Menu
Join us as we delve into the intricate topics of marriage, vows, and what it means when God honors or disapproves of our unions. We confront sensitive issues such as homosexuality and remarriage, guided by our host Steve Gregg’s insight into biblical scripture and theology. The discussion continues with listener interactions exploring unique perspectives on Genesis 15, leading to a deeper understanding of biblical covenants.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
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. We take your calls during this hour, and you call in if you have questions you want to talk about regarding the Bible or the Christian faith, or you see things differently, maybe differently from Christianity, or maybe just differently from this host and would like to balance a comment or challenge something. Feel free, very much welcome to do that. The number to call is 844- That’s 844-484-5737. And the only announcement I have to make today has to do with tomorrow morning, Saturday morning, January 17th, we have our monthly men’s Bible study in Temecula in the morning. Saturday morning, 8 o’clock, men’s Bible study, Temecula. If you’re in the area or want to come to the area for that, feel free to do so. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. If you look under announcements there, you’ll find out the time and place. Of course, I just told you the time, the place you can find there at the website. All right, let’s talk to Cookie in Sealy, Texas. Hi, Cookie. Good to hear from you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, it’s good to talk to you, Steve. Good afternoon. Hey, I have a question for you, but I’m going to ask the question, but before you answer, I’m going to give just a couple of caveats. So the question is, does God honor all marriage? The two caveats, of course, is I don’t believe he honors homosexual marriage because that’s not marriage according to the word. And, uh, remarriage that has adultery connected to it. But here’s just a quick scenario. You have two Christians who are living together and they’re choosing to get married, but not because of acknowledging their sin of living together. But what they’re doing is getting married because of the pressure around them. And so kind of like in their hearts, they’re still living together, but they’re doing the marriage thing. That’s just one scenario I was thinking of. You might have others. But can we say as Christians that God honors, you know, other than the homosexual and the other one, that God honors all marriage?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you’d have to say it’s always better to do the right thing because you have good motives. In other words, that you want to do what’s right because it pleases God. But many people, especially almost all non-Christians, when they get married, they’re not thinking about pleasing God. Now, even someone who identifies as a Christian might not be motivated by the desire to please God as much as they should be, but they may cave into pressure to do the right thing. In any case, if they do the right thing, then the right thing has been done, and their situation will no longer be sinful in itself. That is, anyone can get married if they’re not already If they’re not ineligible, let’s put it that way. Like you said, you can’t marry someone of the same sex. You can’t marry somebody who’s married to somebody else already or somebody who’s been divorced but not legitimately divorced. But if somebody is eligible for marriage, and let’s just say you’ve been living in sin with them up until a certain point, but you say, well, okay, for whatever reason, we’re going to get married. We’re going to make this an honest marriage. And they take vows. It’s the taking of vows. that basically contracts a marriage. And God expects people to keep their vows, even if they made those contracts before they were Christians, because he expects people to be honest. I mean, even non-Christians are not allowed to be dishonest. At least God doesn’t give them a pass. If they are dishonest, honesty is required of people. So when you take vows, it’s basic honesty to keep them. Now, here’s the thing. If this couple doesn’t really aren’t seriously interested in marriage and they’re making vows that mean nothing really to them, well, you know, they’re still making the vows. If they keep the vows, they’re married. You know, obviously there’s better motivations, you know, to do things than certain other motivations. But if they have committed themselves by their vows and legally and so forth to, you know, marriage, And then they keep those vows, or whether they meant them very much or not at the beginning. Well, then they’re married. I really think that, you know, sometimes people might get married. I don’t know of many cases like this necessarily because I don’t know people who get married under pressure like that very often. But sometimes people may get married under pressure and not really be that interested in keeping their vows, but they make their vows. And then they come to realize, well, they need to keep their vows because they made them. You don’t make vows and break them unless you wish to have God angry at you. And intelligent people don’t want that. And also, of course, they may actually come to a place where they understand marriage and appreciate their partner more than they did at the very beginning. And they may come to have completely the reasons for being and staying married that anyone else would have, even if they didn’t start out that way. You know, some people think that if people leave their spouses before they’re Christians, then it becomes Christians. That because, you know, they’re Christians, they’ve started a new life, they don’t need to worry about the breach of vows that they made before they were converted. But again, marriage is simply a matter of honesty. I mean, obviously it has sacred dimensions to it as understood in the Bible, but People who are Christians and people who are not Christians, pagans, atheists, Buddhists, or whatever, they can all get married. And when they do, they’re making vows. And when they make those vows, they have bound themselves into a lifelong covenant. We might say, but they didn’t even really intend it. They didn’t really mean it. Well, they made the vows. It doesn’t matter what they meant. What they said is what they’ve bound themselves to. And therefore, they are married. And therefore, living together is no longer a sin anymore. Again, assuming that they both were eligible to be married and they both have, you know, made proper vows without crossing their fingers, you know, at the same time. Then I’d say it’s a legitimate marriage. It may not be the best grounds for marriage. But then again, probably a great number of Christians got saved after they were already married. And they could look back and say, you know, we didn’t have the best reason for getting married either, but we did. And now we’re going to honor it. So it really comes down to honoring the agreement you made.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that, Steve. That helps out a lot. I appreciate you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, good. Say hi to Marlon for me.
