BBC Elders Q&A

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Well, I was going to preach Luke 18 tonight, and then I thought, you know, once in a while we need to have some Q &A and some time for the congregation to ask questions.
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While we may preach doctrinally and with authority, I never want to come across as someone who is not able to be approached and ask questions.
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And so this would just give an opportunity for the church to ask questions. They could be practical about the church, the building, where we plan to be in the next few years.
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It could be, what does this verse mean? As long as you don't say, what does this verse mean to you? What does this verse mean?
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Tell me about this theological position. I had someone ask me today, my son would like to play a certain sport on Sunday.
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What do you think of that? So it could be very practical or it could be very theological. If you want to stump the pastors, that would be very easy to do because it doesn't take much to talk about the eternal aspiration of the
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Spirit of God and those kind of things that I just don't know because I'll answer you with the secret things belong to the
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Lord. Deuteronomy 29 .29. So to cover myself, I'm not just going to be asked the questions.
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I'm going to have the other elders come up too. So elders, why don't you come up and grab yourself a seat. Dave is not feeling that well, so Dave won't be here.
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We are an elder -led church, elder -ruled church, and these men are your shepherds. And what we'll do is
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I'll kind of be the moderator. I'll sit down there as well. And so if you have a question, just raise your hand. I'll repeat the question for the sake of the
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MP3 and for the sake of the internet. And then these men, we can divvy up the answers.
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And I just want you to know, if you don't have any questions for them, I do. And I always love
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Q &As because the Lord just has a neat way of bringing to our attention something that we haven't learned before or what some people are thinking.
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And so I'll just come right down here as well to make sure we get the right time.
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And who would like to start off asking a question? Practical question, a theological question,
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I will tell you probably off the bat that if it's, thank you, related to amillennialism and premillennialism, we probably won't take the question.
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If it's related to, I don't know what else. I mean, I'll take the questions. I don't care. I'm not afraid.
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But I mean, we don't want to keep. I'll call the eternal spirit. All right, who has a question?
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I'll sit down in a moment. Yes. All right, good.
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Thank you, Simon. The question is, what about charismatic Calvinists? We probably should have a definition of what a charismatic is and what a
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Calvinist is because it always depends on definitions. And are those two words put together a contradiction in terms?
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Steve, do you want to take that one? You're on. Well, yeah.
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A Calvinist is someone who, I would define it this way. They believe in the sovereignty of God and salvation.
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They hold to the acronym TULIP, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and preservation or perseverance of the saints.
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Charismatic would be somebody who believes that the super gifts of the
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New Testament church are still in practice today, speaking in tongues, maybe healing, words of prophecy, things of that nature.
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So what I say, it's a contradiction in terms. Well, I don't think
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I would go that far only because we know some of these people, like John Piper.
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I mean, not that I know John Piper. But we watch their ministries.
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And from time to time, I mean, there are some issues, I think. Because ultimately, if you say, for example, as a
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Calvinist, I hold firmly to the word of God. I believe the Bible. And I believe that God has revealed exactly how he saves people.
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And then as a charismatic, I believe that God's still speaking today. And God can sort of modify and move in different ways.
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Well, then am I really a Calvinist? So I mean, I think ultimately there can be problems with that.
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I think it's difficult to be consistent. So I mean, well,
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I wouldn't go so far as to call it necessarily a contradiction. I find it troubling.
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You want to add something, Lewis or Pradeep? Sure. Why not? If you ever ask that of Lewis.
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I mean, I just have to pick a topic. I'll say, Mark Stein, America Alone. Did you read the book? Yes, I did.
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OK, see? I mean, it is just unbelievable. As unaccustomed as I am to public speaking.
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No, it's, again, Calvinist by their very nature, we do.
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We tend to take the word of God as our first authority and as our final authority. And so we go by what is written down.
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What has God written to us, had his servants over the centuries write down so that we could read what he has to say on any given topic?
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We use that as our authority. Charismatics, and this again, we're speaking very broadly here.
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Charismatics tend to use their emotional experiences as their final authority, or to some extent use that as their authority.
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And so that is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. Not that your experiences do not underpin what the scripture teaches us.
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There was a whole group of people that called themselves the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales.
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And you can read about those some. And again, they were firm on the scripture, but their basic deal was, you know, if you tell me you're a
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Christian, tell me what there is in your life, experientially, that confirms that you're a
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Christian. I want to see that in your life. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach.
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It's a question of perspective. And so I would go along with Steve and say that you can't just brush it off as a contradiction in terms, but there are contradictions in that statement that you would look for.
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I think if we look at the issues of Calvinism and charismatics, Calvinism tends to be a system that talks about the doctrine of salvation or soteriology.
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And the charismatics, as they talk about what should be in a church and what shouldn't be in a church is more an ecclesiological issue.
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And so can salvation and church doctrine be put together? In fact, the answer is, even though in church history, we don't have charismatic
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Calvinists, but we have them now with Piper and Mahaney and Wayne Grudem, some good men.
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They're certainly not the Benny Hinn loons of the left or anything like that. And so, can
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I say that? Is that okay to say? You just did, sir. Okay. Sometimes I come on Sunday mornings just to hear what
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I might say when I'm preaching. And so you have someone with a high view of God. I mean, we say the word
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Calvinism here because it's been asked, but from the pulpit, you won't hear us say the word very often because it brings up all kinds of thoughts.
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And we just basically believe that God is sovereign not only on what color your skin is when you were born, who your parents were, the weather, but also over your soul.
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And do you go to heaven or don't you? God is sovereign over that. And charismatics would believe not just in the regular gifts like we would believe, the serving gifts and the speaking gifts, but they also think of sign gifts as well.
