WEBVTT 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:39.440 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.800 Mahler. And I'm Wo. 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:47.680 On today's episode of Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing deism, 00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:52.880 the belief the what's called commonly the watchmaker theory, that there is 00:00:52.880 --> 00:00:56.240 a God, there's a creator, but once he set things in motion, 00:00:56.240 --> 00:00:59.360 he basically just stepped back and let things run. 00:00:59.360 --> 00:01:02.880 Uh the reason we're discussing that today is that I think that 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:07.680 Christianity has been overtaken by a soft form of deism. 00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:11.600 Maybe some of you even listening have some elements of this deistic 00:01:11.600 --> 00:01:15.520 view in your own hearts, even while you confess the true God. 00:01:15.520 --> 00:01:19.200 You know, it's deism is a is a non-Trinitarian heresy and an 00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:24.960 anti divinity heresy in some ways, but the aspect of it that 00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:29.040 is compatible with modern Christianity, which is to say not Christianity at 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:32.560 all, is the belief that God set things in motion and he 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:33.840 just kind of vanished. 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:36.160 So the first half of the episode is going to be talking 00:01:36.160 --> 00:01:36.720 about that. 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:40.320 And then the second half we're going to be illustrating some examples 00:01:40.320 --> 00:01:46.800 of how scripture talks about sin specifically having temporal consequences and how 00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:50.720 we fundamentally don't believe that today, even as we say that we 00:01:50.720 --> 00:01:54.560 do. And just as an alert to any Roman Catholic listeners, I 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:56.080 know there are a few of you at least. 00:01:56.080 --> 00:01:58.880 When we're talking in that, we're going to be using completely different 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:01.520 terminology than you use in your own confessions. 00:02:01.520 --> 00:02:04.240 So please don't mistake us for being in agreement. 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:05.920 We're actually in complete disagreement. 00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:08.720 This is one of the reasons why we split from Rome. 00:02:08.720 --> 00:02:12.080 It was one of the principal reasons for the rest from Reformation. 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:14.480 So we're gonna be using some of the same terms you use 00:02:14.640 --> 00:02:16.080 that mean completely different things. 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:19.040 So we're not this is gonna be a polemic episode, but just 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:22.800 no upfront when we're saying some of those words we are not 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:24.640 talking about what you believe. 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:28.560 A specific warning to parents before we get into this, towards the 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:32.720 end we're going to be giving an example that is necessarily graphic 00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:34.240 in a sexual nature. 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:36.720 We're going to be using one or two words that you may 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:40.480 not want to explain to your children today, so I'd caution you 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:44.480 to maybe screen this episode before you listen with a family, as 00:02:44.480 --> 00:02:47.120 we know many of you are now, and we're thankful for that. 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:50.960 Whether or not your kids listen to this episode now or later, 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:54.240 the reason that we're going to, you know, create some trouble for 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:57.440 you as a parent is specifically that the example is such a 00:02:57.440 --> 00:03:02.720 crucial example of how Christianity in sort of the the modern form 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:07.760 of Jesus died for us and so everything's okay is fundamentally destructive 00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:09.520 to how we are living our lives. 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:10.800 So we're gonna make the case for that. 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:13.520 And that specific example is one the whether or not your kids 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:16.960 listen with you today, your kids need to know before they go 00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:18.000 and get married. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:24.080 They need to understand how certain sins should affect mate selection because 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:25.920 they will affect the rest of their lives. 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:30.320 They've affected your lives, they've affected everyone's lives in varying ways. 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:36.240 So again, I'm going to give a brief recap of scripture as 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:38.640 it relates to God acting in time. 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:43.280 And I'm gonna cover just a few highlights of God doing stuff 00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:44.560 in time. 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:48.320 The reason for highlighting these is that I think that as Christians 00:03:48.320 --> 00:03:52.640 today, even faithful Christians, we kind of look at God's action in 00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:57.600 creation is basically limited to what God said he did in scripture 00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:01.040 and then we have this hiatus and then at some point he's 00:04:01.040 --> 00:04:02.160 gonna come back. 00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:05.920 And so that's why I say we're kind of functionally deists. 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:07.440 we'll make that case. 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:10.720 But it's not that we're saying God never did anything after the 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:14.400 six days of creation, but we kind of believe that Jesus ascended 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:18.400 into heaven and then God's just kind of hands off And later 00:04:18.400 --> 00:04:20.480 on God will come back and do more stuff. 00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:22.480 But in the meantime, we're kind of on our own. 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:23.440 And that's false. 00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:25.760 That's plainly contradictory to scripture. 00:04:25.760 --> 00:04:29.520 And again, it affects how we confess our faith and how we 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:30.640 live our lives. 00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:31.600 So So 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:36.240 in the beginning the word was with God and the word was 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:39.040 God, and God said, Let there be light. 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:42.240 And by the end of the sixth day of creation, God had 00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:45.760 finished all of the things that he intended to make, and he 00:04:45.760 --> 00:04:48.080 saw that it was very good. 00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:52.000 God walked with Adam face to face as friends. 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:55.520 Even as creature and creator, there was no adversarial nature there as 00:04:55.520 --> 00:04:57.280 there is today. 00:04:57.280 --> 00:04:58.960 Adam Adam sinned. 00:04:58.960 --> 00:05:03.440 When he sinned, God cursed him, expelled him from the garden, declared 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:08.480 that you will die, and God blessed him and said, Through your 00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:11.840 lineage, I will solve this problem. 00:05:11.840 --> 00:05:14.480 I will undo the damage that you have done to all of 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:17.360 creation in the fall. 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:21.760 For about fifteen hundred years, mankind became more and more wicked from 00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:25.840 the days of the garden until in the days of Noah, that 00:05:25.840 --> 00:05:28.720 generation was so evil that God regretted he ever ever made man 00:05:28.960 --> 00:05:30.160 to begin with. 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:33.200 And only for the sake of keeping the promise he had made 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:35.760 to Adam did he not kill all of mankind. 00:05:35.760 --> 00:05:39.280 So he preserved eight souls, along with all the animals that needed 00:05:39.280 --> 00:05:41.920 to hitch a ride on the ark through the flood. 00:05:41.920 --> 00:05:46.880 Everything else in creation on this planet was destroyed. 00:05:46.880 --> 00:05:51.360 Five hundred years after that, God came to Abram and made Abram 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:53.120 a new promise. 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:57.600 Two thousand years after God promised Adam that there would be something 00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:01.520 in the future through his lineage that would undo this damage, God 00:06:01.520 --> 00:06:05.840 specifically promised Abram that it would be through his descendants that that 00:06:05.840 --> 00:06:08.000 promise would be fulfilled. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:12.880 And for the next two thousand years, God worked directly in the 00:06:12.880 --> 00:06:20.160 lives of Abraham's ancestors to preserve those promises, those prophecies, 00:06:20.160 --> 00:06:25.440 and to preserve that lineage, to br preserve the bloodline passed from 00:06:25.440 --> 00:06:30.560 Adam through Noah to Abraham and his sons, and fulfillment of God's 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:35.840 promise. Two thousand years after the promise to Abraham, four thousand years 00:06:35.840 --> 00:06:40.160 after the promise to Adam, Jesus was born the Christ, the Messiah. 00:06:40.160 --> 00:06:41.840 He came in the flesh. 00:06:41.840 --> 00:06:45.040 He lived for thirty years as a normal man. 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:47.520 Thirtieth year of his life, he began his ministry. 00:06:47.520 --> 00:06:53.920 And for three years he publicly taught, he performed miracles, he fulfilled 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:58.240 the law of God, he fulfilled the perfect life that Adam failed 00:06:58.240 --> 00:06:59.040 to lead. 00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:04.160 And he also fulfilled through his ministry and his miracles every single 00:07:04.160 --> 00:07:07.840 promise, every single prophecy of the Messiah that was made in the 00:07:07.840 --> 00:07:09.920 Old Testament. 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:14.640 On the cross, when Jesus died, and he said it was finished, 00:07:14.640 --> 00:07:18.320 four thousand years after God said that creation was finished, Jesus said 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:24.240 that his perfect redemption, perfect redeeming work of redemption was completed in 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:25.760 his death on the cross. 00:07:25.760 --> 00:07:28.240 He rose three days later from the dead. 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.360 For forty days he appeared and ministered to hundreds of people. 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:35.120 He was witnessed widely as being As being alive after been having 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:39.600 been provably visibly dead, murdered, and dead in the ground for three 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:43.040 days. After forty days he ascended into heaven. 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:46.960 And that's kind of where a lot of the direct action of 00:07:46.960 --> 00:07:48.400 God disappears. 00:07:48.400 --> 00:07:51.680 Now, interestingly, the timing of this episode is that in the church 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:56.160 calendar, in the Western calendar, ascension was last week, and this coming 00:07:56.160 --> 00:07:59.360 Sunday is the Sunday of the first Sunday of Pentecost. 00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:05.200 So in that ten days between Christ's ascension and the Sunday fifty 00:08:05.200 --> 00:08:11.200 days after Easter, when those tongues of fire come upon the disciples 00:08:11.200 --> 00:08:15.120 and the gathered people on the Sunday of Pentecost, that is a 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:18.800 very visible miracle of God performing in the world. 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:23.120 And subsequent to that, I think almost all the miracles that were 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:27.600 performed were performed specifically by the apostles and by by believers in 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:31.040 fulfillment again of those prophecies that have been made in the old 00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:35.920 testament. Once the apostles had died, once they had spread knowledge of 00:08:36.720 --> 00:08:40.320 God once they had revealed what had been taught to them during 00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:44.560 their three years of seminary, listening at Christ's feet every day, and 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:48.080 the direct revelations that they were receiving from God. 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:52.480 We don't have any warrant to believe that there's been subsequent direct 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:53.760 revelation from God. 00:08:53.760 --> 00:08:58.960 Since the last apostles has died, most Christians consider the direct revelation 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:01.600 from God of new things has ended. 00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:05.920 And unfortunately, I think that has caused us to believe that God 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:10.400 vanished. You know, God stopped directly acting, and although he made subsequent 00:09:10.400 --> 00:09:13.360 promises in the New Testament as well as the old to us, 00:09:13.360 --> 00:09:15.920 we don't believe them in quite the same fashion that it was 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:18.000 believed leading up to that point. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:21.120 And so we're going to begin by by talking about the advent 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:22.080 of deism 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:27.680 subsequent to Christ's death and resurrection and ascension, fast forward about another 00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:33.680 1500 years in our timeline, the Renaissance began and it led into 00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:34.480 the Enlightenment. 00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:39.040 And so today, two thousand years after Christ's ascension, we haven't really 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:42.160 seen much activity from God, not in the same way that it 00:09:42.160 --> 00:09:43.360 was seen in the past. 00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:45.600 And we ignore a lot of the things that God said about 00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:48.080 how he would be active in the world. 00:09:48.080 --> 00:09:51.440 And I think that that has caused tremendous problems for us in 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:55.360 our lives as Christians because by forgetting all the promises that God 00:09:55.360 --> 00:10:01.440 made about being specifically active in our lives, we forget his nature 00:10:01.760 --> 00:10:05.120 as our creator and as our redeemer. 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:08.720 The God who promised all of those good things and and sacrificed 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:12.720 himself on the cross all also promised the small stuff. 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:14.640 Give us this day our daily bread. 00:10:14.640 --> 00:10:17.920 That is a prayer for God to remember his promise to us. 00:10:17.920 --> 00:10:20.800 And while I think many of us say grace before meals and 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:25.040 try to be cognizant of the fact that food theoretically comes from 00:10:25.040 --> 00:10:30.000 God, I don't think we necessarily have the sort of immediate understanding 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:34.880 that what you are eating is direct providence from the Almighty. 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:38.320 That's something that in in past generations we did have because we 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:40.080 didn't have grocery stores. 00:10:40.080 --> 00:10:42.640 You had food in you know many cases it was food you 00:10:42.640 --> 00:10:43.520 grew yourselves. 00:10:43.520 --> 00:10:47.520 If you had a crop failure, you could potentially stay face starvation. 00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:49.840 Today we're insulated from crop failures. 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:52.800 It doesn't matter how bad the weather is, how bad the crops 00:10:52.800 --> 00:10:55.600 are, you can always go to the store and find food. 00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:55.920 So 00:10:57.040 --> 00:11:03.280 post Enlightenment, post-industrial revolution, the world we live in today has pushed 00:11:03.280 --> 00:11:05.760 God out of the way and let us live in a world 00:11:05.760 --> 00:11:08.640 where we can believe that, yeah, God's not really around, He's not 00:11:08.640 --> 00:11:09.120 doing much. 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:11.360 We should obey Him, but it's all just kind of theoretical. 00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:13.440 That God's not doing stuff today. 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:16.720 So we're going to begin specifically by talking about the advent of 00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:20.480 deism and the influence that it has had on the Christian faith. 00:11:20.560 --> 00:11:20.720 So 00:11:20.880 --> 00:11:24.480 as is becoming a theme with this podcast, we are going to 00:11:24.480 --> 00:11:32.000 mention the Enlightenment, because really Deism entered Western civilization, Western 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:37.600 society, and in time the Christian Church in the West, during the 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:41.440 Enlightenment, and there are a number of individuals we could discuss when 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:47.200 it comes to Enlightenment deism, but one of the main individuals would 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:49.280 of course be David Hume. 00:11:49.280 --> 00:11:55.760 Now before getting to Hume, specifically, what deism is in this historical 00:11:55.760 --> 00:12:02.080 context is essentially a rejection of special revelation, not general revelation, but 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:07.680 special revelation, a rejection of miracles, and a rejection of mystery. 00:12:07.680 --> 00:12:11.840 Because in essence what Deism wants to do is be able to 00:12:11.840 --> 00:12:19.280 explain the world purely via observation, empirical observation, and so 00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:23.680 subject the world to human reason, human logic, and so there was 00:12:23.680 --> 00:12:30.320 a removal, literally in some cases, of the miracles and the mystery 00:12:30.320 --> 00:12:32.640 from Christianity, from the Bible. 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:37.360 For instance, Jefferson is one of the best examples of this. 00:12:37.360 --> 00:12:41.360 He literally took a razor and glue and cut out parts of 00:12:41.360 --> 00:12:44.560 the Bible and moved things out things around, because he did not 00:12:44.560 --> 00:12:46.240 like the miracles. 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:49.280 He did not like the parts that could not be reduced to 00:12:49.280 --> 00:12:52.880 human reason, and so there goes the mysteries as well, which would 00:12:52.880 --> 00:12:54.560 be the sacraments. 00:12:54.640 --> 00:12:59.600 Because of course you're not going to explain communion or baptism without 00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:03.440 mystery, at least if you're being true to Scripture. 00:13:03.760 --> 00:13:07.040 To expand on what exactly I mean for those who aren't familiar 00:13:07.040 --> 00:13:12.320 with the terms by special revelation versus general revelation, essentially it's the 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:18.240 distinction between the natural world being general revelation and scripture being special 00:13:18.240 --> 00:13:23.680 revelation. And that is scripture in so far as the things revealed 00:13:23.680 --> 00:13:29.040 in Scripture are not revealed in the general revelation in creation. 