Our Favorite Heresies (Part 3)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. Do you say fudge -sickle, Steve, or fudge -sickle? You know, now you�ve got me thinking about it,

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I�d say fudge -sickle. Why do we kind of slang that here in New England, it�s just fudge -sickle, fudge -sickle?

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Well, I don�t know. Why do they say a lot of things they say up here? You know, it�s just accent. Is it easier to say?

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Because, you know, in England, they would, you know, slide letters together or extract them or something. Fudge -sickle.

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Fudge -sickle. No. I think there needs to be a new segment of No Compromise Radio, the fudge -sickle.

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I don�t know. I mean, it�s just like I can imagine how they say, like, you know,

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I was just thinking about prisons and, you know, conjugal visits. So would that be like a conjugal?

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Conjugal. If it was said in the same manner of fudge -sickle, fudge -sickle. Conjugal. Conjugal.

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Before we start our show today, I have Martin Luther�s little instruction book here, a classic treasury of timeless wisdom and reflection.

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And so, Steve, it�s randomly. If it wasn�t random, could he weigh the pages like that?

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Uh -huh. Now, what�s that thing that we used to do when we were kids and you would see like Mickey Mouse running if you drew him like 15 times and you did that to the pages?

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Oh, yeah. Well, I don�t know what that�s called. Some form of animation, but I don�t know. Or poor man�s animation. Yeah. I don�t know what it�s called.

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Or humankind animation. I don�t know. But I couldn�t even draw a stick figure consistently enough to make it look like it was moving.

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So don�t ask me. All right. I�ll just open it up. Oh, this is an excellent one. The Bible is alive.

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It speaks to me. It has feet. It runs after me. It has hands.

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It lays hold of me. That is good. I mean, isn�t that right? Isn�t that why, you know, our thinking should be constructed around the

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Word of God because it is living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword and faster, may

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I say, than we are? Faster than Pinocchio�s Zendagram.

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Luther, I just ordered a bunch of his original works, Steve, because I haven�t read a lot of his stuff.

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All right? We always talk about Luther and we would understand some stuff maybe from Galatians or some have read the 95

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Theses. But I begin to read some�I�m going back to the primary sources in my life.

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So I�m reading Luther. So I�m a Luther kick. So on the last like six weeks of Twitter, I�ve pretty much just given

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Luther quotes. Some are good though. Some are nice and he�s a no -go kind of guy, pointy, poignant, pungent.

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I don�t think I agreed with this one quote though. It said, �I�ll take the Packers in six.� I don�t know what that�

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Do they play like it�s the best of 12 games in the football schedule?

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Hey, how about those Red Sox? Didn�t they just get a new pitcher? Oh, yeah. We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher.

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Well, they gave up a lot of players for him, some really talented players to get him. But to quote

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Morrissey, �How soon is now? Let�s win now.� It�s immediate. Yeah. Come on.

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Super immediate. Well, we�ve been doing this series on our favorite heresies. You know, it kind of made me think of, you know, go ahead.

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I was going to say we even have a cool graphic for it. Do we? Not. You know how those churches, they have like an eight -week series and they�ve got to have the cool graphics every week for that same thing.

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It�s our current series. You know what? When we put this up on the� What do you say? This is just� I�m just talking off the top of my head.

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When we put this series on the web, I think we should intersperse some movie clips, too, to illustrate the points that we�re trying to make.

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Are some animation deals of the� Oh, yeah. The little, you know, you draw

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Mickey Mouse and� Yeah. I think they should put like little GIFs in there and stuff like that, little GIFs, you know?

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And it�d be like from Ponderosa or Bonanza and stuff and they could just, like, could just� I don�t even remember the names from the characters.

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Hoss? Yeah. Okay. Hoss. Little Joe? Yeah. Little Joe. Dad? Pa. I think it was

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Pa. Come on, Pa. You know you can�t do that,

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Pa. I think I probably saw the Big Valley with� Was it Barbara Stanwyck?

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Oh, yeah. We watched Big Valley a lot. Yeah. My brother liked that one. I long for the day when we could have some clean westerns again.

