Questions and Answers with Andrew Rappaport

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's Q &A session. That stands for questions and answers.

I have questions and you are going to provide the answers. No, I guess that doesn't quite work well, does it?

No, okay, well then I guess you'll have to ask the questions, but only if you are live in the chat room.

And then I hope to find someone else that is smarter than me that can answer questions.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Okay, I just dated myself,

I know. Some of you got that joke. All right, so, we are doing the format a little bit different, don't know if you guys noticed, but the edges are cut off.

Basically, we're going to try to cut down some of the bandwidth that we push, still keeping it high def, but not widescreen.

I guess I'm wide enough, I understand. But we do know that there's been some issues, and so because of that, we are going to be doing this in a kind of a thinner broadcast, so that we push less bandwidth through, and hopefully that will prevent us from losing the signal.

We'll see. We'll see if Ryan complains or gets upset, but he may not actually be watching yet, so we may be off the hook.

But we are looking for any questions that you may have.

If you are joining us live and are in the chat room, you can shoot us any questions that you might have.

We would appreciate it, and that way we would be able to answer those questions.

That would be the goal that we have, of being able to answer the questions. And so, if you do have questions though, and you're not watching live, you're watching on YouTube, you can always email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

That is the email address that you can contact us, email us, and we will try to answer your questions.

So, we have a couple of questions that did come in previously that we're going to look to answer, and then we're going to take some of the ones in the chat room.

The first question that we were asked is one that actually I think a lot of people get if they read

Richard Dawkins or any of the New Atheists, this question that people phrase it this way, how could a good, all -powerful

God allow evil in the world? Now, I want to take that question and break that down.

There's a couple of things that people are doing in this. They're setting a kind of a scenario that they think is going to lock the

Christian into having a difficulty with, because their definition of good and all -powerful means that they're saying if God is all -good and all -powerful,

He cannot allow evil. That's basically their argument.

Now, can God be good and all -powerful and still allow evil?

You know, if God didn't allow evil, if He just made us puppets, those same people that phrase these questions would complain because they'd say, well,

God made me a puppet and I don't have a choice. You see, they would never be happy.

But the real issue is that there is a thing of looking at God's attributes that we have to look at.

God is good. He's all -good. In fact, we wouldn't know what goodness is apart from the nature of God.

God is what defines good. So without God, we couldn't even know what good and evil is.

Evil is the absence of good. Now, God is good, but it doesn't mean that because He's good that He cannot allow evil.

Now, it also means that when they say, well, He's all -powerful, as if, well, if He's really good, but maybe

He wasn't strong enough to keep the devil from sinning, and He wasn't strong enough to keep evil out.

Now, both of those definitions of good and all -powerful are wrong definitions. God is good because of His nature.

It's not that God is good from some outside source. God is good because that's who

God is. Goodness is defined by God. You see, we know what good is because we know who

God is. So the attribute of goodness comes from the nature of God, not the other way around.

The issue with His omnipotence, the fact that He is all -powerful,

God is all -powerful and can do all things within His nature.

In other words, when we look at His goodness and His all -powerfulness, it is part of His nature.

So questions like, you know, could God make a stone so big that He can't move it? Or so heavy that He can't move it?

He can't do things outside of His nature. So He is all -powerful and He allows evil.

Now, in Romans chapter 9, it says He allows evil to put His attributes on display.

We wouldn't know His goodness if He did not allow evil. Now, did

God cause evil? That becomes an interesting question because there are some verses that do seem to say that God caused evil, but yet there's other verses that say

God cannot tempt nor cause people to tempt. God couldn't have done that, so it seems like then you have a, you know, a difficulty.

Well, actually not. God is sovereign. It means He's in control of all things. Nothing happens.

There's not a single atom that is out of God's control in the universe. Therefore, God being sovereign, yes,

He did cause evil in the sense that He allowed Satan, because that's where evil first occurred,

He allowed Satan to rebel. And Satan did rebel, okay?

And so God allowed that. Now, did He directly cause it? Well, He allowed

Satan to have a choice, just like Adam and Eve. And if you think about it,

Satan and the demons and Adam and Eve were the only ones with a free will choice.

You see, after Adam and Eve sinned, we no longer have a free will, we have a will. We have a will that is enslaved to sin.

