You're listening to KFI on demand. Jim, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show.
Hi, how are you, Jesus? I'm well, Jim. What's
going on? I'm just having problems in my marriage. It's my second marriage,
and I'm not sure what to do. Uh. I've been married now,
in my second marriage for six years. I was married fifteen years prior
to that to another woman who I am friends with. Now. Basically,
you know, the blended family thing is just not it's really not working.
So you there's kids both from previous marriage. He has she has two daughters,
and I have one daughter. And they're all teenagers and they're all girls.
So I live in a house basically with four with four you know,
young women and one adult woman. And and you know, from a man's
point of view, at least from my point of view, it's very difficult
at times to deal with their mood swings, you know, from their hormonal
or whatever standpoint. And I, you know, prior to her meeting me,
I used to drink a lot. When I separated from my first wife,
I suffered depression and I drank a lot. And I've had a lot
of women in my life to escape and what were you escaping from? Changed
all that? So what were you escaping from the pain of not being with
my daughter? Okay, and you know I've changed all that, but you
know, she just still doesn't trust me. I'm always getting accused if I'm
a salesman, if I get if I get home late, if I leave
early, you know, if she if she reads my text messages, which
I don't have a problem with, but you know, ask me in a
way that you know is respectful, don't accuse me of stuff. Well,
well, let's kind of look at this through a couple of different perspectives.
First of all, you mentioned the being with a bunch of women and their
home hormones or whatever. I don't know that that's particularly the case. There's
many things that can cause issues when you blend a family automatically, and it
doesn't necessarily have anything to do with hormones. So I don't know that that's
always the fair assessment. I know many guys tend to go to that place,
but there can be a lot of things that you're bringing to the equation
that can cause people to be upset or what have you. You have had
a pattern, This doesn't come out of nowhere now. You may know that
it's unjustified now, but your wife emotions aren't completely unjustified. It you you've
said yourself that you used to drink and used to womanize exactly. So these
are all based on things you've done in the past. How is how is
the so other than than your wife being curious as to where you are and
what you're doing. How is the so called problems in the blended family materialize
them? I mean it was a struggle. It was a struggle early on,
a real struggle. And you know, especially with one of her daughters,
you know, who was really disrespectful and and just you know the way
she was raised. She she, my my new wife came from a really
bad marriage where there he was verbally and emotionally abusive to them, and so
she really had a negative attitude. And you know, I had to have
a I was gentle, but yet at the same time, I had to
have a firm hand if I was going to make this work with them.
And I'm not allowed now to say anything. My opinion is not respected or
allowed. And if I see something that I don't think is right, I
state my opinion. I do it respectfully, but I'm basically shot down.
What would be something you see that you don't feel is right? Okay,
well I think that Okay. The oldest daughter is the one that I have
the problems the most with, and I love her dearly, but she is
a procrastinator. She's an underachiever. She's had several boyfriends after her mother swear
that she would not let her have boyfriends anymore. And she spends a lot
of time on the on the couch watching television. How old is she?
She's seventeen. She's going to be going to college this fall. Is so
is my daughter. Okay, but my daughter is a four point two student,
which you know, I'm not comparing the grade point averages here, Yeah
you are. You just did actually literally you just did well. I guess
I did. But I'm comparing the effort, is what I'm saying. Is
there do you find that there's a learning disability of any kind with the eldest
daughter or anything that might cause that to manifest in a way that hurts?
Like her youngest daughter is fourteen, and she's very smart and gets all a's
in school too, And she says, well that her older daughter just struggles.
She's just not as you know, smart as the other ones. And
I don't I'm not willing to sell you sold on that I think she is
that smart. Okay? Has he did the eldest daughter do better in school
at one time? Or Yeah? When she was in middle school and junior
high school, she did a lot better than she Then she got into high
school. And what happened around high school, Well, you know the first
thing that happened is that she I got a phone call because her mom was
out of town, and I got a phone call and she was caught having
intercourse with a boy at school. And I mean I didn't say anything.
I didn't yell at her. I went and picked her up, and she
got suspended from school, and I talked to her and I said, you
know, people make mistakes, and you know, did you use protection?
And I asked the basic questions and I let it go. At that point,
I said, you're going to have to deal with your mother at this
point, because I don't handle I'd never handled her girls in that fashion.
