Transcript: Episode 0024

WEBVTT

00:00.000 --> 00:01.000
This is a very long video.

00:01.000 --> 00:02.000
I hope you enjoyed it.

00:02.000 --> 00:03.000
I'll see you in the next video.

00:03.000 --> 00:04.000
Bye.

00:04.000 --> 00:05.000
Bye.

00:05.000 --> 00:06.000
Bye.

00:06.000 --> 00:07.000
Bye.

00:07.000 --> 00:08.000
Bye.

00:08.000 --> 00:09.000
Bye.

00:30.000 --> 00:39.520
Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast.

00:39.520 --> 00:41.640
I am Corey J. Mahler.

00:41.640 --> 00:44.080
And I'm woe.

00:44.080 --> 00:48.960
Today's episode of Stone Choir is talking about the subject of whether all sins are

00:48.960 --> 00:55.040
equal and following on from that, whether we are permitted to judge the sins of another.

00:55.040 --> 00:58.880
What does it mean to judge, particularly when scripture says judge not?

00:58.880 --> 01:03.000
These are both things that you hear in the mouths of many Christians today, generally

01:03.000 --> 01:06.800
they're liberal Christians who are trying to avoid controversy.

01:06.800 --> 01:13.960
They're trying to avoid any sense of accusation or claiming that one person could possibly

01:13.960 --> 01:15.520
be worse than another.

01:15.520 --> 01:19.200
That's something that Protestants in particular are extremely allergic to.

01:19.200 --> 01:23.760
So today what we're going to be going through is a series of verses straight from scripture.

01:23.760 --> 01:28.080
This is basically going to be a long Bible study where we talk about the various verses

01:28.160 --> 01:33.480
that make absolutely explicit that not all sins are equal, that not only are they not

01:33.480 --> 01:39.240
equal in God's eyes, but that they are punished unequally as well.

01:39.240 --> 01:44.400
Like many of our episodes, this is fundamentally an assault on the false doctrine of equality.

01:44.400 --> 01:46.720
There's no such thing before God at any point.

01:46.720 --> 01:51.360
And we'll get into the details of what we mean because obviously there are counterarguments

01:51.360 --> 01:56.080
that some make that we're going to demolish here, in this case dealing with the question

01:56.080 --> 01:58.840
of sin being equal.

01:58.840 --> 02:01.120
First passage we're going to talk about today is from John 19.

02:01.120 --> 02:05.880
It's one that we've all heard recently as we're just on the heels of Holy Week.

02:05.880 --> 02:08.880
So Pilate said to Jesus, you will not speak to me.

02:08.880 --> 02:13.440
Do you not know that I have the authority to release you and authority to crucify you?

02:13.440 --> 02:17.740
Jesus answered him, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to

02:17.740 --> 02:19.080
you from above.

02:19.080 --> 02:23.440
Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.

02:23.440 --> 02:27.880
Then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, if you release this man,

02:27.880 --> 02:29.760
you are not Caesar's friend.

02:29.760 --> 02:33.040
Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

02:33.040 --> 02:37.520
I tacked on that second part just because as a side note, in the spirit of all sins

02:37.520 --> 02:41.960
are equal, it's very often something that comes up in the last few years, but particularly

02:41.960 --> 02:48.000
on the heels during Easter of claiming that it wasn't the Jews who executed Christ, that

02:48.000 --> 02:49.600
it was the Romans.

02:49.600 --> 02:55.600
When you read the narratives of Christ's trials, it was the Jews who brought him to the Romans.

02:55.600 --> 02:59.560
The only reason they did murder him themselves is that they did not have the legal authority

02:59.560 --> 03:01.060
to do so.

03:01.060 --> 03:06.400
They came to Pilate and then Herod and then Pilate again, making false accusations and

03:06.400 --> 03:10.720
basically bullied Pilate into a corner to crucify him.

03:10.720 --> 03:13.240
Even though he knew he wasn't guilty, he said he wasn't guilty.

03:13.240 --> 03:18.760
He knew there was unjust, but for the sake of peace in his own head, because here it

03:18.840 --> 03:23.080
says, if you release this man, you're not Caesar's friend, is an explicit threat.

03:23.080 --> 03:27.400
This Pilate would be committing treason if he didn't execute Jesus.

03:27.400 --> 03:29.240
That's how that played out.

03:29.240 --> 03:35.400
When Jesus says, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin, Jesus is naming

03:35.400 --> 03:36.400
the Jew.

03:36.400 --> 03:41.240
He is saying, the Jews who handed me over to you, Pilate, for Roman execution because

03:41.240 --> 03:44.080
you have the authority to execute.

03:44.080 --> 03:49.080
That only existed because of the disparity between the goals of the Romans and the goals

03:49.080 --> 03:50.720
of the Jews.

03:50.720 --> 03:55.320
Jesus acknowledged they had different motivations, they had different interests, and that it was

03:55.320 --> 04:01.400
explicitly the greater evil of the Jews who were crying for his blood and crying for Barabbas

04:01.400 --> 04:05.000
to be freed, even though he was a murderer.

04:05.000 --> 04:08.840
That was the greater sin that Jesus refers to.

04:08.840 --> 04:13.680
Just as a single passage, they would refute the notion that all sins can be equal just

04:13.720 --> 04:19.040
in one verse when Jesus says the greater sin precludes any notion that that could possibly

04:19.040 --> 04:20.280
be true.

04:20.280 --> 04:24.520
As we go through the rest of these, we'll see in greater detail how that plays out.

04:24.520 --> 04:29.720
Right from Holy Week itself, from Jesus' own lifts, that claim that all sins are equal

04:29.720 --> 04:32.360
is categorically disqualified.

04:32.360 --> 04:36.240
We just end there, and it's our shortest episode, right?

04:36.240 --> 04:41.800
Because really, if you have the direct word of Christ here saying that there is such thing

04:41.840 --> 04:47.240
as a greater sin, well, obviously, then there are different degrees of sin.

04:47.240 --> 04:49.960
There are worse sins, there are sins that are not as bad.

04:49.960 --> 04:55.800
Of course, all sin separates from God, and all sin is damning, but there are greater

04:55.800 --> 05:01.440
sins, there are greater punishments flowing from those greater sins.

05:01.440 --> 05:05.120
Just to emphasize what you said about the bit about Caesar's friend, because that's

05:05.120 --> 05:10.520
going to go past most modern readers, they're going to see that and go, okay, you're not

05:10.520 --> 05:13.360
a friend of Caesar, if you do this thing, fine.

05:13.360 --> 05:19.520
In the context, to be Caesar's friend is to be someone who is on Caesar's good side.

05:19.520 --> 05:24.040
To be not Caesar's friend is, as was said, to be a traitor.

05:24.040 --> 05:29.240
To be someone who is going to be marked for persecution and probably execution, and Pilate

05:29.240 --> 05:35.600
may eventually have been executed, whether as a martyr or not, we're not entirely sure

05:35.600 --> 05:36.600
of the history of that.

05:36.600 --> 05:41.880
I happen to think he probably did convert, but that's an aside.

05:41.880 --> 05:46.600
But obviously here, just at the outset, we have the very clear, irrefutable teaching

05:46.600 --> 05:50.080
that there is such a thing as a greater sin.

05:50.080 --> 05:54.560
And so Christians cannot say that, you know, all sins are equal, that's not true.

05:54.560 --> 05:56.640
All sins are not equal.

05:56.640 --> 05:59.800
All sins separate from God, that is true.

05:59.800 --> 06:06.080
Insofar as you are talking purely about the separation of man from God, all sins are equal

06:06.080 --> 06:09.280
in that they affect that separation.

06:09.280 --> 06:16.160
But all sins are not equal in the gravity of the sin, in the degree of the sin, in really

06:16.160 --> 06:23.540
the significance of that separation between God and man that is worked by the sin.

06:23.540 --> 06:28.920
This is something that in Luke 23, at Jesus' crucifixion, he parallels.

06:28.920 --> 06:32.800
Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, and they cast lots

06:32.800 --> 06:34.320
to devise his garments.

06:34.800 --> 06:39.560
That was specifically speaking of the Roman soldiers, the men who were the proximate cause

06:39.560 --> 06:43.040
of his hands and feet being nailed to a cross.

06:43.040 --> 06:46.680
He said, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

06:46.680 --> 06:53.040
Just as he said, this pilot's sin was the lesser sin for unjustly murdering him, for

06:53.040 --> 06:54.760
unjustly executing him.

06:54.760 --> 06:57.600
It was a murder because it was an unjust execution.

06:57.600 --> 07:03.120
But it was also an execution under the law, although the law had been misapplied.

07:03.120 --> 07:08.520
But even at that, Jesus paralleled Pilate's sin of commanding his execution, and then

07:08.520 --> 07:16.800
the actual executioners, the Roman soldiers who were literally at the cross, some of whom

07:16.800 --> 07:17.920
they witnessed what happened.

07:17.920 --> 07:21.520
They witnessed those miracles, as Pilate did, and he wasn't present.

07:21.520 --> 07:26.840
And so when Jesus said, forgive them, for they know not what they do, that is not a

07:26.840 --> 07:32.000
prayer that Jesus gave to the brain crowd of Jews who called for his blood.

07:32.000 --> 07:33.200
They knew what they were doing.

07:33.200 --> 07:35.840
They knew that they wanted to murder an innocent man.

07:35.840 --> 07:40.080
The Roman soldiers, for lack of a better phrase, they were following orders.

07:40.080 --> 07:41.680
What were they going to do?

07:41.680 --> 07:46.120
Pilate says, you execute a man, they nailed him to a cross, that's what they did.

07:46.120 --> 07:54.120
And so here in two verses, in the very same story, hours apart, Jesus says, there's a

07:54.120 --> 07:58.180
greater sin, and he says, forgive these men for the lesser sin.

07:58.180 --> 08:00.880
God forgive them because they don't know that they're nailing the Son of God to the

08:00.880 --> 08:02.600
cross.

08:02.600 --> 08:07.600
And we can, of course, pull out a general principle here, that a knowing sin is worse

08:07.600 --> 08:09.060
than an unknowing sin.

08:09.060 --> 08:11.880
And yes, there is such a thing as an unknowing sin.

08:11.880 --> 08:19.520
If you unknowingly transgress God's law, that's still a sin, but it is an unknowing sin.

08:19.520 --> 08:24.800
If you know God's law and deliberately transgress it, that is a knowing sin, that is a worse

08:24.800 --> 08:25.800
sin.

08:25.800 --> 08:26.800
It's, in fact, multiple sins.

08:26.800 --> 08:33.440
Because the act itself is sin, the guilty intent is sin, the deliberate violation of

08:33.440 --> 08:35.160
God's law is sin.

08:35.160 --> 08:41.520
You're compounding sin when you do something knowingly, as opposed to the unknowing sin,

08:41.520 --> 08:46.320
where you merely transgress God's law, but not deliberately.

08:46.320 --> 08:54.240
This of course, also deals with the difference between original sin and actual sin.

08:54.240 --> 08:57.880
Original sin, in this case, just meaning sins that are not original sin.

08:57.880 --> 09:01.360
It's just a term used in theology to differentiate the two.

09:01.360 --> 09:06.760
It's not saying that actual sin is actually sin and original sin is not.

09:06.760 --> 09:08.960
They're both sin.

09:08.960 --> 09:16.180
Original sin is what is inherited from our parents all the way back to Adam.

09:16.180 --> 09:20.600
It is inherited down the line genealogically.

09:20.600 --> 09:26.440
That is, sin that is a corruption of man's nature, and we sin because we are sinners,

09:26.440 --> 09:29.980
and we are sinners because of original sin.

09:29.980 --> 09:34.720
Actual sin are those sins that we then go on to commit ourselves.

09:34.720 --> 09:40.520
Not inherited sin, but sins that we have committed, theft, murder, adultery, whatever it happens

09:40.520 --> 09:42.120
to be.

09:42.120 --> 09:47.080
And so we see in that the difference between original and actual sin, that at the very least

09:47.080 --> 09:48.760
there are categories of sin.

09:48.760 --> 09:55.960
There are different kinds of sins, and we'll get into more of that later on in the episode.

09:55.960 --> 09:59.760
But again, notice the difference in this passage.

09:59.760 --> 10:07.680
A knowing sin, committed deliberately, committed with intent, is worse than an unknowing sin.

10:07.680 --> 10:09.320
And we of course have that in our civil laws.

10:09.320 --> 10:11.520
We recognize that.

10:11.520 --> 10:17.160
If you accidentally kill someone, probably not murder unless you were doing something

10:17.160 --> 10:22.480
incredibly negligent, then could potentially still be murder.

10:22.480 --> 10:27.360
But for instance, if you are driving a vehicle, and you have a medical emergency, you black

10:27.360 --> 10:32.920
out, you have an aneurysm, and you run over a pedestrian, that's not murder.

10:32.920 --> 10:36.440
It's in fact not even negligent, most likely.

10:36.440 --> 10:41.520
If you deliberately drive into a crowd of pedestrians, that is murder.

10:41.520 --> 10:47.360
So there's a difference regarding the intent, and the same thing holds here.

10:47.360 --> 10:52.680
The first perfect passage for dealing with deliberate sin is from Hebrews 10.

10:52.680 --> 10:57.000
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there

10:57.000 --> 11:02.440
no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury

11:02.440 --> 11:05.480
of fire that will consume the adversaries.

11:05.480 --> 11:09.440
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy, on the evidence of two

11:09.440 --> 11:10.960
or three witnesses.

11:10.960 --> 11:15.120
How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled under

11:15.120 --> 11:20.000
foot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified,

11:20.000 --> 11:22.280
and has outraged the spirit of grace?

11:22.280 --> 11:26.080
For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay.

11:26.080 --> 11:30.640
And again, the Lord will judge his people, is a fearful thing to fall into the hands

11:30.640 --> 11:32.640
of the living God.

11:32.640 --> 11:38.000
So this passage makes clear, part of the reason, perhaps the entire reason, that those Roman

11:38.040 --> 11:44.480
soldiers, Jesus asked for their forgiveness, was that they were not deliberately sinning.

