WWUTT 2295 Q&A Parenting Resources, the Genealogies of Jesus, Contemporary Christian Music

What are some good resources for new parents? Why are there so many differences between Matthew's genealogy of Jesus and Luke's? And is it ok to listen to old Christian music knowing those artists are no longer Christians?

The answer is when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the word of Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness. Find all our videos and other ministry resources at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky, who is not with me this go around. In fact, I was late all week long trying to get these episodes posted. I didn't get Monday's lesson posted until Tuesday, Tuesday's lesson posted until Wednesday, so forgive me for that.

I was hoping that I could hold off on Friday long enough that Becky would be able to join.

Me.

Fortunately, however, we've got sick kids. There's a stomach bug going through our house, so she's cuddling with one of our children on the couch right now while I'm recording this. Pray for us. God willing, she'll be back on with me again next week.

This is the Friday edition of the broadcast when we take questions from the listeners and you can submit those questions to when we understand the text at gmail .com is our email address or send us a voicemail.

Go to www .utt .com. Click on the voicemail tab at the top right corner of the page and you can record your question to us either through your phone or through your computer. Maybe you even have a comment that you would like to share.

You just want to say hi. We would love to hear from you. Maybe your question would sound like this one from Roberto.

Hey, Pastor Gabe. This is Roberto. I reached out to you a few times. I just wanted to ask what books you recommend for anyone going through pregnancy or parenting because thank the Lord, we'll be expecting a child soon.

Again, we love your programming. We continue to pray for you and yeah, what books do you recommend?

Parenting Books for New Parents

Well, thank you so much, brother, and let me first say congratulations. I take it this is your first. That is wonderful. What a blessing of God and I pray for a healthy pregnancy and a safe delivery. You'll be holding that bundle of joy in your arms very soon before you know it, although I know that for your wife, it's going to feel like this is taking forever.

I do not have any pregnancy books that I can recommend to you. When Becky and I got married, we got pregnant pretty quick and she gave me some pregnancy books and said, here's what you need to read to prepare yourself for your husband side of things.

I never read any of those books. Just going to be honest with you. Never even read them. So I didn't retain any of those titles and Becky's not on with me for this episode, too, in case she could remember those titles and then pass them on to you.

But I do have a couple of parenting books that I could recommend, two of them by Vody.

Bauckham.

In fact, one is called Family Driven Faith and the other one is called Family Shepherds. That book in particular, Family Shepherds, is about preparing you as a husband and a father to lead your household spiritually, even if you don't have kids yet or you're still waiting for children and then waiting for those children to grow up and be able to understand the lessons that you teach them.

These are still good books in preparation for that. There's another one that came out from Joel Beakey. Oh, I did not have that one pulled up in front of me here. Hang on just a second. It's called the Family Worship Bible Guide.

I picked this one up a year or two ago. And once again, it's going to help you in how you would lead your family in worship, singing together, reading the scriptures together, praying together. And though you may not be doing that with a bunch of you right now, you still have a wife that you could be leading and the two of you can be doing that together.

And once again, also preparation for when you will have more children. And for you as a father, the responsibility that you have to lead your household. So there's a few recommendations. You can also go to Ligonier .org and in the search bar on Ligonier's website, just type in parenting and there should be some resources that will come up for you that way as well.

The Genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke

This next question, this has to do with the genealogy lesson that I did on Monday, reading the genealogy of Christ, according to Luke chapter three. And Jonathan emails to say, my wife asked me to listen to your explanation of the Luke three lineage as I am in agreement with it being the lineage of Mary listing Joseph as being adopted back into the kingship line as he is banned under Jeconiah's curse.

I had her count the numbers and while there are 28 listed in Matthew, she counted 41 in Luke. I think I had counted 43. That's going back to David, I believe, because there's over 70 names altogether in Luke's genealogy.

So I think they were just counting back to David. I can understand the Leverett marriage bit, if true, but then Heli and Jacob should have the same father and they don't. Can you explain the difference in numbers of generations and the difference in names for all the men listed?

My understanding is that Herod tried to destroy the official genealogical records. Listing the lineage is thus doubly important. I believe that Mary too is a descendant of David and for Jesus to be king, he cannot be descended through Jeconiah.

