“What about the Bride of Christ?”

Steve Brown:
What about the Bride of Christ? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase and worship. So here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. It’s Friday and Sunday’s coming.

Steve Brown:
I know. And I’m going to sit in the pew.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow.

Steve Brown:
I know, you preaching? You preach most every Sunday now.

Pete Alwinson:
No, I don’t. Not now, not now.

Steve Brown:
You know what people do today, young men that you and I didn’t do? They share the preaching load, with other, a lot more than we did, you know, we had to do do it every week. And in my case, twice a week, Wednesday night and Sunday morning, twice on Sunday morning. And I did it, unless I was out of town, but today the pastor sits on the row, with his family. And the associate pastor preaches a good deal too.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a good model. I think, you know, to lead your church, you probably have to preach about 65% of the time, at minimum.

Steve Brown:
I agree with that.

Pete Alwinson:
But it’s good that they’re sharing it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. I maybe still would have been a pastor, if I had done it that way. It was that thing that was always there that got to me. That’s Pete Alwinson, by the way, he comes in on Fridays and we answer questions and we love your questions. By the way, check out ForgeTruth.com. And if you live in the central Florida area, you have a number of choices and you ought to check those out. You could be involved, that’s ForgeTruth.com. And as I said, we love getting your questions. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, anytime, 24 seven, record your questions and sometimes we put it on the air. Or you can write, send your question to

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Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Father, thank you. As we come at the end of this week that we can come into your presence. And we honor you. And what a joy it is to be able to have a Father that will never leave us nor forsake us that knows us, knows all about us and knows where we come from and is developing, taking us into the future. We thank you that you loved us before the foundation of the world and that you redeemed us in space and time and history, by the Spirit, bringing us to faith in Christ. So we honor you Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And Lord, we give you this week. We are amazed at the things that have happened, the things that didn’t happen and the frustrations, as well as the things, we ask that you continue your great work in our lives. You know the bills that have to be paid, the jobs that we need and the relationships that need to be restored. Lord, we come to you asking for your heartfelt work in our life. And now we lift up our pastors and teachers and priests and leaders and ask that you would just be with them, in a powerful way this weekend, as they bring us into your presence, preaching and leading us in worship. We ask that you would be glorified and we commit this time to you now in Q&A. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller:
In the Song of Solomon, the wedding that Solomon married this lady, it’s just purely a secular book. What it is the Bride of Christ. Is it the church or is it the new Jerusalem or, you know, what is this marriage supposed to be about?

Steve Brown:
Well, you kind of mix that a little bit. I mean, you said it was a secular book and then you’re asking about the Bride of Christ. Historically the church fathers have interpreted Song of Solomon in terms of Christ and his relationship with the church, the Bride of Christ. And there’s something to that, covenant people of God can be used in that. And there is symbolism that works and is valid about the Song of Solomon, but there’s also sex in there too. You know, we kinda, it’s kind of says something about our neurotic side, that we want to avoid that part and spiritualize it, because that’s nasty, and you shouldn’t talk about it. And the Puritans, by the way, they’ve been given a bum rap, frankly. They got grace. They were, they knew how to party, but they messed up the sex thing too, because they figured it was nasty. And you didn’t want to, so you gotta do some balance there. You, if you’re going to exegete Song of Solomon, listen to the church fathers, see the beauty of some of that teaching. But at the same time, don’t erase the secular side of it. It really is about a man and a woman, about a bride and her husband and about our sexual relationship and it’s there and other places in Scripture, when we see that sex is not nasty, it’s a gift that God has given to his people within certain parameters.

Pete Alwinson:
Good. Well put, so it’s both and, it is,

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s both and. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
It really is. And it’s been given all kinds of interpretations.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And, you ever preached through the Song of Songs?

Pete Alwinson:
No. I’ve never preached through the Song of Songs.

Steve Brown:
I’ve done every book in the Bible, you and Luther, I can get away with it. Luther stayed away from James. I just stayed away from the Song of Solomon.

Pete Alwinson:
And me too. But both of us have taught through Revelation. Haven’t we? And Luther and Calvin didn’t teach that.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten that.

Pete Alwinson:
We’re more spiritual than they are, for crying out loud.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. I’ve never thought that before, but now that you mention it, it makes sense.

Pete Alwinson:
I’m here to inflate your ego.

