How Do We Determine What To Preach? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Kiley Callaway, Tyson Lambertson, John Mulholland and Jon Simpson.

Jon Simpson
We've been discussing preaching. And some of the, maybe letting you behind the scenes a little bit as to how we determine how to preach and what to preach on, and hopefully giving you a little insight into that. Sometimes people wonder how pastors come up with what they do and there's different opinions on styles of preaching. Be it topical or expository. Should you preach through a book of the Bible? Can you preach on a topic? We kind of talked about that a little last time, so we wanna discuss a little bit more maybe how we determine what to preach on in a given year, kind of how we lay that out and what influences those decisions. So, John, how do you kind of look at that in your church?

John Mulholland
Well, like I said last time, for us it's more expository in nature than the topical piece. Try and manage that Old Testament, New Testament piece. So, then we kind of look at, what haven't we gone through? So if a book of the Bible is gonna kind of guide our primary thinking, what haven't we talked about? So are we preaching through, are we teaching through things that we haven't talked about before, and what does that look like? But also just you know, knowing what's happening in our church body. Tyson, you know, you talked about praying and listening to the Holy Spirit, and certainly those things are a huge part of that because of what God is teaching us and wanting us to talk about. A lot of those conversations too, come from staff meetings of like, "What are we kind of," without actually asking the question, "What are we seeing, feeling, hearing from our church body?" But just like being in tune with our other pastors who are connected to small groups and serving teams. Like, you know, "What are we thinking that we see?" And then we set up that calendar, we do operate on a yearly calendar. Usually by October I start getting antsy, cause we want to know what we're gonna teach on in the year. So we're about a year ahead on our teaching. So I would say prayer, discernment of the Holy Spirit, and then just conversations and awareness of what's happening in our local church body of what we kind of feel like we need to teach on.

Tyson Lambertson
I think that's great. You have to pray, be aware of what the Holy Spirit's doing and where you're wanting to take your church as far as the discipleship model or the method where you want to take the scripture. And if you connect that to your small groups and how that works, if you do your small groups in conjunction with your sermon series and all those. So one of the benefactors that I have is, I have a very intelligent wife. Her name's Tammy and she's very in tuned with the Holy Spirit and helps guide how we preach, what we preach, when we preach it. And gives me some feedback on, I'll say, "Hey, what do you think about doing the book of 1 Corinthians or doing a topic on marriage?" or something along those lines. And she'll say, "Yeah, you know, I think that should wait, maybe we can fit it here. This would be better." So just listening to the Lord and listening to my wife and really being sensitive to what's happening to our people, that in the life of our people is so, so important.

John Mulholland
Yeah, and I think a big thing, an advantage, you know, a window that we have into the lives of the people that go to our churches, like social media. What kinds of things are they---

Tyson Lambertson
That gets dangerous.

John Mulholland
It can get dangerous. But what kinds of things are they talking about? So like for, you know, last year we went through---

Tyson Lambertson
Loving your enemies.

John Mulholland
Yeah, we went through the book of Revelation last year, because I just have this sense that people are thinking like, "Oh, you know, we're living in the end times, it's the end of the world," all that kind of stuff. So let's tap, maybe tap into that angst that people are feeling and hopefully coach and guide them through what scripture has to say on those things. How about for you? How do you decide?

Jon Simpson
So one of the things I do throughout the year, I am trying to listen to the Holy Spirit and watch, as you said Tyson or you guys have said, what's going on in the church? What are issues and stuff that we're dealing with or that I see happening in their struggles maybe? And then just the culture at large, what are the issues that are happening in our culture around us? That, you know, because we're so connected to the world it seems like we feel personally connected to something that happens on the other side of the globe, you know, if there's a tragedy. So I think that is what's happening in the world and what the are issues there. And so I kind of take that all together and just let that sort of ruminate in me. I feel like God at times gives me, whether it be a book of the Bible or whether it be, you know, a particular issue to address right? And so just like I said the last series I was in, The Lies That Satan Tells Us. Well, through the last year, I just felt like I was watching, and of course it happens to me, but I see it happen to people where they're believing a lie that the enemy is interjecting. And I see it happen and honestly it makes me angry because it always leads to destruction right? So I'm like, "I want to address that, you know, that's an issue, that's a problem that I see in the world." So then it's like, you know, figuring out, where does the scripture speak to that? And what does the Bible say and how do we? So I think that is kind of what guides me. I've always, since I was a church planner I was coached to do a year, you know, plan that year out. So I always try to go in January. If I have a team, I take some of my team and we just pray over it and talk about, and ask God, seek God, and then look at our church and all that stuff, and try to plan out a year. And you know, 2020 was kind of encouraging, cause that was my first full year here. And of course I went out away in January with Ken, our worship pastor, we figured out, kind of planned the year out. And then as COVID hits, as stuff happens, you know, things just fell in place. Where it's like I had, you know, I did a series on, you know, Fear Less, I think it was, and then I came right after everything kind of was blown up. And it was like, just very timely, I felt like God had really led and it made me feel like, "Okay, God, you're with me in leading this church, you know, and trying to prepare people, cause I know it's not me." But that's where I really trust God to, you know, lead that way and give us the right stuff to address. And so anyway, it's a year out and it's looking at that and then yeah, whether it's a book of the Bible or whether it's, like I said, an issue or a topic, and then just trying to deal with that.

John Mulholland
Now you said a second ago, you said, "Well, that's where you get into trouble," so how do you like, when we see like---

Jon Simpson
Yeah.

John Mulholland
I see the people at Mitchell Berean are really wrestling with they're believing lies. The people at The Rock are doing this, the people at Westway are doing that. Like how, that getting into trouble, explain that. As a pastor, I know what you mean by that. So how do you tackle some of those things without it being, cause this is something I wrestle with. Do you tackle some of those things without wanting it to be like, "I'm looking at you cause I saw what you posted on Facebook last night?"

Tyson Lambertson
So one of my pastor mentors said this to me, "That God always calls you to a place to do a work in you first, and the other, second." More times than not, my sermon series are on something that I've been struggling with and I'm going through. And the minute I preach it, the minute I say I'm gonna preach it, I'm going to deal with that situation a week before or week after, a month before or a month after, there's something that God's doing in me. So what is God doing in me that He can do a deep work in me so that I can give it away? Because other people are struggling with it, we're human, we all have similar issues, similar problems, similar things. And so staying on topic, not trying to curtail it to somebody, who just done you wrong. And so next Sunday you're gonna preach to that person in that pew. I think that gets you in trouble, that's what I meant.

John Mulholland
So you said, "God's doing your work in me," and I would come back on that too, and say, "There have been things that I've read in scripture." And be like, "Oh man, this would be really good like at some point this would be a really good series," whatever that looks like. How much of you, do you bring into like your Sunday morning? Like how much of you, do you bring into that? Like how much do you talk about, maybe something you struggle with or something you're wrestling with or like your own---

Tyson Lambertson
Yeah, I think there's definitely a balance and I think authentic leadership is so important. Authenticity allows you to be at a level with everyone else, that I am human. And I think where we've gotten in trouble with pastors, is being above humanity. Being something above, and we're not, we're human. We all have sinned, we all have fallen short of the glory of God. And so I think there's a point where we have to be vulnerable, but how vulnerable can we be from the pulpit? When that vulnerability should probably be with some trusted, what I would call my life team. These are issues that I need to discuss with them, not to the public where it's gonna be all over Facebook, YouTube, and social media. You know what I mean? So there's that balance. I think there's that line that could be crossed. But we all need to realize that we're all sinners, we've all fallen short to the glory of God and we need His help. So personal stories, those type of things, I think there's tastefulness and I think there's things that cross the line.

Jon Simpson
Yeah, I think for me, what I'm very cautious about is that in my struggles, which I think it's important to be vulnerable. People need to see that, how we help lead people is for them to see how we wrestle through things and how we struggle with stuff, like that's leadership. I think you go, "I've struggled through this, but this is what I've discovered. This is how I've tried to follow scripture, and this is what scripture says." But I'm careful, like I'm very concerned that I, in any of that, it's sort of a counseling session for me to share, you know, my hurts, my issues. So I don't want that, that's not helpful to anybody. At the same time, I think it's important to let people in and see, you know, Paul said that, his weakness is what he gloried in, because where he was weak was where God was strong. And so he said, I celebrate my weakness and I think it's important to go, "Hey, I'm weak, like I have weak areas or I've struggled through this and this was hard," you know? And so, I think part of it for me is that it's not something that I'm personally wrestling. Like if I've worked through it and I've kind of, you know, gotten through that issue, then I think I can help others and lead them through that. But I also, I don't know, when I was younger, it was a lot of my personal life illustrating things. And I don't do that as much now, to me more now it's like, the principles inside of a point. Like, how do you get through something? Or how do you think through it? That's where I'm interjecting what I've learned or what I've experienced or what the scripture says.

Tyson Lambertson
And I don't know if you guys ever seen the meme, "If you're a pastor's kid, anything that's said can be used in a sermon," those types of things. I really try to watch how I speak about my children. I'll use funny stories and stories that would keep them in a good light. I don't want to use the stories that would tear them down or my family or anybody for that matter. But I do think there's this authenticity that people need to be able to reach out and say, "Oh, he's human too."

John Mulholland
Yeah, when I was in student ministry, and I was like coaching someone who was new coming onto our student ministry team, we would talk about like, be appropriately transparent. You know, there's a level and I think relationally, you know, I'm really grateful that Anne and I have had the opportunity to be in some really great small groups our entire Christian life. But especially since we've been here in Scottsbluff. So we've been able to share things with small group that certainly I would never share from the front. But it's always interesting for me when we share things and people's response to that. Like I had someone once in small group say, "Oh man, I always thought the pastor and his family was this." So to sit in small group and hear this, is really, and it wasn't, "This is shocking." And it wasn't like, "I'm rejecting you because it's shocking." But just people don't really, I think struggle with the concept that the people who are their pastors are human beings and wrestle with things.

Tyson Lambertson
And I think that's because of the series that we're in from the ashes and the devastation that we experienced in the last 10 months. I'm grieving and there's no better person to minister, to people who are grieving than one who's grieving. And so there's some of that identification and being able to connect personally with our own struggles, our own grief, our own mourning. So I think, I think authenticity is so important.

Jon Simpson
Well, thanks again for joining us for another session here. Hopefully this has been encouraging to you and maybe insightful.

The Sin of Pride and How Do We Control It? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so the question this morning, "Can you address the sin of pride? How do we get a grip on it?" So like I said, I think this is a sin that probably to some degree, we all struggle with.

Gary Schick
Amen and proud of it!

Ben Poole
Yeah, we're proud of how much humility we have! Pride is a hard one, because it can come off almost so innocently and how do we address that in our own lives? What is pride? What does the Bible have to say about pride? And so I think there's a lot that we could dig into in our short period of time. So Gary, why don't you open this up with some thoughts?