00:13:29.040 --> 00:13:34.320 And so for instance, Deus will affirm that there is a God 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:38.240 One would hope that is obvious by the name Dius coming from 00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:42.240 Latin Deus God, but they will affirm that there is a higher 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:46.160 being, there is a creator god, there is a god who is 00:13:46.160 --> 00:13:48.240 in control. 00:13:48.240 --> 00:13:53.760 They deny that he acts in time in his creation. 00:13:53.760 --> 00:13:58.080 It's the the watchmaker idea that God wound up the universe after 00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:01.440 creating the universe, obviously, and then let it go. 00:14:01.440 --> 00:14:04.400 And he stands back and he watches it, and so he is 00:14:04.400 --> 00:14:07.760 transcendent and not imminent. 00:14:07.760 --> 00:14:11.040 That is imminent with an A, not an I. 00:14:11.040 --> 00:14:15.200 But special revelation is what you have in Scripture. 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:15.920 Special revelation 00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:21.600 is those things that are not revealed in the creation itself. 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:26.160 And so, for instance, the core of the Christian faith, not revealed 00:14:26.400 --> 00:14:28.320 in the general revelation. 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:31.600 Yes, you can discern there is a God, yes, you can discern 00:14:31.760 --> 00:14:37.200 some things about God, but you cannot discern what God's disposition towards 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:42.160 you is and how he wants you to interact with him. 00:14:42.160 --> 00:14:46.240 Yes, you can reasonably come to the conclusion that you should worship 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:48.480 God, and that is correct. 00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:52.560 Insofar as pagans came to that conclusion, they were right. 00:14:52.560 --> 00:14:55.760 But without Scripture, you cannot know about Christ. 00:14:55.760 --> 00:14:58.880 You cannot know about original sin, except in so far as you 00:14:58.880 --> 00:15:02.000 look around and see that things are not as they should be. 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:04.080 But you don't know what to do with that. 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:05.920 And so you need that special revelation to 00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:10.640 know that Christ died for you, and that belief in Christ is 00:15:10.640 --> 00:15:13.120 how you have a right relationship with God. 00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:15.040 That is special revelation. 00:15:15.040 --> 00:15:18.720 You cannot get that from simply looking at nature. 00:15:18.880 --> 00:15:19.200 And 00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:22.560 just to throw in a verse here, just so that we're establishing 00:15:22.560 --> 00:15:25.920 that we're not just making this stuff up and we're not trying 00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:29.840 to sell some sort of weird pagan version of Christianity. 00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:34.240 The very beginning of Romans, Romans 1, God God writes, For the 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:38.240 wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:41.920 of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 00:15:41.920 --> 00:15:44.960 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because 00:15:44.960 --> 00:15:46.480 God has shown it to them. 00:15:46.480 --> 00:15:51.680 For his invisible attributes, namely, namely his eternal power and divine nature, 00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:55.360 have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in 00:15:55.360 --> 00:15:59.120 the things that have been made, so they are without excuse, for 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:01.760 although they knew God they did not honor him as God or 00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:04.880 give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and 00:16:04.880 --> 00:16:07.840 their foolish hearts were darkened. 00:16:07.840 --> 00:16:15.280 So when we talk about natural revelation, general revelation revealing God. 00:16:15.280 --> 00:16:18.800 We're not saying you don't need Jesus and you don't need Scripture. 00:16:18.800 --> 00:16:23.120 We're pointing to Scripture to say what God said about Himself. 00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:26.960 God says that the heavens testify to his glory. 00:16:27.280 --> 00:16:29.440 We mentioned on numerous paps episodes. 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:31.600 Go read Job 38 and following. 00:16:31.600 --> 00:16:33.520 Read it devotionally every week. 00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:39.120 That is God delivering an extended soliloquy about how creation itself testifies 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:42.320 to his glory to every man, not only to Christians, but at 00:16:42.320 --> 00:16:44.080 to every man who has ever lived. 00:16:44.080 --> 00:16:46.720 So Romans 1, the very beginning of one of the most important 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:50.240 books in all of Scripture, says exactly what we're saying here. 00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:52.880 And we have a lot of critics who just flat out lie 00:16:52.880 --> 00:16:54.240 about everything we say. 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:56.160 We are not making this stuff up. 00:16:56.160 --> 00:16:58.080 It's not a good idea that we had. 00:16:58.080 --> 00:17:00.160 God literally says this. 00:17:00.160 --> 00:17:04.560 So when we are battling deism, it's we're battling in our own 00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:06.800 church for precisely this reason. 00:17:06.800 --> 00:17:11.520 There are men who believe the natural revelation doesn't say anything about 00:17:11.520 --> 00:17:13.120 God. Now they're flipping it. 00:17:13.120 --> 00:17:16.160 They're saying that Scripture is the only way to know anything and 00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:18.240 nature tells you nothing. 00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:19.440 God says both. 00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:23.600 God says that Scripture reveals himself and then nature reveals himself in 00:17:23.600 --> 00:17:27.760 different ways and for different purposes, but to neglect one for the 00:17:27.760 --> 00:17:29.520 sake of the other is evil. 00:17:29.520 --> 00:17:31.840 As Christians we don't get to do that. 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:35.440 And it's also just ridiculous when they try to argue that Scripture 00:17:35.440 --> 00:17:40.480 alone reveals God's glory, because usually when God in Scripture appeals to 00:17:40.480 --> 00:17:43.520 his own glory, he appeals to creation. 00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:48.400 So Scripture itself is directing us to creation to see the glory 00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:52.480 of God, and of course you paraphrase there the beginning of Psalm 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:57.440 nineteen. I'll read the first six verses because they're highly relevant here. 00:17:57.440 --> 00:18:01.440 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims 00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:02.640 his handiwork. 00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:06.800 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 00:18:06.800 --> 00:18:10.560 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not 00:18:10.560 --> 00:18:14.400 heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words 00:18:14.400 --> 00:18:16.000 to the end of the world. 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:19.120 In them he is set a tent for the sun, which comes 00:18:19.120 --> 00:18:22.880 out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man, 00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:24.800 runs its course with joy. 00:18:24.800 --> 00:18:28.000 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:30.880 to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:32.160 heat. 00:18:33.280 --> 00:18:37.360 That is speaking about creation, it's speaking about what God has done, 00:18:37.360 --> 00:18:40.560 what you can see when you look out the window. 00:18:40.560 --> 00:18:46.480 And so again, general revelation, creation, special revelation, scripture. 00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:52.080 Both are true, both reveal truths about God, and Christians can refer 00:18:52.080 --> 00:18:53.200 to both. 00:18:53.200 --> 00:18:55.040 But then to move on to 00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:01.920 David Hume, as mentioned, he is one of the ones who created 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:07.520 the modern conception, or really the the modern framework of thought, that 00:19:07.520 --> 00:19:10.320 turns into modern deism. 00:19:10.320 --> 00:19:14.480 Because in his essay, one of his more famous essays, of miracles, 00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:19.360 in one of his books, he basically argues that miracles are impossible. 00:19:19.360 --> 00:19:23.280 The problem is if you actually look at the essay and assess 00:19:23.280 --> 00:19:27.680 the logic used in it, the entire thing is begging the question 00:19:27.760 --> 00:19:30.080 in the technical sense. 00:19:30.080 --> 00:19:34.240 When someone says begging the question in everyday speech, most likely he 00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:35.600 is wrong. 00:19:35.600 --> 00:19:38.800 Because begging the question is a technical term. 00:19:38.800 --> 00:19:40.640 It is a term of art. 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:46.160 If something brings up a question, it is raising the question. 00:19:46.160 --> 00:19:50.880 If something begs the question, what it is doing is in the 00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:55.680 question, in the inquiry itself, you are assuming the conclusion. 00:19:55.680 --> 00:19:58.080 And that is what Hume does. 00:19:58.080 --> 00:20:03.200 Because the basic outline of Hume's argument is that a miracle is 00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:05.520 something, this is how he defines miracles. 00:20:05.520 --> 00:20:09.680 A miracle is something that transgresses the natural law. 00:20:09.680 --> 00:20:13.360 It is something that is outside of a natural law that goes 00:20:13.360 --> 00:20:16.080 against it, and so the most common example that's going to be 00:20:16.080 --> 00:20:18.480 given is a man coming back from the dead, because of course 00:20:19.120 --> 00:20:24.080 the goal of denying miracles is to deny the resurrection. 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:28.560 Both Christ's resurrection and ultimately our resurrection. 00:20:29.520 --> 00:20:35.760 And so what he argues is, miracles cannot exist because natural laws 00:20:35.760 --> 00:20:43.120 are established over time due to the empirical observation of many 00:20:43.120 --> 00:20:49.440 men. This is the argument that an empirical truth, if you have 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:53.280 contending arguments, the one that is true is the one that has 00:20:53.280 --> 00:20:56.400 the greater weight of evidence behind it Behind it. 00:20:56.400 --> 00:20:59.120 Now there are a number of problems with this, some of you 00:20:59.120 --> 00:21:01.200 will undoubtedly be able to see them. 00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:05.200 For instance, if you have a long established error, how do you 00:21:05.200 --> 00:21:07.360 overturn that with accurate observations? 00:21:07.360 --> 00:21:10.000 Because every accurate observation is going to be Is going to be, 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.160 by Hume's own rule, thrown out because it doesn't accord with this 00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:17.440 supposedly established natural law. 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:19.840 And so as you can see, he's begging the question. 00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:23.040 He's saying, a miracle can't happen because a miracle is outside the 00:21:23.040 --> 00:21:26.320 natural law and only things that are inside the natural law can 00:21:26.320 --> 00:21:29.520 happen. And so it's just complete gibberish. 00:21:29.600 --> 00:21:31.360 But this is the definition 00:21:31.360 --> 00:21:32.640 of a miracle. 00:21:32.720 --> 00:21:32.800 Ex 00:21:33.040 --> 00:21:34.320 Exactly, that's the problem. 00:21:34.320 --> 00:21:37.520 He's he throws out the idea of a miracle by saying a 00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:41.280 miracle can't happen because a miracle is contrary to natural law. 00:21:41.280 --> 00:21:45.920 Natural law here being the laws of nature, not capital N, Capital 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:49.360 L natural law flowing from God. 00:21:49.360 --> 00:21:52.880 But that's the core of this, and this is bled over into 00:21:53.120 --> 00:21:57.840 first the Academy, because of the sciences, particularly the hard sciences that 00:21:58.240 --> 00:21:59.440 infected the 00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:01.520 liberal arts. 00:22:01.520 --> 00:22:06.560 And then from there, because of course, theology is a liberal art. 00:22:06.560 --> 00:22:09.840 Theology used to be called the queen of the liberal arts in 00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:12.800 proper academia in centuries past. 00:22:12.800 --> 00:22:15.600 From there it bled over into the church. 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:17.440 And so you have Christians 00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:23.120 who basically affirm this sort of thought pattern without really thinking about 00:22:23.120 --> 00:22:26.320 what it is they're affirming. 00:22:26.320 --> 00:22:32.160 And so you you have a denial of God's active involvement in 00:22:32.160 --> 00:22:33.280 the world. 00:22:33.280 --> 00:22:36.720 You have this conception of God as being, as was mentioned earlier, 00:22:36.720 --> 00:22:41.600 transcendent and not imminent, which is to say, above it all, sitting 00:22:41.600 --> 00:22:44.720 back watching, he's he's off in heaven somewhere. 00:22:45.040 --> 00:22:48.320 this is an error that some make when they contend that Christ 00:22:48.320 --> 00:22:52.400 is at the right hand of God, not that Christ being at 00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:56.160 the right hand of God is an error, but the conception of 00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:59.760 what the right hand of God is can be an error. 00:22:59.760 --> 00:23:02.000 God is not a body. 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:04.080 God is spirit. 00:23:04.080 --> 00:23:09.040 God is not contained in some heaven that is a physical location. 00:23:09.040 --> 00:23:13.120 The right hand of God is a position of power and authority. 00:23:13.120 --> 00:23:18.400 And so Christ isn't contained, according to divinity or humanity, in some 00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:21.360 in some physical location somewhere. 00:23:21.600 --> 00:23:26.080 He is omnipresent, because of course the fullness of Deity dwells bodily 00:23:26.080 --> 00:23:27.200 in Christ. 00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:31.040 Therefore he has the fullness of the attributes of Deity, one of 00:23:31.040 --> 00:23:36.240 course being omnipresence, sort of a a tangent, but it's important here, 00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:38.000 because if you deny 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:43.840 that God is imminent by saying that he is only transcendent, then 00:23:43.840 --> 00:23:48.160 you are denying his involvement in the creation, and really you're at 00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:53.360 least verging on denying the very nature of God, because you're denying 00:23:53.360 --> 00:23:57.520 omnipresence. And so what we need to do is have more of 00:23:57.520 --> 00:24:02.080 the mindset that our ancestors, our forebears in the faith, would have 00:24:02.080 --> 00:24:04.960 had, where they looked at the natural world with wonder because they 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:09.040 looked at it as God being actively involved. 00:24:09.440 --> 00:24:12.160 God is the one who causes the sun to rise and the 00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:13.360 sun to set. 00:24:13.360 --> 00:24:16.560 God is the one who causes the change of the seasons. 00:24:16.560 --> 00:24:19.600 God is the one who causes every seed to germinate in your 00:24:19.600 --> 00:24:21.440 field or not. 00:24:21.440 --> 00:24:23.520 Everything we have comes from God. 00:24:23.520 --> 00:24:29.520 He is involved in everything, from the grandest scale, the movement of 00:24:29.680 --> 00:24:35.600 galaxies in the universe, the interaction of the galaxies, this grand awesome 00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:41.360 scale, all the way down to the smallest interactions of whether it's 00:24:41.360 --> 00:24:44.880 individual atoms or particles inside of one. 00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:46.400 God controls all of that. 00:24:46.400 --> 00:24:47.440 He is involved. 00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:48.640 He upholds everything 00:24:49.520 --> 00:24:51.360 by his power. 00:24:51.360 --> 00:24:58.480 Without God's active, imminent involvement, nothing happens. 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:00.960 And that includes miracles. 00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:03.120 Now Hume's definition of what a miracle is 00:25:04.080 --> 00:25:10.080 isn't entirely wrong, because when we speak of a miracle, what we 00:25:10.080 --> 00:25:14.880 really mean is that God involved himself in a particular way that 00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:19.520 is so out of the ordinary that it is utterly undeniable. 00:25:19.520 --> 00:25:22.960 So God is involved, as I said, in everything, so the cell 00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:26.400 divisions in your body right now, God controls those, those happen because 00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:28.480 he wills it. 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:30.240 But we don't call that a miracle. 00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:33.760 It is a miracle in the broader sense of the term, but 00:25:33.760 --> 00:25:36.640 we don't call it a miracle because it is in perfect accord 00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:39.360 with the way God made things to operate. 00:25:39.360 --> 00:25:42.080 What we would call a miracle is a man coming back from 00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:45.840 the dead, because that is not in accord with how the fallen 00:25:46.080 --> 00:25:47.440 world works. 00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:51.200 God has to intervene in a special sort of way to cause 00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:54.640 a man to come back from the dead, and so that's what 00:25:54.640 --> 00:26:01.040 we mean really when we say miracle, and that's what these individuals, 00:26:01.040 --> 00:26:04.480 born of the enlightenment thought, deny. 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:08.080 They rip them literally out of the Bible in some cases and 00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:11.920 say you can't possibly have a miracle because God isn't actually involved 00:26:11.920 --> 00:26:12.800 in creation. 00:26:12.800 --> 00:26:16.160 He is merely sitting back and watching the machine that he spun 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:17.920 up and then let loose. 00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:18.080 And 00:26:18.080 --> 00:26:22.320 I think at some point what has really happened is that while 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:26.400 they were trying to deny miracles outright, you know, special things like 00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:31.120 resurrection of the dead, as you laid out, they ultimately are fundamentally 00:26:31.120 --> 00:26:34.160 denying that God is doing the things that God says that He 00:26:34.160 --> 00:26:36.080 does in cr in Scripture. 00:26:36.080 --> 00:26:40.480 In Jeremiah ten, it's written, It is He who made the earth 00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:43.920 by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and by 00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:46.160 His understanding stretched out the heavens. 00:26:46.160 --> 00:26:49.200 When He utters His voice there is a tumult of waters in 00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:51.840 the heaven, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of 00:26:51.840 --> 00:26:55.280 the earth, he makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth 00:26:55.280 --> 00:26:57.520 the wind from its storehouses. 00:26:57.520 --> 00:27:00.720 And wind from the storehouses is a phrase that's repeated several times 00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:02.320 throughout scripture. 00:27:02.320 --> 00:27:08.960 Now today, thanks to modern science, we know that sunlight heats the 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:14.480 earth's crust, causes differences in temperature, which cause differences in pressure in 00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:15.440 the atmosphere. 00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:16.720 And so we get wind. 00:27:16.720 --> 00:27:19.520 We get winds, we get cyclones, we get all manner, you know, 00:27:19.520 --> 00:27:23.680 everything from the smallest breeze to the most powerful tornado is all 00:27:23.680 --> 00:27:25.920 caused more or less by the same things. 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:28.400 And none of it's supernatural on paper. 00:27:28.400 --> 00:27:31.120 You can model it and the models work. 00:27:31.120 --> 00:27:34.000 You can have a model of how a tornado or a hurricane 00:27:34.080 --> 00:27:38.400 or a breeze works that doesn't involve supernatural. 00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:40.800 There's no variable for God in those models. 00:27:40.800 --> 00:27:42.960 And yet they're very predictive. 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:47.840 The problem that we have today as functional deists is that because 00:27:48.320 --> 00:27:52.400 post-Enlightenment, we have these new understandings of the facts on the ground. 00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:54.240 Oh, well, okay, that's how wind works. 00:27:54.240 --> 00:27:54.880 That's neat. 00:27:54.880 --> 00:27:56.960 And you know, maybe you're really into it and you become a 00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:03.920 meteorologist. That's fine, but if you then go on to deny Jeremiah 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:07.360 10 and the other passages that says that God brings forth the 00:28:07.360 --> 00:28:12.560 wind from his storehouses, you can't be Christian. 00:28:12.560 --> 00:28:15.360 And see, that's that's the reason that this is a subject that's 00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:20.160 worth tackling is that if you're denying these trivial parts of scripture, 00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:23.360 and I say that tongue in cheek, there's no such thing, that's 00:28:23.360 --> 00:28:24.320 the point. 00:28:24.320 --> 00:28:28.480 If you know how wind works, and you decide, well, I know 00:28:28.480 --> 00:28:31.680 how that works with the a at the atomic level, so it 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:33.600 can't have anything to do with God. 00:28:33.600 --> 00:28:37.760 When God says I did that, the disconnect is that the fact 00:28:37.760 --> 00:28:42.800 that we have now introspective through reason how things work does doesn't 00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:46.320 tell us the ultimate cause of it working. 00:28:46.320 --> 00:28:48.160 And God himself says that. 00:28:48.160 --> 00:28:50.240 He's doing all of it. 00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:55.120 One of the points that that I made elsewhere is that I 00:28:55.120 --> 00:28:59.600 think there's something very important to be discerned from Revelation as John 00:29:00.080 --> 00:29:04.800 is being given his revelation in in heaven in his vision. 00:29:04.800 --> 00:29:08.400 When he first comes to the throne of God and the terrifying 00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:09.600 beasts are there. 00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:11.200 They say two things. 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:14.560 The very first thing that they say to him is holy, holy, 00:29:14.560 --> 00:29:18.560 holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is 00:29:18.560 --> 00:29:19.840 to come. 00:29:19.840 --> 00:29:23.600 So right there they're confessing the Trinity with the triple holy, and 00:29:23.600 --> 00:29:25.920 the next thing that they say to him as he stands before 00:29:25.920 --> 00:29:29.600 the throne, listen to this, worthy are you our Lord and God 00:29:29.840 --> 00:29:34.080 to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, 00:29:34.080 --> 00:29:38.160 and by your will they existed and were created. 00:29:38.160 --> 00:29:40.800 Now the reason I think that's so important is that the very 00:29:40.800 --> 00:29:44.160 first two things that are said in heaven before the throne of 00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:48.000 God have nothing to do with Christ's sacrifice on the cross. 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:50.480 I do not say that to diminish that in the slightest. 00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:51.760 That is the third thing. 00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:54.960 But it's important, I think, that in order it says then worthy 00:29:55.120 --> 00:29:58.080 are you to take the scroll, and to open its seals. 00:29:58.080 --> 00:30:00.960 For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for 00:30:00.960 --> 00:30:04.240 God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:06.880 have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they 00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:08.800 shall reign on the earth. 00:30:08.800 --> 00:30:13.600 So the twenty four gathered around the throne do confess Christ as 00:30:13.600 --> 00:30:14.720 the Redeemer. 00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:18.320 That's absolutely a fundamental part of Christianity. 00:30:18.320 --> 00:30:20.880 There are two other things that are said before the throne of 00:30:20.880 --> 00:30:21.680 God first. 00:30:21.680 --> 00:30:25.200 The first is the Trinity, and the second is declaring the glory 00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:27.120 of God in creation. 00:30:27.120 --> 00:30:32.480 And so again, as we introspect the glory of God in creation, 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:37.440 as Christians, that should give us a greater appreciation for the glory 00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:38.160 of God. 00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:42.560 It shouldn't make us appreciate science, which aga again is just it's 00:30:42.560 --> 00:30:43.840 a word for knowledge. 00:30:43.840 --> 00:30:45.040 That's literally what it means. 00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:46.560 Scantia is knowledge. 00:30:46.560 --> 00:30:47.360 It's not special. 00:30:47.360 --> 00:30:49.520 It's not a it's not a different religion. 00:30:49.520 --> 00:30:53.040 It is a knowledge can only be of a true thing. 00:30:53.040 --> 00:30:57.600 So when we have scientific knowledge, which is redundant, of things, what 00:30:57.600 --> 00:31:01.200 we're saying is okay, we understand better how it's working. 00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:04.720 And to to Corey's point about Hume and his definition of Definition 00:31:04.720 --> 00:31:09.520 of what we can accept, that's the problem that science faces today. 00:31:09.520 --> 00:31:15.600 The established science, like made up things like anthropocentric global warming, are 00:31:15.600 --> 00:31:16.640 complete nonsense. 00:31:16.640 --> 00:31:19.920 But because ninety-five doctors out of a hundred say this is how 00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:22.800 it works, no one is allowed to even get funding to say, 00:31:22.800 --> 00:31:24.960 well, that's complete nonsense. 00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:25.040 So 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:31.920 these false beliefs have effects on our lives in the left hand 00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:33.920 kingdom and in the right. 00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:37.760 As we get further and further away from believing that God is 00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:41.120 active in creation, it's easier to forget the other things. 00:31:41.120 --> 00:31:44.480 You know, one of our recurring themes is that Satan doesn't care 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:46.080 which lie you buy. 00:31:46.080 --> 00:31:49.360 You know, is is Christians and most of you listening or Protestants, 00:31:49.360 --> 00:31:52.160 you're not going to fall for the the trick that you can 00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:55.360 save yourself, that you can do something to earn your salvation. 00:31:55.360 --> 00:31:56.720 We got that one nailed. 00:31:56.880 --> 00:31:59.440 We figured it out 500 years ago and we've stuck to our 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:02.000 guns. Satan didn't rest on those laurels. 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.920 He's found other avenues of attack that are not frontal assaults on 00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:07.760 the second article of the Creed. 00:32:07.760 --> 00:32:11.280 He's going after the other stuff that we don't have good arguments 00:32:11.280 --> 00:32:13.680 against. It's part of the reason that Stone Choir exists. 00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:17.680 We're talking about this stuff that no one's really talked much about 00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:20.160 because Satan wasn't attacking it before. 00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:23.680 Now that Satan is attacking it, it should become one of the 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:25.600 chief concerns of the church. 00:32:25.600 --> 00:32:26.880 Capital C. 00:32:26.880 --> 00:32:31.520 Every Christian denomination is either struggling with some of these questions, you 00:32:31.520 --> 00:32:34.720 know, things like tranneism and and other matters related to the flesh 00:32:35.120 --> 00:32:39.600 and how we're created, or they're adopting wholesale the religion of the 00:32:39.600 --> 00:32:43.680 world and they're ceasing to be Christian, even as they still have 00:32:43.680 --> 00:32:48.160 the creeds and confessions, whatever your confession is in your denomination. 00:32:48.160 --> 00:32:51.360 When you start whittling away at what God has done in his 00:32:51.600 --> 00:32:56.000 creation, that is an overt denial of the creator. 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:57.520 You can't get around that. 00:32:57.520 --> 00:33:01.200 If you say no, God, the wind didn't come from you, the 00:33:01.200 --> 00:33:04.000 wind came from solar radiation. 00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:06.960 God will judge you for that as a false confession that you 00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:08.000 were denying him. 00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:10.880 And if you deny God, he will deny you on the last 00:33:10.880 --> 00:33:11.600 day. 00:33:11.760 --> 00:33:11.920 I 00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:16.480 think it may be helpful for the listeners to go over guess 00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:21.920 really just a couple practical matters when it comes to deism in 00:33:22.560 --> 00:33:26.480 our own daily lives in the modern world and 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:35.120 it should be mentioned first the first point the Freemasons are deist. 00:33:35.120 --> 00:33:38.720 That is one of the reasons of a number of very strong 00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:42.960 reasons that Christians cannot be Masons. 00:33:42.960 --> 00:33:46.320 And I know that some will think, well, my grandfather was a 00:33:46.320 --> 00:33:51.680 Christian and a Mason, and maybe that was so. 00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:55.440 But if he was a Christian, it was because he was a 00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:56.800 bad Mason. 00:33:56.800 --> 00:34:01.120 And if he was a good Mason, he was not a Christian. 00:34:01.120 --> 00:34:04.960 Because again, Freemasonry is deist. 00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:10.080 It denies that God is active in his creation, that he is 00:34:10.080 --> 00:34:12.400 involved, and it denies the mysteries. 00:34:12.400 --> 00:34:15.600 It is exactly what we've been describing thus far. 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:18.400 It is an organized form of deism. 00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:23.840 It is It is a deistic competing religion to Christianity. 00:34:23.840 --> 00:34:28.000 And so again, no, you cannot be a Mason and a Christian. 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:34.880 These are incompatible, and historically, Lutheran churches, among others, have barred membership 00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:40.640 to Freemasons, and certain other groups have actually persecuted the Masons historically, 00:34:40.640 --> 00:34:43.920 which is of course what a Christian ruler would do, because they're 00:34:43.920 --> 00:34:45.440 an anti Christian cult. 00:34:46.160 --> 00:34:49.920 But then another point that I want to make is something that 00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:54.400 many have undoubtedly read at some point, and that is 00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:56.320 C. S. 00:34:56.320 --> 00:34:59.600 Lewis's trilemma the I'm not going to recommend C.S. 00:34:59.600 --> 00:35:01.360 Lewis generally as a theologian. 00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:07.280 He is a decent apologist, but apologist and theologian usually not found 00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:08.960 together in one man. 00:35:08.960 --> 00:35:12.320 Usually a man who is a good theologian is a bad apologist, 00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:15.600 and a good apologist is usually not a very good theologian. 00:35:15.600 --> 00:35:20.560 Lewis should have let others do the theology, but his trilemma is 00:35:20.560 --> 00:35:22.240 actually quite sound. 00:35:22.240 --> 00:35:23.040 It is quite good. 00:35:23.280 --> 00:35:27.440 I'm not going to say that it is purely logically sound, as 00:35:27.440 --> 00:35:31.520 in you could turn it into a modal logic problem and arrive 00:35:31.520 --> 00:35:32.320 at the conclusion. 00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:34.160 That's not the point. 00:35:34.160 --> 00:35:38.400 It is compelling, which is why I am calling it sound. 00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:42.320 And the trilemma, of course, is when you deal with what Christ 00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:47.280 taught and what Christ claimed, you are left with three options for 00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:53.920 what Christ is, and that is lunatic, liar, or lord. 00:35:53.920 --> 00:35:56.800 You can say that he was a lunatic, that he was a 00:35:56.800 --> 00:36:01.920 crazy man who lived in the desert and told people some good 00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:06.160 stuff and claimed some crazy things, like he was God. 00:36:06.160 --> 00:36:08.400 Or you can claim he was a liar, that he was just 00:36:08.400 --> 00:36:13.440 a swindler, that he was one of a long line, actually, in 00:36:14.080 --> 00:36:18.160 Palestine, of those claiming to be a Messiah. 00:36:18.160 --> 00:36:21.120 Or you can conclude that he is your Lord. 00:36:21.120 --> 00:36:25.760 Because if you take his claims seriously, that's the only option, if 00:36:25.760 --> 00:36:30.400 the things that Christ did and the things that Christ claimed are 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:35.280 both true, then he is your Lord and Savior. 00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:38.800 Deists don't want to deal with this. 00:36:38.800 --> 00:36:41.680 That's why you have men like Jefferson who want to say, I 00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:45.200 really like what Christ taught, and then cut out all this other 00:36:45.200 --> 00:36:50.160 stuff. Why is what Christ taught compelling 00:36:51.120 --> 00:36:52.800 absent his other claims? 00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:58.000 And why can we just jettison those claims? 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:01.680 They don't have an answer for this from the deist perspective. 00:37:01.680 --> 00:37:05.600 It's the same sort of argument as those who would say we 00:37:05.600 --> 00:37:09.040 agree with this confession in so far as we like what it 00:37:09.040 --> 00:37:13.280 says, which for Lutherans, of course, I'm speaking of quatonous subscription to 00:37:13.280 --> 00:37:17.280 the Book of Concord, which is an argument that the Book of 00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:21.120 Concord, in so far as it is correct, correct of course being 00:37:21.120 --> 00:37:25.680 here from the position, the viewpoint of the one making the argument, 00:37:25.680 --> 00:37:29.600 in so far as it is correct, or in agreement with our 00:37:29.600 --> 00:37:34.160 interpretation of scripture, that's completely meaningless. 00:37:34.160 --> 00:37:37.600 To say that you subscribe to something insofar as it is correct, 00:37:37.600 --> 00:37:40.240 in your opinion, means nothing. 00:37:40.240 --> 00:37:43.680 Insofar as the menu at my local Thai restaurant is correct. 00:37:43.680 --> 00:37:45.600 Yeah, of course I subscribe to that. 00:37:45.600 --> 00:37:49.520 Because insofar as it's correct it's true, that's the case for all 00:37:49.520 --> 00:37:53.040 documents. It's a totally meaningless claim. 00:37:53.040 --> 00:37:57.040 And that's the problem that we have here with deism. 00:37:57.040 --> 00:38:04.800 Their claims about Christ make him irrelevant, meaningless, and really highlight 00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:08.080 the bankruptcy of deism itself. 00:38:08.160 --> 00:38:12.480 I think one of the worst consequences of the Industrial Revolution was 00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:15.920 that it separated Us from our food. 00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:20.000 It separated us from our food sources, from how God provides things 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:21.040 to us. 00:38:21.040 --> 00:38:25.520 And there's so much of how God wanted the world to be 00:38:25.520 --> 00:38:28.720 ordered that hinges on Providence. 00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:33.120 The hinges on him acting directly to us. 00:38:33.120 --> 00:38:36.720 Now I'm not making a case for everyone returning to doing everything 00:38:36.720 --> 00:38:40.400 himself. That's I I would be dead if that were the case. 00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:42.240 I'm I can't grow anything. 00:38:42.240 --> 00:38:46.800 It's not fundamentally a rejection of specialization of labor, but I think 00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:52.000 it's important for us to acknowledge that in the industrial age we 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:58.240 have been separated from the immediacy of God's delivery of these things 00:38:58.240 --> 00:38:58.880 to us. 00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:02.560 As I said earlier, I've mentioned before, a grocery store is a 00:39:02.560 --> 00:39:06.080 miracle. You can go in there any time of the year, any 00:39:06.080 --> 00:39:10.800 season, and basically get food pretty much from around the world that's 00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:13.120 if you have a decent grocery store, it's gonna be in good 00:39:13.120 --> 00:39:14.880 shape, it's gonna be fresh. 00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:17.600 You know, some of the stuff is genetically engineered now, so it's 00:39:17.520 --> 00:39:19.760 been messed with, so it looks good. 00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:23.280 But even with that, the fact that there's always food when you're 00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:27.200 hungry if you can afford it, is itself a miracle. 00:39:27.200 --> 00:39:28.400 And I think 00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:36.080 Because we have gotten away from the lifestyle that involved hand to 00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:38.880 mouth in the sense that you are growing the food or the 00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:43.040 animal, the plants, whatever it is, whatever sort of gardening or farming 00:39:43.040 --> 00:39:46.800 you're doing on any scale, when that's no longer a part of 00:39:46.800 --> 00:39:52.160 our lives, we forget that someone's doing that on our behalf. 00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:58.160 And that specialization means that the farmer the witnesses birth and death, 00:39:58.160 --> 00:40:01.680 that witnesses the sacrifice of the animals as they're dying to be 00:40:01.680 --> 00:40:02.880 our food. 00:40:02.880 --> 00:40:05.840 The farmer sees that and it's kept out of sight. 00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:08.640 And frankly one of the other horrors of the industrial age is 00:40:08.800 --> 00:40:12.960 industrial farming, which is absolutely evil and should be destroyed and made 00:40:12.960 --> 00:40:14.320 illegal everywhere. 00:40:14.320 --> 00:40:16.960 That is vile what is done to creatures today. 00:40:16.960 --> 00:40:18.400 It makes me sick. 00:40:18.400 --> 00:40:22.400 If you can support local farmers just as an aside, please do 00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:25.680 that. Because a local farmer is always going to be taking better 00:40:25.680 --> 00:40:26.960 care of their animals. 00:40:26.960 --> 00:40:29.600 I have a friend a few years ago who grew some pigs. 00:40:29.600 --> 00:40:31.600 They had one bad day in their life and they didn't even 00:40:31.600 --> 00:40:32.160 know it. 00:40:32.160 --> 00:40:35.840 They were outside, they were eating like crazy, he cleared several acres 00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:39.440 with with the pigs eating everything up, and then they made incredibly 00:40:39.440 --> 00:40:41.120 good bacon and ham. 00:40:41.120 --> 00:40:43.040 And they never even knew it was coming. 00:40:43.040 --> 00:40:45.360 They had a wonderful life as pigs. 00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:48.960 And then we enjoyed them for a year as dinner. 00:40:48.960 --> 00:40:53.200 That is the way God has ordered things since Noah got off 00:40:53.200 --> 00:40:54.080 the ark. 00:40:54.080 --> 00:40:56.560 God said, As I gave you the plants, I now give you 00:40:56.560 --> 00:40:57.760 all the animals too. 00:40:57.760 --> 00:40:59.600 Everything is yours to eat. 00:40:59.600 --> 00:41:01.920 Now that we have grocery stores, now that we have all these 00:41:01.920 --> 00:41:05.280 other sources of things, we forget that God is still doing that 00:41:05.280 --> 00:41:06.000 for us. 00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:10.320 It's really the polar opposite of manna from heaven, where they were 00:41:10.320 --> 00:41:12.960 wandering in the desert and they had no food and then it 00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:16.160 just it rained, you know, this this bread for them. 00:41:16.160 --> 00:41:18.000 And that was their sustenance. 00:41:18.000 --> 00:41:22.960 The immediacy of that is it's the same sort of immediacy we 00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:26.400 we get from a grocery store, but without any of the notion 00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:29.200 that it's a miracle that God's doing it. 00:41:29.200 --> 00:41:33.440 I want to read again Matthew 6, just this passage where Jesus 00:41:33.440 --> 00:41:39.040 is specifically preaching against us believing the watchmaker theory in any regard. 