Did He Say That? The Hard Sayings of Jesus

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Brent Belford

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 3/10/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hello, friends. Welcome to Stand of the Gap today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of Church Culture at the American Pastors Network. I’m not sure if you’ll be disappointed by these statistics and probably not even surprised. As much as I was, a recent survey that revealed that 49% of Americans believe the Bible is inspired, which means to be God breathed or from God. Just 40% believe the Bible is accurate and thus trustworthy. In 1970s, we believed the Bible was literal much more, but that number has declined to 20%. So we can conclude that Bible believe in Christians that we have a Bible crisis in this nation. But here’s something that’s interesting. 54% of America still believes the Bible has a positive effect on our country. So we would be worse off if we didn’t have the Bible. And so we can assume that teaching the Bible is a good thing.

They might not fully trust the Bible, but they do here in America still see there’s some value to it. Well, I know that the American Pastor’s Network and Stand in the Gap today, we fully are convinced the Bible is the complete and perfect revelation of God from God to man. The Bible is the complete and true and accurate. There is no errors. Now, with that being said, we must admit that there are times that we read portions of the Bible and we could be confused or we ask questions. And many of those hard or difficult passages were uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ. We even shake our heads and sometimes said, did he really say that or did he really mean that? Well, today at Stand in the Gap, we want to look at a number of the hard sayings of Jesus and hopefully help you to continue to have confidence in God’s word and maybe even motivate you to dig deeper into God’s precious word to help us uncover these hard sayings.

Want to welcome a new guest, Dr. Brent Belford. Brent is the senior pastor of Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia. He’s also a professor at Virginia Beach Theological Seminary, which is associated with the church. Brent, thanks for joining us and welcome to Stand in the Gap Today.

Brent Belford:

Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you as well. I look forward to our time together in the word.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, Brent, I’ve spoken to many unbelievers who know a little bit of the Bible. I guess they know enough to be dangerous and they will often to avoid discussing spiritual things say, “The Bible has all kinds of contradictions and inconsistencies. Why should I trust it? ” Brent, is that true? And how do you answer a person who gives you that kind of a defense?

Brent Belford:

Well, I think just want to just go on the record right at the beginning and say the Bible is not full of contradictions. Normally these contradictions are posed by people that don’t understand the scripture. That is the contradictions are alleged and there are answers, good answers to each one of these contradictions. And so since the Bible’s self-authenticating, that is it proves its own veracity and truthfulness. I would try to do a study of the scripture with them if they’re willing and let them pose their questions and then you answer those from scripture as well as you can. And you do that as long as their questions seem to be sourced, not out of skepticism or rebellion against God.

Jamie Mitchell:

Brett, today we want to deal with some of the hard sayings of Christ. And here’s the first one in Matthew 5:48. Jesus is talking about loving your enemy and that it’s easy to love people who you like, but loving your enemy can be difficult. And then he said this, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is. ” Do we need to be perfect like God? And how is that possible? And what is Jesus actually saying right there?

Brent Belford:

Well, I think that’s a great question. I think it is a hard one, but this is an example of where you have to answer that question by looking at the greater context or the surrounding verses in the passage. So that verse he just quoted is in Matthew 5:48 and it’s found at a key juncture in the Sermon on the Mount, which is the longest recorded sermon of Jesus found anywhere in the Bible. It goes from Matthew five to Matthew seven. And so to understand our verse, we need to understand Jesus’s purposes in the sermon. So in the sermon on the mountain, Jesus lays out his expectations, not only laying them out for his followers, but he establishes the standard by which his followers must meet or that a reader must meet. And the standard is intimidating. He starts early in the sermon by saying, “Our righteousness must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees, which I think would exasperate any Jewish listener to this, that it has to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.” And then he goes to this ultimate standard of righteousness that we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

And I think that lofty standard would completely bewilder anyone who takes it seriously. I mean, how can we be perfect and how can we be perfect like God? So interpreters who want to understand scripture sometimes I think try to explain that standard away a bit. They’ll say, “Well, maybe it’s a mature or complete righteousness or something less than perfect.” Instead, I think it’s better to consider where Jesus is going in the sermon. So after demanding righteousness that exceeds the righteous of the scribes and Pharisees, and after demanding perfect righteousness like God in heaven, he then calls believers in the sermon to seek God’s kingdom first, never to judge anyone else and to love always and every person. So he’s not really letting up on his demands in the sermon. He’s demanding perfection and love and actions and motives. And that high standard, I think, is intended to strike the reader as inherently impossible.

