What Are The Best Bible Translations? Part 1 - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez, and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
So great to be with you guys and great to be back with our listeners again today. We're gonna do a follow up today to a question that we covered a couple weeks ago. Somebody asked a little bit of a translation question about some names in the Bible, and as part of that conversation we got just kind of talking about a little bit about different translations, which is something people often wonder about. I think probably, I wish personally, I don't know, but you guys, I wish people came to me with more Bible questions. I've never met a pastor who said, "oh, people are constantly barraging me with Bible questions." So...I love doing this program. But one of the questions that I've probably been asked the most is, "well, pastor, what's the right translation? Or the best translation? Or what would be a good translation for me?" And so I think that'd be a good one for us to just kind of talk about today.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So, I think that is definitely one of the most questions I would get too is, "what translation should I read or which one should I stay away from?" And so today, I guess I'll kind of go through something that when I, that was probably one of the questions I asked too when I first became a believer too. Is, "pastor, what translations should I read?" And so, you know, back then, great question. You know, he threw out a couple, but I had a friend that actually drew me out a chart I guess, so to speak. And so that's kind of what I've used now. And I don't have all the different English translations on here. I guess at some point I could start adding and making this list a little bit better.

Gary Schick
There's always more!

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So I kind of have just the ones that he had showed me back then. And so imagine, like, a straight line, and on one side of the line you'd have, like, your literal translations. And so the literal translation is an attempt to translate by keeping as close as possible to the exact words and phrasing of their original language. So they would take the original language and make sure that they stay true to that. And then on the other, the far side of this, you would have the free translation. This would be more of like that paraphrasing translation. And then in the middle you kind of have, what my friend would call, was the dynamic equivalence. And this was an attempt to translate the word, and it would be close, but it was kind of more of like a word for word. And a lot of times that's kind of tough because, in one, you know, language they have a word, but that word means many things. English should be just kind of, you know, like love! You know, like love, we just think 'love' and, you know, in other languages there's many types of love. And so, those can kind of get kind of tough as you start translating through that. And so, you know, if we look at some of these translations you look at, like the King James version, that would be a literal translation of the scriptures. NIV would be more of that dynamic equivalence. And I guess the NIV 1984 , I should say. Cause you go with some of this new NIV and I would start putting that more of kind of like that paraphrase. Cause some of it's really not where it needs to be anymore. So if you're going NIV, I would definitely try to make sure you find a 1984 version of it. If you can.

Gary Schick
You gotta go for a used though, cause they won't sell them in the regular stores anymore.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. They won't sell that anymore. And so if we were looking at a paraphrase version, this would be, I guess, the most popular one would be the Message Bible. And, you know, that's a good one to read through. But that's not one that I usually use to study through. For me, I usually use either the, New King James, more than likely that's what I'll have in front of me. I'll go back and read through many of them, but I usually study out of more of the New King James. That's kind of the direction I guess I've gone, because that's what I was given when I started, when I became a believer. Everybody kept on handing me, either the King James or the New King James version. Those are the ones that were constantly given to me. So I guess, if we look at the first complete English language version of the Bible, was John Wycliffe's in 1382, I think is what it's what it said, he was kind of accredited for that complete translation of the English Bible. You'd also have, like, William Tindell, that was the 1500's I believe, kind of where he was translating the scriptures. And so, yeah. So for me, I mean, that's kind of the Bible that I've kind of stuck with. And then I've had, like, the Message Bible, I've used that to kind of further study I guess, and not as my main study. So, yeah.

Ben Cline
Yeah, thanks for that. That's a good overview of, you know, the different styles of translation that there are. And, you know, it's funny cause Gary, I don't know what translation that you use, but we may all use different translations. You know, the one that I kind of tend to stick to is the New American Standard Bible. But that's one of the literal translations. And the hard part about some of those is that, you know, especially with that particular translation, is that reading through it is kind of choppy, you know, in English, it's sort of abrupt. And so it is nice to be able to go to some of those other translations. Like the New Living Translation is one that I use just for listening to or for reading, you know, in my own personal devotion time, because you know, it flows in English better. So there's a lot of different choices out there. I guess some of the things that I wanted to talk about, you know, translation is really kind of a funny thing when you're translating from one language to another. I remembered a story. We went on a missions trip to Mexico and we were visiting a church down there, and the pastor asked me if I wanted to preach. Well, I don't speak a lick of Spanish, right? So, I had to have somebody who lived there, who knew English well enough, that he could, you know, translate as I was teaching that morning. But the interesting thing was that we had to sit down and go through the notes that I had written out and all that stuff because there's so many, you know, idioms and, oh, what's the other word? Figures of speech, that we use in English. And every language is like 'that' actually. They have their own idioms and their own figures of speech that they use. But we had to kind of try to take all of those things out and make them, you know, words that he could translate, you know, from English into Spanish as I was teaching. So that's just kind of the way that it goes. And so you have all these ideas that are, you know, from the Hebrew culture and, you know, ideas that come up in the Greek language that don't exactly translate over to English. And so, you know, they do scholarly study to try to figure out how to best get it down on paper in English. But, you know, I just had some thoughts, you know, about the different translations. And these are kind of more, you know, personal thoughts, things that I've learned over the years. And one of those things is to just be really careful when, in your understanding of what a translation is, there are, you know, some false ideas going around. You can't trust certain English translations, because the idea behind, you know, their understanding of how a translation is coming about, especially the newer translations, is that they're translating from one English translation to another, and making an updated version of it or whatever. But, you know, the truth of the matter is, the good English translations that we have, they're all happening from the original languages. From the original manuscripts. And so that's something that is just really important for us to understand, that those ideas that are being translated, the words that are being translated over are not from English to English. They're being done from the Greek and the Hebrew and the Aramaic over to English. And so, just one idea to be aware of. And then the other thing too is, you know, be careful of the idea that there's only one English translation that can be considered the word of God. You know, I know that there's, I might be stepping on some toes by saying that, but there's certain, you know, arenas that you can be in where they say, "this is the only trusted English version of the Bible." So don't go into that, because they're all, you know, a lot of these translations are done very carefully, and they have, a lot of work that goes into them and they really are trying to get that best meaning from the original languages. And then we also have, you know, I don't know if everybody's aware of this, but everybody has access to the resources if you have a word that you're, you know, getting really hung up on, there's resources online to be able to go to and find out the definitions and the different meanings of this word back in the original languages. And so, you know, that's not something that was readily available 20 years ago, but it is now for sure. And so, I guess the last thing that I wanted to talk about was just, you know, as the body of Christ, let's make sure to not let differences in opinion over Bible translations get in the way of us being unified as the body of Christ. You know, we don't want to let that cause divisions at all. So, just some thoughts.

Gary Schick
Yeah, really good thoughts, guys. You know, just in real simple, I think, in terms of answer to the question, which, what is the best translation or the best one for me? It's very simply, listeners, the best translation is the one you're going to read. It's the one you're gonna pick up and read. I'll tell you my own experience as a kid; I was handed, in primary one, I don't know what even that was, you know, somewhere between kindergarten and first grade, I was handed a little King James Bible. I've still got it. And in the cover plate it says, "thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." And oh, how I wish that I had read more out of that first Bible I was handed, unfortunately, as a rambunctious kid in Sunday school. We probably used our Bibles more for knocking each other over the head and really getting some talking to about that. "What? The word of God? What are your kids doing? But when I actually reached a point in my life when I was ready and hungry to read and I opened it, I mean, I made the same mistakes so many people do. The Bible's not just a book that you necessarily want to go cover to cover. It's a bunch of little books and probably best to start in the New Testament. But no, I started in Genesis 1 in the King James version, and as a, I don't know, maybe sixth, seventh grader at that point in my life, I was soon lost. And so I went to the Christian bookstore and there on the shelf were all of these translations. Some of the ones that you guys have already mentioned. The New American Standard was the one, like they were teaching in the seminaries. But again, a little bit harder language. There was the Revised Standard Version, which was a little smoother. I didn't know, but I looked at all of them. And the one I settled on at that point in my life was the Living Bible. And it was at a, was it a perfect translation? It wasn't even a translation, it was a paraphrase. But I'll tell you what listeners, I read it from cover to cover, and as I began to go, if you look through my old copy of the Living Bible, you'll see the opening pages are white. And then you start to see some red lines in there where I start to underline some verses. And then you see, by the time I, and I still did it the hard way. It took me three years; Genesis 1 to the end. Actually, I started in Revelation, because Hal Lindsay was a big deal back then, and I wanted to know how everything was gonna end. And I'll tell you what, if anything will cure you of being just totally, gobsmacked over what is, how are the end times gonna play out? Just read Revelation, and it just blew me away. I was like, "yeah, okay." And now I went back to Genesis 1 and worked my way back there again. But by the time I'm in the New Testament, the pages are, it's just like, "who bled on these?" You know, there's just all different colors. And as I was outlining and highlighting and underlining, it just became such a rich experience for me. And then from there I worked my way into, I guess what you might call, a better word for word translation. I guess we just want to come back to once again, what is the best translation or the best one for me, the Bible you're going to read.

An Explanation of Slavery in the Old Testament - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez, and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Hey guys, it's great to be together. We've got another interesting question that was passed along to me. Exodus 21:1-6 is the passage that's being asked about, and Jonathan's gonna read it to us. But the question is, "can you talk about slavery and the Bible's seeming endorsement of it? Also, it seems strange that a man would have to choose between his freedom from slavery and keeping his wife and kids. What does it mean that the slave's wife and children belong to the slave's master? Is there a spiritual truth that God is trying to show us here? I'm confused."

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So Exodus 21:1 starts out, "now these are the judgements which you shall set before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh, he shall go free and pay nothing. If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master has given him a wife and she has bore him sons or daughters, the wife and the children shall be her masters, and he shall go out by himself. But if the servant plainly says, 'I love my master, my wife, my children, I will not go out free.' Then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl and he shall serve him forever." So that's the scripture that they gave us for today. And I think for me, a lot of times when we look at the scriptures, we look at them through our current circumstances, or the eyes that we've seen here with slavery. When we hear "slavery," we think of it as how we've grown up learning about it, I guess, through school. And, you know, how slavery was in the early times of the United States history and stuff kind of like that. And so we think of it, now slavery is evil like, I hope people don't think, as we talk through this, that we're trying to justify something or anything. But, you know, slavery in itself is evil. And it's not something that should be happening. And hopefully it's not happening currently, but we know that it is happening all across the world right now. So we look at this and we see that slavery, I guess, in the Bible we see it throughout the Bible, happening. And slavery was, I guess, permissible in certain situations as long as slaves were regarded as a full member of the community. And we kind of see this in Genesis 17:12, it says, "throughout your generation, every male amongst you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner. And so you see that even slaves were having to walk through the same things that the Hebrews were having to walk through. The slaves would also get the opportunity to have the same amount of rest. It says, "work six days and on the seventh day, rest." And so even the slaves were held to that standard. Like, "you're gonna work six days for me as a slave owner, right? But on that seventh day, we're gonna give you rest and you're gonna be able to recuperate, hopefully and be able to go on." They were to be treated like humans, cause that's, you know, even though they're slaves, they're still humans. And I think that's some of the difference that maybe we're seeing in the slavery that we've seen happen in the early US history; is a lot of the slaves weren't seen as human. You know, so we dehumanize things so that way it's easier to do things that maybe we shouldn't be doing to other humans. Not saying that back then in the new or in the Old Testament, that people weren't dehumanized. I think you were still seeing some of these things happening. And so I think you see, like, even here, like it talks about the Hebrew slave. They're gonna work six years for that person, and then in the seventh year they're gonna be free. And within our question it talks about, "what about the women and the children?" And I was reading through a bunch of different forums, I guess, on this yet last night and trying to, "okay, where are we seeing this." I've seen some people talk about, "okay, in this passage it doesn't say forever. And so maybe they're serving their six years, and then they'll be free on their seventh. But it doesn't really support that either." And so you kind of have this back and forth on that. What does that mean? And I guess for the way I read that, if the husband was willing to stay and become a slave forever, more than likely his wife and his children were the master's forever. Cause otherwise, why would you, you know, stay knowing that, "hey, your wife's gonna be out in two years," you know? Like maybe you'd, you know, work close to that, to where your family's a slave at, so that way you could be with them. But I guess I'm not really sure on that. So yeah.

Ben Cline
Yeah, these are, you know, difficult questions to deal with and sometimes to understand even from studying through what scripture has to say. But again, it goes a lot to the historical context of what's going on here. And again, like you said Jonathan, we have, you know, such a tendency to look at things through the context of how we understand things in our modern times. And, you know, in our modern times we understand slavery to be, basically, kidnapping somebody and owning them, which again, is evil. It's not okay. But a lot of times, the slavery or the servanthood that is being talked about in the Old Testament, and especially here in this passage in Exodus 21 this is talking about, you know, slavery within the Hebrew culture. And so this is, you know, somebody who owes somebody else a debt, and basically sells themself into servanthood to a person that's called their master now. And so this is something that we could compare to, you know, like indentured servitude. So they're basically there to pay off a debt. And the thing that I love about this passage of scripture, where God is establishing the law, is that he's taking something that the world has been doing for, you know, so long. You see a lot of examples of slavery in scripture of things that were happening in the world, where slavery was taking place. But what God is doing here is, He's regulating it and He's helping people to see that they can't just, you know, do whatever they want and take advantage of other people. And so He's really taking some time to establish some rules here and actually establish some rights, or some basic rights for the slaves, or the servants. And so, you know, slavery is fundamentally different in some instances, you know, from our modern slavery versus what was happening back in the time when this was written. And the thing that was happening that's so interesting, as you read through this passage a little bit further in Exodus 21, the modern slavery that we understand today is expressively forbidden. It's in verse 16 of Exodus 21 that the kidnapping and selling of people is expressively forbidden. And so modern slavery was expressly breaking that law that was established by God. But the interesting thing as you're looking, you know, at slavery in the Bible, is that oftentimes it was like this economic arrangement. And one big difference is that it was never one race feeling a superiority over another race. And that being the determining factor as to whether or not somebody could be a slave. And so that was, you know, a huge difference between what was happening back then and what's happening, not what's currently happening, but I guess there's probably still a lot of slavery that's taking place in different forms in the world now. But you know, what you were talking about, Jonathan, in the early days of the United States, that's exactly what was happening. You know, people were being taken and people were being sold as possessions, which was not okay. But God was establishing here ways for people to relate to each other in ways that were fair. And so there's that six years, you know? They're only allowed to have somebody serve for six years in order to pay off a debt. You know, a married couple, if they went in, if the husband was sold into slavery to pay off a debt, if he sold himself into slavery and he was already married, then they were treated as a married couple. They were treated as part of the community. They were treated as temporary residents of the community. And then when his debt was paid off after that six years, he got to go free with his wife. But then there's that situation where a man marries a woman after he has sold himself into this servitude and he now has a choice to make at the end of that six years. And, you know, if you have a person who truly loves his wife, he's gonna stick with her, right? And so God is giving them this option as a way to show people, you know, God's love and His mercy and His justice. He's giving them a way to be able to stay together. And so, you know, God really is just establishing order. He's allowing a way for families to stay together. He's showing His mercy and His love in establishing these laws, really. And that's probably just some of the answer.

Gary Schick
Right, and there's so much. But I think you guys have really laid the groundwork well. I mean, first of all, differentiating between, really, what's happening even in a lot of Islamic countries to this day where people are, you know, being taken. And we hear about human trafficking, again, right here in the United States. Quite a lot of it. But again, it's people being taken into slavery, and with no way out. And it's completely under the radar of the law, at least, if it's going on here in this country and in other countries. I guess it is legalized, but still in a very bad way. Whereas in the world of biblical times, you know, first of all, the economics of that world were so much different. Today, if you're poor, there are safety nets. You may or may not choose to take them, but they're there. Back then, if you were poor, and had no means to provide for yourself, you would starve to death. Or if you would fall into debt, there was no, you know, way to get out of that. There were no bankruptcy laws that would set you free from it. And I don't even know that there were debtor prisons, so how do you do this? So yeah, by all means, by one of the primary ways that people, and it would be a temporary thing, was to sell yourself. Many people came to this country that way, people forget, many people sold themselves as indentured servants to come here. You know, Englishmen selling themselves to their fellow Englishmen to work in their estates until they had paid off their debt, and would often go on from there and build up their own estates. So I don't, you know, think people really would have a problem with that. At least the idea of this was a temporary means. And then the other thing is, what did it mean to be a slave in the house? Again, we tend to think of the United States model, where the slaves quarters were, you know, kind of down the field. They were very, very poor quarters. The master lives up on the hill, in the mansion. Take a look at Abraham and Sarah, with her maid servant. Take a look at Isaac, Mairus, Leah and Rachel with their maid servants. They're not out in a separate part of the property, they are part of the household. The servants were part of the household. They have, as you guys pointed out, the same rights. And they had responsibilities, but they were, in a sense, part of the family without the rights of full heirs of the family. If we'd have read further into the scripture that you read to us, Jonathan, we would've seen that sometimes a woman from a poor circumstance, her parents may sell, in a sense, sell her to someone as sort of a secondary wife. But if she's not pleasing to him or, you know, maybe she was forgotten as a bride to his son. If that doesn't work out, then she is to be set free, free and clear. I mean, as you pointed out, unlike in the United States, where people were treated as possessions, people remain people in scriptures. And let's remember where this is being written in Exodus, the Hebrews themselves have just come out of slavery. It was, as you both pointed out, just sort of part of the world's system of that time. And so God is moving them towards seeing the humanity in every human. The bride that's provided for by the master is still part of his house. That was the problem. The guy who comes in from outside, and now he's going to basically take away from that household. But he has the option to become a part of that household for life. And in terms of the spiritual application, you know, isn't it in a an interesting thing in the New Testament, we do see even more of the seeds of moving away from slavery. For example, where Paul writes to Philemon about Onesimus, who was a runaway slave, who's now become a Christian and now is a brother in Christ. "He not only asks that you forgive him," in other words, not give him the punishment. Which could have been either a severe beating or death. "But rather receive him back as a brother." And in fact, Paul indicates, and I know you're gonna do even more, indicating basically, "Philemon, it's time to set an Onesimus free." Paul couldn't quite come out and directly say that because of the law of the Roman Empire at that time. But he could sure point Philemon in that direction, which he clearly does. And so this freedom, and it's interesting what the New Testament says to slaves and masters. He says, "slaves, you're free in Christ. You are not serving your earthly master. You're serving Jesus. So regardless of how you're treated by your earthly master do what you do as unto God." And we translate that without even thinking in our context to people working in the workplace, "regardless of your workplace, your boss, those around you, You do what you do as unto the Lord." On the other hand, Paul says to those who are free, the masters, "and you are yourselves enslaved to a heavenly master, and so you treat these others under your authority, under your workspace with the dignity that that is there due." And isn't it interesting then when, for example, James and Jude and, you know, these guys, they're writing the New Testament letters, they identify themselves as a slave of Christ. You know, a servant of Christ, bond slave of Christ, someone who is wholly belongs to the Lord, has become fully His man and fully His representative in the world. And so, you know, and those are some of the positives of that kind of relationship in that time period. They were part of the house, they were obligated to the house. They were to be fully provided for by the house. And they were full representatives of the house when they were sent out on an errand, on a mission with a message. And that is, we are sons of the living God and daughters of the living God through faith in Christ. But we are also his servants, his emissaries, his ambassadors. So is scripture endorsing it? No, it's not endorsing any of the bad, but it's moving the reality of what was going on in the world toward God's ideal for mankind. And also giving us some pictures of how we relate to one another and how we need to be fully God's people. And represent Him well and serve Him well in all things.

Why Is James Translated That Way Instead of Being Jacob As It Is In The OT?

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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
I don't know guys, I think the questions that Russ is, is giving us are getting harder, do you think? So maybe instead of Ask the Pastor, we should call it Stump the Chump.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. I've been stumped a few times.

Gary Schick
But definitely, it sends us digging into the word and that's always a good thing. So here's the question he sent us this week, "Hello guys. Someone told me this last week that the name James in scripture is actually translated as Jacob in the Greek." Which of course the New Testament was written in Greek. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, mostly Hebrew. Then they asked me, "why does it show up as James in our Bible and not Jacob? Feel free to tackle this if you would like and maybe discuss further the translation of the scripture from the original languages. Thanks, Russ." So, as the questions get harder, I hand it off to Jonathan to get us started.

Jonathan Hernandez
Well, as much as I wish I was a Greek scholar, I'm unfortunately not, and so, I'm not gonna try to say some of these names in Greek cause I'm not gonna be very good at it. So from what I was able to gather, I guess there's kind of a couple trains of thought when we look at, why is James not called Jacob in the New Testament? One interesting one that I came across, was that as King James was having the Bible translated, he would rather have the name James in there instead of Jacob. Cause obviously, his name was James. I don't know how much truth is to that one, but I felt that it was pretty interesting as I was digging in. I keep seeing that over and over again, but there's actually nothing that says, "here's the truth behind that or anything." So I just thought that was kind of interesting. As I was digging through some stuff, and people even had YouTube videos about that train of thought, and so I thought those were kind of interesting as I was as digging through So, as we looked, I guess look at the name James, it actually comes out of the name Jacob. And so from what I understand, I guess, and this timeframe, there would've been a lot of people with the name Jacob, cause that's their, you know, kind of an ancestry name. Just like some of you guys, you know? Maybe you have somebody that was part of your family and then everybody's name was derived from that same thing. Like, my dad's name is Peter, and so his dad's name is Peter. My brother's name is Peter, and my brother's son's name is Peter. And so you kind of have this generational name that's going through, and I think this is kind of that same place. Where we see this name Jacob that kind of just was handed down through the generations. And so, as they have this name keep going through, and then as you have these new cultures coming into the land, you kind of have this name kind of start being changed into James over time. And so that's kind of how I was seeing that. Just kind of move through the different time frames and, you know, the Latin culture I guess. Or the different Greek culture coming in and kind of making the name move from, I don't know how to say it, I guess Lavos? I guess that's how they pronouce Lakovos? And that was the, you know, the name kind of just being translated as James rather than Jacob, which, how do you say it was? Lakovos? And so, yeah. See, my Greek's not the best. Sorry. But yeah, so that's kind of how I was understanding this. Just, from that time it just kind of formed into James and so yeah.

Ben Cline
Yeah, it's really interesting just the way that words work over the course of time. You know, one of the things that we see happen every year is that our English Dictionary adopts new language. And a lot of times, those words are developed from words that already exist. But, you know, it's interesting just thinking about the transformation of Jacob into James over the course of time. And one of the things, I think that Jonathan and I were using some of the same resources, so this is good. But, you know, one of the things that they talk about is, that there was so much Greek influence on the language and on the culture during the time of Jesus, that some of these things started to happen. And they talk about how this is a good example of a word getting Greek sized or hellenized, and that's just meaning that it's being influenced by the Greek culture. And so the Greek spelling and the Greek structure ended up, you know, sort of taking over and beginning to transform this name. And I got to thinking about what this looks like in our families today, kinda like you were talking about Jonathan. How those names are passed down. But this is sort of looking at it from a little bit different perspective. You know, on my side of the family, we're Clines, and we spell it, you know, C l i n e. But I would imagine that our ancestors did not have that, you know, more English spelling of a German name. I'm sure it was a K or something like that. You know, and so that has transformed. My wife's family is all from Scandinavian descent. And when they lived in, and I'm not sure if it's the Norwegian or the Swedish side of the family, but when they lived over there, it was Johansen. And when they came over here, it sort of transformed into Johnson. And so there's that, you know, that change that happens because of the influence of the culture. But one of the things that, you know, as you study the Bible, you run into this word etymology. And it's just a bigger word, I guess, that means the study of the course of words over time. You know, how a word changes, how a language changes over time. And one of the things I was reading about, is that before the Latin Vulgate was produced, which the Latin Vulgate would've been the Latin translation of the Bible.

