Q & A With Pastor Jesse

Transcript

JR 29
12/3/2023
Q & A with Pastor Jesse
Selected Verses
Jesse Randolph

Well, welcome back for our evening service. As has been announced a couple of times now this is Q & A time. “Q & A with Pastor Jesse” is the way they’ve titled it. I’m a guy that likes to plan things, so this is very much outside my comfort zone. Even today I was like trying to plan the various ways I could present up here. I thought about doing like Andrew, like the tweed jacket or I thought about doing like Aaron, like no jacket and I thought about getting up here in the front and sitting on a stool or at least having my notes on a stool or having no notes or just kind of walking up and down the aisles and just kind of being Mr. Friendly-Interactive Guy. And I’m just not that guy. I’m a creature of habit. This is my comfort zone, being behind this desk and so I figured what I would do is I would at least start the Q & A tonight back here. And we do have a series of pre-submitted questions and I have had some time to think about those so, I’ll start those, I’ll work my way through a host of those. There are enough questions that have been submitted ahead of time and thank you for doing that, by the way, that I could run through the whole time just doing those questions, but it has been promised that we’d have a live time, an interactive time. So, I’ll just kind of see how it’s going and see how far I’m getting. I might at that point move up there, though it’s way outside my comfort zone, and just talk live to you that way. We’ll see, I’m making no promises.

Alright, so let’s just get right into it. The questions have been submitted along a bunch of different lines, there’s several different categories of questions, they fit into various different theological categories. We’ve tried to sort of organize them according to category. I may jump from one to the other just as I’m watching the clock and as I’m watching your faces and getting a sense of what I’m doing up here, I’ll just kind of go with the flow.

Question
So, here’s the first one. It’s in the realm of salvation. One of you asked, “In one of the creeds, maybe the Nicene Creed, the statement regarding Christ after He was crucified and died, descended into hell. Is this biblical?” So the question is, there’s a creedal statement out there somewhere about Christ allegedly descending into hell and the question is, is that teaching biblical. Well, first of all, the person who submitted the question is referring to the Nicene Creed. It’s actually the Apostles’ Creed that that teaching comes from. And the Apostles’ Creed has its own interesting history. The Apostles Creed in its earliest form is probably in the mid-350’s A.D. It was called the Romanist Creed and then it became what is now known as the Apostles’ Creed closer to the 800’s, under the Frankish ruler Charlemagne. And the current version of the Apostles’ Creed began to be codified under Charlemagne. Here’s how the Apostles’ Creed in its current form reads, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried; He descended into hell and on the third day rose again from the dead.” So, there’s where we get that language, “descended into hell.”

Now if you go back to those earlier versions of what became the Apostles’ Creed you will find that that language “descended into hell” isn’t there. In the 350’s – 400’s it’s not there. It starts appearing in different iterations in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, closer to the time where Charlemagne under his rule, that creed was formally adopted. Now I only bring that up because it’s very interesting that it was during those same centuries that the Roman Catholic Church was sort of getting off the ground. And the Roman Catholic Church has some interesting teachings and doctrines, including the doctrine of purgatory which might have something to do with this whole doctrine of Christ descending into hell, maybe freeing spirits who are imprisoned, and that whole sense that the Roman Catholic Church would teach.

Now clearly there must be some biblical anchor for this idea of Christ having descended into hell, right? There must be some verse that the Catholic Church all those centuries ago anchored in on as it was developing this idea of Christ descending into hell. What bible verse is that? Well, that bible verse is 1 Peter 3:18. If you have a bible I’d invite you to open there to 1 Peter 3:18. We’ll actually work through 3:18 and eventually 19 and 20. But look at 1 Peter 3:18. It says, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.” Now up to that point, that is purely crucifixion language, purely resurrection language. But then look at verse 19. It says, “in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison.” Now it’s there that folks will look at verse 19 and they’ll say that Jesus in some way went back to the realm of the dead, to Hades, to Hell. Catholics would say to purgatory perhaps, to proclaim Himself victorious as a result of His atoning death and work on the cross. For some in that camp they’ll say that this is actually Christ going into that realm to actually give those in that realm a second chance at salvation. I won, He’s saying, and you have one more chance to get right with Me. The only problem with that is that conflicts with Hebrews 9:27, “Its appointed for man once to die and then comes judgment.” Others will take that passage and they’ll say this is referring to fallen angels that Christ is declaring victory over somewhere in the realm of the dead. And they’ll look at 2 Peter. You can turn over to 2 Peter 2:4-5 where it says “if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.” And many will say, well, those angels are actually the sons of God back in Genesis 6, or the Nephilim even, and there’s all these connections they make to Genesis 6:1-2.

I actually don’t hold to either view when it comes to back to 1 Peter 3, and part of the reason I don’t hold to either of those views is that verses 18 and 19 here don’t sit in a vacuum. If we go back to 1 Peter 3:18-19 you have to read on into verse 20 where it says, “in which He also went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison,” comma, “who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.” I jotted down a note here from Martin Luther how he has looked at this passage. He says, “A wonderful text this is and a more obscure passage perhaps than any other in the New Testament, so that I do not know for a certainty what Peter meant.” Martin Luther was brilliant. We might disagree with Martin Luther on different things but he was a brilliant man so I take comfort in knowing that he wrestled with this very passage and its okay for you and I to do so as well.

So who are these spirits that we see here in this passage of 1 Peter 3? I take those actually to be human spirits. These are the human spirits of those who mocked the message of God during the days that the ark was being built by Noah. That’s how I look at this. These were the ones who God said back in Genesis 6 he would wipe from the face of the earth in the flood and we know from Genesis 7 He did that. He blotted out the entirety of the human race save Noah and his family at that time. So I take this “spirits” here of 1 Peter 3:20 to be the souls of that evil human race that existed in the days of Noah. And those spirits are now imprisoned, not in purgatory like the Catholic Church would teach, but in hell waiting the final judgment of God at the end of the age. And so I believe 1 Peter 3 is telling us is that there is this sense in which Christ preached to those who mocked Noah in his day and who were now, not that He descended into hell after His crucifixion, but actually during Noah’s day He was preaching to those individuals.

And how did that happen? When did that happen? When did Christ preach to those who mocked Noah during Noah’s day? I believe that through the Spirit of Christ He was preaching to Noah, to Noah’s contemporaries, during Noah’s day. How do I get there? Well, there’s a few reasons I land there. First, if you would turn over back to 1 Peter 1, just a couple chapters over at the beginning of the book, and 1 Peter 1:10-11. We see that, “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.” So there you have reference in 1 Peter 1 to the Spirit of Christ ministering through Old Testament prophets so I think you can say, consistent with that the Spirit of Christ could have been ministering through Noah in the days of Noah to his mockers and those who doubted him.

Second reason I get there. If you turn back over to 2 Peter and look at 2 Peter 2:5. We’ve already looked at, I’ve already read part of this, but you see that God “did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness,” he’s called. So in other words, Noah, we always think of Noah as just, you know, swinging a hammer and building an ark for all those years. But according to 2 Peter 2:5 he was actually preaching righteousness to all the mockers and the scoffers that surrounded him. So he was a fit vessel through which the Spirit of Christ could have been using Noah to preach against those who doubted him. He was a preacher, he was a herald.

Third reason, going back to 1 Peter 3, it does appear that it was this same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead as we see here in 1 Peter 3:18 who guided Noah as he preached righteousness in his day. Look again at 1 Peter 3:18. It says, where it says Christ was “put to death in the flesh,” and then what does it say? He was “made alive in the Spirit” and that same Spirit is still in view as we get into verse 19 and it says, “in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits,” human spirits, “now in prison.”

All that to say, and I say this knowing that there are multiple different views out there, I believe that what this section of 1 Peter is teaching is that the Spirit of Christ preached through Noah and He did so as He did in the case of other Old Testament prophets, He preached to those ungodly humans who were mocking and scoffing at Noah in the days of Noah, who as of Peter’s writing here, were now spirits imprisoned awaiting judgment. So I take 1 Peter 3:18, I look at the Apostles Creed, I don’t believe that either are saying that Christ descended into hell following His crucifixion to proclaim victory. Now, He proclaimed victory in John 19:30 when on the cross in His final breath He proclaimed, “tetelestai,” “it is finished.” I don’t believe He proclaimed victory a second time after His death.

A last final thought here on 1 Peter 3, this question, is I think that this interpretation better fits the context here of 1 Peter. We have to remember that 1 Peter is all about suffering and persecution and maintaining this clear conscience before God in the midst of suffering. Well, to these Jewish believers, the audience of 1 Peter, who would have presented them a great example of suffering and endurance and persecution and maintaining that clear conscience before God when doing so? Noah, a man who obeyed God and proclaimed His message. That’s why we see Noah mentioned over in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11:7. It says, “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” So that’s my interpretation. That’s my answer on number one. I do not think the Apostles’ Creed statement on Christ descending into hell is a biblically supportable statement.

Question
Question two, and this one is going to be a long one. So it’s long in the content and has all these different rivulets I’m going to have to answer. “Hi Jesse, my question for the Q & A has to do with what appears to be a new boldness by some in the Reformed camp. Why are they pushing so hard lately their view of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ and this issue of biblicism? I’m familiar with the terms and what they mean but it’s almost as if they are trying to take shots at those in the Dispensational camp. Maybe this has been going on awhile and I’m now just noticing it but it seems to be getting more vocal.”

There’s a lot of meat on that bone, there’s a lot of material to cover there. Let me start with this question that sort of alludes to the approach and the tone of our brothers in the Reformed camp, and I do want to say that, our brothers. They’re brothers in Christ and we should remember that and treat them as such. I don’t think this person in asking this question is off base though by noticing that there is this certain boldness and bravado today coming out of the Reformed camp. And I think in some ways that’s simply attributable to the fact that the Reformed camp is a larger tribe today with a bigger voice today and a broader platform today. It’s popular to be Reformed these days. The young, restless, and reformed movement of 15-20 years ago made a lot of headway and gave the Reformed camp a lot of momentum. It’s now popular, it’s easy to buy a Reformed swag, to quote a lot of Spurgeon, to smoke a lot of cigars, to buy a bunch of Banner of Truth books that you’ll never read, and to just be with the ‘in’ crowd. The Reformed crowd has the inside track with the publishers like Crossway and Zondervan, etc. The Reformed crowd has a grip on all the large and popular conferences in our day. You know, I mentioned I’m going to a conference tomorrow in Dallas. It’s like two hundred people, it’s a dinky little thing. The Reformed conferences grab two thousand, three thousand, five thousand people. They are very popular whether it be Ligonier, G3 Founders, Grace to You, you name it. The Reformed crowd swings the biggest stick today, you could say. The momentum is in their favor.

