Transcript: Episode 0024

“All Sins Are Not Equal”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:00 – 00:00:01:	This is a very long video.

00:00:01 – 00:00:02:	I hope you enjoyed it.

00:00:02 – 00:00:03:	I'll see you in the next video.

00:00:03 – 00:00:04:	Bye.

00:00:04 – 00:00:05:	Bye.

00:00:05 – 00:00:06:	Bye.

00:00:06 – 00:00:07:	Bye.

00:00:07 – 00:00:08:	Bye.

00:00:08 – 00:00:09:	Bye.

00:00:30 – 00:00:39:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast.

00:00:39 – 00:00:41:	I am Corey J. Mahler.

00:00:41 – 00:00:44:	And I'm woe.

00:00:44 – 00:00:48:	Today's episode of Stone Choir is talking about the subject of whether all sins are

00:00:48 – 00:00:55:	equal and following on from that, whether we are permitted to judge the sins of another.

00:00:55 – 00:00:58:	What does it mean to judge, particularly when scripture says judge not?

00:00:58 – 00:01:03:	These are both things that you hear in the mouths of many Christians today, generally

00:01:03 – 00:01:06:	they're liberal Christians who are trying to avoid controversy.

00:01:06 – 00:01:13:	They're trying to avoid any sense of accusation or claiming that one person could possibly

00:01:13 – 00:01:15:	be worse than another.

00:01:15 – 00:01:19:	That's something that Protestants in particular are extremely allergic to.

00:01:19 – 00:01:23:	So today what we're going to be going through is a series of verses straight from scripture.

00:01:23 – 00:01:28:	This is basically going to be a long Bible study where we talk about the various verses

00:01:28 – 00:01:33:	that make absolutely explicit that not all sins are equal, that not only are they not

00:01:33 – 00:01:39:	equal in God's eyes, but that they are punished unequally as well.

00:01:39 – 00:01:44:	Like many of our episodes, this is fundamentally an assault on the false doctrine of equality.

00:01:44 – 00:01:46:	There's no such thing before God at any point.

00:01:46 – 00:01:51:	And we'll get into the details of what we mean because obviously there are counterarguments

00:01:51 – 00:01:56:	that some make that we're going to demolish here, in this case dealing with the question

00:01:56 – 00:01:58:	of sin being equal.

00:01:58 – 00:02:01:	First passage we're going to talk about today is from John 19.

00:02:01 – 00:02:05:	It's one that we've all heard recently as we're just on the heels of Holy Week.

00:02:05 – 00:02:08:	So Pilate said to Jesus, you will not speak to me.

00:02:08 – 00:02:13:	Do you not know that I have the authority to release you and authority to crucify you?

00:02:13 – 00:02:17:	Jesus answered him, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to

00:02:17 – 00:02:19:	you from above.

00:02:19 – 00:02:23:	Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.

00:02:23 – 00:02:27:	Then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, if you release this man,

00:02:27 – 00:02:29:	you are not Caesar's friend.

00:02:29 – 00:02:33:	Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

00:02:33 – 00:02:37:	I tacked on that second part just because as a side note, in the spirit of all sins

00:02:37 – 00:02:41:	are equal, it's very often something that comes up in the last few years, but particularly

00:02:41 – 00:02:48:	on the heels during Easter of claiming that it wasn't the Jews who executed Christ, that

00:02:48 – 00:02:49:	it was the Romans.

00:02:49 – 00:02:55:	When you read the narratives of Christ's trials, it was the Jews who brought him to the Romans.

00:02:55 – 00:02:59:	The only reason they did murder him themselves is that they did not have the legal authority

00:02:59 – 00:03:01:	to do so.

00:03:01 – 00:03:06:	They came to Pilate and then Herod and then Pilate again, making false accusations and

00:03:06 – 00:03:10:	basically bullied Pilate into a corner to crucify him.

00:03:10 – 00:03:13:	Even though he knew he wasn't guilty, he said he wasn't guilty.

00:03:13 – 00:03:18:	He knew there was unjust, but for the sake of peace in his own head, because here it

00:03:18 – 00:03:23:	says, if you release this man, you're not Caesar's friend, is an explicit threat.

00:03:23 – 00:03:27:	This Pilate would be committing treason if he didn't execute Jesus.

00:03:27 – 00:03:29:	That's how that played out.

00:03:29 – 00:03:35:	When Jesus says, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin, Jesus is naming

00:03:35 – 00:03:36:	the Jew.

00:03:36 – 00:03:41:	He is saying, the Jews who handed me over to you, Pilate, for Roman execution because

00:03:41 – 00:03:44:	you have the authority to execute.

00:03:44 – 00:03:49:	That only existed because of the disparity between the goals of the Romans and the goals

00:03:49 – 00:03:50:	of the Jews.

00:03:50 – 00:03:55:	Jesus acknowledged they had different motivations, they had different interests, and that it was

00:03:55 – 00:04:01:	explicitly the greater evil of the Jews who were crying for his blood and crying for Barabbas

00:04:01 – 00:04:05:	to be freed, even though he was a murderer.

00:04:05 – 00:04:08:	That was the greater sin that Jesus refers to.

00:04:08 – 00:04:13:	Just as a single passage, they would refute the notion that all sins can be equal just

00:04:13 – 00:04:19:	in one verse when Jesus says the greater sin precludes any notion that that could possibly

00:04:19 – 00:04:20:	be true.

00:04:20 – 00:04:24:	As we go through the rest of these, we'll see in greater detail how that plays out.

00:04:24 – 00:04:29:	Right from Holy Week itself, from Jesus' own lifts, that claim that all sins are equal

00:04:29 – 00:04:32:	is categorically disqualified.

00:04:32 – 00:04:36:	We just end there, and it's our shortest episode, right?

00:04:36 – 00:04:41:	Because really, if you have the direct word of Christ here saying that there is such thing

00:04:41 – 00:04:47:	as a greater sin, well, obviously, then there are different degrees of sin.

00:04:47 – 00:04:49:	There are worse sins, there are sins that are not as bad.

00:04:49 – 00:04:55:	Of course, all sin separates from God, and all sin is damning, but there are greater

00:04:55 – 00:05:01:	sins, there are greater punishments flowing from those greater sins.

00:05:01 – 00:05:05:	Just to emphasize what you said about the bit about Caesar's friend, because that's

00:05:05 – 00:05:10:	going to go past most modern readers, they're going to see that and go, okay, you're not

00:05:10 – 00:05:13:	a friend of Caesar, if you do this thing, fine.

00:05:13 – 00:05:19:	In the context, to be Caesar's friend is to be someone who is on Caesar's good side.

00:05:19 – 00:05:24:	To be not Caesar's friend is, as was said, to be a traitor.

00:05:24 – 00:05:29:	To be someone who is going to be marked for persecution and probably execution, and Pilate

00:05:29 – 00:05:35:	may eventually have been executed, whether as a martyr or not, we're not entirely sure

00:05:35 – 00:05:36:	of the history of that.

00:05:36 – 00:05:41:	I happen to think he probably did convert, but that's an aside.

00:05:41 – 00:05:46:	But obviously here, just at the outset, we have the very clear, irrefutable teaching

00:05:46 – 00:05:50:	that there is such a thing as a greater sin.

00:05:50 – 00:05:54:	And so Christians cannot say that, you know, all sins are equal, that's not true.

00:05:54 – 00:05:56:	All sins are not equal.

00:05:56 – 00:05:59:	All sins separate from God, that is true.

00:05:59 – 00:06:06:	Insofar as you are talking purely about the separation of man from God, all sins are equal

00:06:06 – 00:06:09:	in that they affect that separation.

00:06:09 – 00:06:16:	But all sins are not equal in the gravity of the sin, in the degree of the sin, in really

00:06:16 – 00:06:23:	the significance of that separation between God and man that is worked by the sin.

00:06:23 – 00:06:28:	This is something that in Luke 23, at Jesus' crucifixion, he parallels.

00:06:28 – 00:06:32:	Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, and they cast lots

00:06:32 – 00:06:34:	to devise his garments.

00:06:34 – 00:06:39:	That was specifically speaking of the Roman soldiers, the men who were the proximate cause

00:06:39 – 00:06:43:	of his hands and feet being nailed to a cross.

00:06:43 – 00:06:46:	He said, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

00:06:46 – 00:06:53:	Just as he said, this pilot's sin was the lesser sin for unjustly murdering him, for

00:06:53 – 00:06:54:	unjustly executing him.

00:06:54 – 00:06:57:	It was a murder because it was an unjust execution.

00:06:57 – 00:07:03:	But it was also an execution under the law, although the law had been misapplied.

00:07:03 – 00:07:08:	But even at that, Jesus paralleled Pilate's sin of commanding his execution, and then

00:07:08 – 00:07:16:	the actual executioners, the Roman soldiers who were literally at the cross, some of whom

00:07:16 – 00:07:17:	they witnessed what happened.

00:07:17 – 00:07:21:	They witnessed those miracles, as Pilate did, and he wasn't present.

00:07:21 – 00:07:26:	And so when Jesus said, forgive them, for they know not what they do, that is not a

00:07:26 – 00:07:32:	prayer that Jesus gave to the brain crowd of Jews who called for his blood.

00:07:32 – 00:07:33:	They knew what they were doing.

00:07:33 – 00:07:35:	They knew that they wanted to murder an innocent man.

00:07:35 – 00:07:40:	The Roman soldiers, for lack of a better phrase, they were following orders.

00:07:40 – 00:07:41:	What were they going to do?

00:07:41 – 00:07:46:	Pilate says, you execute a man, they nailed him to a cross, that's what they did.

00:07:46 – 00:07:54:	And so here in two verses, in the very same story, hours apart, Jesus says, there's a

00:07:54 – 00:07:58:	greater sin, and he says, forgive these men for the lesser sin.

00:07:58 – 00:08:00:	God forgive them because they don't know that they're nailing the Son of God to the

00:08:00 – 00:08:02:	cross.

00:08:02 – 00:08:07:	And we can, of course, pull out a general principle here, that a knowing sin is worse

00:08:07 – 00:08:09:	than an unknowing sin.

00:08:09 – 00:08:11:	And yes, there is such a thing as an unknowing sin.

00:08:11 – 00:08:19:	If you unknowingly transgress God's law, that's still a sin, but it is an unknowing sin.

00:08:19 – 00:08:24:	If you know God's law and deliberately transgress it, that is a knowing sin, that is a worse

00:08:24 – 00:08:25:	sin.

00:08:25 – 00:08:26:	It's, in fact, multiple sins.

00:08:26 – 00:08:33:	Because the act itself is sin, the guilty intent is sin, the deliberate violation of

00:08:33 – 00:08:35:	God's law is sin.

00:08:35 – 00:08:41:	You're compounding sin when you do something knowingly, as opposed to the unknowing sin,

00:08:41 – 00:08:46:	where you merely transgress God's law, but not deliberately.

00:08:46 – 00:08:54:	This of course, also deals with the difference between original sin and actual sin.

00:08:54 – 00:08:57:	Original sin, in this case, just meaning sins that are not original sin.

00:08:57 – 00:09:01:	It's just a term used in theology to differentiate the two.

00:09:01 – 00:09:06:	It's not saying that actual sin is actually sin and original sin is not.

00:09:06 – 00:09:08:	They're both sin.

00:09:08 – 00:09:16:	Original sin is what is inherited from our parents all the way back to Adam.

00:09:16 – 00:09:20:	It is inherited down the line genealogically.

00:09:20 – 00:09:26:	That is, sin that is a corruption of man's nature, and we sin because we are sinners,

00:09:26 – 00:09:29:	and we are sinners because of original sin.

00:09:29 – 00:09:34:	Actual sin are those sins that we then go on to commit ourselves.

00:09:34 – 00:09:40:	Not inherited sin, but sins that we have committed, theft, murder, adultery, whatever it happens

00:09:40 – 00:09:42:	to be.

00:09:42 – 00:09:47:	And so we see in that the difference between original and actual sin, that at the very least

00:09:47 – 00:09:48:	there are categories of sin.

00:09:48 – 00:09:55:	There are different kinds of sins, and we'll get into more of that later on in the episode.

00:09:55 – 00:09:59:	But again, notice the difference in this passage.

00:09:59 – 00:10:07:	A knowing sin, committed deliberately, committed with intent, is worse than an unknowing sin.

00:10:07 – 00:10:09:	And we of course have that in our civil laws.

00:10:09 – 00:10:11:	We recognize that.

00:10:11 – 00:10:17:	If you accidentally kill someone, probably not murder unless you were doing something

00:10:17 – 00:10:22:	incredibly negligent, then could potentially still be murder.

00:10:22 – 00:10:27:	But for instance, if you are driving a vehicle, and you have a medical emergency, you black

00:10:27 – 00:10:32:	out, you have an aneurysm, and you run over a pedestrian, that's not murder.

00:10:32 – 00:10:36:	It's in fact not even negligent, most likely.

00:10:36 – 00:10:41:	If you deliberately drive into a crowd of pedestrians, that is murder.

00:10:41 – 00:10:47:	So there's a difference regarding the intent, and the same thing holds here.

00:10:47 – 00:10:52:	The first perfect passage for dealing with deliberate sin is from Hebrews 10.

00:10:52 – 00:10:57:	For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there

00:10:57 – 00:11:02:	no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury

00:11:02 – 00:11:05:	of fire that will consume the adversaries.

00:11:05 – 00:11:09:	Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy, on the evidence of two

00:11:09 – 00:11:10:	or three witnesses.

