WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:43.840 Mahler. And I'm still woe. 00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:44.080 On 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:48.880 today's Stone Choir we're going to be discussing the subject of forgiveness. 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:52.240 Last week we spent a couple hours talking about the state of 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:55.120 young men in the world today and the state of the world 00:00:55.120 --> 00:00:57.520 as it relates to their future lives. 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:00.320 We had a ton of feedback on that episode. 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:03.440 And I wanted to do this episode, Corey, and I wanted to 00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:06.080 specifically address forgiveness because 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:12.320 people reached some logical conclusions, some some right conclusions from listening that 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:14.320 weren't necessarily the ones that we had in mind. 00:01:14.320 --> 00:01:18.160 And so we wanted to talk briefly about why that happened, how 00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:23.600 that works, and more fundamentally how forgiveness plays out in the Christian 00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:27.360 life with each other. 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:31.120 One of the things that we talked about last week was the 00:01:31.600 --> 00:01:35.600 blow-up a few years ago in the Christian space around debt-free virgins 00:01:35.600 --> 00:01:36.800 without tattoos. 00:01:36.800 --> 00:01:40.800 And as we discussed some of the implications of that, at no 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:45.360 point did Corey or I ever explicitly say that unless a girl 00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:50.560 is debt-free without tattoos and without a body count, she is unfit. 00:01:50.560 --> 00:01:52.240 Because we don't believe that. 00:01:52.240 --> 00:01:52.960 That's 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:57.680 as we did say that's that's a test that's virtually impossible for 00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:02.800 anyone today, simply because so much of the world, including frankly, within 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:08.640 the church, is oriented around papering over or actually condoning things that 00:02:08.640 --> 00:02:10.160 can be harmful. 00:02:10.160 --> 00:02:15.200 And so as we were specifically addressing young men, we wanted to 00:02:15.200 --> 00:02:19.600 make the point that given a set of 10 girls, if you 00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:23.760 have a choice of one who potentially has made fewer mistakes, she 00:02:24.080 --> 00:02:27.520 all the things being equal, it's probably a get better choice. 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:30.080 On the other hand, things are never always equal. 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:32.560 You know, there are a lot of different reasons why someone might 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:35.840 go into debt, how much debt they go into, what kind of 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:38.080 tattoos they get, where they get them. 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:41.280 I have an ex who had a tattoo on the side of 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:44.800 one of her feet that said walk by faith because it was 00:02:44.800 --> 00:02:47.280 a tribute to her father who had died. 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:51.120 And at one point she was working in a company where there 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:54.240 was a Japanese visitor who noticed the tattoo 'cause she was wearing 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:57.600 sandals that day and he commented on it and it wasn't really 00:02:57.600 --> 00:02:58.640 a very favorable comment. 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:00.880 He was a little offended by the fact that she would have 00:03:00.880 --> 00:03:02.720 a visible tattoo in the workplace. 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:06.160 Um one of the lovely things about the Japanese is that they're 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:07.760 for very forthright about things. 00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:10.640 You know, if if you have a an East Asian coworker and 00:03:10.640 --> 00:03:14.000 you gain five pounds and you're showing in the face, they'll come 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:16.320 to you and say, you know, you're looking a little fat. 00:03:16.320 --> 00:03:18.240 And I think that's great. 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:20.640 It's not there's absolutely no malice to it. 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:25.760 There's no nothing except for of a brotherly fraternal concern that, you 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:27.120 know, some something might be wrong. 00:03:27.120 --> 00:03:29.680 I just wanna let you know that I I want to see 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:30.960 you be the best you can be. 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:34.960 And so it wasn't a mean thing for a Japanese person to 00:03:34.960 --> 00:03:38.240 say something it was, you know, kind of what a most Americans 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:41.680 would take as offensive about you know your own body. 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.880 And she very adroitly responded and said, Well this is a tribute 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:48.240 to my ancestors, this is a tribute to my my deceased father. 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:50.960 And he was impressed by that and it shut him out. 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:52.240 He's like, okay. 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:56.480 So even when we say that things like tattoos are not necessarily 00:03:56.480 --> 00:03:59.840 a great idea, there are also different types of tattoos, there are 00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:02.560 different reasons for people to get them. 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:05.440 It's not about okay, you did a sin at some point in 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:08.480 the past or something you're like if you're ten thousand dollars in 00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:09.600 debt, is that a sin? 00:04:09.600 --> 00:04:10.560 I don't think so. 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:11.520 Is it stupid? 00:04:11.520 --> 00:04:15.040 Yeah. You know, did you make a mistake and do something stupid 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:16.720 and now you have to dig out of it? 00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:21.040 Yes. So today we're talking about forgiveness because there's the aspect of 00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:24.880 how much of that is for us to forgive in another person 00:04:25.120 --> 00:04:27.920 and then just how do we treat each other in general. 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:30.880 As we said that I said there were a number of people 00:04:30.880 --> 00:04:34.080 who felt the other consciences were burdened by some some of the 00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:36.160 things that we said, which was not our intent. 00:04:36.400 --> 00:04:40.560 So we wanted to begin by talking briefly about uh what's commonly 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:42.320 called the three uses of the law. 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:44.960 As I looked this up yesterday, didn't make sure I was that 00:04:45.040 --> 00:04:49.680 in getting things right, I realized that as usual, the uh reformed 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:52.160 and Lutherans don't number these things the same way. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:55.520 So we're going to be using the Lutheran numbering, which is curb, 00:04:55.520 --> 00:04:58.320 mirror, and rule for the three uses of the law. 00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:02.800 The curb is the civic law, the you know, the law that 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:05.600 you have on the books that says if you do this, you 00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:06.320 go to prison. 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:08.160 If you do this, you owe a fine. 00:05:08.160 --> 00:05:11.280 The curb is there to prevent evil. 00:05:11.360 --> 00:05:15.680 You know, on a theology podcast we're not talking about curbing evil 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:19.840 with the civic law, although you know, in future episodes when we're 00:05:19.760 --> 00:05:22.000 talking about governments that will be a part of it, but it's 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:24.480 always ultimately still top down. 00:05:24.480 --> 00:05:26.800 It doesn't have anything to do with how we relate to each 00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:30.160 other. And then the second use in the the Lutheran ordering is 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:33.040 the mirror, which is to show our sin. 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.040 You read what God has said, you listen to what God has 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:41.360 revealed, and you realize, wow, I sinned against God and I didn't 00:05:41.280 --> 00:05:42.240 even know it. 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:46.960 And that's something that we find in scripture where we God is 00:05:47.280 --> 00:05:48.640 omniscient, He knows everything. 00:05:49.280 --> 00:05:52.160 He knows the the inner workings of our hearts in ways that 00:05:52.160 --> 00:05:52.880 we never will. 00:05:52.880 --> 00:05:55.520 And so He knows more about how bad we are than we 00:05:55.520 --> 00:06:00.800 do. And so when we come to the realization through contrasting our 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:05.440 lives with the law as revealed in scripture, it causes us to 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:09.840 repent. That is a godly ordered response to realizing I did something 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:12.640 wrong. And as I said in the in the group chat after 00:06:12.640 --> 00:06:15.520 we dropped that episode, that you know, Corey and I threw e 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:18.640 ourselves under the bus in that episode more than most. 00:06:18.640 --> 00:06:22.480 You know, we're not gonna we're not going to make these shows 00:06:22.640 --> 00:06:26.160 a tell all about you know our personal sins, in part because 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:28.720 a lot of them involve others and we have no business involving 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:32.880 others in in you know, any sort of personal confession because that's 00:06:32.880 --> 00:06:34.560 that's performative and disgusting. 00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:38.240 I I I would never impugn someone else's privacy in in such 00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:39.360 a way. 00:06:39.440 --> 00:06:39.760 But 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:39.920 But 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:41.360 I 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.560 will happily share things that are bad about me when it doesn't 00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:45.840 affect anyone else. 00:06:45.840 --> 00:06:49.680 Not to not to make myself anything, but just as an example, 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:52.960 like I can I can tell you I did something bad and 00:06:52.960 --> 00:06:55.440 here is how it interacts with God's word. 00:06:55.440 --> 00:06:55.760 So 00:06:56.640 --> 00:07:01.120 scripture reveals when we have erred, reveals when we have sinned against 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:03.760 God. And part of the reason for the fear of the Lord 00:07:03.760 --> 00:07:07.280 episode was to talk about a rightly ordered response to that. 00:07:07.280 --> 00:07:10.640 You know, if I have sinned against God, you know, as David 00:07:10.640 --> 00:07:14.160 said in Psalm fifty-one, against you, you only have I sinned and 00:07:14.160 --> 00:07:16.640 done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be 00:07:16.640 --> 00:07:19.840 justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:21.840 The way that we 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:27.920 see ourselves in contrast to God's perfect will is brutal. 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:32.720 it's standing in front of a near mirror naked, and you realize 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:34.320 you're worse than you thought. 00:07:34.320 --> 00:07:37.760 And so we wanted to talk today about the fact that if 00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:41.440 someone has that response as a Christian, that's only possible with the 00:07:41.440 --> 00:07:42.720 gift of faith. 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:46.480 I think one of the greatest blessings of the Christian life is 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.480 that when we're confronted with our own sin, you have if you're 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:55.040 not a Christian, if you know someone it particularly happens in in 00:07:55.040 --> 00:07:58.400 people who have alcohol or substance abuse, where it's described as them 00:07:58.400 --> 00:07:59.680 hitting rock bottom. 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:03.920 They realize that the next step for them is death. 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:07.760 They've made so many mistakes, they've hurt so many people, they've hurt 00:08:07.760 --> 00:08:11.120 themselves so much, they realize that they're at the bottom of a 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:17.040 well. And the blessing of the Christian understanding of life is that 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:21.280 we understand that we're not down there alone, that God is down 00:08:21.280 --> 00:08:23.520 there with us and that He can lift us out of that 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:26.240 because He Because he forgives us for everything that we've done to 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:28.320 take us to that point. 00:08:28.320 --> 00:08:32.000 And it's a blessing in the Christian life because if you don't 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:35.360 know Christ and you realize how terrible you are, for some people 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:38.320 the next step is self-murder, is suicide. 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:42.400 If if someone despairs of their sin and they don't see any 00:08:42.400 --> 00:08:45.760 way out, that's just utter hopelessness. 00:08:45.760 --> 00:08:51.520 And so when a Christian realizes the same thing, I'm absolutely terrible, 00:08:51.520 --> 00:08:56.800 as is Paul wrote when he described his inability to strive successfully 00:08:56.800 --> 00:09:00.000 in all cases against his own flesh. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.880 Christians know better than most that we're awful. 00:09:02.880 --> 00:09:06.880 And the difference is that we know that the solution is Christ's 00:09:06.880 --> 00:09:12.000 forgiveness first to us from Him and then the forgiveness of God 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:14.160 that we extend to others. 00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:18.480 And so the third use of the law is the rule, the 00:09:18.480 --> 00:09:22.400 rule and norm of the Christian life, where we focus most of 00:09:22.400 --> 00:09:23.680 our time on stone choir. 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:26.560 You know, Corey refers to last week and it's something we f 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:28.000 say frequently. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.200 We're talking about the and then of Christian life. 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:33.040 You're Christian and then what? 00:09:33.040 --> 00:09:36.240 You know what God wants and then what do you do with 00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:37.440 that? And so 00:09:38.400 --> 00:09:41.840 when we describe what scripture says about what God wants all of 00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:45.360 us to be doing in our lives, some people in their own 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:50.480 personal circumstances will look at their current circumstances, their distant past or 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:54.480 recent past, and realize, I did something that I shouldn't have done. 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:58.080 And so we want to talk today about forgiveness precisely because if 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:00.880 that was you, when you heard something last week, you're like, man, 00:10:00.880 --> 00:10:02.560 I I feel crushed by this. 00:10:02.560 --> 00:10:06.080 I I should not have done those things, and I just I 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:07.280 feel terrible. 00:10:07.280 --> 00:10:11.600 We want to d spend today's episode talking about the forgiveness that 00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:14.800 God has already delivered to you on the cross and it is 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:16.400 received by your faith. 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:20.560 And that repentance that you have when you realize your sin Is 00:10:20.560 --> 00:10:24.960 a demonstration of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit because you repent 00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:26.400 without despair. 00:10:26.400 --> 00:10:30.800 Repenting with despair isn't really repentance because you can't you know that 00:10:30.800 --> 00:10:33.840 you can't turn away from your wickedness because you know it's inherent 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:34.400 and it's only 00:10:35.280 --> 00:10:41.120 with the Holy Spirit inside us giving us faith and revealing to 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:46.880 us that God sanctifies us, God makes our lives holy, He lets 00:10:46.880 --> 00:10:50.880 us have the ability to choose to do the very good that 00:10:50.880 --> 00:10:52.640 we cannot choose on our own. 00:10:52.640 --> 00:10:57.680 Someone without God cannot choose to be good in a way that's 00:10:57.600 --> 00:10:59.040 going to have any effect. 00:10:59.040 --> 00:11:02.400 It's only through the gift of faith that that's possible. 00:11:02.400 --> 00:11:05.200 So as we go through this today, I just want to I 00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:09.680 wanna reassure folks who felt bad after last week's episode. 00:11:09.680 --> 00:11:11.200 We don't want you to feel bad. 00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:14.240 We don't want you to feel beaten down or punched. 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:17.840 If you do, briefly, that's that's a good thing. 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:22.000 That's a blessing from God because there was something in God's word 00:11:22.160 --> 00:11:23.440 that that pricked your heart. 00:11:23.520 --> 00:11:26.720 You're like, ouch, I that that was an injury that I didn't 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:27.520 know that I had. 00:11:27.520 --> 00:11:30.640 That was a sin that I didn't realize. 00:11:30.640 --> 00:11:34.320 On the other hand, we don't want to trigger the sort of 00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:40.480 scrupulosity that that is particularly common in more immature faith. 00:11:40.640 --> 00:11:42.160 I don't say that with any insult. 00:11:42.160 --> 00:11:43.120 It's just that 00:11:44.400 --> 00:11:47.200 when you're new and you're you're trying to figure things out, you 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:48.560 wanna try to get everything right. 00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:51.280 You know, whether it's it's a new marriage or it's a new 00:11:51.280 --> 00:11:53.600 faith, it's a new job. 00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:55.760 You show up, you want to get everything right. 00:11:55.760 --> 00:11:58.640 And when you fail, it really, really hurts. 