We have such a wonderful church family, and God has blessed us with so many precious gifts.  And every once in awhile, as I think about our church, I'm reminded of a text that came to mind this evening, and it's just a very brief word.  And it says in the Third Epistle of John, Verse 4, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walked in truth."  And I echo the sentiment of John the Apostle, that in terms of ministry, in terms of serving Jesus Christ, there's no greater joy than to know that your children walk in truth.
 
     We teach you the Word of God on the Lord's Day.  We teach it to you through the fellowship groups and through the Sunday school classes, and through the flocks and flagas and seminary classes and seminars and training sessions and discipleship and books and tapes, and every way we possibly can.  We have perceived through the years that you are more noble than most, for you search the Scripture to see if these things are so.  And that's cause for great joy.
 
     And it comes to be a necessity in our fellowship from time to time, to allow you to respond to the teaching, and we've done this through all of the years that I've been here, periodically just giving you opportunity to ask questions.  I think the last time we did it was in February.  It's been quite awhile, at the conclusion of our series on the family.  We had a little time for questions.  We want to do that again tonight. 
 
     Now, you'll notice there are three microphones, one in the middle and then those two on the side aisles, and you can go and stand behind those microphones and we'll just move across from person to person.  You will find there one of our pastors, who will go at this point, if you will, men, and he'll kind of get you organized.  No more than five people at a microphone, all right?  And then you can wait till someone sits down.  Okay, we've got plenty of room in the middle one here, if somebody wants to come around the back or something.  Great.
 
     Now, the idea is not stump the pastor, okay?  I mean, I know you can ask me things that I can't answer, but what we want to do is to deal with things that are of importance, and we'll do our best to give you an answer out of the Word of God.  You know, in the book of Acts, it says Paul reasoned with them out of the Scripture.  It means he dialogued with them.  And one of the great teaching ways is question and answer.  In fact, throughout the early years of the church, there was a developing question and answer mode in teaching.  It became sort of refined into what we know as catechism, which is a series of teachings based upon the question and answer process. 
 
So, we just encourage you to feel free to ask a question, and we'll do our best to speak right to the point.  Keep your questions short.  Don't give us a big, long, drawn out thing or we'll never get everybody's questions answered, all right?  And we'd like you to give us your name, your first name at least, as we start, so we know who we're talking to.  Okay, we'll start over to my left.
 
JERRY:    I'm Jerry Roth, and my daughter, who's a full time student at Lagas told me today that this question has been kind of discussed by some of Lagas students, and she can't be here tonight, so she asked me if I'd ask it.  She wanted to know how Christ, who was the second person of the Trinity, no beginning, could also be begotten of God.
 
JOHN:     All right.  The answer to the question, I think, is found in Hebrews Chapter 1.  The question is how can Christ be the eternal God and still be begotten of God.  I think that basically there's a twofold emphasis there, but you'll note that it says in Hebrews 1, "God, at sundry times and diverse manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets as in these last days, spoken unto us by His son, whom he appointed heir of all things, by who made the world," so forth.  So, God has spoken by His son. 
 
     In verse 4, it says, "Of the son, he was made so much better than the angels, as he hath, by inheritance, obtained a more excellent name than they, under which the angels said He at any time, thou art my son.  This day have I begotten thee, and again, I will be to Him a father and He shall be, to me, a Son.  And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He said," and it goes on.
 
     I think the concept of Christ being begotten is not that Christ as a person was begotten, but that Christ as the incarnate one was begotten.  In other words, He always existed as the second member of the Trinity.  From eternity to eternity, he always existed.  But He was begotten in the sense that He was born into the world, that He took on a human form and there was a beginning of an actual human being, a God man, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
     So, it's there in verse 6, "When he bringeth in the first begotten into the world," and that has to do with the incarnation of Christ. And that, I think, is the point of his begetting, or being begotten, as it were, as a son in the human sense.  Now, let me take you to step number two in that thought.  I also believe that Christ is called the begotten, not only because of His incarnation, but because of His resurrection, He is called the first begotten from the dead.  So that he went into the grave and came out of the grave, He is the first begotten of the dead. Not first in chronology, but first in primacy.  Of all those that have been raised from the dead, He is the primary one. 
 
     So, He is begotten in the sense of His incarnation.  He is begotten again from the dead in the sense of His resurrection, and that is not in any way to say that He did not eternally exist.  For in John 17, He says to the Father, "I have finished the work you gave me to do.  Now restore me to the glory I had with you before the world began."  And there He affirms His eternal nature. 
 
     Okay, good question.  Steve.
 
