Matt Slick Bible Study on Godly Emotions - 4/19/2017

But that test one two one two three four now, we're good all right.

Hey, man, it's about time. I'll look all right since only have six people here. I'll move this thing over yeah. There we go all right. So since people are now Watching which I got more coming since people are watching not many people show up.

That's okay. So what we're gonna do tonight is go over the issue of simply Emotions now the one who asked me to do this a couple of weeks ago because last week was on vacation. Which I didn't get much vacation time only my vacation was working 30 hours instead of 60.

So that was pretty we went fishing too. And we got completely skunked. It was fun. Did you even see a fish? Hmm. Oh just some ponds state and Eagle a little river. Yeah, we knew it, you know, but it was something to do.

Yeah, I was called fishing not catching. That's that's for sure so any rate and my vacation didn't turn out too well because we had a funeral stuff to do and some helping some people and things like that and You know you know how it goes all right so Stacia asked if I would do something on emotions.

I've been thinking about this for a while off and on on the issue of What we're made in the image of God we'll go over some of that and Emotions and I don't have all of this worked out. I got a lot of notes and as I started to study this I Realized as is often the case when I take a topic and see what God says about it in the word.

What I'll do is I'll go through and just you know, look up anger look up hate look up love look up compassion and see who? To see how it's done. So today for example, I was going through looking up the word made and formed.

Because I took a little bit of a tangent and I started seeing things. Discovered some stuff and when I do that, I don't have often I don't have enough time to put everything in a coherent outline and that's fine because it's just an issue of learning as well.

For me because I'm always learning All right. So maybe say she'll come in later. Hopefully she's okay. But i'm going to tell people now and on line Next week. My plan is to teach an eschatological study.

I've done that before. And i'm going to do a kind of a combined Thing where i'm going to go through a little bit of all millennialism and then i'm going to go through What I see in scripture the things that are going to take place Before jesus returns and it's just going to be a depressing study where things get worse and worse and worse.

And it's going to be bad. So I believe in all seriousness. That things are going to get so bad that if jesus doesn't come back. The christians are going to be murdered everywhere and we destroy our planet.

It could be an economic not only economic but biological collapse. Death every I do I believe it and i'm going to start in the book of genesis. With that i've done it before. You kind of put things together, but i'm going to do this as a single study.

And i'm also interested in some feedback on some issues i've been thinking about on the issue of marriage. I've done things on marriage before but i'm thinking about doing a series on the theology of marriage where I do the biblical basis of marriage and then do the man's responsibility the woman's responsibility and actually have it.

Done up so that we can film it and maybe produce a workbook out of it as well. So i'm thinking about doing that. And also one of the things I want to do i'm just rambling here for a minute. Is I hope to be able to if anybody wants to do this on the carm amazon wish list.

I want to get a projector and someone has given me a projector, but it's so complicated I can't get it to work and i'm a computer tech and I need something that's just simple. So i've got one on the amazon wish list what I want to do.

I already have a a screen. So that I can then with a clicker and computer and uh powerpoint do a presentation and just say here's the verses. We can go through and I want to do that kind of stuff, too.

That's just down the road and maybe we'll get a third camera. They can have it on there. You could do that right a third camera on that we can swap switch around for a third camera. Probably probably and stuff like that.

Okay, so all i'm gonna do is get into the emotions and um. Uh, I do want your feedback to remember so people have been letting me know where they're listening from and stuff like that um. And I appreciate that.

All right. So emotions so I had to write a definition of emotions and that was really a difficult thing to do. Because what is an emotion? Well emotion is something you feel. Well, what's a feeling? It's an emotion and so we get basically no place.

So, how about this? Uh. What's an emotion or what are emotions? Could you close that door just because the noise okay? Conscious experiences that are not the mental abstractions of logic or simple choices.

But are often accompanied by a subjective feeling that could be considered pleasant or unpleasant. So i'm going to read this again because it's a little confusing. What are emotions now this definition i'm giving is a combination of several definitions and some other things that I just put together um emotions conscious experiences, so we.

Something that happens in the brain. That are not mental abstractions of logic. So if I were to say If a equals b and b equals c then a equals c that's a logical abstraction, but it's not an emotion so.

Emotions are mental abstractions, but they're not the mental abstractions of logic. Or is this simply making a choice like i'm going to choose now to do this. And put my paper down that's a choice, but it doesn't it's not an emotion.

No, I could do it emotionally. And so you know it can mix things and so there's these mental abstractions that are mixed with emotions and things like. You're already smiling. You like that when I do stuff like that.

You know, some people just like it when I get weird, I don't know they just think it's funny. What's that. That's why you keep showing up. That's right. That's you notice my wife doesn't show up because um I think she's tired of my antics after 30 years of marriage.

She's heard it all and seen it all so anyway. Conscious experience emotions conscious experiences that are not the mental abstractions of logic or simple choices. But these experiences are often accompanied by a subjective feeling that can be considered pleasant or unpleasant.

Emotions have that value of pleasantness or unpleasantness with them. So love is generally a Pleasant thing a broken heart is an unpleasant thing. Jealousy can be unpleasant. Receiving mercy and feeling compassion can be a pleasant thing.

So we have pleasant and unpleasant emotions. And I don't know if we could have any emotion that would be neutral in its expression of pleasant or unpleasant. I don't know just haven't thought through it enough.

All right. So of course we have biblical examples of emotion. We have anger and uh, Saul's anger burned against jonathan and he said to him you are son of a perverse rebellious woman. It's first samuel 2030.

And so we have examples of all kinds of emotions in the scriptures. We have bitterness contempt conviction disappointment fear weeping we have All kinds of emotions. This is just a short list of what God has given to us revealed in the word.

God’s Emotions and the Image of God

Okay, so As I like to do. You know, I want to begin things with the examination of the proper standard of all things, which is god himself so when we discuss the issue of emotions. What we need to do is understand that god Has emotions and we can say he has emotions because the bible says he has emotions.

God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son john 3 16. Or psalm 5 5 and psalm 11 5 where he actually expresses, uh hatred. He definitely does check this out. Hosea 11 8. How can I give you up?

Oh ephraim. This is god talking. But How can I surrender you? Oh israel? How can I make you like adama? How can I treat you like zeboim? My heart is turned over within me. All my compassions are kindled now.

This is interesting because this is the inspired word of god. This is supposed to be god's word to us. And we understand of course that there is anthropomorphisms. So an anthropomorphism. Okay I hope you can see that on the screen anthropos man morphe form so the form of a man and what that means an anthropomorphism is that uh, god has expressions of of Emotions we're going to get to impassibility here in a little bit and so He expresses himself, uh with love and hatred and anger.

And even jealousy and things like this. And so the question is are these emotions a condescension. You know god lowers himself to our level to communicate. So the divine being god lowers himself and he communicates to us in such a way that we can relate To what it is.

He's talking about now. So this extent of say god is love, all right, and that's first john 4 8. Well, he you know, he loves but what does that mean? What is that in the heart and in the mind of god? Now when I love my wife, for example.

Um, I want the best for her. I have a you know, we've been married 30 years. We've known each other like 40 and um. And so, uh, you know, I still still get this little. Just love her and have that feeling and I just do after all this time.

And I know she doesn't about me. I don't care. It's all right because you know. Usually I walk in the room. Hey, baby you know, but uh. It's all right because that's that's what love is. It's other centered.

You gotta love her. I'm gonna race her over here. You know how it is. So what she said I do it was over and then I didn't have to put my socks away anymore and. And belching was permitted. She still said that isn't but I know it is so First john 4 8.

Okay. So when god loves He does it perfectly so. What I'm gonna do is build a little case for something he loves perfectly. I don't love perfectly. I'm, not capable of loving perfectly. I don't believe anybody in this room is or anybody watching.

Unless it's god watching. I don't believe anybody is capable of loving perfectly. Now. What does that mean? For example in the end in love? Well here, you know, it's the greek word. Um Agape from agabo and so we have this thing, you know love.

Okay, and most people say agape is divine love. Don't go with that. It's um utterly committed given over to kind of a love because the pharisees loved the high seats. I think that's uh Luke 11 either 53 or 51 but nevertheless God loves.

But he does so perfectly his love Is really interesting. Because it's not alone. What we often do as people Is. We will talk about love now. I was talking to somebody on the phone today and um. He said that he was talking to a pastor a while back.

And the pastor's sermon was basically mamby-pamby mediocre crap. And so he lovingly went to the pastor and said, um, I said look, uh, you know, I Thank you for preaching. Um, but he had this criticism.

And he said your your sermon was not very. He says I don't know how to say that biblical uh. The issues that the text that you read. You didn't even go into. And you talked about love which was good. But you missed the truths and you weren't talking about jesus has the only way because you were saying there are other ways.

And this is a problem and so he's you know, obviously it was a heresy the pastor was teaching and he told me. He said that the pastor said look. You're taking the bible too. Seriously. What we want to focus on is love.

We want to focus on love. And that's what we're going to do now. So if let's see if I could do this if we have A scale, you know, let's see how to do this, right? Whoops messed up. Okay, we have a scale right.

And we want a balance Of things we don't want an imbalance if We were to put love here. What happens is this thing just cranks down here and Nothing is here to counter it counterbalance it now what I mean by that Love is a good thing.

But it can't be alone. Because with love we must have other things. We must have Stuff like this. We must have wisdom. With with love we got to be wise in how we are to be loving and be other centered.

We need to be patient. Because sometimes We can be too loving too quickly and harm someone By giving them what they want. We're not wise in our patience. Love is also by nature gracious. So it needs to have grace associated with it.

But also here's something else. That a lot of people are not interested in anymore truth. So love must be accompanied with truth. And if we were to have love. And if we're to have truth And we're to have grace and we're to have Patience and we're to have wisdom.

The effect here is a balance. A harmony between things if we were to take one attribute One issue and we were to focus on it alone. Then what happens is other things get sacrificed in the case of the illustration what I was talking about today.

And what seems to be largely happening in the church in a lot of areas is love. Is Love is elevated so much that truth is sacrificed. You can't be loving without being truthful. Now there's wisdom in how to be truthful.

My wife comes out with a particular particularly new hairstyle. What do you think of this honey, how's it look? It's different. You know, okay. She'll say no. I want you to tell me the truth. What do you think?

Well, you see when you walked out. I was like I don't think it's really good now. Now She can handle that kind of thing with me. Okay. But the thing is that we're going to be you know truthful. I'm not going to say well, you look like you just got out of a zombie festival.

And it looks like some birds had a big fight in your hair and one of them's stuck in there still. You know, so I don't know. Are you gonna go out like that? You know, there's wisdom. You don't want to say something like that to your wife, but I am good at this.

What i'm really good at with my wife is this. That's the slow motion version of ducking okay when things are thrown at me, all right. So with love we have as an example we need to be balancing it with truth now I think that truth is something that we all need to study because where we get truth we get truth from the bible.

We are sacrificing truth for these things like love or um. Compassion. Right and the more I think about this The more i'm thinking they all need to be connected to truth. Truth is what we need truth is what we have to have because with truth these things.

Well are balanced. Not that that having them By themselves is an imbalance. It's just that what we do. Is we tend to go too much on one thing? We tend to focus on one thing notice what god is. You know god is.

God is love. No problem, but god is also jealous. God also gets angry. People will say to me how could a loving god send anybody to hell. Well, i'd say to them god is not only loving but he's also just he's also holy.

Now here's the thing. If you have a diamond. And this diamond has many facets many edges to it and you take a light and you shine through you're going to see a multitude of colors. You're going to see a multitude of stuff.

But if you only look at one of the facets and one of the reflections. Then you're going to get an imperfect understanding of what that diamond is the same thing is here this is what the world is focusing on to the um.

To the exclusion of things like god's holiness and justice and because of this what they're doing. Is now defining love in an unbiblical way. Because if you're going to have truth, it has to come from the bible love has to be understood Biblically and if you don't have all of these as in the revelation of god, you will not know what true love really is.

So, for example, we have an immigration problem. Illegals are coming over. Now people say oh matt. That's don't talk politics. Just listen. Should we be loving and have people come in? Of course we should.

Should we be loving and have everybody in any country just come in? Because that's loving right. No why because well, we've got an issue we have to use a wisdom. Because we know that people are bad. So how about this?

I think because we're so loving we should invite the isis people. Just come into our country. We'll give you homes. We'll give you cars. That's loving. And obviously that's way out of balance. We know that well, we can't trust certain people.

Well, that's the truth of what it is and just because we're loving doesn't mean we can't be truthful. So what we need is to have truth and wisdom with the emotions that we are going to exemplify. We're just using love as an example here because.

It's something we most often relate to. The world wants us to be loving. The world will often beat up the christian. You're not loving enough. You're too judgmental. You're this you're that you have no compassion.

The world will try and lecture us about what true love is and I say no, you don't even know what true love is. It's other-centeredness, but it's with wisdom and godliness and patience and kindness. And you don't even know what it is and you use it like a whip.

To try and get people to bow to what you want in your liberal agenda. Which lacks truth which lacks grace which lacks patience and which with uh lacks wisdom. The way of the world is to elevate one thing.

And they do it apart from god because they don't need him. They don't want god. So their definition of love Is man-centered. And that's the problem. Man-centered love is the definition of love on a human level.

And human level definition is just let people do what they want. Just do not much just Open our borders. Just let's tax the crap out of everybody. You have too much money. We need to be loving and distributed to everybody.

Love without wisdom and Truth leads to all kinds of things like socialism communism liberalism. Idiocy wackiness because they want to use this as a euphemism. This love and then what they do is they use it in such an ungodly way that what they're doing is um.

It's a planning what true love really is. Okay, I kind of digress a little bit. So let me continue. We are made in the image of god. All right. We have communicable and non-communicable attributes. And what this means is that some of the attributes that god has we can have god loves we can love god hates we can hate.

God thinks we can think God's omniscient, but we are not god's omnipotent, but we are not some things god gives to us. We can communicate we can understand them. All right, so god has perfect emotions.

His emotions are perfect. And the reason his emotions are perfect is because they're consistent with his nature. And his nature is holy. His nature is holy which means no sin. No unrighteousness but also His nature is omniscient.

The omnis omniscient omnipotent omnipresent. He has complete knowledge of all things that are consistent with his holiness and his emotions Exists within himself and then he communicates to us in a condescending way.

I'm not in a negative condescending. But it's a lower himself to our our level. And the reason we have emotions is because we're made the image of god and he has emotions. All right, we're made in his image 126 genesis 126 so God's emotions now.

Here's the thing. I want you to get All of god's emotions no matter what we were to list anger love compassion mercy. Whatever we might say all of them are Simultaneously proper and perfect within god all the time.

So that there is no imbalance of one above another and that's what we do in our idolatrous Procedures is we will find something in god that we want and we'll elevate a particular emotion because it suits our needs.

That's not Wise and it's not something that lends us towards truth our tendency. In our emotions is to go overboard. So i'll use my wife and I as an example. We've been married 30 years and we've had our problems.

And um, i've been angry with her and she's been angry with me. Okay, people are married. We're sinners. So Anger. Anger is not a sin. God gets angry. He says, uh, I forgot where anger and be angry, but do not sin.

I can be angry in against heresy, which is a good thing. I can be angry at my wife because she. Uh, I don't know. It's something I didn't like whatever doesn't make any difference. You know how things are.

And so there's righteous anger and there's unrighteous anger. But I can be angry because I made an image of god now also I can love. So I can love my wife in a godly way. I can open the door for her. I can give her my paycheck.

Which is what she gets all my paychecks. I can Be long-suffering when she is sick when sometimes she's uh, let's just say a little moody about something for no reason. I don't understand because she's a girl.

And so I can try and be loving to her but I can also be loving in a bad way. Because I can demand from her to be reciprocal in my love to her. I'm loving to you, but you're not loving to me. Is that loving?

No. It's a form of legalism. Have I ever done that? Yeah. Hate to admit it. But yeah. So the thing is that what what I will do. And maybe you guys are the same way. Is I will do one of these at a time.

And I will tend to do them to an excess. I don't know how you guys are but because I've asked burgers. I'll just blame it on asperger's. I don't know. Um, i'll just do things like excessively like focus on one thing at a time.

And so I can be very angry. I can be very loving. I think I can be very loving. My wife probably right now is at home going and uh. This will be deal. When we focus on one. And we divest it from what it's related to in the totality of emotions and We divest it from the issue of truth that's found in god's word.

That's when these things become wrong. Emotions aren't bad. Emotions are good. Emotions, however must be understood in the context of god's nature. God's nature is that he is kind and patient and merciful and long-suffering and wise and all-knowing and all-powerful and sacrificial.

And all of these things are perfect within god and he doesn't elevate one attribute that he has Above another and then judge all things by this one thing. He's complete and he's completely whole totally forever.

And so therefore he manifests these things and everything in between. Perfectly and properly we don't and the reason we don't is because we don't have all knowledge. We don't have all the ability to be able to be complete in the areas that we are.

We're made in his image and when you add sin into the mix. We're going to mess it up. And this is one of the things. Now because you know, as I mentioned I have asperger's. I don't need. I don't need to have um, I got another one of those in there if you're going to rummage through it.

And there's one in the car, too. I don't need as many as emotional connections as most people do. Seriously, it's just one of the diagnoses of of asperger's. And which for those who don't know it's just a social deficiency thing.

I do really well because I started body language and i've learned how to. To uh to cope i'm very humble about it because i'm so good at it and everything like that. Okay so I don't need as much emotional stimulation as a lot of people do.

I just don't. Okay, fine. My wife, you know, she has those things called chick flicks. I don't understand those things women. They will they go like the chick flicks are where. Are where a bunch of girls?

Are in a room? Talking. About some guy. And in the same sentence, he's both good and bad and handsome and ugly all at the same time. And then they have the secret language. They talk to each other about then they change topics.

And are back on the other thing and everybody knows it. Then when they're done talking there. They move to another room and do some more of the same thing. And then another move room and another room and then the credits roll it's.

No guy gets that. Okay. It's not just an asperger's thing. And so, um. That's what I understand a chick flick to be. There's no explosions. No abductions. No screaming. No. No, uh machine gun stuff. What's the purpose?

I don't get it so, uh, you know. Uh doesn't make sense to me. But you know. Anyway, throw a good alien in there and you're good. Actually, I had a discussion with uh. Uh, what's the uh, frank peretti?

On my radio show. A few years ago, you know frank peretti the christian author written all these books. And so he's supposed to be on my show for 15 minutes. He and I just hit it off. We did the whole show.

And uh, finally he's sold like millions of books millions of them and I said, you know I said frank. I got some uh writing advice for you and he pauses. Really? I said, yeah. Yeah, he goes really what is it?

I said well If you just add explosions and car chases, everything's better and uh. You know. And so he got a kick out of it. He goes. Yeah, that's right. And anyway, we're talking about that. But um, that's how guys are.

Emotions, Sin, and Biblical Clusters

Okay so What we tend to do get back on track. What we tend to do is focus too much on one thing when the world does that it does. What it wants the way it wants not in godliness. And so when it does is it abuses.

What true emotions really are? It abuses it the only way to have true emotions In a godly way is to be on your knees praying and have the word of god guide you in how you are to be. So one of the things.

For example, and I use this example, this is no joke my wife and I had some marriage problems early on and I was in seminary and uh, I wanted her to to uh, Basically be gone when I got home I I didn't love her anymore.

I didn't care about her anymore. I was hoping she just kind of like gone back. See ya. I didn't care and I was going to seminary. Uh to be a minister to learn how to teach people about god's love. And I wanted her basically out of my life because I didn't love her anymore.

And I saw the hypocrisy and I saw the inconsistency and realized I needed some help so long story short was in a counseling office with um with a professor from seminary and I said to him my wife is right here.

I said to him. I don't love her anymore. I don't want to be married to her anymore. And you know, I don't want her to commit adultery because I didn't want her to sin. But if she had I'd be able to divorce her and I'd be free to go serve god be so, you know loopy.

And he looked at me and he said what do you think love has to do with being married and that shocked me. I've talked about this before. And what he was doing was explaining to me what biblical love was.

Biblical love is not just a feeling. Biblical love is a commitment and decision of long suffering. Where you have someone else? And that person's Heart. That person's safety. That person's well-being as the motive.

For the glory of god, obviously. This guy started reading me the riot act and over the next few minutes just totally changed me. Because he was right and I was wrong and what I had been doing. Was actually listening to the world's view of love.

So, you know while c for example, which I think is just Incredibly bad. A husband and wife on tv in a movie whatever and they have a problem that gets separated and right away. They are committing adultery.

They're going to go with somebody else because we're separated. So it's okay. No commitment. No truth of their covenant. It's just it's okay for us to because we're having a problem let's go out and commit adultery.

It's okay adultery is okay because we're separated. You know. This is the way of the world. Its view of love is conditional its view of love is weak. I could do this with the issues of anger. And and mercy and how these things these attributes or these qualities in the world are ungodly.

And how they're bastardized by these secularists. And then they shove them down our throat to tell us what truth is. And then the true person of who love is jesus christ. Like there's I know I haven't watched it yet.

But going on on tv is stuff attacking the person of jesus as is always the case. Why. Because perfect love is not something the world wants. Because it's too convicting. It's too convicting. All right, so I'm going to introduce a concept to you and uh, we'll talk about Some heady stuff.

And I won't be able to make too much sense of it unless I stumble Upon the right sentences. So here's a word impassibility. No, it doesn't mean in the diamond lane. You can't turn on the left. Okay impassibility the impassibility of god.

So Does god have emotions? Yes, because he says he does he grieves he loves he hates he says so so we say he has emotions. Now If I were to my friend nathan here, I could piss him off. I could say something about his wife, which I would never do in a negative way and make him angry.

So I could affect him. By what I say, of course, I made him mad for some other reason. Yeah, my brother, you know my brother I you know, I love him i'll do stuff and i'll just tweak these guys. You know my brother he goes you're getting close.

You're getting real close. And uh, so like oh good, okay getting how close like yo getting closer now. So I can affect people and you can be affected by emotions, right? Now here's a question. Can god be affected by our emotions?

Let's think about this a little bit. Can god be affected by our emotions? Well, what does that mean to be affected by our emotions? By our actions. By our dealings. So if I were to take my chalk and throw it at nathan he's going to react catch it or whatever or he might go things like.

Probably wouldn't be what he'd do but uh, you know, I can affect him. All right. I used to put a camera on him while he's going clues. So I can affect him. And I also have this habit of affecting people with humor try and joke around tell them really bad jokes and things like that.

And uh, try and get people to understand and they're affected. Okay, we got that. Can god be affected? Now I would say yes and no because no from eternity from eternity God knew I would do something stupid right now, right on this day.

At this time there's like that's a clock. Okay at this time he knew I could do something really stupid. And that you know would be that was that was you that's good, that's okay. So or camera was gonna do something really stupid and uh at this point so If I were to commit a grave sin uh.

You know if I were to commit adultery what if I were to lie just think i'll just do something like lying say I were to lie. Does that i'm going to use this? Word. Does it make god sad? Now I mean the word sad in a generic general sense of a negative kind of expression and feeling.

All right, just generic. So if I were to sin. Right here. This is me. This is back when I was 19. I weighed 117 pounds now. It's more like this but uh so. Is god affected from eternity? How can he be affected from eternity if he ordained what I would do because you see.

We have in ephesians 1 11. All right. God works all things after the counsel of his will. If all things are ordained from him by from every from forever ago when I commit my sin now. Can he be saddened by what he's ordained that I will do?

He didn't cause me to sin but it's within the will of god permissively that I sin. So therefore when I do sin, is he saddened? By that well, how could he be saddened from eternity if he's known and he's not planned it.

But with within his sovereign grace the sovereign plan he allowed that so when it does happen is he affected? Well logically at that point we'd say well, of course not because he that's what's ordained.

How could he you know god ordained it and then it happens if he goes? Oh, man I didn't think I was going to be so sad when it happened now. That's what the open theist the open theist would say that open theism says that god doesn't know everything in the future.

Okay, and uh, you can actually go to the god of the open theist and say hey, do you hear the one about no? Okay, or was the god of open theism say a lot. Okay so We could see that with with you know, a god who doesn't know all things.

But on the other hand on the other hand God says He's grieved. When we sin I have verses here um He god Shows, uh, let's see. Where's the other here we go. God has compassion. Genesis 19 16. But he hesitated so the man seized his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters for the compassion Of the lord was upon him.

Or grief genesis 6 6. And the lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth or hate. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity psalm 5 5. Joy. Nehemiah 8 10. Do not be grieved for the joy of the lord is your strength or love.