00:11:58.640 --> 00:12:01.440 We don't want people to feel like, okay, here's this list of 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:03.040 things that we should all be doing. 00:12:03.040 --> 00:12:06.480 If you fail on eight out of ten, that shouldn't beat you 00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:11.040 down. That should give you an indication that okay, God has given 00:12:11.040 --> 00:12:13.120 me some idea what I should be doing. 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:15.200 Here's the stuff that I can improve. 00:12:15.200 --> 00:12:19.200 And as we discuss in today's episode, how we extend forgiveness to 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:23.120 each other, one thing I hope will come across very clearly is 00:12:23.120 --> 00:12:27.360 that our lives are better in the moment, in in these hours 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:31.600 and these days, when we extend God's grace to each other, you 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:34.000 have to be easy on people who feel broken. 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:37.200 You don't clobber someone who already feels like they made a mistake. 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:39.680 So I'm going to talk about this today because we don't want 00:12:39.680 --> 00:12:40.960 you to feel clobbered. 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:43.840 If you're listening, you're like, oh man, I wish I hadn't done 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:48.560 that. That should be a reason for you to know that God 00:12:48.560 --> 00:12:51.600 has forgiven you for whatever it is that you did. 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:54.080 And so by the end of this episode, I hope that we 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:59.040 can make that case clearly because God's word, his law, is ultimately 00:12:59.040 --> 00:13:00.240 a source of comfort. 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:02.720 On one hand, it shows that we are all sinners and that 00:13:02.720 --> 00:13:04.480 we fall short of the glory of God. 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:08.400 On the other hand, God's eternal will is that Jesus died on 00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:11.360 the cross to solve all of these problems, to pay for everything 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:14.000 that you know and that you didn't know. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:17.520 And so on the judgment day, you'll stand before the throne of 00:13:17.520 --> 00:13:21.520 God and your robes will be washed white in Christ's blood. 00:13:21.520 --> 00:13:24.880 And so God will have blotted out all of your sins, and 00:13:24.880 --> 00:13:26.080 we won't remember them. 00:13:26.080 --> 00:13:28.640 The evil that we've done will be forgotten. 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:35.200 And forgiveness now in this life is also about a weaker imperfect 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:39.440 form of forgetting forgetting that we'll be eternal in the new life. 00:13:39.920 --> 00:13:43.360 There are a couple points there that I want to pull out 00:13:43.360 --> 00:13:47.120 and flesh out a little bit before we move on to the 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:49.760 rest of the episode, the main part of the episode. 00:13:49.760 --> 00:13:54.720 But even before doing that, I'm going to read three verses from 00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:58.640 Psalm 139, because I hope this came to mind when it was 00:13:58.640 --> 00:14:02.000 mentioned that wherever you are, even if it happens to be rock 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:04.320 bottom, God is still there. 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:06.960 I won't read the whole thing, I am actually going to recommend 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:10.640 that you pause the episode, go read Psalm one hundred thirty nine, 00:14:10.640 --> 00:14:12.880 and then come back and listen to the rest. 00:14:12.880 --> 00:14:15.200 And this is not just a trick to get some of you 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:17.920 who have not done so yet to check the show notes, but 00:14:17.920 --> 00:14:19.600 it will be there. 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:22.880 But I'll read three verses starting with verse eight. 00:14:22.880 --> 00:14:25.760 If I ascend to heaven you are there, if I make my 00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:29.120 bed in Sheol, you are there, if I take the wings of 00:14:29.120 --> 00:14:32.560 the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even 00:14:32.560 --> 00:14:36.080 there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold 00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:39.600 me. But the two points that I want to draw out 00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:41.040 are 00:14:42.560 --> 00:14:49.440 antinomianism as a general sort of umbrella issue, and then the difference 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:54.400 in terms of repentance between despairing and not despairing, I'll start with 00:14:54.400 --> 00:14:57.840 the second and then go back to antinomianism. 00:14:57.840 --> 00:15:02.320 But when it comes to repentance, the difference between Judas and Peter 00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:04.400 is despair. 00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:10.800 Judas regretted deeply what he had done and despaired, and so Judas 00:15:10.800 --> 00:15:12.240 was damned. 00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:16.720 Peter regretted deeply what he had done, because he had also denied 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:22.160 Christ, he had betrayed Christ in denying him, but he did that 00:15:22.160 --> 00:15:23.920 without despair. 00:15:23.920 --> 00:15:27.920 And so we will one day get to meet Peter in paradise, 00:15:27.920 --> 00:15:31.680 because he did not despair, he repented without that despair, and that 00:15:31.680 --> 00:15:34.480 of course is a gift of God. 00:15:34.480 --> 00:15:41.200 But on the note of antinomianism, some Christians and Lutherans in particular 00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:45.760 historically by certain groups have been accused of being antinomian 00:15:46.640 --> 00:15:54.000 because we preach the gospel in its fullness, in its absolute, fullest, 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:55.040 truest sense. 00:15:55.040 --> 00:16:00.000 We don't mix works with the gospel, for instance. 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:03.840 And as should be evident, as should be very clear from the 00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:07.440 listing of the three uses of the law, we are very clearly 00:16:07.440 --> 00:16:09.760 not antinomians. 00:16:09.760 --> 00:16:14.480 Because the third use is directly against antinomianism. 00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:19.440 The third use is a very clear statement that the law still 00:16:19.440 --> 00:16:21.840 applies to Christians. 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:24.000 The law applied to Adam and Eve. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.800 The law applies for ever because the law is God's will. 00:16:28.800 --> 00:16:33.440 It flows from God's nature, it is eternal. 00:16:33.440 --> 00:16:36.160 And it's not an oppressive thing 00:16:37.760 --> 00:16:41.600 Yes, because of our fallen nature and our fallen flesh we cannot 00:16:41.600 --> 00:16:44.240 fully comply with the law, we attempt to do so, and part 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:47.440 of sanctification is that we get better at it, as we are 00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:52.640 a Christian for longer, and as we exercise ourselves in God's word, 00:16:52.640 --> 00:16:56.560 in God's law, but we won't be perfect in this life because 00:16:56.560 --> 00:16:57.920 we are fallen in this life. 00:16:57.920 --> 00:17:02.000 We are partly regenerated in this life, we are fully regenerated in 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.280 the next, and that is when the law, of course, will then 00:17:05.280 --> 00:17:06.240 not be a burden. 00:17:06.240 --> 00:17:09.840 The law remains, because the law is God's eternal will. 00:17:09.840 --> 00:17:14.080 But you may be familiar with the phrase Lex Semper accusat, the 00:17:14.080 --> 00:17:17.120 law always accuses. 00:17:17.120 --> 00:17:20.720 It's important to note that is the law always accuses, not that 00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:23.120 the law only accuses. 00:17:23.120 --> 00:17:27.440 Because the law does not only accuse, yes, it always accuses because 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:28.960 of our fallen flesh. 00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:32.400 But it also guides us in our life. 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:36.080 That is another way you can another term you can use for 00:17:36.080 --> 00:17:38.080 the third use is guide. 00:17:38.080 --> 00:17:41.520 And the law guides regenerate Christians. 00:17:41.520 --> 00:17:44.720 And so it accuses because of the fallen flesh, because we fall 00:17:44.720 --> 00:17:46.960 short of God's standard. 00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:49.680 But it is not only accusation. 00:17:49.680 --> 00:17:51.200 It is also a guide. 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:53.200 It is wholly good. 00:17:53.200 --> 00:17:56.560 The law is not an evil that was done away with on 00:17:56.560 --> 00:17:57.680 the cross. 00:17:57.680 --> 00:18:01.440 Christ did not come to abolish the law as Scripture makes abundantly 00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:04.160 clear. He came to fulfill the law. 00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:06.560 He came to make it possible for us to please God 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:09.200 with our even if 00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:15.600 incredibly imperfect attempts to obey His law, to comply with what He 00:18:15.600 --> 00:18:17.520 tells us to do. 00:18:17.520 --> 00:18:22.320 Our good works, our which that's all good works are, good works 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:25.440 are acting in accord with God's law. 00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:29.680 Our good works are pleasing to God if we are in Christ, 00:18:29.680 --> 00:18:34.400 because we are in Christ, because the imperfection, the sin that taints 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:37.840 those good works, is not counted against us in Christ, it is 00:18:37.840 --> 00:18:41.920 only the good for which we receive credit, and we receive credit 00:18:41.920 --> 00:18:44.480 because of Christ's work for us. 00:18:44.480 --> 00:18:49.600 Which is quite a great deal for us, a very good thing. 00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:53.760 I want to read the full first part of Psalm fifty-one that 00:18:53.760 --> 00:18:57.680 I quoted briefly before because it goes to a lot of this. 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:01.600 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according 00:19:01.600 --> 00:19:06.000 to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:09.600 my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my 00:19:09.600 --> 00:19:11.920 transgressions and my sin is ever before me. 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:15.760 Against you you only have I sinned, and done what is evil 00:19:15.760 --> 00:19:17.200 in your sight. 00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:20.000 So that you may be justified in your words and blameless in 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:20.960 your judgment. 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:24.480 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my 00:19:24.480 --> 00:19:25.760 mother conceive me. 00:19:25.760 --> 00:19:29.360 Behold you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach 00:19:29.360 --> 00:19:32.800 me wisdom in the secret heart. 00:19:32.800 --> 00:19:39.360 So when David speaks God's word saying, Blot out my transgressions, wash 00:19:39.360 --> 00:19:43.840 me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 00:19:43.840 --> 00:19:51.200 He's describing what Christ's propitiating sacrifice on the cross accomplished when Jesus 00:19:51.200 --> 00:19:56.240 proclaimed it is finished as he died, before he died, in the 00:19:56.240 --> 00:20:00.080 moment of his death, that is what he was announcing, that we 00:20:00.080 --> 00:20:02.880 were cleansed from all of our sin in that moment. 00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:07.120 And one of the tremendous blessings that we have as Christians after 00:20:07.120 --> 00:20:11.440 the cross is that we no longer have to live as the 00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:14.320 Jews did for two thousand years leading up to it and as 00:20:14.320 --> 00:20:20.000 all believers did from Adam through Mary, looking forward to the promise 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:21.360 of the Messiah. 00:20:21.360 --> 00:20:25.040 We have the benefit of hindsight, we have the benefit of hundreds 00:20:25.040 --> 00:20:30.880 of witnesses of these things, who attest from firsthand knowledge and experience, 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:35.120 the miracles that they saw, what they witnessed with their own eyes. 00:20:35.120 --> 00:20:35.760 And so 00:20:36.640 --> 00:20:40.880 our faith in a way today is even easier than it was 00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:45.840 for Noah or for Jacob or for Abraham, you know, you go 00:20:45.840 --> 00:20:48.880 down go down the list of all the patriarchs. 00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:52.160 Their faith was in a promise not yet fulfilled. 00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:53.600 And it's God we're talking about. 00:20:53.600 --> 00:20:56.800 So we can absolutely trust in his promise. 00:20:56.800 --> 00:21:00.240 Because as we often say on Stone Choir, the same God who 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:04.400 can speak the universe into existence, if he makes a promise, it's 00:21:04.400 --> 00:21:05.360 already happened. 00:21:05.360 --> 00:21:06.480 It's a done deal. 00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:08.080 You don't have to doubt it. 00:21:08.080 --> 00:21:08.400 So 00:21:09.280 --> 00:21:13.680 on one On one hand, it's not more impressive that Abraham believed 00:21:13.760 --> 00:21:15.920 and it was counted to him as righteousness. 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:18.480 On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that we 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:19.680 have it easier. 00:21:19.680 --> 00:21:23.840 We have the fullness of scripture recorded for us today testifying to 00:21:23.840 --> 00:21:25.360 all these things. 00:21:25.360 --> 00:21:29.280 And so what that has to do with forgiveness is that when 00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:34.240 the Messiah, when the Christ died on the cross, when God died 00:21:34.560 --> 00:21:38.880 for our sins in that moment, all of our sins for all 00:21:38.880 --> 00:21:40.560 time were washed away. 00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:45.600 Because not only is God omniscient, he's omnipotent, He's He can do 00:21:45.600 --> 00:21:48.000 do everything, and He did it in that moment for us. 00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:52.160 Every sin we ever committed, every sin we will commit from this 00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:56.800 day forward until our last was paid for past tense on the 00:21:56.800 --> 00:21:58.160 cross. And 00:21:59.920 --> 00:22:04.080 the future looking promise that they had in the Old Testament was 00:22:04.080 --> 00:22:08.720 a joy and a an expectation. 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:13.360 What we have today is the fulfillment of that promise in the 00:22:13.360 --> 00:22:14.320 rearview mirror. 00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:18.720 And that's a tremendous blessing that I I think that those in 00:22:18.720 --> 00:22:22.560 the past would envy us because they had to promise something that 00:22:22.560 --> 00:22:25.680 was not yet fulfilled and they didn't know exactly what you know, 00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:27.840 there are hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:29.920 They didn't know exactly what it's gonna look like. 00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:32.720 You know, they they knew bits and pieces and they believed it, 00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:37.600 but prophecies are only fully understood in the rear view mirror when 00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:40.800 God fulfills them and you look and say, Yep, lines up perfectly. 00:22:40.800 --> 00:22:43.600 I wouldn't have imagined it like that, but here it is. 00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:48.000 And that is the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:52.400 And so the forgiveness that we share with each other today and 00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:56.400 the forgiveness that we take comfort in today is in view of 00:22:56.400 --> 00:22:59.440 the shedding of Christ's blood on the cross. 00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:04.240 And the fact that all transgressions, all sins, all trespasses are wiped 00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:10.080 away in that moment, by his perfect blood, is is the root 00:23:10.080 --> 00:23:11.280 of the Christian faith. 00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:14.800 In a future episode we're going to be doing something specifically on 00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:17.600 on the sacraments as a means of grace. 00:23:17.600 --> 00:23:19.760 That's an important part of Lutheran theology. 00:23:19.760 --> 00:23:23.360 So we're going to spend an episode describing how Lutherans view the 00:23:23.360 --> 00:23:27.280 sacraments relative to some of the other denominations to demonstrate. 00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:30.800 Here's why we believe that our approach to Scripture is consistent with 00:23:30.800 --> 00:23:33.920 the Lutheran view of the sacraments. 00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:38.080 The sacraments are absolutely a means of grace, and it's how God 00:23:38.080 --> 00:23:42.880 delivers his promises and his forgiveness in time. 00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:44.080 The word is too. 00:23:44.080 --> 00:23:47.920 When the word is spoken, it delivers on those promises. 00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:52.160 And as we've said before, the superabundance of God's grace is such 00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:56.560 that there's more forgiveness than we have sin. 00:23:56.560 --> 00:24:01.040 He's forgiven everything and he's given us all these different means. 00:24:01.040 --> 00:24:02.880 He knows that we're going to doubt. 00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:06.640 Doubt is sin, and it's gonna happen anyway, because we will never 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:08.320 be perfect until we die. 00:24:08.320 --> 00:24:11.840 And so the superabundance of God's grace is saying, I have the 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:14.960 word for you, I have the sacraments for you, I have pointing 00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:18.640 back to the cross for you, I've surrounded you as a Christian 00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:22.720 in your life in this wicked world with a hedge of promises 00:24:22.800 --> 00:24:27.040 and signs of the things that I have done for you. 00:24:27.040 --> 00:24:30.480 And so those are given as a comfort that the forgiveness that 00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:32.880 was earned on the cross is real. 00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:35.360 It's actually accomplished in time. 00:24:35.360 --> 00:24:38.800 It's not a forward-looking promise as it was for Mary. 00:24:38.800 --> 00:24:43.280 It's a revealed and realized promise that we look back and say, 00:24:43.280 --> 00:24:46.000 yep, God promised and God delivered. 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:49.360 And the joy of the Christian life versus vertically as it relates 00:24:49.360 --> 00:24:53.680 to God is the knowledge that God delivered on his promises and 00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:59.840 therefore Christian freedom now means living free from the terror of our 00:24:59.840 --> 00:25:02.960 sin. And that's something that's part of the reason we did this 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:05.920 episode is there's some people who felt kind of beaten down by 00:25:05.920 --> 00:25:06.720 what they heard. 00:25:06.720 --> 00:25:11.200 Now they were beaten down by the fact that when we talked 00:25:11.200 --> 00:25:14.000 about the third use, when we talked about the rule or the 00:25:14.080 --> 00:25:18.240 you know, the guide of God's perfect will in our lives today 00:25:18.320 --> 00:25:21.520 and going forward, when you look back over your life, you're like, 00:25:21.600 --> 00:25:24.880 Oh, I I failed, I sinned, I did things I shouldn't have 00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:28.880 done. As I said at the beginning, if that repentance is in 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:33.280 your heart, you should know that you have received forgiveness for that. 00:25:33.280 --> 00:25:34.800 You don't need to wallow in it. 00:25:35.120 --> 00:25:36.640 it's important to realize it. 00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:38.960 It's a it's a fruit of the Holy Spirit that we look 00:25:39.120 --> 00:25:41.920 that we look at our own lives and we realize, yeah, that 00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:42.800 was sinful. 00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:43.760 That was bad. 00:25:43.760 --> 00:25:45.360 I shouldn't have done that. 00:25:45.360 --> 00:25:48.880 And then immediately turn to God and say, Thank you for the 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:50.720 sacrifice of your son on the cross. 00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:53.840 That my wickedness that I didn't even know about was already forgiven. 00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:58.320 And then we go on with a joyous Christian life, knowing that 00:25:58.320 --> 00:26:00.080 that's the kind of God we have. 00:26:00.080 --> 00:26:03.360 We don't have a God who's sitting around hiding in the bushes 00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:06.080 taking notes and being angry with us. 00:26:06.080 --> 00:26:08.000 Yeah, that's what Twitter censors do. 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:09.440 That's not what God does. 00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:13.520 God, with his perfect knowledge of the innermost recesses of our hearts, 00:26:13.520 --> 00:26:16.480 knows those things, and yet he still loved us so much that 00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:19.280 he sent his only begotten Son to die for us. 00:26:20.160 --> 00:26:24.320 We always quote John 3.16, but the next verse or two is 00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:26.880 equally important in that sentiment. 00:26:26.880 --> 00:26:29.840 For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, 00:26:29.840 --> 00:26:33.200 that who whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:36.240 life. For God did not send his Son into the world to 00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.280 condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved 00:26:39.280 --> 00:26:40.080 through him. 00:26:40.080 --> 00:26:43.680 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe 00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:47.120 is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of 00:26:47.120 --> 00:26:48.320 the only Son of God. 00:26:49.120 --> 00:26:49.440 That's 00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:52.800 a perfect lead in because I was actually just going to read 00:26:52.800 --> 00:26:53.680 those verses. 00:26:53.680 --> 00:26:56.080 I actually have them up on my screen right now. 00:26:56.080 --> 00:27:01.120 Because it is so vitally important to include seventeen and eighteen 00:27:02.080 --> 00:27:03.360 when we read 00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:08.560 those verses, when we read that section, because we take the wrong 00:27:08.560 --> 00:27:13.200 lesson if we don't read scripture in context. 00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:18.400 Particularly here, we need that context of verse 18. 00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:20.080 Because this pulls out 00:27:21.040 --> 00:27:26.480 some of the theological aspects of justification that I want to go 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:28.160 over here. 00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:31.680 Because there are two aspects of justification. 00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:36.320 You could say two justifications if you are so inclined, but keep 00:27:36.320 --> 00:27:38.800 in mind that you're speaking after a fashion. 00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:43.280 There is the objective and the subjective, and these can also be 00:27:43.280 --> 00:27:47.280 called the universal and the personal. 00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:53.840 The universal objective justification is what Christ accomplished on the cross. 00:27:53.840 --> 00:27:56.480 And we have that in verse sixteen, because what does it say? 00:27:56.480 --> 00:28:01.200 For God so loved the world, that's ton cosmon, cosmos being the 00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:05.360 Greek word from which we get cosmos, that is everything. 00:28:06.160 --> 00:28:11.440 Christ reconciled everything with his death. 00:28:11.440 --> 00:28:16.400 His death was of infinite value it was sufficient for the reconciliation 00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:20.640 of all things and so it is tan cosmon, it is not 00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:24.400 just some group of people, not some small group of people, not 00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:25.920 only human beings. 00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:28.000 It is all things. 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:31.120 And that's of course the same word we get in verse 17 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:34.320 that is still cosmos there, the world. 00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:35.280 But 18 00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:43.280 is important because eighteen teaches us the personal justification, whoever believes 00:28:43.280 --> 00:28:45.680 in him is not condemned. 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:50.720 When it comes to human beings, there is a personal, a subjective 00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:56.240 justification, and that is when you believe, that is faith. 00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:00.720 And so And so, in essence, a way to summarize this is 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:05.920 the crucifixion of Christ was the means by which God worked objective 00:29:05.920 --> 00:29:09.360 justification, that being of all things. 00:29:09.360 --> 00:29:10.960 Faith is the means by which God 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:15.600 subjectively justifies the sinner. 00:29:15.600 --> 00:29:19.120 And the word and the sacraments are the means by which God 00:29:19.120 --> 00:29:22.960 grants that faith to the aforesaid sinner. 00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:30.400 And we'll do the episode on sacramentology at some point. 00:29:30.400 --> 00:29:33.680 But this is the core of it here a response to an 00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:37.920 accusation that is levelled against Lutherans and others who have a sacramental 00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:40.000 theology Theology. 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.160 There are those who will say, Well, you're defeating Solafida. 00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:46.160 You're saying that it's not faith alone. 00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:48.160 And that's not what we're doing. 00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:52.720 We are giving the answer to how God gives you faith when 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:57.360 we say that the word and the sacraments are means of grace. 00:29:57.360 --> 00:30:00.720 Because you have to get the faith somehow. 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:02.080 And that's the point. 00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:05.600 God gives you the faith through the Word and the sacraments. 00:30:05.600 --> 00:30:06.640 It is a free gift. 00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:08.720 It is not something you do for yourself. 00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:12.240 It's not you have to believe hard enough and you'll be saved. 00:30:12.240 --> 00:30:14.640 No. God gives you faith. 00:30:14.640 --> 00:30:17.440 That faith justifies you. 00:30:17.440 --> 00:30:20.400 You are saved because of that faith, because of the free gift 00:30:20.400 --> 00:30:21.120 of God. 00:30:21.120 --> 00:30:24.000 It is a gift from beginning to end. 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:28.480 That is vitally important to understand, because that is the gospel. 00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:34.000 The gospel is free justification for the sake of Christ. 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:37.040 Not because you work hard at it and believe hard enough, not 00:30:37.040 --> 00:30:40.480 because you work hard at it and collect enough good works. 00:30:40.480 --> 00:30:45.200 This is not a competition where you collect little merit badges, and 00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:48.480 if you get to the pearly gates and you have enough of 00:30:48.480 --> 00:30:52.240 them, then you get to be admitted to paradise. 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:55.040 That's not how it works. 00:30:55.040 --> 00:31:01.760 God gives you faith that justifies you because of Christ's sacrifice, because 00:31:01.760 --> 00:31:04.800 vicariously he paid the price for you. 00:31:04.800 --> 00:31:08.480 And so it is all free, beginning to end. 00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:13.200 Now we do not deny that Christians will have good works. 00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:16.800 This goes back to that third use of the law. 00:31:16.800 --> 00:31:20.720 You will have good works as a Christian because you are in 00:31:20.720 --> 00:31:25.760 Christ, because you have faith, and those works are good only because 00:31:25.760 --> 00:31:27.440 you are a Christian. 00:31:27.440 --> 00:31:31.200 If you are not a Christian, you do not have good works. 00:31:31.360 --> 00:31:34.880 This is an important theological point that is often glossed over or 00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:37.520 completely ignored. 00:31:37.520 --> 00:31:42.000 No matter how good before the eyes of the world, some particular 00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:45.040 act, some particular work happens to be. 00:31:45.040 --> 00:31:48.640 If it is done by someone who is not in Christ, the 00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:51.920 work is not meritorious and it is not good, it is not 00:31:51.920 --> 00:31:57.440 credited to that person, before God in God's court, because the person 00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:00.800 has to be justified to have good works. 00:32:00.800 --> 00:32:04.160 And that's good news for the Christian, for those who believe. 00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:07.360 That is excellent news, because if you are in Christ, again, as 00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:12.160 I stated before, the fact that your works are imperfect, the fact 00:32:12.160 --> 00:32:16.960 that you are still a fallen sinner, is not counted against you. 00:32:16.960 --> 00:32:21.360 Your works are considered meritorious, and there are rewards in heaven for 00:32:21.360 --> 00:32:21.920 good works. 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:23.840 Scripture is very clear about that. 00:32:24.320 --> 00:32:29.600 But they are counted only as good because of Christ, and they 00:32:29.600 --> 00:32:34.240 are counted as only good because of Christ. 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:38.720 And I want to focus for just a minute here on the 00:32:38.720 --> 00:32:44.960 way that Scripture speaks about your sins when they're forgiven. 00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:48.720 God doesn't just say these are not counted against you. 00:32:49.360 --> 00:32:52.960 He does say that, but that's not the only thing he says. 00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:58.640 God says that he forgets your sins. 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:01.600 I think that we really this is another thing. 00:33:01.600 --> 00:33:02.640 We gloss over it. 00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:07.680 We don't realize the fullness of what it means for God to 00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:10.800 forget. God is omniscient. 00:33:10.800 --> 00:33:12.880 God knows all things. 00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:18.960 If God says that he forgets something, it's gone. 00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:22.640 It's gone in a way that is total, in a way that 00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:24.000 is absolute. 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:26.880 It never existed. 00:33:26.880 --> 00:33:33.040 So you So your sins in paradise, when you are fully renewed, 00:33:33.040 --> 00:33:36.480 are gone in the absolute fullest sense of that term. 00:33:36.480 --> 00:33:40.000 There is no way to overstate it. 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:45.280 That is the good news for Christians. 00:33:45.280 --> 00:33:52.160 So once you are fully renewed in paradise, all of those things 00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:56.080 that happened in this life, all of the imperfections, all of the 00:33:56.080 --> 00:33:58.880 times that you sinned, all of the times that you could have 00:33:58.880 --> 00:34:03.280 done better, that your good works were imperfect because of your fallen 00:34:03.520 --> 00:34:06.400 nature. That's all gone. 00:34:06.400 --> 00:34:09.440 It is only the good that remains. 00:34:09.440 --> 00:34:12.080 Of course the inverse of that is that it is not good 00:34:12.080 --> 00:34:15.520 news for those who were not in Christ, because none of the 00:34:15.520 --> 00:34:17.040 good for them counts. 00:34:17.040 --> 00:34:20.560 It is only the evil they did that remains because they chose 00:34:20.720 --> 00:34:22.240 to keep it. 00:34:22.240 --> 00:34:26.480 And that is a vitally important point. 00:34:26.480 --> 00:34:30.560 Your sins will be counted against you only if you decide to 00:34:30.560 --> 00:34:31.440 keep them. 00:34:31.600 --> 00:34:36.800 No If you are unwilling to simply lay all of that at 00:34:36.800 --> 00:34:40.560 the foot of the cross and accept the free gift of salvation 00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:44.560 from God on behalf of Christ, then you have declared to God, 00:34:44.560 --> 00:34:47.440 No, I'm going to keep my sins and they're mine. 00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:49.440 And God says fine. 00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:53.200 You get to pay the price for them for eternity, because the 00:34:53.200 --> 00:34:56.720 debt owed for sin, any sin, no matter how small, no matter 00:34:56.720 --> 00:34:59.760 how great, the debt owed for any sin is infinite. 00:34:59.760 --> 00:35:02.720 That is why it is the sacrifice of Christ on the cross 00:35:02.720 --> 00:35:07.360 that was necessary to atone for those sins, because his sacrifice was 00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:09.520 of infinite value. 00:35:09.520 --> 00:35:12.400 So if you want to keep those sins, you can You get 00:35:12.400 --> 00:35:15.840 to keep them for eternity, because you will never be able to 00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:18.880 pay an infinite price because you are finite. 00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:23.120 It took the Son of God, who is infinite God, to pay 00:35:23.120 --> 00:35:25.440 that infinite price. 00:35:25.440 --> 00:35:28.640 And that is why it is good news for Christians. 00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:35.680 The debt is paid, and the sins will be totally forgotten, completely 00:35:35.920 --> 00:35:38.960 erased to the point where they never existed. 00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:42.160 It is only the good that will remain. 00:35:42.160 --> 00:35:46.480 And this is why forgiveness of each other is such a vital 00:35:46.480 --> 00:35:48.400 part of the Christian life. 00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:51.920 It is a crucial part, in the etymological sense of the word, 00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:53.920 crucial, crucifix, same thing. 00:35:54.720 --> 00:35:58.640 The forgiveness that we are commanded by God, that is God's law, 00:35:58.640 --> 00:36:02.160 that we extend to each other as gospel, you know, to use 00:36:02.240 --> 00:36:05.680 the the Lutheran parlance. 00:36:05.680 --> 00:36:10.720 It's God's command and it's for everyone's benefit. 00:36:10.720 --> 00:36:13.920 Yeah, we I talked at the beginning about how some folks were 00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:17.600 burdened with either the their own sins or feeling that they had 00:36:17.600 --> 00:36:18.880 sinned against someone else. 00:36:18.880 --> 00:36:21.840 And so we want to talk for the I think most of 00:36:21.840 --> 00:36:25.120 this episode about the interpersonal part of this. 00:36:25.120 --> 00:36:26.800 Because the I 00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:32.400 the theological discussion of us approaching God and us receiving God's gifts 00:36:32.560 --> 00:36:33.360 is vital. 00:36:33.360 --> 00:36:37.200 It it's absolutely fundamental to this. 00:36:37.200 --> 00:36:42.800 It's also in some ways easier intellectually or at least spiritually, than 00:36:42.800 --> 00:36:44.720 the interpersonal stuff. 00:36:44.720 --> 00:36:48.480 I want to begin as we often do on in this show 00:36:48.480 --> 00:36:49.760 with uh Job. 00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:53.760 Uh at the end of Job in in chapter 42, when God 00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:57.520 is speaking to all the men who are involved in that story. 00:36:57.520 --> 00:37:00.880 He has something to say about forgiveness and about us forgiving each 00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:05.280 other. After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord 00:37:05.280 --> 00:37:09.280 said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My anger burns against you and against 00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:12.160 your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is 00:37:12.160 --> 00:37:14.320 right as my servant Job has. 00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:17.680 Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my 00:37:17.680 --> 00:37:21.680 servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and my 00:37:21.680 --> 00:37:25.760 servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer 00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:28.720 not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have 00:37:28.720 --> 00:37:32.400 not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. 00:37:32.400 --> 00:37:36.720 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuite and Zophar the Namathite 00:37:36.880 --> 00:37:39.600 went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord 00:37:39.600 --> 00:37:42.080 accepted Job's prayer. 00:37:42.480 --> 00:37:45.520 So this is an example of intercessory prayer. 00:37:45.520 --> 00:37:49.920 Yeah, something that the Roman Catholics often use in the describing the 00:37:49.920 --> 00:37:53.840 saints interceding for us in heaven. 00:37:53.840 --> 00:37:58.480 I think that the much more vital read on intercessory prayer is 00:37:58.480 --> 00:37:59.760 what we do for each other. 00:38:00.080 --> 00:38:04.320 If someone sins against you, you are to intercede on their behalf 00:38:04.320 --> 00:38:08.480 to God, to say, God forgive them for this, for their sin 00:38:08.480 --> 00:38:09.920 against me. 00:38:09.920 --> 00:38:12.160 I don't want it to be held against them. 00:38:12.160 --> 00:38:14.560 Because the bad advice that Job received from his friends 00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:17.680 was basically telling him to sin against God. 00:38:17.680 --> 00:38:19.600 They were saying things that weren't correct. 