Transcript: Episode 0097

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Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.

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I am Corey J.

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Mahler.

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And I'm still, whoa.

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On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be revisiting a few concepts that we've discussed in the last year or so.

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One year ago, January 24th of last year, we did an episode on apostasy.

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And this is going to be a continuation of that, basically a part two of, okay, now that churches are becoming apostate, here's what it's going to look like.

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And we're going to refer back to a number of examples.

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That's a really good series to revisit from the beginning of last year.

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If you haven't heard it in a while or if you're jumping around, the first five episodes that we did in 2024 really stand the test of time very well.

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It's much worse now than it was when we did them.

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That's the way this stuff is going to keep going.

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So what we're going to talk about today is when churches are apostatizing, how are the men inside those churches going to behave?

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Because we said in that episode, we're not talking about individual apostasy, which is really kind of the good case if such a thing can exist for the notion of apostasy.

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When an individual steps away from God, rejects God, it's obvious.

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He says, I don't believe in God anymore.

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I'm just going to go away.

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This is all crap.

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It's a very noticeable heel turn.

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And he goes in the other direction.

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He basically repents of his repentance.

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It's obvious.

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You can tell by someone's confession, by his words, by his life, this man no longer believes in God.

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When churches apostatize, they don't do any of those things, not overly, at least not at first.

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When a church apostatizes, it pretends that it continues in the faith of whatever fathers it claims.

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And for the purposes of our discussion today, we will just assume for the sake of argument that whatever your favorite confession is, is true.

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It doesn't matter if it's true or not.

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I'm not conceding anything is Lutheran's, anybody else is right.

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But it doesn't even matter who's right about those facts, because the problem that we have in our respective churches is that given those confessions, assuming that they're infallible, assuming they're true, they're a correct exposition of what God says, the problem is how do apostatizing churches employ those confessions in service of Satan?

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So we're going to talk about today some historical examples.

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We're going to revisit examples from the apostasy episode.

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And we're going to deal with the fact that Satan wants us to be making true confessions.

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He doesn't want everybody making true confessions.

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He loves it when someone apostatizes as an individual and says, I hate God.

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I don't believe in God anymore.

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This is all dumb.

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I'm gone.

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I'm just going to go live a wicked life because nothing exists.

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Satan loves that.

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But he's just as happy for us to be sitting here inside the churches making true confessions because he can use that to his benefit exactly the same.

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One year ago this week, we released the episode called The Required Confession, where we talked about one of the Dakotas had just proposed, I think it's subsequently passed a law related to anti-Semitism, and it makes it illegal the confession of what scripture says about the crucifixion.

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And the point that we made in that episode is that there are five things, at least, that you can say about who killed Christ.

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My sins killed Christ, and so did yours.

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Pontius Pilate killed Christ.

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The Roman Centurions killed Christ.

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The Pharisees killed Christ.

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And the Jews collectively as a group, those who were present, killed Christ.

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All five of those things are true, and only the last two will get you into any trouble.

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And the last one is illegal in the number of states now, and it will probably be illegal soon nationally, because that's the way things are going.

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And so, in the Required Confession Episode, we made the case that it doesn't matter which of those other confessions are true.

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When you are challenged and told, you cannot confess what's in scripture.

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When you go along with it and say, well, sure, I'm not going to say that the Jews did anything, because my sins killed Christ.

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Obviously, that's true.

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So let's just leave it at that.

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That contradicts scripture, which means that you're apostatizing.

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Even while you're saying the very thing that scripture says about your sins crucifying Christ.

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The thing that is true becomes a lie, because it is used specifically in service of telling a different lie.

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This is a trick that Satan has played from the Garden of Eden and the apostasy episode we began with.

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I'm just going to briefly revisit here.

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When you read Satan's encounter with Eve, what happens?

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The first thing that Satan said to Eve was, did God actually say?

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Which tricked her, as we pointed out, into making a true confession.

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She went on to elaborate on what God had said, what Adam had taught her.

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And for the purpose of this argument, it doesn't matter if the fact that the additional words that she used, above and beyond what God is recorded to have said to Adam, doesn't matter if that's an elaboration that was false, if she was making stuff up, if Adam made stuff up.

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We can assume for the sake of argument that that was true, because it doesn't change anything.

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What happened was that Satan said, did God actually say?

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And then she confessed what God said, and that's when Satan had her.

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Satan goaded her, goaded Eve, our mother, into confessing truly what God had said.

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Because when he did that, Satan shifted her focus.

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He wanted her to focus on the fruit that was forbidden for her to eat, so that he could make her envious.

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He wanted her to desire that which God had forbidden.

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And when she responded with a true confession, then he told a half-truth, you will not surely die, which was false in the long run, but it was true immediately.

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She didn't die on the spot.

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And she got the benefit.

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She got the upside.

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She knew good and evil, just as the fruit was intended for.

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But it wasn't intended for her or Adam at that time.

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So right from the outset, with two perfect human beings, the only perfect human beings who have ever lived, with the exception of Jesus Christ, who is the exception to every rule for men, they were tricked into telling Satan something that was true, and that's how he had him.

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Satan has been replaying that same attack over and over again ever since.

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And the reason for this episode today is that we don't believe that we can possibly be tricked when we're saying things that are true.

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And that's the whole point of this.

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It is entirely possible for us to sin and to in fact apostatize as individuals and collectively as churches by telling the truth when it's the wrong truth at the wrong time.

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Because Satan continues to change up his attacks and we have to pay attention to those changes.

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And so the purpose of putting this in front of you and putting in your mind is that we're all vulnerable to this.

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Every one of us is going to tend to cling to whatever our confessions are, whatever it is that we've inherited or adopted as a matter of our personal faith.

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Again, we're not going to get into who's right or wrong, even if you're completely right.

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We're Lutherans, the Book of Concord would suffice for our confession for these purposes.

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It's true.

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The arguments that it makes are true.

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It is also used today by Lutherans as an idol.

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It is idolatrous the way Lutherans treat the Book of Concord.

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Because what do they do?

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They will use it to argue against scripture or to argue against reason and to argue against creation whenever anything comes up that isn't addressed.

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This is the whole problem.

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You can take a confession that's true, that's solving a particular problem at a particular time, and when you try to morph it and make it do something it was never intended to do.

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You know, the authors of the Book of Concord had a particular problem in mind they were trying to solve.

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They knew what problems those were, and they addressed them as best they could at the time.

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It's a good confession, it's a solid confession of the Christian faith for those purposes.

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It is not a complete confession of the entire Christian faith.

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You need scripture for that, you need to reason for that.

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And without all of those things, you're going to go flying off into space.

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Part of the reason that this approach that Satan is taking, where he tricks people or goads people into making these true confessions that are narrow, is that we have to have them.

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It's not that it's bad to have a confession if it's the Book of Conquered or the Westminster Confession or the Pope.

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God help you guys who are Roman Catholic.

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If that is the root of your faith, if that is where you have determined, this is my North Star, as long as I have this in view, I know where I am.

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I can keep my bearings.

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We all need something like that.

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Now, scripture is also that, and scripture should be the ultimate source of that.

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But there's nothing wrong with having creeds.

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There's nothing wrong with having a confession, assuming it's true, assuming it doesn't disagree with scripture.

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But you can make it an idol.

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And we're saying something here today that a lot of people say in a lot of different contexts, oh, you're making the family an idol now, which is a modern, degenerate thing to say.

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It's like, well, you're obeying God, you're creating families.

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That's not idolatry per se.

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And these guys freak out at the notion that obedience to God could possibly make people think, okay, I'm obeying God, so now I don't need God.

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It's a completely irrational process of fear, but it's one that's very pervasive.

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We need to be able to have something to help us keep our bearings.

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And these creeds and these confessions serve that vital function.

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Just as Eve's confession that she gave to Satan was a vital confession.

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He specifically attacked something that God had said, he lied about it with his question, and she correctly confessed.

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She said back what Adam had told her God said.

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She did it right, and she fell for it.

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What should have happened, I think, you know, this is extra scriptural, so you can take it or leave it.

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I think that the correct form of that entire situation, where Eve was having a conversation with the serpent, with Adam standing right next to her, just passively listening, maybe he should not have permitted the serpent to speak to her.

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Certainly after the serpent denied what God said, I think he probably should have killed the serpent on the spot.

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I think personally that probably wouldn't have been sin.

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That could have gone a different way because they had free will.

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They had perfect free will to behave differently than they behaved.

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And although the eating and the envy, the covetousness of that fruit was sin, I think the failure to stop the evil that Satan had introduced into the garden with his lies, one could argue, and I would make the argument that that was a sin even further back than the eating.

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In any event, Satan was able to get away with it because they went along with it.

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They played his game.

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And this is the problem that we don't understand that we all face all the time.

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We are always forced to contend with Satan because he is our adversary.

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He is always the ultimate adversary.

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And anything that we deal with, it's difficult in life.

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We die, we get sick, we suffer, we're miserable, we're sad, we're lonely.

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Whatever bad things that happen are downstream from the fall, that are downstream from Satan's attacks.

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And then he tags right along every day, trying to amplify the stuff to harm us, to separate us from God's love.

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So we're constantly enduring those attacks.

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And we understand when the attacks are bad.

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We understand when the attacks are deliberately saying the opposite of what God said.

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Sometimes Satan will come to some people, maybe some of you, and say, just apostize, stop believing God all together.

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Forget that stuff, that's nonsense.

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Go do this other thing.

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Forget about Jesus.

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You don't need any of that crap.

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Sometimes that's the pitch that works for some people.

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The problem is that's not the only pitch that Satan has.

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The pitch that he used for Eve and the pitch that he's used many times since and he uses to this day, especially in this day, is to goad Christians, and especially Christian denominations as a whole, into making partially true confessions that serve his purposes.

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Because just like in that situation with the Dakota's Law, where it's illegal to say that the Jews killed Christ, most Christians are happy to go along with that.

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They don't believe that anyway.

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Scripture says it and they don't believe it.

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What do they believe?

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They believe something is true.

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They believe that their sins killed Christ, which is absolutely true.

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But there are other things that can also be said that are scriptural, that if you deny them, what have you done?

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If you deny that the Pharisees killed Christ and that the Jews killed Christ, are you Christian?

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You cannot be, because what are you doing?

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You're calling God a liar.

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Scripture could not possibly be more clear about the fact that the Jews killed Christ.

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It's reiterated over and over again after it happens by numerous authors, and they're all inspired.

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You can't be a Christian if you don't believe that the New Testament's not inspired.

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And if you do, then you're confessing that God said this.

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And so when you say, well, I don't believe that part, you're calling God a liar.

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And that's where all this stuff comes down to.

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You can have a narrowly true confession, which Satan loves.

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I made the point in the episode on the true confession.

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Satan loves it when Christians run around saying, my sins killed Christ.

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Yeah, it's all my fault.

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Not in denial of that fact.

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That's absolutely true.

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And it is the most important thing.

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I'm not giving the slightest bit of slander against that true confession.

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It is not the only one, but it's the one that Satan wants us to focus on.

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Because if you stop saying that the Jews killed Christ, it opens up the door for a whole other avenue of attack.

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And this is how Satan works.

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This is how Satan's warfare against the church works.

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There are direct attacks and there are indirect attacks.

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And if we believe that we're better than Eve, who was perfect when she fell for this crap, if we believe that we can do better than that, we are setting ourselves up for apostasy and for damnation.

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That's the purpose of this episode.

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Churches, individuals, collectively, we're all subject to trying to keep our eyes on whatever we know to be true.

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Because we have to.

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You can't possibly fit all of scripture in your head all the time.

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But God warns us that we have to be watchful.

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And the problem that we're trying to solve here today with this episode is that Confessions at some point become an excuse for not being watchful.

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For saying, well, this stuff is going on.

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I don't really understand it.

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It sounds like some people aren't really all that great with their theology or making some weird arguments I've never heard anyone make before.

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It's not in my Confession, so I'm just not going to participate.

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They're all bums.

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They're all bad.

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I'm over here with my Confession.

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I'm above it all.

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I'm not going to fall for it.

