Andy Stanley Rejects the 10 Commandments (and the Old Testament)

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the

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Faith here on YouTube. Today we're heading down to North Point Church, where Andy Stanley holds sway as the vision casting leader there, and we've noted that Andy Stanley has some theological problems.

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He sounds a lot like a post -modern liberal and has some difficulty coming to grips with the truthfulness of things in Scripture, especially those things in the

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Old Testament. And so what we're going to be listening to is the portion of a sermon titled,

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Aftermath, Not Difficult, and we're going to listen to the last portion of this sermon.

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We'll do a little bit of work in the biblical text in Acts chapter 15, but we're going to pay close attention to the things that he's saying in relation to the

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Christians... how do we put this? How are we connected as Christians to the

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Old Testament? And funny enough, Scripture actually lays that out for us very clearly, but Andy Stanley's conclusions from the

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Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 are not only erroneous, they actually put him in the territory known as the

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Marcionite heresy. We'll talk a little bit about that, and what is our relationship as Christians to the

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Old Testament? How are we to understand the Ten Commandments and things like this? So grab a Bible if you want to open up to Acts chapter 15, we'll get to it here shortly.

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Let me put my screen up. Here's Andy Stanley and the tail end of his sermon, this is the conclusion portion of it.

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Let's listen in. There are Jewish people living up there, and there are so many Jewish people who are bought into and kind of hardwired to the dietary laws of Moses.

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So here's the question. Why would James suggest they send that particular message to Gentile Christians?

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What does the law of Moses has been taught in synagogues every Sabbath, what does that have to do with these

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Old Testament -ish commands? And why these? Why doesn't he say, okay, tell the Gentiles, let's see, okay, do not steal, thou shalt not steal.

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That's a good one. What else you got? Oh yeah, that's a good one. Thou shalt not murder. That's a good one. What else we got? Okay, thou shalt not commit adultery.

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Let's just go with three. Send them these. Why the food thing, and then this very general statement, and no sexual immorality?

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What's the connection? This is so important. Those imperatives had nothing to do with keeping the law of Moses.

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Those imperatives had everything to do with keeping the peace in the church.

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Okay, now, what is he talking about? I know, I know.

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We jumped in at the end here, and the reason why is I got to be careful how much of the sermon we put on YouTube for critique purposes.

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You got to obey the copyright laws, and you can only use certain percentages.

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But anyway, let's talk about what it is that he's discussing here. So in the book of Acts, chapter 15, we'll start at verse 1, and this is an important text that has some very good cross -references in the book of Galatians, as well as Romans chapter 3 and 4, and things like that.

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But here's what it says in Acts chapter 15, verse 1. Some men came down from Judea, and they were teaching the brothers that unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

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So now, the important note here, when you read your Old Testament, when you read the Old Testament, there are covenants, and there are several covenants mentioned in the

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Old Testament. You think of the Noahic covenant, this is the covenant that God made with Noah and his family after the flood, and by extension, all of us, and all of the animals, too.

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And that is that he would never destroy the entire earth by a flood. And so, what's the sign of that covenant?

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The answer is the rainbow. So when the rainbow is seen in the clouds, God sees it, and he remembers his promises of that covenant.

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In the Abrahamic, okay, there's an Abrahamic covenant, and circumcision technically was instituted with the

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Abrahamic covenant, and then made a law in the Mosaic covenant. But here's the thing, the

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Mosaic covenant, no one's under that anymore. That has been fulfilled by Christ, and when you read the book of Galatians, the book of Galatians, which is written against the

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Judaizing heresy, that the Judaizers were coming in and saying, unless you are circumcised, unless you keep

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Torah, the very specific things in the Mosaic covenant, this would include the Sabbath, this would include circumcision, this would include the

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Old Testament feast days, that unless you do these things, you're not saved. And those are all part of the

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Mosaic covenant. And so Christians are not required to be circumcised, and there were a lot of Greeks coming, you know, and Gentiles coming to Christianity and being brought to penitent faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and the

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Judaizers were literally, said, this is a salvation issue. In other words, when you read the book of Galatians, what they were doing was mixing grace with works.

