The Narrow Path 10/22

Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each week of the afternoon. Monday through Friday we are on.

This is what, Thursday, so I sometimes lose track of the days because they're all similar. But we have today and tomorrow this week for you to join me if you have questions about the Bible that you'd like to ask, maybe about the Christian faith or the Christian life, or maybe you see things differently than the host does and you'd like to balance comment, I welcome you to call me here. We actually have a line or two open at the moment. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Nicholas from Blaine, Washington. Nicholas, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi there. Thank you for your ministry. The question regarding Matthew 7, around 22 starts. I read a lot of Jesus' words and they seem to be a little more gnarly or kind of that he asks a lot of us. No, to do and to be, kind of compared to the rest of the New Testament in my perception. Anyhow, I'm generally looking for your interpretation per se of Matthew 7, 22.

And yeah, we'll leave it at that. Okay, well, Matthew 7, 22, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father in heaven. That's the verse before. Verse 22 says, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name? Then I will say to them, depart from me.

I never knew you, you who practice lawlessness. So what Jesus is apparently referring to is the day of judgment, when there will be people, apparently many, he uses the word many, will be there who have actually some confidence that they are Christians and that they have served Christ. And the evidence of it is that they have cast out demons and prophesied and done mighty works in his name. Now, to tell you the truth, I don't know very many people who do those things, but I've known of some. But many of them, he said, would be people who will discover that they weren't really his.

He'll say, I never knew you. Now, that is a scary thing because, frankly, I don't very often cast out demons, nor do I prophesy or do mighty works in Jesus' name. And that being so, it would seem these people had more impressive credentials as Christians than I have, and yet they weren't even saved.

So how am I supposed to deal with that? Well, we have to assume that verse 21 explains the passage you asked about. Verse 21, he said, Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven. So we have to assume that the people who were saying, Lord, Lord, we did such and such things, they were in themselves not servants of Christ.

They weren't doing the will of the Father in heaven. And this doesn't mean that it's not God's will for people to prophesy or cast out demons or do mighty works. Sometimes it is His will to do so, but that's not apparently what he's talking about. Doing His will means that you're living your life to do His will instead of your will. In other words, it's not just they did some things that were His will for them to do, which is apparently maybe how they were seeing it. They do some individual acts in the name of Jesus, and they feel like they're serving Jesus. But really, doing God's will is a lifestyle for a disciple. I mean, think about His disciples to whom He's speaking.

They had left their nets. They had left their jobs, left their families, and were following Him around. Now, that's a pretty intensive change for them, and not everyone is called to leave their families, leave their jobs to follow Jesus, but you can see that what they had done was decided that God's will, doing God's will, doing what Jesus wants, is going to define who they are.

It's going to define their lifestyle. It's not just something that they're going to go to the synagogue on Sabbath and give their tithes and do a few religious things and figure that that's going to endear them to God, nor even doing things in the name of Jesus on occasion, but rather living one's life with the mind to do God's will rather than one's own will. And there's a lot of people who are religious who, you know, they actually are fond of Jesus. They admire Jesus.

They even, you know, they think they believe in Jesus, but in fact they don't live for Him. I mean, day by day, the choices they're making are not with a mind to do the will of God, although they may hope that it is the will of God. They're making their choices entirely on a different basis. You know, they're making a choice on the basis of they want to do this. This is their plan. This is their agenda.

They're a dream. And they're not, you know, they're not doing everything simply because they've found reason to believe that God wants them to. So it's really what the life is committed to. Those who do the will of God would be not just those who occasionally do some things that are the will of God, but who are—their life is a life of doing God's will.

And even those who don't have that going on sometimes will do impressive religious things. But he's saying that's not really what he's going to be looking for. Uh-huh.

And it's important to know there's a timeline. You know, the first declaring your life for Jesus, like, you're saved right there, and then it's a journey from there. And then are you actually going to do the will of God after that and try your best? Well, right. I mean, you're right. The Christian life starts at a certain point, the point where you repent and surrender genuinely to Christ as your Lord and your King.

And yet you're not at all perfect. You know, it's like a baby. When a little baby is born, you hope he grows. You hope he gets stronger. You hope he gets wiser. If he's a good child, if he recognizes his parents' authority, he'll be an obedient child. But he'll learn more as he gets older, first of all, what obedience requires, what the will of his parents are. And also, of course, he'll gain more understanding of how to do it, how to live to please his parents.

Now, let's face it. Kids don't always want to please their parents. But that's the role of a child. The role of a child is to please and obey the parents. If a child does something that displeases the parents, that doesn't mean they're not a child.

