TPW 76 Why Ruling and Teaching Elders Must Call Out False Teachers

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Under the Cross and Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Bordewell Heights Presbyterian Church. And today
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I want to talk about the issue of the duties of elders, the duties of elders, what elders have to do.
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When you make the decision to accept the nomination of someone in the congregation and you go through, hopefully, some kind of training, some kind of officer training that teaches you the deep things of the faith and makes sure you understand systematic theology, that you understand the core doctrines of the faith and that you know something about how to defend those things.
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Once you're set apart and you have hands laid upon you and are set apart to the office of elder, there are things that the
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Bible says you have to do. And the reason this is such an important thing to me is not only because we're in a season right now as a church of nominating elders and we've gotten several nominations.
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And I'm really excited about it because right now there's myself and there's three other elders. We have seven deacons, so we're really blessed with great deacons.
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We just ordained three more, but we really could use two or three more elders. And it's a pivotal time for this church's future.
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When you install someone as an elder, that's a big deal. That's going to have a long -range impact on your church.
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And so I'm happy, very excited about this. We have prayed very hard about this process of getting good elders.
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I mean, as it goes with the elders, so it goes with the congregation. So these men are the gatekeepers.
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They hold the keys of the kingdom. And they are tasked by God with some very important things.
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And I think that given the day and age that we live in, where we kind of have the information age, you know, the internet makes everything accessible to everyone.
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So you can listen to a lot of high -profile speakers and really what would amount to, although I'm sure they would disown this title, but kind of celebrity status, ministers and authors and things like that.
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And I think that there may be an unhealthy fascination among some younger ministers to try to gain that kind of status and recognition.
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But the simple fact of the matter is, you know, one of the older ministers in our presbytery made a statement.
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I'll never forget this. One of the best parts about being a part of a presbytery, if you govern your churches biblically, is getting to go to presbytery to see all the other ministers that are part of the regional church and being connected to people.
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Although we don't practice connectionalism the way that we should and as much as we should, I think. It's always great to have those brothers and to hear how their churches are doing.
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And there was a fellow, you know, a lot of the churches in our presbytery are in rural areas and are kind of small, kind of like my own.
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I mean, I don't pastor a big church, but this guy made the statement, you know, everyone's doing well in his church.
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And, you know, they have, I think, like 50, 60 on a Sunday, something like that. And a lot of the congregation is aging and is older.
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And he said, you know what, but we've been in a season of great peace for a long time.
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They love the word of God and they're older and, you know, our church hasn't grown much, but I've been faithful there, you know, and the ministry of the word there.
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God has given us good elders and we've been faithful to the ministry of the word for decades and decades. And he told us as a presbytery, he said, you know, it hit me the other day.
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It'd be easy to get kind of discouraged by the fact, you know, our church hasn't grown much or there's not a whole lot of exciting going on.
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But it hit me the other day just looking out over this congregation that old aging people need pastors, too.
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Old aging people need pastors, too, and I thought, that's great. You know, I remember thinking similar kinds of thoughts when
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I was first thinking about ministry, that if God is to tell him, if you want me to pastor a little church out in the country,
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I will do that. I will do everything I can to try to minister to them faithfully and to make sure that I protect them from error and that I preach the true gospel to them.
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And I will use all the powers that are in me to make sure that they all believe it so that they all go to heaven when they die and will do evangelism and discipleship.
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And I will try to encourage godly marriages and family worship and all that kind of stuff. If you want to call me to do that,
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I don't want a mega ministry. I don't want to do book tours and everything else. I just want to exposit the word of God, teach it.
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I want to protect people from error and get them ready to die. That's all I've ever really wanted to do with my life. And if I can do that to a little group of people and, you know, be able to live with my family and disciple my family, that's great.
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I couldn't possibly be happier. But what I just said, though, is of vital importance.
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You have to protect people from error. Primarily, what I do as a pastor is positive presentation of biblical truth.
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That's what I'm most comfortable doing. I just like to preach and teach the truth, go through the text of God's word and preach and teach it so that people can understand it so that they believe and understand what the text says.
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That's all. You know, that's primarily what I do. The vast majority of the literally thousands of pages of sermons that I've written is just it's just that.
