E257 | Making Sense of Scripture

So what I think that tells people is if I just if I just get my life right with Jesus, all my problems will disappear. And what I would say is when you get your life right with Jesus, you now have the power through the Holy Spirit to deal with your problems. Mhmm. And he will walk you through those things. But but Jesus is not the answer to my problems because I'm my problem.

So, you know, it's like the song Jesus take the wheel. Well, you're driving. So I mean, can you imagine you're on a bus and the and the drive Jesus take no. No. No, bro.

Your job is to Jesus Christ. You need to drive. And so I think what Christians do is we kind of throw our hands up in the air and in this really like cultic like way, we kind of throw off responsibility. And I think that that's one of the things that modern Christians struggle with is, you know, Jesus is responsible for saving my soul. That's what he did for me on the cross.

So he's forgiven me of my sins. My job now as a redeemed believer is to work through my sins and change, and that's why the church is so dysfunctional. If if Jesus alone was the answer to all of our problems, we wouldn't have one epistle in the New Testament. Because Paul is addressing problems. And these are saved people with problems who are unwilling to work through them or are ignorant of them or don't care.

You know, I I have to tackle my own journey. Me being a Christian does not fix my marriage. It gives me the power to fix my marriage, but I have to do the work. I have to identify my sin. Have to accept my issues. I have to listen to my spouse. I have to change. And so I I think it's it's a dysfunctional way. And and and again, imagine you're coming to church. Right?

Jesus solves all my problems. I I walk forward. I give my life to Christ, and I'm still bankrupt. I'm still losing my house. My wife still leaves me. My children won't talk to me. Well, I'm a little upset Mhmm. Because I still have problems. And so what I would say is sin is the source of all your problems. Jesus died to forgive you of those sins, and if you follow him Mhmm.

And you believe that you are saved by grace and there's nothing that can separate you from the love of God, and you have a willingness to walk in the light as he is in the light, right, and what does the light show? The things in our life that are not And I continue to trust that it's okay because he died for me on the cross and he loves me. And I work with those issues and I deal with those issues, many of my problems will go away. Not everything, some things will not be solved until Christ returns. So I just thought it was a gross oversimplification of life.

I think Jesus is the answer to your broken relationship with God, and he is the only thing that can fix that. Mhmm. But you have partner with him to fix your problems.

However, as I read the Bible, I see many references to our works. One example is in Revelations twenty two twelve, which states, look, I am coming soon and my reward is with me my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work. I am confused by verses like this as it goes directly against this statement that our salvation is not works based. How can I understand this better and have a clear answer when other people ask me about it?

It's their works. It's all through the gospel. It's all through the epistles. The apostle Paul says that he works like a dog to serve Christ, so that one day he may stand before God, and and he will see what was gold, what was silver, what was hay, what was straw, and he says the straw and hay and the wood will be burned up like fire. And so there here's the issue with Christians is we are saved by grace through faith, and there's nothing that you can do to save your yourself.

But as Christians, as saved believers, God will deal with the household of God. So James says judgment begins with a household of God. So what did you do with your life after you were saved? And so what Christians love to say is all of my sins, past, present, and future, have been forgiven. And yes, they have.

And what's been forgiven, and this is so important for Christians, is the penalty of your sin. Here's what the bible says, the wages of sin is death. So as a Christian, I am guaranteed eternal life because of Jesus. Now he still is going to deal with me. So Romans eight one says, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

What does that verse mean? It does not mean you will not face judgment. It means you will not go to hell. There's no condemned people go to hell. No Christian, no born again Christian will go to hell. Christians, however, will face judgment. And so what happens? There will be rewards and there will be judgment. What that looks like, we do not know. But so many Christians have conflated judgment and condemnation, and we've made them one word.

And so we cannot save ourselves. We're saved by grace. That is the But James is trying to correct an inappropriate thinking and heretical thinking where Christians thought I'm saved. Can do whatever I want. Mhmm. And he said, you show me your faith. I show you my faith by my works. And here's how Jesus said it. You judge a you you judge a tree by its fruit. Mhmm.

So if I say I'm an apple tree and I never produce apples, I'm not I'm not an apple tree. Yeah. So Paul goes on to say that the fruit of the spirit so what kind of fruit should be falling from a Christian tree?

Those are two different issues, and I know those are big words, but but justification saves me from condemnation. I am not going to hell, I am saved. Sanctification is the process of God changing me and turning me in to someone like Christ. So there's nothing I could do to be saved, but I have to work with sanctification. I can resist the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.

There are people in our church who are Christian, they've given their life to Jesus, but they never serve, they never give, they've never changed. God's going to deal with those people. And they're not going to hell, but they will be dealt with. And it is called judgment. And that's tough for Christians, and a lot of Christians struggle with that, and I've talked times and times again about that, but a lot of times, you know, you've got to remember that every time there's the gospel, Satan counterfeits the gospel.

