1689 London Baptist Confession (part 59)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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February 3, 2019

00:00: Our Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you this morning for who you are, all that you've done for us.
00:08: The fact that you have caused us to be born again, you've given us hope, you have granted us the presence of your spirit.
00:18: Lord, you are sanctifying us even as we struggle from day to day to put off sin and to put on righteousness, to put off the old man and to put on the new man.
00:36: Even so, you are patient, you are long -suffering, you are kind toward us, you love us.
00:43: And Father, we thank you and praise you for that. And Lord, as we look to the confessions and to your word, what it says about oaths and vows and government,
00:55: Father, we thank you for the men that you have gifted to the church, to believers over the centuries, for the wisdom that they have diligently applied in understanding your word.
01:12: And Lord, we pray that you would grant us insight as we look to their work and as we look to your word.
01:18: In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Come on, tell me the truth.
01:24: When you walked in here this morning, didn't you feel like you needed to make sure you were in the right place? Because the
01:31: Iwano lines were gone. And you missed those chairs and the carpet.
01:42: I have to say, it looks pretty good. Really nice.
01:50: Okay, we've been talking about oaths and vows. And yesterday, some of us were at the wedding.
01:59: We got to see the oath taken. And I have to admit, it was a first for me. I mean, I've been to a number of weddings, even participated in a few.
02:09: I have never seen anybody sign their certificate during this ceremony.
02:16: I just thought, hmm. It kind of underscores the fact that they're making a promise, right?
02:22: I mean, they're like, okay, we said what we said. We took the rings, but we're also going to sign.
02:28: I mean, there were no blood oaths or anything. They didn't cut themselves and then do it. But I thought, this is pretty serious business.
02:34: And then I think they, I need clarification on this, but I think they actually forced
02:39: Pastor Mike to go over there and sign it too. I don't know why. I don't think
02:45: I've ever actually signed it except for after the ceremony. But they were like, right there, right then.
02:56: Okay. I think this is right where we are. I think we left off here talking about not just the fact that we are,
03:06: I actually heard somebody use this word. I think it was on TV the other day. Abhorrence.
03:13: And I think it had to do with abortion. We talked about how we live in a culture that abhors abhorrence.
03:21: They will not tolerate intolerance. They're all about tolerance.
03:32: But the confession says that there are certain things that are so despicable, so noxious to God that a
03:37: Christian ought to abhor them. And the bearing of false witness and the irreverent and flippant use of the name of God should make our blood curdle,
03:46: R .C. says. And we talked about that a little bit. We talked about how people use the name of God in vain, how they just use it as a curse word.
03:56: But last week we talked more about how, what it means to take the
04:02: Lord's name in vain. And basically to sort of recap that, with regard to oaths and vows, it means to make an oath before God and then to fail to carry it out.
04:16: And I thought, what do you guys think about this? What does it mean when somebody says that they're a
04:22: Christian, but then boldly and publicly make statements that are unchristian?
04:32: I'm a Christian, but I favor abortion. I'm a
04:37: Christian, but I favor homosexual marriage. What about that?
04:49: Okay, they're not representing God or Jesus Christ accurately. And so I think,
04:55: I mean, in my mind, that's taking the Lord's name in vain. Saying, I'm a
05:01: Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus. I want to live what he says
05:08: I should live. I want to represent him. In other words, I want to be his ambassador, but he says certain things in the
05:15: Bible that I don't agree with. Yes.
05:25: Okay. And I understand what you're saying. They don't know what it means.
05:32: Okay, well, I'm going to say I'm a Confucian. I don't care what
05:39: Confucius says, but I want the label of Confucian. That doesn't make any sense.
05:47: I say I'm a Christian. Well, why am I a Christian? I might say that I'm a
05:52: Christian because I'm a cultural Christian, whatever. But what do you suppose, why would somebody do that?
05:58: Why would somebody say that they're a Christian and then be in favor of things that the
06:03: Bible clearly says are sinful? Why would somebody do that? Okay, convenient compartmentalization.
06:13: I think that's one group of people. Yes. I think that is the $100 ,000 answer right there.
06:20: Right? Because once I take that label, and she's not getting in her allowance, by the way.
06:28: Once I take that label, then I have the platform to look at other Christians and say, wait a second, what that person is doing is unchristian.
06:38: And I know that because I'm a Christian. Now, if you ask Lady Gaga what it means to be a
06:47: Christian, I don't think you get a very accurate answer. I think you get something along the lines of, it means to not judge anybody.
06:54: It means to love everyone. So I think that's one very good reason.
07:03: It gives them a platform from which to criticize people. And I think another one is because it seems like, you know,
07:10: Jesus himself to the world, you know, good man, bad man.
07:17: I think he's considered to be a very good man. Okay.
07:31: The world puts its definition of good on Jesus, and that's not necessarily his definition. Let me give you an example.
07:40: I happen to have, you know, my wife has a hole in her holiness for Lady Gaga.
07:47: Me, huge Lady Gaga fan. I have a little affinity for country music.
07:57: And it's amazing how many country music artists are Christians. But the songs go, you know, poker on Friday night, drinking on Saturday night, church on Sunday morning kind of thing.
08:16: Here's the Jesus that many country music artists believe in. It's the
08:22: Jesus who loves everybody, right? Like the Jesus of Lady Gaga.
08:29: And he loves them so much that he would never judge anybody. In fact, who does he hang out with? The worst sinners.
08:39: So in their mind, he hangs out with them. Why? To affirm them.
08:46: To let them know they're okay. This is incorrect.
08:53: But again, it's this idea of, we're going to take that label and then we're going to, everybody who doesn't agree with this doesn't know what they're talking about.
09:07: I think it's fair to say that we live in a, not just in a fallen world, but that our country really is, in spite of the fact that many people want to say it's a
09:18: Christian country, it's a pagan country. That it is, it has secular values, or as I prefer to say, just pagan values.
09:31: With all due respect, which means I'm about to say something a little bit disrespectful.
09:39: I think that's evident by the fact that, let's just go back to 1960. What was the big thing, and I'm going to talk politics for just a minute, the big thing against President, ultimately
09:50: President Kennedy, when he was running for President, was that he was Catholic.
09:55: You can't have a Catholic be the President, because then the Pope will be telling him what to do. Remember when
10:02: Mitt Romney ran, you can't vote for him because he's a Mormon. And he's going to be getting those secret phone calls from Salt Lake threatening to revoke his temple recommender or whatever.
10:15: Now we have a President who said all kinds of things. Who did all kinds of things.
10:22: Who made this habit of switching out one model for a wife to the next.
10:29: Nobody cares. Some people care, but not too many. Why? Because we just sort of absorbed the culture and we're just indifferent to those things.
10:46: As Christians though, we're called to live a different kind of life, to embrace a different ethic, and really to minister in a profane world.
10:56: I mean, when I mentioned politics, it's not really fair, because ultimately we had to make the choice between two candidates.
11:02: But we have to accept the fact that things that would have been unthinkable, I mean, President Trump could not have run for President in 1960.
11:11: He couldn't have, I mean, even if he was old enough. He couldn't run. He couldn't have run in 1980.
11:18: But we live in a dramatically different world now. We live in a world that is just embracing sin.
11:29: Back to the confession of faith. Whosoever taketh an oath warranted by the word of God, in other words, one that's justified by the word of God, ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act, and therein avouch nothing, that just means promise nothing, but what he knoweth to be true.
11:53: For that by rash, false, and vain oaths, listen, the Lord is provoked and for them this land mourns.
12:08: R .C. says the word for glory, the Hebrew word for glory is kavod. And it means, you've heard this before, heaviness, weightiness.
12:17: And we use the term weighty, you know, I have a weighty decision, when a decision is just so important, it has a lot of implications.
12:29: So we understand this idea of weightiness. And when we take an oath or a vow, it is weighty.
12:35: Why? Yesterday, you know, I mean, if I were
12:43: Mark Arnold, my knees would be knocking, not just because I'm getting married after, you know, not being married for my whole life, but my knees would be knocking because I need to understand this,
12:55: I'm taking a vow, not just before Rebecca, but before these people, and before the
13:02: God of the universe, my creator, I am promising to do something before him.