00:11:10 – 00:11:15:	How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled under

00:11:15 – 00:11:20:	foot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified,

00:11:20 – 00:11:22:	and has outraged the spirit of grace?

00:11:22 – 00:11:26:	For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay.

00:11:26 – 00:11:30:	And again, the Lord will judge his people, is a fearful thing to fall into the hands

00:11:30 – 00:11:32:	of the living God.

00:11:32 – 00:11:38:	So this passage makes clear, part of the reason, perhaps the entire reason, that those Roman

00:11:38 – 00:11:44:	soldiers, Jesus asked for their forgiveness, was that they were not deliberately sinning.

00:11:44 – 00:11:47:	They were executing a convicted criminal.

00:11:47 – 00:11:50:	He was wrongly convicted, but that was above their pay grade.

00:11:50 – 00:11:52:	They had an order, and they followed it.

00:11:52 – 00:11:54:	Their sin was not deliberate.

00:11:54 – 00:11:59:	And I think that it's entirely reasonable to believe that some of them, at least when

00:11:59 – 00:12:05:	they saw the earthquake, and all the incredible happenings, in the immediate aftermath of

00:12:05 – 00:12:10:	his death, it became clear to them that it was, in fact, the Son of God, and that they

00:12:10 – 00:12:11:	had sinned.

00:12:11 – 00:12:18:	So their knowledge of sin at the time, when they were doing it, was not the same as what

00:12:19 – 00:12:22:	happened, at least for some of them, after the fact.

00:12:22 – 00:12:26:	They were not sinning deliberately when they murdered Christ by nailing him to the cross.

00:12:26 – 00:12:28:	That was not true of the Pharisees.

00:12:28 – 00:12:32:	It was not too true of the crowd of Jews, who had followed Jesus for years trying to

00:12:32 – 00:12:33:	murder him.

00:12:34 – 00:12:39:	There are passage after passage in all four of the Gospels describing how the Jews continuously

00:12:39 – 00:12:43:	tried to murder Christ, his entire earthly ministry.

00:12:43 – 00:12:49:	They finally succeeded by using the Romans as a political weapon.

00:12:49 – 00:12:52:	It was clever.

00:12:52 – 00:12:59:	It was absolutely malicious, and it was their way of doing it at arm's length, just as the

00:12:59 – 00:13:04:	Pharisees paid Judas the 30 pieces of silver for his betrayal, and then tossed it back

00:13:04 – 00:13:06:	as they couldn't accept blood money.

00:13:06 – 00:13:10:	They used the Romans to commit their murder.

00:13:10 – 00:13:11:	They did everything at arm's length.

00:13:11 – 00:13:12:	They did everything in secret.

00:13:12 – 00:13:16:	They did everything so that they could keep their hands clean as they were committing

00:13:16 – 00:13:22:	literally the worst sin, the worst crime in the history of the universe.

00:13:22 – 00:13:23:	Think about that.

00:13:23 – 00:13:27:	When someone says to you, all sins are equal.

00:13:27 – 00:13:34:	Would you agree then that if I steal your pencil, or if the Pharisees in the crowd of

00:13:34 – 00:13:40:	Jews demands that Christ be executed for no crime, are those equal?

00:13:40 – 00:13:41:	That's what you're saying.

00:13:41 – 00:13:46:	You're saying that the murder of Christ is no worse than anything else that anyone else

00:13:46 – 00:13:49:	has ever done.

00:13:49 – 00:13:55:	If that's a legal or a moral perspective you want to take, I honestly don't see how you

00:13:55 – 00:13:56:	can claim to be Christian.

00:13:56 – 00:14:02:	Any pagan can understand that there are degrees of sin, that there are degrees of evil.

00:14:02 – 00:14:07:	Corey just gave the example of mens rea when you know you're doing something wrong or not

00:14:07 – 00:14:08:	knowing.

00:14:08 – 00:14:13:	Then there are also the degrees to which some sins are sinful.

00:14:13 – 00:14:16:	There are things that are worse than others.

00:14:16 – 00:14:20:	As Corey mentioned up front, we say this in many episodes.

00:14:20 – 00:14:21:	It's always true.

00:14:21 – 00:14:23:	It's true, especially in this episode.

00:14:23 – 00:14:26:	We're not talking about suteriology.

00:14:26 – 00:14:32:	We're not talking about how we can save ourselves or justify ourselves.

00:14:32 – 00:14:37:	That's a problem that Protestantism solved perfectly 500 years ago, because we read the

00:14:37 – 00:14:41:	Bible again and we believed it again, and God solved it perfectly.

00:14:41 – 00:14:45:	He gave us the true information about how we are saved.

00:14:45 – 00:14:48:	We are saved solely through Christ's sacrifice.

00:14:48 – 00:14:53:	When we talk about something being a greater sin or a lesser sin, none of it gets you off

00:14:53 – 00:14:55:	the hook.

00:14:55 – 00:15:01:	The example we've given in the past is that the sin of Adam listening to his wife and

00:15:01 – 00:15:07:	then eating the wrong piece of fruit, that is the least significant sin in the history

00:15:07 – 00:15:08:	of sin.

00:15:08 – 00:15:11:	He ate a piece of fruit that he wasn't supposed to eat.

00:15:11 – 00:15:12:	It was a beautiful piece of fruit.

00:15:12 – 00:15:15:	It was probably delicious.

00:15:15 – 00:15:18:	The garden was full of trees and he was allowed to eat everything.

00:15:18 – 00:15:20:	God said, this one tree, don't touch that fruit.

00:15:20 – 00:15:21:	What did he do?

00:15:21 – 00:15:24:	He listened to his wife and he ate that one piece of fruit.

00:15:25 – 00:15:28:	Probably virtually every sin that you've ever committed in your life, I'm sure every

00:15:28 – 00:15:34:	sin I've ever committed in my life, was worse than eating the wrong piece of fruit.

00:15:34 – 00:15:36:	We inherit Adam's sin.

00:15:36 – 00:15:44:	We inherit damnation from our Father by virtue of that first sin, the smallest of all sins,

00:15:44 – 00:15:46:	and yet it causes our death.

00:15:46 – 00:15:52:	When we say greater or lesser sin, we do that with full acknowledgement that the least sinful

00:15:52 – 00:15:57:	sin possible, at least that I can think of, is still a damning sin.

00:15:57 – 00:15:59:	We're not talking about manners of damnation.

00:15:59 – 00:16:04:	We're talking about how God views these things.

00:16:04 – 00:16:08:	As we get into some of these other verses in a minute, we'll show clearly specific examples

00:16:08 – 00:16:11:	of other sins that are seen as much more abhorrent than others.

00:16:11 – 00:16:16:	Yes, with all deference to Volta, we are not dealing here with the gospel, obviously.

00:16:16 – 00:16:18:	We are dealing with the law.

00:16:18 – 00:16:19:	We are dealing with sin.

00:16:19 – 00:16:27:	We are dealing with theology, not specifically soteriology, and so his thesis 25, to let

00:16:27 – 00:16:31:	the gospel predominate, is not in play here.

00:16:31 – 00:16:35:	We don't reject Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession, obviously.

00:16:35 – 00:16:37:	That is the heart of Christianity.

00:16:37 – 00:16:41:	That's justification by faith.

00:16:41 – 00:16:42:	But that's not what we're dealing with.

00:16:42 – 00:16:50:	We are dealing with the issue of the nature of sin, degrees of sin, types of sin, categories

00:16:50 – 00:16:55:	of sin, because this is something that has been ignored by the modern church, which undoubtedly

00:16:55 – 00:16:58:	you've heard that refrain from us many times now.

00:16:58 – 00:17:03:	We are choosing these issues because they are things that are either neglected or taught

00:17:03 – 00:17:08:	incorrectly in modern churches.

00:17:08 – 00:17:15:	In order to be seeker-sensitive or what-have-you, many modern churches will say that, oh, all

00:17:15 – 00:17:21:	sins are equal, because they have it in their head, sometimes the best of them anyway, that

00:17:21 – 00:17:29:	they don't want to drive someone away by saying, your sin is particularly atrocious.

00:17:29 – 00:17:32:	Not specifically necessarily that person, because a person wandering off the street,

00:17:32 – 00:17:35:	you may not know what his sin is.

00:17:35 – 00:17:38:	But in his mind, in his heart, he knows what the sin is.

00:17:38 – 00:17:43:	And so in a sermon, if you stand up there and rail against this particularly atrocious

00:17:43 – 00:17:48:	sin, and that's the one in his heart, you have some pastors who are worried that that

00:17:48 – 00:17:53:	man will never come back, because, oh, well, he called out my specific horrible sin.

00:17:53 – 00:17:58:	And so that's the concern, but the concern is precisely wrong.

00:17:58 – 00:18:04:	Because to go into law and gospel a little bit, sinners have to be broken by the law

00:18:04 – 00:18:06:	before they are ready for the gospel.

00:18:06 – 00:18:11:	And so if you don't preach the law in its full severity, you should not be preaching

00:18:11 – 00:18:17:	the gospel in its full sweetness, because all you have done is set that man up to remain

00:18:17 – 00:18:21:	in his sin, to become impenitent, to harden his heart.

00:18:21 – 00:18:23:	And so it's the exact opposite.

00:18:23 – 00:18:28:	It is an inversion of what pastors and teachers are supposed to do when they say that all

00:18:28 – 00:18:30:	sins are equal.

00:18:30 – 00:18:35:	What I think hardening of heart is one of the key things that is left out of the discussion

00:18:35 – 00:18:39:	of, well, if all sins aren't equal, what does that mean?

00:18:39 – 00:18:41:	That is principally what it means.

00:18:41 – 00:18:48:	If you're committing very small with what the Roman Catholics call venial sins, it would

00:18:48 – 00:18:54:	take a lot of them and a lot of deliberate sinning for you to reach the point of apostasy.

00:18:54 – 00:18:59:	On the other hand, if, for example, you're a serial killer, to go to the extreme opposite

00:18:59 – 00:19:03:	that everyone would admit, murdering is worse than stealing pencils.

00:19:03 – 00:19:04:	Everyone knows that.

00:19:04 – 00:19:07:	You don't have to have faith to understand that.

00:19:07 – 00:19:13:	And yet, for some reason, the modern Protestant freaks out at the idea of saying, well, stealing

00:19:13 – 00:19:19:	pencils and murdering a lot of people, those are both damnable, therefore they must be

00:19:19 – 00:19:20:	exactly the same.

00:19:20 – 00:19:21:	Nonsense.

00:19:21 – 00:19:26:	The difference is that the serial killer or someone who does something similarly egregious

00:19:26 – 00:19:34:	and we'll get into some of those other examples, that high-handed, impenitent, severe sin drives

00:19:34 – 00:19:38:	out the Holy Spirit much faster if it was ever present in the first place and makes

00:19:38 – 00:19:43:	it impossible for the Holy Spirit to ever be present by virtue of the inherent depravity

00:19:43 – 00:19:50:	of the man who would do that, whereas someone who's just a shoplifter.

00:19:50 – 00:19:52:	Shoplifting is a terrible, bad thing.

00:19:52 – 00:19:53:	It's destructive.

00:19:53 – 00:19:54:	It's evil.

00:19:55 – 00:20:00:	But if all someone ever does is steal a lollipop every time they go down the candy aisle, they're

00:20:00 – 00:20:06:	probably not going to destroy their faith or make it impossible for the long gospel

00:20:06 – 00:20:07:	to work on their hearts.

00:20:07 – 00:20:13:	If someone comes along and says, stealing is wrong, here's the commandment that describes

00:20:13 – 00:20:14:	that.

00:20:14 – 00:20:15:	You're hurting your neighbor.

00:20:15 – 00:20:17:	You're hurting your community.

00:20:17 – 00:20:18:	That's evil.

00:20:18 – 00:20:24:	It's relatively simple for someone who's been a serial shoplifter to set that aside

00:20:24 – 00:20:25:	and turn away from it.

00:20:25 – 00:20:30:	It's a much bigger ask for someone who's committing much bigger crimes because they know the gravity

00:20:30 – 00:20:32:	of their sin is far greater.

00:20:32 – 00:20:38:	Therefore, the degree of forgiveness that they feel they need is so much more overwhelming

00:20:38 – 00:20:41:	that even if you got them to the point where they might admit that they've done something

00:20:41 – 00:20:46:	wrong, they would think that they were past the point of forgiveness, which is ultimately

00:20:46 – 00:20:48:	why this is so important.

00:20:48 – 00:20:53:	If you let someone committing grievous sins continue in them to the point that when he

00:20:53 – 00:20:58:	is perhaps convicted by his conscience that that was all sinful, he's going to think it's

00:20:58 – 00:21:00:	too late.

00:21:00 – 00:21:03:	That is when the flip side of all this comes into play.

00:21:03 – 00:21:06:	Jesus paid for every single sin, great and small on the cross.

00:21:06 – 00:21:09:	They're all paid for whether you believe it or not.

00:21:09 – 00:21:17:	You can be the most damnable, utterly repudiated person in history with no hope of salvation

00:21:17 – 00:21:19:	and have gone to hell.

00:21:19 – 00:21:22:	Jesus still paid for that person's sins, all of them.

00:21:22 – 00:21:27:	The fact that they rejected that forgiveness in some cases will be because they felt that

00:21:27 – 00:21:32:	their sin was too great, which is the trick that Satan always plays in every sin.

00:21:32 – 00:21:39:	When he pitched the fruit of the forbidden tree to Eve and to Adam, it was in the terms

00:21:39 – 00:21:42:	of, oh, you will not surely die.

00:21:42 – 00:21:46:	Then what happens after we commit that very small sin, seemingly small?

