May 17, 2023 Show with Steve Brown on “Lies We Believe: Getting the Facts Right While Preparing for Spiritual Warfare”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister

George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 17th day of May, 2023.

From time to time, when I conduct major events, such as conferences and my biannual

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheons, I meet somebody that would make a perfect guest to be interviewed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and today, we are featuring one such person.

He also happens to be the pastor of my friend, Denny Lebo, who attends a weekly

Bible study with me at Fay's Country Kitchen right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Just gave them a free bit of advertising there. The study is led by the

Christian Businessmen's Connection, and Denny is a faithful attender there, and when he told me that he had a new pastor at Hope Perform Presbyterian Church of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, I just knew that I had to get him on the air, especially after hearing of Denny's rave review of Steve Brown.

When I met him at the pastor's luncheon, I knew that I wanted to seal the deal and get

Pastor Steve Brown on the program. He is pastor and teaching elder of Hope Perform Presbyterian Church of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, which is a congregation in the

Presbyterian Church in America, and today, we are going to be addressing a very intriguing theme,

Lies We Believe, Getting the Facts Right While Preparing for Spiritual Warfare, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Steve Brown.

Thanks, Chris. It's a real privilege and delight to get to be on this show for the first time as well. I'm looking forward to our conversation here.

And I hope you enjoyed yourself and were blessed at the Iron Trip and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon.

Yes. Yeah, definitely was, and it was also a special delight and privilege that one of your speakers, David King, had been in—we'd overlapped a little bit in the presbytery that I had just come from.

That's right. It was a real—yeah, it was a real privilege to get to see David again and also to hear him speak, and I was really encouraged by that.

And I hope you got your fair share of free books that we made available, thanks to the generosity of many

Christian book publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom who have been providing us with the free books that I select from them personally, going all the way back to the 1990s.

So I hope you got your fair share of books. I got a lot of books, and one thing I'm very thankful for is in my church they have a big bookshelf in the pastor's study, so I have plenty of room and I didn't have to be in trouble at home bringing home too many books that won't fit in our home.

So even pastors get in trouble with their wives for bringing home too many books. I keep most of mine in my—at my office because I do collect a lot of books.

I still actually probably have two boxes or three boxes full of unopened books in our garage, so I need to get on that at some point in the coming weeks.

And I hope that provokes all of the pastors and ministry leaders who are listening to jealousy if you have not yet attended one of my

Iron Trip and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheons, and I hope that you begin to make an effort to be there because you're not only going to be blessed when you attend by the free food and by hearing a gifted man of God speak and the free time of fellowship and rest and relaxation and fun and laughter, but you'll also be leaving with a heavy sack, perhaps even two heavy sacks of free brand new books that I personally select from publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom. So keep your eyes and ears open for my next Iron Trip and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon.

If you could, Pastor Steve, let our listeners know about Hope Reform Presbyterian Church of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

And there is something that always comes up when I mention the name of a congregation that has included in the name

Reformed Presbyterian, because many times people draw the wrong conclusion that you are a member of the

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, which is a fine denomination with some distinctives that make it somewhat different than the

PCA. But I believe that is because of the fact that before those congregations with the name

Reformed Presbyterian in the name, before they merged with the

PCA, I believe they were members of the Reformed Evangelical Synod of the Presbyterian Church. Am I getting that name right?

Yeah, RP. Yeah, now I'm forgetting the acronym. I was just asked this when

I transferred in on the church history portion, but now it's just popped out of my head,

R -P -C -E -S, or I forget. Good thing the candidates and credentials aren't asking that question right now.

Well, if it's R -P -E -S or R -P -E -C -S, it is the

Reformed Presbyterian Evangelical Church Synod. Yes, and that was the one I think my home church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania had been a part of before the merger with the

PCA, if I'm remembering my facts correctly. Well, tell us about this congregation.

Yeah, so I am, as you mentioned, the new pastor here, so I've been here a little less than a year.

So I'm still, you know, in the process of getting to know the members and the people at Hope Church.

That's probably the most important thing for a new pastor to do, other than preaching the Word of God faithfully, is to get to know the people that you're called to care for.

And so it's been a delight to do that so far. I would say Hope Church, if I were to try to explain who we are to someone,

I'd say we're a Bible -believing church that just loves the gospel. You know, we're a group of sinners who are saved by God's grace, who love

Jesus, and we want to tell other people about Jesus. Our mission statement includes the idea of enfolding people, embracing people, and enfolding them in a community of grace, so we can exalt the

God of grace. And I think that that's what Hope Church strives to do. Of course, like any group of sinners, we do it imperfectly, but I see evidence of a good, rich history of doing that for about 30 years here in Shippensburg.

And we want to continue growing in that. We want to continue growing in deeper relationships with one another and in reaching out to the community in greater ways.

And so those are, of course, two things I keep praying for as a congregation. But we are definitely,

I would say, a warm and welcoming community, and I've been encouraged by many efforts that members in the church have taken, even to have ministry initiatives since I've started.

So yeah, I'm really blessed to be a pastor here. So you're warm and welcoming.

I thought you were Calvinist. I'm only kidding, I'm only kidding. We sometimes have a stereotype about that, but it's a stereotype that has been proven to be slander on many occasions.

Not all, but many occasions. Not all. Definitely not all.

I've grown up Presbyterian, but I've also grown up with lots of warm, welcoming congregations. A lot of Christians really living out their faith, even in Presbyterian circles.

Yes, even warm and welcoming as Presbyterians. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Hope Reform Presbyterian Church of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, whether you live there or have family, friends, and loved ones who live there, or if you're traveling through there, the website is hopechurchpca .com,

hopechurchpca .com. Now, we have a tradition here on Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio.

Whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I'd love to hear your story. Yeah, thanks. Kind of to my topic today that we're going to be discussing, there's a temptation, or I could even say a lie, that I've believed at times that my story isn't all that interesting, but it's really a remarkable story, just like any other

Christian testimony. So God took someone like me, who's by nature an object of wrath, whose sin separated him from God, and he adopted me as his child.

I didn't deserve that, and yet he looked upon me with love. He sent Christ to die for me.

My own personal testimony is really a success story, if you will, of the ministry of the local church.

So I began attending Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when I was about six years old.

I was there for a Ligonier Ministries conference when the late Dr. R .C. Sproul was still with us, and I believe it may have had something to do with a

Christmas celebration where they were performing Christmas music or Christian music that was actually arranged and written by Dr.

Sproul. I think that was the conference where I was there in Lancaster at that beautiful facility they have there.

Yes, and it was a wonderful church. Just through the preaching and the ministry in Sunday school,

I really came at an early age to know Jesus as my Savior. I came to know that there was a triune

God who created the world and that I was a sinner and my sins deserved his wrath, and I saw that he loved—in his love, he had sent

Jesus to die for me. And you know, in my even young seven -year -old understanding, the gospel was very clearly presented, and I was able to trust in Christ.

Through the years growing up in seventh to twelfth grade, I was impacted by the youth ministry involved in the youth group, and I think also just the faithful, expository preaching.

Dr. Rogers, for most of my time growing up, I was—you know, even looking back, I can see how profoundly impactful that was, even beyond what

I realized at the time, and so just really grateful for that. I also should mention that my testimony is also evidence of the way

God uses mothers and grandmothers. So my granny encouraged my mom to start taking us to church because they hadn't been in church at the moment, and so that's what led her to look around and find

Westminster, and so you see the profound impact of godly parents and grandparents kind of encouraging you, because if they hadn't taken me, you know, who knows where I would have ended up.

So in God's providence, I'm really thankful for that. And you share the wonderful legacy that the mother and grandmother of Timothy from the

Scriptures— Yes. —has provided for us in the Scripture. Yes, yes, that's so true.

Eunice was his mom, and Lois was his grandmother.

Yes, yeah. And so after graduating high school,

I went to Grove City College and then graduated from there and began working as an accountant in Lancaster and volunteering back at my home church in Lancaster.

And during that time, I began to feel a call to pastoral ministry. I didn't love my job.

I worked at a wonderful accounting firm, but I didn't feel like that's what the Lord was calling me to do. And I love serving in the church.

I was also reading John Piper's book, Don't Waste Your Life, and just reflecting on Isaiah 26, 8, which says, in part, your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.

And so I was just really reflecting on what the Lord was calling me to do, and in my case, I felt like that meant pastoral ministry.

So I took a step of faith and went out to seminary. During that time,

I should also mention I met my lovely wife, Siobhan, and she's been a real encouragement to me.

I kind of joked about being in trouble bringing books home, but she has been—it really is mostly entirely joking because she's been so encouraging and supportive and just through ups and downs of ministry and through the extra burden she bears when

I'm away with a busy schedule taking care of the family. So I have been really blessed. We also have five children we've been blessed with.

They're now ages 7 to 14, and it's such a delight. Every stage of parenting—I don't want any parent listening thinking, oh, it's so easy for him.

Yeah, parenting is hard, but it's also so wonderful and delightful, and I just feel really privileged to be a father of five children.

And so I've been blessed in many ways. Amen. Well, praise God for that. Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address if they have any questions about our theme today,

Lies We Believe, Getting the Facts Right While Preparing for Spiritual Warfare. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

And we ask that you only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And I could readily see a theme like this lending itself to those having questions that are personal and private, since some of these lies we are going to be mentioning may be something that they, until now, have believed.

Perhaps they are in a church where they are in growing measure in disagreement with their own leaders over something that we're addressing today, or perhaps you're even a pastor, and you have growing doubts or growing disagreement with the theology, doctrine, and biblical worldview of your fellow elders or your denomination.

We could understand why things like that would compel you to remain anonymous, and you may do so.

But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Well, first of all, it didn't take you long to come up with the theme that you wanted to address on the show today, lies we believe.

What were the compelling factors that led you to pretty much immediately tell me, I want to speak on lies we believe?

So it's really both personal and pastoral. So for me, it was beginning to identify spiritual warfare in terms of some,

I would even say some severe discouragement several years ago. And I also began to see some patterns of what

I would call negative self -talk in certain situations that I hadn't realized were there, but the

Lord began to show me that. I began to become more aware that there was a spiritual battle taking place, which, you know,

I knew before. So it seems kind of silly to say I became aware of it, but you're often tempted to ignore that.

So it was really a personal thing, also identifying patterns relatedly of overthinking and allowing negative thoughts to discourage me, which, by the way,

I'm still working on all these. I'm not a finished product. But as I wrestled with this and as I hear other people wrestling with similar things, you know, it's so easy to believe that everyone else has it all together.

So you kind of look around and you think like a lie. Nobody else is discouraged, which again is a lie, because if you think about it, you can probably remember at least one thing someone told you honestly that had been discouraging them recently.

But Satan's lies are to kind of try to isolate you and make you feel like it's just you. Everyone else is

OK except you. And so lies like that were really kind of things that I was wrestling with.

I also pastorally, there are so many implications. So you think about sin, you could argue that behind every sin is a lie.

So it's a lie about who God is or who we are. So, for example,

God isn't good. If he were good, he would have given X to me, whatever it is that you think a marriage partner, you know, a certain job or whatever.

And if you don't have it, therefore, God isn't good. And so therefore,

I'm going to take it myself. I'm going to go get it my own way. Or you might think, you know, hey,

I'm I'm not bitter. I'm I'm righteously angry. That's another lie we might might believe.

And so we kind of excuse our sin, we excuse our bitterness because we lie to ourself and say

I'm not it's not really wrong. And so I just see lies all over, both in self -doubt or in sin or in discouragement, both in myself and in others

I talk to. So, yeah, that's kind of what got me thinking about it. I also preached in Genesis three and first Peter at some point, which kind of further prompted this.

And so let's go through some of the major lies that are commonly believed.

Yeah, so, you know, if you think if you boil it down,

I think two major lies could be. I'm not good enough or I am too good or I am good enough.

And so here's what I mean by this. Satan, Satan's a master counterfeiter and he likes to peddle in lies that sound plausible.

So I'm not good enough is there's a half there's a truth to that.

Yes, yes, especially when it's considering soteriology. Yes, exactly.

So I'm a miserable, rotten sinner. My sins deserve

God's wrath and curse, not only in this life, but for all eternity. My sins have separated us from God as Ephesians two says, by nature,

I'm an object of wrath. And so there's a good biblical way to identify our miserable, sinful nature and our need for God's mercy.

But then the lie becomes like, I'm so bad that God could never accept me. All right. I'm so bad that he, you know, he's just so disgusted with me.

He could never love me. And so I think that that's one main line that we believe.

The other, I'm not sure if it's a flip side of the coin, but the other one we can be tempted to believe is that I'm so good that, of course,

God would accept me. And so I think people stay away from God for that reason, too, because, you know, if there's a

God who created everything and if there's a heaven, surely he couldn't send someone like me to hell.

Surely he couldn't be displeased with me. And so I think that that's a just a major lie that we believe.

One of those lies, I'm not good enough for Christ to forgive me, involves a diminishing or even a rejection of the power of the grace and mercy and love of Christ.

Yes. And the other one involves a rejection of the need of the grace and mercy and love of Christ.

Absolutely. And so the one just is it's as if your sin is greater than Jesus' blood.

Your sin is greater than God's love. And the other one is kind of looks at Jesus as a little savior.

You know, it's not I'm not a great sinner. He's a great savior. I'm a little sinner who maybe needs a little help.

Or he's a crutch if you need it. Exactly. Yes. And I think if you even go all the way back to the

Garden of Eden, you look at what Satan said to Adam and Eve, you will not surely die. And so that's that is a huge lie that we can give into.

Yeah. And in terms of the the I'm not good enough side, though, so there's the whole soteriological element of, you know,

Jesus could never save me. But it also then, I think, slips in in more subtle ways where, you know, we're not actually denying that Jesus can save us or that when he returns, he'll gather us home with him.

But we begin to compare ourselves, say, to others. And so my life isn't important because my church is smaller than someone else's.

So what I'm doing must not matter as much. Or, you know, someone might be comparing themselves by physical appearance is a big thing.

And I'm not as beautiful as this person. So I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough.

We can even be, as I mentioned at the outset of here, a testimony envy. So I'm I've been tempted in my life to look at my testimony as kind of boring.

And it's like it's as if, like, God has to save you from a drug addiction or else his grace isn't truly amazing.

Right. In fact, I have lovingly and gently chastise people that I have met and have known who have said that very same thing.

They'll say I'm embarrassed to give my testimony because I've never wandered far in rebellion from my

Christian family and from the church and from Christ himself. And I will tell them, in my opinion, it's just as much a powerful testimony when someone has been preserved from having entered into rebellion as it is when those who have been great, notorious rebels to have been rescued.

One is not a more powerful example of grace than the other. They are both equally powerful examples.

So when when Christian parents may be fearful in this day and age of darkness about what may happen with their children when they are seeking to raise them in a

Christian home, they can have a hope that those children will not wander.

It's not a guarantee, of course, but they have a hope that at least there is precedent for that throughout the history of the church.

In fact, let's pick up where we left off there. When we come back from our first commercial break, if anybody has questions for Steve Brown on Lies We Believe, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Steve Brown right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Chris Arns and the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. royaldiadem .com. We're now back with Steve Brown, pastor and teaching elder at Hope Reform Presbyterian Church of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, a congregation within the

Presbyterian Church in America. We are addressing the theme, Lies We Believe, getting the facts right while preparing for spiritual warfare.

Before I have you continue with more thoughts on these lies, we do have an anonymous listener, and the anonymous listener says,

I have a very close personal friend who is tormented over the idea that he may not be of the elect, even though he loves

Christ, he serves Christ as best a sinner on this earth can.

He is a member of a church in good standing. He reads his Bible faithfully.

He believes the biblical gospel and the biblical description of who Jesus Christ and the triune

Godhead are. And yet he is still terrified that when he gets to the judgment seat on that terrifying day, that the

Lord will say, sorry, you are not one of the elect. But isn't this an absurd scenario that will never take place?

Because if someone is of the elect, they would bear the same fruits that I just described about this person.

Are you there, Steve? Yes, I am. I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. For some reason, there was a little bit of feedback or something, but now we seem fine.

Yeah, so you know that what the listener is describing is not unique or new.

This is, well, there's nothing new under the sun as Ecclesiastes tells us, but if you think about the

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 18, Section 3, it's talking about how we can have the full assurance of faith, but it says this infallible assurance does not does not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long and conflict with many difficulties before he be a partaker of it.

And so you think about it like lots of Christians have struggled with that. I'm even one of the proof texts the confession uses is 1

John 5, 13, which says these things are written so that you may believe in the name of the

Son of God and that you may know you have eternal life. And so as the confession was written, even much further back as the letter to 1

John was written, people must have been struggling with this. So I just want to assure that listener that there's not something uniquely wrong with them.

This is actually a common struggle Christians have, so I hope that encourages you that it's common enough that it made its way into God's Word, and then also that our assurance isn't based on our confidence, but in Christ's death and resurrection for us.

And so if someone's struggling, just encourage them to continue to pray for the Lord to give them assurance and to meditate on his promises.

You can think of 1 John 1 that promises if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us, right?

And so it's not not our great faith in God that ultimately saves us, but it's the great

God who saves us. It's Jesus' blood, his death for us where our hope is, not the strength of our own faith.

But it is a common—I would say a common struggle for Christians, but you're not outside the elect because you have that struggle.

Yeah, and it also reveals, does it not, that this person who the listener is describing, this person has bought into a lie about what theologically reformed

Christians and also known as Calvinists teach. This person seems to think, as some of the enemies of the doctrines of grace continually regurgitate, that the election, the doctrine of unconditional election is some kind of a lottery where God has chosen before the foundation of the world those who will be saved and those who are not to be saved, the reprobate.

And that part is true, but they will say that we're not even going to know until we are standing before him on the throne of judgment if we are one of these elects, which defies the comfort that the apostle

Paul provides us to the church in Thessalonica about we don't have to worry about those who have fallen asleep in Christ, those who have died.

Paul gives us great encouragement that they are going to be caught up in the air with those who are alive at the time of Christ's return, and that there will be a great reunion with these people.

So, obviously, there is not to be some kind of uncertainty as if, like I said, it's a lottery system that has no connection with our belief, our lives, and so on.

Yes, we believe in justification by faith alone. We don't believe that human works in any way, shape, or form add to or merit our salvation.

But at the same time, our lives are a reflection and a fruit of what has happened within our hearts and minds by the grace and mercy of Christ.

So this is just a fallacy that this person has terror over imagining this lottery system understanding of the election.

And it's an indication that the person has been misled by anti -Calvinists, likely, or just a misunderstanding on his own or her own.

And this scenario will never take place. There's not going to be a situation where somebody is standing before Christ who loves

Christ, serves him, has perhaps sacrificed much as a faithful member of the church, and is bearing the fruits of salvation.

And Jesus says, well, none of that matters. You're not on my list. You're not on the election lottery list. So see you later.

Right, you know, and yeah, amen to what you're saying. And, you know,

I think it helps when you're dealing with these things, both for this friend and for the person who's concerned with the friend, to really kind of dig deeper and examine the different lies they're believing, as you're mentioning.

So one lie I'm also hearing is that if I am a true Christian, I will absolutely be fully assured and I will never struggle.

And, you know, as I pointed to in the confession and from 1 John, that's not the experience of every believer.

For whatever reason, we do struggle at times. I think, and I don't know the person who wrote in, but there is also at times a temptation when the struggle goes on for a long time to believe a lie that this will never change.

And we, at least in situations I've been in, I can give up and think, well, it won't change.

At that time, I'm essentially believing the lie that prayer doesn't work, that if I pray to God and keep praying, that he won't answer.

And you can think of the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18. But I at times functionally believe a lie that, no, that's not true in my situation.

And so, again, maybe this caller, that's not what they're going through. But if they are tempted to give up, just point them to that parable in Luke 18 and say, don't give up.

Keep praying that your friend would enjoy assurance of salvation in Christ. Amen. And, by the way,

Anonymous, if you are a first -time questioner, you have won a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, who for years have provided us with free

New American Standard Bibles to give away to first -time questioners on the show. And that Bible will be shipped to you, compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. So please give us your full mailing address and your full name if, indeed, you are a first -time questioner.

Obviously, this will be given to me via email so no one listening will know who you are.

And, by the way, why don't you, if you feel comfortable doing so, give us the name and mailing address of the person whom you are speaking of, and we'll send that person a

Bible as well, a New American Standard Bible. Well, if you could, pick up where you left off there on some of the other lies, we believe.

Yeah, so I identified kind of two of the big ones. I think another huge lie has to do with forgiveness, which could be its whole own conversation.

But you look at 2 Corinthians 2, and Paul says, Anyone whom you forgive,

I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs.

And I think, in terms of forgiveness, we can kind of buy into this lie that it's not a big deal.

I don't need to forgive someone. It doesn't hurt anyone if I nurse this grudge.

And, you know, forgiveness is just not that essential. They've wronged me, and I won't forgive.

And Paul here is identifying the lack of forgiveness as one of the main ways

Satan outwits us as a church. And it's so tempting to give in to that lie and to be outwitted in that way, especially if you feel you've been seriously wronged.

Or let me just say, if you have been seriously wronged, the reason I said if you feel you've been wronged is, in some ways, it doesn't matter if you actually have been or not in how you respond.

So even if you feel you've been wronged when you haven't, you'll still respond as if you've been wronged.

And so when we don't forgive, I think the other lie is that this doesn't affect us.

But when we don't forgive, really, it's ourselves who are held prisoner. It's really ourselves that are being, like, dragged down, even more so than the other person.

It also can destroy the unity or peace of the church, depending on the nature of the offense.

And so forgiveness is a prime way Satan likes to attack and divide. And there, of course, could be multiple different ways he would do this.

A failure to forgive, a failure to acknowledge sin and ask for forgiveness, or even a distorted view of what forgiveness is, which would be, hey,

I said I'm sorry, so let's just never talk about it, bring it up, let's not have any consequences. You know,

I said I'm sorry, let's kind of lightly sweep this under the rug. And depending the scenario,

Satan can attack on any different angle and really divide Christians or make

Christians a, I could even say, a target. So I'm thinking particularly of cases of, perhaps, abuse, where someone would think, hey, forgive and forget.

And essentially that is, let me keep abusing, right? And so that's another distortion of forgiveness.

So those are, there's a whole lot of lies tied up with forgiveness. And I think most dangerously and hardest to recognize are when we refuse to forgive, or perhaps even feel that we have forgiven when in point of fact we haven't.

We know we're supposed to forgive, so we say I've forgiven, but actually, you know, you haven't.

And so let me ask, I could just ask the listeners a few diagnostic questions.

So you could ask yourself, as you think about this person, can you really wish the

Lord's blessing on them? Can you really pray for them? Do you want them to be thriving or being blessed by the

Lord? And if you have a difficult time praying for someone, then that's an indication that you've forgiven, or have not forgiven,

I should say. And another lie related to this failure to forgive would be that forgiveness should be quick and easy, and I won't struggle to forgive someone.

And that's often not true, especially if someone's been deeply wronged. In fact, could we pick up on that where you left off when we returned from the

Midway break? Yes. And please be patient with us, folks. The Midway break is always a bit longer than the other breaks in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program, they are compelled by the

IRS, not the IRS, the FCC to localize geographically

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But also send in your questions to our guest today, Steve Brown, to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

We are going to be right back with Steve Brown on Lives We Believe right after these messages.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia, again for the

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And we are addressing the theme, Lies We Believe, Getting the Facts Right While Preparing for Spiritual Warfare.

And do you have anything further that you wanted to add in your comments about forgiveness,

Pastor Steve? Yeah, so, I mean, I want us to keep going on at some point to the solution to the lies, but I will just add that when we struggle to forgive,

I think at root, often it's forgetting Matthew 18, forgetting just how much we've been forgiven and thinking that we can safely ignore that, especially to our own spiritual health.

So God's grace is amazing and beautiful, and it really does transform us, and it does equip us when we say,

I can't forgive. That's just a lie. We can, because God has forgiven us, and he's given us his

Holy Spirit. Now, I was just curious. I happen to be a great fan, if that's an appropriate way of saying it, of the late

J. Adams, who, just as you are now, he was a

Presbyterian scholar and biblical counselor. And he, and also an author that I have come to know and have interviewed,

Chris Brauns, they have come to the conclusion that although Christians are commanded to never withhold forgiveness from people who approach them, who have sinned against that Christian, and who have asked for forgiveness, it is a sin to withhold forgiveness from them.

It's a sin to not let that person be aware that their arms are extended open wide, ready to forgive them.

It's a sin not to pray for these people who have sinned against us, and it is a sin not to do good to them.

But at the same time, J. Adams, in his book From Forgiven to Forgiving, and Chris Brauns has come to the same conclusion, that we are not to forgive people who refuse to repent and refuse to even ask for forgiveness.

And they put that, they put forgiveness in a different category than loving your enemy, praying for your enemy, doing good to your enemy.

They acknowledge that those things are all things Christians must do, but they believe it's a different category from forgiveness because forgiveness involves releasing someone from a debt, and if they are habitual unrepentant sinners in a specific area, especially if it is harmful to you and those you love, we cannot forgive them until they demonstrate repentance.

These men would also say that that is the way Jesus forgives, because if he forgives everyone, regardless of whether they repent, then hell would be empty.

So I was just curious where you might be on that controversy, because I know there are great men of God, like John MacArthur, who believes we are to immediately forgive anyone for anything they do, regardless of whether or not they ever approach us and ask us for forgiveness.

Yeah, that's a great question, and, you know, it's also an interesting question to wonder how much of that is a substantive difference versus a semantical difference.

So I would say we need to be prepared to forgive, and we need to be praying for forgiveness that the

Lord, if someone has sinned against us, then we would be praying that the Lord would reveal that to them so that they could repent, so that they could receive

God's mercy. You think in Luke 9, where the disciples wanted Jesus to call down fire from heaven and destroy these cities, and Jesus rebuked them.

Instead, hey, we shouldn't be longing for judgment for people. We should be pleading for God to be merciful to people.

And so in that sense, we do forgive, like we do like Stephen or Jesus on the cross. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

I think on the other hand, though, forgiveness begins the pathway to relational repair, and in certain cases, that becomes perhaps impossible.

So if the person doesn't ask for forgiveness, there's a break that can't be repaired, and there are other instances where it may not be safe to approach someone.

So abuse is another example where an abuse victim should never be required to approach her abuser, less often his abuser, because that's just not safe.

It could be re -victimizing them. And so in that case, there may be a permanent relational break, but even in those cases, you could encourage a

Christian who's been abused by God's grace to get to the point where they could pray that that person would be truly brokenhearted over their sin, truly repentant, so that they could receive

God's grace. And by the way, a truly repentant person would also accept the natural consequences of their abuse, and if they won't, then they're not truly repentant.

And of course, I'm assuming that you would agree with me that it is not only wrong, and perhaps we could even say sinful, but ridiculous to forgive people that have nothing to do with a scenario that involves you.

Like to say, I forgive Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for the Holocaust. Well, why are you in a position to forgive them or not?

That's an absurdity, because, you know, now it's one thing on the other hand, like Corrie ten

Boom, who was a prisoner in a

Nazi death camp and survived, and her family perished in that camp.

I believe there may have been one or two survivors, but I can't remember right off the top of my head, but a number of them perished, her parents and so on.

And there was a specific Nazi, former Nazi, who repented and asked for forgiveness.

And although it was extremely difficult for Corrie ten Boom, at least initially, she did forgive that man, and that's a different story.

Am I making sense here? Yes, yes. So you think of Psalm 51, against you, you only have

I sinned. So all sins are an offense against God, and we should ask him to forgive us. Not all sins are an offense against me, and there are many sins that I have absolutely no part in, and I have no place in forgiving, because it doesn't involve me.

Right. Yeah, you should never say to somebody, oh, I heard that some criminals broke into your house, stole everything that you owned and murdered your family, and I want to let you know that I forgive those people.

I mean, that's an absurdity. And there have been some very famous Christians who have said similar things about notorious people that they claim to forgive when it was none of their business to forgive.

Right. And we need to be kind and compassionate to those who struggle to forgive, because forgiveness is a journey.

And when Jesus says forgive, or you won't be forgiven, I don't think he means if you struggle to forgive, you won't be forgiven.

God doesn't forgive us because we forgive others. We forgive others because he forgives us.

And often that journey is slow, and especially if you've sinned against someone else, you shouldn't demand that they forgive you right now.

You need to give them time to heal and realize it's a process, and don't judge them when they, as a sinner, struggle with that.

Amen. We have an anonymous listener who says, how do you deal with the whole concept of forgiveness when a child has been the victim of some form of parental abuse?

And perhaps into adulthood, this child has an estranged relationship with a parent.

They are a Christian, and they realize they must honor their father and mother. But at the same time, they recognize that either or both parents are unrepentant, and the scars that they left may be nightmarish and gruesome, whether physically or mentally and emotionally.

How do we approach this subject, especially in the realm of honor their father and mother, when these are people that do not deserve being honored?

Wow. You know, I think first of all, if you're talking to someone who's had such incredibly emotional pain and damage, you just want to empathize.

You want to, you know, say something like, that sounds so hard, and I'm so sorry. You know, that is not an easy wound to heal.

I think there may, and I don't know the, if you were to talk to this person, you'd want to ask questions before you really fully answer it.

I can't do that here, so I'm going to have to take a stab at answering. But you'd really want to understand the particulars of their situation.

It's possible they have a misunderstanding of what it means to honor your father and mother. You know, if the father and mother has grievously sinned against you, that's going to continue affecting your relationship.

They may not be a safe person to keep having a relationship with. They, it may just put you in another emotional tailspin every time you see them.

They may be still demanding into adulthood or manipulative. And I think surrounding yourself with godly counsel and friends to help you through that, even seeking a counselor or a psychologist or a therapist, a biblical counselor.

I think all those things are useful and appropriate depending on the situation.

I will say, I came across this quote from Louis Smedes, and he said, when you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life.

You set a prisoner free, but you discover the real prisoner was you. And even when you've been grievously wounded, often the person who's wounded you still has so much sway and power over you.

And being able to move from this point of, this person has wronged me grievously, but I'm still going to pray for God to be merciful to them, which would include revealing their sins so that they could repent.

That's a hard place to get to, but that's, you know, by God's grace, something that's possible. And it's a duty of a

Christian to evangelize these people if there is a scenario where they are able to communicate with these people.

Yes. And every situation is different. And again, you never want to encourage someone who's been the victim of abuse to be basically re -victimized, but—

Or have the grandchildren victimized. Exactly, yeah. So safety of children would always be more important than having some type of communication lines open with this person.

But you can always pray for someone, yeah. And wouldn't you think it would be the right thing for even a

Christian to be honest with that person when communication is possible?

To say, I'm finding it excruciatingly difficult to forgive you or to have good thoughts of you,

I mean, depending upon the severity of what's happening. And I'm struggling and I'm praying for it.

But all I can tell you right now is you need to repent and believe upon the

Lord Jesus Christ. If I am ever going to see you in heaven when I leave this earth, you are going to need to be right with Jesus.

And from what I can see, you are not. And you are going to perish in your own sins. You have to be clear, even if you're being honest about your own sin, about your inability to approach the person, even as a human being, depending upon how grotesque the sin and abuse might be.

But am I making sense there? Yes, yeah. And the most loving thing to anyone who is caught in sin is to call them out on it.

Again, there's a whole range of this potential scenarios. One from the person who really should not be talking to or encouraged to talk to an abuser because they're not safe, even currently, to lesser wrongs.

Because we all wrong each other. So depending the break between the child and parent. Yeah, I think having...

So I guess that's where I come back again to really would help to have godly counsel friends, counselors even, in these broken relationships to give you advice for the particulars.

Because I don't want anything I'm saying to be misconstrued or misapplied to a unique situation that we don't have time to get into here on the radio.

Yes, and that last caller, by the way, if you are a first -time questioner, let us know so that you can receive a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, and also compliments of CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. What would be your next area of lies that we believe?

Yeah, so I think, well, if it's okay, do we have time to get into the solutions?

Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. I just don't want to run out of time for that. Sure, I understand. I think as you look at the...

Well, I'll give a next area which will transition into that. As we look at the lies we believe, each person has their own unique ones.

So I was encouraged recently to just kind of do like a thought journal. And as you kind of do your own thought journal, you can identify the things that are going through your mind, and then you can identify what you're believing.

And so you can write out the lies, and then you can compare them to Scripture and write out God's truth.

And really, what you're doing there, I think I may have mentioned earlier how Satan's a counterfeiter. So Jesus says in John 8, 44, that when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Which is the exact opposite of Jesus, right? Jesus says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

So God is truth. Satan is the father of lies. And as I mentioned, I think before, he likes to take

God's truth, and he likes to subtly pervert it. You know, a lie that is just clearly a lie is kind of not dangerous.

J .C. Ryle once wrote that, you know, young men run into sin and they say, I did not think about it.

It didn't look like sin. He said, not look like sin. What would you expect? Sin will not come to you saying,

I am sin. It would do little harm if it did. Sin always seems good and pleasant and desirable at the time of commission.

And so he's kind of borrowing, I think, from Genesis 3 there. And Satan tries to make sin look good, desirable, pleasing.

He tries to make his lies sound truthful, like 2 Corinthians 11, 4 says he disguises himself as an angel of light.

And so to fight the lies, you need to first know they're there, which means in your own personal life, identifying them.

So maybe someone's listening and none of what I've said is really striking home for them because that's not the lie they believe.

But they may have a whole host of other ones. And so identifying them enables you to engage with them.

And they're going to be tricky because Satan likes to disguise himself. Now, OK, I'm sorry.

No, no, you can go ahead. You can finish what you're saying. Well, I was going to move into another step. So did you have a follow up on?

Oh, we just had a listener question. We have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania. And Arnie says, when it comes to forgiveness, don't a lot of people misunderstand that to mean that a forgiveness means that all of your sins and your responsibilities and the consequences of those sins on this earth have been wiped out.

I am not talking about the grace and mercy and forgiveness that Christ bestows upon sinners.

I'm talking about humans when interacting. For instance, if somebody murders a loved one and they ask us on death row to forgive them for this and they demonstrate that they are truly remorseful and sorry and want us to forgive them, even if we forgive them, that does not mean that we should be calling upon the warden and the governor to set the person free from prison for what they've done and things like that.

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, someone stole something from you and they came and they confessed it to you.

You would say, I forgive you. And then you would expect they gave it back, I guess, unless it was like your chocolate bar or something.

Yeah, you would expect a natural consequence or a natural restoration wherever possible to the offense.

Yes. So forgiveness does not mean removing all consequences. Right. And in fact, even on this earth, when even when

God forgives us, for instance, if he forgives a homosexual who was promiscuous and involved in, you know, rampant sexual activity with many anonymous partners and the person gets a diagnosis of AIDS and they're dying and they realize that they will be entering into hell if they don't repent and have the imputed righteousness of Christ and his blood covering them.

Even if they come to genuine repentance and are saved, that doesn't mean God's going to heal them of the

AIDS that they receive. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sexual sin is on many levels a great example.

I mean, marriages are also destroyed, their STDs, all those kind of things are not taken away.

You know, someone who's been unfaithful to their wife or a wife to her husband, if the spouse chooses to exercise biblical grounds for divorce, that may be a natural consequence.

Right. And in fact, I have seen and heard along this trail of thought or train of thought, there have been people who have been in pastoral ministry who were revealed to be serial adulterers or guilty of some sin that is notorious, scandalous.

They are no longer above reproach. And yet, after they have been removed from their office, there are people that I have known and have had conversations with who have said, well, pastor so -and -so repented, so we should want him back in his office.

That's horrible that you don't want him back in his office after he's repented because sin is sin is sin.

And, you know, you sin and everybody sins, so we shouldn't be judging this pastor if he's repented.

No, there's a consequence for what he's done, and one of the qualifications for a pastor is that he is above reproach.

And somebody who is guilty of that kind of scandalous sin cannot be above reproach.

Yeah, it's another lie, and Satan loves to twist truth because, yes, sin is forgiven, but that doesn't mean that everyone is qualified to be a pastor.

A pastor caught in scandalous sin is disqualified himself even if he is forgiven by Christ.

For the sake of the purity and peace of the church, Satan would love to distort that, to just make us look bad.

And let me quickly say on the heels of that, that does not mean that someone who has been excommunicated but restored to the church after repentance cannot be used in many ways in the body of Christ, using his gifts here and there or her gifts here and there.

But that does not mean that they deserve the right to reascend into an office.

Yes, yeah. Yeah, and some often you'll hear the cases that make the news where people are really quick to rush into the restoration without the process of real true healing.

Or they'll escape it and they'll leave a church or denomination and join another one who is willing with open arms to, hey, you could be a pastor with us because the person might be globally renowned for his gifts and preaching and teaching, and perhaps he's an author.

And that church or denomination wants that person, and they don't really care about the scandal of the sin that the person is guilty of.

And then, hey, come back to us, you know. But we have to get our final break.

It's going to be more brief than the other breaks. If you would like to have your question asked and answered by my guest today,

Steve Brown, go to chrisarnson at gmail .com and send in your question. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Steve Brown.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

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Every Christian who's serious about the Reformed faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

Dr. Moorcraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Please visit us at truthloveparent .com. As host of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

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gcbc -nj .org. We're now back with Steve Brown.

We have been discussing lies, we believe. And Steve, I know that the most recent listener question prevented you from continuing on a train of thought.

You were going to say something, and we took the listener question and postponed your comment that you wanted to make, if you could pick up there.

Yeah, so I thank you. I was saying about how we fight these lies and how we need to do so by first identifying them.

And then, you know, I was reading a book recently that talked about a two -step process.

So you have to remove the lie, and then you have to replace it with the truth. And so that's really what we're doing, trying to fight

Satan's lies with the truth of God's Word. Now, that's a lot harder than it sounds.

It's not as simple as just take away the lie, replace the truth. We struggle to do that. And so I just say really practically speaking, prayer is the most important thing we can do.

The Holy Spirit is real. God does answer prayer. And so as we want to replace lies with truth, we need to pray that God would help us do that, because we can't do it on our own.

Second of all, I'd just encourage us to be knowing God's Word. So we replace Satan's lies with the truth that's found in God's Word.

And by meditating on it, it's kind of like knowing a counterfeit. People who identify counterfeit bills do so by really recognizing what the original looks like.

And so we need to be well -versed in God's Word, knowing God's truth. And then

I think just a comment about our confidence. You know, as we think about Satan's lies and spiritual warfare, we have to remember that greater, as the

Bible says, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. 1 John 3, 8 says, the reason the

Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. And so Jesus really has defeated

Satan. He's defeated sin. He's defeated death. And as we think about all these lies that assault us and all these temptations, we know that Jesus has already defeated

Satan. And so that should give us confidence. Now, as far as the element of spiritual warfare and separating fact from fiction while we prepare for it, if you could conclude with some vital thoughts on spiritual warfare.

Right. So I think vital, some vital thoughts is to know that it's real. One of Satan's biggest lies, I think, in the

West is to kind of think, oh, that's what people believed back before modern science.

Now, you know, Ephesians 6, 12 says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So just to know that it's real is hugely important. To be sober -minded and watchful, as 1

Peter 5, 8 says, Satan prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour. But then to be aware, as I mentioned, but confident.

So James 4, 7 says, submit yourselves to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

So, and Satan's a defeated foe. You know, Romans 16, 20, the God of peace will soon crush

Satan under your feet. There's every reason for confidence as we engage, but not cockiness in our own strength.

You know, we need to take heed, but take heed, trusting in God. So I think that's like, and, you know, the other thing

I might just say, practically, it's also this is good to do in relationships and together. These, all these commands and exhortations are given to a church, not isolated individuals.

We really need each other in warfare. Amen. Well, we have time for one more listener question.

And the listener says, when do you believe it is an appropriate time to leave a church that is a biblically faithful church, but some of the problems that have existed in your life with the church makes it too intolerable to remain there?

And I'm not talking about people who flee a church trying to escape church discipline or anything like that.

I'm just talking about what would you say are a responsible and acceptable way and time and occasion to leave a church?

Hmm. Well, I had an accounting professor who always said it depends. But I would think to leave a church, you would want to do it with honesty, with open communication, with counsel, with prayer.

And, you know, there may be times where, you know, for the sake of the purity and peace of the church, you just really aren't seeing eye to eye, and it would be better for you just to leave.

I do think you want to be cautious with that. Like, you really don't want to use that as a way of escaping conflict or doing the hard work of relational repair.

But there may be cases where the just differences are too irreconcilable or any other number of reasons.

But don't do it on your own. Do it with counsel. Do it with friends. Do it with a good faith effort to try to mend what's broken as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone.

So those are just a few principles. I don't know the listener's particular situation. Well, I want to thank you so much for doing such a superb job as my guest for the first time today.

I look forward to your return to the program, and you have an open door here in my studio.

I want to make sure our listeners have your website again. It's hopechurchps, I'm sorry, hopechurchpca, hopechurchpca for presbyterianchurchinamerica .com,

hopechurchpca .com, and that's Hope Reform Presbyterian Church in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

I want to remind our listeners that tomorrow Virgil Walker of the Just Thinking Podcast and G3 Ministries will be my guest.

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater