WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.680 Mahler. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:44.080 And I'm still woe. 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:48.160 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be talking about confronting sin. 00:00:48.160 --> 00:00:50.640 We're going to talk about the duties that we have to God 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:53.760 and the duties that we have to each other both to receive 00:00:54.240 --> 00:00:58.240 condemnation of our own sin and to give condemnation when it arises. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:01.520 We'll talk about the various permutations of how this stuff comes up 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:03.200 and what we need to do with it. 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:07.040 Just two brief bits of housekeeping before we get into it. 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:11.840 One, uh Corey has the second batch of challenge coins shipped up 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:14.880 through about order number roughly two hundred. 00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:17.440 And so that means about a third of the orders have shipped 00:01:17.440 --> 00:01:18.160 so far. 00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:20.800 So thank you to everyone for your continued patience. 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:22.320 This is a very manual process. 00:01:22.320 --> 00:01:25.200 We don't have any sort of fulfillment partner or anything. 00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:28.080 Like it's literally him packing stuff and handwriting notes. 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:29.200 So it's laborious. 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:31.920 Thank you for putting up with the time it's taking get them 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:32.400 all out. 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:33.200 They're really cool. 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:34.800 Everybody loves them as they're receiving them. 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:37.200 So if you're at the very end of the list, sorry you 00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:39.440 had to wait so long, but we promise will be worth it. 00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:40.960 And it's gonna last the rest of your life. 00:01:40.960 --> 00:01:42.320 It's a cool thing to have. 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:45.200 And when everybody gets to, you know, the next year's a convention 00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:48.240 at Ogden or wherever, there'll be a lot of those challenge coins 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:50.560 coming out of people's pockets. 00:01:50.560 --> 00:01:55.760 Secondarily, next week, instead of a regular show like we normally have, 00:01:55.760 --> 00:02:00.000 we're going to be including on this feed the first two hours 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:03.360 of a seven-hour, six and a half hour interview that Corey and 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:06.160 I did with Will Spencer from Renaissance of Men. 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:08.240 We had a really good conversation with him. 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:11.120 That's going to be going in part at least behind his paywall 00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:13.920 on Substack, but he was gracious enough to give us the first 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:15.840 two hours we'll be offering here. 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:18.880 So instead of our usual content, you'll hear that. 00:02:18.880 --> 00:02:20.640 It's mostly going to be things you've heard before. 00:02:20.640 --> 00:02:23.280 One of the nice things about having that episode up is that 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:27.200 the introduction with uh him asking us questions in some ways will 00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:30.960 be the actual introduction to Stone Choir that we never did ourselves. 00:02:30.960 --> 00:02:33.760 To this point, really the best intro to Stone Choir has been 00:02:34.080 --> 00:02:36.720 interviews that we did probably on myths of the twentieth century or 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:38.800 maybe on Kinona's show. 00:02:38.800 --> 00:02:41.440 So finally we'll have an episode that we can point to and 00:02:41.440 --> 00:02:43.600 say if you want to just listen to one episode, find out 00:02:43.600 --> 00:02:46.240 like where are these guys coming from, that I think will be 00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:48.400 it. And then we'd encourage everyone to go back and listen to 00:02:48.480 --> 00:02:49.120 the catalog. 00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:51.600 So that will be what we have next week instead of our 00:02:51.600 --> 00:02:53.360 regular programming. 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:56.640 On the subject of confronting SIN, we're gonna have a structure that 00:02:56.640 --> 00:02:58.400 I'm gonna lay out for you now just so you can sort 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:00.000 of keep your bearings throughout this. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.240 There's gonna be a short part, kind of a medium part, and 00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:03.680 then a long part at the end. 00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:07.520 The short part is going to be that confronting sin in this 00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:12.720 entire conversation is rooted in our obedience to God, our duty to 00:03:12.720 --> 00:03:16.320 God. The only reason for you to confront sin or to have 00:03:16.320 --> 00:03:20.000 your own sin confronted is so that you remain oriented to God. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:21.040 That's why we're here. 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:23.520 That's why we're talking about it, it's why you're listening. 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:26.880 The whole point of the Christian life is like a compass pointing 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:30.880 it, you know, magnetic north to remain oriented towards your creator. 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:32.640 We're creatures, he's a creator. 00:03:32.640 --> 00:03:36.960 Let's make sure that we're not losing sight of him. 00:03:36.960 --> 00:03:41.440 So everything that we say about confronting sin has to be rooted 00:03:41.440 --> 00:03:46.400 in that because as soon as you turn the confrontation of sin 00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:50.640 as interpersonal, you know, it becomes a matter of personality conflicts or 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:54.720 dislike or cultural differences, whatever you want to pick. 00:03:54.720 --> 00:03:56.560 It becomes man versus man. 00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:58.400 It's he said, she said. 00:03:58.400 --> 00:03:59.600 That's nonsense. 00:03:59.600 --> 00:04:02.400 That's not what confronting sin is about. 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:07.360 Confronting sin is about someone saying to someone else, God's over here, 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:11.120 I'm pointed towards him, and you're pointed in some opposite direction. 00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:13.360 You're pointed off in the weeds. 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:16.560 We both need to point in the same direction. 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:20.160 So So it's just important when we're thinking about all the rest 00:04:20.160 --> 00:04:22.800 of these things that that should always be the root, the beginning 00:04:22.880 --> 00:04:24.560 and the end of every conversation. 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:27.440 You know, when you're confronting someone else's sin or when your sin 00:04:27.440 --> 00:04:30.960 is confronted, you need to make sure that you're both pointed at 00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:33.840 the same God in that conversation. 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:37.680 And as a Christian, if you are confronting someone else's sin, you 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:39.760 need to make sure that's what you're pointing them at. 00:04:39.760 --> 00:04:44.240 You can't point the person you're confronting to some other God. 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:48.000 You can't accuse them of sins that are not scriptural sins. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.000 So that'll be the long part at the end. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:52.000 And the middle part is just going to be talking about the 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:53.600 duty to receive correction. 00:04:53.600 --> 00:04:57.200 Because both of those things, whether you're the one receiving the rebuke 00:04:57.200 --> 00:05:01.440 of sin or you're the one giving it, in the context of 00:05:01.440 --> 00:05:06.080 two Christian brothers discussing with each other, you begin with the orientation 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:10.080 towards God, and then it's very much a case that you want 00:05:10.400 --> 00:05:14.240 and you pray that the person would receive your rebuke the same 00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:16.720 way that if they come to you and and accuse you of 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:19.200 something, you would hope that they would approach it in the same 00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:20.720 way that you're trying to approach them. 00:05:20.880 --> 00:05:23.520 It's very much a do onto others thing. 00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:26.480 But just at the outset, when we're pointed at God and we're 00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:29.040 talking about the duty of God, I think that 00:05:30.080 --> 00:05:33.120 one of the framing episodes for this episode and this framing for 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:37.200 the whole this episode is the perfect hatred episode where we talked 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:38.720 about what does hatred mean? 00:05:38.720 --> 00:05:39.600 What does love mean? 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:41.680 Because it's part of the same thing. 00:05:41.680 --> 00:05:45.760 There is no possibility for hatred without love of something, actual Christian 00:05:45.760 --> 00:05:48.480 hatred. And we make the case in that episode that we have 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:51.680 a duty as Christians to hate whatever is opposed to God, and 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:55.680 that love can only be defined in terms of pointing at God. 00:05:55.680 --> 00:06:00.000 The things that God commands, the things that God expresses as true, 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:02.240 those are the only things that we should be loving. 00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:05.600 And anything that's contrary to those, we're commanded to hate. 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:08.560 And so when we're looking at the sin in our own lives 00:06:08.560 --> 00:06:11.840 and in others' lives, it always has to be in view of 00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:14.800 that. And part of the reason for emphasizing that is that 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:19.120 when you're looking at things that are oriented either towards God or 00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:22.560 away from him, it precludes all matters of opinion. 00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:24.800 It precludes disagreements. 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:27.280 You know, one of the prime examples we'll get into in a 00:06:27.280 --> 00:06:30.560 couple places is matters of historical events. 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:34.320 We've done past episodes we talked about you know, the moon landing 00:06:34.400 --> 00:06:37.280 and whether nukes are real, you know, conspiracy theories. 00:06:37.280 --> 00:06:41.280 And we made very clear, as I've said elsewhere online, I don't 00:06:41.200 --> 00:06:43.440 think you're going to hell if you think that the moon's not 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:45.360 real or that the moon landing is not real. 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:47.200 It's not an article of faith. 00:06:47.200 --> 00:06:50.720 My concern about those things is that someone who's been detached from 00:06:50.720 --> 00:06:54.880 reality by denying those true things is that they've opened themselves up 00:06:54.880 --> 00:06:56.320 to spiritual errors. 00:06:56.320 --> 00:06:58.960 And so that's the concern when there's a rebuke there. 00:06:58.960 --> 00:07:01.760 But it's not a matter of salvation to say we landed on 00:07:01.760 --> 00:07:03.360 the moon or we did land on the moon. 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:04.480 Pick any example you want. 00:07:04.640 --> 00:07:05.840 The moon doesn't even matter. 00:07:05.840 --> 00:07:08.880 It's just when it's a matter of opinion about something that has 00:07:08.880 --> 00:07:11.760 nothing to do with scripture, i then it's just a question is 00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:13.120 it true or not? 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:17.680 And what we've seen happen in the last sixty years, last thirty 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:20.880 years especially, is that there are other historical events, and you know 00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:25.520 which ones, that have become articles of faith in a competing religion. 00:07:25.520 --> 00:07:29.360 And so if you have the wrong opinion about those historical events 00:07:29.360 --> 00:07:33.200 in the last century, you're either damned or you're saved, depending on 00:07:33.200 --> 00:07:35.680 which side of those events you fall on. 00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:39.440 Well, the only historical event that has that kind of weight is 00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:42.400 Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. 00:07:42.400 --> 00:07:46.080 That is the historical event that determines damnation or salvation. 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:49.840 Your belief in that is what determines whether you're a Christian. 00:07:49.840 --> 00:07:52.480 No other historical event has that weight. 00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:56.160 And so the very fact that people will come into the church 00:07:56.160 --> 00:07:59.600 and say, No, these are these other historical events that are matters 00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:02.640 of damnation when actually they're matters of opinion. 00:08:02.640 --> 00:08:06.240 Even if you're wrong, even if something happened in nineteen thirty-three or 00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:10.160 nineteen forty-five or nineteen sixty-four, if you don't believe it or you 00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:13.760 disagree with the tenor of it, you think it's fine or whatever, 00:08:13.760 --> 00:08:16.080 that doesn't mean that you're going to heaven or hell. 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:18.400 Doesn't matter either way. 00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:21.920 When someone points to those things and says, well, the religion says 00:08:21.920 --> 00:08:25.200 you gotta do this or believe this, They're not pointing you to 00:08:25.200 --> 00:08:28.000 God. They're not fulfilling their duty to God. 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:30.960 And so as we look at the examples where we're interacting with 00:08:30.960 --> 00:08:35.040 each other, making sure that our compass is pointed at God, which 00:08:35.040 --> 00:08:38.320 is found in Scripture, is crucial because that's the only way to 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:39.760 determine morality. 00:08:39.760 --> 00:08:41.760 Right and wrong is determined by God. 00:08:41.760 --> 00:08:44.240 It's not determined by what makes us feel bad. 00:08:44.240 --> 00:08:45.680 That's another element of this. 00:08:45.680 --> 00:08:49.280 There are things about having your own sin confronted or you confronting 00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:52.480 someone else's sin, even the word confrontation. 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:56.160 We talked last week about why do we confront certain errors? 00:08:56.160 --> 00:08:57.920 Why do we go after certain things? 00:08:57.920 --> 00:08:59.680 Why is anyone confronting anything? 00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:00.560 That's mean. 00:09:00.560 --> 00:09:01.680 Makes people sad. 00:09:01.680 --> 00:09:03.760 Well, the question is is it true or not? 00:09:03.760 --> 00:09:06.640 And if God is over here and everyone else is pointing ninety 00:09:06.800 --> 00:09:09.600 degrees or one hundred and eighty degrees, the guy who comes along 00:09:09.600 --> 00:09:12.240 and says no, you gotta turn around and look this way, he's 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:13.120 gonna disrupt you. 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:14.160 He's gonna be annoying. 00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:16.000 He's like you're looking in the wrong direction. 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:16.480 What do you mean? 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:18.080 you think you're better than me? 00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:19.440 You think you're holier than thou? 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:20.800 Like, no, God's over there. 00:09:20.800 --> 00:09:22.800 You're not even looking in the right direction. 00:09:22.800 --> 00:09:27.120 So let everything that you do that revolves around confronting sin or 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:31.120 having your own sin be confronted be dictated solely by that by 00:09:31.120 --> 00:09:35.280 that which is found in Scripture and in truth. 00:09:36.160 --> 00:09:36.320 When 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:40.640 Woe says that it does not matter how you feel about these 00:09:40.640 --> 00:09:43.520 things, I want to add not a caveat to that, but an 00:09:43.520 --> 00:09:45.680 important sub point. 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:50.480 If your conscience is properly formed, and it will be formed properly 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:55.280 by the Word of God, then you will feel correctly about certain 00:09:55.280 --> 00:09:56.160 of these things. 00:09:56.160 --> 00:09:58.720 You will hate the things that God hates, you will love the 00:09:58.720 --> 00:10:00.160 things that God loves. 00:10:00.160 --> 00:10:05.280 And so your feelings, so to speak, will be aligned with what 00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:05.840 God wants. 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:10.480 Your conscience being correctly formed will tell you what you should believe, 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:13.200 which way you should go on a given issue. 00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:17.520 And so again, if your conscience is properly formed, these things will 00:10:17.520 --> 00:10:19.280 be aligned. 00:10:19.280 --> 00:10:24.640 It is not that your internal perception of these things is definitive, 00:10:24.640 --> 00:10:26.320 that's the point. 00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:31.120 And most people have malformed consciences, because if your conscience has not 00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:36.160 been formed by scripture, then it's effectively a crapshoot. 00:10:36.160 --> 00:10:38.640 It may be right, it may be wrong. 00:10:38.640 --> 00:10:42.080 It just depends on the particular issue, on the circumstances. 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:45.840 If your conscience is not formed by scripture, by the word of 00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:48.400 God, if it is not correctly formed, that it is That it 00:10:48.400 --> 00:10:51.840 is not reliable, and that is why the Word of God has 00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:56.640 to be the sole standard in these matters. 00:10:56.640 --> 00:11:02.240 Because whether or not you internally feel that something is right, that 00:11:02.240 --> 00:11:06.640 matters because that's an indicator of whether or not you have been 00:11:06.640 --> 00:11:09.760 formed by the Word of God, whether or not you are aligning 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:13.360 yourself to the things of God, but it is not in and 00:11:13.520 --> 00:11:17.840 of itself definitive, because it is subsidiary to the Word of God. 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:22.800 And so when we have these conflicts, when we are fighting over 00:11:22.800 --> 00:11:26.720 something that is related to our duties to God, to the Christian 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:30.480 faith, we look to Scripture to find the truth, because that is 00:11:30.480 --> 00:11:34.080 where God has spoken his truth to us. 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:38.320 We are specifically in this case talking about theological controversies, things that 00:11:38.880 --> 00:11:40.320 can be found in scripture. 00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:44.800 As Will mentioned, there's a distinction between these sorts of issues and 00:11:44.800 --> 00:11:46.640 just something out in the world. 00:11:46.640 --> 00:11:51.120 And so for instance, if you're having a debate over something related 00:11:51.120 --> 00:11:52.560 to biology. 00:11:52.560 --> 00:11:55.920 That's not going to be something for which you turn to the 00:11:55.920 --> 00:11:59.760 Word of God to discover the ultimate answer, because it's probably not 00:11:59.760 --> 00:12:02.000 even addressed in the Word of God. 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:04.480 Now in some cases it's going to be, of course, if you're 00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:08.720 dealing with micro versus macro evolution, but that is also addressed in 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:13.200 nature. You can determine that from the created order of things. 00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:16.160 But when it comes to issues of morality, when it comes to 00:12:16.160 --> 00:12:22.320 questions of the faith, questions of theology of doctrine, all of those 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:27.040 must be absolutely and solely grounded in the Word of God. 00:12:27.040 --> 00:12:30.240 That doesn't mean we can't use the faculties that God has given 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:34.080 us to understand it because of course you can't read scripture without 00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:36.320 using the faculties that God gave you. 00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:39.680 First off you have to use sight to read the words or 00:12:39.680 --> 00:12:41.840 you have to use your hearing in order to listen to it 00:12:41.920 --> 00:12:44.160 if you're listening to a recording instead. 00:12:44.160 --> 00:12:47.920 And then you have to use your reason to understand these things. 00:12:47.920 --> 00:12:51.280 So yes, our faculties will of course play a role in this, 00:12:51.280 --> 00:12:55.120 but as Christians we also have God's promises and the Spirit, so 00:12:55.120 --> 00:12:57.520 we know that if we spend the time in the Word, if 00:12:57.520 --> 00:13:00.640 we turn to the Word of God for these answers to these 00:13:00.640 --> 00:13:02.960 questions, God will lead us into truth. 