WWUTT 1695 Q&A Wearing Crosses, Religious Symbols, Spiritual Miracles

WWUTT Podcast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Is it okay to wear crosses? What might a reason be that we not wear a cross?

00:08

And is God still doing a work through miraculous sign gifts today? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

00:25

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God that we may comprehend with all the saints how wide, how high, and how deep is the love of Christ.

00:35

Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .tt .com. Here once again is

00:40

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, who is not in studio with me this week. In fact, she's going to miss this week's episode and next week's episode.

00:50

We are currently on vacation, so I had these recorded in advance. And next week's

00:56

Q &A will be a little late getting published, because I don't actually have that one recorded yet.

01:01

So, we're going to be arriving home, and then I have to publish it, which could take a little bit.

01:06

So, it won't be Friday morning. You may not hear it Friday morning. It may be sometime later on Friday or on Saturday.

01:13

You'll just have to search for it. Next week's devotionals are all recorded, though. So continuing in 2

01:18

Corinthians, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and the study in Ecclesiastes on Thursday.

01:24

Thank you so much for listening and for sharing these podcasts with someone else.

01:29

Please post them on social media, Facebook, Twitter, whatever social media you're using, so that people know there's good

01:37

Bible teaching right here, Monday through Friday, or maybe a little late on Friday, if I can't get it published in time.

01:45

We have the listenership that we do because of word of mouth, mostly. Mostly because of word of mouth, because somebody told somebody else about the

01:53

Bible teaching that you can find on When We Understand the Text. Now, as Becky and I mentioned to you last week, we no longer can access our

02:01

Facebook page, so nothing's being added to Facebook. The last posting was mid -May, and there's nothing that I can do about that.

02:10

Facebook is not going to let us into it anymore. I don't know why. They didn't give us a reason, but we're probably permanently locked out.

02:19

So I'm going to need your help to let people know about the podcast. Share them with your friends on Facebook.

02:25

Whenever you see a new what video, share that on Facebook, because that's about the only way that this stuff is going to go out.

02:31

We've got to do it the old -fashioned way now. This is how it started in the very beginning. Other people sharing these videos.

02:38

I actually didn't begin with a Facebook or a Twitter page. That came about much later. It was just the videos on YouTube.

02:44

So got to rely on you guys to help share these things with others, and we thank you so much for doing so. Leave a review as well on iTunes.

02:52

If you listen to this podcast on iTunes on Friday, we take questions from the listeners and you can submit those questions to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

03:03

Every one of these questions today came from the email inbox. Sometimes I might fish a question off of a comment on social media somewhere else, but all of these were right from our email.

03:13

So send it. Send us a question to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

03:18

I'm going to try to be more diligent about responding to these and not just reading them on the podcast.

03:23

So everybody whose question I read today, I'm going to send you the link to the podcast so you know

03:29

I answered it and here's your answer. So William, first of all, well, he doesn't have a question.

03:34

He has something to share, but he says, Hey Gabe, I am saddened to let you know that when you search what on the

03:43

Google play store, WWU TT, the Bible project app is the first thing to appear.

03:49

I'm sorry for your loss. Yeah, I know man, we, we cannot get past the

03:55

Bible project. They are just everywhere, but you know, they've, they've spent a lot of money to get there.

04:02

The Bible project is as big as they are, not just by word of mouth. It's because there's been a lot of money behind that that has helped to push that it's, it's relatively liberal theology because as mentioned in some of the videos that I've done, they hate the doctrine of hell.

04:19

They say that hell is something man created, not God. They are opposed to penal substitutionary atonement.

04:27

They say that that is not a biblical doctrine that is, I don't think they've ever called it heresy, but they're, they're kind of like right on the line of calling it heresy.

04:35

But it's absolutely what the scripture teaches that God put forth his son to be a propitiation for our sins.

04:42

As it says in Romans chapter three, as it says in first John, Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for sins and whoever believes in him, your sins are forgiven.

04:53

Your sins placed on him with his death on the cross, his righteousness given to you. And when

04:58

Christ died on the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice, he took the wrath of God upon himself, paying the debt that we owed by his blood on the cross.

05:13

That is absolutely what the Bible teaches Isaiah 53, it pleased the Lord to crush him.

05:19

And we've read recently from second Corinthians five 21 for our sake, he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

05:30

And yet the Bible project would call penal substitutionary atonement, a false doctrine. That's false doctrine for them to be able to say that.