It just means they're a child that needs to learn his place, needs to learn what they're to do. Now, when we become Christians, we're doing that voluntarily. A baby isn't born into a family voluntarily.

He just comes because nature brought him, or we could say God brought him. But when a person is born again, they make a choice about that. You have to repent.

You have to believe. And that's making a choice to change. But having been born again, you know, you've already committed yourself to being a follower of Christ. You've committed yourself to being a son of God.

And, you know, your life is then, like you say, a process or a journey, learning more about how to please God, but remaining committed to do so. So, even when you're not doing real well at it, because perhaps you don't understand well or you're foolishly distracted by something briefly and you end up doing the wrong thing, that doesn't mean you've decided not to follow Christ. And deciding to follow Christ doesn't mean you'll never slip up. But it does mean that unless you have decided to follow Jesus, unless it is your commitment that He's your Lord and you're His servant and follower, if you haven't done that, you don't believe in Christ yet. You're not a believer. Because what you have to believe is that Jesus is the Lord. That's what the Gospel is.

He's the King. And so, until someone believes that, they haven't believed the Gospel yet. That's our prayer.

That, you know, someone will look up at the sky or something and think of the big picture and realize Jesus is King. Thank you for your answer. Okay, Nicholas, thank you for your call. Paul from Georgia. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. The other day, I heard William Lane Craig on YouTube talking about the idea that there was no human person, Jesus of Nazareth, and that rather that God the Son took on a second nature, but that there is only one person, that is the divine person. And I wanted to see if I could hear your thoughts about that and also how that might relate to the idea that James tells us that it's impossible for God to be tempted, and yet Jesus was tempted in every way. Okay, well, as far as the first thing, I didn't hear what William Lane Craig said that you're referring to, but I have a hard time believing he said it quite that way, because knowing him, he holds very orthodox Christian beliefs. And to say that there was no man, Jesus of Nazareth, there was only, you know, what, God?

I don't know. I can't understand exactly how you were explaining that, and I'm not sure if that's the way he explained it. The way I understand it is, as the Bible says, that Jesus existed as God from the beginning, and at a certain point, He took on flesh. He took on human nature, and He did so by becoming a real human being. There really was a man, Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, Paul says to Timothy, there's one God and one mediator between man and God, the man, Jesus Christ. So, he refers to Jesus, even in His ascended state, as a man, who is the mediator between man and God. But He was what God is when God takes on human nature. He had human nature and God nature in Him. Now, I can't explain that very well, but it does come into play when you ask the question, if God can't be tempted with evil, like James said, how could Jesus be tempted with evil? And that is something that is a very important thing to sort out, because many people think that because Jesus was God, you know, He just walked around appearing to be a human being. It's like God put on a human costume, but it was really just God.

In which case, He wouldn't be able to be tempted. But the fact that Jesus was tempted means that He really was human. He was God, having taken on humanity, but not just by putting on a Halloween costume that made Him look like a man, but by actually becoming a man, and taking on human weakness, actually coming through the line of David, as Paul points out in Romans 1 and 2, that He came as a son of David, according to the flesh. He took on human weakness. He took on human vulnerability, and He actually, in the New Testament, it's much more emphasized that He was a man than that He was God. We do know that He was God, who had become a man, and that's, of course, a mysterious thing.

We know of no other case. I don't know of any analogies for it, but we can say this, that Jesus' humanity is much more emphasized in the New Testament than His deity. Of course, if every time He's called the Son of God, we call that His deity, then that might not balance out the way I'm saying. But actually, statements that would indicate Jesus is God Himself, and not just the Son of God, those statements are very rare in the New Testament.

They're true, but they're rare. It's not the emphasis. The emphasis is that God actually humbled Himself. He emptied Himself and took on the form of a servant, became one of us, and became subject to death . You see, when you ask, how could Jesus be tempted, since God can't be tempted?

Well, there's a whole bunch of other things that are the same kind of question. How could Jesus die when God can't die? How could Jesus become weary when God doesn't become weary? How could Jesus have areas of ignorance, which He did, and He said He did. He said there were things He didn't know, but only the Father knew.

But God doesn't have any areas of ignorance. So, we have to say, if Jesus had all these weaknesses and limitations that humans have, that God does not have, then we simply have to factor that into our understanding of what it means for God to become a man. He empties Himself of some of His privileges as God. He has to trim Himself down to our size, which means He can't be, for that moment, Jesus was not invisible. He was not omnipresent. He was not omniscient.

