How Should Christian's View Our Cultures Obsession With Justice?

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 Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Well, today's question could be what you might call, kind of a hot topic. But I know it's a question that people are asking. So here it is, "We hear a lot about justice these days. Environmental justice, social justice, et cetera. We know God is a just God.' But how should Christians view our culture's obsession with justice?"

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, I guess this is a pretty important question within our society today. And I would say that I guess even in Jesus's time, I guess it would be an important question on this. So we look at this, how there's this focus on this social justice platform, I guess that's been really going on for a while. But really started really sparking a lot for us in what, 2020? Around that time we started seeing a lot of more things, I guess, popping off in that sense, moving forward in that social justice form. And so, if we look at this, if we take the Bible seriously, then justice should be a big deal for us. We see it scripturally, he commands in Jeremiah 22:3, "do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand the oppressor; him who has been robbed." And so we see these scriptures that God is showing, you know, there is justice and He is a just God. We see in Luke 4:18, and this is quoting Isaiah 61, it says, "Jesus declared his mission proclaimed. The good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are being oppressed." Isaiah 1:17 says to seek justice. So this is a strong call. I guess in that sense, in scripture we have to look at those and take them and say, "okay, if we are seeing this call in scripture, how do we see it lived out in that?" If God's calling us to live this justice out, how do we see this happen? And I think if we can look even in the book of Acts, you know, if we look in the church history in that form, we see this happen in the early church as they proclaim the gospel. We see that there was a racial divide happening back in that time with the Jews, the Gentiles, and the Samaritans. We see this racial divide happening and we see that as the early church was proclaiming the gospel, there was a real sense of community starting to be built. And I think if we can look at that for our time now, there is a racial divide that unfortunately does happen within our society. And if we could just get back and say, "you know what? We're going to start proclaiming the gospel. We're going to start walking it out." Not just saying that we proclaim the gospel, actually walking out the gospel. And doing the things that we see in scripture, and start seeing this real community start happening like we've seen in the early church and start seeing people come to Christ. I think this is how we'll see this social justice, that platform, really say, "you know what? Let's just bring this back to scripture." I think for me, some of the problem with the social justice that we see today is, it really starts pitting people against other people. And this is not the justice that we're wanting to see. We're not wanting to see it divide people more. We're wanting to see it bring people together in unity. And I think we're starting to see, at least this is what I'm seeing, is some of these social justice warriors of our day are really pitting our people groups against people groups. And we're seeing more oppression happening than, you know, we should be seeing people that are oppressed, released and freed from these things. And I think unfortunately, we're seeing it where it's really pushing people more into oppression, not uplifting people like it should be. And so I think that's where I'm seeing it from my side. Gosh, if we're wanting to go after social justice, we should be seeing unity not pitting people against people. And so, yeah.

Gary Schick
I think that's an interesting and a good take on it. This world's attempts to achieve justice don't always achieve it. And I think it's in part because it's us working out of our sinful nature trying to move towards something better. Which the goal is good, but if you use sinful means to get there, you're going to continue tofall short of your objective. And I think also, a part of it is some blind spots, which we are reluctant, all of us, to let go of. Each of us have what we might call our hot topics, things that we want to see, areas of justice achieved. But if we're completely honest with ourselves, there are others that others may be fighting for out there we could care less about. And that doesn't mean that those things aren't important to God's heart. Just that maybe, in fact, even the way this question is worded kind of made me think about that. It says, "we know God is a just God, but how should Christians view our culture's obsession with justice?" As if almost to say, "well obviously culture's in the wrong here by being obsessed with it." You know, throughout the Bible, God is just, "period." And He is obsessed with justice in a way that we could only wish we were. One of the great verses, we used to sing it when I was in youth group many, many years ago, from the book of Micah says, "he has shown me, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of thee. But to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." And I think part of the human problem is, we don't know how to balance justice and mercy. Justice by itself is very important, but very harsh. Mercy by itself can come across as just sort of sweeping things under the rug. You know, kind of like Jesus. Jesus came filled with grace and truth. Truth and justice go hand in hand. Grace and mercy go hand in hand---and love. In our way of approaching life, sometimes we've got justice on one side, mercy on the other. In Christ they don't fight, they kiss. Justice and mercy come together in Him. But exactly what you were saying, in terms of the way, in our sinful selves, we go at this, these things actually tend to conflict. In Christ they come together and even when we pray the Lord's prayer, what are those three words? "Thy kingdom come." Now in part, we're praying for the return of Christ, but we're praying for the King of Kings to come to reign over His kingdom when the kingdoms of this world give way to His ultimate justice and rule. So we are actually to be ambassadors and signposts of that. I just, oh man, I've got several just little quick thoughts that I just want to kind of pop out to the listeners here. One, bear in mind, God's view of justice is at times very different from what the culture promotes as just. But at other times, if we take the Bible seriously, even what the culture is asking for doesn't go far enough. Really, the question is not whether there should be justice in this area, but what is a biblical view of it? What's God's view of it? And biblically, I think three things need to be said. 1. part of our sinfulness, both in the culture and the churches, I've already mentioned, is blind spots. We need God's word to wake us up to areas of injustice that we have grown complacent about. If we ever recognized them to begin with. And one example would be, a hundred years ago this country was divided Christians on both sides over, in part, I know there were other factors, but a big part of it was the issue of slavery. Today it's very hard for a Christian to look back and say, "how could Christians have ever been on the side of that?" But they were complacent in their culture. They found verses to back up what they wanted to say and just close their eyes hard to others. You've got to take the whole council of God in a sense that civil war should never have happened. Christians should have been able to come together and say, "you know what? This is hard, but God's word says, "and therefore we must," as opposed to going the direction we did. Another thing is to acknowledge, you know, we hear a lot today, a lot of it came, you're right, a lot of it got going in the 2020. It wasn't just covid that hit that year. We hear a lot about culture wars. I heard an interesting take on that recently. Culture wars, the person defined as this, a culture war is a theological war where one side identifies it as theological about what God says, and the other side doesn't see that. But it's still about that. You know, it's very interesting. In the culture wars, the secular liberal left, they are using, I guess I want to say Christian values without calling them Christian. So often in calling us our attention to this and this and this. Whereas Christians are saying, "and God's word says." And so it is. It's a cultural, it's actually somewhat of a theological war, in which one side doesn't acknowledge that God is part of the equation. And so that is part of what creates the conflict there. And then third, while we are not called to fix the culture, we are called as Christians to be a prophetic voice within the culture. And even to live out higher values than the culture, and in all areas, not just one or two. For example, it seems like over the course of my life, there were a time when Christians kind of stood up for many things, and more and more we have, maybe it's kind of a stereotype, but Christians have been sort of stereotyped as one issue. People, it's all about abortion. That's all or nothing, and nothing else matters. Well, obviously abortion does matter. And I'll be honest, that has cast my vote more than once. That issue, right there. But it doesn't mean that other issues don't matter. For example, I think the question brought up the question of the environment. Whether you believe in global warming or not, I mean, the world is kind of hot this summer for whatever reason. Doesn't really change what our answers should be to the question, "did God make this world?" And we do our best to take care of it, whether that scientific theory is true or complete hogwash.

Gary Schick
Should Christians be not only leading the way to say all life is valuable, which we should, but should we also be leading the way to a cleaner, safer, healthier environment in our planet? I mean, do Christians want the oceans filled with plastic? I don't think so. And yet, I have heard Christians say, "well, it's all going to burn up. Who cares?" I mean, that is not a Christian perspective. God said, "here's this world, you take care of it until, basically, until I come back," it is what we're going to pass on to our kids and grandkids. It shouldn't be either or, it should all matter to us. But from a Christian perspective, fourth---actually my three turned into six---fourth, I think it's important that Christians stand for the right things in the right way. Sometimes we become so passionate about our causes that we forget that human souls are often at stake, the people we are arguing with. And that's where there is, I think, what's the most important thing here? The issues are always important. Of course they are, they affect people. But it's the people that matter the most. Jesus died for souls. And sometimes when I get pretty wound up about an issue, whatever it is, I tend to demonize the people on the other side. I think we all do. And no, those are souls that we need to reach for Christ. And so yes, we need to, I think, draw the line and make clear our stand and make clear why we stand there. But I think it's also a good idea for Christians too, and this is my next point, and to look for some common ground. Not every issue does have to be us versus them. Christians can stand the ground and be sowers of peace, not division. The Bible calls us to that. That's part of, "thy kingdom come." It's a kingdom of peace. And then sixth and last, I think we need to bathe everything in prayer. Even as Christians, we've read our Bibles, we know what the Bible says about this, so here we are ready to go to---no. We need to ask God to show us His solution. How do we bridge this gap? Is there some place that we can build together? Is there a way through this that we haven't thought of yet? Even if we agree with the scientists, here's an issue in our world, there's still one thing that we can bring to the table that they can't. "God, give them insight," whether we're talking about cancer or whatever it is, we should be bathing everything in prayer and every conversation in prayer and every relationship in prayer. And then God's picture of justice, I think really will be done. He looks, I believe, for a world where people are in harmony, first with Himself, then one another, and then the environment they live in, until He comes for us. So Jonathan, anything more you want to add?

Jonathan Hernandez
No, I think you had some great points there. Definitely, things for us to really think about in those areas. And so I think the last thing is, for me, a lot of times when we are raising our kids, let's make sure that we're raising them with that biblical view of things. I think that's where we're seeing a lot of things going astray. Are we going to be committed to God or are we going to just show up to church, but we want to live a worldly worldview instead of what God has shown us scripturally.

Gary Schick
And I think news broadcasts or a topic that comes up at school, those can be great conversations at home. Say, "oh, that's interesting. What does the Bible say about this?" And so, sometimes we will get on board with what the secular culture is saying and say, "you know what? They've actually gotten ahold of something that's right here in the Bible," because all truth is God's truth. Other times we're going to say, "You know, isn't it interesting how the world is looking for a just outcome, but how that's contrary to God's word?" And look at where that will, if they got their way, where that would actually take us. And what that would actually result in. And for example, well the two we've brought up, we could say, "oh, there's a person who doesn't know the Lord and yet they're caring an awful lot about the world God created." What are some responses, as Christians, we could add to that? Or take the issue of abortion, say, "well, it's really interesting. They're talking about a woman's rights, which obviously there's some truth there, but aren't they forgetting about the person that woman is carrying in her body and that that child has rights to?" And so if the world gets their way there, what does that lead to? The loss of that child's life. So we just need to keep going back to the Bible and affirm what's there to be affirmed. Call it when it's going too far, and absolutely draw the line when it's going totally counter to God. It may use all the right words, but if it's going in the wrong direction, how do we know? What's our compass? "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Not what I want, not what sounds good to me or feels good to me or is most comfortable to me. But what does God's word say?

Does God Give Us the Desires of Our Heart?

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 Johnathan Hernandez .

Jonathan Hernandez
So our question this morning is, "Does God give us the desires of our heart?" And we would look at Psalms 37. This is where we would find that scripture where it says, "take delight in the Lord and God will give you the desires of your heart." And I think we've taken this verse and we've just, what do you wanna say? Like, simplified it into just this part of it, not the entire portion of scripture. We've just taken it down to, "let's look at the scripture and take delight in the Lord and God will give you the desires of your heart." And so, I think at times we see this and it's exciting, right? We see it on t-shirts, we see it on posters, memes on Facebook or any of these things. Like, we see this portion of scripture, or just this verse of scripture, and it sounds great. You know, like, if I delight in the Lord, I will have the desires of my heart. And so, I think people get frustrated, because here they are, they feel like they're delighting themselves in the Lord, but yet they still have this desire for say, a million dollars, right? And here we are. We're serving God, we're doing the things that we've, you know, that we see in scripture. And there we don't have the million dollars, right? And so I think when we take these scriptures out of the complete context of what we're seeing, we can get ourselves into a bit of trouble, right? And that's with any scripture, you know, we have to make sure that we're looking at it in the context of the entire portion of scripture. You know, it's not just a vacuum. It's not, you know, we just can't pull a scripture out and, you know, base everything on just that little tiny bit of it, because we have to have the full context. And what is the author saying in this? What is it? What is the whole meaning through this entire part of it? You know? And so we can't, like I said, we can't just take this little bit of the scripture. You know, we have to look at the whole thing. And, you know, in chapter 37 verse one, we started off. Verse four is where we find the, "delight yourself in the Lord." And so we look and it says, "do not fret because of the evil doers; nor be envious of the workers of inequity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell on the land and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your ways to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as a light and your justice as the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him." You know, as we continue to go on you guys, like this whole scripture, we're starting to see things come into place. Like I said, we can't just take it out of it. We can't do that with scripture. We can't just pull stuff out of there. And so, how do we look at this? How do we see, okay, God will give you the desires of your heart. Is this really what we're seeing here? "Delight yourself in the Lord." So verse four, it says, "delight in the Lord." And we find this thought process throughout the Bible, right? But it's also one, you know, maybe we don't really, or rarely we hear somebody preach on what does it mean to delight ourselves in the Lord? And we could probably have an entire radio show that's dedicated to just that. So to delight yourself in something is to take pleasure from that thing or person. Commonly, we would delight ourselves in like, our spouse, right? So it could be friends, our children. Maybe, you know, we see people that delight themselves in a prized possession. They have an old car, and that's, you know, the greatest thing on earth. And, you know, they delight themselves in that. Unfortunately, some people delight themselves in sin. And so they're taking pleasure, or committing themselves fully into this thing. And David is telling his readers to delight and commit fully to God, to find our joy in Him before anything else.

Jonathan Hernandez
And I would challenge us, as believers are we fully committed? Are we taking joy before the Lord? Are we seeking after Him with everything that we have? And so I think, you know, if we're looking at these scriptures, we need to make sure that we're delighting ourselves in the Lord. And then the second part of verse four, it says that God will give us the desires of our heart. And I would challenge us as believers that if we're fully committed, fully going after the things of God, I think our desires will align with His desires. You know, it's not gonna be, "I want a million dollars so I can be rich and famous, or whatever." Now it's, "okay, if God gives me a million dollars, where am I investing that into the kingdom? And how am I helping what God wants to see happen? I think a lot of times, you know, I know when I first became a believer, my desires were still in things that wouldn't be God's plan, right? First, when I give my life to Christ I'm starting to learn how to walk the Christian life out. I'm praying, "God, remove these things from my life," you know, whatever it may be. And, you know, sometimes our desires are in things that they shouldn't be. Like maybe revenge, lust, envy, greed, something along those lines. And so, the more time we're spending with God, the more time we're delighting ourselves in the Lord. I think that's where we start seeing our desires being removed from this worldly context into a godly context of, you know, what is God wanting to see? What is He wanting to see happen? Not only in our lives, but within our communities? How often do we encounter different believers that are seeking after things that we see, "okay, God is showing us these things. God is speaking these things." And so, as I continue to push and move forward in Christ, we're gonna start seeing these things happen. And it's exciting to see those things, you know? And so, as I look at the scripture, if I delight myself in the Lord, that means I'm aligning everything with Him completely. I'm aligning my thought process. I'm completely all in for God, right? And so I will receive the desires of my heart. But I believe my desires now have been formed in such a way that they're aligning with God's heart. And my heart now is that, you know, exactly what God is wanting to see happen. And so, "delight yourself in the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart," isn't, "I'm gonna give my life to Christ and He's gonna give me a million bucks." Or, "I'm gonna give my life to Christ, and He's gonna give me that amazing vehicle that I've always wanted." You know? No, that's not how we're seeing this happen and how it operates. You know, how we see this happen. You know, we delight ourselves in the Lord and our heart will be aligned with God's heart, and we'll see what, you know, will align with that completely. And so I would just challenge you guys to continue to, you know, read that entire portion of scripture and allow God to speak to you through that and allow the Holy Spirit just to really lead you.

Parenting and Disciplining Your Children

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

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

Jon Simpson
So, last time we discussed parenting and specifically discipling your kids. We want to kind of continue in that with that topic. And so we're gonna tackle a passage found in the book of Judges, again in the Old Testament. Pastor John's gonna read for us again from chapter two of the book of Judges.

John Mulholland
Yeah, "After Joshua sent the people away, each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them, and Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua. And the leaders who outlived him, those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the land he had been allocated at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for them. The Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight and served the images of Baal." And then it continues down a really lousy path throughout the rest of the Book of Judges.

Jon Simpson
Just one generation.

Kylie Calloway
That did not acknowledge the Lord.

John Mulholland
Why didn't they acknowledge the Lord?

Tyson Lambertson
Well, first I think we have to give Joshua some credit, because his legacy was substantial and very, very important. Cause he kept Israel on task. He was a father of the nation. He really did a wonderful job. And his kids followed. Then they split up and went and possessed land. And I think a lot of times it's easy to lose focus and we're seeing in our own generation, people walking away from the things of the Lord and being carried into a culture that is full of demonic influence. So it makes sense that it could be one generation away.

Kylie Calloway
We've got something up on our refrigerator and how we acknowledge the Lord. I mean, acknowledging the Lord may be different in each home. But I'll share them with you, cause I don't memorize them. But we call them connecting habits and disconnecting habits. So I think people use them, and I think this is what drives away kids. So the disconnecting habits would be: criticism, blaming, complaining, nagging threatening, punishing, bribing. Basically, all of those are to control. So anytime those go on in our home, we kind of go to the refrigerator and say, "you know, that's not the way we wanna be, because that's not who God is." But we want to be these habits, because these connect us to one another, which is: supporting, encouraging, listening, accepting, trusting, respecting and negotiating differences. And for us, that's birthed out of love of who God is. So when we have those moments together as a family, we feel like in those times we're acknowledging who God would want us to be. So I have to keep going back to that, being, right? Is that we try to teach our kids that it goes deeper than just church attendance and serving in a church. Yes. Prayer is good, studying the Bible is good. But at the essence is: this is who He wants you to be. And so that's our way of acknowledging the Lord. Of course, we acknowledge Him every Sunday in our worship and in our prayer, but further than that. Of our day-to-day life with one another, getting to the core of who we are is acknowledging the Lord for us. And hopefully for our home, that will teach our kids to continue to acknowledge the Lord in their family lifestyle.

John Mulholland
I really like that difference that you explained. What I heard you say was, "there's a difference between being and doing." And we went through Judges several years ago. You know, if we were to read through Judges and we were to read into the rest of the Old Testament, we would see a people who were doing all the right things. You know, all of the things that are taking place here in the book of Judges, in the midst of that, there are people who are still celebrating the Passover. They're still doing all of the right behaviors. But what they've missed is that being and not acknowledging the Lord, not remembering the mighty things that He had done for Israel. So, back to what we talked about last time, just kind of like, that verse 10 is a key text because it tells us; like, when the kids ask their parents, "what is the reason we do these things?"

John Mulholland
They were supposed to say one thing. And my guess is, they made it about the doing, "Well, we go to Temple because we always go to Temple at this time. It's always the Sabbath. It's always the Passover." And they've forgotten the reasons why. And they've forgotten that they were set apart to be a certain kind of people. So I think our challenge is, "what does it look like for us to be a certain kind of people, and then model those behaviors to our kids? And how can we encourage the people and our bodies to do that?

Kylie Calloway
Right. And that's how we're set apart from the world, so to speak. Those disconnecting habits are ways of external control. I can control you with my complaints, but we teach our kids an internal locus of control, that there's something deeper inside of them that they can choose to be other than externally controlling. Cause if I control you, I mean, that's really a form of witchcraft. So, you know, we're not trying to control in those connecting behaviors, which are birthed out of love. It's hard to do with young kids, but the more---I just had to do it yesterday, but the more consistently we do it, we're finding that that's who our kids truly, at the end of the day, want to be. They know who they want to be. It's just our job to kind of guide them towards that direction. And they can choose not to be that too.

Jon Simpson
Yeah. It also seems like, it's interesting that what happened here was that the people were led into the land and they occupied it, right? They got their inheritance. And once they did, they got busy living and taking care of their family and doing the thing that you do. And the mission or the sense of, you know, conquest or accomplishment or purpose, I think it's easy to lose that. And I think of, in my lifetime now, I've been alive long enough to see and hear about, you know, those movements of God, those hay days of either ministry or God moving. And I know I've heard those stories here in this valley, of God. And you know, sometimes there might be some lament about what's happening, or there's nothing. And I'm like, "well, you know, that sense of mission has to continue," and I think every generation has to grab hold of it and move with it and have a sense of, "we've gotta build." Like, why do we have, you know, churches? Why do we do what we do? Certainly in part, it's to raise our own families, but it has to also be to reach the people around me and to, you know, make a difference in the region. And I think that that sense of mission, as I look back, part of the reason for maybe those where something springs up and there's something really incredible going on, people grab a hold of that, you know?

Kylie Calloway
Yeah. As soon as you said, "they got busy living," I heard in me, "but they didn't get busy dying." And I think that's what you have to do, is die to yourself. Right? We do get busy living, but we're not in the business of dying. And we have to die to our flesh and die to ourself to truly show our kids how to truly live the gospel life.

Tyson Lambertson
I think the text lends to the dichotomy of Joshua leaving a legacy. And/Or living your own life. And I wanna live a Joshua legacy for my kids, so it doesn't fail in the next generation, or generations following that. I wanna live that long obedience in the same direction, so that our kids have a good foundation.

John Mulholland
Yeah. So what does that modeling look like? I think last time, Kylie, you said, "we are doing things that our kids are picking up on." So how can we make sure that they're picking up on the right things? One of the pastors I've listened to frequently says, "we are making disciples. We are discipling our children." The question is, what are we discipling and made to?

Tyson Lambertson
I think it's every day. I think, how I respond to certain circumstances, situations. How I talk, how I model, how I love their mom. How I talk about the scripture, how I apply it to my own life. When somebody does something to me, how do I respond? I mean, it's all the time just modeling the weight all the time. Trying to live a godly life in front of them all the time.

John Mulholland
That's an incredible weight that people have on them. And we, I think as pastors, and as the church, have to help people understand that the way around that incredible weight is through, like, Christ bears that weight for us.

Tyson Lambertson
Grace.

John Mulholland
Because I think people can hear this. You gotta be on all the time. Man, for some people that's grounds to not even try. So how can we communicate that their help is in the Lord, not in their own efforts. Other than saying that, that sounds great.

Why Make Man With The Choice To Sin? - 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
Well, today's question, I think it's really a great one because it's one that I've been asked as a pastor. Maybe you have too. I guess there's different ways of phrasing it, but the way it was worded here is, "why make man with a choice to sin? So in other words, when God made this great big, beautiful world, we see what a mess we've made of it. I mean, why give us the option, you know? Why not just make a perfect creation that couldn't go wrong? You know, that's what we're trying to do with all of our, I don't know, our computers and our AI, and I think we're pretty sure it's gonna end the world or something. No, I mean, God's got His plan. He knows when the world's gonna come to its close. I don't think it'll be AI. You know, so I think it is a good question. Because there's a lot of hurt and heartache in the world. Wouldn't it just be easier, better? Could we give God some advice? What do you think, Ben?

Ben Cline
Yeah. Could we, you know, go to God and say, "if you could go back and do something over again?" No, this is a question that really goes back to the reason why God created everything in the first place. You know, why did he do all of this work to put the universe together? Why did he do all this work to put the earth together and make the earth work the way that it does? You know, why did He create man? Well, He created man, and He created the entire universe to bring glory to His name. I mean, I think that's the overarching reason why He created everything. But I think that one of the main reasons that you see in scripture why God created mankind is because He desires relationship. And, you know, this question goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. You know, it's a question of when sin entered into the world. And, you know, you look back and understand that in God's creation, He put Adam and Eve into the garden, and then he put this tree in the middle of the garden called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And He gave them a command, he told them, "you shall not eat of this tree." And he gave them a whole garden full of trees that would've provided everything that they needed. But this one tree was something that would create an environment where it would give them a choice, right? And so, that choice was whether or not they were going to obey His command. And, you know, we see this even in that creation, even in placing them in the garden with that choice, that God is all about relationship. You know, He made mankind in order to, you know, enter into a relationship with His creation. And, you know, the choice is there. Um, what God wants from us is, is obedience. We all have that choice, just like Adam and Eve had that choice. Though, you know, we are are born with that sin nature that carries on from Adam through all generations. But what God still wants from us is obedience. And if you think about it, if God had created mankind and then not given us, you know, a choice of whether or not to obey Him or whether or not to follow him, that turns into, very quickly, a one-sided relationship, which we know is no relationship at all. Cause relationships are two-sided. They're very much two ways. And, you know, it's really important in this to point out a couple of things. You know, number one: God knew when He put Adam and Eve into this set of circumstances, He knew what the outcome was gonna be. Because God knows everything. However, that does not say that God wanted Adam and Eve to sin. That's not what He wanted for them. He gave them the choice to obey Him or disobey Him. And that's, you know, the choice that they made. It's not what He wanted, but He knew that that was gonna be the outcome. You know, and this is a question where we run into the free will of man and the sovereignty of God. And I don't know if we're gonna dive very deep into that today, but, you know, the fact that God gave us the choice to sin just shows us how much He loves us. It shows us that He wants us to desire the relationship with Him that He desires to have with us. And, you know, it's a difficult question to grapple with, because we think that it would've been as easy as just, you know, not giving the choice in the first place, right? But that's not what God had in mind at all when He created us. So those are some of my thoughts.

Gary Schick
No, I think those are really good thoughts, you know? So, the passage really is Genesis 2, "the Lord God," verse 15, "Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, 'you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." You know, people have asked a kind of related question, "what was it about this tree?" You know, I don't absolutely know that there's anything specific about the fruit on it, other than it could have been just a random anything, but that God was basically giving them a rule. A point of obedience for no other reason than, "I am the Lord, and you are my creation." And I think you pointed out rather well, is that, you know, the big picture is that we are made for God's glory. But when He made us, really He made us and gave us a very high position in creation for at least four things. 1. we've already touched on for just the aspect of relationship with Him. 2. we're told that we're created in His image, so we reflect Him. 3. so that we might rule under Him. We were created to rule, you know, rule over the creation under Him. And then finally, so that we would continue to rely on Him. And just kind of unpacking those one by one. You know, I think you touched on it rather well. God certainly could have made a bunch of automatons, you know? You know, like a computer program. We've kind of touched on that. So you put the information in and you know what you're gonna get out. It only can do what you have given a license to do. Why did God give us license to do these random things, you know? Other than the fact that you don't have a relationship when there's no one out there to relate to. And so that, just by definition it creates, in a sense, the necessity of some kind of a free agent to who can freely respond. We would be responding to God out of automation, but not out of real love. And well, scriptures say God is love, the triune God. He's lived in all eternity in relationship. When He created, He expanded the possibilities of that. And the angels had the same choice. You know, some of them have fallen. The difference is, we don't read about the redemption of angels. But for some reason, God has smiled on man in a way that we can be redeemed through Christ, which is so exciting. So yeah, there's a relationship aspect, but let's also not forget, you know, God says, "then let us make man in our image, in the image of God, He made them male and female." So what is that about? God is spirit. So, you know, physically, are we in His image? No, God's not sitting up there with gray hair and a beard or whatever. Nor is He a beautiful woman or something, you know? He is a spirit. He is not male, female, physical. But we reflect him. We are created in His image in terms of things like character. And again, a part of that is an aspect of freedom. We aren't able to create the environment we're in, but we are able to be creative within it in a godlike way. And He intended this, He intended that we would reflect him in this created order. And so part of that, again, comes to a certain freedom of not only freedom of choice and freedom of will, but just part of what it is to be a being with thought. And then, why were we put here, you know? To subdue and rule over, you know, and fill the earth. So we were put, you know, to care for the garden. We were put in this world to be God's overlords under Him in it. But again, what does that entail? He didn't just say, you know, "go do whatever you want here. Here's a creation for you. Go be the God of that creation." No, he says, "I'm putting you here to take care of it. You have free reign." But again, this one point of contact, this simple rule is a reminder that, "in everything you are under me. I am the overlord, and you are free. I have made this for you to enjoy, but in relationship to me." It all comes back to the relationship to God. And then finally, and this is ongoing even today. As forgiven children of God in Christ, we absolutely, in order to obey Him in any meaningful way, we have to rely on Him. In order for Adam and Eve to sin they, in a sense, had to first, take a step away from Him. They had to go about their own thoughts. They had to turn away from Him. They had to turn away from what He had commanded. They had to turn away from what they knew. They had to turn away from what they knew was right so that immediately afterwards, they're hiding in the bushes. You know, what is that about? Well, they chose to rely on faulty information from someone else. Satan. They chose to rely on what appeared to appeal to them. They saw that the fruit was good to eat and pleasing to the eye and all of this. And they chose not to rely on God. So, you know, as Christians, our sins have been forgiven through faith in Christ. We've been given new life. How are we doing, friends, at living the life? I'll be honest, there's days I just really struggle. And a lot of times, when I'm struggling, it's because I'm stupid enough to be trying to do it in my own strength. We are never meant to do that. You know, we read about Adam and Eve walking with God in the cool of the day. We are called to walk with Him, rely on Him, draw our strength from Him. You can't, listeners, you can't live to God's glory on your own strength. In fact, that won't glorify Him at all. That would just glorify you. "See what I can do?" But see what you can do in and through Him. Now that's a whole different story. And so, you know, as we seek to live a life, to give glory to God, let's think about those four things. Those four precious gifts that are newly ours again in Christ. They're restored to us through faith in Him. What is it that we could jeopardize, could actually lose in sinning? It's these things. What are the things that are restored? It's relationship, it's reflecting the creator, it's acting as ambassadors for Christ. In the creation, now under him, ruling under Him and representing His kingdom. Representative, I guess that would be. And then finally, it teaches us moment by moment by moment to rely to look to Him who is our life. Jesus didn't just say, "I will bring you the way. I will teach you the truth. I will give you new life." He said, "guess what? I am these things. I'm the way, I'm the truth. I'm the life. You can't have it apart from me. But in me, you have it all." So, Ben, you wanna, any more thoughts?

Ben Cline
No, I think that's great. This is such an important question and such a good one to be able to, you know, go all the way back to the beginning of the pages of scripture.

For Those In Ministry What Would You Say To Your Younger Self?

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 and Johnathan Hernandez.

Jonathan Hernandez
So this morning, I guess we're gonna kind of hit on a topic that is maybe a little bit more for pastors or people that are in ministry. But I know the listeners would enjoy hearing some of these things and also as listeners, and maybe you have a new pastor that's stepping into the role as a pastor. Maybe you can hear some of these things and know, "okay, well maybe they may experience some of these things, so let's help them along the way and give them a little bit of a hand." So our question is, "what would you say to your younger-ministry self if you were starting all over again?" And so one of the first things that popped into my mind as, you know, as I was looking this over and just remembering. So I started as a senior pastor at River of Life Church on December 1st, 2012. And so, that was a little over 10 years ago. And stepping into that role, I was just, "what do I do!? How do I do this?" You know, this was my first ministry role. And so it was fun, but it was also a little hectic and a little, "I don't know what to do." And so I remember thinking back, you know, years later, and somebody had said this to me, he said, "Jonathan, your first calling is to intimacy with Christ." And I was like, "Wow, that makes so much sense." You know, and then your next ministry, or your next calling, is to your spouse. And so for me, it would be my wife and then my family, and then the ministry. And I think we know this, but as you start getting into ministry and you start all the busyness of life, what happens is you start trying to flip that around and start pushing ministry first and then everything else. And then your wife's like, "whoa, wait a minute, what about me?" You know? And then obviously, God too is like, "Wait a minute, you're forgetting me." So we gotta make sure that we keep that in order. You know, make sure that we're having that time with Christ and making sure that we are spiritually healthy. You know, cause if we're not spiritually healthy, it's hard to help other people get to that point.

