The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon. We take your phone calls during this entire hour if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or a difference of opinion that you hold contrary to that which is expressed by the host and you want to balance comment or correct it or do something like that, feel free to give me a call.

We'd be glad to talk to you. I'm looking at a switchboard that has one line open right now. This is a good time for one person to get through. The number is 844-484-5737. I'm going to give that again: 844-484-5737.

A few announcements. Tomorrow is the third Saturday of the month. That means, as I do the third Saturday of each month, we have a morning Bible study in Temecula, Southern California, with men. Any men in the region who might want to join us, like I said, it's 8:00 tomorrow morning. The information about its location can be found where the information is found about all of our events, and that is at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements.

Also under that tab are the meetings I'll be speaking at in Northern California coming up soon, about two weeks from right now. I'll be doing a series of teachings in different places in like Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst, that area of California. That's happening about two weeks from now in various places. Two weeks after that, I'm doing some speaking in the Sacramento area, further north than that still. So I've got some trips up north scheduled. If you're in those areas and want to join us for those meetings, or you know someone who would like to, feel free to tell them about it. The details about the calendar and where I'll be and what I'll be speaking on and all that stuff can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements.

And that's all the announcements I'm going to give right now. We're going to talk first of all to Shannon from Arkansas. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Shannon.

Shannon: Hey, how's it going? I wanted to ask you about sanctification. I don't have my Bible with me, but you know the verses: "We've been sanctified," past tense, by the blood. But then I think in Thessalonians, maybe 1 Thessalonians 4, it says, "This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication." I just wanted you to talk about sanctified and what it is and what our sanctification is so I could understand it better if you could.

Steve Gregg: All right, I'd be glad to talk about that. Thanks for your question. First of all, I grew up like many Christians understanding that salvation has three different aspects. I actually think there's probably more than that, but there's three in particular that deal with past, present, and future salvation. We were always taught, at least people who were informed in my traditions, that justification is God's forgiveness of our past sins. So it deals with the past problem of sin. The condemnation of sin is expunged by justification, one aspect of salvation.

This is the one that most people think about when they think about being saved, that is getting rid of the problem between them and God pretty much so that when they stand before God on the judgment day, He'll say, "All right, you're good." That's what justification accomplishes.

Now, the second part of salvation had to do with being saved or delivered from the power of sin in our life at this present time, which we called sanctification. Now, sanctification comes from the word that means to be holy or to be made holy.

Then there's the aspect of being saved in the end from the very presence of sin in this corrupt world when we are resurrected and go into the new creation, and that's called glorification. So I was taught that justification, sanctification, and glorification are the three aspects of salvation that deal with past sin guilt, present sin's power, and the presence of sin in the future when Jesus comes back. Now, I believe in all those phenomena.

However, although sanctification has come to be used popularly among Christians as the process of eliminating the power of sin in our lives or overcoming it or defeating it, being saved from it, because Jesus said whoever commits sin is a slave of sin and you need to be set free from slavery so that you don't keep sinning. In fact, the angel said to Joseph before he married Mary, talking about Jesus, that his name shall be called Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins, which is again from the power of their sins. He didn't say the penalty of their sins; he's going to save them from the bondage they're in, which is to sin.

This process or phenomenon of being delivered from the power of sin in your life and living a holy life, in the tradition I was raised in, which was Baptist, we spoke of that as sanctification. Now, sanctification in that sense we believed was a process that as you grow in the Lord, you grow more like Jesus, you grow more holy. It does say in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18, that we are changed from glory to glory into the image of Christ as we currently are looking at Christ. As we keep our eyes on Jesus, we become more like Him. This is the process of sanctification.

Now, other traditions like the Wesleyan tradition teach that sanctification is a crisis event where sin in your life is defeated permanently once and for all in a single event. That it's a second work of grace. Not all Wesleyans teach this robustly anymore, but it was the teaching of John and Charles Wesley and of the Wesleyan movement back in the 18th century and it's one of the things that distinguished the Wesleyan churches, which would include the Nazarene, the Methodist, the Salvation Army, and some other groups like that that are Wesleyan.

Now, that idea was that you need to be after you're saved, you need to also experience entire sanctification, which is described as something that happens to you in a moment, which I suppose you have to seek by prayer, maybe fasting, who knows, and at that moment suddenly, boom, you are delivered from all sin and you live a sin-free life for the rest of your life.

