Leftover Questions from Q & A Day

Thank you to every one who submitted a question for yesterday’s Q & A Sunday! Unfortunately, we ran out of time and were unable to answer every single question from the stage. However, we’ll quickly tackle the leftover questions on this blog post.

1. Why does God allow trials in my life to test my faith, if in His sovereignty He already knows how I’ll respond (positively or negatively)?

The apostle Peter has a fantastic answer to this question in his first epistle: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” ( 1 Peter 1:6-9). There are some lessons you can only learn in the crucible of pain and hardship. Look at all of the OT and NT figures that we read about and study: Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel, Paul, etc. All of them went through the wringer but the Lord used their hardships for His perfect purposes. It is almost impossible to gauge the strength of your faith until your faith is tested. Even though this testing can be uncomfortable and difficult, it should lead us to thanksgiving and worship.

2. Can you explain what Jesus means in Luke 14:26-27 where He says we cannot be His disciples unless we hate our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children? This seems totally contradictory to His message for us to love one another as He has loved us.

Years ago, I heard a pastor preach on this passage and he said something that has stuck with me ever since: “We should love God so greatly and intensely that our love for other people should look like hate in comparison.” Matthew 10:37 communicates the same teaching of Jesus but provides a helpful perspective with different wording, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” We are commanded to love our spouses, our children, our other family members, and our friends. But they should never usurp the place of God in our lives. He must be our first and greatest love.

3. Is it Biblical to still speak in tongues?

Below is an excerpt from the beliefs page on our website regarding speaking in tongues:

Harvest Bible Chapel is a non-charismatic, conservative, evangelical fellowship that welcomes all who know Jesus Christ as their Savior and all who are seeking Him. Those who claim to possess the gift of tongues and other sign gifts are welcome to worship and fellowship with us if they are willing to be a source of unity rather than division within our church body. We believe that the Christian life is supernatural and that the Lord continues to perform miracles. We also believe that current displays of the gift of tongues distract from the main task of the local church, which is to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission - Matthew 28:19-20

Current displays of the gift of tongues:

1. Give unwarranted prominence to the gift, which is described in the New Testament as being only one of many spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12).

2. Emphasize speaking in tongues as the primary manifestation of the Spirit's work in a person's life, while minimizing the Spirit's work in producing a holy life (2 Corinthians 3:17-18; 2 Timothy 1:9) and a life that displays the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

3. Often suggest that speaking in tongues is a required proof of being Spirit-filled or of possessing salvation in Christ, even though the Scriptures do not teach this.

Harvest Bible Chapel seeks to prevent the propagation of doctrines that would cause divisions within an individual church. Therefore, members to and adherents of Harvest Bible Chapel are not to propagate the teachings and emphases of the current charismatic movement. Although we do not control personal, individual interactions with the Lord, the expression of tongues and other sign gifts are not to be overtly expressed at meetings that are under the organization and authority of Harvest Bible Chapel.

Jesus in the Old Testament

Since December of 2022, we’ve been diving deep into the book of Hebrews as a church. This epistle reveals so much about who Jesus is, what He has done in the past, what He continues to do in the present, and what He will accomplish in the future. Hebrews is such a rich book that constantly points us back to the Old Testament and how Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the promises of God. Many Christians tend to skip over the Old Testament in favor of the New Testament. The NT pages of their Bibles are marked up and worn while many of the OT pages are pristine and even stick together from lack of reading. But I hope and pray that it’s been obvious throughout this seres that you miss out on so much essential theology and blessing when you neglect the OT section of your Bible. By largely ignoring the OT, you are ignoring 75% of God’s Word. The 39 books of the OT are just as inspired and important as the 27 books of the NT. The OT constantly points forward to the person and work of Jesus Christ and this truth is made evident all thought the gospels and the epistles.

The greatest example of this is Jesus’ time with two of his followers on the Road to Emmaus after His resurrection. These two guys are bummed out because of Jesus’ death on the cross and they didn’t understand the true significance of His empty tomb. Jesus plays a bit of a holy prank on them by disguising His appearance from them. He eventually reveals to them that the Messiah had to suffer, die, and then rise from the grave. Then “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself,” (Luke 24:27 ESV). As He sits and eats with them later He says, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was with you, that everything written about me in the Law and Prophets would be fulfilled,” (Luke 24:44 ESV). So, according to Jesus, who is the OT all about? Himself! Jesus perfectly kept the Law of God which we never could. He fulfilled the promises and prophecies written about Him by men such as Isaiah, Zechariah, and Micah. We also see Jesus pop up throughout the OT in two other ways: Christophanies and foreshadowing.

