Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at karng.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live.

Francis, taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick.

You're listening to Matt Slick live. Today is, let's see, September 14th, 2023 for the podcasters. If you want, you can give me a call and we can blab.

877-207-2276. And yeah, we can talk. Now I got some stuff I can read because tomorrow is when I can do hate mail and whacko mail and stuff like that.

But it's pretty good stuff today too. So if you want to give me a call, you have questions. And if you are interested in emailing me instead of getting on the air, you can do that by going to your email. Just email us at info at karng.org.

Just put in there something like a radio question or radio comment and get to it. And so we get a lot of stuff like that. We do actually have, oh God, let's see, just a rearranging of some stuff.

We've got several questions. We've got 57 whacko mails and 32 hate mails because we have some old stuff. And so we get some stuff like that every now and then.

But for some reason, to my utter dismay, I don't get as much hate mail. I don't like it, but that's just what it is. And okay, so it looks like rumble crashed. So we'll see what's happening. If they're going to redo that, we'll figure it out. They're going to work on that.

Are they going to work on that? Going to get it going there, Ernie? I don't know.

It doesn't matter. He'll figure it out and let me know in the text there. If you want to give me a call, like I said, 877-207-2276. So I'm going to get to some of the radio questions and comments.

Here's one from Carrie. What's the best way to witness to a prideful person who is showing no interest in God, but you know they are healed or headed for hell, excuse me, and you want to wake them up to this fact. What do you do? You pray. That's what you do. We can't force anybody to listen. And what we have to do is two things.

We pray for that person and you pray and it may take years. And you be a good witness. You be consistent. You be patient.

You don't push it all the time because you can often push someone away that way. I'm just reading. Sorry, Ernie says the actual rumble site is down. Wow. Well, that's interesting. If by any chance you want to jump in, anybody, to Discord, you can go to karm.org forward slash social media and you'll see the KARM Discord link. And that's just something you can do as an experiment to see how many people we can get in there because you don't have very many in there because Discord's not that friendly to use. But if you want to try it and there's some stuff, you can give it a go. All right.

So rumble crashed. The actual site is down. Well, we are on YouTube, I believe, and also in Facebook. So we've got some listeners and some watchers there. All right. Let's get to another question.

How about this one? Let's see. So I wrote an article. Can Christians join fraternities and sororities? And I got an email response to that. And I wrote in there that a Christian can join or cannot join depending on a few things. You can't if they're going to do weird rituals and secret oaths and illicit stuff. You can't participate. There are Christian sororities and you can join those as long as you're not requiring weird ungodly stuff. So I get this email.

Wow. Did you mean to give a pass to all college Greek fraternities and sororities? Their crests, banners, symbols are straight out of Greek mythology paganism. Now, this is interesting because so what if they have Greek letters like Alpha Omega? What if they have those on their emblem or their seal or whatever it is? Yeah, so? What if they have a Greek guy philosopher as a toga?

I think so. We've got to be careful what's called the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is the source is bad so therefore it is bad. And also consider 1 Corinthians 10. Can we eat meat sacrificed to idols?

Well, yes, you can as long as you're not stumbling anybody else. You have freedom in Christ. So just because those symbols are there doesn't mean it's all bad.

And if there's an upside down cross, forget it, you know. But this person goes on, their induction ceremonies and oaths, handshakes are secret, forbidden in the Bible. That's what I said.

I said don't do that if that's the case. I've had concern for years about our church giving money to missions which are campus centered. Why would you have trouble with church giving to missions that are campus centered? Wow.

We read about these missionaries going, joining something, whatever that word is. I don't know. So anyway, it's unfortunate, not a very clear complaint and used words and stuff.

They just don't know what they mean. Hey, give me a call 877-207-2276. Rumbles back up. Okay. So I don't know what that means. So what we'll do is just see. Hey, it looks like it might be working. Let's see.

Testing. All right. All right.

