Death Ethics

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I'd like to welcome you all back to our study of Christian ethics, and tonight is, if last week wasn't a doozy on the subject of life ethics, this week is certainly a doozy because we're going to discuss the subject of death ethics.
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But before we get to that, I have a few quick announcements to make.
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Number one, if you don't remember, this Monday coming up, I'm going to be speaking at a little mini-conference on tough questions, real answers, and for believers, doubters, and skeptics, and I'm one of three pastors who's going to be on a panel answering questions.
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And so if you're interested, please let me know, I can give you a card with the address.
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Also don't forget, your homework is due.
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You had the choice of doing one of the things that I gave you, one of the ethical dilemmas, or simply doing the briefing.
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You did not have to do both this past week, it was an optional choice.
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You could have done both, but you didn't have to, it wasn't required.
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And if you turned in your briefing homework last week, it's in the box for you to take back, so don't forget that.
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I want to also mention that we are already in plans for our next semester course, or term, it's not really a full semester, our next term course, and our next term is going to be in Greek.
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So Basic Greek, this is the textbook I've taught out of this book for years, it's called Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day by James Found, it's a very useful tool.
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And even if you are intimidated or maybe feel like you don't think you would get anything out of it, I can tell you that one of the richest studies that I've done in my life is learning more about how the Bible was written, and the language that the New Testament was written in.
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So if you're interested, please let me know, and I'll give you the link, and you can go ahead and get the book, and even go ahead and get a little ahead of the game.
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We're going to start in January.
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The other thing I want to do before we get started tonight, is I have a handout to give you.
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I want to read it to you very quickly, and then I'll hand it out.
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Preparation for Week 8, remember this is an 8 week course.
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In the space provided below, please provide an ethical dilemma you would like us to discuss in class.
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This can be a variation on something already discussed, or an introduction of a new topic not previously mentioned.
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In our last session, we will address as many of these subjects as time allows, and examine the relevant scriptures.
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This sheet must be turned in by Week 7, because I need the time to make sure that I've put in the preparation of finding the scriptures and getting everything ready to at least have a cogent conversation.
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I don't want to be hitting something that night and blindsided.
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I need these at least back by Week 7, but even earlier if you can.
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So part of your homework this week, think of an ethical dilemma, maybe something you've dealt with, maybe something someone's brought to you, maybe something that you'd like for us to discuss, as many as we can.
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You remember last semester when we did the Bible verses, and I said turn in the Bible verses, and we only got to one? That was my bad.
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I didn't mean for that to happen.
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My real intent was to look at as many as we could, and unfortunately we only got to one because I didn't manage my time very well.
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But I do promise to at least try better this time, and here's the thing.
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If it's a simple question, it might not necessarily get a simple answer, but it might.
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It might just be, well, this is what I think the Bible says, and other people can share, and we move forward.
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It might be a simple thing, or it might not, but I am curious to see what ethical dilemmas you all have considered or had to deal with, and ones that you would want to share.
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So I'm going to pass these this way, and I'll pass these this way.
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Just please make sure that you do this, because if no one does it, then in our last class, we'll just be sitting here.
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I already got one.
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You already got one? Okay.
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Okay, great.
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And like I said, you can turn that in as part of your homework next week or the week after.
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Just like I said, week seven is the cutoff for that sheet.
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All right, so as I mentioned last week, we dealt with life ethics.
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We dealt with abortion, reproduction, and we dealt very, very surface level with the subject of genetics and the possibility of genetic tampering and the ethics involved in that.
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Tonight, we are going to move to the subject of death ethics, and if you have your syllabus, you know that that entails us discussing suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment.
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Now I want to preface this lesson.
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This subject is probably one that hits very close to home for many people.
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I don't know very many families that have not been touched by the horror of suicide.
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So I want to encourage all of us, if we engage in dialogue tonight, no matter how strong our opinions may be, to please be mindful of the pain that certain people may have been through as we engage the topic.
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I'm not saying don't say what you need to say, but I am encouraging you to speak with grace and not with, you know, as my brother Mike Collier often says, don't be a chainsaw to a blade of grass.
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You know, consider the topic and the weightiness of it.
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Agreed? All right.
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All right, so beginning with the subject of suicide.
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A few weeks ago, the church world was stunned yet again to hear of another pastor who committed suicide.
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Unfortunately, this is an all too common occurrence.
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But what made this particular suicide noteworthy is that the pastor who committed suicide was identified as a mental health expert.
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He was one who had counseled people, most assuredly counseled people who themselves had dealt with depression, anxiety, and the other things that might lead to the problem which would end in suicide.
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And as I just said a moment ago, most of us, if not all of us, have been touched by the reality of it.
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Our family was rocked by it, not just a few years ago, and it was a tragic day.
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I remember exactly where I was when I received the phone call that my cousin had taken his own life.
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And I then had to go and tell my other cousin, and all of us were very close, and we were in a bowling alley together and he just fell apart.
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And we had to go and then see my uncle who had found his son having taken his own life.
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Likewise, I've stood alongside many families.
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I was thinking about this story today.
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I did a funeral for a family and I was called, Pastor Foskey, can you meet with this family, do the service? Absolutely.
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And so I did the service.
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Not a month later, I was called by the funeral home and they said, hey, we need you to do a service.
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This family requested you.
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And that's very rare because normally I don't know the family.
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And I said, oh, they requested me, why? They said, well, you did their family service last month.
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And it was a second suicide within four weeks in the same family.
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And what was, to add insult to injury, the man, I remembered the man being at the first funeral.
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And he had said to his wife how angry he was and how selfish he felt like the person who committed suicide was, and not a month later, he ended his own life.
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So as I said, it's a terrible thing to have to discuss, but in regard to ethics, it certainly falls under the category of one of the things that we need to discuss.
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The dictionary defines suicide as the act or instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally.
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However, I prefer the ESV study Bible translation.
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The ESV study Bible in their ethics section gives a little simpler definition, murder of self.
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I think that's simple, but it really does get to the heart of what we're talking about.
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If we define suicide as murder of oneself, it would seem to fall squarely into the category of something that is wrong or unlawful because there is a clear law, both in the Old Covenant and in the New Covenant, that would add a prohibition against murder.
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We know within the Ten Commandments, it says, thou shalt not commit murder.
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And Jesus reaffirmed this when he said, you've heard it say, don't commit murder.
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I tell you not even to hate your brother.
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When you do, you've committed murder in your heart.
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So we have not only the external aspect of the law, but we have the internal attitude of the heart that reflects the law.