Frankly, I'd like to believe that because every Christian would like to live a sin-free life and it's much easier to just get sin removed from you once and for all than to have to battle and fight your flesh and the devil and do the warfare thing. But I don't think the Bible describes sanctification as an instantaneous thing or your deliverance from sin. And so I do think that deliverance from sin is accomplished by Christ as we grow and as we mature and as we conduct the spiritual warfare, we do take ground, we win battles, we gain territory spiritually speaking in our lives so that we're sinning less all the time as we get older.

And then of course glorification is something else. That's when we're glorified in resurrection, which will happen when Jesus comes back. Now, I say all that to say this is how many people think about sanctification, maybe most. And some of the passages in the Bible that speak of being sanctified could refer to that. I mean you mentioned 1 Thessalonians 4 where Paul said, "This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication." Well, certainly abstaining from fornication for people who are sex addicts or people who are bound up in that sin as slaves of it needs deliverance. And so to be sanctified and to be delivered from fornication would seem to refer to sanctification as such a deliverance as we were talking about one way or the other.

But when you read the book of Hebrews, it appears that the word sanctification is used by that author differently. And he seems to speak of sanctification in the same way that I was taught to think of justification. That is, the writer of Hebrews indicates that all Christians are sanctified and they're sanctified by the blood of Christ, which is the means by which we're justified also. And it sounds like he is saying that every Christian also is sanctified, that the very act of becoming a Christian sanctifies you.

Now, I believe that is how the writer of Hebrews uses the word, though I don't think he means the same phenomenon as say a Wesleyan or a Baptist does when he talks about that. And that is because the word sanctified literally means to be made holy, and holy means set apart for God. So, we think of being holy means I don't do bad things, I'm a holy person, I do only good things, that's being holy. Well, that's maybe a consequence of being holy. For example, Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 1 that as He who has called you is holy, so you be holy in all manner of behavior. So in other words, being holy has ramifications in your behavior.

But I think what the writer of Hebrews is doing, he's saying that when you were converted, you have been set apart in a unique class from those who are not converted. Those who follow Christ belong to Him uniquely. They have been set apart for His service. They've been set apart for a relationship with Him. They've been set apart to be used of Him. In other words, this happens the moment you're saved. You cross over the line from darkness into light, from the power of darkness into the kingdom of His Son, and you're now in a different category, set apart from the rest of the world in terms of your status, significance, and behavior.

Now, that happens of course simply by getting saved, by getting converted. You when you're converted you're now in the family of God, you're not in the family of Satan anymore. You're treated by God as being different than the rest of the world in that respect. And so the writer of Hebrews I think is not thinking of sanctification the way that maybe I first described it and the way I was raised thinking about it. I think he uses the word simply to mean that when you become a Christian, you are set apart. And the word holy means set apart. And the writer of Hebrews is not focusing on the fact that being set apart means you live differently, although that is a consequence of it. He's talking more about a positional categorization of people into different groups. And those who are Christ's are in a different group than all the others and therefore set apart for God.

Now, as I mentioned, Peter in 1 Peter 1:15 says, "As He who has called you is holy, so you be holy in all your behavior." Okay, so I think the writer of Hebrews would indicate that being holy is something that at least begins with and is essentially defined by being in the family of God instead of outside the family of God. You're converted, you're set apart for God. But Peter says, "Yeah, well that being so, that should look like something too." Children of God act differently than children of the devil. And that's made very clear also in 1 John, though he doesn't use the word holy or sanctified there. In 1 John chapter 3, he said whoever commits sin is of the devil. Whoever is born of God doesn't live in sin, he doesn't commit sin. And so the behavior of one who's a child of God is different than the behavior of a child of the devil.

So sanctification in the first instance I think refers to simply being because of your faith in Christ, God has put you in a different category. You are set apart from the rest of the world simply by being one of His children instead of somebody else's child. And then but it has, and I don't think this is separable from it, it's a different aspect of it but it's inseparable because you're set apart, you live differently. You give up on sinning and you live an obedient life. You're an obedient child. So those are my thoughts on sanctification. And again you're going to find different use of the term, I think, in different passages of the scripture by different authors because both aspects, that of being simply positionally set apart for God and that of behaving differently as a consequence of being set apart for God, both are true parts of the term. And especially Hebrews uses it primarily in the first way, and I think other authors often do it in the second way. All right?

