When Should a Christian Not Attend a Wedding?

When should a Christian not attend a wedding? 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 always leave us a voicemail at that number as well if you can't get through, and you can post your question on one of our social media sites or email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Matthew calling in from Arkansas. Matthew, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Hey, thank you for taking my call. My question was regarding the use of the Hebrew word yom in Genesis 1 and 2, so there's the debate about whether or not the only faithful interpretation of that word in chapter 1 is for a 24-hour period. I was wondering if that is accurate, if people who would be open to the interpretation of yom as an epoch or a time period or something along those lines would necessarily be an unfaithful interpretation.

Hey, Matthew, thank you for that question, and I love it as I'm preaching through the book of Genesis and preached through Genesis 1 several months ago. Now, there are several interpretations on the day, that word yom, the days of Genesis 1. Of course, one interpretation is that they are literal 24-hour days, six literal 24-hour days. Now, of course, with the seventh day, there's some question because that's the day on which God rested, and that rest in scripture is pictured as an eternal rest. God didn't just rest for 24 hours, and yet the word yom is used there as well, and so it seems like there's a little bit of wiggle room here.

There are also, I think, faithful Christians who believe in the inspiration of holy scripture and the authority of God's word to take other views of that Hebrew word yom. There is, as you mentioned, a sort of epochal interpretation where a day might refer to a long period of time. Sometimes people refer to this as the day-age theory, and often people will point to other passages of scripture where it sort of seems to indicate that a day can be taken in another sense, so Psalm 90, verse 4, or 2 Peter 3, verse 8, where Peter talks about a day with the Lord being like a thousand years or a thousand years like a day.

There's also another view, which is really understanding the early chapters of Genesis, and in particular Genesis chapter 1 as more of a literary framework, and we're getting these sort of pictures here that mainly highlight for us that God is the creator king who made all things out of nothing and is ordering his creation. And it's really meant to communicate this argument, this polemic against the pagan religions that were around Israel at that time. That actually doesn't necessarily speak to whether or not the days there were 24 hours.

It's just saying that there's a lot more going on there than just how long were the days, and I think a lot of times we get caught up in that question in particular. The main takeaways, here's I think what you have to embrace in order to be an Orthodox Christian, that's that God created all things from nothing, creation ex nihilo, that the Holy Trinity was the one that created God the creator, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't think that those other views, the views that aren't the six 24-hour days, that those views put someone outside of the bounds of the Christian faith or mean that they're unfaithful, per se. I think that there are, like I said, a lot of godly men and women who hold those views. And so there's, I think, some freedom here in terms of trying to understand this text and really get to the heart of what Genesis 1 is communicating.

And really, at the heart of it is a focus on theology and history, theology being a polemic against the ancient Near Eastern pagan religions, and then also history. We do believe, and I think this is another thing we have to embrace if we're going to be Orthodox, that Adam was a real person, the first Adam. We have to embrace that because we believe in Jesus, the second Adam. And so if Adam wasn't real, well, we have problems with our understanding of Christ, the second Adam, and what he came to accomplish. I trust that that answers your question. I would say you don't have to view people who maybe take a different interpretation as not Christian or as even unfaithful.

I know people are wrestling with the Hebrew text here, and there are great people who disagree on this. So thank you for your question, Matthew. You're listing your core Christianity with Pastor Adrielle Sanchez. Let's go to Carrie in Nevada, Oklahoma. Carrie, did I say the name of your town correctly? Yes, sir.

What's your question? My question is, so Adam and Eve were created in Genesis chapter two, but God did not breathe the flesh from the dust of the earth until chapter three after the sin. What is your interpretation or your understanding of what Adam and Eve were exactly before they became flesh as you and I are?

Yeah, sort of. Again, here early in the Bible, in the early books of Genesis, I think these two questions are kind of related, but it's actually, Carrie, in chapter two where God breathed the breath of life into man. So Genesis chapter two, verse seven. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And then later in chapter three, we have the account of the fall. So man lived but didn't live for God for too long. There was sin, rebellion. But you do have the breath of life entering into man in Genesis chapter two, and that really, in Genesis chapter two, is the account of the creation. Does that clear it up for you, Carrie? When it talks about God giving the skin, I don't remember exactly where it's...