00:21:46 – 00:21:51:	What does the accuser come along and say afterwards, God could never forgive you for that?

00:21:51 – 00:21:52:	What you've done is so terrible.

00:21:52 – 00:21:53:	They hid.

00:21:53 – 00:21:55:	They were ashamed and they hid.

00:21:55 – 00:21:57:	They hid because they knew they were naked.

00:21:57 – 00:22:02:	That was part of eating from the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

00:22:02 – 00:22:03:	The same thing happens to us.

00:22:03 – 00:22:07:	When we commit a sin and we know that we've sinned, we hide.

00:22:07 – 00:22:10:	We know that we are guilty of something.

00:22:10 – 00:22:13:	Satan wants us to believe that we can't be forgiven.

00:22:13 – 00:22:18:	If you say that all sins are equal, the person who's in that position won't be able to understand

00:22:18 – 00:22:25:	the severity and the enormity of the sacrifice that Christ gave for their sins.

00:22:25 – 00:22:30:	The sweetness of that salvation is greater for he who needs it most.

00:22:30 – 00:22:36:	Now, we obviously all need salvation from the least to the greatest sinner, but within

00:22:36 – 00:22:40:	our own hearts, we know our own sins, not all of them, but we know many of them.

00:22:40 – 00:22:48:	When we feel as though our sins are greater than God can forgive, Satan has your heart.

00:22:48 – 00:22:53:	Even if you come to some degree of repentance, that's what happened to Judas.

00:22:53 – 00:22:55:	He was possessed by the devil.

00:22:55 – 00:23:01:	He betrayed Christ and then he regretted it, but he didn't repent in the sense that he

00:23:01 – 00:23:05:	turned back to Jesus and said, Lord, forgive me for betraying you.

00:23:05 – 00:23:10:	He felt that he had no hope of forgiveness and so he went and killed himself.

00:23:10 – 00:23:14:	That is the ultimate victory of Satan and saying, oh, it's not a big deal and then you

00:23:14 – 00:23:17:	do it and then he says it's unforgivable.

00:23:17 – 00:23:20:	If someone believes that all sins are equal, they're going to end up on both sides of that

00:23:20 – 00:23:26:	equation one right after the other because if you do something horrible and you're believing,

00:23:26 – 00:23:32:	I know better or worse than anyone else, when your conscience convicts you of that sin,

00:23:32 – 00:23:36:	you're then going to think this sin's enormity is too much for even God to forgive.

00:23:36 – 00:23:38:	There's no hope for me.

00:23:38 – 00:23:40:	That is when there's no room for the gospel.

00:23:40 – 00:23:48:	This is absolutely a question of people receiving salvation and hearing the gospel faithfully.

00:23:48 – 00:23:53:	That can only happen with sound doctrine up front about what sin is and what it is not.

00:23:53 – 00:23:58:	You touched on something there that a lot of Christians also get wrong these days.

00:23:58 – 00:24:01:	It's tangential, but it is related to the topic.

00:24:01 – 00:24:07:	That is the scope of the atonement of redemption.

00:24:07 – 00:24:12:	When we think that any particular sin, leaving aside for the moment the unpardonable, the

00:24:12 – 00:24:14:	unforgivable sin, we'll get to that.

00:24:14 – 00:24:19:	But when you think that a particular sin is too great to be forgiven, that God could never

00:24:19 – 00:24:28:	forgive me, I've committed too many and to heinous sins, you're losing sight of what

00:24:28 – 00:24:33:	exactly Christ accomplished, what God accomplished in the atonement.

00:24:33 – 00:24:40:	And that was the redemption of all things, of creation, because the sacrifice of Christ

00:24:40 – 00:24:44:	on the cross was of infinite value.

00:24:44 – 00:24:50:	He redeemed creation, not just you, not just me, not just a handful of things.

00:24:50 – 00:24:52:	He redeemed everything.

00:24:52 – 00:24:54:	It was complete.

00:24:54 – 00:24:55:	It was finished.

00:24:55 – 00:25:02:	It was an atonement that covered all sin, period, all sin.

00:25:02 – 00:25:08:	It will not be applied to all because there is the objective justification, which is the

00:25:08 – 00:25:14:	redemption, the atonement, the price paid by Christ for all sins, and then there is the

00:25:14 – 00:25:20:	subjective justification, which is the application of that to individual sinners, which happens

00:25:20 – 00:25:21:	by faith.

00:25:21 – 00:25:26:	And so if you don't have faith, it doesn't apply to you, but the sins are still forgiven.

00:25:26 – 00:25:31:	And so those who spend eternity in hell are attempting to pay the price for a sin that

00:25:31 – 00:25:36:	was already forgiven for which Christ already atoned.

00:25:36 – 00:25:43:	And so it is important to not lose sight of the scope of the atonement, of the actual

00:25:43 – 00:25:47:	scale of Christ's redemption, which was infinite.

00:25:47 – 00:25:51:	One of the most common examples that comes up both in the Old Testament and repeatedly

00:25:51 – 00:25:58:	in the New Testament is that of Sodom and Gomorrah, as a particular example of an egregious

00:25:58 – 00:26:07:	sin, and God's immediate temporal and hearkening to the eternal consequences of that sin.

00:26:07 – 00:26:12:	In Genesis 19 it's written, Then the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and

00:26:12 – 00:26:18:	Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done

00:26:18 – 00:26:21:	altogether according to the outcry that has come to me.

00:26:21 – 00:26:23:	And if not, I will know.

00:26:23 – 00:26:26:	We all know what happened there.

00:26:26 – 00:26:29:	They were engaging in Sodomic behavior.

00:26:29 – 00:26:36:	The entire town, the multiple towns in the area, were engaged in obscene sexual acts.

00:26:36 – 00:26:40:	And when they heard the two angels had come, they heard two men were there.

00:26:40 – 00:26:41:	They said, Bring them out.

00:26:41 – 00:26:46:	We want to have sex with them, which forgive me for laughing.

00:26:46 – 00:26:49:	It's utterly alien to me, but it was normal in that town.

00:26:49 – 00:26:55:	When someone came, they wanted to rape the guests of Lot.

00:26:55 – 00:26:58:	And they didn't know they were angels, but it was certainly the confirmation that the

00:26:58 – 00:27:04:	angels had come to seek on behalf of God to see whether the outcry was true.

00:27:04 – 00:27:09:	And the consequence was that those towns were literally wiped off the map.

00:27:09 – 00:27:14:	And we think through modern archaeological evidence, we found exactly where that place

00:27:14 – 00:27:15:	was.

00:27:15 – 00:27:21:	They have found evidence of glass caused by superheated air.

00:27:21 – 00:27:27:	Basically, it appeared that there was a large air burst similar to the Tunguska blast in

00:27:27 – 00:27:30:	I think 1913, roughly.

00:27:30 – 00:27:39:	It was the equivalent of a multi-megaton nuclear detonation in the air above that location.

00:27:39 – 00:27:43:	And that's today that is visible in the ground and where they believe Sodom and Gomorrah

00:27:43 – 00:27:44:	was.

00:27:44 – 00:27:48:	The archaeologists digging it up don't believe the Bible, because obviously it's all nonsense.

00:27:48 – 00:27:54:	But when you look at what they found and what they can describe of the physical events that

00:27:54 – 00:27:59:	occurred there, it pretty well matches perfectly what is described in Scripture.

00:27:59 – 00:28:06:	There was a massive fiery configuration that wiped those towns off the map.

00:28:06 – 00:28:11:	Now, those are the only towns that have ever been wiped off the map like this.

00:28:11 – 00:28:15:	By God saying, this is what I'm going to do.

00:28:15 – 00:28:19:	And in the New Testament, as we'll get to in a minute, it's referred to repeatedly.

00:28:19 – 00:28:23:	Sodom and Gomorrah's sin was greater.

00:28:23 – 00:28:27:	God said he's going to go down and see if it's true that their sin is very grave.

00:28:27 – 00:28:30:	How can a sin be very grave if all sin is equal?

00:28:30 – 00:28:37:	Are we to believe if all sin is equal that the next town over from Sodom was less guilty?

00:28:37 – 00:28:39:	Were there no sinners in that town?

00:28:39 – 00:28:40:	Certainly not.

00:28:40 – 00:28:42:	Because never the claim.

00:28:42 – 00:28:47:	Every town has sinners, because every town has human beings who are born in sin.

00:28:47 – 00:28:53:	The reason that these towns were destroyed was that their sin was very great.

00:28:53 – 00:28:55:	And so we have a passage from Luke 10.

00:28:55 – 00:29:01:	But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say,

00:29:01 – 00:29:06:	Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you.

00:29:06 – 00:29:10:	Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.

00:29:10 – 00:29:17:	I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

00:29:17 – 00:29:22:	And so here we see that even though the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were great, there is

00:29:22 – 00:29:25:	in fact an even greater sin.

00:29:25 – 00:29:27:	This of course is rejecting Christ.

00:29:27 – 00:29:32:	This is rejecting the gospel, rejecting God.

00:29:32 – 00:29:37:	Which is the worst sin of course, and this ties right back into the unforgivable sin

00:29:37 – 00:29:38:	was mentioned.

00:29:38 – 00:29:43:	And I would be remiss if I did not mention as I do every time this comes up.

00:29:43 – 00:29:49:	If you can worry about the unforgivable sin, you have not committed it.

00:29:49 – 00:29:50:	That's the standard.

00:29:50 – 00:29:56:	So if that concerns you whatsoever, you have not committed it.

00:29:56 – 00:29:59:	And I'm not going to tell you not to worry about it, because of course that would be

00:29:59 – 00:30:00:	a problem.

00:30:00 – 00:30:06:	But the unforgivable sin is a complicated topic, but essentially it is unbelief.

00:30:06 – 00:30:11:	It is the deliberate rejection of God, of the gospel, of repentance.

00:30:11 – 00:30:15:	It is high-handed blasphemy.

00:30:15 – 00:30:22:	And that's what we have here, the rejection of the gospel by these towns.

00:30:22 – 00:30:25:	And so it will be better for Sodom on the day of judgment.

00:30:25 – 00:30:30:	It does not mean that Sodom is off the hook, as we've been saying throughout.

00:30:30 – 00:30:35:	Just because some sins are not as bad as others does not mean that they are not sins, does

00:30:35 – 00:30:40:	not mean they do not separate from God, does not mean that if you are not in Christ you

00:30:40 – 00:30:43:	will not go to hell for those sins.

00:30:43 – 00:30:49:	If you are not in Christ, you will go to hell regardless of the gravity of the sins you

00:30:49 – 00:30:50:	have committed.

00:30:50 – 00:30:55:	Your eternity will not be as bad as a serial killer or someone who has committed many heinous

00:30:55 – 00:31:00:	sins, but it will still not be a good eternity.

00:31:00 – 00:31:08:	And so these towns reject Christ, reject the gospel, and that sin is graver than Sodom

00:31:08 – 00:31:11:	and Gomorrah, who did not outright reject the gospel.

00:31:11 – 00:31:19:	Instead, they were engaged in heinous sexual sins, yes, horrible sins, no, not as bad as

00:31:19 – 00:31:20:	rejecting Christ.

00:31:20 – 00:31:24:	In this passage, of course, is one that we had referred to in one of our earlier episodes

00:31:24 – 00:31:27:	on the subject of forgotten doctrines.

00:31:27 – 00:31:31:	This is one of the passages in the synoptics that refers to the doctrine of shaking the

00:31:31 – 00:31:36:	dust off your feet as a curse against those who refuse to hear the gospel.

00:31:36 – 00:31:39:	I mean, they've heard it, they refuse to believe it.

00:31:39 – 00:31:46:	And so I think that's an important tie into, as Corey said, the unforgivable sin.

00:31:46 – 00:31:47:	What does this say?

00:31:47 – 00:31:56:	It says that in the case where someone believes when a missionary comes to them, to be told

00:31:56 – 00:32:01:	that God has come among them, if they do not believe, that is still to be announced.

00:32:01 – 00:32:06:	But whereas in the first case, if you hear and believe to hear that God has come near

00:32:06 – 00:32:12:	you is a matter of profound comfort and joy, if you do not believe when it is announced

00:32:12 – 00:32:17:	by the missionary that God has come among you, it is a curse.

00:32:17 – 00:32:23:	It is the foremost of all curses to saying, God has been here, you have rejected him.

00:32:23 – 00:32:28:	On the day of judgment, you are going to receive what you've earned here.

00:32:28 – 00:32:33:	And that is, I think, one of the things that is missing from Christian discussion of sin.

00:32:33 – 00:32:36:	You earn a specific punishment for a specific sin.

00:32:36 – 00:32:41:	There's a specific punishment for every sin, and there's a specific reward for every good

00:32:41 – 00:32:42:	deed.

00:32:42 – 00:32:47:	Now, the difference, and it's a tricky one for us to process because we've gotten so sloppy

00:32:47 – 00:32:52:	about thinking and speaking about these things, for the Christian.

00:32:52 – 00:32:57:	All of the good works that we do, which were prepared by God beforehand for us to do for

00:32:57 – 00:33:03:	the benefit of our neighbor, we receive credit for them, even though they're God's gift

00:33:03 – 00:33:04:	to us.

00:33:04 – 00:33:10:	All of the evil things that the Christian does are not credited to him, but were instead

00:33:10 – 00:33:13:	nailed to the cross with Christ.

00:33:13 – 00:33:18:	So that on the last day when we are covered in Christ's blood and our robes are washed

00:33:18 – 00:33:22:	white, we appear blameless before the throne of God.

00:33:22 – 00:33:23:	That's how it works.

