Jesus vs. Culture: The Hard Truth

Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc/questions. If you find this resource helpful, please rate and review the podcast so more people

can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know somebody who can benefit from today's topic or has questions like the ones that we're answering, please share this episode with them.

My name's John, I serve as a pastor,

I'm here with Mitch, who's also a pastor, and we love to answer some good questions. Yeah, we do. And today we've got some really good ones. I'm actually really excited about this. We're not so much following a specific topic,

but we're just gonna be kinda bouncing all over the place, and I'm really excited about these questions. So let's jump right into it with the first one. This is a question that we've had before and we get quite often. And so we're gonna answer this again.

It's an important question. Here it is. Did Jesus descend into hell? And that question comes from probably that phrase in the Apostles' Creed.

What would you say to that, John?

Right, that is a question we get asked all the time. Actually, I would say that usually I'm watching the Q and it stacks up probably three or four times before we answer it because I think we've answered it like once a year for the last couple of years, and so we try to not answer it over and over again.

Maybe we should, we love answering it. Yeah, totally, always happy to answer it. It's a really good question. It's an important one to understand and know. One of these days, we're gonna have to create like a frequently asked questions library

where all those can go. Yeah, okay, so did Jesus descend into hell? So going back to the Apostles Creed, so if you're looking at the Apostles Creed, if you're reciting it in a church service like we do before we celebrate communion each time, you probably read that line or actually for us we substitute a different line that is that does have history as well. He descended to the dead. So even to start there,

so in the Apostles Creed, some of the earliest copies of the Apostles Creed that we have. We don't have the original. It wasn't actually written by the Apostles. It was written by people following them, but early on, first or second century, somewhere in there. John, for those people who maybe are unfamiliar with the idea of a creed, what is the Apostles Creed? Why is it important? Yeah, good question. So it's, so creeds and confessions, we say, are helpful tools. They're not the Bible, but they're helpful tools that help us either explain the Bible or

answer important questions about the Bible. So like the Heidelberg Catechism, for example, is in question-and-answer format. It asks questions like, what is faith? What is baptism? Things like that. Questions that we answer on the show, actually. People have been asking for hundreds, a couple thousand years, you know, it's not new stuff. Yeah. So yeah, the Apostles' Creed was a very early creed that was designed just to help Christians be able to recite. These are some core things that we Christians believe. Yeah, and they usually come out of some sort of

theological controversy, right? There's some sort of question about Christianity and then Christians come together, they form a consensus on that, whatever issue it is, to bring clarity for people. And so that's why this question matters a lot.

Did Jesus go to hell? Because I think it really raises the question of, did Jesus accomplish it all at the cross or did he have to go somewhere else and accomplish more? Because at the cross we're talking about, at the cross Jesus pays for our sins. That's what we're professing, confessing.

So did that all happen at the cross or did Jesus have to do some more later? So when it comes to this question, we at Peace Church, where we get to serve as pastors, we when we recite this, we say he descended to the dead rather than he descended to hell. Yeah. And the reason for that is because we believe, looking at scripture, that Jesus suffered it all on the cross. Yeah. There was no more hell to be suffered after what Jesus did on the cross. He says on the cross, it is finished. He says

to the thief next to him, today I will see you in paradise. Okay, so both of those things tell us that Jesus pays the entire payment for our sin on the cross. And then he says that he's not going down to hell. He's actually going up to be with his father in paradise, paradise and hell, two very different things. Yeah. Not the same thing. Right. So, um, we do have some passages in scripture. I think at first Peter three,

there's a very tricky passage there. I'm preaching through that book and come to that passage. Very tricky. Um, about maybe Jesus, Maybe that message is telling us that Jesus went down to Hades or hell or Sheol to declare his victory. If he did so, maybe he did so,

but if he did so, he didn't go there to suffer anymore. That's the key thing. So maybe Jesus went and declared his victory to the souls who were dead already and there, but he definitely didn't go to suffer further. He was finished on the cross.

Yeah, I think that's also a really important thing about how we understand and interpret scripture, right? There are some pretty clear passages that you just mentioned, like the idea, or the statement that Jesus made about that him and the thief on the cross will be in paradise.

That's pretty clear, right? The passage that you just talked about is a little bit more murky, right? And so it's important for us to use the clearer parts of scripture to help us understand the parts that are a little bit more confusing, right?

So it'd be the wrong way of going about it is saying, let's look at this murky piece of scripture that isn't super clear about what happens when Jesus is doing this and say, okay, now let's form doctrine around that in a vacuum and not looking at the rest.

