Searches every word across every teaching, article, and Q&A on the site.
Searches every word across every teaching, article, and Q&A on the site.
Teacher: Pastor Paul LeBoutillier Sue: Hey everybody, we're back with some more questions for you this week, and I'm going to start with the first question from Beverly. She says, "I had a discussion with a couple of family members who think that God's plan for marriage is that He considers a couple as married when they come together as one flesh, without making it legal through the process of a marriage license, etc. The only thing I could think of to tell them was that in our day and time we are to obey the laws of our land. I can't find a scripture that makes it clear." Pastor Paul: The only problem with telling people that we have to obey the law of our land is that there's no law that says you have to have a marriage license to be a married couple. A marriage license does not make a marriage legal. It makes it recognized. It is a legal recognition I will say that. The marriage is made legal by virtue of the fact that God created marriage and that when a man and a woman come together pledge themselves to one another in faithfulness and so forth, and they act like a married couple. They are a married couple. Again, the marriage license is a recognition by the state that these two are married and recognized in such a way that they can take advantage of certain things that the state offers to a married couple. Marriage licenses are not very old. I mean we haven't been giving marriage licenses for very long in the grand scheme of things. In fact, in the history of man, it's like they just appeared. So you have to ask yourself the question, how were people recognized as being married back then? Well, someone could say it wasn't part of the law back then. Well, it isn't part of the law now. If a couple says we're married, but we don't have a marriage license, they're not going to be arrested, nobody's going to say you can't do that. The government won't even say you can't do that. If a couple says we're married, they're married. So that's the thing you have to remember about this whole thing. I appreciate Beverly's question, but it really does come down to a man and a woman becoming one flesh together. Uniting themselves together. A man leaving his father and mother being joined with his wife, the two coming together committing themselves in faithfulness before God that is what makes a marriage. Sue: All right. Good answer. Bailey says, “I have always been confused by the Apostle Paul. Why was he alone sent to the Gentiles, but not the 12? It seems like a big job for one person? Also, why did everyone just accept what Paul was doing? It seems strange that so much of the New Testament is written by someone who said he met Jesus on the road and then did His own thing for 10+ years before checking in with anyone.” Pastor Paul: I suppose from the outside looking in it could kind of sound like that. First of all, it is an assumption to believe that Paul was the only person sent to the Gentiles. There were several of the Apostles that we really don't have any accounting for. We don't know. Some of the others could have been sent to the Gentiles too and we don't know. So to say that Paul was the only one sent to the Gentiles is not something that we can validate. Secondly, Paul was not a man who did his own thing. Yes, he did receive his gospel from the Lord. He makes that very clear. He says no man taught me the gospel that I received. I received it firsthand by revelation. So Paul does admit that. However, Paul also explains in his writings that he went to the Apostles and he presented to them his gospel to make sure he was on track and that was something he cared very much about doing because he wanted to make sure that this is the same thing Jesus had said to them firsthand. And the Bible tells us and Paul writes that the Apostles gave him the right hand of fellowship because they heard his gospel and they said yeah, that's it. So Paul was not a man who believed in being a lone ranger. The Bible tells us that when he finally started teaching he came to Antioch at the behest of Barnabas and he spent a good deal of time there in Antioch where the church was really taking off. For years he taught along with Barnabas the believers there and so there was a lot of interaction with the other believers, the other Apostles, the other leaders of the church and Paul was extended the acknowledgement of his calling. And then finally when he was ordained if you will to go out and do the work of an Apostle, the Lord spoke it in front of the church through a prophetic message. We're told this in the book of Acts that God spoke through prophecy, set apart for me. Saul, as he was referred to as his Hebrew name and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them and so forth. And the Bible says that after fasting and prayer they laid hands on them and they, the body of Christ, sent them and specifically Paul out to do the work that he had been called to do. They recognized, acknowledged. So Paul was far from a lone ranger and that's really kind of where it needs to be understood. Sue: History lesson there. Kate says, “At a Bible study for women that I lead, someone asked if there are demons with specific functions such as “demon of fear” “demon of anxiety” or other functions. I didn't have an answer and when I Acts 13:1-3 (ESV) Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. asked for scripture supporting their viewpoint the room became silent. What does the Bible say?” Pastor Paul: There's a lot of things that the Bible suggests without coming out and saying it. And the Bible suggests that there may be demons that focus on hindering or hampering with certain maladies or certain afflictions. And one of the passages that I would cite is from Matthew 9:32 that says; So the idea there is that the demons specifically hampered this man's ability