Renewed Conference 2021 | Pretty Little Lies Part 2

all right so um everybody enjoy your snacks and coffee and you fueled up and ready to go for the rest of this talk here all right so we were talking about who's the boss of you are you the boss of you or if you're a jesus follower is jesus the boss of you well i want to i want to show you that as a jesus follower jesus is the boss of us right and jesus said that the bible is the boss of us and since jesus is enough it seems like he should be able to tell us who's the boss of us right everybody agree with that yes okay so the question is then what did jesus teach about the bible now i want to give you a little context some sort of laying the context of progressive christianity in the framework of our talk today and so the question would be what is the progressive christian view of the bible now if we look at the historic view of the bible if we go back to jesus and the apostles the early christians you're going to find if you go through church history that christians have disagreed about a lot of things a few things over our church history right this is why we have so many different denominations we have disagreed on interpretations surrounding things like baptism and a women's role in ministry and the age of the earth and predestination just don't even go there don't even go to predestination um that'll that'll get people going but we've disagreed about a lot of interpretations right and that certainly is true but it's because of the historic christian view of the bible that we actually make our positions and our opinions and have our debates and all that because historically speaking christians have always settled our debates based on what the bible says right so historically speaking christians have believed that the bible is inspired by god that it is the word of god and that because it's the inspired word of god it's authoritative for our lives in other words we believe the bible is the boss of us properly interpreted of course do not pull out some random passage from the old testament and then go slaughter someone's sheep because that's pr that's not what it's telling you to do so we have to interpret properly but basically historically speaking although we might disagree over exactly what the word inerrancy is and what it means and all of these things we believe that the bible is god speaking to us it's it's god's word to man not man's word about god right so when an old testament prophet says the lord says we believe that's what the lord said now in the progressive christian world that is sort of flipped on its head progressive christians will say things like this is a human book about god not god's inspired authoritative word some progressive churches will go so far as to outright say the bible is not the word of god there was a church in nashville recently that went viral with a meme where they said that he said the bible is not the word of god i have a podcast on that if you're interested um so it's important to understand this because in the progressive view the bible is more viewed like an ancient spiritual travel journal so this is something we can look back on we can analyze it we can know and understand what the people who lived in those times and places believed about god but they weren't necessarily speaking for god and so that's probably the big the biggest difference between the progressive christian view of the bible and the historic view of the bible so the question is what did jesus think the bible was right because that should settle it for us as jesus followers if we believe that jesus is our authority if we're following him if we're going to call ourselves christians would you agree that our view of the bible should be what his view of the bible is fair enough everybody has the perfect right to disagree and to say hey i don't think the bible is the word of god i don't think it's inspired i don't think it's authoritative for our lives but we need to be intellectually honest that if we're going to take that position we shouldn't call it a christian position because that wasn't jesus position and that's what i hope to show you today so if we look through scripture jesus had quite a bit to say about the old testament scriptures these are uh the jewish scriptures of course the new testament hadn't been written yet so everything that we're going to be talking about for the next few minutes will have to do with the old testament but the old testament's usually one everybody has a problem with anyway so jesus affirming the old testament should should be quite powerful evidence and so the jewish scriptures that jesus had in when he walked the earth are the exact same books that are sitting in your lap today they're arranged in a slightly different order but it's all the same books it's the same words and and that's what you have what jesus had as the old testament is what you have as the old testament so the key question is what did he think they were did he see the old testament just simply as a record of what some people thought about god when they lived or did he really think that that was god speaking to us well in matthew 15 14 jesus says for god said now i want to say here that if there's one thing that jesus affirmed over and over and over and over and over again in the gospels is that the old testament scriptures are the word of god so in this verse in matthew 14 he was referencing several commands from exodus leviticus and deuteronomy and the command was honor your father and your mother and the one who speaks evil of his mother or father must be put to death when he quoted that he did not say some people who were communing with god in their time and place were trying to figure god out so that's this is what their advice was no he doesn't say that he directly quotes it and says for god said in mark 7 8-13 he was criticizing the pharisees uh because they were leaving the commandment of god and he said you void the word of god by your tradition because back in those days the pharisees by their oral tradition we're adding things to the old testament scriptures and requiring people to uphold these additional traditions and additional laws and jesus looked at them and he says by doing that you actually void the word of god notice how unprogressive jesus was they were progressing they were adding things they were changing things and he was saying you're making void the word of god by being progressive in your view of what people have to do and what they're accountable for and so in that way jesus was very much not progressive in matthew 22 31-32 just before quoting exodus 3 6 again he's quoting an old testament passage and he said have you not read what god said to you so it's very clear that jesus believed that the old testament scriptures were the very word of god now if you're going to believe that the bible is the inspired word of god if this is god talking it's kind of a no-brainer that that's going to be your authority right if you have chosen to obey god to place faith in christ then what he says should be your authority and so that's why christians historically have viewed the bible as authoritative for our lives and what that just means is the bible is the boss of you right it and again this requires understanding the bible in its context the bible is not just a book there are lots of different books that make up the bible written by lots of different authors in lots of different places over lots of time and each one of those books has a genre right so if we're reading a historical narrative we're not going to think that that is a direct command for us today thus you know slaughtering people's sheep right there are things the bible records in the old testament that you would definitely not want to repeat because it's recording history right one of the perfect examples of this is when i got really serious about studying theology and hermeneutics which is the the science of interpreting the bible properly i i came across a verse in judges where one tribe of israelites goes and they say go into the the fields and when the young virgins come out and dance go catch wives for yourselves and i was like what like they're gonna hide in the bushes and when these girls come