00:41:39.040 --> 00:41:43.040 He talks about the smallest things in this passage as an illustration 00:41:43.120 --> 00:41:45.760 that if you can trust God for the small things, you can 00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:49.120 certainly trust Him for the big ones. 00:41:49.120 --> 00:41:52.000 Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what 00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:54.480 you will eat or what you will drink or about your body 00:41:54.640 --> 00:41:56.480 or what you will put on. 00:41:56.480 --> 00:42:00.160 Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 00:42:00.160 --> 00:42:01.600 Look at the birds of the air. 00:42:01.600 --> 00:42:05.280 They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your 00:42:05.280 --> 00:42:06.400 heavenly Father feeds them. 00:42:06.400 --> 00:42:09.040 Are you not of more value than they? 00:42:09.040 --> 00:42:11.920 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour 00:42:11.920 --> 00:42:13.280 to his span of life? 00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:15.440 And why are you anxious about clothing? 00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:17.920 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. 00:42:17.920 --> 00:42:21.360 They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in 00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:24.080 all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 00:42:24.080 --> 00:42:26.720 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which to 00:42:26.720 --> 00:42:29.920 day is alive, and to morrow is thrown into the oven, will 00:42:29.920 --> 00:42:33.360 he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:36.560 Therefore do not be anxious, saying what shall we eat, or what 00:42:36.560 --> 00:42:38.720 shall we drink, or what shall we wear? 00:42:38.720 --> 00:42:42.560 For the Gentiles seek after these things, and year heavenly Father knows 00:42:42.560 --> 00:42:43.760 that you need them all. 00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:47.120 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all 00:42:47.120 --> 00:42:48.720 these things will be added to you. 00:42:48.720 --> 00:42:52.720 Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious 00:42:52.720 --> 00:42:53.680 for itself. 00:42:53.680 --> 00:42:56.480 Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. 00:42:56.720 --> 00:42:59.600 This is a passage I've I've read at least once before in 00:42:59.600 --> 00:43:03.120 a previous episode that the reason I keep returning to is one, 00:43:03.120 --> 00:43:06.080 it countermands deism flatly. 00:43:06.080 --> 00:43:09.600 It's saying that your food, your clothing, all of it comes to 00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:13.680 God. Not only is some sort of miraculous intervention outside of the 00:43:13.680 --> 00:43:17.920 laws of nature, but it's how God provides things. 00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:20.880 God gives you a job, God gives you a house, God gives 00:43:20.880 --> 00:43:24.160 you food, all the things that God gives you are his blessings. 00:43:24.160 --> 00:43:28.320 And they're everybody much as bit a blessing as the miraculous manna 00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:29.040 from heaven. 00:43:29.040 --> 00:43:32.720 God is simply fulfilling this promise to all his creatures in a 00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:34.400 different way in our lives. 00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:36.000 And that's a blessing too. 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:38.160 I'm not complaining about grocery stores. 00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:41.280 I'm saying that the fact that we have this blessing of such 00:43:41.280 --> 00:43:45.920 great abundance should be a reason for even greater thanksgiving and not 00:43:45.920 --> 00:43:49.600 certainly a reason for us to forget that it's God that's producing 00:43:50.080 --> 00:43:50.720 all of it. 00:43:50.720 --> 00:43:54.400 He sends the rain, he sends the winds, he grows the crops, 00:43:54.400 --> 00:43:58.080 he gives us farmers and grocery stores and truck drivers and all 00:43:58.080 --> 00:44:02.640 the things that are so mundane that without which we would starve. 00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:05.600 So all of that is God acting in our lives. 00:44:05.600 --> 00:44:10.720 And the f fact that there's scientific reasoning and understanding that let 00:44:10.720 --> 00:44:13.440 us think, oh, well, I understand how the economy works. 00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:14.880 I understand how the weather works. 00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:19.200 I understand how crop rotation and germination works. 00:44:19.200 --> 00:44:22.320 If you forget God, you've missed the entire point of everything. 00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:26.160 You'd be better off starving to death and remembering God than being 00:44:26.160 --> 00:44:27.760 fed and forgetting him. 00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:31.760 God is giving us both in nature and in scripture, and all 00:44:31.760 --> 00:44:33.840 we have to do is receive it with thanksgiving. 00:44:34.160 --> 00:44:38.160 I think a final point that we should make in the US 00:44:38.320 --> 00:44:42.160 context, which of course is our primary context, yes, we have listeners 00:44:42.160 --> 00:44:48.080 from all over the world in fact, but in the US context, 00:44:48.080 --> 00:44:53.360 many operate under the assumption that the US doesn't have an established 00:44:53.360 --> 00:44:57.360 religion, an official religion, and that we cannot have that. 00:44:57.360 --> 00:45:01.360 Of course that's a different argument from another time, perhaps. 00:45:01.360 --> 00:45:04.800 No. The Constitution doesn't actually bar an established religion. 00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:07.360 It bars Congress from doing it. 00:45:08.160 --> 00:45:12.720 But the US does have an official religion. 00:45:12.720 --> 00:45:14.240 And it is deism. 00:45:14.240 --> 00:45:16.960 It is called ceremonial deism. 00:45:16.960 --> 00:45:19.520 Now some of course will try to argue that it's not actually 00:45:19.520 --> 00:45:23.120 a religion, but it is in fact a religion. 00:45:23.120 --> 00:45:25.840 It was first mentioned in Lynch V. 00:45:25.840 --> 00:45:31.840 Donnelly in a dissenting opinion, but I will I'll read just a 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:34.800 quick paragraph from that dissenting opinion. 00:45:34.880 --> 00:45:39.040 I would suggest that such practices as the designation of in God 00:45:39.040 --> 00:45:43.120 we trust as our national motto, or the references to God contained 00:45:43.120 --> 00:45:46.160 in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, can best be understood 00:45:46.640 --> 00:45:52.080 in Dean Rostow's apt phrase as a form of a ceremonial deism, 00:45:52.080 --> 00:45:57.200 protected from establishment clause scrutiny, chiefly because they have lost through rote 00:45:57.200 --> 00:46:02.720 repetition any significant religious content. 00:46:02.720 --> 00:46:08.560 And so essentially our state religion is an anti-religion. 00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:11.600 It is a rejection of Christianity, because of course that is ultimately 00:46:11.600 --> 00:46:12.560 what deism is. 00:46:12.960 --> 00:46:16.800 A rejection of Christianity, and this comes from 00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:21.280 the Jewish law school professor Eugene Rostow. 00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:23.360 I think at the time he was actually the dean of the 00:46:23.360 --> 00:46:24.720 law school. 00:46:24.720 --> 00:46:26.720 But his argument is that the U.S. 00:46:26.880 --> 00:46:32.560 has a ceremonial deism as its religion, which makes appeals to God 00:46:32.560 --> 00:46:38.240 or a higher authority that aren't actually truly religious in that they 00:46:38.240 --> 00:46:42.640 aren't really an appeal to God, but an appeal to a sort 00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:47.280 of tradition or belief in a higher principle, which of course is 00:46:47.280 --> 00:46:50.240 deism. And And 00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:56.240 that is an important point about deism. 00:46:56.240 --> 00:47:00.960 It's this appeal to a higher power, which we of course see 00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:06.880 in Alcoholics Anonymous, or an appeal to providence, any number of different 00:47:06.880 --> 00:47:09.520 terms are used for this. 00:47:09.520 --> 00:47:14.080 If you see someone who uses only those terms, you should be 00:47:14.080 --> 00:47:15.680 deeply suspicious. 00:47:15.680 --> 00:47:19.920 That person is most likely a deist, not a Christian. 00:47:19.920 --> 00:47:21.120 Now there is 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:26.320 a bit of complexity or potential confusion here because Christians can also 00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:27.520 use those terms. 00:47:27.520 --> 00:47:31.440 It is perfectly permissible for a Christian to refer to God as 00:47:31.600 --> 00:47:34.960 uppercase p providence, or as 00:47:35.840 --> 00:47:37.440 the higher power. 00:47:37.440 --> 00:47:44.160 However, a Christian will necessarily also refer a Refer explicitly to Christ 00:47:44.160 --> 00:47:46.480 as Lord and Savior at some point. 00:47:46.480 --> 00:47:50.160 A Christian will be able to give that confession of the faith. 00:47:50.160 --> 00:47:51.760 That's the dividing line. 00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:55.280 The deist will never give that confession of Christ. 00:47:55.280 --> 00:47:58.800 The Christian will give the confession of Christ even if he also 00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:03.520 uses these terms that overlap with terms used by deist, and so 00:48:03.520 --> 00:48:07.840 it is important, it is incumbent on Christians, to pay close attention, 00:48:07.840 --> 00:48:11.840 particularly to those who are speaking in the public sphere, when they 00:48:11.840 --> 00:48:17.120 use these terms, and perhaps even more importantly, which terms they neglect 00:48:17.120 --> 00:48:18.080 to use. 00:48:18.480 --> 00:48:22.480 And so we the living in this generation separated two thousand years 00:48:23.040 --> 00:48:30.640 from Christ's ascension, have inherited this post-Enlightenment version of Christianity 00:48:30.640 --> 00:48:33.200 that most of us hold lazily. 00:48:33.200 --> 00:48:38.080 You know, it's it's simultaneously a true confession and a false confession. 00:48:38.080 --> 00:48:41.920 Because if you stop believing that God is doing certain things, even 00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:46.880 while you believe he's God, we're not sitting here pronouncing judgment on 00:48:46.880 --> 00:48:48.880 who has true faith and who doesn't. 00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:50.480 God alone knows that. 00:48:50.480 --> 00:48:53.760 But we can say with absolute certainty that you are endangering your 00:48:53.760 --> 00:48:59.200 salvation by endangering your faith by adopting a false confession that denies 00:48:59.200 --> 00:49:02.480 God's things that He reveals in Scripture that He does. 00:49:03.280 --> 00:49:05.760 And one of the reasons that we wanted to do this episode, 00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:08.880 and one of the reasons that we began by specifically talking about 00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:13.920 the idea of a watchmaker God who's basically checked out now is 00:49:13.920 --> 00:49:20.080 that as we've gotten into a gospel reductionistic version of Christianity within 00:49:20.080 --> 00:49:24.320 the church where when we are professing our faith, we don't want 00:49:24.320 --> 00:49:26.880 to talk about God punishing sins anymore. 00:49:26.880 --> 00:49:29.680 We don't want to we even want to say the word sin. 00:49:29.680 --> 00:49:31.600 We talk about brokenness. 00:49:31.600 --> 00:49:36.480 Yeah, we talk about things being problematic, which is a Marxist term. 00:49:36.480 --> 00:49:38.720 We don't say sin, we don't say evil. 00:49:39.120 --> 00:49:42.000 That's one of the reasons that Corey and I say sin and 00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:43.200 evil a lot. 00:49:43.200 --> 00:49:46.320 It's not being obsessive or trying to be controversial. 00:49:46.320 --> 00:49:47.920 It's that that's what these things are. 00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:49.680 That's what God calls them. 00:49:49.680 --> 00:49:54.160 So when God calls something evil and you call it problematic, there's 00:49:54.080 --> 00:49:55.120 a disconnect. 00:49:55.120 --> 00:49:57.760 And if you claim to be Christian and you won't say things 00:49:57.760 --> 00:50:01.600 the way God said them, you're gonna get into trouble, even while 00:50:01.600 --> 00:50:05.840 you're confessing all the other parts of the faith that are true. 00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:10.640 And one of the chief problems that we have today is that 00:50:10.880 --> 00:50:15.200 Christians don't believe that God punishes sin in this life. 00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:18.880 We believe that you sin and sin and sin, or you try 00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:20.880 not to sin and maybe you do a decent job. 00:50:20.880 --> 00:50:23.360 Obviously, no matter what, you're going to sin some. 00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:26.640 that's part of the Christian confession. 00:50:26.640 --> 00:50:28.640 We cannot live a perfect life. 00:50:28.640 --> 00:50:32.880 Jesus two thousand years ago lived the only perfect human life. 00:50:32.880 --> 00:50:36.800 We will only be perfected in the resurrection, covered in his blood. 00:50:36.800 --> 00:50:40.640 Until that day, no matter how hard we try, we will fail. 00:50:40.640 --> 00:50:46.480 Nevertheless, we are to try to obey God in in confession that 00:50:46.480 --> 00:50:48.480 He is our God, He is our Creator. 00:50:48.480 --> 00:50:52.480 We to confess as the as the angels before the throne, holy, 00:50:52.480 --> 00:50:55.360 holy, holy, you are God Almighty. 00:50:55.360 --> 00:50:56.880 I will do what you say. 00:50:56.880 --> 00:51:00.400 That should be simple and obvious to everyone. 00:51:00.400 --> 00:51:04.240 Instead, what we hear from so many of our teachers is oh, 00:51:04.240 --> 00:51:07.360 don't worry about that sin stuff, Jesus has it covered, just try 00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:09.440 to do better, and you're forgiven. 00:51:09.440 --> 00:51:09.760 And 00:51:10.800 --> 00:51:15.040 by no means would quarrier diminish forgiveness in the slightest. 00:51:15.040 --> 00:51:20.240 The entire Christian faith is predicated upon the creator of the universe 00:51:20.240 --> 00:51:24.240 six thousand years ago, coming two thousand years ago to repair the 00:51:24.240 --> 00:51:28.720 damage that Adam did and that we perpetuate through our sinful lives 00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:30.160 and our sinful being. 00:51:30.160 --> 00:51:33.680 The fact that God paid the eternal price for our sins on 00:51:33.680 --> 00:51:38.400 the cross does not obviate the fact that there are temporal punishments 00:51:38.400 --> 00:51:40.080 for those sins. 00:51:40.080 --> 00:51:44.960 Not always, not automatic, it's not a one-to-one correlation. 00:51:44.960 --> 00:51:49.200 Nevertheless, it is absolutely the case that God will punish us in 00:51:49.680 --> 00:51:52.560 this life for the things that we do. 00:51:52.560 --> 00:51:56.560 I want to read now the confession, the general confession that's given 00:51:56.560 --> 00:52:00.960 publicly in in virtually all Lutheran churches for hundreds of years. 00:52:01.600 --> 00:52:06.560 O Almighty God, merciful Father, I, poor, miserable sinner, confess unto you 00:52:06.560 --> 00:52:10.000 all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you, 00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:13.440 and justly deserved your temporal and eternal punishment. 00:52:13.440 --> 00:52:16.880 But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, 00:52:16.880 --> 00:52:19.760 and I pray you of your boundless mercy, and for the sake 00:52:19.760 --> 00:52:23.520 of the wholly innocent bitter sufferings and death of your beloved Son 00:52:23.600 --> 00:52:27.440 Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor sinful 00:52:27.440 --> 00:52:33.440 being Now, every week Lutherans are saying, justly deserved your temporal and 00:52:33.440 --> 00:52:35.120 eternal punishment. 00:52:35.120 --> 00:52:37.920 And we focus a lot on the eternal punishment. 00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:38.800 That's hell. 00:52:38.800 --> 00:52:41.840 That's taken care of as a Christian with this confession, with a 00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:42.720 true confession of God. 00:52:43.520 --> 00:52:46.720 You are off the hook for the eternal punishment. 00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:49.520 We never think about the temporal punishment. 00:52:49.520 --> 00:52:52.080 As I said at the beginning, if any of you happen to 00:52:52.080 --> 00:52:56.400 be familiar with Roman Catholic doctrine, we're not remotely talking about the 00:52:56.400 --> 00:52:57.280 same thing. 00:52:57.280 --> 00:53:01.760 Temporal and eternal are two different spheres. 00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:06.000 One is bounded in eternity, the other is bounded in time. 00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:09.680 Temporal is not a synonym for temporary. 00:53:09.680 --> 00:53:13.440 And the reason I mention Roman Catholicism in particular is that this 00:53:13.440 --> 00:53:15.600 is how indulgences came about. 00:53:15.600 --> 00:53:20.640 They realized that if they could attribute some additional penance to pay 00:53:21.360 --> 00:53:25.840 in time for sins, they could raise money. 00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:30.400 Is one of the reasons politically that the Reformation was fought was 00:53:30.400 --> 00:53:31.600 that you know the St. 00:53:31.600 --> 00:53:36.240 Peter's Basilica, all the beautiful things in Italy, those were being built 00:53:36.240 --> 00:53:40.400 with indulgence money extracted largely from Germans. 00:53:40.400 --> 00:53:45.120 It was it was a racial national extortion racket in the name 00:53:45.120 --> 00:53:48.640 of Rome, in the name of the Pope, to get money from 00:53:48.640 --> 00:53:50.640 one nation and give it to others. 00:53:50.640 --> 00:53:55.280 Now the indulgences were everywhere, but they're pushed particularly hard in Germany. 00:53:55.280 --> 00:54:01.040 And so when Roman Catholics talk about temporal punishments, they specifically mean 00:54:01.280 --> 00:54:04.240 doing something to get off the hook in this life. 00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:05.440 That's not what we mean. 00:54:05.440 --> 00:54:08.320 That's not what the Lutherans are talking about when we talk about 00:54:08.320 --> 00:54:09.600 temporal punishment. 00:54:09.600 --> 00:54:14.560 Lutherans are talking about what Nathan brought to David in second Samuel 00:54:14.560 --> 00:54:19.200 twelve. Nathan said, You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with a 00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:22.000 sword and have taken his wife to be your wife, and you 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:23.840 have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:27.840 Now therefore the swords shall never depart from your house, because you 00:54:27.840 --> 00:54:30.880 have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite 00:54:31.040 --> 00:54:32.080 to be your wife. 00:54:32.080 --> 00:54:35.520 Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up evil against you 00:54:35.520 --> 00:54:38.320 out of your own house, and I will take your wives before 00:54:38.320 --> 00:54:41.520 your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie 00:54:41.520 --> 00:54:44.480 with your wives in the sight of this sun, for you did 00:54:44.480 --> 00:54:47.680 it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and 00:54:47.680 --> 00:54:49.040 before all the sun. 00:54:49.040 --> 00:54:52.400 David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. 00:54:52.400 --> 00:54:55.440 And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your 00:54:55.440 --> 00:54:57.040 sin, you shall not die. 00:54:57.040 --> 00:55:02.000 Nevertheless, because of this deed, you have utterly scorned the Lord The 00:55:02.160 --> 00:55:04.960 child who is born to you shall die. 00:55:04.960 --> 00:55:08.000 So that's a temporal punishment. 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:13.360 Now that is a specific, you might say miraculous temporal punishment. 00:55:13.360 --> 00:55:17.440 But the fact remains, Nathan said, the Lord has put away your 00:55:17.440 --> 00:55:19.360 sin, meaning the eternal punishment. 00:55:19.360 --> 00:55:23.440 Nevertheless, David's son was killed by God. 00:55:23.440 --> 00:55:27.520 That was the temporal consequence, and notably, in light of some of 00:55:27.520 --> 00:55:32.560 our previous episodes, the temporal consequence for David's sin was visited upon 00:55:32.560 --> 00:55:36.880 his son, who had you know, by our standards, had done nothing, 00:55:36.880 --> 00:55:40.720 but he was the product of an evil union, and God cursed 00:55:40.720 --> 00:55:42.320 it with death. 00:55:42.320 --> 00:55:47.280 So what When we talk about temporal consequences for sin, as we've 00:55:47.280 --> 00:55:50.880 talked about in the past, we're dedicating this episode specifically to the 00:55:50.880 --> 00:55:55.200 point, God will sometimes use 00:55:56.400 --> 00:56:00.240 punishment in this life, in your life, as you are living and 00:56:00.240 --> 00:56:04.240 breathing, punishment for a sin that you have committed by way of 00:56:04.240 --> 00:56:08.000 chastisement and reproach, and to bring you to repentance. 