SPEAKER 03 :
I will. Thank you. Have a good one.
SPEAKER 05 :
Bye-bye. God bless you. Bye now. Okay, Jason from Salem, Oregon. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, Steve. It’s great to talk to you again. My question today is about the cuts, hasn’t it? In Genesis 15, I listened to your take on it this morning, actually, to refresh my memory, and I thought it was pretty interesting about possibly being the escape from Egypt. And I definitely don’t believe that the consensus belief makes something true, but just for the sake of argument, let’s say that it was God going through the pieces. I know that the dispensation was like the point to that, and kind of like the gotcha text, you know, Abraham didn’t go through, God went through, but they do acknowledge that God went through in two forms. So my thought was, could God, the Father, be going through representing the Godhead, and then the Son be going through representing Abraham and his descendants? And so basically, you know, the result of the covenant being broken is that one of those two has to be slaughtered. And of course, we know that happened. Jesus did come to earth and get slaughtered. So could it be that that’s what’s going on there, that they went through in two parts representing Abraham, like you said I’m saying? I’ve never heard anyone say that before, but I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it. So my question is, have you ever heard that theory before? Or I guess, and what do you think of that possibility?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, hang on there. I might need some clarification. But for the audience who may not know what we’re talking about, in Genesis 15… God promised Abraham that he would give his descendants the land of Canaan. At this point, Abraham didn’t really own any land in Canaan. He was a visitor traveling around, pitching his tent from here to there and moving his sheep around from pasture to pasture. Eventually, he purchased one cave or one field that had a cave in it so he could have a burial place for himself and his wife and his family. But even that was not a dwelling place. It’s not like he owned that land to live on. And so he lived his whole life without actually receiving the promise of the land. And yet he had the promise of God’s covenant that he would give him the land. Now, on one occasion, Abraham asked God, well, how do I know that you’re really going to do this? And God said, well, go get these animals and cut them into pieces and lay them out. Now, as you and I know, and many others know, too, This was a Middle Eastern custom in the ancient times to make a covenant or a contract. Animals, maybe one animal, maybe many, in this case many, would be cut in two, and they’d be positioned across an aisle from each other, and there’d be a passageway between the two halves of the animals. And generally speaking, the two parties to the contract or to the covenant would walk between the pieces of those animals. And the implication, we know this, we actually know this from ancient Mesopotamian texts and cuneiform tablets. So the implication was that the contracting parties were saying, if I break the promise I’m here making, then may the same thing happen to me that happened to these animals. In other words, may I be cut in two like they were. Basically invoking a curse on oneself if they don’t keep their promise. And this was an ancient Near Eastern way to make a covenant. So God told Abram, get some animals. I’m making a covenant with you. And then, of course, I’ll make some promises to you. Now, remember, this was about his promise to give the land to his descendants. But it wasn’t just that he’d give his land to his descendants. There were some other things. He said in verse 12, just after the animals had been cut in two like that, In verse 12 it says, The sun was going down, and deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. So he kind of had this foreboding in a dream. And then God spoke to him and said, Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs. This is, of course, a reference to Egypt. The Israelites had spent four centuries in Egypt as slaves. He says, And they will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. and also the nation whom they serve, meaning Egypt, I will judge. Afterward, they, the Jews, the Israelites, will come out with great possessions. That happened, of course, in the Exodus. So God is saying, although I’ve promised this land to your descendants, they’re not going to be there steadily from this point onward. They’re going to go into captivity in another land for 400 years, but I will bring them back and give it to you because I keep my word about giving you the land. And he says, and as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation, meaning after 400 years, they shall return here. That is to the promised land. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Now, verse 17 says, and it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark. And behold, there was a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed through between those pieces. On the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, To your descendants I give this land, and so forth. Now, the visual here is that this was a covenant being made in the old Middle Eastern way. Generally speaking, the parties to the covenant would pass between the pieces of the animals. Now, Abraham did not pass between the pieces, which is usually interpreted to mean that he was not a party to the covenant in the same sense as God was. Because a covenant usually is a contract between two parties, and both parties have to do something to keep the covenant. And it’s sometimes argued, Abraham didn’t have to do anything. This was just God alone making this covenant. This is an unconditional covenant, they say. Now, what about the smoking oven and the burning torch that passed between the pieces? As you know, because you brought it up, a very conventional interpretation that almost the only one we ever hear, partly because we hear dispensations more often than we hear anyone else, is that the smoking