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And so the Judaizing heresy is a form of salvation by works, and the

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Apostle Paul and others put this down soundly. So unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved, and after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them,

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Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the Apostles and the elders about this question.

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So being sent on their way by the Church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the

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Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers, and when they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the

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Church and the Apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the

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Pharisees rose up and said, it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.

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The Apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter, and after there had been much debate,

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Peter stood up and said to them, brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the

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Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe, and God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the

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Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith, not by works, not by keeping the

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Mosaic covenant. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

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But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will.

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And all the assembly fell silent, they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the

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Gentiles. After they had finished speaking, James replied, brothers, listen to me, Simeon has related how

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God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name, and with this the words of the prophets agreed, just as it is written, after this

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I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen, I will rebuild its ruins and restore it.

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Now, you're going to note here, they were quoting what? The Old Testament. This is from the prophet Amos, I will rebuild its ruins and restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the

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Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who makes these things known from of old.

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So therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood, for from ancient generations

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Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogue.

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Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders with the whole church to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, and they sent

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Judas called Barsabbas and Silas leading men among the brothers with the following letter, the brothers, the apostles and the elders to the brothers who are of the

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Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings, since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions.

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It has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved

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Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus, and we have therefore sent

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Judas and Silas, whom themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth, for it seemed good to the

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Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements, that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.

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If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell. So all right, so definitively the idea of salvation by works was put down at the

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Council of Jerusalem, where the apostles as well as elders, those would be pastors, were present.

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Now the question then comes up then is that what is the Christian's connection to the

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Ten Commandments? And this is an important thing that we have got to pay attention to. And the idea is that we don't decide morality subjectively.

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This is objectively defined for us by the law of God, which is exactly what it does.

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So when we talk about the law of God, we understand the law cannot save us, keeping the law will not save us, that's salvation by works.

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So what's the purpose of the law? Well, Scripture actually tells us the purpose of the law, and think of it this way.

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There are kind of three purposes laid out in Scripture. The first use of the law really falls to the government, where the government has been instituted by God for the punishing of evildoers.

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So the law is used to define what an evildoer is, and the government then, by punishing the evildoers, curbs evil in the world, and by doing so, gives a free hand to the gospel.

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So the gospel can be preached. The second use of the law is the primary use, and we'll talk about that in Romans chapter 3, where the law is given specifically for the purpose of pointing out the fact that you are a sinner, and that lays the groundwork for the gospel, so that you understand your need for Jesus to bleed and die for you.

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But we're also going to see that Christians now have a relationship to the Ten Commandments, and the

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Ten Commandments now define for us what a good work is. We're not saved by our good works, we do our good works because we are

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Christians. That's the idea. And so we're going to see how the Ten Commandments in particular kind of get rolled back into the

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New Testament, with one exception, really, and that's the exception regarding the Sabbath, because the Sabbath is a ceremonial law.

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Now another important distinction then, when we look at the Old Testament, we recognize that there are moral laws that are universal, and they are always in effect, they reflect the very nature of God.

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So the moral law is in effect, and in the moral law there's laws pertaining to our relationship with God, as well as our relationships to each other.

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Then there's ceremonial law, which no one is required to keep these anymore, they've all been fulfilled, they were type in shadow pointing to Christ.

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And then there are the civil laws of ancient Israel, which in many ways you can kind of describe them as coming out of the moral law, it's the legal ramifications of the moral law and the

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Ten Commandments and how it plays out then in how we interact with each other. So the idea then is that we have to rightly understand the law's purpose, and it was never designed to save us, ever.

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And so many people who overreact to the law, overreact because they were taught either implicitly or explicitly that salvation is in full or in part based upon our good works, our obedience to the law, but Scripture is very clear that that's not how that works.

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So let's take a look at Romans chapter 3, Romans chapter 3, and we're going to note then that Paul is giving a discourse and basically making it clear that by works of the law no one is saved.

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And in Romans chapter 3, starting at verse 9, Paul writes, so what then, are we Jews any better off?

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Not at all, we've already charged that all, that's both Jews and Greeks, that's everybody, they're under sin.

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As it is written, none is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God, all have turned aside and together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one.

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That's all of us, by the way. Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive, the venom of asps is under their lips.