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:04.960 He has promised to do that. 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:08.400 But we have to actually do what He said in order to 00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:12.800 receive the promise, in order to receive the things He has given. 00:13:12.800 --> 00:13:14.560 You have to turn to scripture. 00:13:14.560 --> 00:13:17.680 You have to look at the Word of God to determine what 00:13:17.680 --> 00:13:19.040 is true or false. 00:13:19.040 --> 00:13:22.080 And so, as Woe said, the issue is not going to be 00:13:22.880 --> 00:13:25.280 A conflict over personalities. 00:13:25.280 --> 00:13:29.360 This isn't, you know, Martin Luther hated Pope Leo. 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:31.600 That was not the issue in the Reformation. 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:35.680 The issue in the Reformation was whether or not the Word of 00:13:35.680 --> 00:13:41.680 God says certain things about justification, says certain things about works, says 00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:45.120 certain things about satisfaction, all these other issues. 00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:50.160 These were theological issues, these were doctrinal issues for which For which 00:13:50.160 --> 00:13:52.720 we have to turn to the Word of God. 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:57.120 It doesn't matter if you dislike the brashness of Luther or the 00:13:57.120 --> 00:14:03.040 approach of the Medici Pope, regardless of the personalities involved, it is 00:14:03.040 --> 00:14:07.840 a matter of what God has said, what a correct interpretation of 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:09.520 His word is. 00:14:09.520 --> 00:14:14.080 And so you can leave aside all of those other ancillary issues, 00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:16.800 and so it's not a matter of well this person is acting 00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:19.200 in a mean way mean way. 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:21.280 That's not what is at stake. 00:14:21.280 --> 00:14:26.880 It's not whether or not the personalities matter because of course, in 00:14:26.880 --> 00:14:31.120 human conflicts, because humans are involved, that's going to play some role, 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:35.920 but that really should be, as much as possible, put aside when 00:14:35.920 --> 00:14:39.040 dealing with theological and doctrinal matters. 00:14:39.040 --> 00:14:43.200 Because these are simply essentially what you would call them in the 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:48.160 law, really they're questions of fact when you're dealing with things that 00:14:48.160 --> 00:14:52.400 are external and questions of law when you're dealing with things that 00:14:52.400 --> 00:14:56.640 are in Scripture because you are purely dealing with the interpretation of 00:14:56.640 --> 00:14:57.520 God's word. 00:14:57.520 --> 00:15:02.320 That's the distinction there for the legal sphere anyway. 00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:07.680 But another thing that Woe mentioned, I want to highlight all systems 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:11.840 have blasphemy laws, all systems of belief. 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:17.120 And the question is going to be what a system considers blasphemy? 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:19.680 Because that is going to tell you what the god of that 00:15:19.680 --> 00:15:20.560 system is. 00:15:20.560 --> 00:15:23.120 And it's going to tell you the god of the person who 00:15:23.120 --> 00:15:25.200 is advocating for that system. 00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:29.440 And so if someone tells you that you're damned because you believe 00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:34.320 X, well you now know that X is part of the blasphemy 00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:38.640 laws of that person's system, and so that is the system underneath 00:15:38.640 --> 00:15:40.800 the god that person worships. 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:44.960 So if it's a particular historical event that isn't dealt with in 00:15:45.680 --> 00:15:50.000 Scripture, then you know this person has a different God. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:53.600 Because that is not a matter of whether you are saved or 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:57.120 damned, if this is some historical event outside Scripture. 00:15:57.120 --> 00:15:59.760 And so it doesn't matter, for instance, if you believe the North 00:15:59.760 --> 00:16:02.480 or the South was in the right with regard to the Civil 00:16:02.480 --> 00:16:05.200 War. That is not a matter of whether or not you will 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:06.080 be saved. 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:08.560 That is not a matter that is central to the faith. 00:16:08.560 --> 00:16:11.040 It may be a very important matter, and as American I certainly 00:16:11.040 --> 00:16:14.480 would say that Would say that it is, but it is not 00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:17.680 a tenet of the faith, and so it is not something that 00:16:17.680 --> 00:16:20.640 falls under blasphemy laws. 00:16:20.640 --> 00:16:24.880 Because blasphemy is to speak falsely of God, and that is why 00:16:24.880 --> 00:16:25.680 this matters, of course. 00:16:25.920 --> 00:16:30.400 It also ties into, of course, the first and the second commandment. 00:16:30.400 --> 00:16:34.720 But primarily, this is a matter of whether or not what you 00:16:34.720 --> 00:16:37.920 are saying about God, whether it is in your words or in 00:16:37.920 --> 00:16:41.760 your behavior, the things that you are asserting about God, whether or 00:16:41.760 --> 00:16:43.600 not they are true. 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:47.680 Because if they align with Scripture, then they are true. 00:16:47.680 --> 00:16:50.880 If they are contrary to Scripture, then they are false, and if 00:16:50.880 --> 00:16:55.280 they're outside of Scripture and you're saying this particular thing is still 00:16:55.280 --> 00:16:59.920 blasphemous, and so you're damned if you say this thing. 00:16:59.920 --> 00:17:01.760 That's worship of a false god. 00:17:02.160 --> 00:17:05.040 That is rejection of the Lord God. 00:17:05.040 --> 00:17:07.760 That is why it matters, and that is why we say you 00:17:07.760 --> 00:17:12.320 must turn to scripture for this, because if you're turning somewhere else, 00:17:12.320 --> 00:17:15.440 you are setting up an idol and you are turning away from 00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:16.720 the Lord God. 00:17:16.720 --> 00:17:21.760 As we've said many times before, in this life you are always 00:17:21.760 --> 00:17:26.400 and with everything you do, travelling Godward or hellward. 00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:28.960 That is what is at stake in these matters. 00:17:29.360 --> 00:17:33.040 If you are rebuking someone, you are rebuking him because you believe 00:17:33.040 --> 00:17:36.880 that he is turning away from God, which means he is moving 00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:39.760 hellward, and you want to turn him back to God. 00:17:39.760 --> 00:17:42.960 You want him turning Godward Because that's the ultimate goal. 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:47.680 The goal is for everyone to run the race, to persevere. 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:51.360 And so if someone has walked off the path, walked off the 00:17:51.360 --> 00:17:54.400 track, and he's going down some rabbit trail or he's going the 00:17:54.400 --> 00:17:58.240 wrong way, you want to tell him, and part of the reason 00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:00.720 you want to tell him, of course it's your duty to God, 00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:03.680 but it is also because you want him to tell you if 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:05.520 you do that in the future. 00:18:05.520 --> 00:18:08.640 And so that's the issue, which one of you is right? 00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:10.160 Are you traveling in the right direction? 00:18:10.560 --> 00:18:12.400 Is he traveling in the wrong direction? 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:13.920 Or is it the other way around? 00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:17.040 Because someone is going to be wrong. 00:18:17.120 --> 00:18:19.600 So the first half of this that we're going to talk about 00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:22.400 that will be the shorter half is the duty to receive this 00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:24.800 sort of correction rebuke. 00:18:24.800 --> 00:18:28.080 And it's important that the things we're talking about have to be 00:18:28.080 --> 00:18:29.360 sin, as Corey said. 00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:30.560 We're talking about sins. 00:18:30.560 --> 00:18:33.760 We're not talking about things where your opinion is either, you know, 00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:36.880 not historically defensible or whatever. 00:18:36.880 --> 00:18:40.640 Is this going to cause your damnation by itself? 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:44.720 And that's crucial because there are a lot of things where we 00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:47.040 make small mistakes, small sins. 00:18:47.040 --> 00:18:50.000 You know, I say mistake, I'm not trying to paper over something. 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:53.200 When Adam ate the wrong piece of fruit, it was a small 00:18:53.200 --> 00:18:56.400 mistake. You know, it was it was a it was practically a 00:18:56.400 --> 00:18:58.160 a process violation. 00:18:58.160 --> 00:19:00.000 And yet we all die because of it. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:01.520 Because God said don't do that. 00:19:01.520 --> 00:19:02.880 That's off limits. 00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:03.840 That was sin. 00:19:03.840 --> 00:19:05.600 I'm not minimizing it in the slightest. 00:19:05.600 --> 00:19:09.280 I'm saying that when we're looking at sin versus looking at just 00:19:09.600 --> 00:19:12.800 mistakes, we have to be very clear about where we're getting this 00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:13.760 stuff from. 00:19:13.760 --> 00:19:17.520 And so when we're receiving correction, we're receiving the rebuke of our 00:19:17.520 --> 00:19:21.600 own sins, we have to always have we're gonna talk about the 00:19:21.600 --> 00:19:23.760 always, because that's part of the problem here. 00:19:23.760 --> 00:19:28.160 We as a Christian should have the default position, the default position, 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:31.120 not the universal position, but your default approach. 00:19:31.120 --> 00:19:35.680 That if a Christian brother comes to you and says, Brother, I 00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:40.240 believe that you're sinning by X, our default position should be to 00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:43.760 hear him out and to take it seriously. 00:19:43.760 --> 00:19:45.760 Now this is all occurring in a vacuum. 00:19:45.760 --> 00:19:49.360 This is a perfectly spherical cow simulation in physics. 00:19:49.360 --> 00:19:50.960 That should be your position. 00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:52.800 Somebody comes to you and says, I think you're sinning, you should 00:19:53.280 --> 00:19:55.120 hear them out. 00:19:55.120 --> 00:19:57.440 In reality, it's never that simple. 00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:01.360 And so that's where you know the personality conflicts and history and 00:20:01.360 --> 00:20:04.640 all the other things come into play sometimes for the sake of 00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:08.640 streamlining, but often for the sake of greater sin and disruption. 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:11.760 So if somebody comes to you, you first have to ask, you 00:20:11.760 --> 00:20:13.840 know, is this guy even Christian? 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:16.240 If it's someone who's known to you, who's you know not only 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:20.560 a brother, but someone you have a relationship with, absolutely, you should 00:20:20.560 --> 00:20:22.400 take that much more seriously. 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:25.280 On the other hand, you know, on the internet, for example, I 00:20:25.280 --> 00:20:29.520 routinely have people in my mentions and elsewhere saying things like Jesus 00:20:29.520 --> 00:20:32.880 is actually Satan, saying that the Trinity is a heresy and I'm 00:20:32.800 --> 00:20:35.040 going to hell for confessing the Trinity. 00:20:35.040 --> 00:20:36.400 Those are rebukes. 00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:39.680 And those people and often in many cases claim to be Christian, 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:42.080 even while they're saying that Jesus is Satan. 00:20:42.080 --> 00:20:46.080 And so when we say that the default position should be to 00:20:46.080 --> 00:20:50.000 hear out someone who says he's a Christian brother and he's rebuking 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.160 your sin, that doesn't mean you're stupid. 00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:56.240 If someone comes to you and says something blasphemous, you silence them. 00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:57.920 You don't hear them out. 00:20:57.920 --> 00:21:01.360 You don't argue and debate and try to find common cause with 00:21:01.360 --> 00:21:02.960 someone who's a blasphemer. 00:21:02.960 --> 00:21:08.560 And while those are extreme examples, they're also pretty common, unfortunately, today. 00:21:08.560 --> 00:21:12.240 Because not only is the world very far gone, but it's also 00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:15.280 particularly far gone within the church, where we have people who say, 00:21:15.280 --> 00:21:20.080 Oh, I'm Christian, and I believe all this insane crap that is 00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:22.080 demonstrably damnable. 00:21:22.080 --> 00:21:25.040 So the fact that someone is coming to you with a rebuke 00:21:25.280 --> 00:21:28.160 by itself doesn't necessarily tell you anything. 00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:31.920 As we've said many times, especially in the last year, just because 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:35.840 somebody says he's Christian doesn't mean anything anymore Which is tragic. 00:21:35.840 --> 00:21:37.200 That should not be the case. 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:40.400 If someone comes to you and says, I'm a Christian brother and 00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:43.840 I have a concern, we should be able to just take that 00:21:43.840 --> 00:21:45.840 wide open, whoever it is. 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:48.960 The reality is that if you were to do that every single 00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:52.400 time, particularly if you're engaging with a lot of people, almost every 00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:55.040 one of those is going to be some sort of demonic attack. 00:21:55.120 --> 00:21:58.320 You're going to be someone speaking the teachings of demons, saying things 00:21:58.320 --> 00:22:01.280 that are false sins or true sins and trying to get you 00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:03.920 to confess false sins to a false God. 00:22:03.920 --> 00:22:05.600 You can't do that. 00:22:05.600 --> 00:22:08.160 So at the same time, like this is why part of the 00:22:08.320 --> 00:22:11.040 is a profound matter of wisdom is that you have to have 00:22:11.040 --> 00:22:14.800 an open heart as in a Christian to receive rebuke. 00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:18.080 But you also have to have discernment, which goes back to the 00:22:18.080 --> 00:22:18.640 first point. 00:22:18.640 --> 00:22:20.240 You got to be pointing at God. 00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:24.400 So whenever someone comes to you, however, they frame it, if they 00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:28.480 say XYZ is a sin, you need to look at your own 00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:31.920 heart and your own actions and say, am I still pointing at 00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:33.920 God in this particular instance? 00:22:33.920 --> 00:22:34.880 Not in your whole life. 00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:36.560 You know, maybe you have everything squared away. 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:38.640 And maybe there's just one blind spot that you have. 00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:39.680 We all have them. 00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:43.200 Anyone who says he's free from sin deceives himself and the truth 00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:44.160 is not in him. 00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:45.280 God said that somewhere. 00:22:45.280 --> 00:22:46.480 It's pretty important. 00:22:46.480 --> 00:22:50.160 Every single one of us has blind spots, even podcasters. 00:22:50.160 --> 00:22:53.200 The point is when someone comes to you and says that, you 00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:54.880 have to say, okay, I take it seriously. 00:22:54.960 --> 00:22:56.160 I've said in the past I do. 00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:00.000 If someone is mad about something I said, my first response isn't 00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:00.960 to disregard them. 00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:05.200 My first response internally, you know, in a millisecond is early right? 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:06.560 Because that's all that matters. 00:23:06.560 --> 00:23:10.800 If someone rebukes something as sin, the only thing that matters is 00:23:10.800 --> 00:23:13.760 not whether you like them, it's not whether you like their tone 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:16.960 of voice, it's not how it makes you feel, the only question 00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:18.720 that matters is is it right? 00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:20.480 Does God actually condemn this? 00:23:20.480 --> 00:23:22.320 And you may not be able to figure it out in one 00:23:22.320 --> 00:23:25.600 conversation. You know, in the case where someone who is a Christian 00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:28.480 brother comes to you and says, I'm concerned about something, I believe 00:23:28.480 --> 00:23:32.400 you've sinned against me, or in whatever regard, whether it's a theological 00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:38.080 dispute or it's personal action or whatever, it's perfectly acceptable for you 00:23:38.080 --> 00:23:40.080 as a Christian to say, thank you. 00:23:40.080 --> 00:23:41.280 I need to think about this. 00:23:41.280 --> 00:23:42.880 I need to study the scripture. 00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:43.600 I need to pray. 00:23:43.600 --> 00:23:45.360 And oh And I'll get back to you. 00:23:45.360 --> 00:23:48.320 And both of you should be free as Christians to leave it 00:23:48.320 --> 00:23:49.200 at that. 00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:52.000 And I think this is a crucial aspect of this, both giving 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:55.760 and receiving rebuke, is that you're not trying to fix the person. 00:23:55.760 --> 00:23:57.920 You're not trying to say, you're wrong, I gotta fix this right 00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:00.720 now, you gotta straighten up, you gotta get on your knees and 00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:02.000 confess your sins. 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:06.960 If repentance is actually required, then yeah, that's going to follow. 00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:09.440 But it doesn't need to immediately happen because you're not trying to 00:24:09.440 --> 00:24:10.160 win an argument. 00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:12.000 You're not trying to beat the other guy. 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:13.680 You're not trying to increase your score. 00:24:13.680 --> 00:24:16.640 You're trying to make sure the both of you are pointed at 00:24:16.640 --> 00:24:20.720 God. And that should in most cases take time. 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:24.080 In many episodes, we have said and will continue to say, don't 00:24:24.080 --> 00:24:27.120 just believe us because we said something that you haven't heard before. 00:24:27.120 --> 00:24:30.000 Especially if, you know, not only have you disagreed with it in 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:33.040 the past, you've been taught the opposite, but it's going to reorient 00:24:33.200 --> 00:24:37.680 something about your faith, your default position should be not to budge, 00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:39.360 but to look, to study. 00:24:39.360 --> 00:24:42.240 And if it turns out that you need to budge, and it 00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:46.240 turns out you need to nudge your compass to point towards magnetic 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:49.600 north, God's north, then that's you interacting with God. 00:24:49.760 --> 00:24:54.000 It's not you interacting with a particular person's argument or their condemnation. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.920 It's always about what has God said and who is in accord 00:24:57.920 --> 00:24:58.560 with it. 00:24:58.560 --> 00:25:00.160 Maybe it's neither of you. 00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:02.480 And you know, another aspect of this, maybe somebody comes to you 00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:05.360 and accuses you of something, at that point there is a sin. 00:25:05.360 --> 00:25:09.840 If you are the recipient of rebuke of error and someone comes 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:13.360 you, says you've sinned, at that point there's absolutely a sin on 00:25:13.360 --> 00:25:14.000 the table. 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:16.640 Either you're wrong and you need to figure it out and you 00:25:16.640 --> 00:25:21.280 need to repent and confess, or they're wrong, and they need to 00:25:21.280 --> 00:25:24.000 be rebuked and repent and confess. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:27.520 And so in some ways it's important for these controversies to arise 00:25:27.520 --> 00:25:31.120 among us because it's going to strengthen everyone's faith if we're actually 00:25:31.120 --> 00:25:35.280 Christian. If these disputes and debates occur and somebody's like, well, this 00:25:35.280 --> 00:25:38.320 is wrong, and you say, no, actually this is wrong, if you're 00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:41.360 both honest and you both have faith, your faith is going to 00:25:41.360 --> 00:25:43.120 be strengthened by the outcome of that disagreement 00:25:44.400 --> 00:25:48.240 because you're gonna hammer it out and you're going to find that 00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:50.480 one of you is an error and at the end of it 00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:54.400 ideally god willing and if you have repentant hearts you'll both be 00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:57.040 correct. you'll both now be pointed at God. 00:25:57.040 --> 00:25:59.840 And so the orientation may be that you have to straighten out, 00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:01.920 or maybe you have to straighten out your friend. 