The Narrow Path 9/28

Music Good afternoon, and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls if you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith that you'd like to talk about. If you have anything you disagree with the host about and you'd like to talk about that, feel free to give me a call. Right now you can't get through because the lines are full, but I'll give you the number anyway because the lines will open up as the show progresses, and if you call later on you may catch one open. The number to call is 844-484-5737.

That's 844-484-5737. And I want to announce to our friends listening in Arizona that tomorrow night and the next night I'll be speaking in Arizona. I'll be tomorrow night in Buckeye, which of course is in the Phoenix area, and then Wednesday night I'll be speaking in Tucson. And there's information about these gatherings at our website, thenarrowpath.com.

If you go to the announcements link you'll see all the announcements of my upcoming speaking across the country actually. Yeah, tomorrow night I'll be in Phoenix, the next, or Phoenix area. The next night will be in the Tucson area. And then as we get toward the weekend I'll be in Texas. I'll be speaking in Spring Branch, which is in the San Antonio area roughly. I'll be speaking in Houston a couple of times and in Dallas.

So several Texas venues also. That's coming up all within a week of now approximately. So, well, the first one's tomorrow night. So if you're interested, I know we have listeners in all those places, and if you're interested in joining us we'd love to meet you if I have not met you before, and I'd love to see you again if we did before.

You can get that information at the website, thenarrowpath.com, and go to the link that says announcements. And I'll see some of you tomorrow night. All right. Let's talk right now to John from Winters, California. Winters, California. I know where that is. Hi, John.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.

How are you today? Good, thanks. Good. Yeah, I have a question. I am not a King James only guy, but normally I read the new King James, but I've been drawn recently to the King James. And I read something online, and I just wanted to ask you if you had heard this. This guy, he was not a King James only person either, but he promoted the King James version, and he made a statement that in the King James that the terms thee or thine or thy is referring to a single person, and ye or you is referring to several people. That's correct. Oh, that is correct.

Okay. That's one of the great things about the King James version is it does distinguish between the singular and the plural you, which many times many times is very helpful. Of course, most languages do. At least most European languages I'm aware of, they distinguish between you singular and you plural in their verb forms and things like that. Modern English doesn't do that. If I'm talking to you as an individual or you the whole audience out there, I still say you. But in older English, the conventions were much more like other European languages where you can tell by reading it whether it's speaking to one person or to a group of people. And that's helpful because sometimes we wonder, does this apply to me? And obviously if it's speaking to an individual, it might not.

If it's speaking plural, it may well. So that's one of the things we've lost with the abandoning of the King James. I'm certainly not a King James advocate, but I love the King James. I use the new King James more often now. In fact, I use the new King James most of the time now. I also use other versions, other new versions, but I don't think I like any of the newer versions better than I like the King James. The problem is that the King James does have a few things in it that were not in the older manuscripts. And this is why many people moved away from it. But if you acquaint yourself with the things that are distinctive in the King James that aren't in the modern translations and realize there's a textual question about some of those things, then there's no danger in reading it.

And I love the old English. I grew up reading that. Yeah. As an example, this guy used Luke 22, 31 and 32 where Jesus said to Simon that Satan had desired to have him. To sift you.

To sift you as wheat. Yeah, exactly. And you is plural. Yeah. Yeah. You is plural. Sifting the disciples as a group.

The disciples. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah.

So it kind of sheds a little bit of light, right? Well, yeah. I mean, it says Satan has desired to sift you as wheat, but I prayed for you that your faith not fail. And when you're, what's they say? When you're converted, you know, encourage your brethren or something like that. Now, when he says Satan has desired to sift you, you is plural there, whereas all the other you is singular. So Peter, Satan has desired to sift you, the apostolic group.

And he did sift out someone. Judas got sifted out of there. But he says, but I prayed for you singular. And when you, you know, repent of your, you know, falling away, that's singular, then encourage your brethren. So yeah, that's, that's one passage where it's very helpful because a lot of people otherwise would wonder what it means that, you know, Satan wants to sift me.

Well, what's that mean? But sifting the group. Yeah. To separate the wheat from the chaff. Yeah.

Get the chaff out. Yeah. And then he mentioned when the, when he says, but I prayed for you, it was singular for Peter specifically. Right. Right. Indicating maybe that Peter was a little weaker than the others maybe, or he just knew. I don't know if he's any weaker, but he was certainly more self-confident and unwarrantedly. So, but maybe that Jesus had already indicated that Peter's going to deny him.

So, you know, he had to pray for him that he not, you know, apostatize completely. Yeah. All right.

So there's good things. Well, thank you so much. All right.

