Homecoming

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So lower your taxable income while increasing your retirement. PRCUA.org. That's PRCUA.org. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God today with Mike Zwick and Mike, I guess we're talking about marriage. Yeah, I mean, a matter of fact, there's a well-known part of Genesis 2 that I think people know about, and it says Genesis 2, verses 21, and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man, and Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. And Robby, you were studying that? Yeah, actually yesterday I was teaching my special needs class, and I asked God kind of where we were going, and I guess I just got through my COVID experience and watched a whole bunch of Christmas movies, and I was really found it fascinating how many Christmas Eve movies have to do with coming home for Christmas. I mean, how important the home was, and when these people came home from the big city, whatever it looked like, you know, there was a father and a mother and this sense of connection and this sense of home, and I started asking God about that.

Well, how can I teach on that? And he goes, Well, go back and take a look at Genesis 2. And so as I looked at that passage, I saw it in a new light. Reading it in Hebrew was actually beautiful and inspired me on all sorts of levels, but the immediate thing that came to mind is, Wait a minute, God did not say, A man shall leave his father and mother.

This was something they were quoting Adam. And so Adam institutes family here, and the dignity of God giving him this is huge. And of course, Jesus quotes it, you know, later in the Gospels of, you know, when they try to trap him on what does the marriage mean. But there's some letters in the Hebrew that really don't translate into English that I think are significant.

And one of those letters, it's called a vav. And so when you see that this man is going to be united to his wife, and the word for man and wife are really cool in Hebrew, okay, it really shows that the man is the head of the house, and it really shows that the woman is the head of the life. It's something that you don't see taught, but not only are those words like that, but they have a vav to them, meaning that the father's connection to God is passed on to the wife's connection to God, which takes part in this becoming one flesh, which is obviously the fruit.

That's right. And since this was Adam, and he had such a beautiful relationship with God prior to the fall, think about it, I mean, he walked and talked. And before Eve ever came onto the scene, you know, Eve was connected to God through Adam. And so we are connected to God, not only through our parents, but we're connected to God through our grandparents and our great grandparents, in a way that is essentially the heritage that Adam passed on at this point in time when he spoke this over the whole concept of marriage.

And so I started to think, man, wait a minute, right? This means that my kids, I'm not saying that they get salvation for free because their dad was a Christian, but they do get a certain part of the heritage of my relationship with God. And when you see that in that Christmas movie, and those people are coming home, and they're getting to spend time with his dad, this dad is in so many different ways, a connection to God. That is awesome.

And I was telling you earlier that I think I may have a story for this as well, where it kind of connects, because when you started talking about this, I was thinking, hmm, that sounds familiar. But ever since my two young children, who are almost three and almost four now, have been young, we've been praying with them. We prayed with them before they were born, while they were in the womb.

Prayed with them, talked to them every night, tell them that Jesus loves them, and this and that. And sometimes you wonder, you say, man, is this really getting through to these kids? Well, about a month or so ago, probably a little bit longer, I was upstairs one day, it was maybe a Saturday afternoon, and Michael was taking a nap. He was in there talking, and I said, something told me to go talk to him, because I thought I knew what he was doing. I said, Michael, what were you doing? He said, I'm talking to God.

He's a three-year-old. I said, well, what did you ask him? He said, well, I was asking him this, and I was thanking him for this, and the other night he said, I was asking God for a trampoline. So, and then the other day, I think it was maybe this morning or yesterday morning, Michael was downstairs, and he said, he went up to my wife, and he said, Mommy, he said, will you pray for me, because I have the hiccups?

That's beautiful. And she prayed for him, and then the hiccups went away. And so, you know, it's funny, it's that, you know, the prayers of our grandparents, and the prayers of our great-grandparents. I was actually had on CBN this morning with Pat Robertson, the 700 Club, and somebody had actually asked him, they said, if a saint, if their prayers, if they pray, but after they die, can their prayers still be answered after they passed away? And Pat Robertson actually said, yes, they can. He said, if you look at the life of George Muller, he had prayed for the salvation of many, many people, and they said they tracked all of his prayers, and his prayers were answered while he lived, but even after he had passed away, the people that he prayed for to be saved had gotten saved.

So, and that's more than beautiful. I mean, if you think about it in the book of Revelation, right, they talk about that these vases, or whatever you want to call them, you know, that those are the prayers of the saints, and they're coming up as incense. Well, those were the prayers in past tense, and it's kind of cool to think that these are prayers, you know, of generations, and, you know, as you were talking about your son, I couldn't help but think of, you know, my own daughter when she was three, right?

