Join us as we delve into authentic conversations about the essence of Christian witness and community involvement. Host Steve Gregg thoughtfully navigates questions about the correlation between Acts and the everyday Christian life, clarifying common misconceptions about miracles and divine interactions. Tune in for deep scriptural interpretations, as Steve and callers discuss various Biblical passages that feature prominently in both historic and contemporary Christian dialogues. This episode doesn’t shy away from the pressing issues of our time, providing tangible advice on how to approach contentious social media discussions with grace and truth. Whether it’s understanding the context of ancient
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 06 :
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon, including today. We’re taking your calls. We’ve had some problems. I think on Friday we had a problem with the equipment cutting out three-quarters of the way through the program, and they had to play a recorded program for the last 50 minutes. That’s been happening a lot more in the past month, partly because I’m traveling a lot more, and we’re getting more problems hooking up from them. remote area but i’m pretty strongly hooked up today i think we’ll be fine and so you can call in as usual if you have questions about the bible or about the christian faith or if you have a difference of opinion maybe you just have a problem about me feel free to call in and say so we’d be glad to talk to you the number is 844- 877-484-5737. Now, I think the lines may have just filled up as I was speaking, and so if you get a busy signal, if you don’t get through, just call that same number five or ten minutes from now, a few minutes down the road. Lines will be opening up, and you can probably get in before the program’s over. We hope. I’d love to have all of you be able to get through who want to. Our first, well, you may know because I’ve announced it all last week. I’m broadcasting from Texas all this week through the weekend. And I’m also speaking every night in different places. Tonight I’m speaking in Bulverde, which is in the Texas Hill Country. Probably, I’m told it’s about a half hour from San Antonio. And maybe about an hour from Austin, perhaps. I’m not sure about that. I’ve heard that. So if you’re in Austin or San Antonio area or in the Hill Country, feel free to join us today or tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to be in Bulverde. Tomorrow night I’ll be in Bernie, same general area. And if you’re in the area, feel free to join us. I’ll be in the Houston area. on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I’ll be in Dallas area again. So I was in Dallas last weekend. I’ll be in Dallas this weekend. Lots of places in these areas. We have listeners in all those places. If you’re interested in joining us and you want to know where and when those meetings are, Go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and look under announcements, and you’ll find them. And I always do enjoy meeting people I haven’t met before who are in our listeners, in our audience. It’s a pleasure to see them. I hope I can meet as many of you as possible. All right. Well, our lines are full indeed, so I’m going to go to the phone lines and talk first of all to Rez in the Bay Area. That’s San Francisco Bay Area. Hi, Rez. Welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to discuss something with you that kind of has been on my mind and bothered me about what I think possibly is confusion in what people say is the Holy Spirit. Because a lot of times you’ll hear people say, usually I hear it with charismatics, but the Holy Spirit told me this is coming from the Holy Spirit. They’ll say things that clearly you know are not true. They’re maybe bordering on delusional. So how can a person know what truly is the Holy Spirit and not just their subconscious or based even on the religion that they’re following and they’re just saying that cultural idea that they have because of the faith that they’re following and say this is the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER 06 :
That is a problem with many people. And with many, it’s an innocent mistake, I think. I know that when I first was baptized in the Spirit, back when I was 16, I was around charismatic people who were often talking that way. God showed me this. The Holy Spirit revealed this. uh, I’m discerning the spirits, help me discern such and such a thing. And, um, you know, I, in many cases, looking back, I’d say most of what they were talking about are things that simply came to their mind and they, in their own mind, attributed it to the Holy Spirit, though it was probably no more a revelation from the Holy Spirit than, than anything that ever came to my mind. So I never claimed to have those revelations. Um, It’s a cultural thing with some Pentecostals and Charismatics that since they affirm, and I do too, I affirm the existence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the church up until the day that Jesus returns. I don’t believe there was a cessation of the gifts at the end of the apostolic era. And that, of course, I was raised a Christian without any knowledge about that. And so when I was 16 and Learned about the biblical teaching of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. It was a revolutionary thing for me because I had been saved already but had never given a thought to it. It was really exciting to think, wow, you mean the book of Acts, the stuff you read in the book of Acts, that’s really actually something that we can live that way now? And, of course, in the circles where this is affirmed, they often do look at the book of Acts and say, well, that’s the normal Christian life right there. And if it is, well, we see God speaking to people and, you know, them doing miracles and healings all the time and hearing prophecies and stuff like that. And we say, well, I guess that’s supposed to be the normal Christian life. And. I will say this. I believe in all those things. I haven’t renounced any of that at all. But I have over the years, and this has been 54 years since I got baptized in the Spirit, and I’ve been in the charismatic camp, I guess you could say, since then, over half a century. I would say that my studies of the Bible eclipsed my opinions about experiences and stuff, and especially my studies of Acts. Because when I did get filled with the Spirit, I did read Acts. I think, wow, this is great. I can be like Paul or Peter and go around healing people and stuff, and God will be speaking to me. And what I now realize, the book of Acts doesn’t speak about the average Christian experience. It’s talking about a few people, essentially the Apostles. The book of Acts talks mostly about Peter and John and Paul, apostles. Now, Philip gets some attention there, and so does Stephen. And they worked miracles and so forth, too, even though they weren’t apostles. So you get the impression that the apostles and everyone was running around doing miracles. And unless you read carefully, you don’t realize that you’re not really reading about what everyone was doing. You’re reading about what these special preachers that God had anointed and gifted in these ways were. we’re doing. For example, in the book of Acts in chapter 2, we’re told that after the day of Pentecost and the conversion of 3,000 people, the last part of the chapter tells us that the 3,000 who got converted continued daily sitting under the apostles teaching and in fellowship and in breaking bread together and in prayers together. We don’t read that they were doing miracles, but we do read that great signs and wonders were wrought by the hands of the apostles. And with great power, the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of Christ. In other words, you now have 3,000 people at the end of the first day of the church’s birth. And the apostles are out doing miracles and preaching the gospel. What’s everyone else doing? They’re learning. They’re sitting under the apostles. their fellowshipping praying eating together and and sharing their goods together Which is all wonderful things to do and and no doubt what what most of them did. I hope the rest of their lives but those were not miraculous things in themselves and of course later when Paul wrote to the Corinthians he talked about the gifts of the Spirit and you know at one point he talks about how to one is given the gift of the working of miracles and to one is given the gifts of healings and so forth. But then there’s a whole bunch of other gifts, too. And if you include Romans 12, the list of gifts there, some of these things don’t seem very sensational at all. In Romans 12, people have the gift of helps, the gift of giving, the gift of showing mercy, the gift of exhortation, the gift of teaching. These are gifts just like the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. which probably more people have these gifts. There’s more people, for example, who have the gift of giving, since every Christian ought to give to support the work of ministry, than there are who have the gift of evangelism or of teaching or of apostleship. And different gifts have different things. It’s just that the book of Acts focuses on the activities of apostles. It’s called the Acts of the Apostles. So, I’m not saying that these miraculous things and revelations from God were only given to apostles, since both Stephen and Philip also had those experiences, but they were not apostles. They were what we’d probably call deacons today. But they also weren’t just your everyday guys. They were missionary evangelists, apologists that God raised up and confirmed their word with signs following. So what I’m saying is, when you read the book of Acts, you read… very little about the activities of the ordinary Christians. Now, what the ordinary Christians were doing were quite remarkable because they’re sharing their goods with each other and they’re deeply immersed in fellowship and being taught, which apparently is the norm for people who are ordinary Christians. It was the apostles that were having these revelations and things more. Now, when I realized that, it didn’t change my view that we could have revelations and see healings and stuff today. But it did change my view about that being the norm. And that we don’t ever read that that is the norm for everybody in the church. And that’s where Charismatics and Pentecostals, groups that I have had much fellowship with in the past 50 years, often do not strike a balance. And I didn’t either. And one reason I didn’t is because I was called to be a full-time preacher and travel and stuff. And I felt like I did have some of those experiences. And the fact that I had some of those kinds of experiences myself, again, only cemented in my mind that this is what all Christians are to do. But then I realized, well, not everyone’s called to do exactly what I do. And there are other gifts that are less sensational. And so I’ve moderated my position. I do believe God speaks to people. I do believe God does miracles. Well, I don’t think he does it every day. I don’t think he does it. every moment. And there are some charismatic people who almost every impression they get, they say, this is the Holy Spirit showing me. God’s speaking to me about this and so forth. And I think that is, they do it because of a cultural pressure within the movement. They’ve discovered the reality of the Holy Spirit in a way that they didn’t know before they were filled with the Spirit. And they know that there are such things that are part of God’s movement and God’s kingdom. But they don’t know yet apparently how God how generally and how individually and so forth these things are distributed by the Spirit. And the problem is if you think, if you’re in a fellowship where people are continually saying, God told me to do this, I did that, and then God spoke to me about every little decision they made, then you get the impression that that is normal. And then you feel like, well, am I normal? And the pressure is on to, every time you have an impression or an insight or something you think is true, to say, oh, the Holy Spirit showed me this. I mean, it’s innocent enough, because people who do that probably don’t know what it’s like for the Holy Spirit to show them, but they assume that this is the normal thing. It happens several times a day to every Christian. But I don’t think it does. And because of that, they end up having to interpret things that are not the Holy Spirit as if they were. But it’s because of their desperate desire. I would say in the case where people are quite honest about it, it’s a desperate desire on their part to not fall short of the normal Christian life as they have been now conditioned to think of it. Now, I will say there are charlatans, too, and I was talking about honest, charismatic people. Of course, there’s dishonest preachers and fakers who fake the healings and claim to have revelations that God never really gave them, and they know it. They’re just charlatans. They’re just trying to make money or a name for themselves off of the church, which is a great sin. But the people you’re talking about, yeah, it is typically going to be more