There sure is. Okay. God bless you, John. You too. Bye. Richard from Seal Beach, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Yes, Steve. I have a very good friend and I try not to be contentious, but he is just absolutely convinced that there's going to be some kind of new world order or one world government that's going to take over before Jesus comes. And every time something happens on the news, he says, see this, see that.

And I just can't seem to find that anywhere in the Bible. And I would like to know your opinion on this, and I hope you can set us both straight. I'll listen to you on the radio. Thanks, Steve.

Okay, Richard, thanks for your call. Well, first of all, I don't know that he's wrong that there will be a new world or there could be, there could even be a one world dictator. I mean, the things that dispensationalists believe are going to happen in the tribulation politically, geopolitically are entirely possible.

I mean, certainly the world could have a single ruler that will, you know, be a dictator over the whole world. And that's exactly what dispensationalists think the Antichrist is. Now, I don't understand the passages about the Antichrist quite in the same manner as they do. And I don't believe that the Bible predicts a one world order, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. The Bible doesn't say there won't be one. In other words, if there's going to be a global geopolitical order that's, and a dictator, an Antichristian dictator who rules the whole thing, well, that's possible.

I mean, certainly many dictators have sought to establish that and the technology is there that could make it happen. But the Bible doesn't really talk about that. Some people think it does in Revelation 13, but I don't think Revelation 13 is about a future new world order.

So my own views about Revelation, of course, I don't have time to get into right now, though my lectures are online about that. So I would never argue against him that that might happen. But I would argue that the passages that he is thinking of that make him think it's predicted in the Bible are, to my mind, talking about something else and not about that. So I agree with you and I don't necessarily disagree with him.

I probably disagree with him about his interpretation of certain passages that he's applying in that way. But I don't, I've never been one to say that there won't be a new world order or there won't be a cashless society or there won't be a one world dictator. All of those things are things that there are people who are trying to make happen. Like I've never said there won't be a third temple. There's lots of people want the third temple to be built. I'm not going to say it won't happen, but I will say that none of those things, as near as I can tell, are predicted in Scripture.

I know very well, of course, what Scriptures are used to support them. And I have come to understand those Scriptures through a different perspective. And so I don't see them as applicable. But all of those things could happen. And I think all of those things would be a bad thing.

So, I mean, I'm not so far removed from these guys in terms of what could happen. It's only that I don't know that it will necessarily happen. I don't know that the third temple will ever be rebuilt since the Bible doesn't actually predict it. I don't know if there will be a one world order or if Jesus will come back before people do that or if he'll thwart it or if there will be a one world dictator. So I'm open minded about that. It could happen or it might not. But in my opinion, those are not specific things that the Bible actually predicts.

But that wouldn't prevent them from necessarily happening. Okay, let's talk to Jane from Dallas, Texas. Jane, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi.

Hi. I have a question for you. First of all, I've been a Christian most of my life and I'm almost embarrassed to ask this question because I just feel like I should be concrete in this and I'm just not. I never have been. And yet it seems like when I ask the question, like family members who are pastors and stuff like that, they just kind of, you ask too many questions. You don't need to be like that. So I'm going to ask you because I don't know you. And yet I respect a lot of your teaching. And I'm so excited you're coming to Dallas.

Okay. The scriptures, and I know the one in Isaiah 64 talks about we, you know, as God's creation, we are filthy rags. And then I'm not sure if this is scriptural, but this is just what I've heard either from other pastors or just, you know, that we all deserve hell.

They all pastors tend to always say we are all undeserving of anything. Now I by faith believe what the Bible says, but I'm just not understanding how, how I can make some kind of sense of it in this way. God made us, we didn't make us, we didn't have anything to do with being created. He created us.

He put us here. And I know all our life we hear, well, you get a choice. We're not robots. Well, the Bible doesn't say we're not robots, which I'm not saying it. It should, it doesn't even to me, the only scripture that even remotely comes close to identifying us as having a choice is that that one scripture. And right now I can't remember where it is, but it's choose you this day, who you will serve. So that one thing, it seems like everyone clings to that to just pretty much ramp up a whole, the whole scenario of, Oh, well you have a choice.

It's you that gets to choose. And yet all through scripture, there were lots of times people didn't have a choice. You know, God hardened the hearts of Pharaoh and, uh, I believe Herod and you know, okay, well let me jump in.

Let me jump in. Um, first of all, I think every time the Bible gives a command, it strongly implies that we have a choice to obey or not, especially if God gets angry at those who don't obey. Uh, uh, when, when we say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, that's true. Uh, and there are other people in the Bible that says God hardened their hearts too. But we, we, we never read that he hardened the heart of someone who is all, who is innocent.