to speak. And once the demon was cast out, the man spoke freely. Now the term “demon of anxiety” or even “demon of mutism” is not used in the Bible. They are just unclean spirits. So we've done that. That's something that we've kind of attached and particularly deliverance ministries like to attach names to demonic spirits. Oh, he has a demon of anxiety and that's why he's fearful or he has a demon of lust which is why he's constantly looking at women or that sort of thing. Again, the suggestion is there that a demonic spirit can impose a certain issue or malady. But it's not out rightly said and so I would be careful about it. Sue: I would be careful and to me it seems like it opens the door for a victim mentality in a Christian to say, I struggle with this not because I'm struggling with it because I am oppressed by a demon, like you say pornography, whatever and it can really open the door to lead us to just being a victim of something that's oppressing us. Matthew 9:32 (ESV) As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. Pastor Paul: And we have to remember that we give the devil a foothold. That's what the Apostle Paul even said, “Do not give the devil a foothold.” There are weaknesses in our lives that the demons will exploit. Sue: But we have weaknesses in our lives completely apart from any demonic. Pastor Paul: Absolutely. We're born with weaknesses. Sue: We’re plenty to deal with. Pastor Paul: By virtue of the fact that we're fallen human beings. Sue: All right. Daniel says, “Why are there different records of Christ's resurrection in the four gospels?” Pastor Paul: Well, because you have four different people writing about the same event. That's really the answer to the question. And they would say, now wait a minute, shouldn't they all perfectly agree on every particular point? If you were to talk to a detective today who went around and tried to gather evidence to solve a particular issue and you asked that detective if you had four eyewitnesses to the event, how would their testimonies differ? They would explain that the kind of differences you see in people's eyewitness testimonies is exactly what you see in the Bible. What you see between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And Luke probably wasn't even an eyewitness. He went and most likely interviewed eyewitnesses. Anyway, the point is whenever you get a story from the angle of different people, they're going to include different details. For example one person is going to say they're only going to talk about Mary at the tomb. And then another gospel writer is going to say, then there was Mary and there was a few other women that were along with her, why the discrepancy? Because the first author didn't see the need to bring up the other women because to his narrative they seemed unimportant. And we have to remember something about ancient writers. They didn't consider some of the same things important that we do today and being specific about every detail. It just wasn't a hallmark of what they were looking to accomplish. So you have these slightly different accounts. Now, here's the point. Jesus rises from the dead in every one of them. In all the accounts, he is arrested, he is tried, he is scourged, he is crucified, he is declared to be dead, and buried in a tomb. And in all of those accounts he rises from the dead. So I ask you, where are the genuine discrepancies? Everything that matters is in complete and total agreement. Sue: And in the same way that the birth of Christ is offered in a different way in there. Each of the writers was writing for a different audience as well. And there were different purposeful things put in because of their audience. Pastor Paul: Sure. If you're writing to a Jewish audience, you're going to say things you wouldn't say to a Gentile audience. If you're writing to a Gentile audience, you have to explain more things that they might not be aware of. Sue: Great. Thomas says, “How could Adam have had the pride and ability to disobey God's command in the garden and eat the apple if he was created without a sinful nature? Is a sinful nature than just free will or an actual desire to intentionally do what's wrong?” Pastor Paul: The sinful nature is the desire, it is a bent towards sin. There's a lot that we don't understand about free will as it relates to particularly Adam and Eve apart from a sinful nature. We can't relate to that. We kind of see our free will and the bent towards sin as working hand-in-hand and it's very, very, very difficult for us to relate to the idea of this man and this woman being placed in this perfect environment without a sinful nature but being given an opportunity to make a mistake. And they make that mistake apart from a sinful nature. And that's really what he's asking here. How could Adam and Eve for that matter make a mistake? Shouldn't they have been flawless if they had no sinful nature? Well, that sure seems to be the case from our perspective, but our perspective is very limited and very flawed and very one-sided. So we just don't get it. Now, I'm sure the Lord will make it clear at some point. I really don't have a solid answer except that God gave mankind the ability to choose both good and evil even though he himself at that time was completely good. And there was no sinful nature or stain of sin if you will. How that actually played out? I'm really not sure. And I don't think any of us can really say for sure. We just know that that's what the Bible says. Sue: And that's an important answer enough because modern man tends to put that account on trial because we say it doesn't make sense to this. Pastor Paul: We don't get it. Sue: So we're going to put you on trial and figure out how that could happen rather than looking at it and saying, God just gave us the information that we need to accept and we need to help us understand how the human race began? Pastor Paul: There's a great deal in the Bible that we