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A Deep Dive into Faith · Relish: a Christian podcast

• 0:02
  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
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  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or gratified by enjoy we are hoping
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  that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life welcome
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  to another episode of relish i'm roan miller and i'm here with don patterson And as always,
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  how are you doing, Don?
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  I am doing good. Yeah. I think I had giddy juice with breakfast. Yeah. Yeah.
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  I always, you always seem to be a little more energetic after breakfast.
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  Yeah. After breakfast. A little. It's a good breakfast. Yeah.
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  All right. Boy's Bible study always helps too. Yeah. I bet. Young men.
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  I should call them young men.
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  Those young men keep you on your toes, I'm sure. Yes.
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  All right. Well, we'll jump into a question I actually saw in a YouTube video. Oh.
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  I don't know if any of you guys heard of Cliff Connettl, I think is how you
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  pronounce his last name.
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  He's probably around your age, and he would go around to college campuses and preach to kids.
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  And he does apologetics yeah apologetics and
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  stuff yeah so i've seen some of his
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  videos and then they're very good yeah it's the same guy i'm thinking
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  yep it probably is and he still
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  he still will do stuff now but it seemed like he
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  used to do a lot more on college campuses a
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  couple years ago but one of the questions was
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  from some kid and he came up and asked him if
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  god is a good and just god how can he let
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  something like the holocaust happen to such innocent kids and
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  then he kind of he just walked away and cliff wasn't
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  able to like answer the question to him oh man
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  so i he he still ended up answering it
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  to the other kids that were sitting and listening yeah but it's very interesting
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  the kid dropped the question and walked away yeah because that's probably what
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  needed to happen with that question you drop the question and walk away because
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  you have to understand a sovereign God who.
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  Is beyond our understanding. In other words, his justice and mercy,
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  he plays out in a bigger game, bigger background than we understand.
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  And what happened in the Holocaust and those innocent lives that were lost did
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  influence a whole generation and played even into our politics today,
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  and even into our culture today, that event played in.
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  Yeah. Positive and negative.
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  And so there must be a purpose or God wouldn't have allowed it.
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  And there must be a bigger part that's going to be played from it.
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  We often think of life as being like this life is the whole thing.
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  And when you think of those young lives, You think of all those years that could
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  have been lived out and were not, and the talent lost, the great artists that were killed.
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  You think of those things that happened because of it.
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  God doesn't think in those terms because that's very human.
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  That's very human. And this life is important, and what we do in this life is
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  important, but it figures into a bigger godly mosaic than we often take in consideration.
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  So can I give a better answer than he did? No, but God's got the answer.
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  It figures into something bigger from God's standpoint.
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  Yeah. If I remember right, he answered something along those lines as well.
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  So sad. I mean, it's still sad. I mean, there's no way any of us,
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  like you said, can know or understand or justify something like that.
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  Right. But he has a plan.
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  And I, I guess I come from the standpoint, I believe in the plan.
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  I believe his plan for us is better than when we fight the plan or go against
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  the plan or sin, which is against the plan. Mm-hmm.
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  Would, this is an opinion question or I guess you'll probably. My opinion.
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  Yeah. You'll probably end up using the Bible to justify your answer, honestly.
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  But would you think it'd be more valuable to meet with God, we'll say every
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  month, or have the Bible?
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  Like you can, you'll sit down with him, say over coffee or something.
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  So I have a coffee break with God once a month. You talk to him,
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  say like an hour or two every month.
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  I am not sure they aren't already happening. Yeah, that's true.
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  Yeah. Okay, so my time with the Lord in His Word is just about like that.
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  Yeah. It's amazing how God often in my prayer time, my quiet time,
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  will take me to Scripture to get His message across.
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  Yeah. So, boy, I don't see the mutually exclusive.
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  Yeah. And so, since I don't see a mutually exclusive, I find that God takes
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  me, brings me to himself through his word.
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  And the only thing missing is the coffee and the set down time together.
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  Mainly because I have a very relational connection with God and that helps.
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  And I would put relation above religion way high, because that makes my faith,
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  is my time with God. Yeah.
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  Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
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  And if we hope God's hope in our life, we're going to want to know what he's talking about.
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  Talking in the Lord's Prayer, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
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  is asking God's will and submitting to God's will. So that's relational.
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  I mean, that's like bro, like buds.
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  I mean, God's not my bro, but if you go to Romans 8, then Jesus is my brother or co-heirs with Jesus.
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  So in that sense, I'm a bro with Jesus.
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  But intimacy with God is not exclusive either with the Bible or in prayer.
