WWUTT 2120 Q&A Roles in Marriage, Disagreeing With Your Spouse, Confronting Phil Vischer's Reimagined Gospel

Psalm 15 and the Word of Christ in the Heart

Is a wife sinning if she disagrees with her husband? How can a husband and wife disagree in a respectful way? And does Phil Vischer have a better way to share the gospel? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ, that we may be conformed to the image of Christ. Looking forward to the day of His return. Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome. We're on to Psalm 15 this week. Nice. Reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. O Yahweh, who may sojourn in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks blamelessly and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart.

He does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend. In whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear Yahweh. He swears to his own hurt and does not change.

He does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken. Now if you'll remember back to last week, we were in Psalm 14, which began, the wicked fool says in his heart, there is no God.

And what have we read here about the heart of the righteous man? He who walks blamelessly and works righteousness, he speaks truth in his heart. So what is in his heart is what is true. What is in the heart of the wicked man is a denial of God.

There's no fear of God. He does not think God sees when he does wrong. But this man, the righteous man fears the Lord, does righteously, and deals in righteousness with his neighbor. He doesn't show partiality.

He treats everyone in love as the Lord has treated us. Yes.

I was just thinking that, sorry, you look at me and I'm like, what? I didn't really have that much to say, but I was thinking that, that isn't the truth another way of saying the word, like the Bible?

Truth, right. Yeah. The truth is scripture. It's God's word. Right. Right.

And that's what's in his heart. That's what's in his heart. God's word. Yeah. Very good. Like in Colossians 3, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And this is the very thing that motivates us in showing love and kindness to one another.

Yeah. Because we have Christ's word in our heart. Well welcome to the Friday edition of When We Understand the Text, when we take questions from the listeners, and you can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

We've still received some wonderful gifts from folks, as we had talked about in previous weeks, kind of the struggle where we're at right now financially, because we're still paying on a mortgage and we're paying rent at the same time.

And so there've been folks that have given us gifts, and we've still received some of those gifts, and we thank you so much for that. There was a message that I got from a very generous donation, a message that I got that I don't have in front of me here, but he had asked me a question about an essay that was written by G .K. Chesterton.

I just want to say to that individual, I haven't forgotten about you, I've got that message, and in one of these podcasts, though it won't be this one, we'll come to that essay from G .K. Chesterton and respond to it.

So thank you for your gift, and also for your question, and we will certainly get to that soon.

Yes, we have been, definitely been blessed. Yes.

Thank you so much to every listener, who has just, I mean, even if you've just been praying for us, maybe you haven't sent us a gift, but I thank you so much that you would include us in your prayers, that you would lift up our names before our God.

That is, that's a blessing enough for us. Amen. And we thank you for that. Should we say, should we say where we are in this process of selling the house?

Well, I mean, I'm prepared to say that the negative part of that, if it ever, you know. The negative part? Like, if it, anyway, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, no, no. What were you saying? The negative part.

Then I'll give it away. Yeah, you can give it away. Go ahead. Are you sure? Yes, yes, yes. It's yours. The floor is yours. Okay. Well, I won't say it all properly. Anyway, we did have an offer on the house.

We did? And. We did? Yes. We did. Okay. Which is great. It's great news. Yes. And I think we're in the process of starting the whole selling, month-long selling process. That's right.

Yeah. However long this whole thing takes. But if things go well. Yes. And it all remains as it should, God willing, we will close on April the 29th. Yes. So we have received an offer. It's less than what we had posted, but.

That's totally fine. Yeah. That's. We're kind of ready to move on beyond this thing. Yes.

So. So my. The negative part of that would have been I'm prepared to say, you know, that it fell through or whatever later if that comes to fruition. Oh, yeah. Right. But I'm praying that that doesn't happen.

That's right. We just give you all good news. Your mic is pretty quiet there. I'm going to try to. Yeah. Increase you a little bit. It's kind of weird. I was looking at you going. You got to be closer.

No, you're close enough. I am close. I'm practically eating it. Hopefully I don't sneeze for you all. That would be awful.

Oh, I was drinking. I about spit that out when you said that. Yeah.