out dancing they're just gonna run in there and like grab a wife and run off like what okay god you're gonna have to help me with this one well well as i got a little further first of all i realized the genre of that was was historical narrative and it came from the book of judges and in that section it says in those days nobody was obeying god they were all doing what was right in their own eyes it was a dark period of israel's history when they were in utter disobedience to god and so god didn't tell them to do that they just did that they were taking things into their own hands which they should have learned from adam and eve was a really bad idea so we have to we have to look at the genre there are books of the bible that are poetic there's wisdom literature there's epistles that have more direct commands for christian living and so we have to understand that not every sentence you read in the bible is a promise for you and which is a good thing because in the old testament a lot of the promises god made to israel like we love to quote those you know like like all of this this good stuff that happens but there was always a curse that kind of went with the promise like but if you don't do it all your sheep are going to be slaughtered and you're like you don't want that side of the promise so not every promise that god made to a particular person is necessarily for you and then the gospel is our biography we have the biography of jesus in the four gospels so there's there's different genres and just like you would if you get a fiction book like let's say i don't know i'm trying to think i'll say the twilight books okay remember the twilight books because i'm going to talk about one of the twilight books in a minute but if you get the book twilight you know you're not reading history right i mean i i hope i haven't spoiled it for anyone but it's fiction right you're reading a book of fiction so you take it into that context you read the book you read the story and you know that you're not reading a law book you know that you're not reading a historical narrative right we just have to give the bible the same courtesy and understand that it has different genres within so that's why we don't take a historical narrative and turn it into a metaphor right it's a historical narrative it's not a metaphor adam and eve were real people who really existed they're in the genealogies it's important it matters to the gospel and so when we turn that into poetry and say oh well that's just that's just poetry it certainly contains poetic language the genesis account but that's that's what i'm talking about in interpreting the bible properly and and clearly god jesus viewed this as the word of god and thus he viewed it as authoritative for our lives and i think where we see the best picture of this is in matthew chapter four this is the famous scene where jesus is being tempted in the wilderness by the devil now for those of you who might be unfamiliar with the story this is the big test for jesus in his humanity he has just spent 40 days and nights fasting he hasn't eaten he's he's fully human so he's very hungry and he's tired and i've even read some cultural context of where he was and even in the in the geographical area that he was it was common for there to be uh you know i don't know what they call bandits they probably didn't call him bandits back then but you know there there were people that could rove and steal from you and harm you and hurt you uh it was barren and he was hungry so there's all this stuff going on within that context and then the devil comes and tries to tempt him to sin and the first way he tries to tempt him is with what could potentially be the weakest point in jesus humanity which is his physical hunger and so the devil says you know he taunts him a little if you are the son of god turn this stone into bread and so he's he's hitting out his pride well jesus didn't have ungodly pride but he was trying to come in through pride and through his physical need and it's so interesting to me because think about this jesus is god right he has access to all the powers of heaven he could have called down a legion of angels to settle that but what does he do jesus appeals to the authority of the old testament scriptures to fight temptation have you ever really thought about that so when the devil says if you are the son of god turn this stone to bread what three words does jesus say it is written now i think for us modern people we hear like it is written and we just think oh like somebody wrote something down it's written it's written in my book that no for jesus it is written was a direct correlation to the bible being god's word and being inspired and so when we have him say it is written there's a bible scholar again ladies conference little eye candy oh bless these guys this is john wenham he's a great a great bible scholar wrote a great book called christ in the bible i highly recommend you pick that up because it's sort of a short but scholarly treatment of what jesus believed about the old testament scriptures and john winam wrote that it's clear that jesus understood it is written to be equivalent what god says so all those times we have jesus affirming that the bible is the word of god god said this to you it's the commandment of god it's the word of god every time jesus says it is written he's also affirming that this is the word of god in that first century jewish context that's what that meant it doesn't just mean something was written down it had an authoritative sort of context so when jesus is in this wilderness and he's being tempted by the devil three times he appeals to the authority of the scriptures to ward off the temptations all three times and what's so interesting to me is with that first temptation the devil says you know if your son of god turn the stone to bread jesus says it is written what does the devil do he quotes scripture back to jesus correctly he actually uses all the correct words he doesn't like change the words of scripture he uses the exact correct words but he's taking it out of context and so it's just interesting to me that in the temptation scene with jesus we don't actually have a battle over what the word of god says but it's a battle over interpretation it's just interesting to to think about that so how does jesus handle that he's just it's interesting he doesn't even address that he just comes right back with it is also written and then he makes his point that the devil was out of context with the next verse he uses to bring it into the correct context so all three times jesus uses the authority of the scripture to ward off temptation and boy if g if that's jesus view of how if if that's the view of how high scripture is that should be my view too another great book you should get on this is a book called unbreakable by uh andrew wilson he's a pastor from the uk and in that book unbreakable uh unbreakable i think it's called he wrote this consider the way jesus fights he has the resources of heaven available yet he fights by using the authority of the scriptures you know the the authority of the word of god has been questioned since the garden of eden it's literally the oldest trick in the book when the serpent that same serpent that tempted jesus in the wilderness said to eve did god really say and and that's exactly the question that progressive christians are asking today did god really say so jesus used that phrase it is written he and his disciples used that dozens of times in the new testament it was very clear that they were built upon a high view of scripture and a high view of the inspiration and authority of the word of god and i would just say man if we're jesus followers if we're going to call ourselves christians our view should be what jesus view is and it and again everyone has the right to disagree but you can't call it christian if your view is going to disagree with jesus and jesus says the bible is the boss of you all right let's take a look at this next lie this is one we encounter all the time you shouldn't judge you know how many times have you maybe just given an example of biblical morality and somebody inevitably comes and says you shouldn't judge we hear this all the