Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Pot, Dinosaurs, Cults, Cain, Works-Based-Salvation, and Was Teenage Jesus Omniscient? Questions you’re asking.

Episode Date: September 26, 2020

We’ve been getting lots of question on our Facebook page, and we’re hitting them all hear in one lightning round. https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) as we continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/questions-youre-asking/ (Questions You're Asking). Interested in more content like this? Check out our guest interview with Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass on the compatibility of creationism and evolution: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/does-genesis-contradict-science-a-guest-interview-with-dr-s-joshua-swamidass/ (Can Evolution and Genesis Be Friends?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/who-picked-which-books-went-into-the-bible/ (Who Picked Which Books Went into the Bible?) from earlier in this series. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. A lot of you have been asking great questions on our Facebook page. And while some of them we probably could spend an entire episode talking about, we have had so many that we feel like it would be best to do a kind of lightning ground, where we're going to walk through questions that you've brought on Facebook and give our best answer. These aren't whole answers. Darren, entire answers. Many of these things, there's probably books written about them.

So don't expect comprehensive answers. But I'm excited. I think this will be fun. So on the docket today, we have everything ranging from marijuana to dinosaurs, cults, workspace, salvation. And I love this one, was teenage Jesus omniscient. Did he know all? Did he see all? I don't know. My teenagers think they're omniscient. So maybe either way, he probably did. We'll see. Maybe they're Jesus. Doubtful. I've ever told you the story about the gal that came to a, crossing 20s event and claimed to be Jesus. Oh, that gal came to a lot of things at the crossing and claimed to be Jesus. Yeah, well, she came to our thing. She was wandering around the stage one day preaching Jesus's words right there. That was the same. I think, I don't know. She came to the blue note.

Jesus in the blue note. I love it. One of my co-director at the time was teaching a lesson on stage, and she went up to the front row and started yelling, I'm Jesus. It's kind of sad. It was. I mean, it's funny at one point, but then it's kind of sad because you start realizing that this is a person who's obviously very confused. Yeah, I think she was on something, which takes us to our first point, marijuana. So Patrick, have you used marijuana? I have not. Well, this is going to be a really bad conversation because neither of I. So who wants to hear two people who don't know anything about marijuana from personal experience, at least? Do I have to murder someone to know that murder's wrong? Do I have to take shrooms to know that maybe shrooms aren't a great idea? I hear

what you're saying, and we're going to admit at some point in here that, look, we aren't talking from personal experience, but I think we can still give some biblical principles here, don't you? So let me ask you this. Do you think that marijuana is a right and wrong issue, or do you think it's a matter of applying biblical wisdom and people have the freedom to come to different places on it, come to different convictions? I think I definitely lean towards number two. We all, I don't care who you are, we are all using substances, almost all of us at least, right? There are some very freaky people out there who are so self-controlled that they aren't doing any of the things I'm about to list off. You mean like I'm a sugar addict? Exactly. Sugar. Sugar is a kind of drug. It changes how your brain works. It changes how your body functions. And we have a lot more sugar in our diet than humans have ever historically had. And there are consequences to that. The same thing goes for alcohol or coffee. These are things that I use, quote unquote, almost every day. I have a cup of coffee every day. I eat sugar every day. So we all have to, and I realize the effects of these things vary, and that's probably the place to start, is realizing that all substances have an effect on us, but those effects, they vary, right? If I drink a lot of alcohol, there's going to be a very different effect than if I just have one beer. The same thing goes for coffee. If I drink five cups of coffee, I'm going to have a headache. I'm going to be in a cloud. It's going to have an effect on me. And so my point in saying all this is, with any substance that you use, they often come in ranges. There's often a moderacy that's okay, and there's an extreme that's not okay. Okay, but we're going to say that drinking alcohol in large quantities is wrong.