Then you may be able to clean up your computer. That's been lacking. It's just fine. Just fine.

That's a little. It's a little. I think that was actually a drop of ice cream. I was ready to make an excuse. Sort of like, no, I'm pretty sure that's actually food that got on my. Got on my laptop there.

There's no avoiding it. That's definitely. Definitely a spot, but it was, it was solid enough that, you know, didn't, didn't hit the keys. It kind of stayed clear of any of the actual electronic part of that.

It's just a surface level blemish is all it is. Right. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. There's a lot of surface level blemishes.

On my laptop. I thought you were going to say on me, there's a lot of surface level blemishes there.

Come on, babe. I always try to clean his screen and he always yells at me because it's a touch screen and I forget. Yeah. I'm like, your screen's dirty.

He's like, no, no, no, no, no. There was a bug earlier today that was like flying around here and I tried to poke it and, and, and, and smash it and yeah, it just switched to a completely different screen.

And I was like, oh man, what happened to that screen? Good times.

Anyway. Yeah. We have good news. So we are rejoicing very much. We are.

Yeah. Pray that all this goes as it should. The house will sell and we will, we'll close that chapter finally. I'm very looking forward to that. This house definitely did not sell as fast as our house did in Kansas when we moved from Kansas to Texas.

But the Lord is good in his timing and we've been blessed. Yeah.

And I mean, we can't, we can't ask for more than what the Lord gives us. So of course.

Yeah. I had a good pastor friend of mine call me up and just let me know, Hey, the Lord is making you seek him during this period of time. And I said, you're right, you're right. He's drawn us close. That is definitely true.

Becky and I would lay in bed and pray and read a Psalm and just give us the right mindset and, and help us through this in a, in a way that is seeking after God, not, not getting frustrated or complaining about our circumstances, but continuing to press on.

Yeah. And I had some tough days there. I still just pressed on. There's ministry to do. Still got to do it. There've been preachers long before me that have been through much worse stuff than I've been through and, and yet continue to press on for the joy of the Lord.

Amen. All right. I gave out the email address. Did I say that? So when we understand the text at gmail .com, we're heading back to Texas. We are. We're going to be there actually for the eclipse because the, the full eclipse of the solar eclipse that's coming up on what date is that?

April 8th. Yeah. That Monday. Second Monday in April. So it's going to be a full eclipse over Lendale. Yeah. Which is where our. It's right in the path.

That's right. And so. And it's going to be a madhouse. They have a festival that they, that the town has put together that they're planning on hosting and, and there's people coming in from all over the country from the sounds of things.

Yes. It'll be exciting. It'll be a lot.

It'll be pretty crazy. Yeah. Praying that it won't be cloudy. I know. That would be terrible. So it'd be quite a trip going all that way and then. Just for that.

Yeah. Thankfully we have other reasons to be there, but. Yes.

We're going to be at first Baptist Lendale on that Sunday, April 7th. So looking forward to that. We'll get to see all our friends again. And then the eclipse on the 8th and then we're pretty much turning back around and coming back to Arizona after that.

Yeah. We've got school to finish and. Bible study on Wednesday night. Bible study to do.

Yeah. Yeah. It'll be good. In fact, tomorrow on Saturday, we've got a bunch of work we're doing around the house. Cause we're preparing for the first time since 2020 to host a Bible study in our own home.

We haven't done this in four years. Can you believe that? Yeah. And that's been a minute. The kids have been on us about it for four years. For four years. Yeah. When are we hosting Bible studies in our home again?

Can we have them here?

Yeah. They really liked that time together.

Well, that's really how the Old Testament study on the podcast came about was through that home study we were doing. Cause we had, we would be doing Old Testament study at our house on Wednesday night.

And then that same lesson would be what would end up on the podcast the next day, the Thursday edition. Great. So I just continued to do the Old Testament study, even though I wasn't hosting it in my home anymore.

But here we are in Arizona, ready to host our own home group again. Yeah. So we've got that coming up as soon as we get back from Texas. Looking forward to that. Yes. And speaking of the eclipse, speaking of that.

