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Well, good morning, everyone.
It's adult Sunday school class time. So if you're in the foyer and you're wishing to join us, please make your way into the sanctuary now. And if you're already in here, make your way to a seat and we'll get started.
All right. As advertised last week, Simon finished up his series on walking in the spirit. And so I have a Sunday here that I'm going to be doing a Q &A. That's what we're doing today is an adult Sunday school question and answer.
It's been possibly years since we've done one of these. So I'm glad to do it. And next Sunday, we're going to have a Q &A as well. You won't be asking the questions. I will be. And we're going to be asking questions.
I'm going to be asking questions of Joel Baker as he is here with us next Sunday and the following Sunday as well. So let's begin with the word of prayer and then we'll take some questions from the floor.
Let's bow our heads. Our father, we devote and commit our time here this morning to you. It is our joy and delight to gather together as your people and to worship, to give our minds, our hearts, our attention and the meditation of our hearts to your word, to your truth, to doctrine, to walking in holiness.
It is our prayer that during our time here that you would guide us by your spirit, both in the asking of the questions as well as in the answers that are given. We pray that our time here would be profitable to the end of conforming us to the image of Christ and not just informing our minds, but also conforming our hearts to Christ's likeness.
So we ask your blessing upon this time and for that purpose that you would be honored here through the thoughts and intentions of your people. And we pray that our time spent here would be profitable eternally as you use it for our sake and for the sake of your kingdom.
So we commit this to you in Christ's name, amen. All right, it is question and answer. So here are the parameters. The goal of this is not to stump me. That's relatively easy to do. So instead, the goal of this is to answer questions that you would have about doctrine, theology, ministry, Christian living, Christian life, anything like that.
Even some personal questions are not unwelcome. So I will open it up to the floor and take questions. And if nobody here is willing to ask a question, then we'll take them from online. Peter will send out the word and the two people who are watching online might have a question.
Yes.
Okay, the question is, did the prophecy concerning Damascus in Isaiah 17, did that happen in Sennacherib's time or is there something there yet future? And I would have to read the entire chapter here to get the context of it.
First five verses. All right, let's read it. The oracle concerning Damascus, behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city and will become a fallen ruin. The cities of Aurore are forsaken.
They will be for flocks to lie down in and there will be no one to frighten them. The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim and sovereignty from Damascus and the remnant of Aram. They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel declares the Lord of hosts.
Now in that day, the glory of Jacob will fade and the fatness of his flesh will become lean. It will be even like the reaper gathering the standing grain as his arms harvest the ears or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain in the valley of Rephaim.
It was the first five verses. I hope I got that right. I don't have my cheaters on, so it's kind of one of these things here with reading the small print. So the answer to that question is I'd have to look at the details of this passage and with Damascus.
There is, I think, apparently a, with, I'm not gonna say all prophecy, but with much Old Testament prophecy, there is both a near and a far fulfillment. So you could have details of this Damascus taking place in Sennacherib's day where sovereignty is removed from them, where invaders do come in and destroy the city for a period of time.
Damascus could be rebuilt. There could be a modern city named Damascus. And yet the future fulfillment of all of that would be, would await the final judgment upon all the nations that Daniel speaks of and that the other prophets speak of.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would be willing to, I would be willing to say the question is, is this just a future thing or is it a thing in that day as well? My guesstimate, my educated guesstimate would be that there are issues of this prophecy will fulfilled concerning Sennacherib and Damascus.
There was a judgment upon the Assyrian nation and Damascus, obviously in Sennacherib's day when the kingdom was taken away from Sennacherib and given to, his sons killed him and given to the next heir to the throne.
So there's judgments that took place concerning Damascus that fulfilled Isaiah chapter 17. Now, whether every prophecy in this chapter was fulfilled completely and finally, that's something I'd have to look at in more detail because there is a near fulfillment to prophecy as well as a distant fulfillment to prophecy.
Hope that helps.
Okay, another one?
Lanny, don't you have something?
Oh, oh, all the.
Yeah, so Lanny's question has to do with Zipporah being upset with Moses about the issue of circumcision and casting the bloody foreskins at his feet. Thank you, Lanny, I'd appreciate.
It's great.
Do you know what, do you remember what chapter that is? Is that Exodus or Leviticus?
That's Exodus.
It's after chapter 20, because that's the 10 commandments. No, no, that's not right. Answer another one. All right, you try and find that.
Exodus four, Exodus 4 .25.
Verse 21, the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. So I said to you, let my son go that he may serve me, but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.
Now came about at the lodging place on the way that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses' feet. And she said, you are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me.
So he, I lost my place. Oh, so he let him alone. At that time, she said, you are a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. All right, so your question is concerning what part of that verse? I don't want to have to answer more than you're asking.
All right, okay, I'll answer. I'll try and answer everything that I think might be a question with this passage. So it seems as if Moses himself has been disobedient to the command to circumcise his son.
And there is, we don't know all that is going on behind the scenes here, but I think that what we can read between the lines is that Moses himself had failed to circumcise his son according to the Abrahamic covenant and the sign that God gave to Abraham and to his descendants.
This caused God to confront Moses with that sin and seek, if Moses were to be impenitent, to put him to death. And it is Zipporah who takes matters into her own hands, circumcises her son, and is upset with Moses, casts the foreskin at his feet, and almost curses him, saying, you are a bridegroom of blood to me.
So it seems as if Zipporah herself was, in some way, resentful of the ordinance of circumcision and the whole circumcision issue. That is how I've understood it.
Would I be wrong there?
It seems as if Zipporah herself is upset that this has to be a thing. And if that's the case, then we can assume, I think that's the case, that Zipporah was not of Jewish descent. And it could be the case, then, that maybe the reason that Moses was not circumcising his son had something to do with the influence of Zipporah in that decision.
And finally, God had told Moses, you need to do this. This is what Moses knew what the ordinance was. And he did not fulfill that. And so God, in opposition to Moses, seeks to put him to death. And that is not because God was trying to kill Moses but failed to, it is that this stern opposition of the Lord to Moses for that act of disobedience would have resulted in Moses' death.
And Zipporah ended up stepping in, circumcising her son, and thus fulfilling the ordinance and also shielding Moses from that act. It's interesting that Moses himself is not the one who does the circumcision.
And other than the details that are there, I don't know what else to make of that. Sorry? Yeah, she did it.
Yep.
Fulfilling his role. For whatever reason, Moses did not do that, and Zipporah did. It ended up saving Moses' life, her act of doing that. Now, that's a tough one. Good, those are two tough ones right off the, oh, good, Paul, you had a tough one.
Good observation. And I'll repeat that for the recording. God allowed this incident to happen for the purpose of reminding Moses and everybody else involved that the Abrahamic covenant is still in force at this point.
And in fact, God is, in the Exodus itself, the Lord is going to bring Israel out of Egypt to give them that land to begin that, fulfilling that Abrahamic covenant, some of the terms of that Abrahamic covenant.
Yeah, good observation.
Okay, any other?
Yes, Amanda. Okay, so the question is, in James 5, when it says to call the elders, those who are sick, call the elders and anoint the sick person with oil, what is the oil and does our church do that?
So this is not a passage, this is a passage you dealt with in your series,.
Right, David?
I did, I was not here for that Sunday school lesson, and somebody said I should listen to it. So I'm gonna tell you what I think my, I've never studied through James, I've never studied that passage in depth, but here's my take on James 5, that the anointing of oil there has a, there's a medicinal quality to it, and I think that what James is saying is, those who are sick should call for the elders, and there should be the application of whatever medicinal treatment there should be for this illness, and if that does not solve this issue, then the elders should pray, and that that praying of the elders for healing should be accompanied by a confession of sin and repentance if that is necessary, because perhaps the person who is sick in that situation is sick because of some personal sin.
So that's my take on it, was that where you came to as well? Basically, okay. So does our church do that? The answer to that is yes, we do do that, and we have done that. So we have prayed for, there have been times when as elders we've met in my office after service and prayed for some of the congregation who has cancer, who has a diagnosis, who has an illness or a sickness, and they've requested that, and we've met and prayed for them as elders, we've done that as often as we've been asked to do that.
There was an incident, an example of this back some years ago, I don't know how many years ago, at least 12, probably 12, 15 years ago, we had a young lady in our congregation, she was living with her parents, she was a teenager actually at the time, and she came down with some illness and it plagued her for several weeks.
She ended up going into the hospital, she was in the hospital for, I'm gonna say probably two weeks, and the doctors were baffled at what was going on. They didn't understand what was causing these symptoms, and it seemed the symptoms went from almost ready to release her to, and she could go home to, we need to keep her here and watch her, and nobody knew what was going on, so the parents called us and said, will you come pray for her, and we did.
So all the elders went down, we stood around her hospital bed, and this was probably, if memory serves, it's somewhere around like 10 days, two weeks into her hospitalization. We stood around the bed and we said first, look, is there any sin that you have committed that you can think of that might have brought this affliction upon you, and no, she hadn't, so we kind of quizzed her about various areas of sin and types of sin, and she said no, then nothing that she was aware of, and we had no reason to believe that she was living in some covert sin, some undercover thing that she was keeping from everybody.
She was a godly young lady, still is, and so we said, well, we'll pray for you, so we prayed around the bed and had a great time of fellowship and worship with the family, and then we left, and she was released the next day, and those symptoms were gone.
So sometimes the Lord does that, so I mean, I'm a cessationist, right, so people who say I don't believe that God heals people, that's not true, I do believe that God heals people, I do believe that God heals people all the time, and sometimes it's an answer to the prayers of his people, so we have done that, yes.
The oil, I don't think, I don't think that there's anything magical or mystical in the application of a certain kind of oil. I think that the oil in the first century culture was used for medicinal purposes.
It was a medicinal herb. Sometimes the oil was the application to a wound. They would put oil with various herbs and elements in it for healing purposes, as ointments, et cetera, and so I believe that what James is saying is there, you have applied, with the application of the oil, that is the pursuit of medical treatment, and that does not solve it.
It is appropriate to call in the elders. So if somebody came to us and said, look, I have this ailment, and I could go to the doctor and have this ailment fixed or cured, part, we would say we would pray for you, but we would also counsel them, you need to apply the medical technology and the medical ability that we have in this age to this issue.
There's nothing wrong with pursuing the gifts that God has given to doctors or to pursuing the application of medical technology to an ailment or an illness. I think that that is one of the ways that God, by his good grace, has provided for us to be healed in our age, right?
Yes, back here. Yeah, the word anoint does kind of communicate the idea of having some sort of an anointing ceremony, but if it just means to apply the oil, apply the medical remedy, or apply the oil to that salve or to that issue as part of that prayer process, and I think that to put it in one sentence, I think James's point is if you are sick and it is not a result of a specific sin that you're being chastened by or for, and that, then do two things, pursue proper medical treatment for the issue, and pursue the prayer of your elders of your church.
Those are two things that we should pursue, and I don't think that they have to fight against each other, you don't pursue them in exclusion to one another, but we pursue them together. There's nothing wrong with taking a little wine for your stomach's sake.
It's completely appropriate. I'm not condoning drunkenness, you get what I'm saying. The application of the ability to, the application of the thing that would solve the issue, do it. Don't think that it's unspiritual for you to seek the advice or counsel or treatment of a physician or a medical professional, right?
I think there was one over here, was there not?
Nope.
This side of the room, you gotta up your game a little bit. Yes, Simon. Over my 20 years of ministry, where has my mind been changed? Okay, so it's 30 years of ministry, almost 30,.
So the first 10 don't count.
Yeah, the first 10 were actually where much of the changes happened, actually. Okay, so over my years of ministry, where has Scripture changed my mind on some issues? I'll give you a couple of them just off the top of my head.
When I first started pastoring Kootenai Community Church, I was influenced by a book, you may have heard of it, The Purpose-Driven Church by Rick Warren. So I gave that book out to all of our leadership and we went through that and we talked about how to become a more seeker-friendly church and I was doing that with our leadership and sort of pursuing the idea of doing that as a church while at the same time reading books by John MacArthur and other solid guys and listening to good sermons and studying Scripture.
And it was about probably two, three years into that process before I started to realize these two things, these can't go together, these don't go together. And so that changed, my mind changed on that.
When I first started pastoring, I would have rejected the idea of particular redemption, that Christ on the cross paid the price for the sins of his people. I would have argued for a universal atonement, saying that Christ paid the price that purchased the salvation potentially of all people who have ever lived, that every sin ever committed was laid upon Christ rather than just the sins of his people.
Going through the book of Ephesians chapter one, changed my mind on that. Actually going through the book of Ephesians one through five changed my mind on that. When I started Ephesians chapter one, I started, I kind of got opened up to the idea of, okay, what does it mean that in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins?
What is redemption? So I just did a study of redemption. Redemption means that somebody is actually purchased from the marketplace of sin. So then I had to ask the question, if Christ has purchased all men from the marketplace of sin, all men without exception, then why are not all men delivered from sin?
Why do some of them perish if their sins have been finally paid for? So as part of that process, I was kind of struggling through that issue, trying to think it through. I would have argued for a universal atonement.
And then I was kind of confronted with that study. I don't know how to put all of this together. And then I actually had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with Dave Hunt. I don't know if you know who Dave Hunt is, a famous anti-Calvinist.
