Questions and Answers, Part 3

Transcript

GRM 1191
07/15/2018
Questions and Answers, Part 3
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

As I mentioned this morning I want to spend our time tonight focusing on the questions and answers and spend some time first answering questions that have been submitted and then I will open it up. We will perhaps cover a couple of questions that have come in and haven’t gotten around to. I will start with easy ones, short ones.

Why do you only discuss things on Sunday night when only the real believers show up.

That’s great. What do I say? It is always comfortable to be among the elect. It just would be awkward to do something like this on a morning. Just probably could not do it with that kind of setting. So, If I had my druthers, it would be nice if we were in the chapel where everybody was closer. It would help you with questions as well. Some of us have talked about this but we can’t quite get everybody in there. So, it leaves us a little spread out. It makes it a little more difficult for Q and A but didn’t have any particular, any unbelievers. Anybody is welcome to come on Sunday night. You don’t even have to attend church so invite your friends to come. Some watch on the internet. Glad to have them as well and you can submit questions. While I am saying that, 74121 is the number and then ihcc is the message.

Since we do not base the model of the church on the Gospels why do we base the model of church discipline on Matthew 18?

That is a valid question. If you have your Bible and you want to turn to this. Again, I just want to try to give a summary of this. They don’t ask about the principles. Let me just express, in Matthew there is a break after chapter 12. The public ministry of Jesus really is over with chapter 12 of Matthew and at the end of chapter 12 when they said, “His mother and his brothers are waiting to see Him,” He said, “Who are my mothers and my brothers? It is those who do the will of My Father,” showing the superiority of the spiritual relationship.

You come to chapter 13, He begins to teach them in parables. Remember parables were to conceal truth from the unbeliever so Israel’s rejection of Him. He was revealed in chapter 12 as a Prophet, Priest and King and the comparisons made and they have rejected Him. So He begins to teach in parables and when they ask why He teaches in parables, He tells them that it is so the unbelievers do not understand but when the disciples asked for explanations, He gives it. So, we are moving toward the cross now with chapter 13.

In chapter 16 He tells the disciples in light of Peter’s confession, verse 18, “I say to you, ‘You are Peter. Upon this rock I will build my church. The gates of Hades will not over power it.’” Again, the disciples don’t comprehend this, but you see now He is talking about building His Church. It is not offering the kingdom to Israel so with that transition that has occurred. So, the church does become a focus here. He tells them He is going to build His Church.

Then when you come to chapter 18 you have that second mention of the church. “How do you restore one?” Now there was a process of dealing with Israelites who sin within the nation. You had the Mosaic Law but here now you have a process of restoration that will focus in the church that will not be under the Mosaic Law and the guidelines that God gave to the nation.

So, you have mention like in verse 17, “If he refuses to listen to them tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen to the church.” There are principles looking forward to the church that Christ said He is going to build. It will be built on the foundation of the truth concerning Him.

That is why we take it from Matthew 18. It is true we don’t build our theology on the Gospels per se but there is truth there that obviously is binding for us and even at that it is not particularly directed to us. There are principles that we learn from.

Then, as we have seen, we have seen these same principles applied in I Timothy chapter 5 in the context there about elders who sin but it gives the same principle. Two or three witnesses, those who continue in sin ultimately have to be dealt with and removed from the body. Same principle as in I Corinthians 5.

We find not always a complete step by step but the same principles being applied. I Corinthians 5 where you have someone in the church who persists in his sin in an open defiant way. He must be removed from the body.

So those principles are established. The reason we pick them up is he talks about the church in that context in light of what he said earlier. He was going to build His Church and then the following principles. That is why we go to those in the Gospels.

What does the Bible teach about being gay and lesbian?

What the Bible teaches about being gay and lesbian is what the Bible teaches about marriage and sex of any kind in any relationship outside of marriage. It is sin. It is rebellion against God. What about those who have feelings this way? That is why we talk about your feelings are not the guide. The truth of God has to be the guide. Well God wouldn’t have given me these feelings if He didn’t want me to do this and so on. No, God says what is true. We take this in. We say this is what the Word says. That is why we start with the mind, just what we were talking about last time. It starts in the mind and this is God’s truth. Now we don’t try to impose that on the believer. We point out his sinfulness.

But just because you don’t practice a certain kind of sin doesn’t mean you are pleasing to God or acceptable to Him. That’s why I think sometimes the church picks out big sins; today homosexuality and all of that. Often the church is noted for being against that and it is sin. Understand a person might quit practicing that and they are still on their way to hell and we don’t want to give the idea. Quite frankly we Christians can, if we are not careful, become somewhat self-righteous. I just don’t know how they can do that. I just don’t know how they can be like that. I mean I just find this repulsive. Well that is how God found us, repulsive, rebellious, enemies. I mean these are words that describe us apart from Christ. So, the gay, lesbianism it is sin.

You might want to go to Romans 1 and if you consistently practice sin, you are not a child of God. If you are a slave of sin, you are not a slave of God and righteousness. That is Romans chapter 6. Come to Romans 1 since that is one often thought about. We talk about rebellion and the rebellion involves everyone. You will note in verse 18, Romans 1, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Now he is going to give examples. They are just examples. It is all the ungodliness. That’s what we are in our very character, people apart from God’s redeeming grace. “Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” and then you see they have rejected God. We have rejected God. Talk about us in the context of apart from His salvation.

“Our foolish heart was darkened,” the end of verse 21. That is the condition of the unbeliever. He lives in spiritual darkness. Now Paul talks about it in Ephesians. Here again he talks about it. They are empty, “they are filled with empty speculations. Their foolish heart was darkened. They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible men. God gave them over in the lusts of their heart to impurity. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, worshipped and served the creature.” Verse 26, “God gave them over to degrading passions” and there he uses homosexual, all the different words that are used for it today. “Women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.”

This is showing the extent we go, all kinds of sins or sin. This is just an example of just how far man goes in his sin. He denies that which is natural. It is not just immoral, but it is immorality carried to another level and you know somebody that was normal God created male and female. He created them to be joined together in marriage and then to express that in a sexual relationship. That is great. Outside of that any of that is sin. But you carry it to another level, another step, what? We not only commit the sin outside of marriage between male and female. Now we commit it between male and male and female and female. That has gone another step in rejecting God.

So, it is sin. There is no other way to say it, but you will note how he goes on to describe sin. “God gave them over to a depraved mind” in verse 28, “Filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murders, strife, deceit, malice, gossips.” Certain sins get by in the church. Well that is not as serious as this. Well God lumps it all here in chapter 1, “Gossip, slanders, haters of God.” Well wait a minute. I don’t think slander and gossip is on the same level as murder and haters of God.

It doesn’t matter what I think. Here is what God has to say. “Insolent, arrogant, boastful, disobedient to parents, without understanding.” Verse 32, “Although they know the ordinance of God those who practice such things are worthy of death. They not only do the same, give hearty approval to it.” We have votes that are taken in our country and people vote to approve these kinds of activities. We condone it. That is just an expression of what? A heart because what did Jesus say, Mark 7 and other passages? “Out of the heart proceed all these evil things.” This is the problem. Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things.” That is why we want to be careful.

We are not on a crusade about specific sins because we have to bring the message that can change the heart, the inner person, make me new within. Until that is done God is looking at a heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked. Well I never did these kinds of sins. But you still have a heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked. I think that many Christians border on denying the truth of the depravity of man by this focus on certain sins.

Go to one more passage and then I think we will move on. But go to Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” So that would encompass everyone who is not redeemed and the kingdom of God being the ultimate end which we will get to in Revelation chapters 20, 21 and 22. If you are not going to that kingdom, you are not going to heaven. Well there is a distinction between heaven and the kingdom but ultimately when we are done, heaven will be in the kingdom. We will see that in chapters 21 and 22 of Revelation.

“Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators nor idolaters not adulterers nor effeminate nor homosexuals nor thieves not covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” “Such were some of you but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, washed cleansed from the defilement of our sins and set apart by God for Himself.” We are His holy ones, His saints, sanctified. All come from the same basic Greek word, hagios. “Justified, declared righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of God.” So that transforming power you see and hear, what does the Bible teach about being gay and lesbian? That is sin.

Now let me just say, I have mentioned this on other occasions. Not every sinner is attracted in the same way with the same depth of a desire to the same sin. But that doesn’t mean at the heart we are not sinners. But you know I don’t expect the sinner, he can’t have any freedom from his slavery to sin apart from Christ. Now he is guilty for his sin. That’s what Romans says. They want to do these things, but they are slaves of sin and of the devil. Until you are set free that is where they are.

