How To Not be Deceived Bamboozled or Snookered - Session 2B

Fighting for the Faith

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It's time for another edition of Fighting for the

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Faith. Wednesday, April 17th, 2013.

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I am so not well. I despise head colds, and I appear to be suffering from one tremendously.

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We'll be doing our light edition today. Thank you for tuning in.

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You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. Now, once a week we do our light episode of Fighting for the Faith, not that the topic is light, it's just that it's a singular topic for the program, and we've been working our way through the series of lectures that I gave in both

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Norfolk, Virginia and Oslo, Minnesota, entitled How to Not Be Deceived, Bamboozled or Snookered by Religious Hucksters, Snake Oil, Conmen, or Your Own Idolatrous Notions.

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We will continue with that lecture today. In fact, this will be session 2 .B, or 2B, not to be, you get what

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I'm saying, because last week we left off kind of in the middle of a lecture, and what we're doing is we're working our way through the basic principles of sound biblical hermeneutics delivered on a lay level, if you would.

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There are other principles that you can learn and apply, but most of those other principles require you to at least be conversant with the biblical languages or other things, and so those

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I've left out just due to the fact that, although I've put a big plug in there for the original languages,

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I've left those out because on a lay level, it's not that you don't need them, it's just that that's not practical on a lay level.

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So anyway, you get what I'm saying. Without any further ado, here is session 2B on how to not be deceived, bamboozled, or snookered by Snake Oil, Conmen, or Your Own Idolatrous Notions.

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Here we go. So we've been talking about the grammar portion. We're going to switch gears a little bit. I'm going to make a quick note, because remember the three broad categories when we're talking about rightly understanding

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God's Word. Grammar counts. Just a quick note, it's not in the notes. Pay attention to the verbs.

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The old seminary profs are very good at pointing seminarians to the fact that when you're working through a biblical text, pay attention to who's running the verbs.

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This is just real simple stuff. It's subject predicate, and oftentimes you'll find that when people are twisting

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God's Word, they're not paying attention to the verbs, and who's running the verbs. So you'll find that Jesus oftentimes runs his own verbs, and so if people are going to be preaching from a passage, preach the verbs that regard

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Jesus. Quick note here, historical principle. Since the books of the Bible were written at certain times over a 1 ,550 -year period of history and at certain places on earth for various purposes and groups of readers, biblical interpretation must be historical.

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Accordingly, the exegete must carefully consider the historical circumstances under which each Bible book was written as well as the historical contents of each book.

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Now, this might sound harder than it really is, and this is the idea. The reality is that all of the history that you need to know in order to properly understand the

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Bible technically is already in the Bible. You don't have to go to an outside source, although sometimes somebody who's helping to shed light on a particular era or archeology and things like that will help.

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They'll help only in clarifying things that are already in the biblical text. The history that you need to understand is the history that's recorded, and so there's a reason why, when we look at the

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Old Testament, that it begins in the Garden of Eden, and it's not because the Garden of Eden was some kind of mythical poem.

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It's not. That sets up the whole scenario that explains the problem that has affected us all, and then there's a promise given.

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Think about it this way. When Adam and Eve sin, there's curses pronounced, but there's also a very important promise, the promise regarding the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.

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Some biblical scholars argue, and I think it's an interesting case, although I'm not 100 % convinced by it, that Adam and Eve, when

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Eve gave birth to Cain, she really thought that she had given birth to the Messiah. There's something in the

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Hebrew text that lends itself in that direction. It's a little bit tough to tease out, and it's a little bit harder to actually definitively prove, but that being the case, the important thing is that moving out from Adam and Eve, you'll notice that we're following a very specific genetic line family from father to son, to father to son, to father to son, with a couple of prostitutes mixed in,

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Tamar, which is a fascinating thing, which should really help us here.

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And so we're following particular family line, and the apex of which begins in Matthew chapter 1 with the genealogy that takes it all the way through and ends with Jesus Christ.

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So all of the history you need to know in order to properly understand the Bible is there. You need to read it and understand it.

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So it might require you to understand a little bit of the politics of Samaria or what was going on in Syria at the time, things like that.

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But a lot of that stuff's laid out for you pretty clearly in the text, so you don't have to worry about that. And the more literate you are with the overarching historical stuff and how we're following this line through real history, it'll help clear things up.

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Now, that's just a little bit of a note. We're going to move on to the next ones. These theological principles are the ones where the nuts and bolts are at.

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Grammar is important, and I demonstrated how that all plays into this, but these next ones are real practical things that when you apply them properly and you get it and you don't deviate from it, you're not going to mess up how to understand

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God's Word. So our theological basic principles. Principle number one, because the

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Scripture is of divine origin and is the verbally inspired Word of God, it is holy without inconsistency of thought or speech, without contradiction, without the slightest error in the original manuscript.

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This is important. God is capable of lucid thought and he doesn't contradict himself.

