The Narrow Path 9/9

Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon with open phone lines for you to call if you wish to call with questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or anything related there unto or whether you have a difference of opinion with the host and would like to bring that up, you can call this number. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Damian from Boise, Idaho.

Damian, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey Steve, God bless. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you.

Awesome. Hey Steve, I have two questions for you. My first question is I'm reading the book of Jude and I think in verse 20 it talks about praying in the Spirit.

My first question is how do you pray in the Spirit if you don't have the gift of speaking in tongues? And then my second question is on the idealist view of Revelation, I'm kind of having a hard time I guess wrapping my head around it and I just want to see if I'm on the right track. The idealist view basically says it's not speaking about like a specific time frame or season, it's just basically something that can repeat in different time frames of history.

Is that kind of... Well yeah, kind of. Yeah, the idealist view of Revelation is that the visions are symbolic of larger principles or ideals or truths which do not apply to one particular time in history but might apply to many different times of history. They are like the truth of God's sovereignty over the nations, the raising up of kingdoms and bringing down of kingdoms, the bringing of wars of conquest as judgments on nations and things like that. That these things happen throughout history and that God is the one behind them is kind of what the idealist view holds.

The book of Revelation will be telling us. And so, you know, almost anyone who makes some kind of a spiritual lesson from the book of Revelation, from any of its visions or anything, would in some sense be following the idealist view. Though it's entirely possible to take idealist approach to certain parts of Revelation whereas you see the whole book in, you know, largely a different way. Maybe like I see the whole book largely in a preterist way but I see the middle parts and the last parts of the book in an idealist way. I have reasons for that. Of course, my lectures, I give those reasons. But the idea of the idealist view is that it is symbolic for ideas and transcendent principles that are always true and manifest in different historical situations throughout history repeatedly.

So that would be what the idealist view generally refers to. As far as Jude verse 20, you said, is that a reference to speaking in tongues and how do you pray in the Spirit if you don't speak in tongues? Well, it is true that Paul uses the expression praying in the Spirit to mean speaking in tongues because he says in 1 Corinthians 14, 14, for I pray if I pray in a tongue my spirit prays and my understanding is unfruitful.

What is it then? I will pray with the Spirit and I will pray also with the understanding. I will sing with the Spirit and I will pray and sing with the understanding. Otherwise, if you bless with the Spirit, and here you'll see he clearly means in tongues, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say amen at your giving of thanks since he does not understand what you're saying. So Paul does in 1 Corinthians 14, when he is talking about tongues, he does refer to it as praying and singing and blessing God in the Spirit.

Now Jude says that we should pray in the Holy Spirit. In fact, he says we should build ourselves up in the most holy faith praying in the Holy Spirit. It's interesting that when Paul was talking about tongues, he says that he that speaks in an unknown tongue edifies himself.

That means builds himself up. So we do know that from 1 Corinthians 14, Paul sees speaking in tongues to be speaking in the praying in the Spirit and also building oneself up. So in Jude, who is a different author and might use the terms differently than Paul, Jude says but beloved build yourselves up in your most holy faith praying in the Holy Spirit. It would connect very well with Paul's discussion of speaking in tongues as that which builds you up and that which is in the Spirit. However, I don't know that that's enough for us to assume that praying in the Spirit necessarily must only mean in tongues. I would assume that if we're praying under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and empowered by the Holy Spirit, enabled by the Holy Spirit, I would consider we're praying in the Spirit in that sense because we walk in the Spirit in that sense.

In the Spirit, when the Bible says walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. To walk in the Spirit, I believe, is to be guided by the Spirit and to be empowered by the Spirit. And so praying in the Spirit could mean the same thing. Now certainly that would apply to speaking in tongues, but it might not apply only to speaking in tongues. In Ephesians chapter 6, Paul says in verse 18 that we should be praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. Now he says we should specifically be praying in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication and praying for all the saints. If you're speaking in tongues, you don't really know what you're praying for. So I don't know if he's saying pray in tongues for all the saints because I don't know how you'd know to do that because speaking in tongues you aren't determining what you're praying for.

The Holy Spirit is. So I think probably Paul uses the term praying in the Spirit there more broadly and probably does not refer to speaking in tongues in Ephesians 6, 18. And therefore it's entirely possible that Jude is not referring to speaking in tongues when he speaks of praying in the Spirit.

But it's possible that he is. Of course speaking in tongues was a very commonplace activity in the early church and any of the writers of the New Testament could have alluded to it by that phrase. But I think though when Paul talks about praying in the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 14, it's in a context where it's obvious he's talking about praying in tongues. In these other places it's not obvious that he's talking about praying in tongues. And I think possibly that praying in the Spirit can either be in tongues or not in tongues. And if that's true, then I suspect that these guys would have in these other places that don't mention tongues, they probably would have specifically mentioned tongues if that's what they were talking about. Unless, and this is a big unless, unless it was generally understood in the early church that the term praying in the Spirit means praying in tongues.

