First, I want to say God bless all of you for taking the time to serve and feed us the truth about God’s Word.  All this information has been good for my soul.  I'm in a church where truly I'm not being fed; I'm more connected to the people.  My heart cries out for the people to desire, hunger, thirst, and truly be on fire for God.  To make this short, it's like my spirit is hungry for more.  It’s like people are just going through the motions.

Sincerely,
I Love The People

Dear I Love The People,

Your question brings up a fundamental issue – why do we go to church?  Is it for the people?  Or is there more to a “good” church than just finding people you like to spend time with?

The Bible says that we have a responsibility to assemble with other christians (Heb 10:24-25), but it also says that we need to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Php 2:12).  Christianity isn’t a team sport – we are each responsible for our own relationship with God, and we are each responsible for holding to the truth of God’s Word for ourselves.  Faith is built upon the truth of the Bible (Rom 10:17), and if you are at a congregation that doesn’t feed you the truth, it doesn’t matter how chummy you all are with each other.  Good people are a blessing, but truth always trumps friendships.

     Around the tomb of Jesus, why does it read that there were two angels in Luke 24:4 and John 20:12… but only one in Mark 16:5 and Matt 28:2-5?

Sincerely,
Head Count

Dear Head Count,

This is a great example of why we have multiple accounts of Jesus’ life.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all record the life of Christ, but they each do it from a different perspective, and they each emphasize different things.  Luke and John pointed out both angels at the tomb, but Matthew and Mark only focused on the angel that spoke.  This isn’t a contradiction; it is simply a matter of only including the details that are pertinent to their particular narrative.  Matthew and Mark never said there was only one angel… they just talked about the angel that spoke because that was all that was important for their accounts.

     We had the question in our Bible class about the Year of Jubilee the Israelites were to observe every fifty years.  My question is: did they keep this commandment?  And where is it recorded in the Bible?

Sincerely,
Jubilant

Dear Jubilant,

Lev 25:10-12 says that the Year of Jubilee was a holy year observed every fifty years.  Every fifty years, the Jews were to let all their Jewish slaves go free, and all land that had been leased (you couldn’t sell your land permanently in Israel) was to be returned to their original owners.

As far as we can tell, the Bible never specifically mentions an instance where the Israelites kept this commandment, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t.  There are many feasts and offerings commanded in the Old Testament that we never read about the Israelites following.  The assumption would be that during times of faithfulness, the Israelites remembered these feasts, and when they turned away from God, they probably forgot them.  At least, that is the pattern we see with the Passover feast.  When Hezekiah became king, he reinstituted the Passover because the Israelites, in their idolatry, had stopped keeping it (2 Chr 30:1-3).

     What or who is the bride of Christ?

Sincerely,
Missed The Wedding

Dear Missed The Wedding,

The church is the bride of Christ.  John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the groom (Jhn 3:29).  Eph 5:23 says that Jesus is like a husband, and the church is like a wife.  In 2 Cor 11:2, Paul says that the christians in Corinth were betrothed to Christ and that it was his job to present them as a pure bride to Jesus, their groom.  All of these verses point to the same teaching – the church is the bride that Jesus purchased through His sacrifice (Acts 20:28).

     When Jesus the Christ walked the earth, did He know everything?

Sincerely,
I Don’t Know

Dear I Don’t Know,

When Jesus lived on this planet, He was tempted in all things just like every other human… the only difference was that He never sinned (Heb 4:15).  That means that Jesus had to walk by faith and not sight, just like we do (2 Cor 5:7).  There were times when Jesus had divine supernatural knowledge of things, but there were other times that Jesus admitted He didn’t know what the Father’s plans were (Matt 24:36).  Jesus didn’t know everything when He lived on Earth.