Psalm 101:3 and Worthless Things on Today’s DL

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And greetings welcome to the dividing line, my name is James white. I'm looking at a tweet here

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I I just got done doing the Calvinist Batman podcast which was

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Interesting very very interesting Check it out next

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Tuesday. I think is when it's gonna come out something like that we talked about all sorts of things and I rambled on a lot.

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I did a lot of a lot of rambling at that particular point in time But it was it was good and it was it was well worth things and you know

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When rich comes in and starts when he's when he's looking down at the floor and look at a connection Probably indicates something isn't hey.

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Hey something isn't working quite right, but it's it's working now anyway Welcome to the program.

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I've got a lot to cover today. We only have an hour I'm going out of town and I've got it

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I've got to get in the car and get going if I'm gonna get where I need to go and stuff and that's why we're Doing it uber early in the morning.

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I mean, this is very very early in the morning only 930 in Phoenix This may be one of the earliest dividing lines ever done actually come to think of it

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I'm not sure we've ever done anything much earlier then this want to start in with a graphic that I posted on Twitter and Facebook listen with me for a moment to Psalm 101.

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I Will sing of loving kindness and Justice chesed is the term for loving kindness in Hebrew It's a beautiful word chesed chesed puts together

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Um Love agape Philos from the

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New Testament it puts together Pistas faithfulness it puts together

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Elias mercy It's just an incredible term so when when you hear people say to you

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The Old Testament God is this mean terrible angry God only in the New Testament.

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Do you get love and mercy and stuff like that? It's just not true. Chesed appears more often in the Old Testament than The correlated terms do in the

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New Testament, of course, the Old Testament are larger in the New Testament So numbers is sort of relevant anyways

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But I will sing of chesed and justice mishpat A Term that some conservative

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Christians aren't quite as focused upon mainly because it's been misused in our day but the reality is mishpat is the foundation of God's throne in The Old Testament when you think about it to you

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Oh Yahweh, I will sing praises so it seems To sing of loving kindness and justice that's that's what praise to God is is about it involved in that You can't really praise

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God if you're not praising who he is and what he does. I Will give heed to the blameless way

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When will you come to me? I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart

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Hmm I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart. Why do you think you would say that well

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Because we know That there's a difference Sadly in How people behave publicly and how they behave privately and the point of the psalmist here this what this psalm reminds me of is

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Like Jonathan Edwards What were they called not commitments

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The name the name just escaped me his resolutions his resolutions and Yeah, you know what

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I don't know if you had by the way I need to The DL is live now.

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I forgot to do that most people don't Know unless I tell them and so I forgot to like actually our

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YouTube channel Automatically notifies our subscribers the moment we go live. Well, they have to be subscribers

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Well, then they should be well, this is true and we have a lot of subscribers, but we can you know Subscribe to the alpha to make a ministries channel and you'll get notifications as soon as we get to go live

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Okay, good. We are live. We just let people know good. I'm back to someone one This is like this this psalm reminds me of Edwards resolutions and if you've ever read

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Edwards resolutions They probably depressed you madly Because they are so high and so demanding that No one.

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I don't I don't know how anyone unless you are just absolutely Massively sanctified in this life could could ever keep them and When you fail and Edwards failed

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You better understand something about forgiveness and mercy and grace and things like that along the way or you're you're just gonna be constantly depressed

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But at the same time we need to have those kinds of resolutions and that's what

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Psalm 101 is like Yeah, see even Kofi didn't know

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See, so when so when dividing line at work, this was a surprise. Yes. Sorry I did mention it it was you posted it and I mentioned it on Twitter.

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So it's and on Facebook, I think so There you go Um what we're called to in Psalm 101 is a high standard and Just because we know that we are

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Going to need grace and forgiveness when we don't meet that doesn't mean that it should not be a passionate desire

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To strive for that standard. There's no question about it so I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart that means

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I Will seek to be consistent throughout my life in these matters and What the graphic that I posted was from verse 3

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I? Will set no worthless thing before my eyes.

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I hate the work of those who fall away It shall not fasten its grip on me a perverse heart shall depart from me.

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I will know No evil the specific phrase I will set no worthless thing before my eyes

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I put together a graphic on this Because it it seems to be an area where we have lost functional piety

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Amongst quote -unquote evangelicals are reformed and what

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I mean by that Pietistic is generally a negative term and it generally speaks of a surface level religiosity

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That really doesn't translate into life but there is a positive use the term pious and Piety in this phrase.

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I will set no worthless thing before my eyes One of the things

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I mentioned when I posted that the graphic was this requires us to have a consistently biblical worldview

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That will allow us to properly assign Worth or worthlessness.

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I mean you can't this is the the negative worthless thing. It's literally an empty thing

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And it's it's Devar which It's interesting Devar in Hebrew Lagos in Greek Very similar semantic domains for obvious reasons

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But it but there's such basic words that You can have

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Lagos used in John 1 1 specifically of the word who becomes flesh second person in Trinity but then in Romans 15,

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I think it is is it Romans 15 or is it Hebrews? You have reference to The There's a

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I have to look it up I was just going off top my head there but to where Lagos is simply used of things

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Just a very broad use of things in general and Here it is a a thing of worthlessness

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It is Devar has the same it can be a word it can be very specific or it can be just simply a matter that has no value a matter that is it could be frivolous or it could be worthless in the sense of Pretending to have worth but doesn't really have worth

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There's a lot of different which it can be understood but the only way that you can identify a worthless thing a thing of emptiness is

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If you have a positive definition of What a worthy thing or an important thing would be

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That's the only way you could do it and so you have to have a worldview That allows you to assign worthiness now

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Immediately we encounter conflict with the world today at this point because the fact the matter is

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Today we are told that well if if if a transsexual assigns worth to their new gender then everybody else has to assign the same value to their decision and That obviously destroys the meaning of worth

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It becomes a subjective a totally subjective thing And if this phrase is gonna have any meaning to us,

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I will set no worthless thing before my eyes is that just worthless thing is is that just a

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Sense of how I feel about things For example on the food level sushi is worthless to me.

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Okay, I just I just No, no, no, no, no it

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Cooking is good. It's it cooking is a good thing. Okay, sushi is worthless to me

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And yet I had a big debate with everybody on Saturday over veggie bacon

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Okay, and rich is already Across the window is just ready to lose it because of veggie bacon

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Veggie bacon is worthless to many people but it has worth to me. Is this just a matter of taste?

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Is this just Mexican versus Italian? Actually, like both of those that wouldn't work for me. Is this

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Italian versus Chinese? That works for me one I like one. No, no, it's starve. I'd starve to death

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Um no, it's not and For the psalmist to say what he's saying.

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It's very plain that what's going on here. Is that there is a

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Standard and it's God's standard. It's got standard of loving -kindness is a standard of What was the terminology he used used up there of justice?

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wisdom That Allows him to say I will set no worthless thing before my eyes

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Why because my mind is focused upon that which has value in God's sight and So we're not talking about Adiaphora here the term adiaphora

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Refers to things that that don't matter the things that don't make a difference things that do not define

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What is well, you're probably all thinking about the same text I am in Philippians chapter 4

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Finally brethren, whatever is true Whatever is honorable

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Whatever is right and interestingly enough. That's dikaiya

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Which would be related in the Old Testament primarily to Zedekiah, but also it's in some

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Context the same Hebrew word that was used in verse 1 and 101 in regards to mishpat whatever is pure whatever is lovely

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Whatever is of good repute If there is any excellent and if anything worthy of praise and those forms are not if there is we're not sure

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It could be translated sense. So there are things of excellent. There are things that are worthy of praise dwell on these things literally like gives us the

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Tau -tau like gives us the ponder these things let these things Take up your mind

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We all know that we daydream We all know that all sudden we catch ourselves What are you thinking about?

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What are you focused upon? What gives you pleasure

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What is your what does your mind dwell upon? the Apostles exhortation is to have a

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Standard of these things and This of course is what comes right after and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension

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Will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus your heart and your mind needs to be guarded

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It needs to be to be guarded that is a incredibly important concept and for the

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Christian that peace of God is Available to us and part of how that peace of God will guard our hearts and minds is if we are focused upon what is true

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Honorable right pure lovely good repute excellence and these things are all defined by Christian worldview

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They're defined by recognition that we have a creator who has made us we have a creator who

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Has Defined for us by his creative act and by his redemptive acts in history

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What is pleasing and good in his sight and as his followers that should be what we desire to contemplate and to think about and So when we think about Psalm 101,

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I will set no worthless thing before my eyes It's the same idea as Philippians 4 we have the decision to make as to what we are going to Expose ourselves to now.

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There's a limitation. I Guess what I should say what we voluntarily expose ourselves to we cannot leave the world and Unless you're gonna drive down the road with your eyes closed, which

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I do not recommend Then you are going to see an encounter that which is

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Opposed to the Christian worldview and it could be offensive to you. It's gonna happen Anymore in Western culture, you can't you can't drive down the road

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I Where was I? I think it was when I was in Norway last year. Yeah, I think it's when

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I was in Norway last year We come around a corner that I'm being taken to the airport come around a corner and the road the sign along the road

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I'm not sure that she had clothes on I'm really not certain I mean it was explicit as right there on the roadside and you can try to turn your eyes, but you've got to have seen it long enough to realize what it is before you can even know to do that and So you not only have that kind of thing happening

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But we're not talking about trying to create a safe space for Christians either where we're not gonna be offended and all the rest that Stuff we're talking about what your heart dwells upon What you find yourself thinking about and and Contemplating and what truly makes you happy and I don't mean happy and happy happy happy as in joyous and One of the

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I'll be honest one of the things that brought my mind back to this phrase

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Was a movie that came out It's not risen I haven't seen risen if I could find the time

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I probably would I I'd like to it sounds really interesting But I haven't seen it yet So I wasn't talking about risen.

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There's a movie came out. I don't know if it came out this weekend or last week I don't know. I don't follow this type of stuff.

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I admit But evidently it's supposed to be sort of a comic superhero comedian thing

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That I had never heard of until I Don't know just a few months ago when stuff would start popping up on stuff start popping up on social media stuff

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I guess called Deadpool and I Took the time to track down the trailer for it once I read some stuff coming across my feed and Evidently it is a hard our rating

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Just barely missing well, let's put this way probably ten years ago. It wouldn't have been in our rating so Huge amounts of profanity

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And huge amounts of nudity and sex on screen

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I guess the attraction is it's some sort of Superhero Something I don't know some guy

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I guess has cancer or something and Some nefarious group

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Cures him of his cancer and makes him indestructible, but now he has to I don't know I really don't care but It caused me to think about What we voluntarily put into our minds now,

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I'm not a prude I Am NOT a

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King James only fundamentalist Baptist I do not Wear a bowtie white shirt black pants and squeaky black shoes

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From the time I get up in the morning the time I go to bed at night. I certainly don't wear that or riding a bike and I Have seen

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R -rated movies But let me come let me compare and contrast. I would never go see this movie this

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Deadpool thing I see no redemptive value in it at all

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But let me compare it with an R -rated movie I did see and that I would defend seeing and that I think you have the

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Soundtrack to probably still sitting out there and it's if it's not the CD used to be sitting there for like 15 years

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Um, so now, you know what I'm talking about, right? I saw I went to the theater to see

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Saving Private Ryan. I Don't even know when that came out. Could you Google that to find out when I came out?

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I saw Saving Private Ryan and I'd see it again My daughter's saying what okay 98 my daughter says

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I'm butchering the description of Deadpool. Well, that's that's fine Um Hey, I just watched the trailer if the trailers that far off.

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What can I say? I Went to see it as especially after I read articles that noted that D -day veterans and there were more of them around back then than there are today that D -day veterans were seeing the film or coming out in tears and When they were asked why they said

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That is the only film That got it, right That is the only film that recreated what we experienced on Omaha Beach I and one of the things by the way that that they said that really caught my attention because I do read a lot about World War two

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I'm Little over halfway through a book on the relationship between Eisenhower Patton and Bradley right now, which is fascinating.

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It's fascinating Because I don't I do not believe we could do what we did then today

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I do not believe that the worldview that is held by the vast majority of United States citizens would allow us

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To do what we did to sacrifice the way we did that. I just don't think it could happen anymore Which is a dangerous thing because there's still plenty of people who want to be a

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Hitler or or a Mussolini or Interesting Stalin which is part of the strange thing about World War two anyway

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But one of the things they said was that it sounded right in other words the the

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The people who made the film Made it sound like the actual events because In all the movies up to that point what you'd hear is, but I don't know that that's not what you hear

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Those guns are a long ways off what you hear is the bullets hitting things the thuds and the and the

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And and that's what you hear the the actual sound of the gunfire is far away and The close -up sound is the sound that it that it makes when it rips flesh when it bounces off steel when it when it hits water and So when

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I read that I Need to see this I need to see this film. That's R -rated.

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There's profanity in it and a lot of violence Because that's what happened that's what people experienced and to understand that generation

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To understand that experience I Do not think that there was anything morally wrong.

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I'm not saying that everyone else should go see it But to understand what happened to that generation because honestly when you think about it

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Something happened Post World War two look at what happened England look at what happened those people experienced something that absolutely fundamentally changed their worldview and That changed what they taught their children and that led to the 60s.

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We all look back to the 60s well, who were the 60s who was in charge who was doing this stuff in the 60s the children from the returning veterans

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Something happened so I see a huge difference between Purposely exposing yourself to something like that which happened in history and can help you to understand history and can help you to understand and evaluate what's going on in your day and Something like Deadpool, which doesn't do anything.

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It's it's not real. It's You know It's just vacuous mindless

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Uh Entertainment well amusement and remember amuse muse means to think uh

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Alpha privative to not think it is not thinking So I've got someone saying

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Deadpool is a violent parody of Marvel Marvel Marvel superheroes But yeah saving private

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Ryan is far more meaningful. Yeah, I got that feeling. I got the feeling that what it was that there were

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Yeah, now I think about yeah, it does seem to be a mockery of the Marvel superheroes, okay,

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I got it Again it seems to be extremely Immoral in a lot of what it has to say so At the very least what we need to understand is

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I will set no worthless saying before my eyes requires each one of us if you're gonna make that commitment, then you have to have

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Thought through the grid you're going to use to determine whether something is or is not worthless and The balance and this is this is sort of going back to what

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I talked about Back in December when I did that program on stuff. We should divide over and stuff. We shouldn't

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Calvinist Batman was asking me about Unity because I guess last week he had Michael Brown on So Mike and I got to talk about each other without knowing we were talking about each other

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And Some of this goes back to that we have to have

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Absolute convictions about what God has revealed about his truth but we also have to recognize there's

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Romans 14 and there's first Corinthians and There's never going to be a time in this world where we are clones of one another and Finding that balance is not merely a matter of emotion.

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Well, I feel I Feel I'm not saying don't don't you wrong?

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I know I'm a Scotsman But I have emotions believe it or not But I recognize the

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Bible tells me I am NOT to be ruled by them But I am to rule over them that I have been given a mind.

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I'm to have the mind of Christ I'm to have a Christian worldview. I am to make

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I am to treat the Messiah as Yahweh in my heart and that that is going to create a

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Set of priorities that I'm to apply all across my life now that means

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I have to leave room For brothers and sisters Who come to different conclusions not on the

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Trinity or the gospel or something like that not on the stuff where where the Apostles say This is what defines the

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Christian faith but in other areas But all of us should listen

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To what the psalmist is saying here and not just dismiss. This is some overzealous Jewish guy in the past There is something good right true honest and just and saying

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I will set no worthless thing before my eyes There's something true honest and just and good in Saying a perverse heart shall depart from me.

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I will know no evil Now he's obviously not saying When it says

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I will I will know no evil That well,

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I'm going to be ignorant of Evil It's literally ra low a da

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So that is something that you are doing see when we we use a term no in English generally

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We view that as a passive thing the taking in of knowledge this is

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Actually a call From yada Yada means to know but this is

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I will not purposefully seek To know to enter into relationship with to make a part of me evil.

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I Will purposefully eschew it I will this is this is Psalm 1 I will not walk in the way of evil doers

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I will not put myself in the situation where I am surrounded by these things and I I am

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I am Purposefully engaging these things and sullying myself with it and again

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You have to have expended specific energy to have created a a

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Filter through which you are Bringing these things that is built upon Scripture, it's not built upon tradition.

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It's not built upon bigotry. It's not built upon Well, this is how we've always done it, but that it really has a consistent

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Biblical matrix to it what

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I'm talking about is serious Christianity What I'm talking about is taking your faith seriously and applying

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These standards to all of life all of life I Was not in Thinking about this.

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I was not in bringing this up and now I'm gonna have to address it because I've thought of it And I bet you some of the rest of you are too.

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I was not Thinking about Particular political

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Movements or individuals today I Really was not what I was thinking about but I would say

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That a certain event that took place last weekend What was it

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Friday? Was it Saturday? I forget when it was but I commented on the

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Exchange that took place Between primarily Jeff Durbin and Steve camp and I I was gonna do a

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Screenflow video on it. And so I typed up these notes and then realized huh?

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I used complete sentences punctuation everything else in the notes so Why waste the time reading the notes just post the notes people can read and So I I know what happened there.

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It's interesting You may interpret what happened there differently than I did rich interprets it differently than I do

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He heard things differently than than I heard them But the point is it should not simply be a matter of well

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Jeff Durbin has a beard so I go with Steve camp who cares

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Who cares what you should have been listening to in that conversation was

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It started it sounded like it started off real well and then all of a sudden the wheels fell off and While you can say part of that was well part of that was just interview stuff

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Jeff wasn't interviewing. He was inserting himself into it. Well, some people would say that The real issue

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Was worldview and presuppositional and it goes to the impact of one's eschatology

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Really does. I mean if you didn't hear that what Jeff was challenging is that you have to use specifically

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Christian parameters in the selection of Someone who is going to be asked if someone let's put this way and I Should have included

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I always think of stuff. I should have included in the notes if you think

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That the next president will be held accountable by God For what he says and does then obviously you as the voter must use specifically scripturally based parameters in selecting that individual if you do not believe

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That a president will be held accountable For what he does as president, but only be held accountable for who he is as an individual

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Then you don't have to use biblical parameters in the selection of that individual because what he does is not actually directly relevant

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To what he's going to be judged for and I remember having a conversation with somebody about 15 years ago about the

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New Covenant theology stuff and That was one of the issues was what came up was

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I Asked a question. Do you think this was this is way back in Clinton?

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That's how long ago this was I said, I remember it was at a conference and I said, do you believe that President Clinton?

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Will be held accountable for what he has done in regards to the abortion issue

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And I forget who I don't remember who it was. I was speaking with but a New Covenant speaker said Probably Okay but Individual said no

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He will not he will only be judged as an individual. He will not be judged for what he's done as president

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So if you if you take that perspective then You can divorce Christian worldview morality

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Consistency you can you can divorce all of that from your selection Because not to be held accountable for it anyways and so what was going on there was

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One side saying It's constitutional issues that you judge on and Not these other things the other side saying that can't be done and it went back to a fundamental

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Eschatological issue, but that never really got fleshed out that that sort of Didn't happen

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Unfortunately in that situation. Oh To be honest,

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I Grieve that it was posted. I Honestly didn't have to be what

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I mean Didn't didn't Steve's tweet make sure that it would be I Wish that Steve could have retracted that and the two of them could have come to a point to where they decided

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Humbly that it was the thing to do over The attempt had value. Yeah, and I I just wish that both of them could have found a way

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To do it properly. Well, that's what I say at the end of my of my notes, but I don't know that that's not still a possibility and I'm not sure there would be much pressure to have that happen if it hadn't been

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I Would agree with that. I think at this point it it almost screams. I mean it

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I Found it very ugly Well, yeah, it's unfortunate that it turned out the way that it did

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But I'm not sure that I you know, some people would say that some of my debates turned out pretty ugly, too

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You know some of the syngenous debates, I mean that that first debate was syngenous that was That might fall in that category

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Yeah, but we are talking about two men that are believers. That's right Even though they come at their eschatology from two different points of view if They could have merely restrained themselves

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I think the the entire attempt could have had value to all Well, I'm not certain that it won't eventually and hey it's causing us to talk about now

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So maybe that's where the value comes from. I don't know but my point is Getting back to my to the issue here.

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That was not why I brought this up But it is relevant in this sense when you listen to That encounter

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What are you are are you truly thinking through The worldview that you're bringing to what you're hearing.

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Can you filter out your prejudices? Can you filter out?

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And this is this is what concerns me most folks and this is this is where I have felt convicted over the past number of years

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It's far too easy for many of us to let our prejudices

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Determine what we hear and what someone is saying. I know that person disagrees with me on such and such a topic and And therefore

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I Heard them say this I get this all the time. I get this

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Constantly in social media. I get it. I mean I See stuff on my

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Twitter feed that absolutely Leaves me dumbfounded.

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I will say something and I thought it was clear what I was saying And someone will respond and I'm just like How did you get that from what

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I said? And sometimes I don't Respond appropriately.

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I think sometimes the best thing you do is just hit block real quick and just allows for peace But if I do take the time to think it through or if I can find out something about the person sometimes it is educational to figure out why they heard me say what they think

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I said and Almost always well, for example, there's anti -calvinist derangement syndrome

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Where a Calvinist can't say anything? That has any meaning whatsoever. Can't do anything.

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That's right Roman Catholics will hear me saying things in a certain way

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Mormons will hear me saying things in a certain way. I you know, I get that, you know, if I've said your religion is wrong

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You know, I get it But when it's my fellow believers then it gets a little troubling it gets it gets strange as to Why for so many there is no extension of any grace no extension of any possibility

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And it all comes down to just such little things. I mean sometimes it's Well, sometimes it is eschatology and I'm gonna tell you something

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If I ever get to the point Where I won't listen to what someone who has a different eschatology from me has to say

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That doesn't mean I'm gonna ignore it It doesn't mean that I you know remember what two years ago or so of The one post -millennial guy

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Name is giving my mind because I wasn't even thinking about going this direction today It was about second

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Timothy and Things get worse and worse and so on so we had it we had a real disagreement as To whether this was going to be the normative state of the church or whether it was just a temporary thing.

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Hey, I Could not engage in a discussion of the s exegesis of that text without recognizing

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This person is bringing a post -millennial perspective to it And is that determined the exegesis or the exegesis determining the eschatology that's important But at the same time if that man is talking about So many other things am

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I just gonna dismiss him because I disagree with him on that one issue For a lot of people.

44:46

Yes For a lot of Christians. Yes, if they don't look like me if they don't sing the same songs

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I do and don't get me wrong. I it's wonderful when I get to go overseas and go into a congregation

45:00

We're seeing the same songs and they it's wonderful But it's not necessary It's a wonderful thing.

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But if someone sings different songs, well, maybe you'll get to learn a different song I just realized by the way,

45:15

I'm badly pixelated over here. Not just that now it helps me understand why I look weird Still bad, uh

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What I'm what I'm saying, I guess I guess I'm going back over Ground now, and so I'll try to move on it.

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I had a video to move to here, but In all of this my fellow elder a week ago

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Exhorted us from The pulpit that especially at this time

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Where There are political issues that we need to extend tremendous grace

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To our fellow believers who may support candidates that we do not support Now I'm having a little bit of a hard time with that myself these days to be perfectly honest with you but there are there are men in my own congregation that support one particular candidate that I For the life of me cannot begin to figure out how anyone ever could

46:29

Okay, there's one particular candidate. I just view the man as a complete demagogue. I as a person who values consistency throughout one's life

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You can sort of guess who I'm talking about and you can sort of guess who I like because of consistency throughout life as well

46:49

You know, it's pretty easy but but I cannot allow that to cause me to show disrespect to my fellow believer

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Now I've gotten a lot of that from this particular politicians followers, and I've been blocking a lot of people because they tend to be extremely sensitive and they tend like their candidate to be profane in their language and I've always said

47:27

I have the abundance of the heart and the mouth speaks and If you want to stop a conversation with me throw profanity in that'll pretty much do it.

47:36

That'll pretty much do it But hey, I'm struggling with that issue myself and maybe

47:43

I'm just maybe I'm just preaching to the choir here but a year from now, this is gonna be over and And Personally, I don't see almost any positive outcome in any scenario at all.

47:59

I mean, I mean

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Wow Bernie Sanders really honestly,

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I'm seeing Bernie Sanders signs all along my running route in my in my neighborhood and every time

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I run by I sorely tempted To turn around run up the door knock on the door.

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I just want to see what you look like Can we have a conversation I'd like to can we talk, you know, and it hasn't happened anyway

48:36

Back to back to the issue here because we actually need to wrap up here in a few minutes I will set no worthless thing before my eyes.

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I believe what that's calling us to do is Is to as believers recognize that we're creating the image of God he made our minds and That therefore we are to exercise discipline.

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So frontus moss is the Greek term. It's a beautiful term Doesn't sound it doesn't exactly it serves like some

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German words. It doesn't sound real nice, but so frontus moss Sound mind discipline

49:15

There has to be a disciplined creation of standards of worldview that will allow you to then

49:23

Determine what is truly of worth and what is truly not

49:29

Of worth what is worth less? I Don't see a lot of people in much of what calls itself

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Evangelicalism being challenged to think through that issue and to Regularly pray that God would give them that kind of perspective.

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I don't see that happening a lot And what I'm saying is it's vitally important it's vitally important and I think the more clearly we understand the central issues and what really matters

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God's purpose in The demonstration of the glory of the triune God the proclamation of the gospel that the gospel is the power of God in the salvation that the church has been entrusted with the gospel that We are to we are to live in light of the gospel.

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We are to be gospel people we are to seek sanctification because the person who is

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Walking in holiness is the person who is going to be in the best position to Model and proclaim the gospel to make application of the gospel within family within society

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Focused upon the central issues the more we're focused upon the central issues the less likely it is that we will get off into the weeds on things that don't matter and That doesn't mean that we don't debate issues of difference between us

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If you feel that something really impacts the practice of the church the health of the church Fine be willing to debate it, but why?

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Can't we recognize? That Paul wasn't

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Peter. Why can't we recognize that? Oh, yeah, they're both held the same the same standard

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Paul Paul opposes Peter right in front of everybody and says you are not walking straight in accordance the truth of the gospel

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Got it But that was the gospel that was under discussion there. Do you really see

51:37

Paul and Peter as? clones of one another They have different emphases they have different audiences

51:44

It's very clear There were certain people that Paul would have been the best person to Diminish to them and others that Peter would have been it seems that for many people who?

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Would be a part of my audience and hence are concerned about apologetics and things like that We tend to lose balance

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We lose balance because we demand that everybody look like us And talk like us act like us and cross their

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T's and dot their I's just like us and we don't allow Paul to be

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Paul and Peter to be Peter and as a result

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We end up very frequently slamming the door on sources

52:35

That could be very beneficial to us You can actually learn from people who don't believe everything that you believe exactly

52:46

Some of you just heard me say stop being discerning. I didn't say that I Did not say that but what

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I did say is there is a vast difference between Discernment and prejudice and The mature

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Christian will want to know what the difference between them is so Just some thoughts that Ended up wandering farther away from where I started then

53:20

I imagined but Don't skip over these texts you know sometimes it's real easy to look at the psalmist saying these things and out of the psalmist got on the wrong side of the bed that morning or something along those lines and No, he didn't

53:39

Oh, yeah, there's some tough stuff here because it goes on to say Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor him.

53:45

I will destroy well David had the power to do that kind of stuff, you know No one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will

53:54

I endure and it's really easy to go. Yeah, well Look what

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David did In other words, no matter how high The standard we always need grace because we're always gonna fall

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This isn't a work salvation system, this isn't a a grounding for some kind of pharisaical attitude

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My eyes shall be upon the faithful the land that they may dwell with me He who walks in a blameless way is the one who will minister to me.

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He who practices deceit shall not dwell within my house These these are the words of of God Every morning

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I will destroy all the wicked of the land There's a cutoff in the city of the Lord all those who do iniquity, you know, this is this is the godly

54:45

King seeking to bring godliness to a covenanted nation and what it tells us is

54:55

Holiness is a good thing Holiness is a good thing don't let don't let people do the

55:04

Puritan, you know making the Puritan sound bad to you holiness is a good thing but holiness

55:11

Without a recognition of one's own redeemed state always leads to either a personal piety or to pharisaism

55:21

Always got to be a balance. There's always got to be a balance. Hey before we run out of time. Can I talk to you about?

55:29

next year Next year. Can I talk to you about almost next month?

55:37

Sorry Um We still need to raise a lot of funds to get to South Africa and to England.

55:47

I Think I need to look this up Let me see Okay, it should be right here here it is

56:03

Oops I need to let Rudolph know I put Tuesday I thought I thought that I made that mistake. I'm gonna keep that on the screen so I can type

56:09

Sam afterwards Lord willing on Thursday The only way we can have

56:18

Rudolph on is if we do this in the morning again Which is better for it seems to be better for the feed for some reason around here anyways so on Thursday at 11 o 'clock is when we'll do the next dividing line and That'll be 8 o 'clock in Joburg and Hopefully not because I said

56:45

I said Tuesday So I'm gonna try to have Rudolph bush off back on not for the whole hour anything, but I want to talk about What we're doing in Cape Town what we're doing at Pacha soon and what we're doing in Joburg in South Africa and then going from South Africa to London and hopefully

57:06

Having some events there in London As well, it's gonna be a long trip longer than I'm accustomed to taking gonna need a lot of prayer, but it's also gonna especially the

57:17

South Africa London stuff where I'm doing I'm not doing Stuff in London where churches are sponsoring, but I'm doing debates things like that we we pay that we pay the freight we pay the freight and We don't have big donors that just come along and say hey,

57:35

I'll cover all this we just don't I Guess it's my looks or something.

57:41

I just Yes to emphasize this is not a Point where the churches at the where you're going have the ability or the funds to be able to finance their smaller churches

57:53

Yeah, all grace. This is you know, but it needs to be done. This is this is really important.

57:59

Yep Yeah, very very very much so so We've moved the time from normally end of September October, it's gonna need to be

58:09

May that's just around the corner We need to start booking flights. We need to start getting those final arrangements made.

58:15

So please We need your assistance. Please consider helping us.

58:22

There is a travel link on the Support us portion of the website.

58:28

And so if you can assist us in this way, we If if you if if your missions committee at your church

58:36

Does specific events or or support somebody going to someplace do something?

58:42

that would be something that would be really great as well, but we're moving things up and Because of that we really need to come to you and say this is a pressing need it really really is so ailment org support us and Lord willing we'll see you 11 o 'clock

59:00

Our time which is 1 p .m. Eastern Time here on Thursday Hopefully joined by Rudolph to talk about South Africa and something tells me something will have happened between now