Scripture Trumps Feelings

The Mystery Revealed in Christ and the Questions After the Sermon

Let us begin with prayer. Lord Jesus, we thank You again for the manifestation, the revealing of the mystery hidden from the time of the ages that has now been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. We pray as we again open up Your Word, please send Your Holy Spirit so that we may rightly understand it.

Help us to understand what we are to believe. Help us to firmly believe it and trust it as a revelation from You. Help us to confidently believe that we are forgiven because of the Gospel. And then bear fruit in keeping with repentance, showing us what to do from Your law in order to love and serve our neighbor in good works.

All this we ask in the name of our crucified, risen, and now revealed Savior to the nations, Jesus Christ, Amen. Before we get started,.

Any questions from the sermon? Anything percolate up? You sit there and go, what was that? What? It's just amazing how it's all right.

You know, it's really funny. God hides all these little details right in plain sight. So yeah, the myrrh being an embalming... It's just amazing how it's all right. Yep, that's right, that's right. So King, God, and sacrifice.

He's going to the grave. Again, kind of a weird, morbid thing to give to a child. I mean, could you imagine, those of you who are younger, you have a baby, and then at the baby shower, I don't know if you've seen how those things work.

It's a mysterium tremendum to me. There's lots of estrogen in the room when things are going on like that. And generally, when my wife had her baby showers, I was in a different room, and I was basically told not to show my face until everybody had left, because that way nothing stupid would happen.

That being the case though, could you imagine at a baby shower, somebody giving a two-liter bottle of embalming fluid? What was that? They look at you like you were crazy, the person who came with that.

Yep, the person who came with that probably would get blocked on Facebook now, maybe not invited to the Christmas parties. But there it is. I mean, this embalming thing showing up with the presence of the magi, very fascinating.

Any other comments or questions from the sermon? I do.

Yes. Okay, so the statement was made in here, they went to the house. Yes. So how old is Jesus? Is it like two when they saw him, when they came upon him? Uh-huh. So they had moved back to their home.

So, because it says in here, they found him in the house.

Yes, so apparently, so no longer are they, the Holiday Inn is no longer full, and Bethlehem, they've taken up residence there for some amount of time. And you're gonna note then, in the part that follows in the Gospel of Matthew, with the slaughter of the innocents, Herod, when he figures out that they haven't come back, and remember, he inquired.

He goes and tries to find him. Right, he inquired carefully, it said he inquired carefully. When did the star appear? He took copious notes, and then when the order was given to execute all of the infant males in Bethlehem that were two years old and younger, this was according to the calculation.

So we don't know the exact age of Christ. It could be anywhere from he's a toddler to he's two years old,.

You know, to really two years. But he's not any older than two, because.

Yeah, he's no older than two, but we don't know where he is. So it's somewhere between zero and two. And so the idea then, you're gonna note that, boy, I hate to mess this up, but all of our nativity scenes that we purchase and put out in our homes or in our yards and stuff like that, they always have the magi there at the manger.

They do. Yeah, there were no magi at the manger. There were shepherds. But there was no magi. There were no magi, they're later. So you're gonna note then that they don't show up at the manger, they show up at the house.

Different thing altogether. It's funny how traditions kind of crop up. And what's always fascinating to me is that when you biblically point these things out, some people will bear you a grudge, because they have great fond memories kind of wrapped up in the tradition.

You sit there going, you know, that's not exactly quite right with what's going on in the text. And it's like they wanna pinch your head off or something. So I can see no one's got any knives out. This is a positive sign.

Clearly your sanctification is starting to kick in. Good. Let's take a look. We're gonna continue wrapping up on the commandment, thou shall not commit adultery, consider some of its further implications.

Male and Female in the Image of God

But I wanted to, again, make another point regarding the days that we live in, because in order to keep the commandment, thou shall not commit adultery, it presupposes that God has made us male and female.

We've talked about the fact that there's a lot of people nowadays who reject what God has made them. These things are easy to figure out. And if you're having difficulty, ask somebody else to help you.

Ask your anatomy professor. Yeah, ask your anatomy professor, right. But I wanna show you this in the text. In the back end of the book of Genesis chapter one, we see the creation of humanity. And I want you to note this.

Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. Who made us binary? God. Now let me ask you this. According to this text, are men made exclusively in the image of God and women not so much?

Or how about women made in the image of God but men not so much? In the image of God, he created them male and female.

But he created the male in his image first.

Well, yes, it's Adam first, and then Eve comes from Adam. We are mankind, not womankind. And I find it fascinating that the devil is always trying to mess things up. Pagan New Age religions. Are they all about male deities or female deities?

Female. Nature. Is she a mama or a papa? She's a mama. Do you ever get the feeling we may have gotten that all wrong? Huh? Yeah, Father Time. You see, Father Time, he's always depicted as kind of decrepit, old.

Yeah, ships are female. Ships are female. But the reality is this, is that God has ordered things in such a way that humanity reflects God. And all of the personal pronouns for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of the personal pronouns, masculine or feminine?

Masculine. So the idea then here is that humanity reflecting in the image of God, in the way things are ordered, and it's true, we are created in the image of God male and female, but God has ordered that men are the ones who lead.

Now, we gotta make something very clear here. Men are not to lead from a domineering, abusive, do what I tell you to do or I'm gonna smash you into the ground kind of way. Men, like Christ, rule from the bottom.

They don't dominate. They love sacrificially. And so true patriarchy reflects God's character as loving, kind, patient, long-suffering, sacrificial, not domineering, demanding, abusing, cracking the whip, obey or else.

You see, that's how the world operates. The world operates using coercive power. And when coercive power and domination comes into a marriage, it ceases to look anything like the mystery of the bride of Christ and the groom who is Jesus.

It looks like something completely different. And so one of the things I find fascinating is that in our culture, there is a reaction in liberalism against patriarchy. It's just the blanket patriarchy.

And I understand it. I get it. Because what they're really, in some senses, reacting against is the abuse of patriarchy in the name of God. You ever heard of the proverbial good old boys club? Yeah, that's a total abuse of patriarchy.

Total abuse. It's abuse of justice too. And so in some senses, they're reacting against that and their reaction is equally as toxic, by the way. Matriarchy is not the solution. The solution is biblical, Christ-like patriarchy.

You want to see the ultimate example of what it looks like to be a man. When I invoke the image, what comes to your mind? Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, doing this, you know. Some guy with the war paint on going, whoa, like that.

No. You want to know what the quintessential example of what it looks like to be a man. It's Jesus suffering on the cross. That is the quintessential moment of ultimate maleness right there. Laying down his life for his bride.

That's what it looks like. Now, so then we're gonna note, but the idea then here is that the rebellion that's taking place today is a rejection of what God has made us. And the person who says, I might have been genetically gendered as a male, but I'm really a woman, he's rejecting what God has made him.

The people who say binary human beings don't exist, gender is a matter of what you feel inside of you, and it's not limited to male or female, they are literally rejecting God as creator and saying God has no say at all whatsoever in gender.

But this text says God created them, male and female. And God continues to create, by the way. We were all created in the image of God, male and female. There is no zim-zam-za or whatever the things they say now, right?

There's none of that. So the question then comes up. We recognize that marriage is an institution created by God. The marriage bed is to be kept sacred, we talked about that last week. What about the unmarried among us?

Those who are single or widowed? What about that? Let's take a look at some texts and pay attention to how we are instructed by God through these texts. First Corinthians chapter seven is where we're going to take a look.

Marriage, Singleness, and Self-Control in 1 Corinthians 7

And I'm gonna rework through a portion that we covered last week and keep going, because you're gonna see something here. Now, I always have to make this point. When you read the book of First Corinthians, there's a little missing bit that you can reconstruct.

And that is that the church in Corinth sent a list of questions to the Apostle Paul to have him address. And so there's these section headings in there. And the section headings oftentimes will have the statements from the church at Corinth that they are asking the Apostle Paul for clarity on.

And in this particular case, the church at Corinth, for some reason, came up with this statement. Now concerning the matters which you wrote, here's what they wrote. It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

Okay, you could just see the Apostle Paul going, oh man, okay. So we're gonna have to straighten some things out. Because Corinth is really a seedy town, it's really known for its sexual immorality. It was a seaport where they would take boats out of the water and drag them across the isthmus of Corinth.

