Special January Q&A with Pastor Osman

All right, let's begin with a word of prayer, and then we'll get started if you have any questions. Let's pray.

Our Father, we are very grateful that we have this place to meet and that you have called us here by your grace and providence. We thank you that you have given us your word to give clarity on all issues pertaining to life and godliness, and pray that you would help us to think wisely and discerningly and biblically about everything in our life.

May you be glorified through that, and I pray that our time here would be special, that you would bring to our mind those things, bring to my mind those answers to questions that may be asked, and I pray that this time would be fruitful to the equipping and edifying of your saints.

Be honored here, we pray, and pray that you'd be with Jess and encourage him and bring healing to him so that he is able to return and join us again soon.

Thank you for his service to us and to this body, and we pray that your blessing might rest upon him this day, in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, question and answer. So the rule for Q &A is very simple. It's not stump the pastor, that's easy to do, but if you have questions pertaining to life or ministry or scripture or biblical interpretation or anything like that, this is your opportunity to ask that, and if I can answer it,

I will. If I can't, I will just tell you I don't know, or I'll pass on it. So if there are any questions, please raise your hands and let me know now.

Okay, I'll start with one I was asked this morning about gluttony. Is gluttony a sin, and what is gluttony?

And this is just gonna get the ball rolling a little bit. My answer to that question is that gluttony is not just something that is expressed in the eating of food, and typically we think of gluttony as associated with overindulgence or overeating of food, and it can be expressed that way.

Overeating food can also be an expression of idolatry or misplaced affection and desire. For instance, some people will overeat with food because they find comfort in food or they find satisfaction in food or they find fulfillment in food, or food can become almost a surrogate god or an idol in some sense, and so overeating is not just an expression of, it is an act of gluttony, but there are other overindulgences that can also be considered gluttonous.

You can be gluttonous with your sexual desires, you can be gluttonous with your imbibing of television or entertainment or never football games.

It's difficult to reach gluttony watching football, but other forms of entertainment can become gluttonous in some sense.

We typically associate gluttony with the overindulgence of food, but gluttony is a lack of self -control, and it can be expressed in a number of different ways, and one of the dangers that we have in assessing whether somebody is gluttonous or not is that you could look at somebody who might appear to be grossly overweight or overweight by your standard, and they might be somebody who eats like a bird, and they war against that sin constantly and they're fighting it, and yet they're not skinny as a rail.

You can look at somebody else who's skinny as a rail and they might consume 7 ,000 calories a day, and yet their body metabolizes it and passes it on and they never add a pound no matter how much overindulgence.

So it is difficult for us to assess externally whether somebody is overindulgent just by judging by appearances, because that's not always an indicator as to whether or not somebody is guilty of overindulging in anything.

It could be a medical thing, yeah. So is gluttony a sin? Yes, it is, but overindulgence or lack of self -control in anything, food or drink or sexual activity or entertainment or anything, all of those can be expressions of lack of self -control, idolatry or gluttony.

Pardon? Except football. Except football, yes, thank you for that clarification. I didn't know if I didn't mention that earlier.

Peter. Understanding that. Okay, so the question is, can

I think of something recently that in my understanding of Scripture has caused me to reevaluate a doctoral position?

That's tough, because my doctoral position has been pretty much nailed down for at least the last decade.

I can't say that in my pastoral ministry of 23 years that there have been many things where I have had a radical swing in my theology on something.

Probably the most, probably the most recent change for me in terms of my understanding of doctrine would be my understanding of the connection between my

Trinitarian theology and the work of Christ on the cross in terms of the extent of the atonement.

So when I started pastoring, I would have said, I would have considered myself a four -point

Calvinist, four -point Reformed. I would have said that the Father chose a people in eternity past and the

Spirit regenerates all those people whom the Father has chosen, but that the Son came and paid the sin price, the debt, and made atonement for everybody who ever lived, paying the price for all sin.

It was probably as working through the book of Ephesians, and this would have been in the year 2001 to 2002 that I preached through Ephesians, where that radical shift in my theology, and I call that radical because that is quite a substantial change in theology, where that radical shift took place.

It was in going through the book of Ephesians that all of a sudden for me, all of my theology had to become crystal clear and synthesized.