13:10: In other words, that's the weightiness of taking an oath or a vow. The glory of God is involved.
13:22: I mean, they're taking this, they're promising before God and all these witnesses to do something.
13:29: And if they violate that oath, that vow, they're kind of, they're breaking a vow they made before God.
13:41: R .C. says, we tend to be somewhat cavalier in entering into marriage vows, church membership vows, ordination vows, and congregational vows.
13:52: How do we know that? How do we know that people are cavalier about these things? The divorce rate.
14:01: I mean, that's pretty good evidence. Even most pagans take their wedding vows before God, even if they don't do it directly, they're doing it.
14:13: But what about church membership? Take a vow. I mean, I think we ought to have a little more solemnity to it, right?
14:23: But what does it mean to become a member of a church? I think, and I put this in my notes the other day,
14:30: I said, I think people are more willing to change church membership. I'll tell you what's more painful, to give up your
14:37: Costco membership or your Sam's Club membership than your church membership. In fact,
14:45: I pose this question to you. What would be more painful to you, being told that you have to root for the
14:51: Rams today or changing churches? And I think for a lot of people, it would be,
14:57: I can't bear to root for the Rams, be a
15:05: Lakers fan. No. R .C.
15:13: relates how when he was prepping for ordination, there was another candidate, and this is incredible.
15:18: I mean, when you get behind the scenes and seminary and stuff like that, you get to really just talk to guys and see what they're thinking.
15:26: In fact, I had like, I didn't really have a list, but I had a secret list in my mind that if Dr.
15:31: Mayhew, the head of the seminary, ever called me in and said, tell me what you think about these guys, I'd be like, and some of them,
15:40: I mean, I don't know what happened to all of them, but some of them, I think I knew pretty well. One guy said he, he was only in seminary because he wanted a cheap master's degree so he could go on and get his doctorate.
15:56: When master's was very inexpensive because it was subsidized by donors. Think about that.
16:01: They're given money to further the ministry, and some of the guys who are going there who are getting the benefit of this lower tuition don't even want to be there.
16:13: So R .C.'s prepping for ordination, and there are other guys prepping for ordination that are all in this ordination prep together, and a man is talking to R .C.
16:22: who doesn't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the physical resurrection of Jesus. He came to me before his ordination exam and said,
16:33: I'm really going to struggle with that exam tomorrow. He says, R .C., should I go with the resurrection or not?
16:44: I don't know. That's, you know, that's really not a, you know, if you want to take one side of the atonement debate or the other, there are a lot of things you could argue, you know, one way or the other.
16:55: The resurrection, I don't think so. But he says, those were his exact words.
17:03: R .C. says, what are you talking about? He replied, well, should
17:09: I say I believe the resurrection or not? R .C. says, I asked him, do you?
17:15: He responded, no. R .C. replied, then you have to say no.
17:22: The man says, but if I say that, they won't ordain me. When he took the ordination exam, he lied and said he believed in the resurrection.
17:39: And I found that interesting because he goes on to say that many people claim to believe the
17:45: Westminster Confession of Faith. They promise, they take a vow to uphold it, and then they go on to change it or water it down.
17:54: So what does that tell us about how they really felt about the Westminster Confession of Faith? They didn't believe it in the first place.
18:04: A few years later, as he's interviewing for another position,
18:10: R .C. was asked, which confession most aligned with his beliefs?
18:18: And he says, the Westminster Confession of Faith. And he says, the room erupted. People are immediately asking about more modern confessions.
18:28: And he said, wait a second. You guys asked me, which one most closely aligned with what
18:35: I believe? And I told you the Westminster Confession of Faith wasn't very popular.
18:44: So he said this. If you deem that I am not acceptable to your presbytery,
18:51: I hope it will not be because I embrace, listen, the confession of faith under which
18:56: I was ordained and under which you were ordained and swore your allegiance before God.
19:05: Well, guess what? They accepted me because they had no choice.
19:13: Otherwise, they would have had to confess. They were perjurers. They took an oath, but they didn't really mean it.
19:22: As I read that, I just thought, years ago, there's a documentary.