05:38

I wish fewer people were watching the Bible project and relying upon their resources.

05:45

But unfortunately, when you search what in the apps, you come up with the Bible project.

05:50

I said that I've worked on an app, I've paid for the app, and it's only available through well, whenever it gets published, it's only going to be available through Android through the

06:00

Google Play Store. I have to pay like four times more to get it published on Apple.

06:06

It's ridiculous. But anyway, I'm still waiting to see if the app is going to work through Android.

06:12

And that's not yet happened. I don't know what the hang up is. But anyway, as soon as we know that it's on there, if you have a droid, you can go ahead and do it now.

06:20

Search for WWU TT and see if the app comes up. And if people enough people like it, then, you know, maybe

06:27

I'll invest the money to expand into Apple or iPhone. But for now, it's not even on Google.

06:34

This next question comes from Simon. Hey, Pastor Gabe and Becky, do you guys wear crosses?

06:41

Why or why not? Did you ever wear them? Is it OK for a Christian to wear one? I love the podcast and videos.

06:47

Keep them coming. God bless you. Thank you so much, Simon. Yeah, we do both wear crosses. I will.

06:54

I will admit I once had my ear pierced. Just the left ear. Only once it was in high school and college.

07:01

And and I wore crosses. I wore cross earrings in that ear. I've had a cross necklace.

07:07

I've had crosses on T -shirts. I've had crosses on bracelets or on my watch.

07:13

And Becky likewise has had cross necklaces and things like that. Yes, we do wear crosses. We have crosses hanging in our home.

07:21

Why do we hang crosses or wear crosses? I don't I don't really wear a lot of symbolism anymore.

07:28

I try in my clothing to remain pretty neutral. I've shared about that before just because I don't want to do anything that causes someone to stumble.

07:37

So I don't wear brands like branding on the clothes. I'm not anybody else's billboard, so I'm not going to wear brands.

07:44

But I only I do that because I'm a pastor. I don't believe that's a conviction that necessarily everyone has to have.

07:51

But because I'm a pastor and what I represent, then I want to be careful by what

07:57

I wear and the symbols that I that I demonstrate, even when it comes to crosses.

08:02

I still have some T -shirts with crosses on them and things like that, but but very sparingly do I wear something like that.

08:08

So why would we have crosses in our home? Like why do we have them hanging in our home? Why do we wear cross jewelry?

08:15

Why do you have crosses in the sanctuary in your church? You probably have a cross like right over the baptismal, right?

08:22

Why do we do that? Well, the cross is a remembrance of what Christ has done for us.

08:28

We remember the message of the cross that we had sinned against God and what we deserved was wrath.

08:34

But Jesus died in our place and the wrath of God poured out upon Christ for us so that all who believe in him, we are no longer under the wrath of God, but we are the objects of his love and his affection.

08:47

Children adopted into the family of God. Now that is a message that is great for us.

08:53

The rest of the world finds foolish. First Corinthians 118 for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

09:06

We also read in Colossians 120 that God is reconciling all things to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ, making peace by the blood of his cross.

09:17

So when we look at the cross, we remember the peace that we have with God, the sacrifice that was required for us to be able to have peace with God.

09:26

It took the son of God dying for us for our sins to be forgiven and for us to not be under the wrath of God anymore, but be in his love and have this peaceful relationship, a peace that surpasses all understanding as Paul describes it in Philippians chapter four.

09:45

So we look at the cross and we remember this piece. We remember what, uh, what great sacrifice was made.

09:54

The gift that God gave for us, the gift that Christ gave for us as we have been studying in second

10:00

Corinthians chapter eight, verse nine, for, you know, the grace of our

10:05

Lord Jesus Christ, you know that though he was rich yet for your sake, he became poor so that you buy his poverty might become rich.

10:17

So these are things we think about when we look at the cross and that cross is always neutral.

10:22

It's just a, a vertical cross beam and a horizontal cross beam. That's what I mean by neutral. There's nothing on it.

10:29

It's just the cross, unlike the way that the Roman Catholics demonstrate that or the

10:35

Greek Orthodox church demonstrates it. You know what I'm talking about? The crucifix, what's on their cross,

10:41

Jesus, a, an image of Jesus hanging on that cross. The Protestant reformers in response to that 500 years ago, they chose the symbol of the empty cross.

10:53

There's no one on it because Jesus has died once for all, as said in Romans and in Hebrews and the death, he died, he died once and he will never die again.