time and it's usually used to shut down the conversation right and often people will quote jesus right because jesus said judge not lest you be judged he did say that he also said you should judge rightly which we're going to get to in a moment but but jesus kind of says this but we're gonna take a look at the at the broader context but what's under this light that you shouldn't judge i think that the philosophical sort of underpinnings of this one is that the greatest virtue in life is tolerance we hear this everywhere everything's all about tolerance these days but let's take a look at the word tolerance really think about what the word tolerance means by definition tolerance means that you disagree with someone but you're going to respect their right to give their opinion it means that you disagree with what they're saying but you're not going to abuse them you're not going to shut down the conversation you're not going to you know harm them or throw them in jail you're going to tolerate their opinion so by nature tolerance requires disagreement but this is one of those words that our culture has sort of flipped on its head right this is one of those words that has gotten a makeover it's gotten a redefinition and today what tolerance means at least on social media in our culture is something more along the lines of celebrating and affirming someone else's opinion the agreement or disagreement is irrelevant it's your job to actually not just affirm but celebrate whatever the viewpoint is that's the the sort of postmodern definition of the word tolerance but notice how that's actually the opposite of what tolerance actually is because classically tolerance requires disagreement but this is all kind of rooted in a world view called pluralism now pluralism just means a whole bunch of ideas existing together but in the religious context religious pluralism is essentially saying that all religious systems are equally valid notice i didn't say it means they're all they should all be able to equally exist it's the affirmation that they're all equally true but this is not logical and we're going to get to that in a moment but the bible says that you should judge rightly that's actually what jesus said so he said judge not that you be not judged and then later he says judge rightly or judge with right judgment let's take a look at the verse from which we find this this is matthew 7 3-5 and it says this why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye or how can you say to your brother let me take the speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye you hypocrite first take the log out of your own eye then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye and what jesus is saying here is not that we shouldn't make judgments about what's going on with our brothers and sisters obviously because he says you will see clearly to help take this back out of your brother's eye the whole point is to help your brother take the speck out of his eye but the point here that jesus is making is that you should use extreme caution when you do so jesus knows our fallen nature he knows our tendency to be prideful and sinful in our instincts to help our brother with his sin right and so the point here is don't do it hypocritically if you're guilty of the same sin or something greater take a look at yourself first make sure you don't have some log in your own eye so that you can't see clearly to help your brother with maybe something that's smaller in his life and so when we help each other when we call each other to repentance when we keep each other accountable as brothers and sisters in christ the point here is to not do it hypocritically we have to do it by first taking a long hard look at ourselves so jesus is actually giving us instructions on how to lovingly uh and carefully can confront each other and jesus also said in john 7 24 do not judge by appearances but judge with right judgment now paul sort of zooms this in a little closer for us in first corinthians now paul was writing to the corinthian church which was a mess the corinthian church they were just a hot mess in paul's day and so he was constantly writing to them stop doing this oh my goodness please start doing this and please stop doing this and there's just there's sexual immorality in corinth it's there's just all kinds of stuff going on that is causing a lot of problems and so paul's thrust in his letter is to help the church not get polluted by the sin of the world and so paul says this for what have i to do with judging outsiders is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge and so this is very interesting because the bible actually calls us as brothers and sisters in christ to judge each other like we don't like that now that does not mean we can make pronouncements on someone's eternal destination god knows that stuff but we are supposed to judge we're supposed to look at the fruit okay again fruit of obedience in someone's life and judge whether there's signs of obedience there first looking at ourselves and paul says you're actually not supposed to judge the world outside the church the world's gonna act like the world you know the world's gonna world but our job is to judge within the church and the point of that was to keep the church pure to keep it from being corrupted and polluted from sin and so paul's using this one example of sexual immorality found he actually puts the man out and delivers his soul to satan that he might be saved so the point was to do these judgments with the with the hope of repentance and restoration because we want these people to be restored back to the church and but if they're not going to repent paul says we have to put them out and that's again so counter-cultural never going to land a netflix special with that but these are our instructions we don't go by the world's instructions right and of course we are to do this lovingly and carefully because there are so many christians who struggle deeply with sin and the last thing they need is for you to rub their nose in it when they're when they're trying when their heart is like god my heart is broken before you help me with this that's not the time to confront and put anyone out because their heart is toward repentance we all have things we struggle with so this is certainly not an excuse to walk around being a sinning inspector but if there's someone in your life in your church and there's a continual habit of sin that they will not repent of and their heart is hard about it and they're like no i'm not going to repent i actually think it's good and i want to live this way and this is all good and i'm going to find a way to twist the scripture to make it work for me that's what this is applying to not a broken person who's struggling with sin does that make sense so you should judge rightly all right let's look at lie number four authenticity is everything right you do you live your truth be true to yourself now i i want to make sure we're not overacting here because there's some good in this right one of the things i think that's very difficult for a lot of people it certainly has been difficult for me on my journey is when you go to a church and like everybody is so victorious and perfect you just feel so out of place because you know just like how hard it was even to get to church today and your kids all of a sudden became demon-possessed at 7 30 on sunday morning and you're just like dragging yourself to church and then you walk in and like the mom that's got the six kids she's still in her workout clothes because i don't know like she worked out somehow with six kids in the morning but like everything is perfect and you just feel like just you just feel terrible because you're like i just i barely got here and my husband and i fought and my kids got demon possessed and i don't know what to do and you know i do wish the church would be more authentic when we come in to know that like everybody who's coming in to church is is coming out of like a big hot mess right it's just life is hard it's messy and i think we should be authentic with each other about our struggles i think we should be able to be authentic about hurt feelings and all kinds of things that we're experiencing