Apologetics Session 21 - Sanctification - Part 2

Well, we're going to pick up where we left off last week, it was interesting,

I've always been fascinated with the whole idea of sanctification because actually in the whole process of salvation and justification, the longest period of time in our life is sanctification and we really don't talk about it that much and there's a lot of confusion regarding sanctification within the church itself and what does it actually mean or not mean and it kind of goes on this track where it can fall on the side of legalism or fundamentalism or it can go into the other track which we're seeing right now where we have this paganism that's happening within the church itself where they're just saying, well, you know, the unary truth of scripture is not there and we're not going to believe it and so we're in this battle where we are kind of like riding this wave of saying, you know, we're justified in Christ and we're having the

Holy Spirit in us and at the same time we're saying, okay, what happens next?

What's going to go on? So, you know, sanctification is the work of God, all our efforts towards holiness are useless apart from the work of Christ on the cross and Hebrews 10 .10

speaks about that. The work of God's spirit is in us and Paul highlights the Holy Spirit's role with a repetition of this phrase, by the spirit that happens within us and that's in Galatians 5 .16

and he uses a phrase sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the dwelling of the

Holy Spirit that's within us itself there. So Paul is always constantly going back to that theme, that thematic part there of saying that those who are justified in Christ are involved with the

Holy Spirit and there's this process that's happening that is divine within you that's happening for the remainder of our lives until we meet with the

Lord and can glorify with them. However, sanctification involves our cooperation, so again, by walking in the spirit, living by the spirit, keeping in step with the spirit, whereas justification is entirely

God's work with us, we can't do anything to that by God's grace, it involves a cooperation with God of us trying to live to what

God's mandates are supposed to be in our lives and so we have a responsibility of walking in that spirit and so there's a battle that happens there

In Romans 7, Paul's very explicit about the duality of man and what happens in the duality of man, when we're trying to walk in the spirit, our flesh is going to fight us every step of the way and then on top of that we have spiritual darkness, this world that we're living in that's not ours.

So we're constantly in a fight, we can never let our guard down and we're constantly moving in a direction that says we always need to touch base, we always need to know, we always have to ask ourselves, how are you doing today?

Really it's an important part of who we are. So it's an ongoing process, justification is once and we have that, sanctification is for the remaining part of our lives, a continuing process, the

Greek verb for that is called peripatio, which literally means to go about, to increase and as we're growing in Christ and through the

Holy Spirit, we're increasing our knowledge, we're increasing his presence in our life, we're constantly increasing there.

And we're going to do a little exercise at the end here to talk about that. It's the same word that Jesus used when he was talking to the paralytic, he says get up and take your mat and walk, same type of word of the believership that happened with that person is what we're going to be going through in our lives.

So the word walk can be used as to mean, there's a certain walk in our life, a certain walk in our conduct, a certain walk in how we live on doing that.

And Paul uses the tense of this word to reflect a continuous ongoing activity, this walk reminds us that sanctification is a roll ever so slowly down as a superhighway that treks resolutionally up to an arduous path, and I had it up here for a second, and there's the path, notice how the path goes.

And I can tell you just on my testimony that it's not a straight line at all, it's constantly you fall down, you get up, you fall down, you get up.

But just for me personally, just when I think

I get it, something happens to remind me that I'm a still sinner.

So that's a good thing to happen to what's going on, and plus from all the different trials that we go through, making confession of faith, we know we're going to have trials, and that's always going to test our sanctification through our lives.

So the goal of the measure of sanctification is Christlikeness, that's what we're trying to get to, so it's trying to transform us more and more into being like Christ through the

Holy Spirit there. And really the primary instrument that we do this with here is three ways, one is the word of God of course, two is the church body that we have here, and number three is prayer.

So prayer is a continuous thing, and prayer is not the Nancet type of behavior where you have to set a time, it's talking to God, just constantly, when you have a chance, talk to Him, just talk.

And that relationship there is what develops the optimum of what we are going through in sanctification.

And this is God's will for our life, to have that happen. With that being said as an overall entry, there are many views on sanctification, and I want to pass this out to everyone there, because this is where we start to get into the weeds about what is and what's going on there, if you can pass it around.

There's five views on sanctification, and I'll try to go through this, not to read the whole thing, but I think it's a good thing for people to have.

If you remember from the first class, I spoke about, we always talk about the outside world and understanding that the lost needs to be spoken to about God's word and Jesus and all that, but we have an enemy inside the church there that doesn't understand a lot of things that are going on here.

And that's one of the roots of people that we really have to teach them about what's happening there. So there's five views of sanctification.

The Wesleyan view, the Reformed view, the Pentecostal view, the Keswick view, and the

Augustine Dispensational view. And not to make everybody fall asleep with it, but I just want to kind of run through some of these things here and give you an idea of what's going on there.

So the Wesleyan view basically is about entire sanctification. Has anybody heard about that?

