BBC Elder Questions & Answers

That is to say, the elders according to Titus chapter 1, 1 Timothy chapter 3 and 5, the word in 1

Timothy 5 .17 is elders who rule well. Some people are afraid of that word rule because they think it's lording or they think it's tough.

It's not congregational rule, it's not elder led, it's elder rule.

They're not to lord it over, we're not to lord it over, but we're to be shepherds. We can't give you that responsibility if God has given us that responsibility.

And so one of the ways you can always find, is the church led by elders or is it not, is you can ask this question, who has the final vote?

Who has the final vote? You can have elders, you can have deacons, you can have pastors, you can have a congregation.

And whoever has the final vote, they are the ones who rule the church.

And so if you say, I have elders, but they can't do anything unless the congregation votes, or they can't do some things unless the congregation votes, that's still a congregational rule church.

And so we believe the Bible is clear in 1 Timothy 3, 5 and Titus 1, that it is elder rule.

And so I like you to know your elders and I like you to ask them questions. So what we're going to do in just a minute, the men are going to come up, we're going to sit down here.

Some of you have already emailed questions in, we'll take those first. And then after those are done, then you can ask questions, just say them out loud in your seat.

If they're difficult questions, then you can go ahead and watch me delegate those to Pastor Steve.

Pradeep is the one working on his Ph .D. at Southern Seminary, so I might ask Pradeep for the very difficult ones.

Just for the background, Steve has finished his three -year degree at Masters, and Pastor Dave is working on his seminary degree at Southern.

And Pradeep has done his Master's degree at Southern and is working on his Ph .D. So if we don't know, then we'll say we don't know, but we can find out the answer.

If you want to try to stump us tonight, that's pretty easy. But if you want to just have insight to Scripture, that's probably what we're looking for.

And I like questions and answers because if you don't like one question that doesn't interest you, then just wait for the next one.

So it's usually spicy, quickly going. I'll have to tell you the story. I did Q &A children question and answers a long time ago.

And Amanda Bilton, who's now married, was about this big, and I'm sure the parents planted this question from Amanda, to Amanda they planted it.

And she said, Pastor Mike, what was Noah's husband's name?

Oh, thank you, little girl. You know, thanks, Amanda. Noah was a man. But you know what, there are two

Noahs in the Bible. Noah in Genesis 6 -9, and there's another Noah who happens to be a female.

And so if you want to try to stump us, you can. I'm sure some of you have your 3G iPhones available to text things.

I saw my first iPad today while I was preaching. And they're looking at the ESV text while I was preaching, and I just want to make sure they don't alt -tab to ESPN while I'm preaching or something like that.

But technology is technology. And so we'll just try to answer your questions.

If kids have questions, they can answer those questions, too. Again, let's not try to stump the elder board.

But if you've got some interesting question, you can ask. Also, I want to make sure

I let you know as a congregation, while we want to preach with boldness and firmness and resoluteness, if you ever have a question about the

Bible, your soul, your wife's relationship with you, any kind of question that we can help you with,

I want to make sure that you can go to us and ask us anything. What do we believe? Why do we believe it? There's a difference between standing in the pulpit and preaching firmly and then being outside of the pulpit and being approachable.

We want to be approachable so you can ask us any question. So, any questions about that?

Why don't we have the guys come up? Let's grab a microphone or two, guys. I'll sit down there with you. Do you want to sit down here?

Do you want to stand up here? What's better? We'll sit down there. Okay. I have some of the questions now.

And maybe... Yeah, let's use those. I'll just keep my mic on.

Switch is on the bottom, guys. And maybe, Pradeep, we'll start off with a question. I'll come down here.

It feels like an ordination board or something. Can you guys see everyone?

All right. Let's ask Pradeep the hard one. In five words or less, explain the difference between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism.

Somebody emailed Pradeep, the elder board, and asked about the anointing found in 1 John. And so I'll let

Pradeep take that first one. We hear a lot of the word anointing. What does it mean? And Pradeep?

Okay, so the question was, in 1 John 2, if you want, you can turn there, 1

John 2, in verse 20, and in verse 27, there is the term anointing.

What does the word anointing mean? And it also says, in verse 27, but the anointing that you receive from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you.

So what is this anointing, and what does it mean that nobody needs to teach you anything?

I think the reason for the question, and I'll presume this, I think it's

Bob probably who asked the question. Is that right? I'm assuming that the context of the question has to do with the charismatic concept of anointing and teaching that comes.

So before we answer this, it's better for us to look at the context of the text in which this whole word anointing and the teaching comes here.

If you read verses 18 through 27, it's one of the tests for your faith, and it is a test of truth that a

Christian must have in order to be a believer. And in verse 19, John is writing to a church which has gone through a church split, much like what

Pastor Mike dealt with last week. And in this church, there were people who had gone out of the church, and they were now trying to come back and deceive the church by giving false teaching.

And John is writing to the faithful remnant who are still in the local body, and he says, he is actually teaching this local church by writing this letter, and he says, you have two things that you can rely on for the truth, and that's found in this passage.

One of them is the word that they had received. This is a church in the Ephesus area, probably planted by Paul.

You would see that in verse 24, let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.

So the word that you have, stick to it, don't depart from it like these people who have left. The second thing that you have is the anointing.

The word anointing comes from chrism, which is variously translated with different contexts.