Yeah. And we're not going to say that drinking coffee in large quantities is wrong. I think I would say drinking coffee in large quantities is probably wrong. Oh, wow. Hang on a second. How many cups? Now, I don't drink coffee, so I don't care. I have my monsters and prefer that, but where is the line since it moves from okay to wrong? I would hate to plug a different podcast, but we will be doing a podcast on alcohol that's coming out in the future. and I think some of the same principles apply. I do not see it as my personal duty to come into someone's life and start drawing lines about

you can have X amount of drinks and not this amount of drinks, and this is clear of the line. The line is probably going to be different for different people. That line might be based on your personal conscience. That line might be based on how different substances affect different people. But if someone's having 10 cups of coffee a day and they can't function without it, there's going to be life consequences. You're going to have heart consequences. You're probably going to have acid reflux and other things that are destroying your esophics.

there's going to be things that happen to you if you overdo the coffee. So sure, if you want me to put my 10 cup limit on there, that's fine. But that's really not my point. Well, I didn't think that was your point, but it wasn't my point either that I'm really looking for the answer to that question. I think my point was that the consequences of having too much alcohol seems significantly worse than the consequences of having too much coffee. And I'm not sure that you can really have too much coffee from a moral point of view. But I, very sure that you can have too much alcohol from a moral point of view. Now, from a health point of view, they both might have some negative effects, but we're talking about moral issues, not health issues. Well, I think how we treat our body is a moral issue, but that aside from the fact, I think you're exactly right. There are different substances that have more or less traumatic effect. So another good example, this is the opioid epidemic. We realize in the middle of this epidemic that using these drugs to take care of pain had some serious consequences. They weren't only altering people's mental state. They were creating addictions that people couldn't get out of.

I think that's kind of going to go into your point, that look, some things are going to be more and less addictive. Some things are going to be more and less effective. They're going to have a big effect on you. And we have to account for all of these things whenever we're talking about any substance and whether or not we should be using it. So let's get back to some things that we can be confident about. What the Bible tells us is that we as followers of Jesus should be mastered by nothing. Mastered by nothing other than Christ himself. And so if any substance has begun to master you, something you need, you depend on, something that hides emotional difficulties you're having, masks, anxiety, is the place you turn to for comfort and when you're afraid, that's a pretty

big sign that that's beginning to master you and you're drifting outside of what God would want for you. Now, would you say that monster energy drinks have mastered you, Keith? 100%. Not in the least, tiniest, littlest bit. So here's a little story. So I drink a bunch of diet sodas for years. Every day, I drink a bunch. And diet sunkissed, if I remember. Yeah, I go through a change. But yeah, it was a diet sunkiss back then. And I stopped for a year and a half, didn't have one, for a year and a half. Just one day people kept saying it was bad. I stopped. Guess what? I didn't feel any better. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. So I'm the kind of person that if there's a payoff,

I'll stop, do whatever you want, but there has to be a payoff that makes it worth it. Yeah, I had to bring it monster. Whenever it comes to marijuana, I think we can divide it up into two different uses. There's a recreational use of marijuana and there's the medicinal use of marijuana. Now, every drug that you take, whether it's marijuana or something else, I think the question that we should be asking is, is this drug taking me from a state of abnormality to a state of normality? So if you have chronic pain, for example, you're in a state of abnormality and there's a drug that can help you go to normality, that might be a good thing, even if that drug has some other effects. Maybe those other effects don't make you as abnormal as the pain does. Now, again, Keith's point goes back to if we start becoming

mastered by something, that's a problem. That's why we maybe using opioids as a consistent thing in your life isn't a good choice because it's going to master you. So all medicines have side effects. I agree with that, but medicines are prescribed by doctors. They're things you pick up at the pharmacy. They're licensed and regulated. I'm a little bit concerned that medicinal marijuana has become an avenue for people to self-diagnose their problems and self-prescribe medicines for them. Now, I don't want to any way diminish that there are people who seem to be really helped by that. And there are legitimate good doctors who do prescribe that as a treatment. But I don't think we can also fail to acknowledge that that has been a door that a lot of

people have walked through to misuse it. Yeah, absolutely. Look, if you think you have cancer and start taking cancer drugs, those cancer drugs are going to have a really negative effect in your life. And no one here would encourage that. I think you're making the right point. If you're using marijuana and medicinally, it should be prescribed by a doctor. It should go through all the right and proper streams that you would go through for any sort of prescription. I think the recreational use is a totally different thing, and this is where I'm going to start pleading the fifth. People might hate me for it, but I have been told by people who use marijuana two different things. Some people tell me, oh, you can't use marijuana without having a dramatic effect on your mental state. It's like