And I don't know if that is, I don't know if the early church thought that we're not, which leaves that open to question. But how would you do it if you don't speak in tongues? Well, I would just ask that the Holy Spirit would guide me in my prayers. And, you know, that Christ would pray his prayers to the Father through me and just pray. I would begin by praying the way Jesus taught us to pray. I usually begin that way with the Lord's Prayer.

And then I usually fill in the, you know, the phrases I fill in with specific requests that are related to those phrases. But not everyone prays the same way. The main thing I think of praying in the Spirit is that you are being guided by the Spirit, which means you wouldn't be guided by me. I'm not going to be able to give you guidance about how to pray, how the Spirit would lead you to pray. I can only say, follow his leading. Now, the question, how do we know what his leading is? Well, that's, that's the big issue, isn't it?

I mean, Christians are always wondering, how do we know if something is the Spirit's guidance or something else? And that's a larger subject. But I would say, if your prayers are offered in submission to God, trusting his Spirit to guide them, and they are prayed, motivated by love for others and not by selfish, you know, desires, then I would just go, I said, proceed and leave it up to God to do the guiding, because there's nothing more I would know to do. All right. Awesome.

All right. Thank you so much. God bless. Yeah, thank you for your call. God bless you. Okay, Rich from Everett, Washington is next.

Welcome to The Narrow Path, Rich. Hey, Steve. Hey. Thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate your show. Thank you. Perfect timing, too.

I'm just pulling into the driveway. So. Oh, good.

Right. Um, I had a question I kind of wanted to run by you and get your opinion on. It's about kind of related to dispensational premillennialism, and a point that's often brought up when I discuss this with friends or members at my church. And maybe I could back into it a little bit by explaining what I'm thinking. But it has to do with, you know, one point they often bring up is, hey, look, Israel is now a nation again since 1941.

How do you explain that? 1948. Yeah. 48. Excuse me.

Yeah. And, you know, their typical explanation is, you know, this is a this is a really blessing. It's a fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant to Israel.

This is a good thing. This is this is God's filling his promise to them. And I'm wondering if maybe, at least I'm thinking, you know, there there might be another explanation for why probably several but at least one other at least biblically that I might be able to point to. And I guess I would start by maybe even backing up into the Old Testament, even taking a city that wasn't even Jewish, Nineveh, right? Jonah went to Nineveh, they're not Jews, they're pretty, pretty evil, wicked city with all kinds of wickedness. Jonah went there, he preached the Word of God, and they repented.

And in Matthew 12, Jesus points out that, hey, you know, in a manner of speaking, it could be said that those men of Nineveh, even though they were wicked, were more righteous and displayed better judgment than this generation of unbelieving Jews. And right now in Israel, we have a generation of unbelieving Jews. Matter of fact, I've heard, and I don't know how accurate is that converting people to Christianity in Israel is technically illegal. There's some real barriers that are put up there by the Jewish community that are in control.

Yeah, I know people I know people who were kicked out of the country of Israel because they gave somebody a New Testament. Wow. Exactly. Okay. So you have a current generation, this generation of Jews who are unbelieving and resistant to the gospel of Jesus Christ, compared to that generation that was in Nineveh 1000 years ago.

The other example he gives is, you know, the Kingdom of Sheba, which was a pagan kingdom to the south, and the Queen of Sheba came, you know, great distance to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And right, and he was saying the Jews were not doing that. Right.

We need to get to your question. Right. Right.

Okay. So and then he goes on and he says, when an unclean spirit leaves a man, it goes around into hostile dry places, but it seeks to return from where it left. And when it comes back, it finds the place occupied, but it brings seven more spirits and the case and the situation that man is worse than when the spirit left. And then he says, and so it is, with this generation, the whole, I've always heard that teaching in context of spiritual warfare deliverance, but he's really talking about this generation of unbelieving Jews, right?

Is a reason for telling that story. So couldn't it be that an alternative reason for the current nation state of Israel is not because of a blessed promise to Abraham, but because you have an unbelieving group of people who want to return to their homeland and because of their sin of unbelief, they have made it happen, you know, because of maybe choosing racial identity over repentance, maybe choosing nationalism over faithfulness, and for a lot of reasons. And it seems to me that that's kind of what Jesus is alluding to in Matthew chapter 12. Is that okay?

Is that a possibility? And does that make sense? Well, let me let me give you my own thoughts about that statement about the demons and so shall it be for this generation. Jesus spoke about his generation on many occasions. Remember, like there's five different times in Matthew that he uses the expression this generation to what shall I like in this generation?