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So one might think, based on that, this is an open and shut ethical question.
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It's always wrong.
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It's always against the law.
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Let's move on to the next subject.
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But like many other ethical issues, there are questions which arise.
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And I want us to consider two questions tonight in regard to the subject of suicide.
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The first question is the question I always get every time I'm faced with a suicide, no matter the situation, is it possible that a person who commits suicide can go to heaven? That is almost every time I've ever had to deal with suicide, that question is asked.
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The second one is a little more nuanced, but is very important.
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And the second question is, is it ever justified that a person would choose to end his own life? And that's a little more nuanced.
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And when we get there, you'll see why.
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But the first question is, can a person who commits suicide go to heaven? The second question is, is it ever justified to take one's own life? And so that's the two questions we're going to deal with.
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And I'm going to try to be as honest and fair as I can in dealing with both.
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Looking at the first question, can a person commit suicide and go to heaven? Well, before we answer that question, I do want to say that your theological presuppositions will inevitably affect how you answer this question.
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You say, well, why? Well, if you are a person who affirms what I call OSAS, if you don't know what OSAS is, you're not a Baptist.
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Because OSAS is once saved, always saved.
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Right.
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That's that's the Baptist motto.
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That's it's very clear that this is what has been taught and clearly taught that once you are saved, you're always saved.
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And I'm not making fun of it by calling it OSAS.
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It just is the acronym that I've used over the years for this particular position.
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If you affirm once saved, always saved, also known as eternal security.
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You believe that once a person is in grace, they cannot fall from grace.
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And as I said, this is typically the Baptist position.
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And therefore, that will affect your answer in regard to suicide, because your question would then be, was he saved? And if he was saved, nothing he can do can cause him to lose it.
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Therefore, even suicide couldn't cause him to fall.
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Therefore, a person can be saved and commit suicide and go to heaven.
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You understand what I'm saying? I'm not trying to oversimplify it.
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I'm saying if that's your if that's your presupposition theologically, then that sort of answers the question for you.
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The second one would be is if you if you affirm the the other side of that, what we would call maybe I don't really have a cute acronym for this one.
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I would just say this would be you affirm that someone can fall from grace.
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So the first position would be once saved, always saved, can't fall from grace.
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You have the second position that you can fall from grace.
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Those would be many denominations.
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Primarily, if you want to look, I don't really call Roman Catholics a denomination.
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But if you want to start with Roman Catholicism, they would say, absolutely, you fall from grace.
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But but there are others, you know, Methodists believe you can fall from grace.
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Pentecostals particularly believe, especially those who come because Pentecostalism charismatic, a lot of that began in the Methodist movement.
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So a lot of the Armenian Methodism Methodism Methodism sort of undergirds a lot of the Pentecostal theology.
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And so Wesleyan theology is, as far as the theology of salvation, sanctification, all those things are very prevalent in the in the Pentecostal church.
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So so you'll see the idea.
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Yes, you can absolutely fall from grace.
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And if you believe that, well, then you believe that suicide can cause you to lose your salvation.
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Even if you were saved up to the point that you took your own life, that act of taking your own life could be the thing that causes you to fall from grace.
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And at that moment, you're imperiled forever because of that act of suicide.
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So you see how the two overarching presuppositions would affect how you answer the question.
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But I want to I want to offer a third perspective, and this is what I would call the reformed perspective.
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This is the perspective that I would not only hold, but as a church, we affirm because we are a reformed church.
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And that is called the perseverance of the saints.
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So so we call it POTS, perseverance of the saints.
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Everything's got a cute acronym except for the second one.
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Perseverance of the saints teaches that once a person is saved, he will persevere to the end of his life in faith because God is the one who gave him the faith and God is the one who keeps him in the faith.
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And that's an oversimplification of the position.
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But that is the position.
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Therefore, the person who affirms number three would say, yes, a person can fall from belief, but the belief was never truly genuine.
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We would say they were never really saved.
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And so you say, well, where does that come from? Well, two verses in particular that I point to, one is 1 John 2, 19.
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It says, speaking of false believers, it says they went out from us, but they were not of us.
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For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
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But they went out that it might become plain that they are not truly of us.
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And therefore, that would be one of the verses that's used to say if they if they depart from the faith, it's because they were not truly of the faith.
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And again, that's 1 John 2, 19.
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Matthew 7, 21 to 23, this is where Jesus said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
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And at the end of that, he says, depart from me.
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I never knew you.
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He didn't say I knew you for a while and you fell away or I knew you up until the point that you sinned and then you sinned and it was too far or whatever.
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He says, I never knew you.
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And thus there was never a relationship established at the new birth.
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Therefore, the reformed person would say that it is possible for a person to profess faith and fall away.
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But the profession is made void by the the apostasy or the abandoning of the faith.
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And that's why a reformer, a reformed person can affirm both.
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Essentially, once saved, always saved with the caveat, not everybody who thinks they're saved or says they're saved are truly saved.
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Right, because there are people who say they're saved and they're not.
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There are people who believe they're saved and they're not.
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In fact, I believe one of the one of the subtle attacks of the devil is to make people who are genuinely say feel like they're not.
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And people who are not say feel like they are because both of them become ineffective.
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Right, if you're really saved and you don't think you are, you're always doubting, you're living in this constant state of turmoil.
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And if you aren't saved and you think you are, you're in a lot of trouble.
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So I think that's one of the real tricks of the devil there.
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But this leads to the bigger question then.
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Would the reformed person believe that committing suicide is testimony that the person was never saved? Not all theologians answer that the same.
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And I can't give you every theologian's opinion.
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But most of us, and I do count myself among them, most of us would hold out hope that a person who has confessed Christ and has committed suicide may have made that, may be in heaven.
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But again, we don't know.
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And so when somebody asks me, is this person in heaven? My first question is, did they confess Christ? And if they didn't, then my answer is clear, even if it's hard.
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If they haven't confessed Christ, there's no hope.
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Because there is, unless, and again, I can always say, you know, maybe they confessed Christ at some point, you didn't know it.
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But if, you know, my understanding of confessing Christ is that people will know it because your life will have changed.
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So it's hard to really follow through with that.
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But ultimately, though, it is a difficult situation.
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It's a difficult question to answer.
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I want to give, without taking the whole time, is there anyone who feels very strongly about this who would like to say, well, if somebody asked me, I would say one or the other? Is there anybody here who wants to opine? And it's okay.
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Again, I'm not going to challenge you, because as I've already said, I hold out hope, but I don't know.
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Okay.