And so there was a period of time where people didn't feel loved, and Billy Graham came along, and he fantastically preached you were loved by God. People didn't hear that. A lot of people don't know that John three sixteen was not a super famous verse until Billy Graham. Can you believe that? Billy Graham made John three sixteen famous, and it awakened the church to love.

Now what's happened? Satan says I can work with that. You're so loved, nothing that you do matters. I love you right where you are. You never have to change.

God is all inclusive. Everyone's going to heaven. No, no, no, no, no. So we've swung so far from this scary God that hates us, he demands holiness, we can never live up to him, we feel guilty, and now we've swung to where I'm totally loved, and what I do doesn't matter, and I can just sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, and there's no consequence. And so, you know, when you read the gospels, read Luke 19, it's a terrifying verse, and at first it looks and feels like Jesus is judging people and sending them to hell, but he is judging servants.

The word is servants. They're his servants. They're they're not pagans. They're people that knew him and did not serve him and he's dealing with them. Think of the parable of talents.

The one who had five, doubled. The one who had two, doubled. The one who had one, even what he had was taken away. So we have to think about this, and it's a very, very difficult thing. And here's why there's so many denominations, there's so many opinions, because these scriptures are not easy to interpret, and really what churches do is they overemphasize one truth over the other.

That's typically where you get in trouble. So I'm saved by grace through faith, and there's nothing I could do. I can't boast, right? That's Ephesians. Ephesians says we're saved by grace, not by works, and even our faith isn't from us, right?

It's from God. So right, boom. But that same guy said in Romans that we will all stand before God, and he's writing to the church of Rome. He's not writing to the Roman emperor, he's writing to the church of Rome. And he says, We will all give an account for our life.

Same dude. He wrote both verses. And so in Western thought, right, they both can't be true. In Eastern thought, they embrace bothand much easier than we do. So Western thought has a really hard time with that, and it's just attention that's real, and we have to walk in. We're saved by grace. Dallas Willard says this, The gospel is opposed to earning. It is not opposed to effort. You can't earn your salvation. Mhmm.

But man, if you're saved and you are not giving effort, are you saved? And we have to wrestle with that. And that's what James is saying. He saw a bunch of sit on your butt Christians that are like, I'm saved. Jesus died.

He paid it all. I don't have to do anything. And James is saying, look, that's not the gospel. You were saved to do good works. And even Paul says that, that we're to work out our faith with fear and trembling, that we are saved in advance to do the works that he had prepared for us.

Like we are saved for a purpose. We are saved to serve God and work for God, and that doesn't save us, but that's why we were saved. To make the world a better place and to serve him. And so many Christians forget that. And it's just tough, right?

We're like, what is it? You're saved by grace, but you know, in heaven, the apostle Paul is going to be more rewarded than I am. I mean, he just you look at what he sacrificed, you look at what he did, You you look at how he said no to himself. And the Lord is going to reward that. And and that's why Jesus says, look, I am coming soon and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work.

I can't say it any better than Jesus. He is coming, and he's coming to reward you for your work. And a good friend of ours, a lot of people think heaven is communist. Right? It's all equal. Everything is equally shared. And you know, first of all, we're not going to be in heaven forever. We're going be on the new earth, and a lot of Christians don't know that. Revelation actually says that. Behold, a new heaven and a new earth, and the new Jerusalem descended upon the new earth.

And so we will live on earth and All

Don't you know that you will judge angels? So not only are we gonna experience judgment, but we're gonna take part in the judgment of angels. Like, we God made you to rule and reign with him. That's why that's what when Adam and Eve are placed in the garden, they are placed to rule and reign and have dominion over the creation. And that's why it's so sad when people worship the creation.

It's like, no, no, no, no. God created you to rule this and instead of that, we violated his law and we sinned and, you know, we messed things up. So Sarah, great question. Sure. It's a tension that we all have to work through, but here's the gospel. You cannot save yourself. That's why Jesus died. Mhmm. And to become a Christian, you repent of your sins and you place your faith and trust in him. That's what it means to be born again.

But now that I'm born again, just like our grandson, he's born, he has to learn to walk, he has to learn to talk, he has to learn to eat, he has to learn to be kind, he has to learn to share, he has to learn to live like a human. We have to learn to live to be like Christ. And that process is, you know, what Jesus is going to judge. It's why Catholics believe in purgatory. So what happens when a Christian dies in sin?

So they develop this concept of purgatory where your sins are purged, you know, because their interpretation is in that process of judgment that Paul talks about in second Corinthians, you know, we'll be judged as through fire. That's where it comes from. This idea, the Catholics are saying, how are we changed? Because you know you're not like Jesus yet. I'm not like Jesus yet.

So as an evangelical, right, we were in the twinkling of an eye. And so the Catholic would say, yes, but there still is a painful process of getting that sin out of you. And so it's just a tension that, you know, because of the split of the church that I think that we haven't dealt with it well because we're so busy arguing with each other about where we disagree, haven't really wrestled with, okay, what does this look like? And N. T.

