00:00  music by.
00:22  Well, another week has come and gone, and it's time for another episode of The Bible Classroom, and I'm your host, Reid Ashbaucher.
00:30  Well, a lot of things have happened in the world in the last several weeks.
00:33  The United States just went through a midterm election, which brought out some spotlights of some statements made by new leadership that is rising up in the United States in the political arena.
00:48  And as always, we try to discuss what the Bible says, and we try to point out heresies and false teachings.
00:56  And so, something caught my ear this week, and so we're going to talk about that.
01:03  We're going to discuss false theology or erroneous interpretations of the new elected senator of James Tellarico.
01:14  We're not trying to pick on Mr. Tellarico.
01:17  We're just going to work on some statements that were made, and figure out why the statements and why he believes what he believes, and then go on to compare that.
01:29  What do the scriptures actually teach?
01:32  The trick here is that we're going to talk about some things that have been assumed for centuries in the theological community.
01:40  And you're probably going to walk away from today's podcast with more questions than you have answers, because that's the nature of theology.
01:49  As soon as you start digging into certain theological questions, you start raising other theological questions.
01:55  But we don't have the time to go into all of the rabbit trails and all the things that spin off of the subject.
02:03  And sometimes that can be frustrating.
02:05  Maybe we can pick those up if you send me an email saying, hey, I have a question.
02:11  You said this, and can you elaborate more on some point that's being made today?
02:18  And we can definitely go into creating some podcasts to answer your question.
02:23  But today, we're going to look at two statements that were made, and we're going to try to figure out what does the scripture actually say, and why is the statements made, and why do they believe what they believe?
02:36  One of the statements, which has been in the news for a very long time, even before the elections, was that the statement was made that God is non-binary, or that there's no sexes to God.
02:50  There's no male, female, and so forth.
02:52  And if you look into the statement, the line of reasoning that I could find was that, and I'm not sure whether Mr. Tallarico has made this statement or if it came from a supporter of his, but it all came from the same line of reasoning and belief system.
03:09  And that is that the statement was made in the Old Testament that God made the statement that I am that I am.
03:18  It was made with Moses, and it was when Moses said, well, who should I tell them you are?
03:24  What is your name?
03:25  And God said, well, just tell them that I am that I am has sent you.
03:29  And so from that statement, it doesn't reflect any gender.
03:34  And so the assumption is that God is not associated with any gender.
03:39  Well, the way you get that interpretation is by spiritualizing or allegorizing.
03:45  You don't get that from the context.
03:48  Whenever you interpret scripture, you always have to take it in context.
03:53  And as I've always said in past podcasts, for biblical truth to be true, it must agree with all other biblical truths.
04:02  So, why did God in that instance talk about and not reference gender? He just made the statement that, I am.
04:11  He was speaking ultimately to the nation Israel, and in a roundabout way, addressing the subject of Pharaoh and his position in life.
04:22  And Pharaohs in those days, in the Egyptian history, considered themselves as gods.
04:29  That's why they built the tombs, and they engraved all these things in those days, and you have all this history about Pharaohs.
04:38  Pharaoh always saw himself as a god, and people demanded worship, and demanded everyone to bow down to the Pharaoh, which he was almighty and all-powerful.
04:49  And God made this statement because he wanted to reflect to Pharaoh, a human, that he was the only and true God.
04:59  There is no other god than that I am that I am, the creator of all of the world.
05:06  Another name for God is Jehovah, or Lord, as it's translated into the English.
05:13  The purpose was not to reflect binary. The purpose was to reflect power.
05:18  I am the all-power. I am the almighty. I am from the beginning, and I am the end.
05:24  I am the Alpha and the Omega, as Revelation 1.8 says.
05:28  And there is no other god before me, as other scriptures have said.
05:32  And that's why in the Ten Commandments, it says,
05:35  Thou shalt not have any other graven images or bow down to any other gods.
05:39  I am the only god. There are no other gods.
05:42  And this statement was made to Pharaoh to show him that he's not a god, that he's up against the true god, and not the god that the man thinks he is.
05:56  And so how do we know that God reflects to masculine is when you go into the New Testament, Jesus refers to God, the father, as the father.
06:08  He doesn't refer to God, the father, as God, the mother.
06:12  He doesn't refer him as to God of any other gender.
06:16  He refers to him in the masculine as the father.
06:19  And then he goes on and talks about himself.
06:22  Jesus talks about himself, says, I and my father are one.
06:25  Meaning what?
