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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen.
Welcome back. This is Chris Arntzen. Thankfully, the Lord enabled us to return to the live streaming, and we thank you for your patience on Iron Sharpens Iron. Many of you know that we've been occasionally experiencing technical difficulties for reasons we can't determine yet, but God willing, those will be completely ironed out in the very near future.
Keep praying for us. But as I was saying at the very outset of the program today, I'm very excited that I have today with me on Iron Sharpens Iron, as guests for the very first time, two pastors within the same denomination.
We have Pastor Craig Troxell of Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois, on the phone with us today. Pastor Troxell is also Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and Adjunct Professor of Ministerial Studies at Mid-America Reform Seminary in Dyer, Indiana, and it's my honor and privilege, first of all, to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time, Pastor Craig Troxell.
And also we have co-hosting with me in studio here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Pastor Jody Morris, who is the pastor of Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, and it's my honor and privilege to have you for the very first time in studio or as a co-host or guest on Iron Sharpens Iron.
It's great to have you on the program today. Thank you, Chris. It's great to be here. And today we are going to be discussing, with all the heart, thinking again about what you know, love, and choose.
And before we even go into this theme, I would like each of you men to introduce our listeners to your congregations with an abbreviated description of what you do and what makes you unique over at your respective churches.
First of all, our guest, Pastor Craig Troxell, tell our listeners something about Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton.
50 years, 55 to be exact, I believe, and it is a four other churches, and so it's experienced steady, would be the better word, steady growth over the years. And I would say that the distinctive ministry given to Bethel Church would actually be simply the means of grace.
There's nothing fancy about what we do, and most people that attend our church would probably describe it as simple form. It's architectural minimalism with tan brick, and so it's kind of a unique church, even among our denominational church.
I would say that steady ministries, just being here for more than 10 years or so. I've been here eight years, and that's about it. And Pastor Jody Morris,.
Tell us something about the Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church here in Carlisle.
Yes, Redeemer's located right here in Carlisle, and we've been here for 12 years now. We started as a church plant those years ago, and I came a couple of years into the church's existence and am its first pastor and continue to serve here and love the congregation and enjoy this community.
And some of the distinctives of our congregation are probably something similar to what you heard Craig say. We focus on the ministry of the Word and sacrament. Our motto on the church sign says, Worshipping God through Word and sacrament.
We're right there on the corner of York and Petersburg. If you've seen our sign, then you know where we are, and we welcome you.
Great. Well, it's great to have you on the program. And some of our listeners, just to be a little bit more clear about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, they may be totally unfamiliar with the more conservative or evangelical or Bible-based Presbyterian churches.
They may be only familiar with the very liberal mainline Protestant church down the road who may describe itself as Presbyterian. Perhaps, Pastor Craig, if you could give us just an abbreviated history lesson about what happened that brought about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church as a denomination during the fundamentalist modernist controversy.
No, you just captured it well. It comes right out of that controversy, a time when mainline church members were becoming frustrated and missionaries of the gospel and were distancing themselves from those very core tenets and beliefs that Bible-believing Christians had always clung to, like the virgin birth of Christ or his bodily resurrection, things like this.
And so, in the 1930s, that's exactly what explains the birth of our denomination. The flashpoint was missions and a concern that we had missionaries that were no longer interested in the exclusive claims of Christ and things like this, and that's basically how our denomination began.
You could say it's the organization of Princeton Seminary, which for over 100 years had basically taught the same doctrine and had been teaching...
And out of that, the Westminster Theological Seminary, too, correct?
Sure. Yeah, that's also the same people that started, probably foremost among those forefathers, but he died a very, very early denomination. But it very quickly decided the case whether or not we'd be ruled by a person or heavily influenced by just one person, or if we were a true Presbyterian Church that believes in the plurality of leadership.
Great. And I know that you're also adjunct professor of ministerial studies at MidAmerica Reform Seminary, which has become affectionately known as MARS. I know that he's retired now, but if you ever bump into Dr. Nelson Klosterman, say hello to him for me.
He's a good friend of.
Mine. Yeah.
And hoping to have him back on my program again in the near future. Pastor Morris, did you want to say something there?
Well, I just wanted to add, while we're talking about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a fellow pastor in our denomination shared a great thought for many people, I imagine, who wonder what we mean by Orthodox.
He said, Orthodoxy is to biblical teaching what orthodontistry is to teeth. We make things straight.
Right. That's right. In fact, that's what the word means, right? Straight.
Right. Exactly.
And yes, this is no connection to the Eastern Orthodox branches of Christendom, as many people may mistakenly think from that name as well. And we're also, during our discussion on the heart today, we are going to be promoting two conferences.
One is actually a Reformation Day celebration on Friday, October 30th at 7 p .m. at the Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where our guest, Pastor Craig Troxell, will be speaking on lost treasures for our postmodern times, the Puritan theology of the heart.
And for more information, you can go to that website, RedeemerOPC, which stands for Orthodox PresbyterianChurch .org, RedeemerOPC .org. And then, on November 13th, through Saturday, November 14th, that's Friday, November 13th, through Saturday, November 14th, the Dallas-Fort Worth Reformation Conference will be held at MidCities Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bedford, Texas.
And that theme is also going to be on, with all your heart, thinking again about what you know, love, and choose. And that is featuring our guest today in Iron, Sharp, and Zion, A. Craig Troxell. And the website to get more information on that conference is MC, which stands for MidCities, OPC, for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, .org, MCOPC .org.
And hopefully, I will remember to repeat that a couple of times before the end of the broadcast. But first of all, obviously, I think it would be very appropriate, since we're talking about the heart today, a word that's very used, overused, and misused, if you could give us.
A definition of the heart. One way to approach it would be this way. I think the simplest way to put it is that the heart is the governing center of a person. The Bible's most loved word, most often used word, to describe who we are within, in the inner person.
But you can look at it two ways, in that the word heart in Scripture is a term that has simplicity to it. So it reflects that inner unity. But the way the word heart works in Scripture, it's also a couple different nuances.
And it's able then, as one word, to bring in the complexity of that same inner being. So it's both simple, and yet it's a complex term. And we can get into different ways of what that means, or how to explain it.
And that complexity, I think, is in three branches. And that's probably what we'll get into later. So that's how I would call it. I would call it the heart is the governing center, it's in the driver's seat, it's your heart, side to it, and a complexity.
And do you think that the words heart and mind are very often used interchangeably, and perhaps sometimes in an incorrect way? Or how would you separate the two?
Well, the way I would, I would different meanings in Scripture. I mean, most often, so when you see the word heart, it's the unity of who you are within, much in the same way the soul, or spirit, or inner man, or conscience.
But the heart, in many contexts, has a particular nuance to it. And that nuance is tilted either towards the mind, the word you just used, or the desires, or the will. Many times, one of those three aspects of what the heart is being reflected there, it's stressing that aspect of the word mind, for instance.
Many times, it's clearly what's in view in Scripture is the mind. But they're not exactly the same thing. In fact, the way, is that the mind is a portion of your heart. It's that knowing part of your heart.