A Christophany is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ in the OT. Below are several examples.

1. The LORD Appeared to Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18:1-33) - In Genesis 18, we are told that the LORD appears to Abraham and Sarah. This visitor who is labeled as the LORD can’t be the Father because the Bible tells us that the Father is spirit and He has never been seen and will never be seen. This isn’t the Holy Spirit because we only see Him appearing in the likeness of a dove and tongues of fire in the gospels and the book of Acts; He never appears in the form of a man throughout Scripture. So, this divine visitor must be Jesus in His pre-incarnate state because no other explanation makes sense according to Scripture.

2. The Angel of the Lord - This special and very specific angel pops up throughout the Old Testament and scholars have different opinions on who this figure is but the overwhelming majority agree that the Angel of the Lord is Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate form. Why do many OT scholars and I believe that this angel is Jesus Himself? There are several reasons: (1) He speaks with divine authority – He often says things that only God could say and even swears by Himself which no angel or mere human being ever does throughout Scripture. Only God could swear by Himself which He did with Abraham according to Genesis 22:16 and Hebrews 6:13. (2) He appears to have to have omniscient knowledge (3) He identifies as God and is often identified as God by those whom He appears to – Hagar identifies the Angel of the Lord as God, in Genesis 22. The Angel of the Lord and the Lord are spoken about as if they are one and the same person. After Samson’s father encounters the angel, he tells his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” (Judges 13:22). When the Angel appears to Jacob in a dream He says, “I am the God of Bethel,” (Genesis 31:13). The Angel of the Lord wrestles with Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32), appears to Moses out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17), and calls Gideon to fight against the Midianites (Judges 6:11-27).

3. The Commander of the Lord’s Army (Joshua 5:13-15) - Before the Israelites’ famous march around Jericho, Joshua is approached by the Commander of the Lord’s army. This must be a Christophany because Joshua bows down and worships at the commander’s feet and He isn’t rebuked for doing so. If this commander was just an angel, He would have yelled at Joshua and redirected this worship to the Lord. But since He was the second member of the Trinity, He accepted Joshua’s worship because he was more than worthy of it.

4. The Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3:8-30) - After Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into the furnace for refusing to bow down before the king’s statue, Nebuchadnezzar looks in to see that not only are these three men not hurt but there is a fourth figure among them. Nebuchadnezzar says to his guards, “I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods,” (3:25).

I’m a big film buff and I love to watch movies; one of the greatest devices of the film medium is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is when a filmmaker or writer warns the audience of a particular plot point or event that will come to pass later on in the story. One of the most famous examples of foreshadowing in film occurs in The Empire Strikes Back. In this movie, Luke Skywalker goes to the planet of Dagobah to be trained by the great Jedi master, Yoda. During his training, he duels with a vision of Darth Vader; at the end of this quick fight, Luke cuts off Vader helmeted head. Once the helmet hits the ground, the mask explodes and Luke sees his own face staring back at him. This foreshadows that Darth Vader is actually Luke’s father which we discover at the very end of the movie (spoiler alert for a 40-year-old movie). In a much greater way, the OT foreshadows or points towards Jesus through many characters and events. Theologians identify these examples of foreshadowings as types; David Murray describes types in this way: “A type is a real person, place, object, or event that God ordained to act as a predictive pattern or resemblance of Jesus’ person and work.” [1] To be clear, types are not allegories; allegories are almost always fictional stories or examples that speak to spiritual truths while types are historical people, events, places, or objects that point forward to Jesus. Below are several examples of types:

1. Jesus is the greater and better Adam who succeeded in all the ways that our first representative failed.

2. Jesus is the greater and better Noah who brought us onto the ark of salvation and saved us from the overwhelming flood of God’s wrath.

3. Jesus is the greater and better Isaac who willingly laid down His life on the altar of sacrifice.

4. Jesus is the greater and better Moses who led God’s people out of slavery to Satan, sin, and death.

5. Jesus is the greater and better Passover lamb whose blood covers us from eternal death.

6. Jesus is the greater and better bronze serpent who we look to for salvation from the deadly illness of sin.

7. Jesus is the greater and better David whose rule over the entire earth will never come to an end.

8. Jesus is the greater and better Jonah who descended into the belly of the grave for three days and three nights but rose again.

I could go on and on with more examples but this post is long enough already! I hope that it’s apparent to you that Jesus is all over the OT and you can spot Him like a Where’s Waldo book if you have the eyes to see. If this topic fascinates you and you want to know more, I recommend two fantastic books to you: Jesus on Every Page: 10 Simple Ways to Seek and Find Christ in the Old Testament by David Murray and What is Biblical Theology? by James M. Hamilton Jr.

[1]Jesus on Every Page: 10 Simple Ways to Seek and Find Christ in the Old Testament, David Murray, pg. 138.

Becoming What You Behold

At 32, I’m beginning to feel the old adage of you are what you eat. As a teenager, I could eat whatever I wanted at any time of the day with next to no consequences. This is no longer so in my early 30s. The short-term and long-term consequences of my diet are obvious and unavoidable. This past week, the Lord has been impressing an important reality upon my heart: you are what you behold. To put it another way, you become what you choose to behold. If you choose to constantly behold morally bankrupt and worldly entertainment, you will become morally bankrupt and worldly. If you give yourself over to mindless scrolling on social media and beholding posts that are empty of value, you will become a mindless individual who has little capacity for critical thinking. If you choose to behold pornography, you will become a miserable slave to your lusts and appetites.

In 2 Corinthians 3-4, the apostle Paul implores you to behold the glory of Christ so that you can become more like Him. If you know and love Jesus, a spiritual veil has been lifted from your eyes by the Holy Spirit and you now have the ability to see Jesus as awesome, mighty, and glorious. Paul writes, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit,” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Please, don’t miss the beauty of this verse. If you choose to behold the glory of who Christ is, what He has done, and what He continues to do, you will slowly but surely be transformed into His image. Day by day and inch by inch, you will become more and more like Him. You will set your mind on the lasting things of heaven instead of being consumed by the fading things of earth (Colossians 3:1-2). You will put off the old self and continually put on the new self (Colossians 3:5-17). You will grow in your desire and ability to love as He loves, to hate what He hates, and to serve as He serves.

You may be thinking, “This sounds fantastic…but what does it mean to behold Jesus and how can I do this on a daily basis?” In this life, we behold Jesus by faith and in eternity we will behold Him by sight. One day all our hopes will become reality and our faith will become sight. The apostle John promises us that “we shall be like Him (Jesus) because we shall see Him as He is,” (1 John 3:2). Try to wrap your mind around this truth. One day you will see Christ as you can see a friend, a family member, a neighbor, your kids, or your spouse. Seeing Him in His full and unadulterated glory will forever and perfectly change you into His likeness. Until then, we must behold Jesus through the eyes of faith. We must behold Him by focusing our minds and hearts upon the gospel and the truths of God’s Word. You will not become more like Jesus if you fail to behold Him in His Word. Beholding Him in the Word doesn’t just involve reading the words on the page but mediating and reflecting upon them as well. This involves memorizing Scripture and digging these truths into the fertile soil of your soul. This involves putting His Word into action. Beholding Christ is a holistic activity that involves your head, your heart, and your hands.

Maybe you’re reading this and your love and affection for Christ has dwindled in recent weeks, months, or maybe even years. Bible study and prayer have become lifeless tasks that don’t excite you as they once did. Church has become a legalistic routine instead of a life giving time of worship, learning, and fellowship. The fire that once burned so brightly is now a fading wick on the verge of blowing out. The only solution is to get on your knees and ask the Lord to fix your eyes upon the Savior and His infinite glory. Hundreds of years ago, the famous pastor and theologian, John Owen, had this to say in his amazing book, The Glory of Christ, “Do any of us find decays in grace prevailing in us; deadness, coldness, lukewarmness, a kind of spiritual stupidity and senselessness coming upon us? Do we find an unreadiness unto the exercise of grace in its proper season, and the vigorous acting of it in duties of communion with God, and would we have our souls recovered from these dangerous diseases? Let us assure ourselves there is no better way for our healing and deliverance, yea, no other way but this alone, -- namely, the obtaining a fresh view of the glory of Christ by faith, and a steady abiding therein. Constant contemplation of Christ and his glory, putting forth its transforming power unto the revival of all grace, is the only relief in this case." Brothers and sisters, look unto Jesus day in and day out. There is no better view in this world or any other. There is no other view that is eternally transforming.

"I Thirst!" - Didn't Make the Final Cut, or “Bonus Sermon Material From Sunday":

Here was a chunk that got cut from “I Thirst”:

Isaiah 53:7 says that Jesus was led like a lamb to slaughter. This points out something else about Jesus being the “Lamb” that is often overlooked: Lambs aren't herded and prodded like cattle – lambs are led. Willingly following. I read that most people who are being led to be crucified have a major meltdown. The thought of what is coming makes them completely freak out, to the point they need dragged. I totally get that! But Jesus was willing to walk Himself, even carrying His cross part of the way – without resisting. No meltdowns. No freak outs. Willingly being led. Not by the Romans. But by His Father.

See you Sunday!

Pastor Jeff