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Where people generally go wrong in their hermeneutics is, and I'll demonstrate this fuller later, is they're taking passages out of context and then pitting them against other passages and making the

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Bible contradict itself. And so what happens is you quote a passage that says this in context, somebody quotes an out -of -context passage, and all of a sudden the two obliterate and neither one of them can tell us anything.

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So you know you're not rightly handling God's Word when you're ending up with the Bible basically at odds with itself.

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The problem isn't God's Word in that situation, the problem is you. So the

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Bible is the inscripturated Word of God and as such presents the truth in ordinary language in all matters of which it treats.

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The kind of truth the Bible claims for itself is correspondence to reality. This would be the correspondence theory of truth.

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Truth is something objective, it's outside of us, and we can correspond to it. If you think you thunk a thought that's contrary to real truth, you're not corresponding to the truth, therefore you're in error.

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Does that make sense? Principle number two. Scripture, not human reason, personal feeling, church, or tradition, is the sole source and norm of true doctrine in the sphere of religion and theology.

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This is the principle of sola scriptura. Now the Roman Catholic Church just elected the new bishop of Rome, whom they call the

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Pope. By the way, the bishop of Rome is a legit bishop within the church, it's just that he's abrogated to himself or arrogated to himself powers that are not given to him in Scripture, and that's creating all kinds of problems.

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But the Roman Catholics teach that because the bishop of Rome, the

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Pope, has apostolic authority, he is capable within his apostolic office to define and create dogma for the church when he speaks ex cathedra.

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Ex cathedra means from the chair. I recently had a conversation, I was on a radio program, not my own, and we were talking about the

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Pope and things like that, and I was explaining on the program what Roman Catholics teach regarding how one is saved.

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And the explanation I gave was from two sources, the

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Baltimore Catechism, which I have all four volumes of, and also the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

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And so what happened is that a Roman Catholic lady called into the program, and she says, where are you getting these definitions of how

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Roman Catholics believe in being saved? And I said, well, I'm getting it from the Baltimore Catechism. And she says, well, we don't teach that anymore.

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To which my reply was, and that's the problem. Why should I believe a church is telling me the truth if at any moment what they're currently teaching becomes what they're not teaching, and they're teaching something different because the

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Pope can speak ex cathedra. Roman Catholics have a structure for this.

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Evangelicals have created their own structure, and a lot of the seeker -driven pastors are acting like popes.

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You have to have a vision for your congregation. You get a vision from God. The vision -casting leaders in the seeker -driven movement are none other than, well, popes.

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They just don't have the honesty to actually admit it, where they believe they're getting doctrine and dogma and ideas and visions straight from God.

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So whenever somebody comes to you with a doctrine, dogma, concept, theology, or whatever, and its origin is not in the biblical text rightly handled, that means the origin of said doctrine or dogma is outside of Scripture, you can just go, nah, it's not true.

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And it doesn't matter how intelligent or passionate the person delivering it is. Does that make sense?

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Scripture alone. Scripture alone. Principle number three,

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Scripture interprets Scripture, and the less clear or plain passages of Scripture must—notice it's big letters—must be interpreted in light of the clearer passage, and this method must never be reversed.

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The idea behind this is real simple. When we look at Scripture, oftentimes passages in different books will address the same topic or address the same doctrine.

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In that sense, what we can do then is because they're addressing the same topic or doctrine, we're then capable to lift them out of their context and see how they all work together, and so that we can shed light and get a more complete understanding of a particular doctrine.

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You're not doing violence to the text by doing that, because we're looking at things that are comparing apples to apples. And in that situation, the most clear passage among them is the one that governs all of them.

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Does that make sense? You don't take an unclear passage or worse an off -topic passage and make it govern a clear passage.

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It's a formula for disaster, and I'll give you some examples of that in a little bit. And then principle number four, every doctrine of Holy Scripture—and this is where it gets interesting—every doctrine of Holy Scripture is set forth at some place very clearly in non -figurative terms as the main theme of a discourse.

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Such a passage may be referred to as the sedes doctrinae. Okay, this would be the seat of doctrine.

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And as the seat or source of a doctrine, all passages dealing with a certain doctrine are to be understood and expounded according to the sedes doctrinae.

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Now, I'm going to point this out. This particular understanding of hermeneutics comes from the

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Lutheran Reformation. This is not a principle that's shared across all of Reformation theologies.

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This is one that the Lutherans have particularly held to, and I think the Lutherans got it right.

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And that's not just because I'm a Lutheran. Here's the idea. Theology itself, because the way our minds think, it doesn't think linearly when it comes to things like this.

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It always tries to find something that sits as the primary governing passage.

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So in a sense, theology is three -dimensional, and the dimension—and when I describe it to people, it's like this.

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It's like a solar system where whatever passage you think is the most clear or that you think is the central passage on a doctrine, that's the one that sits in the center of the solar system, and all the other passages revolve around it.

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And this is why in theology, we can talk about the material and formal principles of each and every denomination or theology.