Let's get another email. I know that Matt has noticed an increase in those who want to deny the deity of Jesus. Now that is true. I have noticed in the past, I don't know, couple of years, a real increase in the attacks on the deity of Christ. I've noticed it quite a bit. I just ran across Romans nine, five in the N E T, which is by human descent, came the Christ who is God over all. So I'm going to go to Romans nine, five and take a look at, I'm familiar with it.

I don't use it that often. Um, because of different translations, for example, uh, let's see, I've got a Romans nine five over here and I'll look at the Greek. So the ESV says, uh, he's Christ who is God over all bless forever.

Amen. The King James, uh, who is over all God blessed forever. So the RSV says is Christ, uh, God who is overall blessed. So there's different translations. So I'm gonna look at the Greek right now. And what it says is, uh, who is, uh, over all God blessed forever. So, so he is over all God blessed.

So it's pregnant nominative or it's a straight nominative. And a Greek scholar has to look at this and answer the issue. So the reason I don't go there and use that verse is because I don't want to argue with people about which translation is the right one. Because whatever you say, they're going to go back to the King James or whatever it is.

Uh, he's, he's, he's blessed by God and they're just going to do that. And so I agree that the NET is a good translation for that, but because of, of the problem associated with how to exactly translate it, uh, I'm not going to go there and waste time. It's not a waste of time, but you know, uh, go in there and get involved with, um, with, uh, an argument that may not be profitable since different translations have it rendered differently. That's why the passage referencing the five Philistines. Oh, that's right.

Uh, and that is dealing with, uh, the five stones. All right. I spoke to me on, I see a better email.

You asked me to email you. Oh, that's right. The syllogism.

I went over the syllogism before. Um, God created all people. All people are sinners deserving of hell. And, um, God doesn't provide that regeneration to all only Psalm. God leaves those who don't, doesn't regenerate in a state where they'll can only do evil, not good. God makes people do evil.

No, no, no, no, no. He lives them in a state, he leaves him in a state where they do the evil. It doesn't make God makes them do evil. That's a false syllogism. It's a failure to understand the issue of what's called, um, proximate causation and efficient causation. So I've gone over this before in the radio.

Let me do it again and get into some of the issues here. So I use Adam as an example of this. So Adam was in the garden and he, um, he was approached by Eve. He gave him the fruit and he chose to eat the fruit and disobey God. No one forced him to do it. No one made him do it. No one deceived him into it.

He freely willingly chose to disobey God. He is his own cause of the failure. He is his own cause of his sin. So we say philosophically speaking, logically speaking, he is the efficient cause. He is the efficient cause.

That's what it means. No one forced him. He did have his own free will. The proximate cause is God. The proximate cause of Adam's sin is God.

And what that means is that God is the one who arranged the garden to be there and the trees to be there and the fruit to be there, gave them the word, don't eat of this tree and allowed the serpent to come into the garden and deceive. So God's not the efficient cause. He's the proximate cause. Culpability or responsibility for your actions is due to your freewill choice to do or not do something.

So it rests with you alone. This dividing line between efficient causation and proximate causation is really important. So the, the critic here fails to understand the difference between what we call efficient cause and proximate cause in this issue. Now there's actually a third issue, the ultimate cause. The ultimate cause of Adam's sin is God because he's when it created the universe and created us and put us there. So that's the very, very, very broad issue. And then proximate cause is the immediate context and then the efficient cause is the actual one who's doing the action.

And the actual one who does the action is Adam and he is his own responsible party. Here's another one. Where can you say the t-shirts we found? We're going to be working on that. We'll get more information about that when it happens later. And let's see.

I just realized due to how the topics meandered before the room shut down, what room? I'm not particularly talking about evolution. Hmm. We had a conversation about the Cambridge explosion as well as a discussion about hominids. Okay. So what this is response to is, hello, this is so-and-so you asked me to compliment you.

