Questions & Answers 2024-Part 2

Transcript

Download or Read Below

 

24-23b Q&A 2024-Part 2

 

Q&A 2024 – Part 2

Pastor Mike Fabarez

 

Pastor Mike: This is the one weekend out of the year that we take whatever questions you might have. You set the agenda for the morning. We’ve got two pastors here with microphones and we just jump right into it. Unscripted. All I ask is that your question be sincere. It can be about the Bible, Christian life, about theology, doctrine, whatever it might be. So let’s get started. We want to use our whole time to do that. You can wave down one of these microphones and we’ll start.

 

Question: So my question is should we believe in a young earth or an old earth and why?

 

Pastor Mike: Well, I believe in a young earth. Of course, young is a relative term. Because every miracle that Jesus did in proving that he is the creator, he did something in the physical world in time and space that was immediately accomplished. And the product was something that had the appearance of a history and an age that it didn’t actually have. And whether that’s the chemistry of the wine that Jesus turned water into wine, whether it’s the physical body of someone who he healed. If you were to be able to analyze the structure of the biological part of the body that he healed, the forearm, the legs, the nervous system, the eyes, all of these things had an immediate functional usefulness that has a legitimate bonafide in time and space history, an age that it didn’t actually have because he just immediately said it. I think the same way the world is going to end, according to Second Peter Chapter 3, with a word of God’s power, which is instantaneous, I think there’s going to be a correspondence to the creation, which is that’s the correspondence that’s made in that passage. Just as God created the world with the word of his power, he’s going to destroy the world with the word of his power. So, I believe in a young earth and I know that people struggle with that. Just as a chemist would struggle that this wine sitting in these jars is only five minutes old, and everything about it, chemically, is only five minutes old because Jesus is able to show that he’s the creator. Every miracle in the Bible that is a creative miracle, and there are less than 100 of them in the Bible, they’re all done instantaneously by a word of God’s power, either through Christ himself or one of his apostles or prophets. So I’m a young earth guy and I think this is a world that we have that’s millions of years, perhaps, but not billions. Thousands, maybe, not billions. That’s my answer. And I understand radiometric dating enough about it, at least to study it at the university. I understand paleontology, how we date dinosaur bones based on rocks and what kind of parent-daughter isotopes are in them. And I just think all of this is a lot of circular reasoning based on what is an obvious appearance of age in history that those rocks didn’t actually have. I believe that for a lot of reasons, but that’s the short answer.

 

Question: Okay, so my question is regarding slavery. So, right, I consider myself a slave of Christ, right? That’s how I determine it. But I do a lot of debating on TikTok. And it’s really difficult, like with Leviticus, some of the passages I think, 25:44 about owning slaves permanently. And how do we argue? Right? I mean, I understand the concept of like being a slave of Christ. How do we communicate that to a nonbeliever or somebody who’s arguing against the Bible?

 

Pastor Mike: What kind of master is Christ? Okay? And that’s exactly what was demanded of those who owned slaves in the Bible. You couldn’t kidnap people, man-napping. Kidnapping was a serious felony offense as we would put it. God was against cruelty. God was against all the things that we would say make for a bad owner of another individual. And you need to understand people, certainly in the Greco-Roman world at the time of Christ, were willingly giving themselves to masters. There were all sorts, there were professionals, dentists, lawyers. You can look this up. Plenty of people who said, I would do better with a benefactor who is wealthy, and I will be enlisted and conscripted to his service for the rest of my life. So slavery was a common, economic arrangement for people. And, as soon as there was abuse that was outlawed in Scripture, you weren’t supposed to abuse anyone. You weren’t supposed to be unreasonable. You weren’t supposed to steal anybody. You couldn’t do what happened in American slavery and go get people who didn’t look like us ethnically and bring them over here as chattel and sell them on blocks. There’s nothing in that. So here’s the problem with debating this on TikTok or anywhere else. Everyone is comparing a form of American slavery they’ve learned about in history to what we’re reading about in Leviticus or Exodus. And, that’s just not the case. Even right out of the gate in the book of Exodus, when a slave is discussed one of the things that’s quickly discussed is if you want to remain a slave forever with that master go put your ear against the doorpost and have him pierce your ear with the awl because you’re saying I like this master, he’s a great master. You may have been indentured to him because you were in economic poverty. There were plenty of debtor prisons, right? One more way to get out of debtor prison is to sell yourself as a slave. So this was an economic arrangement, much like polygamy that you could find was pretty much an economics arrangement that thankfully, with the development of culture, we see that we’re against polygamy and we’re against slavery. And the Bible is all for that by New Testament times, right? If you can be free, Paul says to the Corinthians, you should be free. Get free. That’s always better to be a freeman. But remember, if you’re a freeman, you’re the Lord’s freeman, right? You’re the Lord’s slave and vice versa. You know, if you’re a slave, then you’re the Lord’s freedman. So, I’m all about the fact that New Testament teaching is trying to advance the kind of arrangement that we might have to care for widows in a better way than just saying, well, go marry someone else in a polygamist relationship. Or why don’t you just indenture yourself and conscript yourself to someone because you’re in debt and you can’t get out of it? So I’m going to sell myself and my labor. But it’s an arrangement that is not the abusive arrangement that we see. And even in American history we always look at the abuses of it and say, well, we condemn it outright, and of course it’s inferior. The Bible says if you cannot be a slave don’t be a slave, be free. And that’s being said in the first century when Greco-Roman slavery was rampant. Does that help? I mean, the concept is distasteful. And I got to tell you it’s because we have been conditioned by the kind of slavery this country has experienced. That’s all we read in history books. I grew up in public school. That’s all I read. I didn’t read anything about Greco-Roman professional slavery in the times of the Bible. I had to go to seminary and start reading to understand that. Where I might say, hey, I’m a speaker, let’s just say that I’m going to indenture myself to Elon Musk and be his speaker and he’s going to have to care for me, take care of me, take care of my family, take care of my kids, everything. I’m going to sell myself to him. Let’s put it this way. If we said at some point a thousand years from now, it sure would be better, or 2,000. Let’s go 2,000 years in the future if the Lord tarries and employment was looked at, that’s a horrible thing. You mean you were employed? You were told what time to go to this building and work, right? That’s insane. You should be free, right? And let’s just say that even in our day we’d say, well, if you can work for yourself that would be a good thing. And so I write or I answer questions as a Christian on a stage, hey, if you can be self-employed, that would be good. Be your own boss, okay? But most of us in the room we’re not our own boss. We go to work. We have a boss. We have a manager. We have a supervisor. We have to check-in. We got to ask permission to take vacation, all of that. If we got to the place where that was the norm, everyone could be self-employed because of technology, let’s say. Right? We might say do it. That’d be great. Right? But right now, it’s not economically feasible for everyone to be their own boss. And it wasn’t economically feasible for everyone to have one wife or every wife to say, well, there’s no men left because of warfare, disease or whatever and so I’m going to marry a guy who’s already got three wives, or I’m going to conscript myself to a rich man so he can pay my bills. Right? We say, oh, you shouldn’t do that. Well, we might say 2,000 years from now no one should work for anybody. Do you see what I’m saying? Every time a boss should be a reasonable boss, should be a kind boss, should be a virtuous boss. And anybody who owned a slave should be a virtuous boss. Even in Scripture, I can’t take if I’m a polygamist in the Old Testament, I can’t treat my first wife badly if I’ve taken a second wife. Right? Those are commands in Scripture. So all of this was supposed to be a compromise for the reality of the socio and economic realities of ancient times. And God was very tolerant of this. And thankfully with the development of society there are better ways for you to seek state funds or Social Security or whatever it might be so you don’t have to, you know, get yourself into a situation that’s a male-dominated society that only males are going to be gainfully employed or own property. Do you see things have changed? Is one better than the other? Well, sure. Just like it’d be great if none of you had to call in and talk to a boss about having a day off tomorrow. So does that help at all? Okay. Do you want more? We can do… Well, because we have a microphone. You want? I mean, do you want to follow up on that? Okay. Yeah. It’s not a fun conversation. But, everything you look at in American history books, of course, we condemn those things, right? You cannot kidnap someone. Right? Okay. You can’t abuse them.