We were traveling at that point in time. Robbie's played basketball all over the country with his AAU team, and so we stopped in this big restaurant, and we're sitting there with the whole family, and Mariah says, can I pray? Can I pray? We're going to, you know, eat dinner. And, you know, she's 21 now, so it's a long time ago, and she prays, and after she prays, she said, daddy, I had my eyes open during the prayer. Do you want to know why? And I thought, she's going to say, because, you know, I wanted to see if Robbie had his eyes open or Tess had, you know, she's going to tell on her brother or sister or whatever, and I said, why'd you have your eyes open, Mariah? And she said, so I could see God. I've, you know, it was one of those things. It's just, it's there because the prayers of a child, you know, they're just, there's something just magical, you know, about that when you see that faith. Well, the same 21-year-old daughter, right, she goes to Samford University now, and again, we're talking about your... Is that in Alabama?

Yeah, it is. It's in Birmingham, and we're talking about your spiritual heritage, and so it's just beautiful to watch your family grow in these things, and so my daughter called me, I think it was Friday, and she said, dad, I have some questions. I have some serious questions, Bible questions for you. Okay. Well, what an honor.

Yeah. I mean, really, for your daughter, and I could tell by this that these were not going to be easy questions, right? She goes, I'm really struggling with these, but I've been doing this Bible for, you know, reading the Bible, chronological Bible through, and I'm supposed to do this in a year, and I'm in Leviticus, and I really have some serious questions. Well, Mariah is sort of a budding feminist, okay, and so I can kind of see these pictures, these questions, you know, and first of all, she had trouble with slavery in the Bible. That was, you know, one of her things, but the one that really had her upset was how come the women couldn't come into the temple when they're in their menstrual cycle, right, and I mean, this is a kind of question your daughter, you know, like, I'm really, and I said, Mariah, I'm just delighted. I mean, I can't even tell you what it does for my heart that you have that question, and I can tell it was a serious question, and she wanted, you know, like, why would God do this? Why would God do that? And I was like, man, I'm just honored, Mariah, that you had asked me that question, and I can see it's really important to you, but I'm really going to have to pray about this, because I, off the top of my head, I never have really, and I can see from your angle that you don't, you know, that seems unfair.

So I prayed about it, and interestingly, this is what came to me. I don't know, okay, that this is the answer, but this is the discussion I was able to have with my daughter, which I really enjoyed having this discussion, right, with her, was that, you know, God does not like for people to come into a worship experience having touched anything dead, right? You might remember that in those Levitical laws, there's all sorts of places, if you touch a dead body any way, shape, or form, you're unclean for some period of time. Well, it was not God's intention at all, I'm sure, that women would even go through this death process every month, right? Because there's a seed that was supposed to be a human, and that dies, and then, you know, to some extent she's touched something dead and needs to be cleansed over a period of time, not by any, you know, she was born into it, and just as we're talking about family, right, we not only obviously have a connection to what our parents, our grandparents, and all did, you know, in the way of being connected to God, but also in their disobedience.

And so, you know, as Adam and Eve have that curse, so do we. Yeah, I mean, and I've got an answer. When, if sometime, you know, somebody may ask me a question like that, or they'll ask me a certain question, and the, uh, it's 1 Corinthians 13 12, where it says, for now we see only a reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And so there are questions that I don't have the answers to right now. I mean, there, there really aren't, and as a matter of fact, um, one of my...

In fact, most questions I don't have answers to. I mean, but, you know, when you look, when you look at the book of Job in the Bible, Job was very specific. He was looking for reasons why all of these bad things were happening to him. And God never really gave him the reason. He, and he said, you know, surely you were there when I created the earth, and surely, you know, you know more about stuff than I do.

But he didn't say, Job, the reason I did this was because of A, B, and C. He didn't, he didn't give him that. And so I, I guess, you know, right now, I mean, we're never gonna have all of our answers, all of our questions answered. I mean, and just look at this. I mean, if you listen to enough preaching, I mean, you got one guy saying one thing, another guy saying another, and a third, you know, so, you know, and that's okay. And, but going back to what we were talking about before, if we're really going to focus on Jesus, we're really going to try to get in tune with the Holy Spirit like you do every morning when you get in prayer, I think it's kind of hard to do that stuff if we're just focused on arguing on these little points of doctrine with other people, because you can stay busy doing that stuff, or you can spend time trying to get closer to the Father and, and love other people.

I mean, you know, if, if this wasn't the case, 1 Corinthians 13, 12, he wouldn't put it in there, and it's there for a reason. But, I mean, there, there is a lot that we know, and we do know about the love of the Father, and, you know, there's so many times in, I guess, my life where I, I look at these things that are going on, and I have question marks. I know, like you said, you did too, and, but then I just, I'm reminded about who my Father is. You know, God the Father, you've got God as your Father. You know, Jesus died on the cross for your sins.

