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David said in Psalm 119, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. The word of God we are to write upon our hearts and it is our remembrance of God's word that convicts us of sin and brings us to repentance in our pursuit of the holiness of God when we understand the text.
Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everybody. Welcome to the Friday edition of the program where we take questions from listeners of the broadcast, viewers of our What Videos, and you can submit your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
Email is the best way to get in touch with us, but I also take questions by Twitter sometimes. I'll be responding to a Twitter request today, in fact. On Twitter, you can find me at twitter .com slash Pastor underscore Gabe.
It's Pastor Gabe with a little underscore mark in between. I had the chance to see the new film, Ben-Hur, this weekend, the updated version of the 1959 classic, and I did a review of the movie at my blog.
Go to pastorgabehughes .blogspot .com. Just to give you the quick summary of it, it's not that great a picture. There might be something else you would wanna go see instead. Just wait for it to come out on video, but I do a side-by-side comparison between the 1959 classic and the 2016 version at my blog.
Again, that's pastorgabehughes .blogspot .com. All right, let's get to the questions here. This first one comes from Scott in New Zealand. Sends us an email and says, greetings in the Lord. I would like to take this opportunity to write and thank you for your ministry through whenweunderstandthetext.
Your broadcast, which he puts in quotes, making fun of my tendency to refer to this as a broadcast instead of a podcast. He says, your broadcast has been a great source of teaching for me, and I give thanks for your clear and thorough delivery of the scriptures.
I have listened through all of the broadcasts and have now returned back to the beginning, back when we were doing Philippians last year, mixing them in with Intruding Favor, Echo Zoe, and Wretched Radio, also a great podcast, by the way.
I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and am thankful that through various media, the word of God is able to be shared across the globe. Please let your congregation know how impacting your ministry has been in the life of another in New Zealand.
I would like to contribute financially as one who has gained so much teaching and encouragement from your broadcast. Please, if you are able to, outline how I can do this from New Zealand. Many thanks, Scott.
Well, I thank you so much for your message, Scott, and I will be sharing this with members of our congregation. They love to hear how this ministry is making an impact in others. How can you give a gift to this ministry?
Well, if you go to www .utt .com, there is a Give tab in the top right corner. Click on that tab, and then you've got a couple of options. One is another link to a website called Simple Give, and that's all set up for you, so all you have to do is click on that link, and then it will give you information on how you can give a gift to our church.
It's a very safe and easy way to give with either your credit or your debit card or your bank account. I don't know how bank accounts work in New Zealand. If it's the same way as in the United States, but if it is the same, you can give through your bank account that way online, or you can just write a check and send it in the mail, and the address for our church is listed right there on the website.
All of the funds that we receive go into the general ministry account of the church. I don't receive anything from it personally. I don't benefit from any gift that is given to when we understand the tax, not monetarily anyway.
I mean, I benefit in the joy of the Lord, but I'm not getting any money from that. That just goes to the ministry that our church does. So being a nonprofit organization, if you live in the United States, those gifts are tax deductible.
We're a small congregation. We just make our budget from month to month like most churches do. We have a little over 100 congregants on a Sunday morning. Most of the funds that we receive come from within the church from our own congregants giving to the church, but we also get some gifts from around the country and around the globe, and we're grateful to anybody who contributes whatever they can.
We did a fundraising campaign earlier this year to raise money for a new roof. We as a church believe in doing everything debt-free. We don't take loans out on things. We want to try to raise money for the needs that we have, and so when the roof started leaking in on my head in the sanctuary while I'm preaching, I realized I couldn't ignore it anymore.
It was time to do something about it. It wasn't that severe. There was a drip in the sanctuary, but it wasn't on my head in the middle of preaching, but anyway, so we put the message out, put the word out that we were raising funds for that, and we did have some listeners of this program that contributed to that, and I'm very grateful to you.
Just to kind of give you an update on how that's going, we raised all of the money by May, and then we started getting several different estimates, and we've settled on one that we think that we like, and they're gonna start work in September, so we're trying to beat the icy season because that's the most brutal on our roof.
Our roof can stand the Kansas thunderstorms better than it could do the ice storms, and so we're gonna get it done before the cold season rolls in, and we'll be good to go, so we thank you very much to everybody who contributed to that, and any little gift that you were able to give has gone a long way for us, and we really appreciate it.
There's another church here in the US, I think from Michigan, that's gonna be coming down and doing some maintenance work with us. I believe that's next month as well, so some of the bigger projects that we can't do on our own, this is part of the missions work that they do.
