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Sunday school from February 11th, 2024
We are going to pray, and then we'll get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we recognize that there are certain portions of scripture that are just not easy to understand. We ask through a careful study of your word that we may properly understand it, that you would help us to embrace sound, wholesome, true doctrine, your word rightly understood as you've taught it.
And we ask, Lord, that through the power of the Holy Spirit that you would continue to give us strength to mortify our sinful nature so that we may daily through the power of the Holy Spirit bring forth the fruit of repentance and love towards neighbor.
We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so we are in Ezekiel. Last week, I took advantage of our Ezekiel text to talk about my favorite doctrine, the gospel, and talk about the fact that there is forgiveness of sins for us in Christ, and this is truly there.
So we're back in Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 21. If a wicked person turns away from all of his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right. So, no, faith first, then the good works follow.
It's not the other way around. None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him. For the righteousness that he has done, he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God or the Lord Yahweh, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live.
But when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice and does the same abominations that the wicked person does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered.
For the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, for them he shall die. So you'll note that the expectation of scripture is that if you're truly a penitent and you have real saving faith, that it actually bears fruit in your life.
Do you keep God's word perfectly? No, that's not what this is teaching. What this is teaching is the daily repentance of a Christian. I've known people who have struggled with grievous sins, difficult sins that you can almost describe as habitual, and yet at the same time, I've never doubted their salvation because despite the fact that they have fallen off the horse and continue to fall off the horse, they daily pick themselves up with the gospel and trust that Christ will forgive them and they truly remain repentant, knowing that what they're doing is wrong.
And so those are seasons in Christians' lives, and it's something that we have to consider. And that is a difficult thing for us to come to grips with, but we all know this experientially. Just don't think like crass sins of the flesh.
Could it be fornal caboodling? No, I mean, you might struggle with gossip. You might struggle with worrying and like having anxiety attacks when you fear that your needs are not gonna be met, and as a result of it, you're not trusting God.
And you find it hard to get past these feelings. Or you might just be so angry at your husband that you wanna pinch his head off and you don't feel like forgiving him. You'll note that there's different ways in which we struggle with sin, and that being the case, what do we do?
We recognize that our sin is wicked. We cry out to God for mercy. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, the scripture says. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
This is most certainly true. And so the daily struggle of the Christian life is in fact that, it's a daily struggle. As a pastor, I never worry about the person who is struggling and wrestling and really, really having a hard time with sin.
I worry about the fellow who has given up the fight altogether and just decides, that's it, I'm gonna just do a swan dive into the lake of fire and I'm just not gonna turn away from my sin. There's no hope for that person.
Or worse, the person who theologically tries to justify their sin by turning the gospel into a license for sin. The gospel is not a license to sin. That is not what it is. It's not like you sit there and go, well, I've got the gospel so I can do whatever I want.
I'm gonna go party like it's 1999. I don't know, was that a good year for partying? But if the song says so, I'm just saying. So the idea then is that as Christians, we remain penitent, we remain humble, we continue to mortify and do mortal combat with our sinful nature, which is a daily grind and that fight doesn't end until we leave the planet.
I would remind people what Ecclesiastes 7 says. It's always a good verse. I like throwing this one out when it comes to dealing with people who are caught up in this idea that they can somehow attain sinless perfection in this life, but Ecclesiastes 7, verse 20 says, "'Surely there is not a righteous man on earth "'who does good and never sins.'".
That's a pretty straightforward passage. What's really funny is if you've ever read John Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, his argument is, well, that's an old covenant thing. It doesn't really apply in the new covenant.
That may have been true in the Old Testament times, but it's not true now that we have the Holy Spirit. It's like, really? Which New Testament passages tell us that we're going to not struggle with sin?
And if you know your church history, then you know the Pelagian heresy was declared a heresy and that sinless perfectionism was one of the doctrines of the Pelagian heresy that was legitimately cast down by the church as false, and their core text to prove that Pelagius' idea of sinless perfectionism was wrong was quoting the prayer that Christ taught us to pray.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How did the ancient church spot Pelagian heretics? They would ask him a simple question. Christ taught us today to pray daily for the forgiveness of our sins.
Why did he do that? Well, not because there's any sin that we need to be forgiven of. He taught us to pray that in order to keep us humble. You're dealing with a Pelagian heretic at this point. So you'll note that, yes, we sin daily, we sin much, and you'll note that as a Christian, that's not our habit in the sense of somehow just impenitently wandering off into sin.
And where church bodies have gone astray, it's when they basically chip away at God's law and by doing so then end up blessing people who are impenitently sinning. So for instance, all right, is there forgiveness and mercy offered by God to those who commit adultery?
Yes, absolutely. There is forgiveness and mercy offered by God to those who commit adultery. Does God bless adulterous relationships? No. So what is called for then for the adulterer to do? To confess their sin.