But if Heli and Jacob were brothers, they should list the same father. There needs to be proof of the line of Mary to show the physical descent of Jesus from David. And I think Luke does this. Thank you for any responses to this.

And I appreciate your email, Jonathan. It was a difficult lesson and I'm glad that could be helpful to so many people. I received quite a few messages about that episode in particular, and I can't remember ever receiving that many emails for one devotional lesson.

Those things are always kind of challenging too, because how do you make a genealogy interesting? So the direction I decided to take with it was showing the differences between Luke's genealogy and Matthew's genealogy and explaining why they are different.

And it's because of Leveret marriage that Joseph had two fathers, or at least two fathers could be listed for him in his genealogy because of Leveret marriage. And you'll have to go back to that episode and listen to that on Monday, or by the way, you can pick up my book, 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says, because I address it there as well.

Let me answer Jonathan in three parts here based on the number of questions that you've put in your email. So first of all, let me talk about Mary's lineage. Secondly, we'll talk about the differences in the numbers between Matthew and Luke's.

Genealogies.

And then thirdly, we'll talk about Jeconiah's curse, since you brought that one up. So first of all, Mary's lineage, you bring up an interesting point about showing that Mary was descended from David, but I disagree that that needs to be proven, though I do believe that Mary was descended from the line of David as Joseph was.

They were married from within the same tribe, but it's not necessary to show she is descended from David. If she is married to a Jew, then she's part of that lineage. Rahab and Ruth are Jesus ancestors listed in in Matthew's genealogy.

They are not listed in Luke's because Luke doesn't have any women listed. But Rahab and Ruth are mentioned in the genealogy that Matthew shares. Rahab was not descended from Abraham, and Ruth could not have been in the lineage of Christ if she had been married to another Moabite like herself rather than Boaz, who was a Jew.

Hebrew descendants always are always traced through the male. It matters who the father is or who the husband is. It doesn't matter who the mother is. For Matthew to even list women in his genealogy, it's just to show the grace of God, especially upon these formerly pagan women and how God had used them to become ancestors in the genealogy of Christ.

And this was also to show how Jesus was going to be a savior to the nations, not just to the Jewish people, but that he would call people from all over the world to himself through the preaching of the gospel.

So again, not necessary to have to establish Mary's lineage, although it is true that she is in the line of David. Now the second part or the second issue regarding your question is the differences in the numbers between Matthew and Luke.

Why are there more names from Jesus to David, almost twice as many names as what are listed as what Matthew lists? So Luke has more names from Jesus to David than Matthew does. Well, all Matthew is trying to establish is to show in a brief way, he's not trying to be extremely detailed, but he's briefly showing how Jesus is descended from David and descended from Abraham so that you would see that he is the rightful heir to David's throne and the fulfillment therefore of the Davidic covenant.

And in doing so, and to do it briefly, he gives 14 generations, three sets of 14 generations. You have 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the deportation to Babylon or to the exile, and then 14 generations from the exile down to the birth of the Christ.

It's not necessary for him to have to list every single name. We might think of that in our Western world mentality of listing genealogies. We might want it detailed to every single person with no gaps, but that wasn't as essential to a Hebrew.

Matthew doesn't have to give the genealogy with no gaps in it. So there might be jumps in there, but he still establishes that Jesus is descended, has descended through this line, even if he doesn't include every single name.

Luke has a little bit more detail to the list of names. He will include names in there that Matthew did not, but there's no contradiction there of any kind. There's no Hebrew word for grandfather. When you go through 1 and 2 Kings or 1 and 2 Chronicles, and it talks about the descendants there in either of those history books, it will refer back to fathers, and a father could be generations back.

There's no word for grandfather or great-grandfather or otherwise. So again, skipping generations in a genealogy is not as big a deal to a Hebrew as it might be to us in our modern Western world mentality.

All right. The third aspect to your question, you asked about Jeconiah's curse. Well, don't read too deeply into Jeconiah's curse. I hear this all the time, especially with regard to skeptics that will, you know, they're always looking for something that they can take out of the Bible and use it to disprove the Bible.

Jeconiah's curse happens to be one of them. This is in Jeremiah chapter 22, and it says of Jeconiah or Coniah, as he's mentioned there, this is Jeremiah 22, 30. Thus says the Lord, write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.