00:33:23 – 00:33:28:	Christ atoning blood washes our robes white in the blood of the Lamb.

00:33:28 – 00:33:35:	We stand before God sinless, not because we've committed no sin, but because Christ propitiating

00:33:35 – 00:33:40:	sacrifice on the cross washed it away, because he paid the price for those sins.

00:33:40 – 00:33:43:	The converse is true of unbelievers.

00:33:43 – 00:33:48:	They had no good works in their life, no matter how laudable it may have seemed, because

00:33:48 – 00:33:51:	they were not doing them in the name of God.

00:33:51 – 00:33:57:	They have everything that they ever did as a sin, which Christ paid for, and they rejected

00:33:57 – 00:33:58:	that propitiation.

00:33:58 – 00:34:00:	They said, I don't believe in God.

00:34:00 – 00:34:03:	I don't want him to have anything to do with this.

00:34:03 – 00:34:04:	These are my sins.

00:34:04 – 00:34:06:	These aren't sins at all.

00:34:06 – 00:34:11:	However they want to cut it, they say, not God's problem, stay out of my business.

00:34:11 – 00:34:17:	On Judgment Day, it's God's business, and Christ's atoning sacrifice does not apply

00:34:17 – 00:34:20:	to them because they rejected it.

00:34:20 – 00:34:26:	It's not in the sense of the Reformed limited atonement where God only died for some, as

00:34:26 – 00:34:28:	Corey said earlier.

00:34:28 – 00:34:32:	The beginning of John's gospel is very important.

00:34:32 – 00:34:37:	When it talks about in the beginning was the word, everything in the universe was made

00:34:37 – 00:34:39:	through Christ.

00:34:39 – 00:34:42:	This is paralleled in the cross.

00:34:42 – 00:34:46:	Everything in the universe was redeemed through Christ.

00:34:46 – 00:34:52:	Only Christ could do that, by whom all things were made, through whom all things were redeemed.

00:34:52 – 00:34:57:	There's a perfect symmetry there that cannot be achieved anywhere else, which is why it's

00:34:57 – 00:35:00:	ludicrous for any man to think, well, maybe I can do something.

00:35:00 – 00:35:02:	Are you kidding me?

00:35:02 – 00:35:04:	It's utterly preposterous.

00:35:04 – 00:35:06:	No Christian believes that.

00:35:06 – 00:35:09:	No Christian believes that he can do anything to save himself.

00:35:09 – 00:35:14:	I think it's one of the greatest weaknesses of Protestant doctrine that we're still fighting

00:35:14 – 00:35:20:	the 15th century heresy that we can earn some of our salvation.

00:35:20 – 00:35:21:	We dealt with that.

00:35:21 – 00:35:22:	We got rid of it.

00:35:22 – 00:35:27:	We purified Christian doctrine and said, no, all the sacrifices at the cross.

00:35:27 – 00:35:30:	Okay, it's a settled matter.

00:35:30 – 00:35:34:	We don't need to relitigate that in every single sentence of every single sermon.

00:35:34 – 00:35:39:	In every single conversation we have about these things, there's more to say about the

00:35:39 – 00:35:42:	world and about the Christian life than saying that Jesus took care of it all.

00:35:42 – 00:35:46:	It's the most important thing, but it's not the only thing.

00:35:46 – 00:35:48:	This is about the end then.

00:35:48 – 00:35:53:	As a Christian who's been redeemed, who has the Holy Spirit to be able to understand what

00:35:53 – 00:35:59:	God has written, when we see people saying things like, all sins are equal, you can't

00:35:59 – 00:36:00:	judge man.

00:36:00 – 00:36:05:	That's just his sin and your sin is even worse, except all sins are equal.

00:36:05 – 00:36:09:	It falls apart on its face, but the important part is what they want you to do is not tell

00:36:09 – 00:36:11:	anyone else about their sin.

00:36:11 – 00:36:13:	That's what Satan wants.

00:36:13 – 00:36:17:	He doesn't want anyone to hear that they're sinning until it's too late, until they've

00:36:17 – 00:36:24:	committed such egregious sins that they feel that they're beyond redemption, which is false,

00:36:24 – 00:36:26:	but it's a lie that's easy to believe.

00:36:26 – 00:36:32:	It's one of the hardest things for someone when they hit rock bottom and in some aspect

00:36:32 – 00:36:36:	of their life to realize they can't do it themselves.

00:36:36 – 00:36:40:	That is when they're ready to hear the gospel, to hear that God did everything.

00:36:40 – 00:36:42:	You don't have to do anything.

00:36:42 – 00:36:48:	God is giving you the gift of faith and belief, receive it with thanksgiving, and it's yours.

00:36:48 – 00:36:54:	To emphasize what you said about the difference between the works of those who are in Christ

00:36:54 – 00:37:01:	versus those who are not, we often hear the term virtuous pagan, at least if you read

00:37:01 – 00:37:04:	theology and are in those circles.

00:37:04 – 00:37:10:	And there is and there is not such a thing as a virtuous pagan.

00:37:10 – 00:37:15:	The pagan who lives a morally upstanding life, who doesn't murder, doesn't cheat, doesn't

00:37:15 – 00:37:23:	steal, doesn't commit adultery, etc., is a virtuous pagan according to the law.

00:37:25 – 00:37:33:	Because you can do the works of the law according to human reason and free will.

00:37:33 – 00:37:35:	You cannot do them perfectly.

00:37:35 – 00:37:38:	You will always fall short, and so you will always sin.

00:37:38 – 00:37:46:	However, as was stated, they are not credited to you as good works because you are not in Christ.

00:37:46 – 00:37:53:	And so as a sinner, everything you do is sin, everything.

00:37:53 – 00:38:02:	Murder, sin, giving candy to a child, sin, saving a drowning animal, sin, everything

00:38:02 – 00:38:05:	you do as a sinner is sin.

00:38:05 – 00:38:11:	And so, in that sense, there is no such thing as a virtuous pagan.

00:38:11 – 00:38:16:	What the pagan cannot do, what the person outside Christ cannot do, is what the person

00:38:16 – 00:38:19:	in Christ can do.

00:38:19 – 00:38:25:	And instead of the works of the law, we are talking about the fruits of the spirit.

00:38:25 – 00:38:31:	Now these are theological categories, and it is important to keep that clear.

00:38:31 – 00:38:35:	Because the good works of Christians are also done according to the law, and we'll get into

00:38:35 – 00:38:37:	that in a future episode.

00:38:37 – 00:38:42:	But in this sense, this limited technical sense, the works of the law are those things

00:38:42 – 00:38:49:	that can be done according to human reason, even by the pagan.

00:38:49 – 00:38:55:	The fruits of the spirit are those things that are done in Christ through faith.

00:38:55 – 00:39:01:	Those are credited to the believer as good works, on account of Christ's sacrifice,

00:39:01 – 00:39:03:	on his behalf.

00:39:03 – 00:39:06:	And so if you are in Christ, you have good works.

00:39:06 – 00:39:12:	The good works you do are credited to you, as was stated, the sins you do are not credited

00:39:12 – 00:39:18:	to your account because they were washed away in Christ, they are washed clean by his blood.

00:39:18 – 00:39:25:	But again, the pagan does not actually have good works, because they are tainted because

00:39:25 – 00:39:29:	the pagan is a sinner, not in Christ, not forgiven.

00:39:29 – 00:39:35:	And so if you are not in Christ, you have only sins, no good works.

00:39:35 – 00:39:40:	If you are in Christ, ultimately, when you are brought before the judgment seat and the

00:39:40 – 00:39:46:	books are open and your deeds are read, you will have only good works, no sins.

00:39:46 – 00:39:53:	The next day Moses said to the people, You have sinned a great sin, and now I will go

00:39:53 – 00:39:54:	up to the Lord.

00:39:54 – 00:39:56:	Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.

00:39:56 – 00:40:01:	So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Alas, this people have sinned a great sin, they

00:40:01 – 00:40:05:	have made for themselves gods of gold.

00:40:05 – 00:40:11:	I want to read this in particular because this, in addition to having the phrase great sin

00:40:11 – 00:40:18:	in English and ESB, I didn't look at the Hebrew, but I'm sure it's faithful.

00:40:18 – 00:40:23:	Moses was not only highlighting that some sins are better or worse than others, but

00:40:23 – 00:40:29:	this was talking about the greatest of all sins, which is a violation of the First Commandment.

00:40:29 – 00:40:33:	Because what had just happened, Moses had gone up the mountain, he had received the

00:40:33 – 00:40:37:	Ten Commandments, he'd come back down, and what did he find?

00:40:37 – 00:40:41:	He found that the Jews had abandoned God.

00:40:41 – 00:40:47:	They had made the golden calf so that they could worship it and say this idol is what

00:40:47 – 00:40:49:	brought us out of Egypt.

00:40:49 – 00:40:55:	God had literally just rescued them and they apostatized while in full view of the fiery

00:40:55 – 00:40:59:	pillar of his presence on the mountain.

00:40:59 – 00:41:04:	It's stunning to me to think about that scene where the very God who had rescued them miraculously

00:41:04 – 00:41:10:	from the Egypt, brought them into the desert, was speaking with the man who had led them

00:41:10 – 00:41:12:	out of captivity.

00:41:12 – 00:41:16:	There's a visible pillar of smoke and fire on the mountain.

00:41:16 – 00:41:17:	They could hear thunder.

00:41:17 – 00:41:19:	It was a huge scene.

00:41:19 – 00:41:23:	It was very visually dramatic, especially for being so unnatural.

00:41:23 – 00:41:24:	What did they do?

00:41:24 – 00:41:29:	They couldn't last 40 days without Moses telling them to bathe.

00:41:29 – 00:41:33:	They had an errand, melt down gold, and make a calf for them so that they could worship

00:41:33 – 00:41:35:	and say this is our God now.

00:41:35 – 00:41:37:	This calf led us out of Egypt.

00:41:37 – 00:41:41:	This was a great scene because it was number one on the list.

00:41:41 – 00:41:43:	You shall have no other gods before me.

00:41:43 – 00:41:44:	He comes down.

00:41:44 – 00:41:45:	Was he fine?

00:41:45 – 00:41:47:	They have another God before him.

00:41:47 – 00:41:52:	Before is an interesting word in that you shall have no other gods before me.

00:41:52 – 00:41:54:	It means in my presence.

00:41:54 – 00:41:56:	It doesn't mean in terms of rank.

00:41:56 – 00:41:58:	It doesn't mean before or after.

00:41:58 – 00:42:05:	It means before is in I see before me tons of soil to quote Spooner.

00:42:05 – 00:42:08:	When something is before God, it means that he can see it.

00:42:08 – 00:42:10:	God is omniscient.

00:42:10 – 00:42:12:	What is before God?

00:42:12 – 00:42:13:	Everything in the universe.

00:42:13 – 00:42:14:	Everything beyond the universe.

00:42:14 – 00:42:17:	Anything exists, it is before God.

00:42:17 – 00:42:20:	God is in the place where there is no place.

00:42:20 – 00:42:22:	He knows everything.

00:42:22 – 00:42:29:	When it says you shall have no other gods before me, it means you cannot have a single

00:42:29 – 00:42:31:	God apart from me.

00:42:31 – 00:42:32:	It's not in terms of rank.

00:42:32 – 00:42:37:	It's not saying God will be number one and then jewelry will be number two and football

00:42:37 – 00:42:39:	will be number three.

00:42:39 – 00:42:44:	It's saying you will have only God anywhere in your heart, in your mind, in your actions,

00:42:44 – 00:42:45:	only me.

00:42:45 – 00:42:50:	Moses came down and he found them abandoning that right off the bat.

00:42:50 – 00:42:54:	He called it a grace and they required him to go back up the mountain and speak to God.

00:42:54 – 00:43:01:	There's also an additional measure of egregiousness and irony that some readers will miss in this

00:43:01 – 00:43:02:	particular section.

00:43:02 – 00:43:10:	If you're not familiar with Egyptian paganism mythology, really what they were fashioning

00:43:10 – 00:43:15:	for themselves was an Egyptian idol.

00:43:15 – 00:43:21:	God had just destroyed Egypt, drowned Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, demonstrated

00:43:21 – 00:43:28:	his power over a course of however long it took for the plagues in the Exodus.

00:43:28 – 00:43:38:	And the Israelites in full view of God physically manifested speaking to Moses on a mountain

00:43:38 – 00:43:46:	decide to create a calf, a golden idol, probably related to Hathor who is represented often

00:43:46 – 00:43:51:	as a cow, so an Egyptian goddess.

00:43:51 – 00:43:57:	And so there's that additional level of apostasy here from the Israelites.

00:43:57 – 00:44:02:	They're returning to the wickedness of the pagan religion with which they were familiar

00:44:02 – 00:44:11:	in Egypt, despite what they just saw God do to Egypt when he brought them out of Egypt.

00:44:11 – 00:44:18:	There's an allusion to this in Matthew 22 when the Pharisees are trying to trick Jesus.

00:44:18 – 00:44:23:	They see teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law, and Jesus said to them, You shall

00:44:23 – 00:44:28:	love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

00:44:28 – 00:44:30:	This is the great and first commandment.

00:44:30 – 00:44:31:	And the second is like it.

00:44:31 – 00:44:33:	You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

00:44:33 – 00:44:38:	Of on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

00:44:38 – 00:44:42:	And so basically what Jesus is describing to the Pharisees is the first table and the

00:44:42 – 00:44:44:	second table of the law.

00:44:44 – 00:44:48:	He's describing you shall have no other gods before me and the second and third commandments

00:44:48 – 00:44:51:	that deal specifically with our relationship with God.

