Sunday Sermon: Q&A to Close 2 Corinthians

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

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Corinthians. Here's Pastor Gabe. Second Corinthians chapter one, starting in verse three,

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I want to remember once again this theme that Paul had placed in front of the

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Corinthians as we come into responding to some of the questions that have come our way and to, and then

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I'll kind of give you the breakdown of what we're going to do here in just a moment. But let's read together. Second Corinthians chapter one, verses one through, or I'm sorry, three through seven.

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And in honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? Second Corinthians one, verses three through seven.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

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For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

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If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.

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Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

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Let's pray once again. Our heavenly Father, we thank you for this comfort,

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Father of mercies, God of all comfort that you have given to us in Christ, knowing that in Jesus, our sins are forgiven and we can call upon you as God.

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And you not only hear us, but you receive us and love us. And I pray that we are continually reminded of this as we come to your word, that we experience that peace that surpasses all understanding, guarding our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus, as Paul talked about in Philippians 4.

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Lead us in your truth this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.

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You may be seated. So I received 15 questions today, maybe a little bit more than that.

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I kind of lumped a few questions together, so you might see your question paired with another question.

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I had taken all the questions off of the card and just written them down and then kind of took them from there and put them together in the categories that I arranged.

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And so I may have taken questions from different people and put them together, but hopefully the question that you asked will end up in here somewhere.

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We happen to have quite a few questions related to Genesis. And so if you look in your bulletin,

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I've got kind of the layout, the basic gist of the questions that I'm responding to today. The first five questions are going to be related to the material that we've covered in 2

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Corinthians. The next five questions will be the Genesis questions, those that have come related to the stories that we read in the first book of the

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Bible. And then finally, that last category of five will just be miscellaneous questions that have been asked. But since we just finished up 2

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Corinthians, and that's kind of what this Q &A is closing out, I'd like to start there with these things that are the most fresh in our minds.

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So this first question goes like this. In 2 Corinthians 12 .2,

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Paul said, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up in the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body,

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I do not know. God knows. What is the third heaven that Paul references?

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Well, this isn't terribly complicated, although we like to complicate it. Paul was simply referring to the heaven where God dwells.

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And this was the Jewish or Hebrew way of referring to the heavens. The first heaven is the place where there are birds and clouds.

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That's what we would refer to as the first heaven. The second heaven is where way far out in the distance, the sun, moon, and stars occupy space.

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And the more we've come to know about outer space and the universe, the further and further we realize those stars are.

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The more vast that we realize it is. But then God dwells in a heaven that is even more vast than what we're looking into in the night sky.

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And that's what Paul refers to as the third heaven. Now often when we talk about heaven, we think of it in terms of layers.

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So that first layer where the clouds are, the second layer where the sun, moon, and stars are, and then the third layer.

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So like out there beyond the edge of space, that's where heaven is, right? No. That's what we refer to as being as heaven, as being above the sun, moon, and stars.

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But understand that that locale, when we say that God is above the sun, moon, and stars, what we're saying is that he sits enthroned above all creation.

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But that doesn't mean that heaven is way out there beyond the sun, moon, and stars. When it comes down to it, heaven is a spiritual existence and it's really not that far from where we are now.

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But there is a veil that separates the physical world in which we live from the spiritual world in which

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God and the angels live. Whenever we read about an angel coming and visiting somebody in the

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Old or New Testament, it's not like they flew across space to earth and then had that encounter.

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But rather the veil that separates the heavenly from the physical was lifted for a moment.

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And an angel from the heavenlies stepped into our realm. When Jesus Christ put on flesh and dwelt among us,

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God enthroned in heaven stepped down off of that throne and became a baby born in Bethlehem.

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But this is not like a distance, like heaven is a particular location. Rather it is a spiritual realm that we cannot reach until we die.

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On the day that Christ returns, essentially what happens is this. That veil is lifted.

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It's not that Jesus travels across space to earth and we see him coming in the eastern sky, although that's the way that it's characterized in scripture or personified in that particular way.

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But rather the veil that separates the physical world from the heavenly will be lifted and Christ will be seen by all.

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Praise God. As Paul illustrates in 1 Thessalonians 4, all of us are participants in that day, whether we've died and gone to be with God before the day of Christ or we're among those who are still on earth on the day that Christ returns.

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Everybody, living or dead, will be participants in that day of the

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Lord. So something to look forward to. But anyway, that's simply what Paul is in reference to whenever he says third heaven there in 2

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Corinthians 12. Question number two, how do you answer someone who rejects

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God for allowing bad things to happen to them? For example, I prayed to God to make this stop and he didn't, so he doesn't exist.

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I believe that the answer that is given to us also comes from 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul was struggling with a thorn that was in his flesh.