He was not omnipotent. He was not immortal, because He died, and He was not immune from temptation. But if He had never taken on human form, He never would have experienced temptation or death or weariness or limitations.

You see, it's the self-limiting of God in becoming one of us that's so amazing, such an act of humility on His part and vulnerability, so they could die, which God cannot do. So, I believe that by becoming one of us, Jesus subjected Himself, as the Bible says, to all the temptations we have. It says He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin. So, since God can't be tempted, how could Jesus be tempted? I think the answer briefly would be He was tempted because He was human, and human beings are subject to testing and trial, and He was, after all, the Bible says, the second Adam. He played a role in history that is analogous to that of Adam in some respects, and Adam was tested and failed the test and brought disaster on the world. Jesus was tested also and passed the test and brought salvation for all those who are in Him. So, you know, He had to have that vulnerability.

He had to be tested like Adam was tested. Right. All right, I appreciate your call. Judy from Martinez, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Hi. Thank you so much for your ministry, like everyone else feels.

I've been so blessed. I was searching this morning, looking to find the width of the curtain that closed over the Holy of Holies. I thought years ago that I read it somewhere, and I couldn't find it. Is there a dimension given, and if so, what is it? You mean the thickness or the width of it? I'm sorry, I said width. I mean the thickness, because it rent, you know, he rented, and the thickness counts. Yeah, well, I have always read that the thickness of the veil covering the entrance to the Holy of Holies was a hand breadth. Now, a hand breadth, they didn't have the same exact measurements we have now.

They didn't have it all standardized, but if you stretch out your hand as far as you can stretch it, the tip of your little finger to the tip of your thumb is a hand breadth, and that was the approximate thickness of the veil from what I have read. Now, does it say that in the Bible? No, it doesn't say how thick it was in the Bible. The information, I assume, comes from other Jewish writings. It may be in the Talmud. It might be Josephus who gives us that information.

I don't know, but, I mean, there are extra biblical sources, outside the Bible, that give us some information, and I'm not sure where that bit of information came from, because it isn't in the Bible. It doesn't tell us in the Bible how thick it was. Well, thank you. I'm so grateful to know that, and no matter how thick it was, it's impressive that that happened to begin with, but a hand breadth would be very impressive. That'd be like six inches or something, you know?

That's a pretty thick curtain. Yeah, that's what I thought. So, thank you. You've answered my question. Thank you, Judy. All right, bye now. God bless. Bye now.

Danielle in Fair Oaks, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi. Hi, how are you? Good. Okay. So, my question, I'm stuck as a Christian, just really feeling torn on how to politically vote. Honestly, I was like, I don't even know if I should call in.

I'm just really having a hard time this year on what to do. Well, you should vote your convictions and vote your values. Now, you have to realize that almost any time there's an election, there are no candidates that are perfect people. There have been very few candidates, I imagine, who are actually even Christians. I mean, most of them claim to be, but as far as what we know to be a Christian, very few choices we've had for president, for example, or for senators, are convincingly Christian.

So, the question is, what must we vote for? We can't just vote for someone because he is or is not a Christian, because most of the time we won't be able to vote at all then if they're not a Christian. But we don't need to vote in a Christian because this isn't a Christian country. This is a free country. People of all religions are free to have equal rights in this country.

This is not like Israel, which was a country where everyone was required to worship Jehovah or be stoned to death. You know, this is a country which is pluralistic and therefore people are allowed to believe what they want to, and they should not be molested for it. So, if we believe in the American, you know, issues like that and being distinctive that way, then we should vote for those people who will protect those liberties because the protection of all people's liberties includes the protection of ours. So, we should look for candidates that really believe in upholding the Constitution because the Constitution is where those liberties are granted. Now, we might say that as Christians we should vote for the candidate that promotes Christianity. No, not necessarily, because we're not voting in a church leader. We're voting in a political leader. We're really voting a manager or CEO of the country, and his religious views are perhaps significant in determining whether he might be an honest man or not, but we can't always guarantee, we don't even know how many people who run for office are sincere when they tell us their religious views.

So, what we need to look at is their record, I think. Now, as far as choosing between, I don't know if you're thinking of the presidential candidates with this call, but given two presidential candidates, I'd want to know, first of all, do they credibly stand for the things they say they stand for? Now, the other thing is, let's assume they do, then what is it they stand for? Now, I have to say, I'm not a Republican, but I'm not a Democrat either. I've remained independent because I don't identify with a party, but I will say that if I look at the things that I want a government official to stand for, the Republican Party is much closer to my values than the Democratic Party. For one thing, I'm not a racist, and the Democratic Party is. The Democratic Party has always been racist. They founded the Ku Klux Klan.