And that's an important thing to remember when we look at this, when we talk about these things. God gave us an ability to have a volition, a will, but it's not free.

It's controlled. It's influenced by our sin nature. So can

God be all good and all powerful and still allow evil? Of course. Why?

Because His goodness is not something that God attributes to, but it's attributed to God.

In other words, goodness is defined by God. So everything God does is good. He is strong enough to have prevented it, but He chose not to for reasons that He knows best.

And the real issue is you and I are not in a place to question God and challenge Him. So that is a question of can an all -powerful, all -good, loving

God allow evil in the world? Yes, He does. So let's take a look at some of the questions and we're going to get to a question later on on baptism.

We see that Ryan is in the room because he wants to know how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? The answer to that,

Ryan, would be that a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. And if you need that slowed down, you'll have to just watch it on YouTube later.

Alright, so we have a question in here saying, who sends people to hell?

That's actually kind of, when we look at what we just talked about with evil, that's actually an interesting question.

Who sends people to hell? Well, ultimately God does because God is in control of all things.

And so, when we look at who sends someone to hell, well, is it the human person's responsibility, their sinfulness that sends them to hell?

Well, yes. They broke God's law, and in breaking

God's law, they violated the law of God, guilty by his standard, and rightly deserve the punishment of hell temporarily.

Wait, you mean it's not eternal? No, no, no, no, stop, stop. I didn't say, I'm not believing in like soul sleep and that it's, you know, the, no.

But hell actually is a temporary place, most people don't pick up on that. If you look at the end of the book of Revelation, it says that hell is actually thrown into the lake of fire.

The lake of fire is the eternal resting place, so those that go to hell go there temporarily until they are thrown into the lake of fire.

So, who sends people to hell? Well, the people deserve it based on their violating of God's law, but it's

God who judges them as guilty and will sentence them to eternity in the lake of fire by his judgment.

So that is something that it seems to people like there can only be one answer to some of these questions, but with God, God works through people and works through things so that people might think there's only one answer when really it's

God is sovereignly working behind the scenes doing things. Take, for example, the writing of Scripture.

Who wrote the book of Romans? Well, Paul wrote the book of Romans. Are you sure? Because God wrote the book of Romans.

Would it be right to say that God wrote Romans? Yes. Is it right to say that Paul wrote

Romans? Yes, because they both wrote it. God worked through him so that what he wrote was exactly what

God intended. God is sovereign. That's why though Satan chose to fall,

God is still sovereign. So let's see. We have another question. This is a question being asked on behalf of Syed Tenbrunke, his favorite question.

If you ask him to ask a question, does light have mass? I'm just going to answer it because I don't know.

Some people actually don't know the answer and some people wonder why he asks it. It's actually a trick question because light does and does not have mass.

Light is a very special element that is both a photon and a wave.

Now, as a wave, it does not have any mass, but as a photon, it does.

Someone wants to know if I can quote the book of Romans. Yes, Romans.

Okay, the whole book. We don't have enough time. It would be good.

I haven't memorized the entire book of Romans. I have memorized at different times the book of Titus, full, word for word.

First Timothy, I memorized word for word. The book of James, I memorized word for word.

Now, one thing I find when you do that kind of memory, it's really great to do and you get a good idea of the book and you really get a good handle on the outline of the book.

Something like when we talk about hermeneutics, it's really good to try to do that. Actually, when I preach a sermon, when

I'm working on a sermon and I'm preaching verse by verse, I am actually working on memorizing the book that I preach through.

The reason I do that is so that I understand basically the layout.

I've read it so many times, but then I actually print out the book and I slip it in my pocket because I'm one of those nerdy kind of guys.

I have like the shirt pocket, you know, where you put a pocket protector. Okay, I don't have the pocket protector, but I put the verse there and when

I'm walking around, when I walk to my car, different places, I pull it out and I read it. What I would do is actually memorize the book that I'm preaching through.

So Philippians, I have memorized, that's what, like four or five books that I memorized word for word.

First John is the other one. And so I would do that and it's really good, but I've also found that if you don't keep up on that, you forget it.

But what I don't forget, what I do have is by doing that memorization, a really good outline.