If you know about it. Perfectionism. Yes, John? At the Church of the Nazarene. Yeah, very well.

Yeah, and it's the idea that somehow John Wesley was pushing this belief that at the end we will be perfect and we will not be able to basically sin, which there's a lot of problems with that.

So the entire sanctification was made through experiential, through the second work of grace that opens up ways for growing in grace.

And there's a great emphasis placed on perfecting the work of love. If you're showing Christ's love through your life, right, that is a perfection according to that, what that sanctification was going to be talking about.

And so in there, what I have here, I broke it down to the beginning points, how they think

God's work works, our responsibility for it, and the effects of sanctification and what the extent of sanctification there.

And you'll see a difference there. The Reformed view, which is a view that we adopt, or I adopt, emphasizes on positional truth and having that truth be with us for the remainder of our lives.

And it's about regeneration, precedes faith, makes faith inevitable. It follows that the faith will continue to operate as God progressively sanctifies us through the individual.

If one fails to persevere, then the individual is regarded as not having been genuinely saved. Therefore, emphasis is placed on living right to persevere.

And that basically is, we're always going to try to strive to be

Christlike as best as we possibly can. The Pentecostal view, this is very, very different.

Phil, you were in... Yeah, but they didn't teach any doctrines. The apparent difference is between a holiness

Pentecostal who believe in the definite second work of grace and the assemblies of God who believe in the progressive sanctification.

But for each, the baptism of the Spirit is heavily emphasized as the gifts of the

Spirit. And I attended, just to see what the church was like,

I attended a Pentecostal church in Whitestown. And in the middle of the service, and this is,

I'm not trying to be disparaging there, but everybody got up and started speaking in tongues. Everybody started, a couple people were running around the church.

There was people rushing over to the stage where the pastor was. It was like an experience.

Yeah, it was just like out of control. Any interpretations? No, no interpretations, no nothing there.

It was very emotional, very high -pitched. People were speaking, you couldn't understand a word they were saying.

And afterwards, when I was leaving, and Joyce was with me, we were leaving, we were looking at each other and we went to one of the elders over there and we said, what's going on?

They said, oh, the baptism of the Spirit is the driver behind this. And, but when

I was there, I just never, I never got a real sense of any grounding, anything that was substantial that had meat to the bone, so to speak, where I felt like they were speaking about God's Word and scripture and all that.

Just didn't feel that at all happening there. That's the holiness

Pentecostal one that's there. Then is the Keswick view. The Keswick view emphasizes positional truth.

And it's as well as provisional truth in the dwelling light of Christ that can be accessed through faith.

That started in, back in England, back in, during the 19th century.

A big believer of that movement was Billy Graham and Oswald Chambers.

If you know anything about Oswald Chambers' work, he wrote all these different books on. My utmost for his highest.

Yes, yeah. And they, they adopt this view, viewpoint here.

And the last one was Augustinian dispensational view. And this view adopts a two -nature concept.

And emphasis placed on God's provision and man's responsibility to appropriate that provision by faith.

And in this respect, the view is similar to Keswick, but with a, with a Shafran articulation.

And basically Keswick said there was two different types of blessings that would happen.

One, when you have justification, and it could be a period of time before you have a second blessing through sanctification, which is not true at all on what's going on there.

And Augustinian view doesn't take that view. They, or they kind of follow what's going on there.

So those are like the five different views. And at your leisure, read them.

Get to know them. Because when you're speaking to other believers, other people in churches, they, they will start to espouse certain things.

And you'll get to notice right away that there's a different way of looking at things. And, and it gives you a good idea of what's happening.

Now, when I was in seminary over in Princeton, they also had their own view of sanctification.

Now, they've gone completely woke. So, and they're pretty much reformed when they first started back in the turn of the century.

Now, it's so totally on the woke side that they, they will not even attest to the authenticity of the gospel.

And for them, they more lean towards a bustling view where it's all about love and all about care.

And if you can show Christ's love in everything, despite what the circumstances are, that's okay.

And I had a very, I can give you a little anecdote about what had happened to me.

So when I had to make my dissertation there, my subject was, was really about this subject matter.

And it was, and the name of the paper I wrote was, it's nobody's fault but mine, which was completely opposite to what we were being taught at school, you know, because they were always doing these positional pieces where they were talking about, well, you know, it could be the environment you grew up with, or it could be, you know, these other events are taking place and all that stuff.

And, um, and I was very blessed that somehow something inside of me was saying, now you got to be accountable for yourself.

You can't, you constantly have to go back to that place and you have to put yourself before the Lord and you have to be on your hands and knees and say,

Lord, just tell me, you know, we, you know, obviously from a place of repentance, but also a place of just trying to get answers.

And, um, and there was some loggerheads that, that happened there.

What, what ended up being kind of like an apex for my journey there was, um,

I had to take counseling classes there and the counseling class, one of them was about the miracle questions and, um, um, and they were pushing to have us as students to, um, to take up some sort of, um, cohort to work in there.