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If you have your Bibles, I wanna just take you to three quick passages. Whenever I get asked about charismatic issues, these are the three passages in my mind that I just quickly go to to help me as I think about are these gifts for today.
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Certainly, I believe that some of these charismatic Calvinists are our brothers and we go to conferences together and they're
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Christian people, but I think they misunderstand these verses.
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Ephesians chapter two, verse 20, as chapter two is talking about the church, bringing the
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Jews and Gentiles together. He talks about this household of God in verse 19. And it says in verse 20, having been built, look at those tenses of the verbs there, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
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Christ Jesus himself emphatically being the cornerstone. And the church is being built, started to be built in the first century with Jesus on earth.
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He begins to build the church and the foundation of the church would be the apostles and the prophets.
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Now we're 2000 years removed from the foundation and so we don't have to go back to the foundation any longer.
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And what would an apostle do that would be extraordinary? So the second verses that I like to go to are found in second
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Corinthians chapter 12. So, so far the church is being built by Christ with the foundation being the apostles and the apostles were very unique individuals, gifted by God.
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And you can always find apostles in the scriptures when they were doing things like this.
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Second Corinthians 12, 12. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles.
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And these apostles would do that. So you've got the apostles foundational level at the church where beyond that, and the last set that I would go to would be
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Hebrews chapter two. And again, I don't have time to give you an exegetical background for each of these verses.
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But in my mind, I just look at these set of verses to help me with the issue of charismatic gifts.
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Hebrews chapter two, verses three and four, you'll find it's very interesting here with past tense discussion of the sign gifts, the sign gifts pointing to the word and the word is now incarnated as it were and the canon is coming together and so the sign gifts die out as the canon grows and comes to completion.
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It says in Hebrews chapter two, verse three, how should we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was first spoken through the
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Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard. How was the word confirmed by the spirit of God?
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How do you know it's really the word of God before the Bible's written? Verse four is the answer.
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You see the comma at the end of verse three. How is it confirmed? God also testifying with them by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the
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Holy Spirit according to his own will. And so when I think of the charismatic issues, I think about the foundational part of the church needing those sign gifts because who's right?
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Steve says one thing, I say another, but I can back up what I say with these sign gifts and Steve can't and so God confirms the messenger and the message by these sign gifts like he did with Moses and Joshua, like he did with Elijah and Elisha.
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And so for charismatics to like the doctrines of grace and have a high view of God, I'm very glad for that.
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And I think over time, I think they'll abandon the sign gifts because to me a more miraculous thing today is
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God's providential working as the king of the universe. And so I'm glad for them. The movement's called
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Sovereign Grace. We sing Sovereign Grace songs here, but we don't sing Sovereign Grace songs about I'm an apostle.
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I mean, can you imagine if I was an apostle? I'll never forget Mark Dever calling C .J.
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Mahaney an apostle. They were trying to figure out a doctrinal question in a Q &A session like this and Dever said, I don't know the answer to that question, but we have an apostle sitting right here.
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He should have the answer. So we believe that sign gifts existed, but they were there to point to something and that pointing was this is truly a word from God and since we have the word now, we don't need any more pointing.
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So, okay, good question. Yes, Bernard. I think that they would say, and I've heard this before, that there are no, there's no verse that says the gifts have stopped.
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Sorry. Or that the feedback has stopped. Yeah, they just say, where's the verse that says they stop?
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So, you know, then you get into a, it's a rather lengthy argument either way. And there'd be 1
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Corinthians chapter 13, verse 10 and what does that perfect or mature word mean there, so.
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Yes, Ron. Okay.
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I'd like to get some counsel and I have a friend. Now that you have everyone's.
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Okay, good.
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Well, I think maybe Pradeep should get this question, don't you? Oh yes,
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I better repeat the question. If a man has a woman that's less than a
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Proverbs 31 woman, who in fact may be not even saved, how should that husband love that wife that he is united to for the rest of his life?
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So the question here has to do with the role of a husband in a marriage, a
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Christian husband. And we need to look to the scriptures to see what the
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Bible tells us as advice for a husband who is in a situation where he's married with a woman who possibly is not a
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Christian, that seems to be the direction we are going. And as a leader of a head of the family, it's his responsibility to do what he can to spiritually nurture the family.
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And we know, you know, just looking at the extreme case of, okay, I'm in a very difficult spot,
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I'm not able to progress, do the kind of things that as a Christian man and as a Christian husband and as a Christian father,
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I would like to do because of the situation. You wanna look and see what not to do first, which is, you know, you are in a situation of a marriage, you are the
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Christian husband, so you do need to keep the marriage, you are not supposed to leave the marriage, you need to do what you can to keep the marriage going.
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And I think as a husband, you have a responsibility for your wife and you need to work with your wife, the spouse, to determine whether that person is a believer or not.
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If not, you know, do your best to share the gospel in a loving way, in a way that would honor
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Christ, because I think the hardest part in sharing gospel is with persons we are most intimate with, because they know all our flaws, we know all their flaws, we know where they're gonna close the doors.
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But we need to work towards sharing the gospel with this person, with our words and with our life.
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And in terms of what this person can be effective in the ministry or in just generally in life, yes, it is a difficult circumstance, when you have a spouse who's unbelieving and not just that, but also antagonistic to everything that you do.
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It is a challenge to be able to do even the normal things in life, much less the things in ministry.
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And as with every other husband, you have a responsibility first to the family, so you need to devote your energy and your attention towards the spouse and the family as a whole, and be used of God as much as you can outside of it.
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Was that the question, Ron, did I answer that? Okay, well,
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I think one of the things that I didn't mention last week, Ron, and we would all affirm this here at the church, that if a husband has a high -maintenance wife and he is handicapped in ministry, then it is his responsibility and duty to love that wife and to have her mature.