If you mention something that's in Titus or Timothy or Philippians or James or First John, I actually can,

I may not know exactly chapter and verse, but I kind of have an idea where it is in proportion to the book and kind of where it is in the outline of the book.

I actually found First John to be a little bit harder because I guess I like Paul's writings because he makes point upon point, where John's kind of more circular.

So it was kind of, I was getting lost, like, wait, was this from earlier in the chapter or was it, I kept getting myself confused.

I know, it's not hard for me to get confused, yeah, I know. So, one of the things that we also got a question in on the subject of evil was why does

God allow evil? And I kind of answered this already. The answer to that is really because God decided to.

I mean, that's really the answer. And are you and I something, we're just the clay.

We are, in the hands of the potter, we are clay for him to use and for him to mold in any way that he chooses to.

So he can do what he sees fit and it is purely up to him to choose to do what he wants to do.

And so what we want to do there is we want to look at things in light of that, but there are other answers that we can look at.

God allowed the Pharaoh in Romans 9, he allowed

Pharaoh to do what he did to put his attributes on display. And so one could say that God allowed sin so that he can display his attributes.

But ultimately, the answer lies within the mind of God and you and I may never know and we should be okay with that.

We should be able to look at things and realize that God is greater than you and I.

And so this is the thing that we always have to keep in mind. I think that was all the questions on evil.

We have some questions that I'm sure will get us in a great amount of trouble with some of our covenantal friends, but we had the question of why baptize by immersion?

Okay, the question there is, it's really an issue that is broader than just the baptism question.

In other words, baptism is actually kind of a surface level thing and really what you have behind it is an approach to how you interpret

Scripture. Now, when we get into the lessons on the study of the Bible, we will look into differences between what's called dispensational theology and covenantal theology.

Now, we're also going to look at some changes that have been occurring within both of those groups, progressive dispensationalism and what's called new covenant theology.

So there's been kind of a coming together, shall we say. But really what it comes down to is how you interpret the

Bible. Now, if you interpret the Bible with covenant theology, you're going to see things with Israel that are going to be tied to the church.

In other words, there's going to be a continuity, a continuousness between Old Testament Israel and New Testament Church.

And therefore, things that were true of Old Testament Israel apply to the church.

So, you had a covenant that was seen in the sign of circumcision.

The idea would be that that is carried over into the New Testament Church age as being the sign of baptism that enters you into the covenant relationship.

Now, that's important to understand. A covenant theologian would not believe, well, a good covenant theologian would not believe that baptism saves a person.

It might surprise some people, but covenant theologians, those people that believe in infant baptism, believe also in believer's baptism.

In other words, if an adult becomes a believer as an adult, they'll baptize them.

That's a believer's baptism. But the real question is, why do they baptize infants and why do they sprinkle?

The baptism of infants would be because that's entering the child into a covenant relationship with God as a member of a family, a believing family that is a covenant family.

That does not mean the child is saved. It doesn't mean they're going to heaven. Now, some covenantalists would believe that because the child is before an age of accountability and was baptized because they're in a covenant family, that then they would go to heaven.

I don't really see any scripture to support that. And so,

I'll leave that aside for the moment. But really what we get down to is you have to understand it in the mindset of the covenants.

Okay. Now, one argument I would have against it being a

Baptist and a dispensationalist, I would say that we would see a difference between Israel and the church.

And so, the rules and things that apply to Israel wouldn't apply to the church. But if we were to say that the sign of the covenant, because Israel is the church, then why would the sign have to change?

The sign for Old Testament Israel was circumcision.

Why change it then? I mean, come on. I was circumcised at eight days old. I just don't remember it.

Got over it. But the reality was is that there is a change there.

If nothing else, there's a change in the covenant. When we look at that, when we look historically,

I think that there's two things we get to. One would be this. The fact is that historically we see baptism, which the

Greek word for baptize, baptismo, means to dip or to plunge, okay, to be immersed in water.

The idea of what was a Jewish baptism was when a

Gentile became a Jewish person, became Jewish, they actually had a baptism in the temple that had a bath of water and they would be fully submerged.

That's the reason why John the Baptist went in the Jordan where there was much water.

That's why when you see in Acts 6 when Stephen is up with, shares the gospel with the eunuch, the eunuch gets saved and he goes, why, you know, can we, you know, get baptized?

