Grace Bible Church - Equipping Hour Podcast

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Opening Prayer I’m excited to talk about family worship. It’s a topic that I hope will either encourage you, refresh your zeal, or introduce to you as a new practice that will bless those in your household. Let’s pray. God, we thank you so much for this morning. We thank you for this opportunity to look at your word and consider what is profitable, what is useful, consider the means of grace that will enable us to grow and be sanctified and be more pleasing to you. God, please help us to do that. I pray that this would be an encouragement to everyone who’s here. And I ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. The Chair I Broke In the past, I did air conditioning for about seven years, and I remember one of the most embarrassing, pit-in-my-stomach moments I have ever had. I was 21 years old, and I was doing an air conditioning tuneup at a customer’s house. Part of my check was to go to every vent in the house and check airflow and temperature, and everything was going really well until I got to one vent that had a chair underneath it. Because the chair was there, I couldn’t reach the vent, and so I did what any sensible person would do. I stepped up onto the chair, and after a couple seconds, I hear creak, snap. I look at the chair. The chair is broken. I noticed for the first time in that moment that chair looks kind of old. The homeowner comes running in. She looks at me on the ground, looks at the chair, and she says, “Mima’s chair.” Just getting worse and worse by the second. It was an heirloom. It was a family heirloom, and I snapped it so that I could be extra thorough on my air conditioning tuneup for $69. She starts crying. I call my manager, and he comes out and promises her we’re going to make it right. They ended up finding an antique craftsman to repair it, and she was happy. I don’t know how much that repair bill cost, but I was expecting to be fired. My manager graciously looked at me afterwards and said, “Did you learn your lesson?” I said, “Yes, sir.” And that was it. I never heard about it again. From then on I used a ladder every time I checked registers. I never stepped on a customer’s chair again. I learned to use the right tool for the job. In fact, I had the right tool available to me the whole time in my vehicle, and I just didn’t pull it out and use it. Think of a typical household—dad, mom, kids—and we will address other situations later. Dad has a responsibility to shepherd and lead his wife. He and his wife together have a responsibility to bring up the children. Those are no tasks for the faint of heart. They’re sweet tasks, but they aren’t easy. You need to use the right tools. This morning, I want to present family worship as an essential tool in those endeavors. Today, I’ll demonstrate three stimulating considerations of family worship. A Husband’s Pursuit of His Wife’s Sanctification We’ll start by looking at Ephesians 5. Go ahead and turn to Ephesians 5:25–27. “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.” I’m not going to do a complete exegesis of this passage or the surrounding passages, but I want to highlight some things that will serve our purpose well. I want to talk about the husband’s need to pursue his wife’s sanctification. The text says that husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church. Notice these characteristics of Christ’s love. It was utterly sacrificial. He gave himself up for her. Christ put the good of the church ahead of his own well-being. He didn’t avoid the things that demanded effort or discomfort or even pain. Those of you who know the gospel understand that Christ went to the cross and bore the wrath of God as a sin offering on behalf of everyone who would ever believe in him, so that though sinful and guilty, they can be declared righteous, innocent, and adopted into God’s household. So husbands, as you look to lead your wives, sacrificial love is the modus operandi for your leadership. But look at the purpose stated here for Christ’s sacrificial love. What was he aiming at? So that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. Christ was aiming at the sanctification of the church. This is positional sanctification. Christian, when you believed the word of God and the gospel, Christ set you apart as his own forever. You have been sanctified. This positional sanctification came through the means of sacrificial love on the cross. So because of what Christ did, every believer is justified. Every believer is declared to be righteous and free from sin. And every believer still alive needs continual repentance, confession of sin, and pursuing holiness. We don’t yet experience the fullness of our purification, sanctification in the gospel, and we won’t in this life. But we must be ever striving for greater purity of heart, greater holiness. This is called our progressive sanctification. So husbands, Christ provided the salvation and positional sanctification of all God’s people at the cross so that the church would be presented to himself in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless. It’s an incredible reality, and it’s one that none of us husbands play a part in. We are beneficiaries of this work. But every believer must partner with Christ, with the Spirit, in the aim to see that they and those around them are growing in godliness. And especially in this context, the husband to his wife. This is part of your duty. Certainly not all of your duty to your wife, men, but it’s an important part, and it’s the element that we’re going to focus on today. It is your responsibility to conspire for your wife’s sanctification. Bringing Children Up in the Discipline and Instruction of the Lord Second stimulating consideration of family worship is to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Look just down a few verses at Ephesians 6:4. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” We didn’t look at the whole context for either of these passages. But if you scan the section, you will see submissional relationships: wives submitting to husbands, children submitting to parents, slaves submitting to masters. In all three of those relationships, the one in authority owes something to those who submit to them. A wife must submit to and honor her husband. Good. But a husband must love and care for his wife. It’s easy for us to see the ugliness of a man who doesn’t love his wife, but always asserts his own authority and demands his honor. It’s dishonorable. In the same way, parents must recognize we hold that same attitude when we demand obedience of our children according to verses 1 through 3 in this passage, but neglect the ministry and care of verse 4. If you’re a parent, hope to become a parent, if you’re a grandparent, or if you just know someone who’s a parent, this passage needs to be in your repertoire. Notice in verse 4 who Paul commands. This command is addressed to fathers. Paul knows the word for parents. He uses it in verse 1. But specifically he gives these commands to fathers. This doesn’t deny or neglect the role of mom in the home, but it does say dad is the leader, and dad is ultimately responsible for the way these things play out. Mom’s influence is significant. She is a fundamental, essential help, laboring alongside her husband and with all of his trust in these things. Five Ways Parents Provoke Their Children The first command here in this passage is do not provoke your children to anger. In the context when Paul writes this, in the ancient world fathers were viewed to have an authority that far exceeds what we view a father’s authority to be today, to the point of the father having the right to put family members to death on a whim. There’s no legal check to his power. God’s view of fatherhood is so far from that one. It is so far from domineering control. Paul’s first desire for fathers and parents in the church is that the children would not be provoked to anger. To provoke your child doesn’t mean that you always make decisions they would approve of. It doesn’t mean that you become child-centered in your thinking. This is what it means to provoke your child: it’s a continual, repeated pattern of treatment that builds up until it boils over in anger, frustration, resentment, bitterness. It’s a tragic picture, a child who’s embittered against their parents, who are actually the primary source of God’s wisdom and care and love. One commentator notes how a child is like a flower that closes off to storm clouds but opens up utterly unfurled to the light and warmth of the sun. Parents hold great influence over their children. They can cause their children to shut down and shut out in anger, and likewise they have the greatest influence in watching their children bloom to full flower. So parents must take care not to provoke. There are some great lists in different resources of ways that parents often provoke their children. Here are some from the book The Faithful Parent by Stuart Scott and Martha Peace. A proud parent won’t be able to admit that they are wrong, and they will demand that their children quickly admit when they have done something wrong. A proud parent will be quick to shame their child publicly. There’s a despairing parent who’s always glass-half-empty, always recounting regrets and failures in parenting. Not only will they struggle to be an encouragement to the child, but they will be motivated by fear and are often therefore unpredictable. Rules and standards might change from one day to the next depending on what mom and dad happen to be worried about that day. The controlling parent micromanages with a harsh, overbearing tone. Their presence is more like thundering storms than sunny skies. They lack kindness. They often use anger and a raised voice as a manipulation tactic to get obedience. A child who lives under this kind of parenting will often be left wondering, are mom and dad in a good mood today? Are they in a bad mood? The child-centered parent will stumble their kids. And you might think, how could that be? They give the child what the child wants. Shouldn’t that child be happy? They let the child decide what to eat for dinner, where to go to church, when to go to bed, all the things that a child typically lacks the wisdom to think through and make judgments on. This could be due to laziness, just to avoid difficult problems that take effort to work through. Sometimes it could be wrongly thinking that this is how you express love to a child: you center your home around them. What happens is that the child ends up making foolish decisions and has to suffer consequences that the parents could have easily spared them from. At some point the child has to leave the house and find out that the world doesn’t actually revolve around them like their parents modeled. These are just a few of the ways that provoking your child to anger can happen. But this is the task of parents, to ensure that the normal patterns, the normal behaviors, the parents’ attitudes, aren’t marked by these things and aren’t leading to provoked children. Discipline and Instruction — Paideia and Noutheteo Then we get to the positive command: bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This is what you’re supposed to do. This is an arduous task, but it’s one that is motivated by love for the child. This word bring them up is the same word in chapter 5:29 when it says no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it. Husbands are to nourish their wives. Same thing here. Everything that the child needs to be nourished, healthy, strong, is to be provided for by the parents. So to say that a parent should work hard to provide food and clothing and a home to live in is certainly true. But here Paul’s using this term to describe the nurturing of the soul. Notice they’re to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Those are the means that the parent has at their disposal. Let’s talk about discipline first. Discipline is a word that often gets tagged onto corporal discipline, the rod. That’s a part of it, but it’s much more. This word for discipline is training. It’s the word paideia, which is familiar if you’re in the classical school movement. It’s the comprehensive training, the whole-life training that takes a child from needing to be guided in everything to being a mature adult. It’s formative. It’s instructive. While it doesn’t really refer to vocational training, it does refer to these three things all intertwined: education, academics, but especially moral and religious training is the emphasis. Successful paideia turns a child into a thoughtful, virtuous, faithful adult. Of course, only God can make outcomes certain, but that’s what we pray for. That’s what we’re laboring toward. This word instruction is verbal teaching. It often has the element of warning. It’s in the same word family as noutheteo. It’s a word group that has been rightly highlighted by biblical counseling movements. It’s instruction with warning of the consequences if you go against that instruction. So both of these words, discipline and instruction, are to be in the Lord. So as parents train, educate, instruct, it is as though the Lord were standing behind all of their instruction. It is as though the parents are the tools in the hand of God for the training of the children. So parents have the important responsibility to ensure that all the discipling, educating, training is done with the Lord’s pleasure in mind. Parents Are Ultimately Responsible Here are some implications. God cares about how your children learn. He cares about what they learn. If history is learning what man has done rather than what God has done in the world through man, you’re doing it wrong. If our children learn science as leading to anything else but Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God, it’s not how it was meant to be done. If they’re learning Bible, scripture, theology, from a source that softens God’s holiness, downplays sin, downplays that Christ is the only rescue from sin, downplays the infallibility of scripture, obviously those things are no good. So God cares about the training of children, and parents are the ones ultimately responsible to see that the child’s life training is in line with God’s desire. Of course it’s okay to contract things out. It’s okay, and often beneficial, to get help. But because parents are ultimately responsible, they need to know what’s going on. They need to be involved on some level. I was talking recently to a father whose family has done homeschooling, Christian schooling, public charter schooling. His experience with the Christian school was that they needed to be on top of whatever the school was teaching. They ultimately found out that this Christian school was soft-pedaling parts of scripture that the world finds tough to swallow. He also explained to me as they got older and went into charter schools, he would go one by one through each of his children and ask, “Okay, first period, what did the teacher say? What did you learn? Okay, what about this? All right, second period.” It’s a lot of work, but he was involved. I can testify as a homeschooling dad that no curriculum is perfect, and I have found problematic things taught in the most unsuspected places. I highlight all that to say the method—whether you do public, charter, private, Christian, homeschool—that’s not the most important thing. It does need to be thought through. But what is important is that in all facets of the child’s education, training, and discipling, parents must be personally involved. You may not be the one to teach your kids science, but you need to teach them a biblical worldview, how to think about those things. You might not be the one to teach them history, but they must learn from you that God is sovereign over everything that happens on this globe, past, present, and future. They might have a Bible class. They might go to NGM, but you parents are responsible for the discipleship of your children. What you cannot under any circumstances do is hand over the education, training, and discipleship of your children to the public school, Christian school, homeschool curriculum. It’s the parents’ task. Sometimes in our culture, there’s the stereotype that dad goes to work and that’s his domain. Mom is the one who’s primarily in tune with educational decisions and training of the child. Dad has his area of expertise and mom has hers, and they keep it pretty separate. Dads, you must be involved in the training of your children. According to this passage, even if the involvement is mediated through a wife’s more direct involvement, that’s okay. But you must be engaged in taking these things into account. Family Worship as the Right Tool So a husband must pursue his wife’s sanctification. A father must provide discipleship and biblical worldview to his kids. And here’s the punchline: there may be no tool in your tool belt as useful as family worship in those things. It’s useful because its intended purpose is to lean into those kinds of things. It’s useful because you can talk to and instruct your whole household at one time. Everyone’s together. Everyone’s engaged. And it’s useful because it is a regular, planned, scheduled time for your family to be in God’s word. I would say it’s useful enough that I think it ought to be considered essential. Now, you might be thinking, how can you say that? There is no verse in my Bible that says, “Thou shalt practice family worship.” It’s true. I have no command from the Lord. We do have examples in scripture. I won’t turn to each one, but feel free to jot these down. Genesis 18:19 says that God chose Abraham. And part of the reason he chose Abraham was for the purpose of Abraham commanding his children to keep the way of Yahweh. Abraham had the responsibility to instruct his children in the ways of Yahweh. Joshua set the expectation of serving Yahweh in Joshua 24:15 when he said, “As for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord.” Timothy was taught the scriptures from childhood, presumably by his mother and grandmother. It says in 2 Timothy 3:15 and it also says there in that context that the scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. I am so encouraged by that. I can’t save my kids. Only God can do that. But what I can do is I can pray for them every day while my heart still beats. I can bring this word that is able to make them wise unto salvation to them every single day as long as I have breath. So there’s no direct command. It’s kind of like reading your Bible every day. There’s