Citizen ATX
Citizen ATX
Building on Foundations: The Fall
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"What goes up, must come down." It is written in the laws of gravity, and it has been written in the history of man. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden which unleashed a whole world of evil and suffering. But what does this mean for us? Why is sin something that affects us so much? Join Jonathan, Corbin, and Stephen as they discuss the fall of man and its impact on humans.
Hello and welcome back to the Citizen ATX podcast. My name is Corbin Smith, and we are back in our series called Building on Foundations. We are we are building on the foundations that we've been setting from the foundations of the Bible in the book of Genesis. So we're it's it's like a double decker foundation there, if you think about it. Um joining me today are Pastor Dr. Jonathan Spencer. Howdy, Corbin. And once again, Mr. Stephen Vaughn, after a brief absence.
SPEAKER_00It's nice to be back, everyone. That's right. I love it.
SPEAKER_03Uh he was in the room last time. He was here. I did mention that on the last podcast, but uh we miss Anita already. It's true. Um, we'll get her back on here soon. It was fun. Uh a lot of good feedback about that. Uh but man, we were in the fall on Sunday. We talked about uh the fall of man, pretty heavy stuff, light work, right? Yep. Um and you talked about really a bunch of different elements, I guess, in the fall. We were in Genesis 3, 1 through uh 13, if I'm remembering correctly, uh if you didn't get to join us. And we talked about the enemy, right? We talked about sin, uh, we talked about Adam and Eve, we talked about leadership. Uh but I think a good place to start is with those kind of first two. So if you just want to summarize briefly for us, if you want to give us an overview, like who is the enemy, right?
SPEAKER_01And maybe another really softball, what is sin, Jonathan? So the enemy, you know, I identified as Satan, and in the sermon I kind of went through some of the names. He has a lot of different names in a sense where God has lots of different names that describe him and who he is, there's actually a lot of different names that are used for Satan for that character there in the Bible. And as far as his origin story that we know of scripturally is that he was cast down from heaven. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are really the only two passages that seem to clearly point to that in combination with Revelation chapter 12. But the idea being that Satan was cast down and he was filled with pride. He was an angel who did not want to operate as an angel. He wanted to be God instead of worship God, and there's only one God, so he cast him down to the earth. And he makes that first appearance in scripture right there in Genesis chapter 3, where he comes into a place that was good, a place called Eden that was uh delightful, and then he comes in and he attacks God and his purposes for this perfect creation by attacking his image bearers of Adam and Eve. And so that's that's who the enemy is. And then you go throughout the scripture and we see that he's our enemy as well, that he's all of ours an enemy. And what he leads Adam and Eve to do to answer that other question is sin, which is really what he did first. He sinned against God. And there's a lot of different technical definitions you could use for sin. I know a lot of preachers over the years have used that idea of missing the mark because it's just a good, easy, you know, visual to say. Um, but what is that mark? It's the expressed will and desire of God. That's what the mark is.
SPEAKER_03Something that we miss a lot in defining sin is we say like it's missing the mark, and then we say, and sin is dependent on what I think good things are if it misses that mark. And that's when we can start to lay some things on God that are maybe unhealthy. Correct. Right, because sometimes our definitions of goods and God's definition of good really don't line up.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And the word of God even says, woe to those who call good things evil and evil things good. So we get all twisted up, but you're exactly right. It's the expressed will and desire of God and not not not hitting that mark.
SPEAKER_03And that's I think that speaks even to an element of things like spiritual maturity, even as being able to understand and seek the will of God, which helps sharpen our understanding of, hey, what is sin in my life, right? Because sin is not just, we've talked about before before the sins of commission and omission, right? This idea that it's not just committing things, but it's like for he who knows what he ought to do and does not do them, for him it is sin, right? And that's that's a big deal. Yeah. And so I think it's this idea of anything that that missing the mark does, it it hits a, I think it scratches the itch, right? Of a good it's hard to define that if we don't talk about a perfect standard, a truly perfect standard that's maybe separate from us. But that that leads us into that, I guess, kind of follow-up question there. If that's what sin is, and and God is perfect, God's also, you know, merciful and kind, and he forgives me, why is why is sin such a big deal?
SPEAKER_01Well, because uh God is also just. And so there's there's the both and side that he is merciful and compassionate, and that gets to his plan of how to deal with sin, which you know is expressed really there in the garden, foreshadowed. But God is also just and and so there is a penalty that comes with our sin because our sin ultimately is it's treason against God. It's it's an abandonment of of us uh accepting our place as creation under the Creator. It's us saying we want to be the Creator and we will call the shots. So that is an act of treason, and God being just cannot let that just slide. He is God, and he does communicate there in the garden that the penalty of sin will be death, that if that if you do not acknowledge him as God and instead want to be God, um, you will die. And and that is what you see played out there in scripture in Genesis, but then you see the fulfillment of it throughout the rest of Scripture. You really see that death on obviously both sides of that physical death as well as spiritual death that comes with that.
SPEAKER_03I guess two kind of further follow-up questions, and I didn't really write these down, so yeah, I'm firing this off the head again for it. But I obviously like that is why sin is serious and God promises death. But do you think is that death? Why do we why do we understand that it is a promise of death to all of mankind and not just to Adam and Eve? Because obviously, like death enters the scene as part of the curse, we'll we'll read next week, right, in Genesis 3. Right. But why is it that disobedience like results in death for all of man, that that's now our condition, that we talked about original sin, and we'll talk about it more later. But why does that because that's what we talk about being an enemy of God when the Bible talks us about us being an enemy of God in rebellion or treason, right? It's because of our original sin. It's not because of even the willful things we do, it's because we can't help but sin. Yeah, it's our condition.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know. Well, it says that in Romans 5 that death is spread to all men because all sin. So I think it's it's not that Adam's sin then gave me death. My sin gave me death. But but my sin was inherited also. There is that original sin aspect. That's what I'm getting at, even. Yeah, so the two are connected where where my culpability is leading towards my own consequence. I am responsible for the people.
SPEAKER_03Some might even call it your depravity, right? Your proclivity to sin.
SPEAKER_01But at the same time, there also is that side of that inherited sin, which you're connecting that thought to. That, you know, I also was born into this world as a sinner, but it was because I was created by sinners and just and their parents were sinners and their parents were sinners. So it's that inherited side where Adam and Eve then had children, and they were made like them, broken, still image bears of God, as we talked about earlier, and we talked about the image of God, but that image is now distorted in them because they are not walking in the fullness of that that they were intended to because of their sin. That's good.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's I think that helps us understand. I think we sometimes we we struggle with like the personal responsibility in death and in sin, because we say, like, oh, I've inherited this from my my first parents. And like, yes, and that your sin nature is inherited, but like the reason that we all die, even like believers die, right? Like in the sense that we we we we we know a physical death, yeah, right, is because of personal sin in our own life, like not because God's like, I'm gonna smite you, but because like that that requires like this separation from Eden and from the tree of life and all these things that like needs to be healed by a redeemer, right? Yes. Um so that's I think that's so interesting to and I think it's something we wanna whenever we're talking about sin and the enemy, right? I think sometimes what we can do is we can we can almost like believe in this dualism where like God and the enemy enemy or like God and the powers of sin and death are the same. And so it's like it's the enemy's fault. They just like made me do it. And like temptation, even if it's from the enemy, does not make your sin or like your sin nature, just because it's inherited from energy, does not make your sin not your responsibility. Because that's that's the thing we ended up talking about at the end of the day today, is that we're we're really quick to deflect blame for sin. Yes. Right. And that's a really, I think a central whenever we're gonna talk about have these hard conversations really about like what needs to be done to kill sin. Because we have, believe it or not, since the beginning of time, God's people have had a sin problem.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, right, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_03Not not even just like uh like I need Jesus to to save, but like uh even within the called-out body that the chosen people, right? There's a sin problem more often than not.
SPEAKER_01And what I think's also interesting is as you study human civilizations, even those outside of the Judeo-Christian, you know, historical perspective, you look at people in other religions, other parts of the world, almost all of them set up some kind of sacrificial system that they believe in a deity, and they also believe that they have, quote, missed the mark in their own vernacular. And because of that, there's sacrificial systems put in place because they can feel and sense that they owe their God their life. And so consequently, then they set up substitutionary sacrificial systems, which to me is quite something, you know, when you think about that, that they didn't read the Torah, you know, how did they get there? And and and a lot of this went on for years before the Torah was ever written. And so, how did they get there? I would argue it's Romans 2, that in our conscience, God reveals Himself to us actually through that moral view that we know right and wrong and we know we're wrong, and we just know it, and it's revealed to us. It's a creation thing.
SPEAKER_03And I think even building on that, even those systems of religion and morality that aren't based on sacrifice in the ancient world, like or the ones that we see in the more quote unquote modern, like more current than like the Sumerians, right? Looking at Islam or Buddhism or something, although Buddhism is quite old. Even those things that require animal sacrifices require some form of penance. Yes, right? They require some sort of spiritual and moral sacrifice, right? In the same way, sometimes even Christianity talks about not as something that earns our salvation, but there is that language in the Bible of you know, we pick up our cross, we suffer, so we might be made righteous, right? Like that language is there for a reason because it's getting at, and this is what Paul says, right? He says, like, hey, you're you're basically you're poking at the things of the unknown God. Yes, right? You just don't, you miss the point. Uh and I think that's so interesting. And such a testimony, I think, to like this idea that like we have a natural, I mean Romans 1, right? We have a natural morality in us and our natural understanding that the creation was subjected to futility. Yeah. You know, that everything around us is it's fading, death is sad, and it makes us like break at in in our hearts, right? Like we weep and have grief, right? Because death is not how things are supposed to be, right?
SPEAKER_01I think it also I'll add one more kind of tangent to that. I think it also gives evidence that there really is a crafty serpent out there because he's a counterfeit. And and what he does is he builds counterfeit systems, and even that of counterfeit penance and sacrifice. And yeah, counterfeit temples. Like when you look at how temples are constructed throughout ancient civilization and how these things model these ideas that are revealed through scripture of the holy temple of God, um, which Satan, which and also of even in heaven, where Eden and is, as we already talked about, God bringing his temple down to earth. But where was Satan cast out from? It was from the heavens. Like he he understands where God is in through. And there's a lot of question marks and kind of the details of that we could it gets into an interesting place, but still to that point, like Satan knows what that place is. Yeah, and then he, I believe, builds counterfeits here on this earth to bring people to the world. Well, he wants to be like it, right?
SPEAKER_03He wants to sit at the throne because he's he's the authority of the earth, right? In this sense that like he's been we've been given over to that for now because of our sinful conditions, right? So he wants to he wants to get a taste of what he thinks like being God is like. And some of that I think is because, and this is me being extra biblical in some sense, right? But it's I think what Satan loves about like the idea of being God is the worship. It's not it's not actually the God part, right? It's the things he gets, it's his pride, right? Um, and that I think we mirror the we mirror the enemy in that sometimes, which I think is interesting. Um there's so much been written, and and I we could ask and talk about, you know, how did Satan get in the garden, all these other things that are like these interesting things. The Bible doesn't talk about chronology is not clear that might be hopping into your brain, and there's been popular media and literature that's been famous Paradise Lost, right? Is a very famous novel about like Satan in the garden, right? Stuff like that. Not biblical sources, not true really in any sense of the word, but it is, it's there are a lot of big question marks. But I think having that baseline of just this is who the enemy is, and this is what sin is, and this is this is why the enemy wants you to sin, right? Is that he wants you to give your allegiance to him so that he can have your worship because he wants to feel like God, right? But we talked about that enemy, the devil, the accuser, Satan, right? He kind of has three methods that he likes to use. We identified at least, at least in Genesis 3 that we can see that are common tactics to tempt or to to deceive people today. Speaking of that kind of deceit that's present in a lot of other like kind of major world religion stuff. And those things were to twist God's word, to question God's word, or to to question God's heart and to cause us to do those same things. Right? It's not just that he's doing it out loud, but that we would partake in it with him. Uh what are some some modern examples we see of that today? I think like obviously we see that in the scriptures at times when we see like the devil is like physically in play, right? Even in like Job, right, which is maybe a less thought-of one, right? While he's not speaking to Job, he's it's definitely like he's questioning God's heart in the end. It's the end of Job as Job is told, like, who are you, right? Like you've been so solid all along, and then you you start to question me, and it's like, oh, you it's because you've been tempted, right? But it's like, hey, how how how do how do we see these in our modern day? Because I think we have to identify them to be able to fight them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, before I identify them, I just thought of this verse and I wanted to read this because I didn't I didn't preach this, but I think it's relevant to our conversation. We're told in First Timothy chapter four, verse one that the spirit expressly says that in the latter latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Yeah. Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences whose consciences, excuse me, are seared. So he said that the days are coming where people will devote themselves to teachings of demons. Usually when we read that, we always think, well, that means does that mean people like with you know spooky, magical stuff around their house? And yeah, there's some of that too, the occultic practice. But I think a lot of it is people don't even realize that sometimes they are following the teachings of demons, and and they are, that it's actually inspired through just uh within secular society. And so I say all that to set this up that sometimes we think that the devil only does the big, huge, wild, occultic thing, and that's what it means to be uh to have twisted, you know, God's message.
SPEAKER_03You're gonna get possessed. Yes.
SPEAKER_01And and sometimes I think it's far less spooky, which makes it way more dangerous. More often than not, I would argue. Yes, and and that's what people miss, is that usually where is that demonic you know twisting of scripture happening? Everywhere around you is the answer.
SPEAKER_03That's not even less scary, right? Because the Bible actually paints this picture of like a war going on above our heads, but it's being fought by heaven.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03Right? And if you're scared of that, like, no, like God holds you in the palm of his hands if you're in Jesus, right? It says in I I if you're curious about like where the Bible talks about this, the book of Jude, not a very long book, but a book that's actually entirely about false teachers, doctrine of demons, and withstanding that and persevering. And it says it in in Jude verse 24, it says, Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. That it's this idea that God is able, and we can the follow-up to these that we'll kind of get to is how do we resist temptation? The first is that we we really do rely on God, we don't rely on our own power in that.
SPEAKER_01That's true. Well, and I think it's a good good thing that you brought up that idea of false teaching because that is really ultimately what it means to twist God's word. It's it's false teaching. But usually when we think of false teaching, we think of it in some ways. Like one way I would point out that I didn't talk about in the sermon of where do you see false teaching? It can be through legalism in your church. And that is false teaching, and it's real. You actually see this to actually demonstrate. I didn't talk about this um in the scripture there, and it was Eve was on this part when she was talking about the rule. She said, God said, Don't eat from this tree or touch it, she says there in Genesis 3. God actually didn't say don't touch it. Yeah, um, she added that part. And a lot of people will add things to scripture, they're twisting it. And so she added to God's word. And I do believe that people in churches add to God's word all the time. And I do believe that is twisting God's word. When you are ultimately adding things to the book to enforce righteousness and behavior modification that ultimately is not rooted in biblical truth, that is twisting God's word to fit your own moral initiative, your own moral desire. And so that would I would say is one way that we sometimes overlook, but it's all around us of that teaching of legalism. But then on the opposite side of legalism, it gets into that licentious, you know, life where we just do whatever we want to do, um, meaning we just apply the text in a way that is very generous to our own uh desires, that that we will find a little bit of Bible, just enough to make ourselves feel good about our fleshly desires and twist the scripture to accommodate what we actually want to do or what we what behavior we want to justify. And that happens in society nonstop, especially in a Western context where we are, where everybody usually has just a little bit of Bible in them. They know enough. Um, and it's just enough to probably get themselves in trouble. They might not understand the full thing.
SPEAKER_03And there are some people that know more than just enough to get themselves in trouble, but they're they're wolves, right? Like that isn't reality. That's we we used a contentious example in the sermon. I thought it was pretty weird. Talk about James Talrico. And hear this listener, the reason that we would bring something up like that is not necessarily just because, like, ah, liberal politics bad. Like, it's because like if you haven't heard, Tal Rico did an interview where he basically said like evangelical Christianity was warping scripture and and we were gonna reclaim Christianity from these like backwards heathens. It's basically how he framed it. And so when you're making religious claims in that way, I think that's that's worthy of being engaged in a church service.
SPEAKER_01Somebody emailed me, no shocker. Um, and and so one email somebody was basically pointing out because they were agitated about anytime you hear a political name in a in a church, people are gonna get triggered. But the the the comment was basically rooted in wanting me to call out some other politicians for their morally repugnant things that they've done. This would be my counter, I guess, to that mindset. There's a difference between calling out the morally repugnant things people do, and if you did that, that would take all day every day because people are doing morally repugnant things around us nonstop. The difference is to do something morally repugnant, but then actually say scripture is justifying this immoral behavior, that is false teaching. There's a difference there from bad living and false teaching. And to that point, that's why I brought that up. And I wasn't even looking for an example just to blast the dude. But as I'm reading the text that week and I'm talking and wrestling through this idea of twisting God's word, and you're looking in society, what a clear example where he's looking to the virgin birth, and I heard him talk about that on Joe Rogan months ago, it just got a lot of headlines last week.
SPEAKER_03Well, he was on the Colbert and then whole thing.
SPEAKER_01It's all he's all it was all over in this last week because he got the nomination. But when you're using the virgin birth to somehow twist that account of scripture to then justify abortion as a morally virtuous thing, yeah, that's twisting God's word. And that's false teaching, and it should be called out.
