Living Stones Q&A - #2

A few months back Living Stones hosted a Question & Answers night and received over a hundred questions. Many of them were addressed during our gatherings and can be found on our podcast here. For the next few weeks I will be posting up answers to some of the remaining questions that were not answered. Answers for the questions have been provided by various Living Stones Elders.


What does it look like to completely die to self?
Dying to self means laying aside our will, desires, motives, etc. and aligning them with Christ. Paul says in Galatians that we have been crucified with Christ and that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. This is the picture of baptism (Rom. 6). As we are lowered into the water we are aligning ourselves with Christ’s death and as we come out of the water we are aligning our self with Christ’s resurrection. Dying to our self would include reminding ourselves of our Gospel identity (reliance on Christ’s work, not ours) and repentance (crucifying the flesh Gal. 5:24). To die to self is to cast aside the idol of self-reliance and fully trust in God.

As a leader, when do you step-down from moral failure?
If by moral failure you’re referring to adultery, then immediately due to the gravity and public nature of such a sin.

Why was proving a point to the devil, worth more than Job's well being?
The Bible doesn’t say that the only reason God allowed this to happen was to prove a point to Satan. I’m sure God, in His infinite wisdom, had a number of reasons why He gave permission to Satan to test Job and we can only speculate from there and need to be careful in doing so (Deut. 29:29). From the story of Job we learn that at times bad things happen to good people and that it isn’t always a result of sin and good things can happen to bad people. The world doesn’t revolve around Karma. We’re also reminded in Job that in the midst of affliction or suffering we shouldn’t curse God, which is so often our default and shows our self-centeredness. When Jesus suffered, He looked to God and submitted to His will. It also shows us that God is sovereign throughout the whole situation and in the end doubles everything that was taken away.

Does the story about the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 teach salvation by works?
Whenever we seek to interpret scripture, we always look at it not only in light of its immediate context, but also with the rest of scripture. We can’t pull out verses on their own and develop a theology, without comparing it to the rest of the Bible. There is a lot of bad doctrine and heresy developed by ignoring the basic hermeneutic principle that Scripture interprets Scripture. So if we come across a passage that seem ambiguous, we don’t develop a theology from it without taking into consideration other passages that are more clear. We then use the clear passage to help us understand the less clear passage, not the other way around!

In this case, the Bible is very clear that we are saved by grace and not by our works and that we are then saved to good works (Eph. 2:8-10). The sheep aren’t saved by their righteousness, but rather that these good works are evidence of their transformed heart. It also shows them being judged for keeping all of the law or none of it. There’s no middle ground. So the sheep are being judged as having done perfect and the goats being judged as having kept none of it. At judgment, those people (sheep) who profess Christ, will be judged not according to our obedience, but to Christ’s perfect fulfillment of the law.

Why did God make the devil if he knew that he would be evil?
Ultimately, we are not given a straightforward explanation to this question in Scripture and we can’t full know the mind of God (Deut. 29:29); however, we do know that God didn’t originally create demons, but that at some point there was an angelic rebellion, with many angels turning against God and becoming evil (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6).

It’s also important to remember that God and the Satan are not equally “weighted” forces waging the war on good and evil while we hold our breath in suspense to see who will win. The Bible always shows God as sovereign and in control, even over Satan and his influences (Job 1:7-2:7).

It’s also important to remember that God will do whatever will bring him the most glory, which he has the right to do because he’s God. God’s glory is most clearly pictured in the cross! The most evil act in history is the act through which God showed his Glory in bringing about reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins displaying His love and mercy. It was on the cross where God’s power and justice was displayed in defeating Satan (Col. 2:15, Rev. 12:11) and Satan’s ultimate end will at be at Final Judgment where he will be thrown into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever and ever (Rev. 20:10).

Living Stones Q&A - #1

A few months back Living Stones hosted a Question & Answers night and received over a hundred questions. Many of them were addressed during our gatherings and can be found on our podcast here. For the next few weeks I will be posting up answers to some of the remaining questions that were not answered. Answers for the questions have been provided by various Living Stones Elders.

Is the length of marital engagement dictated by the Bible?
The Bible does not dictate a specific length for marital engagement. The Bible does say though in 1 Corinthians 7: 9 that if one “cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” Having said that, one should not enter into marriage for the sole sake of sex and should practice self-control. At Living Stones, for a pastor to marry you, we ask that the couple go through at least eight weeks of pre-marital counseling. Personally, I don’t think long engagements (over 1 year) are wise for the reason stated above. This isn’t a hard line in the sand, and there are a number of factors that go into choosing the length of an engagement, but if you’re going to get married, get married and don’t wait another year or two. If you’re not ready to get married, then don’t get engaged.