Ben Cline
Yeah, that's right. And that's funny that you say that cuz that's similar to something that was on my list too. You know, make sure that your personal time with the Lord doesn't get pushed aside for: studying for Sunday or, you know, doing other ministry things. And, you know, that seems counterintuitive because you're a pastor, right? You should be fine. But that's not true. You know, we need to take that time to have a close walk, a close relationship with Jesus so that we're spiritually prepared for handling whatever it is that might come through the doors. And so that's a great one to start out with. Another one that I was thinking of as well is, and this would especially be to my young ministry self is, you don't know everything and you never will. You know, my path into ministry was a little bit different than yours. But, you know, we went to Bible school for a few years and we had decided early on that we wanted to go into church planting ministry. And so we took some time praying about it, you know, visiting the place where we wanted to go. And, you know, by the time that you finished Bible school, and they really do warn you against this, but you know, you're young and impulsive. So they warn you against this. But, you know, you go out onto the ministry field and feel like, "I got this, you know, I can handle anything that comes my way." And then you're humbled very, very quickly. So, you know, that's something that I would try to get my younger self to listen to is, you know, "just realize that, you know, the ministry is not something that you step into knowing how to handle every situation." It's something that you're actually going to be learning in for your entire life.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. That's definitely good, cause I remember those moments. "Oh, I know it all." And then, "Nope. I don't know that." You know, and that's such a good one too. You know, the other thing, you know, one of the other things I wrote down, it's kind of along those same lines too. Is, you need to be in the word for yourself, not just for your sermon. You know, you kind of hit on that too. And, you know, there's so many times that you're looking at the week and it's like, "where do I sit?" Things like, "how do I schedule my week when I already know that there's so much stuff going on?" And I know people are like, "well, pastors only work 45 minutes a week. On Sundays." Well, no, there's so much more to it. And then if you're bi-vocational, you know, there's even more to it. Trying to squeeze everything in, you know, on top of already having work and home and stuff. And so, you know, I knew that there was weeks that I'm like, "gosh, how do I get both of those going?" And so those were tough. So my next one would be, "people will leave and it will hurt, but it's not always your fault." Right? Cause we always blame ourselves if somebody's leaving. "It's because of me." And that's not always the case, you know? There's times, you know, I remember people leave and it was after I had preached a sermon and, you know, and I was like, "oh, well maybe I shouldn't have preached that." And then I would sit back and I was like, "okay, did I preach what God wanted me to preach?" If it was a yes, then obviously you're preaching what you're supposed to, right? If the Holy Spirit's leading you to that, that's what you're supposed to preach. And so, you know, people will leave and it's going to hurt. And I think that's why it's important for pastors to have a tough, you know, a tough skin in a sense. You know, because people leave for all kinds of reasons. You know, it could be the smallest reason. It could be your fault. You know, there's multiple things and, you know, the best thing for us to do is to bless them on the way out. And just pray for them and pray that they will find a church home where they can grow and that they can mature in Christ. And so those are always tough moments, you know, cause I'm like, "oh, I want you here," you know, and the different things like that. And so, you know, I remember my pastor saying, "Jonathan, just keep praying for them," you know, bless them on their way out." You know, "you'll be fine. God will provide." And He always did.

Ben Cline
Yeah. And that's the thing about the body of Christ is that, you know, God has made us all a little bit differently. We all deal with things in different ways and we all feel like we have different needs for our families. So, you know, as a pastor, yes, it does hurt when people walk out the door and say that they're not coming back. But, you know, and that's something also, you know, that you experience as a new pastor in a church that you had not been the pastor for before. But there's gonna be people who just decide that it's not for them. For whatever reason, who knows. But, you know, that's a really good point and, you know, maybe a good reminder to our listeners who are our churchgoers. To, you know, really understand that these are things, you know, decisions that really do affect people.

Jonathan Hernandez
We're pastors, but we still have feelings.

Ben Cline
Yeah, exactly. And another one that, you know, I wish I would've taken on and really tried to understand, as you know, a younger pastor in ministry, is the importance of rest. You know, that's something that will catch up with you every time. And, you know, I'm not even a type of person who has a lot of energy in the first place. But I think I can tend to be a little bit of a workaholic and say, "oh, I don't really need to worry about resting this week." And then it just builds up and builds up and builds up and then you hit a wall and you're just like, "I can't do this anymore." And so, you know, resting is extremely, extremely important. You know, I know that people have different ideas about the application of the Sabbath. About that Sabbath rest that God has had set up in the Old Testament. You know, Jesus dealt with it as something that the Pharisees were, you know, kind of using to condemn other people with. But, you know, rest is something that's still extremely important for all of us as believers to have rest that is scheduled. And I really wish that's something that I would've done, you know, earlier on in ministry, because it's extremely beneficial. And that rest time is not just to, you know, sit around and do nothing all the time, although that might be what it calls for sometimes. But that rest time, is to really take time to, you know, not necessarily focus on the things that are going on around you, but to focus on Jesus. And so, yeah. That's definitely something I would tell myself.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, for sure. And that would kind of go along with the thought process I had with the power of "No." You know, knowing how to say, "No." Cause, you know, there's so many times I think, you know like, I'd always seen my pastor doing something and so I thought, "well, if he can do all that, then I should be able to too." Not realizing that he had said, "no," to a thousand other things. You know, that he was like, "does this align with the vision of the church?" If it doesn't, well, you know what, maybe if we have time at some point, then yeah, we can do it. But if it's not, then we're gonna have to say no. You know? Is that taking away from my family time? Okay, well then that has to be a, "no." You know, I need to guard those times with my family. And so, you know, that was something that, gosh, it was such a hard thing to learn early on. Cause I'd seen, you know, pastors doing 60, 70, 80 hours a week and, you know, I'm like, "okay, well that's the norm." Right? Well, here I am also bi-vocational. I was like, "well, how do I fit---

Ben Cline
How do you do that?

Jonathan Hernandez
Both of those 40 hours a week?" Plus, you know, 60, 70 hours at the church? You know, how does this all work? Well it works because there is this word that we can say, "no," you know? Obviously we need to be led by the spirit, you know, and knowing which directions we go. But also knowing that, you know what, it's okay to say, "no," to things and you're gonna be empowered when you're able to say, "no," to things that you shouldn't be doing anyways. You know? And so knowing those things, I think's always powerful to be able to step into what you're called. Instead of stepping into things that I just don't know how to say, "no," to it. You know, cause there's many things early on that I was just doing because, well, "I want to be a good person. I want to, you know, I want help people." Not realizing, "well that's not the calling that God had called me into." So here I am doing something that, you know, I'm not even equipped, you know, in a sense, to do those things. And if I could have just said, "no," you know? And also, I think that's where, you know, maybe with this next point would be having connections. I think if you look throughout scripture, everywhere you see community, you know, I mean if you look through the Old Testament, look through the New Testament, every story is connected to somewhat of a community of people. And so, you know, I think we think our community is just within our church, and that's a great community that you should be growing and maturing in. But there's also this wider community, you know? As pastors, sometimes we get so zoned in only our church, you know, and that's all we're looking at. But gosh, we're missing out on so many relationships if we could just learn how to, "hey, you know what, now I have great friends with Gary and with you." And so it's like we can grow in a community outside. And so if I know, "hey, this isn't what our church is called to, but I know that that's what your church is called to." "Hey, let's help you guys, you know, jump into that," and be able to grow in that too. And so, learn how to work within a community. I think that would've been something great that I could have known early on, you know? Cause, you know, I think you always hear people say, "well, they're not part of our church, and so we don't want to go be a part of that." And it's like, "whoa, that's so backwards," you know? Thinking like we should be, "Hey, if that church is doing something amazing for the kingdom, why don't we support it?" Why don't we, you know, gosh, we could even just, even if it's just a simple posting on Facebook to help somebody else see it. Maybe we can't go to it, but you know, let's help each other. We're all part of the kingdom. Like, you know, we're all gonna be worshiping in heaven together, so why don't we help and worship with each other here on earth?

Ben Cline
Yeah. It makes you think of, you know, Jesus and his ministry and in establishing the early church. You know, we didn't have all these denominational differences and whatever you want to call them. But, you know, the course of time has really kind of drawn some lines that get in the way of us having that community of fellowship as fellow Christians. And, you know, it's important to stand for what you believe doctrinally. But, you know, God just wants us to be a community of believers and that's true. Like, you know, we're all gonna be in heaven together and worshiping God together. So why don't we start practicing that now? It's interesting. One of the things that I just look back and I feel like I was really, really bad about this: when I was a young, a much younger pastor, is that I would always worry about all of the little things that were going on. And, you know, you hear the phrase, "don't sweat the small stuff." Well, it's really true. Like, you really just gotta let that stuff roll off. And, you know, that's something that I wish I would've done as a younger pastor. You know, if I could go back and say, "don't worry about that stuff." Like, there's all this stuff that just, you know, when you think about why you're doing the work that you're doing. You know, why you're doing the ministry that God has called you to. It's not so that you can worry about, you know, why somebody did this or that or whatever, and or why somebody's making the decisions that they're making. The small stuff is small stuff. If we're gonna focus on what we need to be focusing on, it really should be about, you know, making sure that we understand the gospel and that we're living our lives for Christ. And that we're, you know, out there witnessing to the world that is lost. And, you know, those are the big things and we should really be worrying about those things instead. So that's another thing that's on my list.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yep. Oh, I think I was still not the best at that all way up in time. You know, now as a youth pastor, things are a lot different and I'm trying to learn how to even balance the small stuff there, right? That's what some of the, you know, small things that, you know, I'm trying to learn. I went from being a senior pastor to a youth pastor, and a lot of times it's the opposite way, you know? You've been a youth pastor or children's pastor, worship pastor, something else before the lead role. And so, you know, here I am, the lead role right off the bat and now, you know, transitioning to youth pastor and it's just like, well, this is a lot of different things. And some of the things are similar, but just on a smaller scale. And so I think for me, the last one, at least for today, would be really with the finances. I think in a small church sometimes the pastor's doing everything. And with the finances, I would encourage, you know, cause I know I had to do finances pretty much the whole time I was the pastor of the church, you know? So it's like trying to find somebody that can do it, I think. You know, we weren't a big enough church to be able to pay someone outside of the church to do it. So a lot of times, it was me and then someone else trying to help. So that way, you know, we're not having one person do it by themselves, you know, for integrity reasons and stuff. But, you know, make sure that there's multiple eyes on the finances and not just yourself. You know, we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble. And we're human, we make mistakes. You know, not saying that we're gonna steal anything, but, you know, just not being able to do the accounting software, right? You know, so if we have multiple eyes on it, you know, I know I'm not an accounting major. I took accounting in high school and that was the extent of it. So thank the Lord that he had me go through that in high school to know how to do it now. So make sure that we have multiple eyes on those things. It's something I would tell my younger self is, you know, make sure that you're having people and just training people up. You know, there were people that could step into it but, you know, I was just always like, "well, it's easier, I'll just do it myself."

Ben Cline
It's too much work.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, you know, I can get this done in half the time that it would take to train. And so instead of, you know, and that's the whole thing about the, "no" earlier. You know, knowing that I can say, "no," to myself. "Okay, John, you're doing enough. Allow someone else to step into these roles." You know, all those who are attending all the churches that are out there, just know that your pastor's not perfect. And he needs grace just like everybody else does. And, you know, these are things that we are all learning as pastors in ministry and will continue learning for the rest of our lives.

What Is The Rapture? - 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 Mike Clement and Michael Glebb.