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And so as he leads and as he guides and directs the family as they grow together closer to Christ, and therefore the wife grows more, she will be able to handle more ministry.
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And so the husband just can't flippantly say, like I probably said last week from the pulpit, you know, well, you just have a high -maintenance wife and you can only go as far as your wife will take you.
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That's a true statement, but it's not all the truth, because the rest of the truth is the ministry can only go as far as the husband will lead that family.
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And so that is very critical. You can't look at the wife to see the barometer of the family. You need to look at the husband and his leadership.
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And I can pretty much tell about these men, if I look at their wives and see their countenance, see their service, see their joy, see their ministry, and it will be a reflection upon God's working through their husbands and through these men.
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So if you wanna know about the man, you can go to the wife. I would say to your friend, if this is your friend, that he may have ideas of ministry.
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He might wanna be a pastor or an elder, a seminary student. He may have all kinds of gifts, but in the sovereign hand of God, the number one priority for that man now is his wife.
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And he will have to pour his life out for her. And at eternity's door, when
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God says, you know, this is the mission field I gave you is this unsaved wife. And the person who stands before God will say, you know, it was worth it.
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God, thank you for giving me that privilege to serve this person. Mark.
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I look back at it a little bit. What if she kicks the kid and kicks him out of the house? All right, the question for the tape is, what if the wife then kicks the person out, kicks the husband out, change the locks and all that?
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My first response before I let Lewis take a whack at it is, doesn't sin muddy things?
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Sin just so destroys and confuses and makes just life chaotic.
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And it's very, very difficult in divorce and remarriage and other things like that. How do you just unscrew the, you know, inscrutable?
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Lewis, what would you tell a husband like that? Well, as I think we've all agreed, this is a very thorny issue and one that really applies in our day because it seems to happen a lot.
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But I would go back essentially to what we've already said. The, you've heard, some of you have heard me say here that the essence of leadership, we've said it is the husband's responsibility to lead the family.
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And what so often pops into someone's mind, you say that, well, I get to tell people what to do, but that's not the essence of leadership.
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The essence of leadership can be defined as constantly, consciously taking responsibility for the welfare of those you're leading.
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And you can still apply that principle even if you have been thrown out of the house. As long as you are still the provider for that household, you can take responsibility for the welfare of that wife, for the welfare of those children.
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It may be difficult, she may resist you doing that. But to the very best of your ability and with prayer and much prayer that goes with that, you try to continue to fulfill that responsibility.
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Because as things go on, what we would pray for is that this will affect the wife.
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You remember the story that I think it was Mike said a couple of Sundays ago where the advice to the woman was, well, you really be nice to your husband and then when he's really set, man, you zap it to him.
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You know, and a few months later, no, she wouldn't even think about leaving the fellow. Well, you pray for some sort of a thing like that to happen.
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And from a practical standpoint, also look at your life. If she physically threw you out of the house, you might wanna do a little soul searching to figure out what is it.
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Look at your own life because every one of these disputes has two sides to it. And see where did you fit into this dispute?
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And it may be, you know, and Paul addresses this, it may be that she's determined to leave and that's just the way it is and that's what's gonna happen.
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And like Pastor Mike just said, sin muddies things and it gets in the way. And it really messes your life up.
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And once the eggs are scrambled, you can't unscramble them. But as long as you can, within whatever ability you have and to whatever level you have, you continue to take responsibility for the welfare of that family, as long as it's your family.
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Even if she won't let you in the door, it's still your family. And so you keep applying that principle to the very best of your ability, to whatever level you're permitted to do so.
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And I'm not trying to trivialize this, nor am I trying to make it a be warm, be filled type thing, because it is a very, very hard row.
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It's not easy. And you have no guarantee it's gonna turn out well.
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But, you know, you do as long as the Lord permits you to do.
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You keep it, you keep going down that road. If I can just ratchet up what
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Lewis was saying a little bit, I would say, and I say this to men whenever I talk to them, what happens in the house, and this is something women love to hear, is the man's fault.
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That's pretty easy, isn't it? In other words, on judgment day, you don't get to stand up there and say, it was the woman you gave me.
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This is, you know, and to get even further back, there was something about you way back when that she really liked.
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What did you do to mess that up? And, you know, as much as you can,
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I mean, I think guys have habits of, you know, just devoting themselves to one thing or two things or whatever, and the family, the wife, everything else gets left behind, and it's like, come on, honey, catch up, and sometimes the wife isn't gonna catch up.
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She's not with you, and, you know, it gets back to what Lewis was saying in terms of, you know, what is leadership?
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Well, leadership isn't catch up to me. It's making sure everybody's on the same page, and, you know, in this kind of situation, no effort should be spared.
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Everything from your life should be stripped and gone until you have exhausted yourself thinking of ways to make things right with your spouse.
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That's, I mean, like what Mike was saying. That is your function. That is your mission field.
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That is all that you are about, is how do I restore my marriage? How do I get her to want me back?
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How do I even get her to talk to me? And, you know, overtime, my hobbies, whatever it is that I'm doing, all those things have to go.
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Everything has to go. You know, I can go to church on Sunday morning, and then the rest of it has to be, how do
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I get her back? What do I have to do to make this right? How am I going to best please
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God by what I'm doing and how I'm thinking and what I'm saying to other people?
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Am I grumbling about my wife? Am I, you know, all these kind of things. Everything has to go, and you have to take, ultimately, as a man, you have to take responsibility for what happens in your house.
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I mean, that's what it says when we're talking about qualifications for elders.
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You must run this household well, and it doesn't give any kind of break for, well, yeah, but I have a high -maintenance wife, or I have this, or I have that.