I've just stated my case, okay, And what what kind of relationship does
the eldest daughter have with her birth father? She moved out when she was
fourteen, she left him and came to the house because she wanted to be
with me rather than him. And uh, do you guys bicker? Are
we excuse me? Do you bicker? Do you fight? Like not knock
down, drag out? We don't bicker. We don't bicker. There's times
where she's out of wine, where you know, she gets frustrated because I
tell her, you know what, you need to just go to your room
and be quiet, and she gets a little bit upset about that. But
we don't We don't fight. We don't argue. I mean, and for
the most part, she respects me all the time. But if I ask
her for her help, she helps. You know, she's a good kid.
But you know, there's things about her that I wish to improve,
and I'm not being allowed to do it. Okay, but it's going to
be hard to improve. You've got a lot going on. First of all,
she came into your life at you know, eleven years old or so,
and you're dealing with her as she's going through an important time in her
life, and she's being pulled apart from a family that in her head was
always going to be together regardless of whatever problems they had in that household.
Blended families can be very difficult. The key always is going to be between
you and the mother, two parents loving each other and being the example,
setting the example. As far as discipline, the discipline of those children is
really going to be based on your wife. Their mother. She should set
the tone for discipline for those girls because they're her girls. And you can
be a good step dad, and you can be good counsel to your wife
and all of those things, but she has to raise those children, and
you've got one that's going to go off to college. You can't help but
wonder if there's a sexual intercourse going on at such a young age that it
might not have something to do with her searching for that male attention and those
things that are being torn apart in her life. It's not about being a
stern hand. It's about being a good voice and a good partner to your
wife in a way that the kids, all the kids yours and hers,
can see it and use it as an example. That's the best you're going
to be able to do in a situation like this. Sean, Welcome to
the Jesus Christ Show. Hi. All right, My question is why did
Satan rebell against God if he ultimately knew God would destroy them at the end.
And basically, you know what makes Stayton think that he'll be able to
result himself above the throat of God. It's an interesting question because you think,
Wow, you know you're there in the presence of God already, You're
a special creation, a beautiful angel, powerful angel, and then all of
a sudden there's this rebellion. The belief in modern Christian theology is very simple.
It's pride. Now, angels have the same ability to rebel as humans
do, with some exceptions. They have the total some knowledge they will will
ever have, so anything done will be permanent, and the decision has been
made, both good and bad has been made. So the one third of
Heaven that went with him all locked, that's their decision. Those that stayed
all locked, that's their decision. It is also said that it is believed
that angels have intellectual and emotion as well, the same as humans do.
Again, the difference being they have the total some knowledge they're going to have,
whereas you are accumulating knowledge throughout your life, and only at the point
of death will you be at that point that that same point that an angel
would be where you had the total knowledge of making any decision that would be
permanent. So now you take all of those things, and you have this
angel that slowly starts becoming prideful, wanting to be God. Isaiah fourteen twelve
through fourteen. How you are fallen from heaven Odai, Star, son of
Dawn, How you are cut down to the ground. You lay the nations
low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the
stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit
on the mount of Assembly. And it goes on and on, And that's
the version I'm kind of stuck at because so it's angels are supposedly, you
know, a thousand times smarter than us humans are. I mean, how
does that make any sense that he knows that he's signing his own dessentence?
Or does she think that? Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting that your
assumption is that sin is based on ignorance not intelligence. That's not the case.
It's a matter of thinking you can get away with it, building up
pride. That's what we talked about earlier. Getting to a place where you
know, many criminals are caught people. They understand the consequences, but you
fool yourself into believing and you think it's an intelligent thing and it's not not
at all. Pride supersedes that. Pride becomes the power that leads, not
the mind or the intellect. So you go straight to the smarts when it's
not smarts at all. It has nothing to do with that. It's pride
that builds up exactly every time. Think about the things you do wrong in
life. So Sean, when you make mistakes, you sin, you know
you're coming for that sin. You know it, you're approaching it, and
you're justifying it in your head. Well, it's okay if I speed because
I need to get there and i'm a little late, or I'm a good
driver. These other people are idiots, but I'm good and I'll take care
of this. You justify it, and that's all the enemy did. It's
not about intellect at all. There's very smart criminals out there. All they
do is they allow their emotions to supersede their greed, to supersede their intellect,
to transcend above that and tell them, hey, you could be something
even better if you broke the rules. Karen Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show.
Hi, good morning. I was wondering about pluralistic marriage where a man
could have more than one wife in the Old Testament, and my husband and
I are just driving along and discussing this. So I was wondering if you
could give me some insight about when that became permissible in the Old Testament and
then when it stops being permissible. Okay, it's not permissible, It's never
permissible. Why is your husband? Uh? Is he trying to negotiate with
you? Or this is just theological We're driving along and we've got the Bible.
We just we talk about things. Okay, that's wonderful. I was
wondering, you know, somehow he was going, so, honey, what
would you think if we got a little, you know, extra help around
the house? Uh? Yeah, probably not not a good idea. But
since you both are just looking at it academically, understand this that not everything
in the the Bible is prescribing what you what you should do. Sometimes it
just talks about what's being done, and that happens throughout the entirety of scripture.
Now, there's ways that you can you can conclude based on what's being
said in scripture uh that polygamy is not for the godly person. In the
New Testament, for Timothy three to two and twelve Titus one six, it
talks about the standard and qualifications for spiritual leadership, and that person is to
be a husband of one wife, it says, right. And it also
goes on to talk about different things that dealing with leadership, dealing a beat,
like being above reproach, being temperate, self control, respectable, hospitable.
So if these things are for every believer, then there's no reason to
believe in not just for leadership, there's no reason to believe that the other
qualifications here in this case dealing with the husband of one wife, that that
is not forevery Christian either. Plus, you can look back to Adam and
Eve and the creation, that God was looking to build a couple that would
work together and that could be partners. And the word in scripture is help
meet, and that God wanted Adam to have a help meet, proper help
meet, and in this case it was woman, and it was one woman.
So when you combine all those things and you look, you can even
find in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy seventeen fourteen through twenty. If you read through that,
you'll see that it's talking about having that it's not good to have multiple wives
and these types of things. So anything that's prescriptive, that's prescribing what you
should do or not do in scripture. In scripture says no, not good.
But the other stuff is just describing what's taking place, that there are
people that were doing that, but it describes all kinds of sins in scripture,
correct, correct, And was the action of taking more than one wife
influenced by the cultures around them? Sure? Many times that's why you're not
seeing a direct consequence. So you're not seeing a consequence necessarily to it.
So you think, well, gosh, you know, maybe God is okaying.
I don't give any thumbs up, no difference, because God allows all
kinds of things, and the Father is very allowing because humans need to make
their decisions. So if God was constantly coming down and stopping you from making
a decision, then no one would have free will. And in that in
the case of people in scripture that you know, people will say, well
what about you know, mighty kings, what about Solomon? What about these
things? Well, if God says they're great, then how come they're doing
things that aren't great. But that's the entirety of scripture. Moses was a
murderer, you remember, Moses murdered the Egyptian and he looked left, he
looked right, and forgot to look up, you know. And so there's
there's many times where you will find people who miss the mark in scripture that
are still referred to as great men and women. It's because they in overall,
looking at them in comparison to other humans and to the will and want
of God, that their stand up to a certain standard. But they all
are sinners, and they all will make mistakes, and some of them grievous
mistakes. So there if you look through scripture and the men of renown and
those that people often quote as being wonderful and great and everything, they all
have problems. And that that that goes for even great kings with you know,
the the heart and mind of God. There are those that make many
mistakes. But polygamy is never in scripture condoned. It's allowed, just as
any other sin is allowed, but not condoned. Very good. So I
hope that helps your drive this morning. It does, it does, Thank
you very much. You're very welcome. There is nothing more beautiful to me
than when a couple takes the time to spend and discuss these things. I
just I think it's fabulous. It builds a wonderful relationship between two people to
engage in ideas and thoughts and wondering. And so I commend you in your
hus been for Karen for spending time in the car that most people could just
be quiet or you know, be upset about how long it's taking to drive
wherever these types of things, and then using it for something so productive and
wonderful. I think that's uh. I think that's pretty cool. Bob,
Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. Hey, how are you? Thank you
for taking I'm well, how can I help you? Well, I'm kind
of in a dilemma. I'm a new Bible reader. And you know,
when you start, when you talk about the Bible with people, everybody has
an opinion, of course, but I'm sure not everybody is right because there's
so many difference. So my question is I started at Genesis, and my
dilemma is this. I read that Adam and Eve were presented with an opportunity
to make a decision and they failed, But the result of their decision was
told to them in advanced that they would positively die. My question is were
they do they did they have the prospect of going to heaven? Because if
that was presented to them, the pros you know that they would positively die.
Is that prospect to all men that if you sin, you die?
Now, obviously we're sinners, so I guess we we all die. I
guess just I want to know what their disposition is. Do they have the
opportunity to go to heaven? I love that you are thinking this way.
