WWUTT 2045 Q&A Mount of Transfiguration, Wine or Grape Juice, the Statue of David

Where is the Mount of Transfiguration located anyway? Does it matter if we have wine in our communion cups or is grape juice acceptable? And why is the statue of David uncircumcised? We look for some answers when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary in God's Word that we may grow in our walk with the Lord. Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. I said it all wrong. What'd you say wrong? I said, um, tell about our ministry, but this says tell about our website. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, when I wrote the script for you. Mm-hmm. You know, when I change something up.

You change it up and I get all flabbergasted. I'm like, ah! But I don't notice until after I've passed it.

I didn't know that I changed anything in the script when I sent it to you. Okay. Tell about our website. Tell others about our website. This time I said about the ministry. Yep. No, no. It's vice versa.

Oh, the other way. Okay. I usually I say the ministry. Yeah. This time I said the website. Yeah. All right. Well, that shows you how close I pay attention to exactly what I write. Speaking of websites.

Yes. So let me throw this in here and then we'll jump into our psalm. Sure. Since you brought the website up, you know, our church, the church that we're part of now here in Casa Grande, Arizona, Providence Reformed Baptist Church.

We're making jokes about how we went from FSBCJC in Junction City to now PRBCCG. Wait a minute. Did I get that right? Yeah. Two Cs. Yeah. See, I can't even think. I haven't done it enough yet that I can't just pull it off the top of my head.

Well, if that's too many letters in a row, stringing all those letters, that's too much to try to remember. ProvidenceCasaGrande .com. Oh, that's good. That'll just get you straight to the church website.

Now what's funny is I may have been told that, but I discovered that because I thought surely we can come up with a simpler address. And the first thing that popped into my head was ProvidenceCasaGrande .com.

So I typed that in to see if it was available and it took us straight to our website. Woo-hoo. How about that? So someone had already thought ahead. That's awesome. And done that. You can find our church's webpage that way.

I'm doing some tweaking with it, moving some things around. But you can find out information about our church, our statement of faith. Sermons are online there. Nice. Now I'm going to put the sermons on the podcast.

I'm going to start doing it on the podcast too, but the sermons on the podcast are going to be a week back. Oh, okay. So you have to go to the website if you want to hear it the week of, but then it'll show up on the Sunday edition of the broadcast the week, the next week after.

So they'll always be... Give you a little bit of a breather to get it uploaded.

Exactly. I don't have to feel like I got to do it that day because that day's already full with plenty of other things. Oh, yeah. The Lord's work. Like a nap after church, pizza and a nap. It's a pretty regular Sunday routine, or we're going over to somebody's house and we're there all day.

You know, something like that. Love it. Yep. The fellowship here is wonderful. So if you have the chance to visit our church, if you're in the Phoenix, Casa Grande area, Tucson, come on up and join us.

We do Sunday school at nine. Church is from 1030 to noon. And we'd love to have you visit our church here in Casa Grande. Casa Grande, as some call it, the locals say Casa Grand. Yep. Now then, let's get to the psalm.

Yes, let's. And then we'll get to our questions. This being the Friday edition of the broadcast, we take questions from the listeners and you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

We've been trying to start these Friday episodes with a psalm and we're up to psalm four. This one short like last week, psalm three is eight verses, psalm four is eight verses. For the choir director with stringed instruments, a psalm of David.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness. You have relieved me in my distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. O sons of men, how long will my glory become a reproach? How long will you love what is worthless and seek falsehood?

Selah. But know that Yahweh has set apart the Holy One for himself. Yahweh hears when I call to him. Tremble and do not sin. Ponder in your heart upon your bed and be still. Selah. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in Yahweh.

Many are saying, who will show us good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Yahweh. You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and new wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Yahweh, make me to abide in safety. When I was prepping for this episode and I was reading that psalm in advance, I was looking at it going, didn't I read this last week? And it's because of that line, in peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

Because that was in the third psalm as well. I lay down and slept, I awoke for Yahweh sustains me. Psalm 3, 5. Incidentally, I got a message from somebody because we talked about that last week and focused on that part and how we can be at peace and rest knowing that God is sovereign and he is in control.

Somebody sent me a private message and said, you have no idea how much that spoke to me. And he said, I listened to you read the psalm and that part hit me. But then when you and Becky dwelled on it, it was like all the more.

