Music playing... Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast and welcome back from the Labor Day weekend. We had a recorded program yesterday but we don't usually, we don't today.
We are a live broadcast for an hour each weekday afternoon and we take your calls. That's why we're live so that we can do it in real time, have back and forth conversation. If you have questions about the Bible, that's the main thing we discuss here. But you can ask your question about anything of genuine interest to Christians as Christians and you can talk about, you know, theology. You can talk about ethics.
You can talk about apologetics. You can raise questions about just about anything. And if you disagree with the answers that the host gives, you can call and balance comment. So that's what's available. Right now, all our lines appear to be full. So I'll give you the phone number and you can call in a few minutes and you'll probably find a line opening up. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And our first caller today is Mark calling from Mill Creek, Washington.
Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Good.
Thanks. Yeah. Well, my question is this. Our pastor has been doing a series on Nehemiah and our small group, he gives out these questions in our small group. The question was from Nehemiah 9, one through three, the Israelites were, you know, confessing their sins. And verse two says, then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And the question he asked was, what do you think of the idea of confessing the sins of one's ancestors? And is this something we should do?
And one of the persons, of course, chimed in about slavery, Black Lives Matter, that kind of thing. And so I just wanted your take on that. Well, I think that the reason that they were confessing the sins of their ancestors is because they were these were sins that had not really been repented of. That's why they'd gone into captivity and they're trying to, you know, kind of get a clean slate. They've just come back from the Babylonian exile. They're rebuilding their nation. They're, you know, seeking God's favor on the new nation that they've established.
And, you know, they want to confess to God that, you know, they themselves and those before them had, you know, earned the trouble that they had been in and they wanted to confess that. I think the nation of Israel was being treated as a solidarity. I don't know that really pagan nations like ours or secular nations like ours are viewed that way. I mean, in our nation, there's a percentage of the population that are God's people and, of course, a larger percentage that are not. And therefore, we identify not as much with the solidarity of the nation as with the solidarity of the church, the body of Christ. And that's what Israel was.
Israel was like the church of the time. And so I think that, you know, I know that Daniel also did the same thing in Daniel chapter nine. He prayed and he confessed the sins of the nation, including past generations and even included himself, although he hadn't committed any of those sins, which is kind of interesting. So I'm not really sure what they were thinking. That's not a commonplace necessarily in the Bible to ask forgiveness for your parents' sins, unless, of course, you've continued them.
That's the problem, I think. Also, I think that, you know, the law in Exodus 20 said that God would, if Israel committed idolatry, that God would visit the iniquity of the parents on the children of the third and fourth generation. And the exile in Babylon was God doing that.
Israel had committed iniquity and idolatry and God had sent them into Babylon. And these people were probably about the fourth generation after that. And so three or four generations had suffered from the iniquities of their parents. And perhaps that's what they have in mind when they're saying, you know, our parents brought this upon us.
And two or three generations of us, or three or four generations of us, have suffered from it. And so they're maybe probably bringing that up as a factor in the fact that they're seeking to make a clean break from the enduring consequences of their parents' sins. But in any case, there's nothing in the New Testament that would suggest that we repent of anybody's sins but our own. You know, the Bible says if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. I don't think we can confess other people's sins and they will be forgiven by us confessing them. But it's more, I think, it's probably connected to the covenantal curse that came upon them because of their fathers being in idolatry and them having suffered of the third and fourth generation as a result of it. They're probably trying to just encompass that whole three and four generation that have suffered from their father's sins and repent of all, you know, connection they've had with it. Now, there's nothing wrong with, you know, I think, repenting of the sins of your nation, though I'm not really sure that it makes a lot of sense in most cases because you didn't commit the sins. You're not the one responsible for them. I think the person who committed the sins needs to be held responsible, not a person who never would have agreed with them.
Not a person who never would have agreed with them in the first place and didn't have any opportunity to commit them. So, I mean, for me to repent of slavery, you know, back in the 19th century, and I'm two centuries removed from it, and I never had any ancestors who had slaves. And, you know, and I've never had, I mean, for me to repent of slavery, it'd be a very strange thing because neither I nor my ancestors have ever been involved in it. So, I mean, I think that the Israel is seen as a solidarity, as God's nation, as God's people. And therefore, sometimes the prophets and others would identify as representatives of the nation and make confession of sin for them and so forth because of judgment that had come upon them. But in a secular country, I don't know that that would be the same. I don't think that God looks at secular countries in exactly the same way, especially a pluralistic country where a good percentage of the population are people who are Christians who haven't committed those sins, whereas maybe another percentage aren't even Christians and we can't repent for their sins. So, you know, I think that it's a stretch to say, well, because Nehemiah and Daniel and some of those guys after the exile repented for the sins their ancestors had done that brought them into exile. That seems to me like a fairly unique situation. And it is Israel, after all. It's not a secular nation.
