MSL: May 14, 2024

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The following program is recorded content created by The Truth Network. It's Matt Slick Live!

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Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at CARM .org.

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When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick Live for answers. Taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877 -207 -2276.

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Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick, and you're listening to Matt Slick Live.

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And I hope you're going to have a good show today or a good listen. If you want to give me a call, all you have to do on, let's see, today is

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May 14, 2024, on this nice 14th, which is a nice Tuesday here in Idaho.

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Oh, it's perfect weather outside. Perfect. And if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276.

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And if you want, you can email me. That's easy to do. Just direct your email to, let's see, info at CARM .org.

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And the subject line, put in radio comment or radio question. So I hope you want to do that.

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And I'm going to be in a debate in Ogden, Utah, at the end of the month on the

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Friday, the last Friday of the month. So I don't know how many people actually hear me in Ogden. I don't know.

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I think they do. So now we're north of Salt Lake. So I think it's within the radio range down there.

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Because it's about a five -hour drive from me. Anyway, so if you are interested in checking it out, you can.

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There's a different way to go find out all the information. Go to CARM .org forward slash debates, forward slash debates.

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And it'll take you to a list of debates I've been in. But it's going to have upcoming debates. And there's a link.

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You just click it, and it'll open up a nice page. And all the information you need will be right there. So real easy to do. If you want to attend, it's free.

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And it'll be from 4 to 6 p .m. on a Friday. That's not a good time, but that's just how it is.

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That's what the schedule allowed. So there you go. All right,

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I think that's about it. I can't think of anything else. So why don't we just get on the air here with Buskman.

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Hey, Buskman, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. This is a topic, brother, that seems to divide

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Christians a lot. And it's the topic of speaking in tongues.

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So I need the Matt Slick direction through Scripture, of course,

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Matt, on how should we be dealing with this quote -unquote phenomenon,

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Matt. And I'll listen, sir. All right. So the question is whether or not speaking in tongues is a charismatic gift.

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That's for today or not. A lot of people deny it. I'm one of the guys who holds to its continuation and the ability for God to use it to speak through people in different contexts.

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Now, however, there are those who get up in church and then they just start speaking in blathering, and they call it tongues.

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And they're supposed to do it with interpretation. Now, Chuck Smith, who's the founder of Calvary Chapel, he baptized my wife and I.

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We got baptized down there in Southern California. And I used to attend his church for a few years, and I remember him saying once about how they had a session.

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They don't do it during the Sunday service, but every now and then they would have a session where during the week they would have an opportunity for anybody who'd want to say something from the

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Lord. They thought it might be a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge. And someone got up, he said, and spoke in a tongue.

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They started speaking a different language. Well, how do you verify you don't? And so the person sat down, and there was no interpretation.

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So they just let it alone, and they went on. And I can't remember the exact details, but he said someone came up to him later and said that was

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French, and this is what she said. And then they talked to the woman who spoke in French, and she didn't know

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French. All right, that's an example, if it was real, that's an example of how it's to be done.

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The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 14, one or two at most.

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This is verse 27. And anyone who speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three, and each in turn, and one must interpret.

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If there is no interpreter, you must keep silent. That's what it says. And the word for silent there is sagapo, which means absolute quiet.

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Don't do it. So now there's a question. What are these tongues?

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Are they heavenly languages that no one knows on earth? Only the

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Holy Spirit knows it and moves through a person to speak it. It's one theory. Another theory is that the common language of the time, at least in Israel, was

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Hebrew or Aramaic. And so hearing it in a tongue other than Aramaic would have been speaking in tongues.

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And so it was a language that was known. It just wasn't the divine, so to speak, language of Hebrew or Aramaic.

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Aramaic's a variant of Hebrew. So that's one theory.

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So in the upper room, people were hearing him speaking in tongues, speaking in Egyptian and Syrian and whatever languages were around, not just in the language that Jesus spoke.

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That's one of the theories. So we don't know exactly what's going on, but can the

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Lord cause someone to speak in a language today that he doesn't understand for a reason?

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Absolutely, yes, he can. I know a story where that occurred. It's documented in a book. But, yeah, it can occur.