So your voice is very, very nice. Please send me the resources you mentioned during our conversation tonight. I don't know what resources those are, but I do have some stuff on evolution. I might just talk about evolution stuff because we've got a break coming up. I could do that every now and then and talk about various issues that I think are important.

Maybe I'll do that because sometimes when people don't call, I just talk and I just teach. So maybe I'll do that. Let's see. We've got that and we've got a break in about a minute and we've got some, let's see. I got some hate mail.

I love hate mail. Let's see. Oh yeah, we got some wackos man. There's some people who don't know what they're saying, don't know how to argue very well. Do you believe the apostles doctrine starting with the day of Pentecost, A.D. 33 til today never stopped being preached, Acts 2 38 baptism in Jesus name, salvation, or do you believe Matthew 28 19 Catholic fathers, Justin martyr responsible for change in the baptismal formula, Google it for yourself right now today, truth be told ministries, blah, blah, blah, blah. So wow, that's just, that's pastor Marvin Arnold ministries. Yeah.

It sounds to me like the person doesn't understand the basics of biblical theology and how to understand what's going on there. And that is the case. Hey folks, we'll be right back after the messages. So if you want to give me a call 877-207-2276 be right back after the break. Alright, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call 877-207-2276. All right. Let's get to, let's see, that'll be Monty from North Carolina.

Monty welcome here on the air. Yeah, peace be under you, my brother. God has literally blessed me to get a new Greek English interlinear New Testament from it's from Tyndale.

And it's in the new revised standard. My my brother is what is the most efficient and productive method to use this in my study? Well, it depends what you're studying and how you're studying. But I would recommend to do very light Greek intro, like learn the basic letters, which is only take you 20 minutes. And so you can at least pronounce the words. But in a good interlinear, depending what kind you have there, sometimes they have the pronunciation of the words in there, like, you know, in the beginning was the word in our gate in Halagas. That's it'll teach you how to pronounce the Greek. And sometimes depending on the interlinear, how many rows of information they have, they can give you a little translation, they can give you a translation numbers, or to the Greeks to the strong concordance, and then they have ways of analyzing stuff. So one of the things I recommend doing is when something piques your interest is do a word study on a particular Greek word, and see what you find. And it's often very rewarding, and sometimes it's not.

But a lot of times it is. So it just depends what you want to accomplish. But I do recommend this. A lot of people don't do this, and I strongly recommend this, is to do outlines. And I've been doing outlines for years and years, and I have maybe 30 outlines on material that I've been developing over the years. And it forces you to arrange things logically. And then you find where information is to fit. And so when I teach my Bible study, like I do on Thursday nights, I present to the group an outline.

It's verse by verse analysis with the comments in an outline form. And it's very quick, very basic. And it's informative, instead of long narrative points. That's just how I think. And I think it works better that way to categorize information so you can retain it.

All right? That's very helpful to me. It appears in this book that there is one row of interpretation under the Greek words, and then on the very... Yeah, there would not be an interpretation, it would be a translation. Because to interpret is... Just so you know, because when you get into this, precision makes a difference. Interpretation is verbal to verbal.

Translation is written to written. Okay? Okay. Okay. Translating. All right. Thank you for the correction. It's a small thing, but it's important. Because when you do this kind of work, they'll say interpretation or translation and they mean different things.

That's why it's important. Correct. Okay.

Thank you, sir. On the right-hand side, it then has... Now I confuse this to... It has on the right-hand side, I guess, what the commentators use to explain what it is.

And then this is in the new revised standard version, that I have been studying in the MacArthur Study Bible from the New American Standard. So should I compare each one? Sure, compare them.

Yeah. And also, when you find something that doesn't exactly match, that's good. Because you need to study why.

And usually when you do that, you'll find out what's going on. Because Greek can have different shades of meaning. A single word can have at least 24 different forms that the nouns can. And they have different... And it's called the cognates of the form of the word. So you can have nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, optative.