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And he says, so not to become conceited, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

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Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

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For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

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For when I am weak, then I am strong. The person who prays to God and asks for God to take something away from them, but God doesn't take it away from them, as he didn't take it away from Paul, and they abandon the faith as a result of what they did not get, this was a test of God upon them that they failed.

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In Deuteronomy chapter 13, Moses says to the people of Israel, if anyone comes to you with divine signs, like they come performing miraculous signs and wonders, but then they say to you, let's go after other gods, do not follow them.

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For the Lord your God is testing you. Understand that God uses even false teachers to test the genuineness of those who say that they believe in God.

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And if a person were to abandon God and go after a false teacher, then they fail that test of the

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Lord upon their faith. In this instance here in 2 Corinthians 12, we see that Paul did pass that test.

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For the Lord was allowing this to be on his flesh that he might cry out to God for deliverance.

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And the Lord indeed delivered him ultimately from that. But for the time being, that Paul was praying to God for that to be taken from him,

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Jesus said to him, and we know it's the voice of Jesus that was speaking to Paul. If you have a red letter

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Bible, in fact, it'll be marked in red. Jesus responding to him, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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If the Lord God would not even take this from the apostle Paul, then we know that he has a reason and a purpose for why he doesn't take the things away from you that you might ask

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God to deliver you from. It's not that God doesn't love you. In fact, in Hebrews chapter 12, we read that God is disciplining us.

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And what father doesn't discipline his sons whom he loves? If God did not discipline us, then we would be illegitimate sons and daughters and would not be the sons and daughters of God.

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The Lord tested Jesus in the wilderness. We just read about that this morning in our study of Mark.

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And yet the Holy Spirit was with him. And if Jesus is going to be delivered from the temptations of Satan, my friends, you have the power of the

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Holy Spirit within you. You who are followers of Christ, you've been given the power to resist those temptations when they come.

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Whenever we encounter somebody who has prayed for God to take away something, and yet he does not take it away and they abandoned their faith as a result, pray for them.

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Do not give up hope on that person. Maybe their unbelief is a season.

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May we pray that it's not a permanent fixture of their heart before God, lest they die and then stand before God in judgment.

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In James chapter 4, James says that you ask and you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives.

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Jesus has said to us, and this is actually a passage that's going to come up in our Q &A this morning as well. Jesus has said, ask and it will be given to you.

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Seek and you will find. Knock on the door, we'll be opened unto you for our God loves us and he gives us good things.

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But may we pray for his will to be done, not ours to be done. And may our delight be the will of God and not our own.

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Amen. Hold fast to Christ. He is good and his promises will be done.

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Question number three. Can you explain the difference between rebuke, reproof, admonish, refute, exhort, and encourage?

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In fact, some of those words do actually appear in the same Greek word in the New Testament. It just kind of depends on how that word is used, the way that it gets translated into another word in English.

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But as we went through 2 Corinthians, we talked about the apostle Paul admonishing the

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Corinthians. That was the word that I used most frequently, even though that word itself doesn't appear in 2

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Corinthians. Paul admonished them. What does that word admonish mean? I think one of the most prominent places it's used is in Colossians 3 .16,

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where we are told to teach and admonish one another in the faith.

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To admonish means to correct with goodwill. So you're not just telling a person that they're wrong, and you're not just talking them down so they feel bad, but your intention is specifically that they might know the truth, that they might be taught in a good and a right way, that they would, again, as we prayed this morning, know the paths of righteousness that have been set before us in God.

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You are walking on a path of unrighteousness, I'm admonishing you to make a correction and walk in the path of righteousness.

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In 2 Timothy 4 .2, we see several of these words used together in the same passage.

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Paul says to Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

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There we have reprove, rebuke, and exhort. So what do these words mean and why are they used so interchangeably throughout the

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New Testament, but even in the same context as we see here in this particular passage? To reprove means to scold with the intent to convict or expose as guilty.

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Whenever we evangelize, whenever we share the gospel with those who do not believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary for us to reprove. And that means that someone who does not know

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Jesus needs to understand that before God, they are guilty.

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My friends, if you don't know that you're guilty before God, what is it exactly that Jesus is saving you from?

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We have such a resistance to talk about sin or guilt or any of these things because we don't want to make people feel bad.

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We just want them to love Jesus. Well, if they don't know Jesus as Savior, then they don't know

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Jesus at all. And if you call Christ Savior, what does that mean?

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What has he saved you from exactly? Well, he saved you from your sin? Absolutely.

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He saved you from death, the wages of sin? Yes. Jesus has saved you from the wrath of God, which is burning against all unrighteousness of men, as Paul talks about in Romans chapter 2.

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And as Peter says in 2 Peter 3, a day is coming on which God's wrath is going to be poured out upon the earth.

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Those who are in Christ Jesus will be saved from the day of wrath, but those who do not know

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Christ will perish in the day of wrath. So it is necessary in order to know you need a

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Savior, a person first has to know that they're guilty and that there's nothing that they can do to relieve themselves or forgive themselves of their sins, make themselves right before God.

