What's the Difference Between Old Testament Holy War and Modern Jihad?

Can you explain the difference between Israel's conquests in the Bible and the Islamic Jihad today? 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, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can post your question on one of our social media sites. You can watch Adriel right now on YouTube live and message him that way. And of course, you can always send us an email at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to a voicemail we received earlier this week from one of our callers named William. The Lord blessed me.

He allowed me to hear his voice. He walked with me in the forests of Indiana, trained me himself how to walk as an apostle, taught me the protocols of the temple of my soul, what to do in his presence, what to never do in his presence. My question is, why are there so few churches that even teach that there are apostles in these days? And of the ones that teach that, why so few of them will teach how to walk in that calling? That's the question. Thank you. William, thank you for that question.

And there's a lot there. First, what I would say is, the word apostle in the New Testament is used a couple different ways. And we're talking about the apostles, the 12. There are no more apostles like that. The church, we're told, was built on the foundation of those apostles and the prophets. Paul talked about that in Ephesians 2, verse 20.

When Judas, who was numbered among the apostles, died, when he turned away from Christ, committed apostasy, at the beginning of the book of Acts, Peter talked about how he needed to be replaced in accordance with God's word. And so they said, look, someone who was a witness of the resurrection of Jesus with us has to serve in this office, in this capacity. And they chose someone there in Acts chapter 1. But the 12 were witnesses of the resurrection. They testified to that reality.

That was the focus. And they had this apostolic ministry. Now, the word apostle just means one who is sent out. And so is there a looser way of understanding, you know, apostle, not in the technical sense?

Well, yeah, you do see that in the New Testament. Although I think it's unhelpful to refer to ourselves today as apostles, because it creates a lot of confusion. When somebody says, I'm an apostle, they're claiming that same kind of apostolic authority that was vested to the original 12.

And that's something we don't have. We don't have an apostolic ministry. If you were not apostles today, we have the apostolic message, William. And that needs to be the focus, the message of the apostles that was handed down from Jesus to the 12 and then from the 12 to the churches that they planted as they proclaimed the word of God, the gospel of God to the nations.

That's the message that we hold. And so one of the reasons I don't focus on, you know, apostles for today, that kind of things, I just don't think that we have apostles in that sense today, according to the scripture. And I've seen a lot of abuses in places in Christian circles where an individual will claim to have that kind of apostolic or prophetic authority, and they'll use it to coerce the people of God or to put rules on the people of God that God didn't intend for them to have. The question is not, are you an apostle? The question is, do you teach the apostolic doctrine which focuses our eyes on Jesus Christ and on his gospel? And that's what we need to get back to. We need to get back to the apostolic message, the right teaching of the scriptures.

And that's what I would encourage you and William. So thank you for giving us that call and may the Lord bless you in his word. You're listening to CORE Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we'd love to hear from you. If you have a call, a question about the Bible or the Christian life, give us a buzz right now at 833-THE-CORE.

Let's go to Isabella calling in from Nashville, Tennessee. Isabella, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? In Genesis 1-2, the earth was without wood, and the darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. If God hadn't created the earth and the waters yet, how is the spirit hovering over the waters?

Hey Isabella, thank you for that question and for giving us a call. Boy, there's so much there in the first two verses of the book of Genesis. And I'm just, thank you for reading that for us.

I'm just going to comment a little bit on this. So this language of the earth being without form and void, it's this picture of an uninhabitable wasteland. It's used elsewhere, actually, in the scriptures. You see this in places like Isaiah. The picture that Moses, who wrote the book of Genesis, is giving us is this image of this is no place for people to be.

It's the great nothingness, the great void that God speaks into and creates all things and makes it inhabitable, creating all things from nothing. This is one of the things we believe, Isabella, about God is that God made the entire world from nothing. And we read there also, as the text continues, the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And I think it seems like maybe there's some question here about chronology.