That is, we can’t do this in ourselves. And I think that’s why Jesus ends the sermon with two analogies. The first one is of the wide and the narrow gates. The wide gate is easy. Many enter into it and they go to destruction. The narrow gate, however, is hard, and it leads those who find it to life. The narrow gate at the end of the sermon on the mount, I think represents those who find their righteousness outside of themselves and find it in Jesus himself. And then he ends with the really significant final analogy of the wise and the foolish builders. The foolish man builds his life on the sand. Then the rains fall, the floods come, the winds blow, and the building falls. The wise man, however, he builds his house on the rock. The rock is Jesus and his words in righteousness. So consequently, the point in the sermon, or the point of the sermon on the mount is to drive the reader beyond himself to a righteousness found in Jesus.

I think the sermon works a little bit like how believers often use the 10 commandments or the law of Moses in evangelism. We use the law to show human beings that they cannot attain, that they’ve fallen into sin and need help outside of themselves. That is, they need the gospel. And so this sermon on the mount is intended to show us that we need help outside of ourselves. We must enter the narrow gate and build our lives on the rock Jesus.

Jamie Mitchell:

Praise

Brent Belford:

God. That is we can only have perfect righteousness in Jesus.

Jamie Mitchell:

Praise God. We are made perfect in Christ. It’s not of our own efforts. Brett, thank you for continuing to give us confidence in his word. When we return, why would Jesus tell his followers that they should hate their family? Don’t go anywhere. Continue to be with us here. Standard again. Well, thank you for staying with us today. Today, we’re attempting to raise the level of your confidence in the Bible by addressing a few of the hard sayings of Jesus Christ. Dr. Brent Balford is from Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia, and he’s our gas, Brett. There’s a statement that Jesus makes that you need to help us with, both in Matthew 10 and again in Luke 14, he says this, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

” And then in the Luke passage, he says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and child and brother and sister, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Brett, what is Jesus saying? And as some would say, he’s advocating that we’re to hate our family. I have a hard time believing that. What is Jesus trying to say?

Brent Belford:

Well, I think the best way to answer the question you just posed is to use those two verses to interpret one another. And what I would like to do is kind of think of them in the reverse order that you gave. So first, we consider Luke 14:26. Again, it says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” So in reading that verse, it does leave us with the question, does Jesus actually expect us to physically despise our parents and family if we’re going to be followers of his disciples of his? But I truly believe that Matthew’s interpretation of what Jesus is saying in Matthew 10:37 can help us. So Matthew 10 says, “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

” Here, Matthew summarizes, I think, and translates the content of Jesus’ sermon in a little different way that unlocks one of the ways hate should be understood in Luke 14. And the point is that we’re not actually to hate our mothers and fathers, but that all of our other loves in life should look like hate when compared to the deep, significant love that we have for Jesus. Now, I think someone could also use a portion of the sermon on the mount to defend that idea. I’m thinking of Matthew 5:43 through 45, and I want to read it and just comment on it because I think it will help bring clarity here too. Matthew 5:43 says, “You’ve heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who’s in heaven.” In that text, Jesus deals with a false teaching about the law and he calls us to love our enemies.

He says, “Because your father in heaven does. God makes the sun shine on them and he makes it rain on them. He loves our enemies and so we should as well.” In light of these things, I think the word translated hate in Luke 14 does not mean absolute hatred, but it means something less than the deep, the ultimate love that we are to reserve for God alone. I think this will help us in other passages too. I was thinking of Romans nine where it says, God, he says, “Jacob, have I loved Esau have I hated.” This does not mean that God had an absolute hatred for Esau, but there was a deeper, special love that he had for Jacob as the patriarch of the people of Israel. And so I think that’s important to use this other text to help us understand what Jesus means when he says that we’re to hate our father, mother.