Now before I go any further with that though, I do want to make sure it’s heard here that I’m not against the Reformers. We can’t be against the Reformers given that those initial steps toward faithfulness that they helped us take. I’ve read Calvin and Luther and Zwingli and all those guys and they are profitable and instructive to what it means to be Protestant as opposed to Catholic. These were instrumentally used men of God in the time in which they lived. And as Protestant believers we do affirm much of what those Reformers affirmed. The five “solas”, you know, scripture alone, Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, to the glory of God alone. Those aren’t things we disagree with. But there’s a difference between being reformational and the Reformed theology that is out there today.

Reformed theology as a system, as a teaching, as a body of doctrine, is marked by a few tenants. First it’s rooted and unabashedly so, in Covenant theology which is a system that really took shape and took form in the late 1500’s and it’s really marked by its adherence to these three theological covenants: the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, and the covenant of redemption. Second, Reformed theology is anchored in this Christological hermeneutic that you’ve heard me speak on quite a few times up here which has got its own presupposition. That when we read either the Old or the New Testament we have to be looking at it through the lens of these major themes: of Christ and His salvation. So, whether we’re reading the Old Testament or the New Testament, we’re looking for what does this have to do with Christ and salvation and the Church. And for the Covenant theologian it all has to lead to Jesus, it all has to lead to the cross, and that means they are even looking for Him in the Old Testament. When like I’ve tried to mention up here when going through Jonah and Hosea and the like, sometimes He’s just not there.

Third, Covenant theology and Reformed theology, the two go hand in hand, affirms supersessionism. Those in the Reformed camp, in large part because of the way they read their Bible and their emphasis on Christ and the Church, they would say that in some sense the Church has replaced Israel. It’s adopted the promises of Israel and some would even say there is, on the extreme side, there’s no future for Israel.

Then here’s my fourth one and this is the one that kind of gets to the heart of this question here. Many in the Reformed camp, and I can’t say all, but many, are increasingly and boldly anti-dispensational and vocally so and aggressively so. That goes back to even John Gerstner who was R. C. Sproul’s mentor, who was very anti-dispensational and even wrote a book on that whole topic.

Now I just threw out that term “dispensational” that I should probably define and give some structure to. As a church, in case you are new here, we are a dispensational church. And all that means is that we believe in a consistent, literal, grammatical hermeneutic. We believe that the Old Testament has to be read in the context in which it was written in its time, with its context and its surroundings. We believe, as you’ve heard me say, especially on Sunday evenings, that we read the Bible forward not backward, diachronically through time is how we read it. We believe that the Church and Israel are distinct and that there is a future for Israel and that the covenants that God made with Israel, the biblical covenants, not these theological covenants, will be fulfilled literally if they haven’t already been. And we believe that the central theme of Scripture is not that of Christ and salvation and the Church but rather the glory of God, and in many cases we would even narrow it down and say the kingdom plan and the kingdom purposes of God. So yes, there has been ramped up aggression from the Reformed camp, going to this question, against dispensationalism and dispensationalists. There’s even been a recent book published by Daniel Hummel who was on Albert Mohler’s podcast where he says that dispensationalism will be dead in twenty years. That’s how aggressive its got.

Now as to this substance of this question this person asks, why are they, meaning the Reformed camp, seemingly pushing so hard lately their view of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ and this issue of biblicism? I’ll take those one by one. First this matter of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. I don’t have time to get into all the inner works of that doctrine this evening. I know it has been covered in Sunday School lessons around here and book studies around here and you can look to your left or right and find somebody who can teach you on that topic. But it’s important to note that this doctrine of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ has its root in Covenant theology. And specifically in the covenant of works which is this supposed pre-fall agreement between God and Adam where Adam was promised, they say, blessing and life if he were to obey the terms of the covenant but curses if he were to disobey. And so the doctrine of active obedience, what it does is it assumes that this covenant between Adam and God existed and it goes on to say that because Adam breached the covenant, Christ, the second Adam, came not only to die but to obey the Law and through His perfect obedience to the Law somehow store up and merit righteousness as He fulfilled the covenant of works which Adam broke.

Now certainly we know from Scripture that there are passages that deal with the fact that Christ did live a perfect life. We know that from places like 2 Corinthians 5:21 which says He knew no sin. And there are passages of Scripture that deal with the fact that Christ did perfectly fulfill the Law like in Matthew 5:17. But none of those passages indicates that it was through Christ’s active obedience to the Law that He somehow stored up righteousness, additional righteousness, that was then imputed to us in our salvation. There’s no place in Scripture where you’ll find it being taught that we are justified by Christ’s life or His law-keeping but the testimony of Scripture is that we are justified by His death. He humbled Himself, Philippians 2:8, “to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Galatians 3:13 says, he is cursed who hangs upon the tree. Christ’s supreme act of obedience was His death on the cross and it’s in that, that we have our hope.