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And you're going to note here that Paul is quoting from either Psalm 14 or Psalm 53.

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Yeah, these words are found in both of those Psalms, in verses 1 through 3 in each of them respectively.

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So the throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive, the venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood and in their paths of ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

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So notice that the Old Testament here, portions of it get rewritten into the new. So now then, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, the whole world may be held accountable to God, for by works of the law no human being will be justified.

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The Greek word dikaiō here means, it's a legal term that means to be declared righteous or innocent, you know, not guilty is a kind of way of putting it.

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So by works of the law, no human being will be declared righteous, justified in God's sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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You see, that's the purpose. That's the purpose. The second use of the law, primary use of the law, shows us our sin.

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But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets, they bear witness to it.

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Important to note here, the law and the prophets actually point to Christ and the righteousness that comes by faith.

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Now this is the righteousness of God, whose righteousness is it? That's God's righteousness, given to you as a gift.

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Think of it as Christ's righteousness. So the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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For there is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, declared righteous, by his grace as a gift.

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You see? So law and gospel, they're all part of Scripture, but you have to rightly make the distinction between the law and the gospel.

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So we are justified by grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation, or you can say atoning sacrifice, by his blood to be received by faith.

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This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over the former sins.

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It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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So then what becomes of our boasting? Well, if you're saved as a gift, there's no room for boasting, and that's what

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Paul's pointing out. It's excluded. By what kind of law? By works of the law? By law of works? No!

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By the law of faith, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

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Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? That's the important question we'll be looking at here. Do we overthrow the law by faith in Jesus Christ?

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What does Paul say? No! By no means, on the contrary. We as Christians uphold the law because we are saved.

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We do our good works because we're Christians, not in order to become them. So you kind of get the idea then, and so if you were to kind of fast forward into Romans chapter 13,

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Paul, after doing a wonderful job in the book of Romans of saying that we're saved by grace through faith, not by works, then tells us these kind of important things, and watch this, chapter 13, starting in verse 8.

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Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

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For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment, they're summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Now, love is the law. So we as Christians, we uphold the law.

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We uphold the commandments, especially the moral law, the Ten Commandments. Not the ceremonial, the civil, but the moral law.

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We uphold it because we are Christians, and that's what Paul is saying. So all of these commandments get rolled back into the

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New Covenant, and they continue to show us what our sin is, and they show us what a good work is, but we're not saved by them.

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So, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment, they're summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of what? The law. So the idea is that we love because Christ first loved us.

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So you have to rightly distinguish between law and gospel, sin, grace, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins, which means you have to keep your

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Old Testament. You can't get away from it. So in Galatians chapter 5, and by the way, the book of Galatians is an epistle written explicitly against the

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Judaizing heresy, and in Galatians, in fact, let me pull this up. In Galatians chapter 3, another wonderful text,

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Galatians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that nobody is saved by law keeping.

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So he says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes, Galatians 3, that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

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So let me ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the

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Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain, does he who works and supplies the

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Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

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Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. So then those of faith who are, it is, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

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And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying,

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In you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

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For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. Rely on them for salvation.

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They're under a curse for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and continue to do them.

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Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith.

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But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live from us. So Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

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For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. Now, he's redeemed us from the curse of the law.

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And since the curse of the law has been silenced by the cross, you know, we have nothing to fear from the law, and the law continues to inform us what a good work is, and condemn us rightfully so when we are not acting in accord with the law, you know, we're sinning.

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So it continues to show us our sin and shows us what a good work is. But it's the gospel that really empowers us to keep the law and motivates us to do so.

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So the idea then is that nobody is justified by keeping the law. That's the point.

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But it has a function. So in Galatians, at the tail end of Galatians, in Galatians 5, it says this,

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For you were called to freedom, brother, so do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

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For the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Love is the fulfilling of the law. And you need to know what the law is in order to kind of not make it subjective, but actually quite objective.

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But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say walk by the

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Spirit. This is to walk by faith, trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the

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Spirit. The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. And these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

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But if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

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I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the

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Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self -control.

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Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires.

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So you get the idea. Law and gospel are vital. All of them are the Word of God.