Now that we started talking about that, I remembered there was another question I wanted to grab for this episode. As I was sitting down and I had the questions in front of me here, I was like, I feel like I'm missing one.

Okay. There was one that I wanted to do. Yeah. And it wasn't in my email inbox. It was in another place. Okay. So I had to, I was going, what's the message that I'm forgetting about here? It had to do with the eclipse because as this eclipse is coming through the US, another major eclipse, just like the one that went through in 2017.

Only that one. Was that that long ago? Yeah. It was seven years ago. Oh, wow. Okay. August, August of 2017. The kids were asking me when it was. I was like, I don't know. Yeah. Mariah. I remember being there.

Right. I knew Mariah wouldn't remember it, but Aria still remembered it. Zee Janani remember it. And this will be Ezekiel's first, obviously. And he probably won't remember it. So we had, let's see, that eclipse in 2017 went from the Northwest part of the US to the Southeast.

This one's starting in the Southwest and going to the Northeast. Yeah. And so as that path travels over part of the US, there are something like seven towns called Nineveh that are in the path of this eclipse.

Oh, that's crazy. And I think there's a Nineveh that has received both eclipses. So there was a Nineveh in 2017 and there's a Nineveh in 2024.

And then there's like Was there a mass movement to that town?

Yeah, I don't know. Well, so all of that is I'd be curious. All of that is stirring up these Bible conspiracies and stuff. Sure.

Oh, like seven Nineveh towns. Yeah, I can see that happening very easily. Right. The path of a solar eclipse. And then there's

Seven's a big number in the Bible. That's right. That's the number of completion. Right. And then there's like four Salem's, which is Salem is Jerusalem. Oh, okay. It's like a shortened form of Jerusalem.

Okay. So then there's conspiracy, all these Salem's and then the Nineveh's, or it might be something like there was seven Salem's in the first eclipse in 2017, and now there's seven Nineveh's in the eclipse in 2024.

Some sort of coincidence. Yeah. It's something kooky like that, where of course everybody, oh, this is a biblical sign and something amazing is going to happen here, which that is so Western world American thinking.

Yeah. As if whatever is happening here in America has global ramifications. Only we can see this eclipse in the United States of America or in North America. Right. And as if this has something to do with real world issues that are going on, has nothing to do with that.

The world revolves around me. So of course it does. No, that's such an easy mindset to get sucked into. Yes. I mean, so easy, especially in America. I don't know about other countries, how easy it is there, but with Americans, they very much promote, what's it called?

Self-love.

I was putting it mildly, but yeah. The health.

Health and wealth. No, no, no, no. These are tag words, like they promote these on commercials even. Oh yeah. Self-love and what was the, something about your health, like your, and it doesn't have to do with your physical health, it has to do with your mental health.

Mental health.

Yeah. Or we see like way more mental health prescription medication commercials than we've ever seen before. Yeah. That's going on all the time. But anyway, so I don't have the question in front of me.

I'll have to save it until next week. But it has to do with like, have you heard of these conspiracies that are going on? How do we respond to this kind of stuff? So yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to that question next week.

Next week. Okay. This first one comes from Ariana. I did not get the chance to read this to you in advance. Okay. So you're hearing this one for the first time.

Gabe and Babe. Which is most of them, to be clear. That's true.

Only about half the email I think I read to you in advance. I don't even think it's half.

Yeah, that's probably true. I hear one or two, maybe.

Well, a lot of them come in later in the week. They do. Because I think people are thinking.

And we're busy at the end of the week. Yeah, that's right. So it's tough to make a connection until we do the podcast.

Our most separated days are like Wednesday and Thursday. So yeah, if you send it early enough, then I read it to Becky. But if you wait until we get closer to recording, then she hears it for the first time when we're sitting down right here.

Yeah, but it's good. Either way. Go ahead. Long time listener here, but first time messaging. I can still remember the first time I listened to you guys. I actually had no idea you were married. Aw. Gabe said something kind of flirty to Becky.

And I thought to myself, wait, he's a pastor. He shouldn't be getting that friendly with someone who is not his wife. Then it occurred to me. Yes. Then it occurred to me, wait, maybe that is his wife.