11:03

Death no longer has any mastery over him. So Jesus is not on that cross.

11:09

He was put in a tomb and he rose again. That tomb is empty. The cross is empty. The tomb is empty.

11:14

So we look at the cross, remembering what Jesus has done, not that he's still there. And the

11:20

Roman Catholics practicing the mass practice, the re -sacrifice of Christ. That it's that the, the mass, the

11:27

Eucharist literally becomes his body and the cup literally becomes his blood. There's no reason to re -sacrifice

11:33

Christ. He died once for all. And we look at the cross as a memorial.

11:40

We practice communion as a, as a memorial. The bread is just bread. The cup is just wine or grape juice, if that's what you're using.

11:49

But these things are symbols. Christ is still with us at that table. And these things are symbols of the things that, of the, of the very thing that Jesus did for us.

11:59

The body that was broken, the blood that was spilled as a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins.

12:05

Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me, as a memorial unto me, not literally eating my flesh and drinking my blood the way that the way that the

12:16

Catholics do. So that's what we think of when we look at the cross. These are the remembrances that come by way of wearing a cross or hanging a cross or having it in our church or on the top of our church or something like that.

12:29

Now having said that though, it is very easy to turn even the cross into an idol.

12:37

And we must be very careful about that. Like Protestants can, can get a little haughty in this sense and saying, well, we don't have these idols like the

12:46

Catholics do. They bow down to and they kiss them and they pray to him and all these kinds of things. We don't do that.

12:52

We just have the cross. Yeah, but you can make that an idol too. You can end up worshiping the symbol of the cross instead of remembering what it represents and worshiping

13:02

Christ. And we have to be very careful about these things. We have to be very Puritan in that sense.

13:07

I've heard Dr. Albert Muller talk about how when he'll do tours on the

13:13

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary campus, whatever your opinions are of Dr.

13:18

Muller or Southern Baptist, set those things aside. Okay. Just, just hear the story for what it is.

13:25

So he's giving a tour to prospective students. They're walking around on the campus and he says, this happens every single year.

13:34

Every year there's a student that will say, why are there no crosses after walking around on campus, looking at all the buildings, even visiting the chapel, they'll notice there's no crosses anywhere.

13:46

Why are there not crosses on these buildings, which are buildings in a seminary?

13:53

And Dr. Muller will respond to them and say, because the men who constructed, who designed and built this campus, they were very

14:01

Puritan. And the Puritans did not believe in using any symbols at all in obedience to the second commandment, lest anybody raise up a graven image and even inadvertently end up worshipping it.

14:15

They may not have the intention of worshipping the graven image, but just so they wouldn't accidentally worship the graven image.

14:22

So those men who designed this campus designed it without crosses for that reason.

14:27

The focus was on Christ and on his word, not on any religious symbolism.

14:34

Now, Dr. Muller, in sharing that particular story, he says, now, I love crosses. I have crosses in my office, in my home, and he's an

14:44

Anglophile. So whenever he goes over to Europe and he is visiting, you know, all the different Christian architecture and historical sites and things like that, there's always crosses all over the place.

14:56

There are even buildings that are built in the shape of crosses. Notre Dame Cathedral, I don't know if you're aware, but that was built in the shape of a cross.

15:03

So there's crosses all over the place. And he says, and I love crosses in the architecture. However, sometimes in visiting these monuments or these historical landmarks, there will be a cross.

15:16

You'll walk into the building. There'll be a certain special cross in a specific place.

15:22

And you'll notice that there are people that have put flowers around it and they've built little shrines and put those shrines around the cross.

15:30

And there are marks on it where people have either posted notes or they've kissed the cross.

15:36

And even while they're there admiring the architecture, somebody will walk in and they will bow before that cross and pray to it.

15:42

They will stand up and kiss it as though there is something about that cross that would bless them, as though there's something about that gesture that would give them blessing.

15:53

And Dr. Moller says, I tell you, in those moments, I become very, very

15:58

Puritan. And it would be better for that cross to not even be there than for those people to come in and worship that, that graven image instead of worshiping and honoring

16:11

Christ. And so again, a cross can be a great symbol. And when we hang crosses, let us exercise that rightly.

16:21

Now, it may be a conviction in your heart that you can't do that by hanging a cross. I might cause myself or somebody else to stumble.