And so like in Psalm 139, it ends saying, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. Well, clearly what's in view there is the mind, the cognitive part of who we are, our understanding.
But David, the psalmist there is using them almost interchangeably. So there's sometimes when it is interchangeable. And there's many times you have translations that will have the word mind, or sense, or something like that, and the word underneath it is heart.
That's what's.
Literally there in the text. And do you think that people often speak in a wrong way, Christians, modern evangelicals speak in a wrong way in their reflections upon making the mind perhaps less a desirable element of the Christian faith and presenting the gospel than the heart?
Today, you have people who perhaps overemphasize a sentimental understanding of the and view the mind as something only involved in dry, dull, lifeless intellectualism,.
If you follow what I'm saying. Yeah, no, you're right on it. And that's a very important thing you're presenting. And the way that we have to see that in Scripture is that the heart and the minds are always friends, not seen as having competing interests.
In fact, there are some that would say that—in fact, one of them, Hans Walter Wulf, who wrote Anthropology of the Old Testament, he wrote that in by far the greatest number of intellectuals in the Old Testament, it has the rational functions and view.
So if we're going to say that the heart does one thing in Scripture, it thinks. And so this is the word that's used to bring in meditating, insights, all those sorts of things. In the Bible, you do not want to pit the mind against the heart when, in fact, the heart comprehends the mind.
But there are those times when you find both of them, in the same sentence, like, say, the Great Commandment, where Christ is asked, you know, what's the Great Commandment? In Matthew 22, 37 and following, he says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, cases like that.
Well, your singer is simply redundancy, which Scripture loves to do, one with the other. But that should not put us off. In my research—and this is not really that controversial of a statement—among biblical scholars, and especially, the heart thinks.
And what's interesting is it spikes in its use, especially in wisdom literature. So this word heart appears over 200 times in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, for instance. That's where you see its most common use.
What are these books about? And so, in fact, it's interesting that, you know, in Scripture, like, it says he has an understanding heart or a listening heart, but sometimes it's not translated that way.
It's like he's a man of wisdom. Well, literally, it's a man of heart. And so, it's very helpful to help us to appreciate that the whole idea of heart, apology in the Bible, that area of your heart, the mind, rather, is a part of your heart.
Where you meditate, reflect, etc., etc. I'm very intrigued by the topic, theme, or title of your Reformation Day celebration on Friday, October 30th, scheduled to be held at the Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Lost Treasures for Our Postmodern Time, the Puritan Theology of the Heart.
If you could, before we even go into some other definitions that I want to ask you to describe, if you could give us a breakdown of that very intriguing title.
I maintain, and I should maybe say this, this is a book I'm writing, actually done, it's basically Puritan theology, which also happens to be what modern biblical scholarship is saying about the heart, that the heart is these three areas, the mind, the desires, and the will.
And the Puritans understood this, they worked with this, and you see it in places like John Owen and the book The Mortification of Sin, which is a tremendously insightful work. But you see it in other works as well, and you don't see them, you just see them using it, and assume you call the desires of the heart what they call the affection.
So, they were very, very concerned that particular part of the heart, what is it that we love, what do we want, and the desires of the heart. But as you probably know, they're very strong on the will, and that you can't, and then if the Puritans emphasize anything, it was very, very dense, appealing to all three of these things are assumed in their writing, and they weave in and out of these categories.
So that's where that, I'm not saying anything new for these conferences, just simply going back and realizing that our Puritan forefathers, especially at their best, were articulating in very precise, very descriptive, helpful ways, really drilling down into who are we within.
And that's why when you read them, so oftentimes you feel like you're underneath an x-ray machine, or under a microscope, and you're being taken apart, as it were, and then put back together. That's because they understood this.
So, Craig, what you're saying so far,.
If I understand you, is that while the heart and mind are not contrasted, but coordinated in Scripture, they're not at war with one another, but one is the expression of the other, perhaps, at least a portion of the expression of the heart, the mind is.
Additionally, there's this will that is an expression of the heart, and desires that are an expression of the heart. You mentioned something about a grid. Is this what you're getting at, as a portion of this grid you described, the heart as mind, desires, and will?
Yes. So I think when you come across.
The word mind in Scripture, you're thinking it's a portion of the heart. And this is often the case in our modern translation that the word understanding, sometimes the word... And how about faith, believe, with the heart?
That those, well, these particular words are oftentimes the translation of the actual word heart. So let me give you an example, like Proverbs 632 in the ESV, he who commits adultery lacks sense, he who does it destroys himself.
The word sense is not there, it's actually the word heart. And this often appears in the Proverbs, and the reason it's translated that way is because for a lot of modern day readers, we wouldn't lack sense, it's very obvious that this is a person who's not thinking carefully.
But if they put lacks heart, our modern idea would be to say he lacks emotion or something like that. But that's a too superficial of understanding of the word heart. Understanding, consider, sense, mind, these are oftentimes in our modern translations, actually a translation of the word heart, where either the Hebrew word lev, levav, or the Greek word kardia, is underneath there, and you don't see it.
So we might think that kind of a person.
Lacks conviction or commitment or a will to do what he should, and what we should actually be.
Seeing there is the way it's translated. Right, and this is the problem, is that because of the way we use heart, and the way that Chris was talking about earlier, is we think of it as emotional or something like that.
It's interesting that there's this little sequence, this conversation, and in all places, The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum. I don't know if this is in the movie or not, but with a Tim Woodman and Scarecrow conversation, and Tim Woodman says, not the best things in the world, and Scarecrow says, have you any?
And Woodman says, no, my head is quite empty, but once I had brains and a heart also, so having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart. And see, that's the way I think a lot of evangelicals today think of the mind.
They think of the mind as simply the brain, as opposed to the heart. They say, well, I'd almost always rather have a heart. And well, in the Bible, they're the same thing, or at least it takes in.
The mind. Yeah, and in times, there has been at different periods of Church history, as you know, and even today, an anti-intellectualism that somehow this bad villain of the mind is going to somehow interfere with the wonderful loving heart in its relationship with God and with.
Others. Times when there's been too much confidence put in the mind, other times when it's hard to feel like, you know, we should have nothing to do with it whatsoever. Something like a hard heart is known, and it's true that you can't do an end around the mind and think you're going to come out with a better heart.
In the Bible, that just doesn't make sense. Now, it's also interesting,.
And I don't want to go on too far of a sidetrack here to talk just briefly about the Puritans themselves, but it is interesting that you are titling your conference at Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Lost Treasures for our Postmodern Time, The Puritan Theology of the Heart.
Many people view the Puritans as heartless, and that they would be the furthest place to, or the last place to look for any kind of information on the heart. If you could give us some caricature-busting information, perhaps, on the Puritans.
Well, the best thing to do would.
Just simply read some of their devotional literature, and to read what they say about marriage and love between a husband and wife, to see what they say about prayer, and to read, for instance, to pick up Valley of Vision, printed by the Banner of Truth, which encompasses you, and to see...
