47. Painting Sin With Virtue Signals

Painting Sin With Virtue Signals

Welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 47, Painting Sin with Virtue Signals. One of the most helpful books that I've ever read was Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices by the great Puritan Thomas Brooks.

In that book, which is more like a handbook on how to avoid the toxic schemes of hell, Brooks lays out common ways that the enemy so quickly entraps us. Along with precious gospel remedies that we can employ to avoid temptations that he brings.

Now, last week we began looking closely at the first of these devices and remedies, which we called the bait of Satan. And this week we will continue again, looking at how Satan paints sin with virtuous colors.

The Bait of Satan and the Problem of Virtue Signaling

Section one, Painting Sin with Virtue Signals. In the deepest recesses of the human psyche, like a Balrog sleeping in the depths of Moria, exists an unquenchable torrent of guilt that cannot be assuaged by the putting on of virtues.

And yet the madness of the human condition is this, although we cannot succeed in so doing, surely we will try, try again. In fact, virtue signaling exists to distract us from the inherent guilt that we all know is festering inside of us, like a boil ready to unleash its murky poison.

Imprinted upon the sickly soul of man is the unavoidable knowledge that all of us have sinned and fallen short of our creator's glory, Romans 3 .23. But instead of reckoning with this holy God, the brittle soul of man suppresses this embarrassing knowledge in abject wickedness, Romans 1 .18.

Faced with the foul pollution of our own contaminated character, we pretend that we are virtuous because we cannot stand the terror of how sin has mangled us. That is why organizations like Planned Parenthood when referring to the grisly murder of a million infants per year uses the benign slogan, women's healthcare.

The human ego cannot bear the horror and the culpability of knowing that they have created the most extensive serial killing ring in human history. So with euphemisms turned into ad campaigns, they disguise their offer corruptions and attempt to convince the own looking world that they are in fact the ones who are righteous.

And if you disagree with them, then you are the real monster on the level of a Hitler or Stalin. This is why Democrats in 2020 were wearing the I can't breathe t-shirt commemorating the unfortunate and untimely death of George Floyd.

Because with a tattered legacy of being pro-slavery, pro-racism and pro-Jim Crow and the perpetrator of a litany of violences against the non-white races, the Democrats must constantly play moral whack-a-mole to forget who they were and to convince everyone else that they are now the ones who are unstained.

And should you defy their clever ad campaign or wordsmithing, you will be thoroughly canceled, tossed into a basket of deplorables, doxed and then deemed unfit for polite society. Their guilt is what is fueling their senselessness.

But as Christians, let us not puff out our hollow chest while doing a little conservative jig with the Pharisees either. Everyone virtue signals to some degree or another, but no one wants to face, because no one wants to face the dragons that are hiding within.

We cannot as Christians pretend that this is a game that the pagans only play. When we lie, we paint with strokes called, I was only kidding. When we foment with anger, it was their stupidity that caused it, right?

When we're cut off by the reckless driver, we deem them unfit for the road or for travel. And yet when we do the exact same thing, we are the ones who have an excellent reason for doing so. Perhaps the most constant and revolting aspect of our sin is that it's so morbidly and hideously ugly that our souls not only scramble to hide from it, to cloak ourselves from it, or to redefine it as something more pleasant, but we also end up foregoing true repentance because of it in exchange for pitiful excuses and virtue signals.

Our sin is deadly and without Christ, we are truly hopeless. Section two, the death of signaling and the dawn of virtue. 2 ,000 years ago, the divine author that we rejected penned himself into his own master epic, taking upon himself the weight of the tragedy that his characters deserved.

And unlike us, Jesus Christ came and did not participate in the charades or dawn the theater masque of Thallium, the pulmonary. He did not feign righteousness or masquerade with any contrived or pretended holinesses.

Instead, he lived authentically as the God-man before us. Instead of pacifying guilt, which all of us do, in which he had none, he assuaged the wrath of almighty God for his elect. It was for them that he came, that all who are in Christ now can be set free from the toil of shame and misery to live in the glorious freedom of serving him.

Christ's death on the cross hammered the death nail into our hollow excuses, our hollow performances, our pantomiming righteousness and our need to parody true virtue because we have none in and of ourselves.

And it dawned, his crucifixion and resurrection dawned a new era of new creation where we can now live with peace with God and life by the Holy Spirit on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Today, we are called to lift up our heads from the slop buckets and from the muck that's running up and over the troughs of sin instead of doing engaging in that old sloppy practice, we are now to look forever more to our Redeemer, the Lord of true godliness and virtue and to do that because we must do that.

We have to understand four essential gospel remedies for our sin. That is laid out by the Puritan pastor Thomas Brooks so that we can experience victory in our war against the world, the flesh and the wily schemes of the devil.

As fellow sinners, will you join me as we look at four remedies against our sin. Remedy one, seeing sin for what it is. Brooks notes that we break into an ugly panic stricken run, we would scream and run for yonder hills if we saw sin for what it really is, if we saw it as it really appears.

This is why Satan and our flesh incessantly downplay sin and cloak it in virtuous colors because the actual site of our rebellion is utterly detestable. No matter how alluring and how honorable that that evil appears, you and I must remember that if we could see it with true sight and the way that God himself sees it, that it would be the most ghastly and revolting visage that our eyes could ever behold.

If we could see things as Christ sees them, we would spy the deranged wolf that's hiding under the lambskins and we would see the full menacing nature of the dragon breathing murderous threats under the cloak of an angel of light.

Therefore, the first remedy for the Christian against sin and temptation is to know what sin is. It is hemlock to the heart, raw sewage to the senses. It is radioactive isotopes upon the mind and iocane powder to the soul.

If we do not recognize sin for what it is, then we are defenseless to the death and damage and destruction that it brings. Even as Christians. While sin cannot ultimately separate us from God, it can sully our relationship with him and rob us of thrilling joy.

Mortifying Sin by the Spirit

Remedy two, ending the virtue signaling. Knowing how aberrant the sin is, a Christian must be the very last person on earth who virtue signals. As Brooks says, the dangerous venom is too often to be found under the sweetest flower.

The fairest glove is often drawn upon the foulest hand. The richest robes are often put upon the filthiest bodies. So are the foulest and the sweetest names given to the greatest and most horrible vices.

Thomas Brooks. Instead of empty and dead virtue signals, let us deal with our sin in the way that Christ has already given us. Instead of hiding from it, we have to expose it. Instead of allowing it to fester in some buried cavern of the heart, we have to dig it up and mortify it by the work of the spirit, Romans 8 .13.

That is how the Christian is to live. And that is how we will experience true life in his name. By mortifying our sin, by exposing it for what it is, by understanding what it is, and by running and fleeing from it.

Let us be encouraged to do that work in the power of the spirit. Remedy three, remembering sin's loveliness is only temporary. Brooks notes until we have sinned, Satan is a parasite, but after we have sinned, he is a great tyrant, Thomas Brooks.

Just as a fly drinks in the sweet nectar of the Venus trap, we can be assured that sin's true form will be exposed to us in the end. In this life, the seeds of evil go down with a hint of honey, but soon they grow into the most bitter wormwood that we've ever tasted.

This is true of any sin that you participate in. It goes down sweet and comes out awful. But in the life to come, it will be revealed even for more of what it is. The robes of her malefaction will be completely thrown off.

The vile abominations of what sin is will be revealed and it will torment the reprobate in hell forever in its true form without the ability to flee. As Christians, we must remember that the loveliness of sin in this life and in the life to come is but an illusion.

It's a mirage amid scorching deserts. It's an eternal razor blade hidden among a mass of tropical bubblegum. We have to remember and recall that future miseries are going to spawn from very temporary pleasures so that we can flee these things together now in the present before they take root.

And may the spirit of God aid us in that work. Remedy four, recalling what sin has done to our Savior. Above all else, we must never forget what the faintest and smallest sins have done to our spotless and perfect Lord.

Brooks tells us even those very sins that Satan paints and puts new names and new colors upon cost the very blood, the noblest blood, the lifeblood, the heartblood of the Lord Jesus Christ, Thomas Brooks.

It was for a single drop of fleeting pleasure that an ocean of God's wrath was poured on him. It was for every wittle whoopsie and it was for all of the things that we say that were honest mistakes, even the mildest microaggressions that slipped off of our lips.

That is what caused the thorny daggers to mire our Savior's brow. It was for the tritest iniquities that Christ was pierced through, scorned and mocked on the hill called Calvary. It was for the whitest lies and the most minuscule tall tales that our Savior bled and died.

This is what it cost him. By remembering the awful brutality that our dear Savior encountered and the spiritual suffering that the author and perfecter of our faith endured for us, we can be encouraged to fly away from our sin, all sin, even the ones that seem small to us in the moment and even the ones that still have ascendancy in our heart.

We must fly from them. We must kill them. We must mortify them. Brooks closes out his chapter by saying this. So that when we consider that our sin is what has slain our Lord Jesus, ah, how it should provoke our hearts to be revenged on sin.

Our sin, which has murdered the Lord of glory and has done mischief that all the devils in hell could never do, it was very good counsel that one gave when he said, never let go out of your mind the thoughts of a crucified Christ.

Let that thought be food and drink unto you. Let them be your sweetness and consolation, your honey and your desire, your reading and your meditation, your life, your death and your resurrection. Conclusion.

As we revisit the truth that Thomas Brooks discovered in 1652, let us be reinvigorated by them today. Let us make war with our sin. Let us expose it for what it is. Let us remember that virtue signaling is not making sin less dangerous.

It's hiding how dangerous it truly is. Let us remember that sin's loveliness is only a temporary mirage and an illusion. And let us remember what our sin has done to our Savior. Let you and I avoid the veneer of virtue signaling and resist the temptation to tuck our sins away like poison without dealing with it adequately.

Let you and I flee to the arms of our dear and perfect Savior for comfort. And let us stand in the power of the Holy Spirit to live differently in the days ahead. That is my prayer. Amen and amen. Thank you so much for listening to the broadcast.

It's my hope that these episodes are encouraging to you and they will strengthen you in your faith. I hope that you will share these and get them out to anyone who you think also might be encouraged by them.

But until next time, I hope that you are blessed. Cling to your Savior, mortify your sin, and we'll see you next time on the broadcast. God bless.