Sunday Night Oct 1 2017

Well, obviously this tickles some ears because he's got 24 ,000 people who come. Among those, he tells a story, the title of his sermon that I watched was The Modern Christian Family, a play on the title of the sitcom, The Modern Family, and he was telling a story about how there was this couple and the man was a closet gay and he left his wife to go live a homosexual lifestyle with this other man and so she was, you know, broken and hurt by that, but she got a new boyfriend and her son and his daughter hit it off fine, but this guy was still, they hadn't divorced yet, but this guy and his gay partner decided that they still wanted to go to church, so they went to another campus of Andy Stanley's mega church and they really liked it and felt very welcome, so they wanted to get involved and be part of the volunteers, you know, welcoming people, but then they found out that this gay couple were not living together properly because this man had not yet fully divorced his wife, so they had to get that clear up and go ahead and have him divorce his wife so this gay couple could live together without sin, so they got to be volunteers.

And then one Christmas, they all got together and there was the gay couple and the ex-wife with her new husband and here's the modern Christian family. Not a word of scripture for the whole thing, folks.

That was his sermon. And Andy Stanley has all sorts of material and curriculum that is sold by Lifeway and Mardell and so on and so forth and he's the big rubber stamp name that everybody should look to.

Folks, that's going on all over the name because I protest. That's not Christianity. Who else did I mention? I'll pick on Joe Osteen. Hey look, I'm not the only one who picked on Joe Osteen. Benny Hinn had a conniption fit about Joe Osteen.

Joe Osteen had an interview with Larry King and Larry King is used to interviewing John MacArthur. So he's hitting him with all the hard questions he used to hit John MacArthur with. And Joe Osteen said, I don't know, 63 times.

I have the transcript. 63 times, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But what he did know was that his father, who had been on mission trips to India, saw the sincerity of the Hindus and certainly whatever light they're responding to, God would honor and they're going to be in heaven with us.

Benny Hinn went off. He was so upset. He said, you're telling me that there's another way to be saved other than Jesus? And for five minutes he sounded like a conservative Baptist preacher. He went off about Joe Osteen.

Then he went back to all of his craziness. But I mean, if you make him upset, I mean. So I drop names sometimes because there's a lot of popular and a lot of packaging. When I was in college, I read a book by Brian McLaren, who's a heretic.

I didn't know he was. I thought it was a really cool story and I'm kind of moving along with the characters he's talking about. I really want to get into his book. And by the end of it, you know, I'm supposed to believe that this is full of errors.

You can't really know anything for sure. And you're just hoping that you'll feel your way through. I didn't know what I was reading. I didn't have somebody to come alongside. Of course, Becca's dad knew.

He was kind of worried about it. But I think it's helpful sometimes to know. And I don't do it cruelly or anything. Paul was a name dropper and he did it for the good of the church. Watch out, be careful, so on and so forth.

So hope that answers. Good question, Ken. Any other questions? Yes. I don't quite remember, I don't remember anything about, I know that the crowds tried to force, forcibly make him king after he fed them the bread and fishes.

But what Jesus did was that he withdrew from the crowds. And in John's narrative, we find that they followed him and tried to track him down. And he explained his ministry and his purpose more clearly to the point.

He explained it so clearly to them, John 666, that many of them who used to be following him left him and went somewhere. They were done with him. So I don't know, I do know Jesus Christ was tempted. He was tempted by Satan.

He was tempted in such ways that Satan seemed to emphasize, let's go ahead, you can go ahead and get to glory without suffering. If you just worship me, I'm going to give you all the kingdoms. You don't have to go through the cross, is the basic gist of it.

But Jesus did not and could not sin. Some people have a problem with that. That if he, if there wasn't the possibility of him sinning, then how can he really know what we go through? But Heber says he does.

And he was tempted in the way that we are yet without sin. And I would say that if you think about it, whereas we often give in in our sin at some point along the level of temptation, as it intensifies, he never gave in.

And it only intensified and intensified and intensified and intensified, but he never sinned, he never gave in. So he knows what it means to be tempted more fully than we would ever know. And he's our advocate and he's the one who comes to help us.

So I don't see anything in scripture necessarily that says Jesus was struggling with what the crowds were offering to him, but certainly he knew it was wrong and he rejected it. So anything else? Yeah, that's kind of part of their common understanding of the way the world worked.

If you had a Roman general or emperor who had all authority in his grand empire and kingdom, the best two seats in the house were on the right and left hand. So what they're saying is, we know you're a king, we know that you're grand and glorious and you're bringing your kingdom to pass and all of this.

So, when you get your kingdom, we'd like to have the best two seats in the house, please. You see, that's what they're asking for. Well, I think that they were thinking in very earthly terms and Jesus was trying to teach and instruct them and disciple them as they were always fighting with one another, who's going to be the greatest.

He was trying to, no, no, no, this is the way the Gentiles do it, but the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the least in my kingdom. So I guess it's just part and parcel of trying to teach them the way things happen in his kingdom are different.

They didn't get it at first. Well, that's part of my lesson tonight so I can't give that away yet. And I may not get to it tonight, so you have to come back next week. Okay, I've got to hold on to that.

Please. And another way of asking it is, why did God create Adam and Eve able to sin and why did he in his sovereign providence ordain a world which would turn out the way that it has, especially as we look around and see all of the sin and misery of the world?

And that's a good question. It's a question that believers have been asking for many generations. The Psalms, Jeremiah 12, which is coming up after we get done with the solas, Habakkuk, Job, and then parts of the New Testament even.

People are asking that question. Why did we have to go through? But when you read Genesis it says, God made everything just the way that he made it. He stepped back and said, very good. So we have to lean into that even as we recognize that we have mystery.

Also, when we come to the end of the story, we don't have two human beings, righteous but able to fall. We have a multitude which no man can count, glorified so that they're not able to sin and fall in the new creation.

So I can't answer exactly why God ordained it all to happen in the way that it did, but I do know that at the end of all things, he is more than vindicated in his wisdom and in his goodness and in his righteousness, for he reveals to us what he brings about through his son, Jesus Christ.

What's your other question? Well, we've got two different creatures here, angels and men, and there is no redeemer for angels. If there was a redeemer for angels and God saved them, he would save them to the uttermost so that they could never fall again, but there is no redemption for angels.

There is, however, graciously, salvation for man. The quality and the nature of Christ's satisfaction of the Father is to such a degree that there is no failure in what he does. There is no failure at all in what Christ achieves on the cross and through his resurrection from the dead so that all that he saves will never fail and never fall.

That's about the nature and the person and the work of Christ. That's the reason why we are not going to fall ever for all of eternity. Yeah, I'm not sure that may be part of his plan, but certainly he is glorified.

The scriptures tell us in a variety of ways that everything that God does in judgment and in salvation is for his glory, and the manner in which he saves us is glorious. I don't think I'm in a position to say.

There's a mystery there that I don't know how to go too far into. When you go to the Grand Canyon, you go to stand on the edge and look at it. You don't go to jump in, and there's parts of the truths of God that you go to look at, but you don't go to jump in.

I think that may be part of that. I think that certainly we find in the gospel, when you go to the heart of all things, we find that they were gathered together in Jerusalem against Christ, God's anointed one.

Pilate and Herod and the Gentiles and the Jews to do whatever God's hand predestined to occur is the prayer in Acts 4, and that God brought the greatest good, the outworking of his gospel through the greatest evil ever committed on the face of the planet, the murder of God's only begotten son.

We find how glorious God is in all the good that he brings out of this great evil which occurred. That gives me confidence. I don't know his reasoning behind his eternal counsel, but I can see the outworking of it, and I can see that he's maximally glorified in the way that he shepherds all of history into the fold of his glory.

I think the fold is Christ-shaped. I hope that helps. I don't know if it does or not. Do any of the elders want to help me tackle that one? We know more about God and see more of his glory and his goodness when we experience his forgiveness, when we see his redemption of sinners than otherwise if we had never seen that.

Is that maybe possibly part of the reason why God created things in such a way that Adam and Eve were able to fall?

I read a story once about a sculptor by Kenneth Wiest. He said he was going to make a new piece. Somebody said, what are you going to make? He said, I'm going to make a sculpture of my son. He went down to the quarry to pick out a block to make a statue of his son.

The foreman of the quarry took him over and said, this is a really good piece of, what was it, granite or marble? This is a really good piece. The sculptor looked around and said, no, I don't want that one over there.

The foreman said, no, that one's got a bad crack in it and it's got bad color to it. That wouldn't be a good piece at all. He said, that's okay. That's okay. My son found it, just like you said. That's an interesting illustration, yeah.

How far down would he go? Would he reach, like the song, I love that song about the love of God, the love that reaches to the highest star and to what? The lowest hell. The lowest hell, is that the word?

Okay. Just how far down would God reach to save a person? Just how long is his life? That's a good thought.

He gets more glory, right? Do you have any thoughts, guest, elder, or the Danny?

Well, I'm just considering the 1911, the most striking statement of the sovereignty of God and the salvation of sinners, and he concludes that with, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable that is.

I think we see some glimpses, but it's so far beyond us, I think. It's hard to pin it down, I think, in some ways. Sure. No, I wouldn't believe that. I wouldn't believe that communion with God would be sweeter post-sin.

I mean, I think when believers are, but again, forgiveness is wonderful, but I think we have to look at the idea of forgiveness and that idea of being reconciled to God and realizing that reconciliation through the gift of forgiveness, that this is a taste of what it ought to be in full all the time.

The forgiveness, the coming back, you're being reconciled to God. Christ died upon the cross, sacrificing himself to us to bring us to God, that this is our greatest good. The forgiveness gives us a taste of that, a sense of that, but I would say that living a life without sin, in an unbroken fellowship with God, without the curse, I think that's far, far, far sweeter.

I guess what we have in the new creation, in heaven, especially in the new creation, when we were raised from the dead and we live as we were created to live, fully body and soul, one whole. I did it again, folks.

I am studying and studying about Noah in Genesis 8. Oh, you want me to go to 7 o 'clock? I'll tell you what, you'll be Bereans. I am just enthralled with this dove that comes back to Noah. Why a dove?

And we have all these ideas and popular thought about a dove is a sign of peace and an olive branch is a sign of peace. Where do we get those ideas from anyway? But I'm just enthralled with the dove coming back to Noah with the olive leaf in her beak.

I just am. I can't get away from it. And I'm going back and forth from Genesis 8 to 1 and 2 Peter and the descriptions of Noah there and his connection to Christ. I'm also going to, especially to Jesus' baptism in Matthew 3.

As he is baptized and he comes out and the spirit of God descends in the form of a dove. And why in the world is it a dove? Why is that the form that God takes? And I'm thinking about those things. And I'm also thinking about Pentecost Acts 2.

And I'm just studying and rejoicing and I feel like I'm watching something, but I don't fully understand it yet. So maybe that's why I have so many questions. But if you want to read Acts 2 and look in 2 Peter for things about Noah and Christ.

If you want to read Matthew 3 and Christ's baptism in Genesis 8 and just stare at it for a little while. I think we'll be ready to go next time we're together. Sound good? All right. Okay. Let me write.

I'll do it. I'll do it better than that. Okay. There's Genesis 8 and then Matthew 3 Acts 2. Yeah. See, that's a good question. I don't know. So anyway, it's just I'm rejoicing as I read and as I reflect.

So maybe we'll get us ready for next. Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out. Why is it a dove? Why is it a dove? So I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn. Well, let's close. Let's close with singing the doxology as we.