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But occasionally you do have to do refutation of false teachers. And I honestly don't particularly like doing that because then you get to see the nasty side of everybody.
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And, you know, people people want to engage in chest thumping and bravado. But the thing is, the only thing that motivates me is a love for the truth and a love for the souls that I'm responsible for.
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I can't control what goes on outside the walls of this church. And I I can't control what people listen to or read or whatever.
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But if they're listening to or are reading the books of someone that I know is dangerous, you better believe
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I'm going to denounce that person. For example, John Piper, John Piper. I have been very disappointed at the silly defenses that have been offered for his very obvious false gospel.
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It's been really disconcerting to me. The the silence of the reform celebrities on that issue have been surprised.
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People will say, you know, in public, yeah, well, you know, I definitely disagree with him on that. But what is it that you disagree with him about?
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How people get into heaven? Isn't that a little more significant than, well, yeah, I definitely disagree with him. Doesn't that need to be denounced with a little more pathos than that?
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Maybe possibly this guy is very dangerous. And I certainly don't want anyone thinking that I endorse him or that I'm OK with him.
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We don't carry any of his books here. We sell tons of books at this church. It's a huge ministry of our church.
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But I don't sell anything by him. And I have made it very clear that he is not one of the people in the reform celebrity cult that you want to read and go to conferences where he's speaking and things like that.
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And I have been really disappointed and really upset by the fact that very few have called him out for what he's saying.
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When someone preaches a sermon at the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, does God really save us by faith alone?
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And his answer is a resounding no, he doesn't. I think that ought to raise a few more eyebrows than just, you know, myself and R.
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Scott Clark and Tim and Carlos, you know, and a bunch of lay people going, excuse me, that's not true.
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And then what do we get from the other side? You get scads of quotations, just like the federal vision controversy.
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Those guys wouldn't go to the text of scripture to try to defend their views. What did they do? They tried to ransack the
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Puritans, ransack Calvin and Turretin. And I remember reading those quotations from Calvin and Turretin.
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I'm sorry to try to enlist either one of them on the side of the federal vision is a fool's errand, because I've read everything
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Calvin's written on that in the Institutes many times and Turretin as well. And in fact, what Turretin says about it is so glorious that Presbyterian and Reformed, I think it's
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Presbyterian and Reformed, publishers published just the sections of Institutes of Atlantic Theology on justification by Turretin.
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I don't think I've ever underlined that much of a book before. It's so excellent. And the idea that he would have been
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OK with the federal vision or with Piper is laughably false.
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OK, I'm sorry you haven't read Turretin or Calvin if you actually think things like that. So someone emailed me a link to the
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Piper sermon or excuse me, not to the sermon, but to Paul Flynn, the Irishman who
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I love listening to. I think he's a great guy. I don't know him personally, but I actually sent him some of the stuff that I did on on Piper.
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And he thanked me for that. Paul Flynn's a really good guy. He really loves the gospel and it seems to understand it really well.
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And I've been thankful for his exposes on Piper. But the first time I listened to that,
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I was actually driving some of my kids to a hotel to go swimming. And I have a I drive a gigantic vehicle, a huge Dodge Sprinter was actually an airport shuttle
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I bought on eBay to get my huge family around. But I put my little
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Bose sound leak mini speaker, which is a great speaker. And I it's
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Bluetooth to my phone. I listened to Paul Flynn's Megiddo radio program on the
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Piper sermon. And he was playing playing excerpts from the sermon. And I was really shocked at what what
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Piper actually said and was like, wow, that's really bad. But my assumption, you know, we went to head to the hotel and went swimming with the kids and everything else.
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Listen to the rest of it on the way home. And I thought, OK, I need to pull up the sermon. I want to listen to the whole thing myself. So I did.
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So I listened to Piper sermon. And sure enough, I mean, it's very clear what he's saying.
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And he belabors the point so that you don't misunderstand him, because if you recall, if you've listened to the sermon, the fact of the matter is, before I get into that,
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I've always told people, you don't need to listen to me. In fact, you don't even listen to Tim and Carlos. Don't don't listen to them. Don't even listen to R.