no direct command. If you miss a day, I wouldn’t say you’re in sin. But it’s so in line with other commands and teachings in the scriptures that if someone said, “I absolutely refuse to read my Bible daily. I’m not going to do it,” okay, can I ask you about that? What’s going on in your heart, brother? Why are you saying that? It’s no command to lead your family in family worship, but it is so in line with the passages that we’ve looked at and others that if someone refused it, I’d have some questions. Again, family worship is a regular, consistent opportunity for a husband to nourish his wife and for a dad to have hands-on influence in bringing his children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It’s by no means the only tool in your toolbox, but it should be one you use regularly. I want to be sensitive. There’s probably people here who have adult children, and you can look back and recognize, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything like that. I don’t want you to despair. I don’t want you to take undue blame without trusting the sovereignty of God. I don’t want you to wallow in guilt and regret. God is in control. God gave you your children. He knew who you were when he did. Trust him and start now or soon. It’s never too late. Methods of Family Worship All right, I want to move on to the methods of family worship. These will be practical helps and ideas, and there is no single right way to do family worship. You don’t have to take these as law, but they might be helpful things to consider. The Who of Family Worship First, the who of family worship. In general, everyone in the household should be expected at family worship. Sometimes family worship is viewed as primarily for the children’s benefit, and so only one parent needs to be there. I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. The husband should view this as an opportunity to serve his wife as well and not only the children. Whoever is leading family worship should view it as an opportunity for his own heart to come to God’s word and worship. So it’s not just for the children. Something to be said here too for empty nesters who no longer have children in the home. That doesn’t mean family worship loses its benefit or its help to your household rhythm. But in general, everyone in the household should be present, including believing and unbelieving children. They all need to hear God’s word. And there can be caveats here. If an unbelieving grandparent moves in to be cared for and doesn’t want to be a part of family worship, I can understand where there would be situations where not everyone will be there, and you’ll have to think that through case by case. But so far we have primarily been addressing a typical household of parents and children. I understand that’s not the case for everyone. This would be a wonderful practice for roommates, especially if you’re both believers, a sweet opportunity to encourage each other in God’s word and to pray for one another. If you’re a child in a believing home that doesn’t practice family worship, you can ask your parents. See if they’d be willing to do this. Ask them if you can read the Bible to them at some point in the day. Ask if you can have a regular time to pray as a family. I know that it’s also the case for some that dad is unable to lead family worship. If dad is unable to lead family worship, either because he’s an unbeliever or because he’s not present, mom or anyone else who’s appropriate can and should step in to lead the family in worship together. I’ve even read about a situation where siblings were orphaned and the oldest brother took it upon himself to lead his family in family worship. If dad is present and he is a believer, I think he should lean into this. But wherever that can’t happen, whoever is able should feel the freedom to serve their household in this way. Note to grandparents, want to highlight you for a moment. You have a wonderful opportunity. Your grandkids hear all the time about how they must obey God’s word, seek wisdom, honor their parents. It would go a long way for them to hear it from you too. Or maybe your grandkids don’t hear any of those things, and you might be one of the few opportunities for them to hear God’s word, hear the gospel, take those things in. I can say from personal experience it is sweet to hear kids, parents, and grandparents all singing, praying, reading God’s word together. It’s memorable. It’s impactful. One more thing to consider, not a rule, but an additional ministry as part of your family worship: when you have visitors or you’re hosting somebody who’s not normally in your home, I have found it sweet to include them in family worship, even if you do something a little shorter so you still have time for fellowship. I have been encouraged by other families doing that for us. That is how we were first introduced to family worship when we came to this church. Someone welcomed us into their home and included me and my family in with what they were doing. The What — Word, Prayer, and Singing Now we’re going to move on to the what. What does family worship entail? I’ll give you three things up front. I would suggest that three core elements of family worship are God’s word, prayer, and singing. Remember this will look different in every household. These should be bent to whatever is useful for your household. First, God’s word. You should read it. This is the heartbeat of family worship. You get in God’s word, talk about it, and respond to it as a family. Some families just start in Genesis 1 and keep going. Others do New Testament in the morning, Old Testament in the evening. Some families with young children have found it profitable to take short breaks in reading the Bible in order to read an accurate Bible storybook for a little while. Some aim for one chapter at a time, others do shorter. Whatever works for your family, I would encourage you to do. But have a plan with the aim of eventually bringing your family to the whole counsel of God. One of the things that I’ve seen done that seems to be helpful is popcorn reading. One person reads a few verses and then popcorns to the next person. They read a few verses, and so on. It helps to keep everyone engaged. If you have younger children, it’s a great practice for reading out loud. One really helpful resource that I want to commend to you is the family devotional guide produced by Generations of Grace. It’s the curriculum that we use here in our NGM ministry. There’s five days of readings. It gives a passage to read, then some scripted commentary with discussion questions at the end. And to top it off, the five weekly lessons culminate with whatever the kids are going to hear that coming Sunday in NGM. It’s just a wonderful resource. There are others that can be used profitably. This is also a wonderful time for Bible memory, to make that a habit in your home. The second element of family worship should be prayer. Pray before you read the Bible to remind yourself of who you are worshiping. You are coming to God. Let your prayer help to bring sobriety if that’s needed, to settle everyone in, and remind them that we don’t want to be thoughtless. Neither should it be dull or super serious, but you don’t want to be unthinking. Then pray at the end. Help your family obey or respond to what you read about. What you’re actually doing here is modeling for those in your household what their own personal Bible reading and prayer could look like. You come to God reverently. You respond humbly. If there are cares, you cast them upon God, and everyone in the household gets to watch as God cares for you. You can also use that time to lead your family to think about others as more important than themselves. You can ask each person who’s someone in need they would like to pray for. Maybe help them think of people they know who have needs. Lastly, you sing. You sing together. One, maybe two songs is good. You might be worried that you can’t sing, can’t play an instrument. It’s fine. Hopefully, you have someone who can carry a tune in your household, but if not, you could practice. Why sing together? It prepares your heart to read God’s word. It glorifies God. Your whole family gets to participate in the ministry together. That’s another reason, thinking of Colossians 3:16, which says: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God.” When you sing together, you all get to encourage one another with the truth as you sing. One implication of that is you should sing loud enough to be heard. You also get to teach lyrics. I was talking with someone this morning about how lyrics aren’t quickly forgotten. You can teach them the songs that are sung at church so that they can participate well on Sundays. But whatever songs you sing in your household, let them be doctrinally sound. Let them be rich, because you may be choosing the songs that will be stuck in their head for the rest of their life. Don’t you remember songs from when you were a child? Lyrics that haven’t gone away and probably won’t anytime soon. It’s a sweet opportunity. The When and Where Next, the when. First, you should aim for daily family worship. I recognize that’s not always possible. Small group nights, Sunday evenings, those things might be difficult, but consistency is important. It would be far more fruitful to do 10 minutes every day than 4 hours every Saturday. People in your home have other commitments, sports, other events in the evening. You should try to find a regular time where you can include as many people as possible on a regular basis. If you have to change things, change them. You’re not locked in. But strive not to let good things block out something that could be really important, really useful, really sweet for your family. Guard that time. Many people, if you go read a book on family worship, recommend morning and evening. I’ve heard of some families where everyone can be home on a lunch break, so they do family worship at lunch and in the evening. But if doing family worship twice a day sounds daunting, don’t worry. Just do it once and praise God for it. Gathering your family together once a day, every day, to come before the throne of grace, to ask for God’s help, to look at his word, will have profound impact on your family. One benefit to worshiping together twice a day is that you can have one instance focused on reading through the whole Bible systematically and another that maybe focuses on particular needs or on particular parts of your Bible, like the book of Proverbs, for instance. The where of family worship: it could be anywhere, the couch, the dinner table, the bedroom after everyone’s gotten ready for bed and about to retire for the night. Wherever you do it, try to have it somewhere that’s not distracting. Try to have everyone’s Bibles or song lyrics all ready to go in that place. We’ve adjusted in our house the time and location throughout the years according to the needs of the home and age of the kids. If you were to join us once and come back two months later, it’d probably be different. The How — Be Brief, Simple, and Serious Finally, the how. I’m going to give some notes on how you do family worship. First, be brief. If you’re leading family worship, you aren’t preaching a 1-hour sermon. Shorter is better. Take note of your household’s attention span. Be simple. Your goal is to be understood, from your prayers to whatever remarks you make. Don’t shoot above the level of your household’s ability to understand. Let it be profitable for them. When I first started, I really wanted to sound like one of my favorite preachers I liked listening to on YouTube. It just wasn’t helpful. Kids are like, “Dad, why are you yelling at me?” But you want to be understood. Asking questions helps maintain engagement and helps ensure everyone is understanding. If you’re listening to this and you feel as though, I don’t think I could lead family worship. I don’t feel equipped to do that. Again, there are various guides and Bible handbooks like the MacArthur Bible Handbook or a commentary that will help make a passage’s meaning clear. Feel free to ask around, see if people have used something that they like and that’s benefited them here in the church. But you need to know you don’t need to say anything eloquent or grand. You’re not preaching a sermon. It can be as simple as, “Wow, do you see how God judges lying? We shouldn’t lie. We should tell the truth, huh?” Yeah, we should. It really can be that simple. Can you believe God’s power? Can you believe what he did? Read it. Isn’t it amazing? Yes, it is. You be impacted. You be affected by the scripture and the sentiment that God is working in you as you strive to understand it. Share that. That sometimes requires the one who’s leading family worship to be the most prepared. Maybe go read the passage ahead of time. You might look at a resource or guide so that you can think of words to share with your family. But sometimes we make it seem a lot bigger and more grand and have these very lofty expectations, and it just doesn’t need to be that. It can be so simple. Next, be serious. I say that especially with households with children, with children who love to joke around, be silly. It’s not a time for excessive joking and frivolity. Train your children to sit down, to listen. It takes time, but it’s a really important skill. You’ll be glad when they learn it. But also, don’t be so solemn. Don’t be boring, that it’s just dull. Don’t read the passage in such a way that it makes the Bible seem boring. The Bible is not boring. Inherently, it is not boring. And if we think it’s boring or someone else thinks it’s boring or we make it seem boring, it’s actually because we’re boring. Read it with some life. And don’t be theatrical either. I want to give a note to children who are in here. Children, if you are in a home that practices family worship, come every day with fear of God, honor for your parents, ready to listen, and be very thankful that you are in a home that worships together regularly. Eight Rewards of Family Worship All right, we’ve covered the who, what, when, where, and how. And you’re thinking, where’s the why? The why is number three on the outline, the rewards of family worship. I’m going to name eight rewards of family worship. 1. You get to evangelize the unbelievers in your home on a regular basis. 2. You get to ensure that everyone in your home reads or hears God’s word daily. Even if they’re struggling to maintain their own Bible reading plan, you make sure God’s word is in their minds. 3. It helps to maintain household harmony. It’s hard to meet with God and maintain your bitterness for someone sitting next to you at the same time. Those aren’t congruous, parents. 4. It aids in your raising and discipling, your bringing up of your kids. You get daily time set out to instruct and shepherd them. And it’s outside the moments of conflict or discipline. So helpful. 5. Everyone in your family gets to practice the normal patterns of worship that happen in the church. 6. You prepare everyone in your family to understand and participate well on the Lord’s day. 7. You also get a front-row seat, parents, into how your children are processing and thinking about what they’re reading, what they’re learning in scripture. You get a front-row seat to how they are applying it or not applying it. It’s helpful information. You also get to model good hermeneutics. That’s a word that just means, how do we read and understand the Bible? You get to model that. 8. It provides a regular time for parents to pass on their own faith to their children. It’s great for children to hear and learn from a pastor or an NGM teacher. We need help. Not downplaying that. But it is also important. It is meaningful when children get to be discipled by their own parents. It’s a spiritual inheritance. John G. Patton’s Testimony With that last one in mind, I want to read to you a quote from John G. Patton. He recounts his common experience of family worship in his home that his dad led, and how that set the course for the rest of his life, ultimately going into the mission field. “How much my father’s prayers at this time impressed me, I can never explain, nor could any stranger understand. When on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in family worship, he poured out his whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus, and for every personal and domestic need. We all felt as if in the presence of the living Savior and learned to know and love him as our divine friend. As we rose from our knees, I used to look at the light on my father’s face and wish I were like him in spirit, hoping that in answer to his prayers, I might be privileged and prepared to carry the blessed gospel to some portion of the heathen world.” John Patton never forgot those moments. They were so impactful in his heart. I commend this practice to you so heartily. Closing Prayer Let’s pray. God, we thank you so much for this opportunity. Again, we thank you for getting to consider your word, getting to consider the duties of husbands and parents. We thank you for the opportunity to look at this wonderful means of grace in the life of a household and to look at it from different angles and different sides. God, I pray for all of us that you would invigorate in us the desire to influence those in our household. Strengthen that, and specifically to influence them for godliness. That you would strengthen our love so that we might be willing to work, to understand, to labor, so that we can pursue the good of those we live with. God, we thank you so much for your sovereignty. God, we come to you humbly knowing that we cannot save anyone in our household. We cannot make that happen. But no one is too far that they cannot be saved if you determine to save them. God, we thank you that there’s always hope. Praying for those in our family who do not know you or have rejected you. God, would you save them? Would you save our families and our children? And would you motivate us to be means? Would you motivate us to share and preach the gospel? And I thank you for getting to talk about this practice as a tool to do just that. Please bless the rest of our Lord’s day. I ask that you would enable us to come to your word in just a few minutes with hearts full of worship, full of the desire to honor and glorify you, and full of the desire to submit to your word, to know it, to be shaped by it, and to respond to it appropriately. God, we love you. We thank you. We pray this in Jesus’ name. The post Equipping Hour: Family Worship appeared first on Grace Bible Church.