Yeah.

Right.

Totally.

And that can be easy to do, but it's an important thing for us to look at the most clear parts of Scripture first and then go from there. So I can imagine somebody listening saying, well, I'm concerned that we're moving away from what I was taught was the original reading of the Apostles' Creed. So I can understand that concern, and that's why I bring up the history, and hopefully that helps just to understand that we're not actually deviating from the quote-unquote

original reading of the Apostles Creed, that we have copies that say several different things. Some that have none, nothing, you know, just simply no line at that point. Some that say he descended to hell and some that say he descended to the dead. Yeah. So we've got multiple options there in the history of the Apostles Creed itself. And then of course, more importantly, the Bible, God's Word, the true authority, tells us some things that tells that Jesus did not suffer further

in how he actually bore, not just physically, but spiritually, the wrath of God. The wrath of God was poured out on him at the cross for us. And actually, we usually, when we look at it, there's not like a verse that specifically says this, but usually, you see in the story, in the narrative, that time when it goes dark in the middle of the day,

usually we kind of think of that that's probably the time when in some sort of spiritual way that we can't fully understand that when God the Father is pouring out all his wrath for the sin of his people on Jesus and he's bearing it. And that's traditionally understood as Jesus symbolically taking, not even

symbolically taking, the wrath is suffering hell, right? That's what hell is. It's suffering the wrath of God for sin and for evil, and that's what Jesus does on the cross, is that he literally takes hell for us. Kind of off of that idea, then is it wrong to say that Jesus descended into hell in church? Say that there are pastors here listening or other church leaders, is it wrong to say descended into hell?

I think if you're going to say, if you're going to use that version of the Apostles' Creed, I think mentally you've got to kind of think of the other thing. You've got to kind of think, I believe that he went there to declare his victory. And again, we can talk about that passage is kind of, I don't know, it's really tough

to understand exactly what's being said. But I think if you're going to say it, you've got to kind of mean that in your mind. So I'm not saying everybody who says it is, is that that's awful, but you should probably clarify for people

what that really means.

Because it can be confusing.

Yeah.

That's why we get the question.

And that's why we use the version that says he descended to the dead. Yep. Because he certainly did that. That's a little bit ambiguous as to what exactly that means, but he certainly did that versus the hell component of it. Yeah, that's good. All right, let's jump into this next question. Here it is. The Bible seems clear on prohibiting same-sex interaction and and marriage. What do you have to say about this topic? What should our

approach be to those who are struggling with either same-sex attraction or pushing for full acceptance from the church on this topic? Yeah, great question. Another one of those that we get quite frequently, we have it in episodes about, but want to try to provide another concise answer for people who are asking. So the Bible is clear, like the the question asker mentioned, the Bible is quite clear on this topic in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Think of passages like Leviticus 20, think of passages like Romans 1,

like 1 Corinthians 6, where it specifically names out homosexual behavior as listed as something that is against God's will, that is something that is not something that God prescribes for human beings. So the Bible is quite clear about that. So then the rest of the question is, then how do we treat those people? People who are struggling with same-sex attraction,

right, I think is what the listener asked. Yeah, well, can I ask a question here, quick? What would you say to people who say, you know, here you say those verses, and say, well, those are the verses that everyone uses, the church always uses against the homosexual community,

LGBTQ community, that they're kind of bully passages. What would you say to that? Well, all of scripture is God-breathed. So, you know, do we repeat ourselves in quoting some of the same passages? Yes, but that's because they say it. It's because they're the relevant passages, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to try to find a different verse for each time that I talk about the topic, right? There are some key verses.

I think we could go further and talk about all the positive, so those are some negative ways that the Bible talks about homosexuality. We could also talk about the positive ways that the Bible talks about heterosexuality. The Bible's prescription from beginning to end

is that a man and a woman together forever is God's design for marriage. So we could talk about it in a lot of different ways and see that the whole Bible is consistent about this from Genesis to Revelation. But if we want to jump to just which passages

are explicitly clearest, that's why we keep jumping to those because they're really clear. Yeah, it'd be like saying, if we're gonna talk about lying, it's not wrong for us then to quote parts of the Ten Commandments. Right.