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Material principally would be like the central core tenant of a theology, and the formal principle would be how they get to that.

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What's the source of authority within a theological system? Does that make sense? So what we're doing here, when we're looking at passages and rightly understanding and how to create doctrine, what you do, if you're going to do this right, you have to look at passages that are dealing with the specific doctrine and talking about it directly and giving us clearly understanding around it, and then you look for the clearest passage.

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You know, it's like looking at different diamonds to see which one has the, you know, which is the clearest of them.

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The passage that is the clearest is the one that goes in the center, and it's the one that sheds light on all the others.

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And if you mess this up and you make an unclear passage the thing that governs, you're doing violence that kind of is, well, it's like this.

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It's a little dark, but that's the Death Star from Star Wars, and then what happens is this unclear passage, rather than shedding light on the other passages, it destroys them, okay?

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So this is a bad thing. You don't want to have that happen, okay? Yeah, so that's the idea, okay?

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Where a lot of people go wrong in their biblical interpretation is they have an undisciplined approach to God's Word, and they mistakenly, because either they're taught to or they're just innovating and don't know any better, they take unclear passages, stick them in the center, and then obliterate all the other passages in the meantime.

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And what you're left with at the end of the day is not, you have no ability to know what the Bible says regarding anything.

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Does that make sense? Now, let me give you an example. Now, I promised you guys that I'm just going to hang it out there, and I'm not trying to be controversial for the sake of controversy, but let's deal with a hot potato issue, women's ordination.

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We're going to take a look at some of the passages that are used regarding this doctrine. First passage, 1

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Corinthians 14 verses 33 through 35. It says this, As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the law also says.

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If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

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Here's the question, what topic is this dealing with? Is this dealing with women teaching in the church? Say yes.

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Yes, that's what this topic is about, right? Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being fuzziest, 10 being the clearest, how clear is this passage?

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10? Okay, so it's way up there. Let's make it an 8. Okay, 7 and a half, 8, we'll put it there, okay?

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Just to be, we'll be generous, right? Let's take a look at another passage. 1

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Timothy chapter 2, 11 through 14. Let a woman learn quietly in all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

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Rather, she is to remain quiet, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

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Is the topic here dealing directly with women's ordination? On this one, it's on topic, right?

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But this has to do with women teaching in the church, so it's on the right topic, and I would say it's a clear passage.

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I would say it's a good 8 or 9. Anyone want to disagree with that? It's not very fuzzy, and it references a very specific reason given from another passage, which then gets in play.

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Now, let's take a look at another passage that's often used in this discussion. Galatians 3 .28.

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There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus.

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What's the topic? Is it the same? Okay, let's take a look at the context.

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Hang on a second here. Galatians 3 .28, right? So remember, we look at the immediate context to figure out what's going on.

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Galatians, yeah, God eats popcorn. Galatians 3, that's how you remember that, right? Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, God eats popcorn.

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Yeah. You didn't know that? Okay, hang on a second here.

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Okay, that's a little easier, right? Okay, so let's take a look at the context.

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We'll start at verse 21. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Well, certainly not. If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

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But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

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Now, before faith came, we were held captive and under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

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So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

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But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

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For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Therefore, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, but you are all one in Christ.

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And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring and heirs according to the promise. Is this passage talking about whether or not women can teach in church?

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In other words, it's off topic. So this passage has nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing to say regarding women's ordination.

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It's not addressing that topic. And here's what people do who use this passage.

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They think this has something to do with women's ordination, and they'll make this the Cedes Doctrinae.

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Oh, well see, it says there's neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek. So there. And they destroy the clear passages with this.

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That's twisting God's word. That's unsound biblical hermeneutics. It's out of bounds.

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If we were playing football, I would be blowing my whistle and throwing a flag. So whether it's clear or not, it's totally unclear because it's not even on topic.

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Next passage. 1st Timothy 3 .2. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

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Well, this is dealing with pastors, right? So technically it's on topic. And notice that this isn't a prohibition, but this is basically giving the job description.

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In order for a pastor to be in the pulpit, what does the passage assume regarding his plumbing?

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Husband, right. So now on the topic of women's ordination, how clear or unclear is this passage?

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I would say it's not as clear as the other ones, but still it fits into the mix.

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Let me give you another one that our liberal friends use. And this is Romans 16 .17.

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The apostle Paul at the end of his epistle writes, greet Andronicus and Junius, my relatives, who have been in prison with me.

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They are outstanding among the apostles, and they are in Christ before I was. Here's how the argument works.

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Look, Junius, a female apostle. So that means we can ordain women.

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Topic. Is this talking about whether or not women can be ordained? It's off topic.

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Clarity. How clear is this? Do you know that there's no consensus among the writings of the church fathers as to whether or not

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Junius was a dude or a girl? Yeah, yeah.

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I mean, you got Origen saying it's a guy, you have Christosom saying it's a girl. What do you do with that?