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That is what Satan wants, because maybe the guy who has a true Confession that's actually competent theology, unlike some of the people who are entering the fray when these new attacks come, sometimes they're pretty bad at it.

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The guys who are off on the side with their noses up in the air would be better contenders for the faith.

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If only they would enter the fray and say, okay, there's a new attack.

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Maybe we need a new argument for it.

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The idolatry of Confession comes in when we say, well, I don't care what's happening now because my Confession doesn't say anything, so it must not be important.

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Satan cheers when we do that.

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And he's cheering a lot lately because this is the default position that we find churches in today.

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To say, well, this new stuff is just Satan being weird, the world being weird, it's got nothing to do with me.

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I'm going to cling to my Confession and I know I'm going to be fine.

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That makes us Pharisees.

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The Pharisees weren't unique.

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They were abominable, but they embodied the natural human sinful nature to cling to whatever is self-justifying.

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And true Confessions ultimately become self-justifying.

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Even faith alone, when your Confession is that faith is the only thing that can save me, it doesn't take too much back and forth before, ironically, someone concludes that the fact that they confess that faith saves them alone is what saves them.

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If I hope you're following that, it's one level of indirection.

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It's no longer my faith that saves me, but it's my Confession that my faith is the only thing that saves me.

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As long as I'm confessing that right, then I'm in good shape, because it's no longer rooted in the gift of faith that God has given to me.

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It's now rooted in, well, I'm clinging to this.

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And although we need things to cling to, they have to be every word from the mouth of God.

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That's how Satan fragments the church into a million pieces, by driving these wedges, where he successfully sets one part of the word against another.

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He gets at fighting each other.

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He gets at ignoring the word entirely.

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And then he has us, because it's perfectly fine in hell for you to have a true confession, as long as it's not a complete confession.

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And this nature is played out over and over again.

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And we're warning you about this today, because we're already seeing it a bunch this year.

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We've seen it continuously.

00:17:49.232 --> 00:18:00.872
It's probably going to continue to be amplified, because it's one of the last fig leaves that are left in the Church's impotent attempts to prevent Satan's attack.

00:18:00.872 --> 00:18:07.272
Satan is coming in new angles, new avenues, and churches are saying, well, I've got the old confession, I'm fine.

00:18:07.272 --> 00:18:09.672
The Roman Catholics say, well, I've got the Pope, I'm fine.

00:18:09.672 --> 00:18:17.232
Sure, the Pope might not be great some decades, but overall tradition, going back, they claim Peter was even.

00:18:17.232 --> 00:18:18.892
No, it's news to him.

00:18:18.892 --> 00:18:27.912
Not trying to pick on you guys, but when you root anything outside of what's directly scriptural, that's all it takes, even if it's true.

00:18:27.912 --> 00:18:30.972
The Lutheran Confessions are true, but they're not complete.

00:18:30.972 --> 00:18:41.012
I've mentioned before, I had an argument a few years ago on Discord with a guy where I made an argument from scripture and he refused to believe it because I couldn't point to where it was in the Book of Concord.

00:18:41.992 --> 00:18:43.452
And that was his argument.

00:18:43.452 --> 00:18:50.872
A scriptural argument from me could not possibly be true because I could not cite the Lutheran Confessions.

00:18:50.872 --> 00:18:59.912
Any of the men who authored the Lutheran Confessions would tear their hair out if they had any, to hear that someone who thought he was a good Lutheran made that his confession.

00:18:59.912 --> 00:19:03.972
And that's why this is so dangerous, because you're doing it in good conscience.

00:19:03.972 --> 00:19:08.852
It's an appeal to good conscience that is, in fact, an attack on heaven.

00:19:08.852 --> 00:19:10.112
That's why Satan loves it.

00:19:10.512 --> 00:19:12.372
That's why it's apostasy.

00:19:12.372 --> 00:19:19.692
The one thing that we think we've gotten right, our historical confessions, Satan is going to use as a weapon against us.

00:19:19.692 --> 00:19:31.552
When we swear in witnesses in our courts, we have them typically swear something along the lines of, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

00:19:32.892 --> 00:19:44.492
And all three parts of that, the fourth as well, if you include swearing before God, are important because it is insufficient simply to tell the truth.

00:19:44.492 --> 00:19:50.712
You need to tell the whole truth and obviously not embellish it, as it were, with lies.

00:19:50.712 --> 00:20:02.592
In previous episodes, we've gone over the different kinds of lies and how in some ways, yes, you can in fact lie with the truth, which is why we have the inclusion of the whole truth in that oath.

00:20:02.592 --> 00:20:15.392
Because if you tell only part of a narrative, it is very possible to use just that portion, that true portion though, in order to manipulate, which is one of the ways, of course, that you can lie.

00:20:15.392 --> 00:20:19.172
You can lie by omission, commission or manipulation.

00:20:19.172 --> 00:20:23.112
And so obviously commission is the most obvious one.

00:20:23.112 --> 00:20:24.412
That's that affirmative lie.

00:20:24.412 --> 00:20:29.872
So you aren't embellishing your story with things that are, in fact, not the truth.

00:20:29.872 --> 00:20:32.772
Omission is what is addressed by the whole truth.

00:20:33.832 --> 00:20:42.432
You don't get to leave out parts of the truth and pretend that you have still given a full and true accounting of events.

00:20:42.432 --> 00:20:43.752
Because you haven't.

00:20:43.752 --> 00:20:46.312
You've neglected to include things.

00:20:46.312 --> 00:20:57.772
Now that doesn't mean that just because you left out some ancillary fact, if you are a witness in a murder trial and you leave out the color of a garment that someone standing by was wearing.

00:20:57.772 --> 00:21:01.772
Some bystanders wearing a red shirt and you neglect to say that his shirt was red.

00:21:01.772 --> 00:21:03.112
That doesn't matter.

00:21:03.112 --> 00:21:08.332
These are facts that are relevant, truths that are relevant to the matter.

00:21:08.332 --> 00:21:14.672
And this is one of those centrally important points in this discussion.

00:21:14.672 --> 00:21:20.992
As Woe said, obviously, you cannot hold the totality of scripture in your head at any given time.

00:21:20.992 --> 00:21:22.472
That isn't a requirement.

00:21:22.472 --> 00:21:25.452
That's not something that you have to do as a Christian.

00:21:26.332 --> 00:21:37.872
However, when a truth is relevant, when a truth is attacked, then indeed you must defend it, and then indeed you must confess the full truth, and not simply a part of it.

00:21:39.112 --> 00:21:49.852
And for those who object to confessions, or think that the argument that we're making here, maybe it doesn't make any sense to you, just think about church history.

00:21:49.852 --> 00:21:52.672
We have three ecumenical creeds.

00:21:52.672 --> 00:22:04.232
We don't have three ecumenical creeds, because the men who made the Nicene and the Athanasian thought we should have longer creeds, considerably longer in the case of the Athanasian.

00:22:04.232 --> 00:22:10.512
We have them, because they confess truths that were being attacked at that time.

00:22:10.512 --> 00:22:20.352
We have them, because the previous creeds were not wrong, but were not complete in the sense of being a full confession of the Christian faith.

00:22:20.352 --> 00:22:29.072
That's not to say that if you confess the Apostles' Creed and understand everything that is in the Apostles' Creed, that you can't be saved.

00:22:29.072 --> 00:22:36.712
In fact, if you believe what's in the Apostles' Creed, that is a sufficient saving faith, but you have to believe what's actually there.

00:22:36.712 --> 00:22:41.432
The reason we have the Nicene is to explain some of the additional matters.

00:22:41.432 --> 00:22:46.092
For instance, I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.

00:22:46.092 --> 00:22:48.272
That's not in the Apostles' Creed.

00:22:48.272 --> 00:22:49.532
It is in the Nicene.

00:22:50.612 --> 00:22:56.692
And then, of course, the case of the Athanasian is to deal with Trinitarian issues that had arisen in the Church.

00:22:56.692 --> 00:23:03.032
So these Confessions that we have are to address issues that were live at the time.

00:23:03.032 --> 00:23:07.072
It doesn't mean the issues have gone away because obviously Unitarians still exist.

00:23:07.072 --> 00:23:10.732
So for instance, we still need the Athanasian Creed.

00:23:10.732 --> 00:23:15.792
Satan's not going to stop attacking things just because we have a Confession that addresses it.

00:23:15.792 --> 00:23:17.812
He will continue to attack those things.

00:23:18.592 --> 00:23:27.632
However, by and large, he is going to move on to new tactics because he is going to choose things that are undefended.

00:23:27.632 --> 00:23:36.192
A good analogy for many of these issues in this area would be a military analogy.

00:23:36.192 --> 00:23:47.772
If you have a protected position and it's protected on three sides, well, a smart enemy is going to try to attack that fourth one that isn't protected, if he can do so.

00:23:47.772 --> 00:23:49.632
That is what Satan does.

00:23:49.632 --> 00:23:53.892
Satan is constantly testing for weak points in the wall.

00:23:53.892 --> 00:23:58.092
He's not going to attack the place where you are most strongly defended.

00:23:58.092 --> 00:24:13.692
Now, if you happen to attend a church that does not have a confession, he may have more opportunity to attack you because you haven't built up that wall in really anywhere, except for possibly, hopefully, you at least confess the three ecumenical creeds.

00:24:13.692 --> 00:24:15.612
So Satan is going to attack the weak point.

00:24:15.612 --> 00:24:19.472
He's going to constantly be looking for that weak point.

00:24:19.472 --> 00:24:24.312
Not for nothing does he take the form of a snake, and is he described as a snake.

00:24:24.312 --> 00:24:34.832
As we've mentioned before, and as those who've dealt with snakes know, if a snake can get his head into a place, the whole snake is getting into that place.

00:24:34.832 --> 00:24:36.752
And so that's what Satan does.

00:24:36.752 --> 00:24:40.952
He finds whatever little opening he can, and he slithers through.

00:24:42.472 --> 00:24:51.592
But there's an additional layer here, when it comes to the military analogy, that is perhaps the more important one for our discussion today.

00:24:53.892 --> 00:25:10.992
If you look at military history, and the American Revolutionary War is actually a great example, many times you will have forces on one or more sides of a particular conflict employing tactics from previous wars.

00:25:10.992 --> 00:25:12.132
That's not always bad.

00:25:12.132 --> 00:25:18.192
Sometimes it works, because sometimes technology and tactics haven't changed much between one war and the next.

00:25:18.192 --> 00:25:20.252
But sometimes they have.

00:25:20.252 --> 00:25:28.932
And so, for instance, in the American Revolutionary War, the British were employing tactics from continental warfare of centuries past.

00:25:28.932 --> 00:25:37.332
Fine at the time, perhaps not great, but workable at the time under certain conditions, did not work in the American theater.

00:25:37.332 --> 00:25:39.892
It's part of the reason that they lost.

00:25:39.892 --> 00:25:50.932
Because Americans, on the other hand, employed tactics that had been learned during conflicts with the Amerindians, that had been taught by von Steuben and Lafayette.

00:25:52.092 --> 00:25:54.292
They had updated their tactics.

00:25:54.292 --> 00:26:00.412
They were employing tactics that were more effective than those used by the British.

00:26:01.472 --> 00:26:03.432
Satan does the same thing.

00:26:04.152 --> 00:26:06.692
He updates his tactics.

00:26:06.692 --> 00:26:14.772
He is not going to employ old tactics in a new conflict, unless he thinks that you have forgotten how to address those old tactics.

00:26:14.772 --> 00:26:16.772
Because he will certainly do that.

00:26:18.532 --> 00:26:25.392
But the Confessions that we have do not address all of the problems we are facing today.

00:26:25.392 --> 00:26:29.852
And that is true regardless of which Confession you happen to have in mind.

00:26:30.592 --> 00:26:44.752
If it's the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Augsburg Confession, the full Book of Concord, Satan is not primarily attacking those issues today.

00:26:44.752 --> 00:26:46.992
He is attacking creation.

00:26:46.992 --> 00:26:57.052
Because if you look at the Confessions, particularly the ones from the Reformation era, they are largely addressing issues such as justification.