00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:11.760 In the case of David and Nathan, he had already confessed his 00:56:11.760 --> 00:56:16.320 sin, and he was confronted by Nathan, and the yet still the 00:56:16.320 --> 00:56:21.120 punishment was visited upon him, even as God forgave the eternal price 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:22.240 for that sin. 00:56:22.240 --> 00:56:27.280 So So it is absolutely Christian doctrine that something you do in 00:56:27.280 --> 00:56:31.920 this life will have punishment from God in this life. 00:56:31.920 --> 00:56:33.920 That's how this ties in with deism. 00:56:33.920 --> 00:56:37.360 If you believe in the deistic God, you know, he Jesus ascended 00:56:37.520 --> 00:56:39.840 to heaven and he's gonna show up on the last day, but 00:56:39.840 --> 00:56:42.320 in between God's not really gonna do anything. 00:56:42.320 --> 00:56:46.080 Oh, you know, maybe he feeds us, but the idea that God 00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:50.800 would cause in your life specific punishment for specific sin is a 00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:51.760 big deal. 00:56:51.760 --> 00:56:55.840 And it's something that has a direct impact on our lives, on 00:56:55.840 --> 00:56:57.200 every man's life. 00:56:57.200 --> 00:57:01.440 And so when we're talking about obeying God or not obeying God, 00:57:01.440 --> 00:57:08.160 and we're talking about Christian doctrine focusing, we would argue too much 00:57:08.160 --> 00:57:09.200 on forgiveness. 00:57:09.200 --> 00:57:12.000 I know that sounds terrible, but we're trying to make the point 00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:15.600 that if all of your focus is on forgiveness, that's the eternal 00:57:15.600 --> 00:57:19.920 forgiveness, the specific point we're making here is that God does not 00:57:19.920 --> 00:57:22.720 forgive the temporal punishments for your sins. 00:57:22.720 --> 00:57:24.960 You will still face some consequence. 00:57:24.960 --> 00:57:27.120 Again, not a one-to-one relationship. 00:57:27.120 --> 00:57:29.600 Not every sin has a direct and immediate punishment. 00:57:30.400 --> 00:57:31.600 God doesn't promise that. 00:57:31.600 --> 00:57:34.960 He does, however, promise that there will be temporal punishments for sins. 00:57:34.960 --> 00:57:38.320 And so when they are visited, Christians are to point to them 00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:41.760 and say this is God's punishment for this sin. 00:57:41.760 --> 00:57:46.400 Sometimes as a demonstration that the thing itself is sin, when you 00:57:46.400 --> 00:57:49.600 see the punishment for the thing, that is a demonstration of the 00:57:49.600 --> 00:57:50.320 evil of it. 00:57:50.320 --> 00:57:52.960 It's a proof that it is sin. 00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:57.760 And when antinomians want to focus on, well, Jesus died for you, 00:57:57.760 --> 00:58:01.600 God forgave all that, don't worry about it, that's fundamentally destructive to 00:58:01.600 --> 00:58:04.880 the faith because it allows you to keep on sinning and sinning 00:58:05.040 --> 00:58:07.680 and knowing that Jesus paid for it all on the cross. 00:58:07.680 --> 00:58:10.160 So you can just kind of do whatever you want and try 00:58:10.160 --> 00:58:11.360 not to sin so much. 00:58:11.360 --> 00:58:14.800 Well, when someone says you're actually destroying your body and your mind 00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:18.400 and your soul all at the same time by your evil, that's 00:58:18.400 --> 00:58:21.680 part of what Christians need to be able to tell each other. 00:58:21.680 --> 00:58:25.600 You should be able to tell your friend who is sinning, you're 00:58:25.600 --> 00:58:26.560 abusing drugs. 00:58:26.560 --> 00:58:28.000 Look what it's doing to your body. 00:58:28.000 --> 00:58:29.760 Look what it's doing to your family. 00:58:29.760 --> 00:58:32.080 You're being punished for your evil. 00:58:32.080 --> 00:58:36.240 Stop being evil, and those punishments, some of them will go away. 00:58:36.240 --> 00:58:41.360 The consequences for the punishments may linger, but they're a consequence of 00:58:41.360 --> 00:58:42.880 sin in time. 00:58:42.880 --> 00:58:45.520 That's a part of the Christian faith and it's one that we 00:58:45.520 --> 00:58:49.680 have to remember because as the world gets worse and worse, I 00:58:49.680 --> 00:58:52.560 don't think we can just cling more and more to the cross 00:58:52.560 --> 00:58:57.520 and think about forgiveness in eternity while ignoring the destruction that we're 00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:00.000 inflicting on creation. 00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:02.000 Destroying creation is sin. 00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:04.000 Destroying your body is sin. 00:59:04.000 --> 00:59:05.120 We can't do that. 00:59:05.120 --> 00:59:10.800 When you continue to sin unrepentantly, you're jeopardizing your salvation. 00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:14.320 So this is a matter of profound urgency and importance. 00:59:14.320 --> 00:59:17.040 It's the whole reason that we're we're setting this up in terms 00:59:17.040 --> 00:59:22.000 of deism and temporal consequences because w rejection of a God who's 00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:26.000 active in the world fundamentally results in rejection of a God who 00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:28.240 will ever punish you for anything you do. 00:59:28.240 --> 00:59:32.160 Christians think that they can just live a consequence-free life by doing 00:59:32.160 --> 00:59:34.800 anything, and then as soon as they confess, okay, it's over. 00:59:35.200 --> 00:59:39.120 You can't you you know not touching, can't get mad. 00:59:39.120 --> 00:59:40.960 You're forgiven in eternity. 00:59:40.960 --> 00:59:44.240 You may still have to face consequences in this life. 00:59:44.320 --> 00:59:47.680 And so this is where we'll get into the section about which 00:59:47.680 --> 00:59:50.160 we warned you at the beginning of the beginning of the podcast 00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:53.840 where we will be covering some topics that you may not want 00:59:53.840 --> 00:59:58.240 your children to hear just yet. 00:59:58.320 --> 01:00:02.400 We're not going to cover this in particular depth because it gets 01:00:02.400 --> 01:00:04.480 very technical very quickly. 01:00:04.480 --> 01:00:08.000 Some of you may have noticed as an aside here, that we 01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:11.120 didn't touch really on theistic evolution in this episode. 01:00:11.120 --> 01:00:14.320 We didn't do that because that is also a subject that gets 01:00:14.320 --> 01:00:19.840 very complex, very quickly, both philosophically and biologically. 01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:22.960 We will probably eventually do a future episode on that. 01:00:22.960 --> 01:00:24.480 It will be a deep dive episode. 01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:28.000 It will be involved and complicated. 01:00:28.000 --> 01:00:30.240 You may want to listen to it a few times, but that 01:00:30.240 --> 01:00:32.560 is not this episode today. 01:00:32.560 --> 01:00:37.920 However, we are going to touch on some biology here, because this 01:00:37.920 --> 01:00:44.080 ties into the temporal consequences of certain kinds of sin, particularly in 01:00:44.080 --> 01:00:46.800 this case sexual sins. 01:00:46.800 --> 01:00:52.480 And so first off, it is necessary to mention just some basics 01:00:52.480 --> 01:00:55.280 about human reproduction for those who 01:00:56.160 --> 01:01:02.640 perhaps skipped health class, biology, what have you, humans are ohogamous. 01:01:02.640 --> 01:01:08.000 Essentially means that we have two different kinds of gametes that come 01:01:08.000 --> 01:01:09.760 together to produce offspring. 01:01:09.760 --> 01:01:10.800 That's all that means. 01:01:10.800 --> 01:01:15.520 And it's anisogamus, which is that they are different from one another, 01:01:15.520 --> 01:01:18.560 which is just to say that the sperm cell and the egg 01:01:18.560 --> 01:01:20.320 cell are different. 01:01:20.960 --> 01:01:25.440 Because of course the sperm cell is motile and the ovum is 01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:29.360 not. Now the reason I mention this is because the fact that 01:01:29.360 --> 01:01:34.080 the sperm cell is motile is what is important here. 01:01:34.160 --> 01:01:38.560 Because for a woman, when she has sex with a man, if 01:01:38.560 --> 01:01:44.960 he ejaculates inside her, those cells, the DNA contained in them, do 01:01:44.960 --> 01:01:46.320 not stay put. 01:01:46.320 --> 01:01:52.400 Because again, sperm are motile, they can move and they do so. 01:01:52.400 --> 01:01:57.200 And so the ultimate consequence of this is that the woman winds 01:01:57.200 --> 01:02:01.280 up having some of the DNA from the man with whom she 01:02:01.280 --> 01:02:05.600 had sex, in various places in her body, including in her brain, 01:02:05.600 --> 01:02:07.680 and her cerebral spinal fluid. 01:02:07.680 --> 01:02:15.360 They've conducted autopsies on deceased, obviously, women, and found male 01:02:15.360 --> 01:02:19.040 DNA in the female brain. 01:02:19.040 --> 01:02:21.920 Now this happens a number of different ways. 01:02:21.920 --> 01:02:24.640 One is having sex. 01:02:24.640 --> 01:02:28.720 If the man ejaculates inside the woman, well you now have male 01:02:28.720 --> 01:02:32.560 DNA inside the woman and it makes its way to various other 01:02:32.560 --> 01:02:34.400 places inside her body. 01:02:34.400 --> 01:02:38.480 The other of course would be pregnancy, because if the woman becomes 01:02:38.480 --> 01:02:44.800 pregnant with a son, well the son has male DNA, obviously, and 01:02:44.800 --> 01:02:49.840 there is an exchange of cells between the child and the mother. 01:02:49.840 --> 01:02:52.880 Some of those do cross the placential barrier. 01:02:52.880 --> 01:02:57.200 And so you will wind up with immune cells and others from 01:02:57.200 --> 01:03:01.040 the mother in the child, and from the child in the mother. 01:03:01.040 --> 01:03:04.000 Now there are some benefits to this. 01:03:04.320 --> 01:03:09.040 There have been cases where those cells that cross the barrier from 01:03:09.040 --> 01:03:13.040 the child to the mother have actually repaired damage to the mother's 01:03:13.040 --> 01:03:15.680 body and potentially saved her life. 01:03:15.680 --> 01:03:19.280 It's very obvious why God designed the system the way he did. 01:03:19.280 --> 01:03:22.480 There are some stresses on the female body during pregnancy. 01:03:22.480 --> 01:03:27.600 The pregnancy itself takes care of some of those stresses, and potentially 01:03:27.600 --> 01:03:31.360 of other damage that existed before the pregnancy in order to help 01:03:31.360 --> 01:03:33.520 bring the pregnancy to term. 01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:39.360 One example that I read many years ago was a woman who 01:03:39.360 --> 01:03:45.520 had a defective heart valve, she got pregnant, and the fetal cells 01:03:45.520 --> 01:03:48.640 actually fixed the heart valve. 01:03:48.640 --> 01:03:53.920 Which obviously vastly increases the odds of the pregnancy coming to term, 01:03:53.920 --> 01:03:56.560 because of course there will be stresses on the heart throughout the 01:03:56.560 --> 01:03:59.440 pregnancy and particularly during the birth. 01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:03.120 And so this mother survived, whereas she probably would not otherwise have 01:04:03.120 --> 01:04:09.200 survived because of that microchimerism, which is what we're talking about here. 01:04:09.200 --> 01:04:13.280 Microchimerism is when you have a population of cells. 01:04:13.280 --> 01:04:16.400 You actually have multiple populations of cells if you're talking about the 01:04:16.400 --> 01:04:19.120 distinct genetic lineages. 01:04:19.120 --> 01:04:24.080 But you have a grouping of cells where the overwhelming majority of 01:04:24.080 --> 01:04:27.600 them are from one line, in this case, the mother. 01:04:27.600 --> 01:04:30.640 They are primarily her cells. 01:04:30.640 --> 01:04:37.280 But you have a significant although small percentage of those cells that 01:04:37.280 --> 01:04:41.520 are from another line, usually defined as less than 1%. 01:04:41.520 --> 01:04:44.320 That may not sound like a lot to most people because it's 01:04:44.400 --> 01:04:47.920 you know less than 1%, 1% is small, but if 1% of 01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:51.600 your cells are foreign, that's huge. 01:04:51.600 --> 01:04:54.240 And no, I'm not talking about the ones in your gut, those 01:04:54.240 --> 01:04:54.800 don't count. 01:04:54.800 --> 01:04:59.920 These are cells that are actually in your body potentially doing things. 01:04:59.920 --> 01:05:03.920 Because some of these are going to be stem cells, and stem 01:05:04.080 --> 01:05:07.360 cells are going to produce other cells. 01:05:07.360 --> 01:05:10.160 Some of them are going to be hematopoietic, which is to say 01:05:10.320 --> 01:05:13.680 producing the components that make blood, some of them are going to 01:05:13.680 --> 01:05:17.120 do other things, as I mentioned the ones that for instance could 01:05:17.120 --> 01:05:19.520 repair a heart valve, do something like that. 01:05:19.520 --> 01:05:23.760 And so for a woman you have this microchimerism as a result 01:05:23.760 --> 01:05:27.120 of having sex with a man or being pregnant, and that can 01:05:27.520 --> 01:05:31.600 include if she has a spontaneous abortion, which is to say a 01:05:31.600 --> 01:05:34.640 miscarriage, or an actual abortion. 01:05:34.640 --> 01:05:38.960 Because that also still leaves behind those cells. 01:05:38.960 --> 01:05:42.800 Now the point of this, and how it ties in to what 01:05:42.800 --> 01:05:48.960 we're discussing with regard to sin and the temporal consequences of sin, 01:05:48.960 --> 01:05:52.320 is that if a woman has sex with many different men, she 01:05:52.320 --> 01:05:56.640 is going to have DNA, not necessarily from every single man with 01:05:56.640 --> 01:06:00.080 whom she had sex, but from a number of them. 01:06:00.080 --> 01:06:06.480 The consequences of this are going to be biological and psychological. 01:06:06.480 --> 01:06:08.640 We'll start with the biology. 01:06:08.640 --> 01:06:16.080 Biologically, you are going to have expression of certain proteins, various 01:06:16.080 --> 01:06:16.480 other things. 01:06:16.480 --> 01:06:19.280 I said we won't delve too deeply into it so we won't 01:06:19.200 --> 01:06:24.400 do that, but you're going to have various consequences for the woman 01:06:24.400 --> 01:06:31.120 herself and additionally for any children she has from that point forward, 01:06:31.120 --> 01:06:35.200 from her having sex with a number of different men, you are 01:06:35.200 --> 01:06:41.200 going to actually change the ultimate genetic makeup of the child due 01:06:41.200 --> 01:06:43.920 to the mother's past actions. 01:06:44.400 --> 01:06:49.280 Which means for a man, of course, if your wife is a 01:06:49.280 --> 01:06:53.600 virgin and she has sex with you and only you, your children 01:06:53.600 --> 01:06:55.840 are going to be maximally related to you. 01:06:55.840 --> 01:06:59.680 In fact, each additional child you have with that same woman is 01:06:59.680 --> 01:07:04.320 going to be more related to you because you are literally injecting 01:07:04.320 --> 01:07:08.160 your DNA into her every time you have sex with her, not 01:07:08.160 --> 01:07:09.840 just when she gets pregnant. 01:07:09.840 --> 01:07:10.800 And so she becomes 01:07:11.840 --> 01:07:17.600 not necessarily more like you over time, but more genetically yours. 01:07:17.600 --> 01:07:19.600 That is how God designed it. 01:07:19.600 --> 01:07:24.880 God was not speaking idly, or even truly figuratively, when he said 01:07:24.880 --> 01:07:27.920 that man and wife become one flesh. 01:07:27.920 --> 01:07:32.800 It is more literal than most people would happen to think, and 01:07:32.800 --> 01:07:37.840 certainly more literal than those living a profligate libertine lifestyle in our 01:07:37.840 --> 01:07:40.080 modern world would like to think. 01:07:40.080 --> 01:07:44.880 And so biologically, your children are going to be less related to 01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:46.160 you, as the man 01:07:47.280 --> 01:07:48.640 If your wife 01:07:49.600 --> 01:07:53.200 has had sex with a number of other men. 01:07:53.200 --> 01:07:56.720 And that just continues to get worse as she has more and 01:07:56.720 --> 01:07:58.800 more partners. 01:07:58.800 --> 01:08:02.960 Of course, there are other biological consequences, we know STIs and things 01:08:02.960 --> 01:08:06.880 like that, but these are the ones that are related to the 01:08:06.880 --> 01:08:10.960 discussion we're having here of the temporal consequences of sin. 01:08:10.960 --> 01:08:12.560 Because everyone knows the obvious ones. 01:08:12.560 --> 01:08:17.360 We're talking about the less obvious ones that Christian fathers should be 01:08:17.360 --> 01:08:20.320 teaching to their sons and their daughters. 01:08:20.320 --> 01:08:23.680 Because women need to know this is a thing that is going 01:08:23.680 --> 01:08:26.640 to happen to your body, you have no control over it, it 01:08:26.640 --> 01:08:28.720 is a permanent change. 01:08:28.720 --> 01:08:36.480 And so there are very real, very permanent consequences of being promiscuous. 01:08:36.480 --> 01:08:41.120 And then to speak on the psychological consequences, there is evidence in 01:08:41.200 --> 01:08:46.320 the literature, and really anyone who knows women who have made very 01:08:46.320 --> 01:08:50.400 poor life choices can confirm this, certainly that's anecdote, but if you 01:08:50.400 --> 01:08:53.680 get enough anecdotes together the plural actually is data. 01:08:53.680 --> 01:08:59.360 The psychological consequences for a woman of having many sexual partners start 01:08:59.360 --> 01:09:02.880 to look a lot like schizophrenia. 01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:08.160 Because there's psychological damage caused to a woman by engaging in this 01:09:08.160 --> 01:09:13.280 behavior. There is also probably some biological basis to it because, as 01:09:13.280 --> 01:09:17.280 mentioned previously, a lot of this DNA, or at least a a 01:09:17.280 --> 01:09:21.120 good portion, ends up in the cerebral spinal fluid and ultimately in 01:09:21.120 --> 01:09:21.760 the woman's brain. 01:09:22.720 --> 01:09:26.080 We don't yet know exactly what is happening there because some of 01:09:26.080 --> 01:09:28.800 this research is relatively recent. 01:09:28.800 --> 01:09:32.480 There's been centuries of speculation on these matters, but we now have 01:09:32.480 --> 01:09:33.920 it very well confirmed. 01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:36.320 This is established, we know this happens. 01:09:36.320 --> 01:09:39.520 But some of the the earlier some of the earliest research, I 01:09:39.520 --> 01:09:42.960 guess, in some cases, is only probably a decade, a decade and 01:09:42.960 --> 01:09:46.800 a half old So some of this is still in an infancy 01:09:46.800 --> 01:09:52.880 stage, but we know positively, absolutely, this is something that is happening. 01:09:52.880 --> 01:09:56.880 When a woman has sex with a man, she becomes to some 01:09:56.880 --> 01:09:59.680 small degree that man. 01:09:59.680 --> 01:10:02.240 He makes her his own. 01:10:02.240 --> 01:10:06.960 And so this is part of the reason that scripture so vehemently 01:10:06.960 --> 01:10:12.560 condemns promiscuity and sexual sin, because sexual sin is indeed different in 01:10:12.560 --> 01:10:15.200 kind from other sins. 01:10:15.200 --> 01:10:19.920 Now, for men it doesn't really have these consequences because there's nothing 01:10:19.920 --> 01:10:24.160 from the female body entering you during sex. 01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:26.560 That's not how God designed it. 01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:30.160 There's a reason God describes women as a field, and men are 01:10:30.160 --> 01:10:32.240 the ones sowing the seed. 01:10:32.240 --> 01:10:35.200 The field doesn't really change the farmer. 01:10:35.200 --> 01:10:37.520 The farmer changes the field. 01:10:38.320 --> 01:10:41.600 That is how God designed it, that is how God wants it 01:10:41.600 --> 01:10:43.120 to work. 01:10:43.120 --> 01:10:49.680 Because the wife becomes one flesh with her husband, she becomes his. 01:10:49.680 --> 01:10:53.440 And so as Christians, we have to address this because this is 01:10:53.440 --> 01:10:57.920 something that our culture does not want to accept, does not want 01:10:58.080 --> 01:10:59.520 to teach. 01:10:59.520 --> 01:11:06.560 Because if you teach this, if you speak on these actual consequences, 01:11:06.560 --> 01:11:10.960 then women are going to be hesitant to be promiscuous. 01:11:10.960 --> 01:11:14.080 Of course there are there are other psychological consequences too. 01:11:14.080 --> 01:11:19.840 We know that there's essentially not quite exponential, but somewhere between exponential 01:11:19.840 --> 01:11:24.160 and linear decline in the success of marriages as you increase the 01:11:24.160 --> 01:11:27.440 number of sexual partners of the wife. 01:11:27.440 --> 01:11:29.600 Not the husband, but the wife. 01:11:30.400 --> 01:11:35.840 Because the number of sexual partners a woman has is directly related 01:11:35.840 --> 01:11:37.760 to her ability to pair bond. 01:11:37.760 --> 01:11:41.360 And so a woman who has had many sexual partners will not 01:11:41.360 --> 01:11:43.360 be able to pairbond. 01:11:43.360 --> 01:11:46.800 And if she cannot pair bond, the marriage is not going to 01:11:46.800 --> 01:11:49.760 succeed. Are there exceptions? 01:11:49.760 --> 01:11:51.920 Some few. 01:11:51.920 --> 01:11:54.720 But you're playing the odds, and the odds are not in your 01:11:54.720 --> 01:12:00.000 favor. And so that right there is why so many Christians and 01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:03.920 others do not want to recognize this reality, because this is a 01:12:03.920 --> 01:12:06.080 temporal consequence of sin. 01:12:06.320 --> 01:12:10.560 And it is a permanent consequence of sin, permanent in the sense 01:12:10.560 --> 01:12:14.880 that in this life it cannot be fixed, it cannot be changed. 01:12:14.880 --> 01:12:19.840 These women are permanently damaged because of their past actions, and there 01:12:19.840 --> 01:12:22.400 is nothing we can do to change that. 01:12:22.400 --> 01:12:25.920 They are going to have less of an ability to pair bond, 01:12:25.920 --> 01:12:30.800 their children are going to be less related to their supposed fathers. 