Special March Q&A with Pastor Osman

Kootenai Church

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All right, I didn't quite dress up for this, but I did trim my beard and actually shaved this morning.

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Brushed my teeth for everyone. And I know that some of you are watching in your pajamas, which is unique.

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This is a totally different experience for me doing this, doing a live stream, any kind of a live stream.

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It's almost something like a like I'm doing a podcast or an interview or something like that.

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So this is something entirely different. Unique, kind of odd, weird.

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Speaking of unique, odd, and weird, Peter is here to help us out with all this stuff. So thank you, Peter, for your help in getting all this set up and ready to go.

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I don't think I would have been able to do this without him. The unique, odd, and weird one. Man's got talent, so bad skills.

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All right, it is 930, so I have a list of questions here. Before we get started on that, we're gonna open in prayer.

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We've got, according to my stats, zero viewers.

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Tilt it down. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. I really can't without this thing falling out.

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My dashboard says zero viewers. All right, trying to keep my phone in its place here.

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You can get some duct tape. Yeah, a little bit of tape here. Looks good.

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All right. Oh, now I see 30 viewers. All right, 30 people in adult

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Sunday school class via a live stream. So let's open in prayer, and then we'll get started with some of the questions that have been submitted in various channels, and we'll get started.

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Let's pray. Lord, we are very grateful that we have the technology and the ability to do this, and it is a blessing even being able to meet online in this way.

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This is not optimum, but we know that you know our needs, and you know what we are here for, and you know what we're trying to accomplish even by canceling church for the next couple of weeks, and it's our desire that even as we gather together here and look at your word and understand things from your word, that you would be glorified through our time and our study, and thank you for the questions that have been submitted, and I pray that you give me clarity in giving clear answers and help it to be clearly articulated and understandable, and that our time here together may be used by you to edify us and equip us and encourage us in your word.

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We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So I got a couple of... Now, what is my favorite fictional book?

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All right. We got questions coming into the live stream already, so I'm going to hold off on those, and I'm going to have

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Peter collate some of those for us later on. Let's start with something a little light -hearted. Rainey Aarons asked this question, what does without wax mean?

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Because I put that on my email correspondence, you know, the emails that I send out as well as my written correspondence, any letters that I send out to people

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I have without wax as the signature line, and so I get asked this a couple times a year, actually, and I had this in a...

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I gave an explanation of this in a random thoughts article in our newsletter a while back. Here's the explanation of it.

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Back in ancient times when merchants would sell pottery in the marketplaces, pottery that had been fired that had no cracks in it at all was considered premium pottery.

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It was worth the high dollar value. Unscrupulous merchants would take pottery that had been fired and had cracks in it, and they would fill the cracks in with wax, and then they would paint over top of it and make it look as if it had no cracks or no defects, and then they would sell that as if it were high value pottery.

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So the way you could tell if you were in the marketplace, the way you could tell if something was the real McCoy was genuine or not was to hold it up to the light, and the light would shine through the wax but not through the pottery.

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So you could take a vase or a bowl or a plate or something and hold it up to the sun. The light would shine through, and you could see where the merchant had filled in the cracks with wax.

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So merchants would, in order to avoid being suspected for being unscrupulous, they would mark their pottery as sine sere, which was

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Latin for without wax, which meant that if you held it up to the sun you would see that there was no cracks, there was nothing filled in, there was nothing hidden from the site that the light would reveal.

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And so the genuine merchants who really wanted to sell good pottery would mark their pottery as sine sere, without wax, meaning that if you held it up to light, what you saw was what you get.

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They weren't covering over or hiding any defects. And so sine sere is the word from which we get our word sincerely, which means genuine or true.

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And so it's kind of another way of saying sincerely, but without wax carries the idea that what you see is what you get.

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There's no defects being hidden here, that if you held it up to light you wouldn't see cracks.

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So that's where it comes from. That's where sincerely comes from, sine sere, at least according to the story. And I like the story, and so I use the signature line without wax, meaning it's sincere or genuine or true.

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There's nothing hidden, there's nothing masked over and sold as if it's something that's not. So that's where without wax comes from.

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All right, another question. Sarah Joy asked, I would love to hear a recap of the essential core doctrines or the doctrines that all true

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Christians must agree on as opposed to the areas we would disagree and still be saved and have fellowship. So what

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I'm going to do here is pull up an excursus on the essentials. This we include with our membership class, and this is something that we kind of go over when we are in membership class and cover the essentials of the faith there.

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And I'm just going to review these, and what she asked was for a recap of the essential core doctrines.

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So I'm going to give something of a brief recap of those essential core doctrines here. Basically we talk about primary issues in theological terms.

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We have primary doctrines, secondary doctrines, and tertiary doctrines or third -level doctrines. The third -level doctrines would be doctrines or beliefs that are not as important or fundamental to the faith.

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They really have no importance at all. Christians can disagree on some of those things that are really so far away from the core essentials that they're almost meaningless.

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Secondary issues would be ones that are connected to primary issues. They're not salvific issues.

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You can disagree on whether you baptize babies, for instance. You can disagree on the timing of the tribulation or whether or not there is a millennium.

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Those would be secondary issues, though they're all important issues. And the primary issues would be the issues that we would say, if you disagree on these issues, this strikes at the very heart of whether or not you really are truly a

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Christian. So those would be the primary doctrines of the faith. So those doctrines would be doctrines that relate to the person of God, the nature of God, and obviously connected to that would be the person of Christ, since he is the second person of the

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Trinity. So we're talking about doctrines, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Scripture, and the doctrine of salvation.

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If you believe something wrong about salvation, you're believing something that will inevitably damn you.

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So primary doctrines, we would list the Godhead and included in the Godhead as a primary or fundamental doctrine would be the doctrine of the

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Trinity. Rightly understood that God is one being, one God, in three separate and distinct persons.

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That those three persons coexist, they are co -eternal, they are co -equal in value and in eternity and in power and authority.