Early on, you have the anointing by the oil, where you have the priest, you have the king, and then in Jesus Christ, you don't have oil, but you have the

Holy Spirit who anoints him. So the chrism, or I think the charismatics take that off, but it's talking about the

Holy Spirit, and the anointing that we get is from John 14, 16. It talks about the other helper whom

Christ says will come, and this helper will come and abide with you forever.

This is something that happens at the time of salvation. It is not something extra like some of the charismatics would say that happened at a later point in time that does some special teaching.

In fact, the separated church that went away were possibly influenced by the

Gnostics who had that kind of a concept that you have this special revelation or something from the outside, whereas the anointing that John is talking about here is the

Holy Spirit that every believer has and it has nothing to do with any supernatural, special, magical revelation.

And so the context of this passage should be always put the word and the spirit of God that every believer has as the means of attaining this truth.

And when it talks about you have no need that anyone should teach you, it is not saying that you don't need teachers.

The Bible is complete with passages talking about the role of pastors and teachers and the need in the local body for teachers.

But in this specific context, he is saying that you have already received everything that you need in the

Scriptures. That what you have received at the beginning, stay to it. And the spirit of God that is within you,

He will illuminate you with regards to what the truth is. So that is the context in which we want to study this passage.

Good, thanks Pradeep. You know, lots of times we have words and we just throw them out there.

Oh, that guy Sue, he is anointed preacher. When somebody says that to you, Pradeep, what do you usually say?

That guy has got the anointing. He is a super anointed preacher. They are not really talking about the context in 1

John. What are they trying to say? I think they are probably just saying he is a good speaker.

Because from a charismatic background, they would think that God is just speaking through that person.

And the right way to discern that would be, is he speaking the Bible? If he is, then I think that is true.

In your background being charismatic and being from India, do the Indian charismatics talk that way?

Oh, he is anointed? Yes, they do. And sadly, many a time what they would mean by that is, this person is very forceful and he is saying with the authority of God, not necessarily the content being what comes from God.

Yeah, I find that interesting, Pradeep, that if someone would say that is anointed preaching, and it is not even truthful preaching, it is not even deep preaching, they are saying the man's personality, style, delivery, that is anointed.

Similar to people if they say, well, I don't really like that slow lament song, that hymn you sang, but I really feel the

Holy Spirit in that song that has the drums and the bass guitar, and they don't understand how they feel the

Spirit. And so I use a similar analogy for that. Yeah, so the charisma is in the person and not in the actual chrism, which is the

Holy Spirit Himself. Which is a little bit different than 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 that we looked at this morning. Okay, next question.

Here is an interesting question that we got this week from email, and I am going to ask Pastor Dave to address this one.

By the way, when we ask a question, I hope you sit there and think, if I got asked that question, what would

I say? Somebody asked you, what is the anointing? What would you say? What would you say to this? What does

Satan look like? That was the email. What does Satan look like? Well, the answer is right here.

Pastor Steve drew the picture. You want to come up and take a look at it? And he used a red pen also.

What does Satan look like? Most folks would say fierce, ugly, horns, grotesque.

But actually, when you back and look at the description of Lucifer, of course he was good looking.

He could transform himself as an angel of light and his ministers as angels of light.

Good looking. It comes across as being someone or a person that could be received when you think of Satan and his ministers.

If you look in 1 Timothy 4, you'll see the characteristics of those, the tactics and the characteristics of those who would be in Satan's emissaries.

1 Timothy 4, beginning in verse 1.

I'm reading from the King James here. Now the spirit speaks expressly or explicitly that in the latter times, some shall fall away or depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits or deceitful spirits and doctrines of devils.

And this is basically his tactics, the wiles of the devil. The focus ought not to be what does he physically look like, but because we're in a spiritual warfare, right?

We're wrestling not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual beings. But what do they do?

What is his goal? Of course it's to deceive. It is to come, as Jesus said, to rob, to steal, to kill, to destroy.

Not to build up, not to give life, as Jesus came to give life, but just the opposite, to destroy men's souls, to attack, to divide in the church.

And how does that come here? Well, of course, it goes on and says, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron.

This is the description of those that are followers of Satan, tools of Satan and those that are using his means.

And we should not be, as it tells us in the Scripture, we should not be unaware of the wiles of the devil or the schemes of the devil.

He's going to come into the church forbidding things to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which

God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer.

So we see in this text here that the wiles are for deception and giving lies, making the truth appear, supposedly the truth that they're trying to bring, really it's a lie that's packaged as a truth so that people will be led astray.

Okay, next question. We get this all the time and so we might as well deal with it. If you had to pick the most popular question that's ever been asked for Q &A, ever here at Bethlehem Bible Church in the last 13 years, what do you think that question would be?

Steve Nelson? Pardon me? The Nephilim in Genesis 6 which is tied to what did

Jesus do while his body was on the cross before he was raised from the dead.

So that's the question, what did Jesus do? His body's on the cross, did Jesus die? Yes, he was dead, right?

He was killed, he gave up his own spirit, he died. What did he do between his death on Calvary and his resurrection on Sunday morning?

And you would go to what passage to find that out? Can we know? Do we know? Let's go to 1

Peter chapter 3 to take a quick look. I think 1 Peter 3 and Colossians 2 both give us a little hint.

What was Jesus doing while his body was on the cross? Certainly his spirit had not ceased, we like to think of death as somehow ceasing, but scripturally death would be more along the lines of a separation.

The father turns his back on the son for those three hours. On Calvary he's judging the elect's sin on Christ.

And then he dies later, Jesus dies. So what is happening in 1

Peter chapter 3? There's no light down here and so here comes the glasses, the first time ever

I think I have to do it. Christian Harris did a pretty good job when he was using glasses, don't you think? He just put them on, put them off, and I thought

I'm going to learn how that guy preaches with glasses on. He's very debonair the way he did it.

1 Peter chapter 3 verse 18, ESV, For Christ also suffered once for sins.

He's leading into this triumphant Christ, Christ as victor, as he's talking to the dear folks there who are scattered and who are getting persecuted.

The righteous for the unrighteous, that's pretty good substitutionary atonement language,

Jesus the righteous for us the unrighteous, for what purpose? That he might bring us to God.

So Jesus is dying for sins, notice it doesn't say his sins, was he dying for his sins? He wasn't suffering for his sins, it was for our sins, that he might bring us to God.

And then now we get to find a little hint of what was happening. Being put to death in the flesh, that is his flesh is in the state of being dead.

Would you agree that Jesus' body was dead on Calvary? Right, did he die? The answer is yes.

So his body is dead, but he, the eternal God, the I Am, who's always existed, did he cease to exist?

Has there ever been a time in the history of the world, history of creation, backwards to eternity past, or frontwards to eternity future, that Jesus ceased to exist?

Answer? No, he's always existed. And so his body is in the state of being put to death, and his spirit is alive.

So what did he go do? Well, it tells us verse 19, in which he went, his spirit went, not his body, his body was there, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.

I wonder what he proclaimed. Well, this is amazing. Some people think he went and evangelized people who were in a temporary holding hell kind of thing.

And they take that word proclaimed as the proclamation of good news. There is a word for that, by the way.

It's euangelion. It's to preach the good news. That's not this word. This word is like a herald, a preacher.

Thus saith the Lord. Hear ye, hear ye. This is news. It's not good news. It's just news.

Some people think that Jesus went and proclaimed this message to people who had died during the time of Noah's flood.

That's one of the interpretations. People died. You'll see the context if you just read on, just quickly.

People died in the day of Noah's flood. Everybody died except eight people. And now Jesus, in the spirit, he goes and preaches the gospel to them, the gospel of the second chance.

Does that sound right? No, it doesn't sound right. One of the things you can do with a passage like this that's difficult is say to yourself, let's figure out what it doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean here's good news. You get a second chance after you die. By the way, this is a very difficult passage.

Here's what Martin Luther said about the passage. I don't know what Peter means here. At least he was honest.

I have no idea what this means. So we know it's not preaching the gospel. It's a proclamation.

Jesus' body is dead. His spirit is alive. He goes to some kind of prison and he makes a proclamation.

Boy, that's interesting. Some people take this as Jesus was proclaiming the gospel in spirit through Noah in Genesis 6, 7, 8, and 9.

So it was Jesus' spirit that was used to help Noah proclaim this truth.

120 years and there's going to be a flood. I don't think that one's right either. So what happened?

Who are these spirits who were in prison? What is this town crier -like proclamation?

Well, let's take a look at verse 20. Because they formally did not obey, there are some spirits in prison who didn't obey.

That's why they're there. Well, when is that? When was that? When God's patience waited in the days of Noah.

Something was going on in Noah's days. These people did not obey. These things didn't obey.

These entities didn't obey. While the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

Jesus' body is dead. His spirit is alive. And he goes and preaches to these spirits.

And what do you think he says to these spirits? Repent and believe?

By the way, I think Edwards is right. If you could go to hell today, the temporary hell today, and say to people there, if you repent and believe, you can get out of this hell.

Would they repent and believe? The answer is they wouldn't repent and believe. Why? They'd want to get out of hell.

There are no masochists in hell. But they don't have it in their nature. They can't see the beauty of Christ.

They can't see the heinousness of sin. They hate the consequences of sin. But they don't have it in their nature to say,

I now love what I used to hate and hate what I used to love. They won't repent in hell. And by the way, that's why

I think hell keeps getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Because they're not honoring

Christ Jesus in hell. And so if you don't honor Christ Jesus, that's a sin. And the sins keep compounding and compounding and compounding throughout eternity.

So Jesus makes a proclamation. And here's what I think he proclaims. And then Steve's going to take over the difficult part.

Turn to Colossians chapter 2. This gives us one other insight on what he did. And I think here's what he did.

He said, You lose. I win. I'm alive. Substitutionary atonement has been accomplished.

And so Colossians chapter 2, there's this disarming language, this shaming language.

And so many think this helps us as we work through what happened to Jesus.

One thing's for sure, Jesus wasn't born again in hell like the Word, Faith, Heretics teach. That didn't happen.

He didn't need to be born again. He didn't need to go down to hell to suffer more because when

Jesus finished his substitutionary atonement on Calvary, he said, It is what? Finished. The debt's already been paid, so there's no other debt to pay.

He wasn't down there trying to get people, as the Roman Catholic Church teaches, out of some kind of limbo.

They're down there in limbo, and now I've got to get them out. He goes down to the spirits that Steve will address in just a moment and says,

I have triumphed over you. We don't know much, but Colossians chapter 2, verse 15.

Most scholars think this gives us a hint into what happened. He, Jesus, disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame.

This isn't a make example of. This is public shame, embarrassment. Here he's king, and he makes a display or an exhibit of them by triumphing over them.

And so that gives us a little hint on what happened back in the time when

Jesus was down preaching, that he was the king, that he was the victor, that he died and Satan could not stop him.

So who were these people, though? Who were these things, rather, that were down there that he preached to?

