Liberal Theology 2

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All right, well we are finishing today, Lord willing, our subject of liberal theology.
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This is the larger portion of our study of systematic theology, which we've been doing in sort of an odd way because we've been looking systematically at different types of theologies.
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We started with Roman Catholic theology, went to natural theology, went to Lutheran and Arminian, Reformed, all kinds of different theologies.
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And it's all coming out of the book that we have charts of theology and doctrine.
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Well, if you look under liberal theology, remember what we talked about the definition of liberal and conservative? Liberal comes from the Latin for liber, which means free, and the idea of a liberal is someone who is lack of restriction or constraint, they're free from those things.
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So essentially you'll hear the term free thinking oftentimes is associated with someone who is a liberal.
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Conservative means to preserve something or to conserve something, and typically it's the conservation of tradition.
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That can be bad too because not all traditions are right, not all traditions are biblical.
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So to say conservative is always right and liberal is always wrong is not correct.
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You must understand that there are within the two systems things that are right and things that are wrong, and there are things where you would be called a liberal for because maybe you are a person who likes to listen to music that doesn't always have a hymn base.
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Maybe you listen to something that's not Christian, or maybe you watch a television show that is not necessarily about the life of Jesus and somebody says, well if you don't watch television shows about the life of Jesus then you're not a Christian, or if you don't watch VeggieTales with your kids and you actually let them watch something else, you know like Animaniacs or something, you're just a sinner.
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So again, where is the line? Well the Bible is the dividing line.
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The Bible tells us what the truth is and we have to believe what it says, and when the liberal denies what the scripture says, we deny him.
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When the conservative denies what the scripture says, we deny him because we're not seeking necessarily to identify ourselves politically, we're identifying ourselves biblically.
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Okay, that was an introduction pretty quick.
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All right, so we looked at theology, God, the Trinity, and we ended on Christ.
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And as I said last week, I think this is the biggest issue that I have with liberals, and again I'm painting with a broad brush.
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Liberals as a whole, at least liberals as they identify themselves that way, tend to see Christ as a moral example, someone who expressed God to us.
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He did not die to pay the penalty for our sins or impute his righteousness to man, and he was neither God nor Savior, but merely God's representative.
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And this is something that very recently a good illustration of this came up.
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In a certain church, there was a request to change a song.
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There's a song that has been popularized.
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It's a recently written song, so we would call it a contemporary song, but I don't know that we'd necessarily identify it as very contemporary because a lot of the more contemporary Christian music tends to be kind of vacuous and not really meaningful, but this song is very meaningful.
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And in the song, is it called In Christ Alone, where it says, and on that cross when Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied? That's the title of the song? Well, that particular line, where on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, that particular line, this church that wanted to place that song in their hymn book requested from the songwriters the right to change the line.
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The line would be changed to, on that cross where Jesus died, the love of God was magnified, rather than the wrath of God was satisfied.
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Now, why would they want to change that line? Well, the argument from their perspective is that they do not believe in penal substitutionary atonement, what we call the PSA.
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Not a public service announcement, but the penal substitutionary atonement.
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This is essential to the gospel, and they have denied it.
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That's huge.
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It's huge.
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Well, they don't believe that that was the purpose of the atonement.
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They do not believe that the purpose of the atonement was to satisfy the wrath of God, because they believe that God satisfies his wrath simply by turning it away, that he does not have to justly punish it.
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There is no, no, the sacrifice is to demonstrate the love of God by Christ not smiting or cursing his enemies.
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This is what they say the cross was, that the cross was not intended for Christ to receive the wrath of God, but rather to show the love of God in the face of hatred.
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Sorry, it made me laugh.
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But doesn't it sound good? Doesn't it sound like something that if someone got up and say, the cross isn't about God's wrath, the cross is about God's love, and everybody goes, yay! And you hear that, right? So that's what I'm saying.
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This is out there, and it's permeated, it's permeated so much of Christianity.
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The cross is about God's love, but the wrath of God must be satisfied because he is holy, and he is just.