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Scott Clarke. Just go listen to Piper sermon. Go listen to the sermon and listen to him say that.
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Remember the survey that was done? And they're not evangelicals anymore. And he says it was a totally confused survey because the survey asked, how do you get into heaven?
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You don't get into heaven by faith alone. You get justified by faith alone. That's pretty clear.
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Justification is not what gets you into heaven. He's real clear. You don't get into heaven by faith alone.
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You just get justified by faith alone. You get into a position where God is 100 percent for you by faith alone. Yada, yada, yada.
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Now, I would encourage people go back and listen to Piper sermon and then listen to my critiques of it.
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But just think, if you're a Christian, is that what you believe? You believe justification is not what gets you into heaven, that something else is what gets you past the final judgment into heaven?
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Certainly not. Certainly not. And that's what makes it so subtle and dangerous. But I want to talk about, well, why would
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I go ahead and stick my neck out there and say, OK, this is a false gospel? Once I had listened to the sermon myself and could see how clear he was being,
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I just like I'm preaching on that this coming Sunday. I mean, we just had the 500th anniversary of the
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Reformation. You know, we had Reformation conference. I did talks on the five solas here at the church.
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We we had to use me as the speaker because every other good speaker was already speaking somewhere else. For the 500th anniversary of the
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Reformation. And those are not just slogans. Those are the heart and soul of Christianity.
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Those are the heart and soul of everything that I hope for eternally, that the people here hope for eternally.
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And I don't care if it's John Piper or the Apostle Paul himself. Paul said that if I come back and tell you something different in Galatians 1, 6 through 9, if I if if me or an angel, if we are an angel from heaven, preach another gospel to you, let him be anathema.
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And so why would I be willing to stick my neck out and say, OK, yeah, this is a false gospel.
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I knew that I know from what I hear, I'm off social media now, but I hear that my sermons and stuff and stuff that I do is sometimes posted on like Theo Cast and like the
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Reform Pub. And I've heard people say people say nice things and people say really nasty things about me.
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And I don't honestly care about social media anymore. I've gotten off of it. One of the best decisions
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I ever made was getting off of everything and just not being bothered with with all that. All of the chest thumping and bravado that goes on by people who are oh so brave behind their keyboards.
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But anyway, why would I be willing to do that? Because I have an obligation to. It's not something
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I had to sit and think about. Well, should I? You know, gosh, you're going to really stand out against a graduate of the
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University of Munich in Germany who apparently knows Greek really well and has written dozens of books.
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Yeah, because what he said wasn't true. What he said about how you get into heaven, in point of fact, is not true.
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And I don't care who he is. He's wrong. OK, you do get into heaven by faith alone. Oh, you must be an antinomian.
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I did a whole sermon on that called Answering Antinomianism Again, because the objections never change.
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What has always been the objection to the pure, free, gratuitous justification by faith alone?
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Well, you're saying we can just live like the devil and still get to heaven. In fact, Piper says that you can't.
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We should not say that you can live like the devil and still get to heaven. Yeah, that is the objection that has always been raised against Sola Fide.
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It always will be. It always will be, too. So I was willing to say that, stuck my, you know, put myself out there.
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I've gotten a lot of nasty email. People have left some nasty comments on Sermon Audio to the stuff
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I've done and to that sermon. It's actually my second most popular sermon I've ever done. It's got like 1 ,200 or 300 downloads or something like that on Sermon Audio, which, hey, that's great.
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But a lot of people have also, in fact, more than more than the nasty grams.
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A lot of people have said, you know, I didn't really fully understand how serious what he was saying was until I listened to your sermon.
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I'm like, that's good. That's the reason I preached it. That's the reason I preached it, because I think it's that important.
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So why do that? Because Titus chapter 1 verses 9 and following requires that we do that.
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If you're an elder, listen to me. Listen closely. You do not need to wait for John MacArthur to say something.
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You don't need to wait to see if Phil Johnson or, you know, whoever who the whoever's in the gospel coalition or what does it call it together for the gospel.
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I don't honestly track with or follow much of it because I'm sick of things like the Manhattan Declaration, the
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Manhattan Declaration. I was really surprised to see Al Mohler and Ravi Zacharias and Ligon Duncan, their names on there.