You can have masculine, feminine, neuter, and you can have plural and singular. And all these variations are woven into nouns. Well, depending on a few things, you could have a slight meaning difference on how a translator might want to see something.

So that's why it's worth looking at and just comparing. You'll just benefit. Well, I was blessed also to have a Greek... To be given a Greek grammar beyond the basics by Wallace. And sometimes I get a little...

Thank you, sir. I get a little overwhelmed in going around trying to understand what I'm reading. This Greek has really become Greek to me. Pardon the... Yeah, I get you.

What I would do is just go through little by little. You can also, if you're interested, you don't have to go very deep into Greek, but you can just go online, look up at YouTube and say, basic introduction to biblical Greek. Look it up and you'll have people talking about it and you'll go, oh, that makes sense.

Where before it didn't. Because it's just not that easy to pick it up unless you're linguistically minded and you don't understand a few basics, you can get lost pretty quickly. And so you have to know things like what is the nominative case, the genitive, the dative, the accusative.

And so these have to do with what's called direct and indirect objects and possession and subjects. And once you understand those basics, you go, oh, I see what's going on and it's not that big a deal. Okay.

And then one last log on the fire. I think you had made a recommendation about the New American Standard version that you love. Yeah. Excellent.

I've been using it for many years, 30, 35, 40 years, I don't know, it was a long time. Okay. Um, well, Matt, I really appreciate your ministry. And I do love keeping you in my prayers, because I recognize your job is not the easiest one, but you do it with a lot of zeal. And I think you have a genuine love for people.

And that shows through on the radio. So you keep it up and you are constantly in my prayers. Thank you.

Appreciate it. I'm chuckling because of genuine love. I like to say to people, yeah, I faked that pretty well.

But you know, as a joke, but I do have Asperger's and so we don't need the social stuff. There's a lot of, a lot of people do. But you know what? I do care how people are before the Lord.

I want them to find Christ and that's what's important. And that's it. Okay. So praise God, brother. All right.

71 years of age, I've learned to distinguish the genuine from the, from the non genuine. So God bless you, my brother. Well, thanks, bro. Appreciate it. All right. All right. Okay, bye.

God bless you too. So that's Monty from North Carolina. Let's jump on with Randall from Texas. Randall, welcome. You're on the air. Thank you. I'm glad to be on. This is the right.

I jumped on yesterday to your video the other day and just had, had a lot of fun chatting with you. I was just going to ask. We've got a break. Hold on. Sorry about that.

Just where the timing goes. We'll get right back. Okay. Hey folks, we have three open lines. If you want to give me a call 877-207-2276 we'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick.

All right. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. Do you want to give me a call? 877-207-2276. Let's get back on with Randall. Randall, how are you doing buddy? Good.

So I just had a real quick question I wanted to ask. If you could just share maybe what are some of your favorite, I don't want to say proofs necessarily, but some of your favorite arguments for the existence of God that you have found effective in evangelism. Evangelism is different than apologetics. Because out on the street evangelism is different than online apologetics and evangelism.

So I'll do the one that I do online that I developed and accidentally developed and I find it to be useful. And it's the basic idea that statements are either true or false. It's called the law of excluded middle. And so what I'll do is I'll say, could you affirm that statements are either true or false? You know, I am talking to you. True.

I'm an elephant. False. And I talk about it and 99% of the time people say, yeah, that's correct. I said, okay, good. Now what I'm going to do is offer you a statement. Please tell me if the statement is true.

I'm talking to an atheist, right? And I say, tell me if the statement is true or if it's false. And here's the statement. It is always morally wrong to torture babies to death merely for one's personal pleasure. And I'll repeat it. And that's what I do with it.

Is this true or false? It is always morally wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure. And if they say, no, it's not morally wrong, then I'm going to say, can you please give me an example when it's okay to do that? And they're stuck because it's, you know, it just doesn't work.

