Big Q&A

How we doing, church? Let's go, happy Mother's Day to all the moms here. You can tell we're gonna do something a little bit different. So we've been in a series called Big Questions where you guys have sent in your questions and you said, hey, these are the questions we're asking. Not only that, but you can vote them up on a Slido app. There's an application that some brilliant mind has come up with where you can vote up, hey, this is my question too. This is my question too. And so next week, we're going to wrap up Big Questions. You're gonna have an opportunity to vote on the final four. Say, hey, I wanna make sure you guys cover this next week. But this week is going to be a little bit of a rapid fire round. And so every year, about every year, we do a Q&A up here, which is just a time where you can ask questions. Well, because we're in this Big Questions series, we know your questions, we've seen your questions, you've asked your questions. And so that's what we're going to do today, where we're gonna take seven of those questions, if God willing, if there's enough time, and work through them and make sure that you guys leave here. So it's a note-taker sermon. You guys know our preference is to take a passage

of scripture, to stay in that scripture, to break it up, so that you leave with a great understanding of a text. Today, there will be lots of scripture, lots of jumping around, lots of questions, going different places. But I do wanna say this. If you're not typically in this room, maybe you're a guest today, maybe mama leveraged everything she had and said, hey, I gave you life, so you're gonna show up today. I want you to know that we gather here, you saw that giant cross on the screen earlier, we gather here around the person of Jesus Christ who died for our sins and raised from the dead. And we're just crazy enough to believe that we're gonna be with God forever in his kingdom, forever and ever and ever, because he paid our way there through his son, Jesus Christ. And it would be just a tremendous miss if we didn't start right there. John, how we doing? Good, man, have a seat. I'm going to. Hey, you know how you know it's Mother's Day today? How you can know for sure it's Mother's Day? Pink shirt, I don't know. I feel like that's where you're going, man. Because you're wearing a pink waffle sweater shirt. Yeah, man, I knew it.

It's only fun if you make fun of my clothes. It looks good, man, it looks good. Timo's doing well, they're keeping up with it. Oh, wow, wow, I don't know. Fashion forward. I don't know that. All right, Q and A, you wanna jump in? Let's jump in. You ready for this? No more jokes, I promise. I can't promise. Number one. Okay, and so these are the questions that y'all ask. Everybody upvoted these through big questions. And what we did is we took the remaining seven and we looked at them and they could be batched into three different categories. It's like relational, apologetics, and then ecclesiology, theology. So that's what we're gonna do. And I believe that these relational ones got the most votes and so we're gonna go and begin there. And the first one is, how do I continue to love, help, guide friends who are a part of the LGBTQ community without turning them away? And as I like read that question, I think, you know, to frame it up a little bit, this isn't written in the question, but I think it's at the heart of it,

is like, all right, I've got unbelieving friends. How do I love them without turning them, like love them towards Christ without turning them away from the church and Christ and the Bible? Said otherwise, it's like, okay, like if they invite me to go to their wedding, it's a gay wedding, like, can I go to that? How do I engage with that? I think that's good enough to start with. So we're starting in the shallow end. Yeah, man, it's Mother's Day. Let's jump in, LGBTQ. Why not? This is a perfect Mother's Day. What in the world? You guys asked. Okay, so it's where John is going, I think it's where I wanna start, is when you go into these conversations, you're trying to discern one of two things. Is this person a believer or an unbeliever? Because your next step is going to change based on the answer to that question. And being a Christian is binary. And so sometimes people would say, man, they're very Christian. My friend is very Christian. No, Christian is binary. You're either indwelt with the Holy Spirit or you're not.

And if someone is not indwelt with the Holy Spirit, then it would be very foolish to hold them to standards that the Holy Spirit would convict somebody accordingly. Like we don't have the power in our flesh to not sin. Like without the Holy Spirit, our inclination, our natural desire, our flesh is to sin. And so with someone who doesn't have the Holy Spirit, you're going gospel. You're reminding them that God loved them so much that he gave his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, as a payment for their sins so that they can be a child of God forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And because you're not gonna go morality. You're not gonna go with someone who doesn't have the Holy Spirit and say, okay, let me teach you how to live now as a Christian so that you can pretend to be one. All right, that's one of the biggest problems in the. to the church today. And so there are two errors about our approach to this specific question, I believe. And so Ephesians 4, 15 says that we are to speak the truth in love. There is the paradigm. There is the spectrum. Every person listening right now, now you need to identify where you're at on this spectrum. You're either, you're error towards truth, you're a prophet, you can be like,

hey, but the word says and this is right and this is wrong, or you error toward love. Like somewhere on that continuum, that's where you fall. And if you error toward truth, which is my ditch, I have to grow and ask God to help me be more loving in my approach. I need to make sure that everything I say and do that my motive is love. And if you err toward love, then you need help to say, okay, at some point, not at some point, I need to make sure that truth is with the love or else love devoid of truth is not love at all. It's a counterfeit. And so here's what it looks like in real life. You believe, you're like LGBTQ, homosexuality is wrong, Bible, I mean, marriage between one man and one woman, you know, and that's where you're at. And you don't know any gay people and they don't wanna be anywhere near you and you've never had them over for dinner and you're just kind of like, you know, it's like, well, you're in the wrong. Like you're repulsive to people that you're called to love. The other error is you're like, oh man, I've got so many gay friends, you know, that's just like they, I'm like their safe place but they have no idea what you believe, you know. You've never spoken the truth to them. You never said, hey, I'm gonna love you, I'm gonna care for you,

because we were like, how do you love somebody? How do you love somebody? You invite them to your table, you identify their needs and you meet them, you share your resources, you send them text messages in the morning saying, hey, this is what I prayed for you this morning. Hey, I just, I wanna remind you of this truth that God loves you so much and you're constantly sharing those realities with them all the time and you mow their lawn, you know, you meet a need, you wash their car. It's like, how do you love somebody? Like this is what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. And then to that last part of, you know, the wedding, which comes up often on Friday Q and A, is I would just say, when you go to a wedding, a Christian wedding, like a wedding with Bible, you are standing as witness that you believe that God brought these two together. And that's why the long tradition is, if there's anyone here that objects, you know, historically, we were given an opportunity to object to the ceremony saying, no, I'm here to not to say, I don't believe these two belong together, right? And so I would only go to a wedding if you have the conviction, a Christian wedding, you have the conviction that the Lord

brought these two together. But I'm not one of those people to say I would never, because there may be some strange nuance where you're given the opportunity to share your faith or as you've prayed through that in the context of community you're doing the hard thing by being present for them in this particular way, because you want them to know this truth. But I think a lot of times we default to that because it's the easy way to say, okay, well, I just don't wanna ruffle any feathers, you know? And then lastly, I would just say, we can't determine obedience by the outcome. Like sometimes we are faithful and it's hard, it doesn't go well. And it doesn't mean you did the wrong thing. You can't always determine obedience by the outcome. What would you add? Man, I would add this one thing is that the question says, how do I engage and treat and love and care for my LGBTQ friends? And I would just like add some other letters to that, like H and P and D and M, like how do I love my heterosexual single friend who's just running through woman after woman after woman and doesn't know the Lord? My drunk friend who's an addict to drugs or alcohol. How do I love my porn addicted friend? How do I love my really just like mean friend?

So I think it can be wrong for the church to be like, all right, there's this subset. What do I do with these people who struggle with same sex attraction versus like, no, it's anybody in sin. Like, how do I love anybody in sin to the fact that they need a savior and not make this the issue, but rather like, that's just an indication of where they are and they need Jesus and to love, pray for, bless. The other thing I would say is like, you be that friend that I know you and I both had. I mean, I lived all my life up into the age of 30, like just dead set on my sin. I thought I could have my cake and eat it too. My sin caught up with me and I was dying. And I reached out to two people that I was like, I know these people are believers and I know they'll tell me the truth. And they were there when my life caught up with me, my sin caught up with me. So be that person. Because sin does lead to death. So eventually, whatever lifestyle they're living is going to catch up with them. When it does, make sure you're the one that you've got that relational equity that they're like, I'm calling that person because I know they'll love me

