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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.
It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 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 with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this twelfth day of January 2024, and I am thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest, one that has a unique place in my heart because he was a pastor of mine before I moved to Pennsylvania.
He was one of my pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, and he is now, currently, pastoring Sovereign Grace Church in White House, also known as Greenbrier, Tennessee, and we have another thing connected to both of us is that we are both individuals who were rescued from addiction by a merciful God, and today we are going to be addressing the theme, Sealing the Coffin on Addictive Sin, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Mark Grimaldi.
Thanks, Chris.
It's always a pleasure to be here on you, to be on here with you, brother. Appreciate it.
Amen. Well, tell our listeners, for the sake of those who have not yet heard you on the show or they just forgot about the details about Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee, tell us about that church.
Yes, Sovereign Grace Church, we are in Greenbrier, as you said. We're about 45 minutes north of Nashville, up in northern middle Tennessee. We are, of course, a 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith Church, and if you'd like to visit, we'd love to certainly have you come and see us, but you can check us out on our website at www .sovereigngracechurch .net, www .sovereigngracechurch .net.
So we'd love to see anybody if you're in the area or visiting, or we just would love to see you.
And this is a solidly reformed Baptist church, am I not right?
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
And is it confessional?
We are. Yeah, we hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
Great. Well, I hope that some of our listeners who live in or near the Greenbrier slash White House, Tennessee area will visit that fine congregation, or if they're passing through, or if they have family, friends, and loved ones in Greenbrier or White House or nearby, we hope that you will recommend that church to those you love so that they can be edified by the ministry there.
And we will, God willing, be repeating that website and contact information before the program is over. Well, from what I can recall from your own personal testimony, didn't a near-death experience due to drugs have something to do with your coming to Christ to begin with?
Yes, Chris. Yeah, in fact, for several years when, let me say this, I was converted at 21. So I'm 49 now. So about 28 years ago, you could do the math there. But I was involved with drugs and some heavy drugs, some very heavy addictive drugs.
And I wound up in the hospital. My heart was beating out of my chest, and I didn't think I was going to survive. But in God's good grace, I did. And it was right at that time that he just started to call me out of that lifestyle and to begin to seek him.
And that's when I came also to the church over there in Merrick. And he worked in my life and just grateful that he has rescued me from that addiction since then to now.
Yes. And as I have repeated many times in this program, I was enslaved to the sin of habitual, unrepentant drunkenness. And I try not to use the term alcoholism as much as possible because it sounds too clinical.
It sounds too sanitary. And when you use that term, there are very often false ideas that are conjured up in the minds of many where things are purely viewed as being a sickness. You will very often hear people say to a drug addict or drunkard, it's not your fault.
This is a sickness and that kind of a thing. Now, obviously, these addictions become physical sicknesses. I mean, your body actually biologically becomes dependent on these substances. And great care needs to be taken in many cases where people are so seriously addicted physically that they need to be under medical observation when they quit or get weaned off of the drug as it could kill them.
But at the same time, to tell a sinner, an unrepentant sinner, no matter what that may be, it's not your fault. I think that's a very dangerous and misleading thing. In fact, I think it's a lie. Wouldn't you agree?
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, at the end of the material that I wrote on the issue of addiction, I have one of the appendix, I addressed the issue of AA and whether or not it's a viable option. And that's one of the reasons why I consider AA not to be a viable option.
Again, not to say that there's not been any success in people overcoming alcohol addiction or drug addiction through the help of AA. But ultimately, one of the problems with it is that they do treat you as if you're the victim and as if you just have a sickness.
And so they almost eliminate the guilt aspect of it. And even though you'll have a lot of the folks who struggle with these kinds of addictions will say that they've done wrong to people and they have to make amends and atone and so on, they still will come back to say that it's because of the illness or the sickness that they have from the alcohol that they've done those wrong things.
So that's definitely one of the big problems I have with those kinds of ministries.
Yes. And there are very well-meaning people involved in the 12-step programs. But the order of them don't even make sense. In fact, there is one of the steps is a recognition that you are not in your right mind.
And the following step is that you are to choose a God of your own preference or a higher power of your own preference to get you through this addiction and to have victory over it. And yet, how are you supposed to do that if you're not in your right mind?
How are you supposed to choose the correct higher power? And it really becomes when you speak. Now, I know that there are evangelical Bible-believing Christians who even lead 12-step groups, but the average non-believer is basically using that higher power aspect as a mind game because they'll even tell you that it could be a tree or a chair or whatever you choose it to be.
It's like you're playing with the power of positive thinking or something.
Yeah, when you read through the big book, which I've read most of it, a lot of the big book is testimonies toward the end of it. But I've read the whole philosophy behind it and then into several testimonies as well.
And you'll find that when you read that, you'll even see it italicized where they constantly come back to seeking a higher power or seeking a God or higher power according to what you believe or according to what you want to view that God to be.
And there's usually italics with that, like according to your understanding, as opposed to seeking a living and true God. It's just whatever God you want according to your understanding. So that's definitely one of the issues you see.
And as you said, there are a lot of good folks, a lot of good folks who are involved with AA. There's a lot of Christian folks who found some sense of encouragement. We know many people who have been involved.
And so we're not saying anything to condemn those folks, but it's just not the best option overall. And there are significant problems with it. And yes, you can come to the right and true and living God if that's the one you seek as your God.
If you come from a Christian background and you seek the true God as your higher power, you can come to faith and you will. The problem is that a good portion of the people who are involved with AA are not seeking that God and will look to other means of of authority and oversight from the true living God.
Amen. And as I always do,.
Whenever I have the opportunity, I like to give a praise report for Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina, where I entered for their their ministry, for their recovery ministry from addiction.
And I can never stop saying wonderful things about it. The website is hebroncolony .org, H-E-B-R-O-N colony .org. It's free of charge. It just requires a $300 refundable deposit in case you have pharmaceutical needs while you're there.
And that money is returned to you if you never use it. And it is not a 12-step based ministry. In fact, what it really is, is a men's discipleship ministry. And they do have a branch in South Carolina for women.
But Hebron Colony is a men's discipleship ministry aimed at leading by, of course, the power of God and the Holy Spirit, leading the lost to salvation, and also leading those who are truly saved there to repentance and restoration in their churches and in their families and so on.
And in fact, not only is it not a 12-step ministry, but there is very little ever said about addiction and drugs and alcohol. You are just under rigorous Bible study and hearing the Word of God preached every day.
And they do not have people getting up and publicly giving their war stories about how they survived through their addiction nightmares. Some of that can become vain practices of glamorizing addiction.
And very often, that is not an intentional thing that occurs. But I am just glad that they do not involve the 12-step mindset at Hebron Colony. And the man who actually founded it, even though while I was there, there was no confessionally Reformed minister involved in the leadership there, the workbook that they used was written by a Reformed pastor in the early 20th century who founded Hebron Colony, a Presbyterian minister who left his congregation in North Carolina because no one would follow him in leaving the liberal Presbyterian denomination that this congregation was a part of, the PCUSA.
They refused to leave the denomination, so he left on his own because of the liberalism. And when he moved to Boone, he began to witness GIs returning home from World War II who were drunks. And he said, something's got to be done about this.
So Hebron Colony is the oldest continually running ministry for addicts in the United States. So once again, hebroncolony .org. And a shout out to Don Holder and everybody there. I have nothing but fond memories.
Of course, I hated being there the first week or so, but I grew to love being there. And I'm not saying this is the case for everybody. Everybody's a different individual. But since leaving there, I've never even had a temptation to return to drinking.
It's just pretty remarkable. And when I say remarkable, I'm not talking about myself as there's something to brag about. I'm just saying in regard to God's work in my heart there. And I always have to remember that he who thinks he stands, take heed lest you fall.
But at the same time, I am rejoicing that I can sit at a dinner table with Reformed brethren or even unbelievers who are drinking wine with their meal or what have you. And it doesn't even faze me. So, and like I said, that's not the case with everybody.
Some people need to keep completely away from others who are partaking in alcohol or any other substance that's addictive. But but right now and for the past 12 to 13 years ago, since I left there, I have not had that struggle.
And I thank God for that. I have plenty of other sins that I have to struggle with, but not that one. But anyway, this is, I think, a very important issue we are addressing. It's probably especially important for Reformed Christians to hear, because although it seems to be in vogue now that evangelicals from many different backgrounds, even Pentecostals that I know, who at one time, you know, if you were caught or it was discovered that you were moderately drinking, you could be excommunicated very easily from a Pentecostal church.
But nowadays, it's more of an acceptable practice, just like it has been, not in all, but in most Reformed churches and denominations and fellowships. And I happen to agree that it is a liberty for Christians, not for me, but it's a liberty for Christians who do not struggle with an addictive sin to moderately, socially imbibe in alcoholic beverages, as long as they never reach the point of intoxication, which is a damnable sin.
Some people seem to forget that the sin of drunkenness is damnable. But one of the reasons I said it's especially probably important for Reformed Christians to hear this is, I'm assuming that you agree with me, Pastor Mark, that far too often amongst our Reformed brethren, there is a flaunting of this liberty to the point where it's juvenile, to the point where they don't seem to care about others that are battling an addiction.
And the idea is, well, that's the weaker brother, so I don't really need to be concerned. But the irony is, the Apostle Paul said we have to be very much concerned about the weaker brother, right? Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
A lot.
Of times what happens is you'll have folks who've come out of some independent fundamentalist church backgrounds, where there was a lot of restriction on those things, like you said, where even to have alcohol in your home, you know, is wrong, or some of the things we would see as extreme.
And so what happens is coming out of that, and kind of having a sense of freedom from that level of bondage, they tend to go off the other side of the horse. And now it's like every single photo they take or post on Facebook has them, you know, carrying a 40 ounce of alcohol and smoking a cigar or hookah pipe or, you know, so it's, as you said, there's a liberty there, but we don't have to flaunt it and glorify it and present it in a way that could harm others or even just identify too much with things in the world, where the world would see it as something that's more than just a liberty, where they would be entrenched in that and to see Christians kind of constantly flaunting it can be a danger.
So I've seen that many times when people have come out of a strict background with certain kinds of church affiliations, where they'll go the other extreme, and it's just now they got to go out of their way to just flash all that all over the place.
And in fact, I heard with my own ears, a couple of guys, I'm not going to mention the name of the podcast, I don't even know if it still exists. But these guys may have repented of this. I don't know.
But that's one of the reasons I'm not mentioning names. But I've heard with my own ears, Reformed Brothers, who host, at least hosted a podcast, joking about imbibing too much the night before they were doing the broadcast, joking about being intoxicated.
And like I was saying just moments ago, this is a damnable sin. And if it's not for the blood of Christ covering us, it would certainly send anyone to hell. And it's not something to think, oh, that's cute.
Am I going overboard here?
No, no, I think you're 100 right. I know a brother specifically, who have, who have been exercising the liberty, have gone so far with the liberty in that way to flash it or to joke around about that, and have wound up falling into some significant sin, you know, of perpetual drunkenness and other things.
And by God's grace, they've come around and repented. But it's just, you know, it becomes a pride issue. And, you know, and this is my freedom and so on. And so I think it's nothing to joke around about at all.
It is very serious when.
You look at what scripture says. Okay, well, before we go to our first commercial break, I want you to discuss how our listeners are to prepare for the battle.
Yeah, yeah, appreciate that, Chris. Let me just say this by way of preface too. And when I put this material together, two things that had really motivated me to do this. And one was, was besetting sins in general.
I've always, as a pastor for almost 20 years now, one of the big, one of the big struggles, which is no secret, particularly among men is pornography and sexual sin and those kinds of things. And so I really had that in mind.
I've always looked for material, material that could be in some way like a workbook or curriculum type material to help folks deal with, with sexual sin and pornography and things like that. But on top of that, I've been working in a prison ministry here for about a year and a half in several different pods.
I would go in throughout the week and do a Bible study. And I noticed a lot of these folks that were in the prison were in there because of drug issues, drug addiction issues, repeatedly coming back in, they get out, they go right back to it, get caught, come back in.
And when they leave, a lot of times what they have to do is go to a one year program to kind of transition back into life. They have to first go to a rehab program. And even in the jail itself, they have AA pods and NA pods.
There's also sexual addiction pods that all have the same 12 step kind of philosophy behind it. So I've gotten to sit in on some of those meetings and to see what it's about. So those kinds of things are what kind of compelled me to put this material together because I felt like what's out there that I'm aware of, besides AA, which again has several issues, I have several concerns about that.
But even some of the good stuff that's out there, I think it doesn't bring into it. Maybe some of the positive aspects of AA, there are some positive things that I think are helpful to incorporate into our understanding of addiction and what the scriptures teach about it.
So that's kind of the background that got me into that. The other question, should I answer that now or should we wait for the break now,.
The one you were asking? You can start the ball rolling before the break. We got about five.
Minutes. Okay, good. Yeah. So one of the things that I do in the book, there's about five chapters on just informational teaching and kind of some important things that I try to express about working on besetting sins, right, or addiction.