Now, Jeconiah wasn't childless. He did have sons. So what does this curse mean? It means that none of his sons, exactly what's said there, the last two lines there in that curse in verse 30, it means that none of his sons would sit on the throne of David ruling again in Judah.

And not only was that true in the lifetime of Jeconiah's sons, it was true during the earthly ministry of Jesus. And it's true even to this day, no one in the line of Jeconiah to this day has ever sat on the throne ruling again in Judah.

And so that's all that curse is saying. That was right at the time when the exile happened and none of Jeconiah's sons became kings. Even when the Jews came back into Jerusalem and rebuilt the walls and rebuilt the temple, they still didn't have a king.

They did not establish a king in coming back to rebuild their city. Even when the Herods are sitting on the throne at the time of Jesus earthly ministry, they weren't Jews. Herod was an Edomite. So even there, it's no one in the line of Jeconiah that ends up becoming a ruler in Judah.

That curse is one of those prophecies that we can even see still being upheld within our lifetimes. There's not a descendant of Jeconiah sitting on the throne of David in Judah. So I appreciate your questions there, Jonathan.

I hope that clears some things up. The next question is from Joseph. This was another question that I got from several people, but I'm going to use Joseph's question here and respond to this. Hi, Pastor Hughes.

What happened to the Hear the Word of the Lord podcast? I absolutely loved it. Too much on the plate, maybe? I listen to the Friday podcast often and must have missed your update on it. I have been very edified from your ministry.

God bless you. Well, I appreciate that, Joseph. So yeah, I did have too much on my plate. I was trying to do too much and I got behind, but really what shut down the Hear the Word of the Lord podcast, at least temporarily, is that I ran into a copyright issue.

I did not know that was going to be a thing, but nonetheless, I had to go through the right channels and avenues and try to clear all of that up. So by that point, I didn't want to try to catch up with what I had missed.

So I'm going to resume the Hear the Word of the Lord podcast and start back in Genesis 1 so you get to hear it again. And all of that is going to debut on January 1st. Hear the Word of the Lord. That's the name of the podcast.

You can still find it. There are episodes that are still there. I don't know if I'll wipe them out and just kind of start from scratch. I'll begin again from Genesis 1. I might end up doing that. But yeah, once again, it's my second podcast where it's just Bible reading.

There's no music, no commentary, just straight Bible reading. And you can find it through Spotify or Apple or whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Incidentally, there was a time a couple of weeks ago, this might have been, it could have been about a month ago now, I noticed that my podcast numbers were dropping and dropping fast.

And it happened almost all at once, like within a week or two, I had lost nearly 40 of the numbers that I was used to seeing with regards to how many downloads an episode of the podcast might get. And I was astonished by that.

I was like, what is going on that is making all of these listeners drop off? None of the of the feedback had decreased. I was still getting the same number of emails, same number of comments or reviews or something like that.

None of that had declined. But the number of downloads was just going down and a lot. So I was trying to figure out what was going on there and come to find in some of you. If you're in podcast land, then maybe you know this.

If you've had a podcast and you check your stats and stuff like this. But Charitable has shut down. Charitable was the site that was providing most podcasters with their numbers because Apple was like the largest distributor of podcasts.

Well, people aren't listening through Apple as much anymore as they are listening through Spotify. And Spotify is giving more accurate numbers than Apple is. So Apple shut down their Charitable, which was kind of an extension of Apple.

And therefore, because they're not reading those numbers anymore, I think that had something to do with the numbers that are reported back to me. And Spotify just may not be as detailed on some of the other platforms that grab my podcast and will distribute it.

And I don't know if that's the reason why the numbers went down or not. But this was a problem across the board. And there have been various podcasters that have noticed this over the past year or so these numbers that are declining.

I hope this hasn't affected anybody being able to listen to the podcast that it still downloads for you. If you've been having issues, let me know about it so I can figure out what I need to.

Do.

But otherwise, thank you for listening and leaving a review on whatever app you use to listen to this podcast. Because if you leave reviews, it puts keywords in there. It helps to influence the algorithm and will make it easier for somebody else to find this podcast if they're looking for a good Bible study podcast.

