Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to that's a Good Question, a podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language.
If you or someone you know has questions, please submit them to roundthetable.co questions.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to that's a Good Question. My name is John. I'm excited today to get to talk with my good friend Pastor Ryan.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Hey, John, how's it going?
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Ryan is our lead pastor at Peace Church, and today we are going back to our roots of. That's a Good Question. Answering a whole bunch of Bible questions from all over the place with Ryan here today. That's right. It's where we started. And I thought with the two of us going at it today, it'd be a great chance just to go back to the roots, look at a whole bunch of different questions about different verses all over the place. Some of these also are about passages that you've preached recently. So something in here for everybody.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: I think it'd be a great time. So let's jump into it. All right, first question is this. How do we know that Christianity is the correct belief over any other beliefs? And they give the example of Catholicism or Judaism specifically?
So in my own mind, as we're answering this question here, I'll give us the build up to this thing. I would say that we're kind of jumping past some important points that we normally would talk about when somebody says, hey, prove it, which is, number one, the existence of God. But I think since they're asking, you know, versus Catholicism or Judaism, they're assuming.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: They're assuming God. A God.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So which I think, you know, we could talk about those arguments, but. All right, we're assuming there's an existence of God. We're assuming that God has spoken in some way, shape or form. Okay. So then the question is, who has spoken for God? You know, who are his prophets? What is his holy book? Why is it Christianity, as opposed to other religions? I think is where we're. Where we're going to.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd be curious to hear what you have to say, Pastor John. But I think for me, the number one thing I'd point to is the resurrection. Yeah. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the defining proof that Christianity is the true religion. That's an interesting phrase, I think, that we've come up with. But the notion that Christianity is the true path to the true God and it's been manifested through the life, death, an ultimate resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Amen. That's the central claim of Christianity.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Is the.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the central claim. And the Bible goes so far, this is phenomenal. Where Paul even says, without the resurrection, our preaching is futile, that. That we have no hope. Like literally, the Bible itself hinges the entire Christian faith on whether or not Jesus rose from the dead.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: And so if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then not only is Christianity just one of many religions, it's a false religion. And now we have to look at other possib possibilities.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Right. First Corinthians 15.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Where Paul says that if the resurrection is not true, he says we are above all men, most to be pitied.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Because the whole thing that we live for, that we put our hope in, it's all a lie.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: So it hinges on that.
Yeah. I mean, so we go to, you know, the historical evidence.
So if we think first about Christianity versus Judaism, and then we can talk about the Catholicism one next. So think first about Christianity and Judaism. The. The core difference is that we say that Jesus is the Messiah. Yeah. Right. So we both believe in the Old Testament. We both are looking for a Messiah. The difference is in Christianity, we say that Jesus is the Messiah.
And like you said, you know, we look into fulfilled prophecy for that. You know, we go to passages in the Old Testament. Here's my quick. Just a couple. There's. There's so many in the Old Testament that we could look at, but I. Here's a few.
Micah 5. 2 says the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Jesus was. Isaiah 53 says that the Savior would suffer and die for sin. Jesus does that. Psalm 22 says that he's gonna have pierced hands and feet, that soldiers will cast lots for his clothes. Jesus does that. Zechariah 11:12 says he's gonna be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus does that.
The Old Testament says that he's gonna do things like heal the blind, raise the dead.
Jesus does those things. He feeds the 5,000. So it's really, you know, it's the. It's the performance of miracles and the fulfillment of prophecy that I'd say are the major things that says Jesus is the Messiah. And then the ultimate miracle is the resurrection. Yeah, that's. That's like the, you know, that's the clincher. That's. That's the one.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Yep. That's the validating proof of it all. Because you can find, obviously there's other people who were born in Bethlehem. There's other things you can piece together, maybe certain people, but all of them coming together in Christ with the stamp of the resurrection. That's why all of my eggs go in the. As I once said during a sermon, all my eggs go in the Easter basket.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: All my eggs go into the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. And that's why I trust in the Christian faith above all other religions. Right.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: So then the rest of the Bible itself, we could say there's tons of archaeological evidence for it.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: That's just constantly more and more.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All the time.
So. And by the way, if you want to go deeper into any of that, a few different books I'd recommend. The first one I'd recommend is Irwin Lutzer's 7 reasons you can trust the Bible. Just a fantastic book. It's a short, small, little book. I keep it nearby to me in my office all the time because I think it's just a great handy reference.
