Hard Questions #5

Welcome! I would encourage you to continue to pray the secret prayer. Today I will give a brief message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and cup, and following this we will have a sharing time, where all in the body are welcome to share what the Lord is teaching them.

This is our final message in our Hard Questions series. The questions we are going to look at today, like the others in this series, asked by you, are these: How do we tell whether an open door is God’s will? How do we tell whether a “closed door” is God revealing that His will is something else?

Hard Questions #4

Welcome! I would encourage you to continue to pray the secret prayer. Well, I have a lot of ground to cover today, so I will get right to the hard questions. There are three questions we are going to look at today. The first is this: Is there an unforgivable sin?

What is the context of this question? It comes from two passages, one in Matthew 12, and the other in Mark 3. Here is the Matthew 12 passage:

And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. – Matt. 12:31-32

Hard Questions #3

Welcome! Have you been praying the secret prayer? I would remind you to continue to pray this prayer. If you don’t know what it is, talk to someone in church after the message today. Today, as we continue with our Hard Questions series, we are going to look at a number of questions. The first, a nice, easy question, is this: “Why do some people have easier lives than others?” And the flip side: “Why do some people suffer so much more than others?”

What, that’s not a nice easy question? Actually, no – it certainly qualifies as a hard question. I think it is also a huge question; that is, the question can mean many different things, depending on the questions an individual has behind the question, and thus, there is not one answer, but many. And in general, regardless of the particular “flavor” of the question, the answers are not short and sweet, but complex. To be honest I only feel that I can go a short way towards an answer, but I will give you all that I can.

Hard Questions #2

Welcome! I trust that you have been remembering to pray the secret prayer. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I encourage you to ask someone in church today. I also strongly encourage you to read or listen to last week’s message. Today we continue with our Hard Questions series. There are two questions we are going to tackle today. The first is this: What is a proper Biblical understanding of women’s roles in the church?

I admit that this is a somewhat intimidating topic for me. But they aren’t called hard questions for nothing!

Well, I think the place to start is in Genesis. Much of this will seem basic, but I think it is important that it be said.

Hard Questions #1

Welcome! Today we return to the second portion of our Hard Questions series. Today we are going to look at Bible interpretation, are also going to look at a very personal question for us as a church. This latter question we will explore a little at a time; and in fact, we will revisit it to some degree in every one of these 5 teachings on hard questions.

Our first hard question can be posed this way: How should one go about gaining a proper understanding of what a Bible passage means? This question has countless applications. One is a question someone put on their card back when I asked people to send in hard questions. Here is their question, slightly paraphrased: How do we know which New Testament commands and practices are for all time and which are specific to a particular culture?

Hard Questions: Nay sayers?

Today, we are going to look at a couple of questions of nay sayers, or people who say that God does not exist or the Bible is disproved for one reason or another. These types of questions can be uncomfortable for us because we do not feel like we have sufficient evidence to refute their claims.

In the last 150 years, no single area has provided a jumping off point for turning away from God or saying no to God like the realm of science. There has been a dramatic push to take God out of public education, in part, under the guise of the “impartiality” of science.

Scientific investigation, by definition, is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”  So what does the Bible say about the physical and natural world?

Hard Questions: God’s Goodness

Welcome! Today we continue our series on hard questions. Last week we talked about God’s power, and we addressed the question of why, despite an all-powerful God, there is suffering and evil in the world. We also briefly talked about how to respond to those who suffer. This week we are going to focus on God’s goodness, and we will look at several questions that often are borne out of doubting the goodness of God.

Is God really good? (I realize there is a bit of a play on words here, with that word “really.”)

This is a common point of attack used by atheists and others who question or reject Christianity. Often the question has the form “How can a loving God…” followed by whatever particular charge is made against the claim that God is good.

Hard Questions: God's Power

Welcome! Today we continue our series on hard questions. Last week we talked about how we know that Christianity is true (the Holy Spirit) and how we show that Christianity is true focusing on why it is plausible that there is a Creator, and if there is a Creator, why it is plausible that He would communicate to us through something like our Bible. We then talked about reasons to believe the Bible. I don’t think I said this last week, but I want to emphasize that when you talk with unbelieving friends, a huge goal and prayer should be that they actually get into reading the Bible – with you, without you, in a group, whatever, but that they read it. It is when they read that the Holy Spirit can powerfully speak into their hearts, convicting them of sin and convincing them of the reality of what they are reading.

This week’s message is entitled God’s Power, and next week’s is God’s Goodness. These topics are very much interrelated; many, many hard questions boil down to arguing that if God is all powerful, He isn’t all good, and if instead He is all good, He must not be all powerful. Because the topics are linked, these messages are very much linked as well; we will deal both with God’s power and God’s goodness this week and next. To begin, I want to start with the question of God’s power straight up.

Hard Questions: The Bible

Welcome! Today we begin a new series – the topic is hard questions. We will start with a question so big that at first glance most people don’t know where even to begin. Here is the question:

How do you know that Christianity is true?

The first thing to think about, and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig has pointed this out, is that there is a profound difference between knowing Christianity to be true and showing it to be true. The most important reasons a believer has for knowing that the Bible is true may be totally inadequate, even frustrating or “useless,” to an unbeliever.