The Narrow Path 08/28/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon as we are right now. So you can call in, you can ask questions about the Bible or the Christian faith and we'll talk about them on the air. You can bring up points of disagreement you might have with the host and we'll talk about those on the air too if you'd like. Just give me a call. Right now, I'm looking at a few open lines so you're welcome to call now and get through. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. Tonight I'm speaking in the little town of Oakhurst, California, that's up near Yosemite, in the Sierra Pines Church. That's tonight at 6:30. They asked me to talk about the narrative of the Bible. I'm going to do a survey, an overview of the whole history of the Bible, the internal history of the Bible. Not the history of how we got the Bible, but the history that the Bible records. So I'll be doing that all in one evening at 6:30 tonight in Oakhurst, California, at the Sierra Pines Church. Now Oakhurst is pretty remote, so I assume most of our listeners aren't going to be anywhere near there. But any of you who are might want to be aware of that and come out for that. And then of course tomorrow night, I'm giving the Revelation Four Views talk with a Q&A in another church, Ponderosa Basin Chapel, which is in Mariposa, California, not very far from tonight's meeting. I think maybe about a half hour from there, I'm not sure. Ponderosa Basin Chapel in Mariposa, California. I'll be talking there tomorrow night. And then in Coarsegold, which is also in the same general area, at the Coarsegold Reformed Fellowship on Sunday. I'll be speaking Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. So those are all in kind of one area here, today through Sunday. I'll be speaking four times. So if you're in the area or want to come to those meetings and you didn't catch the information I just gave, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and go to the announcements link and you'll see where all these places are and when. All right, we're going to go to the phones now and talk first of all to Michael, our first caller today from Inglewood, California. Hi, Michael, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Michael: Thank you. All right, Steve. I'm kind of opening or trying to start a church at my house and I have a few new members. I was listening to Matthew 7:13 and it brought some to my attention on Romans 12:2, is what I was looking up there. And so there is a couple that are lesbian and they were not in the church and they got married when it became legal, and then they started to go to a church where there was a female lesbian pastor. But then they started reading the Bible for their own so they kind of see things. Now they're still married but they said they stopped having the sexual affair, homosexual affairs, but they still have the attraction but they stopped. Now I guess my question is because it seems they don't want to divorce because divorce is also a sin. So they're like can we stay married but not do anything? Because even if we divorce we don't want to marry a man anyway so we're just not going to do anything. What do you think about that?
Steve Gregg: Well, good for them that they're remaining celibate and that they're taking their conversion seriously. I mean that's a very good thing. It seems to show that their conversion is genuine. When you say divorce is wrong, well divorce can only occur where there's a marriage. And where two people of the same sex have solemnized their relationship, that's not what God looks at as a marriage. Jesus defined what marriage is. Jesus said a marriage is when a man and a woman get together and God makes them one flesh in a marriage. Now people living together, whether they're man and man or woman and woman or man and woman, if they're not joined by God because let's just say it's a man and a woman and the reason their marriage is not blessed by God is because one of them is still married to somebody else, and Jesus said a second marriage in that case is adultery. Well when you're committing adultery of course you don't need a divorce from that, you just need to repent of that. And of course a marriage between people of the same sex would be of a similar sort. It's not a marriage in a biblical sense of the word, it's more a highly ultramodern definition expansion of the word marriage in popular culture. And I don't know, certainly you don't need to get a divorce in God's sight from that. But I would suggest that if they don't get a divorce, let's just say a legal divorce, they would seem to be saying they still endorse the reality of the marriage. I would say they could even get it annulled, although the government doesn't annul marriages, but in like in the Catholic Church it could be annulled because they recognize that some people who have lived as if they're married, they really didn't have a legitimate marriage so they just annul it, it's not a divorce. I would say if they're serious about this, they certainly can remain celibate. Are they still living together, I presume?
Michael: Yes.