00:26:01.920 --> 00:26:04.480 He comes to you and he thought one thing he was mistaken. 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:05.760 You figured out together. 00:26:05.760 --> 00:26:08.160 Maybe you need to involve a pastor or someone else who's like, 00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:10.080 hey, can you help us understand this? 00:26:10.080 --> 00:26:11.120 We disagree. 00:26:11.120 --> 00:26:11.920 What do you think? 00:26:11.920 --> 00:26:14.160 Help us figure this out from scripture. 00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:17.520 Sometimes it involves the rest of the church, not in a big 00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:19.440 public sense, but just other believers. 00:26:19.680 --> 00:26:22.400 Where there are two or three are gathered, there he is with 00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:27.440 us. And so when disputes arise, I think it's important that we 00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:32.880 don't take them as personal confrontations, as fights, as emotional things, as 00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:36.080 matters of reputation and of feelings. 00:26:36.080 --> 00:26:39.680 Take it as a matter of okay, we're gonna learn about God 00:26:39.680 --> 00:26:43.280 today. Somebody thought something different than somebody else. 00:26:43.280 --> 00:26:44.880 Let's figure out what God says. 00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:48.000 You're gonna have a Bible study, you're gonna pray, you're gonna discuss, 00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:49.920 and iron is gonna sharpen iron. 00:26:49.920 --> 00:26:53.280 That's a cause for joy, even when someone's gonna be proven wrong 00:26:53.280 --> 00:26:54.240 in the process. 00:26:54.240 --> 00:26:56.480 Because in the end, if you're brought to repentance and you're the 00:26:56.480 --> 00:26:59.200 one receiving it and your brother is correct and he rebukes you, 00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:00.800 and you're like, You're right. 00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:01.920 Amen. Thank you. 00:27:01.920 --> 00:27:02.720 I'm sorry. 00:27:02.720 --> 00:27:04.240 To him, to God. 00:27:04.240 --> 00:27:07.680 Whatever the sin was, to have someone straighten you out as a 00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:11.280 Christian brother is one of the great joys of the Christian faith. 00:27:11.280 --> 00:27:16.080 Because it's strengthening everyone within the body of Christ. 00:27:16.080 --> 00:27:17.520 It's not about ego. 00:27:17.520 --> 00:27:19.440 It's not about one-upsmanship. 00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:22.560 It's about us all pointing in the same direction, pointing at God. 00:27:22.560 --> 00:27:25.840 And so when you receive these sorts of corrections, you should have 00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:27.200 an open heart. 00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:29.520 At the same time, you need to make sure that you're understanding 00:27:29.520 --> 00:27:31.680 and filtering what's coming in. 00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:34.720 Is it true rebuke or is it an attack? 00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:36.160 It's gonna be one or the other. 00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:37.760 Well, it could be three things. 00:27:37.760 --> 00:27:40.800 It could be true rebuke, it could be your brother airing, or 00:27:40.800 --> 00:27:41.840 it could be an attack. 00:27:41.840 --> 00:27:46.000 And those are three fundamentally different problems that all need to be 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:48.880 received and solved in different ways. 00:27:49.520 --> 00:27:53.840 We should always view these conflicts both as an opportunity 00:27:54.800 --> 00:28:01.280 for improvement and as an opportunity for deepening our faith and deepening 00:28:01.280 --> 00:28:03.520 our knowledge of the Christian faith. 00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:08.480 But they also have to be pursued as that sort of opportunity. 00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:11.760 Again, not as a conflict in the sense of a conflict of 00:28:11.760 --> 00:28:15.120 personalities or an interpersonal conflict. 00:28:15.120 --> 00:28:18.960 This is an intellectual, really, is one way to put it, sort 00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:19.920 of conflict. 00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:21.200 This is dispassionate. 00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:25.600 This is not like Wo said, it should not be emotional. 00:28:25.600 --> 00:28:31.520 This is not where one man is staking his reputation and something 00:28:31.520 --> 00:28:33.440 personally on this matter. 00:28:33.440 --> 00:28:36.320 It's whether or not you're right about the things of God, and 00:28:36.320 --> 00:28:39.280 that is what is fundamentally and centrally important. 00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:41.760 Are you oriented rightly toward God? 00:28:41.760 --> 00:28:45.280 Are you believing rightly with regard to God 00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:51.840 If you were out hiking and you were just wandering along the 00:28:51.840 --> 00:28:56.320 trail and you happened upon another hiker, and he asked you where 00:28:56.320 --> 00:28:58.960 you're going, you ask him where he's going, you say, I'm going 00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:02.880 to visit this waterfall, and he tells you you're going to have 00:29:02.880 --> 00:29:07.040 a hard time finding it because you're walking the wrong way. 00:29:07.040 --> 00:29:10.960 You're probably going to consult whatever map you happen to have with 00:29:10.960 --> 00:29:14.080 you to figure out which one of you is right, because if 00:29:14.080 --> 00:29:17.040 you want to see that waterfall, it kind of matters that you're 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:20.000 walking toward the waterfall. 00:29:20.080 --> 00:29:24.320 These matters are significantly more important than whether or not you get 00:29:24.320 --> 00:29:26.720 to see a pretty waterfall. 00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.840 We should treat them the same way you would treat that sort 00:29:29.840 --> 00:29:32.880 of you can call it a conflict, but not in the sense 00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:36.080 that's usually imported with that word word in English. 00:29:36.080 --> 00:29:38.160 It's a disagreement. 00:29:38.160 --> 00:29:41.760 One of you says it's this way, the other man says it's 00:29:41.760 --> 00:29:42.640 that way. 00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:45.680 You look to the standard, in that case a map, in this 00:29:45.680 --> 00:29:49.360 case scripture, and figure out which one of you is right. 00:29:49.760 --> 00:29:53.680 And if that man proves that he knows where the waterfall is, 00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:57.680 maybe he's a local and you're hiking somewhere on vacation, you don't 00:29:57.600 --> 00:30:00.880 know the area, you're going to thank him, and you'll be glad 00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:04.240 that you listen to him, because that's the right way to receive 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:05.440 that correction. 00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:07.840 He's actually doing you a service. 00:30:07.840 --> 00:30:11.200 The same is true with regard to our Christian brothers. 00:30:11.200 --> 00:30:14.240 If we rebuke them for their error, we are doing them a 00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:17.920 service, it's also service to God, of course, and if they then 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:22.560 in turn rebuke us for some error later down the line in 00:30:22.560 --> 00:30:25.840 which we have engaged something false that we believe or if they 00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:31.040 correct us on this specific issue because perhaps our initial correction was 00:30:31.040 --> 00:30:35.120 not a correction, we were in error, and our Christian brother was 00:30:35.120 --> 00:30:42.160 correct, the person receiving that correction should rejoice because you 00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:44.960 now no longer believe something false. 00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:47.920 Some error to which you held has been removed. 00:30:47.920 --> 00:30:50.880 That's always a good thing. 00:30:50.880 --> 00:30:56.480 In many parts of our lives we think of correction in those 00:30:56.480 --> 00:31:02.400 terms. If someone helps you with cooking and tells you the reason 00:31:02.400 --> 00:31:06.720 that that burned is X, Y, and Z, and then you take 00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:10.240 that into account and next time whatever you were making doesn't burn, 00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:13.680 you don't get angry at that person, you thank him for helping 00:31:13.680 --> 00:31:16.320 you not burn the dish this time. 00:31:16.320 --> 00:31:21.280 We should of course think of these conflicts in theological or doctrinal 00:31:21.280 --> 00:31:23.520 matters in the same way. 00:31:23.520 --> 00:31:28.160 If your brother helps you to see correctly, that is a wonderful 00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:30.800 thing. He has done his duty as a Christian brother, and you 00:31:30.800 --> 00:31:35.200 have And you have received that Christian comfort because you have Christian 00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:41.600 brothers. Which raises a tangential point that is very important, one we've 00:31:41.600 --> 00:31:45.520 made many times, and scripture bluntly states, do not forsake the gathering 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:47.600 together of the saints. 00:31:47.600 --> 00:31:51.120 One of the reasons that you have Christian brothers, one of the 00:31:51.120 --> 00:31:54.560 reasons you go to church and maintain these relationships and have Bible 00:31:54.560 --> 00:31:57.840 studies and all these various other things is that Is that so 00:31:57.840 --> 00:32:01.280 that you have men around you who can help you in your 00:32:01.280 --> 00:32:06.800 Christian walk, in your Christian faith, so that maybe there's some issue 00:32:06.800 --> 00:32:10.720 on which this particular Christian brother is more knowledgeable. 00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:12.960 He spent more time studying it in scripture. 00:32:12.960 --> 00:32:14.560 He can explain it better. 00:32:14.560 --> 00:32:16.880 Maybe you're better at another issue. 00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:21.040 As Woe said and as Proverbs says, iron sharpens iron. 00:32:21.040 --> 00:32:24.240 This is what we do as Christian brothers, we help each other 00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:25.840 with regard to the faith. 00:32:25.840 --> 00:32:29.040 Some men have been given the gift of teaching and interpretation and 00:32:29.040 --> 00:32:33.600 these other things, some men perhaps have less of that. 00:32:33.600 --> 00:32:35.760 All parts of the body are important, but when it comes to 00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:40.400 these sorts of conflict these sorts of conflicts, we turn to the 00:32:40.400 --> 00:32:43.920 Word of God, and we find the truth there, and then we 00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:46.960 rejoice whether we are corrected or whether we are the one doing 00:32:46.960 --> 00:32:47.840 the correcting 00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:53.920 Because the outcome is that everyone improves. 00:32:53.920 --> 00:32:58.640 Even if, say, you are the one doing the correcting, and you 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:02.240 are right, the other man is in fact in error. 00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:03.920 He receives the correction. 00:33:03.920 --> 00:33:05.920 He amends what he believes. 00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:07.120 You are both better off. 00:33:07.120 --> 00:33:09.920 And the reason you are better off is not just because you've 00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:11.120 done your duty to God. 00:33:11.120 --> 00:33:12.720 Of course, that is paramount. 00:33:12.720 --> 00:33:14.320 That's always of paramount importance. 00:33:15.360 --> 00:33:19.600 But when you teach these things, you will improve your own knowledge 00:33:19.600 --> 00:33:20.320 of them. 00:33:20.320 --> 00:33:25.360 Anyone who is engaged in teaching really any subject will be able 00:33:25.360 --> 00:33:31.840 to tell you what Very truthfully and with firsthand knowledge, teaching a 00:33:31.840 --> 00:33:35.520 subject improves your own understanding of the subject. 00:33:35.520 --> 00:33:38.560 That is one of the ways, in fact, that you can best 00:33:38.560 --> 00:33:42.800 deepen your understanding of some even a new subject is explain it 00:33:42.800 --> 00:33:44.000 to someone else. 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:47.280 Because in explaining it you have to solidify your own thinking. 00:33:47.280 --> 00:33:51.200 You have to shore up how you present the information and how 00:33:51.200 --> 00:33:52.400 you understand it. 00:33:52.400 --> 00:33:55.120 And so you will deepen your own understanding. 00:33:55.120 --> 00:33:59.520 There are benefits all around to those correcting and to those being 00:33:59.520 --> 00:34:03.440 corrected. And we should see this as a good thing as a 00:34:03.440 --> 00:34:07.920 part of the Christian life, as something that one Christian brother does 00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:09.360 for another. 00:34:09.360 --> 00:34:13.200 Not just again, not just because you're looking for some benefit in 00:34:13.200 --> 00:34:15.280 the future of that person doing the same for you. 00:34:15.440 --> 00:34:16.880 Of course that's part of it. 00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:20.480 But because as we mentioned, with the first major point in this 00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:23.760 episode, it is your duty to God. 00:34:23.760 --> 00:34:28.800 These things are about God's honor, they are about God's truth, and 00:34:29.040 --> 00:34:31.840 above all else we have to defend that. 00:34:32.160 --> 00:34:35.920 And so bear in mind that if you have a Christian brother 00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:39.840 who brings some correction to you who says I believe that you 00:34:39.840 --> 00:34:44.720 are in error on this point, because God's word says this in 00:34:44.720 --> 00:34:49.600 these places places, recognize that he is doing his duty as a 00:34:49.600 --> 00:34:54.720 Christian, because what he is doing is he is defending God's truth, 00:34:54.720 --> 00:34:58.880 and secondarily he is also seeking to aid you in your Christian 00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:01.920 life, to aid To aid you in your faith by correcting what 00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:03.920 he believes to be an error. 00:35:03.920 --> 00:35:07.120 And if he is right, then you are better off because you've 00:35:07.120 --> 00:35:07.760 been corrected. 00:35:07.760 --> 00:35:11.520 If he's wrong, you have the opportunity to help him. 00:35:11.520 --> 00:35:14.800 That is how we should view these things that is how we 00:35:14.800 --> 00:35:19.520 should respond to them, instead of letting them turn into acrimonious conflicts 00:35:19.520 --> 00:35:23.360 of personality or whatever else it happens to be. 00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:27.360 But as Wo mentioned at the outset of this part of the 00:35:27.360 --> 00:35:31.920 episode, this does all come with an important caveat. 00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:36.720 We're dealing with brothers correcting brothers, and in this case I do 00:35:36.720 --> 00:35:41.360 mean the broader sense of brother, because of course our Christian sisters 00:35:41.360 --> 00:35:42.480 are also part of this. 00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:46.000 That plays into this differently, because there are differences between men and 00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:49.920 women. We've gone over those in previous episodes. 00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:53.840 But women are also part of this, because one of the core 00:35:53.840 --> 00:35:58.080 duties, of course, of a Christian man is to see that his 00:35:58.080 --> 00:36:01.920 wife is trained properly in the faith, is to instruct her, because 00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:05.360 he is the first and foremost teacher in her life with regard 00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:06.320 to the Christian faith. 00:36:06.320 --> 00:36:08.880 That's one of his duties, and he should of course take that 00:36:08.880 --> 00:36:10.480 very seriously. 00:36:10.480 --> 00:36:13.440 And so spend more time in the scriptures. 00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:16.560 But to return to the caveat, today we deal with 00:36:17.600 --> 00:36:23.280 far more people than anyone ever in the past, with the only 00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:27.920 possible exception being, say, a king who held audiences and so would 00:36:27.920 --> 00:36:30.080 see many of his subjects. 00:36:30.240 --> 00:36:33.760 In the past, you knew a tiny handful of people who lived 00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:37.200 around you, unless perhaps you're a traveling merchant or something. 00:36:37.200 --> 00:36:38.800 You didn't know very many people. 00:36:38.800 --> 00:36:41.040 You didn't interact with very many people. 00:36:41.040 --> 00:36:45.520 There wasn't opportunity for those people to tell To tell you you're 00:36:45.520 --> 00:36:46.720 wrong, or 00:36:47.680 --> 00:36:52.080 maliciously perhaps to tell you you're wrong in some cases, that's no 00:36:52.080 --> 00:36:55.120 longer the case because we have things like social media. 00:36:55.120 --> 00:36:59.920 If I post something on Twitter, it is going to be seen 00:36:59.920 --> 00:37:04.480 by thousands of people I will never meet, or even tens of 00:37:04.480 --> 00:37:07.920 thousands of people I will never meet, or if it's something controversial, 00:37:07.920 --> 00:37:10.480 perhaps more than that. 00:37:10.480 --> 00:37:14.320 Every single person who replies to that does not have to be 00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:19.200 taken as seriously as I would take a Christian brother, particularly a 00:37:19.200 --> 00:37:24.160 Christian brother, whom I know well, who's been a friend perhaps for 00:37:24.160 --> 00:37:29.040 many years, a Christian brother I trust, and so for instance, if 00:37:29.200 --> 00:37:31.920 woe were to come to me and tell me he believes I 00:37:31.920 --> 00:37:36.240 am wrong about song about some particular issue of the Christian faith, 00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:38.720 I would take that very seriously. 00:37:38.720 --> 00:37:44.960 If someone with bright blue hair and a listing of Marvel movies 00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:48.720 in his bio pops up pops up in my Twitter mentions and 00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:52.080 tells me that he believes I am wrong about some facet of 00:37:52.080 --> 00:37:57.680 the Christian religion or I'm wrong about Jesus and his nature. 00:37:57.680 --> 00:38:00.400 I am not going to take that as seriously as I would 00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:03.600 take woe telling me that I am in error. 00:38:03.600 --> 00:38:07.760 And that is exactly how a Christian should respond to these things. 00:38:07.760 --> 00:38:11.840 If someone, some random person on the internet, tells you that you 00:38:11.840 --> 00:38:17.360 are in error with regard to the Christian religion. 00:38:17.360 --> 00:38:22.160 I'm not saying that you can just immediately dismiss that as being 00:38:22.160 --> 00:38:27.120 nothing. If you read that and your conscience is not pricked in 00:38:27.120 --> 00:38:30.240 any way whatsoever, you can probably just dismiss it. 00:38:30.240 --> 00:38:34.000 If however you think that there might be a point there, go 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:37.200 and discuss it with your actual Christian brothers. 00:38:37.200 --> 00:38:41.120 Those men you know to be Christians, those men you can trust. 00:38:41.120 --> 00:38:44.640 You don't have to discuss it with this random person about whom 00:38:44.640 --> 00:38:47.120 you know nothing on the internet. 00:38:47.120 --> 00:38:50.960 That's probably not going to be as productive as if you raise 00:38:50.960 --> 00:38:53.920 the issue in your Bible study. 00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:57.440 You could say someone asked me a question or someone said I 00:38:57.440 --> 00:38:59.680 was wrong about this particular thing. 00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:01.040 What do you think? 00:39:01.040 --> 00:39:03.040 That's iron sharpening iron. 00:39:03.040 --> 00:39:07.360 That's discussing something with a Christian brother, so you can both deepen 00:39:07.360 --> 00:39:11.280 your understanding of the subject, and you can quiet your conscience if 00:39:11.280 --> 00:39:14.480 you had some sort of doubt because of something raised by a 00:39:14.480 --> 00:39:16.320 random person. 00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:21.040 You simply cannot take every single comment that comes your way in 00:39:21.040 --> 00:39:24.560 the modern world and treat it the same way you would 00:39:25.680 --> 00:39:29.520 another member of your church, if he had raised the issue. 00:39:29.520 --> 00:39:32.080 Because if you do that, it will not only absorb all of 00:39:32.080 --> 00:39:34.720 your time, it will probably drive you insane. 00:39:34.720 --> 00:39:38.720 So there are some caveats with this when it comes to modern 00:39:38.720 --> 00:39:42.160 life, because this is an issue of wisdom, and part of that 00:39:42.240 --> 00:39:47.360 wisdom is knowing what to take seriously and what not to take 00:39:47.360 --> 00:39:50.880 seriously, or at least not as seriously. 00:39:50.880 --> 00:39:52.480 You have to filter that. 00:39:52.480 --> 00:39:55.200 The same way that you filter everything else in life. 00:39:55.200 --> 00:39:59.200 You don't believe every single email you receive at face value. 00:39:59.200 --> 00:40:01.760 If you did, you would probably have been scammed out of all 00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:03.840 of your money by now. 00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:06.960 So we recognize that you have to do this filtering. 00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:10.960 The same is true with regard to to issues 00:40:11.840 --> 00:40:14.720 dealing with theology, dealing with the Christian faith. 00:40:14.720 --> 00:40:17.360 As Woe said, there are three possibilities. 00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:20.160 You can have a Christian brother who is coming to you earnestly, 00:40:20.160 --> 00:40:22.720 who believes that you are in error, you could have the Christian 00:40:22.720 --> 00:40:26.240 brother doing that who is himself in error, and there's always that 00:40:26.240 --> 00:40:27.040 third option. 00:40:27.040 --> 00:40:30.880 There could be someone who is doing it maliciously, and that is 00:40:30.880 --> 00:40:36.160 very often the case in the modern context, particularly on social media. 00:40:36.160 --> 00:40:36.720 Do we have 00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:41.360 Which is precisely why Paul's admonition that all scripture is breathed out 00:40:41.360 --> 00:40:45.440 by God and is useful for reproof and rebuke and correction of 00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:49.120 error is the central thesis of all of this. 00:40:49.120 --> 00:40:52.080 I'm not even going to call scripture a tiebreaker because scripture should 00:40:52.080 --> 00:40:53.120 be the source. 