He says they go down into the water to where there's much water. For sprinkling, you wouldn't need that.

And historically in the Didache, which is, the

Didache is a very early book, kind of a book of instruction for the church.

And you see in there baptism by immersion. However, being in a desert area, there were places where there was no water.

So, it became in some areas common to pour water on people and then eventually to sprinkle.

Now, if you believe in the covenants, there is a connection there. If you're looking at a covenant theology and that view, you see the idea of sprinkling, the sprinkling of the blood on the altar with the idea of sprinkling the water.

That may be that there's a sprinkling of the blood, but the question would end up being is, is that the atonement for sin, the baptism, sprinkling that water?

Well, no, that's not the atonement. It was what Christ did that was the atonement. So, I wouldn't see a clear connection there.

I would argue that the word baptismo means to dip or to plunge, and it means to be submerged into water, and that's historically what we see.

And I would argue that we should baptize by immersion. Now, in my church, we did have someone that medically could not be baptized by immersion, and so they poured water.

Is that unbiblical? Well, we explained the reasons for it, and we had to then, you know, after explaining, say, what does it picture?

Baptism is something that is to picture, at least a believer's baptism, is an outward sign of an inward change.

So, it's an outward sign of being cleansed. Therefore, what we have is it being a sign.

It doesn't add grace as a sacrament, like the Catholic Church would argue. It is an outward sign of something that happened inwardly.

Now, in America, being baptized may not be as big of a deal, but you go to the Middle East, a

Muslim country, where you are raised as a Muslim, and you get baptized, and now that's a death sentence, and you do it publicly?

Well, when you do that, what you have is you have baptism that's pretty serious. It's like a death sentence.

That's actually what it was like in the first century. When a Jewish person got baptized, they were cut off from their family.

Keep in mind, this is in a culture where your family was everything. I mean, you lived with your family, even multiple generations.

You worked with your family. All your friends were part of the family. So, you lived in an area where everyone knew you.

A Jewish funeral for someone that was baptized was basically that somebody would become a

Christian, they'd get baptized publicly, and their family would actually bury an empty casket.

They'd bury an empty casket because of the fact they would treat them as dead. They wouldn't talk to the person, nobody in town.

And often those believers ended up picking up and moving, and they would leave.

This is often how some think is some of the influence of the Book of James to the scattered

Jewish believers, some of it being Roman, some of it being family that may have been persecuting people. So, we have there is the idea that baptism had a more serious connotation, and that's why baptism was so important in the first century.

All right? So, someone's asking in the chat room, did that almost happen to me?

Yes, it did. For some who do know that I am from a Jewish background, both my parents are

Jewish. My father was raised Orthodox Jewish, and it became a big deal when

I became a Christian. And my father and my mother did discuss whether they were going to disown me.

They were going to put me out of the house, and that was going to be that. There were some things that went on within our family that at that exact time that my parents said, my dad had told me that was the reason that they did not, they chose not to do that.

But they told me that they were very seriously considering that. So, yes. Let me get to some of the other questions that we have in the chat room.

We have two more questions in here. What conditions should a person, should cause a person to leave a church?

You know, this one is one I think we do not take church unity and church membership serious enough.

We are to be members of a church, part of the body of Christ, the local visible body of Christ.

And what we see a lot is people kind of treat church the same way they treat shopping.

You know, like one store one day and go to another the other day. You know, very loyal to, you know, one brand of clothes and then decide they tried something else and like that better.

Church is not like that. Church is about you using the gifts that God has uniquely given to you for the body of Christ that God has put you into so that you can serve them, not them serve you.

They will serve you because they are serving one another. But church is not about you.

It is about church. It is about everyone else. So, to leave a, to have an issue that would cause someone to leave a church, it should be pretty serious.

False doctrine would be one. But I mean real false doctrine, not just you disagree with the pastor on something.

I knew some people that were arguing because the differences on divorce and remarriage, I got to leave this church because the pastor is preaching, you know, false doctrine.

Just because you disagree on something that may not be crystal clear or good people have differing views on it does not mean that it is false doctrine.

Now, if you argue that it is false doctrine because the pastor disagrees with you, what you are actually saying is that you are

God. I mean, you are saying that your doctrine is equal to God's doctrine.