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And in the same way, a judge who released a guilty rapist without any punishment would be called an unjust judge.
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If God were to simply release us from our sins without them having been rectified or judged or condemned, would, too, be unjust.
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And because God is not unjust, he must punish sin, and he punishes sin by virtue of a substitute.
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That's what we call it, penal substitutionary atonement.
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Christ becomes a substitute, takes our penalty, the penal substitutionary, and the atonement, meaning to bring two things together.
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The word atonement is a conglomeration of three ideas at onement, at one, to bring two who are separated back together.
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That's where the word atonement comes from.
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It means to make reconciliation.
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So that is denied almost universally in those who would identify themselves as liberal because they have to deny the wrath of God, and to deny the wrath of God means they have to deny the purpose of the cross.
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So they replace the purpose of the cross with a different purpose.
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Okay? Let's move now quickly to the Holy Spirit.
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The Spirit is the activity of God in the world, not a third person of the Godhead who is equally in essence equal in essence to the Father and the Son.
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I think that's a little overgeneralized.
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Again, I've said this about this book before.
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I don't know that every church that would consider itself liberal would deny that the third person of the Trinity is a person.
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I don't think that it's even an issue.
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I think in a lot of situations, things like that which are systematic in nature, systematic theology, tend to be less the focal point.
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Things tend to be more about feelings than about systematics and things like that.
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But I do know that there is a sense in which there are those who don't believe the Holy Spirit is a person.
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Not that it is the liberals, but I'm going to use another example.
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The Jehovah Witnesses don't believe that the Holy Spirit is a person.
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They believe He is an active force, and they will say, much like electricity runs through the wires of your home, the Holy Spirit is an energy or force that runs through people.
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You know, the Spirit is within you, the Spirit is working within you, and He is not a person, it is a force.
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And that's typically how you will hear the differentiation in the identity of the Holy Spirit.
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We will say He, and the Jehovah Witness will say it.
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And I'll say this, even in conservative Christian churches, I've even heard seminary professors make this error.
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They will identify the Holy Spirit as it.
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Well, He is a person, and He's identified, I think, even more specifically when in the book of Acts, when Ananias and Sapphira lie, Peter says, how could you lie to the Holy Spirit? You have not lied to men, but to God, thus identifying the Holy Spirit as God.
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And so He is certainly identified as a person, certainly identified as someone that can be spoken to and spoken through, the Spirit speaks for us when we can't pray, Romans chapter 8, you know, all these things.
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He's certainly personalized in Scripture, not identified as some type of a energy.
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So as far as, again, I think that this is, again, I think this is an overgeneralization.
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Different people are gonna have different views on the Holy Spirit when it comes to liberalism.
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Some, again, don't even believe in the personality of God to begin with, so even that would be a step away.
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The next one is very important, how they see the Bible.
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The Bible is a fallible human record of religious experiences and thought.
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The historical validity of the biblical record is doubted.
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Scientific assessments prove the miraculous in the Bible to be religious expression only.
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This is how they see the Bible.
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They see the Bible as man's writings, and this is what is so funny, because they'll say that.
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They'll say, well, the Bible was written by a man.
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And I say, now wait a minute, your textbooks were written by men.
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You believe what they say, and usually to a fault you'll believe what the textbooks say.
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So not that I'm comparing the Bible to textbooks, but I'm exposing it, exposing the hypocrisy.
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Well, I don't believe the Bible was written by a man.
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Well, everything was written was written by a man.
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What's your argument? Well, you're saying it was divine in nature.
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Well, yes, we believe that the Bible was breathed out by God.
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That's what the Greek term theionoustos means.
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It means to be God-breathed, and that's what the Apostle Paul says when he says all Scripture is God-breathed, 2 Timothy 3.16.
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So they don't believe that.
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In fact, I remember very, very well a man who was a member of this church.
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He was a member when I became the pastor, and he was a member a little while after I became the pastor, and he never really liked my preaching, which was fine.
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A lot of people don't.
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It's okay.