And that's why we have Pastor Steve here, because I got the easy part. Indeed.

Well, spirits, I was just, I was thinking back when I taught through this very difficult passage and just looking at the

ESV study notes and it does in fact say what I thought I remembered, which is the spirits, that term there is almost never applied to mere human beings, but it applies to supernatural beings.

And so the most logical understanding of that would be angels and or demons. But what

I'd like to do is to address the question fully and to go back to numbers, the book of Numbers chapter 13, because the question that actually came in, a little bit different, but we're going to get there by different means here, is how did the

Nephilim survive the flood? The Bible seems to indicate they should have died in the flood, yet they appear in Numbers 13, 33.

So they should have died, but here they are in Numbers chapter 13, verse 33.

And to do that, what I want to do first is read verses 25 to 33 and then we'll kind of take this apart a little bit.

Just to kind of set it up, Moses has received a command from the

Lord to send men to spy out the land of Canaan. They've been wandering around and now the men have gone into, wandering around the wilderness and now they've sent the men into the land and this is what the spies come back with at verse 25.

At the end of 40 days, they returned from spying out the land and they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh.

They brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land and they told them, we came to the land which you sent us.

It flows with milk and honey and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell on the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.

The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev. The Hittites, the Jebusites and the

Amorites dwell in the hill country and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the

Jordan. But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and occupy it for we are able to overcome it.

Then the men who had gone up with him said, we are not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we are.

So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land they had spied out saying, the land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people we saw in it are of great height and there we saw the

Nephilim, the sons of Anak who come from the Nephilim and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers and so we seem to them.

We are pathetic. We are little tiny people. We can never whoop up on those giants.

It is done. We are cooked. They have got fortified cities. They are ten times our height. We have no chance at all.

And of course the response to that is the people start rebelling and God judges them and only saves them based on the intervention of Moses.

But they just exaggerate. They don't want. They don't think they can win. In their hearts they have no faith in God.

They don't think they can win and so they just kind of ramp up this rhetoric about how miserable it is going to be.

Now this word Nephilim is kind of interesting. One man translates it this way. He says giants is mostly supported by the

Septuagint and that term may be quite misleading. The word may be of unknown origin and mean heroes or fierce warriors.

It comes from a verb meaning to fall. They caused other people to fall. They were tough. No doubt about it these

Nephilim. But the question was are these Nephilim, these so -called

Nephilim, which I don't believe were Nephilim at all, were they the same ones in Genesis 6? Did they somehow survive the flood?

So to answer that let's go back to Genesis 6. I would say they probably were scary looking guys but I don't really think they were the

Nephilim, not the same ones we see in Genesis 6. I'm going to read Genesis 6 verses 1 to 4. When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose.

Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever for he is flesh. His day shall be 120 years.

And here we go, the Nephilim. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Now, who are the

Nephilim? Several theories. One is that they were just mighty men, mighty warriors, who became involved with women and had some mighty sons.

One is that they were angels who left their proper abode and took on the form of men and reproduced with women.

Another, which is from John MacArthur, I think probably the right view, although it's difficult.

It's a difficult situation, but his view is that they are demon -possessed men who then reproduced with these women, who got married to these women and reproduced with them.

Ultimately, I mean, the question is, why would I believe that? Well, in part because of what

Pastor Mike read in 1 Peter 3 about these spirits being in prison.

It seems reasonable that these spirits in prison were those who fell in this way, who disobeyed

God in this way, and that he then cast them into that prison.

In fact, it says, I highlighted when I cut and pasted that, the spirits in prison.

Why? Verse 20, because they formerly did not obey. Also in 2

Peter 2 .4, listen to this, for if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

Listen, we know that there are demons who fell with Satan, who followed him, but they're not cast into hell and committed to chains.

They're not bound. They're in fact doing God's work and Satan's work, but I mean, they are trying to infect and impact the world that we live in.

Here's the kicker, is Jude 6 and 7, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, their proper dwelling place in the second heaven, as it were, in the presence, and even in the third heaven.

He has kept in eternal chains, notice the same language, under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as, verse 7, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued a natural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

So to link this all together, and as I said in class here a few weeks ago, this is kind of like a three -cushion bank shot in pool.

This is not some simple question, if it were, people probably wouldn't ask it over and over again.

But we can see from Jude that they violated where they were supposed to be, and they did it, why?

To conduct sexual immorality and to pursue unnatural desires. And so God placed a special punishment on them, just as He will

Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment. So, with all that said, here we have the

Nephilim, that I believe were these demon -possessed men, and God became greatly displeased.

How do we know that they didn't survive? And I have my note here somewhere. Oh, yeah. Genesis 7, 21 and 23, or 2, 23, talking about the results of the flood.

And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind.

Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils... Listen, there's nothing that escapes this. Everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died.

In the Hebrew mindset, that is the nephesh, that is the breath of life, and that is the creative energy of God, as it were, the energizing work of God that keeps, that separates a dead body from a live one.

It's that breath of life that He's talking about. And so in verse 22, it says, everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died.

And then He, God, blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heaven.

They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.

And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. So did they survive to numbers?

No. And I think that it was basically the desire of these men who were being disobedient to God, unfaithful to Him, in numbers.

They wanted to scare the people of Israel. They wanted to create a situation where the people did not want to follow

Moses and Joshua and Caleb. And so they said, listen, these guys are Nephilim. They're giants.

We're never going to beat them. They've got fortified cities. They would have gone, you know, they would have, if they could have known about technology, they would have said, they've got big tanks and artilleries.