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  So I'm not giving you much of opinion, am I? I think you answered it. I got them both.
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  I got them both. Yeah, they go hand in hand for you. They really do. Yeah.
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  And it's amazing what God takes me to in his word. Yeah.
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  Do you think that the books in the Bible will ever change, will ever add or take away potentially?
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  No, I think the canon will remain like it is.
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  I think the broadening significance of other works that give it context,
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  I think will give more validities to some of those works because they lend credibility
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  to this primary piece, the Bible.
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  And so, it's been interesting to get into Michael Heiser's work and his dealing with the Book of Eduk.
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  And he makes a case that Enoch is an important book.
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  And what's interesting is he makes that case from the Bible.
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  Oh, okay. And to me, that has more validity than if he said,
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  oh, this is just an important book and we need to make it just equal with the Bible. Yeah.
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  I'm not quite there. But Heiser would say it is highly informative towards the biblical text.
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  And then it helps us understand some of those places that are less, like Genesis chapter 6.
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  How are we supposed to understand the Nephilim?
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  Oh, yeah. And it gets a broader understanding of the Nephilim if you look at
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  what's said in the book of Enoch. Okay.
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  Then it also raises bigger questions as much as that.
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  And then Jude, the book of Jude reflects Michael, the archangel, and that's in Enoch.
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  And then we get a bigger, better understanding of who Michael is.
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  So some of those things, I think, will maybe solidify what we understand this
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  text to be and the importance of this text, the primary text of the Bible.
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  And that's what I find is happening a lot in what's going on in biblical archaeology
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  and archaeology in the area of Palestine and Jerusalem.
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  It's actually lending more credibility to what's in the Bible.
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  So those who say the Bible is myth—,
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  or poetry. I think we'll need to re-evaluate their stand.
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  Mm-hmm. I've heard experts talk about how the Bible has far more proof,
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  documentation, witnesses,
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  cross-documentation than any other person, event, thing that happened in history.
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  Like Socrates, Aristotle, those people.
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  Yeah, ancient texts. I mean, we'll take what they said without question.
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  Yeah, Lee Strobel would be one of those who's documented all the cross-referencing
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  that has to do with the crucifixion and the Christ event.
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  And done a very good work on that.
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  Yeah. Is that the case of Christ? Is that what it is? I think it's the name of the book.
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  But documentation, it's out there. So those who are saying that the Bible is
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  a myth or, you know, just a storybook, I think we'll need to reevaluate their stand in the future.
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  Yeah. I mean, the other, whatever else we take for information from back then
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  that has a fraction of documentation as the Bible. Right. Yeah.
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  Yeah. And the consistency of it too. Right.
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  That then feeds into the other thing that I would say Christians need to be
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  much more Bible literate than we have.
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  I mean, there was a point in time where the Mennonite church in particular,
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  if you started in kindergarten with their Sunday school material,
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  you would do a major scan of the entire Bible by the time you're a senior in high school.
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  In fact, you'd go through most of the text in those last four years.
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  You'd have a basis before that of the stories of the Bible. But in the last
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  four years of that program, you would get major study of everything from.
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  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Harmony of the Gospels, to Paul's missionary journeys.
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  And it was really a good Sunday school program, and you graduated knowing the Bible.
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  Well, we don't have anything close to that teaching our children today.
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  We have Bible memory, which, praise the Lord, we're still doing.
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  But biblical literacy in the last generation has gone down considerably.
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  And so my, my nudge to you and your generation is get a hold of it,
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  get to know it and know it well.
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  Well, I, even with bio memory, I remember, I don't know what the reason was,
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  but that day I did not want to do bio memory.
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  I did not want to work on memorizing my verses. And my dad was telling me how
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  I had it so easy compared to him. And he goes and gets his, he just had a packet
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  of about index cards, like that big.
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  And they had printed Bible verses on it. And the thing's just full of references.
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  And they had to look them up in their Bible. It wasn't printed on the paper
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  for them. And then they had to recite all of those.
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  And it was probably 10 times what I was doing.
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  And that kind of changed my perspective a little. Right. I'm sorry we are not pushing you to do more.
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  At that time, I felt like I was being pushed real hard. And,
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  you know, that's part of what's going on.
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  Yeah. But you got to want to.
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  When you want to, then it's easy. Yeah. But you got to want to.
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  And children, I was a rebellious child, believe it or not. Yeah.
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  Just ask my parents. Say no. Yeah, I had my moments.
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  I wish I had done more as a child than I did. But I did.
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  What I could. I mean, I did what my parents told me to. Well, I'm sorry.