charismatic people who are saying, yeah, the Lord showed me this, and then the Lord revealed that to me, and then God, the Holy Spirit spoke this way to me. I’m not going to say they’re always wrong, but I will say they’re probably wrong more often than they’re right because they’re, I mean, because it isn’t all that common in the book of Acts, even for the Apostles. You find at special times, Peter’s on a rooftop and he gets a vision about these animals, unclean animals. Or Paul’s praying in the temple and Jesus appears to him and gives him instructions and stuff. Now, you and I are not Peter or Paul. But even they didn’t have those things happening every day. As near as we can tell, they just lived a faithful Christian life and fulfilled their calling when God wanted to. He punctuated their experience with these experiences of revelation and so forth. So I think anyone who reads the book of Acts without a more extreme charismatic lens will see that these are special cases. And there are special cases today, too. I believe that God still does this kind of thing. But to think that this is every Christian’s normal activity is, I think, too… is to read more into it than the Bible would certainly allow. All right, let’s talk to Kerry from Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Kerry. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hey, Steve. I hope you are enjoying your time in Texas. Yes, very much. And while you’re in the hill country, if you have time, go to Fredericksburg and take a look around. It’s a very unique little town. I think you’ll enjoy it. But I have a question. I heard it. this weekend during the Easter service, that the releasing of Barabbas was a type of scapegoat. And then I have another question that I was just reading through John and the Upper Room experience, and I was, I don’t know, I was just taking back that the announcement of the new covenant was not made or John doesn’t record it. And I was wondering if all the Gospels record the announcement of the new covenant or not.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Well, you know that John does not, but the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, yeah, it’s interesting because all the Gospels record something about the upper room on the night that Jesus was betrayed and such. And the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, really only record the Last Supper, pretty much. Very little of what was said between Jesus and the disciples there is really brought out in the Synoptic Gospels. Whereas when you get to John’s Gospel, he has like four chapters, chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16, about what happened in the upper room, and he doesn’t even mention the Last Supper. Except he begins by saying, when supper was over. Jesus got up and wrapped himself in a towel and washed the disciples’ feet, and then he began to give what we call the Upper Room Discourse, which goes on for several chapters, none of which is in the Synoptic Gospels. And the Last Supper is passed over without mention, except to say when supper was over, Jesus did this. Now, why in the world is that so different in John? In my opinion, John was familiar with at least some of the Synoptics, if not all of them. He wrote much later than they did. And he knew that there’s a lot of duplication. In the records of Jesus’ life, John was probably the last surviving of the apostles when he wrote the book of John. And he had memoirs. He had remembrances of things with Christ that the others had not mentioned. So his gospel was not simply another attempt to reinvent the wheel and duplicate what others had said. He knew what they had said, and he practically avoids it entirely. I mean, there’s only one miracle of Jesus’ life. In the Gospel of John, other than the resurrection, of course, that’s also found in the other synoptics. That’s the feeding of the 5,000. The other synoptics are full of Jesus’ parables. John doesn’t have any parables in it. The other Gospels are full of his exorcisms. John doesn’t have a record of any exorcisms. There’s mention of demons, but there’s no mention of exorcisms. This is not because he’s writing, you know, an alternative story of Jesus, but a supplementary one. He didn’t, you know, the things that the other three gospels had covered quite adequately, John didn’t bother to waste ink and pages on. But he did, you know, put in memories he had of his time with Christ, which were not the same as the others. So the others really covered the last supper, the last Passover supper quite adequately, but very little else about the upper room. So John left out the last supper and went directly to the conversations that Jesus had and gave great detail about them. Now, you were talking about Barabbas being released. Is that a type of the scapegoat? No. No, the scapegoat actually had the sins of the people upon them, laid upon it, and then it was taken out to the wilderness to die. Barabbas had his own sins upon him. And he was released from dying. So it’s kind of the opposite of the scapegoat. Jesus, I think the scapegoat in the Old Testament, is a type of Christ. Our sins are laid upon him, and he carries away, he takes away the sins of the world, as John the Baptist said. So I think that the scapegoat pictures Christ, not Barabbas. Barabbas, I would say, would be parallel, though I don’t know if he’s a type, but he’d be parallel to people like us. That we are guilty, he was guilty. We are therefore doomed to death, which is the wages of sin. He was doomed to death. But, you know, it was going to be either him that would die or Jesus. And Jesus died and he was released. So it’s more like Barabbas would be more of a picture of any of us who are saved. Instead of us dying, Jesus died in our place and we were set free. So I don’t know what preacher was that said that, but I wouldn’t necessarily see it that way. Okay, let’s talk to Don from Vancouver, Washington. Don, welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. My question today is about the Aaronic blessing. In our church, the end of the service, the pastor will say, let me give you my blessing, and he quotes the Aaronic blessing. And we’re not a sacerdotal faith, so is he incorrect in doing that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, certainly no one in the church is told to do that. But we are a kingdom of priests, so even if you’re not a sacerdotal church that has priests in it, everybody’s a priest. I suppose anyone could offer that blessing on others. But the Aaronic blessing is something that Aaron and his sons were supposed to pronounce over Israel.