And the letters they wrote to their wives. Oh, yes, I mean, there's so much there. You know, when somebody says something like that, I think probably our strategy should be, somebody who wants to put down the Puritans and say, well, what have you read?
Right. You know, just simply ask them, what have you read, by, let's say, John Owen, or, you know, we could pick anybody, but I think that it'd be helpful if we just start introducing our people to primary sources, and read, you know, the Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, or to read on the Holy Spirit.
These men talk so much about the Holy Spirit. It's on every page, and as is the heart, when you start opening up what they have to say, of them called the cardiographer. It's all about the heart. So this is a great concern of theirs, and yes, they were concerned about theology, but when they wrote polemical theology, it was to protect what was more precious to them, and that was the, this is John Owen, communion with God, or mortification of sin, or on temptation.
And it's very clear, when you read those works, that you're sitting underneath the tutelage, and not somebody who's interested in just.
Whittling away with their knives. Yeah, well, the Puritans, when I began to be taught what they actually taught, and believed, and lived for, really destroyed mythology for me in a good way, and they have become a very valuable part of my Christian growth.
And it's amazing that the Puritans, no matter how many hundreds of years ago they may have written their works, how timely and timeless some of the, many of the things that they address, they could be describing the present-day church, and the dilemma that the church is in today, perhaps with some antiquated wording here and there, but the actual messages themselves really hit home in an amazing way.
And we have a couple of other definitions that I'd like you to go through. First of all, we hear a lot about the word sin, especially those of us who are in more conservative, Calvinistic, or even fundamental churches.
Sin is brought up quite frequently, and in the most pulpits of modern evangelicalism, especially those within televangelism and so on, you hardly ever hear it at all. But if you could go through a definition of sin for us.
In 1951, I started to see how it's not just that we have these three areas of the heart, these three aspects of the heart, and then the vocabulary God's given to us. And as we're talking about the mind, what's interesting to me is the most popular word for sin in the Bible, it's usually translated sin, no surprise there, but it means literally to fall short or to miss the mark.
And what that means is you fail to measure up to the standard. You know what the standard is. Talk about mistakes and errors of that standard, you miss it. And that can be done both actively and passively.
The most popular word in the Bible means exactly that, to miss the mark, to fall short. We know we're supposed to tell the truth, so lying, lust, and anger, all these things, or all the things that we, quote, forget, unquote, to do, bespeak our sin.
But then the second nuance to that, and this is very important, think of the mind in particular. It means that I know what I have to be thinking as well. And one of the things that Christ does in the Sermon on the Mount is he totally exposes that person who thinks that they're sinless because they, I'm not a murderer because I've never killed anybody.
I'm not adulterer because I did not sleep with somebody. He goes right through the moral law and exposes all that and basically says, you have an anger problem with your brother, guess what, you've committed, you struggle with lust, you struggle with hypocrisy or avarice, worldliness or anxiety or self-righteousness or judging.
All these things begin by incubating in the mind. And so what it tells us is that falling short of sin is not just in my actions or in my speech, but it's also my mind. Or if I am, you know, simmering in my anger, if I am completely lost in anxiety because I continue to nurture that, and then we're not even talking yet about false doctrine or unhealthy doctrine, those can be sins as well.
And so this is really helpful to understand that the sin of my mind is one peculiar expression.
Yeah, we think of that as very often as an unimportant thing. We think of it as really not sin at all. Some people will even categorize, the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, will categorize homosexuality as not being sin unless it's acted upon.
But that's completely off the mark, isn't it? Isn't that a very dangerous way of thinking about sin?
Yeah, sin is too often, but some stir them out, being very concerned about it and being comfortable afterwards, I do not know. It's very unsettling when you read and you see the ways in which you are by the law of God and the way in which Christ is a prophet, you know, we never realized.
But no, that internal thing that's happening within, that's all open to him. And he's showing us again and again that maybe you didn't act upon this, you wanted to, that's because I stopped you. But it begins right here.
Here's the seed of it, in this anger or in this lust, whatever it might be.
And the biblical view of reality and all the world we live in, it says that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. It's very easy for us to be deeply concerned about our outward appearance and not pay so much attention to our heart.
And there in the Sermon on the Mount, it seems to me that one of Jesus's points of emphasis is that this is about what God sees. This is about what he's paying attention to. And it seems like what you might be getting at here is that if the mind is about what you know, and to sin is to fall, and then to sin is to fall short of what you know, and that's where God is paying, that is what God is paying attention to.
Right.
We have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Craig Troxell, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
Please give us your first name at least, the city and state where you reside, and the country where you reside if you live outside of the United States. And please feel free to remain anonymous only if this is a personal or private matter that you are asking about.
And again, the email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Craig Troxell and Pastor Jody Morris.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes. And if you just joined us, our guest today is Pastor Craig Troxell. And he is going to be speaking at two different conferences that we are promoting today. One is going to be held Friday, October 30th at 7 p .m. at Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on the theme, Lost Treasures for our Postmodern Time, the Puritan's Theology of the Heart.
For more details on that, you can go to the Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church website, which is redeemeropc .org. And then after that, not long after that, Friday, November 13th through Saturday, November 14th, the Dallas-Fort Worth Reformation Conference at MidCities Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bedford, Texas, also features Pastor Craig Troxell on a similar theme, With All Your Heart, Thinking Again About What You Know, Love, and Choose.
And for more information about that conference, go to the MidCities Orthodox Presbyterian Church website, which is mc, for MidCities, opc, for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, dot org. mcopc .org. And we encourage you all, if you live in those areas or if you have time to get to those areas, to get there for those events, and obviously let your family, friends, and loved ones who you know who do live in those areas to be there, if at all possible.
And before we went to the break, we were discussing sin, Pastor Troxell, if you could get into a little bit more depth, iniquity and transgression.
Right, there's scripture uses, and a good example would be, again, in Psalm 51, where David immediately is confessed into the mind. The second word he uses is the word for iniquity. And the word iniquity correlates well with desire.
The word iniquity means to pervert or to twist. So it means to take something that originally was straight, and then it twisted like wrought iron, something that you work, or it means to make it crooked.
But it can also take on the nuance of when we corrupt something, something that was clean, and now we make it corrupt and impure. And we can talk about that when we talk about desires. The third word is for rebellion.
And so it takes on that idea of that anytime that I owe submission to someone, but I resist them, this is the Bible's word for political revolution, to completely throw off authority. But it's the idea that I'm kind of brazenly defying the one who's in charge of me or over me.
And so you can see how that really works well with the will, and the person's will resistant to God. But we'll see in a little bit, if we talk about this, that there's also a flip side to this. There's a time when our will is supposed to be strong, when it could be weak, or enslaved, and cave, or afraid.
Those categories come into play there as well. But those are those three words that are used there. There are other words very similar to them, but I see them falling out in these three groups that really help to bring out what sin is.
And there are times when you might sit under somebody's instruction, like I was in college with a liberal professor, and all he would say about sin is, it's falling short. I thought, well, that's not so.
Nobody's perfect. Government leaders said that, you know, I'm not perfect. Well, I think somebody that in your heart, you're perverted, and that you lodge impurities, or that you're rebellious. Well, now you're really starting to.