It had to agree with each other. All my ideas of theology had to agree with one another, and it was in the book of Ephesians that I was forced to come face to face with the electing work of the

Father and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, because that's expelled out in Ephesians chapter one, and as I was going through Ephesians chapter one,

I was studying that phrase, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. I think it's

Ephesians 1 .7. And it talks in Ephesians 1 about the work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in our salvation, and at the end of each description of each of the person's work, each of the persons of the

Trinity's work for our salvation, it says, to the praise of the glory of his grace. And so there's a division there in Ephesians chapter one where Paul is laying out the electing work of the

Father, the redeeming work of the Son, and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. And it was in Ephesians 1 that I was forced to come face to face with the fact that it is inconsistent to think, to suggest, that the

Father only intends to elect some, the Spirit only intends to regenerate some, but the Son intends to pay the price for all.

That was an inconsistency. What does it mean that he purchased our redemption?

What is redemption? Does the work of Christ on the cross only make salvation possible, and then the rest is up to us?

Did he intend to pay the sin debt for all sin, for all sinners who have ever lived, or did he intend to come and to seek and to save his people, those whom the

Father had given to him, and to pay the sin debt for them, erasing their debt before God, and effectively redeeming them?

Did he obtain eternal salvation for them, or did he make eternal salvation possible so that they could obtain it by their own faith and works?

And that was back in 2001, 2002, and that was probably the last major shift where I just, and now, since that time, that has become, for me, my theology regarding all of those issues has become more refined and more precise as the language that I use and the way that I think about those things and present the gospel has,

I've tried to bring that into conformity to my theology. All right?

I think that would probably be the last major one, or big one, yeah. Nate? Have I wrestled through all the scripture that's used by those who are on the other side of the scope of the atonement debate?

And yes, I have, because I was in that position at one time, and so I had to deal with all of those passages that seem to suggest that the atonement of Jesus Christ is unlimited in its scope and applied equally to all people.

So some of those passages would be like 1 Timothy 2, I think it's verse four, where it says, he is the savior of all men, especially those who believe.

1 John 2, 2, he is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. We saw one of those in Hebrews chapter two, where it says he tasted death for all men.

Those type of passages that speak of the atonement of Jesus Christ in terms of all,

I did have to wrestle through that. Now, I'll give you basically sort of a general way in which I deal with those passages.

I did it specifically, spent a whole message on it in Hebrews chapter two, verse four, I think it is, where it says that Christ tasted death for all men.

Spent a whole message on that when we preached through that, talking about the scope of the atonement. In that passage, Hebrews chapter four, he specifically talks about the sons whom

God is bringing to glory. He limits those for whom that he tasted death in that very context.

And so what those on the other side will often do is they will take passages that speak of him being a propitiation for all, or tasting death for all men, and they then will interpret the rest of the context in light of that reference to all.

So he tasted death for all men, means therefore every individual who has ever lived. Whereas the author of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter two makes it specific, he is bringing many sons to glory.

He is specifically speaking of those whom the father is saving and who are saved by the blood of Christ as those, it is all of them, all of us who are believers for whom he has tasted death.

It's all who believe are the ones for whom he has tasted death, not all mankind. If Christ has paid the debt of the death, the sin debt, the penalty for all people who have ever lived then why are not all people who have ever lived saved?

If indeed their debt is paid then what is the claim of divine justice upon them at the final bar of God's justice when they stand before him?

What claim does God have, what claim does the justice of God have against that individual if Christ is fully atoned for and fully paid for all of their sins?

And some people will say well because they didn't believe and so they're cast into hell for their unbelief.

Well is unbelief a sin? Yeah it is, okay, did Christ die for that sin?

If he did then why are they cast into hell for the sin of unbelief? For what are they punished? In scripture specific when hell is, when the justice of God is executed in hell people are punished and cast into hell because they're liars, they're thieves, they're blasphemers, fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, revilers, persecutors, violent aggressors, et cetera.

It is those specific violations of God's law for which they are punished. If Christ has paid the price for them and then they are punished in that stead then justice has been done twice and that is not justice.

It is not just for God to punish Christ for sin and then to punish the sinner for that same sin which is why we who are in Jesus Christ can know that our sins are forgiven and we know that the justice of God can never fall upon us because Christ has borne our sin in our stead.

And therefore the debt has been paid, the penalty has been paid, it's been taken out of the way, he has obtained eternal redemption for all of those whom he is bringing to eternal glory.

So the very simple and easy way of answering some of the supposedly unlimited passages is to say that when scripture describes the allness or uses that unlimited language

I think that in all of those passages the case can be made quite convincingly that what is intended is that Christ paid the price for all without distinction, not all without exception.

In other words, the issue in the first century church when scripture was written was are the Gentiles included in the atonement of the

Jewish high priest, Jesus, who offered himself for sinners, right? How are Gentiles saved?

And the issue for the New Testament writers is they are covered, Christ died for all men, Jews and Gentiles, Scythians and slaves,

Greeks, slaves and free men and women, et cetera. That atonement is provided, that is the atonement provided for all men without distinction,

Jews and Gentiles, not all men without exception as in every single one who has ever lived. Otherwise, nobody would go to hell.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. To save the world, right.

And verse 17 of John chapter three describes what Christ came to do with his first coming. He didn't come to bring judgment, which is what the

Jews expected when the Messiah would come, that he would come in, he would establish a kingdom, he would judge the nations. And John specifically is saying he didn't come the first time to bring judgment.

He came to bring salvation, which is what he does. And so God does love the world. And by saying that I believe that the atonement is limited to those who believe,

I'm not suggesting that God does not have any love for the non -elect. I don't believe that. I believe that he does have a love for the non -elect.

But his love for the non -elect is not the same as his love for the elect. It's not a redeeming love. There is a desire in God that desires that all men be saved.

Yes, I would not deny that. But God has all kinds of desires that he has not seen fit to ensure come to pass.

There are some desires that God has that he ensures the accomplishment of his purpose. And there are some things that God desires that for other purposes and other reasons, he does not guarantee or move to guarantee the fulfillment of that desire.

Yeah, so the question is how do we explain to unbelievers that God chose some people for the foundation of the world? I don't think the discussion of election is something

I ever bring up with an unbeliever. So in sharing the gospel with somebody, I never say, look, I'm really trying to discern if you're elect or not.

The issue is not their election because that's not the gospel. The gospel is not, hey, God has chosen some and therefore you need to see if you're one of those by believing in Christ.

The gospel message is Christ has paid the price sufficient for all who will believe. And if you will come to him, he will not turn you away and you will find that his sacrifice is sufficient to pay the penalty for your sin.

And you need to repent and believe in Christ today. So the call of the gospel is not discern whether or not you're elect.

The call of the gospel is repent and believe. So that's not even a conversation that I would ever have with an unbeliever. Yeah, I don't doubt it.

And some people would probably, some unbelievers might even object to that characterization of God's sovereignty, in which case

I would simply say that's, I don't know why you're objecting to that. Why would you object to God being sovereign in salvation when you don't even believe in this

God and you don't even want this God? So ultimately, if an unbeliever perishes, he's not getting anything he didn't desire for his entire life.

He desired to be away from God. He didn't want anything to do with God. He hated righteousness. He hates that God. And if he gets eternal judgment, he gets exactly what he desired.

In the end, both the elect and the non -elect get exactly what they wanted. Our job is to preach the gospel without any concern as to whether or not they are elect or not.

That's not even something that should come into our mind. We don't know and we can't know.

We can't know. I mean, many people would have looked at Judas Iscariot and thought he was elect, for three years of walking with Jesus.

And we just can't know that. All we can know is that here's the promise of the gospel and all who repent and believe will receive the promised forgiveness and righteousness.

And if you will not repent and believe, then you will perish and you will get exactly what it is that you desire and long for.

The non -elect are not being kept out of heaven because God is stingy with his gifts or his grace. The non -elect are not being kept out of heaven because they're not elect.

The non -elect are kept out of heaven because they will not repent and believe. And they hate the God who demands that they turn from their sin and believe on Christ.

Does that answer your question, Nate? Okay. Any other questions?

Okay, go ahead. Is it related to this? Okay, is this related to this?

Okay, ladies first. So the question is, sometimes

Christians will categorize sins and thinking these are the big ones and these are the small ones. And the small ones are not too bad and the big ones are really, really bad.

And first of all, is that a biblical way of looking at sin? And second of all, how do we do that?