SPEAKER 07 :
They were a sacerdotal religion, though. So is that a different thing, and should we be doing it then?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, first of all, for those who don’t know what sacerdotal means, sacerdotal means a religion that has priests and altar sacrifices and so forth. And so there are sacerdotal churches like the Catholic Church and some others, but Episcopal and so forth. But Protestant churches are usually not sacerdotal. They don’t have priests. They have pastors. And usually Protestant churches believe, as I do, in the priesthood of the believer, which means that we’re all priests equally. The pastor is not a priest. any more than anyone else’s. On the other hand, when you say, okay, since that is true, should we not be doing that? I don’t see any reason to, I don’t see any harm in doing it. You know, For us to pronounce blessings over each other, you know, is not a bad thing. You know, Jesus said to his disciples, when you go into any house, when you’re traveling to preach the gospel, say, peace be on this house. You know, that’s a blessing on the house. And, of course, the Aaronic blessing, the last line is, may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So to wish peace on people is certainly biblical enough. I mean, we don’t have any prescribed liturgy for doing that, but I would never object to it. In fact, it seems to me like some of the churches I’ve been in, non-denominational churches, the pastor has ended with that kind of a thing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. It just bothers me.
SPEAKER 07 :
It seems like a priest, you know, it feels like there’s… between us and God directly. And maybe I’m just being hypersensitive to it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Maybe so. I think all Christians can bless each other. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with the pastor when he’s standing before the congregation to utter a blessing on the congregation. But you’re right. It’s not commanded to Christians to do that. So it’s an import from the Old Testament. But it seems to be a harmless enough one. I can’t think of anything to object to.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, I just was in a face once that was very like that.
SPEAKER 06 :
So anyway, okay, thank you, Steve. Okay, thank you, Don. Good talking to you. Susan from Little Rock, Arkansas, welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, hi, Steve. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 06 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, Steve, thank you for all that you do and your wonderful sharing of your information and helping us in all that you do. I wanted to thank you for that. And also, I have just two questions. Number one, how do you witness to family members that are maybe new Christians in the family experiencing brothers that have not been leaders in the family they’re not even one of them is actually not married living with a woman not married and they have a lot of children in the house from her previous marriages and I’d like to know like we had Easter come upon yesterday Resurrection Day and this family member of mine my brother elected to stay at home and you know do the family thing with the kids for her side of the family and had his daughter there visiting but did not choose to go to church, and it really broke my heart to hear this. It just really did, and I didn’t probably respond in the kind, caring way I normally do. I was very firm and direct about it, about not being a leader.
SPEAKER 06 :
Before you tell me your second question, let me just address that, and then I’m going to have to hold you over the break and take your second question because we’re really at the end of this half hour. How do you witness to family members like that? I don’t think any differently than you witness to anybody else. Witnessing to people means that you tell them what the gospel is, or you share your testimony of how Christ has changed your life. There are different ways to share with people, but if you want to evangelize them, evangelize means to give them the gospel preach the gospel to them now the gospel has to do with you know our in a sense our obligation to surrender to Christ as king and lord that’s you know because he died for us he purchased us we’re owned by him and whether we serve him or not he still owns us which means if we don’t serve him we’re in violation of we’re in rebellion against the king we’re like a runaway slave Or like a deserter from the army, we have an obligation to be obedient and show up and serve him. But if we desert or if a slave runs away or whatever, well, then we’re at odds with him. And so that Jesus is the king that God has exalted at his right hand and given authority over all things, heaven and earth, is the message that we have for them and that we have an obligation to serve him. Now, if you’re wondering how do not, how do I win to him, but how do I win them? Oh, there’s, I know no secrets to how to win anybody. I mean, uh, Jesus didn’t win everyone. The apostles didn’t win everyone. Uh, we really want to win our family members. Of course, it’s understandable, but Jesus said that he would divide families. Sometimes it sounds to be divided over him because some members would serve him and some wouldn’t, but presenting the gospel to them is the right thing to do, to do it in love, speak the truth in love. Um, And I wouldn’t say crowd them with it. I mean, if they don’t want to hear it, then just love them and just be a good Christian before them and wait for the best opportunity. I need to take a break here, but hold on. I’ll come to your second question after the break. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’ll be back in 30 seconds. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER 04 :
Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you but everything to give you. When today’s radio show is over, we invite you to study, learn, and enjoy by visiting thenarrowpath.com where you’ll find free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Remember thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 06 :
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, it looks like we have one line open. You can call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. We were talking before the break to Susan from Little Rock, Arkansas. She had a second question. I told her to hold on until after the break, and now is your opportunity. Susan, what is your second question?
