Jeff Gelineau - Beyond the Book - Class 1 - Certainty

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   There’s always a bit of tension when I prepare for a class. Most speakers know that when you go off script, the odds highly increase that you’re going to say something that you’re going to regret later. But like many speakers, probably most speakers, I pray before I get up here and I ask God to direct my words and to share the message that He needs for you to hear. So the tension exists between me asking God to speak through me and me also being afraid to go off my notes. And it’s, that’s exactly what happened one day that was the inspiration for these classes.

2. 0:46

   Actually, I was on a bit of a roll in a, in a class that I was giving and I and I felt the spirit working in the room and I, I felt compelled to say something that I had never thought before and I did not have in my notes. I looked at everybody and I said, don’t just do the daily readings, do the daily readings. And there was a hush over the room and, and it was, you know, it was one of those kind of moments in your life when you have a little aha and you and you realize something. So before we begin, I want to make it very clear my goal this week is not to encourage you to stop reading the Bible. It feels pretty weird sitting out there in Bible school, hearing 2 great Bible classes and then getting up front and saying don’t go to Bible classes anymore. So it’s, it’s not my goal and, and please give me some grace and, and when you, when you feel like I’m saying that just thinking about it a different way, right. I, I fully believe in teach that there is no better way for us to learn about what kind of people God wants us to be than regular attention to the Bible.

3. 2:07

   Without our our, our nose in the Word, we will never change. We’ll see that one of the key ways that God transforms us into His people is through reading of His Word. God wants us to know Him, and to do that successfully, we need to to read about Him. I’ve been married to a wonderful woman for over 40 years. I love her and I really want to make her happy. For that reason, I study her.

4. 2:38

   I’m constantly asking her slightly annoying, maybe very annoying questions. Do you prefer Raspberry coulee or fresh raspberries on your cheesecake? Would you prefer a week alone in the mountains or a week with friends at the beach? Just constantly asking you these questions. And the more I learned about her, the better I equipped I am to make her the most happy I possibly can. But what kind of annoying husband would I be if I just constantly peppered her with all these questions but never actually did anything with the information I had gained? I would not be making my wife very happy if I offered her a peanut butter pie and I took her to Disneyland. I can tell you that right now.

5. 3:22

   Those would not make her very happy. So to serve God, we need to understand Him. Better yet, we need to understand what kind of people God wants us to be. But how is this going to please Him if all we ever do is just keep learning about what kind of people He wants us to be and never actually becoming the kind of people he wants us to be? What I want to address this week is a misunderstanding that I find common in our community is I find that too often we confuse busyness with service.

6. 4:03

   Too often we fill our lives with Bible classes and personal study in Bible schools and study days and and we leave no time for us to treat those around us with the spiritual behaviors that we read about in in these classes. Too often we mistakenly start thinking that the hours and hours and hours that we spend studying the Bible is somehow in itself service to our Lord, instead of simply preparation for that service.

7. 4:34

   Too often we think that if we do the readings every day, attend midweek Bible class, and never miss memorial service, we’re living the kind of life that God wants us to live. We miss the fact that the sole purpose of Bible study is to transform us into a holy people that reflect God’s love, God’s grace, and God’s mercy. We’re so busy doing the daily readings that we don’t take time in our lives to fill our lives with the things that we read about in those daily readings.

8. 5:11

   I think it comes from some crooked thinking and it’s time to set it straight. Now. What I’m concerned about is it just not entirely sure that I’m the right person that should be leading this discussion.

9. 5:24

   I’m the guy who finds himself getting frustrated at arranging board meetings. Imagine a ranging board discussing meetings that they’ve had with a young sister, and the poor girl is dealing with alcohol use disorder and in her impaired state, she often sleeps with whatever guy is in the barstool next to her. And you can just imagine the trouble that this brings into her life and the lives of those around her. But it’s 9:54 PM and I’m frustrated and I’m tired. I’m probably hangry and I find myself thinking, I don’t have time for this.

10. 6:04

    Let’s just get over with us. I want to get home and finish up that Bible class on forgiveness that I’m working on. So, so really like, am I the best person? Am I really qualified to be talking about this topic or, or is it specifically because of those kind of thoughts that I have in my life that I am qualified to talk about this problem? I fill my life with many, many, many things. Remember that section in Second Corona, 2nd Corinthians 11 where Paul boasts about how much better a servant he is and everybody else, He’s like, you know, you think you’re righteous.