And my cohort, uh, was doing a prison ministry and I was with these groups of people that were having us do this prison ministry.

And one of the things they wanted us to do was to start counseling based around the miracle question. I think

I spoke about this the first time that I talked about what is faith, but the miracle question is, is that, and this gives you a good idea about what the underbelly is on what was happening there, is if you can change anything in the world, what would that be and how can we help you attain it?

And, and it ended up being a place where, where I had to basically confront my teachers and say, hey, wait a minute.

What about scripture? What about allegiance? And what about acknowledgement, uh, to, uh, the

Lord and we're supposed to be following this and, um, and they kind of pushed me to the side saying, no, we're beyond that now.

We're not, we're not doing that now. Now it's about the individual itself. So this is, this is very much a sense of the subtlety that kind of permeates within the church body where, uh, in the beginning of my first time

I spoke about what is faith, I talked about the fact that you can break down very simply. There are two gods.

There is our sovereign Lord and then there's us who wants to be God. And the slow, subtle part of this is that the church is, is trying to make themselves like God instead of acknowledging who the authority is.

And, um, and that was starting to permeate and also in the seminars too. And I was underneath that.

So, uh, this will give you a good background as a starting point to really understand the subtleties that are happening there and what is biblical truth.

And so I hope that you really do utilize it. So with that being said, one of the questions

I always run across is that is sanctification just free will? Or is there divine governance or providence there?

I mean, so if you go through the process of justification and now you're sanctifying the

Holy Spirit, basically who's driving the bus? What's really happening here?

Is the Holy Spirit driving us? Or we have free will to do stuff? What's really going on there?

And so divine governance and sanctification goes hand in hand.

One of the things that Paul talks about is that if you're in the Holy Spirit, you're actually a slave to Christ.

He says that very emphatically. A slave being that everything you do in your life is to the master.

This is what is going on there, which is very different than what we talk about now. But it's very emphatic in Ephesians and Colossians and Philippians that Paul talks about that and being a slave to Christ.

So the doctrine of sola gratia or saved by grace and grace alone and justified through faith allows us to have that category where we are a slave to our

Lord and Savior. And Matt, you had spoken about the whole idea about election and free will.

There's a fine line between divine governance, election, free will, what is being done in terms of our adoption into Christ's family there.

And so in Ephesians 1, 11 -14, it says, In him we have attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purposes of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were first to have hope in Christ might be praised of his glory.

In him you also, when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with a promised

Holy Spirit who has guaranteed our inheritance until we acquired possession of it to the praise of his glory.

Now, not to get too deep in the weeds with this, but if we believe that Christ and the treaty is all sovereign and omnipotent, there has to be a divine governance that's going to be happening there within that.

So within our sanctification process, the Holy Spirit knows the beginning, the middle, and the end to what's going on there.

And of course, my chart keeps on timing out here. So until we see him, that this divine governance needs to be acknowledged and understood that part of our sanctification process, there's a point to what's going on here.

So there's three parts to this. There's a necessarily part to what is happening with our sanctification and divine governance.

There's a free part, a freely part to it. And there is a contingency part to it, contingence on events.

So I'm going to read you a couple of things here. In Nehemiah 9, 6 -7, it says, you are the

Lord, you alone. You have made heaven and the heavens of heavens. And with all the hosts and the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, you preserve all of them.

And the host of heaven worships you. You are the Lord, the God who chose

Abram, brought him out of the Ur of the Chaldeans and gave them the name

Abraham. So he oversees everything anyway, we know that. And he knows every single thing that's going to happen before, during, and afterwards.

Such as in Proverbs 16 -33, it says, the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the

Lord. Now, think about that for a minute. We're going through sanctification, we're choosing to be

Christ -like, yet God knows everything that's going to happen for us. Why?

So the question is why? All right, so here's a, and you should be familiar with the story in Judges.

So Caesarea fled away on foot of the tent of Jael and the wife of Heber the Canaanite.

For there was peace between Jabod the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Canaanite. And Jael came out to meet

Caesarea and said to him, turn aside my lord, turn aside to me, do not be afraid.

So he turned aside to her into the tent and she covered him with a rug.

And he said to her, please give me a little water to drink before I'm thirsty. So she opened the skin of milk, gave him a drink and covered him.

And he said to her, stand at the opening of the tent and if any man comes and asks you, is anyone here, say no.

But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg and a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness.

So he died. And behold Barak was pursuing Caesarea and Jael went out to meet him and said to him, come and I will show you the man whom you were seeking.

So he went to her tent and there lay Caesarea dead with the tent peg in his temple.

Now when you listen to that story, you listen to what just occurred, the background of that was

God wanted to defeat this enemy and he was using by providence

Caesarea to go ahead and make a decision on her own to go ahead and fulfill what God wanted to get done.