and they'll tell me the truth. Jesus full of truth and grace. To the woman caught in adultery, I don't condemn you, go and sin no more. I don't condemn you as grace, go and sin no more as truth. And he held those both in perfect tension. So the second question is similar in that it's like, is it sin or is there Christian liberty to wear tassels on male shoes? Let's see, is it? I think we've. It's only fun. No, I want you to look. It's only fun. I want you to look and you tell me, is there sin or Christian liberty to it? That's special for the second service because that wasn't there in the first service. He roped you guys into this too and it's frustrating. Second question, similar and different. It says, how do I love my friends well who are living with their boyfriend, girlfriend or excessive drinking? Now, I believe what's at the heart of this question. The first was like, how do I love an unchristian who's living a sinful lifestyle? This is, how do I love a Christian in a sinful lifestyle? Like they profess Christ and they're living in sin. You know, I'm trying to figure out how to love my friends well

and you're making it really difficult for me. Okay, so remember we said at the beginning, you wanna identify, you're trying to determine, you're trying to discern whether they're a follower of Christ or not. And so this one, assuming they are a follower of Christ, well, the scripture gives us a really clear path to follow. And so if someone's in sin, Matthew 18, 15 through 17 says, we would go to them and we would bring our concern to them just between the two of us, which means we don't vent. We're not, hey, let me just check. Hey, let me just check this with you real quick. Hey, I'm thinking about, hey, so-and-so really frustrated me by, what are your thoughts on this? No, no, as soon as you have that little, something's not right, I'm gonna go to them. Hey, I want to understand how you can do that when you say you follow this and you go in here and you find the scripture that's in violation and you turn it around and you just say, read it. And I have seen God, I've seen the Holy Spirit do some really powerful things with that move right there. You turn the Bible around and just say, hey, let's read this out loud together. Help me understand how what you're doing is not in complete contradiction to what that says. And so what often happens in that, you win them over. They're like, oh man, I see that it is, I repent. If they don't, now you would widen the circle,

you would bring someone else with you. Okay, the next verse in Matthew 18, 15 through 17, you would bring someone else with you and you would say, okay, now just between the three of you, you say, hey, we're here to confront you in this issue. What we see is as you choosing to willfully disobey God. And if you've won them over, which often happens, they're like, okay, I didn't believe you, but now you brought John with you and I'm like, okay, great. And if not, then it says you widen the circle to the church. Now what that looks like here at Harris Creek is every life group has a deacon. What it has looked at at some point, if somebody goes to a different church is we would contact their church and say, hey, can you meet with us? And to both churches would be represented there. We do these kinds of things often. So this isn't just theoretical for us. And so as I say this, like there's a real expectation that this is how you're gonna go about confronting them. There's an often misunderstood scripture. It's in Matthew 7, judge not lest ye be judged. And what I want to make sure you understand is what that scripture, he goes on to say, before you can take the splinter out of somebody else's eye, you gotta remove the plank out of your own eye. He's saying you cannot hold someone to a standard that you're not willing to live to yourself. So this verse is addressing hypocrisy.

Judgment, okay, are we to judge those inside the church? Yes, we are. Okay, you're like chapter and verse that. I'm glad you asked. First Corinthians chapter five. He says, am I now to judge those outside the church? By no means, but am I to judge those inside the church? And the whole context of that particular passage is, yes, absolutely, we are called to help each other, to hold each other accountable. And so this idea that we're not, we are to absolutely judge other Christians, not in the salvific sense, not in a, I'm sorry, heaven or hell sense, an eternal sense, that's only God, but in a sense of like holding each other accountable. That's why we're so big on life groups here, doing life together. We believe that is the biblical model. That is the precedent that the scripture gives us, that we would for sure challenge each other and say, hey, I know. that that's not who you wanna be. And we care for one another, we shepherd one another. What would you add to that? Yeah, Proverbs 24, 11 and 12. It says, hold those back who are stumbling towards death, who are staggering toward the slaughter. If we said we didn't know, like I didn't know, does not he who knows the heart know and will he not reward us according to what we have done?

And so there's this sense where Cain's like, hey, am I my brother's keeper? With, you know, the first murder. And God's like, yes, yes, you are. And you can't just say you don't know because we fall in two spectrums. One, it's like, well, I'm not gonna say anything. Who am I to judge? And the other's like, oh no, I'm gonna judge. I'm gonna judge everybody. And there's this like middle ground. And I think a really helpful process as we're in life group and as everybody's got sin on a daily, weekly basis is for you to go first. It is the take the log out of your own eye. It's James 5, 16, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed. And that's a mutual reciprocal thing. Instead of you just being the cosmic hall monitor appointed by God to point out everybody else's sin, it's like, hey man, this is what's going on in my life that I wanna confess. Anything come to your mind, they may be self-aware and be like, you know what? Yeah, I'm really struggling with my boyfriend or girlfriend, sleepovers, whatever. And if they're not, be like, hey, let me ask this. And what do you think about? Yeah, I think that a practical step you can take in this that I've seen God do miracles through, honestly,

is just say, hey, I don't think that's who you wanna be. Would you be willing to meet with me? Could we start to meet every Thursday at 7 a.m.? And now you're saying, man, I'm willing to invest my life into yours and to wrestle through this with you. I'm not just throwing, I'm not drive by, you know, throwing stones and then keep moving down the road. I'm saying, hey, let's keep having the conversation. And if you're like, well, okay, Thursday at seven, what am I gonna do? One thing truly that I've done is our dear friend here wrote a book, Freedom Starts Today, which is just a devotional that is a path toward freedom. And he shares his own stories and whatnot in there. And so this morning, it's not an advertisement for a book, but I was like, that is an amazing resource we should put in front of the body. That as you do that, just say, hey, meet me at 7 a.m. on Thursdays or Wednesday at 8 a.m. or whatever time works best for you. And let's just begin to work through this resource. And I have seen people find tremendous freedom through that process. Okay, so third question that the body asked, if the first is unbelieving friend in sin, the second is believing friend in sin, the third would be believer or person, and it's not sin, but they're stuck. And so the way that the question is phrased is, how do you help someone who can't overcome stress,

anxiety, or worry? I would add fear, mental. Depression. Yeah, yeah, all the like mental struggles and disorders. So like, how do you help someone there? Yeah, when you're dealing with issues of the mind, like the way that we think, again, I'm trying to give us helpful handholds on how to think about this. I think in two categories, circumstantial and sin. Okay, circumstantial is grief, a bunch of hard circumstances that happen. It could be a brain injury. I mean, literally a car wreck, you hit your head and now your brain isn't working as it should. Or it could be a vitamin deficiency or hormonal or a season of life where your brain's not producing the serotonin or some unexplainable reason where your brain just isn't, you know, the dopamine, the serotonin levels, like that's just off. And so you feel off for any number of reasons. And so I'm kind of trying to determine the one of two things. I'll give you an example. I struggled badly with anxiety disorder in a season, which meant my anxiety caused me to change the things that I was doing.

I had to change my schedule because my anxiety was so high. And I think mine was caused by my own sin. I think I took on too much. I started to shortchange quiet times in the morning, spend less time with God. And I got to this place where something in my brain broke and I needed help. I have a dear friend I do life with closely and they struggle with similar struggles, anxiety and whatnot. And it's circumstantial. Like I don't think they necessarily did anything wrong. It's just, it's something that they live with, something that they're challenged by often. And so you're trying to determine, okay, which one of those is it? Because for me, like what I needed is people to come around me. And he mentioned James 5.16. confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed for the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective. And so, you know, they didn't show up and say, hey, you're in sin. You know, finger, like this is clearly, they asked great questions to help me understand that I got to a place where I had taken on too much. Another great verse here is Philippians four. We talked about this recently.

Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition. With thanksgiving, present your request to God with thanksgiving and the peace of God transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. It goes on to say, whatever's true, whatever's noble, whatever's right, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. And so the scripture, a couple thousand year old scripture is giving us a process, I mean, it's really laying out cognitive behavioral therapy. It's like, instead of being anxious, you can take your worries and turn them into prayers. It says pray, present requests with thanksgiving. It's really like pray, pray, pray and pray some more. And then he says, and dwell on these thoughts. Like what you're feeding your mind matters. Renew your mind around what is true, whatever's noble, what is right, what is pure, what is lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy. And that, you know, that's some of the best science, best psychology that we have today is living out this practice. But all of that has to be wrapped in lots of patience. The word in the Greek is actually long-suffering. So these are not quick fixes. You're not showing up and saying, hey, let me throw a Band-Aid on your open wound.

You're saying, hey, I'm here for the long haul. I'm not going anywhere. And then you start to text that person in the morning and you say, hey, I'm praying this for you today. And you're that kind of friend that, you know, when there's somebody lame on the mat, you're like, I'm gonna stop at nothing and carry you closer to Jesus. Like, I'll put a hole in the roof if I need to, you know, whatever it takes. And I hope every pair of ears listening right now, wherever you're at, if you're listening, I hope you're the kind of friend that you wake up in the morning and you fire off a few text messages and you say, hey, this is what I'm praying for you this morning. Hey, friend, this is what I'm praying for you this morning. We want to be those kinds of friends. What would you add? And I think about Job's friends who, his was circumstantial, it wasn't sin, but they're asking him like, what did you do wrong? This is because of something you did and had no idea what was happening in the supernatural realm, that this was purely an affliction, satanic affliction. And what they needed to do was just to sit with him and to love him, pray for him, support him. Instead, it came as this accusatory thing. So there are those times when it is sin.

I mean, I was depressed when I was an alcoholic. I gave up alcohol, the depression lifted, but there's other times. So just making sure that you're being present in that and not quick to the decision. The other thing, I mean, you mentioned that time when you were going through anxiety. I remember trying to walk into the counselor's office with you and they like waved me off. They're like, no, you can't come in. But the reason why is he's like in the fog of anxiety, depression, stuck in his head. Well, I can see clearly and I can take notes and I can sit there and when the doc's like, well, how are you doing? He's like, I'm pretty good. I'm like, hold on, no, you're not. Like you're not enjoying the things you usually enjoy. Like these are depressive symptoms. And so that's something you can do as a friend. He's like, let me go with you. Like, I'm in this with you. Not just like platitudes, praying for you, but like, no, I'm gonna bear one another's burdens. Galatians 6, one and two. Like, I am walking with this through you. I'm gonna go to the doctor's appointments with you. I'm gonna check in as you start medication. And I'm gonna ask you questions like, hey, anything else in your life contributing to this?

Like, how are you doing with all the different X, Y, or Z? Yeah, so we show up and I'm like, hey, I want you to come with me. You know, cause I can't, I mean, my brain is so fragmented at the time. I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna hold on to what she's gonna say. And we get there and she goes, oh no, I'm not seeing both of you. I mean, you're the client. And I was like, okay, well, then I'm not seeing you. You know, so I changed counselors. Yep, yep. So get in with them, walk together, all the one and others of scripture, like to serve one another, I do one another with honor, love one another, shepherd each other. It's just like so helpful, especially in these situations. All right, changing gears. The next two questions are more apologetics related, which is a defense of the faith. Like you're looking at the world around us and about us and considering how do I reconcile God with science? Here's the two questions. The first is how do dinosaurs and the ice age fit in with the creation story? And does science contradict Christianity? Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day.

You didn't think we were working in dinosaurs today. Ice age, little squirrels chasing the acorn, here we go. Yeah. So there's disagreements around the age of the earth. There you kind of have young earth creation. theory you have people who believe that earth is hundreds of millions of years and where I think we go wrong is when it's like you know when I just said you probably thought yeah you have those who are right and those who are wrong and I think we have to approach this with lots of humility eager eager to learn and open-handed I'm gonna say some things right now and if you're a geologist or a paleontologist you you may disagree with me and you may do so where you're like but I've got letters behind my name you know I've earned the right to have a really strong opinion on this and the reality of it when we're talking about a season that we didn't observe when we're talking about something in history where there's no documented record of it we we don't know what happened before times that we lived in if it wasn't written down and documented closely and I'll just say like when you talk about the age of the earth like if I God created Adam okay and there he is like you know he is presumably 18 25 year old man 30 year old man how old is he how old is Adam he's 32 seconds old and God created him and Jesus's first miracle was what what was Jesus's first miracle he turned water into wine what was the vintage how old was the wine because wine has to go through a fermented fermentation process wine it takes time it you know he was it sat in oak barrels for you know seven years or ten years well no it's 32 seconds old okay so God the you know the first miracle the Creator did was create something with the appearance of age and the first miracle that Jesus on earth did was create something with the appearance of age so somebody goes well why would God ever create something with the appearance of age I was like I don't know but he has a track record of doing so like it seems that he does that and when you look at Genesis 1 and 2 it says in the beginning God created the heavens the earth and it says in the now the earth was formless and empty darkness was

over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters and then verse 3 and God said let there be light and there was light well how much time passed between 2 and 3 because God is hovering over something that is formless and void and it's not like God to create something formless and void so that rock that's there how old is that rock I have no idea how old that is and so that would be a tinge of what some people call gap theory or gap earth or not gap your gap theory and so I kind of subscribe to a little bit of that and and then I would just say man there's many times where I've done what this says and it's been really hard but I've never regretted it and there's been many times where I've not done what this said and because I took the easy route and it was very inconvenient and I regretted it every single time and so when I'm in error of something that I don't know I'm there's there's mystery there I'm just gonna go with what it says and I'm just gonna err towards where I've one day much sooner than I think I'm gonna stand before God and I'm gonna say I just tried to do what you said I just tried to take you at your word and when I have this conversation with somebody it I'll always ask this question because it's very telling to me and I'll go did you know that reptiles grow their entire lives and you know they're one of the only class of animals that grow their entire lives there's some invertebrates that do do and then there's some some kind of fish that do but reptiles most vast most reptiles grow their entire life from when they're born to when they die well what happened in Genesis 6 is some shift where God says now it is appointed for man to only live a hundred and twenty years okay something changed in our atmosphere prior with according to the flood and the Bible documents it how long did man die prior to before this chapter how long did man live sorry before this chapter 700 800 900 a thousand years that's what we see like a thousand years okay well an iguana an iguana grows its entire life it lives about 25 years if it lives seven times longer than the 25 years which John told me is 175 years because he's good at math that how big is that iguana if an iguana is this big at 25 years but it grows its entire life and now it lives 175 years how big is it

and like sometimes you're having this conversation with people and they're like oh I didn't know that and I'm like well how far into your research are you because this is this is wild I mean I'm telling you the scriptures kind of 10 for 10 on this stuff as we're talking about the age of the earth I mean they they'll have these layers and I know you were telling me about you know the poly straight trees they're fossilized trees petrified you see that tree trunk grown straight up through different strata that were deposited that a geologist would say are millions of years separate, that those are different layers of rock over different time periods and you got a tree growing straight up through all of them. Or you've got, we have dinosaurs that we have found with soft tissue that still exists. So collagen, blood vessels, tissue, soft tissue that is still soft. And that makes you scratch your head a little bit given that we just found it. And we're not talking about Antarctica. It's Montana, this was found in Montana. Blood vessels inside fossils that were 75 million years old. And so I'm just like, man, I don't know. And they'd be like, well, you're such a fool. And I'm like, here's the reality. There are brilliant scientists, brilliant scientists, way smarter than me that believe the earth was hundreds of millions of years old, okay? And there are brilliant scientists, way smarter than them, just kidding, way smarter than me,

that believe the earth is about 8,000 years old. And they're both scientists and they both got lots of letters behind their name and they disagree. And so where I'm operating outside of my area of expertise, I'm gonna go with what the scripture says. Yeah, I think one last thing to consider in all these conversations, because people can get really worked up about these things and whether they land old earth, young earth, or whatever that may be, is really, I think this is an X-ray of the heart. As you look into these things, it should stir your affections for God, no matter where you land, like, oh my goodness, this amazing creator. If it turns towards cynicism and doubt, it's probably just revealing a condition of your heart towards the Lord God. And so let that, keep that in tension as well. Like if there's heart drift towards cynicism or if it's like, man, this stirs my affections, like what a God we serve. All right, so next question and related, does science contradict Christianity? Yes or no? Does science contradict Christianity? I've heard people that I respect and agree with answer this and say, no, it'll never contradict. What I would say is yes.

I think there is a contradiction between science as we know it and Christianity. Here's why. I don't think science, and I think this is really important. Very important. I don't think science leaves room for someone dying, being in the grave for three days and then showing back up. That's a supernatural event. So science explains observations in the natural realm. Now, I think one day we'll have a perfect understanding of science and our perfect understanding of science will not contradict Christianity. But today, science would say that's an impossibility that someone can be in the tomb for three days and then show back up. And so we're talking about a supernatural God, a God who extends far beyond our natural understanding or our understanding of natural things. And so that's why I would start with, yes, I think there are contradictions. Now, I think there's lots of explanations and I think there's been times in history where science has disagreed with the scripture and come around only to agree with the scripture. There's lots of reasons that some of our scientific discoveries or the lack thereof are quickly covered up and there's been movies and documentaries about this. But I think that we serve a supernatural God that is not explained through natural explanations.

Dude, there's some crazy stuff too. Like you see in the Old Testament where God's giving these rules to the nation of Israel and he's like, hey, don't blend linen and wool. And it's like, man, that's such a weird, like, why do you care about our clothes? Like, come on, like, we're not gonna eat shellfish or shrimp or the coney badger, but please, could we like knit some stuff together? Well, now, just within the last few years, we have found that certain fabrics have frequencies. Linen has a 5,000 megahertz frequency, wool has a 5,000 megahertz frequency, which aid in healing of the body. And when you blend them, they cancel. It's like thing after thing throughout the scriptures. Circumcised on the eighth day and we learn that our body creates a bunch of vitamin K on the eighth day, an excess of vitamin K, which clots the blood, feels lay fallow. They're like, hey, God's like, I want you to do nothing in the seventh year. And now we learn like, oh, that actually helps the crops be sustained throughout time. When the spirit Jesus and John observed, like, oh, water and blood came out, they wouldn't have had a biological explanation for what was happening in the heart, in the fluid, the water that would separate from the blood. He's just observing it.

And then medical science, 2000 years later is like, oh, that's actually. Here's why. Bible's 10 for 10. Yeah, amazing. Okay, so next two questions we've got. The first is, and now we'll get into theological, ecclesiological, doctrinal, is a megachurch, a biblical New Testament model for the church? We're running out of time, so I'm gonna take these quickly. I would say yes. When Jesus taught thousands gathered, but then in Acts it says 3,000 were added to their numbers, 5,000 were added to their numbers. They gathered into the temple courts, which was the largest gathering space of that time. There was no larger gathering space. And then in Acts 6, you see they have a problem because of the size. And the solution to the problem because of the size is not to break up into smaller groups, but it's to change the leadership structure. And he says, okay, now let's implement deacons so that every person can be cared for and the widows can be cared for. And so in the scripture, it makes room for all different sizes of church. And it says we're, it instructs us to change your leadership structure

so that everyone there is shepherded well. You would never drive by a hospital and say, man, they're too effective at helping the sick, so I'm not gonna go there. What you wanna do is you wanna make sure that you attend a church that is effective at teaching the scriptures and shepherding the people and giving you opportunities to use your gifts. Well said. Last one, it says, why does the Old Testament God seem so much different than the New Testament God? Same God. Malachi says he's the same yesterday, today, forever. Hebrews says the same thing about Jesus. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, forever. Same God. In the Old Testament, we see great acts of mercy and patience. He was so patient with the Israelites. Psalm 103 says he's slow to anger, abounding in love. We learn about the character of God in the Old Testament. And then likewise in the New Testament, you see situations where like Acts chapter five, Ananias and Sapphira seemingly lie about something small and both die. And so the wrath of God falls upon them. So there has to be room in your theology for the wrath and holiness of God, that God is about his holiness, that he is a holy God set apart from us,

that he is an all-powerful God, the most powerful force the world has ever known. And so, you know, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Jesus is there at the very beginning of creation, Genesis 1, 1, Jesus is there. And then likewise in the New Testament, it's the same God. He is never changing. And so sometimes we think he's mean in the Old Testament and loving and kind in the New Testament. And I'm just like, sometimes I'm like, what Bible are you reading? Because Jesus says some things where I'm like, whoa, I don't know if I'd get away with saying that. Yep, totally. The theological term, if you wanted to like look into this more, got questions or whatever, is the immutability of God, the unchanging nature of God. It's two Ms, I-M-M, immutability of God, that he was and is and is to come, his character doesn't change. Why don't you pray this out? Cool, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word that you've given to us by the inspiration of the spirit that was put down thousands of years ago and yet is timeless truth. That's a light to our path, a lamp unto our feet, and that it is useful to equip us for every good work. Not that we would be smarter, that we'd be led by you

and bear spiritual fruit, that we would lead others in this present darkness to find hope in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is him who we worship now and forevermore. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.