To recognize that what they've done is evil and cry out to God for mercy and then bear fruit in keeping with repentance. That's what's called for. And you'll note that so many churches nowadays, I mean, I cannot even begin to tell you how many pastors I've talked to and I've asked the question, what does your church do when you have young college age students who decide they're gonna shack up together?
Do you commune them when they come to the rail? I've had multiple pastors tell me, yeah, well, the head pastor won't let us bar them from communion. It's like, what? It's like, yeah, it's like not even an issue.
This is prison.
Right, there's a problem, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so what is our policy at Kongsvinger? The word of God, and you'll note that if there's a young couple shacking up together and they present themselves at the communion rail at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, they will not receive the Lord's Supper.
They might even receive a rebuke, which is the right thing to do. So you'll note then that for all the sexual politics out there, I think that as it relates to the alphabet community and other places, I think that the heterosexual Christians need to get their act together and recognize that these sins, they damn, they le-doom, they damn, and I'm not talking about homosexuality.
I'm talking about heterosexual fornication and adultery and things like this. If we're gonna condemn one, we have to condemn them all properly under the sixth commandment.
As somebody who does outreach to that community, I can tell you it's valuable for Christians, no matter what their sins are, to reread Romans chapter two and what it has to say about valid sins in the community around you, that you cannot evangelize while you're excusing your own sins.
You have no ground, and the conclusion of Romans two says, because the church in Rome was doing this, excusing their own sins while coming down like a hammer on all the sins of Rome, which, dude, there are mini-series about that.
And they are real sins, but the apostle Paul says that the church in Rome, God is cursed among the Gentiles because of what you are doing.
Yep.
And Romans seven really has to apply to the church. We've got many logs we've gotta take out of our own eyes.
Oh, it's just this sin involving the internet or just this sin involving dating or just this sin involving unbiblical divorce.
Or an adultery and stuff.
Until we go on crusading against these sins, which tempt 95 of us, we're not gonna have any grounds. As a matter of fact, we get hated. But biblically, give grounds for scorn to the unbelievers as opposed to having a standing point to share the scripture, the gospel.
That is absolutely correct. And the world is very keen to pay attention to the most vocal voices, whether they're valid voices or not within the visible church, for the purpose of saying all you Christians are alike.
I remember Jerry, not Jerry Falwell, the guy, huh? Hang on a second. Now, that's a problem. As I'm getting older, I know where it is in my brain. I just have to get a different path to get there. Jimmy Swagger.
You guys remember Jimmy Swagger? Back in the day, Jimmy Swagger was one of these hellfire, brimstone preachers. And they were saying, this is a guy who can bring it. And what was he known for? Preaching law.
Did he preach law and gospel? No, he preached law. And he put some more law on top of the law and then put it into a law sandwich and served it with a law salad. And for dessert, there was law ice cream.
And it was just law, law, law, law, law, law, law, law, law, this guy was preaching. Well, it turns out that after his church services, he would get into his vehicle and he'd be trolling for hookers. And he got caught up in a police sting.
And he was arrested for that. And of course, the world was sitting there going, man, this guy's been railing against us and all the things that we like to do, but turns out he was doing the same things.
Just doing the same nonsense. And the world just discounts us. And what happens is that then the world creates characters like Dana Carvey's church lady, right? Could it be Satan, right? And the reason why that particular character was so popular and everyone can relate is because they've been to church with that person.
Or they know a lady who's in their neighborhood who claims that she's a Christian and she's like that. And the thing is, is that for all of her claims about how holy she is, it's obvious to everybody that she isn't.
And she's quick to condemn everybody else without even owning a bit of her own sinful quirkiness at all. And of course, everybody can smell it. And that smells like hypocrisy. And so they assume that Christianity is the same.
So when we who understand law and gospel rightly say, nope, God's law condemns this sin, the world hears that and they assume that we are saying that we are better than them. That's what they assume. You're condemning me for that?
You think you're better than I am? You're calling me a sinner? And we who understand law and gospel sit there and have to go, yep, we're calling you a sinner. And the reason I say that is because I am one too.
Because the law condemns us all. The law is not given for us to play the game of the star-bellied sneetches. You guys remember the star-bellied sneetches? Wonderful. Dr. Seuss was a Lutheran, by the way.
I don't know if you guys knew that. He was a Lutheran. And that Yertle the Turtle was against Nazism and Adolf Hitler, just a saying. But the story of the star-bellied sneetches, and they were the best on the beaches because they had stars upon thars, right?
These are sneetches that had stars on their chests. And then this crazy character comes up with a machine that makes it so that these other sneetches who didn't have stars on their chests, this machine will put stars on thars.
And so those who had those stars, they were on the same level as everybody else. And the thing is that when you play with God's law in such a way that you somehow delusionally think that you're keeping it, and you're looking down in your nose at everybody else who isn't, they're the sinners.