They were the ones who created the Jim Crow laws. They're the ones who resisted the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Democrats have always been the ones who are anti-black, and of course, they pretend to be otherwise now, but even the way they do so is anti-black because even Black Lives Matter is really not pro-black. They are for abortion, and if you're for abortion, you believe in killing millions of black babies every year because that's what the abortion industry does. So, I mean, if you're for abortion, you're really anti-black because, you know, Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, was outspokenly determined to wipe out the black race through abortion. That was what she wanted abortion to do, and that's largely what is happening. Most abortion clinics are in black neighborhoods, so, you know, this is racism. The Democratic Party has always been racist.

They still are. Now they're trying, of course, to be racist against whites, but that's because they want to start a race war, of course. I mean, that's why there's people breaking things in the streets. This is the beginnings of race war, which didn't exist, really, before the Democratic rabble-rousers went out and started doing it. Now, again, I say this as a criticism of the Democratic Party as myself, not a Republican, but just as an independent person saying, if people stand for those kind of things, I could never vote for them, you know? And so, I do think, now, Trump, of course, leaves much to be desired, and everybody knows that. Everybody knows that Trump has had a checkered past, and everyone knows that, you know, he's a little bit offensive and obnoxious, but, you know, I'm not voting for a president who will be nice and lovable. I'm looking for a president who will actually do the right thing, and as near as I can tell, from my point of view, the four years that Mr. Trump has been president, he's done the right thing, and one thing he's done that no president has done yet is kept all of his promises that he could keep. You know, he actually seems to have more character than any candidate we've had in my lifetime, because he actually made promises, people voted for him to keep those promises, and that's exactly what he spent his four years doing, fulfilling them. Yeah, that's where I got hung up. Yeah.

Knowing what I want to vote for. Well, a lot of Christians say, you know, well, Trump used to be a womanizer. Well, maybe he was. I don't think he's been a womanizer in the White House like Clinton was and like John F. Kennedy was, you know. I heard rumors that Mr. Trump got converted and became a Christian during the campaign.

I won't argue that he did. I don't know, but I heard it from a source that is fairly reliable, and I would say, well, it does seem like he's cleaned up his act, you know, so I'm not going to hold against him what he did before he was a Christian or when he was a private citizen. Again, a private citizen may really do a lot of bad things without hurting me, but a president who's immoral in office, well, I have an interest in that, you know, because I'm the one he's governing. Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was kind of on the fence with, you know, voting for Trump, voting like, you know, in the middle, you know, independent, and it was just like, that doesn't really make a difference. It was just kind of that stuff in that.

Well, yeah, and you're not alone. There's a lot of Christians who find Trump to be an offensive individual, to have an offensive past and things like that, and to say, as a Christian, I can't vote for a man like that. But what kind of man can you vote for? You know, there really hasn't been a candidate in my lifetime whose life has been exemplary and sinless and so forth, and therefore you have to decide, okay, I'm not going to get a sinless man. Let me at least get a man who'll do the job he's being hired to do, you know, and that would be my take, and I think that at least I think Trump believes in doing the job that the president is hired to do.

Now, I will say this. To not vote for Trump, of course, I mean, just to stay home because you don't like Trump or Biden, is a risky thing. You know, you might stay home and not vote and Biden might win or Trump might win.

I don't know. But whoever wins, if it's not the candidate who stands for what you stand for and you didn't vote for the opponent of that person, then you'll realize that you've missed an opportunity to vote in somebody who will at least preserve some of the things you believe in, as opposed to the candidate who will demolish everything you believe in. Anyway, I appreciate your call. I've got to take a break, as you can see. Thank you for joining us. We have another half hour coming up.

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Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call. We'll talk about them.

You might have a different viewpoint and want to talk about that, and you're welcome to. The number to call is 844-484-5737. And for those of you who want to call, I have good news. There are some lines open.

That's not always the case. Sometimes I have to start the half hour or the hour at the beginning of the hour. Same lines are full, but if you call in a few minutes, maybe there's something open. Right now, there's actually several lines open, so feel free to call right now.

It's 844-484-5737. And I do want to remind you that I have a new book out on the subject of the Kingdom of God, which is largely based on my lecture series on the Kingdom of God from our website. And it just came out, and if you're interested, you can go to Amazon and get it. I don't sell it. Don't write to me at The Narrow Path and ask for my book. I'm not selling any. But you can buy it where you buy books normally.