So, if I talk to someone who says they are ensnared in this kind of sin or any other, the first thing I want to talk about is their relationship to Christ. Now a Christian can be entangled in sin. That is why Paul warns us about the danger of sin. It is not something to dabble on. Now I am a Christian. I can go back and maybe indulge in that sin a little bit you know but I don’t have to worry about being enslaved. The characteristic of sin, it does enslave. And Christians can get re-entangled in sin and it becomes a compounded problem. And that it can become an issue if you are enslaved to sin, then it becomes a question, am I really a believer?

So, when you talk to someone you want to talk about these matters. I don’t want to give them, well, I know I am a Christian, but I can’t quit this sin. It just … I say wait a minute! How do you know you are saved? Well I remember I prayed. I trusted Christ. Well if that is true, He set you free. Now you have chosen to re-entangle yourself but by His grace you can be free. Now that doesn’t mean it will be easy. When I make a choice to do certain things then I expect God just to make it easy to get back out, but the power is there to get back out. You say I can’t stop, then I say you are not a believer or you are a believer who is lying because it says in Romans 6 we “have been set free” but we better be careful because the devil will lure us back and say it’s not that bad. You know, you are free, so you don’t have to worry about being entangled. Sin entangles.

I am not saying Christians can’t get in any kind of sin, but you can’t let your desires, having strong desires, because our inner being we have been corrupted by sin and so having a desire the world says they are born this way. That is not an answer. So, what does it teach about being gay and lesbian. It teaches that is sin as all sexual activity outside of marriage is sin and along with the other kinds of sins and manifestations, these things are all. So, no list is complete because these are all just manifestations of our rebellion against God.

Okay, let me see here. This question I am not sure whether this qualifies as a question or a topic for a full sermon. There is some truth in that. Let me just address part of this question. The question goes to Biblical approach to dealing with depression and it is a little longer but mental issues.

There is a lot to be said on that and in fact I thought I would answer that because in today’s paper, the Lincoln paper. There is an article on soybean farmers not in a corner quite yet but that is not what I want to talk to you about. This is catch 22, the drug side effects cause some to ditch medications. Did anybody read the article on the front page of the paper? Okay, good, you were reading your Bibles. I was reading the paper.

Dealing with the problem….you know the world has psychologized sin. I am not a medical doctor. I am not saying there is never a time for drugs. And I am thankful we live in a day where they have drugs that help with certain things, but I think we need to be careful. We get into the mental area.

We have one writer, it is an older work but he called psychology the new religion. What we used to deal with as spiritual issues now have been psychologized. So, this whole subject, depression and these mental issues, a lot of them have to do, they become pretty well characteristic of well to do societies where people have more time to be depressed. They don’t have time to think about how badly they feel. I am not making light of depression.

Charles Spurgeon said he lived his life with his head in a black cloud. It may have been partly because of a certain kind of physical issues that he had that would eventually be involved in his death, but it didn’t keep him from functioning. He just did what he had to do.

I have 63 volumes of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons. Everybody quotes Spurgeon because there is so much. I have multiple volumes of the magazines he produced every month for most of the years of his life. How did he do this? He is depressed. He ought to be sitting in a corner weeping. Well I am depressed. Now what do I have to do? Here is what the Lord told me to do so I do it, that kind of thing. I don’t know.

What is interesting about this article, and you ought to at least be aware. I recommend to you Martin and Deidre Bobgan’s writings on this. You can access them on the internet. We have their books in Sound Words. In fact, there are some of their books in the used part in the back.

If you are interested in this area, he does great research. He publishes a newsletter. It is the one from March/April, Psychotherapist Gone Amuck. And he researches these things in time like most of us wouldn’t have time to do and does an excellent job but here it is a reminder. We have drugs that can alter our mental state. The problem is they can’t always control the alterations that are a result. So they interview a psychiatric nurse practitioner who works with dealing with people who have severe and persistent mental illness and addiction issues and makes the note here in this column, “Doctors don’t really know what causes most mental illnesses other than believing they result from chemical change that causes the brain to misfire and may result from genetic or biological factors, psychological trauma, injury, environmental stress, substance abuse and then she goes on to comment, “Honestly they are not sure how the medications work. They just know it changes brain chemistry.” Now that is not new.

Down through history different societies have used drugs to alter behavior and put you into a certain state. So, we just ought to be aware this is not, it is sometimes transferred into a medical kind of terminology and Bobgans has been good in pointing this out. But you go to something that has a physical cause, they can find out. They can check. My arm won’t work. I am having a stroke, you know kind of thing. You break your arm. There are tests to show that. In the brain they don’t know. So, if you feel sad a lot, let’s see. We have done a drug here and we know we can alter your thinking, your brain, but they don’t know the outcome. This is a scary thing.

