Gabba
The conflict, whether great or small,
may not be discouraged.
The scourge, God is over all.
May God remain blessed.
Blessings, angels, with...
Good afternoon everybody and welcome back
to Steadfast Baptist Church.
It's great to see everybody here this afternoon.
If we can go ahead and find our seats,
we will get started.
And for our first song this afternoon,
let's go to song number 46.
Song number 46,
my savior, first of all.
Let's all sing that out together.
I shall know him, I shall know him
By the grace of the nails in his hands
Through the gates, through the city
In a row of spotless quiet
He will lead me where no tears will ever fall
In the glad song of ages
I shall mingle with the light
I'll see you on the next one.
and help us sing out unto you.
And in the name of Jesus' name we pray, amen.
All right, for our next song,
let's go to song number 35.
Song number 35.
When I see my Savior, song number 30.
I'm in a steadfast Baptist church if you did not already get a bulletin and you would like one
You can just lift up your hands nice and high
Jude 1 16 is our verse of the week on the insides our service and soul winning times
We also have our prayer list. Please be in prayer for our
Expecting ladies, upcoming events, Saturday is our adventure part for the teens, we have the joint baby shower, men's retreat, August 14th to the 16th, please make sure to sign up.
If you haven't, FBBF conference 27th to the 31st, if you're able to help with the cleaning, if you was part of our cleaning crew conversations, the schedule should be out there for you to sign up for some of those times.
We will probably have to be full hands on with our ushers and stuff since we're gonna do some valet parking and things
So we'll probably have an ushers meeting about that soon
Also, we have our Missons Conference, but the Diego is leading this September 8th to the 12th
Tyler, Texas so many marathon September 27th
The details there for the adventure park. Please make sure you sign up on that
Baby shower details are there on the back. We have the list of our prayer lists.
So if you have any other prayer requests, please just send them in to our email address and we'll add them to the bulletin.
And then we have the missionary update for July with the Avengers or Bannock and...
He's really doing a great job out there. So
Definitely, it's a good news
Report and it's great to know that we have evangelists out there that are working really hard
Just continue to pray for his family and pray for their church that they're trying to plan out there and just try to get started
So they definitely need those prayers. That's pretty much all I have as far as announcements
We're gonna go ahead and just seeing our Psalm of the week and our special Psalm and hymn binders
It's going to be Psalm 126, Psalm 126.
Alright, that was Psalm 126. Let's all sing it out together.
And was our mouth filled with laughter, And our lungs singing,
Since the day of Harkness even, The Lord of the number,
Names for number.
Go ahead and open your Bible, so the book of Colossians,
chapter number two, that's Colossians, chapter number two.
Colossians chapter 2, the Bible reads,
for I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you,
and for them at Laodicea,
and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh,
that their hearts might be comforted,
being knit together in love,
and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding.
to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ,
in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
And this I say lest any man should be guile you with enticing words,
for though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the Spirit,
joying and beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.
As ye have therefore received Christ, Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.
rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding
therein with thanksgiving.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men,
after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."
And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also
ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of
the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, wherein
also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him
And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him,
having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us.
and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.
And having spoiled principalities and powers,
he made a show of them openly,
triumphing over them in it.
Let no man therefore judge you in meat,
or in drink, or in respect of an holy day,
or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days,
which are a shadow of things to come.
But the body is of Christ.
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels
intruding into those things which he hath not seen
vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind and not holding the head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment
ministered and knit together
increases with the increase of God
wherefore if you be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world
Why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances, touch not, taste not, handle not,
which all are to perish with the using, after the commandments and doctrines of men,
which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship and humility and neglecting of the body,
of the flesh, so I just pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day.
I thank you for the souls that were saved.
I pray that you would please bless Pastor Shelley now
as he preaches your word.
Fill him with your Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.
And then the Bible says here in verse number eight,
beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy
and vain deceit after the tradition of men
after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.
And so the Bible mentions the word philosophy one time.
It's mentioned here in Colossians chapter number two
and it's a negative mention.
It's saying beware of philosophy.
The idea of philosophy is simply answering
Why are we here?
Where did we come from?
What is our purpose of life?
Just logic.
And what is the world really comprised of?
Just these big kind of questions that are asked.
Philosophy is trying to identify or understand those things.
Well, obviously those questions are not bad questions,
but the Bible has already answered them.
It already has all of the needed information.
Therefore, we should avoid philosophy
which aims to answer these questions without the truth,
without the Word of God, and false ways.
Now, the context of Colossians chapter number two
is speaking to a Gentile audience.
that is potentially going to be influenced by various things.
If you skip up to chapter one, and notice in verse number 27,
to him God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you.
the hope of glory so he's speaking to a Gentile audience trying to explain to them
hey the mystery of God was that you are also the children of God
that you're going to be saved, that God cares about you
he doesn't only care about the nation of Israel
or just Jews but rather hey Christ is inside of you.
and they're kind of late comers to the party in the sense that
they're switching from a pagan world, a pagan idolatry of false religion into Christianity.
So as new converts, it's easy for someone to come along
and to try and spoil them, ruin them saying, well...
Yeah, you got saved, but let me let me explain what the Bible really means or let me really explain who God is or get all this
extra information
That's not the word of God
And this is going to happen even in our world today where you could get saved,
maybe you start learning about the Bible or you start learning about Christianity,
and someone comes along and says, oh well there's all this other stuff you have to learn.
Let's go to seminary and let's read all these church commentaries and you need to know about
the church fathers and you need to learn everything that Aristotle learned from Plato,
from Socrates and that's how you really understand who God is and that's how you get all of this
And to me, to make application for us would be that if you have the Bible, that is all you need.
When you get saved, you do not have to go to seminary.
You do not have to read a bunch of church commentaries.
You don't have to read a bunch of philosophical books.
You don't have to get some college education in order to draw closer to God.
You already have the utmost wisdom that you can possibly have in this book.
And really all that philosophy will do is it'll spoil you.
Just like good food can go bad,
Christians can go bad.
How do they go bad?
Through philosophy.
Philosophy actually makes you worse, not better.
And I'll just be honest, when I read
philosophical writings,
I read the ideas of people like
Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.
I often feel like I'm getting dumber.
because I'm trying to wrap my mind around some of these concepts
that are really just bad concepts, foolish ideas, nonsensical writings,
and it spoils you.
It makes you worse if you are really to believe in this stuff
or to try to accept it wholesale.
And in fact, a lot of the ideas of these men
are even rejected by modern-day philosophers
because philosophy is ever-evolving and ever-changing
because it's not true.
If it was true, it would be settled, it would be proven,
We would know it as fact, it would no longer be philosophy, it would be fact.
And the Bible, hey, it doesn't change, you know why?
Because it's fact.
Because it's the truth because it's right.
Now we also have to believe it by faith,
but at the end of the day we know that it's the truth and it's not changing.
And we don't want to get away from Christ.
Look at verse six again.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him,
rooted and built up in him,
and established in the faith as ye have been taught,
abounding therein with thanksgiving.
So, what prevents you from getting spoiled
is being rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith.