00:40:53.120 --> 00:40:55.680 It shouldn't be well my opinion and then your opinion and let's 00:40:55.680 --> 00:40:56.640 see what the Bible says. 00:40:56.640 --> 00:41:00.000 No. If you're coming to a man and you're trying to correct 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:03.600 him and you didn't begin with the Bible, you have already sinned. 00:41:03.600 --> 00:41:07.680 You shouldn't be getting anything that you're going to admonish a man 00:41:07.680 --> 00:41:10.400 for sin anywhere other than the Bible. 00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:13.680 And so, you know, it's important, I think, when when we remember 00:41:13.680 --> 00:41:17.520 that passage, that when Paul wrote that, only the Old Testament existed. 00:41:17.520 --> 00:41:19.680 The New Testament didn't exist yet. 00:41:19.680 --> 00:41:24.480 Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude were in the 00:41:24.480 --> 00:41:26.640 process of writing the New Testament. 00:41:26.640 --> 00:41:30.720 So when God says all scripture is breathed out by God, it's 00:41:30.720 --> 00:41:34.240 inclusive of all scripture that we have today, but they were only 00:41:34.240 --> 00:41:36.240 talking about the Old Testament at that time. 00:41:36.240 --> 00:41:37.440 It's true of both. 00:41:37.600 --> 00:41:40.240 I mentioned this specifically because A, uh 00:41:41.200 --> 00:41:44.880 We give short shrift to the Old Testament in many cases in 00:41:44.880 --> 00:41:46.560 a lot of these discussions today. 00:41:46.560 --> 00:41:51.520 It's very common for people who call themselves Christian inside the church 00:41:51.520 --> 00:41:55.760 to set the Old Testament against the New Testament in effectively to 00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:58.320 confess that there are kind of two gods in play where the 00:41:58.320 --> 00:42:00.240 God really changed his mind. 00:42:00.240 --> 00:42:02.800 We have a lesser God and a greater God or a meaner 00:42:02.800 --> 00:42:05.280 God and a loving God. 00:42:05.280 --> 00:42:08.000 That's when you know that you're dealing with someone who's not an 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:10.960 error. You're dealing with the teachings of demons. 00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:13.760 And the second minor point today, but that's going to be a 00:42:13.760 --> 00:42:16.640 major point for a couple upcoming episodes, is that when they were 00:42:16.640 --> 00:42:20.240 talking about that, they were talking almost exclusively about the Greek Old 00:42:20.240 --> 00:42:23.920 Testament. Virtually none of the quotations in the New Testament come from 00:42:23.920 --> 00:42:24.720 the Hebrew. 00:42:24.720 --> 00:42:26.880 That'll be a subject for a future day, but I just want 00:42:26.880 --> 00:42:30.480 to prime you guys if you're not already on Twitter following some 00:42:30.480 --> 00:42:32.560 of the things we've been discussing there. 00:42:32.560 --> 00:42:35.680 There was a There was a radical change in the church regarding 00:42:35.680 --> 00:42:37.520 the Greek versus the Hebrew. 00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:40.800 And it has a lot of impact on our faith today. 00:42:40.800 --> 00:42:43.600 One of the quotes I'm gonna have a little bit will exemplify 00:42:43.600 --> 00:42:45.760 just how much changed. 00:42:45.760 --> 00:42:49.440 So now that you're primed to be able to receive as a 00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:52.960 Christian the rebuke of another and to be able to filter well 00:42:53.040 --> 00:42:55.200 is this true or is it false? 00:42:55.200 --> 00:42:59.200 We get to the harder subject of how and when do we 00:42:59.200 --> 00:43:01.200 rebuke the errors of others? 00:43:01.440 --> 00:43:05.920 As we said in the persuasiveness matters episode, there are times when 00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:09.680 you just keep your mouth shut because the fact that someone is 00:43:09.680 --> 00:43:14.080 wrong about something is not an occasion for you to necessarily leap 00:43:14.080 --> 00:43:16.240 into action and fix everything. 00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:19.520 And the examples we were giving, they were primarily not theological at 00:43:19.520 --> 00:43:23.120 all, but there may be cases where theology is in play. 00:43:23.280 --> 00:43:25.600 You know, Corey and I are Lutherans. 00:43:25.600 --> 00:43:30.240 This is a Christian podcast in a Lutheran vernacular in some cases, 00:43:30.240 --> 00:43:34.160 in a Lutheran flavor, but most of what we say, I think 00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:37.280 most of our audience just agrees with, is not really a Lutheran 00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:41.680 distinctives. We've done a couple episodes that we've largely sequestered about baptism 00:43:41.680 --> 00:43:45.120 and communion because those are a couple Lutheran distinctives. 00:43:45.120 --> 00:43:48.000 And we did them principally because we had so many people asking. 00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:50.800 That's not a case of us chasing the rest of you down 00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:53.680 the street and yelling at you because we think that you're wrong 00:43:53.680 --> 00:43:56.240 about these things, even though we believe you are wrong. 00:43:56.240 --> 00:43:59.520 And so we made the case in those episodes, here's what we 00:43:59.520 --> 00:44:02.880 believe scripture says about baptism or about communion. 00:44:03.200 --> 00:44:08.080 Those are sealed off areas of disagreement that fall into other areas. 00:44:08.080 --> 00:44:10.000 You know, it's when I say sealed off, I don't mean that 00:44:10.080 --> 00:44:13.760 like the sacraments are isolated in the Christian life. 00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:17.680 But they are particular subjects that are not always in play. 00:44:17.680 --> 00:44:22.080 I think it's something the Lutherans are incredibly bad at, especially today, 00:44:22.080 --> 00:44:26.800 is that because we have a sacramental theology that's sort of in 00:44:26.800 --> 00:44:31.280 opposition to most other denominations, there are a lot of Lutherans that 00:44:31.280 --> 00:44:32.560 that's their comfort zone. 00:44:32.560 --> 00:44:34.320 That's they want to run to that and say, I'm going to 00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:37.520 pick this fight because I got all the sources on my shelf. 00:44:37.520 --> 00:44:40.000 I can make these arguments because they're five centuries old. 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:42.640 I'm going to beat up on those guys because they're wrong. 00:44:42.640 --> 00:44:44.720 And the question that I will always ask is what problem are 00:44:44.720 --> 00:44:45.600 you trying to solve? 00:44:45.600 --> 00:44:47.520 No one's arguing about communion. 00:44:47.760 --> 00:44:49.600 we're talking about trans and kids. 00:44:49.600 --> 00:44:51.360 Shut up about communion. 00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:55.360 And I think that you know, whatever your distinctive is in your 00:44:55.360 --> 00:44:59.760 denomination, when someone comes along and is addressing an issue and you 00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:04.960 say, Shut up about this, it's not the point, it's perceived as 00:45:04.960 --> 00:45:07.520 an attack on the doctrine when it's not, it's a correction of 00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:09.920 the misplaced emphasis. 00:45:10.080 --> 00:45:13.120 I think this is something that virtually all Protestants are guilty of 00:45:13.120 --> 00:45:15.360 today when it comes to the doctrine of justification. 00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:17.680 This is something that came out of the Ogden Conference a couple 00:45:17.760 --> 00:45:20.800 weeks ago, and something I've been saying for a while. 00:45:20.880 --> 00:45:25.280 The fact that justification was the seminal issue of the Reformation doesn't 00:45:25.200 --> 00:45:26.960 mean it's a seminal issue today. 00:45:26.960 --> 00:45:28.960 Satan has moved on. 00:45:28.960 --> 00:45:32.400 And is not the justification is not important. 00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:36.400 Anytime I'm having a conversation with anyone anywhere, if I realize in 00:45:36.400 --> 00:45:40.080 the course of that conversation that they're wrong about justification, meaning they 00:45:40.080 --> 00:45:43.760 think that they can save themselves by whatever degree, I'm gonna stop 00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:46.720 whatever the rest of the conversation is and try to work through 00:45:46.720 --> 00:45:47.760 that first. 00:45:47.760 --> 00:45:52.160 Because whatever else, you know, we agree with in scriptural matters, if 00:45:52.160 --> 00:45:55.600 you think that you can earn your salvation, your salvation is in 00:45:55.600 --> 00:45:58.720 jeopardy. You're in the most extreme danger. 00:45:58.720 --> 00:46:02.480 So when I say something like justification is not the fight right 00:46:02.480 --> 00:46:06.080 now, it is not the justification doesn't matter, it's that it's not 00:46:06.080 --> 00:46:07.680 the pressing issue. 00:46:07.680 --> 00:46:08.880 Because it's very simple. 00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:12.080 I tweeted a couple days ago, it takes sixty seconds to explain 00:46:12.080 --> 00:46:13.680 justification to somebody. 00:46:13.680 --> 00:46:18.480 The fact that there's been reams of paper printed for centuries dealing 00:46:18.480 --> 00:46:21.600 with the errors surrounding it doesn't change the fact that it's a 00:46:21.600 --> 00:46:22.960 very simple question. 00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:24.480 Can I earn my salvation? 00:46:24.480 --> 00:46:25.120 Absolutely not. 00:46:25.680 --> 00:46:26.480 Who did? 00:46:26.480 --> 00:46:29.200 Jesus earned my salvation on the cross. 00:46:29.200 --> 00:46:30.640 He paid for my sins. 00:46:30.640 --> 00:46:32.240 He paid for your sins. 00:46:32.240 --> 00:46:33.600 That's justification. 00:46:33.600 --> 00:46:35.440 It's located on the cross. 00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:38.960 If you try to locate it anywhere else, you're ceasing to be 00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:40.480 a Christian. 00:46:40.480 --> 00:46:43.280 But today, that's not where Satan's attacks are. 00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:45.680 Satan's not attacking justification. 00:46:45.680 --> 00:46:50.400 And so sometimes when we're looking at confronting the errors and others 00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:53.920 others, sometimes we're not even confronting doctrinal errors. 00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:56.640 We're confronting errors of emphasis. 00:46:56.640 --> 00:47:01.280 I will loudly say the Lutherans are talking about almost exclusively the 00:47:01.280 --> 00:47:02.160 wrong things. 00:47:02.160 --> 00:47:05.520 Their heads are in the sixteenth century and they're not paying attention 00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:08.560 to where Satan's attacking, and it makes them virtually worthless. 00:47:08.560 --> 00:47:11.840 In fact, it makes most of them enemies of the church today. 00:47:11.840 --> 00:47:13.520 Not because the doctrine's wrong. 00:47:13.520 --> 00:47:16.560 The doctrine that I hold to that they're trying to defend is 00:47:16.560 --> 00:47:16.880 simply not 00:47:17.760 --> 00:47:19.120 the fight. 00:47:19.120 --> 00:47:22.640 And so the last part of this episode is about talking where 00:47:22.640 --> 00:47:23.360 the fight is. 00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:25.280 So we talked about last week too. 00:47:25.280 --> 00:47:26.720 Where is the battle? 00:47:26.720 --> 00:47:30.320 Because when you're looking to confront the errors of others, and principally 00:47:30.400 --> 00:47:34.400 for this portion, we're gonna be talking about theological error versus you 00:47:34.400 --> 00:47:37.840 know personal sin, although both are involved to some degree. 00:47:37.840 --> 00:47:40.240 And I think that's one of the distinctions we need to make. 00:47:40.400 --> 00:47:43.360 When you're looking at confronting the sin of another, you know, just 00:47:43.440 --> 00:47:46.560 as we talked just a minute ago about someone confronting your sin. 00:47:46.560 --> 00:47:48.960 In some cases it's just gonna be you're wrong about something in 00:47:48.960 --> 00:47:53.200 scripture. That's a bad sin because you have been misled about scripture, 00:47:53.200 --> 00:47:55.360 it's potentially undermining your faith. 00:47:55.360 --> 00:47:57.440 And then there are things where someone needs to confront you because 00:47:57.440 --> 00:47:58.160 you sinned. 00:47:58.160 --> 00:48:01.120 You sinned against them, you sinned against somebody else. 00:48:01.120 --> 00:48:05.200 When you're looking at confronting the sin and error of another, it's 00:48:05.200 --> 00:48:07.520 going to fall into a few different buckets. 00:48:07.520 --> 00:48:11.200 And those And those different categories need to be treated differently. 00:48:11.200 --> 00:48:15.360 If someone has sinned against you personally, you know, say Cory did 00:48:15.520 --> 00:48:18.720 something really mean to me, something sinful against me, I'm not gonna 00:48:18.720 --> 00:48:19.680 tweet about it. 00:48:19.680 --> 00:48:21.360 I'm gonna speak to him privately. 00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:24.960 I'm going to say you did this, this was a sin. 00:48:24.960 --> 00:48:26.240 You need to repent. 00:48:26.240 --> 00:48:27.360 I need to forgive you. 00:48:27.360 --> 00:48:28.880 And all this needs to happen. 00:48:28.880 --> 00:48:30.960 And so you know we figure it out. 00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:33.920 As Christian brothers. 00:48:33.920 --> 00:48:37.840 A lot of what's discussed in the New Testament is specifically focused 00:48:37.840 --> 00:48:38.240 on that. 00:48:38.240 --> 00:48:40.640 It's focused on personal sin. 00:48:41.040 --> 00:48:45.120 And I think the problem that we have today when we're looking 00:48:45.120 --> 00:48:51.600 at scripture for addressing these broader doctrinal problems and broader societal sins 00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:55.200 that aren't personal sins at all, is that when we look at 00:48:55.200 --> 00:48:57.680 the texts that are given in scripture that talk about how to 00:48:57.680 --> 00:49:02.240 deal with these sins against brothers, we ignore the brother part. 00:49:02.240 --> 00:49:04.720 Corey is my brother, according to the faith. 00:49:04.720 --> 00:49:06.480 And according to the flesh, to some degree. 00:49:06.480 --> 00:49:08.400 We're we come from the same parts of Europe. 00:49:08.400 --> 00:49:09.440 Long time ago. 00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:13.200 We're not recent relatives, we're distant relatives, but not that distant. 00:49:13.200 --> 00:49:15.760 Certainly much closer than I would be to an Indian. 00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:19.040 And yet principally he's my brother in the faith. 00:49:19.040 --> 00:49:23.040 So when those discussions happen in the New Testament, they apply to 00:49:23.040 --> 00:49:27.680 us. They apply to two Christian men hammering out their disagreements, whether 00:49:27.680 --> 00:49:30.160 it's sin, whatever it is. 00:49:30.160 --> 00:49:32.720 They don't apply universally. 00:49:32.720 --> 00:49:36.960 When Scripture speaks of a brother, it's not talking about everyone on 00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:37.600 the planet. 00:49:37.600 --> 00:49:40.560 Every man on the planet is not your brother. 00:49:40.960 --> 00:49:43.280 Every man on the planet is not your neighbor. 00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:45.520 And brother and neighbor aren't synonyms. 00:49:45.520 --> 00:49:48.720 They mean two different things theologically, because they mean two different things 00:49:48.720 --> 00:49:51.200 linguistically. Like they mean what they say. 00:49:51.200 --> 00:49:53.840 You know, the the fact that Cory is my brother according to 00:49:53.840 --> 00:49:58.400 the faith is a theological layer applied on top of the brotherhood 00:49:58.400 --> 00:49:59.680 according to the flesh. 00:49:59.680 --> 00:50:03.520 So it's saying that our adoption as sons of God makes every 00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:06.720 Christian on the planet our brothers according to the faith. 00:50:06.720 --> 00:50:09.520 And that's absolutely essential for the Christian faith. 00:50:09.520 --> 00:50:13.440 Because wherever a man is anywhere, whatever our disagreements, if we both 00:50:13.440 --> 00:50:16.880 actually have the same God, then the rules that the New Testament 00:50:16.960 --> 00:50:21.200 in particular sets sets out dealing with these disputes because we don't 00:50:21.120 --> 00:50:23.200 have the sacrificial system anymore. 00:50:23.680 --> 00:50:26.240 if you sin against me or I sin against you, we can't 00:50:26.240 --> 00:50:28.800 go sacrifice a pigeon or whatever at the temple. 00:50:28.800 --> 00:50:30.640 There's another way that we have to deal with it. 00:50:31.040 --> 00:50:33.680 If you're not my brother in the faith, then there are other 00:50:33.680 --> 00:50:34.880 ways to deal with things. 00:50:34.880 --> 00:50:38.400 And so when we look at the duty to confront sin, if 00:50:38.400 --> 00:50:41.600 it's in the church, there are private matters, and then they're also 00:50:41.600 --> 00:50:44.240 public matters, and they're distinct matters. 00:50:44.240 --> 00:50:47.440 And what's ironic about the fact that when you look at many 00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:49.920 of this scripture passages we're gonna get into here in just a 00:50:49.920 --> 00:50:53.680 minute, in the New Testament, people in the church used to say, 00:50:53.680 --> 00:50:57.040 Well you can't say that publicly because you know, this, that or 00:50:57.040 --> 00:51:00.560 the other thing where someone's spreading false doctrine, they ignore the fact 00:51:00.560 --> 00:51:05.680 that Paul is literally emo it's mostly Paul, but God overall is 00:51:05.680 --> 00:51:08.720 publishing these epistles against public error. 00:51:08.720 --> 00:51:12.800 These epistles ring out for all time, for the eternity of the 00:51:12.800 --> 00:51:16.560 Christian church, that these errors occurred in these places. 00:51:16.560 --> 00:51:20.720 There's nothing that's ever in history been more public than the condemnation 00:51:20.720 --> 00:51:22.240 of these errors. 00:51:22.240 --> 00:51:24.800 And yet today we're told inside the church, oh, you have to 00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:25.760 keep that a secret. 00:51:25.920 --> 00:51:28.240 You can't say that that person did anything wrong publicly. 00:51:28.240 --> 00:51:29.920 You can't say this body is wrong. 00:51:29.920 --> 00:51:32.320 You have to go approach them privately. 00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:33.520 Utter bollocks. 00:51:33.520 --> 00:51:35.360 It's complete nonsense. 00:51:35.360 --> 00:51:38.080 And so that's the last part of this is dividing where is 00:51:38.080 --> 00:51:41.040 it a personal sin, where is it a personal error, where it 00:51:41.040 --> 00:51:44.320 is a private matter, and where is it a public matter? 00:51:44.320 --> 00:51:46.880 Because the parts of scripture that you look to in some cases 00:51:46.960 --> 00:51:47.920 are gonna vary. 00:51:47.920 --> 00:51:51.200 Now it's gonna vary in terms of the rules that apply, not 00:51:51.200 --> 00:51:52.240 in terms of the heart. 00:51:52.240 --> 00:51:56.000 That's why we did the the previous portion talking about the heart 00:51:56.160 --> 00:51:58.400 which we should receive correction. 00:51:58.400 --> 00:52:01.440 Because the same heart with which you receive the sort of correction 00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:04.720 should be the kind of heart that you use to approach certainly 00:52:04.720 --> 00:52:06.080 another brother. 00:52:06.080 --> 00:52:09.600 But when we love the things that God loves and we hate 00:52:09.600 --> 00:52:13.280 the things that God hates, we're going to apply it in different 00:52:13.280 --> 00:52:15.120 ways in different situations. 00:52:15.120 --> 00:52:21.360 When there's public doctrinal corruption in churches, it's not a private matter 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:22.880 by any definition. 00:52:22.880 --> 00:52:25.680 Not scripturally, not in our confessions. 00:52:25.680 --> 00:52:28.640 It's a public error that's going to destroy souls. 00:52:28.640 --> 00:52:33.760 And the destruction, the scope of the damage being done, is another 00:52:33.760 --> 00:52:35.360 crucial part of this. 00:52:35.360 --> 00:52:38.480 If Cory gets something wrong with me, like if we have some 00:52:38.480 --> 00:52:42.480 personal problem with each other, that's private and it's between us. 00:52:42.480 --> 00:52:46.240 If Corey says something publicly that I disagree with and I believe 00:52:46.240 --> 00:52:50.160 that it's sin, I believe it's a corruption of scripture, then although 00:52:50.160 --> 00:52:52.800 I may speak to him privately, I certainly would because we're close 00:52:52.800 --> 00:52:58.080 friends, the damage that he's doing by saying something publicly is itself 00:52:58.320 --> 00:53:00.240 a matter of great urgency. 00:53:00.240 --> 00:53:03.760 It's much more urgent than just us disagreeing privately where no one 00:53:03.760 --> 00:53:05.040 else is being harmed. 00:53:05.040 --> 00:53:10.240 If the harm is being done publicly, the urgency is vastly greater. 00:53:10.240 --> 00:53:13.680 Because if it's just a private matter, then you know you can 00:53:13.680 --> 00:53:15.760 reconcile until you die. 00:53:15.760 --> 00:53:18.960 And even then you God has forgiven our sins and we can 00:53:18.960 --> 00:53:22.080 trust in his mercy even when we are ignorant of our own 00:53:22.080 --> 00:53:26.000 sin. But when someone is actively harming someone else, whether it's in 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:28.800 the church or in the world, which is the other thing here, 00:53:28.800 --> 00:53:30.400 we have two spheres going on. 00:53:30.400 --> 00:53:33.360 Some of the harm that's done is bodily. 00:53:33.360 --> 00:53:35.680 It's in the left-hand kingdom, it's political. 00:53:35.680 --> 00:53:37.360 Has nothing to do with the church. 00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:41.440 And those are cases where things are simultaneously sin and they're matters 00:53:41.440 --> 00:53:42.160 of law. 00:53:42.160 --> 00:53:45.040 And this is where many people in the church come wading into 00:53:45.040 --> 00:53:49.440 conversations to which they're not parties, trying to trying to apply falsely 00:53:49.440 --> 00:53:53.760 biblical standards in cases where an army is needed, where the sword 00:53:53.760 --> 00:53:57.040 of the prince, the godly prince, is needed to deal with open 00:53:57.040 --> 00:54:02.560 rebellion. So the fact that there are texts that deal with error 00:54:02.560 --> 00:54:06.400 and rebuke and sin doesn't necessarily mean that that's the only thing 00:54:06.400 --> 00:54:07.040 you can do. 00:54:07.040 --> 00:54:09.040 And so as we go through these, some of these, just keep 00:54:09.040 --> 00:54:11.920 in mind that the wording of the passages matters. 00:54:11.920 --> 00:54:14.480 It's not enough to say, well, there was a sin, and so 00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:16.560 this is the only thing we can possibly do. 00:54:16.560 --> 00:54:20.320 There are sins where the response is you send in an army. 00:54:20.320 --> 00:54:21.120 And that's it. 00:54:21.280 --> 00:54:23.360 You don't send in priests or pastors. 00:54:23.360 --> 00:54:25.040 You don't send in the gospel. 00:54:25.040 --> 00:54:28.400 You send in people to kill the evil men, which is a 00:54:28.400 --> 00:54:32.080 state matter, it's not a personal matter, but sometimes that's the only 00:54:32.080 --> 00:54:36.640 response. It's not a gospel issue if someone is committing an invasion. 00:54:36.640 --> 00:54:39.200 That's a matter for defense. 00:54:39.200 --> 00:54:43.040 And the fact that the church is wading in incompetently and maliciously 00:54:43.120 --> 00:54:45.680 in many cases to those conversations 00:54:46.640 --> 00:54:48.960 is one of the chief political problems today. 