And so you had sailors getting into town all the time and sailors do what sailors do. And it was just a place of debauchery and drunkenness and sexual immorality on what was called the Acro-Corinth, which was a hill there in Corinth.

At the very top of the hill, there was a temple set up to, I think, Aphrodite. And the way the sailors would worship there, it was with temple prostitutes. So it's just a town that is just as messed up sexually as you could possibly imagine.

Makes Las Vegas kind of look tame. And as a result of this, with the sexual immorality being the way it is, oftentimes Christians will overreact to something. They will overreact, they'll say, well, with all of these temptations to sin this way, it's probably best if we just don't do that at all.

You see, because there's people who abuse alcohol, therefore we're gonna say if you have alcohol, it's a sin. That's not the solution. The solution is to remember that one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is what?

Self-control. For the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and this one, self-control. So the solution to a problem is not something that creates the opposite problem. So they're saying it's good that a guy might not have sexual relations with a woman.

You can just see Paul beating his head against his desk at this point. He says, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, Paul says, each man should have his own wife, each woman her own husband.

Have you ever considered that for the young and the single that are struggling with sexual temptations and sexual sin, that maybe the reason why they're having so many problems is because they haven't recognized that God has created marriage to address that.

If you're having problems along these ways, get married. So the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, likewise the wife to her husband. You're gonna note here that, I pointed this out last time, the husbands belong to the wives, the wives belong to the husbands.

They belong to each other. It is not the husband says, you belong to me. Get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich. No, they belong to each other. So the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, likewise the wife her husband, for the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.

Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. And do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourself to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

So you're gonna note here the Apostle Paul correcting the church at Corinth. No, marriage is a good thing. It's also one of these things that helps us not succumb to the temptations of the devil. But you're gonna also note, Paul is describing it in such a way as this, that the person who is single and is courting a woman, the day before their marriage, for them to come together sexually is a sin.

For them to come together sexually after they are married is a good work. You see it? So the idea then is this, as Christians, we must soberly and with self-control recognize that God has created this.

It is a beautiful thing. And although people are abusing it and falling into grievous sins, that we must recognize it for the good gift that it is. It is the means by which humanity is procreated. And you're gonna note here that the expectation is that in a Christian marriage, that Christian marriages are not, and I'm gonna use this word, it's a little stark, but they are not sexless.

And that's kind of a vital thing. I know this is gonna sound weird, but there is 30 of all marriages, 30 of all marriages are sexless. There's no coming together between the man and the wife. None.

This rules that concept out, which requires, and boy, I hate to say this, requires you to put your cell phones down and actually talk to each other. Because making this happen sometimes in a marriage relationship is complicated.

There was a meme that made the rounds a few years back that basically talked about how simple-minded males are. Men are easy to please. There's like two buttons, beer and sex. But then you look at the buttons for a woman, it looks like the space shuttle controls.

Good luck figuring out how that all operates. And listen to me. It's important that you all figure that out within your relationships. First year of marriage, anybody who's been married, first year of marriage, easy or difficult?

Liar. You're totally lying. I'm gonna call you to repentance right here.

Ellen isn't even here to hear you, she's so tired. She'd say you're lying.

It's difficult. You get two sinners now cohabitating under the same roof in a lifelong commitment. And so divorce, it shouldn't be on the table. And he's doing something that's ticking you off and she's being mad and making him upset.

That one's gonna take a while to figure out how to unwind. Good luck. And listen to what I'm saying. In our marriages, those difficulties, the face-to-face, dealing with each other's strengths, weaknesses, things that upset us and other things like that, these are the places, this is the crucible of our sanctification, period.

Then throw kids into the mix, holy guacamole. I mean, what was already a barbecue that you couldn't cook on because the flames were still going, now take 10 gallons of gasoline to pour that on that thing and you figure it out.

Those of you, first child born, was that easy to adjust to or difficult? No, it's not my turn to get out of bed, it's your turn to get out of bed, baby. I don't wanna change the diaper, you change the diaper.

Isn't it my weekend to sleep in? And that's just the tip of the iceberg because then you've got vomit that comes into the mix and strange, weird things that the kids do. I won't embarrass my kids, but there's stories that we tell.