Now, I often jokingly say that if you interpret the Bible consistently and correctly every time, you will always agree with me and that is tongue in cheek.

But the real issue is you and I still come to the Bible with presuppositions.

And so, what we have is we end up having the case where, you know, we have to learn to realize that you and I may interpret the

Bible incorrectly at times. We would hope we don't, but we might. And so, we have to keep that in mind.

All right? And so, one person is saying if I am the pastor of the church, that might be good cause to leave.

Might be. I would leave that church if I could, but you know, hey,

I can't. No. But the reality is this. When we look at the reasons, I mean, if you are moving, that is a good reason to leave a church.

If you are moving outside of an area where it is too far, if you are, you know, if there is really, you want to leave on good terms though, okay?

But if you see sin, sin that is not being addressed, known sin,

I mean, something that is discussed, it is known, and they are turning the other way because leadership just doesn't want to address it, that may be an issue because what they are really sacrificing is the purity of that church, and they are more concerned with themselves than God.

God wants a pure church. Ephesians chapter 5 says that God wants husbands to keep their wives pure like Christ does the church.

Christ wants His body to be pure, okay? And so, we want to not leave too quickly.

So, moving, false doctrine, but if they don't agree with your view of evangelism,

I know a lot of people, it is like, well, they don't agree with me on, you know, way of the master.

Well, okay, so what? I mean, if the church doesn't go out and practice evangelism, maybe that is why you are there.

I mean, God gifted you to evangelize so that you could be the one to go out and do the evangelism.

I mean, that is a thought. Try it. So, next question that we have is, how would you address the issue of a woman teaching men and women in a

Sunday school? In my church, it would never happen, so I don't have to worry about it.

I wouldn't allow it. I don't believe, and we have a video on this that goes through this, but I would not allow a woman to teach men.

I do not believe that is biblical, okay? The issue there becomes, one, that if you have a church that is letting a woman teach a

Sunday school class with men present, you ask them how they interpret 1 Timothy 2, 12, and following, and get into it.

Now, if they are going to argue that that is cultural, that in the first century women shouldn't teach, but in this time they could, then you have to address the issue that the argument

Paul makes there is one of creation order. Adam was created first, not

Eve, so it is not cultural. That is God's creation order as an issue. Second reason he gives is that it is a sin order.

The woman sinned first, and then the man. So, it is the creation order and the sin order.

Now, I know a lot of people try to make arguments, yeah, but what about Deborah? Okay, well, Deborah did it, and she was acted as a leader, and she even said that that would be to the condemnation of Israel that she would act in such a way.

She knew it was wrong and a judgment on Barak that she would do that.

Now, if you want to argue that this is what women should do because Deborah did it, then also remember that Deborah also went into a tent and stuck a nail through the head of her enemies.

Is that what God is calling you to do? Just a thought. So, be careful when you try to use the

Bible in a way that wasn't meant. So, these are some questions.

I don't know if we have any more questions from the chat room, and I'm told that if you want to ask a question in the chat room, do a little

Q colon, and that should supposedly make a big Q for the person who's kind of on the other side over there to post in this side over here so I can see the questions, and sometimes

I get to see snide comments that you are making. Some of you don't actually know that I get to see all the comments later.

Someone sends me all the comments, so I get to read them. Insert evil laugh.

All right, speaking of that, see my

Genesis question. What was the Genesis question? Did I miss the

Genesis question? I don't remember seeing a

Genesis question. So, whoever posted a Genesis question, someone's asking how to do the big

Q. The big Q is a Q and a colon. So, I'm not sure.

Speaking of that, see my Genesis question. I'm not sure which question that may have missed the chat room master of all things and who gets very busy doing other things.

So, if you could repost your question, that would be great.

So, you're looking for, okay, looking for a question that might have missed.

I know the chat does kind of scroll off, so we may have missed it. So, one question that, this wasn't put as a question, but some people ask at Sunday school, okay, yeah,

I guess that wasn't it. Okay. So, did

God tell Adam to eat the tree before he made Eve?

Genesis chapter 2. Okay, so the question of did

God tell Adam not to eat the tree before Eve did?