00:54:49.040 --> 00:54:52.720 The those in the on the right who are in the church 00:54:52.720 --> 00:54:54.880 are trying to get those who are on the right outside of 00:54:54.880 --> 00:54:57.440 the church to say, look, we're on the same side, but you 00:54:57.440 --> 00:54:58.480 need Jesus. 00:54:58.480 --> 00:55:01.440 And then on the left, you have people who pretend to be 00:55:01.440 --> 00:55:04.240 in the church who are doing Satan's will against the Against the 00:55:04.240 --> 00:55:07.760 world. And we have unbelievers looking at the evil that's coming from 00:55:07.760 --> 00:55:10.320 inside the church and saying, well, I don't want anything to do 00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:11.200 with Jesus. 00:55:11.200 --> 00:55:15.200 So it's crucial for us under to understand as Christians when and 00:55:15.200 --> 00:55:18.560 how do we address error in the public sphere versus in the 00:55:18.560 --> 00:55:19.440 private sphere? 00:55:19.440 --> 00:55:22.800 Because it will ultimately separate some from God who could have been 00:55:22.800 --> 00:55:25.760 reached if we were faithful about these things. 00:55:26.320 --> 00:55:31.040 Woe mentioned the episode on perfect hatred Already, and there is another 00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:35.920 episode, really, a series in this case, that also serves as foundation 00:55:35.920 --> 00:55:41.040 for or preface to this episode, and that is the series we 00:55:41.040 --> 00:55:45.680 did on love, and of course, those episodes are closely related because 00:55:45.680 --> 00:55:48.320 hate and love are related. 00:55:48.320 --> 00:55:50.560 As we went over in those episodes. 00:55:50.560 --> 00:55:54.160 But one of the reasons that love is so important in this 00:55:54.960 --> 00:56:00.480 is because those who offer the rebuke or correction are often accused 00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:02.160 of being loveless. 00:56:02.160 --> 00:56:04.880 They are accused of lovelessness. 00:56:04.880 --> 00:56:11.120 That is one thing that is thrown as an accusation almost constantly. 00:56:11.120 --> 00:56:16.640 Woe and I both receive accusations of that on Twitter and elsewhere. 00:56:16.640 --> 00:56:20.160 Because you have people when it comes to those who are either 00:56:20.160 --> 00:56:24.880 ignorant or malicious or actually quite frankly usually both, but you have 00:56:24.880 --> 00:56:26.800 those who know only that God is love. 00:56:26.800 --> 00:56:27.920 That's all they know about scripture. 00:56:27.920 --> 00:56:29.600 They know absolutely nothing else. 00:56:29.600 --> 00:56:32.960 They've never picked up a Bible in many cases, and so they 00:56:32.960 --> 00:56:36.800 pop up pop up and say, well you're not being very loving. 00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:40.960 It's because they have no idea what love actually is. 00:56:40.960 --> 00:56:47.280 Permitting someone to persist in egregious error in sin is not love. 00:56:47.280 --> 00:56:48.000 That's hatred. 00:56:49.040 --> 00:56:51.280 That's the bad kind of hatred. 00:56:51.280 --> 00:56:54.320 That's not hatred of evil or hatred of the wicked. 00:56:54.320 --> 00:56:56.240 That's hatred of the good. 00:56:56.240 --> 00:57:00.320 Because all you're doing is letting that person merrily march straight into 00:57:00.320 --> 00:57:04.000 hell. That is not love. 00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:08.240 You can think of Proverbs, spare the rods, spoil the child. 00:57:08.240 --> 00:57:13.280 There are certain things that you must do with regard to error, 00:57:13.280 --> 00:57:17.520 with regard to rebuke, with regard to raising children, all these related 00:57:17.520 --> 00:57:21.520 matters, that the modern world would not call love, because what the 00:57:21.520 --> 00:57:27.840 modern world does is it conflates permissiveness and license and calls them 00:57:27.840 --> 00:57:28.160 love 00:57:29.200 --> 00:57:33.840 because if you just let someone do whatever he pleases, that's called 00:57:33.840 --> 00:57:36.080 loving by the modern world. 00:57:36.080 --> 00:57:39.360 If you tell him these things you are doing are you going 00:57:39.360 --> 00:57:41.360 to harm you or are harming you? 00:57:41.360 --> 00:57:45.760 Well, that's not loving because you're being intolerant. 00:57:45.760 --> 00:57:47.920 Which is completely insane. 00:57:47.920 --> 00:57:52.000 If someone is eating poison and you tell him, you're eating poison, 00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:53.200 you need to stop. 00:57:53.760 --> 00:57:56.080 That's the loving option. 00:57:56.080 --> 00:57:59.360 The tolerant option would be to say nothing because well he can 00:57:59.360 --> 00:58:02.880 just eat whatever he pleases, that's his freedom, that's his liberty, he 00:58:02.880 --> 00:58:04.400 can do what he likes. 00:58:04.400 --> 00:58:08.000 That isn't love, that's hatred, that's malice. 00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:11.680 That's hatred taking the form of indifference, which is one of the 00:58:11.680 --> 00:58:14.240 worst kinds of hatred. 00:58:14.240 --> 00:58:17.280 And yet that is what the modern world attempts to pass off 00:58:17.280 --> 00:58:21.120 is love, and it is the accusation again that is so often 00:58:21.120 --> 00:58:26.240 thrown at those who are attempting to rebuke and correct these errors. 00:58:26.240 --> 00:58:29.360 And it is done often with malice. 00:58:29.360 --> 00:58:34.080 There are some Christians who do it simply out of ignorance, which 00:58:34.080 --> 00:58:37.840 is, quite frankly, in many cases, an excusable ignorance, because it shows 00:58:37.840 --> 00:58:43.120 an ignorance of Scripture, because again, you have to know Scripture in 00:58:43.120 --> 00:58:47.040 these matters, if someone says something, if they mention a topic, you 00:58:47.040 --> 00:58:50.960 should have parts of scripture that come to mind because you should 00:58:50.960 --> 00:58:55.040 be familiar enough with God's Word that you remember those things. 00:58:55.040 --> 00:58:58.880 So if someone says slavery is a sin, you should think, well, 00:58:58.880 --> 00:59:03.440 God gave Abraham slaves, and there's an entire book Philemon to a 00:59:03.440 --> 00:59:08.880 slave master, not commanding him to free his slave. 00:59:08.880 --> 00:59:12.880 If someone says polygyny is a sin, you should think, well, God 00:59:12.960 --> 00:59:17.120 told David he would give him more wives. 00:59:17.120 --> 00:59:20.560 If someone says that capital punishment is a sin, you should think, 00:59:20.560 --> 00:59:24.880 well, God actually commands that in Genesis nine six, it's part of 00:59:24.880 --> 00:59:25.920 the moral law. 00:59:25.920 --> 00:59:28.160 It flows from God's unchanging nature. 00:59:28.160 --> 00:59:35.280 It is required that Christians have and also exercise the death penalty. 00:59:35.280 --> 00:59:41.120 And any of several dozen other topics, there are ready answers for 00:59:41.120 --> 00:59:44.640 these things in Scripture if you know Scripture. 00:59:44.640 --> 00:59:49.360 And someone who rebukes these errors should not be accused of being 00:59:49.360 --> 00:59:55.440 quarrelsome or loveless or contentious or whatever accusation happens to come to 00:59:55.440 --> 00:59:59.440 mind of the person throwing it, because that is not what is 00:59:59.440 --> 01:00:00.080 at issue. 01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:02.480 What is at issue is whether or not 01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:07.680 the party making the contention is correct, whether it is the initial 01:00:07.680 --> 01:00:09.680 contention or the rebuke. 01:00:09.680 --> 01:00:15.200 The question is does this statement, does this assertion align with what 01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:17.200 God has said. 01:00:17.200 --> 01:00:20.400 Because if not, it is an error and needs to be rebuked. 01:00:20.400 --> 01:00:23.840 If it does, then the person attempting the rebuke is an error, 01:00:23.840 --> 01:00:25.920 and he needs to be corrected. 01:00:25.920 --> 01:00:29.600 Assuming that we are dealing, of course, with Christian brothers, if you're 01:00:29.600 --> 01:00:33.920 just dealing with some malicious interlocutor, that's a different matter, you can 01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:36.880 dismiss that person or handle him differently. 01:00:36.880 --> 01:00:39.680 Because as Well mentioned, you have to read the words that are 01:00:39.680 --> 01:00:41.120 actually in Scripture. 01:00:41.120 --> 01:00:45.840 And so Scripture says if your brother, well that is if your 01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:50.000 brother, it is in this case your brother in Christ. 01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:51.600 Because there are differences there. 01:00:51.600 --> 01:00:55.280 We know this from our everyday life, your brother in law and 01:00:55.280 --> 01:00:57.520 your brother are two different things. 01:00:57.520 --> 01:01:01.120 They're both brothers, but there's a distinction there, and the same thing 01:01:01.120 --> 01:01:04.400 is true with regard to a brother or a brother in Christ. 01:01:04.400 --> 01:01:07.680 There are duties, there are rules, there are ways you approach these 01:01:07.680 --> 01:01:12.560 things as dictated by God's word, depending on whether you're dealing with 01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:14.000 a brother or not. 01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:18.240 You do not deal with a pagan, with an unbeliever in the 01:01:18.240 --> 01:01:22.000 exact same way you would deal with a brother. 01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:26.560 But to return to that issue of murder briefly, the issue of 01:01:26.560 --> 01:01:31.600 Genesis nine six, as Wo said, there are times where the solution 01:01:31.760 --> 01:01:35.840 where the medicine, as it were, is not the gospel, it is 01:01:35.840 --> 01:01:36.960 the sword. 01:01:36.960 --> 01:01:41.360 That is the case with regard to punishing murderers. 01:01:41.360 --> 01:01:45.520 The state uses the sword when punishing murderers. 01:01:45.760 --> 01:01:49.680 The state doesn't use the gospel to deal with that issue. 01:01:49.680 --> 01:01:53.760 Scripture doesn't command the use of the gospel to deal with that 01:01:53.760 --> 01:01:58.160 issue. I'm not saying that the gospel can't be somewhere in our 01:01:58.160 --> 01:02:01.680 juridical process if we were actually a Christian nation. 01:02:01.680 --> 01:02:08.160 There should probably be some point between arrest and execution, where a 01:02:08.160 --> 01:02:12.800 pastor goes and speaks to that man gives him the opportunity to 01:02:12.800 --> 01:02:14.880 repent, to confess his sins. 01:02:14.880 --> 01:02:16.640 As Christians we should offer that. 01:02:16.640 --> 01:02:19.040 That should be there somewhere. 01:02:19.040 --> 01:02:22.400 But that is not the core part of that process. 01:02:22.400 --> 01:02:25.120 That is not even the ultimate goal of that process. 01:02:25.520 --> 01:02:29.360 That is addressing wickedness in the left hand kingdom. 01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:31.120 And that is addressed with the sword. 01:02:31.120 --> 01:02:35.440 And so when Christians, supposed Christians, interject themselves and says, well is 01:02:35.440 --> 01:02:36.480 that a gospel issue? 01:02:37.120 --> 01:02:42.240 Or you're not letting the gospel predominate or whatever other catchphrase happens 01:02:42.240 --> 01:02:44.080 to come out. 01:02:44.080 --> 01:02:48.720 They need to be rebuked because they are actually harming whatever needs 01:02:48.720 --> 01:02:52.800 to be done with regard to the problem. 01:02:52.800 --> 01:02:57.440 We see this conflated sometimes in the case of those who will 01:02:57.440 --> 01:03:02.400 conflate forgiving your enemies, forgiving those who sin against you 01:03:03.280 --> 01:03:07.040 and wanting to do away with the punishment. 01:03:07.040 --> 01:03:08.800 There is a distinction there. 01:03:08.800 --> 01:03:11.040 There is a very important difference. 01:03:11.040 --> 01:03:16.000 Yes, you must forgive the person who sinned against you, however, if 01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:19.600 it is a matter with regard to the left hand kingdom for 01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:23.360 the prince to handle, he must still punish that man. 01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:27.920 Just because he has been forgiven by God and by those against 01:03:27.920 --> 01:03:32.160 whom he sinned does not mean that he is not punished temporally 01:03:32.160 --> 01:03:35.280 for that, it means that he will not be punished eternally for 01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:38.080 it if he repented. 01:03:38.080 --> 01:03:40.480 But the temporal punishment remains. 01:03:40.480 --> 01:03:44.400 These issues are distinct, they have to be treated differently. 01:03:44.400 --> 01:03:48.480 And so if someone interjects himself and tries to bring in well 01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:52.640 this scripture says that if your brother sins against you, well if 01:03:52.640 --> 01:03:55.120 it's not a brother it's not applicable, and if they try to 01:03:55.120 --> 01:03:59.360 bring in well the gospel, if it's not dealing with the gospel, 01:03:59.360 --> 01:04:00.880 it's not applicable. 01:04:00.880 --> 01:04:05.040 If it's dealing with transgressions of the moral law, yes, of course, 01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:08.960 that is an issue related to God's word and related to the 01:04:08.960 --> 01:04:12.240 positive laws of the country, that person may very well need to 01:04:12.240 --> 01:04:16.400 hear the gospel in the process, but the central and fundamental issue 01:04:16.400 --> 01:04:21.360 is that violation of the moral law which must be punished. 01:04:21.360 --> 01:04:23.200 These are important lines that we must 01:04:24.080 --> 01:04:30.160 know where they exist and we must recognize and respect them. 01:04:30.160 --> 01:04:33.520 You do not conflate these issues, because if you conflate them, not 01:04:33.520 --> 01:04:35.680 only do you create chaos. 01:04:36.320 --> 01:04:42.080 But quite frankly, in many cases, you're probably sinning in doing so. 01:04:42.080 --> 01:04:46.400 This is a problem that we see everywhere in the modern world, 01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:49.600 because we have Christians who don't know anything about scripture. 01:04:49.600 --> 01:04:52.080 They don't know anything about God, they don't know anything about the 01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:53.200 Christian faith. 01:04:53.200 --> 01:04:55.840 All they know is the word love. 01:04:55.840 --> 01:05:00.240 And so as just a general rule, which it's unfortunate, it's another 01:05:00.240 --> 01:05:03.760 one of those, but if someone accuses you of being loveless or 01:05:03.760 --> 01:05:07.920 not being loving or lovelessness or whatever the accusation is, if you 01:05:07.920 --> 01:05:13.280 hear that word, you should be on your guard. 01:05:13.280 --> 01:05:16.000 That is an indication the person with whom you are dealing 01:05:17.040 --> 01:05:23.040 does not actually understand Christianity, does not understand scripture, or is acting 01:05:23.040 --> 01:05:27.760 in malice, because that is one of Satan's favorite weapons. 01:05:27.760 --> 01:05:32.640 He loves to level the accusation against someone who is attempting rightly 01:05:32.640 --> 01:05:35.200 to rebuke error or sin. 01:05:35.200 --> 01:05:39.760 The accusation of being loveless, you aren't being kind, you aren't being 01:05:39.760 --> 01:05:44.720 Christ like, you're being insufficiently loving, you're being mean, you're being hateful. 01:05:44.720 --> 01:05:46.320 These are all of a piece. 01:05:46.320 --> 01:05:49.920 It is one of his favorite weapons, and far too many Christians 01:05:49.920 --> 01:05:53.440 fall for it because they hear that accusation, they shrink back from 01:05:53.440 --> 01:05:57.440 the attack, as it were, from the rebuke, from correcting that error 01:05:57.440 --> 01:05:59.120 that needs to be corrected. 01:05:59.120 --> 01:06:02.480 So if you hear that, you need to immediately be on your 01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:06.400 guard and you need to scrutinize what that person is saying, what 01:06:06.400 --> 01:06:09.840 that person is doing, and why he is doing it. 01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:12.720 Because again, you have to know are you dealing with a Christian 01:06:12.720 --> 01:06:16.800 brother, or are you dealing with someone who is something very different 01:06:16.800 --> 01:06:18.640 from a Christian brother? 01:06:19.200 --> 01:06:19.440 So 01:06:19.440 --> 01:06:22.720 in the case where you are dealing with Christian brothers, which is 01:06:22.800 --> 01:06:25.840 is a limited subset of this, but it's it's a vital one. 01:06:25.840 --> 01:06:28.080 And it's the one that we began with in the opposite direction 01:06:28.160 --> 01:06:29.600 where you're receiving a rebuke. 01:06:29.600 --> 01:06:33.280 I'm gonna give you just a few passages, brief ones to demonstrate 01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:37.920 the spirit which with we should approach the error in others the 01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:42.480 sin in others, whether it's personal sin or it's matters of theological 01:06:42.480 --> 01:06:44.960 error, this is what we should do. 01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:49.120 Galatians six says brothers, so we just been saying brothers, that means 01:06:49.120 --> 01:06:49.840 in the church. 01:06:49.920 --> 01:06:52.320 Does mean all human beings on the planet? 01:06:52.320 --> 01:06:56.720 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression you who are spiritual 01:06:56.880 --> 01:06:59.600 should restore him in a spirit of kindness. 01:06:59.600 --> 01:07:04.160 Keep watch on yourself, lest you two be tempted, bear one another's 01:07:04.160 --> 01:07:07.200 burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 01:07:07.360 --> 01:07:12.240 As I said earlier, the spirit with which we receive rebukes we 01:07:12.240 --> 01:07:13.920 should also rebuke. 01:07:14.080 --> 01:07:16.640 You should not go after someone in a way that you wouldn't 01:07:16.640 --> 01:07:18.080 want them to come after you. 01:07:18.080 --> 01:07:21.200 And so when I say go after, obviously that's a very limited 01:07:21.200 --> 01:07:24.320 subset of all the possible ways of going after somebody. 01:07:24.320 --> 01:07:28.640 If somebody makes a mistake, you want to bear the fruit of 01:07:28.640 --> 01:07:32.240 repentance and that's going to mean that you gotta do it as 01:07:32.240 --> 01:07:35.520 a Christian in a way that's going to be received because inherently 01:07:35.600 --> 01:07:38.320 when someone comes to you and says, I'm doing so you're doing 01:07:38.320 --> 01:07:42.560 something wrong, your instinct is generally to get your ackles up to 01:07:42.560 --> 01:07:43.440 be defensive. 01:07:43.440 --> 01:07:44.880 Nobody likes to hear it. 01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:47.840 However, you receive it, you're generally your first instinct is not, oh 01:07:47.920 --> 01:07:48.560 great, I'm wrong. 01:07:48.560 --> 01:07:49.680 I love being wrong. 01:07:49.680 --> 01:07:53.120 Like, no, that's you shouldn't have a habit of that. 01:07:53.120 --> 01:07:56.720 But when the rebuke is given, it should be done in a 01:07:56.720 --> 01:07:59.760 spirit of gentleness, in the case of brothers in the church. 01:07:59.760 --> 01:08:01.520 And that's absolutely true. 01:08:01.520 --> 01:08:04.640 And it's also absolutely not universal. 01:08:04.640 --> 01:08:07.520 There are rebukes that should not be given in kindness, and we'll 01:08:07.520 --> 01:08:08.960 get to that in a minute. 01:08:08.960 --> 01:08:12.720 Another passage from James five, at the very end, James says, My 01:08:12.720 --> 01:08:17.680 brothers, again, if anyone among you in the church, that is, if 01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:21.280 anyone among you wanders from the truth, which is to say if 01:08:21.280 --> 01:08:25.200 anyone who was a Christian is straying from being Christian, my brothers, 01:08:25.200 --> 01:08:28.000 if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him 01:08:28.000 --> 01:08:31.520 back, let him know that what whoever brings back a sinner from 01:08:31.520 --> 01:08:34.960 his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a 01:08:34.960 --> 01:08:36.480 multitude of sins. 01:08:36.480 --> 01:08:41.040 So again that's the impetus behind any Christian correction of another brother. 01:08:41.040 --> 01:08:44.240 You see someone who's a Christian, he's in the church, he's a 01:08:44.240 --> 01:08:48.160 brother in Christ, and he's straying by whatever means. 01:08:48.160 --> 01:08:52.080 Maybe it's a personal sin, maybe it's something habitual, maybe it's an 01:08:52.080 --> 01:08:54.160 error that's going to lead to more error. 01:08:54.160 --> 01:08:56.160 And you know, because you've seen it a hundred times, you know 01:08:56.160 --> 01:08:57.920 that this is how that plays out. 01:08:57.920 --> 01:09:02.800 To go gently and rebuke that error and bring him back is 01:09:02.800 --> 01:09:05.680 loving. There are many other examples we're not going to get into. 01:09:05.680 --> 01:09:08.480 Much of the New Testament is about this sort of thing. 01:09:08.480 --> 01:09:13.520 It's absolutely vital that we approach these things within the church in 01:09:13.520 --> 01:09:17.760 a way that's loving, because to fail to do so will often 01:09:17.760 --> 01:09:21.680 bear destruction where perhaps repentance would have been possible. 01:09:21.680 --> 01:09:25.280 If someone is in error and you rebuke them so harshly that 01:09:25.280 --> 01:09:29.200 they can't help but become defensive, they may be hardened in their 01:09:29.200 --> 01:09:32.080 sin simply because they don't want a cave to how mean you 01:09:32.080 --> 01:09:33.680 were. That's entirely possible. 01:09:33.680 --> 01:09:34.640 It happens. 01:09:34.640 --> 01:09:39.440 People will maybe be factually correct about some sin, but then they 01:09:39.440 --> 01:09:43.280 go so far beyond what is permissible for a Christian that the 01:09:43.280 --> 01:09:46.320 other person becomes even less Christian as a response. 01:09:46.320 --> 01:09:50.560 Satan can get away with anything when we're not keeping our compasses 01:09:50.560 --> 01:09:52.080 pointed towards God. 01:09:52.080 --> 01:09:55.280 And so you begin your rebuke in scripture and you make sure 01:09:55.280 --> 01:09:57.760 that you have a Christian heart with another brother. 01:09:58.400 --> 01:10:00.240 But it again doesn't apply everywhere. 01:10:00.240 --> 01:10:02.560 This applies within the church. 01:10:02.560 --> 01:10:06.560 And in first Timothy five, Paul writes, As for those who persist 01:10:06.560 --> 01:10:09.760 in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the 01:10:09.760 --> 01:10:13.120 rest may stand in fear in the presence of God and of 01:10:13.120 --> 01:10:16.320 Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep 01:10:16.320 --> 01:10:20.800 these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. 01:10:20.800 --> 01:10:24.560 So this is the case where someone in the church is effectively 01:10:24.560 --> 01:10:25.760 hardened in their sin. 01:10:25.760 --> 01:10:28.560 Yeah, I think one of the most common cases that we see 01:10:28.560 --> 01:10:32.080 in the church, unfortunately it tends not to be rebuked, is something 01:10:32.080 --> 01:10:37.440 like premarital fornication and shacking up and that sort of thing, where 01:10:37.440 --> 01:10:39.200 people are in are engaging in behavior. 01:10:39.200 --> 01:10:43.200 It's open and notorious, and everyone just kind of turns a blind 01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:44.960 eye because they're still coming to church. 01:10:44.960 --> 01:10:46.880 And so you you let it go. 01:10:46.880 --> 01:10:51.200 That is one of the most pernicious types of sin in the 01:10:51.200 --> 01:10:53.600 church because it corrupts everyone. 01:10:53.600 --> 01:10:56.640 It corrupts every man who knows and says nothing. 01:10:56.640 --> 01:10:58.160 I think that's another aspect of this. 01:10:58.160 --> 01:11:01.200 The scripture makes clear that there are cases where you must rebuke. 01:11:01.200 --> 01:11:04.400 And even though the rebuke must be given in gentleness and it 01:11:04.400 --> 01:11:08.640 must be done in a loving fashion to achieve the result of 01:11:08.640 --> 01:11:10.160 repentance that God wants. 01:11:10.160 --> 01:11:13.200 Because again, this is not us saying I want you to do 01:11:13.200 --> 01:11:16.400 this. It's saying, brother, God says this is a sin. 01:11:16.400 --> 01:11:17.280 Don't do this. 01:11:17.280 --> 01:11:21.040 It's harming you and it's harming everyone who witnesses it, it's harming 01:11:21.040 --> 01:11:25.920 anyone who keeps silent about it, because they're ultimately condoning public notorious 01:11:25.920 --> 01:11:29.120 sin by pretending it's not even notorious at all. 01:11:29.120 --> 01:11:30.080 Satan loves that. 01:11:30.080 --> 01:11:32.160 That's a victory condition for him. 01:11:32.160 --> 01:11:36.560 There are cases where persistent sin must be rebuked, and as God 01:11:36.560 --> 01:11:40.320 says rebuke it publicly so that the rest stand in fear. 01:11:40.320 --> 01:11:44.880 God wants fear and shame to be a part of these discussions. 01:11:45.040 --> 01:11:47.920 And I think that's something that's lost whenever you have these people 01:11:47.920 --> 01:11:50.640 making accusation of lovelessness. 01:11:50.640 --> 01:11:54.000 It is loving to say what you're doing is an error that 01:11:54.000 --> 01:11:56.400 leads to spiritual death. 01:11:56.400 --> 01:12:01.200 And the persistence in that error necessitates saying, look, what this person 01:12:01.200 --> 01:12:05.040 is doing over here, they stand judged, they stand condemned. 01:12:05.040 --> 01:12:08.640 Everyone should be fearful and they should be ashamed. 01:12:08.640 --> 01:12:11.760 Fear and shame are a crucial part of 01:12:12.720 --> 01:12:17.120 what has to happen in the church when someone is not repentant. 01:12:17.120 --> 01:12:19.760 And if you only ever focus on oh love, love, love. 01:12:19.760 --> 01:12:22.880 Love without knowing what it means, you won't understand that it is 01:12:22.880 --> 01:12:24.400 only loving to say that. 01:12:24.400 --> 01:12:28.400 It's hateful to just put up with open and notorious sin and 01:12:28.400 --> 01:12:29.280 say nothing. 01:12:29.280 --> 01:12:31.840 Because you really like 'em and so you just let it go. 01:12:31.840 --> 01:12:32.640 That's not loving. 01:12:32.640 --> 01:12:34.960 Corey gave a couple good examples of that. 01:12:34.960 --> 01:12:37.280 If you go to a doctor because you maybe weren't feeling well, 01:12:37.280 --> 01:12:40.640 you're run down or whatever, and they run some tests, and the 01:12:40.640 --> 01:12:44.800 tests turn up that you have some potentially fatal disease, and then 01:12:44.800 --> 01:12:47.120 you go in for your test results and the doctor says, no, 01:12:47.120 --> 01:12:47.600 you're fine. 01:12:47.600 --> 01:12:50.160 You know, it's probably just a cold and sends you home. 01:12:50.160 --> 01:12:53.360 And you you feel a little bit better, you know, psychosomatically because 01:12:53.360 --> 01:12:56.160 you've got a clean bill of health and six months later you're 01:12:56.160 --> 01:13:01.920 dead because the progressive disease killed you Well the Christian today would 01:13:01.920 --> 01:13:03.920 say that what the doctor did was loving. 01:13:03.920 --> 01:13:06.960 Why? Because the doctor knows whenever he tells someone that they're gonna 01:13:06.960 --> 01:13:09.840 die if they don't have some radical treatment, they get sad. 01:13:09.840 --> 01:13:13.200 They cry, they're upset, it's disruptive to their life. 01:13:13.200 --> 01:13:14.640 They gotta do a bunch of other stuff. 01:13:14.640 --> 01:13:16.400 Some of it's not gonna be pleasant. 01:13:16.400 --> 01:13:19.680 And so the nicest, most loving thing a doctor can do is 01:13:19.680 --> 01:13:21.520 give them a clean bill of health, right? 01:13:21.520 --> 01:13:22.800 That's what the church does. 01:13:22.960 --> 01:13:25.520 The church papers over these open and torious sins. 01:13:25.520 --> 01:13:26.640 It's like, no, it's fine. 01:13:26.640 --> 01:13:27.520 You're okay. 01:13:27.520 --> 01:13:31.200 Even though those sins are sins which lead to spiritual death. 01:13:31.200 --> 01:13:34.800 The only loving thing, the only Christian thing for us to do 01:13:34.800 --> 01:13:37.120 in the church, just as in case of that doctor, is to 01:13:37.120 --> 01:13:42.320 correctly diagnose the sin, to say this thing is actually bad. 01:13:42.320 --> 01:13:43.680 It's actually harmful. 01:13:43.680 --> 01:13:45.280 That's the only way to treat it. 01:13:45.280 --> 01:13:49.360 You cannot treat a sin or a disease by pretending it's not 01:13:49.360 --> 01:13:53.040 there. Last example I want to give here from scripture is one 01:13:53.040 --> 01:13:56.000 of the most crucial because I think it's probably just about one 01:13:56.000 --> 01:14:00.400 of the most abused passages in scripture today in this context. 01:14:00.400 --> 01:14:02.800 It's a passage probably everybody knows to some degree. 01:14:02.800 --> 01:14:04.320 It's Matthew 18. 01:14:04.320 --> 01:14:06.880 When even if you don't know a whole lot of scripture by 01:14:06.960 --> 01:14:09.600 you know name and number, Matthew 18 for a lot of people 01:14:09.680 --> 01:14:11.200 is like, yeah, I know it's got something to do with you 01:14:11.200 --> 01:14:13.040 know confronting sin. 01:14:13.040 --> 01:14:16.320 I'm gonna read a paragraph, but I'm gonna just emphasize first the 01:14:16.320 --> 01:14:17.840 the first sentence of this. 01:14:17.840 --> 01:14:21.040 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him is fall 01:14:21.040 --> 01:14:22.960 between you and him alone. 01:14:22.960 --> 01:14:26.080 Now everything else that comes after is in this context, but we 01:14:26.080 --> 01:14:27.360 pretend it isn't. 01:14:27.360 --> 01:14:30.800 If your brother, that is someone in the church, sins against you, 01:14:30.800 --> 01:14:34.160 that is a personal sin, go and tell him his fall between 01:14:34.160 --> 01:14:35.680 you and him alone. 01:14:35.680 --> 01:14:38.720 That necessarily means that there are no other parties to this sin. 01:14:38.720 --> 01:14:41.440 If Cory does something to me, I don'm not gonna broadcast it 01:14:41.440 --> 01:14:42.080 on the internet. 01:14:42.160 --> 01:14:44.800 That would be a violation of Matthew 18. 01:14:45.200 --> 01:14:48.000 We deal with it privately because it's a private matter. 01:14:48.240 --> 01:14:49.200 Nobody else knows. 01:14:49.200 --> 01:14:51.440 And so to tell anyone else, hey, did you know what he 01:14:51.440 --> 01:14:52.000 did to me? 01:14:52.000 --> 01:14:53.760 That's is is itself slanderous. 01:14:53.760 --> 01:14:54.560 Even if it's true. 01:14:54.560 --> 01:14:57.040 Go back and listen to the slander episode if you've forgotten how 01:14:57.040 --> 01:14:59.040 that works, because it's vital. 01:14:59.120 --> 01:15:03.360 The problem with the misapplication of Matthew 18 today is it's very 01:15:03.360 --> 01:15:06.400 narrow how scripture describes it. 01:15:06.400 --> 01:15:09.520 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fall 01:15:09.520 --> 01:15:11.280 between you and him alone. 01:15:11.280 --> 01:15:14.000 If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 01:15:14.000 --> 01:15:16.560 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along 01:15:16.560 --> 01:15:19.520 with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of 01:15:19.520 --> 01:15:20.800 two or three witnesses. 01:15:20.960 --> 01:15:24.080 If he refuses to listen, then tell it to the church. 01:15:24.080 --> 01:15:26.880 And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him 01:15:26.880 --> 01:15:29.600 be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. 01:15:29.600 --> 01:15:30.240 Now 01:15:31.520 --> 01:15:35.360 this is described in in many places as the Matthew 18 process. 01:15:35.440 --> 01:15:40.880 Process for admonition where if anyone sins anywhere, anytime, any place, this 01:15:40.880 --> 01:15:44.000 is the only thing you can possibly ever do. 01:15:44.000 --> 01:15:46.320 That's radically false. 01:15:46.320 --> 01:15:49.360 If it's a public sin, Matthew eighteen doesn't apply. 01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:52.000 That's only for private personal sin. 01:15:52.000 --> 01:15:54.960 The reason that Matthew eighteen is given when you actually just read 01:15:54.960 --> 01:15:58.160 the text and you don't have any baggage from false teaching, this 01:15:58.160 --> 01:16:01.040 is saying that a personal sin can in fact escalate to the 01:16:01.040 --> 01:16:03.840 point that someone is removed from the church. 01:16:03.840 --> 01:16:08.400 That what we call today church discipline is functionally and is truly 01:16:08.560 --> 01:16:11.680 only a recognition that, you know, say Corey has sinned against me 01:16:11.760 --> 01:16:12.800 or let's make it less mean. 01:16:12.800 --> 01:16:15.760 If I've sinned against Corey, I do something horrible to him, he 01:16:15.760 --> 01:16:20.000 confronts me, I don't repent, like no, you deserved it, whatever. 01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:23.280 He brings somebody else in so that someone else can testify that 01:16:23.280 --> 01:16:24.800 I'm unrepentant. 01:16:24.800 --> 01:16:26.720 If I'm like, I don't like any of you guys, I'm gonna 01:16:26.720 --> 01:16:28.400 keep doing what I want, you're all wrong. 01:16:28.400 --> 01:16:32.640 Then that is something that is made a matter of public record 01:16:32.800 --> 01:16:35.600 that everyone is told that not only did I do this thing 01:16:35.600 --> 01:16:39.600 in secret to Corey, but that I refused admonition, there was scriptural 01:16:40.000 --> 01:16:42.880 admonition, like I don't like any of you guys, I'm gonna do 01:16:42.880 --> 01:16:43.920 what I want. 01:16:44.160 --> 01:16:48.240 Publicly, I need to be recognized as an unbeliever that whatever else 01:16:48.240 --> 01:16:51.280 I may get right, if that is my approach when someone's like, 01:16:51.280 --> 01:16:54.160 You're sinning sinning, I'm not Christian. 01:16:54.160 --> 01:16:57.760 Because whatever else my confession may be, this is a confession of 01:16:57.760 --> 01:16:59.120 my damnation. 01:16:59.120 --> 01:17:03.440 To resist the rebuke of Christians when the Holy Spirit is in 01:17:03.440 --> 01:17:07.200 play, when scripture is in play, when clear sin is involved, if 01:17:07.200 --> 01:17:09.600 someone is unrepentant, they're not a Christian. 01:17:09.600 --> 01:17:13.280 Period. You cannot be a Christian if you're not repentant. 01:17:13.280 --> 01:17:16.720 So what Matthew 18 is actually teaching is not that there's a 01:17:16.720 --> 01:17:20.320 particular script that's applied to every possible case for anyone ever sinning 01:17:20.400 --> 01:17:21.600 anywhere in the universe. 01:17:21.600 --> 01:17:25.440 It's very specifically saying that even private sins can and must become 01:17:25.440 --> 01:17:28.720 private matters if they're matters that lead to damnation. 01:17:28.720 --> 01:17:32.160 If I'm unrepentant about something and nobody else knows about, and it 01:17:32.160 --> 01:17:36.480 rises to the level that we've previously discussed, it is necessary for 01:17:36.480 --> 01:17:41.440 that privacy to be made public and the expulsion from among all 01:17:41.440 --> 01:17:43.680 believers is something that is to be recognized. 01:17:44.160 --> 01:17:45.360 And that's it. 01:17:45.360 --> 01:17:48.080 This is a very, very narrow passage. 01:17:48.080 --> 01:17:51.920 It is not a universal script for all times and all places. 01:17:51.920 --> 01:17:54.880 If it's not a brother, it's involved, Matthew 18 has nothing to 01:17:54.880 --> 01:17:55.600 do with it. 01:17:55.600 --> 01:17:58.560 Even if the spirit isn't is informative. 01:17:58.560 --> 01:18:00.080 And so I gave these other passages. 01:18:00.080 --> 01:18:02.400 The spirit of these things is clearly informative. 01:18:02.400 --> 01:18:04.160 And what is the information? 01:18:04.160 --> 01:18:05.840 You seek repentance. 01:18:05.840 --> 01:18:08.400 Why? Because this is about God stuff. 01:18:08.400 --> 01:18:10.240 God seeks our repentance. 01:18:10.240 --> 01:18:13.600 God came among us as a man seeking our repentance. 01:18:13.600 --> 01:18:15.280 He died as a man on the cross. 01:18:15.280 --> 01:18:18.080 God died on the cross to pay for the sins that we're 01:18:18.080 --> 01:18:18.880 all committing. 01:18:18.880 --> 01:18:21.120 That's how much he cares about us repenting. 01:18:21.120 --> 01:18:23.760 For us to look to the cross and say, yes, that punishment 01:18:23.760 --> 01:18:24.880 of sins was for mine. 01:18:25.440 --> 01:18:28.800 I put Christ on the cross, and God loved me so much 01:18:28.800 --> 01:18:32.560 that he put himself on the cross for my salvation. 01:18:32.560 --> 01:18:37.360 When we turn these passages that are trying to pursue the reconciliation 01:18:37.360 --> 01:18:42.000 in the church into something that actually becomes license for abuse and 01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:45.360 lies. Again, it's a satanic victory. 01:18:45.360 --> 01:18:49.360 Satan does a victory lap anytime someone's like Matthew 18, Matthew 18, 01:18:49.360 --> 01:18:53.680 Matthew 18, for things that are open, public, and notorious wickedness. 01:18:53.680 --> 01:18:54.960 It doesn't apply. 01:18:54.960 --> 01:18:57.680 It certainly doesn't apply in theological matters. 01:18:57.680 --> 01:19:01.520 If someone has an office of a public teacher or a pastor, 01:19:01.440 --> 01:19:05.280 and they go around lying in God's name, Matthew 18 has nothing 01:19:05.280 --> 01:19:05.920 to do. 01:19:05.920 --> 01:19:10.000 They have no protection, they have no eighth commandment protection. 01:19:10.000 --> 01:19:14.640 Their reputation is according to their false public confession. 01:19:14.640 --> 01:19:17.920 And that's the only reputation that they can have until they are 01:19:17.920 --> 01:19:19.120 brought to repentance. 01:19:19.120 --> 01:19:22.880 And so when somebody's running around as a false public teacher, spreading 01:19:22.880 --> 01:19:27.440 false public sin, you don't use Matthew eighteen, you 01:19:28.320 --> 01:19:33.120 tell the world this is a false prophet, they're endangering souls. 01:19:33.120 --> 01:19:36.800 And so as we're looking at how we apply this to others, 01:19:36.800 --> 01:19:40.400 there's it's not even a continuum, it's there are different sets of 01:19:40.400 --> 01:19:43.840 problems. And the different sets of problems have different rules, even though 01:19:44.080 --> 01:19:45.840 they're informed by the same spirit. 01:19:45.840 --> 01:19:50.560 And the spirit is protecting the church and protecting the individual, protecting 01:19:50.560 --> 01:19:53.760 the soul by bringing them to repentance, and protecting everyone else who 01:19:53.760 --> 01:19:57.360 is either going to witness their unrepentance or perhaps be subject to 01:19:57.360 --> 01:20:00.800 their lies because all those things are in play. 01:20:00.800 --> 01:20:05.120 And if we don't treat scripture the way God gives it to 01:20:05.120 --> 01:20:08.400 us, it leaves all these cracks for Satan to slip through. 01:20:08.400 --> 01:20:11.440 It's like, oh no, Matthew 18, Matthew 18, sure, there's a there's 01:20:11.440 --> 01:20:15.360 a false prophet running an entire denomination and he's lying in God's 01:20:15.360 --> 01:20:17.920 name, but you have to go speak to him privately, or you 01:20:17.920 --> 01:20:19.440 can't tell anyone what he did. 01:20:19.440 --> 01:20:23.120 No. When someone's putting out press releases and making public speeches and 01:20:23.120 --> 01:20:27.600 private speeches to hundreds of people, spreading lies and filth about God, 01:20:27.600 --> 01:20:29.840 you have no duty to speak to that man. 01:20:29.840 --> 01:20:32.400 Your duty is to publicly rebuke him. 01:20:32.400 --> 01:20:35.680 And in fact, any man who fails to do so, when he 01:20:35.680 --> 01:20:39.280 has any sort of duty to speak publicly within that body, has 01:20:39.280 --> 01:20:40.800 himself sinned. 01:20:40.800 --> 01:20:43.520 Silence is often a sin in these matters. 01:20:43.520 --> 01:20:46.400 That's something that no one will treat because you know what? 01:20:46.400 --> 01:20:47.840 It puts a lot of guys on the hook. 01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:50.720 There are men who should be speaking out against things that refuse 01:20:50.720 --> 01:20:53.840 to. And when push comes the shove, like, oh well, Matthew 18, 01:20:53.840 --> 01:20:56.640 I just haven't had a chance to go speak to him personally 01:20:56.720 --> 01:20:59.520 until I talk to this guy face to face, I can't tell 01:20:59.520 --> 01:21:01.040 the world he's a false prophet. 01:21:01.040 --> 01:21:01.920 Get real. 01:21:01.920 --> 01:21:05.600 The Reformation would not have happened with those rules, and Satan knows 01:21:05.600 --> 01:21:06.240 it. 01:21:06.800 --> 01:21:12.080 This distinction between private matters and public matters is key. 01:21:12.080 --> 01:21:18.480 It is absolutely essential to understand these things are handled differently because 01:21:18.480 --> 01:21:20.640 they are different. 01:21:20.640 --> 01:21:24.960 If your brother sins against you, and just you, no one knows 01:21:24.960 --> 01:21:28.000 about it, it was in private, it is a sin against you 01:21:28.000 --> 01:21:29.840 and you only. 01:21:29.840 --> 01:21:32.960 Then you are to deal with that one way. 01:21:32.960 --> 01:21:38.560 But if your brother is teaching falsely publicly, that is a sin 01:21:38.560 --> 01:21:42.160 against all of those who hear it, all of those who may 01:21:42.160 --> 01:21:45.760 hear it is a sin against God, of course, first and foremost, 01:21:45.760 --> 01:21:51.440 but that is a public matter that must be rebuked publicly. 01:21:51.440 --> 01:21:52.320 And there is 01:21:53.360 --> 01:21:55.600 a sort of third category here. 01:21:55.600 --> 01:21:59.200 It's not really a third category, because it's really a subset of 01:21:59.200 --> 01:22:04.720 public. But there are times where the sin, this is going to 01:22:04.720 --> 01:22:08.240 be particularly the case for false teaching, but there are other sins 01:22:08.240 --> 01:22:10.800 that could be in play. 01:22:10.800 --> 01:22:16.800 If a man is teaching falsely, but let's say not publicly, privately, 01:22:16.800 --> 01:22:22.560 but not privately as in one-on-one, privately as in say seminars or 01:22:22.560 --> 01:22:26.000 a class, some smaller number of people. 01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:28.960 This was more of an issue historically because today much of this 01:22:28.960 --> 01:22:31.680 will then be published on the internet later and it will be 01:22:31.680 --> 01:22:34.400 truly public. 01:22:34.400 --> 01:22:38.720 That is somewhere between the private matter of between one man and 01:22:38.720 --> 01:22:43.440 another, and the public matter of something that is deliberately published. 01:22:43.440 --> 01:22:47.760 But But if that man is in a position where he can 01:22:47.760 --> 01:22:51.600 then go on to create additional harm, say it's a pastor who 01:22:51.600 --> 01:22:55.760 is preaching in a church or a man leading a denomination, and 01:22:55.760 --> 01:23:00.960 he is saying these things in these supposedly semi private settings, you 01:23:01.120 --> 01:23:04.320 as a Christian, if you are in the position to rebuke this 01:23:04.320 --> 01:23:09.440 false teaching, have an absolute right to further publish the false things 01:23:09.440 --> 01:23:13.360 that he has been saying in order to rebuke them. 01:23:13.360 --> 01:23:17.040 This does not run afoul of the eighth commandment, it does not 01:23:17.040 --> 01:23:20.400 run afoul of the issues regarding slander. 01:23:20.400 --> 01:23:23.920 This is a matter with regard to the things of God, with 01:23:23.920 --> 01:23:29.520 regard to the truth, with regard to blasphemous false teaching. 01:23:29.520 --> 01:23:34.880 And it is public by virtue of his office, his position, the 01:23:35.280 --> 01:23:39.680 things that he is doing, the consequences of the harm, even the 01:23:39.680 --> 01:23:42.720 just the consequence of the potential harm. 01:23:42.720 --> 01:23:47.120 There are times where publication of that sin is going to be 01:23:47.760 --> 01:23:49.680 part of the rebuke. 01:23:49.680 --> 01:23:52.240 This again is a an issue of wisdom. 01:23:52.240 --> 01:23:56.000 You have to know as a Christian man when, where, and how 01:23:56.000 --> 01:23:57.920 to make that call. 01:23:57.920 --> 01:24:01.200 But just because someone says, well, you can't publish that because that 01:24:01.200 --> 01:24:02.800 was a private seminar. 01:24:02.800 --> 01:24:07.200 There were only 30 men there, that is not a defense. 01:24:07.200 --> 01:24:09.520 It is certainly not a perfect defense. 01:24:09.520 --> 01:24:14.240 There may be cases, and there will certainly be cases where the 01:24:14.240 --> 01:24:18.480 man who has the duty to rebuke will have to publish that 01:24:18.480 --> 01:24:23.600 sin, make it more public, and then rebuke it publicly. 01:24:23.600 --> 01:24:27.600 That is not slander, that is not a violation of the eighth 01:24:27.600 --> 01:24:33.280 commandment, because the sin is already effectively public, and because the consequences 01:24:33.280 --> 01:24:36.640 of that sin are going to continue to harm, are going to 01:24:36.640 --> 01:24:38.080 increase in harm 01:24:40.160 --> 01:24:45.440 When it comes to this matter of public sin, I want to 01:24:45.440 --> 01:24:50.800 give all of the Lutherans listening an actual paragraph number to memorize, 01:24:50.800 --> 01:24:54.080 and anyone else who is so inclined can memorize it as well. 01:24:54.080 --> 01:24:58.080 It is paragraph two hundred and eighty four of the large catechism. 01:24:58.080 --> 01:25:02.240 This is of course in the section dealing with the eighth commandment, 01:25:02.240 --> 01:25:05.760 and this is most relevant for these issues because it deals directly 01:25:06.320 --> 01:25:09.440 and explicitly with the issue of public sin, and so I will 01:25:09.440 --> 01:25:12.720 go ahead and read that paragraph. 01:25:12.720 --> 01:25:16.960 All this, and to editorialize what precedes this is dealing with Is 01:25:16.960 --> 01:25:20.560 dealing with private sins, is dealing with the sin of one brother 01:25:20.560 --> 01:25:25.600 against another, and so all this has been said regarding secret sins, 01:25:25.600 --> 01:25:29.200 but where the sin is quite public, so that the judge and 01:25:29.200 --> 01:25:33.440 everybody know it, you can without any sin avoid him and let 01:25:33.440 --> 01:25:37.520 him go, because he is brought himself into disgrace. 01:25:37.520 --> 01:25:41.920 And you may also publicly testify concerning him, for when a matter 01:25:41.920 --> 01:25:44.720 is public in the light of day, there can be no slandering 01:25:45.280 --> 01:25:49.440 or false judging or testifying, as when we now reprove the Pope 01:25:49.440 --> 01:25:53.760 with his doctrine, which is publicly set forth in books and proclaimed 01:25:53.760 --> 01:25:54.800 in all the world. 01:25:54.800 --> 01:25:59.600 For where the sin is public, the reproof also must be public, 01:25:59.600 --> 01:26:03.440 that everyone may learn to guard against it. 01:26:03.440 --> 01:26:07.600 That last part is key what you are doing when you rebuke 01:26:07.600 --> 01:26:11.040 public sin if you have been given the opportunity and of course 01:26:11.120 --> 01:26:14.640 the abilities to do that, what you are doing is guarding against 01:26:14.640 --> 01:26:19.520 it, you are protecting others from it, because false doctrine must be 01:26:19.520 --> 01:26:23.760 refuted. Because if false doctrine is not refuted, there are those who 01:26:23.760 --> 01:26:24.800 will believe it. 01:26:24.800 --> 01:26:27.440 Of course there are those who will believe it anyway, but if 01:26:27.440 --> 01:26:31.280 it is refuted, if that false teacher is rebuked, if the correct 01:26:31.280 --> 01:26:34.960 teaching is set forth in opposition to that false teaching, it is 01:26:35.040 --> 01:26:38.880 not It will guard some of those who would have believed the 01:26:38.880 --> 01:26:44.640 blasphemy if not for that defense, if not for that rebuke. 01:26:44.640 --> 01:26:47.600 And so, for instance, this gives a very good example. 01:26:47.600 --> 01:26:52.160 If someone publishes a book, if someone publishes an essay, whatever written 01:26:52.160 --> 01:26:56.640 thing it happens to be, with false teaching in it, there is 01:26:56.640 --> 01:27:01.520 no concern about going to that man privately to rebuke him, because 01:27:01.520 --> 01:27:03.760 that is entirely public. 