The Narrow Path 10/23

Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and I am live at the moment, but I may have to just ask the studio to play a recorded broadcast if my voice is breaking up too badly. I'm in a storm in Indiana, not able to get a very good internet signal here. So, if the quality is bad, we just need to have a recorded program today.

I'll try to take a call and, studio, you can let me know if it's terrible because I, of course, won't know. To the Narrow Path, thanks for calling. That was something that went in from my head to my heart. And I realized that that's the case, that God doesn't see us any differently than he sees his own son, Jesus Christ. And so we all become at the height of Jesus Christ. I had a friend that would always say to me, once you start seeing everybody as if they are Jesus Christ himself, not literally Jesus Christ, but you see them as if they are Jesus Christ. And he quoted the scripture about Jesus when he said, the least you do unto them, you do unto me.

And I realized that... Right, so what would your question be? Bill, what would your question be?

Do you have a question? Am I going off the rails believing this? No, that's what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that what is done to a believer is, in fact, done to Jesus because we are his body.

So, yes, it is correct to think that we should look at other people, at least other Christians, as Jesus. So, yeah, that's a good insight. I happen to agree with that. Thank you. All right, let's talk to David in Eugene, Oregon. David, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Absolutely.

Thank you, Steve. My question comes out of 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 11 and 12, and it's where Paul is telling us to make our ambition to lead a quiet life, work with our hands, mind our own business so that people respect us. And then, in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 16, he says, Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. And so, we have some good commands there from Paul, and so how do those commands compare to what the Lord told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1-5 about being set apart for a specific purpose? And how do we know if we're to be set apart for a specific purpose beyond what Paul said in Thessalonians?

So, what you're saying is Paul gave general instructions to Christians about making a living and being decent and honest and rejoicing always and giving thanks and everything, but you're wondering if that's the whole of it, or is there something more specific that God wants some of us to do, and how would we know? Is that your question? Yes, thank you. That exactly was my question.

Okay. Well, you know, I think that when God has a special task for someone, I think they'll know it. I think he'll put it on their heart. It's not for us to be frustrated wondering. I mean, the Bible certainly gives us plenty of instructions about generally how to live to please God, and some of those verses you quoted would be good examples of that. If you just do that, if God has something special that He's calling you to do, it's basically His responsibility to kind of inform you of that.

And we should assume that not everyone has really unusual things that God's calling them to do. I mean, there's millions and millions of Christians around the world, and most of them are no doubt supposed to be just living godly lives and being perhaps outspoken for Christ and their life be a testimony for Christ. You know, in the book of Acts in chapter 2, when the church grew immediately in one day from 120 people to 3,000 people, we read that the apostles every day boldly gave witness to the resurrection of Christ, but the 3,000 people sat regularly under the apostles' teaching, and they ate together, and they broke bread together, and they prayed together and fellowshiped together, but it's interesting. All the witness was being done by the apostles at that point. Now, later on, as Paul put it, God gave in addition to apostles, He gave prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, and not everybody is one of those.

All of those are like public ministries. So that's not really what every Christian has, but we shouldn't have to assume that everyone is going to be called to something highly remarkable or highly visible, but when Christians live as Christians, when they live holy lives and loving lives, just the community of believers becomes a powerful witness. Now, everyone has a gift of the Spirit, but some of the gifts of the Spirit are like the gift of giving or the gift of helping or the gift of showing mercy or some of the gifts that Paul lists in Romans chapter 12. So there's the gift of encouraging, there's the gift of leading.

These are all different kinds of things that people do. Some of them don't get a lot of attention, and some of them are simply done in the course of living the Christian life. For example, if you had the gift of serving, in all likelihood there would be some kind of ability you had that would be useful to the body of Christ that you would feel inclined to serve people with. And if you had the gift of giving, in all likelihood God would be giving you a little bit of extra money or a lot of extra money and you'd have it on your heart to give it to people. The gift of showing mercy, that kind of thing. I mean, you can just tell pretty much what your gift is in many cases just by doing what comes naturally as a Christian, because when you have a gift of the Spirit and you're a spirit-filled believer, well, then doing that does come naturally to you.

It may be supernatural, but you're a supernatural person. So just what you do naturally is what God wants you to do. Now, if God wants you to drop everything and be a missionary to China, well, He's going to have to give some kind of special insight to you about that, and you'll feel it, you'll know it. So I think that these verses you read, if every Christian just did that, including the people who are called to ministry, we'd have a very powerful testimony of the Church to the world.