STEVE:    Hi, I'm Steve.  I would like to - I feel this question needs to be asked, in the sense of clarification to which you talked two weeks ago on binding and losing whatever is bound in Heaven.  I'd like to, in light of what the charismatics have done, I'd like a little example and boundaries of what we can do. It may make some examples from Scripture how we can bind something and how we can lose something, and bound in Heaven and Earth and not get way off on the tangent.
 
JOHN:     Okay, Steve.  The answer to that question is very simple.  The only basis on which we can bind, and that means to forbid, or lose, and that means to permit, is if what is being permitted or what is being forbidden is clearly referred to where?  In the Scripture.  We have no right to go beyond the pages of Holy Scripture and bind things, or that is, permit things or forbid things.
 
     The concept of binding and loosing was a rabbinical concept, a rabbi's - binding and loosing is an old, archaic thing.  It would be permitting and forbidding in our terms, and Jesus said to the Apostles, you remember that whatever you forbid on earth shall have been forbidden in Heaven.  Whatever you permit on Earth shall have been permitted in Heaven.  In other words, He's simply saying when you act in agreement with the revelation of God, Heaven is acting on your behalf.
 
     It becomes difficult, for example, in Matthew 18.  Let's say you know somebody's in sin, and so you want to go to that person and you want to confront them and you say you're bound in your sin.  You must repent.  You must get your life cleansed.  This is wrong.  And then you proceed to discipline the person.  You take two or three witnesses, you tell it to the whole church, and that's difficult to do because you think, well, boy, I hope I'm right about this, because I want to put this guy's name out through the whole church, right?  You want to be sure you're right.  You want to be sure you have the permission to do this. 
 
Some people say, "Don't do that.  It's not loving to do that. Oh, my, don't do that."  Just accept them.  In fact, somebody said to me a couple of weeks ago at the - I guess only a week ago, at the radio conference.  We have people in our church who have gotten divorced, they're remarried other people, and the whole time they've stayed in the church, and the divorce was un-Biblical and the remarriages were all un-Biblical, but the church feels the best thing to do is say nothing, because they don't want to ruin the reputation of the people, make things hard for them, et cetera, et cetera.
 
And so, there is that natural tension, and that's why the Bible says that when you pursue the matter of discipline, you should do so knowing you have the right to permit certain things and the right to forbid certain things, because if they have been revealed as such in the Bible, Heaven has already done it anyway and you're only acting in accord with Heaven. 
 
So, the limit on that, Steve, is the limit of the authority of the Word of God.  Now, the charismatic people, many of them have gone to the point where they talk a lot about binding Satan. Now, that's not in the Bible at all.  That's just totally foreign to Scripture.  There's no such thing as binding Satan in the Bible.  You can't, frankly, permit Satan to do anything or forbid him to do anything.  He is a free individual, within his own boundaries to do whatever he chooses to do, within the confines of God's limitation.  The only freedom you have is to respond or not respond.  But you can't control Satan.  You can't say, "Satan, you can't come here.  Satan, you can't go there, you can't do this."  You're not God.  You don't control Satan.  But you do control your responses to him by the power of the Holy Spirit.
 
So, binding and loosing has really been kind of pushed beyond its Biblical parameters in that sense.  Yes?
 
MARK:     Yes, my name is Mark Sherman, and I would like to ask you a personal question, if I may.
 
JOHN:     Sure.
 
MARK:     In characterizing your own life, what kind of a man do you think you are?  [Laughter]
 
JOHN:     Well, that's a fair question.  6'1 ½, 195, human being like all other.
 
MARK:     If the question's too general, then I - you don't need to answer it.
 
JOHN:     No, I'll answer -
 
MARK:     It's pretty general.
 
JOHN:     Yeah.  I'll answer it.  Let's see.  In terms of the physical, you can see what I am.  We'll get on with that, something else.  In terms of the mental capacities, I have certain limitations, but I learned a long time ago to work hard. In terms of spiritual qualifications, I see myself as a sinner saved by the grace of God.  I see myself as one, who if it weren't for Jesus Christ's sovereign love in my behalf, I would spend forever in Hell.  I see myself as a person with no merit to commend myself to God.  He has saved me, and I thank Him for that.  He has called me into in the ministry.  Again, it's just as gracious as was my redemption, so I have no right to be here on my own, any more than I have a right to be saved.  And so I'm as thankful to God for this as I am for my salvation.
 
     I see myself also as a person who's totally committed, basically, to the knowledge and understanding of the God who has written this word.  And so, I've committed my life to study His Word.  That's the spiritual dimension.  That doesn't mean I don't sin.  That doesn't mean I don't fail.  It doesn't mean I'm better than anybody else.  That's not the case.  It's just that I have a unique calling.
 
     In reference to this church, I s