Hebrews - Part 4 (Hebrews 2:2-7)

In Hebrews 2.2, it says, For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? We have declared it first by the Lord. so Hebrews 2 3 how shall we escape if we neglect such great salvation it was declared at first by the Lord it was attested to us by those who heard while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will so looking at those verses we have a few interesting phrases that in and of themselves are worthy of trying to understand what's going on. So the big picture is basically you should be focused on your salvation.

You should be focused on it because it was given to us by God, because it was provided by apostles who were testified by God to be apostles. It was given by our Lord himself. It's really important, but there's people who, when I read commentaries, have different takes on some of the details of this that would change the overall meaning. And so I want to look at a couple of the phrases.

So the first one says in Hebrews 2.2, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, what is this message delivered by angels? That would be a good question. and if you do what I do, and you don't have the whole Bible memorized, but you have the notes in your Bible, the notes, you know, I've got one really good Bible. All Bibles are really good, but what I mean is I have one Bible that's an ESV Bible that has just – I'm going to hold it up for you guys here. it's got all these marginal notes with all so all that is is these are all these references to other verses that appear like the one we're talking about so in my bible next to hebrews 2 2 there's a little little letter when you tap on the letter on your phone or look in your Bible, it takes you to Acts 7.53.

So if you look at Acts 7.53, give me a second to get there. This is Stephen preaching to the people. We'll just go to 7.51. He says, you stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears you always resist the holy spirit and he says as your fathers did so do you and he says which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute so he's really speaking to him the way jesus was speaking to the pharisees a lot on earth or just saying you you guys were never you're just like the people before you that you came from they weren't listening to what god was saying.

He says, you resist the Holy Spirit. He says, and they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one who you have now betrayed and murdered. So he puts them like we tell people like a lot of hard things in Christianity when we're preaching, but he just told them you murdered the Lord Jesus Christ and like he means it. I mean, this is literal, you know, these people were actually there.

But then he says, you who receive the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. So, you know, obviously, Acts 7 could be a great chapter to exegete and preach through. And you can even just stand and read it and you're preaching it yourself. But he says, delivered by angels. The law was delivered by angels and they did not keep it. So his point to them is, you guys received God's law.

It was delivered by angels, and you didn't keep the law. You've always resisted the Holy Spirit. And then the other part is Galatians 3, verse 19, where we saw something like this, where Paul says he's comparing the law and faith. faith, the law compared to the promise that comes through faith. In Galatians 3.19, he says, why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.

So he's leading up to the point where he's going to say the law was put in place as a guardian to basically preserve the line of the Messiah, and so to lead people to the Messiah who would come so that their transgressions will become evident to them. The law shows us our transgressions, but then he says, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. So, a couple of neat verses in the New Testament that identify the law as having even been given by like angels.

And so in Hebrews 2 the same theme comes through This is the authorship of the Holy Spirit He says, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, seems like he's talking about the law of God. And he says, in every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation so now he's making um a contrast so hebrews is a book of comparisons and contrasts there's so many times that the the author of hebrews the holy spirit himself as well is trying to give us a picture of two things he's either showing us a similarity between the things to help us to understand what what maybe one of them is that we're not understanding yet. So he's taking something we do understand, temple sacrifices, a priesthood, and he's going to show us something we don't understand yet, the mediation of Christ on our behalf.

Or he's showing such a contrast that there's no way we can not think Christ is better than everything. So the book of Hebrews is Jesus is better than everything. It's one of the summaries of it. but so he says how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation and so when i read this i read if you neglect the salvation that's been offered to you you are uh you don't have any hope you're you're hell bound um if you're a person who lives as if you don't know about this salvation by faith you you evidence that you haven't heard about salvation you evidence that you don't know God himself.

You don't know Christ. I read a commentary, though, where the guy said, it doesn't say, I'm trying to remember what the guy said, because I didn't like it, but I want to summarize it for you. He said, to neglect salvation, he said, you can't neglect something you don't have, is what he said. And he tried to make the point that he's speaking to believers, which, you know, most of the book is, and he's trying to make the point that you have salvation.