Gary Schick
Which the Roman Church follows to this day,

Ben Cline
The Catholic, yeah. So there, before that time, there was the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Bible.

Gary Schick
Right. For the Old Testament.

Ben Cline
For the Old Testament. Yeah.

Gary Schick
The New Testament has always been in Greek.

Ben Cline
Yeah. And so the etymology of this is that, the Greek Septuagint was translated into Latin. And so in that version, from what this says, the influence began to change that name Lokovos into a form that looks more like James and is translated into James, from what I understand could be. So that's another possible way to look at it. You know, as there were, and I think that there was some French, you know, involvement in that as well. Where the Latin was changed into the French and there's just a whole lot of history to that.

Gary Schick
A lot of history in Latin and French.

Ben Cline
But, you know, so all of that to say, this is the etymology of that word, that it changes over time. And so we do still see the name Jacob in the New Testament. But it is, you know, almost always referring to the Old Testament characters and not the New Testament characters. And so there's just a lot to it. There really is.

Gary Schick
And just picking up on that, as I looked at those two words in Greek, there's actually in the New Testament, there's both names. There's Yakov, which is just directly translated from Hebrew into Greek as Jacob. And then there's the Greek name, which is the Hebrew equivalent Yakuba, which is always translated James. So there's your difference right there. So it is actually two different Greek words for the same name. One is the Greek name, one is the Hebrew name put into Greek letters. And so yeah, Yakov=Jacob. And then there's something else that goes on. And that is, how does it get from a y sound into the English with a J? And that is because English has a certain amount of heavy influence, as you mentioned, by French, but also by German. And I think it's in German, that for some reason, what we have as the letter J is pronounced as an I or a Y. And so you mentioned in your own family's history, Johansen. Well, Johann is John, and it has a J. And so in the New Testament, Yohannes is John and comes into Johan in German or Scandinavian or whatever it is. And then in English, we come to that letter J and we don't pronounce it with an I or a Y, we say "Ja." And so, you know, for example, we hear about in, you know, Spanish, the name Jesus. Jesus comes from the Greek "Yesus," but when you send it through into English, it ends up with a J. And so we say, "Ja" where in older times they would've said, "Ya" And so these are all ways that language kinda changes over time. But it is the same essential name. And similarly, you have in Hebrew the name Hanah, we say Hannah. And then you meet the New Testament prophetess who celebrates Jesus' birth, Anna. And in English we call her Ana. And both names are the same name, and they all all mean grace. So, Hannah, Anna, Ana. And in Hebrew you have a lot of H sounds and there's a couple of Hebrew letters that have an H sound. There's really not an H letter in Greek. There's kind of a little hyphen to say there's an H sound here, but yeah. So there's a lot of reasons why, especially, names get kind of twisted up as they go from one language to another. And so now I don't know why, and I noticed you guys really didn't find it either, why the M sound comes in there. But just to check what you said, Jonathan, cause it sounded a little suspicious to me too. Is King James' influence on the King James Bible influencing the name? And I'm gonna say, "no," and here's something you readers you can do, or listeners you can do this too. While you were talking, I just looked up the Bible Gateway, which has a whole bunch of translations and I looked for the Wycliffe translation, which predates the King James by a lot, you know, over a hundred years. And it's translated there as James.

Ben Cline
Oh, interesting.

Gary Schick
I don't know why people kind of go off in these in the internet about King James. Friends, it's a witch hunt. It's what do they call it? A conspiracy theory, it's nonsense. A conspiracy. It is 100% nonsense, cause you can go back a hundred years before him and find, "No," it's already being translated as James. And so Yokuba, you're gonna find consistently throughout the New Testament, James, it refers to all those contemporary to Jesus.

Ben Cline
And I think that M sound that's in the end of James, that is from the French influence.

Gary Schick
Probably. Yeah.

Ben Cline
And I think that's where that comes from.

Gary Schick
How did Jacob stay Jacob through all those centuries? We'll never know. And we are not experts in language, but we're thankful for it. And we're thankful for those who've done the hard work for us. I still to try to hang on a little bit to my Greek from seminary days, and I don't know if that's so much, because it was such a painful experience for me. Or a little bit, you know, somebody who influenced me a lot, I'm rereading his works right now is C.S. Lewis. He's a language guy. And so I'm a wannabe language guy. I still keep trying, you know, I've been trying for 30 years and I'm still trying. But I know a lot of guys that just say, "thank the Lord I got through that class and put it on the shelf." But it is important that people do the work, or that some people have, because as we talked about last week, we were talking about orthodoxy. There have been mistranslations through the years that have led to much more serious things than, how do you pronounce a name, for example. As we've talked about, did we talk about this after the show or during the show once how the divine name was actually mistranslated into the King James as Jehovah? Where actually two names are going on there, the Hebrew name Yahweh, and as in order to not say that name, the Jews would say Adonai Lord. And so they put the vowels for Adonai into the word Yahweh. And in the King James it got translated Jehovah. Well that's not a big deal, cause God knows who we're talking about no matter what we call. But then it becomes a little more serious in the Latin Vulgate when St. Jerome, who was a pretty good translator and he did, he had both as you pointed out. He had the septuagint in front of him, but he also was very proficient in Hebrew. But somehow he translates the words for repentance as dependence. And so that creates a whole new train of thought as opposed to merely turning from my sin and trusting in Jesus. Now I've gotta do something about it. And so that leads we Protestants to say in a wrong direction that we were grateful for our Greek studies. To go back to the original and say, "no, it doesn't say dependence, it says repentance." But then even worse, you have somebody who stumbles over John 1 and mistranslates it. "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God." And it's mistranslated by the Jehovah's Witnesses as, "in the beginning was the word, and the word was a God." Which, if whoever did that really knew their Greek, they would know that that would not be a possible translation there, but a mistranlation. And so, and now you've got it taking us, not into a wrong teaching within the Christian Church, but taking us now completely out of Christianity. Because now, at least by Jehovah's witnesses, they don't understand Jesus even to be divine. They just see Him as a very good man. Sorry friends, there's a lot of good men I know, and not one of them can save me. It takes a perfect---the sinless son of God who is God in the flesh. And so, aren't we thankful as English speakers, that is our primary language for those who have carefully done the work to say, what does this text say? So hopefully this conversation has been helpful to our listeners, but you can do some of this work yourselves, listeners, in the sense of: open up Bible gateway and don't just compare the modern translations, but also look at the ancient translations or what's the other one that I look at all the time? Not Bible gateway, but, oh, the You Bible. If you look in the You Bible, you can find a lot of English translations. You can find other languages, and you can find some of the older ones. The one I would be cautious about is the Geneva Bible. Over and over again, I have looked for the Geneva Bible online, but what I'll find is what calls itself the Geneva, but it actually is just the King James. And I don't know why that is, but I'm pretty sure I was looking at that Wycliffe translation. That it really was Wycliffe's translation, which actually predates the Geneva translation into English, which is a whole other conversation, isn't it? So maybe we should end there. Other than what's the edifying part in this? Just to be really grateful that, #1 the original language has been preserved for us. #2, there have been people who love Jesus, love the Lord very much, who have been very careful in the translation to make sure that our modern translations really do get it right. And where there's discrepancies and questions, they'll often put it in the footnotes. And then #3, sometimes we're gonna scratch our heads and say, "why is Jacob the Hebrew name? Jacob become James?" And I think we solved it. In the New Testament, they went with the Greek name, and then through French it becomes from Yokubo to James.

Why Do Bad Things Happen If God Loves Us? - 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.

Gary Hashley
Hello and welcome to this edition of Ask the Pastor. A question was sent into KCMI and forwarded to me by Russ Garrett, and it says, "Hello, I googled the simple and often asked question, 'If God loves me like a father and has good things for my life, in accordance to what Christians often purport to convey to non-Christians, then why do bad things happen to me when I had no role in them? Further, and more problematic He doesn't act on my behalf or others when He could. Let me personalize this: Friends went to another city to start a church plant. After they and others prayed for months and believed this was God's leading, within three months of the plant, his wife was murdered leaving him as a single parent. So where was God, without the ward and tepid explanations Christians give? How do you begin to reconcile this? I have children, and I don't have any power like God, and even I would've acted to protect my kids. Thank you." Well, you know, this is a very common question, and this is a question that probably neither Brad nor I will be able to answer to the total complete satisfaction of the questioner. Because living in a sinful world, we are surrounded by bad things happening to people, and not just the evil people of the world, but even the good people of the world. And there are those who would say, "I don't wanna hear the worn and tepid explanations," and that's a legitimate thought. but yet maybe those ward and tepid explanations are truly biblically based and faith based understandings. One thing I notice in scripture is that I don't find anywhere that God promises me, or promises you as a follower of Jesus, that life is gonna be easy, and that He is never going to allow anything bad to happen in your life. In fact, in Isaiah 30:19, 20, we find both sides of this. Verse 19, for a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you. Now, that sounds fantastic. It sounds like, you know, God's gonna step in and everything's going to be good. The next verse, verse 20, "and though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher." So, one sentence right after another sentence, the first almost leading you to believe that God is gonna make sure that everything goes well, "you'll weep no more. As soon as you cry, I'll hear, I'll answer." And then the very next sentence says, "the Lord might give the bread of adversity and the water of affliction." Now, there are those who would say that if bad things happen to good people, if God is there and He's loving and He's wise and He doesn't step in, then it must mean that God really isn't there. In fact, one author says, "you know, there are some assumptions, a fact, and then a conclusion that we can approach in two different ways. Assumption #1: an all powerful God would be able to end suffering. Assumption #2: an all loving God would desire to end suffering. Fact: suffering exists. Conclusion: an all powerful, all loving God, therefore, does not exist." And I have a dear friend who I went to Bible school with. I flew airplanes with and ministered alongside of, who had two teenage sons killed in an automobile accident. And now he claims he was a fool to ever believe in God, because if God didn't stop the bad thing from happening, then he's not going to serve God. But on the other side of the page, he says, "assumption 1: an all powerful God does exist. Assumption 2: an all loving God does exist. The fact that suffering exists then leads to the conclusion: God must have loving reasons which he is able to achieve for permitting suffering." I'll tell you, when I come across times in my life where life is hard and suffering is a reality, I like to remind myself of what God said through Isaiah 55:9, "for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." And I just remind myself that God doesn't necessarily think the way I think. Because basically the question is saying, "well, if I as a parent would step in and would make sure my children don't endure suffering, then if God is a loving father, then He should do what I think I would do if it were me." And yet, the fact of the matter is, God thinks differently than we do. He never told us that what seems normal to us is normal to Him. He didn't tell us that what seems reasonable to us will be reasonable to Him. And so we face these struggles. I think of Hebrews 11, before I turn this over to Brad. You know, in Hebrews 11, the faith chapter about these faithful people, you know, and early on we read about Adam and Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Sarah, and all these through Joseph and Moses. And then it talks about, you know, "by faith, great things happened." He says, "what can I say? Time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak, Sampson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stop the mouths of lions, quench the power of fire, escape the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women even receive back their dead by resurrection," and some say, "yes, I like that." But then it says, "some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered, mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated." So when I look at that, I realize that there are times where God does step in and wonderful things happen. And there's times He allows hard times in people's lives. Now, I can't say anything I've said is the absolute answer that's going to solve this in everybody's mind. But I'll tell you, as I've lived life for 65 years myself, as I've gone through difficult times, I find that what the Bible teaches about God's mind and God's love and my need to trust Him, it may not be in some people's minds the best answer. But in my mind, it's the better answer than any other answer out there. So yeah, do tough things happen in people's lives? You're listening to a guy whose mom died of breast cancer when I was 29 years old. You're listening to a guy whose nephew died at five days old, because only half of his heart was developed in the womb. But yet, I have found that trusting God and His wisdom and His love and his sovereignty, and trusting that He has a plan, I I don't find that as worn and tepid. I find that as encouraging. Pastor Brad, tell me what's going through your head right now.

Brad Kilthau
Well, I know one thing, Gary. When you're talking about Isaiah 55, and we use that a lot, and we have to because again, God's ways are above our ways, and we have to keep that in mind. But as I was looking at this question too, and I don't wanna be disrespectful in any way to the listener who sent this in. And I don't want to come across that I don't have compassion for them and where they are and what they're thinking. But my first thoughts is this, we don't get saved to be kept safe from harm and disasters here on this earth. We get saved to ensure that we will not have to pay for our sin/debt in hell forever and ever. We have to think about the other side. We have to think about heaven, you know, and we have to keep in mind that God doesn't owe us anything here on Earth. It doesn't matter if we go to church every week, it doesn't matter if we give our life savings to all the charities to feed people. It doesn't even matter if we plant churches. God still doesn't owe us anything, okay? And so when I looked over this question, "if God loves me like a father and has good things for my life, then why do bad things happen to me when I have no role in them?" And as I looked at that question, it appears to me that our listener has figured out God to be made up of some type of a merit system. That if I do, then God does, and we have to understand again, that's not our God. Ephesians 2:8-9 makes that very clear, especially when it comes to our salvation, "for by grace through faith we're saved." It's not of us. It's not of our works. It all a gift from God, and we think about this gift. It's a gift that we don't deserve. And then the second half of the question, "why do bad things happen to me when I had no role in them?" I think that brings out that there's a misconception of who we really are as human beings. Because when we think about it, you know, if we're born on this planet, as a human being, we're a descendant of Adam, and therefore we have that sin nature that Adam passed on. And secondly, we have all sinned and sinned and sinned and sinned repeatedly against God. So to say that I had no role in this, well, we have to remember that we're all sinners. I love what it says in Ecclesiastes 7:20. It says, "there's not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins." Romans 3:23, of course, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." 1 John 1:8, "for if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us." All right, so here's a thought. We all are contributing to the situation that we live in, and the bad things are happening on this earth because we're all sinners. Bad and horrible things are gonna happen to all of us. And the reason those bad and horrible things happen, is because we have this sin issue, and sin has brought about these horrible, horrible things. And when we think about us saying, "I've never caused any of this. I didn't cause this with this person." Well, what have we caused? We've caused sin. We sinned ourselves, and there is judgment and there's consequences for that. So to say we don't have any role in the bad things that happen here on Earth is basically saying, "well, I'm pretty good. I mean I'm perfect, I'm holy." You know, sin brings death. Sin brings illness, sin brings hardship, sin brings loneliness. And we've all contributed to the world's sin problem. And when I think about this horrible thing that happened to this woman, the blood of this woman is not on God's hands. Her blood's really on our hands because we're the ones who've sinned against a holy God. And so, even though we're all sinners, even though we all contribute to the horrible situation of this world through our sins and the hardships and everything that comes upon people, we gotta see the other side of this. God in His great love died for us. While we were still these horrible sinners, Jesus, who was perfect by the way, He paid our sin debt in full. He shed His blood on the cross, and therefore we're free from what we do deserve. And that freedom comes by faith in Christ. We always go to John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He sent his only begotten son. That whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." I mean, think about that, Gary. When you think about it, Jesus came and gave us a gift that we don't deserve. He gave us a gift, a freedom from our sin problem. And the truth of the matter is, He's taken care of that eternity situation already. And then we also know that in the end, when He returns, there is not going to be any sin at all. It's gonna be eradicated completely. But until then, we don't have to live in despair. We don't have to, even when there's evil things happening to us, we realize that as believers, the moment we die, we go into the presence of the Lord. And when I heard about this woman who's involved in God's work in planting churches, most likely she's a child of God and a believer. And so most likely, as we know from the Bible, at the moment she died she went into the presence of the Lord. She gained, gained, and gained. She went to heaven forever to be with Christ in the Father's house. She's not cheated out of anything. She's got the best of the best. And yes, compassion and love needs to go out for the husband, but I think he's a believer also planting churches for the Lord. Yes, he's hurting. Yes, he's mourning, but not as those who don't have hope. This is a short time. Soon he will be united in the presence of the Heavenly Father forever and ever. We've gotta keep in mind that God acted already to protect his kids. If you're looking for something right now to protect, He already did that 2,000 years ago. And that protection cannot be taken away from us. It is eternal security that we have in Christ. And so I think we have to keep the right perspective here. The perspective is that Jesus paid it all. The Father has already protected us, and He offers that free gift for us to take by faith at any moment.

Gary Hashley
I think the difference comes because doubts and questions come from feelings. Faith is a choice. I choose faith. So Father, those who are suffering right now and wondering where you are, remind them you are right there with them in their suffering just as you were right there with your own son when He suffered for us on the cross.

Keeping Our Focus During The Holidays - 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 Pastor Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Hey, listeners, as I kind of prayed, this is what I wanted to address just briefly with you this morning as you're about your day, something to help keep our focus for the holidays. It is a mad dash till Christmas starting today, Black Friday, and it is so easy to forget the pause that we just took yesterday to give thanks. And to lose sight of what we are about to celebrate, Jesus, whose birth Christmas is at least supposed to be about it. Sometimes we kind of hear the not so funny joke about that the Christ child kinda lost in the wrapping paper of the day. And I know some of you are just starting your Christmas shopping. Some may already be done before Black Friday even arrived, others probably are gonna be making a mad dash on Christmas Eve. But whatever your Christmas season looks like, I hope that you can just pause and keep in touch with the highlights of what the season is about. You know, Thanksgiving was yesterday, and in a way, even talking about it is like eating turkey for the next couple of days. Not quite the same, is it? But yet giving thanks. What a beautiful way to enter the Christmas season. In fact, what a beautiful attitude to carry with us all through the year. And as we enter into the season of love and joy and peace and hope, let's maintain that attitude of gratitude that I hope was a part of your Thanksgiving celebration yesterday. Today, I just want to read to you one of the great Thanksgiving psalms, and then just think about it for a moment or two. Psalm 136, and you can even join me. There's a refrain that's repeated every verse or two, and I invite you to, as I'm kind of reading it, and you're going to learn what the key word is. I'll just give you a hint, "His love endures forever." And I want to invite you listening, friends, as I'm reading that to join me. And in saying it, I think there is something powerful about hearing the word of God, which is one of the wonderful things about being able to send it forth over the airways. But there's also something powerful about speaking the word and speaking it together. So join me on the refrain as I go through this powerful Psalm, Psalm 136. "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good." And here's that refrain, "His love endures forever to him who alone does great wonders. His love endures forever, who by his understanding made the heavens. His love endures forever, who spread out the earth upon the waters." Join me now, "His love endures forever. He who made the great lights; His love endures forever. The son to govern the day; His love endures forever. The moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever. To Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt; His love endures forever, and brought Israel out from among them; His love endures forever. With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; His love endures forever. To Him who divided the Red Sea as thunder; His love endures forever. And brought Israel through the midst of it; His love endures forever. But swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever. To Him who led His people through the desert; His love endures forever. Who struck down great kings; His love endures forever. And killed mighty kings; His love endures forever. Sihon, king of the Amorites; His love endures forever. And Og, king of Bashan, His love endures forever. Engrave their land as an inheritance; His love endures forever. And inheritance to His servant Israel; His love endures forever. To the one who remembered us in our low estate; His love endures forever. And freed us from our enemies; His love endures forever. And who gives food to every creature; His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever."

Over and over, this beautiful psalm tells us something about God and then repeats. And I hope you were repeating it with me, that refrain, "His love endures forever." You know, whatever's going on, here are four words for you to just repeat today. "His love endures forever." It's a powerful psalm. The psalmist looks back, first at the creation, and as he considers different aspects of God's creating, he's just reminding those who are joining with him in song and praise that this God who created, His love endures. And then he zeroed in on what was the keynote of blessing for Israel. That powerful moment when they really birthed His nation, when God led them out of Egypt. Triumph over peril, brought them through the Red Sea and into the Promised Land. Granting them the land where kings had once ruled, and now giving them, who were a slave people, and nothing and no one in the world, a place in this world. Friends, that was what Israel looked back to. What is it we're looking back to today? In this country, we're looking back yesterday to the pilgrims and how You brought them through the sea and how You brought them through a difficult winter. Allowed them to be befriended by the natives and taught to hunt and fish and plant corn and to celebrate God's faithfulness. And now, as we are just on the pivot point of entering into the Christmas season, we remember when Jesus came, walked among us, prepared the way for the Lord. Isaiah wrote, "prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight the path for Him, a highway for our God." And Jesus came and he dwelled among us, and he gave his life at the cross. And he rose again and he opened paradise. And he is Mighty God, King of King's, Everlasting Father, Counselor, Prince of Peace. All of this and more, we have so much to be thankful for. The God who Israel knew as the God whose love endures forever. The God who our pilgrim's fathers, followed to this great land of plenty and discovered His love endures forever. The love in whom Christ has come and dwelt among us; His love endures forever. He is coming again. Friends, why not take, just even each verse of this psalm as you enter into the King. Into the season before us, is a starting point for your prayer and your praise and entering His presence with thanksgiving in your heart, developing an attitude of and for your mind and a joyfulness in your spirit. If you do, I believe you're going to answer further into the joy of this season. Then perhaps ever this season that is just beginning. I'm wishing you thanksgiving. I'm wishing you joy. I'm wishing you peace. I'm wishing you the fullness of the hope that is ours in Christ, and the steadfastness of His love in your hearts. Now get out there and enjoy the gift of this day and remember his love endures forever.