06:26  They are one in nature, and they are one in power and in purpose.
06:32  And so Jesus, the son, is God incarnate and equal in nature with the father.
06:41  If the father is masculine and Jesus is physically masculine, he is also, in the Old Testament, we don't see him, but he is referred to in the masculine.
06:51  If you look at the name of God in the Old Testament, the name is masculine.
06:57  So for anybody to have any other interpretation, you have to spiritualize.
07:03  Now, Mr. Terrellico, apparently, from my research, graduated or attended a Presbyterian seminary there.
07:13  I think it was in Austin.
07:15  Now, the Presbyterians tend to be all millennialists.
07:18  In other words, they're not dispensational.
07:20  They don't believe in a millennium.
07:23  And they get there, similar to Catholics, by misinterpretation of the scripture, by allegorizing, by spiritualizing the scripture.
07:32  They don't take the grammatical historical approach to scripture interpretation.
07:38  And so many times the interpretations are out of context, and then you lose the full meaning and purpose behind what's actually going on.
07:48  The next subject we want to talk about is, Mr. Tallarico talked about the love of God, and we should be obeying God in the sense that if you should love your brother, you should love, Jesus gave the commandment, you should love the Lord God, and then you should love your neighbor as yourself, and then he tied that to his politics, and that we should have open borders, and we should love everybody, and that everybody should be accepted no matter who they are,
08:18  because God's love is unconditional, and we should practice that as Christians, and if we're not practicing that, maybe we're not Christian. We need to focus on that.
08:29  Now, a lot of that all sounded good. I heard the speech online in regard to that, and as I listened to it, it sounded wonderful. It sounded like, oh, that almost could be true, but then it leaves out things. It's out of context to the rest of theology.
08:47  For biblical truth to be true, it must agree with all other biblical truth. So, let's talk about the love of God. Is the love of God unconditional?
08:56  Now, what I'm about to say could lead you down a road that you've been told for centuries that God's love is one thing, but in reality, the scriptures may be teaching something slightly different.
09:11  So, let's talk about that. Is the love of God unconditional? And my response to that is, is what does the scripture say? And so, let's read something. Most of what we're going to talk about today will be found in the book of the Gospel of John.
09:28  So, we'll look at some other scripture, but I think primarily most of what we want to see is in John.
09:35  Let's start with John 14, 15. It says,
09:40  Who is he talking to? He's talking to the Christian.
10:08  And who are Christians? They're followers of Christ.
10:13  But more than that, we read in John 3, 16. It says,
10:20  For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.
10:30  Now, and also before that, in John 3, 6, it says,
10:35  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
10:41  Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again.
10:47  What does that mean? You must be born again.
10:49  It's talking about a spiritual birth.
10:51  Christianity is not just a faith. It's not just a belief. It's not a religion.
10:58  It is a life that is born again out of through Spirit.
11:03  And when you become born again, as described in chapter 3 of John,
11:10  The Scripture says that the Holy Spirit comes and lives and abides in you, as I just read,
11:16  You become a new creature in Christ. You have a whole new attitude. You have a whole new life.
11:22  You are forgiven of your sin, and you are given new attitudes where you can display that to the world in the same attitude that God has.
11:33  And that's where we get this, love your neighbor as yourself.
11:37  We can't do that without being born again, because we're naturally sinners.
11:42  Let's talk about the love of God. Is the love of God unconditional?
11:46  Well, let's talk about that.
11:47  John 3, 16,
11:48  For God so loved the world.
11:50  So here's God loving the world.
11:51  Is that love unconditional?
11:53  It says that He gave His only begotten Son.
11:56  So love actually is an attitude.
11:58  And this attitude is in such that He gave something very valuable, very important to Him, which was His Son.
12:06  That whosoever, so now we have a clause that is conditional,
12:10  that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
12:16  So God is loving, but the love only extends to those who are believing.
12:23  In other words, God loves His world.
12:25  He gives His Son, who died for all.
12:28  And the condition to accepting and having God's love in your life is repentance and faith.
12:36  It isn't, God loves me unconditionally, and now I can go out and sin and do whatever I want.
12:43  And if I want to break the laws of government, if I want to break the laws of man and break the laws of the state,
12:49  if I want to rape people, if I want to kill people, if I want to do whatever I want to do,
12:53  God is going to love me unconditionally.
12:55  I'm sorry, but that's not the way it works.
12:57  It's God loves that He gave.
13:00  He loved so that He could save you.