And the way we live is the primary testimony. Remember, Jesus said, This is how all men will know that you're My disciples, if you have love for one another. And He even said in 1 Corinthians 13 that, He said, you know, if I do all these magnificent gifts and things, but if I don't have love, it's nothing. So, you know, when you say, you know, how do we know what else God wants us to do, there might not be much else that He wants you to do than the wonderful thing that all Christians are supposed to do, and that is to love people and serve people and be available to God to speak or act whenever, you know, an opportunity arises. So I'm not of the opinion that everybody has the kind of calling that you'd need to have an angel of the Lord appear to you and say, you know, you're called to do such and such. But if you do have that kind of a special calling, it may not be something God's let you know about yet. It may be something you'll know about later, but if He wants you doing something, it's going to be on your heart to do it. And frankly, opportunities will arise to do it too, because that's how God puts you into services.

He opens the doors to do things that you're sensing that you should do. And so, I don't know, I mean, what do you do? What kind of a job do you do?

I work actually at a local TV station, and I'm in outside sales for the TV station. My wife and my kids were really involved in our local church here in Eugene, and so, you know, we love serving at our church and like to be able to talk with clients about the Lord and kind of what God has done for me. Frankly, that might be the whole of what God wants you to be doing at this point. And if at some point He has something more out of the ordinary that He wants you to do, you know, something special that not every Christian is necessarily doing, He can let you know. He'll let you know if He's calling you.

If you get a call of God, you'll know that you've got the call of God, I believe. Well, that is very, very helpful. Thank you. Okay, David, God bless you. I appreciate you calling today. Now, I'm not sure how well my internet hookup is working, but so far we've gotten through two calls, so I'm going to continue hoping it'll work out.

I don't know how strong my voice is coming across, so studio, let me know if it's not doing well. David and another David in Auburn. It's just fine. Okay, good.

It's working fine. David in Auburn, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi there, brother Steve. God bless you and grace to you and your family. I just want to thank you so much for your resources and just growing substantially so much through the years.

And so just thank you for that. My question to you really quick is here working in where I work, I work in a public school district and I encounter various different people all the time. And sometimes in the conversations, I'll feel convicted, not so much because of something I did wrong, but it's maybe more in the context of the conversations that are going on around me. So it kind of grieves me to hear, you know, the crude humor or the gossip or the slander.

So my question to you would be when Jesus encountered situations like that around the people he was around, do you think that he corrected everybody in every instance or do you think that he just removed himself from the situation? And I would love to take your answer offline, please. Okay. Okay.

Thank you for your call. Okay. So how did how did Jesus react when he was around people who were being crude or whatever? We we don't have, you know, specific descriptions of how he did that, but we do know that he accepted invitations to parties which were attended by the lowest form morally of people in Israel.

The prostitutes and the tax collectors and the ones who are generally regarded as the sinners. And he they seem to be comfortable around him and he seemed to be comfortable around them. I mean, he loved him. He said he was like a physician who was going to the sick. And so, you know, if they used crude language, which I imagine sometimes they they did because he was at feast with them, they'd be not only talking to him, but to each other and so forth. He probably saw a lot of behavior that wouldn't be very much like the way he would act. But but he was full of grace and truth, the Bible says.

And so, you know, he might say something if if it was necessary. But I think Jesus probably felt the way I don't know. I guess maybe I could be projecting the way I feel. But when I'm around sinners like that, I don't like that kind of language. I don't like that kind of joking. But I kind of look at them as people who they don't know much better.

I mean, they're they don't know any other society. I'd love, you know, sometimes they notice that I don't speak crudely. I mean, I've been in a secular situation where someone came up to me and said, you're a Christian, aren't you? I said, how did you know?

And they said, because you're not using the event. You're not cussing and stuff, which was surprising. But it's surprising to me that that would stand out for them. Just being an example of being pure yourself, if somebody tries to tell you a joke, wants you to laugh. You know, I don't know, you don't have to be like a prude about it, but you don't you don't want to encourage it either.

So you might just smile and say, you know, I don't find that that funny. But I mean, you don't want to you don't want to sound like some kind of a Pharisee either because Jesus wasn't. We have to realize that Jesus was quite popular among those kind of people. And that would suggest that he didn't behave like the Pharisees did, because I don't think the Pharisees were very popular around those kind of people.

