Why be a medium? The answer to that and other questions on this edition of key life. Hi, I'm Mike Kellogg and you are now listening to key life, where you can find honest answers to honest questions about God's work. Now, here is Steve. Thanks, Mike. My pastor, Pedalwonson, as usual, is now on Friday. Thanks for doing it. Good to be here. How are you doing? I'd say I give you three free sins every time you did this, but people would get angry. I take them anyway. Even though you know I can't and Eric used to say on the program, Madam, he can't give three free sins. He doesn't have the power. It's a joke. At any rate, thanks for coming in. By the way, Pete comes in each Friday and we answer questions together and we love to get your questions, but you do have to write them down. To key life, post office box 5,000. Madeleine Florida, 32794. Our key life Canada, post office box 32150. Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H5N3. Or you can email us at Steve at keylife.org with your regular mailing address if you want an answer. And you always get an answer from me or a staff member or in the magazine or on the broadcast. And one other thing, don't use the 1-800 key life number as to ask questions. You can get the booklet we're offering. You can get the magazine free, the booklet free, the key life takes free, and a bunch of other neat stuff. And you can make a contribution of course. But when you have a question, you've got to write it down. Why don't you leave us in prayer? Oh, one of the things, be sure and include your call letters. When you write or call key life. Okay, now. All right. Would you leave it? Just shut up. That's right. Okay. Father, we thank you for the ability to laugh and the opportunity to come into your presence today. For Father, you are so good and your grace just has pervaded our lives. And sometimes it's something that we take for granted. But we thank you today that you love us because of what Christ has done. And we thank you that you loved us before. We even wanted anything to do with you. That you came after us. And that you stay with us and you'll never leave us. You won't forsake us. We give you honor and praise. We're glad we're your children. And Father, we do pray as we look ahead to this weekend in time of worship that you would prepare us to hear your word and to focus on you. Prepare us to give and not just to get, but to give honor and praise to your holy name. And be with our leaders who are going to stand in front of us and teach and lead us in worship. Be with our worship leaders, we pray, and our pastors and priests and teachers, the pastoral families, be with the kids that are always on display as a part of the pastor's family. We pray you'd encourage them. Cause your people to come into your presence and to give you praise and honor. And we also pray for key life and just pray that Lord you'd be with Steve, bless his ministry for your namesake, the honored and glorified and key life we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. This first question is from Georgia. What is the motivation for our obedience? Well, I thought that grace meant that it didn't matter if we were obedient. You know, it means a lot. You know, grace doesn't mean you eliminate the law. You know that. That was a set up softball question. That's cool. I appreciate it. Cause I get criticized by people who say, I'm encouraging sin. I've heard you say, go ahead and sin. Yeah. Well, I didn't. No, that was Luther. Oh, okay. I wouldn't say anything like that. Luther said, if you sin, sin boldly. But Luther's trying to do exactly the same thing I'm trying to do in that context is that we're so caught up in being perfect. That that in itself becomes the cause of our sin. Obsessiveness. Obsessiveness about purity is a cause of more sin than anything that I know. And so when God, and this is what Romans teaches, takes away the obedience to the law, is the measurement of whether or not God likes us. Then we have a freedom we didn't have before. And we find in that context that we're being obedient. But that begs the question. The question which you so definitely sent back in my direction was why be obedient in the first place? If God loves us, if he's forgiven us before we sin, if sin is fun, why be obedient? Yeah. Well, and sin is fun to some extent until it turns on you and as things you. But no, you said it because of what Christ has done for us out of a response. And to realize what Christ has done, Romans 6, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be? How shall we who died to sin still living it? So there's this sense Paul is uphauled that we would even ask that question because what Christ has done is free to free us from sin. Why would we want to live that life? Oh man. There's something in me that Eric who's our producer and I are both neurotic. And we're both better because we understand grace. I have a friend in Atlanta. You know him. He's a good friend of yours who Tom Wood. Oh yeah. And great guy. He's planted a bunch of churches and he sent out an email thing to people that want to call grace again. I get it too. I'm glad he's doing the research, but did you see the one from Spurgeon? Where Spurgeon said, when I thought God was a tyrant, my sin increased. When I knew about God's love, my heart was broken and my sin. And it's his goodness and his grace that makes me want to be obedient. That's right. I was talking to somebody yesterday who had a father who really was a tyrant. And I wouldn't even go to his father's deathbed. I have nothing to do with him. I'll tell you, if my father who taught me unconditional love asked me to do anything, I might not be able to do it. Growing up, I just get, still might not be able to do it. But I want you to know, I don't want to do it. That's right. And you know that's how we start out because when we