Steve Gregg: Okay. Yeah, that could even be problematic, though the Bible doesn't say that two people attracted to each other can't live under the same roof. It's just somewhat unwise because frankly most people have times where their will is weak and where their sexual attraction is strong where if they happen to live under the same roof things happen that they had already decided perhaps weren't going to happen but they do anyway. I would think it'd be very wise for them to live separately, though again if they can't afford to do that and they live in the same house and they do remain celibate, they're not technically committing any sin. You can't condemn them for that. I would just tell them that would be very much to be advised against. They don't have to get married to a man, they don't even have to be attracted to men. They don't even have to stop being attracted to women since they probably don't have much control over that. Most people don't have control over who they're attracted to. But of course attraction only rises to the level of sin when you submit to the temptation. Temptation is not the same thing as sin. A man and a woman living in near proximity might have sexual desire toward each other, but if they resist the temptation and they don't have sex, they haven't sinned. You don't sin until you do sin. Now it's a very awkward thing. We have some neighbors who are a same-sex marriage couple and I've often thought what would happen if they became Christians. And in this case they've adopted a couple of children. It'd be very, very hard. Of course it's very hard, once you do something disobedient to God, sometimes you've just dug yourself into a hole that there's no easy way out. But the Bible doesn't say that following Jesus is going to be easy. It demands everything. You have to deny yourself and take up your cross. It sounds to me like these lesbians who are coming to your church are, have made that commitment. And they're just wondering what they should do. I do think that it's not very expensive to get a divorce. They don't have to divide property or whatever. But I think they should not continue to live their lives officially in the sight of man married. Because in so far as they do so, they're communicating without words that such a thing is a marriage. So to renounce the marriage is not to renounce friendship with each other or love for each other, but they're just not going to have a sexual relationship. And if they're not going to do that, it'd probably be wise not to live in the same house together, though again as I say, what's wise and what's moral are not necessarily the same thing. If a person doesn't have any choice but to live in the same house with somebody that they might find attractive, obviously they're going to have to be very self-controlled. But some people can do that. People who find that they can't though would have to probably take separate lodgings. It's a hard thing. My heart definitely goes out to people who before they knew God had no idea about these things. I mean they were attracted same sex, the society affirms them, made it legal for them to get married. I mean if you're not committed to God and don't know any better, you just go that way. And yet the government and the state and the society has let them down because if society had not departed from the ways of God, these people would not have fallen into this trouble. I mean they might be a lesbian couple doing lesbian things, but they wouldn't be seeing themselves as a marriage. It's like if a couple of 20-year-old kids, a man and a woman, are living together in sin but they're not married, well when they get saved they can just not live together. But where there's a marriage then there's legal entanglements, stuff like that. But when a marriage is itself not a marriage in God's sight, then I don't think it should be persisted in in a situation where people might interpret it as a marriage or where you may be encouraging people to think that you're married. Those are my thoughts. That's a hard counseling situation for a young church planter to be in, but hopefully you'll have the wisdom to navigate it. Thank you brother for your call. Fred from Alameda, California is next. Fred, welcome to the Narrow Path.
Fred: Hi. Is the verse about or the chapter where it talks about putting on the full armor of God, is that in Philippians?
Steve Gregg: No, Ephesians. Ephesians 6.
Fred: So I had a question. I know like it talks about the helmet, breastplate, and the shield of faith. My question is when Paul says, and I'm not sure where this is, I think it's in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul said he wanted to visit some place and he said he couldn't and he said the reason was "Satan prevented me."
Steve Gregg: That's 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, I believe.
Fred: Okay, so my question is, going back to putting on the whole armor of God, did God, I mean did Satan prevent Paul from doing something he wanted to because he let his guard down and he didn't put on the full armor of God, or is that irrelevant?
Steve Gregg: Yeah, it's a different subject. It's more or less irrelevant. The armor of God, Paul said, is to help you to stand against the wiles of the devil. And by that he means the attacks of the devil when the devil is attacking you. The armor of God is what he says is your protection. He says put on the full armor of God so that you can withstand in the evil day. Withstanding means resist an attack. And having done all to stand. So the idea is that you'll still be standing after the battle's over, you're not a casualty, you're a winner. And now the armor of God he mentions, of course, is the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. Now, you know, if you take out all those military metaphors, he's talking about truth. He's talking about righteousness. He's talking about faith. He's talking about salvation. Now, these are subjects that are major subjects of the New Testament. They're not always presented in a military kind of a metaphor. But they are simply the things that we have as Christians. We're saved, we have faith, we have truth, we have righteousness. And what Paul is saying is not that you have to do something special that other Christians don't have to do so that you can go into battle. But life is a battle. And in the Christian life, the enemy is trying to destroy your Christian life. He's going about like a roaring lion whom seeking whom he may devour. He wants to get the advantage over us, he says