Now there’s also this question about biblicism. I spoke on this matter at length in a recent Sunday evening message on biblicism. It was called “What Does Athens Have to Do With the Church?” And in that message I did note that there is this growing groundswell of activity among younger theologians who have especially become enamored with Reformed theology and some aspects of Covenant theology and scholasticism and philosophy and all the like, who are… They will say they’re “sola scriptura” which would be reformational and which we would hold to, but they will also say that we need things like the metaphysics of Aristotle or the theology proper of Thomas Aquinas or the theological covenants or the guard rails of creeds and confessions to properly interpret the Scripture or to properly handle the Scripture. Now it would be unfair to lump all those different theologians together as if they are saying the same thing but one area in which they rally together is by saying that we (who we call ourselves Biblicists) are wrong. They are saying that Biblicists have a problem. We would say the Holy Spirit illuminates the Scriptures perfectly for us if we have the Spirit living in us whether we are a PhD earned doctor of theology or whether we are a high school educated farmer. The old Tyndale quote about the plowboy having enough knowledge to know the Scripture to out reason the pope biblically. Now that’s all derisively called Biblicism. Now we need Aquinas apparently. And now we need Turretin. And now we need a certain confession or a creed to rightly understand and handle the Scriptures. Like I said, I’ve already gone very public on the record about pushing against this trend. I’ve already faced a fair amount of fire for it but I plan to keep speaking up because this is a very important topic and I actually do think it goes right to the heart of what it means to be reformational, to be in the line of those early reformers who stood on the sufficiency of Scripture.

Question
Wow, I’m going to skip ahead a few questions because I think there’s some really good ones here that would be worth talking about. Like there’s one that, this one actually came up in the women’s Q & A but we didn’t get to it because we ran out of time there. Do you see the common theme here? I talk too long, I run out of time, and we get shorted. So here’s the question I’m going to go to. This is moving out of the realm of salvation and theology proper and those sorts of things. Now we’re going to go to the issue of gender. Women, women’s roles, and the matter of women working outside the home, there’s a lightning rod question. Here’s the question, here’s how it’s phrased, very simple. What does the Bible say about working outside the home? I want to first say to whoever submitted this, whenever they submitted this, I very much appreciate how this question is phrased. What does the Bible say about that topic? What does God’s word have to say about women working outside the home which is really just shorthand for what does God say about working outside the home because the reality is where we sit today in the year 2023, what God has said has sadly become somewhat obscured and forgotten in certain circles, has it not? The sad truth there are fewer and fewer people asking a question like this, what does God have to say. And more and more people framing this question in the realm of this is about equal rights and this is about women’s rights and this is about fundamental rights. But this isn’t about equal rights or women’s rights or fundamental rights. This is a matter of authority and the question is are we going to take and receive and apply God’s word for what it is and what it says or are we not?

So what does God’s word teach as it relates to a women working outside the home? I’m going to frame this up according to three basic principles here. And they’re going to be broad, just so you know, because there is no bible verse that says just like this: a women must not work outside the home. That bible verse doesn’t exist. There are however certain guardrails that a woman, and if she’s married, her husband, can go to as they navigate this question and navigate it in their home. Principle number one is this. That women are cursed. After the fall women are cursed. Men are cursed. Women are cursed and the curse on women we know is two-fold. One is that they will experience pain in child-bearing, in childbirth, and two is that they will have this desire to rule over their husband. They’ll have this desire to dominate their husband, to usurp his authority, to abandon the domain that God has called her to and instead to do the things maybe her husband has been called to. The modern expression would be she will try to wear the pants in the family. See, God originally created the family structure to be comprised of this husband who is lovingly leading his wife and then the wife following her husband’s leadership. But now on account of the fall and on account of this curse the woman has now this desire, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly, to push the man out of his place of leadership and headship and authority and even provision.

And this curse by the way is not just some Old Testament relic by the way. It’s also mentioned in the New Testament. For instance in 1 Timothy 2:12, you can turn there if you’d like. 1 Timothy 2:12, bringing this to the Church context, Paul says “But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.” So in other words, this sin cursed woman’s desire to usurp, to overturn, to dominate exists not only in society more broadly but it carries over as we see here in 1 Timothy 2 to the church. And that’s why these guardrails are put here by Paul in 1 Timothy 2. So as it relates to this question of women working outside the home, step number one, and principle number one, is to recognize that women are already fighting an uphill battle. They are already under a curse thanks to Eve, a curse that plagues all who have two X chromosomes.

Not only that though, and here’s our second principle to apply, women today are working not only under this curse but they’re going against the waves of three different waves of feminism. Especially in our country over the last 125 or so years. Over the last 100-plus years three different waves have washed over this society. Three different waves of feminism have washed over this society. And each of these three waves, and I went over this, I think on Mother’s Day, a real popular time to preach feminism. Each of these three waves has grown increasingly more aggressive. That is just documented fact. Feminism today is not about receiving equal pay for equal work or prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace. Feminism today is far more sinister and it’s increasingly more anti-God and anti-Scripture and it feeds directly into the curse that women are already under to begin with.