I think those people probably felt very uncomfortable around the Pharisees because of the judgment they were experiencing. We have to remember that people's real problem is that they're alienated from God and everything else they do is a symptom of that. And and that's a sickness. I mean, it certainly is a sickness that they're responsible for because they can repent if they know to do so.

But still, I mean, whether they're responsible for being in that condition or not, that's the condition they are in. And and as such, they are blind. They are numb to the things of God, it may be. And so I would say that if people are behaving in a way that's so contrary to the ways Christians know how to believe, one should probably assume they don't really know much better. In fact, that's what Jesus said when they were hurling insults at him when he was on the cross and pounding nails into him. He said, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing. So I imagine that's how Jesus sort of viewed the course people and the fallen people in society with whom he, you know, to whom he reached out. I think the main thing to realize is it's not your duty as a Christian to judge non-Christians. Jesus himself, it says in John, he did not come to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He didn't come to condemn the world because the world was already condemned, it says. This is all in John three.

So I would suggest that, you know, it's not our place to judge the world. Now, Paul said it is our place to judge the church. I mean, Paul said that very clearly in First Corinthians five. He said, you know, those who are outside the church, we don't judge those people.

That's God. God judges them. But those inside the church, we sure had better judge because we have to exercise church discipline. And I realize that Christians tend to feel like the duty is the other way around. They think like we should be pointing the finger at all our unsaved friends about all their sins and kind of turn a blind eye to the sins in the church. That's just the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible says we should be confronting sin in the church and leaving it to God to judge those who are not in the church. That's not ours to judge.

We can tell them the truth. And when Jesus said he was like a physician going to the sick, notice the attitude of a physician toward a patient is hopefully compassionate toward them. Not self-righteous. I mean, a physician, just because he's not sick, he doesn't go to the sick person and say, Shame on you. How dare you be sick?

Why can't you be well like I am? You know, he's there to help. He's there to minister. And that's what Jesus was. He said that's how that's why he hung around with non-Christians. So somehow I think we need to, if we aren't already that way, we need to recast our role when we're around offensive people. People who maybe they're not even trying to be offensive. Maybe they just don't even know that their behavior is offensive to people like ourselves or to God. So we have to really be gracious if we aren't full of grace and truth.

We're not really like Jesus because that's how he is described as being. I hope that helps. Let's talk to Don from Snohomish, Washington. Don, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.

It's a pleasure. I believe that Christians will be given rewards based upon our lives. And yet I often hear from other Christians that we will not be judged.

Yet I see in the New Testament verses that lead me to believe we will. And just a couple, three quick verses. James 3, 1.

My brethren, not many of you become teachers, excuse me, let not many of you become teachers knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. 2 Corinthians 5, 10. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. And 1 Corinthians 3, 14 and 15. If anyone's work, which is built on endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved.

Yet so as through fire. So my question is, are all these verses referring to a judgment related simply to rewards or are they related to some type of punishment, rebuke or reckoning by God? Well, and there's another verse where Peter, you know, talks to the Christians and he says, If you call God your Father, who without partiality judges everyone according to his works, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear, he says, and he's talking to Christians. So there is something to fear of the judgment. Now, there's no hell. There's no hell or condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

So I don't know if we if we really have anything that we'd call punishment in the sense of, you know, a negative thing that's done to us or if it's rather as you were wondering whether it's just the forfeiture of rewards that we would have had. You know, our salvation is based on our submission to Christ. But not everyone who's submitted to Christ does as many of the same kind of works or disciplines their own actions as well as some others do. Or, you know, walks as strongly in the spirit and sometimes fall.

Some people fall more than others. And I would say that there is something forfeited. And, you know, the punishment may not be so much that God exacts some proactive kind of punishment upon them. As they live in eternity, knowing that they didn't please God as much as they could have, and that they didn't receive such rewards as he wished to give them. And eternity is a long time to live lacking something, you know, I mean, something that you could have had.

You know, so I imagine there'd be some regrets there. But it does seem since there is no condemnation to Christians, but there is a judgment of Christians. And it is a judgment that we should be sober about and diligent to be prepared for. I don't think it's that the judgment is that we go to hell if we don't do enough good works or anything like that. That certainly is not agreeable with the New Testament teaching. But it would be rather we don't please God with our lives as he's made us to do.

Remember, the Bible says, by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. But the next verse says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has foreordained that we should walk in them. So he has works, good works in mind. He's foreordained certain works for us to walk in.