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, those are the three persons. So one God, three separate and distinct persons, not three gods, that's tritheism.

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And of course, by the doctrine of Trinity, we don't mean any kind of Sabellianism or Modalism. The idea that there's one

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God and one person who manifest or displays himself in three separate and distinct modes, being

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But that we have three separate and distinct persons within the one being that is

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God. And each of those three separate and distinct persons shares fully the divine essence. So you don't need to get the

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Father, Son, the Holy Spirit all together in the room in order to have all that is God. You can have the Son in the room with you and have all that is

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God. And I'm speaking here, I'm describing it here in terms that would help sort of explain the doctrine of the

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Trinity, but these terms are not necessarily theologically accurate because you could never have all that is

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God without having the Father and the Spirit. But for the sake of discussion to illustrate the difference between Modalism and Biblical Trinitarianism, I'm describing it this way.

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You don't need to have the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit in this room in order to have all that is God. If you had any one person, you would have all that is the being of God in that one person.

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So that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, each by themselves possesses fully all of the divine nature.

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So that would be Biblical Trinitarianism's doctrine of God. Now obviously connected to that is the doctrine of Christ because he is the second person of the

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Trinity, which means that we have to get the doctrine of who Christ is, that we believe that he is fully God, that he is separate and distinct from the

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Father and the Holy Spirit, that he was born of a virgin. This is the second heading that we include as essential doctrines, the virgin birth of Christ.

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Without the virgin birth of Christ, you have some sort of one of the early church heresies regarding the person of Christ, either that he's two separate and distinct spirits or personalities inside of one being, like a split personality disorder, or you would have to concede without the virgin birth, you'd have to concede that he is in some way conceived naturally and thus has some sort of an inherent sinful nature.

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So the virgin birth, which would be the sinlessness of Jesus Christ incorporated with that. So that's all sort of subsumed under the doctrine of God.

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Another major doctrine would be bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe in a literal bodily resurrection from the grave, not any kind of a spiritual resurrection or revivification or something like that.

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Another essential would be the vicarious and atoning death of Jesus Christ, meaning that he actually paid the price for sin in his death on the cross.

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He atoned for or paid the price and expiated the sins of his people through his death on the cross, and that it was a substitutionary death that actually paid the penalty of divine wrath.

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The emergent church movement kind of denied that doctrine years ago as they began to question whether or not, or they began to say that the idea of a substitutionary atonement was akin to divine child abuse, that God would whip his son for our sake.

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This was child abuse, and imagine me beating one of my children for a sin that you committed. That's how they tried to sort of posture that belief of vicarious substitutionary atonement.

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So wrapped up in the doctrine of the atonement is the belief that Christ being fully

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God and fully man paid the divine price, met the divine demand of justice on our behalf.

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So the vicarious atoning death of Christ. The second coming of Christ I think is a non -essential.

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You can't deny that without denying in some form the doctrine of the

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Trinity or I think really God's plan for the future. So we believe in the second coming of Christ.

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Now that breaks down I think immediately into secondary issues, whether you're premillennial or postmillennial or amillennial, whether you're pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib, pre -rapture, or any one of those various different sort of end -time scenarios.

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John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul can disagree on whether there will be a millennium or the timing of that millennium or the nature of a rapture or the nature of end -time events.

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Those would be secondary issues. They're important issues, but you can disagree about the nature of the millennium without being a heretic, without denying an essential of the faith.

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And then salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. That's another essential.

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If you deny that and add works or baptism or Sabbath keeping or tithing or church attendance or human merit in any way into that equation, then you are denying an essential of the faith.

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And this of course would get to the heart of the difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Protestantism, though they would agree with the doctrine of the

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Trinity, the virgin birth of Jesus, obviously the bodily resurrection from the grave, in some way an atoning death of Jesus, though they don't believe that his death is entirely sufficient for the forgiveness of sins.

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And of course they would believe in some form of a second coming, but they would deny this essential. Not every

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Roman Catholic would deny this, but Roman Catholicism and the Roman Catholic Church certainly does.

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They deny that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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And that of course is the heart of the Reformation doctrines that separates

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Protestantism from Roman Catholicism. They deny those. They don't deny that salvation is by grace, they just deny that it's by grace alone.

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And they don't deny that it's by faith, they just deny that it is by faith alone, in Christ alone.

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And then the last essential I think that we have on our excursus in our membership class is the belief in the verbal plenary inspiration of the

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Old New Testaments and the inerrancy of the original autographs. These I think are essential non -negotiable, non -deniables.

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And somebody just said Roman Catholic lifts up idols as well. That's absolutely true. That was chat. See how I'm doing this now?

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I'm watching the chat channel, I'm looking at the membership excursus, and I'm talking to you at home, sitting there in your underwear or your pajamas.

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All right, so that is the answer to Sarah Joy's question. Then we have some tough ones.

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This one comes in from the first to third Sunday school class from Jenny. She did, oh you know what we should maybe do?

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No, I'll return to that in just a moment. She asked, why did

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David lament Saul's death in 2 Samuel, but then write Psalms calling for the judgment and destruction of his enemies?

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How does this apply to how we should treat our enemies? Two questions there. Let's deal with the first one.

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Why did David lament Saul's death in 2 Samuel, but then write Psalms calling for the judgment and destruction of his enemies?

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And this is a bit of a tougher question because it gets to the heart of imprecatory prayers and imprecatory

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Psalms. If you read through the Psalms, I did a series on imprecatory Psalms some years ago in adult Sunday school class.

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If you read through the Psalms, I think it is fully one half. If memory serves, it might be a little bit more, but fully one half of the

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Psalms contain some sort of imprecatory element. That is an announcement.

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It either was an announcement of God's destruction on Israel's enemies or God's enemies or David's enemies, or it was a desire of that destruction or a description of that destruction or a prayer for the destruction or the judgment and the justice of God.