And it is one of the ways that during this process that God uses us to do that.

By her own, almost seems like her own free will. But he knew at the end this is what's going to be the plan that he wanted to protect and bring justice to what's going on there.

Another way is freely, man's inspired decisions. So in Isaiah it says, woe to Caesarea, the rod of my anger, the staff is in my fury.

Against the godless nation I sent him and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder and to tread them down to the mire of the street.

But he does not so intend and his heart does not so think.

But it is his heart to destroy and to cut off nations, not a few. So again,

God uses free will to go ahead and decide what he's going to be doing with nations.

He already knows what the end result's going to be. And in Romans in 3, 9, 18 he says, what then?

Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we are already charged that all, both

Greek and Jews, are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one.

No one understands, no one seeks God. All that turned aside together, they have become worthless.

Not one does good, not even one. Their throats is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

The venom lasts and is under their lips. Their mouth full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood in the paths of ruin and misery.

The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. And so with this, we're getting a clearer understanding that man's free choice is to go ahead and do what they do in their life.

And people are going through the process of sanctification. There is a providence that happens at the end there. There will be justice to be done.

And then he continues in Ephesians, Paul continues in Ephesians 2, 1, 10. You were dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked, following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the son of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh.

Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love of which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. And raises us up and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show, and this is the key, in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace of kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

And that's part of that process that happens there. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. This is not wrongdoing.

It is a gift of God and the results of work, so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship, creating

Christ Jesus for his good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

And so we're kind of now going through this path knowing that there is a purpose.

We have free will. We can make decisions. If we are in Christ, these decisions, God already has a plan for us to do that.

And it kind of goes against what the whole thing about, and I talk about this a lot, about the whole

Jesus code, that when we go into a church and everybody, you go to some of these churches, they all look the same.

They all act the same. They all like, almost like robots. That's not what should be happening.

That's not what we are about. That's not what God has us to be. We are the bride of Christ.

We are all individuals. And yet, at the same time, we have goals. We have things that God wants us to accomplish in this life.

So that's about the free decision. But then there's the contingency, contingence on events.

So Mark 16 -15, Mark 16, 15 -17, and he says to them, go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned. So there's a clear delineation between those who are in Christ and going through this process and those who are not.

And there's other events that happen, such as in Genesis 50, 15 -21, when

Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, it may be that Joseph hates us and pays us back for the evil that we did to them.

So they sent the message to Joseph, saying, your father gave this command before he died. And say to Joseph, please forgive the transgressions of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.

And now please forgive the transgressions of the servant of the God of your father. Joseph wept.

And they, they, he forgave them the transgression of the servant.

And his brothers also came and fell down before him. Behold, we are your servants. But Joseph said to them, do not fear, for I am in the place of God.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

So do not fear. I will provide you and your little ones best and comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

So another part of our process is that God knows that through different events that are going to happen within our lives, during this sanctification, even when we fail, he's going to use them for good.

He will use them for good, no matter what happens. And in Ephesians 1 .11 says, in him, we have obtained this inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

So we, it is a unique discovery to go through life, knowing that for the remainder of my life, even when

I fail, God can use that. He will use it for something.

And when we triumph, he will use that for something. And the people we meet, he will use that. In the intersections that happen, he would use that, the interplay we have.

He will use everything to sanctify us and do that. And we have to be mindful of it, that we're not all going to be the same following the same things.

So does that make sense to everybody? That, okay, I don't want to go too quickly through this.

So basically the final part of this thing is, so how do we measure sanctification?

How do you do that? Does anybody have an idea how you do that? Should we?

Should we measure it? Well, in Galatians 5 .16 -25, he talks about the fruits of the spirit.

And so while we have a little time, I have this to pass out to everybody.

Here, pass this out. And I think, and this is something that is an individual thing that everybody can take a look at.

And it kind of gives you a good idea of what sanctification could mean in their lives.

We're going to have a problem if we have to write humility in here. So the fruits of the spirit was advocated by Paul in Galatians 5 .22

-23. And it doesn't occur only here, but also in other parts of scripture.

And most of the attributes of those by God himself lives, but this is our sanctification process once we are justified through Christ our

Lord. And when we look at this list, what's interesting, and we're not going to put anybody on the spot, but I think it's a good exercise for us that when

I did it myself, I could tell you there was a lot of different things that I think

I'm pretty good at, but there's a lot of things I'm not good at at all. And Paul is very specific in terms of what the fruits of the spirit are and how we do that.

So what I had done here was basically do a rating from one to five, and you do this in your own time.

One being that you need work, and five being you're very blessed that you were able to do that. I fall short in a lot of these areas, and I had a parade about it and everything.

But I think it's a good thing to do to check in with yourself and to see what's going on, to be truthful with yourself.

And then I have a column there that has a reasoned solution about why what's going on there.

And I think it's a very practical way to look at where you're at.