Shannon: Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah, it kind of got two aspects. I understand. Yeah, I'm going to go back and listen to you again so I can get it.

Steve Gregg: All right. Yeah, fortunately these radio shows are in the archives. As soon as the show is over, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, or the app and you can listen to the show again if you want to say, "Well, I'd like to hear some of that again." All right, brother. Thanks for your call. We'll talk next to Michael from Denver, Colorado. Michael, welcome.

Michael: Hi Steve. So nice to speak with you again. And yeah, I just had a quick comment and question today. So I was wanting to get your perspective on this. I was reading an article earlier on CBN about a Liberty University student who is taking legal action after Virginia revoked state tuition aid due to her religious major. So Bethany Hall started her academic career as a music education major. Eventually she changed her major twice: first to youth ministries and then to music and worship. Now, in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that states can withhold state-funded scholarships from students pursuing a degree in theology, but religious rights groups still disagree with that ruling and the legal group actually filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to reverse the court decision on grounds that it is discriminatory and violates...

Steve Gregg: Let me interrupt here a minute because I have no expertise in legal matters. Do you have a question for me related to the Bible or Christianity?

Michael: Yeah, I was getting to that. So on the basis of Christianity itself, I thought it would be interesting to ask you about: do you think that it's essentially an overreach to revoke a student's state-funded scholarship for pursuing a degree in Christianity or religion itself?

Steve Gregg: Do I think that's an overreach?

Michael: Well yeah, I mean just your overall opinion. Do you think that that is maybe unconstitutional in a sense?

Steve Gregg: All right, see that's a legal question. I don't know. If you think do I think the state should be required to give loans to cover the tuition of theological students? Well, it seems to me like that's the state's decision if they want to do that or not. I myself, I mean not to say everyone has to do what I would do, but if I chose to go to school, especially theological school, I don't think I'd ask the state to get involved at all. I wouldn't seek any loans or anything like that from such sources. And I realize it's hard to pay school bills if you don't get loans, but I don't know. I don't understand the whole educational system and loans. I didn't go to college. I didn't want to go to college. I don't want to go to college. If I'd gone to college, I would not take loans because I don't believe in going into debt. I've lived my life essentially debt-free. I've had a mortgage on my house at one time, but I largely live without debt and certainly would not go into college debt. Second, also I wouldn't even probably go to college to learn theology. I learned everything I did by reading the Bible and other things.

So anyway, I'm just not the man to talk to about that. I don't know what the state's rights are with reference to who they give their loans to or what the school's role in that is or whatever. That's something that'll be I mean if somebody has gotten a loan from the state and the state's going to withdraw it because they disapprove of something she's doing or something, she can take that up with the legal system, but I have no idea how it should turn out because it's a very different realm than anything I've gotten close to.

Michael: Yeah.

Steve Gregg: Thanks for your call, bro. Tom from Gainesville, Florida. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Tom: Hello, thank you. Would you die for just anyone?

Steve Gregg: I hope so. I mean, first of all, I would die even for no one. I'd love to see Jesus. To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. So dying is not much of a sacrifice. I've lived a long life, but even when I was young, when I was 16 and ever since, I've been eager to see Jesus. And if a doctor told me I'm going to die next week, I'd say praise God, couldn't come too soon. Now that's not because I hate life; I actually enjoy life for the most part and I consider I'm doing something valuable here, but I also consider my life is in God's hands and if He says it's time to stop it, I'm taking you home, I'll say wow, you're not going to get any complaints from me about that.

So, I mean, now I do believe that love, I do believe that love, the best kind of love, is to lay down your life for somebody else. So it's not simply a matter of being ready to die, it's a matter of giving up your life in order to benefit somebody else and save somebody else's life. Would I do that for just anyone? I hope so. I mean that's always what I've asked myself. I do this, this is actually a question I've asked myself not every day but frequently for the past 60 years about or 55. And you know, is there anyone I wouldn't die for? And I can't think of anyone.