00:38:19.600 --> 00:38:22.320 And if grow Job had listened to them, he would have fallen 00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:23.280 into sin. 00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:27.840 And so God was angry with that because they were effectively being 00:38:27.840 --> 00:38:30.880 the devil's tempters in that situation. 00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:33.760 And what was God's solution? 00:38:33.760 --> 00:38:36.400 You guys, you need to go sacrifice. 00:38:36.400 --> 00:38:39.920 I will hear Job's intercessory prayer on your behalf. 00:38:39.920 --> 00:38:43.920 When Job says, forgive these men, I will forgive them for his 00:38:44.080 --> 00:38:47.280 sake. Which of course is also for Christ's sake, because all forgiveness 00:38:47.360 --> 00:38:50.240 is, as we've just laid out, is at the cross. 00:38:50.240 --> 00:38:54.080 That finished work, that perfect work on the cross of the sacrifice 00:38:54.080 --> 00:38:58.800 of Jesus Christ, paid for all these sins, past, present, future. 00:38:58.800 --> 00:39:03.920 The intercessory prayer of Job for his friends is forgiveness. 00:39:03.920 --> 00:39:08.000 God forgave, and Job forgave. 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:11.200 The thing that we have to deal with in this life, the 00:39:11.200 --> 00:39:15.120 very practical matter, is one of the hardest parts of being a 00:39:15.120 --> 00:39:20.720 Christian when you are commanded to forgive those who are trying to 00:39:20.720 --> 00:39:22.960 kill you, that's tough. 00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:25.680 That's ego is involved. 00:39:25.680 --> 00:39:29.440 The notion that I have been slighted, that someone wants to hurt 00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:32.080 me, and I want to defend myself and I, you know, I 00:39:32.080 --> 00:39:35.680 want to protect my family, and I want to protect my property, 00:39:35.680 --> 00:39:37.920 and I want to obey God. 00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:41.600 And the joy of the Christian life is realizing that those things 00:39:41.600 --> 00:39:43.280 are not at odds. 00:39:43.280 --> 00:39:48.720 So when we're discussing forgiveness, we're not talking about pacifism. 00:39:48.720 --> 00:39:53.360 We're not talking about there being no temporal consequences for the evil 00:39:53.360 --> 00:39:55.760 actions of other men. 00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:58.080 We're talking about what God is saying here. 00:39:58.080 --> 00:40:01.840 These men sinned against me, and they sinned against you, Job. 00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:03.840 You intercede on their behalf. 00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:05.760 Ask me to forgive them, and I will. 00:40:05.760 --> 00:40:08.080 That's a promise that he makes to all of us. 00:40:08.080 --> 00:40:09.920 That's in the Lord's Prayer. 00:40:09.920 --> 00:40:14.800 Forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our debts, as we forgive those 00:40:14.800 --> 00:40:18.640 who owe us debts or who trespass against us. 00:40:18.640 --> 00:40:22.320 That is that's a tough part of that prayer, because if you 00:40:22.320 --> 00:40:27.440 actually think about it and pay attention to it, it's it's not 00:40:27.440 --> 00:40:30.960 calling down a curse, obviously, because it's a it's a good thing, 00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:36.000 but it is the godly test for the kind of repentance that 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:36.960 we're to have. 00:40:36.960 --> 00:40:41.040 If we say, Lord, Lord, forgive me, and God looks at our 00:40:41.040 --> 00:40:44.960 lives and says, Well, you're not forgiving anyone around you, the answer 00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:46.720 will be, You're not forgiven. 00:40:46.720 --> 00:40:51.360 You don't actually seek my repentance because you don't forgive anyone. 00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:55.200 You owe this infinite debt to me, and yet you won't forgive 00:40:55.200 --> 00:40:59.280 the small debt of this other man who owes you something. 00:40:59.280 --> 00:41:03.680 And that's the reason that forgiveness is so crucial in the Christian 00:41:03.680 --> 00:41:06.720 life is that it's a hard ask. 00:41:06.720 --> 00:41:10.480 If you're not thinking about it in terms of obedience to God, 00:41:10.480 --> 00:41:14.320 once you actually think about it in terms of, well, God Almighty 00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:16.240 commands this. 00:41:16.240 --> 00:41:18.400 You just you should just do it. 00:41:18.720 --> 00:41:22.960 the proper response of the faithful Christian is not to argue, not 00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:25.360 to say, not to grumble, not to say, I don't like it, 00:41:25.360 --> 00:41:27.920 I don't think that's right, I don't think that's fair. 00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:28.960 Yeah, exactly. 00:41:29.200 --> 00:41:31.040 The point is that it's not fair. 00:41:31.040 --> 00:41:32.480 Do you want fair? 00:41:32.480 --> 00:41:34.720 I when I was a little kid, I was probably about five 00:41:34.720 --> 00:41:35.760 or six. 00:41:35.760 --> 00:41:39.360 My mom had been complaining on a particular day about something, some 00:41:39.360 --> 00:41:40.320 injustice in her life. 00:41:40.320 --> 00:41:41.760 I have no idea what it was. 00:41:41.760 --> 00:41:44.400 But it made enough of an impression on me that that evening 00:41:44.480 --> 00:41:48.640 when we were doing our family prayers, I said, Dear Lord, please 00:41:48.640 --> 00:41:51.200 give my mom everything that she deserves. 00:41:51.200 --> 00:41:54.000 And my family still laughs about it to this day because that's 00:41:54.000 --> 00:41:56.720 such a horrifying prayer. 00:41:57.120 --> 00:41:59.920 of all the nightmarish things to pray for your mother. 00:41:59.920 --> 00:42:04.240 Please give her everything she deserves is the most horrific curse imaginable. 00:42:04.240 --> 00:42:06.640 I was a little kid, I was I I knew that she 00:42:06.640 --> 00:42:09.600 was crying out for justice and I wanted my mom to have 00:42:09.600 --> 00:42:13.200 justice. I didn't realize what I was actually calling down. 00:42:13.200 --> 00:42:17.680 But as as mature Christians, we do understand that if you say 00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:23.120 give that person everything they deserve, that's an infinite hellish death sentence. 00:42:23.120 --> 00:42:29.280 And God's command to us is that you're not to do that, 00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:33.600 because that measure by which you measure others, I will measure you. 00:42:33.600 --> 00:42:34.960 That is God's promise. 00:42:34.960 --> 00:42:37.040 He promises to forgive our sins. 00:42:37.040 --> 00:42:41.840 But if we want to weigh out and meet out God's justice 00:42:41.840 --> 00:42:46.240 against other men for their slights to us, God holds that against 00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:50.560 us. He says you're not actually you're not forgiven because you are 00:42:50.560 --> 00:42:51.920 not forgiving. 00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:53.520 And that's that's law. 00:42:53.920 --> 00:42:58.080 that's the rule that God lays out for us. 00:42:58.080 --> 00:43:04.000 In Mark eleven, Jesus taught, Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you 00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:07.360 have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in 00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:10.320 heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 00:43:10.320 --> 00:43:12.880 And the Greek word that's used for trespasses means the same thing 00:43:12.800 --> 00:43:13.920 in English. 00:43:13.920 --> 00:43:17.120 It means if if you're walking down the sidewalk and you step 00:43:17.120 --> 00:43:19.200 into someone's yard, you're trespassing. 00:43:19.200 --> 00:43:22.320 It's not necessarily a big deal, but it's a trespass. 00:43:22.320 --> 00:43:26.960 And so when the word trespasses is used correctly as a translation 00:43:26.960 --> 00:43:28.960 in scripture, that's what it means. 00:43:28.960 --> 00:43:30.720 It doesn't mean big stuff. 00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:33.680 It doesn't mean, oh, this man tried to kill me, this kid 00:43:33.680 --> 00:43:35.360 man tried to burn down my house. 00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:38.640 It means he you know, he said something mean about me or 00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:41.200 you know he looked at my dog the wrong way or he 00:43:41.200 --> 00:43:43.680 stepped on my my yard, whatever it is. 00:43:43.680 --> 00:43:45.840 We have to forgive the small stuff too. 00:43:45.840 --> 00:43:49.040 We can't let that stuff pile up in our hearts as bitterness 00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:49.680 because 00:43:50.640 --> 00:43:55.600 It precludes us from receiving God's forgiveness to us. 00:43:55.600 --> 00:43:59.040 And so it's it's a blessing to know this as a Christian. 00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:01.760 And it's it's not a burden, but it's a 00:44:03.360 --> 00:44:04.320 it's a command. 00:44:04.320 --> 00:44:07.040 God is saying, here's what I expect of you. 00:44:07.040 --> 00:44:09.920 And in the third use of the law is the guide for 00:44:09.920 --> 00:44:13.360 the Christian life, it should become easy for us. 00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:17.840 As Corey was talking about sanct sanctification earlier, it takes time as 00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:21.120 a Christian to get used to just obeying God and not being 00:44:21.120 --> 00:44:22.080 a whiner. 00:44:22.160 --> 00:44:26.000 Because that's not it's not our inherent type. 00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:28.320 It's not our personality as a human being. 00:44:28.400 --> 00:44:30.400 We want to say, no, not me, that other guy. 00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:32.960 Don't you know don't hold me to those standards. 00:44:32.960 --> 00:44:34.160 We're all like that. 00:44:34.160 --> 00:44:37.520 There's no such thing as being so great that you never ever 00:44:37.520 --> 00:44:39.760 have experienced that. 00:44:39.760 --> 00:44:42.880 As you develop in the Christian life, as you focus more on 00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:45.680 God's things, it does get easier. 00:44:45.680 --> 00:44:50.720 Not because you necessarily become this super person, but because you come 00:44:50.880 --> 00:44:53.360 become completely subsumed to the will of God. 00:44:53.360 --> 00:44:56.160 Like God commands it, okay, that's it. 00:44:56.160 --> 00:45:00.800 And when that is our response, God commands it, Lord, let your 00:45:01.120 --> 00:45:02.560 will be done. 00:45:02.560 --> 00:45:07.200 When that is the the autonomic response of the Christian, suddenly everything 00:45:07.200 --> 00:45:10.800 gets a whole lot easier, which is part of God's blessing. 00:45:10.800 --> 00:45:14.720 Uh Corey and I were we faced some very serious threats against 00:45:14.720 --> 00:45:17.680 ourselves a few weeks ago and it kind of ruined my day 00:45:17.680 --> 00:45:18.240 when it happened. 00:45:18.240 --> 00:45:21.040 You know, I was thinking about how to handle something that was 00:45:21.440 --> 00:45:26.800 a very credible, potentially completely destructive threat to my life. 00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:27.120 And 00:45:28.560 --> 00:45:31.440 it wasn't until I got in bed and was praying that I 00:45:31.440 --> 00:45:34.160 realized this, you know, this stuff that we're saying to you now, 00:45:34.160 --> 00:45:36.480 I had to say to myself, like, what does God to say 00:45:36.480 --> 00:45:37.120 about this? 00:45:37.120 --> 00:45:38.960 Very simple, forgive 'em. 00:45:38.960 --> 00:45:41.680 Somebody does evil against you, you forgive them. 00:45:41.680 --> 00:45:46.080 And forgiveness means exactly meant what it meant in Job's case and 00:45:46.080 --> 00:45:47.920 in all the other cases in scripture. 00:45:47.920 --> 00:45:52.960 When someone sins against you, as happened to Jesus when he was 00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:56.320 on the cross and they were dividing his clothes, he said, Father 00:45:56.400 --> 00:45:59.360 forgive them, for they know not what they do Stephen said the 00:45:59.360 --> 00:46:01.280 same thing when he was being stoned. 00:46:01.280 --> 00:46:04.400 That was his last words before he died. 00:46:04.400 --> 00:46:09.680 That sort of intercessory prayer from us as believers to God on 00:46:09.680 --> 00:46:13.920 behalf of the people in the midst of their very most malevolent 00:46:13.920 --> 00:46:19.840 and evil acts, is God's command to us to say, Lord, I 00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:23.680 don't want this person to suffer the earn eternal price for this 00:46:23.680 --> 00:46:25.200 evil against me. 00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:27.920 And in all those cases, in the in the case of Jesus 00:46:27.920 --> 00:46:30.960 and Stephen, in the case of the threats against us, it is 00:46:30.960 --> 00:46:36.080 precisely because these people hate Christ that they are doing these things. 00:46:36.080 --> 00:46:41.440 And so when we say, Lord, forgive them for our sake, that 00:46:41.600 --> 00:46:43.280 takes us off the board. 00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:48.320 That is saying I don't want justice on in my name to 00:46:48.320 --> 00:46:50.400 be visited against this man in eternity. 00:46:50.720 --> 00:46:55.200 Because I don't want you visiting anyone else's justice against me for 00:46:55.200 --> 00:46:56.560 all the evil I've done. 00:46:57.120 --> 00:46:58.320 that's the equation. 00:46:58.320 --> 00:47:01.520 Please, Lord, take my name off the board on both sides of 00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:02.800 the ledger. 00:47:02.800 --> 00:47:06.400 And when we do that, insofar as they continue to hate and 00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:10.000 act as m enemies of God, God will deal according to them 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:11.280 as he sees fit. 00:47:11.280 --> 00:47:13.440 We don't need to worry about that. 00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:16.320 And I only mentioned that in a specific personal example because I 00:47:16.320 --> 00:47:17.760 had a crap day when it happened. 00:47:17.760 --> 00:47:20.080 I woke up the next morning, felt fine, and I'm worried about 00:47:20.080 --> 00:47:20.880 it since. 00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:25.440 That's a blessing from God when some evil is befalls you and 00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:28.800 you obey God and you trust in God and the next thing 00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:31.440 you know, everything's fine again. 00:47:31.440 --> 00:47:36.160 That that's the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding. 00:47:36.160 --> 00:47:36.480 And 00:47:37.760 --> 00:47:40.640 my comfort is not that, oh, I don't think anything bad is 00:47:40.640 --> 00:47:42.640 going to happen to me in the future because I prayed to 00:47:42.640 --> 00:47:45.360 God and for asked for his forgiveness for this person 00:47:46.400 --> 00:47:47.360 it may happen. 00:47:47.760 --> 00:47:50.080 The worst most evil things may happen. 00:47:50.080 --> 00:47:53.280 I I all the evil that is wished against me by our 00:47:53.280 --> 00:47:56.640 enemies may come to fruition if God permits it. 00:47:56.640 --> 00:47:59.600 So it's not a get out of jail free card for us 00:47:59.600 --> 00:48:03.920 to avoid temporal consequences for the evil of others. 00:48:03.920 --> 00:48:06.800 But I don't need to worry about it because God has marked 00:48:06.800 --> 00:48:09.360 the hour of my death and nothing will be permitted to happen 00:48:09.360 --> 00:48:11.120 to me that he doesn't permit. 00:48:11.280 --> 00:48:15.200 And so if something happens, I'm not going to do what Job's 00:48:15.200 --> 00:48:17.360 wife said and curse God and die. 00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:20.320 I'll take the good with the evil and I will praise God 00:48:20.320 --> 00:48:21.040 for it. 00:48:21.040 --> 00:48:24.240 And it's important for us as Christians to think through these things 00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:27.120 now when it's easy, you know, when the lights are on and 00:48:27.120 --> 00:48:30.800 you have a full belly and you're not, you know, n nothing 00:48:30.800 --> 00:48:33.920 particularly bad is happening to you, even if you're stressed out. 00:48:34.160 --> 00:48:37.600 Or you're you're bummed out, you have lost your job, or some 00:48:37.600 --> 00:48:41.760 stress or some bad thing is happening, the knowledge that could get 00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:45.360 way, way worse to the point of you losing everything, including your 00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:50.320 life. The reconciliation that we have to each other now in these 00:48:50.320 --> 00:48:53.680 moments when you're like, I'm gonna obey God and leave the rest 00:48:53.680 --> 00:48:54.800 to him. 00:48:54.800 --> 00:48:58.800 That habit that we form now in those quiet moments, you know, 00:48:58.800 --> 00:49:03.920 in bed before you go to sleep, is us being served by 00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:08.800 God in the future when calamity befalls, when terrible things are happening. 00:49:08.800 --> 00:49:11.840 We can look God, look, we can look back and trust that 00:49:11.840 --> 00:49:15.360 when God commanded us to do those things, and we know that 00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:18.000 He keeps His promises for those things. 00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:21.200 God will keep His promises to us then in the moment of 00:49:21.200 --> 00:49:24.160 horror and in the future, even if you know, if the future 00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:26.080 is that you're gonna be dead in five minutes. 00:49:26.080 --> 00:49:28.080 Okay. What does God promise then? 00:49:28.080 --> 00:49:29.840 Eternal life with him. 00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:33.360 So there's no bad thing that can happen to a Christian that 00:49:33.360 --> 00:49:36.000 we can't receive with rejoicing. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:36.320 And 00:49:37.200 --> 00:49:41.600 forgiving each other for the things that we do comes upfront. 00:49:41.600 --> 00:49:45.520 And as Corey said, it's not we're not earning our salvation salvation. 00:49:45.520 --> 00:49:47.920 It has nothing to do with that. 00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:51.040 It's saying, I understand the debt that I owe to God and 00:49:51.040 --> 00:49:54.080 I understand the debt that this person owes to me, and there's 00:49:54.080 --> 00:49:55.280 no comparison. 00:49:55.280 --> 00:49:59.440 How could I possibly demand justice for this small thing when I 00:49:59.440 --> 00:50:02.320 have a lifetime of evil piled up against God? 00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:06.320 I would never ask for that man to receive whatever what he 00:50:06.320 --> 00:50:10.400 deserves, because Lord help me if I receive what I deserve. 00:50:10.400 --> 00:50:13.600 And with that knowledge, we then have peace from God. 00:50:13.600 --> 00:50:17.600 And that's the blessing of obedience, of obedience coming from faith is 00:50:17.600 --> 00:50:20.160 that everything is suddenly fine. 00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:23.680 You can be completely peaceful in the middle of a hurricane. 00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:27.840 Because no matter what happens, you can trust in God's promises. 00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:31.600 And in the daily life, forgiveness is a key part of that. 00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:34.800 if you're having a great week, a great month, a great year, 00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:38.640 but there's someone who's done something evil against you, if you're harboring 00:50:38.640 --> 00:50:41.040 that against them, it's going to eat up the whole year. 00:50:41.040 --> 00:50:45.600 It's going to color a dark cloud across whatever else happens until 00:50:45.600 --> 00:50:46.960 you reconcile. 00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:51.040 And maybe reconciliation in terms of coming to you forgiving them and 00:50:51.040 --> 00:50:54.720 them being reconciled to you as brothers in Christ is impossible. 