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But he was getting very frustrated about the fact that we were holding to the Scripture and we were saying the Bible is the Word of God, infallible, inerrant Word of God.
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We came to my home upset.
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It was during the time where we were having sort of a debate over Reformed theology, so it was a it was a big time in the church, and I was actually having meetings with several people because of miscommunications and misunderstandings and things like that.
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Well, he came to my house, sat on my couch, and one of the first things he said was, well, I don't think the whole Bible's true.
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Just that clear and that simple.
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I just don't think the whole Bible's true.
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And I said, well, then you're in the wrong church.
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I said, because I can throw a stick and hit 15 churches who don't believe the Bible's true.
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Why are you with us? Notice I didn't try to argue with him.
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I just said, you're in the wrong place.
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We're saying the Bible's true.
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You're saying it's not.
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I'm not gonna try to convince you that it is, but I will say this, as long as you're here, you're gonna be unhappy.
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Because in our Constitution, in our statement of faith, it says we believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, you know.
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And he, well, I just don't believe it's all true.
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Well, anyway, this is how it all worked out, because it does become kind of interesting later in the conversation.
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He says, well, tell me about this Calvinism stuff.
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And I said, I can't.
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And he said, what do you mean you can't? I said, well, a few minutes ago you told me you don't believe the Bible's true.
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So as soon as I show you a verse or a series of verses or a chapter of the Bible that tells you that this is true, all you have to say is, I don't believe that.
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I said, you have denied that you believe what the Bible says, so really I can't prove anything to you from the Bible if you don't believe it.
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And he just sort of looked at me.
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I said, Huh? He ended up eventually leaving.
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He had a grandiose departure, actually.
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He left during a business meeting.
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Yeah, yeah.
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He was displeased.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Like I said, though, the point of it all is his words.
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I don't believe the Bible is true.
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Okay, I can't make you believe the Bible is true.
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Only God can open your eyes, take the scales off your eyes, open your ears.
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We're going to talk about that this morning in our sermon.
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We look at Lydia.
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It was God who opened Lydia's heart to believe everything that was said by Paul.
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Not me.
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I can point you to evidence as to why the Bible is true.
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I can explain to you why I believe the Bible is true, and I can tell you that that's what we believe as a church.
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So if you come here to be a member, we're covenanting to believe the Bible is true, but I can't make you.
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And that's a good way, just at a certain point, say, you know, we're not going to go any further.
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We can't.
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We have come to a fork in the road, and neither one of us are willing to go the other direction.
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So yeah, that happens.
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I'm not trying to be ugly, but you know, you proclaim the truth, and you move on.
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All right, last two things.
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Salvation in the future.
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Salvation, this is huge, because remember, if you deny penal substitutionary atonement, you've denied the very foundation of the gospel.
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So how does salvation occur? Well, man is not innately sinful.
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That's huge.
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I remember when I was in college, one of my textbooks, you open it up, one of the first lines of the textbook was, we used to believe, man used to believe that all men were sinful, but now we know.
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I don't know what happened to that.
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I remember thinking, I don't need to go any further, but now we know.
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Yeah, exactly.
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It was pretty much written off.
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There was a time when everybody understood that everybody was sinful.
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You know the American system of government is based on total depravity.
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That is why there are three branches of government, because the idea was understood that no one could be trusted with complete and absolute power.
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It's based on the idea that people are sinful.
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Yeah, and they are right.
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They are absolutely right.
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So this idea, the liberal idea that man's not innately sinful, but possesses a universal religious sentiment.
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Again, those words are oversimplification, of course, but it is true.
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They'll say, well man is religious by nature.
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You have to ask why.
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Well, you know, just the way it is.
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We would say it's because he's made in the image of God.
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Sure.
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The goal of salvation is not personal conversion, but societal improvement.
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Christ set the ultimate example of what mankind is striving for and will ultimately become.
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Again, the idea that Christ set the example of not hating his enemies and being willing to be persecuted and not fight back and blah blah blah.
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Liberal theology has characteristically uniformly denied the fall, original sin, and the substitutionary nature of the atonement.
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That is absolutely true.
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If you talk to most liberals, they will deny, number one, the historicity of the first three chapters of Genesis, or the first, well, first 11 chapters of Genesis.
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They'll deny the historicity of that.
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They will deny the sinful nature.
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Man, because if you don't believe in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, if you don't believe...
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Now, I'm not arguing necessarily that you have to believe in specific timelines, even though I think that that's important.
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I don't, but people who deny outright, I just don't believe in Adam and Eve.
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I don't believe in the garden.
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I don't believe in any of that.
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They are denying the very reason for the gospel.
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The Apostle Paul uses Adam as the example.
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He says, in Adam all die and in Christ all are made alive.
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And he says, in Adam.
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He specifically references Adam because it is the fall of Adam that brings about the destruction of mankind and it's the work of Christ that brings about the redemption.
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If there was no fall, there's no need for redemption.
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If there was no innate sinfulness, if there was no innate deadness and sin, there would be no need for regeneration.
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And all that the Bible says when Jesus says, unless a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven, that would be wrong.
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There's no need to be born again if there's no problem in the way you were born the first time.
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And that's why it's called the last Adam.
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You have the first Adam who brought destruction and sin.
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You have the last Adam who brings life and redemption.
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So this is, again, the biggest issue for me is whenever I speak to people who would identify themselves as liberal in general, a generalized term, liberal Christian, in saying that, typically what they are saying is that they deny that the Bible is completely true.
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They deny that man is completely sinful and that salvation is completely in Christ.
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And those are the three things that I think are the hallmarks of biblical Christianity.
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So again, and I'm rushing through these today because I did want to finish and my time is now coming to an end and I know today was a short lesson, but I hope it's been fruitful and helpful.
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Let's look finally at the future.
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Christ will not personally return.
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The kingdom will come to earth as a result of universal moral development.
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Now in the weeks to come, we are going to talk about liberation theology.
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Liberation theology is popularized specifically, particularly in certain cultural groups that have been oppressed and they find their salvation rather than in a spiritual salvation from sin as being more of a release from oppression, release from slavery, release from bondage.
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And that's the way salvation is typically identified, is a release of earthly things.
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And even in the modern health and wealth movement, release from poverty, you know, receive your riches.
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Well, typically in liberal theology too, there is sort of that same thing.
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It's, you know, release from depression, release from bad marriages, release from, you know, bad home lives or, you know, abuse or whatever.
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It's always about something physical.
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It's always about something in this life and typically looking forward to the life to come is not the focus.
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It's almost always something about this life.
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And thus it becomes very myopic, very worldly, and very fleshly.
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So again, absolutely, absolutely.
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I imagine she at some point said, well, I'm a daughter of the king and I must have riches because I'm the daughter of the richest, you know.
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The kingdom will come to the earth.
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Universal moral development is a, is though, if you think about it, what are we being told? And I want to, I'll hasten because then we got to go.
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What are we being told and almost every time something like, for instance, the modern issue of the bathrooms, right? The bathroom, men, women, boys, girls, men going, what are we being told? We must allow this to move forward.
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We must allow this to see progress.
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So the universal moral development that they're talking about is not what we would see as biblical moralism, but the idea is a, it's a freedom from constraint.
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Oh it is, it is, it is, but what do they say, and this is where I'll finish, what do they say, well, if you don't agree with this in the future you will see that you were on the wrong side of history.
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Have you ever heard that phrase? You've never heard the wrong side of history? Yeah, I put a video, I've shared that video about the...
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...for a gay wedding.
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Yeah.
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They're villainized, but this guy's praised for his, but that's very much a double standard.
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Well that's what I say, it's the, when it talks about the universal moral development, what it is saying, and at least from this perspective, is their particular view of morality, which is always changing.
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It's always changing.
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Yeah, let's pray.
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Father, I thank you again for a time to study, and I pray this has been fruitful for your people.
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In Jesus' name, amen.