This could be referring to what was taking place a little bit later as well. And so I don't think that we necessarily need to see a contradiction here because it's very clear that God is the one who made all things. So there wasn't this material that was there beforehand, this eternal matter or material, whatever it was, whether it was water or something else. No, God made everything from nothing and the spirit of God was hovering over his creation, making it inhabitable so that mankind could be there.

And so I think maybe just understanding the chronology there a little bit more loosely is helpful. But the main takeaway for you and for me and for all of us, as we read the early chapters of Genesis, is that God is this great creator king who didn't need any help making anything. He made everything from nothing, which demonstrates, Isabella, that he is all powerful.

And because he's all powerful, he is worthy of our worship. Thank you for giving us a call. God bless. Hey, thanks, Isabella.

So great to hear from our younger listeners here at CORE Christianity. By the way, Adriel, I was just thinking of all the things that God has created. And I know one of your favorite things is Carolina Reaper's peppers, which he has created for your kitchen, right? Yes. Yeah. Bill, you're referring to the fact that one of my friends here in the office brought me some Carolina Reapers with gloves and in a special container so that nobody hurt themselves. And I just cooked them up yesterday and ground them into powder so I can put them on my pizza now. Oh, man. I like hot things, yeah.

May the Lord protect you. And God created. We're talking about the goodness of creation here, God making all things. I don't think that they're hot because of the fall. I think that they're just as how God made them.

They're good. I think you're right. This is CORE Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We have a brand new resource we'd like to tell you about. It's absolutely free, and it focuses on one of the most beautiful attributes of God.

Yeah. We're thinking about God as Father, and the resource is 10 Ways God Reveals Himself as Our Father. We want you to have this resource because there's so much confusion today in the Church about who God is and what God is like as He's revealed Himself to us in His Word. Oftentimes, right, Jesus referred to God as the Father, and God is our Father through adoption into the family of God by the work of Jesus Christ. We are the children of God by the grace of God, and so it's so important that you understand the 10 ways God reveals Himself as Father.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, but I think it's a really good start for you, and so get a hold of this resource. This will be especially helpful maybe if you had a strained relationship with your father or an absent dad, just to understand how God is your Heavenly Father and complete in all ways in offering you His love. So you can check this out.

It's absolutely free. Just go to corechristianity.com forward slash offers. That's corechristianity.com forward slash offers.

Look for 10 ways God reveals Himself as our Father. You can also call us for that resource or any one of our resources. Here's the phone number, 833-THE-CORE. Just spell it out on your phone, 833-THE-CORE. Well, here's an email we received from one of our international listeners.

As a matter of fact, her name is Linnea, and she says, Hi, Adriel and Bill. I am a Swedish listener, and I just want to thank you so much for the show. It blesses me so much and helps me grow and understand the Word of God better, and I know it does for many others. When I hear the news about war and terror and devastating things happening in other countries where people are being slaughtered by terrorists, it sometimes leads me to think about the Old Testament passages where God ordered Israel to take over the land and sometimes kill the people who live there, both men, women, and children. I have a hard time seeing that the killing, especially of children, was something that God was behind. Pastor Adriel, can you help me understand this?

Well, thank you so much for reaching out to us and for that email. You know, there are a few ways we need to understand. Oftentimes, I think when we look at the conquest narratives in the Old Testament, we just sort of assume that Israel is coming in as this terrible, mighty army and just massacring all of these people, these poor, helpless people, that kind of a thing. We need to actually have a better understanding, I think a more biblical understanding, in terms of what the real picture was. Recently, Linnea, I preached through Genesis chapter 15, where God essentially prophesied, God revealed to Abraham, what the children of Israel were going to experience for a long period of time. God said to him in Genesis chapter 15, verse 13, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. They're referring to the exodus out of Egypt. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, and you shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here, that is here to the land of Canaan, in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

Now, that last phrase there is really important to, I think, understanding the answer to your question. God is essentially saying, look, the Amorites are there. The people of Canaan are there in the land, and they're not defenseless, helpless, innocent. They're really sinning against the Lord in very grievous ways. They were sacrificing their own children.