So I sat down in a conversation with Dave Hunt, and he said, hey, a friend of mine tells me that you're kind of leaning this direction. You need to stay away from that. That's bad doctrine, that's bad theology.
And he was trying to push me a different direction. And it was to no avail. By the time I got to Ephesians chapter five, where Paul makes the argument that men are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Who is the her? It's the church. Christ gave himself up for her, the church. He purchased his church with his own blood. If he purchased all men with his own blood, then there is no distinction between the church and all who perish.
In which case then, Christ did not purchase all men who perish. If he had, all men would be saved. Otherwise, Christ has failed to do what the father sent him to do in purchasing his people. So that was another example of something that was my mind was changed.
Oh, thank you. My wife can shine me into all the ways that my mind has been changed over the years.
Thank you.
Yes, biblical eldership. When I first started pastoring Kootenai Community Church, I thought that this had a, the church had a biblical church structure of a rotating eldership and a pastor who was not an elder and people nominated by the congregation.
The congregation had the final say in all of that. And it was actually put together by the pastor who was two pastors before me. And he was on the elder board when I kind of came to the conclusion that this is, I don't think that what we're doing here is right.
And sort of with great fear and trepidation, I went to an elders meeting that had the previous pastor on the elder board, as well as his father. And this is John Kinney and Dave Kinney. They were both on the elder board.
And I said, hey, I've read this book. I think what we're doing here is not quite right. I mean, it's close, but it's not quite biblical. I want to give this book to you guys. You guys read through this.
And the book was a biblical eldership by Alexander Stratt. And so I said, read this book and let's get back together and think it over. I got to teach on eldership in a few months. And I kind of wanted to get your guys' take on this.
And you read it over in the next month. We came right back in and I thought, no, this could be just horrible conflict. And Dave, the one who was instrumental with a group of others, two pastors, two previous to me, at that elders meeting, he said, I think you're absolutely right.
What we're doing is wrong and we need to change it, which was just fantastic. And then we worked together, the two previous pastors, Dave and John and myself, we worked together to basically change to a biblical form of biblical eldership.
And the Lord has blessed it. And it was by God's grace that both those men were very gracious in how they approached it. So that was another issue that got changed. Deidre, is there another?
No.
And then I'll probably say that I don't know if my mind was changed so much as my heart and my mind were brought to a better, a more clearer understanding of exactly what heaven is by reading Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven.
I think if I were to put on a list of the top 10 most influential worldview-altering, mind-altering books that I've ever read, heaven would be on that list in the top five. The Greatness of the Kingdom would be on that list in the top five as well.
Those two books probably did more, not to change my mind so much as to just take me from a very foggy understanding of certain realities to a very clear understanding of certain realities. Yeah, good question.
Thomas?
Oh, that's a very good question. You shouldn't be embarrassed to ask that. That's a very good question. Yeah, so the question is, scripture says that if people have not heard of the message of the gospel and have not repented and trusted in Yahweh, his provision of salvation, so in the Old Testament, that would have been trusting in Yahweh's word and coming to an understanding of who he is and believing him, and in the New Testament era, it's in Christ, that faith is focused in the person of Christ.
The person who has not done that perishes, and so what about languages that have been lost? Sorry, and then scripture also says that we will gather around the throne every tongue, every tribe, every kindred, every language will be represented there, so what about the languages that have been lost before the gospel came to them, and what about tribes and people, tribes that have perished and have never heard the message?
How will they be represented in heaven? Very good question. Sorry? I do have an answer. I'm trying to figure out how far back into the explanation I wanna go. What do you think happens to the babies that die in human sacrifice, abortion, and miscarriage?
Where do you think they go? I think they go to heaven. That's my conviction. No, I think they go to heaven, and if they go to heaven, then you have babies sacrificed, died, stillborn, aborted, et cetera, from every tribe and tongue on the face of the planet.
That will be represented in heaven, so what's that?
Why do I believe that babies go to heaven? Okay, so I give, sorry? I'll give you two arguments why I believe that babies who die go to heaven. Number one, because they have not committed any sin that is worthy of eternal damnation, so they either go to heaven or they go to hell, so a baby who dies in the womb wakes up in eternal conscious torment under the fires of hell for what reason, what justice is served for that baby?
That baby is imputed the guilt of Adam's sin, but babies are not punished for the guilt of Adam's sin. Adam bears the punishment for his own sin, so Ezekiel 18 lays this out, that the children are not punished for the sins of their parents nor parents for the sins of their children.
