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 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:43.920 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:47.760 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be revisiting a few concepts 00:00:47.760 --> 00:00:50.240 that we've discussed in the last year or so. 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:53.440 One year ago, January twenty fourth of last year, we did an 00:00:53.440 --> 00:00:54.880 episode on apostasy. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:58.480 And this is going to be a continuation of that, basically a 00:00:58.480 --> 00:01:03.200 part two of okay, now that churches are becoming apostate, here's what 00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:04.080 it's gonna look like. 00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:06.720 And we're gonna refer back to a number of examples. 00:01:06.720 --> 00:01:10.000 That's a really good series to revisit from the beginning of last 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.240 year. Yeah, if you haven't heard it in a while or if 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:15.920 you're jumping around, the first five episodes that we did in 2024 00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:18.480 really stand the test of time very well. 00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:20.560 It's much worse now than it was when we did them. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:22.480 That's the way this stuff is going to keep going. 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:26.560 So what we're going to talk about today is when churches are 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:30.320 apostatizing, how are the men inside those churches going to behave? 00:01:30.320 --> 00:01:34.320 Because we said in that episode, we're not talking about individual apostasy, 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:36.720 which is really kind of the good case of such a thing 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:39.360 can exist for the notion of apostasy. 00:01:39.360 --> 00:01:43.920 When an individual steps away from God, rejects God, it's obvious. 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:45.760 He says, I don't believe in God anymore. 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:46.880 I'm just gonna go away. 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:48.080 This is all crap. 00:01:48.080 --> 00:01:50.320 It's a very noticeable heel turn. 00:01:50.320 --> 00:01:52.000 And he goes in the other direction. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:54.640 He basically repents of his repentance. 00:01:54.640 --> 00:01:55.680 It's obvious. 00:01:55.680 --> 00:01:59.360 You can tell by someone's confession, by his words, by his life, 00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:01.440 this man no longer believes in God. 00:02:01.440 --> 00:02:06.160 When churches apostatize, they don't do any of those things, not overtly, 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:07.600 at least not at first. 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:12.160 When a church apostatizes, it pretends that it continues in the faith 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:14.800 of whatever fathers it claims. 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:18.400 And for the purposes of our discussion today, we will just assume 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:21.920 for the sake of argument that whatever your favorite confession is is 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:24.080 true. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. 00:02:24.080 --> 00:02:27.680 I'm not conceding anything as Lutherans, anybody else is right, but it 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:30.800 doesn't even matter who's right about those facts. 00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:34.320 Because the problem that we have in our respective churches is that 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:39.760 given those confessions, assuming that they're infallible, assuming they're true, they're a 00:02:39.760 --> 00:02:45.760 correct exposition of what God says, the problem is how do apostatizing 00:02:45.760 --> 00:02:50.160 churches employ those confessions in service of Satan. 00:02:50.160 --> 00:02:53.120 So we're going to talk about today some historical examples. 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:56.960 We're going to revisit examples from the apostasy episode. 00:02:56.960 --> 00:03:00.880 And we're going to deal with the fact that Satan wants us 00:03:00.880 --> 00:03:03.120 to be making true confessions. 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:05.360 He doesn't want everybody making true confessions. 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:09.360 He loves it when someone apostatizes and is an individual and says, 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:11.680 I hate God, I don't believe in God anymore. 00:03:11.680 --> 00:03:12.720 This is all dumb. 00:03:12.720 --> 00:03:13.360 I'm gone. 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:16.560 I'm just gonna go live a wicked life 'cause nothing exists. 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:18.160 Satan loves that. 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:21.440 But he's just as happy for us to be sitting here inside 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:25.280 the churches making true confessions because he can use that to his 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:27.680 benefit exactly the same. 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:31.840 One year ago this week, we released the episode called The Required 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:36.480 Confession, where we talked about one of Dakotas had just proposed, I 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:41.280 think it subsequently passed a law related to anti-Semitism. 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:45.600 And it makes it illegal the confession of what scripture says about 00:03:45.600 --> 00:03:46.960 the crucifixion. 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:50.080 And the point that we made in that episode is that there 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:53.760 are five things at least that you can say about who killed 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:55.840 Christ. My sins killed Christ. 00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:57.120 And so did yours. 00:03:57.120 --> 00:03:59.280 Pontius Pilate killed Christ. 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:04.560 The Roman Centurions killed Christ, the Pharisees killed Christ, and the Jews 00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:08.640 collectively as a group, those who were present, killed Christ. 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:11.840 All five of those things are true, and only the last two 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:13.120 will get you into any trouble. 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:16.240 And the last one is illegal in a number of states now, 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:19.280 and it will probably be illegal soon nationally, because that's the way 00:04:19.280 --> 00:04:20.320 things are going. 00:04:20.320 --> 00:04:24.400 And so in the required confession episode, we made the case that 00:04:24.640 --> 00:04:29.840 it doesn't matter which of those other confessions are true when you 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:34.560 are challenged and told you cannot confess what's in scripture, when you 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:36.560 go along with it and say, well, sure, I'm not going to 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:39.120 say that the Jews did anything, because my sins killed Christ. 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:40.480 Obviously that's true. 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:42.640 So let's just leave it at that. 00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:48.400 That contradicts Scripture, which means that you're apostatizing, even while you're saying 00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:52.400 the very thing that Scripture says about your sins crucifying Christ. 00:04:52.400 --> 00:04:56.000 The thing that is true becomes a lie because it is used 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:59.040 specifically in service of telling a different lie. 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.320 This is a trick that Satan has played from the Garden of 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:04.720 Eden and the apostasy episode we began with. 00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:07.040 I'm just gonna briefly revisit here. 00:05:07.040 --> 00:05:11.680 When you read Satan's encounter with Eve, what happens? 00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:15.200 The first thing that Satan said to Eve was, did God actually 00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:19.680 say? Which tricked her, as we pointed out, into making a true 00:05:19.680 --> 00:05:24.000 confession. She went on to elaborate on what God had said, what 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:25.360 Adam had taught her. 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:28.080 And for the purpose of this argument, it doesn't matter if the 00:05:28.080 --> 00:05:31.920 fact that the additional words that she used above and beyond what 00:05:31.920 --> 00:05:35.040 God is recorded to have said to Adam doesn't matter if that's 00:05:35.440 --> 00:05:38.720 an elaboration that was false, if she was making stuff up, if 00:05:38.720 --> 00:05:40.000 Adam made stuff up. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:42.320 We can assume for the sake of argument that that was true 00:05:42.400 --> 00:05:44.000 because it doesn't change anything. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.840 What happened was that Satan said, Did God actually say? 00:05:47.840 --> 00:05:51.840 And then she confessed what God said, and that's when Satan had 00:05:51.840 --> 00:05:57.520 her. Satan goaded her, goaded Eve, our mother, into confessing truly what 00:05:57.520 --> 00:05:58.720 God had said. 00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:02.320 Because when he did that, Satan shifted her focus. 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:06.240 He wanted her to focus on the fruit that was forbidden for 00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:09.200 her to eat so that he could make her envious. 00:06:09.200 --> 00:06:12.560 He wanted her to desire that which God had forbidden. 00:06:12.560 --> 00:06:16.880 And when she responded with a true confession, then he told a 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:20.560 half-truth, you will not surely die, which was false in the long 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:22.320 run, but it was true immediately. 00:06:22.320 --> 00:06:24.400 She didn't die on the spot. 00:06:24.400 --> 00:06:26.160 And she got the benefit. 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:26.880 She got the upside. 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:30.080 She knew good and evil, just as the fruit was intended for. 00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:33.360 But it wasn't intended for her or Adam at that time. 00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:37.600 So right from the outset, with two perfect human beings, the only 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:41.440 perfect human beings who have ever lived with the exception of Jesus 00:06:41.440 --> 00:06:46.160 Christ, who's the exception to every rule for men, they were tricked 00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:49.920 into telling Satan something that was true and that's how he had 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:53.520 him. Satan's been replaying that same attack over and over again ever 00:06:53.520 --> 00:06:57.440 since. And the reason for this episode today is that we don't 00:06:57.360 --> 00:07:01.120 believe that we can possibly be tricked when we're saying things that 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:02.080 are true. 00:07:02.080 --> 00:07:03.760 And that's the whole point of this. 00:07:03.760 --> 00:07:07.760 It is entirely possible for us to sin and to in fact 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:13.600 apostatize as individuals and collectively as churches by telling the truth when 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:16.320 it's the wrong truth at the wrong time. 00:07:16.320 --> 00:07:20.080 Because Satan continues to change up his attacks and we have to 00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:22.160 pay attention to those changes. 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:25.120 And so the purpose of putting this in front of you and 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:28.400 putting in your mind is that we're all vulnerable to this. 00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:31.440 Every one of us is going to tend to cling to whatever 00:07:31.440 --> 00:07:32.640 our confessions are. 00:07:32.960 --> 00:07:36.400 Whatever it is that we've inherited or adopted as a matter of 00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:39.040 our personal faith, again, we're not going to get into who's right 00:07:39.040 --> 00:07:41.520 or wrong, even if you're completely right. 00:07:41.520 --> 00:07:42.640 We're Lutherans. 00:07:42.640 --> 00:07:46.400 The book of Concord would suffice for our confession for these purposes. 00:07:46.400 --> 00:07:47.200 It's true. 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:49.040 The arguments that it makes are true. 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:52.400 It is also used today by Lutherans as an idol. 00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:56.160 It is idolatrous the way Lutherans treat the Book of Concord, because 00:07:56.160 --> 00:07:56.960 what do they do? 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:00.960 They will use it to argue against scripture or to argue against 00:08:00.960 --> 00:08:06.000 reason and to argue against creation whenever anything comes up that isn't 00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:08.480 addressed. This is the whole problem. 00:08:08.480 --> 00:08:12.480 You can take a confession that's true that's solving a particular problem 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:13.840 at a particular time. 00:08:13.840 --> 00:08:17.040 And when you try to morph it and make it do something 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:20.080 it was never intended to do, you know, the authors of the 00:08:20.080 --> 00:08:23.120 book of Concord had a particular problem in mind they were trying 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:23.920 to solve. 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:27.280 They knew what problems those were, and they addressed them as best 00:08:27.280 --> 00:08:28.720 they could at the time. 00:08:28.720 --> 00:08:29.920 It's a good confession. 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:34.640 It's a solid confession of the Christian faith for those purposes. 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:37.280 It is not a complete confession of the entire Christian faith. 00:08:37.280 --> 00:08:40.400 You need scripture for that and you need a reason for that. 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:44.640 And without all of those things, you're gonna go flying off into 00:08:44.880 --> 00:08:48.720 space. Part of the reason that this approach that Satan is taking, 00:08:48.720 --> 00:08:53.200 where he tricks people or goads people into making these true confessions 00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:56.000 that are narrow is that we have to have them. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:58.240 It's not that it's bad to have a confession, if it's the 00:08:58.240 --> 00:09:02.240 Book of Concord or the Westminster Confession or the Pope, God help 00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:05.920 you guys who are Roman Catholic, if that is the root of 00:09:05.920 --> 00:09:10.080 your faith, if that is where you have determined this is my 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:14.000 North Star, as long as I have this in view, I know 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:14.800 where I am. 00:09:14.800 --> 00:09:16.400 I can keep my bearings. 00:09:16.400 --> 00:09:18.240 We all need something like that. 00:09:18.240 --> 00:09:23.840 Now, scripture is also that, and scripture should be the ultimate source 00:09:23.840 --> 00:09:24.640 of that. 00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:26.560 But there's nothing wrong with having creeds. 00:09:26.560 --> 00:09:29.760 There's nothing wrong with having a confession, assuming it's true, assuming it 00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:34.640 doesn't disagree with scripture, but you can make it an idol. 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:37.920 And we're saying something here today that a lot of people say 00:09:37.920 --> 00:09:39.040 in a lot of different contexts. 