I mean, they were just trying to build it up to discourage them from doing that. So anyway, with all that said...

Okay, that's good. So let's wrap it all the way around to 1 Peter 3. Some kind of hybrid race that the demons are trying to produce, either through direct contact with women when they have a body or demon -possessed bodies, to have some kind of unredeemable race that you would not have a substitute for.

If God was the God -man, why was Jesus the God -man? Because He had to die in our place.

A man dying for a man. He had infinite value to die for us because He was the God -man, but God dying for man as God was a man.

But if there's some kind of demon -hybrid race, unredeemable, and so God specially punishes those demons,

He puts them in a place called Tartarus, a place of hell, and He keeps them there until the end.

Jesus goes and says, what you tried to do was not accomplished. I have had victory over you.

All right. Now, questions from the congregation. We have other questions. Kind of softball, lowball questions, things maybe we want to talk about.

What... Oh, something like that. Okay. Who has a question?

Yes, Erickson. Pastor Steve.

Pastor Dave. Pastor Dave. All right.

One of you guys want to take it? One of you guys with the MacArthur Study Bible? It's the funniest thing while one of these guys is looking up the passage.

Was it Revelation 12? You have to have a verse or something. You know that one verse in the

Bible about the dragon. You know, what does that really mean? I'm always... The best thing to do is to find the passage and look and read it when you're going to answer a question like that.

Is it 12? Yeah, 12. One time, MacArthur was asked a question at a shepherds conference about a Bible doctrine and he said, well,

I don't really know the answer so let me open up the MacArthur Study Bible and read what I wrote. And then he read it and he said, that sounds like a pretty good answer.

Well, Erickson, when we're Scripture silent, I'm silent. Sorry. It's Revelation 12, 13 when it says, and when the dragon saw that he had been thrown to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.

Is that... But the woman was given two wings of the great eagle.

I don't know. I don't know. It's pretty tough without a reference. I don't know who's rescued.

You, Erickson, or me. And the dragon became furious and the woman and the woman went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

And he stood on the sand of the sea. So, what's your question? Well, I guess it depends if you're

Amil or Premil. Here's what we'll do.

I don't really like... Sorry to use this language. I don't really like to run my mouth when I'm not super confident. So, at the risk of running my mouth, we'll just get you the answer and then

I'll preach instead of run. How's that? All right. Next question. See, it's not that hard to stump us.

Simon. Okay, next question.

The harmony of the gospels according to the harmony of Samuel and Kings. See, you know, here's a big problem.

Questions and answers in front of illiterate congregations are as easy as pie. Are you saved by works?

But then, all of a sudden, on Sunday night with you guys, this is going to be hard. I'm sweating already.

Okay, Simon. Okay, I think

I know the answer to that one. But, Pradeep or Dave, would you want to take that? No, please, you first.

And, Christian charity, be my guest. Simon's got a point.

Here's the point. God is unchanging, yes? He's an unchanging God. And, His character never changes.

His attributes, His perfections, His moral quality never changes. But, you'll see in the Bible, sometimes, it seems like an extra heavy dose of grace.

Other times, an extra heavy dose of judgment, our wrath. the answer, really,

I think, Simon, and I want you to rephrase your question in just a second. But, the only way we can see how

God deals with people is found in the Scripture. And, there doesn't seem to be a pattern. Sometimes, for instance, with the kings, they're under a theocracy.

They're underneath God. And, God is more short -fused than long -fused when

He might deal with other people. And, even the pagans. And, He will judge His people, I think, in the New Testament.

Judgment starts with the house of God. Many times, and I know you already know this, but we have to reframe the question when we think about God and justice.

Why does God do this and He doesn't do that when we should say to ourselves the question, every king, the first time they sinned, they should have got wiped out.

They should have been obliterated. That's why, occasionally, you'll see the punctuation points in the Bible. Leviticus 10,

Nadab and Abihu. Remember Nadab and Abihu? Offering false fire. Maybe showing some of their private areas of their body that they shouldn't.

Maybe they're getting drunk. Maybe a little bit of both. And, God, what does He do? The fire comes down out of heaven.

And, His Father's told you better be quiet. And so, why doesn't that happen more? You know, it's kind of like us.

When I grew up, I'd say to myself, you know, if I don't confess all my sins, what if I die in my sleep and I don't have all my sins confessed?

Well, you could stay up for 5 ,000 hours and never confess them all because we all have sin. And so, I'm sure

God could have killed all the priests, but then there would have been no priests. And so, why did

God seemingly deal out harsher judgment on some than others? Well, sometimes, Simon, I think the answer is, we only see a snippet of their life.

And if you think, for instance, of Samson, is it true or false? Samson's in heaven. True. True.

How do we know that? Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11. Boy, that's a strange thing to think of. Samson in Judges, what is it, 14 through 16?

13 to 16. That here he is, a horrible, scoundrel, sinner. And yet, the part of his life that we see, here's my point, is mainly the sinning part.

We don't really get to see a big snapshot, a big panorama of his faith like maybe we see with Paul.

And so, some of these kings, we just see a little bit of their dastardly deeds and God judges them.

Other times, there's this guy that God didn't really judge because many of the years that he did good in the sight of God aren't even recorded except as, he did good in the sight of God.

And so, this all gets back to the nature and character of God. God is by nature a God who chooses and a

God who chooses based on his own free will. If you could take the veil and pull back the veil of God that somehow surrounds him, and you could hypothetically do this, what attribute would you see at the center?