And there are factors that I think maybe would play into that that I don't think would have any relevance to our own case. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for your answer. All right.
Thank you for calling. It's a hard question. I don't really know the answer.
I'm just guessing. Okay, let's talk to Peter in Hillsboro, Oregon. Peter, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. All right, Steve. The Bible says if you call your brother a fool, you're in danger of hellfire. What if I call a politician an evil, you know, moron in my own home? Is that my in danger of hellfire?
Well, it depends on what's in your heart. Jesus called people fools. Jesus referred to the Pharisees as fools. He also even spoke to some of his disciples, the two men on the road to Emmaus and called them fools.
Paul wrote to the whole church of Galatians and called them foolish Galatians, which is another way of calling them fools. So when Jesus said, if you say to your brother, you fool, this has to be taken within its proper context. It starts with Jesus saying, you've heard that if you murder your brother, you'll be subject to judgment. But I'm saying there's other things that don't seem as severe as don't seem to rise to the level of murder in our minds, but which are related to it and also bring us into danger of judgment. And those things would be the things in the heart that lead to murder.
Now, what kind of things lead to murder? Well, anger is something Jesus mentions there. In 1 John, John mentions hatred. He said, he that hates his brother is a murderer. Jesus said, if you're angry at your brother without a cause. And he also spoke of calling your brother fool or rocker.
Rocker is just a term of contempt. It means something like empty head. He said, you'll be in danger of it. But what I think he means is I don't think he means that if you say fool, you're automatically you've got a ticket to hell. I think what he's saying is if you have contempt for your brother, disregard for your brother, if you don't honor him as someone made in God's image, if you don't recognize him as a fellow human being and fellow sinner with yourself, loved by God and died for by Christ, if you just disregard his value as a human being and calling him an empty head or a fool. And I think by that, he's talking about doing so gratuitously without really having any righteous cause for using those terms. Then you have the attitude toward your brother that contributes to murder. If anyone murders another person, at the very least, they have not regarded them highly.
They have not dignified them as people made in the image of God. Now, if you say that somebody is a fool, it may not be as a term of contempt. It may be as a descriptive term because sometimes, I mean, there is a difference between being wise and being foolish. The book of Proverbs talks all the time about the fool and the wise and contrast them.
There are people who are fools and there are people who are wise. And if you're using the term to describe something they are doing or thinking, say, that's foolish. I mean, that's how Jesus used the term. That's how Paul used the term.
That can't be sin. What Jesus is talking about is simply using abusive language that illustrates contempt for your brother. So if you call your brother, you fool.
I mean, I think people sometimes get too legalistic about what Jesus said and they don't notice what he's getting at. He's getting at the point that murder is not the only way to disrespect your brother, though it's the ultimate way. There are things that lead up to murder, which may not end up in murder, but which are the same species of disrespect and hatred and anger toward your brother. Those things in your heart are not okay. And if you have those things in your heart and those things are coming out of your mouth, then you are in danger of hell fire. He doesn't say you're going to hell, but you might. You're in danger of it. Your heart is in such a place that that's the path you're on. He didn't say you can't get off of it, but he's saying this is the road to hell, or this is the road to Hannah, actually, he says. Because I really have contempt for these baby-killing Democrats. I can't take them.
Yeah, I do too. Well, you have to learn how to hate evil in the abstract without hating somebody that God loves. God loves sinners.
He hates them in another sense, but the Bible says he loved the world enough to die for it and for all people, for all sinners. And so you can't, I mean, you have to value them. When somebody is a very evil person, so much so that they don't seem to have any value left in them, and I can think of a few people who are in the news, politicians that you hear from a lot these days, I mean, when I hear them, I think that person seems to have outlived their mind. You know, they've lost their mind.
I don't know if they ever had one, but they don't seem to have one now. And to point that out is simply an observation of fact. You might say it to your own mother or father if they're getting dementia, you know, and it doesn't mean you hate them. Now, if because their mind is foggy, they also make decisions that are evil or poorly thought out and which end up in evil, we have to ask ourselves, are these people trying to be evil people? Maybe they are, but we don't know that. Or are they just out of touch with God? They're out of touch with God's ways. They don't understand that this is truly evil. I don't know.
I really don't know. And I have to be careful about speaking abusively about them. I can certainly describe their words, their policies as both evil and foolish. And I do so without diminishing my desire that they might be saved and be with us for eternity with God. If you've written people off in the sense that you don't even want them to be saved, then you're not like God.