Get into the... Right. It's just like the commonly used phrase, I'm only human, which is a way to excuse yourself of anything that you do that may be hurtful, especially to others, and, well, I'm only human.
Right. Transgression to rebel, that's where it's definitely connected with the will of knowing exactly what you're doing, and then defying.
God and what you know he teaches and commands, correct? Passive. Nobody can argue I'm just passive and everything. Well, as it turns out, that's a problem. Right. It's more than just what we think, or that I have a stray thought every now and then.
I actually commit myself, and whether I do that in my mind, whether I do it in my language, or in my actions, that our heart is committed to a certain agenda, and we pursue those things.
Now, how do the three offices of the Lord come into play here?
It does not exclusively... Trying to understand the work of Christ, and to see that those, and as a priest, think of the ministry of Christ, is that Christ ministers to his people through his Word. He would say the Word of God is not just active, it's being actively applied to us through the preaching of the Word, but in a particular way by the Spirit.
It was the ministry that Christ told his disciples that, though they would be disappointed and saddened that he would go away, that something marvelous was about to happen in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who takes the teachings of Christ.
And the fact of the matter is, we not only need to have recreated minds where God, by his Spirit, grants to us a saving knowledge of Christ, but we need our minds renewed. And in fact, Romans 12 opens up this very way, in that not to be conformed to this world, but to be renewed in the mind of the heart, and to be transformed by God's Word in our mind.
And so we need God to retool us in the same way that a car, or a musical instrument, or machinery has to be retooled, or retuned, or reminded. And this is teaching us more and more our thinking about our life, and our world is completely different from what it used to be, because he's literally at work in our minds, in our thinking, how we understand things, because he's stamping us into his mold, and not allowing us to be completely shaped by this world.
And this is very helpful. Constantly undergo this process of being sharpened, and honed, and reoriented by God's in your thoughts, and your goals, and all these ways. It's a way that God is training us, and helping us.
And then, even beyond this, is taking place. And this is particularly helpful in an age that's telling us we really can't know anything, living in a post-modern time, confidence, the things that we believe are true.
And it's striking to me, where you have these promises in Scripture, where, as I write these things, to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know. I think it's amazing, the Scripture says this, that you may know.
I'm certain, or we know, we may be certain, you know, that God works all things for a good. So again and again, what you have is this kind of bolstering of the mind, telling us that, look, you have, you believe in a God that you cannot see, and you are not wrong in doing so.
That by the Scriptures continuing to assure us that what we know is true, and that, or as Francis Schaeffer would say, that we know that we know. And to have the, and what is real. See, these are the things that are not going to last.
Again and again, it's reminding us, not just that we have life, we are clinging to, are things that we absolutely must not forget. And there are things that,.
We have a listener in Lindenhurst, New York, CJ, who asks, I know it's a very popular teaching that someone can be born again and sin freely and not lose their salvation, and then at a different point later on in life, when they are more mature, they make Jesus the Lord of their life and put him on the throne rather than themselves.
Is this a biblical teaching? This one's for Jody.
Want to separate Christ as Savior from Christ as Lord, and it seems to me that the Reformed faith has answered this quite well, and to say that, no, we would say that we accept Christ, so when we accept him as a prophet or as our priest, that he is, in fact, the Lord of our lives.
And there's some times when people say things that are silly in their immaturity, and they may say something like that, when in fact, what is happening in them is that Christ is subduing them, and he is teaching them.
Somewhere along the lines, the Doctrines of Grace began to make that line is chronologically already practiced, and need to bow our knee before his kingship, I need to make sure I submit everything to him in life.
And no Christian, no Christian, no matter what theological persuasion, without concern or wantonly, no person, we all of us sin when we.
Talk like that. And yes, concerning the topic of the heart, the Apostle Paul says that with the heart one believes, and if your definition here as you're describing the heart to us is true, then it's the whole man that believes, not just the mind, and not just the will later, but the whole man who believes.
And so these points can't be broken up, we can't divide between.
Christ as Savior and Christ as Lord. And maybe, Chris, just to tag on to what Jody said, that we can't, you cannot antiseptically separate these categories, they're not meant to be parsed that way. All of my thinking has an agenda, it's all wrapped up with will, you can't take them apart.
And in the heart of a heart of any Christian, what do I want? Well, I want what Christ wants, and I want to love what Christ loves, and I want to hate what he loves. Yeah, do you think that.
That, I think that is a part of the four spiritual laws or something of that nature that the listener was talking about, do you think that that could be a wrong response to the truth that we are not to think that we need to clean ourselves up before we come to Christ?
Perhaps that's an overreaction to that wrong notion that would be more in a Pelagian or semi-Pelagian understanding of salvation, that because we're sinners, we have to first somehow clean ourselves up and make ourselves presentable to God before we come to him.
Some might even think before they.
Even enter the doors of a church. I've never thought of it that way, but I do think that it's very prevalent that when people say, well, I'll get myself together, then I'll come to church, that they do not understand the Gospel in the least.
And unfortunately, sometimes even our own people think these things, and we have to correct them. You're right, there's probably a deviation from that understanding, even though it is a right understanding to say that you need to come to Christ and let him do the hard work, let him, by his Spirit, in the context of a community of faith and sitting under the ministry of the Word,.
Let him go about that work. And yes, may I add that that community of faith where a person comes should work very hard to read the signs. They might be very difficult to see, the signs of the Spirit of God at work in this person's life, because they're there, and as faint as they may be, because so many other troubling things could be going on.
Where there is a sign of the Spirit's work, there is the Spirit at work. And where the Spirit is at work, he will do his will, and he will have his man. And we shouldn't get in the way of that, because we're concerned about all the troubling aspects that we might see in that person as they come.
We want them to come, and our communities of faith should be open and ready to receive them. Could you talk a little bit about the work of the Spirit in the heart to bring a sinner to faith, what our confession calls the effectual calling?
Yeah, the effectual calling is that powerful summons of God, in the way in which our exposit this, that it's the heart. And effectual calling is basically saying such a way that it convinces us of our sin.
It puts it as so interesting, because it talks about enlightening our minds. It talks about renewing our wills. And yet, if you look at the scripture text for that particular question, it goes to Ezekiel 37, it says, take away our stony heart, and give us a heart of flesh, of regeneration, and being born again.
And so, set in along with this language of calling, like in Romans 8 28, it speaks of that those who are called were justified. But yeah, it's a comprehensive thing, where God comes, and without doing, he's opening our heart, and it means the softening of the will.
It means that we see what we really want, really desire his truth, and it's when people are really hungry, like the prodigal son, who realizes all these pigs are eating better than he is, that's when he starts to look home.
It's hunger. 35, I think it is, where he says, you know, whoever is thirsty is the bread of life, and this is what he provides. And we see that. We see it in our minds. We embrace with our desires, and our will finally bends the knee to every Christian, whether they understand it perfectly or not.
But he does it. He does it beautifully. He does it graciously. For some people, it takes a long time, but we bless God for them, because I think you get a similar testimony. He could give her a new heart,.