This language, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. It demonstrates to us that the inhabitants of Canaan who were there at the time of Joshua's conquest later, after the 400 years of captivity, that God's people were driving them out because of their great wickedness, their great evil, and God's people, they weren't this mighty imperial army. They were slaves who had been battered for hundreds of years, and so they're coming out in weakness, driving out these terrible nations and destroying them. It was actually, in one sense, a picture of the final judgment of God's judgment coming here and now in the present because Canaan is this picture, supposed to be a picture of Eden. You think about in the Old Testament what Adam and Eve were called to do.

They were called to drive out the serpent, the false worship, the idolatry. That's what Joshua is doing during the time of the conquest. Now, I'll also say there are some scholars who highlight that these cities, they probably weren't cities that were primarily inhabited by families with women and children. These were military strongholds. The conquest there, it really would have been a military fight.

We're not focusing so much on families and the death of children per se. There are others who say even that language is just idiomatic. It's a figure of speech, a way of speaking to highlight that this is a great and terrible destruction. But again, we just have to understand that really we're looking at these servants of the Lord who have been battered for hundreds of years, driving out the Canaanites who were really doing terrible, horrible things. It's very different than what we see today, tragically in places like Afghanistan going on right now in other parts of the world with acts of terror and the persecution of believers and just others as well.

There's a helpful book that I want to recommend to you. It's called The Skeletons in God's Closet by Joshua Ryan Butler. He really gets into this question, the question of the conquest and how do we make sense of it.

I think it's really helpful. One of the things actually that he says in the book is that this isn't the weak fighting on behalf of God. It's God himself fighting on behalf of the weak and oppressed, his people, really. So when we realize that, I think it helps us to make a much better sense of the conquest narratives. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life.

We get some challenging ones here and Adriel's not afraid to take those. Here's a number to call. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 833- THE-CORE. Let's go to Mariah in Lincoln, Illinois. Mariah, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? My question is really about the vaccine going on currently. A lot of Christian people that I've been attending church with have their reservations about doing it because they believe that it is the mark of the beast. And what I've understood is more of it is like a conditioning. I don't know what personally the Bible says about this, but is it possibly a conditioning for Christians to just accept it so that way they'll be easier going with it and then just understanding it a little better?

Mariah, thank you for your question, and I know that this is one that a lot of people are really struggling with. Now I've said on the broadcast before, no, the COVID-19 vaccine is not the mark of the beast. When we read about the mark of the beast in Revelation chapter 13, it really is the association with idolatrous worship, with the antichrist turning away from the gospel, turning away from Jesus and embracing sin and evil, wickedness. It's not the vaccine, you can't accidentally take it, but your question is a little bit different. It's, well, is this preparing people to receive the mark of the beast? And again, I would say I don't think so.

I think that actually there are other things that are happening in the world today that are preparing people, if you will, to receive that mark, but I wouldn't say it's the vaccine. I think if we go to 1 John chapter 4, listen to what John said there, Mariah, and this is where we need to focus as we think about this kind of question. He says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them.

For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. And you know what John says there, Mariah, the spirit of the antichrist has been at work in the world ever since the days of the apostles. And what is he trying to do? He's not trying to get people to take a vaccine. That's not his focus. He's not trying to, you know, that's not the focus. The focus is taking our eyes off of Christ and who he really is, denying that he came in the flesh and denying what he came to do to make atonement for our sins.

You know, we can get so caught up in all these other things. The question is, do we have a right understanding of who Christ is, who Jesus is? The spirit of the antichrist is at work in the world today trying to take our eyes off of Jesus and to get us, you know, to fall headlong into sin, into unbelief. Those are the things that we should be concerned about. Spiritually speaking is breaking God's law first and foremost, turning away from God's goodness, rejecting God's gospel. That's what's leading people in the way of the antichrist. And that's where we as believers more than anything need to make a stand. Thank you for your question. Great response, great counsel on that. And as you said, a lot of people calling in with that question, real concerns about the vaccine. What does it mean? What's the biblical ramifications?