We're very excited to receive them and do some other maintenance work things that we need to do on our building. So thank you very much to the gifts that you give, and again, all of that goes to the general ministry that First Southern Baptist Church does, not only in Junction City, but also in North America and around the world.
The website, once again, www .utt .com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner. Scott, thank you for your message, and I thank you also to others who have sent emails and talked about how much this program has blessed you.
It keeps me going. I appreciate hearing the encouragement very much. Okay, this next one comes from Brian, and Brian says, dear, what? I listened to the study on Deborah, and you brought up a line saying that there are only things a man can do and things only a woman can do.
I was wondering, can you provide some examples? Brian goes into some different things that he believes, and he says, I've asked this question to my Complementarian female friends and couldn't quite articulate my thoughts.
Thank you for your time and ministry in your podcast and YouTube, Brian. Well, Brian, when it comes to Complementarian ministry, the gist of it is this. I kind of repeat myself from what I said a couple of weeks ago.
There are things that a man is supposed to do that a woman cannot do. There are things that a woman is supposed to do that a man cannot do, and the two of them, in their strengths and weaknesses, complement one another, and we have a functioning body of Christ.
If we had a church that was all men, we would have a dysfunctional body. Likewise, if we had a church that was all women. So it's supposed to be men and women together and also of different generations.
We have older men and younger men. I'm not the kind of person that believes in separating and segregating out people by age groups and generations. That is the wrong way to do church because the youngest generation needs to be benefiting from the oldest generation, and likewise, the oldest generation benefits from the youngest.
As we have the outline of mentorship given to us in Titus chapter two, the older men are supposed to mentor the younger men, and the older women are supposed to mentor the younger women. So that's something that a woman can do in a church that a man cannot do.
There are things that a woman can teach other women that men cannot teach women and should not be teaching women. Do I really need to provide some examples to elaborate on that point? So like, for example, I've seen my wife helping out some of the younger moms, like first time moms with their infants and things that as a woman, they've never had to do before in caring for an infant.
And I've seen and overheard some of the advice that my wife has given to those mothers. And so you have an example there of an older woman mentoring a younger woman. I don't think my wife wants to be referred to as an older woman, but we're in our mid thirties now, babe.
I think it's unavoidable, especially in our church, which is very military influenced. And so we get a lot of young families that come in. If you're in your mid thirties, you're in the older generation in our church.
Cause most new families that come in are in their young twenties. And some of them are even newlyweds. We get that a lot as well. Older women mentoring the younger women. Men cannot teach younger women how to breastfeed and should not be doing that.
All right. And then there are other things about a woman, a man can't teach her either. But a man can teach a woman. And we have that understanding in realizing that it is the calling of a man to fill the role as pastor, elder overseer in the church and teaching.
And so all of the church submits to the authority of the eldership and the teaching of God's word. All of the church is supposed to submit to Christ. And all of the church is also supposed to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
That is given in Ephesians chapter five. So how does that look? Well, in submitting to one another, it means that a person is going to have a particular calling or spiritual gift that they need to fill.
And you need to allow that person to fulfill that calling. Not looking at that person thinking, well, I can do that job better than that guy can. Or not looking at somebody else and being envious of the position or the spiritual gift that they have, thinking that you can have that gift as well.
Rather, if they have been called to fill that ministry position, you need to submit to realizing that that's their calling and they need to do it. So that's the way that we submit to one another. And a woman is a better example of submission than a man is because the woman is called to submit to those positions of authority, whereas a man is called to fill those positions of authority.
So as we've all been called to submit to Christ and his authority, the woman is the better earthly example of that submission than a man is. So you think of the charge in Ephesians 5 that a wife is supposed to be submissive to her husband.
And that does not mean that the husband lords himself over her because the charge for the husband is that he's supposed to lay his life down as Christ did for the church. And the husband's supposed to do that for his wife.
And so the wife is the greater earthly example of submission as we are supposed to see submission happen within the whole church, not just one sex of the church. Remember that the church is described as the bride of Christ.
So Christ is the bridegroom and we are his bride. So as the wife is the picture of submission to her husband, so the whole church is supposed to be submissive to Christ Jesus. That is something that a woman can do as a greater earthly example than a man can do.
And we should all look to women for that example of submission. That's a great calling. That's not in any way saying that a woman is less than a man. It is a great and wonderful calling for our Lord Christ has said, if you wanna be great in the kingdom of God, you must learn to be a servant of all.
And a woman can show that submissiveness better than a man can do. So what is it that a woman can do that a man cannot do or is better than a man can do? So number one, she can mentor younger women. Number two, she can teach children.