Towards the end of chapter three when he's talking about giving, the covering of skin. Yeah, so that's different from breathing the breath of life into man, and honestly, it's such a beautiful picture for us of the gospel. So you have the creation of man in Genesis chapter two, man called to be fruitful and multiply, to tend the garden, to keep it.

This great cultural mandate is sometimes referred to by theologians and pastors. And sadly, Adam and Eve didn't do what they were called to do. Adam and Eve rebelled. They sinned against the Lord by eating from the forbidden fruit. And then in Genesis chapter three, you have the curse essentially on the ground.

You have the result of sin entering into the world. And in verse 22, or actually in verse 20 it says, the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

Now, a little bit earlier after the fall, if you recall, Carrie, they tried to clothe themselves with a fig leaf. They were trying to hide their nakedness before the Lord, and it just didn't work. And that's the reality for us too, that shame, that nakedness that comes through sin, if you will.

There's nothing we can do to cover up. We're naked before God. What we need is to be clothed by the Lord. And so what happens here at the end of chapter three? Essentially, God takes animal skins and clothes Adam and Eve. He covers their nakedness.

What does that mean? It means that there had to be death. An animal had to die, had to be sacrificed. And so you have a picture here in Genesis chapter three of the gospel, of this idea that the lamb of God would take away the sin of the world, that we, the people of God, needed to be clothed, covered, if you will, because of our nakedness. It's so wonderful to think about how all of scripture is sort of pointing us in that direction, our need for a Savior, and how God provides that salvation for us ultimately in his son Jesus. And so that's what's being foreshadowed there in Genesis chapter three, verses 20 and 21.

Thank you for your call, Carrie. You know, we often talk about those types and shadows that we see throughout the Old Testament that point us to Jesus. It's really remarkable when you think about the connections there, and I think maybe a lot of people miss those when they're reading the Old Testament.

Yeah, they're sort of like Easter eggs, you know, when you're a kid and you're running around looking for Easter eggs and you find one, you find a really good one, and you open it up and it's got all this treasure, you know, marshmallows and chocolate and all that good stuff. That's the feeling I get when I stumble across something in the scriptures like that, like Genesis chapter three, verse 21, where God clothes Adam and Eve and covers their nakedness. It's like, wait, whoa, wait, the gospel right there in Genesis chapter three, long, long before Jesus would come, the lamb of God to take away the sin of the world?

Yeah, it's all there. And again, this is why Jesus could say to the religious leaders, you know, in John chapter five, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it's those very scriptures that testify of me. Moses wrote about me.

And so we see Jesus throughout the pages of the Bible, if you will, and it's such a beautiful thing. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We want to take just a moment to say thank you to a special group of people.

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We'd love to have you consider that. So check it out this week at corechristianity.com. Well, let's go to a voicemail we received earlier this week from one of our listeners named Richard. Pastor Sanchez, my daughter is getting married in a few months and have asked a homosexual friend of the groom to conduct the ceremony. As a Christian man who has been married for 35 years, I feel that I should not attend the ceremony. I would appreciate and respect your thoughts on the matter. Thank you and may God bless your ministry.

Richard, thank you for your question. I want to give an answer and then I want to pray for you that the Lord would give you wisdom in loving your daughter and caring for her and the decision that you're going to make here. So let me just give you some things that come to mind with this question. One, marriage is a common institution. It's common to the people of the world and that is you don't have to be a Christian in order to get married. There are many non-Christians who are married with each other, I think before God legitimately, and who were married by all sorts of different kinds of people. This is not the person who makes the marriage.

It's the promise. It's the covenant that two people enter into, if you will. And so there can be a legitimate marriage here, I think, even if it's not done in the context of the church, because as I said, marriage is this common institution, which ultimately we know from the apostle Paul is meant to point us to Christ and to his work for us. You think about what Paul said in the book of Ephesians that marriage is a picture of the relationship that exists between Jesus Christ and his church.