They're like children playing in the marketplace and so forth. And they're a wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, he said. And when he gave the Olivet Discourses, these things shall happen in this generation. And he said the same thing in Matthew 23. And so we see that Jesus is talking about his own generation. And when he says his generation is like a man who had a demon cast out of it, but because the man didn't close the door or wasn't occupied enough to keep other the demons from coming back, the demons came back only in much greater force. I think Jesus is saying that his generation, the Jews of his time, were like that, that he and his ministry had cast out demons a lot from the nation and in the figurative sense had brought light to the nation corporately. Of course, individuals had demons cast out, but there's a sense in which the whole nation had had the darkness dispelled because it says of Jesus that those who sat in darkness have seen a great light when he preached. So the demons were kind of driven out of the nation, maybe not every last one, but the nation had been very much infested, as we can see from reading the Gospels. And yet they did not turn to Christ.

They did not close the door for a reinfestation. They didn't fill the house with Christ himself as a substitute for the demons that had been driven out. And so in 70 AD, that same generation experienced an infestation of demons that was horrendous. If you read Josephus' account, especially of the time of the siege of Jerusalem when the Romans were outside before they broke through, the behavior of the Jews inside were clearly the behavior of demon-possessed people, I mean, who had lost their minds. They were just crazy. I mean, it looked a lot like some of these Antifa riots or something like that, only on a large scale of the whole city.

And so I think he's predicting that because he came and he gave them a chance to be free, to be delivered, but they did not seize that opportunity, that they're going to be more infested by demons than they were previously. And I think that, and that happened in 70 AD. Now, as far as Israel existing today, I can't go into great detail right now because the call is waiting, but I can say this. There is a lecture at my website. There's actually a lecture series called What Are We to Make of Israel? And there's at least one lecture there, I believe, called The Modern State of Israel. And I go into the history of how the Zionist movement began in the 1800s and how it developed in such a way as through the influence, largely through the influence of dispensationalist Christians to influence political figures and so forth to agree to pressure the United Nations to let Israel become a nation.

I give dates and times and people and names and so forth. And so, you know, whether it's a fulfillment of prophecy or the blessing of Abraham or not, there certainly are other ways to explain how Israel could become a nation, especially if the most powerful country in the world, America, which was dominated very largely by dispensational Christian thought, was pressuring for that to happen. So it could be, I mean, the dispensationists did predict it would happen before it happened.

And that is their boast. They say, see, we said this was going to happen way back in the 1800s and here it did happen in the 1900s. Yeah, well, I mean, maybe they got it right or maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They worked really hard to make it happen. And who knows that it might not have happened through those efforts, whether there was any interest on God's part in it or not. It was largely the United Nations, which was not a godly organization that made Israel a nation again.

Now, God may have used them, but God might not have used them. I mean, the question of whether Israel today exists as a fulfillment of prophecy or not would have to depend on whether there is some prophecy to be fulfilled on that subject. And as I read the Old Testament and the New, I mean, there's zero in the New Testament. There's not one line in the New Testament that could possibly suggest that there's a restoration of Israel in the end times. But in the Old Testament, there are references to Israel being restored, but not in the end times, but after the Babylonian exile. And that did happen.

So once that happened, there's no other predictions about it. So I don't know of any Bible prophecy unfulfilled 2,000 years ago that remained to be fulfilled about Israel becoming a nation again. So I mean, my own, my series, What Are We to Make of Israel, goes into much more detail on that than I can here.

And especially for your interest, since you're interested in how the nation became a nation in modern times, my lecture on the modern state of Israel would probably be helpful to you. I appreciate your call, Rick. Kerry from Hearst, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yeah, Steve, thanks for taking my call. Sure. Hey, I was, I get to listen to your program quite often and I really enjoy it. I had a question about whether you are a Trinitarian and if you are, why you are, if you're not, why you're not.

And then a second question is if, for people who denied the deity of Christ, but they believe in a Christ, can they be saved? And I'll listen on the radio. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you for your call, Kerry. Yes, I am a Trinitarian. That means I believe in the Trinity. I don't take my view of the Trinity though from the creeds per se. I mean, they are in there and I might not have ever put the whole idea together if the creeds hadn't done it first, but I don't follow the creeds because they are the creeds. I follow things that are in the creeds if they agree with scripture. Some of the creeds say things I'm not sure I agree with, but I do believe that the creedal statements about the Trinity, at least the basic statements that God is one in substance and three in person, has a pretty good scriptural case in its favor. Now, there might be some other things that they say, like it says Jesus was begotten, not made before the foundation of the world and eternally proceeding from the Father, those kinds of things, those are going frankly into areas the Bible doesn't really say anything about very clearly. And the Bible doesn't really say anything very clear about the Trinity either, but there are lots of statements in the Bible that have to be harmonized because the people who made them were not schizophrenic and they weren't crazy. So like Jesus, he made a distinction between himself and the Father.