Bobgans talks a lot about this. You know we have…maybe it is in this article or this article I can’t remember, talking about evaluating school children starting at the age of 12. Giving them a series of questions and it is better if their parents aren’t involved in this because the children may be influenced by having their parents there.

Now you see what happens. And quite frankly most of this is like the village witch doctor. You know those societies. You had a problem, you went to the witch doctor and he told you what the problem was. It may be somebody put you under a spell. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe… Well how did the witch doctor know? Well he is the witch doctor. Witch doctors know, and we are sort of are like that with psychology and psychiatry today. Well they know. Well how do they know? They know! How do you know they know, because they are psychologists, psychiatrists? They know. If you put a PhD there that means they know. We don’t know, they know but it is important to know that they don’t necessarily know. Some of the examples they give – here is a person they have a combination of problems, two problems. One they are addicted to drugs and the other they are depressed. Well no wonder they are depressed if they are addicted to drugs.

Sometimes I don’t make the connection. We’ve got two problems here. They are addicted to drugs and they are depressed. And your sin is depressing. One of the authors, a psychiatrist, makes a note here that his observation is, one of the things that is multiplying our evaluation of things as mental illness is the breakdown of authority and it leaves people adrift. There is no God, there is no authority.

I feel bad for kids. Most boys have attention deficit disorder and yet we say when they start they have to go to kindergarten. They have to learn to sit in that chair, do this. By first grade they have to do this. By second grade they have to do this. We have to shorten recess because it is more important that they learn this. Be honest. I look out every Sunday. Some people have a hard time paying attention to an hour long sermon and then we put that third grader in a class and want him to sit and listen to geography and history, then math, then English and quit squirming. You can’t do it. And we say well they have attention deficit disorder. Take them out and let them run around the track four times. We press people into a mold. Now I am not making a blanket statement for everyone but all of a sudden we just have this explosion of mental illness whatever that is.

I appreciate the Bobgans because they research from actual psychiatrist like E. Fuller Torrey, best known for his excellent medical research on schizophrenia. And he believes that is a real issue. “A major emphasis behind this tendency to psychiatry-ize social problems arises from the vacuum of absolutes in our culture. This vacuum is associated with the decline of religious influence” and then it goes on. “In the past, religion supplied some absolute value upon which we could base decision. When this influence died there is a search for new absolutes. Psychiatry (and he is a psychiatrist) has been willing to sanctify its values with the holy waters of medicine and offer them up as the true faith of mental health. It is a false messiah.” He wrote the book The Death of Psychiatry. “Reveals why non-medical psychiatry, psychotherapy should never have become a medical specialty. Diseases are something we have. Behavior is something we do.”


Another psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz authored over 300 articles and numerous books, one of the most distinguished professors of psychiatry in the past 100 years. “Known during his life time as the great deflator of psychiatric pretentions because he questioned the assumptions and practices of his own profession, psychiatry. When you get into psychotherapy, it deals with thoughts, emotions, behavior not with the brain itself. Psychology does not deal with the brain’s biology, with the mind’s activity, the individual’s social behavior. In medicine we understand what a diseased body is but what is a parallel? If brain disease were the case, the person would be a medical patient not a mental patient.” And this Dr. Szasz very sharply refers to psychiatric impostor “who supports a common culturally shared desire to equate and confuse brain and mind, nerves and nervousness.”

Again, I am not an expert in this area. I do get concerned. You will note, everything I see now, there is a move to make sexual addiction defined as a mental illness. So, they can remove the responsibility from the person and this is what we have done to many things that the Bible calls sin.

You know I use to go to the city missions in Philadelphia and talk to drunks, but they are not drunks anymore. They are alcoholics and it is not really their fault. They have certain brain things that make them attracted to alcohol or perhaps or any sin you get involved in will control you. It has that potential. That is what sin does. It enslaves and some of this we want to explain away sinful behavior by saying, “Well, you know they are not completely responsible” and they go on to talk about even our courts have become now where you have the expert testimony that this person really wasn’t responsible for what they did because of a certain mental condition.


All of that, you asked about depression and I was cautioning, be careful. I am not giving medical advice whether you should take this or shouldn’t take that, but I would want to be very careful. They don’t know but they talk about it.