You got the Holy Spirit living inside of you. You know, when we die and we get to heaven, I'm sure we'll have a lot of these questions answered, and, and it's still good sometimes to seek and ask God, and I'm not saying that's the case, but I guess I want to admonish people who are listening is to, instead of focusing on all the things that you don't understand, focus on the, the God who we do understand, and praise Him. Yeah, but, and to the same extent, if we don't have questions, if we don't wonder, right, it causes us to dig into the Scriptures, allowing for His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and those kind of things, but if, you know, continuing on in the family, you know, you watch many Christmas movies, you're going to see there's often a brother, or an aunt, or an uncle.

In other words, family is a big part of what they usually are going to show in these movies, and often these people are characters. I mean, just all sorts of things that are going on, but when you think about Jesus, and it's and it's interesting, because Jesus is so many things, but when you think of Jesus as a brother, and you have this connection to what He's actually done at the cross, and, and you've been studying this just recently in, in Matthew 27, right? Yeah, I, and for a second, I mean, before I go there, you know, when you were talking about if you have parents who love the Lord, you know, because my wife and I, we love the Lord, and we tell our children about the Lord, but I'm sure there's somebody out there, there's people out there listening, whose parents did not love the Lord, and were not walking with the Lord, and actually heard J.D. Greer tell a story this week about a Muslim man who was, when he was in Southeast Asia many years ago, he was doing a mission trip, and he said, this guy came home, and he was a Christian, he said, but he would go to the mosque, and he would worship Jesus, but nobody knew about it, but he took these notes in a journal, and when he took the notes in the journal, his mother actually found them, and when he came home, his mother was at the front door, and there were about 200 men outside, and his mother said, these notes that took, said, I gave my life to Jesus, she said, are these your notes? And he said, yes, mother, I gave my life to Jesus. So his mother took, took her shoe off, she slapped him in the face with it, which is basically saying, you're no longer my son, and then the 200 men who were outside thought that they had beaten him to death. They cracked his ribs.

I mean, they beat him so bad, they had left him for dead. Well, five hours later, he came to, he found an, he found a missionary, and they got him to safety, and he got better, but I think JD, one of the things that he said was that the hardest part for this, for this young man is, is when he came to JD, and he said, I'll never speak to my family again, and he said he started to cry, but the good news is, and I dealt with that, because my dad, maybe, I think my dad might have gotten saved at the last minute, but during my dad's lifetime, he, he wasn't a Christian, and it was hard, you know, but it says in, Jesus said in Mark 3 33, he said, who are my mother and my brothers? He asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, here are my mother and my brothers, whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. So maybe you become a Christian, and maybe your family doesn't like it, maybe you're the only Christian in your family, and you feel like an outcast, but there's a verse, I know you talk about it, Robbie, where it says, you receive Mark chapter 10, right, that, you know, he who gives up mothers, sisters, brothers, lands, for my sake and the sake of gospel, will not fail to receive a hundred mothers, sisters, brothers, lands, and persecutions, both in this life, which is cool, because that means you're getting a hundred mothers, and those hundred mothers are going to be neat, but in the life to come, everlasting life, and so you do, and, and we do have the connection, we just do, we, we have a connection, we know through Noah, we have a connection, we know through Adam, that there are people in your family, I can assure you, that had a phenomenal relationship with God, in every person that's on the face of the earth, has this connection through their heritage to Adam, they have a connection to Noah, and then they may well have, you know, connections, you know, Jewish connections, or, you know, all these different heritages that are there, but once again, one of the brothers that you get is Jesus. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and one of the things that, uh, when you were talking about this, and I'm sure you've heard about this over the years, but scientists have developed, have found something inside of people that they call the God gene. Have you heard of that?

Oh yeah. And it's, and it's, it's proposed that human spirituality is influenced by heredity, and that a specific gene, called the vesicular mononaeum transporter 2, predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences. The idea has been proposed by geneticists Dean Hamer in his book called The God Gene, how faith is hardwired into our genes. I mean, isn't that kind of what you're saying?

Oh, it completely is. If you think about who invented the whole deal, you know, God made man, he made him very specifically. And when you look at, you know, just the word man in Hebrew, that when a man will leave his father and mother, it's one of the beautiful things of reading that particular passage is, you know, a lot of us, you know, what's the difference between a boy and a man?

What's the difference between a boy and a man? And a man in Hebrew is the head of the house. And so when a boy leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, at this point in time, he becomes a man, a head of his house.