SPEAKER_03The reason that we fall into, I think, and can easily be deceived by things like that is because we we we only know just enough of them. We know who Mary is, we know what the virgin birth is, but we only know enough about it to like vaguely like pay attention in church, right? And then it's like, well, I can say that this thing is these things, and it's a lot of progressive theologians in this realm will say like scholars say this, and it's like a scholar that went to my progressive schools that has degrees for all the people that agree with me, or from the non-believing side of like the biblical scholarship, which is a large side of it, right? And then you look at like reputable Bible scholars that are of a conservative persuasion, which are as numerous, right? And it's like the totally opposite thing is said. And and just here, like, this is not a new thing, listener. This is a thing that played out really famously, actually, in like 1920s Germany. It ended up the progressive theology ended in Nazism. I don't know if you knew that. Uh Frederick Schleiermacher, direct kind of progenitor of those guys that turned like liberalized German Christianity into eventually nationalist German Christianity. Uh so there are there are a lot of jumps in logic and and hate that won't kind of come out in uh maybe a surface-level reading of those things.
SPEAKER_01But the key is, I think you pointed to it, is is when someone says something is true, are you basing that authority based off of who taught them, which is what you're saying? Because like somebody that has a more progressive uh interpretation, they would argue it because of some scholar that taught them that also had that same progressive interpretation.
SPEAKER_03And there's scholarship on the backing of like sometimes we make it like scholarship versus conservative Christianity. There is rigorous scholarship behind conservative reading.
SPEAKER_01But this is why I say it comes down to the point of you're not asking who taught you that, you're asking where is that in the Bible? That should be the right question. Start there in the scripture. Like even use that example when when Talerika was talking about the virgin birth, he said that Gabriel asked for Mary's consent before she was pregnant. Well, I can go pull up the Bible right now, and I don't see that in question form. He doesn't ask Mary, hey, pretty please, can the Holy Spirit overshadow you and fill your womb with the promised Messiah? And if you say no, we're in trouble because I don't know what's gonna happen now, and maybe God's plan is not gonna work out. That's not in the Bible. Um, he says what's gonna happen, and then she agrees, which honestly is very Christ-like because we're all supposed to pray, uh, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and that we yield ourselves to the will of God. And so she pr she made a statement of agreement. He posed that as an answer to a question that didn't exist. It was a statement, it wasn't a question. And so I say that as an example, just to say you hear somebody say something real spiritual, and you're like, well, go look at the text and see, does that actually say what he says in the text?
SPEAKER_03In the text, Gabriel, I pulled it up here. I was I was not super engaging with you with what you're saying, so I'm sorry for that. No, you're fine. It's Luke 1:34, where Mary says to the angel, How will this be since I am a virgin? So first she actually, yes. And then he explains how it's gonna be, and she's like, so be it. Like, let God do it. She agrees. Like it's more like, oh, God's gonna do this thing and praise God. It's more about her devotion than her consent. It is now God isn't like taking over Mary's like free will and stuff like that, and he chose someone that he knew would like be faithful. Like, she's chosen because she's faithful and she's going to obey, right? But it's not a question of like if Mary had said no, like, guess we don't get Jesus then. Like, that's God's plan for the beginning of time. If you think that your answer to his will, like that's heavy to hear, right? Can mess up God's will for eternity.
SPEAKER_01A hundred percent. How pompous of it. And and Gabriel did not say, Hey Mary, yeah, God sent me to ask Is this okay if I do? Do this and and and will you let me because we really think you're the right gal, and and will you please give me the consent because God wants to redeem the whole world if you'll say yes. That's not what happened, but that was that was the once again the theological gymnastics that underlines that sentence that Talerico said.
SPEAKER_03Well, and on the other hand, I'll say that there is theological gymnastics on the other side of the aisle too, at times. There is a I don't think that email of like, hey, like, why aren't we punching other sides isn't inherently good or bad, right? Like I do there's some value to like stuff even now we're talking about like reports like Pete Heggs Heggs saying we're bombing Iran because it's gonna fulfill a biblical pop uh prophecy. It's like, okay, like that's a weird way of reading scripture. Just say I'm gonna declare a war to fill this out.
SPEAKER_01I'll use an example on the right, just to be fair to anybody on the left that might be upset. Immigration's a great topic. So immigration's a topic that would come out that that if you're a conservative, you would talk biblically about borders and walls, which those are in the scriptures and there are gates and people are left out. Those things are there. Exactly. But but I'll give an example. Like I remember John Piper uh just a week or two ago, he tweeted a verse out of Leviticus, basically, basically just saying be kind to the immigrant. It's just basically it what he literally had no commentary on it. It only just said like the Bible, and the Bible verse said something about it's in Leviticus, basically just be nice to the stone jerker and the immigrant.
SPEAKER_03A biblical, yes, a biblical precept.
SPEAKER_01You would think we all could get it agree on that. But then people on the far right, to then go to the other side, then viewed that as completely wrong and unbiblical and woke, and this and it's like, man, he just quoted a Bible verse. That's all he did. Um, and that yes, you can ask and and request and demand, even I would argue, borders in a biblical way, healthy borders. And I think there's a biblical theological argument that actually goes behind that. But you also are called biblically, theologically, to be kind and welcoming to the sojourner and the immigrant. And both those things, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. There's an intention in some sense of the modern world, but we love presenting false dichotomies to say that you have to be on one or the other, but that would be an example on the other side that sometimes we can twist scripture to where, well, that's one verse, but we won't talk about any other verses that won't fit our political agenda.
SPEAKER_03We just want to have a holistic view of whenever we're saying script, and again, I get it. Like we want our church to stay out of politics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like that's a common talking point, right? I think if we think it's important enough of a scripture to like this is gonna shape what I think politically, then we need to be interpreting it right, right? It's just what I would say. And I think so as we as as Baptists, well-meaning, we love religious liberty, we therefore say, because I don't want religious organizations to be running the government, that therefore religious organizations shouldn't be speaking into the government. And that's not, I mean, we don't hold any other cultural or or or societal force to those same standards. Like we're not shocked when uh, you know, the NAACP has a has a not that that's like a bad thing, but they have a political view, right? Right. We're not shocked when like a homeowners association has a political view sometimes. We're not shocked, you know, uh when when when a union has a political view. So why is it weird that sometimes if we're saying that we're living our life based off these these things, this is this turned into a weird, I'm realizing this turned into a weird direction of this this podcast conversation.
SPEAKER_01But it's actually all relevant because it all starts back to the serpent who is crafty. And and I think a lot of people have I think he's so crafty, he's led Christians to be terrified of actually talking about their faith in practical ways, which is in the civic arena. That does apply into our everyday lives, and there is that tension, hence, even this whole podcast, Philippians 3.20, that our citizenship is in heaven. But we are citizens in Austin, Texas today, those that are local, wherever you are listening. And what does that mean? And how do you engage that world? You engage it through the lens of scripture. You your devotion is to God, and and ultimately you are informed by his scripture and everything that you see. But the problem is if you're not informed by scripture, God's word will be twisted and you'll be misled. And that's the whole point of the conversation.
SPEAKER_03We gotta guard our hearts. And the same way we talk about like other sin, I think we we just like take that for granted. And some of that's because our Christianity today, and this will get into stuff we'll talk about more later, so I won't talk about it too much now. But this idea of like sometimes the reason that we are so susceptible to false teaching is because we have grown content to like receive our understanding of scripture from like eclipses and from from people that tell us this is what it says, and because we're not willing to do the work ourselves or we're unable to do the work ourselves, because we haven't trained ourselves in righteousness, right, in understanding and growing in sanctification, right? We haven't worked out our salvation with fear and trembling, right? Then it becomes difficult for us to guard our hearts against false teaching, right? And and I love that we talked about this. It's funny enough that one of the first black preachers in America, Lemuel Haynes, says famously, he's he's talking to this universalist guy, and he says, you know, who else did not, who else said, like, did God really say? He says, That's the devil, right? Every time we hear that, we have to wonder, like, hey, that's not always a bad question. But if our argument is centered on, did God really say encountering thousands of years of Christian Orthodoxy and understanding of a passage, we should say, hmm, do thousands of years of Christian Orthodoxy know better, or do I know better? And am I the exception to the rule?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'd say generally, not always, but generally, you are not the exception to the rule. Yeah. If you have a fully modern, like way out there compared to history interpretation of something like that passage with Mary, right? I'd say you're probably wrong. Unless you have like some very good Greek work to prove what you're not wrong.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it's biblical to say that too, because the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God lives forever. And so if it lives forever and it's immovable, unchanging, if culture is changing or people's interpretation is changing suddenly, you know, after thousands of years, to your point of just faithful orthodox understanding, God's word didn't change in 2026. So people change. And when people and the Bible clash, the Bible doesn't need to move. We do. We need to move. That's the whole point. And and I think that's where Satan, though, loves to get his foot in because he tries to say, Oh, you've got it all figured out, and he'll twist the scripture to accommodate our own fleshly desire. That's just the way it is.