Isn't that the game that the Pharisees played? I always point out that when we get to a gospel text where it says that the Pharisees grumbled against Jesus because he went to eat in the house of a sinner.
And it's like, duh? There's no other type of human being on planet Earth. If Jesus couldn't eat with sinners, poor Jesus would have to eat by himself every single day.
There's poor Jesus. He's not allowed to eat with sinners, which means he can't eat with his mom,.
Can't eat with his dad, can't eat with the kids in the neighborhood, can't eat with anybody, right? Because he eats with sinners. And then, of course, when the Pharisees say something like that, he's eating with sinners.
What does that tell you about what they thought about themselves? That they weren't. So, surely there's not a righteous man on the Earth who does good and never sins. So what's the daily life of the Christian?
It's the grind. It's the slog. It's, well, it's Romans 7. I think this is helpful here in this regard because we have to not only affirm what God's word is saying, that those who turn the gospel into a license to sin, who wander from the faith and pursue unrighteousness, that they've abandoned the faith.
We have to recognize that each and every one of us have a tendency towards despair because the daily grind of fighting against our sinful nature is anything but fun. And it really is a legitimate daily grind.
And so Paul, in Romans 7, talking about the law and its condemning power, and then how this plays out in his own life, he asks the question, did that which is good then bring death to me? No, by no means.
It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual. And here's an interesting fact.
Paul here, he says, Amy, I am of the flesh. He does not say I was of the flesh. I were of the flesh. Formerly, before I was a Christian, I were of the flesh.
Okay?
He says, I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Can anyone just say, that's me? You know?
Okay.
I know I am supposed to clean the litter box. Okay, my wife is out of town.
I know I'm supposed to do this daily, but the good that I want to do, I don't do, right? So it gets pushed off for two or three days. And then I wonder why my cat smells.
So, right?
Now that's a silly example, but the thing is, is that we know the good that we ought to do. And as Christians, because we are a new creation in Christ, the new man that you are in Christ desires only to do good.
Only.
Your sinful nature is not on board. Is, in fact, warring against the person that you are in Christ. Let me give you a cross-reference on this, so I'm not speaking out of turn. In the book of Galatians, Paul says, like, an interesting thing.
I say, walk, peripateho, conduct your life by the Spirit. That means by the power of the Holy Spirit. Augustine, on the letter in the Spirit, it just lays this out beautifully, exegetically points out that a Christian has to daily pray and ask the Holy Spirit for strength to mortify our sinful flesh.
So we walk by the Spirit, by the power of the Spirit. Walk by the power of the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.
These are opposed to each other.
Why?
To keep you from doing the things you wanna do. So the daily grind of the Christian. I know I'm supposed to do my homework. I know I'm supposed to kiss my wife and tell her I love her. I know I'm not supposed to tell my husband that he's an idiot and disrespect him.
I know, all these things, right? I know these things, but what does your sinful flesh say? Let's go for it, right? And so the Spirit and the flesh are at war with each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.
What do I wanna do? I wanna do good. That's what I wanna do. But the good I wanna do is not the things that I do because my sinful flesh is sitting there going,.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We don't wanna do that. We're gonna do the other thing, okay? We don't wanna work. We wanna play. We don't want to clock in. We want to call in sick and then pull out our PlayStation 5 and spend the day blissing out on, you know, I don't know, some kind of thing.
I don't know what we're talking about. I don't know the video game, so you'll have to tell me. Right? So let's keep going back with Romans now. I don't understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. Note his attitude as a penitent, okay? What do you mean if I do not do what I want, I agree that the law is good? Even when the temptation comes and I fail the test and I sin, I still agree that God's law is good and it's right and it's holy.
Me, not so much, right? So now it's no longer I who is doing it. It's sin that dwells in me. And this is the part where Lutherans, I think, shine forth when they talk about the status of a Christian. The status of a Christian is simul justus et peccator.
We are simultaneously justified before God and still have a sinful flesh, okay? Now it is no longer I who do it. It's sin that dwells in me. I know that nothing good dwells in me, that's in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what's right.
I do not have the ability to carry it out.
That just proves Paul isn't saved.
Oh, that proves he's not saved, right? Well, clearly he don't have the Holy Spirit. He just needs to have that second blessing of holiness from the Holy Spirit.
The only reason why he fell was because he was never honored to begin with.
Okay, right.
So you'll note here, he says, as a Christian, I have, okay, and we're gonna note here that he has the desire to do what's right. He doesn't presently have the ability to carry it out.
As a Christian, wait, what?
Nope, but I am a child of the King, uh-huh. And here's the thing. If you do not embrace what the scripture is saying here, you're gonna end up in Goofyville, all right? Let me explain, okay? You ask your garden-variety, charismatic, Pentecostal NAR person, okay?
