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Taking questions from listeners about being a witness at Christmas and directing friends and teachers away from false teaching. Visit wwutt.com for all of our videos!
How can we lead family members to Christ at Christmastime? If we know somebody who is following along with false teaching, how can we bring them back to the soundness of the Word of God? These questions and more when we Understand the Text.
Merry Christmas from your friends at When We Understand the Text, an online Bible ministry promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
Now here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.
We're heading into a weekend where we have some strange weather in store for us here in the state of Kansas. Right now we're getting a mix of rain and ice, sleet. I don't know if this qualifies as sleet or not, even though sleet is ice.
But anyway, I can hear it tapping on the window behind me. On Sunday, Christmas Day, we have a 90 chance of severe thunderstorms. That's right. Here in the state of Kansas, we could actually have tornadoes on Christmas Day.
And that's Kansas weather for you. Being Friday, heading into the Christmas weekend, we're going to be taking questions from the listeners and I've got a couple of Christmas themed questions to respond to as well.
But before doing that, I wanted to play you something from my dad. My dad had an air shift in radio for something like 35 or 40 years. I don't know how long it was that he was on the air. He still works in radio, but he works right now in sales or what's called grant underwriting.
And if you've never worked nonprofit Christian radio, then you probably don't know what grant underwriting is and how different that is from commercials. But that's a part time job for him. His other part time job is working at a crisis pregnancy center.
And I'm very proud of the work that my dad does there in the Atlanta area. Well, every year at the radio station he works, he works at, they record the staff will record these Christmas memories and then they'll play them on the air on Christmas Eve.
My dad recorded a memory about a vacation that we took a little over a decade ago. And that's the story that I'm going to share with you. This is what guy senior and and you're going to find out where it is that I get my voice from.
Hi, I'm Dan Hughes. Most of my time at New Life FM is spent somewhat behind the scenes talking to business supporters about the radio station. Merry Christmas. Jesus is the reason for the season. I've worked in radio most of my life and radio is one of those jobs where you work a lot of holidays.
My wife, Polly, and I have six kids and we decided it was time for us to be off at Christmas. Our kids were to the age of not getting the toys on Christmas morning and we decided to take our Christmas money for a family trip together.
We went skiing. Our kids had the skiing experience with the church youth group. But as for me, it was my first time on skis. I decided to take the beginners class, so it was me along with the five and six year olds.
However, the next class didn't begin for another hour and I didn't want to stand around with all that ski gear doing nothing. So I took off up the slope on the ski lift up the mountain, jumped off, headed down the slope.
Mistake. The thing of going back and forth down the hill, it looks easy from a distance. And on TV and in the movies, I was headed straight down the hill, setting a land speed record and managed to steer just enough to avoid killing people.
Then there was the ski lodge ahead. I managed to get pointed toward the parking lot. I ended up zipping through rows of cars and got the skis pointed toward a big pile of snow. And it was somewhat like the cartoons you've seen of someone planted headfirst into a hill of snow with just the skis sticking out.
Well, now at Christmas, I celebrate how I almost died the day after Christmas about 10 years ago. I'm enjoying my easy chair in Georgia this year. Merry Christmas. I love how we got not one Wilhelm scream, but two Wilhelm screams out of that story.
That was fantastic. Thank you so much, Dad. All right. We've got we've got a correction to make here before I get to the questions. This was a correction that was sent to me by a viewer regarding the what video that I did that featured Andy Stanley.
And we talked about this last week on the podcast. And then I just took what we talked about and turned it into a what video. So I'm going to play that video first and then tell you what the correction is.
If somebody can predict their own death and then their own resurrection, I'm not all that concerned about how they got into the world because the whole resurrection thing is so amazing. And in fact, you should know this, that Christianity doesn't hinge on the truth or even the stories around the birth of Jesus.
It really hinges on the resurrection of Jesus.
OK, Andy, so you're not amazed about the fact that the Old Testament prophets predicted his birth, specifically the virgin birth. And then it happened. Not just the lineage and the time, but the exact place.
