A (11:20)
So that's the way he looks at it. Now let's look at a passage. This is such a cool spot to look at real quick. So Jesus is here and he is at Caesarea in Philippi. So Caesarea Philippi, this is a particular location where there's carved into the walls. I've been there, been to Israel a couple times, and carved into the walls in Caesarea Philippi is a bunch of like little alcoves. Little, like they're not that big. They're like this big, you know, carved little egg shaped things. And you put idols in there. And at this location, it was a pagan shrine. There was pagan things going on there, if memory serves, there's a river that comes out of the rocks right there. And so what they did is they build a temple around it. And then they give credit to false gods as if the gods are giving them that water. So that's the location where Jesus is. Maybe he was standing right before it when he asked his disciples the following question. When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples saying, who do men say that I, the Son of man am? Who do people say that I am? Right, who is Jesus? This is the question that Vivek was circling around in his response. So they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Right? Because you can't just turn Jesus into whatever you want. Who he is actually matters. And actually he's none of those things. So Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the Son, the not a son, the Son of the living God. Now this is a two Part answer. And it's super important. Every time Jesus is called the Christ, we just let it wash over us like we've heard it a million times. But that is a very Jewish statement. It is saying that Jesus is the Messiah and he's the Messiah of the Old Testament. That is, he's the one prophesied over and over again in the Scriptures. He's the one who came to fulfill the law. He's the one who stands as the prophet, like Moses, as the one who would show up and be the redeemer of Israel. As the suffering servant of Isaiah, he fulfills the prophecy in the garden. He will crush your head and you'll bruise his heel right to Satan. And about the seed of the woman, this word Christ, Messiah, it brings in a mountain of theology and doctrine and truth about who Jesus is. And it's part of his core identity. He's the Christ, and he's also the son of the living God. And when we read more and more and more about this in the Gospels, we understand that this is about Jesus as incarnate God, God in human form, both God and man. And he came and he died for our sins. And so this is key, this is important. And he does it where in the midst of all these pagan idols that are at least nearby, if not in view at the moment. So Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who's in heaven. That's Jesus, man. That's the real Jesus. And so, Vivek, if you happen to see this, I would just encourage you. I would not be insulted personally or offended or something like that, or feel that my Christianity was at danger if you were to say, yeah, I don't believe in Jesus, we have some of the same values, but there are some core differences between us and Christianity. And yet I have respect for you guys. And you could try to build bridges other ways. I think, however, that when you try to import Jesus into your ultimately polytheistic system, right, that is not gonna work. Because it's better for you just to admit you're rejecting than to actually make a fake Jesus and try to act like you're building bridges with believers, you'd be better off that way. Doesn't mean I wouldn't vote for you if I was right there, you know, in your. In your state and able to. Able to do that. I'm not saying that, and I'm not encouraging people not to vote for him even to be honest, I. I don't know the ins and outs of the state. So I say I probably would vote, but who knows because I haven't looked at all the details, obviously. So let's go to your guys. Questions from the live chat. My name is Mike Winger. My goal is to help you learn how to think biblically about everything. And I do this by trying to continually go back to scripture, go back to what the word of God says about topics. On Fridays, I do these Q and A's, 1 o' clock PM. That's my time. That's California time. Right. Pacific time. We do these Q&As. And the purpose of the Q&As is, is to hold on. That's not. What I want, is to help you learn to think biblically. I've found over time that answering people's random questions by walking through, like, what does Scripture say about this? How does Scripture answer this question? That's one of the greatest ways to equip people to think biblically on top of just normal verse by verse studies. So that's the agenda here. Plus it gets your burning questions out, hopefully. All right, first question or second question of today? And it's coming from Michael Centauroi. One P says is Genesis 1:3 the moment Lucifer was made. Then you have several other things you say very quickly here. Morning Star, First Creation, First Worker, and Genesis 131. Jealous of mankind. New standard. Very good. Ezekiel. And I cannot track with all that. It's just. I know, I know how it is on YouTube, man, Michael, you're like cramming tons into and you're sort of hoping like, I hope he knows what I'm talking about in this case. It's a lot to try to track with. You've got 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, four passages of Scripture. Ezekiel 28, Genesis 3, Isaiah 14. That's the two passages in Scripture that may be a reference to Satan. I think they are, but not Everybody agrees. Luke 10:18. Is that where Jesus says, I saw. I'm just getting caught up on your message. Is that where he says, I saw Satan fall like lightning? Luke 10:18. Or is it something I can't physically type? Yeah, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. This actually is a very debated passage as far as what it means. Does he mean he saw that? I'm not. This isn't about your question. I saw Satan fall Like lightning was at him. Using a metaphor to describe as the disciples went out and they cast out demons because they just reported, hey, you sent us out and it really happened. Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. Right? The 72, they went out. And so is he saying that was what he saw? He was sort of watching, spiritually watching what was happening as they all went out? Or is he saying, oh, no, I was there at the fall of Satan and I have power over him, and this is a past tense thing. And then some people, probably the least likely interpretation is they think it's futuristic. Satan falling like lightning is a future thing. Anyway, I'll leave that to you guys to debate. So Genesis 3:1. Let's focus on the main point of your thing. The serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. Your question is, is that when Satan was made, Satan possibly was made. And sorry, Genesis 1:3, not 3:1. You did reference 3:1 later. Okay, so could this be the creation of Satan? You actually have two verses. You had Genesis. There's like six verses in your question. Okay, sorry, guys, I'm only confusing you because I'm confused by the question, which is because the YouTube comment limit is so small. Genesis 1:3. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. Is this God creating Satan? So his name Lucifer or Lightbringer and that kind of thing? I don't know of anybody who's held that view. And this is actually a good clue. If your view is novel and new, it's probably not true. Now, there's times where people try to leverage this wrongly and they act like. Like, let's say believers, baptism. People will act like, well, that's a novel view. Nobody held it in the early church. And I'll hear these statements be made by people, usually Catholic apologists. That's when I have heard it. It's not like all of them do this, because I'm sure they all don't, but it comes pretty strong. And so they go. So therefore, that view, your view on baptism, not doing infant baptism and having believers baptism, that is new and therefore it's not true. The problem here, of course, is that that's actually not a new view. It's not new at all. And so they're overstating the actual historic evidence in their favor. And so then they distort things. But this is of you, at least I haven't heard before, and I would consider that important. So God says, let there be light. And then it goes on. And God saw the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the darkness called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and morning the first day. The context overall in verse three through five and you could even say even more, I'll go verse one in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This shows us the context is creating the heavens and the earth is not talking about a creature here. Then the earth is in darkness. And then God says, let there be light. And there was light and there's. This light is not personified. At some point this light is not given any sort of identity other than just being actual light. He separates light from darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And so he's talking about like actual physical realities of light and dark. That's what is coming across there and ordering of time. It seems as well because he didn't just call the light light, he calls it day versus night, which are also time related things. So your question, right, is Genesis 1:3, the moment Lucifer was made, he he's the morning star. You say he's the first creation. I don't know that he's the first creation. I'm not sure where that comes from. Maybe I'm ignorant to something there. First worker, I don't know of those terms, first creation, first worker being used of him. But I would say this passage is not that. The interesting thing about this though is not only do we not know exactly when Satan was made, we don't know when angels were made in general or other spiritual beings other than God in humans. We just don't know when they were made. And this Genesis 1 doesn't seem to be trying to tell us when they were made. It's focused on the creation of the heavens and the earth. There's the universe and it just doesn't give us those details. The serpent comes and it seems to be Satan in the form of a serpent, an animal that God had made, but he's in the form of the serpent. Either whether he's possessing one or if he's actually somehow manifested some sort of physicality. I don't know the answer to that question. And there's a whole other discussion about the word serpent. And I think it's. Some try to interpret it and say that it has the meaning of a shining one. And maybe it means more than serpent. Or somebody said, well no, it just meant it was poisonous. It was fiery, poisonous serpent. I don't know. I'M just saying that these debates get really nuanced and really quick. But in the course of the passage, God is making light. That's just light, period. Now, light becomes a metaphor in John 1 for Jesus, and that's really cool. And the parallels between Genesis 1 and John 1 are really, really neat. Right? It starts off with in the beginning. And in the beginning, not God created, but in the beginning, something was already there. And what was already there? The Word, Jesus. Right. And the Word was with God. That's relational with God, because God is. There's. There's members of the Trinity, Father, Son, Spirit. And the Word was God because there's identity of him being God, the only God. So super cool. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. And now we see that Jesus is the avenue through which creation takes place. And without him was not anything made that was made in him was life. And the life was the light of men. And then what happens? Light. Light shines in the darkness, just like in Genesis 1. And the darkness has not overcome it. And then he goes on to talk about the light shining. And so the Parallels between John 1 and Genesis 1 are really neat. That wasn't what you were asking about, but I think it's really cool. So hopefully that answers your question. The only clue I know that off the top of my head I'll share about the timing of the creation of spiritual beings other than us is Job. Where in Job, it talks about when God's questioning Job, he's like, were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth? Were you there when I did this, this, this, this, this? And then he says that, were you there like. And the angels rejoiced. They were rejoicing. The sons of God, they were rejoicing in what God was making or had made. And the implication is that they actually witnessed creation. They witnessed creation is the implication. And so I tend to think that they were made some point very, very early on. Maybe they were made probably before the events of the things we read about in Genesis 1:3. I think they were already there. My theory on that, based on Job. All right, question number three. The Parable of the Laborers, Matthew 20 says we get the same reward in heaven, but the parable of the tenants says we get different rewards based on our works. How do we reconcile this? Let's see. Let's look at the two parables, and let's understand what your dilemma is here for everybody to get on the same page. So Jesus, when he tells parables, if anybody's kind of new to this Christian stuff. Jesus uses stories to teach truths, you know, and he'll tell a story like this one. He goes, the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Now, the idea here is that it's harvest time. Now, in farming communities, they know harvest time. You literally hire a ton of extra workers for a brief period of time, and you have, like, this little window to harvest all your harvesting. You know, it's like go time. So after agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, typical amount for a day at the time for them, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. And to them he said, you go into the vineyard, too, and whatever is right, I will give you. So he doesn't tell them how much he'll give him. He just says, whatever is right. So they went out. So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. Okay, so this is a lot of hours of work early in the morning, towards the first hour of the day. Then there's people who are, like, barely doing any work at all about the 11th hour. I mean, this has got to be like the last hour of work. After they've been working all day, these other people. He went out and found others standing, and he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day? They said to him, because no one has hired us. But he said to them, you go into the vineyard, too. And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last up to the first. And when those hired about the 11th hour came, each of them received a denarius, which, if you recall, is the same amount that was promised to the guys that would work all day long. They worked for like an hour, maybe. Now, when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. So he pays the most recent workers a full denarius. People get excited. I'm going to get even more. And then they get the same thing. And on receiving it, they grumbled to the master of the house, saying, these last worked only one hour, and you've made them equal to us who've borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, friend, I'm doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Didn't you say, I will work for this. It's worth it to me for this. And I gave you the thing that we agreed on. Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first and the first, last. This is kind of like the parable of the prodigal son. And you have the unforgiving older brother. And it's this sense of, I have a sort of I despise the grace of God in other people's lives. You know, I don't want to go to heaven if there's a bunch of forgiven predators and evil people there and people who've done horrible evil sins. I don't really want to even be there. And you're like, well, you don't have to be there. I want you to be there. But I'm just saying, like, you're despising God's very grace and not acknowledging that he really changes people. But yeah. So how does that correspond to the other parable, which is Matthew 25, starting in verse 14? For it will be like a man. This is another parable here. It will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. So he's going to take off. And he's like, hey, servants, you got to guard over my property. Take care of it. Well, and so what does he do? He gives one servant five talents. Now, a talent is not a skill. A talent here is referring to a large amount of money. So to one, he gave five talents, a huge amount, crazy amount of money to another two, also a very large amount of money to another one, each according to his ability. And so, yeah, the five talent guy is really skilled. The one talent guy doesn't have as much skill, so he gives him less. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So he doubled it over the course of the investment. So also he who had two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more, saying, master, you delivered to me five talents here I have made five talents more. His master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. And he also, who had the two talents, came forward saying, master, you delivered to me two talents. Here I have made two talents more. His master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. He also had. He also, who had received the one talent, came forward saying, master, I knew you to be a hard man. Now he's got his excuses lined up, right, I need you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. He buried the money. Here you have what is yours, right? It's untouched. I didn't waste it, I didn't spit, I just hid it. There it is. But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. As in there was a safe investment he could have made. There was something else going on. He was wicked and slothful. His excuses aren't real. The truth is he was scared of responsibility. Or he was otherwise just what the master says, wicked and slothful. You just had evil and you were lazy, and so you buried it. And you had an excuse in your head. Like Proverbs says, the lazy man says there's a lion in the street. In other words, he exaggerates how hard things are so he doesn't have to do them. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the 10 talents, the most successful guy. For to everyone who has. Excuse me. For to everyone who has, will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not even what he has will be taken away and cast the worthless servant into outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Okay, let me read your question again. Now, in light of all that, the parable of the laborers, Matthew 20 says we get the same reward in heaven, but the parable of the tenants says we get different rewards based on our works. How do we reconcile this? I can actually add one more thing into the mix here, where Jesus says, store up treasures in heaven, not on earth, where moth and rust destroy. And the implication is that for each thing you're doing, there's like, treasures in heaven, not just like a single pass. You're in heaven, but there's some qualitative difference as you're actually in heaven. So the way I look at it is this. God gives something the same to every Christian, and he gives something different to every Christian. And I think that this may explain some of your challenge with these two parables. The thing he gives us that's the same is salvation. Now, in the parable, the first parable that we mentioned, where you have the laborers, what I think you have here is you have the Israelites who suffered and labored under the law, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting on Jesus. And then you have these Gentiles who totally don't deserve anything. They just were pagans and. And then the Gospel goes out and these Gentiles are getting saved and they're receiving the promises of Israel that they're becoming part of as they become grafted in, at least spiritually speaking, right, where they get heaven, eternity, forgiveness. And that thing is the same for everybody, whether you have Samuel, this old man. When Jesus is born, they bring him to the temple, and you've got Anna, and you got Samuel, and you got these two older people, and they're waiting on the Messiah, and they've lived faithfully in their lives. They've been laboring and working hard. And then compare them when they see Jesus, and they're like, oh, I've seen your salvation, Lord, the thief on the cross. Who's this dude who does nothing? And he's laying on the cross, he's nailed to the cross, going, I deserve to be here. I should be punished for what I've done, right? But, Lord, remember me when you come to your kingdom. And Jesus is like, hey, late laborer, I'm going to give you the same thing I'm going to give Anna and Samuel. So in that sense, we get the same thing, which is entrance into heaven, into the fullness of God's presence. We don't have levels of heaven like Mormonism, where Jesus will only come visit you occasionally if you're not on the top level. Every once in a while, you get to see him. Bottom level, you don't get to see him at all, that kind of thing. I think I'm getting those details right. It's been a while since I looked into it. The point is that there are these different levels of heaven that are Very different experiences. And those experiences are based upon one of the things they're based upon is your works. Are you good enough? Did you do the right things? Did you get a temple recommended? Did you get married and sealed for time and all eternity in the temple? Did you tithe faithfully to the Mormon Church? Do you really want to get the very presence of God? You got to really work for it. Now, on the other hand, Jesus gives us all entrance into heaven, into the very glory of God. We are bride of Christ, all of us. We are all equal in that sense. In the other sense, it's a different experience in that that thief on the cross has no fruit from his life except his testimony of Jesus. Actually, it's a lot of fruit because of where it is in the Bible. But he has no labors that he did for the Lord and there's no return on that. Now, that doesn't mean he gets a lesser place in heaven. But let's take the guy who isn't in the Bible but gets a deathbed conversion. He gets saved, and it's real and it's deathbed. He goes to heaven, and not one person in heaven is there because he witnessed to them. Not one person in heaven is there saying, you blessed me spiritually with the gifts the Holy Spirit gave you and administered to my life. Those are treasures in heaven that only come through labors. Hope that makes sense. All right, let's go to the next question. Number four. Sam Moyson says, why do Christians continue the tradition of using Lord for Yahweh in modern translations? And why isn't this practice blasphemous or wrong, as groups like JWS would argue, they thanks for