Now I will say this, I might modify my position at this point and say if somebody is a criminal who is worthy of death and the righteous law of God says that person should be put to death because of their crimes, yeah I'm not likely to substitute myself for them. Though a little bit like the guy in the Tale of Two Cities, he looked enough like an innocent man who was going to be put to death that he could substitute himself and go to the guillotine instead to rescue an innocent man or a man that he felt should live. You know, that's a far, far better thing to do than what most people have ever done. And I would like to think I could do that. But I mean what if I were in the position, I mean obviously there'd be factors, my real character would be put to the test. I hope that what I think myself to be is what my real character is. And I certainly examine myself like Paul says to do, examine yourself see if you're in the faith. But give me a situation where you might see it differently because I'm not sure what kind of scenario you're thinking.

Tom: Yeah, I guess what I'm talking about is about a week, about maybe about two weeks ago you said that you felt at a time in your life you felt the presence of God and you said at that time you would die for anyone. And I guess I asked myself that question: would I die for anyone? And I don't think I would. And I was just wondering what does the Bible say? I don't even think I would donate a kidney to a stranger. Does the Bible fault me?

Steve Gregg: Well, you know, first of all, you misunderstood what I said. I didn't say that I asked myself that question or felt that way when I felt the presence of God. I actually said when I'm not feeling the presence of God. When I don't feel the presence of God and I wonder have I drifted from God, the Bible says we know that we've passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. And it's the love of Christ in us that tells us that we're genuine Christians. Jesus said this is how all men will know that you're my disciples if you love one another. And he also said greater love has no one than this but that he lay down his life for his friends.

Now, there probably would be situations where the legal aspects of a situation would make me not inclined to lay down my life for somebody because frankly society is being saved from them by them getting the electric chair or something like that, you know. No sense to release them. But I guess the question is: is there anyone I would not love enough to die for them if it was the right thing to do? That'd be I guess the way to look at it. I don't think to lay down my life for a person who's going to the electric chair for crimes that he did that deserve it would be a sensible thing to do because I'm not really, I don't think it's necessarily right to let him go to get him free. I think people there's certain things the Bible says people do them they are worthy of death.

Now, you know, this is very hypothetical so I don't really know. But I mean I think all parents, unless they're absolutely the worst conceivable parents, would die for any of their children to save the life of their child, anyone would die unless they simply are not worthy of the title parent, a father or mother would die for their child. I hope that any husband or wife would die to save their spouse. I think most people would do so to save their parents or hopefully their brother or their sister. Now that being so, the same love of God is equal toward other people's children and other people's spouses and so forth. In other words, God loves the kids of my neighbor as much as He loves my kids. And if I love who God loves, then you know I'm not going to be restricting my love to those who I would have natural affection for.

Now this has nothing to do with how I feel. Feeling the presence of God, you know, when I feel the presence of God I don't have any real doubts about, I never did. In fact, I don't have any doubts about it haven't for decades had doubts. But when I was 16 years old and in the revival we did in a sense feel the presence of God on many occasions but sometimes not. And it's when those feelings were gone I had to test myself. The Bible says test yourself see if you're in the faith. And the best test is is there anyone I don't love enough to die for? And so that was the test I gave. And at that time I had no children or anyone who depended on me and so my life was even more expendable than it is frankly right now.

So anyway, those are my thoughts. But you know I don't know who you should be ready to die for, but Jesus said that he that seeks to save his life will lose it, but he that loses his life for my sake will find it. So I guess the real question is: would giving up your life for a particular person in a particular situation, would it be doing it for Christ's sake? In other words, would it promote Christ's interests? Would it be what Christ would want me to do? And if the answer is yes, I should be willing to do it. And that's about probably that's the best way I should qualify that general statement.

Hey, I appreciate you calling. I've got my music playing. It means I have to take a break here. We have a break at the half hour, but we have another half hour coming up right after this break, so don't go away. The Narrow Path is listener-supported. And if you'd like to write to us, the address is The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. The website is also a place where you can donate if you want to, but if you don't want to donate, go to the website anyway because there's all kinds of stuff and it's all free. There's no paywall, there's no price, you don't even have to give us your email address, we won't even know you were there. Just go and take stuff, and there's thousands of free resources there for download. Check it out. That's thenarrowpath.com, where you can also donate. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. I have some lines open right now. They were pretty full in the first half hour, but we've got a few lines open. If you want to call, you have a Bible question or a question about the Christian faith or something you want to fix, a wrong statement by the host that needs to be corrected, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And if you call right now, you can definitely get on our switchboard, and if you don't call right now, you might not be able to, it may fill up.

