountability isn't real. Maybe it's just for the crowds. And then she said all that stuff, and then they deleted the section of the video where she said it. But it still exists. Ruslan did a reaction to it. Maybe I'll do something. I don't want to do any of these videos, to be honest. I could just put a new one out every five days. Just little tidbits of information and drag out the news cycle like some people try to do. I don't want to do all that. But, yeah, you guys can check it out. I'll link it down below. Just some of the stuff I'll link below to the Jim Johnson thing. That'd be something you guys can watch. Give me two minutes to get that up after the stream's over. But otherwise, that's the update. Individuals are rising up. Leaders are pressing the other direction. A lot of them, even the ones who secretly agree, or at least they tell me they agree. Is it real or not? I don't know. I don't know who's telling me the truth behind the scenes. But publicly, publicly, maybe to other leaders, they say things publicly to the people, to these kings and priests, they don't tell them the truth. So maybe we'll get there. Maybe it's the next generation of leaders. That's what I always thought it would be. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that we can delight in your word. We can choose to rejoice in you, Lord, even if our hearts don't catch up right away. We can just choose to trust you and not wait for our feelings to catch up. To that, we're grateful. We pray, Lord, for real reform and transformation and real light in the Charismatic church. The amount of corruption, fraud, spiritual fraud, abuse. It's amazing that people like Sean Foyt can even still be operating at high levels. Paula White. Oh, my goodness. Can even exist. Just the fact that Kenneth Copeland has a ministry at all amongst Christians in the American church is absolutely devastating. We pray all that would change because the consciences of integrous people and because of leaders who are willing to risk everything in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. All right, y'. All See you guys next time. Sa.