all you do. Okay, so it cannot be blasphemous. Like, this can't be blasphemous. And I can absolutely give you a great argument for this, that it's not blasphemous inherently to do this. Now, you could do it for blasphemous reasons. That would be blasphemous because your heart issues. But it's not blasphemous, just like in and of itself. And here's the reason why. In the Book of Hebrews, chapter 1, the Greek New Testament, right? What we have as our like this is our. In fact, even in the Gospels and other places, when they are quoting a passage of the Old Testament that uses Yahweh that had the Lord's name written out, Yehofah, Yahweh, Jehovah, we can argue about the pronunciation, but it has the Tetragrammaton, right? It has the yad. Hey, vav, hey. When they're quoting those passage, it doesn't even try to translate that into Greek. It just puts Kurios, which means Lord. That's all it does. Meaning that our New Testament, divinely inspired and commissioned by the Holy Spirit himself, it does this. It takes Yahweh and replaces it with Kurios or Lord. It's not a conspiracy. There's no other version that we would have had of all of these books collectively where it wouldn't have been that way. So that being said, it can't be blasphemy if the Bible's doing it. That doesn't make any sense. So why do Christians continue the tradition of doing this? Well, for one reason, it is just tradition. It's just what was being done. So the Jewish communities at the time of Jesus didn't do this to blaspheme God's name. They did this, like, in a lot of things that they did as a way of protecting the people from violating the commands of God. And so the analogy of what the Jews did with. I like this analogy. It helps with adding extra rules on top of what God said in Scripture is they would add more and more rules. So I'll give an example of these kinds of rules. Don't boil a baby in its mother's milk. Okay, so a baby goat. We're talking about animals here. A baby goat, don't boil it inside the milk of its mother, which might have been some weird sort of barbaric, kind of like, inhumane practice that was going on. And they go, don't do this. God cares about some degree of animal rights. Although you can still eat animals, of course. But the righteous has regard for the life of his animal. Proverbs says. So there's. There's care for it. You do care. Now, what rabbis did was eventually translated this into, just to be safe, to make sure that you never boil, you know, the baby goat or whatever in its mother's milk. Let's make sure we never eat meat with cheese. In fact, meat with dairy of any kind, we won't meet. And the logic here was maybe due to acidic conditions in your stomach, digestion, maybe that counts as boiling. And so if I ate a piece of cheese and there was meat with it, what if these two animals were actually related? And now they're boiling in my stomach and I'm violating the command. Now, that's not necessary, but that is standard kosher laws. Even now in Israel, if you go to McDonald's in Israel, you cannot order a cheeseburger. If you go to. I've tried this. If you go to a restaurant in Israel and you order food where you want cheese with it, because I'm American and I want some cheese on that thing, and then you ask for cheese on the side, they will not serve it to you. They're like, no, we know what you're doing. This is against our ways. The analogy that describes what happens here is that don't touch the mountain. Hopefully, I'm not giving you guys too much information here, but when Moses got the law, they were told, don't touch the mountain. Anyone who touches the mountain comes near it will die. Stay far from the mountain. So they use this as an analogy for don't violate the law of Moses. Let's make sure nobody comes even close to touching the mountain. Let's say, don't even get close to the mountain. We're going to build a fence around the mountain. And that is a lot of the extra kosher laws. Oh, we're going to say, you can't even eat cheese with meat at all. Now, I know the command is don't boil. But we're going to say, don't even eat meat and cheese. And that way we'll stay very far from the mountain. We're building a fence around the mountain. Now, Jesus criticism here is that in doing so, they can build a burdensome list of commands for people, which they, in fact, did do. And there's still some pretty burdensome stuff inside modern Judaism when it comes to those kinds of rules. You can't tear toilet paper on the Sabbath. There's things like that where you go, this is really not the heart of what God meant. Like, you have to know that. But there can be a sense of dignity and a sense of righteousness that comes from observing all of those little details, which is why Jesus criticized them. I know I'm getting a little off track, but I think it's important for tithing mint and cumin, and ignoring the weightier matters of the law. Okay. All that to say, as far as your question goes, that's why they wouldn't use Yahweh, the divine name, in the New Testament as they're writing is because Jews at the time had stopped using. Using God's name. They would not write it. They would avoid it. And so they continued to do this as time goes on. Now, they did it not as an insult to God, but as a way of making sure to not violate the command. Don't take The Lord's name in vain. And they thought, well, I can't take his name in vain if I don't say his name. His name's too sacred to even be said. And so they would say something else. And for instance, they would take the yad, hey, vav, hey. And then they would take the. We don't know what the vowels were that were in the middle there. And they would take the vowels from a different word, like Adonai, which means lord, right? That's a Hebrew word for lord. And they would take the vowels from Adonai, stick it into the yad, hey, vav, hey. And you get not the real name of God, but you get a similar sounding thing. And so that's at least that's one theory. There's debate about how to pronounce it. That's one theory of it. And seems like what they've done to me, This question is kind of answered for me in the fact that the New Testament does this. I don't think you have to do it. I don't think you should avoid saying God's name. I think God inspired the authors of the Old Testament to write his actual name, but he also allowed for the New Testament, inspired the New Testament to write Kurios and not to even attempt to do some sort of transliteration into Greek from the Hebrew. And so we accept it and we go, yeah, maybe this isn't a die on the hill kind of issue. Maybe it's okay either way. Now, personal preference, why don't translations do this? You also ask that I would like it if translations would do this. And there was one that tried, and I think it was the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is now just called csb. And in their first edition, if memory serves, this was several years ago, many years ago, when I looked into it, their first edition, they oh, my wife's cooking something that smells delicious. I haven't eaten anything today. Smells good. Tortillas on the stove is what it is. I'm so distracted by that. In the first edition of the Christian Standard Bible, which was called the hcsb, they actually used the name of God as memory serves. In subsequent renditions of it, they took the H off. They just did csb, which I think was a smart move. And then they went back to Lord instead of Yahweh or Jehovah or whatever. Why do they do that? Well, because people probably didn't want to buy it, because people get freaked out by it. They think it's strange. People who are used to English Bibles doing the Lord thing instead of Yahweh. They open it and they go, this looks like it's Jehovah's Witness. What am I looking at? And then they're less likely to buy it. They're less likely to read it. And then obviously, Jewish groups feel very upset by this. Many Jewish groups, because they're like, don't do this. You're printing the divine name. This is against our rules. And so it creates conflict. And so it tends to not be printed that way. But because of the New Testament, I say this is a don't die on this hill kind of issue. All right, there we go. Number five. Julia Larson says in Acts 19, verses 5 through 7, it says there were 12 men in total that began prophesying and speaking in tongues. How does this align with Paul's direction to limit tongues to two or three people in 1 Corinthians 14:27. Just a second. Let's look at those passages. Acts. Actually, let's look at the first Corinthians passage first. 