WWUTT 1185 Q&A Good Friday, Cup of Wrath, Fear of God, Jesus Topics, Study Bibles?

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Why do we call today Good Friday if Jesus was crucified on this day? What was in the cup

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Jesus was asking the Father would pass from Him? And can we know anything if we don't have the fear of God?

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The answer is when we understand the text. Happy Good Friday to you and your family from When We Understand The Text, an online

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Bible ministry committed to the sound teaching of the Word of Christ. Be sure to tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt

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.com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. Well, this is, as you mentioned,

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Good Friday, and so we're going to start going through our lesson today.

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We're going to open up the Scriptures and begin with a Good Friday lesson, so this going along with what we've been doing on the podcast thus far.

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Uh -huh, wonderful. So we started with Monday, well, we started with Palm Sunday was my triumphal entry message last week.

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Uh -huh. And then Monday was Jesus cursing the fig tree. Yes, earlier. What did I say?

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You said last week. Last week, last weekend. Okay. The previous weekend. Sure. Then we had

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Olive Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, or Spy Wednesday, talked about the

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Last Supper yesterday. So today we're at Good Friday where Jesus was crucified on this day.

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Yes. And we call it good because of what Christ did for us.

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Amen. Yes. We are justified before the Father for all who have faith in Him. Yes. So it's, that's why we call it good.

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It is good for us. Certainly a horrible thing that the Son had to be crucified for this, but that shows us the gravity of our sin, the seriousness of what we had done, that it would take the sacrifice of the

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Son of God to atone for our transgressions, and also a demonstration of the love of the

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Father for us. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That He did not leave us dead in our sins, but that He gave

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His own Son to die for us, that all who believe in Him will have everlasting life. So we come to the

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Good Friday story, Jesus' crucifixion in Matthew 26. I actually want to go back.

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This still may qualify as Friday because, of course, it was very, very late.

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It was after the supper was over, Jesus and His disciples went out to the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus prays there in the

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Garden. And it says in verse 36, Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples,

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Sit here while I go over there and pray. And taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful and troubled.

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And then He said to them, My soul is very sorrowful even to death. Remain here and watch with me.

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So if you've ever felt grief over a situation before, and you have even wondered in that grief, am

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I being unchristian because I am mourning in my spirit?

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Am I not trusting God because I'm so sad? Understand that Jesus experienced this grief.

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So as it says in Hebrews, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but became like His brothers in every way, yet was without sin.

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So Jesus experienced grief, and in fact, experienced a grief unlike we will ever experience if we are in Christ.

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True. Yeah. Yep. That's all I got. You look like you wanted to add more.

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No. Okay. No. Every time I try to add more, you have covered it. So we're good. We're on the same page.

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Good deal. Yeah. So the Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 1, is a verse we've brought up,

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I think, the last several Fridays, actually, because of the way things are going in the world right now, where he said that we felt like we had received the sentence of death, but this was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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Right. And this is what we see, of course, in our Savior, in Christ Jesus. So going on a little farther, this is

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Matthew 26, 39, he fell on his face and he prayed, saying, my

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Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

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And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, so could you not watch with me one hour?

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Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

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Again for the second time, he went away and prayed, my Father, if this cannot pass, unless I drink it, your will be done.

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And again, he came and found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.

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Then he came to the disciples and said to them, sleep and take your rest later on. See the hour is at hand, and the

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Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going, see my betrayer is at hand.

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Something that I experienced when I was growing up in youth group and the churches that I attended, and this may have been similar for you as well.

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Whenever we would get around close to Easter, it was always somebody that was going to present to us some sort of,

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I don't know, scientific, biological explanation or something like that of crucifixion. Like this is what

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Jesus went through when he was crucified on the cross. Here's why it hurts so much. Oh, yeah, yeah.

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Here's what is incredibly excruciating, which is a word that comes from crucifixion.

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It means out of the cross. Here's what's so excruciating about crucifixion. And then they give you like the gruesome, gory details.

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Right. I remember that speech. You ever had that before? In fact, there was even one,

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I was in high school. There was even one year they played a video of Dawson McAllister.

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You may not remember who Dawson McAllister was. No. I used to listen to his call -in show all the time. In fact, one of my earliest responsibilities when

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I was in Christian radio was to sit in a studio on a Sunday night and catch all the commercial breaks on Dawson McAllister.

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Oh, okay. So he would hit a commercial break and I'd just have to hit the button to make sure our commercials played instead of his.

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Right. Because more local. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Right. So it was, this was in the days of, things weren't as automated back then.

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A little more difficult. I was 14 or 15 years old. That was what I got paid for, sitting in the studio to press a button every 10 minutes.

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It was - Hey, it worked. Pretty easy work. Yeah. But anyway, that's Dawson McAllister.

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So I remember his call -in show from that. I always had to listen to the show while I did that, flipping things back and forth. So there was a, one year, one

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Easter, my youth leaders played a video from Dawson McAllister when he had done, you know, one of his events or gather.

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We had him come speak a few times as well as part of the Christian radio station that I was working for.

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We had like youth gatherings and Dawson McAllister would come speak. Okay. Anyway, they played a video with one of his gatherings with a bunch of youth and he's explaining to them crucifixion.

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What it is, how painful it is, where the nails go in, what it's like hanging on the cross, what happens to the human body when it's there.

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And all of this is being given to us and explaining to us, I guess, to strike fear into us, to help us understand what

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Jesus went through so we don't have to go through. To be honest with you, I don't ever really remember a gospel presentation in any of that.