And then you'll find then that in your marriage, there are the tall weeds and difficult times to get through and you feel like hacking through it with a machete is taking forever. And then there are times when things are calm and peaceful and you take the good and the bad together and it's in this crucible that the Lord is sanctifying us and it's difficult and it's hard.

And in the midst of all of that, God reveals that we are to continue to keep coming together, this is a good work. And in the keeping of coming together, we are taking away the temptation to sin. And that's a vital piece of all of this.

Over and again, when you see a relationship, a marriage that has become sexless, that is the open door to adultery. It is the open door. And the person who becomes the adulterer oftentimes will justify it by saying, well, wasn't getting any at home.

I remember years ago, I've probably told the story a few times. Years ago when I was working in the corporate world, I had a colleague of mine come into my office and tell me that he was leaving his wife and gonna be running away with some lady in the office.

He's a Christian, goes to church. I said, no, you're not. That's an absolute sin. That is adultery, what you are doing you need to repent of. To which he said, no, God has revealed to me in my heart that she is my soulmate.

No, he hasn't. You are utterly deceived. No, he has not. He didn't listen. Not only did he lose his wife, his kids, didn't take more than a year and a half before he lost his soulmate too. Temptations.

So again, it's kind of strange to talk in these terms. What is a sin one day becomes a good work the next. And that's how scripture would teach us. Now, Paul then goes on to say this. Interesting portion of scripture.

As a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as myself as I am. Paul was a fellow who was not married. He was celibate. Each one has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

So to the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

They should marry. I mean, that's straightforward. The reality is this, is that celibacy is technically a gift given by God, but it's a rare gift. And if you don't have it, don't sweat it, get married.

And it's kind of interesting that the Roman Catholic Church ended up idolizing virginity and requiring their pastors to be celibate where no scripture says that. In fact, scriptures say that a pastor should be the husband of one wife, children, obedient, and believers.

Well, that would require certain things happening in a marriage. And so they've taken that away from their pastors. And what has that led to in the Roman Catholic Church? Yeah, straight up debauchery.

How many years has it been that we haven't had a major Roman Catholic priest abusing children of one stripe or another scandal? You know, the reason for that, it's real simple. They don't have the gift of celibacy.

Get those priests married, this problem starts to go away, or at least it simmers down to the same level of problem that you have within the Protestant churches. And you're gonna note that being married isn't the solution to everything because there's still fellows who are married who are pervs.

That's just how this works. But the percentage of them drops dramatically when we understand that we were made to procreate. Does that make sense?

I'm not familiar, yeah. I've heard that on the West Church. High-volume parties were made to celibate.

Yeah, yeah, it's very rare, very rare. But yeah, the sexual immorality that everybody keeps talking about and burbles up to the surface, and the world, what does the world think about the church as a result of these continued scandal after scandal after scandal, year after year after year, and all of the money that the Roman Catholic Church has paid to families to settle these things and keep them under wraps.

Everybody knows about it. I mean, Netflix recently did a documentary. If you haven't seen it, it's very disturbing but worth the watch. The name of it is called The Keepers. It's like an eight-part series that addresses this exact problem.

And they interview the survivors of those who've been abused by these priests. And it, again, rough to watch, but again, it'll give you an idea of the nature of the problem. How much of this goes away if you just let them fulfill the requirements of Scripture?

Husband of one wife, the end, right? You got it. So Paul says to the unmarried, I say that it's good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot, then there's nothing there. There's no shame.

It is better for them to marry than to burn with passion. To the married, I give this charge. Not I, but the Lord. So you know that Paul here is saying, okay, the part that's me speaking, you're not bound by this, but this part is because it's from the Lord.

The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. The husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest, I say, I, not the Lord, so this is his part again, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.

And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy, or you can say sanctified, because of his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.

Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but it is they are holy. So yeah, there's a word we don't use in polite company anymore that has to deal with the procreation of illegitimate children, children who are conceived outside of the bond of marriage.

That's what he's referring to here because they are married, their children are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so, in such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace, for how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband, or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

And I gotta tell you, if you don't know anybody who's in a marriage where one spouse is believing and the other is not, those are difficult marriages. They are really tough. Let me just give this advice, kinda throw it out there.