oven is God the Father, and the burning torch is Jesus. And so God and Jesus are making a covenant between themselves. This is not between Abraham and God, they say. This is between God and himself. This is between the first and second persons of the Trinity. And therefore, we have to assume that there’s no conditions that Abram has to meet or his descendants. This is just God unilaterally going to keep this promise. That’s the conventional view. Now, I have to say, as you must have listened to my view on it you said earlier, I don’t see any basis for this understanding. Where in the Bible is God ever referred to as a smoking oven? I know of no place. And to see a smoking oven does not immediately convey the idea of, oh, that’s God, the Father. And a burning torch, where in the Bible is Jesus referred to as a burning torch? I mean, these are arbitrary meanings being given to these symbols. We’ve got a smoking oven and a burning torch, and they’re joined together. in this covenant situation and say, okay, let’s just make that God and Jesus. Well, if you want to, you can, but it’s 100% arbitrary. There’s nothing in the Bible to suggest this meaning. Now, I remember when I was younger, I questioned that just because I don’t like to believe things just because someone said them, even because a lot of people say them. And I came up on my own with an alternative that I’d never heard before. And that is I knew that the captivity in Egypt was later referred to in Deuteronomy and in Jeremiah as an iron furnace or oven, a burning oven, iron furnace. In Deuteronomy, God said to Israel that God had brought them out of the iron furnace of Egypt. And Jeremiah used the same language to speak of it. So I knew that an oven imagery or furnace, possibly, could refer to the captivity in Egypt. It was used that way elsewhere in Scripture. As far as a burning lamp or a burning torch, I don’t think I thought this way until I noticed Isaiah 62.1, where it says that, we should not give God any rest until he makes Jerusalem a praise and her salvation goes forth as a burning torch or a lamp that burns. It’s the same expression in the Hebrew as we have here. So God’s salvation of Israel is compared to a burning torch in Isaiah 62.1. The captivity of Israel is referred to as iron furnace in three places. Deuteronomy 4.20, Jeremiah 11.4, and also in 1 Kings 8.51. So, you know, we’ve got these cross-references. We don’t have any cross-references saying an oven or a furnace in any sense is a symbol of God anywhere in the Bible, nor that the burning torch is an expression referring to another part of God or another person in the Godhead. This is strictly guesswork, total speculation, although you’ll find almost all dispensationalists hold it But after I came to this view, I thought, well, maybe what’s going on here, God has just promised verbally that he’s going to take Israel into captivity in a foreign land, that’s Egypt, and that he will deliver them and save them out of it and bring them back to the land of promise. Well, that’s the promise that’s being made here, and that he would join the captivity with the salvation from captivity in one imagery, binding them together in this particular dream that Abram had, As one, that is, the punishment, or not the punishment, but the captivity that Israel goes through is bound inseparably from God’s promise of salvation from it. That struck me as at least as good a possibility. Now, it was only somewhat later that I found a number of commentators, older ones like Adam Clark and so forth, who actually felt that that’s what it means. And more recently, I even looked at some of the Hebrew commentaries. Some of the Hebrews, some of the rabbis actually consider it to mean something like that. In other words, they didn’t see it the way the dispensationalists do. They saw it as entirely a different thing. Now, you’re saying, but what if it really is about God and God or something like that? And maybe it is saying that if the covenant is broken, then one of these parties has to be torn in two or something like that. I’m not sure, but it sounds like maybe you’re linking that with maybe Jesus being torn in two and suffering or dying. Is that what you’re suggesting? I guess you’re not there to answer me. All right. Anyway, I don’t know. I mean, the way you explained it, I don’t know that I understand it that way. I do not have any concern whether someone understands it that way or not because I don’t think it matters too much whether we understand it that way or another way. But as far as what I think it means, I think we’ve got good grounds to take it the way that I explained it rather than the way that dispensationalism does. All right. Let’s talk to Jason from Salem, Oregon. Welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, that’s me again. I got cut off. I’ll let you take another call.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, sorry about that.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, you’re good. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 05 :
I didn’t know you were cut off. Sorry about that. Okay, Michelle from Kingman, Arizona. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, I have a question about Matthew 22 and it’s about the wedding feast. And it’s talking about how the man doesn’t have on a wedding garment, which is something I want to ask you about. And then he gets cast away into outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth. So, um, it’s obviously not hell cause there’s no fire. So I’m just wondering what is outer darkness if you know more about that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Well, I don’t know that we can conclude that it’s not hell just because fire is not mentioned there. Um, You know, fire is definitely an image that the Bible sometimes uses in some passages about hell. But it’s very often understood by theologians that fire may be literal or it may not. It may be simply an image of something that’s preternatural, something that’s not in this natural world but is in the next world. And we don’t have a word for it, but fire becomes one of the possible