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I was told along the lines of, I mean, I'm not quoting because it's been so long, but that's the gravity of our sin.

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He had to go through all that in order to pay our sins.

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Yeah. Pay our debt. Pay our debt. So this is what we deserved and Jesus took that for us. Yeah. More or less.

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It wasn't spelled out that clearly because, I mean, I still didn't understand, but it could have just been

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I wasn't saved yet, too, so I just didn't understand. But I do remember hearing that that was how bad our sins were and why it had to be so severe.

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Yes. Of course, the presentation there or the understanding there being that Jesus is God and he's letting himself be crucified by those persons that he created.

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His own creation is killing him. Right. So he gave his own life.

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He's the one who laid his life down, said it to the Pharisees, I have the authority to lay down my life and the authority to take it back up again.

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So he's doing this for us. Of course, that's not really explained. I don't remember that explanation being there whenever we were watching these kinds of presentations.

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I guess. Yeah, I don't remember that part. It's almost like we were just expected to be heartbroken over the fact that Jesus died for us.

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And he suffered so much. And this is, yeah, this is the suffering that he went through and he's God and did this. So we deserve this, but he did not.

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He's perfect, sinless, gave himself up to do this. But yet I'm still listening to this presentation and I'm going,

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I don't really understand. Okay. I mean, I know that crucifixion was a painful thing.

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I don't know that I needed the gruesome details to get that. I know, right? I can't get it out of my head. But I still was left not understanding why am

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I being told this every Easter? Why am I constantly being reminded? I wasn't told that very often.

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So I'm trying to remember when I was told that. It wasn't always the same group of people. It was somebody else was telling me the story.

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But it wasn't like every year we went through that scenario in some way, shape or form.

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It had to be more recent, but I don't remember when. There was even a point in my life later as I was getting older,

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I didn't start to question these things. But when I started making friends with people in college who had been secular their entire lives or maybe they had gone to Sunday school when they were little kids, but haven't been in years.

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And they start presenting to me their doubts and the things that they did not find convincing about Christianity.

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And some of the things that they would say, I remember one of the arguments from one guy in particular, he said to me, you know,

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I was always told to me how much Jesus had to suffer for me. But I had a relative who had cancer and suffered with that for years.

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Jesus suffered on a cross for three hours counting getting beat beating, you know, it was maybe 12 hours.

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So how is what he went through worse than what my relative went through when they were struggling with cancer for like a decade.

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And that was for me at that at that particular juncture, that was a pretty decent argument.

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Like it's not a good argument, but at that time, I'm going, I don't know how to respond to this. Now, I didn't have doubts.

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I had no doubts in my heart about the truthfulness of Christianity. But how do you reply to that? But how do you respond to that?

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Right. Because I was being brought up the same way. I was hearing these presentations in Sunday school and youth group and some of the church gatherings that I would go to explaining the suffering that Jesus went through and not really understanding why

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I was being told that. Because the Bible doesn't even give those kinds of gruesome details. True.

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I mean, we know, we know what was happening, right? And being nailed to a cross, pierced through his hands and his feet, hanging there for three hours.

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Yeah. Being beat before then having a crown of thorns on his head. I mean, we know it was it was a horrible, horrible thing without going now through a biology lesson on what happens to the human body.

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No, I know. I'm not going to do that either. I don't need it again. Right. It's just we're being told things that it's good historical background,

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I suppose. But I just don't understand how this adds to the story that I can already read in Scripture. And when

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I'm getting brought up that way, it wasn't so much my parents. It was, you know, the youth groups and the churches that I went to, right.

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And when I'm being brought up that way, and then I encounter a friend who's saying, I've had relatives that have suffered more than that.

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How do you respond to that? How do you come back to that and then say, well, you've missed the point because I didn't get the point either.

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I didn't get the point of why I was getting a biology lesson on all of that. I bring that up because a turning point for me was studying

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Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. So how was it that I came to understand

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Jesus suffering as being greater than any other human suffering? It's because of what he prayed in the

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Garden of Gethsemane. He said to the father, he tells the disciples, wait here.

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He goes a little farther. He falls on his face and he prays saying, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

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And I remember at one point reading that and thinking, what is this cup that he's talking about?

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Am I sure I know what that means? I mean, was it the cup of the

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Lord's Supper? Because that's what was just, you know, two paragraphs before Jesus doing the

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Lord's Supper with his disciples. I had never considered that one. This is the cup of the new covenant, my blood that is spilled for the forgiveness of sins.

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You know, I've always been taught to read things in context. Well, that's the closest reference to a cup. Okay. So is the cup that he's saying, let this pass from me, the cup of his blood that he was just giving to his disciples?

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Well, if that's the case, then he's asking the father that he not have to die.

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You know, that's what I'm thinking through as I'm reading this. He knows that he has to die.

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He's grieving over having to die. His disciples will die. And we get a different reaction from them in the book of Acts than we get from Jesus.

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Jesus is filled with sorrow. He's falling on his face. He's crying out to God saying, if this is possible, let this pass from me.

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But when we see the disciples getting persecuted in the book of Acts, they're praising God for being persecuted and possibly even put to death.

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See, I'm just kind of working with you. What was going on in my mind when I was working through this stuff? Right. So what's the difference here?

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Why is it that Jesus is seeming to wimp out? I'm going to be very careful the way that I put it.

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Yeah. Because that's not what was happening, but that's what it's looking like in my mind. Why does it look like Jesus is wimping out?

