Speak not evil. This is the second question. Speak not evil of one another that. He that speaks evil of his brother and judges, his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. James 4 verse 11.
That's reading from the Old King James Translation. The second part of the question is: in what way do we judge the law? Which I really kind of skipped over that, but I'll just go off the top of my head because there's nothing else up there. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville.
Pastor Rick is currently teaching through a topical series. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Predestination judging others is the title of Pastor Rick's message. Here he is: Hebrews 12:25. See that you do not.
But again, the Pronouns. See that you do not refuse him who speaks. Oh, wait a minute, I can refuse him?
Well, you know, the the great Apostle Paul, who I believe wrote Hebrews. Is saying we can refuse God out of free will. The Calvinists say, no, no, you got that all wrong. For if they did not escape who refused him. Who spoke on earth, how much shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven?
These three topics on Calvinism, Reformed theology, and predestination, I would rather not. speak on. as a personal preference. But as a pastor, I'm obligated. The Lord led me to put the question boxes out there.
The Lord led me to answer each question. This one incidentally had a smiley face on it. I said last week's rapture one had a smiley face. It didn't head high. But this one had a smiley face, and that was kind of nice.
Kind of breaks the tension a little bit. Anyway. For human choice, For human choice. According to Hebrews 12:25 and Hebrews 2:3. It's not invalid.
Jesus said, I would. But you were not willing. That would be kind of weird if they couldn't, anyway, because he didn't give them the ability to do will.
So you see, can you see how crazy this doctrine is? And then you say, well, wait, but these people that push this doctrine are such respectful people, they're so knowledgeable.
Well, if the king has no clothes, you know, I don't want to take too much of my time, but he can give the king a suit. That it is invisible. Two the ignorant people, but the really smart people will see the suit. And it was all a s it's it was a lie. And so the king is walking around naked in public.
And the rich people are acting like, boy, he just looks wonderful in that thing, because they don't want to be perceived as being dumb. It's such a funny little. That's not an aphorism. Anyway. So some of that goes human humans can be guilty of this.
So this doctrine of Predestination as pre-choice is actually fatalism, and it's not in the Bible.
So, to answer your question once more, the difference between predestination and free will is not the valid question. The question is, how did predestined turn into pre-choice? How did predestined turn into something that wipes away all the invitations and the free will of people in the Scriptures, the desires that come if you thirst? How did that one word Turn it all upside down. And it is.
Or speak to almost any Christian, and they'll say, well, you know, I don't really understand that one. Just look it up in the Greek. You'll find it doesn't mean what they say it means. Anyway. We come now to the second part of the question.
Why do so many get it wrong? As I mentioned, free will derangement syndrome. You would have mocked that 10 years ago, what? But now that you're seeing it actually something that can happen, a whole country can go crazy. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, there have been others.
I think part of their appeal is The Accreditation that goes with it. All of the people that really push this forward are formally educated people. There's nothing wrong with being formally educated. In fact, it's critical I want the guy who designed the bridge that I drive over to have been formally educated to benefit from the resources of the engineering school or the university's resources. In fact, if you're an engineering student, you're not out rioting.
You're so busy working to get the grades to pass, you don't have time for that stuff. That's genuine science at work, especially civil engineering, which would design the bridge.
Well, anyway. It's an entrenched sacred cow now, as are other things in other fields. Clinical, not developmental necessarily, but clinical psychology is a sacred cow. You can't touch it. It says, where's science when it's not?
Evolution. Evolution says where science? When it's more a religion than a science. You've heard me say all these things before. But wait until the Calvinists hears me on YouTube.
Then you're going to say, you know, it was worth sitting through that again. All right, I've got to remember it's Wednesday nights. Wednesday night, things don't fly too well up from up here. Anyway, coming back to this. This doctrine requires people have a little bit more in education, like low, middle class and up.
You won't see them preaching total depravity, limited atonement, irresistible grace in the slums of the world. in the hood And the barrios. They won't take it there. And it has to be taught. As I mentioned, a little child will come to Christ just at the simple gospel.
