What Should Christians Do With Thanksgiving? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
We've got a timely question to think about today as we're moving into Thanksgiving this week. And the question goes like this, "What do, or should Christians do with the holiday of Thanksgiving?" We wouldn't think that would be a question we'd have to ask, but today we do. And we have to remember that when we think about Thanksgiving, it is just, flat-out remembering God's blessings in difficult circumstances. And so fitting for us today, as we think about where we are as a nation and some of the things that are coming up against us today in our country. But we have to also look back in history, because Thanksgiving holiday has been celebrated on and off in the United States since 1789, when President George Washington declared it as a national holiday. And then President Abraham Lincoln made it a regular national holiday in 1863. I thought that was kind of ironic that two presidents that probably went through some very difficult times in this nation are mentioned as bringing this holiday to the forefront. But the reason for the holiday is to remember God's blessing. Especially God's provision and care for the pilgrims, the first European settlers that came to America. And as history tells us, they arrived from England in 1620, and there was a group of Christians among them that were seeking land to make a new life for themselves. They were seeking to come to a place of where they could worship God in freedom. But however, when they arrived in North America, it was late, too late that is, to plant food or anything that would make for harvest. And so they didn't have much food during that first cold snowy winter in the Massachusetts bay colony. And many of them died during the winter. In fact, as I was looking up a little bit of this history, 46 out of the 102 pilgrims perished that winter. In spring though, the local Native American Indians helped them plant what they needed to plant that would grow. That is corn and beans and squash, and when harvest time came around, the pilgrims had an abundance of food. And as history tells us, there was so much to eat they invited their new friends, the local Native American Indians, to celebrate with them. They had a big feast. They praised God for helping them survive the winter and providing new friends and abundant food. Now, even though they had endured much suffering, now was still a time to rejoice because those that did survive, they realized that the only reason they survived was because God looked out for them. God brought them to this new land. God gave them the privilege to worship and freedom and spirit and truth, and they had it right. That is all blessings do come from God. And we think often of the verse found in James 1:17 that says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above comes down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." And for Christians in the United States, as we get back to our question, Thanksgiving is not only a time for food and family, as great as that is, but it is more importantly a time that we thank God for the good provisions in the care that he shows for us every day. He shared that with the original American settlers, He's still sharing that with us today. He has blessed our nation so much, but we also have to remember that the percentage of Christians in America today compared to what it was in the mid-1800's, when this holiday was first coming into being instituted in our country, that percentage isn't even close. And so we have many Americans that don't thank God on Thanksgiving day in this nation. But for those of us who trust in Christ, we remember that our families, the food, provisions we have, we know it didn't come from us. It isn't because of our work alone, but it is all a blessing that God has given to us. God is our creator, He's our provider, and it's good for us to take time to thank Him, especially on this time of year. And they actually have a holiday that, encourages us to do that. In fact, again, in the Bible, it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." And so guys, I want to kind of continue the talk about Thanksgiving and Tim, what are some of the ways for Christians to correctly celebrate Thanksgiving?

Tim Hebbert
You know, I think it can be just about anything you really want, as long as it's from the heart. I always feel like one of the ways to celebrate Thanksgiving is to share the goodness of God with somebody less fortunate than you are. Here at the church, the last several years, our Kids Club on Wednesday night, collects food goods and one of our ladies groups combines with them. And they purchase and deliver to, I think this year was about 20 families. Several of them were shut in elderly people, who needed some good food, some things just to let them know that there are people in the community that care about them. And our home celebration, my family's celebration, it's probably Sandy and mine's favorite holiday of the year. To your point, I think it's become secularized, just like Christmas and Easter has. But in our home, my whole family gathers and we typically have, a half a dozen people, either from the church here, or maybe friends that we know don't have somewhere to light on that day and we invite them to our home. But everybody comes at 10 o'clock in the morning. And everybody that comes is in charge of preparing something for the meal.

And we typically stop on the hour, at the top of the hour, every hour around and gather in a circle and everybody shares a thankfulness that they have of what's gone on in the last year. For me last year, to be honest, I was just thankful that I had health enough to have my family there. I had just gotten over COVID, that turned into pneumonia, and so I was thankful for that. But that's typically, for me I think of Thanksgiving anytime the Lord gives me a heart of Thanksgiving. I want to try to share that with someone, and so one of the ways is to serve other people. But another way I believe that honors God is to draw people into your close knit circle. You know, so to speak, and share that love for the Lord and that thanksgiving for the Lord with them. Because sometimes I think we take the goodness of God, well now I shouldn't say sometimes, when we're not careful, we always take the goodness of God for granted, and we're not near thankful enough. I don't know. What do you guys do for Thanksgiving typically at the church or at your home?

Gary Hashley
Well, Thanksgiving for me was always a very special time, because I was a ministry kid and we didn't live near my grandparents on either side. And my dad's family, he was one of nine, they only got together three times a year Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. So between Easter and Thanksgiving, I never saw my cousins, and there were over 30 of us cousins. I never saw my cousins. So they were great times when we would fill my Aunt Juanita's house, because she had the only house big enough for grandma and grandpa and nine, their kids with their spouses and then 30 some grandchildren total to get together. It was a very special time to get together with them, but we always had a time with just my dad and mom and my sister and brother and I. It was very, very special time for me, and we'd like to carry that on in our family. I mean, we have a daughter in Colorado and a daughter in Helena with their families, Helena, Montana, and a son who's now in Indianapolis. So we are together a lot, and we look forward to those times when at least part of us, rarely is it all of us, part of us can get together. Where I pastor there at Calvary Memorial, they started a routine, a pattern years ago when the church first started back in the mid-1960s of having a large, we call it feast of thanks. It is a very full house, full blown Thanksgiving dinner that we get together. This year we had about nearly 200 people in house and plus we delivered meals to shut-ins, and just had a great and wonderful time. We do it early in the month, that way we set the tone. I feel like it really kicks off my holiday season for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, to be able to do just that. But it is a great time. What about Community Bible Brad?

Brad Kilthau
Well, Gary we do the same type of thing, in fact, we just went through it this past weekend. We call it a Praise Service of Thanksgiving, and we just kind of open up the service time for people to give their personal testimonies and praises of great things that have happened in their life through the past year. We had a lot of people who would stand up and share a lot of bad things that happened as most of us can attest to. I think that those times are testing, but in every time of those testing's they always saw the goodness of God through that. And so they dwelt more on the goodness that God showed to them through those difficult times that they've been going through in their lives. And also just take a little bit of time to look at the little things that God blesses us with. And then after the service, of course, we have a carry-in meal in the same way. We kind of theme it towards Thanksgiving, decorate the fellowship hall, and everybody gets together for the meal. And then of course, as Tim was sharing here, we also do the same thing. We deliver meals earlier in the week to those who are needy, and the women's ministry does a tremendous job of putting together a huge box of food and a big Turkey and all of that, and the trimmings to go. And what they do is they ask me to deliver it to people in need. No one in the church knows where these packages go to except for myself. And some things that I've been coming across the last few years is just this, it's not only people in a physical need, but sometimes people are in an emotional need. They're struggling with some difficult times in their life, and this meal just shows an expression of love from the church. And so, yeah, guys, it's a great time of year just to get the body of Christ together. And again, coming back to, what is Thanksgiving all about? It's just remembering God's blessing in the difficult circumstances of life and seeing God through all of that.

Gary Hashley
Yeah, Thanksgiving as I was growing up in Michigan was a day to eat Turkey and watch the Detroit lions lose a football game, because that was generally the pattern. But most of us think of family, but we all ought to think of God. The very first Psalm I ever memorized in totality, it was Vacation Bible School as a young boy, and I got points for memorizing Psalm 100. "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing, know that the Lord He's God. It is He was made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His name for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations." I look at that Psalm and the first four verses, are kind of the what of Thanksgiving and the last verse, verse number five is the why. And as you think of the what, there are several action words in Psalm 100: make a joyful noise, serve the Lord, come into His presence, know that the Lord is God, enter His gates with thanksgiving, give thanks to Him, bless His name. And I think a real good lesson from that is thankfulness is an action word. It's not just what we say, but it's what we do in response to what we would say because, and I love it. It says, "Know that the Lord is God." And then in verse five, "For the Lord is good." He's God, and He's good. And it's really, you know, what we should be focusing on, that God is God and God is good. So those first four verses have all those action words telling us, you know, what we can do, but the why is verse five, "For the Lord is good His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations." And I think what I need to remind myself of frequently guys is that, things may not feel good. Circumstances may not be describable as good, but God is good, and that's the thing I'm thankful for. Many have gone through some really tough times. There was an automobile accident on 85, between Torrington and Bear Mountain Station, and two Frontier School of the Bible students were killed. A friend of mine and his son and his son's girlfriend were killed in an airplane crash last night. There are things that aren't really enjoyable, but we can be thankful people because the Lord is good, His love endures, His faithfulness is here for all generations.

What is Accidentalism? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So our question is one again that I had to do a little bit of research on. It was a new topic I hadn't heard of, and so here it is. "I recently heard a new term I've never heard before. Can you tell me what accidentalism means?" And so I, to some degree figured it's probably self-explanatory, but I'd never really heard it this way as a philosophy or a point people are trying to use. So, Gary, what have you found on this?

Gary Schick
Well, you know, I went to that great source of knowledge, Wikipedia. And essentially, "In philosophy, accidentalism denies the causal closure of physical determinism and maintains that events can succeed one another haphazardly or by chance (not in the mathematical, but in the popular sense). Opponents of accidentalism maintained that what seems to be a chance occurrence is actually the result of one or more causes that remain unknown due only to a lack of investigation. Charles Sanders Pierce used the term tychism (from the Greek word τύχη, meaning chance) for theories that make chance an objective factor in the process of the universe." Kind of brought my mind back to the first Jurassic Park movie where that one scientist in the helicopter was talking about chaos theory, you know, like you can't predict it. And so, you know, is there some truth to this? Sure and it's opposite is a determinism and there's a variety of forms of causal determinism. And so the theory of causal determinism, is basically the idea that everything is part of a chain of events, one leading to causing another, like the domino effect. And if you're a fan, I'm a fan of the old, Sherlock Holmes stories, you know, that's basically causal determinism. You know, Holmes would look at Watson and tell him, you know, "See your brother had a bad day today." "What, how do you know?" "Well, because you know, you've got a hair move to your left on your forehead and that's caused by the wind. And wind was blowing that way in your face because you were turned that way. And you were turned that way because you were concerned." At the end, it's like, "Oh, sure, I see how it all fits together," but you're always mystified by Sherlock Holmes. How he could see to the bottom of everything. And so this is kind of the opposite theory. This is, nope things just happen. And so where do we as Christians line up on this, is this even a topic for us today? Ask the pastor? Well, maybe in the sense that Ephesians 1:11 says, speaking of Jesus, "In Him, Jesus, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will." And so what we would call biblical, philosophers would call theological determinism. The determinism that counts God as the primary factor. And that's where I'd line up, you know, and even within Christianity. We have debates about, where does freewill end and God's predestining will begin. I don't know. I just know that he has given us a choice and a call to believe and when we get to the other side, we will say, "And that was his plan all along." All I know is that God is sovereign. God is good, I trust Him, and He's all powerful. I don't have to worry about the random forces of the universe and what might, whoops, happen to me today, because I've got a God above me. And in whom He's literally, scripture, as the old African spiritual goes, "He's got the whole world in his hands," and He does, He's got me and He's got you. And whatever you're facing today my friends, He's got this, whatever accident may be fall, that appears to be so outwardly, who can ever know the factors that go into things. God rules and overrules again and again. We trust his plan.