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Yeah. Because we always try to put ourselves in Jesus's place. And that's just not possible.

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I mean, we can't ever imagine what it would be like to be him. Yes. Not ever. Especially what he went through on the cross in taking our sins upon himself.

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Being made a sacrifice for us. Even if you were to crucify yourself, you still wouldn't have any idea what it was that Jesus went through on the cross, which is the beauty of that sacrifice for us.

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Right. What he took for us as a demonstration of his love. That's where people tend to go wrong and totally misunderstand the passage, is because they put themselves there.

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Yeah, that's right. And that's kind of what it felt like when I'm listening to these explanations of the gruesomeness of crucifixion.

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Yeah. Because it's like, okay, so this is what any person would experience if they were being crucified.

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True. Yeah. Jesus is mourning over this. Peter received this later on, only he was crucified upside down.

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Yeah. That was probably more painful. Yeah. So why is it that Jesus is grieving over what he has to do, whereas the rest of the disciples, when they were persecuted for the gospel, they rejoiced in it.

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They rejoiced in being counted worthy to suffer persecution for the name of Christ. Why the difference in the reactions there?

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So that's what I was noticing as I was reading this. What were you going to say? Oh, no, I was just going to reiterate the fact that you had said that Jesus appears to be wimping out.

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That's because that would be our human response. That's our human response. Right. But it wasn't his human response.

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So carry on. Okay. So then, again, I'm coming back to the cup here. Yes. So what is this cup that he's asking to pass from him?

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It can't be his death. Right. If he is really grieving over this, grieving so much that he's sweating drops of blood.

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So it can't be about what he's about to go through physically. Right. Because there are other people who are about to face grievous things, and they don't enter in such a stressful state that they sweat drops of blood.

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Right. So why is this Jesus reaction? Why is this causing him such anxiety?

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And he's asking the father that if it's possible, if there's any other way, can we do that?

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Can there be any other way? But I'm not doing this according to my will. I am submitting to the will of the father.

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So and I don't even remember when this happened later, because it wasn't the first time that I was sitting down and kind of pouring over these passages and trying to understand

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Easter story, Jesus suffering. Why was it so great? Why was it greater than anything else that we will ever go through?

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Why was this sacrifice so full of love? And somewhere in there,

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I came into Psalm 75. Now, I want to say that this was even after I had finished college, so I wasn't in college anymore.

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I wasn't responding to my secular friends anymore on the things that they didn't believe. It was still just part of my own biblical studies.

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So I come into Psalm 75, where it says in verse eight, for in the hand of the

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Lord, there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

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And there's a reference to the wrath of God being poured out, poured a pouring of the wrath of God in the book of Revelation.

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And there are references to the cup of God's wrath in the Old Testament in Jeremiah 25.

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Thus, the Lord, the God of Israel said to me, take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath and make all the nations to whom

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I send you drink it. And there's a reference to that passage in Revelation, that all the nations will drink the cup of God's wrath.

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Revelation 14, 10, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb.

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Revelation 16, 19, the great city was split into three parts and the cities of the nations fell. And God remembered

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Babylon the great to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.

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And it was when I started seeing these passages and I'm putting it together and I'm like, the cup of God's wrath, the wine cup of his wrath that Jesus did not want to drink, that he dreaded drinking.

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This was the cup that he was asking, let this pass from me. And suddenly it just all started clicking for me.

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So when you're hearing these messages. Yeah, I definitely don't want God's wrath. Yeah, that's right. And suddenly the greatness of what

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Jesus did for me on the cross becomes that much more glorious and that much more heart -wrenching that this was the sacrifice that was paid for me.

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Not that Jesus went and got beat up for a few hours so that I don't have to get beat up for a few hours.

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I might experience a longer period of suffering in my body than he did.

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But what I will not have to experience ever, ever, ever is the wrath of God.

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Jesus took the wrath of God with his death on the cross. And just for those three hours that he was hanging there and some will,

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I think it was Charles Spurgeon even that has said that the beginning of God's wrath upon Christ actually started with him sweating drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane.

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I think Spurgeon has said that. Getting beat up on there by the guards when they were taking him to go stand before the high priest.

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And then he's getting beat up before the high priest. Like the cup of God's wrath is starting to be poured out on Christ here even before he gets to the cross.

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Okay. It finished with the cross. Right. He died there. Right. But the sweating, the drops of blood is where it began because in the blood is the life.

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And when we talk about Jesus shedding his blood for our sins, we're talking about him giving his life.

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This is a reference that comes straight from the Old Testament. In the blood is the life. So when you are sacrificing an animal, it's not that the blood has any mystical property to it to forgive you of your sin.

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It's that a living creature's life is being given for your life. For the wages of sin is death,

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Romans 6 .23. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Right. So for your sins and transgressions, you deserve death.

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So to pay for those sins, you have to give the life of an animal. And the spilling of the blood is the giving of the life.

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So once Jesus began shedding his blood for us in grief over the wrath of God that was coming upon him, that was the beginning of the wrath of God.

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And then it just finished with the cross. I'm not like falling on my sword over that.

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I'm just saying this is another perspective on understanding when was

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God's wrath starting to be poured out on Jesus. We know when it finished, when he said it is finished, then it was done and he gave his spirit into the hands of the

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Father. But when did it start? That's often where the conversation kind of differs depending on the belief.

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So Jesus giving his life for us and doing this, he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might know the righteousness of God in him, 2

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Corinthians 5 .21. So our sins were placed upon him and his righteousness has been given to us.