And number three, she is the better earthly example of submission as we are all supposed to submit to Christ. Here's a fourth thing that she can do. She can be an evangelist. So she can go out into the community and evangelize just like a man can do.
And in fact, there are going to be lost women in your community that will better listen to a woman than they will listen to a man. When I go out and I do evangelism in Junction City, about 80 of the people that I'm talking to, so four out of every five are a man.
And they're most likely to listen to what I have to say than a woman with children. And most likely when I encounter women in the community, they have children with them. And so there is a need for women in this community also to go out with the gospel and to evangelize.
We see the picture of evangelism exercise through Priscilla in the book of Acts. And Paul also speaks very highly of her in Romans 16. So she is an example of evangelism, of ministry service in the community in that way.
And again, once again, there are women who are gonna speak to other women better than a man can speak to other women in terms of how the gospel is shared. So that's something else that a woman can do.
And that role of authority, a woman not having authority over a man extends only in the church. When she goes out with the gospel, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that has authority over everybody. So she can preach that gospel to even a lost man and lead him to Christ.
Though I would say that a woman should not go about doing that alone. She definitely needs to have somebody with her and doing those things. Our culture is still a dangerous place to live sometimes. So anyway, I hope that without rambling on too much, I hope that that answers your question, Brian.
And I hope that I've been able to articulate my thoughts on that particular subject. Okay, one last question that I have here, and this comes from Forrester on Twitter, and I've received something from Forrester before.
He said, Pastor Gabe, would you mind talking on the podcast about some of the trials that you had when you were a new believer in Christ and how the Lord brought you through them and taught you? Well, it's a great question, Forrester, and I actually had to give it some thought.
Now I've gone through some difficult trials. For the most part, I've had a very easy life. I was born in a Christian radio family, so there was always a job for me. Yeah, you wonder where I get my radio voice from.
It comes from my dad. And since I was the oldest son, I got the pick of being able to work at the radio station above my brothers. And so I got my own radio show at the age of seven. And even when I was in high school, while my friends were bagging groceries or flipping pizzas, I was working at a Christian radio station.
So when it came down to finding work, there was always a job for me, and I never had to struggle in that way. Although my job was not always easy, even though my coworkers accused me and my father of nepotism, I always did more work than they did.
That is not a boasting point, it's just simply a matter of fact. There were times that I came to the radio station late at night and corrected an error at the station because I was the single guy. I didn't have a family at home.
I was the high school kid. And so my dad would send me down to take care of the problems that were probably the responsibility of somebody else, but he didn't wanna have to drag them out of bed and away from their families in the middle of the night.
So there were times that my job was much harder than anybody else's job. I worked harder because I was the boss's son. I didn't have as much privilege. I also got paid less. And we did that so that my dad would earn the favor of the board of directors, and there wouldn't be any accusation of any favoritism being shown toward me just because I was the boss's son.
But because of that experience in radio, when I moved out of the home and I lived in other places, I was always able to find work in radio. And there were also times when I struggled. I remember one time after I'd finished two years of college and I wasn't sure where I was going next, I ended up in the same town where I had just graduated from JUCO, and I had not a dime to my name.
Actually, kind of a funny story, if I can elaborate on this without rambling too much, I had a check. I had my paycheck with me, but I had no bank to cash it in. I couldn't cash it in a bank that did not know who I was, and they even required my social security number to open an account, and I had to have my social security card.
So I had to apply for another card, which was gonna take six weeks to come in. So I had a paycheck that was really worth about as much as the paper that it was written on. I couldn't cash it anywhere.
And I hated going for those like check cashing places where you have to give like 10 or 15 of your paycheck. So I was trying to avoid that. So I ended up having to sleep in my car. I had a paycheck, but I couldn't cash it, and so didn't have a dime to my name.
Some friends of mine ended up helping me out. I actually had a teacher friend who gave me a hundred bucks, and he told me, I know you're good for it, and I know you'll pay it back, and I did. And there was a missionary family that was on furlough that had a basement that they weren't using, and they let me live in their basement.
Quafe and Regan Nichols was their name, and I still remember them quite fondly and very appreciative of the season in which they opened their home to me and provided for me. But even in those struggles, even in those times when I didn't know what it was that I was gonna do, and I didn't even know if I was gonna be able to eat that night, I knew that God was providing for me.
I did not doubt God in any of those circumstances. I knew that it was just another trial that I was going to get through, and the Lord was strengthening me and teaching me to rely upon him. Now, having said that though, there are still trials that I've gone through in my life that the Lord needed to teach me a great deal about repentance and coming to him for his grace and his forgiveness.
Now, by reputation, I was a pretty squeaky clean young man. I never smoked a cigarette, I never was drunk. However, even though I didn't sleep around and I did not sleep with my girlfriends, I was always very respectful of the girls that I dated, but behind the scenes, there was some dark sin that was going on that nobody knew about.
I was addicted to porn, and somehow by the grace of God, that addiction never translated into playing those fantasies out with the girls that I was dating, and that's only by the work of the Lord that he was able to stay my conscience in that way.
But nonetheless, I was in a pornographic addiction and I was committing adultery in that way, so everybody thought of me as this very upstanding young man, but I had this dark sin that I was addicted to on the side.
And it's been a difficult thing for me even in my adulthood as some flashbacks and images will still come into my mind where I'll see things on the internet that tempt me to click on them, and that all comes from that life of sin that I lived while I was in college and in my young 20s.
And so the Lord brought me to a place of repentance. I remember really weeping and crying out to the Lord, and there were other times that I struggled in it even later on and had to come to repentance once again.
I remember living in an apartment on my own when I was in Abilene, Kansas, this was before I met my wife, and hitting my knees in my apartment floor and with my hands in the air and saying to God, I still have not conquered this sin, and I know that I can't do it on my own, and so Lord, I need your grace to get over these things.
And daily, there are submissions of conscience to the Lord where I have to take my thoughts and submit them to Christ as we are instructed to do in 2 Corinthians 10. So through these trials in my life, these are the ways that the Lord has brought me.
Now, Forrester, as you asked in your question, what are trials that you had when you were a new believer in Christ? Well, I came to the Lord when I was four. I remember praying to God and giving my life to him, and even though I did not really understand matters of repentance, those things would come as I grew.
I gave my life to Christ at a very young age, and so how the Lord taught me things at that young age, I don't remember, but as I've grown up and as I've matured in the Lord, these are some of the ways that God has taught me.
There's a verse in Psalm 119, of course there is, there's a lot of verses in Psalm 119, it's the longest chapter of the Bible, but in particular, I'm thinking of the section titled noon, which goes from verses 105 to 112, and we read the following.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to your word. Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your rules.
I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.
I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end. So there are times in my life where I took my life into my own hands and I wanted to do my own thing, but because my parents raised me in the training and the instruction of the Lord and I had God's word in my heart, it would convict me of my sin.
I would repent of that sin and God would show me his grace. And it's by his grace that I did not stray too far. I did not forget God's law. He kept me close by and kept a conviction in my heart that I would know my sin and repent of it before the Lord.
And that is something that I continually pray to God. I pray that I would not lose my conviction because the moment that I lose my conviction is the moment that I become comfortable in my sin. I do not wanna be comfortable in my sin.
I want God's holiness. And so this is just some of the ways that God has shown me his grace over the course of my walk in my Christian life. And he is continuing to show his grace to me every single day.
I need his grace now as a husband and a father. I am not the perfect husband and I am definitely not the perfect dad. And so when it comes to knowing how to love my wife or love my children and teach them, teaching my family, I need God's help.
I need God. And it is by his word, the way that he taught me through his word, I am now teaching to my wife and to my children. And so I need that conviction of when I do something wrong or when I get grumpy with my wife and kids or when I get separated from them for a while and I start doing my own thing instead of paying attention to my family.
This conviction comes into my heart, repenting before the Lord and repenting before my family. And I continue to experience God's grace. As it says in Lamentations 3, his mercies are new every morning.
And so I am continuing to grow in that knowledge and that understanding, maturing in the faith as we all should, all who are in Christ Jesus. And we do this by reading his word and writing these words upon our hearts.
Pray that the Lord would do that for you as well. And don't lose that sense of conviction. Let us be convicted of our sins. And when we go out preaching the gospel with others, we share the words with them that would convict them of their sins, that they might repent and know the holiness of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Thank you so much for joining me for this program. I appreciate having you each and every day that we are on. Next week, we will finish up Romans. Romans chapter 16, we get to the end of it next week.
Then we'll do our Q &A Friday next week. And then I'm gonna take a week off. We'll be back on the program again on September the 5th. There'll be a few changes, but it's still gonna be the same Bible teaching that we have offered from the very beginning.
And I thank you for your support just by listening in. Tell somebody else about when we understand the text. Our website is www .utt .com. God bless.
This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.
Find a good gospel-teaching Christ-centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again Monday for more Bible study when we understand the text.