Another sort of broader one is I don't have enough faith to be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Just some great stuff in there. And then I was trying to remember within the last hour the name of the. The name of this book, but I can't remember. But there's a great book that my wife loves that's. It's like a cold case kind of book. It's a. It's an investigator who. He kind of. As a. As a former detective, he kind of goes through like, the claims, the evidence surrounding Jesus.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Former detective. Not like a. So you're not talking about the. Like the case for Christ?
[00:05:41] Speaker A: No, it's not the least trouble. 1. There's a. There's a. But it's similar. Yeah, but it's more. It's more recent than that. But he. He's like a. He's like a former cold case.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: You know what?
[00:05:50] Speaker A: I do think.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: I know we have to look it up and put it in the show notes, but. Yeah, I know. Yeah.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: If you Google. If somebody googled that, you could probably find it.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: He's a cold case investigator who just was like, let's. Let's use the. The skills that I have and look at the evidence around Jesus. And he concluded. Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: With this. The other thing that I always find a great inspiration from is the men who walked, talked, and knew Jesus all went to face martyrdom.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: For claiming that Jesus rose from the dead.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: And if anyone would have known whether he did or didn't, it would have been those original disciples. And they all held true to that claim that they had had known Jesus died, had encountered him for a substantial period after his resurrection. And they were literally willing to give their lives towards it. That, for me, is a powerful testament to the reality that Jesus rose from the dead. Now, clearly we don't have, like, we don't have his body because he rose from the dead.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: We don't know exactly which tomb was the empty tomb, to double check. But, you know, this good. This good reference to know, you know.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Well, really, I mean, all of our evidence, historical evidence doesn't. We don't really have people saying, no, he's in the tomb. Like they were saying that the tomb is empty.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Then there was people saying, which is, well, it's a fake. You know, they move the body or something. But. But really, I don't think anybody historically is saying that, oh, no, the tomb was full. You know, like, yeah, people are saying, yeah, it was empty. But then they propose. Even the Romans in Scripture, you know, propose a different way that could happen. It must have been a fake. They stole the body.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: That kind of thing.
So, all right, so that's kind of Christianity and Judaism. Then we get to Protestant beliefs versus Catholicism. And then I would say it really comes down to. And we've talked actually a lot about this over the last year or two, probably been two years now. I taught a class on. On Catholicism coming out of Catholicism.
And then we did some Q and A here on. That's good question about it. So feel free to look back at some of those episodes. But the core comes down to kind of a difference of authority. You know, we have some differences in our Bibles, and then there's, of course, the Pope versus Scripture alone kind of conversation. And so it kind of comes down to, you know, these. What we call the Apocrypha, these books of the Bible, they're in the Catholic Bible, not the Protestant Bible.
The simple answer I could give is that those books really take place in the 400 years between the close of the Old Testament and the opening of the New Testament. And even the Jews of the day did not acknowledge those as scripture. Yeah. So we're trying to go back to the Bible that Jesus used.
We're trying to go back to the Hebrew scriptures.
And so, I mean, that's. That's kind of the shortest answer I could give is that's.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So the notion of, like, which one's the right religion is like, okay, well, those that believe in the resurrection are definitely on the right path now. Are within. Within those who believe in the. In the true historical, physical, literal resurrection of Jesus. All right.
In those camps who believe that is there Some deeply erroneous beliefs that kind of exclude them from. From others, of holding maybe more pure understanding of God and his revelation. And we're saying Catholics, by holding the Apocrypha, have thereby embraced something that isn't actually ordained or inspired by Scripture to cut that so. So therefore they're carrying some weight that makes them not necessarily wrong about the resurrection, but not as right about God's full revelation of who he is in his plan for humanity.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. At least some differences in our beliefs that are critical, such as how exactly salvation comes. Is it by faith alone or is it by faith plus some act of ours, some works of ours? Obviously we would say it's by Jesus's works alone, by our faith, by God's grace only, and we don't help in that.
So then there's the Pope question. And that kind of comes back to, largely to Matthew 16 and what Jesus says about the good confession and about Peter. On this rock, I will build my church. And we would say that it's on Peter's confession, not Peter as the first pope.
Also, I think, you know, we could add to, number one, I think there's the Bible case for that. But number two, I think even historically, in order for that to really carry weight, you'd have to prove that Peter was the first pope and that there was a line of succession from Peter with authority over the entire church. And we really don't have that historical evidence. So I think from Bible and from history, that doesn't hold up.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: So even within the Bible, Acts 15 with the Jerusalem Council.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: It seems like James is kind of the one leading.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Leading the. Leading the show. So.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And very early we see rise up groups of elders that are making decisions for the church.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
So there it is. That's a, you, you know, a huge conversation and there are some more resources that we have out there on that. But I think that's a, That's a quick thumbnail sketch answer to that question. I think that's helpful.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Pointing people to the, the class that you taught and some of the, some of the material we have would be helpful to put that in the show notes for this.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely be good.
Great question.
Good question. As it say.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: That's a good question. That's a good question.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: That is.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: That's kind of like almost the question.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: That's right. Next question.
What exactly do people mean when they use the word conviction or convicted? And I don't think they mean like in law and order.
I think they mean, is this still A show.
I don't know.
I assume.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: I remember when I was a little boy, my grandma would watch that.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Oh, that thing's been around for forever.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Because I remember that. That epic.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Uhhuh. Uhhuh.
So I don't think they mean law and order. I think they mean in the Bible or in Christianity, when we say somebody's feeling conviction or feeling convicted.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: What. What does that mean?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: I think that you can look at it maybe one of two ways that you could say that's the Holy Spirit working in a person's life to make them aware of places where they're falling short or sinning. That could be one way that I think people would talk about that.
I think you could also maybe just to. To say to. To. Again, not reading the full question, unless that's exactly how it was.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: That is it. That's it. That's the full question.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's. It's. It's realizing it's. It's coming to an awareness of your sin and feeling. Feeling that that's wrong and that you want to correct that in some way.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: And so that's probably what I would say.
It seems to me like there's a lot. Maybe there's more to that question that they didn't write.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure.
Yeah. So you hear the word, you hear God's design, God's will for your life, and then you feel convicted because we don't line up with that. Right. We are sinners. And that response is the Holy Spirit working in your heart to create a response of conviction that says, yeah, I see that. I don't line up with God's desire for my life, and I want to do something about that. Which. Number one, you need Jesus to be your savior because you can't do it on your own by your works. And then, number two, once you receive Jesus as your savior, you want to grow more and more into likeness of Jesus and to more and more into alignment with God's law and his will for your life. Yeah, so there's that. I think of John 16:8. Jesus says about the Holy Spirit, and when he comes, the Holy Spirit, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, which is exactly the things that we've just been talking about.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I'd say it comes through the Spirit and. Or the Spirit working through the Word. Like, we could have a conversation and one of us is in error and we're gonna call one another out, and the Spirit can work in that conversation. But it's always gonna be in alignment with the Word of God, whether or not the Word of God is right before you when you're reading it.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: So the conviction that you're going to feel is a. From the Spirit, but it's going to be in alignment with the Word, the Holy Bible, that this Holy Spirit has
[00:13:15] Speaker A: actually inspired, which is really important because, you know, you could say, well, I have a feeling in my. In my gut about something, but then. And you could say, well, is that the Holy Spirit? Well, does it line up with the Word?
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Would be the next question.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: The Holy Spirit is the author of the Word, so maybe the Word and the Spirit work together.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be. But let's make sure it's in accordance with the Word, because if you have a feeling in your gut and it doesn't align with the Word, then, well, number. The Spirit's not going to contradict himself. Right. And so the Word, the Bible is there to help us clarify the true moving of the Spirit.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's. That's how I'd answer the question. Anything else you'd want to add about that?
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Well, yeah, one other thought that came to my mind was in Second Corinthians 7, there's the distinction between godly grief and worldly grief.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Which I think is important to think about. So the verse says, godly grief produces repentance, that leads to salvation.
Worldly grief produces death.
So if you feel conviction, you know, I think worldly grief is just kind of like, oh, I feel bad, but doesn't actually do anything productive about it. Whereas godly grief, the Word, it says it produces repentance, which means that you are led to say then to confess, to go to God and to say, father, I confess that I have sinned in this way. Father, please forgive me for my sin through Jesus, and Father, please help me to now fight against this sin and grow.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So we would say it's not just an awareness of your sin, but it's an awareness of your sin that leads you to want to find some correction towards it. Yeah. And that was what we'd call it, repentance.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Feeling bad is only the first step.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Then you got to do something.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: All right. Going a totally different direction, but I think a really important question, question here about discipleship, especially in today's day and age. Here it is. I'll read it. This. This one's a little bit longer, but I'll read the whole question.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Says in a Media environment shaped by outlets like Fox News and cnn, which often present strongly partisan perspectives. How can we as Christians ensure our thinking and posture toward our government and make sure it's shaped more by scripture than by political commentary?
And then they, they propose one potential solution, which I think is interesting. They say, consider an app that listens to real time conversations and uses AI to provide biblical counsel and relevant scripture delivered privately through an earbud or phone notification. Would this be something you would use? Why or why not? So two layers. Yeah, I think this, that's why I think this question is really interesting. So, you know, first of all, it's about how do we get discipled? You know, is it Fox, is it cnn? Something else? And then what role does AI play in the whole thing? Wow,
[00:15:49] Speaker B: that is a very thick question there.
First thing is, I would say is what they start off with. Recognize that your news outlets are for profit.
Their goal is to keep you listening. One of the best ways to do that is to constantly tell you what you want to hear. So confirmation bias, skewing towards the audience. We know this happens. So we have to recognize that with whatever news outlet we listen to.
So I'm glad they recognize that because people do need to recognize that, and I don't think we do because we're so eager to want to make sense of the world and we want that to happen in the categories that we understand. And so we look for ways to interpret the world that confirm what we're already feeling.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: And so one of the things that I've admired, we talk about this sometimes, us pastors here at peace. But Pastor Nate is really good at. I'll often sometimes see him on his laptop. He's got Fox News on one side of his screen and CNN on the other side. He's comparing the headlines to try to discern the truth. Right. Because they're both, they're both reporting on the same events, but they have a completely different spin on it. So he's looking at both and trying to figure out, well, that's why I
[00:17:00] Speaker B: try to look for news outlets that will be fairly critical of both sides.
And that's really hard to do. And so the second part of that question was, yeah, look into real time conversations that, that AI helps you filter using biblical wisdom to help discern.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I was, I was, I was. And I wasn't entirely sure the specific application they're talking about. I imagine two scenarios. One is, are they saying, you know, like, that you'd have you train AI to like, listen to the news and then give you its own perspective, or are they saying like, literally, like they'd listen to you and I talking right now in this conversation and they'd be in my ear telling me, this is what I think.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Well, again, we got a couple of guys in our church who are growing. They wouldn't use the term AI experts, but they're definitely growing in that world and they even work in that world.
And everything I'm hearing is that AI still will adapt to the user and still will tailor their response to whoever is interacting with them. So to say, would I trust that.
I still think that I can be a helpful tool that we've engaged for certain things, but to see it as a source of wisdom or proper biblical interpretation, I would not counsel that right now.
And I'm not saying I never will. I'm just saying I haven't seen enough to where I would want to put my trust in that. I mean, because you've got Islamic apologists also using AI to try to prop up Islam over Christianity and saying, and pointing to AI ChatGPT and Stuff and saying, Ask ChatGPT a question, it spits out the Islamic answer as the right answer. And then these Islamic apologists will say, see, even AI is showing that Islam is the one true religion. And so even AI, even what you're seeing happening, like Fox and CNN and all these other ones, there's still counterparts to that with AI because AI is still going to be programmed by a human.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: And there's no way of getting around that.
Humans inherent bias.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Within that programming.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: So it can be a helpful tool. But like you said, there's so much it wants to make you happy. So, you know, you could, you could have, you know, you could have a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, a Mormon, you know, you could have four different religions sit down with chatbots. And if you prompt it correctly, you know, if you tell it, hey, I'm, I'm, I made this, my theology is based on this.
You know, help me think through some questions based on that. You know, it's going to be affirming of your religion and it's going to give you answers based on that. Yeah, right. You know, for all four of those people, like, it's not, it's not going to choose.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Totally. Totally.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: And maybe the day will come when it will choose one. But that still doesn't mean it's, you know, the objective golden standard.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Here's the other thing I'd say about, about this is people are wanting to know everything that's happening all the time, across the entire globe with the right pure information.
And what I'm saying is we, the common people, we're never going to get the full story.
We're never going to fully understand why certain world leaders have made certain decisions. We're never going to be privy to all of the information given. So from our vantage point, from where we're sitting in small town America or wherever you are, you're not going to get the full story. So trying to then understand what's happening, trying to get a full picture so you can have the full right answer, I just don't think we're going to be able to have that.