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This is a work that only Christ can do. So in this way, we reprove, we expose as guilty, we show a person their guilt.

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And how do we do that? We do that with the law. When a person sees it, this is what

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I went through with the high school kids this past Wednesday night as we're going through Romans right now. In Romans 7, Paul says,

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I didn't know what it was like to covet until I read in the law, thou shalt not covet. And then I realized, I'm a covetor.

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And no matter how much I concentrate on not coveting, when I focus on that sin, it just makes me covet all the more.

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The thing that I want to do, which is righteousness before God, I cannot do, but it's the thing I don't want to do that I keep on doing.

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That's what Paul says as he goes on there in Romans 7. Kind of shows the absurdity of sin.

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As much as we want to follow in righteousness, yet we do the absurd thing. And that is blaspheming the very creator of the entire universe, as though we would say to him that our ways are better than his ways.

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And it's for this reason that we deserve death, that we have rebelled against God and His holiness and His perfection.

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It's not about how good you are compared to other people. It's about how good you are compared to God. And compared to God, we have no goodness.

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Yet we are blessed to read, as we studied in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, for our sake,

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He made him to be sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

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This is the doctrine that we refer to as double imputation. When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, our sins were imputed to Him, and His righteousness was imputed to us.

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So now clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we stand before God justified, all those who have faith in Jesus.

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But to know that you need that righteousness, it's necessary for you to know your guilt before a holy

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God. That's what it means to reprove, to show a person their guilt before God. To rebuke sounds the same, slightly different.

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The word rebuke in the Greek, when we have it in the New Testament, is epitomeo.

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And epitomeo means to warn strongly with a properly assigned value.

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I love that. We kind of lose the meaning a little bit in the translation into English, but when that word is used that way in the

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Greek, it was understood that the guilt that a person is guilty of is properly assigned.

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That's what it means to rebuke somebody. So you're not rebuking someone for something greater, like overwhelming a penalty for the sin that they've committed or something like that, but rather that we would properly assign the value of the sin that has been committed.

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There are certain things that are laid out in Scripture that are worthy of being dismissed from the church.

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Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 5. If a person is guilty of sexual immorality, if they are guilty of being liars and thieves, and yet they bear the name of brother, they're supposed to be put out from your midst so that they may learn not to do such things, and such sins will separate a person from the kingdom of God.

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But if you lose your temper with somebody and somebody catches you doing that, I saw you get mad at your brother and I heard you call them a name, you can go to them and you can encounter them one -on -one, as Matthew 18 says,

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Jesus talking about those ways that we're to correct and admonish one another.

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You go to your brother just between the two of you, and you correct that brother or sister, and if they repent, then you've won your brother, and there's no need to have to make a public case of it.

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But then if they will not listen to you, take one or two others along, right? So that every charge may be established by the witness or the evidence of two or three witnesses.

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And then if they won't listen to even them, you take it before the church, and if they won't listen to the church, treat them as you would a

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Gentile or a tax collector. It means treat one as you would an outsider if they will not repent.

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So there are certain sins that don't need to be dealt with as severely, but they're still sin.

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It's still something that separates us from God and must be repented of. And so it's properly assigning the value of the sin that has been committed.

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That's what it means to rebuke. The next word is exhort. To exhort means to summon or beseech.

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Now I have not done my job as a pastor preaching to you if I don't give you an exhortation.

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Otherwise, all I've given you is a Bible lesson or maybe some sort of history lesson. But what we read in the

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Scriptures must also come with exhortation. What does that mean? It means like, in light of what we've just read, therefore, you must go and do this.

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Which by the way, every time you read in the New Testament the word therefore, whatever comes after the therefore is exhortation.

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Every time. Paul will lay down some sort of deep theological biblical truth or something about God and then he will say, therefore, this is what this means for you as a believer.

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This is how this should be reflected in your life. That's what that means to exhort somebody.

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Next word is admonish. I've given you the definition of that one. To correct with goodwill and to give counsel.

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The next one is refute. Now, this word is actually rarely used in the Bible. The most prominent place that it's used in the

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New Testament is in Acts 18 .28. And it's where Apollos was refuting the

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Jews. And he was countering their arguments with more Christological arguments. And so he was doing a refutation.

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So to refute means to prove wrong or provide a sound argument against.

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And then the last word is encourage. And the interesting thing about encourage is it's the

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Greek word parkaleo. And this is the same word that we've had come up 10 times in the passage that we started with this morning that's translated comfort.

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Encourage and comfort in the Greek are the same word. To encourage means to offer up evidence that stands in God's court.

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That's lovely. But literally in the Greek, that's how that translates.

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To offer up evidence that stands in God's court. And words that might be translated from parkaleo include comfort, encourage, and exhort.

