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Exploring Radical Inclusivity and Exclusivity in Faith · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Music.
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  To flavor, to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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  Welcome back to another Relish episode here. I'm with Don, as always. And I'm with Ron.
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  How you doing? I think I'm doing all right. Let's see what kind of questions
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  you've got for me, though.
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  Boy, last time you got right to it, nailed us on a couple.
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  That's good. We don't shy away from them, although, yeah. Maybe it might be better if we did.
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  What you got? We'll start off with Timothy Keller always often says how the
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  Bible is radically inclusive and radically exclusive.
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  So how is that the case?
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  Right. It's radically inclusive. The grace of God is much bigger than sometimes I think we play it out.
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  And so I think he does that well in his explanation of the prodigal son.
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  If you ever get a chance to listen to Timothy Keller's series of sermons that
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  he did on the prodigal, it's really a powerful set of sermons.
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  So it's radically inclusive in the fact that God really does love the entire
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  world, not just a portion of it.
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  And he emphasizes the fact that the grace is big enough to save everybody who would come to Jesus.
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  The second part of it is, It's radically exclusive in the fact that you need
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  to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You need to understand that
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  the kingdom is brought to those who have accepted Christ.
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  In other words, if you haven't, you're not, I hate to say it quite this abruptly,
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  but if you haven't accepted what Christ did on the cross,
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  you haven't got a hope to be there in heaven.
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  And Jesus said in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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  No one comes to the Father but my me. You can't get there without Jesus.
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  Yeah. And so that's very exclusive, I guess, because without that faith in Jesus
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  Christ, you don't get into heaven. Yeah.
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  So I think that's what he's meaning by...
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  Big, inclusive, by the fact that that grace would save every individual who's
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  accepted Christ as Savior.
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  It's exclusive in the fact that if you haven't accepted Christ, you're not in. Yeah.
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  There's a lot of good people, but just being a good person doesn't get you in.
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  This is true. This is true.
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  I think you brought part of that up in the last episode when your question was
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  talking about, so if you've accepted Christ, is that it kind of thing?
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  And I think you hit that one right on, nail on the head on that one. Yeah. Yeah.
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  So then moving into the next one, this kind of like two-part question,
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  why did God create the tree of good and evil?
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  And like, was it a way of tempting Adam and Eve?
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  Tempting? Yes. Or sifting? Yeah. And interesting enough, the Bible begins in
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  a garden, ends in a garden, begins with two trees, ends with one tree.
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  So, you have two trees that are in Genesis chapter 2.
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  And so, in verses 8, it says, Now God planted a garden in the east,
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  in Eden, and there he put a man that he had formed.
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  And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground,
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  trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food in the middle of the garden,
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  the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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  And so that's the tree that gets them in trouble, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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  Because when you get to chapter three, then there's this wily guy,
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  old serpent dude, craftier than any other wild animal.
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  I like the description. and all of a sudden he said, well, did God really say
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  you must not eat of any tree in the garden? And well, yet it did,
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  And we may eat of the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat
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  from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. Well, actually,
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  there's two of them there.
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  So that when you get to the end of chapter 3, what happens is God makes their garments.
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  And, of course, we know where he got the skins. That's the first sacrifice.
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  And he must not be allowed to eat.
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  Excuse me, verse 22. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take from
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  the tree of life and eat and live forever.
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  So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
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  And then we go back to Revelation 22, and there's the tree again.
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  So what were these trees all about? I mean, at the end of Revelation, the tree is there.
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  Uh excuse me 22 2
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  22 2 yes very well good and on
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  each side of the river the tree of life bearing 12 crops
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  of fruit yielding its fruit every month and it's for the healing of the nations
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  and there is no longer any curse verse 3 isn't that neat yeah the other tree
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  is not even spoken about tree of good and evil it's gone so then the question
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  is valid that you started with and i gave you the long around answer.
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  So what is God doing with this tree? And it's basically, and he probably knew it was going to happen.