So, I think there we're really not sure. The way the text is laid out, it seems that God may have given

Adam the instructions and then he created Eve afterwards. And so, the thought is that Adam may have been the one to explain the instructions to Eve.

That could be. It could be that Adam and Eve both received the instructions directly from God.

Not really sure, but what we are sure of is that Eve clearly knew that eating of the fruit was wrong.

Now, in Genesis chapter 2, we see that when the serpent tempts her, he says, did

God surely say that you could not eat of the fruit? She says, God said you can't eat it or touch it.

Now, she added something that wasn't given to Adam, at least in scripture.

Now, this is one thing to keep in mind with interpretation. Adam probably got more instructions than are recorded in Genesis chapter 1 and 2.

Okay, it's probably just not all recorded. So, could

God, now I'm not saying he did, but could God have told Adam not to touch the fruit, but all we have recorded is do not eat the fruit?

That could be. That's not jump -ticking. I know it's great for preachers to argue that, you know,

Eve added to scripture and see that's the problem. The reality is that we do see that that's a possible thing because we don't know if everything is clearly there.

So, the thing that you end up with there then is, would you say that it has to be that Eve added to it?

Well, we don't know. But what it does seem is that Eve clearly knew she should not eat of the fruit, that we do know.

And so, we have to keep that in mind. Christine is mentioning that Genesis 2, 15 to 17 states that he did, then he saw

Adam was alone. So, let's read that real quick.

So, Genesis chapter 2, I know you all brought Bibles to class, especially on stump the teacher day, you know.

All right. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to work and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you shall surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it.

For in that day that you eat of it, you will surely die. Then, that's time order then.

Then the Lord said, it's not good that man should be alone. Understand your point there,

Christine. But, keep in mind, could God have given the instructions again to Eve after she was made?

It is possible. Okay. So, that is a possibility that God may have given the instructions both to Adam and Eve afterwards.

So. Um. That question you just posted, should

I answer that? Okay. So, the question that came up in the chat room.

I'm just reading what says here. Would you accept it if Chris Holdworts would wanted you to be a guest on Close Encounters Radio?

Parentheses. This is my own idea, close parentheses. Uh. You made a good guess before.

So, the answer to that would be, sure, Chris. If you're watching, I would love to be on again.

It was great the last time. We had a lot of fun. So, anytime. I know

Tony is away traveling and lift up brother Tony in prayer this next few weeks.

I think he's in Scotland. I think it's for three whole weeks. I don't know if he's in Scotland that whole time.

I think he's there for at least two of the weeks. So, lift him up. He's going to be doing a lot of ministering with brother

Josh Williamson. And so, they're going to be out on the streets. I'm sure they're going to be preaching in some churches as well.

So, lift them up. But yeah, in the absence of the great

Tony Miano who does a great job on Close Encounters radio, I'd be happy to fill in.

But I'm sure that drives the numbers of listeners down into the gutter.

You know, or just right to the dirt. So, someone's saying he's in Scotland and then going to Norway.

Okay, that's what I had thought. I thought that he wasn't going to be fully in Scotland the whole time.

So, thank you. So, we could take maybe one or two other questions.

One question I'm being asked here that just got tossed in is, why do I love

Deuteronomy 29 -29? Let me read Deuteronomy 29 -29 for you and then you'll know why

I usually use this verse so often, especially when I teach systematic theology.

Because when we go through systematic theology, we kind of get things that we just can't explain. Some of the things even we went through today where it's just really left up to God.

God has the answer. Deuteronomy 29 -29, it's easy to remember where it is, says,

The secret things belonging to the Lord are God, but the things that have been revealed belong to us and our children forever, and we are to do all the words of this law.

I love that because it says the reality that there's things you and I can't know.

It talks about that God is greater than us. He's incomprehensible. If you remember in the systematic theology classes that we did, the very first lessons, the very first attribute of God that we looked at was the question or the attribute that He is incomprehensible.

And so, when we look at that, when we see the verse there, we end up realizing that there are things you and I are not going to know, but those things that God has revealed to us are for us to obey.

Alright? So, and this may be the last question of the night, but let's see.

What would you say to someone who used Romans 14, 12 -14 as a rebuttal against judgment?

Okay, as we always do when someone asks a question, Romans 14, let's open to Romans 14.

And if we're going to be good students of Scripture, I hope that you realize that we won't read just Romans 14, 12 -14, but we're going to start a little earlier.

If we start, we'll start at verse 5, but we could even start earlier with the whole chapter.

But one person esteems one day better than another, while another esteems all days alike. One should be fully convinced in his own mind.

The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the

Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the

Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the

Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be the

Lord of both the dead and the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or, you, why do you despise your brother?

For we will not stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written,

As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, every tongue shall confess to God, so that each of us will give an account to himself, to God.

That was verse 12, so let's read verse 13. Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide to never put a stumbling block or a hindrance in the way of a brother.

I know that I am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but the unclean for any more who thinks it's unclean.

For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love, but what you eat do not destroy one from whom

Christ died. So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not a manner of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the spirit.

Whosoever serves Christ is acceptable to God and appointed by men. So then let us persuade what makes for peace in a mutual upbuilding.

And we really should have started at verse 1. Here's the thing that you hopefully saw when reading the context. This is dealing specifically with some specific issues.

Can we judge one another? Well, actually, in fact, John 7, I think it's 24, commands us to judge, but with a righteous judgment.

We should be judging by the Word of God, not by food and drink, but by the righteousness of God.

That verse just said that, Romans chapter 14. The issue there is in areas that are not clear, areas that are gray issues, areas that are not specifically stated as a sin in Scripture.

Should we in those areas judge? We should be showing love above all things.

In other words, the issue there is if my brother thinks that... I'm trying to think of something.

I don't smoke cigarettes, but we'll take that. Say I smoked cigarettes and I thought that was an area of liberty and someone thought that was an area of sin and I was smoking a cigarette in front of them.

That's not loving. That is me kind of flaunting it in front of them, flaunting my liberties and putting a stumbling block in a sense.

Say they used to be a smoker or a more popular one is drinking nowadays. It seems people are...

This seems is a horrible thing to do, but I've been noticing more and more Christians that think they have the liberty to drink and they're boasting about it and promoting it on Facebook.

And there's other people who are struggling because they came from having to give up all alcohol because they're so tempted by it and they see

Christians that are showing the beers they're drinking. Okay, I don't think it's appropriate.

That's my view. But if you're doing that and you have someone that's struggling with it, you're causing them to...

You're causing a stumbling block in front of them. So both things should be wrong. You shouldn't be drinking in front of them to prove to them that you can.

You shouldn't be condemning them if you're the more mature person. You shouldn't be condemning them if it's an issue of liberty.

But you shouldn't be doing it, period, if it could possibly cause someone to stumble.

In other words, you should so love your brothers and sisters who Christ died for that that should be more important than your beer.

Which I don't even understand why people wouldn't like it. It tastes horrible. But, which means yes,

I have tried beer in the past. So, I would argue that you have to show love in those cases.

Is that an argument that we shouldn't judge? No, because there's other verses in clear context that says that we should judge.

It's how we judge and the judgment that that's speaking of is specifically to areas of Christian liberty.

So, this was a little bit of a Q &A. I guess the brother to encourage this week, or brothers maybe will do, is both

Josh Williamson and Tony Miano as they're traveling. And just pray for Tony.

He doesn't make a very good bachelor. In other words, he doesn't do well being away from his family.

He really is a very family man, family -oriented man. And if there was any way that people could take his whole family with him when he travels, he'd probably love it.

But pray for him this week as he's traveling to Scotland. Three weeks away from your bride can be a lot.

I know it's been there. So, just pray for him. If you have any questions, questions that you want to ask that we didn't answer, you can contact us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

academyatstrivingforeternity .org. We will seek to answer those questions. Maybe on a future Q &A show we'll get to answer those.

If you like the Q &A show, let us know. Maybe we could do more of these. You could send in some questions.

We can look to answer them. We did this specifically because of the fact that we are having someone come in tomorrow to try to help us with some of the internet problems that we've been having with bandwidth.

Try to see if we can boost it up. We're supposed to be getting plenty more bandwidth than we...

We're trying to get plenty more bandwidth than we have and so that there'll be less streaming problems. But because we do know right now due to a storm we have really bad problems, we decided that we would do this.

Hopefully it comes out okay and you all got to enjoy it. And until next time, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.