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In the book of 1 John chapter 2, we are told that we have an advocate before the

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Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. That means not only is

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Jesus our mediator before God, but he is also speaking of us favorably before God.

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He is our encourager, for he offers up evidence that stands in God's court.

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How does Jesus do that? I have paid for this one's sins, and they are mine.

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Praise God for that. 1 Corinthians 4 .14, Paul says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you, as my dearly beloved children.

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And though the things that Paul writes might be very strong and very harsh, yet he does this for the purpose of raising up saints to glory in Christ.

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Question number four. My question is on the sovereignty of God. I believe that God is sovereign over every purpose, will, and plan that he has.

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Why is it that among some believers, they believe that men have free will to choose

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Christ as Savior? Let me qualify that word free will before we continue on. The term free will that we use only appears in the

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Bible in one way, and it's referring to the free will giving that is offered up to God in addition to the responsibilities and the obligations that we have.

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So it more specifically related to the offerings that the Israelites were supposed to give to God in the

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Pentateuch. Then if there was anything else they wanted to give to God beyond that, there would be free will offerings.

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It doesn't matter whether you're reading the King James Bible or any of the more modern translations, that's the only way that term free will appears.

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Whenever we talk about the will of man versus the will of God, do you have free will? Absolutely you do, but you only have the will to do what is in your nature to do.

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For example, a cow can only do what is in a cow's nature to do.

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A cow can't be a pig. It can't go rooting around for truffles, okay? A cow does not have that in its nature to be like a pig.

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A cow can only be a cow. Likewise for you, you can only do what is in your nature to do.

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And before you come to Christ, the will that you have desires to sin. It does not desire to please

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God. If you have the desire to please God, it's because your heart has been regenerated by the

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Holy Spirit. Titus 3 .5 mentions that, and God talked about that through the prophet Ezekiel, and we've mentioned this before in Ezekiel 36, where God says,

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I will sprinkle clean water on you and cleanse you from all your uncleannesses.

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And I will take your heart of stone, and I will give you a soft heart. And I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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We talked about this also, we were in 2 Corinthians 6, verses 1 and 2. Do not receive the grace of God in vain.

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For he says, in a favorable time, I listen to you. And in a day of salvation,

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I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.

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So it is God who has worked out this salvation in us through his

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Holy Spirit and belief in the gospel. You did not have faith in God until the gospel was proclaimed to you, and you turned from your sin, and you came to faith in Jesus Christ.

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And when that was done, there was probably an exhortation that was given to you.

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And that exhortation probably sounded like this, repent and believe the gospel.

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Did you make a choice to follow Jesus? Yes, you did.

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That was your decision. You made it. Well, when you study the theology of it, you find out in the scriptures, you could not have made that decision unless God had acted first.

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And he transforms our will, which was previously against God, into a will that is for God.

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Our orientation has changed. We had an orientation that was heading in one direction away from God, and his

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Holy Spirit turned us around, and we're now oriented to God, and in his direction, and desiring him.

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Yes, people will still sin on the way because we are weak in our flesh, but what should happen there because we have the

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Holy Spirit within us is that we're convicted. We feel guilty because we know we've sinned against God.

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And so therefore, our orientation is to desire to repent of that sin and be in the pursuit of God even when we stumble and fall.

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And so this is what it means for us to have a will. When we come to Christ, we have a freed will.

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We are released from the bondage to our sin, and we're now free to worship God where previously we could not do that.

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Romans 8, verse 9 says that they who do not have the spirit of Christ cannot please

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God. So it is only when we are given his spirit that we are able to live in such a way that pleases the

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Lord. When Paul says in Romans chapter 3 that no one does good and no one seeks

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God, who he's talking about there in Romans 3 is every fallen man descended from Adam who does not even have the will to seek after God because their will is fallen.

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So they have the will to rebel against God. You sin, and you sin of your own choice, but that's what you in your desire want when you don't have

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God. You want the sin instead of God. And it's by his grace that we're transformed then to pursue

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God instead of the passions of our flesh. So then the nature of this question here in question number four, what

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I sense from this is, why is it then that among believers there are still those who believe that it was by their own will that they came to faith in God instead of by the will of God?

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I believe the answer to that is in Romans 12, 3. For by the grace given to me,

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I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith

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God has assigned. So we're all at various stages of development in our maturity in the

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Holy Spirit of God. And there is a necessity for those who are more mature to help to raise up those who are less mature, not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to recognize that God has assigned you a measure of faith.

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So take that measure that God has assigned to you and use it to help another, regardless of where they are in their measure of faith, that we may build each other up.

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This is what Paul talks about in Ephesians 4, 15, and 16. We would speak the truth in love, growing one another into the head, who is

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Christ Jesus, the head of the church. J .C. Ryle has said, of all the doctrines of the

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Bible, none is so offensive to human nature as the doctrine of God's sovereignty. These are truths that natural man cannot stand.