Ben Poole
You know, this is an interesting topic because, it kind of goes against almost every faith belief. I mean, every, every belief system has this cause and effect.

Gary Schick
Even the belief in just, science.

Ben Poole
Absolutely. And so I think it's something we need to be careful of to not fall into any traps that Satan may use to sway people away from the truth. Because as someone may claim to have no faith, they can look at the world and say, "You know, the big bang just happened. These things just happen, there's no reasoning behind it. There's no reasoning behind how life came about, it just happened. Everything just happened to fall into the right place at the right time for the right amount of time. And it just happened." And to me, and what I know about the truth of God's word and the truth that I believe is not taught enough. I don't think this is impossible, that things just happen. I do believe a hundred percent in free will, that we have a choice in how we're going to live and what we're going to do, but I don't think even that was by accident. I think that there has been a plan, and I think if you look at the scriptures from beginning of Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation. You see this beautiful plan that has been laid out. How God used, well take Rehab for instance, a prostitute who was not an Israelite became part of the lineage of Christ. Ruth as well, who was not an Israelite. The three women talked about in Jesus's lineage is Rahab, Ruth, and Mary, and these are people that should not have been involved.

Gary Schick
Well, and don't forget Bathsheba.

Ben Poole
And Bathsheba yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, there's just so much of this cause and effect, and I don't think cause and effect just happens. I think there has got to be a plan in place, and I think it's simply just read the scriptures and see how God works through different scenarios. And now in those scenarios, He lets choices be made. He lets David and Bathsheba, God allowed that to happen.

Gary Schick
Yep, He doesn't will sin, but he knew is was coming, and he knew what he was going to do in response. You know, actually I'm glad you said these things Ben, because you mentioned Ruth. It takes me back to my seminary days, when I was learning Hebrew. And one Hebrew word, this kind of sums up accidentalism, it's the word "וזה קרה." It means, "And it happened." And so at the beginning of Ruth, we read "וזה קרה" and it happened that there was a famine in the land. And so Naomi, her husband and their two sons Mahlon and Kilion, they head off to, they just sort of happened to go off to Moab. And these boys happened to marry these gals, and they happened to die there. And then, but you know what, Ruth is an integral part of God's plan for Jesus. And so it's kind of, from our perspective, there's a lot of accidentalism, there's a lot of "וזה קרה," there's a lot of, "And it happened." And then there's what we also read in scripture, "But God." You know, and we see the divine hand of providence and, that was a key word. I'm seeing you wearing kind of a patriotic shirt today and tomorrow as we're sitting here, it's veteran's day, but it'll be yesterday when you all are listening to it out there on the radio. You know, providence was a word, even the unbelievers among our founding fathers who didn't know Jesus, they believed in the hand of providence. They believed in a providential power which we know as the Lord God, who for good orders things and has created an orderly world. I think you're right, I think the danger of this is sort of this idea. It's really a pagan idea of chaos. Kind of like the Greeks who believed, in the beginning was the god Chaos. And from Chaos comes all this, you know, that was scientific guys by Darwin, big bang, you know? "Oh, I didn't know that. Rule that scientific theory had religious rule." Yeah, It's actually old Greek paganism in a new form, the idea that it happened and there is no explanation, it just happened. But behind all things we believe in a God who was before all things and who in all and through all is working out his perfect plan, and I trust it.

Ben Poole
And that's really, the hope is, when I read up on this, I think, man, what is there? What's the point in waking up tomorrow? If accidentalism is truth, what's the point in any of this? And I think the encouragement for us, especially as Christians and that encouragement should take us out into the world to share the gospel, is there is a purpose. There is a plan that God has for each of us. And as a whole, as a big seed church, God has established us to be the hands and feet of Jesus here on Earth. This is, you and I are part of God's amazing plan through his grace. And that is such an honor and a privilege to be part of that in whatever way you play. Whether you're a pastor like us, or you're in the workforce or a stay at home mom, or whatever's going on in your life, you have purpose, you have a purpose in Christ. And so never, ever forget that. Which kind of makes me think about going into these holiday seasons. This is a time where a lot of people struggle. A lot of people struggle with depression, the loss of loved ones, especially over the last couple years has just been rough all around the world. Just this last week, I lost a classmate of mine, a young guy who had a wife and five little kids. And what's been amazing through that is, this wife of my friend is a major strong Christian. And through all the events that took place was able to minister to the nurses and the doctors to share her faith. And they got to see God work in that, because even through that hard time, there was a purpose that God was using. And we don't understand it, there's going to be times we don't have a clue what God is doing. But it's not an accident, it's not hidden from God. It's not like he doesn't understand what's happening, He's orchestrating this road before us. And we have the joy in Christ to walk this road as he leads. Yeah, so anyway, this is kind of a bigger topic than I thought it was going to be, a little more powerful. And I think it's just something that we can be encouraged by. And if you hear somebody talking about this, engage them in conversation. And enjoy that and listen to what they have to say. Really listen and see why, why would you believe something like this? And just listen to what they have to say, because I really believe in my experience, people want to talk about what they believe in as long as someone's willing to listen. And if we're willing to listen to people that are more apt to listen to what we have to say as well. So let that be your encouragement today that you are part of, God's amazing grace and this amazing plan that he has for all of us. Well, do you have anything else, Gary?

Gary Schick
Yeah, well, and I'm just thinking, you know, the scripture calls us, it says, "But continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling." But it does that within the context of what else scripture says, "He, who began a good work in you will carry it forward to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." So all we're called to do in Christ, we do with confidence in God's sovereign grace and plan.

What is the Reformation Movement? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So this morning, our question is, "Could you talk a little about Martin Luther and the reformation movement? Take us on a little history to her about the reformation movement's beginnings, and how it has influenced the church of today." And so to be honest, I don't really know a lot about the reformation movement. However, I would probably be comfortable saying, if you're a Christian today and active in a church, a lot of that probably has to do with, because of some of these people, especially Martin Luther over 500 years ago, making some steps. And so we are part of that legacy, that living legacy of what happened hundreds of years ago. And so this has, maybe implications for us today as what happened so many years ago and what continues to go on. And so, Gary, I just open it up to you to kind of share some of that history with us and some thoughts on that.

Gary Schick
Well, of course, you know, one thing that we often just talk about and don't even think about is this idea of going back to the Bible. And of course that's where it begins, it begins with Jesus and the apostles 2000 years ago. So what's the big deal about what happened in the 1500s and how does that affect us? Well, over time, over 1500 years, as a matter of fact, the Bible was still there, but it was in, at that point, largely translated, it was translated into Latin. Which the educated knew, but the average people didn't know, they should know their own languages, that was one problem. And then the other thing is, is over the accumulation of time, some other ideas, it sort of accumulated, been largely accepted by Christians, that really weren't in the Bible. And so along comes this little old monk named Martin Luther who really wanted to get it right. He wanted to be saved and he was taught that he needed to confess every sin and he would go to his confessor and confess until his confessors were like, "Please Luther, don't come back until you've really gotten something, okay?" But you know, he had a very sensitive conscience and he knew from scripture that God is a holy God who cannot permit sin into his presence. And here he is trying to work his way into heaven. And finally, one day he's reading a scripture in the book of Romans 1:17, where he reads these words, "The just shall live by faith." And it's like a light goes off in his head. It's like, "That's the point of the cross, that's why Jesus, the sinless son of God came and died to wipe away my sins. The just shall live by faith." And then he goes on and he reads more deeply in Romans and he sees that it's not by works of the law, which we have done, but by faith in what Christ has done. As Paul later writes in Ephesians, "For it is by grace we are saved through faith and not by works that we have done." Yes, there are works that come along as a result of our salvation. You know, there are certain things I do because I'm an American, or because I'm the child of the parents that I come from, that reflect that. But that's not what makes me an American or makes me a member of my family. We are made children of God through faith in Christ, and as a result of that, not to add to what Jesus has done, we do these works. Well anyway, in that particular time, that wasn't the way it was being taught in the churches. And so, at one point Luther, actually October 31st, 1517, he writes up this long list of what are called theses, they're things for debate. And he hammers, them to the door of the Wittenberg chapel. Which is what people did in those days, you know, they didn't post online because there wasn't an online, they posted on the chapel door. And his plan was just to basically recall the church, reform the church back to scripture. And so he took up several of these things that had come in. For example, like the idea of, "Well we're saved by faith and works," well, no, the Bible didn't say that. You know, he reads about, Mary and Jesus's brothers in the Bible and the church is teaching that she never had any other children. But that's not really what the New Testament seems to indicate. He reads in the Bible that we confess our sins to God, and so why is he having to confess to his priest to have everything forgiven? And so on it goes, several things, you know, he has these questions about Mary and the saints, the apocryphal, the confession, but above all salvation. And also, just the idea of, in the Bible we read about heaven and hell, but the church was teaching about this place in between called purgatory. And that you had to either work your way out of it, which could take hundreds of years or buy your way out of it by paying indulgences to the church. And you could usually pay off a few years of purgatory time by paying for these indulgences and somebody, some priests would say a prayer for you and they'd be forgiven. Well at Luther's time, they were building St. Peter's in Rome, and there was a fella on the street selling a special indulgence. And his saying was, "As the coin in my cup does ring the soul of your loved one from purgatory does spring." And just infuriated Luther because it was, this is nowhere in scripture. So anyway, he begins to write and he begins to write what he is seeing in the Bible. And he is brought to trial, in a town called Worms, the trial was called a diet, And so it's called the Diet of Worms. And if that doesn't sound tasty to you, believe me, it wasn't tasty for Luther either. He gets there, basically all of his writings are put in front of him and he's basically given the choice. Did you write this? Yes. Will you recant it or basically die? Well, let me think about it. No. So he comes back the next day. They let him think about it overnight. "This is, you know, I've written about different things here. There are different topics, but all of them do have this in common. I went to the scriptures. If I can be shown from the word of God where I am wrong, I will retract it, I will recant it. But if I cannot be shown by the word of God in clear reason where my error is, here I stand. So help me, God, I can do no other." And there was kind of a moment of silence in the room. "Here I stand on the word," and then they condemned him. Well as he was in a coach, traveling back home, you know, probably going to be arrested at some point, he's kidnapped. He's taken away to the Wartburg castle where he's held or in hiding for like a couple years while he translates the Bible in its entirety, into the language of his beloved German people. And this begins to happen all over Europe. Others like Calvin, Zwingli, and Wycliffe. They're getting the Bible into the language of the people, they're bringing the people back to what the scriptures actually teach. And the Roman church has a Counter-Reformation, the council of Trent where all of these things, none of it had actually been hardened as this is what we believe. Then it actually became the teaching of the Roman church, and so that is the difference. Protestant churches have rejected these extra biblical teachings, the Roman church affirmed all of them. And it was just kind of a very, both sides, no room in the middle type of thing. But you know, here's something I think is really beautiful about the reformation. And there were five watchwords of the reformation, of course the educated language was Latin so they're all in Latin. But I'll tell you what they are, I think they're a good guide for us still today. They are simply this: Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), Sola Christus (Christ alone the savior), Sola Gratia (By grace alone He saves us), Sola Fide (Through faith alone), Soli Deo Gloria (To God alone, be the glory). I think that's a pretty good foundation for the Christian life. As we find in scripture, "By grace we are saved through faith in Christ alone all praise and glory to God."