Gary Schick
I think there's also confusion based on how you use that word pride. I mean, I think there's a, what we use in our language as a healthy pride, you know? Taking pride in your work, healthy self-esteem, this is I guess what you call a right and proper, appreciation of doing your best. But what the Bible's talking about with pride is actually, self-esteem out of balance, it's self to the extreme, you know? Just the first thing that comes to my mind, that I remember learning in the old King James as a kid, the word from Proverbs, "Pride cometh before a fall." And of course, probably the greatest example of that is Satan himself, which taking from some things in Ezekiel and Isaiah, it appears that he was at one point the highest of the angels. So a healthy pride would've been, "Wow, God has placed me here. What a wonderful thing!" But that wasn't enough, he wanted to place himself above God. And that's what we do when we sin pridefully. C.S. Lewis, I believe in Mere Christianity, calls pride the cardinal or root sin. The sin that is basically at the base of all other sins, where we want our own will above what God has asked of us. That takes a certain unhealthy focus on self and an unhealthy view of yourself, kind of putting yourself in the place of God. So what's the cure to that? Well, Jesus, of course, is the cure to everything and how do we come to Jesus? We have to humble ourselves. You know, when I talk to kids about the 10 commandments, I remind them that there's two sides to every commandment, you know? Thou shall not kill, well what is that? You know, don't murder, don't kill, but what's the opposite of that, that we should be doing? We should be valuing life, you know? Honor your father and mother and respect authority. So what's the opposite of that? Don't disrespect authority. We can go through all 10 commandments. Well similarly, in the cardinal sins, there's also their counterparts, cardinal virtues. And you know like, the opposite to hate perhaps would be love. The opposite to pride would be, I believe humility. And interestingly some of these great thinkers, C.S. Lewis I think, I think he got it right, pride is at the root of all sin. Another great thinker Andrew Murray, in a book on humility, actually calls humility, let's see if I can find it, "The highest virtue and the root of every virtue." You know, Jesus modeled humility and everything. He said, "The son of man came not to be served, but to serve," He humbled Himself. In Paul's letter to the Philippians he said, "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made Himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant, He humbled himself then became obedient to death, even death on to the cross. And God has exalted him to the highest place that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." So Jesus, in His total obedience to the will of the Father exemplifies a healthy humility in all of its ways. And what does the scripture say to us? "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and in due time He will lift you up."

Ben Poole
Yeah, this is such a huge topic, and I think that a lot of what you talked about, even what C.S. Lewis said is so true. That pride really, from my perspective, is selfishness, "It's about me." And as Christians it's everything but about me. It's supposed to be about God and about others, and that should be our hearts desire. So I just kind of looked this up. There's so many different places you can look on different topics of the Bible. One of them is openbible.info, where you can type in different themes and it'll put out, you know, like the first hundred verses of that topic. Well so I put in pride just to see, and there's well over a hundred verses that talk directly about pride and pridefulness and the sin of it. A lot of them are found in Proverbs, which is a book of wisdom, which I think we ought to be reading in pretty regularly. I just wanna read a few of these: Proverbs 11:2, "When pride comes then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom." Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 29:23, "One's pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor." Jump to the New Testament, because this is also talked about in the New Testament, one that's I think really impactful, it comes out of James. That I think sometimes we don't like to talk about some of these things, because it's unpopular, uncomfortable. But this is what James 4:6 says, "But he gives more grace. Therefore Scripture says: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." So one thing that I strive for in my own life is, if there's pride what position is that placing in me in my relationship with God?

Gary Schick
And others.

Ben Poole
And others especially, you know? And so that realization that if I'm allowing pride to settle in my life, this is a real sin, and if I'm allowing it to settle, what does that mean? That I am in opposition to the will of God. To consider that is detrimental to the Christian to think, "I'm placing myself at odds with God." I don't know anyone who's a Christian who wants to be at odds with God. And to lose maybe the blessing of God because of selfishness and pride. And so we strive to be humble and what does that look like? And there's so many things that we could talk about there, but---

Gary Schick
Jesus.

Ben Poole
Its really yeah, what did Jesus do? He gave His life for others and we're called, you know, and I think about this even as husbands. You know, as we are to lead our family and Ephesians says, "Husbands, you are to love your wives." How? Like Christ loved the church. What did Jesus do to love the church? He gave Himself up for the church. That's how we lead our families is a sacrificial way that we would give up ourselves for the people that we love.

Gary Schick
And others, if you're in any kind of a position of power or authority, how do you view and treat those that are under your care or leadership or direction? Do you demand or do you serve? Do you lead by example or do you lead by authority and position? I tell you what, pride not only puts us out of balance, but putting us in the place of God. When we are not that, we're just vice Regents in this creation who rule under Him. But it also dries up everything that we desire, it's a love killer. Let's not forget 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered." It's not proud, not self seeking. You know, in a way that definition kind of spells out what pride is. It's wanted itself, to put it in the Old King James, it puffs itself up, it puts itself first and ends up ultimately, last and alone. A lonely place to be.

Ben Poole
So you're listening to this and we're talking about pride, and you know, we don't have a whole lot of time left, but I just kind of wanna look into how do we get that? How do we get a grip on it? How do we really address, as you did touch on that, kind of at the beginning, what's the anecdote for this? Jesus. And we say that, but I wanna put some meat on that. What is that gonna look like? And I think part of it is, maybe you don't know if there's pride in your life or not. One thing that I do and I try to do regularly in my own prayer time with God is, "God, if there is sin in my life that I'm not aware of, would you help me to see it so that I can truly repent for from that?" And that's where it comes to, is this heart of, "I do not desire to be proud I want to be humble. So God, would you show me in my life where I have the sin of pride?" And then go to God in prayer and truly repent and give that up to God. And then through your daily life, I'm kind of a practical person, so I think about throughout the day, you know, one of my struggles as a Christian is anger, you know? And so I have to be really hands on with that, and really address that. And when I see a situation that I'm struggling with, that I want to be angry, I'm aware of it because it's on my mind. And I think pride or any other sin can be that way. It's in our mind, we're thinking about it and we're trying to stop Satan from having that foothold in our life that we can, "No Satan, you are not welcome here. I'm not allowing this to take place, I'm sticking with team Jesus here. You know, and I'm gonna go a different path." And sometimes, and I think pride especially, that can be really hard. Where to have that understanding that we to be like Christ and have that same mindset. That was not an easy thing, even for Jesus to do, you know? He really, you know, I think about the sacrifice He gave for the world. I mean, He was so stressed out physically as a human, nearly to the point of death already. That sweating blood was a real thing that took place, and it means that your body was so distraught that it's near death from the stress. And so I'm not saying that that's where we're at, but I'm understanding that God is full of grace, thankfully, and He sees that. But we need to understand that we're not called to live this easy life, the stress-free life. We're living a life of sacrifice, but for the glory of God.

Gary Schick
Yeah, and you know, I think of the beatitudes, and they focus on humility. And, you know, the very first, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom." So a confession to God, "Lord, you know what, pride, It is at the core of my sin, the old sinful nature. And I can't fix that, so I just ask you to do what I can't, make me aware." We have to humble ourselves to come to Christ and we need to continually humble ourselves to say, "And Christ do your work in me." I think focusing on the virtues that come from a Christ-centered life, you know, the fruits of the spirit, praying for those and focusing on those. I think, again Paul's words in Philippians finally brought us "Whatever is true, noble, right, pure." Friendship building, well spoken, virtuous, praiseworthy, think about these things. And then, you know, I think there was some real wisdom in old Martin Luther. He would actually pray through the 10 Commandments and he'd just say, "Lord, where is something else God, in my life besides you? Where have I misused your name? Where am I, you know, not respecting others? Where am I lusting? Where am I coveting?" Where, you know, he would work through, and then finally don't ever forget the greatest, "Lord in what ways am I failing to love you and my neighbor?" God will show you the pride in places and the places of sin in your life. When you do the work to declare your need for Him, when you put your focus on the virtues, and when you physically pray through the Commandments, and let Him do the weeding. Don't be so proud that you think you can do this by yourself.

Ben Poole
Yeah, and I think I wanna close with that before we pray out of here, but I kind of give it as a warning, but kind of just a realization. If you're gonna pray to God, which you should, and you're asking Him to reveal some things, or show some things, be prepared to listen. You know, be prepared to listen and then be obedient because He's not gonna lead you down a path that He doesn't want you on. He's gonna lead you down the right one, but we need to be able to hear, listen, and obey.

What is the Israel of God? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
And Gary, as one of these questions were sent in by our listeners, it reads this way. It says, "Can you explain what Paul is talking about in Galatians 6:16 when he talks about the Israel of God," and I'm gonna read that verse. And then I'm gonna turn it over to you, Gary, and to see what your thoughts are. But the verse reads this way, "And as many as walk, according to this rule, peace and mercy, be upon them. And upon the Israel of God." And this term, Israel of God, seems to have really got a hold of our listener who is asking about what this means.

Gary Hashley
Well to start with, we should begin with that statement about, who follow this rule. And if you look at what Paul's been talking about, he's talking about, that salvation is found in the Lord, Jesus Christ. He talks up in verse 12 about the cross of Christ, and he talks later about not boasting in your flesh. But he emphasizes the need for faith, and we know that it is faith that saves. And so the rule he's talking about is the truth of the gospel. It's not like, you know, "Do this physical act, bring an offering, whatever, and you're saved." Or you know, I'd say, "It's not be baptized and you'll be saved or take communion and you'll be saved," but it's believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. But yeah, the part that the question entails is the last three words, Israel of God, question being, what is he talking about when it comes to the Israel of God? And part of this hinges upon another word, just prior to that, which seems like a word you don't pay a lot of attention to, it's just a connective word. I'm reading from the ESV, the English standard version, "Mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God." We've talked in the past on this program about the inspiration of scripture and that we believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of scripture. Verbal, we believe the actual words that were written down by Moses or by Isaiah or by the apostle Paul, the very words they wrote, God superintendent, that those were the words that they used. Plenary has to do with the fact that all of the words, not just some of the words, not just the ones that seem like spiritual words, but all of the words were inspired. And we always like to make sure we give this little explanation. And that is in the original theological term, the original autographs or the actual copy that Isaiah wrote or Ezekiel wrote, or Matthew wrote or Paul wrote. Well in this particular verse 16 of chapter six of Galatians, "Mercy, be upon them, and upon the Israel of God," it's just a little three letter Greek word, Kai. And the question being, how is that to be translated? Because that word technically can be used in more than one way. If you have a New International Version that you like to read from, the word you find isn't 'and' it's 'even.' So it would be read, "Mercy be upon them, even upon the Israel of God," making that the same, but my ESV and the New American Standard and others, "Mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God." So that makes a whole change in how you would understand that. Is it them even the Israel of God or them and the Israel of God? And I must say that I agree with the scholars who did the New American Standard and who did the English standard version. That the context and all makes sense, that it's 'and' be upon them 'and' upon the Israel of God. So there are those who say, "Well, you know, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about the Israel of God being everybody who knows Jesus? Are we saying the Israel of God are Jewish people who've come to truly know Jesus as their personal savior? Or are we talking about the Israel of God is the church today? And saying then that the church now is Israel, that the Israel of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Israel of crossing the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai. And the walls of Jericho falling down and the Israel with a king like David and a king like Solomon, that they were totally thrown away by God. And the church today is slipped into that spot. And we are now the Israel of God, thus saying the promises to Israel now are promises to me, promises to you if you know the Lord Jesus as savior. So if you go along with the NIV, "Mercy be upon them, even the Israel of God," you might come to the conclusion. Then we're talking about Israel of God, are believers in the church age. And we are now Israel, but I would go along with those who say, we're talking about mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. And if you remember, there's a spot in Romans where the apostle Paul says, "You know, not everybody who is a blood descendant of Abraham, is a spiritual descendant of Abraham." That there are those who are Jews simply because of their genetics, but there are also those who are children of Abraham in the sense that they are also not only just genetically Jewish. But they are people of faith, like Abraham was a man of faith. So that there are Jewish people who come to know the Lord, Jesus Christ, and even today with Israel set aside and Gentiles grafted in, as Paul wrote in Romans, to the faith. Yet there are Jewish people coming to faith today, and yet someday it says all Israel will be saved. But right now there are Jewish people who realize Jesus is Messiah putting their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. So my conclusion is, and I'm not sure where Brad's going because we didn't discuss this before we started. But my conclusion is, he's talking about those who are Gentiles, who know Jesus, them and upon the Israel of God, Jewish people who have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior from sin. So it makes a difference. Is it the word 'and' or is it the word 'even' Bradley?