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So what's the clarity on here? Now let me show you something else. This is Romans 16 .17. Let me show you two in a different translation.

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Okay, I quoted that one on purpose. Rose, bro. 16 .7. Greet Andronicus and Junius, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners.

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And there's a little note here, Junius or messengers. There's alternate readings here from this text.

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This is not a clear passage at all, and there's different ways to read it based upon how the

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Greek sentence is constructed. And it doesn't imply really when you take a look at what's going on that we're dealing with a, quote, female apostle.

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Let's summarize where we're at here because I'm demonstrating how this works. Clear passages always govern unclear, and you're looking for the clearest one to be the

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Cedes Doctrinae. Now of the passages we've taken a look at, 1 Corinthians 14 .33 -35, 1

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Timothy 2 .11 -14, Galatians 3 .28 is just straight out. It's not even on topic.

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Romans 16 .7, totally unclear, so it cannot govern. And 1 Timothy 3 .2.

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Now you could throw into the mix at this point, and this is where it gets important because this 1

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Timothy 2 .11 -14 references the creation itself. In this particular sense, a good candidate for the

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Cedes Doctrinae is actually the account of the creation of Eve. And here's why, is because when we talk about prohibition, we're talking in a sense about law.

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But before the law was given, the creation account tells us about not law, but the gift that God gave to Adam and the gift that God gave to Eve in her vocation as his helper.

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And so the idea is that vocation itself is not law. Vocation itself is, I think, gospel, because God gives to you, gives you the ability to love and serve your neighbor in a particular way in which you were made.

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And so the Scripture says we were made male and we were made female, and there's different functions that go along with each of those sexes, if you would.

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And it is not slavery for a man and a woman to have a right relationship, that's actually freedom.

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Does that make sense? Now, it takes a lot longer to argue that, but I think that's a better way to argue it because otherwise, if you're just going to argue prohibition, it just is law, law, law, law, law.

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And I think you go back to the creation account, and now you're talking gospel because God gives Adam and Eve vocation, gives

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Eve to Adam, you know, to Adam as a gift. It's just all gospel, not law at that point.

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I think it's a better argument, but that takes a little bit longer to flesh out. But going back to the point that I was making, if you were to take

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Romans 16, 17, and make that the Sedes Doctrinae, what you're ending up doing is basically sticking the

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Death Star into the middle of the equation, and it's now obliterating all the clear passages.

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So when you listen to people argue biblical passages, it's not that you're just, okay, well,

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I've got a passage, and you've got a passage, so there, my argument's biblical, and yours isn't. No, we've got to apply sound biblical hermeneutics and not have an undisciplined hermeneutics so that we can rightly understand

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God's Word, and clear passages always govern unclear, and there's going to be a passage by which we can shed all the light on the others.

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Now, if we were to, in fact, let me back this up just a little bit. If we were to put, like, 1 Timothy 2, 11, 14 in the center, it's shedding light on all the others, and it's not destroying any of the other passages.

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It's really not. When you take an off -topic verse and make it the center, you're making it so the

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Bible contradicts itself. But if I put 1 Timothy 2, 11 through 14 as the central passage, the

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Bible's not contradicting itself at all, and it's shedding light on all the other passages in a way that they all are now working together, and I don't have to throw any of them out.

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Yes. Yes. For instance,

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I would go to the Judge Deborah, and when you read that story, that story itself is brimming with tension regarding the fact that the men aren't doing what they're supposed to do, to the point where Deborah literally tells an

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Israel commander to, you know, do his job, and he won't do it unless she's there with him, and she says, fine,

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I'll go with you, but God's not going to give you the glory. In Scripture, it's always clear that when the men aren't doing their jobs, and it ends up with women rising up to the top like that, it's an indictment against the men and a judgment against them.

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That's a harsh way of thinking about it in 21st century American terms, but that's a big part of the story of Deborah, so keep that in mind, but that wouldn't then, that passage then does not, you can't put

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Judges, you know, the story of Deborah into the center to obliterate all the other passages, and she's not operating, she's not teaching in the synagogue, okay, so that's, we got that set up too, so.

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Yes, but we know for a fact she's not teaching in the church, but this is the other thing. Just because females do not have, given by God, the vocation of preaching and teaching in the church, does not mean that females do not have the ability to preach and teach

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God's Word. In fact, we're all called to do it, it's just there's certain settings in which that's not appropriate.

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When the church gathers together for Word and Sacrament, that's not given to them to do that, there's an office to whom that is given, and that's given to men.

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Now, out in the world, women preach the Gospel to everybody you can find, teach

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God's Word to everybody who will listen. This is not to put a gag order on women and say, oh, you can't teach

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God's Word ever, you know, forget it, it's not going to happen. No, not at all, and I would even argue that women, you are the ones who have the greatest say in the kids and who's coming up in the next generation.

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I can tell you this, that it was my wife who had the biggest impact on my kids because she's kind and nurturing and I'm grumpy and hairy, okay?