 

Question: My question is regarding, like the issue of transgender and that whole thing where in our workplace or even our schools they’re requiring us to address them according to the pronoun they prefer. So is there something that’s compromising my Christian principles? How should I address that? Or how should I, you know, do I call them by he or she? Or just by their name or what?

 

Pastor Mike: Okay, well, it’s insanity, right? We know it’s insanity, but if that insanity got to a place where you have now coworkers who think they’re cats or dogs and you now had to bark at them to say hello or meow at them to say hello, would you do it? I mean, but at some point I think you would say, I’m not playing this game, right? I’m not going to play this game. Now I’m not going to bark at you because you think your dog. And I’m not going to say to a man, “Hey, good morning ma’am,” because you think you’re a girl, right? You’re not a girl. Every cell in your body says you’re not a girl. So I do think Christians at some point need to believe in truth enough to say I’m not going to play the game. Are we going to lose our jobs over that? I don’t think we have to be belligerent about it. Right? I would do all that I could never to address someone who’s playing in an imaginary game about their gender or whether or not they’re an animal. I’m not going to moo at you because you think you’re a cow because you’re not a cow. I’m not going to call you a man if you’re a woman. I’m just not. And I think at some point, you know, you could have economic situations, even as in the last question, where we might say, well, if I don’t somehow, you know, avoid, you know… I’m not going to make a stink about carrying banners around that say, “In truth Jim is really a man. He’s not a woman, so stop calling him Jane.” I won’t do that at work. Right? Because I’m just there to live my life quietly and earn a paycheck so I can go about my business as a Christian. But at some point, if I’m stuck and cornered and I’m supposed to be… I’m going to say at some point your conscience is going to say, I’m not going to play your game anymore. And I don’t want to be belligerent about that. I don’t want to be argumentative about that. I want to do it all with gentleness and respect, because I feel bad that you have a dysphoria that you may really believe it. A lot of people that have this, by the way, young people in particular, now it’s rampant and it’s a social contagion that everyone’s saying, well, now I’m not the gender I was born with. My gender does not correspond with my sex, biological sex. That’s increasing for the applause and acceptance. And the breakdown of our teenage society because it is broken, I’m going to go preach on it all week out in the blazing hot desert, we have a problem with people having the kinds of connections and friendships they need, and because of that, people are starving for affirmation. And they’ll get this affirmation by playing around with gender dysphoria. And a lot of them grow out of it when they stabilize, even in their brain, the brain gets fully developed and all the rest. Some don’t, I understand that, but it is a fiction and I don’t want to play games with people. And I would think you wouldn’t moo at someone. And we’re not far from that, right? You can go online and find subsets of culture that are all about that. So, I’m going to say I think you could get by with nodding and, you know, you may call someone the name that they want to be called, but when I start playing… I don’t know. You’re going to have to make some decisions about that. And I just don’t want to play those games. I will try to be very creative with my language to get out of the conversation quickly with the person who’s playing crazy games, because it is a game. You can say whatever you want. This will be out there. You know, I’m sure I’ll get plenty of heat for it, but it’s a game, you’re playing a game. And a lot of people are messed up in their heads, I get that. There are people I’ve met who are absolutely demonized and they think there’s something they’re not. But, you know, whatever the reason, there may be a rationale, it may explain something, but it doesn’t excuse it. We’re about the truth. Yeah.

 

Question: I was reading through Matthew and, you know, growing up about the resurrection. You know, I believe Christ was the only one who was resurrected. And I was reading in there that the saints, the tombs opened up and the saints, you know, came out and there were walking amongst the city. And I was like, baffled. I’m like, oh, you know, I never saw that in a movie my whole life growing up. And I’m like, what’s going on here? And the second part is like, what was the purpose? I mean, I see all these people who were saints, you know, believers in Jesus going around talking to people. I’m like, okay, what’s going on here?

 

Pastor Mike: The most monumental thing that ever happened in the entire history of humanity was that Christ came and absorbed the penalty of our sin. And when it happened, there were some miraculous events. One of the miraculous events was that people were coming out of the tombs. People were, I would say, resuscitated. Right? There are, Jairus’ daughter, there are plenty of people in the Bible, Lazarus, who were dead and came back to life as an act of God’s miraculous power. That always plays a purpose. There’s always a purpose for that. Right? And those purposes are fulfilled in the pages of the context where we read about these miracles. And there’s less than ten of them in the Bible, like seven or whatever it is. That scene, you say, what’s going on here? I’ve never heard about that. The reason you never ever heard about it is because this is not the resurrection of the type that we have with Christ. It’s the resurrection of the type we have with Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter. These are resuscitation. People who were dead, right? They had their spirit dispatched back to go and, you know, infiltrate that body. And God repaired their biological unit to be still under the curse of Romans 8 and Genesis 3. And they had to live and then they had to have a second funeral. How hard was that for the family? At some point they all died. That’s why there’s not much made of those people. You trust me. By the time we get to the book of Revelation we’d be hearing about all those people because they’d still be alive and healthy. So this is not the resurrection, as First Corinthians 15 clearly says, he’s “the first fruits” of those who will be resurrected. That’s all future. The only one that is resurrected to a body that is impervious to death. So all the gospels don’t record it. Matthew 27 is the only passage that has that text. It happened and some people don’t… Like there are scholars who now say, well, I don’t really think that happened. Well, of course it happened, it is there. Why did it happen? I think because it’s associated with Christ dying on the cross. The most monumental victory over sin that’s ever happened. Just like the temple veil tore. Now you can ask why did that happen? According to Josephus that was four inches thick. And Josephus wrote you couldn’t take horses, tie ropes to both ends and send the horses in opposite directions and rip it. So if you knew what you were talking about, the veil there in the temple, you’d say, why did God do that and rip it from top to bottom, right? There’s no explanation in the text. It just says that’s what happened. We though, start to say, well, you read the book of Hebrews, that kind of… I can see that… Okay. It seems to make sense that… Okay. I got it. The veil was torn to show that the temple was obsolete. Okay? We could say the same thing about resurrections. Why were there people coming out of the tombs and appearing in Jerusalem after Christ died on the cross? Because the wages of sin is death. He just died and absorbed all of our sin. He said “Tetelestai,” it is finished. All the sins have been paid for. There’s no death anymore. Well, it’s all postponed. Well, postponed? Can you show us? Bam! Here are people coming out of the tombs. So it makes theological sense if you give it a little thought. Just like the tearing of the veil. Although both are given in Matthew without any explanation. Does that help? Yeah. It’s odd. I mean, it’s odd things that happen.