the pains and the struggles that we go through we should be so authentic in that stuff because it's only when the light can shine on things that they get exposed and then they can be healed because it can't be healed if it's hiding in the darkness or hiding under perfect clothes and somehow like perfect buns in your workout clothes but i mean if you're like that mom like congratulations that's amazing like i'm super amazed by you but you know it's just we we just need to do that right but what i think is that in our culture the word authenticity again is kind of one of those ones that's gotten a makeover it doesn't really mean to be authentic in how you feel about things in our culture it really more means like man whatever comes out like you just be you be you you be your true authentic self and it doesn't leave room for repentance in fact if anything it almost makes us turn our sins into our little quirks right like this is just me this is just my messy self and we kind of wink at our sin and this is just me being authentic and i think that that's a lie that we're really facing in our culture so we should be really real about who we really are to god and if we're doing that then all of these other lies we've talked about are going to make sense because to be truly authentic would be to say i do have a sick heart without jesus like that's true biblical authenticity but where this is showing up in culture we'll go to a research professor and author named brene brown so she's kind of known for writing about shame and vulnerability and faith and many christians follow her teachings now she i believe she does claim to be a christian she was raised catholic i believe and then deconverted and reconverted back to the episcopal church would be a mainline protestant type of church that would affirm more theologically liberal conclusions and by that theological liberalism is really the theology that underpins progressive christianity so you have things like um denying the supernatural events in the bible you have sort of denying the deity of jesus and i don't i'm not speaking directly for her but i'm just explaining theological liberalism that uh is taught in these mainline protestant churches and you know so christianity becomes more of like what you do in the world being a good neighbor things like that but the atonement the you know brokenness of humanity all that that's going to be kind of swept to the side or off the table altogether and so she wrote this in one of her books she said true belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world true belonging doesn't require you to change who you are it requires you to be who you are now notice that she's hitting on a common longing right we all have this longing deep within us to belong everyone wants to feel that but in her book braving the wilderness she teaches that each of us have an inherent divinity now i want to i want to camp here for a moment because this is an idea that's borrowed from new age thought and it has made massive inroads into progressive christianity and largely through a guy named richard rohr so richard rohr is a catholic friar he's a franciscan friar and by the way from the catholics that i've talked to he's not in good standing with the catholic church he's sort of like you know we have our progressives they have their progressives but richard rohr has gained a tremendous following especially among millennials and he's very grandfatherly he's very warm he's very genial he comes off very disarming a lot of people have credited richard rohr with bringing healing to them to themselves spiritually and he's just so incredibly influential it's almost impossible to calculate virtually every progressive christian writer and leader that i've read and interacted with credits him as at least being someone they follow and glean wisdom from some even call him a spiritual father and a mentor we mentioned jenn hattmaker she referred to him as a spiritual father and as a mentor and she said one of the best teachers we have today and i know we're talking about brene brown but we can't really talk about this idea without bringing richard rohr into the picture and so this inherent divinity that brene brown teaches how that's manifesting in the church is this idea now we've kind of gone through the gospel step by step you know the creation the fall of man the need for atonement jesus covering our sin becoming enough for us how that's taught in the progressive church is really starting with creation so as christians we believe god created the world he is not the world he created the world he's entirely separate from it he's imminent in it and he's transcendent from it so he's like really close and really far away all at the same time and as christians we believe that god is everywhere all at the same time he is omnipresent and that's because he's not contained by a body god is spirit he doesn't have a physical body that keeps him contained into one space so he's everywhere all at the same time now the in many progressive christian circles and at least the ones that follow richard rohr they start with a completely different view of creation so creation in that mindset is considered the first incarnation and so richard rohr will take jesus and he separates jesus from christ and he'll say like you know christ isn't jesus last name which yes i mean we know we know christ isn't jesus last name christ is the title of messiah jesus is the christ right he's the messiah the promised messiah but in rohr's view christ is this cosmic reality that can be found anywhere there is creation so um richard ward teaches that jesus was a man who sort of caught on to this christ consciousness and he achieved this type of enlightenment in fact he says jesus is a model and an example exemplar of the human and divine united in one body but that was something jesus sort of attained and and then it's that we can also attain that we can actually follow jesus example as a model to become aware of this christ consciousness and then we can actually say i am the christ this is very this is put very very plainly in richard word's book the universal christ you are the christ you are the christ um this carpet is the christ because it's made of physical matter it's part of creation and so this is a view called panentheism a view of creation called pan-enthism now this is a close cousin to the view pantheism uh pantheism is more of an eastern belief and that's that god is the universe right and i hope this will make sense of so many things you hear in culture when people say like the universe is guiding me that's a pantheistic view of creation and that's the view that god or some kind of divine essence is all physical matter it's all of creation now the in the progressive paradigm there are very few progressive christians who would outright say i am a pan-theist but many will openly admit richard rohr included that they are pan-end theists and so what that means is the word pan means all theism is god or theist so pantheist god is all pan-enthist is all in god so god is in all and all is in god now that might sound a lot like our view of omnipresence god is everywhere all the same time but omnipresence doesn't it teaches that god's not contained within a physical object so there can't be um just like a more of the divine essence in this table than there is somewhere else so if you come put your hands on this table i mean sadly there are a lot of churches that sort of have that view i think incidentally where they might think an object has more divine power than something else but that's a pan and theistic view to creation and so this led richard rohr even to write in his book how he looked deeply into the eyes of his dog i mean it's going to sound funny but it's really it's really sad when you think about how many people are buying into this look deeply into the eyes of his dog and his dog is the christ the chairs you're sitting in is the christ now think about this if you have this inherent divinity which by the way this is all borrowed from new age this is foreign to church history this is foreign to the bible this is foreign to historic christianity and it's very alive and well in the new age so if you believe that