00:26:57.052 --> 00:27:02.032
There are many other issues that are addressed in the Book of Concord and in other Confessions, of course.

00:27:02.032 --> 00:27:05.732
There's predestination, election, all of these things.

00:27:07.212 --> 00:27:09.672
But Satan isn't attacking those.

00:27:09.672 --> 00:27:19.552
As we pointed out previously, what he's attempting to attack now, with a great deal of success in some cases, is creation itself.

00:27:19.552 --> 00:27:25.792
Because if Satan can get you to deny creation, well that's an implicit denial of the Creator.

00:27:26.892 --> 00:27:30.652
So he doesn't need you to reject justification.

00:27:30.652 --> 00:27:44.332
If he can simply get you to reject God in toe-toe, if he can get you to reject who God is, then he doesn't need you to give a confession that is by its words false.

00:27:44.332 --> 00:27:48.772
Because what you mean when you confess it is false.

00:27:48.772 --> 00:27:51.792
Because it's one thing to say the words.

00:27:51.792 --> 00:27:57.032
It's another thing to say the words and mean the right thing by them.

00:27:57.032 --> 00:28:06.232
Because it's entirely possible to say something that the other person hears as being entirely true, and yet it's not what you meant.

00:28:06.232 --> 00:28:11.652
This is something that Muslims use all the time when deceiving non-Muslims.

00:28:11.652 --> 00:28:15.392
They lie about Islam, and they lie in a number of different ways.

00:28:15.392 --> 00:28:17.192
Sometimes it's simply that lie of commission.

00:28:17.192 --> 00:28:19.392
They just outright lie about it.

00:28:19.392 --> 00:28:28.832
But other times, they deliberately mislead by saying something that they know you will hear one way, but they mean it another.

00:28:28.832 --> 00:28:31.952
Mormons do the exact same thing, incidentally.

00:28:31.952 --> 00:28:34.412
I don't believe Mormons have a particular term for it.

00:28:34.412 --> 00:28:39.432
The Muslims have four different terms for their different kinds of deception.

00:28:39.432 --> 00:28:40.652
Not the topic for today.

00:28:40.652 --> 00:28:50.512
But just because the words themselves on their face are true, does not mean that the thing being said is true.

00:28:50.512 --> 00:29:00.912
Because for a thing to be true, with regard to the person making the confession, the words must be true, the meaning must be true, the understanding must be true.

00:29:02.212 --> 00:29:08.812
Now, that doesn't mean that it's bad to confess the creeds, even if you don't completely understand them, because they're guardrails.

00:29:08.812 --> 00:29:13.432
They serve as a bulwark against Satan and against heresy, against false doctrine.

00:29:14.172 --> 00:29:21.372
And so, it is good to confess them, but obviously, it is better by far to actually understand what you are saying.

00:29:21.372 --> 00:29:39.512
Because again, as Woe said in his introduction, Satan can get you to focus with a sort of monomania on a true confession and get you to miss everything else, other truths that are also important, because there's not truth just in scripture.

00:29:39.512 --> 00:29:41.572
There's not truth just in the confessions.

00:29:41.832 --> 00:29:43.972
There's truth in creation as well.

00:29:43.972 --> 00:29:46.952
And that's why Satan is attacking creation.

00:29:46.952 --> 00:29:54.292
If he can get you to deny these other truths, eventually he will get you to deny the faith.

00:29:54.292 --> 00:30:00.452
Because the consequence of denying the other truth will inevitably be denying the faith.

00:30:00.452 --> 00:30:03.912
What he'll do effectively is turn you into a Gnostic.

00:30:03.912 --> 00:30:08.692
Because if you deny the reality of creation, that's effectively what you're becoming.

00:30:08.692 --> 00:30:18.392
If you are the kind of person, and we've all encountered this sort of person recently, who simply says that's not a gospel issue, that's not about salvation, that doesn't matter.

00:30:18.392 --> 00:30:20.032
How is that about Jesus?

00:30:21.912 --> 00:30:27.612
Almost without exception, when someone uses that objection, he's a Gnostic.

00:30:27.612 --> 00:30:36.232
He may not know it, but he is a Gnostic, because he is denying the reality of creation and trying to spiritualize everything.

00:30:36.232 --> 00:31:00.432
So that's a case in which Satan is bringing back an ancient heresy, really, it never went away, but it is an ancient heresy, and he's using it in a new form to get men to confess things that often are in their own sense, in a minimal way true, but in the way they are employed by Satan, they are getting those men to give a false confession, getting them to deny the faith.

00:31:00.432 --> 00:31:07.632
Because you can say that's not about Jesus, and maybe that's true, but that's not an objection.

00:31:08.472 --> 00:31:15.992
If someone, for instance, raises the reality of race, because that's part of creation, we see that in creation.

00:31:15.992 --> 00:31:21.152
It is abundantly obvious to any man with eyes.

00:31:21.152 --> 00:31:34.632
If he can get you to deny that, if Satan can get you to say, well, that's not real, it's not a gospel issue, it's not about Jesus, well, he's turned you into a Gnostic, because now you said the flesh doesn't matter, the flesh isn't real, it's only the spirit.

00:31:36.192 --> 00:31:44.032
Well, that's denying God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, in the words of both the Apostles and the Nicene Creed.

00:31:45.212 --> 00:31:56.432
Satan is getting you to deny reality, getting you to deny a truth that isn't explicitly mentioned in Scripture.

00:31:56.432 --> 00:32:07.512
It's everywhere in Scripture, of course, you have the Table of Nations, you have Acts 17, you have all these places where it is mentioned, and it is assumed throughout the pages of Scripture.

00:32:07.512 --> 00:32:19.652
But you're not going to find a specific verse that simply says, God created the races of men, races real, and that lists a bunch of the things that we know from looking at creation.

00:32:20.832 --> 00:32:26.232
Just because it's not there in an explicit verse does not mean it is not true.

00:32:26.232 --> 00:32:40.072
And if Satan can get you to deny any truth, he is eventually going to get you to deny all truth, at least if you don't repent of rejecting that initial truth.

00:32:41.272 --> 00:32:49.272
Which is part of the problem when it comes to these confessions from the Reformation era.

00:32:49.272 --> 00:32:52.072
They state things that are true.

00:32:52.072 --> 00:32:59.772
Again, we're not going to say that they're all correct, but certainly as Lutherans, we're going to say in the case of the Book of Concord, it's correct.

00:32:59.772 --> 00:33:04.312
Insofar as it addresses matters, it is accurate.

00:33:04.312 --> 00:33:09.592
It is a true statement of the faith because it agrees with scripture.

00:33:09.592 --> 00:33:12.912
But it does not address the problems we have today.

00:33:12.912 --> 00:33:25.652
And so when men try to bring up the Book of Concord and try to use it as a cudgel in order to attack men who are addressing other problems, well, now the Book of Concord has become an idol.

00:33:26.712 --> 00:33:30.452
And incidentally, you can in fact do the same thing with scripture.

00:33:31.612 --> 00:33:35.592
In the case of scripture, it takes a slightly different form.

00:33:35.592 --> 00:33:40.672
But it's a form that is familiar to all of us because it's something that Satan loves to do.

00:33:40.672 --> 00:33:44.012
And I just went over how he does it.

00:33:44.012 --> 00:33:50.772
If Satan can get you to set two truths against each other and reject one, that's his opening.

00:33:50.772 --> 00:34:06.472
And so if you think that you find a truth in creation, and then someone tells you, well, that conflicts with scripture, be very careful because the truth contained in scripture is from God, and the truth contained in nature is from God.

00:34:06.472 --> 00:34:08.932
Those things will not conflict.

00:34:08.932 --> 00:34:25.372
It's one of the reasons that evolution is so dangerous because evolution makes claims about truth with regard to reality, with regard to creation, and then attempts to set those at odds with scripture.

00:34:25.372 --> 00:34:35.672
And so the problem that you are faced with when you look at that is, well, either scripture is false or evolution is false.

00:34:35.672 --> 00:34:38.432
That's the actual problem there.

00:34:38.432 --> 00:34:41.412
That's the actual decision you have to make.

00:34:41.412 --> 00:34:59.812
But how they try to spin it, because how Satan tries to spin it, is that evolution is just obviously true because it's just making these assertions about things that we observe in creation, that we observe in, of course, they wouldn't call it creation, but these things that we observe in the natural world.

00:34:59.812 --> 00:35:00.972
So obviously this is true.

00:35:00.972 --> 00:35:09.012
So now you have to reinterpret what you believe about scripture, because obviously that can't be true at the same time as this.

00:35:09.012 --> 00:35:14.332
The issue, of course, is that the claims asserted by evolution are ultimately false.

00:35:14.932 --> 00:35:18.412
The minor claims are true to some degree, but the major claims are false.

00:35:18.412 --> 00:35:20.712
We've gone over this in previous episodes.

00:35:22.172 --> 00:35:28.312
But what Satan wants you to do is deny some truth, any truth, wherever it is.

00:35:28.312 --> 00:35:33.312
He doesn't really care which one it is, because he just wants that opening.

00:35:33.312 --> 00:35:50.512
And if he can get you to lie with the truth, that's so much better, because it is much more difficult to get a man to realize that he has been confessing the truth, but in a false way, than it is to get a man to realize he's simply been confessing a lie.

00:35:50.512 --> 00:36:00.812
Because if you've been confessing a lie and someone can prove to you it's a lie, only an insane man is not going to reject that and reform what he believes.

00:36:00.812 --> 00:36:16.052
But if you've been confessing the truth and someone is trying to tell you, yes, but you're missing this part of the truth, or you're confessing it in a way that is effectively false, that is a much harder argument.

00:36:16.052 --> 00:36:19.632
It is much more difficult to get someone to repent in that case.

00:36:19.632 --> 00:36:21.492
And that's why Satan loves it.

00:36:21.492 --> 00:36:36.592
If he can get you to entrench on whatever it is, one of the confessions, some particular aspect of Christian doctrine, and in doing so, get you to reject other truth, he's got you.

00:36:36.592 --> 00:36:43.912
Because now it is going to be almost impossible for anyone else to convince you that what you're doing is wrong.

00:36:43.912 --> 00:36:46.392
Because what you're doing is true, right?

00:36:46.392 --> 00:36:47.732
You're telling the truth.

00:36:47.732 --> 00:36:48.672
You're speaking the truth.

00:36:48.672 --> 00:36:53.152
The things you've said are true, perhaps.

00:36:53.152 --> 00:36:55.172
But it's not the whole truth.

00:36:55.172 --> 00:36:56.652
And that's the issue.

00:36:56.652 --> 00:37:02.172
Because it has to be the truth and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

00:37:02.172 --> 00:37:13.032
Not just some little portion of the truth, and certainly not some little portion of the truth, used in a way that is misleading or even outright false.

00:37:14.892 --> 00:37:22.052
The summer of my junior year of high school, I went to a week long summer camp for basically law school.

00:37:22.052 --> 00:37:28.752
And it was brought to mind by Corey's beginning and ending of that segment where he talked about the whole truth.

00:37:28.752 --> 00:37:36.352
One of the exercises that we did was a moot court where we were all given a fact pattern, and each of us was given assignments for our roles.

00:37:37.112 --> 00:37:39.672
I was assigned to be the defendant.

00:37:39.672 --> 00:37:49.132
And I don't remember exactly the details, but I think the gist of it was that I had been a father at my kids' baseball game, and I hit somebody.

00:37:49.132 --> 00:37:51.212
There was some sort of altercation in the parking lot.

00:37:51.212 --> 00:37:56.912
There was some verbal disagreement that turned into a physical altercation.

00:37:56.912 --> 00:38:01.552
And so I was being put on trial for assault or for battery.

00:38:01.552 --> 00:38:04.832
And I remember it because it was a fun exercise.

00:38:05.552 --> 00:38:08.272
But as the defendant, I wasn't given any information.

00:38:08.272 --> 00:38:09.452
Everyone else wasn't given.

00:38:09.452 --> 00:38:11.912
I don't think I could be wrong about that.

00:38:11.912 --> 00:38:20.512
But when I took a look at the fact pattern that I had been given, my own conclusion as me was that, well, this guy is clearly guilty.