I'm not that bad. I hope they come to their senses in time. Yeah, I hope they do because, I mean, there are people who are doing very foolish things and they have a lot of power and very evil things. And to despise what they're doing and even to, in a sense, disrespect them for being so influential toward evil, that's not what Jesus is talking about. He's not talking about treating your brother like a criminal because he is a criminal or treating your brother like he's being foolish when he is.
He's just talking about using abusive language because you despise somebody. Sure. Okay. Thank you very much, Steve.
Okay. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you, Peter. Sharon from Loomis, California.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Hi. Let's see.
Where's my notes? Why did God try to kill Moses in Exodus 4, 24 through 26? Well, I just started reading Exodus and I get down to that part, you know, the Lord met him and there tried to kill him. I understand.
Go ahead. Yeah, lots of people have trouble with that. Well, what it says, well, Moses had been sent by God to go and confront Pharaoh and to demand that Pharaoh do what God is commanding him to do, namely, release the Israelites. But there was something God had commanded all Israelites to do, including Moses, which Moses had not done. And that was circumcise his son on the eighth day of his life. In other words, Moses is going down there to rebuke a pagan for not obeying God when he, one of God's own people, was not obeying God, which is even more scandalous, really.
I mean, if a pagan who's ignorant isn't obeying God, that's a bad thing. But if somebody who knows God knows who he's supposed to do and doesn't do it, that's really a bad thing. And Moses was guilty of that. Now, so God, I don't think, intended to kill him. It sounded like he was trying to kill him. But I think what it means is that Moses was in mortal danger. He could have died. He could have died if it hadn't ended the way it was. Now, in what sense God was trying to kill him, that's not explained. Some interpreters believe it's talking about him getting really sick. He might have gotten a super high fever and been, you know, thrown up and was near death.
You know, death from some illness. Or some people think perhaps God appeared sort of like he did when he wrestled with Jacob all night in Genesis, and that sort of a human form of God wrestled with Moses and came close to killing him and perhaps could have. But the circumcision of the son was what God was requiring. Now, Moses, I believe, in that situation, was somewhat disabled. So his wife took a sharp instrument and circumcised belatedly their son. And so the crisis ended. So that's what I think is going on.
That way, Moses would not be hypocritically standing before Pharaoh as God's agent, commanding obedience to God, when he himself had secretly areas of his life where he had not been obedient to God and had not settled that. Yeah, God doesn't mess around, does he? No. All right. Thank you.
All right, Sharon. Thank you for your call. Good talking to you. Okay, Anthony from Rhode Island.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.
Thanks so much for taking my call. Great show. I was listening to some archives and you had mentioned a commentary that I did some research on. And I wanted to know if, when you were doing your four looks at the Book of Revelation, if you had come across and studied a commentary that was written in 1614 by Andrew of Caesarea. And if you had, I wanted to find out what, if he was a historical, a historicalist or a spiritualist in taking his outlook on Revelation, because I read it and I couldn't figure it out. Isn't that funny? When, you know, you read a commentary, because Revelation is hard to understand, and after you read the commentary, you can't even figure out what the guy is saying.
And some of these and some of these competitors are very famous. It's reading the church fathers is like that. Now, Andreas, I'm not sure if you talk about the same person. There was an Andreas who may have been, may have written as early as the ninth century, but there's come question about when he wrote. And I have not read his whole commentary.
No, I don't. It's, it's not exactly real easily accessible. At least it wasn't. I didn't have the internet. Back when I was writing my book in Revelation, I didn't have the internet. I had to go to libraries and find books and I didn't find Andreas, but I did find people who quoted him. And the parts that they quoted were interesting in that they sounded like he might've been a preterist.
He and, you know, mostly him, I think. And, and cause he said that he was talking about the trumpet judgments. And he was saying that, you know, when these were occurring, God had not yet sent the Romans to destroy Jerusalem. It hadn't happened yet. And that this was about that, but I own, but I heard people quoting him.
I didn't read him in context. I, my suspicion was that if you could read the later parts of Revelation in his commentary, he might be a historicist because now see the difference is a preterist believes that Revelation is almost entirely about AD 70 and the destruction of Jerusalem. A historicist believes that the, the history of the whole church is scanned through the book of Revelation.
It's like a panoramic view of the whole church, but how early it begins is not agreed upon. There are many historicists who believe that the history begins in the time of Domitian and runs to the end of the world. Now the Domitian would be like 96 AD, but there are some, and that would include Adam Clark's commentary, who was also a historicist. And I think Matthew Henry's too, if I'm not mistaken, as I recall, who they're historians and they believe the book of Revelation goes through the whole church age, but they begin it earlier than Domitian.
