 Welcome to Hard Questions, where we gather pastors together to take on your tough questions and answer them right from the Bible. I'm Tom Hollis, the moderator, and today our panelists include Dr. William R. Glaze, Bethany Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, Ray Hypal, Providence Presbyterian Church in Robinson Township, Pete Giacalone, Lead Pastor, South Hills Assembly Guy Church, Bethopark, Pennsylvania, J. Anthony Gilbert, pastor of another level ministries in the North Hills area. Pastors, thank you for being with us today. Glad to have you. Glad to hear your answers to these tough questions. And today we're going to be talking about gambling, judging, and eating. Well, one of those I kind of like. All right. So let's see where we start with this one. All right, Pete, we're going to go to you first. And it's what does the Bible say about gambling? And before you answer, have you noticed that every single sports program you watch, every commercial break, there's an ad for gambling. I pull up my phone to check a score or check just Twitter or Facebook or something. And there's gambling ads there. It is everywhere right now. What does the Bible say? Well, first of all, let me piggyback off what you just said. The gambling problem in America right now is an epidemic. Tens of millions of people are literally addicted to gambling. Now, again, my family background, where I've come from, my grandmother, I'm just going to throw a quick testimony here. My grandmother taught me how to gamble when I was five years old. And when I would get together with my cousins, the very first thing was the quarter that they had in their pocket. I wanted in the quarter I had in my pocket. They wanted so. So gambling is nothing new to me. But when I gave my life to Christ, when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, not only did gambling go in my life and drinking, and it was immediately, it is a true addiction. And let me use this scripture taken from Romans just as a springboard. It's just a springboard. It says, No ye not to whom you present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servant you are whom you obey, whether you have sinned under death or of obedience under righteousness. I liken that to that, that the once you open up that, I'm going to use the word Pandora's box. Once you open up that box and you have that lustful desire to have more, I think greed comes in with that. And that to me, again, this is my own personal conviction. It's a trust issue. From the day, again, when I gave my life to Christ, my family disowned me. Everything. But, and at 17, I learned to trust God. I'm now 69, and I can say that in church life and in my own personal life, God has never failed me. Of course, that's my testimony. I own that rather than gambling, trying to get anything rich quick. We're trusting God in this. Well, you know what? If you look at every gambling situation, they're not set up to lose money. Oh no. No, they wouldn't be on TV and advertising if they were losing money. Right. So somebody's losing money. And so it's the people that are involved in gambling. And I would ask the question, you know, as a Christian, am I being a good steward over God's resources? You know, if I realized that that my money comes from the hand of God, you know, is this something that God would want me to do, you know, to invest in something again, that is based on the company or the organization making money and not me. But then the second thing, because I hear this quite a bit, well, I just do it recreationally. And so, you know, addiction and all this stuff, they say, I don't have a problem with that. But you know, if you really look at gambling, gambling makes luck a God because you got what? Lady luck. And what is that? You know, lady luck. Be good to me tonight. Well, you know, as a Christian, if you have a need, what do you do? Heavenly Father, you know, please meet that need. So you're praying to luck and asking luck to, you know, to be your God and let the dice fall or let the cards fall in your favor. Oh, the pastors, they're going to give so much money to the church when they when they win. Let's go. They're not tithing now. They're not going to tithe when he makes big money. You know, it's funny. You talked about those ads that we're seeing everywhere. As soon as gambling comes around, you also see ads for gambling addiction problem call, you know, and the statistics show that whenever gambling is legalized in an area, everything is affected adversely by that. You get more drugs, more prostitution, more people homeless. You know, you go a couple of blocks off of the Las Vegas Strip. It's just horrible how many people are broke, devastated. And that's what gambling does. And I understand the question because I've got this before two people. So where does it say thou shalt not gamble? You know, and you'll get things like that. And no, it doesn't say that. I'll say right now. The Bible doesn't say thou shalt not gamble. What it does say is thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal. How are we to earn our living by legitimate work? The very concept that you can get rich quick or that you can make your living in a way that you don't have to work that violates the way God made us. God made us to work six days in legitimate occupations, you know, not as a bank robber or something. And we get satisfaction from that. I mean, when people don't work, they have all sorts of psychological problems, depression problems, because there's nothing in their lives. And gambling is just, it's just bad all the way around. It's bad for us. And it's a bad witness and it's not trusting God, as Dr. Glaze said. So, you know, this is something Christians just thought not to be involved in. Well, let me ask a side question that's still about people say, well, wait a minute, invest in the stock market, that's a gamble. We start doing business. That's a gamble. Everything's a gamble. Life's a gamble. What's the difference between gambling? Well, I think when you're making an investment and things like that, I mean, if you're looking at some of those, you know, underhanded, I got a little stock tip and you know, that no one knows about, well, you know, that's more of a thing. But there's, that's not the same type of gambling as that. I mean, usually if you have good investments, you're going to get a return. Usually, though, it's you make an investment now and then it pays out in the long run. It's not a quick get rich quick. As a matter of fact, there's something about the road travel to prosperity. I think it's important that people need to understand about the lottery. You know, the Bible says in Proverbs 1311, wealth gained quickly will dwindle. And if you take it, I don't know if you all remember the each true Hollywood story, if you all remember those back in the day, they had the curse of the lottery. If you ever get a chance to check out, it's amazing. There were six of them. I think they did one committed suicide, two were murdered. One was in worst debt and they were before and only one made it because there's something about that process of achieving prosperity, not becoming rich, but becoming wealthy, which is a mindset that really helps you to be able to cultivate and take care of that wealth when it comes. When you get all that immediately, money only makes you more what you already are. And so it really can be a mess. So while the Bible doesn't clearly say you can't, it's very important that we understand that there's a lot of dangers to that. Absolutely. What's to say in Proverbs that it makes itself wings and flies away. So we need to be careful. And then again, on that same study, Jay, I think that you were just talking about, they have proven that these people have won a million dollar lotteries that within a year they're broke. They're in debt. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. So gambling, again, doesn't say there's not a verse you can point to. It says not to gamble, but the weight of the Bible and Christian living is against that. So let's go to the next one. What do you say to someone who says they don't believe in God because Christians are too judgmental, Pastor Ray. You know, and I've heard that a lot. And you'll see that in little clips on YouTube. You know, I'm spiritual, but I won't go to church because Christians are hypocrites judgmental. Well, you know, I think that's one of the most foolish things a person can say. And if you know somebody who's saying that, and if you can just say to them, you're being very foolish in saying that. Because let me just give you some examples. Would you say, you know, that all Democrats are murderers because this Democrat committed murder? Or would you say all Republicans are thieves because this Republican stole something? Or would you say, I don't believe in science because I saw a couple of scientists over here plagiarize something. Or all scientists are wrong because they're wrong about some things, therefore everything they say is wrong. Or I don't believe in medicine because this doctor committed malpractice. I mean, if you do that, you can't believe in anything. People aren't perfect. People don't always line up with what they do. Do Christians unfairly judge people? Absolutely. They do a lot worse. I always like to say that if you think the church is full of hypocrites, you're right. And there's always room for one more. Why don't you join the church and stop being a judgmental hypocrite and actually be a hypocrite who's trying to confess his own sins and turn to God? That's really good. Let me go to Pastor Glazer. Well, you know, I'd say how can you make an assessment about God based on a human being? You know, we had in previous programs talked about the fact that we're all sinners, right? And you know, we all stand in need of the blood of Christ. So, you know, if you're looking at me and you're making an assessment about God, then you've got your eyes on the wrong person. You know, you need to get to know God for yourself. You need to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, develop a relationship with God and not let it be based on what you see somebody else did. You know, for your answer, Peter, I really got to wonder what they mean by judgmental, too, because we will stand on biblical principles that may sound judgmental in a post-Christian culture, but I agreed all the way. And again, I would, if I had a chance to sit down and talk with an individual like this, I would probably look them in the eye and say, wait a minute, why would you allow someone else's life to affect you in a negative concerning eternal life? You know what I mean? So, I'm going to allow, like you just said, right, the Republicans stop becoming Republicans because there's some hypocrisy in it. Now, you're trying to say, now we're dealing with something with far-lasting value, eternal life. So, I have a really tough question here. I'll leave it for you. Christians ever get judgmental? Do we ever get judgmental? Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah. We're going to say guilty here. Okay. We have gotten two judgmental at times. I think that there's a possibility. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying all Christians. I'm making a blanket, but does it ever happen? Well, yeah, that's like, he just mentioned a bunch of things that people do wrong in anything. It's like, but you have a bad experience at a restaurant. You don't stop going to all restaurants. Because, but I think we'll step further with that. Somebody's going to judge you, though. So, how, why would you say Christians are two judgmental? So, I don't want to go to church and I'm going to stop believing in God. Well, if the Christians are going to judge you, you need to go into the judgment. And if God is going to judge you, and you're not doing it because the Christians, you're still going to be judged. So, the reality is, is to stop believing in God doesn't make any sense at all. Because somewhere along the line, you're going to have to give an account for your life. You know, you reminded me something, and Jay, you touched on a little bit, but Tom, you know, part of this question could be somebody doesn't like the fact that Christians are standing on the Bible and saying, you know, homosexuality is a sin. Sex before marriage is a sin. That's not being judgmental. That's telling the truth. And God doesn't call us to not do that. Everybody, you know, everyone's favorite verse, judge not lest ye be judged. And that means we can never judge anybody. That's not what it means. The whole thrust of that verse is that we're not to judge ourselves in a different standard. By the way, we judge others, but Jesus said, judge one another righteously. And righteously is by what the Bible says. When I stand on the Bible, I'm not being judgmental. I'm telling the truth. That's right. Amen. Well, good question. And a good lesson for all of us to remember. We're going to come back in just 60 seconds when we ask, what do you do when someone has a word from the Lord for you? Welcome back to Hard Questions. We're answering your questions. And here's a great one. What do I do when someone comes to me with a word from the Lord? I put air quotes around it last time, but it comes with the word from the Lord. But I don't believe it. Do I let it go? Do I say something? Pastor Jay, start us off. That's going to be good. And I can't wait to jump into this because I love the fact when we have different views. And this is one of the ones that I think is it's going to be we're going to see some different views from that. So I think it's really good. I'm a firm believer that when that type of thing happens, one of the things I live by is prophecy should always be confirmation, never information. But I do believe someone could prophesy something to you that could be information that can become confirmation. So I wouldn't say I don't believe it. I would say more on the line of where I haven't found a witness with that yet. The Bible talks about trying the spirit by the spirit. So I think with any word that comes in, your baby should leap. I love this. The fact when Mary was pregnant, Martha was pregnant. She was six months. Mary was pregnant. When she when Mary walked into the room with Martha, right? Yeah, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, thank you. I was like, wait, something's wrong with that with Elizabeth. John the Baptist slept in a room. So what was in her belly left with what was in her belly? And I think that's the way prophesy should work. What's in your spirit will bear witness with my spirit that we're on the right track. So if you don't, if you get a word from God and you don't feel that that's from the Lord, put it up on the shelf. Pray about it. Say, Lord, if this is you, show me the manifestation of that. If it's not, maybe that prophesy had too much cheesecake for you went to bed that night. You know, whatever it might be. But it's up for you to judge it though. You need to judge that word and don't move on it because you're afraid to miss it or because of fear. Move on it because you know don't blindly follow something like that. It's very important to mention that. Well, in the early 60s and 50s when there was a mighty move of God, this was happening in cottage pair meetings. Somebody would come up and say, the Lord spoke to me. You shouldn't be married to your wife. You should be married to so-and-so. And I'm talking about life change and experiences where just brought massive confusion into the body of Christ. So first of all, a word will, as far as a plumb line is concerned, the word, a word from the Lord will must line up at the plumb line of the word of God. And then I always encourage people never make a life-changing experience, a life change on someone else's word. And like you said, Jay, if it's confirmation, it's a different story. Yeah, get something from God yourself. Yeah. And I don't know about these brothers, but I've had, you know, people come up to me and tell me, you know, God gave me a word for you. And generally, when that happens, you know, I mean, a lot of times, 99.9% of the time, it's positive, you know? And I'm like, man, I really want to receive that, you know? I mean, I'm excited about that. But you know, generally, what I'll say is I'll say, man, you know, what that's... Because again, for me, most of the time when people do it, it's positive. And I say, man, you know, I really receive that. And but in my spirit, you know, I'm saying, let me go pray about this, you know? And let me, you know, get, like you said, that confirmation from the Lord. Yeah, I think that's really important. I just heard someone say, when someone tells you, ask you to do something and you say, I'll pray about it. That was really interpreted. Leave me alone. Can I share a quick story about that before you go, because there was actually a lady in my church years ago that came to me one time and she said, God gave me a word and said that you need to start going to people in your church and you start washing their cars and buying their groceries personally. And you're missing everything with your wife, your wife, you know, meeting her needs the way you need to. You need to make sure you're doing this, that and the other. So I brought my wife in and I told her, I said, well, share this with my wife and see what she says to you. And she corrected her right there on the spot because she rebuked me. So I said, okay, well, that's fine. So I brought my wife and I said, share with her. And she said, no, you're way wrong. He's doing everything he needs to do. And then some, and so, you know, sometimes in those moments like that, people bring stuff to you, just bring them in on it, show them what's going on. And if it's not confirmation, don't receive it. So pass it right. Tell me something good. I'll give you a word. No, and you know, I think, you know, earlier in my walk, I would have probably been a little bit more confrontative. And I mean, you know, we've talked about this on different subjects. I don't believe, I believe the scripture is complete. I know you all believe that as well. But I believe that means God does not inspire new words into people. But understanding that, I do believe in the Holy Spirit and that He illumines the word to us. He convicts us of sin. He convicts us of righteousness. You know, when I went into the ministry, people were saying that you're gifted and so forth. And the church said, quit your job and we'll pay for you. And the first thing I did was we need to pray. You know, we need to fast and pray about this. Because number one, I didn't want to go into the ministry and Robin didn't want me to go into the ministry, my wife. And so we really fasted and prayed. And I wouldn't say to you, I got a word from the Lord. But I would say I was convicted by the spirit that this was right. And what I did was I didn't, you know, just sort of go by feelings or anything. And I know you guys aren't saying that, but I sort of practically looked at this. So I made a list why I'm called. And it was about this long. And then I made a list why I'm not called. It was about that long. And, you know, and I started to pray and fast. And then I really began to look at, well, what has God provided and what do I lack? And so we made sure that everything could be provided that we needed and everything could. You know, we could get healthcare. I could finish the degree in two years. So all that fell into place. It came down to, I'm afraid to do this because I'm leaving a career in television 10 years and going into the ministry, not knowing what, the only reason not to do it was fear. And I knew that wasn't from the Lord. And so, you know, I wouldn't have said, I got a word from the Lord. I would have said that I was convicted by the spirit that God had made this possible. And I love that story. Thank you for sharing that. That's great. And so whether or not, so you're saying not necessarily an inspired word from God so much as somebody can still come and say, I really have a conviction about this part of scripture that I want to share with you that I really think our church should be doing or something like that. That's the way I take it. If someone said, God told me, I'm going to take it as, okay, this person is convicted. I don't believe he really heard God's voice, but he may be seeing something that is in the Word and he has the spirit. And so he's discerning something. So I am going to take it seriously, but I'm not going to look at him as a prophet speaking to me from God. You're going to tell him, I'll pray about it. I'll pray about it. I'll pray about it. Leave me alone. Well, coming up in 60 seconds, we answer our hotline question of the week. Welcome back to hard questions or taking on your questions. And we have an audio one. Let's listen. Hi. The Bible tells us that we shouldn't eat shellfish and that we shouldn't wear clothes made of two different materials. So if we don't have to follow those parts of the Bible, why do we have to follow the other parts of the Bible? What differentiates what we shouldn't follow and what we should follow? Well, to me, this is a really interesting question. And I think it goes to a lot about the Old Testament and how do we use the Old Testament? So Pastor Glaze, you start us off. Yeah, well, if you look at the law in the Old Testament, it fell into three categories. The civil laws, the ceremonial laws, and the moral laws. The civil laws, a lot of that expired with the Jewish civil government. When that went out, they kind of went by the wayside. And then there were ceremonial laws that when Christ came and did his priestly work, he fulfilled a lot of those laws. Give me an example of a ceremonial law. Well, sacrifice maybe, something like that? Yeah, the festivals, obeying the festivals, yeah, different observances that they had. And when Christ came, he fulfilled them. So I mean, if you still want to do them symbolically, there may be nothing wrong with that, but it's not necessary to follow them strictly by the law. But then there were moral laws. And those moral laws, if you look at the Ten Commandments, out of the Ten Commandments, nine of them were directly repeated in the New Testament, except for remembering the Sabbath day. So the moral laws carried over. So when you talk about shellfish and you talk about mixing garments, those things right there fell under the civil laws. And so yeah, when Israel pretty much came into the land and as time went on, those type things did go out of existence. So we're not mandated to follow those things, but there are moral laws that continued on that we need to continue to keep. Yeah, that's good. To keep. I think there's nothing wrong with being careful of the food you eat, but to say that it's sin to eat shrimp, or it's sin, or you're going against God, I see Jay licking his lips right now, to have lobster tail. I think you're bringing yourself under a law, which like you said, is no longer there for us. So we're out from under that. I'll go in moderation. Well, I want to say this. First of all, it's a phenomenal question. I mean, there's a lot of questions that come in, none of them are bad, but there's something I was like, wow, that's a very unique question. I like the way that you broke it down. I think one of the things that's important is to realize that those ceremonial laws that were there, once Christ came, they were 100% fulfilled. And now we operate in Galatians, according to the law of Christ, and Jesus even came and said, now all of the law is wrapped up in these two. Love the Lord that God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Even the 10 commandments are broke down into those two there. So everything, the moral laws, the only thing really that we carry over into, which thank God for that. And then even dealing with like food and clothing, a lot of that too, was also God showing the nation of Israel at the time, how to be separate from other nations. So some of those things were just their way of showing, we're not like other nations that God required of them, which a lot of those things too, when you really study them, can be shadows and types of how, what they saw on the outward, God now did on the inward of our hearts. Amen. Salvation as the Bible reveals it, it was given progressively and there were certain stages for God's people, as you guys have talked about. And the ceremonial law was an important part of that, that Israel would be given certain types and shadows so that they would wait in the promise that God would send them the first promises, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. Now that's not a lot of information, but somehow this woman's going to have a male offspring who's going to take the victory back from Satan and restore mankind into the presence of God. And then that's expanded to the seed of Abraham, right? And the seed of David. And so we get more and more of the seed of the virgin and those ceremonial laws. Jesus is the Passover lamb. That's why we don't sacrifice lambs anymore. And there is actually, he says, where do you find this in the question? Well, there's a couple of specific places. Acts chapter 10, when Peter is praying and he has a trance and he sees this sheet from heaven with all kinds of forforded animals, wildbeats, creeping things and birds. And the voice said, Peter rise, kill and eat. And Peter said, not so Lord, I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice spoke and said, what God has cleansed, you must not call unclean. And in the gospels, it talks about Jesus cleansing all foods. And so those laws clearly were explicitly said to be fulfilled. They were put aside. And like what you said, Jay, God did give them in a sense to keep Israel separate so that they wouldn't become combined with the nations and then become idolaters and then commit sexual sin. You know, if you can only wear garments of one kind and you can't eat shellfish and all kinds of other things. Well, you can't mix with the nations. And so that protected them, that kept them separate. And we're still called to be spiritually separate, right? Believers can't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. So there's these spiritual principles that continue. You know, Israel was commanded to put a roof around or a fence around your roof. The principle continues, not that no one puts a roof or a fence around the roof now, but we put fences around pools so kids don't fall in and drown the same principle. So there's principles there that carry over as well. But the moral law is right and wrong. Right and wrong never changes. Yeah. And I think sometimes we have a hard time discerning where we draw that line. Because yeah, I think it was a great question. I agree with Pastor Jay. Thank you so much for your question. Well, we like to end the program with the scripture. And today we go to Psalms where it says this, The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all he has made. That's from Psalm 145 verse nine. Thank you so much for joining us. We're so glad you joined us for hard questions. You can send us your hard questions. You can email them at hardquestions at ctvn.org or call us on our hotline. Have a great day.