Brad Kilthau
You're gonna find Gary, that my thoughts on this are not anywhere away from what you're sharing. I mean, we're pretty much on the same thought. Kind of, when I was reading through this and thinking about what to share with our listeners about the Israel of God, that is shared in this verse. You know, it seems like in the church, we've always tried to categorize people who come to our worship services. And one of the things I found, is that years ago the Methodist church registers once contained three columns of people who would attend their worship services. You could either be considered a seeker or one who's saved or one who is sanctified. And so they would actually make this register and put your name in one of those columns after you attended church on that Sunday. So I guess it kind of, they must have had some special insight into the heart of people that other people don't have. But, you know, there's obviously always been this thought to categorize people, and I think this is one of the things that's being addressed here in the church of Galatia, by the apostle Paul. And I think he's addressing these legalists who are trying to put something upon the congregants of the church. And the argument I think that they were trying to express here is that, they had a form of legalism that had to be done in order for a person to go into heaven. And so these Judaizers, as we would call them in Bible school, I think had two columns. They had those who were legalists and going to heaven, and those who were not legalists and weren't going to heaven. They were trying to force these legalistic things upon the people. And I think it's very clear, is when you look at verse 15 it says, "If we're in Christ, neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation." And so he was getting after these Judaizers who were always trying to put their rituals upon the Gentiles, and especially the Jewish ritual of circumcision. And so I believe this term is really the apostle Paul, who's kind of putting the leather to these guys, and he's making a charge against them for their false teaching. Their doctrinal deviation, their unworthy motive, because I think their motive that Paul's getting after here is really bragging rights. And that's really the motive of what most people would do when it comes to legalism, is they put legalistic requirements upon people, so they can brag. And I don't know, maybe the picture here is that when these Judaizers returned to Jerusalem and they got up in their missionary conference meetings and they got to stand up in front of all the people, they could say, "Well we traveled far and wide, and we've got all of these scallops to show for our efforts," or something like that, I don't know. But you know, it's really a great warning in application, I think for us as ministers and those who serve in the ministry today. And it's a challenge for us to make sure that we keep the gospel pure, but also that we keep our motives pure in the ministry. It's very tempting for those in the ministry to get together, have bragging sessions about the statistics that are going on in their church. And you know, sometimes we'll tip our hat obviously and say, "Well it was God, it was the good Lord that made it happen." But then we get to sit back and dwell in the limelight for ourselves, and we have to be careful that we don't fall into this. And the truth is, no one can really escape this temptation fully, because pride is one of those tender boxes that just so easily can go off in the heart of people on this side of eternity. Cause right now we are not perfectly conformed in the image of Christ, that will not happen until we get to heaven. And so we have to have this antidote, I think for this poison of pride, and that is, you know, self crucifixion of the flesh. We have to do that everyday and make sure that our motives are never prideful. And you know, I think it's kind of ironic that we're talking about this right now too, at this time of the year, because we have our church annual meetings that usually come up at the fiscal part of the new year. And we make up our annual reports and we got to be careful that we don't make these reports into bragging about our churches, or bragging about our self efforts, or bragging about these statistics that we have. We've got to make sure that we keep pride out of the ministry. And so I think that's what Paul's done here, is he set the stage in these verses with addressing these Judaizers in the church at this time. And he's saying, "Guys, there's only two categories, but there's these two categories are this way. There is the new creation, and there are those who are trying to add on to their old religion, adding salvation onto their old religion." We know that those are part of the new creation we're a new creation in Christ. We're totally new, and it comes about by faith alone in Jesus Christ. But there are always those who seem to want to add onto their old religion. That is, "Well, we'll believe in Jesus, but we're gonna keep our old rituals and our old religion. And that has to be done too, and they make the two try to come together." Now we have to make sure that we are part of the new creation because it's only about Christ and it's only about Him and His work. This new creation, it's not an improvement, it's not an addition to our old, but it's something entirely new. And so I think when he uses this term, the Israel of God, he's trying to point out something to these Judaizers. And he's trying to very pointedly say, "I'm talking about those who put their faith and trust in Jesus," not only as a Gentile and a Jew, which is the general church, but he's making an address to the Jews are born by nature, and a birth of being a Jew. And those who also accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah. That's the Israel of God, Jews who are saved. And so again, he's taken a leather to those guys who are trying to obscure the gospel here, because the true is, as he shares here. There's no real peace and mercy for those who want to walk under the law, there's only peace and mercy for those who are part of the new creation and that's through Christ and Him alone.

Gary Hashley
And, you know, there are those who differ on this. I love reading Bob Utley's commentaries and he says, "It is, the church is the Israel of God." And I'm not gonna break fellowship because I don't agree with him, but I think it's not simply talking about the church. In fact, another author talks about the fact that, you know, Israel of God, that if we say this time, the word Israel of God refers to the church, this author says, "But the other 65 occurrences of the term, Israel in the New Testament refer to Jews." So why would there be 66 times? The word is there 65 times, it refers to people who are genetically Jewish, and one time that it's the church. I mean, I used to teach in Bible college that, if the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense. And if 65 times is talking about national Israel, those who are Jewish by blood, that is probably talking about those who are Jewish by blood here, put their faith in Jesus.

How Were The Scriptures Written? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So last week, if you tuned in, we were talking about different ways people interpret scripture and how it came to those who wrote it down. And we kind of came to a point near the end of our discussion, talking about where the Bible came from, and how that works out into our lives. How can we trust it? Do we take a blind faith to what the Bible says about all these different things? How do we know that the scriptures are true? And so we thought, at least for this week and maybe more, we'll just see where the conversation takes us. But talking more about how we got the Bible and how that plays out into our lives. So I'm gonna hand it over to Gary.

Gary Schick
Well, and yeah, I thought it was a fun conversation last week and you know, the scripture gives us some hints. I mean, like I mentioned last week in Peter's letter, he talks about how people did not just basically write down whatever they wanted, they were carried along by the holy spirit. And we talk about where Paul writes to Timothy, "All scripture is God breathed, it comes from God." So this is what scripture says about itself, but how do we know it's true? And so I just wanted to dwell on that a little bit today because yes, we take God's word by faith, but it is not a faith without evidence. It is a well-founded faith. It is a faith that basically to my mind, it takes more faith to not believe the scriptures than to believe them. And I say that for several reasons, there is both internal evidence in the Bible that shows me that it really is truly God's word and there is external evidence. And so I just want to click off some of the evidences for scripture. First of all, if the Bible really is God's word, what would we expect? We would expect that it actually claims to be so, right? And no kidding. The Bible does claim to be so, over and over again, there are phrases like, "The word of the Lord came," or "The Lord said," and these are things that don't just happen now and then. This kind of, "The word of the Lord came," or "The Lord says," shows up no less than 3,808 times in the Old Testament alone.

Ben Poole
That's impressive.

Gary Schick
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could write a fictional book where in it you say, "The Lord said," so that doesn't actually prove that it's God's word. But if it's God's word, you would expect it to say so and tada, less than almost 4,000 times, 3,808 in the Old Testament, it says, God said. And then you have things like fulfilled prophecy. And I know there are other quote-on-quote scriptures in the world or books that claim to be scripture, but this is really unique to the Bible. Where you have, for example Micah 5:2, the Savior's gonna be born in Bethlehem and then you move onto Luke 2, Jesus is born in Bethlehem and we hear the story on how he gets there. Now Jesus has no control over where He's born. Did it just so happen that He was born in Bethlehem? And you know, that's gonna be of course the argument of people. Well, yes, there's some coincidental fulfillments. Oh no. Oh, over and over and over again in scripture, we read about these fulfillments and not just in Jesus' life. I mean, in the Old Testament, it's such a long book, I mean, it takes over 1500 years to write it. You have these early prophecies of other things that are gonna happen, and you read later on in the Old Testament how these things happen. And not just, sometimes they're within the same book, like the Lord said to the king, "You're gonna win or lose in battle today," and it happened that day. But there's other ones like, you know, when Jericho fell there was a prophecy about what would happen if anybody ever rebuilt it. And several books later, generations later, unrelated people later, it happens. And then in the life of Jesus, I don't have it right in front of me, but even for Him to have fulfilled a fraction of the number of prophecies that relate to Him, the statistics against it happening are gazillion to one. I mean, it's just impossible. And Jesus didn't fulfill a handful of prophecies about the Messiah, He fulfilled all of them. And there are many prophecies. So this one about fulfilled prophecy, that's kind of a big deal. And then you just have the, I guess you wanna say, the continuity of scripture. It really reads kind of like a story from beginning to end, and so what do you need to do that? Well, you need an author, right? I mean, whoever heard of a committee coming up with anything cohesive. And look at the Bible, we're not talking about a committee, we are talking about 40 different writers from all walks of life. Shepherds, kings, farmers, just all walks of life, they lived on three different continents, Africa, Asia, Europe. I mean, they were in different places. Three different languages over a period of 1,600 years with all the changes in people's viewpoint and understanding of how you do life over that kind of a period of time. And yet they come up with a single storyline, and it works from beginning to end. Forty writers, three continents, three languages, 1600 years. And in the Old Testament Christ is coming and in the New Testament He has come and He's coming again. And, you know, Hebrews 1:1-2 kind of talk about, you know, in the past our forefathers, you know, they got the word in various forms, but in our day, Jesus has come. And so we even see why this story has an endpoint because Jesus is the endpoint of scripture. And then God promises, His word is gonna accomplish what it promises. Isaiah 55:10-11, "My word will not come back forth," and it does accomplish. God promises His word will not pass away, Matthew 5:18. Matthew 24: 35, "And His word has not passed away." So there's a lot of internal evidence that God's word is a unique book, that it really is God's word, but then you don't even have to look in the Bible, you can just look at the Bible from the outside. You have the evidence of history, it's not just the Bible that talks about the person of Jesus. There are Roman historians who were not Christians, who reference this man Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilot. His followers said he was raised from the dead. So, you know, does it say one way or another whether Jesus rose again, we could go off, just have a whole conversation about proofs for the resurrection of Jesus. The evidence is, there is early historical evidence from outside of the Bible. Jesus lived, Jesus was a teacher and a healer, He was crucified under a specific Pontius Pilot. And His followers said, "Yup, He rose from the dead." There's sociological evidence, I guess you could call it, there's some things going on in Genesis that just seem weird to us. In terms of, what do you do if you can't have a child? And so Abraham does some things where his wife Sarah gives him her maid servant, and we would go, "Wait a minute." But that was actually common at that particular time in history that Abraham was identified with. We didn't know that until they started, archeologically digging up documents from the era of the Galileans, where Abraham grew up. And oh, some of this stuff that we never could figure out why this was happening it wasn't part of God's plan, but Abraham tried some things that were sinful, but it was common in the culture. And over and over again, the archeological evidence, archeology, you know, there's people would say, "Well, of course the Bible's not true. It says there's a town there and there's no town there." Archeologists start digging with a shovel, guess what they find, they find the town. So there's archeological evidence, there's historical sociological evidence, there's historical evidence. And then there's the manuscript evidence, you know, nobody questions, the writings of Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, or Plato. We have a handful of copies and they're very late. Like Plato lived here and the earliest copies from thousands of years later. We have from the New Testament, I mean, there's a scrap of John that's from, could have been written while John was still alive. We have thousands of copies over and over again, and you can put them all together and you know, is there an error or a change in spelling on a name or something here and there? Yeah. But has there ever been found anything that makes a difference in what we believe? No, probably the biggest question wasn't about the New Testament, it was for a long time about the Old Testament, because the oldest copy that we had of the Old Testament was a thousand years after the time of Jesus. I think it's called Leningrad Codex which is over in Russia. And so people would say, "Well, yeah, that's the Old Testament as we have it now, but what was it really like before Jesus?" Well, then they dug something up called the dead sea scrolls and these things go back what, 2 to 400 years before, or 200 years before Jesus. And so all of a sudden they're reading the Isaiah scroll and they're comparing it to the Leningrad Codex, more than a thousand years later. In a whole chapter, they may find one slight variation in a three letter word, and again, the meaning has not changed at all. And there's a reason for that, the Jews, true they lived in a day when they had to hand copy everything, but they had figured out how many letters were in every book of their Bible. And so they'd get, you know, finished writing the 150 chapters of Psalms, and then they would go back and count the letters, and if it didn't match upright, they'd crumpled it up and start writing over. They were meticulous. So there's the manuscript evidence, it hasn't changed. And then there's just the Bible's endurance in the face of opposition. People have tried to outlaw it, burn it, get rid of it. This book, we still have it, and I don't know about you, Ben, but I've heard about the many lives that the Bible's changed. And I lied, I do know about you cause I know you, I've seen how it's changed your life. I've seen how it's changing my life. This is a living book, this is God's word and it is alive and changing lives. I don't just believe the Bible's God's word because it says so, I believe it's God's word cause I know so in my own life, and then there's all this other evidence besides.

