How Does God Promise to Bless Us?

Does God promise to prosper our health and finances? At 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. Now we're also on social media. You can post your question on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

You can watch Adriel live in the studio on YouTube right now and message us that way through our YouTube channel. And of course, you can always email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Larry calling in from Roseburg, Oregon. Larry, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Well, thank you for being there. Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance. And I was just wondering, since I'm a Messianic Jew and Paul was too, why he said in Galatians 1 that there be never lasting curse. He repeats it twice and anybody who doesn't preach the gospel that he preached. And most people presume that's what they're preaching. But Paul said in Acts 28, the very last sentence in Acts, that the gospel he preached was the gospel of the kingdom and that Jesus was the Messiah.

And I wonder if people are just ignorant or being blinded by the devil to realizing the need for repentance and what it truly is to include the kingdom as part of the gospel. Because God did fulfill Paul's curse with the early church in the seventh century. It was all the churches in Revelation are all now under Islam, which is in Hebrew, the word for Allah is translated as curse. Like if you don't keep my commandments, all these Allah will come upon you.

Hey Larry, thank you for your question. You mentioned today is the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. And of course we read about that back in the book of Leviticus. It was this day of deep cleansing, if you will, of the temple and of the people of God.

A very important day that foreshadowed, that was a picture of the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, something that we celebrate as Christians. And it's that message of the cross that is central to the preaching of the apostles, that was central to the preaching of the apostles, that is at the heart of the gospel. And if we don't preach that message, then yes, we are under a curse. And it's what the apostle Paul talked about, as you said, in Galatians chapter one. Now it's important that we understand the background of the book of Galatians so that we can really grasp what it is that he's referring to when he talks about this curse. If you listen or read, beginning in verse six of chapter one in the book of Galatians, Paul said to the Galatian church, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. And then as you said, he emphasizes this, he doubles down, he goes on in verse nine, as we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. The problem in Galatia was that there was this group of people, Paul refers to them as agitators, who had snuck into the church and they were beginning to preach a message, a gospel quote unquote, Paul says it wasn't a gospel at all, that was contrary to the one that the Galatians had initially received from the mouth of the apostle Paul. And what they were being told now by these agitators was that if they really wanted to be a part of the church, they needed to basically embrace Judaism, they needed to be circumcised, they needed to embrace the ceremonial law, the law of Moses, go back to that. And Paul says, look, that's not the gospel, that's not going to save you, the law is not a faith, the law is pointing us to, leading us to Christ and emphasizing our need for forgiveness, our need for repentance, but it's not the gospel. And so I think insofar as there are ministries today that when you ask them, you know, what is the gospel, and they point to the law, do this, that, and the other, yeah, that leads to curse, that leads to death, the gospel is the proclamation of what God has done for us in Christ to redeem us from our sins. And so really I think it's important for us, this is one of the things that we really need to recover today in the church, is a clear understanding of what the gospel is, and the fact of the matter is, if people were confused about it in the first century, people that the apostle Paul himself had preached to, well then, friends, there's going to be confusion today about the gospel, and that's why it's important for us to return to the scriptures, places like the book of Galatians, in order to understand what the gospel of the Lord Jesus, what the good news of the Lord Jesus really is, lest we too be under a curse, as the apostle Paul said there in Galatians 1. Larry, thank you for your question. God bless you. Thanks for calling in, Larry, and thanks for listening to Core Christianity. Well, let's go to an email question that came in from one of our listeners named Ken. He says, Does 3 John 1 and 2 teach that God will prosper our health and finances?

There are different translations that make it seem like this is something that we should expect. Yeah, 3 John. I don't know that we've ever received a question about 3 John.

Obviously, we get a lot of questions about the stuff in the gospel of John, or even in John's first letter, 1 John, but I appreciate this question about 3 John. It begins in verse 1, Beloved, verse 2, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul. Now, does this mean that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy? I think what you're asking is, is this biblical support for what's sometimes known today as the prosperity gospel?