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  We have a hard time saying something we can't do, we can't do.
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  Now, okay. So we have speed limits on highway one, right? Yeah.
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  And 55, right? 55.
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  When's the last time anybody drove 55 on highway one?
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  I mean, we drive in the vicinity of 55, but 58 to 61 really feels good. Yeah.
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  You know? And so we're by nature sort of driven to do those ornery things that
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  somebody else tells us we're not supposed to do.
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  You've never had that as a teenager, I'm sure. You've never done anything that
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  your mom and dad didn't justify ahead of time to say, yes, Rowan,
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  you make sure you do that.
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  Or if they say you should do that, do you do it?
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  I mean, it's sort of our nature. I'm not going to put you on this, on the.
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  Sorry, but,
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  It's sort of our nature to run against absolutes.
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  And this is one. And it's so absolute. He said, if you eat of it, you'll die.
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  Yeah. And of course, the snake says, oh, yeah, he's not going to kill you off for that one.
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  That's sort of the way a lot of things are. I mean, if you look at the 10 commandments.
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  Isn't it sort of the same way?
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  Yeah. So basically what God was doing by putting the tree of good and evil in
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  the midst of the garden was, are you going to listen to me or not?
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  I mean, basically God's saying, are you going to abide by what I ask you to
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  do or not? It's obedience.
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  And they failed that one miserably. And if we're quite honest,
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  we keep failing that one miserably.
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  I mean, a lot of us want to do good and we try to do the best we can,
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  but in one way or another, we're sinners.
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  We're going to fall short. And then what do we do with it?
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  And that's what Jesus lived into. The fact that we're not perfect,
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  we can't be perfect, we fail miserably, and his grace is sufficient. So we do the best we can.
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  Okay. Kind of poking more at the serpent now, do we believe Satan was the serpent?
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  Oh, yeah. Without a doubt.
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  I'm there saying, yeah, that was Satan. I would say. So then was Satan created
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  with the other animals or was he with?
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  Well, if we go into Hebrew mythology, which lays behind the New Testament,
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  or the Old Testament, excuse me,
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  we would see that, and Jesus alludes to this fact, that he saw Satan and his
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  angels, his angels, cast out of heaven.
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  So originally, Satan would have been an angelic being, probably on the platform
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  of Michael and Gabriel, as far as archangel kind of individual.
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  And we know from Ezekiel 12, is it, that he was beautiful.
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  He was striking and sort of full of himself.
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  In fact, pride was the reason that he was cast out because he wanted to be as good as God.
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  And he wanted the same worship God had. And we see shadows of that in the temptations,
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  that Jesus has given in Matthew four.
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  And so maybe Satan's showing his hand that he still wants to be God.
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  He still wants to take the glory away from God that is rightfully due Adonai.
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  So he is around before day one. Yes. Okay.
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  Yes, that's true. That's what I figured.
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  Good questions. Wow. Oh, are you, got any more of those or you got some?
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  I have another one. Go ease them up and down a little bit. I don't know if this
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  one will be any easier. Oh, okay.
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  I think it'll be interesting. Okay. What would a letter from Paul to the current
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  day Christian church contain?
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  It might look like the seven letters to the seven churches of Revelation too. Three.
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  Like, what are similarities from what we have in differences?
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  Yeah, I think he'd come down on our morality.
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  I mean, when you look at 1 Corinthians 5 and how he sticks it right down on the Corinthian church,
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  I don't think he'd leave any stone unturned for the modern church today as far
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  as what we're living out in our morality and how easily we're reflecting the world around us.
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  I mean, Romans 12, verse 2 says, no longer conform to the pattern of this world.
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  And here we're conforming pretty good for the pattern of the world.
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  There's very little difference between us as Christians.
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  Even our divorce rate is similar to those who are not Christians.
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  And so we have adopted the pattern of the world. He'd definitely have that in that letter.
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  That'd be one of those things. I hope he'd clean up the women in ministry thing.
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  That'd be nice if he cleaned that up. Yeah.