I would say this though. If you do read the book and like it, or even if you read it and don't like it, I'd be glad to have you write a review of it and post it on Amazon. When a book's brand new, it takes a while to amass some reviews, and so when people look out of curiosity, there's no reviews. I mean, there are a couple there, but it just came out last week. If you happen to read the book and you feel strongly favorable or unfavorable, write a review.

I'd like to see the unfavorable ones as well as the favorable ones. The book is called Empire of the Risen Sun. So if you go to Amazon, put my name Steve Gregg in there, you'll see easily that book will come up with my other books. And if you've read it, review it.

If you haven't read it, you might want to think about getting it. Let's talk to Paul from New York. Paul, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Okay. Yeah. Hi.

Thanks, Steve Gregg. I have two questions. I noticed a couple other people who've been able to ask two questions, so I thought I'd try that as well. So my first question is about baptism and the mode of baptism. And oftentimes in a dictionary where people will say, commentators will say, the word baptism itself means to dip or to immerse in Greek. Now, I don't know how familiar you are with the early church writing called the Didache.

I've read it a couple of times, yeah. Okay. So I don't know Greek and I don't know the meanings of words, and so I just know that early church fathers, they spoke Greek as their native language, so I trust their meaning of the word. So anyway, in the Didache where it speaks of baptism should be in running water. If running water is not available, it could be in still water, and if that's not available, then it could be poured. That's correct.

That's what it says. Okay, so my question then is, if the word baptize means to immerse, and the Didache says, pouring is a legitimate form of baptism, how can the word itself mean to immerse? Well, the word does mean immerse, so that's just a fact of Greek language. It's used in secular Greek to refer to a woman dipping clothing into dye, to dye the clothing, or to actually dipping anything into a liquid.

The word baptizo is the Greek word for that, and so, I mean, that's not even really, I think, seriously open to question. The Didache says baptism should be in running water if possible, or in warm water if cold water's not available. Obviously, he's saying the word means dipped, but he said if there's not enough water, and there are perhaps places in the Middle East where there's not very much water, then instead of dipping, just pour water over the head and say, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, I mean, yeah, there is the concession made that one could pour if they're at a place where there's not enough water to do it the normal way. It makes it very clear. If there's not much water, then pour water over the head.

So it's, you know, he's trying to say—I mean, not he, but the writers of the Didache are trying to say it's important to baptize, and there's some preferable ways to do it. Running water's preferable. Cold water's preferable. If you don't have those choices, you can dip in warm water or standing water. It's not impossible. All of that has to do with dipping, but if there's not any water at all, or not much, you could just pour water over the head.

So, what we see is flexibility. We don't see a redefinition of baptism into something other than dipping. We see that dipping is assumed to be the way to do it, but pouring is something that can be done if you have to accommodate the absence of enough water to dip somebody in. So my point, though, would have been if the word itself means to dip, then someone who has been poured upon—in many denominations today, even—that practiced baptism through pouring, if we were to take the word as meaning to dip, then the person has really not actually been baptized, because he hasn't been immersed. Maybe they haven't been immersed, but they've had a substitute ritual that stands for their baptism. That's what it's saying. It's saying you should dip people, but if there's no water to dip people, then there's another ritual that will stand in instead of it.

So it's as good as it is, if that's all you can do. Okay, that's interesting. It'd be like saying this. It'd be like saying, under the old covenant, let's say, people were required to tithe—that is, give 10 percent of their income to the priest. And there could be all kinds of instructions about tithing. And then one of the instructions might be—you don't really find it, but this is hypothetically—now, if you don't even have any money, or you don't have even enough money to divide it into tenths, then just give what you can, and we'll call that your tithe. In other words, they wouldn't necessarily be literally tithed. The word tithe means one tenth, okay?

But instructions about tithing might recognize. There are situations where someone simply has so little, like the woman who had two mites, two pennies that she put in the offering. How does she give 10 percent of that? She either gives 50 percent, 100 percent, or none of it. So the point is, she wasn't tithing technically, because she couldn't. That wasn't the option.

She actually gave all. But I'm saying that in a set of instructions about tithing, it's assumed that tithing means a tenth. But there might be, after several instructions about the things, say, and if you can't give a tenth, if that's an impossibility, then this will be acceptable in the absence of opportunity to tithe. And I think that's the same thing with the baptism.

If you can't dip them, then pour water over them instead. It'll work. Okay. Okay, so that somewhat answered my question. It seems like, I guess what I'm gathering you're saying, is that it is not baptism, but it serves as another ceremony that could serve as baptism, I guess. Yeah, it's not technically dipping. You're right.