Ben Poole
Yeah, amen to that. These are amazing examples of living by faith. According to scripture, no matter what comes.

Gary Schick
Luther expected to die any day.

Ben Poole
And there are Bible translators who were killed for translating the scriptures in some of the most horrible ways. And they stood facing their earthly demise, knowing they did what was right. Thank God we're not in that situation. We have Bibles everywhere. You can get them at your fingertips on your phone, computers, books. I mean, even hotels, some still have Bibles in every room. I mean, so it's actively available wherever we are, essentially, whenever we want it. Part of, because of what some guys like Luther did, they stood up deciding, "I'm going to go back to the scriptures." And I think that is such an amazing example for the church today, as we look at the world and we see sin is not slowing down. If anything, it's ramping up and here in America, especially it's more and more praised. And Christianity is sort of being shoved to the back burner, and we're seeing this take place. And I think this just stands for us as encouragement as Christians, that no matter what we face personally, or as big C church, as the church stands in the world, it's encouraging to me to know that I'm not doing this alone. That we have got the cloud of witnesses watching the church live in this world. And it's an example set for us that things may be hard, things may be getting worse it feels like. But God's word still stands true that no matter what we face, we can always stand on God's word. And know that even if that affects our physical life here, even our employment or our families, we can stand before God knowing we've done what was right. And we have examples that have gone before us that say, "You can do this." And this is what God desires for his church, is not to just take the word of someone else, but God has given us his word so that we can each read it. That it's not hidden from us, it's not someone trying to take power away from us, but that God has opened up this doorway for us. And he used men like Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Tyndale, and Wycliffe. I mean, all of these people paid a lot of sacrifice so that we can have the word of God. And so I think my encouragement is stand up, stand strong for scripture and don't back down and dig into it because we are so blessed and the message isn't just for us. The message is for us to take to the world, so that we can be the messengers of the greatest message ever told.

Gary Schick
Amen. And you know, one of the principles of the reformation was, reformed and ever forming. In other words, reform back to scripture and always coming back to it. Because we have that within us, that is always wandering. And coming back to our anchor point in God's word is so important.

Ben Poole
It's a direction for our life, it lights the path before us. Well, this was a great topic. So as you know, we celebrate Halloween, but it's also known as reformation day because over 500 years ago when Martin Luther stood up for what he believed was right. And the world has changed ever since because of that. So we're thankful for that.

What Is The Deconstruction Movement? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So our question morning is on a new topic I've never really heard of. So I've been doing some reading and some digging into this, and I'm excited to talk about it. So here it is, "Can you talk about the deconstruction movement? Where are its origins? What are the premises of its teaching? What are the dangers? What is the appeal and how should we view it?" So a lot of questions in there, but the kind of main point is, what is this deconstruction movement? How is that affecting the church? Things like that. So, Gary, why don't you open this up?

Gary Schick
Well, and do you want to go a little bit into the roots of it first? I mean, I got some scripture stuff I want to talk about.

Ben Poole
I didn't have much on the history, just more kind of the now culture of it.

Gary Schick
From what I could gather, and it's new to me too, is that basically it kind of comes along the concept of taking your faith, examining it, kind of breaking it down and looking things over and saying, is this what I believe? And then going forward. And the way from what I read, I could see something, a positive direction to take with this, and I could see a negative direction. You know, it kind of made me think of Socrates' old quote, "The unexamined life is not worth living." And so maybe the faith premise would be the unexamined faith. Is it worth having or holding onto? And I think that there is biblical grounds for examining our faith. 1Thessalonians 5:21 says, "But test everything, hold fast to what is good." Elsewhere in scripture, we see, "Test the spirits, for not every spirit is of God." And I think in our own lives, we are constantly doing this as we grow. We're taking what we've learned, Paul tells Timothy, "Remember what you've learned from your youth, hold on to that," but we're also digging deeper, re-examining our lives. I think the question for me really is, what is the standard we are testing our faith against? Is it scripture? Is it Jesus? Or is it me and what appeals to me? You know, we do read in Matthew 24:10-13, Jesus said, "And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved." 2 Timothy 4, "Now the spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared." 2 Timothy 4:3, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears. They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions." Am I going after what appeals to me and slowly rejecting my faith, as I believe some in this deconstructionist movement have done? Or am I deconstructing the old self and putting on more and more of Jesus? Jesus said in John 17:17, "Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth." So there is the bottom line for me. What is your truth standard? If your truth standard is your own judgment, your definition of truth is going to shift and drift over time. And you may be among those departing the faith. If it is God's word, you will be anchored firm, and you will be slowly, piece by piece building your house more and more carefully, I hope, on Jesus. I think there is a deconstructionist heartbeat to the gospel that says, "Putting aside the old self, putting on the new. Taking off the old, putting on Jesus; dying to self, living to Christ." And that's what you mean by deconstructionism, let's go for it 100%. If it's, "Well, I don't know if this appeals to me, you know, really, I don't think this part of Jesus' teaching is culturally relevant today." Then I'm sorry, we part ways there. I'm not going down, I'm going with Jesus. Jesus the same yesterday, today, and forever. God in the flesh, the image of the father, that's who I want to follow, regardless of what new wind of teaching is blowing today and blowing smoke tomorrow.

Ben Poole
Yeah. So this is something that I think, the terminology I've never heard of, but the more I read into it, I've seen it. I think it's so clear. One person I was reading from, from an atheistic perspective was talking about, you know, the sixties and seventies when there was kind of this movement out of the church. And, "We should be pushing that and we should become more like Europe and we should just exclude religion altogether and just focus on humanism essentially." And so what's crazy to me is, this is actually a larger issue than I think I ever realized. I'm gonna read just a little bit from one author, from Relevant Magazine, which is a Christian magazine. But I just want to read something he wrote. He says, "As a life coach working with deconstructing Christians, most of the people I've seen walk away from the faith did so, not because of their struggles with God, but because Christian churches have become too wrapped up in the very things Jesus spoke against with the Pharisees. Who could really blame a person for walking away from a religion when it has been so intertwined with systems of greed, oppression, manipulation, and control? I get it, it often seems all of Christiandom has forgotten the greatest commandment, love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. People are not deconstructing because they want to hear theology that tickles their ears. They're deconstructing because most churches have forgotten the core principles of Jesus's ministry. They've forgotten their first love." And I understand that, to a point. I get that we can sometimes see problems in churches.

Gary Schick
Because there are people there that are sinners that need to be saved by grace.

Ben Poole
A hundred percent. And he talked about some bands that have left the Christian faith, church leaders that have left the Christian faith, and kind of place them under this deconstructing movement. They have examined what they believe, then they examine what the church is doing or teaches, and they say, "You know what, this isn't jiving, and so I'm out." And I know that it's probably a lot deeper and probably, you can't put a blanket statement like that over all of them. Everybody has their reasons for the decisions they make. But I think my struggle here, is that I agree completely with what you said. That there is a call for deconstructing, in the right way. What happens is, people don't want to do it the right way. They want to look at the culture and they want to look at themselves and say, "I need it to fit me, and not me fit what God has called me to be." And I think that there's a healthy way to do this, if our goal is to become more Christ-like. So the struggle is, why I'm part of a church that doesn't do this. So my problem here that I would wrestle with is, then why would you leave the thing, you know that needs help?

Gary Schick
Well, yeah, and again, there's nothing new here. Unfortunately, it's true, a lot of people, churches full of hypocrites. And how well do you live up to the full teaching of Jesus? I mean, the sermon on the Mount, it's exactly who we should be, and we all fall incredibly far short. So the easiest person for me to forgive is me. You know, I can pass over just about anything I've done. But if you were to say, or think the things about me that I may have thought about you and forgive, well, I might not forgive you for that. It's always hard to forgive somebody else. It's always easy to forgive ourselves. And so, you know, does the church need constantly to be reformed to scripture? In fact, one of the principles of the reformation was reformed and every forming, and I'm not talking about reformed theology here. I'm talking about the principle of reforming back to God's word. The whole concept in the days of the reformation was that the church has drifted away from the clear teachings of the gospel and the word. I know some listeners are gonna agree and some are going to disagree. But I think the principle really should be good for all of us that we want to get ever closer to Jesus and closer to his word. And so, does the church get comfortable as a group with certain sins and certain blind spots? Absolutely. Representative of many individuals with those, including ourselves. And so I think we need to be constantly breaking out of our sin and breaking into more of Jesus. And it's a challenge for the church as well, but that brings revival. When we humble ourselves before God and make him and his word our standard and not ourselves.

Ben Poole
So another direction that I kind of want to go for just the last few minutes we have here. When I was reading from the perspective of someone who is not a Christian, and I said, atheist. I don't know if they're atheist or not, I don't know exactly, but definitely from a non biblical worldview. A lot of the things that came up and says, "Well, examine the facts because so much can't be proven, so much taken on faith and all these things." And so people will use that as almost their own proof text of, "If I can't see it, touch it, smell it, you know, whatever, it's not real enough for me. That the lack of evidence proves to me that there's holes in this belief system. Therefore I'm not going to be part of it." And I wanted to, because I don't have in my head and my knowledge, all this beautiful information that is out there for proof towards the truth of the gospel message, the truth of scripture. One of them is one of my favorite books. I think every Christian should have in their libraries, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. A phenomenal story of a man, you probably know this, there's even a movie about it, who was an atheist. His wife became a Christian, and then he decided, "I'm going to prove her wrong," essentially, and went out and ended up finding Jesus and the truth of the gospel. Another one is by Josh McDowell, again, grew up an atheist. Went out to absolutely prove the Bible was false and came to the point where he said, "There's so much evidence pointing towards the truth, it's undeniable." And he wrote, he's written lots of books, but one of them is Evidence That Demands a Verdict.