Michael Clement
But we're gonna continue on where we were. And I got a little long-winded last time. It was a hard time stopping. And we were talking about the person in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we were talking about the fact that Jesus is coming again. And then related to that, there are two other issues that are greatly debated by just, you know, not just little weird groups in one sense or another, but churches that are Orthodox and hold to the gospel and hold to the Bible. But they look at things differently. They understand things differently. And we were talking about the rapture, first of all, and not every group holds the same position on the rapture. Jesus said he would come again, but he, in the book of 1 Corinthians, it says, "that the dead in Christ will be raised first and that we who are alive will be caught up together with him. And so shall we ever be with the Lord." That may not be 1 Corinthians, but it's living believers that are caught up. And we go to meet the Lord in the air. And if you take a literal interpretation of the Bible, and if you recognize the idea that Israel are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that the church is made up of Jews and Gentiles, bond and free, male and female, and had its beginning pretty much at, on the day of Pentecost, and is a very unique entity. So there's a difference between Israel and the church. If you hold to those truths, take the Bible literally, difference between Israel and the church, you're gonna come up with a pre-millennial or a pre-tribulational rapture. Now, there is what's become popular today, brother Mike, and you probably have heard this, is the pre-wrath view. And the pre-wrath view used to be called Mid-Tribulational. And there was a fellow who was the head of, I believe it was Friends of Israel. And, in fact, he's been to this area. And he wrote a book on the pre-wrath rapture changed his position, stepped down from his position in that organization, because that was a pre-tribulational view that they held. And they became very popular talking about the pre-wrath rapture, mid-tribulational. Now, the tribulation period recorded in the book of Revelation is a seven year period. And when you look at it, there are a number of references to that mid-period, three and a half years. Something pretty interesting happens at that three and a half year period. And that comes outta scripture, but it's not clear that that's when the rapture takes place. But there are many that hold to that position today. And then there's a post-tribulational rapture. And what you have in the Book of Revelation, you see at the end of the book of Revelation, there's a great resurrection, and it's called the First Resurrection in scripture. Well, and, and many have said, well, that's the rapture. You know, because obviously something takes place there. It says that people are raised, but it doesn't make reference to the translation of living believers. That living believers are now, their bodies are changed to the same body that Jesus had when he was raised from the dead. But those three views are found in Christianity with regards to the rapture. Now, there's also the whole area of, when is the second coming supposed to take place in relationship to the millennium? The millennium is a period of how long Brother Mike? A thousand years? That's what millennium means. And the Bible talks about this millennial period. It's a period when Jesus will, again, if you take it literally, that Jesus will physically rule and reign from Jerusalem over the entire Earth. All kinds of things will be changed. People will live through that whole millennial period. There will be true justice. And that's just a lot of things that'll be exceptional during that period. So there are those that have debated in Christianity. Well, when will Jesus come in relationship to the millennium? And there was a view that was very popular at the turn of the last century in the early 1900's. It was called Post-millennialism. And post-millennialism was the idea that Christians would gradually have such an impact on the world, that the world will become Christianized. That it will get better and better and better. And one of the evidences of that was, World War I. Do you remember what World War I was called? The Great War. The Great War was also called "The War to End All Wars." And in fact, at the end of World War I, our government took a lot of battleships and sunk them because that was gonna be the last war that the world ever had. Because Christianity was making all these changes, and people just held on to the idea that things were just gonna get better and better and better. And we're not gonna need all this. Right. Because, and that was a byproduct of Post Millennialism. Well, World War II, Korea and Vietnam pretty much killed that idea, at least for a while. But interestingly, it's coming back. There are people that are holding to the idea, that in fact, Christianity is gonna change the world. And that eventually, it'll be just like what the Bible calls Millennium.

Michael Gleb
There's a movement now, and you can see this with social media sort of gearing us and turning us towards Christian nationalism. And I think that a Christian culture is a good culture. I think that is obviously the right culture. But nothing changes the heart outside of a personal relationship with Christ. And you can be in a Christian culture and not know Jesus. And so that's the biggest issue that I see with that. But that's coming back. You're right about that. And I didn't make that connection, but there is now a lot of talk about Christian, sort of, nationalism. We talk about America in terms of a Christian nation, because of its foundation, and that's a good thing. But again, being born in America is not saving anybody.

Michael Clement
It gives you a better chance.

Michael Gleb
That is true.

Michael Clement
A better chance of hearing the gospel here in America than anywhere else in the world. I just came back from a trip to my son and his family down in Brazil. And that is a whole different culture. I think every American should spend at least a week in a third world country. And they would get off the plane and get on their knees and kiss the ground and thank God for the country that they have the privilege of living in. Anyway, post Millennialism has the idea that there'll be this, in bringing in of the millennial kingdom by the church, by missions. And then eventually the world will be Christianized, and at the end of that, Christ will come, and then he'll judge the nations, and eternity will begin. Then there's a millennialism, and sometimes that's been called realize millennialism. And there's a number of ideas, and I really don't want to misrepresent it, but one of the ideas is that, what happened in 70 AD with the fall of Jerusalem, that was the tribulation. That all the things that are said in the book of Revelation, about the judgements and all that, that took place in 70 AD and now, since 70 AD we've been living in the Millennium. The millennium is a time when Christ reigns, but it teaches, well, Christ is reigning in the hearts of men. He's reigning through the church, he's making his influence known through the church. And that there will come a time in the future sometime when Christ will physically return again. But this is the millennium now, which means Satan is bound now. And there's a lot of people, including me, that have a hard time wrapping their heads around that idea. So anyway, there's all these different views of the individual details, timing. One of the things that scripture encourages us, is that we need to be ready. You know, we always need to be ready. When I was first saved, there was a lot of talk about the second coming of the Lord. I mean, oh, there was just, you know, the signs and Israel became a nation and, oh, there was just all this talk about the second coming of the Lord. There were prophecy conferences and a group of churches in northern New Jersey had a round robin prophecy conference. And they got guys like John Walford and some other guys who, they would be at one church one night and another church another night, and they just rotated these guys around. And boy, everybody was talking about it, and everybody was excited. Well, I came home, we lived in this trailer court, and I came home from a youth group activity, and I'm walking through the trailer court and I happened to look up in the sky, and the moon had a ring around it. I had never seen the moon with a ring around it. And I didn't know a whole lot about the Bible, but I remembered something about there being signs in heaven before the second coming of the Lord. And I thought, "my goodness, Jesus is gonna come! What do I need to do?" And right nearby was the trailer of a friend of mine, and as far as I know, they didn't know the Lord. And I ran over to their door, and I pounded on the door. And this friend's mother came to the door, she said, "mike, what's wrong?" And I pointed up in the sky and said, "Look, look, look!" And she looked up and she said, "oh yeah, ring around the moon. Haven't you ever seen one of those before?" "No, I haven't."

Michael Gleb
Jesus is coming back!

Michael Clement
That's what I'm saying. I was expecting any moment to hear the trumpet. I heard a pastor one time say that, you know, "scripture says that in the twinkling an eye, at the last trump, that Christ would come." And he said, "scientists have actually tried to figure out how quick the twinkling of an eye is. And it's, like, nanoseconds." You know, just instantaneous. He said, "but the sound of a trump will take a few seconds," he said, "so I got a two second message." He said, I hear a trump and I'm gonna say, you better all get saved right now, I'm going to heaven." And boom, off he goes.

Michael Gleb
And it's interesting when you think about, when we talk about this, I've always been kind of same with you as we had a lot of talk about prophecy. And some people wanted to camp on prophecy. And there was maybe this over-emphasis on it. And some people, I think, really just wanted to scare people. I really, truly, think that was what they desire to do. And the return of Christ should not scare any Christian. It shouldn't be a frightening thing. It should, matter of fact, I think it's Paul that writes and he says, you know, "comfort one another with these words." And this is a comforting thing, but you know, what are we to do? Well, it's simple. You know, I've told our church before, I said, "there's the wake up walk with the Lord." Commune with Him. Love the people that God has placed in your life; abstain from sin. That's a pretty good day in the life of a Christian. And so that's what we do. And if you can tell somebody about Jesus, I mean, that would be another important thing to do, because every single day, it's a day closer to that day.

Michael Clement
And John Walford once made the comment, and it was back in the early 60's when all these conferences were going on. He said, "isn't it sad?" He said, "if we have a prophecy conference, tons of people will come out. If we have a conference on holiness, on prayer, on evangelism," he said, "you don't get the response." And yet that's the reason for prophecy. You know, that these things should motivate us in our Christian life.

What Did Synagogue Worship And Teaching Look Like?

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 here's the question that came our way: "We are doing an overview of the New Testament in a Bible study. The subject of synagogue worship came up and someone asked what that involved, assuming there was teaching that took place. Who did the teaching? Was it a scribe, a Pharisee, or a member of some other Jewish religious sect?" Jonathan, what were you able to come up with on this question?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so I guess we kind of see in the New Testament that they record 10 occasions on which the ministry of Jesus took place in synagogues. The gospel records, you know, as we read through those. And it's a good, you know, good place to kind of start and think about looking back at all those occasions and what took place, what happened. But as we get into the question, you know, what is the synagogue? You know, how's it differ from the temple? You know? The temple itself, you know, only the Levites and the priests could enter into the temple. But here in the synagogue, it was more of a community center, so to speak. And so all members of the Jewish community could participate in community life within the synagogue. And so that, you know, was one of the big differences for me to look at. Some of the traditions hold that this was a place of assembly for a study of the Torah. You know, during their services, we would see the service take place on the Sabbath. And then also, I believe it was on Mondays and Wednesdays, I think it was, where the city markets were to take place. And so when all the people from outside of the town would come in to the markets, then they would spend time in the synagogue also. And there'd be times of, the same thing of teaching out of the Torah and then out of the prophets. And then also, they would have the prayers of benediction, I think that's how you say it. They would have those moments. And so as we look through this, you know, the adult males of the Jewish community could be part of the synagogue, but only males from the age of 13 and up could be elders within the synagogue. And so they would have the opportunity to be able to read out of the Torah and then read out of the prophets and also say the prayers. If we were to see that take place, I guess they would have a seat, which they would've called the seat of Moses. And I think we hear, you know, as we look back at some of these passages in scripture, we'd see where Jesus sat down after he read the, you know, read out of the Torah. And that he would take that seat, and then he would teach. And usually the teaching would take place, but it was never really, like for us, you know, we have a sermon in our Sunday services. And a sermon could take, you know, I don't know how long you guys preach, but there's some that I've seen that are 15 minutes and some that are an hour and a half, you know? And so, from my understanding is most of the time, the teachings were quick, you know, a few minutes long. And so they would read through whatever they were reading through, and then just have a few words afterwards. So that's kind of what you would see take place during these times. And so one of the things I really liked about, you know, as I kind of just dug through this, is how they really, everything in the synagogue was about relationship. It was about community, you know? The school would, you know, the school was usually within the synagogue. The community events were there. Obviously, the services were there for reading the Torah, you know, reading the law. You know, all of that stuff was there, the government things were there. And so everything was wrapped around this ideal of community. You know, and I still love that thought process, and hopefully that would, you know, for us as believers now, how do we? But the big thing that I got out of this was, how do we maintain, or how do we keep that atmosphere of community within our churches? You know, within our community here? How do we, you know, even here with us, you know, we have two kind of separate camps that we come out of in a sense, you know, in some areas. But we can continue to have community. And so, how do we have community as other churches coming together too? So, yeah.