01:27:03.760 --> 01:27:05.120 That is a public sin. 01:27:05.120 --> 01:27:08.800 It is subject to public rebuke. 01:27:08.800 --> 01:27:14.000 Matthew 18 does not play into it, because Matthew 18 is addressing 01:27:14.000 --> 01:27:15.040 a different matter. 01:27:15.040 --> 01:27:19.200 It is addressing that private sin, the secret sin, the sin that 01:27:19.200 --> 01:27:23.200 is not published, that is not known to the wider world. 01:27:23.200 --> 01:27:26.320 That is a sin that can be handled in a different way. 01:27:26.320 --> 01:27:29.120 It must be handled in a different way, because God Because God 01:27:29.120 --> 01:27:30.960 has commanded us to do so. 01:27:30.960 --> 01:27:36.000 It is more productive to handle that sin in that way because 01:27:36.240 --> 01:27:39.280 you give the person the opportunity to repent. 01:27:39.280 --> 01:27:43.600 You're protecting his reputation, you are helping him as a Christian brother, 01:27:43.600 --> 01:27:46.880 you are attempting to salvage that relationship. 01:27:46.880 --> 01:27:50.400 Or if not necessarily at the level of salvaging it, to fix 01:27:50.400 --> 01:27:52.640 it because there's some problem. 01:27:52.640 --> 01:27:54.080 That is handled differently. 01:27:54.400 --> 01:27:59.120 That is not the consideration when it comes to public sin. 01:27:59.120 --> 01:28:03.280 We have many false teachers these days who stand up and in 01:28:03.280 --> 01:28:08.880 the name of Christ proclaim things that are directly contrary to scripture, 01:28:08.880 --> 01:28:14.480 that are incredibly wicked, that are abominations in the eyes of God. 01:28:14.480 --> 01:28:19.040 They are not subject to any of these protections in Scripture. 01:28:19.040 --> 01:28:22.640 They are They are to be rebuked forcefully. 01:28:22.640 --> 01:28:25.120 They are to be rebuked publicly. 01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:29.600 There's no concern with regard to their reputation or any of those 01:28:29.600 --> 01:28:33.520 other matters that play into our concern, that play into how we 01:28:33.520 --> 01:28:37.440 deal with We deal with brothers in Christ. 01:28:37.440 --> 01:28:41.200 These false teachers have to be destroyed. 01:28:41.200 --> 01:28:44.720 That is going to take the most forceful sort of rebuke and 01:28:44.720 --> 01:28:48.960 the most public sort of rebuke, as opposed to how you would 01:28:48.960 --> 01:28:52.000 deal with the private or the secret sins. 01:28:52.000 --> 01:28:56.240 And so if you see someone who is dealing with a false 01:28:56.240 --> 01:29:01.280 teacher in that way, you as a Christian may not rebuke the 01:29:01.280 --> 01:29:02.720 way he is doing it. 01:29:02.720 --> 01:29:05.120 Because how he is doing it, if he is doing it publicly 01:29:05.120 --> 01:29:09.600 and forcefully, as long as of course he himself is teaching rightly, 01:29:09.600 --> 01:29:11.760 what he is doing is not wrong. 01:29:11.760 --> 01:29:12.480 He is defending 01:29:13.360 --> 01:29:16.720 God's honor, he is defending God's truth. 01:29:16.720 --> 01:29:18.400 That is the concern there. 01:29:18.400 --> 01:29:23.680 The concern is not the reputation of the blasphemer, of the false 01:29:23.680 --> 01:29:28.160 teacher, of the demon who is standing up and pretending to be 01:29:28.160 --> 01:29:32.000 an angel of light, pretending to speak in God's name, and teaching 01:29:32.000 --> 01:29:39.280 falsely and leading other Christians or would be Christians astray, or leading 01:29:39.280 --> 01:29:44.560 apostates and unbelievers deeper into hell. 01:29:44.560 --> 01:29:48.640 The central concern is for God and His honor and His truth 01:29:48.800 --> 01:29:53.040 that is That is the duty with regard to these matters. 01:29:53.040 --> 01:29:56.640 That is the central duty being upheld by those who are teaching 01:29:56.640 --> 01:29:59.600 rightly and rebuking false teaching. 01:29:59.600 --> 01:30:05.360 However, there is also that secondary, that subsidiary concern concern with regard 01:30:05.360 --> 01:30:08.000 to our Christian brothers. 01:30:08.000 --> 01:30:11.120 False teaching is harmful. 01:30:11.120 --> 01:30:16.000 Even if you don't necessarily believe the false teaching, you now know 01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:18.480 it. There is some knowledge that is bad. 01:30:18.480 --> 01:30:22.000 We've gone over this many times in previous episodes. 01:30:22.000 --> 01:30:26.240 There are things that are harmful simply in the hearing. 01:30:26.240 --> 01:30:29.120 Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world. 01:30:29.120 --> 01:30:31.520 There are going to be false teachers. 01:30:31.520 --> 01:30:35.520 They cannot all be silenced before they speak, or before they speak 01:30:35.520 --> 01:30:39.040 too broadly, before too many men have heard them. 01:30:39.040 --> 01:30:42.560 And so sometimes the best we can do is simply rebuke them 01:30:42.560 --> 01:30:44.240 and then teach correctly. 01:30:44.240 --> 01:30:49.200 But hearing that false teaching is harmful in and of itself. 01:30:49.200 --> 01:30:52.880 You can't sequester that and delete that from your mind. 01:30:52.880 --> 01:30:54.400 Some of it is there now. 01:30:54.400 --> 01:30:56.640 You've heard the false doctrine. 01:30:56.640 --> 01:30:59.600 It is harmful to hear false things about God. 01:30:59.600 --> 01:31:03.120 Those are things that we as Christians should not want to hear. 01:31:03.120 --> 01:31:06.000 In a fallen world, yes, sometimes we are going to have to 01:31:06.000 --> 01:31:09.440 hear them so that we are prepared to rebuke them, so we 01:31:09.440 --> 01:31:11.920 are prepared to stand against them. 01:31:11.920 --> 01:31:14.480 But it would be better if we did not have to, and 01:31:14.480 --> 01:31:18.000 it is certainly better if false teachers are not out there freely 01:31:18.000 --> 01:31:20.320 preaching and teaching these things. 01:31:20.320 --> 01:31:23.680 Not only is it an insult to God, is an affront to 01:31:23.680 --> 01:31:28.800 God, and it reflects poorly on the society, the nation that tolerates 01:31:28.800 --> 01:31:32.880 it, and God will judge that, and I would remind everyone that 01:31:32.880 --> 01:31:38.320 God does judge nations, not just individuals, but not only are all 01:31:38.320 --> 01:31:43.280 of those concerns, but there is also the concern for those who 01:31:43.440 --> 01:31:48.080 are Christian, who will be harmed by hearing this wickedness. 01:31:48.400 --> 01:31:51.760 Just as there are things that you should not want to see, 01:31:51.760 --> 01:31:53.520 there are things you should not want to hear. 01:31:53.520 --> 01:31:56.240 And we all know the things you should not want to see. 01:31:56.240 --> 01:31:57.040 That one's easy. 01:31:57.040 --> 01:31:58.480 We all immediately grasp that. 01:31:58.480 --> 01:32:02.240 There are horrible things that you could see, and you would be 01:32:02.240 --> 01:32:05.760 far better off if you had never seen them. 01:32:05.760 --> 01:32:10.720 But the same is true with regard to hearing false things, and 01:32:10.720 --> 01:32:15.600 it is particularly true with regard to false things about God. 01:32:15.600 --> 01:32:20.480 And so this sort of rebuke of these false teachers can be 01:32:20.480 --> 01:32:25.440 forceful, can be even perhaps verging on strident. 01:32:25.440 --> 01:32:29.520 This is not a matter where we're concerned about tone, where we're 01:32:29.440 --> 01:32:33.120 concerned about being mean, or not being nice enough. 01:32:33.120 --> 01:32:36.560 This is a matter where we are concerned about the truth, where 01:32:36.560 --> 01:32:41.360 we are centrally concerned about rebuking those who are lying in God's 01:32:41.360 --> 01:32:46.880 name, about silencing wicked tongues, about ensuring that the truth is defended, 01:32:46.880 --> 01:32:50.080 and that the sheep are not harmed. 01:32:50.080 --> 01:32:55.120 This is not a place where the eighth commandment factors into defending 01:32:55.120 --> 01:32:59.600 this man's supposed reputation, or where slander is a concern. 01:32:59.600 --> 01:33:03.280 I'm not saying that you lie about him, because that is a 01:33:03.280 --> 01:33:04.640 different matter. 01:33:04.640 --> 01:33:08.320 But if you are simply standing up, speaking the truth about a 01:33:08.320 --> 01:33:13.440 wicked man, who is doing this in public and then rebuking him, 01:33:13.440 --> 01:33:17.680 all of these concerns in scripture about if your brother or if 01:33:17.680 --> 01:33:21.840 a brother, or when your brother, any of those concerns, they are 01:33:21.840 --> 01:33:24.080 absolutely not in play. 01:33:24.080 --> 01:33:28.240 And if a Christian tries to inject them into the matter, then 01:33:28.240 --> 01:33:32.880 you can rebuke him, because he has now aided that false teacher, 01:33:32.880 --> 01:33:36.080 and he himself is guilty of sin, to some degree guilty of 01:33:36.080 --> 01:33:39.760 the false sin of the false preacher himself, because when you aid 01:33:39.760 --> 01:33:43.520 someone who is teaching falsely, when you aid someone who is sinning 01:33:43.600 --> 01:33:44.640 particularly openly, you 01:33:45.520 --> 01:33:50.000 have become complicit in that sin, and so part of this is 01:33:50.000 --> 01:33:52.640 not being complicit in the sins of others. 01:33:52.640 --> 01:33:56.640 As Wo said, if you stand there silently, when God puts you 01:33:57.280 --> 01:34:01.440 in the position with the ability to rebuke false teaching, you have 01:34:01.440 --> 01:34:06.240 become complicit in it via your silence, because it is possible to 01:34:06.240 --> 01:34:10.560 become complicit in evil without doing anything except standing there with your 01:34:10.720 --> 01:34:12.480 soul mouth shut. 01:34:12.800 --> 01:34:16.640 An astonishing example of this complicity that I just came across last 01:34:16.640 --> 01:34:20.000 week. I had occasion to look at the LCMS bylaws. 01:34:20.000 --> 01:34:22.400 I was interested in what it would take to expel a present 01:34:22.400 --> 01:34:24.400 of the President of the LCMS. 01:34:24.400 --> 01:34:29.200 LCMS bylaw two point sixteen on the expulsion of a president of 01:34:29.200 --> 01:34:31.520 the Synod from membership in the Synod. 01:34:31.520 --> 01:34:36.160 So this is effectively removing the president himself from the roster of 01:34:36.160 --> 01:34:39.680 all the members of Synod, which if you remember from previous episodes 01:34:39.760 --> 01:34:43.600 or if you haven't been in the LCMS, pastors in congregations are 01:34:43.600 --> 01:34:47.040 members of Synod, individual Christian men are not. 01:34:47.040 --> 01:34:50.160 So there are no Christian men in that are members of Synod, 01:34:50.160 --> 01:34:53.360 it's pastors in its congregations. 01:34:53.360 --> 01:34:58.160 The bylaw related to removing a man from the roster has to 01:34:58.160 --> 01:35:02.720 do with open and notorious public sin, public false teaching, all manner 01:35:02.720 --> 01:35:07.760 of things that cross so many lines that the next step is 01:35:07.760 --> 01:35:10.160 to effectively defrock them. 01:35:10.160 --> 01:35:12.880 Here's what bylaw two point sixteen says. 01:35:12.880 --> 01:35:16.080 If the council of presidents by fifty one percent of the votes 01:35:16.080 --> 01:35:20.080 of the District Presidents determines that bylaw section two point one six 01:35:20.080 --> 01:35:24.480 applies, then the Council of Presidents shall ensure that the accuser has 01:35:24.480 --> 01:35:27.280 met face to face with the accused president of the synod in 01:35:27.280 --> 01:35:30.560 the manner described in Matthew eighteen fifteen. 01:35:30.560 --> 01:35:34.480 Even if the alleged violation of Article thirteen of the Constitution is 01:35:34.480 --> 01:35:41.040 considered to be quote unquote public, this provision of Matthew 18:15 shall 01:35:41.040 --> 01:35:42.000 be followed. 01:35:42.000 --> 01:35:45.280 The reputation of all parties to the matter is to be protected 01:35:45.440 --> 01:35:47.360 as commanded in the eighth commandment. 01:35:47.360 --> 01:35:51.040 Now, as Corey just delineated a few minutes ago, this is in 01:35:51.040 --> 01:35:54.720 direct contradiction to Lutheran confessions. 01:35:54.720 --> 01:36:01.360 The Lutheran confessions expressly state that the manner of sin in Article 01:36:01.600 --> 01:36:04.160 13, that I'm not going to bother reading, that it's it clearly 01:36:04.160 --> 01:36:04.800 applies here. 01:36:05.120 --> 01:36:09.200 Open public notorious sin is the only reason that 51% of the 01:36:09.600 --> 01:36:13.920 presidents would say we have to remove the president of the Senate. 01:36:13.920 --> 01:36:18.560 The Missouri Senate bylaws codify a direct repudiation of what scripture says 01:36:18.960 --> 01:36:24.080 about Matthew 18, and a direct repudiation of what the Lutheran confessions 01:36:24.080 --> 01:36:27.440 say in the large catechism about the eighth commandment. 01:36:27.440 --> 01:36:30.160 It's astonishing to me, and yet it's not astonishing at all at 01:36:30.160 --> 01:36:30.640 this point. 01:36:30.640 --> 01:36:35.920 This is absolutely blasphemous in the bylaws of the corporation and is 01:36:35.920 --> 01:36:40.240 there falsely to protect, as Corey just said, to protect blasphemers. 01:36:40.240 --> 01:36:42.880 None of this would ever apply because remember it takes fifty-one percent 01:36:42.880 --> 01:36:45.360 of the presidents to say this man needs to be removed. 01:36:45.360 --> 01:36:48.240 And then they would begin the proceedings to affect that. 01:36:48.240 --> 01:36:51.360 What this says is that the accuser of the man, as though 01:36:51.360 --> 01:36:53.680 there's an accuser when there's public and notorious thin. 01:36:53.760 --> 01:36:57.360 I think that's one of the greatest lies in all of this, 01:36:57.280 --> 01:37:01.360 when Matthew eighteen is misapplied in cases where it has nothing, no 01:37:01.360 --> 01:37:05.680 bearing whatsoever, is the notion that there has to be some individual 01:37:05.680 --> 01:37:10.880 accuser to be personally offended by whatever has happened. 01:37:10.880 --> 01:37:11.840 Because what does that do? 01:37:11.840 --> 01:37:13.680 It sets up a he said, she said. 01:37:13.680 --> 01:37:16.160 It means you have an accuser and you have the accused. 01:37:16.160 --> 01:37:16.960 Well no. 01:37:16.960 --> 01:37:21.520 When we have cases of open, notorious public sin, of paul false 01:37:21.520 --> 01:37:26.480 teaching, of false prophets, like we have with the current president, it's 01:37:26.480 --> 01:37:30.880 blasphemous. It's open public blasphemy against God Almighty. 01:37:30.880 --> 01:37:33.520 The only accuser is Christ himself. 01:37:33.520 --> 01:37:36.560 And although Christ is going to accuse men like him at Harrison 01:37:36.560 --> 01:37:40.240 on judgment day, every district president has a duty today to also 01:37:40.240 --> 01:37:41.120 accuse him. 01:37:41.120 --> 01:37:44.080 Every pastor has a duty to point to the things that have 01:37:44.160 --> 01:37:48.000 been falsely said about the Christian religion by men like him. 01:37:48.000 --> 01:37:49.520 And yeah, it doesn't happen. 01:37:49.520 --> 01:37:54.240 And the bylaws of the corporation are there to insulate such men 01:37:54.240 --> 01:37:59.040 from accountability to the Christian church, which in effect says it's not 01:37:59.040 --> 01:38:00.480 a Christian church, and it isn't. 01:38:00.480 --> 01:38:03.680 There are Christian churches among it, but the congregations are going to 01:38:03.680 --> 01:38:08.880 need to flee or be destroyed because this sort of pernicious denial 01:38:08.880 --> 01:38:13.760 of scripture can only ever possibly have the result of destroying faith. 01:38:13.760 --> 01:38:16.800 And part of the point of this episode is this stuff, the 01:38:16.800 --> 01:38:22.000 failure to to correctly address sin, to publicly address the wrong sins, 01:38:22.000 --> 01:38:25.200 all these are ways that Satan is going to exploit our own 01:38:25.200 --> 01:38:26.880 sinful fallen nature. 01:38:26.880 --> 01:38:28.320 Because we're all sinners. 01:38:28.560 --> 01:38:31.040 You know, it's the gimmick you're told as a little kid. 01:38:31.040 --> 01:38:33.600 If you point your finger at somebody, there are three fingers pointed 01:38:33.760 --> 01:38:34.560 back at you. 01:38:34.560 --> 01:38:36.880 It's kind of dumb, but it's also true. 01:38:36.880 --> 01:38:41.200 You don't want to be pointing fingers unless there's something this serious. 01:38:41.200 --> 01:38:46.000 But the reason that that's a dumb example is that there's no 01:38:46.000 --> 01:38:50.320 accuser when someone is doing something so open and egregious and notorious. 01:38:50.320 --> 01:38:54.640 It's not that oh I'm offended by this, is that this offends 01:38:54.640 --> 01:38:57.440 God. This is clearly against scripture, whatever it is. 01:38:57.440 --> 01:39:00.080 That's why the our compass needs to be pointed at God first 01:39:00.080 --> 01:39:03.600 and foremost, and then to correct others and say, look, man, you're 01:39:03.600 --> 01:39:04.880 not pointing at God anymore. 01:39:04.880 --> 01:39:07.120 You need to get on back on the right path and have 01:39:07.120 --> 01:39:09.120 your compass point at a God too. 01:39:09.120 --> 01:39:12.160 And you will know when your compasses are pointing in the same 01:39:12.160 --> 01:39:15.760 direction, and you're basing that on scripture, then you know that you're 01:39:15.680 --> 01:39:17.600 talking about the same God again. 01:39:17.600 --> 01:39:21.360 And so many of these disputes come to where our compasses are 01:39:21.360 --> 01:39:24.720 pointing. These guys will point to something that's not scriptural. 01:39:24.720 --> 01:39:27.440 They'll point to the global religion and say, This is what I 01:39:27.440 --> 01:39:31.200 believe. These historical events of the 20th century, this is what I 01:39:31.200 --> 01:39:35.280 determine faith in damnation based on. 01:39:35.280 --> 01:39:37.840 We will link once again for about the fifth time in the 01:39:37.840 --> 01:39:43.040 show notes a essay by Professor Mark, who sainted, who was discussing 01:39:43.040 --> 01:39:45.440 many of these subjects that we're talking about today. 01:39:45.440 --> 01:39:50.320 And he found a a quote from Luther that's perfectly apt. 01:39:50.320 --> 01:39:54.880 Luther said, Faith and love are two different things. 01:39:54.880 --> 01:40:01.040 Faith tolerates nothing, love tolerates everything, faith curses, love blesses, faith seeks 01:40:01.600 --> 01:40:05.360 revenge and punishment, love seeks to spare and to forgive. 01:40:05.360 --> 01:40:09.360 Therefore, when faith and God's word are involved, there can be no 01:40:09.360 --> 01:40:13.840 more loving or being patient, but only anger, zeal, and scolding. 01:40:13.840 --> 01:40:17.360 All prophets also acted in this way, that in matters of faith 01:40:17.440 --> 01:40:19.760 they showed no patience or mercy. 01:40:20.080 --> 01:40:22.960 And odds face this seems like a very heartless quote. 01:40:22.960 --> 01:40:25.680 It seems like a quote that's completely at odds with what I 01:40:25.680 --> 01:40:29.680 just read a few minutes ago from Galatians in first Timothy. 01:40:29.680 --> 01:40:30.880 It's loveless, right? 01:40:30.880 --> 01:40:36.640 And so Mark Wort's dealing directly with the accusation of lovelessness, which 01:40:36.640 --> 01:40:39.680 is why one of the first things we incorporated by reference was 01:40:39.680 --> 01:40:41.920 the episode that we did on perfect hatred. 01:40:41.920 --> 01:40:46.400 Because if you do not understand perfect hatred, Christian hatred, the duty 01:40:46.400 --> 01:40:50.000 of every Christian to hate that which God hates, none of the 01:40:50.000 --> 01:40:52.640 rest of this will make sense, along with the episodes that Corey 01:40:52.640 --> 01:40:54.320 mentioned that we did on love. 01:40:54.320 --> 01:40:59.200 You can't understand rebuke, in fact you can't understand faith if you 01:40:59.200 --> 01:41:03.520 don't understand love for that which God loves and hatred for that 01:41:03.520 --> 01:41:05.360 which God hates. 01:41:05.360 --> 01:41:09.760 We're dealing here when we're talking about rebuke and reproof and correction 01:41:09.760 --> 01:41:12.480 of error of things that God hates. 01:41:12.480 --> 01:41:15.760 And while it is not license, therefore, for us to hate anyone 01:41:15.760 --> 01:41:18.000 who makes a mistake, because that's that's all of us. 01:41:18.000 --> 01:41:19.440 We all make mistakes every day. 01:41:19.440 --> 01:41:24.400 We sin, we get things wrong, we lie knowingly and by omission. 01:41:24.400 --> 01:41:25.360 We're sinners. 01:41:25.360 --> 01:41:26.000 We're human. 01:41:26.000 --> 01:41:26.640 We're creatures. 01:41:26.640 --> 01:41:27.840 We've we're fallen. 01:41:27.840 --> 01:41:29.440 We get things wrong. 01:41:29.440 --> 01:41:33.840 And so the distinction needs to be between hating that which God 01:41:33.840 --> 01:41:36.400 hates and hating people. 01:41:36.400 --> 01:41:39.280 And is not always the same thing. 01:41:39.280 --> 01:41:42.960 If I get something wrong and you believe that I'm a Christian, 01:41:42.960 --> 01:41:46.160 the first approach should be, well, you know, this guy made a 01:41:46.160 --> 01:41:47.840 mistake. He sinned. 01:41:48.000 --> 01:41:48.880 I don't hate him. 01:41:48.880 --> 01:41:51.360 I want to try to straighten him out so that we're both 01:41:51.360 --> 01:41:54.080 on the same page with regard to God. 01:41:54.080 --> 01:41:55.360 That approach 01:41:56.400 --> 01:41:59.200 Has to be rooted in faith that's always going to be about 01:41:59.200 --> 01:42:00.000 telling the truth. 01:42:00.000 --> 01:42:03.200 Just as in the example, the doctor refused to give a potentially 01:42:03.200 --> 01:42:06.800 fatal diagnosis because he didn't want the guy to feel bad. 01:42:06.800 --> 01:42:08.080 That's not loving. 01:42:08.080 --> 01:42:10.480 And so that's the point of Luther's quote is that when you 01:42:11.120 --> 01:42:15.040 it's not setting faith and love in opposition, it's saying that when 01:42:15.040 --> 01:42:19.120 we're dealing with matters of faith, of salvation, of doctrine, we can't 01:42:19.120 --> 01:42:20.400 give an inch. 01:42:20.400 --> 01:42:21.680 Satan wants to give an inch. 01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:24.400 He wants you to give up just the tiniest bit, the pinch 01:42:24.400 --> 01:42:25.200 of incense. 01:42:25.200 --> 01:42:27.840 There's so many examples throughout scripture. 01:42:27.840 --> 01:42:32.400 Beginning in the garden, when Eve recounted what Adam had told her 01:42:32.480 --> 01:42:34.960 God said about the fruit, she said that she would die. 01:42:35.040 --> 01:42:36.160 What did Satan say? 01:42:36.000 --> 01:42:37.760 you you will not surely die. 01:42:37.760 --> 01:42:38.800 It's not gonna be that bad. 01:42:38.800 --> 01:42:40.080 You'll be fine. 01:42:40.080 --> 01:42:42.560 That's the eternal cry of hell. 01:42:42.560 --> 01:42:43.600 It's not that bad. 01:42:43.600 --> 01:42:45.040 You're gonna be fine. 01:42:45.040 --> 01:42:46.720 And who doesn't want to hear that? 01:42:46.720 --> 01:42:49.440 Whatever you do wrong, you want to hear it's gonna be okay, 01:42:49.440 --> 01:42:52.400 right? you don't want to hear that you have a potentially fatal 01:42:52.400 --> 01:42:54.960 disease. You don't want to hear that you've sinned. 01:42:54.960 --> 01:42:57.360 You wanna hear that's gonna be hunky dory. 01:42:57.360 --> 01:43:01.280 And there's a distinction between it's gonna be hunky dory and Jesus 01:43:01.280 --> 01:43:02.720 died for your sins. 01:43:02.720 --> 01:43:05.040 The distinction is whether or not a sin occurred. 01:43:05.200 --> 01:43:07.680 Because, oh, I feel bad, yeah, maybe I didn't get right. 01:43:07.680 --> 01:43:08.880 Like, no, I sinned. 01:43:08.880 --> 01:43:10.240 I sinned against God. 01:43:10.240 --> 01:43:13.280 And if I sinned against another man or whatever, I I sinned 01:43:13.280 --> 01:43:16.400 first and only against God. 01:43:16.400 --> 01:43:21.360 Faith deals with that honestly, and it deals with it heartlessly in 01:43:21.360 --> 01:43:24.960 a sense that my heart isn't going out to someone and saying, 01:43:24.960 --> 01:43:27.120 oh, well, yeah, they're sinning and they're lying and they're doing all 01:43:27.440 --> 01:43:29.440 this stuff, but I really like 'em. 01:43:29.440 --> 01:43:31.520 So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell 'em. 01:43:31.520 --> 01:43:32.400 Like no. 01:43:32.400 --> 01:43:36.000 The more you love someone, the more urgent it is to correct 01:43:36.000 --> 01:43:37.200 their error. 01:43:37.200 --> 01:43:40.160 And so that's why so often we will we'll try to delineate 01:43:40.160 --> 01:43:40.400 between 01:43:41.280 --> 01:43:45.360 that which is emotional and that which is factual, because our emotions 01:43:45.360 --> 01:43:47.520 will almost always mislead us. 01:43:47.520 --> 01:43:50.160 And it doesn't mean that they should be completely disregarded. 01:43:50.400 --> 01:43:51.680 I gave the example earlier. 01:43:51.920 --> 01:43:57.520 The scriptural admonitions for a Christian rebuking another Christian acknowledge the fact 01:43:57.520 --> 01:44:00.160 that you can do it in such a way that you'll drive 01:44:00.160 --> 01:44:01.760 someone further from God. 01:44:01.760 --> 01:44:05.520 If they've sinned and you clobber them when it's the wrong thing 01:44:05.520 --> 01:44:08.400 to do in wisdom, you can make things worse. 01:44:08.400 --> 01:44:12.000 You can compound one sin with another sin by failing to be 01:44:12.000 --> 01:44:14.080 wise about the situation. 01:44:14.080 --> 01:44:14.400 But 01:44:15.520 --> 01:44:18.800 your devotion must be to faith and to truth. 01:44:18.800 --> 01:44:20.400 And that is to God's will. 01:44:20.400 --> 01:44:22.880 God's eternal will doesn't change. 01:44:22.880 --> 01:44:26.400 And the love that we have for each other must always be 01:44:26.400 --> 01:44:28.720 bounded by saying, I'm going to tell the truth. 01:44:28.720 --> 01:44:30.400 And it's one of the things that Corey and I are good 01:44:30.400 --> 01:44:32.880 at, even though it makes many people dislike us. 01:44:32.880 --> 01:44:34.160 Even if they kinda like us. 01:44:34.160 --> 01:44:37.440 Like, you know, these guys I I I try to put up 01:44:37.440 --> 01:44:40.640 with them, but then they say this stuff that's really upsetting and 01:44:40.880 --> 01:44:42.480 you know they wander off in disgust. 01:44:42.480 --> 01:44:43.680 Happens fairly often. 01:44:44.800 --> 01:44:45.120 And 01:44:46.000 --> 01:44:49.200 all I can say is that I love you enough that I'm 01:44:49.120 --> 01:44:50.480 not gonna lie. 01:44:50.480 --> 01:44:53.440 I love you enough that I'm okay with you hating me for 01:44:53.440 --> 01:44:54.960 telling you the truth. 01:44:54.960 --> 01:45:00.000 And if I fall too far off that side of the horse, 01:45:00.000 --> 01:45:02.640 I confess to God that that is my weakness. 01:45:02.640 --> 01:45:04.560 But it's also one of my strengths. 01:45:04.560 --> 01:45:06.400 It's one of Corey's strengths. 01:45:06.400 --> 01:45:09.600 The fact that someone will be angry doesn't give us any information 01:45:10.240 --> 01:45:12.160 about whether we're right or wrong. 01:45:12.160 --> 01:45:15.280 And that's the the the essence of Luther's quote about faith and 01:45:15.280 --> 01:45:17.280 love being two different things. 01:45:17.280 --> 01:45:20.880 The faith that we as Christians are to bring to these matters 01:45:21.120 --> 01:45:22.560 isn't set against love. 01:45:22.560 --> 01:45:24.480 It's driven by love. 01:45:24.480 --> 01:45:29.840 But love cannot dominate faith because love can't override truth. 01:45:29.840 --> 01:45:32.160 That's why we talk about the transcendental sometimes. 01:45:32.160 --> 01:45:36.480 We talk about God's nature, which is unknowable and impossible and perfection, 01:45:36.480 --> 01:45:40.960 but when we talk about these different essential pieces of it, God 01:45:40.960 --> 01:45:43.840 is love and God is truth and those are not in opposition. 01:45:43.840 --> 01:45:47.120 So Luther's not citing them in opposition, neither are we. 01:45:47.120 --> 01:45:52.640 The doctor that fails to diagnose a fatal disease, the Christian who 01:45:52.640 --> 01:45:56.240 fails to diagnose a fatal sin in the name of love is 01:45:56.240 --> 01:45:58.080 not being loving at all. 01:45:58.080 --> 01:46:00.800 I think that's one of the crucial things we have to address 01:46:00.800 --> 01:46:03.920 in our own lives, when we're looking at the sins, the mistakes, 01:46:03.920 --> 01:46:07.920 the errors of others, are we being loving by letting something go? 01:46:07.920 --> 01:46:10.960 And in some cases, you know, like n not necessarily with sin, 01:46:10.960 --> 01:46:14.000 but things that are just, you know, if I think you're wrong 01:46:14.000 --> 01:46:17.440 about the twentieth century or the nineteenth century or the eighteenth century, 01:46:17.440 --> 01:46:19.520 I might think you're wrong about any number of things. 01:46:19.520 --> 01:46:23.120 I'm not gonna chase you around yelling at you about it, unless 01:46:23.440 --> 01:46:26.400 something is actually gonna rise to the level of salvation. 01:46:26.400 --> 01:46:32.160 That is when faith must override the loving tolerance of brothers just 01:46:32.160 --> 01:46:33.120 being human. 01:46:33.120 --> 01:46:35.360 We're all human, we make mistakes. 01:46:35.360 --> 01:46:39.360 When it's sin that's involved and when it's sin that's misleading others, 01:46:39.360 --> 01:46:41.120 a different set of rules apply 01:46:42.320 --> 01:46:44.240 because truth must dominate. 01:46:44.240 --> 01:46:46.080 Our faith must dominate. 01:46:46.080 --> 01:46:48.960 And that is not set against love. 01:46:48.960 --> 01:46:52.400 But love cannot be used to say, well, I love this guy 01:46:52.400 --> 01:46:54.240 so much, I'm not going to tell him the truth. 01:46:54.240 --> 01:46:56.080 That is an incoherent sentence. 01:46:56.080 --> 01:46:59.520 You cannot love someone such that you do not tell them that 01:46:59.680 --> 01:47:00.480 which is true. 01:47:00.480 --> 01:47:04.080 There's wisdom in how you approach it, but to remain silent when 01:47:04.080 --> 01:47:07.760 a man is endangering his soul is hatred, even when it makes 01:47:07.760 --> 01:47:10.160 you feel better, even when it makes him feel better. 01:47:10.160 --> 01:47:14.160 Frankly, when there's sin and there's error involved and everybody feels better, 01:47:14.160 --> 01:47:16.880 that's your sign that something's gone horribly wrong. 01:47:16.880 --> 01:47:20.720 That's it's the crucial element of this episode is that they're are 01:47:20.720 --> 01:47:23.040 times when you gotta make people feel bad. 01:47:23.040 --> 01:47:26.640 This episode, last week's episode, there are times when you have to 01:47:26.640 --> 01:47:27.760 make people feel bad. 01:47:27.760 --> 01:47:28.880 Not necessarily everyone. 01:47:28.880 --> 01:47:32.080 It's not necessarily the duty of every single Christian in every single 01:47:32.080 --> 01:47:33.920 case to address every single error. 01:47:33.920 --> 01:47:35.120 That would be mass chaos. 01:47:35.680 --> 01:47:40.000 these are matters of of wisdom and patience and love, but the 01:47:40.000 --> 01:47:41.360 love must serve God. 01:47:41.360 --> 01:47:44.880 It cannot serve another man's feelings. 01:47:45.600 --> 01:47:45.920 So I 01:47:45.920 --> 01:47:50.240 know it is not a perfect analogy, but I will leave you 01:47:50.560 --> 01:47:56.320 with this analogy to sort of couch the differences here between and 01:47:56.320 --> 01:48:03.760 among private, semi-private, we could call it, and public. 01:48:03.760 --> 01:48:10.240 There are two distinct kinds of juridical systems, of court systems. 01:48:10.240 --> 01:48:15.920 The best example would be the US versus, say, Germany. 01:48:15.920 --> 01:48:20.640 Many of the EU countries, but we'll use Germany for this example. 01:48:20.640 --> 01:48:25.600 The difference is the adversarial versus the inquisitorial system. 01:48:25.600 --> 01:48:28.720 There are many differences here, and as I said, the analogy is 01:48:28.720 --> 01:48:32.480 not perfect, but it is a good way to help keep these 01:48:32.480 --> 01:48:35.840 parts in mind, to think about the difference here between the private 01:48:35.840 --> 01:48:37.040 and the public. 01:48:37.040 --> 01:48:44.000 The inquisitorial system is what you use for the private matters, the 01:48:44.000 --> 01:48:48.400 private sins, the secret sins, in the words of the large catechism. 01:48:48.400 --> 01:48:51.680 The adversarial system is what is used for public sin. 01:48:52.240 --> 01:48:57.040 The difference between the two systems, the inquisitorial system, first off, there 01:48:57.040 --> 01:48:59.120 is no jury. 01:48:59.120 --> 01:49:02.880 Second, the judge plays a much more active role 01:49:03.760 --> 01:49:06.800 and the goal is simply to arrive at truth. 01:49:06.800 --> 01:49:10.960 The goal is to figure out what happened and what is right, 01:49:10.960 --> 01:49:12.720 what should be done. 01:49:13.360 --> 01:49:16.800 The adversarial system, which is the system we have in the United 01:49:17.280 --> 01:49:22.880 states the judge plays a less active role, a less thorough role. 01:49:22.880 --> 01:49:26.320 It is the parties that independently collect evidence as opposed to in 01:49:26.320 --> 01:49:30.000 the inquisitorial system the judge collects the evidence and then 01:49:30.880 --> 01:49:36.560 in the actual case, in the courtroom, the parties are adversarial. 01:49:36.560 --> 01:49:38.320 They are against one another. 01:49:38.320 --> 01:49:41.680 It is a contest between the two sides. 01:49:41.680 --> 01:49:44.640 The judge serves as sort of a referee is how you could 01:49:44.640 --> 01:49:46.480 think of him. 01:49:46.480 --> 01:49:47.680 And there is a jury. 01:49:47.680 --> 01:49:50.560 There isn't a jury, but for the sake of the analogy, there's 01:49:50.560 --> 01:49:52.880 a jury. 01:49:52.880 --> 01:49:57.600 That is how you should view the public sin, the public dispute, 01:49:57.600 --> 01:49:59.760 because that is the public dispute. 01:49:59.760 --> 01:50:03.040 You have one side that has said something, that's one of the 01:50:03.040 --> 01:50:05.600 attorneys, or one of the parties. 01:50:05.600 --> 01:50:08.000 You have the other side who says something else. 01:50:08.000 --> 01:50:10.400 Well that's the other party, the other attorney. 01:50:11.040 --> 01:50:15.520 They are going to use the evidence they have amassed to argue 01:50:15.520 --> 01:50:17.200 for their side. 01:50:17.200 --> 01:50:21.280 Now, of course, ultimately the judge is God, and God, in the 01:50:21.280 --> 01:50:24.000 actual case, gets the final say. 01:50:24.000 --> 01:50:27.680 He plays a more active and final role than the judge would 01:50:27.680 --> 01:50:29.680 in the analogy. 01:50:29.680 --> 01:50:34.000 But you are the jury, because every Christian is part of the 01:50:34.000 --> 01:50:38.320 jury. You have to decide which side is right when it comes 01:50:38.320 --> 01:50:40.640 to these public contests. 01:50:40.640 --> 01:50:42.960 The arbiter, of course, is God's word. 01:50:42.960 --> 01:50:45.920 So you could also think of God's word as the judge because 01:50:45.920 --> 01:50:49.600 that is what God has given us to judge. 01:50:49.600 --> 01:50:54.400 His word is also, incidentally, the judge in the inquisitorial system, but 01:50:54.400 --> 01:50:58.080 that is a different approach, and the reason it's different is because 01:50:58.080 --> 01:51:02.720 the parties are not supposed to be adversarial in the sense that 01:51:02.720 --> 01:51:05.280 they are in the adversarial system. 01:51:05.280 --> 01:51:07.360 The goal is to find that truth. 01:51:07.360 --> 01:51:12.960 You are all working together to find the truth, using God's Word 01:51:12.960 --> 01:51:16.640 as the ultimate arbiter, because it is the only arbiter in these 01:51:16.640 --> 01:51:20.480 matters. And so if you think of the difference between private and 01:51:20.480 --> 01:51:25.280 public sin as being these two different approaches, but with that same 01:51:26.000 --> 01:51:31.040 central truth of God's word, then it gives you a mental framework 01:51:31.280 --> 01:51:36.720 into which you can slot things that you encounter in your life. 01:51:36.720 --> 01:51:41.440 If you encounter a public sin, if you are in a position 01:51:41.440 --> 01:51:45.120 to rebuke that you have the abilities God has given you, the 01:51:45.120 --> 01:51:49.360 knowledge, the attributes, the aptitude, whatever it happens to be, God has 01:51:49.360 --> 01:51:52.400 given you these things, then by all means you may be the 01:51:52.400 --> 01:51:56.080 one to stand up and rebuke that, to teach correctly with regard 01:51:56.080 --> 01:52:00.320 to the topic about which someone else was teaching falsely, or it 01:52:00.320 --> 01:52:02.880 may be the case that you're part of the jury in this 01:52:02.880 --> 01:52:06.720 particular instance, and so you look for those who are defending the 01:52:06.720 --> 01:52:09.840 false teaching, or in this case you've already found that man, you 01:52:09.840 --> 01:52:12.240 look for the man who is rebuking him. 01:52:12.240 --> 01:52:17.120 And then you use God's word to determine which one is correct. 01:52:17.600 --> 01:52:21.600 The men who are engaged in that public dispute, at least one 01:52:21.600 --> 01:52:23.680 of them will be using God's word. 01:52:23.680 --> 01:52:26.240 It may be that the false teacher is not, or he may 01:52:26.240 --> 01:52:29.040 be using it and perverting it, because of course, as we've mentioned 01:52:29.040 --> 01:52:33.120 before, and as we see clearly in scripture, Satan loves to pervert 01:52:33.120 --> 01:52:34.560 God's word. 01:52:34.560 --> 01:52:39.120 But at the very least, the man who is arguing for God's 01:52:39.120 --> 01:52:42.080 word will be employing it, so at least one party will be 01:52:42.080 --> 01:52:43.040 employing God's word. 01:52:43.200 --> 01:52:46.080 He can point you to the sections where you can go for 01:52:46.080 --> 01:52:49.760 yourself and you can read them, and you can see if what 01:52:49.760 --> 01:52:52.800 one man says or if what the other man says is in 01:52:52.800 --> 01:52:57.360 alignment with what God says, because that is the ultimate arbiter. 01:52:57.360 --> 01:53:01.840 But if you find yourself instead not dealing with this public sin, 01:53:01.840 --> 01:53:06.320 this public false teaching, if you find yourself dealing with a private 01:53:06.320 --> 01:53:10.720 sin, then you don't want that adversarial system. 01:53:10.720 --> 01:53:14.800 You are not necessarily in an adversarial position with regard to your 01:53:14.800 --> 01:53:17.920 brother who has sinned against you, or your brother who has come 01:53:17.920 --> 01:53:20.160 to you and said that you were sinning. 01:53:20.160 --> 01:53:24.320 You are on opposite sides, as it were with regard to a 01:53:24.320 --> 01:53:27.680 question, but your goal should be to find the truth. 01:53:27.680 --> 01:53:31.280 The goal in the adversarial system a lot of times is just 01:53:31.280 --> 01:53:32.720 to win. 01:53:32.720 --> 01:53:36.240 In this case, the truth matters because in this case, of course, 01:53:36.240 --> 01:53:39.520 it is God's word, and you as the jury should be seeking 01:53:39.520 --> 01:53:44.160 the truth, not just which side is better at arguing or happens 01:53:44.160 --> 01:53:45.840 to be flashier. 01:53:45.840 --> 01:53:50.160 You should want to arrive at a true conclusion. 01:53:50.160 --> 01:53:55.040 The same thing in this case, in this specific facet, is true 01:53:55.040 --> 01:53:57.680 with regard to the inquisitorial system. 01:53:57.680 --> 01:54:00.240 You should want to arrive at the truth, but you're doing it 01:54:00.240 --> 01:54:03.840 in a less confrontational way. 01:54:03.840 --> 01:54:06.720 You're not doing it with the same level of acrimony that is 01:54:06.720 --> 01:54:10.320 going to be there with regard to public sin. 01:54:10.320 --> 01:54:13.600 Because as the quote from Luther said, there is a difference when 01:54:13.600 --> 01:54:18.080 it comes to matters of the faith versus matters of love. 01:54:18.080 --> 01:54:21.040 And one way you can think of that is the matters of 01:54:21.040 --> 01:54:25.360 faith are things dealing with the things of God, things dealing with 01:54:25.360 --> 01:54:27.120 God's truth. 01:54:27.120 --> 01:54:32.240 So So if someone is teaching that Jesus Christ is not God, 01:54:32.240 --> 01:54:33.840 that's a matter of faith. 01:54:33.840 --> 01:54:35.680 That has to be dealt with in a certain way. 01:54:35.680 --> 01:54:40.880 That man must be rebuked in no uncertain terms as a false 01:54:40.880 --> 01:54:44.560 teacher straight from the pits of hell. 01:54:44.560 --> 01:54:48.000 But if you're dealing with a matter where it is a matter 01:54:48.160 --> 01:54:52.720 between brothers, you don't deal with that the same way. 01:54:52.720 --> 01:54:53.840 You don't approach that the same way. 01:54:54.080 --> 01:54:56.160 And we all know this. 01:54:56.160 --> 01:54:59.440 We have this distinction also in the left hand kingdom. 01:54:59.440 --> 01:55:02.880 If you're dealing with politics, that is going to be handled a 01:55:02.880 --> 01:55:03.360 certain way. 01:55:03.360 --> 01:55:04.800 It is a purely public matter. 01:55:04.800 --> 01:55:07.040 Politics is Politics is public. 01:55:07.040 --> 01:55:12.000 Those rebukes, those arguments, the adversarial encounters are going to take on 01:55:12.000 --> 01:55:15.440 a certain tenor, a certain nature, that should not be the case, 01:55:15.440 --> 01:55:17.200 say in a family. 01:55:17.200 --> 01:55:18.880 That's private. 01:55:18.880 --> 01:55:23.680 Disputes between and among family members should be handled differently from political 01:55:23.680 --> 01:55:28.240 disputes. Well one, they shouldn't be broadcast, but they should be handled 01:55:28.240 --> 01:55:31.120 in love, they should be addressed with love. 01:55:31.120 --> 01:55:34.880 The same thing is true when it comes to dealing with your 01:55:34.880 --> 01:55:36.880 brothers in Christ. 01:55:36.880 --> 01:55:40.880 Yes, you have to be uncompromising with regard to the true things 01:55:40.880 --> 01:55:44.800 of God, with regard to the faith, with regard to the tenets 01:55:44.800 --> 01:55:48.640 of the faith, with regard to what is in God's Word. 01:55:48.640 --> 01:55:51.440 But you do that in love, in a way that you are 01:55:51.440 --> 01:55:56.640 not necessarily going to approach rebuking a false teacher. 01:55:56.640 --> 01:56:00.480 And so don't look for the same behavior if someone is dealing 01:56:00.480 --> 01:56:03.040 with a private matter versus a public matter. 01:56:03.040 --> 01:56:07.760 Those rebuking public false teachers are going to have to use tactics 01:56:07.760 --> 01:56:11.600 and engage in a way that would be inappropriate in a private 01:56:11.600 --> 01:56:16.160 matter. It is inappropriate to use the tactics you would use to 01:56:16.160 --> 01:56:18.960 refute a false teacher to rebuke him 01:56:20.080 --> 01:56:23.280 when you're dealing with a dispute with a brother or a sister 01:56:23.440 --> 01:56:30.160 or a parent, you behave differently in different places. 01:56:30.160 --> 01:56:32.960 You engage differently with different people. 01:56:32.960 --> 01:56:35.840 That is part of just human life, but certainly as part of 01:56:35.840 --> 01:56:38.000 the Christian life, it's part of wisdom. 01:56:38.160 --> 01:56:44.400 And so this distinction between private matters and public matters, between private 01:56:44.400 --> 01:56:48.720 sin and public sin, must be maintained. 01:56:48.720 --> 01:56:52.000 Those who attempt to blur them are attempting to mislead you or 01:56:52.000 --> 01:56:53.760 harm you in some way. 01:56:53.760 --> 01:56:59.920 Whether they are doing it personally or those behind them, the animating 01:56:59.920 --> 01:57:03.760 intelligence is doing it, it really doesn't matter, because in either case 01:57:03.840 --> 01:57:06.000 it is going to harm you if you let it. 01:57:06.000 --> 01:57:07.360 Do not let that harm you. 01:57:07.360 --> 01:57:11.120 Do not conflate these things. 01:57:11.120 --> 01:57:15.840 And so finally, though, I want to go back to that first 01:57:16.480 --> 01:57:19.520 point, major point that we made. 01:57:19.520 --> 01:57:21.520 Because that is the core of this. 01:57:21.520 --> 01:57:24.080 That was the most important point. 01:57:24.080 --> 01:57:25.840 Yes, the rest of this matters. 01:57:25.840 --> 01:57:27.040 Yes, it is key. 01:57:27.040 --> 01:57:28.400 You have to understand it. 01:57:28.720 --> 01:57:33.760 because it gives you the roadmap, the the groundwork, the way to 01:57:33.760 --> 01:57:36.960 approach these matters, how to deal with these things, how to handle 01:57:36.960 --> 01:57:38.720 these as a Christian. 01:57:38.720 --> 01:57:43.200 But that first point is what is most important. 01:57:43.520 --> 01:57:47.520 And just like the commandments, the first one is more important than 01:57:47.520 --> 01:57:50.160 the rest, the second is more important than the third through the 01:57:50.160 --> 01:57:54.960 tenth, the first point matters the most because it is about God. 01:57:55.200 --> 01:57:57.440 And that is the core of this. 01:57:57.440 --> 01:58:03.360 When dealing with theological questions, when dealing with questions of scriptural truth, 01:58:03.360 --> 01:58:07.360 we must get them right, because these are the things of God. 01:58:07.360 --> 01:58:12.960 We are not permitted to be tolerant, to give leeway, to let 01:58:13.440 --> 01:58:18.000 bygones be bygones, to let others persist in error, to agree to 01:58:18.000 --> 01:58:22.240 disagree. Because when we are dealing with the things of God, what 01:58:22.240 --> 01:58:26.240 we are doing in what is our duty is to defend God's 01:58:26.240 --> 01:58:28.800 honor, to defend God's truth. 01:58:28.800 --> 01:58:31.840 And there is no leeway in that. 01:58:31.840 --> 01:58:36.080 Love covers a multitude of offences, and so we can do some 01:58:36.080 --> 01:58:38.480 of that with regard to private matters. 01:58:38.480 --> 01:58:41.840 We can overlook the gruffness of someone or the fact that someone 01:58:41.840 --> 01:58:44.560 approaches something in an unpleasant way. 01:58:44.560 --> 01:58:48.240 We can let some of those things slide not with regard to 01:58:48.240 --> 01:58:54.160 the truth claims, and the truth claims are the whole, are the 01:58:54.160 --> 01:58:57.520 totality of the public matters. 01:58:57.520 --> 01:59:01.440 And so we cannot do what the world says, because what the 01:59:01.440 --> 01:59:05.040 world always says to us, particularly in this day and age, is 01:59:05.040 --> 01:59:07.280 that you have to be tolerant. 01:59:07.280 --> 01:59:08.720 You have to be nice. 01:59:08.720 --> 01:59:10.240 You have to be loving. 01:59:10.240 --> 01:59:14.160 If you don't simply let the other person persist in his error, 01:59:14.160 --> 01:59:18.080 then you're being unloving, you're being unchristian, you're being unchristlike, you're being 01:59:18.080 --> 01:59:21.520 hateful, all of these accusations. 01:59:21.520 --> 01:59:22.960 Ignore them. 01:59:22.960 --> 01:59:26.320 And ignore them if they are thrown at those who are rebuking 01:59:26.320 --> 01:59:30.320 false doctrine, because they are not relevant, they do not play a 01:59:30.320 --> 01:59:34.400 role when it comes to public sin. 01:59:34.400 --> 01:59:39.760 Because what is being defended is God and His truth truth, and 01:59:39.760 --> 01:59:46.160 for that it is only an absolute defense that is acceptable, because 01:59:46.480 --> 01:59:50.160 there is not a single part of Scripture which we can yield 01:59:50.160 --> 01:59:54.400 and remain Christian if we are yielding it willfully, if we are 01:59:54.400 --> 01:59:57.440 yielding it knowingly. 01:59:57.440 --> 02:00:01.200 Absolutely everything God has told us is true, and all of it 02:00:01.200 --> 02:00:03.440 is worth defending. 02:00:03.680 --> 02:00:06.480 It isn't the case in all things in all parts of life 02:00:06.560 --> 02:00:09.760 that every hill is worth dying on, but when it comes to 02:00:09.760 --> 02:00:14.960 God's truth, it is absolutely true that every hill is worth defending, 02:00:14.960 --> 02:00:18.160 every hill is a hill on which it is reasonable to die 02:00:18.560 --> 02:00:22.800 because these are the things of God, and we as Christians are 02:00:22.800 --> 02:00:25.760 not permitted to compromise on them. 02:00:25.760 --> 02:00:30.000 We are not permitted to tolerate false teachers. 02:00:30.000 --> 02:00:35.040 Because God is truth, and any deviation from that is a deviation 02:00:35.040 --> 02:00:36.160 from God. 02:00:36.160 --> 02:00:39.840 So as we've said before, and will undoubtedly say again, if you 02:00:39.840 --> 02:00:44.000 aren't moving Godward you're moving hellward, so to compromise on these things, 02:00:44.000 --> 02:00:48.400 to tolerate false teaching, is to move away from God, is to 02:00:48.400 --> 02:00:52.880 walk toward hell, and that is what we are avoiding, by teaching 02:00:52.880 --> 02:00:58.800 correctly, by rebuking false teachers, and by doing so publicly and in 02:00:58.800 --> 02:01:00.720 an uncompromising way