Ben Poole
Yeah, and I think that's really where it comes down to is, as a Christian digging into God's word will show evidence in your life of a life changed. I know for me personally, I would not be in any way who I am today without God's word affecting my life. It's what I love about Hebrews writers says, "Word is living and active and we read it." It's like growing up and I always heard, you could read one passage one time, read it another and you gained something else. I mean, there's always more to learn because the author of the scriptures is the creator of the universe, and He knows what we need in it. And I wanted to just kind of put some numbers out real quick that I was thinking about. When we were talking about these different writers of history that are taken as, how would I put it, secular gospel truth of whatever they were writing nobody questions.

Gary Schick
Or that they wrote it.

Ben Poole
Yeah, nobody questions Homer or Plato for fact. So since Plato lived, the closest evidence of his writing was found 1,300 years later. That's the closest they can come to. There are only seven manuscripts of anything he wrote. Seven, and it is taken as truth. Aristotle, another famous historian that we read about in school growing up. Closest manuscript to his original writings is 1,400 years, there's five copies.

Gary Schick
And they probably don't match up all that well, who knows.

Ben Poole
Right, they are what they call reconstructions.

Gary Schick
Okay, so that means, so they've actually gone in and changed things?

Ben Poole
Things have changed in what was being said. Now let's just look at the New Testament. The closest we come to the original writers is 100 years. Again, could have been while John was still alive in that one piece. There are 14,000 manuscripts.

Gary Schick
Yeah, tons of them.

Ben Poole
And they are all telling the same truth. The reason I believe that there's such an issue with the disbelief of scripture, is because this is Satan's playground. If he can get you to question the authority of scripture, in a lot of ways, everything else crumbles. And that's where we have to be so careful. So this is more than just numbers and we're trying to tell you, there's a lot of actual, physical proof that the scriptures are absolutely true. But you have to in some ways, you've got to investigate and invest into this to know it.

Gary Schick
Well, so confronted with that, are you willing to let the Holy Spirit come in and change your life? And that's, I think why we don't wanna believe it because, if this is true then wait a minute.

Ben Poole
Our life has to change.

Gary Schick
Yeah, I have to line my life up to God. I can't make God fit into my box, I have to fit into His picture. And you know what? That is painful at times. But as I look at where I'm at and where I've been and where I'm headed, I'm just like, "You know, and it's gonna hurt some more Lord, but keep making me more in the image of Jesus," because I don't wanna be who I was without Him. I don't even wanna be who I was five, six years ago with Him. And it hurts, but God, God is faithful, and His word is true. And, you know, you talk about how you keep getting more out of it. The meaning doesn't change, but the applications and the way it applies, you just didn't see it before. And there is just so much depth there, because of its true author, the Holy Spirit.

Views On How The Scriptures Were Written - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so kind of a big question or topic that we're discussing today that maybe a lot of these words you've never heard of, and we'll try to kind of make this understandable and easy for us to walk through. So, they asked if we could take some time to walk through some of the different views of inspiration regarding the scriptures. Views like modernism orthodoxy, Neo orthodoxy, verbal and plenary inspiration. Essentially, what do we believe as to how the scriptures were actually written and what do other people believe as to how the scriptures were written? And then what does that mean for us? And that's really kind of, I think where we need to go with that is, what does this mean for us as Christians, who are Bible believing people, and how do we place our trust in that? And so Gary, I just kind of wanna open up and let you take off with it.

Gary Schick
Yeah, and that's a great question, it's huge. I don't know if we'll get through it today or not, I guess we'll just kind of keep an eye on the clock and see where it goes. But what you believe about the Bible is huge. Is it God's word? Is it not God's word? If it is, you know, how did we get it and even you know, how do we know it's true? So I didn't dig into quite all of the things there, but, I dug into a couple of them a little bit. There are different viewpoints as to the nature of God's word, and there are some big words that are thrown around. Inspiration is one of them, which "to inspire," literally means in breathe. And we get that from Paul's letter to Timothy, where it says all scripture is God breathed. Literally God breathed it out and profitable for teaching, reprove correction, and training and righteousness. So that's, I guess a starting point, and what does God's word say about itself? So I want to kind of define some of this, but then I think that's where we really need to go. What does the Bible say about itself? So in terms of orthodoxy, and I picked up some of this from a website called Got questions, Your answers, Biblical answers. So in terms of orthodoxy, the Orthodox view holds that the Bible is the revealed word of God, given by the inspiration of God. By inspiration both verbal and mechanical, is meant that the holy spirit was in full control of the biblical writer by either verbally dictating everything he was writing or using the person as a vessel through which to work. This doctrine of inspiration comes to the logical conclusion that the original manuscripts are without error or contradiction. In other words, yes, there's a human author, but they are writing what God has given them to write. And God has taken that person with their vocabulary, their viewpoint, their understanding, and gotten His words in print for us. Plenary is this concept that the Bible is complete and sufficient revelation of God, and a couple of passages that would support this are 2 Timothy 3:16--17, which I just quoted from. And also 2 Peter 1:20 and 21, which I'm hoping to get to here in a few minutes. Neo orthodoxy is kind of a semi liberal view. The liberal viewpoint would be, "You know, the Bible's written by a bunch of human authors, it's full of errors, it's basically what different people have believed over time." Neo orthodoxy kind of tries to come at least part way to the Orthodox position. It defines the word of God as Jesus, and so that would appeal to us. John 1:1 "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God," it's Jesus. However, here's where we part ways with the Neo Orthodox. It says, "That the Bible therefore is simply man's interpretation of the word's actions, Jesus actions." And thus the Bible itself is not inspired, it's a human document, various parts of it might literally be true, but various parts might not be. And so, the Neo Orthodox you would be essentially, the Bible contains the word of God, without being the word of God. I happened to have a professor when I was in college, drove me crazy until I figured out this is really where he was coming from. We were in a class called Bible and Culture, and I was like, "Great, and we're gonna talk about Moses and the parting of the Red Sea." And I'll never forget him standing up in front of the class and saying to us, "There are true stories and truth stories. And the Bible is full of truth stories." Well, you know what? Aesop's fables are great stories full of truth, but they're not true, they're fiction. And I woke up in the middle of the night and my roommate's like, "What was going on with you last night? You sat up in bed and you're like, Ryan Arnold will tell you it's a truth story." It's just like choking on this idea. I'm sorry, friends, I have not dedicated my life to teaching people a bunch of truth stories. Yes, God's word is full of truth because it's true. And so with that, first of all, I wanna let you know what my denomination, the foresees, a conservative congregational Christian conference believes. We believe the Bible---consisting of the old and new Testament---referring to the 66 books of the Protestant Bible to be the only inspired inherent, infallible authoritative word of God written. Inspired, God breathed, inherent, without air, infallible. It won't lead us astray, authoritative, it's what we base our Christian life and practice on. Word of God, written down, as opposed to Jesus, the living word this is the written word. What does the Bible say about itself? I think that's the key. I've already quoted 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is, God breathed." 2 Peter 1:21 says, "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the holy spirit." I think it's important to remember that Jesus quotes from the breadth of the old Testament. If you look at the Hebrew Bible, it consists of three parts, the law, the prophets, and the writings and Jesus quotes from all of them. He never quotes from the apocryphal book. The books that we find in the Apocrypha that's included in the Roman Catholic Bible, but he does quote from the books that we consider the Bible of the old Testament, that the Jews consider the Bible of the old Testament, the Jews also don't include the Apocrypha. And in terms of the new Testament, we have evidence that the new Testament writers knew exactly what they were doing. For example, Paul writes 1 Thessalonians 2:13, "Therefore we never stopped thanking God, that when you received His message from us, you didn't think of it as our words, as mere human ideas, you accepted what we said as the very word of God, which of course it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe." And the Bible's a powerful book, there's so much we can go off into, in terms of what the Bible says about itself. Hebrews 4:12, it's one of my favorites, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edge sword. Piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow, discerning the very thoughts and intentions of the heart." Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." The scripture describes itself as a lamp, as a fire, as a hammer, as a sword, as bread, as milk, as honey, as meat. If we had time to look at all those scriptures, it really is complete and without error and good for us. It's not only do we base our faith on it, but we grow in our faith from it. Just so much could be said on this topic.

Ben Poole
Yeah, there really is. And I think if you're listening and part of a church that is in any way really associated with even KCMI, I think that we would all fall on that same understanding of scripture. That we believe and hold scripture to be our beginning and end of our understanding of faith. That we believe that it is perfect in and of itself, we believe that it is God's word. There's times where the writers wrote, like dictations, specifically wrote exactly what Jesus said. You can see that through Jesus' teachings, you can even see that from the gospels. Even in Revelation where John writes and records what Jesus said, to specifically the seven churches. But we also see that they didn't write just verbatim what Jesus was saying, they wrote stories. They wrote, you know, John's seeing this vision of the Revelation and he's writing what he sees. You see Luke who writes the book of Acts, and he's writing about the growth of the church. He's writing a history lesson essentially, of what is taking place. You see Paul, Peter, James, they're writing letters to churches, encouraging them. Paul says, "These people say hello and blessings to you, and I pray for you and I think of you." And so all of that though, we believe is 100% inspired through the Holy Spirit, speaking through the apostles. And sharing God's word from Genesis to Revelation that it is completely God breathed through them. It very well could have been different for each of them. Obviously, John writing Revelation had a very different experience, than maybe Paul did in writing his letters. But, yeah, I mean, this is huge and I would just encourage you to probably try and make a grasp of this, if you don't already, because this understanding can affect our spiritual walk. Because like, if you have a professor like you had Gary, who really doesn't believe. I mean, and what if we take that stance? How does that affect our faith? Well, that can make massive lifelong changes in our world and in ourselves.