 

Question: So just now you said that there were less than ten times in the Bible where there was a miracle that was kind of like a resurrection. And then to the first question you said there were less than 100 times where there was a miracle that was natural that happened instantaneously.

 

Pastor Mike: No, no, no. That’s not what I said. A creative miracle where something was done instantaneously that creates something out of nothing with an appearance of history and age it never had. Less than 100. And I count creation week with a lot of miracles in seven days as one. When I went through the Bible to count these myself I counted that as one. But go ahead.

 

Question: Okay. So my question is are there any miracles that still happen today? And if not, how do we explain things in our life that seem to be miraculous?

 

Pastor Mike: Yeah, if it’s miraculous, I’m thinking, yes. There’s a whole other category of miraculous events where God in Providence within the laws of nature responds, we would see it this way on the timeline of life as humans, responds to our praying or our requests, and does something within the laws of nature. Okay. That’s all I’m saying. There are a lot of people who have had cancer. We prayed for them and their cancer has gone. It’s not gone instantaneously. It’s gone because the cells no longer rebel and they start to subside and they go back, and six months later, no cancer. And six years later, because everything in five years might recur, six years later they’re clean of cancer. Great. Credit God with that. That’s a God thing, but it works within the laws of nature. My daughter is paralyzed, right? Her spinal cord has been disrupted. And so in her paralysis that is something that doesn’t repair. Not even if you give it enough time it doesn’t repair. Right? So you can pray for that, that’s not going to happen because it doesn’t happen because it would suspend the laws of nature to happen. Cancer subsiding does not suspend the laws of nature. It’s not very likely depending on what kind of cancer you have. So God’s providence of what he does, it’s the examples I use, as I quoted last week in the sermon if you were here about Hezekiah praying and asking that God would save them. And so 185,000 Assyrian soldiers die instantaneously in their sleep. That’s a miracle, right? That’s the kind of miracle where, wow, crazy. Well, then there’s Jonathan saying, I’m going to go and take these Philistines, right? And he goes and he fights with his armor bearer and while they’re completely outnumbered, they win. But every Philistine who died because a sword went through him. Right? So all of those are like, understandable. And yet it was unlikely. We always see the underdogs coming through. And when we pray for that underdog, we don’t always see it, but we occasionally see it and we think, okay, well, that all makes sense, but it’s very unlikely. Like when the check comes through in the mail on the day the bills were due and I have been praying for that, I would credit God with that. But it didn’t manufacture money on the table as I was praying. The check came in the mail. I know how checks are written. I know how they come, they get delivered in the mail. All of that happened and I’ll say God did that. There’s a story at Dallas Seminary that took place when they were ready to give up and somebody donates a bunch of heads of cattle, some cattle rancher, and saved the whole thing. Everyone was praying and it happened. And when it happened and the door opened, they said, this has been donated, they said Wow, answer to prayer. Do we call that a miracle? Yes. But we have to categorize miracles into two categories. A miracle I like to call it, is a God Thing. God does something. The question is, does he do it within the laws of nature, a providential miracle, or does he do it and suspend the laws of nature? The sun stands still for Joshua. Whatever that is that’s taking us on a massive miracle, right? I believe it happened because that’s what the Bible says. And Jesus says the Bible is true. He rose from the dead. I’m going to believe what he says. So that’s the kind of miracle category one miracle GT-1 I call it, the “God Thing One.” And the “God Thing Two” is that God is still credited with it. It’s like the two jailbreaks in the book of Acts. One, the doors of the gates open on their own, chains fall off, GT-1. Later, there’s an earthquake in Philippi and Paul gets out of prison. Earthquakes. They mess up things. The doors open, you know, things go into wobbly, you know, arrangements. And all of that is understandable by seismic activity and plate tectonics. And there are earthquakes in that part of what is now Turkey. So I’m saying that was providential. They were praying that he would be released and he was released. One was within the laws of nature and it was a providential timing of God. And the other one broke the law. Does that help? Okay.

 

Question: A question for you regarding the millennial period. So without Satan in the roll anymore and everything is a perfect state, why is it that Satan would be released again at the end of that period of time?

 

Pastor Mike: How many people have been born in the last thousand years on this planet? A lot. Okay. During the millennial if the Jews and others who populate the first generation of those who are living in bodies that still propagate and have children and are still given in marriage, which they will be according to my eschatology, my understanding of the Bible. They’re going to populate generation after generation. There’ll be dozens and dozens and dozens of generations during the millennial. All of those people have never known the tempter. They’ve only known Christ on the throne in Jerusalem. They’ve only known a perfect situation as you call it. It’s not perfect, right? Death is still taking place. It’s not quite the glorified state that’s coming. But it’s different. It’s so different that God does something in the world that takes life spans and moves them from 100 years being exceptional to 100 being a terribly sad story that a baby died, right? In other words, when he dies at 100 though, mourn them like it was a child, the book of Isaiah says. So the place is going to be refurbished and everything’s to be great. The people born in the thousand – period, that’s all they’ll know. I think every person who is in the New Jerusalem, with few exceptions, are people who have had the experience, whether it’s the good angels who’ve had the experience of the decision that they faced as Satan rebelled, like we’ve all had in this world, right? To choose, humanly speaking, to choose to follow Christ. That whole set of generations never had. So I think they’re going to have their time of testing when Satan is released. And I think, again, it’s like the resurrections or the torn veil. Why? There’s no description in the passage in Revelation 20 that you’re quoting that tells me why. But I think that’s my assembled answer from Scripture. It would seem like that generation of innocent people who have only known Christ on the throne, much like angels that only knew good, they’re going to have a time where they have an option to choose bad. And sadly, in Revelation 20, it says many are going to rebel. So a lot of those people who have only known good are going to choose bad at the very end of the Millennial Kingdom. Does that help?