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Charles Spurgeon dealt with depression a lot, a lot more than people realize.
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And I have personally struggled with seasons of depression, legitimate depression.
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And when I say that, what I mean is I wasn't just sad.
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I was to the point of absolute darkness and dismay, and I didn't want to do anything.
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I didn't want to go anywhere.
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I didn't want to see anyone.
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I felt like I was ready to die.
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But I never considered suicide, but I understand why someone would.
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I understand the darkness and the pain.
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And I always get real scared when I see these medications on TV.
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Take this medication for your itchy skin, and it will give you thoughts of suicide.
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I think I'll just have itchy skin.
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I mean, honestly, there's no way I'm going to even take that opportunity.
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But, yeah, okay.
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I'm glad you said that, brother.
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I appreciate it.
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And, again, I have some people that are very firmly, if a person commits suicide, he can't be saved.
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And they take that very hard line.
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And, I mean, again, I appreciate people taking a stand, and I appreciate that that's the position that they believe.
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I just can't say that with a good conscience.
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But I also can't say that I believe that they're saved either.
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I don't know.
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That's where my heart would really have the hardest time.
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Yes, sir.
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Yeah, with suicide, I believe, you know, with the Reformation, handed up overnight to Christ.
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I believe he's in heaven.
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And, again, that's where we hold our hope, right? And all our hope is in him.
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I know.
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You know, if you've got a guy who lived his whole life, a good life, still his hope is in Christ.
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Nobody's in heaven because they deserve it.
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Right.
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Absolutely.
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Yes, sir.
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I hold thoughts.
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The third position.
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Yes, sir.
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And I see you personifying hope.
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The God is merciful.
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Yes.
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It's always leading me to more questions.
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It's about him.
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I see you believe that.
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Yeah.
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Well, like I said, this is a difficult subject.
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Did you want to say something, sister? Yeah, I'm sorry.
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I thought you were.
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No, I do.
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Oh, you do.
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Yeah, okay.
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I have a friend, you know, she always talks about suicide.
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And she would always say at this particular time she was going to take her life.
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Her brother had taken his life.
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And she would say, but I know he's in heaven.
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And I was like, well, you know, how do you know? And she was like, well, when he was a kid, he made a professional face.
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And I said, but according to you, he never lived this out at all, you know, in no stretch of the imagination.
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And so I was, when I'm talking to her and I'm just listening to what everyone has to say, holding out hope, yeah, but how about the person that never produced food, as they would say, like Tony, the guy that killed himself.
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I mean, he paid a church, nothing to do with the Bible or anything like that.
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But yet he made this profession, you know, but he whole life, there was no repentance of living in fornication or anything like this.
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He just never produced fruits of a born again person.
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But yet he made a profession.
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I mean, almost all the time that he hung himself.
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He professed to be a Christian.
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But he just, there was no evident love of God.
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Yeah.
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Now, I understand what you're saying.
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That's why I said, that's why I think our position does differ from the OSAS position, because the One Saved Always position tends to take the position that even if you did just make that profession and there was no life change, it's still, you got your heavenly ticket punched.
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I've heard that language.
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And again, I'm not disparaging my Baptist brethren.
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I have a degree, I have two degrees from a Baptist seminary.
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So I feel like if there's anybody who are one, I are one in a sense.
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You know, I can speak with, you know, and I love, you know, I feel very, a strong kinship with the 17th century English Baptists, because that's really the tradition out of which our understanding of the Reformation comes.
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You know, the 1689 brethren, the 1644 brethren, you know, the ones who came together.
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And so I just think, I think that what's happened is the perseverance of the saints, and people say, what's the difference between this and this? Well, the difference here is that, and I'm not disparaging, but often what the difference is here is salvation is tied to a one-time verbal confession, baptism, or some other action.
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In fact, that's how you usually define salvation, right? Did you profess Christ, or did you go down the aisle, or did you raise your hand, or did you get baptized? And they tie that to that moment in their life.
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And I've often, I've heard Baptist preachers say, well, if you ever doubt your salvation, go back to the time of your confession, and that's when you find your hope.
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The Bible never says that.
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The Bible says examine yourself.
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It doesn't say examine when you got saved.
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So, and again, so I would agree with you that I think that she's holding on to more of an OSAS.
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And she thinks it would be okay if she took her life.
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Oh, that's, yeah, I would definitely discourage that.
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And we're going to, and I am going to, I want to say something in a minute about that, too, because I want to point out the fact that the Bible never gives any encouragement in this direction, and it always, anybody who commits suicide, and there's several people who did commit suicide in Scripture, it's always seen as the route of the wicked.
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It's never seen as the route of the righteous, and that's just another, you know, that's not proof of anything, that's just a point to be made.
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But Brother has a, mm-hmm.
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You know, my grandmother, I was so young it really didn't affect me, but I don't know.
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You know what I mean? The day that I encountered Christ, you know what I mean? And that's what I hold on to, and that's where my hope's at.
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It's not in me, you know, so I couldn't know.
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I don't even think I could even make a judgment on somebody, you know, to say that they're not even Christ.
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That's between them and God.
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Yeah.
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In the context of Scripture.
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Yeah.
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There are, while I wouldn't disagree with you, I would say if a person confesses Christ and nothing changes, their life is, yeah, then I would say that that's evidence that it probably is not a genuine confession.
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But, again, we don't know.
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We're just basing it on what we see, and that's what James says, right? He says, you say you have faith, and I show you my faith by what I do.
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And if you say you have faith and do not have works, your faith is dead.
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So, and that means, my belief is what James is saying is you don't have faith.
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Dead faith is not just a different type of faith.
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It's the absence of faith.
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It's a faith of demons is what James says.
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He says, you say you believe, demons believe, you know.
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But I'm not, yeah, I'm with you.
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We can't.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Hey, since Johnny's here, let's close that door.
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Thank you.
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No, no, we were just, we knew you were coming, so we left it.
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We left you a red carpet, brother.
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All right.
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Did somebody else want to opine before we move on? Yep, it's the Pete.
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And make roofball remarks.
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And I just didn't understand what that meant when I was younger.
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I couldn't recognize what that was.
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I mean, she took her own life as a non-professional Christian, of course.
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And it's just, for a long time before I got into the works for working out in the media, I was like, well, I guess she's in purgatory or some weird thought process, until after the things lined up as they were supposed to be.
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And then now I really see what that all means.
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It's really important.
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It's a complete other side of the spectrum.
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Just knowing, I mean, I love her.
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She was a great person, but at the same time, never, ever said anything good about Jesus around me or anybody in the family.