And if we don't walk in them, well, we're missing the boat. We're not missing salvation, but we're missing our purpose in life that God had for us. And, of course, God is ever generous, and so the fact that he has works in mind for us is that these are works he intends to reward us for. But if we don't do them, then there won't be any reward for them. And that's, again, eternity is a long time to be missing something that you could have had and to know that.

That would be certainly perhaps more of a punishment than we might understand at this present time. All right, thank you, Steve. All right, God bless you. Okay, our next caller is Ralph in Connecticut.

Ralph, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Steve, how are you?

I called you the other day, and unfortunately we got cut off. I don't know if you can remember me or not. Why don't you refresh my memory? A lot of things have happened since then. We talked about, I was interested in your opinion of hell, where you said there were different levels.

Well, yeah, actually I thought that question got answered. There's not very many Scriptures that talk about hell, and the ones that do, of them there's not very many that talk about levels of hell, but there's a couple of things that give the impression, three things, I would say. The first thing would be simple justice. It would be simply unjust for everyone to receive the same punishment who has not all committed the same crimes. And since the Bible says the judgment is of works, I mean, if someone says, well, they go to hell because they didn't believe in Jesus, and they all didn't do that so they all deserve the same punishment because that's the same crime. Now, the Bible doesn't say that they're going to be judged for not believing in Jesus. The Bible says they're going to be judged by their works.

Everyone will be rewarded by their works. Every verse in the Bible that talks about the judgment mentions that we're judged for our deeds, for our works, and there's not one that says you're judged because you didn't accept Jesus as your Savior. Now, of course, the Bible does tell us that turning to Christ and submitting to Christ and believing in Christ, that these are the things that deliver us from judgment. But when the judgment is described, it's never about, you know, let's just see if your name, if you believe something.

No, it's about what you did. So justice itself would suggest if God's judging each person according to their works, why would He do that if He's just going to give a blanket judgment to everybody regardless of what their works were? That wouldn't make any sense, and it wouldn't be just. Now, the other thing I would say is that, and I think I brought this up, but I'm not sure, is that Jesus said that the day of judgment will be more tolerable for some lost people than for other lost people. They're all lost, but some have a more tolerable judgment, which seems like it's more lenient or less severe, at least. He said that, for example, Sodom and Gomorrah, the day of judgment would be more tolerable for them than for Capernaum. And then, of course, Jesus in Luke said that the servant who knew his master's will and didn't do it will be beaten with more stripes than the person who didn't know his master's will and didn't do it. So there's not much there, but these statements certainly incline me to the belief that people in hell will not all receive exactly the same punishment. There must be degrees of punishment that would fit what they deserve. Well, hell to me would be, the way I interpret it, would be separation from God.

So how do you rate that? I mean, if one's not going to be, if one is separated from God... Where does the Bible define hell that way? Well, no, I don't read that. It's what I hear, you know, all the years I've been a Christian. You hear people say it.

Sure. Well, I would agree that those who are in hell are separated from God, but that doesn't mean that's all. I mean, being separated from God doesn't mean everyone who's separated from God is experiencing exactly the same thing. So, I mean, the scriptures I gave you, they say something, and that's what they say to me, is that there's different degrees of punishment.

And if that doesn't say that to you, then you can read the scriptures and get whatever you want from them. Okay. I appreciate your call.

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Share what you know. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith that you'd like to bring up for discussion, well, we welcome you to do that.

If you have a different viewpoint from the host and you want to bring that up for conversation, we can do that too. You can write. I mean, you can call me.

You can write too, but you're not going to get on the air that way. You can call me at 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Maxine calling from California, somewhere in California. Hi, Maxine.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes, I'd like to know your thoughts on the Nephilim and Genesis, the angels. I have looked up in commentaries, and there seems to be very little knowledge on that. And I wondered what your thoughts were on them, and I'll take it off the phone here. Okay, Maxine.

Thanks for your call. Well, there really is very little knowledge on that because the Bible only has a few verses on it, and the verses that are there have some ambiguity to them and have been interpreted different ways, which makes it even harder for us to have very much knowledge about them. Apparently, we don't have to know very much about them, but there are a lot of people who think they know a lot about them because I've seen whole books written about them, the Nephilim, and even the book of Enoch, which was a Jewish book before the time of Christ. It has some things to say about them, but it's not an inspired book, and it apparently resorts to a fair bit of speculation, which is what anyone would have to do if they speak with certainty about the Nephilim.