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And now we stand before God as righteous because of what Christ has done for us. He has taken the wrath of God.

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We who are in Christ Jesus never have to experience that. We will never know what it's like. Those folks down in the

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Philippines, every Easter, they always have that Good Friday service where they will crucify themselves.

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What? Yeah. Surely you've seen this before. We talk about it every year. More of that stuff you just blocked.

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Maybe it's one that, yeah. Maybe it's something that I just don't want to remember. That's right. Okay. I guess continue.

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So you have this service that happens down in the Philippines where there are several guys that will go through getting beaten and even crucifying themselves, hanging on a cross.

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Like literally? Literally doing this. Yes. Literally crucifying themselves. Like dying? Not to death.

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Oh. But they'll hang on the cross for like an hour or something like that. I don't even know how long it is.

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And they get pierced and everything? Yep. Pierced through the hands and feet. Okay. Hanging on this cross.

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Sounds weird. They feel like they're connecting with Jesus when they go through crucifixion like he went through.

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Okay. But we have absolutely no connection to Jesus at all by doing that.

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Yeah. That's kind of what I'm thinking. I don't understand how that makes you,

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I mean, maybe they're more empathetic or they feel bad about their sins. I don't know.

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I would have to sit down with one of these people, but I'm not sure I would understand even after speaking.

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Well, this is asceticism. I mean, it's the belief that I have to punish myself for my sins and the more pain

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I suffer. Yeah. Keep going. The more pain you suffer. No, that was it.

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Oh. I think you can fill in the blank from there. The more pain you suffer, the more forgiveness

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I get, I guess. I do it to myself, which is the Apostle Paul expressly said to the

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Colossians, don't have anything to do with asceticism. Yeah. You're just going to end up with a whole lot of pain and no forgiveness of sins.

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No joke. I mean, how are you glorifying Christ in that? Just. Yeah.

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See, yeah. And that's all. Sounds like you're trying to get that attention for yourself. Exactly. Because you just went through all that craziness.

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Yeah. It's self -righteousness. Yeah. Look what I did to forgive myself for my sin.

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It's trying to attain justification by works. So through something like that.

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Don't do that at home, kids. Through something like that, you are not in relationship with God.

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Our relationship with God is through faith in Jesus Christ. Right. So these kinds of activities are not drawing you any closer to God.

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The Bible does not say, go out and crucify yourself. Yes. Don't do that.

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And praise the Lord. Amen. That we come to faith by the hearing of his word, by reading the scriptures, by the preaching of the word.

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We don't have to go out and be crucified. Yes. It's funny that these guys don't bury themselves in a tomb for three days.

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Yeah, that is interesting. You'll crucify yourself, but you won't go lay down in a grave for Friday night, all day

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Saturday, and then try to get out on your own Sunday morning. Yeah. Right. All right, angels. Angels.

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Angels. All right. I did all this already. I hung on the cross. I'm buried in a tomb. Let me out of here.

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So yeah, the cup that Jesus drank was the cup of God's wrath. And for us who are Christians, we will never have to experience that.

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You will still experience death in your body, but you will not experience the wrath of God, the judgment of God for our sins.

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Christ has taken that upon himself. So I share this with you, that you may rejoice all the more in what we remember on this day, on this

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Good Friday, that you may know it as good and praise Christ your Savior for the sacrifice that was given for you, that God's wrath has been taken from you.

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John 3, 36, he who has the son has life. He who does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

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Right. In Christ, the wrath has been taken from us. And this is not just a demonstration of the love of Christ.

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It's a demonstration of the love of the Father who gave his son so that his wrath could be appeased.

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His justice that he is going to be pouring out upon all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of man has been satisfied in the giving of his son,

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Jesus Christ. And the son and the father acting in a total agreement with one another.

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The father gave the son, the son gave his life, and then the son goes back to the father and gives us his spirit.

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So we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, all those who are followers of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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It's continuous. It's beautiful. Yes. Continuous demonstrations of the love of God.

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Yeah. Remember the Easter story. I love it. This Easter and all the time.

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Yes. All year round. Yeah. I love this season that it gives us a good excuse to come back to it and be reminded of it again.

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But we're supposed to remember it always. Right. And I've said this to my church. I think I say it every year.

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Yep. But you already know what I'm going to say. Multiple times throughout the year.

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We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every time we gather. Not just on Easter Sunday, but every

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Sunday. That's why we have church on Sunday, because it was that day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead, conquering death for us.

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And now we begin our week by resting in the Lord rather than finishing our week by resting in God.

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We rest in Christ and his sacrifice, what he has done for us. It is not by our works that we are saved.

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It is by grace through faith in Christ alone. Amen. I've been trying to bring this wrapped up for a little while now, but I keep getting these rejoicing thoughts that come into my head.

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Yes, they're fine. Thank you, Jesus. They are okay. Yes, that's right. So here we are. We're about halfway through the broadcast now.

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I said we were going to start with that lesson first, and then we'll get to your questions. So on the Friday edition, we take questions from the listeners, and you can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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This first one is a two -part question. One, I'm not going to answer.

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Okay. We're only going to answer the second part. I'm going to answer the first part in another way. I'll get to that here in a moment.

29:06

Hi, PG. I enjoy your podcast, especially the Friday editions. I have two quick questions to submit for the

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Friday episode. Question number one. The first has to do with an article that was gaining steam around the internet about a year ago, and I've seen it come back recently.

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The topic is about homosexuality and the original language used in the Bible for homosexuals.

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The point of the article is that the original language used in the clobber verses, quote unquote, in the

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Bible about homosexuality used a different word in the earlier translations that meant boy molesters, and it was changed to homosexual in 1946.

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Then he gave me a link to the article, and he says, is that true? I'm not going to go into the details of the answer to this question, at least on this podcast.

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Usually before we answer a question like this, I give a little more of a disclaimer. Right. You may want to talk to your kids about this first.

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I'm going to answer this question through my blog. If you go to PastorGabe .com,

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that'll get you straight to the blog, P -A -S -T -O -R -G -A -B -E .com.

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Thank you, Matt from North Carolina. I forgot to mention who this was, but thank you,

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Matt, for that question. It's coming to the blog. Now, here's question number two. I really enjoy presuppositional apologetics, and one of the verses that I often hear used in presupp is from Proverbs 1 .7.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. They then use this verse to say that you can not know anything without the fear of the

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Lord, since Proverbs says that is where knowledge begins. My question is, is that a proper interpretation of Proverbs 1 .7?

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You can't know anything unless you have the fear of God. Would that be a proper interpretation of Proverbs 1 .7?

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Well, I'm going to answer that question yes and no. It's kind of a blanket statement.

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A blanket statement to say you can't know anything? Yeah. Are you talking anything, anything?

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Because obviously there are people who are not saved that know stuff. You have to know how to read to read

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Proverbs 1 .7 and know the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Also, I mean, just the fact that they're functioning as a person.

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They're not just a blob on the ground waiting for somebody. You have to know stuff in order to get up and walk and talk and feed yourself.

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In the practical sense, in the practical sense, people can have knowledge without the fear of God.

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Yes. But that knowledge is extremely limited. Even a guy like Stephen Hawking, who was this quantum physicist who believed that looking into the vast distance of the universe is how we unlock its secrets.

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Carl Sagan believed the same thing. Carl Sagan said something like, we need to be looking into space for extraterrestrial life because when we find out who they are, then we'll find out who we are.

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Yeah. I remember that. So, yeah. Looking into space and thinking that that's how we're going to find the answers to the purpose of our being even here on Earth.

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So you can see how these brilliant, brilliant guys would believe in absolute ridiculous, foolish things because they did not have the fear of God.

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Even a guy like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins.

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I get those confused. Yes. Okay. They kind of go together. So it's tough to separate them out sometimes.

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Anyway, a guy like Richard Dawkins, who is one of the New Atheists, he's kind of the father of the

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New Atheist movement almost. Everybody associates Richard Dawkins with that movement. But even a guy like him, when you ask him the right kinds of questions, you realize that he's not really all that much of an atheist.

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And even he will say that if you get him in an honest moment. He's not really an atheist. He's really more agnostic.

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But one of the things that he said to Ben Stein, Ben Stein did that documentary called

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Expelled over 10 years ago. Okay. I don't know if you remember that. Barely. I had never watched it, but sure.

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Sure. Okay. I remember seeing something about it. Stein was asking him several questions and Stein had him stumped.

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You could see he just kind of turned into a mumbling fool in front of Ben Stein, who was a game show host.

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You know, he's doing this documentary, but all things considered, what Ben Stein was most known for at that time, other than Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

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Right. Bueller. Bueller. Bueller. Or Clear Eyes. Oh, yes.

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For dry eyes. Red eyes. There's clear eyes. Yes. That one. There you go.

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I gave a free eyedrop ad on our podcast. That we don't even use.

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No. We always complain about our eyes being dry and that we never even use eyedrops. What was

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I saying? Okay. So he was basically a game show host at the time. He had that show, When Ben Stein's Money, and he decided to do this documentary on intelligent design.

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And so he's sitting across from Richard Dawkins and asking him these questions and totally stumping Dawkins.

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Like Dawkins just really was totally caught off guard by all that. And it's like, dude, a game show host knows how to best you in your logic.

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Well, that might have helped with the stumping. You kind of get to that point where you're like, wait, who are you again?

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Do you know who I am? Why are you asking me these questions? Yeah. In which case his pride is what does him in at that point.

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Yes. But one of the questions that Stein asked of him was like, basically, where does all this come from?

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And I can't remember what it was that Richard Dawkins said, but it was something to the effect of, well, you know, life didn't begin here on this planet.

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Maybe it was on like crystals on meteors. And a meteor came crashing to Earth, and it was life that was on that meteor now got transplanted to Earth.

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And that was how life began on this planet. So it's not really life from non life. It's just life that came from another place.

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But it's just like, I mean, you just kind of hit your head when you're listening to that going. But where did that life come from?

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Yeah. Exactly. Let's start at the beginning here. You didn't answer the question.

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You just kind of like threw the question on another life on another planet somewhere. Right. Let them answer the question.

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Is there life on other planets? That's how we'll know who we are. If we find that. That's right. Exactly. It goes right back to Carl Sagan.

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Oh dear. We can just find out who they are. Well, then we'll find out who we are anyway.

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So you see how like even brilliant guys such as this and they're brilliant. I mean, if I was having a conversation with Richard Dawkins about biology,

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I'm sure he would just absolutely rock my socks off. But if we're going to have a conversation about God, it's really, really easy to stump these guys.

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You just have to come to the basic questions. Why are we here? Where did we come from? Do you believe that life can come from non life?

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You have to say yes, because if you don't say yes, then you have to admit that the life had to come from some ultimate source that created it or made it and put it here for a particular reason.

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So you either as a naturalist, you just have to defer and say, I don't know.

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Or you have to say, yes, I believe that life comes from non life. There's really no other options. And by that point, when you're admitting that life comes from non life, when you're making that confession, you're confessing to something that is a complete myth.

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It is a it's a it's akin to a fairy tale. It's not testable.

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It's not scientifically provable. It has never been observed by any human being ever in the history of mankind.

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And yet these guys who sound like they're so absolutely devoted to scientific evidence and proof when it comes to the origins of all things and how they came to be, they believe in fairy tales.

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They believe in myths and crazy superstitions. They do not believe in science.

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They do not believe in what the science says. So so they're going to fill that with every other thing other than God.

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Exactly. Yeah. They're filling that box with everything other than God. And they get paid for it. So you know, they have incentive to keep at that.

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That's true. It's really true. I mean, you think of everything in your life you have to lose in order to give up that belief and and start trusting in God.

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Although, I mean, really, when it comes down to it, you're talking about Richard Dawkins being the most famous atheist alive right now.

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If he were to change his beliefs, he would still be very, very rich.

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He's really not giving up that much, especially when you consider now we've got this atheist who's converted to Christianity.

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I mean, there's going to be speaker invites out the wazoo. True. Hey, come on and tell us your story, how you went from being an atheist to a

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Christian. It would be very lucrative for for Richard Dawkins to do that. So I don't think money is exactly the reason, although he would still have to give up a lot, a massive transition, massive change in order to get from where he's at to becoming a

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Christian. And he's just he's just not going to do that. Giving up himself for Christ, which is what that takes, dying to yourself, living for Christ.

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Right. Anyway, I didn't mean to make like the it would be lucrative for him argument as well.

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He should do it because he can make money. Don't hear me saying that. No. It's not what I meant. If he does, that is by the

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Holy Spirit. Yeah. I'm really I'm of the belief that if a person of that kind of platform is going to change their life that much, if their life has changed by the

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Holy Spirit that much, I really don't see how they can continue in the position that they were in prior to the change.

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So taking, for example, and I'm just throwing this out there as a personal opinion, but take for example,

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Kanye West. OK. I was really, really skeptical about all of that because nothing about Kanye's position had changed.

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So he's still making music. He's he's still talking about himself the way that he always talks about himself and just very, very full of himself, still still standing on stage in front of massive, massive crowds.

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Nothing's really changed here. Now, if Kanye West had disappeared for like five years, what's happened to Kanye?

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Where did he go? We don't know what's happened to this guy. And then he comes back and goes, hey, I'm a I'm a Christian.

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So I've been trying to give up my former ways. I didn't want to seek the the praise or the adulation of anybody.

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It just needed to be me and the Lord for a little while. Now I'm back and I'm ready to make some music. That would have been a little bit different for me.

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But he had just converted to Christianity. And as a result of his conversion experience, he's making this album.

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And you can find the the interviews with him, like standing up in front of crowds and saying, sorry, guys,

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I'm sorry if I get this messed up because I just became a Christian a couple of months ago. Right. So he's even saying, though he grew up in this and his mother taught him this and he was a professing

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Christian at the beginning of his music career. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I didn't know he called himself a Jesus follower.

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It's why. Anyway, I won't go into that. We'll go off on like a whole Kanye West tangent.

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But I did not see enough of a change in the guy to be truly convinced that there was a spiritual transformation that has occurred.

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Now I'm not as judged. I can't say whether or not he's truly saved. But for those people who are skeptical of this, it's perfectly logical reason for for us to be skeptical.

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Right. Because he's always claimed to be a Christian. Some of the vocabulary changed in the last year.

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But he's he's making a whole lot of money off of this and boasting about that, by the way.

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If you listen to the right interview, he's boasting about how God is giving him so much money as a result of these of these albums that he's making.

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He's doing concerts with Joel Osteen. Yeah, that's what I was going to say is he's probably boasting that he's being blessed for it because of who he's hanging out with.

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Right. So so you got a guy who becomes a Christian and he's getting rich off of that proclamation.

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Hey, I'm a Christian now. You have all the reason in the world to be skeptical of that claim. It's like it looks right.

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It looks right now like you've become a Christian because it makes you rich. Right. So you decided it was lucratively profitable for you to proclaim faith in Jesus Christ.

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And that's why you did it. That's going to be a stumbling block for other people as well.

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People who are looking at Kanye West story or anybody like that and saying, I'm not I'm just not convinced that this is real because he's getting rich off of it.

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Yeah. Just like those megachurch pastors to me. Right. They're all getting rich off of it. So anyway, that same same thing with Richard Dawkins.

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If some sort of transformation like that would were to take place, we would hope to see as a fruit of that repentance that he's not trying to make a buck off of it, that he's repentant of his sin and realizing, man,

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I've led a lot of people astray. For a long time, I need to get out of the spotlight and do something else for a while or never return to the spotlight again, whatever that might happen to be.

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Yeah. Anyway, so we're coming back to the question of, is it possible for a person to have knowledge even without the fear of God?

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Yes, I think we've demonstrated that. I think we've answered that. But you cannot have a knowledge of God. But you said yes and no.

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So. Right. So there's the no. Yes. A person can have knowledge of things. We see that.

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But I think that's even that there's evidence of that. It's just logical. People know stuff without having the fear of God, but they cannot have knowledge of God.

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So there is no knowledge of him in his character, who he is, what he is doing, how

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God is working through events that God is good. They don't know that about God unless they have the fear of God.

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They might see him as a tyrant, which is exactly the way Richard Dawkins describes him. He thinks that he's an evil

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God. Well, even with having a fear of God doesn't mean that they believe that they're saved.

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Because I mean, like in the Bible, there's plenty of people who, you know, oh, the Hebrew God, you know.

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Oh, yeah, sure. Let's not anger him. I get what you're saying. Right. They had a fear because they knew that that God was going to have some serious wrath.

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Like the king of the Moabites. Yeah. He brings Balaam to curse Israel. So, hey, their God is not going to wipe me out.

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Right. So, yeah, there's a fear of God. There's a fear. But it's a worldly kind of fear.

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Right. It doesn't lead to repentance. Right. It doesn't lead to reverence of God. Right.

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It just leads to how do I get out of this? Yes. How do I appease him and still get my way? Yeah, exactly.

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So without a reverent fear of God, they cannot have knowledge of God. They don't know his character.

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They don't have relationship with him. They cannot have a consistent knowledge of anything.

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So that was kind of the argument that I was making regarding the atheists. Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, any of those guys, we might perceive them as being brilliant men, but their knowledge is inconsistent because it doesn't, it's not being, things are not being known to the praise and glory of God.

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Their knowledge is all to the praise and glory of themselves. Right. But not unto God. So they can't have a knowledge of God knowing him relationally.

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They cannot have a consistent knowledge of anything. And finally, they cannot have a saving knowledge.

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So the person who does not have the fear of the Lord is not saved. Right. They cannot be saved because they are still doing things for themselves rather than doing things in reverence and worship unto

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God. So there's - Just for clarification, that does not mean they cannot be saved in the future.

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It means that they cannot be saved at that moment. Right. As long as they are not in the fear of the

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Lord, then they don't have salvation. Right. Right. No fear of judgment.

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Well, I take that back because they may have a fear of judgment. John talks about that in 1 John 4. All that's left is a fear of judgment is what he says.

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So there's a fear of judgment. There's just not a reverent fear of worshiping God and surrendering oneself unto the

45:42

Lord. This next question comes from Stan in West Virginia. Dear Pastor Gabe, I grew up in an independent fundamentalist

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Baptist church, and those guys were obsessed with money. They would check my parents' bank records because my parents were foolish enough to give them that information just to make sure that they were tithing 10 % every month.

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Whenever the pastor would do his series on church giving, he would say, Jesus talked more about money than any other topic.

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Now, I know that's not true, so that's not my question. Rather, here's what I'd like to try to understand.

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Whenever some kind of claim like this comes up, how can I be best equipped to refute it?

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Taking this particular claim as an example, if I should again face a false preacher making a claim like,

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Jesus talked about money more than any other subject, how can I warn my friends and my family that such claims aren't true, and they're being deceived at great cost to their wallets?

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Thank you for your ministry, Stan. I don't remember where I heard this.

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I know I heard this a little bit when I was in high school and college, Jesus talked about money more than any other subject.

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I don't remember where I heard that, though, because I don't think it was the pastors that I sat under.

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I don't think they ever said anything like that. I remember hearing it too, but I don't remember when. Yeah, somewhere this claim is floating around.

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I don't know what the origin of the source is. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that it originates from independent fundamentalist

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Baptist churches. But I can't say for sure that's where that comes from. Of course,

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Stan recognizes right off the bat, no, that's not true. And you're absolutely right, Stan, it isn't even close to the top of the list of things that Jesus talked about the most.

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Jesus talked about God more than any other subject, because he is the one who introduced us to the

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Father. Right. We know the Father through the Son. Yeah. So, Jesus talked about God and his heavenly

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Father more than he talked about anything else. And it just demonstrates right there. That is everything that Christ did to the glory of God the

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Father, as it says in Philippians 2. 11. So, the next most common thing that Jesus talked about was heaven, the kingdom of God, all of that being synonymous with one another.

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Guess what was third most common? Oh, I saw your tweet. Heaven was second.

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So, what was third? Oh, I don't remember. Sin? Yeah.

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I tweeted about this. Hell, specifically. Yeah. So, God is first. Heaven is second.

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Hell is third. Ah. Judgment. Yes. Everything that would be associated with that. So, yeah,

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I made a tweet about this, and the tweet was because I had just gotten that email from Stan. I wondered. So, yeah. I was like, hey,

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I'm going to make a comment about this. Jesus talked about God the most, followed by heaven, then hell and judgment, then being disciples himself as son of God, and how he fulfilled promises and prophets and those things that have been written about him in the

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Old Testament. He talked about prayer, then faith, then love, and all the way down the list somewhere, like it's down around number 18, 19, or 20, if you were to make a list out of headlining subjects.

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Yeah. Way down the list somewhere is money. Okay. But it wasn't even near the top, not even in the top ten subjects that Jesus talked about the most.

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So, I don't know where that claim comes from and even how they justify it. But Stan's question is, specifically, if this happens again.

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How do you refute it? How do you refute something like that? It's like a claim that just comes out of left field.

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So how would you refute a claim like this? Stan, I know this takes a little bit of work, but this is where systematic theology becomes really, really valuable and important.

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Okay. And here's how you do it. So, in this particular case, we're just limiting it to the words of Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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You got four books right there. Yeah. I would encourage you, in one sitting, go through all of it.

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Read Matthew 1 to John 21. You just read all of that in one sitting.

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Now, it's probably going to take you a couple of hours. Okay. But reading it all at once, instead of breaking it up, gives you a greater familiarity with it, to read all of that at once.

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Right. And then what you do after that, and you might even do this more than one time. You read it all the way through,

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Matthew 1 to John 21. You get really familiar with the Gospels and everything together in context.

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Then you grab a notebook and you start writing down topics that you're interested in considering that Jesus talked about.

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You've read it enough times now, or you've read it through at least once, all the way through. So, you're familiar with the things

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Jesus said. Think of some of those things that you saw coming up the most and write those words down.

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Well, I saw him talk about the Father, saw him talk about heaven, saw him talk about this. So, then make those sort of columns in a notebook,

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I guess, or maybe you have several pages. Then you read through it again, Matthew 1 through John 21.

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You can break this up over a longer period of time. Now that you're taking notes, it's going to take you longer to get through it.

50:54

Oh, yeah, definitely. And you can put like a little tally mark or even write the references down everywhere that Jesus mentions

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God. Every time he points to the Father, every time he tells the disciples about prayer, every time he tells them about loving one another, any of these things.

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Whatever the topic is that you've got lined out in your columns, and you're just making all those notes.

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And that way, you've got something. You've equipped yourself now to be able to answer, like even in kind of like a concordance sort of mindset.

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It's like you've almost created your own concordance there of the words of Jesus in the Gospels in your mind.

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You've set that forth. It doesn't have to be like a memorized in detail list, but you have enough familiarity with it now that when somebody makes a claim like that,

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Jesus talked about money more than any other subject. You can go, no, he didn't. I can tell you flat out he didn't.

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And here's why. And you have a familiarity with the text enough that you can summarize it in two or three sentences.

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You don't have to approach this from the standpoint of, I have to give you hard evidence, and here it is.

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I'm laying it down in a book, and I'm pointing you to it right here in order to refute this person and refute their belief.

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You don't have to do that. So if you're asking me that question, thinking, is there some sort of a verse that I can give this person?

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No, because there's not one verse that's going to refute the person who says Jesus talked about money more than any other subject.

52:18

Right. There's a lot of verses. There's a lot of verses that are Jesus words. So just having a familiarity with those things, and that way you can be in being really familiar with the real, you're quick to identify when something counterfeit comes your way.

52:33

Right. It's like the way, you know, bankers. A lot of the time, those people are just repeating what they've heard.

52:39

Yeah. It's not that they know that, or they think that wholeheartedly. They're just like, oh, yeah, that's something great to say again, you know, and so you say it again.

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So it's, unless they're preaching it, then, you know, they're not accountable for that.

52:54

They haven't put the thought into it that you, Stan, are putting into it. Right. Like as Becky is saying, they've just heard something, and now they're repeating it.

53:02

Right. They haven't put the thought into, that might not be true. Have I ever really challenged or tested that claim or that belief?

53:09

Yeah. Even as a new Christian, I was still going through that of, you know,

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I don't, I heard it, and so it must be true. Right. You know, somebody else said it, so it's got to be in there somewhere.

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And it was somewhat authoritative. And they said it was in the Bible. So who's going to argue with it being in the

53:28

Bible? Exactly. How can I argue with that? Right. So there you go, Stan. That's the end of my answer to that question.

53:34

I want to get one more in here real quick. Okay. We're going to finish up with this one. This is Scott. He says, Pastor Gabe, as I'm about to purchase a new

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MacArthur study Bible, I have a choice. My favorite is NASB, yet I hear that the

53:47

ESV is also good. I've never had an ESV, but I heard good things about it.

53:52

Which would you choose? I'm also asking Tim Challies and Todd Friel would love to hear your thoughts.

53:58

I had to respond to this one because I couldn't be one -upped by Tim Challies and Todd Friel. Well, of course not. I replied to Scott.

54:04

I told Scott, hey, you need to get the MacArthur study Bible the way the MacArthur study

54:10

Bible was meant to be the new American standard Bible. The NASB. Yep. Your MacArthur Bible should be a

54:16

NASB because that's what it is that he teaches out of. But personally, I still teach out of the ESV and I really like the

54:24

ESV study Bible. So if you do get a study Bible and you want to invest in the ESV study, that's real good.

54:29

If you get your MacArthur study Bible, I would recommend the NASB. Get them both. Now you've got two translations and you can, you can compare them together.

54:36

All right. That's the end of our show. Yes. Thank you so much for listening in. Everybody have a happy Easter.

54:42

Yes. Enjoy. Be looking for. Staying in. Yeah. Staying in. Because it's kind of crazy times.

54:50

Where you have to stay in. Here in Kansas, we don't have to. Right. It's highly recommended.

54:57

It's highly recommended. Yes. But we don't have to. We are blessed enough to not have to. Yes. The sermon will be online on Sunday and look for tomorrow in the scripture reading, finishing up the book of Matthew.

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Yes. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness that you have shown to us as we celebrate and remember and commemorate here on Good Friday.

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And I pray that the joy that we have in Christ Jesus for the sacrifice that was given for the forgiveness of sins, we lift this up in praise to our

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God and we share it with others that they may know the good news of the gospel and turn from their sin, repenting of the ways of this world, dying to their selves and being made alive in Christ.

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May we continue to walk in humility and holiness all of our days, being sanctified in your truth until the day of Christ, when you return in glory.

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And we pray and ask these things in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. All right, go right ahead.

57:03

Happy Good Friday to you and your family from when we understand the text and online

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Bible ministry,

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I was trying to say, committed to sound teaching of the word of Christ.

57:23

Be sure to tell, was that me? Yeah, I made noise with my leg.