11. 6:42

    Hold my beer. He’s, you know, I’m talking like a madman with far greater laborers, far more imprisonments, with countless beheadings, and often near death, right? A Gentile of agenda, a Jew of a Jew. No, it’s a Pharisee of a Pharisee. That’s what he says, right? I’ll channel that same emotion for a little while and I’ll talk like a madman as well. I’m a member of a large ecclesia that begins each week with Sunday school and memorial service, and then Monday night is softball and Tuesday night is volleyball and Wednesday night is a Ranger board meetings, and Thursday night is midweek class and Friday night is CYC.

12. 7:13

    We take the Sabbath off and we do it all again on Sunday. And then I work for the Tidings Magazine and between the Tidings Magazine and the Simi Hills Ecclesia, the Palm Springs Bible School, the Bible Mission, the Idyllwild Bible School in the Southern California, YOCI sit on a lot of boards and I and I attend a lot of meetings and I balance a lot of checkbooks.

13. 7:33

    All of this on top of the previously mentioned Bible classes and, and then there’s personal study in Sunday school and study days and Bible schools. You know, I spent, I counted it just because I’m that kind of away. I spent 68 hours preparing these classes makes for a very busy life. And meanwhile, my neighbor across the street, Mark, is clearly searching for the truth and looking for meaning in his life. And he’s reached out to me a couple of times and he sees me dragging my trash cans out to the curb. And I’ve managed to put off having a serious discussion with him because I’m always busy.

14. 8:15

    I’m always anxious to get back inside, back to the computer, back to the project I’m I’m working on, or I have to jump in the car and head back to the ecclesial hall. I confuse busyness with service, and I’m afraid I’m not alone.

15. 8:35

    Why? Why do we do this? I think fundamentally one of the basic reasons to do this is because it’s easier. It’s it’s it’s literally easier. It’s clear what you have to do, right? Yeah. You read Leviticus 27, Psalm 140 to 142 and Luke chapter 10. You pray before every meal. You show up in midweek Bible class with an insightful comment that you want to share. And and then you take your turn, given the expectation. And you never be late to your Sunday school class. Come with your bright shining faces. That’s beautiful singing, isn’t it, Peter? Oh man, it’s a lot.

16. 9:13

    It’s, it’s a, it’s a lot you fill your, you fill your life with. And if you work 50 hours a week, if you’re trying to raise 3 kids to grow up and not become serial killers, if you’ve got, if you got grass to cut and leaves to rake. When you Add all these things together, it’s pretty much a full time job.

17. 9:30

    And it’s a good job. It’s a nice life. It’s a busy life, for sure, but it’s a pleasant life. Until late one night those bitter yeah tacos kick in and you can’t fall asleep and you lay in bed at 2:00 in the morning thinking. You just lie there wondering about everything. Is it?

18. 9:56

    Is it all true? You find yourself questioning if all this is worth it, if it even really means anything at all. Moments when you doubt, times of doubt are not comfortable. I’ve had those times. I’d like to talk about the path that I’m going down this path between certainty and doubt. Now these it’s, it’s a path and I’m not at the end of it, right?

19. 10:27

    These thoughts are not fully baked. You’re going to find some soggy bottoms. I’m asking you for help working through this. I feel that somehow my propensity to fill my life with busyness of ecclesial things and not necessarily the simple godly things that the Bible teaches is somehow connected to this idea of certainty and doubt. I think it’s important for me to come to grips with that struggle.

20. 10:54

    And I’m absolutely sure that the journey that you’re on is different than mine. You’re you’re not the same as me. You probably see things differently. But hopefully you’ll find some of the things we talked about this week to be helpful. And along the way, I think we can find an answer for how to make sure you don’t confuse busyness with service.

21. 11:14

    I’ve had a few times in my life when I’ve questioned my faith. It’s happened more than once. I question my belief in God, my my choice of religions to associate with.

22. 11:25

    These times are always uncomfortable, disconcerting, disorienting. Sometimes you don’t even tell your wife about them because you know she said some things too and you don’t want to push her any further. I’ve tended to to block them as it’s easiest to just not think about them. And besides, we got Bible class to go to in 20 minutes. Like get going, got to finish dinner. But that’s not a healthy solution to this problem. I’ve come to believe that I need to try to trust that God is purposely bringing these moments into my life, not for me to resist them or or or push them under the carpet, but for me to work through them, for me to think through them. I’ve come to believe that there is value to be gained by wrestling with doubt instead of ignoring it. I would like to prepare you not to give in to doubt. Don’t think to yourself, Well, I’m doubting my beliefs, so must be they’re not true.

23. 12:24

    I’m just going to leave the ecclesion. And you know, this all must be baloney because I just doubt it. God doesn’t want you to give up on him just because he’s brought doubt into your life. And yes, I said that God has brought doubt into life. I believe that God does bring doubt into your life. There are so many biblical examples of people who struggle with doubt that God must be trying to teach us a lesson through that.

24. 12:52

    And I didn’t come to doubt easily. It took some work. I was brought up in a conservative Sunday school and we sat every Saturday, Sunday morning under a plaque that read Study to Show thyself approved unto the Lord. Like many of you, I grew up in a community that had clearly marked boundaries of what is expected to be to be believed. When you identify as a Christadelphian, you have fairly clear guidelines of what Christadelphians believe, and you’re expected to believe those same things. My ecclesia in Vermont had a 300 question examination where you were supposed to have verses memorized and answering some of those questions.

25. 13:37

    Now, 50 years later, I find that often Christadelphians do encourage you to think for yourself. I think that’s healthy. That’s probably one of the strongest parts of our community. It’s one of the advantages of a community that provides quite a bit of leeway on what you can believe and still be part of the group. Once you’re in the group, which is odd, right? First got to get in the group, but then they give you quite a bit of leeway on what you want to, what you believe, how you understand things.

26. 14:06

    And as you grow, obviously as you grow, your beliefs are going to change and maybe you head out a bit from the group and you can start to feel that it’s uncomfortable for the group to have people get too far outside of the center. And I realize I’m uncomfortable for some people to be around.

27. 14:26

    You might be a little bit uncomfortable. So far in this class, it’s definitely not as good as John’s was. I say some things or maybe I asked some questions that some people would rather not talk about. It’s quite uncomfortable to be that individual who’s questioning you might be there yourself. It’s it’s more comfortable to be safely centered in thinking the same way as everyone else.

28. 14:51

    So what happens in this kind of environment is that true faith and correct thinking start to be considered the same thing. We even go so far as to interchange these words and concepts, right? We use terms like the truth and the faith like they’re synonymous with being a Christadelphian. What can develop, I think, is that your faith becomes something that’s based on your beliefs. And to the best of my limited abilities, I’ve determined that the Christadelphian set of beliefs is as close to God’s teaching teachings as I’ve ever discovered amongst any other group.

29. 15:30

    So I bathed my life around this set of beliefs. I’ve developed my faith on this set of beliefs. My faith has been based on knowledge.

30. 15:43

    Knowing this set of beliefs, knowing what the Bible teaches, knowing what God wants from me, knowing has given me a sense of belonging. And here’s the problem. Knowing doesn’t last. Don’t get me wrong, knowing definitely has its place. It’s vitally important that we know the truth of God’s teachings as clear as we can.

31. 16:09

    Reading and studying and understanding and knowing the Bible is vital. But I don’t think that should be at the center of our faith. We shouldn’t have a faith that’s based on knowledge. We should have a faith that’s based on trust. There’s a saying about life, and I think it applies doubly to Bible study.

32. 16:28

    Einstein is famous for saying it. Einstein said. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. And that’s the problem with knowledge. The more you learn, the more you see that you still have more to learn, and you quickly find yourself in this lifelong, never ending spiral of studying and learning. That’s why it feels very comfortable and normal and even advisable to fill your life with Bible classes and Sunday schools and study days and Bible schools. But eventually, no matter how smart you are, you’re going to run across something that you just don’t understand, that you can’t understand.

33. 17:06

    It might be something simple, it might be something complex, but probably it’s going to be something personal. Why did God allow my baby to die?

34. 17:22

    Why did I get a terminal disease? Did God really create the planet that I live on in the manner that Genesis 1-2 and three describe?