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And so there you go. That's the issue with tongues mainly. Does that help? So what you're saying,

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Matt, is the tongue that come out of the woman who didn't know it was French was actually

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French. In other words, it was a verified conversation format between human beings.

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It wasn't halal, halal, halal, halal. It wasn't by me, by me, yeah.

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Okay, so that was what I was trying to explain to a dear sister of mine that I said it's a language for, and I picked

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German. And I said, I only know a little bit of German. So if someone walked in and said guten tag,

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That's a tongue, and I can interpret that, I told my sister. It means good day in English.

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But the rolling of the tongue and using your vocal cords to reverberate weird sounds, and then calling that tongues,

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Matt, is what they claim is the quote -unquote angelic language. And if I remember right, brethren, you would know this better than I, isn't there a scripture that sort of refers to that, and it seems like,

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Matt, that's the Bible verse that they'll use to undergird and validate the rolling of the tongue and the vocal cord usage.

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Could you elaborate on that, brother? Well, that's out of 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1. If I speak with the tongues of angels, of men and of angels, so, you know, there's different interpretations here.

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So does it mean that angels have, uh, someone came in and said,

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Matt, stop teaching this charismatic nonsense. Well, I'll tell you what, Eth, call me up on the radio show and let's talk, let's see what the

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Bible teaches. Okay. Because I'm willing to do a debate on it, all right, do a formal debate.

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And that's why I'm calling, so that caller, that's why I'm calling in, guys, to get that biblical knowledge, not something else.

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Go ahead, Matt. Sorry. So the question is, how would we know if we spoke in the tongue of an angel?

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How would you know? You know, there's no way to verify, you know, angels come down and say, here's what we say, this is how we say it, here's conjugation.

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Oh, okay. Thank you. Now we know it's from an angel. It doesn't work like that. So some think it might be hyperbole that Paul is referring to.

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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, does it mean they actually have an angelic language? Well, they have to communicate somehow.

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So I'm going to assume they're going to have some form of communication, some language, something going on. I don't know how it's going to work. I can't really go on beyond that.

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So there are people in charismatic churches, and just so you know, I believe in all of the charismatic gifts for today, all of them.

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Not normative and not like, hey, brother so -and -so has to get the healing, just go to him and bang, you know, you're done.

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You know, I don't, I don't think it's how it works, but I think the church as a whole has access to all of them when they're humble, when they're expanding the gospel,

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God can work through them. All right. Now, I agree with that, Matt, because that has literally happened to me.

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But since it's, I don't have anybody in my sphere that can say, yeah, Bussman is speaking truth, then it remains anecdotal.

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But I would not lie to you and on a radio program saying that it happened because God's going to judge me for lying to you, brother and all your listeners.

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But it has. So go ahead. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. Well, hey, I prophesied once and I used to get words of knowledge and they were in the context of expanding the kingdom of God and evangelism.

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And I can tell you stories where I just would know things and I'm not trying to boast, but what do you do with these kinds of things, you know, and and we can get into that.

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But so I think what happens mostly in these churches today is just a bunch of crud.

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These guys, girls are just they're overly energetic. They, you know, they just start saying stuff, you know, not now it was it.

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Now I got to buy a Honda. You know, now I got to buy a Honda, you know, and you just say these things really fast. And then it's speaking in tongues.

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Well, it doesn't work like that. And so here's a quick story because I don't have any waiting.

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So my friend Charlie and I, when we were first Christians, first going out to evangelize in Southern California, we went out and I'll get to the end of the story because it's really an interesting story.

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It really is. They will tell it for the break if no one calls in. But at the end of our little evangelism session, we were taking turns going door to door and he went to this one door.

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It was his turn. And the lady started to speak in Spanish. She didn't speak English. Well, I had some high school

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Spanish. I was pretty decent at it. So I started talking to her in Spanish and Charlie thought

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I was speaking in tongues. Later on, he figured, wait a minute, you know

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Spanish? Yeah, I had it in high school, you know, and I had a great teacher too. So it was funny, you know, which was a good time.

