Has God Turned His Back On the United States?

Has God turned His back on the United States? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. This is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us with your question at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Feel free to leave a voicemail if you've got our voicemail system. You can also post your question on one of our social media sites, and you're always welcome to email us your question at questions-at-core-christianity.com. First up today, let's go to Elias who's calling in from Longview, Texas. Elias, what's your question for Adriel? For your most recent discovery, findings of Jesus perhaps in the Old Testament? Thank you for your answer. Yeah, favorite Jesus, sort of picture of Jesus in the Old Testament. I love this.

And Bill, I want to hear from you if you have one as well. Elias, I was preaching before, I'm currently preaching through the book of Revelation, but before the book of Revelation, I preached through the book of Genesis. And one of the things that's just remarkable to see is how over and over again, you have pictures of the Messiah way back in Genesis chapter three, verse 15, where you have this promise that the seed of the woman is going to crush the head of the serpent, what some people will refer to as the proto euangelium, the first preaching of the gospel, the promise of the gospel. But then throughout the entire book of Genesis, and no doubt throughout the entire Old Testament, you have that promise continuing to be traced out, whether it's continued with the promise of blessing the nations through Abraham, and even the experience that Abraham has with that mysterious priest king named Melchizedek in Genesis chapter 14.

Did you see it over and over and over again? So I would say that a number of those ones from the book of Genesis, because they're so fresh on my mind, would probably be my favorites to think about, but also always just the bigger sort of picture of Christ being the fulfillment of all of those sacrifices under the old covenant, the ceremonial laws. And you look at the temple and its sacrifices and the blood that was shed there in the temple, just all day long, rivers of blood, if you will, especially during the time of the Passover, pointing forward to Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It's just really remarkable.

So those are some of the ones that I would go to. At least, Bill, I don't know if you have a particular story in the Old Testament that you really cherish and feel like, man, what a great picture of Jesus there. I love the fiery furnace when you have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and then Nebuchadnezzar looks in there and sees this fourth man. And of course, it's never identified specifically as Jesus, but my feeling is that's who it is. Yeah, yeah.

No, what a great picture that is as well, right? Like the Lord with his people in the midst of their exile and in the midst of their suffering, in the midst of the furnace. So, so much comfort and encouragement that we can take from the Scriptures.

And Elias, thank you for your encouragement and for giving us a call. By the way, we have a great book on this topic called Seeing Jesus. You can find that by going to corechristianity.com forward slash Jesus.

Again, corechristianity.com forward slash Jesus for that wonderful book, Seeing Jesus. Let's go back to the phones. Grace is on the line from Oklahoma. Grace, what's your question for Adriel? Hi. Hello.

Hi, Grace. How are you? I'm fine. How are you, Adriel? I'm doing well.

Oh, good. I just want to say I admire your show. It's so enlightening on so many levels. And my question is not anywhere as deep or as intelligent and probably useful as many of the questions and answers that you give, but it's important to me. And it may sound, I don't know, silly or dinky, but I'm kind of taking it seriously.

I'm doing this. I'm a sort of an amateur hobbyist jeweler. And I was really wanting to make a crown, an actual crown, yes, for Jesus when he returns. Okay?

Okay. So I was looking at the stones and all the interpreters disagree as far as the different translations of the Bible, whether it's an emerald or whether it's a turquoise. So I finally got an interlinear Bible and I was looking them up in the strongest concordance in Hebrew. And it just turned my world around because the names of the stones have a meaning that some of them are beyond my grasp. But like for instance, the ninth stone literally translates as a dream, a clama. And I think it's the eleventh stone, the showam stone, and that was in Genesis. That was in the Garden of Eden, if you look it up in Hebrew. And then the very first stone is spelled the same way as Adam. And so in some of them I'm having a hard time really looking up. And so I was wondering, now it's kind of beyond the point of me wanting to know whether it's a diamond or a sapphire or a, you see what I'm saying?

I want to know the deeper meaning of the stones that I can't quite seem to reach or even if you have resources to recommend to me for this. Yeah. Grace, well, one, thank you for that question and let me just say something that I really appreciated about what you said.

All these questions are good questions. I think sometimes people think, oh man, I don't want to call in with that guy. I don't know if that's going to help anyone or whatnot. But just the way that you word it, this is important to you. And all the scriptures should be important to us as we search them, as we're moved by them.

I'm just grateful that you've taken an interest in this and that you've been digging deeper and that it's been a blessing for you. And I think oftentimes, especially when we do that deep digging into the scriptures, when we're mining them and how neat that we're talking here about these precious stones, mining for those treasures that we find in scripture, and so often the Lord rewards us as we dig. And so these are the 12 stones that appear on the high priest's breastplate. You also see the language of 12 stones in other places like Revelation chapter 21, the picture of the new Jerusalem. And in terms of the deep, let's just talk about the big meaning here, the sort of big picture meaning of these particular stones. I'm going to read Exodus chapter 28 where it talks about making this particular piece of clothing for the priest.

Exodus 28 verse 15. You shall make a breastpiece of judgment in skilled work in style of the ephod you shall make it. Of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen shall you make it.

It shall be square and doubled, a span its length and a span its breadth. You shall set in it four rows of stones. A row of sardius, topaz, and carbuncle shall be the first row. The second row an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. And the third row a jacinth, a gate, and an amethyst.

And the fourth row a barrel, an onyx, and a jasper. They shall be set in gold filigree. There shall be twelve stones with their names according to the names of the sons of Israel.

They shall be like signets, each engraved with its name for the twelve tribes. And so in one sense these twelve stones are similar to the showbread in the table. They're a picture of the people of God.

And I think there are so many wonderful things. I mean these twelve precious stones being symbolic of God's holy people. The way in which the Lord views, cherishes, treasures his people. This is I think what we see even in the New Testament where the people of God are referred to as his own treasured possession. And so you have these twelve stones that are symbolic of God's people, God's covenant people, but they're placed on the breastplate of the high priest who enters into the holy place, into the presence of God on behalf of the covenant people as their mediator. So in one sense the priest is bringing the whole community of faith with him when he enters into God's presence. So you see this picture of the priest being a mediator, this figure that brings the people of God into the presence of God. And here I think we get to see a wonderful picture of Jesus, our great high priest who marries the names of his people we might say on his heart, who's entered into not the holy places made with hands, the earthly tabernacle, but into heaven itself, the heavenly temple where he could appear for us once and for all to put away our sins.

And so these priests and all the stuff that we see there in the Old Testament with the tabernacle, the furniture of the tabernacle, the garments of the priest, they're pointing us to these greater realities that highlight Jesus as our great mediator, the great high priest, the one who gives us access into God's presence. And that's why we worship him, why we love him, which is precisely what you're seeking to do. And so Grace, may the Lord bless you as you continue to dig into the scriptures.

And again, thank you so much for giving us a call. You know, the other thing that's so encouraging about Grace is she's using her gifts and talents in a way to serve the Lord. And isn't that something that we're all called to? Yeah. Grace, please send us a picture of this thing when it's all done. And I think that's cool.

Great. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. By the way, we have some great Bible studies that we produce here at the Core, and we'd like to tell you about one of our newest ones today.

That's right. We have a new Bible study on the book of Philippians. And it's actually been out for a while, but we're offering it a new and a fresh today. And we're excited because this is one of Paul's New Testament letters, actually written during a time of great difficulty. I mean, he's writing the book of Philippians while he's imprisoned. And so you imagine the struggle that he's going through, and yet he calls the church in Philippi to rejoice, to be full of joy.

Well, how do you hold together that tension? The tension of the sufferings we experience in this life, the difficulties, the challenges we experience, and the joy that we can have through Jesus Christ. I think that this resource will help you think through that more. It's a 10-week Bible study. You can get it for a donation of $20 or more over at corechristianity.com, perfect for small groups and also for individual studies. So get ahold of this resource. Be great if you're in a church, a small group, you've been looking for some kind of curricula.

This would be a wonderful choice. You can find it by going to corechristianity.com forward slash new study. Again, corechristianity.com forward slash new study, our newest study on the book of Philippians. Well, we do receive voicemails here at Core Christianity.

And here's one that came in from one of our listeners in Nebraska named Jan. My question is, I honestly think that God has turned his back on the United States. What do you think? Thank you. Bye-bye.

Yeah. Well, what do I think about this? I think that God is long-suffering and more full of grace and mercy than we could ever imagine. I think our sins and the sins of a nation testify against it, but does that mean that God has completely abandoned us? No, the Spirit of God is still on the move, working, redeeming, bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ. And God has his embassies, if you will, spread abroad throughout the United States and every country of this world called to be salt and light, called to preach the gospel, called to preach the law, testifying against a nation of its sins so that people might come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

And so I think sometimes we can watch the news and we just feel like, man, things seem so terrible. Maybe God is totally done with us. And you can almost feel hopeless, but we need that continual reminder that the Lord is more merciful than we are, more long-suffering than we are.

It's like what Peter says in 2 Peter. God is not slow when it comes to bringing about his judgment. He's patient towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

And so we need to fix our eyes on that mercy and hope in the gospel, not in our sinlessness, not in how just things look all around us because we see so many injustices, but our hope has to be the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ. The psalmist said in Psalm 33, verse 12, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. Well, who is that people today?

It's not one particular nation on earth like the United States. It's God's church. It's his covenant people, again, spread out throughout the whole world.

This is what we read in 1 Peter chapter two, verse nine. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. So the church on earth is God's holy nation. We can't confuse the church as God's holy nation with the common nations of this world through whom God works and that God is governing, but the church is proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus Christ who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light so that we might be a blessing to all nations and so that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation would come to experience the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

Until the Lord comes back, ushering in the final judgment, there's always hope, and so we cling to that hope in Christ. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. You do receive emails, and you can email us your question anytime at questions at corechristianity.com. Here's one from Rebecca. She says, Hey, Adriel and Bill, my husband and I have recently been thinking about how our culture is being progressively shaped in an increasingly sexualized direction. I wanted to pick your brain on whether you guys think there is any psychological and spiritual benefit to be gained from the separation of sex and nudity and if there's a place for it in Christian circles, or more specifically, is there a place for exploring the use of nudity as a therapeutic tool for Christians to help desexualize the body?