You know this becomes hit and miss. We give medications to a person and all of a sudden it so radically changes them. We have a family member that we know. He developed some seemed to be mental issues of coping with a situation and they ended up putting him into a mental facility and put him on drugs. After being there for some time, one of the doctors finally come and say, “We have to admit the drugs we administered to this person has deteriorated him significantly. The problem was these are such powerful drugs now, it is going to take us some time to begin to gradually back off of this.” It ended up, when they put him in for the right kind of test, he had an actual physical problem in the brain that was affecting the behavior. These things ought to be defined.

One doctor sharing with me said, “You know, I get these people that are sent to me for help” and he is in the physical realm. He said, “They are on so many drugs I don’t know what the problem is. First, they’ve got to get him off this stuff, so we can find out what they are when they are not so controlled by their drug;” so just being aware. As I say, “I am not an expert in this area. I know what the Bible calls sin. Sin is sin. So, what the Bible addresses as sin, it is sin and I am not saying young children don’t have to learn to obey their parents and obey authorities but we push them into a mold.

Let’s face it. some of you are farm background people. You know there was a time when kids born on the farm, as they got older they went out and they helped farm and they were busy and active through the day, then they came home tired. Their attention deficit disorder was taken care of. They didn’t have extra energy and their energy was focused on something that took energy. I feel bad for kids that when a kid is put in there and they have the pressure they have to learn to sit there and pretty soon we are going to drug them.

We used to have a little dog in our family and since I am in charge I said, “No dogs.” So, we had a little dog and we would take him east on vacations and you know what the vet told us? “It is hard to travel in a car. I will give him this. Give it to the dog.” And you know what it does? The dog became very docile, very calm. I did think of giving it to the kids, but I didn’t.

Just a reminder that drugs can control behavior. So, we want to be careful. I am not saying, certain things like depression from my own. I can be a depressed person. The Lord brought Marilyn into my life. Not easy to deal with a person who is happy in the morning you know but you do it. It is not a matter what do I feel like? You know sometimes I do tell Marilyn, some people think – she says “You know, you think the glass if half empty. I think it is half full.” I said, “No Marilyn, you don’t know it is empty. It is not half full, it is empty.”

You know if I don’t feel like it, Mondays I am depressed. My head is, what are you doing? A kid could have preached… a kid could have preached… Don’t say amen. So, you know you deal with it.

What is it? Sit around and wonder why you are depressed. That’s why I think some of these mental disorders are characteristics of our well to do societies where we have more time and more benefit but I am not diagnosing your depression. It really doesn’t matter if you have a leg that doesn’t work because of a disease. You learn to function with the leg that doesn’t work.

Marilyn is a happy person. She functions on a schedule. If it is 10:00 o’clock, she goes to sleep. If it is 5:30, she gets up, wonderful. I tried it. It doesn’t work. Some nights I go to bed at 2:00 o’clock. Some nights I try to go to bed at 10. If I go to bed at 10:00 o’clock with Marilyn, I get up at 2:00 and go to my study. Everybody is different. I guess I am saying that. That’s the problem. I could preach sermons on one thing.


I had a question about Greg Boyd. I want to answer that. I’ve got one of Greg Boyd’s books here asking if I have read Cross Vision by Greg Boyd. And I have not read that book. I haven’t read a book by Greg Boyd since I read this one. I read it in July of 2000. So I am not familiar with that but I am familiar with Greg Boyd.

The person hasn’t read the book, but he has a friend who has read it and he is helping him by phone. He lives in another state and they are talking about Bible interpretation. This book is called Cross Vision.

Let me just say something about Greg Boyd. You don’t want to read his stuff. I put Greg Boyd and this is my subjective observation, I put him outside the bounds of evangelical Christianity. Now in this book he wants to warn against that. “Don’t call me a heretic.” What he is promoting in this book is certainly not a doctrine Christians should ever divide over. We should handle these kinds of debates with love. He is one of those who was key in the openness of God debate, open theism. That is what this book is about. Published in 2000 and it is a big thing in evangelicalism.

I counted, I have a dozen books on my shelf on open theism, the pros, the cons, the battle going on. It basically says “the future is open, God is open. God controls some of the future but not all of the future.” They redefine things. “God is omniscient which means He knows everything that is knowable. The decision you will make tomorrow is not yet knowable so God doesn’t know that but He knows more probably what you will do because He has a lot of experience.”