being drunk. It's not the same thing as being drunk. It's just as disorienting in a different fashion as alcohol is. And that's just from one or two hits of whatever this is. And then I have other people who assure me the exact opposite is true. They say, oh, no, I can have a little edible and it barely affects me. It's no different than getting, you know, a tiny little buzz. Like, what's the big deal? And so I haven't used marijuana. I'm not really interested in it. Maybe you should. Maybe you should do like a research project for 10 minutes of a hotel. That just seems like a foolish way to make decisions in your life. Patrick smokes marijuana as a Bible study. Well, unfortunately, this is how lots of people make decisions, right? It's like, should I watch something? Well, let me watch it. And then I can tell you

whether or not I should watch it. I mean, there's just, I don't know if that's how we make decisions in life. So I'm not helping anyone. I'm just saying, I don't know. Well, so much for our lightning round where we were just going to buzz through these real quickly. Buzz, get it? Instead, we just spent a long time of marijuana. Let's see if we can pick up the pace. But before we do, is there anything you wanted to say else about marijuana? Have we pretty much exhausted our very limited knowledge. I am going to Colorado in October, and I am not planning on any marijuana being a part of that trip. That tells you probably where I'm at. But if you do report back to us right here on 10-minute Bible talks. Okay. Sure. All right. Next one. G. asked, where are the dinosaurs in the Bible?

Sidney also asked the same question. I think that's a question lots of people have. I've heard that question asked a lot. And one of the questions I asked back is, why would we expect dinosaurs to be mention in the Bible. I mean, there are probably thousands of species of animals that are extinct, and we don't expect any of them to be mentioned in the Bible. Where's the dodo bird in the Bible? Why do people expect that, Patrick? Why do you think people read their Bible and say, hey, I don't see dinosaurs. I expect to see dinosaurs. So where are they? Well, I think the reason why is pretty straightforward. We have a tendency to read Genesis 1 as a science textbook, and if we read a science textbook that was about the biological development of Earth, it would surely

include things like the dinosaurs. Of course, it would also include things like early microbes and all kinds of other living organisms that no one seems to be asking me about. Like, we're the microbes in the book of Genesis? That's a huge problem because the book of Genesis is not a science textbook. It is a poetic treatment of the creator God forming and designing a world for the sake of his image bearers. And those image bears happen to be humans. And again, hate to break it to you, but Humans haven't been on the biological scene for very long. Dinosaurs were long gone before there were any humans on planet Earth. There's no reason that we should expect to see dinosaurs.

The story picks up after they're all dead. So I take it from that that you are pretty sure that dinosaurs did roam the Earth at some point in history. No, I think God put fossils in the ground to trick us. Wow, we got snarky, Patrick today. We're doing a lightning ground. I'm trying to have fun here. I don't think that. So I grew up in a tradition where people said this kind of stuff. They'd say that it was like a trick. God was testing our faith with dinosaur bones, which is I don't even have a category for it. And they would tell me that dinosaurs were in the Bible. Like, have you read about Leviathan or the bohemoth? Clearly, the behemoth is a stegosaurus. I mean, this stuff is just nonsense. There are no dinosaurs in the Bible. We shouldn't expect there to be.

Okay, so we have every reason to believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth at one point. And yet we don't find them in the Bible, nor should we should we? We expect them to. That's not a problem for dinosaurs or the Bible. Next question comes from Pilly. Who was Cain afraid of? And so what Pilly is referring to is a story in Genesis 4 where Cain kills Abel and then he's afraid. Now, remember Abel's his brother. He's afraid that he is going to be pursued and killed himself. He's scared, so he's on the run. And the question is, who is he afraid of? I mean, is he afraid of Adam and Eve, his parents? Adam and Eve are running or around the world trying to chase down Kane to discipline him? Who is he afraid of? How would you answer that, Patrick? In Genesis 4, Adam and Eve have two children, like you said, Kane and Abel. No other

children are mentioned. So again, the only option we have is Adam and Eve if we believe that Adam and Eve and Kane were the only humans. So clearly there's someone else out there. There's other people who are chasing Kane. And how we answer this question is going to be a bit of an inference. It doesn't matter what answer you give. You're giving your best guess. So what are some of the the guesses you've heard, Keith? Well, one of the things that I've heard is that maybe Kane and Abel had other siblings, and therefore they were running from family members. It doesn't quite make sense to me. Something that makes more sense to me is to think that there were other human beings at this time, that Adam and Eve were selected from those human