No, it isn't. We do know, according to the teaching of scripture, you think of even Jesus as the prayer that he taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 6. We're taught to pray about our physical needs. Give us this day our daily bread and our spiritual needs. Forgive us our debts. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. But God does care about our bodies and our health, and there's nothing wrong with praying that the Lord would raise us up if we're sick. I mean, James talks about this in James chapter 5, that God would provide for us the things that we need. Give us this day our daily bread. Help me to have gainful employment.

There's nothing wrong with those things. What the prosperity gospel teaches, and this is what's not being taught here in the beginning of 3 John, is that if you're truly a follower of Jesus, that God always wills for you to be blessed and healthy and wealthy. So it's not just this idea that God cares about you and will provide for his people. It's that you should be above and beyond blessed.

You should be rich. I remember talking to a guy one time in my gym when I was in college training to be in the ministry, and I was wearing a Christian t-shirt at the gym, and he came up to me and he started talking to me, and he said, You're a believer. And he said, I'm a pastor. And of course, as a young guy training for ministry, I thought, Oh, this is great.

I want to learn from this guy. And in the middle of our conversation, he said, I'm rich, you know. And I just thought, rich in Christ? Yeah, me too.

You know, that kind of a thing. And he said, No, I'm rich, rich. And he pointed to a number of passages. He appealed to Abraham in the Old Testament. He was trying to make this case that God intends for us to be rich.

But that's just not the case. Now, riches aren't a bad thing. Putting our hope in riches is a bad thing. And I think what the prosperity gospel does is it leads people to chase after these things that God does not call us to chase after. And so, you know, it's good for us to pray for one another that we would be healthy, that we would be strong. I think even times like this in the middle of a pandemic, the Lord would raise people up. But we don't have a promise in scripture that God's intention, will, is always to heal. And that if he doesn't, it's our fault because we don't have enough faith. It's those kinds of things that the prosperity gospel teaches that are completely false. And that's certainly not what 3 John, verse 2 is saying. So, hey, thanks for that question. As you said, false and also very destructive because they set a lot of people up for spiritual disillusionment and feeling like, well, I didn't have enough faith. That's why I've got cancer.

Yeah. Talk about a just destructive theology that leaves people feeling worse than before. I mean, that's one of the ways that we know that it's just heresy.

It's not taught in the Word of God, but it also drives people away from God, frankly. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life or something about theology or doctrine or even what's happening in our culture right now as it applies to our Christian life. Here's the phone number to call. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Well, let's go to George calling in from Seguin, Texas. George, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Hey, good afternoon, brothers. First of all, God bless.

You know, it's a beautiful day here in Texas, and hopefully it's the same over there. I did have a quick question for you. The Bible lately has been studying Genesis 6 in particular where, and I'm sure you've gotten this before in similar situations, but where it references here the sons of God when they saw the daughters of men and they were beautiful and they took them as wives for themselves, whichever they chose. And the question is here, you know, what exactly are we kind of written to? I know there's debate kind of within, you know, the Christianity itself when it comes down to kind of these particular set of verses, you know, because we have this, we have kind of the similar situation going on in Job. But then we have verses along, you know, in, for example, in Mark 12, verse 25, where reference is something similar, you know, and if I may read where it says in verse 25 of Mark 12, But when they write from the dead, neither they, neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of heaven. George, this is a question if you say that we have received before, and it's a common one, I think, because people read the text of Genesis chapter 6, and it just seems so strange.

There are a few different, I think, interpretations that faithful Bible teachers, scholars have gone to that I think each of them, you know, has strength and weaknesses. But first let me read Genesis 6, a little bit of Genesis 6, and then I'll give those interpretations, then I'll give my thoughts. So Genesis 6, verse 1 begins, When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and the daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Now, in the Bible, oftentimes, sons of God is a reference to angels.