Is Worshiping God As important as Some Make 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 Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau (00:31):

The question that we wanted to address today, is a question that goes this way about worship. It says, "is worship of God as big a deal as some Christians seek to make it? Is it that important to God, or are there other things that He is much more concerned about?" Well, it's a good question, but when we think about God and the need for worship, I think you gotta look at what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37. Basically, a man walked up to Him one day and said, "what's the most important thing in the Bible?" What's the most important thing? And remember what Jesus said, He said to the man, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And this is the greatest and the first commandment." I think, obviously when we look at that, we find what Jesus was saying. Is that the worship of God is the absolute purpose of our life, is that we are to worship God. That's our purpose for being here. Now, when it comes to worship and the way it's expressed in different ways, through different believers, different churches throughout the valley, how do we have a God-honoring worship? And maybe this is maybe what the listener was thinking about with the question. But I think, when I was looking at this question a little bit, I thought, "well, there has to be a passion." There has to be a passion for the Lord. I know, when we love our jobs, we get up in the morning. If you really love your job, you can't wait to get up and go to work, and have something, you know, happen with the your hands or whatever God's given you, giftedness, to do. You just, it drives you. It drives you to do the best that you can. A lot of people have a passion for sports, and you look at the crazy things that they'll do for that. But when it comes to worship, we've gotta have the same thing. We have to have a passion for the Lord before worship will ever be heartfelt. Before it'll ever be, I believe, God honoring. And so a question that we have to, I think, ask ourselves when it comes to worship is, "do I really have a deep burning passion for God Himself?" And if that passion is there, you're gonna see that the worship is there. If the passion isn't there, you're probably gonna see a bunch of actions, routines, ritualistic type things, worship that's not really honoring to the Lord. And one of the passages of scripture, Gary, that I was thinking about when we look at this question, is found back in Malachi 2, especially in verses one through nine. And it talks about the corrupt priests of Israel, and how these priests were, as they should be, called to lead the people to worship God. But they weren't doing a very good job of that. What was happening was, when people were bringing in sacrifices to be offered up on the altar, they'd bring their old sick cow. They'd bring their old animal that had a lame leg or something like that, and they would bring it in and the priest would just go, "okay." And they'd offer up that sacrifice before God like it was nothing. And so they were letting the people get away with not worshiping the Lord properly. And then God comes down on the priests, as He should, and God gets after these priests because they're the ones who are to lead worship. And one of the unpopular parts of that passage of scripture is, the Lord said, "I will spread refuse on your face and on your feasts." And you think about that, it says dung. That's animal dung is what He's talking about there. And so, what was God saying? That He's gonna smear that across their faces and on their feasts? Well, what God is really saying to them is, "because of your lack of leading the people in worship, I'm taking you outta your position. You're gonna be like filthy refuse that's gonna be taken outside of the city and burned and done away with because you are of no value to me." And I always gotta wonder, what happened with those priests, you know? And how that all went down. But obviously, you can see that the priests had lost their passion to worship God. They had lost their love for God, which led to a lack of worship. And it's just going through the routine, you know, and I guess, what I'm saying is we can do that today as Christians too in the church. We can lose our passion for God. We can just go through the routine pretty soon, and it's like a regular routine of going to church on Sunday and whatnot. And we think that we're worshiping God by sitting there singing some songs and, you know, clapping hands and participating with other believers. But it's not from our heart, it's just another routine. And before God, you gotta wonder if that isn't sickening to Him as He looks at that, because He's looking at the heart. He's looking for people who really wanna worship Him because they're in love with Him. And you know, so you think about, how can we change that? How can we get that back, that fire that we need to worship the Lord? Well, I think one of the things, as we learn here in Malachi, is we need to get ourselves in a place of where we're under the teaching of the word of God that will bring about a love for the Lord. If you're not under the teaching, you're not in love with the Lord, because you're getting disconnected, you're not reading this love letter. I think about Mary and Martha when Jesus walked into the village, and of course, Martha invites Jesus over and she's getting all the house ready, maybe a big meal ready, all of those things. And she's getting frustrated cause she looks over and Mary just continually sits at the feet of Jesus and doesn't move. And so finally she comes over and she's very frustrated. Jesus can read her heart. He can probably read her face. And I love what the Lord Jesus says to her. He says, "Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but the one thing that's needed. Mary has chosen that good part." And that really speaks to my heart, because what the Lord is saying is, until you place yourself under me, under my teaching, you're not gonna see true love and true worship." You're gonna be running around being busy, trying to get the right things to look good for Jesus. But he's looking at us to get ourselves into place of where we'll really see who He is and the greatness of Him so that we can worship Him properly. And so, as I was thinking through that, also, I have to bring this up, Gary, before I turn it over to you. As I think about worship in the church, we have to understand the importance of our peers when it comes to worship. Because again, when you come back here to Malachi, because the priests didn't have a passion and weren't doing their job correctly, the people were walking away from their worship of the Lord at the same way. And, you know, as men especially, I wanted to say this, as men we're called to be the spiritual leaders of our home. Spiritual leaders, even for our wife, and we're to be the spiritual leaders in the church, and we should be the ones leading worship. We've got that same calling as that spiritual headship, that spiritual leadership that God has put us into. And I just wonder sometimes that, you know, if you walk through the church, how many men are really singing from their heart in worship? Most of the time it's usually, I don't know, the women when it should be the men. But men for some odd reason, they think that they can stand there like, you know, Mr. Macho, and "I'm not gonna sing this. I'm just gonna stand here and mumble the words or not even open my mouth at all. And it makes me look tough and it makes me look manly." But I got to think that's not manly before God. God's looking for a man that'll lead his family, lead his wife, and lead the church in worships. Let's always keep in mind our peers when it comes to worship also.

Gary Hashley (08:03):

I've been asked over the years, "well, what does it mean to worship?" Our English word, worship, comes from an old English word, worth-ship. It's expressing to God the worth that He has to us, the worth He deserves to have in our minds and in our hearts. I've described it this way: worship is letting God know that I know who He is and what He's like. How amazing He is, how much I love Him, how much I rely upon Him, how much I adore Him. It is an expression. We do find in scripture that God wants exclusive worship. And why would I say that? We find one spot in the Old Testament in particular that says, "the people would go before Sabbath during the week, and they would worship on the high places. They would worship the idols and the gods of the peoples around them. And then they'd show up on the Sabbath to worship God." And God was not happy with that. It wasn't, you know, "I'm glad you've come worship me today. The rest of the week is yours." It was, you know, "I want to be exclusively worshiped by you." So, one of the questions we have to ask is, you know, "is God the one that is the most important in our lives? And are we expressing that to Him now?" We express it in a variety of ways. We can express it in song and some today, you know, anytime we're singing in church, they call it worship. Sometimes it's just simply singing because we aren't really expressing from our heart to God, our love and our adoration and our wonder and our awe. We can worship in song, but every time we sing doesn't mean we're worshiping. We can worship in prayer. As we come to Him in prayer, we're letting Him know we're relying upon Him. He's of utmost important in our lives. It's worship to study the word. We kind of differentiate, you know, worship time from sermon time. But actually coming before God during the sermon time and really, truly, all of us focusing on the scriptures and letting God know that we know how important He is and how much He is the most important in our lives. But we can also do it through serving Him and through evangelism. I mean, Brad talked about the great commandment, "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." But he said the second is like it, and that is "love your neighbor as yourself. And I guess the thought that comes to my mind, Brad, is there are things we can do to worship, but simply doing those things doesn't mean we're worshiping. For instance, back in Isaiah 58, the Israelites were, you know, wondering, "how come we fast?" We go without food for a period of time, and it was designed to be a time of worship, but they were doing it and they'd lost the sense of it. In fact, God says, "is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and you're healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call on the Lord and the Lord will answer; and the Lord will say, 'Here I am." He was saying, you know, "You can go without food, but that doesn't mean you're worshiping in a time of fasting." In fact, He said, "I'd rather have you love your neighbor as yourself. I'd rather have you, you know, try and loose the bonds of wickedness in people's lives and help people find freedom in Christ to help break the yolks that bind people and to share your bread with the hungry and help the homeless poor and help the naked poor have something to wear." He's basically saying, you know, "I want you to worship me, but it's not just singing, it's not just praying, it's not just fasting. You can do those things and not worship, but you can serve me in those things. And I will see that as worship." I had a gentleman come to me years ago and he said, "You know pastor, I know I'm not here a lot in church." He said, "but you know, I like to hunt and I like to fish." He says, "I can worship in the woods." And I smiled and said, "do you?" He said, "do I what?" I said, "do you worship in the woods?" You know, we can, that doesn't mean we do. And we can make excuses for it, but what God wants is our hearts to come before Him in wonder, in awe, in adoration. That can be through singing an old hymn, that can be singing a Sunday School chorus, that can be singing a brand new song we call worship songs. And I know we've had worship wars in America, in our churches. What is the right approach to a church service that we could rightly call worship? And I'm not sure God is as worried about the form, or the melody, or the rhythms or the harmonies, or just even the activity. He's more worried about our hearts expressing to Him that He is God, that we love Him, that we adore Him, that we submit to Him. That we take His word seriously and want to know it, because as we know His word we'll know Him better. So yeah, worship is very, very important. It's important to God or we wouldn't be told so much about it in the scriptures. But just remember, it's not just what we do or what we say. It's the thought and the attitude and the heart behind it, because God does want us to worship. Jesus said, "we should worship Him in spirit and in truth." I hope that helps!

The Themes of Advent - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez, and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Good to be back with you listeners, and perhaps some of you are doing a little traveling over the last week, and I hope that you made it safely home as we are recording this morning. It is a cold one out there, and maybe it will be on Friday when this airs. But anyway, we kind of have something that we're gonna, I think, hold until January. We're just, really getting in the Christmas Spirit and thought we would take a turn onto some of the, from a Christian perspective, the themes of the season. And take a little bit of a look at, what are called the themes of advent, I guess you might say. So, we come from three different backgrounds, and I know our listeners come from a lot of Christian backgrounds and some of you out there have grown up with something called Advent. And I would guess, just by our conversation right beforehand that all three of us, none of us actually probably grew up with it. I did not....we did not grow up with it. I have served in churches that didn't know what Advent was. I have served in churches where this is a big part of what we do---and I have found---and currently I'm serving in a church where it's not a big part of what we do, but it is something we kind of follow through the month of December. "Bring the kids up for a few minutes as we light some candles and talk about their significance." Of course, this is not found anywhere in scripture, but the themes that we talk about are found in scripture. And so, the very first one, and I guess there's different ways to approach Advent too, but the first one, I think universally, is the prophecy candle that talks about our hope as Christians. And Jonathan, could you get us rolling on it?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, definitely. So, like Pastor Gary was saying, I didn't grow up with, you know, going through the Advent season. And I serve in a church that we don't really have it. I've never had it, I've never done it, I guess, since I've served there. And even as going to the church there, we didn't serve, or we didn't go through this process. But it's exciting to dive in and kind of learn and see what this looks like. And so the first candle is a prophecy candle of hope. And so in ancient times God gave His people, Israel, hope by speaking to them through the prophets. And, you know, we see this all throughout the Old Testament, and how the prophets spoke and gave the word to look at for forward. He revealed what was to come and told of the great blessings that they would receive when Jesus, the Messiah, would dwell amongst them. And the people look forward to the coming of their Messiah, and the hope that was spoken into this. We find that same hope when we read through the words of the prophet. And hopefully as you guys read through those, you can feel that hope building up within you. We find that, like I said, we find that same hope, Christ has come and our hope is in Him. "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul," this is Hebrews 6:19, "a hope that is eternal." And so during this week, we get that opportunity to reflect on the hope of Christ. We see what the Old Testament had spoken of the coming Messiah, and then we get to see the actual coming of the Messiah. You know, as we celebrate Christmas here, you could look at the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. "Therefore, the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel." And then we see the fulfillment of that in Matthew 1:23, "Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel," which being translated is, "God with us." And so that's kind of, you know, like I said, I have to really dig in to see what the Advent season is. And so that's kind of where my study is, I guess, so far has gotten me.

Ben Cline
Yeah, I also grew up in a church that didn't really, we didn't really know what Advent was. I think I'm sure that my pastor probably knew what it was, but we never really celebrated it, you know, in any way, shape or form. And so we weren't taught about it. But, you know, in recent years, the church that I serve at currently, we have some years, gone through the Advent season. Some years, not gone through it. But I wanted to kind of, like you were saying Jonathan, kind of dig into that this year and, you know, take some time to think about what it symbolizes and what it reminds us of. And, you know, thinking of the topic of hope, if you do a word study for hope in scripture, oh wow, it's gonna be a long word study, right? And it's a very large topic in the scriptures, and so it's an exciting thing for us to remember. And I guess the question that I always start off with when I'm talking to somebody about hope is, you know, there's a different understanding, I think, of that word hope in the world versus, you know, from what the Bible teaches about it. And so, you know what I guess the question is: what is biblical hope? You know, it is not the same kind of thing that we talk about when we say, "I hope that something happens," or "I hope that I get this thing," or whatever. And even going into the Christmas season, that's maybe something that we hear a lot as well. What do you hope that you get for Christmas? It's a wish, right? Yeah, it's something that, you know, we really just wish for. And it's not based on anything that we know for certain. And I guess that's the difference between worldly hope and biblical hope, is that the hope that we have is based on things that are certain. And the hope that we have is because of what certainly happened. And it's interesting, you were talking about Hebrews 11 as we were kind of talking before we started recording this morning. And the first verse in that says, "Now, faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see." You know, and so you can go through and you can do a, a study of that word, hope, and find all sorts of things in scripture about what biblical hope actually is. And the first thing that I would say, is that biblical hope is deeply tied to faith. You know, our hope in being certain of what we do not see is deeply tied to the faith that we have in God, and deeply tied to the faith that we have in the promises that He's made to us in scripture. And so, you know, if you look at the Greek, if you look at those, the definition of the word, hope, it has behind it this idea of certain expectation. Which, you know, if you're hoping for a pony for Christmas, it's not the same kind of certain expectation. But if you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your savior, you have that certain expectation that you will spend eternity with Him forever. And that you are now adopted as one of His children, that you are a co-heir, you know, of the Father with Jesus Christ. And so, you know, there's all these things that we can place that certain expectation into, and that's just the word that we call, hope. So those are some of the things that I was thinking about. Just getting started off with that theme of hope for Advent.

Gary Schick
Yup, and good things to think about. You know, as I think about these things, these are Christmas traditions. And I don't know about your families, I grew up in a family where it was pretty bare bones. Christmas morning, opening gifts...most of the time. I think, yeah, most years we would read the Christmas story together. Now, my current family, it seems like every year we're adding on some new Christmas tradition, you know? It's starting off with Christmas Eve: we all open one present, and it's a big surprise! It's always Christmas pajamas and a big surprise, we put them on and there'll be a game. And we go around in our Christmas pajamas, driving around looking at Christmas lights. So, if you see some people in pajamas on Christmas Eve, it's probably the Schick family and their dogs are with them in the vehicle. And that is just one of what has become many. But, you can kind of understand when the date of Christmas was somewhat set. And of course, there is a little difference. Most of the western Church, essentially, celebrates Christmas, December 25th. The Orthodox East celebrates, I think a little bit later. We'll probably hit that in January. What's the difference there? But in any case, think about the time of year we're heading into. Think about what this time of year would be without Christmas. The days are dark, long, cold. And so what do people start to do? They start to light fire to keep them warm. And so here is a time in the church when things are gloomy, dark and cold, where people would light a candle and begin to think about the biblical expectation that we have in Christ. And as we approach the day that we celebrate His birth, we don't know exactly. I think there's some ideas when He may have been born, but the 25th is just kind of what we've settled on. It's a great way, I think, to kind of get our minds a little bit back in what it might have been like for the people of the Old Testament past. You know, Peter talks about the prophets of old, longed to look into the things that we now celebrate, you know, who Christ is. So, I'll get up on Sunday and read for example, "for as we light this candle about hope and prophecy," to read just a few verses like you did. About, you know, from Isaiah 7, "the Virgin will be with child," or this Sunday, it wasn't actually part of that, but just part of my message, cause I actually am going through Hebrews 11. Where in Isaiah 9, it talks about, "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." What must it have been like for Isaiah to write that and then to just wonder, "who is this? Who is this gonna be?" You know? And of course, we know it's Jesus, but to just be looking for, and you know what? In a sense, we are with those saints, those Old Testament people in the sense that they were looking forward to Christ. We're looking back on his first coming, but we are also waiting with eager expectation and confident hope. I love the way you talked about that Ben, looking forward to His return. You know, the world is still a dark place, and yet we have this light burning within us: Jesus! This hope, and we have this assurance that He is coming again. He is going to set the world right. And for those who put their hope in Him, there is all of the eternal joy to come. What a great thing to focus our minds on in the hurry and the busyness. In the dark and the cold and the slippery and the wet! But yet, as Christians, let's be out there with hope, and we're gonna talk about some other great things: peace and joy and all the things that we associate with Jesus and His coming. But today, it's on hope. Hey, thanks listeners for being part of this with us. And again, where where are you at today? Maybe you're not feeling hopeful. Maybe there's some pretty heavy burdens on your shoulders. Maybe there's some recent grief in your life, or even past grief that's still pretty heavy in your heart. I just encourage you to open up the word go back to the promises that look forward to Jesus and just be reminded of all that is ours in Him. What a great hope wishing you that today.

Why in the Old Testament, is LORD in all Capitals? - 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.

Gary Hashley
Well, good morning and welcome to another installment of Ask the Pastor. I affectionately think of it as stump the chump, but that's just my mind and the way my mind tends to work. This question was turned in at KCMI that was forwarded on to us, and the question reads this way. "I've noticed in the Old Testament, when it talks about the Lord God, LORD is all in capital letters. In the New Testament, it's used with lower case letters: Lord. What is the significance of these?" Well, that is a very good question, because how do we know God other than as He has revealed Himself? And one of the ways He revealed himself is in this thing we call the Bible. But in the Bible, another aspect of God revealing Himself is through His names. There's not just one designation. There's not just one name for God, and so we need to then spend a little time and do a little study to learn about God based upon His names. There are three primary names for God that we find in the Bible. There is Elohim, there's Adonai, and there is Jehovah. Elohim, Adonai and Jehovah. Elohim we meet real early in the Bible. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," capital G, lowercase O, lowercase D. Let me read to you from Lehman Strauss's book. "The first person," he says, "L signifying unlimited strength, energy, might and power. Allah, signifying to swear, declare or make a covenant. These two roots, when brought together in the name Elohim, mean infinite strength and absolute faithfulness. Thus, we are introduced to the God of the Bible as the one with whom nothing is impossible." And who always keeps His word. Elohim is the strong faithful one. So when you come across the word God, capital G, little o, little d, it is the English rendering of Elohim talking about God's power and God's faithfulness. No wonder in Genesis 1:1, "in the beginning God created," the power of God, "created the heavens and the earth." So Elohim is one of those you run into. Then you find Jehovah, which appears with the all capital letters. Whether it's the word Lord in all capital letters, or the word God in all capital letters. And it's the translation in English of Jehovah, the name Jehovah translated God. All capital letters about 300 times, and Lord, all capital letters about 6,000 times. It's mentioned in scripture more than any other name of God. It's derived from the Hebrew word "havah," meaning to be or being. When Moses said to the burning bush, "who do I tell the Hebrew people you are?" He said, "tell them, 'I am who I am has sent you," the one who is to be. The idea is of course, that of existence, self existence. Thus Jehovah is the eternal existent one, self existent one without beginning, without end. The same yesterday and today and forever. God is now what he always has been and what he will remain forever. So when you do see it in all capital letters, LORD or GOD, it's Jehovah. But then there's a third term, Adonai, which you see as the word Lord with a capital L and then a lower case o r d. And of course, that name has to do with authority. It has to do with reigning over, and others being under the one who makes the rules. The one who puts the rules into place, and the one who would punish for the breaking of the rules. And so those three primary names are really important for us to learn from, because they tell us things about God. So yes, capital G, little o little d from Elohim. Capital G, capital O, capital D are all capitals with the word Lord, Jehovah. And then Lord with a capital L and a little o r d, Adonai. Now, those names are often compounded, Almighty God: Elshaddai. Most high God: El Elyon; Everlasting God: El Olam. Then with Jehovah, there's Jehovah Gyra that talks about being the provider. Jehovah Rapha, a healer; Jehovah Nissi, our banner. Jehovah Shalom, gives us peace; Jehovah Tsidkenu, got our righteousness. Jehovah Shama, the God who is present. So yeah, it might be simpler in some ways if there was just one name for God, but God reveals Himself as the self existent one, as the strong one, as the faithful one, as the giver of peace, as the one who provides for our needs. And all those are part of what we find in the Bible with the names of God. Brad, looks like you're ready to jump in.

Brad Kilthau
Well, you know, Gary, you're saying that and it's right on. Of course, when we look at the names of God, it is to help us to understand more about who God is and the character of God. And kind of when you go through history and see the Jewish people and how they pen out scripture, how they read scripture in public squares and so forth. And then as you come down to the New Testament time, and we get, here in our Bibles---but when you go back to to ancient history, some of the things that I found that was very interesting is: we realized that for thousands of years, the Jewish people, they had a great expression of how to worship the Lord. And it's found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 it's called the Shema, and it goes this way here, "O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And of course, these are all capital L O R D, "the Lord is one." "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." And Lord, as we see in that worship of the Jewish people to God, is the personal name of Israel's God. It's the personal God. Now, as we learn, of course you come back to Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3. And of course that's when God appeared to Moses and said, "Moses, I want you to go out and lead my people out of slavery, out of Egypt." And of course, there's Moses, you can just see him shaking in his sandals like, first of all, he's got to face Pharaoh. The second thing is, he's got to go back to his people who've already rejected him, and why would they ever follow him? And it's like, Moses turns to God and says, "well, what if the people asked me the name of God and who sent me?" And so God responded, and when you're studying the original language, God tells him, "tell them 'Ea sent me." Ea is the best way I could pronounce it. And when you study that, it means "I will be, I will be." And so you can just see Moses like, "how am I gonna use that? I Will Be sent me? It's not gonna work for me." And you know, God can obviously read our minds, as Moses is standing there, "I will be," should be only something that God would say to the people. So in the next sentence God tells Moses, basically the word, Yahweh, the God of our ancestors has sent me. "That's the way you will address the people. The God of your ancestors is the one who has sent me to come and to free you." Now, when you get to that word Yahweh into ancient Hebrew, again, it is actually a form of a verb. That means He will be, just as you were saying, Gary, He's always been, He's self existent. God is just simply there. He doesn't depend on anyone else for His existence. He never was created, He's always been, He will be. God has always. And so when we see this word, Yahweh, that's when we come to that appearing in the scripture, some 6,500 times in the Old Testament alone. Now, through the centuries, as we know the Jewish people, they wanted to honor the divine name of God. And so often they didn't wanna say His name, when it came to his name. As they were reading the scripture out loud, they thought it would be a great way to honor God by not even saying His name, because they were not worthy to say His name. And so when they read the Hebrew Bible aloud and they would come to the part of where they would need to say His name, they stopped even saying the word yahweh. And instead they said, Adonai, Adonai for the Lord, Adonai. And this practice continued throughout the centuries. And later on, when people started to translate the Bible, especially as we know coming into the English language, they somewhat had the same practice. Instead of spelling out the divine name, just translated L O R D all in capital letters. And more of that is when you think about the ancient scribes, you know, they wanted to prevent anyone from accidentally saying God's name out loud. And so they came up with a, I don't know, kind of a visual reminder to make sure nobody said it wrong. And when they would say, you know, again saying Adonai was a way that they could say the name of God in public and still show respect to God. But one of the ways they moved on with this, to make sure that no one said the name of God and used another name that would still honor God, but not be speaking a name of God, is they took the four capital letters out of Yahweh. They took the Y, the H, the W and the last H of the Divine name. And of course we see Y H W H, and then they inserted the vowels of the name Adonai. And so they took the vowels, a o and a, and they came up with a word, which is for a name for God, which is pronounced Yahuah. And so the Israelites and the Jewish people aren't gonna say Yahuah. So it was just a visual reminder, never to say even Yahweh, always go to Adonai and say it as Adonai. And then of course, when Christian scribes and so forth, translating scripture, a lot of them didn't know this history when they were even translating some of this. And so, some of them even started using the word Yahuah, which was an artificial word. Instead of saying Adonai or as coming back and saying Yahweh. And so they were saying, Yahuah. And until basically later on through this time of figuring it out, finally they came up with the true way of, they thought, of addressing God in a way that would be honoring and still not be saying His absolute name. They said Jehovah, and today, many Christians still use the word Jehovah. The title Jehovah describes the name of the Lord. Now, the main thing is this, the word L O R D in all capitals, it indicates that there is a divine name of the God of Israel. And we have to be careful sometimes that we don't confuse that. Because when we come into the New Testament, of course there's the word Aden, which is simply as you were alluding to, Gary, means Lord, L o r d, with the lowercase letters following. And of course, that name could be used to describe a king, you know, or to describe a guy that had servants or a guy that was just a shepherd over the sheep. He was a Lord of that. And so often the authors would use that: the Lord of all the Earth, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of Lords, and so forth. But I think behind all of this, this is what we gotta get out of. This is Jehovah, Lord, Adonai, Yahweh, all of these, it represents the original name of the God of Israel. And I guess the way we need to address the God of Israel, if you really wanna be serious about this and to say it properly, and you're worried about saying it wrong, it's just the one who was the one who is, and the one whoever will be. And to probably reverence the Lord with his name.

Gary Hashley
And I think we need to be very careful, because we've become pretty flippant with the name of God. Israel was very careful, even how they said it and how they wrote it. I agree with that. And we take it so casually and we use it as just an expression of excitement or an expression of fear or whatever. And we need to be really careful how we use the name of God.

Brad Kilthau
You know, sometimes that can even happen in our prayers, right? We can Lord, lord, lord, Lord, and not even realizing we're throwing that precious name of the Almighty God out there like that. Again, do we really mean to say His name? Do we really mean to say His name in a reverent way? You're right, Gary. We have to be very careful that each time we address Him and try to speak His name, that we have this high lifted up reverence for who we're speaking of.

Gary Hashley
I had a young man at Frontier School of the Bible when I taught there, who loved to start his prayer, "help me God." And something in me just cringed. I'm not saying it was horrible, but it just seemed a little casual when you're addressing the sovereign God of all things.

Who Were The Puritans? - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Okay, here's the question. "The Puritans play a prominent role in our observance of Thanksgiving. Can you tell us more about these people and their faith?" And Jonathan, would you get us started?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so I had to do quite a bit of research, cause I didn't know a lot, I guess. So I guess the question talks about Puritans so we can, I guess we'll hit on that. They were a group of people that were, I guess part of the church in England. And a good majority, you'd have two different groups, you had the Separatists, I think that's how you say it. And then the ones that didn't wanna separate from the church. Those kind of the two groups of that Puritan thought process I guess. And they were really wanting to, I guess they were a movement that was trying to separate the Anglian type of church culture that they were wanting to move into, and separate from more of that Catholic church mindset. And so they wanted to make sure that their influence was purely scripturally motivated. And then they also wanted to eliminate from their beliefs anything that was rituals or practices that weren't really directly found in scripture. So they didn't wanna just do something because it was what we've always done. They wanted to make sure it was, "this is what scripture shows and so then we'll go with that," their beliefs. And from what I found on the internet, some of their beliefs was that there's a judgmental God. God rewards good and punishes evil, predestination, the elect, the original sin, God's grace and providence. And so that was some of the beliefs that they would, I guess, walk in. And so, if we're talking about Thanksgiving as a holiday, we would talk more about the Pilgrims, and the other guys, we'll get more into that as we move forward. But the Puritans, I guess if we separate them from the Pilgrims, they came over to America more in that 1630, somewhere around that time, to Boston. And they were also ordered from the king to establish a colony there. And so they came over with the goods, with the backing of England in that sense, to come and establish a colony there that would really be England on this side of the states. Well obviously, it wasn't the states back then, but (laugh). So that's kind of where they came over from, that they really wanted to separate and have religious freedom. A lot of them, and this is where we see the pilgrims coming over, is cause they were coming over because they wanted to have that religious freedom. And some of the Puritans really, I guess some of them later on were still part of the Church of England. "We haven't separated from them, and so we're coming over to establish that here." And as you guys will talk about the Pilgrims, they were coming over to run away from that culture. And so that's where we see it. My family, I guess if we're talking about Thanksgiving, we celebrate it and more of the thought of us getting together as a family and thanking the Lord. And we see that, I guess some of that within the pilgrims. They were thanking God for that first harvest and they were celebrating with the people that had survived through that dreadful first year. And then also you would see the Native Americans that came apart and celebrated with them during that first harvest. Cause they were the ones that helped teach them how to grow the crops, how to fish. How to do those type of things, and how to live in this environment opposed to where they were from. So kind of, I guess some of the history that I had found within that.

Ben Cline
I always think back when I get questions like this, that my worst subject in school was history. And so I have to do a lot of looking, but I kind of wanted to focus a little bit on the Pilgrims and their faith. Because our celebration of Thanksgiving does really revolve more around the Pilgrims than it does the Puritans. And there's a difference there. But it was interesting reading about the pilgrims, because they truly were separatists from the Church of England. They left England in 1608 and they interestingly went to Holland to seek religious freedom there; to be able to worship according to their conscience. And they were only there for, I think, 12 years or something before they decided to leave there. Because the economy and the culture there was not really allowing them to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. And so they set off for the new world, and ended up landing in Massachusetts in 1620. And that's all of the history that I really wrote down. But I was just focusing on the beliefs of the Pilgrims being separatists from the Church of England. Number one: they rejected the institutional Church of England as Separatists. And so the first thing that I was thinking of, that I was reading about, is that they believed that the worship of God must originate in the inner man. And so I was just thinking of, what are some of the scriptures that were maybe running through their minds as they were formulating that sense of worship. John 4:24, "God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth." So they were probably seeking the truth of worshiping God. Luke 4:8, "Jesus says, 'worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." And I think that's probably something that they were seeking; was to be worshiping God only and not the institution that they felt like man had created. Psalm 66:4, it says, "all the earth bows down to you. They sing praise to you, they sing praises to your name." Romans 12:1, this is a familiar verse to us, "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual service of worship." And so they had this desire to be worshiping God according to the way that they understood God was asking them to worship Him. And then the second part of what I was reading about, what the pilgrims believed is that they didn't see church as a building. They didn't really see church as this physical institution, but they saw it more as we see it now. We talk about this a lot in church, that church is not this building that you come to, but it is the body of Christ. And that really goes on and is talked about more in Romans 12, starting in verse three. He talks about how the body of Christ, we all have gifts that, He's made us all gifted in different ways. But the reason why, is because He wants us to work together as the body of Christ, as the church. And so I think those were maybe just some things that they could have studied as they were formulating that belief system that they came over to the new world with.

Gary Schick
Yeah, in many ways they were kind of the seed from which modern evangelicalism has grown. In many ways, in terms of independent churches, in terms of Back to the Bible, in terms of a personal faith versus an institutional faith. And I think you both drew the line really well. I think it gets confusing in people's minds; people say Puritan and mean Pilgrims. And yeah, actually the difference between the Puritans and the Separatists is right there in the names. And what they were seeing happening in England is something that we are seeing. I mean, it's been going on for ages. There is a tendency, however the church begins, for it to slowly institutionalize and to sort of start to drift away from scripture. And so shortly after the reformation, England was kind of going back and forth in its relationship to Catholicism, and the Church of England was kind of the result. And there were some really great things about it. It had reformed to the scripture in some ways, but not completely in others. And there was an institutional aspect which maybe wasn't so great, but there were some good things happening. And so the Puritans were a group within who, their goal was to purify, Puritans to purify the church from within. So the Puritans are the ones who hung in there and they said, "we are the Church of England, we are not leaving the Church of England. We are going to be God's light within to bring this institution around to a more biblical base." The separatists, just by definition, they separated out. They didn't go to church at the local Episcopal church, which was the Church of England. They had their gatherings in the countryside, and houses and farmhouses, and whatever; barns. And really, the famous guy from them is John Bunyan, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. Sadly, I'll bet most of our listeners have never read The Pilgrim's Progress. But there was a time when pretty much, in every Christian home in America you had three books. You had the Bible, you had Fox's Book of Martyrs, and you had John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. And Pilgrim's Progress, he wrote it while he was in jail and starts as if he's, "While I was in jail I had this dream," or something to that effect. And it is an allegory, where it's very symbolic, this guy's journey from the city of Destruction, which is the city of this world to the heavenly kingdom. And how he came, first, as he's coming out, he's hearing the words of the prophets and he's fleeing freeing for his life, and he flees the city of destruction. He finally comes to the foot of the cross, where literally the burden drops off his back and he receives the gift. So they had a very evangelical understanding of the gift by salvation, by faith through Christ and Christ alone. Great book. If you've never read it, read it. But as you pointed out, these separatists as you pointed out Ben, these separatists first go to Holland. And one of the things that I remember about them is that they're actually doing pretty well there, but their kids, just like our kids, are starting to blend in with the culture and speak the language of the culture. And for them, that literally meant speaking another language. Speaking Dutch as opposed to English, and just taking on the Dutch culture, and maybe in some other ways starting to drift away from their Biblical roots. And so they're like, "no, this isn't good," and so they go back to England and they eventually board the Mayflower. And after a horrific voyage, they land in New England, north of where they wanted. They wanted to go further south where it was a little warmer. They get there. Have you ever watched the show Alone? Basically you're watching 10 people out starve one another, trying to win 50 or 500 grand, and whoever is basically the last one who can take it out there. And every now and then somebody will bring down an elk or something. They'll bring down some massive animal, and they'll have some food to survive on. But, this is the pilgrims, they get---and the thing about Alone that is so appropriate to this, is they put these people, these 10 people in some remote location late enough in the year that they really don't have time to build, gather, and prepare for winter. And so it really is, it's a show of just scratching by, and that was the pilgrims. They were the first episode of Alone. They get to New England when it's well past time to plant or even really harvest. Winter's coming, they have to pull together some bare bone shelters, people are sick, they're sick from the voyage. I think, as we've pointed out, I think over half of them died that winter. The handful that were left are taking care of the sick and it's ugly. These people are sick, their---well, I probably can't say it on the radio. It's coming out from everywhere, let's just put it that way, and they are really sick. And so the people that are left are having to change the clothing and change the bedding and it's gross. And they only would've survived, I think based on the kindness of the natives. And I think in our minds, the way we've kind of gone to school, and that we've dreamed up this image of the first Thanksgiving, it's probably a little different than the way it really was. I think well, what did you say, Jonathan? You thought they probably ate eel, because that's what the natives had helped them learn to fish. I mean, whether there was any Turkey, there was probably venison. One of the things I remember reading is that they did play games. So we talk about, "oh, they've secularized Thanksgiving with all this football." Well, they probably didn't play football, but as you point out, they may have played lacrosse, the native game. There was some friendship there as time unfolds, they probably didn't continue to treat those natives at all the way they should have. But they were treated well by the natives, and probably only survived because of them. Teaching them to plant, teaching them to fish, teaching them to so many things. And so I think there's some good that we can come together about, and say, "you know what, thank you Lord that there were some people who welcomed them to this land." Would that it had stayed that way, I don't think the Pilgrims, who were looking for some religious toleration didn't turn around and end up being all that tolerant as they set up shop in New England. But history happened and we are still a work in progress. I think that's what America is, it is a work in progress. But there's some pictures there that I think, this is what we need to strive for. And as I was thinking about this, as we were even talking right before we dug in, I thought about those words in Revelation 7 where John talks about what's coming. He says, "and after this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from every tribe and people and language standing before the throne and before the land clothed in white with palm branches in their hands and crying out in a loud voice, 'salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb." So as Christians, we have some distant memories of what that might have been. We really don't know a great deal, but we also know where we're going. And I think Thanksgiving can be a day to strive toward. A good day for all of us, who in one way or another, found ourselves in this wonderful land of plenty. And making America what it should have been and should be. Just one nation of people from every background, for people of every background where the gospel can be freely offered to people of every background. And boy, that is my prayer, is that we'll come together and just really honor Jesus in our own homes. Enjoy the day. It's only a day, they had it, I think, for several days. Was it three to five or something? Three days. So can you just imagine, stop. We kind of do that at the end of the year. Between Christmas and new years, everything slows way down. That's what they did. They just slowed down to give thanks for the harvest and to give thanks to the Lord.

California Misconceptions - 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 Michael Gleb and Matthew Gleb, and Pastor Mike introduced us to his brother Matthew, who preaches in North Carolina.

Michael Gleb
Hello and welcome to Ask the Pastor. My name is Michael Gleb and I'm the pastor of Torrington Baptist Tabernacle and I'm joined today by a special co-host. This is my brother Matthew Gleb, and Matthew is from North Carolina. Matthew, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Matthew Gleb
Yeah, like you said, my name is Matt. I'm the youth pastor in Greenville, North Carolina at People's Baptist Church and I've been there now for 10 years and the Lord's really blessed in our ministry there. Excited to be a part of a staff, about six of us on staff, and we run about 450 people on Sunday morning. And I have a youth group, about 40 to 50 kids, and I just really love serving the Lord.

Michael Gleb
Amen. I think it's a unique experience that's obviously different from being a pastor, is being on staff at a church and serving under a pastor. And sometimes the pastoral staff can be underappreciated sometimes. But also, it can be a tremendous blessing and you have an opportunity to work with people that even a pastor doesn't get the opportunity to work at. But anyway again, you said that you had been on staff for 10 years at People's Baptist there in Greenville, North Carolina. Talk to us about some of the duties that you have had over your tenure there.

Matthew Gleb
Yeah, I started right out of college and we have a Christian school there. And so Pastor Butler, who's actually also my father-in-law, hired me on to teach at the school. So I taught there full-time for a couple years, and knowing that I did not wanna teach forever he, and he knew that as well. And we started to transition out of that position and I started a college ministry at East Carolina University. We called it a Turning Point College Ministry. And I had a great time doing that for several years, for four years actually, and saw a freshman class come in and work with them until they graduated and got to see several students saved. And I got to participate in a couple of their weddings and actually marry off a couple of them as well. So that was really cool to see. And then during that time our youth pastor at the time, left our church to help his father-in-law in Pennsylvania. So I started pulling double duty with being a college pastor and youth pastor, and we were able to do that for about a semester and I just could not keep up with preaching three times a week. Still teaching a little bit in the school and just all the other response was that, "come on a church staff." And so we handed off the college manager to someone else, and I was able to be a full-time youth pastor from then on out and still work a little bit in our Christian school as well. But a lot to do, a lot of different facets of our ministry. And so it's great to be a part of a little---have my hand in a little bit of each one.

Michael Gleb
Yeah. I know a little bit about your history and I know that you've coached basketball, is that right?

Matthew Gleb
I've coached all the sports, not qualified for some, but basketball, baseball, soccer.

Michael Gleb
Oh, soccer. Wow, that's an interesting one. I was an assistant coach for soccer in Fairfax, Virginia for a while, but never was the head coach. And I mean, you've done just about anything that you can do in a church ministry. You've done it, you sing in the choir.

Matthew Gleb
I was singing in the choir and with some scheduling conflicts, I sing whenever I know the song. Now, I'm not able to go to our practices, because of some scheduling conflicts in our ministry. But yeah, love singing. I never sang ever in my whole life until I went to our church: learned how to sing a little bit and learned how to read some music. But mainly I sing with our frontline music and on our church staff we have a singing all of our staff we can sing pretty well. So that's fun. But yeah, singing has become a new part of the resume.

Michael Gleb
Amen. That's good. Yeah, I know that you almost have to be sort of a renaissance man when you come in on staff somewhere. For instance, I had my education in history, history education, secondary education. But when I started teaching, it was teaching. I taught computer classes, I taught PEs, I taught health, I taught all kinds of things that I had zero experience or almost zero knowledge in by the way. So I'm sure some of those parents wouldn't like to hear that. But anyway, that's kind of how it is.

Matthew Gleb
And we really cannot forget about the most important facet of any ministry is being able to stack chairs and move tables. I can move all sorts of tables. Plastic, metal, wooden, you ask and I've done it.

Michael Gleb
Yeah, I told the congregation, I said, "pre-pastoring is 80% reminding people of the gospel and 20% setting up chairs. So yeah, I understand that. That's so true. Now, you don't forget, there is a better half to the Gleb family. And there are also should I say an offspring? Talk to us a little bit about your wife and family.

Matthew Gleb
I've been married now for nine years, her name is Casey and we met in college. We went to West Coast Baptist College, and that's where we met and started dating. We dated for about a year and a half and then I proposed to her after I graduated and she still had a year left. And so I started working at the church one year before she got there, and we enjoyed our time together alone. And then we started to want to have a child, and this may relate to some people, but it took us four and a half years before we were able to have our son. So that's pretty tough. And all of you out there that may be struggling to have a child, or it just doesn't come as quickly as it does others. It was definitely a burden for us for a while, but we were able to have a son, his name is Chandler Michael Gleb. He's the best, and I love him so much. And now we are currently wanting to have another child. And so if any listeners out there have a good prayer life, please pray for me and my wife to be able to have another kid.

Michael Gleb
As your brother, I got a little excited there. I thought there was an announcement coming to the greater part of eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska coming up there, but that's good.

Matthew Gleb
-----You would not be the first to know.

Michael Gleb
We're glad to hear that. Chandler is a special boy. I love him to death and we're excited that Chandler's in your life. He was born in 2020, and just kind of a little bit of a family history here. Our dad, Matt and my's dad passed away in late 2020 to Covid, but Chandler was born in March I believe, right? And then yeah, Chandler was born in March and so he was able to meet dad, and dad was able to hold him and that was a blessing. Now, I had you come out here and preach for me every year. We've had you here every year except for last year because we had a covid scare in our church and then there was literally Southwest Airlines canceling flights because of pilots on strike and all this stuff. So you preached to us online while we set out for a couple of weeks going to online services but you have a connection to the west. How long did you live here?

Matthew Gleb
As you told me, cause I did not know this We moved here in 93, so I was three years old. I'm a 1990 baby, and that's really fun to say these days. To say, "I was born in the 1900s," for all these young people around. But we moved here in 93, and then moved out back east in 2003. So, I was here for 10 years and then while I was in college, my parents moved back. So most of my Christmas's while I was in college were in Cheyenne.

Michael Gleb
Yeah. So, I know this is probably putting you on the spot. It's not the formative years of your life. For instance, I moved here when I was 15, so that shows you the age gap here between us. But I moved here at 15, so it was formative years for me. But can you tell us anything maybe that you like about the west or something you remember about the west, or something that you appreciate about the area?

Matthew Gleb
Yeah, I love the wide openness. You get out east and there's trees everywhere, so you can't see very far and you kind of feel enclosed. But out here it's just kind of wide open. So I do love that. I miss the western culture of the cowboys. And I miss the mountains, and being able to actually see the mountains in North Carolina. If you get into the mountains, you can't see them anymore because there's just trees everywhere. So, I love that. Love the weather. I loved winters here for a while as a kid, cause we had to play in the snow. Obviously, I didn't have to drive through it, so I know my mom hated that. And my mom and dad were on the precipice of divorce several times as dad would be forcing our car down the highway.

Michael Gleb
Know no murder!

Matthew Gleb
Yeah, he'd be forcing us down the highway. We're going to church and we only had to drive an hour to church one way. So we've seen our fair share of accidents. But yeah, I love the west, and love coming out here to visit. Love coming right here to preach to a lot of good people here. And yeah, I like the culture.

Michael Gleb
Now, you came to know Christ here in the west. Am I mistaken about that?

Matthew Gleb
Yeah, I was saved in 2001 when we were going to Cavalry Baptist Temple in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I got saved one night when my little sister was scared, that she came into our room and she was scared and I was like, "Jessica, there's nothing to be afraid of. No one's gonna get us in our house." She goes, "No, I'm not afraid of that. I'm afraid of dying and going to hell." And I've heard the gospel message my whole life. I could quote the verses, but I feel like it was truly then that the Lord convicted my heart and I realized, "Oh wow, I don't believe that I would be going to heaven if I died." And it just kind of hit me all at once. And we could not wait to talk to our parents; they were actually, I think, at the grocery store. And so when they got back, my dad took me into our computer room, and my mom took my little sister. And he led me to the Lord, and we knew the verses, talk together, and that's the night that I trusted Christ as my savior.

Michael Gleb
Yeah, it's one thing to know what the Bible says, concerning salvation. It's one thing to know all the verses, it's even another thing to believe there is a God. But to have a personal relationship with Jesus is the most important thing to accept Him personally. And so that's a great story. It just reminds us of how many people grow up in church and never truly accept Christ as their Savior.

Matthew Gleb
We actually just recently had a woman at our church, she grew up in a certain denomination, and you could say that she loved God. That she appreciated the Bible and she enjoyed bringing her family to church. But they visited our church and her oldest daughter got saved at camp, and her husband had already been saved when he was in college. But she came to a point where she realized, "I can be as sincere as I want to be about religion and about God," but she came to know that, "I never trusted Him as my savior." And sincerity will not give you everlasting life.

Michael Gleb
Right.

Matthew Gleb
Being a good person and even really pushing everything you have into your religion, really means nothing. It's all about a relationship with Jesus. And I'm so glad that, Ms. Bear is her name, she actually was saved this Summer. Yeah, that's a blessing.

Michael Gleb
Let me put you on the spot as we end up here. Churches out here are not incredibly large. There's probably a few of them. I've been to some churches, even worked on staff of some churches; churches back east that were bigger in size that oftentimes have a staff of pastors: if you will, assistant pastors, youth pastors and things of that nature. Matt, from personal experience, and I really don't mean to try to put you on the spot here, but can you give us, if you happen to be in a church with an assistant pastor, here's what I've seen before. A church member may get angry and they don't direct it towards the pastor, because of the office. And so what they do is, they almost place their anger, it's misplaced anger, onto a staff member. They feel like they can mistreat a staff member. They feel like they can mistreat a youth pastor, or such and such. So I may ask you a question, what would you recommend of being 10 years on a church staff, what would you recommend for those maybe listening that do have a larger church that have the staff? How do you treat a staff member? Is it that way out there?

Matthew Gleb
On the senior pastor?

Michael Gleb
No, no, no. If you're, I mean, as experienced, how would you treat, if you're just a regular layman, how do you treat the staff person and their family?

Matthew Gleb
Yeah. I think it's easy to overlook the staff member, because the pastor is there in front of us every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, depending on your schedule. And so he gets a lot of the due recognition and appreciation for his office, and everything that he puts into the church. And this is no bash on our church. I believe our church does a great job, but I've seen it growing up in church my whole life. Where the people who don't have the title as senior pastor, that they may be forgotten. We have a pastor appreciation month, and a lot of times we recognize the pastor, but then there's a whole other pastoral staff that is doing a lot of work as well. And picking up a lot of the work so that the pastor could just study and preach and not have to do all the ins and outs, weekly things that we do. So I believe my dad probably did the best I've ever seen out of anyone. Helping to recognize and appreciate a whole church staff. And he would give honor to the pastor, but he would quickly follow that up knowing that the other families that are involved get their appreciation as well. And he wanted to take care of them. And the church staff gets a lot of the pressure, but sometimes the compensation is not as much. And so it's almost like the balance is totally different. So it's a good thing for maybe even your church to reevaluate how you take care of your staff, how you recognize them. We're not doing this to pat them back. We're not doing this for "atta-boys." But man, they don't hurt.

Michael Gleb
Sometimes it's needed.

Matthew Gleb
Yeah, they really do help keep people on fire. It's good to know that what you said spoke to someone's heart. It's good to know that, you know, you were a blessing to somebody. So be willing to share that. Be willing to be a blessing to those families in any way, shape or form.

Michael Gleb
Well, Matt, thank you for joining us. I love you and I'm so thankful you're my brother first of all, but that you came on and helped some people.