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Nothing, in short, will make him submit to them but the humbling teaching of the

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Holy Spirit. So let us continue with steadfastness in prayer and the word of God, holding out the word of truth to one another, that we may grow each other in righteousness, preparing

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Christians together for the day of glory. Amen. Question number five, at what age would you say that you discovered

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Christ? And I'm putting this question with a passage that I just read out of 2 Corinthians 6, 2.

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Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. What was that day for me?

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I don't know. I haven't the foggiest idea. Now, I can tell you this.

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I've known about Christ my entire life, and there's not a day in my life that I did not know about him.

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From the very first Sunday that I was breathing in this world outside of the womb, I was with my parents in church, and almost every single

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Sunday since then. I have a life where I am grateful to say I've spent more of my

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Sundays in my life in church than out of church. And there was a phase there in college where I felt like I didn't have to go to church.

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But nevertheless, even there, the Lord still pulled me in that direction. In Psalm 119, 109,

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David said, I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.

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There were times when I took matters into my own hands and I would stray from God, but yet it was the

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Lord that held me close to him, and so I was never able to stray too far, and I'm thankful to God for that.

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It's only by the grace of God that I didn't stray as far as I could have strayed. But nevertheless,

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I've known Christ my entire life. When I was four years old, I prayed to God and I said at the age of four,

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Jesus, I want to follow you. And I remember that. I wasn't baptized until I was a teenager, and then, of course,

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I kind of went by the wayside when I was in college. But the Lord still brought me back to that.

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At what point in my life, in the 38 years that I've been alive, did I actually come to redeeming, saving faith in Christ?

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I don't know. There are some people who do know that, and praise God. Like, they can tell you the exact day.

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The hour before this hour, I was a sinner headed for hell, but after this hour, praise the

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Lord, I was transferred into his glorious kingdom. That's wonderful if you know that. Unfortunately, my progression was much slower than that.

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It was a much broader stretch of time. It didn't really happen in one single moment, I don't think.

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Was my prayer genuine when I was four? I believe that it was, but only

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God knows for sure. I know that today I stand favorably in the presence of God, and for that,

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I am thankful. Now, that concludes the first five questions. I'm not gonna spend as much time on these next.

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I think I can go through these a little more quickly. But the next five are the Genesis questions. Genesis 1 .26

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says, "'Then God said, let us make man in our image, "'after our likeness, and let them have dominion "'over the fish of the sea, and over the birds "'of the heavens, and over the livestock, "'and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing "'that creeps on the earth.'

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Then Genesis 2 .7 says, "'Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust "'from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils "'the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.'"

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So the question in light of these two passages is this. Why are there two different accounts of the creation of man?

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Very simply, the account that we see in Genesis 1 is a day -by -day account of what

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God did on those respective days of creation. Genesis 2 looks more specifically at what happened on day six.

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That's simply the reason why there appears to be two different accounts, but they're not really two different accounts.

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Genesis 1 is a very broad summary of what happened on each day. Genesis 2 is more specific about the events that happened on day six.

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Question number seven, were both man and woman made in the image of God? If so, what gender does that make

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God? Well, we come to an understanding of being made in the image of God, the key passage in the whole

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Bible related to this is Genesis 1, 27. So God created man in his own image.

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In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

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Are both man and woman created in the image of God? Yes. What does that mean to be created in the image of God?

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It does not mean that you bear like the physical likeness of God. That's often the way that gets interpreted, but that's not what that means.

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And that's why you see the Michelangelo paintings with God reaching out and touching the finger of Adam and he just looks like a man with old white hair.

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But that's the way that we perceive that. Whenever we read that we're made in God's image, where we go is, oh, so God looks like us.

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But to be made in the image and the likeness of God, and by the way, there's no difference between the two. Image and likeness are the same.

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The Catholic church has separated these two things out into two different things. And they'll talk about we're fallen in one sense, but not in another.

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But that's not exactly what that means. Image and likeness are used interchangeably. To be made in the image of God means that we are created to reflect the

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Lord's holy character. Can the animals do that?

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No, they cannot. Only we, men and women who were created in the likeness of God, can reflect

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God's holy character. So essentially what happens at the fall of man is man goes his own way and what he reflects in his character is not

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God. So therefore that creature which was made to reflect the likeness and the image of God has blasphemed

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God with every action that he does because what he shows in his likeness and in his image is that God is not holy.

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That's why sin is so horrible. Everything that you do that is chasing after the passion of your flesh and is not in the holiness of God is by itself a blasphemous action.

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Because you are conveying, you who were created in the likeness of God, that God is unholy and that is what makes sin so blasphemous because God is indeed holy.