SPEAKER 02 :
My second question, Steve, is I would like to know how to best, when we see posts on Facebook that are divisive and eliciting criticism, you know, feedback and not maybe necessarily wanting to hear both sides of the equation and do the research and really understand what both sides are wanting to do or say in the political realm. How do you recommend any suggestions on how to reach the community in the larger sense to have those kind of dialogues? Is there… Any suggestions, any thoughts that you would have that you could share with us on the airwaves, too?
SPEAKER 06 :
Now, you mentioned in the political realm, are you talking about political posts?
SPEAKER 02 :
Political posts and also the lack of sometimes civility, kindness, care, concern for one another, it’s created throughout our culture right now. It’s been this way for several years. But it’s pushback friends that have either unhooked or pulled away, maybe not even on social media. And it could be family members. It’s just a wide circle of people. But how do you navigate those kind of issues and concerns? keep a biblical perspective and yet be reaching and caring about people to bring them into the fold and care about them and love on what they are.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I have to say that sometimes we feel a pressure to join every conversation when we hear someone say something that we disagree with or we think we could set them straight. We just feel like, well, it’s my obligation to jump in here and say something. Well, it might be, but I would say that many people who do jump in and say things Probably it wasn’t their obligation to it because they didn’t do it well. Like you said, there’s nastiness, there’s mockery, there’s alienation that is spread through the kind of tone that many of the Facebook things are. See, communicating on Facebook is just another branch of communicating in general. When you’re sitting around with a bunch of non-Christians, maybe neighbors or people at work or at school or somewhere where you may be around unbelievers, And they’re all saying things, and a lot of things they say you don’t agree with. You don’t have to speak up every time, you know. And especially if they already know what you think. If they already know what you think, you don’t have to respond every time they say something you don’t agree with. In fact, there’s an urge to do that that’s probably a carnal urge, just because you don’t want to let something go by without you having the last word about it. I mean, we all have that. Well, maybe not everybody. Most of us probably have. that carnal desire to have the last word. But if that’s what we are like, we’re probably not going to communicate very peaceably because things escalate. If you disagree with somebody today, it’s different than a few generations ago. I think you could disagree with people and they’d say, oh, okay, so you don’t agree, that’s fine. People aren’t like that today as much, especially non-Christians. And new Christians are just non-Christians who become Christians. And they often are more like the non-Christians they always were than they are like the Christian they need to become. And that means you find on Christian chats just as much nastiness and lack of love and so forth. Now, I would just think, and I’m on a few, of course we have our own Facebook page, we get a lot of dialogue about different things, and almost everyone who posts there identifies as a Christian, but there’s a good portion of them, maybe at least half, who probably shouldn’t be posting anything on Facebook, and if they are, they shouldn’t let anyone know they’re a Christian, because they’re terrible examples of the Spirit of Christ. It’d be best for people to say, hey, Am I so important that my opinion cannot go unsaid in this situation? Maybe there’s people, maybe some mature Christians out there who could say the same thing I’d like to say, but they can say it without getting in a big fight, or they can say it without offending people so much. Now, telling the truth in any mixed group is going to offend some people, even if you’re very kind about it and if you’re very gentle. But there are certainly ways to interpret a volatile conversation without increasing the volatility. And, you know, most of my posts I put on our own Facebook page, and most of the conversation is peaceable. And even most of the people who are ornery toward other people are usually polite toward me. I think they don’t want to be banned or something, so I don’t really get into nasty arguments with people very often. And if it is getting nasty, I drop out. I’m not interested in a nasty argument. But there are plenty of people who post there that I think, did you really have to post that? I mean, they’re Christians, and they’re saying maybe something I agree with, but I don’t agree with them posting. I think the biggest thing that we need to learn in this age of social media is we don’t have to say everything we think. Every thought that comes to mind It doesn’t have to be put on there by us, and especially if we’re ornery or we can’t do it in the spirit of Christ. Everything a Christian does anywhere, on social media or in real life or anywhere else, Paul said do all, whether in word or deed, do all in the name of Jesus. That means you do it as the representative of Jesus so that what the people hear you say or read that you say should be not any different. Then if they heard Jesus say it, that is, if he said it, you should say it the way he would. You should say the thing he would. You should hold your peace when he would. Jesus held his peace a lot of times. Sometimes people were asking him questions and he just wouldn’t answer. So you don’t have to say everything. It says in Proverbs, the fool speaks his whole mind. I think in modern translations, the fool ventilates all his feelings. But in the King James, the fool speaks his whole mind. The wise man holds it in until afterward. You know, it’s possible that if you don’t do well on social media, you should probably not spend much time there. You know, people did live without social media for many thousands of years, right up until a decade or so ago. So it’s hard to believe that we can live without social media, and especially now. if it’s too great a temptation for us. If we can’t be on social media without thinking, oh, I’ve got to answer that, and you’re all emotion and all anger and so forth, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Just don’t do it. But, you know, if you speak the truth, Paul said in Ephesians 4.15, speak the truth in love. And, you know, I believe in speaking the truth in love in these chats. But I’ll tell you, there are And there are non-Christian chats that somehow I’ve gotten onto. I don’t know how I got onto them. Maybe they were linked to something else I was doing. And I was just putting in a calm word that’s different than everyone else’s. And I didn’t realize I’m in an atheist chat or something like that. And everyone jumps on me. I think, okay, I don’t need to be here. Clearly, you guys are not looking to me for my answers. And I’m not so proud as to think you need to look to me for my answers. I’m not so important. God is important, but I’m not. And on a Christian chat, especially when people are talking about controversial doctrines, my opinion about a controversial doctrine is not so important that everyone needs to hear it or know it. And if they want to know it, if they’re asking about it. I need to ask, can I say this in a way that won’t become, you know, insulting or hostile or anything like that? If I can’t, I can say, well, wait for someone else who can. There are mature Christians out there who can say things that need to be said and ways they need to be said. But social media doesn’t wait for them. Everyone jumps in, including a great number of people who shouldn’t say anything until they grow up in the faith a little bit and become more like Christ. Because there’s some very embarrassing posts, that Christian’s post on the Internet. I just think, why? Why do you do that? You feel it’s your mission to bring shame to Christ? Why don’t you just not? So that would be my thoughts about that. You don’t have to be on the social media, but if you do, you don’t have to be talking all the time, and you don’t have to correct everything. There are other people out there who can do that. So that would be the best answer I think I could give you about that. Mark from West Hartford, Connecticut. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hello.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, okay, good. I’m sorry. I was listening on the radio. Anyways. First off, I’d like to thank you. I read through the Bible throughout the year, and then when I finish, I start all over again. This year, I’ve been using your verse-by-verse teaching. I would suggest that anybody who reads any part of the Bible… Go to it because it is such a valuable asset, and I’d like to thank you for it. It’s giving me more understanding and in-depth knowledge to the words that I’m reading. I appreciate you saying so. Yeah, and I would suggest anybody who’s doing that to definitely check out your website, Universe by Verse Teaching. Okay. Anyways, what I called about was Psalm 16, 9 through 10. I mean, in the beginning of it, it sounds like the psalmist is saying it, and then halfway through it, it sounds like God is speaking, and then at the end, it’s a prophecy as though Christ is saying it. So… Could you explain to me those verses as who is actually presenting it and how I should be?
SPEAKER 06 :
There’s two phenomena at work here that you need to be aware of when you read the Psalms. One is that the Psalms do exactly what you say. They skip around. Sometimes it’s the psalmist speaking and then suddenly it’s God speaking to him or to the audience. It’s like The audience, many of them start with the psalmist complaining to God. He’s going through trials. Where are you, God? Why do I have so many enemies? What did I do wrong? And then you’ve got God talking, either to the psalmist or to the audience. And then it will go back and forth. It’s like the psalms aren’t written the way we would write stuff because we’re a little more attentive to that kind of changing. We don’t want to confuse our audience. But we just need to be aware that this happens a lot in the psalms. And sometimes there’s even quoting the bad guys in the psalms. So you just have to kind of use, in a sense, common sense and say, okay, it’s obvious that this is the psalmist talking about himself. Oh, here, God is speaking now. Okay, that’s surprising. I didn’t expect that. But now I notice it. I just deal with it. That’s the reality. So that is true in the Psalms. That’s also true in the prophets often. Sometimes the prophet is speaking for himself. Other times God starts speaking. It’s not usually hard to tell when the change takes place. But it’s just the way that the poets and both the prophets and the psalmists were poets. And they do that kind of thing. And so you just kind of keep, be aware that that’s happening at times. It is confusing. The other phenomenon is that David, who wrote most of the Psalms, I say he wrote most of them. We know his name is on 75 of them and there’s 50 of them. Half of them he actually has his name on, and he wrote some of the others, too. But David is often seen as a type of Christ. And by type of Christ, I mean there are people and institutions and things and events in the Old Testament that happened to an ordinary character. But then they are foreshadowing. Christ like one of our callers said do you think that Barabbas was a type of the scapegoat I think it would be the other way around if anything but I don’t think it was but what he was saying is the scapegoat in the Old Testament is that foreshadowing the release of Barabbas in the New Testament I don’t think so, but there are things in the Old Testament that do foreshadow things in the New Testament, mostly Christ. That is, David is seen in many cases as a type of Christ. So is Isaiah in a few passages. But the New Testament writers will quote Isaiah, words that