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You have to rightly understand, you know, how to divide law and gospel and their purpose and functions and which portions of the

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Old Testament, you know, Christians are under. We are not required to keep the Sabbath. We are not required to obey the

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Mosaic dietary laws. We're not required to be circumcised or anything like that.

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So you get the idea. But this is the, you know, this is the topic that Andy Stanley has steered into.

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But the conclusions he's going to come up with are really not in accord with what

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Scripture teaches in the cross references to the very text he's preaching on. He was asking these new

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Gentile believers to make some dietary concessions for the sake of unity in the church, because he knew no matter what they taught for a

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Jewish person, that dietary law was like, OK, I know we're free and I know Peter had a vision and I know what

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Jesus said, but I just can't eat pork. I'm shrimp. I'm just I just can't. I mean, I love Jesus. Yes, I do.

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I love Jesus. How about you? But I just I can't just don't make me do that. And so they're saying, look, tell the

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Gentiles, tell the Gentiles, you make concessions like we're making concessions because we're going to have one church, not two.

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This was all about peacekeeping, not law keeping. Now I want to talk about this one real quick.

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This is because this is kind of the outliers, like the dietary thing. Kind of odd. Then he says, oh yeah, and abstain from sexual immorality.

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Now, if I were to hand everybody a three by five card and I were to say, tell me what you think this means or what this means to you, how many different answers would

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I get? Yeah. Do you think for a second that sexual immorality is defined subjectively and not according to what

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God has defined sexual immorality to be from the

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Ten Commandments and other places? You think of a fellow like Joseph before the Ten Commandments were even given on Mount Sinai, he knew that adultery was a sin against God and against his neighbor.

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About as many answers as there are cards, right? So what does this even mean? You're going to send a bunch of idol, you know, ex -pagans who participated in temple prostitution who have a very different sense of morality and what you can and can't do with slaves.

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I mean, the morality of the pagan world, you know, you should know this, in the pagan world. And what's weird is that the

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Apostle Paul and other apostles in their writings clearly define what sexual immorality is and they always hook it back into the

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Ten Commandments. You know, it's weird. Paul did that in Romans 13. We just saw him do that. In other religions, the gods could care less how you treated other people.

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The gods, there was no religious morality, zero, zippo. The gods just wanted sacrifices.

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Now, there was civil law in terms of what you could and couldn't do, but in terms of religious law, there was no moral religious law in paganism.

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It was a completely separate thing. So to send a bunch of Gentiles and abstain from sexual immorality, what does that even mean?

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Yeah, um, do you think that they weren't being catechized at all?

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And think about this, when the Apostle Paul would go to plant a church, the first place he would go would be the synagogues.

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And so a lot of the earliest converts to Christianity were Jews, not only

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Gentiles. And so these congregations had both. This is so important.

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This was a general call to avoid immoral behavior, but not immoral behavior as defined by the

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Old Testament or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one. They weren't Jewish. But as defined...

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Yeah, what you just said is not correct. And even if it was a completely

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Gentile congregation, that doesn't mean that they had no concept of what sexual immorality was or how it was defined.

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Again, this is really weird, because now he's basically saying that the

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Ten Commandments have nothing to say to Christians, and that's not at all.

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At all. What the New Testament teaches, at all. I would just, again, point you to something like, you know,

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Romans 13. Defined by the Apostle Paul, who had been teaching in Antioch for two or more years.

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And do you know what the Apostle Paul consistently tied sexual behavior to?

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Not the Old Covenant. Yeah, I'll reread Romans 13 in a minute.

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The Ten Commandments, the one commandment that Jesus gave us, that you are to treat others as God, through Christ, has treated you.

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So when Paul talked about relationships, he said stuff like this. In your relationships to one another, in your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.

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Any questions? Hmm, kind of covers it, doesn't it? Now let me reread Romans 13, because it's quite informative here.

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Romans 13 .8. Oh, no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

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For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment, uh -huh, you notice he quotes the commandments, they are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. That's a direct quote from the

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Apostle Paul. The fellow he's claiming never defined sexual immorality according to the

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Ten Commandments. Yeah, let's just say that Andy Stanley's fallen off the

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Orthodox bandwagon at this point. He's in different territory.