And so that's the first thing I would say. And the other thing I would say is there was an ancient controversy in the church, in the first few centuries of the church, known as the Donatist controversy. And I think actually the situation isn't entirely the same, but I wonder if there isn't some wisdom we could glean from that controversy. Back then, there was a question about whether or not the baptisms that were performed by certain ministers, pastors, were legitimate. And the reason those baptisms were being called into question is because those pastors later turned away from the faith during a time of great persecution. They committed apostasy. They denied the Lord. And so there were some within the church who were saying, boy, if you were baptized by Pastor Johnson, who turned away from the Lord during that time of persecution, your baptism probably didn't stick. And that probably wasn't a legitimate baptism because it turns out that Pastor Johnson was a non-believer. He must not have really been a Christian. He was an apostate. And so this was a great contrary.

As you can imagine, people were wondering, well, what do we do? Do I need to go and get baptized again or legitimately baptized for the first time? And I think that the answer that the church gave was right on, based on the teaching of Holy Scripture.

And it was basically this. It was that it's not the holiness of the minister, their faith even, that causes these things. In particular, here in the Donatist controversy, it was a question of the sacraments that causes baptism and the Lord's Supper to be real or powerful or efficacious. It's the Spirit of God. It's the promise of God.

It's the word of God. So regardless of the person who's administering them, it's ultimately the word and promise of God that makes it legitimate. Now, of course, I don't believe marriage is a sacrament. It's not the same thing that we're talking about here.

But I think by extension or by way of analogy, there's some similarity here where you could say, I don't think that this is the right way to go about this. I would prefer for you to be married within a church. But I think that even, despite the fact that this individual is the one performing the marriage, it can still be a real marriage.

And this is a common institution. And so that's where you as a father have to exercise wisdom in weighing all of these things together. And I'm sure that you had this conversation with your daughter, brother, because you love her and she knows how you feel. I know also that you probably don't want to burn any bridges with her and her future husband, that you want to care for them and be there for them. And so I think it's still possible for you to attend the wedding even if you disagree. And I think you can make that known.

And you can give the rationale for why you disagree because of how you view marriage and what marriage is according to the scriptures and how ultimately it's supposed to point us to Jesus and the gospel. And if that's not happening here, well, then that's a tragedy. And yet, you still want to, I think, keep that connection with her. And so is there a way, I guess I would ask, of you being able to express how you feel to her, but also continue to show her your love and support for her specifically and keep the door open so that you can, as a man who's been married for many years, and know what marriage is all about so that you can point her in the right direction and continuing to encourage your daughter and to love her. And so I can't give you the answer and what exactly you have to do in this situation, but there are some things I think that you can think about as you make your own decision. And let me pray now that the Lord would give you wisdom. Dear Heavenly Father, we lift this brother up to you and I pray for him. I ask Lord God that you would be with him, that you would give him wisdom, that you would fill him with your Holy Spirit so that with whatever decision he makes, he might have a clear conscience. And God, that it would ultimately result in you being honored and glorified, that you would strengthen his relationship with his daughter and with her fiancee, that you would help him to be an example of your love and also of the truth, Lord, in their lives. So would you be with him and guide him as he thinks about this very difficult decision?

Would you give much grace to him and be at work also in his daughter and in her fiancee? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. One of the ways you can submit a question is through our YouTube channel. You can actually watch Adriel live on YouTube every day at 11 30 a.m. Pacific, 12 30 Mountain, 1 30 Central or 2 30 Eastern Time. That's the time to tune into YouTube and submit a question to us. Here's one we received earlier today from one of our listeners. By the way, we have people watching right now in Phoenix, Arizona, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Rochester, New York and Farmington, Michigan.

So thanks so much to all of you for checking us out on YouTube. Here's the question. What is the best way to go about expressing to your pastor that the scripture he is teaching is not the correct interpretation? Should I even express my concerns?