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:42.000 Oh, you you're making the family an idol now, which is a 00:09:42.160 --> 00:09:44.640 modern degenerate thing to say. 00:09:44.640 --> 00:09:46.320 It's like, well, you're obeying God. 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:47.600 You're creating families. 00:09:47.600 --> 00:09:50.000 That's not idolatry per se. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.600 And these guys freak out at the notion that obedience to God 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:57.440 could possibly make people think, okay, I'm obeying God, so no, I 00:09:57.440 --> 00:09:58.320 don't need God. 00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:03.360 It's a completely irrational Protestant fear, but it's one that's very pervasive. 00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:06.320 We need to be able to have something to help us keep 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:10.640 our bearings in these creeds and these confessions serve that vital function. 00:10:10.640 --> 00:10:14.720 Just as Eve's confession that she gave to Satan was a vital 00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:18.320 confession. He specifically attacked something that God had said. 00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:20.400 He lied about it with his question. 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:22.400 And she correctly confessed. 00:10:22.400 --> 00:10:25.040 She said back what Adam had told her, God said. 00:10:25.040 --> 00:10:27.680 She did it right, and she fell for it. 00:10:27.680 --> 00:10:31.120 What should have happened, I think, you know, this is extra scriptural, 00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:32.880 so you can take it or leave it. 00:10:32.880 --> 00:10:36.960 I think that the correct form of that entire situation where Eve 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:40.400 was having a conversation with the serpent, with Adam standing right next 00:10:40.400 --> 00:10:45.120 to her, just passively listening, maybe he should not have permitted the 00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:46.480 serpent to speak to her. 00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:51.200 Certainly after the serpent denied what God said, I think he probably 00:10:51.200 --> 00:10:53.120 should have killed the serpent on the spot. 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:56.000 I think personally that probably wouldn't have been sin. 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.640 That could have gone a different way because they had free will. 00:10:58.640 --> 00:11:02.640 They had perfect free will to behave differently than they behaved. 00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:07.040 And although the eating and the envy, the covetousness of that fruit 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:11.760 was sin, I think the failure to stop the evil that Satan 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:15.440 had introduced into the garden with his lies, one could argue, and 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:18.240 I I would make the argument that that was a sin even 00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:20.400 further back than the eating. 00:11:20.400 --> 00:11:24.400 In any event, Satan was able to get away with it because 00:11:24.400 --> 00:11:25.840 they went along with it. 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:27.600 They played his game. 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:30.960 And this is the problem that we don't understand that we all 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:32.480 face all the time. 00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:35.760 We are always forced to contend with Satan because he is our 00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:40.160 adversary. He is always the ultimate adversary in anything that we deal 00:11:40.160 --> 00:11:41.920 with that's difficult in life. 00:11:41.920 --> 00:11:45.840 We die, we get sick, we suffer, we're miserable, we're sad, we're 00:11:45.840 --> 00:11:50.480 lonely. Whatever bad things that happen are downstream from the fall that 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:52.720 are downstream from Satan's attacks. 00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:56.240 And then he tags right along every day, trying to amplify the 00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:00.320 stuff to harm us, to separate us from God's love. 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:03.520 So we're constantly enduring those attacks. 00:12:03.520 --> 00:12:05.840 And we understand when the attacks are bad. 00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:09.440 We understand when the attacks are deliberately saying the opposite of what 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:10.400 God said. 00:12:10.400 --> 00:12:13.520 Sometimes Satan will come to some people, maybe some of you, and 00:12:13.520 --> 00:12:16.240 say, just apostise, stop believing God altogether. 00:12:16.560 --> 00:12:17.440 Forget that stuff. 00:12:17.440 --> 00:12:18.480 That's nonsense. 00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:19.760 Go do this other thing. 00:12:19.760 --> 00:12:20.800 Forget about Jesus. 00:12:20.800 --> 00:12:22.640 You don't need any of that crap. 00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:25.440 Sometimes that's the pitch that works for some people. 00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:28.560 The problem is that's not the only pitch that Satan has. 00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:31.680 The pitch that he used for Eve and the pitch that he's 00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:35.520 used many times since and he uses to this day, especially in 00:12:35.520 --> 00:12:40.960 this day, is to goad Christians in especially Christian denominations as a 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:47.040 whole into making partially true confessions that serve his purposes. 00:12:47.040 --> 00:12:50.560 Because just like in that situation with the Dakotas Law where it's 00:12:50.480 --> 00:12:53.840 illegal to say that the Jews killed Christ, most Christians are happy 00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:55.040 to go along with that. 00:12:55.040 --> 00:12:56.720 They don't believe that anyway. 00:12:56.720 --> 00:12:59.040 Scripture says it, and they don't believe it. 00:12:59.040 --> 00:13:00.240 What do they believe? 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:01.520 They believe something is true. 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:04.800 They believe that their sins killed Christ, which is absolutely true. 00:13:04.800 --> 00:13:06.960 But there are other things that can also be said that are 00:13:06.960 --> 00:13:09.840 scriptural that if you deny them, what have you done? 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:12.960 If you deny that the Pharisees killed Christ and that the Jews 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:15.520 killed Christ, are you Christian? 00:13:15.520 --> 00:13:17.200 You cannot be, because what are you doing? 00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:18.960 You're calling God a liar. 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:22.000 Scripture could not possibly be more clear about the fact that the 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:22.640 Jews killed Christ. 00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:28.640 It's reiterated over and over again after it happens by numerous authors, 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:30.240 and they're all inspired. 00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:32.080 You can't be a Christian if you don't believe that the New 00:13:32.160 --> 00:13:33.520 Testament's not inspired. 00:13:33.520 --> 00:13:37.200 And if you do, then you're confessing that God said this. 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:40.000 And so when you say, Well, I don't believe that part, you're 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:41.600 calling God a liar. 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:43.840 And that's where all this stuff comes down to. 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:47.680 You can have a narrowly true confession, which Satan loves. 00:13:47.680 --> 00:13:50.560 I made the point in the episode on the true confession. 00:13:50.560 --> 00:13:54.720 Satan loves it when Christians run around saying, My sins killed Christ. 00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:56.880 Yeah, it's all my fault. 00:13:56.880 --> 00:13:59.360 Not in denial of that fact. 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:00.320 That's absolutely true. 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:01.840 And it is the most important thing. 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:07.680 I'm not getting the slightest bit of slander against that true confession. 00:14:07.680 --> 00:14:10.640 It is not the only one, but it's the one that Satan 00:14:10.640 --> 00:14:14.240 wants us to focus on because if you If you stop saying 00:14:14.240 --> 00:14:16.800 that the Jews killed Christ, it opens up the door for a 00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:19.200 whole nother avenue of attack. 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:20.720 And this is how Satan works. 00:14:20.720 --> 00:14:23.680 This is how Satan's warfare against the church works. 00:14:23.680 --> 00:14:26.720 There are direct attacks and there are indirect attacks. 00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:30.880 And if we believe that we're better than Eve, who was perfect 00:14:30.880 --> 00:14:33.920 when she fell for this crap, if we believe that we can 00:14:33.920 --> 00:14:38.400 do better than that, we are setting ourselves up for apostasy and 00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:39.600 for damnation. 00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:41.200 That's the purpose of this episode. 00:14:41.680 --> 00:14:48.560 Churches, individuals, collectively, we're all subject to trying to keep our eyes 00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:50.400 on whatever we know to be true. 00:14:50.400 --> 00:14:51.440 Because we have to. 00:14:51.440 --> 00:14:54.080 You can't possibly fit all of scripture in your head all the 00:14:54.080 --> 00:14:58.240 time, but God warns us that we have to be watchful. 00:14:58.240 --> 00:15:00.960 And the problem that we're trying to solve here today with this 00:15:00.960 --> 00:15:05.600 episode is that confessions at some point become an excuse for not 00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:09.120 being watchful for saying, well, this stuff is going on. 00:15:09.280 --> 00:15:10.880 I don't really I don't really understand it. 00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:13.040 It sounds like, you know, some people who aren't really all that 00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:16.480 great with their theology are making some some weird arguments I've never 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:18.000 heard anyone make before. 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:21.120 It's not in my confession, so I'm just not going to participate. 00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:23.280 They're all bums, they're all bad. 00:15:23.280 --> 00:15:25.200 I'm over here with my confession. 00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:26.240 I'm above it all. 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:28.080 I'm not going to fall for it. 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:29.920 That is what Satan wants. 00:15:29.920 --> 00:15:33.840 Because maybe the guy who has a true confession that's actually competent 00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:37.200 theology, unlike some of the people who are entering the fray when 00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:40.480 these new attacks come, sometimes they're pretty bad at it. 00:15:40.480 --> 00:15:43.120 The guys who are off on the side with their noses up 00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:46.160 in the air would be better contenders for the faith. 00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:48.800 If only they would enter the fray and say, okay, there's a 00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:49.680 new attack. 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:51.760 Maybe we need a new argument for it. 00:15:51.760 --> 00:15:55.840 The idolatry of confession comes in when we say, well, I don't 00:15:55.840 --> 00:15:58.960 care what's happening now because my confession doesn't say anything, so it 00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:00.720 must not be important. 00:16:00.720 --> 00:16:02.560 Satan cheers when we do that. 00:16:02.560 --> 00:16:06.720 And he's cheering a lot lately because this is the default position 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:10.400 that we find churches in today, to say, well, this new stuff 00:16:10.640 --> 00:16:12.800 is just Satan being weird and the world being weird. 00:16:12.800 --> 00:16:14.160 It's got nothing to do with me. 00:16:14.160 --> 00:16:16.880 I'm going to cling to my confession and I know I'm going 00:16:16.880 --> 00:16:18.240 to be fine. 00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:20.560 That makes us Pharisees. 00:16:20.560 --> 00:16:22.400 The Pharisees weren't unique. 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:28.400 They were abominable, but they embodied the natural human sinful nature to 00:16:28.400 --> 00:16:31.840 cling to whatever is self-justifying. 00:16:31.840 --> 00:16:36.160 And true confessions ultimately become self-justifying. 00:16:36.160 --> 00:16:40.080 Even faith alone, when your confession is that faith is the only 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:43.440 thing that can save me, it doesn't take too much back and 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:49.520 forth before ironically someone concludes that the fact that they confess that 00:16:49.520 --> 00:16:52.960 faith saves them alone is what saves them. 00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:54.640 If I hope you're following that. 00:16:54.640 --> 00:16:56.480 It's one level of indirection. 00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:00.400 It's no longer my faith that saves me, but it's my confession 00:17:00.400 --> 00:17:02.640 that my faith is the only thing that saves me. 00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:06.080 As long as I'm confessing that right, then I'm in good shape. 00:17:06.080 --> 00:17:08.480 Because it's no longer rooted in the gift of faith that God 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:09.520 has given to me. 00:17:09.520 --> 00:17:12.560 It's now rooted in, well, I'm clinging to this. 00:17:12.560 --> 00:17:15.520 And although we need things to cling to, they have to be 00:17:15.520 --> 00:17:17.840 everywhere word from the mouth of God. 00:17:17.840 --> 00:17:22.800 That's how Satan fragments the church into a million pieces by driving 00:17:22.800 --> 00:17:27.200 these wedges where he successfully sets one part of the word against 00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:30.880 another. He gets us fighting each other, he gets us ignoring the 00:17:30.880 --> 00:17:32.000 word entirely. 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:33.360 And then he has us. 00:17:33.360 --> 00:17:36.480 Because it's perfectly fine in hell for you to have a true 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:39.600 confession as long as it's not a complete confession. 00:17:39.600 --> 00:17:42.720 And this nature is played out over and over again. 00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:46.720 And we're warning you about this today because we're already seeing it 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:47.440 a bunch this year. 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:48.960 We've seen it continuously. 00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:52.400 It's probably going to continue to be amplified because it's one of 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:57.600 the last fig leaves that are left in in the church's impotent 00:17:57.600 --> 00:18:00.640 attempts to prevent Satan's attack. 00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:04.880 Satan is coming in new angles, new avenues, and churches are saying, 00:18:04.880 --> 00:18:07.040 Well, I've got the old confession, I'm fine. 00:18:07.040 --> 00:18:09.440 The Roman Catholics say, Well, I've got the Pope, I'm fine. 00:18:09.520 --> 00:18:14.560 Sure, the Pope might not be great some decades, but overall tradition, 00:18:14.560 --> 00:18:17.600 you know, going back, yeah, they claim Peter was, even now it's 00:18:17.600 --> 00:18:18.640 news to him. 00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:21.600 Not trying to pick on you guys, but like when you root 00:18:21.600 --> 00:18:27.040 anything outside of what's directly scriptural, that's all it takes, even if 00:18:27.040 --> 00:18:27.680 it's true. 00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.640 The Lutheran confessions are true, but they're not complete. 00:18:30.640 --> 00:18:33.280 I've mentioned before I had an argument a few years ago on 00:18:33.600 --> 00:18:37.200 Discord with a guy where I made an argument from scripture and 00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:39.840 he refused to believe it because I couldn't point to where it 00:18:39.840 --> 00:18:41.680 was in the book of Concord. 