he said about himself, or David in the Psalms, things David said about himself. And the New Testament writers will say, well, that’s Jesus speaking. which by that he doesn’t mean it wasn’t Isaiah or David speaking, it was them, but they were speaking as types of Christ and therefore their statements are essentially Christ’s sentiments, Christ’s words, and so forth. And Psalm 16 is one of those because you know that Peter quoted it. in Acts chapter 2 and said, you know, David said, you will not leave my soul in Hades, neither let your holy one seek corruption. And then Peter said, well, that’s not entirely about David because it was the Messiah who God didn’t leave his soul in Hades because he rose from the dead and his body didn’t decay or seek corruption. So Peter said, is perhaps the first to do this in the New Testament, of take something David said and apply it to himself, that is, to Jesus himself. That happens. And we might say, well, how do we know when it’s doing that and when it’s not? Well, there might be some times that we don’t. But there’s enough times in the New Testament where David is quoted. In fact, David… is the most quoted Old Testament character in New Testament writings. They quote the Psalms more than they quote any of the prophets. And that’s because David is often seen as a picture of Christ, a type of Christ. And so you’ll see quotes from the Psalms throughout the whole New Testament. All the writers seem to use them. And they’ll usually apply them to Jesus. So when they do that for us, we know that at least that psalm, It needs to be seen that way because it says in Luke 24, 45, when Jesus was in the upper room with the twelve, it says he opened their understanding so they might understand the scriptures. And, of course, the only scriptures they had were the Old Testament. So Jesus gave the disciples an inspired understanding of the Old Testament scriptures. So when they quote something, they say, well, how did Peter know? Or how did the writer of Hebrews know? Or how did Paul know that that time when David was speaking apparently about himself, how did he know that that was really Christ? Well, Jesus opened their understanding so they would know that. And we wouldn’t necessarily know that. So I think when we read Psalms, for example, We need to read often knowing that from time to time, David speaks not only of himself, but more, you know, the meaning extends further out to represent Christ also. We may not know every time that that is the case, but many of them are identified for us in the New Testament. And sometimes we can make a very educated guess about that. So, yeah, psalms are a special kind of writing that, you know, have their challenges for us to understand. But the things you mentioned are true. The speaker in a psalm sometimes shifts without notice from the writer to God. back maybe to Jesus in this case. And then again, sometimes things David says apparently about himself are ultimately about Jesus. Most notably is Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I mean, that’s David, no doubt, speaking of himself in the first instance, but also as a representative of Christ himself. of whom he is a type. And there’s a lot of those. Pastor, Psalm 40, several verses, verses 6 through 8, are quoted in Hebrews chapter 10 as being Christ speaking, although you would have guessed it was David speaking about himself. So you’ll find that. You’ll find that with the Psalms, especially, and sometimes with prophets. And as far as why they do that, we may not be able to explore that or find the authoritative answer to why. But we can certainly see that it is so. And keeping that in mind as we study them will do us a lot of good. All right. Let’s talk to Danny in Rochelle, New York. Danny, welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, Steve. Hey, what’s up? Yeah. Yeah. Welcome. Yes, Steve. Today I want to ask you, you know, I want to know how can I make sure God blesses me with more abundance financially and with better health and wisdom? How can God bless me with more? Well,
SPEAKER 06 :
First of all, there’s no guarantee that God will bless you with more wealth and health and so forth. Very righteous people, both in the Old and the New Testament, were in both states of wealth and states of poverty. And the ones who were in the states of poverty were no less righteous than the ones who were in the state of wealth. And some of them were in both. For example, Job was a very wealthy man and a very righteous man. God had great pleasure in him and was boasting of his great righteousness. And yet Job had everything taken from him without himself doing anything differently or wrong. And he went through a period of great sickness and poverty and lost everything. And we don’t know how long that lasted, but certainly longer than he wanted it to. And then he was restored again. Now, the thing is that Job was the same man, was equally righteous when he was wealthy as when he was in poverty. That’s normal. Joseph was in prison for, what, 17 years or more, or 12, I guess, 12 or 13 years, and had nothing. And yet he was elevated to a very high position in Pharaoh’s cabinet and was very wealthy and privileged. But He was the same righteous man both times. I mean, he went decades in each condition. So there’s nothing in the Bible says that a righteous man will be wealthy. He might be if God blesses him. That has to do with God’s will, not ours. It wasn’t Job’s will to be impoverished, and he didn’t do anything to make that end. So I think the point is that Paul said in Philippians 1, I have learned a secret. I’ve learned a mystery, he said in the Greek, to be content in all states. He said, I’ve learned how to be wealthy and I’ve learned how to be poor, how to abound and how to be in lack. And he says, in all things, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I’ve learned whatever state I’m in to be content. That’s spiritual. That’s pleasing to God when we’re content in the state that God has us. Paul, writing to Timothy, both of them very godly men, He said, you