11:44.480 --> 11:47.160
They were executing a convicted criminal.

11:47.160 --> 11:50.680
He was wrongly convicted, but that was above their pay grade.

11:50.680 --> 11:52.320
They had an order, and they followed it.

11:52.320 --> 11:54.400
Their sin was not deliberate.

11:54.400 --> 11:59.200
And I think that it's entirely reasonable to believe that some of them, at least when

11:59.200 --> 12:05.280
they saw the earthquake, and all the incredible happenings, in the immediate aftermath of

12:05.280 --> 12:10.200
his death, it became clear to them that it was, in fact, the Son of God, and that they

12:10.200 --> 12:11.640
had sinned.

12:11.640 --> 12:18.640
So their knowledge of sin at the time, when they were doing it, was not the same as what

12:19.400 --> 12:22.080
happened, at least for some of them, after the fact.

12:22.080 --> 12:26.560
They were not sinning deliberately when they murdered Christ by nailing him to the cross.

12:26.560 --> 12:28.280
That was not true of the Pharisees.

12:28.280 --> 12:32.560
It was not too true of the crowd of Jews, who had followed Jesus for years trying to

12:32.560 --> 12:33.720
murder him.

12:34.160 --> 12:39.640
There are passage after passage in all four of the Gospels describing how the Jews continuously

12:39.640 --> 12:43.160
tried to murder Christ, his entire earthly ministry.

12:43.160 --> 12:49.920
They finally succeeded by using the Romans as a political weapon.

12:49.920 --> 12:52.240
It was clever.

12:52.240 --> 12:59.320
It was absolutely malicious, and it was their way of doing it at arm's length, just as the

12:59.320 --> 13:04.600
Pharisees paid Judas the 30 pieces of silver for his betrayal, and then tossed it back

13:04.600 --> 13:06.840
as they couldn't accept blood money.

13:06.840 --> 13:10.000
They used the Romans to commit their murder.

13:10.000 --> 13:11.320
They did everything at arm's length.

13:11.320 --> 13:12.600
They did everything in secret.

13:12.600 --> 13:16.680
They did everything so that they could keep their hands clean as they were committing

13:16.680 --> 13:22.040
literally the worst sin, the worst crime in the history of the universe.

13:22.040 --> 13:23.160
Think about that.

13:23.160 --> 13:27.280
When someone says to you, all sins are equal.

13:27.280 --> 13:34.040
Would you agree then that if I steal your pencil, or if the Pharisees in the crowd of

13:34.040 --> 13:40.080
Jews demands that Christ be executed for no crime, are those equal?

13:40.080 --> 13:41.080
That's what you're saying.

13:41.080 --> 13:46.760
You're saying that the murder of Christ is no worse than anything else that anyone else

13:46.760 --> 13:49.600
has ever done.

13:49.600 --> 13:55.040
If that's a legal or a moral perspective you want to take, I honestly don't see how you

13:55.040 --> 13:56.960
can claim to be Christian.

13:56.960 --> 14:02.240
Any pagan can understand that there are degrees of sin, that there are degrees of evil.

14:02.240 --> 14:07.240
Corey just gave the example of mens rea when you know you're doing something wrong or not

14:07.240 --> 14:08.240
knowing.

14:08.240 --> 14:13.560
Then there are also the degrees to which some sins are sinful.

14:13.560 --> 14:16.960
There are things that are worse than others.

14:16.960 --> 14:20.760
As Corey mentioned up front, we say this in many episodes.

14:20.760 --> 14:21.760
It's always true.

14:21.760 --> 14:23.920
It's true, especially in this episode.

14:23.920 --> 14:26.840
We're not talking about suteriology.

14:26.840 --> 14:32.600
We're not talking about how we can save ourselves or justify ourselves.

14:32.600 --> 14:37.840
That's a problem that Protestantism solved perfectly 500 years ago, because we read the

14:37.840 --> 14:41.840
Bible again and we believed it again, and God solved it perfectly.

14:41.840 --> 14:45.320
He gave us the true information about how we are saved.

14:45.320 --> 14:48.680
We are saved solely through Christ's sacrifice.

14:48.680 --> 14:53.960
When we talk about something being a greater sin or a lesser sin, none of it gets you off

14:53.960 --> 14:55.300
the hook.

14:55.300 --> 15:01.820
The example we've given in the past is that the sin of Adam listening to his wife and

15:01.820 --> 15:07.500
then eating the wrong piece of fruit, that is the least significant sin in the history

15:07.500 --> 15:08.500
of sin.

15:08.500 --> 15:11.120
He ate a piece of fruit that he wasn't supposed to eat.

15:11.120 --> 15:12.420
It was a beautiful piece of fruit.

15:12.420 --> 15:15.340
It was probably delicious.

15:15.340 --> 15:18.460
The garden was full of trees and he was allowed to eat everything.

15:18.460 --> 15:20.520
God said, this one tree, don't touch that fruit.

15:20.520 --> 15:21.520
What did he do?

15:21.520 --> 15:24.480
He listened to his wife and he ate that one piece of fruit.

15:25.480 --> 15:28.380
Probably virtually every sin that you've ever committed in your life, I'm sure every

15:28.380 --> 15:34.140
sin I've ever committed in my life, was worse than eating the wrong piece of fruit.

15:34.140 --> 15:36.360
We inherit Adam's sin.

15:36.360 --> 15:44.360
We inherit damnation from our Father by virtue of that first sin, the smallest of all sins,

15:44.360 --> 15:46.340
and yet it causes our death.

15:46.340 --> 15:52.660
When we say greater or lesser sin, we do that with full acknowledgement that the least sinful

15:52.880 --> 15:57.400
sin possible, at least that I can think of, is still a damning sin.

15:57.400 --> 15:59.960
We're not talking about manners of damnation.

15:59.960 --> 16:04.000
We're talking about how God views these things.

16:04.000 --> 16:08.120
As we get into some of these other verses in a minute, we'll show clearly specific examples

16:08.120 --> 16:11.640
of other sins that are seen as much more abhorrent than others.

16:11.640 --> 16:16.880
Yes, with all deference to Volta, we are not dealing here with the gospel, obviously.

16:16.900 --> 16:18.740
We are dealing with the law.

16:18.740 --> 16:19.900
We are dealing with sin.

16:19.900 --> 16:27.620
We are dealing with theology, not specifically soteriology, and so his thesis 25, to let

16:27.620 --> 16:31.500
the gospel predominate, is not in play here.

16:31.500 --> 16:35.020
We don't reject Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession, obviously.

16:35.020 --> 16:37.100
That is the heart of Christianity.

16:37.100 --> 16:41.100
That's justification by faith.

16:41.100 --> 16:42.740
But that's not what we're dealing with.

16:42.760 --> 16:50.360
We are dealing with the issue of the nature of sin, degrees of sin, types of sin, categories

16:50.360 --> 16:55.680
of sin, because this is something that has been ignored by the modern church, which undoubtedly

16:55.680 --> 16:58.800
you've heard that refrain from us many times now.

16:58.800 --> 17:03.960
We are choosing these issues because they are things that are either neglected or taught

17:03.960 --> 17:08.680
incorrectly in modern churches.

17:08.700 --> 17:15.420
In order to be seeker-sensitive or what-have-you, many modern churches will say that, oh, all

17:15.420 --> 17:21.740
sins are equal, because they have it in their head, sometimes the best of them anyway, that

17:21.740 --> 17:29.180
they don't want to drive someone away by saying, your sin is particularly atrocious.

17:29.180 --> 17:32.700
Not specifically necessarily that person, because a person wandering off the street,

17:32.700 --> 17:35.260
you may not know what his sin is.

17:35.260 --> 17:38.600
But in his mind, in his heart, he knows what the sin is.

17:38.600 --> 17:43.880
And so in a sermon, if you stand up there and rail against this particularly atrocious

17:43.880 --> 17:48.080
sin, and that's the one in his heart, you have some pastors who are worried that that

17:48.080 --> 17:53.960
man will never come back, because, oh, well, he called out my specific horrible sin.

17:53.960 --> 17:58.880
And so that's the concern, but the concern is precisely wrong.

17:58.880 --> 18:04.200
Because to go into law and gospel a little bit, sinners have to be broken by the law

18:04.260 --> 18:06.900
before they are ready for the gospel.

18:06.900 --> 18:11.580
And so if you don't preach the law in its full severity, you should not be preaching

18:11.580 --> 18:17.540
the gospel in its full sweetness, because all you have done is set that man up to remain

18:17.540 --> 18:21.980
in his sin, to become impenitent, to harden his heart.

18:21.980 --> 18:23.820
And so it's the exact opposite.

18:23.820 --> 18:28.700
It is an inversion of what pastors and teachers are supposed to do when they say that all

18:28.700 --> 18:30.020
sins are equal.

18:30.020 --> 18:35.080
What I think hardening of heart is one of the key things that is left out of the discussion

18:35.080 --> 18:39.200
of, well, if all sins aren't equal, what does that mean?

18:39.200 --> 18:41.280
That is principally what it means.

18:41.280 --> 18:48.080
If you're committing very small with what the Roman Catholics call venial sins, it would

18:48.080 --> 18:54.160
take a lot of them and a lot of deliberate sinning for you to reach the point of apostasy.

18:54.160 --> 18:59.200
On the other hand, if, for example, you're a serial killer, to go to the extreme opposite

18:59.900 --> 19:03.540
that everyone would admit, murdering is worse than stealing pencils.

19:03.540 --> 19:04.900
Everyone knows that.

19:04.900 --> 19:07.660
You don't have to have faith to understand that.

19:07.660 --> 19:13.540
And yet, for some reason, the modern Protestant freaks out at the idea of saying, well, stealing

19:13.540 --> 19:19.340
pencils and murdering a lot of people, those are both damnable, therefore they must be

19:19.340 --> 19:20.940
exactly the same.

19:20.940 --> 19:21.940
Nonsense.

19:21.940 --> 19:26.700
The difference is that the serial killer or someone who does something similarly egregious

19:26.700 --> 19:34.640
and we'll get into some of those other examples, that high-handed, impenitent, severe sin drives

19:34.640 --> 19:38.520
out the Holy Spirit much faster if it was ever present in the first place and makes

19:38.520 --> 19:43.480
it impossible for the Holy Spirit to ever be present by virtue of the inherent depravity

19:43.480 --> 19:50.040
of the man who would do that, whereas someone who's just a shoplifter.

19:50.040 --> 19:52.120
Shoplifting is a terrible, bad thing.

19:52.120 --> 19:53.120
It's destructive.

19:53.120 --> 19:54.120
It's evil.

19:55.100 --> 20:00.740
But if all someone ever does is steal a lollipop every time they go down the candy aisle, they're

20:00.740 --> 20:06.500
probably not going to destroy their faith or make it impossible for the long gospel

20:06.500 --> 20:07.980
to work on their hearts.

20:07.980 --> 20:13.500
If someone comes along and says, stealing is wrong, here's the commandment that describes

20:13.500 --> 20:14.500
that.

20:14.500 --> 20:15.500
You're hurting your neighbor.

20:15.500 --> 20:17.020
You're hurting your community.

20:17.020 --> 20:18.660
That's evil.

20:18.660 --> 20:24.160
It's relatively simple for someone who's been a serial shoplifter to set that aside

20:24.160 --> 20:25.760
and turn away from it.

20:25.760 --> 20:30.320
It's a much bigger ask for someone who's committing much bigger crimes because they know the gravity

20:30.320 --> 20:32.560
of their sin is far greater.

20:32.560 --> 20:38.880
Therefore, the degree of forgiveness that they feel they need is so much more overwhelming

20:38.880 --> 20:41.920
that even if you got them to the point where they might admit that they've done something

20:41.920 --> 20:46.200
wrong, they would think that they were past the point of forgiveness, which is ultimately

20:46.200 --> 20:48.160
why this is so important.

20:48.160 --> 20:53.620
If you let someone committing grievous sins continue in them to the point that when he

20:53.620 --> 20:58.500
is perhaps convicted by his conscience that that was all sinful, he's going to think it's

20:58.500 --> 21:00.020
too late.

21:00.020 --> 21:03.060
That is when the flip side of all this comes into play.

21:03.060 --> 21:06.980
Jesus paid for every single sin, great and small on the cross.

21:06.980 --> 21:09.740
They're all paid for whether you believe it or not.

21:09.740 --> 21:17.500
You can be the most damnable, utterly repudiated person in history with no hope of salvation

21:17.840 --> 21:19.760
and have gone to hell.

21:19.760 --> 21:22.360
Jesus still paid for that person's sins, all of them.

21:22.360 --> 21:27.280
The fact that they rejected that forgiveness in some cases will be because they felt that

21:27.280 --> 21:32.440
their sin was too great, which is the trick that Satan always plays in every sin.

21:32.440 --> 21:39.920
When he pitched the fruit of the forbidden tree to Eve and to Adam, it was in the terms

21:39.920 --> 21:42.560
of, oh, you will not surely die.

21:42.560 --> 21:46.920
Then what happens after we commit that very small sin, seemingly small?

21:46.980 --> 21:51.340
What does the accuser come along and say afterwards, God could never forgive you for that?

21:51.340 --> 21:52.840
What you've done is so terrible.

21:52.840 --> 21:53.840
They hid.

21:53.840 --> 21:55.500
They were ashamed and they hid.

21:55.500 --> 21:57.460
They hid because they knew they were naked.

21:57.460 --> 22:02.260
That was part of eating from the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

22:02.260 --> 22:03.780
The same thing happens to us.

22:03.780 --> 22:07.060
When we commit a sin and we know that we've sinned, we hide.

22:07.060 --> 22:10.380
We know that we are guilty of something.

22:10.380 --> 22:13.140
Satan wants us to believe that we can't be forgiven.

22:13.160 --> 22:18.920
If you say that all sins are equal, the person who's in that position won't be able to understand

22:18.920 --> 22:25.320
the severity and the enormity of the sacrifice that Christ gave for their sins.

22:25.320 --> 22:30.240
The sweetness of that salvation is greater for he who needs it most.