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A lot of the Psalms have those imprecatory elements. And so one of the questions that comes up when you study the imprecatory

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Psalms is, oh well, to give you an example of the imprecatory Psalms, Psalm 73 that I wrote the book on the prosperity of the wicked.

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At the end of that, he talks about the wicked being lifted up just for the sake of God destroying them, making their judgment even more severe, that God puts them in that position, that wealth is a method or a way of God's judgment.

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That's an imprecatory element in that Psalm. So a lot of the

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Psalms have that element, that imprecatory element, and one of the questions that comes up is how do we deal with that?

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Should we be praying in precatory Psalms today? Should we be announcing

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God's judgment like that today and desiring the judgment of God on his enemies today?

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I think that there is a sense in which all the righteous do desire to see God's justice vindicated and his name vindicated.

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There should be something in the heart of every redeemed person that says, yes, I'm tired of seeing sin and I want to see those who commit sin judged and God's name and his righteousness and his kingdom come and vindicated.

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And by the way, even the prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, that's an imprecatory prayer. When you pray for the kingdom of God to come or for Christ to return, do you understand what that prayer means?

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When you pray, Lord Jesus, come quickly or return, do you understand what the return of Jesus Christ here is going to mean?

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It is going to mean the end of the day of grace. It will mean the destruction of the nations, the judgment of the goats, the judgment of the wicked, consigning them to their place in damnation and the establishment of his kingdom.

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That is going to be a judgment on the world.

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So even that prayer is an imprecatory prayer. So there should be something in the heart of the righteous that says, I do desire the vindication of God's justice and I do desire that God's name would be made great and that Christ would come and that evil would stop.

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And sometimes the stopping of that evil requires the judgment of evildoers in scripture.

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So David would pray for the destruction on his enemies and in the series, and I don't want to get into this right now, but in the series on the imprecatory

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Psalms, I made the case that David was in a unique position to pray for God's judgment on his own personal enemies since the establishment of God's kingdom revolved around, in the

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Davidic covenant sense, revolved around David and the continuance of his throne and the prosperity of his descendants.

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The fulfillment of God's covenant to David required the judgment on David's enemies.

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And so David, unlike you and I, David can pray for the destruction of his enemies because in some sense, the destruction of David's enemies was the destruction of God's enemies.

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And so he could be vindicated for praying that or desiring that because he was actually desiring the establishment and the fulfillment of God's personal promises to him.

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So there's a way in which David can pray those prayers that I don't think you and I can.

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And I think we need to be careful when we pray for that type of judgment that we are praying not for our own sake against our own personal enemies.

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The guy that cuts me off in traffic, we don't go dropping imprecatory prayers on him. My neighbor who parks his trailer on my yard again and kills the grass, we don't pray our imprecatory prayers upon him.

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But I do think it is valid when we see evil and wickedness going on from people who rule in the nations, tyrants, people who are starving their citizens, people who are killing babies in the womb and doing so with full knowledge.

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I do think there is a sense in which it is appropriate to pray that that evil would stop and that it would bring mean judgment if that evil would stop.

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And we would be happy with that. We would be content with that. Not that we necessarily desire to see individual people judged, but we desire to see those who do evil judged in a more generic sense.

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I think there's an appropriateness to that. So why then would David pray for the destruction of his enemies? And then when Saul gets destroyed, when

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Saul dies, he laments it. And this I think is a bit more of a personal look at David's heart.

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It is not inconsistent for me to desire the destruction of the judgment in a holy and righteous sense of those who do harm to God and God's people.

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And then when that judgment comes, for it to have an emotional impact on me. I think that those are two separate and distinct things, and I hope you can see that.

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In one sense, we are asking God, judge your enemies. But then when that judgment comes, it strikes kind of close to home.

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And it can make you sad. It can make you lament that. David can pray that Absalom would be put down, but then when

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Absalom gets put down, it hurts to see that happen. And those are not inconsistent emotions.

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The desire to see God's righteousness vindicated and his name made great. And then when that happens, it means the destruction of the evildoer.

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And then all of a sudden, all that hurts. And so we can have conflicting emotions in the midst of that.

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How does it apply to how we should treat our enemies? We're called to treat our enemies with love and loving kindness and graciousness, gentleness, compassion, letting our words be seasoned with salt, loving them and showing them love and sharing the gospel with them.

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That's how we should treat our enemies. Because those are our personal enemies. So the guy that cuts me off in traffic, I don't drop in precatory prayers his way.

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Instead, I back up and I slow down and I let him in and I show that kind of grace and kindness to him, just like everybody does, right?

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That's how we all respond to that. And the people who persecute us, I think the book of 1

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Peter answers that. We need to show them love and gentleness and submission and honor to whom honor is due in the way of attempting to demonstrate the love of Christ.

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That's how we handle our personal enemies, while at the same time it is okay for us to pray for God to vindicate his name, even if that means the judgment on his enemies.

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All right, second question from the first and third grade Sunday school class. Was it wrong for David to have two wives?

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This was before Bathsheba. And yes, it was wrong. And scripture records men, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all having multiple wives.

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David had multiple wives. A number of the judges in the book of Judges had multiple wives. That was not

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God's design. God's design was laid out in the Garden of Eden in Genesis. So it was sinful and wrong for David to have those multiple wives, even before Bathsheba, even after Bathsheba.

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That was not part of God's design. And the fact that God didn't strike them dead for that sin was just a testimony of God's grace to them.

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But it's not a pattern. It's something that's described in scripture, not prescribed in scripture. So it's not a pattern for us to follow.

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It's just something that's recorded in scripture that was true of those men. And it was sinful for them to have that, for them to do that.

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Jenny had a third question. I'm going to save that for just a second. Was it wrong for David and Jonathan to lie to Saul when they devised the plan for testing whether Saul wanted to kill

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David? Because they told, Jonathan and David told Saul that David had asked to spend the feast in Bethlehem with his family.

