Questions and Answers, Part 19

Selected Scriptures

    This is your time.  We want you to ask questions that are on your heart.  Don't be bashful; don't be afraid to ask your question.  At the same time we don't want you to take a long time building up to it so that we can answer as many questions as is possible, okay?  But it's your time and don't feel intimidated.  Just hop up and we'll be glad to help answer your question.  Good.  Let's start right over here on the left.  Give us your name first, okay?

DENNIS:  Hi John, Dennis.  You remember me?  I'm the one that always asks all the questions. 

JOHN:  That's fine, Dennis.  Don't worry about it.

DENNIS:  I have three but I'll get in line behind the others after I ask the first one.

JOHN:  Okay.  Tilt the microphone up a little.  Just tilt it up a little.  There you go, right there.

DENNIS:  From Sunday's message I guess it was in the morning, from Matthew 10:25, words kind of stuck with me and maybe you can kind of expand on it.  Beelzebub, I think it says,

JOHN:  Beelzebub?

DENNIS:  Yeah from Matthew 10:25, "That they have called the head of the house Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!"

JOHN:  Right.

DENNIS:  Can you kind of expand upon that?

JOHN:  All we have in that statement is the words so it becomes a matter trying to interpret what the Lord meant.  There are possible variations of things that He meant so the best you can do is try to fit into the context, okay?  Beelzebub, or Beelzebul, as it appears some other places, is a term that was used by the Jews of that day to refer to Satan.  Basically Beelzebub was the name of the lord of the fly's who was a particular deity of the Philistines, but down through the years that particular name had come to be identified as a title for Satan.  Now it says, "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub," now if you look at the assembly of believing people as a household and it says if the critics and the unbelievers have called the master Beelzebub, and who is the master?   It's the Lord.  Did they call him that?  Yes they did as we find in Matthew 12, they actually said he did what he did by the power of Satan, and that's what that means.  So if they're going to condemn the master of the house, they're certainly not going to be hesitant to condemn the people who are in the household.  In other words, if they would strike out a blow at the highest level, they're certainly not going to hold back at the other lower levels.  So the Christian needs to be aware of the fact that if they call the Lord Himself satanic, if the religionist say the Lord Himself is the ultimate heretic then they're going to condemn us for that as well.

DENNIS:  Thank you.

JOHN:  Okay.  Greg.

GREG:  Yeah, my name is Greg and in James 1:15 it says, "When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."  I've heard three different versions of that particular one.  Is that a lifestyle type of death or is that more of a, or is that a physical death?  I know it's not a spiritual, but is it a physical?

JOHN:  Taking, Greg, in the broadest possible since, no matter what kind of sin exists it brings forth death.  All sin ultimately brings death.  All sin committed by everybody everything it's ever committed ultimately brings death.  In this sense, you can take it anyway you want to take it, lust brings forth sin and sin when it finally reaches its ultimate end brings for death.  You can look at that every way.  First of all, all sin ultimately brings physical death, right?  Every single person in the world is going to die.  It's appointed to man once to die.  Why?  The wages of sin is what?  Is death.  Now the only elimination of that reality is in the rapture, but apart from the people who are raptured, the norm is that all sin brings death, physical death.  Physical death is a reality in the world because sin is a reality.  Okay?  All sin also brings forth spiritual death because all sin cuts us off from God.  Thirdly all sin brings forth eternal death.  In other words, if I sin I am condemned to hell, right?  Now, physical death I will go through.  The spiritual and eternal death can be reversed by faith in Jesus Christ, but even in that sense Christ had to die my death for me and Christ died not only a physical death, but listen to this:  he died a spiritual death too, because he said on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou, what? forsaken me." 