In one sense, that is an unbiblical way of looking at sin that we shouldn't, because a sin might be small or insignificant, we shouldn't think that it's okay for us to commit or to think nothing of it.

We should try and mortify that sin just like we would any other sin. And we shouldn't look at people who struggle with bigger sins than we do as if, well, they're really committing or struggling trying to mortify the big ones, and I don't wrestle with that because that can create pride in our hearts.

It is true that all sin is equal in this sense that any one single sin, big or small, is enough to damn me eternally and to cause the justice of God to be executed against me.

One lie is just as worthy of eternal judgment as one act of homosexuality, and I use that one because that's the one that, as Christians, we tend to think, well, that's the big one right now.

That's the one that we're battling over in our culture. Or adultery, or Bernie Madoff -style extortion and theft.

Those are the big ones, and so I don't struggle with those, and so those are the big ones. One single lie is sufficient to damn me to the same extent that a big sin will damn me.

It is equally hideous before God in that sense. But even under the

Old Testament, not every sin was punished the same way. Some sins you could be executed for, some sins excluded you from the nation of Israel.

Some sins required restitution, some sins didn't require any kind of restitution. So there does seem to be, in God's recognition, that there is a hierarchy of sins in the sense that not every sin is serious in the sense that it's dealt with in the same way.

All right? If I had an affair on my wife, our church would handle that differently than me getting upset with my wife today because she got out of bed late.

And those are two, she chuckles because she got out of bed late. So those are two, those are two different sins, right?

But our church would handle those differently. Our church wouldn't even handle the fact that I got short with my wife this morning.

That's something that I deal with with my wife. Me having an affair with my wife, that's something of a totally different order. So are all sins equal?

In some senses, yes. In other senses, no. Depends on what we're talking about with sin. Well, sins aren't equal even though the consequences are different.

It wouldn't make sense to say sins are equal but the consequences are different because the fact that the consequences are different. Equal in the sense that God doesn't like them.

Equal in the sense that they make me guilty. Equal in the sense that it's an expression of my corruption, my corrupt nature. But not equal in the sense of the consequences of it or how it is necessarily handled.

I think that if you wanna, there's a good book on this called Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges which I think is excellent. And he goes through,

I don't know, that's 12 or 15 sins or something like that of things that we typically overlook in evangelicalism.

They're the small things that everybody, you know, our vanity, our self -seeking, our self -reliance, things like that.

And he really shows from scripture how some of these respectable sins, sins that we overlook in evangelicalism, are really damnable sins that plague us in many ways.

So that's an excellent book if you want a good book on sort of looking biblically at what we consider to be the small sins.

I would say Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges. Does that answer your question?

How do we deal with them? How do we deal with it? I think we just have to mortify. Oh, how do we deal with, how do we not be judgmental towards other people who struggle with those sins?

I think the answer to that is to preach the gospel to yourself every single day. I think when you wake up every day or at some point during the day, you just remind yourself, man,

I am a wretched sinner and here are all the ways that I have failed already today. I will probably fail 100 times before tonight, but my righteousness does not depend upon me.

And so though I have my own sins that I have to mortify, my brothers and sisters in Christ, they have their own sins that they have to mortify and all of us have to mortify different sins.

Some of us have to mortify the sin of gluttony. Some of us have to mortify the sin of self -reliance or prayerlessness or short -temperedness or greed or vanity or pride or a lying tongue.

There are all of these sins that we struggle with and everybody's struggle is different and everybody struggles with different sins to different degrees, but the remedy for all of us is the same.

We have to mortify those sins and put them to death. And I think that the way of fighting that pride or that judgmentalism is just to preach the gospel to yourself every day and remind yourself of what it is that makes you righteous on the side of God and where you would be without the gospel.

And that should humble you. The law has a way of humbling us and when we go through the law and say, man, I'm a liar, I'm a thief,

I'm a blasphemer, I'm adulterer at heart, I've coveted things that are not my own,

I've dishonored my parents, I've dishonored my God, even today, and you go through the law of God and it should have the result of, it should have the effect of humbleness.

Humble? Yeah, well, it's easy for me to say. Yes, Emily?

Is there a hierarchy in heaven and hell? What'd you say,

Josh? Multi -level. There seems to be a hierarchy of, there seems to be a hierarchy of rewards in heaven.