Frequently, he made that distinction. On other occasions, he identified himself with the Father. He said, the Father is in me. I'm in the Father.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Before Abraham was, I am, and other things like that, where Jesus actually was identifying himself with God. And yet other times, he never distinguished himself from God, but he did distinguish himself from the Father. The Father is God, but so is the Son, and so is the Holy Spirit. That being so, and the fact that there's only one God needing to be retained, means that God is in a sense one.

In another sense, he's three. And that's what I take. That's a Trinitarian doctrine. Now, will people who don't believe that Jesus is God, will they be lost or will they be saved?

I can't make decisions about that. I don't know that Abraham or Isaac or David or some of the prophets or other righteous Jews of their time in the Old Testament, I don't know how many of them knew the Messiah would be God. I know the rabbis in Jesus' day didn't believe that the Messiah would be God. The disciples, when they walked with Jesus, didn't know he was God. Remember, when he stilled the storm, they said, what kind of man is this?

That he commands the wind of the waves and they obey him. I mean, they didn't know he was God. But I believe they came to understand that later on. In the upper room, Jesus said to them in John 16, verses 12 and 13, he said, I have many things to say to you, but you're not ready for them yet.

You can't bear them yet. But when the Spirit comes, he will guide you into all truth. And it seems to me when I read their writings after the Spirit came to them, the things they say indicate that they did understand that Jesus was in fact God. And they could see back some of the things he said that pointed that direction. But they were saved. I mean, before they knew he was God, they were still followers of his. They were still his chosen disciples and so forth. So I think I could not say that a person who does not know that Jesus is God is, you know, going to hell for not knowing that. Because I don't think the Old Testament saints knew that.

I don't think the disciples knew that in the time Jesus walked with them. We remember in the upper room the night before he died, Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and that's sufficient for us. And Jesus said, have I been this long with you, Philip, and you don't know me? In other words, you're asking to see the Father. Don't you know who I am? How long do I have to be with you before you know who I am? And the implication is very strongly, well, what do you want to say? Don't you know the Father's in me and I'm in the Father?

And if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So it's clear that the disciples, even after three and a half years of living with him, didn't have a clear conception that Jesus was God, but he was disappointed that they didn't know it. He was surprised they hadn't figured it out, but they did know it later.

And so I would say there are people like that now. They read about Jesus. There's things he says they don't fully understand. They get the impression that he's not God because he talks about his Father is greater than him and so forth. And they don't understand what that means, and therefore they conclude, I guess he isn't God. But it's not because they're rejecting the Bible and its testimony. It's because they're not understanding it correctly. And that's like the disciples.

I don't think they understood correctly until a certain point when they did. And yet they were saved before they understood that. So I'll have to leave it to God to decide who is and who is not saved because that's not the decision left to me. To my mind, God would be capable of saving some people who never in their lives had heard of Jesus. And I say that because Jesus died for everybody. That doesn't mean everybody's automatically saved, but it means he can claim anyone he wants to.

He bought them, and he can collect on them. And of course, anyone whose heart is right toward him, it's very hard to imagine that if Jesus died for people and their heart is right, but they don't know of him because they never heard of him. It's very difficult for me to believe that the fathers are going to say, sorry, Jesus, even though you bought them, you can't have them because they never heard. That doesn't strike me as God's way, but I can't really say. The Bible doesn't really tell us whether a person who believes that specific thing is going to be saved or lost. But I think we have examples in the Bible of people who were saved prior to the time that they came to understand that Jesus is God.

But in many cases, they later understood that. I need to take a break at this point. I do appreciate your call. And when we come back for a break, I'll talk to Everett from Pablo, San Pablo, and we will take more calls for another half hour because we're only halfway through the show. At this point, I want to let you know that The Narrow Path is listener supported. Many of our stations we do not receive enough to keep on the air long term. We sometimes get surplus from some stations so we can pay for the ones that don't bring in enough. Your station may be in danger. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.

I'll be back in 30 seconds. Stay tuned. Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. We're proud to welcome you to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When today's radio show is over, we invite you to visit thenarrowpath.com, where you'll find topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse by verse teachings, and the archives of all the radio shows.

Study, learn, and enjoy. We thank you for supporting the listener supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour. We're taking your phone calls if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you have a different view from the host you'd like to talk about. The number to call is 844-484-5737. There are a couple of lines open if you're interested. The number is 844-484-5737.

Everett from San Pablo, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes, thank you, Steve. Steve, my question is in St. John chapter 8, around verse 36, 37, 8 up in there, when it talks about the slave abides not in the house forever but the son, and if the son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Can you explain to us the significance of mention about the servant abides not in the house and what would that mean within its immediate context? And if the son makes you free, you'll be free indeed. Okay, well, Jesus there is talking to the Jews who were putting confidence in the fact that they were children of Abraham. Again, it was an idea that being ethnically Jewish was something that would commend them to God. But Jesus said they had to become his disciples in order to be all right. And he said, if you continue in my words in verse 31, you'll be my disciples indeed.