Opening Prayer and Why We’re in Leviticus on Easter Lord God, thank you for this morning. Thank you for an opportunity to celebrate your resurrection. Lord, it is such a sweet truth that so often throughout our lives we forget or put on the back burner. I’m grateful that we live in a society where, even though most people do it wrong, they at least set aside a day to remember that you have risen. As we come to your Word this morning, as we open up the book of Leviticus, help us remember and be in awe of what it means to be in your presence and of how significant an act it was for you to go to the cross. In your name, amen. Well, he is risen. All right. This is not a church that does that very well, so I figured we’d try. This morning I’m doing one of our NGM lessons. It covers five lessons the kids are going over over the next several weeks, because we don’t have NGM today and we don’t have NGM on the 25-year anniversary service. So this is our Leviticus overview. The last time we touched the kids’ curriculum, we were in Exodus back in February. I don’t expect anyone to remember it, so let me lay the groundwork for what we’re talking about today. In Exodus, God’s presence returned to his people, but there was still a significant distance. So God gives them sacrifices, priests, the Day of Atonement, and then says, “Now live like people who belong to me.” That is the arc of what we’re going to be talking about today. The main point of our story this morning is that God built an entire system to teach his people that earning their way into his presence is impossible. However, we sit on this side of Calvary, so we must remind ourselves daily of this distance that the cross had to cross. It happens to be Easter. It wasn’t planned this way, but as I reviewed what I was supposed to teach, I thought, man, this is a perfect preview to Resurrection Sunday. From Sinai to Separation Let’s open up our Bibles, and we’re actually going to start in the book of Exodus. When we read together, we’ll be reading in Exodus 33. But let me give you some background. In our February NGM lesson, we walked through three chapters in Exodus. God brought Israel to the base of Mount Sinai. He had carried them out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea, fed them manna, and when they arrived at the mountain, he spoke to the entire nation. God himself, out of the fire and the smoke and a shaking mountain, directly spoke to his people, giving them the Ten Commandments with his own voice. They were terrified. They begged God to stop talking. They told Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen, but don’t let God speak to us or we’ll die.” So Moses stepped in as a go-between. He went up into the thick darkness where God was, and the people stayed at the base of the mountain. This was the first time in the story where the need for a mediator was obvious. Then God gave Moses seven chapters of a construction plan for a tent: measurements, materials, furniture, fabrics, detail that feels endless in a reading plan. And he did it because he wanted to live with them. The people had just begged God to stop talking to them, and his response was, “No. Make me a tent. Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” The tabernacle was his answer to the distance that sin had created. He is both holy enough to kill anyone who touches that mountain and willing to live in a tent in the middle of their camp. That’s the tension the gospel shows us. While Moses was up on that mountain receiving those plans, Israel was at the base making a golden calf. Aaron, the guy who was the voice for Moses, who had walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, asked for every piece of gold and melted it down and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you from the land of Egypt.” He assigned the credit for what Yahweh had done to a piece of metal that had barely even existed in that form. Then he put God’s name on it: “Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh.” So he made this graven image and then named it God. This wasn’t just rejecting God. It was redefining him. God told Moses he was ready to destroy them. He said, “Let’s start over.” Moses argued with God, not on the basis of Israel’s character, but on God’s. He appealed to God’s ownership of the people, God’s glory, God’s promises to Abraham. So God relented, but 3,000 men still died on that day. The sons of Levi went through the camp with swords. These were everybody’s friends and brothers, and Israel felt the weight that their sin had caused. Then Moses went back up to God and said, “If you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out from your book which you have written.” Moses said, “Take me instead.” And God said, “No.” He said, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him out of my book.” Moses couldn’t ransom them. He could not be the mediator. He could not be the true payment for their guilt. That’s where we ended two months ago. We ended at Exodus 32. We knew that God is just, because God killed 3,000 men for their sin. And we knew that God is merciful, because he carried forward a people that didn’t deserve to be carried. After the golden calf, God tells Moses he’ll still give Israel the land. He’ll still send an angel to drive out their enemies. But he says this in Exodus 33:3: “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, for I will not go up in your midst because you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way.” They still get what they were promised. They’re going up to the land. But they don’t get the most important part: God. And the text is very clear about the reason. God didn’t withdraw his presence as punishment. He did it to protect them: “lest I consume you on the way.” His holiness is so pure that his presence among a stiff-necked people would destroy them. That word stiff-necked is an agricultural term. An ox that stiffens its neck against the yoke refuses to be led. You can pull all you want; you’re not moving that ox. He’s stiff-necked. He won’t be led. That is what God was calling Israel: a people that would not be led. He speaks to them and they build a calf. He commands and they do what is right in their own eyes. The text doesn’t hold Israel up as an example of repentance. They mourn when they hear this news. They strip off their jewelry as a sign of grief. But this is the same people who will grumble for 40 years in the wilderness. They didn’t really understand what they did. They just didn’t like the punishment. God didn’t just refuse to dwell in their midst. He physically separated himself from them. Moses takes the tent of meeting and pitches it outside the camp. Exodus 33:7 says he put it a good distance from the camp. So if you want to seek Yahweh, he’s not in your midst anymore. You have to leave the camp. You have to go a good distance. You have to see a physical picture of the reality that God is not existing among you anymore, because God’s glory and human sin cannot coexist. Then Moses goes into that tent and prays. He doesn’t point to anything in Israel. He reaches for God’s own character. Moses says, “You have said, ‘I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.'” His intercession rests on God’s initiative, not Israel’s improvement. That word favor is the same Hebrew word that shows up throughout the Old Testament for grace. It’s unmerited. It’s already in motion before Moses opened his mouth. This is the picture of New Testament grace. Paul says in Ephesians, “By grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves. It’s a gift from God.” The pattern is the same with Moses. God moved first. The entire sacrificial system in Leviticus exists because God chose to be gracious. Israel didn’t design it. God did. So when we read Leviticus, we should read it thinking, this is a gracious gift from our Lord. Every word in this book is a way God made so that he could be among his people. The next morning Moses climbed Sinai alone, and God descended in the cloud and stood there with him, and he called upon the name of Yahweh. In Exodus 34:6–7, God speaks about himself: “Then Yahweh passed by in front of him, Moses. And Yahweh called out, ‘Yahweh, Yahweh, God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.'” In these verses, God is defining himself. He calls himself compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—three different words for sin, and God forgives it all. Then, in the same breath, God says he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. He forgives sin and he punishes sin. If you don’t feel the tension in that sentence, you’re not paying close enough attention. How does a God who abounds in lovingkindness and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished deal with a stiff-necked people that he’s chosen to love? This isn’t resolved in Exodus. Frankly, it’s not resolved in Leviticus. Every sacrifice, every priest, every Day of Atonement is God saying, “I’m holding both of these truths at once, and I’m giving you a system to live under while you wait for the real answer.” The Question Leviticus Exists to Answer After Moses’s intercession, after God proclaims his name on the mountain, and after the tabernacle is finally completed, the people built it exactly as God commanded. So God keeps his promise. Turn a couple of pages to Exodus 40. “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle, and Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had dwelt on it, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle.” God is near. God came back. God chose to dwell in the middle of his people. And even Moses—the man who just saw God’s back on the mountain, the man who has spoken to God face to face—can’t even walk in. The glory fills the place so completely that no human can enter. That’s the question Leviticus exists to answer. The same God who told Moses, “No man can see me and live,” is now dwelling in the center of a camp full of sinful people. How can they survive? How can anyone get near him? The answer isn’t something the Israelites figured out on their own. God himself built a system. He designed every sacrifice. He appointed every priest. He established every ritual because the gap between his holiness and their sin was too wide for them to cross. So he said, “Let me build a bridge.” That’s the story that leads us to the book of Leviticus. That’s where we stand when we open it and ask, “Why all of these rules?” The next lessons in the curriculum for the kids go through that answer. Over the next couple of months, they’re going through Leviticus, and this is an opportunity for us to show them how important this book is for every Christian. God’s glory fills the tabernacle. He’s now in the middle of his people. The first thing he does from that tabernacle is speak, and he gives Moses instructions for the sacrifices. In these, God establishes the cost of being near him. The Cost of Nearness: Blood, Atonement, and the Offerings Leviticus gives us five different types of offering: the sin offering and the guilt offering, which dealt with the problem of sin; the burnt offering, which expressed total dedication to God; the grain offering, which honored God’s provision; and the fellowship offering, sometimes called the peace offering, which celebrated the restored relationship between God and his people. Five offerings, each doing something different. But the system has a logic to it, and this logic matters more than the mechanics of it. When the offerings were brought, the order was fixed. Leviticus 9 shows this order of offering: sin offering first, then burnt, then fellowship. You can’t skip to peace with God. Sin has to be dealt with. You can’t dedicate yourself to him before you can be dedicated to him. And you have to be dedicated to him before you can enjoy fellowship with him. Sin, burnt, fellowship. The order isn’t arbitrary. The order is the gospel. You don’t start with fellowship. You start with the blood. In the last lesson, we talked about the bronze altar, the largest piece of furniture in the entire tabernacle complex, and the first thing inside that gate. You couldn’t skip it. You couldn’t go around it. Two lambs every day, one in the morning, one at night, plus whatever individual offerings were brought throughout the day. The four horns of this altar were smeared dark with blood. It was probably never fully clean. The next day, it would start again. This wasn’t necessarily a spectacular event. The person bringing the offering did most of the work himself. Look at Leviticus 1:3–5: “If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall bring it near, a male without blemish. He shall bring it near to the doorway of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before Yahweh. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. Then he shall slaughter the young bull before Yahweh.” The person bringing this offering brings the animal himself. He lays his hand on its head, and then he kills it. I’m not a hunter. I’ve never field-dressed an animal, because that sounds like a terrible thing to do. I have no desire to do that. But this process is doing that before the animal ever dies. He draws the blade across the animal’s throat while his hand is still on its head. The animal bleeds out while the man’s hand is still pressing down on its skull. Blood pours onto the ground at his feet. The animal’s legs buckle. Its body convulses. And the man stands there with blood on his hands because God designed this system so that the cost of sin would be something you felt. They held the animal down while it struggled. Then the person who brought this offering kept working. He skinned the animal himself. He cut it into pieces, removed the internal organs, and the priest arranged the pieces on the altar. Then the priest offered up all of it in smoke, a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to Yahweh. The whole area smelled of blood and burning flesh. This is the aroma of worship under the old covenant. This is what it costs to come near to a holy God. I think we sanitize this. We’ll read, “He shall slaughter the young bull before Yahweh,” and our minds skip right to the theology. But God designed this process to be experienced and felt, with blood running down your arms, soaking your feet in the dirt, and the smell of an open carcass—which, I’ll tell you what, is awful. Back in the day, I did a Tyson chicken and International Beef Packers tour project, and walking into that space when it was not cooled will punch you in the face. I was proud. I was the only one that did not puke. Standing there in that moment must be atrocious. The cost of sin must feel like so much weight. It’s not just a hymn. This was not theological abstraction. This was life draining out of an animal while the offerer holds a blade in his hand. And God wanted his people to feel that every single time. This should have been you. You should be the one bleeding. You should be the one dying. The cost of your sin is life. Have you ever dealt with blood? Not like the paper cut I got yesterday moving cardboard. Real blood. Significant blood. That’s why I don’t want to do anything in the medical industry either. Blood is not cool. I’m good without it. I have to tell myself it’s just Hershey’s chocolate. They dye it red. This was flowing with blood. It stains everything. And God chose to use blood as a means of atonement, not water, not oil. Leviticus 17:11 says: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” Blood equals life. God designed it that way so that when blood was shed, we could see the cost of sin. The cost of sin is not effort. It’s not good intentions. It’s not a scale where your better acts outweigh your bad acts. Something has to die so someone else can live. The blood on the altar is visible, physical, unavoidable proof that sin is a life-and-death situation. And God is the one who provided the solution. The priest splashed blood around the altar, blood on the altar, blood at the doorway. There’s no way to approach God in this system without passing through blood. The author of Hebrews says, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.” This isn’t just theology. It is the architecture of the system God built. There’s a grain offering too. It’s not about atonement. It’s a gift. Leviticus 2:1 describes fine flour mixed with oil and frankincense, offered to honor God’s provision. But even here he says there is no yeast. Throughout Scripture, yeast represents sin. You can’t bring an offering to God while clinging to the thing that separates you from him. Even the non-atoning offering teaches holiness. The guilt offering dealt with sins that caused specific harm to another person or to God’s holy things. Leviticus 6:5 describes someone who swore falsely or defrauded their neighbor. You didn’t just sacrifice a ram. You made full restitution, giving 20 percent more, and you gave it back on the day you brought your guilt offering. You had to make it right. There’s a phrase that repeats throughout these chapters: “The priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.” Over and over. Atonement, forgiven. This is the system God created, and the worshiper walks away forgiven. But he’s going to sin again, and he’s going to need another animal. The priest will need to do this again—over and over and over, next week, next month, next year. The repetition is the point. If this had been sufficient, he would have only needed to do this once. Hebrews 10:1 says: “For the law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.” The