And we thank you, as always, for recommending this to someone else. This next question, I was asked to keep this anonymous, but the person asking the question says, Dear Pastor Gabe and Mrs. Gabe, I'll pass that on to her.

In the past, I've bought Christian music that I thought to be good because my Christian parents listened to it when I was growing up. However, in recent years, these artists are proving that they were never really Christians to begin with.

Here are a few examples. Lecrae is now deconstructing his faith. Lauren Daigle supports homosexuality and apparently attends Andy Stanley's church. Jars of Clay supports homosexuality. They claim to be a Christian band, but some of their lyrics seem to argue against God, not for him, such as their song, Oh My God.

Amy Grant also supports homosexuality now. If I own and listen to these artists' older songs, which have good lyrics despite the people who sing them, am I being foolish? My main concern is not for myself because I just enjoy the songs as songs, apart from the foolishness of their performers.

But my concern is in the possibility of misleading my wife and children who see the artist's names on our stereo each time a song plays. I remember hearing these names and seeing their albums when I was young, too.

Please help. Thanks. Well, I appreciate your question. And incidentally, to go along with this, I just found out or I found this out yesterday that November the 21st, yesterday was the 29th anniversary of the release of Jesus Freak by DC Talk.

Isn't that incredible? 29 years ago when that album came out. Now, I was 15 years old when that CD was released, and I can still remember listening to it for the very first time. I was a freshman in high school, and there was a friend of mine who was driving our youth group kids and dropping them off at their homes.

And she had a copy of Jesus Freak. She was connected in Nashville in some way. Her name was Dara and eventually would work in Nashville. I think she worked as a booking agent, so she helped book these artists in different concerts and tours and things like that.

So anyway, even when we were living in southwest Kansas together, she had a connection with Nashville and had an early copy of Jesus Freak. And while she was driving around dropping students off, she told me, hey, listen to.

This.

I've got the new DC Talk album. And I wasn't able to listen to it very clearly because we're teenagers in a van, so we're all carrying on. But then it was a couple of weeks later at the Christian radio station that I worked at 15 years old working at a Christian radio station, and they had an advanced copy of the album two months before it came out.

And so I grabbed it. The production director let me have it, and I went into the studio and I put it in the CD player and I listened to it straight through from beginning to end. And I knew when I got to the end of that album that I had just listened to the greatest Christian rock album of all time and still stands head and shoulders above all the rest for album sales, influence in the culture.

I had unsaved friends who would not set foot in a church to save their lives, and even they had copies of Jesus Freak. They thought it was just an incredible album. So 29 years ago. But you know what's happened with DC Talk since then, right?

Toby Mac still seems to be pretty faithful as far as I can tell. My son, who's now 13, still loves listening to Toby Mac and will pull his songs up on Spotify and on YouTube and stuff like that. But Kevin Max, you probably know, has fallen far from the Lord and has deconstructed his faith, as he has said, and is also LGBTQ affirming.

So he has said that he's in favor of gay marriage and affirms all of the perversions that are in that LGBTQ acrostic. Does that mean that I don't let my kids listen to DC Talk? No, they still listen to DC Talk, and they love it.

Incidentally, the two album, two of the albums that they probably listen to the most. If we were to create a huge family top 10, Jesus Freak and Free at Last would be in that top 10. They were fantastic albums, and it's amazing to me that how much of an influence they had on me when I was a teenager, and I'm watching them have an influence on my kids.

And it's just sad that Christian music doesn't have that level of artistry anymore. We've played newer Christian songs. My kids don't like them. They're not even interested in them. They go back to my CD collection and they pull stuff out of the 80s and 90s.

That was when Christian music artistry was at its best, and Jesus Freak is certainly kind of at the apex of that. They've also listened to Jars of Clay, although you're absolutely right that Jars of Clay has become LGBTQ affirming.

Dan Hasseltine, who's the lead singer of Jars, one of the other guys, too. I can't remember the guitarist's name, but he became like a soccer mascot and goes by.

The name.

It's either Soccer Moses or Soccer Jesus. I can't remember. He's just into something weird. That whole band got weird, and there were a lot of people in contemporary Christian music who became that way.