beings and brought into the garden. In that sense, they were kind of the test cases. But they weren't the only people who existed at that time. A similar question is who did Cain marry? Did Cain marry a sister? None of this makes sense if you only have Adam and Eve, you only have Cain and Able on the scene. So my guess is there are a lot of human beings that existed. Adam and Eve were taken into the garden by God as priestly representatives. They fail. They are kicked out of the garden and the people that Cain is running from or the people that he married, from were other people that had existed for maybe ever since Adam and Eve did. I mean, Genesis 1 doesn't say God created Adam and Eve. It says God created human beings in his image. And then in Genesis 2, we read about Adam and Eve. So a lot of people read Genesis 2 back into

Genesis 1, and they think in Genesis 1 God created Adam and Eve. That's not what the text says. So the point here is this. There have been some bizarre conclusions. But like I said, everybody's making an inference. So I've heard people go so far to say, well, yeah, clearly Cain had to marry his sister, but the genetic pool was so pure that they could do this incest thing and it would work out for them. And maybe that's right, but it's no more of a guess than what Keith just said. And I hate to say it, I think the idea that there are other humans seems to make more sense of Genesis 1 to 2, and it makes sense of the rest of the Bible. The idea that God would pick out two people to function as priests as representatives for the rest of humanity,

does that happen anywhere else in the Bible? What happens all over the place in the Bible? Bible. God pits the Levites out of the 12 tribes. You're going to be my priests. In the exact same way, we are called to be a priesthood of believers, called out from the world as representatives. So we could keep finding example after example of God calling a small group of people out of a large group of people to represent them. And that seems to be what's happening with Adam and Eve. You did that interview on the podcast with Josh Swami Das, PhD at Washington University. Any help on how people can find that easily? Yeah, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Let's go. on to our next interview. And by the way, I would listen to the interview with Joshua Swami Das. A lot of people have listened to that. We talk about evolution. We talk about this topic, and they have found it very helpful. So next question. This one comes from Kelly. She said, how do I know if a church is a cult? I hope Kelly doesn't go to the church we pastor

at. That would be really awkward. I'm going to look her up in the database when I get off this. Kelly, if you go to the church that we pastor, we are not a cult, I promise. So one thing you can tell about cults is that they are trying to manipulate. and control people's lives. They use shame, they use guilt, they use power, they use secret knowledge in order to control your life like who you marry or how you spend your money or how you spend your time or where you work. I think another sign of a cult is that they have layers of secrets. So you come into the cult and they say things that sound really rational, very kind, very normal. It's like, oh, these people are loving, they're calling people to love. But if you continue to move forward

in the cult, there's going to be layers of secrets where they start giving you deeper knowledge, deeper ideas. And they never tell you what those things are up front. You have to keep moving your way in. And that's a sign of a cult. I mean, a good Christian church can tell you what they believe right up front, no problem. Here's where we are. And they're trying to manipulate you. They might try to persuade you, but no one's coming to your house and saying, this is what you must do, or isolating you, or tearing you down so that they can then build you back up. These are not things that normal churches do. To me, a big distinction, though, is, the manipulation and control because you could have unorthodox beliefs, but that doesn't make you a cult. So sometimes people have said that they think Mormonism is a cult because it doesn't

agree on some fundamental Christian beliefs. But I always push back. As far as I know, my experience with Mormonism is that it's not a cult. I disagree strongly with them theologically, and I wouldn't call them part of the Christian family. But I don't think it's a cult because it's not using to manipulate people in their lives. It's not trying to control people's lives. I think that's interesting. I don't know if I would have framed it that way. I have kind of always thought about people who have unorthodox Christian beliefs as being Christian cults, but I think you're making a good point that these are somewhat different things. It is really helpful, though, I think, to say on the podcast that there are a lot of groups

which claim to be Christian, which are not in any normal, historic Orthodox sense Christian. That would be groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons. They don't agree. on the core fundamentals of the Christian faith with what all Christians have believed in all time. Alicia sins in a question, does Jesus know everything? In other words, Jesus in his humanity, is he omniscient? And there have been a lot of debates that have filled a lot of really boring textbooks. Very boring. Painfully boring chapter after chapter after chapter. You can read on this. And it's not that it's unimportant because the question really here is, is Jesus fully God? That's what it's going after. And if he is fully God, then he must know everything. And if he doesn't