You who are single in the room, if you meet him or her, and you've got that wibbly wobbly feeling and all the hormones are running, and you feel like every time you think about that person, you're walking on air, that lasts just a very short amount of time.

And that will never come back. It doesn't come back. That's not how our bodies work. If the person you are having those feelings for is not a believer in Jesus Christ, don't listen to your feelings. Separate yourself from that person, and I assure you, the hormones will settle down and you'll come back to your right mind.

Because if you make the decision to marry an unbeliever while you're having those types of feelings, you are setting yourself up for an extremely rough ride. Because when the kids come and you say you want them baptized and we've gotta go to church, the conflicts that are going to ensue are epic.

It's like trying to fight a land war in Asia. It's very difficult.

I believe a spouse is not saved, but losing.

Yeah, this has to do with the fact that their children, that the institution of marriage is holy still. So even though it is an imbalanced one, it is not that the institution or the spouse is somehow a blight because they're not saved.

That's what it's referring to. Instead, they must consider them holy, at least within the office of marriage itself, or the institution and the office that they fulfill as either husband or wife. So you have to kind of think of this almost, it's a little civil, it's a little ceremonial, but the idea then is that this rules out the idea that well, I'm a believer and my husband is not.

So because he's not a believer, that means he's a low-down, dirty, filthy, rotten pagan and I can leave the relationship. Oh no, no, no, no, no. That's ruled out here. No, he's still holy in this institution.

And your children are holy as well. So talking about holy in the sense of that, regardless of the fact that he's an unbeliever and his sins are unforgiven, he's still holy as your husband, holy as your wife, and you get the idea.

Yes, sir. Under that description, like, a no-fairness scenario, how does Christianity?

Yeah, I'll say this. That conflict will manifest in similar ways when one spouse is of one belief as far as their doctrine and another spouse is different. So if you get a Roman Catholic and a Lutheran together, which is very common around here, you're gonna have some bumps in those relationships and conflict centering around catechesis, communion, where the kids go to church and things like that.

And believe me when I tell you, these are not easy issues to sort out. If you want to make things as smooth as possible, marry somebody who has the same confession you do. Then it does work.

Oh, it does work. It does work, because if that husband and that wife are true believers, and they are strong in their faith, they're going to relay that to their children no matter which church they go to.

Yeah, no, notice I'm not saying their kids won't believe or anything like that. I'm just saying, the conflicts that are created around religion and denominational differences within a marriage, that adds a whole dynamic of conflict that I'm just gonna say, it's a lot easier in a marriage without it.

I think generalizing it to say that it would be tough, you're not giving that husband or that wife, I just lost my word, credit due for their faith.

Oh, yeah, but see, I'm not challenging the faith. That's not it at all. I'm just talking about the dynamic of marriage itself. Let me give you an example personally. I became a Lutheran before my wife did.

My wife and I both were Nazarenes. If you know anything about Nazarene theology, it's extremely strict, very legalistic. It's a combination of Wesleyan Methodism and Finite Revivalism, which is an interesting mix.

And it is all law. I mean, you don't really hear the gospel as a Christian. And I mean, that almost made an atheist out of me. And when I started attending Christ College Irvine, that was my first exposure to Lutheran doctrine and theology and this biblical distinction between law and gospel.

I had never heard that before. And I bristled against it, fought against it, but eventually said, no, this is what the scriptures say. And so as the story goes, over and again, I would debate, I was a Nazarene when I was at Christ College my first couple of years there.

And I would get in these theological debates with my Lutheran colleagues in college, the Lord's Supper and baptism. And it really irked me because every time they would open up the Bible, it would say what the Lutherans believe, but it didn't say what I believed.

And it really bothered me that I would get my clock cleaned by these guys because I was getting better grades in all of them. I graduated at the top of the class. And so you got C students that can clean my clock on baptism and the Lord's Supper.

And so I'm in my second year Greek readings course, and we're translating through Titus. And so it's the fall and it's like a month of October. We're in chapter three and I'm translating. And of course me, I'm always waiting to the last second to do anything anyway.

So I'm doing my homework late at night. I'm up translating this text and it says, let me show you the text just to, cause I think it'd be worth a look. It's found in Titus three. And then I'll tell you the rest of the story.