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I'm just not that kind of nurturer, and so the reality is that these roles that God has created for us, these offices that we have, the office of husband, father, mother, wife, these are not to be despised by us but embraced by us because this is how

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God has truly made us. And it's freedom, not slavery, to be acting in those offices where God has put us into, and this is not a gag order on women saying, oh, you can't ever teach

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God's Word. No, no, no. There's certain places in which that is not appropriate. God has called men to do a particular job, and it's going back to the order of creation.

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When you get home, I guarantee you, moms, you're having a huge impact on your kids because you're the ones teaching them the

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Scriptures oftentimes. Although, men, you should be doing it at the dinner table, but that's a different story.

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Now, this is important and there's a little caveat to this. The Old Testament must be interpreted by the New. Old Testament has to be interpreted by the

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New. Once we grasp the overall outline of the Bible and see that it is a progressive revelation, we will always look to see how the

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New Testament interprets the Old Testament. For instance, God promised Abraham a seed which would bring a blessing to all nations.

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The New Testament interprets that seed as Christ, Galatians 3 .16. Now, there's a caveat here.

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In some limited examples, the Old Testament still has the sedes doctrinae and it has the whole thing for us.

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For instance, the doctrine of creation, you're not going to find that clearer anywhere else than in the

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Old Testament. Does that make sense? So there are some exceptions to this, but the other way I look at this also is that because we're dealing with progressive revelation, the idea that it gets there is that generally speaking, as you work through Scriptures, God is revealing more and more and what's happening is you're getting an accumulation of data that then has its apex in the

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New Testament. And then the other thing is that historical events have to be interpreted in light of clear theological passages, which

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I think we'll get to. In fact, it's the next one. The Gospels must be interpreted by the epistles. The Gospels record the historic events of our redemption and the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, ascension of Jesus Christ.

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But by themselves, historic events are not sufficient. We need an authoritative word that tells us the true significance of those events.

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The classic example of this is the crucifixion itself. Scripture says that cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.

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Jesus was literally nailed to a tree, not a living tree, but the wood of a tree, right?

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And so he's viewed as cursed. There's your theological significance.

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What was the crucifixion all about? God cursed him. That's it. It's not enough, is it? If you were in Jerusalem 2 ,000 years ago on Good Friday when they crucified

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Jesus, and you were walking from like the Mount of Olives, you know, to the temple complex, right?

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And you were to go through the gate of the old city. And there's those poor three guys up there on the cross, those

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Romans making their statement. They're not going to put up with any shenanigans, right? Horrible, brutal, nasty death.

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Now you would notice that the sun is darkened, and you hear some guy screaming out, and then there's an earthquake.

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What's going on? Do you know the theology of what's going on? Can you tell just by looking at the event?

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You can't. So we need an authoritative interpretation of the historical events so that we understand the theology behind it.

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Otherwise, it's just your opinion or idea as to what was going on there as anybody else's. It turns the cross into a big

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Rorschach test. The inkblots, what do you see? I see a bunny. The cross is not a

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Rorschach test. We know what happened on the cross because we go to those didactic portions of Scripture that give us the theology of what was going on there.

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For instance, Isaiah 53, even though it's not an epistle, Isaiah may as well be the fifth gospel. He was pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity.

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The chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him. By His stripes we are here. God, He was numbered with the transgressors, right?

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All of these things are telling us what's going on. Or as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus was crucified for our sins, died, and rose again on the third day, right?

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So you've got these clear theological statements in other passages of Scripture that give us the theology of the historical event.

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Otherwise, you're just left with nonsense. I had a conversation with the emergent church leader,

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Brian McLaren, at an emergent conference once. He's written quite a few books, but at that time, the book that he had recently written was entitled,

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Everything Must Change. And in his book, Everything Must Change, he postulates that the reason why Jesus was hanging on the cross and was crucified was because He was trying to demonstrate once and for all to His disciples that the violence used by the

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Roman Empire to oppress people just doesn't work. I mean, where'd you get that from?

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So I went up to him at this emergent conference and I went up to him and I said, Brian, I have a question for you.

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He goes, shoot. I go, all right. So I read what you wrote in your book.

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What do you do with Isaiah 53? He was pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, right?

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And he looks at me and he says, well, it all depends on what you mean by the word for. And then he engaged in postmodern word games.

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It can't mean what you think it means just by looking at it. No, no, no, no. And then he went on to explain to me how the doctrine that Christ suffered penally for our sins on the cross is the doctrine that is most responsible for imperial

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Western nations enslaving indigenous peoples. Yeah, that's what he told me.

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And he was rather passionate about it. Didn't make any sense. You know, didn't make any sense at all.

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But here's the deal. He wasn't getting his theology from the epistles. He wasn't get his theology about what was going on the cross from Isaiah 53, because he engaged in word games to try to erase what it was saying.

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So then he can come up with his own theology as to why Jesus was on the cross. Let's all sit around and we'll have a big group hug.

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And we're going to engage in an emergent conversation where we can all ask questions and conversation in community here.

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And whatever you feel that Jesus was doing on the cross. Well, that's good for you. This is this is a an example of coming to a non conclusion.

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This is not how theology is done. Not Christian theology. Next rule.

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Yes, exactly. In fact, what I find interesting from time to time, I'll review sermons on my radio program where Jesus gives a parable and then

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Jesus interprets a parable. Now, these are like no brainer sermons. OK, this when a pastor is given a text like this.

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This is wonderful. No homework. It's open book. All you got to do is give the same interpretation of the parable that Jesus gave.

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Not hard, but the parable of the sower and the seeds. I have got a bin in my library and I've got the world's largest collection.

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I've almost two terabytes of the world's worst sermons. I've got ten thousand five hundred and sixty two of them.

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I haven't even listened to at the moment because I'm so far behind. But yeah, but who has time? But in there,

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I actually have a bin for the parable of the seed and the sowers. Pastors just literally just inventing their own interpretations.

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And you're thinking, Jesus told you what it means. Just say those words. It's not art, you know, but no, you got to keep in mind here, small group studies done poorly.

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They're partly responsible for the morass that we're in. How many have ever been to a small group Bible study where you've opened up the word and then you've read a passage out of context and then you went,

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Becky, what does this verse mean to you? And then just say, oh, well,

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I was going through this hard time in my life and I lost my job. And, you know, and it has nothing to do with the passage.

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Right. And then she shares. OK, it's group therapy. And then you move on to Jim. Jim, what does this verse mean to you?

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Knock it off. Who cares what the verse means to you? The past, what the question we need to be asking is, what does this verse mean?

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What did God want to communicate to us when he had his author's pen, this verse, all scriptures, they a new stuff.

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It's God breathed. You think it's there so that you can just read it and bend it into a little balloon animal, you know?

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Oh, look, it's a bunny. It's a sword. It's a rabbit. You know, you get what

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I'm saying here. This is what people do with the Bible. And we're not supposed to do that. Who cares what it means to you?

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If you want to go into group therapy, pay for it and have somebody who has actually trained to do it, do it with you.

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OK, but small group study leaders, just because they have a pulse and showed up at church last Sunday doesn't mean they're qualified to do group therapy, especially with Bible verses.

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Sorry. I feel better now.

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Thanks, guys.

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OK, moving along. OK, you get the point that I'm making, though.

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OK, I got to keep moving forward. The incidentals must be interpreted by the systematic.

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This rule applies to the proper reading of any literature. This is a common sense. But how hard is it is to use in common sense when we're anxious to prove our point?

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Major heresies are often the result of turning minors into majors. This is another way of taking an unclear passage and making it govern.

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Focus on the primary texts that are dealing with something, not incidental little details that might show up as a fleeting thought in scripture.

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Now, this is important because this also plays into the women's ordination one. The local must be interpreted by the universal.

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The Bible often inculcates universal principles in the context of a local culture. We must be very careful not to make some features of local culture a universal norm.

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For instance, Moses took off his shoes as a token of reverence in the presence of God. That was an Eastern custom, which is still practiced in some parts of the world.

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We Westerners show reverence by taking off our hat. Christian men do not think of going into church with their hats on, for this would show disrespect.

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But if we were associating with people of another culture, we might take our shoes off before entering the church. So here's the idea.

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Paul commands us to greet the brethren with a holy kiss in Romans 6 .16. Now, a strict literalist may insist that this form of Christian fraternity is still obligatory today, but most

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Christians understand it to mean that we should treat fellow Christians like blood brothers. So those of you men out there who are wanting to practice the holy kiss on me,

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I do know Taekwondo. Just saying. So the idea here is that this is a valid biblical understanding.

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We're not to say that this holy kiss is a command that we all have to abide by now.

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This was a cultural thing back then. But here's what happens in the women's ordination thing. People will argue that this has to do...

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The reason why women can't be ordained is because of the culture back in the first century. That's absolute baloney.

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In the first century, women had prominent roles in the wider culture within religion.

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I would point you to the priestesses at the Oracle of Delphi. You think of the Vestal Virgins and things like that.

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Women played prominent roles culturally in the ancient world. It was not...

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Well, then, you know, the Temple of Aphrodite, well, that's a little different. There was a religious experience that could be had there, but it's not good.

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But the point is this, is that it's a historical canard. It's absolutely wrong to say that this is a cultural thing.

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In fact, Christianity was bucking the wider Greco -Roman culture by insisting that only men should be pastors.

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Because in the wider culture, women played prominent roles in the past. And plus,

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Paul's argument in 1 Timothy is not based upon a cultural norm, but it's based on creation itself.

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Does that make sense? This is also important. The symbolic must be interpreted by the didactic.

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Our doctrinal position should be established by a plain, thus saith the Lord, from a straightforward didactic or teaching text.

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This is another way of saying Cedes Doctrinae. What really becomes difficult is when somebody tries to put in the center of a doctrine a symbolic text, you know, from Revelation or Daniel, where we're dealing with symbols on something, and they've attached their definition of those symbols to it, but nowhere in the didactic teaching does it explain those symbols in that way, and so it's another way of obliterating things.

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Now, this is important. All biblical interpretation must take cognizance of and be guided by Scripture's self -announced purpose.

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Believe it or not, the Bible is purpose -driven. Sorry, I know. I hate to put it that way.

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We've got to find a way to take that word back, by the way. 2

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Timothy 3 .15, How from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

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All Scripture is breathed out, or God breathed, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent and equipped for every good work.

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And John 20 .31, These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

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In other words, contrary to what Rick Warren says, the Bible is not the missing manual for the life of human beings.

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The Bible is not a Chilton's Guide, where you sit there and go, you know, I've got to look up that portion where it talks about how do

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I fix a broken whatever. You know, I've got a broken marriage. I've got kids that are misbehaving.

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I've got to look that up in the Bible. And oh yeah, here's the user's manual says I've got to do this, this, and this, and this.

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The express purpose of the Scriptures is so that you're going to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing have life in his name, or make you wise for salvation.

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That's the express purpose of these Scriptures. It's not to basically help you, you know, tick off, you know, a higher number on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

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It's not what it's about. Principle six, to rightly understand interpret

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Scripture is to necessarily distinguish between law and gospel. It's a constant theme on my radio program for a reason.

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Okay, between the long gospel elements in the text and then properly relate the former law to the latter gospel.

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Justification by grace through faith in Christ is the main subject of all true biblical and Christian theology.

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The interpreter must see to it that his interpretation of Christ, of the text, has Christ as its center, teaches him, and glorifies him as Savior and Lord.

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John 5, 39 and 40, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me.

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Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. So properly distinguishing law and gospel is what it means to make

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Christ the center of the Scripture. That's the idea here. Now, we've all experienced bad preaching in this regard.

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I'm confident of this. When a pastor preaches the gospel as if it only applies to evangelism and then never preaches the gospel to Christians, you create a scenario by which people believe that they are saving themselves either in whole or in part by their good works.

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This is just the facts. I remember back in the day, yes, when you preach the law and when you preach the gospel as if it's only for evangelism purposes and not law and gospel, then what happens is you're going to only preach the law, and you're going to create a scenario by which people think that their salvation in whole or in part is accomplished by their law keeping, by their good works.

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Common mistake, and the reason why it's a common mistake is because Romans says we have the law written on our hearts. We naturally proclivitate to the law.

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The gospel is an alien message. It is not one that you intuitively get at all. And so here's the idea.

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Give you an anecdote and then kind of work it out from here. I used to attend

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Pasadena Nazarene Church in Pasadena, California. H .B. London was my pastor.

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H .B. London is the cousin of James Dobson, the focus on the family. When I was at Pasadena Nazarene, the gospel was never preached to me as a

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Christian, and that is not an overstatement. I did hear the gospel on occasion, particularly on those

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Sundays, which happened several times a year that they called Evangelism Sunday, and here's how this worked.

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H .B. London would say, we're going to be having Evangelism Sunday a month from now, and we want you to invite your unsaved friends.

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We're going to preach the gospel to them. They're going to hear that Jesus died for them, and people would go, oh, that's a great thing, and so Evangelism Sunday would come.

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There was a big push. People were sending out postcards and putting out newspaper ads, and the place was packed, right?

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It's Evangelism Sunday. We got a lot of people here who want to learn about Jesus, so H .B.

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London preached the gospel, but he preached it in such a way that even though I was in attendance there, you can always tell who the people who were not.

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They were like the ones in the back. You know, we were somewhere in the middle, right, of the congregation. He'd make a point of saying, and you people here who are here for the first time and you've never heard about Jesus, I have good news for you.

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Jesus died for your sins. Oh, I heard the gospel. But it wasn't for me.

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It wasn't for me. It was for that person who showed up. Talk with your evangelical friends.

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You start talking about the gospel, say, oh, we already know that. That's for evangelism, and yet Paul in the book of Romans expresses his desire to travel to Rome so that he can preach the gospel to them in the church of Rome.

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We do not graduate from the gospel, and where the gospel is not preached to Christians, the default setting that people go to is law, and then it's going to lead them in several different paths that will lead to utter despair.

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Path number one, legalism. This is where they basically fool themselves into believing that they're actually pulling off God's law and that God's happy with them based upon their performance.

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But then what happens is that when you go to that path, you find yourself on a swing, and you're going back and forth.

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You go from Pharisee, oh yeah, I'm pulling it off, to total despair.

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It's like, God is mad at me. He's not happy with me.

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I know I'm not doing this. I know I'm not making it, and what happens is that the

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Pharisee part where they think they're pulling it off, that's the facade they put forward with you people.

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That's the facade they put forward with everybody else. Oh, I'm doing great.

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Yeah, and you can always tell somebody who is not hearing the gospel, look at the highlights in their

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Bible. You give me somebody who is trapped in a church where they're not hearing the gospel, for them,

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I guarantee you I can open up their Bible to any of the New Testament passages, and what I will find is every law passage is underlined, and not a single highlight will be on any gospel passages, because when they're reading their

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Bible, they're always looking for that next thing that God wants them to do and they need to do. So they're always looking for the thing they've got to do to please

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God, and how to apply it, and all this kind of stuff. But because the law can't save, and because the law is always pointing its bony finger at us and saying, you're not doing it, you're not doing it, you're screwing up, you are such a sinner, look at you, right?

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That's what the law does. That's the purpose of the law, is to show us our sin. What happens is, is that they are swinging back and forth between total frightenness to legalism, and it's this back and forth swing.

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And when you're on that swing, there are two options at this point that seem like they might provide a solution.

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One, become an atheist. I'm not joking.

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Former Christians who are angry atheists have more honesty about who they are and what they are than people who are trying to put a mask forward that they're pulling off the law.

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The one thing I can say about somebody who is an angry ex -Christian atheist, what they did is sane.

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It makes more sense to say Christianity is a crock, and walk away from it, and be angry, and say,

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I don't believe in any God. That is actually intellectually honest than staying in this constant swing back and forth between complete terror of God, and then thinking that you're pulling it off, and you're not.

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You withhold the gospel from people, and you put them into despair. Another option, which is an option that a lot of people are going now, is into mysticism.

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The direct, charismatic, spiritual gifts experience of God, right? But there's a lot of diminishing returns here.

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Because what happens is that people, when they're in this situation, you know what they're looking for? Any kind of assurance that God loves them.

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That's what they're really looking for. So they're turning to mysticism because they think that in mysticism, if I go to church, and I'm raising my hands, and I feel the

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Holy Spirit, and I have the experience, that shows me that God loves me.

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That I'm accepted by him. But what happens when you go to church, and you feel nothing?

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God's angry at you, right? It is this vicious cycle, and what's at the heart of it is all law, no gospel.

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Gospel only to get you into the fun park of works, and now that you're in, you don't hear the gospel anymore.

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That's only for the person out there, right? You're in the fun park of works now, and all you get is law.

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Get busy. Law and gospel must be done right in church, and it must be done right in our understanding of Scripture.

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The purpose of the law is to show you your sin. So when you read God's law, and you sit there and go,

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I'm undone. I'm guilty. I'm wrong. The law has done its work, but what's needed at that point is the gospel, and Christians need to hear the gospel.

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Not once a month. Not on Evangelism Sunday for the guy who just walked in that day, but they need to hear it for them because every single

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Sunday when you walk into church, you have just spent an entire week in your vocation out in the world, and you've been wrestling with sin, death, and the devil, and you know what?

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I know for a fact that each and every one of you are coming into church not victorious, but really having had a number done on you, and you need good news.

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You need to know whether or not God really loves you, and the job of the pastor is to tell you your sins are forgiven,

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Christian. Though the devil may have had his way with you, I've got better news.

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Christ is better than the devil, and he conquered him on the cross, and Christ bled and died for you. You are forgiven, absolved, go in peace.

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We need to constantly be reminded of that, otherwise we forget, and that's a big problem in churches today.

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They think the gospel is something in the rearview mirror, long ago, far away, something that I remember hearing that gospel at a

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Billy Graham crusade as they were singing 39 verses of Just As I Am Without a

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Plea, right? That was the last time I ever heard it applied to me.

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Might rhyme. I have to work it in there. I'm going to give you a couple of verses, and then we'll pause for a break real quick.

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Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, for by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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And for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not

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Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified, that means to be declared righteous by works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus.

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And I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

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The law is good. It's not bad. It's holy. It's right. But it has a holy purpose, and it's designed to show you your sin.

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So don't let it have the last word. The gospel always has the last word. Christ always gets the last word.

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His blood has the last word. And when the devil comes along to you and says, you are a filthy, rotten sinner.

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I saw what you did. Take Luther's advice from the Galatian commentary.

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When the devil comes along and says that to you, you say to them, oh, thank you, devil, for reminding me that I'm a sinner. Because indeed

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Jesus himself said that he came to seek and save sinners, of whom I am one. Therefore, by telling me

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I'm a sinner, you're telling me that Christ came for me to save me. Thank you again for reminding me of my sin, because it only reminds me of how my

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Savior bled and died for me. Amen, if I'm allowed to say that.

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So what'd you think? I'd love to get your feedback. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the

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Faith, you could do so. My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com, or you can subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com

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forward slash piratechristian, or follow me on Twitter, my name there, at piratechristian. Till tomorrow, may

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God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross, for all of your sins.