But they will not say, wait, mommy. That's Total depravity you're talking about. Is that irresistible grace? If I understand you correctly, he's going to get that. The child's not going to say, Is God forcing me into heaven?
They're going to receive it. And they pride themselves in not being emotional thinkers, but that is precisely what I think they are. The question now is: why do they do it? I'm giving you my opinion. Because the facts do not support their conclusions.
And we just took predestination. We didn't touch, oh, we did a little bit of depravity. But the limited atonement, we'll get to the irresistible grace. Perseverance of the saints sounds so glorious, but what they mean by we don't know if you're saved till you drop dead preaching Christ. It's like, man, where do you come up with this stuff?
We're almost done. Thomas Sowell, If you don't know who he is, he is worth listening to. And he has many of his books on audio free, for free. He said, when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
That's Calvinism to me. People want to hear that. This is for the really intellectual ones that can really understand what's going on. And it appeals to a lot of people. Not all of them.
Some of them have just been exposed to this from their childhood. That's all they know. They're never going to give it up. I've never seen a converted Calvinist, there may be one out there. The doctrine, as I mentioned, if you dare challenge it.
you're gonna run into a firestorm. In fact, Their doctrine to make it s do it this way. John MacArthur was asked: if you could have been with Jesus in the days of the apostles. What questions would you ask? And one of his answers was this.
I would ask him to clarify the difference between Sovereignty and volition. Volition is the act. of using your free will.
So he still doesn't understand. I could have answered that question for him, abandoned Calvinism, and you'll understand free will and sovereignty at the same time. And because it's coming from such a figure, well, he must know more than I. And so therefore I will kowtow. to his opinion, and that's a mistake.
You have to run it through the scripture. The doctrine to suggest it is wrong. When I said you run into a firestorm back in the 1900s, Jack. Horner was I don't know if he's still alive, a paleontologist. And all he did was suggest that T-Rex was a scavenger.
And oh man. The paleontologists will rise from the dead. and attack him. Just for suggesting. That T Rex must might not have been a predator.
but a scavenger. Human nature. The question, why do you think they're that way? The humans do this. They have so much invested into something, they're not going to abandon it, and they won't receive criticisms, and they will lambast anything that goes against their hypothesis.
Last point on this. The reason why they write so voluminously. on this single topic. is because they're trying to convince themselves. I am convinced of that.
Because The Trinity doctrine is a hundred times more important than this. If you never settle the Calvinistic, Arminian, free will debate, fine, you're still going to go to heaven believing in Christ. But the Trinity, you begin to assail the deity of Christ, for example, you will end up in hell. More than likely, you are denying the person of Christ. Why don't they write so much material about the deity of Christ instead of wasting so much energy?
Five-volume sets, ten-volume sets, Birkhoff, systematic theology. It's all trying to push this thing up a hill.
Okay, that's that. And I don't know if you're happy. I don't know if you're going to come and say, you know what, thank you.
So glad you put that. Or at the end, like, man, do we have to do the other two on Calvinism? I don't know what's going to happen. Anyway, here's the next question. Maybe this was the one with the smiley face.
Out of the smiley face, I liked it so much. Anyhow, coming back to this. Speak not evil, this is the second question. Speak not evil of one another that. He that speaks evil of his brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law.
James 4 verse 11. That's reading from the Old King James Translation. The second part of the question is: in what way do we judge the law? Which I really kind of skipped over that, but I'll just go off the top of my head because there's nothing else up there. Oh, there, that's funny.
But the other jokes that weren't about me, they weren't so funny. Anyway. What does this mean? That's part of the question. The Old King James is not a bad translation.
It's just not Up to date. with our vernacular. The way we talk. And that causes us to often go back and have to reestablish what the verse is actually saying because the English is older, and the New King James really helps out there. I've gone into why I don't prefer The Minority texts, where there's only a few hundred copies, the Alexandrian text versus the Byzantine or the majority text, Assyrian.
which have thousands. Fragments. And whole books of the Bible. I've gone into that, so I'm not going to take any more time on that at the moment. But I will reread the verse in the New King James, so it might help.