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It was just very disturbing in terms of her.
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So that's just on that side.
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Yeah.
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I want to add a thought.
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Thank you, James, for sharing that.
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And I know that's a tough situation.
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Like I said, with my cousin, it's hard to even think about.
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I want to add a thought.
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Even if a person who commits suicide does go to heaven, that does not make the act of suicide justifiable.
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That's very clear.
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I think we made that clear at the beginning, but I want to reiterate it.
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We're not affirming the righteousness of suicide.
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We're affirming the grace of God, but not the righteousness of suicide.
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And as I just said, brother, when we were talking, is that I want to give you four cases of suicide in Scripture if you want to look these up at some point and think more on them.
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The first one, King Saul fell on his own sword.
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Obviously, he didn't die right away, but that was an act of attempted suicide.
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That's in 1 Samuel 31, 4 through 6.
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Ahithophel hanged himself, 2 Samuel 17 and 23.
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Zimri burned the king's house down with himself inside, 1 Kings 16 and 18.
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And of course, Judas Iscariot hung himself in Matthew 27 and verse 5.
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So again, all of these guys that I just mentioned, and just those few examples are certainly not men who were at the time considered to be righteous or in the will of God.
31:56
So certainly not justifiable from a biblical perspective.
32:00
But that leads to the second question.
32:04
Would it ever be justifiable to take one's own life? And most of us are familiar with cases where people die in the act of saving someone else.
32:20
So for instance, a soldier is in a group of other soldiers, somebody throws a grenade, he lays on the grenade, the grenade takes his life, and everyone else is spared.
32:34
We would never identify that as suicide.
32:37
We would identify that as sacrifice.
32:40
And we would say that such a thing is not only justifiable, but it's noble.
32:46
Jesus said, greater love has no man than the one who lays down his life for his friends.
32:54
So I only mention that because there are people who try to justify suicide with those types of...
33:02
And the only one I can think of even close in Scripture would be the story of Samson.
33:08
Samson does, in a sense, take his own life under the power of God even.
33:12
He takes his own life at the end of his narrative.
33:18
And that one always kind of made me kind of rub my chin and go, wow, God gave him the power to destroy his enemies, but he died too.
33:28
And that might just be something for your own personal thought to think through.
33:33
How do we really understand that? I just don't see it as an act of intentional suicide as much as I see it as just like a soldier in battle giving himself for the cause.
33:43
I think we could see Samson as giving himself for what he considered to be a righteous cause, which is destroying the enemies of God.
33:52
But he did die, and he certainly did die by his own hand in a sense.
33:59
But there are situations where a person makes a decision to die where it might not seem so noble, but it might seem equally as justifiable.
34:11
I want to give you an example.
34:15
Brittany Maynard was 29 years old when she was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.
34:22
The prognosis included uncontrollable seizures and severe pain, and in her home state of California, physician-assisted suicide was illegal.
34:34
So she moved to Oregon, where at the time it was legal.
34:39
She went ahead with the procedure to take her own life with the help of a doctor, and her story actually made national news, and her story became the impetus which helped get a bill passed in California, where now California has signed into law physician-assisted suicide as of 2015.
35:06
Some see this not so much as suicide but as euthanasia, and we are going to talk about euthanasia in a minute.
35:15
And by the way, just so you know, when we get there we'll talk more about it.
35:26
Euthanasia is Greek, and we're going to study Greek next term.
35:30
Eu-prefix means good.
35:34
Eulogy, good word, is what eulogy means.
35:39
Eu-prefix means good.
35:41
Thanatos is death.
35:45
Thanatos.
35:47
So euthanasia means good death.
35:52
Or, as some would call it, death with dignity.
35:58
Death with dignity.
36:02
So some would say that Brittany Maynard was trying to avoid the indignity of losing her faculties, losing her bodily control, pain and suffering, and as a result she chose to simply go with a good death rather than a bad death.
36:30
And before we even go further, I think we all can sympathize with the pain.
36:35
None of us that I know of have had a brain tumor.
36:41
But God, well the question is, does God allow that we would take control over our own mortality? That's really the question.
36:55
Or is this a usurpation of His divine control, His divine sovereignty? Are we usurping His authority and saying we're going to do it ourselves? That's really where this comes in.
37:14
And I have a biblical example of this, if you want to write this down.
37:18
Now this may seem a little out there, but I think it's a good example.
37:25
In Judges 9, verses 50-57, Abimelech, and there's quite a few Abimelechs in the Scripture, so this is just one of them, not everyone, but this is one.
37:39
Abimelech has, in battle, been injured by a woman.
37:49
She dropped a stone on his head, and he is dying from this stone.
37:58
So he demands that his armor bearer take his life, so that he would not suffer the indignity of having been killed by a woman in battle.
38:10
I don't mean to make you laugh, it's not really funny.
38:13
I know this is a far cry from a brain tumor.
38:16
But it is an example of someone who wants a good death, rather than an undignified death.
38:24
And to him, undignified death means killed by a woman in battle.
38:29
So rather than that, he requests that his armor bearer kill him and save his reputation.
38:38
Is he justified? We whisper, we think.
38:47
I don't think so.
38:50
And I still, as hard as it is for me to say this, I don't think Brittany Maynard is either.
39:05
That's a good question, Johnny, because that is the issue, right? What if somebody is plagued by something else that they say they can't live with? And so do we allow for suicide in any case, as long as the person feels like they just can't handle whatever the situation is? Yeah, because he believed that he was helping by providing a good death.
39:43
He believed he was helping by providing these people with this.
39:47
Oh, sure.
39:50
I've never seen the paintings, but I believe you.
40:00
Wow.
40:21
Only because you're taking away your opportunity to serve Christ in another way.
40:28
Because if you show up in a hospital or this or that, and you can preach to them the gospel, that event doesn't happen because you're already gone.
40:37
That's a good example, too.
40:38
You're robbing God of whatever the purpose in your life may have been.
40:43
That's a very good point.
40:51
Even if you don't know what God has planned, there's possibilities that God can pull you out of where you're at.
40:56
You know what I'm saying? You're saying that it's impossible.
40:59
What I'm saying is that when you take the route of suicide, you're saying there's no hope.
41:03
Yeah.
41:04
And that's a good point.
41:07
So, again, I do not find anywhere in Scripture where there would be justification for suicide, even in the event of extreme circumstances.
41:17
And that is hard, because there are people who seem to be suffering greatly.
41:25
And yet, what do we do? We stand on the Word.
41:30
That's all we can do.