Okay. And it's beautiful what happens, because it's what it's saying is, and the flesh, you know, Hebrew is a little bit different, you know, syntax. So it doesn't say he becomes one flesh. It says the flesh becomes one, a cod, which means the Lord is one. Oneness is a huge deal in the Bible.

It's just gigantic. And so, and the flesh becomes one, well, both man and wife. Now, woman's a different word, but man and wife both look very similar in Hebrew.

They both start with this aleph, but then the man is a bed, which means house, and the woman is the head of the water, which is a men. Okay. Which means that, and I don't know if you notice this with your wife, but I've noticed it with my wife. When it comes to the kids, she has authority I don't have. Right. She just does.

And I don't really get it necessarily or understand it. But you know, as well as I do that, you know, if your kid wants to jump off the roof, they come running, dad, I really want to jump off the roof. That's a great idea. You know, he's not going to go run to his mom to ask if he can jump off the roof. But now after he jumps to the roof and hurts himself, he's never going to run to dad. Oh man, I just met my leg. It hurts.

It hurts. You know, that isn't what happens. You know, the becoming one flesh part is very much a union of genders and an absolutely beautiful thing that obviously is hardwired. Right. You know, when you look at them, any family you want to, they're just certain things that you can clearly see that happen through the gender. But then the uniting of genders is, is, is truly beautiful.

You know, yeah. And, uh, you know, it's interesting when you were saying that one of the things that I was thinking is, is there are some people who are unmarried and Jesus talks about them. He said that, you know, some people become eunuchs for the kingdom of God, or they, they, you know, they want to devote their lives to, to Christ. And there's nothing wrong with that. Oh, well, yeah, because, you know, as Paul said, you know, I wish everybody was as I am. Right.

And, and I'm not, don't take what I said to mean that Paul was not a man. Okay. Right, right, right, right, right. Right. Because he had a marriage, right. He had a union with Christ that that's, that's absolutely phenomenal. Right. And, and, and the fruit.

Okay. Because think of how many children Paul had, and I happen to be one of them. That's right. That's right.

You know, because how many of us are still eating from the fruit of that union between Paul and Christ and, but there is definitely a union that they can happen for, like you said, for singles as well. That is, that is so cool. And one of the things that I, you know, when we're talking about this, one of the things that I think about is that, that God has a plan. You know, he, he, he has a plan. And, and I, it was interesting, I'd forgotten about this, but I was reading something this morning. It was a book that Stu gave me, and it was about how God is very organized, and he's structured.

And he said, even when Jesus, when he was feeding the thousands of people, and with all the fish, he said, they lined them up in rows of fifties and hundreds, and said, even when he was done, that he cleaned it all up. And so maybe, maybe if you're listening, you're wondering, well, is there a purpose? Is there a rhyme or reason to all of this that's going on? Whether even COVID, or, you know, with a parent who just passed away, or, you know, children who are wayward, or, you know, family members who are not walking with Jesus, or who are not saved, and that, that God, he works it all together for good to his glory. You know, and, and a lot of times we can't see a hundred yards ahead of us, but all God wants us to see is what's right in front of our face.

Because if we saw what was a hundred yards ahead of us, then we'd skip right over the steps that we had to take to get there. So. Well, the stuff of a thousand Christmas movies, okay, is similarly to music that I'm told that there are more songs about going home than there are about love, and that it's a gigantically critical aspect of the human nature. So as you're listening to the show today and you're thinking, yeah, you know, you just think about, you know, home, word bound, I wish I was.

Okay. Well, there's this sense of coming into the kingdom that has to do with going home. And, and the good news is that your big brother, right, Jesus, he took on your sin on the cross so that you really could go, you could have that sense.

Like I remember when my parents divorced Mike, that I felt like I couldn't go home anymore because my parents weren't together. And, and it wasn't until I actually came to Christ that I realized, wow, I do have a home and I can go there if, and you know, I accept the God, you know, what God gave me, which is his son on the cross, taking on my sin and then asking him to be Lord of my life and, and receiving that and beginning to walk in his word and, and walk, you know, in his authority. In his authority. Matter of fact, there's a, there's an old song and it says, Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. Patiently waiting, Jesus is watching, watching for you and for me. Come home, come home, ye who are weary, come home. Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, is calling, calling, O sinner, come home. Maybe you're listening to this today and you say, God, I've been, I've been wandering and I've, I've been going my own way and, uh, you want to come home.

Just, just pray with us right now, Lord Jesus. I'm, I'm sorry. I've sinned against you. And I've, I've, I've, I've gone my own way, Lord. I've, I've been a prodigal Lord, but I, I apologize. I repent for my sins. I, I turn away from them and I, I look to you, Jesus, and I accept you as my personal savior. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me from my sins in Jesus name, if not for God, if not for God. This is the Truth Network.