13:02  And He loved you enough that He gave His Son to die on a cross so that you could have eternal life.
13:08  But there's a condition, and the condition is you must have repentance of your sin
13:14  and have faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, that He died for you and covered your sins.
13:18  Now, how do we know that that's really the case, that there's a condition to God's love?
13:24  Well, let's look at the woman that was brought to Jesus,
13:28  and the Pharisees were trying to condemn the woman for adultery.
13:32  And they brought the woman, and they said, well, we want to stone this woman.
13:36  Should we stone this woman, Jesus?
13:38  And Jesus looked around and said, well, those who have not sinned cast the first stone.
13:46  And no one cast the stone because they all knew they were sinners.
13:49  And He went to the woman, and what did He say?
13:52  He said, woman, is there no one here to condemn you?
13:55  And she said, no, Lord, there's no one here to condemn me.
13:58  And Jesus said, neither do I condemn you.
14:01  But then He made a statement, and He said, go and sin no more.
14:07  There was a condition to the forgiveness.
14:09  Go and sin no more.
14:12  And He made that same condition in other circumstances.
14:15  God doesn't just give blanket love. He gives love to draw. It says God's love is designed to draw people, to draw us to Himself, to show us that we are sinners and that we need Him and that He can save us. And then we repent of that sin and we have faith that Jesus is that our Savior.
14:37  And upon that, the Holy Spirit comes and personally indwells us as individuals. And then we have a new nature in us, which is God, which gives us the ability to live out the Christian life and the power of the Holy Spirit. We can't do that in our own power. It's not natural. We're sinners.
14:58  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
15:06  So, if then there's a condition, but then once you're born again, then God's love becomes unconditional. What do you mean by that?
15:19  I mean, there's a condition to receive God's love, but once you receive God's love and you've met His condition, which is repentance and faith, and you become born again and part of His family, now His love becomes unconditional.
15:34  How do we know that? We know that because the scripture says in Romans, who shall separate, what shall separate us from the love of God?
15:42  And He lists all these things, neither height nor depth, nor all these things are peril, nothing shall separate us from the love of God.
15:50  Meaning what? It's unconditional.
15:51  Once you are born again, you are born again.
15:55  Again, the Holy Spirit says that He enters in you and He will be with you and in you forever.
16:02  You find that in John, I believe, chapter 16, chapter 14.
16:07  So, in one sense, God's love is unconditional, but it's unconditional to the believer.
16:14  It's not unconditional to the unbeliever.
16:19  There is a condition to God's love, and that is, as Jesus said,
16:24  and came into the city of Jerusalem, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.
16:29  Repent and believe in the gospel.
16:30  So, here Jesus is walking into the midst of the people, and He's offering His love, but what is He saying?
16:37  Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.
16:41  He's not saying, I love you, so now go out and do whatever you want to do.
16:46  If you want to cross the border and break man's laws and kill people and maim people and do all the things, I'll still love you.
16:55  No, no, that's not how it works.
16:57  God said that, ultimately, in the end, and let's read that.
17:03  Let's go into, let's say, Titus chapter 3.
17:08  It says, remind them to be subject to the rulers, to authorities, and to be obedient to the ready of every good deed,
17:17  to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.
17:25  For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures,
17:32  spending our life in malice and evil, hateful, hating one another.
17:37  But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us,
17:45  not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy,
17:52  by the washing and regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
17:57  whom He poured out upon the richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
18:01  that being justified by His grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
18:09  You know, let's go on to Colossians chapter 1.
18:12  It says,
18:13  And He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
18:20  For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible,
18:28  whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
18:33  All things have been created by Him and for Him.
18:39  And then if you go to Romans chapter 13, it says,
18:44  Let every person be in subjection to the government authorities.
18:49  Now, we just read that God establishes government.
18:53  So, in other words, God gives the authority, and those which exist are established by him.
19:04  So, all authority is established by God.
19:07  Therefore, he who resists the authority has opposed the ordinances of God,
19:15  and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
19:22  So, if we connect that to the political arena, and I'm not going to make this about politics,
19:27  I just want to show you how theology in a practical way works.
19:31  What God is saying is he establishes all authority.
19:35  As long as it's not breaking or going against God's laws, which is the Ten Commandments,
19:40  in other words, if the government says, you need to go out and murder so-and-so because we told you so,
19:46  and the Ten Commandments say thou shalt not murder, the higher law thou shalt not murder stands,
19:52  and you don't need to be obedient to the government.
