Spiritual Depression Pt. 4 The Soul

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Spiritual Depression Pt. 5 That One Sin

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Okay, we're on our fourth part of spiritual depression, and just a little review.

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What is spiritual depression? Remember, we're looking at it from Psalm 42, 5. Why are you in despair,

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O my soul, and why have you become disturbed within me? Hoping God, for I shall again praise him for the help of his presence.

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And then this was a statement, a general statement, that we looked at. Most Christians of all times and in different circumstances, at some point in their lives, find themselves downcast, unhappy, and in despair.

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I just want to make one thing clear. Because you're sad doesn't mean you're depressed.

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There's a difference between there are times to be sad. I mean, the Bible tells us, you know, time to weep.

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So just because you're unhappy or you're sad doesn't mean that you're suffering from spiritual depression.

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And sometimes I think we lose sight of that fact that, you know, anytime somebody's downcast, oh, they're depressed.

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No, depression is much different than just being sad. Okay, so we've examined this topic in general.

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In the first section, we just looked at an overview of what spiritual depression was. And now what we're doing is we're examining particular aspects or reasons for this condition, and then look at the same time looking for remedies or cures.

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All right, here again is a quotation from Martin Lloyd -Jones. He says, we are considering this subject not only because it is sad and tragic that any

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Christian should ever be miserable, but because of the whole state of the church today. I have no hesitation in asserting again that one of the reasons why the

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Christian church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition.

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This comes from about the 1940s or 1950s. That's when he made that statement, and it's still absolutely relevant today, isn't it?

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Even more so. So an introduction to this next chapter, starting with a quote.

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He says, we must be impressed by the fact that the forms which this particular condition may take seem to be almost endless.

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It comes in such different forms and guises that some people stumble at the very fact. In other words, what he's saying, and this is the point that I want to make, is there's not one cookie -cutter reason for going into spiritual depression, nor is there one cookie -cutter answer to how to relieve yourself from spiritual depression.

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Depending on the cause is what the remedy will be, okay?

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And we see this, we went over that, you know, even in medicine. You want to make sure that you understand the cause before you start giving a remedy, okay?

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It only makes sense. And the same thing is true of spiritual depression. And this is particularly true of Christians who believe that when they came to Christ, all of their troubles are left behind them.

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Anybody experienced that? Came to Christ and all of a sudden everything, the skies just brightened up, and everything happened, and you never had a dark thought, nobody ever, you never had any trouble, everything just works perfectly, right?

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No, it doesn't happen that way, does it? All right. They miss the fact that we are called to spiritual warfare.

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When you come to Christ, you are enlisting in his army, or you're drafted into his army would probably be a better better choice of words, and you are then in the devil's crosshairs, make no question about it.

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So you will expect difficult times. If you don't expect difficult times, you are a candidate for a spiritual depression, all right?

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They lack an understanding of what it really means to be a Christian, and we're going to pick up on some of these themes in future chapters, so I'm only introducing them now.

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The verse that Martin Lloyd -Jones has chosen for chapter four is

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Romans 617, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, okay?

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Now he uses this verse to show how the entire being of the Christian is involved in living a godly life, and that's really the subject of the whole chapter.

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This sentence that I just read here is the subject of the whole chapter tonight. The will, the emotions, and the mind.

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You see that in Scripture, you see theologians use this all the time. When we're trying to describe the soul, we use these various aspects of the soul.

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You have to be careful, though, and I don't want to give anybody the impression that you can compartmentalize the soul of a man or a woman into these neat little sections.

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It's all interspaced. I mean, we're made up of two parts, body and soul, all right?

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And the soul has different aspects to it, the will, the emotions, the mind, but again, you can't, they're still intertwined, okay?

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Does that make sense? Right, but you can differentiate between them. Hold on.

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All right, here's, as each one of these came up, you notice this is how

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Martin Lloyd -Jones breaks it down. The will, obedience. Obedience is a matter of the will, all right?

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Emotions from the heart. Let me caution you here, too, because this is a little pet peeve of mine.

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The heart in Scripture does not always mean emotions. In fact, usually when you see the heart used in Scripture, it's describing the whole soul, all right?

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But it does have the connotation of being emotions. In fact, usually, in fact, who can tell me, when the

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Scripture wants to talk about emotions, what does it usually say? The bowels, the guts, all right?

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But here, I don't have a problem with Lloyd -Jones using this, but the heart in Scripture is not relegated to merely emotions, because Proverbs tells us that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

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So it's not that simple, but I'll just pass over that, even though I take a little exception to it.

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Now, notice the corollary between the teaching of Jesus. What is the Great Commission, I mean the Great Commandment?

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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

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This is a great and foremost commandment. Notice, what is being said here, all right?

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The point is, you must love the Lord with your entire being. Jesus is not trying to talk about, you know, today

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I'm gonna work on loving God with my mind, and then with my heart, and then with... No, the idea is, it's emphasis, it's kind of like the,

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I'm trying to think of the parallelism, synthetic parallelism.

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Remember, it's like pulling an antenna, just, you know, or a telescope, you keep pulling it out and pulling it out.

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That's what's happening with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. It's emphasizing the importance that you love the

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Lord your God with your entire being, all right? There cannot be one aspect of your being that does not love

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God or obey Him. That's what it means to be a Christian. The whole teaching of Scripture is that you're either in Christ or you're not in Christ.

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You can't have one foot in each, in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God, and so you have to be sold out completely.

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There are so many different analogies of Scripture. Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me, all right?

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And you have to love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. In Mark's Gospel, he records

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Jesus as adding another concept when he, when Jesus gives the Great Commission this time, all right?

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Look at it, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, okay?

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If you want, again, the point is loving the Lord with all your being cannot be one aspect that does not, that includes your physical body as well, and I think that's what might be indicated when he says with all of your strength, showing that it's not just a spiritual, you know, if we reduce

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Christianity to the spiritual dimension only, what error are we lapsing into?

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Yeah, but what is the name? I'm looking for a heresy. Yes, Gnosticism. Remember, the

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Gnostics made a distinction between the flesh and the spirit, and that's one, and a lot of Christian churches even do this today.

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They completely almost ignore the physical and material realm, and we're going to get into that a little bit later, all right?

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So another quote from Martin Lloyd Jones, so that in describing the Christian, the thing is he is emphasizing is that there is a wholeness about his life.

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This is important. It's a very important thing, especially, and a lot of people are suffering from spiritual depression because they miss the wholeness of the life in Christ, so it's wholeness about this life, the whole man is involved, the mind, the heart, the will, and a common cause of spiritual depression is the failure to realize the

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Christian life is a whole life, a balanced life. Lack of balance is one of the most fruitful causes of trouble and discord and disquietude in the life of the

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Christian man, okay? In other words, things are out of kilter. They're not where they should be, and once more

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I have to indicate that the cause of this lack of balance can be laid far too often to the charge of the preacher or the evangelist.

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Lopsided Christians are generally produced by preachers or evangelists whose doctrine lacks balance, rotundity, or wholeness.

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Who would be the poster children for what he says here? Yes, health, wealth, and prosperity.

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You know, how do they evangelize? You got problems, come to Jesus, your problems are solved.

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You need money, come to Jesus, you'll get money. You're sick, come to Jesus, if you have enough faith, you'll be healed.

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And they make all of these promises, and what happens? A lot of the promises go unfulfilled, and then what happens?

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A person gets upset in their soul, the promise is real, and they can very easily lapse into spiritual depression.

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Yes? But those preachers, what I've noticed is they don't take responsibility. What they say, like if somebody comes to them and says, hey, you know,

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I didn't get my prayers answered, they'll say, oh, you're not praying, they'll throw it back onto the person and say, well, you're not praying hard enough, or something's wrong in your life, or they'll make up something.

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They don't take responsibility for preaching that way. You're absolutely right. In fact, usually what they'll say is, that's because you don't have enough faith.

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Okay, how many times have you heard that? Oh no, the promise is there, but you don't have enough faith to believe it.

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And again, Martin Lloyd -Jones says that's one of the reasons for spiritual depression.

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So let's look at some of the principles from this chapter. First, spiritual depression can be caused by a failure to understand the greatness of the gospel, all right?

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Some people think the totality of the gospel is forgiveness of sin. Now, I'm not demeaning this.

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I mean, that's the first step. I mean, praise God that our sins are forgiven. But if that's all you think that salvation is, you're missing.

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You're missing many of the blessings that Christ has in store. The greatness of our salvation far supersedes the mere forgiveness of sin, all right?

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My sins are forgiven. I need nothing else is what they say, all right? So they don't look any further.

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What is it that the Bible really teaches? You come to Christ, and then what do you have to do?

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Walk in the good works. Work on your sanctification with fear and trembling, okay?

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In other words, there are obligations that are upon us to live a godly life.

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Put off the old man. Put on the new man, okay? So there's far more than just forgiveness of sin.

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Forgiveness of sin is like going through the door, and then, you know, it's like being hungry, and somebody says, there's a banquet in here.

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Okay, they open the door. Okay, I'm in. I'm at the banquet. Then I never go to the table. That's what it's like if you just stop at forgiveness of sin.

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Others reduce the gospel to a moral code only. These are people who miss the whole atonement aspect of salvation, and all they look at is, well, it's like a moral code.

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One of the problems with that is there are several religions that have very good moral codes. I mean, if you look at, you know, like even the sayings of Mao.

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I mean, there's somewhat of a morality there, you know, and a lot of the

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Eastern religions have good moral codes, right? Look at the Mormon Church. Sometimes Mormons outpace

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Christians in living righteous lives. Of course, they're not in Christ, but I mean on the outward, it looks like they're very righteous people, right?

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So they reduce it to a moral code, and it's a moral code that is worthy to guide your life, okay?

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Others are drawn to the aesthetic beauty of it. What I mean by that, they look at the complexity, the consistency of the

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Christian life. They look at the Bible, and they see all of its intricacies, and how it's woven through, and you see that consistent theme.

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If you've never studied the Bible in that way, it's a very good thing to do periodically, because the internal consistency of the

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Scripture is marvelous. When you realize that it was written over a period of thousands of years by how many different authors, and you see that internal consistency, it's a beautiful, plus the poetry in it.

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In our Sunday School class, we've had gone through the poetry, and looking at the parallelisms, and the chiastic structure of the

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Scripture. It's a beautiful thing, and some people are just drawn to the aesthetic beauty, and they're still not really partaking of the

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Christian life as a whole. They're only looking at one small aspect of it. Second, spiritual depression can be caused by a failure to understand the wholeness of the

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Gospel. It's a little bit different than the greatness. There are people who are only concerned with the intellect.

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They grasp the intellectual part of the Bible, okay? They see the logic of the

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Scriptures, okay? I'll never forget John Gerstner, who was

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R .C. Sproul's mentor. He went to and studied at Harvard Divinity School, all right?

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Now, Harvard Divinity School is notoriously liberal, okay? And the chairman of the department, whose name escapes me, and this goes back quite a few years ago,

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Gerstner was studying there, and the head of the department came over to him and said, John, he says, I don't understand the debate in Christianity and evangelical circles between Arminians and Calvinists.

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He said, that makes no sense to me. He says, clearly the Bible teaches the doctrines of grace,

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Calvinism. He says, clearly, I mean, it's all over the pages. I don't know how you can mistake it. I don't believe it, he says, but that's clearly what it teaches.

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So here's the head of a divinity department who's not a Christian, and yet he appreciates the intellectual aspect and the logic of the scriptures, and so he can, for him, it would be much like studying

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Shakespeare or studying Aristotle or studying

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Plato, because he can appreciate the intellectual and the logical part of the scriptures.

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They appreciate it philosophically, and you can even see these people debating various philosophical aspects of the

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Word of God, but their entire interest is only in the intellectual.

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They dwell on theology, doctrine, metaphysics, and concern themselves solely with argumentation and discussion.

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Now, nothing in this sentence theology, doctrine, metaphysics, argumentation, and discussion, none of those are wrong.

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We could even add debate up there. Those are all things that are good, but not if that's all you're looking at the scriptures for, okay?

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One of the things I appreciate about Dr. White, in all the debates that he did out here on Long Island a number of years ago, in his closing argument, he always saved at least the last five minutes of his closing argument where he gave a gospel message, you know?

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He answered his opponent, and he did so extremely well, of course, but then he would always switch and say, but that's not what's important, and then he'd give a gospel message, and that's the way it should be, all right?

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Still talking about people concerned with the intellect. Speaking of these people, Martyn Lloyd -Jones said this, he's got a great quotation here, not only was there an absence of the grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ in their lives, but there was often an absence of the ordinary milk of human kindness.

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Those men would argue and almost fight about particular doctrines, but they were often hard men to approach.

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You would never go to them if you were in trouble, because all they're concerned about is the doctrine, the arguing, winning the argument, etc.

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All right, still under the same thing. B, there are other people who are only concerned with the emotional aspect of the scriptures, all right?

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They're moved by the experiences, first, of other people as other people tell their, quote, conversion story, all right?

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And the more bizarre it is, the more the emotions are moved, all right?

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So you have people who, what do they focus on? A drug dealer gets saved, all right?

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What do they do? Immediately, they take him and they put him in front of a group of people. I mean, this guy's, you know, he's like five minutes out of a drug store, not a drug...

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They are drug stores, but of a drug house, and all of a sudden, now he's standing and giving his testimony.

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I mean, come on. It doesn't make sense, all right? And then they're moved by their own experiences, and that usually comes where you're told that you have to have certain experiences to demonstrate that you are, in fact, a true believer, manifested in some supernatural way, and what happens?

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What happens if you don't have one of those experiences? There's something wrong with me?

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Am I not saved? You know, and it leads to spiritual depression, all right?

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They crave the mystical experiences, all right? People coming, talking about stories about legs being lengthened and, you know, and all kinds of things being healed.

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It's nuts, and so they come to the Scriptures looking for what?

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For those feelings. They want the emotional high, the emotional experience, and unfortunately, a lot of these churches focus on that, so they'll have various kinds of retreats where they bring in speakers who are extremely motivational, and they're using the methodology of the world, right?

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What did Paul say? He said, I didn't come to you with persuasion of speech. I came in the power of God, all right?

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Some of these people are moved by the atmosphere of the church, the beauty of the worship service, and then, of course, the mountaintop experience, you know?

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Psychology professors have actually done experiments and recreated, quote, some of these charismatic experiences with a group of non -believing students.

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The cathartic experience of the emotion by singing repetition in songs and over.

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You even see that in rock concerts. I mean, you see, look at what happens, and then most of these songs, all right, how often is the one line repeated over and over and over?

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People jumping up and down, flashing of lights, whiff of certain kinds of smoke hovering over the crowd, all right?

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And the next thing, what do you know? Tears. See, tears streaming down the faces, right?

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And, you know, raising of the arms. You can't tell the difference between that and a charismatic service.

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It's difficult. See, there are other people who are concerned only with the will, all right?

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And this is getting back to what we talked about a little earlier. They're moved by persuasive arguments.

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Now, let me pause again. There's nothing wrong with your argumentation if you're defending the faith to be persuasive, but it can be carried too far, all right?

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If you've ever been to an evangelistic rally that was held at a big stadium, all right, and at the end there's an altar call and 37 choruses of Just As I Am, and that they keep playing that, and the preacher pleading with people to come forward for salvation until people start getting out of their chairs, and then catharsis takes over.

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The next thing you know, you have all kinds of people. They actually did, in fact, in the book by Martin Lloyd -Jones, he says that he interviewed people at a rally, what they call the

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Inquirer Room. It's where they would be counseling, all right? And he said that he had the people ask, the people who came forward for salvation, he said, why are you here?

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And there was a high percentage that said, because the man told me I should come here. They had no idea what they were doing, just that this is what you should do.

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If you want your life better, come down these aisles, we'll meet you right down here, and we'll take you into that room. So I came.

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They make a decision for Christ. Notice I have that in quotations. They make a decision for Christ because they've been pressed to make a decision.

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This is what you need to do. You need to make a decision, and you need to make it tonight. You might get hit by a truck if you leave this place, and this is prevalent in evangelistic campaigns.

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You see it frequently. Look at what Martin Lloyd -Jones says.

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He says, I think we should abolish the word decision. I do not like it. It seems to me that to talk about deciding for Christ is a denial of the text that we are considering, as I will show you.

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This making a decision, again, has often happened as a result of an appeal. Then he says, let me sum up this point by putting it like this.

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These are the people who decide to take up Christianity instead of being taken up by Christianity.

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So the answer to this cause, this particular cause of spiritual depression, is to teach and preach the truth.

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We start with the truth. Any evangelistic efforts that doesn't begin with the truth, the truth is heading for disaster.

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Then the emotions in the will be engaged properly. Instead of whipping people's emotions up and then bringing them to the gospel, it's the other way.

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The gospel should cause them to have, if there is going to be an emotional experience, that should follow. Same thing with the will.

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It is this balance in the Christian life that will keep you from spiritual depression. The greatness and the wholeness of the gospel keeps everything in its proper perspective.

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But what are these people being told? All you have to do is say this prayer, make a decision, and that's all you have to do.

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You don't have to do anything else. And that's not the message of the

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Scripture. What did Jesus say? What was Jesus's method of evangelism?

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Well, you want to follow me? Count the cost. Before you come and follow me, count the cost.

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Do you know what you're getting into? That's what he said. Romans 617, this is the one.

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Notice, you became obedient from the heart. To what? The doctrine.

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Obedience, the will, the heart, is coming from the doctrine.

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Another quote, the Christian should know why he is a Christian. The Christian is not a man who simply says that something marvelous has happened to him.

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Not at all. He is able and ready to give a reason for the hope that is in him. If he cannot, he had better make sure of his position.

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The gospel is not something partial or piecemeal. It takes in the whole life, the whole of history, the whole world.

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It tells us about the creation and the final judgment and everything in between. This is missing in so many churches today.

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They teach a piecemeal. It's only the spiritual life. In fact, many churches look at the gospel like from a

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Time magazine perspective. Anybody read Time magazine? I read it every time

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I go to the doctor's office. But Time magazine, they have a section for world news, national news, the arts, science, religion.

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Now, I don't have object to Time magazine doing that, but when the church does that, it is wrong.

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Religion is not just one slice of your life. It covers every aspect of your life.

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If you're a Christian, every aspect of your life, whether it's work, play, entertainment, no matter what it is, is affected by your

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Christianity. And that's what he's saying here. He says, so many, because they indulge in these harmful and unscriptural dichotomies and only apply their

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Christianity to certain aspects of their lives, are bound in trouble. It is quite inevitable. If you just slice up your life, and I give my religion

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Sunday morning, maybe even Wednesday evening, but that's it. The rest of the time, that's me.

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I can't make up my own mind. No. There's another remedy to spiritual depression.

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This doesn't come from Martin Lloyd -Jones. I added to his book. I'm going to request royalties.

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Developing a biblical worldview. While the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, it governs and affects the material world.

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And again, this is being downplayed by a vast majority of the church, especially in America.

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Yes. Yes. That's a good part of it.

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They don't have a biblical understanding of the kingdom of God, let alone, you know, and peace is one of the main aspects.

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Peace, what's the primary application of peace in Scripture? Peace with God.

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Everything at first is to God. I'm at peace with God, then I can be at peace with my neighbor. Sometimes peace with God means

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I'm at war at my neighbor, as we may well see here in the near future.

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The false dichotomy views of the kingdom of God can lead to spiritual depression.

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We've seen that here in our country. How many churches, when faced with the

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COVID and with threats from the government, have just closed their doors, when we need to be advancing the kingdom more now than before?

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Do you realize? Yes. What's the first priority?

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Loving God. Loving your neighbor comes as a result of loving God. If you're not loving

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God, loving your neighbor is meaningless. In quite frankly,

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I believe that most people who are doing that have looked for a, quote, biblical reason not to be in the government sites.

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They can argue with me, alright? They won't get far, but they can argue. I'm Norwegian, you know, you can always tell a

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Norwegian, just can't tell him much. What was that?

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I heard an amen. No, I mean, the whole idea is,

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I think a lot of the reasons why they're doing it is because they don't have the biblical worldview.

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You've talked to, I mean, what's preached from our pulpit? What does the Bible teach? We are to exercise dominion over this world.

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That's what the Bible teaches. That was given to Adam and Eve in the garden, and it was translated because of sin in the

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Great Commission. Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing and teaching them to observe.

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If you don't have this biblical worldview that we are to dominate and impact culture, then it's easy.

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Well, yeah, when things get tough, we just withdraw. We cloister, we cocoon ourselves.

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Yes? They emphasize physical well -being over spiritual well -being. Yes. That's what you said, that's priority.

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So spiritual well -being is more important than physical well -being, because that's what's going to live on after we exit this physical body.

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Do you realize how many people, how the suicide rate has skyrocketed under the

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COVID? Why? Because we're being forced to live in an anti -social environment.

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What did God say when he created Eve? It is not good for man to be alone, and the government is saying you need to be alone.

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It's merely that simple. Okay? Questions? Yes, Ted.

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Just a comment. When you were talking earlier about how some of these men are unapproachable, they're involved in their intellect, and they don't care, and they can't rub shoulders with the hoi polloi or loa peck.

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One of the things that impressed me as I was going to the different conferences of Philadelphia, PCRT conference and the others, is how approachable they were.

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You could rub shoulders with them, and you could talk with them, discuss and ask questions, and that was really the earmark of all of them, so I appreciated that.

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Yeah, but you're talking about you were going to Reformed conferences, and most

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Reformed people have a biblical worldview, and that's why they would, and they understand these things, that what role, look, the kingdom of God is spiritual, all right, but it supersedes.

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That's what Jesus told Pilate. He said, my kingdom is not of this realm. He said, if it were, my disciples would be fighting, but it's not.

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It supersedes, and it governs, and this physical material realm is under, we are supposed to take dominion over this.

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That's exactly what the Great Commission is. The Great Commission is a restatement of the dominion mandate back in Genesis 2.

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I mean, it's that, in Genesis 1 and 2, it's that simple, okay?

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God created this world, put man on it for a reason. What is that reason? The chief end of man is to glorify

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God and to enjoy him forever. Then what did he tell Adam in the garden? Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, all right, and then what?

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In Genesis 2, he tells him, I want you to make the whole world a garden. That's what he said, and of course, that's figurative language, okay?

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But it's only the reformed understanding of the scriptures that shows the beginning, as he quoted here, shows you the beginning, the end, and everything in between, working from the beginning to the end.

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If you don't have that biblical worldview, then when something like COVID happens, you will easily get depressed, distressed.

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When you have ungodly people elected into office, what do some people do?

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They go, oh, what was me? This is terrible. What are we going to do now? What do you mean, what are you going to do now?

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What you've been commanded to, make disciples, preach, teach, in season, out of season, so we're coming into a bad season.

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So what? That's all the more of an opportunity. You may be called to go to jail, praise

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God, right? Look at what happened with John Bunyan.

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We got Pilgrim's Progress because he was sent to jail. That's when he wrote it, okay?

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Oh, yes, I'm sorry. No, he's not saying to be saved.