They begin it, you know, with the Jewish war. And so if that's, if that was what Andreas was doing, I don't know, cause I haven't read his whole commentary, but if that's what he was doing, he could either have been a preterist or he could have been a historicist who saw the early parts as being about the Jewish war, but, but would see the book of Revelation carrying on through the rest of church history eventually. It was interesting. A lot of the stuff that you teach, you know, and again, this was back in 1614, he confirmed such as the thousand years being literal, you know, being the church age and a lot of other things that you've said.
I mean, it was just absolutely amazing, but I couldn't understand. Most of what I say, most of what I say about Revelation goes back at least to the 1600s, if not much earlier. And the idea that the thousand years represents the church age, that would be almost the unanimous view of the church from about 400 to about 1800. So yeah, any commentary written by a mainstream Christian in the 1600s would be all millennial because the whole church was.
Okay. That makes sense. The only thing that confused me with him, he kept talking about the antichrist in Revelation. And that's, that's the thing that's through me because the historicists had an antichrist. Right. Well, you know, the historicists and the futurists both use the word antichrist to refer to the beast in Revelation 13.
Now the beast is not, is nowhere called the antichrist, but they just assume that is the antichrist. Now in 1614, if he was a Protestant, I don't remember if he was a Catholic commentary. No, I think he was Catholic. Yeah.
Yeah. Then he would probably be following Francisco Ribera's work. Francisco Ribera was a Jesuit priest in the late 1500s, just before him, who believed that the antichrist would be a last days figure, like the dispensationalist believed today. In fact, that's when that idea arose, basically in modern times. The early church fathers talked about an antichrist also, but of course they lived long before the rise of the papacy. And after the rise of the papacy, it became more commonplace to believe the papacy was the antichrist. But, you know, the church fathers, they talked about the antichrist too, but it's hard to know exactly how they visualized him. And they didn't live very late in his, in church history. So they couldn't identify anything in their time as, as the antichrist, but they did generally see the papacy that way. The church often did. I mean, even, even during the Catholic times, groups like the Franciscan order saw the popes as the antichrist.
And that was a long time before the reformation and all the reformers saw it that way. Hey, listen, I need to try to get another call in here, but I appreciate you joining us today. Thank you.
Rodney from Detroit, Michigan. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.
Thanks for taking my call. My question is about the Sabbath day. I've heard arguments both ways. I know there's a difference in opinion on if a Christian should like keep it or not. But my question is the Sabbath day is one of the 10 commandments. And I know that like nobody would argue that the other nine commandments are definitely valid for the day. So wouldn't the fact that the Sabbath day is listed in the 10 commandments, you know, kind of solidify it as something that we should be paying a specific attention to. It would seem kind of strange that just one of the 10 commandments was done away with yet the other nine would still be valid. Well, it's not strange really at all, because lots of the 613 laws in the Old Testament were done away. And a lot of them still represent valid moral principles.
Moral principles are valid at all times. Even before the 10 commandments, it was wrong to murder. That's why Cain got into trouble. Even before the law was given in Abraham's time, it was wrong to commit adultery, which is why people didn't want to take Abraham's wife while he was living. I mean, adultery, murder, theft, these kinds of things blasphemy.
These have been considered to be evil and are evil from the foundation of the earth and always will be. The fact that the 10 commandments include some of those things doesn't mean that it originated them, or that they cease to be true when the 10 commandments cease to be our guide. Jesus taught all those things too. But Sabbath keeping was never commanded until after the Exodus, and it's never commanded in the New Testament, because Sabbath keeping is a different kind of law. Just like in the Old Testament, we have lots of laws about keeping new moons and festivals and things like that. Those are all part of the Old Covenant. They're not part of a new covenant. And Sabbath is of that type of a law. It's not what we call a moral law.
It's a ritual law. I'm sorry I'm out of time for that. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We're taking a break for a few seconds, and I'll be back for another half hour. Our website is thenarrowpath.com.
Let's talk again in 30 seconds. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. At the beginning of our first half hour, I had to announce our lines were full.
Right now, I can announce that almost all of our lines, not all of them, are open. And therefore, you could get through if you call right now. The number is 844-484-5737.
That's 844-484-5737. And before we get to the calls, I want to say something more about the last call because we got a call from a caller in the last minute or minute and a half of our segment, and I was not able to go into much detail. And I don't want to go into much detail now because it was on a subject that people ask about a lot, which means I've talked about it a lot. I mean, I don't have anything new to say that I haven't said 100 times on this program over the last 25 years or 23. But just for the sake of the caller, we didn't get much time.