I'll tell you what society says. You'd see love, grace, compassion.

When Moses said, I want to see who you are, show me who you are, in Exodus chapter 3, the veil is pulled back and what does

God show Moses? Answer, why don't we just quickly go there.

I almost preached this passage this morning, so I'll try not to preach it tonight. I told the guys, let's try to do five minute answers or in Erickson's case, five second answers.

We should have something you can't ask questions on Revelation without sending them in.

All right. The elders, we don't use Robert Rules of Order unless we want to. Can I get a second?

Second. All right, good. Exodus chapter 33. Now remember, here's what's going on.

Moses is up getting the testimony of God about the ark, about the tent, about all these holy things and what are the people doing down below?

We want to have a God lead us into the promised land, so they make this golden calf.

The sin and the blasphemy, literally an orgy is going on down on earth and here's the holy mountain with the holy

God giving holy instructions to Moses and Moses says, I need help leading this kind of people into the land.

Show me yourself. I need another glimpse of who you are. I've seen your glory in the past and I want to see your glory now.

Exodus chapter 33 and he says in verse, let's pick it up in verse 14.

My presence will go with you and I will give you rest. Sounds just like Jesus, doesn't it? Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

And he said to him, If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight and I your people?

Exodus 33, 16. Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct, I and your people from every other people on the face of the earth?

You've got to lead us into the land. I need your help, Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, This very thing that you have spoken,

I will do. For you have found favor in my sight and I know you by name. Moses said,

Please show me your glory. So what do you think he shows? Society today would say,

And God showed him his love. God showed that he was some kind of George Burns God.

Some kind of Grandpa God. And he said, Verse 19,

I'll make all my goodness pass before you. What do you mean my goodness? Is there badness in God?

No, I'll show you my person. I'll show you my character. You want to see who I am? I'll show you who

I am. I'll have all my goodness pass before you. That is, And I will proclaim before you my name, the

Lord. What do you see when you see the inner recesses of God? You see a

God who chooses based on his own free will, the sovereign hand of God. I will be gracious to whom

I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 3 ,000 people got killed because they made the calf.

God could have killed them all. Only 3 ,000 were killed. And God said, If I want to show mercy, that's my nature.

I show mercy. And then he picks it up. Paul does in Romans chapter 9, doesn't he? Talking about who goes to heaven and who doesn't.

Jacob I have loved. Esau have I hated. Who talks that way, Paul says. Who is like that?

And then Paul quotes Exodus to say, God does that because that's the nature of God. That's how

God does things. Sometimes he's pleased to do this. Sometimes he's pleased to do that. What's the answer for most things in life?

Because it pleased the Lord to do it. And so for Simon's question, which is a good question, there's not really a pattern for things.

You just see these punctuation points where God says, This is what I'm pleased to do. We all deserve hell, but occasionally there is mercy and there is grace.

Yeah, sure. What's part of that, Simon, maybe the idea of a generational curse? And does he continue to do that?

You know, I think in the Old Testament, you know, where we would see sins passed on to fathers in the second generation or however many generations, the idea was the whole community lived together and families lived together.

So, you know, grandpa would be in the tent. And so if grandpa slept with somebody else, and that would impact the entire family, not just, you know, all the way down through the generations, not just grandpa.

In the New Testament, you know, are there still sins that can have that kind of impact?

I think there are. Are they necessarily God's judgment? I mean, if your father or mother is involved in drugs or alcohol or something like that, that can have an impact on a child.

That's just a reality of life. That's not, you know, any biblical kind of thus saith the

Lord. But, you know, God judges each man according to what? Ultimately, what he does with Christ, but, you know, would say his works, meaning whether he received

Christ or did not. So the idea that somehow we would be held accountable or would receive some kind of judgment for what our fathers or grandfathers or whatever did,

I don't think that's a biblical concept. And if I can just add a couple of things,

I think in Deuteronomy 5, 9, and 10, the generational curse and the blessing is listed, you know, four or five generations you will see, and then thousands of generations to those whom he gives his love.

And as Pastor Mike mentioned, ultimately, it's a sovereignty of God in terms of what

God chooses to do. And in the Old Testament, especially in the life of Israel, the national

Israel and the families like Pastor Steve was saying closely together versus in the New Testament where I think we see a little bit more individual handling.

I think what you want to distinguish there is the society and the structures that were laid rather than the

Lord's handling of each person. Because I think I was reading through the same sections.

It's either in 2 Kings or in 1 Chronicles where the kings had to decide between the iniquity of one person and his sons.

And how do you judge in this manner? And the king looks into the Lord's law and he says,

No, you ought not to punish the son for the king and for the father's sins.

But what Pastor Steve mentioned even in our world today,

I don't know who this is. Maybe one of you know, Jonathan Edwards and someone else, they tried to trace his descendants and just to see what the legacy was of these men.

And just the rich life that Edwards lived in the Lord and how the

Lord blessed his descendants in various ways. I don't know who the other person was. Yeah.

And so there is some just natural consequence to a life of sin.

But in terms of the Lord's favor, he is sovereign and every man is judged for his own actions.

Sure, absolutely. When it comes to Scripture, it's always been puzzling when we read the

Scripture many times like that, Simon, when you read in there, you say, wow, this person, Uzzah reaches out his hand to just stable the cart and he's gone.

But sometimes you look at the life of David and you say, boy, he really got away with a whole lot more. We can't put

God in a box. When we read the Scripture, we have to take it, as Mike said, it's not all there. Even in the

Gospels, it said, if all the things that were, that Jesus had done could be written, the world could not contain the volumes.

