F4F | Joel Osteen: Don't Be Defined by Your Mistakes

The Difference Between Sin and Mistakes

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Rosebro. I am your servant in Jesus Christ. This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God.

No shortage of crazy things being said out there. Now if you've ever been told that you should not allow yourself to be defined by your mistakes, and I'm talking like by a pastor, and the pastor has this weird way of talking about mistakes when clearly the thing he's supposed to be talking about is sin, yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below.

Don't forget to like the video. You've been taught something very, very dangerous. Think of it this way. Think of it this way, and that is that if you were to go to the doctor and you were to describe to him symptoms that you were experiencing, seeking from him a remedy, right?

Yeah. First important rule of remedies when it comes to doctors is they have to correctly diagnose your ailment. If the doctor says, well, I think you have a cold and when in fact you have cancer, and the doctor says, I am gonna put you on theraflu, lots of liquids, and give me a call in a couple weeks, but you really actually have cancer, will the theraflu help you?

No. In fact, this doctor has misdiagnosed you. If you don't get the diagnosis right, you can't get the treatment right. Case in point, we're heading over to Lakewood, and we're gonna be listening to Joel Osteen and his message titled, Don't Be Defined by Your Mistakes.

Scripture Says Humanity Is Dead in Sin

Don't be defined by your mistakes, and we're gonna take a look at the diagnosis that Scripture gives for humanity to see if what we all suffer from is a bad case of the slipsies and the oopsie-doosies and things like that, because I assure you that's not the problem, but let's dive into this particular message, and the Lakewood servers are a little slow today, so there may be some latencies, but we'll see if we can have our editor work through that,.

But here we go. I want to talk to you today about don't be defined by your.

Mistakes. Right, don't be defined by my mistakes, okay? We can all look back and.

See times where we gave into temptation.

Wait a second there. If I give into temptation, is the devil tempting me to make a mistake? Is that what the devil's really all about? I'm going to get those people. I'm going to tempt them into mistakage.

No! That's, I'm pretty sure the devil isn't about tempting us into making mistakes. Pretty sure it has something to do with sin, but I digress. Let's continue. We let our guard down and compromised. We were sloppy and compromised.

Yeah, it sounds like sin to.

Me. Didn't handle the situation the way we should. It's easy to be defined. Yeah,.

Didn't handle the situation the way I should. By one mistake. That would be sin. Mistake in life. It's easy to what? By one mistake? Mistake. Mistakeage, yeah. So Jesus came to save us from mistakeage, to prevent us from being defined by mistakeage.

You know, this is bad. This is really bad. In fact, let's let's do this, shall we? Let's do a little bit of work in the biblical text. I think that's a good idea. So the epistle of 1st John. Now, if you know your Bible, or you're not familiar with the Bible, well, the New Testament begins with four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and that's not what I'm referring to here.

The Apostle John, who wrote the Gospel of John, also wrote three letters that are recorded for us in the epistle section of the New Testament, and they are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. Well, 1st John chapter 1 says this, if we say we have no sin, sin, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

But if we confess our sins, He, God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we have not sinned, we make Him, God, out to be a liar, and His word is not in us.

Now, that's some pretty strong stuff there. If we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves, and if we say we have not sinned, we are making God Himself out to be a liar. That's kind of an important thing.

Yeah, the problem that the Gospel seems to be the remedy for is not slipsy-oopsie-daisies or mistakage. It's sin falling way short of the glory of God. Now, let's take a look at another text, shall we?

This one, by the way, could hurt people's fee-fees, and what I mean by that is that if you're all into, like, self-esteem and stuff like that, yeah, this isn't gonna work. This text is just gonna obliterate your self-esteem.

My apologies. Scripture has a bad habit of doing that, but if you want to get a feel for just how bad things are, and by the way, we all fit into the category, into the group that Paul is describing here.

Yeah, Romans chapter 3, verse 9, the Apostle Paul says, so what then? Are we Jews any better off? Because he's been picking on the Gentiles earlier. He says, well, not at all, and then he says, we've already charged that all, all, by the way, Pontos here means all, that both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

Yeah, they're not under mistakage or slipsy-oopsie-daisies. Nope, they're under sin, as it is written, and watch this. Yeah, self-esteem alert here. Your self-esteem is about to be obliterated, and your self-righteousness, too.

It just kind of works out that way. None is righteous, no not one. That would be me and you all included. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside, and together they have become worthless.

Yeah, so that self-esteem and self-worth talk, put it all away. You're a sinner, and you're not righteous, and by the way, the Apostle Paul is directly quoting two Psalms here, and that would be Psalm 14 and Psalm 53, respectively.

The opening verses from each of them also say this exact same thing. So we get this three times in the Scripture, so yeah, if you think that,.

Well, that only appears, you know, that's the Apostle Paul, and everybody thinks.

He's a jerk. Well, the thing is that you've got Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 also say the exact same thing, so you can't just dismiss Paul here. Yeah, three times the Scriptures say this about us. Might want to pay attention.

Anyway, so all have turned aside. Together they become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throats an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.

Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and in their paths are ruin and misery in the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Dead in Trespasses and Sins

Okay, now let's add a little insult to injury, shall we? Ephesians chapter 2, the opening verses of chapter 2 says this, and you, you Christians, even the ones at Ephesus whom this letter was written to, you were, and that's right, Christians were, now the Christians are not presently, but Christians before they became Christians were, were dead in trespasses, and look at the word there again, sins.

Yeah, that's lipsy-doosies. So you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and watch this, we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Yeah, that doesn't seem to paint a very good picture of humanity here. Yeah, so let's take a look at Romans 5 then, and let's take a look at the origin of sin. How is it that we have all become sinners?

Romans chapter 5 verse 12 says,. Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin was indeed in the world before the law, the Torah was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. Yeah, look at that. Sinning, sinning, sinning, sinning, sinning, not mistaken, slipsy-doosies and things like that, nope.

Yeah, sinning, yeah. But the free gift, by the way, the free gift of forgiveness, the gospel, is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, how much more have the grace of God and the free gift by grace of the one man Jesus Christ abounded for many?

And the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin, not mistake, but sin, for judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through the one man, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of the righteousness reign through the one man Jesus Christ?

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, yeah, that's right, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

So you'll note that the problem that the scriptures seem to be pointing out that we all seem to be struggling with and guilty of is, you know, sin. And then you got the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul, one of the last letters that he wrote, so he's getting close to being martyred for the Christian faith, he's gonna have his head lifted off his shoulders by a Roman centurion.

The Apostle Paul in 1st Timothy chapter 1, starting in verse 12, writes, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer.

Notice he doesn't say a mistake-er. I was a persecutor and an insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus.

Now the saying is trustworthy, it's deserving of full acceptance, that Christ, Jesus, came into the world to save sinners. Not mistake-ers. Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost, or you can say the chief.

But I receive mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, foremost what? Sinner. Jesus Christ my displays perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life. So to the King of the ages, the Immortal, the Invisible, the only God, be honor, glory forever and ever.

Amen. So the Apostle Paul has no problem taking on the moniker of sinner. Not mistake-er. He's not being defined by his mistakes. He has no problem saying that he is the chief of sinners. How come do you, how come Joel Osteen doesn't preach and teach that?

The Gospel Is Christ Died for Our Sins

Now by the way, the gospel itself also includes the word sin. Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 15, now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel that I preach. If you want to know how to define the gospel, it's defined for us in 1st Corinthians 15.

So the Apostle Paul, I want to remind you of the gospel that I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word that I preached to you, well, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins.

That's right. The good news is that Christ, Jesus, died for our sins. Not our mistakes, our slipsie-doosies, and things like that. Nope, he died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture. So the Scripture diagnoses you and I as sinners, not mistake-ers.

And the solution to a sinner is the death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God in human flesh, Jesus Christ. And that's what the gospel says, that Christ died for our sins. But Joel Osteen says, don't be defined by your mistakes.

We continue.

By one moment, by divorce, by a business that didn't make it, by how we raised our.

Children, by divorce. Oftentimes, divorce happens as a result of one partner sinning, and if there's no sin involved that gives biblical grounds for divorce, then the divorce itself is sinful. Uh-huh, he's just saying.

The enemy is called the.

Accuser. He would love for you to go through life letting that one mistake,.

One. So apparently, you know, the average number of mistakes out there committed by humanity is, you know, one. Yeah, aside from that, we're just basically good people, you know, and you might have faltered that one time, once.

So don't let that one time you've made a slipsie-doozie, don't let that define you. Okay? That one bad season. One bad season, yeah. One. One bad, you know. So, you know, pretty much you can look across your life and say, you know, I'm, oh, totally mistake-free.

But then there's that one mistake during that one mistake season. Oh, man, and I don't want that to define me. Uh-huh. Through the one man, Adam, we.

All became sinners. Uh-huh. ...caused you to be condemned, where you're not passionate about your dreams. But that mistake didn't stop God's plan. You may have failed, but you are not a failure. This is not a biblical definition of sin.

Pelagianism and the Denial of Original Sin

Now, if you go to the archives of Fighting for the Faith, the podcast at FightingForTheFaith .com, earlier in the summer, I played a series of lectures, the second time I played it, by Phil Johnson on historical heresies.

And this is an important heresy that you need to look for in the list. If you haven't already listened to the lecture, it's the lecture on the Pelagian heresy. I'll have our editor put a link down below in the description for this episode of Fighting for the Faith.

And you need to listen to that lecture, because to sit here and talk about sin in this way is a denial, a tacit, an overtly tacit denial. Yeah, can you do, can you overtly, tacitly? Yeah, well, yeah, I think so.

It is an overt tacit denial of the doctrine of original sin, which puts Joel Osteen into the heretic category. He is a purveyor of the Pelagian heresy. To say that, well, humanity is basically good, not born dead in trespasses and sins, and that you may have been guilty of making a mistake, like a divorce or something, which was part of a bad season of your life.

But, you know, I'll let that thing define you. That is the Pelagian heresy, I would say, on.

Steroids. That was a moment in your life. Right. That was one season. Yet, yet, Romans.

5 said that through Adam we all became sinners. Paul says in Romans 2 that we were, we were born dead in trespasses and sins. The Apostle Paul, writing in Romans 3, said that none is righteous, not even one.

And John says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, and we make God.

Out to be a liar. It doesn't determine your future. Don't let that mistake.

Define who you are. Yeah, do I need to go further? Yeah, that, that whole sermon by Joel Osteen, Don't Be Defined by Your Mistakes, is a complete travesty. In fact, let me go back. We're gonna play a little bit more because he has an analogy that he's going to give from the baseball world.

Now, I'm a baseball fan. I, I, I like baseball. So I'm a Dodgers fan, in case you wanted to know, you know, that, but that, you know, I, I was trained to be a Dodgers fan by my grandfather, who, by the way, was a big Brooklyn Bums fan, and then they moved to Los Angeles.

And I grew up in Southern California, so my grandfather, when he would visit, he would, anyway, he's gonna make a, an allusion, and so, you know, see if the, well, we'll let Joel spin this out just a little bit more.

I'm not, I'm gonna be done yet, but let's, let's see if we can take a look at his, how he describes humanity and see if this fits with what we read in Scripture. If you go.

Around wearing negative labels, divorced, addicted, failed, compromised, it will keep you from the fullness of what God has in store. Do you have a biblical.

Text that says that, Joel? Because I think you just made that up. If you're a.

Bill Buckner and the Problem of Defining People by One Mistake

Baseball fan, you may remember the name Bill Buckner. Yep, I remember Bill Buckner.

And Buckner's blunder. Yeah, that's right. It was against the Mets in the World.

Series. I remember that, yeah. He was a star player for the Boston Red Sox for many years. Yep. He had more hits than Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams. Yeah. One season, he won the batting title, had the highest batting average in all of baseball.

He was a great teammate, a leader in the clubhouse. But in 1986, during the World Series, he went to field a slow rolling ground ball and missed it. It went right between his legs and the other team scored and tied the game.

That opponent went on to win the World Series. The fans were so upset, so disgruntled, they never let him live it down. He became known as the player that missed the ground ball.

Right. Yeah. So note the analogy here, you know, Buckner, I mean, hall of fame material. I mean, great leader, amazing player, great stats, more hits than Joe DiMaggio. That's you, you know, and then, you know, you know, you just miss the one thing, you know, that that one mistake.

Right. Yeah.

Despite his illustrious career, despite all of his hits, all the runs he scored, they didn't remember any of that. All they remembered was that one bad play, that one mistake. Bill Buckner passed away earlier this year, 33 years after that game.

The first line in the National Associated Press article was Bill Buckner, a star hitter who became known for making one of the most infamous plays in baseball. People will try to define you by your mistakes.

Yeah. You can't, you can't fix this. It's, it's, it's broken. I just, it's wow. So to describe you and me as basically star players on God's team. And you know, we like Buckner, man, we just blew it on one ground ball and it was a mistake, man.

We didn't even mean to, you know, I was, I was putting in my best effort and, and, and then I, you know, I made a bad mistake. No, that's, that's not how that works. Let me remind you again, what the apostle John wrote.

Remember, John is the one whom Jesus loved. All right. John says, if we say we have no sin, sin, sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God is faithful. And just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we may God out to be a liar and his word is not in us. Yeah. Joel Osteen, straight up Pelagian heretic. To describe, to describe sin in this way as a one-time one-off mistake is, well, this is, this is a pulpit abuse.

This, this is malpractice of the highest order. This man is not a sound teacher. And if he can't get the problem correct, there's no way the solution that he's going to give you is going to help you at all.

Instead, it's going to land you in hell. Now, I hope you found this helpful. If so, all the information on how you can share the video down below, don't forget to like the video, ring the bell, and if you don't already support Fighting for the Faith, all the information on how you can support us by becoming a crew member, that's down below in the description.

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