We shouldn't be all that concerned with those details, even though it's literally the first event we read in the New Testament. Just how important is the virgin birth? Well, if Jesus was not conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, that means he was conceived by the seed of man.
The Bible says everyone born of Adam is born under the curse of Adam, inheriting his sin nature. We would not be able to call Christ sinless if this were the case. But because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Jesus is perfect.
When the angel said he will save his people from their sins, we know that's true because he was virgin born. He is God incarnate, the pure and spotless lamb who takes away the sins of the world. The virgin birth is as important as Christ's death and resurrection.
Got it, Andy. The thing that makes the Christmas story so believable is the fact that the entire story is so remarkable.
No one would have made this up. No one could have made this up. No, the thing that makes the Christmas story so believable is the Holy Spirit. Who discerns for us spiritual mysteries such as the virgin birth when we understand the text.
So following that video, Manos wrote in and he said, hi, I don't know if somebody else has pointed this out, but the sin in John 1 29 is singular, not plural, makes a huge difference. Thank you so much for the small nuggets of truth that you provide.
They have been a huge well of compact knowledge and reference points for my everyday life. May God give you strength to carry on with this ministry. Well, I appreciate your email and you are correct. John 1 29 says the next day, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not sins of the world.
And that really bugs me. And I wish that I could change it, but I probably won't. I've had typos that pop up in videos like this before. Sometimes I've taken the video down. I've made the correction. I've put it back up.
I may not do that in this case. It doesn't have it doesn't make as big of a difference as you think it does elsewhere. John writes 1 John 1 7. The blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 2 2.
He is the propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 3 5. You know that he appeared to take away sins and in him there is no sin. So the words are really interchangeable.
It doesn't make that much of a difference between sin and sins, but it's enough of a typo that it bugs me. And and I wish that there was a way that I could make the alteration without having to take the video down and put it back up.
Problem at this point is there's so many people that have linked to the video that if I take it down, all of their links are going to be defunct. And so that that's that's the irritating thing about it.
But nonetheless, I appreciate I appreciate you letting me know. And I'm going to be more conscious of that, more mindful of that in the future to make sure I'm saying sin when appropriate and sins where appropriate.
This next question comes from Amber in California. She says, Hi, Pastor Gabe, what do you do on Christmas Day when you are the kids? I'm 29, the oldest and my two sisters, brother and brother in law are all believers and your parents profess to be believers, but seem more like nominal believers, sadly, because the fruit and the affections for the things of Christ just really aren't there.
I think Christmas is the perfect day to celebrate Christ. But my dad wouldn't really be up for leading a family devotion or even reading one. In the past, we've tried different things like singing Christmas carols to each other.
We've watched the John Piper video where he reads his poem, The Innkeeper, and a few other things here and there. But it's always kind of awkward. All of us kids really want something Christ centered for Christmas, but it's almost like my parents can't get through that part fast enough.
I'm just wondering what you'd recommend in that type of situation. I know this question isn't just about Christmas, really, but you know how the holidays have a special way of making underlying tensions rise to the surface more easily.
And then she throws in a ha ha. Thanks again for the what ministry, Amber. Well, Amber, I wish that I could really give you an easy answer here, but there isn't one. I mean, it really seems like you're trying to bring up Christian things and little by little starting to infuse those things into conversations and and even trying to initiate some sort of a tradition that would be very Christ centered and just doesn't seem to be getting through to your parents.
It's been my experience. I know that we often say that Christmas and Easter are the perfect times to be more evangelical because people's hearts seem to be just a little bit more receptive to the Christian message during those holidays than any other time of the year.
But it's in my experience that the opposite is true. It's actually more difficult to be evangelical in those seasons than any other time of the year. I can't say that's necessarily the case all across the board, but that's been my experience.
It's harder to share Christ with someone at Christmastime who doesn't really know or follow Christ any other time of the year. They don't want to listen to you because they think, hey, I'm already celebrating Christmas.
Why are you telling me about Christ? You don't have to convince me. Look, you know, I I go to church and do the Christmas Eve service and I know Christmas carols and on and on it goes. So because a person has this concept of this idea that they go to church at Christmas or they go to church at Easter, then they're doing what they're supposed to do.