In other words, the hardening of the hearts. Uh, that's one of the ways in which God judges people who are worthy of judgment. Pharaoh was a very wicked ruler and a tyrant and a murderer. And, and part of the way God, uh, judged him was to harden his heart so that he wouldn't relent until he got through 10 whole plagues to wipe him out in his country. Uh, so I mean, there are times when God removes apparently free will from people's hearts, but it's not as if they were born that way without free will. It's, you know, they, God has only done that to people who are already wicked, uh, and had made choices to be wicked when they could have done otherwise, I believe. Now as far as whether we all deserve hell, I think, I think we do because we've all sinned not only against the known will of God from the scripture, cause not everyone knows the scripture and therefore they don't, they don't know all the things they're doing wrong, but we've all said against our own conscience too. We all have done things that we knew we shouldn't have done. Our conscience told us that, but we did it anyway.

And therefore we've all done, uh, we've all violated God and rebelled. He created us with the ability to do that. See, that's what I'm saying.

That's where the clincher is. We, we didn't get to pick, you know, are we going to be nice creatures are we going to be, you know, you know, he created us to be able to choose him or not, you know, I don't believe it's quite that way. I, the way I see it is that he created, well, he created us.

There's no question about that, but I, it sounds like you're saying that God created us either predisposed to choose him or predisposed not to so that we didn't really have a choice that he no, no, I'm not, no, I'm not really saying that. I'm just a little confused where, where it talks about, we're all as filthy rags. I'll tell you, he, he has that in his, let me talk about that verse. Let me talk about that verse.

I do believe, well, I do believe we're all sinners and rebels against God. I, uh, I don't think that this verse in Isaiah 64 six is used correctly by most preachers. Uh, it says, but we are all like an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. Now, uh, many preachers, uh, because of their desire to emphasize total depravity will say, you see, even our most righteous things are filthy before God and unclean before God. So, so God even hates our righteous deeds. I mean, I've heard people say that it insults God for us to try to do good deeds because then we're not counting on his grace and so forth. So, and they would say, therefore, even when you do good deeds and righteous things, they're really an act of rebellion against God.

Now, I don't understand it that way. I mean, there may be some cases that God sees that way, but I, I don't, that's certainly not what Isaiah is saying. Isaiah, this is one of those places where it's good to know who he's talking to. He's talking to his own apostate nation and the fact that they were doing, they were doing righteousnesses. He's referring to their religious activities, their sacrifices, their fasts. You know, a couple of chapters or a few, few chapters earlier here, rebukes about their fasts, their fasting, which sounds like a righteous thing to do, but their hearts are wrong and likewise their sacrifices. You know, it says in Proverbs twice, um, the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. So if a person has a wicked heart, even when they're doing righteous or religious things, uh, it, you know, their wickedness of their heart cancels it out and makes it an, uh, a hypocritical thing, which God hates. So what he says, all of our righteousness is now Isaiah is not writing us a systematic theology on biblical anthropology about the human heart. He's speaking prophetically to his own nation about their apostasy and he's saying, you guys, everything you are doing that you think is righteous, all your righteous deeds, those are really, they're not righteous.

They're foul because your hearts are wrong with God. Now he's not saying in this passage that the same exact thing would be true of every person. For example, if I, uh, if you or I who love the Lord do a good deed, I don't think God's offended by that good deed. He wants us to do good deeds who are, you know, he's foreordained that we should walk in good deeds. The Bible says in good works and he's, it says in Titus that he redeemed us so he'd have a people who are zealous for good works.

So certainly our good works are not like filthy rags if we are not like filthy rags. And that's where I'm, I'm kind of confused because let's say the individual who, you know, wasn't raised around the word God or that there is a God, he just hears little tidbits here and there when he's in school or maybe he runs into people and meet them. I know, I truly believe that God puts all kinds of things in our path to direct us to him or to make it, make us aware of him. But I just know I was blessed to be in a Christian home and you know, I had it at my beck and it's good that you, it's good that you're mindful of that and thankful for that because many times people like myself, I was raised in a Christian home and I've never done anything but follow the Lord in my life.

But, but it's easy for people like that to be very pharisaical and to look down their nose at somebody who's, you know, a prostitute or a homosexual or, or a drunkard in the gutter, you know, and, uh, I think it was deal moody who, uh, the great preacher who was walking down the street with a Christian friend and the friend pointed out some derelict in the, in the gutter there who was drunk and it was moody, I believe who said there, but for the grace of God go I, uh, in other words, he said, that's me. If God had given me the grace to be what I am instead. I mean, anything that is, anything I have that isn't like that is God's grace.