You'll know the truth and the truth will make you free. Well, they didn't like the suggestion that they needed to be made free or that they didn't know the truth. And they spoke kind of rashly. They said, well, we're Abraham's offspring. We've never been in bondage to anyone, which is a really dumb thing to say because, of course, much of their history, they had been in bondage. They'd spent hundreds of years in bondage in Egypt before they were founded as a nation. But they were the same ethnic people. They had been in bondage in Babylon and Media Persia. And even now they were occupied and not a free people because the Romans occupied them. So it's really difficult to know why they said we've never been in bondage except to just kind of counteract him rather without thinking.

I think they did that from time to time. They often said kind of stupid things because they were desperate and didn't have anything intelligent to say to oppose what he was saying. So they said, we've never been made in bondage. Why do you say we should make free? And he said, well, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And he said, the slave does not remain in the house forever, but the son remains in the house.

Therefore, if the son makes you free, you're free indeed. When he says the slave does not remain in the house forever, he means he doesn't have an inheritance there. He doesn't have a long-term guarantee of being in the family. He could be in the family all his life. He could even inherit it if it was the will of the master, but that wouldn't be very normal.

And so the idea is that the son has a secure right to the household that is to be in the family. The slave isn't quite in that situation. He said, if you're committing sin, you're a slave of sin.

Now that would mean you don't have any secure place in God's household. They thought they did. They thought because they were Abraham's children, they were also God's children.

In fact, they actually said that a little later in the conversation. They said, we're not born of fornication. We're God's children. So they considered being Abraham's children to be the same as being God's children.

And he said, no, you're not. If you're living in sin, you're not one of the children. You're one of the slaves. You're a slave of sin. And therefore you don't have a secure place in the household. The son does, that's him. And if the son, you know, if you're one of his people, then, you know, of course you're invited to be with him and you'll have a secure place in the house with him.

But the slave, the one who's a slave of sin, doesn't have that position. Got it. Very well, thank you for taking the time, Steve, to lend your blessing from you, your heart, your marriage, and your ministry. God bless.

Thank you, Everett. Great to hear from you again. Bye now. All right. Let's talk next to, there's quite a few callers now. Looks like the next one in line is going to be Robert from Pennole, California.

Robert, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. All right. I have you on there, Robert?

Hope so. I hit his button. He's not there. Okay.

Going once. Oh, hey, I hear a voice back there faintly. Yes. Hello?

Yeah. Can you hear me? I can now. I couldn't a moment ago. Go ahead. Oh, sorry.

Oh, yeah. So I was reading Mark chapter four, the sower of the seed. And what kind of confused me was where Jesus, where they asked him, why did he speak in a parable? And then at the end, he tells them that something about they don't, so they don't, so they are not forgiven. And I'm kind of curious, doesn't Christ want everyone to repent and be forgiven, but he tells them that so they don't understand it, so they won't be forgiven. I was wondering if you can break that down for me.

Yeah. You're talking about Mark 4 12, where Jesus, when they asked, why, why do you speak in parables? And by implication, they're saying, they don't understand these parables.

Why don't you speak in a way they can understand you? And he said, he said, so that seeing they may see and not perceive and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they should turn and, and their sins be forgiven. So that they may hear and not understand and their sins be forgiven them. That is a quotation from Isaiah chapter six, by the way. And what are you saying is, what are you saying is these people, many of them have out, have outlived their opportunity to repent.

Now, this was not true of everyone. The disciples had come from those crowds. What Jesus is saying is that in Israel, there were two kinds of people. One who had hardened themselves against God. They had rejected God long enough that he has, basically he's judging them now by, by cutting them off.

But there were also some who had not done so. They were soft-hearted Jews, people who are part of the faithful remnant. And these were the ones who became the disciples, the ones who, the Jews who had a heart for God came to Jesus.

Same chapter in verse 34. It says without a parable, Jesus did not speak to the multitudes, but when they were alone, he explained all things to his disciples. Now the disciples were part of Israel too, but they were part of, they were what we call the faithful remnant. They were the ones who had a heart for God. And so they came to Jesus and he explained these parables so they could understand. He wanted his people to understand that, but he realized that in Israel, just like any Gentile nation, they were, the majority of the people there were not, they didn't have a heart for God and therefore they weren't his people and he wasn't going to share his secrets with them. And if you read the parallel passage in Matthew 13, you'll see that what he's saying is that the mystery of the kingdom of God is not for the general public.

It's only for the disciples. So what Jesus was doing is he's coming to a nation whose population was mixed, spiritually mixed. They were Jewish, but they weren't all in the same spiritual condition. Some of them had hardened themselves against God and he wasn't going to do them any special favors for them, but there were some that were still as they should have been.