What we have, what is written in Genesis 6, is that the sons of God, at a certain point in time before the flood, the sons of God saw and were attracted to the beauty of the daughters of men and took wives of them and had children with them, and their children became mighty men of renown. Now, the passage does not say anything about the Nephilim being the products of these marriages, but it does mention the Nephilim were around in those days. The verse early on, I'm not looking at the passage, but it says there were Nephilim in the world in those days also. Now, to say there were Nephilim in the world in those days, that's a statement sort of an aside. It doesn't say that the Nephilim were in any sense related to these marriages. It's just like two other times in Genesis when it's telling the story of Abraham, it'll give the aside the Amorites were in the land in those days. Okay, well, but they weren't Abraham. I mean, this usually interrupts some narrative about the story of Abraham, and it'll say that the Amorites were in the world in those days.

So, you know, to say that the Nephilim were there in those days doesn't really tell us anything about who the Nephilim were. Now, the sons of God are often, it's disputed who they are. I think a great number of people have heard that the sons of God are angels who fell. There is some basis for referring to the angels as sons of God, although as far as I know the only basis for that is in the book of Job, and the sons of God are mentioned a few times in Job in such a way that gives the impression that it's referring to angels. So the sons of God may be angels, but not necessarily, because the term sons of God is used much more frequently in the Bible to refer to godly people, people who are followers of God. In Hosea, Israel is spoken of as, you know, when they repent and when they fall, they'll be called sons of the living God. In the New Testament it says, Beloved, now we are the sons of God. It says, that's in 1 John, in the Gospel of John in chapter 1, it says, as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God. Sons of God is a term for godly people in most of the occurrences of that word in the Bible, and it's used that way both in the Old and the New Testament. It may be, and it probably is the case, that the term sons of God refers to angels in the book of Job, but the question is, what does it refer to in Genesis 6? And, you know, one view is that the sons of God are in fact angels who were sexually attracted to women, and so they settled down and started families with them. You know, it says they took wives of them and they had children by them.

That's like starting a family. Now, a fallen angel, in my mind, would be a pretty, I don't know, it would not be a human thing. An angel is not a human being. And so I'm not really sure how an angel would reproduce with a human being, because, you know, species that are not the same cannot interbreed, and angels are not the same species as human. And if someone would say, well, in the Bible sometimes they appear as human. Well, it's true, they do appear as human.

That doesn't mean they're human. From what we know about, you know, humans and other species is they have a distinctive DNA, and angels don't have that DNA. You know, and DNA, by the way, the DNA you have is, you know, a combination of DNAs of your parents and your grandparents and so forth. So the specifics of your DNA speak of a biological history going back to Adam in your life, where Adam's, I mean, angels don't go back to Adam. Why would they have DNA going back to Adam?

And without it, how could they reproduce with women? So I have serious problems with the popular view. The popular view is widely held by the Jews. And as I say, it was popularized by the Book of Enoch. There are a number of Christians who believe it. I think even the Schofield Reference Bible way back in 1909 held that view, and there must be, I know a lot of them, among modern teachers. Michael Heiser has popularized that view, though it was around, you know, it's been around all my life. So, I mean, when I heard it from him, it was no surprise.

But I have trouble with it. I just have trouble believing that angels have the biological equipment to have human babies or have human babies with human women. So I'm more inclined to think that sons of God there has the meaning that it has most of the time in the Bible, which is referring to godly people, men who are godly. And they were attracted to women who were not daughters of God. They're just human women.

I mean, so were they. The men are human too, but the men are not only human, but they're godly humans. The women are human, but they're not godly. And so I believe it was like spiritually mismatched marriages. And their children were not necessarily the Nephilim. The Bible doesn't say anything about their children being the Nephilim.

It says their children were mighty men in the earth. But it says there were Nephilim in the world in those days, and also after that when the sons of God went into the daughters of men and children were born to them. So there was Nephilim around at that time too, but before that too. So it makes it fairly clear, it seems to me, the Nephilim are not the products of those marriages. And if those marriages did involve angels mating with women, as some people think, that still wouldn't make the Nephilim their offspring. The Bible does not say the Nephilim are their offspring. By the way, the word Nephilim is only found twice in the Bible. One is there in Genesis 6.

It's also found later in Numbers 13 when the spies who spied out the land of Canaan came back with their report and they said there's giants in the land. That's also Nephilim. And so what's interesting is that's a long time after the flood. The Nephilim that are described in Genesis 6 would have had to be wiped out in the flood.

In fact, they were, you know, I don't know exactly what impact they had on bringing on the flood, but they may have had a corrupting influence on society, whoever they were. I think they were just giant people, just like Goliath. Goliath was a giant person. He was not half angel and half human.

He was just a giant guy. And there are giant guys, and in Old Testament times there were even whole races of fairly giant people like Goliath. So we see some of them even after the flood. But if we believe Nephilim have to be sired by angels, then we'd have to assume that even after the flood some more angels came down and did the same thing so that there'd be Nephilim in the Promised Land for the spies to find and report about.

I find that the most reasonable suggestion. Some people do, and I don't have an ax to grind about it. I'm just saying I don't think there's much in the Bible to tell us about the Nephilim they're mentioned. And I think all scholars agree that it refers to giants, and most would agree giant people, though there are some who want to make them giant half people, half angel. And so there's some kind of weird species like that. A person can believe that if they want to. It won't change anything because, of course, whatever happened before the flood has been washed away millennia ago.

So it's all just a matter of curiosity rather than any kind of a practical issue for Christians. I appreciate your call. Pat from Fort Worth, Texas, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi. You just don't know how much I appreciate your showing. I wish we'd all have been trying. I do now. Well, anyway.

I do now. You told me. Well, that's a really good answer on Nephilim. And I wanted to ask you about judgment myself. It says judge not lest you be judged likewise, but then you're supposed to judge righteous judgment. So what it means is are you willing to be judged under the same judgment you're going to judge? Is that what it means?

Because people say, oh, you just always judge. That's precisely what it means. It means, I mean, the next, when Jesus says in Matthew 7, 1, judge not that you be not judged.

The very next line is the measure you use to judge others is the measure that will be used to judge you. And he's assuming that the people he's rebuking are people who are judgmental, but they're not any better than the people they're judging. In some ways they're worse because he says, how can you say to your brother, let me get that speck out of your eye when you've got a beam in your own eye? So he's saying, listen, you're trying to correct your brother. You're trying to tell him he's wrong, he needs correction, needs something done to him, and yet you've got the same thing worse than he's got. And then Jesus says, you hypocrite.

That's the next line. He says, you hypocrite. First get the beam out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. So he's not saying it's wrong to get specks out of your brother's eye.

If your brother has a speck in his eye, it's actually a very loving thing to do. And that's a metaphor for judging your brother. But if you judge your brother when you've got the same problem in spades, you know, then you're being a hypocrite. So what Jesus is forbidding is hypocritical judgment. But you're right, over in John 7, Jesus said, I think it's in verse 24 if I'm not mistaken, he said, judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. So obviously just as it's wrong to judge the wrong way, it's wrong not to judge the right way.

We are required to judge. And then you got to remember that when you point the finger, you got one more point back at you. That's true. That's true.

Unless you're missing your finger or something. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. God bless you, Pat. Thanks for your call.

Okay. Good to hear from you. Some of these lines are breaking up in my ear. It might be my connection.

But anyway, it's good. I'm glad we're able to continue the show despite the bad connection. John in Vancouver, B.C., welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. John, you really need to turn your radio off. Yeah, hello. Hi, John, did you turn your radio off? Are you there? Hello. Hi, John.

What's up? Yeah, I'm on. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I'm on. Can you hear me? Yes.

Go ahead. Yeah. Is this Steve? Is this Steve?

This is he. The very one. Yeah, okay.

It's nice to get on your show. Do you have a question? I just have a quick question I want to ask.

Probably a lot of other people too. When we have our glorified bodies, are we going to be like, I'm in the kingdom of Canada, are we going to be able to have sports or we can have competitions? Like if we head down here on earth and just give us a little rundown of what maybe heaven's going to be like and what we might be doing just for the leisure time in heaven before aside from being with our heavenly Father and our friends. And I'll just hang up and give you the answer so that way I can hear. Bye-bye. Okay. Thank you so much for your show. I love it. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. God bless you. What will we be doing in our glorified bodies?

You know, I could guess, but I wouldn't have any basis for believing my guess has any merit. The Bible tells us almost nothing about eternity. It does tell us that there will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more weeping, no more sickness, no more death. I guess that's a pretty significant description, but that's all in one verse. Beyond that, we're not told if we're going to do any of the same kind of recreational things that we do now or if we'll even want to. You know, God has told us very little about our eternal glory, and He's told us very little about hell. Both are mentioned. Both are affirmed to exist, but beyond that, not much is said about them. I mean, a few things are said, but they're very general.