Therefore, there's no need for you to have to share the gospel with them. So it's actually it's it's probably more penetrating to share the gospel at another time of the year than at Christmastime. I think that what you're doing is great.
See if there are opportunities and ways that you can infuse those kinds of things into your conversations at other points of the year as well. The more regular that you are about this, the more that the Holy Spirit will chip away little by little at what's probably a hardened heart and they will be a little bit more receptive to hearing about these things and talking about these things so that when you get to Christmastime, then they will be a little bit more receptive to, hey, let's do something that focuses on Christ, who is the reason for the season, as as my dad had mentioned there a little bit ago.
And and I hope that that that advice is good for you, that that that works for you. A verse that I've shared many times from Second Timothy, chapter two, that the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone, patiently enduring evil and correcting opponents with gentleness.
God may perhaps grant repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. And we read a couple of weeks ago in First Peter, chapter three, verse 15, in your hearts, set apart Christ as holy, always ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.
But do this with gentleness and respect. Talk with your parents about the hope of Christ that you have in your life, doing so with gentleness and respect, and maybe move the conversation in such a way that kind of puts your parents in a place to have to respond or share something about about their feelings about God.
And then you can open up to them the scriptures and tell them what the scriptures say about God and little by little, not forcing them, not beating, beating them over the head and definitely not ever letting these conversations turn into some sort of an argument or a fight, but little by little opening up the scriptures to them and the truth of God, according to his word, and let the spirit do his work on their lives as they hear the gospel proclaimed.
And again, I hope that's helpful to you. Let me pray for you real quick before I move on to this next question here. Dear God, I thank you for Amber's heart and her desire to see in her parents not just a profession of believing in God or your son, Jesus Christ, but that Amber would see in her parents a fire in their hearts, a desire for the things of God.
And I pray that you would give her and her siblings opportunities to be able to share Christ and the gospel with their parents and and to do this in such a way that that the Holy Spirit is really going to grab hold of them, that they're going to be receptive.
Their ears would be open to hear the gospel being proclaimed to them, and they would rejoice in this hope of the gospel, the forgiveness of sins that we have in Christ Jesus and eternal life that has been promised to us.
Deliverance from this world and into your eternal kingdom. Thank you for for the gift of faith that has been given to us through Jesus Christ. And may we have the courage to share this faith with others.
And may the Holy Spirit turn hearts toward Christ. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. This next question, actually, these next three emails all have to do with the same thing. So I'm going to read the emails together and then and then respond.
This one comes from Nick Pastor Gabe. I listened to your clip about Francis Chan and him being a guest at IHOP, the International House of Prayer. I remember a few years ago when I first heard that he was attending.
And my initial thought was, oh, this is going to be like Matt Chandler going to Code Orange Revival and rebuking Stephen Furtick in his church and then never getting invited again. But as we saw the first and then the following times, he affirmed them as brothers and didn't boldly or even cleverly rebuke them.
Instead, we hear him say maybe God is bringing a movement of unity. Francis should have remembered the Ark of the Covenant knocking over all the other idols when it was stolen away and stuck in a room full of false gods.
That's the story of the Ark of God humiliating Dagon, the Philistine God in in First Samuel, Chapter five. What do we do with a brother who seems to be orthodox, showing such a lack of discernment? So that's Nick's email.
This next one comes from Sander and he says, hi there, Gabe. I'm a I'm a listener from the Netherlands and I frequently listen to the podcast and watch the videos. They are sound, straightforward and great to share.
Thanks. And God bless you for these. Now, I have a couple of friends whom I pray for every night that they may be freed from the influence of Bethel Church or the new apostolic reformation teaching. My best friend, Joel, started going in that direction.
And at first I warned him, then let him go his way until one day he really came to the realization that Bethel teaching is bad stuff and is now back up and running for the Lord. I have a few other friends who are heavily influenced by these kinds of teachings like ultra preterism, power, evangelism with little gospel preaching and lots of miracles and another friend who does children ministry and even did a fire tunnel once.