00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:43.280 And that was his argument. 00:18:43.280 --> 00:18:47.680 A scriptural argument from me could not possibly be true because I 00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:50.560 could not cite the Lutheran confessions. 00:18:50.560 --> 00:18:53.920 Any of the men who authored the Lutheran confessions would tear their 00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:56.960 hair out if they had any to hear that someone who thought 00:18:56.960 --> 00:18:59.520 he was a good Lutheran made that his confession. 00:18:59.760 --> 00:19:01.840 Yeah, that's why this is so dangerous. 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:03.920 Because you're doing it in good conscience. 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:07.600 It's an appeal to good conscience that is in fact an attack 00:19:07.600 --> 00:19:08.640 on heaven. 00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:10.320 That's why Satan loves it. 00:19:10.320 --> 00:19:12.240 That's why it's apostasy. 00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:16.400 The one thing that we think we've gotten right are historical confessions 00:19:16.560 --> 00:19:19.440 Satan is going to use as a weapon against us. 00:19:19.520 --> 00:19:19.680 When 00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:23.440 we swear in witnesses in our courts, we have them typically swear 00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:27.440 something along the lines of do you swear to tell the truth, 00:19:27.440 --> 00:19:32.560 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 00:19:32.560 --> 00:19:35.760 And all three parts of that, the fourth as well, if you 00:19:35.760 --> 00:19:42.640 include swearing before God, are important, because it is insufficient simply to 00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:44.160 tell the truth. 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:48.240 You need to tell the whole truth and obviously not embellish it 00:19:48.320 --> 00:19:50.320 as it were with lies. 00:19:50.320 --> 00:19:54.480 In previous episodes, we've gone over the different kinds of lies and 00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:58.000 how in some ways, yes, you can in fact lie with the 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:01.040 truth, which is why we have the inclusion of the whole truth 00:20:01.040 --> 00:20:02.480 in that oath. 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:07.120 Because if you tell only part of a narrative, it is very 00:20:07.120 --> 00:20:12.480 possible to use just that portion, that true portion though, in order 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:14.880 to manipulate, which is one of the ways, of course, that you 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:15.360 can lie. 00:20:15.360 --> 00:20:18.960 You can lie by omission, commission, or manipulation. 00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:19.840 And so 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:24.560 obviously commission is the most obvious when that's that affirmative lie, so 00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:28.720 you aren't embellishing your story with things that are in fact not 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:29.760 the truth. 00:20:29.760 --> 00:20:33.520 Omission is what is addressed by the whole truth. 00:20:33.520 --> 00:20:37.760 You don't get to leave out parts of the truth and pretend 00:20:37.760 --> 00:20:42.240 that you have still given a full and true accounting of events. 00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:43.440 Because you haven't. 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:46.000 You've neglected to include things. 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:49.520 Now that doesn't mean that just because you left out some ancillary 00:20:49.520 --> 00:20:52.640 fact, if you are a witness in a murder trial and you 00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:56.720 leave out the color of a garment that someone standing by was 00:20:56.720 --> 00:21:00.320 wearing. Some bystanders wearing a red shirt and you neglect to say 00:21:00.320 --> 00:21:01.600 that his shirt was red. 00:21:01.600 --> 00:21:03.040 That doesn't matter. 00:21:03.040 --> 00:21:07.120 These are facts that are relevant, truths that are relevant to the 00:21:07.120 --> 00:21:08.720 matter. And this is 00:21:09.600 --> 00:21:14.240 one of those centrally important points in this discussion. 00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:18.560 As Wo said, obviously you cannot hold the totality of scripture in 00:21:18.560 --> 00:21:20.720 your head at any given time. 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:22.160 That isn't a requirement. 00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:26.160 That's not something that you have to do as a Christian. 00:21:26.160 --> 00:21:31.440 However, when a truth is relevant, when a truth is attacked, then 00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:34.800 indeed you must defend it, and then indeed you must confess the 00:21:34.800 --> 00:21:38.800 full truth and not simply a part of it. 00:21:38.800 --> 00:21:44.160 And for those who object to confessions or think that the argument 00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:47.360 that we're making here maybe it doesn't make any sense to you. 00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:49.360 Just think about church history. 00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:52.480 We have three ecumenical creeds. 00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:56.720 We don't have three ecumenical creeds because the men who made the 00:21:56.720 --> 00:22:01.760 Nicene and the Athenasian thought we should have longer creeds considerably longer 00:22:01.760 --> 00:22:04.160 in the case of the Athanasian. 00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:09.120 We have them because they confessed truths that were being attacked at 00:22:09.120 --> 00:22:10.320 that time. 00:22:10.320 --> 00:22:15.680 We have them because the previous creeds were not wrong, but we're 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:18.880 not complete in the sense of being a full confession of the 00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:20.160 Christian faith. 00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:23.920 That's not to say that if you confess the Apostles' Creed and 00:22:23.920 --> 00:22:28.160 understand everything that is in the Apostles' Creed, that you can't be 00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:31.680 saved. In fact, if you believe what's in the Apostles' Creed, that 00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:36.080 is a sufficient saving faith, but you have to believe what's actually 00:22:36.080 --> 00:22:40.240 there. The reason we have the Nicene is to explain some of 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:41.440 the additional matters. 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:45.840 For instance, I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. 00:22:45.840 --> 00:22:48.160 That's not in the apostles Creed. 00:22:48.160 --> 00:22:50.240 It is in the Nicene. 00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:53.360 And then of course the case of the Athanasian is to deal 00:22:53.360 --> 00:22:56.240 with Trinitarian issues that had arisen in the church. 00:22:56.240 --> 00:23:00.960 So these confessions that we have are to address issues that were 00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:02.720 live at the time. 00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:06.640 It doesn't mean the issues have gone away, because obviously Unitarians still 00:23:06.640 --> 00:23:10.320 exist, so for instance, we still need the Athanasian Creed. 00:23:10.320 --> 00:23:13.920 Satan's not going to stop attacking things just because we have a 00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:15.760 confession that addresses it. 00:23:15.760 --> 00:23:17.600 He will continue to attack those things. 00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:22.240 However, by and large he is going to move on to new 00:23:22.240 --> 00:23:27.280 tactics because he is going to choose things that are undefended. 00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:33.040 A good analogy for many of these issues in this area would 00:23:33.040 --> 00:23:36.000 be a military analogy. 00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:41.440 If you have a protected position and it's protected on three sides, 00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:44.160 well a smart enemy is going to try to attack that fourth 00:23:44.160 --> 00:23:47.440 one that isn't protected if he can do so. 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:49.440 That is what Satan does. 00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:53.680 Satan is constantly testing for weak points in the wall. 00:23:53.680 --> 00:23:57.040 He's not going to attack the place where you are most strongly 00:23:57.040 --> 00:24:01.200 defended. Now, if you happen to attend a church that does not 00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:05.440 have a confession, he may have more opportunity to attack you because 00:24:05.440 --> 00:24:10.000 you haven't built up that wall in really anywhere, except for possibly, 00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:13.440 hopefully you at least confess the three ecumenical creeds. 00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:16.000 So Satan is going to attack the weak point, and he's going 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:19.280 to constantly be looking for that weak point. 00:24:19.280 --> 00:24:21.920 Not for nothing does he take the form of a snake and 00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:24.160 is he described as a snake? 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:27.760 As we've mentioned before, and as those who've dealt with snakes know, 00:24:27.760 --> 00:24:31.600 if a snake can get his head into a place, the whole 00:24:31.600 --> 00:24:34.480 snake is getting into that place. 00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:36.480 And so that's what Satan does. 00:24:36.480 --> 00:24:42.080 He finds whatever little opening he can, and he slithers through. 00:24:42.080 --> 00:24:46.640 But there's an additional layer here when it comes to the military 00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:53.600 analogy, that is perhaps the more important one for our discussion today. 00:24:53.600 --> 00:24:57.200 If you look at military history, and the American Revolutionary War is 00:24:57.200 --> 00:25:03.680 actually a great example, many times you will have forces on one 00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:10.640 or more sides of a particular conflict employing tactics from previous wars. 00:25:10.640 --> 00:25:12.000 That's not always bad. 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.320 Sometimes it works because sometimes technology and tactics haven't changed much between 00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:17.920 one war and the next. 00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:19.920 But sometimes they have. 00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:23.520 And so for instance, in the American Revolutionary War, the British were 00:25:23.520 --> 00:25:28.400 employing tactics from continental warfare of centuries past. 00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:32.960 fine at the time, perhaps not great, but workable at the time 00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:37.280 under certain conditions, did not work in the American theater. 00:25:37.280 --> 00:25:39.840 It's part of the reason that they lost. 00:25:39.840 --> 00:25:44.880 Because Americans, on the other hand, employed tactics that had been learned 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:49.280 during conflicts with the Amerindians, that had been taught by von Steuben 00:25:49.520 --> 00:25:51.760 and Lafayette. 00:25:51.760 --> 00:25:57.200 They had updated their tactics, they were employing tactics that were more 00:25:57.200 --> 00:26:01.200 effective than those used by the British. 00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:04.000 Satan does the same thing. 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:06.560 He updates his tactics. 00:26:06.560 --> 00:26:11.040 He is not going to employ old tactics in a new conflict 00:26:11.040 --> 00:26:14.640 unless he thinks that you've forgotten how to address those old tactics, 00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:18.160 because he'll certainly do that. 00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:19.760 But the confessions that we have 00:26:21.040 --> 00:26:25.200 do not address all of the problems we are facing today. 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:29.440 And that is true regardless of which confession you happen to have 00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:30.240 in mind. 00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:35.120 If it's the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the 00:26:35.120 --> 00:26:42.240 Augsburg Confession, the Full Book of Concord, Satan is not primarily attacking 00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:44.240 those issues today. 00:26:44.560 --> 00:26:46.800 He's attacking creation. 00:26:46.800 --> 00:26:51.440 Because if you look at the confessions, particularly the ones from the 00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:56.800 Reformation era, they are largely addressing issues such as justification. 00:26:56.800 --> 00:26:59.520 There are many other issues that are addressed in the Book of 00:26:59.520 --> 00:27:01.840 Concord and in other confessions, of course. 00:27:01.840 --> 00:27:06.880 There's predestination, election, all of these things. 00:27:06.880 --> 00:27:09.360 But Satan isn't attacking those. 00:27:09.360 --> 00:27:14.000 As we pointed out previously, what he's attacking to attack now, with 00:27:14.080 --> 00:27:19.440 a great deal of success in some cases, is creation itself. 00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:23.680 Because if Satan can get you to deny creation, well, that's an 00:27:24.080 --> 00:27:26.560 implicit denial of the creator. 00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:31.440 So he doesn't need you to reject justification if he can simply 00:27:31.440 --> 00:27:36.000 get you to reject God in toto, if he can get you 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:40.400 to reject who God is, then he doesn't need you to give 00:27:40.400 --> 00:27:44.160 a confession that is by its words false. 00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:48.480 Because what you mean when you confess it is false. 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:51.520 Because it's one thing to say the words. 00:27:51.520 --> 00:27:55.680 It's another thing to say the words and mean the right thing 00:27:55.680 --> 00:27:56.800 by them. 00:27:56.800 --> 00:28:01.360 Because it's entirely possible to say something that the other person hears 00:28:01.360 --> 00:28:05.920 as being entirely true and yet it's not what you meant. 00:28:05.920 --> 00:28:11.440 This is something that Muslims use all the time when deceiving non-Muslims. 00:28:11.440 --> 00:28:14.960 They lie about Islam, and they lie in a number of different 00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:16.880 ways. Sometimes it's simply that lie of commission. 00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:19.200 They just outright lie about it. 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:25.200 But other times, they deliberately mislead by saying something that they know 00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:28.160 you will hear one way, but they mean it another. 00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:31.680 Mormons do the exact same thing, incidentally. 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.800 I don't believe Mormons have a particular term for it, the 00:28:35.680 --> 00:28:39.200 Muslims have four different terms for their different kinds of deception. 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:44.080 Not the topic for today, but Just because the words themselves on 00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:48.800 their face are true does not mean that the thing being said 00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:50.400 is true. 00:28:50.400 --> 00:28:54.000 Because for a thing to be true, with regard to the person 00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:58.320 making the confession, the words must be true, the meaning must be 00:28:58.320 --> 00:29:01.840 true, the understanding must be true. 00:29:01.840 --> 00:29:05.280 Now that doesn't mean that it's bad to confess the creeds, even 00:29:05.280 --> 00:29:08.640 if you don't completely understand them, because they're guardrails. 00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:13.040 They serve as a bulwark against Satan and against heresy, against false 00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:16.960 doctrine, and so it is good to confess them, but obviously, it 00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:21.040 is better by far to actually understand what you are saying. 00:29:21.040 --> 00:29:25.920 Because again, as wo said in his introduction, Satan can get you 00:29:25.920 --> 00:29:31.200 to focus with a sort of monomania on a true confession and 00:29:31.200 --> 00:29:35.600 get you to miss everything else, other truths that are also important. 00:29:35.600 --> 00:29:39.360 Because there's not truth just in Scripture. 00:29:39.360 --> 00:29:41.680 There's not truth just in the confessions. 00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:43.760 There's truth in creation as well. 00:29:43.760 --> 00:29:46.720 And that's why Satan is attacking creation. 00:29:46.720 --> 00:29:51.520 If he can get you to deny these other truths eventually, he 00:29:51.520 --> 00:29:54.160 will get you to deny the faith. 00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:59.120 Because the consequence of denying the other truth will inevitably be denying 00:29:59.120 --> 00:30:00.160 the faith. 00:30:00.160 --> 00:30:03.760 What he'll do effectively is turn you into a Gnostic. 00:30:03.760 --> 00:30:07.280 Because if you deny the reality of creation, that's effectively what you're 00:30:07.280 --> 00:30:11.200 becoming. If you are the kind of person, and we've all encountered 00:30:11.200 --> 00:30:14.480 this sort of person recently, who simply says that's not a gospel 00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:18.160 issue? That's not about salvation, that doesn't matter. 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:21.200 How is that about Jesus? 00:30:21.520 --> 00:30:27.200 Almost without exception, when someone uses that objection, he's a Gnostic. 00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:30.400 He may not know it, but he is a Gnostic because he 00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:35.920 is denying the reality of creation and trying to spiritualize everything. 00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:38.720 So that's a case in which Satan is bringing back an ancient 00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:42.480 heresy. Really, it never went away, but it is an ancient heresy, 00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:45.760 and he's using it in a new form, to get men to 00:30:45.760 --> 00:30:49.840 confess things that often are in their own sense, in a minimal 00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.640 way, true, but in the way they are employed by Satan, they 00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:58.400 are getting those men to give a false confession, getting them to 00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:00.240 deny the faith. 00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:05.760 Because you can say that's not about Jesus, and maybe that's true. 00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:08.160 But that's not an objection. 00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:13.120 If someone, for instance, raises the reality of race, because that's part 00:31:13.120 --> 00:31:16.000 of creation, we see that in creation. 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:20.800 It is a Abundantly obvious to any man with eyes. 00:31:20.800 --> 00:31:23.840 If he can get you to deny that, if Satan can get 00:31:23.840 --> 00:31:26.080 you to say, well, that's not real, it's not a gospel issue, 00:31:26.080 --> 00:31:30.720 it's not about Jesus, well, he's turned you into a Gnostic. 00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:33.760 Because now you said the flesh doesn't matter, the flesh isn't real, 00:31:33.760 --> 00:31:35.840 it's only the spirit. 00:31:35.840 --> 00:31:40.560 Well that's denying God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, 00:31:40.560 --> 00:31:44.960 in the words of both the Apostles in the Nicene Creed. 00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:48.080 Satan is getting you to deny 00:31:49.280 --> 00:31:55.360 reality, getting you to deny a truth that isn't explicitly mentioned in 00:31:55.360 --> 00:31:58.000 Scripture. It's everywhere in Scripture, of course. 00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:01.200 You have the Table of Nations, you have Acts seventeen, you have 00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:04.960 all these places where it is mentioned, and it is assumed throughout 00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:07.200 the pages of Scripture. 00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:11.840 But you're not going to find a specific verse that simply says, 00:32:11.840 --> 00:32:16.320 God created the races of men, races real, and that lists a 00:32:16.320 --> 00:32:20.480 bunch of the things that we know from looking at creation. 00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:24.560 Just because it's not there in an explicit verse does not mean 00:32:24.560 --> 00:32:26.000 it is not true. 00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:30.880 And if Satan can get you to deny any truth, he is 00:32:30.880 --> 00:32:34.960 eventually going to get you to deny all truth. 00:32:35.120 --> 00:32:40.960 least if you don't repent of rejecting that initial truth. 00:32:40.960 --> 00:32:45.920 Which is part of the problem when it comes to these confessions 00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:48.800 from the Reformation era. 00:32:49.120 --> 00:32:51.760 They state things that are true. 00:32:51.760 --> 00:32:55.200 Again, we're not going to say that they're all correct, but certainly 00:32:55.280 --> 00:32:57.120 as Lutherans, we're going to say in the case of the Book 00:32:57.120 --> 00:32:59.600 of Concord, it's correct. 00:32:59.600 --> 00:33:04.480 In so far as it addresses matters, it is accurate, it is 00:33:04.480 --> 00:33:09.280 a true statement of the faith because it agrees with scripture. 00:33:09.280 --> 00:33:12.640 But it does not address the problems we have today. 00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:16.000 And so when men try to bring up the Book of Concord 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:20.160 and try to use it as a cudgel in order to attack 00:33:20.160 --> 00:33:24.560 men who are addressing other problems, well now the Book of Concord 00:33:24.880 --> 00:33:26.400 has become an idol. 00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:31.280 And incidentally, you can in fact do the same thing with Scripture. 00:33:31.280 --> 00:33:35.600 In the case of Scripture, it takes a slightly different form, but 00:33:35.600 --> 00:33:39.200 it's a form that is familiar to all of us because it's 00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:42.400 something that Satan loves to do, and I just went over how 00:33:42.400 --> 00:33:43.680 he does it. 00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:46.960 If Satan can get you to set two truths against each other 00:33:46.960 --> 00:33:50.400 and reject one, that's his opening. 00:33:50.400 --> 00:33:54.000 And so if you think that you find a truth in creation, 00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:58.560 and then someone tells you well that conflicts with scripture, be very 00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:03.760 careful, because the truth contained in scripture is from God, and the 00:34:03.760 --> 00:34:06.240 truth contained in nature is from God. 00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:08.640 Those things will not conflict. 00:34:08.640 --> 00:34:14.000 It's one of the reasons that evolution is so dangerous because evolution 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:20.400 makes claims about truth with regard to reality, with regard to creation, 00:34:20.400 --> 00:34:25.040 and then attempts to set those at odds with scripture. 00:34:25.040 --> 00:34:27.840 And so the problem that you are faced with when you look 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:31.360 at that is well either scripture is false 00:34:32.800 --> 00:34:35.680 or evolution is false. 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:38.400 That's the actual problem there. 00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:41.120 That's the actual decision you have to make. 00:34:41.120 --> 00:34:44.080 But how they try to spin it, because how Satan tries to 00:34:44.080 --> 00:34:44.720 spin it is 00:34:45.600 --> 00:34:50.640 that evolution is just obviously true because it's just making these assertions 00:34:50.640 --> 00:34:54.880 about things that we observe in creation, that we observe in of 00:34:54.880 --> 00:34:57.520 course they wouldn't call it creation, but these things that we observe 00:34:58.160 --> 00:35:01.360 in the natural world, so obviously this is true, so now you 00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:05.840 have to reinterpret what you believe about scripture, because obviously that can't 00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:08.640 be true at the same time as this. 00:35:08.640 --> 00:35:13.280 The issue, of course, is that the claims asserted by evolution, are 00:35:13.280 --> 00:35:14.720 ultimately false. 00:35:14.720 --> 00:35:17.840 The minor claims are true to some degree, but the major claims 00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:18.400 are false. 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:21.840 We've gone over this in previous episodes. 00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:27.360 But what Satan wants you to do is deny some truth, any 00:35:27.360 --> 00:35:28.320 truth, wherever it is. 00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:31.600 He doesn't really care which one it is, because he just wants 00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:33.040 that opening. 00:35:33.040 --> 00:35:37.120 And if he can get you to lie with the truth, That's 00:35:37.120 --> 00:35:38.400 so much better. 00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:42.640 Because it is much more difficult to get a man to realize 00:35:42.640 --> 00:35:45.840 that he has been confessing the truth but in a false way 00:35:46.080 --> 00:35:48.640 than it is to get a man to realize he's simply been 00:35:48.640 --> 00:35:50.080 confessing a lie. 00:35:50.080 --> 00:35:53.120 Because if you've been confessing a lie and someone can prove to 00:35:53.120 --> 00:35:56.560 you it's a lie, only an insane man is not going to 00:35:56.560 --> 00:36:00.480 reject that and reform what he believes. 00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:03.360 But if you've been confessing the truth and someone is trying to 00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:04.480 tell you, yes, but 00:36:05.760 --> 00:36:09.840 you're missing this part of the truth, or you're confessing it in 00:36:09.840 --> 00:36:15.040 a way that is effectively false, that is a much harder argument. 00:36:15.680 --> 00:36:18.800 It is much more difficult to get someone to repent in that 00:36:18.800 --> 00:36:21.280 case. And that's why Satan loves it. 00:36:21.280 --> 00:36:24.880 If he can get you to entrench on whatever it is, one 00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:30.560 of the confessions, some particular aspect of Christian doctrine, and in doing 00:36:30.560 --> 00:36:33.280 so, get you to reject other truth 00:36:34.560 --> 00:36:36.480 He's got you. 00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:41.200 Because now it is going to be almost impossible for anyone else 00:36:41.200 --> 00:36:44.640 to convince you that what you're doing is wrong because what you're 00:36:44.640 --> 00:36:46.160 doing is true, right? 00:36:46.160 --> 00:36:47.520 You're telling the truth. 00:36:47.520 --> 00:36:48.720 You're speaking the truth. 00:36:48.720 --> 00:36:51.520 The things you've said are true. 00:36:51.520 --> 00:36:54.880 Perhaps. But it's not the whole truth. 00:36:54.880 --> 00:36:58.800 And that's the issue, because it has to be the truth, and 00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:02.000 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:06.800 Not just some little portion of the truth and certainly not some 00:37:06.800 --> 00:37:11.040 little portion of the truth used in a way that is misleading 00:37:11.040 --> 00:37:13.040 or even outright false. 00:37:14.640 --> 00:37:17.600 The summer of my junior year of high school, I went to 00:37:17.600 --> 00:37:22.160 a week-long summer camp for basically law school. 00:37:22.160 --> 00:37:25.680 And it was brought to mind by Corey's beginning and ending in 00:37:25.680 --> 00:37:28.480 that segment where he talked about the whole truth. 00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:31.120 One of the exercises that we did was a moot court where 00:37:31.120 --> 00:37:34.800 we were all given a fact pattern and each of us was 00:37:34.800 --> 00:37:36.880 given assignments for our roles. 00:37:36.880 --> 00:37:39.360 I was assigned to be the defendant. 00:37:39.360 --> 00:37:42.160 Yeah, I don't remember exactly the details, but I think the gist 00:37:42.160 --> 00:37:45.760 of it was that I had been a father at my kids 00:37:46.080 --> 00:37:49.040 baseball game and I hit somebody. 00:37:49.040 --> 00:37:51.280 There was some sort of altercation in the parking lot. 00:37:51.280 --> 00:37:56.800 There was some verbal disagreement that turned into a physical altercation. 00:37:56.800 --> 00:38:00.480 And so I was being put on trial for assault or for 00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:05.440 battery. And I remember it because it was a fun exercise. 00:38:05.440 --> 00:38:08.240 But as the defendant, I wasn't given any information. 00:38:08.240 --> 00:38:10.400 Everyone else wasn't given, I don't think. 00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:12.160 I could be wrong about that. 00:38:12.160 --> 00:38:15.200 But when I took a look at the fact pattern that I 00:38:15.200 --> 00:38:18.640 had been given, my own conclusion as me was that well, this 00:38:18.640 --> 00:38:20.560 guy's clearly guilty. 00:38:20.560 --> 00:38:23.520 But when I was on the stand, I wasn't going to tell 00:38:23.520 --> 00:38:24.080 the whole truth. 00:38:24.240 --> 00:38:25.280 I thought I was guilty. 00:38:25.600 --> 00:38:27.200 Because I was a defendant. 00:38:27.200 --> 00:38:30.240 And so I tried to be as clever as I could, because 00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:34.080 it was the competition against the other kids and to show off 00:38:34.160 --> 00:38:35.600 and whatever. 00:38:35.600 --> 00:38:39.440 And so I was exonerated on the stand and moot court. 00:38:39.440 --> 00:38:42.640 And it And as soon as I was found not guilty, I 00:38:42.640 --> 00:38:47.120 laughed and said I was so guilty, which triggered subsequent discussion about 00:38:47.120 --> 00:38:50.720 double jeopardy 'cause some of the kids were really offended. 00:38:50.720 --> 00:38:55.840 And I was reminded of that because obviously, we all have an 00:38:55.840 --> 00:38:59.600 incentive not to tell the whole truth when we're going to get 00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:00.880 in trouble. 00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:07.040 And that's one of the big problems with these long-running theological disputes 00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:11.680 or cases where there's men no theological dispute, but suddenly something comes 00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:15.040 into dispute that no one's ever really thought about, there's a good 00:39:15.040 --> 00:39:17.440 chance that you're gonna get it wrong at some point. 00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:20.240 Not because you're a bad person or because you're evil or because 00:39:20.240 --> 00:39:21.280 you're stupid. 00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:22.720 You might just get it wrong. 00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:23.760 You were missing something. 00:39:23.920 --> 00:39:25.360 Maybe you didn't have all the facts. 00:39:25.360 --> 00:39:27.120 Maybe you couldn't put it all together. 00:39:27.120 --> 00:39:30.560 Maybe you personally are not the right person to be figuring out 00:39:30.720 --> 00:39:32.960 complicated theological problems. 00:39:32.960 --> 00:39:34.960 That's almost universally true. 00:39:34.960 --> 00:39:37.680 So don't feel bad if it applies to you. 00:39:37.680 --> 00:39:42.640 In these circumstances, as fallible human beings, when we are faced with 00:39:42.640 --> 00:39:46.960 fact patterns in real life where we can get stuff wrong, and 00:39:46.960 --> 00:39:50.080 theology is on the line, which means that morality is on the 00:39:50.080 --> 00:39:53.200 line. Calling God a liar is on the line. 00:39:53.200 --> 00:39:58.800 Suddenly the willingness to tell the whole truth is paramount because the 00:39:58.800 --> 00:40:02.640 natural incentive to say I'm gonna be really clever when I'm engaging 00:40:02.640 --> 00:40:06.080 here, I'm not gonna say anything that's gonna give up any ground 00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:09.840 in a debate or in you know some sort of trial, that 00:40:10.080 --> 00:40:11.600 makes a kind of sense. 00:40:11.680 --> 00:40:15.680 Doesn't necessarily make moral sense, but it makes logistical sense. 00:40:15.680 --> 00:40:18.720 Because if you just give away the whole game by conceding your 00:40:18.720 --> 00:40:22.080 opponent's point, then why have the dispute in the first place? 00:40:22.080 --> 00:40:23.920 Just admit you were wrong. 00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:26.320 We don't have that tendency. 