I was like, oh, I just, I needed this and help me to relax. Oh, that's awesome. That was, that's amazing. Yeah. Amen to that. But here also you have other imperatives that come up in the psalm. Tremble and do not sin.

Ponder in your heart upon your bed and be still. I do that a lot too. And I'm laying in bed and I'm thinking about what have I done today? I can tell you I was laying in bed. When was this Thursday morning regretting everything I had eaten in the last 24 hours.

Oh dear. That's not quite pondering my actions or my sin, but it was, I definitely got hit with something and I'm going, oh boy, I regret, I regret what I ate yesterday. This is awful. But you still have those moments when you lay in bed and you just think about, you contemplate.

Don't waste your moments in bed. I think too many of us are quick to pull our phones out. Keeps us awake late at night because we're staring at our phone. I remember a friend of mine at our church in Junction City said, because of smartphones, we've forgotten what it's like to be bored anymore.

Oh my goodness. So true.

Yeah. My children don't know what to do. Our kids, yeah, they just don't know what to do. They're like, I want something, I'm like, no, figure out what you can do. You have two fingers, you know, you have a pen and paper, go.

Well, that boredom is good. It is good for us to think about things other than, you know, streaming through our social media or playing dumb games.

Well, I know whenever I have quiet, like a quiet moment, which is rare, but it's usually whenever I'm in between things and I realize like that's the time that I just let my brain, you know, kind of float to whatever.

And I know whatever I'm filling myself with every, like constantly is what I think about and what I dwell about. So like, I know if I've been on my phone too much, if I'm constantly thinking about what am I going to look at next on my phone, or if I've been, you know, out and about and driving, like I've been driving too much, you know, cause I'm thinking about where I'm going to go next.

And you know what I mean? Things like that. Like where, where is my heart?

And it's. That's a good gauge. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. Yeah. Like, where does your mind go first? Right. That's usually the things that have been consuming your, your heart lately. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I get convicted because it never goes to the Lord first, you know, in his word. That's our flesh. Oh man. Weakness of the flesh. So easily. Yeah. So yeah, it's a, thankfully he's convicting me on that more and more often.

Verse five, offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in Yahweh. That reminds me of Romans 12 one, present your bodies as living sacrifices unto the Lord. Yeah. This is your spiritual act of worship, holy and acceptable unto God.

Yeah. So pursuing righteousness, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. All the things you need will be added to you as well. Lift up the light of your face upon us, oh Yahweh. You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and new wine abound.

When I put the kids to bed Thursday night, I was, the girls in particular, I was trying to help them think about what did you do today to be thankful for? Because we had a grumpy end of the day. Oh yeah.

You got to go to the store and you got new stuff. Yes. So can you be thankful for today? Why are you grumping at the end of the day? What do you have to be thankful for? And so we thought about those things.

I convinced one daughter better than the other one. Of course. And you probably know right away which two they were. Yep, five years ago. But more than that statement, more than when their new grain, when their grain and new wine abound.

So wine was always a symbol of God's abundant provision in the scriptures. Let your vats be overflowing with new wine. Yes. So we know that God has blessed us abundantly. When the wine vats were full, it was a great harvest.

So be thankful for more than a great harvest. You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and new wine abound. So we're going to talk about something pertaining to wine. Oh yeah. Here coming up in just a moment.

Yes. It's one of the questions that we got here today. We got a question about the transfiguration because that was something we looked at this week in Matthew 17. We have a question about grape juice versus wine and communion.

Okay. This was like a skirmish that had bubbled up on social media earlier this week. And then the last question, I've saved this one for last because it has a little bit more of an adult theme to it.

Okay. I don't think you necessarily have to dismiss kids from the room, but you might have to explain a few terms to them. So I'm saving that one to the end of the episode and I'll give you a cue when I get to that one.

Yeah. That's what I try to do when you get those more adult oriented questions. Yeah. We'll save it to the end. But first of all, so I can't remember if this was last week or the week before I said, could you guys get online, leave some reviews for us?

Oh yeah. Give us five stars because it helps to bolster the podcast when people are searching, especially for Bible teaching podcasts. The more interaction we get in the review section, the greater the likelihood that that podcast will show up closer to the top of the list.

Right. So if you get on the, what would it be? ITunes? I don't know. ITunes, I was told was defunct now, isn't that right? I have no idea. So they don't have to do iTunes anymore. I don't know. I haven't been on it in years.