He's like, just don't neglect it. Like, make sure you keep a healthy focus on it, and you don't just forget about it once in a while. And I think the guy came from sort of an Arminian viewpoint. And because I read this, and I see almost the same language and warning as we get in Hebrews 10. So if you go to Hebrews 10, toward the end, in verse 28, speaking again about the law of Moses and comparing the consequences of the law of Moses to what will happen to those who reject Jesus Christ.

He says, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. So same concept. we neglect such a great salvation. It's just like ignoring the message delivered by angels that you died without mercy. And then 29, how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace?

We'll get to Hebrews 10 at one point here, but just the idea of a spirit of grace and then outraging the spirit of grace. It's like grace and outrage are opposite words. so this this author is trying to emphasize the abundant grace of god the type of god we serve and that that for you to ignore the salvation that's been offered is outrageous to him but again what we saw here is is that if you set aside the law of moses so if you ignored it uh if you know if you didn't listen to it if you didn't heed it if you disobeyed it you you would die without any mercy. There was no mercy in God's law for the evildoer.

When the two or three witnesses came and testified against you and said, yes, he did this evil deed, there wasn't a chance to say, well, let's let him go. If you were guilty, you were guilty. And so the phrase without mercy isn't meant to be a bad thing. It just means that's not what the law is designed to do. The law is not designed to give mercy. The law is designed to ultimately give punishment or reward for good behavior, which we're not so good at performing.

But what he's comparing here is that if you wouldn't listen to the law and you died without mercy, and then here I am pouring out grace on people through my son, Jesus Christ, if you're going to ignore that message of salvation, if you cannot just sit down, humble yourself, and accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, or believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, or trust in Christ, whatever phrase people like to use to mean salvation, we have a lot of them in English, then there's no mercy for you either. More mercy is provided in the message of the cross than in the entire law. And if you reject the mercy that's provided there, it's not like there's more some other place.

You get mercy one way. It's through Jesus Christ. And so in Hebrews 2, I think the author is actually saying the same thing he's going to say later in Hebrews 10, that the message declared by angels the law of God was reliable and every transgression or disobedience received justice And he saying if you will not take heed to the salvation offered in Jesus Christ if you don pay close attention to what you heard and you drift away from it you will not escape There is no other way for you to be forgiven of your sins than to believe in the salvation story that we've been given, that Christ died on the cross for our sins, rose again three days later and ascended into heaven.

I think he's making the same point he's going to make in 10. I think anyone who picks on the word neglect and says that somehow means you have it, but you just ignore it once in a while, I think that's silly. I should say foolish. Silly sounds too nice in my mind. So now this salvation he's talking about was declared at first by the Lord, he says. And it was attested to us by those who heard.

So it was declared at first by the Lord. So Jesus Christ has been proclaimed since Genesis 315. You could argue he was always there. But Genesis 3.15 is when we first hear the gospel. That's when we first see that God's going to send a Messiah to come into the world to basically undo the works of Satan. Okay, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, John tells us.

And we see that in Genesis 3.15. And we know from our understanding now of so much of the New Testament that the Old Testament was constantly giving us types and shadows and pointing us to Christ. I mean, the books of Hebrews will teach us that about so many aspects of the ceremonial law. what what never happened though in the old testament was the revelation of jesus christ in the way he's revealed when he became incarnate and preached on this earth so we can argue all the live long day that that the old testament pointed to him but what we can't say is that he He was proclaimed or declared in the same way as when he appeared.

When Jesus Christ appeared, everything changed. It is a significant event in history. There is an absolute difference between types and shadows in the real thing. And if you don't believe me, wait until the sun comes up, go outside, look at your shadow, and then, you know, try to fix your tie in your shadow. The shadow does not give you the details and the understanding and the vision that you really need to know what something looks like.

So Jesus comes. He declared the salvation. He came on the scene and he proclaimed it. He was a preacher. I mean, we could just go through all the gospels here. Jesus Christ was a preacher. and Jesus Christ was literally everything that liberals and fools and false converts today want to say he wasn't.

He wasn't a tree-hugging, poor people-loving hippie guy or whatever, Democrat, socialist kind of guy. Jesus Christ was a hardworking man. He worked with his hands. he was the carpenter's son Jesus Christ preached on the street he stood outside and just basically yelled at people and told them the truth of God he was a prophet of God who told people what God had said he revealed God to people and he did it truthfully and he did it without fear of man he did it without any shame of what men would think of Jesus Christ proclaimed the gospel he called people a brood of vipers he called people sons of the devil he also had compassion on people in ways that are way beyond what we're capable of anyway so don't try to be more compassionate than Jesus either he was perfect at it but Jesus Christ pitied people He loved them from his heart and he gave them eternal life.