41:31
Again, this is Christian ethics.
41:32
This isn't global ethics.
41:37
If a woman drops a rock on my head, my wife's going to get her.
41:46
Exactly.
41:47
Like I said, I just thought it was an interesting sort of parallel.
41:50
And I know it's sort of a wild parallel.
41:52
But for me, here's a guy who wanted a good death.
41:54
He didn't want what he considered a bad death.
41:56
And it's about as close as I could get to this type of thing.
42:01
And, again, I want to now – we're sort of already on euthanasia.
42:07
We've already mentioned it.
42:08
But I want to move to euthanasia and sort of tie these two together, because the difference, really, between euthanasia and suicide is the introduction of someone else often making the decision.
42:21
If you choose to commit suicide, you're choosing to end your own life.
42:26
Euthanasia usually means someone else is choosing to end your life or end the life of someone else.
42:31
So that's really where it's different.
42:33
Even physician-assisted suicide, which is a form of euthanasia, you're still making the decision.
42:38
The physician's not coming to your house to kill you.
42:40
You're going to him so that he'll kill you.
42:43
I mean, you understand, right? It's still – it's a personal – in that sense, it's a choice.
42:47
It's a decision.
42:48
Whereas euthanasia often happens to people who can't make the choice.
42:52
What was the lady who had the feeding tube? Maybe we were talking about her.
42:55
Terri Schiava, right? She's not making a choice.
42:58
Somebody's making the choice on her behalf.
43:00
And so that's why I think the distinction between suicide and euthanasia, while some suicide can be euthanistic or euthanizing of someone, it's typically that's the distinction.
43:11
So, it's long been the custom of many people – and I wrote this kind of weird, so I'm going to read it as I wrote it.
43:19
It's long been the custom of many people that when a beloved pet becomes too old or infirm to enjoy a good life, he is taken to the vet and put down.
43:31
Usually, this justification – or the justification is that we don't want the animal to suffer.
43:39
And I remember growing up having several pets that were put down because they were either sick or too old to survive or they were very infirm.
43:51
The same arguments, in a sense, are used for euthanizing people.
43:57
If they are in a constant state of suffering, why not put them out of their misery? If we would be so good to an animal, why would we not show the same mercy to a person? That's the argument.
44:11
And again, we're looking from the other perspective.
44:14
But immediately, we have to recognize that the comparison breaks down almost immediately because animals are not people.
44:25
Don't get offended.
44:29
I know we love our furry babies or whatever they're called, the people who have their dogs and their – don't you shoot me.
44:35
I know we love their animals, and that's fine.
44:39
But we do understand the qualitative difference between human kind and animal kind.
44:46
At least we should.
44:48
The biblical difference is very clear.
44:50
Therefore, the ethical dilemma of putting down a dog or a cat or any other animal is not on the same level as taking the life of a human being.
45:01
It's just not even in the same ballpark.
45:05
But this is the argument that is sometimes used.
45:08
The supporter of euthanasia would argue that's just the point.
45:11
If you're willing to give a good death to a dog, why would you not do even more for a person? If they're that much more important, why would they not receive even more of a dignified death? Isn't it a crime against humanity to not allow people to avoid an inevitable period of intense distress? A few years ago, a film came out called Me Before You.
45:36
Did anybody see it other than my wife? I know she saw it because she told me about it.
45:43
Me Before You was a movie about euthanasia.
45:48
Well, physician-assisted suicide.
45:50
Like I said, there's sort of a crossover there.
45:55
And it made its way into the cinema.
45:57
It was a very popular film at the time.
46:00
And it tells the story of a man who is bound in a wheelchair.
46:04
And because of his being bound in a wheelchair, he decides to take his own life, even though throughout the story he falls in love with a young lady and she falls in love with him.
46:14
And he ends up taking his own life anyway because he doesn't want her to have to live with a wheelchair-bound person.
46:25
The film was popular.
46:28
$200 million it made on a $20 million budget.
46:35
It does go to show that the interest in this subject is pretty widespread.
46:40
And as I think one of you mentioned earlier, overseas they've really begun to make this more and more common.
46:50
Have you seen the thing that you can buy that you can get in and it will kill you? It's almost like a cocoon.
46:58
Yeah, the suicide, what's it called? Yeah, but it looks like something from Star Trek.
47:04
You get in and it covers you up and it looks like a pill that you're inside.
47:11
And it fills with a gas and you die.
47:18
And they make it, like I said, it looks like an iPhone.
47:20
It looks like an incredible piece of technology.
47:26
It's got Bluetooth.
47:27
Yes, I'm almost certain.
47:35
It turns on the car in the garage.
47:38
Exactly.
47:39
Yeah, it's a very fancy example of that, yes.
47:43
An argument often raised against euthanasia, and I want you to hear this and understand what I'm about to say.
47:51
A lot of times when the subject of euthanasia comes up, an argument against it is that, well, once people are given the right to die, there will become an inevitable obligation to die.
48:06
Meaning, as people become more and more of a burden, rather than making the choice, it's the right choice.
48:15
And then it will become the obligated choice.
48:17
And this is what causes a lot of people to be afraid of euthanasia legislation because they start thinking, well, what if I get sick? Are they going to immediately want to pull the plug or are they going to immediately want to kill me because I'm a burden? Yeah, if you're a burden in whatever way.
48:36
In fact, let me read.
48:38
This is from the ESV study Bible, your lesson on ethics in there.
48:42
Quote, nations that have allowed for physician-assisted suicide find that a society can quickly move from allowing the right to die to the belief that there is an obligation to die on the part of the elderly and the very ill who are draining resources from the society.
48:57
In such situations, it becomes likely that a number of elderly people will be put to death against their will.
49:05
End quote.
49:05
That's what's in your book.
49:07
Yes.
49:03
Well.
49:57
Yeah.
50:02
We just call it hospice here.
50:04
We don't call it euthanasia.
50:12
I know a lot of people.
50:14
I know a lot of people who do feel that same way because a lot of people said that to me.
50:18
Yeah.
50:18
Yes, ma'am.
50:32
She had just started opening her eyes back up, and she couldn't speak or anything like that.
50:36
So they ended up calling it hospice.
50:39
And I mean, she wasn't in danger of dying.
50:43
She just lost all that.
50:45
And they called it hospice because she didn't want to do the exercises or anything.
50:51
None of that's something to worry about.
50:52
And she wanted her breathing tube removed from the mouth, but she was afraid of choking or whatever.
51:01
And then one of the sisters said, well, ask the hospice guy, well, can't you give her enough medication where she would just easily stop breathing? Wow.