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  I did most of what I tried, but just to understand that our parents are helping us form in good ways.
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  And yeah, we're still kids when we're kids.
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  It's part of human, human nature. Yeah.
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  All right. Well, we'll go to first Thessalonians here and it says,
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  Oh shoot, I didn't write down the verses But it says,
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  God has not called us for impurity But for holiness So what is What's the difference
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  between those And what does that mean Exactly,
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  Yeah, do you have the verses What Paul's nudging And he does it here,
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  he'll do it I think it's Is it 1 Corinthians 3,
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  No, Ephesians 3 Ephesians 2 last part of Ephesians 2 he calls us to be a holy temple,
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  so he calls us to purity,
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  in purity in the context that he would remember it at the temple,
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  and so he wants us to live lives, did you find the passage yet?
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  Yeah, 1 Thessalonians 4 7 right in front of me,
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  for God did not call us to be impure but to live a holy life therefore he who
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  rejects This instruction does not reject man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
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  And my brain was going to Ephesians. The idea that we are living sacrifices,
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  holy and pleasing to God.
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  My goodness, where's my brain this morning? I should have had more coffee.
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  It'd be similar to what he's talking about in Ephesians 2.
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  That's not quite what he's talking about us being joined together no I'm thinking
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  of 1 Corinthians 3 I'm sorry guys problem of immaturity yeah,
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  don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit lives
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  in you which is parallel to what this is talking about that don't reject God,
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  who gives you his Holy Spirit If anyone destroys God's temple,
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  God will destroy him, for God's temple is sacred.
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  He is setting aside our bodies as temples, holy and pleasing.
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  And so we're to treat ourselves as holy.
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  Now, how does that work out?
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  In another spot, he talks about making sure that we don't defile our temple.
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  That would be in chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians, he talks about sexual immorality.
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  And that being the body is not meant for sexual immorality, that is 6 verse
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  13, but for the Lord, and for the Lord the body, and for the Lord the body.
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  By his power, God raised the Lord from the dead. He will also raise us.
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  Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Whoa!
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  So then when we think of our bodies, it's not just flesh and blood,
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  but we are taking on the nature of Christ.
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  So shall I take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never.
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  Do you not know he unites himself with a prostitute as one with her body?
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  So when you go back over here, God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
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  Therefore, he who rejects instruction does not reject man, but God who gives you his Holy Spirit.
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  So this holiness is something that's done in our body as much as our spirit.
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  Can you imagine being holy in spirit and not in body?
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  So I got all my thoughts pure, but my body isn't going to be pure?
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  Yeah. Yeah, I don't think so. It doesn't quite work. It doesn't work that way.
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  So basically what Paul's doing here, both in Corinthians and Thessalonians,
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  is calling people to live a life that reflects who Jesus is.
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  And Jesus wasn't going around doing all sorts of naughty things.
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  So did he not call us to impurity, as it says, because he knows that's an impossible goal to reach?
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  Or is, like, why not impurity as well? if that makes sense.
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  He calls us, God did not call us to be impure. Yeah. But to live a holy life.
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  Am I missing the question? Why wouldn't he call us to be impure also?
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  Well, he doesn't want us to be impure. The impurity would be not reflecting his purity.
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  Oh, I'm totally, hold up. That's my fault. That's all right.
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  My brain was out on that one. Need another cup of coffee? Something like that.
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  That's all right. I got Rowan on one. Sure did there.
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  Oh, man. That's all right, dude.
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  These scriptures that you're pointing to have a harmony between them. Okay.
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  Because they're Paul's way of saying, let's live like Jesus lived.
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  Let's reflect the love of God that Jesus did.
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  Even though he didn't walk under Jesus' ministry directly, these are ways that
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  we see through Paul's ministry.
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  He teaches Jesus. Yeah.
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  And he goes, even to the woman that was caught, caught in adultery,
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  he says, go and sin no more.
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  That's why he died on the cross. So that we could be free of that and we don't have to sin anymore.
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  I mean, let's face it.
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  A good share of what drives us to do shameful things is a shame we're already feeling.
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  Yeah. And if we can take care of the shame we're already feeling,
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  likely as not, we won't go down that rabbit hole.
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  And that's what Jesus died on the cross for.
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  I think that's a good place to end.
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  Ready for that coffee, huh? Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for joining us as always.
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  I hope that you enjoyed the video and feel free to let us know,
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  let me know if you have any questions.
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  And we'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us for this podcast.
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  Feel free to become part of this ministry by sharing with others our goal is
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  to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who god is and is calling
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  to us in our daily lives thank you again for joining us and may god bless your day.