You sit there and go, you know, do you struggle with sin? Nope, I don't struggle with sin at all. It's like, uh-huh, let me check your internet browser, right, let's see if you're struggling with sin.
But you're gonna know, they can't admit that they are. And then when they finally say that, you know, actually, I am wrestling with this sin, but I need deliverance, I need somebody to cast the demon of pornography out of me.
Wait, what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm dealing with the demon of alcoholism. I'm dealing with the demon of backbiting. Those aren't demons. Those are sins of the flesh. Let me prove that again, too, okay? So you're gonna know, if you don't embrace what the scripture is saying here, you are going to have a hard time figuring out why you're still sinning.
And you're gonna come up with voodoo witch doctor solutions to try to solve the problem, which never solves the problem, okay? I don't know a single person who says, you know, I used to struggle with crystal meth.
I struggled with crystal meth, but then I had the demon of crystal meth cast out of me, and now I, after getting my dental work fixed, I walk perfectly and never have any temptation whatsoever to go back to crystal meth.
I don't know a single person that says that, okay? In fact, if anything, one of the things I have seen among charismatics is the person will claim that they have been delivered from a particular demon, and four and a half minutes after church, they're back to it.
And now they're worse off because they can't let on that they're still struggling because everyone prays God because they had the demon cast out of them, and it's just not how this works, okay?
Yeah?
Yeah, so we have a question from online. Can we see Proverbs 24, 16 as our daily fight against sin as redeemed humans?
All right, Proverbs 24, 16, I have to look. Hang on a second here. Proverbs 24, verse 16 says, oh, here we go. So let me put it in context because verse 16 is a half sentence. Lie not in wait as a wicked man against the dwelling of the righteous.
Do no violence to his home, semicolon. For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity. I think that's a perfect way of describing it. What does the life of a Christian look like?
It looks terrible. It's a mess, okay? But yeah, no, I think that's a great way to look at it. You'll note that those who have faith in Christ, though they struggle with sin, they will continue by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue coming to hear the word, receiving the sacrament, and by the power of the Spirit, mortifying their sinful flesh, even if the progress in mortifying the sinful flesh is slow in coming.
But you're gonna note here, listen, the desires of the flesh, Paul writes in Galatians 5, 17, the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you wanna do.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. What are the works of the flesh? These are not demons. This is the works of your sinful flesh. Sexual immorality and impurity, this is just not, this is kind of an anemic translation.
So akatharsia is filthy or dirty refuse, state of moral corruption, vileness. So when it says impurity, that's such a weak translation.
Liberal scholars seeking to undermine God's word point out that in first century usage before the spread of Christianity applied the gospel, the sermon on the, made the sermon on the Mount widely known.
Pornos, the Greek for porno,.
Is only refers to the physical act of adultery.
No.
In the first century, it's not, before Christianity, it's only used for the physical act of adultery. So they're putting akatharsia, which is the moral inequity, closes that loophole.
And does not let a non-Christian audience say, well, we're not going all the way.
Right.
So I'm not, this heart, this calls back to Jesus' teaching in Matthew to the Hebrew audience. You say you're not committing adultery, but I know what you were thinking in eighth grade. So that's a possible.
So, and you'll note that the way the New Testament uses the word pornea. So this is the word that gets translated to sexual immorality here, pornea. And this is nuanced against adultery. Adultery is its own word.
And they can be synonymous. A good way to put it is, is that all adultery is pornea, but not all pornea is adultery. And this is why for millennia now, Christians have understood pornea as having kind of a broader understanding.
Basically, all sex outside of marriage is going to be pornea, which is going to include the sex that occurs inside of your brain, you know, with self-gratification and things like this. So the works of the flesh, they're evident.
Sexual immorality, impurity. And let's take a look at asalgeia here, which is the one that gets translated sensuality. Lack of self-constraint, which involves one in conduct that violates all bounds of what is socially acceptable.
Self-abandonment.
So when you see the word sensuality here, understand that the word behind it, this is a perversion that takes, that basically turns the gospel into licentiousness. That's what asalgeia actually means.
And then the rest are pretty self-explanatory. Idolatry, sorcery, enmity. Note here, sorcery is listed as what? A sin of the flesh. If ever there was a candidate in this list of sins, a candidate for something that was straight up demonic, it would have been sorcery.
But what is sorcery? Sorcery is that satanic desire that isn't necessarily prompted by demons, that satanic desire in human beings to control nature itself through the means of manipulation of spells and incantations and stuff like this.
I want that girl to fall in love with me, so I'm gonna make a love potion. Love potion number nine.
That also describes climate scientists.
But the idea here is that it's the power of the control of nature through incantations and spells and manipulations and things like this. And next in line, enmity. Standard stuff at a church council meeting.
Strife, jealousy, and I was joking about that part. Fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
And then you'll note in that list, when we talked about sensuality, that self-abandonment, this word itself, aselgeia, is describing what Ezekiel is talking about. The abandoning of righteousness altogether.
Self-abandonment and going into full-on licentiousness and just going for it. You sure?
All right.
So you see the connections, right? Coming back then to Romans seven, back to Romans seven, Paul says, I have the desire to do what is right. I do not have the ability to carry it out. Well, if the apostle Paul didn't have the ability to carry it out, do you think I have the ability to carry it out?
Do you think you have the ability to carry it out? No, you don't. But don't think I'm... Well, there we go. Thank God we don't have the ability. We can just wrap it up and say, don't even try. Yeah, that's not the point he's making.
He says, I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do not do what I want, it is no longer I who do it. It's what? Sin that dwells in you. Do you still have a sinful nature?
All right, so what do we do with it? Daily take it back to the waters of our baptism and hold it under the water until the bubbles stop. That's, you know, we are in mortal combat with our sinful nature.
So I find it to be a law that when I wanna do right, evil lies close at hand, and it's not, it's the evil that's lying close at hand isn't the Democrats, it isn't the Republicans, it isn't the alphabet community or the people on the internet or whatever.
It's your own sinful flesh. That's how close it is. It's so close, it's in you, right? He says, for I delight in the law of God in my inner being, praise God, we do, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Do you think that that was an overstatement? Some hyperbole on his part that the sinful flesh that he still had at that time was waging war against him? Have you ever stopped to think you are at war, not only with the devil and the world, you're at war with your own sinful flesh.
And if you don't recognize that that, your sinful flesh is an enemy combatant, hell bent on knocking faith out of you, and you need to respond in kind. And since you don't have the ability to overcome it, you had better tap into the only one who has the power to overcome your sinful flesh.
And it ain't you, it's the Holy Spirit. So note then, we have our sinful flesh waging war against us, against the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?
Oh, I know, I know a guy, I know a guy. It's Jesus, right? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, my flesh I serve the law of sin. But it doesn't end here.
So note, Romans 7 leaves off with basically a stalemate, if you would. The new person he is in Christ, and his old sinful flesh. This, he can't get the upper hand, he doesn't have the ability in himself to get the upper hand over his sinful flesh.
How then does one get the upper hand over the sinful flesh? Answer, note what this section's called, life in the what? Which spirit is that? The Holy Spirit. Not Holy Spirit, H-O-L-E-Y, that the Charismatics believe in, but Holy Spirit, H-O-L-Y, right?
So there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Say that again. There's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death, for God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh.
So you'll note the solution to everything is the gospel. Isn't that weird? The solution is the gospel, right? By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
Who do what? Walk not according to the flesh, but walk according to the spirit. For those who live according to the flesh, what do they do? They set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.
Listen to these words. To set the mind on the flesh is death. To set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. We all know this. We all know this, okay? The person who sets his mind on the flesh, okay?
He just goes whole hog and just pick your poison, adultery, drugs, video game addiction, I don't know, just whatever, okay? The good you know you're supposed to do, you don't do. Instead, you just pursue that other thing, right?
At the end of it, is the person sitting there going, those were the best days of my life. No, they look back on them with shame.
No, shame doesn't.
Right, right. So note here, we all already know this. We've been down this track. Ecclesiastes is a wonderful text in this context too, yes.
I have a two-part anti-bunny trick.
I have a question about our original text for the Bible study.
Yes.
Okay, so Ezekiel 18, 24 seems to blend in to this talk about our ongoing battle with sin.
And ironically, also has to deal with the question of perseverance of the saints.
You should know that.
I did not plan this.
The Holy Spirit did. Oh, pious, that's just, I know your ulterior motive, you wicked man.
You are also correct, but I rely on Jesus. There is no condemnation for me. I just quote you from five minutes ago.
All right, so. Okay, so, I'm gonna go ahead and read this.
In Ezekiel 24, so, Uvashuv Tzadi. So, and when turns the righteous man.
And Hebrews 11, six makes it clear, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Not difficult, it's impossible.
Every time the Old Testament talks, says someone is righteous, they are stating they are a believer.
Okay, so we have a believer who turns, shuv is to turn a 180 degree turn. But it's usually used for repentance from sin to God.
This is repentance from righteousness, from faith into something else.
Okay, and then it goes on, but can you explain this? I've got two ways that this kind of relates. One, how do we differentiate between this righteous person who turns from his righteousness and then is, and you know, and gosh, doesn't the rest of that verse seem to indicate that this believer is subsequently damned after he shipwrecks his faith?
Absolutely. So, you'll know that Martin Luther, and when he talks about the power of baptism, he asks questions along these lines. You know, what about the person who walks away from their baptism, right?
That person has lost faith. They've lost faith, and how then are they to be saved? They have to return to their baptism. So, that's the idea. So, when we talk about perseverance of the saints, we cannot talk about it apart from the means of grace.
So, let me give you an analogy, and we'll kind of work it out. I shouldn't start with the analogy, but this is still kind of how this works out. Faith is a gift given by God. So is life itself, okay? Did any of you choose to be born, by the way?
No, I assure you, I wasn't just floating off in space somewhere looking at my parents going, would you get together already? I'd like to be born.
I was screaming in protest the entire time.
Right, okay.
I wouldn't have made that choice.
So, the point is, is that we didn't choose to be born, but we were given the gift of life. Life is a stewardship, okay? If I decided that I was not going to eat, I decided I'm just gonna stop eating altogether.
Now, I have a lot in reserves right now, but when the reserves run out, what will happen to my body? I'll die of starvation, right? And you sit there and go, okay, well, why did he do that? Because he didn't steward the gift that God had given me.
How does God sustain physical life? Through food, right? Through sustenance, through exercise and things like this. You have to steward the life that God has given you, and you steward it through means.
Man does not live by bread alone, Christ says, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Quoting Deuteronomy, right? He quotes that against the devil. Listen to the sentence. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Faith is a gift given. You did not choose to become a Christian, okay? So, you'll note that in our repertoire of hymns that we will never be singing, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, because you didn't.
It's a breaking of the eighth commandment.
Right, so, actually, that would be a breaking of the second commandment, but, okay. But the idea then is that you've all been gifted faith and repentance. And faith, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Faith is then a stewardship, just like your life. It needs to survive based on what? You have to feed it. Feed it what? The word of God, the body and blood of Christ, and the word of God rightly taught.
And the idea here is that you'll note that there's this habit that human beings have, okay? Let's say I've discovered my new favorite sin. Well, when I've discovered my new favorite sin, am I keen on going to church and having my favorite sin condemned by the preacher?
You'll note that human beings are ridiculously predictable. Okay, I've decided I'm gonna go down this road, and the first thing that's gonna happen because I've gone down this road is I'm gonna stop attending church.
I'm gonna stop hearing the word of God. I'm gonna stop confessing that I'm a sinner. I'm gonna stop hearing the words of the absolution. I'm going to, what? Starve my faith to death. And that's what this is talking about, the shuv here, is to turn away from faith because Christ is our righteousness, to turn away from our righteousness and to turn towards wickedness.
And human beings do this. How many times have you heard somebody say words like this? The reason why they don't want to hear God's word is because they like their sin, right? Do you think you're any different?
And so the idea here is this turning away is to basically say, goodbye, Jesus. Goodbye, word of God. Goodbye, means of grace. And now Christianity and God's word and the sacraments, they're all in the, they're in the rear view mirror.
And where are you at? You're feeding your sin. This is a dangerous thing.
What would you say to the person who reading this passage will simply say, well, I mean, clearly the person who walked away would just never say it to begin with.
Okay, so it's a twisting of scripture. There's a passage in one of the Johannine epistles that talks about the fact that the reason why they left us is because they were not of us. That's not talking about your garden variety Christian.
That's actually talking about the Gnostics. Okay, and look at your context here. All of 1 John is written against Gnosticism. Okay, the reason why those Gnostics left us is because they were never of us.
That's the reason why they've separated themselves from us. That's so, to basically turn that into, well, the reason why that person fell away and they no longer attend church is because they were never a Christian to begin with.
That's a cute answer, but the scriptures do not permit that.
So the language of this verse doesn't seem to allow it.
The definition of the one who falls away.
Is, it's Sadiq. It is the righteous.
Which by Hebrews 11, six, can only be somebody who believes.
Correct. It is impossible to please God.
It's impossible to be righteous without faith.
Yup.
So this verse doesn't allow a non-believing believer to fall away.
There's no such thing as a non-believing believer. You believe in flaming snowflakes if you believe in such a thing like that. Language, at this point, doesn't mean anything. And I would always come back to the fact that the person who says that you can't lose your salvation and they were never of us, Christ himself in Matthew 13 drives home hard the idea that you can legitimately fall away because he teaches this in the parable of the soils.
Disciples came to Jesus and says, why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered them, to you has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, to them it has not been given, for to the one who has more will be given and he will have an abundance, but for the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away from him.
So here's the parable explained. Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart.
This is what was sown along the path. So here God's word comes and the person doesn't believe. As for what was sown on the rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while and when tribulation and persecution arises on account of the word, he what?
Falls away.
Is that scondolito?
Yeah, that is.
Scondolito.
So it's not merely that he falls away. This is what causes him to sin. It brings, completely brings him to a downfall at this point. He's scandalized by the fact that he's having to suffer for the Christian faith.
So he falls away. As for what's sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world, the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful.