Right? So that's one problem that they have. If they say yes, now they've really got a bigger problem because I'm going to say, okay, so what you're affirming then is a universal moral absolute. How do you do that in your atheistic worldview? What I'm doing here, and one thing is I'm trying to show that the atheistic worldview just is incompetent when it comes to dealing with this kind of an issue. I'm undermining their atheism.

That's part one. And I'll say, so if it's the case that it's always wrong for everyone, then you're affirming a universal moral truth value. Now sometimes they'll respond and they'll say, well, no, it's just my opinion that it's everyone's.

I think there you go. Your opinion is there's a universal moral truth value. So if you have a, your opinion is there's a universal moral truth value. My question is how do you have that in your atheistic worldview? Since there is in your view, there is no universal mind. There's no universal moral giver. How do you have a universal moral truth in your worldview?

And you can't. So I say this undermines your own atheism. And yet at the same time, when you affirm the truth value, you're affirming that your atheism is insufficient because you're saying it's a universal truth, but there's a problem yet again, because the universal truth requires by implication, a universal mind. See morals, we don't find them underneath rocks.

We can't put it in a jar. Take a picture of a moral. It's an abstract entity. A moral is something that occurs. So I'm not going to lie to you, Randall. I, you know, if I, if I were to lie to you, that's occurrence in my heart.

You may not even know that I have. And so if I am intending deception, that's an abstraction. It only occurs in minds, in hearts and souls, spiritual, whatever you call it. It doesn't occur out there on the wall.

You know, I'm looking at my wall next to me here in the office. That's where the, that's where the lie occurred. It makes no sense. So the idea of morality deals with minds, with spirits, with souls. How do you have a universal mind or excuse me, a universal moral truth value in your atheism? For one thing, you can't do that because your view refutes it.

That's a whole nother thing to get into. But the other thing is you're implying there's a universal mind. And I would say that, uh, that means there's a God, the universal mind. And they say, and once we're done with this, I can talk to you about the one in the mini issue and how a universal of moral truth that is universally true has particular manifestations of how we have the one universal with many particulars and how that can be solved by the Christian Trinity. And I get, that's a whole nother part. I'll do that with them too.

That's one way. I got another one if you want. Okay. Sure.

All right. So another one is, uh, I call it, well, it's the, it's a variation of the Kalam cosmological argument. You can't have an infinite regression of uncaused causes. And it's a basic principle, but what I'll do is I'll say, look, all facts, all actualities and potentialities exist inside of a causal chain. They don't exist independently of any context. So the fact that I have a, a Maine Coon cat, which I do, he's 20 pounds and that we call him flopper, he's got the IQ of a, of a bag of logs.

Okay. He's a beautiful, lovely cat. He does. He's got a bag of logs. You know, he used to roll down the stairs. He's just like, we call him flopper for a reason.

You know, he's more coordinated now. And so people come over and go, what the heck is that? That's our cat, you know, put a saddle on him and you can ride across the room.

So anyway, uh, that's, that's what you call a digression. So all facts, all, all potentialities and actualities have a context. So my cat's existence, it's context. And I own the cat. He lives in our home. He was given to us by a family member.

Uh, and someone bought that cat for our family member and flew the cat in from, uh, out of state. This is all true. A fact has a context. Every fact has a context and every context is a set of other facts. So every fact and set of facts has to have a context. Well, the context are, they have time temporality to them.

What must be the case for those facts to have their context? Well, whatever came before that. Well, what come before that?

How far back do you go? You can't have an infinite number of, of contexts. And I can give an illustration for that, but if you want, I will. But the thing is, so it has to be traced back to the ultimate initial cause. And the ultimate initial cause is personal or impersonal. And how does an impersonal cause initiate all actualities and mentalities as well, as well as, uh, universal morals? How do you get these generated out of an impersonal abstract entity?

You can't do that. So this is more complicated and I get into that. And then there's transcendentals, which I get into that too, as well.