All of them should have been part of that faithful remnant and everyone could have been, but they didn't. If you don't care about God, then God's not going to give you the special favors is what he's saying of knowing the mysteries of the kingdom of God. But if you do come and get it, you know, I'll be glad to explain it to you, but the ones who aren't interested, he's not going to give away his secrets to them. They'll hear him speak. They'll hear him talk about sowers sowing seeds and women making dough and mustard seeds becoming big trees and things like that, but they won't understand what this is about because he doesn't want them to know what it's about.

They're not his friends. Jesus was an invading king establishing the kingdom of God in an occupied territory that was hostile and we see hostile was by the fact that eventually they killed him. It was hostile. So Israel was by and large hostile territory toward the Messiah, but not everyone was and the ones that were desirous of the Messiah, he desired them too and he wanted to let them in on all of his secrets. But when you invade a country, you don't let your strategies out to the public. You only share your trusted, you know, vetted generals and things like that of what you're going to do and that's what the disciples were. So his teaching the multitude, someone might say, well, if he didn't want the multitudes to know what he's talking about, why didn't he just not address them at all?

Why did he speak to them at all? Well, because some potential disciples were there in the crowd, some that had not yet contacted him or he hadn't contacted them. There was anyone in the crowd might potentially be a disciple, but, you know, he called them. He called the disciples from the crowds by speaking to the multitudes in this way. And why would the disciples then react better?

Because they wouldn't really understand it either. But they heard him saying the kingdom of God is like this. The kingdom of God is like that. The kingdom of God is as if this and there and these were people who are hungry for the kingdom of God. And I think that like like everyone else in the crowd, when they heard the parables, they thought, I don't know what he's talking about, but he's talking about the kingdom of God. I don't understand what he's saying. And those who really cared came to him and said, Lord, explain these parables.

I want to know what you're talking about because I'm interested in the kingdom of God. The rest just ignored it. Just walked away. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And like today in today's world, sometimes I try and share my faith or the gospel with somebody and they just don't get it. They don't understand it. And I guess you can kind of compare back then to what today with those verses. Right.

Well, it could be. I mean, we certainly need to make sure that if we're sharing the gospel, someone that we're making it clear because some people are not as clear as others and explain. I mean, it's possible that someone would not understand it because a given presentation isn't really sensible or isn't clear. And the same person might respond if the gospel was made more clear.

But yeah, there are people who've dulled themselves. They've closed their eyes. They've closed their ears, like Jesus said.

And up to that, up to this point, they, they are essentially deaf and blind. So when you preach the gospel, it's like water off a duck's back or worse, they get hostile. That's what Jesus said about casting your pearls before swine and giving what is holy to dogs. If you cast your pearls before swine, they'll turn on you and attack you. And certainly, even though it's a, it's a, if I gave you a pearl, you'd probably be really happy because that's a valuable thing. But if I gave it to a pig, he doesn't know what that is. He doesn't care about it.

He just charged me, you know, a wild boar or something. And they didn't have quite the same kind of domestic pigs we do. So the point is that not, you know, the gospel was not entirely for public consumption.

Everyone had to hear it, but there were some who would not be allowed to understand it because they'd already closed their hearts down to God. Yeah. Okay. I get it now.

I get it. Thank you for clearing that up. And I don't want to hold up your line.

I know your lines are full. And I just want to say thank you very much for breaking that down for me. Thank you.

Okay. Robert, God bless you. Thanks for your call.

Harold from Sacramento, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, how you doing, Steve? You hear me?

Yes, I do. You know, Steve, with that guy you was talking to right before you got to me was kind of somewhat, I'm not saying question to two. And what I'm saying is that when I got saved about 10 years ago, and I received the Holy Spirit and he worked in my life and he changed me and took me off drugs and a lot of other stuff. And then there were these guys out on the corner holding up signs saying Jesus saved and repent. And I was drawn to that. And I got to know the guys.

Next thing I know, I'm holding up a sign that says Jesus saves, repent. Now, yeah, you know, I had no problem with that. And people out there, they didn't, they closed their windows, they don't want to hear it, they blow their horn, they get upset about it.

And I even had a couple of them come at me a couple times. But it doesn't bother me. I'm still doing this because I'm drawn to God to do this. It's like it was my calling. But my question to you now is that, Lord, it broke change inside of me in my life and took sick, took weed away and alcohol and, you know, weed away and alcohol and drugs. But I'm still holding on to cigarettes. Am I wrong to still want to hold the sign up of God and I'm smoking cigarettes? Well, my advice would be not to be smoking a cigarette while you're holding up the sign.

No, I'm not doing that. Yeah, there's many people who would, many people would think that's a sin. Now, the Bible does not identify smoking as a sin, but it certainly is culturally regarded as, well, it's just regarded badly culturally.

And Christians ought to do all they can to not stumble people or not offend people unnecessarily. Now, if you're smoking a cigarette, it wouldn't stumble me, though I would wonder why you don't give it up. But I know that people who smoke often have a very great difficulty doing so. I have friends, very, very godly friends who have served God now for probably, I guess, about 40 years, it would be going on, who when they got saved as adults, they had smoked all their lives and they really wanted to quit. They gave up their sinful lifestyle, but they really couldn't quit smoking.

It was just something that had a hold on them. Eventually, they did. Like me.

Yeah, well, I'm sure it does. But I will say this. They kept wanting to quit, and they kept trying to quit, and they kept praying about it and so forth. And over time, they did quit.

So, I mean, it took a couple of years. But, you know, if you say, well, I want to quit, but it's been hard to quit, so I won't quit. You know, I mean, you're not going to go to hell for smoking a cigarette. But there are reasons not to do it. I mean, it's a very poor use of your money, for one thing. It's a poor use of your body, your health, in another case. And it's a poor testimony to many. I mean, those are reasons enough to want to quit and to keep desiring and praying about it.

You know, it's a funny thing. I know people who were heroin addicts, and when they got saved, they came off heroin cold turkey. But some of them still had problems with cigarettes or something else. God doesn't deliver necessarily of everything at once. That comes with walking with Him and waging a good warfare. I mean, the Christian life is a battle against the flesh and against the world and the devil. And therefore, some things are hard won. Some things God just gives you, like deliverance from this or that.

Other things, He makes you fight for it. I think because that builds your spiritual muscles and it builds your stamina, teaches you to pray and things like that. You know, that's what I think. But I think you should continue. I think you know that it's not really a great thing to smoke. So though I don't condemn you for it, I just, if I were you, I'd certainly be trying to do all I could to quit.

And if you're holding up signs, I wouldn't be smoking at the same time. No, I'm not doing that, Steve. But Steve, my next question is, you know, it says that in the Bible that I can't, I don't know exactly where, but I've heard it and I've seen it before in the Bible. But those, you go out there and preach in the Word of God and denying His power, you know, you don't have that right. I'm looking at myself. I don't have that right to go out and tell somebody God is powerful.

He can break chains and trust in Jesus. And I'm still smoking cigarettes. Well, how come I can't use that same doggy analogy on myself? Well, I hear you. I hear you. And I can see why you feel that way. I mean, I would not want to preach something that I'm not living.

Yeah. On the other hand, I don't claim to live a perfect life. And yet I preach that Jesus can deliver people from sin. In other words, the gospel I preach is true.

It's even true for me. But in many cases, I haven't really appropriated all of it yet. I mean, I'm not a sinless person yet. I will eventually be delivered from all sin. And in the course of living for God, I feel that I've been delivered from many past sins that I don't do anymore. But I'm not perfect, which means there are still sins that I will stumble into. And so, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, he wants to use you and he wants to deliver you too. But he just wants you to be faithful in your continuing to learn to walk in the Spirit of God.

Continuing to learn to walk in the Spirit and resist temptation. And if you fall, if you fall and smoke a cigarette when you're trying to quit, it's not it's not like God's going to disown you or anything like that. He knows our frame. He remembers that we're dust.

He knows how weak we are. But I would say smoking a cigarette is a little different than some other kind of sins. There are others like it, but there's many that are not. Many sins are secret. Many sins take place only in a person's head and no one else knows they're sitting.

They can pretend to be very holy and very righteous and very humble and be none of those things secretly. But smoking cigarettes is one of those things that's harder to hide. For one thing, where there's fire, there's smoke. I say that I know the saying is the opposite. But when there's smoke coming up, people can see there's a there's a cigarette there.

They can also smell it on your clothes. And, you know, I mean, it's just I'm not saying it's I'm not saying it's the ultimate sin. I'm just saying it's something that's definitely something that you'd probably want to get over as soon as you can. And just learn to walk in the Spirit and pray for deliverance. Try to go longer without falling and just make it your goal to be smoke free eventually. And God will help you. Just don't give up the goal.

Keep your eyes on Jesus and he'll draw you out of vantages that you're still in. Thank you, Steve. Okay, brother. God bless you, Harold. It's good to talk to you. God bless you too, Steve. Thank you. God bless. Bye now. Okay, Dave from Shoreline, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi Steve. I really love your show.