Jamie Mitchell:

Brent, some have used his passage to justify rejecting or pulling the plug on relationships with their family members who may be living in sin or have a belief that is contrary to our beliefs in Christ. How do you help them to see that this is not what Jesus is saying, but more so how we help them when they get in that position. Obviously, they have their allegiance to Christ, their commitment to the word of God, but it doesn’t mean that we get rid of certain relationships. How do we balance that?

Brent Belford:

Yeah, I think that’s an outstanding question as a pastor. Questions like that often surface from believers and especially knowing how to deal with a family member or a friend who is not walking in accordance with the scripture. So I’d start by saying this, no passage in scripture calls us to pull the plug on relationships with friends and family. There’s no text that demands that of us necessarily. Now, there are texts that call us to confront professing believers, so professing believers who insist on continuing in sin. Sometimes in love, we do have to tell others what the Bible says and what it calls them to. Our culture preaches tolerance. That is what is expected and valued by the culture. So according to culture, we should affirm them in their sin, but true biblical love will sometimes graciously, prayerfully confront sin in others, especially friends and family, and tell them what God is calling them to do in the gospel.

Doing so, of course, we all know and recognize, requires wisdom from above grace and really prior demonstrations of love toward those friends and family. I think it would also, as I’m thinking of your question regarding friends and family and how to treat them, I think I would also encourage your listeners to ask others in their church, to perhaps ask others in their church small groups, and to let their pastors speak into this about how they can properly love according to what the scripture would say.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Brent, one of the things in regards to this that’s pretty interesting in light of what Jesus says here is over the years, counseling with couples and counseling with family members, especially let’s say you have a child who really goes off the deep end and he may get involved or she may get involved with same sex relationships, get involved with some kind of really bad behavior, and they want the parents acceptance and approval. And when the believing parent says, “No, we love you, but we don’t accept what you’re doing,” the wayward child will say, “Well, do you hate me? Why do you hate me so? ” Because a lot of times their interpretation of you not accepting their sin is hatred, isn’t it?

Brent Belford:

Yeah. I mean, that would be the way that they often receive it. That’s where I think it’d be important to just be communicating in grace that you ultimately do love your children. You care for them so much and you care for them enough that you’re willing to tell them what God would say about that. I think it is also key to just do this prayerfully. Sometimes we just enter into it and we bluntly tell them what the scriptures say without really praying through the best approach to do this, when to do this, how to do this, what tone to do this with, but ultimately I think you would really need to communicate to them, “Listen, I could just sit back and tolerate what you’re doing and just tell you that I can’t affirm this or whatever, but that would be less than genuine biblical love.

That would be less than doing what the scripture says. And ultimately, reminding them that they’re going to stand before the Lord one day and have to give an account to what the Bible says versus anything that they might think or anything that you might think.

Jamie Mitchell:

In this passage, I think it’s interesting that we immediately run to the idea that we don’t want to hurt or offend our loved ones, but what Jesus is calling us to is that he wants to be honored and have a place of reverence and fear and be exalted above everything else. And we never think to ourselves, I wonder if that will offend Jesus. We’re so concerned about offending our human relationships instead of exalting and loving first the Lord Jesus. Isn’t that really the case here?

Brent Belford:

Yeah. I think that’s a great reminder that our ultimate truest, deepest loyalty is toward God, and it’s really what would compel us to prayerfully express to our children in this case, the scenario you posed that God would want more for them than them following in their own way.

Jamie Mitchell:

Beloved, just listen again clearly to the words of Jesus. He’s not telling you to hate anybody. He’s not telling you to pull a pullout on a relationship, but what he is saying is he wants to have first place. He doesn’t want to be number two. The fact of the matter is if Jesus is number one and other relationships are number two, they are going to be way better off having Jesus first in your life and them being second. You see, friends, Jesus is calling us to a radical commitment as his followers, but not at the cost of ruining other relationships, especially the ones that we could spiritually influence through our love and for them to see that we have a strong commitment to Jesus Christ. When we return, are there sins that God will not forgive? Jesus has our saying that we need more understanding on it.