So what I'm trying to say is I want people to unburden themselves from having to know the answers to everything that's happening and go back to what scripture has called us to do. Ultimately, we love God, love our neighbor, seek to make disciples, and it's not your problem to try to solve all the world's issues.
And I get it. The world is now at our fingertips. Everything that's happening is at our fingertips. We can watch a live stream from an Iranian family that's videotaping being bombed and lied like this is just, it's unprecedented.
But with that, we don't have everything that we want to make the decisions that we need to make. So I'm not saying we shouldn't be engaged. I'm not saying we shouldn't be aware, but trying to find a place where we know exactly what's happening and whether we can make the right judgment on that just. I would ease off on that being a lifestyle.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: We can't be omniscient.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: That is exactly. That is literally exactly what I'm saying.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: We cannot be omniscient. And we. And with that, neither can we make the final eternal right, pronounced judgment on everything that's happening.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We, we take in what information we can and we make our best judgment and then we be humble about that judgment. I think it's kind of the best we can do.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Knowing that everybody's going to have some spin whenever some. I think whenever somebody says, oh, I've got the real. You want to hear the real story on this? I've got the, the real story. I'm always extra cautious about those. You know, you can still read it and maybe there's truth in there, maybe there's not. I don't know. But, you know, just be careful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to be discerning. And so, so, yeah, would we Trust AI entirely with that. No, no. Is it a helpful tool? Sure. But you got to always come back and test it against Scripture. So I'll ask it. I'll ask it questions, but I'm always prepared to say. And I will argue with it sometimes and say, well, no, that's not true. Or take a look at this or whatever.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Or tell it to give you the counter argument.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's another thing.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Like.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Like it says one thing. It says, okay, now give me the counter argument to that.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: And then that will really help you be able to think things from a more, you know, from. From more angles, which I think will give you a better answer and better perspective.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, always. One great example in scripture is Acts 17, when Paul's teaching, he says that the Bereans were noble. They were especially good because every day they would hear what he had to say and then they would go home and test it against Scripture.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: And that's what we have to do. And it is hard work.
There's no shortcut. So I think in some ways that's what we'd all would like, is a shortcut.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: A way to type in a question and have the exact right, always true answer. It doesn't work like that. The Bible is always true, but we do have to do the work of reading it, of interpreting it.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. To try to synthesize an answer. You're going to lose much.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: All right, cool. All right, so let's talk about.
Here's a Bible question that relates to a sermon that you preached recently on the Parable of Talents.
Okay.
So it says, in the Parable of Talents, does the man who buried his talent lose his salvation?
Says all three are given the talents, none having earned them, but the one who buried the talent is cast into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so it certainly seems that way.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: I mean, just with the language that Jesus uses, he uses that language elsewhere to denote that. That they are now placed outside the kingdom.
So I think what the question goes back to is like, okay, if this is an analogy of grace being given and us responding to that grace and that salvation, and when the king comes back, what will be shown is those who, I think, received and embraced their salvation and those who didn't, or at least the offer was given, because the gospel call is offered to all, like we proclaim the gospel, Come one, come all. Come and receive the grace that's been offered to you through Jesus.
Just because they hear that call Just because in their mind and in their ears they received the call doesn't mean they're going to do anything with it. It's those who respond to the gospel call are those who are saved. Not that your response is earning your salvation, but your response confirms that you have received it into your heart. Right. And so again, it goes back to the notion of, you know, how far do you want to take a parable? You know, at one point, are you, Are you making a parable, an allegory, which isn't always the right thing to do. Typically, a parable has one point, not that you can't extrapolate various implications, but with the parable of the talents, the notion is, is that God has given us something.
And those who respond and use it are those who have shown that they have received what the king has given to them.
Other people don't. You know, in the sermon, I can't remember when I preached this a couple weeks ago, you know, we said that he went and buried his talent. You know, some of the language we might use is that he just put it in his back pocket. He didn't do anything with it. He took it, but didn't do anything with it. Versus the man who received the five and two talents.
They are the ones who shown that they respected and responded to the King by embracing what that was given to them, and then they went and did something with it. And. And so did the person go to hell.
It certainly seems like Jesus is saying that with saying, cast into the outer darkness because the person appears to not have received the gift truly from the King.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: How would you answer?
[00:26:06] Speaker A: I agree entirely. I think your point about the parables and how to use them is an important one. So Jesus, yeah, Jesus is trying to make a specific point from that parable.
Does, does that mean we can learn some secondary points from them? Yeah. So you have to kind of be like, careful with that because he told it to make a certain point. So kind of going into second and third levels of points, you kind of go like, you just gotta be careful.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: And so I'm trying to. I'm trying not to scoot around the answer the notion. I think the point of the parable is that God has given us something and we are meant to do something with it. And to not do something comes with consequences. Right.
And that's really the point I would make. But trying to answer the question honestly from that vantage point, it sure seems like that's kind of the implication.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Well. And I think that's when you got to bring in the rest of the Bible. You read all the Bible in context.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Took the words out of my mouth. Exactly.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: So you bring it out.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: One parable of many. Yeah.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: We know that we're saved by grace, not by works.
We also know that when you hear the gospel, you have to respond with faith. Otherwise you don't receive what it promises. So you've received it in the sense that you've heard it, but you're not going to actually receive what it promises unless you respond with faith.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because the free gift is extended and offered to all. It's given to all, in a sense.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: But not all will receive it. Right.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: All right, one more question for run out of time here.
Here's the question. It says, I've heard certain parts of the Old Testament are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. We've said that many times here on the show.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Uh, says I get in Genesis, where husbands had several wives and even concubines. That is descriptive. Totally true. Doesn't prescribe that they go on. And not something that we still practice today. But when did this switch morally to not be okay? Was it a moral wrong then or more of a social, cultural difference? Great question. The short answer is that it was always wrong. There's no flop there. There's no change that it was right for a little while and then it became wrong. It was always wrong.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: One of the. Actually the first instance of the Bible of having multiple wives is Lamech in Genesis chapter five, which is the.
Either four or five off top of my head here.
But we're going back to the lines coming from Seth and from Cain, which are the sons of Adam and Eve. And we get to the seventh in their lines, which is like sort of the stereotypical.
The bad descendants of Adam and Eve and the good descents of Adam and Eve, the ones that are following the Lord, the ones that are not.
And Enoch is the one of Seth's line who is a great follower of the Lord and actually said the Lord took him up. He didn't face death, he was taken up to heaven. His parallel is a man named Lamech who had two wives, and he was a revengeful guy and killed somebody for insulting him.
So right away from the beginning, we've got an indicator. This is not a person who's an example for you. This is not a role model.
So, yeah, all the way through the Bible, it doesn't stop every instance and say, hey, just so you know, this is wrong.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I want to go back to what you just said, I want to emphasize it because I think it's really important. The Bible doesn't morally evolve over time because we got the book of Genesis where right off the bat, the prescribed, the definition and the design of marriage is one man, one woman. Yeah, right from the very beginning, we see that. Right from the very beginning, we see that all people are made in the image of God.
So what happens is that as humanity continues to expand and culture develops, not all that culture is going to be developed in line with God's original plan. This is why we see things like polygamy and slavery and all these things that go against what God's original prescription was, that all people are made in the image of God, that we're to fill the earth and subdue it, take care of the planet, and that we're supposed to have a marriage that's divined by one man and one wife. And so when we see God's people go and develop culture or replicate or, you know, model or replicate culture, mimic culture, that's ungodly.
It's simply just telling the story of what's happened. And I think sometimes that is one of the hardest things for Christians about the Bible is that the Bible is just so real.
It just tells the real story of people's depravity.
And you're right, you don't see a consistent rebuke of that, but what you do see is a constant retelling of these stories, which only ever emphasize how much heartache and brokenness it brings. Like, the implication is the more that you go outside God's design, the worse it is for humanity, the worse it is for you, and the worse it is for culture.
And so it's not that we flip flopped back to our original design.
It's that that was the original design and that the story of the Bible shows that people don't always follow that.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Probably one of the clearest examples in the Bible is Solomon, who is a hero in the Bible. And yet scripture tells that his story, his downfall, is that he had a lot of wives. He was only supposed to have one. He had a lot that was bad, and it actually was his downfall.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: So awesome. Thank you, Pastor Ryan.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Thanks, Pastor John.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Thanks, everybody for listening. Some great stuff. We'll see you next time. Have a great week.
[00:31:18] Speaker C: Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone today. You can follow that's Good Question and find more episodes wherever you listen to podcast. That's Good Question is brought to you by Round the Table a Ministry of Peace Church in Meadowville, Michigan.
