The Bible Q&A (Part 4)
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Introduction:
Introduction:
Here we are!
We have made it to the FINAL lesson of our Q&A series for this year
This is something that I plan on bringing back every year, and I also think we will sometimes have a one night Q&A session during one night of a specific series (just depending on the topic)
But for now, this is it.
I really cannot overstate how much I have been blown away by your questions
But if I am even going to have a chance of being timely this time, I need to go ahead and get started, right?
So let’s do it!!
Question #11: How do you handle it when your Christian friends are sinning but you don’t want to break the friendship even when they aren’t repenting?
Question #11: How do you handle it when your Christian friends are sinning but you don’t want to break the friendship even when they aren’t repenting?
This is another great question
There are a few things that I think that it is important to understand here
1. Christ calls us to befriend sinners
How do we know this?
Because Jesus Himself did this
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
So yes; obviously, Jesus is a friend of sinners
Why was Jesus a friend of sinners?
Well, for one thing, we are all sinners
And Jesus desires to have a relationship with everyone; He offers Himself to ALL
Jesus pursues a relationship with sinful humanity
But here is something else that we know:
2. Christ calls us to be careful about who we hang out with
There are two Scriptures that I would like to look at in reference to this:
2 Corinthians 6:14 (ESV)
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
What is a yoke?
YOKE Wooden frame placed on the backs of draft animals to make them pull in tandem.
If you’re like me, you might need to see this to understand it, so here is a picture
Here is an ox and a donkey pulling a wooden plow together with a yoke
With this in mind, what does it mean to be unequally yoked?
It means that you’re not carrying your weight in your walk with the Lord.
You aren’t able to make much progress, because your unsaved friend is making you unbalanced and unable to “pull the plow” so to speak
Your friend is influencing your direction
So, really, this means that we need to make sure that the people that we hang out with don’t negatively impact our walk with Christ.
And heres the other verse that I was talking about:
Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”
What is this verse saying?
Hanging out with the wrong people too much will result in immoral behavior\
So now, we have two ideas that seem to be in contrast with each other
On the one hand, Christ was a friend of sinners, and we are challenged to be the same
But on the other hand, we are to be careful who we hang out with so that it doesn’t get in the way of our walk with Christ
How do you sort this out?
How do you find the balance between these two?
3. Have an inner circle of Christian friends
The people that influence you the most will be the people that you spend time with the most
That’s why it is important to make sure that you are spending most of your time with people who are going to help you grow in your faith.
And, yet again, Jesus provides a model for us here
He may have been a friend of sinners, but he had an inner circle of 12 (or 11 if you don’t count Judas)
He did spend time with other people, but most of his time was spent with people who were like minded in their faith
4. Have an outer circle of unsaved friends
Jesus spending time with friends is Jesus spending time with people outside of his inner circle
But get this; the goal is always for these people to join Jesus’ inner circle
That’s why he shared with them
And that’s why we share the Gospel with our unsaved friends
Yes, it is primarily because we want to see their sins forgiven, but you also get to have an even deeper friendship with them, which is a really cool thing
But we still need to very specifically address the question at hand:
What do you do when your friends are sinning and you don’t want to break off the friendship?
To be honest, it depends.
5. It depends on the sin
If you are hanging out with friends who are trying to get you to look at pornography, for example, the best thing for you might be to break off the friendship
You want to make sure you don’t’ go down a path you shouldn’t go down
The same could be said about a group of friends that drink or do drugs
It is healthy to have boundaries like this, and to say “if this is the path you’re going down, I cannot follow”
Other times, it might not call for such a drastic move
It kinda just depends
But the goal is always for us to influence them positively, rather than for them to influence us negatively
And navigating this requires wisdom
Let me close off this section with a verse
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
Pray about it, and seek Biblical council about the specific situation
God will make it clear to you
Do you have any more questions about this topic?
Question #12: In Jeremiah, God says that the heart of men is wicked, yet in Isaiah, God says that the heart is worthy of restoration. Is there a contradiction here? Why or why not?
Question #12: In Jeremiah, God says that the heart of men is wicked, yet in Isaiah, God says that the heart is worthy of restoration. Is there a contradiction here? Why or why not?
The first thing that I wanted to do is to look at the two verses in question
Here’s the one in Jeremiah:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
And what about the Isaiah passage?
Well, I can’t find it. I have looked everywhere
I have even looked at the Bible as a whole to see if there is a reference to the heart being “worthy of restoration.” I couldn’t find anything
To the best of my knowledge, the Bible doesn’t say anything about the heart being ‘worthy of restoration
These two verses are closest thing I could find
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
What do these two verses have in common?
In both, the heart starts off as a bad thing
Thus, there is no contradiction here.
The heart is wicked. Period.
1. The heart is wicked and can only be restored through Christ
And the only way it is made clean is through Jesus
This is what salvation is all about, and it is also what sanctification is all about
When we get saved, God gives us a new heart
But after that, is our heart perfect? Well, of course not. In fact, there is still a wicked sinful nature in there
But as we grow in our relationship with Christ (sanctification), our heart is molded more and more into the heart of Christ
Sorry that I couldn’t do a better job of answering this; I looked as good as I could.
Do you guys have any idea what verse may have been in mind?
Do you have any other questions about this topic?