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So at any rate, not a big deal, but I do believe it happens. There's a book called Bruchko where apparently a tribe was able to communicate with another tribe that didn't speak the same language and the tribe got converted.

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So there's documentation about this kind of stuff happening. So it does happen.

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And anyway, I'm beating around the bush here. I don't want to say too much, but yeah, it happens.

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But it's literal languages. It's French, it's German, it's Latin. It's Greek.

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It's okay. Okay. Or an earthly language that's extinct. Yes. Yes. Like Gaelic.

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A friend sent me a song in ancient Gaelic once. And it was really cool sounding, by the way.

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You know, Mongolian, if you've ever heard them talk, it's a wild, the who.

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Oh, you're a who fan, Matt? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Wolf Toto. Oh, they're great.

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Oh, yes, they are. Oh, Wolf Toto, man. You're a man after my own heart. Yeah. So that's what

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I kind of wanted to put to rest is, biblically speaking, that human beings speak

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Greek if God unctions them to via His Holy Spirit without ever me,

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Bussman, studying Greek. But someone could understand and say, wow, Bussman, how did you learn that? And I can literally say in the eyes of my father,

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I don't know. I didn't study Greek. Well, I did, Bussman. And you just spoke perfect Greek.

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I believe that can happen at the charge of the Holy Spirit. I do. I agree with you.

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The Holy Spirit can still do stuff. It's Greek. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing.

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It's to be done for the edification of the body of Christ. But some people get up and they'll start doing this.

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Amen. And they're not doing it the way they're supposed to be doing it biblically. It's just ridiculous. All right.

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Well, we need to get going. There's a break, buddy. Okay? All right, man. God bless. God bless, Matt. Thank you, sir. Bye -bye.

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Hey, folks. We'll be right back after these messages. We'll get to Paul from Richmond, Virginia. We have three open lines, 877 -207 -2276.

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We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick Live!

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Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

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All right, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Hi. Let's see. I think we've got someone else calling in right now. But we have two open lines, 877 -207 -2276.

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Paul from Richmond, Virginia. Welcome. You're on the air. Yes. Okay. Can you hear me?

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Yes, I can. What do you got, man? All right. Let me cut the volume up in my car. I've got a fairly new truck, so I'm still figuring out how to use my

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Bluetooth stuff and everything. Sorry. I had to make sure everything was working. You sound good.

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All right. Perfect. Well, I was listening to the last conversation and speaking in tongues and all of that.

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As a person who's grown up in Virginia and been out in the deep southwestern parts of Virginia, I've met lots of different people and everything.

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But one of the things the last caller was talking about, or I think it mentioned, was there were different religious experiences that happened to people.

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To you, I don't think I'm going to sound like a crazy person. But to a lot of people, I have. When I was a 17 -year -old young man,

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I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant. We're still in high school. There were a lot of pressures on me to make different decisions.

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My family didn't approve of the girl I was dating when all this was going on.

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It wasn't a good situation. Not a planned situation. Of course,

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I prayed on it as hard as I could. I was raised Catholic. I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but I was raised in the

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Catholic Church. After listening to you and different other things, there's a lot of things that I don't agree with with them, but that's not to do with this subject.

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So I was praying as hard as I could, and I had an experience in my bedroom of my parents' house where a great light came through my window.

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I was praying whether or not to decide to have an abortion. I was talking to God like I didn't know what

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I wanted to do. It wasn't somebody I was planning on spending the rest of my life with at that time.

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I was a young moron. A light came through my window.

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A bright light came through. My blinds came through everything. I was in a catatonic trance.

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I couldn't speak. I didn't move. Nothing. I could see an image in front of it.

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To me, it looked like Jesus, but it was just a silhouette in the light with its hands out to me and told me that I was going to have a son and that the

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Lord had work for that child to do here and that getting an abortion was a terrible idea.

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I agree. Exactly. After that,

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I never thought of another girl name after that. It was so confident to me that I knew

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I was having a boy. They had the first ultrasound. I, unfortunately, was at work because being 17 going on 18 and stupid,

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I had to leave school and go to work. Long story short, she was like,

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Do you want to know? I was like, I already know. I've never had an experience like that since.