Gary Schick
Followed by more of Demands a Verdict, and More Than a Carpenter. And he's written so many.

Ben Poole
Basically what I'm saying is, if there's issues you're struggling with, there are resources, extra biblical resources out there. Never place those above scripture, scriptures above all, but use these other resources. Like guys like Josh McDowell or Lee Strobel that have invested unbelievable amounts of time in their life who began out as atheists, who found the proof.

Gary Schick
And don't forget C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. He was another one of those guys, he didn't believe.

Ben Poole
I quote C.S Lewis almost every sermon he is so, just gold. There's so many resources for you, if you're truly seeking the truth. Because I think that's the point is, you can be critical if you want, but I think if you would choose in your heart to seek the truth.

Gary Schick
But, and I think, and this goes beyond our talk today, but I think they've called it like, post enlightenment. Just the idea that out there, it's out there for some, that basically you can't know anything. I mean, even things that we accept as scientific fact, so to speak. And of course we do, we live in a culture and in a time when everything is questioned. And it really comes down to, "Well, what's true for me versus what's true for you." But there again, if you are in the standard of truth, there is no basis for truth. Truth has to be something that's out there independent of us. And if there is a God in the universe who created all, he ultimately is that standard of truth. If there are true laws of nature, there are things he put in place. So you can come to a knowledge of the truth, if you're really desiring that. On the other hand, if you're just looking for a life of, what pleases me, well, I got nothing to say. Because you're just going to kind of keep recreating the universe around yourself. And even if you wanted a perfect church, there was a guy who founded it and it's a church at zero, cause he couldn't attend there either. But Jesus died to save sinners, among which we include ourselves, because people who are following him, but he's our standard.

Why Are So Many Marriages In The Church Failing? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
Okay, our question is, "I'm greatly disturbed by what seems like a sudden rash of marriages in the church that are crumbling. What are we doing wrong? And is this a sign of the times of the end?" So, I think we all can see culture affecting marriages and yeah we definitely see this even in the church, which is really sad, especially. And I know that it's probably detrimental all over the world. But it seems like we can see it pretty clearly right now. Especially with social media and things that we see, even from what we've talked about in the past. Those high profile or those popular pastors and culture and even their marriage is crumbling. So Gary, what are your thoughts on this?

Gary Schick
Well, it's a big topic, and it's kind of a two-fold topic. It's marriage, it's marriage in the church, and it's a question about the end times. It's actually three things there, okay? So, and just regarding marriage, I mean my parents are divorced. I think the divorce is probably, and just somewhere, all of us are related to somebody and maybe it happened to you. And so I guess anytime we talk about this, I want to be sensitive because I know that every situation is different. That many people who enter with the best of intentions find themselves in a broken marriage. It's always a risk when you walk down the aisle with somebody because you, no matter how well you know them, you don't know them until you've said I do. And so a lot of prayer and thought should go into that. But that said, I just want to mention a couple of things. One, I think we need to be mindful of our own discipleship. It's true. And you know, I didn't look it up in preparation for today, but I've heard it over and over again. That the level of divorce in the church is not only equal to, but sometimes higher than that in the world. I wonder if that comes from an expectation, people have, Christians have, "I'm marrying another Christian, and so it's going to be like this." And so maybe there's just a little problem in our own theology. We are sinners saved by faith. And one of the things I like to impress on couples is, "Now just know that I think you've made a good choice here. You're both wonderful people, but you are marrying a sinner. And you won't really know the degree of your own sin I don't think, until you get married." I know for me, I didn't know how selfish I was, when I lived on my own till I was 35, but living side by side with another person. And it's not because she was trying to push it in my face, it just became evident over and over again. How after living really 10 years almost on my own out of college, I was just living for myself in so many ways. Even as a pastor, my world revolved so much around me, and now I had to learn how to, and I'm still learning how to make my life more about someone else. And that's where I think the beautiful model that Jesus gives us about marriage, in Ephesians 5, really comes into play. He talks about the wife's role, is the church relating to him. And the husband's role is Jesus relating to his bride, the church. And those are standards none of us can live up to fully. But they are standards we need to embrace. And so maybe we have this thought that we're just going to enter marriage and the good things we've had in our dating life are just, it's going to be like that. Marriage, marriage changes everything. I kind of divide my own life into two phases. There was pre my wife, Bridget, and there is post, after her. And it's, I love it. I wouldn't go back for anything, but it's a whole different life. You truly have to lay down and let go of all the expectations you had and just accept the fact that God has put you out on a whole new adventure. And it's going to take a lot of trust in him and a lot of working together. Lots of great marriage advice out there, but maybe the best is, a good marriage is made up of two strong forgivers. You know, and I know I've mentioned other things in the past. It maybe helped some folks out there. A pastor friend of mine in town, pastor Jake Roberts, gave me some advice that I've passed onto many couples. He says, "You know, the husband has four jobs biblically, and the woman has two. Her jobs are to support and encourage him and to show appreciation to him. And really to be alongside co-worker. His job is to protect, to provide, to nourish, to cherish her. And wives, you may be saying, "My husband's not doing that for me." Do your part, and it may start to come from him. Husbands, you may say, "My wife's not doing that for me." Do your part, and the right thing might come from her. God's not asking you to fix your spouse, He's asking you to follow him. And so it's about discipleship, it's following Jesus. But regarding the last days, sure, there will be a great falling away. And Paul talks to Timothy about, in the last days will come times of difficulty and the people, I won't read the whole passage, but it's summed up really in verse two, for people will be lovers of self. And so does that play in a marriage? Of course it does.

Ben Poole
This is such a huge topic. And you hit on so many great points. I would say that, man I have so much to say, there so much. I guess I'd start a couple of resources that I know my wife and I have worked through outside of scripture alone. One of them is the Five Love Languages, excellent book by Gary Chapman. And the other one that we did our pre-marriage counseling through was Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson. Eggerichs, fantastic. Both of these come directly out of scripture. Pulled from scripture, they're Christian authors and teachers highly recommend those. Talking to my wife last night about this question and, kind of, you know, gathering thoughts on this. And she really kind of pointed out just a real clarity. She said, "It's really actually quite simple. It's about selfishness." And that's really kind of what you were just talking about was, we, especially when you're newly married, like you talked about. You don't realize you are in love with this person, but you're also kind of in love with yourself. And then you have this wrestling of, I'm selfish and maybe not hurtful selfish, but you're not trying to hurt your spouse at all. You're trying to live up to certain expectations, but at the same time you're still dealing with, I was on my own, I had my own life. I had my own schedule and now I'm kind of at the hands of someone else, someone else's schedule, and someone else's life. And it's a real learning curve to adjust to not just living with someone, but being a husband or wife of someone. You are responsible for and responsible to someone else, and it's huge. And I think a lot of people in our culture, especially, you know, a lot of kids look at celebrities as examples, which they probably shouldn't do that. But I mean, it's sort of like bragging rights on, well I was with this person, and then we got divorce. And I went with this person, we got divorced, and it's sort of like, we're keeping a record of this. And so our culture is not helping that longevity of marriage. Just recently I got to help celebrate and perform a service, renewing vows for a couple in our church. Celebrating 50 years of marriage, and talk about how rare that is. You know, we kind of think of our grandparents maybe as they've held on. But we kind of look at it now like, I don't know how you can do that. And I think it goes back, and we talked about this once before, it's keeping God at the center. You know, we talk about marriage between husband and wife, but it's more than that. It is between us and God. It is a covenant relationship we're making with someone else and with God, and not to be taken lightly. And I really appreciate what you brought out in Ephesians talking about marriage. A lot of times in our culture, especially, you know, Paul talks about the wife needs to submit to the husband and respect him. And that's kind of where a lot of people stop and say, "You know what? I don't like that, I'm not going to keep reading." And, but if we do keep reading what he brings about from the husband's perspective, it's deeper and scarier at times.

Gary Schick
Lay down your life for her.

Ben Poole
Yeah. He says, "You are to treat her like Christ loves the church." Well, how did Christ love the church? He gave his life for her. That puts it back on us as men and husbands, to live in such a way that I can love my wife in the good and the bad, in sickness and in health. And it's not that we can't, because we're called to so therefore we can. Love her and honor her in the exact same way that Christ does the church where he gives himself up for her. And that's our honor, I believe as husbands to live in such a way. And if we do that, there's no perfect marriage. There's no perfect relationship. You know, maybe you're listening and you're not married yet. And you have a lot of these, grand beautiful visions of what it's gonna look like. And some of those are true and they will, and there's going to be some hard days. There going to be some seasons where there's a lot of struggle and issues and tension in your marriage, especially when kids come around. And how do we raise them? How do we discipline them? What do we do? But even in that, we are given an opportunity to love and respect one another. And our kids will see that, the world will see that. But I just want to encourage you don't give up, don't ever give up. A lot of people think the grass is greener on the other side and something else looks beautiful. And I've always said, the grass may be greener, but it might be planted over the sewer tank too. You know what I mean? So invest in the people you've committed to and invest in your spouse. You know, my wife and I talk about, we have three and one on the way, kids. And I hear a lot of people talk about how their kids are the most important people in their lives. And I tell my kids, "I do love you, but you are not the most important person in my life, my wife is." And if we can live the way God has called us to live and have our marriages the way God has called our marriages to be everything works out. Everything comes into place just the way they should. So I just want to encourage you guys, I mean, look for resources, find help, talk to people, because everybody's struggled in one way or another.

Gary Schick
We've been down the road.

Ben Poole
Yeah. And so we want to be here as pastors, but also as two husbands, you know. That know that you can talk to our wives too. And ask questions and find out what we do or what worked and what didn't work. I'm pretty open about my struggles and things that I struggle with. So, but don't feel like you have to go this alone and don't think that divorce is your only option. Yeah, that's, that's pretty much what I got. I mean, there's so much more we could talk about, but we just want to be encouraging to you to know that God loves you. God loves marriage and designed it as something beautiful for us to enjoy and to be in the midst of the pleasure of marriage, even in the struggles.

Gary Schick
Wouldn't trade it.

How To Have a Biblical Marriage (Part 4) - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Kiley Callaway, Tyson Lambertson, John Mulholland and Jon Simpson.

Jon Simpson
We've been on this topic of marriage, understanding the importance of having healthy marriages for our community, knowing that God has built really everything on marriage, all the way back in the beginning of the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. And so we know that it matters to God, and yet we understand what a challenge it is to navigate marriage and to try to move in the right direction with our marriages, towards marriages that are God honoring. And so of course, we looked at a number of different topics inside of this and how to work at our marriages, work on our marriages. And so this week we want to look at the idea of hanging in marriage and resisting, sometimes the urge to get out. With the understanding that there are situations where individuals need to leave a marriage. For reasons of abuse or physical danger, we're not advocating that you would stay in every marriage all the time, no matter what. But we still want to talk probably to the majority of marriages that are going to have a temptation at times, to give up on it because of the pressure, because of conflict, because of not feeling the same feelings that we once felt. And so I think that's where scripture really gives us direction. And so Kylie, you got a kind of a key passage for us. Would you read that for us?

Kylie Callaway
Yes, John, I would. Matthew 19:3-6 says this, "And Pharisees came up to him and tested him. This is Jesus by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Jesus answered, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning, made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife? And the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What, therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

John Mulholland
I think you need to continue for a second. So I'll read the next ones. "Then why did Moses say in the law that a man could give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away? They asked. Jesus replied, Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended." So I think we can stop there. You know, when you talked about abuse or physical situations, I think this is a challenging topic because, each one of us in ministry, we have dealt with a situation where there has been abuse or someone's been in physical danger in their marriage. From a marriage perspective, we still have an ideal, and we still have to talk about that as an ideal thing, that divorce is not within God's plan. I think we can say that. And yes, we can allow for realities that each one of us has dealt with, but that doesn't eliminate, or just because there is always the sinfulness of man, there is hard hearts. I think there are times where we are afraid to talk about this because of these scenarios and situations that each one of us have dealt with. And I don't think we can just say, we can't talk about the ideal because there are realities in people's lives. But I also think the flip of that is true. We can't talk about the realities of people's lives and then deny the ideal, if what I'm saying makes sense. So, I know our caution is, like you said at the beginning, we don't want to say you should stay married no matter what, even in a physical, abusive situation. Cause none of us would ever say that. But the truth is that doesn't negate what God calls people who are married to, which is I need to strive in my relationship to not divorce. And the only reason I can, the only reason I want to, or the only reason that's allowed us because of the hardness of my heart. And that hardness might be because I don't love my spouse anymore. That hardness might be physical abuse of my spouse against me. But I think that allowance of divorce or the fact that the divorce was permitted is only a concession because of the sinfulness of mankind. So, as we think about those situations, we have to recognize that the only reason that we are even allowed to consider the possibility of divorce is because of our sinfulness, which might manifest itself in lots of different ways. But the bottom line is, when we get married God wants us to remain in that marriage. And if there's abuse, we should leave, or if there's physical danger, we should leave. If there's marital infidelity, we have the ability to step away from that.

Kylie Callaway
And I agree with you and the points that we laid out. I mean, if we are totally and completely following the word of God and seeking God first. Praying together, reading the word together, submitting to him, killing our flesh, dying to ourselves, and submitting to God. If we're learning how to have fun with one another, if we're learning how to fight fair, cause there will be fights, I think we're less likely to be abusive to our spouse. So I'd go back to say, you know, when it's gotten to that point, have we even taken the steps that we've talked about today, to make our marriage as Godly as it can be? There are those cases where yes, there is abuse, there is not only physical abuse, there's emotional and there's verbal abuse. And I do agree with that, I never promote divorce. I do say that I think there's areas for separation to where, that man or that woman could come to their senses. To realize that I've erred, on the wrong side of the word, and I've lost something valuable to me. That gives the room for the holy spirit to bring restoration. And sometimes unfortunately, because of the hardness of the heart, some people just don't want to reconcile.

John Mulholland
Do you have some pushback on that Tyson? I feel like there are some things you want to say about that.

Tyson Lambertson
No, I'm just trying to formulate the proper context in this, because there is that emotional and that physical and sexual idea of, this is not healthy. And it's not going to get better because it's a continual habitual pattern. And I think that habitual pattern really lends to the hardness of heart. Not putting Christ as reverence, of the center of our life, and in this idea of not giving up. I think those things we set aside, and we talk about marriages who perhaps just have these tit for tat fights and we get upset because of the way we're treated. Again, I realize that all of us are sinners and we don't have it. And when we have an authority issue or are always trying to one up, that lends to this separation and we cannot, we cannot go there. We have to stay strong in our connection, and that's what we're talking about, is remaining strong in the connection, not giving up. Realizing that you have to lay down your sword and sometimes surrender, to allow the Lord to do what he wants to between a husband and wife.

John Mulholland
I think also this comes down to, these are deep spiritual things that we're talking about. And whether it's physical, mental, emotional, or verbal abuse, those things are just manifestations of what's happening in that person's heart. So, I guess what I mean by that is, there's a whole lot of things wrong with a person who is doing that. And as followers of Christ, we want to help people deal with their sin problem and point them to Christ. And those things are just the way that their sins manifest themselves. So, if I have a couple or a person typically in this situation, it's been a female that, "My spouse is doing this, I want to get a divorce." I think that is a last step. I'm not saying it's not unbiblical, I'm not saying it's not uncalled for, and I'm not saying it's not unreasonable. I would be hesitant to just say, "Yeah, you should divorce that." And I'm not saying you shouldn't be in a place where you're safe or anything like that, but I think our world has this whole concept of marriage backwards in terms of what it is and what it's not. And what makes this just a really sensitive subject, are the people that each one of us have talked to, and the realities that they deal with. But we're still presented with an ideal, I mean it's something that God has created. So we have to be, cautious and hesitant in the way that we talk to people who are in the midst of those very real things.

Tyson Lambertson
Well, I think one of the reasons why divorce is such a strong statement from the Lord that God hates it. Is that it's just really the beginning in the relationship, because now you live separate lives. But perhaps you have kids and divorce destroys relationships, not only the marriage relationship, but down the chain, or even with parents and grandparents and all of those situations. So divorce is one of those things that just destroys relationship, and God wants us to have relationships. And so that's why it's so important to onboard people, to help you avoid giving up. We have those realities of infidelity, of abuse that sometimes we need to say, no, don't stick in there. This is bad, this is not going anywhere, nothing's getting better. But if there's some repentance and some forgiveness offered or asked for, who am I to say no to that? Who are we to say no to that? To stay in the game, to make it better, become self-aware of our own junk, and deal with our own stuff so that we can be better in a relationship. That's what I think about, never giving up, realizing I've got to deal with myself so that I can help my spouse, help Tammy be better.

Jon Simpson
Yeah. I think the heart of this is that the people of Israel lobbied to Moses for the, okay to do this. And Jesus just reasserting, "Hey, don't think God was okay with that. And there's just too often, that as a rule we gravitate away from, we just do as human beings, we gravitate to what we want away from what God commands us to do. And we want to make all the reasons in the world of why it's okay and justified to do it. But the truth is, Jesus did a hard reset on marriage and he said, "No, actually that wasn't okay." And I think at times we just need to be self-aware of our culture and recognize that we've moved the same direction. And we want divorce really for almost any reason, and we find all kinds of reasons to justify it. That's what happens. And yes, it's a hardness of the heart, just like it was in the Old Testament, a lot of the time. And I'm talking about the big middle of the majority, and we're talking about extremes and exceptions and they're there. But really I think if we're to be honest with ourselves, and honest with what God thinks, we'd hang in a lot more. We'd fight a lot harder, we'd resist our selfish desires a lot more, and we'd hold ourselves accountable. Our churches, our people, our pastors, whoever to, "Hey, no, getting out is not the right answer." Yes. Working on me and growing spiritually and being more, in tune and obedient to what the scripture says. Because just even as you've said, a lot of times in this Tyson, in this whole marriage talk, humility is one of the hardest things to do. But man, it's a good thing to just go, "Hey, have I gotten to a place where I've been hurt? I just don't want to forgive anymore, I don't want to stay in this, I don't like it. I'm not happy." And our culture puts a lot of emphasis on happiness, you know? I mean, I've heard people go, "Well, I shouldn't just stay married for the kids. You know, that's not a good enough reason." I'm like, maybe it is, maybe actually those kids, you know, it's been said in the secular world that we're just selfish in our marriages. We don't care that much about the kids, because the kids get damaged. We all know they get damaged a lot more in divorce, but where is that? Hey, maybe we should stay in this for the kids. I don't know. Maybe it's not a bad thing.

John Mulholland
No. I think what we've gotten away from is, marriage is a covenant. And covenant means commitment. And I think that's why God hates divorce, is cause marriage is so much an example of God's love for us. And the example of the church.

Tyson Lambertson
Well, a covenant, a blood covenant was never meant to be broken. A commitment in today's society is a contract that can be null or void. It'd be argued in a court of law. And those types of things, the covenant, the God honoring covenant is meant not to be broken. And I think the stick-to-itiveness is important. I do think culture has played into, if I'm not happy, I'm gonna just run, I'm out. And that's with anything, that's with education. But marriage is right in there, that if I'm not happy, I'm out; that dishonors the Lord tremendously. And I do think we all have to come to a place from humility that says, "Man, I'm a sinner in need of Jesus, just as much as anybody else. And I have to forgive because the Bible says, if I don't forgive, how can I forgive you?" And that's a real issue with your first neighbor, you know?

Jon Simpson
Yeah. Well, listen, uh, maybe a little, a little tougher topic this time, but hopefully helpful to you. And again, we'd encourage you as always to get in the scriptures and to see what God has to say about these things, but we care about your marriage. We care about the marriages in our valley and, uh, and we know how important it is that we're strengthening marriage. And so we just pray that you would continue to work at your marriage.

Is Tithing A Biblical Requirement? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Brad Kilthau, Gary Hashley, and Tim Hebbert.

Tim Hebbert
Our question today is, "Is tithing a biblical commandment for the Christian living in the age of grace? The word tithe means 10%, it means 10. And we can go back early into the book of Genesis when Abraham encounters, this mysterious fellow named Melchizedek, he's the prince of Salem, he's kind of a symbolic imagery of who Jesus is going to come someday. The word Salem, meaning peace. And he comes in to the land of Salem and needs some help. I'm paraphrasing heavily here. And he offers up a 10% offering of tithe to King Melchizedek. And so that's where it started in and through the course of the Old Testament, God lays that thought process on his people that they should always give back to him. And I think what we need to see about tithing in its foundation to start with is, tithing is an act. It's not an emotional response. As we hear lots of people, it's not a love offering. It's an act of obedience. I heard a pastor say this once and he was talking about Sunday morning. He said, "God deserves the first fruits of everything." And he said, we come to church on Sunday. Hopefully if you're out there listening, you're getting into your local house of worship. On Sunday, we come to our houses of worship on Sunday to give God the first fruits of the week. Well tithing is giving back to God, the first fruits of his provision. And I can make a pretty good case and it's not just a financial giving back. It's a giving back also of time. My mom taught me and my brother and sister early on that it was not out of our net income, it was out of our gross income. I was telling Brad and Gary, you guys this story, my dad used to always tell this, and it was this small country church, and they were struggling in financial difficulty and they brought on a man to be in eldership because they knew he was really good with money and they thought maybe God would call him in to help them get back into a good place of decent finances. So a year later, this church is just teaming with finances to do all the work they'd wanted to do. And they said, "How did you make this happen so quickly?" Well, as the story goes, this gentleman was the owner and operator of the local grainery. And he said, "Well, most of you are farmers, and when you brought your crops into the grainery, I just took 10% off, and just gave it to the church and you didn't even miss it." And the reality of that story is, when we give to God first, He always leaves us enough provision to take care of our own needs. If we're obedient to give back to Him first. Gary, is tithing still a requirement in the church today?

Gary Hashley
Well, you know, people love when it comes to the subject of tithing to say, "Doesn't Paul say, we're not under law, but we're under grace?" And that's true. The problem with that reasoning is tithing, as you said, started before Moses, before the commandments, before the nation of Israel, it started with Abraham. And so it predates the law. And so people say, oh nuts, you know, am I still required to give? I grew up in a ministry home of the three of us, Tim and I both grew up in ministry homes and neither of our dads made a lot of money. And I remember my dad refused to take us to eat in a restaurant if tipping was expected, so we could do the McDonald's thing. And we could do the Ponderosa steakhouse because they actually had signs that said, no tipping, please. And so my dad would take us and, you know, tipping is one of those things. Where do you give to the person who has, you know, served you, and my dad has since learned to tithe. My step-mom has made sure he's done that. But you know, as we think about our giving, I don't think it's ever been solved. This, do you have to tithe thing has ever been solved around the church, but the thought about giving is prevalent in scripture. So if you don't want to tithe and say, I don't want to be limited, I don't want to be required. I don't want to be restricted. I mean, I'll tell you if they add the tithe or the tip onto my bill at the restaurant, they never get as much as if I add it on, because if I add it on it's my free will, if they added on that's all they get. But when it comes to the church today, I believe that Paul teaches generosity. In 2 Corinthians 8 He says, "We want you to know brothers about the grace of God. That's been given among the churches of Macedonia for any severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part, for they gave according to their means, as I can testify and beyond their means of their own accord." In other words, they chose to do this begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord. And then by the will of God, to us. You know, Paul talks about generosity and he talks about giving. He talks about even not what was expected when it came to their giving. Later on in the next chapter, chapter nine, starting at verse six, the point is this, Paul says, "Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give, as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work." And again, it talks about giving in a, I want to mode, not in an, I have to mode, right? We are not under law, but we are under grace. I think what Paul is saying is that our giving should be an attitude issue. What is my attitude toward giving? And it should be an appreciation thing. I appreciate that God lets me earn. I appreciate that God provides in my life, in my family, and for my needs. And I want to share, I've often had people say, but pastor Gary, I can't afford to tithe, that I can't afford to give. And I'll often say, but I find I can't afford not to, not that I'm playing a game with God, but I find that when I put God first and I honor him and I'm generous toward him and toward his ministries, that everything else seems to fall in place and I've encouraged couples. Why don't you just, you know, test God a little bit? If you can say that in a nice way, why don't you set aside say three months, and give to God as you feel you should. And at the end of the time, evaluate, and you know, I've never had anybody come to me and say, pastor Gary, that was the stupidest thing you ever suggested. But I have had people come back to me and say, you know, once we started giving, it seems like everything else fell into place. And I'm not saying that, you know, God's an investment scheme. I'm just saying that God takes care of those who are faithful to him. So, Brad, you've been sitting there nodding your head. You haven't been shaking it. So that's encouraging, we'll let you out our time.

Brad Kilthau
Well, I like what you guys have shared today. I mean, it's been really good. Tim bringing out that the idea of where tithing comes from and taking us back in the scriptures, because I know a lot of people have thought that it's some church-made thing or man-made thing that we put upon people. And, no, no, it was shown in the scriptures back in the beginning, as you said in Genesis, and then Gary, I loved how you shared and I keep nodding my head, yes to you guys, because, it's a heart thing, you know, God doesn't need your money, but it's a heart thing that he's looking for. He's looking for a heart that's sold out to him and I'd like to kind of finish up our time a little bit with, I think we need to see that there are benefits to tithing. One of the things is when we tithe God becomes our protector instead of our bank account, being our protector. And I was thinking about the passage of scripture in Malachi 3:11. And the Lord says, "I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field." Wow. That's a pretty amazing statement. The Lord says basically to a people that would give to him as they weren't doing at the time and he was calling upon them to, he says, "I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure that no one sneaks in and destroys your field or your crops." And he's also said, "I'm going to make sure that, that vine, uh, maybe it's a little reluctant to bear for you this year." He says, I'm going to tell it to bear fruit for you. And so when you think about God and his power, how foolish it would be for us to trust our bank account more than we would trust in the Lord. The biblical principle that we learned in Malachi 3:11, is kind of what you were saying Gary. Is the Lord is just saying, trust me, trust me. I'm the one who protects you from robbers and thieves and Satan. I'm the one who protects your livelihood. I'm the one who makes it possible for your crops to grow. And I'm the one who makes sure you have food to put in your mouth. And again, we kind of get back to, how big is our God? We should trust the one who makes the sun come up in the morning a whole lot more than we trust the guy that's trying to make money for us in the stock market. We should trust the one who gives our heart, the next beat, our next breath of air a whole lot more than those $20 bills that we have in our wallet that we think are our protector. And so when God becomes our protector, rather than our money, it does something for us as a Christian. It reduces our stress, it reduces our worry. It reduces our fear because we give it over to God, instead of trusting a dollar or somebody in charge of giving us that dollar, we're trusting in God. And I guess what we need to clarify here is, we're not making a bargain with God when we tithe. We're not saying, "God, if I give you this money, then I get an insurance plan back, so make sure I'm going to be taken care of." No, we're not looking for an insurance policy, we're just showing that we're putting our trust in God. And that's what God wants more than any thing else, and he honors that kind of faith. That's what tithing shows us, He's our protector. And I think the second thing I want to share is, and there's a whole lot of benefits, but the second thing is, tithing brings us into a more intimate relationship with the Lord. When you go back to Malachi 3:10, the Lord says, "Bring all your tithes in into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house." And then he goes on to say, "Try me out. See if I'm going to honor what I'm saying to you." Some of our bibles say, "Test me in this." That's what God says, test me in this. And he says, "I'll open the windows of heaven and pour blessings on you." It's like God is saying, "Do you want to see how involved I am in your life. Do you want to see who really writes your paycheck? Do you want to see who keeps your washer and dryer running after the warranty has passed? Do you want to see the one who stocks your refrigerator with food?" "Start giving to me and you'll start seeing how involved I am in your life." Because you're trusting in Him and not the money. You're not looking at the money, you're looking at God. And you really can't see that kind of working of God in your life when you and I fail to trust God by tithing. When we don't tithe, we don't get to see the interaction of God in our life. Like we really can when we do tithe. And there are so many benefits that God gives to us when we're faithful. When we trust in him and money is one of the best ways to show how really true our heart is. We can talk about it all we want, but money is an action that shows trust. And I know a lot of people don't like to talk about money in the church. And probably I think because most of the time when we talk about money, there's always guilt that comes along with it. But we got to remember Jesus talked about money a lot. In fact, when you get in the New Testament, he talked about money, more than anything else other than the kingdom. He brought up money and the importance of money and how we should be stewards of that. And so we shouldn't be afraid to talk about money in the church, because when we're talking about tithing or giving to the Lord, it should actually be something on kind of the forefront of our minds when we walk into that church on Sunday. I get to give to the Lord today, I get to have this act of faith and trusting, not just talking about it, but actually I get to participate in worshiping God by trusting in him, by tithing and giving to his work.

What Are Some of The Greatest Hymns? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Mike Clement and David Clement.

Mike Clement

We were asked if we'd be willing to put together a couple of programs where we talk about some of the great hymns of the faith and look at maybe their hymn stories and the content of the hymn, and some things like that. So when we really want to share something with you before we get started with this, I got 10 points. So if you've got a pencil and paper, you can write down 10 points. Can't preach that on a Sunday morning, it takes too long. Number one, music is a primary form of worship. Now different churches and different traditions have handled music in different ways. I read that some of the reformers banned music entirely in their worship services. Calvin, didn't think a whole lot of it, John Calvin, he kind of tolerated it, but he put it on a very low level. Actually the guy who was the president of the school that I graduated from, put it way below the preaching ministry. He didn't, and I heard of a pastor in Philadelphia, back the turn of the previous century. And he wouldn't allow a choir in his church. Yeah. He said, in fact, he said from the pulpit, when Satan was thrown out of heaven, he landed in the choir loft. And so he just wouldn't allow it. Martin Luther though, elevated music to the same level as teaching and doctrine. He thought it was really, really important. Scripture mentions music as a form of worship. Psalm 100:2 says, "Serve the Lord with gladness, come into his presence with singing." Dave. You've got a couple of verses there.

David Clement
Yeah. And Ephesians 5:19, it says, "Speaking to yourselves in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord." And then over in Colossians is a similar verse. It says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing, one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart unto the Lord." And we could see pictures of this all throughout those scriptures. One that comes to mind vividly of me obviously, is David, David wrote many of the Psalms. He was very gifted in poetry if you would, and in songwriting. And he wrote many of the Psalms and many at times, how he went to singing his praises of the Lord, or, you know, some of them more prayers that he had to the Lord. I think of a Psalm 52 is a prayer that David wrote unto the Lord and talking about his own sin, his life, and just praying to the Lord through hymns, through songs, through spiritual song. I think it's very, I think it's great. And we see that in the scripture,

Mike Clement
We don't have a lot recorded in scripture as to what the early church services were like. And God probably did that so that we wouldn't be caught up in just imitating, the rituals and so forth. But there were some things, the preaching of the word was primary and there was also music early in the first century church.

David Clement
Actually in the first prison ministry, it started with--thrown into prison there at Philippi. They were at midnight, they opened their voices and they were singing praises unto the Lord at midnight. And then there was the first prison ministry, right.

Mike Clement
There you go. Third thing we have is two primary goals of music and worship are, first of all, to praise and glorify God. And secondly, to encourage and exhort other believers. I'm reading a book right now by A.W. Tozer. Tozer wrote that serious students of God's word should equip themselves with a good translation of the Bible and a hymn book. And he just emphasized that many of the doctrines of God's word are found in good Godly hymns that were written down through the ages. And so he said that was a great way to learn the truth of God's word is through the hymn book. Another thing, music is used in worship, but it must always reflect the person and character of God. Now there is secular music, there's cultural music, there's just all kinds of different forms of music. But when you talk about what's going to be in church, in worship or, an individual using it for worship, well, that's a whole different level. Mom, when she was a young teenager worked for, American Missionary Fellowship, which was the organization that had Camp Rock at that time. And she was a summer missionary and she was sent out to remote areas to do vacation Bible schools. And it was an all day vacation Bible school. And they did all kinds of things, but one of the things they did was they sang hymns. Well, some of these kids had never been in church, so they didn't know any of the hymns. And she told how with one group, she sang a hymn with them, or a camp song and then said, "Well, what would you like to sing?" And one of the little boys said, "Jimmy, Crack Corn," There's nothing wrong with secular music and things that are not sacred. But when you're talking about in the worship service, when you're worshiping the Lord, either in a service with other people or by yourself, then it ought to reflect the character of God.

And what we find in Isaiah 6, is Isaiah is caught up into the throne room of God. And he sees things that he can't even describe and he is struck with his own sinfulness. One of the things he says though, is he sees angels on either side of the throne of God, and they're calling to one another. Holy holy, holy. And there are a lot of hymns that talk about the holiness of God. Holiness, actually has the connotation of something that is different and something that is set aside from other things, and God is different from his creation. There is a view of God called pantheism, which says that God is in everything, He's in the rocks, He's in the trees, He's in the birds. And there are people that get all off on that kind of thing. You know, God is in nature. God is outside, he's in our world, but He's outside of our world. He is not part of creation. He created creation, he made the universe. And it also has the idea of being separate and separation is always separate from something and separated to something else. And this conference that I went to this weekend, Dave, one of the guys brought that up and he said, "You know," he said, "Sometimes in our circles, we get all hung up about separation. Oh, we need to be separate from this and separate for that." He said, "We got it backwards. We need to be separated unto God. And if we're separated under God, then some of these other things just need to fall by the wayside. They they need to be taken out of our life so that I'm more dedicated and more separated for the Lord. And I really like that music in worship is to always reflect the person of God, the character of God and the truth of God's word. I remember years ago there was a very popular song and, I like it. It's a Christian song, but some people had some problems with the theology in it. They didn't think that it was accurate theology, and they expressed that to the writer. And the writer's response was, well, this is the way that God gave it to me. Well, I don't have a problem with the song, but I really didn't like his answer. Seriously, he's kind of elevating his songwriting to the level of the inspiration of God's word. God's word is inspired, God's word is without error, God's word is God's truth. God may move us to do something and encourage us, and bring things to mind, but good music needs to always be in agreement with God's word. And if it's not, then it's not good music, right. There's a problem with it. Well, a couple of other things at the end, not all old music is good. We were, we were in a church in New Jersey and they had a choir, bless their hearts. They would just be up there just singing away. I couldn't understand what they were singing. It wasn't a real good choir. In fact, if I wanted to get anything out of their singing, I had to take my hymn book and find the hymn that they were singing and follow along so I knew what it was. We know a fellow who started a new church over in Wyoming, and he really started a church with a bunch of people that were totally unchurched. He had very little music. They would have one hymn in the worship service and they'd sing it three times cause they didn't know it. And he said he never had just instrumental music because people didn't know the hymns. It didn't mean anything to them. Anyway, not all old music is good. Not all new music is bad. There have been some more recent things, and I'm going to mention Majesty. And somebody's gonna say "gracious that is ancient." Not as ancient as I am now. When that came out, it just really touched my heart, and it focuses on God. And that's something that I didn't put in our little outline here, Dave, but in most hymn books, in the beginning of the hymn book, there is an index, and the index will point out sections that are dedicated. So there's a section for Christmas music. There's a section for the other music. The vast majority of our music written today and written in the past is testimonial, and testimonial hymns are not bad. This is what God means to me. This is what God did for me. But most hymn books have a very small section that's dedicated to worship and that focuses only on the Lord. And I think that's kind of significant anyway. Not all popular music is good, just because people like it doesn't mean that it's good now. They like, it means something to them, but the teaching behind that music and, and the presentation of it, may not be good at all. Music is different from one culture to another. In fact, it's even different in different parts of our own country, where you've got a local flavor. We live in the west and we get a lot more country western stuff. And I never used to listen to bluegrass music, but I've kind of developed a taste for it. I'm enjoying it, the Rochesters and some people that we know. Music is different from one culture to another. And another thing for us to keep in mind is that those who are musicians and singers in the Old Testament were priests. They were priests, they were called of God. Now in the New Testament, it says that all believers are priests. Were a holy people, were a peculiar people, were a royal priesthood. But the whole area of worship in the Old Testament, that was led by Godly people, people that were to know what God's word has to say and be familiar with it. I met a fellow one time who was a part of a music group. And they were a very popular music group, but he shared with me, "If the kids knew the lifestyle that I live off of the stage, they never would listen to what I have to say." And unfortunately that can be true of pastors and preachers as well. So all we're going to do is we're going to look at some hymns that have passed the test of time. They're found in most hymn books, been used by most churches. We intend to look at the stories behind them. And we also intend to look at some of the things that they teach. So that's the game plan. And we were right, Dave, all that we got through was the outline, right?

Will There Still Be Sinners In The New Earth? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Jeff Banks, Andy Griess, and Bruce Peterson.

Bruce Peterson
So here's the question, in Revelation 22:12-15, this is Jesus speaking, it says this, "Look, I'm coming soon. My reward is with me, and I will give to each person, according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magical arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves him practices falsehood. So the question is, this is the last chapter of the Bible. And John has just told us all about this new city Jerusalem that comes down onto the new Earth. And there's no more death, no more sin, no more of the old things, all the old things are gone. And now at the close of the thing, it seems like maybe there's still dogs outside the city on the new Earth who are practicing magic. Maybe you shouldn't leave the city gates. You might get murdered.

Andy Griess
When she posed it to me on Thursday, I thought, man, what a great question. And then I realized kind of just looking at it more carefully, what appears to me is happening is, John has led us through this whole thing all the way to the end. And then just here at the very end, he's just going to take a big snapshot of the nuts and bolts of here's the final piece of this. And it is this, the final judgment has happened, and now that the new Heaven and new Earth is here and all those who are in Christ get to participate in it, it's a wonderful thing. Everybody's exciting, everybody's rejoicing, and then he just slips in at the end; but not everybody's going to be part of this. There's a group of people that are on the outside. I don't think literally outside the gates of the city, but they're not going to be participating in this. And so we've got at the end of all of human history, it all comes down to there's two very different groups.

Bruce Peterson
Yeah. I would agree with that. Right at the end, the headings in your Bible, even there, it says, this is the eulogy, like this is the wrap-up. And so here's the big story. The big story is, there's a place where there is no more sin and you get to be with God, and there's outside of that. You don't want to be on the outside. But here's what I think is interesting. Like this, in my Bible is all in red. This is a quote from Jesus, right? So John has broken it down, he's gotten lots of more information, and he's given us details. We don't really know when Jesus told this to John. John might have saved this quote. He might've got this quote in chapter one when he was talking to Jesus, when Jesus said, look, I'm the one who was dead and I'm now alive. I got the keys, here's the deal; there's the city, and this is where the righteous are. And you better get in the city because outside the city, is the dogs, now, John, go talk to the angels. They're going to explain all this stuff to you. And you're going to get all this detail about a city and a new Earth, cause there's not a new Earth. This chunk that Jesus is talking about, he doesn't even bring up the new Earth really. So I think John saved this quote for the end, because he's saying, listen, don't take my word for it. Jesus even said, listen, the righteous are in, the unrighteous are out.

Jeff Banks
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that. And the fact that you brought up that this is red letter. This is the authority of Jesus, the assurance, everything that's been spoken about up to this point, that's going to be fulfilled the victory that's in Jesus. He's driving it home saying that, this is all true, and it's by the authority of Jesus. We do get reminded in the very end here that, there will be those who are going to enjoy life in the kingdom, in this new heaven and earth. And there's a reason why, and we want to get to that, and there's going to be some who are not going to experience it. These are those who are unredeemed or lost. These are the people that are going to be cast out of God's presence. And so now we wrestle with, what's the basis, who's it in? In verse14, blessed are those who washed their robes. Those who have been cleansed in the blood of the lamb and have the heart of the gospel, we've been talking about is that, those who have that through faith in Jesus, that Jesus pays for our sin and full through his blood. We get his righteousness credited to us. Those are the people that are in, and those who are not, are out.

Andy Griess
This is the last chapter of the Bible, I'd go to the very beginning of the story, where God creates everything and the idea is, you can have me as your king, this can be yours, but you've got to let me be the king. Will you allow me to be the one who's God? And at the beginning we reject God, sin comes into the world and sin is something that affects us all. And so when we look at this list of all the people that are outside, it's the dogs, it's those who practice magic, sexual immorality, murderers, idolaters, everyone who loves and practices falsehood, oh, that one gets us all right. I think that the beginning of the whole story is we all have rejected God. And so the whole story of the Bible is, is God gonna allow mankind to be separated from him forever? Or does he have a plan to fix what's been broken, to make us what he created us to be. And so the whole story is, you've given mankind chance. They can't, they can't, they can't. So we need a savior and then Jesus comes in. The whole thing of it is, there was all of mankind should have been in this category of outsiders outside. And we would have been, if it was up to us, if we had to contribute to ourselves, if we have to fix ourselves, we would forever be outsiders, which is why the entire Bible clearly points directly to the cross of Jesus and the resurrection and what he did.

Bruce Peterson
As you were talking, my brain went to just two chapters earlier in the great white throne of judgment, right? So this great white throne judgment that, all human kind is, kind of afraid of because there's books that are being kept and everything you do wrong that violates the law of God, including what you even think, including motives. So even if you do the right thing with the wrong motive, it gets written in this book. And then how do you not end up in the lake of fire in that chapter? The answer is, if your name is also written in the book of life; Well, what's the book of life about? 2 Corinthians 5:21 right? "He who knew no sin became sin so that we could become righteousness." Like I sin, you still sin. Any list God would comprise that would say, this is sin, we'd all be on that list. And the difference is, are we washed in the blood, right? We've been forgiven by the plan of God, which is Jesus. The one sacrifice that can make us alive, clean, and well.

Jeff Banks
Isn't that the heart of this, chapter 15, this isn't an exhaustive list. It's not like we're chatting on good or bad. It's pointing out, uncleansed sinners and their sin is still on them, that's the difference.

Bruce Peterson
They don't have a payment for it, so they still wear their labels. The first group, they might do those things, but they don't wear the labels. Their robes have been washed, not by them, in the blood of Christ. Some people are washed and some are not for a million different reasons, but you have to be washed.

Andy Griess
That's something that if you're listening today, you should understand, if you read that list and you go, oh, that's me. That does not have to be you forever. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. Jesus' sacrifice was a full and complete payment for every sin. Those who trust in him are forgiven fully and freely. And in Him, we become the righteousness of God. The people in that first group who have been washed, it's not that they behave better. It's not that they did something differently. It's that they recognize their sin. They recognize, "I don't want to be this anymore Jesus.

If you can change me, if you can make me new, if you can give me your righteousness, I will have whatever you can give. I'm trusting you to do what you say you can do." And simply by that choice to put your trust in Jesus, everything changes, you are made new. You're forgiven completely. And so even today, if you've never, ever, ever recognized your sin, turned in faith to Jesus, you would be in the one category this moment. And the moment you put your faith in Jesus guaranteed, 100% that you are with Christ forever because you're washed in his blood. And it's an awesome thing. I'm so glad that at one point in my life, my grandmother shared that message with me. And from that day on, I've never been perfect, but I've known that in God's eyes. I'm perfect, and my place is secure. That first part of that is talking about me. Not because of anything I did.

Jeff Banks
And you can add to that, Andy, the other side of that, if you look at the list and say, I'm not any of those, and you think that you're righteous, your righteousness is not good enough, even if you don't think, I'm good, I'm not any of those things. And you're clinging to some righteousness that you think is enough. I mean, that's the whole book of Romans, right?

Bruce Peterson
Like there's the comparison is not--there's no righteousness. People who don't do these things and people who do, don't, that's not the comparison. Right? There's washed people and people who are still dirty. Why were the people washed in the first place? They were dirty. You don't wash clean things. Exactly. They're washed.

Jeff Banks
But yeah, I think that's the requirement of we need--there's righteousness, right? That's his perfect righteousness. That's his gift. That's Romans and it's credited to our account. And so that's the hope of the gospel that, you can have the assurance that you're going to enjoy this life because you've been washed.

Bruce Peterson
So, to sum up, so all that is super important. The big idea, and this is though this is a wrap up. So, it's not redefining the details of the city on the new planet, no sinners on the new planet. Yeah. No sinners anywhere in this whole category, the details are here. This is a broad story wrap up, insiders, outsiders, washed people, and people who haven't been washed yet. And that's the big story, right? Is that right?

Jeff Banks
That's the big story. And to Andy's point, if you find yourself, whether it's, because of you recognizing your own sin or thinking you're too righteous, the offer to be washed is there.

Bruce Peterson
The last verses? So let's just do it right. Then go to the very end of the book. And what's it say? Well you have got come? All who are thirsty, come. The one who wishes to take the free gift of the water of life, come that's right. There's the offer, right? This is for you. Are you thirsty? Can we get a drink?

Andy Griess
Ah love it.

Bruce Peterson
Dirty? Yeah? Jesus categorically washes feet. Jesus is the cleanser.

How Can God Be A Trinity? - Ask The Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Brad Kilthau, Gary Hashley, and Tim Hebbert.

Tim Hebbert

So we're gonna talk a little bit about this - what does it mean that God is a Trinity? And you know, I tell my young teenagers in classes, the first rule when we start talking about God is that He's not human. We can't place any human attributes on Him, because if we do that the concept of the Trinity is almost impossible to fathom. And in truth, it really is kind of hard to wrap our minds around it. Anyway, let's just dig into this and see where the Lord takes us this morning. What is the Trinity? How do we find that? That's the one true God who lives eternally in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I listened to a pastor talk about it and I love the statement he made. He said, "God has been in relationship with Himself for all of eternity." And I guess that's maybe the best way that we can really describe that. What is that relationship? Well, it's a loving relationship that binds and fuses them together as one God existing within three separate persons. So it's hard to understand, but the foundation of everything we believe and who we are as followers of Jesus Christ starts with that foundation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and His word. God doesn't waste any time in sharing with us who He is.

One of the things I love about studying the Old Testament is He reveals Himself through His names. But He makes a statement in Genesis 1:26 where He begins to share, as I like to put it, that "one of a kind nature" because it can't be duplicated, it can't be imitated. Only God can be existing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But He says in verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness'." So He immediately goes into a plurality of who He is as one person. And throughout the Old Testament, each one of them is found and revealed in different scriptures here and there, but in that moment He doesn't define Himself as a triune God. But He does say "I have more attributes than you can fathom in one person." Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not human that He should lie, not a human being that He should change his mind. Does He speak and then not act, does He promise and not fulfill?" We're defining early on in scripture who God the Father is. Isaiah 7 tells us this, it's one of those iconic passages that reveals who Jesus is before He comes into the world. Verse 14 says, "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Emmanuel," which we know means God with us. And in the second verse of Genesis 1, we're already introduced to the holy spirit, it says, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."

Then when we get into the New Testament, Jesus begins to teach us about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And then Paul really lays out the doctrine of how each one of these separate persons in the Godhead. But Jesus has revealed in His baptism, as the atmosphere parts you can see the glory of heaven, the Holy Spirit. And then the father says, "That's my son, the One that I am well pleased in." Later on at His transfiguration, we see the Holy Spirit come in the form of a cloud as Moses and Elijah nestled down into that transfiguration of who Jesus is. And then again, we hear the voice of the Father say to Peter James and John, paraphrasing a little bit, "That's my Son, listen to him." But I love this scripture. And in Romans 8, when Paul is defining the Holy Spirit He gives us that Trinity, starting with verse nine He says, "You however are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His spirit that dwells in you." So Paul in those three verses gives us an image of the working agreement, so to speak, between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now Gary, there's a lot of error out there when we try to apply human conditions to that, so why don't you speak to that.

Gary Hashley

Well in Mark 12, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy and says, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord Your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. There are groups out there that say we are monotheists, we believe in one God. And I say, "Well, I'm a monotheist too, but I'm a monotheist who realizes scripture teaches that we have one God but we have three persons who make up that God. And each one, the Father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus is just as much God as the Father, the Spirit is just as much God as Jesus and the Father, and Jesus isn't the Father, and the Father isn't the Spirit, the Spirit isn't Jesus. Some of those errors come because we try and wrap our heads around a concept too big for our brains. Some people believe we must have three gods. And that's what other religions would say, "We're monotheists and you're plural theists. You believe in three gods." No, we don't, but even though we say we don't believe in three gods, there are those who really struggle with that. They go round and round and round with that. And one of the problems is that if you've got three gods, someone's going to want to be king of the hill. And yet we don't find that, we find unity and we find cooperation. You look through the scriptures and you don't find that the members of the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, are arguing over who gets top billing.

Another error that comes up - I had a guy in the first church I pastored come to me, he had a friend who had some interesting ideas about the Bible and about God. He came to me one day and he says, "I was talking to my friend and my friend told me that Jesus is less than the Father, that the Father is the big God. And Jesus is sort of a lesser God." And I said to Jack, "Well that's interesting, because Jesus said, " I and my father are One." Jack said, "I can't wait to go tell my friend because he missed that somewhere." How could they be one if Jesus was the less than the Father?

Another error that can come up, and I heard this from an adult Sunday school class in a church in southern Michigan where one of the deacons of the church was teaching the class. And he said, "Let me explain the Trinity to all of you. The trinity is like this - God gets up in the morning, and some days He puts on His God the Father suit, and He does God the father stuff. And then another day He might get up, assuming God sleeps, He might get up and put on His Jesus outfit, and He goes and does Jesus things. And then there are times where it's more appropriate when God gets up and puts on His Holy Spirit costume." And so He pictured this as God having three different outfits, and whatever day the One God had on either His God the Father suit or His God the Son suit or His Holy Spirit suit. There are a lot of errors out there, and some of it is because we really want to understand it. And I don't fault people for wanting to understand, because I want to understand. People trying to explain the Trinity, like it's like an egg, with the shell and the white part of the egg and the yolk being part of the egg. And that sort of helps us think through it a little, but the shell isn't the yolk and the yolk isn't the white and they're not coequal or coeternal. So, you know, any explanation that I've heard people come up with always comes up a little short of the perfections of the Trinity. But Pastor Brad, tell us why it matters.

Brad Kilthau

I think something you brought earlier is that anytime we do any teaching, especially on the doctrine of scripture, we have to ask why does that matter? How does it help me out? And the truth that God has triune is of utmost importance because it impacts our lives in several ways. One of those ways is through authentic worship. Since God has revealed Himself to us as triune, the Bible says in John 4:23 that we are to worship God in spirit and truth. And we cannot truly worship Him apart from regarding who he really is. And so it is good that when we worship Him, we comprehend what that means when we talked about our God is a triune God. I think even more importantly, the Trinity is vital for salvation. For our salvation to be possible, there needed to be a perfect sacrifice of infinite value to pay for the sins of the world, and if Jesus is anything less than fully and eternally God and He had limitations, that would prevent Him from accomplishing the work that we needed for Him to do on the cross and the resurrection. And when you think about our salvation, in scriptures the Father initiated salvational work, the Son completed the salvation to work in the cross, and it's the Holy Spirit who opens up our understanding and even gives us the ability to believe in the work of Christ. So all persons in the One God are vital in our salvation. And then there's also the thought about a healthy and personal relationship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit. We need to accept and embrace the fullness of God as it's been revealed to us in the scriptures. You can't ignore that, just as you were saying, it's all throughout the scriptures that he is a triune God. You can't throw that away and then have a intimate relationship with Him.

I think about this too - we need to get into the throne room of the Father. We want to go to the throne room to speak to the Father, well who makes that possible? Well Jesus opens the door and allows us there. And then it's the Holy Spirit that gives us the ability to even speak because we don't even know what to say and how to say it in the presence of the Father. So in order to have a healthy relationship we need this triune God of ours. And here's a fourth one that I was thinking about as I was contemplating this question - without the belief that our God is triune, there's a personal relationship problem for us as believers, because Christian relationships are to be modeled after and reflect the perfect unity and love that exists between the three Persons of the Trinity. Just as Jesus said as he was praying for the church in John 17, he said, "that all my followers may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I in You, and that they may be one (speaking of the church) as We are One, I in them and You in me." And so when we think about our God who is love, there's this eternal active love that's always gone on among the Trinity Persons, infinite love, even before we were created. And so we're to reflect that kind of love for one another, and we're commanded to do that in Philippians 2:2, it says, "Being like-minded having the same love, being in one spirit and of one mind." And so it even affects our relationship as we look at our God and understand who He is and how we can relate to one another.

And so really the doctrine of the Trinity is a precious truth. And I know it blows our minds when we think about it, we have to sit back and go, "How can that be? I can't understand it." I think as you were saying Gary, we make a big mistake if we try to bring it down to some analogy that we can all comprehend - we can't comprehend all of our God. He's above who we are, but it is good to sit back and think about our triune God, because again it shows us how amazing He is and how wonderful and magnificent He is. And so it's a practical truth that should impact the lives of us Christians in a lot of different ways. So this is a good question, a good one to think about and constantly thinking about as believers in Jesus Christ.