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Really? So you guys agree that with Eastern Orthodox clergy and Roman Catholic priests?
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Yeah, we together proclaim the gospel of costly grace.
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No, you don't, because you don't agree on what the gospel of costly grace is. Well, that wasn't the primary purpose of the document, the primary purpose of the document is it was to be against homosexuality and abortion and religious freedom, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Yeah, but the document addresses something about you guys that isn't true.
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Well, unless maybe for you it is. Is it true? Do you guys look at Roman Catholic priests and say, yeah, we together proclaim the gospel of costly grace?
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No, Rome anathematized and murdered a lot of our forefathers over the gospel of costly grace that they still don't believe to this day.
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And I loved the fact that, you know, R .C. Sproul, God rest his soul, that he wrote an article saying,
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I don't know why people keep asking me to sign these documents that are concordat with Rome and the
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East. We do not have a unity of faith with Rome. We don't. We never will.
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Unless they repent of their errors and embrace the true gospel. That's the issue.
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The issue with Rome is the false gospel. It always has been, always will be. So I don't track with any of these groups anymore because frankly,
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I don't trust them. I don't trust them. You're going to fix your name to documents like that. You just lost your credibility to me.
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Well, who are you? I'm just a lowly minister here in Northeast Tennessee. I'm trying to pastor my little church and protect them from wolves in sheep's clothing.
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And for doing that, you know, I'm attacked on, what was it, the Reformed Brotherhood, the
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Reformed Brotherhood. And, uh, someone sent me a link to, I'd never heard of that. And someone sent me a link and these two guys are slashing and burning me and, you know, accused me of practically, practically purposely misrepresenting
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Piper. Like, how do you misrepresent someone when you played unedited their entire sermon? You know, on YouTube, how do you misrepresent someone when you, when you played unedited everything they said?
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And then Piper's clarification video, I responded to that too, because it made it even worse. He just doubled down and made his position even clearer.
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And so I was attacked and I actually private messaged, um, one of them and gave him my cell phone number.
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I said, let's talk, let's talk, man. You guys are talking about me. Let's talk. And he, he messages me back.
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What can I do for you? And I never did call me. And I was like,
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I got other things to do. Not interested. I've said what I want to say about it. You know, you're welcome to respond. Uh, I don't care.
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Uh, the, the contempt that people, I just want everyone to know. The contempt that's been directed my way.
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Um, because of what I've said about John Piper, I want everyone who has expressed that kind of nastiness towards me.
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I want y 'all to know something. I wear your contempt as a badge of honor. I wear it as a badge of honor and because of it,
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I will have a better resurrection. So in that way, thanks for it.
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Thanks for it. Definitely. The gospel is more important. I don't care who's saying it.
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Uh, I took ordination vows. It's pretty serious stuff. And I vowed to protect and proclaim the gospel in public and private, in my private correspondence.
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And in all of my writing, speaking, talking, every form of communication that comes from me that is addressing this issue is going to proclaim the one true gospel.
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That is what I was put under ordination vows to do. And that is what I plan to do. In fact, I have a picture on my wall right over here.
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Um, that was taken by someone. I don't, I don't know who took the picture, but it's all the elders and the, the commission from our presbytery that laid hands on me.
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It's a very serious moment for me. It's me on my knees with all their hands, one, two, three, four, five, six with six of them with their hands on me.
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In fact, one of them was the elder, uh, here, Bob Lane, uh, that's gone on to glory. He was a charter member of this church.
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He was, I think 95 when he died. Uh, I was, I was with Bob myself. And one of my sons was with Bob 20 hours before he died.
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And he asked us to sing hymns with him and we sang, um, the church is one foundation.
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We sang amazing grace. And it was beautiful to hear him singing that 20 hours before he died. So it's real serious stuff, real serious stuff to me.
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Um, the gospel that we proclaim and I don't care how many articles are out there in defense of Piper and what, what is it?
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Is it a biblical defense of anything? No, it's just here. Here's quotations from Puritans.
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You've never heard of, um, you know, twists, Gattaca, vines, and whoever. Uh, it's interesting.