00:44:51 – 00:44:56:	And then the second table is our relationship with man, beginning with parents and then

00:44:56 – 00:44:59:	murder, adultery, and so forth.

00:44:59 – 00:45:05:	So when Jesus says there's a first and a second commandment, that necessarily implies

00:45:05 – 00:45:08:	that some sin is greater than others.

00:45:08 – 00:45:12:	The only alternative, if you say that all sin is equal, is to say, well, I can violate

00:45:12 – 00:45:17:	the first commandment and be an idolater, or I can do something else like steal my neighbor's

00:45:17 – 00:45:18:	ox.

00:45:18 – 00:45:19:	That's all the same.

00:45:19 – 00:45:22:	Jesus literally says in Matthew 22, it's not the same.

00:45:22 – 00:45:25:	He says the first and greatest commandment is our relationship to God.

00:45:25 – 00:45:29:	And then the second commandment is our relationship to our neighbors.

00:45:29 – 00:45:30:	And everything flows from that.

00:45:30 – 00:45:35:	And as we've said in the past, when you look at the ordering of the commandments from one

00:45:35 – 00:45:37:	through 10, it's greatest to least.

00:45:37 – 00:45:43:	At least Lutherans, we put things like chattels in the 10th position and we put God in the

00:45:43 – 00:45:44:	first position.

00:45:44 – 00:45:46:	Don't commit adultery.

00:45:46 – 00:45:51:	Don't steal your neighbor's ox or donkey or his slaves or his wife.

00:45:51 – 00:45:52:	Those are both sins.

00:45:52 – 00:45:57:	They're both damning sins, but they're at opposite ends of the spectrum of severity.

00:45:57 – 00:46:02:	It is far worse to commit idolatry than it is to steal.

00:46:02 – 00:46:03:	Stealing is bad.

00:46:03 – 00:46:05:	Idolatry is worse.

00:46:05 – 00:46:06:	Jesus says it.

00:46:06 – 00:46:07:	We have to believe it.

00:46:07 – 00:46:10:	And if we believe it, then we can't say all sins are equal.

00:46:10 – 00:46:16:	There's going to be a lot of redundancy in this episode because there's so many passages.

00:46:16 – 00:46:22:	The reason that we're doing this cumulative repetition of these various verses, and we're

00:46:22 – 00:46:23:	only scratching the surface here.

00:46:23 – 00:46:27:	There are many, many passages that deal with this specific issue.

00:46:27 – 00:46:29:	These are some of the key ones.

00:46:29 – 00:46:34:	But what these litany of passages show us are that you cannot possibly believe that all

00:46:34 – 00:46:37:	sins are equal if you believe any part of the Bible.

00:46:37 – 00:46:40:	You can turn to pretty much any book and you're going to find the same story.

00:46:40 – 00:46:44:	And that story is that there are some sins that are greater and there are some sins that

00:46:44 – 00:46:45:	are lesser.

00:46:45 – 00:46:50:	Not for the purpose of salvation, but for the purpose of sin against God and the degree

00:46:50 – 00:46:55:	to which it offends him and the degree to which the penalty that Christ paid on the cross.

00:46:55 – 00:46:56:	That's important.

00:46:56 – 00:46:58:	God says it's important.

00:46:58 – 00:47:00:	This isn't us making something up.

00:47:00 – 00:47:02:	This is not podcast or theology.

00:47:02 – 00:47:04:	It's literally just reading what's in the Bible.

00:47:04 – 00:47:07:	So the reason we're saying the same thing over and over again is that God said the same

00:47:07 – 00:47:09:	thing over and over again.

00:47:09 – 00:47:13:	And when the world is saying the opposite thing over and over again, at some point you

00:47:13 – 00:47:18:	have to wonder which book are they reading because they cannot be reading the Bible if

00:47:18 – 00:47:20:	they're saying that all sins are equal.

00:47:20 – 00:47:26:	To add just a little footnote that isn't actually, well is from the Bible and isn't

00:47:26 – 00:47:27:	at the same time.

00:47:27 – 00:47:32:	Just for those who are going to be listening with a more critical ear, yes, I am well aware

00:47:32 – 00:47:42:	that the word underlying calf in Exodus 32 is Igel and the feminine version is Iglah.

00:47:42 – 00:47:48:	But it was most likely still in some way related to Hathor because, yes, Hathor is typically

00:47:48 – 00:47:54:	represented as a female deity and thus a cow and not a young bull.

00:47:54 – 00:47:58:	Just adding that for anyone listening with a critical ear.

00:47:58 – 00:48:00:	Keeping it out of the comments.

00:48:00 – 00:48:06:	Yeah, basically I'm heading off having to field a comment somewhere on that point.

00:48:06 – 00:48:07:	That's something that people probably know.

00:48:07 – 00:48:13:	This is Cordy and I talk, we'll sometimes make these odd asides, brushing aside criticisms

00:48:13 – 00:48:16:	of what we've just said.

00:48:16 – 00:48:20:	We're such perfectionists that we're both sitting here continually critiquing what we're

00:48:20 – 00:48:22:	saying to ourselves.

00:48:22 – 00:48:26:	As I'm speaking, I have a running monologue where I'm basically heckling myself saying,

00:48:26 – 00:48:27:	well, that's not right.

00:48:27 – 00:48:28:	That's not right.

00:48:28 – 00:48:29:	You should do that better.

00:48:29 – 00:48:30:	You should have said this differently.

00:48:30 – 00:48:31:	Literally as I'm talking, as I'm thinking.

00:48:31 – 00:48:37:	And so sometimes our senses get longer and longer as we sort of tack on all these additional

00:48:37 – 00:48:39:	seemingly less important things.

00:48:39 – 00:48:44:	It's specifically because we're trying to be clear and precise in our speech and not

00:48:44 – 00:48:45:	make mistakes.

00:48:45 – 00:48:51:	And so we literally harangue ourselves in our heads so that we find all the faults.

00:48:51 – 00:48:55:	So hopefully there's not much left for someone else to find fault with.

00:48:55 – 00:48:59:	That's something that's kind of endemic to the way our brains work.

00:48:59 – 00:49:03:	But I wish the more people sort of took that care as they approached these things because

00:49:03 – 00:49:08:	just shouting catchphrases that sound nice and that make you friends with the world.

00:49:08 – 00:49:12:	If it puts you at odds with scripture, we think that's a big deal.

00:49:12 – 00:49:14:	That's why we're taking the time to do this.

00:49:14 – 00:49:18:	That's why we're suffering the indignities that Corey and I have suffered in our personal

00:49:18 – 00:49:20:	lives for the sake of doing this.

00:49:20 – 00:49:21:	This has not been fun.

00:49:21 – 00:49:22:	This has not been easy.

00:49:22 – 00:49:25:	We've taken abuse for saying these things.

00:49:25 – 00:49:26:	For what?

00:49:26 – 00:49:27:	For doing Bible studies.

00:49:27 – 00:49:28:	Okay.

00:49:28 – 00:49:32:	If people want to heap abuse on us for doing Bible studies, I think that if there's a sin

00:49:32 – 00:49:37:	here, the Bible study is a lesser sin than he who would attack us for it.

00:49:37 – 00:49:41:	It's funny that the same people who say all sins are equal are also the first to say that

00:49:41 – 00:49:43:	Corey and I are chief among sinners.

00:49:43 – 00:49:47:	Maybe that'll be a subject for another episode.

00:49:47 – 00:49:49:	The next passage I want to read is from Luke 12.

00:49:49 – 00:49:55:	And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to

00:49:55 – 00:49:58:	his will will receive a severe beating.

00:49:58 – 00:50:03:	But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating.

00:50:03 – 00:50:07:	Everyone to whom much was given of him, much will be required.

00:50:07 – 00:50:12:	And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

00:50:12 – 00:50:19:	So again, this is emphasizing not only the knowledge and forethought of the action of

00:50:19 – 00:50:24:	the individual, but it's emphasizing that they're greater and lesser punishments and

00:50:24 – 00:50:30:	that to some degree, the punishment for he who does not know what he's doing will be

00:50:30 – 00:50:31:	lesser.

00:50:31 – 00:50:32:	There's still punishment.

00:50:32 – 00:50:36:	You know, this passage, this is from ESV and so I didn't fix where I said servant.

00:50:36 – 00:50:38:	It means slave.

00:50:38 – 00:50:39:	You don't beat servants.

00:50:39 – 00:50:40:	You beat slaves.

00:50:40 – 00:50:42:	You beat someone who's your property.

00:50:42 – 00:50:43:	Maybe you should.

00:50:43 – 00:50:44:	Maybe you shouldn't.

00:50:44 – 00:50:45:	This passage condones it.

00:50:45 – 00:50:50:	It says, the greater beating will go to the slave who has sinned more greatly.

00:50:50 – 00:50:54:	The lesser beating will go to the slave who has sinned more lightly.

00:50:54 – 00:50:58:	Lighter beating, lighter consequence for a lighter sin.

00:50:58 – 00:51:03:	Again, it doesn't explicitly say greater and lesser degrees of sin, but it's the same principle

00:51:03 – 00:51:07:	playing out again because it's exactly the point.

00:51:07 – 00:51:10:	These things are everywhere in scripture.

00:51:10 – 00:51:14:	And once you start to understand that this notion of equality and of everything being

00:51:14 – 00:51:19:	equal and identical, it's antithetical to scripture.

00:51:19 – 00:51:22:	It's something new in a new religion.

00:51:22 – 00:51:25:	It's not something that came from God.

00:51:25 – 00:51:27:	Next one I wanted to cover was from James 3.

00:51:27 – 00:51:30:	It's a very short one that we've referred to before.

00:51:30 – 00:51:34:	Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will

00:51:34 – 00:51:38:	be judged with the stricter judgment.

00:51:38 – 00:51:44:	Again, if everything is the same, how can there possibly be a stricter judgment?

00:51:44 – 00:51:47:	And consider this.

00:51:47 – 00:51:51:	This is being written about Christians.

00:51:51 – 00:51:56:	It's not being written about a stricter judgment in terms of believer and unbeliever.

00:51:56 – 00:51:57:	This is not about soteriology.

00:51:57 – 00:52:00:	This is not about whether or not someone's saved.

00:52:00 – 00:52:05:	It's saying that even if you are saved, if you choose to become a teacher, you opt into

00:52:05 – 00:52:10:	a stricter judgment, you will face harsher consequences.

00:52:11 – 00:52:17:	Now, in heaven, harsher consequences don't mean punishment, but there are degrees of

00:52:17 – 00:52:18:	glory in heaven.

00:52:18 – 00:52:23:	We probably won't get in some of those passages today, but it's clear that the rewards in

00:52:23 – 00:52:25:	heaven are also given unequally.

00:52:25 – 00:52:32:	When Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first, how is that not unequal?

00:52:32 – 00:52:37:	All of these phrases that are so common to the way God speaks about heaven and about

00:52:37 – 00:52:45:	reordering the ungodly, worldly life and a heavenly life, it's all about inequality.

00:52:45 – 00:52:48:	The first shall be last.

00:52:48 – 00:52:49:	That's not fair.

00:52:49 – 00:52:50:	That's not equal.

00:52:50 – 00:52:55:	That's saying that someone who lived like a king today and did not live in a gogly fashion,

00:52:55 – 00:52:59:	even if he's saved, he's not going to be first in heaven.

00:52:59 – 00:53:00:	He's going to sit at the back.

00:53:00 – 00:53:02:	He's not going to have the place of honor.

00:53:02 – 00:53:06:	It's going to be the widows and the orphans and those who had the least and were the most

00:53:06 – 00:53:11:	humble and seemed the most pathetic.

00:53:11 – 00:53:16:	Those will be the ones whom God elevates as the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

00:53:16 – 00:53:17:	It's not just about station in life.

00:53:17 – 00:53:20:	It's not just about class system.

00:53:20 – 00:53:22:	It's also about works.

00:53:22 – 00:53:28:	When God judges more strictly teachers, those who have taught faithfully will receive great

00:53:28 – 00:53:29:	rewards.

00:53:29 – 00:53:34:	Those who have taught unfaithfully but were still saved, they're not going to get much

00:53:34 – 00:53:35:	for it.

00:53:35 – 00:53:37:	We don't know how that plays out.

00:53:37 – 00:53:41:	We're not giving specifics because God gives none, but God absolutely says that these things

00:53:41 – 00:53:43:	will occur.

00:53:43 – 00:53:49:	All we in the 21st century need to know is that it's unequal.

00:53:49 – 00:53:52:	Some get more, some get less in heaven.

00:53:52 – 00:53:59:	In perfection, some get more and some get less based on the degree of their sin today.

00:54:00 – 00:54:06:	For a teacher to be judged with stricter judgment based on his teachings implies that there

00:54:06 – 00:54:11:	are some teachings that are sinful and that the greater degree of sin and teaching, the

00:54:11 – 00:54:15:	greater lack of glory will be given for that teacher.

00:54:15 – 00:54:20:	It may well be a teacher who spent his whole life teaching falsely but somehow was filled

00:54:20 – 00:54:21:	still a Christian.

00:54:21 – 00:54:24:	I don't know what he's going to get in heaven.

00:54:24 – 00:54:25:	He's going to be in heaven.

00:54:25 – 00:54:30:	He's going to be perfect for him but will not be as greatly rewarding to him as if he

00:54:30 – 00:54:32:	had been a faithful teacher.

00:54:32 – 00:54:34:	Again, we don't know what that looks like.

00:54:34 – 00:54:35:	It's not our business.

00:54:35 – 00:54:36:	It's not our problem.

00:54:36 – 00:54:37:	It's in God's hands.

00:54:37 – 00:54:39:	We can trust that he will act perfectly.

00:54:39 – 00:54:43:	All we need to know is that when we run around saying, yeah, it's all the same man, that

00:54:43 – 00:54:45:	we're not agreeing with what God says.

00:54:45 – 00:54:52:	Yes, of course, we do know that we have elected to be subject to the stricter judgment because

00:54:52 – 00:54:59:	what we're doing here is teaching and we are both well aware of that fact.

00:54:59 – 00:55:03:	But I would also highlight here that I do think the implication that comes along with

00:55:03 – 00:55:09:	this is something to which Christians should pay attention.

00:55:09 – 00:55:14:	There are different kinds of teachers, the same as there are different degrees of sin.

00:55:14 – 00:55:21:	If you are a pastor, you are a teacher in the church, you are an overseer, you have responsibilities

00:55:21 – 00:55:27:	and you will be held to account for what you did or did not do in this life.

00:55:27 – 00:55:31:	When you spoke falsely, when you minimized parts of scripture, when you ignored parts

00:55:31 – 00:55:35:	of scripture, God will ask you about that at the judgment.

00:55:35 – 00:55:39:	You will have to give an answer.

00:55:39 – 00:55:45:	But there are other teachers as well and those teachers will be held accountable for what

00:55:45 – 00:55:49:	they did or did not do in the office that was given them by God.

00:55:49 – 00:55:53:	It's not going to be the same sort of stricter judgment as someone who stands up to teach

00:55:53 – 00:55:55:	in the church.

00:55:55 – 00:55:58:	That is what is in view here.

00:55:58 – 00:56:03:	But if you're a parent, you're a teacher and you will be called to account for whether

00:56:03 – 00:56:06:	you taught your children correctly or not.

00:56:06 – 00:56:11:	If you are an employer, you will be called to account for how you treated and dealt with

00:56:11 – 00:56:13:	your employees.

00:56:13 – 00:56:18:	Now there may be some complexity there when it comes to teaching the faith to employees

00:56:18 – 00:56:25:	and how much of a duty an employer has there is up for debate.

00:56:25 – 00:56:30:	But if you are the master of a house, you are responsible for everyone in your household.

00:56:30 – 00:56:36:	You are a teacher by virtue of your office and it is your duty to fulfill that faithfully.

00:56:36 – 00:56:45:	Again, no, you will not be held to this particular high level of scrutiny and strictness because

00:56:45 – 00:56:47:	you did not stand up to teach in the church.

00:56:47 – 00:56:52:	You did not deliberately stand up to handle the things of God.

00:56:52 – 00:57:00:	But by virtue of the office given you by God, you do have a lesser version of this duty.

00:57:00 – 00:57:05:	And it is vitally important for Christians to bear that in mind when they go about their

00:57:05 – 00:57:06:	daily tasks.

00:57:06 – 00:57:10:	If you are a father, are you training your wife?

00:57:10 – 00:57:12:	Are you training your children?

00:57:12 – 00:57:16:	Are you training those who work in your household if you have others who work in your household

00:57:16 – 00:57:18:	or live in your household?

00:57:18 – 00:57:25:	Are you doing the things God gave you to do by virtue of the office he gave you?

00:57:25 – 00:57:32:	If you are not, you are falling short of the mark and falling short of the mark is one

00:57:32 – 00:57:37:	of the things that is meant by one of the words we translate as sin.

00:57:37 – 00:57:39:	Do not sin by omission.

00:57:39 – 00:57:45:	Yes, it is possible to sin by commission, but it is also possible to sin by omission,

00:57:45 – 00:57:50:	which simply means it is possible to sin by doing something, and it is possible to sin

00:57:50 – 00:57:54:	by failing to do something that you should have done.

00:57:54 – 00:57:59:	And for specific details on what we mean when we say that we are teachers, go back and listen

00:57:59 – 00:58:02:	to the first episode of Stonequire, episode number one.

00:58:02 – 00:58:08:	We specifically talked about the difference between what a pastor does and what a teacher

00:58:08 – 00:58:11:	who is addressing an anonymous audience.

00:58:11 – 00:58:17:	So there's no accountability for anyone listening to us, to us.

00:58:17 – 00:58:22:	There's no relationship between you as a listener where we hold you accountable for what we

00:58:22 – 00:58:23:	are teaching.

00:58:23 – 00:58:26:	However, what we are teaching, we are accountable to God for.

00:58:26 – 00:58:27:	That is the difference.

00:58:27 – 00:58:31:	A pastor is accountable for the souls in his parish.

00:58:31 – 00:58:37:	A teacher in an audience hall doesn't have accountability in the same way.

00:58:37 – 00:58:39:	He's not necessarily taking attendance.

00:58:39 – 00:58:40:	He doesn't know who's there.

00:58:40 – 00:58:45:	In the lecture, he shows up, people show up, you listen, you take it or leave it.

00:58:45 – 00:58:48:	When we say that we are teachers, it is in that sense.

00:58:48 – 00:58:49:	We are teaching from Scripture.

00:58:49 – 00:58:56:	We're saying things that God says, and we're giving you what we believe is a faithful explanation

00:58:56 – 00:59:00:	for those things, particularly as they relate to the world today.

00:59:00 – 00:59:05:	But that is not to say that it is taught with any authority beyond the authority of Scripture

00:59:05 – 00:59:06:	itself.

00:59:06 – 00:59:11:	We're not making any claim-based credentials or anything.

00:59:11 – 00:59:12:	Take it or leave it.

00:59:12 – 00:59:15:	If what we say is good, it's because you agree with Scripture.

00:59:15 – 00:59:20:	If you don't like it, okay, if you don't take your arguments, that's between you and

00:59:20 – 00:59:21:	God.

00:59:21 – 00:59:23:	If we're wrong, we answer to God.

00:59:23 – 00:59:25:	If you're wrong, you answer to God.

00:59:25 – 00:59:27:	We don't have to worry about that.

00:59:27 – 00:59:33:	And again, from the Luke 12 passage, everyone to whom much has been given of him, much

00:59:33 – 00:59:35:	will be required.

00:59:35 – 00:59:37:	We're smart.

00:59:37 – 00:59:38:	We're good at this.

00:59:38 – 00:59:43:	Even if someone thinks that what we're saying is false, particularly those who are hate

00:59:43 – 00:59:48:	listening who believe that we're false teachers, they admit that we're extremely good at it.

00:59:48 – 00:59:52:	Those who listen and like what we say also think that we're good at this.

00:59:52 – 00:59:58:	We've had a very warm and welcome and widespread reception to the way that we're explaining

59:58 – 01:00:02
things on Stone Choir because we're good at it.

01:00:02 – 01:00:05:	The reason we're doing it is that much has been given to us.

01:00:05 – 01:00:08:	What were we doing the year before we started this podcast?

01:00:08 – 01:00:12:	We were not using our gifts the way we're using them now.

01:00:12 – 01:00:13:	That was sin.

01:00:13 – 01:00:15:	We should have been doing this earlier.

01:00:15 – 01:00:16:	We talked about it earlier.

01:00:16 – 01:00:21:	I avoided it because I knew that harm would come to my family from evil men who would

01:00:21 – 01:00:25:	seek to destroy me for the sake of telling the truth because that's the state of the

01:00:25 – 01:00:26:	world today.

01:00:26 – 01:00:28:	It's the state of the church today.

01:00:28 – 01:00:32:	I put it off because I didn't want to cause harm to my family.

01:00:32 – 01:00:37:	It eventually got to the point by the end of 2022 that it became clear that I had no

01:00:37 – 01:00:38:	choice.

01:00:38 – 01:00:41:	Corey and I talked about it and we finally pulled the trigger on something.

01:00:41 – 01:00:45:	I think we both knew from the time we met that we pretty much had to do this.

01:00:45 – 01:00:46:	Other people had talked about it before.

01:00:46 – 01:00:51:	We joked about it for a couple of years, but we avoided it sinfully.

01:00:51 – 01:00:54:	We stopped sinning and now we're doing it.

01:00:54 – 01:00:59:	Now we're accused of sin for doing it, so again, in a minute we'll get to the judgmental

01:00:59 – 01:01:00:	stuff.

01:01:00 – 01:01:04:	I just want to point out, when we say we're teachers, it's not bragging.

01:01:04 – 01:01:07:	The reason we're doing this is that we have been given gifts.

01:01:07 – 01:01:10:	We believe as a matter of conscience we have no choice but to do this.

01:01:10 – 01:01:13:	We believe that it's obedience to God for us to do this.

01:01:13 – 01:01:16:	We don't have a choice.

01:01:16 – 01:01:21:	I don't want to put it like it's that important to not remain silent.

01:01:21 – 01:01:23:	That's why we named it what we did.

01:01:23 – 01:01:26:	We give an explanation at the end of the first episode.

01:01:26 – 01:01:30:	We are the stones who cry out, not because we feel that we have a vocation to, but we

01:01:30 – 01:01:34:	have the aptitude to, and no one else was doing it.

01:01:34 – 01:01:38:	Now that we've begun doing it, other men are beginning to speak up against the same evil.

01:01:38 – 01:01:42:	That is what needs to happen because two guys of the podcast aren't going to do anything

01:01:42 – 01:01:43:	by themselves.

01:01:43 – 01:01:46:	If we're just shouting into the void, nothing changes.

01:01:46 – 01:01:52:	It takes hearts and minds elsewhere in the church reorienting towards what God has said

01:01:52 – 01:01:58:	so that we can all become faithful members of faithful churches again.

01:01:58 – 01:02:03:	The last passage we're going to read in this section from Matthew 5 amplifies from James

01:02:03 – 01:02:04:	3.

01:02:04 – 01:02:09:	Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to

01:02:09 – 01:02:13:	do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches

01:02:13 – 01:02:16:	them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

01:02:16 – 01:02:21:	Again, this is reiterating greater punishment, greater reward, least and greatest.

01:02:21 – 01:02:24:	Connishment maybe isn't quite the right word.

01:02:24 – 01:02:26:	Called the least in heaven, you're still in heaven, so great.

01:02:26 – 01:02:27:	You cross the finish line.

01:02:27 – 01:02:29:	That is a cause for celebration.

01:02:29 – 01:02:32:	However, you're going to be the least.

01:02:32 – 01:02:33:	It's not a popularity contest.

01:02:33 – 01:02:37:	It's not striving to be number one in heaven.

01:02:37 – 01:02:40:	We all know that it's not us.

01:02:40 – 01:02:46:	The scripture talks some about the ranking there, and we have a little bit.

01:02:46 – 01:02:47:	We know that there's a ranking.

01:02:47 – 01:02:54:	Jesus Disciples argued over who is going to be seated at his right hand, and the question

01:02:54 – 01:02:55:	is valid.

01:02:55 – 01:02:57:	The concern isn't our problem.

01:02:57 – 01:02:59:	That's God's gift to give.

01:02:59 – 01:03:04:	What we have to worry about is that in this life, our actions do not shame God, do not

01:03:04 – 01:03:09:	waste the gifts that we've been given, and that if God says something, we're not ashamed

01:03:09 – 01:03:12:	of it, and we just believe it and we follow through with it.

01:03:12 – 01:03:17:	Again, to finish out this thing on all sins not being equal, we're not saying,

01:03:17 – 01:03:19:	oh, if you obey God, you'll be saved.

01:03:19 – 01:03:23:	You're already saved, so how can you best obey God?

01:03:23 – 01:03:27:	You're just changing the word order, but it fundamentally alters the equation, and that's

01:03:27 – 01:03:30:	the reason that these subjects are important.

01:03:30 – 01:03:36:	To emphasize what was said about teachers and what will be demanded from teachers and

01:03:36 – 01:03:43:	others, from him to whom much has been given will much be required.

01:03:43 – 01:03:45:	That is the long and the short of it.

01:03:45 – 01:03:50:	If you have been given a particular set of gifts and you are not using them in service

01:03:50 – 01:03:54:	of the kingdom, you will be judged for that.

01:03:54 – 01:04:00:	That's not necessarily going to damn you, but you are not going to receive the rewards

01:04:00 – 01:04:06:	that you would have received if you had used the gifts given you by God to do the good

01:04:06 – 01:04:11:	works He prepared for you to do.

01:04:11 – 01:04:16:	And that is the case if God has given you intelligence, you should be using that in

01:04:16 – 01:04:18:	service of the kingdom.

01:04:18 – 01:04:22:	If He has given you material wealth, you should be using that in service of the kingdom.

01:04:22 – 01:04:29:	If you are someone to whom God has given tens, hundreds of millions of dollars, you should

01:04:29 – 01:04:35:	absolutely be using that to fix up church buildings, to fund the soup kitchens, to help

01:04:35 – 01:04:37:	others in your congregation who are struggling.

01:04:37 – 01:04:42:	You should be using the things God has given you to help others, because those are good

01:04:42 – 01:04:43:	works.

01:04:43 – 01:04:48:	Those are the good works prepared specifically for you, because He gave you the means to do

01:04:48 – 01:04:49:	it.

01:04:49 – 01:04:54:	And when it comes to teaching, if God has given you a perceptive mind, the ability to

01:04:54 – 01:05:01:	process materials, knack for languages, whatever it happens to be, all of these various capacities

01:05:01 – 01:05:06:	that go into being a good teacher of any particular subject.

01:05:06 – 01:05:12:	Because you can serve God teaching law, the same as you can serve God teaching theology.

01:05:12 – 01:05:15:	You can serve God making shoes.