Yeah. But, I mean, the fact that the Didache says that does not mean that the Greek language, that baptism doesn't mean dipping. That it does. It does.

It means immersing. And you can just get any lexicon and prove that to yourself. You said you had a second question. We're taking a long time on this one, but we have nothing. Okay, yeah.

I'm sorry. So the second question is about Abraham's sons. I've often heard it preached that Abraham, when he had Isaac, it was impossible for him to have a son because he was too old. And so it took a miracle for God to give Abraham his son, Isaac. Now, I've always found it interesting because after Sarah died, Abraham had several more sons.

Six. So it apparently wasn't impossible for him to have Isaac. It may have been impossible for Sarah, but not Abraham.

Am I correct on that? Well, it depends because the reference to Keturah's six sons, which Abraham fathered, we're not told. I mean, most people think that story about Keturah and her six sons is reported out of chronological order. It's not known whether these sons by Keturah were born at the time they're reported or at an earlier time, and they're only reported at the end of his life in order to fill in a detail that had been passed over without mention earlier. This is the way that Genesis narration often is.

It will often tell the story of a person's life, not giving every detail because the story doesn't want to be broken up with unnecessary details, but then as the person is dismissed from the narrative, they'll throw in something about his life that's somewhat important that happened earlier. And so, at the end of Abraham's life, I guess it's in the, what, the 24th or 25th chapter of Genesis, it mentions that he had six sons by this woman named Keturah also, and that could have happened earlier before he got so old. After all, when he sent off Ishmael, it says that he sent off the sons of his concubines, interestingly. So, it actually says when Ishmael was sent away along with his mother, when he was about probably 16 years old, that along with him, Abraham sent away the sons of his concubines, plural. So, some feel that Keturah was a concubine and Hagar was a concubine, and that Ishmael and these six sons were all concubine children who were born prior to Isaac, and they're just not mentioned until the story's over, so we've already heard about Isaac and Ishmael because of their role in the story, but then it mentions the details of these guys being born. Now, another view that has been suggested, which I don't consider to be as likely, is that when God made Abram virile again so that he could have Isaac, he could father Isaac, that he remained virile for a long time afterwards and was able to have other children after Isaac.

That's not impossible, but it doesn't strike me as likely as the suggestion that Keturah's sons are mentioned out of chronological order and that they were perhaps born before Isaac, and therefore before Abram was too old to have children. That would be my thought. Let's talk to Scott from Phoenix, Arizona. Scott, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thanks. Good afternoon. I've got a question about, well, I was born or kind of raised in a Pentecostal or Charismatic upbringing, and I was considered myself a Christian up until a certain point when I realized that I wasn't, I didn't think I was in my past. And by always, if anyone would have asked me, I would have called myself, I would have said, yeah, I'm a Christian, you know, because I believed. And I don't know if that's because of what I was taught at the Charismatic or in Baptist and that kind of thing. But now I know the difference, but I also see a lot of people like the way he was calling about a Christian president or whatever.

How do you know what to vote for? I know a lot of people who call themselves Christians and the fruit isn't there. And yes, we were talking about someone like that you shouldn't eat with who calls themselves a Christian. You shouldn't even be around them if they're calling themselves a Christian.

Yeah, if they call themselves a follower of Christ and they're associated with the body of Christ, if they call themselves a brother, Paul said, if they're living in fornication, don't associate with them, right? Well, that's how I was. I was like that before. Well, but you're not now, so that's good.

So what question do you have for me? Well, how do I treat these people who I know now call themselves Christians? And, you know, like some of my friends are like that. A lot of your friends are like that.

Well, if I were you and you had been like them, you had been doing it yourself, I would talk to them and say, you know, I've been living wrong. And the way we've been living is just wrong. If we're going to live that way, we shouldn't call ourselves Christians because the word Christian refers to somebody who's following Jesus. And when we live and when we fornicate and get drunk and when we party like that, we're not followers of Jesus. We're lying and we're taking His name in vain. So we have to decide whether we're going to give up our sinful ways or whether we're going to stop calling ourselves Christians.

Those are really the only two options. And if I have done that? If you had done that, what? If I had done that to the people I know, if I told them, I understand, I know how it is because I've been there.

It's no good, you know. Well, what do they say? What do they say to that? Do they say, well, I'm saved by grace so I can get away with all this stuff? Well, I love Jesus.