SPEAKER_03It's good. Well, we got to keep moving. We got so much more to cover. Uh, we talked about uh Satan being uh the tent this tempter of Jesus in the desert. You briefly mentioned it. I got this question weeks ago from a student. I don't even know if he he's listening or not, but if he is, great. Uh and he asked about uh in Matthew, right, when Jesus is tempted by the enemy, right? We're talking about temptation, so it's kind of related here. Is it like could Satan have really been like, I'm gonna give you all the world? Here it is, all right. You listen to me, right? Like, does he really have that power? Like what what is what kind of power does the enemy have?
SPEAKER_01He does have power, but he has limited power. So I think I think he was, you know, writing a check with his mouth that he couldn't actually cash, you know, on that. And I and I think though, you know, you look scripturally, Jesus, I believe it's John 8, he calls uh Satan the ruler of the world. So he does have real dominion in that sense that that is underneath the dominion of God. God's still sovereign. Even in Job, you see that he has to go up to God to go ask for permission.
SPEAKER_03Well, God allows for Satan to have authority here, he does.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because you see also really that that handoff where Adam was given all dominion of the world, and then Satan came in and messed it all up, and now he is, you know, in that sense, reigning on this earth through sin and through brokenness and through all these things. But that being said, we're talking about Jesus, particularly in that passage where he's trying to make him stumble, and he says, basically, if you go the easy way, you don't die, I'll just give you everything you can see. Um it wasn't his to give. Um and and he and he could, in a sense, you know, one could argue, give something temporal, temporal of the world.
SPEAKER_03That's what I'm gonna say. It's temporal though.
SPEAKER_01But if you're talking about eternal dominion, which is really what what the son was called to is to come defeat Satan and eternally rule and reign, that would come under the authority of the direction of the Father to the Son, and he didn't have that authority to give him. He couldn't say, You can eternally reign according to my standard, because only God reigns, and and God, that's all God's stuff. He can't give away uh all of that eternal glory. So I do think he had some authority, I guess would have been my answer to to the young man, but he didn't have that much authority, he was speaking beyond his means.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I think uh even on top of that, right? Like I think there's a reason that Jesus, it seems like in the scriptures, in the text itself, seems to engage and like have to wrestle more with temptation in the garden than he does with the enemy. Yeah, right, because Jesus knows scripture to where he says, Hey, actually, even though you you right physically now it doesn't look like it, I already have dominion over these things. Like Jesus is God, right? It's not like he doesn't know that, it's not a spoiler alert, really. Like he doesn't discover it, he doesn't become God later, right? Jesus is fully God and fully man. And so he that's why he's able to engage and know the scriptures so fully to so thoroughly just trounce. I mean, if you read the Matthew passage, right, Satan looks like an idiot. Like it's like, what do you mean? Right. Uh and so I think it is like it's a picture too of going back to like how do we resist this kind of temptation where Jesus or we're sorry, where Satan will twist scriptures or or or question God's heart and all these things, is if we really know the word of God.
SPEAKER_01And I think we also have to see that what he was trying to give him was a substitute for suffering, and that real glory does come through suffering. You know, it does, and and he was trying to offer Jesus the the easy solution of get what you want without it costing you anything. Exactly. And and that's what he does to us too. It's like, you know, here, I'll give you what you want, but this'll be easy, it'll cost you nothing. The reality is it costs us everything. It might not come immediately, but it eventually does come. And Jesus was wise enough to see that that this would be costly. I'm not gonna take this.
SPEAKER_03That's a that's a gut punch. I think just a reminder for us regularly. It's like, man, if your Christianity is really easy, you're probably doing it wrong. That's harsh. That that challenges me a lot. Yeah. But it's like, man, if it's very easy to follow Jesus, then then there's maybe some things that are disordered, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um but kind of tying into what we were just talking about about knowing God's word. You said on Sunday that the most dangerous Christians are biblically illiterate Christians. That's kind of a bar, by the way. That's a good that's a good line. Uh what does that mean though, to be biblically illiterate? Because that's a word we throw around sometimes, or a phrase we throw around sometimes.
SPEAKER_01I would throw it out, and this is not an academic definition, this is just a Jonathan definition. When I talk about somebody who is biblically literate, I think in the most basic way, what does that mean measurably? It means you know the overarching story of Scripture, Genesis to Revelation. You understand, because it is one big story, I would, I would contend, from Genesis to Revelation, and then with that, you know the key doctrine that comes from the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The big points. Yes, the big points. Like you won't know, like even me, I'm a pastor, I've been reading this Bible pretty consistently for nearly 25 years, both just as a devoted Christian and now as a pastor. You could Bible drill me right now, and I'll not get something right. That's inevitable. Like I'm sure there's something obscure out there that's like, the factoids.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Right.
SPEAKER_01And but I would but I would consider myself consider myself to be biblically literate. Doesn't mean I've memorized the whole book cover to cover, but I have memorized a lot and I've studied it day by day, and I do know the story and I do understand the key doctrines to keep me walking faithfully with the Lord.
SPEAKER_03Well, I I think this is a not to like lay too much on this, but I do think sometimes we hear that and we're like, oh, that's me. I'm biblically literate. But really, most Christians, it's like I was listening to Entirite came to true when I was there. And he says something about Romans that I think is like gut punched me for the rest of the Bibles. We say, like, we know Romans really well, and really we know like a little bit of Romans 1, and like Romans 8 and 9, and Romans 10, and then Romans 12, right? Like we know, we know like the highlight. You know chapter 9, you're already doing better than most. Yeah, but that's true, right? But I think sometimes in the scriptures we say, like, I'm biblically literally, and it's really we know like the beginning, the end, and the middle. But there's a lot, like biblical literacy is more than just like, I know the gospel, I know that God created the world, and I know that where it's going. It is more than that. And hear this, like most Christians today, you're like, you talk about the exile, and they're like, What's that? Right? And that's like the point of the Old Testament is that like there's an exile that's gonna come, and and God needs to deliver his people from it and change their hearts because they're headed into rebellion, right? All these things and leader uh reader, listener, if you if you if you don't know what I'm talking about, I should encourage you to like read the old testament, read the prophets, right? That's it's all about this idea that like Israel is God's chosen people, eventually like they rebel so much that God casts them out from the promised land, right? They're in Babylon, they're in exile, and they have to return. Right. And that's like the second half of the Old Testament for a lot of people. So things like that. And that's so it's it's not necessarily knowing all the minutiae details of things like the exile, but it is knowing like hey, this happened in scripture. I can give a coherent timeline of like what God said is like the most important book ever. Right. Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and even beyond just knowing it is memorizing it, hiding it in your heart. Psalms 119, 9 through 11. Yeah, it's how you keep your keep your way pure, yeah, hold it hiding in your heart.
SPEAKER_01And so the memorization happens as you just read it. Like I've I have a I have a probably a pretty significant amount of Bible memorized, and some of that was due to active discipline of literally trying to memorize passages of scripture, but a lot of it just has been a compound effect over time that I didn't even try to memorize it. It's just in there because I've been reading it, you know, rigorously for all these years. And so it you will get there. I I I would add one more comment though on what it means to be biblically literate. I think when we just talk about reading in general, like some people would say I'm a reader, and I'm just talking about reading in general. Like I'm a reader. And if somebody said, Hey, tell me about yourself, oh, I'm a reader, what does that mean? We would hear that as well, that means they read books, they read in their free time, they read whatever the news, they probably read novels, nonfiction, whatever. But that that term is qualified by them actually spending time in books. Yeah, so in the same way, for you to be biblically literate, it just means you're reading the Bible. Like really, it just means like you are disciplined in your life that you are reading the Bible regularly. And if you're not reading the Bible regularly, then I would argue you will become biblically illiterate because you're literally not reading it.
SPEAKER_03And I would just ask why, like it's again, like it's it's a hard because like I know that there's some maybe some shame things that come with that sometimes, and some of that's unhealthy. But I do I just want to challenge you. Like, if you're like, ah, I don't need to read the Bible, like, where do you why? Like what about like anything that that you do hear in scripture, right? And I guess if you don't think scripture is very important, then you probably wouldn't read it, right? What do you what about what you see when we gather as a local church and we gather around the scriptures, right? And we say that this is God's word that he's delivered for us, makes that seem unimportant. Yes, you know, and it's it's uh it's a gut check for us because we don't want to be like legalistic about that. No, yeah, but also like if if you are in Jesus and you say that you value his words, and you say that you're I've said this before on the podcast, uh, we we had a speaker at our connection weekend that said this very well, right? Like, if we're gonna bet our eternity on this book, why would you not read it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, and even like we're talking about the fall and the concept of sin. I mean, if you want to ha have the guidebook on how to really uh deal with your sin and and have some uh good words spoken into you, read the Bible. Yeah, I mean it's all right there.