00:38:20.512 --> 00:38:24.252
But when I was on the stand, I wasn't going to tell the whole truth.

00:38:24.252 --> 00:38:27.212
I thought I was guilty because I was a defendant.

00:38:27.212 --> 00:38:35.592
And so I tried to be as clever as I could because it was the competition against the other kids and to show off and whatever.

00:38:35.592 --> 00:38:39.632
And so I was exonerated on the stand and moot court.

00:38:39.632 --> 00:38:50.832
And as soon as I was found not guilty, I laughed and said I was so guilty, which triggered subsequent discussion about double jeopardy because some of the kids were really offended.

00:38:50.832 --> 00:39:00.092
And I was reminded of that because obviously we all have an incentive not to tell the whole truth when we're going to get in trouble.

00:39:01.152 --> 00:39:14.712
And that's one of the big problems with these long-running theological disputes, or cases where there's meant no theological dispute, but suddenly something comes in a dispute that no one's ever really thought about.

00:39:14.712 --> 00:39:17.672
There's a good chance that you're going to get it wrong at some point.

00:39:17.672 --> 00:39:21.512
Not because you're a bad person or because you're evil or because you're stupid.

00:39:21.512 --> 00:39:22.812
You might just get it wrong.

00:39:22.812 --> 00:39:23.992
You were missing something.

00:39:23.992 --> 00:39:25.432
Maybe you didn't have all the facts.

00:39:25.432 --> 00:39:26.792
Maybe you couldn't put it all together.

00:39:27.392 --> 00:39:33.112
Maybe you personally are not the right person to be figuring out complicated theological problems.

00:39:33.112 --> 00:39:35.152
That's almost universally true.

00:39:35.152 --> 00:39:37.932
So don't feel bad if it applies to you.

00:39:37.932 --> 00:39:53.352
In these circumstances as fallible human beings, when we are faced with fact patterns in real life where we can guess stuff wrong and theology is on the line, which means that morality is on the line, calling God liar is on the line.

00:39:53.352 --> 00:40:06.492
Suddenly the willingness to tell the whole truth is paramount because the natural incentive to say, I'm going to be really clever when I'm engaging here, I'm not going to say anything that's going to give up any ground.

00:40:06.492 --> 00:40:11.852
In a debate or in some sort of trial, that makes a kind of sense.

00:40:11.852 --> 00:40:15.972
Doesn't necessarily make moral sense, but it makes logistical sense.

00:40:15.972 --> 00:40:22.312
Because if you just give away the whole game by conceding your opponent's point, then why have the dispute in the first place?

00:40:22.352 --> 00:40:24.232
Just to make you are wrong.

00:40:24.232 --> 00:40:26.572
We don't have that tendency.

00:40:26.572 --> 00:40:37.892
I'm not saying necessarily we should, but the problem is that the armor that we have as individuals, as human beings is to push in the other direction, to never give an inch, even when we should.

00:40:37.892 --> 00:40:44.572
So say in some of these theological disputes like evolution, we did 6,000 years in counting as an episode.

00:40:44.572 --> 00:40:47.172
One of the things we talked about was evolution.

00:40:47.172 --> 00:40:50.832
And we made the case there that it's completely incompatible with Christianity.

00:40:51.392 --> 00:40:56.432
And yet at the same time, there are a lot of Christians who in good conscience believe that it's okay.

00:40:56.432 --> 00:41:01.952
Because if they've not heard the arguments that we made there, they've not given a much thought, you know, kind of makes sense.

00:41:01.952 --> 00:41:04.292
And, you know, I guess Genesis maybe could be allegorical.

00:41:04.292 --> 00:41:05.932
So I believe in God.

00:41:05.932 --> 00:41:07.472
I believe in scripture.

00:41:07.472 --> 00:41:14.572
I just think that it took longer than 6,000, 7,000 years for all this stuff to come into being.

00:41:14.572 --> 00:41:22.612
We made the case in that episode that the only way evolution, macroevolution can exist is with death.

00:41:22.612 --> 00:41:30.612
And so either scripture is lying about when death entered the world or evolution is impossible.

00:41:30.612 --> 00:41:33.032
You can't have it both ways.

00:41:33.032 --> 00:41:35.552
And that's not an argument that most people have heard.

00:41:35.552 --> 00:41:40.232
So there are a number of people when they heard that argument, okay, I believe that evolution is false now.

00:41:40.232 --> 00:41:59.872
Some people had their minds changed just based on that fact, because it's a black and white situation where the observable universe portions of it, for example, the age of the earth and the age of the universe itself, which doesn't suggest evolution, but those ages are much older than the age given in scripture.

00:41:59.872 --> 00:42:06.972
It does not necessarily follow that scripture is wrong, but it does imply that different things are happening.

00:42:06.972 --> 00:42:10.592
So the argument we made is that Adam had an age when he was created.

00:42:10.592 --> 00:42:14.592
He was zero days of living, but he wasn't a baby.

00:42:15.132 --> 00:42:17.992
He was a fully grown, sexually mature man.

00:42:17.992 --> 00:42:27.652
And as I mentioned before, after doing that episode, in the episode I speculated, you know, maybe he was 40 years old, I realized after the fact, he had to have been 70 years old.

00:42:27.652 --> 00:42:37.892
I believe that now that Adam was created as a 70 year old, because A, it would have made him an elder, and B, it would have meant that he died when he was a thousand years of age.

00:42:37.892 --> 00:42:41.732
So, the speculative made him wrong, but he had an age, and that was the point.

00:42:41.732 --> 00:42:43.212
Adam was created with an age.

00:42:43.592 --> 00:42:45.232
The earth was created with an age.

00:42:45.232 --> 00:42:48.492
The universe was created with an age.

00:42:48.492 --> 00:42:52.332
And it is entirely up to God that those don't have to be the same age.

00:42:52.332 --> 00:42:56.672
In order for everything mechanically to work out with the universe, they have to be different ages.

00:42:56.672 --> 00:42:58.752
And so, that is what we observe.

00:42:58.752 --> 00:43:05.452
And so, there are cases where reason, when apprehending creation, is going to seemingly contradict scripture.

00:43:05.452 --> 00:43:07.932
And that doesn't mean that we just have to give up on either.

00:43:07.932 --> 00:43:11.852
There may be, sometimes, a clever solution that lets both accord.

00:43:12.472 --> 00:43:14.832
Some things are just flat out miraculous.

00:43:14.832 --> 00:43:27.412
Examples we have given in the past are things like baptism and communion, the hypostatic union, God, Jesus Christ being fully man and fully God, which is, incidentally, why there are three ecumenical creeds.

00:43:27.412 --> 00:43:35.132
Battling that out for centuries, because it's such a big deal, and it's such a hard problem to wrap our heads around, because it's miraculous.

00:43:35.132 --> 00:43:41.492
If you try to be completely rational, when you are talking about the nature of Christ, you are going to be a heretic.

00:43:41.872 --> 00:43:51.452
You will absolutely, 100% be a heretic, if you try to take reason and shoehorn Christ's nature into that, because it is irrational.

00:43:51.452 --> 00:43:56.772
You are dealing with, A, God, and B, supernatural happenings.

00:43:56.772 --> 00:43:59.892
So, there are very limited cases where our reason fails.

00:43:59.892 --> 00:44:01.292
Our reason fails all the time.

00:44:01.292 --> 00:44:07.952
There are limited cases where what we observe is plainly contradictory to scripture, but it's exceedingly rare.

00:44:07.952 --> 00:44:13.932
Most of the time, places where scripture is silent are places where creation testifies.

00:44:13.932 --> 00:44:18.352
And so, they are in accord because scripture says that God made everything.

00:44:18.352 --> 00:44:20.852
So, anything that you find, God made.

00:44:20.852 --> 00:44:23.272
There is no adversarial nature there.

00:44:23.272 --> 00:44:25.952
That's why it's called God's two books.

00:44:25.952 --> 00:44:28.552
Both of these things testify to His glory.

00:44:28.552 --> 00:44:29.232
And you know what?

00:44:29.232 --> 00:44:31.112
Scripture says the same thing.

00:44:31.112 --> 00:44:36.492
Scripture says that God points to creation as testifying to His glory.

00:44:36.492 --> 00:44:43.832
So, it's not a wacko position to say that you can believe all those things at once even when they don't talk to each other.

00:44:43.832 --> 00:44:47.712
You're never going to discover what's in Scripture in nature.

00:44:47.712 --> 00:44:51.472
There are things in nature that you will find described in Scripture.

00:44:51.472 --> 00:44:57.952
We need both to understand the glory and the might of God and to understand His love for us.

00:44:57.952 --> 00:45:02.532
And Scripture is more important because it fills in all the blanks we can never apprehend with our reason.

00:45:02.532 --> 00:45:12.872
It's only by that faith being passed down as facts, as the written word of God, which at one point in history was the oral word of God.

00:45:12.872 --> 00:45:25.952
One of the other examples that we used in the apostasy episode that I mentioned from last year was King Josiah, whom Scripture describes as having been a boy king, having been a faithful king.

00:45:25.952 --> 00:45:38.132
And yet, when it describes, and we went into great detail in that episode, we read the whole section where it described all the things that were going on in King Josiah's temple at the time that he was king.

00:45:38.132 --> 00:45:40.312
And it was profound wickedness.

00:45:40.312 --> 00:45:41.672
There were Asherah poles.

00:45:41.672 --> 00:45:45.672
There were altars to false gods, to demons.

00:45:45.672 --> 00:45:54.532
All of this wickedness was being worshiped in and around God's temple with Josiah's permission, and he thought he was serving God.

00:45:54.532 --> 00:45:56.892
And that was the purpose of that illustration.

00:45:56.892 --> 00:46:07.872
Josiah believed with a clean conscience that all the evil that he was participating in before they found the Book of the Law in the temple, and they found it in some rubble or in some dust.

00:46:07.872 --> 00:46:09.512
It was completely forgotten.

00:46:09.512 --> 00:46:13.232
When they rediscovered scripture, he repented.

00:46:13.232 --> 00:46:21.292
He had it read to him and he immediately knew that he had been engaged in the most grievous, idolatrous wickedness.

00:46:21.292 --> 00:46:23.092
He repented on the spot.

00:46:23.092 --> 00:46:25.212
He didn't try to synthesize the two.

00:46:25.212 --> 00:46:37.752
He didn't ask his priest to pour through that, to find some example or some reason, some out, for him to say, well, I'm not actually guilty of this, because, you know, it was like this when I got here, so it's not my fault.

00:46:37.752 --> 00:46:41.612
That's the human impulse to try to find some excuse.

00:46:41.612 --> 00:46:45.332
He was horrified properly because he was a faithful Christian.

00:46:45.332 --> 00:46:54.012
And that's why God credited him as righteousness, as belief, even in the face of the wickedness he had participated in for nearly a decade of his kingship.

00:46:54.012 --> 00:47:06.372
When they rediscovered scripture and put it into practice again, and again, as we said there, not only did they forget where the Book of the Law was, but they forgot it existed.

00:47:06.372 --> 00:47:07.812
That's how far gone they were.

00:47:07.812 --> 00:47:12.072
They had forgotten the existence of the written word.

00:47:12.072 --> 00:47:18.712
And so when this was rediscovered, it was telling them things they had completely forgotten, things they didn't have any access to.

00:47:18.712 --> 00:47:20.932
Because again, you can't find it in nature.

00:47:20.932 --> 00:47:24.792
You can only find that which God reveals in His word through His word.

00:47:24.792 --> 00:47:26.972
You're not going to find it on gold tablets.

00:47:27.412 --> 00:47:29.052
You're not going to find it in the stars.

00:47:29.052 --> 00:47:31.532
You're only going to find it in scripture.

00:47:31.532 --> 00:47:32.552
He repented.

00:47:32.552 --> 00:47:34.812
He had no excuses.

00:47:34.812 --> 00:47:36.732
He didn't blame anyone.

00:47:36.732 --> 00:47:40.692
He said, Lord have mercy, let's fix this as soon as possible.

00:47:40.692 --> 00:47:44.552
And he spent the rest of his kingship addressing those problems.

00:47:44.552 --> 00:47:46.372
And he fixed it very quickly.

00:47:46.372 --> 00:47:53.212
And so his kingdom again fell into wickedness as soon as he died because his son was evil.

00:47:53.832 --> 00:48:00.712
But at least for his sake, there's a period of time where his people were blessed by faithful teaching.

00:48:00.712 --> 00:48:03.612
And that gets into the other thing that Corey said.

00:48:03.612 --> 00:48:11.392
Satan doesn't necessarily even need our individual churches to apostatize completely in one generation.

00:48:11.392 --> 00:48:20.872
So it's fine if you go from having strong belief to having a syncretist mixture of beliefs, but you still go to heaven somehow.

00:48:20.872 --> 00:48:21.752
God sorts it out.

00:48:22.152 --> 00:48:25.812
You're forgiven for your errors of which we all have.

00:48:25.812 --> 00:48:31.252
And you go to heaven despite having held some false beliefs.

00:48:31.252 --> 00:48:34.952
Satan still wins because he's playing a multi-generational game.

00:48:34.952 --> 00:48:41.772
Because what you have done is created inheritance for the next generation that's worse off than the one that you found.

00:48:41.772 --> 00:48:49.372
So when it's passed down, what everyone is taught is this messed up version that's riddled with lies and has some truth in it.

00:48:49.832 --> 00:48:52.232
What do you think is going to happen in that circumstance?

00:48:52.232 --> 00:48:58.932
Is it going to somehow emerge even better in another generation, or is it going to continue to deteriorate?

00:48:58.932 --> 00:49:03.012
Satan knows how to play this game, and he plays it for the long run.

00:49:03.012 --> 00:49:06.892
He's perfectly content to let some generations go to heaven.

00:49:06.892 --> 00:49:22.332
He'd like to get everybody, but if he has an intermediary generation that's in decay, such that maybe they preserve the temple before Josiah, somebody preserve the temple in some knowledge of God, and then just misplace scripture.

00:49:22.332 --> 00:49:27.632
Maybe they were still Christian, they were still believers, but they forgot where the Bible was.

00:49:27.632 --> 00:49:32.492
And then a generation passed, and a generation passed, and soon nobody remembers anything.

00:49:32.492 --> 00:49:38.632
That's how Satan plays this game, which is why we have to always be vigilant at every point.

00:49:38.632 --> 00:49:45.412
We can never let air creep in, and wherever we find air, wherever we find it, we have to respond as Josiah did.

00:49:45.992 --> 00:49:51.932
We have to be horrified, and we have to personally repent the moment we realize we've been in air.

00:49:51.932 --> 00:49:53.212
It is possible.

00:49:53.212 --> 00:49:54.812
It has happened to you.

00:49:54.812 --> 00:49:56.232
It has happened to me.

00:49:56.232 --> 00:49:58.332
It will happen again.

00:49:58.332 --> 00:50:00.932
We're not perfect creatures.

00:50:00.932 --> 00:50:02.392
We are imperfect.

00:50:02.392 --> 00:50:03.892
We're fallible.

00:50:03.892 --> 00:50:05.252
We're foolish.

00:50:05.252 --> 00:50:06.652
We're selfish.

00:50:06.652 --> 00:50:09.412
We're going to stick to whatever makes us feel good.

00:50:09.412 --> 00:50:12.412
And the things that are true generally don't meet that criteria.

00:50:13.092 --> 00:50:18.612
The things that are true that are of God genuinely, they're usually unpopular.

00:50:18.612 --> 00:50:20.992
They're usually going to get you into trouble.

00:50:20.992 --> 00:50:23.852
So when people start screaming and shouting and say, you can't do that.

00:50:23.852 --> 00:50:24.292
That's evil.

00:50:24.292 --> 00:50:24.772
That's wicked.

00:50:24.772 --> 00:50:28.312
That's not what we've done since the 1960s.

00:50:28.312 --> 00:50:31.852
You're going to have to face an uphill battle and you're going to have to choose.

00:50:31.852 --> 00:50:35.732
Do I fit in or do I obey God?

00:50:35.732 --> 00:50:41.892
When a generation fails to meet that test head on, that generation is going to apostatize.

00:50:42.412 --> 00:50:58.752
And then the inheritance passed on to future generations of the church, the entire church is going to be false doctrine, false belief and spiritual weakness, where there's no notion of fighting or contending for that, which is true and from God.

00:50:58.752 --> 00:51:09.352
At this point, when someone actually wants to contend with things that are godly, contend for them in the face of adversaries in public, the guy is usually going to get shouted down.

00:51:09.352 --> 00:51:10.092
Why are you fighting?

00:51:10.512 --> 00:51:12.052
Why are you angry about stuff?

00:51:12.632 --> 00:51:14.252
You're causing dissent.

00:51:14.252 --> 00:51:19.332
Everything was so peaceful and happy, and then you said somebody was wrong about God, and everyone's riled up.

00:51:19.332 --> 00:51:21.312
Look at all the disruption you're causing.

00:51:21.312 --> 00:51:27.952
Well, it's possible that there's actual harm being done by someone doing that, if everyone was right in the first place.

00:51:27.952 --> 00:51:30.612
Or it's possible that someone's pulling the fire alarm.

00:51:30.612 --> 00:51:40.852
And the dire situation that we face today is that all of us individually are put in a situation where we have to discern as best we can.

00:51:40.852 --> 00:51:44.392
Has someone messed up in a previous generation?

00:51:44.392 --> 00:51:45.872
Have they made a false confession?

00:51:45.892 --> 00:51:51.712
Or has Satan tricked us into taking a true confession and twisting it?

00:51:51.712 --> 00:51:55.612
And using it for purposes for which it was never intended?

00:51:55.612 --> 00:52:02.132
Another example I point to frequently is the bronze serpent that Moses held aloft at the command of God.

00:52:02.472 --> 00:52:11.632
He had him fashion a bronze serpent to hold up on a pole in front of Israel because they were being bitten by snakes, poisonous snakes, that instantly God sent.

00:52:11.632 --> 00:52:22.812
And God told Moses to have Israel look at this serpent, this bronze serpent on a pole, and those who gazed upon it would be saved from the venomous stings and not die.

00:52:22.812 --> 00:52:24.492
And it worked.

00:52:24.492 --> 00:52:29.012
Those who obeyed God were saved from poisoning and dying.

00:52:29.012 --> 00:52:35.812
And then later on, a few books later, we find out that they kept that bronze serpent and they gave it a name.

00:52:35.812 --> 00:52:40.212
They named it Nehushetan, and they were worshiping it as a God.

00:52:40.212 --> 00:52:44.712
So this is what Confessions often end up doing.

00:52:44.712 --> 00:52:51.892
You have something that was good at the time, it was true, it served a purpose, it was entirely in accord with God's will.

00:52:51.892 --> 00:53:01.092
And yet somebody decides we're going to hang on to it and we're going to reuse it for some other purpose, for which it was not intended, it was not ordained by God.

00:53:01.692 --> 00:53:04.692
And next thing you know, you have idolatry.

00:53:04.692 --> 00:53:07.332
In that case, it was straight up idol worship.

00:53:07.332 --> 00:53:11.412
They gave the name of a demon, they were worshiping it instead of God.

00:53:11.412 --> 00:53:14.492
That's how easy it is for us to do these things.

00:53:14.492 --> 00:53:22.772
You know, in the case of things like creeds and a good sound Christian confession, you don't throw it away after a generation because it served its purpose.

00:53:22.772 --> 00:53:30.692
But you must always acknowledge that it only served the purpose of answering the questions that those men faced at that time.

00:53:31.872 --> 00:53:53.232
There can be no doubt that if the exact same men who wrote all the books in the Book of Conquer, the Lutheran Confessions or your Confessions of your church, whatever it is, if all of those men were alive today in our churches, in our circumstances, those men, if those Confessions did not exist, they would write very different Confessions.

00:53:53.232 --> 00:53:55.432
Does that mean that the old ones are wrong?

00:53:55.432 --> 00:53:56.072
No.

00:53:56.072 --> 00:53:57.832
It means they were solving a different purpose.

00:53:59.092 --> 00:54:04.032
A faithful contender for God's Word is going to deal with what's in front of him.

00:54:04.032 --> 00:54:08.072
And sometimes that's going to mean talking about things that people haven't talked about before.

00:54:08.072 --> 00:54:15.712
And when that happens, you're going to have men who are going to try to cling to the old Confession, just like that bronze serpent.

00:54:15.712 --> 00:54:18.212
They're going to wave it around and say, what about this?

00:54:18.212 --> 00:54:22.652
We've had this for centuries, and it clearly applies here because of the old use.

00:54:22.652 --> 00:54:26.512
Like, well, the old use doesn't apply here because we have a different problem now.

00:54:27.472 --> 00:54:33.912
The reason the pattern keeps repeating is that it's human nature to fall for it, and it's Satan's playbook.

00:54:33.912 --> 00:54:35.732
He loves this crap because it's easy.

00:54:35.732 --> 00:54:37.032
It keeps working.

00:54:37.032 --> 00:54:39.872
We keep gobbling it up, and it's deadly.

00:54:39.892 --> 00:54:41.372
It's deadly to souls.

00:54:41.372 --> 00:54:42.652
Maybe not in one generation.

00:54:42.652 --> 00:54:44.192
Maybe it takes three or four.

00:54:44.192 --> 00:54:45.372
Do you think Satan cares?

00:54:45.372 --> 00:54:46.092
No.

00:54:46.092 --> 00:54:49.572
He can keep attacking people in many different ways as he wants.

00:54:49.572 --> 00:54:53.632
He doesn't need to corrupt every church instantly all the time.

00:54:53.632 --> 00:55:00.452
He'll take his time if it means that he can ultimately destroy a church, especially one that once had a sound confession.

00:55:00.452 --> 00:55:14.392
What greater victory for hell than to take something that was once true and faithful and to gradually corrupt it and get it to turn its own confessions that once pointed to God and then have it point to hell?

00:55:14.392 --> 00:55:16.572
That's as satanic as it gets.

00:55:16.572 --> 00:55:19.132
That is what we're dealing with as an enemy.

00:55:19.132 --> 00:55:21.792
And the problem is that we don't believe it.

00:55:22.552 --> 00:55:29.092
We believe that as long as we just keep mouthing the correct words, we're going to be saved from everything.

00:55:29.092 --> 00:55:33.432
As long as we cry, Lord, Lord, we're going to be hunky-dory.

00:55:33.432 --> 00:55:35.612
God warns us about that.

00:55:36.912 --> 00:55:46.512
For anyone who happens to be thinking that this could never happen, this is obviously something about which we don't really need to worry, because Satan couldn't possibly.

00:55:48.452 --> 00:55:57.912
Well, I would direct you to look at the various church bodies in the United States, because we've seen exactly this play out over time.

00:55:58.972 --> 00:56:12.332
Each and every tradition has bodies ranging from relatively conservative traditional to wildly liberal and outright and openly apostate.

00:56:13.732 --> 00:56:18.452
In the case of the Presbyterians, you have the OPC, the PCA and PCUSA.

00:56:19.572 --> 00:56:26.872
In the case of even the Methodists, you have the Wesleyan, and then you have all the way down to the UMC.

00:56:26.872 --> 00:56:44.592
For the Anglicans or the Episcopalians, you have ACNA and TEC, and you even have the same thing with regard to the Baptists from, say, the IFB churches, SBC is middle of the road, and then there's ABCUSA, which is the very liberal Baptist body.

00:56:44.592 --> 00:56:51.312
In the case of Lutherans, we have the LCMS, NALC, LCMC and ELCA.

00:56:51.312 --> 00:56:55.932
Now those of us who are Lutheran would not call ELCA Lutheran.

00:56:55.932 --> 00:57:02.132
We would in fact say they should not be allowed to use the name Lutheran, because they're not even Christian.

00:57:02.132 --> 00:57:04.492
But they didn't start out that way.

00:57:04.492 --> 00:57:08.292
They started out as a faithful Lutheran body.

00:57:08.292 --> 00:57:13.992
They started out as a merger of a number of bodies and the organization chart, as it were, starts to get complicated.

00:57:13.992 --> 00:57:17.072
But they didn't start out apostate.

00:57:18.512 --> 00:57:30.152
That happened incrementally over a number of generations, because they would yield on an issue here, or they would stop confessing this truth in the right way there.

00:57:31.212 --> 00:57:43.852
And eventually, you wind up flying the so-called rainbow flag and the BLM flag, and suddenly your churches are empty and you're having to sell them to balance your budget.

00:57:46.292 --> 00:57:52.572
We've seen this play out time and time again, and it hasn't played out just in the US.

00:57:52.572 --> 00:58:05.752
It's played out everywhere there have been Christians, when they didn't guard the deposit of faith entrusted to them by their forefathers, or when their forefathers themselves were corrupt, as often happens.

00:58:07.712 --> 00:58:17.712
This is very much a playbook that Satan has been running for a very long time, and he will continue to run it because it will continue to work.

00:58:17.712 --> 00:58:47.012
What we're saying is this is something against which Christians have to guard, because not only do we have to guard against it for ourselves, but we have to guard against it for those who will come after us as well, because as Woe was saying, and as we've addressed in previous episodes, it may be that your errors don't damn you, but your children will be worse off, and their children will be even worse off.

00:58:47.012 --> 00:59:06.832
And unless you have something like a reformation, like a restoration of right doctrine and teaching, eventually you are going to wind up with bodies calling themselves churches that are nothing of the sort, because the things they teach aren't true, and the things they teach do not save.

00:59:07.912 --> 00:59:11.392
Can you be a member of an ELCA church and possibly be saved?

00:59:11.392 --> 00:59:15.032
Sure, felicitous inconsistency does exist.

00:59:16.132 --> 00:59:18.792
But you don't want to rely on that.

00:59:18.792 --> 00:59:29.772
As I've said before, if you are out hiking, generally speaking, unless you're one of those people who has some issue with adrenaline, you don't try to get as close to the cliff as possible.

00:59:31.712 --> 00:59:39.792
When it comes to issues of religion, when it comes to doctrinal issues, you should absolutely avoid the cliff.

00:59:39.792 --> 00:59:45.232
You don't want to get as close as possible to the line of apostasy.

00:59:45.232 --> 00:59:47.772
Well, I'm not over the line, so I'm fine.

00:59:47.772 --> 00:59:51.172
The issue is you don't know exactly where that line is.

00:59:51.172 --> 00:59:56.832
You don't know how many false beliefs you can hold and still be saved.

00:59:56.832 --> 00:59:59.372
We're not saying that you should doubt your salvation.

00:59:59.452 --> 01:00:04.772
We're not addressing this topic in order to cause you to fear.

01:00:04.772 --> 01:00:16.852
We're just calling you to think about these issues, to be mindful of what you believe, why you believe it, what you confess, why you confess it.

01:00:16.852 --> 01:00:22.352
Because again, it's not sufficient just to confess the thing mindlessly.

01:00:22.352 --> 01:00:25.192
A parrot can do that.

01:00:25.192 --> 01:00:33.112
It is important to understand the words you're saying, what they mean, and why you're saying them.

01:00:33.112 --> 01:00:48.392
Because even if, let's say, you understand all of that perfectly, if all that you pass on to the next generation is the words, devoid of understanding, devoid of the why, then they are in a precarious situation.

01:00:49.692 --> 01:00:55.092
It may be sufficient for them, but what about the generation that comes after them?

01:00:57.032 --> 01:01:04.192
All of these issues are generational, because that is simply how it works for mortal men.

01:01:04.192 --> 01:01:11.812
We're only around for 80-ish years, depending on genetics and other factors.

01:01:11.812 --> 01:01:13.972
Misadventure.

01:01:13.972 --> 01:01:23.412
And generally speaking, there's 25 to 30 years between generations, so you have that overlapping time in order to transmit the faith to the next generation.

01:01:24.132 --> 01:01:32.012
But you have to make sure that what you're transmitting is the truth, is the whole truth, and is nothing but the truth.

01:01:32.012 --> 01:01:35.892
Not just certain sub-segments of the truth.

01:01:35.892 --> 01:01:38.972
Not the truth with some bits distorted.

01:01:40.332 --> 01:01:45.452
Because Satan is going to be around for that next generation.

01:01:45.452 --> 01:01:53.752
He's still going to be here, working at destroying the faith, working at leading men astray, long after you're gone.

01:01:53.752 --> 01:01:56.052
He's been at it for thousands of years.

01:01:56.052 --> 01:01:58.172
We don't have thousands of years.

01:01:58.172 --> 01:02:04.492
We have a limited time in which to get these things right, and then to pass them on to future generations.

01:02:05.692 --> 01:02:20.292
And if we don't take those issues seriously, it's very possible to go from something like what the LCMS was in the 1800s and the early 1900s to what Elke is today.

01:02:20.292 --> 01:02:24.732
And it can happen a lot faster than most men believe.

01:02:24.732 --> 01:02:29.372
It doesn't take a hundred generations to become apostate.

01:02:29.372 --> 01:02:38.152
As Wo mentioned, but Nehushtan, that took less than a generation, maybe one generation, essentially.

01:02:38.152 --> 01:02:47.232
And they went from, I won't say, good and proper worship of the true God, because obviously they had their problems at that point in Israel's history.

01:02:47.232 --> 01:02:54.512
But they went from recognizing and understanding at least part of the truth to open idolatry.

01:02:56.192 --> 01:03:02.272
And the example of what has happened in the US with Lutheranism is a great warning.

01:03:02.272 --> 01:03:03.612
It's not just Lutheranism.

01:03:03.612 --> 01:03:04.912
I'm not picking on Lutherans.

01:03:04.912 --> 01:03:08.572
It just happens to be that I'm Lutheran and I'm most familiar with their history.

01:03:08.572 --> 01:03:15.872
Obviously the same thing has happened, as I mentioned, with the Presbyterians and the Baptists and others as well.

01:03:15.872 --> 01:03:34.892
But it is very possible to go from conservative Christian bodies that confess right doctrine and two generations later have essentially empty pews with female so-called pastors preaching Marxism from the pulpit.

01:03:36.732 --> 01:03:37.832
We've seen that happen.

01:03:39.052 --> 01:03:59.692
There are men alive today who watched it happen within their own lifespan, because there were men when they were children who were attending Elka churches, or what would become Elka in many cases, faithful churches, and they've watched that change in their own lifespan.

01:03:59.692 --> 01:04:03.232
They should have left those churches long ago, but some of them have not.

01:04:04.332 --> 01:04:12.712
This is not something that is theoretical, or something that is just some possibility out there, that this is something that is...

01:04:12.712 --> 01:04:14.692
You should think about it, because maybe it'll happen.

01:04:14.692 --> 01:04:23.992
No, this is something that Satan actively exploits, and actively pursues every single day, because it works.

01:04:23.992 --> 01:04:25.812
It's effective.

01:04:25.812 --> 01:04:33.912
Satan is not going to use ineffective tactics over the long run, because he's not dumb.

01:04:35.212 --> 01:04:38.052
If he were dumb, he wouldn't be a threat.

01:04:38.052 --> 01:04:46.192
If he were dumb, we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with these issues, because then he'd basically be a court jester, and we could just ignore him or laugh at him.

01:04:46.192 --> 01:04:57.232
We should certainly still laugh at him, but we should also take him seriously as the enemy that he is, because he does prowl about as a roaring lion seeking to consume whom he can.

01:04:57.952 --> 01:05:13.652
And one of the ways that he does that is leading men astray by getting them to turn into an idol, that which is in fact true, but true only insofar as the things it addresses and when it is used truthfully.

01:05:16.272 --> 01:05:30.632
Because there's a certain Latin phrase that comes to mind when dealing with this issue, and of course that is Abusus Iusum Non Tolet, which is a general Latin maxim, a legal maxim, but also a logical one.

01:05:30.632 --> 01:05:37.512
And essentially it just means that the abuse of a thing does not destroy the use of a thing.

01:05:37.512 --> 01:05:41.672
Which is to say, a good thing can in fact be abused.

01:05:41.672 --> 01:05:42.812
We all know that.

01:05:42.812 --> 01:05:43.932
I'm holding a pen right now.

01:05:43.932 --> 01:05:47.752
I always wind up using my pen as an example because it's usually in my hand when we're recording.

01:05:48.292 --> 01:05:52.252
But I can write with my pen, which is a good use.

01:05:52.252 --> 01:05:58.852
I could also stab someone in the neck with my pen, which is usually a bad use, unless it's self-defense, which is a different matter.

01:05:58.852 --> 01:06:03.532
Don't really want to destroy the pen, but there is a good use for the thing.

01:06:03.532 --> 01:06:08.032
And just because there's a bad use does not mean the good use is destroyed.

01:06:09.092 --> 01:06:11.792
But perhaps we need a sort of corollary.

01:06:12.072 --> 01:06:14.612
Usus bonus abusum non precludit.

01:06:14.612 --> 01:06:17.492
A good use does not preclude abuse.

01:06:18.632 --> 01:06:25.272
Just because a thing has a good use does not mean you cannot abuse it.

01:06:25.272 --> 01:06:33.492
And so the standard maxim is that the abuse doesn't destroy the use, but we should keep in mind the corollary as well.

01:06:33.492 --> 01:06:37.952
The good use does not mean that the thing cannot be abused.

01:06:38.572 --> 01:06:58.412
And so just because there is this good use for our confessions, just because they are true in the matters they address, in the way in which they address them, when you understand what they're saying, does not mean that Satan cannot use them to mislead.

01:06:58.412 --> 01:07:04.732
Because he can certainly get you to give a false confession with words that on their face appear to be true.

01:07:06.312 --> 01:07:11.852
Now, I know this is going to sound horrible to some of you, because quite frankly, it is a horrible thing.

01:07:11.852 --> 01:07:19.972
The idea that you could give a false confession, that you could lie effectively with the truth, is a terrifying possibility.

01:07:21.352 --> 01:07:23.272
But it remains a fact.

01:07:23.272 --> 01:07:25.492
It is something that can occur.

01:07:25.492 --> 01:07:32.012
And we all recognize this from the examples given with regard to the courts, for instance.

01:07:32.292 --> 01:07:36.052
That's one people can grasp quite readily.

01:07:36.052 --> 01:07:43.432
Another example would be the use of words that are not univocal, but in a univocal fashion.

01:07:43.432 --> 01:07:44.892
Essentially equivocation.

01:07:46.852 --> 01:07:52.092
If you speak a certain sentence, we'll abstract it a bit.

01:07:52.092 --> 01:07:54.652
If I say, X is true.

01:07:54.652 --> 01:07:56.692
Well, it depends what X is.

01:07:56.692 --> 01:07:58.752
Rather heavily, doesn't it?

01:07:58.752 --> 01:08:07.132
And so if I mean one thing by X, and in that case, it's true, it doesn't mean that it holds for all senses of that.

01:08:07.132 --> 01:08:09.632
A more concrete example.

01:08:09.632 --> 01:08:14.352
If you told another person, I saw Tom at the party.

01:08:14.352 --> 01:08:19.792
Well, if you know more than one Tom, there's an ambiguity, there's the problem there.

01:08:19.792 --> 01:08:22.532
That can be exploited to mislead.

01:08:22.532 --> 01:08:28.412
Because maybe you know the other person will think, one friend, Tom.

01:08:28.412 --> 01:08:30.292
But you actually saw the other one.

01:08:30.292 --> 01:08:32.332
Maybe there's a reason you're attempting to mislead.

01:08:32.332 --> 01:08:34.812
That's what Satan attempts to do.

01:08:34.812 --> 01:08:38.272
He wants you to say something that is false.

01:08:38.272 --> 01:08:43.292
He doesn't care if there's a particular sense in which it could be true.

01:08:43.292 --> 01:08:47.952
Because the goal is to get you to give the false confession.

01:08:47.952 --> 01:08:53.452
Or to get you to distort the confession and pass it on as a false confession.