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It solidified my faith for the rest of my life until I believed this world. Did you have a son?

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Oh, yes. I did have a son, and I have two grandchildren from him now. All right.

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Good. I didn't mean to leave that part of the story out.

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It's dumb. It was the most amazing thing that ever happened in my entire life.

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Unfortunately, my son is an atheist. How old is he?

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I'm still waiting for him. He is 33. Well, keep praying for him, and we'll see.

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Just keep praying. That's what you've got to do. Have a daughter about that age who's an atheist, and pray for her as well.

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Amen. I've heard you speak about that, so that's why I kind of felt comfortable talking to you about it.

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Sometimes I wonder when I look at my little granddaughter, Was it planned for one of my grandkids?

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But anyways, we're all spending the weekend together this weekend. On a camping trip. If there's any advice you can give me to slip in, to just say a word or two to my atheist son, just to try to bring up the conversation, because we've had it plenty of times.

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Just say you're praying for him. There's a guy on the radio named Slick you can talk to. You never know.

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He might say, what? You never know. We talk about atheism and what is untenable. You never know.

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I've actually asked him to debate you on that, because he debates people online. I haven't even watched his stuff, because his mother told me it would infuriate me.

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Who I'm not with. I didn't stay with his mother. We're still good friends. So I've actually asked him to debate you.

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Maybe I'll challenge him one more time and get him to listen to one of your shows.

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I can just talk over the phone sometime if he really wants to know why atheism is untenable.

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You never know. I appreciate you calling, man. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you very much,

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Matt. I enjoyed listening to you. God bless. You too, man.

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God bless. Thanks. All right. Good night. All right. Now let's just zip over to Elijah from Philadelphia.

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Elijah, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. My question today is this.

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So I've heard atheists use this argument before. They say that the

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Israelites are—so since atheists don't believe in God, they don't believe that God is the one that commanded them to commit genocide and steal people's land in the

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Old Testament. So they say— Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm not hearing all your words. You're saying the—say it again.

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I wasn't sure what you said. Go ahead. I said atheists, since they don't believe in God, they don't believe that—they don't believe that God commanded them to commit genocide and steal people's land in the

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Old Testament. So— Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So they use the word genocide and steal the land, right?

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Yep. Okay. When people, when atheists ask me or say things like that,

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I say, well, it's what the Israelites did wrong. Because if they're an atheist, they don't have any universal standard of morality.

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They just have their opinion. They can say it was wrong. I say, well, why is it wrong? Are you appealing to something that's not atheistic?

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Because if you're going to say it is wrong, the culture should have done something, and you're saying that there's a universal moral truth.

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Where do you get that from your atheism? This is how I start off with them, and they're not used to that kind of a response.

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But nevertheless, go ahead. And so since they don't believe that God commanded them to do that, they say this.

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They say that the Israelites just used the idea of God telling them to do this as an excuse to—

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And they're begging the question. Yeah, it's called begging the question. They're assuming their position is true in order to argue for their position.

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But it doesn't demonstrate their position is true, and they don't have any internal means by which they can justify any universals.

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We've got a break. Hold on, buddy. Okay. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned.

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Be right back. It's Matt Slick Live!

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Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

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All right. Welcome back to the show. Let's get on. Let's see.

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Back on with Elijah. There you are, buddy. Okay. Yeah. A follow -up on what

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I was saying. So they like to say, one, you know, since they don't believe in God, they think the

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Israelites was using that as an excuse. And also, also, I've heard them say that the idea of the

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Israelites calling themselves the chosen people and then going to the land of Israel and then going to the land of Israel and then going in, killing entire people and stealing their land.

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They say that that sounds very similar to what the Europeans did to the

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Native Americans. And so and so they think it's just just, you know, you know, the same thing that just happened way back then.

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Them using the scriptures as an excuse to do things. Right.

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And like I said before, what I do with the atheists when they raise this kind of an argument, I'll just ask them, is it wrong?

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I mean, tell me, because what they're doing, they're appealing to a universal, but they can't.

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A universal ought, a universal right or wrong. Well, what are they doing? They're being inconsistent with their atheism.

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And I pointed out, I'd say just from the start, before the gun even goes and you're racing, you're already blowing it.

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You're saying it's wrong to do this. Well, how do you know it's wrong? How do you know there is no God? Do you have any evidence that God doesn't exist?

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What's your rationality? Is it because of your subjective experiences that you don't see God, you're subjecting him to the scientific method?

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I said, whichever one you want to talk about, I can talk about at length. I said, now let's talk about morality, talk about obligation, the is and ought problem.

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Let's go into it. And I said, but if you guys want to come out and say that something is right or wrong, they should or shouldn't have done that.

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Who are you to judge the culture of another? Who are you to say what is right and wrong? You can say you don't like it, that's fine, it's your opinion, but you don't have a right to shove your opinion down everyone else's throat and say this is right or is wrong any more than the

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Israelites who went in under your view and took the land from people. You can't say they're wrong.

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They can say you're wrong for not doing what they want. So I say to them, you don't know what you're doing here, you're not being logical, you are not being consistent, you don't have a universal standard of right and wrong by which you can make these judgments, and all you're doing is offering your subjective opinions.

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Then I ask them one final question. So I'm going to ask you a final question here. If you are saying that you don't have any universal standard and it's just your opinion how entire cultures ought to be, then

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I just have a question. Is that arrogant? You tell me. Okay.

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All right. I have a follow -up question because I've seen

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APS discuss this on all my different APS radio shows.

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Okay. What's the question? Are you there? Hope we didn't lose him.

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We'll see. Okay. I want to hear what the question is. No, we lost you for about 10 or 15 seconds.

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So you said on the radio show they ask her to say something and then ask her to say that, but then it went blank. So what was it?

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Yeah. So if you were talking with APS on their radio show, they would probably ask you this, and I would like to know how would you answer.

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So they would ask you, so the Europeans committing genocide against the

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Native Americans and stealing their land, was that right or wrong in your view? Well, from my view,

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I would say based on the universals, what the Bible says and how Christianity says don't steal and don't murder,

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I'd say that that was wrong and what they did was wrong. Okay. Yeah. Based on the scriptures.

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So now what? Because I'm basing it on the word of God. If they're going to say, well, then Israelites were wrong. Well, that's their scriptures, the same scriptures that you were asking me about.

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And God came in and told them that. You had to demonstrate to me that God isn't real somehow in order for your argument to be valid.

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Okay. Yeah. Let me tell you something. Atheists don't really have good arguments.

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They really don't. And it used to be that atheists would call me up all the time and argue with me.

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And we can get some sophisticated arguments that I don't want to kill the audience here because sometimes we get into stuff that you just don't, people aren't, average bearer's just not going to understand at all.

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Transcendentals, universals and nominalism, phenomenalism, ethics, you know, and so, uh, but I can tell you that, uh, atheism is just intellectually bankrupt.

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It cannot provide the necessary preconditions for universal intelligibility, cannot provide any, uh, explanation, any cogent explanation for our origins.

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It cannot explain any universal moral standard by which they can make judgments. In the three most critical areas of thought, when we deal with these kinds of things, it fails in all of the areas.

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Okay. And I have ways of tricking them to see stuff, but at any rate, so, uh, here's the, uh, here's the, uh, uh, example that, uh, that I, that I like to use.

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Uh, so, so I would say that, I would say that, you know, you know, if a person says that they know for sure that, that there is no life on other planets,

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I would say, uh, how would you know that? Have you been to every planet in the universe?

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And, and, and so, and so it's the same thing with God. I would say, I would say, how do you know that God doesn't exist?

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Uh, we don't even have the technology to open up a portal to go into all of the other dimensions.

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So have you been to all of the other dimensions? How do you know if you've never, if you've never even done this, you know, right.

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And those are good questions. Um, and so what they're doing and they want to use a scientific method, okay.

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And they want to use science and what you're doing is using it against them. Have you been to all these places? Have you checked this? Have you checked that?

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And so there is just one of the ways of demonstrating that atheism is just, it's just not very intellectually sophisticated.

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It's not. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right, buddy.

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All right. Yep. All right, man. Okay. Okay. Have a good one.

