Does the Bible say anything about interracial marriage? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity.
Well, hi there. This is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We pray that you had a wonderful weekend.
Our phone lines will be open for the next 25 minutes or so. You can talk to Pastor Adriel alive. Here's the number again, 1-833-843-2673. As always, you can post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. You can also email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Brandon in St. Louis, Missouri. Brandon, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?
Hi. My question for Pastor Adriel is something that's been on my mind for a while. If I'm saved by grace through faith alone and a sincere Christian, but a mournful sinner, like I'm truly feeling bad and sin, but continue to do it, but repent every day, but I still will fall victim to the flesh. Am I ready? If Jesus were to come back tomorrow, would I be going with him?
Hey, Brandon, I can tell that this is something that really concerns you. There are different answers that people will give, but I think what the Bible says very clearly is, I'll just quote from what we read in John 5. These are the words of our Lord Jesus. He said, John 5, verse 24, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Brandon, if you are in Jesus Christ, if you have been justified by faith, you don't go back and forth from a state of justification to a state of not being justified every time you sin. Our sin grieves the Holy Spirit. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 4. We're exhorted not to grieve the Holy Spirit, but I don't believe we ever lose that status of being justified so that when we stand before the Lord, when you stand before the Lord on the day of judgment, you can stand with confidence, not in your own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Jesus which he gives to you freely by faith.
I think that's what we have to fall back on. When we're looking to ourselves, to our own works, the struggle that you described sounds to me a lot like what Paul himself described in the book of Romans, in Romans chapter 4, where he says, you know, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? You're struggling. You're feeling what I think every genuine believer has felt in their lives, this sort of day by day battle with sin where we get up and we say, look, I'm going to walk with Jesus today, but we realize that we still struggle with the lust of the flesh. Every single day there isn't a person who doesn't sin against God in thought, word, and deed every single day. And yet our hope, our confidence, your confidence isn't in the level of our obedience or the level of our sanctification. It's in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And so you can rest in that.
You can rest in him. That's what faith is. It's this empty hand that receives and rests in what God has done for us in Christ.
And so, brother, if you believe in Jesus, if you've trusted in him, then you can rest. And from that place, from that new identity in Christ, you walk with him. You serve the Lord. You seek the Lord. Of course, none of us does that perfectly, but we seek to grow in grace, to walk in the Spirit, as Paul says elsewhere in the book of Galatians. So I think that you can rest in that and not go back and forth between, am I saved because I'm doing good now and then not saved tomorrow because I failed or I'm struggling with some sin?
No. Look to Jesus and rest in him and then walk with him as a child of God. We've also got a great core guide that might be helpful to you, and we'll send you the PDF for that for other folks that might be interested. It's called Seven Things Everyone Needs to Know About Repentance. And you can find that at our website under core guides.
Again, Seven Things Everyone Needs to Know About Repentance. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we want to mention that we are listeners supported. We don't receive money from a particular church or denomination. We rely on people just like you to help keep us on the air.
So if you like this program, if you find it helpful, we would encourage you to consider making a gift of any amount. You can also join what we call our inner core. Those are folks that support us on a regular basis. And that entitles them to some very special, exclusive resources, including some Bible studies from Pastor Adriel that we send to our core members. You can find out more at our website, corechristianity.com. Let's go to Brandon in Dixon, Tennessee. Hi, Brandon. Welcome to the program.
Hey, guys, I appreciate you taking my call again. But my question is actually coming from Exodus 4, 24 and 25, where it talks about God seeking out to kill Moses and then Zipporah, his wife, taking a stone and circumcising the son and saying, Well, you are a husband of blood to me. So my question is, why did God want to kill Moses? And what would be the purpose of him if he did succeed? Like, why?
Yes, a great question. So I'm going to read that text, and then I'll give us some of the background. Exodus 4, verse 24, a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Could be a reference to Moses or a reference to Moses's son. He took her son's foreskin and touched Moses's feet with it and said, Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.
So he led him alone. It was then that she said a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. So what's the background to this? Well, the covenant of circumcision was given to the people of God back in Genesis chapter 17. And this is the background.
This is why this is such a serious thing. Back in Genesis chapter 17, verse nine, God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, and every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your own money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring.
Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money surely shall be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant. And then verse 14 says this, any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. So the issue here is Moses is being disobedient to essentially the command that God had given to his people. There in Genesis chapter 17, this sort of covenant of circumcision, this sign of the covenant, which was a picture of being a part of the people of God, and to withhold that from his child would have been a terrible thing.
It was a horrible mistake. It was breaking the covenant of the Lord, which he took very seriously. And of course, one of the other things I think that we see here, Brandon, is how much God cares that our children are raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The people of God, the Hebrews, were called to train their children up in godliness, in righteousness, to give them that, in particular in the Old Testament, that covenant sign of circumcision, which was a picture of their inclusion in the visible quote-unquote covenant community, the family of God, if you will.
It was a sign of that. And Moses wasn't obeying the Lord by withholding it from his child. And so his wife steps in and really sort of keeps back the judgment of the Lord. You also see, I think, a little bit later in the book of Exodus, just God's heart for the children of his people, the importance of raising them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, of teaching them the doctrines of our faith and what it looks like to walk with God and obey God in worship. In Exodus chapter 10, for example, verses 8 and 9, I love this. This is the sort of back and forth between Moses and Pharaoh. Verse 8, Exodus 10, so Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said to them, Go, serve the Lord your God.
But which ones are to go? Pharaoh wants to know, Who are you going to take with you in the wilderness to worship the Lord? And Moses said, We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we, that is all of us, the entire family, must hold a feast to the Lord.
And so it was a part of sort of passing on the faith to the next generation, and Moses, insofar as he wasn't acting in obedience there in Exodus chapter 4, was compromising the truth, was going against God's word, going against God's command, and that's why the Lord was about to judge him. And so I appreciate your question, brother. Hopefully that clears it up for you, and thank you for the call. Thanks so much, Brandon. Thanks for being a regular listener to CORE Christianity.
We appreciate all of our listeners. If you have a question for Pastor Adriel, our phone lines are open right now for the next 15 minutes or so. Here's the number to call.
It's 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. By the way, you can also leave a voicemail at that number 24 hours a day. If you do, let us know your name, where you're calling from, and we'll do our best to use your voicemail on the air. And here's a voicemail we received about the New Testament.
Hi, my name's Nicole, and I have a question for you guys. My question is, how do we know that all of the New Testament is inspired by God? Yeah, really an excellent question. You know, sometimes there are things that we point to in terms of trying to understand how it was that it was determined that these books, in particular the New Testament books, were meant to be a part of the canon of Scripture, those inspired books of Holy Scripture. And some of the things we point to are, one, what we call apostolicity.
That is, these books were written by an apostle or someone associated with the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They were there. They were eyewitnesses. They were a part of what was happening. You think about what Peter says. You know, we weren't following cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And so there's that apostolicity. These books were associated with the apostles. You also have what's sometimes referred to as catholicity. And that word catholic, it simply means universal. These were the books that were universally embraced by or accepted by the whole church early on in the first few centuries. And so, you know, there were other books that maybe were more disputed. But the reality is you have, in all places, these books received as the inspired word of God.
They cohere. They sort of make sense theologically together. They're not sort of out in left field teaching wonky things, which is what you sometimes find in other quote, unquote, you know, books that, you know, some people will say they should have been included in the Bible, which they shouldn't have.
And so you have these things. Antiquity also. They're old.
They're ancient. They date back to the first couple centuries of the church. Those are all things that we would point you to say this is some of the criteria that we use to determine, that was used to determine which books were to be received as God's inspired word.
But you also have sort of internal evidence. What we see in the New Testament itself, Paul writing to Timothy, I love this, this verse. Second Timothy, chapter three, verse 16. He says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Now, there primarily he's thinking, you know, about the Old Testament scriptures.
That's what they had at that point. But he doesn't just say the Old Testament scriptures is all scripture. And even in the New Testament, you have you have these instances where, you know, the New Testament writings themselves were considered to be scripture that is on par with God's inspired word. Peter says this of the apostle Paul's writings. You see this in Second Peter, chapter three, verse 15. Peter refers to Paul's writings as scripture. Paul, he even views his own writings as the word of God, the commandment of God. He says this to the Corinthians in First Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 37. So you also have this sort of internal evidence that confirms for us that these books, these writings are indeed the inspired word of God for us to receive for our encouragement, for our growth and grace. And so we love the word and we read it, we study it, and God speaks through it. Thank you for that question. Thank you, Pastor Adriel. This is Core Christianity.
And you know what? Summer is right around the corner and most kids are going to be out of school for a few months. And just in time for summer, we actually have a great free resource, brand new resource just for families. Okay, so this is a resource I'm really excited about as a father with four young children. We've done some Bible memorization in our own family. And this resource is called Ten Verses to Memorize as a Family This Summer.
By the way, you could do it on your own. It doesn't have to be with your entire family, but it is a really wonderful resource to get you and your family into the scriptures, meditating on the word of God and memorizing the word of God. There's this wonderful verse in 2 Timothy 1, verse 5, where Paul says to Timothy, I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice.
And now I am sure dwells in you as well. You know, one of the ways that we sort of pass the faith on is through the scripture. By memorizing the scripture, we know according to God's word that faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of Christ.
Paul said that in Romans chapter 10. And so look, there are a few better things you can do with your time this summer than memorize the word with your family. Get a hold of this resource, Ten Verses to Memorize as a Family This Summer. Just go to corechristianity.com forward slash offers to download that again. It's called Ten Verses to Memorize as a Family This Summer.
Get started memorizing those verses this week. And also you can call us for that offer or any one of our offers. Just go to 833-THE-CORE.
That's 833-843-2673 for help getting any one of our offers. Well, here is an email question that we received from one of our listeners named Joshua. He says, I was told by a reformed theonomist that the fact that I'm a Mexican man and I'm married to a white woman with whom I have a son makes for a big problem. It seems like he was advocating for racial purity. He called his beliefs biblical and historical. What did the scripture say about interracial marriage between two believers? Hey, Joshua, thank you for that question.
Whether or not this guy's views, and I would recommend maybe you find some new friends, but whether or not this guy's views are historical, the key is are they biblical? And let me just say to you, no, they're not biblical. The question here is a question about interracial marriage. You do find, it's really interesting in the scriptures, examples of interracial marriages that were blessed by the Lord. The fact of the matter is we're made in the image of God.
Humanity is made in God's image, worthy of dignity, respect. I'm thinking in terms of some of the marriages that we see in scripture, Moses. Moses himself, the mediator of the old covenant in Numbers chapter 12, verse 1, this is what we read, Miriam and Moses spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. So here you have a Hebrew marrying a Cushite, someone from Ethiopia.
She would have been black. Moses' wife was black, and yet this was a marriage that was blessed by the Lord. And you see this actually in all sorts of places in the scriptures.
Another passage that honestly I just think is so beautiful, Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, is this sort of poetic love poetry between a wife and her husband. I mean, you have this sort of back and forth dialogue, and the woman says in Song of Solomon chapter 1, verse 5, listen to this, she says, I am very dark, but lovely. O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kadar, like the curtains of Solomon, do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me.
My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me a keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon. For why should I be like one who veils herself besides the flocks of your companions?
What you have here is this sort of love story, and the woman here in the Song of Solomon, she's saying, look, I've been forced to work out in the field all day. The sun has looked upon me. My skin is dark.
Don't look at me negatively. This is this beautiful love story between these two people who probably had different colored skins. Now, right there, I'm not sure that it's technically an interracial marriage, but oftentimes that's what's focused on in these kinds of discussions. You have the example of Moses, which I already gave you. You think of Boaz and Ruth as well. There's another example. You also think, for example, of Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well.
I think this is so interesting. In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well. Of course, we know our Lord Jesus was never married, but you have a lot of this bridegroom imagery there in John 4. In the Bible, oftentimes in the Old Testament, in Genesis and in Exodus, men and women would meet at wells, and that's where they would be betrothed. Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at the well would have raised the eyebrows of his disciples, and indeed it did. What he's showing is this woman, the Samaritans, the Gentiles, are being welcomed into my church. They are the bride of Christ. People who don't understand this, or people who say interracial marriage is not biblical, I would just say they have a really poor understanding of the Scriptures, of the New Covenant, of humanity in general.
I think that that's just an idea that we can reject right away. Something you see in the Old Testament and the New Testament, something that God blesses. The real question is, and Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 7, marrying in the Lord. That's what we're called to. We're called to marry in the Lord.
It doesn't matter whether the person that you're married to is black or white or Asian or Hispanic. Are they a believer? Are they in Christ? That's what God calls us to in His Word. God bless. You know, Adriel, the research shows that if you marry a person of a different faith, you're going to have probably a lot more problems than you would in, let's say, an interracial marriage.
Because trying to marry outside the faith, let's say a Christian marrying someone who's Muslim or Jew, that can be a real strain in a marriage, especially when it comes to raising children. Yeah. That makes perfect sense to me, Bill.
It doesn't surprise me that that's what the research says. The Lord ought to be the most important thing for us in our lives individually and also in a marriage. You grow together in Christ. If one partner has zero interest in that, then that could be a huge strain. Of course, you do have Paul's exhortation in 1 Corinthians 7. If an unbelieving partner is willing to stay with you, that's a good thing. You don't have to leave them if you're already married, that kind of a thing. But there is, I know, a lot of heartache that can be had there, and so we're called to marry in the Lord.
Good advice for young people who are listening today and considering marriage. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Robin in Lawrence, Kansas. Robin, what's your question for Adriel?
Hi. I am wanting to know, I have been having a slight argument with my nephew, and we're trying to decide, or not decide, just trying to figure out, I can't find it in the scripture where it says, but I've always been taught to believe that when you die, that your soul, if you're a Christian, doesn't die. We that are Christians go straight to be with the Lord. Am I wrong about that? My nephew seems to think that when we die, we are dead until we are raised with all the Christians. Can you answer that question for me, please?
Yeah, Robin, I'd be happy to answer that question. What we're talking about now is what takes place when a believer, someone who is in Christ, dies. Their body goes down into the ground. Where does their soul go? Are they just sort of sleeping, waiting for the resurrection, unconscious? And then all of a sudden, when the resurrection, when the final judgment happens, then they're brought back to life, if you will, or resuscitated, that kind of a thing. Or is it the case that when we die, we're in the presence of the Lord, experiencing His glory, His goodness, worshipping around His throne?
What's the answer? And I believe that the Bible is very clear about this. The Bible says in multiple places that when we die in Christ, we are immediately in the presence of the Lord. Our bodies go down into the ground, waiting for that day of resurrection, but we are with the Lord in the Spirit, if you will. The apostle Paul talked about this in various places.
2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 7, he says, For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. You see this also in the book of Philippians, chapter 1, where he's talking about his death and departing to be with Christ. He says in verse 22, If I am to live on in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.
I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. Paul realizes when I die, when my body goes down into the ground, I'm going to depart and be with Christ, looking forward to that day of resurrection.
There really is a great hope here. This is what we sometimes refer to as the intermediate state, because it isn't the final state of believers. The final state is the glorified resurrected body that we receive at the last judgment. But between the moment we die and that last judgment, we're in the intermediate state, in the presence of the Lord, to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord, around God's throne, worshiping him, with the saints who have been perfected, who have gone before us, if you will, all those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ.
You have a vision of this actually given in the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 12. What does this mean for us? What does it mean for you? It means that we know that when our body fails us, when we go down into the ground, the moment we die here on earth, physically speaking, the moment we die physically speaking, we are in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is such a wonderful thing to look forward to.
But there's even more than that. It's not just that we're in heaven floating around for all eternity. It's that our bodies are going to be raised incorruptible. No more sickness, no more pain, no more sin. 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.
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