Gary Schick
What it really means is, and this is where the liberals and the modernists part ways with us, that means they can pick and choose. They get to be actually the authority of God's word, not God Himself. And so, if they don't like something, you know, like, "Oh, the Genesis. That doesn't match with our views of evolution, so therefore that's just a story with truth in it, it's no longer true." And not just Genesis, although Genesis is foundational to everything. But, you know, we look at all the moral questions of our times and we see how, what we call Biblical churches have parted ways with what we call Mainline and Liberal churches. Well, what what's going on there? The Mainline and the Liberal churches are following the culture and wherever culture contradicts scripture, "Scripture's wrong, scripture's wrong, scripture's wrong. We've moved on, we've evolved beyond that. And so our understanding has evolved." Well, God said it, I believe it, that settles it, and you know what, cultures change, our viewpoints change. What people consider morally right culturally, a hundred years from now, may be radically different from what it is today. But God's word and His view on marriage, sexuality, on so many things, it stays the same. And thank God that it does, because it's a foundation you can build your life on. Jesus said, "Whoever hears my word and puts them into practice, is like a wise man who builds his house on a rock." And every other path is what the other guy built, the fool built on sand. So I'm gonna stick with God's word, I'm not saying it's always easy. You're right, you pointed out there's every kind of, I guess what you'd call genre, in scripture. There's history, there's poetry, there's prophecy, there are parables, which, you know, they aren't things that literally happen when they're parables. But that's different than when we're reading a history that is saying, this is what happened. And so, do we have to kind of understand what we're reading there to get the right interpretation? Absolutely, but the key is, God has given it. It's true and it contains truth because it's true.

Ben Poole
Yep, absolutely. I would encourage if you've never really looked into this, this kind of goes with it, but maybe a history of how we got our Bible. It's a beautiful history actually. There's so many books, I studied one when I was in college. It's simply, How we got the Bible from Lightfoot, I just looked it up on Amazon, it's the first one that pulled up. A phenomenal, just really great view, for me it helped solidify my foundation of my faith. That I can trust God's word, that what we're reading is true and accurate today.

What Does It Mean To Be God's People? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
Our question today is one that's very extensive and we'll try to get through it as quick as we can. There's a lot of subject matter to cover, but the question is, "Often 1 Peter 2:9-10 is quoted in the church about who we are as believers in Christ. But being chosen or called a Royal priesthood or a holy nation or His own special people is really hard to comprehend for some of us. And so could you guys explain a little bit of the meanings of those titles?" So I'm gonna just take the first one if you don't mind and then I'll let you guys take the other ones. Maybe mine's a little easier, I don't know. But when we get into verse nine of 1 Peter chapter two, the apostle Peter identifies the church, that is believers, as a chosen race. And as I was looking at this in the context of scripture, of course, when you go back to chapter one, verse two, Peter already told us that we are the elect, according to the foreknowledge of God, the father. When you start bringing up the subject, obviously of being the elect, that's a very controversial subject. And it has a lot of problems within the church and there's a lot of divisiveness, but I think if we look at it in light of what Peter already wrote in 1 Peter chapter two, when he said "We are the elect, according to the foreknowledge of God, the father," that clears up a whole lot of things. That means that before God created the world, that he chose us in accordance with His omniscient knowledge, which includes all of our free choices. And when I look at this, I know there's those who stand on one rail as compared to the other rail, free choice or God's sovereignty. I don't see that in the Bible, I see both rails running to heaven as has been shared in some of the commentaries that I've read in past years. And what I see it as is, really it means that God doesn't violate our free will, even though He is sovereign, even though His will is going to be done perfectly, He doesn't violate our free will. He doesn't force anyone into His heaven, kicking and screaming, not wanting to go. We do know that God didn't create us as robots, He doesn't wind us up and we walk around as a programmed robot and loving Him. In fact, I love what C.S. Lewis said some years ago, he said, "Without choice, you cannot have true love." And I think that's something we have to always keep in mind when we think about the sovereignty of God, and also our free choice is, if there's ever gonna be real love, there always has to be choice. And we know that even in our own personal relationships, there can't be true love between a husband and wife, unless there's a choice to love one another in that relationship. But then on the other side of things, we know that God is in the eternal now. That means that He's not limited to time, He's not limited chronologically like we are. I know for myself, I can't even operate unless things are chronologically put into order. And I think this is one of the problems that we come up to with this debate, is that many people wanna make God think like us. They try to make God limited, they try to make God finite, they try to make God in a box. And that is not our God, our God is eternal, our God is infinite, our God is necessary, and our God is the first cause. We have to remember that God's above space, time and material universe that we live in, He's not bound by it. And therefore in His order to determine who's elect and His omniscient knowledge of our free choice, they run together. In fact, some of the commenters that you'll study on these passages of scripture will tell us that those two are coextensive. In other words, God's sovereignty does not outreach our free choice, they run together. There's not one more powerful in the way God does things over the other. So since God has transcended again over time, space and material, universe, He's not limited to the ways we are. In time and chronologically again, He exists in eternal now that means that God can look into the future just in the same accuracy as we can look in the past. In fact, I love what Norman Geisler wrote in his book that I read just recently, called Free But Chosen. And he talks about how often he'd be out, giving lectures and there would be a football game at home, and he wanted to watch the game, but he couldn't get home to watch it. So his wife would record the game and then he would go home and watch the game, the film. And what he said is, "Of course the game would always end up the same way on the film. I mean, you could watch it over and over and over again, the play, the players, the referee calls, everything was always the same. It was fixed, you couldn't change it. But the day they played that game, the players all had a choice in which way they ran, what play they ran as the game was played." And I think we can look at the same way of our life, is we are players in the game of life. We have a free choice, even though God has His will determined of what's gonna happen in the future. But I think we have to keep in mind the consequences of our choice, understanding that you and I, we will always absolutely be held responsible for our choices. Our choice of accepting the Lord or rejecting the Lord, that is determining our eternal destination. God has always projected Himself before all men that He exists. As we know in Romans one and two, and God has always shared that He is there. And if man would reach out and pursue that light, God will give more light until eventually it accumulates to that gospel, bringing that person to the knowledge and understanding of our lost condition and our need for Christ. It's not a case of if we see God or not, the Bible tells us all man sees God, but the Bible also tells us it's man's choice to accept or to reject Him. So I guess what I'm saying is we are responsible for our decision to accept or reject the Lord. But at the same time, God has in His foreknowledge accepted us according to the choice, obviously that we've made to accept or reject Him too. So the chosen race, yeah. We either choose God or we suppress the truth and walk away from Him. So that's one of the ways I would try to, in a nutshell, try to quickly explain why we are called a chosen race. And so Tim, I'm gonna hand off the next one to you a Royal priesthood.

Tim Hebbert
You know, guys, I think this is a passage of scripture that all Christians need to read more than once, maybe once a week, remind ourselves of who He's called us to be in Him. So when Peter's writing this letter and he refers to the church as God's chosen, as a Royal priesthood. For the Jews anyway, he's hearkening back to something that they would've understood from scripture, all the way back in Exodus, 19th chapter. Moses has led them out of Egypt, two months into the journey they make a stop at Mount Sinai, and it says this, "Exactly two months---." This is chapter 19 verse one of Exodus, "Exactly two months after the Israelites left Egypt, they arrived in the wilderness of Sinai after breaking camp in Rephidim. They came to the wilderness of Sinai and set up camp at the base of Mount Sinai, then Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The Lord called to him from the mountain and said, 'Give these instructions to the family of Jacob, announce it to the descendants of Israel. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on Eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you'll obey me, keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth, for all the earth belongs to me.

Tim Hebbert
And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation. This is the message you must give to the people of Israel." God's intent for His children, that He delivered from Egypt is that they just wouldn't be a band of followers, but that they would be king priests, Royal priesthood that would declare to the world who God was. They were to be the on earth, living example of what happens when you follow the king of the universe, they struggled to do that. And so what Peter's telling us, I think in this passage is, "Okay, we're the new Israel, that's our calling now. That calling that he gave the nation of Israel so long ago, he's calling on his church now to take up that mantle, to be my Royal priesthood, to be the king priest, if you will, here on earth, declaring to the world who I am. And whenever I read this passage, I think of growing up as a kid, when my dad was leading song service at church, that was back before worship teams, right. We'd do a couple of hymns and invariably, his favorite chorus was Child of the King, oh yes, oh yes I'm a child of the King. And this is the phrase he loved the best, "His Royal blood now, flows through my veins." And I think we forget that we get worn down in the day to day minutia of life. And yes, we love Jesus, yes we're following in as best we can, but we forget He's calling to a higher purpose. He's called us to live a Royal life, just like He did. And that's what I get from that. but I'm gonna turn it over to Gary, cause he's gonna talk a little bit about, what does it mean to be a holy nation?

Gary Hashley
You know, there's a lot of confusion today over the role of Israel, the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob and Jacob's 12 sons. And today the church, which is comprised of yes, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who've put their personal faith in Jesus Christ, as their savior, and those of us who aren't Jewish. I remember on the way home from church one Sunday after hearing this term circumcision and uncircumcision in a sermon, you know, I asked my dad what all that meant. And he says, "Well, if you're uncircumcised, it's referring to you as a Gentile." What's a Gentile? How do you know if you're a Gentile? He said, "If you're not a Jew, you are one. If you're not a Jew, you are a Gentile." And so what this isn't saying as I look through the entirety of scripture, it's not saying that we, as the church today have totally replaced Israel in God's purposes, in God's plan, in God's prophetic realities because you know, we are not Israel. Though we are still a chosen people, we are still a holy nation. Kenneth West does great work with Greek, and I don't know a lot of Greek, but I love to know guys who do know Greek. And Kenneth West says the word nation is the translation of a Greek word, meaning quote, "A multitude of people of the same nature." It doesn't mean that we're of a nationality as a nation, as the Jewish people are a nation, but that we have this commonality in Jesus Christ. We have this new nature in Jesus Christ as His followers. The word holy means set apart, set apart for His service. And so let me quote, Matthew Henry who says, "All Christians, wheresoever they be, composed one holy nation. They are one nation collected under one head agreeing in the same manners and customs and governed by the same laws. And they are a holy nation because they are consecrated and devoted to God renewed and sanctified by His holy spirit." So it doesn't matter what nation we belong to physically, as in whether we are of the United States or we are of Bolivia, or we are of Brazil, or we are of Russia, or we are of China. We are a special people to God, and we're special people, not because of the land we live in or the boundaries of our country, but because we are all followers of Jesus. As we used to sing as children, "Red and yellow, black and white, they're precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world." And as His children, through faith in Jesus, no matter the color of our skin, no matter where our ethnic background goes, we are His people. We're a holy people, but we're set apart for Him. And I love what Warren Wiersbe says, because in the old king James, it says we're a peculiar people. And I remember as a young person, peculiar was not something you wanted to be, because we think of strange, we think of weird. But Warren Wiersbe said it so well he said, "It doesn't mean odd, it means refreshingly different. That there's something about us that when the world looks, it's refreshingly different." And if we read a little farther, Peter in verse 12, just a couple verses later says, "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation." Peter says, "We are chosen, a chosen people, a chosen race, a Royal priesthood, a holy nation." And the whole purpose of that in God's scheme of things is to have a way to glorify Himself through people who are refreshingly different. And if the world wants to look for something to complain about, something to pick at us about, all they can find is we live a wonderfully different lifestyle that is respectful and kind, and honorable and ethical. And that just like with Daniel, when said, "They went to look for some reason to accuse Daniel, the only thing they could find was he prayed a lot." And so they worked against him because he prayed a lot. So what a joy to be a part, no matter where we live on the planet, as followers of Jesus. We are God's nation. Does He still have a plan for Israel nationally? Yes, He does. I believe fully. We didn't replace Israel in that sense, but we are His people in a very special way.