35. 17:36

    And why is there suffering on this planet if God is loving and kind? Knowledge is eventually going to leave you hanging out to dry. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they’ll pass away. As for tongues, they’ll cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. And I think it’s actually even worse than that. I think there’s a deeper problem with a knowledge based faith. Correct thinking starts to provide this sense of certainty. If our faith is based on correct thinking, then without it we can start to feel that our faith is going to shrivel up and die. If I’m not correct, I lose my faith. When the unanswerable question comes up, if we can’t answer it, our faith is weakened.

36. 18:29

    Have this happen enough times or, or sooner or quick, you know, in a close period of time and your faith can be destroyed. So this fear of losing a handle, uncertainty can lead to a preoccupation with correct thinking. And then different ways of thinking or, or fresh new ideas, you know, on an issue are seen as a compromise to our faith or, or maybe giving up on faith altogether.

37. 18:57

    If our faith is based on knowledge and we therefore need to always be in in the right in order to maintain a healthy faith on a dangerous course. If I show you a verse that clearly says something in opposition to what you believe, you can’t believe that because if you do, you’ve lost your faith. Here’s the rub.

38. 19:23

    God is greater than we are. We simply cannot understand everything that God does. We think we can. It’s all written down. There’s 66 books, read them, figure it out, but we’re unable to comprehend what God is doing in this universe are the problem is our limited human brains therefore limit the Almighty. We limit the the all powerful God. We restrict God to just those things that we are able to understand.

39. 19:59

    I want to repeat, I’m going to repeat a lot because they’re recording this thing. There’s nothing wrong with seeking to think correctly about God. Thinking about what we believe, learning more about what we believe, and disagreeing and deliberating with others. It’s normal for people of faith. The problem is when we start to trust our beliefs rather than trusting God.

40. 20:26

    The preoccupation withholding on to correct thinking with a tightly closed fist is not a sign of strong faith, it’s desperation. Faith is about letting go.

41. 20:41

    Faith is about trusting. It’s about believing in things not seen, things not understood. It’s it’s the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. It’s all about things that are not visible. The things you can’t see, the things you can’t touch, the things you can’t feel, the things you can’t understand is what faith is made of.

42. 21:22

    Now I cannot give a Bible class about faith without talking about Abraham, the father of the faithful. And I love how Paul describes him in Romans 4. He says, What shall what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh. For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say?

43. 21:42

    Abraham believed God and it was counted him as righteousness. That’s one of the cornerstones of our belief. Is that this idea that Abraham believed God and it was accounted for him as righteousness. What exactly are we talking about though? What an actual event is Paul referring to?

44. 22:01

    There’s the famous battle where the four kings draw up against the five kings and Sodom and Gomorrah is overthrown and people are carried away captive, and Abraham rounds up 3 and 18 miss servants and they go and they rescue him. That must be what he’s talking about, right? This huge amount of faith that Abraham had?

45. 22:16

    No, that’s not it. Well, how about the defining moment of his life? Must be the sacrifice of his son, right? God commands Abraham to take his only son, the one he’d waited 100 years for, up on top of mountain and sacrifice him. Surely that is what Paul’s talking about. Nope.

46. 22:35

    The verse Paul is referring to is from Genesis 15. It’s not some daring victory against huge odds. It’s not some amazing displays obedience. It’s simple. It’s an old man standing all alone out in the middle of the night in a field.

47. 22:52

    And he said, look toward heaven and Number the Stars. If you’re able to number them, then he said so shall your offspring be. And Abraham believed the Lord and he counted to him as righteousness, looking up to the stars in the heaven and hearing voices. God promised 100 year old man with an infertile wife, he’s going to be the father of an innumerable host.

48. 23:19

    Crazy talk. And Abraham believed it and that was counted as faith. No way it could be proven. All evidence contrary. I mean I’ve got 100 years of trying with this woman and we can’t have kids against all logic without any historical president precedents. Abraham believed it even though it made no sense whatsoever.

49. 23:48

    God is not looking for us to figure things out. God’s not looking for us to be convinced by logic and and math. God just wants us to trust him, to believe Him. When He says something crazy to us, He wants us to believe Him. And God doesn’t expect greatness from us. He doesn’t call on us to fight battles or to sacrifice our children. He simply wants us to believe Him. He simply wants us to trust Him.

50. 24:14

    As a matter of fact, it’s specifically not the great acts that save us. It’s not our works that bring us salvation. This simple fact of this active of giving your life over to God is what he wants from us. This illogical, almost counterintuitive act of acknowledging that we are incapable of resolving our own issues in our own life, that we’re unsuccessful in fighting the battle against our own sins. Acknowledging that in the end, we can’t make it on our own. No matter how strong your willpower, no matter how quick your wits, in the end, you need to turn to God for salvation. And that’s the simple faith of Abraham. And that’s the faith that I want in my life. And that’s the faith that we need to fill our lives with. To walk by faith, not by a sense of wanting to obey all the right rules.

51. 25:10

    Believing that we’re right gives us a sense of order and a very messy world. We want to feel like we’re right and the things that we do and the things that we say, it feels comfortable and it’s comforting to follow rules and, and feel like you’re good because you’re following the rules. This natural human desire to be right extends to our understanding of God. We study and we read and we listen to classes and lectures and podcasts and, and videos and we start to believe that we’re right and our understanding of God. But we aren’t actually trusting God. We’re trusting in our own ability to to think correctly and to and to be smart and and disguising it as trust in God. Trust in God comes when you admit you don’t understand everything and yet you still believe that God exists and that he’s in control.

52. 26:06

    God is in control, not you. I’m going to repeat that. God is in control, not you. Your job is to trust God regardless of whether or not it makes sense to you. I don’t understand why God does half the things he does and doesn’t bother me. Therefore, when some smart person says to me, well, how Can you believe God?

53. 26:27

    You know he kills babies. What kind of God is that? I don’t know, but I trust him. I’ve always loved Daniel’s friends with their response to them and Nebuchadnezzar. They’re just about to be thrust into the fiery furnace, right? And Shadrach, Meshach and Benedo answered instead of the king. O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning furnace, and he would deliver us out of your hand.

54. 26:56

    But if not, be it known to you, O King, we will not serve your God. They were going to do what was right out of trust in God. Their, their faith was based on trust, not knowledge. Think about it. I mean, it couldn’t have been based on knowledge. There’s no Bible verse telling them that God would rescue them from the fire. They didn’t have any previous example of someone been rescued from a fire.

55. 27:27

    What they did have was trust. And that’s what I’m trying to develop in my life. That’s that’s what I want is I want a faith that’s based on trust, a faith that’s not so much defined by what I believe, but by who I trust. Daniel’s friends really had no idea what was going to happen.

56. 27:50

    There were surprises Nebuchadnezzar when the 4th person into the the furnace, but they were confident in who they trusted. Abraham couldn’t imagine what was going to happen. Sarah been trying to have kids for 75 years. How could that possibly change now at 90 years old? But Abraham trusted in who was making that promise. Our faith has to be based on who, not what Now maybe like me, you’ve misunderstood faith as a what word and not a who word. Our faith shouldn’t be what I believe. Our faith should be who I believe. I’ll agree correct beliefs are very important, but correct beliefs are not the problem, they’re just a necessary prerequisite to build your faith upon. Faith needs to be based on trust and not knowledge. A faith that rests on knowing, one that requires you to know what you believe in order to have faith. It’s just a disaster waiting to happen. It values too highly our mental abilities. All it takes to ruin that kind of faith is a better argument. And there’s always someone smarter than you. There’s always a better argument out there somewhere. Let’s talk a bit about a trust based faith. I’m going to go back to my example of my marriage, which Kelly loves.

57. 29:23

    Every time I talk about this, my beliefs about a person are unavoidable. My my beliefs about a person are often helpful in determining the deepening our relationship. And yet, I often have mistaken beliefs regarding my own wife. 40 years together and I still don’t understand her. Thankfully, our marriage is not based on an accurate knowledge of each other or I’d be in deep trouble.

58. 29:50

    Our vows are based on our commitment to trust one another, whether or not we understand what they meant. When they said get my glasses, you thought you knew what they meant, but that’s not what they meant.

59. 30:03

    We trust in the commitment that we’ve made to each other, even if we don’t like each other. Even sometimes we annoy each other or we can’t stand the sight of each other. The commitment to trust is fundamental. Children, as soon as they are conscious, trust their parents unconditionally. As we mature, trust is at the heart of any healthy relationship, and our relationship with God is no different.