I don't know. Apple podcast, maybe. Apple podcast. Yeah. Maybe that's what it is. Yeah. So get on there. If you use your phone to listen to podcasts, whether it's Spotify or Apple or whatever it might be, click on that review section, leave us a review, give us five stars, helps people find the program.

These are the latest responses that I had. Now I said that, hey, leave us a review because we'll read it at the end of the year. Here's why I'm doing it now though. Spotify just released or just sent people their list of podcasts that you listened to the most this year.

Apparently they do this at the end of November. I was not aware of this. Oh, okay. But friends started contacting me and showing me the podcast of the top podcasts that they listened to this year and how many of them had, when we understand the text in the top five.

Oh, that's awesome. And I didn't know anything about this cause I don't use Spotify. I just listened to, you know, whatever the podcast app is on my phone, whether it's pod bean or the one that comes default with your iPhone.

But Dylan from Texas contacted me, showed me that I, we were in the top five, top five most listened to podcasts for 2023. Beth, his wife also had us in the top five. Chris from Wichita Falls had us at number one.

Oh, nice. The closet Calvinist had us at number three. We've had, we've read a question from the closet Calvinist on here before. And I had a few others that had sent me those. Those are the ones I just wrote down right here.

But thank you. Thanks for those who have, Oh, there was somebody else that said, uh, I guess their podcast review also shows you how many minutes you listen to it. Okay. They listened to us for like 980 minutes in 2023.

So he said, thank you for filling 980 minutes of my year.

We'll get a thousand minutes by the end of the year. Yeah. Right.

So that's pretty cool. And we appreciate you listening to the program and telling others about it. Also want to say thank you to Scott who sent us a Christmas ornament in the mail. Oh, yes. I sent Becky a picture of it.

I don't have it with me right here. I meant to bring it in here while we were recording this episode, but it, it says it's our first Christmas in Casa Gran. I love it. It's so pretty. It's going to go right on the tree, Scott.

We really appreciate it. Hadn't shown the kids yet. No. Once we start hanging ornaments on the tree. And it'll be up a little higher. Got to keep it out of the reach of the two year old. Yeah.

He's getting a little, uh, ambitious. Oh yeah. He's going to try to climb the tree this year. He is. I'm sure of it.

I know it. It's going to be worse than a cat. So here's some of those reviews that we got from the broadcast as well. This one is from, this one goes back to August, Gary. It says, if you like learning God's word and having it broken down in its truth, here is your podcast.

Seeing God's word through a godly viewpoint and not a worldly one. Thank you for that. There was another one in July. Oh, can't wait until you're back on the air in August. Praying that the break was beneficial.

It was. Yeah. That's when we were, uh, we were off in July. Yeah. Then, uh, this one is from Gotham. I don't know. That's probably short for something. Okay. Solid biblical teaching. Five stars. Nice.

This one from Raleigh. What is one of my favorite podcasts? Biblical teaching that explains concepts clearly and in an interesting way. And then, uh, this one from Papa John, not to be confused with the pizza place, outstanding podcast, doctrinally sound and biblically orthodox.

This podcast is a must have. I go back to past episodes to get content on my current studies. Oh, that's awesome. Now I did tell somebody I was going to take all, what are we at? 2060 episodes. Where are we at now?

That's a little high. I don't think we're quite there yet. So I think we just did 20, yeah, 2045. Yeah. I knew it was getting up there. Yeah. This is episode 2045. So I told somebody I was going to take all 2045 episodes and I'm going to create a catalog on the website that just has them all listed and the links on them because goodness, it is hard to archive these and whether you're using pod bean or it's probably easier on pod bean, Apple only backlogs 999 episodes.

So if you want to get episodes numbered back under a thousand, you would actually have to type the number into Google to get that episode number to come up. Wow. So what I'm going to do is go to create a page on the website that has every single episode listed and I'll group all the ones in Matthew, all the ones in John, all the ones in Romans.

That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work, but I got to do that.

Yeah. Do it now before it gets too much.

I'll try to have it done by the end of the year because I just never thought of this. I didn't think anybody would really resource it like a library, but I get quite a few comments about that. So we'll try to put them in certain orders.

The Q and A's will all be kind of in one spot. I'm not going to try to group it by subject. So random. Yeah. I mean, you just heard the subjects we're covering today. Yeah. It's not like we go with a particular theme or anything like that.