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And of course, this revealed Saul's evil intention to murder and to kill David. So the question was, was it wrong for David and Jonathan to lie to Saul in that situation?

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And that ties us into a question that Dave Rich sent in, is it ever okay to lie? And this is a bit more of a complicated one.

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So I'm going to save that for a moment and deal instead with a couple other questions that Dave raised.

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And so let's switch gears for a little bit. Dave asked the question, and he's,

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I don't know why he's asking some of these questions. So Dave, how much time we got left?

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Okay, we got lots of time. So Dave asked the question, what's distinctive about Reformed theology versus Arminian theology?

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And what is hyper -Calvinism? And then related to this, if God is not the author of sin, then

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God cannot be said to be sovereign over all. And so this is the Calvinist conundrum.

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How can God be sovereign over sin, cause sin in that sense, and yet not be responsible for it?

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How can God cause sin by allowing it and yet not be held accountable for it? And tying into that question is, does

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God have two wills? So let's deal with what is distinctive about Reformed theology as opposed to Arminian theology.

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And I think the best way to describe that or handle that question would be to simply say that Reformed theology makes much of or rests upon a right understanding of the decrees of God and the work of God in eternity past to will, to guarantee, and to plan the redemption of man.

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There's a number of distinctives or differences between Reformed theology and Arminian theology, you could call it

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Calvinism versus Arminianism, et cetera. I think most of the fundamental disagreement goes back to how sovereign do we believe that God is and how much do we believe that the will of man has a role in the salvation of sinners.

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I would say that Reformed theology understands properly that God is a triune

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God who worked in eternity past to guarantee, to plan redemption, and then to guarantee the redemption of his people.

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And this is why scripture talks about God predestining some to salvation, to redemption, to adoption of sons.

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It speaks of God electing a people, choosing a people, giving those people to his son, the son coming into the world to save those people and make an atonement for those people, and then the spirit of God regenerating those people, sealing those people, and then eventually resurrecting them at the end of time, and all of those whom the father has given to the son.

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So we've talked about all of those doctrines in some capacity in the past, both in adult Sunday school classes, of course, when we preach the doctrine of John, it's all the way through the gospel of John.

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That eternal plan of God whereby he plans the salvation of his people and secures their salvation everlastingly, that's all the way through the gospel of John.

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It's unavoidable in that gospel. So that is the distinctive of Reformed theology, I think, the understanding of the sovereignty of God in all things and in salvation, and particularly in salvation.

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Arminianism would make much of the will of man, man's will in salvation, his response to the gospel.

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Reformed theology would make much out of the sovereignty of God and God's will in salvation and what that guarantees and what that affects.

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Related to that, what is Hyper -Calvinism? And this is a good question because it ties into our understanding of Reformed theology.

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Oftentimes the minute someone mentions the term Calvinism, people automatically think in terms of what they think

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Calvinism is. So when people ask me the question, are you a Calvinist or is Kootenai Community Church a Calvinist church? I will respond to that with a question.

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I will say, you tell me what you think Calvinism is, and I'll tell you whether I am one or not. Because it is very rarely that anybody ever asks me that question, that they actually know the differences between Reformed theology and Arminian theology, or they even understand the origins of the debate or even the issues at hand.

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And most people, when they think of Calvinism, they're thinking in terms of Hyper -Calvinism. So if I just come out and say, look,

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I'm a Calvinist, then people would say, oh, so you don't believe that God has any love for the non -elect, you don't believe in gospel preaching, you don't believe in sharing the gospel, you don't believe in sharing your faith, et cetera.

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And that's not true at all. In fact, if you follow our preaching and the teaching at this church, and our emphasis on the gospel and the ministry that we have here, then you understand that sharing the gospel is something we emphasize.

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We had a whole conference, a whole spring conference, sorry, fall conference. We had a whole fall conference on how to share your faith with Andrew Rappaport and striving for eternity ministries, to equip people to go out and do that.

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We have missionaries that we support. Of course, we believe in evangelism. So then what is the difference between, so, well, let me back up.

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So people who think that Calvinism believes those things do not understand the difference between Calvinism and Hyper -Calvinism.

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So what is Hyper -Calvinism? Hyper -Calvinism to be clear, is not Calvinism taken to its logical conclusion.

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Hyper -Calvinism makes some of the very same errors as Arminian theology makes. So let me give you four errors of Hyper -Calvinism.

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And to go, to help you out on this, I would recommend this book,

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Spurgeon versus Hyper -Calvinism by Ian Murray. This is a great little book about Spurgeon because he was neither an

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Arminian nor a Hyper -Calvinist. He was accused by people in his day of being both.

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The Hyper -Calvinists would accuse Spurgeon of being an Arminian because he preached the gospel and the Arminians would accuse

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Spurgeon of being a Hyper -Calvinist because he believed in election and predestination. And Spurgeon was neither an

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Arminian nor a Hyper -Calvinist. So Ian Murray, Spurgeon versus Hyper -Calvinism.

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Now, if you're not familiar with the, this book would be, it's biographical, but it's also theological.

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So this book would be for those who are a little bit more familiar with the issues. What I'm going to do is

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I'm going to give you the four errors of Hyper -Calvinism and explain how it would be different from what I would believe as when

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I would believe I'm a biblical Calvinist. Here are the errors of Hyper -Calvinism. First, number one,

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Hyper -Calvinists deny the universality of gospel preaching. They deny that the gospel promises of forgiveness and eternal life should be presented to everyone.

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Now, they believe that the gospel, the facts of the gospel, that Christ came and died, that he rose again and did this to save sinners, they would say that those facts of the gospel should be proclaimed to everyone.

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But the promises of the gospel, that you can have eternal life, that you can have your sins forgiven, that Christ died for you, that those promises of the gospel should only be preached to the elect.

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So they would say that the command or the promise that if you trust Christ, he will give you eternal life, that should only be addressed to elect sinners.