This is where the Bible talks about this. It's not unloving against liars. Sure, right. We want to hold the truth in love, right? So we got to hold to what's true. We can't, you know, compromise on what's true and we want to do it in love. So go on to the second part of the question then of how do I

believe. Yeah. Sorry Andrew. No, it's good. You know, how do we treat people who have an attraction to people of the same sex? So that's another thing we have to talk about, right? Is there's homosexual behavior, which the Bible says is sin. But then there are people who struggle with a desire, an attraction to people of the same sex. And so, you know, how do we care for those people? How do we love those people?

How should those people then live? You know, I think when you look at the Bible, then they've got to be able to say, hey, I've got this desire and it's out of sync with God's design for me, for men and women, for marriage, for sexuality, right?

And so that's really hard, and yet, to other degrees, all of us have that to some certain extent, right? All of us have some desires that are against God's design, because after Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, broken, fallen world, unfortunately we have sinful natures. So all of us have desires that are against God's design, and we have to fight against those desires in order to live in obedience, in accordance with God's will.

Now, I wanna just say right away, for the same sex-attracted person, I can't imagine the difficulty of that, fighting against that desire, knowing that that's not God's will, and yet that's God's call for his followers, his disciples.

And so for us as a church, then, we wanna love and support, if they're Christians, those brothers and sisters, and say, hey, brother and sister, we wanna come alongside of you, help you fight against those desires,

help you live in accordance with God's design. We're here for you, we want to support you, pray for you, give you a helpful friendship as you fight that fight. And for those who are not yet followers of Jesus, we want to communicate the truth and do it in love. So we want to, I want to, just like I'm doing now, I want to be open and honest and say, yeah, the Bible says that that's not God's design, that's actually not what's best for

you or for others. And so I want to actually invite you into what is better for you, which is God's good design. Come to Jesus, put your faith in Him, receive Him as your Lord and your Savior, walk with

Him.

Yeah. I think sometimes we are so, like, sometimes we dance around this so much because there's such a pushback from people on this issue. That, you know, I think it's fair to say, just because something is hard, just because something is hard does not mean that then we can go against God's word, right?

The desire for same-sex attraction is bound to be very difficult, but that doesn't give us a license than to just say, well, it's hard, so I can do what I want here. You know, there are, with any number of sins, people who genuinely struggle.

You know, I'm sure that there are people who genuinely have difficulty with gossip, right? But it would be wrong for us to say, well, we know that this is hard, and God, or you know, that maybe you even feel like this is the way that God's designed you

to be prone to gossip, to want to gossip, that it's natural for you. It would be wrong for us as a church or for us as pastors or Christians to then say, yeah, let's just, you know, it's hard for you, so it's okay if you keep doing it.

Sure.

You know?

Sure. Yeah. One of the other questions I've heard raised is, why do Christians pick on the LGBTQ? Because, you know, maybe the fact that we're addressing this question explicitly right now,

or the fact that we sometimes do talks on this, they say, you know, why are you talking about that, and why don't you talk more about gossip, like, you know, example that you brought up. Yeah. Well, hopefully we do talk about both, right?

We should address both, we shouldn't, you know, no sins are okay. Yeah. You know, all sins are outside of God's design, so we should talk about all of them and address all of them. One of the interesting and unique things about the LGBTQ, the homosexual

conversation, that part of it, is that I don't know many people that are gossiping or lying or stealing or murdering and saying, this isn't bad, this is great, and in fact, the world should accept it, promote it, and embrace it. Or even the church, right? To say, you know, Brian and I, our producer, we were talking about this earlier, kind of an idea for a video. Imagine someone coming in and talking with a pastor saying, hey, I really want to be a Christian, but I also really want to continue to steal.

Yeah.

And like our response would be, no, no, like the Bible says this is wrong. We'd go to scripture, show them where it's wrong. That wouldn't be unloving. We'd say, this is something that you need to repent of. If you want to follow Christ, you can't continue to do this regardless how much you like to do it, regardless how good you are at it. It is something that the Bible says is wrong. And that wouldn't be unloving. That wouldn't be wrong for us to say, again, regardless of what it is. Yeah. Jesus says repent and believe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that's I

think that's what's unique about, yeah I think the tail end of the question, right, ask the question about what about those who are advocating for... Yeah, for full acceptance from the church on this topic. Gotcha. Yeah. And that's one of the situations where, you know, that question that that were acceptance I think is an interesting one because, you know, I try to be careful around it. Are we welcoming?

Yes, we are very welcoming. If you are living even an openly homosexual lifestyle, please, you are welcome at the church. Please come and hear the gospel and hear the good news. Learn what this Christian faith thing is about. But are you affirmed in it?