Steve Brown:
Right, I recently heard, this is an e-mail. I recently heard a message where the speaker said that we should do good to others, because under common grace, God sends the rain on the just and the unjust. There was no further explanation that we should do good to others, because of a love that God has shown to us in Jesus. I found it troubling, that the speaker did not mention God’s grace and love towards us as a motivating factor in itself. Am I right to be concerned? Yeah. You ought to leave the church, but no.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, he, or she should be concerned, right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah. That’s a legitimate concern.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a legitimate.

Steve Brown:
And it may have been just an oversight on the part of the pastor who was teaching. So, you might go to the pastor and say, look, there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
And you might find out that there really is, you know, do you know that Luther quote about.

God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbors do.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And there is, there is that. And we do that, because out of love for Christ.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think what you’ve said is, it really hits this and answers this, this question. But, you know, it’s interesting, it could have been an oversight on the pastor’s part. And, I was about ready to go speak to my guys the other day, on a message. And I’d been going through James and it was a real, you know, commanding section in James and I realized as I was driving over to speak it, that I had no gospel brought into my message. I’ve done that. And I thought, well, I can’t give them this until I give them the gospel.

Steve Brown:
If they don’t get that they won’t get this.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And so, there really are so many sections in the New Testament where it gets into the teaching, the commanding, the application.

Steve Brown:
Oh. So much.

Pete Alwinson:
Sometimes we forget that it is grace that energizes all of these activities.

Steve Brown:
And forgives us when we’re not able to pull it off.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
I’ve never gotten this question, but I love it. Listen to this. Does God use death as a means of discipline? That would do it.

Pete Alwinson:
Did you ever promise that

Steve Brown:
I didn’t make that up. Did you ever promise that to your kids? I’m going to break your face. Does it? Yeah. Well, you know, I think of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts. I don’t think that was a me, I think, for instance, that they were Christians, I just think they blew it.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I think they were a kind of a disease in the body of Christ and needed to be removed. It doesn’t mean that they weren’t saved and maybe they weren’t. I don’t know? I mean, I wasn’t there and it’s above my pay level. But, I don’t think that was discipline. I think it was just, you know, when you’re dead, man, you don’t do anything bad anymore, but you don’t do anything good either. So, that would, that could be punishment, I guess. That’s discipline, that’s different.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there’s that sense of Paul and the Corinthians, some of you were misusing the, the Lord’s Supper, I Corinthians 11. And, and some of you are asleep because of it. And so, he can use it as discipline. But usually it’s the send a message to the rest of us.

Steve Brown:
But even in that communion passage that some of you died, because you’ve messed with this.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
That’s not discipline, that’s punishment. Isn’t it?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, in other words to reform in that sense.

Steve Brown:
Well, maybe, you know, I haven’t even thought about it. I mean, this is a whole new subject to me. I just thought it was a joke.

Pete Alwinson:
You thought they were joking on you?

Steve Brown:
Well, I did, but I, but I kind of see what you’re talking about.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. It’s certainly, you know, as you think of the idea of discipline in the Old Testament, Musar the Hebrew word. Yeah, it is for instruction. And so, it was certainly instructive to Ananias and Sapphira, but it was instructive to everybody else.

Steve Brown:
Oh, don’t you know, you know, my pastor last Sunday, we’re doing a fundraising program for a new building. And he preached on this passage. He said, I’m not saying that God does this, if you don’t give to our building program.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
But you ought to think about it.

Pete Alwinson:
That is hysterical.

Steve Brown:
Oh, he made a joke out of it and it was funny. It really was. And it was a good sermon. But Dan, I don’t know if I’d have picked that passage for fundraising, you know, we’re we’re um, We don’t have time to do a new question.

Pete Alwinson:
I don’t know if we do.

Steve Brown:
Well. I’ve got answers to the questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, there’s on here.

Steve Brown:
The next three questions. Yes. Yes and no.

Pete Alwinson:
But we don’t even know what the questions were, but this one, here’s this one. Can we lose our salvation?

Steve Brown:
No.

Pete Alwinson:
No, and you know, God comes after us and holds on to us.

Steve Brown:
And that was settled before we were born.

Pete Alwinson:
Isn’t that something.

Steve Brown:
You know, there was a friend that Tony Campolo to this guy was asking, when were you born again? Are you a Christian? He said, when? He said, about 2000 years ago.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it.

Steve Brown:
Guys. We got to go. Again, we love to get your questions. And we seem to kit a lot, but we do take your questions seriously. And we think about them a lot. We got to go, but before we go, I must say, that Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.