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And they would say that no appeal at all should be made to the non -elect, to sinners, to believe the gospel, because they would say that if the atonement of Christ is particular, that is, that it is for his people and not a payment for sins for the whole world, and if the election of the father is particular, in that he chose some and not all, and if the regenerating work of the

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Holy Spirit is particular, that is, he doesn't regenerate everybody, he regenerates some but not all, therefore the preaching of the gospel should be particular, that we only give the promises of the gospel out to those who are the elect.

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So there needs to be some sort of, and this was Spurgeon's objection to hyper -Calvinism, that there needs to be, according to hyper -Calvinists, there needs to be some sort of an internal examination of the sinner to see if he is drawn or inclined or feels like he should come to God, or if God is at work in his heart, some sort of an inward look in order to determine all of that before you can present to them the promises of the gospel.

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So hyper -Calvinism denies the universality of gospel preaching, and obviously I'm not a hyper -Calvinist by that measure, because I get up and I would preach the gospel to anyone.

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I have told sinners, even though there are people there that you have no idea what's going on in their hearts, that you can proclaim the gospel to them and declare to them that they must repent, and if they do and believe

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Christ, that they shall be saved. So hyper -Calvinism denies the universality of presenting the gospel promises to all men.

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They would say it only should be presented to the elect, or those who are coming to faith in Christ, or who have been regenerated and then are seeking out

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God's forgiveness. Second, hyper -Calvinists would deny the warrant of faith, or this is what

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Spurgeon called the warrant of faith. They would say that as a Calvinist, or as a gospel preacher,

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I would say we call all men. We declare to all men everywhere that they should repent and believe on Christ.

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We preach the gospel to all of creation. We don't discriminate, try and discriminate between the elect and the non -elect when it comes to to imploring them to place their faith in Jesus Christ.

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So a hyper -Calvinist would say you cannot call the non -elect to faith in Christ because they don't have the ability to place faith in Christ.

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Therefore, until you discern whether or not they're elect, whether or not they've been regenerated, and the work of the

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Spirit of God is going on in their heart, you can't tell them to place their faith in Christ. You can't tell a non -elect person who doesn't have the ability to believe savingly on Christ, you can't tell them to place their faith in Christ.

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So they would say that we would err, the hyper -Calvinist would say we err if we present the demand for faith to all men without distinction.

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And so where the one says you can't, the first error, remember, was you can't present the promises of the gospel, forgiveness and eternal life to all men, this would say you can't call upon all men to repent and believe because they're not able to do that.

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And so to say that, to say to a non -elect person that they are called to believe the gospel, to the hyper -Calvinist that would be a falsehood.

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You can't say that to them because they're not called to believe the gospel because they're not elect. A Calvinist would say or a

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Biblicist would say that all men are called to faith and to believe and that we don't need to know the extent of the atonement in order to call men to believe upon it.

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The extent of the atonement for whom Christ died, though we may say it is particular, I don't need to know that this individual person is among the elect and included in the atonement for me to tell them that they must place faith in Christ.

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And I don't think that us understanding that is necessary for us to present the gospel. Now Arminians, here's where Arminians and hyper -Calvinists would make the same mistake.

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The Arminian would say all men have to be included in the atonement, otherwise we can't present the gospel to all men.

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So if we're called to present the gospel to all men, all men must be included in the atonement. In other words, we have to know the extent of the atonement in order to present the gospel to all men.

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We have to know that it is for all men. The hyper -Calvinist makes the same error as the Arminian. They would say you have to, you can only present the gospel to those who are included in the atonement.

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And so if somebody is not included in the atonement, we can't present the gospel to them. We can't call upon them to believe. The error is the same on both sides, whereas a

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Biblicist, a Calvinist, biblically we would say I don't need to know that somebody is included in the atonement in order to tell them you must place faith in Christ.

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And so we can present therefore the gospel, the promises of the gospel, and the demands of the gospel to any and all men without distinguishing them.

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You know Spurgeon's old adage that God hasn't stamped an E on the chest or the back of senators to tell me whether they're not elect or not, so therefore

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I preach the gospel to all men. That statement was because of this error of hyper -Calvinism. The third error, so first a denial of the universality of presenting the promises of the gospel, second a denial that we present the warrant of faith to the non -elect, and third a hyper -Calvinist would deny human responsibility.

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They would say sinners are not required to do what they are not able to do, and therefore since sinners are not able to believe upon Christ, they are not required to do so.

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So this denies that the unbeliever is damned for his unbelief or his rejection, so it's a denial of human responsibility.

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I've said before, Arminian denies the sovereignty of God, a hyper -Calvinist denies the responsibility of man, and that's where this comes from.

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A hyper -Calvinist denies that man is responsible to do that which they are unable to do, and I would say that in the fall man lost his ability but not his responsibility, that the sinner is still responsible to believe, and if he does not, he will be damned not because he is not elect, not because Christ has not died for him, he will be damned because he refused to believe.

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It is his unbelief that damns the sinner, and this element of hyper -Calvinism would say that the sinner is not damned for their unbelief, they're damned because God has not chosen them, and that their unbelief is not something that warrants hell.

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I think that's it, so that's the third one. It's the universality of gospel preaching, warrant of faith, the third one is their human responsibility, and the fourth one would be the love of God.

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A hyper -Calvinist would say that God has no desire at all for the salvation of the non -elect, that no man has a right to trust, this is how

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Ian Murray in that book, Spurgeon vs. Hyper -Calvinism, Ian Murray would say that no man has a right to trust in a loving

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God until he has some personal evidence that he is one of the chosen ones, whereas I believe that God loves all men, but I don't believe that all love of God is equal and the same.

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I believe biblically that God does have a love for the non -elect, but it is not a redeeming and a saving love, it's not the love that Christ has for his bride, the church, that caused him to come here and to give his life in her stead so that he may give his bride eternal life and make her one with him.