I just want to say this. His question was, if we don't keep the Sabbath, then why do we keep all the other Ten Commandments? Why would there be a law in the Ten Commandments that we don't have to keep when we see the validity of the other nine perpetually? And my answer in brief was there's two kinds of laws in the Bible. There's 613 laws in the Old Testament, and some of them are eternal principles.
We call that the moral law. The moral law is based on something that never changes, namely God's character. God is just, and therefore all behavior that is unjust is always contrary to Him. God is faithful. All behavior that is contrary to faithfulness is contrary to Him.
God is holy and unselfish and loving, and all behavior that is not like God is sinful. Now, that's true before there were Ten Commandments and afterwards. So murder, adultery, theft, bearing false witness, dishonoring your parents, these kinds of things are wrong, and they were always wrong and still are wrong because they go against the nature of God Himself.
And God doesn't change, so those things never change. Therefore, we find that it was already considered to be wrong to murder back in the days of Cain and Abel. It was already considered to be wrong to commit adultery in the days of Abraham, and probably long before that too. Lying and swearing falsely, stealing, dishonoring your parents, none of these things were tolerable in any legal system even before the Ten Commandments were given. The fact that the Ten Commandments include some of these doesn't tell us that the Ten Commandments invented them or that when the Ten Commandments come to the end of their use that those principles somehow have ceased. The Ten Commandments were part of a covenant that God made with Israel. There's a new covenant now, the Bible says, and it's made the old covenant obsolete. It says that in Hebrews chapter 8, verse 13, now that there's a new covenant, the old covenant is obsolete, he says. So the Ten Commandments were part of that covenant that's obsolete. But moral behavior is not obsolete.
It's not absolute. It's the laws that are obsolete. That is the body of legislation that God gave at Mount Sinai, which included the Ten Commandments and 603 other commandments. So we still keep those because they've always been required. They were required before Moses' time. They're required after Jesus' time.
So that's why nine of those things really, we don't dispense with them. Even though we have dispensed with the Ten Commandments as a body of legislation. They were valid before there was that body of legislation.
And now that that body of legislation no longer exists, they still are valid. However, there's another kind of laws that God made with Israel that only apply to them because he had a special covenant relationship with them. Of course, he required them to keep the moral commandments.
He wanted to make sure they knew that. But he also wanted them to do some other things that not everybody has to do, like offer sacrifices in the tabernacle in a certain way and keep certain annual festivals and certain monthly festivals, the new moons and certain weekly festivals, the sabbaths and so forth. These all were of a different type because they're not something that grow out of the eternal nature of God. The Sabbath is based on the fact that God rested after six days, but that's not part of his nature.
That's just something he did. He doesn't rest every six days or every seven days. That's not something that's part of his nature or else he'd be keeping the Sabbath today. God never kept the Sabbath after the first one in Genesis chapter two.
God has never rested from his works ever since. And Jesus used that as his reason for not resting from his on the Sabbath. In John chapter five, when they accused him of working on the Sabbath, he said, yep, that's what my father does. And I'm his son, like father, like son. You know, I do what my father does. And that means he works every day.
I work every day. In other words, Jesus said Sabbath keeping isn't something God does. And therefore it's not part of his eternal character or something like that. But faithfulness is, justice is, love is, but keeping certain days special is not. And therefore the laws that were ceremonial were the ones that told the Jews not to eat certain foods, not to work on certain days, to observe certain festivals, to offer certain animals in a certain way, in a certain place with certain priests and so forth.
Now that was all important. It was all very important in the Old Covenant because that was the way the Jews would show that they were special people because not everyone was required to do those things. God told Israel that keeping the Sabbath was the distinctive mark of the covenant. It was the way that they showed that they were under this particular covenant that God made at Sinai, where he commanded it. Likewise, circumcision was a mark of being part of the covenant made with Abraham.
But these things are not now. In the New Testament, we don't find any commands to do any of these things. So in fact, you know, if you look at Romans chapter 13, I guess it is, Paul says in Romans 13 verse 9 and 10, for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet. And if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Now notice, he did list some of the things that are in the Ten Commandments, but only the moral ones. He didn't mention anything about Sabbath keeping, but he said, and if there's any other commandment, meaning if there's anything else that God requires of us besides these, it's all summed up with love your neighbor as yourself. And because loving your neighbor doesn't hurt anybody, you don't harm anyone.
So that fulfills the legal requirements that are upon us. God wants us not to hurt each other. Well, you could keep Sabbath and still hurt somebody. In fact, you could not keep Sabbath without hurting anybody. Keeping Sabbath doesn't hurt or not hurt anyone.
It's not relevant. It's a ritual, just like keeping Passover or keeping the new wounds are rituals. And the Bible indicates that those things were shadows, temporary things that have been replaced with the body, the substance, which is Christ.