What is the church doing to help build up the men in the community as leaders in the church and their homes?
It is a constant prayer of the LS staff and pastors that men would man up and be godly men who lead in the church and home! Paul exhorts the Corinthian men saying, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, ACT LIKE MEN, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13 ESV). So often it’s women who shoulder up the man’s burden and responsibility to lead his family and church, because he simply chooses not to put in the effort, give of his time and resources, or has some other idol in place.

This is why approximately 2/3 of the volunteers at Stones are women.

The primary discipleship tool to build up men in the community is Community Groups. We have over 90 different community groups for men, women, and co-ed all over the Reno-Sparks area every day of the week at various times for people to join. For men that are already plugged into the strategy (worship gatherings, community group, mission) and are faithful, there are a number of more “organic” groups for men to join or be invited into such as the pastor’s school, academy groups, deacon process, etc. I could be completely off and most likely am, but part of me wonders if the guy who asked this question (assuming it was a guy), has even taken the initiative to faithfully plug into the opportunities currently in place.

What does your relationship with your wife look like based on Ephesians 5:22-25?
Marriage is given to us as a picture of Jesus’ relationship with us (Eph. 5) and heaven is often pictured as a wedding banquet (Rev. 19). Jesus refers to Himself as the Bridegroom (Matt 9:15) and the church is referred to as His bride (2 Cor. 11:2).

So the exhortation here is that a man is to lead and love his wife the way that Christ loves the Church. How did Jesus love the Church? He chose her, pursued her, served her, sanctified her, and laid down His life for her. As a man submits to the Lord, a wife submits to her husband’s leading in the same way the Church submits to Christ’s leading. Too often we hear the word submission and we get squeamish, especially in American culture, and no doubt, there has been abuse; however, if a man is truly following Christ’s example of what it looks like to love his bride, then it should be a joy for his wife submit to him as we in the church joyfully submit our lives to Christ.

How do you become a Christian?
There are not certain “steps” one takes to become a Christian in a religious sense i.e. say this specific prayer, or do this then that, etc. To become a Christian rather means to recognize and understand that our sin has separated us from God and apart from Christ there is no hope for reconciliation. It means that we have come to a place when we realize we are unable, no matter how hard we try, to meet God’s standard of perfection and are in need of a savior. This is repentance: that we turn from sin, and turn to Jesus in faith. It moves beyond a pure cognitive understanding of the Gospel and acceptance of it to placing full trust and faith in Jesus’ death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. Once we have placed our faith in Jesus and His work on the cross, we now live a life of faith and worship in response to His amazing grace (Gal. 2:20).

Can you be a Christian and not go to church?
I think that you could technically be a Christian and not go to church because we’re saved by God’s grace and not by our own works of righteousness (Titus 3:5); however, you would be walking in sin (Heb. 10:25) and are most likely deeply deceived by your own self-righteousness. What a place for Satan to get someone. If one refuses to repent and submit to Hebrews 10:25, then they’d truly need to personally assess whether they’re Christian or not. Paul gives the analogy of the church in First Corinthians as being a body, comprised of all different parts to make a whole. If a part of a body is cut off, and isn’t quickly “sown” back on, it will die.

What does it mean to have my identity in Christ or "gospel identity"? How does this look in my daily life?
To have our identity rooted in the Gospel means that we see ourselves the way God sees us through Christ (redeemed & forgiven Col. 1:13-14, righteous 2 Cor. 5:21, chosen Eph. 1:3-8, justified Rom. 5:1, child of God Rom. 8:15, free from condemnation Rom 8:1, sealed 2 Cor. 1:21-22, new creation 2 Cor. 5:17, temple of the Holy Spirit 1 Cor. 6:19.

It’s out of this identity that we have the freedom to follow after God. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). Having a Gospel Identity sets us free and gives us peace before God because we remember our right standing before God is not based on our works, but by Jesus work on the cross.

Resurrection: Part 3 - 5/15/11

Resurrection: Part 3 from Living Stones on Vimeo.

Hell vs. Annihilationism

Recently with all the discussing about eternal life, hell, etc. The topic of annihilationism has come up. Annihilationists believe that hell is not eternal torment, but there’s just a period of time where someone suffers in hell – then they cease to exist. Although this sounds great to the carnal dictates of the human mind it is not consistent with God’s revelation or God’s justice. We know this from scripture. For more information on the doctrine of hell, see my sermon here or listen here. In the process of all of this discussion I had some conversations with some leaders and deacons-in-training at our church regarding the doctrine of hell and annihilationism. One young lady, who is a deacon-in-training, read a couple books on the subject and talked to several pastors, missionaries, and theologians. Below is the correspondence between her and a man who runs a mission organization in China, which she used to work for. She shared his answers with me, and thought they were brilliant, so I wanted to share his answers with you. Her words are in italics – his responses are in bold.