I can honestly say that listening to you guys has changed the way my husband and I talk to one another. Who knew you could get such a great example of healthy marriage conversation by listening to a podcast?

That's true. My question has somewhat to do with this subject. I know that you are what has been termed complementarian. A woman is not to lead her household. That is the responsibility of her husband.

But how much can the woman direct her husband if she needs to? Can she disagree with her husband? I heard you read from 1 Peter 3 and 1 Corinthians 7 about how a believing wife should conduct herself with an unbelieving husband.

But what about two believers? What if the husband needs correction? How far can a wife go in giving guidance to her husband? I appreciate you both very much. As always, I hope the Lord blesses your ministry, that you can reach many more people as you have reached me.

In Christ, Ariana, Rochester, Minnesota. Oh, wow. Up there in the cold. Minnesota. Minnesota. I love the accents. That's awesome. So how much can a wife correct, guide, direct her husband? How much can a wife do that?

So first of all, let me kind of establish a couple of things with her question here. So she said, I know that you are what has been termed complementarian. We don't really call ourselves that. The word is out there.

It means a certain thing. I think we've used it before. But really, where we stand is more along what would be called biblical patriarchy. That word kind of became a curse word in the culture. There were some Christians that were concerned.

If we start talking about patriarchy, people will have in their minds that we're talking about some sort of abusive household setup, something that's more along the Bill Gothard lines of things or independent Baptist fundamentalism.

And that's not the kind of picture that we want to create in somebody's mind. So we're going to redefine this thing, and we're going to call it complementarianism. So what is complementarianism is relatively young.

It's only been around for a few decades. And it was guys like John Piper that kind of helped push it. It was the something for biblical manhood and womanhood, a council, the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and kind of put the whole thing of complementarianism versus egalitarianism.

So the concept behind complementarianism is just simply that a man and a woman are equal in the eyes of God, but we are made for different roles. A man has certain roles that he's supposed to fill. A woman has certain roles that she's supposed to fill.

But the two of them complement one another with their strengths and weaknesses. That's all very true. And if you're talking about a base point of complementarianism, then I agree. Of course, I would say that's really just biblical patriarchy.

And the husband's role is that he is to be the head of his household. A wife is to submit to her husband as to the Lord, and she's a picture of the way that the whole church is supposed to submit to Christ.

And this is, of course, talked about in Ephesians chapter five. This is kind of the main chapter that we go to when it comes to husband, love your wife as Christ loved the church. Wife submit to your husband as to the Lord.

Beginning in Ephesians five, beginning in verse 22. So complementarianism, that's the name that gets used, but we're more along the lines of biblical patriarchy. There wasn't anything wrong with that term.

It just got added in complementarian. So now the problem is that you've got some complementarians who are claiming to be complementarian when they're really egalitarian. They believe that men and women are equal even to the extent that they can fill the same roles.

There's no role that a man can do that a woman can't do just as well. And even though there are some egalitarians that might think, yeah, there are definitely differences between men and women, but the egalitarians for the most part believe that a woman can do everything that a man can do.

And kind of the central mark of egalitarianism is a woman can be a pastor. That's kind of the main argument that they have. There's nothing in scripture that prohibits a woman from being a pastor. So yes, in the sense, right, you said complementarian, that's where we are, but we would prefer to use the term biblical patriarchy.

You said a woman is not to lead her household. Now I disagree with that. And I don't think that a complementarian holds that position either. A woman should lead in her household, but she doesn't lead her husband.

So we have instructions in scripture that a woman is to put her household in order and she is to love her children. And so putting a household in order, there's going to be some leadership there. Even she will play a role in the discipline of the children.

Now that's primarily going to be on the dad, especially when you consider that in Ephesians six, it says fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

That command is specifically given to fathers. And so the father is to lead the household in terms of discipline. He's supposed to be the primary discipline giver in his home, raising his children in what is right and what is wrong.