Cause I, I'm as capable of being there as that person is. And he realized that, you know, I have received grace that that person has not received. And that's not necessarily just referring to salvation grace. It's just talking about benefits in life. Right.

And that's what I'm talking about. The ones that don't and like, I'm like, I'm witnessing to people sometimes or, or I want to or, or I know other people who have, and those are the ones that just, it just seems like nothing has gone right in their life. You know, abusive parents or parents that don't love them, don't share the Lord with them.

And then, and they just, it's like they just go through life and horrible things happen in their life. I mean, it's like so noticeable and they're not, they're not these wicked people, you know, they're not what you would see as what he deserves. Right. There are people, there are people just like you've described who are quite kind and quite generous and quite meek and quite humble, all those things that God likes in a person. Now that doesn't make them worthy of salvation because we really have to be perfectly righteous to be able to fellowship with God. I think we have to choose.

Is that what you're saying? Well, I think we have to, I think, I think we have to have the righteousness of Christ. I think we need to have the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed by faith. But that doesn't mean that God dislikes the good deeds of those people or that he thinks that they're awful people.

Because I think of Cornelius. Cornelius was not a believer in Christ. And and Peter came to him and as God instructed him to and said, you know, he said, as a Jew, I would ordinarily not even come into your home as a Gentile. But God has shown me not to, that he's not a respecter of persons and that in every nation, those who do what pleases him are accepted by him. Now accepted by him doesn't necessarily mean they're saved, but it certainly doesn't mean that they're loathsome to him and that, you know, they are, you know, nothing, you know, hell's too good for him.

I don't think that that's what he means. I think that God does recognize there are people whose hearts are seeking him. And that's why he wants us to reach them with the gospel, because they can then know Jesus. Now, if we don't get to them with the gospel, that's another story. God, God alone knows how he'll judge such cases.

And I'll leave it to him to know that. But I think I think you're on to something. I mean, while I believe we are all sinners and therefore all worthy of judgments from God, there are some Christians who almost revel in the doctrine that everyone, including you know, the sweet little granny who's never heard of a person in her life, but just never heard the gospel and dies without Jesus, that that person is just, you know, nothing is more appropriate but for her to be tormented forever and ever. I don't think God sees it that way. I just don't see that as what the Bible teaches. But the Bible does teach we're all sinners. It does teach we all need Christ and we all need to be forgiven. But I guess the guess what I have trouble with is that a lot of these people who really want to lay heavy condemnation on everyone who's never even heard the gospel, some of whom have been, like you say, abused as children, lived in poverty.

You know, maybe they're been sold into sex slavery and they've never known anything else. And they've never heard the gospel. You know, they say, Well, if they never get the gospel, they never hear of Jesus, then God wants to burn them forever and ever and ever and ever.

So they get to live in hell in this life and the next life forever and ever. Sure, I'm not really sure that the Bible says that God has that attitude toward people. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from their evil ways and live. God loves the world. That's why he sent his son.

There's no one he doesn't love. So I mean, this the flavor of that kind of preaching does. I think it does misrepresent something in the nature of God. Now, what he'll do with people who haven't heard the gospel or who have heard it and have not understood it. I mean, he knows the heart. And there may be people who never hear of Christ that God knows that if they had heard of him and understood him, they would have loved him. And so we'll leave that to God.

God's really the judge of such things as that. I appreciate your call, Jane, very much. Maybe we'll see you in Dallas. Okay, let's see. I was going to take another call right now, but we have a break coming up and I don't want to interrupt the caller and hold them over for the break. So I'll leave them on hold for the moment. Right now we do have a couple lines open.

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Remember the narrow path dot com. Welcome back to the narrow path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Greg, and we are live for another half hour. Taking your calls.

If you have questions that you'd like to call in with about the Bible to discuss or you have a different view from the host, I want to discuss that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Most of our lines are full. Looks like we have one line open. But if you call and get a busy signal, that means that line's been taken. It looks like it's ringing perhaps now.

No, it's not. So that line's still open. But if you get a busy signal, just call back a few minutes later and often a line will be open. Not only because I will have talked to a caller and they've moved along, but even people who are waiting on hold don't always stay because it's sometimes a long wait. Now the lines are full.

The number you want to have handy if you're going to call in a few minutes or to get on today is 844-484-5737. And I want to remind our Arizona listeners I'll be speaking in the Phoenix area tomorrow night and in Tucson the following night. If you're interested in that, you're welcome to join us.