All right, we're going to talk next to Peter from Portland, Oregon. Hey Peter, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Peter: Thanks for taking my calls, Steve. I have a question that's kind of, I know it's probably not biblical but I have this feeling that it's true. I don't know if God showed me in a way, but I just wanted to hear your advice on it. Basically, I know that God's omnipresent but He also is not affected by time. And the reason I'm saying that is: do you believe that people can pray for someone who may not even still be alive? Meaning when you're praying for them, God would hear them when they were alive, hear your prayer in the future and maybe answer your prayer then.

Steve Gregg: Well, the idea that God is outside of time and so if you pray today for let's just say your mother who's now dead and you pray that before she died she'll receive Christ, though you don't know that she did at all, does God, who is outside of time, take into account that prayer you're praying now and answer it back in the past? That's a very, you know, the whole idea of time travel and so forth and being outside of time, that's just really beyond any of our pay grades, we just don't have any knowledge of that.

It is certainly true that many Christians believe that God is outside of time. Now the Bible doesn't tell us that. I think it's something that's deduced by various things the Bible or even science itself tells us. I mean if the Big Bang as they say was the beginning of both time and space as the scientists believe, then time had a beginning. But the cause of the Big Bang before there was a Big Bang would have to be God. And therefore God was before there was time. But even the term "before there was time" is a chronological term and suggests time.

But to suggest that God exists in a realm that doesn't isn't governed by time and that past or present or future can equally be accessed to Him instantly, that's like C.S. Lewis taught in Beyond Personality and in Mere Christianity. Lewis himself said that's not taught in the Bible; he gave it as a theory that he has and he said if you don't if it's not helpful don't worry about it you don't have to believe it. And I would say the same thing. You know, maybe God is outside of time. Maybe He does have equal access to past, present, and future simultaneously. I do not know. The Bible doesn't say that.

But because the Bible doesn't say it, it certainly doesn't give any examples or teachings about praying for something that's already happened in the past to be different. It's like that whole thing with the time travel in science fiction movies. You go back and you change one little thing and then the whole world turns out differently as it would in many respects because everything is part of a chain reaction of things and so you go back and change one thing and then a whole cascade of events don't happen that would have happened and some people aren't born who would have been born, some people die who wouldn't have died then. You know, the world changes in ways that it wouldn't have changed.

And I don't think God gives man that kind of control over things. And if you could change them by praying for them, in other words if you can't personally go back in the past but God can and you can ask Him to go and do this thing different because you don't have a DeLorean, well okay so that would be kind of the same thing. I mean, in fact, many things that we wish would have happened, if they did happen, would change the world in ways that we could not anticipate and maybe not even for the better in the long run.

So I wouldn't encourage anybody to pray for the changing of the past. For one thing, I don't know if that it's possible. Secondly, if it is possible, I don't know if it's desirable. So, I mean, but the whole idea of being able to do so stems from more of a philosophical notion of God being outside of time, which many Christians hold to. Some say it's more of an Aristotelian idea than a biblical idea, but it may be true. All I can say is we don't have any encouragement in those areas to do that kind of thing from the Bible, so I wouldn't recommend it. I think sticking with what the Bible tells us to do is a big enough task without trying to add things that may be impossible to the list. I appreciate your curiosity about that, though, Peter. Thanks for your call. I'm sorry, I hung up when he was in the middle of a sentence; I didn't know that. I never mean to hang up on anyone mid-sentence; I was just moving on because we have a lot of callers and limited time.

Robert in Santa Ana, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Robert: Yes, hi there. I only get to listen on occasion, so whenever I call back again, I guess my framing of the question would probably be along the same lines, that being I guess I struggle a lot between God's response on the macro, I guess you might say, and the micro; micro being me and macro being, I guess, the bigger picture. On the macro side of things, I look at things like how the Bible says regarding Israel that He never sleeps or never slumbers. I wonder how so many years, all these tunnels and things, I think it's 400 miles of tunnels being dug underneath Israel there and stuff like that for Hamas to do its dirty work. I find it hard that if God never sleeps and slumbers, how can You miss tunnels being built for that long a time?