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That type of love is a different kind of love, it's a redeeming love, not a general love. I think that even the general love that God has for the wicked and for sinners is a love that is beyond our ability to comprehend or to plumb the depths of, but it does not move him to save everybody or to even try and save everybody.

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So here again, the Arminian and the Calvinist makes the same mistake. The Arminian and the

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Calvinist both make the mistake of believing that there's only one love in God and not multiple ways or expressions or kinds of love in God.

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So the Hyper -Calvinist would look at the love of God in Scripture and he would say, every reference to the love of God in Scripture is limited to the elect.

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The Arminian would look at the love of God in Scripture and say, every reference to the love of God in Scripture describes the love that God has for all men.

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He loves all men equally, therefore he's trying to save all men equally. And the

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Hyper -Calvinist on the other side saying, no, every reference to the love of God, there's only one love that God has and it's only a specific and redeeming love.

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And so if you stand in the middle between the Hyper -Calvinist and the Arminian, then you would have to say like me that, no,

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God has the right to love different people in different ways. He loves the sinner with one love.

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He loves his bride, his people with another love. His sheep are separate and distinct in his plan. Both the

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Hyper -Calvinist and the Calvinist, sorry, the Hyper -Calvinist and the Arminian both would, they make the same error in saying that they would deny to God the right to love in the same way that you and I love.

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I love my neighbor with a different love than I love the people who are here in our church. I love the people who are here in our church with a different love than I love my wife.

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I don't love all women equally. I don't love all people equally. I have different affection for my children than I do for your children.

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It doesn't mean I don't love your children. It means that I love my children in a different way, to a different degree, with different expressions than I love your children.

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Or I love my wife with a different degree, in a different way, with different expressions than I love your wife. I would be a horrible person.

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You would rightly charge me with horrible crimes if I loved all women equally, if I loved all women the same way that I love my wife.

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I would either be neglecting my wife horribly or I would be doing inappropriate things with every woman that I've found on the other hand.

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So we make distinctions in our loves, the way that we love, the objects of our love, the expressions of our love, and God does the same thing.

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The Hyper -Calvinist denies that and the Arminian denies that. So those are the errors of Hyper -Calvinism.

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That was a long one. Where are we at? Ten after ten? I give you permission to take a sip of your coffee as you're sitting on your couch watching this in your pajamas.

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What is Hyper -Calvinism? Oh, so let's relate it to that.

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Oh, we're going to deal with, is it ever okay to lie? All right, so let's wrap up the issue of the sovereignty of God.

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If God is not the author of sin, then he cannot be said to be sovereign over all things. If he doesn't, at least in some sense, cause sin, then something is caused without him being sovereign over it.

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How would you respond to this? And does God have two wills? We would say that God is not the author of sin in the sense that he is morally culpable or morally responsible for it, but he is sovereign over sin.

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He decreed that sin would be allowed into his creation, and he decreed that he would use even sin and sinfulness in a sinless way to accomplish his eternal purposes for his own glory and for the good of his people.

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So God allows sin and causes it in the sense that he has decreed that sin enter a good creation, and he has decreed that he will redeem sinners, and he has decreed, at least in an allowing sense, all things that come to pass.

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He actively decrees that these things should be, but he does so with a holy and untouchably holy will.

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So God intends for sin to happen, but he intends it for good, and he uses sin sinlessly.

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I think that's the best way of saying that. So he is still sovereign over it because nothing happens without him allowing it to happen.

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There's no sin that takes place that God says, well, I can't do anything about it. It's out of my hands. It's just sort of men doing their own thing.

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God is sovereign over it in that he controls it. There's nothing renegade. There's nothing outside of his control or of his sovereign hand.

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So I hope that answers that. Does God have two wills? We know that he has a secret will that he has not revealed to us, and we know that he has a revealed will that he has revealed to us.

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So the will that you would be holy and righteous without blame before him, he has willed that.

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He is bringing that to pass. His will that you abstain from sexual immorality, that is a stated and decreed will that he has not seen necessarily to bring to pass because there are people who violate that will of God.

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And then there is the secret will that he is working out that he has not revealed to us all the details of that secret will.

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So does God have two wills? He has multiple wills, some of which he has determined that he will bring to pass sovereignly, and some of which he has determined he will not bring to pass or not necessarily ensure the accomplishment of that will.

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All right, where are we at for subjects here? Oh, we're going to get to, is it ever okay to lie?

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And I'm out of coffee, so during the break I'm going to get some coffee. So Dave asked, he brought up two

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Bible contradictions. This was a good one. Both of that, both these were actually really good, and I had to do a little bit of research to find out the answers to these, so I'm glad I wasn't asked this on the fly.

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Dave writes, how long was the famine option following David's census? Was it seven years of famine as it says in 2

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Samuel 24 13, or was it three years as it says in 1 Chronicles 21 11 -12?

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One of them must be wrong, so the Bible is wrong. So you remember the story, it's toward the end of David's life, he calls for a census, and I think it was

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Joab that tried to talk him out of it. Somebody tried to talk him out of it. One of his advisors said this is not a good thing, and David said do it.

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So he went and did it, and then God struck the nation, judged the nation for David asking for a census, from taking a census.

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So 1 Chronicles, let me read you the passages so we know we're talking about. 1 Chronicles 21 11 -12 says, well back into verse 9, the

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Lord spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying go and speak to David saying, thus says the Lord, I offer you three things.

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Choose for yourself one of them which I will do to you. This is the three judgments that David got to choose between. So Gad came to David and said to him, thus says the

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Lord, take for yourself either three years of famine or three months to be swept away before your foes while the sword of your enemies overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of the

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Lord, even pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying through it all the territory of Israel. Consider what

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I shall answer, I shall return to him who sent me. So that's 1 Chronicles 21, and then 2

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Samuel 24 -13. David's seer came saying go to speak to David, this is verse 12, thus the

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Lord says, I'm offering you three things, choose for yourself one of them which I will do to you. So Gad came to David and told him and said to him, shall seven years of famine come to you in the land, or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you, or three days pestilence in your land?