You can go to thenarrowpath.com. Look under announcements and scroll on down to tomorrow night's date and the next night and you'll see where and when. And we'll look forward to seeing you. I'll be in Texas by the end of the week. And I'll be speaking in the San Antonio area as well as the Houston area and the Dallas area all within the next several days. Okay, let's talk to Mark from Clifton Park, New York. Hi, Mark. Thanks for waiting.

You're welcome. So can you explain to me how when Jesus healed the leper, how maybe that established him as the Messiah? Because in the under Jewish tradition, usually touching something unclean makes you unclean, but only God can essentially heal a leper and settle for Jesus to touch something unclean and make him, you know, make the leper no longer leprous that establishes him as an Messiah, that's a not. Well, there are prophecies in the United States that do miracles of healing. And, you know, healing a leper is one kind of healing and he healed, of course, many other kinds of people too.

But you're right. Leprosy was generally regarded to be incurable and only God could cure a leper. And you also write that touching a leper would normally make somebody unclean in the Jewish law. That is, the Jewish law had restrictions against touching unclean things like lepers or women on their period or a man who had had a wet dream the night before or a person who was killed touching a body. If you touch those kinds of things or unclean animal, those things will make you unclean temporarily because the uncleanness of the object transferred to the person who touched it. Now, Jesus touched a dead body and he also touched a leper. He also touched a woman who had an issue of blood. All of those things under the Jewish law would make him unclean.

However, the transference went the other direction in this case. His cleanness went to them. His life went into the dead man and into the woman with the issue of blood and the lepers. And therefore, what that does show is, if somebody had eyes to see it and ears to hear it, was that Jesus was the one bringing in the new order. The old order, contact with these things would make a person who's clean make them unclean. But in the new order, there is a new power. The power of the Holy Spirit is given to bring about reversal of those situations.

The curse, all the things that the law cursed were redeemed from the curse of the law. And therefore, I guess you could say that would prove he's the Messiah. I think there are things he did that would be more indisputably a sign of it because, for example, there was a name of the Syrian who was a leper in the Old Testament. And Elisha the prophet was instrumental in his healing supernaturally, although Elisha didn't touch him or even see him, actually. Likewise, Miriam turned lepers, Moses' sister, and Moses prayed for her and she was healed.

But again, no one touched her either. So Jesus actually touched the lepers and instead of himself becoming unclean, they became clean. So I think that that would be a signal that the new order has come and it's not going to be the old order anymore where uncleanness would infect you by touch. You know, it's interesting when God brought Israel into the Promised Land, there were unclean cultures there and he made them drive them out because he was quite sure that contact with these cultures would make Israel unclean.

And he was right. They didn't drive them out and they did have contact with those cultures and they did become unclean. But God never told the church in the New Testament to, you know, isolate itself or drive out the unclean people but rather to go and make them clean, go make disciples out of them. So there's a new dynamic in the new covenant. It's the Spirit of Christ. It's the Spirit of God. It's the New Testament dynamic that actually when we have contact with the unclean, if we're walking in the power of the Spirit, it makes them clean. And that was first seen in Jesus and we're now his body so it's supposed to be true of us also. Whereas the Old Testament didn't have that kind of power in it so God had to just kind of tell them, stay away from dirty things, unclean things, unclean cultures because you can't handle it.

But he kind of expects us to be able to handle it and to transform them through the Gospel. All right? I appreciate your call, brother. Thank you for joining us. I'm sorry. I guess I hung up when you were saying something. Dennis from San Mateo.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve. I've got a good friend that lives out of state and we're all former Catholics and we frequently talk about the Bible and different things. And he asked me about the Sabbath and changing the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. And I thought I'd give him a pretty good answer about Christ being our Sabbath. Now our rest is in him and that the Sabbath in the Old Testament was pointed to Christ to the rest and so forth. I think he feels there's a more nefarious plot going on there, maybe with the Romans at some time changing the date. And he sent me a website from this church.

It's called the Church of God International in Tyler, Texas. And they give a couple of biblical passages too in the New Testament, Mark 2, 27, 28, and Luke 4, 16, to substantiate why the Sabbath is still to be... Can you read those to us? Or you can just give me... That's what you've done. Okay, Mark 2, 27, and 28. That's correct. Mark 2, 27, and 28. And the other one was Luke 4, 16. Well, Mark 2, 27, and 28 says, he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath day. Seventh-day Adventists and other Sabbatarians sometimes try to take from this verse the meaning your friend is getting, namely that Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So what they're saying is Sabbath was not made just for Israel. It was made for all mankind.

But that's not what Jesus is saying. Actually, the Sabbath was not made for all mankind because in Exodus 31, God told Israel that the Sabbath was going to be a special sign of the covenant between them and him. So their keeping of the Sabbath was going to be unique.