01:08:53.452 --> 01:08:57.772
Because sure, Satan would love to drag you personally to hell.

01:08:57.772 --> 01:09:02.392
But if he can't get you, he will definitely settle for your grandchildren.

01:09:03.452 --> 01:09:06.912
And so these are things against which we have to guard.

01:09:06.912 --> 01:09:22.452
Because if we lose this deposit entrusted to us, if we lose the faith, the truth, the good confessions, the things that have been entrusted to us as part of our patrimony, then we are passing on a burden to the next generation.

01:09:23.732 --> 01:09:26.232
And it may be that they will lose the faith.

01:09:26.232 --> 01:09:28.712
Because that certainly happened all over the world.

01:09:28.712 --> 01:09:37.792
As we have mentioned so many times, all three of Noah's sons walked off the ark knowing the Christian faith.

01:09:37.792 --> 01:09:44.952
Now there's some doubt as to what particularly Ham believed, but he knew of the Christian faith.

01:09:44.952 --> 01:09:47.172
Did they all pass it on?

01:09:47.172 --> 01:09:47.992
The answer is no.

01:09:48.852 --> 01:10:00.892
In fact, at some point that chain was broken in all cases, because all of humanity apostatized to varying degrees and at varying times.

01:10:02.152 --> 01:10:06.272
That may have happened in this very way.

01:10:06.272 --> 01:10:11.292
Getting men to state something that's true, but not in that sense.

01:10:12.352 --> 01:10:15.932
For instance, Nehushtan.

01:10:15.932 --> 01:10:19.132
God did command Moses to create that.

01:10:19.132 --> 01:10:22.072
That was something from God.

01:10:22.072 --> 01:10:24.812
It had a legitimate use.

01:10:24.812 --> 01:10:28.792
It was then used in a way that was an abuse.

01:10:28.792 --> 01:10:31.252
It was used in a way to mislead.

01:10:31.252 --> 01:10:33.952
It was turned into an idol.

01:10:33.952 --> 01:10:42.332
Because if you looked at it, if you used it in the way that God commanded, it would save you from death from being bitten by the serpents.

01:10:43.952 --> 01:10:51.272
But if you start to worship it instead, if you turn it into an idol, you're using it in this false way.

01:10:51.272 --> 01:10:58.252
It doesn't change the nature of the thing, because the thing was still from God and had that legitimate use.

01:10:58.252 --> 01:11:05.412
But what you have done with it, what Satan has got you to do with it, is idolatry, is apostasy.

01:11:06.492 --> 01:11:16.352
It is entirely possible to apostatize while speaking words that on their face, that on the surface, appear to be true.

01:11:17.552 --> 01:11:25.432
The phrase, it's true, but, is something that should really weigh on us much more.

01:11:25.432 --> 01:11:38.892
I think that when we see these arguments playing out in public or in private, that there's not the inherent impulse to guard against the but part.

01:11:38.892 --> 01:11:53.132
All the guys want to argue about, especially if they're not particularly good at hammering these issues out, then in the case where someone's not particularly adept, all they're going to be able to lean on is whether or not it's true.

01:11:53.132 --> 01:11:55.672
And if it's true, that's got to be good enough.

01:11:56.212 --> 01:12:04.672
As I said earlier, it's necessary for us to have these North Stars, to have these frames of reference, so that we don't lose our way.

01:12:04.672 --> 01:12:09.592
And sometimes they are just summaries and distillations, like the creeds.

01:12:09.592 --> 01:12:13.292
We've mentioned in a previous episode, we were talking about the creeds.

01:12:13.312 --> 01:12:33.732
One of the reasons that typically either the Apostles or Nicene Creed is put right before or right after a sermon, is so even the man who doesn't know a lot about theology, if he hears a sermon and the very next or the very previous thing that he hears is a creed that contradicts something in the sermon, he's probably going to notice.

01:12:33.732 --> 01:12:50.452
He might not be the one to figure it out or argue correctly how to fix it, but he might have enough awareness, situational awareness to say, hey, the creed says this about Jesus' nature and the pastor said something that I don't understand.

01:12:50.912 --> 01:12:54.592
That doesn't mean that the pastor is a liar or blaspheme or anything.

01:12:54.592 --> 01:13:00.952
Hopefully, it's just a good teaching moment where there's some subtlety that a good teacher can tease out and explain to someone.

01:13:00.952 --> 01:13:17.972
But those are also there as curbs to say, whatever you say in the pulpit, it had better accord with these creeds because these are many centuries old, these north stars of a basic confession of the Christian faith.

01:13:17.972 --> 01:13:19.012
And they're not complete.

01:13:19.492 --> 01:13:22.632
I re-read all three of them earlier just to prepare for this.

01:13:22.632 --> 01:13:28.512
And I noticed one thing I was looking for, whether and to what extent they refer to scripture.

01:13:28.512 --> 01:13:31.792
And scripture is pretty much an afterthought.

01:13:31.792 --> 01:13:36.052
One of the mentions that it talks about Jesus being raised from the dead.

01:13:36.052 --> 01:13:44.892
And so the creed confesses that scripture exists and says some good stuff, but you just have the gospels and you'd be set there.

01:13:44.892 --> 01:13:50.732
That doesn't imply or certainly state that all of scripture is breathed out by God.

01:13:50.732 --> 01:13:55.752
And it wasn't that the men who crafted the creeds denied scripture in the slightest.

01:13:55.752 --> 01:13:56.952
That's my whole point.

01:13:56.952 --> 01:14:00.452
They didn't mention it because it wasn't what they were fighting over.

01:14:00.452 --> 01:14:09.872
When we get in this position where we want to make arguments where we'll say it's true, but I'm going to go in this other direction, that's when we're in real danger.

01:14:09.892 --> 01:14:17.372
I want to leave you with something that John the Baptist said at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry for Matthew 3.

01:14:17.372 --> 01:14:26.012
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

01:14:26.012 --> 01:14:32.952
Bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father.

01:14:32.952 --> 01:14:37.832
For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

01:14:37.832 --> 01:14:41.152
That warning should be a warning to each of us.

01:14:41.192 --> 01:14:47.232
Because this tendency that the churches have and that we have been taught, is to become Pharisees.

01:14:47.232 --> 01:14:52.432
I want you to remember the words, We have Abraham as our father.

01:14:52.432 --> 01:14:59.652
Because every time someone picks up his confession and waves it in the air is proof of what a sound theologian he is.

01:14:59.652 --> 01:15:01.572
That's exactly what he's doing.

01:15:01.572 --> 01:15:04.432
He is saying, I have Abraham as my father.

01:15:04.432 --> 01:15:08.112
How can I possibly be wrong when I'm waving this confession in the air?

01:15:09.232 --> 01:15:11.332
It's a Carnival Barker's trick.

01:15:11.332 --> 01:15:15.472
Even if it's true, because it's not a sound argument.

01:15:15.472 --> 01:15:17.252
That's the distinction here.

01:15:17.252 --> 01:15:28.712
Even assuming for the sake of argument that what he is holding up in the air is a true and faithful confession of the word, it doesn't mean that whatever else he's saying is also true, just because he believes that thing.

01:15:28.712 --> 01:15:33.212
Each argument needs to stand on its own, and it needs to be consistent with other arguments.

01:15:33.212 --> 01:15:35.352
And all those arguments need to be rooted in scripture.

01:15:36.512 --> 01:15:42.592
Any departure from that is an opening for Satan to attack, and he always will, without fail.

01:15:42.592 --> 01:15:46.052
He's the one orchestrating these departures from scripture.

01:15:46.052 --> 01:15:48.272
He's the one orchestrating these departures.

01:15:48.272 --> 01:15:54.492
And sometimes he begins the way he began with Eve, by tricking her into confessing truly.

01:15:54.492 --> 01:15:57.032
And that was his opening.

01:15:57.032 --> 01:16:02.992
Every time you hear someone saying, I have Abraham as my father, you're dealing with a Pharisee.

01:16:04.072 --> 01:16:17.012
It doesn't mean that he's apostate, but that is a pharisaical argument to presume that because of the genealogy of one set of ideas, that everything else is legitimate.

01:16:17.012 --> 01:16:20.332
That's not reason, is not borne out by scripture.

01:16:20.672 --> 01:16:22.072
It's an absurdity.

01:16:22.072 --> 01:16:25.732
And it's one that wouldn't work on us if we were being vigilant.

01:16:25.732 --> 01:16:27.072
That's really what this episode is about.

01:16:27.072 --> 01:16:27.972
It's a call to vigilance.

01:16:27.972 --> 01:16:32.512
In whatever circumstances you find yourself, they're gonna be different than my circumstances.

01:16:32.572 --> 01:16:33.392
That's fine.

01:16:33.392 --> 01:16:37.852
And we're gonna have differences of opinion about what our confessions should be.

01:16:37.852 --> 01:16:41.612
We should all be on the same page, because only one of us can be right.

01:16:41.612 --> 01:16:53.132
But even if your confessions are true, if you are met with the impulse to wave them in the air and say, I can't be wrong about this other thing because I hold to this, you're being a Pharisee.

01:16:53.132 --> 01:16:59.012
You're being a tiny little Pharisee, and you're doing something stupid, and you're giving Satan a foothold.

01:16:59.012 --> 01:17:14.892
Even if you're right, even if you're right about the thing you're arguing about, never mind the confession being true, even if you're also right about the thing you're opposing, if you're using that fair, sable argument, I have Abraham as my father, that's the opening that Satan might use 20 years down the road.

01:17:14.892 --> 01:17:20.512
We can never let ourselves get away with doing that because that's it.

01:17:20.512 --> 01:17:24.032
That's the whole shooting match as soon as we start making those arguments.

01:17:24.032 --> 01:17:29.472
And it was prophetic when John the Baptist mentioned that because throughout the rest of the New Testament, that's what they act like.

01:17:30.152 --> 01:17:34.292
They continuously say, You can't be right because we have Abraham as our father.

01:17:34.292 --> 01:17:37.012
We were never slaves, which was a lie incidentally.

01:17:37.012 --> 01:17:37.972
It's absurd.

01:17:37.972 --> 01:17:44.092
The lengths that they went to, to point to Abraham being their father is justification for everything else.

01:17:44.092 --> 01:17:45.492
It's an absurdity.

01:17:45.492 --> 01:17:46.952
It's a falsehood.

01:17:46.952 --> 01:17:48.632
It is a bad argument.

01:17:48.632 --> 01:17:50.492
And it's the first step to hell.

01:17:50.492 --> 01:17:51.752
Or not necessarily the first step.

01:17:51.752 --> 01:17:53.172
It's one of the steps to hell.

01:17:53.172 --> 01:17:54.492
For some, it may be the first step.

01:17:54.492 --> 01:17:56.352
For others, it's probably not.

01:17:56.352 --> 01:17:57.772
But it's never a good argument.

01:17:58.592 --> 01:18:06.392
We have to catch ourselves when we say it's true, and then realize that we're on shaky ground.

01:18:06.392 --> 01:18:12.792
If you're asserting something true that's irrelevant, you're making a bad argument in any context.

01:18:12.792 --> 01:18:16.592
And if you're doing it with theology, you're getting into very dangerous territory.

01:18:16.592 --> 01:18:26.012
Because another thing we've said many times, when you make a scriptural argument, a doctrinal Christian argument, if someone believes you, if they agree with you, you're binding their conscience.

01:18:26.592 --> 01:18:38.012
And that's particularly a problem with pastors and clerics, because they automatically get that sort of respect accorded to them by virtue of their office.

01:18:38.012 --> 01:18:45.492
When someone attains the teaching office in public, everyone is naturally going to tend to defer to him.

01:18:45.492 --> 01:18:49.352
When in doubt, you're probably not going to argue with the pastor, and that's a good tendency.

01:18:49.352 --> 01:18:52.952
I don't want people going around arguing with their pastors all the time, that's disruptive.

01:18:52.952 --> 01:18:55.132
You're probably wrong if the guy's half competent.

01:18:55.612 --> 01:18:58.612
Even if you're both wrong about stuff, he's probably going to argue better than you.