analogies for it. But, you know, but other analogies of suffering, besides being thrown in fire, could be applied to the same place, especially if there’s more than one aspect of it. So, I mean, in one parable, it could be likened to darkness. In another parable, it could be likened to fire. Now, for us, fire and darkness are not usually found together. But it’s possibly not literal darkness or literal fire. But simply talking about an exclusion from the light? Excuse me. You know, painful, agonizing exclusion? That’s a possibility. The man, by the way, who’s not in the wedding garment, has to be understood in the context of the whole parable that the king, who represents God, made a wedding for his son, who represents Jesus. But then we don’t hear any more about much of the son, but we do find that the king invited his friends, representing the Jews who had a covenant relationship with God prior to the coming of Jesus. He invites them to come to the wedding. He invites them to come be part of Christ’s kingdom, to celebrate the coming of the Messiah. And they don’t. They don’t. They just turn him down. Now, you know, if I invite you to my son’s wedding and you don’t come, I might be slightly insulted that I… You’re a free person. You can turn me down if you want to. But when a king invites you to his son’s wedding, you don’t really have the opportunity to say no. That’s a command to parents. It’s the king. And to say, no, I don’t think I’ll come, is to say, I don’t respect your son enough to accept your invitation to the wedding. And this was a rebellious act against the king. So the king punished those who had been his former friends and burned down their city, it says in verse 7. Which I think represents, because the Jews did not receive the invitation to celebrate the Messiah, God had their city burned down, which happened in AD 70. But then it goes on. That’s not the end of the story. Then he sends his servants out to invite people who were not his friends before, people further away, out in the highways and byways. It means the international roads where they go to places outside of Israel, and they bring in Gentiles. And so the evangelization of the Gentiles is seen after the fact that the Jewish people, to a very large extent, did not respond. They came under God’s judgment, and then the Gentiles were given opportunity, and they became a very dominant group. demographic at the wedding. It says the wedding was filled with guests. Now, okay, so that’s this present age where Gentiles are being brought in to the Messianic kingdom to become followers of Christ, as true Christians do. The thing is, though, that a lot of people come in on their own terms instead of on God’s terms, and that means they’re not really honoring God at all. They may like to come to a to honor God. And a man who comes to a wedding not properly dressed is showing disrespect to the king and his son. Now, in the day we live in, I’ve gone to many weddings wearing Levi’s and casually dressed. In fact, I’ve conducted weddings on beaches in sandals before. I mean, we’ve got very informal instances of marriage in our modern, of course, especially in Southern California, where I’ve lived most of my life. So, I mean, it might not seem strange that someone comes dressed as they are. But actually, in my own lifetime, when I was young and forever before that, if you were invited to a wedding, you came dressed appropriately. You didn’t come as you were. You dressed up appropriate for the celebration. And that would certainly be so if you’re coming to the king’s mansion for his son’s wedding. You’re not going to come in your t-shirt and cut off jeans. You’re going to dress as a person ought to dress at an occasion like that. That’s a way of showing respect. And so the man who didn’t wear proper clothing was saying, you know, yeah, I’ll show up. I’ll be there. I hope the food’s good. The wine’s good. But I’m not going to respect the king and his son enough to behave as expected or to dress as expected. And that means that when the Gentiles have been evangelized for the past 2,000 years, there’s been a huge number that have responded, and they’ve become part of the church and part of that feast, as it were. But some of them have come on their own terms. They have not come to honor God or Christ. They haven’t come on God’s terms. They come on their own terms. And Jesus is saying, at the end, when the master comes himself, he’s going to weed those ones out. The ones who have come to the feast, maybe they’ve been in the church all their lives, but they’ve never surrendered to Christ. They’ve never been concerned to honor Christ as they should. They’ve come only on their own terms. Well, those ones will be cast out. They won’t have a permanent place in God’s kingdom. They’ll be out in the dark. Now, darkness could very well just mean it was nighttime. And the lights of the mansion only reached so far out into the night, and these people were excluded from it enough that they’re out in the dark. And it was, you know, dangerous and unpleasant out there. It’s an image of going to hell, but it’s not saying that hell is literally dark. It’s, of course, a parable, and therefore it has symbolism in it. I need to take a break, but we have another half hour coming. Don’t go away. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Check it out. Lots of free resources there. In 30 seconds, I’ll be back, and we’ll take another half hour of calls.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with 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. See you at thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 05 :
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 want to call with your questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or your disagreements with the host, we would love to hear from you. The number to call is is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. I want to announce again that tomorrow morning, if you happen to be in Southern California, we have a monthly occurrence, a Bible study in the morning in Temecula, 8 o’clock in the morning Saturday, the third Saturday of every month. You can find out where that is by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and looking under announcements. All right, we’re going to talk next to Kyle in Sacramento, California. Kyle, welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 05 :