It was not for all men to do. It was for Israel to do. And so there was no general command to keep the Sabbath. What Jesus is saying is something entirely different, and those who would take him to say that the Sabbath was for all people are simply doing what many people do, and that is ignoring the whole context of a passage in favor of a phrase that they think can work for their view. What Jesus is pointing out is that it's for human benefit, that is Israel's benefit, human beings, that God made the Sabbath. But the Pharisees and the rabbis had so defined Sabbath obligation as to put people under bondage to the Sabbath, as if the Sabbath is more important than people. Like, you know, if you can't pull your lamb out of a ditch or you can't be healed on the Sabbath or something like that, and people were criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, if you can't do that, then the Sabbath becomes a tyranny over people to keep them from the benefit that they need. And he says that's not what God had in mind. He didn't intend for men to be slaves of the Sabbath, but for the Sabbath to be slaves of men.

But he doesn't mean mankind in general. He's talking to Jewish people, and they're the only people who were given the Sabbath commandment. And it was a distinctive sign between them and him of their covenant they had. No Gentiles had that covenant. So he's not saying all mankind is supposed to keep in the Sabbath. If he was, that'd be a very strange thing to interject at this particular point in the discussion, because they are talking about whether it's lawful for him to heal on the Sabbath or not, or I should say in this case, whether the disciples can eat on the Sabbath by picking grain and rubbing it in their hands. In the next chapter, they talked about it being wrong for him to heal on the Sabbath. In other words, people have needs, and they were saying you can't meet any needs on the Sabbath because that's breaking the Sabbath. Well, that's making the Sabbath an unhelpful tyranny. And he's saying no, the Sabbath was not made to burden men, but to be a boon to men. The Sabbath was made for men.

They weren't made for it. And he talks about how David ate the showbread, which was also a violation of the ceremonial law, just like Sabbath breaking would be a ceremonial law. And he says David was blameless for that. So were the priests, he said, when they work on the Sabbath.

No one blames them for doing that. He said that in the parallel in Matthew chapter, wherever it was. I know the passage 12, Matthew 12. But he's arguing some entirely different point. I mean, if he's saying man, the Sabbath was made for all men to keep, then it'd be as if, it's as if he's arguing against somebody who's saying the opposite, as if the Pharisees were saying only Jews should keep the Sabbath and Jesus said, no, it's made for all men. But they weren't saying only Jews should keep the Sabbath.

That wasn't even in the discussion. You've got to recognize the flow of thought before you can make sense of a passage, especially an ambiguous passage, which can mean more than one thing. You've got to understand it in the way that fits the conversation. He was not saying anything about all mankind are supposed to keep the Sabbath. And then he said, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

And what is the context here? The disciples were rubbing grain in their hands, working and eating the grain. They were criticized for doing that on the Sabbath, because that's too much work for a Jew to do on the Sabbath they thought.

And Jesus defends them for doing it. And he said, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. Now what he means by that is, I'm the Lord on the Sabbath and every other day. In one of the gospels, I think it's in Matthew's version of Chapter 12, he says, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.

He adds the word even there. In other words, he's the Lord of every day, even the Sabbath day. And that means his disciples, the only thing they have to do, they don't have to look at the calendar to see what day it is.

They just have to look to the Lord, see what do you want me to do? He's the Lord on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday. He's the Lord every day and even the Sabbath day. So what he's saying is the Sabbath doesn't dictate to us, the Lord dictates. The Lord over the Sabbath does. And so he's saying, if I don't mind them working on the Sabbath, then they're doing okay because I'm their Lord and they only have to obey the Lord.

And so that's totally introducing into the past. It's something that Jesus and those in the conversation with him weren't even interested in talking about at that point. Now, you mentioned Luke Chapter 4 in verse 16 says, so he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. Okay, so they say it was his custom to go in the Sabbath, to the synagogue on Sabbath.

And we read that in the book of Acts that Paul also would go into the synagogue on the Sabbath and preach. Now, what did the Sabbath law command? Did it command going to the synagogue?

No. The synagogues didn't even exist when the law was given or even in Old Testament history at all. The synagogues didn't exist. So there's no command to keep the Sabbath by going in the synagogue. Is there a command to go into the synagogue and preach?

No. But that's what Jesus and Paul did. In other words, they weren't keeping any Sabbath command by doing it. They're going to preach.

That's what they do every day. In fact, they were doing it to break the Sabbath in a sense because they preached the other six days too. The Sabbath command was do your work six days a week and don't do it on the seventh. Well, what was Jesus' work? He's a preacher. What's Paul's work?

