December 1, 2017 Show with Joe Thorn on “A Christian Response to Juicy Gossip: How Should God’s People React to the Avalanche of Sex Scandals Among Celebrities & Politicians?”

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this first day of December 2017. Well, I can truly say, probably more than ever, with more meaning than ever before, thank God for Joe Thorne.

The reason I say that is that Joe is a man who is always ready to help out Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when we are caught in a bind, and literally about 30 seconds ago, I called him because our guest today that was previously scheduled, Thaddeus Williams, forgot that we had an interview, and he's at the Grand Canyon.

So I just thank the Lord that somebody as qualified and somebody who is as fascinating and as brilliant and as excellent a guest as Joe Thorne is ready with such short notice, not all the time, but today he was by the providence of God.

And Joe Thorne, for those of you who have not heard him on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before, he is a pastor at Redeemer Fellowship in St. Charles, Illinois. He's the author of a number of books, including Note to Self, the Discipline of Preaching to Yourself.

I think that's what I meant to write, and I put down disciple. The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself, and Experiencing the Trinity, the Grace of God for the People of God. He's a contributor to the ESV Men's Devotional Bible, and we won't hold that against him since the NASB is a sponsor of this program, and also the ESV Story Bible and the Mission of God Study Bible.

He's also a host of a podcast exploring Christian faith and practice from a Reformed Baptist perspective titled Doctrine and Devotion. Today we are addressing a Christian response to juicy gossip, and we are specifically talking about everything that we are learning about every day as the scandals unfold in regard to Hollywood celebrities, television personalities, and politicians.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Joe Thorne.

Chris, thanks for having me on, man. It's always an honor, and let me just tell you right now, if I was booked to be on your radio show, Grand Canyon couldn't keep me away. Grand Canyon's not going anywhere.

I don't know what this guy's problem is, but I would prioritize the radio show. I'm just letting you know that.

Well, actually, the fault is just as much in my lap as mine, because I have been busy all day and didn't take the time to remind Thaddeus this morning about our interview. But anyway, God has his reasons for having Joe Thorne on today, and Joe Thorne, according to God, was the right guest for Friday, December 1st, 2017.

Well, I'm happy to be here. And why don't you tell our listeners who are not familiar with you about Redeemer Presbyterian—I'm sorry, Redeemer Presbyterian. I'm so used to those two words following each other, especially since we have right here in Carlisle, Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a congregation that I would feel much more comfortable attending than another more infamous one.

But anyway, Redeemer Fellowship, which is a Reformed Baptist congregation in St. Charles,.

Illinois. Tell us about that. Well, Redeemer is 10 years old now, or 10 and a half years old, I guess. It is situated west of Chicago, about 40 miles, and it's made up of a very diverse, vibrant group of brothers and sisters.

The Lord loves the Word, and we're growing, we're planting churches. It is the happiest, healthiest church I've ever been a part of, and it is an honor to serve alongside the other pastors there. And I just was hanging out with our small group, lovely people there, some of my dearest friends.

Man, it's a great church that I am not worthy to even be a part of, but I brag on those people all the time, because what God has done among those people and who has made those people is really one of the greatest joys I get.

To experience on a regular basis. Amen. Well, for those of you who either live in the St. Charles, Illinois area, or you plan to visit there, or move there, or you have family, friends, and loved ones who live in that area, especially if they do not already have a Bible-believing church where they are a member, you could go to RedeemerFellowship .org.

RedeemerFellowship .org, and we hope that you make use of that website, whether you are visiting there or just gleaning knowledge from all the information that they have posted there. Well, why don't we also, before we go into our topic, have you give a little synopsis, a little brief summary of note to self, the discipline of preaching to yourself, and also experiencing the Trinity, the grace of God for the people of God.

Sure thing, yeah. Well, Note to Self was written, I guess it came out in 2011, and it's a very small book, and it's essentially a devotional. People would read a page and a half a day if they wanted to, and it's a collection of reflections on Scripture, very experiential theology, but the idea of the book, and this is laid out in the introduction, is to teach people what it means to actually preach the Gospel and to preach the Word of God in its entirety to ourselves, right?