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People before me, yeah. In your relationships with one another, just remember, your body is a temple of the

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Holy Spirit, and so is hers, and so is his. Any questions?

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No? I think that about covers it. The Apostle Paul was explicit and specific about teaching on sexual immorality, but he did not tie it to the

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Old Testament. Yeah, that's weird. I just showed how he tied it back to the Ten Commandments.

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Weird. This letter makes perfect sense because it's going to show up in the church in Antioch where the

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Apostle Paul's been for two years. So basically they're saying, in order for there to be unity in the church, let's not offend.

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Let's not offend the Jewish sensibilities when it comes to the dietary law. They'll move past this over time. Consider the implications of what he's saying here.

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He's literally advocating for the basically getting rid of the

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Old Testament, including and especially the Ten Commandments and the morality laws of the

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Old Testament, which by the way are restated very clearly in the

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New Testament. And with this little magic trick that he's performing, this opens the door for Andy Stanley to basically say he's gay affirming and things like that.

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I'm just saying. It's clear what the next move is after this. And you need to take

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Paul's teaching on moral purity seriously because that has the potential to divide you as well because you have different religious customs when it comes to moral purity.

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No, no Christian would have different religious customs when it came to moral purity.

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And again, I would point you to the Apostle Paul. Let me find this. Let me see.

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Homosexuality. We'll take a look. Yeah, 1 Corinthians chapter 6.

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We'll just take a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6 in context here. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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That's 1 Corinthians 6. 9. So don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters.

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Yeah, the Ten Commandments say something about you shall have no other gods before me. Nor adulterers.

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Yeah, thou shalt not commit adultery. Nor men who practice homosexuality. Homosexuality is a form of sexual immorality.

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Nor thieves. Remember, thou shalt not steal. Nor the greedy. Nor drunkards. Nor revilers.

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Nor swindlers. Revilers would be those who break the commandment to you shall honor your father and mother.

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Reviling is a form of breaking that commandment. Nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.

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But you were washed. You were... That's being baptized there. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. Strange. Why is it that it is so easy for me to find the very thing that Andy Stanley says doesn't exist in Paul's writings?

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Weird. Paul tied sexual behavior to Jesus' new command. The Old Covenant, the

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Old Covenant Law of Moses was not the go -to source regarding sexual behavior in the church. More importantly, and perhaps more disturbingly, if that's a word, or offensively, the

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Old Testament, or the Law and the Prophets as they called it, was not going to be the go -to source for any behavior in the church.

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Yeah, weird. I just quoted two sections of the New Testament from the writings of the

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Apostle Paul that restated exactly the same moral code as is found in the

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Old Testament, very specifically the Ten Commandments. To make this point, because this is so important,

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I originally in my notes, I was going to put a screen up here that said, in other words, that means thou shalt not obey the

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Ten Commandments. But I knew someone would take a picture of that. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you put it up as a photograph or not.

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What you just said is that that's what you wanted to do, thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments.

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But the Apostle Paul clearly rolled the Ten Commandments back into the New Testament. And he wrote under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit because he was an apostle. Now, another interesting text I think is worth noting in this context is our discussion that we had recently regarding apostles.

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Ephesians chapter 2 says this, that,

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So then you are no longer strangers and aliens. The Apostle Paul, writing to Gentiles in the church of Ephesus, says that they are no longer strangers and aliens, but they are fellow citizens with the saints, and they,

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Gentiles, are also members of the household of God. And the household of God is, listen, built on the foundation of what?

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The apostles, which the apostolic doctrine is found in the New Testament, and the prophets.

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And the prophets are the ones who gave us the Old Testament. So the church itself, the household of God, is built on the foundation, the doctrine of the apostles as well as the prophets.

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That means Old and New Testament, but it has to be rightly understood, and God's Word actually teaches us how to do that,

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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. What Andy Stanley is sounding a lot like is a heretic known as Marcion.

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Let me explain. Wikipedia actually does a pretty decent job of explaining what Marcion was about.

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Marcionism was an early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144

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AD. Marcion believed Jesus was the Savior sent by God, and Paul the

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Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel.