I love you and where you think and where you give simple explanations to simple people like me. And I wondered if we could focus on the cross for just a second. I've heard so many sermons that look at what Jesus went through, but I'm wondering what God went through when Jesus was on the cross and did he feel a similar pain that we feel if we have to put a child in the grave? I'm sure. Oh, absolutely. I mean, in a sense, it'd be easier for me to endure torture and death, which wouldn't be easy for me, by the way. I'm not a hero, but it'd be easier for me to do that than to put my son or daughter through that. I mean, any parent who's worthy of that name would rather suffer personally than have their child suffer. The interesting thing is that Jesus was both God's son, but in a sense, he was God in the flesh too. So God was suffering in both senses. The Bible says that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. This is 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

And I don't know exactly how that works. I don't know exactly God's subjective experience in all of that, or Jesus's either for that matter. We could guess, but we can't claim that it's been explained to us somewhere. All I can say is that God certainly suffered by Christ's suffering, both in the sense that he was in Christ suffering in human form, and he was also suffering in the sense that we would suffer if our own children. Because you see God was in Christ, but he was also outside of Christ.

I'm sorry, and I realize there's a certain amount of mystery involved here, but I'm wondering how much, I mean, were the actions separated at some point? Right, that is a common preaching point. The Bible doesn't specifically say that they were separated, but it says things that might lead us to conclude that. It says also in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that he who knew no sin, meaning Christ, became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Now, he became sin for us when he took on our sins. Usually it is understood that God therefore saw him as a head and had to deal with him in our place, as if he was us, as if he was all of our sins combined. And many people think that that would mean that God would have to turn away from him. And you know, they mentioned that Jesus quoted Psalm 22 one from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so they say that he said that they say he said that because God actually had turned his back on him and they were separated.

And that may be true. It's not, it's certainly not the only way to interpret those passages, but it's reasonable. So I don't take a stand one way or the other on what the Bible doesn't say unambiguously. Because after all, David, before Jesus, David said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Psalm 22 one. And God really hadn't forsaken him. He was feeling forsaken of God and expressing his anguish, but he wasn't really forsaken of God. And in fact, he, he later on, he actually says that, he says in verse, for example, verse 24 of the same Psalm that God has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him, meaning himself. But when he cried to him, he heard. So this is the same Psalm where he said, why have you forsaken me? Now he says, now God hasn't abhorred or hidden his face from him.

And he does hear the cry. So I think that the cry of David in Psalm 22 one is simply a cry of anguish, not necessarily a theological statement that God had in fact left him. And therefore, when Jesus made the same cry, he certainly felt God forsaken, but whether God really had forsaken him or not is not affirmed in, in that necessarily, in my opinion. So, but he might have, I know Hank Hanegraaff, who has the Bible Anthony show years ago, I heard him, uh, deny that God and Jesus were separated at that time. And I had never heard anyone even denied. I just thought all Christians taught the same thing. This is back in the nineties.

I heard this and I decided to research it and find out, well, you know, he's right in the sense, not so much to deny it, but to at least raise questions about it, because the Bible doesn't clearly say it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate the show. Thank you, Dave. Good talking to you, uh, Kathy from Yorba Linda, California.

Welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling. Let me put there. Hey, you're there already there.

Yes. Yeah, I'm here. Go ahead. I can't hear you. You can't hear me. Oh, there you are.

You're pretty faint. Um, that's okay. Um, I, well, first of all, I am so grateful to have found your ministry and I wrote down my question so I wouldn't get lost. Um, so should I read it? Sure.

Okay. Um, I have a question that's bothered me for a long time. It came up for me again recently when you had a caller who was discussing freewill versus God knowing who was going to choose him and who would not. And your response was along the lines that although he knew what an individual was going to choose, it didn't mean that person did not have a choice, that the person didn't know couldn't exercise freewill. And that's true, but it begs another question.

And that's mine. So, um, since God knows which individuals will not choose Christ, why would he go ahead and create them anyway when by doing so he's creating people he knows will end up in hell? And I ask it because that just kind of sounds out of what I thought God's character is.

Well, God, I'm going to ask you this. Well, God is not obligated to, uh, save anybody, but of course he wants to save everyone. He just knows that there will be people who will not meet the terms of salvation that grieves him, but he can't have them not exist because some of them are going to be the parents and grandparents and great grandparents of saints. Uh, God can't say, I mean, these people can't say, well, God, because I'm going to reject you, you shouldn't make me.

And he would just say, well, listen, I gave you every opportunity to follow me. I didn't, I didn't make you not do that, but just because you want to be a rebel and hate your creator, uh, I can't, you know, I can't accommodate you by not making you because your children, your grandchildren are the people who are going to be my children in heaven. Uh, so, I mean, God just lets people do what they want to do, but no one is an island. No one just kind of exists to go to heaven or hell and, uh, or doesn't. They, uh, everyone's connected to everyone else.

And if you take one person out of that, um, out of that brick wall, other bricks are going to fall. So God doesn't, uh, it's not so much that God chooses to make people who won't accept him. It's that he allows everyone to exist. He allows everyone an opportunity and, uh, and everyone exists for a reason.