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If you read the histories of the Westminster assembly, who were those guys? Vines, Gattaca and twists. Um, they were guys that questioned the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ.
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You can read about that. Um, and, uh, Fesco's, uh, the theology of the Westminster standards. He has some of the minutes and actually, uh, transcripts of some of the speeches.
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Um, in fact, their questioning of that doctrine was defeated. And I think, um, was refuted soundly by Goodwin and others on the floor.
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Um, and so three out of 121 had questions about that. And the Westminster standards teach the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us.
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You know, it's just bizarre to me. It's almost like people are hoping you don't know anything about things like that, but, but anyway, the quote game is easy to play.
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I mean, I've got the Puritan hard drive. You could, if you look hard enough, you can find some pretty interesting things said by Puritans just because they're
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Puritans doesn't mean they know everything. And it certainly doesn't mean that you should believe everything. I mean, think about Richard Baxter, for example.
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Uh, we certainly don't want to put him up there as someone who really is a, is an efficient spokesperson for the gospel because he's thoroughly confusing about that.
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And some have even put him in the category of being a Sassanian on that particular topic. It doesn't mean that the guy never had anything worth saying.
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He did, uh, his practical stuff and, you know, the saints everlasting rest or some interesting things in him. But I've always thought, you know,
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Richard Baxter is definitely not someone that I would put out there, you know, in the same category as Owen or Watson or Thomas Brooks or any of the rest of those guys.
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So anyway, so why, why did I go ahead and do this and have had to deal with, you know, chest thumping guys throwing acid over the internet at me?
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Um, why do that? Because Titus one verse nine says that the elder is to hold fast the faithful word.
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He has to be loyal to the faithful word, the faithful message, uh, which is in accordance with the teaching so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.
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The elder has to do that. Now, for the most part, I exhort in sound doctrine. I just,
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I'm expository. Most of my sermons, if you look, if you look through all my manuscripts and I've thought about editing them for publication,
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I may, I may do that if I ever have time. Um, but it's mostly just a positive exposition of the word of God.
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Um, but you also have to refute those who contradict. You don't wait for another person to do that.
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If the sheep you're listening to me, ruling elders, teaching elders, if the sheep that you're shepherding are being threatened by a wolf and they're reading his books and listening to his talks and downloading his sermons, you better say something about it.
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Don't wait for MacArthur or whoever you have an obligation. When you hear the falsehood, when you hear the false gospel, you better talk.
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You ought to refute those who contradict. Now listen to the categories of, of people that you need to refute. Listen to verse 10 for there are many rebellious men.
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Yeah. Rebellious meaning what rebellious against the word of God. Rebellious against things that are taught in scripture.
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They're rebellious. There are many insubordinate empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision.
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Who are those of the circumcision? That's, that's the Pipers of the world. That's the people that add things as works requirements on our part that get us into heaven.
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That's what the circumcision is. Especially them, especially them elders. You need to refute those who contradict.
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For there are many rebellious empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, especially people adding things to faith in Christ as the means of justification or people who change the definition of justification from that, which gets you past the final judgment into heaven to get you into a position where God is a hundred percent for you.
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From that position, then you then put sin to death and pursue holiness. And that's what gets you past the final judgment.
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No, that's the circumcision. Those of the circumcision. Listen, verse 11, who must be silenced because they're upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain.
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They're upsetting whole families. They're destroying the church. They're ripping things apart. That's actually what the word heretic means.
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The term hereticon, hereticon means what? A divisive person.
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They divide people by teaching perverse things. They teach perverse things and they have to be silenced.
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Well, who's supposed to do that? The elders. Elders refute those that contradict the gospel.
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If someone says, yeah, we believe in sola fide, justification by faith alone. Okay, well, what do you think justification does?
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Well, it doesn't get you into heaven. Remember, Piper said that. So, yeah, that survey that was done, those people were totally confused.
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They asked such a dumb question. How do you get into heaven? And what does he say? You don't get into heaven by faith alone.
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In other words, justification is not what does it. It's all this other stuff pursuing holiness without which no one will see the
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Lord. Gross misinterpretation of Hebrews 12, 14. He quotes it like a mantra without which you will not see the
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Lord. I remember him saying that in the clarification video without which you will not see the Lord. That is, you won't be finally saved unless you've done this.