You know, I know that for myself personally, I can be a little bit high and mighty, thinking

I know too much. And so I don't give myself a pretty high score for that, and I always have to, to your point, be a little more humble.

Other places where I think that I do okay, I try to be a peacemaker in everything

I do, so I think I do that. But when you take this and you put it, let's say, towards marriage, or you do it towards work, or if you do it towards coworkers, and you do it towards customer service, how does all these things fit in there?

And you can make a pretty decent matrix of your life and say, wait a minute, there's aspects of error that I need to work on.

And so I would encourage you to do this on your own. Do it with your wife and friends.

Just get a bearing on where you're at. And what?

Another question. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Well, you just said it, because I was thinking it might be better to have somebody evaluate you.

Exactly, yeah, exactly. Is that Joyce Stewart? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you do what you think is, and then have someone else, like Mike Joyce, say, okay, what do you think?

And do that. And you see how they compare. Yeah, it's dangerous, you know.

But like I said, when I was going through this exercise, I'm like, eh, I don't know. Only give it to somebody that scores very high on kindness, though.

Well, I think it's interesting, because this whole class has been about the truth, and knowing the truth, and walking in the truth, and holding firm to the truth.

But when the Lord lists the gifts of the Spirit, and we know how important the truth is, but that's not necessarily on this list.

So you can have all your doctrinal ducks in a row, and be a darn bitter old scoundrel.

And that's not going to do you any good. Yeah, I agree with you.

You need to walk with the Spirit. To that point, last week I had spoken about, you know,

Martin Luther and Calvin. And I just pointed out different things that, you know, while they're great doctrinal giants, they also had their issues there.

And I was going to bring on some other people, and I thought about it, I actually prayed about it, and I'm like, no,

I'm not going to do that. You know, I'm not going to do that. There's a book from Frank Biola that's about the forefathers.

And his premise on it was that we have a tendency to make, and it's a natural tendency to take these titans, these spiritual titans, and we put them on a pedestal.

You know, but they're still human, and they still go through the same things that we go through. And so what he did was break down, you know, a lot of these people from Augustine, all the way through, through D .L.

Moody, and he went through all of them and just talked about their humanity. And it's a really neat, like, caveat to what we read about their doctrinal premise to who they were as human beings.

And I'll never forget, you know, one of the things about Billy Graham, I read his biography years ago, but what has struck me in the story of Billy Graham, and I don't know how everybody feels about Billy Graham or not,

I have my own opinions about it, but one thing he wouldn't do, which

I just thought was, I had shared this with Joyce, was he would not go into an elevator by himself with a woman.

He just wouldn't do it. He would always wait for somebody else to go with him in there. It was just one of those things that he did in his life.

It doesn't make him better or worse or whatever, but he just wouldn't, he just wouldn't put himself in that position to do that.

And I thought that was just an interesting aspect. I made fun of Mike Pence for the same thing. What? I made fun of Mike Pence for the same thing, because he said he won't be alone with a woman other than his wife.

Yeah, for a meeting or lunch or anything. Yeah. I think that's a good rule of thumb. Yeah, yeah.

So this is all I have for us today, and I want to thank you all for going through this.

I will be putting these, there's a bunch of documents that I'm going to be putting up on the Google server, so look for the link.

And does anybody have any questions or anything that they want to add to this? Oh, come on.

Yeah. When we counsel each other as brothers, because we do love each other, and when we see a brother falling short, in gentleness, we're to advise them.

We're not to be judgmental, but we are to be fruit inspectors. We're to exhibit the fruit of the

Spirit. And if we see a brother lacking in that, we know he's been a Christian for a while, he shouldn't be doing that.

Right, right. You know, we do it gently and in love, because we all fall short. And I appreciate it when somebody tells me, hey,

I got to work on that. Right, right. You know. That's the biggest, last week

I had spoken about a lunch I had with a brother, and it was a really difficult lunch.

And it was one of those type of things where we were kind of burying our hearts. And two things were happening with me during that time.

One was, I wanted to do what you were talking about, Rich. Be a fruit inspector. Right, but I was doing everything I can not to judge him, like I was doing everything.

I almost wanted to yell and didn't do that. And I kept on saying, please,

Lord, just make me just be peaceful about this and do it. And that's really, really hard to do.

It's just hard to. And the Holy Spirit grabbed you and said, you got to watch on your pride. Yeah, exactly.

And you know, it's weird because when I got home, I felt really bad.

I felt really, really bad. So much so that I called Joyce at her work and say, we got to pray because there's something like,

I shouldn't feel like, you know, I need to tell this person how to live their life.

You know, I mean, you should be inspired by the Holy Spirit to do that. So there was an internal struggle with me.

And like you're saying about pride, to do that and not to do that. And it's cool that the

Holy Spirit reveals to us what we need to pray for about ourselves. Right. I got to work on that,

Lord. Help me. Thank you. And he's gracious because a lot of things we would never see for ourselves.