So broad principle number one, there’s this curse on women by which she desires to usurp the authority over her. Principle number two is that women today are awash in these three waves of increasingly aggressive feminism. Here’s broad principle number three. God’s word teaches women where their priorities must lie in Titus 2:3-5, you can turn there with me, Titus 2, a familiar passage. In Titus 2 we see this model of Christian discipleship which involves older women mentoring and training and teaching younger women to do what? To climb the corporate ladder, right? to get the corner office, to get the highest paying job, to demand equality? No. It says, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.” You’ve heard me teach on this before on Mother’s Day. The areas of instruction that older women are to be providing to younger women as modeled here in Titus 2 have to do with, if you boil them down to two categories, they’d be watching their heart and loving their home. Watching their heart being sensible, pure, kind, etc. and then loving their home being workers at home, loving their husbands, loving their children. And then you see the purpose statement here at the end of verse 5, “so that the word of God will not be dishonored.” Those are the standards that God has given you ladies. Not to listen to what Gloria Steinem has to say or Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift now, but to watch your hearts and to love your homes. Now are there situations in which a woman might need to work outside the home? Maybe she’s single or recently divorced or widowed or she has a husband who is incapacitated and can’t do anything work-wise. There might be situations like that, that throw a curve ball into all of this and the point would be, she with the input of her husband if she has one, and with the input of her pastors if she doesn’t have one, needs to consult those individuals, and then with her open Bible prayerfully navigate her way through that. But what we can’t do is let the exception swallow up the general principle here which is that the woman’s priority is to be in the home. That’s her primary sphere, her primary domain. Not because I said it, but because God’s word says it, and because this is very standard where it says “so that the word of God will not be dishonored.”

Question
Okay, I’m going to try for one more, okay? And by the way, when we get to the live time I want to encourage you (I’ve never done this before, I’m a rookie up here) but I want to encourage you to think broadly about questions that you might have. I mean sure, ask Bible questions, ask theological questions that you’re wrangling with, but if you have other questions about how I do things in terms of management of my home, how I do things in terms of church involvement and prioritizing this role in this ministry, questions about the direction of the church, things I and the elders are thinking about and praying about; I will share what I can share. But I want to make sure that you are aware that we can go broader than… You can ask what I’m thinking about the Packers game tonight, not that I’m thinking about that in fifteen minutes. Anything like that.

I’m going to do one more of one of these pre-loaded questions and then we’ll do some open Q & A. This one is interesting. This one says, “When women pray in public or privately does the Bible instruct them in 1 Corinthians 11 to cover their heads? If so, is their hair covering enough?” Oh, that’s interesting, that’s a good one. I’m looking around for head coverings as I get ready to answer that one. On this one I just have to say, there has been this smallish army of guys out there especially on social media, guys who will call themselves “biblical patriarchalists” who spend an amazing amount of time and ink and sweat on this question as though it’s a first-tier gospel issue. I won’t ask, I won’t name names, I don’t want you to go search for them and I frankly don’t want you to buy their books. Um, the context here in Corinth was that the church here had the special devoted times to praying and prophesying, back when prophesying was still an active gift of the Holy Spirit. And the whole concept here is that this is disordered Corinth. That’s a major theme of the book of 1 Corinthians. “Christians Behaving Badly” might be the title of my sermon series in 1 Corinthians when I get there. It’s a disordered church and Paul is instructing this church, as they come together, to pray, to prophesy, as women and as men. In these meetings he’s encouraging them to retain some degree of semblance and order. And one way to do that (this might be a crazy thought to us in the year 2023 when gender is in upheaval) is to simply preserve and honor outwardly established gender roles.

To see what I mean let’s go over to 1 Corinthians 11. Let’s not just have me talk about it, let’s look at what the Word says. 1 Corinthians 11, we’ll pick it up in verse 3. It says, “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head.” Does that answer your question, are we done, clear enough? Okay, he keeps going. “For a man ought not to have his head covered since he is the image and the glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake. Therefore, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even the nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him.”

I’ll stop there just for a second. So here in this disordered Corinth as they are gathering to pray and to prophesy. What he’s saying here, major theme of what all I’ve just read, is that the distinction between male and female was to be honored. We saw that back in verse 3 where he says, “I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.” Men were not to cover their heads with long hair. Look at verse 7 again, “For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God.” Look at verse 14, “Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him” and conversely the woman was to cover her head… with her long hair. Look at verse 15, “but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.” That’s my answer to the question, question about head coverings and is hair a covering, I believe that verse 15 answers it for us. There are those in certain theological tribes that are seeking to mandate that women come into the service with a cloth on their head to be the head covering and they have their convictions and their reasoning. I don’t want to dismiss them out of hand as though they are crazy. It’s a matter of emphasis that I’m getting after. But I do believe that the proper interpretation here is that it’s the hair. The woman’s long hair is the head covering as indicated by the context here.

Question
Okay, I’m going to take a fly at this and see what you’ve got. Question, “I would like to know what’s the difference between the soul and the spirit.” Oh, that’s a great question. So what you’re getting into is the whole concept of body, soul, and spirit, right? We see that in a couple of different passages and there are those who would hold to the dichotomists view of man’s internal constitution, or just his overall constitution, his body and soul. And there are those who, like in Hebrews 4:12, say that there must be some division between body and soul and spirit to say that soul and spirit are distinct. I don’t have a lengthy exegetical argument to make for you right now on the distinction between soul and spirit. I’ve held, as I’ve gone through the Scriptures over the years, that if you look at Old Testament and New Testament revelation the basic breakdown of mankind is that he is embodied in flesh, right? And that he has some sort of soul, I guess would be the word I would use. He’s encased in a body of flesh but the soul goes on forever. We are eternal beings who are put in these bodies of flesh but we also have a spiritual component, that’s what goes on. So the way I’m answering your question is I actually don’t place a distinction exegetically as I look at the whole of Scripture, between soul and spirit. I believe man is body, the physical side, and man is spiritual. What you would see in Hebrews 4:12 is the soul and/or spirit.

We have a question over here. “Jesse, Genesis 6:2, just curious your take on the identity of the ‘sons of God’ in that verse.” I knew that was going to come up. Let’s go to Genesis 6:2. Man, I thought I would just do a Genesis 6, refer to, you know, the flood and everything else and that we could skip the Nephilim, and nope. Yeah, it’s funny, Well, I’ll just give you the short answer. I’ve always taken that to be fallen angels. That’s the position I’ve taken on Genesis 6:2. I heard some interesting theories actually at a conference last year, the same conference in Dallas, that this is some seed of anti-christ and they’re trying to make a connection between anti-christ and the sons of God of Genesis 6. I don’t see that. I do think that the connection over to 2 Peter and the angels, those spirits that are now in prison, that supports the idea that these are fallen angels. I don’t have much more to go on, on the question of the sons of God in that context. You might hear me say this a few times in the open mic part of it, this: Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord,” fall back but I’ve taken it as fallen angels. That was an unsatisfying answer. Get back to the script.

Question
Question, “Did Jesus spend three nights in the tomb? Great question. It’s funny. A couple weeks ago I was in Jonah, actually in Matthew 12 and I went through that very question of, you know, days in the Jewish concept in the Jewish mind, parts of three days. There are those who take it like it could mean three twenty-four-hour periods which push Good Friday to be something more like Good Thursday or even Good Wednesday if you want to get three full twenty-four-hour cycles. But there is enough historical evidence from the time in which Jesus lived that the Jewish conception of a day did not necessarily have to mean a full twenty-four-hour cycle. So, I think how we think of the crucifixion and the burial, and the number of hours Jesus spent in the tomb, I think we’re okay and on safe ground and I’ve always held that the Friday to Sunday period is correct. I’ve gotten push back on that, just so you know. I think when I did the Jonah three days and three nights in the belly of the fish message a couple weeks ago I had a couple people jump on me and say, no it’s, you don’t have to go there because Jesus could have been crucified and buried on a Wednesday. Possibly. I stick with the traditional view.

Question
“Jesse can you explain the ministry of Indian Hills Community Church and the ministry of Sound Words.” Oh, this is going to take the rest of our time. I mean our ministry biblically is to make disciples, right? Our whole objective and goal here, as followers of Christ, is to make disciples. That starts as you know with sharing the gospel with the lost. That involves teaching and training them all that Christ taught them. That involves baptizing them as an outward expression of what God has done in their heart. And then it involves replicating and doing that process over and over so at our core we are all about the Great Commission. As Christians we are to be about the Great Commission. As a church we are about the Great Commission. I would expand that a little bit though to say that as a church we are all about building up believers in their faith, right? So the church is not, this is not a big tent revival where it’s, you know, unbelievers pouring in and we’re singing “Just As I Am” and have a weeping bench up here and making this all about revivalism. My job and our job as church leaders is to preach to the church, those who are in the family of God, to see them built up in their faith, to see Christ formed in them, to see Him built up and made central in their life as they grow in their knowledge of Him through the Word. There’s so many other ways we can go with that, that question what is the purpose of the church, the mission of the church.

Sound Words is… it does, and it must fall under Indian Hills. It’s an extension of our ministry. As many here, especially long-timers know, we haven’t had as much of an active getting out there to all the countries, you know, like a missions program let’s say, right? Where you send people all around the world and you fund them and you support them and that sort of thing. I know we’ve done versions of that and there are different ways we can do that. Sound Words in some ways, an appendage, always under the ministry of Indian Hills, never to be over it, never to be taken too much of our time, but to be something with the extra time that we do have to think of how can we get this content that comes from this church and get it out to the masses. You know, in the old days you would send a missionary on an airplane and with his bag and a passport and get him out there. These days in the digital world we really can do amazing things through digital media to get the message out to a larger wider audience. So you hear the tagline on Sound Words, “Our goal is to help Christians love and live out God’s word.” That’s really not all that much different than our mission here at the church. Sound Words though just takes it beyond where we are here in Lincoln.

Question
“Jesse, so initially I thought that there was one unforgivable sin, stated in Matthew 12:32, and that’s to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit which can’t be done today. But then I’m trying to weigh that with Revelation 14:9-11 where it says, if you, anyone in the Tribulation, worships or takes the mark of the beast, will be condemned to hell to be tormented day and night in the presence of the Lamb and the holy angels forever and ever. So is that… Can somebody that is left behind and takes the mark of the beast, can they be… have salvation? Initially I thought, no, but then I listened to John MacArthur, he didn’t state why, but he said, that he believes that if somebody takes the mark of the beast that they can receive salvation. So I was wondering what your viewpoint was and why.”

I can’t, I don’t have much of a why. I just have my very reflexive, traditional “no” answer. If they’ve taken the mark of the beast I don’t believe they can be saved. I haven’t really worked through that to be perfectly honest with you, in terms of all the exegetical reasons why and who. I would sift through that if I were to do an oral PHD defense on that topic but I would disagree with MacArthur that one who takes the mark of the beast can be saved. I will research that further. I will track you down and I will give you more reasons why next time we meet. How about that? Sorry for the thin answer on that one.

Question
We can take a couple more in a few minutes, but I have a couple of really intriguing ones I want to get to, real quick, okay? And one of these I actually promised I would get to when this person submitted this to me. this one has to do with mental illness. The questions says, “What would be some examples of legitimate mental illness versus sin with a diagnosis and how can we help people who have mental illness or help them see the biblical view of the struggle and the sin that they have?

Now there’s so much I could say here, and I have to be short. I would say first with that question how should we view mental illness, I would say cautiously and carefully. As some of you may know, I actually come from in my previous life in other church backgrounds, a background of biblical counseling. Not psychological counseling, not integrative counseling. I know in our church we’ve had history with that. This is not the kind of counseling where you mix Freud with Scripture and those sorts of things. I’m talking about pure biblical counseling. And I do believe by the way that biblical counseling, can actually help people, Christians, as they seek to understand what God’s word has to say.

Biblical counseling (rabbit trail here) is really just meant to be an extension of the pastoral office, always has been. See, what happened was pastors forever, as they are called to pastor and shepherd and lead God’s people in truth, would always minister to people through the Word in their office behind the closed door and help them figure out the root of their problem and to help them turn from their sin and walk on a path of righteousness. What happened was in the post-Freud era and Darwinian era, the evolutionary era, churches and pastors gave that up and gave that to this new class of shrinks and psychologists and counselors outside the church so now church people who had problems and sin were being out-sourced to psychologists and shrinks and the like. And the whole biblical counseling movement has been to bring that back under the guidance of pastoral shepherds in the church. Not to psychologize, not be too quick to diagnose sin issues as mental issues, but to recognize that, that much of what -- and this is where I’m going to get to the answer here -- much of what is called clinical today and much is what is called mental illness, much of what is called psychological is actually spiritual. And that goes right down the line.

You know, the question you’ve asked, what would be some examples of legitimate mental illness versus sin with a diagnosis. I mean there are so many, it goes down to categories and definitions. Does the Bible teach examples of or give examples of individuals dealing with despondency or despair, what the modern psychological world would call depression? It sure does. David’s bed is flooded with tears. Elijah goes through a whole season of despondency. Our Lord wept we know. So we know there are examples of people despairing and being despondent. Did the Scriptures talk about people dealing with seasons of worry which modern clinical diagnosis would call anxiety or anxiety disorder. The Scriptures do speak to those very issues. Do the Scriptures refer to people having lustful thoughts, what modern psychology would call sexual addiction? They sure do. The Scriptures talk about people being drunkards who need to repent, what the modern psychological movement would call alcoholism and twelve-step required. Yes.

So all that to say the answer to this question, what should we do when somebody says, and you know, they might have concern about mental illness or they’re struggling with some sort of diagnosis, maybe they’ve been told they have an addiction or a condition of some sort. Let me start by saying we shouldn’t shame them. We shouldn’t be harsh with them. We shouldn’t be dismissive of whatever it is they are saying. The Proverbs teach us over and over to hear before we speak. Be quick to listen and slow to speak. But we also don’t need to be shy about acknowledging the fact that we do live in a hyper-psychologized world and we can say with clarity and love and with boldness… So the person who is a Christian that’s saying they are struggling with one of these clinical diagnosis, we can say, like it says in 2 Peter 1:3 that we have all that we need in the Scriptures “pertaining to life and godliness.” We can slow them down and say, you don’t need to necessarily run off to the counselor or the shrink before we have a conversation about what the Bible teaches. If you’re a follower of Christ you have the Spirit living in you. You have the ability through the Spirit’s illuminating power to understand what God has said in terms of your sin condition and the sin that you’re struggling with. You don’t need to go have Dr. So-and-So or Shrink So-and-So prescribe you a pill to fix that. Now I’m not going to get down the path here and maybe this is actually what they are asking, are there situations in which there may be some sort of, what would you call it, uhm, chemical issue, chemical imbalance. That’s where we as followers of Christ who are handling the Word would say, well, we’re not medical doctors, we can’t make that call, we can’t make that diagnosis. But I do want to speak against this very fast, quick-triggered trend to just call everything a diagnosis or everything mental illness or everything depression when we have answers in Scripture that there may be much more to it, namely spiritual issues, sin issues.

Question
I’ve got one more. Man, I might have two more. We might need to do this again. This one is a really good one. It says, “How should I be…” that’s the wrong one. “How can I encourage my husband to be leading spiritually in the home?” That’s a really good one. “How can I encourage my husband to be leading spiritually in the home?” First of all that marks a godly desire. The woman, the wife, here to be wanting her husband to be leading spiritually. That does present a very common issue and if one of the women in this church is asking that question I’m confident there are many women in this church who would ask this same question.

I just want to give some basic reminders to the women in the room and the men, you’ll benefit from this I trust by just listening. There is this historically provable tendency, and we’ve already seen it back in the question about women working outside the home, of women to rule over men or to seek to rule over men as a result of the curse, to push men out of positions of leadership whether that be in the home or in the church or in society. There’s also this historically provable tendency in men to abandon the responsibilities to lead. And it goes right back to the garden of Eden where Adam is taking the backseat in his conversation with the serpent and he only speaks up in time to blame his wife. We also see this in modern-day churches where women’s ministries routinely outnumber men’s ministries, routinely out gather men’s and just simply, if I’m saying it honestly, out do men on the ministry side. And then sadly this is true in the modern home as well. In the home where husbands routinely fail to lead and sometimes this is for spiritual reasons where they might just… I just mean they are spiritually immature or maybe ignorant of what they are called to do by the Word. Sometimes this is for sinful reasons where you have a lazy husband or a prideful husband or an angry husband or a husband who’s just been swallowed up by and consumed by sexual sin and this is, he’s just off the rails and can’t even focus on his call to lead spiritually. Now whatever the reasons are, here’s some basic ideas in terms of encouraging a husband who is failing to lead in the home.

First would be to simply not forget your role as the wife. 1 Peter 3:1-2 says, “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.” So don’t forget your role, first and foremost. Remember that you are his helper, you’re not the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit will use and may use your holy behavior to bring about change and conviction in your husband, so don’t forget your role. Two, don’t drip. I would go back to Proverbs 27:15, “a constant dripping on a day of steady rain and a contentious woman are alike.” Or Proverbs 21:9, “It is better to live in a corner of a roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman.” To drip is to be the exact opposite of the one in 1 Peter 3 who is winning him without a word. Third, don’t forget where the power lies. The Spirit is going to need to convict your husband and to prompt your husband to step up in this way, so what you need to do is just pray, pray that God the Spirit would bring about that conviction and move him in the direction of being a faithful leader of your home. And then the last one is don’t compare, don’t compare. Spiritual leadership looks different in different homes for different men. The fact that your husband isn’t yet reading Calvin’s “Institutes” to your four-year-old is okay. The fact that your husband is maybe not yet singing around the table “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” but is just kind of stumbling his way through the creation account of Genesis 1 is okay. It takes time so encourage the steps that you see as he’s moving forward in that.

Question
Wow, there’s a lot of questions here and its 7:30. Can I do one more, it’ll be a real short one, okay? Actually I’ll do two, real short ones. One is, “How is it going with your ‘one’? and you know what that refers to. Back in September I challenged our body to be thinking and praying about that one person in the coming year you can be sharing the gospel with and moving it in that direction. My one is a gentleman named Brian who is a barber here in Lincoln. And I kid you not, after our first visit after I preached that message he went out of business so I don’t know where Brian is actually and I’m kind of bummed by that. I don’t know if it’s because I shared with him or if there were just other circumstances but he is out of business so I’m going to look for a new barber and I’ll give you a name and you can be praying for that new barber.

Question
Okay, the second one, this was an interesting one, “Do angels sing? If so, where is that in the Scripture?” Now I admittedly didn’t have a ton of time to look through this one, but I did do enough due diligence that my initial reaction was, well, of course angels sing. That’s what we sing about in the hymns, and we just think of angels as singing, it’s just part of… We think of trumpets and we think of song and that’s what they do. And what’s interesting is what I found is references to shouting, referencing to praising, references to rejoicing. Could those involve singing? Sure. Could that be in the sung voice? Sure. But the text doesn’t say that. The only place we see it is actually in Job 38:7 where it talks about the morning stars before creation singing together and many will say those morning stars are angels at that time. That’s all we’ve got. So that even kind of rocked me as I was thinking about it like Christmas Eve sermon and that sort of thing. I was maybe going to bring in singing and angels singing but whoever asked that question, thank you, it made me rethink it.

Well, I think I’ve sufficiently filibustered to avoid any more scary questions so, we’ve a lot more questions here and I’m sorry. I know you’ve probably do have more questions. Thank you for participating. One thing I would like to do, and this goes to John’s question a little earlier about the ministry of Sound Words and Indian Hills, I don’t know when we’ll be able to do another one of these with just the normal church schedule but I would like to do it again and in the meantime what I could do is answer some of these questions or other questions you have in a podcast format where we could just record some of these and get those out and hopefully that would be an encouragement. Thank you for your time.

Let’s pray. God, I thank You for this dear body of believers. Thank You for their love for You, their love for Your word, their love for truth, and their commitment to live by it. Thank You for the reminders we’ve had all day today of Your love for us, Your plan and Your purpose in sending Your Son into the world so that we would be able to and have a path to be made right with You through His atoning work on the cross. Thank You for these questions. Thank You for the thought that’s gone into them both those that were submitted on paper and those were submitted tonight in person. I do pray that Your word was honored. I pray that truth was spoken, and I do pray that as we go about the rest of our weeks that we would glorify You greatly in our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.