60. 30:26

    Trust works regardless of where our thinking happens to be at the moment. When we learn that it’s OK to let go of the need to be right. Oh, pro tip, husbands, let go of the need to be right, OK? When you learn to let go of that and that God is not going to pounce on you from behind the corner giving you a whipping because you know you stepped, you know, you stop believing and you know worrying about what’s right, God actually welcomes that step of faith.

61. 30:58

    Only then will that stress of holding on to correct thinking begin to fade. Only then are we giving control over to God. The focus moves from ourselves to God and whom we trust. That’s what Jesus called dying and losing our lives. He said if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me forever would save his life, we’ll lose it.

62. 31:23

    Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. That’s hard to do. Letting go, letting go of yourself, letting go of your need to be in control, moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. And that’s learning to truly trust God is hard to do. It requires courage. It requires humility. Knowing what you believe is important, but most people don’t come to faith in God by the force of a good argument.

63. 31:51

    We come for various reasons that aren’t really reasons in the conventional sense. Our reasons are intuitive more than rational. They’re emotional more than logical. They’re mysterious more than known. Coming to faith in God involves coming to sense God’s presence in your life, which really kind of defies our ability to rationally process that experience. Doesn’t mean that our faith is not real, it just acknowledges that faith is part of our humanity, not really an intellectual process.

64. 32:25

    What’s interesting is that even though it wasn’t our intellectual ability that brought us to God, we really want to make it a part of our service to God. So you were young, you were impressionable and you just felt that warm sensation of God filling your life and you decided to get baptized and now you want to make intellectual study the way you’re going to serve Him.

65. 32:50

    Our, our minds just they really, they want to be able to explain our reality through thoughts, right? We’re thinking creatures. We want a faith that makes sense. I think we’ve actually published books called a faith that makes sense. We use that phrase when we’re preaching. We want something we can quantify and classify and catalog and and compute. I mean, Popo did a mathematical expression this morning in a Bible class, right?

66. 33:15

    Hey, we want something that we put such a large value on. Knowing what you believe there should be very logical and clear, and we should be able to articulate it to anyone that we meet. On the other hand, if you don’t know what you believe, then something’s clearly up with you. What’s what’s wrong with you, right?

67. 33:34

    That’s the message that comes up in our community. So if you have questions about things, if you’re not quite sure about things, if you simply don’t understand why the Bible says some things, you feel like there’s something wrong with your faith. We often equate faith with knowledge. And when we honestly look at a verse and we realize we don’t have no idea what that verse is talking about, we start thinking must be our faith is weak.

68. 33:57

    Most of our experiences with our church are based on expanding our knowledge. We go to Bible class, we have Sunday school. Even our expectations, which the word means to urge or admonish, end up being classes, right? You know, it’s a 45 minute class that he gives.

69. 34:15

    If your faith is based on knowledge, then the more Bible study you have in your life should help you to increase your faith, right? I’m not trying to knock Bible study. Learning about the Bible is good. Can I say that seven more times, right? But what I want to draw attention to is this preoccupation with correct thinking, which feeds on the mentality that knowing is central to faith. Knowing is central to faith.

70. 34:43

    You say that backwards and it’s obviously not true, right? If I tell you that if you know your Bible well enough, you’re going to have faith. No, none of us know that. Like there’s, there’s academics, AI probably knows the Bible better than I do, right, But doesn’t have faith. There are a lot of professors and critics and students who literally have PhD in the Bible and they have no faith at all.

71. 35:07

    So knowing your Bible well doesn’t guarantee you’re going to be faithful. Faithfulness is supported by knowledge, but it’s created by trust. OK, we have literally 3 minutes. Here’s AQR code for some discussion. Thoughts. We’re not going to do it, but grab the QR code anyways if you would. So if you, if you want, you know you can tackle. I got 5 questions for you.

72. 35:39

    You can tackle these maybe with your friends or if the classes at the food and fellow the questions, the food and fellowship are boring, you can maybe tackle these. I’m just saying, hey, you know, or maybe just yourself and and you don’t have to put it. You don’t have to reply. You don’t have to put anything in writing.

73. 35:57

    But if you went to Chris Evanston school, you’re probably going to want to. So, you know, if you feel free to, if you choose to, I’ll read all the responses I get tonight and if anything in there is helpful or meaningful, you know, we’ll include it in the upcoming classes, right?