00:50:54.720 --> 00:50:56.480 That's not even what we're saying here. 00:50:56.480 --> 00:51:00.800 We're saying that you intercede to God on their behalf and say, 00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:02.720 Lord, not in my name. 00:51:02.720 --> 00:51:06.000 What they do against you is between them and you, I'm not 00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:07.120 a party to it. 00:51:07.120 --> 00:51:08.240 I forgive them. 00:51:08.240 --> 00:51:11.200 I ask you to forgive them for Christ's sake, for my sake. 00:51:11.200 --> 00:51:12.240 And that's the end of it. 00:51:12.240 --> 00:51:12.880 That's hands off. 00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:15.360 it's j Jesus take the wheel. 00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:17.840 And we can trust that God will do that and He'll do 00:51:17.840 --> 00:51:18.960 it perfectly. 00:51:18.960 --> 00:51:23.760 And with that sort of confident faith, suddenly everything else becomes easy. 00:51:23.760 --> 00:51:27.280 On the good days, the bad days, the worst days, everything becomes 00:51:27.280 --> 00:51:31.040 easy when you have confidence that the promises that God keeps in 00:51:31.040 --> 00:51:34.400 these small things He's also going to keep in the great things. 00:51:34.400 --> 00:51:38.320 And being reminded in our own lives by those moments when we 00:51:38.800 --> 00:51:42.480 ask someone to be forgiven for our sake, and then we wake 00:51:42.480 --> 00:51:47.440 up at peace, is God demonstrating his love for us that you 00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:50.160 will not be burdened by the evil of other men. 00:51:50.160 --> 00:51:52.480 The only way for them to burden you is if you permit 00:51:52.480 --> 00:51:55.360 it. And that can only happen if you don't trust in God's 00:51:55.360 --> 00:51:58.800 promises. And yes, someone will hear this and feel condemned by it, 00:51:58.800 --> 00:52:03.120 because again, if you're sinning against God by not trusting in him, 00:52:03.120 --> 00:52:04.800 that's a call to repentance. 00:52:04.800 --> 00:52:07.200 And so when we say these things, it's not intended to like 00:52:07.200 --> 00:52:10.160 beat up on people's consciences. 00:52:10.160 --> 00:52:12.880 But when the word of God acts on us is going to 00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:15.120 act according to God's will God's will. 00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:18.960 We don't have any control over what the Holy Spirit does with 00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:21.040 God's word in people's hearts. 00:52:21.040 --> 00:52:23.280 God will not return to him void. 00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:27.840 God will accomplish the task for which he sent his word forth. 00:52:27.840 --> 00:52:31.360 Forgiveness is something that we give to others because it's been extended 00:52:31.360 --> 00:52:32.640 to us infinitely. 00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:34.640 And that's a very easy equation. 00:52:34.640 --> 00:52:38.640 And once we get used to it, you have a decent Christian 00:52:38.720 --> 00:52:39.760 peaceful life. 00:52:39.760 --> 00:52:43.360 No matter how bad things get with your neighbors, with your enemies, 00:52:43.360 --> 00:52:47.600 you can never be so beset that you won't be at peace 00:52:47.600 --> 00:52:51.680 inwardly. That's a that's a tremendous gift from God. 00:52:51.680 --> 00:52:54.240 And so this episode is about the gifts that God gives us 00:52:54.240 --> 00:52:57.440 through us giving each other the gift of forgiveness. 00:52:57.440 --> 00:53:00.400 If we have that, we have everything that God wants for us 00:53:00.400 --> 00:53:01.920 in this life. 00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:05.920 Personally, I've made a little bit of this easier for myself by 00:53:05.920 --> 00:53:09.600 taking a page out of God's book and simply forgetting many of 00:53:09.600 --> 00:53:14.240 the slights against myself, I suspect there may be some mechanical differences 00:53:14.240 --> 00:53:15.920 there in God's case, but 00:53:17.280 --> 00:53:22.640 when we speak of fairness versus mercy, I would hope that Matthew 00:53:23.120 --> 00:53:28.320 eighteen comes to mind, and I'll read the section that I have 00:53:28.320 --> 00:53:32.000 in mind that many of you undoubtedly know which one of the 00:53:32.000 --> 00:53:36.720 But before I get to that, I want to draw out two 00:53:36.720 --> 00:53:42.640 terms and further define them so that we're abundantly clear about what 00:53:42.640 --> 00:53:46.480 we mean and what we're saying and what we are not saying. 00:53:46.960 --> 00:53:51.120 The first term is suffering. 00:53:51.120 --> 00:53:54.560 And when it comes to suffering, there are two kinds we should 00:53:54.560 --> 00:53:58.880 distinguish. There's suffering that is simply part of this life, whether it 00:53:58.880 --> 00:54:04.240 is caused by others, by the natural world or any other source. 00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:06.880 And then there is suffering for Christ. 00:54:07.600 --> 00:54:12.880 When Christians speak of bearing suffering, when the scriptures speak of that, 00:54:12.880 --> 00:54:16.720 it is bearing suffering on account of Christ, on account of your 00:54:16.720 --> 00:54:20.000 faith. If someone comes up to you in the streets and punches 00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:23.360 you in the face and says I hate your shoes, you're allowed 00:54:23.360 --> 00:54:24.880 to defend yourself. 00:54:24.880 --> 00:54:28.560 If you don't defend yourself that's not suffering for Christ, that's being 00:54:28.560 --> 00:54:29.920 a pacifist. 00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:34.400 Christians are not called to be pacifists, Christians are prohibited from being 00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:39.760 pacifists. If on the other hand, you are dragged before the secular 00:54:39.760 --> 00:54:44.640 authorities, and you are told to renounce some part of Scripture, then 00:54:44.640 --> 00:54:49.120 you are required to affirm what Scripture teaches and bear whatever suffering 00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:53.360 may come, because that is for Christ. 00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:58.000 And the second term that I want to highlight is the term 00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:02.560 enemy. And the reason we need to further define 00:55:03.440 --> 00:55:08.000 this term is because English and really insofar as I'm aware all 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:14.880 Germanic languages have the same not problem but distinction between them and 00:55:14.880 --> 00:55:17.920 languages like Greek or Latin. 00:55:17.920 --> 00:55:19.920 And that is that the term enemy 00:55:20.960 --> 00:55:22.400 is vague. 00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:25.760 It is ambiguous in a way that it's not necessarily so in 00:55:25.760 --> 00:55:29.600 these other languages, because it has a wider range, a wider scope 00:55:29.600 --> 00:55:30.640 of meaning. 00:55:30.640 --> 00:55:34.560 If I tell you that someone is my enemy, you don't know 00:55:34.560 --> 00:55:37.920 if that's a personal enemy or a public enemy. 00:55:37.920 --> 00:55:41.120 So for instance, if you are if your nation is at war 00:55:41.120 --> 00:55:45.920 with another nation, the citizens of that other nation, the soldiers of 00:55:45.920 --> 00:55:49.040 that other nation, are not your personal enemies. 00:55:49.040 --> 00:55:50.880 They are public enemies. 00:55:50.880 --> 00:55:54.240 That's not what's in view here in Scripture when we're forgiving our 00:55:54.320 --> 00:55:56.960 enemies and praying for them. 00:55:56.960 --> 00:56:00.240 Yes, you should still pray for those people to come to faith 00:56:00.320 --> 00:56:03.840 if they are pagans, if they are atheists, that's a separate matter 00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:05.840 from what we are discussing here. 00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:10.000 But the distinction in Latin would be inimicus and hostis. 00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:14.400 Enimicus is a personal enemy, which is what's in view here. 00:56:14.400 --> 00:56:19.760 Hostis is a public enemy, what's not in view here. 00:56:19.760 --> 00:56:22.240 And so you have to keep that in mind 00:56:23.200 --> 00:56:27.760 when you read these passages of scripture that deal with enemies. 00:56:27.760 --> 00:56:31.680 You are called to forgive your personal enemies, to pray for your 00:56:31.680 --> 00:56:35.120 personal enemies, not to hold these things against them. 00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:39.760 That is not saying that a nation cannot have enemies, that a 00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:43.280 nation cannot act against those enemies, that a prince cannot wield the 00:56:43.280 --> 00:56:46.080 sword, because of course the prince does not wield the sword in 00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:47.760 vain. That is a separate matter. 00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:52.800 So those who accuse Christians of being pacifists are using this ambiguity 00:56:53.040 --> 00:56:57.600 in this term in a certain subset of languages to try and 00:56:57.600 --> 00:56:59.520 push false doctrine. 00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:01.200 Do not let false teachers 00:57:02.240 --> 00:57:05.840 befuddle you in this particular way. 00:57:05.840 --> 00:57:09.280 Scripture does not teach, again, just to make sure this is abundantly 00:57:09.280 --> 00:57:12.960 clear, Scripture does not teach that Christians must be pacifists. 00:57:12.960 --> 00:57:16.880 In fact, it teaches the opposite, that a good Christian, particularly a 00:57:16.880 --> 00:57:21.440 good Christian man, cannot be a pacifist. 00:57:21.440 --> 00:57:24.720 But to return to the issue, as I said, I would, of 00:57:24.720 --> 00:57:25.920 fairness versus mercy. 00:57:26.880 --> 00:57:32.400 You should of course think of the parable of the unforgiving or 00:57:32.400 --> 00:57:35.600 whatever adjective it happens to be if you have headers in your 00:57:35.600 --> 00:57:37.920 Bible, it's not in the original text, so it doesn't matter. 00:57:37.920 --> 00:57:41.840 But the unforgiving servant. 00:57:41.840 --> 00:57:45.280 Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will 00:57:45.280 --> 00:57:48.320 my brother sin against me, and I forgive him, as many as 00:57:48.320 --> 00:57:49.440 seven times? 00:57:49.440 --> 00:57:52.640 Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, 00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:55.200 but seventy seven times. 00:57:55.200 --> 00:57:58.560 Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who 00:57:58.560 --> 00:58:01.040 wished to settle accounts with his servants. 00:58:01.040 --> 00:58:03.680 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed 00:58:03.680 --> 00:58:08.000 him ten thousand talents, and since he could not pay, his master 00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:11.040 ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all 00:58:11.040 --> 00:58:13.680 that he had, and payment to be made. 00:58:13.680 --> 00:58:17.040 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with 00:58:17.520 --> 00:58:19.680 me, and I will pay you everything. 00:58:19.680 --> 00:58:22.880 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released 00:58:22.880 --> 00:58:25.360 him and forgave him the debt. 00:58:25.360 --> 00:58:28.480 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his 00:58:28.480 --> 00:58:32.400 fellow servants, who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him he 00:58:32.400 --> 00:58:35.520 began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. 00:58:35.520 --> 00:58:39.120 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience 00:58:39.120 --> 00:58:41.200 with me, and I will pay you. 00:58:41.200 --> 00:58:44.000 He refused, and went and put him in prison, until he should 00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:45.440 pay the debt. 00:58:45.440 --> 00:58:48.880 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly 00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:52.240 distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had 00:58:52.240 --> 00:58:53.520 taken place. 00:58:53.520 --> 00:58:57.520 Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, 00:58:57.520 --> 00:59:01.040 I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me, and 00:59:01.040 --> 00:59:04.160 should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I 00:59:04.160 --> 00:59:05.600 had mercy on you? 00:59:05.600 --> 00:59:09.040 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he 00:59:09.040 --> 00:59:10.400 should pay all his debt. 00:59:10.960 --> 00:59:14.400 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, 00:59:14.400 --> 00:59:19.040 if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. 00:59:19.040 --> 00:59:23.840 And so we see initially, when the Master is dealing with the 00:59:23.840 --> 00:59:26.560 unforgiving servant, the ungrateful servant. 00:59:26.560 --> 00:59:28.080 We see mercy. 00:59:28.080 --> 00:59:31.680 Because he forgives them this massive debt, and for those who don't 00:59:31.680 --> 00:59:35.120 know how large of a sum ten thousand talents is, it may 00:59:35.120 --> 00:59:35.920 as well be infinite. 00:59:35.920 --> 00:59:38.720 It is not something that you are ever repaying if you are 00:59:38.720 --> 00:59:40.160 simply a laborer. 00:59:40.160 --> 00:59:43.360 That's the sum of gold that a king would have in his 00:59:43.360 --> 00:59:46.960 stores. The average person will never possess that, will never be able 00:59:46.960 --> 00:59:48.080 to repay that. 00:59:48.080 --> 00:59:51.600 He was forgiven an infinite debt, and so of course, that is 00:59:51.760 --> 00:59:57.680 typologically, us as sinners, forgiven the infinite debt of sin against God 00:59:58.640 --> 01:00:00.320 on behalf of Christ. 01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:04.960 And then we see later, when the master deals with him again, 01:00:04.960 --> 01:00:06.960 he is treated with fairness. 01:00:06.960 --> 01:00:09.360 Fairness is you have to repay the debt. 01:00:09.360 --> 01:00:12.400 You cannot repay the debt, you will never repay the debt, but 01:00:12.400 --> 01:00:15.760 it is fair to demand of you that the debt be repaid. 01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:18.560 And so in light of the fact that we are forgiven the 01:00:18.560 --> 01:00:23.600 infinite debt of sin, we are to forgive our fellow servants, our 01:00:23.600 --> 01:00:28.800 fellow Christians, our fellow man, his sins against us. 01:00:29.200 --> 01:00:31.760 Because those sins are minor. 01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:33.920 Here it's a number of denarii. 01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:38.640 Denarius is the day's wage for a hired hand for the average 01:00:38.640 --> 01:00:41.520 laborer. So it's not a trivial sum. 01:00:41.520 --> 01:00:46.240 It's a hundred days worth of labor, but it is nothing compared 01:00:46.240 --> 01:00:48.480 to ten thousand talents. 01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:52.720 It is a finite sum compared to an infinite sum. 01:00:52.720 --> 01:00:57.520 And so we are called to forgive these minor debts of our 01:00:57.520 --> 01:01:01.840 fellow servants, in light of what Christ has forgiven us, what God 01:01:01.840 --> 01:01:06.080 has forgiven us on Christ's behalf. 01:01:06.080 --> 01:01:10.000 We are not called to be the wicked servant who fails to 01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:16.640 forgive his fellow servants, because that is rejecting Christ, that is rejecting 01:01:16.640 --> 01:01:21.040 faith. That is saying, No, I'm worthy of this, and it is 01:01:21.040 --> 01:01:23.760 my works that have done this for me. 01:01:23.760 --> 01:01:25.360 That is to be an apostate. 01:01:25.360 --> 01:01:26.800 That's what we see here. 01:01:26.800 --> 01:01:30.640 The wicked servant is apostate, and that is why of course he 01:01:30.640 --> 01:01:31.920 is delivered over to the jailer 01:01:40.080 --> 01:01:43.920 And I just want to reiterate the import of the way God 01:01:44.000 --> 01:01:50.800 describes the forgiveness that he extends to us and the extent of 01:01:50.800 --> 01:01:55.840 the forgiveness that He expects us to try to deliver to each 01:01:55.840 --> 01:02:00.480 other. Obviously, God's completion of these things is utterly perfect, and ours 01:02:00.480 --> 01:02:02.400 is always utterly imperfect. 01:02:02.400 --> 01:02:06.400 Nevertheless, when God demonstrates the amount of and degree of forgiveness He 01:02:06.400 --> 01:02:08.880 extends to us, that's an example. 01:02:08.880 --> 01:02:12.400 That's here's what perfect forgiveness looks like. 01:02:12.400 --> 01:02:15.520 You should contrast your forgiveness with this. 01:02:15.520 --> 01:02:19.840 And when we say things like this, again, it's not intended as 01:02:19.840 --> 01:02:22.800 condemnation for however you're forgiving people. 01:02:22.800 --> 01:02:27.040 It's a reminder that uh make sure you're actually forgiving them for 01:02:27.040 --> 01:02:27.440 one thing. 01:02:27.440 --> 01:02:28.560 You know, it's if 01:02:29.680 --> 01:02:34.080 I I've said in the past, if someone says I'm sorry, say 01:02:34.240 --> 01:02:35.120 I forgive you. 01:02:35.120 --> 01:02:38.080 Don't say, don't worry about it or it's no big deal. 01:02:38.080 --> 01:02:39.520 Say I forgive you. 01:02:39.520 --> 01:02:42.080 Announce forgiveness to them. 01:02:42.080 --> 01:02:47.040 Because frankly, you're doing something harmful if you won't announce their forgiveness. 01:02:47.040 --> 01:02:50.960 If someone is contrite, if they're repentant and they know that they 01:02:50.960 --> 01:02:54.800 need forgiveness and they come to you, you have an obligation to 01:02:54.800 --> 01:02:57.040 deliver it in clear terms. 01:02:57.040 --> 01:03:00.320 And that's that's one of these things that's you know it's we 01:03:00.320 --> 01:03:03.520 try to downplay you know socially by saying oh don't worry about 01:03:03.600 --> 01:03:04.640 it, it's a big deal. 01:03:04.640 --> 01:03:08.560 And And that may be true, but that's the downplaying in that 01:03:08.560 --> 01:03:12.720 moment is far less important than them hearing from your lips, I 01:03:12.720 --> 01:03:13.760 forgive you. 01:03:13.920 --> 01:03:17.600 And frankly, that's equally important to you, because if you say to 01:03:17.600 --> 01:03:20.080 them, Ah, don't worry about it, it's no big deal. 01:03:20.080 --> 01:03:23.040 Maybe later on you think about it and think, well, you know, 01:03:23.280 --> 01:03:25.520 maybe it's kind of a bigger deal than I thought it was. 01:03:25.520 --> 01:03:28.320 I you know, looking back at what they did, it you know, 01:03:28.320 --> 01:03:31.120 I I would forgive them, but I kind of have a problem 01:03:31.120 --> 01:03:33.200 with the way they did it. 01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:37.760 If you announced their forgiveness, that's also binding on you. 01:03:37.760 --> 01:03:39.440 And it makes it very simple. 01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:43.280 If you're thinking about it later and they said please forgive me 01:03:43.360 --> 01:03:46.400 and you say I forgive you, when you look back, the that's 01:03:46.400 --> 01:03:49.280 bookended. That's the beginning and end of the thing. 01:03:49.280 --> 01:03:55.920 You have foreclosed on yourself dwelling on the past transgressions by announcing 01:03:55.920 --> 01:03:56.960 that forgiveness. 01:03:56.960 --> 01:03:59.760 Because instinctively we know, well, okay, it's settled. 01:03:59.760 --> 01:04:00.800 It's over. 01:04:00.800 --> 01:04:02.880 And it's over in a way that's not over when you say 01:04:03.040 --> 01:04:04.000 that's no big deal. 01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:05.440 Don't worry about it. 01:04:05.760 --> 01:04:09.520 In Isaiah 43, God says, I, I am he who blots out 01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:14.160 your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins. 01:04:14.160 --> 01:04:18.640 As Cory said earlier, this is God who is infinite and omniscient, 01:04:18.640 --> 01:04:21.600 who knows all things, says Saying, I will not remember. 01:04:21.600 --> 01:04:23.760 We don't know how that works, and we don't need to worry 01:04:23.760 --> 01:04:24.240 about it. 01:04:24.240 --> 01:04:27.680 All we need to do is trust in that promise. 01:04:27.680 --> 01:04:31.440 He says something very similar in Psalm 103. 01:04:31.440 --> 01:04:35.040 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who were oppressed. 01:04:35.040 --> 01:04:38.160 He made known in his ways to Moses, he acts for the 01:04:38.160 --> 01:04:39.280 people of Israel. 