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Yet you who were made in his likeness are trying to convey that God is not and going after your own way instead of giving him the glory and the honor and the worship that he deserves.

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I hope I've stated that correctly, that you're not hearing me say that God is unholy but it's as though with your actions you're proclaiming that he's unholy.

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The Latin term that we use to define ourselves as being made in the image of God is imago

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Dei. And what we mean when we use that phrase imago Dei, it means that man is not

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God. Man reflects the Lord and is therefore not the Lord. It also means that as the imago

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Dei, we are distinguished from animals. We are subordinate to the Lord but we're not subordinate to the animals.

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As it says in verse 28 of Genesis chapter three, God made man to have dominion over all of creation.

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So we're not subordinate to animals. Pita, who thinks that people and animals are all the same.

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No, see that is contrary to the imago Dei and they blaspheme God. They take that which was made in the image of God, we, and desecrate it.

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And that's what we do with our sin. We desecrate that image of God. It's as though we are living statues of God.

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And when we sin, we desecrate those images of the Lord. You who are soldiers, you understand the seriousness of stomping on the flag.

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Well, think of how much more serious it is for we who are in the likeness of God to stomp on the image of God.

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Which is why we must desire holiness that we may reflect God's character in this way. So the second part of this question is, if God is not human himself, then what gender does that make

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God or what sex does that make God rather? Well, honestly, neither, because he is neither man nor woman.

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In John 4, 24, Jesus says of God, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

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Now, since God is spirit, he has no form, so he has no sex.

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However, God the Father has chosen to reveal himself in the masculine.

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And therefore, that's the way we must refer to him. Even though you could make the argument that God has no specific sex, that does not give you permission to then go, well, then

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I decide that God is my mother. No, for you must worship

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God the way that he has said that he is, not who we want him to be.

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And God has chosen to reveal himself as a father and refer to himself in the masculine.

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Whether you're talking about God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit, all three persons of the

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Trinity are referred to in the scriptures as he. And so therefore, that's how we must worship

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God. And Jesus saying, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth, according to the way that God has said he is to be worshiped, not the way we would wanna worship

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God. Now, Jesus himself, of course, God incarnate, God who put on human flesh, and the human form that he chose to take on was that of a man.

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So Jesus is male. And even now, sitting at the right hand of the throne of God, he's still fully man and fully

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God. In 1 Timothy 2 .5, it says that we have one mediator between God and man, and that is the man,

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Christ Jesus. So even sitting now at the right hand of the throne of God, Jesus is still fully

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God and fully man. And so let us know God the way that he has shown himself to be and worship him accordingly.

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Question number eight. Genesis 6 .2 says, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any as they chose.

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What does this mean? The sons of God saw the daughters of men. Does this mean that fallen angels mixed with humans?

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That's the common interpretation of that. And there are many teachers that I respect and learn from that even interpret that passage that way.

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That what this means in Genesis 6 .2 is that fallen angels were mating with human women and therefore producing children that became the evil on the earth that God ultimately purged with the flood.

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I have to tell you that personally, I don't believe that that's necessarily what that's talking about. Because what we have in Genesis 6 comes right after the genealogies that were laid out in Genesis 5.

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And you have two distinct genealogies. You have the genealogy of Seth and you have the genealogy of Cain.

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Those who are the genealogy of Seth were referred to as the righteous. And those who were of the genealogy of Cain were a fallen man.

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So what ends up happening is that those who were in the righteous line ended up taking for themselves spouses from the fallen line.

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And then there became no distinguishing characteristics between the two strain of humankind prior to the flood.

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Then everybody just became sinful. There was not a righteous and an unrighteous. It was everybody was living in sinfulness.

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But God singled out for himself one who was Noah and saved him, a righteous man, and his three sons and their wives, eight people on an ark from the devastation that came.

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That's what I believe that the interpretation of Genesis 6 is. If you don't agree with me, that's fine.

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You won't be put out of the church. Question number nine, when did

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Pangea happen and why did certain animals end up on certain continents? So in Genesis chapter 10, it's mentioned for us there that in verse 25, to Eber, we have another genealogy there, and this is post -flood.

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This is all after the flood now. To Eber were born two sons. The name of one was

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Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. And then at the end of Genesis 10, it says, these are the clans of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies and their nations.

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And from these, the nation spread abroad on the earth after the flood. Now, some have taken these passages to mean that Pangea or the dividing of the continent.

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So Pangea was one supercontinent. And then you have the dividing of the continents. And some believe that that's what's being spelled out here in Genesis 10.

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But whenever we have an earthquake on the earth, and we hear about some massive earthquake, particularly it takes place in an island in the

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Pacific somewhere. What's the next news report that you hear after that earthquake? A tsunami warning, right?

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This is just earthquakes as we experienced them on the earth right now. So let me detail this for you.

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If Pangea happened after the flood, it would have wiped out all of humankind again, because that massive move of continents would have destroyed everything.