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It's your job, and you have to figure it out. Just an extra comment.
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If you have an unbelieving spouse, and you come to church, when you get home, just have your spouse think, man, when my spouse goes to church, she or he might be kind of down or crabby or this or that, but after they come back, they are joy -filled, happy, excited, willing to serve.
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And I think there's ways to win spouses. Steve, when you said it's always the husband's fault, so if the wife sins, that's the husband's fault, or is it the husband's responsibility, or would there be a difference?
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Well, there is a difference. Thank you for bringing that up. It's her fault.
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She did what she did, but he's responsible. He's accountable for everything that goes on inside of his house. That's what
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I thought you meant. That's exactly what I meant. Yeah, go back to the Garden of Eden. Eve sinned first, we all know that, and then
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Adam sinned after her, but when God comes to call Adam to account, he doesn't want to talk to Eve.
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Why? Because Adam's in charge, and this goes all the way through life.
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In the military, if something's gone wrong in the unit, and I don't want to talk to PFC Dokes that actually did whatever it was that happened.
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No, no, I want to see the commander, because it's his responsibility. So that's when
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God's out there, Adam, what's going on, Adam? And like Steve said, you can't use the, well, it's the woman that you gave me,
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God, defense. That doesn't work, that doesn't fly. The man's the one in charge, and that's what it means to be in charge, is to take, the responsibility is yours.
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Well, and think about this, Adam didn't really get to pick a spouse. You all did, so.
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Well, most. All right, other questions? Yes, Sixto.
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You came here, and you saw that.
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In humanity, in that body of the feminine, would you classify Jesus as being oppressed, anxious, or just one person?
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How would you characterize that, because in humanity, that isn't real. Okay, let me just repeat the questions.
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The first, the comment, in terms of the sermon, and it's easy to preach a good sermon when you just preach from the text. I mean,
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I could have just got up and read James, and it's so powerful. Matter of fact, sometime this week, just stand up in front of a mirror with your
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Bible, and read James out loud to yourself. It is an amazing passage of 52 imperatives, and 104 verses, and it just preaches.
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And just stand up and read it, and it's the power of the spoken word. And I don't mean in some kind of word faith deal, either.
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Regarding the humanity of Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when
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Jesus was sorrowful, the question is, how would we describe that sorrow?
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Would it be depression, would it be anxiety? Would we put some kind of DSM, psychological paradigm up against that?
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Pradeep, you wanna take a shot at that? Not the DSM thing, but just Christ at the
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Garden of Gethsemane, and then others can chime in. So when we think of Jesus Christ, from the scriptures, it is very clear that he was fully
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God, John 1, 1, 1, John 1, 1, and he was fully man.
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He went through all the trials, and circumstances, and temptations that we as humans go through, and he endured them.
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Now, when we look at his response to trials, whether it is right at the beginning, when he went for 40 days in the desert, or right at the very end, in the
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Garden of Gethsemane, as a fully human being, he did experience the trial in its fullness, and in many cases, maybe even more so than any of us can go through, because without having sinned, he experienced the full weight of those trials on himself.
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And I think it's good for us to compare those two different types of trials, the first one being the physical, you know, starvation that his body went through, and you can, we all would agree that as a human being, the responses that his body would have given would be very similar to what was ours.
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And now, when we look at the last, you know, in the Garden, the trial is a very difficult one.
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We know that the trial that he has here is primarily one of taking the sin upon himself, and of separation, by bearing the wrath of God on himself, and this is a very difficult trial.
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Now, what was his response to the trial? I think that's the question that we wanna answer. We know that Christ did not sin, right from his birth till the very moment he was crucified and he died on the cross.
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So whatever his response was, that could not be tainted, I believe, with sin.
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So what kind of anguish did he experience? What does, is that depression?
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Is that a torment of the spirit and of the mind and in willing himself to obey the
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Father? I believe it would have been a torment.
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I don't know if you were trying to get the distinction between the types of responses as being depression or anguish, and I would have called it anguish, although I do not know the shades that is being implied here as to where it crosses into sin.
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Is that your question, Sikster? Yes. I think that something that you and we saw was basically from that time of the 1880s, and you said that humanity is awake and is still alive.
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But I wanted to know if there's a specific case of Christ saying that it is the sin of the
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Christ that he's sinning against the Father. Okay, good question. Let me repeat it.
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Why don't we turn, congregation, to Luke 22 and take a look at the text? When anybody ever asks you a question, the best thing to do is go to the text because it often answers our questions.
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The follow -up question was, with Strobel and does Jesus kind of understand our pain and sorrow and depression as we feel, anguish, et cetera?
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Let me just read it. It's one of the most amazing chapters in the scripture, and we'll just focus in on 39 through 46.
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Luke 22, and Jesus came out and proceeded as his custom, as was his custom to the
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Mount of Olives, and the disciples also followed him. When he arrived at the place, he said to them, "'Pray that you may not enter into temptation.'
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And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and began to pray, saying, "'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.'"
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By the way, what was that cup? Here, God, the Son, knows exactly the degree of the holy nature of God.
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And he knows about sin, not experientially in his own body, but he's been on earth, and he knows because he's omniscient.
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And he will realize the awesome fury that God the
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Father will unleash upon sin, and in this particular case, on the sin -bearer, and so he knows.
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Can you imagine if you're standing on death row and you think, I'm going to hell in a few moments, what would your response be?
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And here, Jesus isn't going to go to hell, but it's as if the gates of hell would be opened, the torment that the denizens in hell would deserve, and Jesus is going to have to pay that price.
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He will be punished. And so he knows what's coming, and so much so, look at verse 43, these ministering spirits.
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Now, an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Isn't that amazing? Hearkening back to Luke 4 and Matthew 4, where the angels ministered to Jesus after the temptation.