Everybody is punished for the sins that they have committed in the flesh, so at the end, in the book of Revelation, when all the books are opened and people are judged according to the deeds that they have done in the book, their books, their misdeeds, their crimes against God are recorded, what sins has a baby in the womb committed?
The answer to that is nothing. Is it a fallen creature? It is, but it has done nothing to warrant eternal conscious torment because that baby has never committed any crime against God. It's great-great-great-grandfather Adam has, but we are not punished for Adam's sin, we are punished for the sins that we commit.
It is unjust for God to punish Adam for his sin and then punish every baby who has ever been miscarried or died for the sin of Adam. That is unjust. Second, I would say, then the question might be asked, what then merits a baby standing in the presence of God if it's imputed the guilt of Adam's sin?
How can it stand in the presence of God? Well, how do you and I stand in the presence of God? We have been imputed the guilt of Adam's sin as well, right? But we are imputed what else? We are imputed the righteousness of Christ.
So I would suggest that the righteousness of Christ is necessary to be credited to the account of the baby so that the baby stands in the presence of God, not just forgiven, but also righteous. So it is imputation that saves every person who has ever lived.
Abraham believed God and it was credited or imputed to him as righteousness. Imputation is what causes, it is what brings salvation to every person who has ever lived. So the baby, I believe, is imputed the righteousness of Christ, not on the basis of faith, but on the basis of God's grace.
Since it's his righteousness, he can impute it on whatever terms he wants, he chooses to impute it. To us, it is imputed on the basis of faith. You need to see your sin, understand that you're a sinner, repent of that sin, and believe upon the Son.
And in that act of faith, we are imputed the righteousness of Christ and our sins are imputed or credited to him. A baby cannot exercise faith. A baby cannot even understand what faith is or who God is or what it is or what sin is or none of that.
So how does a baby stand? A baby is innocent in terms of its own sin. So I believe that because it is innocent in the terms of its own sin, it cannot qualify for eternal judgment. And instead, the righteousness of Christ is credited to the account of that baby so that it is able to stand in the presence of God.
It's imputed righteousness. Wow, now the hands start going up, here we go. Okay, there's seven, what's that? Yeah, that's a good one. There's also, if you want a bunch of arguments for this from the text of scripture there, there's a blog, I'm hoping that this blog is still up.
Maybe somebody can check it real quick and let me know, but it's Cripplegate blog. I think Cripplegate is still up. There are two articles at Cripplegate and these are good solid guys that write for Cripplegate.
One of them is called, I think it's something like 25 arguments from the Old Testament that babies go to heaven. And the second part of that is 25 arguments from the New Testament that babies go to heaven.
One of the arguments from the Old Testament that stands out, and there are a lot of them, like for instance, Job. When Job says, it would have been better for me never to have been born and to have endured this, if Job had never been born, if he had died as a miscarriage in his mother's womb, like he said, oh, curse the day that my mother brought me forth.
Oh, that I had died and never seen the light of day, died in my mother's womb. Would it have been better for Job to have died in his mother's womb and then gone to eternal conscious torment and never known the goodness and grace of God?
Or would it be better for Job to have been born to come to know Yahweh, be a worshiper of Yahweh, go through what he did, and then spend eternity with Yahweh in glory? Obviously, it would have been better for Job to have, in that scenario, it would have been better for Job to have lived his life and gone to heaven than to have been died in the womb and gone to hell.
The only way that Job's statement makes any sense is if in dying in the womb, he would have went straight to eternal glory and not to eternal conscious torment. Another example is the children in the Old Testament, their passages, I think it's in Ezekiel or Jeremiah, one of those places, and the blog post at Cripplegate will give you this passage.
There's a passage in the prophets, I think it's Jeremiah, where God calls the children who are sacrificed to Moloch my innocent ones. He refers to them as innocent and he condemns the pagan nations for sacrificing their children to idols, and he calls those children who were sacrificed my innocent ones, and he pronounces judgment upon them for what they were doing to his innocent ones.
So if they belong to God and they were his and they were innocent, I fail to see how it is that they would go to hell. So there are a bunch of arguments like that in those two posts, so I would commend those to you.
Dave, they are?
Thank you. And did I get the titles of them right? She doesn't know. Well, what help are you then? Okay, yes. I think, I don't call it an age of accountability, I would say that it is an age of understanding, and this is gonna be different, I think, with every kid.
At some point for all of us, there comes a point where we understand the concept of sin and what it is and our guilt before a holy God. And I don't have to sort that out. I don't think any of us here have to sort that out.