Are there any? This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or your Christian life or your church. And here's the number again, 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to Mark in St. Louis, Missouri. Mark, what's your question?

Yes, thanks for taking the call. My question is, how do you beat lust? How does a man beat it? I've been trying a long time, starting to believe I can't be saved because I stand the word, I pray, I ask God to bind my flesh, ask Jesus to bind me, the man. How do you, how do you stop lusting us?

How can you be a man of God, but if you see someone, a man's wife or something, you look at her cleavage or you look at her body, I can't do that, right? So what do I do? How do you beat it? How can I finally conquer it so I don't have to keep going back saying, God, forgive me? How can I just kill it and beat it?

Yeah. Hey, Mark, God bless you, brother, and I want to pray for you and I want to give you hope. In your own flesh, right? We know, Paul says, in our flesh, no good thing dwells. In and of ourselves, we can't conquer lust. You can't conquer lust, but here's your hope.

Here's your hope. God in heaven is for you. The will of God is your sanctification that you would abstain from sexual immorality, and so if God is for you, who can be against you?

And I think, I think you have to, you have to know that. You have to have confidence there that God is for you so that when you pray, Lord, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil, you know that this is something God is going to do. How is he going to do it?

By the grace of his Holy Spirit. Have that confidence, brother, that it's not in you. You put no confidence in the flesh. Your confidence has to be in the Lord, in what Christ has done in forgiving your sins and giving you a new identity through faith and through baptism, and then walking in light of that new identity, relying on the Holy Spirit. So then, brothers, Paul says in Romans 8 verse 12, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, for if we live according to the flesh, we will die. But if by the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, not your own spirit, but by the Holy Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And so I would just say to you, Mark, one, don't rely on yourself. Get the help that you need, accountability. That's, that looks like confessing sin.

That looks like, depending on what the issue is, getting proper accountability. That's why you need the church. You need a local church. And rely primarily on the grace of the Holy Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Well, how do you do that? It's not a magic trick. It's meditating upon the Word of Christ. As the Word of Christ dwells in you richly, we are filled with the Spirit of God, drawn near to God in prayer. It is a battle, and it's going to be a battle that you're going to face. And this is why Jesus commanded us to pray every day, lead us not into temptation.

That's going to be the cry every day. And my encouragement to you is don't give up, and don't give up hope, because the Lord is for you. And you know if God is for you, that when you cry out to him for forgiveness, and for growth and holiness, that he hears that prayer, and he answers that prayer. And I'm going to pray that prayer for you right now, brother.

So let's pray for Mark, and for everyone who's wrestling with this in particular. God, we know how serious your word takes sin. And we know based on the words of our Lord Jesus that it's not just what we do, you know, the actions we commit when we're thinking about something like lust, but even in our own hearts.

Jesus, you said to look at someone with a lustful intent is all ready to commit adultery. So we come before you, Lord. We lift our brother Mark up to you. We pray, as you've taught us to pray, lead our brother not into temptation, deliver him from evil, fill him with your spirit, so that by the grace of the spirit, he might put to death that battle with lust, and walk in a manner that is honoring to you, and respectful, honoring to the people around him, Lord, not treating them as objects, not seeing them as objects for lust, but as image bearers, God worthy of dignity and respect. And so be with our brother, and be with all those, Lord, who struggle with this. We call upon you, asking for your mercy to be poured out, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Thanks so much for your call there, Mark. We appreciate it. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Before we go today, we want to remind you that we have a wonderful group of people who support this program. They're called our Inner Core, and we'd like to invite you to become a member of the Inner Core. And Adriel has some special resources that we will send you if you would join.

Yeah, the Inner Core. Brothers and sisters, if you've been blessed by Core Christianity, would you join? It's a monthly donation of $25 or more, and it helps us to continue to get the word out. You can find out more on our website.

And hey, I just wanted to also mention, we're going to be on the line for another half hour recording an extra episode today, so if you want to give us a call, you have another half hour to give us a call, and please reach out to us. God bless. 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.