Paul says that in Colossians 2, verses 16 and 17. So I hope that helps. I didn't want to, I left the caller with so little time to answer.
I wanted to give him some more time. Okay, let's talk to Regina from San Diego County, California. Hi, Regina. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for taking my call. So my call is in reference to prayer. And I wanted to know with regard to prayer, how when I know prayer is an ancient practice prior to, I guess, Judaism, because people have always prayed or sacrificed to some type of deity or something. And then it was, you know, Jesus taught us to pray and the disciples prayed and so forth.
Right. So what would your question be about prayer? Is when we pray, I know God doesn't change his mind, but what is the purpose of us praying if something has already been declared as so?
I guess I'm really trying to understand. I mean, I believe in prayer, but sometimes they get answered, sometimes they don't. So I'm just trying to understand, is God changing his mind or is he being merciful because we prayed or, you know what I mean? Well, God doesn't want us to pray in order to change his mind and we don't want to change his mind.
He's always right. Why would we ever want to change his mind? You know, whatever God wants is perfect. Whatever he decides is as good as it gets.
We don't have any better ideas than he has. So I would never want to change his mind with my prayers. If he has something he intends to do, I just want to be on board with him. Now, the question is, of course, do we actually know his mind about everything?
Not about everything. We do pray for things that we hope might be his will, but we also hope that if it isn't his will, that he won't do it. In other words, I don't want to change his mind. If he thinks it's the best thing for me to get coronavirus and die from it, I don't know if that's his will or not, but if it is his will, I hope he doesn't change it because it wouldn't be his will unless it's the very best possible thing. I mean, I'm going to die somehow, and he knows how he wants me to die, and so I'd rather die the way he wants me to and when. Now, that doesn't mean I wouldn't seek any kind of medical care because I don't know that it's his will for me to die. The fact that I get the virus doesn't mean that I know that he wants me to die from it.
The point I'm making is I don't want to change his mind. If he, you know, Hezekiah, the king, who is a good king, was visited by Isaiah, who told him that God wants him to get his house in order because he's going to die. He was sick, and of course, until Isaiah came to him, it wasn't known. Will you recover?
Will you not? Well, he said, God tells me you're going to die, so get your house in order. Well, Hezekiah didn't want to die. It would have been better if he had at that time, frankly, and that's why God wanted to take him, but he prayed, and he asked God to change his mind. Now, God did change his mind and gave him 12 more years to live—excuse me, 15 more years to live. Three years later, he had a son, and 12 years later, he died and left a 12-year-old son to rule in his place, who would never have been born if he had died when God told him to, and that son became the worst king ever. He became the longest reigning and the worst king that the Jews ever had led them into idolatry, and eventually brought about the Babylonian exile because of him, the Bible says.
So, it was a disaster. God told Abraham—I mean Hezekiah at that time—and he says, you're going to die, so just prepare for it. And Hezekiah wasn't willing to let that be the final answer, and so he said, okay, how about if you change your mind? Now, God did, and you know, the Bible says sometimes God gives us what we ask for when it isn't his desire. He gives us our request, and with it, leanness of soul, the Bible says. That's why the Bible says we should always pray if it is your will. I mean, we might know very well what our will is. I know that if I'm sick, I want to get well.
I know that if my marriage is in trouble, I want it to get better today. I know that if I'm childless and I can't have a child, I know I want to have a child, but God's will is best. And so, our prayers are not to change His mind, but to request what we think may be His will. Now, some might say, but if it's already His will, won't it just happen?
Why should we have to request it? No, it won't, because God has given us a role to play in governing the world. That's why He made Adam and Eve. He said, let us make man in our own image, and let's give Him dominion over the world that we've made, okay? So, He gave man dominion, and God allows man to do things, including to request His aid in things. And as I said, He might even answer our prayers as we ask, even if they're not good prayers. So, we need to be careful that we always do what Jesus did. Jesus said, Father, if it's your will, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but Yours be done.
That's how we need to be understanding things. Jesus wanted to avoid the cross, and who wouldn't? If I was in His position, I'd probably be praying the same thing.
And I'm not sure I'd be so quick to say, but Your will be done, not mine. But Jesus prayed the way we're supposed to pray. He prayed for what He hoped would be the will of God, what He wanted to be the will of God. But He also said, however, of course, God, I want you to have the power of veto if this is not the right thing.
Not my will, but Yours be done. And that's how we should always pray. We should always be praying according to His will, if we can. And if we don't know His will, we simply, you know, give that caveat. Our prayers are not demanding of God things.
We're inviting Him to act in a world that He's given us charge over. And so, it says in 1 John 5, I think it's verse 13, if I'm not mistaken, it might be verse 14. I think it's verse 14, actually. It says, this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, we know that we have the things that we desired of Him. So, He will answer our prayers if we pray according to His will. Now, some might say, as I said, but can't He do it without me asking?
Well, He may, perhaps He can, but He has decided not to. Remember, James said, you have not because you asked not. What that means is you would have it if you'd asked. You didn't pray. And therefore, the thing that God would have done and wanted to do didn't happen. The fact that you would have had if you prayed means it was God's will to give it to you.
But you didn't get it because you didn't ask for it. So, the Bible clearly teaches that prayer changes outcomes. And so, we should always be praying that God's will will be done. And always be, whether we say so out loud or not, our idea should be, but if it's not, you will. Please do something else because we're not trying to change His mind about anything.
At least, I certainly wouldn't want to change His mind about anything. I don't know better than Him. All right, let's talk to Dwight from Denver, Colorado. Dwight, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes.
Hi, Steve. I'm wondering, is it required of all pastors to give a financial statement as to how much their offerings are and then what they do with the money? I have, you know, I believe that 501c3 corporations, and most churches are those, are supposed to have some kind of transparency about that. Now, I don't know that they have to print it out and hand it out to the congregation, though I think it'd be a good thing because, I mean, they're counting on the congregation to support the projects and the expenses that the church is involved in. If the people don't support it, the church doesn't have any money to do it. So, they should be very transparent and say, here's where the money you're giving has gone. Now, I say they should.
The Bible doesn't say anything about it, of course. It's just a matter of honesty and transparency. I would certainly never ask anyone to give me anything if I didn't make it very clear what I was going to do with it, you know, and, you know, when we say, you know, if you give to The Narrow Path, we're a 501c3, you know, what we're going to do with it. We tell you exactly what we're going to do with it. We're going to buy radio time.
That's what we do. We don't have any salaries. We don't have any buildings. We don't have any staff. We don't have any payroll.
We don't have anything. We're all volunteers and we buy air time with the money. But churches buy a lot of things with the money. They usually pay some on a building unless it's outright owned. They usually have salaried staff.
They have some they give to missions. They have some they give to, you know, the gardener and things like that, you know, the window washers and stuff. So, I mean, they should allow the people to know where the money's going. In fact, some people I know are going to a relatively small church that has some big expenses and they're really laying on the pressure for people to give. And yet the church refuses to answer members of the congregation when they ask, you know, how is this money going on? What are we paying our staff here?
This church has several pastors on staff and they receive paychecks and they will not tell the congregation how much they're making. I told them I would. No, I wouldn't give another penny. I wouldn't give another penny.
If you're too ashamed of how you're spending the money I'm giving you, then I'm not going to give you any more cause for shame. I'm not going to give you any more money, you know? Yeah.
Okay, thank you. Okay, Dwight. Good talking to you. Bye now. Okay, let's see, Maxine in California somewhere. Hi, Maxine. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thank you. My question is, is there such a thing as praying for petty things? For example, and I shocked myself. I was in conversation and someone asked me to pray. Oh, I need a housekeeper.
I need someone to help me clean. Would you pray for me? And I said, no.
Then I shocked myself and they said, well, why not? I said, there are people in this world who are sex slaves, human trafficked, they're sick, they're poor. These are the things that you should pray for. And then I thought, who am I to say? And I just want your opinion on the question of can you pray or ask for things that are just petty?
I think you can. You know, the Bible says that God is concerned about every detail. He said the hairs of your head are numbered, which means they're a matter of his attention and concern. The Bible says, cast all your cares on him for he cares for you.
So he cares about all the things you care about. You know, I think that, you know, some of the things we think we need do seem really petty compared to some of the horrible things people are going through in the world. But I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't really think we have to just pray for one or the other. I think we can pray for big things and little ones at the same time. Now, it'd be hard to pray for every little thing that's a concern of every person. And we can't.
We don't know what they are. But if someone specifically says, hey, this is something that's a need, you know, I need this done. I need to hire somebody or whatever. And I just can't find someone.
I'm up the creek. Please pray that God will supply someone. I think that, you know, I think we should pray about everything that really is a concern. And a lot of times those are bigger issues than we know. A lot of times, I mean, through prayer, God will direct things so that, you know, they'll hire the housekeeper that it becomes a significant connection.
You know, maybe they'll lead that person to the Lord or maybe the housekeeper will lead them to the Lord or something else will happen. I mean, you never know what a small thing might turn out to be, you know, the loss of a nail in a horseshoe can cause a battle to be ended. Yeah. So we can't really, shouldn't minimize things too much. But we, but you're right.