22:30.240 --> 22:36.040
Now, we obviously all need salvation from the least to the greatest sinner, but within

22:36.040 --> 22:40.400
our own hearts, we know our own sins, not all of them, but we know many of them.

22:40.400 --> 22:48.580
When we feel as though our sins are greater than God can forgive, Satan has your heart.

22:48.580 --> 22:53.980
Even if you come to some degree of repentance, that's what happened to Judas.

22:53.980 --> 22:55.660
He was possessed by the devil.

22:55.660 --> 23:01.180
He betrayed Christ and then he regretted it, but he didn't repent in the sense that he

23:01.180 --> 23:05.780
turned back to Jesus and said, Lord, forgive me for betraying you.

23:05.780 --> 23:10.380
He felt that he had no hope of forgiveness and so he went and killed himself.

23:10.380 --> 23:14.760
That is the ultimate victory of Satan and saying, oh, it's not a big deal and then you

23:14.760 --> 23:17.320
do it and then he says it's unforgivable.

23:17.320 --> 23:20.840
If someone believes that all sins are equal, they're going to end up on both sides of that

23:20.840 --> 23:26.600
equation one right after the other because if you do something horrible and you're believing,

23:26.600 --> 23:32.560
I know better or worse than anyone else, when your conscience convicts you of that sin,

23:32.560 --> 23:36.760
you're then going to think this sin's enormity is too much for even God to forgive.

23:36.760 --> 23:38.440
There's no hope for me.

23:38.440 --> 23:40.780
That is when there's no room for the gospel.

23:40.780 --> 23:48.000
This is absolutely a question of people receiving salvation and hearing the gospel faithfully.

23:48.000 --> 23:53.180
That can only happen with sound doctrine up front about what sin is and what it is not.

23:53.180 --> 23:58.460
You touched on something there that a lot of Christians also get wrong these days.

23:58.460 --> 24:01.980
It's tangential, but it is related to the topic.

24:01.980 --> 24:07.020
That is the scope of the atonement of redemption.

24:07.020 --> 24:12.440
When we think that any particular sin, leaving aside for the moment the unpardonable, the

24:12.440 --> 24:14.920
unforgivable sin, we'll get to that.

24:14.920 --> 24:19.920
But when you think that a particular sin is too great to be forgiven, that God could never

24:19.920 --> 24:28.120
forgive me, I've committed too many and to heinous sins, you're losing sight of what

24:28.120 --> 24:33.600
exactly Christ accomplished, what God accomplished in the atonement.

24:33.600 --> 24:40.660
And that was the redemption of all things, of creation, because the sacrifice of Christ

24:40.660 --> 24:44.260
on the cross was of infinite value.

24:44.260 --> 24:50.620
He redeemed creation, not just you, not just me, not just a handful of things.

24:50.620 --> 24:52.180
He redeemed everything.

24:52.180 --> 24:54.060
It was complete.

24:54.060 --> 24:55.860
It was finished.

24:55.860 --> 25:02.220
It was an atonement that covered all sin, period, all sin.

25:02.220 --> 25:08.640
It will not be applied to all because there is the objective justification, which is the

25:08.640 --> 25:14.120
redemption, the atonement, the price paid by Christ for all sins, and then there is the

25:14.120 --> 25:20.480
subjective justification, which is the application of that to individual sinners, which happens

25:20.480 --> 25:21.720
by faith.

25:21.720 --> 25:26.480
And so if you don't have faith, it doesn't apply to you, but the sins are still forgiven.

25:26.480 --> 25:31.640
And so those who spend eternity in hell are attempting to pay the price for a sin that

25:31.640 --> 25:36.220
was already forgiven for which Christ already atoned.

25:36.220 --> 25:43.100
And so it is important to not lose sight of the scope of the atonement, of the actual

25:43.100 --> 25:47.540
scale of Christ's redemption, which was infinite.

25:47.540 --> 25:51.980
One of the most common examples that comes up both in the Old Testament and repeatedly

25:51.980 --> 25:58.780
in the New Testament is that of Sodom and Gomorrah, as a particular example of an egregious

25:58.920 --> 26:07.440
sin, and God's immediate temporal and hearkening to the eternal consequences of that sin.

26:07.440 --> 26:12.480
In Genesis 19 it's written, Then the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and

26:12.480 --> 26:18.400
Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done

26:18.400 --> 26:21.920
altogether according to the outcry that has come to me.

26:21.920 --> 26:23.760
And if not, I will know.

26:23.860 --> 26:26.460
We all know what happened there.

26:26.460 --> 26:29.820
They were engaging in Sodomic behavior.

26:29.820 --> 26:36.460
The entire town, the multiple towns in the area, were engaged in obscene sexual acts.

26:36.460 --> 26:40.300
And when they heard the two angels had come, they heard two men were there.

26:40.300 --> 26:41.300
They said, Bring them out.

26:41.300 --> 26:46.100
We want to have sex with them, which forgive me for laughing.

26:46.100 --> 26:49.340
It's utterly alien to me, but it was normal in that town.

26:49.340 --> 26:55.080
When someone came, they wanted to rape the guests of Lot.

26:55.080 --> 26:58.200
And they didn't know they were angels, but it was certainly the confirmation that the

26:58.200 --> 27:04.080
angels had come to seek on behalf of God to see whether the outcry was true.

27:04.080 --> 27:09.800
And the consequence was that those towns were literally wiped off the map.

27:09.800 --> 27:14.080
And we think through modern archaeological evidence, we found exactly where that place

27:14.080 --> 27:15.080
was.

27:15.080 --> 27:21.380
They have found evidence of glass caused by superheated air.

27:21.380 --> 27:27.720
Basically, it appeared that there was a large air burst similar to the Tunguska blast in

27:27.720 --> 27:30.700
I think 1913, roughly.

27:30.700 --> 27:39.060
It was the equivalent of a multi-megaton nuclear detonation in the air above that location.

27:39.060 --> 27:43.180
And that's today that is visible in the ground and where they believe Sodom and Gomorrah

27:43.180 --> 27:44.180
was.

27:44.280 --> 27:48.760
The archaeologists digging it up don't believe the Bible, because obviously it's all nonsense.

27:48.760 --> 27:54.840
But when you look at what they found and what they can describe of the physical events that

27:54.840 --> 27:59.960
occurred there, it pretty well matches perfectly what is described in Scripture.

27:59.960 --> 28:06.600
There was a massive fiery configuration that wiped those towns off the map.

28:06.600 --> 28:11.160
Now, those are the only towns that have ever been wiped off the map like this.

28:11.160 --> 28:15.260
By God saying, this is what I'm going to do.

28:15.260 --> 28:19.860
And in the New Testament, as we'll get to in a minute, it's referred to repeatedly.

28:19.860 --> 28:23.020
Sodom and Gomorrah's sin was greater.

28:23.020 --> 28:27.180
God said he's going to go down and see if it's true that their sin is very grave.

28:27.180 --> 28:30.740
How can a sin be very grave if all sin is equal?

28:30.740 --> 28:37.180
Are we to believe if all sin is equal that the next town over from Sodom was less guilty?

28:37.180 --> 28:39.420
Were there no sinners in that town?

28:39.420 --> 28:40.420
Certainly not.

28:40.420 --> 28:42.080
Because never the claim.

28:42.080 --> 28:47.440
Every town has sinners, because every town has human beings who are born in sin.

28:47.440 --> 28:53.320
The reason that these towns were destroyed was that their sin was very great.

28:53.320 --> 28:55.560
And so we have a passage from Luke 10.

28:55.560 --> 29:01.840
But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say,

29:01.840 --> 29:06.400
Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you.

29:06.400 --> 29:10.320
Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.

29:10.320 --> 29:17.500
I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

29:17.500 --> 29:22.820
And so here we see that even though the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were great, there is

29:22.820 --> 29:25.060
in fact an even greater sin.

29:25.060 --> 29:27.420
This of course is rejecting Christ.

29:27.420 --> 29:32.220
This is rejecting the gospel, rejecting God.

29:32.220 --> 29:37.180
Which is the worst sin of course, and this ties right back into the unforgivable sin

29:37.180 --> 29:38.860
was mentioned.

29:38.860 --> 29:43.600
And I would be remiss if I did not mention as I do every time this comes up.

29:43.600 --> 29:49.960
If you can worry about the unforgivable sin, you have not committed it.

29:49.960 --> 29:50.960
That's the standard.

29:50.960 --> 29:56.160
So if that concerns you whatsoever, you have not committed it.

29:56.160 --> 29:59.080
And I'm not going to tell you not to worry about it, because of course that would be

29:59.080 --> 30:00.080
a problem.

30:00.080 --> 30:06.640
But the unforgivable sin is a complicated topic, but essentially it is unbelief.

30:06.640 --> 30:11.780
It is the deliberate rejection of God, of the gospel, of repentance.

30:11.780 --> 30:15.020
It is high-handed blasphemy.

30:15.020 --> 30:22.220
And that's what we have here, the rejection of the gospel by these towns.

30:22.220 --> 30:25.020
And so it will be better for Sodom on the day of judgment.

30:25.020 --> 30:30.020
It does not mean that Sodom is off the hook, as we've been saying throughout.

30:30.020 --> 30:35.340
Just because some sins are not as bad as others does not mean that they are not sins, does

30:35.360 --> 30:40.120
not mean they do not separate from God, does not mean that if you are not in Christ you

30:40.120 --> 30:43.200
will not go to hell for those sins.

30:43.200 --> 30:49.920
If you are not in Christ, you will go to hell regardless of the gravity of the sins you

30:49.920 --> 30:50.920
have committed.

30:50.920 --> 30:55.880
Your eternity will not be as bad as a serial killer or someone who has committed many heinous

30:55.880 --> 31:00.760
sins, but it will still not be a good eternity.

31:00.780 --> 31:08.580
And so these towns reject Christ, reject the gospel, and that sin is graver than Sodom

31:08.580 --> 31:11.900
and Gomorrah, who did not outright reject the gospel.

31:11.900 --> 31:19.380
Instead, they were engaged in heinous sexual sins, yes, horrible sins, no, not as bad as

31:19.380 --> 31:20.940
rejecting Christ.

31:20.940 --> 31:24.700
In this passage, of course, is one that we had referred to in one of our earlier episodes

31:24.700 --> 31:27.300
on the subject of forgotten doctrines.

31:27.320 --> 31:31.600
This is one of the passages in the synoptics that refers to the doctrine of shaking the

31:31.600 --> 31:36.000
dust off your feet as a curse against those who refuse to hear the gospel.

31:36.000 --> 31:39.400
I mean, they've heard it, they refuse to believe it.

31:39.400 --> 31:46.720
And so I think that's an important tie into, as Corey said, the unforgivable sin.

31:46.720 --> 31:47.720
What does this say?

31:47.720 --> 31:56.120
It says that in the case where someone believes when a missionary comes to them, to be told

31:56.140 --> 32:01.580
that God has come among them, if they do not believe, that is still to be announced.

32:01.580 --> 32:06.820
But whereas in the first case, if you hear and believe to hear that God has come near

32:06.820 --> 32:12.980
you is a matter of profound comfort and joy, if you do not believe when it is announced

32:12.980 --> 32:17.580
by the missionary that God has come among you, it is a curse.

32:17.580 --> 32:23.380
It is the foremost of all curses to saying, God has been here, you have rejected him.

32:23.380 --> 32:28.280
On the day of judgment, you are going to receive what you've earned here.

32:28.280 --> 32:33.560
And that is, I think, one of the things that is missing from Christian discussion of sin.

32:33.560 --> 32:36.800
You earn a specific punishment for a specific sin.

32:36.800 --> 32:41.040
There's a specific punishment for every sin, and there's a specific reward for every good

32:41.040 --> 32:42.040
deed.

32:42.040 --> 32:47.920
Now, the difference, and it's a tricky one for us to process because we've gotten so sloppy

32:47.920 --> 32:52.920
about thinking and speaking about these things, for the Christian.

32:52.920 --> 32:57.900
All of the good works that we do, which were prepared by God beforehand for us to do for

32:57.900 --> 33:03.020
the benefit of our neighbor, we receive credit for them, even though they're God's gift

33:03.020 --> 33:04.540
to us.

33:04.540 --> 33:10.780
All of the evil things that the Christian does are not credited to him, but were instead

33:10.780 --> 33:13.700
nailed to the cross with Christ.

33:13.700 --> 33:18.500
So that on the last day when we are covered in Christ's blood and our robes are washed

33:18.500 --> 33:22.320
white, we appear blameless before the throne of God.

33:22.320 --> 33:23.480
That's how it works.

33:23.480 --> 33:28.840
Christ atoning blood washes our robes white in the blood of the Lamb.

33:28.840 --> 33:35.640
We stand before God sinless, not because we've committed no sin, but because Christ propitiating

33:35.640 --> 33:40.720
sacrifice on the cross washed it away, because he paid the price for those sins.

33:40.720 --> 33:43.880
The converse is true of unbelievers.

33:43.880 --> 33:48.660
They had no good works in their life, no matter how laudable it may have seemed, because

33:48.660 --> 33:51.380
they were not doing them in the name of God.

33:51.380 --> 33:57.060
They have everything that they ever did as a sin, which Christ paid for, and they rejected

33:57.060 --> 33:58.060
that propitiation.

33:58.060 --> 34:00.820
They said, I don't believe in God.

34:00.820 --> 34:03.260
I don't want him to have anything to do with this.

34:03.260 --> 34:04.260
These are my sins.

34:04.260 --> 34:06.020
These aren't sins at all.

34:06.020 --> 34:11.860
However they want to cut it, they say, not God's problem, stay out of my business.

34:11.860 --> 34:17.320
On Judgment Day, it's God's business, and Christ's atoning sacrifice does not apply

34:17.320 --> 34:20.200
to them because they rejected it.

34:20.200 --> 34:26.360
It's not in the sense of the Reformed limited atonement where God only died for some, as

34:26.360 --> 34:28.800
Corey said earlier.

34:28.800 --> 34:32.600
The beginning of John's gospel is very important.

34:32.600 --> 34:37.680
When it talks about in the beginning was the word, everything in the universe was made

34:37.680 --> 34:39.240
through Christ.

34:39.240 --> 34:42.740
This is paralleled in the cross.

34:42.740 --> 34:46.420
Everything in the universe was redeemed through Christ.

34:46.420 --> 34:52.660
Only Christ could do that, by whom all things were made, through whom all things were redeemed.

34:52.660 --> 34:57.020
There's a perfect symmetry there that cannot be achieved anywhere else, which is why it's

34:57.020 --> 35:00.740
ludicrous for any man to think, well, maybe I can do something.

35:00.740 --> 35:02.980
Are you kidding me?

35:02.980 --> 35:04.220
It's utterly preposterous.

35:04.220 --> 35:06.460
No Christian believes that.

35:06.460 --> 35:09.840
No Christian believes that he can do anything to save himself.

35:09.840 --> 35:14.480
I think it's one of the greatest weaknesses of Protestant doctrine that we're still fighting

35:14.480 --> 35:20.200
the 15th century heresy that we can earn some of our salvation.

35:20.200 --> 35:21.360
We dealt with that.

35:21.360 --> 35:22.680
We got rid of it.

35:22.680 --> 35:27.840
We purified Christian doctrine and said, no, all the sacrifices at the cross.

35:27.840 --> 35:30.000
Okay, it's a settled matter.

35:30.000 --> 35:34.840
We don't need to relitigate that in every single sentence of every single sermon.

35:34.840 --> 35:39.020
In every single conversation we have about these things, there's more to say about the

35:39.020 --> 35:42.940
world and about the Christian life than saying that Jesus took care of it all.

35:42.940 --> 35:46.180
It's the most important thing, but it's not the only thing.

35:46.180 --> 35:48.140
This is about the end then.

35:48.140 --> 35:53.420
As a Christian who's been redeemed, who has the Holy Spirit to be able to understand what

35:53.420 --> 35:59.020
God has written, when we see people saying things like, all sins are equal, you can't

35:59.020 --> 36:00.540
judge man.

36:00.540 --> 36:05.000
That's just his sin and your sin is even worse, except all sins are equal.

36:05.000 --> 36:09.560
It falls apart on its face, but the important part is what they want you to do is not tell

36:09.560 --> 36:11.880
anyone else about their sin.

36:11.880 --> 36:13.120
That's what Satan wants.

36:13.120 --> 36:17.600
He doesn't want anyone to hear that they're sinning until it's too late, until they've

36:17.600 --> 36:24.120
committed such egregious sins that they feel that they're beyond redemption, which is false,

36:24.120 --> 36:26.600
but it's a lie that's easy to believe.

36:26.600 --> 36:32.020
It's one of the hardest things for someone when they hit rock bottom and in some aspect

36:32.020 --> 36:36.420
of their life to realize they can't do it themselves.

36:36.420 --> 36:40.500
That is when they're ready to hear the gospel, to hear that God did everything.

36:40.500 --> 36:42.380
You don't have to do anything.

36:42.380 --> 36:48.820
God is giving you the gift of faith and belief, receive it with thanksgiving, and it's yours.

36:48.820 --> 36:54.140
To emphasize what you said about the difference between the works of those who are in Christ

36:54.160 --> 37:01.320
versus those who are not, we often hear the term virtuous pagan, at least if you read

37:01.320 --> 37:04.440
theology and are in those circles.

37:04.440 --> 37:10.000
And there is and there is not such a thing as a virtuous pagan.

37:10.000 --> 37:15.960
The pagan who lives a morally upstanding life, who doesn't murder, doesn't cheat, doesn't

37:15.960 --> 37:23.960
steal, doesn't commit adultery, etc., is a virtuous pagan according to the law.

37:25.040 --> 37:33.040
Because you can do the works of the law according to human reason and free will.

37:33.040 --> 37:35.040
You cannot do them perfectly.

37:35.040 --> 37:38.440
You will always fall short, and so you will always sin.

37:38.440 --> 37:46.240
However, as was stated, they are not credited to you as good works because you are not in Christ.

37:46.240 --> 37:53.040
And so as a sinner, everything you do is sin, everything.

37:53.540 --> 38:02.140
Murder, sin, giving candy to a child, sin, saving a drowning animal, sin, everything

38:02.140 --> 38:05.900
you do as a sinner is sin.

38:05.900 --> 38:11.460
And so, in that sense, there is no such thing as a virtuous pagan.

38:11.460 --> 38:16.860
What the pagan cannot do, what the person outside Christ cannot do, is what the person

38:16.860 --> 38:19.740
in Christ can do.

38:19.740 --> 38:25.080
And instead of the works of the law, we are talking about the fruits of the spirit.

38:25.080 --> 38:31.240
Now these are theological categories, and it is important to keep that clear.

38:31.240 --> 38:35.480
Because the good works of Christians are also done according to the law, and we'll get into

38:35.480 --> 38:37.640
that in a future episode.

38:37.640 --> 38:42.640
But in this sense, this limited technical sense, the works of the law are those things

38:42.640 --> 38:49.240
that can be done according to human reason, even by the pagan.

38:49.240 --> 38:55.220
The fruits of the spirit are those things that are done in Christ through faith.

38:55.220 --> 39:01.900
Those are credited to the believer as good works, on account of Christ's sacrifice,

39:01.900 --> 39:03.700
on his behalf.

39:03.700 --> 39:06.940
And so if you are in Christ, you have good works.

39:06.940 --> 39:12.980
The good works you do are credited to you, as was stated, the sins you do are not credited

39:12.980 --> 39:18.580
to your account because they were washed away in Christ, they are washed clean by his blood.

39:18.580 --> 39:25.000
But again, the pagan does not actually have good works, because they are tainted because

39:25.000 --> 39:29.640
the pagan is a sinner, not in Christ, not forgiven.

39:29.640 --> 39:35.360
And so if you are not in Christ, you have only sins, no good works.

39:35.360 --> 39:40.080
If you are in Christ, ultimately, when you are brought before the judgment seat and the

39:40.080 --> 39:46.640
books are open and your deeds are read, you will have only good works, no sins.

39:46.700 --> 39:53.220
The next day Moses said to the people, You have sinned a great sin, and now I will go

39:53.220 --> 39:54.220
up to the Lord.

39:54.220 --> 39:56.820
Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.

39:56.820 --> 40:01.620
So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Alas, this people have sinned a great sin, they

40:01.620 --> 40:05.940
have made for themselves gods of gold.

40:05.940 --> 40:11.500
I want to read this in particular because this, in addition to having the phrase great sin

40:11.500 --> 40:18.880
in English and ESB, I didn't look at the Hebrew, but I'm sure it's faithful.

40:18.880 --> 40:23.120
Moses was not only highlighting that some sins are better or worse than others, but

40:23.120 --> 40:29.800
this was talking about the greatest of all sins, which is a violation of the First Commandment.

40:29.800 --> 40:33.880
Because what had just happened, Moses had gone up the mountain, he had received the

40:33.880 --> 40:37.640
Ten Commandments, he'd come back down, and what did he find?

40:37.640 --> 40:41.240
He found that the Jews had abandoned God.

40:41.240 --> 40:47.500
They had made the golden calf so that they could worship it and say this idol is what

40:47.500 --> 40:49.580
brought us out of Egypt.

40:49.580 --> 40:55.820
God had literally just rescued them and they apostatized while in full view of the fiery

40:55.820 --> 40:59.180
pillar of his presence on the mountain.

40:59.180 --> 41:04.620
It's stunning to me to think about that scene where the very God who had rescued them miraculously

41:04.620 --> 41:10.620
from the Egypt, brought them into the desert, was speaking with the man who had led them

41:10.640 --> 41:12.360
out of captivity.

41:12.360 --> 41:16.800
There's a visible pillar of smoke and fire on the mountain.

41:16.800 --> 41:17.800
They could hear thunder.

41:17.800 --> 41:19.360
It was a huge scene.

41:19.360 --> 41:23.600
It was very visually dramatic, especially for being so unnatural.

41:23.600 --> 41:24.680
What did they do?

41:24.680 --> 41:29.080
They couldn't last 40 days without Moses telling them to bathe.

41:29.080 --> 41:33.320
They had an errand, melt down gold, and make a calf for them so that they could worship

41:33.320 --> 41:35.180
and say this is our God now.

41:35.180 --> 41:37.860
This calf led us out of Egypt.

41:37.880 --> 41:41.280
This was a great scene because it was number one on the list.

41:41.280 --> 41:43.800
You shall have no other gods before me.

41:43.800 --> 41:44.800
He comes down.

41:44.800 --> 41:45.800
Was he fine?

41:45.800 --> 41:47.300
They have another God before him.

41:47.300 --> 41:52.080
Before is an interesting word in that you shall have no other gods before me.

41:52.080 --> 41:54.140
It means in my presence.

41:54.140 --> 41:56.140
It doesn't mean in terms of rank.

41:56.140 --> 41:58.240
It doesn't mean before or after.

41:58.240 --> 42:05.640
It means before is in I see before me tons of soil to quote Spooner.

42:05.660 --> 42:08.780
When something is before God, it means that he can see it.

42:08.780 --> 42:10.280
God is omniscient.

42:10.280 --> 42:12.140
What is before God?

42:12.140 --> 42:13.460
Everything in the universe.

42:13.460 --> 42:14.660
Everything beyond the universe.

42:14.660 --> 42:17.460
Anything exists, it is before God.

42:17.460 --> 42:20.820
God is in the place where there is no place.

42:20.820 --> 42:22.660
He knows everything.

42:22.660 --> 42:29.620
When it says you shall have no other gods before me, it means you cannot have a single

42:29.620 --> 42:31.500
God apart from me.

42:31.500 --> 42:32.980
It's not in terms of rank.

42:32.980 --> 42:37.560
It's not saying God will be number one and then jewelry will be number two and football

42:37.560 --> 42:39.040
will be number three.

42:39.040 --> 42:44.480
It's saying you will have only God anywhere in your heart, in your mind, in your actions,

42:44.480 --> 42:45.480
only me.

42:45.480 --> 42:50.480
Moses came down and he found them abandoning that right off the bat.

42:50.480 --> 42:54.440
He called it a grace and they required him to go back up the mountain and speak to God.

42:54.440 --> 43:01.000
There's also an additional measure of egregiousness and irony that some readers will miss in this

43:01.000 --> 43:02.240
particular section.

43:02.240 --> 43:10.700
If you're not familiar with Egyptian paganism mythology, really what they were fashioning

43:10.700 --> 43:15.180
for themselves was an Egyptian idol.

43:15.180 --> 43:21.860
God had just destroyed Egypt, drowned Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, demonstrated

43:21.860 --> 43:28.900
his power over a course of however long it took for the plagues in the Exodus.

43:28.900 --> 43:38.000
And the Israelites in full view of God physically manifested speaking to Moses on a mountain

43:38.000 --> 43:46.560
decide to create a calf, a golden idol, probably related to Hathor who is represented often

43:46.560 --> 43:51.200
as a cow, so an Egyptian goddess.

43:51.200 --> 43:57.560
And so there's that additional level of apostasy here from the Israelites.

43:57.560 --> 44:02.700
They're returning to the wickedness of the pagan religion with which they were familiar

44:02.700 --> 44:11.940
in Egypt, despite what they just saw God do to Egypt when he brought them out of Egypt.

44:11.940 --> 44:18.620
There's an allusion to this in Matthew 22 when the Pharisees are trying to trick Jesus.

44:18.620 --> 44:23.500
They see teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law, and Jesus said to them, You shall

44:23.500 --> 44:28.120
love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

44:28.120 --> 44:30.400
This is the great and first commandment.

44:30.400 --> 44:31.760
And the second is like it.

44:31.760 --> 44:33.840
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

44:33.840 --> 44:38.560
Of on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

44:38.560 --> 44:42.480
And so basically what Jesus is describing to the Pharisees is the first table and the

44:42.480 --> 44:44.360
second table of the law.

44:44.360 --> 44:48.880
He's describing you shall have no other gods before me and the second and third commandments

44:48.880 --> 44:51.800
that deal specifically with our relationship with God.

44:51.800 --> 44:56.420
And then the second table is our relationship with man, beginning with parents and then

44:56.420 --> 44:59.420
murder, adultery, and so forth.

44:59.420 --> 45:05.620
So when Jesus says there's a first and a second commandment, that necessarily implies

45:05.620 --> 45:08.060
that some sin is greater than others.

45:08.060 --> 45:12.420
The only alternative, if you say that all sin is equal, is to say, well, I can violate

45:12.420 --> 45:17.700
the first commandment and be an idolater, or I can do something else like steal my neighbor's

45:17.700 --> 45:18.700
ox.

45:18.700 --> 45:19.700
That's all the same.

45:19.760 --> 45:22.520
Jesus literally says in Matthew 22, it's not the same.

45:22.520 --> 45:25.760
He says the first and greatest commandment is our relationship to God.

45:25.760 --> 45:29.660
And then the second commandment is our relationship to our neighbors.

45:29.660 --> 45:30.920
And everything flows from that.

45:30.920 --> 45:35.000
And as we've said in the past, when you look at the ordering of the commandments from one

45:35.000 --> 45:37.480
through 10, it's greatest to least.

45:37.480 --> 45:43.600
At least Lutherans, we put things like chattels in the 10th position and we put God in the

45:43.600 --> 45:44.920
first position.

45:44.920 --> 45:46.480
Don't commit adultery.

45:46.480 --> 45:51.020
Don't steal your neighbor's ox or donkey or his slaves or his wife.

45:51.020 --> 45:52.700
Those are both sins.

45:52.700 --> 45:57.580
They're both damning sins, but they're at opposite ends of the spectrum of severity.

45:57.580 --> 46:02.700
It is far worse to commit idolatry than it is to steal.

46:02.700 --> 46:03.700
Stealing is bad.

46:03.700 --> 46:05.140
Idolatry is worse.

46:05.140 --> 46:06.140
Jesus says it.

46:06.140 --> 46:07.700
We have to believe it.

46:07.700 --> 46:10.780
And if we believe it, then we can't say all sins are equal.

46:10.780 --> 46:16.220
There's going to be a lot of redundancy in this episode because there's so many passages.