Bill, we're talking about therapeutic tools here, so I'm going to lean on you for this one, but let me just say a couple of things. Yes, man, everything is so hypersexualized, and there is a real issue, I think, where we can't separate these two things, where everything is just so sexualized that... What did Jesus say? If you look at a woman to lust for her, you've already committed adultery in your heart. I think we really do need to examine ourselves here and ask ourselves to what extent have I been shaped by the hypersexualized culture that I'm in so that I'm unable to look at another person, a person made in the image of God, worthy of dignity and respect without objectifying them? Huge problem. This is one of the big issues with pornography in our culture and society today.

It's just terrible, and so there needs to be a lot of repentance. There needs to be a lot of healing, and we've talked about this on the broadcast before, but is the right approach trying to desexualize the way we think about the human body and maybe using nudity to do that? My concern is that a lot of people are going to hear that and think, okay, now I'm justified in looking at images of the opposite sex or whoever, naked images, and I'm just trying to desexualize my mind.

That just seems very unwise to me and unhelpful in particular and easily abused, and so I would say no. Personally, pastorally, I would say that's not a wise approach, and so we have to be cautious here, brothers and sisters, and really ask ourselves, what am I doing? How am I using my eyes, my mind to honor the Lord? Paul says in Romans chapter 12, verse 1, we present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Earlier in chapter 6 through 8, he says we present the members of our bodies as holy instruments for righteousness to the Lord.

That's every part of us. God has sanctified you in Jesus Christ, and now we're called, and this is verse 2 of Romans 12, not to be conformed to this world, to the worldly way of thinking, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That's what we need, and it's a work of the Holy Spirit.

Bill, I don't know if you have thoughts just coming from your professional background with this question in particular, but it just seems to me that it would be really something that would be abused, not so helpful per se. I think one of the ways we desexualize our minds, if you will, is by repenting of the pornography, by repenting of these things that people are consumed by that make it so hard for them to view the opposite sex and other people made in God's image with dignity. I'm not sure exactly what Rebecca is suggesting there, but I've even heard of, believe it or not, Christian nudist camps. That sort of thing just really troubles me.

So, I think your caution is well taken. You know, the flip side of this is when you have such a legalistic view of sexuality, and as parents, you start to impart to your kids that all sex is bad and dirty and wrong, and yet we know that God created it for a couple who are committed in marriage. That's right. And it's a beautiful thing, and it's a treasured thing, and also results, of course, in the processing of children in many cases. So, I think the flip side is, especially for moms and dads, to help their kids to develop God's view of sexuality, which is beautiful and pure and right. And, of course, that's so opposite of what our culture is teaching right now.

Yeah, so good. I'm glad that you brought that out, because I think we can often in the church have this sort of taboo view of sexuality and intimacy. And in reality, it is this gift that God has given to us not to be abused. And, of course, we see it so abused in our culture today that we're trying to find an answer, but the answer is not to demonize it, to make it just this taboo thing.

It's to have that positive biblical outlook that the scriptures give to us. Now, also, you mentioned these nudist colonies. Did you know, Bill, that there was an ancient sect called the Adamites? It was a heretical sect, and basically what they were known for was a group in North Africa in the third through fourth centuries, and they wore no clothing during their religious services.

I feel like it'd be kind of hard to concentrate on worship if that's what you were doing. But they were condemned because, obviously, they had some strange views. So this thing has been around for a while, Bill. Thanks for pointing that out. I appreciate that. I don't appreciate the image, but really, the historical context is interesting. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Here's a voicemail from one of our listeners.

This is Kyle. I have a question regarding the need for monasteries and convents. I'm wondering if that was ever something scriptural, is there a purpose and reason for them in certain churches today, and whether or not those are, in fact, iterations of false religions. Thank you.

Yeah. Monasteries, I mean, some places where believers retreat and are there and devoted to prayer and fasting, and of course, there are many Christian traditions where this is a big thing. As big, I would say, among the Reformation churches, because during the time of the Reformation, there was this big push to not separate, if you will, from the world, but the restoration of the doctrine of vocation, living and working in the world, serving your neighbor, not being cut off from your neighbor, but serving your neighbor with the hope of the gospel, but just also in whatever it is that God had called you to.

So I think that there can really be, in one sense, I think that there can be an issue here. When you think about what God calls us to, when you think about the Great Commission and the way in which, at least in the New Testament, it seemed like the church was set up, these kinds of institutions, these monasteries are things that did begin to develop early on in the history of the church. And so whether or not, I guess for me, I would be more on the side of the sort of Reformational side of viewing them, not so much as what we're called to as Christians, sort of abandoning the world and cutting ourselves off and just being devoted to prayer in isolation, but really wanting to encourage people to view their work, their vocation as a gift that God had given to them in serving society, in growing together with people, and spreading the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And so I appreciate your question. If you're considering running off to the monastery, maybe give us a call back and let us know and we can give you some encouragement there. But once again, God bless you, brothers and sisters, and thank you. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity, to request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673, that's 833, the CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.