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And being in agony, he was praying very fervently, and his sweat became like, it doesn't say they were, but it says his sweat became like drops of blood falling from the ground.
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When he rose from prayer, came to the disciples and found them sleeping with sorrow.
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So as I look at Christ here, I see, at least in Luke 22's account, he's saying, you know, remove this cup, but I will submit to you.
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Verse 44, it doesn't say anything about depression or anguish, although we know anguish in Isaiah 53.
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Here it says he was in agony, and he was sweating, and he found the disciples in sorrow.
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I would say that is a very human response, and I would say that depression is a consequence of sin, and so I don't think this is
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Jesus being depressed, I think this is Jesus understanding the ramifications of God the
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Father's holy wrath upon sin that he will have to take, and for moments on the cross, from noon to three, he will not be calling his father,
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Father, he will be saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He has been in complete communion with the
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Father, he will no longer have communion, and his father will turn his back on him as he pours out the wrath of God.
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And so when I think of depression, I don't need to have Jesus feel depressed so that Hebrews 4 would be true, that he is close to me, and he is a high priest who can sympathize with my weaknesses, because generally he has sympathized, but he has not sympathized with our sinful responses.
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He has sympathized with our temptations and trials, but he doesn't really have true sympathy to our sinful responses, because that is more a chasing him, don't do it that way.
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So when Strobel says, and he did this before with some other psychology in the book, The Case for Christ, with David, and manic depressive, and some things like that, either
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Strobel did it or somebody else, and so I would say Jesus in his humanity can identify with us, as Hebrews 4 says, but I don't think this has anything to do with depression,
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I think it has to do with knowing full well with the omniscience of the Son how bad the wrath of God's going to be.
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And in his humanness, he cries out like any human would be, if you stand on the precipice of hell and look over there, you're like, this is gonna be bad, and he recoils, as it were, with anguish, but with determination to do his
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Father's will. So I would throw out all the depression talk. When we're depressed, there are ways that we can work through those things, and Psalm 32 and Psalm 34,
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I believe, would be the ones where I would take us for depression responses. Yes.
39:08
Okay, that's a good question. Let's give this one to Lewis. Lewis, why did Jesus cry in John 11 when
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Lazarus died, knowing that, in fact, he was going to raise him soon? This is a very interesting passage, particularly in light of what
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Jesus is going to exhibit his divinity, but this also exhibits his humanity.
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We sometimes lose track of the fact that Jesus was 100 % a human being.
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And he, in his humanity, he did.
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He felt hunger, he felt tired, and fear is also one of the things that God has built into us for our protection.
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Why do we not, why do we know not to step off the precipice? Well, our fears, you know, but anyway, back to the passage in John.
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Here comes Jesus, and it's very significant that Jesus takes the time to mourn with his friends.
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Now, Mary and Martha and Lazarus are among the people that he's closest to on earth, outside of his immediate disciples.
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You know, these three people are very important people to him. And the text says that Jesus is troubled, and that, if you will, he's feeling anger at the feelings that have been engendered in Mary and Martha because of the death.
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Because don't forget, death is an enemy. Death is the result of sin. Death is not part of life, you know.
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It's, death is not something to be embraced, it's not something that we're supposed to celebrate.
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It's part of sin's impact on earth, and this is troubling Jesus. And you're right,
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Jesus knows what he's gonna do. And if it was someone, if it was me, I would have just said,
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Mary, Martha, don't worry. Just wait till you see what
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I'm gonna do, you know. Everything's gonna be cool, just, it's all right. I've got it,
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I've got it taken care of. No, Jesus has time and takes the time to weep over Lazarus.
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And to mourn with Mary and Martha. And to demonstrate his embracing of their feelings on this thing.
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Because don't forget, Jesus has deliberately stayed away for four days to make sure that everybody has the point,
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Lazarus is dead. And so he's gonna come and he's gonna demonstrate his deity because only
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God has power over life and death. But he's also gonna demonstrate his humanity as he takes the time to mourn with these people.
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And, you know, to comfort them before he raises Lazarus.
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By the way, when it comes to burying loved ones, people say, well, we're gonna have a memorial service and it's gonna be a going home celebration.
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I understand that, but I think there should be some weeping and some mourning. And even though we know our loved ones, if they're
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Christians, are in the presence of God, it still hurts and it hurt Jesus, even though he knew he was going to have
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Lazarus be raised from the dead. Death is supposed to sting. And that's why we have a great savior who has conquered death and who lives forevermore.
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Okay, some other questions. All right,
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Mark. What's harder?
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Oh, here we go. I know what's gonna come. I like this. Okay, good question.
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The question is from Luke, excuse me, from Judges chapter 13, the Spirit of the Lord in Samson, and how the
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Spirit of the Lord began to stir Samson at certain cities. And Steve, is this the same spirit as the
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Holy Spirit? What would be the difference between the Spirit's work on or in Samson and in the church today?
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Well, yeah, the microphone. It's the same spirit, same
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Holy Spirit. There is no new spirit. There is a difference in his working.
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And I think if we examined the life of Samson, we would have a great deal of difficulty pointing to a time where we thought, now there's a guy who's really living for the
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Lord. I mean, in fact, if we didn't have Hebrews 11, I don't think there's anybody who would stand up and say,
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I'm here to testify that Samson's in heaven. We only know because the word of God tells us that Samson's in heaven.
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And I mean, basically having studied this passage, what
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I would say is when you understand the point of Samson's whole life, which is what right around after he, when his parents are mystified that he wants a woman of the
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Philistines and all that, and they don't get it. In fact, nobody really gets Samson.