The universality, the laws of logic, but you could have manifestations. And then when I'm done talking with them a lot of times like this, I say, Oh, there's one more thing I want to run by you. And they say, what? I say, Jesus rose from the dead. The eyewitness has wrote about it. What do you say about that?

And it's going way back simple. He rose from the dead. Well, I don't believe it's a book, but I don't believe this.

I go, well, you don't have to believe it, but you, you should. And if he did rise, what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means everything he said about himself is true. And he said, I'm the way, the truth and the life.

And nobody comes to the father, but by me, you got to trust in him for the forgiveness of your sins, because you've offended him for the holy God and his resurrection proves that what he said is true. So I'll do that and give the gospel message out too. Okay. That's awesome. I like that. Yeah.

Yeah. I just, uh, we're actually working on a project with our church right now, um, uh, is specifically starting an evangelism program. Um, and maybe a better term is the evangelistic outreach opportunity, uh, to, to connect with our neighbors and within our community. So we're, we're taking each one of those neighborhood sections, um, and sending some folks out.

And so I'm helping to do the training there and just wanted to get some good, some, some ideas of what would be some, you know, obviously you're not going to be able to answer all questions at all times, but what are some just good hit pockets, um, bits that, you know, someone could share quickly, uh, and, and not, you know, and they didn't have to have a whole lot of background information to be able to get into that. Well, if they go door to door, for example, different things have different contexts. And so let's just say, you know, door to door, or what if you have a ministry set where you go and mow people's lawns for free.

What if you, uh, you know, Hey, I saw your tree needs trimming. We just have a church group. We want to come in and just do it for free. Want to know if that's okay with you.

We're not asking for anything. And, uh, you could do that and you have tracks ready and you can invite them to your church. Okay. And nine times out of 10, it's not going to happen, but there are different ways that you can do that. And it just depends on which one you want to go with.

So if you tell me which one you're leaning towards, we can talk about some ideas. Yeah. The direction we're headed, um, is leaning towards, uh, just knocking on doors and just simply asking, you know, letting them know that we're, we're, uh, the church across the street and that's the name, not the name of the church that physically we're across the street. And that we're just there to see if we can pray for them for anything. And if they say yes, then pray with them, connect with them. If they say no, then, you know, shake their hand, tell them, thanks for, thanks for letting us, uh, spend your some time with you and, and move on to the next door and then, uh, maybe, you know, come back maybe three months down the road and, and ask again. That's excellent.

What I would also do is have, um, a track of some sort you could hand out or a piece of paper or something, a brochure that has your church intro on it, directions and name of the church, and to say, can I leave this with you? And if they say no. Okay. But, uh, there's a reason for that too. We've got a break. Let's talk a little bit more about this after the break, cause that's a really good idea you've got. Hey folks, three open lines. If you want to give me a call, 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. Let's get back on the air here with Randall.

Randall, Randall, you still, you still there? Let's see. I hit the thing. Let's see. Hey, I don't know. Keith, if you're here, if you can hit go on it cause it's not happening on my end and uh, let's try it again.

That's weird. I don't know what happened. So I'll do is I'm not going to do anything. I can't do anything. I'll just go to Tim from Memphis.

Maybe get to Randall later. Uh, welcome. You're on the air. Oh, and by the way, Hey Ernie from CARM.

Thanks for the $5 rant buddy. Appreciate it. Really do. All right. Okay. Sorry about that, Tim.

What do you got, man? Hey, um, yeah, I, uh, struggled with homosexual behavior. Uh, most of my adult life, I went through a program called web in action for four years residential program. And that got me out of the behavior, um, for years and years up until maybe eight years ago when I fell again consistently over a number of years. And just recently in the past eight or nine months, um, God got ahold of me.

That's the easiest way to say it. And brought me to a place where I surrendered completely. And I said, Lord, you, you have my life.