You can you can YouTube that yourself and get an explanation of what a fire tunnel is there at Bethel Church and Jesus called the culture. My heart is seriously broken over this and I can so easily become bitter or hateful while the latter is something that I need to deal with on a personal level.
I still have this question. How should I point out to my friends that what they believe is wrong? Should I just go up to them and tell them or keep on praying? I realize I need the help of God in this.
And so I sincerely hope that you can give me a good answer for this. Sincerely, Sander. And then this final email comes from Emerson. Hi, Pastor Gabe. Yesterday, an acquaintance of mine posted on Twitter a link to an excerpt from a Stephen Furtick sermon.
I have been following your ministry for some time and I have become aware of his man centered preaching and blasphemy. I responded on Twitter asking Trevor to read your blog and I tagged you in the tweet as well.
And then he links to my blog, the one that I wrote on T .D. Jakes and Stephen Furtick being in cahoots with one another. Trevor responded with the following message. Thank you for the suggestion about Furtick and Jakes.
I know you are trying to do the right thing, but this article is not helping the church or the move of God in your nation. I really hope this article is not from your pastor. It is awful that he would say that T .D. Jakes does not know God and is the Antichrist.
Both simply are not true statements. I have read this article and I'm not impressed. What a waste of time and energy in writing this. We should not be fighting each other, but the true enemy is Satan.
Let's focus on reaching the loss, proclaiming the gospel and building up the church through encouragement and not judgment. Emerson goes on, I am looking for guidance on how to respond. I'm confused since I know that T .D. Jakes is a modalist and then both Jakes and Furtick preach a very man centered gospel.
Do I try and point these things out and show that the scripture says we need to teach what accords with sound doctrine? Your video yesterday talking about Francis Chan and the International House of Prayer come to mind as we cannot force unity, which I feel like Trevor is trying to do.
What, in your opinion, is the best way of responding? I want to be kind, gracious, but never wavering on the truth. Trevor is a pastor and I am concerned that he is pointing his congregation to poor teaching and bad influence.
Any guidance or wisdom that you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Well, first of all, I want to say to you three men, Nick and Sander and Emerson, how much I appreciate your heart and your passion for the gospel, whether it's in regards to a person who is as high up and as influential as a man like Francis Chan to a person who is a local pastor and the and the persons that he influences to those who are lay people and get caught up in this false teaching.
All of them need to be prayed for and we need to find ways to reach out to them and direct them to the soundness of the scriptures and away from this false man centered gospel. I think about the best solution that I could give.
And again, this is this is like my response to Amber a little bit ago where there is not some all purpose answer that I could give you. That's that's a magic solution. If you do this, you will immediately convince this person and they will come around and see the light.
There are instructions that the scriptures give us, but ultimately it is God's decision whether or not to turn a hardened heart back to him and to sound doctrine. But we bring about this change by preaching the soundness of the scriptures.
Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So we're not going to make any headway at all with those who need their minds turned toward the soundness of the scriptures and a discerning a gift of discernment unless the scriptures are present in what it is that we are sharing.
And I think about the best place that you can come to, if I could encourage you three men in this is first and second Timothy and Titus. And these three letters, Paul's pastoral letters, are the heaviest on being sound in doctrine, particularly when you're talking to a pastor.
How are you going to convince a pastor to stay away from this man centered junk and come back to the soundness of the scriptures? Well, look at the letters that were specifically written to pastors. We have in these letters instructions that apply to absolutely everybody.
But it's particularly relevant in understanding that it was to a pastor that Paul was writing to in first Timothy, chapter one, beginning in verse three. Paul says, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and to endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion. Again, that man centered preaching, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make their confident assertions.
I come also to second Timothy, chapter two, which is a passage that I quoted in that in that sermon clip of me preaching about Chan and the International House of Prayer. And you can find that clip on our when we understand the text Facebook page.
If you haven't seen that clip, go to facebook .com slash W .W .U .T .T. videos and you'll get to our Facebook page. So anyway, I quoted from second Timothy, chapter two, where Paul says, remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good but only ruins the hearers.