know, having food and clothing, we will be content with these things. That is, we won’t desire or demand anything more than that. That’s in 1 Timothy 6. So, you know, very godly men, Old and New Testament characters, have been rich and very godly men in the Old and New Testament have been poor. There’s no reflection there. on how they behaved or what they did. You can’t manipulate God. See, there’s a whole bunch of people out there, the Word of Faith teaching, that says if you do the right things, especially if you have enough faith and make the proper confessions, positive confessions, You’re guaranteed to be healthy and wealthy. Well, the Bible just doesn’t teach that. They have to take some verses out of context and ignore a whole bunch of other verses in the Bible, which is never a very good way to reach a knowledge of the truth. It’s a false teaching. And it gives people the impression that, you know, if you’re sick or if you’re not wealthy, you’re doing something wrong. And then you have to hear, well, what do I have to do different? Well, maybe you don’t have to do anything different. God’s will is not the same for every person. Jesus healed a bunch of people when he was here on earth because that was God’s will, but he didn’t heal all of them. When Jesus left Israel and went back to heaven, there were still a lot of sick people in Israel. Some of them were still there when Peter and the apostles were ministering later after Pentecost. Jesus didn’t heal everybody. He didn’t even heal all his friends. Lazarus was sick, and he’s a dear friend of Jesus. And the sisters wanted Jesus to come and heal them. And Jesus said, no, this will be for the glory of God. And the glory of God was that Lazarus wasn’t healed. He died. Now, he did get raised a few days later, but dying was the will of God, not being healed. So we have to recognize that if someone has taught you That if you’re pleasing God in the way you should, that you’ll be wealthy, you’ll be healthy. They are telling you something that is contrary to what the Bible teaches, though they may think it’s biblical because their church may have given them a few proof texts that are not relevant to it, but they think they are. And I would just warn you, that’s not the right way to think. And I’d warn you against being swept up in that idea. Okay, Hugh in California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, hello still. Happy Resurrection, our King Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER 06 :
Amen. Thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
What’s your question? About the select the pole, the smoke, the white and black, is that biblical?
SPEAKER 06 :
Hugh, I have to stop you. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Are you speaking into a speakerphone?
SPEAKER 09 :
Peace.
SPEAKER 06 :
Earpiece. Okay, yeah, I need you to speak through your regular phone.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, about the smoke, the black and white smoke, to select the Pope, is that biblical in the Bible?
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, to select the Pope, the black and white? No. First of all, a Pope, having a Pope is not biblical. Okay, so all the traditions of the Catholic Church about what they let the white smoke when they’ve got a pope selected and the black smoke when they don’t. I’ve heard of the custom. I’m not very familiar with it, but it’s certainly not biblical. The whole idea of a pope is not biblical. So that’s just something that man has made up and it’s become a tradition in the Catholic Church. Okay, Karen in Covington, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. I have a couple of questions, and I’ll just ask you the most pressing one first, and if there’s time for the other one, I’ll ask you that. I’m making a kids’ coloring book to share the gospel and what Easter is about. And I was wondering, I wanted to share the gospel in particular, and I was wondering what I should include in that. It’s probably for kids that Some of them don’t come from Christian families.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Well, the way the gospel was preached in the book of Acts would be a good way to go. When Peter preached in the household of Cornelius or when he preached on Pentecost or when Paul preached in the Pisidian Antioch synagogue or other places, the main things they focused on, and this would be easy to do in a coloring book, would be on the fact that Jesus lived a miraculous life. He worked miracles, healed people, you know, cast out demons, did good deeds, and that he was the Son of God, and that’s why he was able to do these things. And then, of course, he got crucified. It could be pointed out that some people who were bad people didn’t like what he was doing, and they decided to get rid of him, and they crucified him. But that was all part of God’s plan, although those who killed him didn’t know that. God knew that, and Jesus knew that. And God raised him from the dead on the third day so that Jesus is alive today. He’s not like the founders of Buddhism or Islam or other religions who are dead and buried. His tomb is empty. He was buried, but he rose and walked out of it. And it’s been empty ever since because he’s alive today, which means we can have an ongoing relationship with him. But I would also emphasize, after he rose from the dead, God caught him up into heaven and sat him on a throne and gave him a crown and a throne and gave him the authority to reign over everything in heaven and earth, which means he has authority over all of us and we should all submit to him and follow him. And those are the points of the gospel. Remember, the gospel is an announcement. It’s good news. People sometimes add to it like an invitation or tell them what we need to do about it. But the point is, it’s declaring that these things are true of Jesus that I think need to be told. I’m sorry we’re out of time. I wish we weren’t. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are a listener-supported ministry. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.