Yeah. But yeah, once again, if you want to submit a question to the program, you can send it via email to when we understand the text at gmail .com. Let's get to some of those questions here. This first one comes from Caleb, has to do with the lessons on the transfiguration this week.

Okay. Dear Pastor Gabe, I appreciated your lessons on the transfiguration. Thank you for taking time and stretching that over three days. Here's my question. Sometimes I hear preachers call it not the transfiguration, but the Mount of Transfiguration.

Is there any distinction intended when referring to the transfiguration itself or the Mount of Transfiguration? Was there any significance to that particular mountain? Thank you for your ministry. No, we don't know where the actual mountain is.

So there really is not a significance to that particular place. Jesus just took Peter, James and John up on a mountain and it was somewhere in the region of Caesarea Philippi. Okay. Yeah. So that was the region they were in.

So the mountain would have to be somewhere around there, but we don't know which one for sure. Yeah. And I think it's pretty obvious as to why. Yeah. People would go up there and think there was something magical or mystical about that particular mountain.

Right. Like the place instead of the event and the person. Yeah, exactly.

And then you would be missing the significance of the story.

Which is just how people are. People don't do that.

No. Myself included. They don't go worship relics and stuff.

Well, we don't do that, but I do miss the point is what I was meaning. Gotcha.

Well, I know you wouldn't worship the relic, but there are plenty of people that. Oh, yes, they do. Yeah. Somebody's going to build a temple up there. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Right. Yep. And there probably already is.

You know. Right. Turn it into some vendor place. Yep. So yeah, like I said, there probably already is somewhere someone has built a structure of some kind, a temple or church or whatever on top of the hill and said, this is the place.

This is it. Yeah. This was where Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. But we simply don't know. And the point, of course, was that Jesus would be showing his glory to Peter, James and John, that they would know he is the holy one.

And all of this was in the context of the things that he was telling them about going to his death, saying that we're going to go into Jerusalem. I am going to suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed.

But don't fear. I'm going to be raised on the third day. That was in chapter 16, verse 21. And he says it again at the end of the events of the transfiguration when he says that the son of man is going to suffer at their hands.

So he tells them this is going to happen. But fear not. You have seen. I am the one who was sent from God. Yeah. I am the son of God sent down from heaven. Yeah. And for that brief moment, taking away the veil of his flesh and showing his glory to Peter, James and John, and then telling them not to tell about the vision until after the son of man had risen from the dead.

That was another thing they missed because he says to them again in two consecutive chapters that he's going to rise from the dead.

And they just missed that part. Yeah. Well, I mean, what does that really mean?

Instead, it's like our Lord is going to be put to death. Yeah, we don't want we don't want that to happen. That's absurd. That's crazy. You're God. You're not supposed to be.

Right. Not supposed to be put to death. But yeah. So the. It's like the happy. I mean, even back then, they liked the happy ending, the, you know, like the happy story. Yeah. Right. Not life.

Yeah. A book like a book like Judges ends on a very grievous note. Yes. And then it's resolved by the events that come about in Ruth. Right. Because then it's from the line of Ruth. You have David who comes and then God's covenant with David.

So on and so forth.

Yeah. It's amazing that how many people like today want their best life now, you know, like, of course, like that's that's not even I mean, it's in the Bible, but it's that's not like our lives are not easy.

Even the famous people from the Bible, you know, like everybody knows their name. Oh, yeah. Knows their story. But they had a hard life and everybody focuses on the fun part of it. It's like you're forgetting the suffering that went through that.

We all have to die.

Yeah. I mean, there's there's nothing scarier than that. Right. Dying. Yes. That's true. Suffering is, you know, nobody wants to suffer either, but death is it. That's the end. And even though I know that when I die, I'm going to go be with the Lord.

Yeah. It's still scary. Yeah. Like read the end of Pilgrim's Progress before they get to the Celestial City. They have to go through that river, which symbolizes death. Right. And and Christian is just he's terrified.

Yeah. I can't feel the bottom. I'm I'm dying. And who's the one that's with him? I can't remember the character that's with him at the end that goes through the river with him. It's not help. It's it's hopeful.

Hopeful. Hopeful. Yeah. It was the H was tripping me up. Yeah. So Christian and hopeful go through the river to get to the Celestial City. And it's actually easier for hopeful than it is for Christian.

Yeah. And that's to show that that each of us is going to go through death a different way. Right. For some death might be easier than others. Yeah. And for Christian, it was much harder. It seems to be what John Bunyan was conveying there with how they even going through the river, they both seem to.

You're going through the same thing. Exactly. But you're handling it different. Yeah. Yeah. It's just different. That's a scary thing. It's a scary thing to think about. I know that my Redeemer lives.

I know that I will live with him on the other side. Amen. But yeah, going through that river before getting to the Celestial City. That's that's a scary part.

I think I talk about it more calmly and I don't know, like I'm OK with it right now. But because it's not a reality for me yet, you know, like I'm not suffering in that way at this moment. But but I do talk about it calmly, more calmly because the kids ask about it.

They're like, I don't want you to die. I want you to live forever. Yeah. Our kids do ask about that. Yeah. And so so I try to make it like it's OK. You know, like when the Lord calls me, calls me home and it'll be OK.

I will be you know, I will miss I tell them I will miss them. I'm not sure if that's accurate when I'm over there. But right now, you know, thinking about it, I would miss that. Sure. But I mean, I know they're in good hands.

Yeah. Because the Lord has them. So I, you know, if he calls me home, he calls me home kind of thing. I pray for my children all the time.

Yeah. Because there's only so much I can do. They're in the Lord's hands. Amen. Yeah. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, as said in Philippians. And as Paul also says to the Philippians, it'd be better for me to go there.

Right. Right. But it's better for you that I remain here. Yeah. Yes. I remember that. Yes.

So, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it, really. I haven't really taken the time to think about it a whole lot. Death itself. Not on the other side.

Right. That's what we want. Right. But it's that thing you got to go through to get to the other side. Right.

And I'm more of a positive thinker of a glass half full kind of person. Yeah. So I'm like, no, just skip over that. I want the happy ending, you know, like, just get me there.

There are moments when the reality of my own mortality just kind of, you know, hits in my head. Sure. You're not going to live forever. Yeah.

Everybody's going to go through this. Yeah. I feel that right now in my hips.

Yeah, you'll probably get some reminders in your body that we're not staying here. This is temporal. Oh, man. As I tell my children fairly often, but no matter what happens, no matter what happens, be with Christ.

Be sure you're going to get to the other side. Yeah. No matter what happens in life, no matter how our roads may diverge, where God is going to take you later on because he's got a course for you that's different than the course that he has for me.

Yeah. But no matter where you end up, hold fast to Christ and make sure you're going to get to the other side. Yes. There's nothing more important than that. Nothing is more important than Christ. So praise God for that.

Anyway, coming back to Caleb's question. Yes. Sorry. Is there any difference between referring to the Transfiguration itself or the Mount of Transfiguration? No, probably not, unless in context you're talking about the location.

But if whether a minister refers to the Transfiguration or the Mount of Transfiguration, he's talking about the same event. Yeah. It's not that there's a significance to that place because we don't know where that place was.

Jesus just takes them up on a mountain. And as I kind of said, I can't remember which lesson it was, but I did mention earlier this week that we see Matthew do that occasionally in his gospel, that Jesus goes up on a mountain and does something.

He goes up on a mountain and he gives the Sermon on the Mount. Right. He takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain. He's up on a mountain when he feeds the 5 ,000. He goes up on a mountain when he ascends into heaven.

That's not at the end of Matthew, but he says on a mountain in Galilee is where he gives them the Great Commission. So we kind of think of that as being the end of his earthly ministry. We see those things in Matthew.

It's kind of a motif that comes up and ascending to a high place is in the Old Testament as going to a place of worship.

High place was always a place of worship. I always thought of it like Moses getting the, you know, like going up the mountain and talking to God and stuff. And that's connected with it.

Yeah. That's connected to it. Okay. Because when Jesus goes up on a mountain and does the Sermon on the Mount, it's the first time Israel has heard from God, like heard the voice of God since Mount Sinai when God gave the Ten Commandments.

Hearing instructions and imperatives from God. It was 1 ,500 years ago at Mount Sinai and here God was speaking to them again on a mountain in Galilee. Yeah. Through Jesus Christ. Huh. I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah. That's interesting. But thank you for your question, Caleb. Yeah. Good clarifying question there. Now this next one, this is where we get into the dust up that happened this week regarding grape juice and wine at communion.

Oh, yes. Okay. This is from Don in North Carolina. Dear Pastor Gabe, you might've seen the recent dust up online regarding grape juice and wine. One of the cross politic guys said that Baptists who serve grape juice in communion are effeminate and should just be drinking milk in a bottle with a nipple on it.

In a response to Tom Askew, Tom Askew, by the way, president of Founders Ministries, in a response to Tom Askew, he said that it was directly commanded by Jesus to use wine and the feminist movement is why we switched to grape juice.

Is there any truth to this? I think you'd covered this before, but is it necessary to absolutely use wine or is grape juice a worthy substitute?

We have kind of talked about it. I don't know if it's like this specific, but we have talked about it.

Yeah. I think a question related to this has come up before. We're Reformed Baptists, of course. The London Baptist Confession of Faith does say that the elements of communion are to be bread and wine.

But even when we see that mention in the LBCF 1689, is it talking about actual fermented wine? Because you do have unfermented wine or non-alcoholic wine, rather, putting it that way. There is wine that doesn't have alcohol in it.

So is that still wine? Does that still qualify? This is really a semantic argument. I think that's how we had responded to it before when it came up in the Q &A. This is semantics. Yep. Because grape juice has alcohol in it.

Yep. And it is actually undergoing the fermentation process, but it just isn't as far along. Or it's been stymied because of pasteurization and stuff like that. But there is still fermentation and there is still alcohol in grape juice.

It's just so minuscule that it's not going to get you drunk if you drink a whole lot of it. Mm-hmm. I remember Yeah, you'll have other problems. You might experience something, but it's not going to be drunkenness.

I remember reading from one historian. I was talking with Alan Nelson about this, and I don't remember who this was. It was just one of those things I was reading in my readings one time, and it wasn't significant enough to log it away wherever I had read this from.

But it was talking about how there were Christians in the churches, in church history, that just didn't have access to wine. But they might have access to grapes. So they would compress the grapes to get the juice out of the grapes, and then they would water it down.

They would add water to it. But they called that wine. That's what they called it. Yeah. They didn't call it grape juice. Right. That term is fairly recent because we bottle it and market it and sell it as grape juice.

But any kind of pressing the juice out of the grapes, which already has the process of fermentation going on, it just hasn't given it enough time for it to have alcohol in it. Right. And then you add water to it, and they called that wine.

They called it wine. So then this is what they're serving at communion. How far does the fermentation process have to go and you get alcohol in it before you can officially call it wine? Right. Again, that's why this is semantics.

And the cross-politic guys, in case you're not familiar with them, it's the show cross-politic. This was Gabe Wrench was the guy from cross-politic that said this. Okay. And this is one of those statements, it's nothing but mean.

Like I don't see how this statement was meant to edify or encourage the church in anything. It was just being mean. Yeah. Here's the statement as he gave it. So who would I read this from? Don gave us kind of a summarizing of the statement, but he didn't quote it exactly.

Here's what Gabe said. Okay. How many masculine emphasize scare quotes, scare, scare quotes, scare quotes, scare quotes. So he actually puts that in parentheses. How many masculine emphasize scare quotes sit under pastors who serve them great juice for communion might as well serve them a baby bottle with a nipple and milk in it.

So he's calling pastors who serve grape juice instead of wine doing something effeminate. He didn't actually use that word effeminate, but that's what he means because he puts masculine in quotes. How many masculine guys sit under pastors to give them grape juice for communion?

And maybe not. Maybe he's not saying effeminate because he says might as well serve them a baby bottle with a nipple and milk in it. I don't know. Maybe he is saying effeminate. I don't know. I'm reading too much into his intentions, but that's the actual quote.

And really there's nothing about that that is meant to instruct or direct the church in something. This is him voicing an opinion and causing a quarrel over it. And what does Romans 14 .1 tell us to do?

Yeah. To avoid quarrels. To avoid, avoid quarreling. And this is a quarrel over words. Paul said to Timothy, avoid quarrels over words. And that's what exactly this is. Paul gave this instruction to the Thessalonians in 1st Thessalonians 5, 12.

We ask of you brothers that you know those who labor among you and lead you in the Lord and admonish you and that you regard them very highly and love because of their work. Live in peace with one another.

And we urge you brothers, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. If Gabe really thinks that people who are drinking grape juice at communion are weak, then he should be doing something to help them, not throwing out these provocative statements that are quarrels over words and cause fights and disruptions among the brothers.

Yeah. This is not the first time CrossPolitic has done anything like this. It was several months back that they had made a statement on their program that Baptist theology is the cause of transgenderism in our culture.