51:10
And then he took them outside because he quickly said, well, we don't do assisted suicide.
51:14
And then he called the two sisters outside, and they discussed whatever they discussed.
51:18
And they came back in.
51:20
They gave her a shot.
51:23
No, I left because I didn't want to see her go through that.
51:26
But before I could get home straight, she was dead because they came in and gave her a shot so that she would quickly die when they removed the breathing tube from her throat.
51:41
And so I definitely believe that they assist people at times, but they call it a different name.
51:52
As I said, I've seen a lot of people die.
52:01
I've been in the room with several people.
52:04
I'm going to hold back my own comments because there's just – it's – but what you're saying is certainly – a lot of people would feel that way.
52:16
Yes, sir.
52:18
With the hospice, my mom, she had breast cancer.
52:22
But it's almost like in Proverbs 31.6, give a strong beverage to one person.
52:27
I mean, it's easier – because they knew my mom was going to die.
52:30
Everybody knew my mom was going to die.
52:32
It's just that they made it more comfortable for her when she was passing away.
52:36
And that's what I say.
52:39
Like I said, I'm going to hold back saying anything other than to say that there's a lot of – there's a lot of strong feelings.
52:48
There's a lot of, obviously, belief in different things.
52:53
If we are hastening death for the sake of hastening simply because the person is a burden, then I would say that's wrong.
53:04
That's a form of euthanasia.
53:08
I want to get back to something I was trying to say before.
53:11
I appreciate everybody sharing.
53:12
Tonight is a good sharing night, and I appreciate you guys all sharing.
53:14
Don't think that by me not saying anything I'm disagreeing or agreeing.
53:18
I want to hear what you have to say, and I don't want you to feel as if I've come against you or anything like that.
53:23
It's not my purpose.
53:24
I'm a facilitator in all this.
53:26
We're learning together.
53:27
But one thing I do want to say is this.
53:30
The idea that, well, if they begin to allow euthanasia, they're going to force euthanasia, that argument is what we call a slippery slope argument.
53:41
In logic, that is not – that's not a proof if something is good or bad because just because something can lead to something bad doesn't make it bad.
53:52
That's called the slippery slope argument.
53:54
Maybe one day I'll teach a course in logic, and that would be a good follow-up to all this, how do we logically get to where we're going.
54:01
But here's my only thing to say about that.
54:04
Euthanasia is either bad or not, no matter what it leads to.
54:09
It on its face is bad or not, and I would say it is wrong.
54:13
So even if it didn't lead to the government coming in and killing people or whatever, even if it didn't lead to that, it would still be wrong.
54:20
And that's what a slippery slope – a slippery slope says, well, it's going to get worse.
54:24
Well, it's already wrong.
54:26
It's sort of like the people who talk about abortion.
54:28
Well, it's going to lead to X, Y, and Z.
54:29
But the abortion is already wrong.
54:30
You don't need the rest to prove that is it wrong.
54:34
And so you start with is euthanasia biblical? No.
54:39
Is it right? No.
54:40
But can it lead to these other things? Yes.
54:45
But we don't need to go there.
54:46
We don't have to go there, because we can, from the beginning, just say that it's not right.
54:51
From a Christian worldview – have you heard that? On the briefing? From a Christian worldview, it is certain that life itself is a gift from God, and He has the right to determine its beginning and its ending.
55:08
It is important, though, that we distinguish – and this is an important distinguish, and I want to end with this.
55:15
It's important to distinguish between actively killing and passively allowing someone to die.
55:23
Now, all the hospice conversations we had, notwithstanding, because I would say those are a different subset of this.
55:30
What I'm saying, though, is if you have a person that's being kept alive by a breathing machine, and that's the only thing keeping that person alive, I do not think it's euthanasia to stop the machine if that's all that's keeping the person alive.
55:41
And I think we would agree with that, but that could lead to a deeper conversation.
55:45
But you understand, that's not the same thing as euthanasia.
55:47
And so when we say euthanasia, we're talking about the active taking of life, not the passive allowing of life to end on its own.
55:55
Because, again, I've been there.
55:56
I remember a man in our church, his wife.
55:59
They said, you know what? The only thing keeping her alive is this breathing machine.
56:02
As soon as we turn it off, she's going to pass.
56:04
I was standing there with him, and he waited for his children to come and say goodbye, and they were not wrong.
56:10
I was with him until they turned the machine off, and as soon as the machine turned off, the breathing began to get shallow and shallow, and within just a few minutes, she was gone.
56:23
So I don't think that's euthanasia, and I just want to make that distinction between the active taking of a life and the passive removing of.
56:32
But that leads to another question.
56:34
What about a feeding tube? And again, we can't get to all this because of time, but that is a feeding tube the same as a breathing apparatus.
56:42
So you see how deep this can go.
56:44
I mean, the well could never be run dry of opportunities and questions.
56:48
In fact, I do have one ethical dilemma.
56:52
I'm just going to throw this out.
56:53
We're not going to answer it, but this is an example of something I hope you bring back to me when we have our last discussion, our final night.
57:02
Imagine a person who was diagnosed with cancer.
57:05
It doesn't say breast cancer.
57:07
I think I was still thinking about what one of you said.
57:09
Imagine a person is diagnosed with cancer.
57:12
He is told that he has six months to live if he doesn't get treatment, but if he gets treatment, he could expect a full recovery.
57:20
He decides he does not want to have the treatment because it's very painful.
57:23
He'd rather die sooner than live in pain.
57:27
Is his choice to receive no treatment a form of euthanasia? I'm not asking for an answer.
57:38
I just want you to think about that.
57:39
If he said, you know what, I could get treatment, but I don't want it.
57:43
I'd rather die.
57:49
That's the type of thing I hope you bring back to me because that would be a good conversation in our last class.
57:55
And you weren't here, Johnny, earlier, but one of the things I'm giving you tonight is a handout to take home.
57:58
Write in ethical questions for us to discuss in class eight.
58:04
Take the handout with you and bring it back.
58:07
All right.
58:08
We're going to take a break, come back, and talk about capital punishment.
58:15
We are now moving to our last portion on death ethics.
58:19
The subject is capital punishment.
58:26
I knew we were going to do this in the last portion of class, and as one brother said, hey, we could talk about this until 10 o'clock at night.
58:33
Yes, we can.
58:35
But because of the limitation of time, I just want to make a few quick points.
58:38
If we want to add anything to that, that's fine.
58:40
But I do want to kind of get through my notes, make sure you guys hear what I've put together.