I do think that you should express your concerns. And of course, this is a real tragedy when an elder or a leader in the church maybe is teaching something that is out of line with scripture. Now, of course, it could always be that maybe they're teaching the truth and we just disagree with them. But I think with humility, you can go to your pastor or your elders and bring this up. You know, Paul told Timothy in First Timothy, Chapter five, verse one. Do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity. And so I would say the wrong approach would be to go to your pastor and rebuke him and say, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ because you're teaching this thing that I disagree with, at least if there's some debate to be had. And so I would say you go with humility and you appeal to him as you would a father even.

This is what Paul says in First Timothy, Chapter five, and open up the scriptures. And the hope is that your pastor would be willing to open up the scriptures with you and to talk about whatever it is that you're struggling with in terms of the interpretation. But I would say, let the whole conversation be bathed in prayer, approach it humbly, respectfully, be encouraging. I would say maybe coming and asking questions would be a better approach than coming and making accusations. So asking questions about maybe his particular interpretation and how it lines up with other passages of scripture, where it is that you think it's not entirely accurate.

And so, yeah, be humble, be humble and be open also to the encouragement of your elders. I mean, we're all sort of in this together trying to understand the scriptures. We want to be Berean together and search the scriptures.

And it could be that we're wrong when we ask these kinds of questions. We want to be open to that, too, and really getting to the bottom of what the Bible teaches. But I think if you approach it in that way with humility, with love, with respect, that that's going to be your best chance of something fruitful coming from it.

And I hope that something fruitful does come from it. And let me just say, as a pastor, I really love, I know not every pastor feels this way. And maybe that's why I do core Christianity, because I enjoy this. But I love when people ask me questions about a passage I preached on. And even if they disagree, even if there's pushback, I like to be able to get into, well, here's how I came to this conclusion in terms of the exegesis and studying the scripture.

I think that's okay. And I think pastors should be able to do that. I mean, that's why we study the Word of God is so we can have these kinds of conversations.

And so it's unfortunate, I think, when people raise questions and they're just shut down. And I hope that that doesn't happen for you. I hope that you can have a good conversation with your pastor full of love and charity. Great counsel there, Adriel. Thanks for that. This is core Christianity.

Here's another YouTube live question we received. This one's from Caleb. He says, how do you reconcile Proverbs 16, 7 with 2 Timothy 3, 12? So let me read those two verses, Caleb. Proverbs 16, verse 7 says, when a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. And then 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 12 says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Well, the first thing I would say is we have to think about the genre of scripture that we're looking at. And in the Proverbs, we're looking at wisdom literature. And oftentimes in the wisdom literature, you have in some books like the Book of Proverbs or even in the Psalter in the Book of Psalms, you have this sort of principle of justice, of right and wrong. Do this and good things will happen.

Do this and bad things will happen. And it seems very, very black and white. And it is just general wisdom. Yeah, these are general truths that I think we can take to the bank and that we should take to the bank because it's wisdom given to us from the Lord. But even in the wisdom literature, you have sort of contradictions because you think of... And when I say contradiction, I don't mean in the sense that sometimes critics of the Bible will bring up contradictions in scripture. I just mean that it's part of how the wisdom literature is meant to be read.

I had a professor in seminary who said we need to read it in counterpoint. So you have the sort of black and white, you know, right and wrong of the Proverbs. Do good and good will happen.

Do bad and bad happens. And then you have other books of the wisdom literature like the Book of Job or like the Book of Ecclesiastes, where you have people who did the right thing, if you will, and yet terrible things happen. And so we're supposed to read that in counterpoint, recognizing that wisdom is a complex thing, that not everything is as black and white, that we have to take things on an individual basis, on a case-by-case basis, even though there are general principles that we can take to the bank and that we can live by. And so there's no real contradiction between what we read in Proverbs there and what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3. It's true. If you desire to live a godly life in Jesus Christ, you will experience persecution, and yet the Lord is with you and will be with you through those things.

And so I think once we understand the different genres that we're looking at, we realize that there's no contradiction between those two texts, and we can embrace them each as they stand on their own. 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.