You've you've pointed out some really wonderful things to be thinking about from going through
Genesis. So I want to commend you on that you're going down the right
the right path of how people should approach scripture. Scripture says in Thessalonians to
test all things and hold fast to that which is true. And I love
that you're doing that. But let's look a couple of things. What is
it you have to look at what the words mean? What does it mean
to surely die? Well, it's not talking about a physical death. It
was talking about a spiritual death. So you're rightly curious to say, well,
does that mean that they're for sure going to go to hell. Which
is the spiritual death or what part does it play. There's nothing in scripture
that points to Adam and Eve specifically that says Adam and Eve went to heaven
or paradise in their case. Nothing, But you have to look at it
in context and look at it this way. Everyone that sins is going down
the path of surely dying. So imagine and you tie that with later in
scripture, the wages of sin are what yes, okay, so you know
that the wages of sin is death. God's saying here that Adam and Eve,
if they if they eat of this fruit, will surely die. To
the same statement, those that sin will die spiritually. The only thing is
so imagine it more like a payment. Those that do this, in this
case, sin will have to pay a million dollars. Let's make it simple.
We'll have to pay it a million dollars. Will owe a million dollars,
So that payment will have to be made, is what it's implying throughout
the entirety of scripture that payment is going to have to be made by someone.
Now, a million dollars can be paid by someone, but you have
to think of it in a way that it couldn't be paid by any individual.
So all that says will surely die is pointing to the fact that it
is the consequences or the judgment is death. So our Jewish brothers and sisters
look towards. We're looking forward to the Messiah. So imagine this way that
really the things that they did were more like writing a check on a bank
account that will be filled one day, whereas modern day Christians are looking backwards
at an already filled bank account that they're tapping into by receiving Christ or not
receiving Christ. Either they accept or reject me. So if you look at
it, all those pieces play a part. What our Jewish brothers and sisters
did to write that check was to do sacrifices, animal sacrifices, and those
burnt offerings and the like were pointing towards the ultimate sacrifice which would pay for
it, which was my death on the cross. You're taking all of these
things into account, and you read Genesis three twenty one, and Genesis three
twenty one says, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife
garments of skin and clothe them. Many theologians believe that this was actually the
first sacrifice, and that this sacrifice that is taking place there to make the
garments and to clothe them points to the fact that they, Adam and Eve,
indeed were saved. And I say that in air quotes to understand the
difference between somebody looking forward and writing that check by way of animal sacrifice versus
a Christian that is looking backwards towards the filled account that it was paid for
on the cross. So it's not the it is the full justice, which
is the full justice. The wages of sin are death, period. However,
that's for everyone across the board. Yes, even Adam and Eve.
They will surely know death. What that is to say is they will understand
they will have a debt that is death that can only be paid for by
death. But in this case the sinless lamb. So it's all everyone that
has ever sinned, oh man, all of sin and fallen short of the
glory of God. The consequence of that is spiritual death. However, by
receiving the gift of grace, the blood on the cross, that debt can
be paid for. But that's after the crucifixion and the resurrection. So prior
to that, all the Jewish believers, all of those that were people of
faith were looking forward towards the Messiah, Messiah, the Machikh, and therefore
they were writing the checks on that account, which is the sacrifice. Genesis
three twenty one applies the sacrifice by the garments of skin. So that would
imply to many theologians that in fact Adam and Eve were saved by the grace
of God via the sacrifice. Also the relationship that God has with them afterwards,
although changes does not go away, does not become obsolete, and so
that points to that as well. So really the scripture is best when you're
reading it, and I love the way you're parsing it and hearing those things,
and they stood out to you they should. But really, in the
fullness of scripture, they call it the hermeneutics. Reading through and seeing the
harmony of scripture throughout the entirety of scripture, not just one book or one
verse or something like that, you'll see that that that overall theme is throughout
the entirety of scripture, that the debt is death, and the payment is
my life, my resurrected life, and that blood on the cross, and
that death that took place the perfect and sinless and spotless lamb, and the
combination of those things, although look a little different depending on what side of
the cross you're standing. If you're looking towards it not happening yet, or
looking back at it it's already happened. The actions are different, but they
have the same meaning. So that's where Adam and Eve fall in that story.
It wasn't that God the Father was saying, you're you're going to surely
die and there's no way out of it. It's saying that, yes,
the wages of sin are death. That payment will have to be made,
and at this point, because the cross had not occurred, the payment will
be made by way of a burnt offering, an animal sacrifice, and that's
talked about in Genesis three twenty one kfix on demand