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And by doing this, you think, okay, that's not what see the Lord means. Saved is a unique biblical term.
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What is saved talking about? Justification. Romans 5, 9. How much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
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Why does justification save us from the wrath of God? Because we're forensically pronounced righteous by our justification, such that wrath is no longer hanging over us.
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It's justification that saves us from the wrath of God. Justification does it. Justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
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First Thessalonians 1, 10. To wait for his son from heaven, even Jesus, who delivers us, who saves us from the wrath to come.
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John 3, 36. He who has the son has life. He who does not have the son shall not see life for the wrath of God abides upon him.
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We're saved from the wrath of God by being justified. Justification is the forensic legal judicial act.
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The cross of Jesus Christ is Jesus bearing in his body our sins upon the tree.
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First Peter 2, 24. It is he, God made him who knew no sin, Christ, to become sin in our behalf.
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So that in him, we would become the righteousness of God. It's a forensic judicial substitution.
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What is it? First Peter 3, 18. The just in behalf of the unjust. Total substitution, vicarious death, vicarious righteousness.
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Romans 4, 6. Just as David speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.
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That is the grounds of our justification and the grounds upon which we enter into heaven itself.
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And if your reaction to that is, well, you're saying that there's no such thing as sanctification. You're saying we can just live like the devil and go to heaven.
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I'm thankful that you, that you would say that. Because Paul had people say that to him all the time. And what's his answer to that?
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Is his answer that to hang final salvation on works? No, his answer is the biblical doctrine of regeneration.
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Romans 6. It's the biblical doctrine of our being made alive in Christ and our being freed from slavery to sin.
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That's the answer. It's not to hang final salvation or to invent a new category, final salvation by works.
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That's not the answer. The answer is regeneration. And so we are to oppose those who are of the circumcision.
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I don't care who they are. I don't care where they went to school or how many PhDs they have after their name or how many book tours they've been on or how many published works they have or how intelligent they think they are.
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If you're an elder, if you're an elder in Christ's church and you've had hands laid on you, you are responsible for the sheep that are under your shepherding authority.
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You do not have to wait. And in fact, it is a sin for you to wait. If you hear a false gospel and you don't call it that and you don't warn people about it, if you know they're being exposed to it, you're sinning against God.
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And you need to speak. Don't be timid. God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and boldness.
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He who has the scriptures has everything that they have. Remember what Luther said? A simple layman armed with scripture is greater than any
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Pope or council. Now, you shouldn't just rush off to battle, you know, as soon as you hear anything, you're, you know, going off to battle to go blast away at everybody.
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That's foolish, too. I had to think about this a lot before I actually came out and said,
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OK, this is a false gospel. No question about it. It's very clear what he's saying. And so I'm going to call it that.
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And you know what? You call it out and then you move on. You go back to your expository preaching and teaching ministry.
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I don't just talk about this all the time. I've been preaching through the Westminster Confession and hitting every major doctrine of the faith.
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You address the doctrines that are addressed by the passages that are before you. And I'm a big believer in Lectio Continua.
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You just expository go through books of the Bible. My hope is if God gives me good health and gives me a long life,
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I want to have sermons on every passage in the whole Bible before I die. I would love to have actually exposited the entire scripture.
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I've done the whole book of Genesis. I've done the first 10 chapters of Matthew. I've done the first six chapters of Luke.
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I preached all the way through the book of Romans. I took 80 Sundays, I think, to do that. Preached all the way through Philippians.
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And so, you know, I'm trying to do that. And I'm also preaching on doctrines, doing doctrinal exposition, too, which requires a lot of expository work as well.
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But going through books of the Bible, you preach on the doctrines that are addressed by those passages. But if you know that your church is being assaulted on the
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Internet, you know, the information age does make things a little more complicated. People are exposed to a lot more.
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You may recall, or if you know anything about the Jehovah's Witnesses, they used to really heavily control what their people were allowed to read.
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In fact, if you were caught with apostate literature in your house, you could be disfellowshipped.
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You could be thrown out and shunned. But now with the Internet, they can't control that anymore.