We don't have all of it. We'll get it all later. But certainly when it comes to sin in a family and it comes to the consequences of those sins, whether it's in a person's lifetime or not, be sure their sin will find them out and they will be judged accordingly.

One day, they'll stand before God and, of course, they'll have to deal and that sin will be dealt with.

It's very important for us as we come to the Scripture to realize we don't have the whole story, but what we do have, we bow before it, we thank

God for it, we don't try to put them in a box and we worship Him and we serve Him based upon the truth that He's revealed to us in the

Word. Okay, time's ticking. Just a quick comment on Jesse James. You know Jesse James, the gunslinger?

Jesse James was a murderer and the deacons of the church and the leadership of the church that he was at, and this is documented, wanted to church discipline him and kick him out.

But they were afraid that if they did, he'd come by and kill him. And so they didn't do it.

But Jesse James knew what the Bible taught and so he rode his horse to the church and asked them to take his name off the membership rules because he wasn't a

Christian. Interesting. Okay, we want to talk about communion and I want to have

Dave give an update on kind of what's going on with the building. We can have a little humor,

I guess, tonight. What does Selah mean? When you see it in the Psalms or that one time in Habakkuk, what does

Selah mean? S -E -L -A -H It's hard to know. Pause, the root word is.

Dwight Pentecost used to say stop and let that sink in. Because remember, these are songs.

Maybe it was a refrain. And then I learned one this week. It's what David said when he broke a guitar string.

So I didn't know if that was biblical or not. Selah. You know, it's time to stop and I've got to put a new guitar string on.

Is that biblical? Not in the version I have. Okay.

What we'll do with the remaining time, Dave, just for a moment or two, address communion because I don't think it needs to be addressed that much.

And then tell us what's happening with the building and what we should expect in the future. Sure. The question came in about communion.

Could we possibly have communion during the morning AM service because there's some folks that just can't stay for the day and we as elders have been shooting some emails around.

And we've been aware of this. And what we're going to do, at least on a trial basis, is starting in the third quarter of the year for the first Sunday of every quarter, for the first Sunday of every month,

I think we talked about, right? First Sunday of the quarter. The first Sunday of every quarter will be during the

AM service we'll have communion. And at least try to start there and that will help the body. As far as the building,

I did give an announcement last week. We have a committee of men that are getting together to pray, to research, to consider the issue of outgrowing this building.

Of course, it's a good problem that we have. It's just great to see what the

Lord is doing in that. As Pastor Mike was preaching this morning, I remember a friend of mine wrote a tract many years ago and it was called

The Gimmick Gospel. And basically what it was is just doing all kinds of things just to get people in the church. Taping a $5 bill underneath the bus seats when bus ministries were big just to get a bunch of kids to come to the church.

But the Lord has not put that upon our heart and we want to be obedient to the word, preaching the word.

So the building is being filled and that is a good thing. So there's men together, getting together to talk about this and really what we're considering are what are our options?

What can we do? And if you think about it, there's not a whole lot of them. We could do nothing and that won't make the problem go away.

We could allow for more seating, possibly in the building, like we did the Flip, to allow more seats in the back.

There's another opportunity for the IBS room upstairs, the big room, to be outfitted with a flat screen and the audio visual and have people sit up there.

Not the greatest option but it's one that's doable which could give us seating for about 40 or 45 more people.

Another option would be to totally on a Sunday morning just to rent another building, have our Sunday morning there and do everything else here or the other option is to sell this building, look for another piece of property elsewhere whether it's a building that we can refurbish, a piece of property and build upon that.

And what the committee is going to do is by the middle of June get recommendations to the

Elder Board and say this is what the options are, here's the pros and cons and here's the one that we believe would be the best recommendation.

As a church body, we just ask you to keep praying about this. As a matter of fact, some of the recent developments are of course you knew that about a week and a half ago the town of West Boylston needs municipal buildings because the buildings that they had at Mixter School have been condemned because they're just in really bad shape.

They're renting for $10 ,000 a month. They've done that for three years. They spent $360 ,000 already and they're looking for a building.

We have offered our building for them to consider. They came in and toured the building and now they're touring other buildings and they will consider whether or not to purchase our building.

So that's a matter of prayer that we could set before you that you could ask the Lord to direct in that way, give us favor in their eyes if this is the building that would suit their needs and we believe that it would.

And along those lines too, we just had another little recent development is that we did a commercial appraisal of this building and we were thinking early on,

I think if all of us would think of a figure, we were thinking that it might come in probably less than a million dollars.

Well, it came in with the, the study was done with three different directions and all of those calculations came to about $1 .3,

$1 .4 million which is much, much better than what we had thought and if the Lord would allow this building to be sold for that much or more, the

Lord could do that, that would provide the needs that we have to go forward. We're going to take methodical good steps towards and right steps to do the right thing when it comes to the new building that we need.

But your part would be to give us input, give Scott Goddard input, he's heading the committee, and to certainly pray about this.

It's very, very exciting to think that if we could, we're just preaching the word of God, preaching the gospel,

Christ is building his church and it's not gimmicks, we're not manipulating this and it's wonderful to come in and see, like this morning, wasn't it great?

All the new faces that were here, I mean, I look around and say, who's that person? This is great to see what the

Lord's doing. Dottie has a question and so you know what?

I was going to close in prayer, but if Dottie can come to a Sunday night service and she has a question,

I'm going to take the question from Dottie and if it takes me an hour to answer it, Dottie, I will. If you go to the book of Revelation, I still love you.

Okay. I'll believe that. My guess is, my telepathy says you're going to ask about verses 20 and 21.

Well, one of the things that we can do often, Dottie, is we reread and make things too complicated and that is an error in Bible theologians.

The good news is, I know you're going to still love me if I disagree with you, I think the text, when he was in the state of being dead physically and alive spiritually and he went somewhere and so even if you look,

Dottie, it says he went somewhere, so where did he go? He went and preached a message to spirits that were in prison and so like Steve said, spirits aren't usually used of the word of people.

Where's this prison? The prison wouldn't be on earth and so Jesus went someplace to preach and so he went someplace to preach a message to proclaim something.

Not preaching like evangelism, but a proclamation. So, yes.

So you know what? If I was trying to compound the problem, Dottie, this morning the man who asked me this question, he said,

I just can't get my arms around this and I said, okay, well then why don't I make it harder for you? When the person said, when

Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you'll be with me in paradise, what does that mean? Does that mean

Jesus, his spirit now goes to heaven first to escort the person? What is that thing on the ceiling?

Some kind of stick bug or something? What is it? It's an

I want to buy product. I want to buy product. So, here's what

I do. Jesus went someplace to make a proclamation and so if Jesus went there to go take the thief on the cross to heaven first, then that's fine.

If I can't think of some kind of spatial, three dimension, X, Y and Z axes because of this, then that's fine too.

No scholar that I know of has made a good point on where did Jesus take him? And did Jesus go with the man?

I can't think and look at the same time. What are you saying? Well, I'm just going to say... Oh. Well, he is omnipresent.

When Jesus is in his body now, people say, well, Jesus came and talked to me. I kind of wonder how he would do that when

Jesus is at the right hand of God making intercession. Jesus is omnipresent yet he is incarnate.

He is incarcerated as it were in a body by his own will, by the Father's will, by the Spirit's will. And so, is

Jesus omnipresent now that he has no body, that he can go make the proclamation? So, I believe both are true.

He made a proclamation and he did take that man to paradise. Yes. You can add whatever you like.

Dottie, we are still friends, right? Yeah. Good. And you know what? This may shock you, but Kim and I don't agree on everything either theologically.

And she still puts up with me and loves me. And so, what we are not after at this church is agreement on every little minor detail.

Dottie and I agree that Jesus is great. He is a wonderful Savior. We are sinners. We are all in process.

And so, I don't say that because I am standing Dottie down. I am just saying this is your view,

Dottie, and this is mine and we still love each other. And so, until that changes, Dottie, you have to let me know.

By the way, in general, if you are bugged at me or one of the other elders, you either have to cover it or you need to come and talk to us.

I assume we are in good stead until you come and talk to me. I have been holding that against you,

Mike, for all those years. Well, I didn't even know. When I shake your hand and smile at you, you shake my hand too.

And so, if you see Dottie and I talking over here tonight, we are just loving each other is what we are doing.

Dave. I was just going to say this. You know, with a lot of these difficult passages, when you go to the different commentaries, there are great theologians that don't even agree that are way beyond me, of course.

But, just practically speaking, in this text, I'm not trying to minimize the question that was originally asked by the gentleman who asked it.

It's good to be able to try to understand where did Jesus go? Because it does say he went someplace and preached to spirits in prison.

But if you go back, if you want to be practical and kind of raise it up to the context, this piece of this scripture here is housed all within this whole book of Peter of Christians living in suffering, times of suffering.

And it's saying here that, I guess, just a two -pronged approach, Jesus suffered at the hand of the

Father and because of that was victorious. And he went and he preached this victory.

I think maybe, Pastor Mike, this is where your mother's favorite hymn probably came from. I think so,

Victory in Jesus. Yeah, right here in this text. And when it comes to the

Christian life, the path to spiritual victory is through suffering.

And that's what Peter's trying to teach. And we kind of get into these other, these sub -phrases sometimes.

We get all caught up and it's good to understand it. But let's not forget the bigger picture. The bigger picture of this book is that as Christ suffered, we can have the same mind and we suffer.

And through the suffering that God ordains for our life, there's spiritual victory that's yielded in that.

And we're victorious, of course, in Jesus Christ. I just wanted to throw that out so we don't lose sight of that.

By the way, that was a good demonstration of why you need a plurality of elders. Right?

Even tonight with all four of us. Nobody knows everything. We all cover each other's weaknesses.

And amplify strengths. Okay. Well, good. That was interesting.

Steve Nelson? Is it a quick one? What was your question? I'm just curious. All right.

Well, the comment is, and you'll smile when you go, that's typical Avendroth, because it pleased God to have a long fuse with David.

Because he loved David and he had chosen David. But it's interesting, true or false, David could be a

New Testament elder. He could be an

Israelite king, but he could not be a New Testament elder. And so, David sinned, yet God loved him, not because of the sin, but because he had chosen him.

In Psalm 32, David did not have his iniquities counted against him, because a greater

David was going to come and he bore David's sin. And so, you see these saints in the

Bible and they show their sinful nature, even as redeemed saints.

Okay. Why don't we stand? Thank you for coming tonight. Let's sing a final hymn. Pastor Dave, do you want to lead us in some song, some doxology, something like that, anything?

What did you say? Hallelujah Chorus, yes. Yeah, let's sing

Victory in Jesus. I think it's 473, is that right? 473, Victory in Jesus.