So, I could guess, but I'm not usually the type to do that, I mean, when there's no data available. I will say this, though, and I've shared this on the air a number of times when people have asked this question, is that when I was a little kid, I asked my dad what heaven will be like, and he said, well, heaven will be—when you're in heaven, you'll have everything you want. Now, frankly, that was a good answer for a child, and I still believe it's true. Of course, the way it's taken by a child is a childish way, and I probably got the wrong impression, even if it was a good answer, because to be told I will have everything I want does not at all tell me what I will want at that point.

In fact, as a child, I couldn't even know what I would want as an adult because Paul said, when I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I acted as a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things, and I don't think like a child anymore. When my dad told me that, I pictured like a Willy Wonka chocolate factory of my own, you know, something like that, endless toys. Maybe I'd own a Toys for Us store, and I wouldn't have to sell anything. I'd just get to keep it and play with it.

I mean, this kind of thing. That's how children think, and I got a feeling that just as I wouldn't want those things now, I don't think I would want them in heaven either, but many of the things I do think I would like now might be things that in that form, when I'm in that different, you know, state of being, I might not find any interest in the particular things that entertain me now. I'll certainly see things differently, just like I now see things differently than I saw them when I was a child. So, when we see him face to face, we'll be like him, the Bible says. And so, I got a feeling that our tastes will be perfectly united with his tastes, and I don't know, you know, I don't know if Jesus likes to go out and play soccer or something or watch it.

He might, though we don't read of him doing it when he was here, but I just don't know. I don't know what we will want to do because we will be a different, we'll be living in a different order of being, much more different from our present than childhood is to our present. You know, there's a big gap in the mind of a child, between the mind of a child and the mind of an adult. I think the gap between a person in our present flesh in this present world and our present carnality levels, I think the gap between that and the mind we'll have when we're with him is even greater.

What I can say is if you can imagine what you will most enjoy now, I mean, if you could just write your own story of your life and all the things you think are wonderful now, well, take that level of joy and enjoyment that you think that would provide for you and realize that probably when you are in your glorified body, you'll have joy greater than you imagine, but it might be found in many other things. I also have told on the air this story because these are true stories and I think they illustrate this reasonably well. When I was a little kid, a neighbor kid told me about sex and he wasn't 100% accurate, but he was accurate enough to gross me out. And I remember thinking, well, I don't want to grow up and have sex.

It sounds horrible. Of course, I didn't know when I was a little kid what happens when your hormones change and so forth. And then, of course, when I became a man, I put away childish things. But the reason I give that example is because adults find a great deal of enjoyment in sex enough so that some people practically worship it, whereas a child can't find anything about it that would appeal to them at all. And so if God told us right now and described to us what it is that we'll be enjoying when we're with Him and when we have glorified bodies, it might be that it wouldn't appeal to us at all. And I'd say, well, why would that be any good?

Why would that be something I'd want? And so I think God just left it, frankly left it to our imagination, but I don't know if He wants us even to be imagining it. That song, I Can Only Imagine, well, that's true.

You can only imagine. You can't know because God hasn't told us. So right now, if you think, you know, playing sports is the thing that would make you really excited, well, just know that whatever excitement and joy that would give you, you'll have greater joy than that, though it may have nothing to do with sports in that day. Remember, it says in Psalm 16 concerning God, He says, in your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. So when we're in His presence and His right hand is divvying out to us what He's had in my first fall eternity, which, you know, I have not seen and you have not heard and hasn't even entered into the mind of man, we'll find in His presence fullness of joy, which is something that even going to a sports event probably doesn't provide right now. It might distract you from sorrowful things, but it's not the fullness of joy that we'll have in God's presence. So I've got a feeling God can't probably even describe it to us. There's probably reasons why it has not entered into the heart of man. Man probably doesn't have the frame of reference to process it, but just know you won't be disappointed if you make it there.

You'll be very disappointed if you don't. Okay, let's talk to Benito in Newcastle, Washington. Benito, welcome to The Narrow Path. I am hitting the button, but I'm not activating your call. Hello, Greg. Thank you for having me on, man. You are. Good. Good to hear from you.

Yeah, good to talk to you. Okay, so I have a family member who I love dearly, and recently he's accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior, but he has been involved with a—I consider it a cult because IUIC is united in Christ, and they believe that only African Americans, Native Americans, and expansive world are only going to go to heaven because they are a part of the 12 tribes of Israel. And also that—I know that's not true, you know, because Jesus died in the cross. That assumes, I guess, that must assume that God is a social justice warrior because he's only going to give advantages to those groups that are disadvantaged now. Yeah, okay.