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Okay, man. You too. All right. All right. All right. Now let's try this.

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Let's get on the air with, uh, Bradley from Winston -Salem, North Carolina. Bradley, welcome.

30:20

You're on the air. Hey, how you doing, Matt? Oh, hanging in there a little tired, but you know what?

30:26

No. Oh, I hear you, brother. Me too. Uh, I just had a question. I've been listening to you.

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I'm from the Charlotte area. I've been listening to you for about three weeks and I wanted to call in because I had some time.

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Talk about, uh, get your opinion on, uh, uh, the attack, uh, on marriages in our country and in our nation and in the world.

30:48

Yep. Yep. It's bad. Okay. So you have a question about it or you want me to just comment?

30:55

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Just basically. Cause I've, um, I, me personally,

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I've been married two times and, uh, I've, I'm a Christian. Um, I accepted

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Christ probably when I was about 12 years old. And of course I, uh, you know, I, I was a child in my faith and, you know,

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I was for quite some time and I know that I, as a, I'm a third, I'm 38 years old now.

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And I know that over time I've grown. And, uh, even through like a, I was married the first time for eight years.

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Um, and you know, we, we kind of got married. I was in a church and, uh, and the wife, the woman that I married, we were both young.

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She got pregnant outside of wedlock and, um, kind of, I think a lot of my decision making was to go ahead and get married to do the right thing.

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Things like that, you know, at about, you know, young twenties and, and we got married lasted for about eight years.

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And, you know, I went to church and everything, you know, on Sundays and stuff. And I believe I had a, had a decent relationship with God, but it just wasn't like, uh, as real.

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It was, I think it was more religious, uh, to a certain extent. Uh, there was a lot of religious mixed in maybe with truth.

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And, uh, you know, so me and my wife, we, we, uh, we ended up having another child and, uh, you know, she, uh, we, my first wife, we divorced and, uh, had a child and we went through a lot of custody issues and a lot of legal issues and, uh, seeing a lot of things of how our justice system works and is very ungodly to me and, uh, different things like, uh, now

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I'm, I'm married twice and I see my, my first daughter kind of suffering from it and different.

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Do you have a question related in there somewhere? Uh, yes, sir. Just, uh, just about, you know, uh, about the seriousness of marriage and, and the attacks on it and what can a man do in order to, cause

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I, you know, I'm obviously I'm married in order to honor

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God with their wife. Um, well, in order to honor

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God, to be the husband that she needs, you know, once you made that commitment to God, regardless of the situation.

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That's right. He needs to, first of all, humble himself before the Lord, Jesus Christ. He needs to get on his knees alone without his wife, without anybody around.

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He needs to get on his knees and he needs to talk to God. And he's asked the Lord. And, and do it not just once, but do it for weeks and ask the

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Lord to reveal to him what he is doing wrong. Well, he's got plenty to say about his wife, but he needs to get on his knees and say, what do you want me to do?

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What do you want me to be? What do you want me to know? And he needs to start there, start there. And he goes for weeks because God will answer that.

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And then we get back to the break. We'll tell you a little bit more. Okay. So hold on, buddy. All right. Hey folks, be right back after these messages, please stay tuned and, uh, be right back.

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It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

34:27

Here's Matt Slick. All right. Welcome back to the show. Let's get back on with Bradley.

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You still there, buddy? Yes, sir. All right. So I'm going to do is

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I'll give you the basics. I mean, there's always variables and things you've got to work through in details, you know, but I'll just say this again.

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So we can get it one segment here. If a man, and I love it, that men can understand that.

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There's so much I could teach on this, but let me just do that for just a little bit.

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The Trinity is one God and three distinct simultaneous co -eternal persons. And the nature of the

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Trinity is creative, perfect, pure. And marriage is a reflection of the inter -Trinitarian communion.

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It's a covenant. God covenants. He makes promises. And so in marriage, you have made a promise before God to each other and to the community.

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It's a triple covenant. And if the marriage is having trouble, now, if the wife is problematic, you know, we're not going to talk about her.

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We're going to talk about what the man's job is. Okay. Right now. Yes, sir. So he should start off by looking to the

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Lord and saying, what do I do? You ask God to reveal to you your sin and your failures.