 

Question: So we’re grandparents and I’m thinking when I ask this question, it’s about children. When the rapture occurs what will happen to children who are not at an age of accountability? Does the Bible speak to that?

 

Pastor Mike: It doesn’t speak to it specifically. But much like a lot of the answers this morning an assembled answer I think would be, either all the children before an age of even understanding the implications of their sin and their need for Christ, right? That comes at a particular age. It doesn’t mean they’re innocent. They’re not innocent, they’re attached to Adam and therefore they’re in a category of needing redemption. So they don’t come already redeemed and they mess that up by culpable sin. They’re sinners by birth. But I believe in my assembled argument from the attributes of God and God’s plan and how judgment works, I think they will either all be taken, if our eschatology is right and the Church is caught up in the seven-year period of the tribulation, or at least, the very least, I look at passages like First Corinthians Chapter 7, which speaks and uses the word “Hagios,” the children are holy when there’s at least one believing parent in the home. Now, I think we’re talking about small children here. I think that’s a practical statement of sanctifying effect. Just like if you have a righteous leader, as the Bible says, there’s something good and righteous that happens, a sanctifying effect for the kingdom when the king is righteous. And I think the same thing when there’s a Christian parent, there’s a sanctifying effect. But if you look at that, you think, okay, that’s a big word. Holy. It doesn’t mean that they’re saved. I don’t think it’s holy in the sense that they’re justified before God because they need to come to the place of becoming Christians. But at the very least, I’d say that passage and the rest of my argument, that’s a compounding argument, I’m going to say, I just think there be very little doubt that Christian parents are going to have their children left behind. Yeah. And I’m probably in the Letter “A” category of my first answer, but Letter “B” makes it even stronger when I speak to Christians at least.

 

Question: I ask this question on behalf of a shy young lady who is sitting next to me. She’s been…

 

Pastor Mike: Make her stand up and ask the question (audience laughing).

 

Question: She would kill me. She’s reading some books. She’s read some by D.L Moody, by C.S. Lewis now, by Elisabeth Elliot and some consider them Christian mystics. And I’m curious and so is she, how do you define what exactly is Christian mysticism and how does it relate to God’s word?

 

Pastor Mike: Yeah. You can add Tozer and some others to that list. Two things. One is, if you read Tori, you read Moody. There are a lot of people, it’s a form of theology called Keswickianism. It’s fun to say, or let’s just call it this. There are a lot, Wesley, Tori, Moody, who believed in a second blessing, an encounter with God, post-conversion, where God does something to turbocharge your Christianity. It’s based, I think, on a bad reading of the book of Acts not understanding the transitional nature of the book of Acts. And so some people are thrown into the category of use they’re seeking a spiritual experience post-conversion. And they’d say, well, that makes them a little different than what we know of as modern evangelical scholars and Christians and pastors, because they’re not teaching that. I mean, if you’re in the Assemblies of God, maybe, or the Foursquare Pentecostals, yes, okay, they do. But most evangelical leaders in Christianity, they don’t. So some people put them in a category of mystics because they’re seeking an encounter with the spirit secondary in the Christian life. Others though, like Tozer, there are… Let me differentiate a kind of mysticism. There’s a kind of mysticism in Roman Catholicism that is distinct from the Protestant version of something they use the same name for. There is a sort of mysticism that… Let’s put it this way. Western Christianity is very logical, very rational, which doesn’t mean it’s right, necessarily. But God is a God of truth and that certainly is indicative of truth. Truth has to correspond with reality and all of those things we see fit. We can study the Bible from a Western mindset and we can see all of this works and fits. And I think it’s a great way for us to teach the Bible. But the element of connection with God through the empowerment of the Spirit is certainly something that comes through in certain writers that you don’t see as much of in modern Protestant evangelical leaders. I would simply say, I do think the pendulum has swung too far in some of our top leaders in Western evangelical theology that we don’t take into consideration what we do see as normative experiences. Here’s how I put it in the Partners Manual in the chapter on the Holy Spirit of the kinds of constraint, which has to come into the subjective realm. And I guess if you want the quick answer now, as I’m speaking out loud, the subjectivity creeps into their theology versus the objectivity. Objectivity, very Western, very logical, very rational. The subjectivity I think within the rational reading of the Bible, there is this category of conviction and even prompting, as I call it in the Partners Manual that I think we cannot deny. And when I wrote that chapter, I thought to myself, this is not going to fly with a lot of my colleagues because they don’t even it like that. They think it opens Pandora’s box to, you know, Pentecostals, charismatics, and we’re not going to do that because we know where they go in denial of the propositional truths of Scripture oftentimes. So I’m saying we’re just going to have to have it at least to talk about it. There are promptings. There are convictions. There are things that the Spirit does on the subjective side of my walk with God that I’m not saying because of my experience, and it has nothing to do with my experience, has to do with the Bible’s stated experience that I don’t think is just tied to the apostolic experience. Paul says things like this to the Corinthians. In Second Corinthians, what is it? Chapter 4. “I found no rest in my spirit.” Right? So he didn’t say I needed to leave. Okay. “No rest in my spirit.” Most thoughtful evangelical Protestant conservative seminary professors that’s a hard category for them to talk about. Am I in tune to make God’s work on my spirit? Does that at least get you down the road to say some people it’s the second blessing theology that you have? And Moody had that. Moody believed in that and taught that and you can look up the word Keswickian, Keswick theology. You can see a lot that goes with that. And then you can see the mysticism of Roman Catholicism. I’m not talking about that. That has brought on the whole movement of this kind of contemplative prayer movement. Right? The spiritual formation in a lot of seminaries today has bought that hook, line and sinker. I’m against all of that because ultimately it denies the propositional statements of Scripture. And because as a good Western thinker, I’d like to believe rationally, I can look at the Bible and say those things are the pillars and posts, I can’t move them because God is a God of truth and the Bible is rational. But there is an element that I think we need to at least understand. There are subjective aspects to the Christian life and some people leaned into that a lot harder in the past than your reading today. Yeah, that was muddy. But you get what I’m saying. Does that help a little bit? Okay. All right.

 

Question: More and more in Christian circles than even some of my dear friends at other churches are talking a lot about the Enneagram and what number you are. It makes me feel unsettled. It sounds very new agey. I just would love your input.

 

Pastor Mike: Yeah. Just tell them I’m number one. Just tell them that. Number one. I’m always going to be number one. I was born number one. No, don’t. Don’t say it. Avoid it. That’s my short answer. We can go about Myers-Briggs. We talk about a lot of different diagnostics that have been laid on people and it seems Christians are always drawn to these because, you know, so much of the Christian life is going to demand a self-awareness even down to our spiritual gifts or whatever. But this is something I would say as a pastor, I can preach a whole sermon on it if you want, but I’m going to say avoid it. Don’t go there. Don’t waste your time on that. Do you want the biblical answer? I would just say Psalm 139. You just pray this prayer. “Search me O God, try me, know my heart. See if there’s any wicked way in me.” And then do what the Bible says. That’s the kind of self-analysis you need to do. Do you need to know your temperament? Okay. But, you know, with the whole movement in the 70s is kind of learning your temperament and then all the things that grew out of that or the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis or Myers-Briggs. All of these things, I think, took us to where we relied too much on what we found out in those tests to kind of explain things in my life, which to me is often turned into excuses in my life. And that’s why this one in particular is even worse. So the Enneagram thing, I would say avoid it. And, any one of our pastors, because we’ve talked about it in our pastor’s meetings, they’ve got some material that they’ve found that they think is helpful. I haven’t read it. I may have touched it and looked at it, but, ask any of our pastors, whoever handed you the microphone. Was that Pastor Roy? Ask Pastor Roy. Do you have that information? Do you have that little book? If not, he can find it. But he can get that to you. Delegation. You watched some pastoral delegation right there.

 

Question: How would you answer a fellow Christian who says if I don’t will to read the Bible, serve in church, etc., then I shouldn’t do it because I should do things my heart fully desires?

 

Pastor Mike: Okay. Is this person a parent? Okay. Well, if the person is a parent, I’d say try to parent that way. In other words, try and tell one of your children, “You know what? I don’t want you to do this unless you feel it, right?” So I got my son pulling my daughter down by the hair and slamming her down, or standing on his little sister. “I would encourage you to see if you could find in your heart the will to step off of your sister.” No one’s going to parent that way. And God doesn’t parent that way. God doesn’t parent that way. If you want to know how God approaches this, read Psalm 103 verses 1 and 2. Psalm 103:1 and 2 shows us how godly people are supposed to think about their will, and that is, you need to tell your will what to do, right? You need to look at the Bible and see what the instructions are from the dad of the universe and say, do this. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” Here is the psalmist talking to himself about what he should do. It’s not like, “I’d really like to feel it then I would do it. But I don’t want to be a hypocrite.” Right? Be a hypocrite if that’s what you think hypocrisy is because that’s not what hypocrisy is. Right? You do it because it’s right. You do it because you’re supposed to do it, and you tell yourself to do it. So you would never parent that way because I think you could easily see the absurdity of waiting for someone to feel something to do it. You would never parent that way. And God looks at our immaturity as grown adults and he doesn’t parent that way either. And here’s the thing. You want to wait for your will to tell you what to do. Try that out for a year. Read Hebrews 12 and find out if you’re not being disciplined by God, because you will be disciplined by God. This is the “follow your heart nonsense,” right? This is the whole problem with the non-Christian life doing what I want to do, doing what I feel, right? But here’s what the Bible… here’s what Jesus taught. Okay. Are you ready? Luke Chapter 14. Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. Deny yourself. If there’s anything that would teach me, I don’t wait for my will to will it, right? All of you should be giving. Let’s just get to something I know half of you don’t will to do, right? Everyone should be giving. If you’re a Christian and you’re taught by your teacher, the Bible says you should respond materially by putting something in the offering or doing it through PushPay. All of you should. The Bible doesn’t tell you how much, but all of you should do it. And a lot of you don’t do it because you don’t will to do it. Because there’s a lot of reasons you don’t will to do it. All of you should do it, and you’ll be held accountable before God, and eventually you’ll be disciplined. And according to biblical passages sometimes he does that by making sure your money doesn’t stretch to the end of the month. And that’s why when I say to people, talking about giving, you should give, they say I can’t afford to give. I’m saying you can’t afford not to, because the whole reason God is disciplining you financially is because you’re not generous. You get generous with God, I guarantee you. This is not prosperity gospel stuff. I’m not saying you get your boat in the harbor or your mountaintop house, but I am going to say God’s going to take care of your needs. So willing, right? If we wait to will something, we’re a mess. And there’s nothing in the Bible that would tell us that, nothing. Hypocrisy, by the way, “Hypokrino”, it’s a compound Greek word. “Hypo” means “under,” the preposition under. “Krino” means “to judge.” It’s a mask, right? You would judge me differently if you saw what’s under the mask. Okay. There’s hypocrisy, a little bit of hypocrisy in all of us, right? The distance between our reputation and the realities, there’s always some distance there. But the point is, if the Pharisees are condemned in Matthew 23 as hypocrites over and over and over again, it’s because they were trying to tell people they were godly and they kept saying, I’m godly, look how godly I am. I’m sounding a trumpet, to go back to the Sermon on the Mount, to throw my money in the offering plate. But if my parents need money, I’m not going to give them that money, because I’m going to say it’s “Corban,” it’s committed to God. So you’re a hypocrite. You don’t want to really be generous. You want the accolades of being seen as generous. So that’s hypocrisy. It’s not saying, well, I’m going to wait to pray until I feel it. Right? No. You should tell yourself to pray because God told you to pray. And I think Psalm 103 is a great example. And that’s just one of many examples in the Bible telling yourself what to do because it’s right.

 

Question: So do you believe that we can or should pray to the saints? Because in Hebrews 12, you know, it’s funny, we just mentioned that or you just mentioned that we’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And then, I would just like to hear your perspective kind of from a Catholic perspective. Not that I’m Catholic or anything. And then likewise, just what is your opinion on praying to Mary and how we should conduct ourselves in that conversation with a Catholic? Because I don’t really know the answer.

 

Pastor Mike: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Verse 1 of Hebrews Chapter 12 is “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” therefore “we should run with endurance the race that is set before us.” The cloud of witnesses that were just discussed it’s the word “Marturia” in Greek, which we get the word “martyr” from. And the point is that they’re testifying to God’s faithfulness and their actions are testifying to you. Think of a martyr who’s being strong and committed to Christ all the way to being burned at the stake. In Hebrews 11 they’re all hailed as people who believed in God, even when it was hard. Some were sawn in two, some went around destitute. So in Hebrews 11 we get all those names from the Old Testament. And then the statement is we’re “surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.” When you see “cloud” and you think, oh, well, I know what that means, it means the spiritual saints are watching what we’re doing, right? That’s not the context. The context is we have within the Bible, within the pages of the ta grapha, the Scriptures, the writings, we have all of these testifying personalities and biographies of those who trusted Christ. You should trust Christ. And for “the race set before you,” you should endure that just like Christ did. He had the faith to look beyond the cross to the crown, you should look beyond the pain to the payoff. And you should trust him. Why? Because you’re surrounded by people who you read about in the Bible. So this is a literary textual surrounding. This is not a cloud. Ooh. I have my witnesses. Right? No. Here are the witnesses. He only names witnesses who are in the pages of the Scripture. So I am surrounded by the saints. Saint, by the way, is not a canonized saint as the Roman Catholic church teaches as a saint. That’s make-believe, that’s made up by the Roman Catholic Church. A saint is anyone who’s a believer in Christ, anyone. Or in the Old Testament was a believer in God’s mercy and they knew they were sinners and threw themselves on the mercy of God. Those are the “holy ones.” That’s all “saint” means. It comes from the Latin word “sanctus,” which comes from the Greek word “Hagios.” It means that they’re holy, they’re set apart for God. So people who are set apart for God, and they prove it by their behavior, you should have a surrounding yourself by being inspired by them. Just like when you read a biography in our bookstore, a good missionary biography, or some Christian biography, you’re surrounded now literarily by that story. And just like they endured, you ought to endure, just like they had faith you ought to have faith. That’s all that that passage means. Okay? Do I ask people to pray for me? I do ask people to pray for me. Now the Catholic will say, well, I’m just asking people who went on before who died to pray for me. I’m not. Because Deuteronomy 18 says I’m not supposed to have an interest in discussing things with people who have gone before me. I am not. Jesus tells the parable. Think about this. The rich man and Lazarus, Luke 16, and he says, listen, there’s a chasm set here between a good place and a bad place in the afterlife. And when the guy who’s in a bad place asks Abraham in the good place, can I send Lazarus back to warn my brothers? He said, no, right? “They have Moses and the prophets; let them,” your brothers, “hear them,” the Scriptures. Okay? It always comes back to the Scriptures. Do you want to be motivated? Read the Bible. Do you want the witnesses to motivate you to faith? Read the Bible, get these people in your mind. Or as Paul says, any of the patterns you’ve seen in me, take note of them and imitate, “Mīmēsis” in the Greek language, mimic them, imitate them. That’s why we have Christian biographies. It’s not about me praying to them, right? Any time there was any kind of trying to contact the dead, talking to the dead, that was always condemned in Scripture. That was from the beginning to the end. And you can quote Saul if you want and say, well, you know, you saw Saul and he was calling out to Samuel and Samuel showed up. Well, you don’t want that experience because that didn’t go well. Right? This was one exception we have in Scripture of someone who you think is a hero but he’s not, he’s a failed leader, talking to the dead. And Samuel’s frustrated that even this is allowed by God and it ended poorly, it ended with Saul dying on Mount Gilboa the next day. So I’m saying don’t contact the dead. Don’t talk to the dead. There’s only one person who was dead and is now alive that you ought to be praying to and interceding, and the always, ever-living one, the one “who is and was and is to come.” You pray to God and that’s it, right? That’s it. The Triune God. That’s it. You pray to the Spirit. You pray to Jesus. You can pray to the Father. But generally speaking we pray with the guidance of the Spirit’s book, in the Spirit, through the intercession of Christ to the Father. That’s a general pattern of prayer in the Bible. There’s an exception. Stephen cries out to Jesus as he’s dying there in Acts Chapter 8. But all I’m telling you is that’s how we pray. We don’t pray to dead people. I can ask someone in my small group to pray for me. I’m not ever going to try in any way to talk to a dead person, because the Bible condemns that from beginning to end. That’s why we don’t pray to the saints, okay? I don’t pray to the saints. I don’t talk to the saints. I talk to living saints, not dead ones. And the Roman Catholic Church is way off base. And, Mary, let’s talk about Mary. If Mary was someone who is, as they say, an intercessor of sorts, she understands me. She’s a woman, right? One of the reasons Mariology came to be what it was is because of syncretism. Many, look even in the Greco-Roman period, many of the gods were goddesses, they were female. And Christianity in trying to adapt even early on in the medieval period but certainly in modern times, particularly in South America, the religions, a lot of animistic religions, where there was worship of goddesses. Right? They needed something, or so they thought. If we can just adapt to the culture, they want to talk to a woman here, right? Mary continued to be exalted through the centuries and so pray to her. And then it became… Read Mother Teresa. It’s all about Mary being the co-redemptrix. Not only is she someone who is supposed to intercede and understand me, she now has a part in the redemption of my soul, right? This is blasphemy. This is rank blasphemy. And so we need to reject Mariology because if Mary had any important role to play in your sanctification, she’d be talked about in the letters of the New Testament. And there is no mention of her. There’s not. And you may say, well, Jesus really loved his mother. Well, of course, at the cross he says to John, would you take care of my mother? Because apparently Joseph had died because he’s no longer mentioned. But early in the book, she became an obstacle to Jesus. Matter of fact, Jesus says, “who are my mother and brothers” because they came in Mark to take Jesus out of that teaching spot. And he goes, no. James, even the half-brother of Jesus, Mary’s son, did not believe him. The brothers did not believe him and Mary did not believe him. A lot of statements that Jesus makes about Mary that aren’t very good. And to say she’s sinless, which the Roman Catholic Church said, you don’t read the Magnificat. It’s called the Magnificat from the Vulgate in Latin. It’s Mary’s prayer. And what is she praying? Well, she’s praying to her Savior. Do you know who needs a Savior? A sinner, right? So Mary’s a sinner. And I’ll say that to any Roman Catholic priest. Bring it on. Bring the Pope in. Let’s talk to the Pope. I’ll talk to the Pope. Right? Mary is a sinner. I don’t pray to the dead. Right? She’s dead. She meets the biblical qualification of dead. It doesn’t mean she’s not a living spirit and in the presence of God. I’m not supposed to contact the spirits. The only spirit I’m supposed to contact is the Holy Spirit of God and the living spirit of the Father through the mediation of the Son. I don’t talk to Mary. And Mary if she were important we’d have a lot of writings about Mary and we don’t. Matter of fact, there’s a split testimony about Mary in terms of the statements that Jesus made about her. That’s pretty strong, but I feel strongly about people who are blaspheming. And Mary has got to be upset at what has happened because she was a godly woman, at least when she was a teenager and bore Christ. And then later in life, we assume, because she becomes a very important part at the end of Christ’s ministry and into the early church. But let’s stop with the exaltation, the veneration of Mary. She’s not sinless. And in saying you’re sinless, by the way, you’d have to say you had no connection then to humanity, to Adam, because Catholics have Romans 5 in their Bible just like we do. Well, you know how they got around that? After they deemed her sinless, then they said, well, she couldn’t have had a normal human birth. So they believe in the Immaculate Conception and the Immaculate Conception of Mary is that she was conceived supernaturally just like Jesus was conceived supernaturally. Now, this is covering your tracks as a heretic, right? That’s nonsense. That’s nonsense. Where is that? It’s nowhere. It’s in the mind of the church in Roman Catholicism, which you need to renounce as your theological parent, because it’s a bad parent to go to, to learn about biblical truth. Wow, that was strong. Do you have a follow-up on that? Okay. Let’s get a microphone back here.