I don't put a number on that. It's 10, it's 12, it's 15. I think that different children will reach that age of understanding at a different age. So I know it is comforting to say, oh, look, I don't have to worry about my children until they're 12 years old or whatever you put an arbitrary age at.
I think that what scripture says is that we are accountable to God for the knowledge that we reject. Those who have received greater light receive greater condemnation. So let's apply that to a child.
Is my two-year-old grandson rebellious when he hears the command of his parents and doesn't do? Yeah, he is expressing Adam's sinful nature. He is expressing his sinfulness. He's expressing his rebellion.
That is true. But is he morally accountable for an eternal punishment for that at two years old? I don't believe that that's the case. So he is expressing his fallenness, yes, but not every expression of fallenness is a guilt-worthy act of rebellion against God and his truth.
That is what holds us morally accountable for our sins. So what age is that? I would say as a parent, you communicate the gospel and share truth with your children at a young age. As early as you can, you begin to just flood their mind and their heart with these biblical truths and evangelize your child from the first time that they can begin to understand these concepts.
And then trust. Okay, what's the name of the article? Okay, what happens to infants who die? The Old Testament answer. And I'm assuming that part two of that was what happens to infants who die? The New Testament answer.
You'll look it up. Now, you think that living in this age, we could get faster answers than this, but. All right, so let me ask for any questions relating to this subject before we move on to another.
Okay, we still have a couple. Okay, go ahead, Jake. You can solve it with infant baptism. No, I know, I know, you're kidding. I appreciate the troll, though.
What's that?
Okay, okay, good.
So there's the principle that, okay, so there is the statement in Exodus chapter 20 where God says, I will visit the sins of the fathers on the children of the third or the fourth generation. So I don't wanna just sound smarmy and put this off on your responsibility to do this, but I have a whole chapter on that in the book, Truth or Territory.
If you have that book, you can read about it there. Basically, that is a statement of comparison where the Lord is saying, the sins of the children, I will visit the same punishment on the children as I do upon the parents if the children persist in the sins of their parents.
So it's not a principle that says that a child can turn away from the sins of their parents, but God is still gonna curse that generation with the sins of its forefathers. That is what Ezekiel 18 specifically addresses when God says to the children of Israel, you say that the fathers eat the sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.
In other words, my daddy did this and now I have to feel the effects of it. The fathers eat the sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge, the sourness like vinegar. And that was a proverb in their day saying, we're being punished for the sins of our fathers.
And Ezekiel flips that all around and says, nope, you're not being punished for the sins of your fathers, you're being punished for your own sins. It would be unjust. And this is what God says, Yahweh says, it would be unjust for me to punish the children for the sins of their parents.
Everybody will bear the punishment for their own sins. And then Ezekiel 18 goes through this long explanation. He says, a man commits these sins, he does all of these iniquities, will I not judge him?
Yeah, certainly will. But then he has a son who turns from all the sins of his father and doesn't follow after the sins of his father. Will I punish that son for the sins of his father? And Yahweh says, no, I will not punish that son for the sins of his father.
Everyone bears the responsibility for their own sin. And then he takes it to another step. And he says, let's say that, that man has a son who doesn't follow after the righteousness of his father, but does all of the iniquity that his grandfather did.
Am I gonna bless that third generation because of the righteous deeds of the second generation? No, I will visit his iniquity on him. And everybody bears the punishment for his own sin. That's the principle of Ezekiel 18.
And that I think is throughout scripture, that's true. So in Exodus 20, what you have is God saying, if I'm a sinner and God visits the iniquity on me and my children persist in the same sin that I'm walking in, God will punish that same sin to the third and the fourth generation.
But the next phrase in Exodus 20 says, I would much rather bless to the thousandth generation of the one who walks in righteousness. So all God is saying is I'm willing to pour out curses and wrath upon every single generation to the third to the fourth generation, but I would rather bless a thousand times more.
God is much more inclined to bless the righteous deeds of his saints than he is to just punish the deeds of the wicked, but he will punish the deeds of the wicked to every generation that persists in those sins.
So then what do we have in instances with Achan where his entire family is punished for that, or the people who threw Daniel into the lion's den, their entire families are punished for that. It is true that sometimes God visits a judgment upon an entire family because of the sins of the father.
We, it is wrong, sorry, let me rephrase that. It is true that sometimes children have to feel the effects or the consequences of their father's sin. That is a true statement. There are sins that I could commit that would affect my family for generations to come.
And even if they walk in righteousness, there are sins that I commit that would affect them for generations to come. So that is, there is a sense in which the children will experience consequences for the iniquity that a man or a woman commits.