author of Hebrews is making an argument about the whole system. It is a shadow. It shows you the shape of something real, but the shadow itself can’t do what the object does. That’s what the law is. That’s what the sacrifices are. God genuinely accepted them, but they could never make the worshiper permanently right with God. They could never change the heart that kept producing the sin. The people living under the shadow were being trained year after year, sacrifice after sacrifice: recognize what the real sacrifice will be. Every animal that died on that altar was God teaching Israel the same lesson: you need this, and this isn’t enough. The system didn’t fail. It did what it was designed to do. It created a desire for something better. The Priesthood and the Danger of Casual Access What they needed was a mediator, and that’s the priesthood. God’s presence fills the tabernacle. The sacrificial system is now in place. Someone has to stand between God and the people and carry the blood past the curtain on behalf of a nation. So God chose the last person we probably would have expected: the guy who just made a calf. He chose Aaron and his sons, sinful men, to stand in his presence on behalf of the nation. God gave them what they needed to wear to be set apart. He put a plate on Aaron’s forehead to show that he doesn’t belong to himself; he’s in God’s service. He had a robe with bells on, just in case he died. If you don’t hear bells, you know the sacrifice didn’t work. He had a breastplate with 12 stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel. When he walked into God’s presence, he carried the entire nation with him. He goes in so they don’t have to. That is what a mediator does. He stands where the people cannot stand, and he carries them with him. We don’t have time to work through all of the details this morning, but they are worth reading and understanding. After all of this preparation, the priest still has to offer a sin offering for himself before he can offer anything else for the people. The man standing between God and Israel is a sinner, and he needs grace before he can even administer the sacrifice for the people. So every time he serves, the preparation begins over again. The priesthood is God’s provision for the gap, but it’s also a reminder of how wide this gap is. If the mediator himself needs atonement, what does that tell you about the distance between a holy God and the people he’s mediating for? God tells them what this is for. In Leviticus 9:6: “This is the thing which Yahweh has commanded you to do, so that the glory of Yahweh may appear to you.” The sacrifices weren’t just a list. They were a condition of seeing God’s glory. Obey the system he built and he will show up. Then, jumping down to verses 23–24: “And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, then came out and blessed the people, and the glory of Yahweh appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before Yahweh and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar. And all the people saw it, shouted, and fell on their faces.” Fire from the presence of God consuming the offering is God accepting the offering. God saw the blood, accepted the substitute, and demonstrated that the way was open. In that moment, the system was functioning exactly as God designed it. But it didn’t take long for us to screw it up. Leviticus 10, starting in verse 1: “Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective fire pans and put fire in them. Then they placed incense on it and offered strange fire before Yahweh, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of Yahweh and consumed them, and they died before Yahweh. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘It is what Yahweh spoke, saying, “By those who come near me, I will be treated as holy, and before all the people, I will be glorified.”' So Aaron kept silent.” The same fire in chapter 9—the fire from God’s presence—consumed the offering and the people shouted for joy. Then in chapter 10, the fire from God’s presence consumed the priests and everyone went silent. Same God, same holiness, same fire. The only difference was how God was approached. One chapter earlier, the entire nation was on its face in worship because God had accepted their offering. Now two of Aaron’s sons are dead, burned up in the tabernacle, because they decided the details of God’s instructions were flexible. The exact nature of their violation is debated. The text may hint they were drunk, because immediately after their death God gives Aaron a direct command about not drinking wine or strong drink when entering the tent of meeting. The specific violation matters less than the principle: “By those who come near me I will be treated as holy.” God defines the terms of nearness, and Aaron’s sons decided those terms were optional. The fire that had just accepted the sacrifice turned on the men who thought they could improvise. Aaron kept silent. His two oldest sons are dead on the ground, and he doesn’t say a word. He was grieving, but he knew Moses was right. God’s holiness is not negotiable, not even for a father’s grief. The silence is heavier than any words Aaron could have said at that moment. He stood there in his priestly garments, the blood of his ordination still probably on his ear and his thumb and his toe, and he had nothing to say. Because what do you say when you know God is just and your sons were wrong? You stand there in silence. We approach God every day, every week. We pray, we sing, we take communion. Christ secured that access for us. Nadab and Abihu are permanent reminders that access and casualness aren’t the same thing. The God we approach through Christ is the same God whose fire consumed unauthorized worship. His holiness has not changed. What changed is the sacrifice. A better priest offered a better sacrifice, and our access is permanent. But the God on the other side of that access is still the God whose fire fell in Leviticus 10. We come boldly, as Hebrews tells us, but we must come on his terms. We must come honoring his holiness. The Day of Atonement and the Two Goats The next lesson for the kids is on the atonement. The atonement sacrifice happens once a year, every year. These daily sacrifices are in the individual lesson: one person, one offering, one act of forgiveness. I’ve often wondered how long the line is for that. If it’s like Disneyland, you’re waiting for an hour. There’s no FastPass. But sin doesn’t just affect the sinner. It defiles the priests who handle it. It contaminates the tabernacle where God dwells. So the Day of Atonement addressed what the daily sacrifices couldn’t. Once a year, the high priest entered the room no one else could enter, carrying blood into the immediate presence of God. In Leviticus 16:2, Yahweh says to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat which is on the ark, so that he will not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat.” This first instruction is a warning: don’t come in whenever you want. You will die. The Holy of Holies is not an empty room. This is where God’s presence is. It’s unmediated by blood, and it will kill you. On this day, the high priest enters alone, burning incense so the smoke covers the mercy seat before he can even look in that direction. Without this incense, he will die. He brings blood first from a bull for himself, because the high priest still has to be atoned for before he can atone for anyone else. Then he slaughters a goat for the people and brings its blood inside the veil. Inside the ark sit the stone tablets, the law that every person in the camp has broken. Above the ark is the mercy seat, where God appears. The law underneath, God’s presence above, and the high priest sprinkles blood on the mercy seat and in front of it. Leviticus 16:14 tells us he sprinkles this blood seven times. That blood is the only thing standing between a nation of sinners and the holy judgment their sin deserves. It satisfies God’s judgment so that his mercy can reach his people. There are two goats brought for the people’s sin offering. The first goat is killed. Its blood goes inside the veil: payment for sin. But the second goat isn’t killed. In Leviticus 16:21–22: “Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins. And he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it out into the wilderness by the hand of a man ready to do this. And the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an isolated land. And he shall send out the goat in the wilderness.” This is both hands, a full confession, a full transfer. The text uses, once again, the three different words for sin that we saw earlier: iniquities, transgressions, and sins. All of it laid on this goat and sent into the wilderness. The first goat dies as a payment, and the second goat signifies a removal. These truths are what God does with sin. He pays for it, and he carries it away. Eric read from Isaiah 53 on Friday, and it uses this same language. Isaiah 53:4–6 says: “Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried away. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.” Both of those goats point to Christ. The goat that died is Christ paying the penalty for our sins. The goat sent away is Christ removing our sins as far as the east is from the west. Two goats on the Day of Atonement, because it takes two pictures to show what one Savior accomplished in a single act. And once every year, that’s what Leviticus 16:34 says: “This is a perpetual statute.” If this had solved the problem, once would have been enough. But every year the high priest goes back behind the curtain. Every year the blood is sprinkled. Every year God is teaching Israel, “This isn’t the final answer.” In those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Hebrews 10:11 tells us, “And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God… For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Every priest stands. You stand when your work is not complete. Christ sat down at the right hand of the Father. He offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, and he sat down. The distance between those two realities is the distance Christ crossed, and we cannot fathom that distance. Scott talked Friday night about Matthew 27. In verse 51, when Jesus died, the veil of the sanctuary was torn from top to bottom. The veil existed for one reason: to keep people out. Not even the high priest could pass except once a year, covered in blood, hidden behind incense, and scared to death. For 1,500 years this curtain was saying, “You can’t come in here.” No animal sacrifice could remove it. The veil stayed because the sacrifice that could tear it had not yet been offered. When Christ died, God tore it from top to bottom. The sin that required the separation was dealt with permanently. Again in Hebrews 10:19: “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from every evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” We are not trembling high priests. We’re not sitting in clouds of incense when we walk in here on a Sunday or when we sit in our quiet time. The blood of Jesus did what the blood of bulls and goats could never do. So draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. Our nearness to God cost the Son everything. And now he sits. The job is complete. Be Holy: What the System Was Pointing Toward There’s one last lesson in the curriculum, and it’s in Leviticus 19. After everything we’ve walked through this morning—after the presence, after the sacrifices, after the priesthood, after the Day of Atonement—God says one more thing to his people. Leviticus 19:2: “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy.'” The reason for holiness isn’t self-improvement. It’s to reflect God. God’s people look like God, not like the surrounding nations, not like whatever feels comfortable. “You shall be holy because I, Yahweh your God, am holy.” When we walked through holiness in the attribute series a few weeks ago, we looked at how Charnock described it. He called holiness the beauty of the Godhead. Power is God’s hands. Omniscience his eyes. Mercy his heart. Holiness is his beauty. Every other attribute is glorious, but holiness is what makes every other attribute beautiful. Power without holiness is tyranny. Sovereignty is oppression. Even love without holiness is sentimentality. Holiness is the purity that makes everything else about God trustworthy. And God says, “Be like that.” The commands in Leviticus 19 touch everything: honor your parents, no idols, leave grain in your field for the poor and the foreigner, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t take advantage of the deaf, don’t put a stumbling block before the blind, don’t pervert justice for anyone, rich or poor, don’t hate your brother in your heart. Holiness is more than don’t steal or cheat on your wife. The commands in this chapter push into territory that most people would consider optional. Leave part of your harvest in the field for people who can’t afford food. Keep your body clear of markings for the sake of being set apart as God’s holy people. Pay your workers on time. Don’t hold a grudge. Holiness touches your wallet, your body, your calendar, the conversations you have when the other person isn’t even in the room. Holiness is comprehensive. It’s relentless. It leaves no corner of your life untouched. And God says, “Be holy.” Leviticus 19:18 says, “You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh.” Jesus called this the second-greatest commandment, and this is the first time you see it. Some of these commandments carry into the New Testament, and some were fulfilled in Christ or belong specifically to Israel’s identity as a nation set apart from its neighbors. But the principle beneath every single one of these commands carries across every page of Scripture. God’s people are different, not because we’re better, but because God’s people belong to a holy God. And belonging to him changes what you do with every part of your life. Here’s where this section serves our main point this morning: nobody kept it. Nobody looks at Leviticus 19 and goes, “I did every single one of those perfectly.” Not fully, not consistently, certainly not for long. The call to holiness reveals the same thing the sacrifices revealed, the same thing the annual Day of Atonement revealed: there’s a distance. Even after God provides the presence, the sacrifices, the priests, and the atonement, the people still can’t close this gap on their own. God gave them the command, “Be holy.” He gave them detailed instructions for what holiness looks like, and they couldn’t do it. The law is perfect. We’re not. And the system teaches that we need him. That’s the whole point. Leviticus 19 is the last piece of evidence in the case that God has been building for us this morning. His presence is real, and still the people can’t be what God calls them to be. We need more than a system. We need the one the system was pointing to. And on this side of Calvary, what God commanded from the outside he now accomplishes from the inside. As Ezekiel 36:27 says, “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.” Christian, God gives you the power to be holy. It is a new power that you have when you commit your life to Christ. So that’s what these five lessons talk about. They talk about God’s presence. They talk about sacrifice. They talk about the need for a mediator and an atonement and holiness. Five layers of the same truth. God drew near to a sinful people, and he built an entire system so that they could survive his nearness. Every piece of that system worked, and every piece of that system was insufficient. The sacrifices had to be repeated. The priests needed their own atonement before they could offer. The call to holiness exposed what everybody already knew: we couldn’t do it. And the system did exactly what it was designed to do. It taught a people, and it teaches us, what we need. Then Christ came. The presence that filled the tabernacle became flesh and dwelt among us. The sacrifice that had to be repeated was offered once for all time. The priest who needed his own atonement was replaced by one who knew no sin. The Day of Atonement that came back every year was fulfilled in a single afternoon. The holiness that no one could keep was credited to everyone who belongs to him. The depth of our gratitude for what Christ accomplished is directly tied to how well we understand what he replaced. That’s why we spend time in Leviticus. That’s why we have Leviticus, so we can truly understand what Christ’s death replaced. Closing Prayer Lord God, many of us have heard the truth that you went to the cross to die for our sins our entire lives. We grew up either in the church or in a society that just assumes that. And yet we grew up 1,500 years or 3,500 years removed from these words on the page. This sacrificial system that was so significant and so difficult and so vivid—what it means to see a life taken for our sins—are words on a page. Lord, help these words on the page to penetrate our hearts, and help us to be lost in, to be consumed by, the truth of what your death on the cross meant. So this morning, as we celebrate your resurrection—because your resurrection shows that not only did you defeat sin, but you defeated death, that the work was finished—Lord, as we celebrate that, help this day not to be about family, but to be about you. Lord, we love you. Amen. The post Equipping Hour: Presence, Priesthood, and Atonement appeared first on Grace Bible Church.

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The following is an AI-generated rough transcript of the Equipping Hour. It may contain inaccuracies.  Opening and Introduction Smedly Yates: Well, good morning. Happy Sunday. Welcome to Grace Bible Church this morning and to Equipping Hour. This morning, we’re going to be doing a follow-up from an equipping hour that Jake taught on January 11th on dementia. And that was, Jake, that was riveting and encouraging. And I thought you taught us everything we needed to know, but apparently you didn’t. Because the numbers of follow-up questions from that equipping hour broke all records. So we’ve sort of accumulated those questions. And let me just encourage you, if you didn’t get a chance to listen to that equipping hour from January 11th, pull it up on the website, go back and listen to that. And this morning, what we’re going to do is just put the questions that many of you asked in person and submitted. Or just get to ask those of Jake in front of all of us. And so Jake really is going to give most of the answers here. I don’t know if I have a whole lot to say. Other than these are the questions we got, Jake, help us. So with that, let me open us in a word of prayer and we’ll get started. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your kindness to us. We don’t deserve to have physical ability endure in this life. We don’t deserve to have mental capacity sustained in this life. We truly only deserve condemnation under your wrath for our sins. And so anything that you give to us, we pray to use as a gift, as a stewardship, to use well and for your glory, and to be content and to trust you as things diminish. And we thank you for the preparation, for mental decline. You’ve already given us from principles from your word. We pray even now as we discuss caring for one another and seeking to glorify you in personal worship in our physical existence that you would be honored as we listen and apply and are strengthened and sharpened to help others. We ask all this in Jesus’ name. Amen. I’m going to start with kind of a personal question that came in, Jake, and it goes like this. If I try not to get dementia, you gave us a lot of helps, dietary exercise, sleep, some of those things that were really helpful, practical things. So if I’m doing those things, if I’m trying not to get dementia, am I expressing distrust and dissatisfaction in God and his sovereignty? Stewardship, Planning, and God’s Sovereignty Jacob Hantla: Maybe. So, yeah, we spend a lot of time talking about the practical ways that you might want to steward this life and this body that God’s given you. The big hitters were exercise, right? We said if there’s one that you can do, it’s that. But there’s a lot more. There’s a, but if you’re doing those things, is that sinful? It might be. There’s a way to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Planning, though, is not unbelief. Planning like God doesn’t exist is unbelief. or planning like God’s way isn’t best in your selfishly, arrogantly grabbing after your own desires. That’s unbelief. That’s sin. So the issue isn’t whether you should steward, but it’s whether an action that you’re saying is stewardship is actually a mask for control, pride, and fear. Proverbs 27:12 says the prudent sees danger and hides himself. There’s a way to see that. Where you see danger, you hide yourself from it. You take planned steps in order to avoid it that actually roots itself from fear of the Lord. And that would be right. And in contrast, it says the simple go on as if that danger isn’t there and they suffer for it. So there’s nothing inherently righteous or right and just saying, I’m going to trust the Lord and use that as a mask for just lazy thoughtlessness. Similarly, there’s nothing righteous at all in saying, I don’t want what I fear is coming and I’m going to grasp after what I want. But James 4, you guys might want to open there. This is, a really, really helpful section of scripture for planning. And it reveals why we actually have to, at the heart of all of this, guard our hearts, not merely do the right thing. James Chapter 4. And this is in the context of the warning, or the command to humble yourself from verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. And now, he says, come now, verse 13, you who say today or tomorrow, we’re going to go into such and such a town, spend a year there trade, and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You’re a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will do this or that. So the take home from that is not don’t plan, don’t run a business, but rather as you run it, run it as one who actually embraces and recognizes your temporalness, your weakness, your dependence, and God’s sovereignty. Smedly Yates: If we zoom out from the topic of dementia, and we just think about the principle underlying that, we’re dealing with the realities of God using human means in his sovereign plans. If we rephrase the question, we might say, is it sin and distrust of the Lord to study for your chemistry exam? No, of course not. Can you sin by studying for your chemistry exam without thought toward God and exalt your own pride and intellect and your hard work? Yeah, that’d be wrong. A godless, practical, atheistic approach to effort would be sin. But a laziness that says, well, I’m just trusting in the Lord, but I’m not going to go apply for a job, study from my exam, practice for the athletic endeavor, or whatever is sin the other way. And I love the example of evangelism. We know that God will save people, but we know that God uses means to do it. So is it a failure to trust God when I go out and share the gospel with people? No, it’s actually the obedience that God uses as a means to accomplish his ends. Now, I can’t control the results. So you can be faithful, worshiping the Lord, telling others how great Jesus is all day long and nobody gets saved and God is honored and we trust him. Jacob Hantla: Yeah. There’s two biblical, I love the illustration. It’s throughout the Bible of horses and chariots. You can write down Proverbs 21:31 and Psalm 20:7. In Proverbs 21:31, it says, the horse is made ready for the day of battle. Who does that? We do that. The people do that, and they go, battle, but it says, but victory belongs to Yahweh. And similarly, in Psalm 20:7, this, this was actually one of my favorite passages in fighting cancer. I stole it from Piper in his book, Don’t Waste Your Cancer. He says, some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of Yahweh our God, which doesn’t mean go to battle with slow horses and broken down chariots, it’s wise to get the best you can. If you know that you might be facing a future with dementia or anything else you might face, chemistry test or other health problem, be diligent to plan, but do it in a way that when you don’t get dementia, it wasn’t your effort that gets the glory. It was Yahweh’s. And if you get dementia anyway, you say, it was the Lord’s will. It’s best, I trust. Reverse Sanctification and Dementia Smedly Yates: A question came through, and really there were several facets that sort of get at the same kind of question. But people wondered, and this comes obviously from people who have worked hard to care for people with various forms of dementia. But it seems like Christians at times can experience what looks like reverse sanctification. Is that what’s going on there? Have people been abandoned by the Holy Spirit when behaviors change in mental decline. Jacob Hantla: Yeah, I think probably about five, six of you asked that question with very particular circumstances in mind. And the question doesn’t overstate the reality of what occurs. So reverse sanctification. Sanctification is the process of progressively being conformed to the image of Christ from the point of salvation, usually, and normally for a Christian, until the point when they finish well, die, and are taken home, and then glory. But that doesn’t always happen for Christians. The reality is sometimes in dementia, some Christians become more childlike in their faith. It’s not inevitable that your sanctification will reverse. And I don’t think that’s the right term. It’s the observed reality that we see. But sometimes their faith becomes more simple, but not less godly. They might tell the same stories over and over again. Or if you imagine sometimes what happens in dementia, your existence in the moment is separated from what’s gone before it. So you’re always disoriented. That’s terrifying. And so you see the Christian in those moments having a childlike trust questions that you feel bad for them, but they are trusting the Lord in a real way. But sometimes, and this is the words of Dr. John Dunlop, wrote a book on the Christian and dementia. He goes, dementia can indeed change personalities. It has transformed wonderful, loving, godly people into tyrants. And that happens. I’ve seen, you see somebody who was self-controlled loving. and as they progress into dementia, they curse. They use language that’s not befitting a Christian at all. There’s inappropriateness in all kinds of ways. And so what’s going on there? I think it’s helpful. I’m going to do another physiology lesson. Bear with me, I promise it’s worth it. It helps me. So there’s some types of dementia, especially that there’s one we talked about called frontotemporal. What does that mean? It’s the area of the brain in which it happens. And it changes the way that your brain physically works. So there’s an, I’m going to oversimplify a little bit. So, but this is, this is helpful. If you think of your prefrontal cortex, you might have heard that word because we joke. Teenagers, their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed. And that’s true. It’s why you don’t trust your kids to make life-altering decisions. But the prefrontal cortex is, you could think of it as the executive control center of your brain. It houses the part of your brain for abstract thought, concentration, working memory, and most critically, inhibition of inappropriate thoughts and actions. You and I do it all the time you think it’s like the breaks. There’s a filter on, thank God there’s a filter, right? Something comes to your mind and it doesn’t come out your mouth. Because of the prefrontal cortex, it overrides automatic impulsive thoughts. It helps you consider the consequences in the future before acting. It connects your current behaviors to the past experiences and your goals. And when that area is damaged, somebody has a really hard time choosing the appropriate behavior for the situation. The damage, it sort of removes the filter. There’s another thing, orbital frontal cortex. It’s just another area of your brain. You don’t need to know the big word. But what that is is that’s particularly critical for regulating social behavior. When that area of the brain gets damaged, like if you get a cancer to that area or a surgery that affects, that area instantly, that person can explain what appropriate social behavior is, but they don’t recognize when their behavior violates that. So it’s manifested by like just a list from a textbook that I looked up on this. It’s greeting strangers in an overly familiar manner, standing too close to others, inappropriate touching, being aware of social norms, like I said, but unaware that your behavior violates that, and that can go to extremes, sexual inappropriateness, language inappropriateness, and they’re just unaware. You and I, if we were to be saying that, it would be sin. In this case, it actually may represent a physical inability. So what’s going on there? I want to think about the brain and the believer. When the Holy Spirit expresses self-control in a believer. So, right, the fruit of the spirit is self-control. And I just said, well, self-control comes from the prefrontal cortex. So are we just our brains? No. When the Holy Spirit makes a believer new. And when the Holy Spirit controls that believer, he does it in a way through the working of our physiologic brain that enables us to submit to him, which means that he’s actually using our prefrontal cortex in a renewed way. I think it’s helpful. Open your Bible’s to Ephesians 5:18. I think this is really helpful. And there is an inner working between the way our brains and our most inner us, your soul, your mind, you’re who you are. There’s a working there that we, don’t truly understand, but that we can get glimpses into here. And I think that that, if we think of the way our brains in the working of the Holy Spirit to accomplish things like self-control, I think this is a helpful verse. Ephesians 5:18, do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. And what’s that contrasted with? But be filled with the Holy Spirit, with the Spirit. So what does alcohol physically do? Alcohol in a person, it actually, you’re going to now see why I did this physiology lesson, it actually dramatically reduces prefrontal cortex activity. It takes the break off. It takes the filter off. You may still have the Holy Spirit, but the physiologic means that he uses to exercise control of, you would use to minimize your expressions of sin while in this body that’s falling apart, you’ve now chemically altered that. And so you have a lack of self-control, an impaired moral reasoning, increased risk-taking. Similarly, your orbital frontal cortex goes dysfunctional. That’s why I mentioned those two things. That happens with alcohol and anything that stimulates GABA receptors. That would be like benzodiazepines, some sleeping pills, some anti-enactylase, some anti-enactylase. anxiety meds, it can lead to social inappropriateness for those same reasons. Opioids. Research shows that chronic amphetamine and opioid use alters decision-making by ways that are very similar to focal damage to that orbital frontal cortex. You can see now chemicals interacting with your brain in a way that we’re used to seeing those people don’t act right. THC from marijuana, same thing, decreased brain volumes in chronic use, especially in the orbital frontal cortex. Sleep deprivation. Tons of breakdown, temporary, and the connection between amygdala, which is like your fighter flight, your stress area, and your prefrontal cortex connectivity. So sleep deprivation triggers this. You basically don’t have a brain. on your emotional regulation. So why am I going through all that? If we have the ability, it’s right for us to keep ourselves from breaking our brain intentionally. Don’t be drunk. Avoid chemicals that would alter those areas and make the expression of self-control more difficult or less likely. and you can actually, you see it in your kids when they’re unslept, more prone to sin. You see it in yourself. So imagine yourself with 48 hours without sleep, then drink a little bit of alcohol. You will become disinhibited, irritable, and be much more prone to sin. Don’t do that to yourself. But now what happens if that’s actually happening physically because areas of your brain are dying, they’re tangled up with proteins, or they’re otherwise that they can’t access the energy stores to function? That’s effectively what they’re, but they can’t sleep it off or sober up. It helps you be probably a little more understanding and maybe see that it’s not actually a reversing of sanctification, but rather, I think it’s a, well, let’s just turn to 2 Corinthians 4, and I think we’ll see what it is. You see that dementia can change behavior by damaging the brain’s physiologic instruments of restraint and judgment, but it’s not the same thing as the Holy Spirit moving out. sanctification isn’t stored in a lobe of the brain. You are more than your brain. It’s actually our brain is that part of us that’s wasting away. It’s not our inner man. So 2nd Corinthians 4:16, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. day. This is helpful to remember in somebody whose outer self is falling apart, not just physically their body doesn’t work anymore, but their brain’s not working. This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen, the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. It’s really helpful. when we look at somebody with dementia and it looks like they’re becoming less and less Christian. I love the way John Piper says it. He has a helpful ask Pastor John on dementia. And he says, Paul’s telling us that weak, in glorious, demented shadow of a once strong Christian in front of us is on the brink of glory and power. You need to go into nursing homes and think that way. These people are on the brink of glory and power. We must keep this continuity in mind between diminished powers of human beings here and the spectacular powers that they’re going to have in the resurrection. It’s so important if we lose a sense of that continuity for the Christian, will assume that we are becoming less human rather than being on the brink of gloriously superhuman. So it’s helpful to see that your brain is the outer person that’s wasting away. And that isn’t necessarily connected to the what God has done in the most inner you. Confrontation, Rebuke, and Care for the Weak Smedly Yates: Given that reality, Jake, we think about somebody whose inhibitions are broken down. The manifest ability for self-control allows things in the heart to make their way out. Is there ever a place for confrontation, rebuke, encouragement, help for somebody who’s still living the Christian life, still susceptible to sin? At what level is it appropriate? How should we think about, you know, helping behavior and rotten speech and things like that? Jacob Hantla: Yeah, absolutely. There is. You have to recognize that the purpose of rebuke would be repentance, right? And just like with children and with all Christians, it’s really wise and necessary to discern when possible between sin and inability. The reality is that we can’t always do that. But before I go there, I want to get back to this question. Let’s think about ourselves and what we’re going to be prone to do with what I just said. I’m going to be prone, you might be prone, to say, well, I didn’t sin. It’s just my physiology that made me do it. You don’t get off the hook ever in the Bible because your physiology had a weakness. God uses our weakness and our physiology as the platform in which he demonstrates his power, and particularly his power over sin. Our brains, actually a significant part of why they’re weak and why they break like this, is because it’s a part of God’s judgment for us. Romans 1, right? We became futile in our thinking, and our minds were darkened as a result of our unwillingness to acknowledge God as God. We are not merely our brains, and yet the dysfunction of our brains is actually a significant part of the fall. God renews that. He changes that in the believer. And if you as a Christian say, I know where I am particularly vulnerable, maybe I’m heading down a path towards dementia, or maybe I have some particular weaknesses where I haven’t slept much this week. I just had back surgery. I know I’m going to be on an opioid for pain, and I know that I’m going to have a particular—even if you can’t say the area of your brain that’s going to not function right—you're going to say, all right, Jake taught me that I’m going to tend to act inappropriately towards people. I’m not going to view myself rightly. I’m going to have a lack of self-control. I better ask for help. I’m not going to justify sin, but I’m actually going to be more vigilant for it. Fight it more diligently and get people around me to help me fight it. So now let’s go to the question of, is it ever appropriate to rebuke a dementia patient? Let’s assume that person is a Christian. Go to 1 Thessalonians 5:14. If that person is a Christian and they are sinning, even if they’re not even aware of it, they’re going to say, will you please come to me and help me? I’m going to need help. We need to, as best we can, use the right tool for the situation. Discern weakness, faint-heartedness, and still don’t hesitate to admonish unruliness or idleness. So 1 Thessalonians 5:14: “We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle or the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak.” Do you see those three different instructions? Somebody might be expressing sin. All three of these might be evidences of—in all of these three cases—there might be somebody evidencing unbelief or something that needs turning, changing. And in one case, the tool is admonishment. In another, it’s actually help. And in the other, it’s encouragement. Now consider the person with dementia. Their brain is not functioning the way that yours is. They can’t connect their actions to what’s socially appropriate. They can’t connect their actions with the goals they’re aiming at. They might be unclear as to even the situation that they find themselves in, the context of their life. That’s a pitiable—in all the right ways—pitiable circumstance. That would tend to make that person fainthearted, very weak. What they probably need more than admonishment is help and encouragement. I love Poithress. This is from Piper and Grudem’s book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He says, “Our privilege as Christ’s children altogether should stimulate rather than destroy our concern to treat each person in the church with the sensitivity and respect due to that person by reason of his age, gift, sex, leadership status, personality,” and I would add mental status. So how should you do this? With mild impairment, let’s just go down a category. If you had somebody with mild impairment—not all dementias, it’s not this catch-all where everybody’s all the same—you can have a mild impairment. Probably normal accountability. They’re going to tend to need more admonishment and help and encouragement, but be slower, be gentle, be more concrete. You’re probably not going to be able to string together three or four if-then statements to logically get them there. Make it simple. Sort of like when you’re admonishing your three-year-old, maybe your five-year-old, your seven-year-old. You still do it, but not in the same way that you would a 25-year-old or a 35-year-old. But then with moderate impairment, your correction probably becomes more redirection. Just simple statements of, “That’s not okay. Let’s go over here.” Change the environment. And then severe impairment, probably treat it more as symptom management, prioritizing safety, comfort. Simple statements still: “That’s not okay.” Like you would use for your one-year-old: “Use your hands for gentleness. We don’t speak like that. That doesn’t honor the Lord.” Normal Aging, Forgetfulness, and Dementia Smedly Yates: Statements like that. This is so helpful, Jake. I think partly because we don’t want to be in a position where we’re shocked and our black-and-white categories of sanctification, justification, get in the way of compassionate care and love for someone who is in a weakened state that needs help. It’s not dismissing sin, but just really helpful, compassionate care. I have a more personal question for you. Last evening, we had a number of friends in our home, and I got confused and thought that a dear sweet friend was somebody else altogether. And it occurred to me later, I asked a really strange question that didn’t make any sense to her at all. Do I have dementia? Jacob Hantla: I don’t think so. But you are getting older. There’s a forgetfulness that’s just a part of being human. And there is a forgetfulness that’s increasingly normal with age. Smedly Yates: You’re right behind me. You’re catching up. No, you’re not catching up, but you’re behind me. Jacob Hantla: Percentage-wise, I’m catching up, and I will never in an absolute, absolute way. So there’s normal aging, and some normal cognitive decline with aging is very different than actual dementia. So if you do have questions about that, it’s helpful. Regardless, if you just say, hey, I’m getting old. I’m not sleeping as well. Just as a result of not sleeping as well, as a result of just being weaker, maybe having more history behind you, some more stuff to forget, or whatever, you realize, hey, I don’t have dementia, but I’m not who I once was. That’s not a bad place to be. There’s a weakness there that’s helpful to get people around you to augment your weaknesses. How much more, if you were heading toward dementia. I promise I’ll tell you if I see it. You do the same for me. But regardless, you might or you might not. I don’t think you do. But let’s say that you’re saying, I forget stuff, do I have dementia? The second that you start thinking that, you’re probably not the right person to be making that call. It’s wise to get family members, elders, even medical professionals, doctors to assess: is this dementia? Is it a reversible cause? What’s the probability it’s going to accelerate? And then as you start seeing more and more likelihood that, yeah, this is progressing, start getting people around you to start relinquishing intentionally controls that you might have on your life. Can you double-check me on any purchases greater than X amount of money? Let’s go update the will. Let’s get you on a power of attorney. Invite them to take away the keys at the appropriate time. Even if you say that’s a long way from now, that’s a really humble way to invite, in a godly way, people who love you to be enabled to help you. Forgetting the Gospel and Childlike Faith Smedly Yates: Jake, can a believer forget the gospel in a mentally diminished state or not have the ability to articulate the gospel? Jacob Hantla: Yeah. They can. Memories are stored in our brain. And you might not have access to those memories even while you are saved. Right? That unbreakable chain of salvation will end in glorification from Romans chapter 8: all those whom he foreknew, and it gets all the way to glorification. And in the midst of that may be a trial like your memories are disconnected from you in a way that you can’t explain concepts like substitutionary atonement, you might not even remember that Jesus is your Savior, though he is. And so if somebody has forgotten those things, don’t tire of reminding them of those things. Because even if that memory can only stay with them for that one moment, it’s real. And it might help them endure that moment. It’s a really complex, I can’t say that we understand it at all. But God does. There’s a complex relationship between our thoughts, our memories, how those connect to our actions, and what our ultimate status before God that’s normally expressed through faith. And you can’t have faith without trusting in Jesus. So how can somebody who doesn’t even know who Jesus is trust in him? I’m just going to say I’m not God. God knows. And when you are in your right mind, if you do, that’s evidence of God’s work in you. Because nobody can say Jesus is Lord apart from, in me, and being it, apart from God changing them, saving them, making them new. And so if their brain breaks, and they no longer are able to say that in the same way, I don’t think that’s going to be devastating because they weren’t saved on the merit of faith, but they were saved by grace through the exercise of faith. That faith may look different now. But it’s helpful to think of what kind of people go into the kingdom. Like the disciples, when the children were coming, and they said, no, don’t let them near. And Jesus says, no, it’s, it’s that kind of person who gets into the kingdom. Don’t think that those, faith doesn’t have to be complex. Faith doesn’t have to be well reasoned out. That doesn’t mean that you have an excuse not to think. Peter says, add to your faith knowledge, right? We are expected to grow in faith. I’d love to hear you expound on this, Smed. But there’s a childlikeness of faith that actually in your dementia, you might be able to express that. In your arrogance, maybe in your self-trusting when your faculties are working, it may actually be God’s means of separating you from your strength, because when we’re weak, we’re strong in him, that we don’t get to see all the interplay of that, but we may be a means moment by moment of reminding the Christian who forgot who Jesus was of who he is. Smedly Yates: I think that’s so helpful. The weakest place you will ever be in life are at your last moments on the earth. No matter how it is you go out of this life. Just last night I was working through the details of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. And listen to this, Paul is comparing the resurrection to a seed sown into the ground and then what comes out afterwards. And there are different levels of glory from sun, moon to stars, different kinds of bodies, fish, and other things. But not everybody’s the same. But every human being who faces physical mortality ends life here and then experiences resurrection, every one of us will experience the most profound weaknesses in the last moments. And here’s how Paul describes it. The body is sown, placed into the ground like a seed, corruptible. Subject to absolute humiliating corruption, raised incorruptible. No longer ever subject to corruption. And when we think about brain deterioration, that word corruption is weighty. Sown in dishonor. The last moments of anyone’s physicality are the most dishonorable. Stripped of power, stripped of strength, stripped of dignity, but raised in glory. And Jake, what you shared earlier about somebody being on the brink of the kind of glory that C.S. Lewis described—if we were to see a resurrected saint now we’d be tempted to fall down and worship them or run away in abject terror. We just have no idea what this glory is like on this side of it. But we go from the lowest, most undignified, most powerless spot in our earthly existence in those last moments. And he goes on and says, put in the ground in weakness, raised in power, put in the ground natural, raised supernatural. And so the earthy is first and then the spiritual. And so it’s just helpful to think about not being surprised when someone is at their most profoundly weak, not just physically but mentally, end-of-life scenarios. Jacob Hantla: Yeah, it’s profoundly humbling. And it makes us want to say, I don’t want to be there. Can I avoid that? Okay. I mean, do your best. And ultimately God may bring us there in a way that all of us, sometimes our last moments are momentary, sometimes our last moments of that corruptible humiliation last a really long time. In this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on, we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, this physical body that’s falling apart, we groan, being burdened. Not that we would be unclothed. It’s not merely saying, hey, let’s take this thing off, but that we would be further clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. It’s not even worth comparing. And so if that’s the way that God has to be glorified in us—to go back to that first question—okay, I’ll do that. It’s light and momentary, even if it lasts a long time. And even if I’m not even able in the moment to contemplate what time is, it’s humiliating. And you know what? I’m going to ask the Lord to take that from me. I’m going to say, God, please don’t. That’s an okay prayer. That’s similar to what Paul prayed and said in 2 Corinthians 12. And Jesus says, no, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And if Jesus says that to you, Christian, you can say, okay, I’m going to be content with weaknesses. And man, if you get to care for somebody in their weak moments there, it’s helpful to have these things in mind to know they’re on the brink of glory. Marriage, Roles, and Dementia Smedly Yates: I want to move to a practical and theological question related to roles, thinking particularly about husbands and wives honoring biblical roles in marriage, particularly when a husband is experiencing mental decline and dementia. How does a wife caring for a husband honor those roles with a diminished ability? Jacob Hantla: Yeah, that’s a really helpful question. I loved thinking through this. Smedly Yates: I came up with it myself. No. Several people asked. I just wrote it down. Jacob Hantla: You did. I think we want to avoid two opposite errors. One is a view of submission and leadership as a rigid subservience. If a husband can’t lead, the wife can’t act. Or on the other side, a role evaporation. That illness or inability cancels biblical patterns. Both of those would be absolutely wrong. Did you get that? One would be if the husband can’t lead, then the wife shouldn’t be able to act. And if the husband can’t lead because of inability, role distinction, that God set out that is grounded in creation order, not in ability, right? Men aren’t pastors because we’re better at it or smarter at all or better teachers. That’s not where God grounds it. But in his purposes. And so it’s helpful. If we think about what femininity is, so we’re helping a wife whose husband is just incapable of leading in the ways that she wishes he could, a heart that longs to follow. You think of 1 Peter 3:4. The adorning for the woman is in the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. Normally, that’s going to be expressed through submitting to husbands, to their leadership, even in ways, as long as their leadership—for unbelievers, as long as their leadership doesn’t lead them to go against the Lord—even submitting to that with a gentle and quiet spirit. That’s going to play itself out differently for a husband who can’t lead through inability or poor decision-making due to brain decline. You go to Proverbs 31. This breaks the category of a submissive wife as one who’s subservient and just says, “Tell me exactly what to do, so I only do that thing.” No, an excellent wife who can find, she’s far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her. He will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life. You see right there a husband who can trust his wife, whose wife is working for his good and not harm, that’s a wife who’s embraced godly roles. It’s not a wife, it’s not neediness that she expresses, but productivity and care. Jump forward to verse 15 of Proverbs 31. She rises while it is yet night, provides food for her household, portions for her maidens, she considers a field and buys it, the fruit of her hand, she plants a vineyard, she dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable, her lamp does not go out at night. This is a woman who can work, who can work hard, but very different from that which feminists would say, hey, a woman who doesn’t need a man, a woman who functions for her own good, depart from him, but this is a woman who’s functioning strong for the good of her husband. And her husband trusts, she, verse 27, looks to the ways of her household. She doesn’t eat the bread of idleness. Children and her husband call her blessed and praise her. Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. This biblical femininity is rooted in fear of the Lord, love of her husband, not a desire to dominate over the husband, but to come alongside as a God-given helper to build him up, that can be demonstrated in very unique, very God-glorifying ways with a husband whose mind is increasingly not working. It’s fundamentally a disposition to honor and support the husband voluntarily and gladly. Leadership often involves delegation. So, husbands: if you’re heading that way, plan in advance for the kinds of ways so that your wife, even when you can no longer give your preferences, she knows, and it seems like in the moment, she’s actually working against it when you no longer understand what’s going on. She’s actually able to follow. So it’s good and right for the wife to be productive, capable, in a way that might look independent, but with a hard attitude that supports. So anticipate that. I want to give a personal example. This is actually hard and a little bit embarrassing. So dementia is different than delirium. Delirium is something that’s short-term, usually from a cause. You see it in elderly when they get like UTIs. You can see it from medications. Post-surgery, I see it all the time with anesthesia. As many of you guys know, I spent a long time in the hospital with Burkitt lymphoma. I was getting a lot of chemo. They stick a needle in my spine, give me chemo directly into my cerebral spinal fluid around my brain. I was on tons of pain medication and all kinds of other medications that did weird things to my brain. I don’t remember this time, but there was apparently a few days—I remember bits and pieces of it—where I was out of my mind. I at one point apparently tried to hit Kiki. I took all my clothes off and tried to go in the hall at the hospital. Kiki was a loving, submissive, supportive wife by helping me not do that. I am very grateful for her tearfully persevering, guarding me from myself as my brain was failing me. At that point, thankfully, in a reversible way. But she was not stepping out of her God-ordained role by saying, “No, Jake, you cannot go in the hall naked. No, Jake, you cannot hit me. Jake, get in bed,” and even physically and chemically restraining me for a time. That was a gracious expression of role differentiation that I think honored the Lord and honored me. I remember also, just husbands to wives, me at the—I was reading my vows this morning from almost 25 years ago. I wrote in those vows. And I’d encourage you guys to think through that now. And singles, as you’re thinking through marriage, think through what it might mean in all the different stages. I said, “I pray that as we grow old together, our love will grow stronger because we are together growing as one closer to Christ. I commit myself to loving you, even when your beautiful body is gone, even when your mind is not sharp, even when you do not recognize who I am. No matter what the cost to me, I will be married to you until God takes you.” And that’s what it means. That love isn’t in it for what the other one can give. It’s not self-seeking. It actually seeks the good of the other. So have this mind in you, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped after, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being found in human form. He did that all the way to the point of death, death on the cross. That’s what husbands are called to. That’s what all of us are called to. So thinking, I am above changing this diaper or correcting my spouse for the thousand and seventy-second time this week. Stooping that low is nothing compared to our Savior’s humble condescension to us. And so you actually are embracing God-given roles as a Christian when we help and endure and love our spouse to the very end. Honoring Parents and End-of-Life Care Smedly Yates: And that’s a great segue, Jake. When I think about what you just described, our parents did those very things for us when we were helpless. There may come a time where those roles are reversed and we’re helping our parents in their end-of-life situations. I’m going to ask you a series of questions that came in and you can answer whichever ones you want. I’ll try to go faster so we get through them. Maybe. Maybe we do a part 17 of this series, whatever. But I’m thinking about the command, the prohibition, do not sharply rebuke an older man. And the positive commands honor your father and mother. Those commands don’t expire. And when I think about don’t sharply rebuke an older man, there ought to be an elevated view of those who have walked this life longer than we have. We’ve lost that in an American culture, right? Tribal cultures have kept that in some ways. Other places, other cultures have kept that. We just sort of disregard the elderly as a new cultural phenomenon. And, you know, the word euthanasia, the beginning of the word is, is eu or good and thanasia, thanos, death. Good death. It’s not good. And we don’t discard people when they’re no longer of utilitarian purpose. But that is where our culture is going. And Christians must look very different. So when we think about how do we gently, compassionately, lovingly honor God, honor our parents, loving them through end-of-life scenarios. Here’s a series of questions. How do I honor those relationships when compassionate care, sometimes correction, help the 1,077th time. Dad, use your words. Don’t use your hand. You know, whatever it is. Give me the keys. How do we do that and honor them in our disposition? Number two, is it sin to employ the resources of home health care or a live-in situation, a retirement community, etc.? And then what do we need to think about with end-of-life scenarios? Yeah. That’s a lot of questions. Let’s go. Jacob Hantla: Let’s go. So I think honoring your parents means, first off, it’s a disposition of the heart, but it’s a disposition of the heart that is connected to meeting their physical needs. You went to 1 Timothy 5. Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father. And then dot that dot, second, verse 2, older women as mothers. And then it rolls into, let’s think of widows who are truly widows. Open to 1 Timothy 5. This is maybe a section that you’re like, you might not read this honor widows who are truly widows section, thinking it applies to you. It does. And I think in it is the answer to this question, or at least a significant part of it. Verse four, the thought here is the church needs to take care of widows, but don’t do so in a way that robs a family of the responsibility and need to take care of their own parents. So look at verse four. If a widow has children or even grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household. And now look at this three part: make some return to their parents. So rooted in just a mom, dad, thank you for however many years of my life. You changed my diapers and fed me and looked after every need. It’s okay if my career is messed up because I have to have you in my home and I have to go take care of you. That is, do you see what it says? That is actual showing of godliness. I love what you just said. It’s so different than the culture. The culture might do this in a way that Christians have to be sharply different than. It is godliness to make return for the way that your parents cared for you. Number two, this is pleasing in the sight of God. You don’t do it out of social obligation—well, who else is going to do it? They don’t have enough insurance. Or even if they do have insurance and you do get the privilege of having live-in help. No, you are seeking to please the Lord as you make return to them. This is pleasing. Yeah, and then the third was, yeah, so godliness, make return to their parents. It’s please the Lord. Take care of your parents. Meet the needs. And if you don’t, verse 8, do you see what it says? If anyone does not provide for relatives, especially members of his household, do you see what you’re saying? You have denied the faith and you are worse than an unbeliever. This is what James is referring to in chapter 2. That’s a faith that’s dead being by itself. The religion, end of James 1, the true religion, takes care of orphans and widows in their distress. How much more are your parents? So, yes, take care of your parents. You have to. It’s a great privilege. It’s actually God’s ordained means of living out godliness. So can you send your parents to a care home? Does that mean you have to maximally sacrifice? Not necessarily. It doesn’t mean that you have to perform every task. Neglect is sin, but using help may be wisdom. The reality is dementia needs are often 24-7. They involve skilled needs at times. They may wander, fall, be incontinent, unsafe swallowing. Care at home at all costs—that may be rooted in love. It may also be rooted in pride or even foolishness. Honor can actually look like choosing a good facility, visiting often, advocating, overseeing care. Encourage the church to be involved, but don’t demand the church do the work at you avoiding it. I don’t remember what the other questions were. Smedly Yates: That’s all right. We got one minute left, Jake. Would you close our time in prayer? Closing Prayer Jacob Hantla: God, thank you for your word and just how replete it is with wisdom and principles and instruction and most of all revelation of who you are and what pleases you. God, I pray from this and just from this lesson and all the trials that you bring us through related to dementia and so many others that you would increasingly form us each individually and then corporately as your body. Form us into your image. Increase our godliness and then, God, bring us safely home. We love you. Be glorified in our lives and in our church. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. The post Equipping Hour: Dementia and the Christian Q&A appeared first on Grace Bible Church.

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The following is AI-generated approximation of the transcript from the Equipping Hour session. If you have questions you would like to be addressed in followup sessions, please direct those to Jacob. Opening & Introduction Smedly Yates: All right, this morning’s equipping hour will be about artificial intelligence—hopefully an attempt to introduce this topic, help us think through it carefully, well, biblically. Let me just open our time in prayer. [Prayer] Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your kindness to us. Thank you for giving us all that we need for life and godliness, for not leaving your people adrift. Thank you for putting us into this world exactly in the era that you have. We pray to be effective, fruitful, in all those things which matter for eternity in this world, in this time, in this age. God, we pray for wisdom, that you would guide our discussion here. We pray that this would be of benefit and a help to Grace Bible Church. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. Here’s the layout for this morning and for a future equipping hour. We’ll be talking for about 35 minutes, back and forth—Jake and I—and then at 9:35, the plan is to go to Q&A. So, this is an opportunity for you to ask questions. At that point, I’ll surrender my microphone and you guys can rove and find people. For the next 33 minutes or so, you can be thinking about the questions you’d like to ask. Jake’s going to do most of the talking in our time here. I’m going to set him up with some questions, but just by way of intro, I want to get some things out of the way as we’re talking about artificial intelligence. You might be terrified, you might be hopeful. I want to get the scary stuff out of the way first and tell you what we’re not going to talk about this morning. Is that fair? Artificial intelligence is here. Some of you are required to use it in the workplace. Some of you are prohibited from using it in your workspaces. There’s nothing you and I can do to keep it from being here. Some of the dangers, some of the things you might be wondering about, some of the things that make the news headlines—over the last two weeks, scanning the headlines, there was a new AI headline every day. One of the terrible things that we won’t talk about today is the fact that nobody knows what’s true anymore, right? How can we discern? But the reality is the god of this world has been Satan for the entirety of human history and he’s a deceiver from the beginning. There’s nothing new about lies. They might be easier and more convincing with certain technological advances. The lies might be more ubiquitous, but the same humanity and the same satanology are at play. We may be concerned about societal fracture and distrust. Some people, if they distrust new tech, will withdraw from society. Others will fully embrace it. And so you get a fracture in society—those with, and those without tech. Some people will just say, “If the digital world works, we’re going to use it.” That’s not the Christian perspective. We’re not simply pragmatists. We do care about what’s true and what’s right. Some are worried about AI chatbot companions that will mark the extinction of relationships, marriage, society. I probably fall into the category of those who assume that AI will mean the end of music or the death of music and other art forms. That’s just me, a confession. People run to end-of-the-world scenarios—the robots decide they don’t need us anymore or the collective conscience of AI decides that humanity is a pollutant on Mother Earth, and the only way to keep the earth going is to rid itself of humanity. The survival of the planet is dependent on our own extinction. So AI will bring about a mass human genocide and the end of homo sapiens on earth. We know that’s not true, right? We know how the world ends, and it doesn’t end by an AI apocalypse. So don’t worry about that. Some people worry that AI will be a significant civilization destabilizer. That might be true. But we know that God is sovereign, and we know where society and civilization end up: at the feet of Jesus worshipping him when he rules on the earth for a thousand years leading into the eternal state. So don’t worry about that either. Some believe that AI is the antichrist. Now we know that’s not true. What is the number of the beast? 666. And this year it got rounded up to 67. So we know AI is not the antichrist. 67 is the antichrist. And if you want to know why the numbers six and seven got together in the year 2025 and formed the new word of the year, ask your middle schooler. Is that all the scary stuff? Not even close. I have a family member who has worked in military intelligence working on artificial intelligence stuff for a long time. He said it’s way scarier than you could possibly imagine. Do you want to say any more other scary scenarios we shouldn’t be thinking about? Jacob Hantla: No, we’ll probably cover some of those. Smedly Yates: Okay, great. What we want to focus on today is artificial intelligence as a tool. Just as an axe can be a tool for good or evil, AI is a tool that either has opportunities for betterment or opportunities for danger. So we want to think about that well. What you have on stage here are two of the shepherds at Grace Bible Church. You’ve got Jake Hantla, who is the guy I want exploring artificial intelligence and telling us how to use it well—he has and he does. And then you have me; I intend not to use artificial intelligence for now. We’re on opposite ends of a spectrum, but we share the same theology, same principles, same concerns, and I think the same inquisitive curiosity about technological advances. I drive a car; I’m not Amish in a horse and buggy. I like tech. But on this one, I’m just going to wait and see. I’m going to let Jake explore. From these two different poles, I hope we can be helpful this morning to help us all together think through artificial intelligence. What is AI? Smedly Yates: Let’s start with this, Jake. What is AI basically? Jacob Hantla: At the heart of it, most forms of AI are a tool to predict the next token. That might not mean much to you, but it’s basically a really fancy statistical prediction machine that accomplishes a lot of really powerful outcomes. It doesn’t have a mind, emotions, or consciousness, but it can really effectively mimic those things because it’s been trained on basically all that humanity has produced that’s available to it on the web and in other sources. I’ll try not to be super technical, but I want to pop up a picture. Can you go to slide one? When we think of AI, large language models are probably the one that most of you will think of: ChatGPT, Gemini, Grock, Claude, things like that. Effectively, what it does when we’re thinking of language—it can do other things, like images and driving cars and other things, but let’s think of words—it takes basically all that humanity has written and learns to predict the next token, or we could just think of the next word. So, all of you know, if I said, “Paris is a city in…” most of you would say France. Paris is a city in France. How do you know that? Everyone here has learned that fact. Large language models have gone through a process of training where they learn facts, concepts, and grammar, so that they can effectively speak like a human in words, sentences, and paragraphs that make sense. So how did it get to that? On the right, there’s just a probability that “France” is the most probable next word. How did it get there? Next slide. I’ll go fast. Basically, it’s a whole bunch of tunable weights—think of little knobs or statistical probabilities that interlink parameters. These things get randomized—there are trillions of them in the modern large language models. They’re just completely random, and then it starts feeding in text. Let’s say it was “It was the best of times, it was the…” and it might say “gopher” as the next word when you just randomly start, and that’s obviously wrong. The right word would be “worst.” So, over and over and over again, for something that would take one computer about a hundred million years to do what they do in the pre-training, they have lots of computers doing this over and over until it can adequately say, “Nope, it wasn’t gopher. It should be worst. Let’s take another crack at it.” It just manipulates these knobs until it can act like a human. If you fed it a mystery novel and at the end it would say, “The killer was…” it has to be able to understand everything before to adequately guess who the killer was, or “What is the capital of France?” It compresses tons and tons of knowledge from all of the written text. Then you start putting images in and it compresses knowledge from images and experience from life into a whole bunch of knobs—basically, numbers assigned so it can have an output that is reasonable. Next slide. You take people—pre-training is the process where you’re basically feeding text into it and it’s somehow learning. We don’t even know—humans are not choosing which knobs mean what. It’s a black box. We can sort of start to figure out which knobs might mean things like masculinity or number or verbs, but at the end, you just have a big bunch of numbers. Then humans come in and train it—reinforcement learning with human feedback. They say, “This is the kind of answers we want this tool to give.” At the outcome, people are saying, “We ask it a question, it outputs an answer, we say that’s a good one, that’s a bad one.” But in this, you can see there’s lots of opportunity for falsehood or biases—unstated or purposeful—to sneak in. If you feed in bad data into the training set, and if it’s trained on all of the internet—all that humans have made—you’re going to have a whole lot of truth in there, but also a whole lot of falsehood. It’s not learning to discern between those things; it’s learning all those things. In reinforcement learning with human feedback, we’re basically fine-tuning it, saying, “This is the kind of answer we want you to give,” and that’s going to depend on who teaches it. Then the final step is people judging the answers: “This is the kind of answer we want, this is the kind we don’t want.” Lots of opportunity for biases to sneak in. That was a long answer to “What is AI?” It’s a prediction machine with a whole lot of math going on. What Sets AI Apart from Other Technology? Smedly Yates: Jake, what sets AI apart from previous technological advances, especially as it relates to intention? Jacob Hantla: Tech could be as simple as writing, the wheel, the airplane, telephones, the internet—all those things. All of those, in some sense, enhanced human productivity, strength, our ability to communicate. We could pick up a phone and communicate over distance, use radio waves to communicate to more people, but it was fundamentally something that humans did—magnified. A tractor takes the human art, the human attempt to cultivate a field, and increases efficiency. AI can actually do that. A human in control of an AI can really augment the productivity and effectiveness of a human. You could read a book yourself to gain knowledge or have AI read a book, summarize it, and you get the knowledge. But AI can, for the first time, generate things that look human. It’s similar in some ways, but it’s very different in that it’s generative. AI and Truth Smedly Yates: Tell me about the relationship between AI and truth. You touched on it a little bit before. Jacob Hantla: AI contains a lot of truth. It’s been trained on even ultimate truth. AI has read the Bible more times than any of us ever could. To a large degree, it understands—as AI can understand—a lot of true things and can hold those truths simultaneously in ways that we can’t. But mixed in is a lot of untruth, and there’s no… AI can’t have the Holy Spirit. AI isn’t motivated the same way we are to know what’s true, to know what’s not. So, AI contains a lot of truth and can help you get to truth. You can give it a bunch of true documents and say, “Can you help me? Can you summarize the truth that’s in here? Or actually just summarize what’s in here?” If what’s in there was true, the output will be true; if what’s in there was false, it will output falsehood. It doesn’t have the ability or the desire to determine what is true and what’s not. AI, Emotion, Values, and Worldview Smedly Yates: So, ability and desire are interesting words. Let’s talk about emotion in AI, values in AI, worldview, and regulation of data. For us, true/false claims matter—or they don’t—depending on our worldview and values. Is there a mystery inside this black box of values, of emotion? How do we think about that? Jacob Hantla: First, AI doesn’t inherently have emotion or values, but it can mimic it based on the data it’s been trained on. You can ask the same AI a question and, unless you guide it, it will give you likely a hundred different answers if you ask the same question a hundred times. Unless it’s been steered in one direction, some answers will be good, some will be bad—everything in between. It’s generating a statistical probability. It doesn’t inherently have any of those things but can mimic them. It can be trained to have the values of the trainers. You can have system prompts where the system is prompted to respond in a way that mimics values, mimics emotions. The danger is if you just accept what it says as truth, which a lot of people will do. You say, “I want to know a piece of data,” and you ask the AI and the answer comes out, and you accept it. But you have to understand the AI is just generating a response based on probabilities. If you haven’t guided it to have a set of values, you don’t know what’s going to come out—and somebody may hide some values in it. Gemini actually did this. I think it was Gemini 2, but if you asked for a picture of the Founding Fathers, it would—because it was taught in the system prompt to prioritize diversity—give you images of a diverse group of females or different races, other than the races of the actual Founding Fathers, because it was taught to prioritize that. It had a hidden value in it. You can guide it to have the values you want with a prompt. It’s not guaranteed, but this is the kind of thing I would encourage you to do if you’re using these tools: put your own system prompt on it, tell it what worldview you want it to come from, what your aim is, and you’ll get a more helpful answer than not. Is AI Avoidable? Smedly Yates: Is AI something we can avoid, ignore, be blissfully ignorant about, put our heads in the sand? Jacob Hantla: You could, but I think it’s wise that we all think about it. I’m not encouraging people to adopt it in the same way that I have or Smed has. But the reality is, the world around us has changed. It’s irreversibly different because of the introduction of this technology. That’s what happens with any technology—you can’t go back. Technological advances are inevitable, stacked from scientific discovery and advances. If OpenAI wasn’t doing what it’s doing, somebody else would. You can’t go back. You can’t ignore it because the world is going to be different. You’re going to be influenced by both the presence of it and the output of it. When you get called on the phone now with a very believable voice, it might not be the person it sounds like—AI can mimic what it’s been trained on. There’s thousands of hours of Smed’s voice; it won’t be long before Smed could call you and it’s not Smed. Or Scott Demerest could send you an email asking for a credit card and it’s not Scott. News reports are generated by AI; some of them are true, effective, good summaries, and some could be intentionally spreading disinformation or straight-up falsehood. If you’re not aware of the presence of these things, you could be taken advantage of. Some work environments now require you to do more than you could have otherwise, and not being willing to look at the tools in some jobs will make you unable to compete. Commercially Available AI Products: Benefits and Dangers Smedly Yates: Let’s talk about the commercially available AI products that people can access as a tool. What are the opportunities, the benefits, and what are some of the dangers? Jacob Hantla: There are so many we couldn’t begin to go through all of them, but the ones most of you will interact with are large language models—people just say “ChatGPT” like Kleenex for tissues. It was the first one that came out and is probably the most ubiquitous, one of the easiest to use, and most powerful free ones. There’s ChatGPT by OpenAI, Gemini by Google, Claude by Anthropic, Grock by X.AI (Elon Musk’s), DeepSeek from China (good to know that’s made/controlled by China), Meta’s Llama, etc. Do the company names matter? Yes. It’s good to know who made it and what their goals are, because worldviews are to some degree baked into the model. If you’re ignorant of that, you’ll be more likely to be deceived or not use the tool to the maximum. But with all of these, these are large language models. I drive around now with AI driving my car—ultimately, it’s a similar basis, but that’s not our focus here. Large language models open up the availability of knowledge to us. They’re superpowered Google searches. You can upload a bunch of journal articles, ask it to train you to mastery on a topic. For example, I was trying to understand diastolic heart failure and aortic stenosis—uploaded articles, had a built-in tutor. The tutor asked me questions, evaluated my understanding, used the Socratic method to train me to mastery. This could do in 45 minutes what would have taken me much longer on my own. Every tool can do that. The bad side: you could have it summarize articles for you, and now feel like you have mastery you didn’t actually gain. You could generate an essay or pass a test using it, bypassing the entire process of learning and thinking. Students: if you have a tool that mimics human knowledge and creativity, and you have an assignment to write an essay, and you turn in what the tool generated as your own, you’re being dishonest and you bypass the learning process. The essay wasn’t the point—the process was. Passing a test is about assessing if you know things. If the AI does it for you, you bypass learning. I liken it to going to the gym. The point isn’t moving the weights, it’s building muscle. With education, the learning process is like exercise. It’s easy to have AI do the heavy lifting and think you did it, but you didn’t get stronger. So, be aware of what you’re losing and what you’re gaining. The tool itself isn’t morally good or bad; it’s how the human uses it. The more powerful the technology, the greater good or evil can be accomplished. The printing press could distribute Bibles, but also propaganda. Using AI with Worldview and Preferences Jacob Hantla: When I interact with AI on the Bible, I put a prompt: “When I ask about the Bible or theology, you will answer from a conservative, evangelical, Bible-believing perspective that uses a literal, grammatical-historical hermeneutic and a premillennial eschatology. Assume the 66-book Protestant canon is inspired, inerrant, infallible, completely trustworthy, without error in the original manuscripts, sufficient, and fully authoritative in all it affirms. No sources outside of the 66 books of this canon should be regarded as having these properties. Truth is objective, not relative; therefore, any claim that contradicts the Bible so understood is wrong.” I’m teaching it to adopt this worldview. If you don’t set your preferences, you might get any answer. The tool can learn your preference over time, but it’s better to set it explicitly. Audience Q&A Presuppositions and Biases in AI Audience (Nick O’Neal): What about the values and agenda behind those who input the data? What discernment do the programmers have to put that information in? Jacob Hantla: That goes to baked-in presuppositions or assumptions in the model. Pre-training is basically non-discerning: it’s huge chunks of everything ever written—good, bad, ugly, in between. It’s trained not on a set of values. Nobody programs values in directly; the people making it don’t even know what's being baked in. The fine-tuning comes when trainers judge outputs and reinforce certain responses. System prompts—unseen by users—further guide outputs, reflecting company worldviews. Companies like OpenAI are trying to have an open model so each person can let it adopt their own worldview, but there are still baked-in biases. For example, recent headlines showed some models valuing certain people groups differently, which reflects issues in training data or the trainers' worldview. You’re right to always ask about the underlying assumptions, which is why it would be foolish to just accept whatever comes out as truth. In areas like engineering, worldview matters less, but in many subjects, the biases matter. Is There an AI Bubble? Audience (Matthew Puit): When AI came out, the costs rose artificially by companies. Is the AI bubble going to pop? Jacob Hantla: I don’t know. I think AI will be one of the most transformational technologies. It’ll change things in ways we anticipate and in ways we don’t. Some people will make a lot of money, some will flop. If I knew for sure, I could make a lot of money in the stock market. AI-Generated Worship Music Audience (Rebecca): I see AI-generated worship music based on Psalms, but it’s generated by AI. Is anything lost in AI-generated worship music? Jacob Hantla: AI doesn’t have a soul or the Holy Spirit. It can generate worship music with good doctrine, but that doctrine didn’t come from a place of worship. AI can pray a prayer, but the words aren’t the result of a worshipful heart. You can worship God with those words, but you’re not following a human author who was worshipping God. For example, my kids used Suno (an AI music tool) to set a Bible verse to music for memorization—very helpful. Some might be uncomfortable with music unless it was created by a human; that’s a preference. Creativity is changing, and it will get hard to tell if music or video was made by a human or by AI. That distinction is getting harder to make every day. Setting Preferences in AI Tools Audience (Lee): You mentioned putting your preferences in. How do I do that, especially with free tools? Jacob Hantla: Paid AIs get more processing power, context window, and can use your preferences more consistently. Free versions have some ability—you can usually add preferences in the menu. But even if not, you can paste your preferences at the beginning of your question each time: define who you are, what you want, what worldview to answer from. For example: “I’m a Bible-believing Christian,” or “I’m a nurse anesthesiologist.” That helps the AI give a better answer. Parental Guidance and Children Using AI Smedly Yates: What should parents be aware of in helping their kids navigate AI? Jacob Hantla: Be aware of dangers and opportunities. Kids will likely use these tools, so set limits and help them navigate well. These tools can act like humans—kids without friends might use them as companions, and companies are adding companion avatars, some with sinful tendencies. That can be a danger. For school, a good use is as a tutor: after a quiz, have your child upload the results and ask, “Help me understand where I’m weak on this topic.” But also, be aware of the temptation to use AI to cheat or shortcut the process of learning, discovery, and thinking. Which AI Model? Will AI Become Self-Aware? Audience (Steve): Is there a model you recommend? And does the Bible preclude the possibility of AI becoming self-aware? Jacob Hantla: There’s benefits and drawbacks to all. For getting started, ChatGPT or Perplexity are easiest. Perplexity lets you limit sources to research or peer-reviewed articles and can web search for verification—good guardrails. I build in prompts like “verify all answers with at least two web sources, cite them, and state level of confidence.” On self-awareness: AI will never have the value of humans—they're not created in God’s image, they’re made in our image, copying human behavior. Will they gain some kind of self-awareness? Maybe, in the sense of mimicking humanness, but not true humanity. They won't have souls. They may start to fool more people as they get better, but Christians should use AI as a tool, not ascribe humanity or worship to it. AI Hallucinations Smedly Yates: Do you have an example of a hallucination? Jacob Hantla: Yes, Ben James was preparing for an equipping hour session and found a book that fit perfectly—the author and title sounded right. He asked where to buy it, and the AI admitted it made it up. That happens all the time: the model just predicts the next most probable thing, even if it’s false. Hallucinations happen because it’s a probability machine, not a truth machine. This probably won’t be a problem forever, but for now it’s very real. Ask it questions about topics you know something about so you can discern when it’s off, or bake into the prompt, “verify with web search, cite at least two sources.” For Bible/theology, your best bet is to read your Bible daily so you have discernment; then use tools to help, not replace, your direct interaction with God’s Word. There’s a wide gap between knowing the biblical answer and having your heart changed by slow, prayerful reading of the text and the Spirit’s work. If we run to commentaries, YouTube sermons, pastors, or even study notes before we’ve observed and meditated, we’re shortcutting the Word of God. The dangers predate the internet. We’re out of time. We’ll have a follow-up teaching on AI. Submit questions to any elders or the church office if you want your question addressed in the next session. The post Equipping Hour: Biblically Thinking About AI (Part 1) appeared first on Grace Bible Church.

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