14:27. I got to back up. We really have to read more. I'll read quickly, and I won't do a lot of commentary on it, but we got to read more. So Paul says, pursue love in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1. Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God. For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. Now he's speaking, let's be honest, not just of anyone speaking in tongues, but someone speaking in tongues with no interpretation. For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds himself up, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. As in, it's more loving. You're blessing others. It's not just about you. So one of the problems with everybody speaking in tongues in a church gathering, church service, is that it's all just about them in a way that is not upbuilding others. Now, I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets so that their church may be built up. He doesn't mean greater like they're more valuable human. He means it's more helpful. You're bringing more benefit to others. Now, brothers, if I Come to you speaking in tongues. How will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? Imagine Paul's like, Paul the Apostle visits your church for the first time in, like, five years. And he's there, and you're like, oh, it's Paul. And he gets up and he just speaks in tongues the whole time and then walks away. You'd be like, what was that? Pointless. If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know it is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves. If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning. There's languages, tongues. In other words, speaking in tongues is actually a language. It's never gibberish. But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you're eager for manifestations of the spirit, strive to excel in building up the church. That's your focus. Not the gifts. It's the benefits you can bring to others people. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also. I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. I love that. Make sure your brain is turned on in worship. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you're saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church. Ah, here's the thing. In church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to Instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. Brothers, do not be children. In your thinking be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the law it is written by people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners. I will speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord. Thus tongues are assigned, and this is going to be confusing. I have a video on this somewhere. Maybe someone will find it. And I'll Link it below. The tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers, but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and outsider or unbelievers enter, outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you're out of your mind? This is the thing. If you have outsiders, that is people who simply are not accustomed to your charismatic ways, or you have unbelievers, that is non Christians, they will enter into the church and think you're crazy. And they will be justified in thinking it because of the way you're acting. I just want more churches to recognize this. But if all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he's convicted by all. He's called to account by all. The secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. See, Paul cares about people, not just about gifts. He cares about people. What then, brothers? Okay, here's where the rule comes. When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. As in, don't just be like, everybody has to have something to contribute. Make sure it's done for the purpose of building up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at the most three, and each in turn and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in the church and speak to himself and God. Okay. Then he goes on with prophecy and talks about rules of that. All that to say, yeah, here's the rule for in the church, when you're in the church, as you gather in the church and gather as a church gathering, I'm emphasizing that on purpose. Yeah, two or three at the most. You don't have to have any, but two or three at the most, and only with interpretation. And if one guy's going off and nobody's getting an interpretation from the Holy Spirit, if nobody's getting the understanding of what this thing is, or maybe someone in the room who speaks that language, then stop. Tell them to keep it between themselves and the Lord. And I think this is. Here's the guy who speaks in tongues more than any of them, and he's telling them to control it and to do it in this way. Is that consistent with the book of Acts? That's your question. In Acts, chapter 19, we have the following. I'll have to back Up a little bit. Okay. It happened while Paul, while Apollos was at Corinth. 19, verse 1, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, no, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. Okay. These guys are like, they got the gospel from somebody, kind of, sorta. They're very incomplete, but they are disciples, meaning that they're like trying. Like Jesus had disciples who followed him. Maybe they didn't fully understand him, but they were still called disciples. Because disciple doesn't just mean you're saved. It means you're a follower of a teacher. So they're trying to follow Jesus. And they said, no, we've not even heard of it. And verse three, he said, into what then were you baptized? And they said into John's baptism. Ah, John, John the Baptist, John the baptizer, who was baptizing people before Jesus was even revealed, saying there was someone coming after him who they had to honor. Maybe they know it's Jesus, but they don't. They're obviously not. They don't know a lot. So they sent into John's baptism and Paul said, john baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. There were about 12 men in all. And he entered the synagogue for three months and he's debating and speaking with them. All right. How is this different than First Corinthians? Well, it's not in church. It's not a church service. It's literally just a gathering of believers, kind of believers who then receive a special moment of a bunch of them all speaking in tongues. They're all experiencing the same thing at the same time. There's no unbelievers or outsiders that are getting confused. And so it's not violating what Paul says later on. This is a divine work of God to demonstrate like Jesus really is the real one. John really was pointing to Jesus. And so God's manifesting this as confirmation. Kind of like in the Book of Acts earlier on, when you have in two Acts, chapter two, a bunch of people speaking in tongues, which would have violated. But it was purely a divine work of God and people all understood them, right? There was somebody interpreting every one of these guys speaking in Tongues in Acts, chapter two, all of them came with interpretation. So general rule two or three at the most, only with interpretation. Stop talking if you don't have interpretation. That's the general rule barring acts of God that he does. And if he did something in a church and it was truly the Lord, I would be like, yeah, generally we don't do this, but God's doing a special thing here today. I'd be open to that. But I'm also wary because I know a lot of charismatic churches who would just act like God's doing that every Sunday in their church. And that's their mark of spirituality, is that they routinely go against what the text says. Okay, number six, question number six. I'm full up on questions for today. By the way, here's from Katie's online name, and she says J. Warner Wallace talks about sanctification as a long hallway between justification and glorification. If some people still make it to glorification without the hallway, why is it necessary at all? So I'm going to say something that might sound like I'm being like curt, but I would say it's not. I'll say it two ways. One, when you say sanctification, meaning, say the journey from when I first got saved, when I was probably around 12 years old, heard the Gospel, and, and then very, very slow sanctification process. By that word, we just mean your life is coming more in line with righteousness and with who Jesus is and with following and submitting and being a good Christian. That just took very, very, very, very, very slow pathway for me. And now I'm, you know, 47. And so, yeah, I've had a lot of years of this going on already, and I'll, God willing, have many more years. But compare that to the thief on the cross. This dude gets converted on the cross from a life of sin to now he believes Jesus on the cross gets saved. Boom. Where's his sanctification? So in one sense, it's not necessary. Okay, that's my short thing that might be kind of seem curt to people. It's not necessary because God can simply sanctify you. Boom. Like that. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have benefits. Right? So let me give you an example. Let's say that I am a billionaire and I have kids and I'm thinking I could just pay for everything they ever want. But I'm going to create milestones. I want you to do this, and then I'm going to take care of this for you. I want you to do that, and I'll do this and I'll do this and this, and I'm creating a path because there's benefits in that. Or I could also alternately just give them money, and maybe that would be fine. Now, this is an imperfect analogy because this is not what sanctification is. Sanctification is not God financially taking care of you, nor is it God giving you provision. Sanctification is character transformation in my heart, in my life. It obviously can happen in a moment, but there can be benefits of it happening over time. That's all I'm trying to draw out here. And the benefits of it happening over time are worthwhile as you work through and struggle and you grow and mature. And let's just be real. All Christians will be in heaven. They'll all be sanctified, but they won't all be the same maturity, having had the same experiences, having learned all the same lessons. But what they all will be, thank God, is rid of our flesh. That's an immediate sanctification thing. As soon as I die, I'm done with this flesh. It will never tempt me again. The temptations that come from my carnal flesh are gone. The old man is fully removed from me. And so that is for every Christian instant, sanctification upon death to a significant degree, as far as that part of it goes, then I'm also being conformed that much more into God's very image. Not that I'm a God or anything like that. And so, yeah, that happens. But I think that when we say this, we think, hey, I walked the long hallway of sanctification and that person just died and got it right away. But we're also overstating perhaps our own sanctification, because I'll tell you, I've been walking that hallway for a long time, but I still have a very long way to go. And if I was to, and I guarantee you, if I died at the age of 80, I would still have a very long way to go. And it's not like I'm ready for heaven, Lord, I'm fully sanctified. I will not be ready until I'm rid of this flesh and rid of this carnality that tempts me all the time. So I just wanted to have that perspective as well, I think can be helpful. All right, number seven from Rosa, Saved by Grace, who says, hey, Mike, what does it mean to not provoke your children to anger? Scripture instructs us to discipline our kids, and Hebrews 12:6 allows for the use of punishments. So what counts as provoking? Yeah. So let's look at the passage. You didn't reference it, but I think it's in Ephesians where it talks about the household codes. Household codes. Let me just scan through Ephesians here. I think I need a new keyboard. I'm like. Some of the letters aren't coming up. Spilled something on it. Okay. After talking about wives and husbands. Yeah. It is in Ephesians 6, 4. Here we go. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So discipline is obviously included here. Discipline, discipline, which is not just punishing, because, yes, that's discipline, but discipline is also structuring, creating structure in a person's life and instruction. So teaching and do it of the Lord, That's a task that fathers have. It doesn't say youth pastors. Here it says fathers. And it's interesting to me that fathers in particular are told not to provoke their children to anger. I think personally that this is a very broad statement. Don't provoke your kids to anger. When I think about kids and why they get angry, there's lots of reasons why they get angry. You won't give me what I want. You won't do the thing that I want. You're not allowing me to do what I want. It's always like there's an obstacle between me and what I want is my parent. That provokes kids to anger. Sure. But this is different. When it says, fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, I think it means you're wrongly provoking your kids to anger. This could be due to things like inconsistent rules. Right. Like, am I. What are the rules, dad? What are the household rules? Well, it depends on how angry I am on that day. Right. Like, I'm having a good day. Then you can get away with whatever you want. So then that can provoke anger. Anger can be caused by a dad abandoning their kids, a parent disassociating with their kids, or simply not caring about them, where you punish them, but you don't actually love them, and things like that. That can provoke anger. There's a million things that can provoke anger. So give thought to that. Because as parents, parents can turn into people who know how to control their kids or coexist or cohabitate with their kids, but maybe can give up on parenting their kids. And so that I don't know. I don't know if that helps. There's probably like a dozen other answers that are better than mine on this. That's what I think of, though. When you say don't provoke your children to anger, it doesn't mean you don't discipline. Because right here in the passage, discipline. Right. And God, he disciplines us like Hebrews 12 you were talking about. It says, don't despise. The Lord's chastening as a father chastens his son, so the Lord chastens those whom he loves. And so refusal to discipline at all is actually a lack of love, which will provoke anger, I imagine. All right, I'll go to the next question. Number eight. Hey Mike, love your content. I do. TikTok lives reading scripture and sharing insights I've found. But does 1st Timothy 2, 1115 make this sinful? For me as a woman, I truly wanted to know how to. I truly want to know how to please God. So I'm going to give you the short answer, but I will point you to the long answer. And the long answer is pretty long. There's a video I made about like everything women can and can't do according to the Bible. They go through all kinds of details. I even have a section where I talk about social media. And so I'm going to link that video below. And I walked through all of it. It was after like a two plus year project where I did a topic of women in ministry and I studied everything I could on that and I get into lots and lots of detail, the nuances of stuff. So in my opinion, I, a woman sharing. I'm reading this Bible scripture and here's insights I found in it is not the same as somebody teaching like an elder teaches. Where you're teaching, you get up, you're in the pulpit, you're teaching. Or even the way I teach online, I teach online in a different fashion. Even though I'm not your elder, I'm not your pastor. You may see me as a pastoral type impacting your life, and I'm grateful for that. But I'm not actually your pastor. You may be, and some of you are thinking, yes, you are, Mike, you're my. No, no. You mean that my ministry has blessed your life and helped you walk closer with Jesus and understand his word better and provided you with some guarding, some protection, some leadership, and some good things. And those are all pastor Ish. But there's an actual role called pastoring or eldering that Involves physical contact, local church stuff. And I'm not that. But I still. My teaching online, the way I teach would change if I was trying to do this as a woman. I would actually change it quite a bit in the way that I go about these things. And so if you share this as scripture and insights, Scripture and insights, I think there's nothing wrong with that. Even if your insights are theological in nature. But you just are careful in the way this is going to sound vague to some people, the way you communicate. You're thoughtful to say, I don't want to be with my words. Positioning myself into a position where I'm basically like, I'm your spiritual leader. I'm not just someone online. You're not in this open forum where anybody can talk and say anything they want. And that's great. I'm just a voice sharing my thoughts. It's more like, I'll give an example. Joyce Meyer. Joyce Meyer is a teacher who very much postures herself like, I am the spiritual leader, declaring the truths of God to you with authority. That's how she presents herself very much. Alicia Childers is an example of a woman who speaks on all kinds of issues and topics that are of importance, that are of relevance, theological issues and stuff, but I think does so in a way that is informed with her understanding of complementarianism. Ali Beth Stuckey seems like she does a pretty good job with this stuff, too, in my opinion. That's my two cents on it. I'll link the video down below and you can check it out. Hope that helps. Number nine, the Khaleel says, I recently came to Christ and since had a fire for Christ. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. That's so awesome to hear, Khalil. Praise God. Be patient in your walk. Be patient, patient, patient. All right. Because you need to burn for Jesus, but you also have to smolder for Jesus, if you can get what that means. All right, meaning fire terminology here. My wife has been a Christian all her life, you say, and often compares her walk to mine and wonders why she doesn't have the same fire advice. Was it that some people said comparison robs us of joy? That's true. For her to be inspired by you is one thing. Encouraged by you is a good thing. But I don't know exactly how to counsel you guys on this because let me describe different scenarios and you pick which scenario applies to you. There's a person who's fully committed to Jesus, but they don't have that fresh excitement that you've got. And they're still like, I'm walking with Jesus. I'm committed to Jesus. I am fully in. But they don't have, like that same, like, sort of strong zeal you've got. This could be because that's how they're wired. This could be because of this one scenario. I'm just wired this way. This is my zeal. My zeal level is full. I'm at Zeal Level 10. And this is just what I'm like at zeal level 10. But if their zeal level 10 is actually something super awesome and they're really. But their actual zeal for Christ is down at 3, then there's a problem. That's a different scenario. Is that the case? In which case maybe seeing your zeal is allowing them to go, your wife, to say, hey, I need more of this. And don't get discouraged. Instead, get inspired and think about how you can stir up good things. And for that, if that's you, if it's anybody listening and you feel your zeal for Christ has waned and that you, you could have so much more and you just don't. My encouragement to you is read Jesus letter to the Ephesian Church. In the book of Revelation, in chapters two and three, he writes these letters to the seven churches, and one is to the church in Ephesus and to that church, he says, I have this one thing against you. You've left your first love. And he gives them advice on how to fix that problem. How to fix the problem, according to Jesus, is go back to your first works. Go back and do the first works. What are the first works? Well, go back to when you had your highest zeal for Christ and ask yourself, what was I doing back then that just flowed out of my love for the Lord. Go back and start doing those things and it will help you tap back into that love you had for God. That's what I recommend. Would you spontaneously just sit down and worship in your living room with your guitar or with some music? Would you attend church a little more often and you were talking about Jesus with co workers. Go back to your first love. So that's one thing. But there's another thing I'll add here, just because I don't know your particular situation. It's another factor. Anybody who has been newly introduced to an amazing thing will tend to have a higher degree of initial excitement than they will have a year or two or five years later. And that's okay. That doesn't mean I care less now. That just means I have become more, I've sort of absorbed this reality. I'm living with it rather than still just sort of experiencing it for the first time. And it's important that we guard ourselves that that doesn't turn into a lackadaisical attitude. Like, I sometimes will think about my wife and think like, what a blessing she is. And like, oh my goodness, I'm so glad. I'm just even to myself in my own heart. Like, I'm so grateful to be married to her. And for me, I just imagine my life without her for a moment and then I'm like, oh man, I'm so grateful. And this just that imagining my life without her immediately stirs up love, appreciation, gratitude lowers the criticisms that I have in healthy ways. And I'd say the same can be done with your walk with Jesus. You just imagine yourself without Jesus for a minute. Really imagine yourself without salvation for a minute, and then see if that doesn't stir up that zeal. All right, those are some thoughts. I hope there's something there that's encouraging for you. Number 10 this might sound weird. This is an anonymous question. This might sound weird, but sometimes thinking of God as perfectly good and loving makes me doubt. Can we really be so lucky to have the best case scenario God? Oh, I think that I would be on the opposite side of that one as you in that if God wasn't perfectly good and loving, that would cause me to doubt big time. And I can share with you a couple reasons why. First off, let me get this out of the way just in case. Just in case this is discernment in my mind. Maybe it isn't. But it's possible that the reason this seems wrong to you that God's so perfectly good and loving is because maybe you're thinking that God's existence is about you. Now, you may not be thinking it really thinking it, but maybe somewhere subconsciously is in your process. So if God's existence is about you, I get you going. How could I be so lucky as to get this God that's so perfectly loving and good, but when you realize that his goodness and his love isn't actually, it's directed towards you in a way, but it's not about you. It's not only directed to you. God is good. He's so good that it's scary to those of us who are not good. Which is why I need Jesus, right? He's loving. He's so loving that he'll punish those. He'll punish you for the people you've hurt because He Loves them. So then I go, his goodness and love. It's not cartoony goodness and love. It's like real goodness and love. And I realized that, and it maybe helps it become real and not. Because if I think of God's goodness and love as like, cartoonish, you know, like God, there's some people that joke. I've seen this in a church circle where people joke like, I'm God's favorite. I know he loves everybody, but I'm his favorite. And I think that's a cartoonish view of God. That is a very cartoonish view of God. And that view of God does make me doubt, would make me doubt if I was trying to think of God in those terms. But I think of his goodness instead as something that's actually scary as well as wonderful. His love as something that's terrifying and comforting. Depending on where you're at. As far as like, are you getting the millstone award from Jesus? You cause one of these little ones who believes in me to stumble is better. If a millstone was hung around your neck and it was cast into the sea, that's better than me getting to you after that because of his love. When I see God as that kind of good in love, I don't have a cartoonish view at all. But here's why. If God was not all good and all loving, if he wasn't, I should say perfectly good and perfectly loving. I don't know if I say all loving like he loves everything. Like, oh, I love when people die. I love it. It's like he loves everything. But if God wasn't good and loving, I would struggle with that. Because philosophically, that isn't God. Like God is inherently his nature is. He's the ground of all moral good. So in order for love to exist, God has to be the idealized version of love. In order for goodness to exist, for it to even be a thing, God has to be perfectly good. In order for evil to exist, it has to be some counterpoint to the goodness of God. And if God was something less than good, that defies the very nature of what God is, that couldn't exist. If God was less than good, I don't think it's possible. I don't think God could exist in any other form than God does exist in loving, good, perfect, righteous, holy, just all of those things. I don't think he could be. His divine aseity, meaning his existence is sustained purely through Himself, not through any other external means. Imagine if you go to God and he's like, oh, I come and hug you, but I can't unplug from this wall because it sustains me. You'd be like, you're not God. Who are you? It's changing the very nature of God that would cause me to doubt. So, yeah, hope that answers that question. So guys, that's all for today. That's the 10 questions and I don't have much. No, I have updates to share. It's not going to share. I hate to bait you like that. It may not be wise for me to share any updates currently at the moment, but there's lots of things going on behind the scenes. As always and appreciate your guys prayers for those who've been praying for I asked for prayer for victims. I'll say this, victims of some of the bad guys I've dealt with. I can't be any more specific than that. For safety for people, but it's not primarily. When I'd asked for prayer on social media, it wasn't primarily for me that I'm in danger. There may be some danger, there's some degree of danger that's there, but not like imminent threats or something like that. I'm cautious and I'm careful and I take some measures, but I'm actually asking for prayer and I still ask this. Please pray for victims of some of these bad guys to have courage to continue stepping forward and to take a little bit of risk if it's so guided by God that they would take some risks in order to get these guys caught. Because it's amazing how there'd be someone standing up who you're like, this guy would fall. If this person, this person, this person would just say what they know would just go forward, but they're scared. Please pray for that. That's a very real prayer request. Speaking of which, why don't we just pray right now? Father God, we ask for health for the body of Christ. We ask that you'd increase our witness to the world. Because as we deal with some of the issues that are going on inside of churches where there's corruption in the long run, I believe and pray. Lord, we pray that this would turn out to a witness to the world where they will say, these guys really believe what they say. There's some integrity there, there's honesty there, there's reality there and there's accountability there and there's protection for victims here. May they see this and may they know this about the body of Christ and about evangelicals in particular, charismatics in particular. Lord, may more and more rise up and do the right thing. Even when it's murky waters and it's hard to see what the right thing is. We ask that you would cause more victims to go forward to deal with situations where there's people who've done grievous evil worse than anything. I've discussed that. Those people would actually come forward and they would make noise and they'd realize that now is the time, now's the chance, now's the opportunity. We also pray you protect those people, protect them from any reprisal, from any consequences where they're being attacked for what they're doing, but give them courage to think that's worth it and know that it's time, if indeed it is. Lord, your will be done. Father, we ask that you be glorified and that the goodness of Jesus Christ would shine in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. All right, guys, that's it. I did do a video. I'll close out with this. I did a video on Greg Locke, a very concerning issue related to Greg Locke and accusations he made about Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen. And he says he has evidence, and I'm calling him to produce the evidence to go forward, do something with the evidence. He says he owes me nothing, but he owes the victims to go forward. So I'm going to link that video down below. I encourage you to check it out, because I hope it's. If he's. If he lied, he should go forward and say he lied. Because I'm not saying he's. I'm not saying what he says about these guys is true. I don't know. But the accusations and with the claim that he has evidence to back it up. I mean, I was on call with the FBI earlier today to be like, you guys should look into this. Please look into this. I don't know if they will. It's. I think that's the right thing to do. So, yeah, anyway, that's it. God bless you guys. Sa.