We might call them besetting sins. And then after that, I have three appendix to it as well, where I have actually a 31 devotional appendix, just giving individuals an opportunity to kind of learn how to study the scriptures in a way that's productive, you know, asking questions and not just reading it, but actually seeking to understand and work through questions so that they can grow and just learning how to have a good devotional life as that's important and dealing with issues from a legal standpoint and from a gospel standpoint, law and gospel kind of sense, but always centered on the gospel, of course.
And then I have a Proverbs reference section in the back, a guide using Proverbs or a lot of the Proverbs that deal with addictions or a lot of them deals with alcohol or even sexual sin, those kinds of things.
And then finally, a chapter on AA, just expressing some of my concerns, but also commending some of the things that I appreciate about AA. But at the beginning of the book, then in the introduction, the two things that I start out with is I try to explain right from the outset, you know, that if somebody's going to use this material, there are two things right from the outset that they have to really have.
One is to have a confidence that God is able to help them in some sense. Now, I realize that can be something you're struggling with. If somebody is caught up in an addiction, you might feel hopeless or helpless, but just to really try to have a sense of recognizing the power that God has and confident that he can help you overcome whatever the besetting sin or addiction is.
Very important to have that sense of confidence in what God can do. And then secondly, to be committed to fight a very difficult and painful battle. If you're dealing with a besetting sin, and you think that it's just something that's going to be simple to just kind of, you know, just sit on a conveyor belt and kind of, you know, I'll take it in stride.
It's not going to happen. You have to be determined. There has to be a sense in which the house is on fire. You're in the room there. And what would you do to get out of that house and to get your family out of the house?
It's that kind of severity in dealing with addiction and besetting sin. It has to be that kind of radical, you know, compelling sense of needing to deal with it. And then with preparing the battle for the battle in the first section, the first chapter, that's the introduction, what I was just saying, having that kind of a mindset.
I also deal with, if you're not a Christian, you know, it's important to come to Christ first, to be saved, not 12 steps, but to repent and believe and come to Christ. And that's where the power will come to help us not only overcome sin, but to be reconciled with God and so on.
But on preparing for the battle in the first chapter, there's two things that I emphasize there in preparing for the battle before fighting it is one is, and this has to do with what I said in the introduction, is there has to be a diligent commitment.
There has to be a real sense of understanding of the severity of the sin of where you're at, the dire need of overcoming this, to recognize that it's a war. And there has to be a readiness to fight that battle on God's terms and with his resources.
So to be willing to do whatever it takes, you can't be a lazy Christian and fight this battle. And I've seen that with different folks in the church at times where they want to overcome sexual addiction or sexual sin, the besetting sin or different kinds of addictions, but they're not really committed to take the steps to really do whatever's necessary.
And Chris, one of the things that encouraged me about you with the Hebron Colony is your willingness to leave your life in Amityville and to go away for a few months. I mean, that's a tremendous commitment and step.
Just that in itself was positive and would fulfill what I'm talking about here, showing that you're serious, showing you're willing to do whatever it takes, even though you have all these responsibilities at home and things you want to do.
You were committed enough to leave. And I thought that was huge on your part. And then secondly, real quick, the other important thing is reliable accountability. And this is where I think the benefit of AA comes in is one thing AA emphasizes is accountability.
And in Hebrews 3, 12 to 14, it talks about that, the importance of having accountability of, you know, of encouraging one another as the day is called today so that you're not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
So not just having a mere Sunday service kind of fellowship, but a daily, if you're depending upon the nature of the sin, even a daily communication with some individuals.
You can trust, regular check-ins, openness, just accountability. In fact, if you recall, when you were my pastor, one of the serious sins that began to manifest in my life before, or that led into full-blown, scandalous, habitual drunkenness was forsaking the assembling of the brethren.
And it's very dangerous, extremely dangerous, and that's putting it mildly, to become this maverick Christian. And very often, the Christianity aspect of the maverick is not even real. I believe in my case I was a true, regenerate person, but I don't think when somebody's in the midst of unrepentant sin to that level, they could be comforted by the extension of confidence from brethren that they are truly saved.
That is to be seen when the person does come to repentance. And, you know, obviously, even the Scriptures forbid Christians from even eating with a professing brother that's in the midst of unrepentant sin.
And obviously, we're talking about scandalous sin because every Christian is a sinner. Every pastor is a sinner. But we're talking about things that bring reproach upon the body of Christ. And that was one of the first areas that I opened up the door and gave the devil a foothold in my life as I became less and less accountable.
Yeah, we didn't see you for long. I could remember we didn't see you for long stretches of time. You were absent, right, in a lot of ways from the church. You'd pop in now and again, but you definitely weren't getting in any kind of regular fellowship or accountability.
And so on. Yeah. And when I was there, I was frequently driving home, stopping at a bar in and getting soused and obviously putting people at risk by driving. That was a very selfish act, and that's a selfish act for anybody.
And that's even putting it mildly also when you are refusing to get a taxi or anything like that, and you're actually behind the wheel of a deadly machine when you're not in your right mind. But we have to go to our first break right now.
And if anybody has a question, please submit it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.
Only remain anonymous if it's a personal and private question, and I could readily understand this topic invoking questions that are extremely delicate, personal, private, either about the individual's own life and addiction or the addiction of someone they love.
But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be.
Right back. Don't go away. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a Christ-centered,.
Gospel-driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family. At Linbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
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Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern for all who bear God's image. If you live near Linbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship.
For details, visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's l-y-n-brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast of the Lord's.
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So go to royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with my guest Mark Romaldi and we are speaking on the theme, Sealing the Coffin on Addictive Sin. By the way, I just want to quickly thank my dear friends at Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia for renewing their annual advertising contract.
I just got an email while those commercials were airing in the beginning of the show here. I just got an email from their bank that the money has been transferred into my checking account. So I'm rejoicing that they think so highly of this program that they use a portion of their hard-earned finances with which God has blessed them to keep this show on the air.
So I want to thank you once again. And their website is heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Well, let's continue on if you have anything to say about preparing for the battle or do you want to move on to fighting the good fight?
Yeah, we'll move on to fighting the good fight.
Yeah, so that's the second chapter in the material is called Fighting the Good Fight. And the main gist of this chapter is focusing on, and it sounds cliche, I realize that, but really on the importance of prayer and the word.
Those are the two key components of overcoming addiction. You're going to have to be faithful in your prayer life and in the ministry of the word. And the reason is because to overcome any sin, whether it's besetting or addictive, whatever the nature is, we know that the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary.
The Holy Spirit, apart from him, we cannot do anything in our sanctification. We're told in Romans to put the death and deeds of the body by the Holy Spirit. So we need the Spirit. And he uses, of course, the word of God as the primary tool for doing the work in our hearts.