01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:36.160 This is simply the reality, the biological reality of how God made 01:12:36.160 --> 01:12:39.280 women. And so we have to deal with that. 01:12:39.280 --> 01:12:42.560 If we just obeyed God, if we listened to what he says 01:12:42.560 --> 01:12:45.360 in Scripture, if we were faithful to what he commands, none of 01:12:45.840 --> 01:12:46.960 this would be a problem. 01:12:46.960 --> 01:12:48.000 This would be great. 01:12:48.000 --> 01:12:49.520 This is a good thing. 01:12:49.520 --> 01:12:51.840 This helps build families. 01:12:51.840 --> 01:12:53.520 This helps build marriages. 01:12:53.520 --> 01:12:56.080 This creates a stable society. 01:12:56.080 --> 01:12:59.520 But when we live in a society that is an open rebellion 01:12:59.520 --> 01:13:03.840 against the things that God says are good, against the things that 01:13:03.840 --> 01:13:07.760 God commands us to do, this is damning. 01:13:07.760 --> 01:13:10.320 This destroys people. 01:13:10.320 --> 01:13:13.760 And we want to be able to say, speaking as the the 01:13:13.760 --> 01:13:18.400 general generic sort of Christian, they want to be able to say, 01:13:18.400 --> 01:13:22.320 Well, if you just believe in Jesus, all your problems will go 01:13:22.320 --> 01:13:26.800 away. It's a sort it's a sort of therapeutic gospel, and it's 01:13:26.800 --> 01:13:29.760 false. All your problems will not go away. 01:13:29.760 --> 01:13:31.600 That is not what God promises. 01:13:31.600 --> 01:13:34.960 Your eternal problems will go away because you don't go to hell. 01:13:34.960 --> 01:13:36.320 That's certainly important. 01:13:36.320 --> 01:13:40.080 That is the most important thing, but the temporal consequences are real 01:13:40.080 --> 01:13:42.320 and they remain. 01:13:42.320 --> 01:13:46.720 You are not going to be cured of the STIs you've acquired 01:13:46.720 --> 01:13:48.960 through a libertine lifestyle. 01:13:48.960 --> 01:13:51.680 You are not going to have all the foreign DNA removed from 01:13:51.680 --> 01:13:55.840 your body if you're a woman or incidentally a homosexual male, if 01:13:55.840 --> 01:13:57.760 you become a Christian. 01:13:58.080 --> 01:14:03.040 These things remain, these consequences remain. 01:14:03.200 --> 01:14:07.840 Yes, the eternal punishment for the actions that led to the temporal 01:14:07.840 --> 01:14:12.160 consequences, those eternal consequences are removed. 01:14:12.160 --> 01:14:14.960 But the temporal ones are not. 01:14:14.960 --> 01:14:19.520 And we do a great disservice to the younger generations, particularly parents 01:14:19.520 --> 01:14:24.320 and grandparents, do a great disservice to their children and grandchildren, when 01:14:24.320 --> 01:14:26.400 they do not tell them these things. 01:14:26.400 --> 01:14:29.360 Because lying to them about them is one thing, yes, that's sin 01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:31.680 certainly sinful, and that's a problem. 01:14:31.680 --> 01:14:35.440 You are derelict in your duty, but failing to teach them these 01:14:35.440 --> 01:14:37.840 things is also sinful. 01:14:37.840 --> 01:14:40.080 Because you are to train up a child in the way he 01:14:40.080 --> 01:14:40.960 should go. 01:14:40.960 --> 01:14:43.600 Because that promise of God that when he is old he will 01:14:43.600 --> 01:14:46.960 not depart from it doesn't apply if you don't do the train 01:14:46.960 --> 01:14:49.760 up a child in the way he should go part. 01:14:49.760 --> 01:14:54.720 The basic takeaway from this is that there are very real 01:14:55.840 --> 01:15:04.000 Biological and psychological consequences of sex, particularly for women, and the consequences 01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:06.560 are temporally permanent. 01:15:06.560 --> 01:15:12.160 And so Christians need to recognize this and teach future generations these 01:15:12.320 --> 01:15:18.080 truths so that they can at least have the information necessary, maybe 01:15:18.080 --> 01:15:22.000 to make better decisions, than the last handful of generations with regard 01:15:22.000 --> 01:15:23.200 to these matters. 01:15:23.200 --> 01:15:27.760 Because things are certainly now not trending upward, because we continue to 01:15:27.760 --> 01:15:33.920 lie to the younger generations about the very real consequences of these 01:15:34.240 --> 01:15:37.520 lifestyles that are supposedly consequence free. 01:15:37.920 --> 01:15:40.160 I'm sure that there are a lot of people listening right now 01:15:40.160 --> 01:15:42.720 who are shaking your heads in disbelief. 01:15:42.720 --> 01:15:45.520 It sounds like a completely insane theory. 01:15:45.520 --> 01:15:48.000 We're gonna put a number of links in the show notes. 01:15:48.000 --> 01:15:51.760 You can just Google microchimerism as in chimera. 01:15:51.760 --> 01:15:53.920 That's is literally what we're talking about. 01:15:53.920 --> 01:15:57.920 We're talking about small scale chimeric changes. 01:15:57.920 --> 01:15:58.880 It sounds insane. 01:15:58.880 --> 01:16:01.200 It sounds fancible, it sounds like sci-fi. 01:16:01.200 --> 01:16:05.360 It sounds certainly sexist because here's two men saying women will be 01:16:05.360 --> 01:16:08.480 screwed up if you sleep around and men are not affected to 01:16:08.480 --> 01:16:09.600 the same degree. 01:16:09.600 --> 01:16:14.800 Everything about what Cory has just said is blasphemy against the spirit 01:16:14.800 --> 01:16:15.680 of this age. 01:16:15.680 --> 01:16:18.160 That's part of why we're talking about it. 01:16:18.160 --> 01:16:20.640 I would guess that most of you have probably never heard about 01:16:20.640 --> 01:16:21.280 this before. 01:16:21.280 --> 01:16:23.760 Or maybe if you've heard about it, you haven't thought about the 01:16:23.760 --> 01:16:27.920 consequences that it has for yourself and for your spouse, for your 01:16:27.920 --> 01:16:34.720 children. Think about what Corey's just said in terms of the two 01:16:34.720 --> 01:16:37.840 different ways to approach God's order. 01:16:37.840 --> 01:16:41.840 Yeah, we talk a lot on Stone Choir about God ordered things 01:16:41.840 --> 01:16:43.200 in such a way. 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:46.320 So God says do this, and then we can either obey him 01:16:46.400 --> 01:16:47.920 or we can disobey him. 01:16:47.920 --> 01:16:49.440 And it can go either way. 01:16:49.440 --> 01:16:51.840 You can you can do whatever you want. 01:16:51.840 --> 01:16:56.560 God rarely intervenes and prevents someone from disobeying him. 01:16:56.560 --> 01:16:57.840 That happens sometimes. 01:16:58.160 --> 01:17:00.160 it's part of the point of this episode. 01:17:00.160 --> 01:17:01.520 God does intervene. 01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:04.160 But most of the time, if you want to go off and 01:17:04.160 --> 01:17:06.080 sin, it's gonna happen. 01:17:06.080 --> 01:17:09.440 And then you're gonna suffer the consequences. 01:17:09.840 --> 01:17:13.680 But the point of this part of the episode is that 01:17:14.960 --> 01:17:20.000 an orderly marriage where there's a union of one man and one 01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:25.760 woman in matrimony, the one flesh union where they're both virgins coming 01:17:25.760 --> 01:17:30.480 in. Think about the consequences of microchimerism in that yeah, Corey described 01:17:30.480 --> 01:17:33.760 it, but I just want to reiterate to emphasize it's a fork 01:17:33.760 --> 01:17:34.800 in the road. 01:17:34.800 --> 01:17:38.800 On one hand, if you obey God, you the husband with your 01:17:38.800 --> 01:17:44.480 virgin wife, every time you lie down together, she becomes more yours. 01:17:44.480 --> 01:17:46.320 You become more one. 01:17:46.560 --> 01:17:50.560 It's not just a temporal one until you're done. 01:17:50.560 --> 01:17:55.600 She becomes more you, more yours every single time, your entire life. 01:17:55.600 --> 01:17:58.640 By the end of your life, she was far more yours than 01:17:58.640 --> 01:18:01.440 when you took her hand in marriage. 01:18:01.440 --> 01:18:03.280 That's a blessing from God. 01:18:03.280 --> 01:18:05.600 That's absolutely a blessing. 01:18:05.600 --> 01:18:10.720 And when you're not using contraception, more often than not, God is 01:18:10.720 --> 01:18:15.760 going to bless your physical union with with children, with child after 01:18:15.760 --> 01:18:19.840 child. And as Corey described, what happens when there's a baby in 01:18:19.840 --> 01:18:21.120 the mother's womb? 01:18:21.120 --> 01:18:25.120 The placental barrier is not an absolute barrier against the sharing of 01:18:25.120 --> 01:18:29.600 DNA. And just as in the case with the spermatozoa, I want 01:18:29.600 --> 01:18:33.600 to make explicit, we're not saying that the sperm somehow gets into 01:18:33.600 --> 01:18:35.600 the cerebrospinal fluid. 01:18:35.600 --> 01:18:37.920 However, the DNA does. 01:18:37.920 --> 01:18:42.320 Not in every case, but the more The more times that a 01:18:42.320 --> 01:18:46.640 woman has a man inside her, the more chances there are for 01:18:46.640 --> 01:18:49.840 that foreign DNA to become a part of her body. 01:18:49.840 --> 01:18:52.880 And because of the circulatory system, it just floats around. 01:18:52.880 --> 01:18:57.120 There's no way of knowing or predicting where it's going to settle. 01:18:57.120 --> 01:19:01.760 Now, they've found in most of the organs in the body at 01:19:01.760 --> 01:19:05.520 various times they have discovered male DNA inside women. 01:19:05.520 --> 01:19:08.880 And it's the DNA, it's not it's not just cells, it's subparts 01:19:08.880 --> 01:19:09.360 of cells. 01:19:09.360 --> 01:19:13.040 It's the DNA which then propagate for decades. 01:19:13.040 --> 01:19:16.160 There was one case that I read about whereas a ninety-four year 01:19:16.160 --> 01:19:21.360 old woman had a substantial amount of male DNA in whatever part 01:19:21.360 --> 01:19:23.520 of her body that they were introspecting. 01:19:23.520 --> 01:19:27.120 Now, obviously if she had had children, that would have been decades 01:19:27.120 --> 01:19:28.720 and decades prior. 01:19:28.720 --> 01:19:33.200 So it's not just DNA floated around and then eventually got disposed 01:19:33.200 --> 01:19:37.200 of. It becomes a part of the woman's body and her own 01:19:37.200 --> 01:19:43.120 body perpetuates that foreign DNA as its own, she becomes less herself 01:19:43.120 --> 01:19:46.640 and more the man with whom she has had sex. 01:19:46.640 --> 01:19:51.280 And so when you're properly ordering these things, that man is your 01:19:51.280 --> 01:19:56.880 husband. Every time you have sex, there's more of him in you 01:19:57.120 --> 01:20:00.800 remaining. Every time you have a child, that child becomes a part 01:20:00.800 --> 01:20:01.280 of you. 01:20:01.280 --> 01:20:03.600 You know, that's not just a metaphor. 01:20:03.600 --> 01:20:06.480 Mothers talk about their children being a part of them. 01:20:06.480 --> 01:20:10.560 We now We now know scientifically, you know, it's the scientific part 01:20:10.560 --> 01:20:15.200 is certainly less important than the metaphysical spiritual part of a child 01:20:15.200 --> 01:20:18.560 being of the mother, but it's also physically real. 01:20:18.560 --> 01:20:23.040 The more children that she has, the more of their DNA is 01:20:23.040 --> 01:20:23.920 in her. 01:20:23.920 --> 01:20:26.880 And the children's DNA propagates as well. 01:20:26.880 --> 01:20:32.000 The firstborn will propagate his or her DNA to subsequent offspring. 01:20:32.000 --> 01:20:35.840 So that the children will be even more closely related. 01:20:35.840 --> 01:20:36.160 And 01:20:37.360 --> 01:20:38.400 this is a blessing. 01:20:38.400 --> 01:20:39.520 Like this is a beautiful thing. 01:20:39.520 --> 01:20:42.800 As Corey said, this is how God designed all this to work. 01:20:42.800 --> 01:20:47.520 That is absolutely a beautiful miracle for a family to be so 01:20:47.520 --> 01:20:53.280 closely united that they're all fundamentally of the father by virtue of 01:20:53.280 --> 01:20:54.000 that union. 01:20:54.000 --> 01:20:55.760 That's incredible. 01:20:55.760 --> 01:20:59.680 And on the flip side, you have the girl who whores, the 01:20:59.680 --> 01:21:03.760 girl who chases after man after man, and does the same things 01:21:03.840 --> 01:21:06.080 except in a disordered fashion. 01:21:06.080 --> 01:21:11.120 The more times that happens, the more disjoint her own insides become, 01:21:11.120 --> 01:21:15.280 the more separate people she has in tiny pieces in her. 01:21:15.280 --> 01:21:18.640 And as Corey mentioned, I want to say this explicitly: the more 01:21:18.640 --> 01:21:22.480 times that a girl has had sex with different men, the greater 01:21:22.480 --> 01:21:27.040 the likelihood and the greater degree that any offspring you have with 01:21:27.040 --> 01:21:30.240 her your with her will not be your own, not to the 01:21:30.240 --> 01:21:32.080 same degree as if she were a virgin. 01:21:32.080 --> 01:21:35.760 Yes, they'll mostly come from your DNA, but some of the DNA 01:21:35.760 --> 01:21:39.440 in your children of a girl who has been whoring will be 01:21:39.440 --> 01:21:40.960 the other men. 01:21:40.960 --> 01:21:43.440 They will leave their mark on her and it will be in 01:21:43.440 --> 01:21:44.640 your children. 01:21:44.640 --> 01:21:48.480 And we see examples sometimes where that may actually have been the 01:21:48.480 --> 01:21:52.000 case. You know, when you see a twin twins where one is 01:21:52.000 --> 01:21:54.960 black and the other is white from the same biological parents, and 01:21:54.960 --> 01:21:57.200 everyone's like, Oh, it's a miracle race isn't real. 01:21:57.200 --> 01:21:59.680 Well, I race is real. 01:21:59.680 --> 01:22:03.600 I would bet a large amount of folding money that that woman 01:22:04.000 --> 01:22:07.680 in that particular example had had sex with an African American and 01:22:07.680 --> 01:22:12.080 his DNA was hanging out enough to change her the skin color 01:22:12.080 --> 01:22:14.640 of one of the children. 01:22:14.640 --> 01:22:16.720 These have real consequences. 01:22:16.880 --> 01:22:20.400 As Corey said, they have psychological consequences too, particularly because some of 01:22:20.400 --> 01:22:22.320 this does literally get into the brain. 01:22:22.320 --> 01:22:24.880 And we're not just talking about DNA floating around in this in 01:22:24.880 --> 01:22:25.680 the fluid. 01:22:25.680 --> 01:22:28.880 It literally gets into these cells, which then replicate. 01:22:28.880 --> 01:22:32.400 And so the brain of a woman in some small part is 01:22:32.400 --> 01:22:36.800 replaced by the brain of whichever man has been inside her. 01:22:36.800 --> 01:22:39.280 If it's your wife, that's a blessing. 01:22:39.280 --> 01:22:42.320 If it's random men, that's absolutely a curse. 01:22:42.320 --> 01:22:43.360 It's horrifying. 01:22:43.360 --> 01:22:46.160 And so part of the reason that we broke our general rule 01:22:46.160 --> 01:22:50.160 with this episode of trying to avoid subjects that you know you 01:22:50.160 --> 01:22:52.720 wouldn't be able to listen to with your kids is that this 01:22:52.720 --> 01:22:56.000 is so important for you to share with your kids in whatever 01:22:56.000 --> 01:22:57.120 manner is suitable. 01:22:57.120 --> 01:22:58.080 They don't need to listen to this. 01:22:58.240 --> 01:22:59.600 They need to hear from you. 01:22:59.600 --> 01:23:02.880 Don't ever have sex with anyone who is not your spouse. 01:23:02.880 --> 01:23:05.840 Ever. One man, one woman, forever. 01:23:05.840 --> 01:23:09.520 Any deviation from that makes things exponentially worse. 01:23:09.520 --> 01:23:13.520 And to the point of the temporal consequences, it's permanent. 01:23:13.520 --> 01:23:15.760 There's no undo for this. 01:23:15.760 --> 01:23:18.800 There's forgiveness, but there's no undue. 01:23:19.200 --> 01:23:22.960 it's fundamentally the same as a man or a woman deciding that 01:23:22.960 --> 01:23:28.240 they're transsexual and that they need to mutilate their body to be 01:23:28.240 --> 01:23:29.840 the other sex. 01:23:29.840 --> 01:23:33.200 So men will chop off their genitals, women will chop off their 01:23:33.200 --> 01:23:39.040 breasts. If on the rare occasions when those people repent and return 01:23:39.040 --> 01:23:43.600 to Christ, their body parts don't grow back, once you mutilate your 01:23:43.600 --> 01:23:48.080 body, once you do this physical harm, that is an obvious punishment 01:23:48.640 --> 01:23:50.800 for the sin you're committing. 01:23:50.800 --> 01:23:52.320 There's no undo. 01:23:52.320 --> 01:23:54.400 God will fix you in the resurrection. 01:23:54.400 --> 01:23:55.600 To what degree we don't know. 01:23:55.600 --> 01:23:58.080 We don't know what our perfect resurrected bodies are going to be 01:23:58.080 --> 01:24:00.480 like, except that they'll be ours. 01:24:00.480 --> 01:24:04.560 But we do know that in That until you die, you're gonna 01:24:04.560 --> 01:24:05.520 be the way you are. 01:24:05.520 --> 01:24:08.560 Whatever you damage stays that way. 01:24:08.560 --> 01:24:10.560 That is a big deal. 01:24:10.560 --> 01:24:13.360 And the reason that we want to talk about this is that 01:24:13.840 --> 01:24:17.440 don't do the crime and you won't face the punishment. 01:24:17.440 --> 01:24:21.440 See, when we talk about temporal consequences, you know, in the case 01:24:21.440 --> 01:24:26.880 of David and Bathsheba and Uriah and Nathan, when Nathan came to 01:24:26.880 --> 01:24:30.400 David and said to him what God had proclaimed that his child 01:24:30.400 --> 01:24:34.000 would die, there wasn't a direct connection between his action and the 01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:34.960 child dying. 01:24:34.960 --> 01:24:38.240 The child died as a punishment against David. 01:24:38.240 --> 01:24:42.640 However, in these other cases, it's much more obvious what the connection 01:24:42.640 --> 01:24:45.680 is. If you're a man who thinks so you're a woman and 01:24:45.680 --> 01:24:50.240 you chop off your penis, what's the punishment for that? 01:24:50.240 --> 01:24:51.680 It worked. 01:24:51.680 --> 01:24:52.800 That's the punishment. 01:24:52.800 --> 01:24:53.680 It worked. 01:24:53.680 --> 01:24:56.560 When we sin against our own bodies it works. 01:24:56.560 --> 01:25:00.160 God doesn't need to have some other separate punishment to just be 01:25:00.160 --> 01:25:04.560 delivered from the sky, not discounting at all that that will happen. 01:25:04.560 --> 01:25:07.520 We know for a fact it happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. 01:25:07.520 --> 01:25:10.960 But the immediate effect is what is described at the end of 01:25:10.960 --> 01:25:12.320 Romans 1. 01:25:12.320 --> 01:25:16.240 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their 01:25:16.240 --> 01:25:20.640 women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and 01:25:20.640 --> 01:25:24.720 the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed 01:25:24.720 --> 01:25:28.720 with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and 01:25:28.720 --> 01:25:33.280 receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 01:25:33.280 --> 01:25:36.320 That's explicitly a temporal punishment. 01:25:36.320 --> 01:25:40.400 And it wasn't fireballs from the sky, it was STDs. 01:25:40.400 --> 01:25:44.000 It was corruption of the flesh as a direct consequence of the 01:25:44.000 --> 01:25:46.800 flesh being used for corrupt purposes. 01:25:46.800 --> 01:25:52.560 So when we're talking today about temporal consequences in opposition to a 01:25:52.560 --> 01:25:54.720 deistic God, this is why. 01:25:54.880 --> 01:25:57.440 Satan wants us to believe Like if you want to believe in 01:25:57.440 --> 01:25:59.680 God the creator, fine, that's fine. 01:25:59.680 --> 01:26:01.040 But he doesn't do anything. 01:26:01.040 --> 01:26:02.160 He's not really watching. 01:26:02.160 --> 01:26:04.800 You know, maybe there's a judgment day someday, but you can live 01:26:04.800 --> 01:26:07.680 your life however you want, and there'll be no consequences. 01:26:07.680 --> 01:26:10.720 And oh, Jesus died for everything and you're saved, and that's great. 01:26:10.720 --> 01:26:12.240 Don't worry about it. 01:26:12.240 --> 01:26:14.480 The reality is very different. 01:26:14.480 --> 01:26:20.480 The God of Scripture says: when you sin against him, you may 01:26:20.720 --> 01:26:22.000 well face consequences. 01:26:22.000 --> 01:26:25.760 He doesn't promise, again, there will be a one-to-one relationship, but he 01:26:25.760 --> 01:26:29.040 promises that there is a due penalty for those sins. 01:26:29.040 --> 01:26:33.520 And if you receive it, you can't do anything but confess. 01:26:33.520 --> 01:26:34.080 And so 01:26:35.600 --> 01:26:38.960 one of the things that's things that's happened recently in Lutheranism in 01:26:38.960 --> 01:26:42.880 the last few years, there was a blow-up not long ago related 01:26:43.200 --> 01:26:50.800 to the claim online that men preferred debt-free virgins without tattoos. 01:26:50.800 --> 01:26:53.040 Now Now, this is a true claim. 01:26:53.040 --> 01:26:54.640 This is a moral claim. 01:26:54.640 --> 01:26:57.840 It is what some would call a judgmental claim. 01:26:57.840 --> 01:26:59.360 And that's that's the root of this. 01:26:59.360 --> 01:27:03.840 That's the root of the antinomian spirit within so much of Christianity 01:27:03.840 --> 01:27:07.680 today. When a man says I would prefer to marry a girl 01:27:07.680 --> 01:27:11.840 who is debt free, she's a virgin and she doesn't have tattoos, 01:27:11.840 --> 01:27:17.120 the immediate response from the antinomian is shrieking in rage and terror. 01:27:17.120 --> 01:27:20.320 How dare you judge someone for their past actions? 01:27:20.320 --> 01:27:25.440 She confessed, she repented, God forgives her, you must do the same. 01:27:25.440 --> 01:27:29.280 And that's a complete sleight of hand because that's not at all 01:27:29.280 --> 01:27:31.040 what's being talked about. 01:27:31.040 --> 01:27:35.600 If you have a girl who has $200,000 in debt, who has 01:27:35.600 --> 01:27:40.640 slept with 30 men, and who's covered in tattoos, she She's going 01:27:40.640 --> 01:27:42.080 to be a worse wife. 01:27:42.080 --> 01:27:43.520 Absolutely, period. 01:27:43.600 --> 01:27:46.080 She's going to be a worse wife. 01:27:46.080 --> 01:27:50.400 Christians should be able to say that because it's plainly obvious. 01:27:50.400 --> 01:27:53.600 If she's 200 grand in debt or any amount of debt, what 01:27:53.600 --> 01:27:55.920 is that going to do to your family finances? 01:27:55.920 --> 01:27:59.600 Well now you're a debt slave for the bad decisions of her 01:27:59.600 --> 01:28:01.440 father before you even met her. 01:28:01.440 --> 01:28:04.960 If she's a whore, you now are going to have children with 01:28:04.960 --> 01:28:07.280 a woman who's not going to be able to properly bond with 01:28:07.280 --> 01:28:09.760 you, and your kids won't be related to you, not to the 01:28:09.760 --> 01:28:12.400 same degree as if she were actually yours. 01:28:12.400 --> 01:28:14.880 And tattoos are self-loathing. 01:28:14.880 --> 01:28:18.480 When a girl is covered in tattoos, she's saying I hate myself. 01:28:18.480 --> 01:28:21.520 Usually they go hand in hand because she's so messed up from 01:28:21.520 --> 01:28:25.760 the other bad choices that she has left herself in such a 01:28:25.760 --> 01:28:29.680 state that even when she turns to God, pray that every single 01:28:29.680 --> 01:28:33.120 one of them would, would repent of those sins, would return to 01:28:33.600 --> 01:28:39.280 the flock and would stop doing those things. 01:28:39.280 --> 01:28:43.280 The point of this is that the temporal consequences remain. 01:28:43.280 --> 01:28:46.320 She can be forgiven by God for all those things. 01:28:46.320 --> 01:28:48.800 She's still $200,000 in debt. 01:28:48.800 --> 01:28:52.000 She still has a body riddled with other men's DNA. 01:28:52.000 --> 01:28:55.840 She still has a body that's been defaced in opposition to how 01:28:55.840 --> 01:28:57.280 God made her flesh. 01:28:57.280 --> 01:29:00.720 And so when you as a man are looking at two perspective 01:29:00.720 --> 01:29:04.160 mates, you must choose the one who is going to be a 01:29:04.160 --> 01:29:04.960 better choice for you. 01:29:04.960 --> 01:29:06.880 That's a matter of wisdom. 01:29:06.880 --> 01:29:11.520 Now, part of the problem that we have today is that so 01:29:11.520 --> 01:29:15.760 many people are screwed up, so many people have sinned so grievously 01:29:16.000 --> 01:29:18.800 that it's almost impossible to find a girl that doesn't have a 01:29:18.800 --> 01:29:19.680 body count. 01:29:19.680 --> 01:29:21.360 That's consequential. 01:29:21.360 --> 01:29:21.680 And 01:29:22.880 --> 01:29:26.400 there's a small way in which the people who say we have 01:29:26.400 --> 01:29:29.920 to just forgive her and move on are not entirely wrong. 01:29:29.920 --> 01:29:31.920 And that is this one narrow point. 01:29:31.920 --> 01:29:36.400 As a generation where virtually every girl has done these things, the 01:29:36.400 --> 01:29:40.320 only way to perpetuate the human race is for some of them 01:29:40.320 --> 01:29:42.880 to get married and to have kids. 01:29:42.880 --> 01:29:46.160 And maybe have a broken generation or two, but then if they're 01:29:46.160 --> 01:29:48.160 faithful, you can put things back together. 01:29:48.160 --> 01:29:50.960 But if you as a man have a choice between one type 01:29:50.960 --> 01:29:53.920 of girl and the other, you only have one choice. 01:29:53.920 --> 01:29:56.880 You should never choose the girl who has done this sort of 01:29:56.880 --> 01:29:58.000 harm to herself. 01:29:58.000 --> 01:30:00.960 Because it's not a question of you holding her past sins against 01:30:00.960 --> 01:30:02.800 her. And that's a crucial point here. 01:30:03.040 --> 01:30:07.200 It's not saying Jesus forgave her, but I'm not going to. 01:30:07.200 --> 01:30:09.280 Jesus forgives her in eternity. 01:30:09.280 --> 01:30:13.200 You can tell that Jesus hasn't lifted the penalty for her temporal 01:30:13.440 --> 01:30:16.160 sins because she's still stuck with them. 01:30:16.080 --> 01:30:19.440 She's still riddled with another man's DNA and covered in tattoos and 01:30:19.440 --> 01:30:21.200 two hundred thousand dollars in debt. 01:30:21.200 --> 01:30:24.000 If Jesus had forgiven those in the sense that they mean that 01:30:24.000 --> 01:30:26.000 you care about, they would all vanish. 01:30:26.000 --> 01:30:27.360 She would go back to being a virgin. 01:30:27.360 --> 01:30:29.600 She would go back to being, you know You know, the sixteen 01:30:29.600 --> 01:30:32.720 year old girl in her under her father's roof before all those 01:30:32.720 --> 01:30:34.720 bad choices were made. 01:30:34.720 --> 01:30:42.240 So when Christians try to set soteriology of Jesus' relationship 01:30:42.240 --> 01:30:43.600 to us and forgiving our sins 01:30:44.480 --> 01:30:48.640 against what we have to live with in this life, it's a 01:30:48.640 --> 01:30:52.720 false dichotomy, and it's one that ultimately will lead to destruction. 01:30:52.720 --> 01:30:55.840 Because as Corey says, if if you if you forgive all those 01:30:55.840 --> 01:30:59.120 sins, if you fall in love with her madly and you want 01:30:59.120 --> 01:31:03.200 to marry the the girl who has all those problems, you're going 01:31:03.200 --> 01:31:05.520 to live with the consequences of that. 01:31:05.520 --> 01:31:07.040 She will have more mental problems. 01:31:07.040 --> 01:31:08.560 She absolutely will. 01:31:08.560 --> 01:31:12.080 She will not love you as much as a girl who never 01:31:12.080 --> 01:31:15.200 did those things because she biologically can't. 01:31:15.200 --> 01:31:18.080 I think that's the key takeaway from that one aspect of it. 01:31:18.080 --> 01:31:22.720 A girl who has had sex with multiple men literally cannot love 01:31:22.720 --> 01:31:25.520 her husband as much as one who hasn't. 01:31:25.520 --> 01:31:26.720 It's a fact. 01:31:26.720 --> 01:31:29.520 The we'll have links in the show notes to demonstrate this. 01:31:29.520 --> 01:31:32.720 It sounds unforgiving, it sounds unchristian, it sounds like we're trying to 01:31:33.200 --> 01:31:36.880 set science in all this new stuff in opposition to what Scripture 01:31:36.880 --> 01:31:39.840 says. The point we're making is that Scripture says what we say. 01:31:39.840 --> 01:31:43.120 Scripture says that there's a temporal punishment for sins. 01:31:43.120 --> 01:31:44.640 And sometimes you can't see it. 01:31:44.640 --> 01:31:45.840 Sometimes it doesn't happen. 01:31:45.840 --> 01:31:47.760 Sometimes you don't wouldn't know about it. 01:31:47.760 --> 01:31:49.920 You certainly can't see microchimerism. 01:31:49.920 --> 01:31:52.320 You can meet a girl who will lie about her body count 01:31:52.320 --> 01:31:54.880 and say she's a virgin or say, you know, one or two 01:31:54.880 --> 01:31:57.440 guys, you know, oh well that's not too bad. 01:31:57.440 --> 01:31:59.520 You can't see the consequences, but they're there. 01:32:00.480 --> 01:32:01.040 And so 01:32:02.400 --> 01:32:05.760 like we talked about in the last couple episodes, the reason for 01:32:05.760 --> 01:32:08.880 sharing these things is not even so much for the guys who 01:32:08.880 --> 01:32:11.680 are listening to try to find a wife, although it's certainly for 01:32:11.680 --> 01:32:14.720 you. It's really in large part for you if you're going to 01:32:14.720 --> 01:32:16.960 find a wife and then have kids or the parents and then 01:32:17.040 --> 01:32:18.480 the audience. 01:32:18.480 --> 01:32:21.440 Make sure that your kids don't make any of these mistakes to 01:32:21.440 --> 01:32:22.240 begin with. 01:32:22.240 --> 01:32:25.840 And obviously that's impossible to do perfectly, but warn them. 01:32:25.840 --> 01:32:30.320 Tell your daughters every man you sleep with becomes a part of 01:32:30.320 --> 01:32:31.600 you forever. 01:32:31.600 --> 01:32:35.280 And when someday you decide you want to settle down and give 01:32:35.280 --> 01:32:38.160 your husband children, they won't be his. 01:32:38.160 --> 01:32:40.160 Most girls are gonna find that pretty horrifying. 01:32:40.160 --> 01:32:42.720 Some of the girls who are listening right now probably find that 01:32:42.720 --> 01:32:43.680 pretty horrifying. 01:32:43.680 --> 01:32:46.960 I can assure you the men who hear it, including myself, find 01:32:46.960 --> 01:32:47.920 it horrifying. 01:32:47.920 --> 01:32:49.200 That's messed up. 01:32:49.200 --> 01:32:52.000 Why? Because it's not how God designed things. 01:32:52.000 --> 01:32:55.440 God designed things where one man and one woman come together and 01:32:55.440 --> 01:32:56.240 that's it. 01:32:56.240 --> 01:33:00.800 And the propagation within that family unit is a beautiful wholesome thing. 01:33:00.800 --> 01:33:05.520 We've created the opposite with our disobedience and we can't paper over 01:33:05.520 --> 01:33:06.960 the consequences of that. 01:33:07.680 --> 01:33:10.800 So we're gonna have to do the best we can with this 01:33:10.800 --> 01:33:15.760 generation and pray that the next generation will heed the warning of 01:33:15.760 --> 01:33:18.240 our own, to heed the warning of, hey, don't do all these 01:33:18.720 --> 01:33:21.200 stupid things that we've done because they're destructive. 01:33:21.200 --> 01:33:24.080 Not only does scripture say it, but if you're dumb enough to 01:33:24.080 --> 01:33:26.880 need science to tell you too, we got both now. 01:33:26.880 --> 01:33:29.920 We can absolutely prove that you're destroying your life by doing these 01:33:29.920 --> 01:33:32.880 things. So, whatever reason is good enough for you not to do 01:33:32.880 --> 01:33:34.320 them, go with it. 01:33:34.320 --> 01:33:37.200 It should be God's obedience, and that's the point. 01:33:37.200 --> 01:33:40.080 The reason we talk about God says and when we don't do 01:33:40.160 --> 01:33:43.760 we get the consequences is that that's what God says. 01:33:43.760 --> 01:33:46.640 If you just obey God and you don't know anything about science, 01:33:46.640 --> 01:33:49.440 you don't know anything about how any of this stuff works, it 01:33:49.440 --> 01:33:50.400 doesn't matter. 01:33:50.400 --> 01:33:55.440 The obedient person who serves God faithfully will simply never face these 01:33:55.440 --> 01:33:58.960 consequences. That is a blessing, and that is what we should be 01:33:58.960 --> 01:34:01.520 sharing with our children in future generations. 01:34:02.000 --> 01:34:06.240 What we're dealing with here, really when we speak on the issue 01:34:06.240 --> 01:34:12.480 of temporal consequences and more so those who more or less reject 01:34:12.480 --> 01:34:16.320 temporal consequences, is Gnosticism. 01:34:16.320 --> 01:34:20.960 It's an ancient heresy that continually crops up in the church, and 01:34:21.520 --> 01:34:23.440 there are some who will say that 01:34:24.400 --> 01:34:29.120 Christians are paranoid about Gnosticism, at least certain Christians, and they see 01:34:29.120 --> 01:34:30.640 it everywhere. 01:34:30.640 --> 01:34:33.920 The problem is that it is everywhere, and that it constantly crops 01:34:33.920 --> 01:34:36.800 up. It is something that we have been fighting in the church 01:34:36.800 --> 01:34:38.640 for millennia. 01:34:39.840 --> 01:34:46.000 Very actively, certainly for centuries, it comes in ebb and flow. 01:34:46.000 --> 01:34:50.560 Sometimes it is a very strong opponent to the church, sometimes it's 01:34:50.560 --> 01:34:55.840 weaker. Today it's very strong. 01:34:55.840 --> 01:35:01.280 In our society, we have a very weird relationship to the body, 01:35:01.280 --> 01:35:06.160 to the flesh, because there's a very strong strain of transhumanism in 01:35:06.160 --> 01:35:11.440 modern thought, the idea that we can transcend this mortal coil and 01:35:11.440 --> 01:35:14.400 become something greater, whether it is through 01:35:15.760 --> 01:35:22.000 hallucinogens, some try that route, or body modification, which is to say 01:35:22.080 --> 01:35:27.360 perhaps cybernetics, or genetic engineering, whatever it is, there's this belief that 01:35:27.360 --> 01:35:32.320 we can transcend all Our mere flesh. 01:35:32.320 --> 01:35:35.520 And then on the other hand, there are those who totally deny 01:35:35.520 --> 01:35:39.600 the flesh and focus instead on the spirit, and think, well, the 01:35:39.600 --> 01:35:41.120 flesh doesn't matter. 01:35:41.120 --> 01:35:45.120 Ultimately, we're a spirit, and so what happens to the flesh is 01:35:45.120 --> 01:35:51.360 irrelevant. And that is part of some forms of ancient paganism, particularly 01:35:51.360 --> 01:35:54.400 the Greek paganism, to some degree the Romans. 01:35:54.400 --> 01:35:58.000 There's a bit of it in Hinduism and other places, certainly the 01:35:58.240 --> 01:36:01.600 you know, escape from samsara, things like that, but 01:36:03.200 --> 01:36:04.480 Gnosticism 01:36:05.760 --> 01:36:11.440 tells you to deny the reality of the flesh, and that is 01:36:11.440 --> 01:36:14.400 what underlies those who argue 01:36:15.680 --> 01:36:18.800 against temporal consequences for sin For sin. 01:36:18.800 --> 01:36:22.800 What they're ultimately saying is that it's the spirit alone that matters, 01:36:22.800 --> 01:36:27.680 and the flesh isn't real, because as soon as you are converted, 01:36:27.680 --> 01:36:30.160 as soon as you believe in Christ, as soon as you have 01:36:30.160 --> 01:36:33.280 faith, well, your your spirit is now right with God, and so 01:36:33.280 --> 01:36:34.960 the flesh, well it's that's irrelevant. 01:36:35.520 --> 01:36:38.560 that's just something you have for a time and no, that's not 01:36:38.560 --> 01:36:39.520 what Scripture says. 01:36:39.520 --> 01:36:40.960 That's not what God made. 01:36:40.960 --> 01:36:42.960 You are body and soul. 01:36:42.960 --> 01:36:46.560 You are not soul riding around in body. 01:36:46.560 --> 01:36:49.040 You are not body that happens to have a soul. 01:36:49.040 --> 01:36:51.840 You are soul and body, body and soul. 01:36:51.840 --> 01:36:56.000 You are both of those as a human being. 01:36:56.320 --> 01:37:01.280 If you lose either of those, you're incomplete. 01:37:01.280 --> 01:37:04.800 And so the destruction of the flesh, of course, yes, is one 01:37:04.800 --> 01:37:05.760 thing you have. 01:37:05.760 --> 01:37:08.480 Christ says, Don't be afraid of those who can kill your body, 01:37:08.480 --> 01:37:11.840 rather fear God alone who can destroy both body and soul in 01:37:11.840 --> 01:37:13.280 hell? But 01:37:14.400 --> 01:37:15.680 those are both real. 01:37:15.680 --> 01:37:17.680 That's why they're both mentioned there. 01:37:17.680 --> 01:37:20.560 Because both the body and the soul can be destroyed. 01:37:20.560 --> 01:37:22.880 And note what it says about hell. 01:37:22.880 --> 01:37:24.160 Body and soul. 01:37:24.720 --> 01:37:29.520 Those in hell are still body and soul because that is what 01:37:29.520 --> 01:37:32.640 it means to be a human being. 01:37:32.640 --> 01:37:36.960 And so when you deny the reality of temporal consequences, when you 01:37:36.960 --> 01:37:40.880 deny the reality of biology, whatever it happens to be, whether you 01:37:40.880 --> 01:37:45.760 deny that microchimerism happens, whether you deny that there are psychological consequences, 01:37:45.760 --> 01:37:49.360 in this case with a biological basis for women who are promiscuous, 01:37:49.360 --> 01:37:53.280 or you deny the reality of the sexes, you deny the reality 01:37:53.280 --> 01:37:57.760 of race, whatever it happens to be, whichever one of these biological 01:37:57.760 --> 01:38:02.640 truths you deny, ultimately what you are doing is rejecting the reality 01:38:02.640 --> 01:38:06.480 of the flesh and telling God that he's wrong and know I'm 01:38:06.480 --> 01:38:09.280 just a spirit and this flesh is just something you gave me 01:38:09.280 --> 01:38:13.120 for a time and it really doesn't matter. 01:38:13.120 --> 01:38:17.600 That is not what it means to be a human being. 01:38:17.600 --> 01:38:22.160 That is not what Scripture teaches, that is not what Christians are 01:38:22.160 --> 01:38:24.800 permitted to hold or must hold. 01:38:24.800 --> 01:38:30.160 Christians must hold that the flesh is real, both the flesh and 01:38:30.160 --> 01:38:31.760 the spirit. 01:38:31.760 --> 01:38:35.920 As I've mentioned before, when this topic has arisen, I am deliberately 01:38:35.920 --> 01:38:39.040 ignoring dualism versus trialism. 01:38:39.040 --> 01:38:40.720 I hold to the latter. 01:38:40.720 --> 01:38:43.440 That's not the discussion right now. 01:38:43.440 --> 01:38:45.120 You are body and soul. 01:38:45.120 --> 01:38:49.200 You have to affirm, as a Christian, the reality of both. 01:38:49.200 --> 01:38:54.960 And the flesh comes with very real consequences in time when you 01:38:54.960 --> 01:38:59.680 abuse the flesh, or when you suffer something, because of course it's 01:38:59.600 --> 01:39:00.480 not always abuse. 01:39:00.480 --> 01:39:03.760 If you lose a limb, having faith in Christ does not regrow 01:39:03.760 --> 01:39:06.720 the limb, and you may have lost that due to no error 01:39:06.720 --> 01:39:08.320 on your part. 01:39:08.320 --> 01:39:13.920 Because sin does not have consequences just for the sinner. 01:39:13.920 --> 01:39:18.000 Sin has consequences for everyone around the sinner. 01:39:18.000 --> 01:39:21.200 Sin has consequences for creation. 01:39:21.200 --> 01:39:25.440 Creation fell because Adam sinned. 01:39:25.440 --> 01:39:30.400 Everything was subjected to futility because of Adam's sin. 01:39:30.400 --> 01:39:35.200 Your pets die because Adam sin, your pets die because you sin. 01:39:35.200 --> 01:39:38.880 Sin has very real consequences here in time. 01:39:38.880 --> 01:39:42.000 It will also have consequences in eternity if you do not believe 01:39:42.000 --> 01:39:43.040 in Christ. 01:39:43.040 --> 01:39:46.400 But the consequences in time are not removed 01:39:47.280 --> 01:39:49.360 simply because you have faith. 01:39:49.360 --> 01:39:53.680 They will be removed in eternity, because you will be perfect. 01:39:53.680 --> 01:39:56.800 But they are not removed in time. 01:39:56.800 --> 01:40:01.520 And to deny that is to become a Gnostic, and a Christian 01:40:01.520 --> 01:40:08.320 cannot be a Gnostic, because Gnosticism is a rejection of Scripture, it 01:40:08.320 --> 01:40:10.960 is a rejection of God's truth, and it is also rejection of 01:40:10.960 --> 01:40:12.880 what it means to be human. 01:40:12.880 --> 01:40:15.760 It is a rejection of our nature and our essence, which of 01:40:15.760 --> 01:40:20.160 course is again a rejection of God, because rejecting the creation is 01:40:20.240 --> 01:40:22.160 rejecting the creator. 01:40:22.480 --> 01:40:27.280 And so that is why we keep bringing up these sorts of 01:40:27.280 --> 01:40:33.440 topics. Because there are Christians who stumble into these heresies because they 01:40:33.440 --> 01:40:36.000 listen to the world and they don't pay attention. 01:40:36.000 --> 01:40:39.840 They don't assess, they don't look critically at what it is they're 01:40:39.840 --> 01:40:44.160 being told to believe, and so they stumble into heretical position. 01:40:44.160 --> 01:40:47.680 Now maybe felicitous inconsistency will save them. 01:40:47.680 --> 01:40:51.200 Maybe they don't really ultimately in their heart of hearts believe these 01:40:51.680 --> 01:40:53.200 lies they profess. 01:40:53.200 --> 01:40:56.080 Maybe they trust in Christ alone. 01:40:56.080 --> 01:40:58.640 But that isn't the position that you want to take before the 01:40:58.640 --> 01:41:01.200 judgment throne. 01:41:01.200 --> 01:41:05.360 You want to hold to a true confession that doesn't have all 01:41:05.360 --> 01:41:07.760 these little lies attached to it. 01:41:07.760 --> 01:41:11.120 You don't want to have to rely on, well, someone lied to 01:41:11.120 --> 01:41:14.640 me and I was deceived, and that's not an excuse. 01:41:14.640 --> 01:41:19.040 Certainly it is better to have been deceived and believed something false 01:41:19.040 --> 01:41:23.360 than it is to willfully believe something false, but ignorance is not 01:41:23.360 --> 01:41:25.280 an excuse. 01:41:25.280 --> 01:41:31.040 The pagans who lived in deepest darkest Africa millennia ago, and never 01:41:31.040 --> 01:41:35.920 heard the gospel, did not therefore have an excuse. 01:41:35.920 --> 01:41:39.200 Because God's law is written on the human heart, and there are 01:41:39.200 --> 01:41:43.520 very real consequences in time for the individual and generationally for that 01:41:44.080 --> 01:41:48.800 person's progeny when that man sins. 01:41:48.800 --> 01:41:51.760 So do not think that as a Christian 01:41:52.720 --> 01:41:57.360 you can just say, Well I believe in Christ, and therefore all 01:41:57.360 --> 01:41:59.840 these other things are irrelevant. 01:41:59.840 --> 01:42:02.000 That is not how it works. 01:42:02.000 --> 01:42:05.680 Belief in Christ is the most important thing, yes. 01:42:05.680 --> 01:42:09.200 But all of the other truths flow from that, because if you 01:42:09.200 --> 01:42:12.240 believe in God, if you believe in Christ, if you believe in 01:42:12.240 --> 01:42:16.960 this ultimate ground of reality and truth, then you must believe everything 01:42:16.960 --> 01:42:18.720 else about Him. 01:42:18.720 --> 01:42:22.640 Not just that He gave His only begotten Son to die for 01:42:22.640 --> 01:42:25.760 you, that he raised him again from the dead, that you are 01:42:25.760 --> 01:42:29.920 covered in his blood, that you are made whole in Christ, that 01:42:29.920 --> 01:42:31.360 you're forgiven. 01:42:31.360 --> 01:42:35.040 Because there are other truths about God, he reveals them in nature, 01:42:35.040 --> 01:42:39.040 he reveals them in scripture, and as Christians we are beholden to 01:42:39.040 --> 01:42:41.360 believe in those things. 01:42:41.360 --> 01:42:46.400 Because to believe otherwise is to believe something false about God at 01:42:46.400 --> 01:42:51.040 best, and at worst it is to accuse God of lying. 01:42:51.040 --> 01:42:55.520 And if you accuse God of lying, things don't get better from 01:42:55.520 --> 01:42:58.960 there. You will eventually apostatize. 01:42:58.960 --> 01:43:00.560 That is the end of that row. 01:43:00.560 --> 01:43:03.360 That is the broad path. 01:43:03.360 --> 01:43:07.360 And so all of these truths about God that we keep mentioning 01:43:07.360 --> 01:43:11.280 in these episodes, the reason they are important, as we have said 01:43:11.280 --> 01:43:14.160 so many times, they are not the core of the faith. 01:43:14.160 --> 01:43:15.760 That's not the point. 01:43:15.760 --> 01:43:19.200 The point is if you believe a lie, if you believe any 01:43:19.200 --> 01:43:23.440 lie, because Satan's goal is to get you to believe any lie. 01:43:23.440 --> 01:43:25.040 He just wants an opening somewhere. 01:43:25.040 --> 01:43:25.600 It doesn't matter. 01:43:25.600 --> 01:43:27.200 He doesn't need you to open the front door. 01:43:27.200 --> 01:43:28.480 Just open the back window. 01:43:28.720 --> 01:43:31.040 He'll happily climb in. 01:43:31.040 --> 01:43:35.120 If you believe a lie, then you will eventually be faced with 01:43:35.120 --> 01:43:36.400 a choice. 01:43:36.400 --> 01:43:41.280 And that choice will be accepting you believed the lie, rejecting it 01:43:41.360 --> 01:43:44.800 and believing the truth, which is what we are calling you to 01:43:44.800 --> 01:43:45.920 do, or 01:43:46.800 --> 01:43:50.080 you can refuse to accept that you believed a lie because it's 01:43:50.080 --> 01:43:54.080 uncomfortable to have to admit that, and you can double down, and 01:43:54.080 --> 01:43:59.600 you'll double down by believing another lie, and another lie, and another 01:43:59.600 --> 01:44:03.680 lie, and it never ends, because as we've said many times, there's 01:44:03.680 --> 01:44:07.120 no floor, it can always get worse. 01:44:07.600 --> 01:44:11.680 And so yes, there are temporal consequences of sin. 01:44:11.680 --> 01:44:13.840 Yes, those stick with you. 01:44:13.840 --> 01:44:17.600 Yes, those will not go away in this life in many cases. 01:44:17.600 --> 01:44:20.720 But if you continue sinning, it will continue getting worse. 01:44:21.040 --> 01:44:22.720 And so stop. 01:44:22.720 --> 01:44:27.920 Turn from your sins, repent, and live the best life you can, 01:44:27.920 --> 01:44:31.760 even with the consequences of your past sin. 01:44:31.840 --> 01:44:37.440 If you don't accept that those consequences are real, you will forever 01:44:37.440 --> 01:44:40.880 be lying about the nature of reality, the nature of your own 01:44:40.880 --> 01:44:43.360 flesh, and the nature of God. 01:44:43.360 --> 01:44:46.880 That is not how you have a right relationship with God. 01:44:46.880 --> 01:44:52.160 You have a right relationship with God by accepting His truth, accepting 01:44:52.160 --> 01:44:57.760 the consequences of your past errors, and attempting to live the best 01:44:57.760 --> 01:45:02.560 life you can going forward with what God has given you in 01:45:02.560 --> 01:45:08.720 light of both God's gifts and the consequences of your actions. 01:45:09.040 --> 01:45:12.320 The Christian life is not a life of perfection. 01:45:12.320 --> 01:45:17.040 It is a life of repentance and yes, attempting to do better. 01:45:17.040 --> 01:45:18.480 That is part of the Christian life. 01:45:18.480 --> 01:45:22.160 You do have good works, because good works flow from a living 01:45:22.160 --> 01:45:24.800 faith. But it's not perfection. 01:45:24.800 --> 01:45:30.160 You won't be perfect in this life, those temporal consequences do remain. 01:45:30.160 --> 01:45:34.560 As a Christian, affirm the truth and move forward. 01:45:34.560 --> 01:45:38.880 I want to close with a brief story that's recounting uh Issues 01:45:38.960 --> 01:45:41.440 etcetera episode from twenty nineteen. 01:45:41.440 --> 01:45:43.360 As I was listening to it back when I used to still 01:45:43.360 --> 01:45:46.480 listen to issues and thought that Todd was a decent guy. 01:45:46.480 --> 01:45:51.760 This particular episode that I'm gonna recount briefly is where I initially 01:45:51.920 --> 01:45:55.840 had the realization of what we're describing today. 01:45:55.840 --> 01:46:00.160 The episode was with a woman who at the age of sixteen 01:46:00.240 --> 01:46:04.640 in nineteen seventy three, got knocked up by her boyfriend. 01:46:04.640 --> 01:46:08.240 She hid it from her family, her Lutheran family, until she began 01:46:08.240 --> 01:46:12.000 showing. One day her mother realized she was pregnant, took her straight 01:46:12.000 --> 01:46:14.480 to the doctor, uh it was a family doctor who was also 01:46:14.480 --> 01:46:19.040 Lutheran I don't remember if it's a Lutheran hospital, but pretty close. 01:46:19.040 --> 01:46:20.800 He was very gruff with her. 01:46:20.800 --> 01:46:23.920 He told the mother point blank she can't keep it. 01:46:23.920 --> 01:46:27.920 Uh they had ten kids at home and so he said you're 01:46:27.920 --> 01:46:30.880 not gonna be able to you're not gonna be equipped to handle 01:46:30.880 --> 01:46:32.720 this child as well. 01:46:32.720 --> 01:46:34.640 She agreed and so 01:46:35.600 --> 01:46:38.720 the sixteen year old girl, you know, didn't have any input. 01:46:38.720 --> 01:46:42.240 The decision was made to give the child up for adoption through 01:46:42.560 --> 01:46:47.360 Lutheran child and family services are the precursor to it. 01:46:47.360 --> 01:46:49.360 She received no prenatal care. 01:46:49.600 --> 01:46:53.600 She basically just went on with her life. 01:46:53.600 --> 01:46:55.280 She was not taken out of school. 01:46:55.280 --> 01:46:57.680 Uh the law had been changed, so they weren't able to expel 01:46:57.760 --> 01:46:58.480 her either. 01:46:58.480 --> 01:47:02.400 So she attended school every day, pregnant as a teenager, unwed. 01:47:02.400 --> 01:47:04.240 Uh her boyfriend skipped. 01:47:04.240 --> 01:47:05.680 He wanted nothing to do with it. 01:47:05.680 --> 01:47:07.920 So she was on her own. 01:47:07.920 --> 01:47:11.200 She went into labor at school, she came home, told her mom 01:47:11.360 --> 01:47:12.880 she was having contractions. 01:47:12.880 --> 01:47:15.680 When dad got home he drove her to the hospital and she 01:47:15.680 --> 01:47:16.720 was basically on her own. 01:47:16.720 --> 01:47:19.280 And the way she described the delivery was that they wheeled her 01:47:19.280 --> 01:47:23.840 in, they put up a curtain at her midsection. 01:47:23.840 --> 01:47:26.160 She wasn't able to see anything. 01:47:26.160 --> 01:47:28.560 She delivered the baby. 01:47:28.560 --> 01:47:31.040 She never even knew if it was a boy or a girl. 01:47:31.040 --> 01:47:33.600 She never got to hold it, uh never got to see it 01:47:33.600 --> 01:47:34.000 at all. 01:47:34.000 --> 01:47:38.720 She literally gave birth and then it the baby vanished. 01:47:38.720 --> 01:47:40.400 And then she went home. 01:47:40.400 --> 01:47:42.880 She recuperated and she went back to school and it was like 01:47:42.880 --> 01:47:44.800 it never happened. 01:47:44.800 --> 01:47:46.960 And part of the reason that she was telling the story was 01:47:47.360 --> 01:47:52.160 that she described how not long after she met the nice Lutheran 01:47:52.160 --> 01:47:56.320 boy and they got married and started a family and had a 01:47:56.320 --> 01:47:57.680 couple other kids. 01:47:57.680 --> 01:48:00.640 She never told anyone that she had had this child this child 01:48:00.640 --> 01:48:01.600 at sixteen. 01:48:01.600 --> 01:48:03.920 She did learn a few days after the birth that it was 01:48:03.920 --> 01:48:05.840 a boy, so she knew it was a boy and that was 01:48:05.840 --> 01:48:09.360 it. And she had been told that I believe that they would 01:48:09.360 --> 01:48:11.760 go the child would be adopted by a Lutheran family. 01:48:11.920 --> 01:48:14.560 family and that was that was the extent of it, but she 01:48:14.560 --> 01:48:17.680 never knew anything beyond that. 01:48:17.680 --> 01:48:21.520 Fast forward to you know recent memory, she got on twenty three 01:48:21.520 --> 01:48:23.840 and me because she had Crohn's disease, one of her daughters had 01:48:23.840 --> 01:48:27.600 Crohn's disease, which is a heritable disease, and so she was curious. 01:48:27.600 --> 01:48:31.120 She found her son and so it connected them. 01:48:31.120 --> 01:48:34.800 And you know, she was shocked and terrified and didn't know what 01:48:34.800 --> 01:48:37.920 to do, but I don't know if excited was the right word. 01:48:37.920 --> 01:48:40.080 It was you know, it was it was like free fall, she 01:48:40.080 --> 01:48:41.520 didn't know what to feel. 01:48:41.520 --> 01:48:45.040 But she had described her life before that as being one of 01:48:45.040 --> 01:48:46.880 complete numbness. 01:48:46.880 --> 01:48:51.920 She described how when she gave birth to her children in her 01:48:51.920 --> 01:48:56.720 marriage, it didn't have the same type of joy that 01:48:57.840 --> 01:49:01.920 it would have had if not for her first child. 01:49:01.920 --> 01:49:05.920 And until she did the 23 in me, she never told her 01:49:05.920 --> 01:49:07.840 husband. She never told her family. 01:49:07.840 --> 01:49:11.040 Her and her parents parents were the only people who knew that 01:49:11.040 --> 01:49:14.720 she had ever been pregnant, you know, in in her circle of 01:49:14.720 --> 01:49:18.000 friends. And so after she met her son, who at this point 01:49:18.080 --> 01:49:20.560 was I think forty five years old, he was an attorney, had 01:49:20.560 --> 01:49:23.680 five kids of his own, he was successful and happy and Lutheran 01:49:23.760 --> 01:49:26.240 and so yeah, it was it was a good reunion, but it 01:49:26.240 --> 01:49:29.760 was still very difficult for her and you know, she talked to 01:49:29.760 --> 01:49:33.680 her f her husband and her kids and everyone was happy about 01:49:33.680 --> 01:49:37.360 it. But one of the points of the episode as she recounted 01:49:37.520 --> 01:49:42.400 all these various facts was her describing her own suffering and emptiness 01:49:43.040 --> 01:49:47.120 from having given birth to a child and then having the child 01:49:47.120 --> 01:49:49.200 vanish, you know, through adoption. 01:49:49.200 --> 01:49:52.240 And she said that, you know, her the child whom she gave 01:49:52.240 --> 01:49:53.680 up for adoption forgave her. 01:49:53.680 --> 01:49:55.760 He understood why it had happened. 01:49:55.760 --> 01:49:58.480 He said he agreed with her was the right thing to do 01:49:58.480 --> 01:50:00.400 under the circumstances. 01:50:00.400 --> 01:50:05.200 What struck me about hearing her describe the suffering and the numbness 01:50:05.360 --> 01:50:10.400 and the the silent trauma of those events was that there was 01:50:10.400 --> 01:50:15.840 literally only one difference between her second pregnancy and her first. 01:50:15.840 --> 01:50:19.680 It was the same act of conception, it was the same gestational 01:50:19.680 --> 01:50:23.680 process, it was the same type of birth, the only difference was 01:50:24.400 --> 01:50:29.360 the moral circumstances surrounding with whom she had had sex. 01:50:29.360 --> 01:50:32.320 In the first case it was a boyfriend in high school. 01:50:32.320 --> 01:50:33.200 That was wrong. 01:50:33.200 --> 01:50:34.640 That was disordered. 01:50:34.640 --> 01:50:37.760 That was not to whom she had been given. 01:50:37.760 --> 01:50:42.560 She gave herself away to someone inappropriately, sinfully. 01:50:42.560 --> 01:50:46.720 The result of that coupling was that her entire life has been 01:50:46.720 --> 01:50:49.520 scarred. And that was one of the things that she talked about. 01:50:49.520 --> 01:50:51.200 She knew he was she was forgiven. 01:50:51.200 --> 01:50:53.600 Everyone in her family and her life forgave her. 01:50:53.600 --> 01:50:56.480 No one holds her morally culpable. 01:50:56.480 --> 01:51:00.480 And yet, to this day, even after having been reunited with him 01:51:00.560 --> 01:51:03.920 and all the rest, her entire life has been defined by the 01:51:03.920 --> 01:51:09.360 numbness of a pregnancy outside of marriage, to the point that it 01:51:09.360 --> 01:51:14.160 even had a small detriment on her bondage bonding with her subsequent 01:51:14.160 --> 01:51:17.520 children. And what I realized as I was listening to that was 01:51:17.520 --> 01:51:21.040 how profound that is that if her first child had been with 01:51:21.040 --> 01:51:23.520 her husband, it would have been only joy. 01:51:23.520 --> 01:51:25.760 It would have been 100% joy. 01:51:25.760 --> 01:51:30.080 It was the single act of disobedience of having sex outside of 01:51:30.080 --> 01:51:35.360 marriage and the resulting pregnancy that set a chain of events in 01:51:35.360 --> 01:51:39.280 motion that were the temporal consequences of her sin. 01:51:39.280 --> 01:51:40.320 She's forgiven. 01:51:40.320 --> 01:51:41.520 She's confessed. 01:51:41.520 --> 01:51:44.320 I'm not holding in her against her morally. 01:51:44.320 --> 01:51:45.520 I'm not sitting in judgment. 01:51:45.520 --> 01:51:46.240 That's not the point. 01:51:46.240 --> 01:51:49.920 The point is that the suffering that she endured and continues to 01:51:49.920 --> 01:51:52.480 endure, she still has psychological problems from it. 01:51:52.480 --> 01:51:53.840 I would imagine this is a few years ago. 01:51:53.840 --> 01:51:58.960 She's probably doing better now that she's reconciled with her her adopted 01:51:58.960 --> 01:52:03.520 son. But the fact remains that she lost out on most of 01:52:03.520 --> 01:52:06.160 her life as being the sort of life it would have been 01:52:06.160 --> 01:52:08.000 by that one single act. 01:52:08.000 --> 01:52:09.920 And that's the point of this whole episode. 01:52:09.920 --> 01:52:15.200 All it takes is one deviation from God's commandments to potentially wreck 01:52:15.200 --> 01:52:16.560 your entire life. 01:52:16.560 --> 01:52:20.400 Now this is sort of basic parental advice for anyone. 01:52:20.400 --> 01:52:23.680 You make one bad choice, it can ruin your life. 01:52:23.680 --> 01:52:28.400 The reason that we're discussing it, this is even true among Christians. 01:52:28.400 --> 01:52:33.280 It's even true with Jesus Christ and the forgiveness at the cross. 01:52:33.280 --> 01:52:38.080 Even when you sin and you are forgiven and you confess it, 01:52:38.080 --> 01:52:41.680 the sin may still harm you for the rest of your life. 01:52:41.680 --> 01:52:45.440 And the only way to fix that is never to do it. 01:52:45.440 --> 01:52:47.360 There is no undoe button. 01:52:47.360 --> 01:52:50.880 There's no undo for her having slept with her boyfriend when she 01:52:50.880 --> 01:52:52.000 was sixteen. 01:52:52.000 --> 01:52:55.520 And she paid for the rest of her life for having done 01:52:55.520 --> 01:52:55.840 that 01:52:56.720 --> 01:52:58.160 Knowing that she was forgiven. 01:52:58.160 --> 01:53:00.400 And I think that's one of the important parts of this is 01:53:00.400 --> 01:53:06.400 that it's not psychologizing guilt and loss and separation, anxiety, and all 01:53:06.400 --> 01:53:08.800 these psychological terms we throw around. 01:53:08.800 --> 01:53:10.960 She was injured by her sin. 01:53:11.840 --> 01:53:15.280 What should have been the most joyous day of her life became 01:53:15.280 --> 01:53:16.080 the worst. 01:53:16.080 --> 01:53:19.200 And the worst day of her life became the defining moment of 01:53:19.200 --> 01:53:19.840 her life. 01:53:19.840 --> 01:53:22.320 Even though she went on to have a good and happy life, 01:53:22.320 --> 01:53:25.760 it wasn't as good and happy as if she had not done 01:53:25.760 --> 01:53:29.680 that. And so I would ask everyone who's listening to remember that 01:53:29.680 --> 01:53:30.960 that is the point of this. 01:53:30.960 --> 01:53:35.040 It is not about sitting in judgment retroactively and say, well, you 01:53:35.040 --> 01:53:37.040 did this and you did that and we need to we need 01:53:37.120 --> 01:53:37.200 to 01:53:38.400 --> 01:53:42.320 you. The point is that the only way to prevent these temporal 01:53:42.320 --> 01:53:45.840 consequences for our sin is not to do them in the first 01:53:45.840 --> 01:53:49.840 place. And the best bet, if you're not gonna simply believe God 01:53:49.840 --> 01:53:52.000 and obey him, there's backup. 01:53:52.000 --> 01:53:55.280 If you believe that God is active in this world, believe that 01:53:55.280 --> 01:53:57.760 there are temporal consequences for your sin. 01:53:57.760 --> 01:54:00.400 And even if you don't want to obey God for the sake 01:54:00.400 --> 01:54:02.400 of being a faithful creature. 01:54:02.400 --> 01:54:05.760 Perhaps if the if the curb there is you will only but 01:54:05.840 --> 01:54:08.960 obey him because you don't want the consequences, that's fine. 01:54:08.960 --> 01:54:10.400 You're still obeying God. 01:54:10.400 --> 01:54:13.680 In the future, God will hopefully strengthen and preserve your faith to 01:54:13.680 --> 01:54:16.400 the point that just obeying him for its own sake will be 01:54:16.400 --> 01:54:20.640 enough. But the only way to prevent any of this harm, any 01:54:20.640 --> 01:54:24.000 of this damage, is not to do the sin in the first 01:54:24.000 --> 01:54:28.080 place. And we're in a generation that is so pervasively affected by 01:54:28.080 --> 01:54:32.320 this and so many other sins that people want to be defensive 01:54:32.320 --> 01:54:34.560 about their own past actions. 01:54:34.560 --> 01:54:36.480 Christians need to get past that. 01:54:36.480 --> 01:54:39.440 And they need to get past it in part by not relying 01:54:39.440 --> 01:54:41.840 on the cross as a crutch. 01:54:41.840 --> 01:54:43.600 That's not what it's there for. 01:54:43.600 --> 01:54:48.480 We're comforted that we're forgiven, but we still need to be reminded 01:54:48.480 --> 01:54:51.520 that there's punishment for evil in this life. 01:54:51.520 --> 01:54:52.640 God built it that way. 01:54:52.640 --> 01:54:55.600 God did both of those things. 01:54:55.600 --> 01:54:59.760 And the cross is the most important thing, but no less important 01:55:00.400 --> 01:55:04.800 in terms of shaping our lives can be God's will is revealed 01:55:04.800 --> 01:55:08.720 to us in scripture And in some cases, things that are contrary 01:55:08.720 --> 01:55:11.760 to nature, it's revealed in nature itself. 01:55:11.760 --> 01:55:15.280 God has organized everything so that we have to go out of 01:55:15.280 --> 01:55:17.280 our way to make things worse. 01:55:17.280 --> 01:55:21.760 And one of the things we're trying to emphasize is believe God, 01:55:21.760 --> 01:55:25.760 obey Him, and you won't make things worse. 01:55:25.760 --> 01:55:30.480 To the contrary, if you do disobey God, if you do sin 01:55:30.560 --> 01:55:35.840 either willfully or accidentally, and fall into these traps and these errors, 01:55:35.840 --> 01:55:39.840 you may well receive the due punishment in your flesh that will 01:55:39.840 --> 01:55:41.520 never go away. 01:55:41.520 --> 01:55:45.280 And civilizationally, and as a church, both the left hand and the 01:55:45.280 --> 01:55:51.200 right hand of Christ, we must acknowledge that there's punishment for sin. 01:55:51.200 --> 01:55:53.200 God paid for everything on the cross. 01:55:53.200 --> 01:55:57.360 The temporal punishments are only paid by those who have committed the 01:55:57.360 --> 01:56:00.640 sins, and in some cases their family, and their friends, and their 01:56:00.640 --> 01:56:04.720 neighborhoods, and their communities, and in some cases their very civilizations. 01:56:04.720 --> 01:56:07.680 So this is a matter that affects all of us. 01:56:07.680 --> 01:56:12.480 This is not about secret sins and it's not about retribution. 01:56:12.480 --> 01:56:16.160 It's about making sure that we teach our children and we shape 01:56:16.160 --> 01:56:18.640 those who still have a chance not to go down these paths 01:56:18.720 --> 01:56:21.040 to tell them how bad it will get. 01:56:21.040 --> 01:56:24.000 And sometimes how bad it will get is the best incentive to 01:56:24.000 --> 01:56:24.400 obey God 01:56:25.360 --> 01:56:28.400 and later on you realize what a blessing it is from God 01:56:28.400 --> 01:56:31.840 to have these things revealed and to have people in a senior 01:56:31.840 --> 01:56:34.400 position to warn you don't go there. 01:56:34.400 --> 01:56:37.280 You will only make make things worse for yourself in a way 01:56:37.280 --> 01:56:40.400 that will never go away until the resurrection. 01:56:40.400 --> 01:56:40.720 So 01:56:41.600 --> 01:56:43.920 if you listen with kids, or if you have kids, or if 01:56:43.920 --> 01:56:47.360 you're going to have kids, talk to them about this. 01:56:47.360 --> 01:56:49.360 This generation is a mess. 01:56:49.360 --> 01:56:51.760 The next generation doesn't have to be. 01:56:52.000 --> 01:56:52.800 That's with you. 01:56:52.800 --> 01:56:54.320 That's with the parents. 01:56:54.320 --> 01:56:56.960 If you have made these mistakes, if your kids are on the 01:56:56.960 --> 01:57:01.040 path of making these mistakes, think about these consequences for the rest 01:57:01.040 --> 01:57:01.760 of their lives. 01:57:01.760 --> 01:57:05.360 Think about the ways that they you can help them avoid suffering 01:57:05.840 --> 01:57:09.440 and create an environment in your home and in your church and 01:57:09.440 --> 01:57:14.800 your community where we have these curves around these behaviors so that 01:57:14.800 --> 01:57:16.480 they just don't happen. 01:57:16.480 --> 01:57:21.760 It used to be that profligate sexual behavior was thoroughly frowned upon. 01:57:21.760 --> 01:57:23.120 It was scorned. 01:57:23.120 --> 01:57:26.160 It was despised by society. 01:57:26.160 --> 01:57:29.760 We need to bring that back because when that's being maintained at 01:57:29.760 --> 01:57:33.280 the societal level, you don't need people to even believe in God. 01:57:33.280 --> 01:57:35.760 They just need to know that it's gonna hurt if they disobey 01:57:35.760 --> 01:57:38.080 God, whether or not they believe in him or not. 01:57:38.080 --> 01:57:41.520 Just believing that if I cross the line with these with these 01:57:41.520 --> 01:57:44.640 things, I'm going to pay for it socially. 01:57:44.640 --> 01:57:48.400 That will keep people from sinning, from doing evil. 01:57:48.400 --> 01:57:51.920 That benefits everyone, most of all them. 01:57:51.920 --> 01:57:57.360 Again, to rein in someone's sinful nature through a curb that says 01:57:57.440 --> 01:58:00.800 if you act like a slut, you're going to be scorned and 01:58:00.800 --> 01:58:06.000 shamed publicly and you're gonna have a terrible reputation, that should come 01:58:06.000 --> 01:58:10.240 back. And the fact that that went away was a necessary precursor 01:58:10.240 --> 01:58:11.520 for everything else. 01:58:11.520 --> 01:58:14.320 So this is not about finger pointing or recrimination. 01:58:14.320 --> 01:58:17.440 It's about preventing the evil from occurring in the first place. 01:58:17.440 --> 01:58:21.920 Because only by preventing the evil from occurring can we avoid the 01:58:21.920 --> 01:58:23.520 temporal consequences? 01:58:23.520 --> 01:58:27.360 And let's not have no more reasons to nail Christ to the 01:58:27.360 --> 01:58:30.880 cross. As faithful Christians, that should be our chief concern. 01:58:30.880 --> 01:58:34.160 But as Christians living in this world, all of these things are 01:58:34.160 --> 01:58:35.440 equal concerns. 01:58:35.440 --> 01:58:36.960 We have to be faithful to God. 01:58:36.960 --> 01:58:38.480 We have to obey Him. 01:58:38.480 --> 01:58:40.400 Because what choice do we have? 01:58:40.400 --> 01:58:43.120 He's told us these things for our benefit, and the more we 01:58:43.120 --> 01:58:44.800 obey, the better things are. 01:58:44.800 --> 01:58:47.040 I what's the downside? 01:58:47.040 --> 01:58:51.120 God has given us all these blessings, let's receive them with thanksgiving 01:58:51.280 --> 01:58:53.440 and share them with others.