And I think that in the examples that you gave, that's exactly what you have happening there. There is a judgment that comes upon that whole family. I would never assume that the children of the men who threw Daniel into the lion's den were themselves Yahweh-worshiping righteous people who didn't deserve any kind of wrath, nor would I make that assumption about any of Achan's descendants.
I hope that answers that. All right, regarding children, heaven, are we still on that subject?
Go ahead.
Yeah, so good question. God is going to judge people based upon their knowledge of truth and the light that they have rejected. Would that apply to, are you wondering about the adults in those tribes who have never heard the gospel?
Because, okay, so now Romans 1 answers that question, right? That there comes a point in everybody's life where they understand, they know that there is a God. For the invisible things of God, since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
So I would not say that that applies to the adults who are bowing down and worshiping idols, because that judgment that is described in Romans 1 comes to those who are given up or given over to idolatry, who exchange the glory of the creator for the glory of a created thing, and they worship and serve beasts and animals and created things rather than God.
So in a tribe of people who are worshiping idols who have never heard the gospel, they are guilty because the light of creation they have rejected makes them guilty. And so their sin of idolatry and rejecting that light and not pursuing that light is what keeps them accountable before God.
And in that tribe, let's just isolate to that tribe, in that tribe, the children who are young, who are small, who are infants, who are babies, who die before they come to that understanding, I don't think that they are guilty before God for that same thing.
But at some point, they're gonna pursue the same sins that their parents pursued and become accountable and guilty and without excuse. So is their judgment gonna be the same judgment that is heaped upon, say, Kenneth Copeland or Benny Hinn or somebody who has received a tremendous amount of light and rejected the gospel?
No, I don't think the judgment is the same. There are degrees of judgment in hell. Jesus identified that when he said it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for Chorazin and Bethsaida because Chorazin and Bethsaida saw the works that the son of man did, and they rejected that truth.
Sodom and Gomorrah didn't have nearly the light, they had the light of creation, but they didn't have nearly the light that Bethsaida and Chorazin had, and they rejected, and Capernaum, they rejected that light, and so their judgment is going to be more severe.
Okay, any more on that subject of children and babies and accountability?
Jason.
Okay, good, that's a good question. That's a good way to tie this up. How does the doctrine of sovereign election and what I've just said about children being imputed to the righteousness of Christ go together?
I believe that the election of God, that God has chosen to save in Christ, through Christ's righteousness, all the babies who die in that state. So therefore, election includes not just people who are imputed to the righteousness of Christ by faith, but election includes all of those who are imputed to the righteousness of Christ by the grace of God apart from faith, and that would apply to the babies who are born, so that you could say of a baby who dies in the womb, that baby was elect.
Now, of the person maybe sitting here or that I pass on any given day who is capable of exercising faith in Christ, hearing and understanding the gospel, I can't know whether they are elect or not until they come to faith in Christ, but I do believe that we can say that the choice of God to elect or to choose in grace who would be saved included those whom he had ordained should never see the light of day or die in a state of innocence.
So election would include them by my view.
Jason, since faith is the gift of God,.
Is there any reason those babies cannot be given the gift of faith? Well, if by faith what we mean is the mental understanding of truth that is followed by the volitional acting upon that truth, that all I believe is the gift of God as well.
So does a baby who is six months along who dies in the womb, can we say that they have faith? I wouldn't say that they have faith in that way, no, but I think that they are granted the righteousness of Christ.
For us, of whom faith is required, I would say faith is a gift. Wouldn't deny that at all. It's a sovereign gift of God. But of the baby, the salvation and imputed righteousness itself is a gift. It is not expressed in faith since the baby's incapable of faith in that sense, but it is nonetheless just as much.
Their salvation is no less a gift than mine. For me, my salvation is realized or expressed in time through faith. So my salvation and faith happen at the very same moment. I'm regenerated and faith is present.
So regeneration and faith, salvation, grace, justification, all of that happens in a moment. With the child, I would argue the only thing that is absent that is the one thing that they are not capable of mentally or to express.
That faith is not expressed in a child. I guess I should say that because not capable of being expressed, but the righteousness is imputed nonetheless. The person who dies instantly after being regenerated and believing has no capacity to express faith.
In a sense, that is true. And the only biblical example that I could give would be the thief on the cross. But even the thief on the cross said, don't curse this man, he's innocent. We're not, we deserve this, he doesn't.
So there you see, it's really small, but there you see at least a modicum of growth in grace and sanctification for the man on the cross. So is it possible for somebody to have faith one instant and less than a second later to die?