know everything, then perhaps he's not fully God. Because you see that Jesus learns things. He's astonished. He doesn't know the time that he will return. He grows in wisdom. So there are scenes in the Bible in which it seems to say that Jesus doesn't know everything. He's not omniscient. So how do we wrestle with the question then, can an non-omniscient Jesus truly be God? It's a great question, and like Keith said, lots of theologians have wrestled with this. And actually, this is one of the major questions that the early church had to figure out, had to sort out, and there were lots of debates. And it can sound a little bit esoteric, but it really does matter. And where the church landed on this is a paradoxical but

necessary statement. Jesus was both fully human and fully God. I don't know how to square that circle, but I don't have to because I'm not the incarnate God. Jesus does. And Key's point is we can't take the gospel seriously if we throw one out or the other. Jesus was a human who developed. The book of Luke twice describes Jesus growing in wisdom. I mean, just stop and think about that, the God of the universe growing in wisdom. Well, that only makes sense if he is a human. If he's fully human, he developed a normal human does. That perhaps, in fact, I want to say perhaps, I will say definitely, 16-year-old Jesus was more mature than 6-year-old Jesus. 26-year-old Jesus was more mature than 16-year-old Jesus.

And perhaps 2,000-year-old Jesus is more mature than 30-year-old Jesus. But does that mean he knows more? It's one thing to say you're more mature. It's another thing to say that you grew in knowledge. I'm having a difficult time cutting those two apart. I understand the difference, right? So, okay, how about this? Did Jesus know about atoms?

Well, I think that goes to the... Adams with a T. You probably knew some... Adams. And some Eves. So I think that goes to the core of the question. And I think what I understand, and maybe I'll get excommunicated from Orthodox Christianity after I say this, I don't have great confidence.

But I think the way I'd answer that question is that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. So in one sense, you can say, yes, he did. He is fully God. God knows everything. But on the other hand, he didn't know about Adams because he was a product of his own culture and no one knew about neutrons and electrons the time he lived. I think that that's a pretty good answer I'd like to agree with. We can say both, right? I think we have to say both. And this has been, again, this has been a challenge that people have dealt with. So what I hear some people,

they'll say this. Well, look, his body is human, but his spirit has God. No, that's called dualism. That's nothing to do with Christianity. Other people will come along. They'll say, well, he only appeared to be human, but in his essence, in reality, he was God. Well, if we say that, then he's no longer fully human. He is just God. There's other people who say he was born fully human, but then God adopted him, kind of made him divine after the fact. And again, the book of John is clear. Jesus was there even before the beginning of all things. And so the only way that Christians have figured out how to move forward is what keeps getting at. We live in a paradox. Jesus is fully human, and Jesus is fully God. Jesus is still fully human and still fully human.

holy God, developing his human life after 2,000 years and resurrected existence, and still fully divine. Maybe you listened to the episode last week where we discussed God's sovereignty and human responsibility. And what we end up saying there at some point is that both of those fit together. They're compatible, even if we can't quite figure it out and answer every question and know every detail. I think this issue of the humanity and divinity of Jesus is similar. We hold to both things that are true, but we don't necessarily have all the answers that we'd want. We can't necessarily explain every detail of exactly how that works. And like Patrick said, this was one of the most contentious, probably the most contentious

issue in the history of the early church. So you have these huge councils where people come together and they talk through all these ideas, they study the scriptures, they pray, they think about it. And they come down and say, yes, he's both fully God and fully human. 100% God, 100% human. Do not compromise either, or you lose something incredibly important. Okay, let's go on to our last question. This comes from Dylan, and he asked, do Romans 2, 5 to 11 in Matthew 24 through Matthew 25,

do these passages teach that we are saved by work? So let me give a little bit of context here, and I'm going to pass it off the key. Well, the answer is yes. They do teach salvation by works. I agree. Now we've got everybody feeling. I'm really itchy and confused. That's good.