19:28: I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's called, I think it's something like, I think it's called, Losing Our Religion, and it's like this documentary that's made from the liberal perspective about Southern Seminary.
19:41: In fact, I think they fly over the campus with a helicopter. It's very dramatic. And what was going on at Southern Seminary before Al Mohler came on campus and was the president, there was all sorts of perversion.
20:00: I mean, professors having affairs and all sorts of different things going on on campus.
20:10: The deity of Christ being denied, the resurrection being denied, all these other things. The statement of faith for Southern Seminary could not have been more plain.
20:19: None of those things were acceptable. And every year, a professor there has to sign his name that I agree and I affirm and I will uphold these standards.
20:30: And then they didn't. So Mohler gets in. What was the number? I think it was like there were 96 professors and he fired 94 of them.
20:40: And so this whole documentary is about how terrible Al Mohler is for doing this. Yes, how terrible of him to hold people to what they promised to do.
20:56: Another example I have is it's interesting to me to go to churches and to read their statement of faith and then, you know, maybe it's the
21:06: Westminster Confession of Faith. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's just something they've written about how high they hold the word of God.
21:14: And then you go and you listen to some of the sermons. I've said this one before. I listened to one fairly local church.
21:23: And for the first 20 minutes, he talked about how good the coffee in the lobby is. I thought it was a good advertisement, but I didn't really think much of it as a message.
21:34: You know, if you want to give an expositional sermon on coffee, I guess it's okay, but that's not really why we're there.
21:45: The Confession says this, an oath is to be taken in the plain and common sense of the words without equivocation or mental reservation.
21:55: So when you make a promise, you must use language that doesn't give you an escape hatch.
22:01: Doesn't, you know, when you're, I mean, if you're clever with language and sometimes, especially when
22:08: I write, I can be clever with language. You can construct things in such a way that you go, well, if things don't go the way
22:16: I want, I have this little fuzziness in the language and I can get out, you know, it really depends on what the definition of is, is, right?
22:28: Yeah, you could take it that way. But if you look, it is a different way where to use plain and common language when we take these oaths.
22:41: Why? So they're easily understood and so that we can be held accountable for them. The Confession goes on to say a vow, which is not to be made to any creature, but to God alone is to be made and performed with all religious care and faithfulness.
22:56: And I love this part, but Popish monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty, and regular obedience are so far from being degrees of higher perfection that they are superstitious and sinful snares in which no
23:16: Christian may entangle himself. What's the translation of that?
23:25: Well, or you could say it this way, right? Catholics aren't Christians. Now the first part of this here where it says it's just not to be made, an oath is not, or a vow is not to be made to any creature.
23:42: It's just to protect us from our propensity towards idolatry. Right? Not only are you not allowed to swear on the temple, but you're not allowed to swear on any creature anywhere.
23:55: Cows or whatever. I don't know why cows. Why not cows? But you can't.
24:00: No cow vows. And such vows have to be made with great thought and not rushed into.
24:09: Now, as I indicated, I think we have to think about the historical context of this, the 1689, and it comes in, you know, towards the end of the
24:19: Reformation when things have settled down, the Westminster Confession of Faith already written. So monastical vows.
24:28: Yeah, that is how you say it. The perpetual single life of Catholic priests.
24:34: I didn't look it up, but I think it's somewhere around 1 ,000, it could be 1 ,050 A .D. when this comes into being.
24:42: Well, what about this? What about the promise of singleness or even nuns? Why? Why would you do that?
24:51: Why would anybody do it? I'm sorry. It's better to remain single, right?
25:02: So that you can do what? Okay, devote your life to God, right?
25:08: Service. Is that why most
25:15: Roman Catholics do it? The priests and the nuns. I think some do. Why else would they do it?
25:26: Because they're required to, right? And I think when you think about why would you require somebody to do that,
25:34: I think there are two reasons. One is, I mean, you know, there are the reasons that appear to be godly, but there are other more practical reasons.
25:54: If you have no errors, then where does your money go when you die? I went to the church, which helped quite a bit in the church maintaining or gaining wealth.
26:16: Does it not give some kind of perception of holiness?