Steve Gregg: Well, I mean you're suggesting that if God wasn't asleep, He wouldn't permit those things to exist. But that just gets us into a more generic question that everybody asks sometimes is: if God's a good God, why is He letting this bad thing happen? Why did God allow the atom bomb to be created? Well, we might say, well, it made a difference in a good way in World War II if you don't happen to be Japanese, you could see it that way. But the invention of the atomic bomb also threatens the whole world right now, especially in the hands of rogue nations and so forth. So why did was God asleep when that was allowed to happen? No, of course, He doesn't sleep. He's aware of everything. In fact, not everything people are doing, He's aware of every sparrow that falls. Jesus said not a sparrow falls to the ground except by the will of your Father. That's a pretty detailed attention He's paying. In fact, Jesus said the hairs of your head are numbered. So He knows He knows more about the details of every human being than they know about themselves.

So, you know, I guess the question is why did God allow Hamas to dig all these tunnels? Well, I mean why did God allow any bad actor to do bad things? That's really what it comes down to. This isn't like a separate issue from the general question. And the answer is because God doesn't care to intervene all the time. If God intervened to stop every bad thing that a bad person wanted to do, then of course only good things would happen. But it also means that man wouldn't really have any agency because if God made people to make good and bad choices but He prevents every bad choice from being made, then really He only allows the good choices. This is not how God rules.

Now, you're suggesting that the tunnels that Hamas digs under Israel are particularly something that God would not want. Now, I don't know what God wants. Again, God allows us human beings to be tested with various kinds of trials, various kinds of dangers. The whole panoply of experiences that God allows people to have conspire together to test and to train and to teach trust and so forth. God wants us to learn to trust in Him, to look to Him, to obey Him, and this in the context of situations where there are things we might fear, things we might be tempted to do wrong, things that God might even allow us to do that are wrong. But we are responsible agents in a world where all kinds of things happen, including some very dangerous or unpleasant things happen.

For an Israeli, it's a very dangerous thing to know that Hamas has tunnels under you and so forth. And I don't envy them. But different people in different parts of the world have different dangerous things happening to them. The question of why does God allow it, or does the fact that He does allow it, does it indicate He's sleeping, is more the general question. Now, we don't know why God allows some negative things and prevents others.

I think the answer is because, like I was saying to the previous caller, if you could change one thing, if you go back in history and change one thing, let's say you could go back and kill Adolf Hitler when he's a baby, you know how many things would change in the world? You might say well a lot, a lot of things would change for good. Well, if you think the establishment of Israel in the last days is a good thing, it might not have happened without the Holocaust. We don't know. God knows. There were a lot of people hoping for that to happen for a long time, and it was the Holocaust after World War II that gave great impetus for the nations of the world to support the notion of making a nation of Israel. Now, I'm not saying that Israel becoming a nation is good or bad or indifferent, I'm just saying some people certainly see it as good, and if it is good, it's very arguable that it might not have happened without the Holocaust. We don't know. But God does. God knows how those dominoes are going to fall.

If we change one of them, we have no idea how they all are going to fall, but God does. And we might say well if I were God, I would prevent that thing from happening. If I could go back in history and do something that only God can do, I would do this and it would be different. Right, things would be different, but who knows how many ways they'd be different. I would say that God has a plan, He doesn't intervene all the time, and when He doesn't intervene, it's because He's making a conscious choice not to.

It's like when I was a little kid, my family loved to tell this story I barely remember, I was probably two or three years old, I don't know, my family and my grandparents and stuff were all at probably Newport Beach, California, in the sand and we had snacks there and I had a banana. My brother's probably listening, he probably knows exactly this story, I'm sure he does. My mom certainly does. You know, I was peeling a banana, but as a little kid, I didn't have much experience with bananas, I was holding it by the very bottom tip and pulling the sides all the way down. And my grandfather, who was a bit of a prankster, was telling my older sister, "Watch, watch what's going to happen here, the banana's going to fall over in the sand." And he didn't stop me. And lo and behold the banana fell over in the sand. And I cried because I wanted to eat the banana, but now I couldn't. And the funny thing is my grandfather saw it coming. He could have stopped it, but he didn't. Now, he was possibly just being a prankster, or maybe he thought this is one way to learn a lesson about how to peel a banana.