Now these folks might still actually be in the faith, but you know what they're not doing? Sharing the gospel.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. He falls away. He just, goodbye, I'm out of here. You know, I, one of the things I think is interesting, I'll kind of point this out, is I'm gonna use a, I don't know if I want to use that analogy.
God's, the gospel is, doesn't care who preaches it or where it's preached. As a result of it, that, let's say somebody is at Lakewood, right? And by some odd alignment of the planets, Joel Osteen inadvertently preaches the gospel.
Who gets past her does.
For a good cause. Right.
From time to time, he might actually say, Christ died for our sins. What did I just say?
You know.
I was possessed. I didn't mean that. But he, so if he preaches the gospel, guess what? God promises the Holy Spirit will be operative with the preaching of the gospel. He, the Holy Spirit doesn't care who preaches it.
So somebody at Lakewood, hearing the gospel, might actually believe. And they, at this point, have real faith in Christ. Here's the problem. Their steady diet of doctrine that they're giving is not conducive for faith to flourish, but rather for faith to die.
So you remember in the Great Commission, Christ says, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all I have commanded you. Discipleship continues on for each of us because we continue to apply ourselves to hearing the commands of Christ in the words of the apostles and in the words of all of the scripture.
We continue to hear that, right? So there you are at Lakewood. You've been brought to life by the power of the Holy Spirit through the preached gospel. You believe Christ died for your sins, and you have been taught over and over again, you're the head and not the tail.
God wants you to be prosperous, wants you to be healthy, wants you to be wealthy. He wants you to be influential. He wants you to be the, you know, the bee's knees and all this kind of stuff. And so you're listening to this, having faith, but then being fed this poison, okay?
So then real persecution breaks out against Christianity. And what are you going to do? I didn't sign up for this. Even though you have been given the gift of faith, you're gonna take that faith and chuck it as far as the East is from the West because you think Christianity's all about having your best life.
Now, you didn't sign up for persecution.
So that verse 21, having no root,.
Having no word, having no depth of scripture. Yeah, no depth in that soil, no depth for the God's word to dig in deep. Then what happens is that as soon as persecution arises, hasta la vista, baby. Now, no, so Christ doesn't say, well, the reason why they left is because they were never of us.
That's not what he says. He says they received the word with joy and only when these other things come up, they fall away. So if Jesus didn't believe in once saved, always saved, I'm not gonna contradict him.
That seems to me like a career limiting move within Christianity as a pastor. So contradicting Jesus, that's not smart stuff. So yes, Hannah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I don't know what branch of theology Bunyan was in. I would note that it has not been since I was in college that I've read Pilgrim's Progress. And so having me kind of recall it, it's like all I remember is that Rosenblatt didn't like it.
And that he thought it was kind of dripping with some type of moralistic pietism. I can't say definitively that's the case because I don't have it fresh in my mind. But I would note it is not pietism nor is it self-righteousness to soberly say that a person can take their faith and walk away from it.
And as this Hebrew verb in Ezekiel says, turn away from that righteousness. And so you'll note that that's an important thing. And let me show you something else in the Gospel of Luke that I think will help here because I think this was one of the things that Bruce was getting at in his non-Bunny Bunny trailing which is kind of an interesting category.
You'll note here, listen to this. Okay, this is so perfect with this biblical theology. Describing Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist. In the days of Herod, the king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah.
And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both what? Righteous.
Dikai 'o.
You sit there and go, well, that means that they were, they were obedient to God's commands.
Wrong.
Let's take a look at a dikai 'os here, okay? To being in accordance with high standards of rectitude, upright, just, fair. Okay, the verb dikai 'o mean it's a legal word that means you're declared righteous.
Okay, it's a courtroom verdict. And this, in here in this really long definition is also that kind of idea that they are declared righteous. And so how are they righteous before God? Well, as Bruce was pointing out, Hebrew says without faith it's what?
Impossible to please God. So here Elizabeth and Zechariah, they were both righteous before who?
God. How? Faith.
Walking blamelessly in all the commands and statutes of the Lord. That's the fruit of their faith.
That can only exist in accordance with 1 John 1, 8, 9, you know, 8 and 9.
Where we confess every, because if we say we have no sin, so you can't be saying they were sinless like the Pharisees would say. Or about themselves, usually. But rather that all of the sins that they inevitably, you know, because we just covered it in Romans 7.
Were perpetually covered by their confession independence.
On the steadfast love.
And unconditional mercy of God.
Right, so let me ask you a question. So we're all saved by grace through faith. We are declared righteous, dikai 'o, by grace through faith as a gift from God. Pure and simple by faith. Can we say that we are all walking blamelessly before each other?
I, let me explain. Let me explain, okay? So if I were to just, after church, you know, kind of decide I was gonna finally let my true feelings about Stephen Elliot out, and I told somebody, that's Stephen Elliot, he's a big booger head, okay?
All right?
And Elliot found out about it, okay? And so this person calls up Stephen Elliot, did you hear what Pastor Rosebrook said about you? He said you were a big booger head.
He did.
What?
Right, and he said, may God give a curse to the Kansas City Chiefs today at the Super Bowl. Okay, because I see you wearing red.
But both teams are red.
I know your true intentions. But all of that being said, you know, so I'm speaking trash talk here, I'm breaking the eighth commandment, right? And so Elliot calls me up. What gives here, Rosebrook? You know, why'd you call me a booger head, and why are you talking down on the Kansas City Chiefs?
All right, and so what do I do? I go, you know, you're right. I, you know, I'm sorry. What I said was sinful, I was wrong. And I ask you to forgive me, right? And he goes, yep, all right, I forgive you.
Am I still walking blamelessly before him? Yes, but walking blamelessly before others is not sinless perfection. It's acknowledging our sin when it comes up, and asking for forgiveness, and forgiving others when they sin against us.
So that being the case, love keeps no record of wrongs we heard in our epistle text today. So moving forward, will Stephen Elliot always remember that I called him a booger head? And you know, I'm not so sure I can trust that Rosebrook guy, no.
You know, moving forward, he'll believe that the gospel has covered all of that, right? And that's the idea. So walking blamelessly is not sinless perfection. It's the humble recognition of your sin, asking for forgiveness, walking in repentance, which is the daily grind of the Christian faith.
Whereas, you know, the self-righteous, they don't even think that they're sinning at all. They don't even ask for forgiveness. And those who've walked away from the Christian faith don't even think that, you know, they don't care what Jesus has to say about anything.
How many people in our days have we read about, like major prominent Christian leaders have deconstructed their faith, and they're no longer Christians? Are we to just say, well, they were never of us?
Baloney.
If, you know, how many of them were baptized?
All of them?
They legitimately turned away from the Christian faith to pursue something different.
The only reason you're divorced is because you never got married in the first place.
I like the Southern accent on that one, too. Yeah, no, so you'll note, the scriptures warn us, warn us against this. Let me come back to exegeting Romans 7. We were in eight, okay? Paul then, so those who are in the flesh, oh, let me finish the sentence.
To set the mind on the flesh is death. To set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It doesn't submit to God's law, indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Does that sound like a challenge that you should accept? Well, I'll prove you wrong. No, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you, however, are not in the flesh, but you are in the spirit, if, in fact, the spirit of God dwells in you.
Does the Holy Spirit dwell in you?
Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, and the spirit is life because of righteousness, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, and he does, that's kind of the point, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal body through his spirit who dwells in you.
So then, brothers, are we debtors? We are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. You gotta remember who you owe at this point. Do you owe your flesh to, well, I owe a big debt to my flesh, and so I gotta make sure I keep paying my debt to my flesh.
If you live, okay, so then we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if what?
By the what?
By the spirit. Dei pneumati. If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. What are we supposed to use the Holy Spirit for? Speaking in gibberish? Giving nonsensical prophecies about breakthroughs and suddenlies?
We're to take, by the power of the Holy Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body. The Holy Spirit is the one that breaks the tie between your sinful flesh and the new person that you are in Christ. What does this require you to do?
Beg.
Let's come back to that concept of prayer. Daily waking up and saying, God, please, by your spirit, give me the strength to wage war against my sinful flesh that wants me to not do the good that I want to do, and help me by the spirit to put to death today the deeds of the body.
And guess what? When God wakes you up in the morning, tomorrow morning, you're gonna have to pray the same thing. And then the day after that, and then the day after that, and the day after that, until you stop breathing.
And you'll note here, it's important to recognize who's the one who's giving us the strength to put to death the deeds of the body. It ain't you. It's the Holy Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit gave you that strength, is there anything that you can boast in?
And say, I conquered this sin. No, you did not. The Holy Spirit gave you that strength to put to death that deed of your flesh, and you don't get any credit at all for it. The Holy Spirit does. Right, yeah.
So the idea then is that the daily walk of the Christian is the daily crying out to God to give us the strength to put to death the deeds of our body. How does Luther's daily prayer go?
Right?
Look it up, right? This day that I fall into no sin or evil, right? We're praying to God to give us that strength. And Christ teaches us to pray. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Is that not a prayer to God that by the power of the Holy Spirit he would help us to put to death the deeds of the body? That's exactly the same concept. So, I hate to say it, being Christian's hard, it's gonna be a grind, and you're daily gonna have to cry out to God to give you the strength to wage battle against the sinful flesh that is waging war against you, and it's only by the power of the Spirit that you'll have any progress in putting to death the deeds of the body.
And you get to do this every day until you stop breathing. The end. So there, this is where I'm gonna end up. Lord willing, we'll see you next week.