you have this spark of divinity in you if this divine essence is already in you where are you going to look to find god you're going to look inside you're going to look inside yourself right remember i said progressive christianity and some of these cultural lies they start with the self and the end with the self not to harp on this point too long but i i would like to bring up one more example because this is an example of how this is really getting into even broader culture and the church have any of you heard of a book called untamed by glennon doyle okay a few people have heard of that book about two i believe it was two years ago it was one of the top selling books across all genres on the new york times bestseller list amazon kind of the same thing like with the rachel hollis book it was wildly popular and the book we're going to get to this author in a moment but the book's called untamed and it's essentially the story of glennon doyle who started as a christian mommy blogger and as she sort of evolved in her faith and in her idea of reality she came to the point where she decided it was time to leave her husband and come out as a lesbian and marry women's soccer star abby wambach and so she made that announcement untamed as essentially their love story of how that all came to be but she describes a specific point when she was trying to seek after god and try to find the divine and so what she did is she went into her closet for 10 minutes a day and she described how she would just try to tune out all the thoughts and sink lower and lower into herself and she sunk low enough into herself that she discovered what she describes as liquid gold it's this feeling of warmth and now she she calls it the knowing and interesting that the knowing is spelled with a capital k so now she consults this knowing that she has found within herself whenever she makes decisions he says if i need to make a decision and i feel the liquid gold if it feels warm i say yes if it feels cold i say no so essentially she's teaching women to find this divine essence inside themselves and use her feelings to make decisions and she even warns against your intellect she says you know all of your your logical thinking that's your training and and that's just the indoctrination that you've been given as you grow up you have to like move that aside and go with this this knowing and all of this is based on this idea of inherent divinity now you can understand at this point if you don't believe that humans are inherently sinful of course you're not going to believe they're separated from god in fact they are god they are the christ they have that divine essence inside themselves you can understand maybe why the atonement sounds so horrific why would jesus come and be crucified on a cross when we were never separated from god in the first place in fact richard says that outright in his book he says the only thing that separates you from god is the thought that you're separated from god jenn hattmaker calls that that separation self-imposed it's something we do in our own minds we just have to realize how beloved we are and then we will reconnect with that divine essence that's already in there so you can see how dangerous this type of view is and yes it is dangerous because if the christian gospel is true and you are broken and you are separated from god and you do need a savior that is a damning ideology so what's under this lie that authenticity is everything i think what's under this lie is just that humans don't really need to be saved this is the divinity of all mankind if you need salvation look inside yourself god is there but as christians we don't want to be true to ourselves we want to be true to who we are in christ and the bible has a lot to say about that but i want to revisit this gospel summary that we read in the beginning from rachel hollis now that we've kind of gone this far let's read this again with fresh eyes i studied the gospel and finally grasped the divine knowledge that i am loved and worthy and enough as i am that's a really scary gospel when you know what the bible actually teaches about it so the bible doesn't teach that authenticity is everything i think true authenticity we should live in but it's not everything because you're not even always going to be able to do that perfectly right but the bible talks about holiness holiness is everything god is holy it's one of his attributes holiness means god can have no unity with sin that's the definition god can have no unity with sin well we're in quite a predicament now because we have sin right but this is where the gospel just shines because if we put our trust in jesus his righteousness is transferred onto us and every single day once that journey begins every single day we become more and more like him and for some people it's a really slow process it won't look like much on the outside and with other people it seems like it's overnight they're just like radically different god knows but it's a process called sanctification and it just means being made more and more like jesus every day a theologian charles ryrie put it like this god gives you light on something and you respond to that light and then he gives you more and then and then you respond to that and he gives you more and he just keeps bringing you along and that's that's sanctification it's the process by which we're being made more holy and we're being made every single day more holy jesus said in luke 9 23 if anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me when we think about taking up our cross as christians you know i think our tendency as modern people is to think of that as a victorious thing i mean think about um you know we make crosses out of gold and we wear them on our necks and that's great i have one and i wear it and i love that but in our context today we look back on the cross and we think that was jesus victory over death like that's a victorious thing but we have to understand what jesus was saying within the first century context that he was saying it in the roman empire the cross was an instrument of death and it wasn't just any kind of death it was the most embarrassing horrifically painful and shameful death that you could possibly imagine roman citizens were not crucified it was saved for the slaves and the traitors to the state this was not a way to die honorably this was a dishonorable death not only was it the most physically painful thing they could think of but to be crucified was to be utterly shamed now think about that when jesus says pick up your cross daily yes it's victory we look back and know it's victory but it's also like sometimes it brings shame in the world's eyes the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing right when we pick up our cross we're saying i'm willing to be counted a fool for the name of christ alongside him i'm going to participate in the sufferings of christ by being willing to say something difficult even though it might mean losing my job even though it might mean being called a horrible name or being shamed in my society romans 12 2 says do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of god what is good and acceptable and perfect so this is sanctification right we're transformed by the renewing of our minds jesus when he was praying in john 17 said sanctify them by your truth your word is truth we are sanctified by the word of god it's so important that we get that in our hearts and minds every single day even if you don't have a ton of time i recommend take one scripture verse a day and try to memorize it even if you can't sit down for 30 minutes take eight or ten words strung together into a sentence and memorize it and that keeps it in your heart and mind all day long you can just repeat that what was that repeat it just the one thing and this is all the process of sanctification john says i believe in second john walk in the light what a great solution for all the problems we have as christians right we never can quite be good enough and you know we we may not see certain things god says walk in the light what happens when you walk in the light you let the light shine on everything and god will show you he'll show you he knows you can't be perfect