But when the Lord talks about, I'll say, a change in our lives, there's a lot of painful words that come up like refining, or crucible, or pruning.

And none of those things are pleasant to go through. But if we trust the

Master in what He's doing in our lives, no matter what we're going through, we know that the end of it all is that He wants us to bear more fruit, and He wants our fruit to remain.

And it's going to end up being a glory to Him. But we may not be an overt sin, but He wants to bring things out of our lives so that we can bear more fruit for Him.

And sometimes we have no idea what to do or how to do it, and He'll just put us through things that'll bring things out, make us trust

Him more, make Him love us more. And it might be very painful, the things we go through.

But on the back end of it, it's going to be glory for Him, and it'll be much better for our lives, too.

Sometimes you don't see any of that stuff until long after it's happened. And there's even sometimes where you may never see it in your lifetime.

So there's an element of trust there, I think. Hey, Drew, when you talk about pruning, it's like cutting something off.

And this is a form of surgery. And surgery hurts at first. It takes a while to heal. And a lot of times after the pruning, you don't see any fruit, right?

It's just a bare stump. And you think, well, Lord, what am I going through?

Because if you do do this examination of your life, and you're not seeing anything happening, it's like you do have to be patient, and you have to trust that the

Lord's doing the right work that you don't understand at the given time. There are things, though, just speaking for myself, there are things that have happened in my life that I can now see.

And there are things that have happened in my life that I don't know if I'll ever understand why. And, you know, it's just like you were saying, there's a plan there.

God allows us to make free choices, to fall down, and then uses those things to further refine us.

Maybe. I know from, we were, Brad and I were talking about this before everybody came.

John, you were here too. But, you know, for years I was away from the Lord, and I came back.

And I was living in Wilmington at the time, and I became basically an isolationist.

Like I had to get rid of all, like there was something compelling me to get rid of, you know, everything, and kind of be alone in doing that.

Which is what Drew was alluding to, you know, like you're just cutting off all these things. And it doesn't, for me personally, it didn't make any sense.

Like, okay, like, but I just felt this compulsion to get rid of stuff, like just to get away from it.

And so I had said my parents were living in South Carolina, so I would go there, and my mother used to make fun of me because I would almost lock myself in the room.

And then I'd stay with my sister, and I was in her basement. I would stay alone there, just reading, just doing this.

But there was something inside of me that was telling me, this is what you need to do. And it didn't make sense at the time there.

Looking back though, when I see the different challenges that happened in my life, you know, the tragedies and triumphs that I had, and there's some pretty significant tragedies.

And that period of time, I think God was readying myself to what was going to be coming.

And I don't think I would have been able to handle it if I didn't do that in the beginning part.

I'm sure all of us have the same type of story when it comes to things like that. But it takes a lot to be, you know, to Drew's point, like to be humble and to be fallible.

And we live in a world that's just the opposite. They want, you know, success is everything, and it's your identification.

But, you know, to die to Christ is exactly what happens. You need to die to Christ, and to allow these things to take place, you know.

And I think that's why I felt so bad on my lunch there, because instead,

I should have been weeping there for the pain that this individual was going through, instead of the other way, which was a reminder of, like, how this dualism that I had there, fighting my own flesh, what's going on there.

You know, not to be prideful and be judgmental and have that happen. So yeah, so we're constantly going to go through that.

And you notice, we've probably all had this experience when we're younger Christians. When we first get saved, we still have a lot of carnal friends that appeal to our carnal nature, and we have to cut some of them off completely.

Right, right. That's hard to do. That's part of the pruning process, too. Hopefully, as we grow in Christ, you know, we don't have friends like that.

Our friends are our brothers in Christ. Yeah, Bob? Well, I wanted to ask you, Ivan, having explained that situation to us, and having went through it and dealt with it, if you had to do it over again, how would you do it?

Or would you not do it? No, I would do it. I would definitely do it. I think there's a moment where...

I always believe there's a moment where, and I always use the phrase, God either whispers to you or he puts a boot in your neck.

And, you know, I think a lot of us have to have the boot in the neck when that happens.

Because for myself personally, if I had lived in the same circumstances, if I had the same, you know, job, the finances

I had at the time and all that stuff, I think that I would not have been able to pursue what

God wants me to do in this life. And all that had to break down, either voluntarily or involuntarily, it had to break down.

It had to be taken away and stripped down to the core. And the stripping for me is different than the stripping for everybody else.

But it really had to happen. And you had to come face to face. For me personally, I had to come face to face with my sin, my depravity, my this.

And I'm not trying to be super spiritual about it. I just think that unless that happens, it's a very difficult...

Looking through life through a different type of lens. You're not really looking it through Christ's eyes.

I just truly believe that. But what I'd like to know, because I think it's important, at least for me, the person that you were having lunch with, and it sounds to me like you were confronting him about something.