But it also means that we need to be asking for the Holy Spirit and we need to be praying fervently about these issues directly and continually pleading with God to give victory. In Luke 11, 9 through 13, we think of the parable that the Lord gives or the illustration of a child who asks of their parents for food or for a drink and how as parents, we would never give our children anything that's harmful.
If my son asked me for an egg, I wouldn't give him a scorpion or a serpent. I would only want to do what's good for him. And I love my child. Well, God says that if we ask him for whatever we ask him for, that he will answer.
And he's not evil as we are. We're evil. And yet we love our children. All the more he will do is good. And in that text, it says, how much more will our heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?
And sometimes it's too easy to just look over what that's saying there. So we know that more importantly than anything, we need the Holy Spirit in every single aspect of our Christian walk. And so if you're going to deal with besetting or addictive sin, the Holy Spirit, it's important to have the Holy Spirit, which means it's important to be in prayer.
The scriptures also talk about those texts that are often abused, where it says, whatever we ask in Christ's name. In 1 John, it talks about that. I know the Lord talked to his apostles about that, that he will do it.
And particularly when we pray according to his will. But the good thing that we can say about dealing with sin is we know for certain that that is the will of God for us to be dealing with sin. When we're praying for a particular job, or if we're looking to buy a house, it's okay to pray about these things, but we don't know if that's the will of God.
And so if he doesn't answer according to our desire, we have to accept that that's not his will. There's no guarantee that he's going to answer in that way. However, if we're praying about things such as dealing with sin or the prospering of ministries unto the glory of Christ, we can have the certainty that he will answer.
And so we have to be fervent in prayer when we're seeking to deal with sin. And then also in the word of God, it talks about in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 about the word of God, right? Being that which equips the man of God, right?
For the fight, for every good work, everything that we need for the battle, everything we need for our sanctification, for our growth, everything that we need to please God, to understand how to please God, it's found in God's word.
And so we need to be really good stewards of the word of God and to be meditating upon it. I often find that when folks are struggling with sins in a sense when it's addictive or it's besetting, usually more often than not, the devotional life is not really intact.
There's not regular constant time in the word and in prayer. Usually you tend to drift away from those responsibilities and it's spread out and you're more open for the enemy's arrows and attacks. So it has to be daily.
There has to be a daily commitment to being in the word, to being in prayer. You had said before, Chris, that when you were at Hebron Colony, one of the things that made it so successful, certainly it was helpful to be away from the context where you were accessing the alcohol so freely, right?
That helps in the physical sense of being away from the addiction, but also just being so entrenched in the word. It wasn't 12 steps that helped you, but it was you were constantly in the preaching of the word, constantly called to read the word.
And so fighting the good fight necessitates really making good use of those two things, prayer, being in the word and availing yourself to every means of grace, being in the body, having the fellowship with the brethren, being under the preaching of the word.
It has to be that kind of a full commitment. So that's kind of where chapter two really focuses on fighting the good fight.
Yeah. In fact, you could not graduate from Hebron if you did not finish the workbook that they gave you, that everybody got. So they were making that the priority of the whole experience. Um, we have, uh, Anthony, uh, who is in Alabaster Township, Michigan.
Uh, and Anthony says, I know that a part of the discussion will involve addiction to pornography, but isn't the word addiction, in your opinion, being overused? Like there are people who call themselves sex addicts who go to a rehab facility because they'd have to overcome their so-called addiction to sex.
And these are things that are not biological addictions, such as somebody who has an alcohol or drug addiction, where very often, as was mentioned earlier, medical observation is paramount when someone is being weaned off an addictive substance.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. And that's why I would say when I use the word addiction, I use it in the context of, uh, of how it's used, uh, by our culture in general. But I agree. Um, certainly there's a different, uh, there's a different way in which, um, continually being involved with, with sexual sin, um, affects you, the, the, uh, the physical components of your body and the mind than alcohol or drugs.
Um, even gambling, right. People talk about having a gambling addiction. You know, there's some psychological aspects to that of course, as well, but that's why I like to use the word even, even more so, uh, the besetting sin.
So when you, when you're in one sense, when you entertain any sin and you continue to entertain it, it becomes more and more attractive and more and more difficult to pull away from it. It's, it becomes worse and worse.
The snowball gets larger and larger, any kind of sin. It could be stealing. It could be again, gambling, sexual sin. So in that, when I talk about addiction, I mean, it's that element. If it has, it has a tight grip on your soul, it's become a besetting sin.
Uh, and you keep running to it. Um, there is an element of, of, of ownership there where the sin begins to take hold of you almost in a master slave like fashion. Um, and it talks about not being enslaved to sin and so on.
And so even Christians, um, because we have an important role in our sanctification in cooperating with the Holy spirit, um, the fault being on us, we, we can, we can drift, neglect our, our responsibilities and our duties.
We can kind of cave into temptations and we can give into them more and more. And it does become increasingly difficult to pull away. So that, that's what I would say about the issue of addiction, more besetting, but, but I would agree with, with that individual.
There isn't in our, in our culture, this sense of where people use the concept of addiction to get away from the idea of being responsible for it, to, to using the idea of being a victim mentality. Well, I can't help my addiction to sexual sin because it's, it's, it's, I just can't help it.
I'm addicted to it. I think that's wrong. That's unbiblical. Um, and that, that I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to use that language to convey that understanding of it, that, that we're, we're somehow the victim in it.
We are responsible. We give in, we let our guard down, we're guilty of it. But when you do give into it, when you now are entrenched in it and it becomes besetting, it's the power that it has over you at that point that I'm talking about as far as finding some level of freedom and, and, and putting the coffin on addictive sin.
That's how I would be understanding that.
Yes. And, uh, I also despise the whole victim, uh, ideology that has just become dominant in our culture with everything, uh, especially with, uh, so-called race relations and so on. But, uh, there are legitimate times when an addiction begins due to somebody truly being a victim.
And I'll give you an example of that. There are people who had serious injuries, uh, who, uh, visited their physician, uh, before doctors, uh, were aware of how serious the addiction to things like Oxycontin were.
And they prescribed these drugs to people who were merely trying to survive the agony of whatever pain they were going through and they became addicted. Now, obviously there is a point when a person is responsible when they realize they are addicted and, and, uh, havoc, uh, is being wreaked in their lives and people are pointing it out to them.
They've got to seek help and repent and so on. But wouldn't you say, at least in those, uh, that portion of life, there are some circumstances, and even with a child, for instance, who might be raised in a home with drug addicts and the, the parents are feeding the kids drugs.