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Now, she's got hers. You can lift them out, you know, that kind of thing. But you ask God to make you the man you're supposed to be for her.

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There's a lot of men when they want to find a wife, she's got to be like this and this. They got a few lists and can't find her.

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Well, wait a minute. They should be saying, Lord, make me like the man you want me to be for whoever you would trust me with. Anyway.

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Right. So you deal with your own sin regardless of what your wife does. Because if your wife is good or bad or irritable or not or stubborn or whatever it is, you're still obligated to be a good husband.

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Doesn't mean it's going to happen all the time, but that's what your job is supposed to do. This is what it means to love your wife.

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A lot of people make a mistake of thinking that love is a feeling. I don't love her anymore. Well, then good. You don't love her?

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That's right. You don't feel anything for her? Good. Now you can start loving her. What? Now you can start loving her.

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What do you mean? Now you protect her and you guide her and you put her first. You don't feel like it, but you do what's right because you're a man.

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Because you're a Christian man and you stand up like a Christian man. And if she's not being the best wife, it doesn't mean it's okay for you to go out and do something you shouldn't be doing.

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Doesn't mean it's okay for you to go out and justify sin. Well, she's this and that and that.

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And so therefore, I could... No, it doesn't work like that. It's, Lord, I have to honor my marriage before you.

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And it means that you have to put her first. You've got to protect her, honor her, provide for her. Now, I'm not saying it's always easy, okay?

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But it's what you've got to do. Even if she isn't the best wife, even if it means that you have to swallow your pride, you've got to suffer through difficulties.

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Now, every now and then, you need to go to counseling. You've got to get this stuff out. You've got to talk about it. But I'm just giving the skeleton here.

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And again, a lot of men, what they do, they say, if the wife isn't good, then he's excused.

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Wrong. And don't have the right to just abandon their wife. Now, if she's abusing him physically or threatening the children or committing adultery, you know, well, you know, separate and take care of stuff.

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But we're talking normatively. And so, it's not necessarily the issue here that we have to say, how do we make her okay, what we do ultimately.

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But the thing is, what do you do? And Christian men are too often ready to bail and not suffer through everything.

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Look, most guys, you know, if there's a storm outside, a storm, and there's people suffering the flood and they're coming down, they're sweeping, there's a car in the way, most men will run out there, jump out in the water, risk their lives to save somebody.

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And yet, in their marriage, they want to find an excuse to bail. And the inconsistency.

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And they have to understand that they would often give their lives, risk their lives for somebody else, but they won't even do it for their own wives.

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They won't risk their own pride. They won't sacrifice their own pride, their own humility. They won't do these things that they need to be doing for their wives and they need to lead their wives that way.

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And the men need to act like Christ did. And what did Christ do? Who was God in flesh?

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What He did was, He loved, He forgave, He was patient, He suffered,

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He taught, He healed, He provided for them, and He died for them. And this is what we're to emulate.

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Now, we're sinners, and we're going to fail. But, that's not an excuse to give up.

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So marriages need to understand, or people in marriages, men in particular, need to understand, if you claim to be a

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Christian, you better start acting like a Christian. And the first way to do that, first step, is drop down to your knees.

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Say, Lord, reveal to me my sin. I've got a list of hers.

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What do you want me to do? And you ask God to deal with her sin, between him and her.

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And you ask God to deal with that, but you say, Lord, make me the man you want me to be. Make me the man.

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And it's, well, trust me, it's hard. All this love,

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I'm telling you, it's hard. It's one of the, I think it definitely challenges our faith as men, and who's made a vow to be to be one, you know, and to honor that vow.

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Because the temptation is, I think a lot of times as well, oh, this ain't working out, and you play the blame game, then you both say, well,

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I'll just go to the next one. And somebody else, this just wasn't it. But you fail to take accountability for your decisions.

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And you ran. And that's something I don't want to do. Because I do love, my wife now,

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I love her. And even, regardless of problems and situations,

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I don't want to be a coward. In other words, I don't want to run from my commitment and my covenant.