01:05:15 – 01:05:19:	If He gave you a particular dexterity, you're very good with your hands.

01:05:19 – 01:05:20:	You may be a surgeon.

01:05:20 – 01:05:21:	You may be a cobbler.

01:05:21 – 01:05:26:	It just depends on the abilities that God has given you.

01:05:26 – 01:05:33:	What will be required of you at the judgment is what you did with the gifts that were given

01:05:33 – 01:05:35:	you by God.

01:05:35 – 01:05:43:	Yes, there is the central judgment, the core matter upon which you are sent to the right

01:05:43 – 01:05:46:	or the left hand, whether you are a sheep or a goat.

01:05:46 – 01:05:51:	And that is whether or not you have faith in Christ.

01:05:51 – 01:05:57:	But after that the books are opened and your deeds are read from them, and you will have

01:05:57 – 01:06:05:	good works or you will not, depending on what you did in this life with what God gave you.

01:06:05 – 01:06:09:	And that again is why we are doing this podcast.

01:06:09 – 01:06:15:	God gave us the ability to look at these materials, to understand them, to read through the resources,

01:06:15 – 01:06:18:	and then to teach others.

01:06:18 – 01:06:20:	And so we are using the gifts that He gave us.

01:06:20 – 01:06:27:	And as mentioned, in the balance of our lives here to four, we've used those gifts largely

01:06:27 – 01:06:29:	for other things.

01:06:29 – 01:06:31:	I've taught a little bit in the church in the past.

01:06:31 – 01:06:36:	I taught through part of Genesis until COVID kind of killed that.

01:06:36 – 01:06:41:	But for most of my life, no, I didn't focus on these things and use the gifts in the way

01:06:41 – 01:06:43:	that I should have been using them all along.

01:06:43 – 01:06:46:	I should have been doing this for far longer than I have.

01:06:46 – 01:06:49:	We both recognize that.

01:06:49 – 01:06:57:	But it is better to begin doing the things God wants you to do today than saying, oh,

01:06:57 – 01:07:03:	well, I didn't do it for the last ten years, so it's already too late.

01:07:03 – 01:07:08:	That's just Satan again telling you you've committed too many sins over too long of a

01:07:08 – 01:07:09:	period.

01:07:09 – 01:07:10:	They're too great.

01:07:10 – 01:07:11:	They're too heinous.

01:07:11 – 01:07:12:	God couldn't possibly forgive you.

01:07:12 – 01:07:14:	And that's false.

01:07:14 – 01:07:17:	Your sins are already forgiven.

01:07:17 – 01:07:19:	Start doing the good works now.

01:07:19 – 01:07:22:	That is part of Christian life.

01:07:22 – 01:07:24:	No good works do not save you.

01:07:24 – 01:07:27:	Again, we went over this five hundred years ago.

01:07:27 – 01:07:29:	We had this fight.

01:07:29 – 01:07:35:	We won because we resorted to Scripture and the adversaries did not.

01:07:35 – 01:07:37:	Good works will not save you.

01:07:37 – 01:07:41:	Good works do not contribute to your justification.

01:07:41 – 01:07:44:	Good works do not make you ready for justification.

01:07:44 – 01:07:47:	Good works do not complete your justification.

01:07:47 – 01:07:53:	Good works do nothing for your justification.

01:07:53 – 01:08:00:	But you still have to do them as a Christian because a living faith will produce fruit.

01:08:00 – 01:08:05:	The same as a living tree, a living tree, a healthy fruit tree produces fruit.

01:08:05 – 01:08:12:	If your faith is a living and healthy tree, it will produce good works because those are

01:08:12 – 01:08:17:	the fruit of a living Christian faith.

01:08:17 – 01:08:21:	And so if you have not been doing those works, if you have not been using the gifts God gave

01:08:21 – 01:08:25:	you, start now.

01:08:25 – 01:08:31:	And so we will finish up today with one more passage also from Matthew being Sermon on

01:08:31 – 01:08:33:	the Mount.

01:08:33 – 01:08:37:	You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that

01:08:37 – 01:08:42:	everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with

01:08:42 – 01:08:43:	her in his heart.

01:08:43 – 01:08:48:	If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better

01:08:48 – 01:08:53:	that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

01:08:53 – 01:08:58:	And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better

01:08:58 – 01:09:04:	that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

01:09:04 – 01:09:10:	And so what we see here in the teaching on lust or adultery on the Sermon of the Mount,

01:09:10 – 01:09:18:	in the Sermon of the Mount is you have a progression of sin from least terrible to most terrible.

01:09:18 – 01:09:24:	The ultimate end of this chain is not actually listed by Christ, because the ultimate end

01:09:24 – 01:09:27:	of course is actual adultery.

01:09:27 – 01:09:34:	And so it's the wandering eye that drives that grasping hand that pulls the body down

01:09:34 – 01:09:38:	into adultery and ultimately the soul down into hell.

01:09:38 – 01:09:41:	And that's what we're dealing with here.

01:09:41 – 01:09:47:	You have a progression of sins and every step is worse than the previous one.

01:09:47 – 01:09:55:	If you look at a woman with lustful intent, that is adulterous sin, but it is not as bad

01:09:55 – 01:10:02:	as reaching out and grasping that woman, which is of course the physical manifestation, the

01:10:02 – 01:10:05:	beginning of the ultimate act of adultery.

01:10:05 – 01:10:11:	And that is not as bad as the actual act of adultery.

01:10:11 – 01:10:12:	These are degrees of sin.

01:10:12 – 01:10:19:	This is Christ's teaching on the progression of sin, because we see this with all sin.

01:10:19 – 01:10:23:	Sin always gets worse.

01:10:23 – 01:10:28:	And so the time to stop sinning, of course, is before you start, but the second best time

01:10:28 – 01:10:33:	to stop sinning is the second you recognize it is sin.

01:10:33 – 01:10:36:	Because if you continue, it will get worse.

01:10:36 – 01:10:41:	You will commit more egregious sin, because it is always the little sin that Satan gets

01:10:41 – 01:10:47:	you to commit, the little sin where you give into the flesh and some minor thing that leads

01:10:47 – 01:10:50:	to another sin and another and another.

01:10:50 – 01:10:53:	And ultimately you commit heinous sins.

01:10:53 – 01:10:58:	You will, of course, ultimately apostatize if you continue down that path, because it

01:10:58 – 01:11:03:	becomes a willful turning away from God at some point.

01:11:03 – 01:11:10:	And so here on the teaching on lust, if you look at a woman lustfully and most of this

01:11:10 – 01:11:15:	audience undoubtedly is male, you are going to do this in life.

01:11:15 – 01:11:18:	You are a fallen and sinful being.

01:11:18 – 01:11:20:	Your passions are not rightly ordered.

01:11:20 – 01:11:25:	You are going to look at a woman with lustful intent, particularly given the reality of

01:11:25 – 01:11:29:	our current social situation, let's call it.

01:11:29 – 01:11:34:	Turn away, close the browser tab, walk away from the computer, whatever it happens to

01:11:34 – 01:11:38:	be, whatever the temptation is, flee.

01:11:38 – 01:11:41:	That is the advice of Scripture is to flee the temptation.

01:11:41 – 01:11:44:	If you cannot flee the temptation, pray.

01:11:44 – 01:11:47:	Pray the Lord's prayer.

01:11:47 – 01:11:52:	Do the best you can to minimize this temptation because men are visual.

01:11:52 – 01:11:54:	That's a simple fact.

01:11:54 – 01:12:00:	And so looking at the woman with lustful intent, that desire that starts with the eye is going

01:12:00 – 01:12:02:	to lead to more.

01:12:02 – 01:12:08:	It may be you look at the woman first and then you decide to go and talk to this woman

01:12:08 – 01:12:11:	who you have a lustful desire for.

01:12:11 – 01:12:13:	You've committed an additional sin.

01:12:13 – 01:12:18:	No talking to a woman is not a sin, but it's the intent you have behind it.

01:12:18 – 01:12:20:	And then you ask her out for a drink.

01:12:20 – 01:12:24:	The sin progresses, it gets worse.

01:12:24 – 01:12:28:	Flee from the sin as soon as the temptation arises.

01:12:28 – 01:12:32:	Yes, that internal desire, that concupiscence itself is sin.

01:12:32 – 01:12:36:	You've already committed the sin when you've looked at her with lustful intent.

01:12:36 – 01:12:42:	But you don't have to continue the chain and commit worse and more egregious sins.

01:12:42 – 01:12:49:	So the Christian response is to turn to God because God will give you a way to escape from

01:12:49 – 01:12:50:	the sin.

01:12:50 – 01:12:51:	He promises that.

01:12:51 – 01:12:53:	Look for that way to escape the sin.

01:12:53 – 01:12:59:	If it's fleeing, if it's praying, minimizing whatever it is you can do, flee from the sin.

01:12:59 – 01:13:06:	Do not follow this chain that Satan wants you to follow because what he wants you to do

01:13:06 – 01:13:09:	is he wants you to start off thinking, well, looking isn't that bad.

01:13:09 – 01:13:13:	Yeah, it's a sin, but there are much worse things I could be doing.

01:13:13 – 01:13:15:	So I'll look.

01:13:15 – 01:13:22:	He wants you to follow from that all the way down into the depths until you commit fornication,

01:13:22 – 01:13:24:	adultery, whatever it happens to be.

01:13:24 – 01:13:29:	And then he's going to turn around and tell you, look, you're just a sinner.

01:13:29 – 01:13:30:	You've already committed this heinous act.

01:13:30 – 01:13:32:	God won't forgive you for this.

01:13:32 – 01:13:34:	You may as well keep sinning.

01:13:34 – 01:13:36:	That's his end goal.

01:13:36 – 01:13:38:	Do not follow him into the pit.

01:13:38 – 01:13:46:	The important thing to note about the progression of sin is that looking lustfully is a sin.

01:13:46 – 01:13:49:	And then any follow on are additional sins.

01:13:49 – 01:13:57:	And I think this is something that the all sins are equal lie, actually weaponizes upfront.

01:13:57 – 01:14:03:	It's not only at the end where you've already committed fully to a life of sin and you say,

01:14:03 – 01:14:05:	well, I've already done, I may as well keep doing it.

01:14:05 – 01:14:12:	If you believe that all sins are equal and you catch yourself looking lustfully at someone,

01:14:12 – 01:14:20:	well, if all sins are equal, then the natural rationalization of that circumstance is what?

01:14:20 – 01:14:22:	In for a penny, in for a pound.

01:14:22 – 01:14:27:	I already looked at her with lust on my heart, which Jesus says is actual adultery.

01:14:27 – 01:14:31:	So if I'm already an adulterer, why shouldn't I follow through?

01:14:31 – 01:14:33:	Why shouldn't I complete the act?

01:14:33 – 01:14:34:	I'm already guilty.

01:14:34 – 01:14:35:	I may as well enjoy it too.

01:14:35 – 01:14:37:	That's the trap.

01:14:37 – 01:14:42:	If you believe that all sins are equal, then it's very, like that's, it's false.

01:14:42 – 01:14:47:	That's what I just said is a lie, but it is a very easy lie that can be rationalized in

01:14:47 – 01:14:50:	the mind of someone who's ultimately just self-serving.

01:14:50 – 01:14:55:	Even if you listen to part of what these people are saying, God said, which is false.

01:14:55 – 01:14:56:	God didn't say that.

01:14:56 – 01:14:58:	God said these things.

01:14:58 – 01:15:03:	But even if you listen to it and it informs your actions, the lie of all sins being equal

01:15:03 – 01:15:09:	may very well cause you to commit greater sins because you don't believe they're greater.

01:15:09 – 01:15:11:	See, that's the trap.

01:15:11 – 01:15:14:	If all sins are equal, how can you commit a greater sin?

01:15:14 – 01:15:16:	You're already a sinner, so who cares?

01:15:16 – 01:15:19:	Like Jesus died for me, he took care of all this crap.

01:15:19 – 01:15:21:	What do I need to worry about?

01:15:21 – 01:15:23:	That's part of the ultimate trap.

01:15:23 – 01:15:25:	It's not just that all sins are equal.

01:15:25 – 01:15:31:	It's just that individual sin is equal to any other individual sin.

01:15:31 – 01:15:37:	Necessarily, any volume of sins is also equal to a different volume of sins.

01:15:37 – 01:15:42:	Someone who commits a hundred sins in a day versus someone who commits a thousand sins

01:15:42 – 01:15:45:	in a day, there's no way to quantify that.

01:15:45 – 01:15:46:	We don't even know how often we sin.

01:15:46 – 01:15:52:	It's impossible, but even for the sake of argument, if it were quantifiable, both are

01:15:52 – 01:15:56:	equally damned, but if you believe that all sins are equal, you can't say to the man who's

01:15:56 – 01:16:00:	only committed a hundred sins, you got 900 more.

01:16:00 – 01:16:02:	You're not going to be any worse than that other guy.

01:16:02 – 01:16:05:	That's what these false teachings do to us.

01:16:05 – 01:16:07:	They ultimately give license.

01:16:07 – 01:16:13:	See, they're sold as a way of being loving and being caring and not being judgmental,

01:16:13 – 01:16:18:	but ultimately what they do is they give license to greater and greater sin, which again,

01:16:18 – 01:16:22:	ultimately always leads to separation of the soul from God.

01:16:22 – 01:16:28:	It's what Satan wants, which is why this all sins are equal stuff is a pernicious sin.

01:16:28 – 01:16:33:	It is a vicious, evil thing that is spread among us.

01:16:33 – 01:16:35:	Some people have it say with good intentions.