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Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all -forgiving

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God of the New Testament. This belief was in some ways similar to Gnostic Christian theology, notably both are dualistic.

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That is, they posit opposing God's forces or principles, one higher spiritual or good and the other lower material and evil.

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Now, Andy Stanley is not a dualist in that sense, but he definitely sounds to me like he's rejecting the

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Old Testament, and yet the household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

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That's the Old and the New Testament. And it would define me for the rest of my life, so I'm not going to put it up there, but I want you to hear me say it.

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Here's what the Jerusalem Council was saying to the Gentiles. You are not accountable to the

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Ten Commandments. You're not accountable to the Jewish law. We're done with that.

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God has done something new. Yeah, no, Christ has fulfilled the law for us.

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The law still condemns us of our sins, and it defines what a good work is. And over and again, just read the back half of the

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Apollonian Epistles, yeah, the Ten Commandments are restated quite clearly as, you know, defining what morality is or isn't, and what a good work is or isn't.

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What he just said is patently false. This is the Marcionite heresy in the 21st century, and this is dangerous.

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This is blasphemous. He would say to them, and he would say to you, thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments because those aren't your commandments.

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Yours are better, and yours are far less complicated, but they are far more demanding.

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Because you see, look up here. When you begin to view every single person you meet, red, yellow, black, or white, rich, poor, vulnerable, not vulnerable, when you begin to view every single person you are eyeball to eyeball with as made in the image of God and a potential dweller in the image

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Nope, you can't do that, sorry. Made in the image of God, that's revealed to us in Genesis.

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Mm -hmm, yeah. So yeah, you just relied on the

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Old Testament there. Nope, you can't tell people or let that thinking, interrupt your thinking as a

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Christian because you're just throwing out the whole Old Testament, and made in the image of God is revealed in Genesis.

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A place for the Spirit of God, you will treat them well. You will not need chapter and verse.

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You will do for them what God, through Christ, has done for you. Any questions?

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This was a new and better day. This was an extraordinary day in the history of the church.

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Church leaders. No, this is an extraordinary day in the history of the church. Andy Stanley is full -blown

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Marcy Knight heretic. Church leaders, the church leaders who are closest to the action, who understood better than we ever will.

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Church leaders unhitched the church from the worldview, the value system, and the regulations of the Jewish scripture.

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Not just how... No, they did not unhitch the church from the value system of the

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Jewish scriptures. No, they completely reiterated that entire value system.

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God's moral law is eternal. It was not temporary. Wow, this is blasphemy.

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Person became a Christian. They unhitched the church from the entire thing, the whole worldview, that God loves

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Jews better more than He likes other people, that you're to build walls and hunker down and wait for God to protect you.

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Jesus said, no, you're supposed to go to other nations and share this message. He's not making a proper distinction between law and gospel, and nor is he making a proper distinction about the fact that the

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Mosaic Covenant had moral law, civil law, and ceremonial and the moral got reiterated in the

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New Testament. Everything's different. Everything's new. The whole worldview, the imperatives, everything's new.

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So the imperatives are apparently different now. You can worship whatever God you want, or whatever, hmm.

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Finally, 20 years after the resurrection, Peter, and James, and John, and Barnabas, they detached the church from Judaism.

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Not because there was something wrong with Judaism, but because Judaism, the law of Moses, was a means to an extraordinary end.

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Besides, the Old Testament prophets predicted it. Besides.

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Yeah, yeah, again, weird that you're trying to quote the Old Testament while telling us that we need to be unhitched from it.

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So Andy Stanley, this extremely dangerous, and I mean this, dangerous sermon, the conclusions that he drew are easily debunked by just even a cursory reading of the

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New Testament. What he's saying is absolutely false, and this literally would open the door.

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Open the door for, you know, Andy Stanley and North Point Church basically affirming same -sex marriages, the

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LGBT thing, and this is crazy going nuts is the best way I can put it.

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So, very sad indeed. Pray for Andy Stanley, and pray for the people at his church. He is a false teacher, and a dangerous, dangerous one at that.

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This isn't antinomianism, this is the Marcionite heresy. It's like antinomianism on steroids, and this is not what

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Scripture teaches at all. Now if you found this helpful and useful, please consider supporting

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So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.