01:04:39.280 --> 01:04:42.640 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in 01:04:42.640 --> 01:04:43.920 steadfast love. 01:04:43.920 --> 01:04:47.440 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 01:04:47.440 --> 01:04:50.720 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay 01:04:50.720 --> 01:04:53.840 us according to our iniquities, for as high as the heavens are 01:04:53.840 --> 01:04:57.360 above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who 01:04:57.360 --> 01:04:58.080 fear him. 01:04:58.080 --> 01:05:01.360 As far as the east is from the west, so far does 01:05:01.360 --> 01:05:03.760 he remove our transgressions from us. 01:05:03.760 --> 01:05:07.600 As a father shows compassion for his children, so the Lord shows 01:05:07.600 --> 01:05:10.720 compassion to those who fear him, for he knows our frame, he 01:05:10.720 --> 01:05:12.880 remembers that we are dust. 01:05:14.400 --> 01:05:20.240 When God says that his steadfast love for us separates our sin 01:05:20.240 --> 01:05:25.040 as far as the East is from the West, that's Him describing 01:05:25.120 --> 01:05:25.360 in in 01:05:26.400 --> 01:05:30.080 vaguely comprehensible human terms. 01:05:30.080 --> 01:05:33.200 There's an infinite distance between you and the penalty for the thing 01:05:33.200 --> 01:05:34.560 that you've done. 01:05:34.560 --> 01:05:37.680 Spiritually, that should be what we offer to each other. 01:05:38.320 --> 01:05:38.960 Now 01:05:40.080 --> 01:05:42.960 we're talking about forgiveness in particular. 01:05:43.040 --> 01:05:46.320 We're talking about it in general, but we're doing it in view 01:05:46.320 --> 01:05:51.440 of last week's conversation also where we were discussing interpersonal relationships. 01:05:51.440 --> 01:05:56.880 And when you're in a relationship, particularly a marriage, you're obviously going 01:05:56.880 --> 01:05:59.360 to remember the dumb crap that you did to each other in 01:05:59.360 --> 01:06:00.320 the past. 01:06:00.320 --> 01:06:03.120 And that's not sinful. 01:06:03.120 --> 01:06:06.800 Humans are not capable of completely forgetting. 01:06:07.120 --> 01:06:12.480 We are, however, completely capable of reframing past events that at the 01:06:12.480 --> 01:06:20.000 time were horrible and caused tears and anger and distance where 01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:23.760 there should be no distance between two people who love each other. 01:06:23.760 --> 01:06:30.160 When forgiveness is announced and received, when forgiveness exists in that relationship, 01:06:30.160 --> 01:06:34.640 the fact of the separation, the fact of the pain between you 01:06:36.160 --> 01:06:39.440 honestly, in most cases, it usually becomes laughable. 01:06:39.440 --> 01:06:41.760 You know, it it that's gonna depend on the personality. 01:06:41.760 --> 01:06:45.200 It's certainly gonna be the case more in, for example, in American 01:06:45.200 --> 01:06:49.840 relationships than you know, Russian relationship where the Eastern Europeans aren't as 01:06:49.840 --> 01:06:52.400 jovial as we are about things. 01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:57.760 But certainly within the West, old married couples laugh about the stupid 01:06:57.760 --> 01:06:59.600 stuff. They don't dwell on it. 01:06:59.600 --> 01:07:03.040 But if if something comes to mind, all that all that's left 01:07:03.040 --> 01:07:06.320 in view of the forgiveness that you extend to each other for 01:07:06.320 --> 01:07:09.600 Christ's sake is how humorously stupid it was that you're ever mad 01:07:09.920 --> 01:07:12.720 in the first place, or that you ever did something so stupid 01:07:12.720 --> 01:07:14.480 that required forgiveness. 01:07:14.480 --> 01:07:18.480 And so the silliness and the evil, you know, it's we're not 01:07:18.480 --> 01:07:20.080 minimizing the evil of it. 01:07:20.080 --> 01:07:24.800 But I think the fact that in retrospect, after forgiveness, we just 01:07:24.800 --> 01:07:28.640 see the absurdity of our own human folly 01:07:29.760 --> 01:07:32.000 shows the power of God's forgiveness. 01:07:32.000 --> 01:07:35.200 That something that was truly evil that would have destroyed a relationship 01:07:35.200 --> 01:07:38.960 between a man and a woman, between a man and God, with 01:07:38.960 --> 01:07:43.760 forgiveness, all of the all the bad is taken away and all 01:07:43.760 --> 01:07:47.280 that's left is the the stupidity and the absurdity that we would 01:07:47.280 --> 01:07:49.840 have done something against God or against someone we love in the 01:07:49.840 --> 01:07:51.040 first place. 01:07:51.040 --> 01:07:57.280 And it's for us in these times, before the judgment throne, before 01:07:57.280 --> 01:08:00.080 we get to that point, it's okay to laugh. 01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:03.040 It's okay to forget too, like you're blessed if you completely forget 01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:03.920 about that stuff. 01:08:03.920 --> 01:08:07.360 But if you remember, remember and laugh and say that was just 01:08:07.360 --> 01:08:09.280 silly. I'm so sorry, I was dumb. 01:08:09.520 --> 01:08:10.960 Can you believe we did this? 01:08:10.960 --> 01:08:13.040 I will never do that thing again. 01:08:13.040 --> 01:08:17.760 That's That's repentance and it's the joyful Christian life to say, Yeah, 01:08:17.760 --> 01:08:19.440 I sinned. 01:08:19.440 --> 01:08:22.960 And another crucial part point that we wanted to make in today's 01:08:22.960 --> 01:08:24.080 episode is 01:08:25.280 --> 01:08:29.680 paying attention to when a sin occurs and when forgiveness is delivered 01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:32.400 as it relates to us interacting with each other. 01:08:32.480 --> 01:08:36.640 What I mean by this is if you're a young man and 01:08:36.640 --> 01:08:40.480 you're looking for a wife and you find someone and she's not 01:08:40.480 --> 01:08:43.680 completely perfect, just as you're not completely perfect. 01:08:43.680 --> 01:08:45.840 A congratulations, you found a human being. 01:08:45.840 --> 01:08:47.440 She's gonna be great. 01:08:47.440 --> 01:08:47.760 B 01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:54.080 if she has sins in her past, and then you come to 01:08:54.080 --> 01:08:56.560 her and you say, I want you to be my wife. 01:08:56.560 --> 01:08:59.760 There's no forgiveness there for you even to extend her, but she 01:08:59.760 --> 01:09:01.680 didn't do anything against you. 01:09:01.680 --> 01:09:05.200 If she sinned in her past, you should not ever make her 01:09:05.600 --> 01:09:08.160 feel like she needs to apologize to you. 01:09:08.160 --> 01:09:12.560 Now, if she's a good girl, if she's repentant, she will look 01:09:12.560 --> 01:09:14.480 back and say, Yeah, it's not me anymore. 01:09:14.480 --> 01:09:16.160 I I wish that I hadn't done that. 01:09:16.160 --> 01:09:17.360 I can't undo it. 01:09:17.360 --> 01:09:19.440 I'm a completely different person now. 01:09:19.440 --> 01:09:22.320 You take her as she is, and you love her as she 01:09:22.320 --> 01:09:27.360 is, and whatever regret she has for her past sins that she's 01:09:27.360 --> 01:09:32.480 repented of and left behind, you should never, you should be like 01:09:32.480 --> 01:09:36.800 God. You should forget about those things and never think that that 01:09:36.800 --> 01:09:38.160 colors who she is. 01:09:38.160 --> 01:09:40.640 Because we're not talking about sins within a relationship. 01:09:40.640 --> 01:09:44.240 We're talking about you had no idea this other person existed and 01:09:44.240 --> 01:09:48.080 then you met, you decide if she's for you or not. 01:09:48.080 --> 01:09:53.680 If she is, you have nothing that you can hold against her. 01:09:53.680 --> 01:09:56.320 Even apart from the fact that you should forgive anything that you 01:09:56.320 --> 01:09:59.520 did. What we're saying is that there's a case to be made 01:09:59.520 --> 01:10:01.680 that you shouldn't even be thinking about oh, I need to forgive 01:10:01.680 --> 01:10:03.920 her for what she did because she didn't do it to you. 01:10:03.920 --> 01:10:05.760 She did it to God. 01:10:05.760 --> 01:10:06.800 Or he did it to God. 01:10:06.800 --> 01:10:09.040 Like I'm not just picking on girls here. 01:10:10.160 --> 01:10:11.600 we're all sinners. 01:10:11.600 --> 01:10:15.520 Duh. When someone comes to you and you create a relationship with 01:10:15.520 --> 01:10:19.360 another human being who is a fallen sinful creature, 01:10:21.120 --> 01:10:24.800 there's a clean slate in that relationship and you try to make 01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:28.160 sure that you keep that slate clean every day by forgiving whatever 01:10:28.400 --> 01:10:32.400 whatever sins occur within the relationship, you're gonna have a lifetime to 01:10:32.400 --> 01:10:33.760 do stupid stuff to each other. 01:10:33.760 --> 01:10:36.720 You have to forgive in both directions. 01:10:36.720 --> 01:10:39.520 For the young guys who are listening, or the young girls who 01:10:39.520 --> 01:10:44.240 are listening, you should not be burdened by things that you've already 01:10:44.240 --> 01:10:45.520 repented for. 01:10:45.520 --> 01:10:49.280 And that the comfort of the gospel, when we commit sins against 01:10:49.280 --> 01:10:52.080 God, when we do these things that are terrible, we realize they're 01:10:52.080 --> 01:10:55.680 terrible, we need to trust in God's promises about how far he 01:10:55.680 --> 01:10:58.320 separates us from our sins. 01:10:58.320 --> 01:11:02.400 And when he talks about blotting and covering and removing and forgetting, 01:11:02.800 --> 01:11:05.920 we need to trust that God has done that for us. 01:11:05.920 --> 01:11:08.800 And so, you know, as we talked about last week, when you're 01:11:08.720 --> 01:11:11.520 talking about someone you can create a life with, it's not about 01:11:11.520 --> 01:11:14.880 a perfect person, it's about someone who is going to 01:11:15.840 --> 01:11:20.960 be able to fulfill the duties of a good spouse, who's not 01:11:20.960 --> 01:11:24.800 going to have the kind of baggage that will become insurmountable. 01:11:24.800 --> 01:11:27.680 There are cases where that that's simply the case. 01:11:28.080 --> 01:11:31.200 But the fact that anyone has ever done something wrong in their 01:11:31.200 --> 01:11:34.400 past, you shouldn't assume that it's baggage. 01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:36.240 it's a case by case thing. 01:11:36.240 --> 01:11:40.640 Someone did something and they regret it and they're absolved and it's 01:11:40.640 --> 01:11:42.800 behind them, that's the end of it. 01:11:42.800 --> 01:11:47.600 And frankly, you know, it it's gonna depend on circumstances, but I 01:11:47.600 --> 01:11:50.800 would say in general, if you're already the point that you you 01:11:50.800 --> 01:11:53.280 love someone that you want to have a life with them 01:11:54.400 --> 01:11:57.360 All the things being equal, I think the default should be to 01:11:57.360 --> 01:12:00.000 say there's nothing here for me to even see. 01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:02.240 I'm not even gonna say you should forgive them because that the 01:12:02.240 --> 01:12:05.280 point was just trying to make is that you shouldn't feel like 01:12:05.280 --> 01:12:07.280 you have to forgive them for anything because it's none of your 01:12:07.280 --> 01:12:08.400 business. You can decide 01:12:09.440 --> 01:12:11.520 do I want this person to be a part of my life? 01:12:11.520 --> 01:12:15.120 When you get to that point and you say yes, that's it. 01:12:15.120 --> 01:12:19.040 Two become one flesh, and it's it's effectively a new person. 01:12:19.040 --> 01:12:21.680 The new couple is a new thing. 01:12:21.680 --> 01:12:24.960 And you're starting from scratch, try not to pile up too many 01:12:24.960 --> 01:12:26.400 more mistakes with each other. 01:12:26.400 --> 01:12:30.480 Don't make the past mistakes and try to avoid making future mistakes. 01:12:30.480 --> 01:12:34.160 And when you do, forgive quickly and easily and get to the 01:12:34.160 --> 01:12:35.440 point that you can laugh about it. 01:12:35.440 --> 01:12:38.880 And you'll have a very long and happy and successful marriage if 01:12:38.880 --> 01:12:42.320 you're willing to extend the sort of grace to each other that 01:12:42.320 --> 01:12:44.560 God extends to you. 01:12:44.560 --> 01:12:47.440 But part of that is keeping an eye on what God commands 01:12:47.520 --> 01:12:48.480 and trying. 01:12:48.480 --> 01:12:51.200 If you if you're thinking day by day about I want to 01:12:51.200 --> 01:12:53.920 serve God faithfully, I want to be a good wife, I want 01:12:53.920 --> 01:12:57.120 to be a good husband, if you have that in view, when 01:12:57.120 --> 01:12:59.920 you sin, it's not going to be huge stuff. 01:12:59.920 --> 01:13:02.000 You're not going to sin catastrophically. 01:13:02.000 --> 01:13:04.960 You're going to sin in smaller, stupid ways. 01:13:04.960 --> 01:13:08.320 You're not going to fall into the big ticket traps that occur 01:13:08.320 --> 01:13:10.160 when you're not paying any attention. 01:13:10.160 --> 01:13:12.960 And that's the reason that the rule of the third use of 01:13:12.960 --> 01:13:14.480 the law is so vital. 01:13:14.480 --> 01:13:17.920 And the reason it's worth talking about is not to burden consciences, 01:13:17.920 --> 01:13:21.040 but it's to say, hey, here's a way not to have a 01:13:21.040 --> 01:13:23.040 burden conscious in the first place. 01:13:23.040 --> 01:13:28.160 Obey God, fear Him, love Him, treasure His precepts, and you won't 01:13:28.160 --> 01:13:32.000 have a situation in your relationship where you have this terrible stuff 01:13:32.000 --> 01:13:33.200 to forgive. 01:13:33.200 --> 01:13:36.960 The ideal relationship is one where you don't accumulate those mistakes, those 01:13:36.960 --> 01:13:40.400 sins, and you And you don't have a bunch of baggage in 01:13:40.400 --> 01:13:43.680 the relationship to carry around until you forgive. 01:13:43.680 --> 01:13:49.120 And you forgive quickly and freely, and you trust that God's promise 01:13:49.200 --> 01:13:52.080 that He will blot those sins out for that person holds within 01:13:52.480 --> 01:13:56.080 your relationship as it does between them and God. 01:13:56.080 --> 01:14:00.960 Typology is a great gift from God to the Christian and to 01:14:00.960 --> 01:14:02.000 the Church. 01:14:02.160 --> 01:14:05.520 Little foreshadowing for the Sacramentology Episode 01:14:07.200 --> 01:14:12.800 But marriage is used throughout Scripture as a type for the antitype 01:14:12.880 --> 01:14:16.800 that is Christ's sacrifice for the church. 01:14:16.800 --> 01:14:20.480 Marriage is used as the type for the antitype that is Christ's 01:14:20.480 --> 01:14:20.960 relationship 01:14:21.920 --> 01:14:26.560 to and with the church, with believers. 01:14:26.560 --> 01:14:28.880 This is a helpful way to look 01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:33.120 at how you should approach marriage, and this goes for both young 01:14:33.120 --> 01:14:36.720 men and young women, or middle aged, if you happen to be 01:14:36.720 --> 01:14:40.800 getting married older. 01:14:40.800 --> 01:14:47.280 Who you were before you became a Christian, is in large part 01:14:47.280 --> 01:14:48.320 irrelevant 01:14:49.600 --> 01:14:51.760 from God's perspective. 01:14:51.760 --> 01:14:58.560 All of those sins do not carry over after the altar. 01:14:58.560 --> 01:15:00.720 That is the dividing line for the Christian. 01:15:00.720 --> 01:15:04.400 The dividing line is Christ's sacrifice. 01:15:04.400 --> 01:15:07.520 When you become a Christian, when you are given that free gift 01:15:07.520 --> 01:15:10.320 of faith Those sins are gone. 01:15:10.320 --> 01:15:11.760 They're in the past. 01:15:11.760 --> 01:15:16.160 Yes, there's this tension of now, but not yet for the Christian 01:15:16.240 --> 01:15:20.800 because we still live in a sinful fallen world, in sinful fallen 01:15:20.800 --> 01:15:21.600 flesh. 01:15:22.880 --> 01:15:26.560 But we have the beginnings of these eternal things. 01:15:26.560 --> 01:15:28.640 We have the beginnings of paradise. 01:15:28.640 --> 01:15:32.800 We have the beginning of sanctification that grows as we progress in 01:15:32.800 --> 01:15:33.440 the Christian life. 01:15:33.440 --> 01:15:36.080 And yes, there is progress in the Christian life. 01:15:37.200 --> 01:15:43.360 But that altar on which Christ died, that's the true dividing line, 01:15:43.360 --> 01:15:47.360 because the sins are in the past with reference to that point 01:15:47.360 --> 01:15:52.720 in time, and the new you is the future. 01:15:52.720 --> 01:15:56.320 You should think of marriage in the same way. 01:15:56.320 --> 01:16:00.720 Those things that happened in your past or her past or your 01:16:00.720 --> 01:16:06.640 past and his past, you are leaving those in the past. 01:16:06.640 --> 01:16:10.720 The marriage altar is the dividing line. 01:16:10.720 --> 01:16:13.280 The two shall become one flesh. 01:16:13.280 --> 01:16:18.160 That is a new person, that is a new creation by God. 01:16:18.400 --> 01:16:21.520 So leave what happened in the past in the past. 01:16:21.520 --> 01:16:26.400 Yes, there may be consequences with which you have to deal in 01:16:26.400 --> 01:16:30.160 this life, because that is the reality of the fallen flesh. 01:16:30.160 --> 01:16:35.120 Handle those things as necessary, but do not bring up those things 01:16:35.120 --> 01:16:36.560 from the past. 01:16:36.560 --> 01:16:40.400 Absolutely never use them as a weapon against the other person. 01:16:41.120 --> 01:16:44.080 These are not things that you get to hold over the other 01:16:44.080 --> 01:16:48.560 person that give you power to wield, to manipulate, or to force 01:16:48.560 --> 01:16:52.240 some sort of action out of your spouse. 01:16:52.240 --> 01:16:54.720 That is exactly what you should not be doing. 01:16:55.040 --> 01:16:57.360 That makes you the wicked servant. 01:16:57.360 --> 01:16:59.040 In fact. 01:16:59.040 --> 01:17:00.880 All of that stuff is left. 01:17:00.880 --> 01:17:04.560 That altar is the dividing line. 01:17:04.560 --> 01:17:10.160 So bear that typological relationship in mind with regard to marriage. 01:17:10.160 --> 01:17:12.400 That is one of the things that we can take out of 01:17:12.400 --> 01:17:18.320 Scripture when Scripture uses marriage as a type. 01:17:18.320 --> 01:17:23.680 But keep in mind that tension in the Christian life of now 01:17:23.920 --> 01:17:26.240 but not yet. 01:17:26.240 --> 01:17:30.240 Because that is true it flows through all of this. 01:17:30.240 --> 01:17:34.480 The sins still exist because we remember them. 01:17:34.480 --> 01:17:36.880 As David says in the Psalms 01:17:38.240 --> 01:17:41.680 Your sins are ever before you, you remember the things you have 01:17:41.680 --> 01:17:44.880 done against God, the things you should not have done, and of 01:17:44.880 --> 01:17:50.240 course you regret them, you feel shame for them, that's proper. 01:17:50.240 --> 01:17:54.560 But also remember that you have been forgiven for those. 01:17:54.560 --> 01:17:58.320 So use that memory insofar as you still have it. 01:17:58.320 --> 01:18:00.800 Maybe God has blessed you with forgetting some of them. 01:18:00.800 --> 01:18:03.280 Undoubtedly He has blessed you with forgetting some of them. 01:18:03.280 --> 01:18:06.240 No human being has perfect memory. 01:18:06.240 --> 01:18:09.120 But use what you remember of those sins. 01:18:10.240 --> 01:18:15.440 To drive you into God's Word, into that forgiveness, into the Christian 01:18:15.440 --> 01:18:19.520 life. That is part of what it means to be a Christian. 01:18:19.520 --> 01:18:23.600 You seek that sanctification, you seek to do better. 01:18:24.320 --> 01:18:24.640 And 01:18:25.920 --> 01:18:29.520 a quote comes to mind from Saint John Chrysostom that is an 01:18:29.520 --> 01:18:34.240 excellent one for this point Do not be ashamed when you repent. 01:18:34.480 --> 01:18:36.560 is a medicine for sin. 01:18:36.560 --> 01:18:39.040 It's phrased various ways. 01:18:39.040 --> 01:18:44.400 Do not be ashamed when you repent, but when you sin. 01:18:44.400 --> 01:18:47.200 That's the point. 01:18:47.200 --> 01:18:50.640 When you sin, immediately turn to God. 01:18:50.800 --> 01:18:55.360 Don't feel that because you've sinned now you've separated yourself from God 01:18:55.360 --> 01:18:58.400 and there's a chasm and you have to do X, Y, and 01:18:58.400 --> 01:19:00.800 Z before you can approach God. 01:19:00.800 --> 01:19:04.560 That is the voice of Satan telling you that you need to 01:19:04.560 --> 01:19:07.280 separate yourself from God. 01:19:07.280 --> 01:19:10.640 That is the absolute worst thing you can do at that moment. 01:19:10.640 --> 01:19:15.360 What you should do is immediately turn to God and repent. 01:19:15.520 --> 01:19:17.120 Turn away from that sin. 01:19:17.120 --> 01:19:19.600 That is what God commands you to do, that is what God 01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:22.880 wants you to do. 01:19:22.880 --> 01:19:25.840 Because if you hold on to that sin, which is exactly what 01:19:25.840 --> 01:19:29.040 you're doing, if instead of repenting you say that I need to 01:19:29.040 --> 01:19:32.880 do these things before I turn to God, you're holding on to 01:19:32.880 --> 01:19:34.720 that sin. 01:19:34.720 --> 01:19:36.960 Don't keep your sin. 01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:40.560 Christ paid for that sin on the cross, he paid for not 01:19:40.560 --> 01:19:44.560 only every sin you have ever committed, any sin you are committing 01:19:44.560 --> 01:19:48.000 now if you are committing a sin while listening to this, he 01:19:48.000 --> 01:19:51.840 also paid for every sin you will commit. 