And only he can do that. But what we can do is we can dispense the words that he's given us so that people might receive eternal life as well. And so I know I'm preaching to the choir here. But when we go on the street and we talk to people about their greatest needs in life and they come up to us and and, you know, especially some of the times we go out, we get poor people, they need money.

And people need help for their alcohol addiction and people need a job and people need their wife to come back. And there's all sorts of things that people are having trouble with in this world. And we give them Jesus Christ. And the way we give them Jesus Christ is by teaching them who Jesus Christ is, by describing Jesus Christ the way the Bible has given us to describe him.

God's given us, what, 31,000 verses that we can use to describe Jesus Christ to people. And every time we open our mouth and we say something that's not one of those, for the most part, we're saying we think we have a little better way of saying it. And you don't. And I don't. I understand we summarize scripture sometimes and paraphrase things. That's different.

I'm talking about people that try to just completely change it or people who just avoid using biblical language altogether for fear that it'll offend people. We need to trust that the words God gave us are the words the Holy Spirit actually wants to use and will use to regenerate people's hearts, grant them faith in Christ, and transfer them from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his son. so there a little off the topic but that that me so the message was declared at first by the Lord Hebrews 2 It important I don think we need to prove that one If you don't believe me, you just need to read more of the Bible, just the Gospels. I think we all know that.

But then it says it was attested to us by those who heard. and then he says while god also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the holy spirit distributed according to his will so this is an interesting phrase to me because it says it was attested to us by those who heard the way i read that at least in English, I'm not getting into the Greek, is this a first person description, us. That's a group of people that includes the author, had this message of such a great salvation declared and attested to that group, including the author. And then he says, it was attested to us, by whom? by those who heard.

Well, I'm convinced that Hebrews sounds a lot like Paul. And I have slipped when I've taught from Hebrews and said, Paul says. Paul was not taught the gospel by the other apostles. It wasn't attested to Paul in this way. Paul was taught the gospel by Jesus Christ himself. so when somebody argues that the author of Hebrews was Luke or Apollos or whoever else people like to say, this verse sort of supports that this wasn't an apostle.

This wasn't one of these main guys that we think of like Paul. And so, you know, just something that's more of a thing you can argue about if you go to seminary. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that one. And those guys like to argue about details like this, and that's fine. He says it was attested to us by those who heard. So the gospel starts with the Bible itself, the Old Testament.

But it really starts with Jesus Christ proclaiming this is the gospel. The kingdom is here. Believe in the king. Repent and believe the gospel. But then once Jesus Christ isn't proclaiming it anymore, the message is spread by the apostles. So he goes on the mount and he says, go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.

Who is he speaking to? He's speaking to his disciples. He's sending them out basically to start churches that fulfill the Great Commission. And so he tells his apostles to declare this. And then it says, well, God bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. This is great.

Hebrews is also a book about the church, telling us how the church is to function. So, for example, turn to 2 Corinthians 12. In verse 12, or 2 Corinthians 12, verse 11, Paul is writing to the Corinthians. He is trying to make the case that the Corinthians should think of him and his message as one to listen to. because the Corinthians are being deceived by these other messengers that are coming.

And Paul's mockingly called these guys super apostles because these guys are coming along and acting like, hey, you should listen to us because we're all that. And the Corinthians are falling for it. And there's analogies to the church today. We can get into that another time. But he says, I have been a fool. He says, you forced me to it.

He says, for I ought to have been commended by you. he says for I was not at all inferior to these super apostles even though I am nothing so he's trying to point out he's nothing Christ is everything to these guys but in his in his declaration of of really his humbleness and his trying to describe for them like look what what what actually makes me someone worth listening to is that I'm actually humble these other guys aren't. I'm actually here for you and for God. And these other guys are only in it for themselves.

So it's kind of hard. And this is a difficulty of a leader, of a teacher, of a pastor is actually to exhibit humility. And if people aren't noticing that you're humble and you have to grab them and explain it to them as a teaching tool, it's really contradictory to the idea that you're humble. Because as soon as you start talking about how humble you are, people are like, well, you're not humble now.

And that's kind of the catch-22. But if people don't realize it because they're too dense to figure it out, you have to tell them. You have to explain it to them, things that they don't get. Think about with your kids and those of you who have kids. Kids don't just figure out that you're being humble. You make yourself low.

You be unselfish. They just take advantage of it. Kids are like the Corinthians, basically, just carnal people following the passions of their flesh. Sometimes you have to explain things to people, and that's okay. It's okay to look at your wife or your kids or whoever you're leading and try to explain, like, hey, I want you to see how I've tried to make myself low in the eyes of God and in the eyes of man and how maybe that qualifies me to be someone you should follow.

But then he says in verse 12, 12, the signs of a true apostle, 2 Corinthians 12, 12, the signs of a true apostle. okay so there's true and false apostles and one way you can know the difference is anybody that's alive today that calls himself an apostle they're in the category false apostle If you go back to the first century, there were going to be true and false ones, and you had to know how to tell the difference. Well, how did you know the difference? He says there were signs of a true apostle.

He says they were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. Well, isn't that what Hebrews 2.4 was saying, or 3? Was it 4? I don't like using my computer program. I should just use my Bible. And 2.4, God bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles of these apostles that were attesting to his gospel.

The reason we have Bible books is that men who were literally healing people of diseases wrote these things down. And then someone said, well, that guy's got the power of God that Jesus just exhibited. that guy's got the same power to heal people. He's got the same power to prophesy truth from God that is irrefutable, that's infallible, that aligns with all of other scripture, and yet often reveals a little bit of something we didn't know yet.

That evidenced for people that these guys were true apostles, that the message could be believed. Anybody can stand on a corner and preach. The way that you knew the message could be believed was because it was from God. The way you knew it was from God was either it was already written in a place we knew was from God, which is what we do today, or God testified to his truth by either proving the foretelling true or through the signs and wonders that cause people to realize, well, something's happening that's out of the ordinary here.

There's nothing ordinary about guys getting healed. And so we can stand today and we can preach in the tradition of the apostles and we can basically tell people about Christ and we can tell them what we'll say an infallible message. Now, will we sometimes mess that up a little bit? Sure. You know, I preach on the street. Even if I just read scripture, I could say something wrong.

I get it. But we are telling people the truth. We are telling people a message that cannot fail. And that is so important that we follow in what the apostles have given us. And we see that we know we have the truth because they bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles. And then he even says, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will, which reminds us of Romans 12. which is where Paul says in verse 6, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, and he goes on and on listing different spiritual gifts and how we're to use them. And so the author of Hebrews recognizes, hey, you have gifts among you. And these apostles had the gifts that were given according to God's will. And so we're not to despise the people with the cooler gifts.

I mean, it would have been hard, I think, to be a person who was gifted in acts of mercy, standing next to a guy gifted in healing. I mean, the one guy is going to get way more attention, way more thanks, way more accolades. And God wants us to humbly be thankful to play any role in his kingdom. I think Jesus said, why don't you just be happy your name's in the book of life?

Like, that should bring you so much joy that, you know, even the hardest life as a Christian is endurable. If you've escaped from slavery in Egypt, don't complain about the food you eat wherever you get to go. So, the message was declared by angels. The message of the law was reliable. if we neglect it there's punishment to come there's no hope outside of Christ and then this message was declared by the Lord was attested by the apostles and then we have the reference to Psalm 8 Hebrews 2 5 for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking.

I want to remind you, it's a comparing contrast book. God's comparing the supremacy of Christ to even the overwhelming revelation of angels. If an angel appeared to any one of us right now, we'd probably turn off Zoom and die, or maybe die and leave Zoom on. We'd be overwhelmed. We be afraid There powers that are more powerful than we are as creatures as men Angels are creatures too but we mere men And angels are big things These are powerful beings And so God comparing angels to men and he says it's been testified somewhere, what is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him?

He's reminding us here that you made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. So you could read that, and you could do what most of America does and say, oh, that's talking about me. That's so exciting. Who am I that God is thinking of me? There's a song, Who Am I?

It's a casting crown song, and they use these verses, and it's like, oh, you know, there's God up in heaven and he looks at all these wonderful angels and then he sees little old me and he's so excited. And so you could read it that way. And I can understand how this, this can apply a little bit to man. We're who, you know, it is a big deal that God cares for you and me and that we are lower than angels, but one day we'll judge angels.

So for a little while, we're lower than angels. But then it says you've crowned them with glory and honor. Okay. Maybe We've got a little bit. Everything in subjection under his feet. Well, okay, we've been given dominion.

I can see how somebody could go there. But just keep reading. Sometimes we just stop reading. Now in putting everything in subjection to him, okay, you can still be talking about mankind in general. It says he left nothing outside his control. Okay.

It's starting to sound like a person, but I guess you could still play the, yeah, this is just about mankind game. And then he says, at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. Now it's getting a little weird. If you're going to make Psalm 8 and God thinking of you and being mindful of you and making you a little lower than the angels, it's starting to get a little bit weird.

So keep reading. Then he says, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels and then boom, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor. and then he tells us why afterwards, but I'm just going to stop there just to prove the point that Psalm 8 is about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one who became a man and became lower than angels, and it was phenomenally humiliating that he would do that in the first place.

But the point is, who is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? Well, it's Jesus. He's God's son. That's who it is. God loves Jesus. God would have a problem if he loved sinful creatures without Jesus.

He is incapable of looking upon sin and unrighteousness. It's against his character. But he loves Jesus. Jesus was the perfect man. Jesus did what Adam couldn't do. And so God was mindful of him.

And he made him a little while lower than angels. Well, yeah, he was a man who's lower than angels. Angels had to minister to Jesus after he was in the wilderness fasting for so long. But it says you crown him with glory and honor. Yes, it says here in verse 9. Jesus crowned with glory and honor.

And then it says, putting everything in subjection under his feet. It says, now putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. And then he says, at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. That's a really interesting phrase because we think Jesus is king, Jesus rules. Of course, everything's in subjection to him.

And in some way, he's sovereign and everything is according to his will. But if you look at 1 Corinthians 12, we'll finish here. 1 Corinthians 12. No, 1 Corinthians 15. I'm sorry. 1 Corinthians 15.

And, of course, I don't remember. Yeah. In verse 27, well, 26, I'm sorry, 25. For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. He's talking about Jesus Christ. He's ruling and reigning, which we agree with.

But then it says until he has put all enemies under his feet. So there are some things not in subjection to him. It says the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Well, death is still alive and well, right? If there's anything that's certain, it's that we're going to die. we could actually hope for a tax existence right now probably not And then for God has put all things in subjection under his feet But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he, God, is accepted who put all things in subjection under him.

So God isn't subject to Jesus. Jesus is co-equal with the Father. But then he says, when all things are subjected to him, the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. Point being, Jesus Christ is reigning. He's ruling now. He's not waiting for us to make the world nice enough for him to rule.

He's in charge right now. He's the ruler. He's the king. He's the reigner. and Jesus Christ is putting all things in subjection under his feet. God himself is doing that. And the last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

Death will be swallowed up in victory and there will be an ultimate removal of death. Every tear will be wiped away from every eye. There'll be no more death, no more crying, no more sickness, no more disease. The curse will be lifted that we created. like this is there's not this out of control situation where god's like kind of battling satan behind the scenes and when god finally gets the best of them like death will be gone we're simply cursed by god for disobedience to his law because disobedience to the law requires justice it's that simple the curse we live under now is the justice we actually deserve in this life The mercy is that we're not dying faster.

The mercy is that we live long enough to hear the message of salvation. And so Jesus Christ is the subject of the Old Testament. He's the object of Psalm 8. That's who's being spoken of. He is the one who was made a little lower than angels, who God set his love upon and thinks about and is crowned with glory and honor. And so, again, what we can easily walk away with in Hebrews is that Jesus is better.

You know, you say Jesus is better than what? Well, everything, but the law, angels, the apostles. He's better than it all. If you have Jesus, that's all you need. And it's all you have. So I'll stop there and open it up for comments, questions, discussion.