So don’t go anywhere, stay with us here at Stand of the Gap today. I love doing programs like this where we get to discuss the veracity and the trustworthiness of the Bible. Yet beyond this program, we must all become diligent students of God’s word and do your own work in the scriptures. Brett Belford is our guest as we handle some of the hard sayings of Jesus. Brett, raising up competent students of the word is kind of what you do. Take a moment and share about Virginia Beach Theological Seminary, how people can find out about the seminary and what God is doing at the school.

Brent Belford:

Well, yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about our seminary. That is what we try to do. We strive to help people be competent students of the scripture. So at our seminary, Virginia Beach Theological Seminary, we labor hard to produce students who love the text of scripture, who love Christ and who love grace. In our masters and doctoral programs, we give ourselves to prepare our students to know how to properly interpret the word of God and then how to apply it in the ministries that God gives to them. And we take that very seriously and we find a lot of joy in doing it. So seriously, in our master divinity program, we have students that we require to take two years of Greek, two years of Hebrew, and we do that so that they can more clearly see what God gave us in the Holy Scriptures.

We believe without apology in scriptures, the scriptures that are inspired and inerrant and are the sole authority of our faith and practice. And we encourage our students to find joy in the written word of God and in, of course, the living word of God, Jesus Christ. So you can check us out online at vbts.edu, or better yet, you can come by for a visit, come to Virginia Beach and we’d love to put you up and spend some time and get to know you a bit more.

Jamie Mitchell:

And that offer to put you up down at Virginia Beach, that’s to check out the school, not just to go to the beach. Is that correct, Brett? I just want to make sure. Well, Brett, let’s get back to Jesus in Matthew 12 and then again in Mark three. Jesus will raise some more eyebrows when he makes a statement that seems that there are sins that God can’t forgive. Here’s the state from Mark three. “Truly, I say to you all, all sins will be forgiven, the children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of eternal sin. “Brett, you got to help us. What is Jesus saying and is there really an unforgivable sin?

Brent Belford:

Well, again, to answer this question, I’m going to emphasize the greater context of the biblical passage. So if your readers have a Bible or listeners have a Bible, or maybe they can think and listen clearly as I just talk a little bit about the verses just before the verses that you read. These verses here about an unforgivable sin and a short section that starts in Mark three, verse 22. So it goes from Mark 3:22 down to verse 30. And at the beginning of the passage, we can read in verse 22 about some scribes that come down to where Jesus is from Jerusalem and they come to check out his ministry. These scribes were the religious authorities and as they observed the miracles and the healings of Jesus, they attribute what he’s doing to Satan. More specifically, they were saying two things. They’re making two charges against Jesus.

The first one was he is possessed by Beelzebub or in other words, he’s possessed by Satan. And then secondly, they say by the prince of demons, he’s casting out demons. So these scribes were saying that Satan was indwelling and empowering Jesus to perform the miracles he was performing. And now I think you can understand that’s a very serious, serious charge they’re bringing against Jesus. So Jesus shows them just how crazy their charges are in the next part, verses 23 through 27. And he basically asked the question,” Why would Satan attack himself through Jesus, through empowering Jesus to cast out demons? “Instead, Jesus says that he’s actually bound the strong man Satan so that Jesus can perform these miracles and cast out demons. And that’s when Jesus issues this really strong countercharge against the scribes. They’ve committed a sin that’s eternal and never has forgiveness. And he calls that sin the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

And to understand what that is, I want to answer two questions here. First, what is this unforgivable sin? Now, clearly from other passages in the scripture, we know that sins like murder or adultery are not unforgivable. There are people in the Bible who committed murder and adultery. I think of one person in particular, David, who committed both of those sins, and yet he was forgiven by God. We also know that sins like homosexuality or greed or drunkenness or stealing are not unforgivable because Paul tells the Corinthian church,” Such were some of you, but you’ve been washed and justified and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. “Instead, the text says,” It’s blasphemy, hateful, insolent language directed against the Holy Spirit. “That is, in context, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the sin of attributing the work of the Holy Spirit through Jesus to demons or to Satan.

The second question I want to ask or answer, however, is this question, how is that sin unforgivable? Well, I think that the context would bear out the idea that this sin is unforgivable because it involves the very one who brings unbelievers to repentance and forgiveness. You see, the Bible says that it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. John 16 bears that out. And we also know that without the spirit’s conviction, human beings cannot understand or receive that is accept the things of God. One Corinthians 2:12- 16. “And so blasphemy against the spirit is when an unbeliever belittles the spirit so profoundly that he withdraws his convicting power so that the person is never able to repent and be forgiven.” In other words, the person can’t be forgiven because he will never seek forgiveness apart from the spirit enabling him.

In conclusion, I agree with the old commentator, JC Ryle, who said this, he said, “There is such a sin as a sin that is never forgiven, but those who are troubled about it are most unlikely to have committed it. ” On the other hand, he said, “Those who actually do commit the sin are so dominated by evil that it’s unlikely that they would ever be aware of it. ” You see, people are inquiring about the sin, worried about whether they’ve committed it. To me, that’s evidence that they have not committed it. Consequently, the only sin God won’t forgive is the sin that unbelievers refuse to ask forgiveness of blasphemy, the spirit of God.

Jamie Mitchell:

Brent, you probably like me as a pastor, you’ve had people come to you who have even said, “I think I’ve committed the unpardonable sin and they’re crippled in their faith.” And I end up saying to them, much like what Ryle wrote there was, “Listen, if you’re so concerned about it and you’re grieved by it and you’re worried about it and you’re convicted about it, it’s probably evidence that the spirit of God is at work in your life.” Isn’t that the conclusion as pastors we come to a lot of times when people talk to us? Yeah.

Brent Belford:

I’ve actually had someone come into my office and later they became, really felt guilty about the way they had, for instance, taken the name of the Lord in vain. And in a moment of rage or anger, they had done that and then came in later and said, “I just feel like maybe this is a sin that God can’t forgive and have I committed the unpardonable sin?” And I was able to assure them like you did that the very fact that you’re troubled by this is likely evidence that the spirit of God is convicting you of it. And the way I understand the unpardonable sin is it’s something an informed unbeliever does in rejecting the work of Jesus, attributing it to Satan, and That so the spirit kind of withdraws his conviction, convicting power from that person.

Jamie Mitchell:

Beloved, as you’re listening today, look, you can get involved in sin. You can have sinful behavior. You could sear your conscience so that you, in many respects, you’ve hardened yourself to the Lord. But if you’re one of God’s children, trust me, he will break you. He will bring about a severe mercy because he loves you, because the spirit of God will never let you go. But sometimes there are people who don’t want God’s redemption. They don’t want to respond to the spirit. How sad and how tragic. The good news is whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Look, in our last segment, I thought Pharisees were not a good example of godliness. And if so, why did Jesus say that, well, we need to be like them. And I always run away from anything that the Pharisees are doing or look like.

Well, you stay with us as we finish up today’s program on the hard sayings of Jesus Christ.

Welcome back. We’re finishing up with Dr. Brett Belford, and we’ve been looking at some of the difficult statements made by the Lord Jesus and passages that if not examined carefully could lead you to a wrong conclusion. We have just handled a few of these hard sayings of Christ. And there are many more. We want you to kind of pull your Bible out and start digging in like we’ve been doing here. Brett, one of the important themes of Christianity is that we do not live under the law, but we have been set free through grace. In this last passage we want to consider, Jesus said something in Matthew five. He said this, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth passes, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless you’re righteousness, here it comes, exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees. You will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Brett, are we to be like the Pharisees and even more challenging? Are we to be more religious than the Pharisees were if we’re to get into heaven?

Brent Belford:

Well, again, this is a very high ethical standard in one sense that Jesus gives us here. In Matthew 5:20, that verse you just read, Jesus calls for our righteousness to exceed the standard of both the scribes and the Pharisees. Now, I want to point out a few things about this to answer. At first, this verse, verse 20, is a header for the verses that follow. So in Matthew 5:21, the next verse, through the end of the chapter, verse 48. And then in six: one through 18, Jesus will more specifically explain what he means by having a higher standard of righteousness in the scribes and the Pharisees. So in Matthew 5:21- 48, he goes after six statements that the scribes made about the law. So first he goes after the scribes. Now, the scribes were the legal experts. They were the teachers of the law, the theologians.

And so Jesus critiques the scribes teaching on the law in six areas. And you can see those in most English Bibles very easily by looking for the words, “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you. ” These six statements were what the scribes were saying about anger and lust and divorce and taking oaths and retaliation and dealing with your enemies. And in each statement, Jesus takes the scribes explanations who required external righteousness and Jesus intensifies them to require also internal righteousness. The first three concerned what the scribes did with Deuteronomy, the last three with Leviticus. And then as you look forward into chapter six, Jesus explains how his followers righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the practitioners. They were the ones concerned with counting steps on Sabbath, and they were concerned with physical obedience and marks of obedience to the lost standards.

So in chapter six, verses one through 18, Jesus uncovers three ways that our righteousness must exceed the Pharisees. In giving, if you look in your Bible at chapter six, verse two, it says, “Thus, when you give.” Then in praying in verse five, six: five, it says, “And when you pray.” And then in fasting in verse 16, it says, “And when you fast.” These three sections are apparent when you see those expressions, but also you see the phrase, “They have their reward.” You see, the Pharisees were concerned with external acts of righteousness. They wanted to be seen by men and to be caught even in the busiest intersections praying, and they wanted people to see that. And so what Jesus does here is he intensifies the righteousness he requires to include not only external acts of righteousness, but also internal righteousness. So when Jesus says that our righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, he’s not saying that we need to beat the Pharisees at their own game.

He’s not demanding greater quantities of righteous actions or righteous observations than either the scribes of the Pharisees. Instead, Jesus is requiring righteousness of a different character. He’s requiring righteousness of a greater quality, a perfect righteousness that includes both external and internal obedience. This section then I think drives the reader again to the purpose of the whole sermon on the mount, and that is to find righteousness outside of himself in the rock, Jesus Christ. And so then once a believer finds righteousness in Jesus Christ and him alone, these standards in the sermon on the mount, I believe, then encourage them to strive themselves to practice both internal and external righteousness.

Jamie Mitchell:

Brett, I want to end our conversation today because we just have a couple of minutes left. I want to end with kind of where I started with and why I even wanted to do this program with you. And that is, as I’ve listened to you explain these passages, brother, I have such confidence now in God’s word that there’s an answer there. And you’re not only a seminary professor, but you’re a pastor. The people in the pew today, they need that confidence, don’t they? They need to know that God’s word can be trusted. As we kind of come to the end here today, what word do we have to our listeners today about God’s word, its trustworthiness, and why we should devote ourselves to it?

Brent Belford:

Yeah, I just think a life verse for me is John 17:17, where Jesus is praying in the high priestly prayer for the disciples. He’s just about ready to be taken away from them in the experience of the cross. He’s setting himself aside for the experience of the cross so that they might be sanctified. And he prays to God, he says, “Sanctify them through truth, thy word is truth, or your word is truth.” So Jesus knew that the word of God had the amazing ability to sanctify, to set apart the heart of any believer and to make us more like him. And so if Jesus is going to pray for that one of the busiest days of his earthly ministry and a significant moment, we would be good as followers of his to give ourselves to the word, knowing that it’s through the word of God, that God will sanctify us.

Jamie Mitchell:

Boy, that is so true. It’s so good. And the word of God says that we’re to be workmen and to find our approval by the hard work that we do being of students of the word. Well, Brent, thank you so much for being with us. What a joy. I can’t wait to have you back and we grapple with more of God’s word because I think it’s such an important thing in this day and age. People are seeking truth. They want the truth. People keep saying, “You got to trust my truth, but at the end of the day, we need God’s truth in and through our hearts.” Friends, want to encourage you to check out Virginia Beach Theological Seminary and the ministry of Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia Beach where Brent is the pastor and check out your own Bible. Pick it up, dust it off, dig into it.

If we will do that, we will gain confidence in the holy scriptures and we’ll never be concerned that Jesus had said something contradictory or confusing. Well, until tomorrow, thanks for being with us. God bless you. And as always, live and lead with courage.