01:18:58.612 --> 01:19:07.032
So frankly, picking these fights is not a good idea until you've done a ton of legwork, which you may or may not be competent to do.

01:19:07.032 --> 01:19:13.432
But it's not a question of being disruptive, it's a question of just understanding, are we getting into trouble here?

01:19:13.432 --> 01:19:22.672
Maybe all you can do is go talk to someone else who has his head on straight better than you do to help you check what's going on, to maybe straighten you out.

01:19:22.672 --> 01:19:24.112
In a lot of cases, that's going to be the case.

01:19:24.172 --> 01:19:25.772
You just misunderstood something.

01:19:25.772 --> 01:19:30.452
The pastor said something true, you didn't understand, you got upset, you were wrong.

01:19:30.452 --> 01:19:31.492
That can happen.

01:19:31.492 --> 01:19:34.492
Repent, figure it out and repent.

01:19:34.492 --> 01:19:47.352
Part of the episode that we did a while back called You Are Forgiven, when we discussed repentance, the essence of repentance is turning away from your sin, from your error, realizing that you were wrong.

01:19:47.352 --> 01:19:54.432
Repentance is not sorrow, it's not a feeling, it's a behavior, it's a change of direction.

01:19:54.432 --> 01:20:00.632
And that's part of the Christian life, to realize, oh crap, I screwed up.

01:20:00.632 --> 01:20:02.332
I didn't know what I was doing wrong.

01:20:02.332 --> 01:20:03.892
I did it in good conscience.

01:20:03.892 --> 01:20:05.452
I realized it was evil.

01:20:05.452 --> 01:20:06.872
I'm doing a 180 right now.

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I'm going in the opposite direction.

01:20:08.852 --> 01:20:10.412
That's repentance.

01:20:10.412 --> 01:20:13.092
And every Christian is capable of that.

01:20:13.092 --> 01:20:18.332
A man who's not capable of that is not Christian, regardless of what his confession is.

01:20:18.332 --> 01:20:20.532
You can confess with your lips all day long.

01:20:21.032 --> 01:20:29.292
If you can never possibly be wrong under any circumstances, if you can never have sinned, you can be guaranteed that you're not a Christian.

01:20:29.292 --> 01:20:32.912
And those are often the guys who are the most insistent that they're free from sin.

01:20:32.912 --> 01:20:34.832
They hold themselves up as examples to others.

01:20:34.832 --> 01:20:37.872
Look, look how great you can be if you're just like me.

01:20:37.872 --> 01:20:40.612
What a nightmarish thing to say to someone.

01:20:40.612 --> 01:20:41.372
God help you.

01:20:41.372 --> 01:20:43.232
Please be better than me.

01:20:43.232 --> 01:20:47.532
When we're dealing with God's things, we have to take exceptional care.

01:20:47.532 --> 01:20:50.232
And that's especially true of teachers and of pastors.

01:20:50.972 --> 01:20:57.852
And part of that is realizing, just as Josiah realized, that he'd made a mistake.

01:20:57.852 --> 01:20:59.532
He was in sin.

01:20:59.532 --> 01:21:02.112
Satan's been doing this for 7,000 years.

01:21:02.112 --> 01:21:10.332
And he knows that one of the most effective strategies is to get men to confess true things so that he can destroy them.

01:21:10.332 --> 01:21:11.952
We're not immune to that.

01:21:11.952 --> 01:21:13.952
We're vulnerable to it.

01:21:13.952 --> 01:21:16.972
The man who's just straight up a apostate who says, I hate God, I'm out of here.

01:21:17.192 --> 01:21:18.892
I'm going to be an atheist now.

01:21:19.412 --> 01:21:21.812
I'm going to live a degenerate life.

01:21:21.812 --> 01:21:23.932
He's no threat when it comes to this.

01:21:23.932 --> 01:21:28.552
No one's going to be misled by his life and think, well, this is what godly living looks like.

01:21:28.552 --> 01:21:31.852
He's not going to bind anyone's conscience with his wicked ways.

01:21:31.852 --> 01:21:36.332
He's going to be a bad example, maybe an appealing example to some.

01:21:36.332 --> 01:21:40.432
But it's the man who says, no, no, this is what God wants us all to do.

01:21:40.432 --> 01:21:42.952
And I'm going to hurt you if you don't agree.

01:21:42.952 --> 01:21:50.472
The man who wants to make arguments that aren't in scripture, that aren't consistent with scripture, that's the man who's a real danger.

01:21:50.472 --> 01:21:55.052
Well, the earliest episodes that we did was on neglected matters in scripture.

01:21:55.052 --> 01:22:04.372
And one that I've thought about more and more lately is the directive from Jesus Christ to curse those who reject the gospel.

01:22:04.372 --> 01:22:10.012
He said to shake the dust off your feet against a town, against an entire group of people.

01:22:10.012 --> 01:22:11.712
And the apostles did it.

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In fact, Paul did it to the extent that he said to the Jews, that your blood be upon your own heads.

01:22:17.092 --> 01:22:18.912
I'm going to go preach to the Europeans.

01:22:18.912 --> 01:22:20.452
And that's what he did.

01:22:20.452 --> 01:22:25.192
He cursed them in the name of God for rejecting God.

01:22:25.192 --> 01:22:28.852
And he was obeying Jesus Christ when he did it.

01:22:28.852 --> 01:22:34.352
Now find a pastor who's going to say we must curse those who reject the gospel.

01:22:34.352 --> 01:22:36.572
As we said in that episode, no, we're right here.

01:22:36.572 --> 01:22:38.812
I don't know exactly what that looks like.

01:22:38.952 --> 01:22:42.272
I'm not advocating for the church of going around and cursing people.

01:22:42.752 --> 01:22:43.532
That's not the point.

01:22:44.172 --> 01:22:56.692
But if you're dealing with someone who, when he sees those passages that say curse those who reject the gospel, if you say, that's not my God, you're a Pharisee.

01:22:56.692 --> 01:23:00.512
You are saying, I have Abraham as my father because I've got all this stuff.

01:23:00.512 --> 01:23:01.752
Oh, but I don't believe that.

01:23:01.752 --> 01:23:03.012
That's a bunch of crap.

01:23:03.012 --> 01:23:10.992
Whatever God said here in scripture is clearly wrong, because I have all this other stuff that he said that I believe, and this is my God.

01:23:10.992 --> 01:23:12.212
This is the problem that we have today.

01:23:12.372 --> 01:23:20.272
Inside the church, people are picking and choosing which parts of scripture they like and don't like, and reinventing a new God from the pieces.

01:23:20.272 --> 01:23:21.552
It is untenable.

01:23:21.552 --> 01:23:25.012
It is a danger to souls, and it's everywhere around us.

01:23:25.012 --> 01:23:28.812
So beware of those who say, I have Abraham as my father.

01:23:28.812 --> 01:23:34.772
Beware of those who waive their confession as the proof of their legitimacy.

01:23:34.772 --> 01:23:39.132
If their words and their actions are legitimate, they'll be borne out by scripture.

01:23:39.972 --> 01:23:46.452
And if their words and actions are not borne out by scripture, then they're not legitimate, and they have something of which to repent.

01:23:46.452 --> 01:23:48.292
And the same is true of each of us.

01:23:48.292 --> 01:23:50.672
Same is certainly true of me.

01:23:50.672 --> 01:23:51.852
It's just that simple.

01:23:51.852 --> 01:23:53.032
We can't say that we're perfect.

01:23:53.032 --> 01:24:02.372
We can't say that we're locked in, and because we have the genealogy of past performance, that we're not going to make any mistakes in the future.

01:24:02.372 --> 01:24:04.292
Nothing ever works that way.

01:24:04.292 --> 01:24:08.752
And the fact that that's become a normal thing in the church today is a tremendous danger.

01:24:09.392 --> 01:24:11.032
So, just watch out for it.

01:24:11.032 --> 01:24:13.852
Watch out for guys who are saying, I have Abraham as my father.

01:24:13.852 --> 01:24:14.872
Don't worry about it.

01:24:15.672 --> 01:24:17.212
I got this settled.

01:24:17.212 --> 01:24:22.332
This confession says that whatever else I'm saying is right, because this confession is true.

01:24:22.332 --> 01:24:24.372
It's a sales mechanism.

01:24:24.372 --> 01:24:25.852
It's a logical fallacy.

01:24:25.852 --> 01:24:27.772
It's all manner of deception.

01:24:27.772 --> 01:24:33.372
If any of this sounds like Satan, congratulations, you're starting to get a whiff of the sulfur that's emanating here.

01:24:33.372 --> 01:24:35.912
It is possible for individuals to apostatize.

01:24:35.912 --> 01:24:38.132
It is possible for churches to apostatize.

01:24:38.592 --> 01:24:41.692
It is possible for your church to apostatize.

01:24:41.692 --> 01:24:51.172
And when your church is doing it, that's probably when they're going to scream the loudest about their confessions while they're doing all the other things that are not consistent with Scripture.

01:24:51.172 --> 01:24:58.672
Anything that's limited in its nature of its confession is going to have holes that Satan can drive right around.

01:24:58.672 --> 01:25:03.912
In the past, we've described the confessions of Lutheranism as imaginable.

01:25:03.912 --> 01:25:07.032
They were an impenetrable bulwark against certain attacks.

01:25:07.652 --> 01:25:10.112
So, what has Satan done in the last five centuries?

01:25:10.112 --> 01:25:11.512
He drove around.

01:25:11.512 --> 01:25:12.552
He went over.

01:25:12.552 --> 01:25:17.992
He didn't need to attack the impenetrable fortress of arguments about justification and sanctification.

01:25:17.992 --> 01:25:18.512
Fine.

01:25:18.512 --> 01:25:19.532
Whatever.

01:25:19.532 --> 01:25:21.652
You can say all that stuff all you want.

01:25:21.652 --> 01:25:23.932
Satan has new attacks.

01:25:23.932 --> 01:25:26.832
We have to be prepared for new attacks as Christians.

01:25:26.832 --> 01:25:40.232
We have to be vigilant for false teachers who are incompetent or reactively malicious, because not only will they get these things wrong, but they will tell us in the name of God that we have to obey them while they lie.

01:25:41.992 --> 01:25:47.792
We don't want this to be an unsettling or upsetting episode, but in some ways it is.

01:25:47.792 --> 01:25:54.832
Because to say that you have to be vigilant even in the face of true confessions is deeply upsetting and disruptive.

01:25:54.832 --> 01:25:59.092
It's a terrible situation, which is how you know it's from hell.

01:25:59.092 --> 01:26:00.912
No man could cause this on his own.

01:26:02.152 --> 01:26:08.252
If something were true and men tried to attack it, it would withstand that attack on its own.

01:26:08.252 --> 01:26:11.252
But Satan is the ultimate rules lawyer.

01:26:11.252 --> 01:26:12.952
He invented this crap.

01:26:12.952 --> 01:26:17.932
He invented sitting on the stand like I did in moot court and lying with the truth.

01:26:17.932 --> 01:26:20.212
I told just enough that I wouldn't get in trouble.

01:26:20.252 --> 01:26:21.032
I was play acting.

01:26:21.032 --> 01:26:25.012
I wasn't being duplicitous, but I also wanted to be really clever.

01:26:25.012 --> 01:26:28.852
I wanted to impress the other kids by beating the system.

01:26:28.852 --> 01:26:30.192
That impulse is in all of us.

01:26:30.712 --> 01:26:36.892
And when we bring it to bear in these situations that are eternal life and death, we cross the line.

01:26:36.892 --> 01:26:37.712
We can't do that.

01:26:37.712 --> 01:26:43.372
We have to recognize if we have erred, we have to have the confession of Josiah.

01:26:43.372 --> 01:26:46.152
We have to rend our robes and beg for forgiveness.

01:26:46.152 --> 01:26:47.972
We have to repent on the spot.

01:26:47.972 --> 01:26:52.172
Because anything else is doubling down and saying, I have Abraham as my father.

01:26:52.172 --> 01:26:53.852
I'm going to be fine.

01:26:53.852 --> 01:26:58.292
On the last day, everyone who has that confession is going to be in line with the goats.