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You know, white hat, black hat, bad guy, good guy. But now when you go watch a western, the modern western is kind of like the modern

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Braveheart or Gladiator. They want to create a really bad character.

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You know, they want to create an evil man. And so now instead of just having some evil guy who happens to be a horse thief and he shot somebody in the shoulder or something, he has to burn the children and rape the wife and blah, blah, blah.

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And you're just like, okay, I already get it. This guy is an evil bad man. That's all I need to know. I don't need to know all the rest.

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Well, my problem with most of the movies these days is the good guys, you know, they can't be good. You know, they just can't be relatively good.

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They have to be mostly bad but a little bit, you know, reluctantly they're going to do the right thing, you know, once in a while.

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So yeah. What is in the heart? Anti -hero. Now, men have their problems, of course, they're the ones who are being bad, but what's in the heart of a young lady who's trying to be an outstanding citizen but she meets kind of like the bad boy and then goes off the deep end?

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What's going on there? It's because according to the survey, she's good. She's mostly good. So we've been doing this series on our favorite heresies and, you know, from Christianity Today, the

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November issue put together by Lifeway Research and Ligonier Ministries and, you know, they got joined together in this spiritual enterprise.

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So is 2 Corinthians 6 involved here? I think so. So I don't know whether it's equally or unequally yoked, but if you're hooked up with Lifeway.

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Well, I was going to say, what does light have to do with darkness, but what does congregationalism have to do with Presbyterianism?

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What does the International Mission Board have to do with the

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General Assembly? With the Presbytery. Yeah. With the elders. Okay. So, we're down, you know, because they give a percentage of evangelicals, professing evangelicals who believe these statements and, you know, some of them have been quite disturbing, but this one here, 48 % -

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Jared I'm going to give you a little background music. I'm going to be making sounds, but you keep reading. Pete Thank you. So, 48 % agree with this statement,

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God, oh, I'm sorry, even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation.

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Slightly less than half believe with that one. Pete Well, that's so obvious because we know mortal sins deserve damnation, venial sins don't.

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I mean, I mean - Pete See, this is the race to Rome all over again, right? Pete How hard can that be? We just have kind of like, some things are really boo -boos and some things, you know, you really meant to do it.

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Pete Moral relativism, you know, it's like, God, God pretty much creates life on a curve.

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He's rooting hard for you. Sometimes you slip up a little bit and he knows, he knows about that.

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Oh, he knows that you didn't mean to tell that lie. Pete Rooting tooting. Pete He's rooting for you.

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Pete He's rooting tooting. Pete Everything's going back to the, the old Brenner in some kind of old Magnificent Seven or something.

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Pete When you slip and fall, you don't expect God to condemn you. He's going to give you a hand up.

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That's just how he is. Pete Steve, if you go, you meaning the audience or you could do it too if you wanted, and you go look at the different definitions for sin, you know, sometimes we just default to miss the mark, but even in the

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New Testament, you've got a transgression, you've got a trespass, you've got iniquity, you've got missing the mark, sin, all these different words.

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I'm trying to think of a couple other ones. I think there are six in the New Testament. Pete You didn't know a harmartology, a harmardiology class was going to break out.

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Pete I know. I know. And you think, okay, how many different ways does God have to quantify? Listen, here is the standard,

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God's perfect holiness. You know, and if you want to see what that looks like on earth, you look at the

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Lord Jesus Christ, never complained, always content, always thankful, always prayed when he should, relying upon the

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Spirit of God. And then you think, well, but I really wasn't that far off. I mean,

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I almost, I mean, from afar, you could think Jesus's life and my life on earth were pretty much equivalent.

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We could live in apposition to one another if we were grammarians. Pete Dear Pastor Mike, I was reading

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Romans the other day, and I came across Romans 6 .23. Maybe you could comment. The wages of sin is heaven.

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I read from the New Living Understanding of Scripture, said the

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TNUS. Pete I know. We just make up translations.

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Pete New Living TNUS. Pete We just call them as we see them, make them up as we believe them. Pete TNUS.