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, so I wanted to ask you, who is Yahweh, and why did Jesus never mention him?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I don’t think Jesus never mentioned him. Yahweh is the Hebrew name that God communicated to Moses and the Israelites when he made a covenant with them. And it’s the name by which he’s generally called that distinguishes him from the gods of the heathen. The gods of the heathen had their names too. Now, the word God is a generic term. Even the word Lord is somewhat generic. But each nation… in their different religions, had different names for the gods they spoke of. So, you know, of course, most of them had many gods, but most nations had a principal god, too. In Egypt, it would be Ra, the god who’s the sun. They had other gods, too, but Ra was the chief one. You know, in Moab, it might be Chemosh. In Phoenician, it might be Baal. you know, in Canaan it might be, you know, some other god. But the point is that Israel’s god, the name that he was known by was Yahweh. Now, of course, unlike the other nations, Yahweh, I should say Israel, understood that Yahweh was not just one of the gods, not just the name of their god as opposed to other gods, but all the other gods were demons, the Bible says. And only Yahweh was the real god. So So generally speaking, in the context of Israel’s communication and religion, when they said God, they were implying Yahweh. I mean, there could be context where they’re talking about, you know, the Canaanite God or some other God. But if they simply referred to God, meaning the real God, that would be used kind of interchangeably with the name Yahweh. Likewise, often the word Lord. would be referring to Yahweh. Now, Jesus came at a time where, you know, the name Yahweh was known, and we don’t know how often he may have used it. He may have used it frequently, but we don’t have the sayings of Jesus recorded in Hebrew, and Yahweh is a Hebrew name. But we have the recording of his statements in Greek. Now, he may have spoken in Greek, or more likely he spoke in Aramaic, which is like Hebrew, but that the writers of the Gospels, writing for Greek-speaking people, they translated his words into Greek, and therefore the name Yahweh is not found in the New Testament because it’s not a Greek word. The Jews already had a convention they’d adopted for translating Yahweh with the Greek word kurios, which literally means lord or master. I don’t know that it was a great idea to do, but that’s what they did. And they did that 300 years before Christ. In the Septuagint, the Jews had chosen the Greek word Kyrios, which means Lord, to translate the Hebrew texts where the word Yahweh was used. Now, the New Testament writers used this Greek translation. That was the Bible people were using in their day. It’s the Bible they usually quoted from, the Greek version. And in the Greek version, all the places where the Hebrew Bible said Yahweh, well, the Greek Bible had for many centuries now, before Jesus’ time, been translated into kurios. So that’s the term that was used in the Greek to replace the word Yahweh. And just as the Greek translation of the Old Testament did, the Greek writings of the New Testament followed the same convention. Since they weren’t writing in Hebrew, they didn’t give the Hebrew form of the names. and so that’s why you don’t find the name Yahweh in the New Testament. Now, again, Jesus may have spoken in Hebrew or Aramaic. We just don’t have his words recorded for us in those languages. Everything that we know that Jesus spoke has been translated for us from whatever language he spoke into actual Greek. We may believe, and we might be right in believing, that he did use the word Yahweh often in speaking Aramaic or or Hebrew, but his words have not come to us in those languages, so that’s why we don’t have any record of Jesus using that word.
SPEAKER 08 :
Have you ever studied occultism or Kabbalism specifically?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I have not studied Kabbalism. I believe that… You know, that’s sort of a Jewish mysticism. It was not practiced by Jesus or his disciples, and therefore it’s not of any value to me because I’m a follower of Jesus. I’m not a follower of the Old Testament. I’m not a follower of the Kabbalah or of any other cultic thing. Now, I have studied some cults. I have studied some occult things just as a matter of seeking to understand what they teach, usually to refute them, but but I do not make it a matter of my expertise. It’s not an area of expertise for me.
SPEAKER 08 :
I only ask because it’s concerning that I’ve been doing a little bit of studying on Kabbalism and for example, Aleister Crowley with his magic circles, they have the name Yahweh written in the magic circles and And other names like, other titles like El Shaddai, El, Elohim.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, well, those are all biblical terms in the Hebrew Old Testament referring to God. Though, again, the New Testament is written in Greek. We don’t have those terms there. They’re not Greek terms.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for your answer. I appreciate your show.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Thank you. Jimmy from Staten Island, New York. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, Steve. If you could look at John 3.8, and it’s talking about the method, somebody’s born from above. He commanded Nicodemus, you must be born from above. And he said, do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again or born from above. And in 3.8, Jesus explains how it occurs. And I don’t see free will in there at all. The word so means in this manner is everyone who is born of the Spirit. So if you could comment on that verse. And also after that, if you have any ideas about the aseity of God.