SPEAKER_01It's good. Well, and I and I also just want to say this too, if you're listening to this, I don't want to come off legalistic, like you're saying, Corbin, but but I think it's also just important to I guess understand that no one ever feels their way, you know, into reading the Bible. Like it's never like, oh, I just feel like reading it suddenly, and now I'm just gonna be disciplined to this every day. Yeah. Like I'll just say as a pastor, there are days I don't want to read the Bible. Like I wake up, I don't want to do it. Like, and and that, but why do you do it? It's because you are disciplining and crucifying your flesh. You are controlling your body and your mind saying, I choose to go lean into that book because I know I need it even when my flesh says it does not. It's good for me. I trust and I know that to be true. And sometimes I read the Bible and you have that great big spiritual experience where the the Lord gave you a word through the word and you're walking away filled up. And sometimes, honestly, you just walk away from it. This is just me speaking as a pastor, where you don't have all the warm fuzzies and all that.
SPEAKER_03It's just to learn something, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You learned and you leaned in. But it's it's in to me a sense, it's it's the word, so it's a conversation through the power of the Holy Spirit. And sometimes, in the same way when we have conversations, even with just say our spouses, sometimes there's warm fuzzies, there's big conversations that you walk away with. Wow, you think about it. And sometimes you have that conversation to maintain that relationship. And you just walk away and you're like, you're glad you had it because you know you need to talk. Yeah, but you didn't walk away just all like, ooh, warm, lovey dovey. It just was it was a conversation. And I really think prayer and Bible study, yeah, it's like that. It really is. That sometimes it is, it's just a relationship builder. And some of those days are the big, warm, fuzzy, big mountaintops, and some days it's just being faithful and talking with God and listening to Him. That's all it is. And and so if you're waiting for that mountaintop experience, I just hate to burst your bubble, but you're not gonna get it. If that's what you're waiting for, is every day so easy, it's never gonna happen. And you probably set false expectations.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's that's maybe a criticism sometimes of our kind of circles that we run in in terms of faith, things like the SBC world, kind of uh evangelical world, is sometimes we have made faith an experience in ways that are unbiblical, right? Experiences are great, but if your faith is centered around how do I feel in my experience, that's just not one, it's not biblical, but two, it's not sustainable.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? Like there is it doesn't matter who your preacher is, no preacher's gonna hit a rock star sermon every single Sunday that's gonna make you feel like I'm having these crazy moments, right? Like I know youth pastors that are that are my age that put like all this pressure on themselves to be like, I have to hit this home run every time I and it's just not it's not gonna happen. Man, I hope most of the time, right, God's doing something powerful, and it I'd say every time that it's doing something powerful for someone, right? But the idea that like everybody's gonna connect with every single time they approach every single piece of church or or Bible or prayer that that's just like the point is that the Bible actually even says that God's word doesn't return empty because even when we don't feel it still has an effect on us, and we have to trust that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was too I was about to talk about that as well, because like there have been times where I've been in the middle of Bible study and I'm like, I I'm not learning anything about any of this. I have no idea what I'm saying. I'm in Ecclesiastes, I'm like, I'm like, I alright, dude. I'm looking for something, but I'm not learning anything. And then two weeks later, I'm like, wait, I I read about that. And that was that day where I was like, I didn't get anything out of this. And it was like I needed that today.
SPEAKER_01Most most of Bible reading, or I would even argue Bible preaching, you could say the same thing about both of these things. It's much like baseball that when you step up to bat, you're not trying to hit a home run every time. To your point, sometimes you will, Corbin. Like sometimes you'll hit it have a sermon that knocked it out of the park, or sometimes you'll have a quiet time with the Lord that you're walking away with. Wow, it was a home run.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But really, what faithful Bible reading and faithful Bible preaching in is is it's just a bunch of singles. You're just getting on base. You're just getting on base over and over. And if you just continue to do that, you score runs. You know, you will eventually just keep growing as a case.
SPEAKER_03There's a it is painted pictures. There's a bigger illustration. There's a bigger illustration. That's awesome. Well, I I think that that stabs it. Well, my follow-up question was like, how do we combat biblical literacy? I think we've covered that pretty pretty thoroughly. Um we briefly touched on this idea that that what should color a lot of our thoughts about sin and and our first parents, Adam and Eve, was this idea of like original sin. We said that like when we talk about us being sinners, commission, omission, yes, but it's also like our condition, right? Right with God. Um what is original sin and what's like practically like what does that mean for your average Joe? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. Original sin is a doctrinal teaching that goes back into the early church when they tried to put together, I believe it was Augustine that I think kind of brought all this together.
SPEAKER_03He's a deeper, deeper theology of it than yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, where he he helped develop and frame out some of this this verbiage, some of the nomenclature that goes with all this. But but original sin at the end of the day is a doctrine that states in a nutshell, as a result of Adam's fall, all of mankind are sinners by nature, and that we have a propensity to sin uh and that underlies our actual sin. So we are sinners by choice. That's the actual sin.
SPEAKER_03We have responsibility for that sin.
SPEAKER_01We are choosing sin in that sense that we have responsibility, but we also are sinners by nature. Like it's it's we're gonna sin.
SPEAKER_03Well, some of that choice is from our nature, right? But that's that doesn't mean that God doesn't view that as our responsibility.
SPEAKER_01Correct. So we're culpable, but we also uh are but we're also born into this world with that uh natural propensity that we cannot stop through our own power. That's the idea, is that that I can't like it apart from the power of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are slaves to our sin and we're born into this world as sinners. Like we're going to sin. And even as a redeemed man of God, I'm still gonna sin, but now I have power through Jesus Christ to overcome temptation uh and to find victory over sin. But but that victory, while I may, in a sense, if I'm growing with Christ, quote, sin less, some people might argue that, there's still sin. There's still sin, but that sin might not be as egregious to the world.
SPEAKER_03I would argue that even maturity in Christ is you're realizing more and more like how often you sin. Not that you're necessarily sinning more, but you're like, man, I feel like I've come a far away on the big things.
SPEAKER_01And you're like, but look at you're consciously aware of it.
SPEAKER_03All these things that I'm doing all the time.
SPEAKER_01Well, and the Puritans used to say that the most mature Christian is not the one who sins the least, he's the one who repents the quickest. And that's the idea is the heart posture thing. Yeah, because because you always are going to sin, but it's but sometimes some of those egregious sins you are able through the power of Jesus Christ to crucify where it's no longer owning you. Willful sins will say, Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. Habitual sins. Exactly. And you can have freedom, but there's still like that, that inner angst struggle in your mind and heart where that's the other thing that sometimes we miss on sin. It's not just what we do, it's what we think, it's what we feel. It's at that subconscious level.
SPEAKER_03Jesus says when you look on a woman wrongly, that's lust and it's adultery.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03That it's not just like, oh, I cheated on my wife, but it's like, hey, if you linger for too long, you've committed adultery. Right. Like there's a high standard here.
SPEAKER_01And because it's in our nature in that way, that that's why even as redeemed Christians, we're still going to have the struggle with sin. And it will not be completely removed from us until we're a new glorified new creation, ultimately through Jesus Christ. But right now we're spiritual creations that we have power, but we do not have a hundred percent freedom from sin. And that's there.
SPEAKER_03The reality is that original sin is this inheritance that therefore means our destiny without intervention is hell.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_03Like that's the and it's I love Wes Huff says this a lot. Uh, if you guys are familiar with who that is, he says the good news is good news because the bad news is really bad. Yeah. The bad news is that in our it in our sins, right, original sin inherited, right? Like in our current standing with God without Jesus, we are out of luck. Right. Right. And that's something that's important. Like it sounds really bad because it is really bad, right? Like you might be like, that sounds tough. Like, how can we do it? You're right. The good news is God made a way through his son, Jesus. Yes. Right. And that's the while while the first Adam, right, led us to death, the second Adam's gonna lead us to life and life above.
SPEAKER_01And to that point, even use that word inheritance. We inherited sin through the first Adam, but through the new Adam, we receive a new inheritance. We're now co-heirs with Christ, and now we've been given all that he has, he is now going to share with us. And so he's redeemed us and it's all gone full circle.
SPEAKER_03Romans and Hebrews, if you're curious about checking that language out, Romans and Hebrews talk a lot about that. Uh we talked a lot about blame and responsibility and on on specifically uh the harmfulness of secrets. Um what is what is a healthy response for a Christian that finds himself and say, What would you tell a Christian right now that's listening? That's like, hey, like I am harboring some secrets, I know I am. Yeah, right. Like, how do we respond to that? And maybe as a follow up to the why is secrets then specifically the Bible says it in Ephesians and in Romans and in 1 Corinthians and other places is so harmful.