become Christians, we understand grace. But because of all the teaching in the church, we eventually devolve to, well, I got to do this to be a Christian. I got to do this because of what other Christians will say. And we forget the essence of grace. And so it does become that way. When we're converted, we don't start out as legalists, generally speaking. Yeah, we understand the grace. We understand. And that's why we were floating on air. And that's why we used to sing when we're driving in our cars. And then we forget because everybody else, so that legalism just can kill. You know what I believe? I believe that the reversion to the law as the measurement of our salvation or as the measurement of our acceptance in the church, that that reversion is the sign of the fall more than the sin. I really do. I think there's something in us that we don't want to owe God anything, so we're going to make up. We think we're better than we are. That's self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is addictive. We love to feel we're better than other people. And if we're not that we're accepted for other people because we are so good. And the whole thing about God's unconditional love because of the blood sacrifice of Christ is forgotten. And as a result, and I believe there are hundreds of thousands of people who walk away from the church every year. And I got this from Bill Hendrick's book, Exodus Interviews, who walk away from the church. I said, you can't do it anymore. You can't keep it up. You can't be that good anymore. And it isn't amazing how people will make those comments. I just can't pray like you prayer. I can't read the Bible like you read the Bible or whatever. And so you always from the pulpit. I mean you say, follow me as I follow Christ. And you never say, go out and sin and have a good time. God's going to love you anyway. Well you came close to that one time but you're wise. I think I quoted you. But you always talk about your own humanness. And so you never feel condemned. I mean you feel like, guys this is what we've got to do. This is what I'm doing. Sometimes I fail it. And people go, finally we had a preacher who's human. And that's the reason people love you. But we always were, right? We were just trying to fake it. Well and it's hard for preachers. My heart goes out to preachers because people want us to be a lot better than everybody else. True. And they pay us to be better than everybody else. And they put us on a pedestal because they can always say, well he's a professional and he does it that way. And it kills preachers. So when we sure got off on a hot button, you're new. You answered it. Well, you helped. In fact, if you hadn't been here, I would not have answered it adequately. This is from South Carolina. And you said you thought we'd answered this, but I didn't remember. Why is there so little mention of an afterlife in the Old Testament in comparison to the New Testament? Well, it's a very good question because it's accurate. You just don't see any kind of unified eschatology in the Old Testament. And you really see this, Lord, if I die and I'm in the grave, what good am I to you? So spare my life. You see that in the Psalms and put a little bit more poetically. They just did not have a consciously consistent, developed theology of the afterlife in the Old Testament. That comes with progressive revelation when you get to the New. This progressive revelation mean that they lie to us in the Old Testament. No, no, no. But very good, that's a good softball up there for me too. No, it better not mean that. No, it just means that God and His wisdom did not see fit to make it clear in the Old Testament, but has now in the New Testament thought, unless you want to answer another way. No, no, I agree. Obviously, agree with you. That was the argument between when the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Pharisees were mostly the evangelicals of the covenant people. They believed in angels. They believe in the inerrancy of scripture, the whole canon of the Old Testament. The Sadducees were not. I mean, they believed in the first five books in the Bible, did not believe in angels, and did not believe in personal after life in mortality. That's right. But they would have claimed to have been, you know, Torah believers. Exactly. And good Jews in that sense. And then when they went to Jesus, you know, they were playing a game with Him and said, this woman was made this guy. He died and he had all these brothers, and then she married the next brother, which was the law, and the next brother, and in heaven, who's wife is she going to be? You see, their issue was, they didn't believe in after life, so they were making fun of Jesus. And then Jesus, being the Polymesis that he was, cut their legs off. So yeah, well, okay, the reason it's not there is because, now there are indications here and there in the Old Testament, but never the full developed personal immortality that we see in the New Testament. The Old Testament words that are used are sheol, and the place of the dead. And there's tantalizing clues to an after life teaching, but that's not well known. Not detailed, exactly. Good point. Just very quickly, because we don't, well, let me first, in first Samuel it says that God put an evil spirit on Saul. How does the Holy God have an evil spirit to inflict someone? He's going to answer that in 15 seconds. God is in charge, and when you think you've got him figured out, you have him, and he do whatever he wants. And that text specifically says an evil spirit on the Lord. That was given so that you would ask that question and be confused in the face of the God of the universe, and if you're not confused in the face of the God of the universe, you're probably working on it. Gotta go. Key Life has a listener-supported production of Key Life Network.