SPEAKER 05 :
The what of God?
SPEAKER 04 :
Aseity.
SPEAKER 05 :
I don’t even know that word. Is that a theological term?
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s the ever-present. It’s the I am. God has being in himself. We don’t have being in ourselves. Our being is contingent on his being. Without him, we have no being.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t know. I guess you never heard of aseity?
SPEAKER 05 :
No, I never heard that word, but I mean, I would agree that God has innate and necessary being where our being is contingent since we’re created.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, R.C. Spall has a good sermon on the acuity of God. If you ever have an opportunity to take a listen, it’s awesome. But anyway, I’ll take your comment on John 3.8 if you would.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. All right. Thank you. Yeah, I think it’s interesting because I’ve been reading theologians for 65 years and kind of in the mainstream. So it’s surprising to hear a word, a theological term. Of course, it’s not a biblical term, but it’s a theological term that I don’t remember ever encountering. But I’m not interested, I mean, as a primary concern, to be able to be familiar with theological terms. It’s more interesting if you tell me this has to do with God being self-existent rather than contingent and so forth. I understand that, whatever name we give it. I understand God is self-existent. Now, you’re talking about the conversation in which Nicodemus was told by Jesus that he had to be born again. And he mistakenly thought that Jesus meant be born a physical time again, second time, going to the mother’s womb again and come back again. And Jesus said, no. No, that’s being born of the flesh. He said, what is born of the flesh is nothing but flesh. But what is born of the spirit… is spirit. He said, I’m telling you, you have to be born of the spirit. Okay, so Nicodemus is still pretty confused. And Jesus says, well, don’t marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes. You hear the sound of it and cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the spirit. And Nicodemus still doesn’t understand. He says, how can these things be? And Jesus said, if I’ve said, are you a teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things? Assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we’ve seen. He said in verse 12, if I’ve told you earthly things, which, as I mentioned to a caller, I think, earlier this week, earthly things, I think, means things for which there are earthly analogies, like being born is an analogy. You know, and you don’t believe it. How will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? Now, what’s going on here? Jesus says, I’m talking about spiritual things here. You obviously don’t understand them, I’m sorry to say, but the fact that you don’t understand them doesn’t empty them of meaning or of validity. I’m surprised that you would reject something just because it goes over your head. I would think the most common phenomenon, wind blowing, for example, that goes over your head too, but you accept it readily enough. Likewise, this whole idea of being born of the Spirit. I mean, think about wind. It’s one of the most common phenomena we know. We can always tell when it’s windy outside just by looking out the window. We can see the movement of the leaves and so forth. But we don’t know where the wind came from. We don’t know where it’s going. It’s mysterious to us. We can’t even see the wind. We only see the effects it has on other things. And yet, that does not cause us to doubt the existence of the wind. And, you know, we recognize there are things we don’t see or understand, but that does not delegitimize them. And I think that’s what he’s saying. That’s the same thing with this matter of people being born of the spirit. You don’t understand it. It’s above your pay grade, perhaps. It’s a spiritual thing and you don’t understand spiritual things. All right. But. That doesn’t mean that I’m not telling you something valid and important. So I don’t think he’s… Now, I think what you’re suggesting is that he’s saying that being born of the Spirit is somehow like… the wind in some more precise way. To me, I think what he’s saying is it’s like the wind only in that it’s a phenomenon that is somewhat mysterious and we have unanswered questions about it. We don’t know what it is. We can’t analyze it the way that some things are analyzed. I think the wind is that way. At least it was in his day. Nowadays, meteorologists can tell us where the wind came from and things like that. But in Jesus’ day, people couldn’t. That was a mysterious thing. He says, well, being born in the Spirit is mysterious too. But if we try to make it more of an exact analogy, let’s say we postulate that Jesus is saying, people who are born in the Spirit, you don’t know where they’re coming from and you don’t know where they’re going. I’ve actually heard people jokingly say that about Christians. Oh, well, they’re born in the Spirit. They’re like the wind. You don’t know where they’re coming from and where they’re going. I don’t think that Jesus is saying that. that people who are born of the Spirit, you don’t know where they’re coming from or where they’re going. That’s not the point he’s trying to make, because you might very well know where they came from. You might very well know where they’re going. They might tell you where they’re going. So the point here is he’s not trying to save the phenomenon of the wind in the respects he mentions. You don’t know where it’s coming from or where it goes. Well, that’s an exact parallel to being born of the Spirit. Namely, you don’t know where those people are coming from or where they’re coming from or where they’re going. Now, that would be a nonsensical point, it seems to me, and certainly not the point he’s trying to make. The point he’s making is you don’t claim to understand everything about the wind, but you still believe in it. You know it’s real. And so also you clearly don’t understand these spiritual things, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real. So that’s the parallel I think Jesus is making. It seems rather awkward to try to make some other kind of parallel in that statement between the wind and those who are born of the Spirit. So I myself wouldn’t make any other parallels than that. Matthew in New Jersey, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thanks for taking the call. God bless you. Thank you. Steve, my question is around going to Acts 5, verses 1-11. This is where Ananias and his wife Sapphira, in different translations, I think between the NIV and the LSB, say that they did either half of a portion of the land sales or some of a portion of the land sales. I mean, it’s kind of irrelevant, but to me, it just seemed somewhat generous. Like my secular brain thinks like what had happened to them was kind of a harsh punishment. And I’ve heard different people explain the why of all this, but I was kind of hoping to get your perspective on why, you know, Peter dealt with them the way he did. rather than maybe like a harsh warning or like, you know, at least thank you for the contributions. Yeah, I guess to me it just seemed like a harsh punishment for what does seem like kind of a generous offer.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, what was going on is that, you know, the community of the Christians, and there was only one Christian community on the planet at that time. That was in Jerusalem. So it was just one church. Everyone in Jerusalem was in the church. That is to say everyone who was in the church was in Jerusalem, I should say. And so it was a community that everyone was interactive with, and there were no other Christians elsewhere. But the thing is, the Jews, by the way, all the Christians were Jews in those days, the Jews who had come from other lands for Passover and had simply gotten detained by the fact they got converted and stayed in Jerusalem to be discipled as new believers, these people had homes elsewhere. They had come from other lands. They didn’t have actual homes in Jerusalem. They didn’t have jobs in Jerusalem. they couldn’t stay very long and support themselves very easily because they were not locals. And so I believe what happened was because of the large number of people in the church who simply didn’t have any means of supporting themselves there, those who had surplus wanted to share with the others so that they could eat and live there and just get by. in a situation where they were not in a position to support themselves. And also, of course, the gospel always did attract a lot of poor people, probably more poor people than rich people, as James points out. Most of the people in the church were poor, not rich. In James’ epistle, he says that. Now, so you say, well, these people were generous, so they gave some, or maybe sometimes they gave half of what they sold. What the Bible tells us is that there were people who had extra houses and lands. These must have been the ones they weren’t living in because they weren’t going out to sleep under a bridge. These were people who were landowners. They had properties they could dispense with, and they thought, well, here’s some people who don’t have properties. They don’t have homes, and they don’t have jobs here, and there’s not employment for all of them here, so I’ll sell this piece of property. and the apostles can distribute it to the people who need stuff. And so people typically did that, and many of them, like it gives an example at the end of chapter 4, Barnabas was one who had sold his property and brought the entire amount of the sales to be distributed. Now, there’s nothing in here, in the book of Acts, that suggests that anyone was required to do this, or that if they sold their property… They were not required to give it all. But they were not supposed to pretend that they were giving all and not be doing so because that’s simply being as hypocritical as the Pharisees. That’s trying to posture for religious status. This is something that the early church had no stomach for and which God was going to nip in the bud because, frankly, there’s always… in fallen human beings, there’s this tendency to want to pretend to be holier than you are, to be esteemed as a very spiritual or generous or godly person above what you really deserve. Now, Jesus was very much against all such hypocrisy, and it’s the most severe criticisms he gave was of the Pharisees who did that very thing. And so this was not to be tolerated in the church. And so what we had here probably there were others like Ananias and Sapphira who had sold properties and only gave some of it to the poor and kept the rest. But they wouldn’t lie about it. They would not pretend. Hey, this is everything. Man, we’re just giving all we have here. When, in fact, they weren’t. Now, see, the question was not how much you were giving. It wasn’t even how much you were keeping. The question was how much you were lying to us. How much are you pretending? How much are you faking spirituality? That’s the issue that was here. Peter didn’t blame them for keeping money back. He blamed them for lying to the Holy Spirit. And by that, I think he means by lying to the apostles, he’s hoping to fool even God himself, who had given such discernment to the apostles that they could recognize that through the Spirit. But the point is made, Peter even says to them, you didn’t have to sell the house at all. The land you sold, you didn’t have to sell it. And he said, after you sold it, you could have done whatever you wanted with the money. So it’s obvious there was no obligation to give everything. And they were not, I think, they weren’t judged because they failed to give everything. I think they were judged for being the first hypocrites in the church. And God made an example of them saying, this kind of hypocrisy, this is what I think of it. Boom, you’re dead. Now, they may have gone to heaven. I don’t know if they did or not. We don’t know if they were lost souls. mean Christians many people have done things like that since them and have not been struck dead that doesn’t mean it’s okay and that’s just the point by God doing this at the very beginning he sets an example that is a precedent you know it says listen this is how I feel about people doing this kind of stuff now anyone else who does the same kind of thing