But it's pretty close. Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
Well, are you going to argue with God? Just to answer the question about judging the law, are you going to argue with God about what he said? If he says, love your brother as you love yourself, are you going to argue that that is bad theology? That shouldn't no, you're not going to do that, because then you will be attacking him. And so James is writing to Jews.
And he's saying Don't be messing with what we're taught in the scripture. And these are Jewish Christians that he is working with, and it had to be one of the hardest jobs on the earth at that point in history. Still pretty hard. To wrench people out of their culture into the culture of the kingdom. Which has to do with being a new creation of new wine skin And of course um Well, that would stay there.
So coming back to this, we are to judge the actions and the behaviors. Anything less would protect criminals.
So you have to start out with, okay, we, judgment, God has given me reason, even though. Man fell into sin. We still have the ability to reason. If we couldn't judge people, then nobody would go to jail. There'd be no such thing as crime.
So just by reason alone, we begin to solve the. The puzzle Years ago when we did the build out for this place, we hired an architect. And the architect had a draftsman. I don't remember his name, but he was one of the most abrasive little. He was abrasive.
And he was so abrasive when we finished the job And I met with the architect. We you know, the guy is a problem. And he kind of wrote, Yeah, I know. And I should have said, what is he, your brother-in-law? Why don't you fire that guy?
And that's why he didn't get the next job. simply because of that other guy. that worked in his office.
Well, I judged that guy's behavior because anytime we called with a problem, it was another problem on top of the problem, him. Control. Of course we exercise judgment. The context of James chapter three and four is accountability. without abusing it.
And this word that we're considering here, speak not evil of one another, really. Is a single word. Speak not evil, is a single Greek word. And it means do not slander.
Now if you say, well, the Greek is not enough, well the context should be then, because here's the context that goes along with the Greek. Rereading the verse: Speak not evil of one another. He that speaks evil of his brother.
Well, that's slander. Whoosh. The devil means slanderer. And so, James is not talking about judging a person's sinful behavior. He is talking about Maliciously and falsely attacking people.
And you see this when people are under pressure. when they really don't like another person. When they want to stop another person's progress, when they want to take something from them, when they want to belittle them in the eyes of others, when the person is up to no good, they will. slander another person to get what they want. Happens in the corporate world a lot.
We hear about, you know, people stepping on people as they climb the corporate ladder.
Well, that's part of it, slandering people. It is a vice of the tongue.
So James is not for forbidding conf Fronting those in sin. Because it's elsewhere commanded in Scripture. That's what we're going to spend the rest of our time with. Not too many comments will be necessary. Corinthians 6.
Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judge hold on, is the judge of the world here the elect? Are we going to be judging the Calvinists? Let's see how that falls apart. You have to leave the word world the world.
Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the in the smallest matters? Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life, if then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life. Do you appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge?
I say this to your shame. It's so. That there is not a wise man among you, not even one who will be able to judge between his brethren.
So Paul is saying, you got problems in the church with two Christians? You sue each other. in a secular court. We're going to judge angels. Why can't you figure this out?
Why can't you settle this in the house of God? Why can't you judge this? Why would you take the name of Christ, and have two Christians in court. Suing each other. Trusting unbelievers.
and not believers.
Well, I could say, Paul, well, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about who's going to be judging because I would fear. The way I've seen Christians behave, I would fear being judged by Christians. Unless I could pick him out. But I wouldn't want to just say, well, we're just going to Do a lottery and pick who's going to judge you today, Pastor. I'll pass on that one.
So uh The abuse of judgment is what we're talking about.
Now, personal convictions over Commandments. You don't have a right to do that. If you say, I don't think we should work on Saturday, that's a Sabbath day. And well, that would show you're one of those legalistic-minded Christians that don't understand the New Testament church. You think we're Israel.
Anyway. If you said, I don't work on Saturdays, Because that's the Sabbath.
Okay, that's your conviction. But don't go judging the rest of us as cheating the Bible or being less Christians because we're going to work on Saturdays. And so that would be a wrong kind of judgment.