And that's praise God. He does those things. Amen. Yes, and it's interesting, our charismatic and Pentecostal brethren will often chide us who are Reformed, and not only us who are Reformed, but perhaps especially us who are Reformed, for not having the Spirit.
And yet we believe the Spirit is far more involved in the life of a Christian than they do, really, if there are many, and that is because we believe in the necessity of the Spirit to even open up our eyes and ears that we may come to Christ in saving faith.
I mean, we rely on the Spirit far more than the non-Reformed Christian does.
I used to wear cattle, that there's no such thing as a fat cowboy, and they would also say... And I think what I mean by that, of course, everything I have is a gift, and I know who I am and my weakness, and so I need His Spirit for that wisdom that I do not have.
Embrace and pursue. As a father, as a Christian disciple, I need the Spirit.
And before we go to the break, I want us to begin a discussion on keeping of your heart, which I think that we'll probably spend the most of our final hour in. That is really where the rubber meets the road and the practical elements of theology, where we as Christians have to really take heed to the warnings in Scripture to protect ourselves from those temptations that will lead us into sin.
And we just, all of us, have heard about someone who is fairly prominent in our Reformed circles who was revealed to be involved in a very wicked internet service, or at least visiting the website. And of course, it should be quickly said that he was caught.
There were probably many more than we care to count who believe that they are secretly in the privacy of their own homes getting away with these sins and constantly forgetting that the Lord is fully aware of everything that they're doing.
Right. But one of the things that you have described as the gatekeepers of your heart are the eyes and ears. If you could start off that part of the discussion with that.
Here about, as you're saying, keeping the heart and keep your heart with all vigilance. Well, if I could start with keep, that's used in Proverbs 4 .23. Actually, the one suggests, if my wife tells me to watch the kids, on the one hand, she's saying, you know, watch them, so tie their shoes, but also to watch out for them, so watch for danger, like a loose dog, foul weather, fast, outward and outward things.
So keeping the heart is both, you know, word that it means to watch over something that you just you're studying it in such a way that you know it, but also it means that you're watching out for it. And so that's what the Bible means by keeping the heart.
It means that, on the one hand, I'm looking for danger outside of myself, those things that will appeal to my heart, but I'm also looking, what I call the gatekeepers of the heart is what Scripture teaches us with regard to the way both preserve and protect, but here the emphasis is on protecting.
And it's the eyes and the ears, directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. The idea there is you're on a path and don't look to the left, don't look to the right, keep your eyes straight. And it's the eyes that get us into trouble so many times.
We think of King David looking around the city and seeing this woman Bathsheba, and it says that she was pleasing to his eyes. And it's interesting, it's the very same language that's used when Eve saw the fruit of the tree, saw it was pleasing.
There's three verbs in common in both of those passages. And so what does David do? He sees, he takes what was forbidden him, and all this... He desires, and then he takes. Yep. He sees it's beautiful, it's good to the eyes, and he desires and he takes.
To mind, the heart, and the will. Oh, it's interesting. Yeah, you could argue that. And so the eyes are very important, and so the light of the heart. So in Matthew 6 .22, he says, the eye is the lamp of the body.
So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? It's Matthew 6 .22 and 23.
And what he's leaning on is the person who created everything. He knows how this works, that light shines into your eyes, and through them, your whole body is able to work dependent upon that illumination.
And if it's healthy, your whole body is going to function properly. But if it's not, then you're in trouble. And he's saying that's also true for your heart. And this becomes a very, very important idea when we think of, for instance, the call of Isaiah.
This people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears. And so what he's saying is that for these people to see or to hear is what's going to gauge whether their hearts are open.
Now, what is so significant about that that Jesus cites when he's asked, why do you speak in parable? And he goes to that passage, and he says, well, some see, but they don't see. They hear, they don't hear.
And that's the very passage that's gone to passage that closes the book of Acts. This is what Paul quotes in Romans. And so an idea that to see spiritually will determine whether you are blind spiritually or whether your heart is open.
And so in scripture, it says, prepare your heart. And that's why you have that covenant. He says, I've made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin? But what's interesting, the verse that's not noted six verses later, like this, if my step is turned aside from the way and my heart has gone after my eye.
What's interesting there is he's saying in verse one, I'm doing what I can with my eyes to protect her. I'm not looking at these younger ladies. But what about those times when your eyes let you down, your eyes are looking at something before you realize it?
You're looking at something that's forbidden. Well, that's going to come down to your heart. So your eyes are supposed to be the gatekeepers of your heart. But then there's those times when you can't help what you see, like a commercial comes across the television, or you're looking at all the billboards going by on the highway and realize that there's one that probably you don't need to read or remember.
Well, what it's going to get down to is your heart. And so by watching where your eyes go, and I think what's so significant about this is think of the age in which we live. When you go to an airport, you're sitting there waiting for your plane, look around what's happening, everybody is plugged in.
It's almost like being in the ER, you know, in a trauma unit, everybody's got wires coming out of their body. And they're all, they are glued to what they're watching, and their ears are completely tapped into it.
It'll be more relevant to an audio visual aid. Everything I said about the ears is also true. The person who refuses to listen is the person whose heart is closed. And I could cite many passages on this, like Jeremiah 1310, to say that these people refuse to hear my words.
And the reason why is because they're stubbornly following their own hearts. And Isaiah 610 is another example of that. He was hearted, he would not listen, Scripture says in Exodus 7. And the godly listen.
They're given a new heart, and it's because their ears have been opened. Tain, blessed are your ears, for they see, and your ears for they hear. And so what enters in your heart is either because you saw it or you heard it.
We're going to another break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com. That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please, if you're writing, include at least your first name, city and state of residence, and country of residence, if you live outside the USA.
And if this is a question regarding a personal and private matter, you may remain anonymous. Chrizarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back with Pastor Craig Troxell and Pastor Jody Morris on our discussion on the heart right.
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Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times. 631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us. That's wrbc .us. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in, we apologize once again that we have been having some difficulties with some of our technical aspects of the show with like our commercials and so on.
Sorry for those pauses of dead air that are unintentional. And hopefully all these things will be rectified in the near future. And if you just tuned us in, our guests today are Pastor Craig Troxell, and he is going to be speaking at two different churches for conferences.
Pastor Craig Troxell himself is pastor of Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and he's an adjunct professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and adjunct professor of ministerial studies at Mid-America Reform Seminary in Dyer, Indiana.
He is going to be speaking on the heart. First of all, he's going to be speaking at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And the theme of that conference or that celebration of Reformation Day is Lost Treasures for Our Postmodern Time.
The Puritan's Theology of the Heart. That's Lost Treasures for Our Postmodern Time. The Puritan's Theology of the Heart. That's on Friday, October 30th at 7 p .m. For more details, go to their website, RedeemerOPC .org.
RedeemerOPC, which stands for Orthodox Presbyterian Church .org. RedeemerOPC .org. And then also, just a couple of weeks after that, Friday, November 13th and Saturday, November 14th, Pastor Craig Troxell will be speaking at the Dallas-Fort Worth Reformation Conference at Mid-Cities Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bedford, Texas.