He's a preacher. Did they preach six days a week? They did. Did they preach on the Sabbath?

Yep. They didn't do anything different on the Sabbath than what they did the other six days. So they were not keeping the Sabbath as a special day. It was his custom to go into the synagogue on the Sabbath and preach, it says.

Okay. Well, that's not saying he's keeping the Sabbath. The law of the Sabbath says you don't do any work. Now, we don't know how much work Jesus did on the Sabbath. We know he healed and he preached. That's his regular work.

He did all the other days too. So there's no evidence that Jesus was keeping the Sabbath. He went in the synagogue to preach. Well, that's where you find Jews on the Sabbath day. When it wasn't the Sabbath day, he went on the hillsides and on the street corners and he preached wherever he found people.

But on the Sabbath, the best place to find Jews was in the synagogue. So customarily he went there and did so. Yeah. They're just trying to read stuff into a passage that isn't there. And they do it all the time.

This is the same. You run into these people using these passages all the time. They don't make the point. Yeah, it's too bad because of the, you know, the beauty of Christ's work and the freedom and the liberty in Jesus is mitigated by something, some legalistic interpretation like that. I know.

I know. Well, that church that put out that literature or whatever you're looking at, they're not the alone to do it. Seventh-day Adventists do this and there's Seventh-day Baptists and there's Seventh-day Church of God. There's a lot of Seventh-day Keepers and they always use the same verses.

I've never yet met a Sabbatarian who knows how to exegete any passage of Scripture, which is a shame. You know what exegete means? It means look at it in context. Look at the words that are there. See how it fits in the context and understand what it means.

They've never done that. I don't know of any Sabbatarian who's ever even knows the concept of exegesis, but that's the only way you understand the scripture properly is if you can exegete it properly because it means something. But the context and the language and things like that are going to tell you what it means. But lots of people just find a verse that has a phrase in it. Sounds like it's saying what they could make it say what they want it to say. And so they do.

But they miss the whole point of what Jesus actually said. All right. I appreciate your call. Thank you, Steve. All right. God bless you, Dennis. Good talking to you, brother. Okay. Let's talk to Jason from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Jason, welcome.

Hi, Steve. I was wondering, if the Bible is true, shouldn't we be more interested in overthrowing God rather than worshipping him since he's incapable of handing out justice proportionately? Why do you say he's incapable of doing that? Because he sends people to hell and they're in torment forever. How do you know that?

And how do you know that? Well, because I believe I was reading Matthew or Mark the other day and Jesus talks about people being sent to the lake of fire or something like that. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lake of fire for sure. But this idea of being tormented forever, where are you getting that?

Well, I mean, don't you think if you're in a lake of fire that you'd be tormented forever? Well, maybe. Not necessarily. There's other options.

Oh, really? What are the other options? Well, the other options, there's three.

There's three, actually. And all of these have been on the table since the beginning of the church in the early church. The church fathers had different views about hell. There were some who believed it's a place of eternal torment, like you're talking about.

There were others like Irenaeus who believed that you only suffer proportionate to what you deserve, which is what you're interested in, justice. And then they're annihilated, which means they don't suffer any further. They just cease to exist, so they don't have any participation in heaven or anything else after that.

They pay their debt, as it were, and then they're gone. And the third view was Clement of Alexandrian origin and some other church fathers like that held the view that hell was a place of redemption, where people would be brought to salvation, would be brought to repentance so that they'd actually be saved eventually. So there's different views about that.

And I would say that you're right. It does seem hard to make eternal torment a just punishment for any amount of sinning in a finite lifetime. There are some people who believe that that's what hell is, but it's not the only view that's been around. I don't think it's the best one supported in Scripture either. Do you have any Scripture that supports which view would you take? Well, I'm not sure which view, because there's Scriptures that are used on all sides, and I don't really have to know which one.

But I did write a book on it called Hell, Three Christian Views. If you're interested, there's a lot of Scriptures in every case, probably almost an equal number of Scriptures for each view. But obviously, it's not how many Scriptures, it's how are they being interpreted.

Are they interpreted properly? And that's where that takes a little bit of expertise, and not everyone wants to put in the time to look into it. But I will say this. I do think that the idea that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment has less Scriptural support than the other views do. But I'm not the one whose opinion matters. But the point is, you are suggesting that God is unjust, and the Bible actually teaches the opposite. The Bible teaches that He's the only person who's ever been just, always just, and never unjust. So again, that might even be in itself an argument against eternal torment, though there are many who believe that there is eternal torment and that it is just because that the sins that we commit in this life are of much greater magnitude than we ever imagine. This is not an argument I'm using, but this is an argument some people use. And they say we learn more about the magnitude of sin by the just punishment that God gives it than by how we feel about it. Most of us can justify our sins, and those who do the similar sins that we do.