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Her Introduction to the situation: My pursuit on the study of hell has been an intense one for me. What began as a simple desire to learn more took me to a whole new place in my understanding of God's infinite power. God truly is glorified by all of His creation and by everything that happens in it. When I first studied Anniahalism I was driven by both emotional struggles and intellectual questions. I was very close to being considered a professing annihilationist when God began a series of events to open up my mind to His ways. The turning point for me was the evenings of March 11th when Japan got hit with an earthquake and then the tsunami. God gave me a very restless night of sleep that night and woke me up early on the 12th to continue watching the news on this. The Lord spoke to my heart that morning saying that this was not a "natural disaster" but rather His Supernatural Power. I was immediately humbled by His power and found myself glorifying Him in a situation that the world would view as a reason to question God's sovereignty. This isn't something I say to many people and don't get me wrong, my heart goes out to those suffering from the tsunami. But my soul brings glory to God because I know that nothing happens without his allowing it to. It was through this change in my heart as I looked at the crisis in Japan differently that God allowed me to understand that He too is glorified in his creation of Hell. I don't know how to fully explain it, but I have an absolute peace that its true. A couple weeks ago Jason Diaz preached about sanctification and the wonderful wooden duck. He talked about how the person carving the duck would have to chip away anything that doesn't look like a duck. God gave me this understanding of a kind of parallel to how He uses Hell. He must sanctify his creation and in doing so, He takes away everything that no longer looks like Him (hence the duck). So by meditating on sanctification and how God truly glorified in all situations regardless of how our mortal human eyes view them, I began to open up to how God is also glorified in His creation of Hell. I understand that Hell is a very difficult topic for many of us to really think about. But I challenge us all to do just that. I challenge us all to think about it the way God thinks about Hell not the way the World does. I pray that we all can have eyes to see Hell the way God see's it.

Here's a snippet of their exchange

Her words: I'm calvinist which is kinda my hangup on eternal conscious torment. If I was Armenian then I could swallow it much easier, but being a Calvinist then I'm stuck saying that some people were actually created for Hell and never had a shot at any other option. However I'm also fully aware that I don't understand God's ways, and my claim isn't backed by Scripture. I too don't at all feel like this is a hill to die on. Its more of an open hand issue for me but I am pretty intrigued by it. Edward Fudge also talks about the Matthew 25:46 verse ("Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life"). He says that no longer existing or even being in the presence of God in even a common grace environment is in fact eternal punishment, but that it doesn't have to be a conscious punishment. But to no longer exist is an eternal sentence (punishment).

His response: Yeah, he has to dance around this verse because it’s problematic for his position. But if you let it just say what it says, it’s kind of hard to come out the other end with annihilation. At least in my thinking. I don’t like reading a bunch of ideas into a verse to make a theological point. That’s not good scholarship.

Her Words: He talks a lot about the fire being eternal, smoke being eternal, punishment being eternal (permanent) but that none of those have to do with a conscious torment.. There were a couple examples that the NT uses to describe Hell as being like those that were destroyed from the flood. He mentioned that no one questions what the word "destroyed" means when talking about objects, but we change that meaning when talking about people to it becoming a eternal torment instead of just destroyed (ceasing to exist).

His Response: Right, but he’s arguing for annihilation from a bunch of peripheral ideas. He’s not arguing for annihilation straight from a text that says the damned are annihilated. If that concept (annihilation) wasn’t in the minds of the early readers, and I can’t think of any ancient philosophical position that would have held that view, then don’t you think there would be something more clear on the issue? Could the early reader’s have cleverly sorted through all the little nuances of this metaphor and that one and figure out, “Hey, the damned are annihilated!”? And where could you find a metaphor on earth with a concept of eternal conscious suffering? All the metaphors Jesus used were earthbound so naturally temporal in nature. They are metaphors, and so by nature not exact. To insist on annihilation is to push the metaphors a little harder than Jesus intended.

Her Words: So the Scriptures don't use the word annihilated but they do seem to express destruction which to me may be the same.

His Response: But again, Jesus is trying to put “the fear of God” into people through examples that show how terribly awful hell will be. He used the most awful metaphors he could find, but again, they are earth bound and so they speak a lot to the issue of total and complete loss and destruction. Basically, the metaphors can work in favor of either view. One has to ask, what was the prevailing understanding of the nature of eternal damnation in that day? If the metaphors don’t directly challenge the prevailing notion, then that notion is supported by the metaphor. The theologians that are arguing for annihilation are doing so mostly because of the modern mind’s logical problem with it, not from sound Biblical exegesis.

Her Words: Oh, and he mentions that it wasn't until Plato/Socrates that the idea of the soul being eternal even came about and it wasn't a scriptural thing. Do you know much about when we started having this philosophy?