and many people have they may not be struck dead I may not make an example of them like I am but at the very beginning here I’m setting a precedent and this is my judgment of such behavior and if you do this behavior and i don’t strike you down it doesn’t mean that i feel any differently about it when you do it than when they did it and this happened also at the very beginning of the old testament when they first built the tabernacle the very first day it was open two of the priest’s sons they innovated uh you know they didn’t do what god told them to do in offering sacrifices they did a little differently and god struck them dead Now, he didn’t do that with all the priests throughout all of Israel’s history who did that and worse. But he’s setting a precedent right at the beginning. He says, okay, this is the beginning of our interactions together, and here’s what I think about this kind of behavior. Now, keep that in mind, because I may not do the same thing to you immediately. I may not send fire out of my presence and consume you, but I did it to them, and frankly, I don’t feel any better about it when you do it than when they do. See, a lot of times people, because they get away with something briefly or immediately, they think they’ve escaped it. And God is saying, no, I’m giving you a very graphic illustration of what I think about this kind of behavior. And even if I don’t do the same thing to you, I still feel the same way about it. And there is a day of reckoning, of course. So let this be a warning to you. And that’s why they were struck dead, I believe. Because they… They were the first people, as far as we know, in the church to overtly seek to gain status and recognition for being more spiritual than they really were. They were struck dead for their lying, not for their holding back money.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. That’s amazing. Thank you, man. You not only answered the question, but the follow-ups I had as well. So God bless you and your ministry, man.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. God bless you, Matthew. Good talking to you. All right, let’s talk to Mike from Northern California. Mike, welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, hey, Greg, I really like your show. I don’t get to listen to it enough. But, hey, I wanted to comment on last week. You had a caller that was talking about tongues. He was talking about glossolalia and xenolalia and other stuff. And I’d heard one of those terms before, but I went ahead and looked it up last week. And in analytical terms, lexicon, Greek analytical lexicon of the New Testament. And neither of those words are in the New Testament. Sinolalia or glossolalia. So I looked it up a little more. Glossa is the word, yeah. Right. Glossa is the word for language and tongue or speaking. And there’s also other… Afone and dialectos are also used. But anyhow… So I looked it up, and the word was coined in the late 1800s. Glossolalia was coined in the late 1800s. It is not a biblical term. It’s not the Greek form. Yeah, the Greek form that the person was claiming was, it sounded to me like he was claiming that it was in the New Testament. And it is not in the New Testament. And it wasn’t coined, that word glossolalia, is not found until around the 18, after the 1850s.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I never knew the history of the word, but I knew the word glossa is the word for language.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, glossa is Greek, and there’s all those different variants of it. And I just, because sometimes you’re, somebody calls up and says something, it kind of leads us, everybody down a rabbit trail, and we’re suspecting it’s true, but it’s not correct. And I wanted to find out myself because I hadn’t ever seen it. I’m not a scholar. I’m not a student of the Greek either, but I do have a, A Greek analytical lexicon will look up, and it’s not there, next to all the other variants of Glossa.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I appreciate it. You’re an example of the best kind of listener, like a Berean. Remember the Bereans, they heard Paul say something. And they didn’t just take his word for it. They looked it up. They searched the scriptures to see if these things were so, and therefore many of them believed. That’s exactly what every hearer should do.
SPEAKER 09 :
Can I comment on something else? Sorry about that. Which was a former question or comment somebody was talking about where Jesus was talking about the salvation and the spirit. And not knowing where it’s coming and going. And I think I had a little different perspective on that. And it’s just that I think that the grace of God by the Spirit, people assume that it will be there whenever they want it. But, you know, like, is the grace of God with a person that’s a non-Christian when they’re dancing suggestively at a bar? You know, is that when God’s going to come to them and say, you know, you need to turn? Yeah. I mean, it might happen, but there are people that say, oh, I’ll wait until I’m, you know, right before I die, and I’ll open my life over to Christ. But if the Spirit is not there and doesn’t give them the grace, even if they choose to believe, does that mean that they’re still saved? And I don’t know that answer. But I say it’s not a good thing to take that chance. that the people need to choose to believe when they have the grace, when they have the conviction of the Spirit, when the Spirit of God is there leading them. They need to respond with a yes affirmative about Christ.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, that’s correct. I mean, whether that point is implied in John 3 or not, I don’t know, but that is certainly another application. If we think being born of the Spirit is under our control, well, it’s not. You know, you don’t make it happen. God makes it happen. That’s the point of the comparison with the wind. And like you said, you can’t always count on the wind blowing when you’d like it to. That’s the problem with windmill generators. You can’t always have the wind when you want it. You better call upon the Lord while he is near. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