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Consider what I'll answer. So those are the three options. Now in 1 Chronicles 21 it does say three years of famine that he was offered, and in 2

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Samuel 24 it does say seven years of famine that he was offered. So is that a contradiction?

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The best way, well not the best way, the only way and the way to answer this is to understand that each author is recording the same events from a bit of a different perspective.

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So here is the answer to that conundrum. It's actually in a much wider context. Now first of all if you have seven years of famine, you have to have inside of that seven how many?

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You have to have three. You have to have three years of famine and plus four more.

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So if Gad offered to David seven years of famine in one account and three years of famine in another account, the three years would be included in the seven.

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But the contradiction makes us assume or is asking us to assume that the three and the seven are contradictory rather than one being included in the other.

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And the one being included in the other is actually the answer to this alleged contradiction. So here's the broader context.

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In 1 Chronicles chapter 21, no where is it?

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Where is it? 1 Samuel. It's 1 Samuel 21. It's 1 Samuel 21 where it records, now there was a famine in the days of David for three years after year, year after year, for three years year after year.

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So in the broader context of the 2 Samuel 24 passage that talks about them being, flip back here, that talks about there being three years, in the broader context of that, the author notes that there had already been a famine for three years.

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So then when David is confronted with, to choose his judgment, Gad asks him in 2

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Samuel where it's already been noted there had been three years of famine year after year. Gad now asked David, you want three years of famine?

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In the 1 Chronicles passage, is it 1 Chronicles? Yeah, 1 Chronicles passage. He records it as Gad asking for seven years, which means if you take the three years that had already been a famine for three years, and you add three years to that,

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I know there's only six, hold on, you add three years to that, three years had already been a famine, and then three more years would have made for six years in the first, in the 2

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Samuel passage. In the 1 Chronicles passage, Gad just asked about seven years. Now what the, what the author of 2, 1

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Chronicles is trying to capture is the total length of what that famine would have been over the course of the three years of famine that had already been, as well as three more years of famine.

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So in 1 Chronicles, it's seven years total. In 2

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Samuel, it's three years added to the first three years that had already had a famine. You say, but then there's, where's the other one year?

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You still got one year that you haven't accounted for. Remember that Israel was not to plant, or to sow, or to gather for one year out of every seven.

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It was the Sabbath year that they were not to plant in the, in the land. They were supposed to save up for six years, and then on the seventh year, they were to let everything be fallow, and to not plant for that seventh year, to give the land a rest, a

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Sabbath rest. So that would be the other year. If you had six, and you would have seven somewhere, either in the middle of that, or at the end of that, or at the beginning of that, that seventh year would have been in there.

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That one year, the seventh year, would have been in that seven years. So the simple answer to that is that in 1

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Chronicles, I say simple, but obviously it's more complicated than that. In the 1

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Chronicles passage, we're dealing with the totality of what that entire famine would have looked like by adding the three years, the second

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Samuel mentions to it. You had three years of famine. David is being asked for another year of famine.

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It's possible that at the beginning of that year, or at the beginning of that first three years, or the end of that first three years, that there would have been somewhere in there that Sabbath year, which would have made it a total of seven years.

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So in the second Samuel passage, David is simply being asked, how many more years of famine you want?

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God's going to add three years to that. If you choose three years of famine, you're going to end up with seven years total of famine, because there had already been three that had passed.

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That's the answer to that alleged contradiction, which sort of vanishes when you understand the context and what was going on in the history there.

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Where did I come up with that? Did I make all of that up? No. It's my opportunity to plug another book.

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This book here, that's where I got this today. I just pulled this off my shelf this morning while I was sitting here preparing for adult Sunday school class. Keeping Faith in an

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Age of Reason by Jason Lyle. If you were here for the conference that he had, that's where I picked this book up.

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There's a whole bunch of alleged Bible contradictions in there that shows you the logical fallacy that leads to the Bible contradiction, and then describes the answer to it.

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So that's where the answer to that was found. I got that out of Jason Lyle's book. It's a good one. I recommend it to you if you don't have it.

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I think it's the best, probably the best, most concise, easily readable, accessible book on Bible contradictions that I've ever seen.

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I've got a number of them up on my shelf. You can't quite see them in the picture there, but anyway.

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And then Dave asked this question. Oh, you know what? We are past our adult Sunday school time.

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Dave asked the question, is it ever okay to lie? I'll have to put that off until next

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Sunday. Do we have any questions come up in chat channel?

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I haven't been watching that because I've been studying too much here and talking too much. Another problem that Dave raised was rabbits don't chew the cud, so the

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Bible is wrong. And that comes from Leviticus 11 with the list of clean and unclean animals.

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Among the animals, whatever divides the hoof, having cloven hooves and chewing the cud, that you may eat. Nevertheless, these you shall not eat among those that chew the cud or those that have cloven hooves.

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The camel because it chews the cud, yeah, because it chews the cud but does not have cloven hooves is unclean to you. The rock hyrax because it chews the cud but does not have cloven hooves is unclean to you.

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The hare or the rabbit because it chews the cud but does not have cloven hooves, it's unclean to you, Leviticus 11.

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And then a similar thing in Deuteronomy 14 verse 7. Here's the, okay, let me give you the solution to it.

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I'm reading this off of Answers in Genesis website. This is fascinating. In modern scientific classification, animals that chew the cud are called ruminants.

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Cattle, sheep, deer, giraffes, and camels are ruminants. Ruminants have four stomach compartments. They swallow their food into one stomach compartment where food is partially digested.

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Then the food is regurgitated back into the mouth, chewed again, and swallowed into a different stomach compartment. This process is called rumination.

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So is the Bible wrong? After all, rabbits are not ruminants. They do not have four compartment stomachs. So how can they chew the cud?