Go ahead. Yeah, and I'm just—I'm confused by that. And they also preach this doctrine about keeping the commandments, and I know Jesus didn't come to abolish the commandments, but we aren't justified by them. We're justified by his blood. And they use these scriptures. They use, like John chapter 19, verse 17 through 18, and he says to him, Why callest thou me good? There is no good but one that is God, but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. And they use that, right? They only use that scripture to be like, well, you're supposed to keep all the law, but we can't.

Yeah, that'd be Matthew 19. I'm getting a real bad breakup. It may be that my voice is breaking up just as bad as yours because there must be a bad connection at this moment.

But what is your question? I can mostly follow what you're saying, even though it's breaking up. Okay, can you hear me now? Okay, can you hear me now? Oh, it's much better. Yeah. Okay. My question is, how can I lead my brother to see that you don't have to keep the commandments?

You can try to keep the commandments, but all you have to do is believe in the Lord to be saved. How can I lead him in that direction? Well, I'll say this. Probably giving him a resource, something to read or listen to, would be the best thing I could suggest rather than just in the few minutes we have left to try to outline everything.

It'd be good for him to know. Let me just say that I don't know if you've been to my website before. It's thenarrowpath.com, but there are hundreds and hundreds of lectures there. But I could specifically recommend some, and they're free.

Everything's free. So there's like 1,500 lectures, and you can listen or download all of them for free or any of them. But if you go to thenarrowpath.com and you click on the tab that says Topical Lectures, there should be a series there called Hebrew Roots or Torah Observance.

There might be both. And these would be short lecture series I gave on this very matter. But also, I would suggest the series called Genuinely Following Jesus. It's Genuinely Following Jesus, it's called. And it's about discipleship. And I do deal with the relationship of the Old Testament law to the Christian life.

And I do it differently than your brother does. I don't believe that we are supposed to keep the Old Testament commandments. But we are supposed to keep Christ's commandments. We are supposed to love our brother.

We are supposed to love as he loved. That's the commandment he gave us. But the commandments that Moses gave are not the commandments that are for the believer. They are part of the Old Covenant. And of course, Jesus brought the New Covenant. The Bible says that where there's a New Covenant, the Old Covenant is made obsolete. That's in Hebrews 8.13. So, I mean, Jesus brought a New Covenant.

And if the Bible says when there's a New Covenant, the Old Covenant is obsolete, then one has to ask if the Old Covenant is obsolete, then why would the rules and regulations that belong to that covenant apply to somebody who's not under that covenant? That'd be one way to test it. But I do have those lectures that would answer his questions more thoroughly or his issues. Okay. Sweet. Greg, thank you so much for your time. And thank you for giving me Hebrews 8.13.

I appreciate you. God bless you and talk to you later. God bless you and talk to you later. Okay, Benito, God bless you. Thank you for your call. We don't have much time, but maybe Linda from Auburn, Washington, can get something in here in about a minute or two. Go ahead, Linda. Hi.

Okay. Really quick about the Nephilim. I just want to put a comment in that I understand that the writings of Zechariah Sitchin, he looked into the Sumerian Catabolus and he knew Hebrew. So the Hebrew word Elohim, if that's a modern Hebrew word, ancient Hebrew, it's Allahayim, which sounds like Allah, you just can read it off. But anyway, Elohim could mean small g god and beings that had super natural powers that they appeared to. And then they actually, he connected it with Anunnaki, an intelligent race. But I just want to put that. Yeah, Michael Heizer brings a lot of those.

Yeah, Michael Heizer brings out a lot of that information, too. I just need to say that none of that has any bearing on the explanation I gave, because even if you take Elohim, which is the word God in, you know, sons of God, deny Elohim is sons of God. Even if you take Elohim to refer to, you know, beings with super natural power, which is not a necessary way to do it. We don't take Elohim that way in Genesis 1, 1, when it says in the beginning, God, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. We don't believe that a lot of gods did so. But it can mean gods. But even so, the Nephilim are not them. That is, there's no connection in the passage between the Nephilim and the sons of the Elohim.

So that becomes, well, irrelevant to the point that I was making. I'm out of time, I'm sorry to say. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. You can go to our website and see how to support us if you want and take anything there free. It's thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again Monday. God bless.