Gary Schick
Really, really good stuff. Yeah, the words, "church," "synagogue," we think of them as places. But actually, synagogue means, "gathering," and church actually comes from the Greek word εκκλησίασμα, which means, "congregation." So it's really about people. And I think one of the questions that you kind of delved a little bit back into is, you know, the difference between synagogue and temple. Of course, throughout the Old Testament, the temple is the heart of the nation. But the synagogue, which we read about in Jesus' time, actually has its roots to the time when the nation was in exile in Babylon. And so during that time, they couldn't have temple worship. There was no sacrifice going on. In fact, there was a real risk that the Jewish faith, which was so centered in the temple worship, could be lost. And so how was this to be preserved? And it was preserved on the Sabbaths, particularly. But as you mentioned, at other times as well, in the gathering of the Jewish community for essentially the reading of the word, prayers, fellowship. Those three things: prayer, scripture and fellowship. And of course, praise of the Lord, singing would've been all involved. And as you pointed out, not only Jesus, but also Paul utilized the synagogue worship. Because the temple, once again, it's in one place, it's in Jerusalem, even once the people are back from exile. This idea that had caught on of taking the Lord's day to gather together in the synagogue, if you weren't going to the temple, became important because this is the place where little ones are trained up on how to read the word and so forth. And where the men of the community would take turns in reading and expounding upon the word, and where the educational process continued to take place. Luke 4 I think, is a great passage illustrating Jesus and his ministry in the synagogue. It says, "and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 'The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, 'today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." So as you pointed out, really the reverse of today. The preacher stands up to preach while the people sit and listen. In those days, the people stood to listen while the preacher sat down to teach. And he was sitting symbolically in the seat of Moses, which is the place from which the word of the Lord had come. And so here we have Jesus, one greater than Moses, sitting down to teach. And we see that again in the Sermon on the Mount. "And he sat down and began to teach." He wasn't just, oh, sitting down casually with the guys, "and by the way, here's some thoughts," then ended up being the Sermon on the Mount. No, no, no. This is a very specific symbolic act of, "Okay, pay attention. Jesus is getting ready to teach," when he sat down. We have from the Mishnah, five actions that were performed in synagogue and probably go back to the time of Jesus. And before, apparently you needed 10 male adults to have enough of a quorum to have synagogue, worship. Women and children would've also been present, but in a different section. The men worshiped up close, and the women and the children were kind of back behind a screen. The recitation of the Shama hero is, "the Lord our God, the Lord is one." There's recitation of the fefela, which was prayer, which was done standing again. We do it so differently. We are praying, sitting down, heads bowed, hands folded. The early Christians followed the tradition. They not only stood standing, but heads uplifted and hands raised in anticipation of the Lord's return. The priestly blessing, "the Lord bless you and keep you," from Leviticus. The reading of the Torah, the law, and the reading of the prophets. Well, and then as you pointed out, basically anybody who had been to the Jewish version of confirmation, you know, had been through bar mitzvah. Had been trained in the law, was now accepted as a man in the community, even at the age of 13. Could hopefully rightly handle this, as Paul would say, the word of truth. And there are so many parables in the Christian community, because of course, the Christians just naturally followed the pattern that had begun in Judaism. And how appropriate, because we are outside, we are in exile from the heavenly temple from the place where we will meet with the Lord in all eternity. And so we have the Christian Church, it's kind of a Christian version of synagogue. A place of instruction, a place of prayer and praise, a place of fellowship. Where we continue the reading of the, you know, they read the law and the prophets, you know, we would add the gospels and the letters. And some churches are more formal about that. They actually have specific readings from every part of it. Some churches are a lot looser. I tend to read the passage I'm going to preach on and make that the focus of the day. But you know, there's no wrong answers here. There's no commandment, "and this is how you do synagogue worship." That wasn't in the Old Testament. There's not a commandment, "this is how you do Christian worship," in the New Testament. But these are the natural ways that we gather for really these three purposes: prayer and praise, hearing and expounding of the word, fellowship and mutual encouragement, and building up of one another in the Lord in Christ. So, great to spend a little time being built up with you as we've dug into the word today.

How Should We Battle Spiritual Attacks?

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
If you were to ask, I believe the average believer today, who at least is really striving to walk with Jesus and serve Him well, they would probably say it seems like the attacks of the enemy have grown. Whether Satan himself, whether it's society that Satan has a vast influence in and he will use against us. Whether it is our own sinful flesh that he stirs up and attacks us through ourselves. Maybe it's other believers that he can use at times to attack us. The question that we're going to talk about over these next few minutes, in knowing that we as Christians are experiencing many spiritual attacks, "how would you counsel believers in the ability to battle the spiritual attacks?" Well, my mind immediately goes to Ephesians 6 where Paul says that we're to, "be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might." We're to, "put on the whole armor of God, that we may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation and the sort of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication to the end, that you keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." That's the English standard version, if you're wondering, "what is he reading from." It's the one I prefer, and the one I preach from. But I think one thing we get, and I'm gonna start with this and then turn it over to Brad and then to Tim. One of the things in answering the question is, yes, there are great attacks. So yes, we need to be prepared. And Paul talks about the armor of God. You know, you think of a soldier, and I never was one in the sense of being in the military. But they enlist, they train, and they fight. You know, I enlisted when I put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I became a part of God's team, or as we would sing, one of his Christian soldiers. You know, I've been trained in the word in church, Sunday School, Bible college, studying on my own. And then of course, fighting is involved. And, you know, soldiers train their bodies and their minds. They go through basic training, they do the calisthenics. They work their bodies hard, running and carrying and all those things to build up their strength. They build up their minds, they learn their jobs that they'll be doing as soldiers, and then they gear up for battle. They put on the equipment and they get ready with the equipment to fight the battle. And here in the armor of God, we find how to gear up. And I, at the cost of sounding simplistic, basically the gear that Paul talks about is truth (the belt of truth), righteousness (the breastplate of righteousness). Something to do with our solid footing, because he talks about footwear of the gospel of peace. He talks about the shield of faith. He talks about the helmet of salvation on our heads. He talks about, you know, the sword of the spirit (the word of God or scripture). And then he talks about prayer. So really, if we're gonna gear up as those who are soldiers in the army of Christ, so to speak, we need to commit ourselves to truth, God's truth. Not man's truth, God's truth. Living out our faith in a way that is in accordance with the standards we learn, that God has given us in His word. We need the solid footing of being on the solid rock, and having our feet shod in such a way that we are standing solid and not being tripped up by everything the world is throwing at us. We need to be committed to people of faith, to be people of faith, no matter what is happening in and around and the attacks that are coming. We need that helmet of salvation, cause I don't know about you, but Satan plays games in my brain, and I need to have that mental commitment to the assurance I find in the truth of the word of God. Of course, we need scripture, which that kind of fits with truth to start with, and then we need prayer. And I guess if we are going to be ready to battle the attacks of the enemy, we need to train and we need to gear up. And as someone has said, we need to decide ahead of time where we're gonna stand. We need to decide ahead of time how we're gonna stand and what we're gonna stand for. And so, yeah, if we're going to be ready for battle against the enemy, like a good soldier, we need to gear up with truth, righteousness, the right footing, faith, assurance, scripture and prayer. We need to be prepared because the enemy's out there, and Brad, talk to us about another aspect of this.

Brad Kilthau
Well, if you're gonna be a soldier that's prepared, which is very good and obviously clearly stated in the word of God, as you alluded to already, Gary. We also have to be alert, very alert. You know, we can be equipped, we can have a knowledge of the word, we can have, those parts of our life that were involved in the church and committed to the church. But if we're not alert to the attacks of Satan, he's gonna sneak up on us and he's gonna cause a lot of harm. And you know, I think about sometimes the thought as Christians. We can come along and think, "well, you know, God's got this. He's our sovereign God. It's all in control." We've read the end. We know he's gonna finish and be victorious over Satan, and the enemy and all of that. And I think sometimes as Christians, we can get into that gear of confidence, which is okay in a sense, but then use that as an ability to say, "well, I don't need to really, really worry about my daily time in the word. I don't really need to worry about walking this way and that way because God's got it handled and it's all gonna work out." But that's what Satan wants us to do. He wants us, as Christians, to not be alert to his schemes. He wants us to get kind of wrapped up in what we're doing on planet earth and not worry about the spiritual aspect of things. And I think as Christians, sometimes it's easy for us to do. We can get involved in being at everything that our kids are doing. We can be involved in politics, we can really get involved in raising our status and our job or making money. And then as we're focusing on that, we don't realize, that our peripheral vision is not working very well. And that's what Satan wants. He wants to sneak up alongside of us and to hit us with something that we're not prepared for, because we have been just nonchalant walking along as a Christian. We've gotta be, not preoccupied with the things of this world, but we've constantly got to be in prayer and in the word. And, you know, some of those illustrations that you were giving, Gary, we always teach those to the kids, don't we? We always talk about teaching them the armor. And we love to do that because it's easy to put on the outfits, and that really kind of gets the kid's attention and that's good. But we also always have a verse that we kind of throw in front of the kids. And that's Psalm 119:105 that says, "your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." And we've gotta have the word. I'm thinking, described here as a light that you get, you need to have the word to tell you what your next step is gonna be. Because if you're not looking down, if you're not alert, you'll step in something that Satan has got; that snare that's out there waiting for you. And then I think another thought, before I turn it over here to Tim, is I was thinking about 2 Corinthians 10, and also Paul talks about spiritual battle. But in verses 3-5 he says, "For though we walk in the flesh and we do not war according to the flesh," he said, "for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds and casting down arguments in every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." Just something that I want to throw in here is, Paul is primarily telling us that the battle that, usually we are fighting, this spiritual battle is in our mind, it's in our heart. It's not a hand-to-hand combat with Satan. It's not a hand-to-hand combat with demons. And so what do we need to do?

Brad Kilthau
Well, we need to be trained in a way as, even we learn in the word to defend our faith. In this day and time, we have to have a biblical worldview too, because, you know, they were accusing him of using human tactics to draw people into Christianity. And he's saying, "no, I don't use those. I use the power of the Holy Spirit." But that's what they were using. And most times when we come into conflict or issues and spiritual attacks, there is a human element, a human argument that we need to address. We can't ignore that. And we need to be knowing how to defend that this Bible is true. We need to know how to share that Satan's true hell is real. Those kinds of things. We have to be equipped, in that sense, to defend our faith. And especially in the world we have today. Because so many people can just Google, you know, and they've got all their arguments from Google. Well okay, good for them. But why don't we have our argument ready to defend our faith from the word of God? And so we have to be constantly, like you were saying, training and equipping ourselves as those soldiers. So that's my 2 cents on that. I hope our listeners can take in their ability to fight against those spiritual battles. What do you wanna say to us, Tim?