46:16.220 --> 46:22.520
The reason that we're doing this cumulative repetition of these various verses, and we're

46:22.520 --> 46:23.960
only scratching the surface here.

46:23.960 --> 46:27.720
There are many, many passages that deal with this specific issue.

46:27.720 --> 46:29.080
These are some of the key ones.

46:29.080 --> 46:34.720
But what these litany of passages show us are that you cannot possibly believe that all

46:34.720 --> 46:37.640
sins are equal if you believe any part of the Bible.

46:37.640 --> 46:40.840
You can turn to pretty much any book and you're going to find the same story.

46:40.840 --> 46:44.120
And that story is that there are some sins that are greater and there are some sins that

46:44.120 --> 46:45.320
are lesser.

46:45.320 --> 46:50.140
Not for the purpose of salvation, but for the purpose of sin against God and the degree

46:50.140 --> 46:55.220
to which it offends him and the degree to which the penalty that Christ paid on the cross.

46:55.220 --> 46:56.380
That's important.

46:56.380 --> 46:58.100
God says it's important.

46:58.100 --> 47:00.140
This isn't us making something up.

47:00.140 --> 47:02.140
This is not podcast or theology.

47:02.140 --> 47:04.300
It's literally just reading what's in the Bible.

47:04.300 --> 47:07.660
So the reason we're saying the same thing over and over again is that God said the same

47:07.660 --> 47:09.500
thing over and over again.

47:09.500 --> 47:13.860
And when the world is saying the opposite thing over and over again, at some point you

47:13.860 --> 47:18.040
have to wonder which book are they reading because they cannot be reading the Bible if

47:18.040 --> 47:20.400
they're saying that all sins are equal.

47:20.400 --> 47:26.080
To add just a little footnote that isn't actually, well is from the Bible and isn't

47:26.080 --> 47:27.880
at the same time.

47:27.880 --> 47:32.280
Just for those who are going to be listening with a more critical ear, yes, I am well aware

47:32.280 --> 47:42.040
that the word underlying calf in Exodus 32 is Igel and the feminine version is Iglah.

47:42.040 --> 47:48.220
But it was most likely still in some way related to Hathor because, yes, Hathor is typically

47:48.220 --> 47:54.500
represented as a female deity and thus a cow and not a young bull.

47:54.500 --> 47:58.500
Just adding that for anyone listening with a critical ear.

47:58.500 --> 48:00.020
Keeping it out of the comments.

48:00.020 --> 48:06.500
Yeah, basically I'm heading off having to field a comment somewhere on that point.

48:06.500 --> 48:07.860
That's something that people probably know.

48:07.860 --> 48:13.960
This is Cordy and I talk, we'll sometimes make these odd asides, brushing aside criticisms

48:13.960 --> 48:16.280
of what we've just said.

48:16.280 --> 48:20.600
We're such perfectionists that we're both sitting here continually critiquing what we're

48:20.600 --> 48:22.320
saying to ourselves.

48:22.320 --> 48:26.200
As I'm speaking, I have a running monologue where I'm basically heckling myself saying,

48:26.200 --> 48:27.200
well, that's not right.

48:27.200 --> 48:28.200
That's not right.

48:28.200 --> 48:29.200
You should do that better.

48:29.200 --> 48:30.200
You should have said this differently.

48:30.200 --> 48:31.840
Literally as I'm talking, as I'm thinking.

48:31.840 --> 48:37.440
And so sometimes our senses get longer and longer as we sort of tack on all these additional

48:37.440 --> 48:39.740
seemingly less important things.

48:39.740 --> 48:44.900
It's specifically because we're trying to be clear and precise in our speech and not

48:44.900 --> 48:45.900
make mistakes.

48:45.900 --> 48:51.660
And so we literally harangue ourselves in our heads so that we find all the faults.

48:51.660 --> 48:55.820
So hopefully there's not much left for someone else to find fault with.

48:55.820 --> 48:59.420
That's something that's kind of endemic to the way our brains work.

48:59.420 --> 49:03.540
But I wish the more people sort of took that care as they approached these things because

49:03.720 --> 49:08.640
just shouting catchphrases that sound nice and that make you friends with the world.

49:08.640 --> 49:12.560
If it puts you at odds with scripture, we think that's a big deal.

49:12.560 --> 49:14.600
That's why we're taking the time to do this.

49:14.600 --> 49:18.240
That's why we're suffering the indignities that Corey and I have suffered in our personal

49:18.240 --> 49:20.640
lives for the sake of doing this.

49:20.640 --> 49:21.640
This has not been fun.

49:21.640 --> 49:22.920
This has not been easy.

49:22.920 --> 49:25.160
We've taken abuse for saying these things.

49:25.160 --> 49:26.160
For what?

49:26.160 --> 49:27.160
For doing Bible studies.

49:27.160 --> 49:28.160
Okay.

49:28.160 --> 49:32.320
If people want to heap abuse on us for doing Bible studies, I think that if there's a sin

49:32.320 --> 49:37.340
here, the Bible study is a lesser sin than he who would attack us for it.

49:37.340 --> 49:41.060
It's funny that the same people who say all sins are equal are also the first to say that

49:41.060 --> 49:43.460
Corey and I are chief among sinners.

49:43.460 --> 49:47.180
Maybe that'll be a subject for another episode.

49:47.180 --> 49:49.980
The next passage I want to read is from Luke 12.

49:49.980 --> 49:55.300
And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to

49:55.300 --> 49:58.180
his will will receive a severe beating.

49:58.180 --> 50:03.520
But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating.

50:03.520 --> 50:07.520
Everyone to whom much was given of him, much will be required.

50:07.520 --> 50:12.960
And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

50:12.960 --> 50:19.480
So again, this is emphasizing not only the knowledge and forethought of the action of

50:19.480 --> 50:24.080
the individual, but it's emphasizing that they're greater and lesser punishments and

50:24.080 --> 50:30.060
that to some degree, the punishment for he who does not know what he's doing will be

50:30.060 --> 50:31.060
lesser.

50:31.060 --> 50:32.060
There's still punishment.

50:32.060 --> 50:36.980
You know, this passage, this is from ESV and so I didn't fix where I said servant.

50:36.980 --> 50:38.420
It means slave.

50:38.420 --> 50:39.580
You don't beat servants.

50:39.580 --> 50:40.580
You beat slaves.

50:40.580 --> 50:42.420
You beat someone who's your property.

50:42.420 --> 50:43.420
Maybe you should.

50:43.420 --> 50:44.420
Maybe you shouldn't.

50:44.420 --> 50:45.660
This passage condones it.

50:45.660 --> 50:50.180
It says, the greater beating will go to the slave who has sinned more greatly.

50:50.180 --> 50:54.520
The lesser beating will go to the slave who has sinned more lightly.

50:54.520 --> 50:58.440
Lighter beating, lighter consequence for a lighter sin.

50:58.440 --> 51:03.320
Again, it doesn't explicitly say greater and lesser degrees of sin, but it's the same principle

51:03.320 --> 51:07.560
playing out again because it's exactly the point.

51:07.560 --> 51:10.320
These things are everywhere in scripture.

51:10.320 --> 51:14.800
And once you start to understand that this notion of equality and of everything being

51:14.800 --> 51:19.100
equal and identical, it's antithetical to scripture.

51:19.100 --> 51:22.300
It's something new in a new religion.

51:22.300 --> 51:25.540
It's not something that came from God.

51:25.540 --> 51:27.940
Next one I wanted to cover was from James 3.

51:27.940 --> 51:30.620
It's a very short one that we've referred to before.

51:30.620 --> 51:34.420
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will

51:34.420 --> 51:38.260
be judged with the stricter judgment.

51:38.260 --> 51:44.380
Again, if everything is the same, how can there possibly be a stricter judgment?

51:44.380 --> 51:47.160
And consider this.

51:47.160 --> 51:51.160
This is being written about Christians.

51:51.160 --> 51:56.040
It's not being written about a stricter judgment in terms of believer and unbeliever.

51:56.040 --> 51:57.520
This is not about soteriology.

51:57.520 --> 52:00.120
This is not about whether or not someone's saved.

52:00.120 --> 52:05.640
It's saying that even if you are saved, if you choose to become a teacher, you opt into

52:05.640 --> 52:10.720
a stricter judgment, you will face harsher consequences.

52:11.620 --> 52:17.820
Now, in heaven, harsher consequences don't mean punishment, but there are degrees of

52:17.820 --> 52:18.820
glory in heaven.

52:18.820 --> 52:23.500
We probably won't get in some of those passages today, but it's clear that the rewards in

52:23.500 --> 52:25.780
heaven are also given unequally.

52:25.780 --> 52:32.820
When Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first, how is that not unequal?

52:32.820 --> 52:37.340
All of these phrases that are so common to the way God speaks about heaven and about

52:37.400 --> 52:45.920
reordering the ungodly, worldly life and a heavenly life, it's all about inequality.

52:45.920 --> 52:48.440
The first shall be last.

52:48.440 --> 52:49.560
That's not fair.

52:49.560 --> 52:50.720
That's not equal.

52:50.720 --> 52:55.600
That's saying that someone who lived like a king today and did not live in a gogly fashion,

52:55.600 --> 52:59.160
even if he's saved, he's not going to be first in heaven.

52:59.160 --> 53:00.680
He's going to sit at the back.

53:00.680 --> 53:02.600
He's not going to have the place of honor.

53:02.600 --> 53:06.720
It's going to be the widows and the orphans and those who had the least and were the most

53:06.740 --> 53:11.180
humble and seemed the most pathetic.

53:11.180 --> 53:16.260
Those will be the ones whom God elevates as the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

53:16.260 --> 53:17.700
It's not just about station in life.

53:17.700 --> 53:20.060
It's not just about class system.

53:20.060 --> 53:22.740
It's also about works.

53:22.740 --> 53:28.460
When God judges more strictly teachers, those who have taught faithfully will receive great

53:28.460 --> 53:29.660
rewards.

53:29.660 --> 53:34.900
Those who have taught unfaithfully but were still saved, they're not going to get much

53:34.900 --> 53:35.900
for it.

53:35.920 --> 53:37.360
We don't know how that plays out.

53:37.360 --> 53:41.920
We're not giving specifics because God gives none, but God absolutely says that these things

53:41.920 --> 53:43.240
will occur.

53:43.240 --> 53:49.640
All we in the 21st century need to know is that it's unequal.

53:49.640 --> 53:52.400
Some get more, some get less in heaven.

53:52.400 --> 53:59.080
In perfection, some get more and some get less based on the degree of their sin today.

54:00.020 --> 54:06.700
For a teacher to be judged with stricter judgment based on his teachings implies that there

54:06.700 --> 54:11.500
are some teachings that are sinful and that the greater degree of sin and teaching, the

54:11.500 --> 54:15.740
greater lack of glory will be given for that teacher.

54:15.740 --> 54:20.340
It may well be a teacher who spent his whole life teaching falsely but somehow was filled

54:20.340 --> 54:21.700
still a Christian.

54:21.700 --> 54:24.100
I don't know what he's going to get in heaven.

54:24.100 --> 54:25.100
He's going to be in heaven.

54:25.100 --> 54:30.720
He's going to be perfect for him but will not be as greatly rewarding to him as if he

54:30.720 --> 54:32.240
had been a faithful teacher.

54:32.240 --> 54:34.480
Again, we don't know what that looks like.

54:34.480 --> 54:35.480
It's not our business.

54:35.480 --> 54:36.480
It's not our problem.

54:36.480 --> 54:37.680
It's in God's hands.

54:37.680 --> 54:39.800
We can trust that he will act perfectly.

54:39.800 --> 54:43.760
All we need to know is that when we run around saying, yeah, it's all the same man, that

54:43.760 --> 54:45.840
we're not agreeing with what God says.

54:45.840 --> 54:52.960
Yes, of course, we do know that we have elected to be subject to the stricter judgment because

54:52.960 --> 54:59.020
what we're doing here is teaching and we are both well aware of that fact.

54:59.020 --> 55:03.500
But I would also highlight here that I do think the implication that comes along with

55:03.500 --> 55:09.180
this is something to which Christians should pay attention.

55:09.180 --> 55:14.460
There are different kinds of teachers, the same as there are different degrees of sin.

55:14.460 --> 55:21.100
If you are a pastor, you are a teacher in the church, you are an overseer, you have responsibilities

55:21.360 --> 55:27.040
and you will be held to account for what you did or did not do in this life.

55:27.040 --> 55:31.800
When you spoke falsely, when you minimized parts of scripture, when you ignored parts

55:31.800 --> 55:35.660
of scripture, God will ask you about that at the judgment.

55:35.660 --> 55:39.280
You will have to give an answer.

55:39.280 --> 55:45.080
But there are other teachers as well and those teachers will be held accountable for what

55:45.080 --> 55:49.800
they did or did not do in the office that was given them by God.

55:49.820 --> 55:53.580
It's not going to be the same sort of stricter judgment as someone who stands up to teach

55:53.580 --> 55:55.060
in the church.

55:55.060 --> 55:58.220
That is what is in view here.

55:58.220 --> 56:03.020
But if you're a parent, you're a teacher and you will be called to account for whether

56:03.020 --> 56:06.260
you taught your children correctly or not.

56:06.260 --> 56:11.380
If you are an employer, you will be called to account for how you treated and dealt with

56:11.380 --> 56:13.260
your employees.

56:13.260 --> 56:18.580
Now there may be some complexity there when it comes to teaching the faith to employees

56:18.580 --> 56:25.000
and how much of a duty an employer has there is up for debate.

56:25.000 --> 56:30.720
But if you are the master of a house, you are responsible for everyone in your household.

56:30.720 --> 56:36.760
You are a teacher by virtue of your office and it is your duty to fulfill that faithfully.

56:36.760 --> 56:45.220
Again, no, you will not be held to this particular high level of scrutiny and strictness because

56:45.220 --> 56:47.220
you did not stand up to teach in the church.

56:47.220 --> 56:52.880
You did not deliberately stand up to handle the things of God.

