Today’s question is about Paul’s thorn in the flesh. What was it? Paul wrote about his thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12. Christians have debated over what that thorn in the flesh was for a long time. Some think that it was some kind of a disease.
Imagine this:
John is an unregenerate drug-user who, during a weekend fling in Las Vegas, falls for a flirtatious bartender named Lisa and marries her at the Little Neon Chapel. Their marriage lasts one week.
Fast forward to 20 years later. John is a completely different man. He’s been born again and drug-free for 16 years, and he has been married for 15 of them to a devoted Christian woman named Karen. They have 4 beautiful children, ages 5 through 14, whom Karen homeschools, primarily because they want to make sure that their children are raised in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).
How do I know if I’ve committed the unpardonable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit?
Today’s question is a good one about the unpardonable sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which Jesus said is unpardonable. We find Jesus’ warning against that sin recorded in three out of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic writers. I think Matthew gives us the most context in order to try to come up with at least a semi-satisfactory answer to this question that we’ve posed about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the unpardonable sin. So I’d like to start reading in Matthew, Chapter 12, verse number 22 to get the context,
If God knows everything, why do we have passages in the Bible that say things like, “God tested so and so in order to know all that was in his heart”?
Today’s question is a great one because we have passages in the Bible that talk about God testing people in order to find out what was in their hearts. One example that stands out early in the Bible is when God tested Abraham and it actually says God tested Abraham. He told him to go sacrifice his son, Isaac, up on a certain designated mountain. When Abraham lifted his arm to slay his son, the Lord stopped him of course and said, “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (Genesis 22:12).
Is it wrong to get a tattoo? Today’s question is one that might be considered to be in the ‘less significant question’ category. However, tattoos are becoming very popular, they have been over the last several years in particular, and a lot of people are getting them. They’re a fashion statement and so it’s no surprise that Christians might be wondering, “Should I get a tattoo? Is it okay?” I want to commend you if you’re asking that question and wondering about this, because before we do anything, we ought to ask the question, what does the Lord think about what I’m thinking about doing?
I want to expand a little bit in today’s lesson on the previous lesson where we asked the question, what about people who have never heard the Gospel? Of course, we clearly showed from Scripture that God is speaking to everybody, not necessarily through the Gospel. He’s speaking to them, however, through Creation and through their conscience and, sometimes, through calamities. He expects people to seek Him.
Today’s question is a great one. What about people who have never heard The Gospel, never heard about Jesus? What’s going to happen when they stand before God? How could it be fair of God to judge them about believing in Jesus or not if they’ve never heard about Him, if they’ve never heard The Gospel?
Today’s question, “What is Calvinism,” is a great question. Calvinism is a theological belief about how God saves people, that is how he keeps them out of hell and gets them into heaven. Calvinists uniquely believe that God has sovereignly selected some to be saved, but not all. It’s not God’s will for all people to be saved in Calvinistic theology. He only selected some, in fact, he selected a minority to be saved. The rest, of course by default, he has selected them not to be saved. You can’t have one without the other, okay?
This is a great question we have today: “Are Christians obligated to keep the Law of Moses?” The answer to that question is, yes and no. I’m going to explain what I mean by that in the next few minutes.
We’re asking the same question a second time in Part 2 of the question, “Is It Wrong For Christians To Join The Military?” (Read Part 1 here) Today we’re going to try to go a little further in answering this question.
We did discuss last time that going to war does not necessarily preclude the obedience to the commandment, “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself”, because God told the people of Israel to love their neighbors as themselves, but God sent those same people into war.