Tim Hebbert
I wanna go back to that very first verse in that passage, guys, "be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power," Ephesians 6:10. I think in the world we're living in today, and I think you guys would agree with me in that, I don't think in the day and age we're living in, spiritual attacks aren't going to do anything but increase. So, what's our answer to that? Are we going to, pull the covers over our heads, so to speak, and either wait to pass away or wait for the rapture? Or are we gonna be strong in the Lord and in not our power, but His mighty power? I got to thinking as we were preparing for this, when I was a young grade schooler, I think I was afraid, other than being at church, I was afraid of everything. But when I was with my dad, and you guys knew my dad, my dad was a big imposing figure. I had no fear when I was with my dad. And that's the relationship that our Father God wants to have with us. "I'm not sending you out there by yourself," I love that passage. First chapter, one of my dad's favorite chapters in all the scripture was that first chapter of the book of Joshua. "Be strong and courageous." And if you really analyze that, He doesn't say it to him once. He doesn't say it to him twice. He says it to him three times. But each time, He increases what he's saying. "Be strong and courageous." This is why, "be strong and very courageous, because here's what I'm gonna do." But then at the end He says, "This is my command. This isn't a suggestion. 'Be strong and courageous,' for I'll go with you wherever you go." And He gives us assurances in the Old Testament. Isaiah 52:12 says, "you won't ever be alone, for the Lord will go ahead of you. Yes, the Lord God of Israel protect you from behind." He not only goes before us---God was the very first one ever to say, "I got your back." He also promises that no matter what the devil throws at us, in terms of a weapon, it will not prosper in our lives. Isaiah 54:17, "but in that coming day, no weapon turned against you will succeed. You will silence every voice raised up to accuse you. These benefits are enjoyed by the servants of the Lord. Their vindication will come from me. I the Lord has spoken." That's a powerful passage. But I want to end on this, Gary, this whole passage is one of my favorites. And it reminds me of why, one of the several dozen reasons I love the Apostle Paul's writings, but he's the master of metaphor. He takes something that you understand, and he teaches you through it. And the thing that everybody in that world would've known at the time was the Roman army. So he uses the Roman army, the soldier, the foot soldier and what he's wearing, to prepare himself for battle. He uses those as his indicators. And I want to close with this passage, it's from Romans 8:37. In the time, they would've known what a conquering army looked like, because they saw the best one the world had ever seen before. And he tells us in Romans 8:37, "knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." He's basically saying, "you see that army over there? When you have the power of God in you, be strong. Be courageous. Don't be afraid, because God is greater than anything that this world can throw at you." And I guess, before we close today, if you're listening today, I just ask you to ask yourself this question, "are you living today as a victim or are you living in victory?" God didn't call his people to be victims. He called them to be courageous, to be aware, to put on the armor and to do things through Him, for Him and because of Him.

Why Do We Believe That Jesus Is God And The Only Way To Salvation?

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. Great to have you back, Ben, we were just joking before the show that we're gonna make Ben do all the heavy lifting and answer the question by himself. Hey so, last week we looked at evidence for why we believe that God exists today. We kind of wanted to follow that up with the question, "So why do we believe that Jesus is God and the only way to eternal life?" So there's our question, and I think it's a legit one. I think we kind of talked about last week how most people, even atheists, actually believe in God because they spend all their time denying him, and mad at him for not existing. "Why is the world the way it is? Must be God's fault whether He exists or not," right? So, we saw that there's actually a whole lot of evidence, including our gut reaction, that not all is right. That tells us that there's a reason to believe in God. But why Jesus? Why not many roads to God? And what makes him the unique representative of who God is? Jonathan, could you get us started on that question?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So I guess, as we dig in and look at, you know, do we believe this? You know, I look at it and I see some of these same attributes that are in Jesus that are in God. And so that's, you know, kind of my evidence, I guess, in that we're seeing this Jesus is eternal. John 1 affirms that, "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." And so we start seeing these, you know, Jesus wasn't just there when he was born, but he was there always right? He's self existent as a creator of all things. And we see this in Colossians 1:17, it tells us that Christ is before all things, and in Him, all things consist. He's everywhere present. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in their midst," Matthew 18:20. He's all knowing, you know? So we can, like, walk through these attributes of God and see that these same attributes are there within Jesus. Also, He's all powerful, He's sovereign. Like, you know, we can walk through these! Jesus is sinless. And so, like, walking through and lining these same attributes that we would describe God with, I'm seeing those same attributes in Jesus Christ. And so it's like, for me, these evidences line up and say, "okay, well, if these are the attributes of God," and, you know, God was the only one that could be everywhere all the time, right? And I know some people will say, "well, the devil's all over the place." No, no. Like, it was only God that is everywhere at all times, right? And so we're seeing that same attribute within Jesus. And so for me, that was enough evidence to start saying, "you know what? Jesus is truly God!" And, you know, I mean, there's those multiple other things that we could go through, also throughout scripture and look at those things. But those were some of the things that really helped me say, "okay, well I'm seeing these things in one part of the Trinity, and now I'm seeing them in these other parts." And so yeah, that's kind of where, you know, I hang my hat, I guess.

Ben Cline
Yeah, that's great. And, you know, there's, so much information, I think, about this topic that's out there. It's hard to kind of boil it down into just a small section, and in the amount of time that we have this morning. But one of the questions that I ran across is, you know, as far as that question, "Is Jesus, God? The question that's out there is, "did Jesus even claim to be God?" When you look through the pages of scripture, I think as Americans, maybe we tend to be this way. That we want things to be so cut and dry. We want him to be, you know, clear. And the words, you know, "I am God," are not in there. When you look through the pages of scripture, however, he did make the claim that he is God. Just because he didn't use those words that we would've expected him to use, doesn't mean that he didn't make that claim to be God. So there is that claim from Jesus. John 10:30 is one of those places it says, "I and the Father are one." And if you look at the context of that passage of scripture, he's speaking in, at least in an arena where the Jews are overhearing, the religious leaders are overhearing this take place. And just by their reaction to him, you know, that he is actually making that claim that he is God. A few verses later, you look at what the Jews said back to him. They're basically saying, "you are blaspheming, because you're claiming to be God." And in verse 33 it says, "you, a mere man, claim to be God." And so Jesus is making that claim that he is God. And then in John 8:58, is another example, "Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am." And again, he's not saying, "I am God," in the way that us Americans might want him to say, "I am God," but he is saying, "I am God," by just using those two words, I am. And really, what he is referencing is all the way back to the Book of Exodus, is chapter 3:14, where God revealed Himself as the I am. And really, what that means is that He is the self existent one. So there can't be, you know, two self existent ones who don't need to have reliance on anything else. So, you know, Jesus is definitely making that claim that he is God, and then his disciples also make that claim. Jonathan, you mentioned this: as the Apostle John wrote his book, he started off chapter one in that way. You know, even down into verse 14, he says that God came and dwelled among us. You know, these are evidences from the scriptures and from Jesus' followers, that he did make that claim to be God, that He is God. Thomas is another one. We give him the name, Doubting Thomas, because of the way that he, you know, acted in the end toward Christ. But as Jesus came back and revealed himself, you know, as the risen savior to Thomas in John 20:28, Thomas saw that evidence, right? The evidence with the nail prints in his hand and the hole in his side. And he bowed down and worshiped him, and he said, "my Lord and my God." And the interesting thing about that is that Jesus didn't correct him. Jesus didn't tell him, "no, you don't need to call me that." Jesus accepted that worship as God. And so, there's just so much evidence, and this is all biblical evidence, of course, but this is all, you know, evidence that Jesus is God. And then, you know, we talk about the second part of that question. Is he the only way to eternal a life? Well, the provision of salvation itself is evidence that Jesus is God. You know, I might let you get into this, Gary, if that's the direction that you're heading on answering that second question. But, you know, the salvation that we need because we're sinners, the Bible talks about the fact that we are sinners because we miss the target. We miss the mark when it comes to living according to God's law, according to His righteousness. And so we are sinners, and that sin means that we cannot be in God's presence. There's that separation that has been made because, you know, we're not righteous in and of ourselves. We can't be in God's presence. And now we look to what Jesus Christ provided, you know, with his sacrifice on the cross. And you have to understand that it is only God who could make that provision of salvation for this situation that we're in, you know? To fix that relationship that's broken. And so there's some evidences for, you know, why I believe that Jesus is God.

Gary Schick
And I think it's really interesting, you know, we're kind of looking at this as believers looking at the scripture and saying, you know, as Jonathan pointed out, here's Jesus doing the things that God does, and showing those attributes. And, you know, I think it's really interesting in terms of the claim...let's think about where Jesus was. He was in Israel, he was among the people who were monotheists. They believed in one God. They didn't believe in, you know, all the gods of the pantheon, that the gods had come down to earth like the Greeks did. And so Jesus, in order to get that across, would have to reveal it in a certain way. Not only so that it would click, but that it would be believable. And I think for any of our listeners who maybe aren't Christians or are believers but you kind of, you know, "we have questions, we have doubts." I think this is a helpful question to ask. And so as I was kind of looking at it, you know, is Jesus, God? Well, what would we expect if he was God? And number one, I think we've all kind of addressed it, he would in some way claim to be. We do see evidence of this in, really all four gospels. For example, Matthew 11:27, Jesus says, "all things have been handed over to me by my father, and no one knows the son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him." So he is identifying with the Father in a very unique relationship that says, "you know what? You can't know the Father. I mean, only I know the Father and whoever I reveal Him." That's quite a God claim there. Or Mark 2:5-7 and in Luke 5:17,26 both tell the same story of how some men brought to him a paralyzed man carried by four of them. They dug a hole through the roof, pretty dramatic, to get through the crowd. Lowered him down through the roof, and before Jesus heals this man it says, "when he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'son, your sins are forgiven.' Now, the scribes who were there immediately saw what that meant. They said in their hearts, 'why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" Jesus, first of all, reads their minds. He knows what they're thinking. Well, you might say anybody might know what they're thinking at that point, but he asked this interesting question, "well, which is easier? To forgive sins, or to say, 'rise and walk?" He has just said, "I forgive your sins," a God claim. And then he says, "now, rise and walk," which shows there's something behind that claim. And then, as Ben, as you pointed out, there's so many statements in John's gospel. Again, going back to what you mentioned there, where Jesus said, "I solemnly declare it before Abraham came to be, I am." So two things there: as you pointed out, he's identifying himself with the God of Exodus 3:14, where God replied, "I am who I am." But also he's saying, "and before Abraham was, I am." Well, the Jews are looking at him and saying, "Hey, you're what, 30 years old? How is it that you were alive and well before Abraham?" So they were catching it. Again, you pointed out John 10:30, "I and the Father are one." John 14:9, "whoever has seen me, has seen the Father." And then there's these many clear statements about himself that are basically God's statements. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," John 6:35. "I am the light of the world," John 8:12. "I am the gate," John 10:9. "I am the good shepherd," John 10:11,14. "I am the resurrection and the life," John 11:25. "I am the way, the truth and the life," John 14:6. And, "I am the vine; the life giving one," John 15:1,5. So, does that prove Jesus was God? Just because, in so many words he said, "I am God," no. But if he's God, we would expect him to be making those claims. And then you kind of ask the questions that C.S. Lewis asked, "well, is he saying this because he's off balance in some way?" Everybody around him saw that Jesus was very sane. And as we read the scriptures, he comes across as very balanced, very sane. Was he some kind of a significant liar, you know? Just kind of a pathological liar? Well, there again, that's not how Jesus comes across. So he is either Lord, lunatic, or a liar. Is he telling the truth or not? But again, we don't have to stay with what he says. There's also the evidence of the miracles. And it's interesting. Even his most arch-enemies, none of them doubt that he does miracles. And so Jesus himself said in John 10:37, 38, "if I am not doing the works of my father, then don't believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me because of the works, so that you may no and understand that the father is in me and I am in the Father." John 14:11, "believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or else believe on account of the works that I do." So Jesus said, "look, if you don't believe my words, look at what I've done." And of course, we can look back now, 2000 years later, and we can compare the two sides of the Bible. You have the Old Testament, where there's many prophecies of the Messiah, and the New Testament where Jesus fulfills them. In fact, as I kind of did a little research into this, conservatively speaking, Jesus fulfilled at least 300 Old Testament prophecies of who the Messiah would be and what he would do. Now, I did a little more research. And what do you expect the odds would be that Jesus would not fulfill 300, but maybe say eight prophecies? He probably said, "well, that probably wouldn't be too hard." Actually, the chances that Jesus would fulfill just 8 Old Testament prophecies is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. So, you wanna know how big a number that is? That is one out of, and then you put a one with 17 zeros after it. I don't even know how you say a number like that! You know, what is that? A gazillion? Or a Google? It's huge! One into something with 17 zeros after it, are the chances of just fulfilling eight. And Jesus fulfilled conservatively, something over 300. And then of course, there is the final detail, the thing that brought Thomas to his knees, saying, "my Lord and my God." The resurrection. You know, the 11 remaining disciples, we know Judas committed suicide after he betrayed Jesus. But the other 11, they all went to their deaths, rather than deny that Jesus---they saw him alive, risen from the dead. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us that on one occasion, more than 500 people saw him alive. And when Paul was writing that, most of them were still alive, and they could be verified with, they could be talked to. So is Jesus God? He makes the claim. He did the works that showed he was God. He triumphed over death. You know, there have been other great leaders, thinkers, religious people. These people, they were honest enough not to make such a claim. Buddha never claimed to be God. Mohammed never claimed to be God. Buddhists talked about enlightenment. Muhammad talked about being a prophet. Jesus is the only one who says, "and by the way, I am He." And so, you know, we come back to it. Was He the Lord? Was he out of his mind? The least trustworthy of all the religious leaders that have ever existed? Or was He exactly who He was saying He was? He only makes that claim, and he's the only one also who promises us heaven. The others basically said, "well, here's what I think. Here's what I have found. Here's what I'm trying to do." But none of them had been to the other side. Jesus alone says, "I've come from the other side and I've come to bring you to where I am." So some powerful statements and some very powerful evidence that not only can he make such a claim, but that he's done what is necessary to bring us home, friends. After looking at it, I have to be honest. Presented with the facts about Jesus, for me, it takes more faith not to believe that Jesus is the Christ than to believe that he is. And that's pretty powerful stuff. What an awesome savior!

The Bible Is Spiritually Discerned - 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 Mike Clement, David Clement, and Michael Gleb.

Michael Clement
We've decided that we're gonna continue on with what we were already doing, which was talking about the fundamentals of the faith. And the first one is the Bible, as the word of God. And what we've already talked about is inspiration in being inherent, in being preserved, and in being authoritative; which means it's not optional. They're called the 10 Commandments, not the 10 suggestions. And this is what God's word is. What he uses to judge cultures, to judge individuals. And so here we have it in front of us today. Another thing that we wanted to point out is that the Bible is spiritually discerned. I wanna read from 1 Corinthians 2:14. It says, "but the natural man," that's talking about somebody that's unsaved. Somebody that doesn't know Christ as their Savior. Somebody that doesn't have the Holy Spirit living in them. It says, "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, because they're spiritually discerned." There is an aspect of God's word that cannot be understood by somebody who doesn't know Christ as their Savior. Now, they may know what the words mean, they may be able to put it down. They may be able to repeat it. But that inward knowledge and understanding is something that only comes through the Holy Spirit. And the good news is that every person who's come to know Christ as their Savior, the Bible tells us, is "indwelleth with the Holy Spirit." Jesus said, "when the Holy Spirit would come, he would guide us into all truth." And that he would also remind us of the things that he spoke of. So the Bible is spiritually discerned. And another thing that we said is that the Bible is culturally independent. Now, we have a film by a missionary by the name of Otto Coning who said he went to this people group that was in Dutch New Guinea. And it takes a long while for a missionary to be able to, uh, get through. Oh, no! I'm thinking of another person. Ouch. Peace Child, the fellow who wrote the book, Peace Child. He went to this people group, took him a long while for him to get the language down. And once he got the language down, then he began to communicate the message of the gospel. And when he told them how Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, the people began to laugh, because they honored and worshiped treachery. So when they first heard the story of Jesus, they thought Judas was the hero. But it was because their culture was so twisted. That, uh, in their culture wrong was right and right was wrong. And the Bible actually has a verse that talks about that, that says, "woe unto those that call wrong right, and right wrong." But the Bible stands outside of a culture and passes judgment on it. And that's God's perspective. Just because you were told something was right that doesn't necessarily mean that it's right. If we want to know universally what's right or what's wrong, then we can go to the word of God. So it stands outside of the culture, and it stands in judgment over a culture. And then, another thing that we point out is that the Bible needs to be understood, literally. Now, I'm trying to remember the exact phrase. "It's the literal, grammatical, historical, interpretation of scripture." There are things that have certain meaning in a certain time in history, and they're used of something in a historical context. And then there are figures of speech. A hyperbole is an overexaggerated statement to make a point. And there are other figures of speech that you find in the Bible. But there're obvious. I mean, that it can be, it's to be understood. It can be understood through those things. And so when we come to the Bible, we need to recognize, "Yeah, there are historical context. There is literary, grammatical uses." But it needs to be understood literally. Otherwise, it doesn't mean anything. I kind of, I have a problem with when somebody says, "well, this doesn't mean that. It means something else." Well, okay. What does it mean? And they'll offer an opinion, and you ask, "well, how do you know that?" And it comes down to, "that's what I wanted to mean."

David Clement
Well, one of the things that's interesting, you know, along those lines, is the kind of debate we see in Christianity today about the Old Testament, you know. Where we're living in the New Testament age. And so the Old Testament doesn't really apply to us, but we don't really have to look at it. The interesting thing is, if you look at the words of Jesus, a lot of them are from the Old Testament. First of all, he was quoting the Old Testament.

Michael Gleb
So did Paul. Massively.

David Clement
Yeah, and someone once told me, and I haven't necessarily taken the time to look it up, but someone once told me that for every New Testament truth and every New Testament doctrine, there's an Old Testament example. And I haven't, like I said, I haven't taken the time to look it all up.

Michael Gleb
But I'm sure that's the case.

David Clement
I've seen several fo them myself. And if you look at the Old Testament, the way that God dealt with the children of Israel is how He's dealing with the individuals in the church today. And so you see how God would lead them through, you'd see how God would discipline them as a nation from time to time. A lot of times you can see a direct, polar, or parallel to believers today. And so, just not saying that it's a picture necessarily, but it's again, how God has written these things down for them at that time. You know, there are some things that, again, you know, talking about crossing the Red Sea, I'm not sure I need to know about, necessarily that aspect, because I don't cross the Red Sea literally. But there is a spiritual application there. Which is our trust in the Lord. There are some historical things, but again, it does apply to us to date even the Old Testament.

Michael Clement
Okay, good deal. And your view of the Bible is critical to everything else. Because everything else is what the Bible teaches us about. You know, we're gonna talk about the trinity. Well, how do we know that there's a trinity? Because the Bible says so! Now there is, I think there is validity in saying, what has Christianity taught for 2,000 years? But let's face it, the church's denominations, organizations, individuals, schools at times, they stray. They start going off. And when you find great movements of God that are oftentimes called revivals, great movements of God amongst His people, one of the things that happens is people come back to the Bible. They get their lives straightened back up based on what the Bible has to say.

Michael Gleb
That's exactly what a revival is. There's been a lot talk of revival, even in the news these days. But if it doesn't begin with agreeing with God and agreeing according to His word, I hate to say it, but it's truly not revival. I mean, let's just be honest. It has to be based in the word of God. Unlike this culturally independent thing here. And it's a sad thing where I believe that Satan has got a lot of people convinced that there are, you know, this somehow is an American religion. Or this somehow is a white man's religion, and it's just not the case. This is a word of God for mankind. This is His word to mankind. It's a sad, sad thing. But it rises above anything that I would put onto my own identity. It rises above that. And like you said, this is where we can find truth. As I was growing up, there was two things from a Christian education that I remember very importantly was that, "what is culture?" Culture is a way of life of a group of people. That's why one of the first things I learned. The second thing I learned was, "well, what's the most important part of culture? Is how that culture relates to God. Some cultures don't relate to God. Some people have decided to remove Him from their thinking, as we see in Romans one. How they relate to God; the most important part of any culture. And so, anyway. If that helps at all.

Michael Clement
And you see how God's word, the gospel of God's word, improves any group, any people. When was the last time you saw a hospital that was built by a group of atheists or named for a famous atheist? You know, I don't think there's a Madeline Marie O'Hare hospital anywhere. Oftentimes, what secular thinking people do is, "well, let's preserve that culture." You know, "we don't want to destroy that culture." Yeah, you let them eat one another still, and you let them do all these horrific things. Wherever the Bible has gone, wherever the gospel has gone: it's brought healthcare, it's brought education, it's brought law, it's brought a decent way of living. We had a guy in our church years ago, and we were in Sunday school. I don't remember exactly what it was we were talking about, but he had said something I wrote down on a piece of paper. I still have it on my desk somewhere. And he said, "Every person wants to be treated the way the Bible commands us to treat one another." I was like, "Wow! Yeah, that is so true." You know, that is so true. Everybody wants to be treated important. Everybody wants to be treated decently. Everybody wants to be treated honestly, and with respect and so forth. And those concepts may be found other places, but it's pretty rare. Where it's indoctrinated right into the gospel message.

Michael Gleb
I was listening to one of our missionaries' letters the other night, and William Carey had gone to India. And one of the practices of that was when a husband died, a wife would have to be burned alive on top of her husband's corpse as they floated it down the river. That was the culture. And William Carey came in and changed that. How did he change it? Through the word of God. Not because he was a silver tongue dude, you know? He changed it through the word of God.

Michael Clement
And so, what you find today is all around the world in different cultures. There's Christianity, some places where it's not found yet. We're trying to get it there. But in Asian culture, in European, in South America, on every continent, their churches sometimes look a little different. I mean, it's related to their culture, but it's not dominated by their culture. And, you know, where does it come from? Comes from the word of God. And so, it's so imperative. And that's why with some groups, when people start fooling around with the word of God gets my hackles up. I don't like that, you know? That's not what the word of God says, or what the word of God means.

Michael Gleb
And that goes to the point that you began with; spiritually discerned.

Michael Clement
Spiritually discerned.

Michael Gleb
How do we know, you know? Is because, if you're a child of God, you have the spirit of God. And then you have the word of God, and the spirit of God's gonna lead you into the truth of the Word of God. And that radar starts to scope a little bit when somebody starts to twist scripture. "Wait a minute, that's not what that," yeah.

Michael Clement
Yeah, and that's why it's important for us to know God's word, individually, know God's word. Many years ago, my wife and I were working in a church and a lot of people in the church were very ignorant of God's word. And at Sunday School, the kids didn't know the Bible. The teachers didn't know the Bible. There just was a real lack of knowledge of the Bible. And one of the older ladies in the church told me that many years ago, the church had had a series of pastors that truly believed the Bible, and they were encouraged to be in their Bibles. But then they got a pastor that came, and on one Sunday he said, "you know, you people are bringing your Bibles back and forth from church and home and you're gonna wear them out." He said, "leave your Bible at home. We've got Bibles in the pew, and I'll tell you what the Bible says." And she saw that as the beginning of the decline of their church spiritually. And it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, she's got a lot of wisdom.