Jennifer Knapp, of course, became a lesbian. That was nationwide news when that came out. Ray Bolts, the guy who wrote such great songs like Thank You and Watch the Lamb, is homosexual now and claims to be married to a man.

He was a friend of our family. He was a friend of my dad's. And when all of that came out, I remember my dad just feeling incredibly betrayed by all of that. Every once in a while, my kids will pull up a Reliant K song and listen to them.

And Reliant K has also become this way, is LGBTQ affirming. But what's interesting about all of that is my kids will ask me questions about it because they knew that I grew up backstage. I met a lot of these artists.

I hung out with them at GMA and on their tours. I went on their tour buses. Sometimes we would travel from one place to the next together. I would drop them off at their hotel rooms, or I would pick them up at the airport.

This was my life when I was growing up as a high school student and into my young 20s as well. So they would ask me questions about the artists, and we have conversations about them. I'll tell them that the members of the band Reliant K are not walking with the Lord anymore or Jars of Clay or anyone else.

And they think it's sad, but they can listen to the music and appreciate the lyrics for what the lyrics are, just like you were talking about. You still listen to those songs from when you were a kid, and you're able to disconnect who that person has become from who they once were and what it was that they used to sing, the joy of the Lord that used to fill their lyrics, but isn't there anymore.

Michael W. Smith, and I believe this was 1988, released an album called Eye to Eye. And one of the songs on that album is called I Miss the Way. And that is a song that has come to mind for me many times whenever I have watched some of these artists go astray.

The chorus of that song from Smitty is I miss the way his love would dance up in your eyes. I'm going to tear up here just quoting it. I miss the way his love would dance up in your eyes. I miss the way his heart was the soul of your life.

And somewhere in the saddest part of heaven's room, the father sheds a tear for you. He's missing you, too. And I don't know that Smitty had any idea when he wrote that song that it was going to be something that would speak of contemporary Christian music in the 90s and how many of those artists would fall away from the faith that they claim that they once had.

So it's sad, and I do pray for them. When it comes to shepherding my children, though, I don't want to ignore those realities. I don't want them to not know about the lives of those artists. And then somewhere down the line, they look into it and go, wow, my dad let me listen to this when this artist was like this.

We talk those things out. It's a shepherding opportunity and hopefully becomes a warning to my children just because you would make a living out of Christian music, writing Christian songs and singing about Jesus on a stage 250 nights out of the year does not mean that you're a faithful Christian.

And if we don't heed the warnings that are given in, like, first Corinthians, chapter 10 or in the book of Hebrews, then we may find ourselves losing our grip on the faith that we said that we once had.

First Corinthians, chapter 10, verse one. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them.

And the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.

Do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did. And 23 ,000 fell in a single day.

We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.

So we can see even with these Christian artists, real life modern day examples of those who had once professed faith, but they didn't keep watch on themselves and they ended up falling away. They were like in Jesus' parable of the soils.

Seed that fell in rocky places or seed that fell in the thorns. And the thorns choked the word and it proved to be unfruitful. And so it was with many of them. Continue to pray for them that they might be like prodigals, that the Lord would convict their hearts.

They would come to know the truth that was once said to them, they would turn from their wicked ways before the day of judgment comes for them. Guys, I thank you so much for listening to the program. It means a lot to me that you listen and that you write in and ask your questions.

And I want to labor diligently for you, for your edification, that you would be strengthened in hearing the word of the Lord. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we're in New Testament study. And I continue in Luke, Thursday in the book of Jeremiah.

And then Friday, we try to do this Q &A. Since the Q &A has been a little bit shorter lately, I want to commit to you to doing a Saturday episode every week as well. The Saturday special. And so I'm trying to have something put together in time for tomorrow.

So you might feel like you're getting gypped. I'm not getting a full hour episode on Friday, but I'll make it up to you with some extra episodes. We'll continue Gabe's blog on Saturday. And then of course, I'll have the sermons posted on Sunday.

Tell your friends about our ministry and don't forget to leave us a review online. God bless. And God willing, talk to you next week.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Gabriel Hughes. Pastor Gabe is the author of 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says, examining some of our most common Christmas beliefs and traditions and bringing them back to the truth of scripture.

You can find this and other books at our website, www .utt .com. Join us again tomorrow for more Bible study when we understand the text.