that's why he came but if you walk in the light and let him have access to shine his light on every part then sanctification can really happen so sanctification if i were going to give a theological class on the doctrine of sanctification i'm pretty sure i would just show this gif and then walk away like mic drop this is sanctification i'm sure he was okay but i mean this is it this is sanctification you'll never be good enough but you can respond to the little bit and you might fall a little bit but that elevator's just gonna keep going up right all right let's get to this last lie here speak your truth now i mentioned glennon doyle who started out as a christian mommy blogger she gained a tremendous following at her blog called monastery oh she's down to earth she's sweet she's funny she's a terrific writer all the things that attract people to a platform kind of celebrity person she wrote books she's been on oprah and about three years ago like i mentioned she divorced her husband and married women's soccer star abby wambach now the announcement of her uh marrying abby or being with abby was met with the praise and accolades of her fans and when she introduced her hundreds of thousands of facebook followers now it's over a million and her instagram's over a million now uh when she introduced her hundreds of thousands of facebook followers to abby she ended her message with this what the world needs in order to grow in order to relax in order to find peace in order to become brave is to watch one woman at a time [Music] live her truth in her book untamed her basic proposition is that the world is broken because it's completely set up as a system against women and she says really it's christianity that has done this now she does still claim to be a christian but she says that you know the more conservative christianity or whatever has built this system that has been propped up in the favor of men it's pushed women down and she goes back to the garden of eden she goes back to the the story of eve being deceived in the garden because as the story goes the serpent came to eve first and as we learned later in the new testament eve was deceived adam actually wasn't adam knowingly ate the fruit she was actually tricked right and so in the story glennon says we need to stop seeing eve as a warning eve should not be our warning she should be our model we need to look at what eve did eve owned her truth she spoke her truth she had a longing and a wanting and she owned it and she ate the apple glennon doyle tells you as a christian woman own your wanting this is a quote eat the apple and she says this is what will help women come out of this oppressive ideology you know that men should be leaders in the home and leaders in the church and all it takes is one brave woman at a time to live her truth and i just want to think about this logically for a moment am i supposed to take that advice i don't think she wants me living my truth how would that go i don't think it'd go very well what's under this lie what's under this lie is that truth is relative right this is post-modernism in a nutshell what's true for you is true for me i mean no no that's not it what's true for you is true for you what's true for me is true for me and so relativism is basically the idea that all points of view are equally valid so remember our idea of religious pluralism where you have all these different religious ideas sort of being considered equally valid that's based on this view of truth that's relativism now the accurate definition of truth and this may seem so obvious but like people go to college to learn this stuff truth is a thought statement or belief that lines up with reality that's what truth actually is but a lot of people try to redefine it to say truth is what you make it to be it's what you think it is and that is relativism which would say my truth might be different than your truth so we can't really like say that i can't say you're wrong and you can't say i'm wrong because that's just true for you and and that might be true for me but this violates a law of logic called the law of non-contradiction which basically says that two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense this is a very basic principle of logic and critical thinking and so if we look at these two apples if i say this is a photograph of two apples and at the same time i say this is a photograph of two oranges those statements cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense because they contradict each other now i could say this is a photograph of two apples this is a photograph of two hands those don't contradict each other because both are true there are two hands in the photograph there are two apples but if i said this is a photograph of two apples and this is a photograph of a building those contradict each other they can't both be true at the same time in the same sense now theoretically speaking both statements could actually be wrong but they can't both be true now i'm going to give you an example of this in the religious sphere so islam many people are unaware that islam has like a whole christology that means a theology of jesus jesus is present in the teachings of islam they view jesus as a great man a prophet they believe a lot of the same things we do they actually believe he's coming again there's a lot of similar points about jesus with islam but there's one thing islam teaches about jesus and that's that jesus never died he didn't die on the cross now christianity teaches that jesus was resurrected from the dead the death part's kind of important right now islam teaches jesus never died christianity teaches jesus died on the cross those can't both be true at the same time in the same sense he either died or he didn't and if he didn't die that means his resurrection wasn't really a resurrection and that means the entire belief system of christianity would be false if islam is right then christianity is false but if christianity is correct then islam is false high stakes high stakes when it comes to truth so when i was researching truth kind of to put together in this talk and even to put in my book and some of you have already read this in my book but i googled the health benefits of bacon because because bacon and i learned so many fun facts about bacon i learned that over a hundred thousand tons of it are consumed worldwide each year it's high protein low carb gluten-free it contains a good balance of every essential amino acid score i found an article that claims that it will give you glowing skin and that it will cure adult disease i don't know what that is but it cures it so obviously what i gleaned in a five-minute search on the health benefits of pork was a mixture of facts and there was some fantasy so how do we wade through all this information and discover what's true like should i just pile a bunch of bacon in a bowl and call it a gluten-free salad like i'm not saying don't do that but but the point is that it doesn't matter what i believe about bacon it doesn't matter what i think about it it doesn't there's no my truth when it comes to bacon because the consequences of me eating bacon are going to bear out in reality outside of my own subjective opinion it's going to have some kind of an effect on my body on my blood pressure on my heart health on my thighs it's going to have an effect that will be completely completely irrelevant what i think about it now this kind of comes to the difference between a subjective truth claim and an objective truth claim so you know oprah says speaking your truth is the most powerful tool that we have but i think that speaking the truth is the most powerful tool that we have so let's go to jesus for this jesus said i am the way the truth and the life so the bible teaches that truth is actually a person truth is jesus and the christian historical belief system is deeply rooted in objective truth facts logic and historical data have you really thought about that every other religion i can think of if you look at the origins of islam you look at the origins of buddhism philosophical schools of thought every one of them start with some guy like in a cave or under a tree he gets some kind of mystical revelation about how to live and then he gets a bunch of people to follow him and the teachings you know they work the buddhist eightfold path uh islam with muhammad receiving the quran and dictating the quran but it's not rooted in objective truth right it's not it's not something you can prove outside of the opinion of the person saying it it might be a practice that works for someone but that's not rooted in truth but christianity stands or falls based on the resurrection being an actual event in real history like we mentioned before paul said if christ has not been raised your faith's in vain are still in your sins christianity stands or falls based on facts logic and history so you know i got to go back to ice cream because like i don't know like ice cream is my jam so if i say pecan praline is the best flavor of ice cream i'm making a claim about reality but it's not a claim that you can prove outside of my own mind because someone else could say chocolate is the best ice cream there's no verifiable way to discover the best flavor of ice cream and that's because that's a subjective truth claim that's a subjective claim about reality it's based on the subject essentially it's an opinion it's a preference but let me ask you this how many of you are yourselves type 1 diabetic or you know somebody who's type 1 diabetic anybody know someone okay so now with ice cream you can pick your favorite flavor there's no way to prove that outside of you in objective reality it's just an opinion but let's take that opinion and apply it to diabetes if if i say to you oh you have type 1 diabetes well the best medicine for type 1 diabetes is vitamin c what's going to happen to the person with diabetes they're going to die because the claim insulin is the best medicine for diabetes is verifiable in reality it doesn't matter what you think about it so this would be in the realm of objective truth claims so you kind of see the difference now here's the problem with our culture and our society opinions and preferences people are putting the category of religious belief in the ice cream category there's really no such thing as a relativist in the world if if you go to the bank and you're a relativist and you have 808 dollars in your bank account and you go to the teller and say i'd like to withdraw my 808 dollars and the teller says oh i see just the word bob yeah just says bob here that's just your truth you know if you think you have 808 dollars that's just your truth you go live your truth and i'm just gonna live my truth because my truth says bob how's that gonna go nobody's really a relativist they're gonna expect that money to be there right people are fine saying there's objective truth when it comes to medicine when it comes to uh banking and numbers and mathematics although just google two plus two equals five and even that's being completely um changed like in the last five minutes uh so but but most people just walking around the world are going to agree that there are certain objective truths but what they've done is they've taken morality and religion and they've moved it into the subjective category and for many religions they do belong in the subjective category because their teachings their rituals try this see if it works for you meditate this way see if it works for you try this uh this step you can take on the latter or whatever and it might work for you and that is subjective but christianity is in the insulin category but here's the problem if christianity is true then everybody is going to be in the insulin category when it comes to religion because of the resurrection of jesus if christ has not been raised then your preaching is in vain in your faith is in vain and if christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you're still in your sins i mean paul is basically saying you can actually prove christianity to be false now that sounds scary to christians but it's actually a good thing it makes christianity falsifiable which means it's in the objective insulin category god either exists or he doesn't it doesn't matter what our opinion is about it jesus was who he said he was or he's not it doesn't matter what our opinion is about it jesus was resurrected from the dead or he wasn't it doesn't matter what we think about it christianity is testable it's backed by evidence reason logic philosophy archaeology science the evidence for the existence of god is so overwhelming i really think people would have to be willfully shutting their eyes to it that was a question that was settled for me really early and very easily i mean just think about this scientifically we know that the universe began to exist at a certain point we know that all space-time matter exploded into existence out of nothing now no matter how old you think the earth is the big bang like we shouldn't be fighting against the big bang the big bang read genesis 1 1 and god created the heavens and the earth bang i it's frank turek says i'm not afraid of the big bang i just know who banged it right scientifically speaking anything that begins to exist must have a cause well if the universe all space-time matter exploded into existence out of nothing what is nothing it's not something it's nothing then it had to have a cause well what would cause the entire universe to burst into existence out of nothing well it would have to be something that's outside of that nothing it would have to be something that's outside of space it would have to be spaceless it would have to be timeless i.e eternal it would have to be immaterial i.e a spirit it would have to make decisions about how things are going to go because there's so much intelligence in the universe i.e it would have to be a personal being well who does that sound like i mean it's it's amazing the evidence even that people have gotten saved over that physicists atheist physicists have gotten saved because of the big bang they're like stephen hawking one of the famous physicists in the world came up with that whole theory and when he realized the the implications for the existence of god he actually changed his model to rule that out that wasn't his original model there's a movie called i think it's called i'm gonna get it wrong it might be called the theory of everything i'm not totally sure but it's kind of the story of that of how he was like really uncomfortable with his calculations einstein was uncomfortable with the cosmological uh stuff he was discovering about the theory of relativity and all this i mean i could just go off on this it's just amazing the evidence is so grand you'd have to willfully ignore it so there's no truth there's no truth there's no my truth when it comes to bacon and there's no my truth when it comes to god now i want to close this out by saying that speaking your truth probably won't offend that many people if you say well this is just my truth that always that puts it in a category where they're like okay that's your truth that's good like you're not going to impose that on me but if you start going around speaking the truth it's considered offensive just to claim to know the truth or be certain about the truth in our culture is considered offensive to be that arrogant to say i'm gonna make a claim about reality but this is nothing new like we are not having to face anything that people haven't faced that christians haven't faced for 2000 years in second corinthians paul talks about spreading the gospel and he says we spread the fragrance of the knowledge of christ so the the knowledge of christ has a smell it has a fragrance and paul said that some people when they smelled it it was like life and beauty and hope but to others it smelled like death the same message to some to those who are being saved smelled like life and hope and healing and everything good in the whole world but to others who are perishing smelled like death it smelled like a rotting corpse it was disgusting ew i don't want anything to do with that and i think this is something us in this cultural moment we need to get this through our heads because i think so often we want to find a way to make the gospel appeal to everyone you can't do it you can't make the gospel appeal to somebody who hates god but to those who are being saved it's going to smell beautiful now that's no excuse to be a jerk we want to present the gospel in the most winsome persuasive loving way we can but it will never be loving enough for a culture who hates god so spread the fragrance that's what paul said we just spread the fragrance and to summit's life and to summit's death i experienced this firsthand when i wrote a blog post reviewing the rachel hollis book girl wash your face now up to this point i had started a little blog that i thought you know maybe some old zoey girl fans will find it or maybe some of my old high school friends will find it and maybe i can speak into their lives just a little bit of help along the way of the journey i went through and so you know i was used to getting a couple hundred people viewing my blogs and then when people started uh i think i had one post before this that kind of got a little momentum but when i wrote this post at the time there really wasn't a shareable christian answer to this book and and i knew that and so i kind of suspected that it might get a little more traction than some of my other pieces largely due to the popularity of her book and they're not really being a christian response out there to it yet and so because i knew that maybe some new people might read this i just put a little summary of the gospel at the bottom because i just wanted to make sure people could read the gospel and this post went viral within two weeks it had over two million views it had been picked up by several other websites like the gospel coalition and crosswalk and for every mom and it was it just it was huge and it was really overwhelming because the emails started pouring in right and interestingly most of the responses had to do with the gospel summary that was toward the end of it and i would open one email and it would say something like i am in tears thank you for this this is life to my soul this is just exactly what i needed this makes this makes everything come together for me and then i'd open the next one and it would be literally cussing me out and that was the difference so for some it was beauty and life and hope into others it smelled like the stench of death and it's just it had to do with the gospel people don't want to be told they're sinners if they don't really believe they are and the gospel is not going to be beautiful to someone who doesn't know they're a sinner but if you know you're a sinner then it's beautiful and so our job is to speak the truth our job is not to shrink back from speaking the truth or try to make it so palatable that the message changes we should speak to people in their needs we should speak to people where they're at we should minister peace and comfort if people have had bad church experiences or abusive church experiences we're seeing a lot of that right now but jesus hates that it's not the gospel that's to blame for that the gospel has an answer for that jesus was particularly hard on religious leaders who abused the sheep don't ever forget that and his gospel is life and beauty to those who are being saved but to those who are perishing it smells like death but let me tell you something the holy spirit hasn't changed we don't have a different holy spirit now than the early christians had when they were martyred in the first and second centuries we have the same holy spirit that christians had when they were burned in nero's gardens we have the same holy spirit the christians had through communist and marxist regimes when they were thrown in gulags and concentration camps we have the same holy spirit with us that was with the christians who helped save the jews during nazi germany and the holocaust we have the same holy spirit with us that christians have had for 2000 years and you may not think that you have the boldness or the courage to speak truth into a culture that is so hostile to what we believe but that's okay because you're not enough but jesus is enough and you have the holy spirit and that's the same holy spirit that has empowered christians for 2000 years and i just want to encourage you as you leave here today think about this think about you know i was just reading today and i think i already said this where the bible tells us test yourself make sure you're really in the faith if you haven't done that do that are you a cultural christian have you just been coming to church and reading your bible and maybe trying to work your way into salvation trying to do all the good things for god going on all the mission trips reading enough bible verses not sinning enough and you think that's your salvation it's not it's filthy rags to jesus he wants you he wants you to put your trust in him let him be enough for you and then he will take you on that journey where he gives you light and you respond and he gives you more light and you respond and you will be continually sanctified as you go maybe that's you maybe you need maybe you have a conviction right now from the holy spirit that you haven't spoken the truth that you have sort of pulled the punch or you've been intimidated by culture maybe you're afraid you might you know you work with people who are not going to like you if you say certain things and i'm not saying don't be wise be wise there's a time to say things in a time not to but if you know in your heart you have compromised that's the holy spirit showing you that but you know the good news is and this is something that no other religious system can give you this is no worldly philosophy can give you forgiveness true forgiveness cleansing repentance and you are free and clean and god just keeps showing you the light it's a beautiful story the gospel is beautiful and we have the same holy spirit that the church has had for 2000 years let's pray father i lift up to you every woman who's in this room today i know that the holy spirit is working in hearts right now for some of us maybe we have a specific situation in our mind where we know we've compromised maybe we've uh i could i don't know what it would be in just specific situations but holy spirit i pray that your conviction and your encouragement because your conviction it's your kindness that leads us to repentance in in your conviction you don't condemn for there is no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus but there is conviction and you will show us when we need to repent and when we need to lean into you to help us to live for you because we can't do it on our own and lord for those in here who the holy spirit might be convicting that maybe i've never really done that i've never put saving faith in jesus i i've been trying to earn it i've been trying to do it by my own works and maybe in this moment this is the moment to say jesus i surrender to you i repent of my sins i make you lord of my life i give you this life and and recognize that all of my attempts to do this on my own and by my works are filthy rags before you will you take my life make me yours adopt me into your family and lord maybe there's other things you're convicting people of or speaking into their hearts and i pray in jesus name that no one would leave here without the encouragement and refreshing of your holy spirit we thank you lord that you have put every single person on this earth for such a time as this right now this is no accident that we live in the time and in the place in which we do and lord we've had it pretty easy here in this country for a really long time and it seems like that's changing but lord we want to repent of any time where we have shrunk back from speaking the truth and lord i just pray a special something over these ladies here living in portland where there is so much darkness and seems to be even more advanced in certain places and i thank you lord that you have given all these women the courage and the boldness to live for you and i pray that they would leave this place encouraged and in jesus name we pray amen

Channel: Athey Women

Views: 1,584

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Athey Creek, Athey Creek Women, Devoted, Devoted Podcast, Through the Bible, Brett Meador, Amy McReynolds, Bible Study, Women's Ministry

Id: _0L6qnDLPuI

Length: 73min 4sec (4384 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021