58:45
First thing, under the old covenant, which we have discussed the difference between old and new covenant, under the old covenant, the death penalty was given for various types of sins, including murder, kidnapping, bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, rape, being a false prophet, and violating the Sabbath.
59:06
That's not all, but that's just a few.
59:11
Yet we also know that under the old covenant, the death penalty was not always carried out when it was due.
59:21
There were times when God showed mercy.
59:24
One example is the life of King David, 2 Samuel 12, 13.
59:29
David had committed adultery and even saw that a man be killed to hide his adulterous affair, and yet God did not require his life of him in that.
59:41
So that is an act of mercy on behalf of God.
59:46
Jesus, we don't often think of Jesus as an Old Testament prophet, but in a sense he is, because Jesus is speaking and the Gospels still fall under the time of what we would call the Old Covenant.
01:00:01
We would say John the Baptist was the last Old Testament prophet.
01:00:04
Jesus is, of course, the one who makes the transition to the New Covenant.
01:00:07
But when he's preaching and teaching, he's Old Covenant in that regard.
01:00:11
So we can say this, when Jesus showed mercy to the woman caught in adultery, he's not breaking the law, but he is showing mercy under the law.
01:00:22
So there are times where there is mercy shown, even when the law is requiring death.
01:00:28
Right? We would agree? So the ethical question is, not is the death penalty ever to be used, because certainly it was used under the Old Covenant, and is there not ever a time where it can be withheld? Because there certainly are times where it has been withheld.
01:00:48
The ethical question for the Christian, and this is Christian ethics, is, is the Christian forbidden from supporting the death penalty because Jesus taught forgiveness and the New Testament teaches to not return evil for evil? Obviously that is true.
01:01:08
The New Testament does tell us not to return evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good.
01:01:14
And that doesn't mean good accuracy.
01:01:16
I've heard that.
01:01:18
Don't overcome evil with good aim.
01:01:21
No, that's not the...
01:01:25
So it is a question, is the death penalty abrogated in the New Covenant? Before we answer that question, I do want to make this note.
01:01:37
The death penalty precedes the giving of the Mosaic Law.
01:01:42
The death penalty was given before the Mosaic Law.
01:01:47
It was the first death penalty was given in Genesis 9, verse 6.
01:01:53
Moses comes off the ark, God is giving the Noahic Covenant, he's explaining this covenant that he's made with Noah, and he says in that, if a man sheds the blood of another man, by men should that man's blood be shed, for in the image of God made he them.
01:02:15
Therefore, the death penalty was first instituted as a response to murder.
01:02:24
If a man murders another man, he forfeits his life because he's attacked and killed an image bearer of God.
01:02:35
So Genesis 9, verse 6 is what we would call the institution of the death penalty, and it precedes by many hundreds of years the giving of the Mosaic Law.
01:02:48
So in that sense we could say it transcends Mosaic Law, because it's given before.
01:02:53
And the basis of it is the image of God.
01:03:00
That being said, we can also find the death penalty in the New Covenant, and I want to invite you to open your Bibles now because we're going to look at this passage.
01:03:16
It's not limited to the Mosaic Covenant because it was before the Mosaic Covenant, but it's also not stopped by the Mosaic Covenant because it's found in the New Covenant.
01:03:24
Romans, chapter 13, beginning at verse 1.
01:03:31
Sorry, I told you to take out your Bibles and here we go.
01:03:34
Romans 13, verse 1 says, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
01:03:50
By the way, I just want to mention that Paul is writing this at a time when the government was pretty bad, so people who say that this only applies to a benevolent government, not exactly Paul's argument.
01:04:09
Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
01:04:15
For rulers are not of terror to good conduct but to bad.
01:04:18
Often people use that to say, well, if they are a terror to good conduct, then they're bad rulers and they can be rebelled against.
01:04:23
That's a whole other conversation.
01:04:24
When we get to just war theory and the idea of rebellion and government, things will talk about that, but that's often the verse that's used to make that argument.
01:04:34
Would you have no fear of the One who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive His approval, for He is God's servant for your good.
01:04:42
But if you do wrong, here's the relevant passage for us, but if you do wrong, be afraid, for He, that is the authority or the government, does not bear the sword in vain, for He is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.
01:05:08
There is the New Covenant position on the death penalty as I see it.
01:05:14
And let me just add a moment of thought.
01:05:17
My first sermon that I ever preached, that I can remember, was on the Sunday after 9-11.
01:05:28
Our pastor had been in an automobile accident.
01:05:31
He had been out of the pulpit for several weeks.
01:05:34
And we had been watching videos, because we didn't have anybody else who would preach.
01:05:41
And I was saved in 99, so I'd been saved for about two years at this point.
01:05:48
And 9-11 happened on a Tuesday.
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Wednesday night we gathered for prayer.
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Everybody shocked, still numb from the reality.
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And I was asked, would you preach? We don't want to watch a video this week.
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Somebody needs to preach.
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You're the only one who's even close to being able to do that.
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Okay.
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So I looked for a passage to preach, and I found myself in Romans 13, the passage I just read you.
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And my statement and my sermon was probably pretty short and probably pretty bad, just to be honest.
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But I did say something I would still agree with.
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I said, this passage tells us that the government has a responsibility to bring God's wrath on the wicked, and they are a minister of God.
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The word minister is the same word that we translate deacon.
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And so the government becomes a deacon of God to administer his wrath.
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Now, we know the government is bad, and we know that our leaders and our appointed representatives can really mess things up.
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And even all the way down to the local authorities and even to the police, there can be corruption and bad behavior.
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But it is an institution of God.
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God has assigned three institutions in the world as means of grace.
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The first is the family.
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The second is the church.
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And the third is the state or the government.
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And all three of those are seen by God, in God's word, as having a role to play in administering authority.
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In the home, authority is the father and the mother and the children, and there is a hierarchy of authority there.
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In the church, there are elders, there are deacons, there are church members, and there is a hierarchy of authority given there, with, of course, Christ as the head, the Bible as the word.
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We understand the authority structure of the church.
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And in the state.
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And that's why I would say, as a good Baptist, I do believe in the separation of church and state.
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You understand that idea is not something that came from the secularists.
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It was something that came from the religionists, because they did not want the state to manage the church.
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The idea of separation of church and state was that the church would not come in and establish its own church, like they've done in China, where they've removed the pictures of Christ and they've replaced it with the pictures of the leader of China.
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That's a state church.
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And that's why we should affirm the separation of church and state.
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Not of God and government.
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That's a different conversation.
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Taking God out of government is dangerous, and that's a whole other conversation.
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But the idea of church and state, we do not want the state managing the church.
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Neither, really, do we want the church managing the state, because it's two different spheres of authority.
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While we could discuss how the government should be run, ultimately it is a place of authority established by God.
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Now, I've kind of gone off the subject, but to bring it all back in, one of the things that the state has that the church don't have is the power of the sword.
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The church is not given the power to exercise capital punishment.
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And by the way, if you ever have a Roman Catholic tell you that the Roman Catholic Church never put anyone to death, they're not wrong.
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The Roman Catholic Church never put anyone to death.
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It was always the state under the leadership of the church.
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But it was always the state bearing the sword.
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So you have to understand, from a historical perspective, they would say it was never the church.
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It was always the state, because heresy was a capital offense from the state.
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Who determined who's the heretic? The church.
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The church, then, is the capital witness.
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The state is the one who executes for the capital crime.
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The same with Christ.
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The Jews didn't actually kill Christ.
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That's right.
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The Romans killed him, but the Jews bore the evidence, as it were.
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They were the ones who were calling for heresy.
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And even the conversation, I don't want to go too far on this one, but John Calvin is often accused of being a murderer because Michael Servetus came to Calvin with a false view of the Trinity.
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Actually, he wrote a letter to Calvin.
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Calvin said, don't come here.
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You won't leave.
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That's a short version, but basically, don't come.
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You're not going to find any quarter in Geneva.
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And he didn't.
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He was killed by the Genevan government.
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Not by Calvin and not even by Calvin's church.
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Calvin was a witness, but it was the state that executed the burning of Michael Servetus.
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So, having said all that, the state has that power.
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Now, has the state exercised the power incorrectly at times? Has the state overreached its power? Certainly.
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And one of the things that people like to argue is that if the state can err, and we'll say execute the wrong man, then the state shouldn't have the power to execute anyone at all.
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I can't affirm that, because while I do know that there have been DNA evidences that have come along and have exonerated men and have shown that the state has erred, at the end of the day, that, again, is the argument of the slippery slope.
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Well, because bad can happen, we can't have this other reality.
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I think the burden must be higher for proof if we're going to take a life.
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But at the same time, I think the burden of proof should be pretty high anyway.
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I got kicked off the jury when I went, because they asked me if I would be able to affirm the conviction of a man based on one witness.
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And I said no.
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I said the Bible demands two or more witnesses.
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And I would consider corroborating evidence a secondary witness, and I did explain that.
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If there was fingerprints or video or something that was a corroboration of the original witness's testimony, I said, but one person saying a guy did something, and that's all you have, is not enough evidence to convict a man of stealing a stick of gum, much less anything else.
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And they said, well, you believe that, you might let a guilty man go free.
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And I said, I would rather see a guilty man go free than an innocent man be convicted.
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And that's the biblical point, that it's always better, because no guilty man in the end will ever genuinely go free, because every man will face the judge of this universe.
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So I think that the answer to the capital punishment is not the abolition of capital punishment, but the enforcement of proper methods of justice and determining guilt.
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And if we cannot truly determine a man's guilt, he need not be incarcerated or killed.
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So that's my position on it.
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I would say that I think that the hardest part for me, I understand Christians who would say I can't support it, because the Bible says we overcome evil with good.
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I say yes, but we're talking a different sphere of power.
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The government is in a different place than the church.
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And even the church bears the sword in a sense.
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What does the church do when a person is sinning and is unrepentant, and they've been brought before the church? What does Jesus say in Matthew 18? They are to be excommunicated.
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They are to be put out.
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That's the only sword the church bears.
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It's the sword of division from fellowship.
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You can be removed from fellowship.
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And if you don't believe that's true, read 1 Corinthians 5 and then come back and talk to me.
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Because it's absolutely the case.
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The church can remove someone from fellowship if that person is a danger to the church.
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All right, I'm going to read my conclusion, and then if you have any extra comments you can.
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It's interesting that we normally find non-Christians to be pro-euthanasia and anti-capital punishment.
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Have you ever noticed that? Most non-Christians I know are pro-euthanasia and anti-capital punishment.
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And in both cases they make the argument that they are on the side of life.
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Yet these same people are often pro-abortion, which seems very inconsistent.
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In the end, death ethics is about whether or not we believe God has the right to determine the end of our days and whether or not we have the right to intervene and take matters into our own hands.
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Even in the case of capital punishment, it's not an individual who's taking the matter into his own hands.
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It's not vengeance.
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But rather it is a person who has been judged and sentenced to death by the state, and the state is acting as a deacon of God or a minister of God.
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It is not personal vengeance, but an act of justice.
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Therefore, it's not equated to murder, but the enforcement of the penalty of law.
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From a biblical perspective, no person has the right to take his own life nor to ask someone else to do it.
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Neither do we have the right to take the life of a person who's simply infirm, sick, or old.
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The only time a life is taken justifiably is when a person forfeits his own life by willfully engaging in a crime which ends in his execution.
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Anyone have anything they'd like to add before we pray? Yes.
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Yeah.
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Isn't that interesting? And like I said, as bad as the government can be, it still has a purpose.
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And we could say the church is bad sometimes too.
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And yet it's still a part of God's purpose.
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Anyone else? Yes, sir.
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Just the other day, while we just keep society where it understands what's going on, it should be more broadcasted, as you would say, instead of close quarters, just as a family of effects.
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Meaning, if things...
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Now, this is just a wrong idea because it would never go back that way.
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But if it was public humiliation or anything, an eye for an eye like this, a woman could get kicked in the stomach, could cause an abortion, all the things that would happen, you know, that we were talking about last week, and then so forth.
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If we went back to public hanging or something like that, you would see stuff drop right out the bottom.
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And it wouldn't be so crazy on how to push these crimes around.
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They're getting under the rug, and they're defense attorneys paying $2,000.
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That's just an opinion of mine because I just kind of go on a rabbit trail.
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I prefer the old method of...
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Well, the old method was certainly a spectacle.
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It was.
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I mean, it was intended to be a spectacle.
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Public execution was intended to be a public deterrent.
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And that's certainly an interesting conversation.
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Well, yeah.
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I wouldn't want to...
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time.
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Thank you for this class.
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Lord, I pray it's been helpful just to make us think through things, have to really engage with the Word.
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And I pray, Lord, that whatever opinions I'm sharing, they're based on Scripture.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would have the heart to want to be conformed to what your Word says and not try to conform you to us.
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Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to be here.
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In Christ's name, amen.