Reading the Bible a lot, studying the Bible,
knowing the doctrines of the Bible
will prevent you from going down these roads.
And he's saying, that's the direction you should head.
read more Bible, memorize more scripture, go to church more, that's what you need to do.
You need to walk in Christ, that will cause you to draw closer to Him.
But beware lest any men spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.
After, notice this, the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.
Rudiments is just basic elements, just something that's very basic or the most
simple principles of something.
It later talks about the rudiments in this particular chapter.
Look at verse 20.
Wherefore, if you be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world,
why as though living in the world you subject to ordinances,
touch not, taste not, handle not?
So imagine this.
You're in Colossae.
You just got saved.
Someone could come along and say,
well, actually, yeah, I know you learned a little bit about Christ,
but if you really want to understand God,
you have to start studying Plato, Aristotle.
That could spoil you.
Another thing you could do is you could have Judaizing Jews come around,
Jews come around and say, well, you got to actually start doing all of this Judaism stuff.
You got to start exercising the Sabbath rituals and blowing the shofar and wearing all these hats.
Like they could come and try to get you on an Old Testament Christianity.
Hey, you can't eat that kind of a meat let me explain this kind of stuff to you and they they teach all these
Cardinal ordinances, but it said verse 14 blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us
Which was contrary to us and took it out of the way nailing it to his cross
You don't need to learn a bunch of Jewish customs
order to draw close to Christ and look you can go to a church today where
they'll say well in order to understand the Bible you have to go back to the
historical context and you have to understand what Jews really meant by
the eye of a needle you know is this little gate that camels would go
through on their knees and he's like no you don't need to know that you just
need to know that it's impossible for a rich man to get saved by his works
You don't have to understand all the historical context of when the Bible is saying that the women are not allowed to speak in church
to say like, well actually women were sitting on this side of the room and men were sitting on this.
Who cares what side of the room they were sitting on?
Like that's that's silly to think like well, that's how you explain the verse
It's just that women shouldn't be yelling across the auditorium to their husbands. No, no women shouldn't teach the Bible
Okay, so of course as a new believer as a Christian
There's gonna be all of these different angles that people are coming to just get you off the text
tradition, philosophy, Judaism, Old Testament understandings,
and he's trying to get them to say, no, no, no, you're complete in Christ,
that's all you need, you don't need to go back to the Old Testament laws,
you don't need philosophy, you don't need to just start reading the Bible,
memorizing Scripture, you got all that you need.
And you know what, Christians need that today, today.
Don't think like, well, you know what, I don't have time to go to seminary,
St. Augustine, and everything that he wrote.
And I don't have time to read Thomas Aquinas,
and I don't have time to get all of this education
and all these degrees and become a master of divinity.
Well, the guy that's the master of divinity is a fool.
He doesn't even know what the Bible says.
Go to I Corinthians chapter one,
go to I Corinthians chapter one.
I wanna emphasize this point again before I move on.
But Catholics have been spoiled by philosophy specifically.
And they weren't even spoiled really because they were already not saved, but in a sense they will spoil you with their philosophy.
Catholics can spoil you with their philosophy because since they're not saved, well, they don't really spend time in the Bible or the Word of God or talk about the cross of Christ.
They talk about wisdom because that's what they seek after.
For the preaching the cross is to them that perish foolishness but unto us which are saved is the power of God for it is written
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise where's the scribe
Where's the disputer of this world have not God made foolish the wisdom of this world
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom do not God it
Please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe
For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified
under the Jews' stumbling block, and under the Greeks, notice this, foolishness.
But Greeks seek after wisdom, and they think the Bible's foolish, but the Bible is saying
they're the ones that are really the ones that are fools.
The foolishness is actually Greek wisdom.
And what's so funny to me, you run into, I don't care if it's a Catholic or a Greek Orthodox today,
they will tell you that, yeah, God handpicked and decided to bring Socrates and Plato and Aristotle
under the Greek people to prepare them for the Gospel and to prepare them for Christ and prepare them for the Word of God.
And really, they are just the greatest figures.
I've talked to a Greek Orthodox guy, and honestly, the Apostle Paul is not his hero.
His hero is Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.
Those are his heroes because in their mind that is why people accept the Catholicism
is because of these men.
And maybe that's true, that's why they accept the Catholicism, but they did not get saved.
And of course, the wisdom of this world will not lead you to this.
The wisdom of this world will lead you to hell.
Notice he's saying, hey, the Greeks, they are seeking after wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified.
It says if we keep reading,
but in them what you're called will Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God
because the foolishness of God is wiser than men
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For you see, you're calling, brethren,
how that not many wise men after the flesh,
not many mighty,
Not many noble are called, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,
and God has chosen the wheat things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,
and base things of the world, and things which are despised have God chosen,
yea, the things which are not to bring two not things that are,
that no flesh should glory in his presence.
What is the Bible saying?
It's not about being smart that makes you a great Christian.
You know it makes you a great Christian faith and your faith being in the Word of God saying you know
I don't have all the college degrees. I don't have the pedigrees
I don't have the philosophical mind that you have
I just have faith that this is right and I'm gonna do what this says and that is gonna be the successful person in this
World not the guy who has the great brain, but the guy who has the great faith in their in their heart and in their soul
Why so that no flesh?
should glory in His presence.
It's not about being super intelligent,
about being super smart,
about being super gifted.
It's about having a great faith in the things of God.
And you know what? That's a great message because
no matter where you're at in life,
you can always start putting more faith in Jesus Christ.
We can't all necessarily get a higher IQ
or have the time and effort energy
to gain a lot of wisdom in this world.
And frankly speaking, there's more stuff to learn
than you have time for.
That's why it's like this is what you need. You just need the text. You just need the Word of God
We just need the Bible today
But of him are you in Christ Jesus who have God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
And redemption that according as it is written he that glorious let him glory in the Lord
You know, they'll talk about the brilliant mind of St. Augustine and the brilliant minds
of these men.
But you know what?
I like the simple minds that put their faith in Jesus Christ.
The simple guy that goes out and preaches the gospel and the apostle Paul is making
it clear like, I'm not doing anything special.
Some people are doing special miracles like, you want a miracle or a sign?
I'm not your guy.
You want some great wisdom?
I'm not your guy.
You know what I'll do?
And you know what, that's just all of us soul winners, isn't it?
We just go out, say, hey, I can't do any miracle, I can't do any sign, and I have nothing really
smart to tell you.
But I have something really powerful what Christ did.
Christ and him crucified the power of God under them which believe verse 1 of chapter 2 and I brethren when I came to you came
Not with excellency of speech or of wisdom declaring under you the testimony of God for I determined not to know anything among you
Save Jesus Christ and him crucified and I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling and my speech
And my preaching was not
with enticing words of man's wisdom,
but in demonstration of the spirit and of power
that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God.
Our faith is not in some smart guy
that died thousands of years ago,
that figured out, you know, Platonism,
that figured out divine simplicity or whatever.
No, no, no, our faith is in the power of God,
which is the word of God,
which is the cross and him crucified.
And look, it is powerful because I can walk you up to somebody that's been a Catholic for 30 years of their life.
And in 15 minutes show them how they're wrong and they can change their mind and get saved.
And not only do many people get saved through just the gospel, but after that seed has been
germinated and sprouted and fertilized and given fruit in their life, they may even change.
A lot of people, not only they get saved and take the free gift, they change from the inside
out and they become a completely different person.
Their eyes are open.
And of course, because of that Holy Spirit moving inside of them, guiding them unto all truth,
so many people have lived a changed life as a result of simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
which is power. That is true power. Whereas people that are trying to clean themselves up
and have a changed life through the wisdom of this world or through other means fail,
that goes back to the mud, goes back to the just living in the pigsty.
They're just like the dog that returns under the vomit
and they're not actually having a lifelong change.
They don't have that true sanctification which comes with faith in Jesus Christ.
You know what I love about, you know, our church is not only are we believing
salvation is a free gift, many of us live a lot differently than we used to.
Many of us have made actual changes in our life and are striving to be pleasing unto God.
That's the power of God.
Because we didn't say you have to do this or you're going to go to hell.
That's just fear. That's just compulsion.
But we see people are actually wanting to change because their desires have been changed because of the new man
that's inside of them and them choosing to put exercise that faith they have.
Why? That our faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. This is what changed you, not anything else.
That our faith stands in this and not in some wisdom like, oh my life completely changed when I read Socrates.
I mean, when's the last time you ran into somebody and they said, you know what, I was just a drunk loser doing nothing with my life and then I read Socrates and now I'm just successful in every area of my life.
Now I'm just a changed man. Now I'm just living. No, no, no. People read the King James Bible and they changed their life.
People read the word of God and they make lifelong changes. Why? Because our faith is in the power of God, not in some man.
And yeah, obviously preachers preaching the Word of God,
that person may have influenced you,
but the only reason they influenced you is because they were preaching what the Bible said.
They were preaching the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of man.
The wisdom of man is inferior to the wisdom of God.
That's why, you know, one of the solas that came out of the Protestant Reformation was
Sola Scriptura.
And, you know, frankly speaking, I agree with this.
If you look up a definition of this, it says it's a Latin term, meaning scripture alone.
It is a core Protestant doctrine that asserts the Bible is the ultimate and only infallible
authority for Christian faith and practice. This means that while other sources like tradition
or reason might be helpful, they are ultimately subordinate to the Bible's teachings.
I'm thinking like, how could you disagree with this?
That is right. Look obviously there's things you can learn in this world that can help and there's other stuff that we have that we can use
But ultimately the Bible is our final source and everything is subordinate to it
And there's no greater wisdom than the word of God than the Bible. Everything else is subordinate to it
Now this evening I want to I've addressed kind of an introduction here
But I want to address this one topic that is kind of just important to me and it's simple
It's a very simple thing that I think most people understand, but it's just to show how
philosophy makes you kind of a fool and makes you stupid in comparison to the simple person.
And I want to talk about the emotions of God.
The Bible talks about God having emotion.
And through Greek philosophy and the Catholic Church, they essentially deny the emotions
of God.
And it's just, it's, it's bizarre that anybody can believe this stuff, okay?
And I'm gonna give you a couple things to think about before we dig into some scripture here.
So bear with me, but go over to 1st John,
chapter number four, go to 1st John, chapter number four.
There's two concepts I want to kind of address here.
I feel like there's two main concepts that Greek philosophies really influence the Catholic Church on.
One is divine simplicity and the second is divine impassibility.
Now, I've never really heard these doctrines that much.
I never grew up with them.
I'm relatively, you know, I know very little about them, but I don't want to know a lot about them
because they're so idiotic and foolish and nonsensical that just, I want to be simple considering that which is evil.
But number one, God is for certain not simple.
The God of the Bible is very complex.
He has a wide range of emotions, attributes.
There's so much to know about him.
There's not even one prophet in the Old Testament that encompasses all the things about Jesus.
We need 40 books of the Bible to understand the coming Messiah and all the different
prophecies and all the different complexities of Christ and what he would do.
The complexities of Christ are beyond our understanding.
in his revelation, you know, he's explaining, like,
hey, there's a guy who went to heaven.
He's talking about things that are unlawful for him to speak.
He's talking about how we look through a glass darkly.
We can't even understand all of the wisdom and understanding of God
and the magnificence of God and the beauty of God.
This is impossible.
So, divine simplicity on its face just sounds bad.
But I'll just read for you.
This is what...
The definition of divine simplicity is online. It says it's a theological concept
primarily found in classical theism and monotheism
stating that God is one unified entity without parts or distinct attributes in essence
God's being essence and attributes are all identical meaning God is not comprised or composed of
separate elements, but is a simple individual whole this means
God's attributes are not separate from his being
but rather expressions of his one simple essence.
So, all of that was just like nonsense, okay?
Don't worry. You're like, I have no idea.
This is where they try to break it down to what they're really saying.
They say, God is not just good, He is goodness.
Whoa.
He is not just loving, He is love.
Now, here's the thing, obviously, that's based on a verse in the Bible a little bit, okay?
But what they're doing by stating these things is they're trying to make this argument that
God is not a personal being who has an expression of love towards His creation.
He is love, literally.
This is what they try to argue now. Where is it based on first John chapter 4 look at verse 7?
Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that love it is born of God and know of God
He that loveth knoweth not God for God is love so the Bible explicitly says God is love
But what we could argue from the text is not that it's saying God is literally love
as just an attribute, but rather this is more of a metaphor in the sense that God
the ultimate expression of love and that he's the epitome of love and he
encompasses what love truly is. But that does not mean any time someone loves
that that's just God or I love pizza now that's God or something or any kind of
love towards anything is is God. You can even love that which is evil. The Bible
makes it very clear that wicked people love all kinds of evil things. They love
Love it and make it a lie. Okay loving a lie isn't God
Okay, so we can't just take God and boil him down to this expression like he's just an expression
He's a personal being that can express love
But because of who he is and the love he's shown you could make this metaphor and just say it in some essence
He just is love
Now, I was trying to think about how to explain that because it's kind of difficult when you take these nonsensical ideas and expose them, but
it would be like to express it in another metaphor. I was thinking about this. What if I said Michael Jordan is basketball?
Now here's the thing. Is Michael Jordan literally the game basketball?
No.
No no sensible person would even try to make that claim, but just because he's arguably one of the greatest
He is the greatest. Let's be honest
Because he's the greatest he just is basketball when you think Michael Jordan, you don't think oh he played
You know in minor league baseball, I think
You might think space jam, but you know at the end of the day you think basketball, right?
Just because in some ways he's just the best
Tiger Woods you just think is golf right it doesn't mean that they're literally things
We're just using these as metaphors to explain these guys just really encompass this idea this concept
They make it what it is. Here's one that the haters would love
Pastor Anderson is the new IFB
But is he literally this abstract idea of this thing or is it just an expression to kind of
understand this concept and here's the thing God is love is true
It's a biblical concept, but he's not literally love like he's just an emotion or something
He's not just some abstract idea. This is an expression of who God is. Let's keep reading in this was manifested
The love of God toward us because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.
Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
Can you really have love without an object that's being loved?
The answer would be no.
And when it comes to God, he is telling us, what does love really look like?
It's like God loving us, and how did he love us?
By sending his son to die in the cross, that was the expression of God's love.
That's what God's love looks like.
This passage is not saying, hey man, God's like literally love, man.
Like that is nonsensical.
Oh, divine simplicity. He's not just, he's not a personal being that expresses love.
He just is love.
Like, love is just a concept that, and that's who God is.
So this is divine simplicity.
I'm already not liking it.
Let's go on to a second concept that I really want to get to though,
that they then make out of this concept.
It's called divine impassibility.
The doctrine of divine impassibility holds that God is not subject to suffering, change, or emotional fluctuation.
This belief is rooted in classical theology, particularly influenced by Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle,
and early church fathers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
So, driven by the same philosophical viewpoint is this concept of divine impassibility.
parts or passions.
Passion is kind of an interesting word
because typically I would think of passion as like showing emotional
feelings or intimate feelings towards maybe your spouse or something like that, but passion can go beyond that.
It's just it's it's more broadly applied to just an emotional feeling.
Also, the Bible describes what Jesus Christ went through as his passion.
If there's a movie called The Passion of the Christ, it was talking about his suffering
on the cross and his death barrel and resurrection.
It's talking about his suffering.
So passion could be understood as suffering.
And so it's basically, they're saying God cannot experience passion, he cannot suffer.
Which on the surface you'd say, well what about Christ?
Obviously Christ suffered.
Because if he hadn't become human, if he hadn't become a man, he couldn't suffer.
So he had to become a man in order to suffer.
Gov'e would to Hebrews.
Let's go there for a second.
I didn't have this in my notes, but we'll find it here in a second.
I think it's like Hebrews 2 or something.
The Bible does say that Jesus Christ had to put on a body to suffer,
but the Bible makes it clear that it was for the suffering of death.
So the Bible says in verse 9,
but we see Jesus who has made a little lower than the angels
for the suffering of death,
crowned with glory and honor,
that he by the grace of God should take his death for ever, man.
The Bible makes it clear, yeah, he had to become a man
so that he could suffer death.
Because without putting on, you know, our type of flesh, our mortality,
he could have not experienced the death of the cross the way he did.
That's true.
But the question is, could God actually experience suffering apart from his death on the cross?
And, you know, we want to use the Bible to answer this question.
Because Catholics will argue that God cannot suffer at all.
They would say, if he could suffer, then he would be miserable all the time.
That's their logic.
Here's another quote from one of these theologians.
God is said to be in process with us,
hoping to solve the problem of human suffering
so that he himself can be set free from his own suffering.
That is a helpless God.
So they said if we're suffering
and God is feeling some kind of negative emotion,
suffering, misery, or woe because of our suffering.
and he's dependent upon us being set free or being liberated or cured from our problems
so that he himself can be cured from his own suffering.
Well, that makes him helpless.
First of all, if he's helping us overcome, how is he helpless?
The own quote just seems self-refuting, number one.
But number two, you know, why don't we just ask this question?
What's the most famous verse in the Bible?
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed in him should not perish but everlasting life
Let's think about this verse for a half a second. Okay?
What is the whole point of this verse? What's the whole point of it saying for God so loved the world?
What does it mean that he loved us?
Doesn't it mean that he was willing to give up something that was important to him?
Isn't it kind of expressing this concept of the ultimate price,
the ultimate picture you could give is giving your own begotten, perfect, innocent, flawless son
as a human sacrifice to die the most miserable pain and suffering for people that didn't deserve it?
Isn't that showing like, wow, this person really loves, but do you think it was easy or hard to do that?
Like, isn't the whole point showing God paid the ultimate price of suffering by willing
to sacrifice his own son for us?
I mean, that's the whole essence of the gospel is showing that God was willing to pay the
ultimate price by sacrificing his own son and sending his own son and seeing his own
wrath poured out on his own son.
That's to show how much he loved us.
If it wasn't any kind of high price, if he has no emotional state, this verse is meaningless.
Think about it.
That you don't even care about then it doesn't really mean that much. So like hey, I love you enough to give you one penny
In order to help you with your problems. Does that does that really matter or if I said hey, I'm willing to pay everything
I'm willing to give you everything. I'm willing to give you the life of my son
But why is that important? Because giving the life of your son is an emotional decision.
It's an ultimate sacrifice. Of course, there's suffering involved.
Just from the pure understanding of the most important verse in the Bible.
How could anybody that believes in John 3.16 believe in this divine and passability nonsense?
We're just getting started though.
Now they say, oh, well, you have to understand when every time the Bible uses the word like love God doesn't really love
That's an anthropopathism
Oh
That's really easy to understand. It's saying okay. God doesn't really have passions
He doesn't really have feelings. He doesn't really have emotions. He just explains it to us like he has emotions so that we think he has emotions
You know, it's a little bit simpler than that. He just has emotions
He's just a real person
That has emotions and he tells us about his emotions and you know why we have emotions?
Because he has emotions and we're made in his image and so we're like him and the way that I love my son is supposed to be
Modeled after the way he loves his son not like he kind of in some way loves his son
But he can't tell me how he loves to be that loves his son
So he has to like use this anthropopathism way to tell me it's like no he just loves his son
and he loved me and he sent his son.
That's what it means by God is love,
not this Greek philosophy that I say,
you know, he's like, literally love, man.
No, no, it's John 3, 16.
That's what God is love means.
For God so loved the world
that he gave us only to be gotten a son.
You know, if God so loved us,
we ought also to love one another.
Why would God expect us to have an emotion
that he doesn't have?
That doesn't even make any sense.
Go, if you would, to Exodus 23.
This divine impassibility means that God, according to them, their definition,
as a perfect and immutable beating does not experience passions.
Emotions like suffering, anger, or joy, and the way humans do,
as these imply change or dependency.
God's nature is eternal and changeable and self-sufficient.
And they'll use a verse from Malachi 3.6 that says,
Or, for I and the Lord, do not I change?
You have a bad version here.
For I and the Lord, I change not.
Or there's no variation or shadow or change of turning.
But at the end of the day, we can't just take these verses and apply them to whatever we want.
Obviously, what is it saying?
God and who He is is not going to change.
He's always the truth that's never going to change.
We get that.
That's true.
Variation? Well, why don't we let the Bible decide if God has emotional variation?
Now
One that I want to start with is the suffering. I kind of want to start with this idea of the suffering
But again, you read about these people you read about Catholics read about these theologians
They'll say God doesn't have any of these emotions. I ran into a Muslim and
I was talking with him and
He said oh God
God can't suffer that would make him weak
And I was like, man, I feel like I'm talking to a Catholic
Why because man's wisdom is the same look this Muslim is not reading Plato
This Muslim is not reading Aristotle
This Muslim didn't grow up in a Catholic monastery and learning all this stupid nonsense
Man's wisdom has the same ideas because it's coming from the devil
Okay
You know, the Bible also has other analogies.
You know, the Bible talks about Satan as the father of lies.
Does that mean that every single lie was physically birthed by Satan?
No. Don't be a Pentecostal and blame all of your sin on demons, okay?
Pentecostals, they basically say, like, you have the demon of lying and the demon of stealing
and the demon of drunkenness, and it's like, no, you just are a drunkard.
No, you just lie. You're a liar.
It's like everyone wants to blame the devil for their sin.
And look, is the devil the first person or person I'm using lightly,
the first thing to basically bring lies into the world
and deceive Eve by lying to her?
Sure.
But does that mean that he's the only person generating lies?
No, we lie too.
So it's a metaphor. It's a metaphor for understanding. Hey, he's kind of the first one bringing lies into the world and and
Deceiving Eve and tempting Eve and and telling her things that are not true. You shall not surely die
Liar, he's the father of lies. He's the originator of lies coming to Adam and Eve
But that does not mean that he's literally the father of every single lie
So, you know, they'll say hey, God can't suffer. God doesn't have anger. God doesn't have joy
They're just anthropomorphic or anthropopathisms. They're metaphors for expressing God's actions.
Well, we have to understand that a metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things
to each other without using the word like or as. If it's like or as, it's a simile.
If you said, hey, this is like this, that's a simile. Or it's being as this,
that's a simile. If you just say, hey,
Michael Jordan is basketball. That's a metaphor if you said you can't really say he's like basketball because that's just kind of a weird
Thing to say, but you could say hey this guy's this guy's like a lion when he goes out to the battlefield
That's kind of a similar if you said this guy is a lion on the battlefield
That's a metaphor, but it's taking two things that are not each other
A lion is not this guy
And it's comparing them to just get some kind of an understanding if I said this guy is a lion on the battlefield
What do you understand by that?
This guy is strong. He's ferocious. He's he's going out there just you know
Destroying things, right? That's what you would understand by that concept.
When we say God is love, what are we understanding?
We're understanding that, hey, God is ultimately a loving being doing loving actions.
He has the most ultimate loving action of expression through sacrificing his son.
But what we're not saying is he's literally, literally love as an emotion.
Because if God is just literally love, then how could he ever hate?
And so what we understand is that, hey, God has emotions and these motions are not just arbitrary.
They are dependent on other things.
He interacts. He's a personal being. What is personal? He's interacting with us.
We are having some effect on him, not because we're like more powerful than him or not.
It's because he wants to relate to us because he's a personal being.
And, of course, the Bible brings up the fact that God has these emotions.
Now, I think I want to actually do anger first, because I had to go to Exodus 23.
Sorry, I said suffering, but I'm mad now, so let's do anger, all right?
God can get angry.
God can have all of the emotions that are mentioned in the Bible and all the emotions that we have.
The reason why we have emotions is because God has emotions, or made in His image.
Exodus 23, look at verse 20.
for he will not pardon your transgressions for my name is in him."
This is important because I was thinking about Jesus.
They say, oh, well, Jesus has emotions because of his incarnation
and having put on the human nature.
But this is Jesus Christ who was leading the children of Israel
through the wilderness before his incarnation.
And the Bible says, don't provoke him.
I mean, don't piss him off, all right?
Don't make him mad.
Psalm 2, kiss the sun lest he be angry and ye perish from the
wave when his wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all they have put their trust in him.
Numbers 11, go to Numbers chapter 11.
Look, a five-year-old will not get mixed up on this doctrine
because they'll read the Bible and they'll see God being
angry, happy,
Sad, wrathful, grieved, all the emotions that we have, jealous, he has all these emotions.
And it's, you know how simple it is?
When he's mad, it's because he's mad.
There's not some anthropopathic way to understand like, well he's not really mad if he really
understood that he's literally love.
What are you talking about?
Numbers 11, look at verse 1.
And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord.
And the Lord heard it, and his anger was kindled.
And the fire of the Lord burnt among them and consumed them
that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.
Now look, I don't care if you're a Catholic or not,
everyone would read this verse and come away and say,
look, God burned people alive.
God killed people right here.
So let's take the Catholic versus, you know,
anybody has a brain in their head approach to this.
The Catholic approach, God has no emotions and can't get angry.
He just burned a whole bunch of people alive. Why?
Let's take the brain in your head.
God's mad at them for breaking his commandments and complaining and pissing him off.
So then he punishes them by killing them.
Which one makes more sense, philosopher?
This is philosophy 101. This is the only philosophy class you'll ever need all right. You know why he killed them?
Because he was mad at them
You know why someone hits you because they're mad at you or they they fight you you don't don't make people mad
Like oh man all the drivers here. They're really angry
Well, how are you driving?
People keep getting mad at me
How are you acting? Are you complaining? Oh
Man, my husband's always mad at me. Are you complaining?
Yeah, hey kids mom and dad are always mad at me. Are you complaining?
Let me tell you something complaining makes people mad
It even makes God mad
And he he burned them
Look at chapter 12 verse 9
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them and he departed.
Why did he leave? Because he was mad at them.
Go to Deuteronomy 32, go to Deuteronomy 32.
Look, we have to realize God has real emotions,
and those emotions have real consequences.
Real, real consequence, we want God to be pleased with us, well done, thou good and faithful servant, entered in the joy of thy Lord.
Why would you get rewarded in heaven? Because he was pleased with your actions.
I mean it actually means something when he looks down at Jesus Christ and he says,
this is my beloved Son and whom I am well pleased.
Why is he pleased? Because the Son kept the commandments, whereas why is he displeased with us?
We break the commandments.
Look at Deuteronomy 32-22,
For a fire is kindled in my anger,
And shall burn under the lowest hell,
And shall consume the earth with their increase,
And set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
Why does hell exist?
Because God is mad.
In fact, the Bible says that his anger is what's kindling hell.
His anger.
It's like the entire doctrine of hell is because God gets angry and then Catholic are saying God can't get angry.
Well, then why does hell even exist?
I mean if you're gonna say I'm gonna send somebody to a place of eternal torment where there's fire, no rest, day or night,
they have no escape, eternal regret, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth for all of eternity.
Why? I have no idea. I'm not even mad at them.
Or you could say, hey, I'm furious with them because my son died on the cross and went to hell for them
and they did not want to accept that, so they got what they deserve for their lying and stealing and fornicating
and adultery and all the wickedness that they did.
That's why, because I'm mad at them, because I'm angry with them for all of eternity.
Hey, that's, I like the logic of the Bible over the Catholic logic again.
Oh, no, no, I gotta read, I gotta read Plato and Socrates
and say to Guston to really understand the truth about,
no, no, you just need to read the Bible.
Go to Psalm six, go to Psalm six.
God gets angry.
And look, God can get angry at saved people too.
Don't get this stupid hypergrace mentality
where God can't get mad at you.
Don't get Joyce Meyer's book, God's Not Mad at You.
God would be mad at you for getting that book.
and listening to Jo-Joan Sermons, okay?
Unless it's in spite, that's fine, all right?
Psalm 6-1, the Bible says,
Oh Lord, rebuke me not in my anger,
neither chasten me in thy hot dispensary.
Look, do you think the psalmist,
do you think the person that wrote Psalm 6, verse 1, was saved?
Or do you have this weird idea that unsaved people are writing the book of Psalms?
Arguably, this is probably David.
Based on how the Bible is laid out, it seems like the first section of Psalms is the Psalms of David.
Do you think David is saved?
And what is David saying?
Hey, rebuke me not in my anger!
Because God can get mad at saved people.
Why is it that God killed one of David's children?
Because he was mad for committing adultery and murder.
And that was a serious punishment.
Not only that, the sword never even departed out of David's house as a result of that.
Not only that, one of his sons lay with his wives as a punishment,
and he was almost killed in a treasonous act by Absalom as a result of his actions.
God got mad, and the Bible says,
God is not mocked for what sort of man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Don't think, oh man, I can just do whatever I want,
commit adultery and murder and stuff,
and I won't have any consequence.
That's why as Christians we should still fear God and still do it right because God still gets angry
Look at chapter 7 verse 11
God judge of the righteous and God is angry with the wicked every day
And God's not mad at people because then he'd be helpless
Bible just says he's mad and look how is he helpless if the people he's mad at he throws in hell
He's still one
And how is he helpless if the people that he's mad at but wants to redeem, he still redeems?
There's nothing helpless about it, it's just his emotional state.
God is mad at sin, he hates sin and he hates sinners
and he wants us to get redeemed and become saved so that we're no longer sinners.
Go to Psalm 78, go to Psalm 78.
No parent loves disobedience in their children.
We hate disobedience in our children, and if we could press a button that would make our children
always obedient, we would press it.
And that's what God's gonna do. God's gonna eventually hit that reset button and we're gonna get a new glorified body
and we will no longer be children of disobedience, but rather we will have that redeemed body and we won't send anymore.
Psalm 78 verse 38, for their heart was not right with him, neither were they steadfast in his covenant,
But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not,
yea, many a time turned, he is anger away, and did not stir up all of his wrath.
Not only does God get angry, he sometimes allows himself to change and not stay angry,
but actually overcomes his own anger and doesn't even punish people the way they deserve.
Oh, well, according to divine impossibility, God can't get angry and he can't change his emotion.
And his emotions can't fluctuate.
Why don't care what your divine impossibility says?
Because the Bible is literally saying that God is turning his anger.
Many a time, not just once, many a time turned he his anger away.
It's not like, oh, is this one event where God changed his anger? No, no.
Many a time he turned his anger.
Meaning that God is fluctuating.
God can have different emotions based on different experiences with different people at different times.
That sounds complex. Yeah, it's called divine complexity.
Go to Psalm 103.
It's called the emotions of God.
God has various emotions.
Don't get sucked into this nonsense and start denying the clear verses in the Bible.
And what I notice when it comes to Catholics, with their doctrine,
is they abstract everything away from God and turn Him into nothing.
And they do the same thing to the Bible because, guess what, God is the Bible.
They start saying, oh no, love, it's anthropomorphic, anthropopathic, not really there.
Hey, when we see God, you know, showing himself unto Moses, he didn't really have a body, just joking.
His face is glowing for no reason again.
People in hell, God's not mad at them, just joking.
God loves, just joking.
I mean, they just basically turn the Bible into nothing.
Nothing really matters anymore.
Just their tradition.
Just shut up, sit down, come get the Eucharist,
give us money, and leave.
And the Catholics, look, they are really spoiled.
They're spoiled, they're rotten.
Their philosophy and their theology is terrible,
and they do not understand the God of the Bible
because they take all of it away.
Psalm 103 verse 8, the Lord is merciful and gracious, notice this, slow to anger and plenty
as in mercy.
Notice again, God's emotional state is...
ever ever changing and sometimes he's slow to anger when he finally gets angry he can turn that anger
His emotions are
Changing based on different things go to Genesis chapter 6 go to Genesis chapter 6 now. Let's talk about suffering for a second
We talked about anger. Let's talk about suffering these emotions that God supposedly can't have
But how could you read the Bible and then come away with this approach?
It's kind of weird now obviously we understand Jesus Christ suffered
But what about, what about just God?
What about the Father?
Genesis chapter 6, look at verse 6,
and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth
and it grieved him at his heart.
What is the Bible trying to convey?
God's actually sad about what man has turned into.
He's grieved about it. He's upset about it.
He's even upset that he made man.
He's saying, man, I'm almost like mad or sad
or disappointed that he even made you.
So, what is his logic? What is his conclusion?
If he's mad that he made you, what would you do, logically?
Destroy.
Let's keep reading.
Verse 7,
And the Lord said,
I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth.
It's explaining the justification.
Why would you destroy what you created?
Because you're disappointed with it, you're grieved with it, and you're hurt.
Any of us, if we ever created something or made something
and then it just disappointed us, wasn't to what we wanted,
we may destroy it.
Tear it down, rebuild it again.
I will destroy man who might have created from the face of the earth
both man and beast and the creeping thing and the fowl of the earth
for it repented me that I had made them.
But, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Say, hey, I'm mad that I've created man period, and I want to destroy man period, but there was one guy
that noticed got grace. What is grace?
Something you don't deserve and it's not based on works. So was Noah delivered from the flood because he was just
not sinning? No, he was a sinner like everybody else, but he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And
he's the only one that was delivered out of, who knows, probably millions.
possibly even billions of people.
I mean, that about, I think it's like 1656 years
from the time of creation until now.
That's a lot, that's a lot of time
they could have been populating the earth.
Who knows what kind of population was there on the earth.
Based on our fossil record,
based on how many oils and things that we have in the earth,
seems like there was a lot of stuff going on.
And, of course, it was all destroyed.
I mean, what kind of logic is this to say?
You know what?
God just killed millions of people and just billions of animals and all kinds of just
living organisms for no reason.
He didn't do it for no reason.
He did it because he was mad at them and he was grieved in his heart and he wanted to
destroy them because of his emotion.
God is not just arbitrarily saying all right kill him now
Put this one in hell this one gets to go to heaven based on what I don't know I
Have no emotion. I just am love
What what does that even mean?
He's not just this arbitrary
Emotionless state that just says I just I just am love
Because how would it be loving for him to flood the entire world?
How is that loving? It's not. It's not loving to flood the entire earth. It's not loving to send someone hell.
He hates them. He's angry with them. He's mad at them. He's disappointed at them. All the emotions that we have, look,
there's not an emotion you can have that God doesn't have.
The reason why we even have the emotions is because God is a personal being that also has those emotions.
And we see through all the experiences we have in this world,
we get to understand and kind of empathize with what God has in his emotions.
Go to Psalm 78. Go to Psalm 78.
The longer you live, the more you start to understand and get God.
Sometimes you just, you kind of like don't really understand something,
and then you go through that experience and then you're like,
oh, that's why God feels that way.
It's like man, you just burn these people for complaining as a kid. I'm reading that. I'm like, dang
Then you have kids and you go on a long trip
And the kids are just complaining you're just like I get it
All right
I totally understand.
You know, you're like reading in the Bible
about all these weird people, the Canaanites,
and you're just thinking like, who would do that?
Man, God just wants to slaughter all these people.
Then you meet them and you're like, yes, please kill them.
Please slaughter them.
Like, I totally get it.
I have no problem.
You know, it's like...
Sometimes it's just like we need to go through experiences and it's hard, it's you know, we the Bible talks about all the sacrifices God goes through and you know when you actually have something that you love and it's precious to you and it's special to you, you know, it's one thing to love children, it's another thing to have a child.
You'll never really love a child like your own either. There's something about your child that's just an extra special feeling and you didn't even, you didn't even do anything.
It's like it literally just came out and all of a sudden you just love it so much more than anything else and
It doesn't even it doesn't even deserve your love in a lot of sense because all it does is a scream and cry and is like a terrorist
There's demanding things from you. Like I will cry until you give me what I want. That's how it works
And you're like, okay, like I love you anyways, you know
You just love this little terrorist little terrorist babies or anything. Sorry if you don't like my analogy
But I'm just saying, like, hey, it's just, you know, but there's this natural affection that God gives us and we can understand.
So then to say, hey, you have to sacrifice this, that's a lot more meaningful than when you didn't have that child.
You don't really know what it's like.
My wife has told me this, she said, because my wife's always been a big animal lover.
She loved, you know, she had cats, she had dogs, and she just really loved them.
And she was a good steward of her animals, but...
You know something changed when we had our first kid and she told me that she said you know the love and affection
I had towards my animals really changed and I could see a huge difference between how I feel towards my child and
Animal and it wasn't even the same. You know all these pita activists need just to have a child
And then be like all right, let's kill the animals and eat them all right
That's you know
It's not that big a deal, but obviously you know to love an animal
There's nothing wrong with loving an animal if you love your cat if you love your dog
You know, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it
But you'll never really love it the same as you love a child
And and it's great that we get to go through these experiences to better understand
What the Word of God actually teaches us Psalm 78 look at verse 40 how often they provoke him in the wilderness and grieve him in
The desert notice this how oft meaning how often?
Why? It happened on a regular basis. It's happening all the time. I mean the Bible said that God's angry with the wicked every day.
Every day God's being provoked.
That should really just help you understand something about God that God is
long suffering.
He's way more long suffering than we are.
Think about all the things he has to put up with and things we don't even understand and know and and basically just the
quantity of things he's having to constantly go through.
Go over to 2nd Peter 3, I'll just read a couple of verses for you, the Bible says in Exodus
34, the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long suffering.
and abundant in goodness and truth.
The Bible says in Romans 9, 22,
what if God willing to show His wrath
and to make His power known,
endured with much long suffering,
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?
God is enduring much long suffering
with much evil and much bad people in this world.
And sometimes you kind of think like, how and why?
Well, look, all the emotions of God make sense.
They are logical and they're consistent in the Bible.
Why is God allowing evil people to do their thing?
Why is God allowing, you know, Joe Biden to have been our president?
And Donald Trump to be our president and Israel to have so much influence in this world and the Catholic priests doing other things
Why why is it all this crazy stuff happening? And of course atheists will say like oh, man
You know why?
Why is God allowing all this suffering and pain all these bad things to happen? Why doesn't he just fix it or why doesn't he just change it?
But here's the reality
The reason why God is tolerating this bad is just so another person can get saved
And think about it, he did that with you and he did that with me.
Because God is just, if we sin the first time we sinned,
once we realize what sin was and we sinned,
God is just in just sending us to hell right then and there.
That's what we deserve.
And then God decided to not do it immediately, but put time.
Now how much time?
Again, totally up to him.
He can decide how long he wants to wait.
He can say, I'm going to give you five minutes.
You send the first time, you get a 5-minute timer, and if you don't hit, you know,
believe in Jesus Christ by then, well, you're going to hell.
But instead of giving you a 5-minute timer, what did he give you?
Almost, I mean, a lot of us, maybe a 60, 70, 80-year timer.
That means he's really long suffering.
That means he's giving people a really long time
to make that particular decision
to change and actually get saved.
And if God just started wiping out everybody in all cities,
less people would go to heaven, less people would get saved.
I mean, how many Catholics right now are on their way to hell
but will eventually change and get saved?
He doesn't want to just damn them all and kill them all right now.
He wants to give them that opportunity.
And so God is long-suffering so that more people would get saved.
But does that mean he has to put up with more? Yeah, he does.
Does that mean he's angry longer? Yeah.
But it's so that more people can get saved.
Look at 2 Peter 3 verse 15.
An account that the long-suffering of our Lord, notice this, is salvation.
Even as our beloved brother Paul, also according to wisdom, given unto him hath written unto you.
You know, it's that kid that you don't give up on.
It's that person that you don't give up on.
You give them another chance. You give them another opportunity.
You allow them to have some grace.
And God has given us grace and he's given a lot of people grace so that they could be saved.
Why do we have to go through the end times tribulation so that more people could get saved?
So why would it make sense if we're in the end times if the whole reason God's gonna allow us to be here?
And if the whole reason God's allowing these things to go on is for more people to get saved is when we're going through the end-time
Tribulation you hide and you don't get anybody saved
Look the whole point of him putting us through that and the whole point of us enduring through that is so that more people could be saved
So the best thing we can do hey if it's in the end times we better do more so winning not less so winning
so that more people can be saved.
Go over to John chapter 3, go to John chapter 3.
Let's finish on this last idea of just love.
Look, God is love, and I get that,
but it is an expression of who He is,
and He has other emotions He can hate too.
God hates, God gets angry, God suffers,
God has pleasure,
God has the full range of emotions that we do,
and it's not that He's just boiled down into attributes.
He's not just a clump of attributes.
He is a personal being that we get to share in his affections and love.
The Bible says in John 3.35,
The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into his hand.
Why did God the Father give unto Jesus Christ all things?
Because he loved him.
And the Father truly loves the Son.
John 5.32,
But I know you that you have not the love of God in you.
John 14 verse 21 he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me,
and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest
myself to him.
God loves those who keep his commandments.
And when you love God, you know what, you're going to be loved of, I'm sorry, when you
love specifically Jesus, you're going to be loved of the Father.
The Father loves those who love Jesus.
And notice this, I'll manifest myself to him.
You'll actually understand who God is
when you actually love the Bible.
If you come to the Bible with hatred and a bad attitude,
well, maybe he's not gonna show you anything about it.
John 15, nine, as the Father at love me,
so I loved you.
Continue ye in my love.
Look, love is an expression of what we should do
and how we should behave, not just, we just are love.
We should just be love, man.
Just be love. No, no, no express love towards people. How do you express love?
Well as God sent his son as a sacrifice and laid down his life
We sacrifice and lay down our lives and we do things for people the Bible says let us not love in word
But indeed and in truth we should show our love by going out and actually loving people and doing things
You know sitting in some tower trying to understand
the mysteries of the universe by reading Plato is not loving.