19:55  But as long as the government's rules and laws are not against God's laws,
20:01  then God has established that for a purpose.
20:04  And so, we have border laws, and they were established by Congress and by the Constitution in the United States.
20:11  And those who cross the border illegally have broken the law.
20:16  And so, what some politicians are saying is, that's okay.
20:20  We want open borders.
20:23  Well, if you want open borders, then you need to change the law to have open borders.
20:26  But until then, those who cross the border illegally have broken God's laws.
20:33  It isn't, we need to love everybody.
20:35  It's, God holds everyone accountable.
20:39  In other words, there are laws, and here it says,
20:42  for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
20:49  So, if Congress establishes these laws, the government was established by God.
20:53  Congress, not against anything that God has ruled, has established rules and regulations about our Constitution
21:00  and about our borders.
21:02  And those who cross the borders have broken God's laws.
21:06  It's as simple, really, as that.
21:07  It says, and therefore, who resist the authority has opposed the ordinance of God.
21:13  And they who oppose will receive condemnation upon themselves.
21:18  In other words, if the government has penalties, those penalties are righteous and just.
21:24  And if the rules say deportation, then that is righteous and that is just.
21:30  It's as simple as that.
21:31  That's theology 101.
21:33  And it has nothing to do with, well, you need to love everybody and accept everybody as who they are.
21:40  That's not how the love of God works.
21:43  The love of God draws men to himself so that they can accept him and become righteous,
21:48  so that they can become new creatures in Christ.
21:52  Not so that they can feel emboldened to go out and break more of God's laws
21:56  and be emboldened to continue to sin and work against the kingdom of God.
22:01  So if we're preaching that God's love is unconditional, that's not necessarily true.
22:08  Now, God does love everyone in the sense, unconditional in the sense,
22:14  that there is no sin that you can do that cannot be forgiven.
22:18  You can murder, you can rape, you can do all kinds of evil things,
22:23  and you can still repent and come to God and change your ways.
22:28  God will accept you and forgive you.
22:31  But it's not unconditional.
22:33  It's repent and believe in the gospel.
22:36  Well, I probably rattled on a very long time,
22:39  but we need to understand the love of God,
22:42  and we need to understand the scriptures in proper interpretation.
22:46  And you need to take the scriptures in context.
22:49  You can't take a scripture and say,
22:51  well, that's what it says, so that must be what it means.
22:53  Well, in context, maybe, maybe not.
22:58  We need to be looking at the scriptures in a grammatical, historical, hermeneutical way, not in an allegorical way. The scriptures do speak in allegories, but let the scriptures speak in the allegories. Let's not make an allegory out of the scriptures and then claim that that's the interpretation.
23:16  If the scriptures create an allegory for the purpose of helping you to understand something, that's one thing. But for us to go into the scripture and create an allegory where there is none, then we're misinterpreting and misrepresenting the Word of God.
23:36  So, and there are places in scripture, and I was reading today, where Jesus talked in parables. Jesus talked in figurative language. He says, I speak to you in figurative language on purpose.
23:49  And he does that because he just wants certain people to understand what he's saying and hiding the true meaning to others.
23:57  He is granting knowledge to one and not to another. That's more theology than you're probably looking for and confusing, but there's reasons for all of that.
24:07  And just the scripture is just full of mysteries and reasons why and why is this and why is that.
24:16  And there's just so much in scripture to dig into. And that's why it says, study to show yourself approved, rightly dividing the word of truth.
24:24  In other words, one of the hermeneutical principles is scripture explains scripture.
24:30  And so when you, as you read the scriptures, one piece of scripture will explain another piece of scripture.
24:36  But once, but the scriptures never contradict each other.
24:40  If you come up with an interpretation where you have two and three different interpretations, two different scriptures, and they're contradicting one another,
24:50  they're only contradicting one another because of your interpretation.
24:54  You've got a wrong interpretation.
24:56  And so until you can harmonize all of your scripture together, you don't have a correct interpretation.
25:02  So anyone can be in the political arena and claim they have theology training, but do they have a hermeneutical training?
25:13  And hermeneutics is the art and science of scripture interpretation.
25:16  And it is an art for interpreting the scriptures.
25:21  It takes a lot of effort and a lot of skill and not always performed perfectly by many.
25:29  Well, until the next time, may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.
25:35  And may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
25:45  1 Thessalonians 5.23
25:48  And the music you hear at the beginning of this podcast is through freshpiano.com.