But that doesn't mean that the wife or the mom is not going to issue discipline. My wife issues discipline. Sometimes she gets fed up with how much she's had to do the discipline. And so then when I get home, so and so did this, you know, Zej lied, Annie hit him, Aria pulled somebody's hair, you know, whatever, whatever's going on with the kids.

And Becky's had it up to here. She's disciplined enough. And so now daddy comes home and he gets to do the one to deal out the discipline. So in this way, Becky is also putting together most of the lesson plans that the kids do with the homeschooling stuff that we do.

There's leadership there. So she's leading. She's making some of those decisions and I'm trusting her to make those decisions. Like I'm not, I'm not, what do you call it? Like micromanaging everything that you're doing.

In fact, when it came to educating our kids at the very start of our marriage, I said, you're going to be the one that's primarily doing that because I'm going to be at work and you're going to be leading them in homeschool.

So you pick the curriculum that you know that you can do the easiest, you think would be the most effective for our kids and is something that you can get behind. And she picked the curriculum. I think all I knew about homeschool curriculum was a Becca.

Yeah. I think it was the only one I knew of. Yeah. And then you found these curriculums that I'm going, this is awesome, but I never would have, you know, if left to me, I wouldn't have thought this would have worked.

Yeah. And yet you're doing these things and I hear my kids speaking Latin and I'm like, what in the world? Yeah. So anyway, all of that was very cool. So in that way, I mean, Becky has had leadership roles in the home, but she doesn't take the primary position of being the head of the household or being the spiritual leader of me and the kids.

She certainly spiritually guides me, you know, like I said, talking about us reading Psalms together or praying together. And there've been some days in which I've been rather grumpy and she's probably, she can tell Gabe probably hasn't stopped in his mood to pray.

So I'm going to do that. And you know, like on my way out the door or something like that, she'll say, let me pray for you before you leave or something. All of that is very, very good. There's nothing in there where she's stepping out of bounds and, and assuming a role that she shouldn't have.

This is very complimentarian to go back to that term. We're complimenting one another in our strengths and weaknesses. So where you say a woman is not to lead her household, there is leadership that happens there, but she doesn't hold authority over her husband.

So coming back to Ephesians 522, wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. What does it mean to be subject? To be subject means to yield to authority. So essentially here, even by telling a wife to be subject to her husband already, it's being implied that he is the authority of the household.

Even before we get to the next verse, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being savior of the body. Does Christ ever yield to the authority of the church?

Not unless you're Catholic. I was going to say. Maybe in the Catholic church that happens, but you know, the, the priest, when he does the mass calling Christ into the Eucharist and the cup and whatever else.

So anyway, yeah, there's probably a sense there in which Christ is yielding to the authority of the church, but no, not according to scripture. So in that same way, a husband does not yield to the authority of his wife.

The husband has been given the authority by God in the way that God has established the marriage and the wife is to be subject to her husband because she is yielding to his authority. Right. Right.

Right. I think that everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses and not every, sorry, weird.

We've been this way lately. I mean, with the allergies going on and stuff like that. Yeah. Anyway.

So not every male fits the, my words.

Like the type. A personality sort of thing. Is that what you're thinking of?

No. No. Like the, the, the stigma, the, the, uh, what you expect a male, like the, all the jokes, you know, for the blondes, they, they, you know what I'm saying? You went to blonde jokes, that's hilarious.

I did. I totally did. So you're talking like the archetypal male or the typical male. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Okay. So, so there's a word for that and it's failing me. It's not coming. Generalization? No, it'll come to me a little bit, but it's fine. All right. It's, it's not that important, but anyway, you get the gist that not every male is this way.

Fits the typical male. Right. And not every female fits this way. So not every husband is going to be this mold and not every wife is going to be this mold, but you do work together through Christ and find your strengths and weaknesses and help one another out in managing the house together.

And. Yes. And so there's, there's not going to be like a one size fits all. Just like whenever you read the Proverbs 31 woman, people get discouraged, women, especially because they can't do that. They think that this is all done in one day.

It's not done in one day. I will let you know that.

Yeah. But. And the heart of that, the heart of that in Proverbs 31 is a woman who fears the Lord. Yes. So you can be that woman. Yes. Being a woman who fears the Lord.

