Becoming Better Theologians (part 9)

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Becoming Better Theologians (part 10)

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Father, we praise you this morning for your constant goodness and care of us.
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For all that you have given us, all that you have surrounded us with. Father, we thank you even that we could be here this morning, that we would have shelter from the cold, that we would have a place to come and worship you, that we would have your word.
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Father, we pray that your spirit would attend this morning as we open up your word and talk about you and what you have revealed about yourself.
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In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, I wonder how many of you, and you know
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I wasn't a biology major in college, but did you see what NASA did this week?
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Where they released this information that they found this new life form, and the interesting thing to me about this life form, and again,
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I don't know that much about biology, but it seems like a problem to me. Anybody read that story?
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Daniel. And what did they discover? Okay, the definition of life as we know it has changed, meaning life forms.
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Because they discovered a life form that apparently feeds on arsenic. And I sort of,
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I mean, we'll see how this unfolds in the weeks and months to come. I tend to think that the evolutionists will say, well, look at the broad variety and scope of life.
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But think about this for just a minute, and I don't want to move on, but I just thought it was interesting. If all life began with a single cell, which is the theory, and that that cell divided, etc.,
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etc., etc., how would a cell go from having arsenic as poison to arsenic as food?
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You know, what would the transitional forms be like? You know, the transitional form that only mostly died from arsenic?
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It just doesn't, you know, one, I don't know. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But bacteria that feed on petroleum, they use it to clean up spills.
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Right. But I mean, this is this is just wholly, wholly different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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I just think it's interesting. So we'll see what they what they do with it. I have a question.
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Well, I have several questions for you this morning, but why is it Culver wrote these chapters and he titled them,
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Why do people believe? And I started thinking, well, I'd rather talk for just a few minutes about why people don't believe.
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Why is it that people don't believe in Christ? Because they don't see him, meaning they don't see his physical presence.
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So if they could see him, would they believe? No. And we know that because they didn't believe.
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I mean, how many believers were there after Christ ascended? Few hundred.
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I mean, we know that he appeared to how many after his resurrection, 500. So pretty small group, however many exactly there were.
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I mean, I don't think they had too many troubles keeping the rules of the early church, at least not till after Pentecost.
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But so it wasn't just that. But why do people not believe, Peggy? OK, ultimately, they want to be their own
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God and their own judge. That's right. They don't want to have anyone stand in judgment over them.
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They hate his words. They hate his words, Casey said. Absolutely. They love their sin.
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In a conversation yesterday, if you look at, for instance, the Muslims and assume for the sake of argument, the liberals are hoping, they're agreeing with the
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Muslims. And they seem to be pretty much pushing against Christianity. But the
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Muslims would basically kill a lot of the side that are helping.
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One of the things that the women do, they persecute the women.
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They don't even allow them in the center section of their church. So it can't be what they're doing because Christians speak against homosexuality.
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Matter of fact, they'll say we don't allow women in the leadership. It's much more stringent on the
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Muslim side. But they favor the Muslim side. So the only thing that I can think of is that it's a just and holy
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God that is the reason that they don't like Christians, whereas they don't really believe that Muslims is a true religion or a sincere.
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It really is remarkable. Daniel was pointing out the differences in which the unbelieving world, and by unbelieving
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I mean those who say that they're atheists or have no real profession of any particular religion, how differently they view
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Islam and Christianity. The things that Islam does, and Daniel rightly cited homosexuality, what do they do with homosexuals?
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Stone them. What do they do with women outside, not in the accompaniment of someone in their family.
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They attack them and they don't allow them any kind of, in Saudi Arabia I don't think you're, as a woman, you're allowed to drive.
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They're all manner of things. I was just reading about somebody who, a professional woman in her 40s and wasn't allowed by law to get married because her father wouldn't permit it.
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You know, just on and on and on it goes. And those same things that so many people, they just ignore when it comes to Islam.
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If anything, remotely, I mean look at how they treat Christianity and I hear all the time that we're trying to establish a
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Christian state and overthrow the government and establish the Ten Commandments.
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And I'm going, I know there are people like that, but I think there are about 25 of them or so. I mean, there aren't that many.
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Pam? There's precedent for what Daniel said though, because the Herodians, the Romans, the Pharisees, the
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Sadducees and the common people had a lot of animosity between them and different agendas and didn't like a lot of things about each other, yet they came together in hatred of Christ.
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Pam raises a great point that during Christ's time there were a number of different factions, the Herodians and all these other
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Eons and Eons and whatnot. They all hated each other, but they could all unite on one thing.
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They hated the Lord Jesus Christ. I had a few reasons why people don't believe.
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They were not chosen. Ephesians chapter 1 says what?
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Let's just go to Ephesians chapter 1. Before the foundations of the world, something like that, yeah.
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Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, Even as he chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
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In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
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This is before the foundation of the world. So when I say, it's kind of a funny place for a gigantic toothpick.
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When I say that they were not chosen, it's an indication in Ephesians chapter 1 that to be saved you had to be chosen before the foundation of the world.
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How about this? They hate God. That's a reason why they're not saved.
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Believers are not neutral towards God. They hate him. They're his enemies. I mentioned last week,
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I think it was last week, Psalm 5 says that God loves sinners but hates the sin.
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Is that what Psalm 5 says? He hates sinners. Somebody said, well I was always taught that God loves sinners but hates their sin.
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I'm going, what? I know that's what you were always taught. The question is, what does the Bible teach? It's fashionable to say that.
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What's that? It applies only to Christians. It applies only to Christians, what? That he hates their sin and loves the sinners.
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That's right. Okay, another reason I had is that they hardened themselves.
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If you recall, it was said of Pharaoh that what? He hardened his heart. I'll say this, they are hardened by God.
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Not only says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart but that God hardened his heart.
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Another reason I had was why people don't believe is because the gospel is foolishness to them.
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1 Corinthians 1 .18, they hear it and they think it's stupid. Steve, could you expound upon the church of Laodicea and how they fit in because Christ said that they were neither hot nor cold.
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They were lukewarm. And so he would spit them out of his mouth. Is that a belief apostate church?
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Yeah, I would say they were an apostate church. They were a church that had a form of the truth but were not faithful, thus lukewarm.
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They were not cold, meaning just unbelieving but superficial.
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So ultimately he will cast them out of his mouth, meaning they will not be saved.
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I wanted to turn to Jeremiah chapter 5.
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Yes, okay, Dottie. I think that's a great reason.
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All the false teachers that are on radio and TV in the name of Christ. And it really does, it's an additional hardening agent.
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People see these charlatans or hear these charlatans and they come to hate
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Christianity because they're not hating actual Christianity.
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It's this caricature of Christianity. That's a good point. Jeremiah chapter 5.
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I'm going to read this because I'm going to read the whole thing. God talking to the prophet says,
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Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem. Look and take note.
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Search her squares to see if you can find a man. One who does justice and seeks truth that I may pardon her.
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Just one person so that Jerusalem can be pardoned. Though they say as the
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Lord lives, yet they swear falsely. What's that statement even say?
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These are people who profess a belief in God, but it's a lie.
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Verse 3, O Lord, do not look or do not your eyes look for truth. You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish.
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These people have been judged and yet they have no sorrow. You have consumed them, but they refuse to take correction.
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They have made their faces harder than rock. They have refused to repent.
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Then I said, these are only the poor. They have no sense, for they do not know the way of the
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Lord, the justice of their God. I will go to the great and will speak to them, for they know the way of the
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Lord, the justice of their God. But they all alike had broken the yoke.
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They had burst the bonds. All the people were in rebellion against God.
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Verse 6, Therefore, a lion from the forest shall strike them down. A wolf from the desert shall devastate them.
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A leopard is watching their cities. Everyone who goes out of them shall be torn to pieces. Because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great.
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How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods.
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When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery, that is, they went after false gods, and trooped to the houses of whores.
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They were well -fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor's wife.