Where Does The Sanctity Of Life Come From? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So, like I said, we're gonna continue in our discussion. We have a few questions that we'd like to cover, but I'm just gonna start with this next question. "We use the term, sanctity of life. What does that mean? Is it right to use this term? And if so, where does this sanctity come from?" So Gary, what are your thoughts on that?

Gary Schick
Well, you know, it's a great question. And sanctity is one of those, you know, 50 cent, well, I guess we live in an inflated world, $300 words. But you know, it's a kind of a pricey word that we're not sure really what it means. Basically it means, to be holy, to be set apart, to be sacred, these are all ways of translating the basic meaning of that. And so what we're saying is, that human life is very precious in the eyes of God. We are, as the scripture tells us, Genesis chapter one, "In the image of God, He created them, male and female. He created them." So we are created by God in God's image. And of all the rest of creation, go back and read to Genesis chapter one. It's a beautiful chapter, great place to start the year. As we enter this new year, all life, all creation is precious, God made it. And we should have a care for it, but above all human life is unique in that we reflect the image of God. And so that's why there's such a priority on life, and with sanctity of life Sunday, this is something that has come about. Since the advent of Roe v. Wade, bringing attention of Christians to the sacredness and the specialness of life, right from conception, right from the womb. We talked a little bit about scripture on that you know, "You created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb," Psalm 139. In Job, it actually talks about how Job reflects on how God actually caused his conception. So yes, there's a physical process involved, but there are no human mistakes. You know what? I've talked to people, I spoke with somebody this week, just basically said, "You know what, all my life, I felt like I was a mistake." And I don't think they were even referring to conception, it's just the way this world treated them. And you know what good news it is when we discover that the Bible tells us the truth about ourselves, it doesn't deny sin or evil. These are real, I've heard people to deny that too. No, these are real, but you are still precious in God's sight. Jesus died for your sin, Jesus died to save you. And so, right from conception, life is precious. We need to protect it we need to honor it, we need to treat it as sacred. We need to make ready for it to come into the world, but at the same time, you know, I'm just gonna touch on this real lightly, cause I don't want any fuses blowing. But unfortunately this has become a kind of a politicized issue, and you know, there are basically two parties out there. I don't have to know what they say or say what they are. One of them, at least in its platform stands for life, and the other one seems not to. I just wanna caution us all, that when we say we're pro-life biblically, that means womb to tomb. And unfortunately one side is really good at saying, "We need to protect life in the womb." And the other side is actually better at saying, "And we want to care for that life once it's out of the womb." And as Christians, we need to speak to both parties, we need to say to the one, "Yes, thank you. This is precious from conception, but guess what, what is it that's pushing people toward those hard decisions? How can we help them care for this life once in the world?" The other side, "Thank you for your care for the life that's in the world, by the way, it's in the world even when it's in mama's tummy."

Ben Poole
Yeah, a hundred percent!

Gary Schick
And so that's as far as I wanna go with that. And I think whatever, and I do know Christians of both political persuasions, whatever party you're in, stand for all sides of life within it, stand for the biblical concept of life.

Ben Poole
That is such a powerful statement you made. And I know we don't wanna, you know, pop a cork with anybody, or blow a fuse. But that's speaking truth, plain and simple. And I was thinking about the sanctity of life and why, which actually, kind of coincides with the last question. Why do we seem to place more value in the life of animals than we do on humans? And man, we see that, honestly, I've thought about that even in movies, you know, the dog dies and everybody's, you know, crying, but a person dies and it's like, well, maybe they had it coming, you know. And we just have this kind of a twisted view in the world, but why do we consider human life a sanctity? And I think it goes back to that Genesis one in creation, that we were created in the image of God, but even later at the crucifixion. Jesus didn't come to live this perfect sinless life to become sin for animals. Animals don't sin, they are just animals. We are the ones in need of being saved, because we sin and we mess up and it's because of what God had done. And sending His Son Jesus to save us is really what I think sanctifies us. In life and why we believe life is so precious, and you know, I've really struggled with, you know, people talking about, babies in the womb are not alive and I can't grasp it. My wife is pregnant right now, she's due in March and so right about now is really when, you can really start feeling the baby move. And just the other day my wife said, "Come here, come here," and I mean, she was just kicking and punching and I mean, you could feel her moving and alive and active. And I personally just, I don't grasp how you can say that is not a living human.

Gary Schick
Well, and the reason that you would have to say that, is because if you were in the position of aborting, there's no anesthesia given to that child. There's brainwaves there, there's a heartbeat there, they feel, they even dream, they suck their thumb. And unfortunately, you know, we live in a world where people can abort right to the point of delivery. If it's still in the womb, we can still kill it as long as it's in there and cut it apart in the womb. Again, this might be a little graphic for some, but abortion is brutal. I mean, yes, they'll give maybe the mom, some anesthesia, but they treat the baby as if it was a non entity. With no feeling and just a clump of cells. I mean, even you talk about, you know, do we love our animals more? If we have to put our dog down, it's a horrible day, but we're gonna make that as painless for the puppy as possible. And yet here are lives that some of them are to term, and I think a lot of people would have a problem with that. It gets harder when you can't see it doesn't look like a baby yet, but where in that process, do you suddenly magically, you know, wave a wand over it and it becomes a person? You're there, your soul is there. And even the ancients believe this, I don't have them with me today, but I have some quotes from the earliest Christians saying that, "You know, all life is human from conception." Christians have just understood it because of what God's word says about this right from the beginning.

Ben Poole
Yeah. So with this, I just was thinking, maybe you're hearing this and you're like, you are struggling with this decision or, you know somebody that is, "Okay, what do we do about that? Where do we go? What are the resources? We don't really wanna send them to the hospital." Or you know, you've heard things about certain organizations like planned parenthood, which I don't think we have one real close by here, I'm not sure. But in town here, we do have a Christian pregnancy center, it's called Options Pregnancy Center.

Gary Schick
That's the place to go.

Ben Poole
Here in Western Nebraska, it's a Christian organization. They're, I'm just gonna throw this out there, 1308 avenue B, suite B. They're on avenue B next to, I believe it's Nexus Mechanical Shop. If that is a resource, you need, seek them out. They are there for you and want to help you and just love you through this time.

Gary Schick
And you know, for those who find themselves in a pregnancy situation, and they're just saying, "But I can't raise this child." I just want you to know my family is so grateful to two families out there that we don't even know, that we adopted our children very, very young from, one of them a little older, one of them just a few months old. And I'll tell you what, we honor those moms and those biological fathers. We pray for them and we're grateful for them because our family would be incomplete without all of our children, adopted and otherwise.

Ben Poole
Absolutely. Both of our older girls are adopted, and so I know that there are so many families that would gladly support you in that decision, if that's what you chose. But I want to jump in, in just the last few minutes because a lot of times I think a lot of, young ladies especially, feel like, "I've made this decision, now everybody's looking down on me." Or, "I don't know if God can forgive me." And so one of the questions that came in was, is abortion the unpardonable sin? And you know what, there's probably some people that would say yes to that. And I'm gonna go ahead and say no.

Gary Schick
And the Bible says no.

Ben Poole
And the Bible says, no, too.

Gary Schick
We support you in that.

Ben Poole
So, we are here for you, but I just want to just maybe close with this thought. That whether you've had an abortion or are thinking of it or feel like maybe that's your only way out, God absolutely still loves you. And you are never so far from His grace that you can't come to God. And He is there to receive you and to welcome you into His arms, which is way better than anything in this world can offer. What are your thoughts on that, Gary?

Gary Schick
Well, you know, I mean, yeah, for those who are at a crossroads, I just beg you to call one of us, call Options, and find out your options. But for those, for whom the moment has passed and you're looking back at it and saying, "You know what? It was a hard moment in life, but I took a life and now what do I do for the rest of my life?" That is hard. It is not the unforgivable sin. Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the place where this comes up is, the Pharisees were basically saying Jesus in the miracles He performed had an unclean spirit. And He's like, "You know what? You can be forgiven any sin, including blasphemy against me," Jesus said. You know, against Jesus. But He said, "Whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven." What was the holy spirit? He was giving testimony that Jesus is the Christ. And so if you turn against the witness of the spirit, you are rejecting Jesus. And as long as you reject Jesus, you can't have salvation, cause Jesus is salvation. So as long as you reject the witness of the spirit, that Jesus is the savior, that's where you get forgiveness. As soon as you come to Jesus, all sin is forgiven, and it is really as simple as that. Does that mean that there are no consequences? Well, of course not, there's always consequences. And so, you know, again, for those who may be considering abortion and you're in a tough place, realize that you will get past this day of your life, you will get through this. But if you take that life, you can never undo that, and so forgiveness absolutely. Consequences to your life and even your potential ability to have future children, it can mess up a womb when you do this. You might be cutting off all life from your womb, and so I just wanna caution people about that. That, yeah there's forgiveness, but we don't walk into it and say, "Well, I'm gonna go ahead and do this and be forgiven and it's all okay." There's still some things to carry from that. And again, for those who are on the other side of it, well then it's a question, "Okay, so now how do we go on from here?" But never walk into a situation saying, "Well, I'm gonna do what I know is wrong and I'll be forgiven anyway." But yes, forgiveness is there.

Discussing Abortion - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so if you are not aware, January in the Christian world, more so, is known as, "Sanctity of human life month." There's a particular Sunday where we celebrate it in churches. This year's January 23rd. So be aware of that, just something that we can celebrate, and share the truth of God's love for all people. So this morning we got some questions that came through on this topic and I'm sure to some degree, it's a touchy topic for many people and probably some would disagree, but we want to do something a little bit different this morning. But in leading up to what we're gonna do, I just wanted to share a couple of, or a few of these questions that came out and then, have a little bit of discussion time. And we're gonna read some scripture as well. So first, "Does the Bible say anything about abortion?" And secondly, since we just celebrated Christmas, consider where we would be, if Mary had aborted the savior. And then thirdly, "Is God pro-life or pro-abortion? So obviously, some pretty, pretty deep questions, if we really start to consider them. And we're gonna get into some discussion, but first we wanted to, as we come to the close of this year and the beginning of a new year, we thought of a scripture fitting kind of around this, but also maybe a breath of fresh air.

Gary Schick
Yeah, we both turned to it together. I'm like, "I'm thinking let's read Psalm 1:39," and you're like, "I just opened to that." Which is really, if you're talking the life question. You know, the sanctity, the holiness, the preciousness of life from the womb. This is the chapters. But it's also a great place to end the year and begin the year.

Ben Poole
Yes, I agree. So Gary, why don't you start us off?

Gary Schick
Yeah, I'll take the first half, and then you take the second. Psalm 139, for the director of music of David, a Psalm, "Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me, you know, when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely oh Lord. You hem me in behind and before, you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, to lofty for me to attain, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the Dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you."

Ben Poole
Man, that first half is beautiful. Just amazing. So we're gonna start in verse 13 and close out this chapter, "For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts oh God. How vast is the sum of them? Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I wake, I am still with you. If only you would slay the wicked, oh God. Away from me you blood thirsty men. They speak of you with evil intent, your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you oh Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them, I count them my enemies. Search me oh God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." That's a beautiful Psalm and really listening to David's heart here is just so pure and raw. And I remember actually just reading this, we actually talked about kind of that last bit of that chapter a while ago, addressing that issue. But what you see is this, I mean, David was called a man after God's own heart. Even in his sinfulness, even in his struggles, he had this amazing relationship with God. And he talks about this idea of life and creation of life. And it's not simply science that builds a human in a womb, it's God knitting us together. It is knowing our life from beginning to end before the beginning happens. And so we see this really beautiful picture, I see, of a God who loves life.

Gary Schick
Yeah, and God's connection to life from beginning to end. I mean, the beautiful part of the beginning about, "You know, no matter where I am. You know, I could go to the far side of the sea, no matter where I go you're there, you are with me. Your eye is on me and was with me and on me from the time you were putting me together in the womb Lord." And I think that these are verses that, for the pro life movement, have been significant in our understanding of what life is, where it begins and how precious each of us are. And what makes it great for this moment at the end of this year, as we move into the next is just to say to our listeners, "Hey, don't know where this year has brought you in your personal life, but just know this, you are under a watchful and loving eye. The Lord who formed you in the womb, you are precious to Him. And He's there, He's carrying us through."

Ben Poole
Yeah, you know, we were talking before this. There's a lot of talk, especially now, even in the last years about abortion. And almost this fight between pro-life and pro-choice, and it's easy to get into a fight, it's easy when you believe your right to argue your point. I've struggled with this myself, cause I believe we should be pro-life and I enjoy arguing, but I've also learned that, we're not gonna lead people to Christ by arguing with them. We're gonna lead them to Christ by loving them. I met a guy who was part of a Christian organization, and was leading this huge event. And he was talking about his wife who worked at a pregnancy center that was pro-life, and it was right down the street from an abortion clinic. And a lot of people were picketing and standing outside and yelling at the women that were going in, and really claiming to be Christians, but not really showing the love of Christ. And this guy's wife decided one day, she had this heart for these women. She bought dozens of roses and she walked over there and just started handing out flowers to these women that were there. Telling them that she loved them, that God loves them, and not preaching at them, not beating them over with scripture or telling them their sinning or anything like that. She just wanted to love them, and through that women came over to the pregnancy center and made different decisions to have their children. And so I believe simply from what we just read. Among all the other things, God is absolutely pro life, He creates life.

Gary Schick
Life is what He does.

Ben Poole
That's what He does, that's who He is, He is light and life. And so I think we can come to that conclusion, but that does not mean that He's absolutely against those who are making decisions, because guess what I make sinful decisions too. And He's not against me, He is for me. And so I think that needs to be the heart of the Christian. As we come to this time of year, as we close out this year, we are people of life and light because we are followers of Christ. And Jesus didn't come just for the good people. He didn't come for the people who were righteous and holy already. He came for the sick and the needy and to call sinners to repentance. And that should be our heart's desire as Christians, is to love these people, no matter what they're going through. You know, we're talking about abortion okay, but that's a broad stroke that we can cast, is we are to love people, period. That's who we are, it's not our job to judge the world, that's already taken place. They're living in judgment, it's our obligation and our privilege to love the lost. And this is a month where we celebrate life. Maybe we can do that in a way where we take steps that may be different than what we've ever done before. By loving people in the mess they're in and sharing the gospel of Jesus.

Gary Schick
I one hundred percent agree. You know, it's been a grimier in certain ways. I think we're coming up on, who knows maybe by the time this broadcast will have crossed it, a million people having died of COVID. But you know, many more than that die of abortion. Abortion's the leading killer in this country, and if only that got the airplay that COVID has, right? So it's a tough subject, life is precious and of course it stirs deep feelings. And of course we understand that those who feel motivated to move toward abortion are, just by definition, they're in a tough place. But truly, God's love has a power to change minds, to move decisions in a new direction. And in fact, as we close out the year, as precious as biological life is, it is absolutely, Jesus came that we might have eternal life. And listeners, you are alive, you were born and you've made some terrible mistakes and you've gotten some things right. But you are like all of us, a sinner who Jesus died to save. You know, and you mentioned, Jesus, didn't just come for the good people. Good thing, cause we're not, we are all sinners in God's eyes. He is the good one, He is the one who is good. And yet He in His goodness, loves us right where we are regardless. That's the other side of it. We need to let people know, who are on the other side of this debate, that they are loved too and that their lives matter too. And it seems so obvious to me, to those of us on the pro-life side, "Hey, if I'm in a body, I know how precious that is. How could I ever take it on myself to deny another living person?" As Dr. Seuss would say, "No matter how small, a person's a person, no matter how small." But obviously there's a lot of blindness and darkness in this world, and God's love is what starts to open us up to even be able to hear His truth.

Ben Poole
Yeah, one hundred percent. We know that there's probably listeners that maybe have had an abortion. Maybe even considering it, or maybe you're in a situation where you ended up pregnant and you, from whatever happened, we want you to know that we love you. And God loves you no matter what, even if you've made that choice, you are not so far from God that you cannot be loved and given grace and mercy. And so we're actually gonna continue this conversation a little bit next week. Cause there's some other questions that come up that I think are really great questions. And maybe something that some of you, or you know someone that's struggling with this about, "Can I be saved after making this decision? Where do I stand with God?" So we want to give you some hope and some reason for joy, even in this situation and even in this topic. We know that sometimes we say things that we don't mean or are heard a different way. And so if you ever have questions about this or where we stand on this, feel free to reach out to us and just ask those questions. You can call into the radio station, you can ask the questions it's completely anonymous and we would love to answer those questions.

Who Were The Magi? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so our question this morning, or questions, I guess.

Gary Schick
There's about three of them here.

Ben Poole
Yeah, "Regarding the magi, who were they? When did they arrive in Bethlehem? Shortly after the shepherds or much later? If much later, why were Mary and Joseph still there and not back home in Nazareth?" So I know there's a lot of thoughts on this, and a lot of different interpretations on what happened and when it happened. And so, yeah, Gary, why don't you just kind of open us up with some thoughts?

Gary Schick
What a great topic for Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, everyone. Yeah, so the magi, and they're such an intriguing topic, aren't they? I think we always want to know more about the magi and about the star and all of those things. In terms of, who were they, you know, if you watch the movies, I think, Jesus of Nazareth comes to my mind. You would kind of get the idea that they sort of met on the way from the three different corners of the globe. One from the east, one from Europe, one from Africa, and coming together and sort of finding their way to Jerusalem from some place like that. But really, most likely I think they probably came together from a location, because it specifically says that they came, you know, from the east. And I believe in that time there kind of, I guess what you almost might call a cast of priest, philosophers, magicians among the ancient Persians. May have been just kind of a phrase in general for such holy men or sages, philosophers, wise men, we might call them. And while their country isn't named specifically, you know, they state, when they get to Jerusalem, "We saw His star in the east." And I think we interpret that to mean, from the east, you know and, "We've traveled west to find Him." So Persia, Babylon, these would've been starting points and I think there's often even some thought that Daniel, as one of the wise men of the Babylonian empire, was kind of at the source of these people. But regardless of exactly who they were, you know, I think many Christmas cards that we've seen over the years sum it up well, "Wise men sought Him then wise men seek Him still." It's of course assumed that they were three, but that's because of the three gifts they brought: Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. I mean, the scripture actually only tells us more than once, it could have been two, it could have been 20. But the point is again, not only that they were wise, but they also were representative. Whether they came from one place or----many of us Gentiles, people from the outside. Who, one way or another God alerted to come seeking the one who would be born king and to worship before Him. And I just kind of wonder if when they got there and kind of figured things out, they began to realize just what a special king they had come to. It wasn't that the king inherits palace that they were to find. Then of course, there's this question about when did they get there? And again, if you look at our nativity scenes, it's obvious, everybody showed up the first night. You know, there was a star hanging there, there were angels in the breeze and there were shepherds and wise men, and that fits really nicely at our little nativity sets and scenes. Of course, if you follow the traditional days, it's given that the wise men show up around what, January 6th, which I don't know about in your house, and in your church, but we are pretty much done with the Christmas carols and the Christmas decorations are down by then. So, but how do we know? Well, Luke's gospel is real specific, there was no room in the Inn, Jesus is born in a manger. Probably some kind of a cave-like structure just outside of the Inn or outside of town. But by the time the wise men come, or the magi come in Matthew chapter 2, they find Mary, Joseph and the child in a house. And so that's kind of our indication as to why, there's a period of time lapsing here. Also, although Herod doesn't actually ever hear directly back from the wise men after they've seen Jesus, he does know based on when they saw the star, to kind of figure something under two years old. Now in a way, that's a little bit unhelpful because does the star appear at the time of His birth and that's when they begin their journey or did the star come ahead of time and kind of provide? I mean, they could have showed up the same night as the shepherds, other than the fact that there's kind of these, these two statements. One, "He's born in a manger or placed in a manger and found by the magi in a house," which to me would indicate that they stuck around. And then the third question, "Well why don't they go right back to Nazareth, you know, family, friends, home?" Well, you've got to remember, they didn't have car seats for camels and donkeys in those days, you know what I mean. Traveling with an infant would've been difficult, and so it would just kind of make sense that once Mary and Joseph, and he had a very, he had a trade that he could practice anywhere, he was a carpenter. That they would kind of settle down until forced to flee by Herod's hunt for the baby. And of course, that's exactly what the scripture tells us happened.

Ben Poole
Yeah, that's really great information. And I know that, just reading up on it, there's so many different thoughts on the timeline. And I think that we can easily get caught up in those. I was just actually looking up approximately how far it is to walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And per Google, where all good things are found, obviously, it looks like about 31 hours of walking. So I know my wife had a baby a little over a year ago, I can tell you, she would not be in a rush to be walking 31 hours back home if that was the option. So I think that they probably stuck around and really invested in the health of baby Jesus, learning to be a family. Learning this new dynamic, because you gotta remember this, we see these beautiful portrayals of the manger scene and how beautiful it was. And having a baby is one of the most beautiful experiences ever, in my opinion, but it was still real life. It was still very real in changing diapers, and however they did that, whether it was cloth and hopefully some clean water and things like that. I mean, it was still very real, Mary had to heal after giving birth. I mean, it was real, it was messy, it was having a baby in a barn. I mean, just consider what that would've been like. And so, but going back to the magi, I think that I've looked into this and again, still a lot of theories on who these people were. Obviously were of wealth to some degree having Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh.

Gary Schick
Pricey gifts.

Ben Poole
Pricey gifts, which they also say probably helped take them into Egypt and to cover expenses and to give them a livelihood while they were on the run. But thinking about these guys, these Magi, whether they were simply just wise men, or even some say they were magicians, some have even said they were Kings themselves, they were royalty. And I really like that picture, and I'm not sure we can totally say one way or another, but I think the picture there is beautiful, nonetheless. That these grown men, full of wisdom and wealth and probably power, chose to follow this star to find a baby. I love my baby boy, but it would be super weird if someone came and bowed down in worship of a baby. But something in them knew this is someone different. This is someone worthy of our worship, this young child, whether he was a few days old or he was two years old. That they would come and bow down and worship a baby is powerful to me. What we know on the other side of this story, we know who Jesus is, we know the story, we know the outcome, we know why He came, but these guys followed a star. Knowing what the old scriptures had taught, that the baby would be born in Bethlehem and He would be the king of the Jews and they showed up in worship of Him. And I think it is just humbling, I guess, to me, to know that this is something powerful that maybe we forget sometimes. You know, we celebrate Christmas and we get a lot of different ideas and, in our culture, especially, you know, we get really wrapped up in consumerism and shopping and gifts and all these little things. And not that we're not taking our eyes off of Jesus, but I think the importance of why He came. I talked a little bit in my sermon on Sunday that, one thing that we have really ingrained as Christians is to help kind of keep our focus as "Jesus is the reason for the season." We hear that a lot, and I kind of challenged my church to say, "That's part of it." That's part, He's part of the reason for the season. But as we know what scripture teaches, Jesus didn't come for Himself. He came for you and me to be our savior. And so really, when we look at this from the magi coming, from Mary being obedient, to Joseph having to make a hard choice to even stay with her, all of these things, the point comes back to is, Jesus lives His life. As He goes to the cross, as He's resurrected from the dead, what changes is, Jesus isn't so much the reason for the season; you are. You're the reason for the season, you're the reason Jesus came to live among sinful people. And it is our opportunity and privilege and a great blessing that we can bring our gifts to Jesus. We can give our life to Jesus, we can give our worship to Jesus as our king.