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid a reverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness and their talk will spread like gangrene.
Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. I believe it was Sander that talked about ultra-preterism that he has contended with in the past.
And that would be an example of that right there. Hymenaeus and Philetus saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. But God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal.
The Lord knows those who are his and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. So you have this constant charge that Paul is bringing up over and over again to return to sound doctrine, to stay away from vain teaching, to stay away from irreverent, silly myths.
Rather, train yourself for godliness. That's in first Timothy, chapter four. And to not let anyone teach anything different. In Titus 1 .9, we have a charge that is given to every pastor that he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught and be able to rebuke those who contradict it.
To the Ephesians, Paul said, have nothing to do with the fruitless works of darkness, but rather expose them. So it absolutely is the job and the responsibility of a pastor in caring for his sheep to expose and call out the wolves.
And so when it comes to talking to a person who maybe just does not have the gift of discernment, this is why it is so important in the body of Christ for all of the parts of the body to mature and work together, because there are going to be people in a body who have a gift of knowledge, a gift of wisdom, a gift of discernment.
And sometimes that person with a gift of knowledge doesn't have that gift of discernment. So it takes the person who has that greater awareness of discernment to guide the person who has the knowledge away from filling their their repertoire up with preachers who teach a man centered gospel rather than a Christ centered gospel.
So this is why the church can be so helpful in in building one another up in love. But we do all of these things in love, do it charitably, do not ever let your correction of somebody in the false teaching that they are following develop into a quarrel or a fight.
It never should get there. If tensions are rising, particularly are on the part of the other individual, try to scale it back or even tell them, look, I can tell you're getting pretty worked up about this.
So why don't we take a break? Don't ever put them in a situation where their heart would become even harder against the truth that you are sharing with them, but give them enough of the scriptures to to to just kind of etch away at the hardness of the heart that they are experiencing now, just like the advice that I gave to Amber.
So little by little, the Holy Spirit will will chip away and start to penetrate and their mind will start to become more open to the scriptures. And I'll tell you that we've had some wonderful emails here.
And when we understand the text, story after story of somebody who has said, man, I walked in this false teaching, the same stuff that you're addressing in your what videos. And then one day the spirit just grabbed me.
And the whole it's like the whole Bible opened up to me brand new all over again. And so we we have stories about that. And I would just tell you not to get discouraged, but be before the Lord in prayer.
You know, we had one of the one of the emails that talked about how it's very easy to get resentful and hateful and bitter in heart. Don't ever let yourself get there. Come before the Lord in prayer, praying to him, submitting yourself regularly before the Lord, just as Paul instructed to Timothy, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
That's a responsibility that every single one of us has. So submit your yourself to the Lord in prayer. Keep your mind and your heart in check. So that your aim and your objective is love and not just to be contentious or quarrelsome.
And then also pray for the individual that they would have a heart that would be open to receive the scriptures and the conviction of the Holy Spirit toward a Christ centered gospel, making much of him and less of ourselves, worshiping Christ as preeminent and presenting him as great above all.
And I kind of feel like the more that I talk about this, the more it's just going to turn into rambling. So I hope that I've given you the tools that you need to help to encourage somebody away from this false teaching and back to the soundness of the scriptures.
God, I pray that all of us would be devoted to the sound words of Christ. And if any point we start to veer away, put people in our lives who will correct us and lead us back to the path of righteousness.
As David prayed in the Psalms, let a brother strike me. It is a kindness, a righteous man strike me. It is oil for my head and let my head not refuse it. It is the foolish man who hates correction, but the wise man who loves rebuke.
So Lord, help us to be receptive to this conviction when we experience it in the Holy Spirit. And let it be your name that we exalt and esteem highly. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
Thank you for your support of this ministry. Just by listening in and telling someone else about our podcast. Please join us again next week as we finish up our studies of 1 Peter and 1 Samuel. On behalf of Pastor Gabe and our church family, my name is Becky.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas from all of us here at When We Understand The Text.