No, just like none of the rest of us are affirmed in our sin, right? If I come as a liar, a gossiper, a slanderer, whatever it is, none of us are affirmed in our sin. All of us are welcome, none of us are affirmed. And so that's the thing is that, yeah, we talk about it and it's a little unique because

there are so many advocating for it to not be called sin. And that's the thing. That's why we have to talk about it, be really clear about it because it is sin.

Yeah.

Well, what about churches who are affirming, right? Isn't that confusing for Christians? Sure, then you get that whole, yeah, yeah. That's very confusing. Because there are churches, there are pastors who say, this isn't wrong, you're welcome here.

You know, how do we deal with that? How do we, how should Christians understand that? Yeah, and that's why we go back to the Bible, right? The Bible is the authority for the Christian life. It is God's word to us. So, you know, we as pastors or whatever, we can't just declare, we don't just declare

what is true and what's not. We are people who teach what the Bible says. So that's where we as Christians come back to. And so that's how we explain the difference, that there are some churches that embrace it and it's because they're out of sync with the Bible. Yeah.

And I think that can be a scary phrase for people, but there is value in understanding how has the church understood this over the life of the church, right? It's only within the last couple of decades that churches have been open and affirming and saying that this isn't sin. Right. Anytime you're teaching something, so churches have been around for roughly 2,000 years, right, since Jesus resurrected and ascended. If you are coming out saying,

here's this new teaching that the church has never said before, and here it is, you're probably in the wrong place, right? That's usually not good. There's nuances that we learn over time,

things like that, but there's not like brand new, nobody's ever said this, thought this before, that's not really something that's happening. So when you come out and you say, hey, you know, just recently,

now suddenly the church does embrace this and the Bible never actually said this and all that kind of stuff.

Watch out.

Yeah, it's also a crazy way to view God, right? It would be such an unloving thing for God to say, hey, I've given these people this doctrine for 2000 years, but they've screwed it up, they never understood it. They've mismanaged this idea, and 2,000 years later, then I'll correct it.

Then I'll teach them what's the right way to live and the right way to do church. I mean, I think that would just be such a crazy way to view God that he's like, you know, I'm just gonna let them really genuinely hurt people. I mean, if this is true, if this is okay,

I mean, the church then has done something very, very wrong for 2,000 years against a group of people. And for God to be like, yeah, I'm just going to let them do this whatever, but we're going to correct it 2,000 years later, would be such a hard way to view God.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. I mean, we're always reading and better understanding scripture, but like we said, a major, I mean, that would be a royal screw up.

It would, yeah.

And, you know, and that's the whole thing, right? Everybody, you know, we don't believe only pastors can interpret the Bible. We believe everybody has the opportunity to read the Bible and interpret it. There are, you know, methods that you need to understand, you know, we call it the historical grammatical method, you know, which is basically just reading a book as it was designed to be written.

You know, understanding the context, not just plucking random verses, you know, all those kind of things. So read it according to that way, but I'd encourage you to just go read those passages, think about it. I think they're quite clear.

Yeah. If no other church fathers have said this before, it's probably a bad thing for you to start adopting it. Sure. All right, enough on that. Let's jump into our next question.

Here it is. Is it wrong for a church to say the Pledge of Allegiance or to sing the National Anthem in church? This is a really good question. Yeah, yeah. And there's another one of those again,

but I feel like we get asked, I know I get asked at least a couple times a year. So I'm glad to get to answer it. So let me start by saying this.

Before we get into that,

the question is, do you think the National Anthem is a hymn? I've heard people say that, that it's in a hymn form.

Hmm.

What makes something or doesn't make something a hymn? Whether or not it has a chorus.

Really?

That's the definition of a hymn? I am not a very musical man. It's not really relevant to this conversation.

I don't know.

I have no idea. It's a song. It fits in that category, right?

That's all I got.

Yeah, I wasn't a music major, so.

Nope.

Yeah, I got nothing.

Yeah.

So, should we do the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the National Anthem in church? Yeah, so great question. So, let me start by saying this, is that I love our country absolutely dearly and- You were never a communist.

That's true.

You were never part of the Communist Party. No, no, very much no. So, whenever I'm at a sporting event or something like that and I get to sing the national anthem whenever I get the opportunity in the right places to do the Pledge of Allegiance I am honored to do so I love to do so I get tears in my eyes I get a lump in my throat when the Star Spangled Banner is getting played so I love our

country and I'm so thankful for those who have bled and died to protect our country protect all the beautiful things that we get to enjoy and be a part of in this country yeah so all those things are true.