Question #13: What are your thoughts on demons, ghosts, and aliens?
Question #13: What are your thoughts on demons, ghosts, and aliens?
How about we handle these one at a time?
1. Demons and demonic oppression and possession are very real
Scripture makes this incredibly clear
Jesus casts a lot of demons out of people
But here he is talking about demons more in general
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
Yikes!
But the question for us is “does stuff like this still happen today?”
The undeniable answer is that yes; it does
I have heard stories of people who have seen stuff like this, and that have gone to cast out the demons
Its a legit thing
Also, check this verse out:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,
Wow… so there is more of this yet to come.
But ultimately, we need to remember that for those of us who are in Christ, we ultimately have nothing to be afraid of
Jesus has already overcome all of this stuff
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Once you’ve accepted Jesus, there is nothing that any demon can do to separate you from the love of God
But what about possession? Can Christians be demon possessed?
As far as we can tell, no, this cannot happen
One reason that we know this is that there is no example of a believing person being demon possessed in Scripture
But we also know it to be true as a natural product of certain Scriptures
Let’s look at a few:
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
How does this verse apply to the topic of demon possession?
Christ is in us, and he is greater than “he who is in the world” (aka Satan)
Thus, if Christ is inside of us, we cannot be possessed
Let’s look at another one:
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
How does this verse apply to the topic of demon possession?
We no longer belong to darkness
We know belong to the Kingdom of light
Within such a kingdom, there can be no demon possession
Is it possible for us to still sin? Of course.
But a demon can’t have authority over our body because Jesus has claimed authority over it
Also, the idea of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit would support this as well
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
How does this verse apply to the topic of demon possession?
The HS is inside of us, so now a demon can’t be
However, while demons can’t indwell a believer, can they still affect him in some other way?
The answer to this is clearly yes
Every time we give into sin, there is a spiritual war going on
Thus, the Christian has nothing to fear regarding demon possession
Ephesians 6:11–12 (ESV)
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Notice that the word “wrestle” here is in the present tense.
When we are tempted to sin, demons are involved with that
But when we put our strength in Christ, we have nothing to fear
So that is pretty much everything that I have to say about demons
But what about Ghosts?
2. Ghosts do not exist
Now, the word “ghost” does show up in the KJV
But it is not referring to “disembodied spirits from the dead”
Also, we should note that Jesus’ disciples actually mistook him for a ghost a couple of times
But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear.
But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.
So, they were apparently familiar with the concept
But as far as this actually being something that happened, there is no Biblical merit for it
Because it ultimately boils down to one question: Where does someone go when they die?
As Christians, we believe that people go one of two places: Heaven, or Hell, and this is SOLELY based on whether or not someone has truly accepted Christ as their Savior
People don’t hang out here anymore after they die
I think that one of the strongest examples of this comes from Jesus’ story of Lazarus and the rich man
Let me do a bit of summarizing before we look at the text
Jesus tells a story of two men: a rich man, and Lazarus
The rich man lives luxuriously, while Lazarus has sores and tries to eat what falls from the rich man’s table
They both die; they rich man is carried up into Heaven to be at Abraham’s side, while Lazarus goes to Hades
And now, let’s look at what the rich man asks Abraham
And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ ”
What can we learn from this verese?
This passage clearly indicates that, after dying, one cannot go back to the world
Thus, the concept of a ghost is not a reality
So, if anyone thinks that they’ve seen a ghost, either it was in their head, or heck; maybe it was a demon
But what about aliens?
3. There is no Biblical support for the existence of aliens
I know, I know; you’re disappointed, right?
And let us be clear; Scripture is mostly silent on this
Nothing that the Bible says directly disproves the existence of aliens
But, in my opinion, I do believe that, logically speaking, there is little reason to believe in the existence of aliens from a Christian worldview
For one thing, if they existed, don’t you think the Bible would say something about it?
I do.
Also, in Genesis 1, it is clear that man is at the centrality of God’s existence
That’s why it says that God made mankind “in His image”
And this centrality of man as God’s most prized creation is seen throughout ALL of Scripture
This is why Jesus is called the Son of Man
So when you consider all of that, trying to figure out where aliens exist as a part of God’s creative order and how they would fit into salvation history makes the existence of them highly unlikely
But there is one verse that some people have claimed in the past might be referring to aliens
As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings.
Well, that kind of sounds like aliens, right?
Well, maybe, but they later are identified as cheribim
These were the living creatures that I saw underneath the God of Israel by the Chebar canal; and I knew that they were cherubim.
Okay, then… so that’s out
So the Bible doesn’t say anything about aliens existing
But what to you do about all of the sightings throughout the years?
Well, people are really susceptible to this stuff
My opinion is that, either people think they are seeing things that they are not, or Satan is creating deceptions because he knows they are vulnerable to it
Beyond that, there is not much left to say, but I am down to talk about it some more.
Do you have any other questions about this topic?
Well, in my view,
Conclusion
Conclusion
And just like that, we are done!
But don’t let this be the end of your question journey; keep asking them
If you have a quick question, feel free to just shoot me a text, or to ask me in person
I am ALWAYS willing to answer your questions
Here at our youth ministry, questions about God and the Bible are not only welcome, they are encouraged
So ask away! Continue to make your faith your own and to grow in your walk with him.
PRAY