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

Spiritual Warfare, Lies, and the Hope of the Gospel

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 and 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 for the, well, 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, and so 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 Sharpens Iron 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 Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors 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.

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 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 Reformed 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, no, I'm forgetting the acronym. I was just asked this on my, when I transferred in on the church history portion. So, but now it's just popped out of my head. RPCES, or I forget. Good thing the candidates and credentials aren't asking that question right now.

Well, if it's RPES or RPECS, 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.

The Church, Its Mission, and a Presbyterian Testimony

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 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 that 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 that is, 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 in Presbyterian, 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 and Zion 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.

Salvation Testimony, Family Influence, and a Call to Ministry

Yeah, thanks. So kind of to my topic today that we're gonna be discussing, like 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 in his love, he had sent Jesus to die for me.

And 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 12th 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, was 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 I hadn't been in a 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, 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 has provided for us in the scripture.

Yes, yes, that's so true.

Eunice was his mom, and Lois was his grandmother.

Mm-hmm, yes, yeah, 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.

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 it didn't feel like that's what the Lord was calling me to do, and I loved 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 seven 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 gonna 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 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, 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 okay 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, a certain job or whatever.

And if you don't have it, therefore God isn't good. And so therefore I'm gonna take it myself. I'm gonna go get it my own way. Or you might think, hey, I'm not bitter, I'm righteously angry. That's another lie we might believe.

And so we kind of excuse our sin, we excuse our bitterness because we lie to ourself and say 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, if you think it, if you boil it down, I think two major lies could be, I'm not good enough or I am good enough. And so here's what I mean by this. 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 truth to it.

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, 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 lie 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 is a huge lie that we can give into. And in terms of the I'm not good enough side though, so there's the whole satirological 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, well, 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'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 chastised 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 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 .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Steve Brown right after these messages from our sponsors.

Assurance, Election, and the Comfort of God's Promises

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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'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 three, it's talking about how we can have the full assurance of faith, but it says, this infallible assurance 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 Son, 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 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.