I mean, at least they're going to stay on the podcast to figure out how we get on. Patrick will resolve it all before we get off. The answer is yes. Yes. Okay, so you go read the passage in Matthew 24, verse 44, all the way to Matthew, the end of Matthew 25. And in this passage, Jesus is talking about a final day of judgment. And Jesus himself is sitting on the judgment sheep, and he is separating people based on how they treated the needy, how they treated the imprisoned, how they treated the imprisoned, how they treated. the sick. It's clearly a judgment by works, what they've done in their lives. And then in Romans 2,

Paul seems to be in perfect agreement. I'm just going to read the passage here because it's short enough to get through and you won't think I'm crazy. Okay, Romans 2.5, but because of your stubbornness in your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself for the day of God's wrath when his righteous judgment will be revealed. So he's talking to people and says, hey, there's a day of judgment coming and what you're doing right now, you are storing up wrath for yourself. He goes on, God will repay each person according to what they have done. I'm going to read that again. God will repay each person in this final judgment according to what they have done to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those

who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good. First for the Jew and then for the Gentile. For God doesn't show favoritism. That's a shocking passage for a lot of people. It's the kind of one where I think people read Romans and they just plug their ears and try to pretend like they never heard it, never saw it. There are a lot of passages that say something very similar to those too. So we could multiply passages that make it obvious that we must obey Christ if we want to spend eternity with Christ. And yet this is a problem for us and our thinking because there are a lot of

passages that say we are saved by grace, that it's not our own works. It's not something we can do ourselves, that no one is justified, declared righteous with God by our own behavior. And so what's happened is we've put obedience and grace as though they are two opposite ends of the spectrum. And we've said, okay, how do we split this? How much grace is it and how much obedience is required? Or we do things like Patrick said, and we just kind of highlight the obedience passages with our black highlighter. Otherwise known as a Sharpie. It's a Sharpie. And I mean, I did that for years. I just refused to read, refuse to really consider all the passages that said, I needed to hold firmly to Christ, that I needed to obey Christ in order to have a relationship. with him. And that's because we come out of the reformed tradition where the idea, not the idea,

the truth, that we are justified by faith and that we are saved by grace. This is something that our theologians have spent books. I mean, libraries full of books exploring. I love that that's part of our tradition because it's a deep truth. We are justified by the faithfulness of Jesus, and we are saved by grace. But like you just said, how do we put these two things together? Yeah, maybe the way to think about it is not to say that, that obedience and grace are two ends, opposite ends of a spectrum. But maybe instead the way to say it is that one leads to the other. And you even see that in Ephesians 2-8, which says we are not saved by works, it's only by grace, and yet it leads to good works. And I think we focus on Ephesians

289, which triumphs God's grace, but we leave off the very next verse, verse 10, that says that this grace will lead us to do good works. So in this situation, good works don't save a person, but they are evidence that that person has salvation. And without the good works, then we have every reason to doubt whether that salvation is real, if they really understood the gospel in the first place. Yeah, this is a scriptural pattern that begins all the way back in the book of Exodus. I would actually even say all the way back in Genesis. But if you read Exodus 193, God has just rescued his people from Egypt. What have they done? Nothing. Do they trust him the whole way? Nope. Do they do all the right things? Nope. He just rescues them from slavery. And in Exodus 193,

he says, see, I've carried you on eagle's wings. I've rescued you. I've brought you to myself. And he goes on to say, now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you will be for me a treasured possession. So what happened there? Grace first. God saved them by grace, but then he calls them to law. He calls them to his covenant. He calls them to obedience. This makes a lot of sense because in the Bible's perspective, the grace that God gives us is transformative. When he builds a relationship with us, it transforms who we are, and it actually enables us to walk in his ways. Now, the obvious question then becomes, well, what do we do about the final judgment? So clearly we're safe by grace, but what's this final judgment stuff? How do we deal with a final judgment by works?

So listen to this. Here's Paul writing in 2 Corinthians 5, and he says, for what? we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. So Paul clearly states that our judgment is going to be based upon the kind of life that we lived. Now, I know that makes some of you nervous, but that's the Apostle Paul. Listen to John writing in Revelation 20. So this is in the great throne of judgment.

And it says, I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. Now, why are we so nervous about what those verses say? Well, first of all, I think it's because we misunderstand them. Second, I think it's because we're afraid that these are undermining grace. And grace is obviously at the core, at the foundation of the gospel of what God has done for us in Jesus, that we do not deserve his death, that we do not deserve a relationship.

We don't deserve to be forgiven. And we're afraid that if we're judged, according to what we've done, we've undermined that grace. But again, I think that's based on a misunderstanding of what these verses are teaching. I think that's exactly right. So if we are rescued by grace, and that grace is efficacious, has a, has a lot of effect in our life. It transforms us. What's that going to lead to? Well, the Apostle Paul seems to think, and I could just quote passage after passage that says this, that what it does is it leads us to lead a pleasing life before God, or as Jesus put it, and gives us the kind of life that when we get

before the judgment seat of God, he says, well done, good, and faithful servant. Now, because we have this weird dichotomy of I'm either saved by grace or works, what we think that means is I'm going to come before the throne of judgment, and if I've been perfect, then God says, well done, good and faithful servant. If I haven't been perfect, then he's going to say, get out of my face and disappear. That's not what the Apostle Paul says. He says he's looking for one specific thing, a pleasing life. A pleasing life is not a perfect life. We come to the throne of judgment as sinners who have been forgiven, as sinners who have been rescued by grace. Our sins are forgiven when we walk up to that judgment. And God's going to look at our life, and he's going to

just ask the question, not have you lived a perfect life, but have you lived a pleasing life? Have you sought to walk in obedience to me, the obedience which is empowered by my grace? So when we get to the final judgment, God is going to look at the quality of our life. I think the encouraging news is, if we put our faith in Jesus, the promise is that he will indeed justify us, he will indeed transform us, and we will indeed live a pleasing life. But when God justifies us, what he's doing is he's actually taking that future judgment, that future final verdict on our lives, and he's bringing it forward into the present. He's saying one day, I'm going to declare you in the right.

But I'm going to bring that forward into the present. And by bringing it forward into the present, that's going to change how you live such that that day in the future, I will be able to say those things. So this can all sound really confusing, but I actually think it's very straightforward. God has rescued you by grace, that grace is transforming you, it is changing you. He has justified you. He's already declared you in the right through the faithfulness of Jesus. And that means that he's brought forward that final verdict.

He's already made it over your life today. And so you can rest assured that as you walk with Jesus and trust him throughout your life, it won't be perfect, but your sins will be forgiven. And when you come to that final judgment, he will look at your life and say, well done, good and faithful servant. I think why we don't like this is just frankly because it's really, really scary. And most of us don't look at our lives and think that they measure up. And I think that might be part of the point of thinking through this, that there is a serious

call in our lives to walk in obedience to Jesus. He is our king. He deserves our allegiance. We ought to walk faithfully before him. There's no reason not to do it. I'm glad you brought up Jesus being king in our allegiance, Patrick, because I think a proper understanding of the gospel, a proper understanding of how we're judged and what we're judged by,

will lead us to reconsider what it is we're calling people to do when they become Christians. I think we've discussed it before in previous episodes, but I think too often we have presented Jesus as this get out of jail free, card as just ask him to be your Savior and you'll have your sins forgiven and you'll go off to heaven sometime in the future. That's all good. That's it. That's all it means to be a Christian. But when you really understand the gospel, and I think that is exactly what this question by Dylan is getting at, he's trying to understand the gospel. He's growing in his understanding and he's being challenged by it, is that what we're really calling people to do is put their faith or

allegiance in King Jesus, who is Lord of all, who's the son of all. Who's the son of of God in power who reigns supreme, all authority in heaven on earth have been given to him. And as we put our faith in a saving king who died for us, we are surrendering our will and saying we want to follow you. Absolutely, not perfectly. I mean, not even close, not even in the ballpark, but we want to submit and surrender to King Jesus. And if we don't submit and surrender to King Jesus, it's probably a good indication that we have not really understood the gospel, not really understood the call on our life, tried to separate Savior Jesus from King Jesus, and you just can't do that. Jesus is the saving king.

Well, I thought this was kind of fun. It was good to have a little banter back and forth, and you could probably even tell Keith and I didn't talk through all these things because we have some different ideas. So if you have other questions, go on to our Facebook page. We've got a link to it in the show notes. Like the page. Join the conversation. I think it's been a fun conversation and maybe we'll pick up some of these again in a little bit. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to

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