And that's going to be on the theme, With All Your Heart, Thinking Again About What You Know, Love, and Choose. For more details, go to their website at the Mid-Cities Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which is MC, which stands for Mid-Cities, OPC, for Orthodox Presbyterian Church .org.
MCOPC .org. My co-host in studio today is Pastor Jody Morris of the Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of the churches hosting one of those events featuring Pastor Craig Troxell.
If you have any questions that you'd like to join us on the air with regarding The Heart, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
And if you could, Pastor Troxell, continue on with where we left off here about protecting or the protection of one's heart from sin, from the world of flesh and the devil, the Keeper Himself, the Lord, our Protector, if you could go into a bit on that.
Sure. Where I go with this is because of what the Scripture tells us about our own heart. There's a lot of heart work, to use the phrase of the Puritan John Flavel, that we need to do in paying attention to our weaknesses, those areas where we know that we are prone to temptation and all that.
But the reason for that is because the heart is deceitful of all things and it's who can understand it. And Scripture is telling us that we really do need to take a position of humility, understanding, are not able to get to the bottom of what we struggle with.
And it means that ultimately our confidence can't be in ourselves. Smoke out or unlock doors that have dark closets to them and things that we generally don't want to see or confront. And God is very faithful in exposing those things.
It attracted me to the doctrines of grace, being raised in the holiness movement and being raised in a tradition which said that you could live above sin. I thought, you know, I'm done lying to myself.
I just, I can't believe this. And somebody of youth that had, you know, substantially dedicated himself, realizing that, you know, the last thing I should do is put confidence in myself because I can't do this.
And when you read a psalm like Psalm 121, that's a psalm going up to Jerusalem. It's not from those who made those hills. And it's the Lord who will keep you. In that psalm you get this word, keep, shema, and this shema rather, where the Lord is my keeper.
He is the one who keeps you. He keeps Israel. He'll keep you from evil. He'll keep your life. He keeps your going out, your coming in. The Lord is your keeper again and again and again. And what that psalm reminds us, I can't keep my feet from slipping or stumbling.
I've not done a very good job at keeping myself from wandering away. I can't protect myself from evil and from forces that are greater than myself. See that love there. And so, what do I do then? Well, I'm leaning upon the Lord and to know that He's the one.
I'm under the shadow of His wing. That He's the God who never sleeps or slumbers. There's many times when it feels like I'm asleep. That's not so with Him. He never ceases and is protecting me. And so, and you get that language throughout the Bible.
It's a great promise. It's given that Jacob, I'm with you. I'll keep you wherever you go. It comes up in Psalm 91. Psalm 145, the Lord preserves all those who love Him. It's in the blessing and the benediction.
Number six, the Lord bless you and keep you. And the gospels pick up the very same idea. Put them in your name. Well, anyway, all this goes to show what the gospel is. That Christ as my prophet has come and revealed the way of salvation.
Christ as my priest has come and He's opened the way of salvation. But He's also come as my king and He keeps us along the way of salvation. And He's guarding me to the very end. That when He began, He promised to me is that He'll keep my heart.
That He's going to, or suffering me from being overcome by temptations that are too great for me. Or the world, which is greater than I am, or the devil who's stronger than I am. But He's the one who will keep me in His name by His spirit until His work is done.
And that is that doctrine of a shiplip side of saying do what He, not one of those given to Him by the Father. I find this to be a ministry of Christ as our king. Not just in a sanctifying way, my will, but in the end, He's my Lord protector.
And that's one of the reasons I want to, the Lord, Christ our Lord, the Lord of our heart. But in the end, we belong to Him. He's the one.
Protecting it. Earlier you said that something like 99 of the trouble we have with our heart comes through our eyes and ears. The other 99 comes from within our own heart. James warns about our own temptations that lead us astray, right?
In the light of the onslaught of trial and temptation that we face and everything you described already, it's a very encouraging point you're making here that Christ Himself is the one who truly preserves and protects our hearts.
We're told to keep our heart with all diligence, with all vigilance. But in the final analysis, He is the one who will keep us. That's a very encouraging word.
We have a listener, Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, please explain to me how your Reformed understanding of perseverance and preservation of the saints is not an invitation to sin freely without fear of losing your salvation, if in fact.
God is certainly going to keep you eternally secure. Sovereignty and man's responsibility, and he says, you don't need to reconcile friends. And I think that trying to necessarily, our creeds have the human nature of Christ intersect.
Give us that precise point. I think that in Ephesians 2, 12 and 13, working out your salvation with fear and want to hear, what scripture should be timid? And our minion, Wesleyan, and I said, well, I guess the point we can agree on is obedience.
And he said, that's true and beautiful, I should say. My father began to see the errors of being raised in a view of Christianity that said that every morning, basically, you're not really sure if you're just didn't make any sense whatsoever.
And the reason why is because it doesn't fully persuaded the doctrines of grace before he died, but he had certainly come a long ways. And he was one of the first ones that or his promises in God's word means something.
And what they mean is this, that 21, if my salvation is in my hands, if it is absolutely up to come down to the strength of my will and validity of my obedience, of my need of God's grace, and my waywardness of heart, and my weakness, and my foolishness, and my stubbornness, and the fact that again, and again, and again, I've become so relieved at the grace of someone even like him to me would have anything is that his gift of salvation is free.
Yeah, I think that's why that is a very dangerous combination, as much as we love the fact that it is true that those who are truly the children of God, those who are truly the elect are eternally secure.
We who are reformed tend not to use that phrase, because although it's true, it's insufficient of it's an insufficient definition or description, because we are preserved by God. And that's why we persevere.
Don't you think that it is a very dangerous combination to borrow from Reformed theology, the notion of eternal security while rejecting the rest of Reformed theology, because then you do indeed have a scenario that is very dominant in modern evangelicalism, where people are being taught that the way that you live is no litmus test of whether or not you're born again.
That you are eternally secure as long as you have prayed that prayer or went forward at an invitation or altar call, so-called. And that type of theology which rejects Calvinism or rejects the dominance of Reformed theology and yet embraces that one element of eternal security, that's a really deadly combination, isn't it?
No, that's absolutely right where it ought to be. If you think of just language that you have to watch, I think that you need to keep that edge as a Christian on watch. I'm not on edge wondering whether he loves me or not.
I'm constantly watching out, and for a host of reasons. My responsibility is to set an example before others and to help. But what is it really connoting? What is that bumper stick? You can have Jesus as Savior but not Lord.
Exactly. It's excusing laziness, it's excusing sin, and it's basically prehensible.
Can I add that there simply isn't any environment or thought given to the idea that you can be justified and not be sanctified anywhere in the New Testament.
Oh, that's true.
In fact, there's a passage in Romans where Paul describes the journey or the path that a Christian takes that leads to eternal life, and in that path is included sanctification. You just can't have one without the other.
You can't separate them. Jesus is very clear too. He says, you will know them by their fruits. And so in the Reformed community, we really know nothing of receiving Jesus as Savior but not having Him as Lord.