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Pete Well, what happens, and now this is in seriousness, and when you want to think about this properly, instead of thinking about the sin that the person commits, also think about the person that the sin is against, and that will help you.

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So if I sin against Steve, it's one thing. I sin against my wife, it's another thing. If I sin against, you know, we're talking about, let's say

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I try to hurt physically, then if it's against the President of the United States, it just keeps increasing because it's the value and the nature.

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I mean, we understand that in our society, when you sin against the President in one of these ways, it can't even, you know, people can't even threaten the

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President, or it's a felony. And so it's the one against whom we sin against, and God is an infinite, holy, and wonderful God, and sin against him, therefore, must require a change.

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Pete And I think it's Psalm 51 .4 says, you know, David talking about his adultery, he says, against thee and thee only have

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I sinned. And so, you know, I mean, it elevates it. Did he sin against Uriah?

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Yes. Did he sin against Bathsheba? Yes. You know, but ultimately, his sin, he understands, is against a holy

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God. And you know, that is just lost among evangelicals who could say that, obviously, just about an equal number who don't believe that even the smallest sin deserves damnation.

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I don't know how you quantify, you know, sins, like you said earlier, you know. I mean, we don't, do we have a

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Roman Catholic scale where we can go, well, that's not so bad, you know. Put your sin on the scale, see what it weighs.

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Paul Well, and with moral relativism and society determining these things, if you don't have an external source saying, a fixed source outside of us, this is right, you know, do not murder, thou shall not commit adultery.

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Well, what about society? Society says, you know, gay marriage is fine, therefore, you know, we don't have to go to any of these laws regarding, you know,

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God's word. We just pick our own because we voted on them in the legislator. Steve, if I take an object's life, going back to my earlier point,

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I have to look at the object. So I kill an ant, I kill a flea,

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I kill a squirrel, I kill a possum, I kill my dog. I kill another human, okay?

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The human only is an image bearer of God and therefore, even back to Genesis chapter 9, if it's premeditated,

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I should lose my life. Not because taking a life, taking life is always sinful because it's not if I'm going to take the life of an animal to then eat the animal, a cow or something, but it's the one

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I sin against and if I take a life of another human, that is grievous sin because it's not even really against the human as much as it is against God who says, value life, don't take that person's life.

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Yeah, I just say people have lost perspective, you know, when they think, you know what, maybe there's some sins that just aren't so bad and God will let us into heaven anyway.

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I wonder if this survey, Steve, would have changed much, if any, if they would have been asked, what do you think the

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Bible teaches about this subject? Do you think the Bible teaches that any sin, you know, versus, this is almost like what they think.

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I don't mean Lifeway Ligonier, but what the people think versus, well, do you think the Bible teaches? Oh, you know, it's interesting because I was misreading part of this here because 48 % agree with that, but it's about 48 % don't know if even the smallest,

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I mean, it's not like they were disagreeing with it, but they don't know and I'm like, that gets to your point because people don't know what the

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Bible says. You know, does the Bible say, da, da, da, and, you know, honestly, most people would have to say, I don't know, because they don't know what's in the

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Bible. And that's, you know, are you an evangelical when you don't know what's in the

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Bible? Well, it's like I say, are you an evangelical when you can't tell me what the evangel is? If you don't know what the good news is, how can you be an evangelical?

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And to be kind, if you're a brand new Christian and you say, well,

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I don't know what the word evangelical is, but if I said to you, you know, could you just tell me a little bit about Jesus?

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And you say, you know, I sinned a lot and I couldn't believe there could be a God who would forgive me and I believe in Jesus now.

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And then I say, well, you know, what happened on the cross? Oh, he died on the cross. Did he stay on the cross?

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Oh, he was raised from the dead, right? There are new Christians that we'd have to walk through, but lots of times we're not dealing with new

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Christians. We're dealing with people outside in the parking lot who are trying to get our attention. Here, you know, we're not talking about novices.