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And the scripture says that all this came about so that God could divide the
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Philistines and the Israelites. It was a sovereignty of God at work. Using Samson in ways that Samson wasn't even aware of to so anger the
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Philistines, because the Philistines weren't, if we were to go through this whole Old Testament section, what we would see is for one of the few times,
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Israel wasn't being attacked by a blunt force. They weren't in threat of being carried away in the captivity.
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What was happening is they were kind of being absorbed by the Philistines and they were enjoying great wealth.
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This was a great time of prosperity for them. And so they had no desire to kind of rock the boat and they were kind of losing their identity as a separate nation.
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God used Samson, again, against Samson's will, because Samson was set apart from the womb to obey the
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Nazarite vow, and then violated every tenant of the Nazarite vows just over and over again.
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Sin, sin, sin, sin. That's the whole mark of Samson's life. But God, through the Holy Spirit, empowered
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Samson to do specific works to anger the Philistines and to rally the
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Jews to him so that eventually there was this confrontation which would take place later.
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But Samson was really the beginning of the rebellion of the Jews against the
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Philistines. Now, all that said, does God work in a different way now through his spirit in the church?
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And I think the answer is yes. We are not visited from time to time by special zaps of the
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Holy Spirit and then left on our own kind of the rest of the time.
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We have the Spirit of God within us individually. We're the Spirit of God at work through the body.
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Jesus promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, lead the disciples in all truth, but the
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Holy Spirit's not leaving again. The Holy Spirit is staying with believers, with the church until Christ returns.
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And that was not always the case in the Old Testament. Were Old Testament believers, did they have the
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Spirit? I would say yes, because without it they couldn't obey.
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But there is a difference. Can I quantify it? I don't think I can. But there is a difference definitely.
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We look at Samson, I would argue that Samson wasn't even a believer. I think until he died.
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Because if you read, he's just filled with himself over and over and over again. There's no remorse, no sorrow.
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The only time he's really sorry is when he can't get a drink of water. I mean, it's just pathetic.
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He's so self -absorbed until the end when his eyes are gouged out and he pulls down the building on himself and all the
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Philistines. And basically, I think that it was at that moment that he kind of acknowledged his sinfulness and gave himself to God.
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So I think his whole life had been leading up to that point. Nevertheless, the Spirit of God basically had been whacking him around, so to speak, so that he would do exactly what
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God wanted him to do. There was nothing that happened in Samson's life that was outside the power of God.
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But I would just say that the difference is, first of all, Samson wasn't a believer, but secondly, I would say that the
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Spirit is, because the New Testament says he is, the
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Holy Spirit is invested in the church in a new and different way, a quantitatively different way.
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So qualitatively, maybe it's a better way. The Spirit of God would come upon Saul to do a mighty work and then leave, but the
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Spirit of God now dwells in the church and she is sealed by the Spirit. All right, guys, time just zooms by so fast.
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I've got a couple of questions here I'm just dying to ask. You had to put a verse on your tombstone,
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Pradeep, Lewis, and Steve, what's the verse and why? Start with you, Pradeep. I was gonna find the verse in Philippians.
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Second Maccabees isn't in the text. No. I'm talking about the Protestant canon. Yeah, let me quote it accurately here.
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I think one of the verses that really marks the life of a
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Christian here on this earth for me is Philippians 2, 15, and actually that whole passage in Philippians 2, but 15 kind of closes that for me, which
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I'll just read it here. I'm sure we'll have to rework it to put it on a tombstone, but that we would be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom we are to appear as lights in the world.
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Okay, good, Lewis. That's a tough question.
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You should have warned us. I think it would be Deuteronomy 31, eight.
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Moses is speaking to Joshua and he says, and the
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Lord, he it is who doth go before thee. He will be with thee.
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He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee, fear not, neither be dismayed.
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I would put that because I have had that verse proven in my life over and over and over and over again.
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You know what I love about Lewis is here's this kind of Lieutenant Colonel, tough, strong.
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You never look at Lewis and go, man, that guy's kind of wimpy. But you hear him read the verses and he's about ready to break down and cry because of the goodness of God.
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And I appreciate that tender side of Colonel Brown. Steve.
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I'd have to say Romans 116. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek. All right, good. Next question, guys. Round Robin, we're gonna make this quick.
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Pardon me? Mine? Mine would be 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21.
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And I have it for many reasons. Number one, it describes what God did for me because here's this great God who knew no sin, had
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Christ become sin on our behalf, as it were, that I might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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Plus it will preach. Plus I want it to preach to the unbelievers who walk by that tombstone. You need to get saved.
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You're unrighteous, only God is righteous. And He did it on my behalf as a substitutionary death for me.
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That would be mine. Okay, next. Pradeep's such a new elder, it's not really fair, but I still have to ask anyway.
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What's your favorite part about being an elder? One minute or less. Question and answer session that the pastor makes up on Sunday morning.
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That's a tough one. Maybe I'll just answer it in a slightly different way.
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I'm humbled by the fact that the Lord would use someone even like me in preparing to serve
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Him in this particular way. And I just am amazed at God's work that prepares,
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I think, each person in the body to serve in the way that they are called to and to serve as an elder in being able to teach and being able to counsel and being able to pray and care for and shepherd.
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I think that those are great tasks. And the fact that God can prepare those whom He chooses is bothersome.
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I would say the same thing, the opportunity to preach and teach. Steve? I added the most time and I don't have an answer.
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My favorite thing about being an elder. You know,
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I think I would have to say, well, it definitely has been the times where, I don't know how to say this, where God has used me in some way, shape or form to help people.
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That's just what I would do. Good. If you men had one prayer request that the
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Lord would allow you to see answered in this life before you died, what would that request be? Pradeep?
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Accelerated sanctification. Oh, did you hear that? Accelerated sanctification. The Lord promises in several places that you'll see your children's children.
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That's mine. Oh, right. In the meantime, Gracie's coming home tonight so you can give her some big love.
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Yes. I would like nothing more than to see the
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Southeast of Wyoming State family. Right.
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You know, I have several other questions, but now I'm speechless. Yes. All right, last question.
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Mother Teresa has been in the news this week. How would you analyze
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Mother Teresa's latest news? Basically, what?
55:24
Go ahead. I just wanna answer it first. Was this like the millennium where God answers your prayers before you ask
55:33
Him in Isaiah 66? What is that? Just, yeah,
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I just say Mother Teresa and you could respond to a Time Magazine article. I lit a candle for her, so.
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Oh, you did. See, one minute he's in tears, my unsafe family to be saved, and the next minute it's.
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You know, I listened to the struggles that she had and everything, and I mean,
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I'm not, this will shock some folks here, but I'm not a big Mother Teresa fan. I think if you study her theology, you'll find out it's a theology of salvation by pain.
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She believed that people were not just sanctified by pain, but they were actually saved by pain, and I don't think she believed the gospel, and so it's not stunning to me that she would be depressed.
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She's out there serving people sometimes, but serving a
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God that she doesn't really know, and I think that would be depressing. I think that would be very depressing, so those are my thoughts on Mother Teresa.
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Lewis? Believe it or not, because of what I was up to all week,
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I paid no attention to the news for the entire week. Probably happier.
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Yeah, so I only heard about. That's why you're so joyful tonight. I only heard about this on the periphery. All I can say, and I don't wanna get any rotten tomatoes or anything, from what
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I have seen or know of Mother Teresa's life, I see nothing to indicate that she was regenerate, or that she knew the
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Savior that I know. She devoted her life to serving other people and all of these things and did a lot of good stuff, but I think it goes along with this morning's sermon.
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We'll get email over this. It goes along with this morning's sermon. Here's some works that are empty.
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It's one thing, we can't have faith without some works, but also we can't have works without the faith. And I think that's what you see.
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Here's someone who is trying to work their way to heaven and doing so unsuccessfully. It's hard to answer in one minute or less, because the last time
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I preached Sunday evening here, I preached on 1 John 2, 18 through 27, on false teachers.
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And false teachers come in different ways. And I think, coming from India, I know the way that Mother Teresa's revered by the country, by everybody.
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I don't think there's a single person there, and I know there's even people outside the world. But the impact and the understanding that people got by looking at her works was, here is how you can please
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God, and here is how you can live a life that is honoring to him. And like the other fellow elders just shared, if we do not have a right understanding of who this
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God is that we are serving, and we don't have an understanding of on what basis we can be right with him, there is no salvation.
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And then everything else we try to do, no matter how hard, how sincerely we do, there is filthy rags before God.
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And the sad part is, there are many people who look up to her and believe that this is what
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God is pleased with. And I think we as Christians need to raise the standard up again.
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I think Time Magazine, did anybody read the Time Magazine article? It was criticizing
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Mother Teresa because she was having doubts, and she didn't know if she really believed in this God that she was serving.
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So magazines like to sell things, and they can sell things with fear and with discarding faith in general.
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But overall, Mother Teresa, if you read her writings, you will not read anything that will let you say to yourself, this is biblical faith.
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And these men were talking, I was thinking of Hebrews 11, six, and without faith, it is impossible to please
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God, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.
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And if you read her writings, you'll find out very quickly that she has not just a Roman Catholic view of God, but a
01:00:00
Roman Catholic hybrid view that has all kinds of paganism and Hinduism mixed in there.
01:00:06
And I'll never forget John MacArthur's story when he went over there to visit India and then met Mother Teresa.
01:00:12
And his kids gave her a copy of the Gospel According to Jesus, the book out in the 90s, early 90s.
01:00:18
And so they took a picture of the MacArthur children and Mother Teresa and the book. Well, they dropped off their film into a one -hour photo place, and they came back a couple hours later, and there was a two -foot by three -foot poster of Mother Teresa and the
01:00:32
MacArthur kids on the storefront because they all revere Mother Teresa. And then there's
01:00:37
Mother Teresa holding onto the book, the Gospel According to Jesus, which I wish she would have read, and I wish she would have got saved.
01:00:45
And John said she had some kind of little saying up there that, you know, all roads lead to heaven, et cetera, et cetera.
01:00:51
And so the only way we can analyze it is if she believed what she wrote, she's not in heaven.
01:00:57
If God interrupted her at the very end, she could in fact be, but she is not in heaven because of her works. She is not in heaven because of her false theology.
01:01:05
She would be in heaven because at the end of her life, God revealed himself to her as this God of the
01:01:11
Bible and saved her. And it is a stumbling block when you think Mother Teresa can live her life in poverty in India for over 50 years and not go to heaven.
01:01:20
And on the flip side, Jeffrey Dahmer, who will be a cannibal and many other things that I wouldn't even want to repeat tonight.
01:01:28
And if he truly bowed his knee in prison before he was killed, he will be in heaven. And that is a stumbling block and an offense to anyone who thinks about religion, faith, or Christianity.
01:01:40
But it is all based on the sovereign hand of God and his grace. If you think of the thieves on the cross, they were murderers, they were horrible men, yet God was pleased to show forth his grace at the last minute and save that thief.
01:01:59
So I just wanted you to kind of think biblically about Mother Teresa this week and she's back in the news again,
01:02:05
I think because they're trying to slam people of faith. It's okay to slam anybody of faith as long as it's not the
01:02:11
Muslim faith, but that's another story. All right, good questions tonight.
01:02:20
My favorite part about being an elder is to have the authority in front of these guys to say you have one minute or less to answer.
01:02:26
That's my favorite part. As in the elders meetings, we just all are equal, right? Should we sing a song or what should we do?
01:02:35
Are there any other questions you're dying to ask or answer? We'll have to just do them later. Yeah, Tom, go ahead.
01:02:47
Use baptism, obviously, and also the means of grace and the means of communion for your children.
01:03:01
Since we don't practice those things, how do we nurture and when our children start to acknowledge
01:03:07
Christ, how do we continue to cope with it?
01:03:15
Well, let me repeat the question and then we'll close in prayer, okay? What do we do with children since we don't believe that communion or baptism would be means of grace?
01:03:24
If they are means of grace, then let's have communion every week and let's give those to our children. Matter of fact, at least some of the reformers are consistent enough and they believe that grace comes through the bread and the wine or the bread and the juice, so much so that once the baby has been baptized, they will take a little bit of that bread and dunk it into the wine and then place it on the newborn's mouth.
01:03:49
Because if it is the means of grace, we might as well do it and it's called paedo communion. And so I admire their consistency, although I think they're tragically flawed.
01:03:59
What do we do with covenant children, circumcision, all those things? It's a huge question. Maybe I'll have you read the profession of faith book, your children's profession of faith book, the little green one, but it's a long, long answer.
01:04:13
And what we do is we encourage belief. I hope every family this morning sat down after today's sermon.
01:04:19
I went out with the largest for lunch and we sat around and talked about faith and asking your kids, do you believe?
01:04:26
Is there anything in your life that would make you think that you're a Christian? And God works through the preaching of the word and I don't call preaching of the word a means of grace, but it is in fact the instrument where grace comes and that is through the preaching of God's word.
01:04:39
And so I would set them in front of preaching all the time. And as I said to you last week privately,
01:04:44
I'll tell everyone that I admire the way you bring your kids on Sunday night, Sunday morning, you're sitting in the front row, you're encouraging them to sing along.
01:04:53
You know, once in a while, there's some kind of Transformers book they have or something, but you know, other than that, it's okay. And you would really encourage them and you encourage them to show and you model ministry, we serve.
01:05:06
You teach Sunday school, your wife teaches Sunday school. We're in Iwana, that's just what we do. Everything is on the things of the Lord and it's about the things of the
01:05:12
Lord. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, so we preach, so they believe. And so how do we encourage children?
01:05:18
We have them sit and listen to the preaching. Don Kistler said in Lemonster, California, if you want to damn your kids, then you send them to junior church during the preaching.
01:05:28
What he meant by that was kids get saved and kids know more than you think. Peggy, can
01:05:33
I tell your story? Peggy's daughter, Rachel, and my son, Luke, are in the same school and for years have been in the same school and it's more of a fighting fundamentalist school and, you know, no alcohol and no smoking and it's all external stuff and...
01:05:51
And so they were just having a lesson the other day and Luke's gone because he'll be homeschooled this year as we'll be in Germany.
01:05:58
And so it was Rachel listening to someone talk about Ephesians chapter one, verses three to six and how
01:06:04
God has chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless. And they were trying, the teachers were trying to give a synergistic view, a
01:06:13
God looks down the quarters of time and Rachel was standing up saying, that's not true. He chooses us in eternity past.
01:06:20
Is that what she said? We'll see and my point is good for her to stand up for the truth, let the text speak and Rachel has been coming since she can remember, right?
01:07:02
She can't probably remember a time she hasn't been at the church and to hear that God is the one who chooses and it is not the right question to say, why did
01:07:10
God not choose? But it's the question to ask, why would God ever choose us? And so we bring our kids and they listen and they learn and then we trust
01:07:18
God to save our kids and we know he saves them through the preaching of the word so expose your children to the preaching of the word as often as you can and they'll get it.
01:07:27
They'll go away to Bible college and they'll be monergists. They will believe that God alone works for salvation and so what are the means of grace for children?
01:07:36
Same means of grace for adults but I don't think those means of grace are found in communion and baptism.
01:07:41
I think grace is conveyed, grace is incarnate and then it is conveyed to people as God's spirit uses the word and so get your kids to say the word but it's a huge long question.
01:07:54
Can I have 30 seconds to answer? 25. Okay, 25. First of all, infant baptism, taught nowhere in the
01:08:00
New Testament. Sacramentalism or the sacrament as the Lord's table as a means of grace is taught nowhere in the
01:08:08
New Testament. In fact, the Lord himself called it, do this in remembrance of me is what he said. And finally, in terms of means of grace, if we actually could give out means of grace to me, that undermines the whole doctrine of the sovereignty of God and salvation which is supposed to be what the
01:08:22
Reformed faith is all about, so. Yes, pretty good, Steve. Excellent, excellent.
01:08:28
But it is hard if you, how do you include your children if they don't get baptized and they, for us, we believe you should be baptized before you take the
01:08:35
Lord's Supper. And so what do they get to do? So especially if you've got an elder board that pushes off baptism and we don't want to baptize a lot of five -year -olds, eight -year -olds, 10 -year -olds or 12 -year -olds, we would rather baptize them later when they can act as adults in the local church and use their gifts as an adult would.
01:08:54
So whether that's at puberty or wherever, then that's when it's a good time to talk to the elders about baptism and then
01:09:00
Lord's Supper after that. But in the meantime, just keep bringing your kids. Keep sitting in the front row or the second row.
01:09:08
What was the sermon about this morning? An honest child.
01:09:18
You know what? Honesty is good. All right, let's stand and we'll just sing the doxology and be dismissed.
01:09:25
I'm going to slip out and go get my wife and kids. So if you have questions, you can grab one of the other elders, all right?