So really it begins to undermine the sovereignty of God, but they do it in such twisted ways. These guys come up with these new ideas and then they want to incrementally move you along in their thinking. So yes, that’s not much off of what I thought. Then the next piece is not much off of what I thought, the next piece is not much off of that piece. By the time you are in the end, they have brought you full circle and you are where they are.

I got on to check about the book you asked about, Cross Vision and what Boyd is promoting here is “We view the Old Testament and life through the vision of the cross” because Greg Boyd is a pacifist and he does not believe God is a God of violence. He does not believe in the full inspiration of Scripture so the portions of the Old Testament like God sending Israel into the land to destroy all the Canaanites, “that portion of the Word was written by human authors who adopted the pagan view of their day and the pagan credited the violence that they poured out on their enemies to the work of God.

So the Biblical writers were writing from their perspective.” So that is not really God doing that. Well you can see why I put him outside the bounds of what I would call an evangelical Christian. He just rewrites Scripture, but his danger is he writes it claiming, now don’t set me off as a heretic on that book but this book which is heretical and many have written dissecting it.

He is not the only one who writes on this. There are number of writers promoting it. Error gets ahold. In fact, some of those who oppose him wanted him removed from their evangelical denomination and the denomination decided he still fits within. God is not totally sovereign. He doesn’t surely know all the future. Some things are determined by Him. Other things are open. That is why it is open theism and a god who is open. And they put it just look out at how great this god is because he is constantly adjusting to the decisions people make so that the outcome is what he wants. So even though he didn’t know, and it just deteriorates.

So, Christ dying on the cross wasn’t an act of God, it was just sinful men. God withdrew Himself and he takes “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me” puts it in that context. You see God is not part of that. This is man’s action like all the violent actions of the Old Testament and that is why we ought to be open on things like heaven and hell he says. We don’t have to be fixed on these kinds of things because there may not be a hell because God is not a violent God anyway.

So, I would counsel your friend not to read it. I wouldn’t encourage you to read it because these things, you are going to work through these books and they have another one I am going to talk about next week. They incrementally bring you along to where they are and they are exhausting to read.

I don’t know if I reviewed this here or not because I have the notes in the front and I usually put them there when I am going to review a book with you, but it has been almost 20 years ago. I find them unpleasant to read because every page almost you are trying to deal with their adjustments of Scripture. You just get tired of it. So, some writers I just don’t read once I know where they are unless I am reading something for critiquing it.

Greg Boyd, Gregory Boyd, that is what Cross Vision is. Reinterpret the Old Testament in light of the cross and on the cross God forsook Christ meaning He wasn’t involved at all in that action and so then you reinterpret like Israel going into Canaan. Well God wasn’t involved in that because that was an act of violence, going in and killing the Canaanites. That was just the writer recording and crediting to God what all the pagans of the time did. So, you redo the Bible. It is not a fully inspired book either. So, the more you read of them the more you realize they are not anywhere where we are. We talk about interpretation, Gregory Boyd would not be a literal interpreter of Scripture because he doesn’t believe in the full inspiration of Scripture.

So, encourage your friend to read something else and maybe you will give him help on that and don’t get involved in it because it will only confuse you. You say well, boy, I can’t tell if he is telling something true here or something that is not true. It can get that confusing. So be careful.

Alright, mark off some of these that we covered. Next week I will cover some others. I thought I might cover the head coverings. I want to deal with Christian hedonism and emotions and some of these things we will talk about next time. I didn’t give you any chance. I will give you a chance next time at the beginning for questions. If you have any questions you can prepare them. If you want to write them in, that will help me to prepare for them and then we will give some open time next week.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the revelation You have given of Yourself. Lord, many issues confront us. Many things are brought before us and sometimes Lord we are taken back. We don’t know whether we are adequate in dealing with these things. They can seem confusing. Lord we want to come back to Your Word and remain firmly planted there and sift the things going on carefully through Your Word. Lord we are blessed in the day we live. We are blessed with the knowledge You have given so that we can have things that relieve our pain, given wisdom to men that can deal with diseases and problems. We have medications that help. We are blessed in the day in which we live in many ways. We want to be careful we don’t get drawn in in ways that are contrary to Scripture and allow the authority of the Word to become authority for us, the authority of the world to become authoritative in our lives where it should not be. We want to be discerning as many present themselves as true Christians but they are really undermining people’s confidence in Your Word, are distorting Your Word and changing it and thus attempting to lead Your people away from faithfulness to You. We pray that we individually and as a church will be true to You, faithful in our walk. Bless the week before us we pray in Christ’s name, amen.