00:40:26.480 --> 00:40:30.000 I'm not saying necessarily we should, but the problem is that the 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:33.520 armor that we have as individuals, as human beings, is to push 00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:37.040 in the other direction, to never give an inch, even when we 00:40:37.040 --> 00:40:41.840 should. So, say in some of these theological disputes, like evolution, we 00:40:41.840 --> 00:40:44.880 did six thousand years in counting as an episode where one of 00:40:44.880 --> 00:40:46.960 the things we talked about was evolution. 00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:51.120 And we made the case there that it's completely incompatible with Christianity. 00:40:51.120 --> 00:40:53.600 And yet at the same time, there are a lot of Christians 00:40:53.600 --> 00:40:57.200 who in good conscience believe that it's okay because they've they've not 00:40:57.200 --> 00:40:58.880 heard the arguments that we made there. 00:40:58.880 --> 00:41:00.640 They've not given it much thought. 00:41:00.640 --> 00:41:02.960 You know, it kinda makes sense, and you know, I guess Genesis 00:41:03.040 --> 00:41:06.400 maybe could be allegorical, so I believe in God, I believe in 00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:10.640 scripture. I just think that it took longer than six, seven thousand 00:41:10.720 --> 00:41:14.240 years for all this stuff to come into being. 00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:18.800 We made the case in that episode that the only way evolution, 00:41:18.800 --> 00:41:22.560 macroevolution, can exist is with death. 00:41:22.560 --> 00:41:27.040 And so either scripture is lying about when death entered the world, 00:41:27.040 --> 00:41:30.400 or evolution is impossible. 00:41:30.400 --> 00:41:32.880 You can't have it both ways. 00:41:32.880 --> 00:41:35.360 And that's not an argument that most people have heard. 00:41:35.360 --> 00:41:37.120 So there are a number of people when they heard that are 00:41:37.360 --> 00:41:40.080 like, okay, I believe that evolution is false now. 00:41:40.080 --> 00:41:43.360 Some people had their minds changed just based on that fact, because 00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:49.440 it's a black and white situation where the observable universe, portions of 00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:51.840 it, for example, the age of the earth and the age of 00:41:51.840 --> 00:41:56.000 the universe itself, which doesn't suggest evolution, but those ages are much 00:41:56.000 --> 00:41:59.600 older than the age given in Scripture. 00:41:59.600 --> 00:42:04.320 It does not necessarily follow that Scripture is wrong, but it does 00:42:04.320 --> 00:42:06.880 imply that different things are happening. 00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:09.280 So the argument we made is that Adam had an age when 00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:10.560 he was created. 00:42:10.560 --> 00:42:14.880 He was zero days of living, but he wasn't a baby. 00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:17.600 He was a fully grown, sexually mature man. 00:42:17.600 --> 00:42:20.960 And And as I mentioned before, after doing that episode, in the 00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:23.840 episode, I speculated, you know, maybe he was 40 years old. 00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:27.120 I realized after the fact he had to have been 70 years 00:42:27.120 --> 00:42:31.120 old. I believe that now that Adam was created as a 70-year-old. 00:42:31.120 --> 00:42:33.920 Because A, it would have made him an elder, and B it 00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:36.640 would have meant that he died when he was a thousand years 00:42:36.640 --> 00:42:37.680 of age. 00:42:37.680 --> 00:42:40.720 So a speculative maybe I'm wrong, but he had an age, and 00:42:40.720 --> 00:42:41.600 that was the point. 00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:43.440 Adam was created with an age. 00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:45.120 The earth was created with an age. 00:42:45.120 --> 00:42:45.920 The universe was created 00:42:47.040 --> 00:42:48.480 with an age. 00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:51.120 And it is entirely up to God that those don't have to 00:42:51.120 --> 00:42:52.240 be the same age. 00:42:52.240 --> 00:42:55.360 In order for everything mechanically to work out with the universe, they 00:42:55.360 --> 00:42:56.560 have to be different ages. 00:42:56.560 --> 00:42:58.560 And so that is what we observe. 00:42:58.560 --> 00:43:02.960 And so there are cases where reason when apprehending creation is going 00:43:02.960 --> 00:43:05.200 to seemingly contradict scripture. 00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:07.200 And that doesn't mean that we just have to give up on 00:43:07.200 --> 00:43:12.160 either. There may be sometimes a clever solution that lets both accord. 00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:14.480 Some things are just flat out miraculous. 00:43:14.480 --> 00:43:18.720 The examples we've given the past are things like baptism and communion, 00:43:18.720 --> 00:43:24.480 the hypostatic union, God, Jesus Christ being fully man and fully God, 00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:28.400 which is incidentally why there are three ecumenical creeds, battling that out 00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:31.760 for centuries, because it's such a big deal and it's such a 00:43:31.760 --> 00:43:35.120 hard problem to wrap our heads around because it's miraculous. 00:43:35.120 --> 00:43:38.960 If you try to be completely rational when you're talking about the 00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:41.760 nature of Christ, you're gonna be a heretic. 00:43:41.760 --> 00:43:46.000 You will absolutely 100% be a heretic if you try to take 00:43:46.000 --> 00:43:51.440 reason and shoehorn Christ's nature into that because it is irrational. 00:43:51.440 --> 00:43:56.720 You're dealing with a God and B supernatural happenings. 00:43:56.720 --> 00:43:59.760 So there are very limited cases where our reason fails. 00:43:59.760 --> 00:44:01.120 Our reason fails all the time. 00:44:01.120 --> 00:44:05.520 There are limited cases where what we observe is plainly contradictory to 00:44:05.520 --> 00:44:07.760 scripture, but it's exceedingly rare. 00:44:07.760 --> 00:44:12.160 Most of the time, places where scripture is silent are places where 00:44:12.160 --> 00:44:13.760 creation testifies. 00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:18.160 And so they're in accord because scripture says that God made everything. 00:44:18.160 --> 00:44:20.640 So anything that you find, God made. 00:44:20.640 --> 00:44:23.040 There's no adversarial nature there. 00:44:23.040 --> 00:44:25.680 That's why it's called God's two books. 00:44:25.680 --> 00:44:28.160 Both of these things testify his glory. 00:44:28.160 --> 00:44:29.200 And you know what? 00:44:29.200 --> 00:44:31.040 Scripture says the same thing. 00:44:31.040 --> 00:44:36.400 Scripture says that God points to creation as testifying to his glory. 00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:40.240 So it's not a wacko position to say that you can believe 00:44:40.240 --> 00:44:43.280 all those things at once, even when they don't talk to each 00:44:43.280 --> 00:44:47.440 other. You're never going to discover what's in scripture in nature. 00:44:47.440 --> 00:44:51.360 There are things in nature that you will find described in scripture. 00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:55.520 We need both to understand the glory and the might of God 00:44:55.600 --> 00:44:57.680 and to understand his love for us. 00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:00.400 And scripture is more important because it fills in all the blanks 00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:02.400 we can never apprehend with our reason. 00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:07.840 It's only by that faith being passed down as fact as the 00:45:07.840 --> 00:45:10.400 written word of God, which at one point in history was the 00:45:10.400 --> 00:45:12.480 oral word of God. 00:45:12.560 --> 00:45:16.240 One of the other examples that we used in the apostasy episode 00:45:16.240 --> 00:45:21.680 that I mentioned from last year was King Josiah, whom whom scripture 00:45:21.680 --> 00:45:25.840 describes as having been a boy king, having been a faithful king, 00:45:25.840 --> 00:45:28.960 and yet when it describes and we went into great detail in 00:45:28.960 --> 00:45:32.320 that episode we read the whole section where it described all the 00:45:32.320 --> 00:45:36.640 things that were going on in King Josiah's temple at the time 00:45:36.640 --> 00:45:37.920 that he was king. 00:45:37.920 --> 00:45:40.080 And it was profound wickedness. 00:45:40.080 --> 00:45:45.440 There were ashera poles, there were altars to false gods, to demons. 00:45:45.440 --> 00:45:50.720 All of this wickedness was being worshipped in and around God's temple 00:45:50.800 --> 00:45:54.320 with Josiah's permission, and he thought he was serving God. 00:45:54.320 --> 00:45:56.720 And that was the purpose of that illustration. 00:45:56.720 --> 00:46:01.440 Josiah believed with a clean conscience that all the evil that he 00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:04.640 was participating in before they found the book of the law in 00:46:04.640 --> 00:46:07.760 the temple, they found it in some rubble or in some dust, 00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:09.360 it was completely forgotten. 00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:12.960 When they rediscovered scripture, he he repented. 00:46:12.960 --> 00:46:16.320 He had it read to him and he immediately knew that he 00:46:16.320 --> 00:46:21.120 had been engaged in the most grievous, idolatrous wickedness. 00:46:21.120 --> 00:46:22.800 He repented on the spot. 00:46:23.040 --> 00:46:25.040 He didn't try to synthesize the two. 00:46:25.040 --> 00:46:28.800 He didn't ask his priest to pour through that to find some 00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:32.800 example or some reason, some out, for him to say, Well, I'm 00:46:32.720 --> 00:46:35.520 not actually guilty of this, because you know, it was like this 00:46:35.520 --> 00:46:37.360 when I got here, so it's not my fault. 00:46:37.360 --> 00:46:41.520 That's the human impulse to try to find some excuse. 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:45.120 He was horrified properly because he was a faithful Christian. 00:46:45.120 --> 00:46:48.560 And that's why God credited him as righteousness, his belief, even in 00:46:48.560 --> 00:46:51.520 the face of the wickedness he'd participated in for nearly a decade 00:46:51.680 --> 00:46:57.600 of of his kingship when they rediscovered scripture and put it into 00:46:57.600 --> 00:47:01.440 practice again, and again as we said there, not only did they 00:47:01.440 --> 00:47:05.120 forget where the book of the law was, but they forgot it 00:47:05.120 --> 00:47:07.840 existed. That's how far gone they were. 00:47:07.840 --> 00:47:11.920 They had forgotten the existence of the written word. 00:47:11.920 --> 00:47:15.040 And so when this was rediscovered, it was telling them things they'd 00:47:15.120 --> 00:47:18.560 completely forgotten, things they didn't have any access to. 00:47:18.560 --> 00:47:20.480 Because again, you can't find it in nature. 00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:23.680 You can only find that which God reveals in his word through 00:47:23.680 --> 00:47:24.640 his word. 00:47:24.640 --> 00:47:27.200 You're not going to find it on gold tablets. 00:47:27.200 --> 00:47:28.960 You're not going to find it in the stars. 00:47:28.960 --> 00:47:31.280 You're only going to find it in Scripture. 00:47:31.280 --> 00:47:32.560 He repented. 00:47:32.560 --> 00:47:34.640 He had no excuses. 00:47:34.640 --> 00:47:36.560 He didn't blame anyone. 00:47:36.560 --> 00:47:40.480 He said, Lord have mercy, let's fix this as soon as possible. 00:47:40.480 --> 00:47:44.560 And he spent the rest of his kingship addressing those problems and 00:47:44.560 --> 00:47:46.400 he fixed it very quickly. 00:47:46.400 --> 00:47:47.040 And so 00:47:47.920 --> 00:47:52.320 his kingdom again fell into wickedness as soon as he died 'cause 00:47:52.320 --> 00:47:55.840 his son was evil, but at least for his sake, there's a 00:47:55.840 --> 00:48:00.400 period of time where his people were blessed by faithful teaching. 00:48:00.400 --> 00:48:03.520 And that gets into the other thing that Corey said. 00:48:03.520 --> 00:48:08.880 Satan doesn't necessarily even need our individual churches to apostatize conversation. 00:48:08.880 --> 00:48:11.200 Completely in one generation. 00:48:11.200 --> 00:48:16.240 So it's fine if you go from having strong belief to having 00:48:16.240 --> 00:48:20.640 a syncretist mixture of beliefs, but you still go to heaven somehow. 00:48:20.720 --> 00:48:21.920 God sorts it out. 00:48:21.920 --> 00:48:25.680 You're forgiven for your errors, of which we all have. 00:48:25.680 --> 00:48:30.960 And you go to heaven despite having held some false beliefs. 00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:36.000 Satan still wins because he's playing a multi-generational game because what you 00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:39.920 have done is created an inheritance for the next generation that's worse 00:48:39.920 --> 00:48:41.520 off than the one that you found. 00:48:41.520 --> 00:48:45.360 So when it's passed down, what everyone is taught is this messed 00:48:45.520 --> 00:48:49.600 up version that's riddled with lies and has some truth in it. 00:48:49.600 --> 00:48:52.080 What do you think's gonna happen in that circumstance? 00:48:52.080 --> 00:48:56.240 Is it gonna somehow emerge even better in another generation? 00:48:56.240 --> 00:48:58.720 Or is it gonna continue to deteriorate? 00:48:58.720 --> 00:49:01.760 Satan knows how to play this game, and he plays it for 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:02.880 the long run. 00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:06.720 He's perfectly content to let some generations to go to heaven. 00:49:06.720 --> 00:49:11.040 He'd like to get everybody, but if he has an intermediary generation 00:49:11.040 --> 00:49:15.600 that's in decay, such that, you know, maybe they preserved the temple 00:49:15.600 --> 00:49:20.400 before Josiah, somebody preserved the temple in some knowledge of God, and 00:49:20.400 --> 00:49:22.160 then just misplaced scripture. 00:49:22.160 --> 00:49:23.520 Maybe they were still Christian. 00:49:23.520 --> 00:49:27.360 They were still believers, but they forgot where the Bible was. 00:49:27.360 --> 00:49:30.560 And then a generation passed and a generation passed and soon nobody 00:49:30.560 --> 00:49:32.160 remembers anything. 00:49:32.160 --> 00:49:36.000 That's how Satan plays this game, which is why we have to 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:38.400 always be vigilant at every point. 00:49:38.400 --> 00:49:40.000 We can never let air creep in. 00:49:40.240 --> 00:49:43.840 And wherever we find error, wherever we find it, we have to 00:49:43.840 --> 00:49:45.840 respond as Josiah did. 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.520 We have to be horrified. 00:49:47.520 --> 00:49:51.040 And we have to personally repent the moment we realize we've been 00:49:51.040 --> 00:49:51.840 in error. 00:49:51.840 --> 00:49:54.640 It is possible, it has happened to you. 00:49:54.640 --> 00:49:56.080 It has happened to me. 00:49:56.080 --> 00:49:58.080 It will happen again. 00:49:58.080 --> 00:50:00.720 We're not perfect creatures. 00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:02.160 We are imperfect. 00:50:02.160 --> 00:50:03.680 We're fallible. 00:50:03.680 --> 00:50:05.040 We're foolish. 00:50:05.040 --> 00:50:09.200 We're selfish, we're gonna stick to whatever makes us feel good. 00:50:09.200 --> 00:50:12.880 And the things that are true generally don't meet that criteria. 00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:17.440 The things that are true that are of God genuinely, they're usually 00:50:17.440 --> 00:50:20.800 unpopular. They're usually going to get you into trouble. 00:50:20.800 --> 00:50:23.520 So when people start screaming and shouting and saying, you can't do 00:50:23.520 --> 00:50:24.240 that. That's evil. 00:50:24.240 --> 00:50:24.800 That's wicked. 00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:28.800 That's not what we've done since the 1960s, you're going to have 00:50:28.800 --> 00:50:31.360 to face an uphill battle and you're going to have to choose 00:50:31.680 --> 00:50:35.520 do I fit in or do I obey God? 00:50:35.520 --> 00:50:40.640 When a generation fails to meet that test head on, that generation 00:50:40.640 --> 00:50:42.160 is going to apostatize. 00:50:42.160 --> 00:50:46.640 And then the inheritance passed on to future generations of the church, 00:50:46.640 --> 00:50:51.520 the entire church is going to be false doctrine, false belief, and 00:50:51.520 --> 00:50:56.080 spiritual weakness, where there's no notion of fighting or contending for that 00:50:56.080 --> 00:50:58.560 which is true in a from God. 00:50:58.560 --> 00:51:02.400 At this point, when someone actually wants to contend with things that 00:51:02.400 --> 00:51:06.800 are godly, contend for them in the face of adversaries in public, 00:51:06.800 --> 00:51:09.120 the guy's usually going to get shouted down. 00:51:09.120 --> 00:51:10.320 Why are you fighting? 00:51:10.320 --> 00:51:12.080 Why are you you're angry about stuff? 00:51:12.480 --> 00:51:13.920 you're causing dissent. 00:51:14.160 --> 00:51:17.200 Everything was so peaceful and happy, and then you said somebody was 00:51:17.200 --> 00:51:19.120 wrong about God and everyone's riled up. 00:51:19.120 --> 00:51:21.200 Look at all the disruption you're causing. 00:51:21.200 --> 00:51:25.200 Well, it's possible that there's actual harm being done by someone doing 00:51:25.200 --> 00:51:28.480 that, if everyone was right in the first place, or it's possible 00:51:28.480 --> 00:51:30.640 that someone's pulling the fire alarm. 00:51:30.640 --> 00:51:34.960 And the dire situation that we face today is that all of 00:51:34.960 --> 00:51:38.000 us individually are in put in a situation where we have to 00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:43.520 discern as best we can, has someone messed up in a previous 00:51:43.520 --> 00:51:47.760 generation? Have they made a false confession or has Satan tricked us 00:51:47.760 --> 00:51:52.480 into taking a true confession and twisting it and using it for 00:51:52.480 --> 00:51:55.360 purposes for which it was never intended. 00:51:55.360 --> 00:52:00.080 Another example I point to frequently is the bronze serpent that Moses 00:52:00.160 --> 00:52:03.280 held aloft at the command of God, he had him fashion a 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:06.560 bronze serpent, to hold up on a pole in front of Israel, 00:52:06.560 --> 00:52:10.720 because they were being bitten by snakes, poisonous snakes, that incidentally God 00:52:10.720 --> 00:52:16.400 sent. And God told Moses to have Israel look at this serpent, 00:52:16.400 --> 00:52:19.520 this bronze serpent on a pole, and those who gazed upon it 00:52:19.520 --> 00:52:22.720 would be saved from the venomous stings and not die. 00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:24.240 And it worked. 00:52:24.240 --> 00:52:27.840 Those who obeyed God were saved from poisoning and dying. 00:52:28.800 --> 00:52:32.480 And then later on, a few books later, we find out that 00:52:32.480 --> 00:52:35.520 they kept that bronze serpent and they gave it a name. 00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:40.080 They named it Nehushton, and they were worshipping it as a god. 00:52:40.080 --> 00:52:44.480 So this is what confessions often end up doing. 00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:47.520 You have something that was good at the time, it was true, 00:52:47.520 --> 00:52:51.760 it served a purpose, it was entirely in accord with God's will. 00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:55.840 And yet somebody decides we're gonna hang on to it and we're 00:52:55.840 --> 00:52:59.120 gonna s reuse it for some other purpose for which it was 00:52:59.120 --> 00:53:01.760 not intended, it was not ordained by God. 00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:04.560 And next thing you know, you have idolatry. 00:53:04.560 --> 00:53:06.960 In that case, it was straight up idol worship. 00:53:07.200 --> 00:53:08.880 They gave the name of a demon. 00:53:08.880 --> 00:53:11.200 They were worshiping it instead of God. 00:53:11.200 --> 00:53:14.160 That's how easy it is for us to do these things. 00:53:14.160 --> 00:53:16.960 You know, in the case of things like creeds and a good 00:53:17.120 --> 00:53:21.280 sound Christian confession, you don't throw it away after a generation 'cause 00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:25.600 it served its purpose, but you must always acknowledge that it only 00:53:25.600 --> 00:53:30.240 served the purpose of answering the questions that those men faced at 00:53:30.240 --> 00:53:31.520 that time. 00:53:31.520 --> 00:53:35.600 There can be no doubt that if the exact same men who 00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:39.040 wrote all the books in the Book of Conquered, the Lutheran Confessions, 00:53:39.040 --> 00:53:42.320 or your Confessions of Your Church, whatever it is, if all of 00:53:42.320 --> 00:53:47.120 those men were alive today in our churches and our circumstances, those 00:53:47.120 --> 00:53:52.080 men, if those confessions did not exist, they would write very different 00:53:52.080 --> 00:53:55.360 confessions. Does that mean that the old ones are wrong? 00:53:55.360 --> 00:53:58.480 No. It means they were solving a different purpose. 00:53:58.880 --> 00:54:03.120 A faithful contender for God's word is going to deal with what's 00:54:03.040 --> 00:54:03.920 in front of him. 00:54:03.920 --> 00:54:06.720 And sometimes that's going to mean talking about things that people haven't 00:54:06.640 --> 00:54:07.920 talked about before. 00:54:07.920 --> 00:54:11.600 And when that happens, you're going to have men who are going 00:54:11.600 --> 00:54:15.040 to try to cling to the old confession just like that bronze 00:54:15.040 --> 00:54:17.600 serpent. They're gonna wave it around and say, well, what what about 00:54:17.600 --> 00:54:20.560 this? We've had this for centuries, and it it clearly applies here 00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:22.480 because of the old use. 00:54:22.480 --> 00:54:25.600 Like, well, the old use doesn't apply here because we have a 00:54:25.600 --> 00:54:27.120 different problem now. 00:54:27.120 --> 00:54:31.040 The reason the pattern keeps repleting is that it's human nature to 00:54:31.040 --> 00:54:33.760 fall for it and it's Satan's playbook. 00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:37.040 He loves this crap because it's easy, it keeps working, we keep 00:54:37.360 --> 00:54:39.680 gobbling it up, and it's deadly. 00:54:39.680 --> 00:54:41.200 It's deadly to souls. 00:54:41.200 --> 00:54:44.000 Maybe not in one generation, maybe it takes three or four. 00:54:44.000 --> 00:54:45.440 Do you think Satan cares? 00:54:45.440 --> 00:54:48.880 No. He can keep attacking people in many different ways as he 00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:53.360 wants. He doesn't need to corrupt every church instantly all the time. 00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:56.800 He'll take his time if it means that he can ultimately destroy 00:54:56.800 --> 00:55:00.320 a church, especially one that once had a sound confession. 00:55:00.320 --> 00:55:04.080 What greater victory for hell than to take something that was once 00:55:04.720 --> 00:55:08.880 true and faithful and to gradually corrupt it and get it to 00:55:08.880 --> 00:55:12.800 turn its own confessions that once pointed to God and then have 00:55:12.800 --> 00:55:14.080 it point to hell. 00:55:14.080 --> 00:55:16.400 That's as satanic as it gets. 00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:19.200 That is what we're dealing with as an enemy. 00:55:19.200 --> 00:55:22.400 And the problem is that we don't believe it. 00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:26.240 We believe that as long as we just keep mouthing the correct 00:55:26.240 --> 00:55:28.880 words, we're going to be saved from everything. 00:55:28.880 --> 00:55:33.200 As long as we cry, Lord, Lord, we're gonna be honky dory. 00:55:33.200 --> 00:55:35.840 God warns us about that. 00:55:36.640 --> 00:55:36.880 For 00:55:36.880 --> 00:55:40.880 anyone who happens to be thinking that this could never happen, this 00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:44.960 is obviously something about which we don't really need to worry because 00:55:44.960 --> 00:55:47.040 Satan couldn't possibly 00:55:48.080 --> 00:55:52.560 Well, I would direct you to look at the various church bodies 00:55:52.560 --> 00:55:54.480 in the United States. 00:55:54.480 --> 00:55:58.720 Because we've seen exactly this play out over time. 00:55:58.720 --> 00:56:06.160 Each and every tradition has bodies ranging from relatively conservative, 00:56:06.160 --> 00:56:13.360 traditional, to wildly liberal and outright and openly apostate. 00:56:13.360 --> 00:56:17.040 In the case of the Presbyterians you have the OPC, the PCA 00:56:17.120 --> 00:56:19.360 and PCUSA. 00:56:19.360 --> 00:56:23.680 In the case of even the Methodists, you have the Wesleyan and 00:56:23.680 --> 00:56:26.640 then you have all the way down to the UMC. 00:56:26.640 --> 00:56:31.120 For the Anglicans or the Episcopalians you have Acna and Tech, and 00:56:31.120 --> 00:56:34.240 you even have the same thing with regard to the Baptists from, 00:56:34.240 --> 00:56:38.960 say, the IFB churches, SBC is middle of the road, and then 00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:44.240 there's ABC USA, which is the very liberal Baptist body. 00:56:44.240 --> 00:56:49.200 In the case of Lutherans, we have the LCMS, NALC, LCMC, and 00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:54.640 Elka. Now those of us who are Lutheran would not call Elka 00:56:54.800 --> 00:56:57.840 Lutheran. We would in fact say they should not be allowed to 00:56:57.840 --> 00:56:59.520 use the name Lutheran. 00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:01.600 Because they're not even Christian. 00:57:01.600 --> 00:57:04.240 But they didn't start out that way. 00:57:04.240 --> 00:57:08.000 They started out as a faithful Lutheran body. 00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:10.720 They started out as a merger of a number of bodies and 00:57:10.720 --> 00:57:15.120 the organization chart, as it were, starts to get complicated, but they 00:57:15.280 --> 00:57:18.240 didn't start out apostate. 00:57:18.240 --> 00:57:22.800 That happened incrementally over a number of generations. 00:57:22.800 --> 00:57:26.400 Because they would yield on an issue here, or they would stop 00:57:26.400 --> 00:57:30.960 confessing this truth in the right way there. 00:57:30.960 --> 00:57:37.280 And eventually, you wind up flying the so-called rainbow flag and the 00:57:37.280 --> 00:57:41.600 BLM flag, and suddenly your churches are empty and you're having to 00:57:41.600 --> 00:57:46.000 sell them to balance your budget. 00:57:46.000 --> 00:57:50.400 We've seen this play out time and time again. 00:57:50.400 --> 00:57:53.600 And it hasn't played out just in the US, it's played out 00:57:53.760 --> 00:57:58.480 everywhere there have been Christians when they didn't guard the deposit of 00:57:58.480 --> 00:58:03.520 faith entrusted to them by their forefathers, or when their forefathers themselves 00:58:03.520 --> 00:58:07.360 were corrupt, as often happens. 00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:11.200 This is very much a playbook that Satan has been running for 00:58:11.200 --> 00:58:15.120 a very long time, and he will continue to run it, because 00:58:15.120 --> 00:58:17.360 it will continue to work. 00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:21.280 What we're saying is this is something against which Christians have to 00:58:21.280 --> 00:58:24.640 guard, because not only do we have to guard against it for 00:58:24.640 --> 00:58:29.280 ourselves, but we have to guard against it for those who will 00:58:29.280 --> 00:58:30.800 come after us as well. 00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:35.520 Because as Woe was saying, and as we've addressed in previous episodes, 00:58:35.520 --> 00:58:41.920 it may be that your errors don't damn you, but your children 00:58:41.920 --> 00:58:46.720 will be worse off, and their children will be even worse off. 00:58:46.720 --> 00:58:51.920 And unless you have something like a reformation, like a restoration of 00:58:51.920 --> 00:58:56.160 right doctrine and teaching, eventually you are going to wind up with 00:58:56.160 --> 00:58:57.920 bodies calling themselves churches 00:58:58.800 --> 00:59:01.520 that are nothing of the sort. 00:59:01.520 --> 00:59:05.360 Because the things they teach aren't true, and the things they teach 00:59:05.360 --> 00:59:07.680 do not save. 00:59:07.680 --> 00:59:10.800 Can you be a member of an Elka Church and possibly be 00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:12.160 saved? Sure. 00:59:12.160 --> 00:59:15.840 Felicitous inconsistency does exist. 00:59:15.840 --> 00:59:18.400 But you don't want to rely on that. 00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:21.840 As I've said before, if you are out hiking, generally 00:59:22.720 --> 00:59:26.160 speaking, unless you're one of those people who has some issue with 00:59:26.160 --> 00:59:29.600 adrenaline, you don't try to get as close to the cliff as 00:59:29.600 --> 00:59:34.720 possible. When it comes to issues of religion, when it comes to 00:59:34.720 --> 00:59:39.520 doctrinal issues, you should absolutely avoid the cliff. 00:59:39.520 --> 00:59:43.440 You don't want to get as close as possible to the line 00:59:43.440 --> 00:59:44.960 of apostasy. 00:59:44.960 --> 00:59:47.520 Well, I'm not over the line, so I'm fine. 00:59:47.520 --> 00:59:50.960 The issue is you don't know exactly where that line is. 00:59:50.960 --> 00:59:54.960 You don't know how many false beliefs you can hold and still 00:59:54.960 --> 00:59:56.560 be saved. 00:59:56.560 --> 01:00:00.800 We're not saying that you should doubt your salvation, we're not addressing 01:00:00.800 --> 01:00:04.480 this topic in order to cause you to fear. 01:00:04.480 --> 01:00:09.280 We're just calling you to think about these issues, to be mindful 01:00:09.680 --> 01:00:14.240 of what you believe, why you believe it, what you confess, why 01:00:14.240 --> 01:00:16.560 you confess it. 01:00:16.560 --> 01:00:19.200 Because again, it's not sufficient. 01:00:19.200 --> 01:00:22.080 Just to confess the thing mindlessly. 01:00:22.080 --> 01:00:24.880 A parrot can do that. 01:00:24.880 --> 01:00:30.320 It is important to understand the words you're saying, what they mean, 01:00:30.320 --> 01:00:32.800 and why you're saying them. 01:00:32.800 --> 01:00:38.400 Because even if, let's say you understand all of that perfectly, if 01:00:38.400 --> 01:00:41.920 all that you pass on to the next generation is the words, 01:00:41.920 --> 01:00:46.720 devoid of understanding, devoid of the why, then they are in a 01:00:46.720 --> 01:00:49.520 precarious situation. 01:00:49.520 --> 01:00:52.960 It may be sufficient for them. 01:00:52.960 --> 01:00:56.720 But what about the generation that comes after them? 01:00:56.720 --> 01:01:00.560 All of these issues are generational. 01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:03.920 Because that is simply how it works for mortal men. 01:01:03.920 --> 01:01:11.600 We're only around for eighty-ish years, depending on genetics and other factors. 01:01:11.600 --> 01:01:18.000 Misadventure. And generally speaking, there's twenty-five to thirty years between generations, so 01:01:18.400 --> 01:01:22.400 you have that overlapping time in order to transmit the faith to 01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:25.600 the next generation, but you have to make sure that what you're 01:01:25.600 --> 01:01:30.400 transmitting is the truth, is the whole truth, and is nothing but 01:01:30.400 --> 01:01:31.600 the truth. 01:01:31.600 --> 01:01:37.600 Not just certain sub-segments of the truth, not the truth with some 01:01:37.600 --> 01:01:40.160 bits distorted. 01:01:40.160 --> 01:01:45.120 Because Satan is going to be around for that next generation. 01:01:45.120 --> 01:01:49.520 He's still going to be here, working at destroying the faith, working 01:01:49.520 --> 01:01:53.520 at leading men astray, long after you're gone. 01:01:53.520 --> 01:01:55.840 He's been at it for thousands of years. 01:01:55.840 --> 01:01:58.080 We don't have thousands of years. 01:01:58.080 --> 01:02:01.600 We have a limited time in which to get these things right 01:02:01.760 --> 01:02:05.360 and then to pass them on to future generations. 01:02:05.360 --> 01:02:10.080 And if we don't take those issues seriously, it's very possible to 01:02:10.080 --> 01:02:15.440 go from something like what the LCMS was in the 1800s and 01:02:15.440 --> 01:02:19.920 the early 1900s to what Elke is today. 01:02:19.920 --> 01:02:24.480 And it can happen a lot faster than most men believe. 01:02:24.480 --> 01:02:29.040 It doesn't take a hundred generations to become apostate. 01:02:29.040 --> 01:02:34.720 As Woe mentioned with Nehushtan, that took less than a generation maybe 01:02:34.720 --> 01:02:37.840 one generation, essentially. 01:02:37.840 --> 01:02:42.560 And they went from I won't say good and proper worship of 01:02:42.560 --> 01:02:45.360 the true God, because obviously they had their problems at that point 01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:50.720 in Israel's history, but they went from recognizing and understanding at least 01:02:50.720 --> 01:02:55.920 at least part of the truth, to open idolatry. 01:02:55.920 --> 01:03:00.880 And the example of what has happened in the US with Lutheranism 01:03:01.200 --> 01:03:02.240 is a great warning. 01:03:02.240 --> 01:03:03.600 It's not just Lutheranism. 01:03:03.600 --> 01:03:04.880 I'm not picking on Lutherans. 01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:07.840 It just happens to be that I'm Lutheran, and I'm most familiar 01:03:07.840 --> 01:03:08.560 with their history. 01:03:08.560 --> 01:03:12.080 Obviously, the same thing has happened as I mentioned with the Presbyterians 01:03:12.080 --> 01:03:15.360 and the Baptists and others as well. 01:03:15.360 --> 01:03:21.120 But But it is very possible to go from conservative Christian bodies 01:03:21.120 --> 01:03:25.440 that confess right doctrine and two generations later 01:03:26.720 --> 01:03:33.680 have essentially empty pews with female so called pastors preaching Marxism from 01:03:33.680 --> 01:03:36.480 the pulpit. 01:03:36.480 --> 01:03:38.800 We've seen that happen. 01:03:38.800 --> 01:03:43.520 There are men alive today They who watched it happen within their 01:03:43.520 --> 01:03:45.680 own lifespan. 01:03:45.680 --> 01:03:51.120 Because there were men when they were children who were attending Elka 01:03:51.360 --> 01:03:55.680 churches, or what would become Elka in many cases, faithful churches 01:03:56.880 --> 01:03:59.680 and they've watched that change in their own lifespan. 01:03:59.680 --> 01:04:02.880 They should have left those churches long ago, but some of them 01:04:02.880 --> 01:04:04.000 have not. 01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:08.240 This is not something that is theoretical or something that is just 01:04:08.480 --> 01:04:12.800 some possibility out there that this is something that is you should 01:04:12.880 --> 01:04:14.640 think about it, because maybe it'll happen. 01:04:14.640 --> 01:04:20.640 No, this is something that Satan actively exploits and actively pursues every 01:04:20.640 --> 01:04:22.240 single day. 01:04:22.240 --> 01:04:23.680 Because it works. 01:04:23.680 --> 01:04:25.520 It's effective. 01:04:25.520 --> 01:04:30.880 Satan is not going to use ineffective tactics over the long run. 01:04:32.000 --> 01:04:34.800 Because he's not dumb. 01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:37.680 If he were dumb, he wouldn't be a threat. 01:04:37.680 --> 01:04:40.960 If he were dumb, we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with these 01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:44.400 issues. Because then he'd basically be a court gesture and we could 01:04:44.400 --> 01:04:46.000 just ignore him or laugh at him. 01:04:46.000 --> 01:04:48.880 We should certainly still laugh at him, but we should also take 01:04:48.880 --> 01:04:49.360 him seriously 01:04:50.400 --> 01:04:52.800 as the enemy that he is. 01:04:52.800 --> 01:04:56.480 Because he does prowl about as a roaring lion seeking to consume 01:04:56.480 --> 01:04:57.680 whom he can. 01:04:57.680 --> 01:05:00.880 And one of the ways that he does that is leading men 01:05:00.880 --> 01:05:05.760 astray by getting them to turn into an idol that which is 01:05:05.920 --> 01:05:10.400 in fact true, but true only in so far as the things 01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:13.760 it addresses and when it is used true used truthfully 01:05:15.040 --> 01:05:15.360 because 01:05:16.880 --> 01:05:20.720 there's a certain Latin phrase that comes to mind when dealing with 01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:24.560 this issue, and of course that is abusus usum non tolit, which 01:05:24.560 --> 01:05:30.000 is a general Latin maxim, a legal maxim, but also a logical 01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:34.240 one, and essentially it just means that the abuse of a thing 01:05:34.240 --> 01:05:38.560 does not destroy the use of a thing, which is to say, 01:05:38.560 --> 01:05:41.680 a good A good thing can in fact be abused. 01:05:41.680 --> 01:05:42.560 We all know that. 01:05:42.560 --> 01:05:43.840 I'm holding a pen right now. 01:05:43.840 --> 01:05:46.160 I always wind up using my pen as an example because it's 01:05:46.160 --> 01:05:48.400 usually in my hand when recording. 01:05:48.400 --> 01:05:51.920 But I can write with my pen, which is a good use. 01:05:51.920 --> 01:05:54.640 I could also stab someone in the neck with my pen, which 01:05:54.640 --> 01:05:57.600 is usually a bad use, unless it's self defense, which is a 01:05:57.600 --> 01:05:58.560 different matter. 01:05:58.560 --> 01:06:02.240 Don't really want to destroy the pen, but there is a good 01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:05.440 use for the thing, and just because there's a bad use does 01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:08.800 not mean the good use is destroyed. 01:06:08.800 --> 01:06:11.440 But perhaps we need a sort of corollary. 01:06:11.600 --> 01:06:18.160 Usus bonus abusum non precludit a good use does not preclude abuse. 01:06:18.320 --> 01:06:23.040 Just because a thing has a good use does not mean you 01:06:23.040 --> 01:06:24.960 cannot abuse it. 01:06:24.960 --> 01:06:29.280 And so the standard maxim is that the abuse doesn't destroy the 01:06:29.280 --> 01:06:33.280 use, but we should keep in mind the corollary as well. 01:06:33.280 --> 01:06:38.320 The good use does not mean that the thing cannot be abused. 01:06:38.320 --> 01:06:43.520 And so just because there is this good use for our confessions, 01:06:43.520 --> 01:06:46.400 just because they are true They are true in 01:06:47.280 --> 01:06:51.040 the matters they address, in the way in which they address them, 01:06:51.040 --> 01:06:55.520 when you understand what they're saying, does not mean that Satan cannot 01:06:55.520 --> 01:07:00.720 use them to mislead, because he can certainly get you to give 01:07:00.720 --> 01:07:04.800 a false confession with words that on their face appear to be 01:07:04.800 --> 01:07:08.080 true. Now I know this is going to sound horrible to some 01:07:08.080 --> 01:07:11.200 of you some of you, because quite frankly it is a horrible 01:07:11.200 --> 01:07:14.800 thing. The idea that you could give a false confession that you 01:07:14.800 --> 01:07:21.040 could lie effectively with the truth is a terrifying possibility. 01:07:21.040 --> 01:07:22.800 But it remains a fact. 01:07:23.200 --> 01:07:27.920 It is something that can occur, and we all recognize this, from 01:07:27.920 --> 01:07:32.720 the examples given with regard to the courts, for instance, that's one 01:07:32.720 --> 01:07:35.760 people can grasp quite readily. 01:07:35.760 --> 01:07:41.280 Another example would be the use of words that are not univocal 01:07:41.360 --> 01:07:46.480 but in a univocal fashion, essentially equivocation. 01:07:46.480 --> 01:07:50.560 If you speak a certain a certain sentence will abstract it a 01:07:50.560 --> 01:07:55.760 bit. If I say X is true, well it depends what X 01:07:55.760 --> 01:07:58.480 is, rather heavily, doesn't it? 01:07:58.480 --> 01:08:01.600 And so if I mean one thing by X, and in that 01:08:01.600 --> 01:08:05.600 case it's true, it doesn't mean that it holds for all senses 01:08:05.600 --> 01:08:06.880 of that. 01:08:06.880 --> 01:08:09.360 A more concrete example. 01:08:09.360 --> 01:08:14.000 If you told another person I saw Tom at the party. 01:08:14.000 --> 01:08:18.080 Well if you know more than one Tom, there's an ambiguity there's 01:08:18.080 --> 01:08:19.520 the problem there. 01:08:19.520 --> 01:08:22.400 That can be exploited to mislead. 01:08:22.400 --> 01:08:26.560 Because maybe you know the other person will think one person One 01:08:26.560 --> 01:08:29.920 friend, Tom, but you actually saw the other one. 01:08:30.080 --> 01:08:32.400 Maybe there's a reason you're attempting to mislead. 01:08:32.400 --> 01:08:34.640 That's what Satan attempts to do. 01:08:34.640 --> 01:08:38.160 He wants you to say something that is false. 01:08:38.160 --> 01:08:42.000 He doesn't care if there's a particular sense in which it could 01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:45.680 be true, because the goal is to get you to give the 01:08:45.680 --> 01:08:51.120 false confession, or to get you to distort the confession and pass 01:08:51.120 --> 01:08:53.120 it on as a false confession. 01:08:53.120 --> 01:08:57.440 Because sure Satan would love to drag you personally to hell. 01:08:57.440 --> 01:09:01.440 But if he can't get you, he will definitely settle for your 01:09:01.440 --> 01:09:06.800 grandchildren. And so these are things against which we have to guard, 01:09:06.800 --> 01:09:10.800 because if we lose this deposit entrusted to us, if we lose 01:09:10.800 --> 01:09:15.360 the faith, the truth, the good confessions, the things that have been 01:09:15.360 --> 01:09:18.080 entrusted to us as part of our patrimony, we 01:09:19.440 --> 01:09:23.600 Then we are passing on a burden to the next generation, and 01:09:23.600 --> 01:09:26.000 it may be that they will lose the faith. 01:09:26.000 --> 01:09:28.560 Because that certainly happened all over the world. 01:09:28.560 --> 01:09:33.760 As we have mentioned so many times, all three of Noah's sons 01:09:33.760 --> 01:09:37.520 walked off the ark, knowing the Christian faith. 01:09:37.520 --> 01:09:42.080 Now there's some doubt as to what particularly Ham believed, but he 01:09:42.080 --> 01:09:44.560 knew of the Christian faith. 01:09:44.560 --> 01:09:46.880 Did they all pass it on? 01:09:46.880 --> 01:09:48.720 The answer is no. 01:09:48.720 --> 01:09:54.400 In fact, at some point that chain was broken in all cases, 01:09:54.400 --> 01:09:57.520 because all of humanity apostatized. 01:09:57.520 --> 01:10:01.840 To varying degrees and at varying times. 01:10:01.840 --> 01:10:07.520 That may have happened in this very way, getting men to state 01:10:07.520 --> 01:10:11.840 something that's true, but not in that sense. 01:10:11.840 --> 01:10:14.880 For instance, Nehushtan 01:10:15.760 --> 01:10:19.040 God did command Moses to create that. 01:10:19.040 --> 01:10:21.920 That was something from God. 01:10:21.920 --> 01:10:24.640 It had a legitimate use. 01:10:24.640 --> 01:10:28.560 It was then used in a way that was an abuse. 01:10:28.560 --> 01:10:31.200 It was used in a way to mislead. 01:10:31.200 --> 01:10:33.680 It was turned into an idol. 01:10:33.680 --> 01:10:36.400 Because if you looked at it, if you used it in the 01:10:36.880 --> 01:10:40.640 way that God commanded, it would save you from death from being 01:10:40.640 --> 01:10:43.680 bitten by the serpents. 01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:47.200 But if you start to worship it instead, if you turn it 01:10:47.200 --> 01:10:51.040 into an idol, you're using it in this false way. 01:10:51.040 --> 01:10:55.040 It doesn't change the nature of the thing, because the thing was 01:10:55.040 --> 01:10:58.080 still from God and had that legitimate use. 01:10:58.080 --> 01:11:01.440 But what you have done with it, what Satan has got you 01:11:01.440 --> 01:11:06.240 to do with it, Is idolatry, is apostasy. 01:11:06.240 --> 01:11:12.560 It is entirely possible to apostatize while speaking words that on their 01:11:12.560 --> 01:11:17.200 face that on the surface appear to be true. 01:11:17.280 --> 01:11:23.760 The phrase it's true, but is something that should really weigh on 01:11:23.760 --> 01:11:25.200 us much more. 01:11:25.200 --> 01:11:29.360 I think that when we see these arguments playing out in public 01:11:29.360 --> 01:11:31.600 or in private, there's not 01:11:32.560 --> 01:11:38.560 the inherent impulse to guard against the butt part. 01:11:38.560 --> 01:11:42.640 All the guys want to argue about, especially if they're not particularly 01:11:42.640 --> 01:11:47.760 good at hammering these issues out, then in the case where someone's 01:11:47.760 --> 01:11:51.120 not particularly adept, all they're going to be able to lean on 01:11:51.120 --> 01:11:52.800 is whether or not it's true. 01:11:52.800 --> 01:11:56.080 And if it's true, that's gotta be good enough. 01:11:56.080 --> 01:11:59.920 As I said earlier, it's necessary for us to have these North 01:11:59.920 --> 01:12:03.840 Stars, to have these frames of reference so that we don't lose 01:12:03.840 --> 01:12:04.560 our way. 01:12:04.560 --> 01:12:09.280 And sometimes they are just summaries and distillations, like the creeds. 01:12:09.280 --> 01:12:12.240 And we've mentioned a previous episode when we were talking about the 01:12:12.240 --> 01:12:16.080 creeds. One of the reasons that typically the either the apostles or 01:12:16.080 --> 01:12:20.960 Nicene Creed is put right before or right after a sermon is 01:12:20.960 --> 01:12:24.240 so even the man who doesn't know a lot about theology, if 01:12:24.240 --> 01:12:27.680 he hears a sermon and the very next or the very previous 01:12:27.680 --> 01:12:31.360 thing that he hears is a creed that contradicts something in the 01:12:31.360 --> 01:12:33.600 sermon, he's probably gonna notice. 01:12:33.600 --> 01:12:36.320 He might not be the one to figure it out or argue 01:12:36.320 --> 01:12:42.960 correctly how to fix it, but he might have enough awareness, situational 01:12:42.960 --> 01:12:47.760 awareness, to say, hey, the creed says this about Jesus nature and 01:12:47.760 --> 01:12:50.640 the pastor said something that I don't understand. 01:12:50.640 --> 01:12:53.680 That doesn't mean that the pastor is a a liar or blasphemer 01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:54.480 or anything. 01:12:54.480 --> 01:12:57.680 Hopefully it's just a good teaching moment, where there's some subtlety that 01:12:57.760 --> 01:13:00.800 you know a good teacher can tease out and explain to someone. 01:13:00.800 --> 01:13:05.120 But those are also there as curbs to say whatever you say 01:13:05.120 --> 01:13:09.120 in the pulpit it had better accord with these creeds, because these 01:13:09.120 --> 01:13:11.760 are many centuries old. 01:13:11.760 --> 01:13:17.760 These North Stars of a Basic Confession of the Christian faith. 01:13:17.760 --> 01:13:19.200 And they're not complete. 01:13:19.200 --> 01:13:22.560 I reread all three of them earlier just to prepare for this. 01:13:22.560 --> 01:13:25.920 And I noticed one thing I was looking for, whether and to 01:13:25.920 --> 01:13:28.480 what extent they refer to scripture. 01:13:28.480 --> 01:13:31.520 And scripture is pretty much an afterthought. 01:13:31.520 --> 01:13:35.040 One of them mentions that it talks about Jesus as being raised 01:13:35.040 --> 01:13:36.240 from the dead. 01:13:36.240 --> 01:13:40.960 And so the creed confesses that scripture exists and says some good 01:13:40.960 --> 01:13:43.680 stuff, but you know, that's you just have the gospels and you'd 01:13:43.680 --> 01:13:44.720 be set there. 01:13:44.720 --> 01:13:49.440 That doesn't imply or certainly state that all of scripture is breathed 01:13:49.440 --> 01:13:50.320 out by God. 01:13:50.560 --> 01:13:54.560 And it wasn't that the men who crafted the creeds denied scripture 01:13:54.560 --> 01:13:55.600 in the slightest. 01:13:55.600 --> 01:13:56.800 That's my whole point. 01:13:56.800 --> 01:14:00.240 They didn't mention it because it wasn't what they were fighting over. 01:14:00.240 --> 01:14:03.840 When we get in this position where we wanna make arguments where 01:14:03.840 --> 01:14:07.840 we'll say it's true But I'm gonna go in this other direction. 01:14:07.840 --> 01:14:09.680 That's when we're in real danger. 01:14:09.680 --> 01:14:12.800 I want to leave you with something that John the Baptist said 01:14:12.800 --> 01:14:17.120 at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry for Matthew 3. 01:14:17.120 --> 01:14:20.000 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to 01:14:20.000 --> 01:14:23.840 his baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned 01:14:23.840 --> 01:14:25.760 you to flee from the wrath to come? 01:14:25.760 --> 01:14:29.600 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say 01:14:29.600 --> 01:14:32.720 to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. 01:14:32.720 --> 01:14:35.680 For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise 01:14:35.680 --> 01:14:37.680 up children for Abraham. 01:14:37.680 --> 01:14:41.600 That warning should be a warning to each of us, because this 01:14:41.600 --> 01:14:45.040 tendency that the churches have and that we have been taught is 01:14:45.040 --> 01:14:47.040 to become Pharisees. 01:14:47.040 --> 01:14:51.280 I want you to remember the words we have Abraham as our 01:14:51.280 --> 01:14:56.480 father. Because every time someone picks up his confession and waves it 01:14:56.480 --> 01:14:59.680 in the air is proof of what a sound theologian he is. 01:14:59.680 --> 01:15:01.440 That's exactly what he's doing. 01:15:01.440 --> 01:15:04.240 He is saying, I have Abraham as my father. 01:15:04.240 --> 01:15:07.840 How can I possibly be wrong when I'm waving this confession in 01:15:07.840 --> 01:15:08.800 the air. 01:15:08.800 --> 01:15:13.200 It's a carnival Barker's trick, even if it's true, because it's not 01:15:13.200 --> 01:15:15.200 a sound argument. 01:15:15.200 --> 01:15:17.120 That's the distinction here. 01:15:17.120 --> 01:15:19.920 Even assuming for the sake of argument that what he is holding 01:15:19.920 --> 01:15:22.720 up in the air is a true true and faithful confession of 01:15:22.720 --> 01:15:26.080 the word, it doesn't mean that whatever else he's saying is also 01:15:26.080 --> 01:15:28.480 true just because he believes that thing. 01:15:28.480 --> 01:15:31.280 Each argument needs to stand on its own and it needs to 01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:34.480 be consistent with other arguments, and all those arguments need to be 01:15:34.480 --> 01:15:36.240 rooted in scripture. 01:15:36.240 --> 01:15:40.240 Any departure from that is an opening for Satan to attack, and 01:15:40.240 --> 01:15:42.400 he always will, without fail. 01:15:42.400 --> 01:15:45.840 He's the one orchestrating these departures from Scripture. 01:15:45.840 --> 01:15:47.920 He's the one orchestrating these departures. 01:15:48.160 --> 01:15:52.480 And sometimes he begins the way he began with Eve, by tricking 01:15:52.480 --> 01:15:56.720 her into confessing truly, and that was his opening. 01:15:56.720 --> 01:16:00.480 Every time you hear someone saying, I have Abraham as my father, 01:16:00.640 --> 01:16:03.840 Other, you're dealing with a Pharisee. 01:16:03.840 --> 01:16:08.960 Doesn't mean that he's apostate, but that is a Phariseeal argument to 01:16:08.960 --> 01:16:14.400 presume that because of the genealogy of one set of ideas that 01:16:14.400 --> 01:16:16.720 everything else is legitimate. 01:16:16.720 --> 01:16:20.160 That's not reason, it's not borne out by scripture. 01:16:20.560 --> 01:16:23.760 it's an absurdity, and it's one that wouldn't work on us if 01:16:23.760 --> 01:16:25.520 we were being vigilant. 01:16:25.520 --> 01:16:26.960 That's really what this episode is about. 01:16:26.960 --> 01:16:30.320 It's a call to vigilance in whatever circumstances you find yourself. 01:16:30.320 --> 01:16:32.560 They're gonna be different than my circumstances. 01:16:32.560 --> 01:16:33.200 That's fine. 01:16:33.200 --> 01:16:37.120 And we're gonna have differences of opinion about what our confessions should 01:16:37.120 --> 01:16:39.760 be. We should all be on the same page, because only one 01:16:39.760 --> 01:16:41.440 of us can be right. 01:16:41.440 --> 01:16:45.200 But even if your confessions are true, if you are met with 01:16:45.200 --> 01:16:48.080 the impulse to wave them in the air and say, I can't 01:16:48.080 --> 01:16:51.600 be wrong about this other thing because I hold to this, you're 01:16:51.600 --> 01:16:52.960 being a Pharisee. 01:16:52.960 --> 01:16:56.720 You're being a tiny little Pharisee and you're doing something stupid and 01:16:56.720 --> 01:16:58.880 you're giving Satan a foothold. 01:16:58.880 --> 01:17:00.320 Even if you're right. 01:17:00.320 --> 01:17:02.880 Even if you're right about the thing you're arguing about, never mind 01:17:02.880 --> 01:17:04.480 the confession being true. 01:17:04.480 --> 01:17:07.440 Even if you're also right about the thing you're opposing, if you're 01:17:07.440 --> 01:17:11.840 using that pharisaical argument, I have Abraham as my father, that's the 01:17:11.840 --> 01:17:14.800 opening that Satan might use 20 years down the road. 01:17:14.800 --> 01:17:18.480 We can never let ourselves get away with doing that. 01:17:18.480 --> 01:17:20.240 Because that's it. 01:17:20.240 --> 01:17:23.040 That's the whole shooting match as soon as we start making those 01:17:23.040 --> 01:17:26.640 arguments. And it was prophetic when John the Baptist mentioned that because 01:17:26.640 --> 01:17:29.920 throughout the rest of the New Testament, that's what they act like. 01:17:29.920 --> 01:17:33.520 They continuously say, you can't be right because we have Abraham as 01:17:33.520 --> 01:17:34.240 our father. 01:17:34.240 --> 01:17:36.400 We were never slaves, which is a lie. 01:17:36.400 --> 01:17:37.840 Incidentally, it's absurd. 01:17:37.840 --> 01:17:41.120 The lengths that they went to to point to Abraham being their 01:17:41.120 --> 01:17:43.760 father is justification for everything else. 01:17:43.760 --> 01:17:48.640 It's an absurdity, it's a falsehood, it is a bad argument, and 01:17:48.640 --> 01:17:50.320 it's the first step to hell. 01:17:50.320 --> 01:17:51.680 Or not necessarily the first step. 01:17:51.680 --> 01:17:53.040 It's one of the steps to hell. 01:17:53.040 --> 01:17:54.480 For some it may be the first step. 01:17:54.480 --> 01:17:56.160 For others, it's probably not. 01:17:56.160 --> 01:17:58.160 But it's never a good argument. 01:17:58.160 --> 01:18:01.360 We have We have to catch ourselves when we say it's true, 01:18:01.360 --> 01:18:06.080 but and then realize that we are we're on shaky ground. 01:18:06.080 --> 01:18:10.880 If you're asserting something true that's irrelevant, you're making a bad argument 01:18:11.040 --> 01:18:12.400 in any context. 01:18:12.400 --> 01:18:15.600 And if you're doing it with theology, you're getting into very dangerous 01:18:15.600 --> 01:18:19.120 territory. Because another thing we've said many times, when you make a 01:18:19.120 --> 01:18:24.080 scriptural argument, a doctrinal Christian argument, if someone believes you, if they 01:18:24.080 --> 01:18:26.400 agree with you, you're binding their conscience. 01:18:26.400 --> 01:18:32.960 In this particularly a problem with pastors and clerics, because they automatically 01:18:32.960 --> 01:18:36.880 get that sort of respect accorded to them by virtue of their 01:18:36.880 --> 01:18:43.200 office. When someone attains the teaching office in public, everyone is naturally 01:18:43.200 --> 01:18:45.280 going to tend to defer to him. 01:18:45.280 --> 01:18:47.840 When in doubt, you're probably not going to argue with a pastor. 01:18:47.840 --> 01:18:49.200 And that's a good tendency. 01:18:49.200 --> 01:18:51.600 I don't want people going around arguing with their pastors all the 01:18:51.600 --> 01:18:52.640 time. That's disruptive. 01:18:52.880 --> 01:18:55.360 You're probably wrong if the guy's half competent. 01:18:55.360 --> 01:18:58.000 Even if you're both wrong about stuff, he's probably gonna argue it 01:18:58.000 --> 01:18:58.800 better than you. 01:18:58.800 --> 01:19:02.880 So frankly, picking these fights is not a good idea until you've 01:19:02.880 --> 01:19:05.600 done a ton of legwork, which you may or may not be 01:19:05.600 --> 01:19:07.040 competent to do. 01:19:07.040 --> 01:19:09.360 But it's not a question of being disruptive. 01:19:09.360 --> 01:19:13.120 It's a question of just understanding, are we getting into trouble here? 01:19:13.120 --> 01:19:15.920 Maybe all you can do is go talk to someone else who 01:19:15.920 --> 01:19:19.040 has his head on straight better than you do to help you 01:19:19.040 --> 01:19:22.400 check what's going on, to maybe straighten you out. 01:19:22.400 --> 01:19:24.080 In a lot of cases that's going to be the case. 01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:25.600 You just misunderstood something. 01:19:25.600 --> 01:19:29.600 The pastor said something true you didn't understand, you got upset, you 01:19:29.600 --> 01:19:30.320 were wrong. 01:19:30.320 --> 01:19:31.360 That can happen. 01:19:31.360 --> 01:19:34.240 Repent. Figure it out and repent. 01:19:34.240 --> 01:19:37.200 Part of the episode that we did a while back called You 01:19:37.200 --> 01:19:40.720 Are Forgiven, when we discussed repentance. 01:19:40.720 --> 01:19:44.720 The essence of repentance is turning away from your sin, from your 01:19:44.720 --> 01:19:47.120 error, realizing that you were wrong. 01:19:47.120 --> 01:19:49.280 Repentance is not sorrow. 01:19:49.280 --> 01:19:50.720 It's not a feeling. 01:19:50.720 --> 01:19:52.000 It's a behavior. 01:19:52.000 --> 01:19:54.400 It's a change of direction. 01:19:54.400 --> 01:19:57.440 And that's part of the Christian life. 01:19:57.440 --> 01:20:00.480 To realize, oh crap, I screwed up. 01:20:00.480 --> 01:20:02.320 I didn't know what I was doing wrong. 01:20:02.320 --> 01:20:03.760 I did it in good conscience. 01:20:03.760 --> 01:20:05.200 I've realized it was evil. 01:20:05.200 --> 01:20:06.560 I'm doing a 180 right now. 01:20:06.560 --> 01:20:08.720 I'm going in the opposite direction. 01:20:08.720 --> 01:20:10.320 That's repentance. 01:20:10.320 --> 01:20:12.800 And every Christian is capable of that. 01:20:12.800 --> 01:20:16.160 A man who's not capable of that is not Christian, regardless of 01:20:16.160 --> 01:20:18.000 what his confession is. 01:20:18.000 --> 01:20:20.800 You can confess with your lips all day long. 01:20:20.800 --> 01:20:24.720 If you can never possibly be wrong under any circumstances, if you 01:20:24.720 --> 01:20:28.000 can never have sinned, you can be guaranteed that you're not a 01:20:28.000 --> 01:20:31.360 Christian. And those are often the guys who are the most insistent 01:20:31.360 --> 01:20:34.560 that they're free from sin, basically hold themselves up as examples to 01:20:34.560 --> 01:20:37.600 others. look how great you can be if you're just like me. 01:20:37.600 --> 01:20:40.400 What a nightmarish thing to say to someone. 01:20:40.400 --> 01:20:42.960 God help you, please be better than me. 01:20:42.960 --> 01:20:47.280 When we're dealing with God's things, we have to take exceptional care. 01:20:47.280 --> 01:20:50.880 And that's especially true of teachers and of pastors. 01:20:50.880 --> 01:20:56.320 And part of that is realizing, just as Josiah realized, that he'd 01:20:56.320 --> 01:20:57.360 made a mistake. 01:20:57.680 --> 01:20:59.200 He was in sin. 01:20:59.200 --> 01:21:02.880 Satan's been doing this for seven thousand years, and he knows that 01:21:02.880 --> 01:21:07.040 one of the most effective strategies is to get men to confess 01:21:07.040 --> 01:21:10.080 true things so that he can destroy them. 01:21:10.080 --> 01:21:11.600 We're not immune to that. 01:21:11.600 --> 01:21:13.600 We're vulnerable to it. 01:21:13.600 --> 01:21:16.400 The man who's just straight up apostate who says I hate God 01:21:16.480 --> 01:21:17.040 I'm out of here. 01:21:17.040 --> 01:21:20.720 I'm I'm gonna be an atheist now, I'm gonna live a degenerate 01:21:20.720 --> 01:21:23.680 life. He's no threat when it comes to this. 01:21:23.680 --> 01:21:26.480 No one's gonna be misled by his life and think, well, this 01:21:26.480 --> 01:21:28.320 is what godly living looks like. 01:21:28.320 --> 01:21:31.680 He's not going to bind anyone's conscience with his wicked ways. 01:21:31.680 --> 01:21:35.440 He's going to be a bad example, maybe an appealing example to 01:21:35.440 --> 01:21:38.400 some. But it's the man who says, no, this is what God 01:21:38.960 --> 01:21:40.160 wants us all to do. 01:21:40.160 --> 01:21:42.720 And I'm gonna hurt you if you don't agree. 01:21:42.720 --> 01:21:45.760 The man who wants to make arguments that aren't in scripture that 01:21:45.760 --> 01:21:50.000 aren't consistent with scripture, that's the man who's a real danger. 01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:53.920 Well, the earliest episodes that we did was on neglected matters in 01:21:53.920 --> 01:21:58.560 scripture. And one that's I've thought about more and more lately is 01:21:58.800 --> 01:22:04.080 the directive from Jesus Christ to curse those who reject the gospel. 01:22:04.080 --> 01:22:07.840 He said to shake the dust off your feet against a town, 01:22:07.840 --> 01:22:09.760 against an entire group of people. 01:22:09.760 --> 01:22:11.600 And the apostles did it. 01:22:11.600 --> 01:22:14.640 In fact, Paul did it to the extent that he said to 01:22:14.640 --> 01:22:17.600 the Jews, Your blood be upon your own heads, I'm gonna go 01:22:17.600 --> 01:22:18.560 preach to the Europeans. 01:22:18.560 --> 01:22:20.320 And that's what he said. 01:22:20.320 --> 01:22:25.120 He cursed them in the name of God for rejecting God. 01:22:25.120 --> 01:22:28.320 And he was obeying Jesus Christ when he did it. 01:22:28.320 --> 01:22:31.600 Now Now find a pastor who's going to say we must curse 01:22:31.600 --> 01:22:34.080 those who reject the gospel. 01:22:34.080 --> 01:22:36.480 As we said in that episode, and I'll reiterate here. 01:22:36.480 --> 01:22:38.560 I don't know exactly what that looks like. 01:22:38.560 --> 01:22:41.760 I I'm not advocating for the church of going around and cursing 01:22:41.760 --> 01:22:44.160 people. that's not the point. 01:22:44.160 --> 01:22:49.280 But if you're dealing with someone who, when he sees those passages 01:22:49.280 --> 01:22:53.360 that say, curse those who reject the gospel, if you say that's 01:22:53.360 --> 01:22:58.240 not my God, you're a Pharisee, you are saying I have Abraham 01:22:58.240 --> 01:23:00.320 as my father, because I've got all this stuff. 01:23:00.320 --> 01:23:01.600 Oh, but I don't believe that. 01:23:01.600 --> 01:23:02.960 That's a bunch of crap. 01:23:02.960 --> 01:23:06.960 Whatever God said here in Scripture is clearly wrong, because I have 01:23:06.960 --> 01:23:09.120 all this other stuff that he said that I believe. 01:23:09.120 --> 01:23:10.560 And this is my God. 01:23:10.560 --> 01:23:12.160 This is the problem that we have today. 01:23:12.320 --> 01:23:15.280 Inside the church people are picking and choosing which parts of scripture 01:23:15.280 --> 01:23:19.040 they like and don't like, and reinventing a new god from the 01:23:19.040 --> 01:23:23.280 pieces. It is untenable, it is a danger to souls, and it's 01:23:23.280 --> 01:23:24.640 everywhere around us. 01:23:24.640 --> 01:23:28.640 So beware of those who say, I have Abraham as my father. 01:23:28.640 --> 01:23:32.800 Beware of those who waive their confession as the proof of their 01:23:32.800 --> 01:23:38.480 legitimacy. If their words and their actions are legitimate, they'll be borne 01:23:38.480 --> 01:23:39.680 out by Scripture. 01:23:39.680 --> 01:23:42.960 And if their words and actions are not borne out by Scripture, 01:23:42.960 --> 01:23:46.240 then they're not legitimate, and they have something of which to repent. 01:23:46.240 --> 01:23:47.920 And the same is true of each of us. 01:23:48.000 --> 01:23:50.400 Same is certainly true of me. 01:23:50.400 --> 01:23:51.680 It's just that simple. 01:23:51.680 --> 01:23:53.040 We can't say that we're perfect. 01:23:53.040 --> 01:23:56.480 We can't say that we're locked in and because we have the 01:23:56.480 --> 01:24:00.960 genealogy of past performance that we're not going to make any mistakes 01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:01.760 in the future. 01:24:02.080 --> 01:24:04.080 Nothing ever works that way. 01:24:04.080 --> 01:24:06.720 And the fact that that's become a normal thing in the church 01:24:06.720 --> 01:24:09.120 today is a tremendous danger. 01:24:09.120 --> 01:24:10.720 So just watch out for it. 01:24:10.720 --> 01:24:13.120 Watch out for guys who are saying, I have Abraham as my 01:24:13.120 --> 01:24:14.720 father. You don't worry about it. 01:24:14.720 --> 01:24:17.040 I I got this I got this settled. 01:24:17.040 --> 01:24:20.880 This confession says that whatever else I'm saying is right, because this 01:24:20.880 --> 01:24:22.240 confession is true. 01:24:22.240 --> 01:24:24.240 It's a sales mechanism. 01:24:24.240 --> 01:24:25.680 It's a logical fallacy. 01:24:25.680 --> 01:24:27.440 It's all manner of deception. 01:24:27.440 --> 01:24:29.680 If any of this sounds like Satan, congratulations. 01:24:29.680 --> 01:24:33.280 You're starting to get a whiff of the sulfur that's emanating here. 01:24:33.280 --> 01:24:37.200 It is possible for individuals to apostatize, it is possible for churches 01:24:37.200 --> 01:24:38.480 to apostatize. 01:24:38.480 --> 01:24:41.440 It is possible for your church to apostatize. 01:24:41.440 --> 01:24:44.880 And when your church is doing it, that's probably when they're gonna 01:24:44.880 --> 01:24:48.240 scream the loudest about their confessions while they're doing all the other 01:24:48.240 --> 01:24:50.960 things that are not consistent with scripture. 01:24:50.960 --> 01:24:55.360 Anything that's limited in its nature of its confession is going to 01:24:55.360 --> 01:24:58.400 have holes that Satan can drive right around. 01:24:58.400 --> 01:25:02.800 In the past, we've described the confessions of Lutheranism as a maginot 01:25:02.960 --> 01:25:07.360 line. They were in impenetrable bulwark against certain attacks. 01:25:07.360 --> 01:25:10.000 So what has Satan done the last five centuries? 01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:11.280 He drove around. 01:25:11.280 --> 01:25:12.320 He went over. 01:25:12.320 --> 01:25:16.560 He didn't need to attack the impenetrable fortress of arguments about justification 01:25:16.560 --> 01:25:17.680 and sanctification. 01:25:17.680 --> 01:25:19.280 Fine, whatever. 01:25:19.280 --> 01:25:21.440 You can say all that stuff all you want. 01:25:21.440 --> 01:25:23.760 Satan has new attacks. 01:25:23.760 --> 01:25:26.720 We have to be prepared for new attacks as Christians. 01:25:26.720 --> 01:25:30.320 We have to be vigilant for false teachers who are incompetent or 01:25:30.560 --> 01:25:34.240 who were actively malicious, because not only will they get these things 01:25:34.240 --> 01:25:37.280 wrong, but they will tell us in the name of God that 01:25:37.280 --> 01:25:41.600 we have to obey them while they lie. 01:25:41.600 --> 01:25:45.680 We don't want this to be an unsettling or upsetting episode, but 01:25:45.680 --> 01:25:47.600 in some ways it is. 01:25:47.600 --> 01:25:50.720 Because to say that you have to be vigilant, even in the 01:25:50.720 --> 01:25:54.720 face of true confessions, is deeply upsetting and disruptive. 01:25:54.720 --> 01:25:58.880 It's a terrible situation, which is how you know it's from hell. 01:25:58.880 --> 01:26:02.640 No man could cause this on his own to just if something 01:26:02.640 --> 01:26:06.400 were true and men tried to attack it, it would withstand that 01:26:06.400 --> 01:26:08.000 attack on its own. 01:26:08.000 --> 01:26:11.120 But Satan is the ultimate rules lawyer. 01:26:11.120 --> 01:26:12.800 He invented this crap. 01:26:12.800 --> 01:26:15.760 He invented sitting on the stand like I did in moot court 01:26:15.920 --> 01:26:17.680 and lying with the truth. 01:26:17.680 --> 01:26:20.080 I told just enough that I wouldn't get in trouble. 01:26:20.080 --> 01:26:23.680 That was play acting, I wasn't being duplicitous, but I also wanted 01:26:23.680 --> 01:26:24.800 to be really clever. 01:26:24.800 --> 01:26:28.560 I wanted to impress the other kids by beating the system. 01:26:28.560 --> 01:26:30.480 That impulse is in all of us. 01:26:30.480 --> 01:26:33.600 And when we bring it to bear in these situations that are 01:26:33.600 --> 01:26:36.720 eternal life and death, we cross the line. 01:26:36.720 --> 01:26:37.760 We can't do that. 01:26:37.760 --> 01:26:41.440 We have to recognize if we have erred, we have to have 01:26:41.440 --> 01:26:43.200 the confession of Josiah. 01:26:43.200 --> 01:26:45.840 We have to rend our robes and beg for forgiveness. 01:26:45.840 --> 01:26:47.680 And we have to repent on the spot. 01:26:47.680 --> 01:26:51.520 Because Because anything else is doubling down and saying, I have Abraham 01:26:51.520 --> 01:26:53.600 as my father, I'm gonna be fine. 01:26:53.600 --> 01:26:57.280 On the last day, everyone who has that confession is gonna be 01:26:57.280 --> 01:26:58.560 in the line with the goats