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Simple earthquakes today could mean devastation for an island or for a people that would feel the aftereffects of those earthquakes.

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So the spread of the continents would have done far more devastation than even the earthquakes that we experience now.

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And after the flood, God said he would not destroy the earth again in a flood. So we can rule that out.

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What Genesis 10 here is talking about is not Pangea or the dividing of the continents. What it's talking about rather is the distribution of the people on planet earth after God confused their languages at Babel.

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Now the story of the Tower of Babel doesn't happen until Genesis 11, but what Moses is laying out here in Genesis 10 is just a genealogy.

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He's not trying to follow a chronological order of events. He's just laying out a genealogy there.

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So the things that he says about in Genesis 10 in the later portion of that genealogy happens after the

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Tower of Babel that we read about in Genesis 11. The dividing of the continents happened during Noah's flood.

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And I think it's unquestionable that there was at one point the earth was just one solid landmass and then was broken into the continents that we have today.

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There's geological evidence, there's archeological evidence, there's everything that seems to point to the fact that the continents that we have them now were not the way that things were.

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In fact, Peter even says in 2 Peter 3 that the way that the earth is now is not as it once was.

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So we know that the earth was a certain way prior to the flood. But when you read about the flood itself in Genesis 7, it says that on that day that the floodwaters came upon the earth, the fountains of the great deep burst forth.

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So the continents spread and the water came up and spreading out the continents allowed the water to come up the way that it did.

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But in this spreading of the continents, we also had the creation of the mountain ranges. So then at one point when those continents finally came to their rest, the collision of those tectonic plates which was all happening underneath the floodwaters eventually jutted up into the mountain ranges that we have now.

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You know that at the summit of Mount Everest, they've found sea fossils. How would they possibly get there?

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Except that that mountain range had at one point been much lower and had been covered by the waters of the earth.

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And then in Genesis chapter eight, it says the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed and the rains from the heavens were restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually.

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This was able to happen because after the collision of the plates, the land masses were elevated higher above the waters so that the waters could recede.

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And this was how Noah's Ark landed at Mount Ararat because that mountain actually came up to meet

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Noah's Ark, not that the waters receded so that the Ark landed on top of it. So that's what

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I believe we understand according to Pangaea and the spreading of the continents. By the way, the whole idea of Pangaea, the supercontinent, was first proposed in 1859 by a geologist who was a

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Christian, Antonio Snyder. So the evolutionists are borrowing from the

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Christian's theory when they talk about Pangaea and the supercontinent. Question number 10, how can scientists claim trees, fossils, et cetera, have been around for millions of years?

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How old is the earth? Personally, I believe that the earth is younger than 10 ,000 years. How is it that scientists can claim that trees, fossils, et cetera, have been around for millions of years?

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I don't wanna go into all the evidence of that. You can search answers in Genesis or any of those other websites that talk about these things.

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But let me just give you a biblical response to this. 2 Peter 3, verses five through seven.

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For they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God.

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And that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

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But by the same word, the heavens and the earth that now exist are stored up for fire being kept until the day of judgment and the destruction of the ungodly.

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Notice that Peter starts that section by saying, they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God.

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That's a fact. And those who dwell in darkness deliberately overlook it.

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How do they get one out of that darkness? My friends, by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Now, the age of the earth is a tertiary doctrine. It's not necessary to have to believe that the earth is younger than 10 ,000 years old in order to be a

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Christian. But I think in order to have a consistent theology, we've talked about this before, I won't go into the details of it.

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But in order to have a consistent theology, it's necessary to believe that the earth is as young as the

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Bible conveys that it is. So that's it with the Genesis questions. We're approaching a quarter afternoon.

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Let me do a real brief, quick run through of these final five questions. Question number 11, why do you believe

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God doesn't want a prosperous life for us? He says that we are worth more than the sparrows of the field, have no cares, but through praise, make your requests known to him.

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Well, God does want you to have a prosperous life, but it's just not the way that we think of it in terms of worldly prosperity.

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Jesus said in John 10, 10, I have come that they may have life and have it more abundant.

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But the prosperity that we would be experiencing would be a spiritual prosperity, not a worldly prosperity.

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There are some who are certainly gifted to have more wealth and treasures, but no matter what, whether you have a lot or you have little, we all have an obligation to rejoice in Christ for all things and be thankful for him for everything.

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And the Bible is clear that whether a person is rich or poor, we all share equally in the eternal things of God if we are followers of Jesus Christ.

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Question number 12, would God help a person that really needed the help to survive if at the same time it would hurt someone else?

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There's a book that C .S. Lewis wrote called A Grief Observed, and it's his journal entries that he wrote right after his wife,

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Joy, died. And one of the things that C .S. Lewis talks about in that book is that God would not allow one series of events to happen to one person and disregard a series of events that happens to another person.