It's not wrong to do that as a Christian, right?

We should love the place that we live and have a firm affinity and love for our area. There's nothing wrong with patriotism. Absolutely. Yeah, loving your country is a great thing. And the church is not a national organization. It's a transnational organization.

It spans across many nations. When we come together as the church, we don't come together under the flag of any one country. We come together under the banner of Christ. So that's the thing is that every Memorial Day, every Fourth of July, every sporting event, I love to sing the national anthem and I get teary-eyed about it. But when I come to church, I think the only appropriate songs to sing are about Jesus the King of Kings. That's what that gathering is designed for.

Yeah. Alright, explain that a little bit further. Why is it okay to do it at a sporting event but not at – why can't we do that at a worship service on Memorial Day weekend? Yeah, well, because, you know, as Christians we are parts of several kingdoms, right? We're part of, all the time, most importantly, we are part of God's kingdom. Yeah. And so, and, you know, the church is his body and a reflection of that. But we are also part of these other kingdoms, or we call them nations. Yeah. Right? And so it's okay to have multiple loves and even allegiances,

although you always have to have the ultimate allegiance, your highest allegiance is to Jesus. You know, I have different allegiances in my life. I have them to my family, to my friends, to my workplace, to my country, to my God. You know, I have all of those allegiances

and yet there is an ordering to them. And there are certain places, different places where I acknowledge them in different ways. Yeah. Right, so yeah, at the Memorial Day Parade, which we, every year we love to go to the Memorial Day

Parade, we have our kids come with us to the cemetery afterwards and get to sit to remember in that way, those who died to, and sacrificed to protect the freedoms that we have in this country. And extremely thankful for that. So we have that moment where we get to celebrate that. And then we have when we come together as a church

and we're remembering Jesus' sacrifice. So, you know, we do do things in church like we pray and give thanks for the freedoms we have in this country. We do pray and give thanks for those who have served and sacrificed and died. But in terms of actually, you know, having a song or a, what would you call it? The Pledge of Allegiance is kind of like a liturgy, I think those got to be just focused on Jesus when we're gathered as the church. Yeah, right. And there have been questions about this for a long time, right? A lot of these questions that we have aren't new.

In Reformed theology, this is called the regulative principle. Please don't shut off the podcast yet. I'll explain this. That principle really just means we should worship in the way that God has called us to worship. Not just called in the general sense of like, I feel called to be an electrician or whatever. How he's expressively told us to worship him in the Bible.

In his word. Right, so things like we should always preach the word. That's part of what he's commanded us to do. We should always sing, we should always pray, we should always tithe, we should always have, you know, it's always appropriate

for us to do the sacraments, right? Those are always good things for us to do.

But it doesn't talk about calling us

to do something towards a nation. And I think that's an okay thing for us to say, you know, that would be an inappropriate time for us to do that. If you want to do a community event later, or even something outside the church,

I think that's a little bit different, but if you're calling this a worship service, probably shouldn't do something that is only-

Let's say that, the idea,

we call it a worship service because it's designed to worship Jesus, right? That's what we gather for.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right, our next question is this. If someone says no to the Lord so many times, probably what they meant is very many times, can he or she still be saved? Yeah, so scripture has some pretty strong warnings

about this, I think of Hebrews chapter four, Hebrews chapter six, I think of where Jesus talks about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So there are some warnings in Scripture about repeatedly walking away from the Lord, repeatedly denying his power, repeatedly rejecting calls to repent and believe in the gospel and the good news. So you know that is an extremely serious thing to hear the Lord's call

and to say no. Because that's what I'm assuming when I hear that question is that there's somebody who's hearing the Lord's call, they've got a friend or a pastor or somebody who's sharing with them the gospel message and inviting them to respond and they're saying no. I think Scripture lays out for us, gives us examples that that just makes our hearts harder. The more that we hear the

invitation of God and say no, the harder our hearts become because we're fighting and running away from God. Now Scripture also tells us that God in his grace and mercy runs after us. So all of us are born with rebel hearts that want to go against God, that want to run away from God. And so God in his mercy and grace runs after us. So in that way, I mean, nobody's beyond the ability of God to reach them, right?