16:29

And if that's the conviction in your heart, then don't go against it. Lest you sin. Remain Puritan in your thinking in that particular sense, but don't pass judgment on somebody else who's wearing a cross because they may be exercising it in the right way, not in a sinful way.

16:47

In my Sunday school class on Sunday, we've been going through judges, as a matter of fact, we just finished up the book of judges.

16:54

I'm about to jump into second Thessalonians. Becky and I answered a question on this last week. So somebody had said, are you ever going to post all the rest of the lessons on judges?

17:03

And the answer is no, because I didn't get them all recorded. But you can go back and listen to older podcast episodes that I did on judges.

17:10

Anyway, a recent story that we looked at as we were closing up judges was in Chapter 17. Let me start reading here at the very beginning.

17:18

There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah, and he said to his mother, the 1100 pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and also spoke it in my ears.

17:29

Behold, the silver is with me. I took it. And his mother said, Blessed be my son by the

17:36

Lord. So at first she cursed whoever took the silver. And then when she found out it was her son, she blessed him.

17:41

Verse three, and he restored the 1100 pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said,

17:47

I dedicate the silver to the Lord, to Yahweh from my hand for my son to make a carved image and a metal image.

17:59

Now, therefore, I will restore it to you. So when he restored the money to his mother, his mother took 200 pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith who made it into a carved image and a metal image.

18:10

And it was in the house of Micah and the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household gods and ordained one of his sons who became his priest.

18:20

In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

18:27

So he built he made with silver, a graven image, a metal image and and a carved image.

18:37

And these were things that he worshipped. Now, what did these images represent? They were idols, to be sure.

18:43

But what did they represent? Were they idols to false gods? No, they weren't.

18:49

In fact, consider the words again from Micah's mother, I dedicate the silver to the

18:56

Lord from my hand for my son to make a carved image and a metal image. Now, therefore,

19:02

I will restore it to you. They thought what they were doing was God honoring. They thought by making this metal image that's in the image of something,

19:12

God, something in the heavens, whatever it was, but they they believed that this was a symbol of who

19:18

God is. And so they thought they were doing something that was honoring the Lord, but they were not.

19:23

They were breaking the second commandment where God says, do not raise up a graven image. Don't even make anything that looks like me in heaven above or on the earth below.

19:34

Now, the Ark of the Covenant had angels on the top of it, right? And when the temple was built, there were images of angels even in the temple.

19:45

So it's not that this command means that we can't make an image of anything at all, but we cannot make an image as an object of our worship.

19:59

And that's what Micah and his mother were doing here. They weren't really worshiping the

20:05

Lord. They were worshiping an image, though they thought they were worshiping God. It was breaking the second commandment.

20:11

And this is talked about here in judges as apostasy. When the golden calf was raised up at Mount Sinai after Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and the people are going, whatever's happened to the guy, we don't know.

20:24

And and so they go to Aaron. Aaron has them take off all their gold. He makes a golden calf out of it.

20:30

And he says to them, behold, your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

20:36

So he made that golden image to represent God and they worshiped it. But it was it was wicked for them to do that, and they were punished and many died as a result of that wicked thing that they had done.

20:49

So it is not honoring of God to worship an image. Even though you may think that through that image you are worshiping

20:56

God, this is what is so incredibly damning about what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church and in the

21:02

Greek Orthodox Church, where they have all of these symbolisms that they indeed do worship. They they they make it the focus of their worship, bowing down to it, kissing to it, praying to it.

21:12

That's worship, folks. Doesn't matter whether they call it worship or not. They may try to mask it and say, no, this is veneration.

21:17

No, you're worshiping it. That's what you're doing. And it's breaking the second commandment. No question about it.

21:23

So in that way, we have to be very, very careful. And this is a matter of the heart more than anything else.

21:30

If having a symbol is going to cause you to sin and worship that thing instead of worship

21:35

God, then don't have the symbol. It would be better for you to not even have a cross in your home if it's going to cause you to worship that instead of worship the

21:43

Lord. I tend to be pretty loose on the application of that of the second commandment.

21:50

When I say loose, I mean, I'm not Puritan in the in the application of that. I do not think that all paintings of Christ are inherently sinful, nor do

22:01

I think that paintings of doves as the Holy Spirit or tongues of fire as the

22:06

Holy Spirit would be inherently sinful. See, it's interesting about that. Those who really are strictly abiding by the second commandment would say that images of Christ are wrong, but they don't have the same opinion about images of doves or tongues of fire, which would also be images of the

22:20

Holy Spirit. So anyway, just just kind of mention that. But I don't think that we should be making images of the father because the father is spirit.