Wright says this, that scripture are clear signs pointing into the fog. And so we read a verse that says, we are saved by grace and our sins are forgiven. And that's a real verse, and it points to an eternity we can't see. And then there's another verse that says, we will all be given an account to God, and it points to the same fog. And so we have to hold both of those as the inspired word of God and go, okay.

I'm saved by grace. I'm not worried. I I am not worried about going to hell. I I trusted in Jesus. Mhmm. I am worried about standing before Jesus. I want I want my life to matter.

It is a contradict is it a contradiction, or are Noah and his descendants special?

And I think what we probably have misread in that text is God is saying in one hundred and twenty years, I'm going to bring judgment. It's not that people will live one hundred and twenty years, it's that in one hundred and twenty years, I'm going to bring judgment, and my spirit will be with people no more, and everybody's dying. So just so you know, Genesis six, tough, tough chapter to read, to interpret, and to understand. And so here's why I think my interpretation is accurate because of what you just said. Noah lives longer than one hundred and twenty years, and many people after him do.

And so I just think that, you know, God is saying, look, in one hundred and twenty years, I'm going to do something, and my spirit will not dwell with this weird sex stuff that's been happening with the, that's created the Nephilim, or with the Nephilim, the sons of man, and the daughters of Adam. Something happened that was so egregious that the Lord had to judge the earth, and I just think it's a misreading of what the one hundred and twenty years means. So I think it was a warning, and you know, and that's why a lot of people believe that Noah didn't just build the ark, but he preached for one hundred years for people to repent that judgment was coming, to warn people. But in the end, only eight were saved. So that's my interpretation.

Very difficult text. There's many godly that would disagree with me. Just think, like you're saying, clearly we're misunderstanding it because people live longer than that.

Why does Saul ask him this when he already knows that he is Jesse's son? It's a great question.

So, so many times, you know, a phrase can't be repeated exactly from Hebrew to English. And you have ancient Hebrew in an ancient context in modern English. So sometimes that's the problem. Here I think there's something else going on that we're missing. So if you read back, Saul is chosen by God, he's anointed by God to be the king of Israel.

He sins, he does not listen to Samuel, he tries to be the prophet of Israel, he tries to be the king of Israel, and he tries to be the priest of Israel. And Samuel tells him, wait for me. He doesn't wait, and he sins. And Samuel says, you are no longer going to be the king of Israel, God is going to choose someone else. Then when we read, it says that God removed his Holy Spirit from Saul and sent a spirit of evil to afflict him.

You know? And Saul no more cares about David than he does all the women that he's sleeping with. Like David is just a servant that performs a task. And for a king, you know, David is just a dude that sits on the toilet to make it warm before I go poop. Like David doesn't matter. So doesn't see him. He doesn't care about him. And here's the truth, Saul really doesn't care about him when he's gonna go fight Goliath. He doesn't care. But then David defeats Goliath, and now Saul has to take notice.

So that's one interpretation. Here's another interpretation. Jesus is with the disciples, right? He hand picks all of them. He calls them by name. So you would agree they all know who Jesus is. Correct? Then they're on a boat in a storm, and they say, don't you even care that we're about to die? And Jesus calms the storm, and the disciples say this question, who is this that even the wind and the waves obey? I believe something happened to David when he stepped on on the battlefield.

I believe it was changed. And what Saul is saying is I'm getting chills saying this. What Saul is is seeing is the anointing shift.

He's, you know, he's Saul is a messed up dude. I mean, he turns to witches, he turns to himself, he's paranoid, his own son, and when you read the very next verse, it says, Saul's son Jonathan loved David from that very moment. I think in that moment, Jonathan knew who David was, but Saul did not know. Mhmm. Mhmm.

And David is the king who is the man after God's own heart. David is the man that God will bless forever. David is the man whom Jesus will become a king in his name and in his lineage. And Saul is acknowledging in his own perversion, in his own sickness, there's something special about this guy. And I think it's a subtle question, who is this?

Just like the disciples know it's Jesus, but what they're saying is, there's something bigger about you than I know. And I think that's what he's saying, and we're just missing it in context. That's my opinion. Just so you know, I have never heard a pastor say that. When you asked this question, I prayed through it, I read it, and that's what I got.

That's what I feel like the Holy Spirit was telling me. I'm not saying I'm right. I just, the problem is not the text. The problem is never the text. The problem is our understanding of the text. And so the word of God is not confused, we are. So I hope that provides some clarity there. That's good. But again, we have to be careful we have to be careful with language because the statement, who is this Jesus? They knew who he was.

Mhmm. But, you know, and by the way, it's the same statement that's repeated over and over again by Pharisees and Sadducees. Who who is this that forgives sins? Who is this that heals? It's this question, and and it's interesting. The Messiah comes in the line of David. And so what is the first question we see in the New Testament when we have the arrival of the chosen king? Who is this? Mhmm. And so I think it's

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