Right. Yeah. But not everybody's cut out to do that. And, and plus we don't like go out and buy land and all that right now. You don't go praise me at the gates. Right.

It's a little different. Stands at the entrance of Casa Grande and like, my husband. Yes, come on.

So, so you get, you get it. It's, it's not, it's not to discourage you, but to encourage you that, that you, you find where your strengths are and you, you go for it and to help your household meld with, or come together to, to just praise Christ together.

Yeah. Right.

Exactly. I mean, communication is, and this is the way you started Ariana. I mean, you, you began with love. I love to hear your communication and that's really what it's, what it comes down to. There, there is still a need in your family to communicate well with one another.

Yes. A husband could certainly say, Hey, I'm the head of this household. So you got to do what, what I tell you to do. Yep. And just as Christ could stand in front of us and say, I'm God. So you got to do what I tell you to do.

He certainly has the right to do that, but he's much more gracious and loving than that. Yes. He does communicate with us. Christ does through his word. We know his will, what he desires for us. When we open the pages of scripture and we read what it is that we're supposed to do, what role a man is supposed to fill, what role a woman is supposed to fill.

So there, there can be this tendency to get into this very rigid, kind of like, as I described before, the, the, the independent fundamentalist thing or the Bill Gothard thing, you get into this very rigid, here's the command and here's what it is that you do.

And it be, it can become rather loveless. So remember 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul says, I could have all knowledge, but if I don't have love, I'm nothing. Yeah. So you could have all this head knowledge, all this great theology, which on paper is completely solid.

But then when you're doing it, it's, it's all about what's in your heart, right? It's just, uh, we're going to keep this set of rules and these commands and that's the extent to which it's going to go.

There still has to be love behind it or it doesn't mean anything. There was love behind the words when God gave them to us. There's love behind his reproof whenever he has to correct us because we do something wrong.

There is good communication between God and man. And so likewise, as a marriage is supposed to be a picture of the way that Christ loves his church and the way that the church submits to Christ, then we also need to have good communication in our marriage.

You need to talk with one another. You need to establish these things. You need to decide what responsibilities the wife is going to have, what responsibilities the husband is going to have. He can't abdicate his position of authority.

He has, he has to accept the fact that he is the head of his household. Right. If he abdicates that role, then he's sinning and he's causing his wife to sin. So he has to fill that role. I know that's harder in couples where, you know, maybe the husband has a more melancholy personality and she has a more choleric personality, you know, more assertive.

There are struggles, I'm sure. Right. I mean, there are different things that you have to deal with. And again, going back to your strengths and weaknesses. Yes. But this is still what the Bible instructs.

It doesn't give any loopholes, you know, based on personality types or a type A or type B sort of a person. You know, right. The husband still got to be the head of his household. He still has to lead.

And the wife still has to be subject to her husband. But it is our delight to do these things. This isn't, it's not in any way enslaving us. Oh, I have to be subject to my husband. You know, you delight in the Lord to fill that role, to be subject to your husband because it is a picture of the way that the whole church is to submit to Christ.

Everybody has to be subject. Yes. A wife is subject to her husband because the church has to be subject to Christ. And everybody is the church. Every Christian. Well, that's what I meant. Yeah. Sure. Oh, you were talking to everybody.

Everybody has to submit. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I need to offer clarity there as well. But yeah, we're all supposed to be subject to Christ. Yeah. Everybody in the world should be subject to Christ.

Yeah. But especially the church should be. So, and then, of course, the instruction that's given to a husband, husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

So, we are being sanctified by the word of Christ, exactly what you opened with. And just as Christ sanctifies us by his word, so it is by the word of Christ that a husband is to lead in his home, that he's even to build up his wife and discipline his children.

Because again, going back to chapter six, verse four, fathers bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. So, you have the instruction that's given to husbands to lead his wife in the word, and you have the instruction given also to the father, the husband slash father, to raise his children up in the word.

All of this, the word is filling them up. Right. When you go to Titus 2, and you see the instructions there for how older women can help guide younger women in the way they love their husbands and their children.