01:16:35 – 01:16:40:	Other people say because they know that they're covering for their own greater sins.

01:16:40 – 01:16:44:	They know that they're up to no good and they don't want to be judged more harshly than

01:16:44 – 01:16:46:	someone else.

01:16:46 – 01:16:51:	They pump this smoke screen into the air so that you can't judge them.

01:16:51 – 01:16:54:	I mentioned a couple of times we're going to be doing judge not in this episode.

01:16:54 – 01:16:56:	We're already getting along on time.

01:16:56 – 01:17:00:	Next week, we've decided we're going to be doing an episode on antinomianism where we're

01:17:00 – 01:17:05:	specifically going to talk for probably close to two hours again, specifically about judge

01:17:05 – 01:17:12:	not and the modern view was not modern, but it's a recurring theme of antinomianism or

01:17:12 – 01:17:19:	against the law where people set their hearts against what God says because they don't like

01:17:19 – 01:17:22:	the sound of it and judge not is a part of that.

01:17:22 – 01:17:26:	If you say you can judge people, again, it's another smoke screen.

01:17:26 – 01:17:31:	It's a defense mechanism to say, hey, man, my sins are no worse than yours or no better

01:17:31 – 01:17:32:	than yours.

01:17:32 – 01:17:34:	We're all equal, right?

01:17:34 – 01:17:36:	So don't you tell me what's wrong with me?

01:17:36 – 01:17:41:	Well, where does the law go in that world where you can't tell someone of their sin?

01:17:41 – 01:17:44:	How can they be corrected?

01:17:44 – 01:17:49:	If scripture is useful for rebuke and correction of error and yet rebuke is forbidden by this

01:17:49 – 01:17:55:	modern morality, are you going to be Christian or are you going to be the modern religious

01:17:55 – 01:18:00:	person that says he's Christian, that does things that kill the Christian faith?

01:18:00 – 01:18:04:	That's what this comes down to, so we're going to do another episode on this.

01:18:04 – 01:18:09:	It'll be not quite a follow-on, but a natural continuation of the essence of judging and

01:18:09 – 01:18:10:	the law.

01:18:10 – 01:18:13:	We've talked in the past about what the nature of the law is.

01:18:13 – 01:18:17:	If you'd like a refresher, I'd recommend going back and listening to the episode on

01:18:17 – 01:18:18:	Perfect Hatred.

01:18:18 – 01:18:23:	We talk at some length about the manner in which the law is eternal and it's functionally,

01:18:23 – 01:18:26:	it's God's eternal will.

01:18:26 – 01:18:31:	What God wants for the world, what he wants for us individually, does not change.

01:18:31 – 01:18:35:	The rules are not fickle.

01:18:35 – 01:18:36:	God's not fickle.

01:18:36 – 01:18:38:	The rules are not capricious.

01:18:38 – 01:18:44:	What God desires is that which is good and holy, and when we set our minds and our hearts

01:18:44 – 01:18:49:	at odds with that, we create the hell on earth that we're all experiencing now.

01:18:50 – 01:18:55:	I'll just leave you with the thought that these things that seem small, like what's

01:18:55 – 01:19:00:	the big deal if someone says all sins are equal and someone says they're not?

01:19:00 – 01:19:05:	On a surface, it doesn't seem like it's much of a distinction because it's process especially.

01:19:05 – 01:19:08:	One way or another, we know that Jesus paid for all our sins.

01:19:08 – 01:19:11:	Who cares if one sin is worse than another?

01:19:11 – 01:19:13:	Are you saying you're better than me?

01:19:13 – 01:19:14:	No.

01:19:14 – 01:19:21:	Nothing to do with an individual asserting being better or worse than another Christian.

01:19:21 – 01:19:25:	The problem is that these are matters that ultimately separate souls from God.

01:19:25 – 01:19:26:	Satan knows what he's doing.

01:19:26 – 01:19:31:	When Satan comes up with this rhetoric, like all sins are equal, he knows it's going to

01:19:31 – 01:19:33:	play in our hearts and minds.

01:19:33 – 01:19:35:	He knows what we want to hear because it's license.

01:19:35 – 01:19:37:	It's basically a free pass.

01:19:37 – 01:19:41:	That's not how the pastors sell it, but it's how hearts receive it.

01:19:41 – 01:19:44:	For some of the pastors, it's what they intend.

01:19:44 – 01:19:48:	Some of the guys who are the biggest promoters of this stuff inevitably get outed as sexual

01:19:48 – 01:19:54:	deviants who, in many cases, have been defrocked because they go so far because, hey, man,

01:19:54 – 01:19:55:	all sins are equal.

01:19:55 – 01:19:57:	I don't judge me.

01:19:57 – 01:19:58:	This stuff matters.

01:19:58 – 01:20:02:	Even the things that we talk about that seem like they're small issues.

01:20:02 – 01:20:04:	If they were small, we wouldn't be talking about them.

01:20:04 – 01:20:10:	We're talking about big issues that don't seem big because they slip under the radar.

01:20:10 – 01:20:14:	Everything that sounds Christian is all right by the Christian ear.

01:20:14 – 01:20:19:	The problem is that we no longer discern what is Christian from what is worldly.

01:20:19 – 01:20:24:	All someone has to do is gussy it up and make it sound a little bit like Jesus, and a Christian

01:20:24 – 01:20:26:	is going to say, oh, yeah, that sounds like morality.

01:20:26 – 01:20:28:	I want that to be mine, too.

01:20:28 – 01:20:30:	We focus on scripture.

01:20:30 – 01:20:32:	Please, you focus on scripture.

01:20:32 – 01:20:34:	Read your Bibles.

01:20:34 – 01:20:36:	If what we said is wrong, you're going to find it in the Bible.

01:20:36 – 01:20:40:	If what we said is right, you're going to find a bunch more of it because we're not cherry

01:20:40 – 01:20:41:	taking.

01:20:41 – 01:20:45:	We've spent an hour and a half talking about close to a dozen passages.

01:20:45 – 01:20:48:	We could have done 50 more.

01:20:48 – 01:20:52:	That should be a reminder to you that when someone says something, all sin is equal.

01:20:52 – 01:20:54:	They're not talking about a sin from scripture.

01:20:54 – 01:20:56:	They're not talking about God.

01:20:56 – 01:21:00:	They're talking about teachings of demons.

01:21:00 – 01:21:06:	It's a strident thing to say, but the difference between salvation and damnation is recognizing

01:21:06 – 01:21:08:	our master's voice.

01:21:08 – 01:21:14:	The Christian's master's voice is the voice of God, and that voice is found in scripture.

01:21:14 – 01:21:15:	Others do not hear it.

01:21:15 – 01:21:20:	They hear the voice of God, and they're like, it doesn't sound right to me.

01:21:20 – 01:21:23:	Many of them hear it, and they think that sounds hateful.

01:21:23 – 01:21:25:	It's a very common complaint, is that this stuff sounds hateful.

01:21:25 – 01:21:32:	Well, if you think the voice of God sounds hateful, wait for judgment day, because Christians

01:21:32 – 01:21:37:	are going to be lined up in one line, and everyone else is going to be lined up in another.

01:21:37 – 01:21:40:	We're going to hear a very different type of voice.

01:21:40 – 01:21:43:	Christians are going to hear, Welcome Thou Good and Faithful Servant, and I wish for

01:21:43 – 01:21:47:	everyone who's listening that that would be what you heard here on the last day, because

01:21:47 – 01:21:49:	I would like to hang out with all of you.

01:21:49 – 01:21:50:	We have a stone choir booth.

01:21:50 – 01:21:54:	We can sit around and talk and figure out all the stuff that we didn't understand.

01:21:54 – 01:21:58:	It'll be exciting, and it'll be perfect, and we won't have to worry about fighting

01:21:58 – 01:22:04:	and disagreements, but we have to get there, and Jesus paid the price for us to get there,

01:22:04 – 01:22:07:	but we can't reject what he says.

01:22:07 – 01:22:12:	So please read your Bibles, go to a faithful church, study this stuff, and take it seriously.

01:22:12 – 01:22:15:	And as Corey said, flee evil.

01:22:15 – 01:22:17:	It's okay to flee evil.

01:22:17 – 01:22:21:	Whatever it is, whether it's lust or false teaching, or whatever your particular pest

01:22:21 – 01:22:26:	sin is, if you're confronted with it, just turn around and walk away.

01:22:26 – 01:22:27:	That's where repent means.

01:22:27 – 01:22:31:	Metanoia means turning, turning away from.

01:22:31 – 01:22:34:	Do a 180, back out of there.

01:22:34 – 01:22:40:	Get away from the evil and focus on what God desires, and in the end, that's all we

01:22:40 – 01:22:42:	can do in this life.

01:22:42 – 01:22:45:	We can't be perfect, but we can try to go and sin no more.

01:22:45 – 01:22:47:	So let's try that.

01:22:47 – 01:22:54:	And not to bury the lead or add something on right at the end, but not to be remiss.

01:22:54 – 01:23:03:	I want to point out exactly what it is when someone says all sins are equal.

01:23:03 – 01:23:07:	The reason we are focusing on this, and as was mentioned, we could have gone through

01:23:07 – 01:23:08:	dozens more passages.

01:23:08 – 01:23:12:	We could point out Genesis 9.6.

01:23:12 – 01:23:17:	There are different punishments for different sins, very strongly implying there are different

01:23:17 – 01:23:19:	degrees of sin.

01:23:19 – 01:23:23:	But I want to read the second commandment.

01:23:23 – 01:23:27:	You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

01:23:27 – 01:23:33:	And the explanation from the small catechism, what does this mean?

01:23:33 – 01:23:38:	We should fear and love God, so that we may not curse, swear, use witchcraft, lie or deceive

01:23:38 – 01:23:47:	by his name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.

01:23:47 – 01:23:51:	And that was the point of this entire episode.

01:23:51 – 01:23:57:	Because when you say that all sins are equal, you are lying and deceiving in his name.

01:23:57 – 01:23:59:	You are violating the second commandment.

01:23:59 – 01:24:03:	And as a reminder, the commandments are hierarchical.

01:24:03 – 01:24:08:	You are committing one of the greatest sins, because of course the greater sin would be

01:24:08 – 01:24:13:	to have another God, which is also implicated when this comes up.

01:24:13 – 01:24:18:	But those who say that all sins are equal, are lying in his name, are deceiving in his

01:24:18 – 01:24:19:	name.

01:24:20 – 01:24:25:	And that is why this is important for Christians.

01:24:25 – 01:24:30:	It's important because God's word is truth, and you should believe every word of it.

01:24:30 – 01:24:34:	But it is also important because when you ignore things like this, particularly if you are

01:24:34 – 01:24:41:	a pastor or a teacher, and God forbid you stand up and teach false doctrine on these subjects.

01:24:41 – 01:24:45:	Because that is violating the second commandment.

01:24:45 – 01:24:50:	And if you do not repent, you are keeping that sin for yourself, instead of letting

01:24:50 – 01:24:56:	God, instead of letting Christ take it to the cross, and wash it away in his blood.

01:24:56 – 01:25:02:	And we don't want anyone listening to this, even if you are listening to it, if you are

01:25:02 – 01:25:07:	hate listening to this, if you are attempting to find some way in which we are teaching

01:25:07 – 01:25:11:	false doctrine, something we've said wrong, somewhere we've slipped, misspoken, whatever

01:25:11 – 01:25:13:	have you.

01:25:13 – 01:25:19:	Even if you are that person, we want you to repent and turn from your evil ways, and

01:25:19 – 01:25:21:	return to God.

01:25:21 – 01:25:29:	Because as Woe said, we do want everyone to make it to paradise, no everyone will not.

01:25:29 – 01:25:33:	Scripture is very clear on that, many will reject Christ, will reject God, will spend

01:25:33 – 01:25:38:	eternity in hell paying for sins for which Christ already paid.

01:25:38 – 01:25:42:	We do not want any of you to join them.

01:25:42 – 01:25:49:	We would prefer that you join us in paradise, with the Savior who paid for all your sins.

01:25:49 – 01:25:55:	All of your sins, which are not all equal, some of which are egregious, some of you may

01:25:55 – 01:26:00:	have committed truly heinous sins in your life.

01:26:00 – 01:26:03:	Some of you listening may not have committed particularly heinous sins.

01:26:03 – 01:26:06:	You still sin, you're still a sinner.

01:26:06 – 01:26:11:	Again as Woe said before, you sin because you're a sinner, you're not a sinner because

01:26:11 – 01:26:12:	you sin.

01:26:12 – 01:26:17:	It's that original sin that is the wellspring from which other sins come.

01:26:17 – 01:26:23:	And so whether you've committed the relatively minor sins stolen, the pencil as was mentioned

01:26:23 – 01:26:30:	earlier, although it depends which one of my pencils you steal, or you've murdered someone.

01:26:30 – 01:26:36:	That was paid for by Christ, regardless of the gravity of the sin.

01:26:36 – 01:26:42:	But if you keep that sin for yourself, if you don't allow Christ to take that to the

01:26:42 – 01:26:46:	cross, if you want to say no I want to keep this one, then you get to spend eternity with

01:26:46 – 01:26:51:	that sin instead of with your Savior.

01:26:51 – 01:26:55:	And so all sins are not equal, some are worse than others.

01:26:55 – 01:27:01:	But Christ died for all of them, He paid for all of them, He paid for every single sin

01:27:01 – 01:27:08:	you have committed, regardless of how trivial or how truly terrible.

01:27:08 – 01:27:18:	The atonement, the scope of the atonement was infinite, all sins wiped clean.

01:27:18 – 01:27:19:	But only if you believe.

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