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  Because having both sides in there is hard for us to negotiate, navigate, excuse me.
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  Let's see, what else would he stick in there? Oh, he'd have to have something
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  about men and loving their wives and women respecting their husbands.
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  I think he'd probably say, okay, this Ephesians chapter five,
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  verses 20 to 28 was not a suggestion.
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  I want you guys to do this. It'll make your marriages better And it would make him stronger.
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  And he'd probably have some things in there for us pastors, because he was always
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  addressing Titus and Timothy and making sure they were on top of things.
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  Peacemaking? Yeah, he probably, that part in Romans chapter 12,
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  verses 9 following, yeah, he'd probably have two or three chapters on that one at this time.
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  Because it's interesting, we're at peace as a nation, and we're not at peace as a nation.
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  I mean, as far as peace, we're not in active war, but if you listen to the politics
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  in this nation, we're at war with ourselves. We don't need an adversary.
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  Yeah, so it could have maybe one, maybe two chapters on that.
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  I think the church is also getting closer and closer together.
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  Involved in politics and definitely worldly things like you were saying.
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  And he would probably then remind us, like he does in 2 Corinthians 5,
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  verses 18 through 22, that we're not ambassadors of the world.
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  We're ambassadors of God's kingdom and representing him to the authorities around us. Yeah.
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  Yeah. I like. That's pretty good stuff. Yeah, that's a good question because
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  he would have a lot to say to us.
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  Oh man, I dread meeting Paul when I get to eternity.
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  Would he have more? Would it be longer or shorter, do you think? I think it'd be longer.
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  Yeah. I think it'd be longer because there's more history that's fed into it.
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  And there's also a wider chasm, a wider group that calls themselves Christian.
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  Yeah, that's true. And so he would address the full spectrum.
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  That's what Paul does. He'd do the whole spectrum.
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  And having done that, then yeah, The 16th chapter of Paul would be,
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  we'd be lucky to get by with 16 chapters.
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  Yeah. Really. We'd be very fortunate.
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  Yeah. What is. That was spicy. That's how we like it here at Relish. That's right.
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  Like mama's relish. Yeah. Yeah. Moving to the next one. What is heaven going
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  to be like being there for eternity?
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  Like when i look look to chapter 22 of revelation it's really going to be high grade.
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  Accommodations i don't have any gold in my house showing but there the streets
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  will be gold it'll be high class accommodations accommodations like we've never seen before on earth,
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  Now, whether it's the same for each person or not, I just know that he's prepared a place for me.
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  I'm open to it, and I'm looking forward to it.
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  I think it's probably going to be beyond anything we could imagine,
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  because earth is such a far cry from what heaven is going to be.
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  I think we see glimpses of that in Hebrews chapter 10, when we talk about like
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  Christ and his sacrifice and how much superior it is to the sacrifices that the priests were doing.
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  And I think our heaven's gonna be the same thing. So I look forward to it.
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  The dying part, I'm not too happy about. I'm not looking for that piece,
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  but the heaven part, I'm looking forward to.
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  Even if I have a bench seat, we're looking forward to it. Yeah.
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  What, will we have like a conception of time really?
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  Cause if you think about eternity on earth would be something else. So like. Right.
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  We won't, wouldn't really have a conception of time. I don't think so. Yeah.
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  Because while if Ecclesiastes chapter three says that God has placed in our
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  hearts, a concept of eternity, the reality of eternity, we really don't have.
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  I'm a stickler for time. I don't like to be late for meetings,
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  but I don't think time is at all relevant in heaven.
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  I won't have to hurry to meetings or anything. It'll be so cool. Yeah.
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  And we'd go to worship all the time. Yeah. That'd be great.
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  Yeah. Cool. We had good questions. Thank you. Thank you, Rowan.
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  You did well. Thanks for your answers.
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  And it's good to see all you folks out there.
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  We're still working on this and making it a little better and I think it's coming
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  along well thank you Rowan thank you Don we'll see you guys next time Lord willing.