in 2 Corinthians 2:11, but we know his devices, he says. So we're under attack from the enemy. And we will survive that attack if our armor is intact. Now, what that means is if I am righteous, if I hold on to the truth, if I have faith, if I have salvation. He says those are normal privileges of all Christians, but in terms of seeing life as a battle and an enemy attack against you, your salvation serves you like a helmet, your righteousness serves like a breastplate. And so forth. Your shield of faith, your faith which is something you walk in every day, it's a shield against fiery darts of doubt and deception and so forth. So, you know, Paul is, when he talks about the armor of God, he's simply pointing out that the advantages Christians have are of great value to them in the context of being under attack from the enemy. Now, when he said that he wanted to come to Thessalonica, but Satan prevented him or hindered him, what did he mean by that? Well, in my opinion, he's talking not about he was under spiritual attack, but rather he wanted to come to Thessalonica, but people who were acting on Satan's part under his inspiration stopped him. So this was more of a physical blockage. And the reason is because when he was in Thessalonica, he was only there as far as we know for three weeks before he got run out of town. The Jews of the town stirred up some of the Greeks of the town and there was a riot and Paul got thrown out of town. But there were a few converts there and Paul wanted to visit them and he wrote these letters to them. But when he said he endeavored to come back, but apparently the coast was not clear. The same people who had thrown him out of town, he sees them as Satan's agents. And they hindered him from coming back. The coast was not clear, he couldn't just come back yet. He'd like to sometime, but he saw that their interference was Satan. They were acting on the part of Satan to hinder him. That's what I believe he's talking about there. It's a different kind of thing because the armor of God doesn't guarantee that we won't have physical problems with people. The armor of God protects our soul and our mind, our spiritual life, keeps it intact so that we don't lose it. But in the world we have tribulations. We have persecutions. And our spiritual armor does not protect us from being persecuted. It protects us in persecution from giving up hope and denying Christ, but it doesn't prevent persecution. So when Paul talks about the armor of God, he's talking about your spiritual safety and your spiritual security, but he's not ruling out that the devil still has his loyalists who will come against you and may even succeed in obstructing you or even harming you. And I think when he talks about in Thessalonians, I think he's talking about people, although he says the devil hindered me, I think he recognized those people were the devil's people and the devil brought his troops out to stop him.
Fred: Okay, well thanks. Yeah, that helps.
Steve Gregg: Okay, Fred. Thanks for your call. Darren in Woodstock, Georgia, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Darren: Hi Steve. I have a really quick question. I'm sure you've been asked before, but I've never heard it answered by you anyway. In the Gospel of Matthew there's two demoniacs of Gadara and in Jericho there's two blind men in Jericho, whereas Mark and Luke mention one demoniac and one blind man. Mark's the only one who calls the blind man by name, he says Bartimaeus. But how do you reconcile the differences there?
Steve Gregg: Well there's another case very much like that in that two of the Gospels tell us that when the women came to the tomb to find Jesus, found it was empty, that there was an angel there who spoke to them and told them that he had risen. But the other two Gospels tell us there were two angels there who did. So these are all similar kinds of differences between the Gospels. There's a demoniac, there's a blind man, there's an angel in Mark or Luke. In Matthew there's two demoniacs, there's two blind men, two angels or whatever. And so people say there's contradiction there. I'm not really sure why that would be a contradiction. If I said to you that I went to Australia a few years ago and I did some teaching over there, and you said okay Steve said he went to Australia and did some teaching over there. And then you heard me talking to somebody else in a different situation and I mentioned that my wife and I and another couple went to Australia and I was teaching over there. Now in one case I gave more information than the other. If I just mentioned myself without the others, it's probably to make the point that it happened, that I was teaching in Australia. How many people went with me is not perhaps on my mind to get into. On other occasions I might want to emphasize the fact that some others went with me. But whichever way I say it, I didn't contradict myself. If my wife and I and two others went to Australia together, that doesn't mean that I didn't go. And if I said I went, that could be true along with the other statement. So one statement gives more detail and the other does not. One thing that all the Gospels agree about is that there was a demoniac at Gadara, there was a blind man outside Jericho, and there was an angel at the tomb. Matthew simply tells us yeah actually there was, and there was another one too. You know, he might not have said anything worth recording, you know. It may be that all the conversation took place between Jesus or the women or whoever's talking and one of the people. It is interesting that the one blind man his name is given as Bartimaeus, and it may be that the only reason that he's mentioned only I think it's Mark that gives Bartimaeus' name, it may be the reason he only mentions him is that of the two blind men Bartimaeus is the only one who hung around Jesus and got converted and later his name was known by the others who were with Jesus. He became a known person among them in their fellowship. And but maybe Mark didn't remember or know the name of the other guy because he didn't hang around with them. We don't know why one author gives more detail than another, but we do not have a problem unless what one author says about the subject contradicts what another author says. Now the nature of a contradiction is that there are two statements about the same subject which cannot both be true. It's like if I said the sun never came out from behind the clouds today and then I also said on the same day it was sunny all day long, wasn't a cloud in the sky. Well that's a contradiction, both those things cannot both be true. That's a contradiction, one of them has to be rejected. And so when you have a contradiction it's problematic because it means that if somebody has said the opposite or a contradictory thing to someone else, one of them is not telling the truth. Now if we find that in the Gospels, you know, and one Gospel says something and the other contradicts it, well then one of those can't be trusted and that's a problem for Christians because we do trust the Gospels. But we don't have that kind of a contradiction there. At least I don't believe we do. What we have is four independent authors sharing their recollections of the story of Jesus. They sometimes include different details. Sometimes some of them leave out whole stories that the others include. Some leave out whole sermons that Jesus preached that are included in others. This is just the difference between different authors telling the story in their own way. We have a serious problem if two of them say are talk about the same thing and one of them denies what the other one says. That's a contradiction and we'd have to reject one of them. But if one says there was an angel who said this and another writes yeah there were two angels there actually and they told the women this. Well the one who said there was an angel isn't denying that there's a second one. He's talking about the one that spoke. He said an angel said this. Okay well probably they didn't spoke in unison, probably one of them did the speaking and the other was standing by. Probably the same with the blind men and with the demoniac. So in any case that's what I would naturally think unless I was a skeptic and was looking for problems that don't exist. You know, like I said if you hear me tell somebody about a trip I made and I don't mention anyone else going with me, the next time you hear me talking about it you find out some other people were there too, you don't assume that I'm lying, you assume that you've just learned something more from one statement than from the other, more detail. So I mean that's how an honest person and a not hostile person would read the Gospels. They say oh you know Mark and Luke tell us about this demoniac, Matthew tells us there were two, now I know there were two. I didn't need to know that but I know it because now I have all the accounts. But only somebody who, and I'm not saying you're this person, but sometimes people are this person I'm going to describe, sometimes people are just looking for ways to be unbelievers. They're just looking for ways to reject what the Bible says. And they would delight to find a genuine contradiction. In fact I have a book on my shelf that purports to have scanned a bunch of atheist literature about the Bible and he collects 900 contradictions in the Bible that he got from unbelieving literature. And the book answers all of them. Of course some of them it's absurd to say they're contradictions, but that's just it. People who are unbelievers are often absurd. They certainly in many cases are not reading the Bible objectively, they're looking for problems. And anyone who just reads it with an open mind and intelligent, it wouldn't be a problem to them. But again those kinds of things, you might say why does God let those kind of differences exist? It might be for this very reason. When you come up with a difference in the Bible like that, you're going to go one way or the other. You're going to say oh okay now I know all the facts of it. Or you're going to say wait a minute here somebody's lying. Now if you go with the first way, it means you've got a relatively positive attitude, you know, toward the witnesses. If you go the other way, wait someone's lying when you don't have to assume that, then you've got a negative attitude toward the witnesses. So really people's attitude toward the Bible itself is going to determine how they react to those kinds of things because there's not any reason to react negatively but a very large percentage of the population is determined to not believe the Bible. And so of course they read it looking for those kind of problems. There are lots of passages in the Bible that are pointed to of this type and of some other types that appear to be discrepancy. That is the passages are talk about the same subject but they don't give the same information. But only if both statements cannot be true are we really facing a contradiction here. And these examples would not be that kind of a case.
Darren: All right.
Steve Gregg: All right, God bless you Darren. Good hearing from you. We have another Georgia caller here but oh actually what we have is a break coming up. We'll take this David from Atlanta, Georgia next. We have to take a break here just a very brief one. We have another half hour coming up so don't go away. By the way, we have a number of our lines have opened up and if you'd like to be on the program in the second half hour, this is the time to seize those spots. And you can, if you call 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737 if you'd like to be on the program. The Narrow Path is listener supported. We pay radio bills in large sums. Nobody here is paid. All the money you give goes to the radio stations so that people can hear the program for free. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. There's a donate button there. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.
Narrator: Though The Narrow Path radio program with Steve Gregg is primarily a Bible question and answer format, Steve does invite disagreement with any of his positions. However, this invitation is not meant to be a platform for your own ministry or sermons. Please state your disagreement briefly and if Steve needs clarification or further information, he will ask for it. And please be prepared to articulate your defense with the relevant supporting scripture.
Steve Gregg: Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you disagree with the host about something and want to balance comment, give us a call. We have a half hour and we have a few lines still open. Now this is not always true. One reason I mention lines are open when they are is because a lot of times there aren't any lines open and there's no sense you trying to call if all the lines are full. But there are a few lines open. You can call, you can get through right now, 844-484-5737. And we'll be glad to take your call. Our next caller is David in Atlanta, Georgia. David, welcome to the Narrow Path.
David: Hey, Steve. Couple days ago you answered a different caller and in that answer you mentioned that Pentecost and 70 AD are kind of flip sides of the same coin. And I would like to suggest that the abomination of desolation works the same way. One coin, crucifixion heads, desolation tails. Matthew says when you see the coin, let the reader understand, flee. Luke clarifies, when you see tails, flee. So do you think that's a fair reading? And if not, what does "let the reader understand" mean?
Steve Gregg: Now, I'm trying to understand what your point is. I mean what the position is you're stating. So the abomination of desolation, you're saying that the abomination is one side of the coin and desolation is the other side? Okay, so what you're saying is that you believe the cross was the abomination, that is, killing Jesus was the abomination. And that the desolation of Jerusalem was the other side, the flip side. Is that what you're saying?
David: Yep, that's correct.
Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, feel free. Feel free to think it. We've talked about this before. Jesus was telling his disciples that when they see it, they should flee. And that's been my answer both times that you've brought this up before, that they didn't flee when they saw the cross, so they didn't understand that to be the abomination of desolation. They did kind of flee, I mean they fled from the Garden of Gethsemane and they were hiding out and when Jesus rose from the dead he kind of had to find them in their hiding place in Jerusalem there. But they didn't flee from Jerusalem, and that's what Jesus specifically said, when you see the abomination of desolation, and this would be the same whether you're correct or not. I mean you're saying the abomination that brings desolation. Well the desolation's 70 AD, but the abomination you say is in 30 AD at the cross. Yeah, well they didn't understand it that way because they didn't flee from Jerusalem.
David: But that's the point is Luke clarifies that they didn't understand it that way and he removes the "let the reader understand". So can't the "let the reader understand" part be that it requires specifically the grammar behind it is the epexegetical reading of the phrase, which is one of the valid Greek readings of that phrase, which in English would be more appropriately sort of or more clearly for us English readers, the abomination comma namely its desolation. So that's valid epexegetical is the term for that Greek reading and I think Luke is basically clarifying that by making the simpler.
Steve Gregg: So how is it that the apostles didn't flee? Did not flee when they saw Jesus crucified?
David: Well Luke is clarifying that what he meant was when you see the desolation that comes from the abomination, so when you see the armies, flee, the tails side of the coin.
Steve Gregg: Well, I'll certainly let you believe that. You've brought it up a few times here and I'm not persuaded, but I don't see anything to go to the barroom brawl about it, it's not a problem to me. So you're welcome to that view and the listeners are welcome to consider it.
David: All right, thanks.
Steve Gregg: All right, David. Thanks for calling. Okay, let's talk to Robert in Arkansas. Robert, welcome to the Narrow Path.
Robert: Hey Steve, this is Robert. I love listening to your show, listen to it all the time. I'll keep my question quick and I'll take my answer offline. I've always been struggling with it with the various different gospel timelines in the beginning after Jesus' birth. So how do you fit together the timeline because one of the gospels says that Joseph was warned in a dream to flee into Egypt, and then one of the other gospels mentions that after Mary's days of purification were over that they went into Jerusalem and then further on went into Nazareth? But thank you very much, appreciate it, God bless.
Steve Gregg: Sure, sure. Thank you for calling. People have wondered about it, in fact I've heard skeptics indicate that this is some kind of a contradiction. I don't see it as a contradiction. Matthew tells us in chapter 1 that well we have to go earlier than that before Matthew even starts, Luke tells us that John the Baptist's birth was announced to his father Zechariah in the temple. That's Luke chapter 1. And before that chapter is over, Mary gets a visit from an angel and she's told that she's going to have the baby and it's going to be Jesus. Okay so that's what, and then the birth of John the Baptist is also recorded in chapter 1 of Luke. So you've got in chapter 1 things that happen before Matthew's even before Matthew's narration even begins. Zechariah's told there's going to be a baby, Mary is told there's going to be a baby, then Zechariah's baby is born, John the Baptist. Then we come to Luke chapter 2 and we have the birth of Jesus. Now what Matthew does in Matthew chapter 1 is he tells us about when Joseph learns of Mary's pregnancy. Now he certainly didn't learn about it before she did, so this comes after Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1 tells of Mary being told she's going to have the baby, though the birth of Jesus is not recorded there. But apparently after she learned of it, she told Joseph. Either she told him or he got wind of it somewhere. And so he contemplated divorcing her or calling off the marriage. And the angel in Matthew chapter 1 tells him don't be afraid to take her as wife. And so we do read at the end of Matthew 1 that he did take Mary and they didn't have sex together until Jesus was born. Now in Luke chapter 2 we do have the birth of Jesus mentioned and Matthew doesn't go into the detail about that. Luke tells us that when Jesus was born the angels appeared to the shepherds and the shepherds came and saw Jesus. This was the very night of his birth. This was not the same time that the wise men came, which Matthew later records. But yeah the shepherds came and they went and told people. And then eight days later Luke tells us Jesus went to the temple as a baby to be circumcised. And then he tells us also that another what was it, 31 days later according to the law of dedicating the firstborn, Mary and Joseph had to take Jesus to the temple again to dedicate him and to offer two turtle doves or two pigeons which the law required. And so and then it says and they went to live in Nazareth. Okay now before they went to live in Nazareth some things happened and Matthew records those. Matthew records that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the wise men came, this is probably about two years after his birth. And because and we'll say why, the wise men came asking Jerusalem where is he who's born king of the Jews? Herod was jealous and upset to hear about it because Herod was the king of the Jews, didn't like the idea of someone else being. He asks the wise men where the king of the Jews would be born. They said it's going to be Bethlehem according to Micah 5:2. He tells the wise men go find him and when you find him tell me where he is so I can come worship him too. But of course Herod really intended to kill the baby. Well the wise men show up and they find Jesus not in the manger, they find him in a house. They find his family's moved into a home. Jesus is not there described as a baby but as a young child. I'm going to suggest he was a toddler by this time. Which means of course that Matthew has skipped over a great deal. He mentions Jesus being born in the last verse of Matthew 1, but then chapter 2 opens a couple years later and Luke is the one who's filled in the details from in between, that is the things that happened immediately after birth of Jesus. The reason I say that the wise men probably came two or more years after Jesus' birth is because it says Herod asked the wise men when they first saw the star appear in the east. Now it doesn't tell us what their answer was, but we do find when the wise men go their way home and don't tell Herod what it is and Herod wants to kill the baby, he ordered his troops to go to Bethlehem and kill all the male children under two years old. And it says according to the time told to him by the wise men. So he had asked them when the star appeared, though we're not told what they said, they must have said two years ago or one year ago. And wanting to play it safe, Herod said let's kill all the babies two years and younger according to the time the wise men said. So Jesus was a toddler by this time very clearly. He was not in the manger when the wise men came. It was at least a year or two later and maybe more, but he was a young child now. And then because of Herod's threat they went into Egypt as we read also in Matthew. And then later when Herod died they came back from Egypt and then they moved up to Nazareth. Now all of that happened in the space between Luke's comment about Jesus being dedicated in the temple at age at 40 days old and then the family moving to Nazareth. He doesn't say they moved there the next day. A lot of other stories happened too. Luke like Matthew is selecting the parts of the story that he thinks are going to be significant, the things that are important to include in the story. And of course none of the Gospels record everything Jesus did. John's Gospel says if we recorded everything Jesus said and did, the earth itself could not contain the volumes. And so we see that the Gospel writers are selective. Some things strike them as very important to record. Other things they're just going to have to not record, they have a limit on their ink and their parchment. So they just write what they do. So Matthew is filling gaps between Luke's narrative and Luke fills some gaps between Matthew's narrative. But what makes it confusing is that when Luke mentions them going up to Nazareth, he has not mentioned that previous to them going to Nazareth, they had gone to Egypt and come back. But Matthew tells us that and Luke just skips. Luke just skips from Jesus being 40 days old to his family going to Nazareth to raise him and he grew up there. And then the next you hear from Jesus about Jesus in Luke is when he's 12 years old. Now we know the very fact that the next thing we hear from Luke is that Jesus is 12 years old proves that Luke is one just skip over a lot of time between stories. He tells of the family going to Nazareth and then the next thing you know Jesus is 12 years old. Well therefore since he skips over probably 10 years there and doesn't mention it, it's not surprising that he skips over a few years between the dedication of Jesus at the temple as a baby and the time they moved to Nazareth. The Gospel writers are not trying to fill in all the gaps themselves, they just kind of they give you the high points of the story that they want to relate. And some of the other Gospels bring other high points up that they want to relate and taken them both together you put it you put it together. Same thing with the stories of the resurrection appearances of Christ. All four Gospels give a series of these. Some of them are included some of the same ones as each other, mostly they're pretty independent lists. But it's not impossible to interweave them, that is to interweave them together. So that's what I think we do with Matthew and Luke's birth narratives as well. All right, I appreciate that call. Let's talk to Sean in Santa Cruz, California, my former hometown. Hi Sean, welcome.
Sean: Hey Steve, thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your ministry and your approach to teaching God's word and I'm just a little nervous because I listen to you a lot on the radio. So I have a softball question and then I have more of the—
Steve Gregg: Oh I don't know much about sports.
Sean: Maybe debate, that's your skill set for sure. Well as someone who has been reading the Bible as much as you and living and walking with Christ and everything, people say that whenever they read the Bible they learn something new. And so my first question would be as someone that is a such a veteran when it comes to biblical teachings, whenever what is probably like the last or most recent thing that you have gleaned from in reading scripture that you didn't realize before? And I can give you my second question or we can answer that one first.
Steve Gregg: You know I'm not sure what the most recent is. I would certainly not say that every time I read the scripture I learn something new. I read the scripture a lot and I've been doing it for 70 years about. So I don't learn something new every time, but I do learn things new and but I'm a slow learner. And a lot of times what's going on is my a paradigm I have for some theological understanding, maybe the eschatological understanding or the views of hell or the views of something else, you know, it's a a large system based on lots of different verses. And what will happen is I'll be meditating on scripture or reading scripture I'll see something that challenges or maybe reinterprets some point of a paradigm. Now it won't change the whole paradigm yet, I need maybe a dozen of those to change the paradigm and they may come over a period of years. So I'm seeing little things here and there, little changes and so forth, and then eventually I have to say, okay, given all the stuff that I've seen over the recent years that's challenged something, how do I put this together? And I don't know when the last time was that that happened. I will say this, that I was driving yesterday and I was thinking about some scripture, it'll come back to me, I don't remember what it was offhand. But I got some kind of a different insight into it I think. I mean I assume it was an insight, I could have been wrong. But it was a new thought that I had not thought about it before, that scripture, which is pretty unusual. And I remember thinking oh glad I'm glad I'm not so old that I don't get these anymore. I used to get that kind of thing all the time, you know, and I have to it's a shame that because I'm an old guy I forget stuff, it'll come back when it needs to, but I I don't remember now what it was. But that doesn't happen every day either, I mean it's not always that I see something new. So you know God I don't think it's on a I don't think it's on a schedule that you God shows you new stuff when when you're ready for it or when he wants you to see it or whatever. But I do learn stuff. I do learn stuff still.
Sean: Yeah. Thanks for opening up with that. My question, the reason why I'm calling, has to do with the Trinity. And there was a call maybe a week or so back and had to do with the prayer that Jesus had with before, you know, in the garden. And your response was that he wasn't suffering in anguish. But from what I heard or thought I read is and I looked it up too, so I'm pretty sure it's in the Bible, is that he was bleeding through his pores out of stress. And if he is in that state, how would that make sense if it wasn't something that he was going there to do anyway? And also it's just the part where they say—
Steve Gregg: You mean if his death was not, if his death was not previously anticipated, why would it stress him? Is that what you're saying?
Sean: That and then yeah, basically like he's worried, he's praying, or I don't know if he's worried, I'm just leaving that open. I don't have a dog in this fight, but you know it's just to find the truth and the better understanding. So when he's praying they say, oh he was fulfilling, he was just reciting either Isaiah or Psalm, and to me it just sounds fake, it sounds like unauthentic. And if they say, oh he was just quoting this, to me it doesn't really—
Steve Gregg: Oh you're talking about, you're talking about when he was on the cross, not when he was sweating drops of blood. You're talking about when he was on the cross.
Sean: Oh no, you stay past this cup, he says take this cup from me.
Steve Gregg: Oh that one. Okay. I thought yeah I thought you were saying okay you're getting two things I think confused possibly. When people say he was quoting the Psalm, that's when he did quote Psalm 22:1, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" which is when he was on the cross. Now when he's in the garden he said, "Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me." Now that's not a quote from anything in the Old Testament. The Old Testament does have the imagery of a cup of God's wrath which Jesus apparently was taking on himself, but that the cup of God's wrath in the Old Testament is not actually applied to the Messiah, it applies to God's wrath on nations and things. But now I'm not I'm not really sure what you're putting together differently, but—
Sean: Sorry, I'll rephrase it. So when he's praying and he's seeking the Father's response, why is he even doing that if he is God?
Steve Gregg: Well, yeah, to say he is God, this is something I often have to say. Evangelicals strongly assert that Jesus is God, partly to refute heretical teachings that say he's not God and that he's a created being instead of God. But we do believe he's God, but that's not quite saying it correctly. We say that he is God in the flesh. That's what the Bible says. Says the word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. It says in 1 Timothy 3, I think it's verse 15, it says that he was maybe 16, he was manifest in the flesh. He was God, but he was manifest in the flesh. Now in the flesh means as a human being. He took on human personality, a human form, he took on a human existence, which God does not by nature have. So this was a new thing. Now we don't know much about what it's like to be God in the flesh, but we do have some ideas of what it's like to be in the flesh, because we're in the flesh, we're just not God in the flesh. And we do know that persons in the flesh have anxieties, they suffer pain, they get tired, they get hungry. And you know, God, for example, the Bible says God never gets weary, in Isaiah he doesn't slumber or sleep, but Jesus got weary and he slumbered and slept. We read that God cannot be tempted with evil, but Jesus was tempted in all points like we are. I mean there's a lot of things that are true of God that aren't true of the flesh. And Jesus was God, but he was God now taking on the form of human flesh. Now I don't claim to know what that's like. I mean we sometimes think well what's it like to be God and be a person human? I really don't know at all. But I have to assume that when he acted in his human weakness, that was his humanity, you know. And so as a human being I can understand why someone really be stressed out at the thought of being crucified. And I think there was more going on there for him than there would be for the average person being crucified because he was being offered as a sacrifice for sins. But yeah I'm afraid I can't answer that question without being actually inside Jesus' own skin, which I'm not. And so those things are just things my theological position on this is just based on what the scripture says, not based on what I actually understand from any personal experience.
Sean: Pardon. Oh the beep went off. So you can hear me?
Steve Gregg: Yes, but we only have a few minutes left and I got my lines are all full so we've been talking a long time.
Sean: Okay then, that's all good. I really appreciate you taking the time to to answer my questions and I hope to see you sometime in Santa Cruz.
Steve Gregg: Okay Sean, thanks for your call brother. Yeah I want to try to get someone else in if we can because a lot of people are not going to get on today. El in Seattle, Washington, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
El: Hello. Hi. I just have a quick question and I'm sure you've answered it many times, but I've never heard you before except last couple of days and for some reason I just got in to be able to call you.
Steve Gregg: I just need to know what the question is and then we can talk about it. Yeah we're out of almost out of time.
El: The question is, instead of being buried, cremated. And I've heard people say that that's not a really good deal, but can you tell me your thoughts on it?
Steve Gregg: The Bible doesn't say anything negative about cremation. There are Christians who feel it's not right because the body's made in the image of God and they think it's kind of a disrespect to the body to burn it. Sometimes they say well we're going to be raised from the dead we don't want to be a bunch of ashes, you know, so we need to keep the body intact. These are sentimental ideas that the Bible does not actually endorse. Certainly the Bible endorses that we're made in the image of God. That doesn't mean that once the body's dead that it can't be burned. The body obviously says we're going to be raised from the dead, but it also doesn't say that God will have any problem raising the dead even if they're ashes, since most people who've been dead for very long are.
El: But even if we die, we will decompose if we're buried, so we will just decompose faster cremated than being buried.
Steve Gregg: Exactly. Yeah. Cremation just speeds up the process that nature would do anyway given enough time. All right, maybe we can get one more in here. Derek from Vancouver Island, B.C., we don't have much time, but go ahead.
Derek: Sure, thank you for taking my call. About God's covenant with Noah, is there more to it than just I promise not to destroy the world with water and here's a rainbow to prove it?
Steve Gregg: You know, nothing more is said about it than that. You know, some people say that God is promising not to destroy the world again and all life on the earth again at all, but of course he does limit it by saying with water. There is going to be a judgment on the world, Peter said in 2 Peter chapter 3, that the old world that was judged by water, the one that now is will be judged by fire when Jesus comes back. But I don't know of anything more than that. I mean the bow, it's interesting the rainbow when it's mentioned in Genesis 9, it doesn't use the word rainbow, it use the word bow, like a battle bow, like a bow and arrow. And God says I'm going to hang my bow in the clouds, in the sky. And when the rains come you'll see my bow there knowing that I'm not going to do it again. It's sort of like the old westerns where the gunfighter decides to change his ways, he hangs up his guns over the door. He's, of course in the movie, he always has to take them again to kill some bad guys, but the idea of hanging up your weapons because you're done, it's like God made war against the human race through the flood and now he's going to put his weapon up. And just so you'll know when next time it rains that he's not going to destroy the world again, you'll see the rainbow there which means his weapon is still hung up over the door. Yeah.
Derek: Okay. Yeah no that's just a quick question. There's something about end times and Gentiles, someone was trying to convince me of and I didn't see it as comprehensive.
Steve Gregg: Yeah I don't know, I don't know what they were talking about. I'm also out of time but feel free to call me next week and if you got a better grasp of what it is they said, because I don't I'm not sure what they were saying. All right thanks for your calls. My apologies to those who won't get on today. Call next week please and call early in the program so we can get you on because I really want to. The Narrow Path is listener supported. You can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Have a good weekend, God bless.