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All of these things are happening within the divine sovereign will of God. Lewis also gives this illustration.

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He says, God would not put a bowl of soup in front of one person only to have them right before they take a bite to take it away and then hand it to another person.

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God is not a cruel God with a magnifying glass standing over an anthill burning ants, okay?

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That's not the way that the Lord works. But we are told in 2 Peter chapter one that in Christ Jesus, we are recipients of his very great and precious promises.

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And you know Romans 8, 28, that God is working all things together for good for those who love

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God and are called according to his purpose. So all these things, no matter how difficult the trial may be in our life, no matter how much we might look at another person and say, well, they're having it great and I'm having it hard.

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What's God thinking in that? I'm the more righteous person than they are. Well, if you have to say that, you're probably not.

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God is doing all of these things for our good ultimately and for his glory so that we would give

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God praise for everything on the day of Christ, that we've done nothing, but that God has given us everything.

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And there's a song that I relate to you every once in a while from Stephen Curtis Chapman. It was from one of his 90s albums entitled

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Heaven in the Real World. There's a song on that album stuck with me my entire life.

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I heard it when I was a teenager. I've never forgotten its lyrics. It's called Remember Your Chains. And in one of the verses of that song,

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Stephen Curtis Chapman says, there's never one more grateful to sit at the table than the person who can remember all their pain.

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Some people will go through a tougher life than others, but they will have a greater glory at the table of God in the end.

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Question number 13, is dating biblical? Dating is divorce practice. I think that you can do it in a biblical and an honorable way but the way that it's done in our

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American culture and our American context is to try to find the person that fits. If that person doesn't work,

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I'm gonna dump them and go find another person. You're practicing divorce. You're not practicing commitment and marriage.

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And so I believe that there is a more godly way to approach that. And if you want any more advice or details beyond that, come and talk to me later.

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Question number 14, is God all emotional? I have heard a preacher say that God can feel all emotions all the time.

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Well, we've already said that God is not a woman. So I'm just kidding, just kidding, just a joke.

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I could not resist, but let me just say that whatever emotions

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God experiences and we do have conveyance in the scriptures that God does feel certain things but whatever he feels is not the same way that we feel it.

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So we need to be very careful about that. These things have been spelled out for us in the scriptures in such a way to deal with our human limitations but that doesn't mean that God goes through those things the same way that we go through them.

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The best example that I can give you is out of 1 Samuel chapter 15 where God says to Samuel, I regret that I have made

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Saul king. But then in the same chapter, 19 verses later, Samuel says to Saul that God will not lie or have regret for he is not a man that he should have regret.

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And it's not like Samuel brain farted right there all of a sudden, he's like, he just forgot that God said that he regretted.

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We just understand that what God experiences emotionally is not the same way that we experience it.

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So we need to be careful not to transmit our emotions onto God and think that he's going through this the same way that we're going through it.

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God is sovereign and he sees all things from beginning to end perfectly. He knows that because he ordained it.

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So he does not experience these things the same way that we do. What we can know is this though, that Jesus in his flesh experienced what we experienced.

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When God became incarnate and dwelt among us, Hebrews 2 .17 says, therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

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And then Hebrews 4 .15, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet is without sin.

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So we know that when we pray to God, Jesus Christ, who is the God man, sympathizes with us in our weaknesses.

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And we do not worship a God who is unable to empathize with what it is that we are going through.

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Final question, question number 15. If women can teach the Bible, can she teach over a group of high school, middle school boys?

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Discipleship like a mother teaching her kids. I'm not opposed to the idea of a woman teaching a high school class.

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In fact, we've even had it here at this church, but I would rather a man teach in that class. And here's the reason why.

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A statistic that I just saw earlier this week, 43 % of boys are raised by single mothers.

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78 % of teachers in the public school system are female. So that means close to 50 % of boys have 100 % feminine influence at home and 80 % feminine influence at school.

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You hear about the term toxic masculinity used a lot. We do not have a problem in this culture with toxic masculinity.

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We have a problem in this culture with a lack of masculinity. And so for that reason, if we've got young men in classes, whether that be a middle school or a high school class,

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I would prefer that a guy be in that class. Now, you know where our position as a church, that the position of a pastor should be a man that is filling that role, according to 1

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Timothy 2 .12 and other passages. Paul talked about it in 1 Corinthians 14 as well. Also, and just going back to the order of creation, that man was created first and then woman.

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And that's what Paul appeals to when he says that the role of a pastor should be filled by a man.

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I'm not adamantly opposed to a woman teaching high school boys, but I still think it would be a good idea to put a man in that class because of the lack of masculinity that exists in our culture.

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We give good, strong, godly examples of men to our boys that we're training up to be godly men.

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That is the conclusion of all those questions. Thank you for letting me take an hour to do that. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ when we understand the text.