26:24: You know, look at me. I'm single. I think maybe there's some of that.
26:31: What does the Bible say about singleness? I mean, besides the fact that, you know, it helps if you can do it to serve.
26:44: Okay. Go back to Genesis. It's not good for man to be alone. It's problematic. Why? I mean, there are a lot of reasons.
26:51: I mean, speaking as a man, I could say men are stupid. That's one reason. I mean,
26:58: Adam, who knows what Adam would have done, you know, by himself. I mean, we blame Eve for a lot, but it probably would have been worse if Adam was by himself.
27:05: I don't know what he would have done, you know, burn the whole place down. Stop. It's not good for man to be alone.
27:19: Okay, that's one. And let's look at 1 Corinthians 7 for a moment. I don't want to engage in Catholic bashing, but I think there's some important principles here.
27:45: 1 Corinthians 7, verses 8 and 9. If somebody would read that, please. I apologize for sitting down, but my back is killing me.
27:56: Go ahead. Okay, thank you.
28:11: And that covers your earlier point, too. Think about it this way. How many people have the gift of singleness?
28:22: Few. I think, you know, more people have the curse of singleness. In other words, they are single and don't want to be, right?
28:32: It is difficult because we, you know, naturally have desires, and to be single,
28:40: Paul says, is to burn with passion. And so marriage is given to mankind as a means of dealing with that and also of procreation.
28:53: So what happens when you take men who want to serve in ministry, women who want to serve others, who maybe don't have that gift of singleness, and you tell them the only way you can do this work is to be single?
29:25: It's not biblical, and you can expect when you put rules and regulations in place that are,
29:33: I'm just going to say, unnatural, right? Contrary to our created order, you can expect violations.
29:40: You can expect children out of wedlock. You can expect all kinds of scandal. And you can expect to have homosexual priests, pedophile priests, all kinds of things because you're asking men to do what is entirely unnatural to them.
30:00: Now, the Confession also talks about professed poverty. I actually had to look some of these things up because R .C.
30:09: didn't talk about them because they're only in the Baptist Confession of Faith and not in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
30:16: I found this interesting. Had to go to some Catholic sources. The expressed vow of renunciation of all private property was introduced into the profession of the friar's minor in 1260, whoever they are, some minor group of Catholic priests.
30:35: About the same time, another change took place. Hitherto, no limit had been placed on the common possessions of religious, but the mendicants, which means impoverished orders, in the 13th century, forbade the possession, even in common, of all immovable property distinct from the convent, and of all revenues, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
30:59: Oh, and here we go. Assigned to the Holy See the ownership of all their property, even the most indispensable.
31:08: What did that mean? They signed it all over to the Pope. Everything they had went to the
31:13: Pope. And again, why would somebody do this?
31:22: All their property. They're not going to have anything. I mean, I know some minimalists. I was listening to somebody talk yesterday about being a minimalist.
31:30: Maybe it was Friday night at the Bible study. But I know some people are minimalists, but they still have something, right?
31:39: But what about the idea of having nothing? Why would you do that? Okay. I think it is basically a misapprehension of what
32:00: Scripture says because Jesus at various times says things like, it's easier to pass through the eye of a needle than to be a rich man and all these other kind of things.
32:11: But money is not inherently evil. It can be used for evil things, and it can be an obstacle in the sense that since we're prone to idolatry anyway, if there's an easier idol to fall down to than money,
32:26: I don't know what it is. Which reminds me, you know, going back to the whole whether it's singleness or whether it's this.
32:40: If people know that you've taken a vow of singleness because you want to serve the
32:45: Lord, well, it kind of puts you sort of in a, at least in some people's eyes, in a holier place.
32:52: If you've taken a vow of poverty for the sake of the Lord, and people know about that, then some people will view you more highly.
33:01: Why? Because you must be holy because you don't, not only do you not want to have any intimacy in your life, but you also don't need any property.
33:10: You don't need anything. You need no one. You need nothing. You must be holy. In fact, you can go lock yourself away for something and just think about nothing for the next 40 or 50 years.
33:22: You must be uber holy. And that's what the confession goes on to talk about.
33:31: Regular obedience. Which, again, I had to look up to. And it just means obedience to monastic rules.