 

Question: Yeah. So my main question was, or I forgot to mention it the first time, but…

 

Pastor Mike: I was going to say, because if I missed your main question now and I feel really bad about it. I thought I nailed your main question, but okay. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah.

 

Question: No, I was asking in terms specifically of intercession, you know, and to summarize what you were saying, we should ask living saints who we are surrounded with in church to pray for us for intercession. We should not go to dead saints to pray for us to intercession.

 

Pastor Mike: Because speaking to the dead is always condemned in Scripture.

 

Question: I am a newly converted Christian from the Roman Catholic Church. And I believe that Jesus is the way to the Father. I believe in salvation only through Jesus Christ by grace, through faith. I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. My question is how about the Muslim, the Taoism, the Hinduism. Can they be saved?

 

Pastor Mike: Yeah. Can they be saved? If they become trusters in Christ they can. Yeah. Here’s the thing. Let’s look at Paul’s argument about the gospel in First Corinthians 15, right? “He died according to the Scriptures. He was raised according to the Scriptures.” And without that we don’t have a gospel. And if he wasn’t raised after he died as a sacrifice for our sins, you’re still in your sins. Go ask a Muslim did Jesus Christ, who they say is Isa the prophet, Isa the prophet, because he’s in the Koran. Did he die on a cross for our sins and was he raised? They’ll say no. Blasphemy. Okay? Okay, well, then you’ve just now gutted your religion of any possibility, even though you have Jesus, Isa, in the Koran in Arabic. You’ve just gutted your possibility of any chance for you to think that you’re going to be saved. Ask a Muslim how do I get my sins forgiven? And they will say the same thing they say at the beginning of every sīrah of the Koran, “The Lord is merciful. Merciful. He’s merciful. He’s going to look at me as a sinner. He’s going to overlook my sin.” We need a mechanism of salvation and the Bible talks about in the Old Testament the killing of animals was a symbolic looking forward to the Lamb of God who was supposed to be sacrificed, a human sacrifice. Isaiah 53, a human sacrifice to take care of my sin. And that is what happened. And the Muslims say, no. Hindus, right? We don’t even have one God now. We got a plethora of gods. And all I’m saying is you cannot say that the one true and living God, which is the only one who is, and salvation is based on that. John 17 verses 1 through 3, “What is eternal life for us to know God, the ONLY true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” And Hindus have said not interested in that. And you can put religions, the polytheistic religions, and say they like to put Jesus on the shelf. And Jay Warner Wallace when he came and talked about it, everyone loves to abscond with Jesus. They like to say, I’ll put Jesus in our theology, right? But he doesn’t fit because he says I have to be the only one there. Right? Back to the Enneagram question. He is number one. He’s not going to share his glory with any, as the book of Isaiah says. So there’s no salvation in their theology. And if you follow Hindu theology, the Pali Canon, or you follow the Koran in Islam or what the Imams say, you are not going to be saved. You’re going to have to rebel against that and you’re going to have to say no. And they do it at threat of their life in most Muslim countries. We planted a Compass Bible Church in the nation of Jordan, in a place called Jandaweel outside of Amman and we got so much pressure from the secret police because of our stance that Jesus is the only way. And, I’ve been there, I preached there and it got to the place where we had so many death threats, we had to pull our preacher out. And all I’m telling you is that they don’t like us saying what we say. And you can’t be saved without us saying what we say and that is there’s only one God, right? And he is a triune God, talk to a Muslim about that, Jesus is his Son, which they say emphatically in the Koran he is not his son and he died for our sins and rose again. And without that we can’t be saved. Does that get to the gist of your question? Okay.

 

Question: I have a question that might be kind of a little bit elementary considering the relationship between a believer and their sin being that you’re justified, you’re saved, God paid the price for our sins. I’ve heard this statement saying that God died for the past, present, and future of our sins. Is that biblical? And another part of my question is when we go into prayer this kind of crosses my mind sometimes being that we are credited with God’s righteousness. There’s no condemnation in Christ. But yet the Bible says we are still sinners. How do we bring a relationship when we repent to God? Are we repenting? I understand remorse. Like, I’m sorry, God, I did this. But have those sins already been paid for on the cross and here died in wrath? And how do we approach him, is it just I’m sorry and remorseful. That’s my question.

 

Pastor Mike: I think I got your question. And, you said that’s an elementary question. I have been around and round and round and round with people on this very question who just cannot get there. So that’s not an easy question. I mean, it’s an easy question for me to answer, but it’s not an easy one for them to accept. And I think because there’s an antinomianism that they claim that I have because I answer the way I do. And so I talk to a lot of people and that’s exactly how they pose the question. So I don’t know where you’re coming from, but I’ll answer it biblically. Let me answer with an illustration first of all, because you have already given us the answer and that is we are justified, no condemnation, we’ve been imputed the righteousness of Christ. So right now I am, as it says in Colossians, fully “qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints in light,” like fully qualified right now. So if I sinned this morning and I haven’t confessed that sin am I going to heaven? Yes. Do I go to purgatory? No. If you talk to the Catholics they say I am, but I’m not. I’m fully qualified to be in God’s presence. So I could have 25, 35, 125, 2,000 unconfessed sins and I am fully qualified because of Christ. Okay. So the way they like to put it that, yeah, it’s not past, present and future sins. Well, here’s my illustration. We have to distinguish between the forensic, which is a good word from the Protestant Reformation, the legal acceptance that I have before God, and the reality of the approval of God. And let’s put it this way, Psalm 7 verse 11, God is a righteous God. He loves righteous deeds. Okay, that’s maybe a paraphrase, but it’s pretty close. The last line is right. Loves righteous deeds. He loves righteous deeds. Okay, so that’s what he loves. Now who does he accept? He accepts sinners in the forensic legal adoption bought and purchased by Christ, he bought it wholly for every person on the cross who is a Christian, right? In his plan, and we can talk about in a lot of complicated terms, but in his plan these are going to be his children. So his children are fully qualified because of that payment on the cross. Okay. He loves righteous deeds. And, here’s the illustration I was going to give. I just thought of it on the moment. If I said to you, I’m going to bring you to the most exclusive country club in all of America and you have no right to be in there, but you’re going to come as my guest because I happen to be a member there. And I’m going to introduce you to the president of this country club and he’s a big deal, right? I mean, he’s a big deal. And so you need to be on your best behavior. So you get to come in with me and you walk through all the security and walk through all the people, and now you’re in, you sit at the table with me and I say now I’m going to introduce you to the president of this country club. Right? And you decide to take your shirt off. And I say, oh no, no, no, no, you can’t do that. Okay. The president who comes to the table can disapprove of you. Right? But let’s just say this is a legal arrangement. He can’t kick you out because you’re qualified to be in there because of me. I purchased your entrance into this. So can he disapprove? Yes. And what’s interesting is the people who are big on justification, particularly in the reform circles about ten, fifteen years ago, they were always saying, well, you know what? God is always pleased with you. And I’m saying, no, God is not always pleased with you. And they say, well, he has to be because we’re fully justified and fully qualified. I say, no, you have to separate those two things. Justification is complete. Full. Past, present, future. Sanctification is very real-time. Are there consequences for your sin? Yes. Can you be disciplined by God? Yes. Can he disapprove? Yes. Like when Tullian Tchividjian wrote that book, Jesus Plus Nothing Equals Everything. In his last chapter he talked about the fact that we all have A’s in heaven. And I laughed out loud, and I had to put on a conference here just to show people this is ridiculous. And Tullian doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he hasn’t read the Bible clearly. You have to distinguish, as JC Ryle said 110 years ago, between justification and sanctification. I can say I’m fully qualified. Am I accepted? I’m fully accepted in heaven, but I am not fully pleasing to God. Okay? If you want to talk about grading, read the second and third chapters of the book of Revelation. Does God grade his churches? Those are real people in those churches. He gives them grades. He doesn’t give them letter grades but I guarantee you some are getting A’s and some are getting B’s, and some are getting D’s and they’re about to fail. So God certainly talks about pleasure, pleasing and displeasing. If you want to get into the details of that and I don’t know that’s on the other end of the spectrum, you can read a blog that I wrote. It’s eleven installments and you can find it at the words aggressivesanctification.com, aggressivesanctification.com. I basically review Tullian’s book in eleven chapters, in eleven installments, and try and show the problem of not separating those two. Some people separate them so much that they see sanctification, which is based on your behavior, as affecting your justification. I’m saying no. One is forensic, one is legal, one is complete, one is full, one is past, present and future. And the other one is how you’re going to fare with God today. There’s a word in First Corinthians Chapter 3 about the Bema Seat judgment of Christ and it says “they suffer loss.” Now, you cannot build on that word the entire theology that the Roman Catholics have of purgatory. But you can build that when you stand before God you could be a person who has so much missed opportunity because of your sin that you’re suffering loss. Okay, now he’s going to “wipe away every tear.” But that’s not going to be a good day for you. So Mark Hitchcock wrote a book that’s recently out and I haven’t read yet, but I know Mark and I’m sure it’s a good book. I think we carry it in our bookstore on the judgment seat for Christians. Not a lot is written on that. And we need to write more on it because we don’t think about it. Preacher’s Payday is another one by Clint Archer and, and Lutzer, of course, wrote a book. I don’t agree with one of the chapters in the book, but the rest of it I do. It’s called Your Eternal Reward, Triumph and Tears at the Judgment Seat of Christ. We are going to be judged and we’ll see that we’re not all getting A+, as Tullian said. But yes, in your relationship with God you should be confessing your sins to him, not for the forensic forgiveness of your sins, but for the clearing up of whether he is having favor in you today. My children, like we got somebody on staff who just the adopted a child, I think, legally adopted a child. If that legal adoption is done that’s their child. Okay. And if I said, oh, you’re the child, 100% accepted by this family, right? Matter of fact, the inheritance is going to go to you. Well, that means you’re going to please them every day. No it doesn’t. The child’s not going to please the parents every day. And that is the subjective part of it. Yeah. Wow. I went long on that, but that’s important. That’s not a simple question. Don’t bait me with that. That is not a simple question. Because I know all that’s driving the people who ask that question. We’re out of time? One more? Okay. One more. Real quick. Make it a good one. It’s the last one of the morning.

 

Question: My first question is how do we get the Pope here? Second question is, this is more practical than anything, I’ll be quick. My son’s at a Christian school. There have been guest pastors who come in, teach the kids, do a little chapel with them. This guest pastor, my son is actually friends with his son. They have a bunch of kids at the school. He is a pastor at a local church. And it was just kind of come into existence or we were just aware of it on social media that he is officiating a gay wedding. And so when I found it out, I didn’t quite know my position on it and what I shouldn’t particularly do about it if I go to them, if I go to the school or just how to handle that practically, you know, from a Christian standpoint. He’s a claiming Christian, he’s involved in a Christian school, he’s involved in a Christian church. What do I do?

 

Pastor Mike: Well, you call Rome first for the first question. Get a cardinal on the line. Sweet talk the cardinal and see if you can get the Pope to come. He won’t come. Secondly, I would just be very pithy and simple about it, because, you know, I don’t know what your power is as a parent, although you’re probably paying the bills to be there. But I think you should say to whoever’s in charge, we don’t like compromised pastors who approve of what God condemns being an influence on our kids’ lives. So do better. That’s what I would tell them. Do better. Don’t do this. Whoever’s choosing the speakers don’t have someone who approves what God condemns. That’s not how we want our kids influenced. Now, it may or may not make a difference. It may be that they say, no, this is where… We like this. Or maybe they’re ignorant. They didn’t know it. And maybe he’ll be on a don’t call back list. So yeah, because that’s not what we want. I mean this is clearly not what we want. We cannot approve what God has clearly said is an abomination to him. And, we should seek repentance for people who are involved in those sinful patterns and lifestyles, not approve of it, or try to pretend that we’re… Talk about the first question, we’re playing games to think that we’re marrying two people of the same sex. We’re not. It’s not a marriage. So anyway, yeah, I wouldn’t make a stink. I would have a pithy quick response to the powers that be. This is not who we want, you know, having influence on our kids in chapel. Do better. We don’t want people like that. The bunch of pastors at Compass Bible Church would be happy to come and speak at chapel. No, don’t add my name or our name to them (audience laughing) on second thought, just give that response. It may not be satisfying but at some point what can you do unless you’re in charge of the school? You can make a stink, you can make a fuss. But I just think the good way to start is with a simple, “Did you know?” And then you can do whatever you’re going to do with that. And we’re going to watch your leadership and determine whether your leadership is kind of leadership I want for the school my kids are going to. I mean, that’s a threat. But eventually I would get there. Because it isn’t good.

 

Pastor Mike: All right, stand with me. We’ll let you go with a word of prayer here. Thanks for bearing with us. Our prayer for these is that something would come out of it, something would come out in an issue and a topic, some discussion that would do something positive in your Christian life. So I hope that happened. Let’s pray. God, we do understand our need for your Word. It’s the lamp to our feet, a light to our path. We want to know it better. We want to rightly handle it. So give us the wherewithal to do that. Thanks for times like this. Thanks for this great church asking really good questions. Helpful questions. And I pray that I did adequately here answering them. I pray it would be edifying and helpful and useful to the people in our church.

 

Pastor Mike: In Jesus name. Amen.