We manage to rationalize a great deal. But some say, well, listen, if God actually sees sin as so bad that He's going to torment people forever and ever for it, then it must be much worse than we imagine. And that would not be necessarily a logically faulty argument if the Bible teaches that eternal torment is the correct view of hell.

But like I said, there's a lot of scripture that would raise questions about that. I can't go into now. But if you're interested, I'm not sure if you are, but if you're interested, you can go to thenarrowpath.com topical lectures and listen to my lectures on the three views of hell. I'm not sure how interested you are in the subject, but it's there. It's free.

So you can check it out. Okay. Thanks for your call. Appreciate hearing from you.

Okay. Let's talk to Steve from Linwood, Washington. Steve, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve. Hi. I speak with you today.

Yeah. And I thank you for your hiding of God's word. Thank you.

Steve, although I don't live in the Lone Star State anymore, my brother and two sisters do, and you're going to be down there a week from tomorrow, October 6th. What time is that meeting at Chocolate Bites? Oh, isn't it on the, isn't on the announcements?

No, it is. I did not get there. Oh, okay.

Okay. Well, I believe it's at seven o'clock. I think my wife's looking up right now. Do you see it there?

Let's see here. Yeah. Well, yeah.

7 p.m. Yes, it is. Okay.

One other thing. Spring Branch. I grew up in Spring Branch. That's in West Houston. There might be a Spring Branch in San Antonio.

There is one. There is one that's not far from San Antonio. I guess it's not real close to San Antonio. I think San Antonio is closer to it than Houston.

I think it's about a half hour from San Antonio, but I've never, never been to either place. Okay. So I'm, I'm going by what I've been told, but maybe I'm, maybe it's further than I'm thinking. Okay.

I'm just touching base on that. Thank you for the time of the Chocolate Bites meeting and God bless you. Goodbye. All right. Thanks for your call.

And the information about that is at the narrow path.com under the tab that says announcements and tells all the time and place and stuff. I'm speaking. Okay. Let's see. We've got John from Dallas.

Speaking of Texas. Hi, John. Welcome. Hi, Steve. How are you? Good. My, my question today is, well, by the way, I love the whole version of what hell means to different, different people. I guess in my case I would, my question would be, what would you say to someone that is lived their whole life and the homosexual life trying to come out of it, trying to resist temptation but still deals with addiction due to childhood trauma from a family member?

Yeah. Well, I would say the same thing I'd say to anyone who's, who's trapped in behavior that is sub-Christian, whether it was, you know, drunkenness or, or fornication, you know, heterosexual fornication or anything else. A lot of people find themselves overwhelmed by the power of sin.

And a lot of times it's because of things that happened to them or things or maybe mistakes they made when they're young, which they wish they hadn't. But there's, that's just the human state where we're all sinners, I think by nature, and therefore we need the grace of God. Now, what does the grace of God do? Well, a lot of people think of the grace of God as just it, you know, we get forgiven by grace and that is true. God does forgive us when we repent of our sins, but he also gives us grace to serve him acceptably with godly fear. The Bible says that we can come boldly before the throne of grace to find mercy, which we need because we sin, but also to find grace to help in time of need. God gives us enabling grace in the moment that we're trusting him. Now, I don't know of anybody who can live a sinless life and I've never had a, I've never had a homosexual urge in my life, but I've had other sinful urges. I mean, I'm a man and I have, you know, I have heterosexual urges and so forth. I'm a human being and therefore, and I was single for many of my adult years and I, you know, I was not able to exercise those urges because as a Christian, I don't believe in extramarital sex. So, you know, I know how hard that can be and I know a lot of Christians who struggle in those areas and as a Christian, we need to ask ourselves, do we want to give God our whole life? Do we want to glorify him in all ways? And if so, we need to be very much involved in the warfare for our souls. You know, it says in first Peter, abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul. And we need to, we need to be determined that we will fight against those lusts and that there's a, they, you need a more complete answer than this. And I'm running out of time, which is what's frustrating to me, but God gives grace.

And I would suggest that maybe I would recommend that such a person might listen to some lectures at my website called Cultivating Christian Character, because it's about learning to overcome sin and live a holy life with the resources that God has given. I wish I could go longer, but I'm going to be cut off here in 30 seconds. And if you want to call back tomorrow, maybe we can discuss it some more.

But if you find my lecture series, Cultivating Christian Character, I think that might be of help. I hope it is. And God bless you. I appreciate your call. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are listeners supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593, or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.