So all sin brings death.  The benefit of the Christian is that the death that it brings for us was borne by Christ so that all we endure is the physical death.  So the point of the verse is just a very general very broad thing.  Now, all sin brings spiritual death, all sin brings physical death.  Take the example of a Christian.  We'll still die physically, but if we go on in sin as in the case of I Corinthian 11 when the believers profaned the Lord's table and some of them slept, sometimes God will use death as a chastening.  But the principle is still the same.  If you're talking about an unbeliever it brings death.  If you're talking about a believer it still brings physical death.  If you're talking about a believer it still brings spiritual death, though Christ dies that death.  If you're talking about a believer sinning it could again bring death as a chastening from God.  The point that James is making is just that sin brings death. 

GREG:  The reason why I asked was because the whole thing is talking about being tempted in that particular portion and I wonder if you would _______reference to?

JOHN:  It's saying don't mess with sin because no matter how you cut it sin brings death and why would you who possess life want to do that?  Now if you follow the text down to the verse 21 now you're talking specifically to Christians, of course, "Put away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness."  How do we know it's Christians?  Verse 19, "Wherefore my what? 

GREG:  Brother.

JOHN:  Beloved brother.  Verse 21, "Put away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your," the Greek word is lives.  And here, I believe, he's saying that you'd better stay away from sin because it'll save your life.  And there he's talking about the punitive or the chastening element of death that God brings in the life of the believer.

GREG:  Okay.  Just one more like a yes or no type of question and that's in Psalms 8 where it says, talks about in 4 and 5 it talks about the Son of God,---

JOHN:  Son of Man?

GREG:  Yes, Son of Man.  "What is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man? And the son of man that thou art visits him for thou has made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honor."  Is the son of man there Christ? Or is that talking of mankind as a whole? 

JOHN:  That's a two-fold statement. 

GREG:  I know it appears---

JOHN:  We know it's Christ because it is in Hebrews, but we know it's talking about man because it's true of man.  In other words, what is man that thou art mindful him, the son of man that thou visitest him?  Why bother with men they're lower than the angels. But that also became true of Christ and is later applied to Christ.  You have that throughout the Psalms.  That is a very common double fulfillment kind of thing.  You have David saying, for example, in another place 69:9 "Zeal for thine house has eaten me up.  The reproaches that have fallen on thee are fallen on me," and David speaks out of his own heart.  And yet when you come to John 2, Jesus quotes that as a fulfillment in his own heart.  So that is a very common thing.  You have David and his enemies in Psalm 22, but the ultimate fulfillment is Jesus Christ and the death on the cross.  So that is part of the pattern of biblical prophecy.  I think there is man there and yet when Christ becomes man he identifies with men's lowliness and it then becomes true of him and that's why it's used that way in Hebrews.

GREG:  Okay.  Thank you.

BOB:  Yes, John, by name is Bob.  You taught back in Matthew when you taught about Jesus going into Capernaum and the centurion approached him and asked him to heal his paralyzed slave and I was just curious about the account in 8:5 it talks that it said that the centurion came to him and I ran into an account back in Luke in Luke 7 it talks about, Luke talks about the same incident.  He talks about the fact that the centurion sent one of the Jewish elders and then you go down further down inside, further into the passage and it talks about the fact that in Matthew the same account is that the fact that later on Jesus came, went to the centurion's house.  In Luke it says the centurion sent one of his servants out to stop him.  How come the account seems a little--

JOHN:  When I taught that passage if you'll listen to the tape you'll see that I harmonized those two accounts and they can be easily harmonized.  The purpose that the writer has is mind is very important.  You see you're touching on a problem known as a synoptic problem.  The synoptics, or the Matthew, Mark, Luke gospels are the synoptics of the life of Christ.  John stands alone because it doesn't focus on the life of Christ chronologically, there's no birth account or anything; it focuses on his deity.  But the ones that focus on his life, the synoptics have variations in many of the accounts depending upon the focus and intent of the writer.  Matthew tends to condense things.  For example, when you received a man's emissary you received the man. Now this was a Jewish concept.  It you received a man's ambassador you received the king.  In this case Matthew was simply saying when you received the man sent by the centurion you received the centurion. 