His Response: Basically the Old Testament is where the idea of an eternal existence of the soul after death comes from. The OT has the concept of Sheol, which was a place where all the dead went, both good and bad. But it wasn’t paradise exactly. It was thought of as a kind of no-man’s land. Remember Saul (I think it was), who called up the spirit of Samuel (I think) from the dead. Samuel was thought to be in Sheol. “Eternal life” for the OT Jew, was found in the continued existence of the family’s land and the continued existence of the family name. That’s why it’s such a disaster for Naomi when she loses her husband and sons. She was cursed by God because her “eternal life” (land and family name) ended.

The ideas of heaven and eternal life are more fleshed out in the New Testament because Jesus spoke often about them. But yes, the Greeks also had a concept of a place where the souls of the dead went after death. There were various places with various aspects of enjoyment or suffering, depending on the person’s life. You had to get past a three headed dog named Cerberus and then buy passage on a ferry across the River Styx. But there was a place over there for the souls of the dead. But Jesus didn’t buy into any of that. Also, probably the concept of the devils living in hell and torturing souls forever with pitchforks, along with the idea of various torture chambers and levels of hell are a mixture of some of those classical Greek and Roman notions, along with a lot of imagination from the Middle Ages. Dante’s Inferno did a lot to contribute to the modern and erroneous ideas about what hell will be like.

But all that said, there wasn’t really a concept of the damned being annihilated and the saved living on in paradise forever. If that is in fact the truth, then one would think that the Scriptures would have clearly corrected the erroneous ideas of the time. In fact, they don’t. So I let the idea stand that the damned exist eternally. I just jettison all the baggage. To me, hell is a place where God is not. And where God is not, how can there be anything good? That’s why people there gnash their teeth and weep. That’s why Jesus likened it to an eternal fire. But beyond that, we don’t know much about it. Thank God!

Her Words: My other thought/confusion is on using the word "eternal" to describe life especially since we consider God to be eternal (no beginning and no end). So unless the english language just doesn't have the proper vocabulary which is very possible, i'm confused how our souls are eternal when clearly we are created beings and did in fact have a beginning. Any thoughts on that? If you're open to it, i'd really appreciate dialoguing about this with you!

His Response: Well, here’s some dictionary definitions:

1. without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing (opposed to temporal): eternal life. 2. perpetual; ceaseless; endless: eternal quarreling; eternalchatter.

3. enduring; immutable: eternal principles.

4. Metaphysics . existing outside all relations of time; notsubject to change.

The second and the third ones would lend themselves to the notion of having a finite beginning but not an end. I think that’s probably how Jesus was using it.

Dear Living Stones Family,

As you know, tomorrow we have our big Easter gathering at Lawlor Events Center at 10 a.m. I am really looking forward to worshipping the risen Christ with all of you in one place at one time. Just wanted to drop you all a note to remind you of a few essentials for tomorrow.

1. Pray. Over 2,000 invites have gone out in the past couple weeks, along with a billboard on the freeway. Friends inviting friends, family co-workers, neighbors and schoolmates. It is essential that we pray, not only for our own souls to encounter the risen Christ, but pray for the hundreds of people who don't know salvation in Jesus who will be there tomorrow. Pray against the attacks of the evil one as he schemes to keep these people away from church and from hearing the gospel message. Pray for the band and the technical crew, the artists, and volunteers and pray for me as I preach that I may be able to make the message of the gospel clear and compelling.
2. Be hospitable. Often times people's ears are not open to hearing the message of the gospel until the gospel people show the care of Christ to them. Go out of your way to help people find seats, show people around, introduce yourself, invite people to your community groups.
3. If you are a parent of a child who is 5 years or younger, you do have the option of taking your kids into childcare, but if you do, remember that those who are volunteering, also volunteer not to go to church on Easter so that they could serve you. Thank them. And if possible, bring your children into the service instead so that we can keep the number of volunteers in LS Kids to a minimum. If you're worried about your kids paying attention and being quiet enough, consider a few things: there will be music, there will be a dance, and the sermon is only 20-25 minutes. Also, at the Welcome, I'm going to mention the fact that kids are joining us for Easter celebration and that we should rejoice even if they make noise because these kids are being raised under the influence of the gospel. So, you don't have to worry about it if your kid makes noises or talks too loud or is somewhat distracting. It might be a good idea, though, to sit somewhere towards the back with your kids, just in case you need to make a quick exit. Another good idea would be to bring your kids a bag with crayons, coloring books, books to read or give them a quiet game on your phone to play, that doesn't make noise.
4. In preparation for tomorrow, read for yourself one of the crucifixion and resurrection accounts from one of the gospels. We will be covering John's gospel tomorrow, so you might choose Matthew, Mark or Luke.
5. Pray.

Love you and look forward to celebrating the resurrection of our Lord with you.
Pastor Harvey

p.s. - pray.