74. 36:14

    The, the questions are, are simple. The questions are, you know, just sharing sometimes in your life when maybe you experienced doubt. These aren’t simple questions, right? Define the difference between trust based faith and a knowledge based faith pitfalls that maybe you’ve experienced that personally or ecclesially with being certain. I think one thing that comes up with being certain is arguments.

75. 36:38

    We just want to, we want to fight things over. We, you know, I cannot fellowship you until we’re 100% in agreement on this point. You know, we have to be certain about this. Did you know that 20 OK, I’m going to go slow. 28% of all Christadelphians are illiterate.

76. 37:05

    28% of your brother and sisters cannot read. That’s hard for us to grasp here in North America because our focus is so often on Bible study.

77. 37:19

    The idea is that knowing what you believe places your faith on solid ground. How could these people possibly have any faith or hope if they can’t even read?

78. 37:37

    We think that this knowledge places us on solid ground, but then life happens. Life is messy, life is complicated. You come home and everything is packed up in boxes and she’s leaving.

79. 38:01

    Sooner or later you come to a question you can’t answer and you get knocked down. You get thrown. To say that there’s differences of opinions on what the Bible teaches is a vast understatement. There are literally thousands of different churches, each one thinking that they are the ones that properly understand Bible teaching. Even within those churches, like within ours, there’s thousands of individuals who who all think differently about thousands of different teachings in the Bible. I don’t think it’s possible for us to find two people that agree on everything.

80. 38:52

    Now, thankfully, we’ve come to understand that not everything is vitally important. We’ve made a list of the things that we think are vitally important. We’ve agreed that there’s a a minimum amount of things that we should agree on, and the rest is not essential for our salvation.

81. 39:11

    That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? Maybe a little bit telling right there. The quest to try to understand the Bible, because it’s thought that in doing so it’s essential to your faith, hasn’t actually led to a greater certainty about what the Bible means, but instead it’s led to a staggering amount of denominations and subgroups and and belief systems within those denominations that disagree on what the Bible says. The more and more and more and more we’ve looked at it, the less and less and less we agree.

82. 39:51

    I’ve asked pretty much every brother I’ve ever met who’s involved in the Union process, you know, if, if it wasn’t, if it wasn’t the case, would you divide over today? And every one of them, even the strongest one, says, no, I wouldn’t divide over this issue today. But we spent 75 years or how many years is it 90 years, you know, focusing on it and reading it and studying it.

83. 40:17

    And we find more and more things we disagree with. So where does that leave us? I I believe that the Bible does not model a faith that depends on certainty of knowledge for the simple fact that the Bible itself does not provide that kind of certainty. There’s some really good Bible students here and I would contend that no matter what incontrovertible perfect verse you find, they could find a verse that would you go against that.

84. 40:49

    I think the Bible models trust in God and and it almost wants to teach us by this mass of information it gives us that it’s hard to sort through that you have to trust in God and your trust in God does not rest on whether able, whether you’re able to be to be clear and certain and convicted and confident in what you believe. I want to be careful of what I just said. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter what you believe. I made it quite clear that knowing what you believe is important.

85. 41:27

    It’s the certainty issue. That’s that. That’s the thing, having to be certain about it. Jesus returns and he calls you to be immortalized and saved and you say no, no, no, no, no. You’re supposed to come from the South, you came from the east, and that’s not the way it happens. I’m not going right this kind of resorting to fighting because you don’t agree 100% with me.

86. 41:58

    Certainty, that’s what kills us. That’s the problem, and trust is the solution. I don’t understand. You don’t understand, but I trust you. I have given this hours and hours and hours of thought and you totally disagree. But I trust you.

87. 42:20

    Trusting in God to save you. All alone in a field in the middle of night looking up at the stars and God tells you. You know how you’ve been trying for 80 years to have a kid? You’re going to have a ton trusting that God’s going to carry you through, that God’s going to be there for you.

88. 42:49

    Not always knowing where you’re going, but trusting that he does. Not having to be right, but having to trust. Not having to be certain, but having to trust. That’s what faith is. Faith is a trusting your brothers and sisters even though they don’t agree 100% with you kind of a thing. Not filling your life with activity that makes you feel productive, but trusting God to lead you to what He wants from you, not what you think you need.

89. 43:33

    It’s not about having to be certain. Certainty is not the goal. It’s about being comfortable. Would doubt that’s what we’ll talk about tomorrow.