In other words, Matthew's point is to condense the thing to get at what he wants to get at and if you just compare the passages I tried to do when I preached on it, you'll find that they harmonize wonderfully and that if you just follow the flow there's really no problem at all.  In fact, the apparent discrepancies in the synoptic problem are all resolved if we just carefully study the text.  We've been fighting those things off for years from the liberal critics and there's really no problem. So I would say, I would suggest to you a book that you should buy that would help you a lot.  It's called The Life of Christ in Stereo.  It's written by a man named Chaney and what it is, you've heard of a harmony of the gospels, you can buy a harmony of the gospels where in four columns you get the whole New Testament and they're all laid out beside each other.  But what Chaney did was integrate the four gospels and called it The Life of Christ in Stereo, so that he puts all of the things together so you read the flow of all the narratives in their natural normal chronological sequence, and I think if you read that on this passage or any of those other passages it'll be very helpful in helping you to resolve those kinds of things.

BOB:  Great.  Thank you.

JOHN:  Okay.  Yes!

PAM:  Hi John.  My name is Pam and I had a question about the Holy Spirit, the theology of it.  I would like to know what exactly was the difference between the Holy Spirit in the New Testament and the Old Testament?  Why were only certain people given the Holy Spirit and why did God take the Holy Spirit back from them?  I noticed in Psalm 51 David says, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me."  How did that affect their ministry?  How did that affect a believer if the Holy Spirit was taken from them since we can't lose our salvation?  Apparently their salvation wasn't dependent upon the Holy Spirit at that time.

JOHN:  Well, that's a large question.  There's no difference, first of all, between the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.  He's the same Holy Spirit.  "I am the Lord, I change not."  Right?  Okay.  He's the same and he is always the expressed agent of the power of God.  "The Spirit brooded over the waters and there was creation," in Genesis 1. He is the expressed agent of the creation of God.  He's the express agent of the power of God.  In the life of Christ, Jesus said he did what he did by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And when they said he did it by the power of Satan, he said, "You blaspheme the Holy Spirit not me."  So the Spirit has always been the agency of the power of God expressed.

Now the distinction, I think, is probably best made by our Lord in John 14:17 and he is talking to the disciples and he says, "When I go away I'll pray the Father and He'll give you another comforter," heteras paraclete, just like myself.  And He will abide with you forever, which is better than having Christ around now and then.  But the very statement He will abide with you forever is a very interesting new dimension in terms of the words themselves because such a promise is not made in the Old Testament.  Then in verse 17, "The Spirit of truth in the world cannot receive because it sees Him not neither knows Him, but you know Him," and this is the key statement:  for He dwells what? with you but shall be what? in you. 

Now, at best that I can say, Pam, is that there is then some distinction between the way in which the Spirit of God identifies with the believer in the New Testament.  There is a uniqueness to the Spirit's indwelling ministry.  In fact, it is a mystery in Colossians, Christ where? In you!  That is a mystery, which means what? what is a mystery? something that was hidden in time past and is now made manifest.  There is a newness then in the New Testament in which the Messiah is in you in His Spirit.  "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ," Romans 8:9, "He is none of His."  So now the Spirit of Christ is in us, the Holy Spirit is in us.  He has dwelt with us.  He is now in us. 

Now all I can say is that is the distinction and that grants to us both a fullness, and I want to be careful how I say this, because I don't want to limit the Old Testament men and women, but it grants to us a fullness of power and accommodating fullness of responsibility that is something unique to the new covenant.

Now in the Old Testament we know it will say that the Holy Spirit came upon so and so and he did this and the Holy Spirit departed. And the Holy Spirit came upon so and so and did this and the Holy Spirit departed.  All I can say to you is that the function of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament seems to be defined in different terms, but that does not mean that people, who were drawn to God, were not d