Verse four, when the goodness and the loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us. Notice who's doing the saving. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy by the washing of regeneration.

And here's the word, the phrase over here on this side, Dealutro palingenesias, and the idea that the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. When I saw this word, Latrual, I looked it up and it's a ceremonial washing.

It refers to baptism. It's a religious rite. And so it says in the text that God saved us through the washing of regeneration. That's not what I believed, but the text says it so clearly. So I went and got a different lexicon to see if I can get around this.

So I went and grabbed my other lexicon, looked it up and sure enough, no, it's referring to baptism there. And so I let out an expletive. I was pretty upset, I was mad. I said, that's it, I'm a Lutheran.

And I had to bend the knee. God's word was clear. What I had been taught and what I believed was not what the scriptures say. I have to bend the knee. In order to be honest, I have to say this is what God's word says.

I bend the knee to what God's word says. And every other text says similar things like this. So Barb woke up the next morning and when I finally tooled out of bed, I said, Barb, we're Lutherans. And she said, oh no, we're not.

You know, I gave her an explanation, not only about this text, but about the fact that Lutherans rightly understand law and gospel. And it's correct that we are saved by grace through faith alone, not by our works.

And she would have none of it. And from that moment, it began to create conflict within our marriage. Conflict that I learned if I pig-headedly and stubbornly and immaturely pushed, it would set her off and rightly so.

So what do you do in a situation like that? Because you talk to my wife, I mean, she's actually more Lutheran than I am in a lot of cases. So what made the difference? I decided pretty early on that this butting heads and fighting her all the time wasn't gonna do it because it wasn't some clever argument or coercion that made me realize that this is what the scriptures taught.

It was the scriptures themselves. God opened my eyes, showed me what his words said. So I decided to take a different approach. And she, like every good evangelical woman, insisted that I not slack regarding being the spiritual head of our family.

And she says, you have to be teaching us the Bible, to which I said, yes. If I have to be teaching you the Bible, guess what we're gonna be learning about? I initially tried to have topical studies that dealt with like baptism or the Lord's Supper or salvation by grace through faith.

She would have none of it. She caught onto that really quick. And she said, nope, you teach us entire books. Stop that. All right, fine, I'll teach entire books. And so we have a tradition. The tradition basically went like this.

We eat dinner, and before we take the dishes off the table, out came the family Bible, and I started teaching my family. It took 10 years. And when texts would come up by working through them that conflicted with what she believed, she would ask questions.

And I would say, here's what the text says. And I had to trust God to open her eyes. I couldn't push. I couldn't coerce. I couldn't fight. I could teach, period. And believe me, during those 10 years, man, there were some touch-and-go times.

And so there was a whole religious conflict dynamic in our marriage, and I gotta tell you, I don't miss that one bit. It was tough. It was really hard. And I would say this. You people who are single, you're going to save yourself a lot of conflict if you marry a fellow or a gal who believes the same as you.

You're going to have a lot of conflict if you don't.

I'm just curious, how come you're still attending the Nazarene church?

No, she agreed to go to a Lutheran church, and fairly early on, I was asked to teach at a Baptist church, which is crazy. That's a whole other story. So we were attending two churches for a very long time, which made Sundays just exhausting.

So in the morning, we were at the Baptist church, in the evening, we were at the Lutheran church. And we did that for a long time.

Wait, a decade? Yeah. So her mom did like the Baptist church. Yeah, that's true.

Once we started going to the Baptist church and she can see for herself the big contrast, that's the thing that kind of made her go, oh. And it kind of, you get it, but yeah. So I mean, again, long time of conflict, though.

The least strict. Yeah, the case for Christ, yeah. Yeah. You get to see that. Yeah.

Worth a go now. No, a fascinating movie. Very fascinating movie. And I love how patient and kind and not pushing his wife was. And he was so awful to her as an atheist. He really was trying to knock that Jesus out of her.

And she had to take on, and I loved how she exemplified love and patience and steadfastness, even in the midst of persecution. And great movie, by the way, really great. I mean, theologically there were some things that were squirrely, but I don't expect even Christian movies to get it right 100 of the time.