God can run any one of us down and save us by his mercy and grace. Praise God. And yet, so that's kind of the tension, is I guess my answer to the question is, no, you can't become beyond God's grace, and yet repeatedly rejecting the Lord is not a good thing. That's bad. Yeah, when I hear this question, I hear the heart in it, where someone's saying, if I've witnessed to someone so many times, is there a point, maybe this is what they're saying,

is there a point at which I should just say, you know what, I've done this so many times, they haven't accepted this, you know, I can stop now.

Right.

And the answer is no.

The answer is no, because we believe God is sovereign over salvation, that God is the God of salvation. He's the one who decides, he's the one who changes hearts. So maybe it's gonna take three times sharing the gospel, but maybe it's gonna take 300. Yeah, that's one of those things that it's not,

it's the beautiful part of the gospel that it's not on us, right? And as pastors, that's even more affirming, more comforting, especially when you make a call for people to accept the gospel and then nobody does. Sure.

I've felt as a young pastor or a young person in ministry doing that and going like, man, I must have sucked. But the truth is it's not on me to change hearts, right? God is the one who does it. The Holy Spirit is the one who does that. It's our job to proclaim the gospel,

to share the good news about Jesus, and let the whole community. We've got some great examples in the scripture of, right, the prophets repeatedly went to people, shared what God told them to share, and they were rejected.

Right, the prophets suffered so much rejection, and so, yeah, we don't get to give up. Right, on the onset of his call, God says, you're gonna go and do this, and nobody's gonna listen. And yet it was still his call to do that.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, if somebody's heart does become harder and harder and harder, that's between them and the Lord, that's not for us to discern and say, well, I'm not gonna share the gospel with them then. It's always our call from God to share the gospel

and to pray for the Lord to do something with that.

Yeah.

Don't be discouraged in your evangelism and your call to share the gospel.

Yeah.

We've got three questions left and let's kind of lightning round these. Here they are. Was it Jesus' suffering or his death that actually paid for our sins?

Hmm.

Yeah.

Interesting question.

So I think in some ways both, right? It's really both, but ultimately death is what had to be paid. Yeah. So, yeah, he couldn't have just suffered, he had to also die.

Yes.

We see throughout the Old Testament, right, the sacrifices, death is what had to be paid for sin, right? That's kind of the penalty, that's the price, and so, ultimately, while both of them contributed, ultimately, his death is what pays for our sin.

Yep, absolutely. Second question, what are hedge laws?

How could this occur in the church today? Yeah, hedge laws, so we're thinking of the Pharisees, right, the Pharisees built a hedge, an extra layer of protection, although ironically, have you ever seen a hedge? They're not very protective, right, it's just a bush.

But they try to build an extra fence around the law. So can that still happen? Yeah, people can still try to draw fences around the law. Any examples? Off the top of my head, one that just kind of obviously comes to mind,

and I hate to pick on this one, but it is there. When people say that Christians can't drink any alcohol, that that's against the law, that that's sin, that's not actually the case. The Bible says that drunkenness is sin. But can you have some alcohol? Yes, you can. So when people say no alcohol, never, none whatsoever, that is kind of fencing the law. And I'm sure there are other examples as well. And it stops you from drinking orange juice.

Orange juice is a naturally fermenting thing. So it's just, that would be hard. I like orange juice.

No problem.

Yeah. All right, last question.

How do people get into heaven pre-Jesus?

Yeah.

Or pre the incarnation, I assume. Yeah, great question. We're actually gonna do a longer episode kind of related to this topic, where we're gonna talk about the relationship between the Christians,

between Christians and the law in the near future here. But the short answer is they got saved in the same way that we get saved. They did not get saved by their works. They didn't get saved by following the Ten Commandments or Moses' law or through the sacrifice of bulls or goats.

The book of Hebrews tells us, Hebrews chapter nine, that those did not actually take away sins. Those were symbolic, that they were foreshadowing, leading towards. So actually, Old Testament believers were saved by the life-death resurrection of Jesus.

They just didn't know that his name was Jesus. They didn't know what exactly he would be like, but they were looking forward to the coming of a Savior who would die to take away their sins. And so they died, or they were saved by that same faith. They were just, it was, they did it before Jesus. We do it after Jesus is coming. Yeah. And if you're looking for a verse for that, Romans 3 lays that out that but it was in his divine forbearance

to pass over former sins. So Jesus comes, saves those in the Old Testament. Yeah, it's awesome. Great stuff, great questions, great conversation. Awesome, well hey, thanks everybody. Do us a favor, like, follow, subscribe

on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. Resoundmedia.cc. Have an awesome week, everybody. Have an awesome week, everybody.

the next, video!!