22:29

But Jesus is a man. He is the God man, still the God man, as as mentioned in first Timothy two five.

22:37

There is one mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

22:46

And we're going to see him return when he comes back to judge the living and the dead. So Jesus had a physical body.

22:53

And in that sense, if we if we theorize what it was that he might have looked like or whatever else, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that.

23:00

I don't think that we should have images of Jesus, though, hanging in our homes. That just doesn't seem like a good idea to me and certainly not in the church, in the sanctuary.

23:11

I visited a Baptist church a few years ago. And and they had a stained glass window of Jesus right over the pulpit that really bothered me.

23:21

I, you know, crosses are fine and I think we can look at a cross in a neutral way. But I find it really difficult to believe that a person could look at that image and not have some sort of veneration or worship toward it.

23:33

And it was it was a terrible image. On top of that, it was the white hair or white skinned, blonde haired, sisified, needy

23:42

Jesus. That was exactly the portrait that was in that stained glass window. We were just there visiting.

23:47

But I told my wife, if I were pastor here, that would be the first thing to go. And and we would we would be having quite a battle over that,

23:54

I'm sure. But I don't think that that should be in there in the sanctuary anyway. So I there's the answer to your question,

24:00

Simon. Yes, we do wear crosses. There's the reason why we wear crosses. Be very careful in the way that you remember

24:09

Christ through even symbols like that, like the symbol of the cross. This next question comes from Monty.

24:15

He says, I am wondering if you believe that the gifts of the spirit and the demonstration of them has passed with the original apostles at the end of the first century.

24:25

So he's asking if I'm a cessationist. In other words, I have seen many who misuse and misrepresent this.

24:30

Yet that does not justify condemnation of those who believe these things are still real. If this is your position, then you are saying that Satan and his kingdom are manifesting their works while God is no longer active in this arena.

24:43

What is your position? Well, we've answered this many times on the podcast before. I do believe that the apostolic gifts, those spiritual gifts that affirmed apostolic ministry, those gifts have absolutely come to an end.

24:58

And we have in Hebrews chapter one, verses one and two long ago at many times and in many ways,

25:06

God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.

25:12

And in Hebrews chapter two, beginning in verse three, we're talking about the message that was declared at first by the

25:22

Lord. And it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the

25:31

Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. OK, so they're very plainly stating that these sign gifts were for a particular purpose.

25:44

They were to verify that the message of an apostle was a message that came from God. How do you know that an apostle is speaking the word of the

25:53

Lord? They verify that they are sent by God through the miraculous signs that they perform. And when you saw those miracles, you knew they were miracles.

26:02

This is not like what the charismatic churches do today. What they call miracles cannot be verified as miracles.

26:09

Folks, I cannot say I cannot state that emphatically enough. They're not raising the dead.

26:15

They're not healing the sick. They're not speaking in tongues. What charismatics are calling those gifts are not what we saw those gifts being being demonstrated as in the book of Acts.

26:28

When Peter restored the lame man, everybody knew that man was lame.

26:34

His limbs were shriveled and he could not walk. And now look at the guy. This was a miracle and it was spoken about in all of Jerusalem.

26:44

Even the people that did not believe the gospel still had to acknowledge a miracle had been done here.

26:50

When Peter raised Dorcas from the dead, everybody knew she was dead.

26:56

And Peter raised her to life. When Paul raised Eutychus from the dead, everybody knew he was dead.

27:03

And then they saw this miracle that was done right before their eyes. When when the

27:09

Gentiles in Cornelius's household, when they spoke in tongues, the Jews that were there saw this as something miraculous.

27:17

So they weren't just speaking gibberish nonsense. All kinds of pagans were doing that.

27:23

These were men and women in this house that were speaking foreign languages that they previously did not know.

27:29

And the Jews that were there were astonished by this because it meant that the Holy Spirit had come even to the

27:35

Gentiles. They saw and acknowledged something miraculous. That's what these sign gifts were.

27:43

So I'm sorry, you cannot tell me that what's happening in charismatic churches and in assemblies of God or four square churches or, you know, what the the apostolic churches, they claim to be apostolic, but they're really not.

27:57

You cannot tell me that what is happening in those churches are the same kind of miracles that the apostles were performing. They're not.