01:19:51.840 --> 01:19:56.160 From the perspective of God, there's no real difference between the sins 01:19:56.160 --> 01:19:58.960 you committed when you were five years old and the sins you 01:19:58.960 --> 01:20:04.240 committed when you were, are or will be fifty years old. 01:20:04.240 --> 01:20:06.240 It's the same from God's perspective. 01:20:06.240 --> 01:20:07.840 They were all forgiven. 01:20:07.840 --> 01:20:13.760 All of your sins were forgiven on the cross. 01:20:13.760 --> 01:20:17.280 So turn to God immediately when you sin. 01:20:17.280 --> 01:20:18.960 Don't hold on to those sins. 01:20:18.960 --> 01:20:20.240 Don't keep them for yourself. 01:20:20.240 --> 01:20:22.560 That's what Satan wants you to do. 01:20:22.560 --> 01:20:25.440 Because that's what he's doing. 01:20:25.440 --> 01:20:29.200 That's what every single person who will spend eternity in his kingdom 01:20:29.200 --> 01:20:33.520 is doing, holding on to those sins instead of handing them off 01:20:33.520 --> 01:20:34.880 to Christ. 01:20:34.880 --> 01:20:39.680 That's the miraculous or the wonderful exchange of which Luther speaks in 01:20:39.680 --> 01:20:40.800 his writing. 01:20:40.800 --> 01:20:45.040 We get to hand Christ all of our sins, and he hands 01:20:45.040 --> 01:20:46.960 us His righteousness. 01:20:46.960 --> 01:20:48.080 That's the gospel. 01:20:48.080 --> 01:20:51.760 You are righteous on account of Christ's work on the cross, not 01:20:51.760 --> 01:20:53.360 because of anything you do. 01:20:53.360 --> 01:20:57.520 And He has taken all of your sins, forgiven them, and God 01:20:57.520 --> 01:21:00.400 will forget them. 01:21:00.400 --> 01:21:04.400 And so in this life part of the Christian life is forgiving 01:21:04.400 --> 01:21:08.160 others in the way in so far as we are capable that 01:21:08.160 --> 01:21:10.640 God has forgiven us. 01:21:10.640 --> 01:21:16.240 So forgive others their trespasses against you, and forget them if possible. 01:21:16.240 --> 01:21:18.720 If you don't think about them, you will eventually forget them. 01:21:18.720 --> 01:21:21.760 That's how it works, that's how human memory works. 01:21:21.760 --> 01:21:25.520 That is a blessing from God that we can forget these things. 01:21:25.520 --> 01:21:30.080 And that is particularly true in marriage. 01:21:30.080 --> 01:21:33.280 You are creating a new life with someone, you are a new 01:21:33.280 --> 01:21:35.840 creation, you are one flesh. 01:21:35.840 --> 01:21:38.640 That is what God is joined together, and so let not man 01:21:38.640 --> 01:21:41.040 separate that includes you, incidentally. 01:21:41.040 --> 01:21:43.600 You are still man. 01:21:43.600 --> 01:21:47.360 Do not hold on to those things from the past. 01:21:47.360 --> 01:21:50.480 That will do you and your spouse no good. 01:21:50.480 --> 01:21:53.040 It can only work evil. 01:21:53.040 --> 01:21:57.680 So leave that all before you approach the altar, and start your 01:21:57.680 --> 01:21:59.360 new life. 01:21:59.360 --> 01:22:02.960 Yes, what we spoke of in the previous episode is of course 01:22:03.200 --> 01:22:08.160 important. It matters to this life. 01:22:08.160 --> 01:22:12.480 But as Christians, as forgiven 01:22:13.440 --> 01:22:19.120 human beings, yes still sinful, yes still fallen, yes still living in 01:22:19.120 --> 01:22:21.360 this world. 01:22:21.360 --> 01:22:25.760 We are called to forgive others because we have been forgiven. 01:22:25.760 --> 01:22:29.200 And that is not just because we've been forgiven, it is also 01:22:29.200 --> 01:22:33.360 because God wants to pour out his blessings on us. 01:22:33.360 --> 01:22:36.800 And as was mentioned at the beginning of the episode, when you 01:22:36.800 --> 01:22:41.200 obey God, there are blessings attendant that obedience, some of them flow 01:22:41.200 --> 01:22:46.160 naturally from the obedience, so for instance, if you do not practice 01:22:46.160 --> 01:22:50.960 birth control in your marriage, more likely than not, children will be 01:22:50.960 --> 01:22:52.720 a natural consequence of that. 01:22:52.720 --> 01:22:57.200 Children are a blessing from God, particularly the children of one's youth, 01:22:57.200 --> 01:23:01.600 as the Psalms very clearly say. 01:23:01.600 --> 01:23:04.400 But the inverse of that, of course, is that if you 01:23:05.760 --> 01:23:08.960 ignore the blessings of God, do not seek the blessings of God. 01:23:08.960 --> 01:23:13.200 Often they will not flow. 01:23:13.200 --> 01:23:17.600 So part of being a Christian is seeking those blessings from God, 01:23:17.600 --> 01:23:22.240 and you seek those blessings by obeying God. 01:23:22.240 --> 01:23:25.440 God is the good father. 01:23:25.440 --> 01:23:27.680 You ask for a fish, he's going to give you a fish, 01:23:27.680 --> 01:23:29.360 not a serpent. 01:23:29.360 --> 01:23:33.040 So seek these things from God, repent, turn to God. 01:23:33.040 --> 01:23:34.080 God will bless you. 01:23:34.960 --> 01:23:39.280 This isn't a prosperity gospel, this isn't a therapeutic gospel. 01:23:39.280 --> 01:23:41.840 This is simply the word of Scripture. 01:23:41.840 --> 01:23:44.000 God says that He will bless you. 01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:46.640 All things work together for good. 01:23:46.640 --> 01:23:51.040 For those who are called according to his purposes, for Christians, for 01:23:51.040 --> 01:23:54.800 those to whom he is given the free gift of faith. 01:23:54.800 --> 01:24:00.880 Now we don't know, in our limited understanding, how everything works together. 01:24:00.880 --> 01:24:04.400 Undoubtedly God will help us to see that after the fact, in 01:24:04.400 --> 01:24:07.920 paradise, we'll see how everything worked together, to bring us to where 01:24:07.920 --> 01:24:10.560 we're standing, when we finally understand. 01:24:10.560 --> 01:24:14.240 But even if we don't understand in this life, we can know 01:24:14.240 --> 01:24:19.680 for certain that God is absolutely trustworthy, that everything He has ever 01:24:19.680 --> 01:24:23.600 said is absolutely true, and He has told us that all things 01:24:23.600 --> 01:24:28.160 work together for the good And that he intends to bless us. 01:24:28.160 --> 01:24:31.840 And so what the Christian does is very simple. 01:24:31.840 --> 01:24:33.760 We believe. 01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:39.200 I think the discussion of Christian forgiveness provides a very interesting contrast 01:24:39.200 --> 01:24:43.680 with The discussion of the conduct of doxing. 01:24:43.680 --> 01:24:48.240 You know, when someone's dox is published and it shows years of 01:24:48.720 --> 01:24:53.360 past transgressions, particularly for someone who is in the church who is 01:24:53.600 --> 01:25:00.160 receiving confessional and absolution weekly, who's receiving communion, who has been publicly 01:25:00.320 --> 01:25:05.920 announced by the pastor in God's voice to be forgiven for those 01:25:05.920 --> 01:25:11.360 sins. When a doxer comes along with a dossier with years of 01:25:11.360 --> 01:25:15.600 past transgressions and says, Aha, look what I found. 01:25:15.600 --> 01:25:18.720 I have I have called out this evil man, and here is 01:25:18.720 --> 01:25:21.200 all of his secret wickedness. 01:25:22.000 --> 01:25:24.400 One of two things is occurring. 01:25:24.400 --> 01:25:30.080 Either the man who's being doxxed, who's being accused, is leaving leading 01:25:30.080 --> 01:25:32.800 a completely two-faced life where the 01:25:34.240 --> 01:25:38.880 whatever is in the docs is their true nature and then their 01:25:38.880 --> 01:25:41.040 public life was a lie. 01:25:41.040 --> 01:25:41.360 Or 01:25:42.800 --> 01:25:48.240 the doxer is doing something that is the purest essence of Satan 01:25:48.320 --> 01:25:55.360 himself. When Satan was before the council of God, accusing Job, as 01:25:55.360 --> 01:25:56.800 he accuses all men. 01:25:59.360 --> 01:26:03.680 when the doxer when the satanic accuser lays out here's all this 01:26:03.680 --> 01:26:09.520 stuff, the other possibility is that those things that the docs victim 01:26:09.760 --> 01:26:14.800 has done in the past are sins for which he's been forgiven, 01:26:14.800 --> 01:26:18.400 things that he's repented of, that he is sorry for, that he's 01:26:18.400 --> 01:26:23.360 turned away from, and been forgiven publicly by God for those things. 01:26:23.360 --> 01:26:27.200 And when a someone comes along and says, but here is all 01:26:27.200 --> 01:26:32.560 these accusations, it is the purest form of what Satan seeks to 01:26:32.560 --> 01:26:33.840 do to all of us. 01:26:33.840 --> 01:26:37.680 It's how he tries to burden our consciences with past sins. 01:26:37.680 --> 01:26:42.560 When we When we're Christians, when we're living sanctified lives where we're 01:26:42.560 --> 01:26:47.600 receiving confession and absolution, where forgiveness is being announced, where we know 01:26:47.600 --> 01:26:51.280 it when we read the Word of God that announces our forgiveness 01:26:51.280 --> 01:26:55.520 through the very pages of Scripture and God's own voice. 01:26:55.520 --> 01:26:57.840 Satan wants to say, no, you're not really forgiven. 01:26:57.840 --> 01:26:59.840 Don't believe that pack of lies in church. 01:26:59.840 --> 01:27:02.000 Don't believe that crap you're reading in the Bible. 01:27:02.000 --> 01:27:05.120 You did something wrong in the past, and I'm gonna destroy you 01:27:05.120 --> 01:27:05.760 for it 01:27:06.800 --> 01:27:10.560 Someone who does not have confident faith can be torn down by 01:27:10.560 --> 01:27:13.680 that. And it's it's what he does in all of our lives. 01:27:13.680 --> 01:27:18.160 God Satan's always trying to dox all of us personally, using malformed 01:27:18.160 --> 01:27:22.400 consciences, saying, Here's this stuff you did a long time ago, or 01:27:22.400 --> 01:27:25.680 here's that one thing you did recently that you knew better, and 01:27:25.680 --> 01:27:30.400 look how disgusting you are. 01:27:30.400 --> 01:27:33.840 The Christian response to the disgusting sins that we commit is to 01:27:33.840 --> 01:27:35.920 repent, to say, yeah, that's disgusting. 01:27:35.920 --> 01:27:37.760 I I hate that too. 01:27:37.760 --> 01:27:40.560 I never I never wanted anything to do with that. 01:27:40.560 --> 01:27:43.360 I fell into sin, I turn away from it, and I asked 01:27:43.360 --> 01:27:44.880 God for forgiveness. 01:27:44.880 --> 01:27:48.480 A Christian within his own Christian life who conducts himself in that 01:27:48.480 --> 01:27:52.160 way is free from the guilt for those sins because those sins 01:27:52.160 --> 01:27:54.000 have been laid at the foot of the cross. 01:27:54.000 --> 01:27:55.840 And there's no purchase for Satan. 01:27:55.840 --> 01:27:58.800 When he comes along with your secret docs or your public docs, 01:27:58.800 --> 01:28:01.680 whatever it is, there's a litany of accusations. 01:28:01.680 --> 01:28:05.200 If you're already forgiven by God because you're repentant for anything that's 01:28:05.200 --> 01:28:06.960 actually sinful in there. 01:28:06.960 --> 01:28:09.760 May not be, because of course, Satan is the ultimate liar. 01:28:09.760 --> 01:28:14.000 He will lie and twist anything that he uses to try to 01:28:14.000 --> 01:28:16.560 get you to reject your faith. 01:28:16.560 --> 01:28:19.280 It's a tricky thing, and it's it's one of the weak spots 01:28:19.280 --> 01:28:19.680 that we have 01:28:20.560 --> 01:28:24.560 in a in an immature faith is to not be able to 01:28:24.560 --> 01:28:29.840 distinguish between my heart is accused by the words of God and 01:28:29.840 --> 01:28:34.160 scripture, my heart is accused when I hear someone preaching or speaking 01:28:34.160 --> 01:28:39.120 otherwise about the things of God, because I know that I have 01:28:39.120 --> 01:28:42.560 done something against God. 01:28:42.560 --> 01:28:47.120 God, through the Holy Spirit, desires an outcome of repentance and to 01:28:47.120 --> 01:28:48.960 deliver forgiveness to you. 01:28:48.960 --> 01:28:50.880 Satan desires the opposite. 01:28:50.880 --> 01:28:52.320 He doesn't want you to repent. 01:28:52.320 --> 01:28:53.680 He wants you to despair. 01:28:53.680 --> 01:28:55.360 He doesn't want you to be Peter. 01:28:55.360 --> 01:28:56.960 He wants you to be Judas. 01:28:57.200 --> 01:29:01.840 And so every time any of us confronts our own past sins, 01:29:01.840 --> 01:29:04.080 those are the two directions. 01:29:04.080 --> 01:29:05.280 Either God 01:29:06.880 --> 01:29:10.720 condemning the sin and saying, I died for this sin, I forgive 01:29:10.720 --> 01:29:14.160 you, or Satan saying, There's no possible hope for you. 01:29:14.160 --> 01:29:15.680 You've done something too terrible. 01:29:15.680 --> 01:29:17.600 There's never going to be any forgiveness. 01:29:17.600 --> 01:29:20.880 I will accuse and accuse and accuse until you take your own 01:29:20.880 --> 01:29:23.280 life and seal your fate. 01:29:23.520 --> 01:29:27.680 It's two completely different responses to exactly the same fact pattern. 01:29:27.680 --> 01:29:32.400 And so that's part of what makes this important to actually discuss 01:29:32.400 --> 01:29:37.200 among believers, because when you you know the vast majority of people 01:29:37.200 --> 01:29:40.400 who are listening to Stone Choir or who listen to anything that 01:29:40.400 --> 01:29:44.400 they hear that's going to have something from God, almost no one 01:29:44.400 --> 01:29:46.640 ever gives any feedback 'cause it's a one way thing. 01:29:46.640 --> 01:29:47.440 And that's fine. 01:29:47.440 --> 01:29:50.720 That's a normal part of listening versus speaking. 01:29:51.680 --> 01:29:56.480 When you hear something and it convicts your conscience, the important thing 01:29:56.480 --> 01:30:01.680 is that your conscience is not malformed and that you take a 01:30:01.680 --> 01:30:06.320 response that is itself guided by the very scripture that condemned whatever 01:30:06.320 --> 01:30:07.280 act it was. 01:30:07.280 --> 01:30:10.560 So if you did something in your past and you fail one 01:30:10.560 --> 01:30:13.760 or more of the tests that perhaps we lay out for what 01:30:13.760 --> 01:30:19.120 a perfect life would look like, that is never intended by us 01:30:19.120 --> 01:30:22.960 to heap condemnation on you, to heap burning coals on your head. 01:30:22.960 --> 01:30:26.800 The intent is to say, Here's what God wants for us, when 01:30:26.800 --> 01:30:28.400 we do this, we are blessed. 01:30:28.960 --> 01:30:31.920 Not saving ourselves, as as we said earlier on. 01:30:31.920 --> 01:30:34.560 This is not about I'm gonna do really good and I'm gonna 01:30:34.560 --> 01:30:35.280 save myself. 01:30:35.280 --> 01:30:39.120 No. We that's completely out of the question from the beginning. 01:30:39.120 --> 01:30:41.200 That's the very first thing that Christian needs to learn. 01:30:41.520 --> 01:30:43.360 He can't save himself. 01:30:43.360 --> 01:30:46.800 Satan wants you to think you can't save yourself and God can't 01:30:46.800 --> 01:30:47.680 save you either. 01:30:47.680 --> 01:30:49.360 And that's the distinction. 01:30:49.360 --> 01:30:52.960 When you are confronted with your sin, you realize I can't save 01:30:52.960 --> 01:30:54.000 myself from this 01:30:55.040 --> 01:30:59.120 Listen to God and know that He has forgiven that sin, that 01:30:59.120 --> 01:31:01.680 He has paid the price for it, and that you have already 01:31:01.680 --> 01:31:07.040 received that forgiveness by believing that the sacrifice was given for you. 01:31:07.040 --> 01:31:10.960 Do not listen to Satan, who continues to accuse you and whisper 01:31:11.040 --> 01:31:14.080 and pester in your ear, and bring up things from year ago 01:31:14.240 --> 01:31:17.600 th years ago that you've long since repented of, or there were 01:31:17.600 --> 01:31:19.760 never sins in the first place, and he's trying to trick you 01:31:19.760 --> 01:31:21.520 into thinking they were evil. 01:31:22.080 --> 01:31:24.320 He's a deceiver and he's an accuser. 01:31:24.320 --> 01:31:26.400 That's not what the law does. 01:31:26.400 --> 01:31:30.240 God's law, God's perfect will, never deceives. 01:31:30.240 --> 01:31:34.400 And it doesn't accuse in the same way that Satan accuses, because 01:31:34.400 --> 01:31:37.280 Satan's accusation is hopeless. 01:31:37.280 --> 01:31:42.160 When the word of God, when God's law accuses us of our 01:31:42.160 --> 01:31:46.880 sin, it is narrow in saying this is contrary to my will, 01:31:46.880 --> 01:31:49.600 repent, receive forgiveness. 01:31:49.600 --> 01:31:52.400 There's always an out. 01:31:52.400 --> 01:31:54.480 I don't mean to say that in the sense that you can 01:31:54.480 --> 01:31:59.280 continue to just do stuff and and knowingly sin and say, Well, 01:31:59.280 --> 01:32:00.480 yeah, God's got this covered. 01:32:00.480 --> 01:32:02.000 I don't need to worry about it. 01:32:02.000 --> 01:32:05.120 You will drive out the Holy Spirit if you continuously do that. 01:32:05.120 --> 01:32:06.080 But it'll take a while. 01:32:06.080 --> 01:32:07.760 It's not instantaneous. 01:32:07.760 --> 01:32:10.240 It's something else Satan wants you to think, oh, you did it 01:32:10.240 --> 01:32:11.280 once. That's too big. 01:32:11.280 --> 01:32:13.120 That's That's how all these little 01:32:14.480 --> 01:32:17.520 these sins are small when we're looking at them. 01:32:17.520 --> 01:32:19.120 Like, oh, I wanna I'm gonna do that. 01:32:19.200 --> 01:32:20.560 Seems like a good idea. 01:32:20.560 --> 01:32:23.600 The moment you do it, Satan's like, oh no, that was a 01:32:23.600 --> 01:32:24.880 huge sin, actually. 01:32:24.880 --> 01:32:28.480 And you will never ever be able to reconcile to God for 01:32:28.480 --> 01:32:30.560 that. Scripture says the opposite. 01:32:30.560 --> 01:32:33.520 Scripture says that all sin has been paid for on the cross, 01:32:33.520 --> 01:32:36.000 it's done, it is finished. 01:32:36.000 --> 01:32:41.280 And so when faithful preaching announces it, when scripture announces it, when 01:32:41.280 --> 01:32:44.400 you hear someone just discussing it and the Holy Spirit works through 01:32:44.400 --> 01:32:48.080 your heart to say, I screwed up, I need to repent, you 01:32:48.080 --> 01:32:48.800 already have. 01:32:48.800 --> 01:32:49.920 That is repentance. 01:32:49.920 --> 01:32:54.960 And with a Christian, the repentance receives that forgiveness immediately. 01:32:54.960 --> 01:32:59.360 And the reason that we have the absolution in church, and the 01:32:59.360 --> 01:33:02.400 reason that we are to forgive each other face to face, as 01:33:02.400 --> 01:33:04.160 we were just talking about a minute ago. 01:33:04.160 --> 01:33:08.080 If your spouse, if your future spouse sins against you, forgive them 01:33:08.080 --> 01:33:09.760 immediately. Say, I forgive you. 01:33:09.760 --> 01:33:11.200 This is it's gone. 01:33:11.200 --> 01:33:14.240 It does not exist between us. 01:33:14.240 --> 01:33:16.880 We do that so that there's no purchase for Satan to come 01:33:16.880 --> 01:33:18.400 along and say, but look at this. 01:33:18.400 --> 01:33:20.240 I got this laundry list of stuff. 01:33:20.480 --> 01:33:22.240 you are you s are you serious? 01:33:22.240 --> 01:33:24.400 Are you really gonna love this person? 01:33:24.400 --> 01:33:26.400 Do you really think God's gonna love you? 01:33:26.400 --> 01:33:30.000 No. There's absolutely no room for that in the Christian life. 01:33:30.240 --> 01:33:30.560 So 01:33:31.600 --> 01:33:36.960 Christian discussions can f speak frankly about evil without it being 01:33:37.840 --> 01:33:40.640 something that beats someone down. 01:33:40.640 --> 01:33:44.640 You may momentarily feel beaten down, and that's that's you realizing I'm 01:33:44.640 --> 01:33:46.720 a bigger sin center than I thought. 01:33:46.720 --> 01:33:49.840 That's a good thing because that's God working within you. 01:33:49.840 --> 01:33:55.360 But the very next beat is I repent of this, God forgive 01:33:55.360 --> 01:33:58.720 me, and to believe and to know with certainty that you have 01:33:58.720 --> 01:34:02.320 received that forgiveness, because the price has already been paid. 01:34:02.320 --> 01:34:06.080 That's the reason that we sometimes talk about fixing our eyes on 01:34:06.080 --> 01:34:09.600 the crucifix, on the cross with Jesus' body on it. 01:34:09.600 --> 01:34:12.720 Because as long as you're pointed at that and that is your 01:34:12.720 --> 01:34:16.800 focus, you will not get distracted by, oh, I I don't know 01:34:16.800 --> 01:34:19.120 if I'm I don't know if God loves me enough for this 01:34:19.120 --> 01:34:20.080 one. Really? 01:34:20.080 --> 01:34:21.120 Look at the cross. 01:34:21.120 --> 01:34:22.240 Look who's up there. 01:34:22.240 --> 01:34:23.520 Look what's happening. 01:34:23.520 --> 01:34:26.240 When you look at that, you can't possibly think that God doesn't 01:34:26.160 --> 01:34:28.960 love you enough to forgive whatever it is you did. 01:34:28.960 --> 01:34:31.520 And that's why we're to forgive each other for the same reason, 01:34:31.520 --> 01:34:35.120 because whatever someone else did to you isn't nearly as bad is 01:34:35.120 --> 01:34:36.720 the things that we have done to God. 01:34:36.720 --> 01:34:38.160 And this isn't relativism. 01:34:38.160 --> 01:34:40.720 And we've we've talked in the past about saying, well, you know, 01:34:40.720 --> 01:34:43.680 you know, we particularly called out the thing saying pedophilia is a 01:34:43.680 --> 01:34:45.440 speck in your neighbor's eye. 01:34:45.920 --> 01:34:48.480 I'm not saying anything like that. 01:34:48.480 --> 01:34:52.800 I'm saying that the accumulation of a lifetime of sin is itself 01:34:53.760 --> 01:34:56.400 incalculable by human standards. 01:34:56.400 --> 01:34:58.880 God can calculate it, he knows. 01:34:58.880 --> 01:35:04.080 But the individual thing that someone does to harm you doesn't stack 01:35:04.080 --> 01:35:07.520 up. And so when we forgive each other, it's because we don't 01:35:07.440 --> 01:35:10.160 want to receive what we know we deserve. 01:35:10.160 --> 01:35:12.800 And that's a cause for joy and not despair. 01:35:12.800 --> 01:35:16.000 Ultimately all these things, even when it's a momentary pause, and you're 01:35:16.000 --> 01:35:18.080 like, man, I it's unbelievable. 01:35:18.080 --> 01:35:21.360 As Corey was saying, we most of the time we can't forget 01:35:21.360 --> 01:35:22.160 most things. 01:35:22.160 --> 01:35:25.200 And we look back at them, we should be like, it's astonishing. 01:35:25.200 --> 01:35:27.600 How stupid and evil and it's unbelievable. 01:35:28.160 --> 01:35:34.160 And part of that just astonishment at our own past evil is 01:35:34.160 --> 01:35:36.480 a way of reinforcing that's not me anymore. 01:35:36.800 --> 01:35:38.800 that's not who I am in Christ. 01:35:38.800 --> 01:35:41.280 Even if you're a Christian at the time, you're like, what was 01:35:41.280 --> 01:35:42.000 I thinking? 01:35:42.000 --> 01:35:44.560 It was evil, it was wrong, I shouldn't have done it. 01:35:44.560 --> 01:35:48.480 And so your future life is guided by saying that's there's no 01:35:48.480 --> 01:35:52.560 room in my life for perhaps my past life. 01:35:52.560 --> 01:35:54.320 That is true repentance. 01:35:54.320 --> 01:35:57.040 And that is a life that is filled with God's forgiveness. 01:35:57.040 --> 01:35:58.640 Because you will sin in the future. 01:35:58.640 --> 01:36:02.080 But you won't commit the same types and degrees of sin, at 01:36:02.080 --> 01:36:06.720 least with the same volume and frequency, simply because you will spend 01:36:06.720 --> 01:36:09.840 more time being being hemmed in by all the good things that 01:36:09.840 --> 01:36:13.680 God provides where there's just less and less room for stepping too 01:36:13.680 --> 01:36:16.720 far out of line and getting further away to the point that 01:36:16.720 --> 01:36:19.840 Satan can start whispering and saying, Yeah, there's there's no hope for 01:36:19.840 --> 01:36:21.920 you. you're way too far gone. 01:36:21.920 --> 01:36:25.840 That's the rock bottom that someone who's a substance abuser or something 01:36:25.840 --> 01:36:31.040 else hits and without God they're just stuck in that pit until 01:36:31.040 --> 01:36:32.000 they die. 01:36:32.240 --> 01:36:36.640 Christianity is saying that the forgiveness will lift you out of that 01:36:36.640 --> 01:36:38.480 pit. God will lift you out of that pit. 01:36:38.480 --> 01:36:41.360 You can do it yourself, but the work has been done, and 01:36:41.360 --> 01:36:43.840 when you believe it, you receive it. 01:36:43.840 --> 01:36:48.640 And that comfort that we receive as Christians in the perfect forgiveness 01:36:48.640 --> 01:36:52.240 from God, when we extend it to others, we are blessed with 01:36:52.240 --> 01:36:55.200 a peaceful life as much as we can and have in have 01:36:55.200 --> 01:36:56.320 in this life. 01:36:56.800 --> 01:37:02.560 A key part of the Christian life is sanctification, and part of 01:37:02.560 --> 01:37:09.840 sanctification is that the Holy Spirit will lead you to recognize sins 01:37:09.840 --> 01:37:12.240 in your life. 01:37:12.240 --> 01:37:15.520 And as you deal with those sins in your life, because that 01:37:15.520 --> 01:37:20.000 is part of sanctification, there'll be a sin, you'll focus on that 01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:23.920 sin, you'll get over that sin, or you'll at least mitigate that 01:37:23.920 --> 01:37:28.800 sin, you'll be less prone to it as part of this process 01:37:28.800 --> 01:37:30.960 of sanctification. 01:37:30.960 --> 01:37:35.360 But as soon as you've done that, the Holy Spirit will identify 01:37:35.360 --> 01:37:38.960 another area in your life where you're sinning. 01:37:38.960 --> 01:37:43.920 This will continue for the entirety of your Christian life on this 01:37:43.920 --> 01:37:48.720 earth. Now for the immature Christian, that at first seems terrible. 01:37:48.720 --> 01:37:51.280 You mean there will always be more problems. 01:37:51.280 --> 01:37:54.480 Yes, there will always be more problems. 01:37:54.480 --> 01:37:59.280 That is part of life, part of this life. 01:37:59.280 --> 01:38:03.360 But that's not bad news, and I notably don't mean immature as 01:38:03.360 --> 01:38:07.520 a pejorative, simply an objective assessment. 01:38:07.520 --> 01:38:12.000 It is great news for the Christian that the Spirit will lead 01:38:12.000 --> 01:38:16.720 you to recognize these things, because that is preparing you for and 01:38:16.720 --> 01:38:22.400 leading you into a better life, ultimately preparing you for the next 01:38:22.400 --> 01:38:28.000 life. That is the process of sanctification, that is the Christian life, 01:38:28.000 --> 01:38:30.640 that is great news for the Christian. 01:38:30.640 --> 01:38:36.000 You are turning to God, walking toward God, getting rid of these 01:38:36.000 --> 01:38:39.760 things that are dragging you down, these things that are making your 01:38:39.760 --> 01:38:41.600 life objectively worse. 01:38:41.600 --> 01:38:44.000 And so it is great whenever you can get rid of any 01:38:44.000 --> 01:38:45.600 of them. 01:38:45.600 --> 01:38:50.720 So sanctification is an ongoing process for the Christian. 01:38:50.720 --> 01:38:52.880 That is why we have the Holy Spirit. 01:38:52.880 --> 01:38:54.640 That is why we have God's Word. 01:38:54.640 --> 01:38:58.160 We have, of course, the Holy Spirit to help us understand God's 01:38:58.160 --> 01:39:02.480 Word. Without the Spirit we could not understand the Word. 01:39:02.480 --> 01:39:04.880 But this is part of the Christian life. 01:39:04.880 --> 01:39:09.120 It is a progressive sanctifying of the Christian 01:39:10.400 --> 01:39:14.000 Because as we have mentioned in previous episodes, you are either heading 01:39:14.000 --> 01:39:15.920 toward God or away from God. 01:39:15.920 --> 01:39:19.440 There is no such thing as standing still when it comes to 01:39:19.440 --> 01:39:23.520 the Christian life, when it comes to being a human being. 01:39:23.520 --> 01:39:27.120 Because if you're not a Christian you're walking away from God. 01:39:27.120 --> 01:39:31.200 You are walking toward God or you are walking away from God. 01:39:31.200 --> 01:39:34.800 Sanctification is walking toward God. 01:39:34.800 --> 01:39:37.760 That is the Christian life, that is the purpose of the law, 01:39:37.760 --> 01:39:40.560 that's the third use of the law. 01:39:40.560 --> 01:39:45.600 It aids you in knowing what God wants you to do, because 01:39:45.600 --> 01:39:50.240 that is again God's will, and so you are walking Godward. 01:39:50.240 --> 01:39:54.720 That is what it means to be leading a Christian life. 01:39:54.720 --> 01:40:00.240 You know you're forgiven for your sins already, but you're being sanctified. 01:40:00.240 --> 01:40:04.320 You're becoming the person God always wanted you to be, the person 01:40:04.560 --> 01:40:09.040 God will make you in the next life, because that is when 01:40:09.040 --> 01:40:12.320 the fullness of your sanctification will occur. 01:40:13.040 --> 01:40:18.080 This is something that Jesus describes in the parable in Luke 18. 01:40:18.080 --> 01:40:21.360 He also told this parable to some whom who trusted in themselves 01:40:21.520 --> 01:40:24.560 that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. 01:40:24.560 --> 01:40:28.080 Quote Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a 01:40:28.080 --> 01:40:30.240 Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 01:40:30.240 --> 01:40:33.840 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus God I thank you that 01:40:33.920 --> 01:40:38.160 I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like 01:40:38.160 --> 01:40:40.160 this tax collector. 01:40:40.160 --> 01:40:42.960 I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I 01:40:42.960 --> 01:40:46.640 get, but the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift 01:40:46.640 --> 01:40:49.760 up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God be 01:40:49.760 --> 01:40:51.120 merciful to me a sinner. 01:40:51.120 --> 01:40:54.960 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather 01:40:54.960 --> 01:40:58.480 than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but 01:40:58.480 --> 01:41:02.080 the one who humbles himself will be exalted. 01:41:02.640 --> 01:41:08.640 So if you hear something in Scripture that you feel condemns you, 01:41:08.640 --> 01:41:12.160 you are the tax collector in this parable. 01:41:12.160 --> 01:41:15.680 You are the man who has sinned, who has done something, and 01:41:15.680 --> 01:41:19.680 you know it, and God says that you are justified for his 01:41:20.000 --> 01:41:21.280 sake by 01:41:22.400 --> 01:41:26.960 receiving the forgiveness through faith that was delivered at the cross. 01:41:26.960 --> 01:41:30.640 The man who is haughty, who sits around keeping track of other 01:41:30.640 --> 01:41:35.280 people's sins and announcing them and saying, look at the contrast between 01:41:35.280 --> 01:41:37.840 me and these other people, I'm so much better. 01:41:37.840 --> 01:41:40.160 That man is the man who's in spiritual trouble. 01:41:40.160 --> 01:41:43.440 The man who is momentarily troubled by 01:41:44.400 --> 01:41:47.840 his current sins or his past sins is in better shape than 01:41:47.840 --> 01:41:50.240 the man who's like, No, I got this figured out. 01:41:50.240 --> 01:41:54.720 So if you feel like, man, I I I'm not as good 01:41:54.720 --> 01:41:55.680 as I thought I was. 01:41:55.680 --> 01:41:58.320 Yep. that's A, it's true. 01:41:58.320 --> 01:42:00.080 And B that's good news. 01:42:00.080 --> 01:42:03.680 It means that the Holy Spirit is working within you and you 01:42:03.680 --> 01:42:06.960 are frankly you're more Christian than you were yesterday. 01:42:06.960 --> 01:42:10.960 You're more Christian than when you didn't realize the depths of your 01:42:10.960 --> 01:42:12.480 sin. Because 01:42:13.600 --> 01:42:16.800 once we realize that we can't fix it, that only God can 01:42:16.800 --> 01:42:19.680 fix it, it becomes very simple. 01:42:19.680 --> 01:42:25.120 And so I just again I want to reiterate Satan wants to 01:42:25.120 --> 01:42:29.440 dox you every moment of every day of your life to broadcast 01:42:29.440 --> 01:42:33.440 whatever evil you've done to the whole world to expose you and 01:42:33.440 --> 01:42:37.680 to make you feel like you have no hope in Christ. 01:42:37.680 --> 01:42:39.280 God wants the opposite. 01:42:39.280 --> 01:42:42.560 God wants to blot out and tr to forget your sins and 01:42:42.560 --> 01:42:45.440 to separate them as far as the East is from the West. 01:42:45.440 --> 01:42:48.960 And he accomplishes that through His word and through the sacraments. 01:42:48.960 --> 01:42:52.880 And And Christians know and believe that. 01:42:52.880 --> 01:42:57.280 We know that the evil that we have done is blotted out 01:42:57.280 --> 01:42:59.120 by God because it's what He promised. 01:42:59.120 --> 01:43:00.720 It's not what we deserve. 01:43:00.720 --> 01:43:03.760 We're not saying a prayer of Lord give me everything I deserve. 01:43:04.080 --> 01:43:08.000 We're saying Lord have mercy on me a poor miserable sinner, and 01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:11.600 God will answer that prayer. 01:43:11.680 --> 01:43:16.800 Undoubtedly some who are listening to this episode will have called to 01:43:16.800 --> 01:43:19.520 mind the unforgivable sin. 01:43:19.520 --> 01:43:22.880 We're not deliberately ignoring the unforgivable sin. 01:43:22.880 --> 01:43:25.040 I'm going to address it right now. 01:43:25.040 --> 01:43:29.920 However, if you are still listening to this episode, I can confidently 01:43:29.920 --> 01:43:33.920 say you have not committed the unforgivable sin. 01:43:33.920 --> 01:43:38.000 Another standard by which the unforgivable sin, whether or not it has 01:43:38.000 --> 01:43:39.520 been committed, can be judged is 01:43:40.560 --> 01:43:42.240 if you can worry about it. 01:43:42.240 --> 01:43:46.960 If you can worry about the unforgivable sin, you have not committed 01:43:46.960 --> 01:43:48.880 the unforgivable sin. 01:43:49.840 --> 01:43:53.520 And this ties into something that Wo said about a sin being 01:43:53.520 --> 01:43:57.680 too big, which of course is a favorite accusation of Satan. 01:43:57.680 --> 01:44:03.520 I want to read just a short quote from CFW Walter. 01:44:03.520 --> 01:44:06.880 You were not rightly distinguishing law and gospel in the Word of 01:44:06.880 --> 01:44:11.680 God, if you claim the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, cannot 01:44:11.680 --> 01:44:15.520 be forgiven because of its magnitude. 01:44:15.520 --> 01:44:17.840 This is a vitally important point. 01:44:17.840 --> 01:44:19.120 Anytime Satan tells you 01:44:20.000 --> 01:44:25.280 that you have committed a sin that is too big, he's lying. 01:44:25.280 --> 01:44:28.800 He is a wicked, vile, liar. 01:44:28.800 --> 01:44:32.800 There is no such thing as a sin that is too big, 01:44:32.800 --> 01:44:35.840 as a sin that has a magnitude that is too great to 01:44:35.840 --> 01:44:37.760 be forgiven. 01:44:37.760 --> 01:44:42.480 The unforgivable sin is unforgivable because of its nature 01:44:43.520 --> 01:44:48.880 It is impenitence, it is apostasy, it is the refusal to believe, 01:44:48.880 --> 01:44:54.240 it is the rejection of the free gift, of salvation, of justification. 01:44:54.240 --> 01:44:58.160 It is not unforgivable because of its magnitude. 01:44:58.160 --> 01:45:02.000 And so when Satan says, Well that sin was too big, you 01:45:02.000 --> 01:45:03.600 always know that he's lying. 01:45:03.600 --> 01:45:08.000 You never have to worry about the sin being too big. 01:45:08.000 --> 01:45:14.080 Because all of your sins, every sin, everything was forgiven in Christ 01:45:14.080 --> 01:45:18.240 on the cross. 01:45:18.240 --> 01:45:22.400 Because Christ's sacrifice was of infinite value. 01:45:23.200 --> 01:45:25.600 That is the thing to keep in mind. 01:45:25.600 --> 01:45:26.960 Keep that in sight. 01:45:26.960 --> 01:45:30.400 Focus on the infinite value of Christ's sacrifice. 01:45:30.400 --> 01:45:35.360 Don't focus on the magnitude of your sins. 01:45:35.360 --> 01:45:39.760 Yes, a Yes, until you have repented, you will focus on your 01:45:39.760 --> 01:45:44.160 sins. Those will drive you to repentance, that is, of course, the 01:45:44.160 --> 01:45:46.960 mirror, the second use of the law. 01:45:46.960 --> 01:45:51.680 But once that has driven you to repentance, focus on Christ, focus 01:45:51.680 --> 01:45:54.720 on the Word and the sacraments, focus on the way that God 01:45:54.720 --> 01:46:00.160 brings his gifts to you, because that infinite value of Christ's sacrifice 01:46:00.160 --> 01:46:04.320 on the cross covers any of the sins you have committed. 01:46:04.320 --> 01:46:07.040 So Satan is lying, because of course he is the father of 01:46:07.040 --> 01:46:08.800 lies, he's always lying. 01:46:08.800 --> 01:46:11.840 So do not listen when he says ah that sin is too 01:46:11.840 --> 01:46:15.680 big. There's no such thing. 01:46:15.680 --> 01:46:18.960 Because Because our God is true and merciful. 01:46:18.960 --> 01:46:24.480 Our God is the ruler from Matthew eighteen, who forgives that infinite 01:46:24.480 --> 01:46:27.760 debt of his servant. 01:46:27.760 --> 01:46:29.840 That is the nature of our God. 01:46:29.840 --> 01:46:32.960 That is the nature of the gift of salvation that He has 01:46:32.960 --> 01:46:34.080 given us. 01:46:34.080 --> 01:46:37.200 Our debt is infinite. 01:46:37.200 --> 01:46:41.280 But so is Christ's sacrifice, so is God's mercy, so is God's 01:46:41.840 --> 01:46:46.400 grace. And so no matter how great your sins are, they have 01:46:46.400 --> 01:46:51.600 been forgiven, and you can absolutely rely on that. 01:46:51.600 --> 01:46:55.920 When we say Amen, we should keep in mind what it is 01:46:55.920 --> 01:46:57.200 we've said. 01:46:57.200 --> 01:47:00.480 It means truly, means let it be so, it means a number 01:47:00.480 --> 01:47:01.520 of things. 01:47:01.520 --> 01:47:04.720 But the full sense of it, when we say amen to something 01:47:04.720 --> 01:47:09.440 in Scripture, when we say Amen to something God has promised is 01:47:09.440 --> 01:47:11.440 we're affirming it's already happened. 01:47:11.440 --> 01:47:15.280 It is already so, because God is so reliable that even if 01:47:15.280 --> 01:47:19.200 it is something in the distant future, it is so certain as 01:47:19.200 --> 01:47:20.720 to have already happened. 01:47:20.720 --> 01:47:24.240 That is the sense of what we're saying, and we should bear 01:47:24.240 --> 01:47:28.960 that in mind when we use that word. 01:47:28.960 --> 01:47:33.520 And so I'd like to read another passage from Hebrews to draw 01:47:33.520 --> 01:47:37.440 out some of these points we've gone over in this episode from 01:47:37.600 --> 01:47:42.560 Hebrews ten for by a single offering he has perfected for all 01:47:42.560 --> 01:47:46.800 time those who are being sanctified, and the Holy Spirit also bears 01:47:46.800 --> 01:47:50.320 witness to us for after saying, This is the covenant that I 01:47:50.320 --> 01:47:54.000 will make with them, after those days declares the Lord. 01:47:54.000 --> 01:47:57.040 I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on 01:47:57.040 --> 01:47:58.000 their minds. 01:47:58.000 --> 01:48:02.320 Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds 01:48:02.320 --> 01:48:03.280 no more. 01:48:03.280 --> 01:48:07.360 Where there is forgiveness of sins, there is no longer any offering 01:48:07.360 --> 01:48:08.320 for sin. 01:48:10.720 --> 01:48:15.760 And this passage really contains the summary of everything we have gone 01:48:15.760 --> 01:48:20.320 over in this episode, all of the points we were making, that 01:48:20.320 --> 01:48:23.280 we hope to make. 01:48:23.280 --> 01:48:26.720 The single offering is Christ. 01:48:26.720 --> 01:48:30.320 That single offering was of infinite value, so there is no longer 01:48:30.320 --> 01:48:34.720 any offering for sin, because once for all Christ offered what was 01:48:34.720 --> 01:48:38.000 necessary and all sufficient on the cross. 01:48:38.640 --> 01:48:43.040 God promises He will remember our sins no more. 01:48:43.040 --> 01:48:46.800 That is the greatest promise we can possibly hear. 01:48:46.800 --> 01:48:52.160 Because what God forgets no longer exists, never existed. 01:48:52.560 --> 01:48:56.640 Our sins will be absolutely gone. 01:48:56.640 --> 01:49:00.320 To the point where they cannot even be recalled by God, because 01:49:00.320 --> 01:49:05.600 He promises to forget them, and His promises are always true. 01:49:05.600 --> 01:49:09.360 And that writing of the law on your heart, that's the third 01:49:09.360 --> 01:49:14.160 use. That's the Spirit guiding you into a sanctified life. 01:49:14.160 --> 01:49:18.640 That is the process of sanctification that makes you a better Christian, 01:49:18.640 --> 01:49:20.480 makes you a better person. 01:49:20.480 --> 01:49:24.000 Because yes, being a Christian will make you a better person. 01:49:24.000 --> 01:49:26.560 That is part of the Christian life, that is the third use 01:49:26.560 --> 01:49:31.840 of the law, that is God's Eternal Will. 01:49:31.840 --> 01:49:36.480 Yes, the law accuses your fallen flesh, but the law is also 01:49:36.720 --> 01:49:41.840 turning your fallen flesh into something greater, preparing you for the glory 01:49:41.840 --> 01:49:43.440 of the next life. 01:49:43.440 --> 01:49:46.160 And that is good news for the Christian. 01:49:46.160 --> 01:49:51.920 And that is God's covenant with those who believe. 01:49:51.920 --> 01:49:55.840 And so all that remains now is to end with one more 01:49:55.840 --> 01:50:00.960 reading from scripture, to close out this episode, where we hope that 01:50:00.960 --> 01:50:05.440 we have pointed out to you, highlighted for you, the fullness of 01:50:05.440 --> 01:50:08.720 what it means that God has forgiven your sins and 01:50:10.400 --> 01:50:12.560 Because that is the gospel. 01:50:12.560 --> 01:50:14.000 That is the good news. 01:50:14.000 --> 01:50:17.920 That is the greatest news in the history of the world. 01:50:17.920 --> 01:50:20.400 Because of course that's what gospel means. 01:50:20.400 --> 01:50:23.360 It's good news. 01:50:24.320 --> 01:50:26.480 The Lord bless you and keep you. 01:50:26.480 --> 01:50:29.520 The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious 01:50:29.520 --> 01:50:30.400 unto you. 01:50:30.400 --> 01:50:35.280 The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.