believe by revelation and not by intelligent understanding, because we just can't go there. We can't go there because we can't relate to it. Sue: All right. Dominic says, “I am from France and have been following your Bible teachings since last November. A woman was recently telling me that it was biblical to pray for people who have died. I told her it was not mentioned in the Bible. Can you please help me with a response?” Pastor Paul: I would ask the question, first of all, that whether or not the woman that spoke to Dominic was Roman Catholic. And the reason is because Roman Catholicism embraces books of the Bible that are not in the Protestant Bible and they have books that go beyond the 66 books that we have. And those books we refer to as the Apocrypha. And in the Apocrypha, there are some historical books that are good even for their historical value. Two of those are First and Second Maccabees and they speak of the Maccabean revolt, which basically took place in the intertestamental period. There is a passage in Second Maccabees where after the revolt, after the war was mostly fought, Judas Maccabeus with his men came out to retrieve the dead bodies of their Jewish brethren who had fallen in the battle. And when they began to pull back their tunics, they noticed that all of the dead were wearing an amulet that was of pagan origin that was forbidden by the Jews to wear. Now they immediately assumed that that's why they had fallen in battle because these men were wearing something that was inappropriate and unlawful. But Judas Maccabeus recommended that they pray for those men because of their sin. Frankly, this is largely where Roman Catholicism gets the idea of purgatory. The idea that we pray for the dead because they've messed up and they've gone into this place called purgatory. Which by the way, the Bible doesn't say anything about. But we need to pray them out of purgatory. So we pray for the dead. That's where a lot of this stuff comes from and that's why I would have to wonder was this woman of Roman Catholic origin? I would guess she probably is. So that's probably what's behind it. I can just tell you that there is nothing in the Bible that would lead us to the conclusion that we are to pray for the dead. Nothing. And frankly when we create doctrines based on narratives particularly apocryphal, the books of the Apocrypha, were really skating on thin ice. Sue: Sometimes too I think it can come from a source of grief. I think about our precious little six-year-old granddaughter. When she heard that Charlie Kirk had died, didn't know him but realized in her little world that this was upsetting to a lot of people. She immediately prayed for him and she asked, Jesus, she said, Charlie just got to heaven. Would you please make sure he has a really good time this week? And I think that's just the heart of a child. Pastor Paul: The heart of a child. Sue: The heart of a child. But we have to separate what comes from feelings and from grief with that which is biblical. Pastor Paul: Exactly. Sue: All right. Our last question comes from Tan. She says, “I want to get my ears pierced, but my parents think it's a sin. I personally am not convicted or believe it to be a sin. I respected their wishes while being under their roof, but now I'm married. Bonus points for a rebuttal to tell my dad…telling him that he has a weaker conscience might not go well.” Pastor Paul: I wouldn't imagine and honestly, I wouldn't consider this a matter of a weaker conscience because I don't think there's any danger of emboldening her dad to go out and get his ears pierced so that he'll come back later on and regret it and be self-condemned. That's kind of what the whole weaker conscience thing is all about. I would say to Tan, first of all, this is not a quick answer. But first of all as a married woman who is no longer under the authority of her parents roof, if you will, she is free to get her ears pierced if she so desires. That's the first thing I would say. What I would also add though is what you need to determine or to think through is what effect it's going to have on the relationship with your parents. And you need to ask yourself, is this worth it? If you think your parents are going to get over it and they're going to be fine eventually, then you might just say, I'm going to go ahead and do this. But if you think that it's really going to cause a rift between you and your parents, I would think it through. I mean really think it through and pray it through and decide, is this important enough to me to take that risk? The only thing I can say about speaking to her dad is to challenge him. When somebody comes to you and they say piercing your ears is a sin, I think that it is within our right to respectfully respond by saying, okay dad, if you can tell me where that in the Bible it says that piercing ears is a sin, I won't do it. And that can be an important and even a reasonable challenge because now this woman is married. Again, she's no longer under their roof. This is an adult. One adult to another adult just challenging that adult to say, I hear what you're saying, and I see that you feel passionately about this, but are your feelings substantiated by the Word of God? Because I believe the Bible is the standard by which we determine what is sinful and what is not. So if you can show me in the Bible where this is a sinful action, I won't do it because I don't want to do something that's sinful against my Lord. But if you can't, then you need to live with the fact that I may go ahead and do this because the Bible doesn't say that it is a sin. Now, again, that's a conversation that has to be done very respectfully. Sue: Is it interesting in life all of these little details that take up so much thought space? Pastor Paul: So much bandwidth. Sue: I know. We've covered a lot of ground today, that's our last question. So we're going to leave it right there and we'll see you next time.