SPEAKER_01It's so harmful because when you don't let light shine into the darkness, it just kind of festers. It's just gonna stay there. You have to let light come in, which means you have to open up your heart. You have to open it up to receive that deliverance. And and the whole like, well, then how do I open up my heart? You do open it up to the Lord, yes. Like ultimately, like as I said earlier, we have to see, I said in the sermon that we have to see our sin as an offense against God. It ultimately is confession and asking for forgiveness before God, but God involves people in that process in a healthy way. And this would get to us probably talk about, well, then what to what degree do people need to be involved? Um, I don't believe that I'm a priest, I'm a pastor. Um, you don't have to confess your sins to me to receive forgiveness for your sins. God forgives you, He's the one that provides that. However, scripture also says that all of us as a priesthood of believers, that we're called to be involved in each other's lives and that we help bring that light in there. There's that verse in James 5.16. I know we've talked about it before on the podcast, but we're called to confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. And the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it's working. So even James brings that in. He's saying you need to say it to other people. And it's not to shame you and embarrass you. It's because I believe a big part of that text is twofold. One, because you need the prayer, you need the power of prayer for other people praying for you that does tangibly in a real way give you spiritual strength. But then beyond that, you need the accountability that comes with bringing other people involved. If you if it's only you, what happens for most people is they say, I'll never, ever, ever do that again in their mind.
SPEAKER_03And then then we're promised this time, God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I'll do it. And they might have just gotten back from church camp, so it might last a week, and then they'll do it, and then they'll say, I'll never ever ever do it again. Then it'll last three days, and then I'll never ever, and then it's a day, and then it's like it's constant. They can't do it.
SPEAKER_03And it's listener, I this is a harsh like way of talking about this, I think. Harsh, not necessarily a bad way. I said that because I've done all those things myself. Like, hear this, like I said that because I'm I'm gonna even say, like, we say like, oh I don't know, or like we we say, like, oh, like I don't have to confess sin to be forgiven, and that's true, right? Like, you don't have to confess sin to me or Jonathan or to like a pastor or another person necessarily to be forgiven in eternity. But man, like, how often have so many of us lived? Like, I was kind of joking when they were like, God, I promise no more. And like, unless you're confessing it, it it is very rare that people are from habitual sin. And I would challenge you if you know that's the case, while you don't need to confess to be forgiven, if you don't really want to be healed, right? The Bible would say, Hey, like, there needs to be some questions about your heart of do you want to be healed in the first place?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that's the biggest thing I think that holds people back is is having to confess it in front of another person. Because we're afraid of the consequences, it's yeah, it's terrifying. And also, like, there's real implications in some of that. Because like I'll share a story. There's a friend that I have, I won't mention his name or anything, but he was really dealing with the pornography thing like really hardcore. And he was married, yeah. And his wife was one of those very like biblically convicted, like, if you're in porn, you're cheating on me, and I'm divorcing you. And he ended up having to confess that to her, and and she ended up divorcing him. And then you hear stories about that. It's like, well, I don't really want to have to tell my wife that I'm doing this now because what if she leaves me and this and that? And it makes it scary for people because they're like, Well, people respond to my sin in a bad way, and if I confess it, then they'll like hate me all of a sudden or ruin all my relationships.
SPEAKER_01It's a testing of our faith to confess because ultimately you're once again trusting God at his word. Um, and that's what it's it's gets back into that whole like, you know, do we really trust him of what he says? Because he said it's gonna lead to healing. And even in the circumstance of your friend, and I'm sorry to hear that about your friend and and his wife, I wish it didn't play out that way. I wish she would have received also biblical counseling on that, and maybe maybe listen to some of that counsel because I think there were other pathways I would offer in those kind of circumstances for couples. Um, but all that being said, I I think for all of us, you have to trust God at His Word that that good will come from it. Now, I will also say, just as a word of practical advice, when it says confess, it doesn't mean confess to anybody. Yeah, like you need to be very smart and selective on that of who you confess it to, if something's on your heart. Um, but there has to be somebody. And if you don't have a spiritual somebody in your life, usually it's best to start with somebody at a church, a pastor, a minister, somebody. If you really don't have a brother or sister in the Lord, you're not in a strong Christian community, yeah. Start somewhere. Start with a counselor, start with a pastor. But but if you don't, I I I agree with you, Corbin. I just don't think you're gonna find true, true healing.
SPEAKER_00Well, and it's also important like reconciliation in that as well. Like if your sin is hurting somebody else, yeah, it's important to reconcile that as well. I agree. I agree with that stuff.
SPEAKER_03There's layers that we could talk about and kind of have touched on before. The important thing is it's a loaded one that can make us really scared. And I think that there's questions even about like, hey, like, is that the same thing as when the Bible is talking about specifically like adultery in a way that's like grounds for divorce? Right. If Jesus is also saying that like looking on a woman lustfully is adultery, like there's some layers there that I think I would say there's that's a little more complicated. I would agree, it's not just apples to apples in my interpretation. I think there's screen, yeah. And so work through that, right? Like the reconciliation is is an option. I'll hear hear that. And so don't and and hear this also, like as much as like a fear of consequences is maybe sometimes even quote unquote warranted, right? Like, what's scary is this idea of living in unrepentant sin. Yes, right, because that reflects like a set uh a status of the heart that says that this or that in my life is more worth something to me than like the most important relationship I have, like the relationship that I have with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00In that it's more scary than the wrath of God. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I think it's interesting when you read the Old Testament and they are repenting and you get the whole sackcloth.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, dude, they're ripping their clothes because they're so repentant.
SPEAKER_01Well, and we've gotten so soft in the church because you look at like Old Testament Israel that very much was very fearful of the wrath of God in those moments, and and that that things would go really bad, and then they would have public repentance in that sense, where they were showing their shame outwardly to everyone that we have failed God. We are a mess. Now, because we are in this covenant of grace, praise be to God through Jesus Christ, I think people have cheapened the weight of their own sin because of that. Exactly. And so we don't we're now fearful to do what was probably very normal there in the Jewish society of some of those moments where you would take public ownership of that sin. And then also to be fair, through the through the church, and this gets in the whole Roman Catholic side as well, there's also been an exploitation, I think, too, in this system of confession and sacraments and other things that we could talk about for other times. So it's all kind of gotten murky, but I think if you once again just go back to the Bible, what does the Bible say? The Bible says it is good and healing and healthy to confess your sin. Um, and so you have to trust God at His word on that, and then ask God who would be that person. Um, because if you get the right person, they're gonna help you. They will help you, they're not gonna just condemn you. And the other thing I think people miss in their own walk where they've failed, your testimony isn't just in the mess you made. Your testimony is in how you respond to it. I am restored. So that mess becomes a message if you actually do it right, and then you don't even know how you're actually communicating as you confess to somebody, your vulnerability will inspire someone else to probably do the same. You just don't see that.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's cult like churches that are really good at this and have good restoration ministries and good sin recovery ministries build cultures of this. Yes, right? Like it's not something that just like, oh, like it's only when it's really bad that happens. The hope is that this is a thing like I'm confessing sin regularly in the context of community in the local church because I want to be sharpened so that things don't get to a point where like I'm confessing things that are gonna like break the walls down in my home and stuff like that. And and hear this, this is the last thing I'll say because we kind of did talk about this two weeks ago in a similar kind of vein, but I love what you said that like the word of God says is true. And so I will say, like, for you to be like, Well, I'm the exception to this, would be to say, like, the word of God is a liar.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_03And that's just a a check. Because I think we we we can get defensive and resistant to this really easily when it when there are real consequences online for us.
SPEAKER_01I agree, and I want to give one last piece of advice. It's something I'm actually applying in my own life. I think when we're having this conversation, this is always the reactive conversation. How do we react to this sin? It's much better also to bring in that proactive conversation of how do you avoid these moments. You won't have to confess as much if you have people in your life just ask you tough questions regularly. Yeah. And how are you doing that? Exactly. And so to that point, you don't have to confess if it never happened. And how does it not happen? You give people in your life the authority to ask you tough questions and to do that regularly. I have people actually in my life right now that that happens monthly. About three people have authority because I gave it to them to ask me tough questions. And they can ask the tough questions. And and what that does is it sets up to use that word, guardrails to where you won't ruin your life and then have to go through these painful things. You're still gonna send, but it will, it will, I think, decrease. It will it'll slow it down, especially some of those more egregious things that you're more worried about.
SPEAKER_03So it's good. It's good. Well, uh, those are kind of the questions that we have for today, but we do have uh some good user-submitted ones that we wanted to get to. All of our user-submitted ones really are user, I say, I keep saying that. Uh listen, it's because I'm looking at a screen that's written and it's from Mentimeter, which is like our QA software. Uh and it calls it user when when I'm using it. Uh, but the listener-submitted questions that we've had and that uh have been great every week, but especially these I think tie in well. Uh we talked a little bit last week and a little bit this week about leadership, right? And we talked a lot about like how do we have good and bad desires and like how do we act on those. This question asks, how can we prevent good desires, something like leadership, right, is a common example from the last two weeks, from becoming bad ones. So maybe how do I present something like leadership turning into a desire for dominance?
SPEAKER_01Right. I mean, it's multifaceted. I think it just comes down to grounding yourself in a lot of these other things that we've already talked about. You know, you have to have the word of God, you have to have prayer, you have to have community. Those things are guardrails to go back to that term, it will help you. Um, but at the end of the day, this is a heart issue because it's motivation of heart. Those things will help shape your heart. So hopefully your motivations will stay pure. Um, if you get out of those disciplines and formational things, most likely your heart will drift as a consequence. And so if you're putting those things in your life, they hopefully, Lord willing, will be shaping your heart to keep your motivation pure. But if you're looking at your own life and you're just trying to ask, is this good or bad? I would ask you, what is the motivation of your heart? Um, even using leadership as an example. Why do you want to be a leader? You know, what's your motivation in that? Uh, is it because you want to be rich? Is it because you want to be a boss? Is it because you want respect? Yeah, respect to your name. And honestly, even some of those things are not a hundred percent wrong. This is where it gets complicated too. It's not bad to want to make a big living, it's not bad to want to have a corner office, it's not bad to want to have a staff and those things.
SPEAKER_03Success is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, success. But it's once again, it's what do you plan to do with those things? Why do you want those things?
SPEAKER_03Are you serving success? Are you serving God with that success?
SPEAKER_01And and and what are you gonna do with your your leadership? Because I really do believe in leadership. God gives people influence and authority ultimately to bring glory to God and good to others. Are you wanting to leverage that leadership to bring good and flourishment to others or to maximize your own selfish desires? And that and that is just a good heart question to ask of what's your motivation.
SPEAKER_03Well, this is this is something I engage with with uh with like male students all the time, because a big thing today is success. It's always been success. But especially today, it's like there's a lot of pressure of like, hey, I like the things I want to do and what I want to be when I grow up and everything has to do with how much money I can make, how safe I can be, how secure I can be, right? And it's these motivations that like are not inherently evil, but when safety, security, and and profit are the end goal instead of a means to something else, they become life killers, right? Just straight up. I guess the scriptures would say that they they are the enemy of God, right? Like when they are the end that says we can't serve two masters, yeah, right, and they'll lead to death. And so that is that's such a a good example, I think, is hey, like what is what am I serving in this? Yeah, right. Uh and this that kind of ties into they they had a follow-up question then about how do we know the difference between good desires and bad desires the enemy wants us to follow. This is probably more of like a will of God question necessarily than just a like how do I resist good things becoming bad things? Because I think there are some gray areas here that this is probably really what this deeper question is about if I'm like I want to follow the will of God in my life, right? And I'm I could go to a mission trip to Zambia or to Mozambique, right? Right? Where should I go is one of those sin, right? Like, how do I know, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. I think, I think, and that gets into like yeah, the more targeted detail. But I think in the big picture of, you know, how do you distinguish between good and bad, once again go back to the Bible and ask, you know, is there s is there scripture on this? You know, is this something that God has directly spoken to that that is a good and honorable desire of our hearts or a desire of God that He would have for us and for this world when it's not spoken on as clearly to your point, not that not everything in the world is all outlined as black and white as we want it to be.
SPEAKER_03Something even like who should I marry?
SPEAKER_01Yes. And that that's a good example. So just go with that case study. So that's a good example. So the Bible, if I look up Bethany's name in the Bible, it's gonna go to a city, it's not gonna go to a person. So when I was dating Bethany, the Bible didn't say Marry Bethany. It didn't say that there. But the Bible did say in the Old Testament and New Testament to find a spouse of the same faith community. Um, it did say that. It said it describes a Proverbs 31 woman of what that would look like. It does talk about how to build a home and as we've already taught, husbands and wives, and how the theology should then line up in there. So then you have to look into all these biblical ideas of marriage and then let that measure and say, is this perspective spouse in alignment with God's will for what he would want for my life? And then from there, I think you just make a spirit-filled decision with the counsel of other people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that's a big one is bring counseling. We talked about spiritual friendship in students, and we will again this week. And I think a big part of like God's design for you is that you'd have spiritual friends that speak in your life for things like confession, but also for big decisions in your life. You should be checking in with believers in the local church. Not like to get a permission slip, right? But to say, like, hey, what do you think about this? Yes. Right, like you know me. Hopefully, you know me well, right, right? Like you know the word of God.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03I don't know what to do. What should I do? And people will people love actually to be asked what they think you should do. We all love our own voice. What they think about what you're doing. Uh and so that most people would be, I think, happy to give that. Uh and I'll say too, like, that marriage one is a is a funny one because I think it also assumes like we have two spouses that are like or two prospective spouses that are equally and like if you are really in a place where you could marry someone, I hope that you do not have two equal options.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_03Like, that is an alarming place to be, right? But I do think we we we psych ourselves out with the will of God a lot. And I do I want you to hear this. You are not strong enough to mess up God's plan for your life. Yeah, it's not possible, right? As long as you are doing your best to be faithful, it's fine. Yeah, right. Like God's gonna work it out.
SPEAKER_00I I usually, when I'm in these kind of situations, I ask, like, how does this honor God? And then do I have the capacity to make sure that it continues to honor God? Like if I actually move go through with this, A, do I have the discipline to keep myself on a target that's gonna honor God? But then B, uh, do I have the skills necessary to even achieve that? Sure.
SPEAKER_03Good thoughts, I think. Yeah. Uh we could talk about this forever. There's there's lots of minutiae. We'll talk about every little decision we make. Um we have a follow-up question, another not a follow-up, but I guess another user submitted question, listener submission submitted question. Do you think Adam and Eve are in heaven or in hell?
SPEAKER_01I would think they're in heaven, but but uh but I will also say this it's like I can't give you the proof text right now to just say this is the verse that says they're in the book of life. Like I can't I can't.
SPEAKER_03I mean they're wrapped up in God's promises. I was gonna say understanding of covenants, I think it's exactly it also gets into the bats.
SPEAKER_01I know it's a whole nother conversation. If if one would call uh what God, the relationship between Adam and Eve, if that was a covenant, if it was known as the edemic covenant. Some people don't see that theologically as a quote covenant, some people do. But either way, I would argue whether you formalize it. There was a promise and there was a relationship there that God made. I think what also points towards ultimately uh that yes, they're in heaven, is that you see the redemptive plan promised through the through the offspring of the woman. Like even right there, we'll talk about that next week in Genesis 3.15. But you see even God pursuing them there in the garden, sacrificing an animal to cover their sin, then promising a Messiah through her lineage. Like all these things point to redemption, to where then you get in the New Testament, and Paul calls Jesus a new Adam, the second Adam. So there's even a tie to the first Adam where he's not uh he's not, quote, you know, he's not the forsaken in hell, you know, he's not the enemy. He's a redeemed man now through Jesus Christ. Like there's idea of redemption is kind of the thread that's going from Adam to Adam. And so that's kind of my point is I think God is a redeeming God, and and it seems to point that, yes, that that because he didn't kill them and he literally instead set a plan forth to redeem them, that yes, I believe that they're very few people biblically that are beyond the scope of of repentance and redemption.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And I would say that what we get a picture of from the short things even we just see of Adam, even if we're not talking about covenants, which I think there's a covenantal case to make here. I think there's a couple of things. Some of that's because of how I view the scriptures, versus someone that maybe views it from more of a kind of dispensational lens where it's not so centered on the covenants, right? But um I do think even just what we see from Adam and Eve, like they're sacrificing to God, and like clearly have raised their children to do the same. Right, like they had real consequence for this in, and that's not going away. Right. Right. But if God is gonna we're gonna say that the patriarchs before Israel itself was established, right, or before Jesus himself comes, are still saved because of they had faith in the promise. Right. I would say that Adam and Eve clearly have faith in the promises of Genesis of Genesis 315. Right. That one day you'll have an offspring that's gonna that's gonna crush his head. Um and I think that's that's just important to really hone in on. I agree. I think the only thing pre there's a very few people I can think of that are beyond quote unquote repentance of the Bible. Yeah. Uh Judas is really the first one that like jumps to mind just because of how the Bible prevents like presents him as like he is like outright like like hardened his heart. It's not so much that he repentance isn't available to him, it's that he's turned his heart away from what is offered. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01And even in all those examples that you could find of the worst cases of the Bible, you could still probably find a thread of grace to your point that was offered, like you get into Pharaoh, you know, for instance in in the Old Testament, Pharaoh with the Exodus, where we're told he hardened his heart, God hardened his heart. Both of those things are said in the scripture, but you see that God is offering him chance after chance after chance after chance, and it's no, no, no, no, no. Um, so you see God is so gracious, and I would agree with the way the Genesis, or rather Genesis 3 ends with Adam and Eve, God has set forth a plan of reconciliation to redeem them, and he sends them out and they obey in faith. Like they're listening, they just they go off, they listen.
SPEAKER_03It's not eating anymore, but they're multiplying.
SPEAKER_01They march on and they've been covered through the blood of a sacrifice. I think to your point, if faith is what makes us righteous, yeah, they seem to have faith. They didn't just say, Forget you and war against him when he said these are the curse. They basically said, It seems let it be. And they in faith move forward.
SPEAKER_03If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, right? But I I I'm gonna trust God's kind of gracious.
SPEAKER_01We'll say what's up in heaven. That's right.
SPEAKER_03Uh last but not least, loaded question here Do angels have free will? I got this one recently, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, they they have to, in a sense, to a degree. This gets in the bigger issue of just free will as a whole. I know this is where it gets complicated. But the same argument, I think, can also be made once again about mankind. That's why I say I don't think these are two completely separate conversations. I think they're fairly related. Now, Satan himself fell, you know, and he was an angel, and he fell. And he fell, and he took, I believe, the way you interpret it in Revelation 12, a third of the angels with him that also had free will, seemingly, there in the text, to fall. And so with that, I do believe there was an agency of choice to some degree there. In the same way, I think this gets into the conversation of us as human beings. Do we have free will? And even Adam and Eve, which we kind of talked about that, you know, a few weeks ago. If Ephesians 1 says before the foundation of the world, Jesus Christ was the plan. So that means before Adam and Eve ever had their choice, which I do believe they had a choice, Jesus was already the plan and the solution.
SPEAKER_03God knew their hurts and they couldn't have to be able to do that. He knew what was going to happen to them.
SPEAKER_01So can God be sovereign and there be also an agency of choice out there? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Bible allows for that, certainly.
SPEAKER_01I believe that I believe that. And I believe it to be the same in that sense too with the angels. Yes. I would, I would, I would say the same theology.
SPEAKER_03I would say my the way I I had a student ask this, and I thought it was such a good question. I I answered, I think angels have free will in a different way than we have free will. I don't disagree with that. I would argue. Because it seems like in some sense, like God is allowing Satan to fall, right? He is allowing like an anosity here. Some of that's because of God's ultimate story and plan He's telling in creation, right? Some of that has to happen, right? For this thing that he says is good, right? That this story that's told in the redemption through Jesus is a good thing for creation. And so the things that are going to happen have to happen because that's what has to happen. And I think in the same way, right, like we have free will in a sense. But I do, I love what you said that it's not like I think sometimes we present free will as like ultimate freedom of choice in all things. And Jonathan Edwards is a famous guy that's that's presented this, and some people are gonna disagree with me really vehemently when I say this, because it's kind of a compatibilistic view of free will, but it's this idea that really like free will is our ability to follow like our highest desires, right? Our highest good. And so in the garden we had like true, unadulterated free choice in the sense that like we really did have we were made in God's image and we were able to choose. But sin and our sin nature, which was what we've set up before this, yeah, does affect our ability to choose. Now, angels do not have a sin nature or the image of God in the same sense, and so there's questions about like the reason that we need to define our free will is because theirs clearly has to look different than ours because of that. Yeah. Because that there is a different, they're a different kind of creature, right? They're a different kind of creation.
SPEAKER_01What it also shows in then because you get to that point, that plan of redemption. I've been asked before, you know, can say Satan or the demons be redeemed in that sense. And biblically, no, like they're gonna be destroyed. You know, the the ones that that fell, they're gonna be destroyed at the end. But also then the question, well, why? I think you said something clear that that's a big point there. We are image bearers of God. Like angels are powerful beings that, and we talked about this in Psalm 8 the other day when when David is talking about that of who am I, that you made us a little lower than the angels, that you're mindful of us, that we angels have this special power that they were created by God and for God to serve him and ultimately serve according to his purposes. But we were made as image bearers of God. We were made in a different way. Um, and so with that, God's redeeming us as image bearers of him. But Satan, he's gonna be in a lake of fire. Like he's gonna be in a lake of fire at the end. That's how this thing ends.
SPEAKER_03How prideful, I think how prideful are we that we have just been given so many second chances that we then will lay on God like that. That got somehow God is unjust for not giving like the demons a second chance. Yeah, it's like he's the God of the universe, created the world perfectly by the word of his mouth. He's allowed to deal with this. God says, even to humans, right? He says, I will show mercy on who I will show mercy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? Point blank. And God's justified in that.
SPEAKER_01I also think there's with angels, this is a rabbit trail, but this is me just putting on my own speculative hat too. I'm not gonna speak for God because he doesn't speak on this. But I think if I'm trying to think about this, the angels also had a unique perspective of God that we don't carry here on this earth. Like Lucifer himself, literally there, you know, before God in heaven. Watched him create the world, yes, in the throne room. Like there is there is a level of his fall, you know, is so egregious to be to be where he was and to have the access he had, and then say, forget you, I want to be in charge. Like that is a special level of offense.
SPEAKER_03Sure, I'm there. And I I will say this though. Let's not, I mean, Adam and Eve with the physical presence of God in the garden.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Right. However, I would still differentiate it though, in that the garden, because the garden was a physical location of this earth versus like in the spiritual dimension of the throne room of God.
SPEAKER_03Well, nonetheless, I'd say like certainly it's still quite quite agreed. No, you're right, it's pretty rough. And God would be right, and that's I think something we miss a lot, is because we've seen God show mercy, we know it's good that God shows mercy because God is kind. We therefore say God is wrong if he doesn't show mercy in the ways I want him to show mercy. And God would have been justified if Adam eated messed up and he said, Alright, starting over. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or just end it all together because he didn't need humans anyway. He doesn't need us, he wants us to be done. Right?
SPEAKER_03He loves us and he wants a relationship. That's why. And that should give us some extra support, I think, and encouragement. But it's it's a big distinction.
SPEAKER_00I've I've even heard like that angels have a little bit more limited free will than humans, mainly in the idea of like work. It's like we get more of a choice of like what we do and how we honor God in that way, and they're just kind of told, This is what you do, this is your job, Gabriel, go talk to Mary, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's rabbit trolls on rabbites here, and it's I think some of the difficulty of this, and the reason that this is such an interesting question for a lot of people, that's because of the major categories of theology, right? Not to get too preacher-y, right, but angelogy has tended to attract the crackpots of theologies in the world. And so it's kind of like the end times of it. And so there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of opinion presented as fact. Yeah, there's not been a lot of really truly like well-done scholarly resources, and the Bible just doesn't talk about it.
SPEAKER_01That's what I was gonna say. That's the key, is the Bible does not speak that much about it. But once again, it also comes down to what was the Bible for? The Bible is God's revelation of himself to man and the plan of salvation. And it's all my own. For man, for man, like it's for us. That's what he gave it to us. And so it helps us understand who he is and who we are in relation to him. It wasn't made so that the angels would understand these things or so that we would understand the angels. It's God's revelation of himself. He gives a little bit of it because it's to that point connected to God, but it's not a book all about the angels. It's a book about God. And so we're not gonna know everything about it.
SPEAKER_03Jonathan's actually volunteered to become the leading scholar in the field of angelology. So excited. It'll be a very short.
SPEAKER_00It makes me wonder if like Adam and Eve had a relationship with angels at all, or they knew angels.
SPEAKER_01Well, also, we have a proclivity to worship angels throughout history. Paul talks about this in Colossians 2, that that was an issue he was dealing with with the church then was they worship of angels. That's why in Hebrews that Jesus is having to be presented as superior to angels. And it's because we are all idolatrous naturally, and because all of us want to worship something we can get our mind around that is some pseudo-spiritual, cool thing that we can get. And for people, that's angels. That's why we have all these shows and movies about angels because it it blends into that demigod category of like something that like we can get our mind around and worship. Well, they don't do that.
SPEAKER_03A more charitable way maybe that is just like a biblically accurate angel, the bit is like that's terrifying. And so the reason that people are following you on worshiping because they're like, I have no idea what this is, but it's not human. I know that.
SPEAKER_01I know. We don't want to be touched by an angel.
SPEAKER_03If you look terrifying Daniel or like later parts of some of the prophets, it is it's it's a crazy picture of what angels look like.
SPEAKER_00Guardian angel isn't what you think.
SPEAKER_03Well, here's a uh signing off word. Uh guardian angels are biblical categories. That's not a thing. That's true. You don't have you don't have a little dude in a fedora who talks like a New Yorker that's like lost his wings and he's looking for you anyways. Um that's I'm trying to like channel my limited knowledge of ancient Christmas movies because I'm a child and I haven't seen any of them. Um, anyways, uh I think that's a probably a good place to stop for now. Listener, thank you so much for tuning in with us to this rivety conversation on angels, opinions, and all things, James Talrico. Uh we we have really been blessed by you guys continuing to uh submit your questions to us. We ask that we continue to do that. I'm glad that we got to have some time to really interact with some good ones today. Keep leaning in there. We want to keep uh being able to engage with you. I think that I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Bible can handle our hard questions. Uh, and so I don't want us to ever leave this place kind of thinking that's not true. But uh, we thank you for tuning in to listen with us. We hope you will join us next time on the Citizen ATX podcast.