I guess that is possible. But if that happens, then I don't know what the, I could never say for certain what the state of that soul is. But an individual who expresses faith and then goes on to give evidence of that faith, expressions of that faith, that is what would give us the confidence that there was actually saving faith there.
Yeah, great hypothetical. We could spend a lot of time on there, but it's a good question.
All right.
Yes, Jonathan.
Okay.
Okay, so two issues here. And I'm glad you brought this up because this is one of these issues kind of, there's an issue at the core of your question that is being assumed that I want to deal with out the front.
It is my conviction that every passage of scripture can be rightly understood by the context in which it is written. So I don't need to go outside of 1 John to come to the conclusion that what John is describing here is the, is that the world is not referring to every single person without exception.
No passage of scripture needs a cross-reference from outside to shine light on it. Okay, so if you have a passage of scripture, the only way I can understand this is if I quote all of these other verses around here.
I don't need that. I can understand every passage in its own context. So applying that principle then to 1 John 2, 2, when it says that Christ is our advocate and he died or propitiation, not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world, this understood in two ways.
Number one, first, a universal atonement that Christ's death is the propitiation or the satisfaction for the sins of every person who has ever lived. So world is just taken to mean every person who has ever lived, or it could be understood as he is the satisfaction, not just for our sins, that is us, the Jewish people, or the people to whom we're writing, but that he is the satisfaction that is made available to the entire world.
But the entire world is not propitiated in the death of Christ, but the propitiation of Christ is what is offered to the entire world. It's not just Jews. It is everybody who has ever lived. This is not an exclusive propitiation in the sense that it is not offered to Germans, or Swahili, or Nigerians, or Egyptians.
This is the propitiation that is offered that has provided salvation for men of every tribe, tongue, and kindred. So if the question is, do I need, how do I understand 1 John 2 .2, I would say this, that what John is saying is he is the propitiation or the satisfaction, not just for our personal sins, but he is the propitiation that is made available to the entire world.
And he is the satisfaction for the sins of any and all who will believe, not every person without exception, but every person without distinction.
Yeah, that is true. But also keep in the context, if I were to write a letter to our congregation, I'd say, Jesus Christ is the Savior, and he's the Savior for people, not just our sins, but for the sins of the whole world.
Would you take that as a statement to mean that I believe that every person in the world is gonna be saved?
No, you wouldn't.
You would probably take that in the sense that Jim's saying that, look, Kootenai Community Church is not the only group of believers on the planet, right? He is the satisfaction for our sins, but this satisfaction, this propitiation is extended as far and wide as any and all who will believe.
And I think that that's exactly what John is saying. So the question is, do I need to go outside of that? I can go outside of that to the Gospel of John and to other references in Scripture, and it shines light on this and makes me say, okay, this is at least my take on this is in keeping with what I see elsewhere in Scripture.
But if the only way I can build a doctrinal case from a verse is if I'm quoting some other passage of Scripture to make it, to sort of take the meaning and flip it around to be the opposite of what it seems to say, then I'm abusing Scripture.
I can't do that. I can't justify that interpretation. So I can arrive at either understanding of that just from the wording of that verse itself, and then I would say, okay, I have two options here. I have to step out.
Either one of these could be right. Which one of them is likely right? Neither one might be ruled out exclusively by the context of this one verse right near it, but I could certainly arrive, one of those is the true interpretation of the passage.
And so since one of those is the true interpretation of the passage, then what might other aspects of Scripture tell me about that? I need to pick the aspect of Scripture that's in keeping with, or the aspect of that passage, the possibility that it's in keeping with the rest of Scripture.
So the rest of Scripture can give me understanding that helps shine light on that passage, but the rest of Scripture cannot overturn the clear meaning of that passage itself. And if I had more time, oh, bummer, I would get into how people who believe certain eschatologies do that very same thing, but I'm not gonna do that.
So we'll shut her down there, and thank you for putting me in the hot seat. I'm glad we only do this once every three or four years.
It was fun.
Let's bow in prayer, and then we'll be dismissed. Our Father, we're grateful for your word as our guide, and we would pray that what we understand and what we know to be true would come from your word, and that we would not be swayed by the thinking of the world.
We're grateful that you, by your Spirit, bring us into truth and a promise to guide us in truth, and we're grateful that we can spend this time around your word and thinking on these things. And so we pray that anything that is wrong or in error that has been said here in any of my answers would be quickly forgotten, but that the teaching of your word would settle into our hearts and minds for the glory of Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.