28:03

These sign gifts are not being performed in these churches anywhere today.

28:09

Now, will God still do something miraculous? Will he still heal the sick? Will he still grant somebody perhaps the gift of being able to speak in a foreign language that they previously did not know?

28:21

If he does, it is distributed according to his will. Just as it says in Hebrews two, four, it's not that people have specific giftings that they just always have.

28:31

He's a faith healer. He's a person that can speak in tongues or be able to interpret in tongues, so on and so forth.

28:38

Those are gifts that are given for specific moments and for specific reasons. There's no such thing as a faith healer.

28:44

If somebody says that they're a faith healer, they are lying to you. What Todd White does when he goes out and like stretches people's legs out, try to even it with the other leg.

28:53

He's a charlatan and he is faking you. He is not actually healing anyone of anything, nor has he ever.

29:01

Todd White is a liar. So is Bethel Church. So is Benny Hinn. So is

29:06

Joyce Meyer. Any of these other people that claim to do these miraculous things, even the pastors that claim to receive new revelation from God, Beth Moore, Stephen Furtick, Rick Warren has even done this to a certain extent.

29:19

T .D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, so on and so forth. They are not hearing from God. They are not giving you some kind of a new word or new revelation.

29:28

What we have from God is right here in the word, in the Bible, and we don't need any other new revelation than this.

29:35

So my position on that is absolutely biblical. You cannot show me from scripture that these miraculous signs are still happening with the kind of regularity that we saw them in the book of acts.

29:49

And once again, you have to understand the reason and the purpose for these miraculous sign gifts. It was to verify that an apostle was speaking the word of the

29:59

Lord. Paul says to the Corinthians in second Corinthians 12, 12, the signs of apostleship were clearly performed among you.

30:08

If anybody comes to you today claiming to be an apostle, they're lying. And the way you can respond to them is by saying, raise the dead and prove it.

30:17

They won't be able to do it. Thus, they are not apostles. So there's the answer to your question.

30:23

Monty, I know that I get passionate about that, but it's because so many people have been led astray.

30:29

And incidentally, you kind of loaded your question as though to say, well, Satan is still doing his work.

30:34

Are you claiming that God is not doing his work? God is absolutely doing a work in this world right now.

30:40

He is doing a work in the lives of people who hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. The dead are being raised to life.

30:46

Those who were dead in their sins and their transgressions are raised to new life in Jesus Christ because the gospel was proclaimed to them.

30:53

The Holy Spirit regenerated their hearts to believe it. And they have turned from sin to Christ. And so live.

30:59

That is the work of God that is being done every single day and where the gospel is preached. So Monty, go out and preach that.

31:06

That's what you need to be concerned with doing. And that will turn back the work of Satan that is being done in this world.

31:13

Amen. Well, let me finish there since we're at half an hour. And if you have any other questions that you'd like to submit to the podcast, send them to when we understand the text at Gmail dot com.

31:25

Be in prayer for the Hughes family as we are out on the road. And God willing, we'll be back again on the air with you soon.

31:33

Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the questions that were submitted here today.

31:38

And I pray that the answers that I was able to give were in accordance with your word.

31:43

It was it was in accordance with what the Bible says, not according to my own opinion, but in submission to the word of God.

31:51

Thank you for giving us this word and giving us a knowledge of understanding according to your

31:56

Holy Spirit, that we may not only be hearers of the word, but doers of what they say.

32:02

Keep our hearts and our minds fixed upon you, not worshiping objects or graven images, but we worship

32:09

Jesus. He is the author and the perfecter of our faith and looking to Jesus, as it says in Hebrews 12 to means that we put our faith and our trust in him in that which is unseen.

32:23

And Lord, haste the day when our faith shall be sight, when we are gathered together to Christ and are with you forever in your glorious kingdom.

32:32

Bring that day soon to us. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. I also pray that as we exercise our faith in this world, that our living out our faith would be done according to the scriptures, not trying to push or falsely manifest these feelings based practices of religiosity, but that we we truly live lives of holiness.

32:57

We worship the Lord with our whole mind, heart, soul and strength.

33:03

And we go out preaching the gospel to others, for it's by faith in the gospel that a person is turned from death to life.

33:11

May we walk in newness of life all these days until the day of Christ. It's in Jesus name that we pray.

33:17

Amen. 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.

33:26

But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family. Find a good gospel teaching

33:31

Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again Monday for more Bible study, When We Understand the