There's some big issues we should be praying for a lot because they, I think there's a lot of demonic energy going into some big things that are going on and we need some energetic prayer to come against them. All right. Thank you.
Okay, Maxine. Good talking to you. Thanks for calling.
Dawn from Sacramento, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Thanks for taking my call. This question is about motivation, about what motivated Cain to play Abel and also what motivated the people who killed Jesus Christ, motivated them as well. And does the Bible explain for us what that motivation was?
Well, it, you know, it's probably a complex of things. The Bible does say, it says in 1 John in chapter 3, you know, it says, why did Cain kill Abel? He says, because his own brothers worked for righteous and his own works were evil. Now what's that mean? Does it mean that an evil person simply hates righteousness?
It could. I think there are evil people that hate righteousness. Or does it mean that he was jealous?
That would be perhaps not altogether, you know, removed from the first suggestion, but we don't, we don't really know the whole picture. He hated his brother because God favored his brother over him. So it could be mere jealousy. Or as it says in 1 John, it might be just that he hated, he hated righteousness because he was given over to evil. As far as those who crucified Christ, well, we, we know it says in the gospels that Pilate was aware that out of jealousy, they had delivered Jesus over to him. So jealousy was a factor.
And I think, I think that was probably the main factor. Now there may be in them also a certain hatred of righteousness, hatred of goodness. Why would anyone hate goodness? I mean, why would anyone, for example, not love Jesus, uh, since he never did anything evil and all these wonderful things?
Well, because they aren't wonderful and they don't look very good by comparison. And they feel that their own wickedness is shown up by contrast to somebody who's doing the right thing. And, uh, that's probably involved in Cain's actions as well. I'm, I'm, that's my, that would be my guess. I appreciate your call. One more call.
If we can get it in. Richard from Seal Beach, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yeah, Steve, in John 5, verse 30, Jesus said he came to do the will of the father. In Luke 4 16, he went to church on the Sabbath day as was his custom. Now doesn't it just come and says to you that going to church on Saturday is the will of the father? I don't think so.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. His custom was to go into the synagogue on the Sabbath day because that's where people were. You know what he did there? He preached there. You know what he did when it wasn't the Sabbath? He preached where the people were. He'd go to where people were and he preached them. Paul did too. You read in the book of Acts that, that Paul went into the synagogues on the Sabbath when he was traveling in his ministry.
Why? Because that's where people were on that day. If it was a different day of the week, he'd go to where they were that day. So there's no, no suggestion that either Jesus or Paul observed the Sabbath in the sense of saying, this is a day of rest for me. Going into a synagogue and preaching isn't the same thing as resting. And especially if it's the same thing you do the other six days of the week. The Sabbath law was that you're supposed to do your normal work for six days and then on the seventh day don't do it.
That's the point. You, you cease from your ordinary work on the Sabbath, but the priests didn't. And Jesus pointed that out because their work was too important to, to rest from it. And Jesus' work was too important to rest from it. He didn't rest on the Sabbath day. He worked on the Sabbath day, same work he did every other day. So going into the synagogue is no part of what it means to observe the Sabbath. But of course, I'm sure Jesus enjoyed going into the Sabbath because I mean, into the synagogue, cause he's all his life, he'd gone in and heard the word of God read. You mean, I don't believe there's any obligation for me to go to church on Sunday, but I like to go to church on Sunday. I like to hear the word of God. I like to worship and I'm sure that Jesus did too and Paul, but the reason they went there was to do the will of the father and the will of the father was not resting, but preaching for them.
That's their work. Paul was a preacher. Jesus was a preacher and they preached on the Sabbath every time they got a chance.
Okay. God only rested from his work of creation, not his other work. That's exactly right. So, God didn't wait for them to listen and Jesus didn't preach when he was the answer. And in Daniel 7 verse 25, it says there is a king or a leader who will change God's laws.
Isn't that Pope Gregory in a Catholic church? And don't people that go to church on Sunday forget the Sabbath day instead of remembering it? I don't know if they do or not. I guess we'd have to ask what's in their head. Forgetting something is that something goes inside whether you forgot something or not. That's in your mind. You can't tell me what I'm forgetting and what I'm not. I might be remembering it and realizing it's not something I'm required to do. I mean, or I might even find myself in church on a Sunday and not remember that somebody thought that's what's required.
I mean, remembering it is not the same thing as doing it. But, I know you're a seventh-day Adventist and I know that you like to call about this subject, as do several other seventh-day Adventists. I don't really care to have this discussion a hundred times a month, but it's an open phone line. I appreciate your call. God bless you. You're listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We're listener supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Our website, thenarrowpath.com.
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