But in any case, he saw something he could have prevented and he didn't. For me, at age two or three or whatever it was, it was kind of a disaster to me, but in the grand scheme of things, it was really not that much. And I remember to this day and I've never peeled a banana that way since then. So, I mean, we do learn lessons from things. Now, of course, it probably seems very impertinent to talk about that slight disaster compared to some of the great disasters of history that God has allowed to happen. But the point is in the scheme of eternity, it's hard for us to get God's perspective on how great these disasters are. You say well there's thousands, millions of people are killed, that's certainly important. It is. But God knows every one who's killed in one way in some disaster, if that didn't happen, they'd die another way in some other thing equally disastrous to themselves and to their families. Everyone's going to die unfortunately. I don't take that lightly. Death is a serious thing, but it happens to everybody. And if God says okay, I'm not going to stop this particular disaster, this tsunami, this volcano, this war, this Holocaust, it's going to a lot of people are going to die. But these are people who are going to die one way or another anyway. I know it sounds very flippant for me to say it; I don't mean it that way. I've had a wife who died in a tragic accident, but I knew as soon as she was dead that this was something that would have happened to her some other way if it hadn't happened that way. And I knew that God was in control. I just knew that God can see the outcomes of everything and God is entitled to make choices about when He will intervene and when He will not intervene to prevent a natural disaster or a war or a crime from being committed.

So the tunnels of Hamas, I don't have any special knowledge about why God would allow that to happen, but I do not for a second think that it's because God is not paying attention. But see, I'm as a Christian, I've been conditioned all my life to trust God. That's kind of what being a Christian is about, and to see God is smarter than me. God does many things I don't prefer. By the way, my dad did that sometimes too. There were times he spanked me when I was little, I didn't like that much, and there were times he didn't give me things I wanted, I didn't like that much either. But that didn't mean he was a bad dad. It meant that I didn't know all the reasons or didn't appreciate all the reasons he had for doing things. And it's that way with God too. I don't know all the reasons He allows things that I really wish He wouldn't do or things He wouldn't allow. But then I also assume He sees and knows a whole lot more than I do. And people who don't know that or don't believe that are simply people who will never understand what Christianity is. It's a relationship between a trusting child and a parent, and that kind of trust allows you to know that whatever God does is the right thing for Him to do.

All right, I'm going to take another call now. We're going to talk to John from Boise, Idaho. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

John: Hi Steve. Thank you for what you do. I'm calling to ask if you have taken Bible studies to people in independent living or assisted living and what kind of reception were people kind of stuck the way they were, were they enthusiastic to hear the word, if you have any experience with that.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, the older you get, the more stuck you do get if you resist change. Now there are people who don't resist change, people who from their earlier years have directed their hearts to love and trust God and to love His word. And when I talk to older people about the word of God, if they have been the kind of people who love God, they really appreciate hearing the word of God, of course, and they can be very I've known some old people that are extremely excitable about the things of God in a good way. In fact, of course, some are surprisingly open to changing their views on things if they're Christians because if you love God, you realize I don't know everything and the more I can learn about the Bible, the more I can be corrected, the more of the truth I'll understand. And there are certainly lots of older people like that.

But then older people do get set in their ways too, if they allow themselves to, and especially if they've made mistakes a lot in their lives and they've proudly refused to acknowledge they were wrong, they get stuck in their unchanging attitudes. Now as far as taking Bible studies to assisted care people, when I was younger I used to go into into nursing homes and stuff and talk to people and so forth, but I didn't actually conduct Bible studies there. So the answer to your first question is no.

But I think what you're really asking about is do older people are they very receptive to things like Bible teaching and things that might be intended to change their mind about things. Obviously people as they get older can, if nature takes its course, become more stuck in their way and more resistant to change if they've been hardening their hearts against God, for example, for 60 years, their hearts are hard. That doesn't mean they can't break up the fallow ground and repent, but they're not likely to, not as much likely to, it's much more difficult. But a person who's been a follower of God when they get old, if they know God and love God, they still welcome truth, they still are eager to learn. And so and I've known lots of people like that.

So I guess that's the answer to your question. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'd say most of my listeners are probably old folks. I'm an old guy, and I have found that when I go to my meetings I teach when I travel and so forth, people my age are often a fairly dominant percentage of the crowd, though I'm always glad to see younger people there too, but I think my appeal is to old people more than to young people, it seems like. Anyway, not necessarily, I meet a lot of young people who are pretty enthusiastic.

Enough on that one. Let's try to get some more in here. Let's talk to Jeff from Los Angeles, California. Jeff, welcome.

Jeff: Hi Steve. Thank you for your ministry. My question was I was wondering if you could unpack the parable of the wedding banquet, the great banquet. Specifically interested in your point of view on the wedding garments.

Steve Gregg: All right, so you're talking about Matthew 22 and that is let me just go over it because I know it and I can talk about it and we don't have much time to I mean do you have a specific question or just want me to unpack it, like you said?

Jeff: I would like for you to unpack it. I'm pretty comfortable with most of it, but and then also at the end a little I have a little question about the I'm very interested in your point of view on the garment.

Steve Gregg: Okay, okay, let me talk about that. So Matthew 22 begins with Jesus saying the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son. Now this arranging for his son to have a bride represents God sending Christ to the Jews, and after Christ's ascension, too, also to the message of the gospel going to the Jews.

And the reason we know it's to the Jews is because there's two groups of people. The first people that are evangelized and welcomed to the marriage are the king's friends, which would in the parable be if the king is God, his friends are the Jews. Not that all the Jews are friendly toward God, but they are the people that he has a relationship with before Jesus came here; they were some of them, many of them, were loyal to him and the ones who were not were supposed to be because they had a covenant relationship with God and he, in a sense, had obligated himself to give them the first opportunity to receive Christ. Paul says that, for example, in his sermon at Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13 when he went to the synagogue and the Jews rejected him; he said it was necessary that the gospel first be preached to you. But seeing you reject him and count yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we're going to go to the Gentiles.

So the first offer was always made to the Jews. And that's what it says. He sent out his servants, they'd be the preachers, the apostles, to call those who were invited to the wedding and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants saying tell those that are invited, "See, I've prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatted cattle are killed, all things are ready, come to the wedding." But they made light of it and they went their ways, one to his own farm to another his business, the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about that, he was furious and he sent out his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city.

Now that's not hard to see where that came from. The gospel went out to the Jewish people first. Some of them received it, but for the most part most of the Jews just kind of made excuses not to become believers and they ignored Jesus, made God angry, and he sent out his armies to burn down their city. This happened when the Romans, as a judgment from God, came upon Jerusalem and burned down the city and wiped these people out. That's what Jesus said he did, the king sent his armies and he destroyed those murderers and burned up their city. By the way, this parable follows immediately after the one before it in chapter 21 where because the vineyard caretakers killed the prophets and then killed the son of the owner, it says he's going to in verse 41 of chapter 21 says he's going to destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will give him the fruits of it. So this destruction of the Jewish people who killed Christ and who rejected Christ is what these parables are talking about.

But then verse 8 says, "Then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready and those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways and as many as you find invite them to the wedding." So the highways are the roads that lead further away to other lands. So this is the invitation of the Gentiles because of the Jewish rejection, largely Jerusalem's rejection, Jerusalem comes under judgment and the gospel now is committed to places farther out. So they go out to the highways to to find people and bring them in. These would be essentially the evangelization evangelization of the Gentiles.

And he says, "Therefore go into the highways and as many as you find invite to the wedding." So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. So throughout the past 2,000 years the gospel has gone out generally preached to the public and people have responded. Some good and some bad. Not everyone who's come to Christ or who's come to the church is really converted or really loves God. And the wedding hall was filled with guests. So now at the end of the present age, there's a ton of people, Gentiles and Jews but mostly Gentiles who have come to this feast who have come to Christ.

It says, "But when the king came to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment." So he said to him, "Friend, how did you come here without a wedding garment?" And he was speechless. And the king said to the servants, "Bind him hand and foot, take him away, cast him out into outer darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are chosen but few are called." Or many called few chosen, excuse me. And so that's that parable.

Now what's going on here? The gospel first goes out to the Jews. For the most part they reject it. The king is angry and he sends his armies and destroys them. Notice he doesn't come personally and do it; he sends his armies. The Romans were sent by God, God Jesus didn't return at that time. But after the Gentiles have been evangelized, he comes himself. That'll be at the second coming of Christ. And he's going to assess those who have responded to the gospel. And some will be thrown out because they didn't have a wedding garment. What's that mean? That means they came on their own terms. When a king invites you to a wedding, you you dress appropriately. For you to come and say, "I'll come but I'll come on my own terms, I'll dress the way I want to, I'm not going to necessarily respect the king."

There's a lot of people who've come to the church who have not surrendered to Christ. And they are like people who've come to a wedding without following the required means. And and so they're thrown out. That's what I believe the the parable's talking about. I need to stop because I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Have a good weekend.