I don't want this anymore. Whatever I have to do. And a lot of good stuff has happened. Um, I found a church. I've gone back to church. I'm consistently praying, consistently reading the word, um, uh, and so forth. But there are times when I don't, I'm not struggling with, with, uh, with temptation per se, but, but I struggle with, with truly being cleansed and truly being forgiven. Um, you know, because my sins are what I consider grievous and so shameful that I'm not, I don't want to tell anyone. Um, and you know, there are, there are times when I get, um, bound up in that and I wonder how can I truly know true, uh, deep in, in the heart of my heart's forgiveness for some of the things I've done. Um, I guess that's my question. How can I know that deep cleansing, you know, and then I started thinking about David today.

Uh, you know, how did he find that song 51 cleansing, cleanse my heart? Um, so anyway, that's kind of my question for you. Okay. So this is an issue of the heart and the head, and it's easier to talk about what we ought to do rather than doing it. And so I'm gonna do the easy part first. And the easy part is, is what you ought to do. You ought to recognize that Jesus Christ, God in flesh, that his blood is of infinite value and your greatest sin cannot undo the wondrous forgiveness that is accomplished in it. It is.

It's not potential, it's actual. In Colossians 2 14, it preceded by verse 13 when the last few words in 13 says, having forgiven us all of our transgressions, our sins. And then verse 14 says, having canceled out the certificate of debt, the system of decrees, which is hostile to us, he took it out of the way, having nailed to the cross. So what that means is Jesus at the cross canceled your sin debt, not when you asked him to. It didn't occur when you asked him.

You're justified when you ask him. The sin debt was canceled by Christ at the cross. It's a difficult concept for people to understand. The reason this is important is because, believe it or not, he knew you and your sin, and he loved you anyway. And on that day on the cross, 2000 years ago, your sin was imputed to him all of it. All of your sin.

The sins you've committed, those bad sins, they're all bad but different degrees, and the sins you're going to commit in the future. All of them were put upon Christ, and they were canceled at the cross. They're not canceled at your baptism. They're not canceled at communion. They're not canceled at your belief. Now I'm going to give a doctrine lesson here because people are, their eyebrows are going up.

What do you mean? Well, we're justified when we believe. Justification is a legal declaration of righteousness. And you can read Romans 4, the first few verses of Romans 4 for that. And so we have a righteousness that's not our own.

The righteousness that comes from God. That's Philippians 3, 9. So you have to understand, this is a theology, right? This is a theology.

2000 years ago, well, I'll back up even further. In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4 talks about, it says, He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we be holy and blameless. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ our Lord. So God elected to save you from before the foundation of the world. His love for you is infinite. His, the thoughts for you are infinite. His decrees and His forgiveness in you is infinitely old.

And you have to know this. That He chose you in spite of who you are. In spite of your sin. And He chose to love you for what's in Him. And that can't be changed because it rests in Him.

Not in you and your performance or your failures or your successes. And so Jesus came to save the ones given to Him by the Father. Jesus says in John 6, 37, all that the Father gives Me will come to Me.

And the ones who come to Me I certainly will not cast out. He says all that the Father gives Me will come to Me. That means you're given by the Father to the Son. And Jesus says that you cannot be lost. He says the will of the Father is that all that He has given Me I lose none. So I have to understand there's a theological thing about you in particular that's infinitely old that has been from before the foundation of the world. And your sin which is great did not stop God from loving you. He didn't decide not to love you or temporarily not love you because how bad you can be.

Trust me I know that one personally. Man I'll tell you I've got some sins in my past and oh my goodness. The thing is God chose to love you because of what's in Him not because of what's in you. And what you need to do is you need to trust the love of God in the cross. Your guilt is a proper guilt in one sense but not in another. It's proper in that yeah you're guilty.

But it's not proper in that but He took it away. Where are your eyes? Are they upon the work of the cross or are they upon the condition of your own heart? Because if it's upon your own heart your narcissistic tendencies and your failures are going to be the chains that drag you back. If it's upon the cross then the blood of Christ will continue to cleanse you John 1 7 through 9.

He will continue to minister to you. You have got to trust in what He did not your own condition of your heart. I have a saying my heart betrays me. My heart betrays me. There's so many sins I've got in my life in the past I don't bring them up.

I know they're taken care of at the cross. I know I'm guilty at the same time. And I decide to love Him and trust Him. That's what you have to do. You have to decide that you're going to just yield to His infinitely old love for you and His infinitely valuable sacrifice on the cross for you. That you yield to the blood that cleanses you. You drop to your knees, bow your head, raise your arms and you say, Lord my heart betrays me and yet I continue to trust you. Please work in my heart more holiness and that I would not look to my own guilt and I would look to your blood, to your sacrifice.

And that's what you have to do on a daily basis. And it will take a while, but it'll happen. Okay. Okay. Well one quick question on repentance. I mean do I need to go and talk? I mean I feel like I need to tell people, look this is what I was and I did this, I'm sorry. You know like in church everybody seems to be, if they knew this about me, you know, they would reject me or so. But I think it all goes back to what you originally said.

I just need to be yearly or hourly if I need to. That's right. You know until I somehow get it.

You understand a little bit more here. Sin can be forgiven but the effects of the sin continue. The effects of the sin upon your heart and your body. Those are still there and they're conditioned in you.

And this is a struggle you're going to have and it may take years before you finally release and realize that he loves you more than you can possibly imagine. And that it's all cleansed. Okay it's all cleansed. Yeah well that's what I was going to say. I appreciate your emphasis on what I would call the efficacy of the blood of Jesus.

I've read this and I've heard this and it seems more powerful than I can really comprehend to be honest. True. But necessary. Okay Matt thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for taking my call. You're welcome brother. No problem. Okay bye bye. All right well God bless. All right well I enjoy calls like that.

It's the doctrines of grace that minister to our hearts. Randall hey welcome back buddy. Sure glad to be back yeah I'm not sure what happened.

I just couldn't hear each other. Yeah that's all right it happens no big deal. Yeah so I had some notes. I was going to talk to you about it but if you have more you want to go. You're the guest go ahead. No I'm open to hearing what your recommendations are and so yeah you got your notes I'd love to hear them. Yeah here's what I think would be a good idea but you know context is always different you know. I like it when you say you go to the door hey you have any prayer needs you might want to add do you have any questions about God or Jesus or anything like that we'd be glad to talk to you about that if not that's okay you know and here's a pamphlet or a nicely produced tract not something handwritten on a paper napkin you know but something that's produced that looks good and with a church address and a website and say you know if you have any questions here you go and that's it and you know and they say no thank you okay that's fine you know just praise God but I'd also do this I would take note of this situation let's say an elderly person comes to the door and you can tell very elderly and that the yard's a mess well then what you do is you take note of that maybe you get some guys later and and you come back and knock on the door and say do you mind if we mow your lawn we we're here three weeks ago or whatever it is and you know we just want to love on you and that's it and we don't ask for anything we're not interested in that just to serve you because that's what it means to love your neighbor and you could also say you know if they want to know about the paracordic intertrinitarian relationship and how it relates to the universe as a particular you could talk about that too at the door but I don't know how far they'll get you it might be my mind shuts down a few conversations no that's fantastic yeah I love you know I think that that's so key we did a previous church I was at we did a program called adopt a block and similarly we we came out every single Saturday and we were always there uh knocking on the door asking if they need a thing we mowed their lawn and painted their home and the funny thing was when groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses came by the door hold on man there's music and we gotta go call back tomorrow and finish that because I'd love to know yes I want to but we're out of time and I'm I'm frustrated I want to hear to call back tomorrow buddy we gotta go sorry hey that was Randall from Texas may the Lord bless you hopefully we'll be on here tomorrow God bless bye another program powered by the truth network