I believe in Jesus. Well, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. So obviously, if you don't keep his commandments, then the sound of your claims and love him is very hollow. How can you judge me? How can you judge me like that? Well, we're required to judge people. That's entirely, I mean, in fact, that's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, when he says there's a man in the church who's living in fornication. You need to put that man out of the church. And he says, you need to judge those people. He says, we can't judge those who are outside the church, but those who are inside, we have to judge, he said. And we need to put that wicked person away from you.

Just read 1 Corinthians 5, and that'll answer your question. Yeah, so I'm at the point, and I think I've been at the point for the last several years where I'm not even part of the family anymore. Not part of the family, you mean because you're living an obedient life now, your biological family has rejected you for that? Yes.

Why? Well, they think I talk about God too much, and I guess my life hurts them because I guess they understand now that I'm someone else. Well, I mean, that's kind of what, isn't that what Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 4? He said the time past of our lives has been enough of pleasing the pagans. He says when we walked in lascivious and lusts and idolatries and abominable things, he said, he says they think it's strange that you don't run with them to the same excess of behavior, and they speak evil of you, he says. So Peter said we live to please those people long enough. We're not going to do that anymore, and they're going to think it's strange that you're not doing it anymore. They think it's strange that you're not running with them the same way, and they speak evil of you.

So that's about, apparently that's about average. Peter must have said that was normal in apostolic times, and you're experiencing the norm in that respect, persecution for righteousness' sake. Kind of what I thought, but I just wanted to, I've never talked to anybody else about it, really, who's a brother in Christ, so I'd say she's deep. God bless you, Scott. Hopefully you'll find some like-minded brothers somewhere. It's hard these days, I know. There's, you know, many are called, few are chosen, and even of those who are called and chosen, not all are faithful, and only the ones who will come with Jesus, it says in Revelation, are called and chosen and faithful.

So if you're just called or just chosen, but not faithful, you're not in that group. All right, let's talk to Luke from Scottsdale, Arizona. Hi, Luke. Good to hear from you. Hey, Steve.

Good to talk to you. My question today is about the Old Testament and all the references that we see to God bringing in the Gentiles into His fold. Just going back and reading the Old Testament, it seems like there's so many references to it and allusions to it, and I'm just curious what that would have been like for the Jews of that time to read those statements.

You know, it seems like it would be something that they weren't very excited about or something that they would—yeah, I don't know. I'd just like to get your thoughts on that, what that would have been like for the original readers. Well, you know, you hear a lot about how bigoted the Jews were toward the Gentiles and so forth, and that was very largely true. There must have been some good-hearted Jews who would think, well, that's a good thing.

It's wonderful that the Gentiles could be saved, too. I mean, I can't believe that the whole race of Jews were evil-minded, but we know that through much of their Old Testament history, they were evil-minded, and Isaiah especially speaks a great deal about the Gentiles coming in and being part of God's kingdom. And, you know, I don't know how people responded to Isaiah in his day. He was eventually sawn in two by a king who didn't much like what he had to say, but it wasn't because of his statement with the Gentiles. But, I mean, the prophets, they were not very well received in general, but there was a faithful remnant who did receive the prophets. I'm sure that those who followed Isaiah faithfully probably thought, well, great, I mean, God will save the Gentiles, too.

That's fine. But their view would not have been that of the majority of the Jewish society who really disdained the Gentiles. But if they go back to their origins, the promise God made to Abraham was that through Abraham's seed, all the nations and all the families of the earth would be blessed. So, it never was God's purpose, even from the beginning of Israel's coming from Abraham. The promise made to Abraham, it never was God's will that just the Jews would be saved, but rather that through Israel, through God's Abraham seed, all the nations, all the Gentiles would be blessed, too. So, they should have known, and I'm sure some of them did, but probably a lot of them either didn't know or didn't like it because they were quite bigoted. I mean, racism has been a problem, even bigotry over religion is a problem for people, and the Jews really had that problem a lot. So, I'm not sure what the majority of the Jews did when they encountered those passages.

I don't know if they just ignored them. I mean, think how many passages Christians ignore because it doesn't describe what they want the Bible to say. I mean, when Jesus said, unless you forsake all that you have, you can't be my disciple.

Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you can't be my disciple. I mean, those are passages that a huge number of Christians who think themselves Bible believers, they just ignore them. They're not the kind of passages they want to think about, and I think that probably Israel had those kinds of passages in their prophetic books that they've treated that way, too. They thought they were faithful Jews, but there's some passages they just kind of skip over.

Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. And just thinking about the story of Jonah and all the people of Nineveh repenting, it seems like if I had such a victory like that, it would just be all the glory to God, I'd be super excited about it, but he was just so bitter and angry. Jonah was not happy, yeah. And it may be simply because Jonah hated Gentiles, or it may have been those particular Gentiles, the people of Nineveh, because that was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was threatening his own nation, Israel, and eventually destroyed Israel. So he might have been particularly upset with the Ninevites and the Assyrians, not as much because they were Gentiles merely, but because they were enemies of his nation.

But, yeah, most of the Jews seem to have real prejudice against Gentiles as such. Yeah, cool. Thanks for your answer, Steve. Safe travels.

Okay, Luke. God bless you, thanks. I haven't answered your email because I haven't had time to answer emails yet. Oh, sure. No worries. Okay, God bless you, brother. Thanks.

Bye. Everett from San Pablo, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Okay, Steve, thank you.

Two questions. No, you need to turn your radio down, Everett. Everett, you need to turn the radio down.

It's echoing. Okay, is that better? Yes, much better. Thanks. Great, great.

Okay. So my question is, out of Hebrews chapter one, when it says about the Son of God, through whom also he made the worlds. And I would like for you to comment on that text, through whom also he made the worlds, and what was the worlds considered in that text. And also a few verses down, it talks about the Son being made so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than day.

Could you explain, would it mean being made so much better? Okay, sure. I will. Thanks for the question.

When it says that through whom God made the worlds. There's quite an echo there. Are you listening on the radio? Okay. Yeah, I'm going to turn the phone off. I'll turn off the air. Okay, that's fine.

I'm going to have to hang up there because there's too much echo. Through whom he made the worlds. It could be that he's using the word worlds as we would. We think of planets, you know, other worlds besides the earth. And they certainly knew about some other worlds. They knew about Venus, and they knew about, of course, they could see some planets with the naked eye. But I don't know how much they thought in terms of other planets being worlds.

We would. We often think of that term, other worlds, would probably mean other planets. But in those days, other worlds could refer to other worlds, for example, than the Jewish world or the Gentile world or the Roman world.

Because the word is used that way in the Bible. For example, when Caesar Augustus declared that all the world should be taxed, he means all the Roman world. There were other worlds, you know, in India and places like that that they knew about, but he wasn't taxing them because they weren't part of that world. So it might mean human civilizations, you know, as separate worlds.

I don't know exactly how the term is used in that case. But I suspect he might have been using it the same way we would use it, you know, meaning other planets. Just all the stars and all the bodies in the heavens. But I don't know if we could be sure about his intentions there. Now, when it says that Jesus was made so much better than the angels as He had obtained a better name than they, you have to realize that in chapter 2, He says that Jesus was made like all men. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. But after He suffered death, He, of course, rose from the dead and then ascended far above every angel, far above all principalities and powers and so forth. So He is now made to be above all the angels. He, of course, was that before He became a man, but He's not talking about the pre-incarnate Christ. He's talking about Jesus, historically, had been below the angels like us. And He was made a little while below the angels, it says in Hebrews 2. So then, of course, He was made greater than the angels by being exalted to God's right hand after His resurrection.

So I'm pretty sure that's what He's referring to. He's not denying or referring to Jesus having a pre-existence before His birth in Bethlehem. The Bible affirms that, certainly, but He's talking about Jesus known to us in history. We saw Jesus among us, but He's now been made above the angels. He doesn't mention so much at that point that Jesus had, for eternity, been above the angels before He came to earth. But He's talking about what we can observe historically about Jesus. He lived among us. He was the express image of God's person, the bright shining of His glory, and He was ultimately made greater than the angels by His ascension.

That's what I think is the heat writer of Hebrews is speaking of. Victor in Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. How are you doing there, Steve? Good, thanks. Oh, we don't have much time. I'm sorry. Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. It's Philippians 12 and 13, work out your own salvation. I know the next one was fear and trembling.

I know the next verse said, He worked the will to use His good pleasure so far. What do it really mean, fear and trembling? I know, though, He's working that work and work out our own salvation, but the fear and trembling, where is it? What it means, of course, is that there's a great amount at stake here. Our salvation is at stake, and so we should have a serious, you know, reverence, a serious concern that we get this right. Not that we're really afraid we're going to go to hell if we just step out of line, but we realize we're living in a world that's doing all it can to drive us away from God, and if we happen to be driven away from God, that's a terrible fate.

We should fear that, just like we fear any great danger. So it means we're taking this walk seriously. I'm sorry I had to be so brief, but I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.