Was he a fellow believer? Yeah. So were you really trying to admonish him and exhort him to...

about the lifestyle he was living that you thought was contrary to scripture? Yes and no.

I was very much trying to be loving and understanding and letting him talk and letting him lay it all out there.

And the struggle that I had during that process was that certain things are happening where you can say you should know better.

You know, you should... There are things that you should know better that you shouldn't be doing.

Like it shouldn't be a question of like, you know, because he's close to my age. But apparently he was doing something that you thought was contrary to Christian law.

And I really believe that to follow scripture, that's what we're told to do.

And when you said that you felt like you maybe should have wept there with him, it probably would have been good if you did weep there with him because it would show him the humility in your heart that you had to come to him for something like this.

And it hurt you probably as much or more than it hurt him. Because I think we need to learn to do that.

It's not an easy thing to do. But if we see a brother that's not living a life that we think...

And the Bible says, judge not lest you be judged.

By the same things you judge, you will be judged. So we have to examine ourselves first.

But I think to try to reclaim a brother to a sound

Christian walk, we need to do those kinds of things. And if it hurts, it hurts. But let them know it's hurting you as much as it's hurting them.

That way they don't get the feeling that you're proud. And that you're judging them, that you're trying to turn their head away from the lifestyle they're living to the lifestyle they should be living.

Very true. You're 100 % correct. That was the thing. So when

I personally left that situation, I had this bad feeling for not just him, for myself.

Because of that, that interplay that should have happened wasn't happening to the point that we should be weeping for people who are hurting.

To your point. Instead of like, what are you doing? And that's also part of it.

But there should be a place there that your heart is breaking because another brother in Christ is going through this.

No, I would suppose your heart was breaking before you ever had that luncheon, Dave. Well, you know,

I think in any situation like that, when you're going in there, and I had a couple of them already, where I've actually lost friends who were supposedly believers.

And because of their decision making of what they were doing in their life, not so much of themselves personally, but the overarching position of like, you know, accepting the woke nonsense and all that other things there and still claiming to be in Christ.

And we were just different. And, you know, they felt like I was being a legalist and I was holding my ground and scripturally about what was supposed to be done.

You know, so, you know, I've lost friends that way. And I didn't feel anywhere near as bad about that as I felt about this.

Because it was a brother in Christ who I love. But at the same time, and the thing is, what happens is, is that you're,

I was going to say metastasizing it, but it's true. It is like a metastasis. You're taking their situation and you're putting it into your own lens, and you're putting it into a situation of your own family.

And you're saying, what would happen if that happened in my family? And that can stir up a lot of things that are going on there.

But also, how would I have responded to the same interrogation if it was directed towards me?

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. That's why I keep on saying that we're not all the same.

But we are one body in Christ, and we have to embrace ourselves as brothers in Christ.

This is all we have. We have each other. God put a purpose in each of our lives to be there for each other, to be willing to do that.

And to Bob's point, to weep, and to laugh, and to have joy. But if you don't have that, then what are we doing?

What do we have? And so that's a whole part of it. So I learned a lot through that.

And I'm sure all of you have gone through similar things. And Jesus said, following me, you will divide your family.

You will divide your friends. You will divide. It's going to happen. It's not might happen. It's going to happen.

And those are the tough times where you want to weep for somebody, and you pray for them, and you just continually do that.

It doesn't make me any better than they are. And I think that's the thing that you have to be mindful of, that we're not better than each other.

We're in this together. We're all sinners. But it's tough. It really is tough.

Phil, you were going to say something? Just something came to mind.

I remember somebody said, the older I get, the longer I've been a Christian. I sin less, but I repent more.

And just because that sensitivity to your heart and just wanting so hard to please

God, I mean, I wouldn't really call that my definition of sanctification, but it's a good indicator. Just as you grow more sensitive to God and learn more about his word, when you fail, it's much harder.

It means so much more than just going about it sitting every day.

You get to the point where it really hurts you when you sin and when you fall.

Joyce said something to me once, and it's so true. She goes, why are you becoming more sensitive to my word than the

Holy Spirit? And there's a certain truth to that, where you become more sensitive to your wife.

Like, if your wife is admonishing you, you're all of a sudden like you're on guard here. But the

Holy Spirit's there and it's talking to you. You're like, not doing the same thing. I said, would you please change the subject?

Well, she told me through your wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's wise, so.

But yeah, but it's true, you know. As long as we can understand that we live in a fallen world, we are fallen.

We are slowly conforming to what Christ wants us to do.

And we have to give ourselves that break of like, okay, I'm not perfect, but I am in Christ.

And I will pray and say, Lord, just keep on opening my heart to what's going on there.

And the trials that we go through, as difficult as they can be, they teach us so many wonderful things about how

God's grace is something that overwhelms us. And each one of us has a story that we can share with another brother.