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Everyone's exposed to everything all the time. So the Reformed celebrities that are out there, you know, those of us that are just kind of lowly pastors in little churches in the mountains here, you do need to be aware.
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Of this kind of stuff. And you do need to keep your nose to the wind. And I'm blessed because there's a lot of people that send me stuff.
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And, you know, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? A lot of times I don't know anything about it because I don't really follow the ministries of many other people.
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I like to listen to certain people preach. I've always loved to listen to Joel Beakey. He is one of my favorite preachers alive today and one of my favorite of all time.
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I love to listen to Beakey and listen to a few podcasts. I listen to Presby Castle, listen to Thorn Crown.
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I love listening to Tim Kaufman's stuff on church history on the diving board. It's great stuff. Great stuff. But I don't really track the ministries of many others.
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But if you hear about someone that you know people in your church are being exposed to and they're teaching something that seriously wrong about the gospel.
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You don't wait to say something. You are obligated by God to protect those sheep.
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You're an elder just like any of these other men are elders. And you need to protect the sheep for whom
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Jesus Christ shed his blood. And you need to make sure that you know and understand the true gospel and that you do that faithfully.
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So I hope this has been helpful and that you've been emboldened by it.
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I hope that you will recognize you don't need to wait. If you understand what someone is saying and you know that there's always going to be spin doctors who want to nuance stuff and find some way to massage their words enough to make them orthodox.
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He's just all he's saying is something about the ordo salutis and he he's just saying that you know God sanctifies everybody.
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That's not what he's saying. I wish that was what he was saying. But he's not saying that he's saying you are saved by your works.
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OK and there's no way to nuance that to make it orthodox. OK that's not true. We're saved by grace through faith not by works.
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Just anyone should boast. We're saved by the blood and righteousness of Christ alone. Justification is the eschatological verdict.
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It is the final verdict at the last day at the final judgment. That's what Jesus suffered on the cross. He suffered the fullness of the wrath of God that will come against the unrepentant in hell for eternity.
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That's what Jesus dealt with at the cross. And anything less than that makes the death of Christ in vain.
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Galatians 2 21 Galatians 2 21 I do not nullify the grace of God for righteousness comes to the law.
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If you could be finally saved by your works Christ died in vain for nothing to no purpose.
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That's how serious this is. And that's why I addressed it. And that's why of all the acid that's been thrown over the
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Internet into my face and people that have said all sorts of nasty things about me and to me.
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I don't care. I don't care. You know why I don't care. Because no one has even remotely attempted to defend the concept that final salvation is actually a biblical category just like justification and sanctification are.
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And that it's by our fruits or good works that we get past the final judgment into heaven.
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No one has even remotely shown that from the Bible. No one's even tried to. All they've done is say well this guy
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Petra von Mastich says this and these guys said this and here's another here's some more out of context quotations.
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I did a whole podcast. Someone sent me a list of quotes. And you know why
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I did that podcast because I recognized half of them. Because the federal vision used the same ones. The very same quotations were misused and I thought hmm
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I've looked some of these up before and looked up some of the rest of them too. We are not saved by our works.
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The fruit that grows on the tree does not make the tree what it is.
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It only makes it known to other men whether the tree is a good tree or battery and works do not save us nor do works make us good or bad.
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They don't make us good or bad. They only make it known whether we are good or bad whether we've been redeemed or not.
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Okay we are we are saved upon the legal grounds of the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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We are justified and accounted as righteous once for all eternity. And then God begins to bear the fruits of his
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Holy Spirit in our lives and to recognize that God always does that is not to say that we're saved by that fruit or that we're saved by the effects of God's grace in our lives.
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We are not saved by those things. We are saved by Christ and Christ alone. And if you don't believe that firmly enough if you don't believe that firmly enough to oppose those who deny it maybe you shouldn't be an elder at all.
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Thanks for watching or listening. This is
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Pastor Patrick Hines of Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church located at 108 Brittle Heights Road in Kingsport Tennessee.
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And you've been listening to the Protestant Witness podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m.
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sharp where we open the word of God together sing his praises and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www .brittlewellheightspca
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.org and may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.