Now, of course. Guilty people want to get away from being guilty, and they'll run that line. Don't judge me, brother.
Well, you can respond with, well, I will judge you now on three things. One, Is you're wrong about judgment. Two, you're wrong about what the scripture says on judgment. And three, you're still guilty.
So that doesn't work out well. John chapter 7. Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.
So Jesus is commanding us. If you're going to judge, you get your facts right. And don't come up with this petty stuff that Won't stand. Without judgment, there can be no accountability. Therefore, they would be fertile soil for sin.
So what does judging according to appearances look like? 1 Samuel.
Now Hannah spoke in her heart Only her lips moved. but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. There it is. You don't have any evidence of that.
He made a clinical decision. Or yeah, or he made decisions based on clinical evidence. But it wasn't factual, it wasn't scientific.
So Eli, he doesn't stop there. He gonna tell her he thinks she's drunk.
So Eli said to her, How long will you be drunk? I says, What a mockery. He puts it in a question format. Instead of saying, Hey, don't be drunk, he says, How long is this gonna It's like, oh, another twenty minutes. All right.
Put your wine away from you. But Hannah answered and said, It's tough being a woman in ancient Israel. She said, No, my Lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink. but have poured out my soul before the Lord.
Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now. Then Eli said, Oh, Sorry. Eli said, Go in peace. And the God of Israel grant your petition Which you have asked him. And God granted her petition.
And Eli was part of that, even though he had some. Dad issues. What does unrighteous judgment look like? John 8. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought him a woman caught in adultery, And when they had set her in the midst, and the story goes on, the law says she's to be stoned.
Well, where's the unrighteous part? They didn't bring the man. It's a double standard. And there's other parts to it. That's the big part.
And Jesus wasn't going, and Hosea prophesied that this is how it would be. That they would have these double standards and God would not honor them. And Jesus is fulfilling that in this section here. And he does not make her a victim. of a double standard court.
Without self-righteousness, also. When Peter said this about Judas Iscariot, he's gone to his own place, that's hell. He wasn't wrong. Christ said he was the son of perdition.
So 1 Corinthians 11, 31, for if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. Matthew 7:1, judge not, that you be not judged. That's what that unrighteous judgment, that's not fair, that's not factual, that is self- Self-righteous, that's not, that's the judgment Jesus is talking about. Don't go condemning people to hell. according to what you want it to be.
There are very few characters in scripture who we know are in hell. Judas Iscariot is one, Balaam is another one. Cora 1 Corinthians 5:9, I wrote to you. In my letter, not to keep company with sexually immoral people.
Well, you got to be able to judge to make that call. Ephesians 5:11, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. You have to be able to judge to make that call. Job's friends misjudged him and they slandered him. That is why they got in trouble with God.
They didn't just say, Job, poor you. They were saying, you must have done something wrong. And they brought no evidence and they piled up on him. All four of them piled up on him. The best thing they did, I don't want to be too hard on those guys because they did, they came out of love and they were broken when they saw how broken Job was.
And they were quiet for seven days. Then they messed up. And they started talking, and it was at and Elihu, he loved to hear himself talk, so he just goes on and on. And it's almost like God says, have you ever met anybody like this? I shouldn't be saying that from the pulpit, right?
Because I'm going on and on. All right, we close with this verse tonight. Second Thessalonian Chapter 3, verse 14. And if anyone does not obey our word in this letter, Now as Paul making his letters on a level with scripture. Note that person, and do not keep company with him that he may be ashamed.
That part is we're trying to win the guy. But if he doesn't feel shamed, you can't win him. But if he does feel shame, you have a chance that he's going to repent and restoration can take place. We have other stuff too, but I've given you the short version. I'm going to sleep well tonight.
It was very taxing in preparation. But I'm glad we've got that section done. Let's pray. Our Father, The church is Always at odds with certain doctrines. And many times somebody's got to be wrong, and someone's right.
Whichever way the arrow points, may we not. disagree without love. without care. without understanding that. You are our judge.
And you alone. Judge righteously. In its complete sense, in the complete sense of the word. In Jesus' name, amen. Mm.
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