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Well, you can't. Even if you want to. Even if you want to, you want to bail. It's like,

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I don't even believe, it's like when you want to bail, and then you just go to God, like,

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God, I can't, like, I don't even know how to bail. You know, and he pulls me back in.

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Gives you strength. That's right. You've got to trust God. And people don't realize something. When you ask

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God to reveal your own sin to you in regard to your marriage, he'll do it. He'll do it.

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And then you've got to take care of it. And then it's like, you want to humble yourself, and she's not doing what she should be doing.

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You're like, oh, this is making it even tougher. Yes, it does. There comes the grace extension.

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And then what you do is, while you're trying to live right, you stumble all the way. And then you find out how bad you really are.

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God says, you wanted to know. There you go. Oh, crud. Oh, man. So what did you do when it came to your door?

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That's right. I've got stories about my marriage. What I tell men to do is man up.

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Get rid of the diapers. Take your apron strings from your mommy, cut them, get rid of them, act like men, and stand up like men.

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Do what you have to do. It doesn't mean you have to have a great job making eight figures. It means you need to be faithful.

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And the women have their responsibilities. Women call me up, I'll tell them what they can do, too. But men need to risk, they need to endure, they need to be strong, they need to act like men, as 1

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Corinthians 16 .13 says. Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men.

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Be strong. This is what we're commanded to do. So be strong. It doesn't mean perfection.

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Be strong. Follow Jesus. And act like men. And stop bailing on marriages.

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Men out there start bailing two times. Stop whining like a little boy. You know?

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I just tell them, man up. You suck it up and you get it done. And I know, because I had to do it myself.

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I think a lot of it could have a lot of instantaneous in our culture and so if everything's not going right now we just change it out for a new one.

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That's right. And my wife and I had a lot of trouble in our marriage early on.

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And we both, if it hadn't been for us being Christian we'd have been divorced. So we stuck it out because we're committed to Christ and there was no opportunity we're not going to leave her.

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She's not going to leave me. We're not going to commit adultery. We're stuck. We had to work it out. We worked it out.

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It wasn't easy. We worked it out. And we both had to have some steam let out and you know how it goes.

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But the thing is, that's what you've got to do. Mature up. Sort of bailing and running like little babies.

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My daughters call them man babies. They're man babies. That's what she calls them.

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I love that term. That's right. I appreciate it man. It gets tough sometimes when you feel like you're trying to do the right thing and then you're both trying to do the right thing and then sometimes it just breaks off the other way and a lot of circumstances happen and they start building on each other and then we want to look back into the past and bring everything out and expect ourselves to be moving forward and growing in God in the future.

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But we're still holding on to bitterness and unforgiveness Yes sir.

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About bitterness. Okay. Let's see if I can find it really quickly. Let's see.

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Where is it? I don't think I can find it. Darn it. I thought

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I knew right where it was. It's been a while since I've had to talk about this. Bitterness. What bitterness does is it kills.

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Bitterness if you're wronged by someone and it is a wrong or you think it's a wrong that you've suffered and then you don't take care of it bitterness is a thing that leads to anger and anger leads to murder and so people will become bitter because they're self -justifying their actions.

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She did this and maybe she was wrong and you hold it against her. Well, God says that he will remember our sins no more it doesn't mean he forgets it means he doesn't actively bring them up again and so you have the choice and the opportunity in your marriage to purposely bring up stuff that you've forgiven and you don't want

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God to do that to you so you need to let things go and you have to let go of bitterness because it will fester like a wound and it will infect other things in your heart and your soul.

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You have to get rid of bitterness because it leads to anger which leads to murder murder in the heart and anger in thoughts and adulteries in the mind and heart and so if you if you have been wronged for real, it really was, you did something wrong okay then you take it to the cross, you say

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Lord as you have forgiven me so I forgive her teach me how to forgive this is what it means and you gotta lead this way yeah, oh, it's not easy it is not easy that's right okay

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I lead by example I wish we didn't have to man

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I just wish we didn't have to I don't want to lead by example I feel like it's a lot and the

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Bible talks about dying to our flesh daily to pick up our cross and so it's a real struggle especially when you allow things certain sins