And it could be innocuous to another person, but there'll be that one person that can really use it and say, oh, okay, good,

I'm fine. You know, how are you doing today? What really breaks your heart is when you see a brother that's held back.

Like a Christian counselor went to this brother and said, you're coveting another man's wife. That's wrong. Yeah, yeah.

But he wouldn't stop. And he fell away. I know it's hard to be accountable with guys.

You know, we like to do the solo thing a lot. This group has been really great, you know.

But even at this level, it's hard to really share what's going on at home, that kind of thing.

And we try to pair people up at the beginning, but that's kind of like, forcing the situation.

But I would just like consider looking around the room and saying, you know, there's a lot of really caring brothers in the room.

And, you know, to get together with some of the guys, you know, out of this classroom, you know, and share some time with them.

I know a lot of you guys do that already. But it's great when you have a brother that's going to stand behind you and help you in your walk.

Obviously, a God -given gift when you have a brother like that. Yeah, and just to be totally frank, we're in a perilous time in the church, in our church here, because it's going so fast.

So we have to be more vigilant about that and helping, because so many people are going to be coming in new, and it can go,

I've seen it in the past, where a church can go sideways when it's not intending to.

And, you know, Jeff and John, they need prayer. I mean, while this is happening, they need a lot of prayer, because they are attracting people from all walks of life now.

And it really becomes incumbent on us as a community and as a band of brothers that we understand and we embrace and we love doing that now.

And so, you know, we pray for them and keep them safe. And it should happen, because they're open now to their target at this point.

So I thank you all for anything. Anybody else have anything else to say? Yeah, I'm just going to say that, you know, as Christians, we do tend to beat ourselves up because we, in order to have accepted and believed and repented and had

Christ in our heart, we know that we needed a Savior. So we innately think that we are sinners, and we are.

So we have this tendency to beat ourselves up. So I think it's always important to remind us what it says in Ephesians, that from the time we're justified, that we're sealed, much like an emperor, when he would do a decree, they would melt the wax and they would put it on a decree.

And that's the seal of the emperor, and that meant that that was permanent. And if we take that analogy and embrace that as Christians and know that, you know, it's not a straight line.

Like you were saying, from the time we're justified, all through sanctification, it's not a straight line.

Jeff has a term for it where he calls it backsliding occasionally or whatever, but we're still moving in the right direction.

And I think what Phil said kind of struck a chord with me, too, because the longer

I'm a Christian, it's not that I do sin less, but I can identify sin more in my own life.

I can identify, whereas maybe in my neophyte stage of being a

Christian, I wouldn't necessarily be able to identify what I was doing was sinning.

And now you're almost like you're more honed in on your ability to sin and you can identify it better.

And I'm not sinning more, I'm probably sinning less. I don't know, we all backslide a little occasionally, but I look at it as an identification of things that I know

I've got to improve on. Yeah, we're always going to be improving. We're always a work in progress, because if we get to the point where we're

Christians and we say, okay, you know, we're perfect now, then we don't need a

Savior. So why would we? Because we have to repent and believe, and that's why we need

Christ. Yeah. All right.

Well, thank you very much. And I will be putting this up on the Google Cloud, and I'll have the full thing.

And the next topic I think I'm going to be talking about is angelology. Angelology. Yeah, so we'll be talking about the angels and demons and all kinds of things like that.

And please feel free to, you know, email and share things, you know, and do that.

Do that as much as you can. I try to do it as often, so does Drew. But yeah, please do that and share among us.

You know, we're our own tribe, so we should do that. He said the next topic he's covering.

Are you doing eschatology next? I'm doing eschatology. He said the next topic he's covering. Yeah, okay.

Not yet. Not the next topic. The next topic. So pray for him. He's got a big one there.

The next topic is eschatology. Yeah. I was thinking maybe asking Pastor to have another announcement just to remind folks that we're going through the summer.

And everybody loves eschatology. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They should love it. Thank you. All right,

Jonel Craig. Father, thank you so much. Thank you, Lord, for who you are.

You are our Savior. We thank you, Lord, for having these brothers here, Lord, and the love that we have for each other.

We thank you, Lord, for this church. We thank you, Lord, for our pastors, our elders, our deacons here and for what they're dedicating there.

We thank you, Lord, for this class to have the opportunity to represent you, Lord, and to share the truth there.

We thank you, Lord, that we have a Savior that we can go to and talk to and to confess to and profess about,

Lord. And we thank you for each one of these people who go out there in the world, Lord, to represent you,

Lord, to be an image of Christ. And Father, through all the good and the bad and the ugly through our lives,

Lord, I pray that you would just continue to lift us up, Lord, to constantly remind us to lean on you through these times.

These are very dark times that we're living in right now. And more than ever, they need Jesus Christ.

So we pray that you would just open us up to have those opportunities to talk about you, to do things for you,

Lord. Give the rest of these brothers a great rest of the week, a safe drive home.