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We're not talking about brand new Christians. We're talking about people that should know better. And for me,

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Steve, I think it was similar to you. I got saved and I wanted to know the

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Bible. I worked hard. I'm sure I could have done better. That's not the point. But I worked hard at getting to know the

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Bible. I wanted to know how God thinks, what God thinks, and I wanted to know how to respond to this

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God because for my entire life, I ignored the Bible. So I thought it was time to get a move on. I can remember, you know, going through the process of trying to even pick a church and I was like, because for a while I was having to work 16 hours on Sundays.

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So you know, by schedule, I mean, that was just my schedule. So I actually went up going to, you know, now

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I just shake my head because I had to go to a Saturday night service, you know.

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And after that one, after I was at that church one time, I just thought, I don't really like this.

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You can tell us the name of it. I'd like to know. I don't even remember the name of the church, really. What was that one up in kind of Thousand Oaks or something,

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Rocky Creek or something? Oh. Rocky Pillage. Rocky Raccoon.

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Everything's going back to the Beatles today. Yeah, it always does. I don't know why. But let's move on to the next one.

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That's just false. The smallest sin deserves damnation and, you know, we need to recognize that because we have a very holy

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God. Okay, next one. Forty -two percent agreed with this statement, worshiping alone or with one's family is a way to replace church.

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Who would even make up such a thing? Well, I've heard people say things like, you know, well,

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I can worship God in the forest and you know, and all that. And I'm like, well, that is very true. You can worship God anyway, anywhere, isn't that true?

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I mean, right? You can, right? But on Sunday, you know, the church is called to meet together.

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We're not to forsake the assembly of the saints, you know, I mean, this kind of thing. And I'm just like, so I... This is true replacement theology.

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Yes. Yeah. Replacing the church with one's self or one's family, you know.

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So it says that the Lord purchased the church with his own blood, that the

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Lord loves the church, that the Lord models even our marriage on his love for the church.

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And you know, I guess now we can just replace it all by saying, you know, we don't want commitments.

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We don't want to have to go there at a certain time. And we can just do this in nature. And we just, basically, we don't give a rip about what

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God says. That's what this is called. Petey Well, typical of this would be the kind of person, I mean, I see these sorts of people who say, well, you know what,

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I've never really found a church that agrees with me, or I've never really found a pastor that I liked, or I've never...

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You know, all these kind of excuses for, well, I didn't really like it when they started talking about sin, or, you know, when they made it sound like I wasn't saved, or I wasn't going to heaven, or I wasn't good enough, or my kids were in trouble.

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No. I was done. And I just thought, you know what, I can worship God on my own. Steve, essentially, the book of Hebrews is 13 chapters on Christology, right, a high view of who

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Jesus is from every possible angle, especially through the use of comparison.

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Better than angels, better than prophets, better than Moses, better than Aaron, better than the Old Covenant, better than the tabernacle, and the list goes on.

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And I thought to myself, in a couple years when I'm done, what will Bethlehem Bible Church look like?

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And what if systematic teaching of Christology, what if it just drives people out?

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What if they just get such a hankering for a bunch of how -tos and everything else that they just can't take it anymore?

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And I thought, well, you know, I don't want to be dumb about it and just, you know, never connect the dots for them to see how theology leads to doxology.

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But if it does, it does, because this is what Jesus wants his church to hear, a good dose of Jesus.

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And let's ask the listeners this, how much, what did you learn about Jesus last week in the sermon?

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Wouldn't that be kind of a good litmus test of gauging things versus, well,

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I learned that, you know, if I put a teddy bear in the back of the freezer that my wife, you know, when she's cleaning the freezer and defrosting it, she's going to see a teddy bear with a little love note on there, and then she can use her frozen teddy bear to hit me with when

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I get home or something. I mean... You know what I like about my pastor's sermons is they're very practical.

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He gives me things I can use every single week. Tell me what you can learn about Jesus in the forest.

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How does natural revelation... He's a great creator. Okay. And besides, he's got wisdom and power.

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What else? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It's like, what would it be?

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I don't know. Seriously, if that one life way had to come up with, because Ligonier would have never come up with that.

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That's a pretty dopey thing, but it's mooey dopey that 42 % would agree with that.

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Okay. 39%. My good deeds helped to earn my place in heaven.

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I'm just trying to figure out how they could get there, right? I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it where, okay, 2

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Corinthians 5 .10 and the things that we've done in the body, good deeds done in the body, not the worthless ones but the good ones, maybe increase our apprehension of the glories of heaven, you know, kind of the

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Bema Seat works. But earning my place in heaven, like I have a seat in heaven because I've earned that, and a simple analogy, if there's a banquet put on by a host and you think you've got to earn your seat up by the host,

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I think you're going to be – is it disavowed of that quickly? Trevor Burrus You're going to be disabused of that notion.

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Peter Van Doren What's disavow mean? Is that such a thing? Trevor Burrus Well, we'll see. Would it have to do with –

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I don't know. We'll have to do that on another show and it'll be a barn burner. Let me tell you. It's a barn burner.

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So, I mean, I have this idea, you know, my good deeds help to earn my place in heaven. It's like my good deeds get me up to the place where Jesus can kind of grab me and then fling me around the track so that I can go, you know, fast enough to get to heaven or something.

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It is a bizarre notion that anything I do during this life is somehow going to get me into heaven or even contribute to me getting into heaven.

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Because if Jesus didn't do it all, then what chance do we have to get to heaven? Peter Van Doren Well, it's

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Romans 11 .6. You're going to add a little bit of works to grace and it's going to nullify everything. Trevor Burrus The whole shoot match.

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Peter Van Doren I thought we were spiritually unable. It was spiritual inability, total depravity. So that means if I –

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I can't do anything. So how does that work? This, I mean, this is really – this is like FOF, right?

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Fundamentals of the Faith. These people have – just need to sit in Fundamentals of the Faith class for about two weeks and they'd realize that they had everything wrong.

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Peter Van Doren Did they put your Fundamentals of the Faith class online? Trevor Burrus I don't know, but – well, some of it, but not all of it.

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It's a sad story. Peter Van Doren There's a story. Trevor Burrus But, I mean,

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I would just say, you know, if you just like went through R .C. Sproul's That's a Good Question or, you know,

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I mean, any number of the concise theology book by J .I. Packer. You can go to any number of books and you would quickly figure out that the reason these people got everything wrong is because they don't understand the

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Bible and they don't understand theology. They don't know the first thing about it. Okay, last one. 37 % said this is true.

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God will always reward faith with material blessings. He came not to just give you life, but to give you abundant life, right?

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Peter Van Doren By his stripes. Trevor Burrus We are healed. Peter Van Doren Healed, healed, healed. Peter Van Doren I'm trying to think of something funny regarding that.

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Well, I don't know how this is going to work with the dispersed tribes in James.

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I don't know how it's going to work in the days of Peter and you've got Nero, the king. I don't know how it's working for the folks in Iran and Iraq now.

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How does that all work? Trevor Burrus I don't know, but when you think about it, don't you think that Jeremiah was probably a very wealthy man just living large?

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Peter Van Doren In that kind of theology, Jeremiah was a bullfrog is what it was. I mean, it's just so stupid.

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And you know, it just plays on people's greed. I'm going to go to this God so I can get this stuff.

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And does God bless his children with all kinds of financial things and temporal things?

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The answer is often yes. From Abraham to, you know, Joseph of Arimathea.

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But that's not why you come to the Lord. And that's not, you know, isn't it Ephesians? It just popped in my mind.

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What we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. I'm just wondering why

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Jesus wasn't rich. I mean, Casey Price said he was. Well, I just think the right attitude is what

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Job wound up saying. You know, he giveth, he taketh, you know, blessed be the name of the

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Lord. And that's right. Whatever God gives, I'm thankful for. Whatever he takes, well, it was his to do whatever he wanted with in the first place.

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And ultimately, I just need to worship God, not be focused on my circumstances.

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What we need to do is to say we need to worship a God that on our deathbeds we're still going to be rich.

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And the only way you're going to be rich on your deathbed, what I mean by that is spiritual riches. And we know we will soon hear, well done, good and faithful servant, because I see you in the person of my son who did things well and earned heaven.

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