Thank you, Michael, as always, for your leadership. A couple of thoughts I had. You mentioned early on this morning that the one commentary about 2.3, Hebrews 2.3, saying that, you know, how can you lose? How can you I'm sorry, how can you neglect neglected if you don't, you know, do you really have it? How can you neglect it if you don't really have it?

Spurgeon made the point that I thought was interesting about 2.3. He said that what caught his attention is that we think about sinfulness and perishing. We think about it as a matter of when we openly sin, we stand to perish for that, right? Spurgeon says, but what this text proves is it's even more basic than that. That it's not even about being open sinners.

It's just simply neglecting the salvation that ultimately causes us to perish, that can cause us to perish, that we just need to camp out on that basic idea that if we just don't even accept it, we're dead. We're gone. You know. One other one other thought I had on two four. Is when we talk about the miraculous signs, right? The thing that.

When I'm teaching Sunday school, one of the things I warn the class about is I'm seeing all these. I'm seeing a lot of these, and it's not just women, men too, but I see a lot of women that will buy up all of these devotionals, you know, these new age devotionals that are really cool and how they, you know, speak to us, right, about the word of God, supposedly. I'm trying to think, what is that one real popular devotional that women use right now?

It escapes me, but one of the points I make in my Sunday school classes is I'm like, it's great that you buy these devotionals, but if you would spend just half as much time looking for a Bible that you could really, that would draw you to it, the way you're looking at your devotionals on how pretty it is and how it draws you in and wants you to journal in it and it just makes you want to open it up and breathe it in It like why don you have that Why don we have that same passion for the word of God where it shouldn even be about the devotion? Let's just open the word and let the word breathe. You know, why do you have to have this cool little frilly devotional?

That's just me. So I admonish them a lot of times or warn them about that. But in 2-4, what really gets my attention is this. I remember watching the Band of Brothers I don't know if you guys have ever seen that which was the series done on the Holocaust and World War II and I had never known until I watched that that when Allied forces rolled into Germany and we started turning Hitler back we got into the concentration camps and Eisenhower ordered the troops as soon as we got there to start taking pictures.

He said, because one day people are going to say this never happened. And if we don't take pictures to prove that when we got here, these people literally were dying in these concentration camps, they're going to try to refute it. They're going to try to say it never happened. And I thought, is this accurate historically? Because I had never heard that before.

And I did the research, started reading and found out that it was true that our generals at the time were insistent that we get photo proof in those concentration camps when we got there because we were afraid historically as time went on, we would try to refute it. Well, the interesting thing is, and I didn't mean to go around the block on that point right there, but right there in four, I got to thinking, you know, we believe as men historical events with half the proof and reliability that we have that Jesus Christ lived and died and suffered a horrendous death. And we have no problem believing that.

We've got teachers in every school in America teaching history. And when we get taught that history, we have no problem believing with half the reliability and the proof that historical things happened 100 years ago, 200 years ago, you know, wars that happened in history. No problem believing that. But then we have a struggle or anybody would have a struggle believing that Jesus Christ lived and died.

It's really in some way shameful. But it's interesting to me, you know. those are multiple multiple good points there brother concerning the ladies at your church and and ladies in greater christianity um like these are best-selling books like these these books are selling a lot uh it's it's actually really it's really pathetic in my opinion the popularity of these things because it's the people buying them that are actually selling themselves short so some of the ladies that are selling these books they're promoting their books on the basis that like we're going to free women and we're going to free women from like the the chains of christianity and the patriarchy and submitting to husbands and all these things that they think and say, wait a second, Christianity is the book that says, let a woman learn. That's 1 Timothy 2, let a woman learn.

Other religions don't want women to learn. Other religions want to keep women in the dark. And these books that are these little devotional books that ultimately are telling people fake Christianity, they're actually keeping women from learning. And they're treating women, when they peddle these books toward them, what they're saying is, you're too stupid to read the Word of God yourself.

You're too stupid to open it up and study it and talk to your friends about it and let iron sharpen iron. So you need my little guide that's completely different from the traditional way Christians learn Christianity so that you can color while doing it. And I think it's insulting to women, and I think it's contradictory to Scripture, and I think you're absolutely right that if they would just pick up the Bible and put even half as much effort into enjoying it and understanding it, they'd be blessed beyond what they can even imagine right now.

Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us, and I also have a personal website, michaelcoughlin.net. You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures