Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

The fifth of January 2022 for the podcasters. If you want to watch the show by any chance, all you got to do is go to the karm.org Facebook page. You can watch.

Just facebook.com.org. And you can watch it. Not a big deal, but we have a good community of people who we participate with and chats with for a long time. We're actually talking about doing a get-together in Salt Lake City. Because a lot of people have been regulars, let's just say, in the chat and stuff like that. That's a good fellowship. Anyway, if you want to check it out, all you got to do is go to Karm Facebook.

That's facebook.com forward slash C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. It should get you right there. If you want, you can give me a call. I had to take a good breath there.

I was running up and down the stairs getting a cup of coffee right before the show. So give me a call. We have four open lines.

877-207-2276. And we talk about all kinds of stuff here if you haven't heard before. If you're new to the show, all you got to do is basically anything. We do theological stuff mainly, of course. We talk a little bit of politics and atheism, UFOs, the occult, all kinds of things. I've been studying them for 42 years.

Boy, long time, long time. All right, so four open lines, 877-207-2276. Also, I just want to say thank you for all the donors, the matching funds drive that we had. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate the support that you gave us. It has made a huge difference. We are just doing very well, or not very well, but we're doing a lot better now.

You don't have to worry about certain issues and problems and stuff. I just want to say thank you very much for the support. It was great.

It was a success. So for all of you who signed up and all those of you who supported us, thank you. And also for those who pray for this ministry, just want to thank you for that as well. So may the Lord bless you. All right, let's get on the phone with Anthony from Virginia. Anthony, welcome.

You're on the air. Matt, I've heard you making an argument against libertarian free will, something along the lines of it's against God's nature for humans to have that ability or whatever. How is that position, how is libertarian free will unbiblical? Where does the Bible say that humans don't have libertarian free will? Well, first to define our terms, no, I wasn't saying it was against God's nature.

It's against scriptural revelation. So compatibilism is the idea that human free will and God's sovereign providence, sovereign grace, predestination and election are compatible with each other. That's compatibilism, the idea that human free will and God's sovereignty work together and that we're free, but God is sovereign even over our freedom.

That's what that is. Libertarianism is the position that man's free will is not compatible with God's sovereign decrees and election. It also states that human free will is not completely restricted and incapacitated by sinful nature. And so the issue then comes down to what does the Bible say? What does the Bible say that the unbeliever has libertarian free will?

Remember, we've got to expand on it a little bit more because what they will say is that the libertarian free willers will say that a person who's an unregenerate individual is not enslaved so much by his sin that he can only choose sinful things, but that he's freely able to accept or reject God despite his enslavement. And usually what comes along with that is what's called prevenient grace. And I call prevenient grace kindergarten theology.

It's not a real nice term, but that's what I call it, and I'll explain why. So let's define what free will is first because people have a misunderstanding of what that is. Free will is the ability to make choices that are not forced upon you and that are also consistent with your nature. And the reason I add that little last bit is because God has free will. God is the standard of righteousness, not us. And so God cannot choose to do evil. He doesn't have the ability to choose to do what is bad, what is wrong.

He can only act in a manner consistent with his holiness. So we as humans, we can choose to do good and bad theoretically. We won't get into that can of worms. But they'll say, no, we can do that. And so what they do when I talk to people and ask about free will, they'll say, well, no, it's the ability to be able to make choices between good and evil.

You can do either one, and that's your choice. And that's humanism. Humanism is that man is the center of truth and the measure of all things. And that's not what the Bible is teaching. So we do not agree... Where does the Bible say we can't choose between good and evil? I've never heard anyone formulate that argument before. Where does this doctrine come from?

I've never heard anyone decide to make this argument. The Bible says that the unbeliever is a slave of sin. That's Romans 6, 14 through 20. He cannot receive spiritual things, 1 Corinthians 2, 14.

He's dead in his sins, Ephesians 2, 1. He's by nature a child of wrath, Ephesians 2, 3. He does not do any good, Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12. His heart is desperately wicked and deceitful, Jeremiah... Oh, excuse me, Isaiah 64, 6.

Cannot be trusted. He's full of evil. All his good deeds are filthy rags, Isaiah 64, 6. Jeremiah 17, 9 says his heart is desperately wicked and deceitful, cannot be trusted. So because of this, these things, which the Bible says are true, we have to understand that the unbeliever, it says, cannot receive the things of God, cannot do good.

Cannot. He's dead in his sins. He's a slave of sin.

That's what the Scriptures say. I just quoted them and gave the references. Second time, too, I don't give all the references.

But I'm just quoting them. So when the Bible says the unbeliever is like that, then we understand that the unbeliever is like that. He's free. He can choose whatever he wants to do, but he's only going to choose in a manner consistent with his sinfulness.

Period. So let's say there's a nonbeliever. Is he capable of... Let's just say he sees someone drop their wallet on the ground. Now, he can either choose to take the money or give it back. Are you saying he's only capable of making one choice as an unbeliever?

This is where it gets more complicated. I mentioned earlier about opening up a can of worms, about eating what is right and wrong. So let's say we have a born-again Christian walking, and there's an atheist walking in an airport, and each person 20 feet in front of them is a man, and in each instance the man reaches into his pocket, pulls out something, and drops some $20 bills. And in each case, the atheist and the Christian both say to that man, hey, you dropped some money, and they pick it up and they hand it to that man.

Now, let me ask you a question. Has the Christian done a good work? Yes. Has the atheist done a good work?

Yes. No, because people make the mistake again of thinking that goodness is based upon human level and human interaction, not God's level. The Bible says no man does good.

Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12. No one. So did either one of them do good? Okay, hold on.

Let me finish. The Bible says no one does good. That's what it says. We're slaves of sin. Now, the unbeliever is a slave of sin. His goal is not for the glory of God. His goal is not for the Lord Jesus Christ and submitting to the sovereignty. So his motivation is not pure. His motivation is not good.

You can't say, you know, he gave the money back. That's a good thing. By whose standard is it a good thing? This is one of the things that people just don't get into and they don't discuss. So, wait, I want to be clear. Neither the believer nor the unbeliever did a good thing in that situation. Hold on. Hold on.

Hold on. I didn't say neither. I said the atheist has not.

You said, did the Christian do a good work? And you said, I asked him. You said yes.

I didn't make a comment. Then I said, did the atheist? He said yes. He did a good work. And then I jumped in.

I said, no, he didn't. So, you see, you've got to understand something. Something is good that's based on the nature of God. Goodness is not some ethereal thing about returning dropped money. That's some ethereal principle out there in the universe that we come in contact with. And then we just do that.

That's how we know what good is. Wrong. Hold on. Okay, hold on. Let me explain. You have to understand the principle.

Okay. Goodness is based upon God's character. Goodness is revealed out of what God's character is. So, if we're going to do something as Christians, then we have been sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ. And though our motives aren't always perfect, but we do these things, hopefully, because we want to bring glory to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This means that every action we do is now sanctified through the crucifixion of Christ. An atheist is rejecting that. An atheist rejects the work of Christ, the work of God, and rejects the idea that God is the reason for doing something, so to speak good, which an atheist can't say what is or isn't good anyway. And so he has no standard and no ability to do anything good because his goodness is not based upon what God's character is.

His goodness is not based upon what Christ has done. The motive isn't for that, and the standard isn't good. In order for something to be good, the motive has to be right as well as the standard. Atheists, they don't have a standard, and therefore they can't demonstrate that their motive is right. You have to have a standard of what is right and wrong. The standard is God's character. Without that standard, the motive is irrelevant.

You have to have that universal standard. An atheist doesn't have it, but a Christian does, so therefore the Christian can enter into the realm of doing what is good, but an atheist cannot. That way we'd say an atheist can do good on a human level, but not on a level that will matter with God and improve his standing with God. So I want to be entirely clear. Two people can both make the exact same choice and do the exact same thing, and one person is good and another person is not good. Is that what you're arguing? That is correct.

That's absolutely correct. What makes something good? What makes something good? I would say the action itself has an intrinsic goodness or badness to it. So what you're saying is that there is some property that exists embedded in an action separate from God that now exists as a standard of right and wrong. That's what you're saying.

Well, I'm saying God has a standard of righteousness, and if you act in a righteous way, that is righteousness, and if you act in an unrighteous way, that is unrighteousness. It doesn't matter. Hold on. Hold on.

Back up. You said that actions are inherently good or bad. By what standard do you say that they're inherently good or bad? What's your standard? I would say God's standard. And where's God's standard revealed? Where is God's standard revealed? In the Scriptures, in the Bible.

Very good. According to the Revelation. So if an unbeliever returns a dropped wallet, for example, has he done something good in the eyes of God? Yes. So now you're saying that an unbeliever who rejects Christ, who rejects the sanctifying work of God, is now able to do something good even when the Bible says I'm going to read it to you, all right, because you have humanist philosophy floating around in your head.

You've got to get rid of it. The Bible says, as it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks for God. All have turned aside.

Together they've become useless. There's none who does good. There's not even one.

Now, let me ask you. That's when the atheist returns a wallet. That's from Psalms, though, right? I'm quoting Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12. Well, doesn't Paul quote it from Psalms?

Yes. Excuse me, though. Paul's quoting it in reference to the Jews and the Greeks.

He's putting them all under sin. We'll get back from the break. We'll talk about this.

You need to be God-centered, not man-centered in your theology. We'll get right back. Folks, three open lines, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. Let's get back on the air with Anthony from Virginia. Anthony, are you still there? Oh, we lost him.

All right, it's unfortunate. Folks, let me give you a little bit of a synopsis of this. There's a huge problem in the Christian church, and it exists in the form of humanistic philosophy, man-centeredness. So we often define free will as something that is related to what we feel and understand. We want goodness to be based upon what we understand it to be.

What I try and do is get people to have a Christ-centered understanding of these issues. You've got to understand that God is the standard of righteousness, not us. God is the standard of what is true, not us. God is the standard of what is good, not us. So if something is a good action, what makes it a good action?

Is it simply because there's an inherent quality to give a wallet back to somebody, for example? Is that that action written down in the celestial orb of the universal essence and that we come in contact with it? Well, of course not. That's not a Christian theological perspective. Well, it has to come back to the issue of God. It's a character issue. Thou shalt not steal, and so he gives a wallet back. Now, here's a question, though.

When an unbeliever gives back a wallet, is it a good thing? Well, people say, well, on the human level, it is. I say, agreed, on a human level, it is. But on a divine level, is it?

The answer is no, it is not. The Bible says there's none who does good, Romans 3, 12. And what Paul is talking about there is he's talking about those who are right and wrong according to the law. And he says in verse 8, some say, let us do evil, that good may come. Their condemnation is just. Verse 9, are we better than they? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin, as it is written. There's none righteous, et cetera.

There's none who does good. What Paul is saying is the Old Testament from Psalm 14, he's quoting this information. He's saying, look, the psalmist understands there's no one who does good.

And he's using that and backing it up and using it here to demonstrate that no one is good. Because if we could get to heaven by being good, then Christ died needlessly. Because you've got to think about this. If an atheist gives the wallet back, is he doing a good work? Most Christians, unfortunately, are going to say, well, of course he is. Now, they don't think through these things. They haven't been taught to think through these things.

So they don't have a deeper understanding. Well, if we do something good, is it not because we're Christians? We've been bought with the blood of Christ, Acts 20, 28. And that we are obeying the words and the commands of our Lord and Savior Jesus. And then as we go out into the world, we seek to honor him.

Well, that's good. We could not do that when we were unbelievers. We could not honor the Lord and use him as the standard of righteousness.

No, it had to be our own standard. And so goodness is not measured in our own standard of righteousness, but in the standard of God. An atheist, for example, does not have God as a standard.

He has himself as a standard. So therefore, since there is no ethereal written code about dropping wallets or returning it out there and the ethereal ontological fourth dimension presence of something out there, it has to be that it's a transcendental law which rests in the heart and the mind of God. Actions are not inherently good or bad. It's what God, who is the necessary precondition for morality and the transcendent being who's behind all things, who has revealed to us that certain actions in themselves are good and bad, accompanied by the proper motive. You see, if I were to slap someone upside the face, is it good or bad?

It depends. If I slap that person because I don't like that person, I just got mad and that's not good, but if I did that and it was because it was a beetle, a bug, a wasp on that person's cheek about ready to sting and I, you know, smacked that thing off, then the exact same action has good or bad results as moral value goes because of the intention of the one performing the action. Intentionality is what determines whether or not an action is good or bad. Now, of course adultery is not, you know, I tend it to be good, it makes it good. No, no, that's something that is another topic, another level of morality we can get into, but the idea that I'm trying to get people to understand is that the intention deals with and necessitates the idea of whether or not actions are good or bad.

Adultery is an intention to break law and to go against God, so therefore it's sinful. The intention of returning a wallet, well, what's the reason for a Christian? It better be because ultimately he or she is saved and wants to glorify God.

It better not be because, oh, it's the right thing to do because I'm in touch with the cosmic principle of rightness. That's a useless work for a Christian. Remember, we are going to be judged for our works, good and bad. Now, that's not for salvation, but that's for reward in heaven. So our motives as Christians must be ultimately for the glory of God. As the Bible says, whatever you do, do for the glory of God. I forgot the verse, I think it's in Colossians. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. That's Colossians 3.17. So that's what the command is to do. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.

That's what the command is. An atheist can't do that. Therefore, an atheist cannot perform what is good on that divine level. On a human level, yes, but what Christians are often doing is raising the human level equal to the level of divinity and the divine character of God, saying, yeah, an atheist can do something that's good. The Bible says no one does good because Jews and Greeks, everybody, are all under sin. That's why the Bible says no one can do good.

So what I'm trying to do is educate people about this. Now, back to the topic at hand, which was libertarian free will, which the Bible contradicts. Libertarianism says that an unbeliever is at liberty to be able to choose God on his own and that God's decrees and decisions are not compatible with human free will. That essentially is the elevation of human thought and human reasoning. It's humanism that has assaulted Scripture.

And I'd be glad to debate this publicly with people. And then what they'll often do is say, well, we understand the doctrine of the depravity of man and that mankind is a slave of sin, hater of God, doesn't do any good, cannot receive spiritual things, etc. But what God does is he gives prevenient grace to them. Prevenient grace is the grace that comes before. And this measure of grace given to a person enables a person to be able to make a free will choice to be able to believe or not believe. And I call this kindergarten theology.

And why? Because of simple logic. So God gives grace to Bob and Frank. They're identical twins.

Bob believes and Frank does not with the same amount of grace. What, 20 grams? A liter? What, four pounds? What, what of grace? What does it mean to give a measure of grace?

Well, they can't answer the question. He does not know how to get someone saved if he wants to. Of course he can. All he has to do is manifest his glory to them. Boom, he's saved.

That's what he did to me when I was 17. God just manifested his incredible holiness and I wept and I was repentant. I did by my own free will that which God arranged that I would believe and do by his very presence. So when people say, well, prevenient grace comes along and God just gives it to people and Bob believes and Frank does not.

Well, why? Why does Bob believe with prevenient grace and Frank does not? Because that's the nature of prevenient grace.

Where'd you get this? Where's prevenient grace in the scripture where God gives someone a measure of faith in order to get them to the place of being able to believe or not believe in God? It's not there in scripture except maybe in the book of 1st Chronicles. It's not there. Humanism is alive and well in the church and unfortunately people are not knowing how to get rid of it.

They need to study the word of God and not lead theology and feelings with their own set of mentality. We'll be right back after these messages. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for taking my call.

Thank you for inviting me to call anytime. And I have a question about Genesis 1. And if you don't mind I'll start reading it, verse 14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven and divide the day and the night and let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years. Let them be for lights in the firmament in the heaven to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And he made the stars also. God set them into the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness.

And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. I was wondering, since the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day, how do we determine how long the duration was of a day in the first three days? Generally speaking, when it's an ordinal number, first, second, third, fourth, and with the issue of day in the scriptures, the pattern the great majority of times is a 24-hour period. That's how. How do you determine how long an hour is when there was no sun?

I don't know. But the writer of Genesis was under inspiration and understood it in relationship to the culture and measurements of that time. He wrote it from that perspective. Well, but we know how long a day is and how it's determined between the relationship of the sun and the earth and the rotation and the revolution and so forth. So wouldn't it be just as reasonable to say that the duration of a day prior to day four could have been a fraction of a second or it could have been hundreds of billions of years? Why not? No, a fraction of a second, a centripetal fourth would have thrown everything apart and it just doesn't work. And if you have millions of years as a day, then you don't have climates, you don't have the issue of hydrologic cycle and things like that.

So this doesn't work. Well, you don't have climates if you don't have a sun. You don't have climates if you don't have a sun. First of all, God knows what a day is and when he inspired the writers to use the term day, he's the one who told them to use that frame of reference, which they understood at that time in that way. Second, have you ever heard of the framework hypothesis?

I've heard the phrase, but I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to. Right, so day one, two, three parallel day four, five, six. On day one there's light, but on day four there's the sun.

And the land is on day two and the plants are on day five. And so there's this parallel, it's called the framework hypothesis. And there's a lot of interesting theories about that.

I'm just introducing something worth studying. Also, I have no problem with the day, the night being there because it looks like that rain, the first time it's mentioned is with Noah's Ark. And there's a lot of people, scientists, who've studied this theory that the earth had a canopy of water around it, which meant that the light refraction from the sun, though diffused, was all over the earth and would never get completely dark in any place.

And so we have a lot of plants, huge reptiles would grow, etc., etc., like dinosaurs and the necessary carbon plants for oil and things like that. And that at the flood, it says the floodgates of the heavens as well as the earth were opened. And then it looks like that's when they said that rain first started and then they could have an understanding of more of what the sun was. But nevertheless, so I don't have any problem with the Genesis days being 24 hours.

And I'm going to tell you one more thing, I'm just thinking out loud here. Years ago, when I was young, I took the Bible, it was before I was a Christian, I took the Bible and I started reading from the beginning and I rejected it because it didn't match evolution. Because you can't have the sun created after light, you know, the planet and the earth and all that kind of stuff, it didn't make any sense. How can you have plants before the sun? And a couple of years later, I was reading an article in a scientific journal about what a person would see from the perspective of the earth as the earth would form and it was exactly what Genesis 1 detailed. You'd see light, the diffused light, you wouldn't see the sun until after the photosynthesis and cosmic rays caused the atmosphere to clear up.

And then you'd see the sun, which was visible to that point. And that's what caused me to go back to the Bible and say, how did they have that information? I'm not saying all my theories were right and wrong back then, but that's what happened when I was younger. So there's different ways of looking at Genesis as well. My point is that without a frame of reference between the earth and the sun, since there was no sun, that it's an indeterminate amount of time for the first three days.

I think that's a reasonable conclusion. No, God knows what the day was and he told Moses what to write. So that's the term, day. If it's going to be a scientific understanding of it, it's a scientific understanding of it that a day is determined by the relationship of the earth and the sun. First of all, what makes you think that the Bible is supposed to be scientifically accurate according to modern things?

It does have a lot of scientific accuracies in it, but you've got to make that mistake. But God is the one who created the sun and the earth, set the earth in rotational momentum, and there it is. God knows what it was, then later when he told Moses to write this, he did and said on the first day, God's inspiration had Moses write it as a day. God's reference was known by God. It's written down by Moses.

Well, I appreciate you trying to answer my question without being insulting this time. And by the way, your previous caller, you completely ignored the parable of the Good Samaritan. Our motivation has nothing to do with the good act. We're never told about the motivation in the Good Samaritan. We're just told what he did. The Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan parable is to try and illustrate the issue of who is your true neighbor and what love is to both because the Good Samaritan was unconscious and naked, which means you can't know who he is by his accent or his attire.

That's why he's naked like that. We can also not know by his motivation. We're never told about what his motivation was. We're simply told he was the one who did good. In a generic sense.

And there's lots of people. You can go to Genesis 7, excuse me, Matthew 7, where it says if you, being an unbeliever, know how to give good gifts to your children, then you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. That's Matthew 7-11. It's a different way of using the word good. But you want good to be a... You have to understand, good is measured by God's character, not ours. The point is that we're not told about the motivation of the Good Samaritan. We're simply told what he did.

And his actions were good because they were good actions. And that is in complete contradiction to what you taught in your previous call. No, it's not. No, it's not. The purpose of the parable is not to demonstrate what is good, but to illustrate the necessity of being loving to your neighbor who is your neighbor.

That's what it is. On the human level, there's certainly goodness, which I already stated earlier in the previous call. On the divine level, it's not good. Because nothing is good because the Bible says so. The only one who can do good is God. So what the Good Samaritan did was not good in the eyes of God?

You don't understand. It's not an issue of good or not good. It's a parable meant to illustrate who was your neighbor.

That's what it's meant to illustrate. And the prejudices that are there go to Carm and look up parables and read on the Good Samaritan. You'll see the cultural information there. Okay? Okay, we're going to move along. All right, thanks for taking my call. And thank you again for answering my question without being insulting. I appreciate it.

Okay, thanks a lot. Okay, bye. All right, let's get to Michelle from Texas. Michelle, welcome. You're on the air. Well, good evening. Good evening.

Yes, sir. I've been sitting in all meal and post-meal, and I've come across some kind of teaching on federal vision. Do you know anything about that? I believe that they believe that you have to be baptized to be saved. That's not what I understand federal vision teaches. Okay. But it's – no, you don't have to be baptized to be saved, period. Okay? Right.

All right. And it's within Reformed theology that federal vision operates and works. And there are some issues, but it also gets into pedobaptist covenant theology. Okay. Pedobaptism is infant baptism.

And the question then is, in the federal vision, because of federal headship and representation, can a child be baptized under the father's headship? And this gets into theological issues. And I can talk about those quite a bit. But here on the radio, sometimes people don't really want to do all that.

But that's what the main issues are. Okay? You want to hold that for the break? Okay. I'll hold it. Okay. Thank you.

You want to hold or not? Yes, sir. I'm sorry. Okay.

No problem. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Three open lines, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show.

We have three open lines if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Let's get back with Michelle. Are you still there? Yes, sir. All right. Okay. So I don't know if I helped enough, because federal vision is a large movement, a sub-movement within some reform camps.

And there's some controversy with it as well. Okay. Yes, sir, that was very helpful. And I just wanted to thank you and your ministry for what you do.

I was delivered out of a Falls church about a year ago, and God led me to your website, and I've been listening to you, I think for maybe about three weeks, and I just appreciate everything that you do. Well, praise God, you know, praise God. Remember, always check out everything I say with Scripture, because my last name is Slick.

You can't trust guys on a radio named Slick, okay? Yes, sir. I follow your scriptures.

I write them down, and then I look them up. Good for you. Thank you so much. Oh, that is awesome. Good for you.

Keep checking. Well, God bless, Michelle. Thank you very much. You too. Have a good evening. Bye-bye. You too.

Thanks. Bye. All right, folks, four open lines, 877-207-2276. Why don't you give me a call? Let's get to Harry from Virginia. We lost Harry. He wanted to expand on the issue of goodness.

We've got no callers waiting today. We'll just talk about that a little bit. If people want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Let me go over this again. Let me break it down. There are two perspectives, God's perspective, man's perspective, God-centered, man-centered.

That's it. If you were to look at theology that way and truth that way, it'll help you a great deal. You're either going to have a God-centered perspective or a man-centered perspective. Man-centeredness is natural to us because we're fallen. Man-centeredness says, I know what is true. I know what is good. I'm not as bad as my neighbor. I'm not as prideful as that guy across the street. I'm more gentle, and God will understand my sincerity. That's humanism. Do you have to understand something?

That's wrong. Let me take a side step here. Let's say you go to church.

I've talked about this before on the radio. You go to church, and a half hour sermon I'll compress here into a few seconds. A man gets up, a pastor, and he preaches. He goes to Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments. He preaches through the Ten Commandments. Let's say he does a pretty good job in 30 minutes in why you should not lie and not commit adultery. His reasoning is because it offends God.

On the surface, you'd say, well, that's pretty good because it's true. God is the center. God is the reason, and it is true that it offends God. That is the case. So he says, so you should not lie because it offends God.

All right. Now, here's a question. Could that sermon be just word for word preached in a Mormon church or in a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall or in a Roman Catholic church or in an Eastern Orthodox church without any change?

If the answer is yes, there's a problem. Why is it if we were to have a pastor preaching a sermon that do the Ten Commandments and it offends God, he shouldn't do these things, and yet the exact same sermon can be preached equally in false religious systems and cults? Well, the reason is because there's no Christ in this. You see, the reason that we don't lie and that we don't commit adultery is because we, as Christians, have been bought with the blood of Christ, Acts 20 and 28. We have been bought. We're no longer our own. We belong to Christ. He has cleansed us. We've been freed from sin. And so I don't lie because it dishonors God and because I've been bought with Christ's blood. He freed me from that sin. And so I don't lie because I'm bought, because I belong to Christ, because I want to honor my Lord and my Savior, Jesus.

You know, at the gym I was talking to a guy today. I go to the gym a lot and we're there talking and I said, one of the reasons I want to be in shape, there's two reasons, two main reasons. One is to help take care of my wife with her decaying medical conditions, but the other one is to serve my Lord longer, serve my Lord and Savior, Jesus, longer. My goal is to honor my Lord and Savior, Jesus.

That's who I want to honor. And so if I were to preach a sermon about this, I'd say that the Ten Commandments, I'd say the reason is because Jesus Christ, who's God in flesh, bought us and delivered us from sin, and we are saved and justified by the faith that we have in what he did, not what we do in combination. And this is why we honor him and this is why we seek to honor the character of God revealed in the Ten Commandments. That sermon could not be preached in a Mormon church, Jehovah's Witness church, Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox church, because it's Christ-centered alone in his work without any of our works adding to the finished work of Christ on the cross.

This is a subtle truth, but unfortunately a lot of pastors get up in the pulpit and they preach a sermon that can be ported over to a Mormon church. And I know this because back in seminary, a professor of mine, Dave Schiringa, and I'm still friends with him, and he assigned a text, and I preached a text out of the Old Testament, and long story short, he said, good moralistic sermon. I didn't understand what he meant, went over to his house for dinner, and we had a talk, and I couldn't quite get what he meant by moralism, being good because it's good, honor God because that's what's right.

It's his character, so honor him, it's good. And I said, well, yeah, but that's all true. And he says, yes, it is. Then he asked me the question, could my sermon be preached in a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness church? And the light went on at that moment.

I said, you're right, it could. That's a problem because there's a difference between the non-Christian religions and the Christian religion. They're not Christ-centered. They're church-centered. They're morals-centered.

They're performance-centered. So it changed everything, and it opened the door for me to understand that our goodness is not based on our following the character of God, though that is the standard of righteousness. The standard of something good has to be known.

The standard is God's character. Revealed in the written word, thou shalt not lie. And so we don't lie because Jesus has bought us. Jesus is the one who shed his blood for us and delivered us from those sins. So to not sin is to honor Christ in his redemptive work.

That's what makes what we do good. This is what a lot of people are missing in the church today. Christ-centered, cross-centered preaching, teaching, and morality. We should always use God as a standard. I just recently talked to a guy who may be getting engaged here soon, and if he takes me up on it, great.

If not, no big deal. But I said, I do marriage counseling, and I do what's called the theology of marriage. I start with the doctrine of the trinity, the character of God. The trinitarian communion is what marriage is a reflection of. And then in marriage, the husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church, and the woman is to respect her husband as she would respect Christ. And Christ is at the center of the marriage.

That's how it's supposed to be. In fact, I'm thinking about doing an online seminar on the theology of marriage and teaching these principles and these truths. This is what is needed more and more in the church today. And I'll have to go over it again and again to get at two people's heads.

What is the difference between God-centered theology and man-centered theology? Moralism and Christocentric historical redemptive preaching. Let's get to Leon from Utah. Leon, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How are you?

I'm doing fine, by God's grace. What a privilege I have to be able to teach God's truth. What a privilege. Amen. Amen.

I couldn't agree with you more. That's right. Did you have a good New Year? Yeah, I did. We had friends over and a good family and fellowship and food and all of that. It was great. God blessed us. We're grateful. Oh, sweet. That was good, man.

I love that. My question is, I'm struggling in Deuteronomy 28. Okay. My struggle is, people back in the old days, back in, I don't know, about 16 years or so ago, said they had a hard time reading the old Bible and trusting God because he was just a mean God. I said, you don't know the Lord. And I find myself there now in Deuteronomy 28. He was listening to it through the Wonder Bible, but it's word for word. But it was saying that, it's right here, Deuteronomy 28, chapter 30. We've got about three minutes.

We've got to hustle, but go ahead. Okay. He was saying you should build a house and that house, you won't dwell in that house. And he's just going off on these people and like... You want to know why? Yeah.

He's like, yeah, what's going on there? All right. So, if you have a piece of paper and you draw a horizontal line... I do.

I've got a common paper right here. Well, that's okay. You'll get the point in my head. It's an illustration. In the middle of this horizontal line, you draw a cross. And the Old Testament's to the left, the New Testament's to the right. And the arrow pointing from the Old Testament points to the cross. And the New Testament time, us, now points to the cross.

The cross is the center of history. When God warned the nations, he didn't just give them a three-minute warning and then, you know, fire and brimstone from heaven. He gave them repeated warnings.

Don't do this. Judgment's coming. The reason he was so tough on them is because of that cross. If Israel were to join in the paganism of the enemy's work, then they would have effectively destroyed the messianic promise and the arrival of the Messiah. God ensured that the Messiah would arrive. And Israel had a covenant relationship with God. It was covenant boundaries. If you were to read, and I recommend you do this after we talk.

Here, I'm going to go through quickly because we have like one minute. Read Exodus 21 through 17, the Ten Commandments. I'm the Lord your God who did this, this, this, and that. Here's what you're supposed to do. And if you don't, here's the consequence.

But if you do keep it, here's a reward. Read it in the Ten Commandments. There's actually, there, it's a covenant document. Read the Ten Commandments with rewards and punishments for keeping or not keeping the commands. This is covenant theology.

That's why there's two tablets, ten and ten. Each party, God, man, got a copy. It's a covenant. And so when they broke the covenant, God dealt harshly with them.

But he also was very loving and patient with them because he would send prophets to them. I'm warning you. I keep warning you. I'm warning you again and again and again and again.

Okay, here it comes. We say, boom, judgment, and then we read about the judgment. God is so mean.

Well, wait a minute. He already gave them the parameters, the truths. He was very patient with them, and then they reject him, and they pay the price for it. And that's what's going on in the Old Testament.

And he destroyed the unbelievers to purify that place so the Messiah would not be jeopardized in his arrival through the nation of Israel. That's the short version. Come back tomorrow. We can talk some more about it, okay? Sorry we're out of time, buddy. All right, man, God bless.

Sorry about that. We're running out of time, folks, but I just wanted to get that out. All right, may the Lord bless you, and by his grace, by his grace, we'll be back on there tomorrow. And we'll talk to you then. Have a great evening, everybody. God bless. Bye.