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Peter just walked in. I have three questions posted in the chat for you. I summarized them. Oh, okay. The solution, obviously rabbits don't have the same digestive anatomy of the modern ruminants.

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However, to describe rabbits as chewing the cud is not incorrect. Simply stated, it's not reasonable to accuse a 35 -year -old document of an error because it does not adhere to modern man -made classification systems.

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Consider what rabbits do. And then the answers in Genesis article goes on to describe the fecal cycle of rabbits and pellets and the way they digest and have hard droppings and soft droppings, et cetera.

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I'm not going to get into all of that as fun as that may be. But they ask the question, does the rabbit actually chew the cud after describing the rabbit's digestive system?

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Here's the answer. The Hebrew word translated chew is the word Allah with not

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Allah as in like Islamic Allah, but Allah. With any attempt to translate one language to another, it is understood that there's often more than one meaning for a given word.

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A cursory glance at the Hebrew lexicon reveals that Allah can mean to go up, to ascend, to climb, to go up into, out of place, to depart, to rise up, to cause to ascend, to bring up from among others.

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Here in Deuteronomy Leviticus, it carries the implication of moving something from one place to another.

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So the phrase translated into English as chew the cud literally means something on the order of eats that which is brought forth again.

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And of course that perfectly fits the digestive system of a hare or a rabbit as the previous portion of the article describes.

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And I'll try and drop that into the chat here in just a second before I quit this. Also most reference material on rabbit digestion says that the pellet is swallowed whole and found intact in the rabbit's stomach.

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However experts have observed that rabbits keep the cetratrophe, I don't know what that means, in the mouth for a time before swallowing.

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So even though the mucin membrane covering the cetratrophe is not broken, the rabbit is able to need it with its mouth before swallowing possibly to enhance the process of redigestion.

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So is the Bible an error here? No it's not. Rabbits re -ingest partially digested foods as do modern ruminants.

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This they do without the aid of multiple stomach compartments. So rabbits do actually chew the cud in the sense that the

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Bible was describing there as it was describing a certain type of process of eating. All right

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I'll see if I can drop that into the twitch channel here.

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I'm gonna do an ass. Okay got it. All right there's the link to the

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Answers in Genesis article there at the end. All right so in the chat channel we had three questions.

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Where do I find these? What is

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Pastor Jim's thought on the coronavirus and put it in the Bible? The Bible allows for viruses.

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That's the simple answer to that. It's part of a fallen creation. I'm gonna talk a little bit about it in the worship services to follow here as we address that at the beginning of the worship service.

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We'll talk a little bit about why we cancel church and kind of my thoughts on it. If the devil knows he's fighting a losing battle why do you think he continues?

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Pride. Ever been engaged in doing something you know you're just you're fighting a losing battle but you never want to give up just because you just your pride won't let you.

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Not only that because he is at war with God and God I think that there's an element of self -deception to the enemy where he is deceiving himself into thinking that he can on I mean that's how his rebellion started was deceiving himself into thinking that he had a shot at overthrowing

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God's sovereignty and and taking God's throne away from him. I want to be like the most high he said. So that's self -deception in there.

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What verses talk about the different kinds of love that God has for different people? Well we do have references to God loving the world

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John 3 16. We have references to God loving men in a generic sense. I'm trying to think of something just right at the top of my head.

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The specific references to speak of his love for his people you have it in the gospel of John where he talks about his love for his sheep, his love for his people, his love for those for whom he died in John 6,

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John 10, John 17. That special love of God. Ephesians chapter 5 speaks of Christ's love for his bride the church where his bride the church is distinguished from those who are not his bride.

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That special kind of redeeming love is described there and without going into some more detail there

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I'd have to have to say those are the ones I can just think of off the top of my head as I'm trying to rattle through some of these questions.

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Yeah I can't I don't see any other ones there. I was asked a question right at the very beginning that I thought was an interesting one.

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Oh what is your favorite fiction book? Let me end with that one. I don't read fiction. I think the last fiction

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I read was probably 20 years ago minimum. No I read a fiction book recently.

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I can't remember what it was. I suffered through it for some reason. I don't read fiction. I'm not a fiction reader. I don't enjoy fiction.

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I think my attention span is too short for fiction. I like to read if I'm going to spend time reading.

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I want to learn something. I want to figure something out. I want to grow in some way so I just don't have time to read fiction and I don't do it.

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It's not a love or a passion for me. Fiction, science fiction, I enjoy biographies. I read biographies because I'm learning about actually people that things happen to but the biography has to has to give me information quickly if I'm going to if it's going to I'm going to follow it.

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I find that with fiction when I start to read fiction I've tried it. I read some fiction back in high school.

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I read This Present Darkness. I started Bible college. This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. I read another

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Frank Peretti book. He was my favorite author there for a while and then I stopped reading fiction started reading theology and other books biographies and stuff like that and I just have never never picked it back up.

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History is history and real life and real things are too interesting to me for me to get caught up in fiction so I just don't enjoy it.

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I know that's just odd people. I got friends. I got some friends in Bible college. I think I'm just crazy for not loving fiction but I just don't.

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I sit down to read a fiction book and you know read the first paragraph and it talks about the helicopter coming in over top of the mountains and settling upon the field and the grass blowing away and the flowers and the sunset and the rain and the light midst and the evening and the coolness of the breeze and describes all of that and my mind is off in a hundred other places and I just don't have the attention span to sit there and try and read and to try and focus on long detailed descriptions of things.

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I've heard Louis L 'Amour. I've never even read a Louis L 'Amour book but I've heard it's horrible for that very reason. Far too descriptive.

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So that's where we're at. That is the end of our stream. I'm going to pull back up the Twitch here stream and I'm going to be done here.

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I'm going to take my phone off of this and end this live stream for a second and then give me about 15 minutes to get a cup of coffee to regather my wits and we will begin the worship service stream here in about 15 minutes.