Gary Schick
Amen. Give them the best we have, like they did.

Ben Poole
Yeah. And that's really what we're called to do, is to lay everything at the feet of Jesus, our life, our worship. And essentially we're to give up the promise of our salvation to Him and placing our eternity in His hands. And we get to live that out. And that's really what I think the world needs to hear. There's a lot that went on and a lot of hard things you think about. Herod and the decree he sent out. "Okay, I don't want to lose my place, and if I hear of another king coming up, baby or not, I want him dead." And you think about the pain and the suffering that ensued from that point on, for some time. And thank God, He has a greater plan than even a king on earth can do. And so we get the privilege to worship a living king for all of eternity.

Gary Schick
Well and you know, you talked about the hardness of life. You know, it could have been, I mean, we know the hard choice Joseph made. Maybe, you know, town in Nazareth didn't have that information, but they probably knew Mary was pregnant. And you'll notice that even when they do go back home, they only ultimately go back to Nazareth because they hear a son of Herod is in place. And so they decide not to be so close to Jerusalem and so forth, but you know, it could be, they were just kinda waiting for the gossip to die down. Even you know, as Jesus is an adult later, you know, isn't this Mary's son, you know, aren't His brothers, "And wait Mary's son?" They knew it's part of the story, they didn't know the whole story. And boy, that's the tragedy. As Christmas approaches the world still doesn't know the whole story. This is the son of God who came for us, came for you my listening friends. I hope that you receive the gift of Christ above all this Christmas.

How Do We Know Christ's Incarnation Is True? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Tim Hebbert
We're gonna jump into a Christmas question this week. This is the question, "During the Christmas season, there is a lot of mention of the incarnation. How do we know it's true, and is that really so important to be included in the Christmas story for us today?" And I guess I would answer, yes, to that second question. But, so what is the incarnation? Let's start there. The incarnation, I'll give you the definition of it, the proper definition from a biblical dictionary, "The act of grace whereby Christ took our human nature into union with divine person and became man. Christ is both God and man. Human attributes and actions are predicated of Him, and He of whom they are predicated is God. A divine person was united to a human nature. The union is hypostatical or is personal; the two natures are not mixed or confounded. And that confounded, I would say, or confusing, and it is perpetual." A simpler definition would be, that the God of the universe came into the world and took on human flesh. You know, Brad, as I was working through that, I remember one of our topics, one of the days, probably been five, six months ago. And you were the one that probably for the very first time got me to really think about this. Now when Jesus was resurrected, He was resurrected in bodily form again, and then He ascended into heaven and He took that bodily form with Him. Now that bodily form is not the same as what we have here. It doesn't age, it's not susceptible to anything, but He still bears all of the scars. I think, I agree with what you'd said that day, of what He went through for us at the cross of Calvary. So when He returns, we're gonna see those nail scar hands. We're gonna see the scars of the crown of thorns on His head and all those things. So as we walk through this today folks, I'd just ask you to think in those terms. There's a few passages I wanna share with you that the scripture talks about, "The divine Jesus coming in the form of man." The first one is probably the most obvious to all of us, and that's the first chapter of the gospel of John, verse 14 "And the word," capital W referring to Jesus, "Became flesh and dwelled among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth." The second chapter of the book of Hebrews, the writer says this, starting with verse 11, "Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters in the assembly, I will sing your praises. And again, I will put my trust in Him. And again, He says, here I am and the children God has given me. Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity. So that by His death, He might break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is the devil." And one last passage, and this is from the Old Testament. This is one that any Christian that's gone to a Christmas Eve service has heard this passage. Isaiah chapter nine, and I'm just gonna read verse six, "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders. And His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace." So Brad, how do we know it's true that Jesus was fully God and fully man?

Brad Kilthau
Well, that passage you just quoted from Isaiah, of course, that one's the classic one, talking about the incarnation. The first part talks about His humanity, and then it goes on into His deity and what His plans are in the future. But I think another way we can look at this is, to know that Jesus was fully God and fully man, is you separate the two, was Jesus fully God? You go to the classic passage that you would normally be in during the Christmas season and the gospels, and in Matthew 1:1-17 you got this whole long list of how 'A' begot 'B'. It's one of those lists that we usually skip over, cause we don't wanna try to stumble through the names. But when you get verse 18, you find there's a record account of a birth without a human father. And you find that Matthew carefully guarded the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin. He takes out the whole genealogical table of the Lord and he states when he gets to Mary, that Jesus was only born of Mary. In fact, in chapter one, verse 16, it has the words, "of whom," a pronoun, "of whom." And that indicates clearly in the original language that Mary only, not Mary and Joseph, was the one that had Jesus. And so the fact that Jesus was born only of a Virgin, that's very clearly showing that He is truly God. And then I think another one that's kind of clear that we often forget about is the betrothal between Mary and Joseph. I think that's very important in this miraculous event, because as we know during betrothal period, a man and a woman were, what we would call today, engaged. But to them it was a lot more serious than an engagement. In fact, to break off the betrothal there would have to be a creed of divorce to make that happen. And so also during that period of time, which sometimes is almost a year in length, the couple, the man and the woman could not come together sexually. And if they did, it was actually considered an act of adultery and it could even mean death, it was that serious. And so that tells you, there's not something secret going on here of Mary sneaking off with Joseph or something of that sort. This was a serious thing in that culture, in that day and time, the betrothal period. And so yes, when you look into scripture, it was the holy spirit who came upon Mary during that time. And the Bible says, "Came upon her and placed the son of God, the Messiah in her womb." And we know that even though a lot of people probably mocked it in that day, I mean if they saw a pregnant girl walking around, they would say, "You know, well, she did this, she sinned or whatever." And we know even Joseph didn't believe it to start with until an angel appeared to him in a dream that it was the miraculous work of the holy spirit to bring about the incarnation.

And I think we need to be paying attention to the angel of the Lord when he revealed to Joseph that this son or this child inside of Mary was God Himself. There's something clear in the angel's message, because the angel told Joseph the sex of the baby, the name of the baby and the mission that the baby would carry out. And then of course on this side of things, we can look back and see exactly that was the truth. The baby was a male baby, His name, as we would say it in our language, Jesus, and His mission was fully carried out and that is to save His people from their sin. And so it was a spiritual work, it wasn't of a human father to bring about this conception. Something that never happened in the history of man, something that'll never happen again in the history of man. Jesus was born, He was fully God, and He was always God. As it says in Micah 5:2, "He is of the everlasting," as we look in that passage of scripture. So Jesus' personhood didn't start through this miraculous work of the holy spirit, when Jesus was born here on the earth. The Bible tells us clearly that He existed from eternity past. Absolutely He did, as we know, Jesus created the world that He was born into, when we studied that through the scriptures. And then you can look at the life of Jesus to see that He's fully God. The miracles that He performed when He empowered His disciples to do miracles; the transfiguration. And then you think about raising Himself back to life after the death on the cross. You think about His ascension up into heaven before eye witnesses. Definitely, He absolutely is God. And then the question is, "Okay, so maybe He's fully God, but can He be fully man?" Well, you got to keep in mind, He had a human mother, Mary, which produced a Mary substance, a complete human in nature, a body, soul, and spirit. And in knowing this, we can stand why the angel and his conversation to Mary described the one who being born, as the holy one. And I guess when you study that in the original language, the holy one in Luke 1:35, it indicates that Jesus was supernaturally conceived and Mary gave birth to Him as a human being. But Mary did not give Him His personhood and did not give Him His divine nature. So He was born as a human, He was a male child, but He already existed as the second person of the Trinity. I guess I just need to say that to you guys, because when we're thinking about this broadcast, I know that there are some who have had the thought that Mary is the mother of God. And that's been said often, and that is totally not true. Jesus existed in eternity passed and He existed way before Mary was ever born. Also some of the humanity things of Jesus: He shed tears, He felt real pain, hunger, and thirst during that time of temptation in the wilderness. He ran out of human strength, just like you and I would, He grew from a little baby to being a boy, to being a man. People could feel Him, they could touch Him, they could embrace Him. In fact, He was even able to be beaten, as we know, as He went to the cross and murdered and butchered and hung on a cross, that's got to have a human body for that to happen. So, Gary what are your thoughts on the incarnation?

Gary Hashley
Well, the part of the question that I was asked to think about and prepare for is, "What does the incarnation do for us today?" Brad, you hit on a very good point, Bethlehem isn't where Jesus started. Jesus has always been who He was, the second member of the Trinity from eternity passed, but He became flesh incarnation. If you go to the store, you buy Chili Con Carne, Chili with meat, Chili with flesh. Incarnation; Jesus took flesh to dwell among us and John, one of the disciples, writing in 1 John about Jesus, says, "We've heard, we've seen, we've looked upon, our hands have handled." And he's talking about Jesus that, "We heard Him speak, we saw Him with our eyes, we looked upon Him, we actually touched Him because He was real. He had a real human body, He always had been the spirit. The second member of the Trinity, He became flesh to dwell among us," John says. And the question is, "Well, what does that do for us today?" Well, I sat down and came up with five quick thoughts. One is, if Jesus really became a man while still being God, we talked about that, but if He really became a man, we can know God in a personal way. Because just as the disciples talked with Him and laughed with Him and ate with Him and walked with Him, we have in Jesus, one, we can know God who is spirit, but we can know Him in a personal way. The daily bread back in 2006 included, "God can exact nothing from man that He's not exacted from Himself. He has Himself, gone through the whole of human experience. From the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty, died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile." Through Jesus we can know God, in fact we can't know God without Jesus. He said, "I'm the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me," so we can know God in a personal way and we can know that God understands our every need. Hebrews 2 talks about the fact that He suffered, and He's able to help those who are being tempted. He's able to help us in our need because He became one of us, just without sin. But He had every other attribute of humanity that we have, Brad talked about it: He got hungry, He got thirsty, He got tired He ate, He slept. So yeah, He understands our every need, He knows what it is to be tired. He knows what it is to be hungry, He knows what it is to have people walk away and feeling lonely. The third is, we have a helper for our every need. Hebrews 4 talks about the high priest, talking about Jesus, and says, "In Him, we can find grace to help in time of need." He's always there to help because He came to be among us and to be one of us. And we can know that He can help us in our time of need. The fourth one is, we have a perfect atonement for our sins. It says in 1 Peter, "He bore our sins in His body on the tree," He could not give His flesh for us if He didn't have flesh, and He could not give His blood for us, if He didn't have blood. And if He wasn't incarnated, if He hadn't left heaven to come to this earth and become flesh, there'd been no flesh and there'd been no blood to give for the atonement for our sins. And then lastly, we have a model to live our life after, 1 Peter 2 talks about Jesus and says, "He left us an example so that we might walk and follow in His steps." So because Jesus came, we can know God in a personal way. We can know that He understands our needs, He's there to help when we have needs. He's the perfect atonement for our sins, and we have a model to live our life. And all of that is part of the wonder of the fact that Jesus was born.