56:52.880 --> 57:00.840
But by virtue of the office given you by God, you do have a lesser version of this duty.

57:00.840 --> 57:05.000
And it is vitally important for Christians to bear that in mind when they go about their

57:05.000 --> 57:06.400
daily tasks.

57:06.400 --> 57:10.680
If you are a father, are you training your wife?

57:10.680 --> 57:12.480
Are you training your children?

57:12.480 --> 57:16.880
Are you training those who work in your household if you have others who work in your household

57:16.880 --> 57:18.660
or live in your household?

57:18.660 --> 57:25.060
Are you doing the things God gave you to do by virtue of the office he gave you?

57:25.060 --> 57:32.260
If you are not, you are falling short of the mark and falling short of the mark is one

57:32.260 --> 57:37.900
of the things that is meant by one of the words we translate as sin.

57:37.900 --> 57:39.780
Do not sin by omission.

57:39.780 --> 57:45.860
Yes, it is possible to sin by commission, but it is also possible to sin by omission,

57:45.880 --> 57:50.360
which simply means it is possible to sin by doing something, and it is possible to sin

57:50.360 --> 57:54.480
by failing to do something that you should have done.

57:54.480 --> 57:59.760
And for specific details on what we mean when we say that we are teachers, go back and listen

57:59.760 --> 58:02.680
to the first episode of Stonequire, episode number one.

58:02.680 --> 58:08.200
We specifically talked about the difference between what a pastor does and what a teacher

58:08.200 --> 58:11.760
who is addressing an anonymous audience.

58:11.760 --> 58:17.500
So there's no accountability for anyone listening to us, to us.

58:17.500 --> 58:22.100
There's no relationship between you as a listener where we hold you accountable for what we

58:22.100 --> 58:23.100
are teaching.

58:23.100 --> 58:26.860
However, what we are teaching, we are accountable to God for.

58:26.860 --> 58:27.860
That is the difference.

58:27.860 --> 58:31.740
A pastor is accountable for the souls in his parish.

58:31.740 --> 58:37.620
A teacher in an audience hall doesn't have accountability in the same way.

58:37.620 --> 58:39.780
He's not necessarily taking attendance.

58:39.780 --> 58:40.780
He doesn't know who's there.

58:40.800 --> 58:45.480
In the lecture, he shows up, people show up, you listen, you take it or leave it.

58:45.480 --> 58:48.000
When we say that we are teachers, it is in that sense.

58:48.000 --> 58:49.640
We are teaching from Scripture.

58:49.640 --> 58:56.000
We're saying things that God says, and we're giving you what we believe is a faithful explanation

58:56.000 --> 59:00.400
for those things, particularly as they relate to the world today.

59:00.400 --> 59:05.880
But that is not to say that it is taught with any authority beyond the authority of Scripture

59:05.880 --> 59:06.880
itself.

59:06.940 --> 59:11.300
We're not making any claim-based credentials or anything.

59:11.300 --> 59:12.300
Take it or leave it.

59:12.300 --> 59:15.980
If what we say is good, it's because you agree with Scripture.

59:15.980 --> 59:20.860
If you don't like it, okay, if you don't take your arguments, that's between you and

59:20.860 --> 59:21.860
God.

59:21.860 --> 59:23.060
If we're wrong, we answer to God.

59:23.060 --> 59:25.460
If you're wrong, you answer to God.

59:25.460 --> 59:27.900
We don't have to worry about that.

59:27.900 --> 59:33.220
And again, from the Luke 12 passage, everyone to whom much has been given of him, much

59:33.220 --> 59:35.140
will be required.

59:35.400 --> 59:37.240
We're smart.

59:37.240 --> 59:38.920
We're good at this.

59:38.920 --> 59:43.680
Even if someone thinks that what we're saying is false, particularly those who are hate

59:43.680 --> 59:48.720
listening who believe that we're false teachers, they admit that we're extremely good at it.

59:48.720 --> 59:52.560
Those who listen and like what we say also think that we're good at this.

59:52.560 --> 59:58.280
We've had a very warm and welcome and widespread reception to the way that we're explaining

59:58.280 --> 01:00:02.080
things on Stone Choir because we're good at it.

01:00:02.080 --> 01:00:05.740
The reason we're doing it is that much has been given to us.

01:00:05.740 --> 01:00:08.940
What were we doing the year before we started this podcast?

01:00:08.940 --> 01:00:12.380
We were not using our gifts the way we're using them now.

01:00:12.380 --> 01:00:13.440
That was sin.

01:00:13.440 --> 01:00:15.340
We should have been doing this earlier.

01:00:15.340 --> 01:00:16.660
We talked about it earlier.

01:00:16.660 --> 01:00:21.340
I avoided it because I knew that harm would come to my family from evil men who would

01:00:21.340 --> 01:00:25.940
seek to destroy me for the sake of telling the truth because that's the state of the

01:00:25.940 --> 01:00:26.940
world today.

01:00:26.940 --> 01:00:28.100
It's the state of the church today.

01:00:28.100 --> 01:00:32.160
I put it off because I didn't want to cause harm to my family.

01:00:32.160 --> 01:00:37.360
It eventually got to the point by the end of 2022 that it became clear that I had no

01:00:37.360 --> 01:00:38.360
choice.

01:00:38.360 --> 01:00:41.600
Corey and I talked about it and we finally pulled the trigger on something.

01:00:41.600 --> 01:00:45.840
I think we both knew from the time we met that we pretty much had to do this.

01:00:45.840 --> 01:00:46.960
Other people had talked about it before.

01:00:46.960 --> 01:00:51.480
We joked about it for a couple of years, but we avoided it sinfully.

01:00:51.480 --> 01:00:54.120
We stopped sinning and now we're doing it.

01:00:54.120 --> 01:00:59.940
Now we're accused of sin for doing it, so again, in a minute we'll get to the judgmental

01:00:59.940 --> 01:01:00.940
stuff.

01:01:00.940 --> 01:01:04.700
I just want to point out, when we say we're teachers, it's not bragging.

01:01:04.700 --> 01:01:07.500
The reason we're doing this is that we have been given gifts.

01:01:07.500 --> 01:01:10.700
We believe as a matter of conscience we have no choice but to do this.

01:01:10.700 --> 01:01:13.620
We believe that it's obedience to God for us to do this.

01:01:13.620 --> 01:01:16.700
We don't have a choice.

01:01:16.700 --> 01:01:21.780
I don't want to put it like it's that important to not remain silent.

01:01:21.780 --> 01:01:23.820
That's why we named it what we did.

01:01:23.840 --> 01:01:26.600
We give an explanation at the end of the first episode.

01:01:26.600 --> 01:01:30.880
We are the stones who cry out, not because we feel that we have a vocation to, but we

01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:34.640
have the aptitude to, and no one else was doing it.

01:01:34.640 --> 01:01:38.760
Now that we've begun doing it, other men are beginning to speak up against the same evil.

01:01:38.760 --> 01:01:42.240
That is what needs to happen because two guys of the podcast aren't going to do anything

01:01:42.240 --> 01:01:43.440
by themselves.

01:01:43.440 --> 01:01:46.280
If we're just shouting into the void, nothing changes.

01:01:46.280 --> 01:01:52.000
It takes hearts and minds elsewhere in the church reorienting towards what God has said

01:01:52.180 --> 01:01:58.540
so that we can all become faithful members of faithful churches again.

01:01:58.540 --> 01:02:03.780
The last passage we're going to read in this section from Matthew 5 amplifies from James

01:02:03.780 --> 01:02:04.780
3.

01:02:04.780 --> 01:02:09.060
Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to

01:02:09.060 --> 01:02:13.820
do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches

01:02:13.820 --> 01:02:16.220
them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

01:02:16.220 --> 01:02:21.620
Again, this is reiterating greater punishment, greater reward, least and greatest.

01:02:21.760 --> 01:02:24.080
Connishment maybe isn't quite the right word.

01:02:24.080 --> 01:02:26.400
Called the least in heaven, you're still in heaven, so great.

01:02:26.400 --> 01:02:27.400
You cross the finish line.

01:02:27.400 --> 01:02:29.400
That is a cause for celebration.

01:02:29.400 --> 01:02:32.000
However, you're going to be the least.

01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:33.600
It's not a popularity contest.

01:02:33.600 --> 01:02:37.160
It's not striving to be number one in heaven.

01:02:37.160 --> 01:02:40.600
We all know that it's not us.

01:02:40.600 --> 01:02:46.280
The scripture talks some about the ranking there, and we have a little bit.

01:02:46.280 --> 01:02:47.920
We know that there's a ranking.

01:02:47.940 --> 01:02:54.980
Jesus Disciples argued over who is going to be seated at his right hand, and the question

01:02:54.980 --> 01:02:55.980
is valid.

01:02:55.980 --> 01:02:57.940
The concern isn't our problem.

01:02:57.940 --> 01:02:59.940
That's God's gift to give.

01:02:59.940 --> 01:03:04.860
What we have to worry about is that in this life, our actions do not shame God, do not

01:03:04.860 --> 01:03:09.180
waste the gifts that we've been given, and that if God says something, we're not ashamed

01:03:09.180 --> 01:03:12.300
of it, and we just believe it and we follow through with it.

01:03:12.300 --> 01:03:17.900
Again, to finish out this thing on all sins not being equal, we're not saying,

01:03:17.900 --> 01:03:19.920
oh, if you obey God, you'll be saved.

01:03:19.920 --> 01:03:23.840
You're already saved, so how can you best obey God?

01:03:23.840 --> 01:03:27.880
You're just changing the word order, but it fundamentally alters the equation, and that's

01:03:27.880 --> 01:03:30.360
the reason that these subjects are important.

01:03:30.360 --> 01:03:36.040
To emphasize what was said about teachers and what will be demanded from teachers and

01:03:36.040 --> 01:03:43.080
others, from him to whom much has been given will much be required.

01:03:43.080 --> 01:03:45.160
That is the long and the short of it.

01:03:45.160 --> 01:03:50.060
If you have been given a particular set of gifts and you are not using them in service

01:03:50.060 --> 01:03:54.140
of the kingdom, you will be judged for that.

01:03:54.140 --> 01:04:00.620
That's not necessarily going to damn you, but you are not going to receive the rewards

01:04:00.620 --> 01:04:06.500
that you would have received if you had used the gifts given you by God to do the good

01:04:06.500 --> 01:04:11.180
works He prepared for you to do.

01:04:11.180 --> 01:04:16.440
And that is the case if God has given you intelligence, you should be using that in

01:04:16.440 --> 01:04:18.320
service of the kingdom.

01:04:18.320 --> 01:04:22.880
If He has given you material wealth, you should be using that in service of the kingdom.

01:04:22.880 --> 01:04:29.000
If you are someone to whom God has given tens, hundreds of millions of dollars, you should

01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:35.080
absolutely be using that to fix up church buildings, to fund the soup kitchens, to help

01:04:35.080 --> 01:04:37.160
others in your congregation who are struggling.

01:04:37.180 --> 01:04:42.380
You should be using the things God has given you to help others, because those are good

01:04:42.380 --> 01:04:43.380
works.

01:04:43.380 --> 01:04:48.020
Those are the good works prepared specifically for you, because He gave you the means to do

01:04:48.020 --> 01:04:49.020
it.

01:04:49.020 --> 01:04:54.420
And when it comes to teaching, if God has given you a perceptive mind, the ability to

01:04:54.420 --> 01:05:01.220
process materials, knack for languages, whatever it happens to be, all of these various capacities

01:05:01.280 --> 01:05:06.200
that go into being a good teacher of any particular subject.

01:05:06.200 --> 01:05:12.920
Because you can serve God teaching law, the same as you can serve God teaching theology.

01:05:12.920 --> 01:05:15.040
You can serve God making shoes.

01:05:15.040 --> 01:05:19.600
If He gave you a particular dexterity, you're very good with your hands.

01:05:19.600 --> 01:05:20.920
You may be a surgeon.

01:05:20.920 --> 01:05:21.920
You may be a cobbler.

01:05:21.920 --> 01:05:26.440
It just depends on the abilities that God has given you.

01:05:26.440 --> 01:05:33.100
What will be required of you at the judgment is what you did with the gifts that were given

01:05:33.100 --> 01:05:35.100
you by God.

01:05:35.100 --> 01:05:43.620
Yes, there is the central judgment, the core matter upon which you are sent to the right

01:05:43.620 --> 01:05:46.660
or the left hand, whether you are a sheep or a goat.

01:05:46.660 --> 01:05:51.060
And that is whether or not you have faith in Christ.

01:05:51.060 --> 01:05:57.480
But after that the books are opened and your deeds are read from them, and you will have

01:05:57.480 --> 01:06:05.440
good works or you will not, depending on what you did in this life with what God gave you.

01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:09.180
And that again is why we are doing this podcast.

01:06:09.180 --> 01:06:15.960
God gave us the ability to look at these materials, to understand them, to read through the resources,

01:06:15.960 --> 01:06:18.160
and then to teach others.

01:06:18.160 --> 01:06:20.700
And so we are using the gifts that He gave us.

01:06:20.700 --> 01:06:27.220
And as mentioned, in the balance of our lives here to four, we've used those gifts largely

01:06:27.220 --> 01:06:29.420
for other things.

01:06:29.420 --> 01:06:31.300
I've taught a little bit in the church in the past.

01:06:31.300 --> 01:06:36.700
I taught through part of Genesis until COVID kind of killed that.

01:06:36.700 --> 01:06:41.380
But for most of my life, no, I didn't focus on these things and use the gifts in the way

01:06:41.380 --> 01:06:43.620
that I should have been using them all along.

01:06:43.620 --> 01:06:46.420
I should have been doing this for far longer than I have.

01:06:46.420 --> 01:06:49.720
We both recognize that.

01:06:49.720 --> 01:06:57.400
But it is better to begin doing the things God wants you to do today than saying, oh,

01:06:57.400 --> 01:07:03.520
well, I didn't do it for the last ten years, so it's already too late.

01:07:03.520 --> 01:07:08.360
That's just Satan again telling you you've committed too many sins over too long of a

01:07:08.360 --> 01:07:09.360
period.

01:07:09.360 --> 01:07:10.360
They're too great.

01:07:10.360 --> 01:07:11.360
They're too heinous.

01:07:11.360 --> 01:07:12.760
God couldn't possibly forgive you.

01:07:12.760 --> 01:07:14.640
And that's false.

01:07:14.640 --> 01:07:17.580
Your sins are already forgiven.

01:07:17.580 --> 01:07:19.980
Start doing the good works now.

01:07:19.980 --> 01:07:22.820
That is part of Christian life.

01:07:22.820 --> 01:07:24.860
No good works do not save you.

01:07:24.860 --> 01:07:27.820
Again, we went over this five hundred years ago.

01:07:27.820 --> 01:07:29.820
We had this fight.

01:07:29.820 --> 01:07:35.300
We won because we resorted to Scripture and the adversaries did not.

01:07:35.300 --> 01:07:37.860
Good works will not save you.

01:07:37.860 --> 01:07:41.500
Good works do not contribute to your justification.

01:07:41.500 --> 01:07:44.620
Good works do not make you ready for justification.

01:07:44.620 --> 01:07:47.640
Good works do not complete your justification.

01:07:47.640 --> 01:07:53.040
Good works do nothing for your justification.

01:07:53.040 --> 01:08:00.040
But you still have to do them as a Christian because a living faith will produce fruit.

01:08:00.040 --> 01:08:05.960
The same as a living tree, a living tree, a healthy fruit tree produces fruit.

01:08:05.960 --> 01:08:12.200
If your faith is a living and healthy tree, it will produce good works because those are

01:08:12.200 --> 01:08:17.300
the fruit of a living Christian faith.

01:08:17.300 --> 01:08:21.380
And so if you have not been doing those works, if you have not been using the gifts God gave

01:08:21.380 --> 01:08:25.780
you, start now.

01:08:25.780 --> 01:08:31.780
And so we will finish up today with one more passage also from Matthew being Sermon on

01:08:31.780 --> 01:08:33.580
the Mount.

01:08:33.580 --> 01:08:37.780
You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that

01:08:37.780 --> 01:08:42.000
everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with

01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:43.640
her in his heart.

01:08:43.640 --> 01:08:48.560
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better

01:08:48.560 --> 01:08:53.360
that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

01:08:53.360 --> 01:08:58.360
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better

01:08:58.360 --> 01:09:04.180
that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

01:09:04.180 --> 01:09:10.600
And so what we see here in the teaching on lust or adultery on the Sermon of the Mount,

01:09:10.600 --> 01:09:18.840
in the Sermon of the Mount is you have a progression of sin from least terrible to most terrible.

01:09:18.840 --> 01:09:24.560
The ultimate end of this chain is not actually listed by Christ, because the ultimate end

01:09:24.560 --> 01:09:27.600
of course is actual adultery.

01:09:27.600 --> 01:09:34.340
And so it's the wandering eye that drives that grasping hand that pulls the body down

01:09:34.340 --> 01:09:38.260
into adultery and ultimately the soul down into hell.

01:09:38.260 --> 01:09:41.140
And that's what we're dealing with here.

01:09:41.140 --> 01:09:47.580
You have a progression of sins and every step is worse than the previous one.

01:09:47.580 --> 01:09:55.660
If you look at a woman with lustful intent, that is adulterous sin, but it is not as bad

01:09:55.720 --> 01:10:02.720
as reaching out and grasping that woman, which is of course the physical manifestation, the

01:10:02.720 --> 01:10:05.760
beginning of the ultimate act of adultery.

01:10:05.760 --> 01:10:11.680
And that is not as bad as the actual act of adultery.

01:10:11.680 --> 01:10:12.800
These are degrees of sin.

01:10:12.800 --> 01:10:19.800
This is Christ's teaching on the progression of sin, because we see this with all sin.

01:10:19.800 --> 01:10:23.120
Sin always gets worse.

01:10:23.120 --> 01:10:28.100
And so the time to stop sinning, of course, is before you start, but the second best time

01:10:28.100 --> 01:10:33.180
to stop sinning is the second you recognize it is sin.

01:10:33.180 --> 01:10:36.140
Because if you continue, it will get worse.

01:10:36.140 --> 01:10:41.260
You will commit more egregious sin, because it is always the little sin that Satan gets

01:10:41.260 --> 01:10:47.180
you to commit, the little sin where you give into the flesh and some minor thing that leads

01:10:47.240 --> 01:10:50.540
to another sin and another and another.

01:10:50.540 --> 01:10:53.960
And ultimately you commit heinous sins.

01:10:53.960 --> 01:10:58.520
You will, of course, ultimately apostatize if you continue down that path, because it

01:10:58.520 --> 01:11:03.960
becomes a willful turning away from God at some point.

01:11:03.960 --> 01:11:10.320
And so here on the teaching on lust, if you look at a woman lustfully and most of this

01:11:10.320 --> 01:11:15.880
audience undoubtedly is male, you are going to do this in life.

01:11:15.880 --> 01:11:18.760
You are a fallen and sinful being.

01:11:18.760 --> 01:11:20.540
Your passions are not rightly ordered.

01:11:20.540 --> 01:11:25.220
You are going to look at a woman with lustful intent, particularly given the reality of

01:11:25.220 --> 01:11:29.780
our current social situation, let's call it.

01:11:29.780 --> 01:11:34.020
Turn away, close the browser tab, walk away from the computer, whatever it happens to

01:11:34.020 --> 01:11:38.020
be, whatever the temptation is, flee.

01:11:38.020 --> 01:11:41.820
That is the advice of Scripture is to flee the temptation.

01:11:41.820 --> 01:11:44.900
If you cannot flee the temptation, pray.

01:11:44.920 --> 01:11:47.040
Pray the Lord's prayer.

01:11:47.040 --> 01:11:52.960
Do the best you can to minimize this temptation because men are visual.

01:11:52.960 --> 01:11:54.360
That's a simple fact.

01:11:54.360 --> 01:12:00.720
And so looking at the woman with lustful intent, that desire that starts with the eye is going

01:12:00.720 --> 01:12:02.920
to lead to more.

01:12:02.920 --> 01:12:08.880
It may be you look at the woman first and then you decide to go and talk to this woman

01:12:08.880 --> 01:12:11.240
who you have a lustful desire for.

01:12:11.240 --> 01:12:13.040
You've committed an additional sin.

01:12:13.040 --> 01:12:18.180
No talking to a woman is not a sin, but it's the intent you have behind it.

01:12:18.180 --> 01:12:20.700
And then you ask her out for a drink.

01:12:20.700 --> 01:12:24.740
The sin progresses, it gets worse.

01:12:24.740 --> 01:12:28.460
Flee from the sin as soon as the temptation arises.

01:12:28.460 --> 01:12:32.980
Yes, that internal desire, that concupiscence itself is sin.

01:12:32.980 --> 01:12:36.740
You've already committed the sin when you've looked at her with lustful intent.

01:12:36.740 --> 01:12:42.860
But you don't have to continue the chain and commit worse and more egregious sins.

01:12:42.860 --> 01:12:49.440
So the Christian response is to turn to God because God will give you a way to escape from

01:12:49.440 --> 01:12:50.440
the sin.

01:12:50.440 --> 01:12:51.880
He promises that.

01:12:51.880 --> 01:12:53.760
Look for that way to escape the sin.

01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:59.240
If it's fleeing, if it's praying, minimizing whatever it is you can do, flee from the sin.

01:12:59.240 --> 01:13:06.120
Do not follow this chain that Satan wants you to follow because what he wants you to do

01:13:06.120 --> 01:13:09.680
is he wants you to start off thinking, well, looking isn't that bad.

01:13:09.740 --> 01:13:13.580
Yeah, it's a sin, but there are much worse things I could be doing.

01:13:13.580 --> 01:13:15.860
So I'll look.

01:13:15.860 --> 01:13:22.220
He wants you to follow from that all the way down into the depths until you commit fornication,

01:13:22.220 --> 01:13:24.820
adultery, whatever it happens to be.

01:13:24.820 --> 01:13:29.140
And then he's going to turn around and tell you, look, you're just a sinner.

01:13:29.140 --> 01:13:30.740
You've already committed this heinous act.

01:13:30.740 --> 01:13:32.180
God won't forgive you for this.

01:13:32.180 --> 01:13:34.500
You may as well keep sinning.

01:13:34.500 --> 01:13:36.100
That's his end goal.

01:13:36.100 --> 01:13:38.940
Do not follow him into the pit.

01:13:38.940 --> 01:13:46.840
The important thing to note about the progression of sin is that looking lustfully is a sin.

01:13:46.840 --> 01:13:49.720
And then any follow on are additional sins.

01:13:49.720 --> 01:13:57.600
And I think this is something that the all sins are equal lie, actually weaponizes upfront.

01:13:57.600 --> 01:14:03.440
It's not only at the end where you've already committed fully to a life of sin and you say,

01:14:03.440 --> 01:14:05.960
well, I've already done, I may as well keep doing it.

01:14:05.980 --> 01:14:12.300
If you believe that all sins are equal and you catch yourself looking lustfully at someone,

01:14:12.300 --> 01:14:20.340
well, if all sins are equal, then the natural rationalization of that circumstance is what?

01:14:20.340 --> 01:14:22.180
In for a penny, in for a pound.

01:14:22.180 --> 01:14:27.580
I already looked at her with lust on my heart, which Jesus says is actual adultery.

01:14:27.580 --> 01:14:31.620
So if I'm already an adulterer, why shouldn't I follow through?

01:14:31.620 --> 01:14:33.100
Why shouldn't I complete the act?

01:14:33.100 --> 01:14:34.180
I'm already guilty.

01:14:34.240 --> 01:14:35.800
I may as well enjoy it too.

01:14:35.800 --> 01:14:37.440
That's the trap.

01:14:37.440 --> 01:14:42.080
If you believe that all sins are equal, then it's very, like that's, it's false.

01:14:42.080 --> 01:14:47.120
That's what I just said is a lie, but it is a very easy lie that can be rationalized in

01:14:47.120 --> 01:14:50.320
the mind of someone who's ultimately just self-serving.

01:14:50.320 --> 01:14:55.880
Even if you listen to part of what these people are saying, God said, which is false.

01:14:55.880 --> 01:14:56.880
God didn't say that.

01:14:56.880 --> 01:14:58.240
God said these things.

01:14:58.240 --> 01:15:03.880
But even if you listen to it and it informs your actions, the lie of all sins being equal

01:15:03.900 --> 01:15:09.380
may very well cause you to commit greater sins because you don't believe they're greater.

01:15:09.380 --> 01:15:11.700
See, that's the trap.

01:15:11.700 --> 01:15:14.100
If all sins are equal, how can you commit a greater sin?

01:15:14.100 --> 01:15:16.500
You're already a sinner, so who cares?

01:15:16.500 --> 01:15:19.180
Like Jesus died for me, he took care of all this crap.

01:15:19.180 --> 01:15:21.260
What do I need to worry about?

01:15:21.260 --> 01:15:23.500
That's part of the ultimate trap.

01:15:23.500 --> 01:15:25.700
It's not just that all sins are equal.

01:15:25.700 --> 01:15:31.260
It's just that individual sin is equal to any other individual sin.

01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:37.880
Necessarily, any volume of sins is also equal to a different volume of sins.

01:15:37.880 --> 01:15:42.760
Someone who commits a hundred sins in a day versus someone who commits a thousand sins

01:15:42.760 --> 01:15:45.400
in a day, there's no way to quantify that.

01:15:45.400 --> 01:15:46.920
We don't even know how often we sin.

01:15:46.920 --> 01:15:52.000
It's impossible, but even for the sake of argument, if it were quantifiable, both are

01:15:52.000 --> 01:15:56.840
equally damned, but if you believe that all sins are equal, you can't say to the man who's

01:15:56.840 --> 01:16:00.080
only committed a hundred sins, you got 900 more.

01:16:00.080 --> 01:16:02.900
You're not going to be any worse than that other guy.

01:16:02.900 --> 01:16:05.380
That's what these false teachings do to us.

01:16:05.380 --> 01:16:07.220
They ultimately give license.

01:16:07.220 --> 01:16:13.700
See, they're sold as a way of being loving and being caring and not being judgmental,

01:16:13.700 --> 01:16:18.180
but ultimately what they do is they give license to greater and greater sin, which again,

01:16:18.180 --> 01:16:22.100
ultimately always leads to separation of the soul from God.

01:16:22.100 --> 01:16:28.660
It's what Satan wants, which is why this all sins are equal stuff is a pernicious sin.

01:16:28.660 --> 01:16:33.240
It is a vicious, evil thing that is spread among us.

01:16:33.240 --> 01:16:35.960
Some people have it say with good intentions.

01:16:35.960 --> 01:16:40.040
Other people say because they know that they're covering for their own greater sins.

01:16:40.040 --> 01:16:44.840
They know that they're up to no good and they don't want to be judged more harshly than

01:16:44.840 --> 01:16:46.200
someone else.

01:16:46.200 --> 01:16:51.280
They pump this smoke screen into the air so that you can't judge them.

01:16:51.280 --> 01:16:54.160
I mentioned a couple of times we're going to be doing judge not in this episode.

01:16:54.160 --> 01:16:56.520
We're already getting along on time.

01:16:56.540 --> 01:17:00.340
Next week, we've decided we're going to be doing an episode on antinomianism where we're

01:17:00.340 --> 01:17:05.940
specifically going to talk for probably close to two hours again, specifically about judge

01:17:05.940 --> 01:17:12.620
not and the modern view was not modern, but it's a recurring theme of antinomianism or

01:17:12.620 --> 01:17:19.220
against the law where people set their hearts against what God says because they don't like

01:17:19.220 --> 01:17:22.540
the sound of it and judge not is a part of that.

01:17:22.540 --> 01:17:26.140
If you say you can judge people, again, it's another smoke screen.

01:17:26.160 --> 01:17:31.560
It's a defense mechanism to say, hey, man, my sins are no worse than yours or no better

01:17:31.560 --> 01:17:32.800
than yours.

01:17:32.800 --> 01:17:34.200
We're all equal, right?

01:17:34.200 --> 01:17:36.000
So don't you tell me what's wrong with me?

01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:41.920
Well, where does the law go in that world where you can't tell someone of their sin?

01:17:41.920 --> 01:17:44.160
How can they be corrected?

01:17:44.160 --> 01:17:49.800
If scripture is useful for rebuke and correction of error and yet rebuke is forbidden by this

01:17:49.800 --> 01:17:55.160
modern morality, are you going to be Christian or are you going to be the modern religious

01:17:55.180 --> 01:18:00.860
person that says he's Christian, that does things that kill the Christian faith?

01:18:00.860 --> 01:18:04.180
That's what this comes down to, so we're going to do another episode on this.

01:18:04.180 --> 01:18:09.380
It'll be not quite a follow-on, but a natural continuation of the essence of judging and

01:18:09.380 --> 01:18:10.580
the law.

01:18:10.580 --> 01:18:13.540
We've talked in the past about what the nature of the law is.

01:18:13.540 --> 01:18:17.020
If you'd like a refresher, I'd recommend going back and listening to the episode on

01:18:17.020 --> 01:18:18.380
Perfect Hatred.

01:18:18.380 --> 01:18:23.980
We talk at some length about the manner in which the law is eternal and it's functionally,

01:18:23.980 --> 01:18:26.160
it's God's eternal will.

01:18:26.160 --> 01:18:31.880
What God wants for the world, what he wants for us individually, does not change.

01:18:31.880 --> 01:18:35.320
The rules are not fickle.

01:18:35.320 --> 01:18:36.400
God's not fickle.

01:18:36.400 --> 01:18:38.880
The rules are not capricious.

01:18:38.880 --> 01:18:44.280
What God desires is that which is good and holy, and when we set our minds and our hearts

01:18:44.280 --> 01:18:49.600
at odds with that, we create the hell on earth that we're all experiencing now.

01:18:50.420 --> 01:18:55.420
I'll just leave you with the thought that these things that seem small, like what's

01:18:55.420 --> 01:19:00.400
the big deal if someone says all sins are equal and someone says they're not?

01:19:00.400 --> 01:19:05.860
On a surface, it doesn't seem like it's much of a distinction because it's process especially.

01:19:05.860 --> 01:19:08.780
One way or another, we know that Jesus paid for all our sins.

01:19:08.780 --> 01:19:11.780
Who cares if one sin is worse than another?

01:19:11.780 --> 01:19:13.620
Are you saying you're better than me?

01:19:13.620 --> 01:19:14.620
No.

01:19:14.640 --> 01:19:21.080
Nothing to do with an individual asserting being better or worse than another Christian.

01:19:21.080 --> 01:19:25.280
The problem is that these are matters that ultimately separate souls from God.

01:19:25.280 --> 01:19:26.720
Satan knows what he's doing.

01:19:26.720 --> 01:19:31.160
When Satan comes up with this rhetoric, like all sins are equal, he knows it's going to

01:19:31.160 --> 01:19:33.240
play in our hearts and minds.

01:19:33.240 --> 01:19:35.800
He knows what we want to hear because it's license.

01:19:35.800 --> 01:19:37.960
It's basically a free pass.

01:19:37.960 --> 01:19:41.920
That's not how the pastors sell it, but it's how hearts receive it.

01:19:41.920 --> 01:19:44.280
For some of the pastors, it's what they intend.

01:19:44.280 --> 01:19:48.660
Some of the guys who are the biggest promoters of this stuff inevitably get outed as sexual

01:19:48.660 --> 01:19:54.220
deviants who, in many cases, have been defrocked because they go so far because, hey, man,

01:19:54.220 --> 01:19:55.220
all sins are equal.

01:19:55.220 --> 01:19:57.260
I don't judge me.

01:19:57.260 --> 01:19:58.260
This stuff matters.

01:19:58.260 --> 01:20:02.220
Even the things that we talk about that seem like they're small issues.

01:20:02.220 --> 01:20:04.380
If they were small, we wouldn't be talking about them.

01:20:04.380 --> 01:20:10.980
We're talking about big issues that don't seem big because they slip under the radar.

01:20:10.980 --> 01:20:14.520
Everything that sounds Christian is all right by the Christian ear.

01:20:14.520 --> 01:20:19.640
The problem is that we no longer discern what is Christian from what is worldly.

01:20:19.640 --> 01:20:24.280
All someone has to do is gussy it up and make it sound a little bit like Jesus, and a Christian

01:20:24.280 --> 01:20:26.400
is going to say, oh, yeah, that sounds like morality.

01:20:26.400 --> 01:20:28.480
I want that to be mine, too.

01:20:28.480 --> 01:20:30.000
We focus on scripture.

01:20:30.000 --> 01:20:32.680
Please, you focus on scripture.

01:20:32.680 --> 01:20:34.000
Read your Bibles.

01:20:34.000 --> 01:20:36.880
If what we said is wrong, you're going to find it in the Bible.

01:20:36.880 --> 01:20:40.280
If what we said is right, you're going to find a bunch more of it because we're not cherry

01:20:40.580 --> 01:20:41.580
taking.

01:20:41.580 --> 01:20:45.060
We've spent an hour and a half talking about close to a dozen passages.

01:20:45.060 --> 01:20:48.100
We could have done 50 more.

01:20:48.100 --> 01:20:52.500
That should be a reminder to you that when someone says something, all sin is equal.

01:20:52.500 --> 01:20:54.660
They're not talking about a sin from scripture.

01:20:54.660 --> 01:20:56.220
They're not talking about God.

01:20:56.220 --> 01:21:00.060
They're talking about teachings of demons.

01:21:00.060 --> 01:21:06.700
It's a strident thing to say, but the difference between salvation and damnation is recognizing

01:21:06.700 --> 01:21:08.660
our master's voice.

01:21:08.660 --> 01:21:14.280
The Christian's master's voice is the voice of God, and that voice is found in scripture.

01:21:14.280 --> 01:21:15.920
Others do not hear it.

01:21:15.920 --> 01:21:20.360
They hear the voice of God, and they're like, it doesn't sound right to me.

01:21:20.360 --> 01:21:23.160
Many of them hear it, and they think that sounds hateful.

01:21:23.160 --> 01:21:25.920
It's a very common complaint, is that this stuff sounds hateful.

01:21:25.920 --> 01:21:32.800
Well, if you think the voice of God sounds hateful, wait for judgment day, because Christians

01:21:32.800 --> 01:21:37.200
are going to be lined up in one line, and everyone else is going to be lined up in another.

01:21:37.200 --> 01:21:40.260
We're going to hear a very different type of voice.

01:21:40.260 --> 01:21:43.660
Christians are going to hear, Welcome Thou Good and Faithful Servant, and I wish for

01:21:43.660 --> 01:21:47.100
everyone who's listening that that would be what you heard here on the last day, because

01:21:47.100 --> 01:21:49.100
I would like to hang out with all of you.

01:21:49.100 --> 01:21:50.380
We have a stone choir booth.

01:21:50.380 --> 01:21:54.940
We can sit around and talk and figure out all the stuff that we didn't understand.

01:21:54.940 --> 01:21:58.980
It'll be exciting, and it'll be perfect, and we won't have to worry about fighting

01:21:58.980 --> 01:22:04.460
and disagreements, but we have to get there, and Jesus paid the price for us to get there,

01:22:04.460 --> 01:22:07.280
but we can't reject what he says.

01:22:07.280 --> 01:22:12.640
So please read your Bibles, go to a faithful church, study this stuff, and take it seriously.

01:22:12.640 --> 01:22:15.600
And as Corey said, flee evil.

01:22:15.600 --> 01:22:17.520
It's okay to flee evil.

01:22:17.520 --> 01:22:21.920
Whatever it is, whether it's lust or false teaching, or whatever your particular pest

01:22:21.920 --> 01:22:26.480
sin is, if you're confronted with it, just turn around and walk away.

01:22:26.480 --> 01:22:27.760
That's where repent means.

01:22:27.760 --> 01:22:31.440
Metanoia means turning, turning away from.

01:22:31.460 --> 01:22:34.780
Do a 180, back out of there.

01:22:34.780 --> 01:22:40.740
Get away from the evil and focus on what God desires, and in the end, that's all we

01:22:40.740 --> 01:22:42.060
can do in this life.

01:22:42.060 --> 01:22:45.940
We can't be perfect, but we can try to go and sin no more.

01:22:45.940 --> 01:22:47.900
So let's try that.

01:22:47.900 --> 01:22:54.940
And not to bury the lead or add something on right at the end, but not to be remiss.

01:22:54.940 --> 01:23:03.400
I want to point out exactly what it is when someone says all sins are equal.

01:23:03.400 --> 01:23:07.400
The reason we are focusing on this, and as was mentioned, we could have gone through

01:23:07.400 --> 01:23:08.840
dozens more passages.

01:23:08.840 --> 01:23:12.200
We could point out Genesis 9.6.

01:23:12.200 --> 01:23:17.480
There are different punishments for different sins, very strongly implying there are different

01:23:17.480 --> 01:23:19.840
degrees of sin.

01:23:19.840 --> 01:23:23.360
But I want to read the second commandment.

01:23:23.360 --> 01:23:27.580
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

01:23:27.580 --> 01:23:33.260
And the explanation from the small catechism, what does this mean?

01:23:33.260 --> 01:23:38.980
We should fear and love God, so that we may not curse, swear, use witchcraft, lie or deceive

01:23:38.980 --> 01:23:47.100
by his name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.

01:23:47.100 --> 01:23:51.700
And that was the point of this entire episode.

01:23:51.700 --> 01:23:57.280
Because when you say that all sins are equal, you are lying and deceiving in his name.

01:23:57.280 --> 01:23:59.840
You are violating the second commandment.

01:23:59.840 --> 01:24:03.200
And as a reminder, the commandments are hierarchical.

01:24:03.200 --> 01:24:08.120
You are committing one of the greatest sins, because of course the greater sin would be

01:24:08.120 --> 01:24:13.720
to have another God, which is also implicated when this comes up.

01:24:13.720 --> 01:24:18.800
But those who say that all sins are equal, are lying in his name, are deceiving in his

01:24:18.800 --> 01:24:19.800
name.

01:24:20.020 --> 01:24:25.700
And that is why this is important for Christians.

01:24:25.700 --> 01:24:30.020
It's important because God's word is truth, and you should believe every word of it.

01:24:30.020 --> 01:24:34.140
But it is also important because when you ignore things like this, particularly if you are

01:24:34.140 --> 01:24:41.460
a pastor or a teacher, and God forbid you stand up and teach false doctrine on these subjects.

01:24:41.460 --> 01:24:45.180
Because that is violating the second commandment.

01:24:45.180 --> 01:24:50.600
And if you do not repent, you are keeping that sin for yourself, instead of letting

01:24:50.600 --> 01:24:56.680
God, instead of letting Christ take it to the cross, and wash it away in his blood.

01:24:56.680 --> 01:25:02.000
And we don't want anyone listening to this, even if you are listening to it, if you are

01:25:02.000 --> 01:25:07.400
hate listening to this, if you are attempting to find some way in which we are teaching

01:25:07.400 --> 01:25:11.640
false doctrine, something we've said wrong, somewhere we've slipped, misspoken, whatever

01:25:11.640 --> 01:25:13.680
have you.

01:25:13.680 --> 01:25:19.820
Even if you are that person, we want you to repent and turn from your evil ways, and

01:25:19.820 --> 01:25:21.900
return to God.

01:25:21.900 --> 01:25:29.300
Because as Woe said, we do want everyone to make it to paradise, no everyone will not.

01:25:29.300 --> 01:25:33.940
Scripture is very clear on that, many will reject Christ, will reject God, will spend

01:25:33.940 --> 01:25:38.820
eternity in hell paying for sins for which Christ already paid.

01:25:38.820 --> 01:25:42.980
We do not want any of you to join them.

01:25:42.980 --> 01:25:49.000
We would prefer that you join us in paradise, with the Savior who paid for all your sins.

01:25:49.000 --> 01:25:55.680
All of your sins, which are not all equal, some of which are egregious, some of you may

01:25:55.680 --> 01:26:00.080
have committed truly heinous sins in your life.

01:26:00.080 --> 01:26:03.640
Some of you listening may not have committed particularly heinous sins.

01:26:03.640 --> 01:26:06.880
You still sin, you're still a sinner.

01:26:06.880 --> 01:26:11.000
Again as Woe said before, you sin because you're a sinner, you're not a sinner because

01:26:11.000 --> 01:26:12.120
you sin.

01:26:12.120 --> 01:26:17.780
It's that original sin that is the wellspring from which other sins come.

01:26:17.780 --> 01:26:23.140
And so whether you've committed the relatively minor sins stolen, the pencil as was mentioned

01:26:23.140 --> 01:26:30.900
earlier, although it depends which one of my pencils you steal, or you've murdered someone.

01:26:30.900 --> 01:26:36.820
That was paid for by Christ, regardless of the gravity of the sin.

01:26:36.820 --> 01:26:42.240
But if you keep that sin for yourself, if you don't allow Christ to take that to the

01:26:42.240 --> 01:26:46.480
cross, if you want to say no I want to keep this one, then you get to spend eternity with

01:26:46.480 --> 01:26:51.280
that sin instead of with your Savior.

01:26:51.280 --> 01:26:55.540
And so all sins are not equal, some are worse than others.

01:26:55.540 --> 01:27:01.040
But Christ died for all of them, He paid for all of them, He paid for every single sin

01:27:01.040 --> 01:27:08.500
you have committed, regardless of how trivial or how truly terrible.

01:27:08.500 --> 01:27:18.100
The atonement, the scope of the atonement was infinite, all sins wiped clean.

01:27:18.100 --> 01:27:19.120
But only if you believe.

01:27:49.040 --> 01:27:52.080
Copyright © 2020 Mooji Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

01:27:52.080 --> 01:27:54.640
No part of this recording may be reproduced without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.

01:27:54.640 --> 01:27:56.140
All rights reserved.

01:27:56.140 --> 01:27:59.400
Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent is a request for Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.