33:45: Let's look at Colossians 3. I'm sorry, Colossians 2, verses 20 to 23. You ever see, you know, and it happens like every year,
33:58: I think in the Philippines, it occurs in other places where people will be crucified or they'll carry the cross of Christ or they'll publicly flog themselves.
34:10: Why do they do these things? Outward piety.
34:19: To put on a great show of how holy they are and how much they're willing to suffer for the sake of God.
34:26: Would somebody read Colossians 2, verses 20 to 23? Starve yourself. Beat yourself.
34:35: Pierce your body. Carry a cross.
34:43: Own nothing. Stay single. Why? All so that everyone can see how holy and how righteous you are.
34:56: How much you love God. Kissenmacher said this.
35:03: Any system of religion which is unwilling to accept Jesus Christ as the only and all -sufficient
35:09: Savior is an indulgence of the flesh, a giving in to man's sinful conceit as if he, by his own contrivances, were able to perfect Christ's imperfect work.
35:25: It makes matters worse instead of better. In other words, there's this idea that somehow you are going to add something to the work of Jesus Christ by your own efforts.
35:38: And it doesn't just exist in Roman Catholicism, but this is the context in which the reformers or the composers of 1689 were writing.
35:49: They're writing in response to what they see in Roman Catholicism. But do we see it even in Christianity today, broadly speaking?
36:04: I'm friends with a guy and I haven't listened to one of his messages in a few months.
36:12: But the gist of his messages are this. I just heard him say the other day. It wasn't a full message.
36:19: That's why I didn't say I listened to a full message of his. But are you going to be good or are you going to be great?
36:28: Are you going to be good or are you going to be great? Are you just going to settle for a good Christian life or are you going to be a great
36:35: Christian? Are you going to live a run -of -the -mill
36:42: Christian life? Or are you going to really nail it? Fundamentalism.
36:51: You know, this idea that somehow by... Now, I think the problem we run into a lot of times in our thinking is this.
37:03: I'm either going to the movies and indulging my flesh or I'm not going to the movies and indulging my flesh and therefore
37:12: I am more Christ -like, more holy. I think there's a gray area in the middle and that gray area is this.
37:21: I don't want to go see things. I don't want to listen to things that cause me to have sinful thoughts, that cause me to participate in sins that I might not otherwise be even tempted to do.
37:35: Why would I go watch some rated R movie that is going to have all this nudity and all this sexual stuff in it when that's not going to be good for my mind?
37:46: It's not going to be good for me to indulge in that. Why would I do that? If I struggle with alcohol, why would
37:53: I listen to songs that glorify alcohol? If I struggle with different sins, why would
38:01: I then entangle myself in things that do that? But that's different from saying it is inherently sinful to go to the movies.
38:09: It's inherently sinful to go to Disneyland. It's inherently sinful. I mean, people have a series of rules that they make and this is the kind of fundamentalism that we ought to oppose where it's just nothing but legalism.
38:24: I happen to like to say that I'm a fundamentalist in the sense that I believe in the fundamentals of the Gospel. But this idea that somehow we improve on the work of Jesus Christ, that Jesus isn't enough, that it's
38:39: Jesus plus my rule keeping, my law keeping, my sacrifices, this is what endears me to God.
38:48: Any kind of a study of Ephesians 1 or Romans 8 leaves you with this clear message that being in Christ is all we need.
39:04: Now does that mean you can live any way you want? No. And that's not the message. The message is that being in Christ is the end for which we strive and we ought to be satisfied.
39:18: Thoughts or questions about vows? Yes, go ahead, Corey. And you know there's, yes, and there's a very practical side to that.
39:29: I've been dealing with somebody not at this church here for a little while and his particular situation is very distressing.
39:37: It's very emotionally overwhelming. And there are times just the other day he called and if I didn't see who it was
39:46: I would have never known because there's just sobbing on the other end of the line. And here's my point.
39:55: My point is he's focused on his conditions. You said, you know, focus on things above.
40:03: And so at times like this the practical side of it is, listen, we can mentally flog ourselves, right?
40:12: It's not just about the physical act of doing it but mentally we can flog ourselves because of things that we've done in the past that maybe even brought us to where we are right now.
40:25: But focusing on those things, soaking ourselves in those things is not what we're called to, right?
40:32: I mean there is godly remorse and godly regret and repentance and all those things.
40:40: But this constant need to go back and to revisit these things and to really rue over them all over again is not godly.
40:50: In fact, it's really ultimately a forgetfulness, a focusing on things that are below and not on things that are above.
41:04: It's not keeping our eyes on Christ. It's focusing on the difficulties that we have caused.
41:10: And it's not helpful. I mean it can lead to all sorts of things. I mean why do people, even
41:16: Christians, sometimes commit suicide or even contemplate committing suicide?
41:23: It's because they've lost their focus on Christ and are so consumed by their temporary circumstances that they just lose track of what really matters.
41:36: And I think Psalm 51 is helpful.
41:42: David, who committed murder, who committed adultery, who did all manner of things, understands this, that he is forgiven not on the basis of his goodness because he didn't have that, but because God is able to make him clean, is able to separate him from his sin.
42:09: Other thoughts about vows? Because I don't really know if I want to get into magistrates here. Go ahead. That's excellent.
42:16: You know, the things above being the word because as Pastor Bob said, we are really surrounded by a world that we're familiar with.
42:25: But it is a world that is not transcendent. What's the opposite of transcendent?
42:34: It's common. It's banal. It's obviously sin -filled.
42:41: This is what we're common with. This is what we're comfortable with. But we're not called to focus on these things.
42:48: We're called to focus on the things that are above. And that includes the word. And like Pastor Bob said, we would never, and I say this,
42:56: I love to say this, we would never come up with a religion like Christianity. If you look at Scripture, I don't care how far back you go, we mentioned
43:06: Adam or whatever. You go through everybody in Scripture, you would say, this is a really flawed individual.
43:15: Sometimes they're really bad, bad, bad, bad individuals. And if you're going to invent a religion,
43:21: I'll tell you what, I was talking about this Friday night. If you're going to invent a religion, you wind up with something like Mormonism, where Joseph Smith is able to say things like,
43:29: I've done more for the salvation of mankind than anybody else except for Jesus Christ. And he at another point said, in fact,
43:38: I was a success where Jesus failed, because Jesus didn't keep his church together,
43:44: I've kept my church together. But he also had things, if you know much about Mormonism, in Mormonism, God is just one of us who worked his way by obedience up to being
44:01: God. So if you understand God that way, you go, oh, I get that, and maybe
44:06: I can be God. If you understand, they do a lot of those things, so they just simplify, they make things common.
44:18: They lower everything to where, you know, hey, Joseph Smith wasn't that much less than Jesus.
44:26: I mean, we'd actually sing hymns to Joseph Smith during our Sunday worship services. Talk about blasphemy.
44:39: So it's important that we not, you know, obviously engage in that kind of thing, but we need to keep that transcendence, that idea.
44:48: Any other thoughts before we close here? I really like the carpet,
44:57: I just have to say. Our Father, we thank
45:03: You and praise You for who You are, for what You've done, that You've given us the truth, that You have caused us not only to be born again, but You've illumined our minds that we might know
45:16: You. You've opened our ears, You've opened our eyes to the truth of Your Word, that we might gain greater knowledge, greater insight, that we might know more than our teachers, that we might begin to see and understand
45:35: Your perfections. Father, those perfections that we will study and learn and be transfixed by for all eternity.
45:46: The truths You have granted us, no one would ever invent because they would not want to be the antiheroes of the story.
45:55: They would not want to be the villains of the story, the failures. That's not what men do.
46:03: Your Word shows us the truth about ourselves, even in the best of men.
46:09: Moses and Abraham and all of them fail, they sin. Jesus Christ alone never failed.
46:20: Father, as we think about oaths and vows, taking
46:25: Your name in vain, Father, I pray that when we say we are Christians, that we would seek to live lives commensurate with that title, understanding what it means.
46:38: And Lord, never to add anything to that, to think that somehow we can, by our own efforts, by our own suffering, by anything, add to the finished, perfect work of the