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Shall I not punish them for these things, declares the Lord? And shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?
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Go up through her vine rows and destroy, but make it not a full end. Strip away her branches, for they are not the
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Lord's. For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly treacherous to me, declares the
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Lord. They have spoken falsely of the Lord, and have said, He will do nothing, no disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine.
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The prophets will become wind, the word is not in them, thus shall it be done to them.
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People have judgment on them, and yet what do they say? God's not going to do anything to us. Verse 14
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Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, Because you have spoken this word, behold,
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I am making my words in your mouth a fire, and this people would, and the fire shall consume them.
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Behold, I am bringing against you a nation from afar, O house of Israel, declares the Lord. It is an enduring nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know, nor can you understand what they say.
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Their quiver is like an open tomb. They are all mighty warriors.
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They shall eat up your harvest and your food. They shall eat up your sons and your daughters. They shall eat up your flocks and your herds.
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They shall eat up your vines and your fig trees, your fortified cities in which you trust.
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They shall beat down with the sword. But even in those days, declares the
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Lord, I will not make a full end of you. And when your people say, Why has the
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Lord our God done all these things to us? You shall say to them, As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.
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What's he saying? What's the Lord saying? You don't want to draw me.
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I'll let you do what you're seeking. But what else? They had served foreign gods, meaning idols in the promised land.
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And so what does he tell them? You're going to be taken off into captivity and you're going to serve foreigners there.
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You think you're safe and secure. You're not. Verse 20, declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah.
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Hear this, oh, foolish and senseless people. And here we go. Who have eyes but see not, who have ears but hear not.
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Do you not fear me, declares the Lord? Do you not tremble before me? I place the sand as the boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass.
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Though the waves toss, they cannot prevail. Though they roar, they cannot pass over it. But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart.
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They have turned aside and gone away. They do not say in their hearts, let us fear the Lord our
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God, who gives us the rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.
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Your iniquities have turned these away and your sins have kept good from you. For wicked men are found among my people.
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They lurk like fowlers lying in wait. They set a trap. They catch men like a cage full of birds.
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Their houses are full of deceit. Therefore, they have become great and rich. They have grown fat and sleek.
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They know no bounds in deeds of evil. They judge not with justice, the cause of the fatherless to make it prosper.
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And they do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things, declares the
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Lord? Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this? An appalling and horrible thing has happened to the
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Lord. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule at their direction.
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My people love to have it so. But what will you do when the end comes?
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The people are happy with the situation that they're in. They've gone after these false gods.
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They've made a killing financially. They are fat, dumb and happy.
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But God is going to bring judgment. And why is He going to do that? Two reasons
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I can think of. One is His glory. He's not going to let
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His people serve false gods. And what's the second reason? His holiness.
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But I would put that in with the first one. What's the second one though? His judgment.
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Again, I would put that in with the first one. What's the other reason? He even says He's not going to make an end of them.
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He's not going to utterly destroy them. Because He's chosen them and so therefore
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He loves them. So on the one hand, He's wrathful. He's vengeful. He's going to judge their sin.
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And on the other hand, He's going to save some of them. He's not going to let them utterly be obliterated or absorbed by these invaders.
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I think often our thoughts, even last week when we went through Psalm 50, our thoughts of God are too low and our thoughts of mankind are too high.
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Why don't people believe the gospel? Because they don't want to worship a God like that and they don't want to think of themselves as needy.
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And they can't. I mean, even in that passage, Jeremiah 5, it says what?
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They have eyes but they do not see. They have ears, they cannot hear. So I want to talk...
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Pam. Good point.
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Pam says we tend to think of it as an innocent inability to not be able to believe, but it really isn't.
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It's a hardening. It's a choice. It's a sinful rejection of the truth over and over and over again.
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But I'm going to use some of this material here from Kirk Daniels before we get back to Culver.
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Talking about reprobation is something that we don't talk about all that often. He has a few questions here.
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Why do some people never believe the gospel? And then he answers his own question because they were not elected but were reprobated.
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We're going to discuss what that means in a minute. Well, basically, let me just give you a preview. It means one of two things.
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It can mean that they were simply passed over, that God did not choose them, or it could mean that he actively chose them for damnation.
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Question number two. Are they reprobate because they do not believe or do they not believe because they were reprobated?
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Right? I mean, which comes first? Answer. They do not believe because they were reprobated.
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That's what Daniel says. Question number three. How does God carry out the eternal decree of reprobation in time?
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Answer. God carries out the decree of reprobation by hardening the hearts of the reprobates.
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And we're going to talk about that a little bit. Let me read something from the Westminster Confession.
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As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God as a righteous judge for former sins doth blind and harden, from them he not only withholdeth his grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had and exposes them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin and gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world and the power of Satan, whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves, even those means which
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God uses for the softening of others. When you hear that sort of language, what do you think about?
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What the Westminster Confession of Faith just said. I'll tell you what passage immediately came to my mind.
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Romans chapter one, actually, was what I was thinking. Let's look at Romans chapter one. Right.
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Now, we've read verse 18 through 20 several times, but I'll read it again anyway, but I'm going to read all the way through to the end.
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Romans chapter one, verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse. No one has an excuse for not believing in God because there's plenty of evidence all around them.
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Verse 21. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things, right? This is what mankind does.
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They turn from the living, existing God and make up images of created things and worship them.
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Verse 24. Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.
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Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
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Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.
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And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
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Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty from their error.
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Verse 28. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
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They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
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Other than that, they're doing pretty well. Verse 32. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
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That passage there teaches us a lot.
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But if we're talking about why people don't believe and how they are hardened, can you see that there are two sides to this equation here?
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What happens? Men sin, and then what does God do in response? He hardens them further.
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They harden themselves, He hardens them further. And they say, fine, we're going to harden ourselves further. And He says, fine, I'm going to harden you further.
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And it's just this constant back and forth, back and forth until we get to the world exactly the way it is in 2010.
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Yeah, Pam says that there's even grace and mercy in that and that the misery that's brought on by all this causes people to look for answers and even if they choose the wrong answers, it gets them out looking.
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And it is... I had a thought but I forgot it. Charlie. His son's bride no longer worships the bridegroom.
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He lets the bride worship the bride and commit indecent acts with one another.
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So it's funny, there's a sexual penalty for abandoning God. Yeah, there definitely is a sexual penalty for abandoning
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God and the whole... getting back to what you said in the beginning, that there isn't enough evidence in nature itself to save us.
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There's enough to let us know that there's a creator. We've talked about that quite a bit. We can just look at the order and the structure of things and know that it wasn't random.
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Nobody can actually believe it and we'll get to that eventually, this idea of where did everything come from.
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Well, that is a fundamental question of philosophy. It's a fundamental question of science. It's a fundamental question for all of us.
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Where did everything come from? But to get back to the moral situation here and the salvific question, which is this, that why do people not believe?
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Well, they don't believe because they love their sin, they hate God, and God further hardens them as they continue to sin.
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And so there's this devolving of the culture that ultimately winds up, as Charlie said, it brings more glory to God because ultimately if creation can't save, then only
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God's grace can save. But also it shows the futility of their minds because eventually they are given over to relationships that God never intended and that make no sense and that now everybody has to just agree to.
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And then now we even celebrate it. I mean, we recorded some show here not too long ago.
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I won't mention it by name, but it had to do with Alaska. And they're advertising this show that comes on after it where this guy has multiple wives and I'm going, are you kidding me?
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It's like a reality show about something that's a crime in every state in the nation and they're making money on this.
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And I just thought, this is a bizarre world we live in where they not only take the things that they know that are worthy of death, but they not only let them go, but they give hearty approval to them.
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And I wonder what the ratings are. Steve? Yes. I also think people don't realize that hell is a real place.
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They're like all their friends, and most people who have, they will.
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In other words, they will, well, I'll have all my friends there anyway. So they don't really think of hell as being a place of horror.
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That's right. They don't think of hell as being a place of horror. But I think that's also, again,
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I think it gets back to the fundamental issues. They don't think of God's holiness as, you know,
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God is a better version of us. And we're not all really that bad. My friends, they don't do anything worse than I do.
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And, you know, we do charity events and yada, yada, yada. So how bad can it be?
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And if there is a hell, surely we'll all be there having a good time together, and maybe we won't be running around with harps and wings, but who likes that stuff anyway?
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You know, it's this caricature of hell. Let's look at Isaiah 6.
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And this is something that was referred to, again, in Jeremiah.
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Yes. Do you mean that that's irreversible?
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Well, I mean,
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I think, you know, ultimately, I think what's interesting because the Romans 1 did say or does talk about inventors of evil.
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And I think this is kind of when you leave the natural order of things, that homosexuals have really kind of gone as far as they can to kind of shake their fist at God.
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So I think that's definitely true. You know, can people be saved out of that? Yes, just as an adulterer can be saved out of that, as a liar can be saved, as anyone else can be saved because it's by grace, not because of how bad they are, but because of how great
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God is and his great power to transform lives. But, you know, that whole phrase inventors of evil,
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I mean, do you ever get shocked? You just kind of see what people do to each other, you know?
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And the, I mean, I just remember this is probably like ten years ago. There was an article in the
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LA Times about people who would stick things under their skin like marbles.
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This guy had all these marbles under his skin, and I just thought, how do you even think that up?
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And that's what, you know, it's just like inventors, they're just doing everything they can to deface the image of God.
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That's right, they're an image bearer of God, and so in their minds they're going to, now I would argue that it's mostly a spiritual image, but it doesn't matter to them.
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They're going to deface whatever they can because by doing that, it's an assault on the
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God that they hate. Whether that's actually how they're thinking or not, that's... Oh yeah, and it definitely,
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I mean, this can go on a personal level too. I mean, when we, you know, step by step, we start ignoring the truth.
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Let's just make it really simple. We stop having meeting with the saints, you know, which is a commandment in the scripture.
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We just kind of step by step, we stop reading the scripture, we stop praying, we stop doing this, we stop doing that.
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Well, you know, are we going to stay in a level of neutrality? No. Things are going to get worse.
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And so in our society, it's the same thing. You know, as we go from one step to another, to another, to another, it's going to get worse.
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And, you know, eventually common sense, just to put it on a real crass level, you know, one of the things in this
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Financial Peace University class on Tuesday night, you know, when
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Dave Ramsey says something like, live on less than what you make, that's common sense.
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But, you know, for some of us, it's kind of like this. We just kind of go, Come again?
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Because that's not what we're accustomed to, you know, and when we step back and we really think about it, we go, well, that's really common sense.
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And then, you know, you hear people today say, well, the government can't cut its budget. I don't know, what about living on less than what you make, you know?
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I mean, it's just kind of a, again, it's kind of a common sense sort of thing, but once you abandon those kind of things, then it just gets worse and worse and worse.
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The more, you know, you rationalize things in your mind, why is that?
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Why do we rationalize things in our mind anyway? To satisfy our conscience, but also because we're, how do we confuse ourselves?
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Self -deception, Jeremiah 17, the heart is deceitful above all else, wicked. And so there's a certain, and there's certainly a strain of this in evangelicalism, where, you know, and even as we talk about neo -orthodoxy, which we all know is a new form of orthodoxy, which is not really new or orthodox, but it's based on feelings.
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You know, I feel, I mean, if someone else says to me, I mean, I had somebody, nobody, you know, say to me this week that they were convinced that God wanted them to do something, and I'm going, you know,
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I don't have a verse that says you shouldn't do that. I just look at it from a common sense standpoint, and I'd say, you're mad.
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You know, but I can't stop you. But when we start doing that, when we kind of use our own judgments, and we say, well, it's really not so bad what
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I'm doing. You know, the church is full of hypocrites. I don't like Steve.
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I don't like Dave. That Pradeep is evil. I can say that because he's not here.
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But when you start thinking like that, you're going, hey, you know what, the Bible and me, and, you know, and it can just start a slide that is well -intentioned, but eventually leads to disaster.
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Yeah, Peggy. I still say it's all depravity, because if we start putting, like, well, this is all sinning.
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It's all deserving of death. It's a great point, Peggy, because I said we think too highly of ourselves.
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We think our thoughts of God are too low, and I would add to that what Peggy just said, and I'll just kind of summarize it, which is that our thoughts of sin are too benign.
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You know, our tendency is to think of sin as a sliding scale. You know, there's jaywalking, and then there's murder.
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I mean, you know, and God says, you go to hell for jaywalking. I speak in metaphorical terms.
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Yeah, I mean, our tendency is to think of little sins as not that significant.
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If you violate one sin, you violate them all. Yep. Yes. And I have a feeling that while he was talking to a specific group,
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I have a feeling that he was addressing the televangelists and the radio people, you know, those people too.
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But, yeah, there are certainly gradations of sin in terms of seriousness.
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There are gradations of sin in that sense, but ultimately, salvificly, when it comes to salvation, one sin is the equivalent of another.
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Pam. Yeah. Yeah, Pam brings up a good point.
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You know, how often is a witnessing opportunity ruined by basically a sense of pride because we think of a person's sin as being so bad that maybe we wouldn't even talk to them or we'd talk down to them.
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You know, and I just think, you know, how much damage is being done by this little group out there, where are they, in Kansas?
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You know, they have the website that, I'll clean it up a little bit, godhateshomosexuals .com,
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but that's not really what the name of it is, and it's, you know, this so -called church, and they appear at all these military funerals, and you just go, how could anybody watch that and then say,
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I would like to be a Christian or I'm interested in Christianity or, you know, I think
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I need salvation. I'd be looking at it and going, if I was an unbeliever, I'd just be, those people are horrible.
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On the flip side of that, Quinn, this week I'm having a very strenuous and somewhat troublesome dialogue with a dear friend of mine who's going to a church, and he's on the love, love, love side of it, and for him it is an election, and I keep putting scripture in front of him and asking him, please show me your rebuttal of how we get there, and he gave me 2
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Peter 3, and I said, well, you've taken that out of context. You didn't even let words out of it. Then I asked him an interesting question.
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I said, how prevalent is sin in your church? And he said, well, it's all over the place. And I said, well, is it accepted?
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And he said, well, yeah, everyone. And you just have to love these people. Yeah, and to Daniel's point, the more of a premium a church places on, and I'm going to use this word, and then
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I'm going to define it, on love in the sense that love is just blind acceptance.
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The more of a premium you place on that, the more sin you're going to have in the church.
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What a church needs to be thinking about and needs to be reminded of, and that's what we try to do here, is our own sinful hearts, our own constant need of reminder of the holiness and the transcendence of God, of the truthfulness of his word, and so when we have a church, not this church, but when we have a church that is so focused on, and you can go to website after website after website of these churches where, you know, our emphasis is on being a loving community that accepts all sorts of people, and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.
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Well, then you're going to have all sorts of people coming in there that are going to be having all sorts of sin that they're never going to be confronted on, that they're never going to repent of, and that they're ultimately, you know, they're going to be those
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Matthew 7 sort of people who say, well, didn't we go to the soup kitchen in your name, and didn't we, you know, go build houses for habitats or houses for whatever, you know, in your name, and didn't we do all these other things, and he's going to say what?
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Depart from me because I never knew you because you were never willing to say,
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I love Christ more than I love my sin. That was never your profession.
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That was never your life. You held tightly to your sin, and you did things to assuage your guilt.
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That is not Christianity. Charlie.
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One of the most troubling things is that shame has disappeared from our society, and the society turns their eyes to generate shame.
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Once that's gone, a dangerous time for our country, and you think about shame, but is that not what constrains it?
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Right. I mean, shame is something that is totally lost in our society. It's lost in every possible way.
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I mean, you know, in the schools, you used to get ashamed because you get a
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D or an F. Well, now we've done away with that. Why? Because we don't give out Ds or Fs. That was easy, you know, and it's just all throughout our society.
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Nobody's allowed to fail. There is no such thing as shame, and you know what? If you leave your spouse and you go off with somebody else, well, that's not a shame.
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It just didn't work out. Daycare centers in schools. Daycare centers in schools. Yeah, for the single moms.
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You know, that's fine. Hey, you're 15. You have a child. We have daycare for you. You know, there's no reason that any of, you know, your actions should have any repercussions on your life.
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We'll take care of you. No. No.
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No. We shouldn't be shocked that the society is getting worse and worse, right?
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I mean, that's the whole Romans 1 kind of spiral. It just goes down and down and down and down. But shame is a healthy thing.
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It's healthy in the church. If we say, like Charlie was just saying, I don't want to be the person, you know, whose name is read up, not because that person is beyond salvation, but just because you think, and not because I'm more worried about what people will think about me, but because I don't want to bring reproach upon the name of Christ.
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I don't want to be the person who says, you know, about whom it's said, did you hear about so -and -so?
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You know, did you hear about, oh, what about that church there? They just let this go on and that go on, and you wind up with, really, the
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Corinthian church, you know, where all manner of sin is approved of, in essence.
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But yeah, and that would be an interesting study for a Sunday school, just the topic of shame and how it's presented in the
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Bible. But, you know, overall, I just think when you lose that ability to look at something as inherently bad and wrong and sinful and shameful, that you've really lost the ability, as a society, to bring any kind of focus on any activity.
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But, you know, as a church, and Charlie was talking about kind of the spillover effect of the church on a community, just by virtue of trying to hold up to a standard,
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I would like people to go, in West Boylston, to hear, or to say, did you hear about that church who, you know, disciplined somebody out for adultery?
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Who disciplined out somebody because they didn't do this, or they did that, or whatever. Whatever the sin is.
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Why? Because it's a good thing to think that there is a place in the world that has an objective standard.
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And that objective standard needs to be God's Word. Well, we started talking about reprobation.
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We didn't get very far on it. We were going to turn to Isaiah 6, but we never got there. But, let me just say this, and we'll leave on this and we'll start talking about it next week.
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In Romans 9, Paul writes about God hardening
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Pharaoh's heart. And I don't think we really think much about the fact that God loves those
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He chose from before the foundation of the world with a perfect love. But on the other hand,
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He doesn't love those He didn't choose from the beginning of the world with a perfect non -love.
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He never changes that. It's good to think about the grace of God and the love of God and the mercy of God and those
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He has had mercy. But it's also true of God that on those whom
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He didn't choose, there is temporal mercy, but there's no eternal mercy.
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And there's hardening even while they live. It's that Romans 1 kind of cycle.
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And we saw it again in Jeremiah 5 this morning. Where He says, you know, you guys want to chase after those idols?
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This is what's going to happen. And I know you're not even going to respond to that. And because you're not even going to respond to that,
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I should destroy you. But I'm not going to. This is the grace and mercy of God.
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Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, we thank
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You that we can call You Father. That through no merit of our own, but by Your grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone,
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You called us to Yourself. Father, we know that we never would have sought
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You. We're no better than anyone else. That without Your grace in our lives, we would be just as hard bound in sin as anyone else.
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Father, we would pray for those whom we know, those in our families, even those who are caught up in heinous sins, even sins like homosexuality.
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Father, would You make us not like that church, so -called church from Kansas, but like Your Son, Jesus Christ, who went to those who were in the most need, as it were, of salvation and preached the gospel to them.
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Father, let us always be willing to presume that everyone with whom we have contact is one who is willing or is ready to recognize their poverty without You.
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Let us be quick to preach the gospel to others and to preach the gospel to ourselves, constantly reminding ourselves of Your great grace in our lives,
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Your holiness, and our need for forgiveness. In Christ's name we pray.