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He says if you don't have all three, you're subject to spiritual depression. I'm not saying that any of these people are not necessarily saved, because you can be saved and not know how you were saved.

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Look at our Arminian friends. I mean, I've got family, half my family is Arminians. They're all great

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Christians. They just don't know how they were saved. They have a wrong view of it. Well, it's not up to me to say who's saved and who isn't.

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That's not a decision that I'm going to make. I'm not going to, just like, no, he's talking, remember, what's his, the whole topic here is spiritual depression.

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So these are people, these are causes of people going into spiritual depression, because they don't have a whole view of what the

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Christian life is. Their mind, their will, and their emotions are not all unified in understanding what a biblical worldview is, and therefore, that's why when tough times come, they can be depressed.

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Okay, now some of them may not be saved, but again, that's not for us to, not for us to judge.

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I'm glad that's not part of the eldership. We don't have to do that. Yes? So when it comes to living in the wholeness of the gospel, like he was saying, is that saying that it's talking about the mind, the will, and the emotions?

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Yes. And what is the will, like, would you say that the will is affected by the mind and the emotions, or would you say that they're kind of all equal?

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They're all intertwined. That's why I gave that little caveat at the beginning, that even though we can talk about the mind, the will, and the emotions, we can distinguish that these are parts of the personality of the individual.

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You can't separate them and say, well, you know, my mind is here, my will is here, my emotions are here.

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They're all part of the human soul, the suki, okay? And so what we have to be careful of is allowing one to be out of balance, all right?

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And I'll give you an example. Hymn 271, all right, in our hymn book.

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It's how sweet and awful is the place, all right? I'm not a,

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I don't really emote a lot, you know, when I preach or when

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I'm in the church. I'm not an emotional person. I tend to be more logical, frozen chosen, okay?

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But when we sing Hymn 271, it brings tears to my eyes every time, not because the melody is so beautiful, which it is, all right?

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Not because the harmony and all is so great, which it is, and we have a good singing, a great singing congregation,

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I think. But as I read those words, as I sing those words, you know, where he talks about, you know, why was

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I a guest when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?

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And then the next verse, he says, "'Twas the same love that set the feast that gently drew me in."

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And I'm reading those songs, I'm starting to choke up now, because the truth of that is you see the grace of God, where why am

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I saved? Not because of anything I've done, but God's love and mercy he directed towards me, and he caused me to come in and admire the feast and partake of it, not anything that I've done.

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So it's the truth that moves my emotions and sets my will that I'm going to follow

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Christ. Everything is truth guided. And that's the same thing with the method of evangelism.

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That's why most often we, what do we do? We teach the truth. You're a sinner, you're going to hell, much more gentle than I'm saying it now, you know, and that's why you need the gospel.

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A lot of people, a lot of evangelistic services are, just come to Jesus and everything will be good, you know.

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Why? Why? Well, if you don't, if they don't understand, first you got to give them the truth.

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You are a sinner, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life, so that's why you need to come to Jesus.

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You need your sins forgiven, etc. The truth, the gospel has to be first, and then everything else follows.

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And it's okay if that gets you misty. If you want to cry, fine.

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If you want to lift your hands in the service, go right ahead. I'm not going to hurt, I'm not going to say anything, but is it the truth and not just some cathartic experience?

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And that's only you know. Yeah, that's usually how the theologians break it down.

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I mean, the human soul is very, very complex, so I mean,

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I wouldn't even just reduce it to those three. There's probably other aspects of it as well, but those are the three that we normally deal with.

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Would you throw in strength also because of that scripture? Yeah, you can do that, and I think personally, and I could be wrong,

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I think that Jesus threw that in on that particular occasion to indicate that the physical body is still part of that as well, you know.

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It's not just a spiritual thing. The spirit and the body are connected, and you can't separate the two.

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I mean, you can separate. There you can separate, because when you die, that's what happens. You know, your soul goes to paradise, and your body goes to the dust.

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can separate that, but they are interconnected. Okay, okay.