So that we read the Word, and then it is applied to our own lives, to our own hearts, with great specificity, so that we are knowing how independence, in a very experiential way. So it models that, it explains that, and then experiencing the Trinity is also made up of a number of 50 reflections on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, where it takes those doctrines that we typically associate properly within the Godhead, but then it really drives them down into the experiential life of faith, so that when we call the omnipresence of God or the omniscience of God, we don't want it to stay there as an abstract idea, we want to show how this is a truth of God that we should, that should be having an impact in our faith and our life in a real, tangible way.

Praise God. Well, for more information about those books, you can actually order them from CVBBS .com, that's one of our sponsors, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com, and in fact, I heard about Jo Thorne originally from Patty Jennings, one of the owners of CVBBS .com, who urged me to interview Jo after she and her husband met Jo at a Bible conference they attended, and so make sure that you tell Patty and Todd Jennings that you heard about the Jo Thorne publications from Chris Arnson on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, because as I have been repeating, CVBBS .com has been going through a really big turnaround for the better in their sales, and a lot of you, I am convinced, are not telling them that you are hearing about them from Iron Trip and Zion Radio when placing your order, because this turnaround, just providentially, I don't think it was a coincidence, this turnaround has occurred right in the midst of huge promotions that we are doing for CVBBS, and it would seem too much of a coincidence to have that occur, in my opinion.

So, basically, I'm sorry? Half of the classics in my library.

Have come through Cumberland Valley. Wow. Yeah, sure. I was ordering from them back in the 90s.

Well, that's great to know, and I'm sure they will be thrilled to have you advertise them that way.

I'm going to have to pay for that.

And, in fact, if you folks, when you're ordering from CVBBS .com, you may not realize this, a way that you can tell them that you heard about them from Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I'm going to have to remember to repeat this, because I think a lot of you are just completely ignoring this option, which I just found out about through a listener.

An Iron Trip and Zion listener told me why she thinks that many of my listeners might not be mentioning the show, and she said that when you order on the internet, there is no place to indicate how you heard about the company.

There is a box for special instructions, which, in theory, could be used for that purpose, but one does not know to use the box for that purpose until after you've checked out. So, you use that box to write in there, I heard about CVBBS .com from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and by the way, they are running a 10 off discount on all of their merchandise, and until they tell me to stop, I don't know how long they are doing that, and we'll tell you more about a free offer that they are giving away.

It's a book titled The Theology of the Reformers by Timothy George. It's a $29 .99 book. They're giving it away absolutely free of charge with a minimum order of $50, so you're getting a value more than half of what you're spending by ordering through CVBBS, but we'll keep that in mind and tell you more about that when we are actually during a commercial break, but Joe, the idea of our program today, the theme of our program popped into my head because what we want to talk about is a Christian response to juicy gossip, and I think that most people, the majority of Christians even, no matter how seasoned a believer you may be, there is something in our hearts that leaps for joy even if it's just a little bit.

So with some of us, it's an enormous leap for joy. You could catapult over a building with that leap, but when we see those whose ideology or politics or theology or whatever it is that we despise about them, whatever it is that bothers us, whatever it is that we believe is a contamination to the thoughts, minds, and hearts of either the American people or people globally, if we think this person either because of their politics and especially if they are a politician, that they are a dangerous individual leading people astray, leading people into being in favor of such things as murdering unborn children, or if it's somebody that is just in the entertainment field and they're vulgar and filthy and at the same time self-righteous where they will point fingers every time a conservative especially, and perhaps even especially even more significantly when somebody professes to be a Christian or they are a pastor and they fall, well some of us, if not all of us, have a special place of joy in our hearts when we see one of those people who have been pointing the fingers and laughing have their own wickedness exposed and watch them fumble and mumble and scramble for excuses.

But I wanted you to give your opinion on a Christian response to these things as they unfold it seems every single day, in fact multiple times a day, you'll get updates on things that are being discovered and brought to the limelight because I think that there is an extreme opposite to that that is also wrong where I have already heard a very well-known, should say a well-known celebrity who professes to be a Christian whose brother is a pastor, a very well known pastor, I heard her basically saying you know well we love you Matt Lauer and we all have our problems don't let anybody get you down I will always be behind you or whatever something like that just kind of a paraphrase but I think that that could be equally as wrong to to candy coat the sins that people have committed but if you could what is your initial reaction as a Bible believing pastor who is a heart and mind trained with the scriptures and with solid theology?

Well first of all let me agree with you that we tend to give a pass to our friends and heroes when they fail miserably by either remaining silent no matter how bad it is or by verbally affirming them.

And we love to rejoice in or at least feel smug about those that are against our position or our theology when they fail. That is all sin absolutely and it needs to be repented of. And I think that the root of it all like the reason that is in all of our hearts is because the remnants of sin in the form of pride.

And so what we're doing in that moment when we love God. We want to hear about it we want to be the first one to share it with somebody else. Hey did you hear about Matt Lauer. I did it I did it I did it this week.

I said hey buddy do you hear about that Matt Lauer. And everybody's like yeah I already know. And I was disappointed that I wasn't the one that got to share the juicy gossip with him. So that sin right that sin in my heart is stemming from pride.

And what's happening I think in there is it is it's tied up in the harsh unjust unkind unbiblical judgment that Jesus was always combating that was so common among the Pharisees and scribes and the legalists.

Right it was we were called to judge rightly and compassionately uh but only in the context of having judged ourselves by the word of God and by the standards of God and dealing with our own sins. So I think it's tied up in in this idea like I get the past judgment I get to be the one to agree affirm and not this person is wrong.

What they did was terrible. And by setting ourselves up as the judge we somehow remove ourselves not just from the sin that that person committed but almost even from the possibility that we could commit that sin.

Yes and uh we it is very dangerous when we begin to think more highly of ourselves which is obviously a sin. It's a prohibition uh comes directly from the God-breathed scriptures. And we forget about the sewer that exists in our own minds.

Uh we forget that even though we have been rescued from the guilt and power of sin and the penalty of sin by the death of Christ if we are a genuinely regenerate born-again believer uh we either forget where we came from and act as if we came from the womb.

Uh that we that we are were immaculately conceived as the Roman Catholic heresy of Mary teaches. And we came from the womb sinless. And and we were reading our bibles at six months old and have been uh modeled uh members of the body of Christ ever since.

Or we could even forget that the remaining sin the vestiges and remnant of sin that still is clinging to our brain and our heart. That uh that we let's face it we are all committing sin. Even we who are the best of Christians.

And that's kind of a conceited thing to say. I guess we who are the best of Christians those who are the best of Christians is a better way of putting it. Those who are the best of Christians even have this sin.

And this is something we have to remember isn't it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think when you remember that.

Like when Jesus says hey take the plank out of your own eye right. When he gets into this in Luke six. Yeah I think the the fruit of that is wow I'm much more compassionate now with people which doesn't mean that we give them a pass on their sin right.

What it means though is that we are more understanding of human frailty sin and temptation. And it means that we don't approach this as a person who is without blame and without guilt in any area of our lives.

I think it tempers them you know the pointing finger. And instead it moves us into those situations where maybe we do have to exercise just judgment. It moves us into that with our arms out ready to help.

Right. I mean that's really kind of the whole thing with that uh that parable that Jesus tells like take the plank out of your own eye before you take the speck out of your brother's you. We are supposed to help so we are supposed to judge rightly.

We are supposed to then lay our hands on a brother or a sister now let me help you in this. Now when it comes to like the celebrities and the people that we know from a distance whether they're pastors or whatever um we can't necessarily lay our hands on them to help but what we can do is we can reach out and help the people around us understand what's going on about these things.

You know that the sin of Matt Lauer or the or the and if I'm not constantly addressing and judging my own heart if I'm not maintaining that Lauer or either just say oh what's the problem. We can address the pornography issue in our culture.

Now uh one of the things that I'm sure you agree with is that uh our initial reaction should not be necessarily to believe the reports being said about anyone even if they are somebody that we find totally repulsive whether they were involved in the scandal.

Or not. Uh I mean that's the ninth commandment right. The ninth commandment uh tells us to not bear false witness against our neighbors. Um and so that includes everything from you know not receiving a false accusation not believing every accusation as soon as it's made and defending the name of a person even if you don't like them very much if a false accusation is made.

So yeah we shouldn't be so quick to believe everything but we should desire for the truth to be made known.

Regardless of now uh because this involves this question really involves more than just celebrities whether they are uh actors performers musicians uh talk hosts news anchor men and women but it also applies for people uh within our congregation within our families within our neighborhoods uh how within our when our offices at work.

When do we start taking very seriously uh the reports like this like there is a there is a uh motto that has been repeated in the media that especially if a woman is making a report like this and i'm sure we could include in that a child uh we should immediately take it seriously but we don't necessarily have to broadcast it by when we immediately hear about it.

What is your what are your thoughts on that. Well first of all i think we should take every accusation very seriously because either it means that there is a big problem if there's an accusation there is a huge problem.

It's either on the part of the one who's being accused or the one who is doing the act the accusing right. Because uh if if if they're making a false allegation then there is a major problem on their end that has to be addressed um but if what they're saying is true then there's a problem the person who um you know is is being mentioned and being brought up.

So i i do think that if if an accusation is moved there needs to be an investigation and the way that that is done needs to be uh you know we need we need we need to find out what's going on. I've i've been a part of a church in the past where a teenager made a very serious false allegation uh against a leader in that church and this could have destroyed so much his life his marriage the church uh and in the end she finally admitted no i made that up um so as soon as the allegation was made everybody had to go um so let's go but let's sit everybody down let's talk about it.

So yeah i do think we need to take these and i guess let me say this if anytime we're talking about people superior and i mean in a bad sense i mean accusation i i am pretty yeah uh these kinds of accusations uh as.

You said uh they could destroy a person and slander and and bearing false witness against your neighbor are very prevalent sins of one degree or another. Uh i have heard many uh people who uh are pastors say they.

They believe that gossip is the is the most prevalent sin in the body of christ. And i would tend to believe that. My former pastor actually my most recent former pastor i should say uh mark ramolli of grace reform baptist church of merit long island new york.

He wrote a book called gossip the church killer. But uh we have to be not only very careful not to utter slander or and an exaggeration is also slanderous when we are saying more about the story than the facts would indicate.

I i have said on this program i have said on this program before and i've said to individuals off the air that if you are a witness in a murder trial and you know because you saw a man stab someone to death it is still bearing false witness against your neighbor and slander and sin if you saw him.

If you say from the the witness stand in the courtroom i saw him stab two people to death. Uh if you only saw him stab one it's still slander to no matter how evil this person may be to say he stabbed two.

So we can't pick and choose who we think is appropriate to be slandered. Everybody is off base when it comes to.

Slander. Right. Yeah. And we feed into this right. Because like it's why we like revenge i'm sorry it's why i like revenge movies. Because there's this part of me. There's this uh well there's this part of me that wants justice.

I want i want people to answer for their sins or i want christ to answer for those sins but i want the justice has to happen. And so when people are getting away with things it really troubles me. And so i want to be justice.

But sometimes we're so hungry for what we think is justice. It evolves into a vengeance motif right. And so we want that guy to pay every cent and even more you know. So we really want to put the screws to people's thumbs you know even after it has come out it's like we want to take it farther and farther and farther to continue to punish them.

So i don't think we need to be careful and how we talk about people that have fallen over the accusations of those who have fallen and i would also say kind of piggyback on something that you were saying that um not only do we need to be careful not to make those accusations if they aren't true and not be quick to believe them but to take them seriously when they're made.

But we also need to if we if somebody is clearly gossiping we need to be the ones to say hey man we gotta you gotta check yourself there amen. And we have to go to our first break right.

Now if anybody would like to join us on the air our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question for our guest joe thorne about this topic and uh i ask of you to give us please your for at least your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old usa.

And if uh you are asking about a personal and private matter uh that would actually prevent you from doing the very thing we're speaking out against today uh that would be ideal for you to remain anonymous.

And and we will allow you to remain anonymous and grant your request to remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking. But otherwise please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the usa.

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You just tuned us in our guest today excuse me for the scratchy throat here. Our guest today is pastor joe thorne and he is lead pastor of redeemer fellowship in saint charles illinois. He's an author and host of the podcast doctrine and devotion.

We are addressing the theme a christian response to juicy media gossip in the wake of the avalanche of the sex scandals among celebrities and politicians. If you'd like to join us on the air our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com.

Chris arnzen at gmail .com. And please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the u .s site. One of the things that i posted on facebook recently is that i think that we in the church can learn a lot from these scandals that are bombarding us in the media.

In one way and i'm sure there are many other ways. But one way we can learn from them i think is how not to ask for forgiveness or quote apologize. Right. And i gave an example of one of a one of the poor ways that a certain celebrity apologized quote quote for his misbehavior his misdeeds his sexually aggressive activity toward women who were not receptive of it and he said in basically i will paraphrase uh i understand that i have made a number of women feel horribly because of my actions and for that i am truly sorry.

And what i said in response to that was that this if you boiled it down to its essence is a response that we have heard we have all heard many times and perhaps have even said it when a when a person is cornered with irrefutable evidence of what they've done or when they've been caught in the act of doing something that is deemed to be unpleasant by the populace.

If they are not truly repentant over that action or thought or statement they will typically say i am sorry i hurt your feelings. And i said that if you really want to define what that means the majority of the time the vast majority of the time i'm sorry i hurt your feelings really means i have pity upon you because you are so thin-skinned and are so overly sensitive.

That's really what that means. I am sorry i hurt your feelings. It's not please forgive me for this horrible action that i committed or statement that i made or behavior that i demonstrated you're really saying hey i'm sorry that you can't handle it.

Yeah yeah i feel bad for.

You that's what it is. Yeah it's not. This is the difference. The puritans talk a lot about the difference between evangelical repentance and legal repentance. Right. So legal repentance being well you know what.

I'm sorry i got caught. Uh i'm sorry about the impact of what i did. And so i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna say that i'm sorry and i'm going to change my ways. But it's not evangelical. That's legal repentance.

Evangelical repentance recognizes our sin is just that sin against god and against man. And we are grieved for what we have done not just for how it has impacted people or the consequences that it might bring upon us.

It's not like the situation where i feel bad for you. It is i am broken over what i have done. A real apology a sincere. And it is altercation. Um it uh it doesn't. It gets followed with which is then on them.

It certainly isn't this i'm sorry that you feel or that i loved i love you. You know what. I'm sorry if anything that i said. So again you're not you're not sorry about what you did. You're really you're expressing some kind of regret over how somebody is not sorrow.

Certainly not godly sorrow. Um and it's not an.

Apology yeah so somebody actually very accurately uh brought that up uh in response uh to my um to my uh my post they said that uh i hate it even worse when i hate it even more when someone says i'm sorry if i hurt your feelings.

That even further places a wedge between the guilty party and their actual guilt because they're like say they're really really.

Calling into question the the integrity of the accusation and that is the most common way that people even christians will. When i go marriage counseling pre-marriage counseling we spend a lot of part of marriage right.

And um and i have to walk them through. This is a real apology. Good apology and i'm surprised at how often they're like wow yeah. So uh why don't we go through some.

Of what you believe and of course i'm assuming therefore that you believe. This is what the bible would want us to include in a statement whether it's an oral or written statement that demonstrates that you are truly not only recognizing and acknowledging your guilt but that you are truly uh asking for forgiveness that you are truly troubled by the pain that you have caused that person and that you are going to do everything you can not to repeat that action or deed or statement or behavior and will make restitution if restitution is a required element in this scenario.

Uh to tell us about some of the things that you would personally want to see. If if if someone was making for instance this statement to you or maybe even more importantly your wife or your daughter what would you want to see in a statement like that.

Well the first thing i would.

Say though about this before i give you the component that this is one of them is that restitution in some form is always necessary even if the restitution itself is only the apology and the confession everybody owes that to the person that they have a family there's an owing there's a debt.

So there isn't kind of restitution always sometimes it's just a confession. Um i would say what. Uh what what the scripture calls for and it's worth thinking about. Like uh was it first corinthian seven.

Or the second corinthian seven. I've gone on the bible in front of me so um but godly sorrow. Right. So like we can look at the at the at the classic definitions of what repentance is in the in the reformed standards.

But that the simplest one out there that that i use a lot um is james uh voices not the presbyterian guy the baptist guy. He said that uh repentance is this is first catechism for boys and girls. He says that repentance is sorrow for sin accompanied by a determination with the help of god.

Just no more. And that that's a very simple but very good way because the fundamental thing that they have to be sorry for is what they have done not just the impact the effects or the consequences that they are facing.

Right. So i would i would want them to sense to know the form of this not just atheism against god. So i would want them to sense that what they really want to know what the desire you can see enough.

Yeah. Well uh here's another thing i can't remember if you and i discussed.

This before for some reason i think that we may have as a part of a previous interview but there is even uh amongst not only christians but there is a uh a debate between very like-minded christians.