And, uh, this is before a child can really even know who is so young that they don't even realize what they're doing.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, Chris. There are definitely, I would definitely say there's a level of, obviously, of victimization that, and even with sexual sin, again, not, not to, um, not to remove accountability or, or, uh, responsibility for it.
But sometimes you have a situation where at least somebody has been molested several times as a child and kind of coerced into doing things, you know, that, that, uh, by, by foolish parents or an older brother.
And, uh, and that can help certainly, that can help make them more susceptible to, to, uh, sexual sin. Or maybe they've been constantly, you know, put in the presence of pornographic materials, you know, forced to watch it as a kid or so even, even in that sense that could contribute to the, to the struggle.
But as you said, there, there is a, there is help for all those things. And there is a place to, um, to, to where you, where the victimization aspect of it kind of loses its flavor and you have to be able to say, well, okay, maybe there's a level of truth to the, there was definitely truth to the fact that you were victimized, but you, there's a point where you have to realize that in a sinful world, um, we, we all face those kinds of things and we still have to make use of those tools that, uh, that would help us overcome it.
We can't continue to be, to use the victimization, um, card as a means of excusing ourselves from dealing with whatever it is that we, we, we, um, you know, we have, we're struggling with.
Well, we have to go to our midway break. Please be patient with us. The midway break is longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize geographically this program to Lake City, Florida, where the radio station is located.
They do so with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air in the middle of our show. But we, on the other hand, simultaneously, there are globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely, write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully contact our advertisers, because we need our advertisers to exist, folks.
And send in your questions to Mark Romaldi to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back.
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I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.
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Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts, Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus.
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That's liyfc .org. Have you noticed the gap that exists between the.
Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study? So often, we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study God's Word in those smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.
It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the Word of God and is built upon sound doctrine, much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the Bible.
Hi there. My name is Jordan Tew, and I am the Executive Director of the Baptist Publishing House. Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study resources. Our quarterly curriculum is titled The Baptist Expositor, and for good reason.
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Said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.
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So visit solid-ground-books .com frequently, purchase generously, always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to my guest, Pastor Mark Romaldi of Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, also known as White House, Tennessee, we have some important announcements to make.
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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, and then click click to donate now. Also folks, if you are not a member of a Christ-honoring, biblically faithful, doctrinally solid, theologically sound church like Sovereign Grace Church of Greenbrier, Tennessee, I have extensive lists spanning the entire globe, and I have helped many people find churches all over the world that are biblically faithful, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live.
And that may be you, too, if you are without a biblically faithful church home. No matter where on the planet Earth you live, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.
That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Mark Romaldi on our theme, Sealing the Coffin on Addictive Sin. That is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us a first name, at least city and state and country of residence.
And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And by the way, I want to encourage our listeners, after this live show is over, to look up Pastor Mark Romaldi's previous interviews on the archive at ironsharpensionradio .com.
If you just type in his last name in the search engine, Romaldi, G-R-I-M-A-L-D-I, you will see a number of interviews, including one that we conducted back in June of 2015. I believe the show was only an hour long at that time, but Pastor Mark and I discussed the theme, The Loving Act of Church Discipline, and one of the key reasons we did that is because Pastor Mark placed me under church discipline when I was unsuccessfully battling an addiction.
In fact, I don't think I was putting up much of a battle. I was just enslaved by a battle or enslaved by an addiction to drunkenness, and I often wondered if that is the only time a person who was under church discipline ever interviewed the pastor who placed him there.
Have you ever heard of any other time when that was the case? I haven't, no. No, I haven't. Never heard of it. Well, I think that it's a good thing to reassure people that is not the end of your life being put on a church discipline.
If you cooperate with the shepherds that God has ordained over you, you know, this could be the beginning of your life. In fact, I believe without question that it saved my life physically. I really believe if I kept on the trajectory of drinking the way I was, I'd be dead now and wouldn't be on this program right now.
But anyway, that's another issue, but it is something that—it is a tragedy that very few churches, even evangelical churches, conduct discipline, and I wonder how many Reformed churches conduct it over this issue.
You know, because we were saying before, sadly, it is quite common for this sin of addiction, especially when you're talking about alcohol. If it was heroin or crack or something like that, it'd be a different story.
But alcohol seems to be winked at, and I shudder to think how many drunkards are finding safe havens, in their mind anyway, in churches that tolerate that. But anyway, going back to where we left off, fighting the good fight, have you said everything that you intended to say, or do you want us to move on to getting to the root of the.
Problem? Yeah, we'll move on. Let's move on to getting to the root, and by the way, let me just say this as well for those of you who are out there listening. If you would like to have access to this entire document, I think it's about, I don't know, 70-something pages long.
It's not published or anything like that. I'd be glad to send you the file for free. You know, if you send Chris an email and ask him to get your email to me, then I will gladly send it to you for free if you think it could be useful to you.
So just to let you know that I'd love to offer this to anyone who would like to use it, if it could be helpful in any way. So the third chapter deals with getting to the root, and what I try to do in this chapter, Chris, is get down to the question of, especially dealing again from a Christian standpoint, what happened?
How do we get to this place where we've fallen into this addiction or into a besetting sin? And we know, as I said before, that sanctification is a process. We're involved in that process, and so the weak link is us in that process.
And so where the breakdown takes place is certainly not in God's part in what He does in our salvation, what He's accomplished in His salvation, what this Holy Spirit does in His willingness to cooperate with us in sanctification.
But we are the ones, obviously, that are at fault when we fall into some kind of a besetting sin. And there's three texts that I work on, and I'm not going to get into all the details of them that deal with this issue of getting to the root, and one is in 2 Peter 1, 5 -11.
I'll just read that one text out of the three, but it says in there, Peter says, for this very reason, make every effort. In fact, let me back up to verse 3. I'm sorry. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from becoming ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
And so one of the things that I emphasize from that text in 2 Peter is that even as Christians, we can become nearsighted, as it were. We can forget the beauty and the glory of what Christ has done for us, and we can begin to lack a growth in these particular virtues, self-control and knowledge and steadfastness, and fall into some of the things, the lust that we've escaped from when we've come to Christ, as we found some level of deliverance to the gospel.
We can kind of drift off, and sometimes that's because of trials. We're in difficult trials, and we don't respond properly, and we look for a quick-fix means of fulfillment rather than bearing with the trial and continuing on and just keeping our eyes fixed on Christ.
We look for some other way of finding a quick-fix fulfillment, something short-lived, whether it's sexual sin or alcohol or drugs or whatever it might be. It could be from becoming complacent or lazy in our faith.
We start to become a little too busy in life in certain other ways, and we neglect our souls. Again, the reading of the Word, prayer, daily devotions, being a part of the body of Christ in the church.
There's all kinds of reasons where we can kind of lose sight of the glory of what we have in Christ and lose sight of the kingdom of God. And so I think getting down to the root deals with that issue of where we've lost sight in some sense.
And in Revelation chapter 2, and I won't read it, but when Jesus addresses the church at Ephesus, he talks about them, how great they've been, and just some of the many ways in which he commends them.
They seem like the ideal church, but he says that they've lost their first love, and because of that, they were in jeopardy of being de-churched, of losing their lampstand. And so he commands them then to repent.
He says to remember from where you have fallen and to repent and to do the first works. And so I think there's a sense in which that relates very much to besetting sin is to remember from where we've fallen.
If we've gone astray, maybe you look back and you see some days in which you were, you call the glory days in which you were excited, and at some point you drifted. Well, you can remember and you can repent and you can do the first works again.
You can make that commitment to press forward, to take the grace of God and to move forward and to know that he'll meet you in your faith. The tendency is to, as we fall into sin further and further, especially if it becomes a besetting sin, is to think that the way back just seems too difficult or impossible.
And so it seems to be easier just to continue on down the same path of seeking quick fix fulfillment, rather than going through the burden of really fighting for your soul and pursuing the Lord and taking action.
And so we need to though come back. And lastly, I talk about John 4 verses 1 to 26, the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, and just how the Lord talked to her about finding that living water so that if she found it, she would not need to write the physical water.
And the point there is that when we find Christ, the things that we once depended upon to fulfill us, we see their shallowness and we see the loveliness of Christ and the kingdom of God. And that overwhelms us with such great power and love that we are able to look beyond our sins, to put them away, to turn away from them and to cling to that which is precious in Christ.
And so there's a sense in which besetting sin, what we've done is we've kind of allowed the throne of Christ to be subverted in our own hearts and we become thirsty again. And so we're looking to fulfill that thirst again in the past things that we found desirable before we were saved.
And so we're not drinking at the well of Christ. And so getting to the root has to do with recognizing that in some way, we have drifted away, we've drifted off from that understanding and recognizing the loveliness of Christ, the fulfillment in Christ for a number of reasons we could have drifted off, but we can come back and there's great hope of grace and it's going to take hard work and diligence as we talked about earlier, but there's hope if we recognize what the root of the issue is.
So that's chapter three. Well, we do have another listener. We have Frederica in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. I don't know how close that is to you,.
Pastor Mark, but that's about that. That's really close. It's about 20 minutes.
Wow. Okay. Well, Frederica, if you do not have a solid church of your own where you are a member, I strongly urge you to visit Sovereign Grace Church of Greenbrier, also known as White House. Frederica says you were downplaying or even criticizing earlier the 12-step programs, whether they be AA or NA, but there are occasions when judges require someone to be in regular attendance at these meetings or they will go to prison or have some other kind of serious negative consequence.
What do you do in cases like that?
Yeah, that's an excellent question, Frederica. I appreciate that question. Obviously, if you're in a situation like that, you have to follow through with the program. I'm not saying that it's damnable to go through the program.
There are some helpful things in the section where I address the issue of AA. I talk about some of the positive things and how they do a good job of identifying the common traits of those who at least have an addiction to alcohol because a lot of times people deny it.
And so they do a good job of helping people be able to see, relate to others who have been in their situation. They also do a good job of showing how significant the problem is and also showing you that you can't overcome it in your own strength.
I mean, that's a big emphasis. You have to realize that you can't do it on your own, that you need help. Of course, their higher power being general about that is not productive or helpful overall, but at least they're showing that you can't do it on your own.
You do need somebody beyond you to do it. And then there's also a sense of camaraderie amongst a lot of people in AA. They understand each other. They have a fellowship of sorts and accountability. So I appreciate those things.
What I would say is this, though, Fred Riekers, I would say there's a place to do that, obviously, to fulfill that. I've had people in the jail here who have to continue to do that to get their credits so that they can get an earlier release from their sentence.
I've never told them to stop doing it. But I think it would be to recognize at least the shortcomings of the program and to do the due diligence of ensuring that you're seeking the proper means of the true God and recognizing some of the faults of AA and then dealing with it privately or personally.
The other thing I would say is this. One of the reasons I developed this program is I was hoping at some point, if God wills, to try to open up another avenue, another option that people could take besides AA.
AA is huge. It's worldwide. It grew. You read the history of what happened in the beginning. It has some level of a success rate in rescuing people from alcohol. There are people who have gone through AA who have never touched a drink again.
Again, not everybody. There's a lot of people who reverted and so on. But it has some positive aspects to it. Otherwise, they wouldn't use it. But I would say if we offer another alternative that even utilizes some of the positive aspects of AA, but brings it into a biblical context and focuses on the primacy of the gospel and of bringing glory to God, not just overcoming addiction, but of glorifying God, some of the bigger things, I think that can be a place of bringing folks into a better program.
I wish we had. Maybe there's somebody listening to the program who has the finances to fund something like that. We've talked about wanting to do something like that at our church. If we had the ability to do that, to start something that we can begin to work with those in these prisons, because I've seen them go out for a year into these programs.
I'm always saying, I wish we could work with them. We can offer them another alternative, a very Christian alternative, a gospel-scented, Holy Spirit-empowered program rather than AA that would also bring them into the churches rather than isolating them into these AA-like churches.
AA almost becomes like a church. They plant more AA communities and they wind up doing things similar to the church, but they're bankrupt of the ultimate power of the gospel and of Christ. That's what I would say.
I wouldn't say don't take the program, do it if you're commanded to do it, to get out of jail, of course, but I would just say, looking forward, see that there are other options to help to improve that.
Maybe even at some point, there are folks who'd be willing to get together and offer an alternative even to these prisons. If they see there's an alternative,.
They may open that up, that opportunity. Let me just add to that, as somebody who, for a time, attended NA and AA meetings, even though I was exclusively addicted to booze, I still visited NA meetings with Narcotics Anonymous.
Number one, never, ever, ever, ever, ever allow a woman that you love to attend any of those meetings alone without a man accompanying them, a sober man, a man who is a Christian primarily or preferably, because people who are a part of AA and NA know that this is not something that's going to shock them.
Those meetings are breeding grounds for people to find sexual partners, and there's even I frequently heard jokes, depending upon what meeting you were in, such as, if you want to get sober, go to AA.
If you want to get a woman in bed, and they would not use that polite term, go to NA. And, you know, especially don't let your daughters or your younger sisters or your nieces go to these places alone.
And you're talking about people gathered in a room who are anonymous, who have all kinds of criminal backgrounds on many occasions, and even the people leading them, the meetings. So I just have no ifs, ands, or buts about that.
And in fact, I know of a woman who was raped by an AA counselor, who over the phone told her to meet him at a certain place, which was an empty office. And he said, the way that you've got to get over this addiction is drink until you're sick.
And he brought bottles of wine with him, and she got drunk until she passed out, and he raped her. And it was even a major court case. But also, find out if it's a legal issue, find out if the judge will accept a Christian rehabilitation recovery meeting.
Because when I was at Hebron Colony, there were people that were there for that very reason. In fact, there were people there only for that reason, because it was keeping them out of prison. And Hebron Colony is openly a Christian organization.
They would allow you to attend and become a resident at Hebron Colony if you were an atheist or a Muslim or whatever, but you had to go to the church services. You had to hear the preaching anyway, and you had to complete the workbook, the Christian workbook.
So that's just my two cents in that area. And last but not least, I believe that AA and NA are cults, because any organization that provides spiritual teaching that involves God, whether you are saying it's the deity of your choice or a chair, that's a religion.
They swear they're not a religion. They say they're only spiritual. You can't separate those. Am I off base with that? No, Chris, you're 100 right. And furthermore,.
It's a cult, and it's a very dangerous one at the core. That's why I said that it's not that nobody has ever found salvation while they were attending AA meetings, because they happened to find the right, put their faith in the right, the true God, based on maybe their family history, but at the core of AA, it is very spiritual.
It's also a very man-centered spirituality. When you read even the big book, I was shocked to see so much of an emphasis on your own sobriety being paramount. And even when you, what I would call evangelize in the AA sense, when you try to reach out to others, your goal is not so much out of concern for them.
It's part of your own rehabilitation. So even if they don't cooperate, you're doing it for your own sobriety. A lot of the things you're doing, in other words, the end purpose, the end goal of it all is for your own sobriety.
And so we know that with Christianity and with the way the Lord works, the end goal of everything we do is for the glory of God. That needs to drive everything we do. And sobriety is an issue, but that's not the primary issue.
And so it isolates alcoholism or being an alcoholic or drug addiction and makes that paramount and dealing with that paramount. And it also separates them into groups so that you have all these individual alcoholic groups who can't identify with people of any other kind of sin because they're all alcoholics and then drugs or addiction, they're in their groups.
And so it separates the church rather than keeps them together where we work together in dealing with sin and cooperating in our sanctification for the glory of God. There are many, many severe dangers to AA.
Again, I didn't want to come on here to trash it because I know there are good folks involved. There are good Christians involved. And I think one of the things though, Chris, one of the issues is what you said.
When women go to these programs, especially the drug one, the Narcotics Anonymous, they're very vulnerable. A lot of their families have turned on them. They don't want anything to do with them anymore.
They've stolen money or funds. They're kind of at their wit's end. And now you're their hope. They're coming to you for some hope or rescue. And so you can become like a savior to them. And if you get the wrong people, especially a leader in there, they're not stupid.
They know they can take advantage of these vulnerable folks and be a predator and very easily use these drugs and so on as a means for their own sexual desires. So you're 100 right.
On that. Yes. And there was something I was going to say that flew out of my head, but if it's important enough, I'm sure I'll remember it. But it had something to do with the, oh, I remember now. It was, there's actually, to prove about how much they resemble a religion, if you go to AA enough or NA, there's even a rivalry amongst meetings that resemble the rivalry that exists amongst denominations.
And like, you'll hear like people leading in AA meetings say, oh, don't go to the third Avenue meeting because they don't use the book. They're not really a strict book adherence. The big book, you know, it's almost like a fundamentalist saying, don't go to the liberal United Methodist church because they don't read the Bible there, you know, and, and you'll have all these different divisions amongst themselves on why they think that they are superior over another group, let alone the differences between AA and NA.
And, and I can even remember when I was at the rehab facility at St. Charles hospital on Long Island, before there was an open bed at Hebron colony, it was, it was ridiculous because the, the month that the hospital was profiting greatly off of this, this wing financially from Medicare and Medicaid.
And they wouldn't even, a lot of, a lot of the, what you experienced there as an addict a was not even things conducted by staff. They would actually have the people running the AA and NA meetings who knew the, the process very well.
And they knew it well because they were repeat offenders who kept returning to the hospital. So they would be running the meetings, even though these people were the last people to give anybody advice.
Yeah. And one thing that we had to do is we had to have group therapy with a psychologist and she knew that I was a Christian and she despised it. And she said, what is it that you dislike most about AA?
Why are you so tight about it? And I said, well, I'm a Christian. And to say that you can choose your higher power is the utmost in blasphemy. Uh, there is only one way to salvation and that is Jesus Christ.
And she said, well, why do you have to make that public? Why can't you just keep it to yourself knowing that there were people in the room that will be offended? And I said, well, when I know from history, that men, women, and children voluntarily face torture and death and were executed in gruesome ways because they've refused to stop spreading the gospel.
I'm supposed to stop just because your feelings are hurt. And, uh, and I, and I, and I said, uh, you, you people are teaching that you can pick a chair to be your God. And the woman said, oh, that's ridiculous.
It has to be something living like a tree. So I said, well, what happens when you cut the tree down and make a chair out of it? But anyway, um, uh, like I said, uh, that there are good things that happen in people's lives because of these places, but there are people who, who are freed from addiction by becoming Jehovah's witnesses.
There are people who are free from addiction by becoming Mormons and Muslims. The nation of Islam, uh, was very successful in getting, including Malcolm X himself, getting people off of drug addiction, uh, and living sober and responsible lives,.
But that's a damning cult. Yeah. Yeah. They're still going, they're still, those people are still going to hell. And what they'll wind up doing is replacing that idol, right? With some other idol there.
If they're not in Christ, if Christ doesn't replace the idol, if he doesn't become first and foremost in your heart, it may not be the physical addiction to alcohol anymore, but you'll, you will turn to some other, some other resource to fulfill you.
Just one other quick thing I was going to say about AA, not to beat on the, uh, the, the dead horse in one sense, but, but I do have in the, in the section where I write in the appendix on AA, um, one of the last things I talk about is I show several examples of how AA in many ways cloaks as a church.
I mean, it's very much so similar to what the church is called to do from evangelism to the, to the planting of churches, to the, the big book, right. And all those things are just there. You can see them like shadow versions of the church, but not really, um, obviously the church not doing the work of the church.
And in, we know in the scriptures, it says in the volume of the book, it's written of Christ, right? Our scriptures are full of Christ. Everything that we do should be leading us to Christ, read the big book and see how much of Christ is in that book.
Zero. It has nothing to with Christ. If you have, if you don't have Christ as the central focus of, of any kind of rehabilitation program of anything to do with, with, with your fight in life, um, uh, to be faithful to the Lord, then it's, it's, it's empty of all power.
It's empty of anything, but maybe creating at best another Avenue of taking you to hell, but without the original addiction.
We have to go to our final break. We'll be right back. Don't go away.
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From all over the world. Here's Joe Reilly a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show. He really loves hearing interviewed Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly.
A faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare Ireland going back to 2005. One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr. Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight-volume commentary on the larger catechism.
Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great protestant reformation of the 16th century.
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Welcome back, and folks, I want to remind you, you've been hearing ads every single day for years for the Historical Bible Society. That fine ministry has been founded by its president, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, a very close friend of mine since the early 1990s.
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That's the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates. Please always mention that you heard about them from Chris Orenson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Also, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to my next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon on Thursday, June the 6th, 2024, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania.
Our featured speaker for the very first time is Dr. Joel Beeky, president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you'd like to attend this free luncheon, and not only will you be fed for free, not only physically and spiritually, but you'll also receive a free heavy sack of brand new books personally selected by me, donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom.
Send me an email to register for free to chrisorenson at gmail .com and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line, and that's also the email address where you can send in a question to my guest, Mark Romoldi, but we're rapidly running out of time, so do so immediately if you intend to.
We have Cindy in Findlay, Ohio, and she says, well, it's actually not a question, she says, I would appreciate it if you would send Mark Romoldi my email so I can have this resource as I have a few people in mind, and I hope to, I hope they will accept it.
So I will do that, and you can, Mark will, I'm sure, immediately send that out to you. I want to make sure, since we only have five minutes left, that you really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners when it comes to this subject.
I know that we just were, I believe, entering into, for the first time, shifting your focus, but if you want to combine that in the glories of Christ in the next few minutes, that'd be great. Yeah, yeah, in fact, that will,.
That will get right into what you just asked about, what's dear to my heart, because the fifth chapter really would sum that up, but in chapter four, I talk about shifting your focus, and the emphasis there is on the inscription when it talks about dealing with sin, right, and we went over some of those things already, but it talks about putting off and putting on, so putting off the sinful desires of the flesh, but not only putting them off, but replacing them with Godward desires, good, healthy Godward desires, so it's not enough just to stop the one thing, but as you're stopping that to work on countering that with something that's productive.
In Ephesians 4, 28, for example, Paul talks about putting off stealing, right, and instead, right, putting that off, but instead working with your own hands so that you can give to the one who's in need, so it's not just stopping the stealing, but what helps you overcome stealing and becoming a kleptomaniac, if I can say that, is to not only stop the stealing, but also to work so that you can give, be a giver to someone who has need.
Well, in the same way, when we look for ways to serve, if you're caught up in a besetting sin, we know that besetting sins and addictions are very self-indulgent, they're selfish in nature, and if we're going to escape that with the means that we've gone over, what will help is replacing that as we uproot that, replacing it by giving to others, serving more, looking for ways to serve in the church, looking for ways to help and serve others, and so it's a wonderful thing to find replacements to plant in that spot where those vices have been planted for so long, and then lastly, on the last chapter, which would sum up some of what of my own, what would be most dearest to my heart, is called the glorious Christ, and I just try to encourage you to meditate regularly on the glory and love of Christ.
It really is one of the biggest reasons we struggle with sin at all. In fact, the biggest reasons that we struggle with sin, besetting or not, is because Christ is not lovely enough to us. We lose, or we lose sight of His loveliness, and in this life, we will do that, unfortunately, and yet in Ephesians 3, when Paul prays for the Ephesians at the end of chapter 3, he prays this lengthy prayer, and then he talks about in there with the hope that they would grow in an understanding of the height and the depth and the width and the length of the love of Christ so that you may be filled with the fullness of God, so when he prays that, he prays a lot more there involving the Holy Spirit.
I would encourage you to look at that, but he says that it would lead to this kind of crescendo where we would be able to understand. He's praying for God to give the ability for the people at Ephesus and for us to understand all the dimensions of the love of Christ, and Paul is praying that because he knows that that will affect our sanctification.
It will enable us to be filled with the fullness of God, and if we're filled with the fullness of God, we will have victory over sin. We will seal the coffin on besetting sin, and so the key is to be understanding and meditating more and more on the loveliness and the glory of Christ and his love for us, and so in that chapter, I try to just take a little time meditating on Hebrews 1, 1 -4, just going through the different aspects of Christ's loveliness and glory in that text to kind of get your appetite wet to do that kind of thing.
We need to see more of who Christ is. We don't have to add to it. We don't have to fabricate anything about him. We just have to see clearly more and more who he is and what his love is for us and how perfect it is toward us, how pure it is toward us, and that will give us, that will fulfill us in a way that will show us the ugliness of the things we've been seeking fulfillment in, and it will help loosen the bonds of besetting or addictive sins, and so that's kind of the last chapter, so I would encourage everyone, dear to my heart, is to say, you know, be about the business of putting sin to death, but if you're going to do that, make much of Christ, avail yourself to the means of grace, go over the things that I've spoken about here.
Again, I'd be more than willing to send this to anyone. I think it will be helpful. If you're diligent, you'll make good use of it.
Well, let me also highly recommend a book available through solid-ground-books .com, one of our major sponsors, that I think ties very well with our theme, Deeper Real Change for Real Sinners and How Does God Change Us? by Dane Ortlund, and you can get that at solid-ground-books .com, solid-ground-books .com.
Also, don't forget that the website for Sovereign Grace Church in Whitehouse, also known as Greenbrier, Tennessee, where Mark Romoldi is pastor, go to sovereigngracechurch .net, sovereigngracechurch .net.
And last but not least, don't forget about the ministry I recommended, where I was able to become a sober brother in Christ, hebroncolony .org, hebroncolony .org, H-E-B-R-O-N-C-O-L-O-N-Y .org.
And don't forget, folks, if you are a man in ministry leadership and would like to register for my next free Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio biannual pastor's luncheon featuring Speaker Dr. Joel Beeky on Thursday, June 6, 2024, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, Perry County, Pennsylvania, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line, you could register absolutely free.
Pastor Mark, it was such a joy to have you back on the program, and I want to have you back very soon to address other issues that are a burden on your heart and mind and soul, and so let's keep in touch and get you back on the show very soon and very often.
Yes, sir, brother, appreciate it.
I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions. I hope you have a wonderful, safe, blessed Christ-honoring weekend and Lord's Day, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.