You look at the parables that Jesus told where the man who uses the 10 talents for the

Lord gets 10 more and the man who uses the five talents gets five more. It's not the man who uses the five talents well that is given 20 talents so that everybody has the same in heaven.

Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 about the resurrected bodies differing from one another in glory like the stars in heaven differ from one another.

I think that there is some connection between how we use our time, talents, and treasure here on earth and the rewards that we will get for that in heaven.

I don't expect that my rewards will be the same as John MacArthur's rewards. I don't expect that my rewards will be the same as Charles Spurgeon or the

Apostle Paul. I think that there will be a differing in glory and a differing of rewards. And that may sound, you may think, well,

I share the Lord with my parent or my sibling on their deathbed and they believed for like a week before they died and so what's their reward gonna be?

Whatever their reward will be in heaven, it will be appropriate to them and there will be,

I don't think, I know, there will be no covening of one another's rewards in heaven.

I'm not gonna get there and covet what God blessed John MacArthur with. I will be satisfied with what I get.

All of us will be satisfied with what we have and what we have used for the Lord. We will find delight in that and satisfaction in it however large or small it is because it will be by the apportionment of God's grace that we even have those rewards.

So is there a hierarchy in heaven? I think that there will be a difference in the levels of service, the levels of glory, the level of reward, recognition in heaven.

I do think that that hierarchy will exist. Everything that we read about the rewards in heaven seems to indicate that.

In one sense, we're all given the same reward, that is we get eternal life and we get glory and forgiveness and righteousness for all of eternity.

That's the same for everybody, whether you serve a whole 12 hours according to the parable or whether you serve two hours at the end of the day according to the parable.

We all are going to get that same reward but for the works done in the body, there will be a suffering of loss and there will be a gaining of reward and that will differ person to person, ministry to ministry.

But I can't, you know the reward that I might get for serving faithfully for my whole life as pastor of a church, a small church in North Idaho, that's not gonna be the same reward that John MacArthur gets for having a worldwide international ministry that has affected countless millions.

It's not gonna be the same reward. I'm actually quite content with that and I don't expect that same reward. It wouldn't be just for me to get that reward but God has not made me the pastor of a church of 5 ,000 people in Sun Valley, California with a ministry that reaches around the world.

He has not given me that to be faithful in so I don't expect a reward that would be commensurate as if I had been faithful in that.

I'm happy to be faithful, I'm content to be faithful in what God has given to me and then expect whatever reward that is gonna be for that faithful service and I will delight in it and I will be thankful for it for all of eternity.

In hell, let me answer the other side of it because that answers the heaven side of it. In hell, there does seem to be levels of torment in hell because Jesus said it'll be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than it will be for Bethsaida and Chorazin because of the light that they rejected.

And so the punishment in hell, the hierarchy in hell seems to be in scripture determined by the amount of light that one rejected and the gravity of one's sins in light of that light rejected.

So Jesus said those who, Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented, those are the cities, yeah,

Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented at, no, Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah and one greater than Jonah is here and so the punishment for Bethsaida and Chorazin who saw the bulk of Jesus' ministry would be greater than the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah because they had the

Son of God in their midst. So there does seem to be a hierarchy in hell depending on the light that one rejected and the sins, the gravity of the sins committed in that light.

The lowerarchy? Right, true, heaven is the hierarchy, hell is the lowerarchy. Thank you for that clarification, that's good.

Yes, isn't the point of the rewards in heaven, yeah, so isn't the reward in heaven the point of the glory of God since it's not really what we get but how

God is glorified in the works that we have done? I don't know why, I don't think that we have to choose between those two options,

I think that it can be both. We can say that the rewards that we receive in heaven, we will turn around and recognize this is what

God has done through me, right, that God accomplished this, he worked and willed in me to do his good pleasure and so he gives us the position to serve, he gives us the gifts to serve, he gives us the opportunity to serve, he gives us the energy to serve and then he brings fruit from that service and then he rewards us for that fruit.

And so that reward, I think, will be both something that we look at as I'm thankful that the Lord did this and I have gained this reward but also something that we look at and say if it weren't for the work of God, I would have never had either the opportunity, the means or the ability to gain this reward at all.

I think it can be both of those things at the same time. Yes, Jenny, church history question, okay.

Yeah, yeah, so good question, how do we describe or talk about pre -reformation believers or Christians because during the dark ages, and this is true, they didn't have scripture like we have it, they didn't have understanding like we have it.

So was everybody prior to October 31st, 1517 when Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenberg Church, were all of them unbelievers who were perishing or were there genuine

Christians back then? And I think that an honest study of church history will show that there were genuine Christians back then.

I've done some, I've gone through some classes that James White has taught on church history and found it very helpful because he specifically, one of the things that he says that is helpful is oftentimes we, from our perspective on this side of the

Reformation, with all the truth that we have and the knowledge that we have from scripture and the availability of truth to us, oftentimes we look back on those who lived prior to the

Reformation, the dark ages, and we try to judge their salvation or their understanding by the gauge of what we understand today.

And that's not always accurate. Just because somebody had a misunderstanding regarding baptism or communion or something does not necessarily mean that they didn't have saving faith.

So we have to look at something different than did they have a warped view on baptism or did they have a weird view of communion or did they have a weird view of the connection between church and state.

Those things don't necessarily indicate salvation. And I think that an honest evaluation of church history would show that there were a remnant of believers all the way through all of those ages of church history.

Did they look and sound theologically identical to us? No, they didn't. But neither would many of our brothers and sisters around the world who don't enjoy the same blessings that we do.

So we have to be careful to say that everybody who lived prior to the Reformation was an apostate heretic, because that's not true.

Neither were they all saved because they attended mass every Sunday and the Pope blessed some things over top of them.

They're not saved that way either. It's a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. I think it's fair to say that those who understood the essence of the gospel back then and believed upon Jesus Christ, and there's lots of evidence that there were lots of those people, they were believers, even though they lived under a corrupt religious system that kept the truth from the people for millennia.

For centuries, I should say, not millennia. For centuries. So that's a really good question. Yeah. Okay, so you're arguing from the other side.

If there were no believers at that time, God would have wiped them out. That would have been, yeah. I mean, that is one way of arguing that there had to have been some sort of a remnant.

I would argue there was a remnant because God has always been at work building his church, and that never stopped throughout church history.

Their ability to express genuine saving faith would have been different than our ability to express it.

You're in a, you know, let me give you an illustration. You're in a good church with a clear doctrinal statement and clear biblical preaching every

Sunday, whether I do it or not. I'm not saying anything about me specifically, but all of those who teach and speak here, we're very clear on what the gospel is, and we work very hard at helping you to clearly articulate exactly what justification by faith looks like and sounds like.

You'd never been exposed to that. You could still have genuine saving faith because of what you heard or understood, because you had read it in scripture or heard it from a pulpit.

You could still have genuine saving faith, and yet, because of the environment in which you grow up and live and serve and worship with other people who think they're

Christians, you could be very stunted in your spiritual understanding and maybe live your entire life back then without the same blessing that you might enjoy now just by being here for a few years, the clarity that you would get out of being in this environment.

So we can't say that those people were unaffected by their environment, but we can't say that they were necessarily, their environment was them either.

Right, Martin Luther was a Catholic, and God saved him just by his reading of scripture, right? He came to a saving faith just by reading

Romans chapter one about the gospel and the righteous, the just shall live by faith, and he was radically saved, and so was

Luther right on everything? I don't think he was, and I think his life shows a trajectory of abandoning certain aspects of papal

Roman Catholicism and embracing of certain things that we today would consider essentials of the faith.

And before Luther, there were morning stars like Tyndale and Wycliffe and others who lived, and they shepherded little groups of people in their own locations, and some of them are lost to history.

We have to remember this, that not everybody who was saved back then wrote books and is known to us today. We know of Wycliffe and Tyndale because they wrote, and their stuff has been preserved for us, but we shouldn't think that Wycliffe and Tyndale were the only believers who lived between 300

AD and 1517 until Martin Luther was there. I mean, there was Wycliffe's and Tyndale's and Jan Hus' and all those guys all around Europe and all around Italy and all those areas.

Those men existed, and just because they didn't write didn't mean that they didn't understand the essence of the gospel and shepherd their people well and lead little groups and conclaves of genuine, true believers who were genuinely saved.

In many ways, it's the same as today, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

All right, any other questions? Ron. There is an appropriateness in rejoicing that evil is taken out of the world.

I don't think it's ever appropriate to rejoice that innocent people are killed in any way, even if it is to remove evil.

We don't rejoice in that. When the wicked perish from the earth, the righteous rejoice, that's what the

Psalms say. There should be something in us that longs to see righteousness done and wickedness removed.

When a government, when a government does basically the one thing that God says it should do, which is use the sword for the punishment of evildoers, we should rejoice that a government does that.

When a government misuses that power and destroys innocent lives, we should not rejoice over that.

Do I delight in the removal of evil from the earth? I do. Do I delight or take joy in the fact that that person is in hell or that other sinners who are not necessarily innocent who might have been with him are in hell?

I don't delight in that. So there is a conflict of emotions that I think should be present within us, at least it's within me.

There's a conflict of emotion with me where I say, yes, I'm glad that somebody who was intending to do harm to innocent people was taken out.

I rejoice over that. If innocent people died in the process, I don't rejoice over that.

I don't rejoice that somebody died and went to hell. That doesn't bring me any joy. It does bring me joy and delight that evil was removed and that he is no longer able to perpetrate those evil acts.

That I do rejoice in. So am I happy that people go to hell? No. Am I happy that evil has been taken out of the way?

Yes. I wish that the government, I wish that all governments did more of using the sword to punish the evildoer than they would to use the power of the purse to tax its people and provide healthcare or whatever else.

I mean, there's one thing that our government should be doing and when it does it, I sometimes am in awe that we are actually conflicted as to whether or not this is a good thing or not.

This is the thing that God has called it to do. So when it does it, I'm like, okay, good. That's good. I want evil to be punished.

That's the role of government. So when it does that, I rejoice that it's doing what it was ordained by God to do.

What vexes me is when it does what it's not ordained by God to do. That's what should vex us.

So there is a conflict of emotions in me. And somebody may look at that and say, well, that seems convoluted.

It should be black and white to you or whatever. Maybe it is to you. For me, it's a mixture of emotions. So I don't think we can get away from, we can't, you look at the imprecatory

Psalms, for instance. I think it's fully one third of the Psalms have some sort of imprecatory element.

By imprecatory element, I mean a prayer against or a statement of the justice of God against evildoers. Imagine if a third of the songs that we sung on a given

Sunday morning had to do with God destroying his enemies, wiping them with blood, and removing them from their office, and wiping out their children, and taking away their inheritance, and blotting them out from the book of life.

If a third of or half of our songs that we sung every Sunday morning, if it expressed that, you'd be like, there's something wrong with this church.

And yet, when you read through the Psalms, that's what you get, and that was the worship manual for the nation of Israel and the theocratic kingdom.

It was much imprecatory Psalms for the removal of evil men from our midst. And I don't think that it's wrong.

Now, I don't get up and pray this, imprecatory Psalms on a Sunday morning, because I think that our use of that desire can be misused and misunderstood.

But I have prayed for the destruction of God's enemies, and sometimes by name.

And it's not because I hate these people. It's because I love the righteousness of God. And so my desire to see evil eliminated,

I think, is the other side of my desire to see righteousness established. And if I'm praying imprecatory

Psalms towards somebody because I hate them, then that's a wrong desire. If I'm praying imprecatory

Psalms because I want this evil to stop, I think that that's a right desire. And so I think that the use of that element in our prayer and our desire can be holy and good and true.

It needs to be measured, and I think it needs to be used with great caution and self -examination. How do you pray about abortion doctors?

How do you pray about people who are promoting the death of innocent people in our midst constantly?

How do you pray about that? I want it to stop. And if it means their destruction, then I want it to be destroyed.

If the advancement of God's righteousness means the destruction of evil and evil men, I want the advancement of God's righteousness.

And I don't think that that's, at least I'm not convicted that that's a sinful desire on my part yet. It would be, and I have prayed for their salvation as well.

I don't just pray for their judgment or destruction. I have prayed for the salvation of people that I know are involved in acts of evil and wickedness.

I don't just pray for their destruction, but I don't think it's inappropriate to pray for the destruction of God's enemies, even by name, if that's what it takes.

So that's a difficult and conflicting, I think, desire in our hearts.

And I don't know, at least for me right now, I don't know how you resolve that in a way that's gonna satisfy everybody.

I'll just tell you, for me, I got one foot in both sides of that camp. Yes, since you haven't asked a question yet.

Go ahead. Right, yeah.

How does one settle or deal, this is the question, how does one settle or deal with having people that we know who are

Christians who either hate or love the current administration, no matter what it is? For me, even in the process of the last election, here's how

I evaluated that, or here's how I analyzed that. I refused to be drug into a camp that is either for or against any individual.

And for years, I was in that camp. If he had an R behind his name, then it was credited to him as righteousness.

And no matter what he could do, or no matter what he did, it was good, and you had to defend it.

And if it had a D behind his name, then we had to oppose it, no matter what they did or what they believed, and that's the mentality that our nation has fallen into.

And the more that we are away from God and the more highly politicized our culture gets, the more that divide is going to,

I think, increase, and the more tribalistic that we become. And we just become tribalistic.

Where with those who are on the other side of the aisle, we can't even agree on anything anymore. We have to have everything brought into, we have to take our football games and make it a political thing so that it divides us into tribes.

And I just, in my own mind, in this environment, this is what I'm hyper aware of, that I refuse to be put into a tribe or a group that either has to say everything he does is great or everything he does is horrible.

Does he do great things? He's doing some great things, yeah. Done some great things, fantastic things. Has he done some stupid things?

He's done a lot of stupid things. There's things that he says on Twitter that I just think, really? And there are things that he does and doesn't do that I agree with, and there are things that he does and doesn't do that I disagree with.

And as Christians, why can't we just step back and say, no matter who it is, I don't have to either say it's all bad or it's all good.

And I don't have to ignore what is bad in order to say, well, he's doing good things, and therefore, I'm gonna ignore all of this stuff.

I think, as adults, we have to be able to think in categories and terms and be able to make distinctions and to say, yeah, this thing that he did here, this is really good.

It was a good thing. Did you ever think you would hear a President of the United States call abortion the execution of an innocent human being at the

State of the Union address? Can't we say that it's good? Has he done things in his past that are horrible? Yeah, he has, but he said some things that are good and done some things that are good.

He's done a lot of things to advance our ball and to move it down the court a little bit. We can appreciate that.

Has he done some things that are stupid that we would disagree with? Yes, he has. Why can't we just be honest about that and say, so people ask me, are you pro -Trump or against Trump?

Depends on what day of the week it is. There are days of the week when I wake up and I think, I'll never vote for that guy again. And then the next day I wake up and I think,

I'm gonna go down and vote for him two, three, four times if that's what it takes. So, and every day it changes and when it comes down to, when

I go in and cast my vote, am I gonna vote for him or not gonna vote for him? That might come down to what he said or tweeted the day before. It might come down to who's on the other side of it.

There are people on the other side of the aisle who wanna end our way of life. They wanna put you in prison for what you believe and how you live. And they're honest about it.

They're not even holding those cards close to their chest anymore. They're honest about it. And so, would

I vote for him? I might, yeah, I might as an act of self -preservation. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that there's some legitimacy to that.

Do I want our leaders to be righteous and good? I do, but I don't live in a righteous and good world. And so I have very low expectations for those who lead us politically.

Right, just leave me alone and don't end my way of life. I mean, that's a pretty low bar. And if they can do that,

I'm willing to give them my vote in today's world. But neither should I, neither do I feel obligated that just because I happen to agree with somebody on something that I have to overlook everything they do that's evil or wrong and defend it.

I don't defend it. I've had people say, well, what about Trump did this? And you're right, I don't defend that. I mean, I don't feel obligated to defend that.

So, all right, those were some good discussions. So thank you. Let's bow in prayer and we'll be, we're done.

We're about five minutes over. Father, we do thank you again for the clarity that your word offers on some of these things and pray that our time spent here and thinking through these things would serve to edify and equip us and encourage our hearts together in the truth.

Pray that you'd help us to think critically and biblically in these very troubling and disturbing times in which we live. Help us to evaluate everything in light of your word and to constantly examine our hearts so that we might know that we are in the faith and that we are walking in obedience to your truth.

We love you and we thank you for your grace and for this time and pray your blessing on our worship service and the preaching of your word to follow in Christ's name, amen.