You see this, I think you mentioned the book of Job, you see it in Job chapter 2, verse 1, you see it also in the Psalms. And so one argument that people make is these are angelic beings that have rebelled and they're taking these human wives, if you will. And there are actually passages in the New Testament that seem to perhaps indicate this.

Of course, it's a controversial view, and there are some people that will point to the text that you pointed to in Mark, regarding the angels, how they're not married or given in marriage, in order to contradict this view, but this is one of the views that historically Christians have held. The other views are essentially that this is a picture of the evil line marrying or intermarrying with the good line, and so this is sort of mixed marriages, polygamy, those kinds of things that are taking place. Another view is that it's this picture of these divine rulers, if you will, not truly divine, but kings.

Sometimes kings can be referred to as the sons of God, if you will, so they're these people with status, with power, who are taking these harems to themselves and they're sinning, they're acting wickedly. Now look, like I said, there's a lot of debate about the best way to understand who specifically are the sons of God here. What's helpful to me in terms of interpreting this passage is just really taking a step back and asking the question, what is Moses really trying to communicate here at this point in the book of Genesis? Well, the main point is whatever was going on, mankind was continuing to plunge headlong into sin. Things are getting worse and worse and worse leading up to the time of the flood, and so the point of this passage is not for us to focus primarily on the identity of the sons of God. The point is for us to realize it was bad and it was getting worse and worse. You go from the fall earlier in Genesis to this point, it just goes to show how prone we are to evil, to sin, how we degenerate more and more and more. That's what was happening in these chapters of the book of Genesis leading up to the flood, and that's what Moses is really trying to communicate.

So really what it is is a study on the sinfulness of humanity, on human depravity, on how left to ourselves, apart from the grace of God, apart from the goodness of God's law, we will continue to plunge headlong into sin, destroying ourselves and the people around us, and that's what you see in Genesis chapter 6. Thanks for your question, George. Thanks, George.

Appreciate you listening to Core Christianity. One of the ways you can ask a question is by calling our voicemail 24 hours a day. It's open, and you can leave your question there. Here's the number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Here's a voicemail that came in from Jason in St. Joseph, Missouri. I was talking to a friend, and he doesn't think God's there and doesn't quite sure if he believes in God or not. He lost his two daughters ten years ago, so he's having some hard time gripping whether God is real.

How could I help him? Thank you. Have a good day.

Bye. Yeah, Jason, just a very touchy situation, obviously losing someone that we love and then thinking about how to comfort someone who's gone through that. Whether it was something recent or something long ago, you want to choose your words very carefully. At least at first, I think it's so important for us just to come alongside of individuals, to lament with them. Really, in the midst of that kind of intense suffering, there aren't a lot of words that you can say or that someone's going to receive in that moment. It's prayer. It's crying out to the Lord.

It's lamenting. But the Scriptures do speak to the problem of death. Christ came into the world to defeat death. So there is hope. There is a word of hope that we have for those who are crushed by pain, by suffering, by death. We have to recognize that. I think there is a place for us to have that conversation. That's where you need the wisdom of the Holy Spirit as you speak to this friend.

I really love the scene in John 11 where Mary and Martha are going to Jesus. Their brother Lazarus has died. They're devastated.

They're concerned. They're upset even because Jesus wasn't there when he died. They just know, Jesus, if you would have been here, things could have been different.

Things would have been different. Jesus continually is pointing to himself. He's saying, look, I am the resurrection and the life. There is hope when you believe in me. Your brother is going to rise again. They were thinking, well, yeah, on the last day he's going to rise again.

We do believe that. But then Jesus brought him back from the dead right there in John 11. Leading up to that, we read in John 11, verse 32, When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved. Now, that word right there, deeply moved, it can be translated a number of ways. And oftentimes in the New Testament, it communicates anger. It expresses anger. It's a strong feeling of indignation. So it seems like there's this anger here. And who is Jesus angry at?

Well, he's not angry at Mary and Martha and the people that are mourning there. I think it's an anger towards death. Death is this, according to the Bible, this enemy. It's the last enemy to be destroyed, Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And all of us, those of us who have experienced the pangs of death, the terribleness of death in someone we love, there is this sorrow, there is this anger because we know this is not right.

Jesus knows that it's not right. The text continues, And his spirit was greatly troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see. And Jesus wept. You have here, I think, both anger towards death and compassion towards mourners. And Christ has compassion on your friend, Jason. The Lord Jesus is compassionate to the downcast, to the broken hearted. And he also had anger towards death and sin.

And he dealt with it. That's why he went to the cross and rose again from the dead. And so for all those who are broken hearted, who are crushed, who are weighed down because of the reality of death, we have something to say as Christians when we point to Jesus and we point to his resurrection from the dead. There is hope. There is great hope.

And that hope is found in the gospel. And I pray for you, Jason, that God would give you wisdom as you talk to this friend. It sounds like he's hurting. It sounds like maybe he's angry as well.

Sometimes that can be the case when we lose someone we love. Angry at God, maybe even. And so may the Lord soften his heart and may the Lord give you wisdom in sharing the hope that we have as Christians with your friend. God bless you. Appreciate so much Jason's heart in trying to share the truth of the gospel with this hurting friend.

That's what it's all about, right? Living out our faith in practical ways like that. So thank you for that, Jason. This is Court Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

Here's a voicemail we received from one of our callers, one of our listeners named Heath. I know the scripture says that you are not to eat anything, any meats, or have any foods that have been sacrificed unto idols. So my question is, is knowing that these vaccines that are being pushed on the markets today are actually filled with aborted children. Their stem cells are put into the actual vaccines.

And these are being injected into people. How do the Christian world feel about knowing that this is taking place? I think that the Christian world is leaning more towards the thoughts of man than leaning towards the healing power of God. Where does the church world stand in all of this?

Okay, bye. Heath, a really complex question, and I'm not an expert on vaccines, but I think every vaccine is different. But I'm certain that with a lot of the vaccines that have come out, the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, they're not filled with the stem cells of aborted babies. I think that's just factually not true. I think that's inaccurate. And there has been a lot of misinformation, a lot of confusion out there via social media. Now, that's not to say that other vaccines might not be different.

I think you just have to do your research, do the research, and really figure out what is it, how is this produced, and what is it that this is pumping into you. And so I think maybe getting the information a little bit more clear would be helpful. Let me just say this. As followers of Jesus Christ, as Christians, we can have a high view of the world, of science, of medicine, because it's God's world. And the good that comes from the world, just via God's common grace, is something that we should receive with thanksgiving, praising God for His kindness toward us. I know that everything right now in our culture, in our country, is so politicized. Everything is so politicized, and it makes it really hard to see clearly, I think. And if we can just sort of take a step back and, one, just affirm the goodness of God's common grace, give thanks for things like medical advancements, that doesn't mean that everything is good and that we shouldn't be wise in terms of making decisions for ourselves, medical decisions that are going to affect us. But the reality is, the fact of the matter is, there's a lot of good also that we can glean from this as Christians. And I think part of the issue and what the apprehension is for so many people is just the highly politicized environment in which we live. It's very much us versus them, that sort of mentality.

And the other side is oftentimes demonized, and we don't want to listen to one another. And so I think as Christians, we ought to take a step back, exercise charity, really think through things with an open mind, being guided by God's word, but also the best of just common grace, the wisdom of this world, science, medical advancements. And we can receive that, as I said, with thanksgiving, because it's God's world. And historically, the Church has always sort of embraced that idea. And so is it the case that there are some people who are focusing too much on sort of man's values and not God's?

Well, sure, that happens all over the place. But I think we can be confident that as Christians, we can look at some of these things, exercise wisdom, and ultimately entrust ourselves to the Lord. We need to focus on that as well in the midst of everything going on, entrusting ourselves to the Lord, and then making the wisest decision with the information that we have available to us. Join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.