Preaching Christ and Him crucified, that's loving.
Oh, I'm going to go to university and I'm going to study for years
to become this great philosopher. That's not love. You know what's love?
Dedicating your life to becoming a daily or weekly or monthly soul winner.
Going out there and preaching the gospel. That's what real love is.
Wow, I really want to understand what love is. I want to understand who God is.
That's what love is you know that Jesus said as many as I love I rebuke and chasten be zel's therefore and repent
Why would God punish you if he didn't love you?
That'd be arbitrary just whining around just punishing people for no reason I
Had one last thing that I kind of just wanted to mention go through to Matthew 5 that's the last place we'll go
But there was an interview between Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh
And Ben Shapiro was interviewing Matt Walsh about his beliefs.
And Matt Walsh is a Catholic, if you didn't know that.
And Ben Shapiro asked him about religion, and he's saying,
you know, how does your worldview shape your politics?
This is a question Ben Shapiro asked Matt Walsh.
This is what Matt Walsh said. He said,
for me, the first objective for everyone is to get to heaven.
That's the first objective.
And I thought that was pretty interesting.
He would say, like, hey, the most important thing that
shapes your entire worldview is getting to heaven.
Ben Shapiro then says this, from a religious viewpoint,
you say that the goals to get to heaven
are you a belief-based person?
I mean, is it that you believe in Christ
and therefore you go to heaven?
Or is it a works-based thing?
Because obviously, this sort of differentiator
is between Judaism and Christianity.
So it sounds like Ben Shapiro knows that there's a difference between Judaism and Christianity.
Christianity, you believe in Jesus and you're saved.
Judaism, it's works.
That's why Jews aren't saved.
That's why Ben Shapiro's not saved and probably will never be saved
because it sounds like he already knows what you have to do.
He just doesn't believe it. He rejects it.
And that's what you'll find about reprobates is they can tell you the right answer.
They just don't believe it.
And so, he's giving him this question, this is how Matt Rawls responds.
I don't mean to dismiss like 500 years of fighting between Protestants and Catholics,
but I kind of think that at least between Protestants and Catholics,
the works versus faith dichotomy, it's kind of a misunderstanding,
because I think we actually generally agree.
I wonder if William Tyndale feels that way when he's being burned at the stake for believing in faith alone.
Hey, this is just a misunderstanding isn't it guys that you're just gonna burn me at the stake for believing this
It's just kind of a misunderstanding when the council of Trent makes an entire document dedicated to condemning those
Who believe in faith alone and of course vice versa obviously we believe those who believe in works are not saved
Like this is this is not a misunderstanding
People were really being killed for believing in faith alone,
and people really despise works-based salvation
because they believe those people are going to hell.
Now, Matt Walsh does finally clarify and actually try to answer the question.
He says this,
if all you have to do is believe in Jesus and all you have to do is believe in God,
to be safe, he's like, I definitely don't believe that.
Now, he kind of later in this interview makes another claim.
He says,
I think if you figure out how to love anyone outside of yourself during your life, then
I think that's something God can take and work with.
And those are little embers of something that he can ignite into a fire in a good sense.
So that's sort of the objective of life is to love.
You know, he thinks that it's impossible for you to go to hell as long as you just love something.
Just if you loved anything in this world.
There's anything that you liked, if there's anything you love.
And he says this about hell, he says, well, he says, I don't, I want to get, it's kind of hard with the context.
He says, it seems more just.
This is a weird quote.
What does it mean to choose hell?
This is what it is.
What does it mean to choose hell?
How could anyone ever choose hell
when they know that eternal joy is an offer?
And anyway, in a book called The Great Divorce,
the author, he says, I think does a good job of showing
what it might just sort of look like
when a person would actually choose hell.
And he says that's by them choosing never love anything.
He says life is to love
love what you do and I think that's St. Augustine. So really if you were to
encompass the great philosophy of Catholics and all their views is just
hate, just love because God is love and it's all about love but there's a
problem. Look at Matthew chapter number five verse 46, for if you love them
which love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the same? Look
You can love evil you can love darkness and look everyone is born with natural affection
You can obviously suppress that or destroy it later, but you're born with natural affection
There's nothing special about you loving your child or loving your parents. That's natural. That's normal
It's weird if you don't something off about you if you don't love
Loving things is not going to get you into heaven, it's not going to give you salvation.
It's by believing in Jesus Christ and what he did, and trusting in his love that's going to actually give you that salvation.
And of course we have to understand the emotions of God.
The emotions of God is that he expressed love to us through the gospel, and that's what gets us saved.
But when you get this philosophy coming from Catholics and Greek philosophy, you end up
destroying what the love of God really is.
It's not just loving things that are in your life, you know, that's not the love of God.
You know, the love of God is keeping His commandments.
The love of God is preaching the gospel to the lost.
Don't get spoiled through the philosophy of Catholics or these theologians or these church fathers.
It's all nonsense. You don't need to read it. You don't need to study it.
You're complete in Christ. This is all you need.
And you know what? We should understand the emotions of God because that's who he really is.
He's a real personal being and he wants to connect with you.
And you know what? Don't piss him off.
Don't provoke him don't make him mad try to be a pleasing son. Don't complain. That's why we read the Bible
That's why we follow his commandments so that it'll be pleased with us that he won't be angry with us that we can have a
Good relationship with him. We have a good fellowship with him
Now this is what's really important and look reading this nonsense will not draw you closer to God
Reading the Bible keeping the commandments and preaching the gospel you say wow, that's real basic. Yes. It is that basic
It is that simple.
You know what?
It's a good message because it would be overwhelming if I said, you know what, if you really want
to know God, you guys got to start learning Greek, you got to learn Hebrew, you got to
learn Latin, you got to read all the church fathers, you got to read all the church history,
you got to get all these seminary degrees.
That's the only way to get close to God.
We would all just be like, who's going to do that?
But you know what, praise God, we have a King James Bible in English, and we can read it
every day, and we can draw closer to the Lord, and we can love our neighbor, and we can go
out and preach the gospel to him, and get him saved, and get him away from all this terrible
philosophy.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for loving us and giving us that gift of your Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Thank you for such a beautiful gospel message.
I pray that we would understand that message more deeply as we read the scriptures
and we could see all the heartbreak and the disappointment and the anger that you have to go through in the Bible.
I pray that we would be motivated because of your anger and because of hell
to go out and preach the gospel and to warn people,
pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
I pray that we would not be afraid of the emotions of God,
but rather we'd embrace them,
that we'd get a better understanding of them
as we read the Bible, as we meditate on Thy Word,
as we memorize Scripture, as we sing the Psalms.
And I pray that you would just help our church
to not get drawn away by philosophy, by other ideas,
by other religions, by Judaizers,
but we would just stay rooted and grounded
on the King James Bible, the Word of God.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
For our last song let's go to song number 42
Song number 42 my latest son is sinking fast song number 42
singing, everybody, you were all dismissed.