The two are inseparable. They go together. The way that Jesus as our Savior and Lord works Himself out and that by His Holy Spirit in individuals, it's different for everyone. And that journey can't be formulated precisely, but that journey always includes both justification and sanctification.
We have a listener, Harrison in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you believe it is biblically accurate to tell people to invite Jesus into their heart?
That is, in fact, I mean, it's clear that Christ by His Spirit, and I understand the concern. I'm not troubled by it, because He does. Every single benefit we have, because we are in Christ or because Christ is in us, and what He means by the latter is that Christ Jesus by His Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of Christ, as Paul puts it in Romans 8.
Can I add that even using the language of inviting Him in so that it emphasizes the act of our will is important. And behind the act of inviting Him in as an action of our will is that we would like Him to come, that we desire to have Him.
And you know, in John, Jesus talks about the way the Father draws us, convinces us, and makes or reveals something about Himself to us that is more desirable than what we experience in this world, so that we want Him to come.
And all of these things are aspects or expressions of the heart, that we desire Him, that we welcome Him with our wills, that we desire Him with our hearts. It's a reasonable expression, especially when Jesus.
Says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Now, do you think that the objection by Reformed people is primarily because of the fact that, yeah, you can invite Jesus in your heart, but you should be inviting Him in there to rip it out of you and replace it with a new one?
Yep, I have no problem with that. I'm just, I think that there's about Christ in you in Colossians 1. I'm thinking there's another phrase, but I understand the concerns, but I don't want to be abused in wider evangelicalism.
I'm telling you, inviting Him to do. We're going to be going to our final break of the day for this two-hour.
Broadcast. If you'd like to join us on the air, this is your last opportunity. We've got about 27 minutes left after the break. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and that's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.
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This is Chris Arnzen, and we have, if you just tuned us in, we have been interviewing for the last 90 minutes or so Pastor Craig Troxell, who is going to be speaking at two churches for different events involving the heart, which is our theme today, has been our theme for the last 90 minutes and will be for the next 30 or so.
He will be speaking Friday, October 30th at 7 p .m., God willing, on the lost treasures for our postmodern time, the Puritan's Theology of the Heart. That's Friday, October 30th, 7 p .m., at Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Their website is redeemeropc .org, redeemeropc .org, and then just less than two weeks after that, he will be speaking at the Dallas-Fort Worth Reformation Conference at Mid-Cities Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bedford, Texas, and that is going to be on a similar theme on the heart, and the website for the Mid-Cities Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Bedford, Texas, is mcopc .org, mcopc .org.
I really want you to get back into the mind, that aspect of the heart, and there are a lot of people who say that we don't really need to be reading books written by men, we should just stick to the Bible, and we don't need any guidance other than the Bible.
Well, that's a bit arrogant, isn't it, to think that we don't need teachers when the Scriptures themselves teach that we need teachers, and that not everybody should be one? And isn't that a good way of protecting our minds by saturating them with the—not only the Scriptures, of course, that's the first and foremost thing, but also to glean the wisdom of godly men, many of whom have lived before us, like you've been talking about the Puritans and so on, and great men of God who have stood the test of time to saturate our minds with the truths that they have brought forth from the Word of God?
Well, it's interesting, like in the.
Book of Hebrews, quote, imitating your leaders, listen to them, don't make it hard for them, but it is interesting as well to me, somewhere in there, not to be led astray by strange teachings. I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of verse 9.
And then it follows it up, and I think one of the ways how we can strengthen the mind, very significant, that the book of Romans, one of the deepest, it says, therefore, in light of these great things that we love to reflect upon, I think that's one way to state biblically that grace comes to ministers, to our minds, and many times it comes to the—is constantly reinventing the wheel, and not going back.
Open theology is something, we've seen that before, and that's why the Reformers went after the Socinians. There's all sorts of—if we'll just study it, and again, and to get back to the heart, this is one of the reasons I want to get people familiar again with the Puritans.
And, you know, they're not always at their best, and they're good expressionists, and they have these wonderful pieces of literature, a great job of inoculating a Christian against foolishness. And some of the stuff that we face is not very sophisticated, and some of it is absolutely foolish, and it's silly that people fall for such stuff.
And so that's one of the reasons.
We read our forefathers. And there's the admonition in the Proverbs given again and again,.
My son, listen to my words. Yeah. Amen. And going to the iniquity of your desires, if you could contrast that between perverted love and pure love.
Topics and desires can become perverted. And I think you have to begin with the idea that the word for desire that is not bad in itself or good in itself. And the way that Scripture treats desire is that it's bad depending upon its object, almost always based upon its object, on occasion its amount.
But usually desire in itself is not necessarily bad, it's not necessarily good. Now, the world will tell you any unfulfilled desire is a tragedy. That's probably the point of the movie Titanic. You're saying that's not necessarily true.
There's some desires that are healthy, some that are unhealthy, some are shameful, some are honorable, some are mature, some are childish. And that means we have to either subdue our desires or encourage them, smother some, fan the flame others.
And so when it comes to understanding the purity of desire, the impurity of desire, we have to ask ourselves, is this a desire that is good? In other words, is the amount of it good? If it's too much, the Bible calls those things idolatry, and those are idols.
What do you hunger for? What makes you sad if you can't have it? And so our desires, those desires can get way, way out of control. Well, so what does God do to secure? Our first instinct I think many times is simply to squash desire.
Faith is not Buddhism. What's the goal of Buddhism? It's nirvana or enlightenment. We have no desire. And we are not Buddhists. And for people that are Star Trek fans, but I'm no Star Trek fan. So the goal is not to squash desire.
Or many times we downplay it. We say, if you don't feel like doing the right thing, just do it anyway. Just buck up. And there are many times that's true. I don't always wake up in the morning and feel like I want to have my devotions, but I should have them anyway.
But it's not the heart of the Christian faith to say, if loving my wife is nothing but bare duty. In other words, if she said, well, thank you for the birthday card. I said, well, that's my responsibility as a husband.
Well, that's my duty as a husband. You know, something is wrong. The way that God made the heart is that we are filled with desires. And here again, our desires are too weak. That we are half-hearted.
What God wants us to do is, our desires are to be inflamed, but for the right thing. So like as a husband to rejoice in the wife of my youth, let her delight. Be intoxicated in her love. So that's not squashing or extinguishing desire.
That means fanning in the flame. And so here, I think it's helpful to think of an example from Greek mythology. Let me put it that way. And that's when the sirens would sing and lure men to their death.
Lure them to Charybdis and Scylla. And there are only two figures in Greek literature that made it through. First, there's Odysseus. And what he did is, he stopped up the ears of his men with wax. They bound him to the mass.
And so they went by. They got to hear the sirens singing, but the men didn't hear it. But he got to hear it. So he made it through. But there's another guy who made it through. And that's Orpheus. This is of all Greeks.
And what he did was better. So that when Jason and the Argonauts, he's in their boat. When they're coming, they began to hear the sirens. But Orpheus began to sing. And his song was so enchanted the men, that it was a more alluring song.
They didn't even hear the sirens. And I think it says, actually, it stained the song. I think biblically, from my bride, the noble, what's beautiful, becomes sweeter to me than the songs of the world.
So that fanning in the flame, the right things, so that the more noble desires, the better desires, the good desires, those are the things, these other desires. Because I'm understanding more and more, this world and its desires, they do not satisfy.
These are the things that the desires of the eyes. And that when I'm seeing more and more as a Christian, and the desires of my heart, that Christ alone offers that water that quenches my thirst. That here's the one who gives me food that satisfies.
Here is truth, that not only answers my questions, but this truth has set me free. And I don't care about those others. It's like when I first met my wife, a climber, what about your dream to climb Mount McKinley?
And I said, I found something more interesting. And that was an easy answer, and it was a genuine answer. Why? Because that was the genuine desire of my heart. And that's exactly what's happening, Christ says, about the pure in heart, we'll see, God.
He's not saying a pure isn't clean, He's talking about a heart where what's happening is that it's not mixed with doubt, it's not distracted by lesser things, it's a heart that's being increasingly purified.
And so I think the most beautiful example of that is the illustration where Martha said, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but Mary has chosen the one and it will not be taken from her. And what he's saying is, Martha, your heart is divided, and for them but you, there's nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
It's talking about this having a pure heart. And so a pure heart means having undivided desires. In the same way, if I'm wearing a jacket, it might be 100 pure wool, or if I'm drinking water on the bottle, it'll say 100 pure grade A beef.
In England, it might have some horse in it or something. But anyway, so what is a pure faith? It means it's a faith where it's not distracted, and what it is, it's built upon that metaphor. Like in 1 Peter 1 .6, let me just grab that passage real quick, it says that the genuineness of your faith, which has been tested by fire, and what he's talking about is the same thing Isaiah talks about when God says, I'll smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy.
Well, that's what it means by purifying. And so that is that pure heart of desires, where that's what God is doing in my heart by his spirit, that he's increasingly purifying my heart. It doesn't mean washing it clean, that does happen.
But it means that it's a heart that's less and less without mixed motives, it's less and less divided, not all that extraneous, unnecessary stuff, it's not purged by contaminants. God is making it more and more pure.
And to me, that is one of the most precious that God is doing in this heart of mine, is he's making it more and more like Christ. And so, sorry, that's a little long, but I think that's such an important insight in Scripture.
Our instinct sometimes is altogether wrong. Why shouldn't this? Maybe not. Maybe this is a godly desire.
Yeah, for some reason, I was reminded of the song, I think it may have been a song from the 70s or 80s. If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right. And that should be the national anthem, I think, for this world right now.
I don't mean that it should be in the sense that that'd be a right thing for them to sing. But people think that if they attach the concept or the word love to something, that it all all of a sudden magically makes the object of that love appropriate.
And nothing could be more reflective of that than the homosexual revolution that we are experiencing with same-sex marriage being legal and so on. And people are saying, how dare you? Who are you to stop me from marrying someone I love?
Now, that's a very important part of what you were just saying, that the Holy Spirit is going to guide our hearts to.
Love correctly. Right. That's not what it means, but it's when you want to do what's right. God is at work in you to want, and the promise there is, He's not just helping you to do the right things, but to want to do them.
And I can't wield what I desire, but I have my weak moments, or I have those more truthful moments where I see I didn't want this as much as I thought I did, than absolutely anything. If you think of, in the day, when Woody, the adopted daughter of Mia, and even the mainline press was asking about this, they were scandalized.
And his answer was something like, well, the heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to these things. You meet somebody and you fall in love, and that's that direct quote. But it went something like that.
Well, that's what my heart wants. Well, that's not good enough. That's not defensible. But that is exactly the mindset of this world. If I want it, I can't help themselves. It's like that sequence in The Lord of the Rings, where Mary and Pippin are talking after Pippin has looked into the seeing stone, and Mary says, why do you look?
Why do you always have to look? And Pippin says, I don't know. I can't help. And that is that helplessness of the unbeliever, by temptations and various desires, or that's where Christ comes in, I'm going to reign, never gain the control.
It's that sin's double cure, the reigning power of sin. This will not rule me. And that's the, the sin will not master you. You will struggle with it, and you'll feel like you're in its death hold many times, but it will not reign, because Christ is Lord.
If you could, in about four minutes, leave our listeners with what you most want etched on their hearts and their minds when they leave this program today.
At any given season of life, to state the importance of that, for many of us, we are raised in such a way as to de-emphasize or not encourage that part of our heart, like you were talking about earlier, about theology and the mind.
It's possible to overstate the mind. Many Christians want to intellectualize the faith, and they compartmentalize their life, which is a, it's a horrible, horrible thing to understate the mind. And so that's an area my concern would be, that are not, do not understand that God wants a fan in the flame for the people.
Everybody talks about what they're passionate about. They'll talk about they're passionate about using canola oil, you know, but you know, we ought to be passionate about Christ and our love for Him, and that should be obvious, that we love each other, we love our families, and we love Christ.
And so I don't, I'd like to hear an amen, a renown, in a Presbyterian Church, they're kind of hard to come by. I want to be all-in that way, as a Christian. In terms of the will, it's possible to be too stubborn and resistant of God in our will, but it's also possible to be too passive.
And I think, well, woe is me. Well, I would say, what do you think God needs in this next generation? Do you think He wants weak-willed disciples? You know, we need some Luthers. When somebody says, you know, nobody else agrees with you on this, we want to tell them, say, I don't care, I'm following Christ.
And so we need, are not so weak-willed and so passive, but to know that my duty is to say, yes, and that means that He's making me a courageous, He's making me tender. Well, it needs to be very, increasingly become like putty in the hands of the Spirit, that my heart is always ready to Him.
And the Scripture sacrifice, God will never, He looks upon that and says, now, finally, I have something to work with. And that's where the, those are the things I'd be concerned about. Let's go together, prophet, priest, in your mind, in your desires, in your will.
Thank you so much for being our guest today, Pastor Troxell. It's been an honor and privilege and a joy, and I really enjoyed our conversation. And I know that your personal website for Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois is BethelOPC .org, BethelOPC .org.
I hope that you return as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron soon. I would enjoy it. Thank you very much, Chris, for having me. And Pastor Jody Morris, it's been an honor and privilege also to have you as my co-host for the very first time right here in studio on Iron Sharpens Iron.
Thank you for having me. And I know that your website is RedeemerOPC .org, RedeemerOPC .org, which is also the website you can go to for more information on the Reformation Day celebration on October 30th, a Friday at 7 p .m., at Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on the theme, Lost Treasures for Our Postmodern Time, the Puritan's Theology of the Heart.
And then on Friday, November 13th through Saturday, November 14th, our guest, Pastor Craig Troxell, will be at the Dallas-Fort Worth Reformation Conference at MidCities Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bedford, Texas.
And that website is MCOPC .org, MCOPC .org. I want you always to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater Savior than you are a sinner. God bless, and we hope you join us tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron.