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Welcome to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to be with you, 866, 34 TRUTH, 866-348. 7884. If you want to be a part of the program, if you will allow me just a moment, I want to address something.
Last week, We had the tough news that Chuck Norris passed away, and almost immediately The Chuck Norris jokes were just flooding social media. Maybe you've heard these. They were started many years ago. Things like Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the earth down. Or time waits for no man unless that man is Chuck Norris.
My personal favorite, Chuck Norris kills two stones with one bird. That's one of my all-time favorites. They've been around for years. And they just flooded back. Within minutes.
They were never meant as mockery. It was always kind of like folklore, kind of like Paul Bunyan jokes for this day and age. And it was. You know, it was just a sign of respect and just a great affection for this guy. And it now has become a way for us to be able to grieve because we do miss him.
And. We have a culture war going on about masculinity. And At our core, we're not confused about this. You know, we wanted John Wayne. We wanted Chuck Norris.
Uh not because they were perfect. But because they were clear, we don't want to have this conversation about what is a man. And, you know, These guys were were. they they stepped into legend. John Wayne and Chuck Norris.
You got great actors out there like Robert Duvall, and he played Augustus McRae in Lonesome Dove, one of the greatest characters ever. But Robert Duvall stepped into that. Chuck Norris and John Wayne, they didn't step into a character. The character stepped into them. They didn't just become larger than life, they made life look smaller around them.
And as we're debating this whole conversation about masculinity, I mean, think about just for a moment. Just imagine this for just a moment. Do you remember when Marsha Blackburn asked Katanji Brown? Who was the Supreme Court nominee from Joe Biden? to define a woman.
Can you define what a woman is? What was her answer? Remember what her answer was?
Well well, I'm I'm not a biologist. It was a moment that will follow this woman, because that's what she is. This woman. For the rest of her life, Whatever she accomplishes on the Supreme Court will always be marked by that moment where she refused to use common sense. I don't think for one moment That she didn't know what a woman was and didn't know what a man was.
I think she bowed to the ideology of this world.
Now, that's my opinion, and you can take it for what it's worth. But. I don't see how anybody can really be confused of this unless they are mentally disturbed. This is a basic question. It's not a hard thing.
But imagine, if you will, if Marsha Blackbird had asked a Supreme Court nominee. Can you define what a man is? And they'd said Chuck Norris. I mean, the place would have laughed. Everybody would have gotten it.
And the nominee would have sailed right through. Because it's apparent. And You know, nobody builds myths. Like you have around Chuck Norris and John Wayne and so forth, about people who have to explain themselves.
Okay. John Wayne didn't explain himself. Chuck Norse didn't explain something. And they didn't apologize for strength. They didn't soften their conviction or their patriotism.
They didn't seem confused about what it meant to stand for something. That kind of presence used to be easier to find. John Wayne, of course, carried it in an earlier generation, not because he was a great actor. I mean, you look at his stuff and you see he wasn't that great of an actor, but because he didn't need to be. His clarity did the work.
I mean, Chuck Norris was not going to win an Oscar. But he didn't have to. He was Chuck Norris. John Wayne played John Wayne. Chuck Norris played Chuck Norris.
He didn't try to reach as an actor. He didn't try to stretch as an actor. He just played Chuck Norris. No disclaimers. You know, no weeks.
At no distance from the roll, they meant it and people knew it. Men saw a standard. Whether they could reach it or not, boys saw something to grow toward, women saw something steady enough to trust. And that kind of recognition cannot be manufactured. It isn't branding.
It's coherence. For a long time, America understood that. Not perfectly, but clear enough to recognize it when we saw it. Strength, without apology. Patriotism without embarrassment?
Responsibility without performance, that used to be part of our vocabulary. But to day it's contested. Have you noticed that strength is treated with suspicion? Patriotism gets Recast is naivete, and sincerity is replaced with irony, as if meaning what you say is something that you have to outgrow. And Hollywood reflects this.
It doesn't produce men like this anymore, not because it lacks talent. But if you notice, it doesn't trust the men. that represent that. The characters' heads, they have to explain themselves. Did you notice that?
They always have to kind of soften it when they're challenged. They're they're conflicted. But audience still recognized the difference, and that's why the Chuck Norris jokes worked. The humor depending on something shared. It was something solid, something that didn't need redefining every five minutes.
And the jokes exaggerated, but they didn't invent it. And Chuck Norris knew it. He. He was in on that. He he laughed about it.
Because he didn't take himself that seriously, but I'll tell you what he did take seriously. was his faith. And he spoke openly about it. Not as branding, he wasn't trying to reach a certain demographic or whatever, but as conviction. as submission to something greater than himself, and that is the mark of a true man.
is one who understands authority. One who respects authority. Not cultural approvals, not public opinion, but authority. Go back and look at the centurion that came to Jesus and Jesus was going to go to his house to heal the servant, and he said, No, no, no, you don't have to go. I'm a man of authority, I understand authority.
And I give a command, and my soldiers follow it. You just have to say the word, Jesus. And Jesus did what? He was marveling at this. Isn't that a great moment in the life of our Lord here on this earth, when He marveled at this centurion who understood this?
We have a culture now that just is all over the map. We can't define what a male and a female is. We can't define what authority is. Look at this mess that we have. that we have wrought.
And that's why I think a lot of these Chuck Norris jokes flourish and so forth, because at our core, we're not confused. We still want this. We still want men to be men, women to be women. We don't have to have this blurring of it. And where do we get that kind of clarity?
Well, you get it from Scripture. You get it from Scripture. And Chuck Norris knew that. And he trusted. Christ with his salvation.
And from everything I've seen, this was a man who was deeply committed. To his savior, loved his country, loved his fans, loved life, and enjoyed doing what he did. And I have people that I know that have met him several times, and everyone had the same thing to say: that he was just a stand-up guy. We don't have that a lot in our culture anymore, do we? Certainly not in the entertainment business.
We're missing it. We're poor for it, for not having that. But I look at Chuck Norris and I couldn't help but see, again, all the tributes that came in. And I I don't know what his favorite scripture was. I really don't.
Uh I d I would like to think, though, that 1 Corinthians 15:55 would be right up there at the top. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? I I would like to think that that was one of his, because Chuck Norris knows that now. He knows that verse in ways that we can only imagine.
One day we will. But he knows that now.
So yeah, we grieve. And we mourn. More than just The passing of one man that brought us a lot of entertainment and joy. The the Passing of somebody that was unapologetically American, unapologetically a believer, a Christian. a man of God.
Unapologetically, a man. And I will tell you that That's it and Sting Chuck Norris. And I'll tell you another thing, death didn't take Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris said, I want from here. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884.
This is Peter Rosenberg. We'll be right back. True tonight You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Truth Talk Live, this is Peter Rosberger. Glad to be with you, 866.
34 TRUTH 866-348. 7884. I was just in the opening monologue talking about Chuck Dorris. And I love the Chuck Dorris jokes, and I just find them absolutely hysterical. Chuck Dorris doesn't wear a watch.
He decides what time it is. When Chuck Norris enters a room, he doesn't turn the lights on. He turns the dark off. Death once had a near Chuck experience. And Chuck Norris went with well, listen, what is it?
The with the boogeyman, he checks the closets at night for Chuck Norris.
So and and I they're all said with affection and and with with great uh respect for a guy that lived an amazing life. And and I don't want to make this whole show about that. But it speaks to the larger question about this culture we live it in because of this. This Craziness that we've gotten over refusing to define male and female. And Where wh who is the author of Confucian?
You know that. What does Scripture say? And it's not the Lord. And it's when we have this kind of stuff of the blurring of the lines, it's one of those things where you can see exactly what's going on. And How are we going to respond to this?
What do we say to it? We got to do more than just tell Chuck Norris jokes. And we've got to be able to speak clearly to a world that is just Um Nuts. 1 Corinthians 14:33. For God is not the author of confusion.
So So who is?
Well, it would be the prince of this world. Who else has started all the way back from Genesis of trying to? Muddy the waters. Did God really say? Did God say?
You know, you ever hear these people say, well, you know, that's not in the red letter words. You ever heard that? What they're doing is saying that the teaching of the apostles is not as important. The teaching of the prophets is not as important. And Jesus didn't ever say that.
In fact, he said that the church's foundation is on the words of the prophets and the apostles. He commissioned the authority To both. Uh And the Word of God is what drives all of that. And yet, we want to muddy the waters, we don't want to talk about. Masculinity.
We don't want to talk about these things. What are your thoughts on that? 866-34-TRUTH. 866-348-7884. Are you seeing this?
around you and your community. I we Gracie and I had lunch. A little while back with a lady from the church, and we were just taking her lunch. And she was dealing with some hard things, and she was struggling, and Her son Who's now 22 or 23 or 24 decides he's a woman now? And she was really struggling, and he got angry at her for putting pictures of him.
in her own home When he was still considered a boy.
Now he he is still a boy, he's just mentally disturbed. But he got angry with her, and she didn't know how to do it. She was trying to be supportive, and she struggled trying to call him her and everything else. And I said, Well, who owns the house? She said, Well, I do.
And I said, well, then you're free to grieve the loss of your son however you choose to. It's not his house. But this is going to be more and more. I didn't want to get into a social-political conversation. We were just buying lunch.
And yet we're going to find this everywhere on this confusion. And I remember the first time I heard about this.
Some years ago, I was visiting, a friend of mine called me in Nashville. We lived in Nashville. We went over to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and they were visiting a family where the grandfather actually had gotten into a car wreck, and it was pretty serious.
So they asked, would you come and just sit with the family with us and so forth? And we were just 10 minutes away.
So I said, okay, I'd come over there for a little bit. Went over there and um met a lot of the family and there was a grandson there. And this is a big old boy. I mean, I'm Pretty tall. I mean, I'm, you know, decent size.
This guy had me by at least a A uh a foot. And Every bit he had me by at least 40 to 50 pounds. I mean, he was a big, he looked like a linebacker. And we got to talking. I asked him, I said, well, what are you doing?
He said, I'm in college. And he said, I'm over it. you know Memphis State University I think it was and And I said, oh, he's in grad school. I said, oh, what are you studying? He said gender studies.
Well, I never heard of such a degree. And again, this is a while back, and I looked at him kind of puzzled, and I said. Buddy, was that an issue? I mean, you know, what is that a thing here? You're studying male and female.
How long a course can that be? He said, well, I identify as male. And I looked at him, this beast of a guy, and I thought, I mean, the guy could have posed for Bigfoot. And I thought, What part of that was confusing you? You know, and my friend was over there, and he's a little bit more politically correct than I am, and you know.
To his Shame, but he was putting his head down like, oh, and I, but I really thought it was, I was being pranked. I thought I was being punked on this thing. That's the first I'd ever heard of a degree for Gender studies. And a guy that's 22 years old, it looks like he ought to be hiking a football. Um and and you know on a on a on a Division I team in the SEC, and he's over there.
Well, I identify as a male, and I'm thinking, well, have we got to this? How did we get here? And I don't know that I'd be, he was a little bit taken aback that I didn't immediately start applauding and affirming him. And I was like, well, I make it a habit not to. you know, applaud crazy.
I think we got to stop doing that kind of thing. I mean, this is, where are we going with this as a country? And then, of course, it's just a mushroom to what you see before. And when we get a Supreme Court justice who refuses to. define what a female is.
And Here we are. But, you know, that's what one of the things I just loved about Chuck Norris with it because it just gave a You know, we know what this is. And sometimes we use humor. not have to be confrontational. Because it makes us uncomfortable when we're confrontational.
But sometimes you've got to be confrontational. And that's when I looked at that guy. I looked up at him. I mean, he had me, and I had just gotten, I felt a little bit emboldened because I just got the black belt. And so I thought, well, if he comes after me, you know, at least I could maybe Um, you know, maybe I could outrun him, you know, but uh, I don't know, but I think he was genuinely stunned that somebody had questioned him.
And I thought, this is what they're teaching. But God is not the author of confusion. Again, 1 Corinthians 14, 33. Confusion has a source, it ain't from God. And but I think we can draw some very Clear lines on who it is.
John 8:44. Satan is called the father of lies. Lies always produce confusion distortion always does. And so You know, then we got our own fallen nature. James 1:14, we are drawn away by our own desires.
And we're going to look for things to fill spaces in our lives. And this is what happens in our culture. And all of a sudden, people are getting affirmation in their sickness. They're saying, yeah, yeah, we're we're people are cheering them on in their sickness. when they need help.
You know, it it it's a topsy-turvy world that we're living in now, and I don't know that it's going to get much better. I think we're going to have more and more darkness encroaching. I mean we got it in the church. And we got all this affirming nonsense. I'm not talking about the male and female issue, just affirming sin.
Where do we, you know, how did we get here where we're saying, okay, we're gonna wink at the, or not only wink at it, we're gonna endorse it? Are you seeing this? 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. This is Truth Talk Live. What are your thoughts on that?
Are you seeing this in your churches, your community, in your area, your workplace? Or, you know. Are we just out to lunch here? I don't think we are. I think it's everywhere.
You tell me 866-34-TRUTH. We'll be right back. Truth Talk Life. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.
This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to be with you today, 866-34-TRUTH 866-348. We're talking about masculinity, femininity, manhood, womanhood. The cultural confusion in our life. And it's not just limited to that, by the way.
It's permeating everything. It often does. I got a family member who is a counselor. And that's his profession. And he deals with a lot with couples counseling, particularly when he gets into situations where there's some drugs or alcohol involved as well too.
And he's got a hard and fast rule. when it comes to counseling. that he does not will not take the bond as a client. If the offending party This is individual or in a couple's therapy. If the offending party with addiction issues.
is not in recovery. If they are actively participating in their stuff, he's not going to bother, he won't meet with them. They have to be involved in a recovery program, go into 12-step programs or things such as that, and they have to have sobriety and all that's going on.
Now why do you suppose that is?
Well, I I'll tell you what he tells me. He says, I can't have a conversation in reality if they're still participating in their addiction. If we are still participating in a sinful lifestyle, and calling it endorsing it, embracing it. not struggling against it, snuggling with it. How can we be in a Reality-based conversation.
We're still anesthetizing ourselves. We're still indulging ourselves. We're still embracing something that is contrary. to scripture. And We are not called to endorse a lifestyle.
We're in c we're we're called to crucify the flesh.
Now that's something we don't hear very often very much in a lot of churches out there. Which is kind of sad to say. We get a lot of people who want to tell you about, you know, God just loves you as you are. Let me ask you a question. You've heard that before, right?
God loves you just as you are. Is that true? Is that true? You can You could come as you are. But does he love you just as you are?
And that's it. You don't have to change, just come to God. You don't have to repent. You don't have to abandon something. You don't have to die to the flesh.
You could be, you know. special and loved and everything else. And he loves you just as you are. Is that... Is that the message of Scripture?
866. 34 Truth, 866-348-7884. I look when John the Baptist came on the scene. Did he say Good news, y'all. God loves you just as you are.
Is that what he said? He said, repent. For the kingdom of God is at hand. Not you know, try to condone, try to massage it. But turn from it.
Repent. Turn from this. Turn away from this. And yet Are we being told this? We're allowing people to be indulged.
Like that young man that I looked at, people spent a good bit of time indulging him in this belief system to the point where he can look at somebody else, a complete stranger. I was, you know, thirty something years older than him at the time.
Well, I still am thirty-something years older than him. He's so aged too. But Um but he looks as a complete stranger and and and boasts that he's Getting a master's degree in gender studies, which, by the way, have you tried to get a job with that? As of late? Anybody got a degree in gender gender studies and it's opening up doors for you to get good employment?
Is that worth the money you paid for it or took out loans for? I mean, are th are those valuable degrees? I'm curious to know. 866-34 Truth. I may be wrong.
Doubt it. 866-348-7884. But. Nobody told this guy. that this is not wise.
They all kept affirming him to the point where he's looks like a a linebacker or a offensive lineman. And he's bragging that he identifies as a male, and he thinks this is some kind of breakthrough. Nobody told him. They indulged him in this. Do we do we get a lot of that?
In our culture, from our pulpits and everything else. They're certainly getting it from academia and the media. And this, you know, you've heard the phrase, woke, go woke, go broke. But is that enough? Those are the cultural Financial you know, that kind of stuff, societal things.
But what does the word of God say? about these things. It's his turn from this. And Paul goes through this litany of things, as were some of you. You know, this litany of sins, adulterers, murderers, gossipers, lying to disobedient to parents.
I mean, he goes, as were some of you. That's clarity punching through this. But we've got to a point where we don't want to speak with clarity anymore. And the best we can do sometimes are Chuck Norris jokes. You know, when we use a caricature to just.
to describe a greater truth, but so we don't have to be too confrontational about it. But we all know what the joke is. The joke is, we've got a society here that wants to argue about masculinity. One of my favorite pictures that I see is from World War II. And it shows a A a soldier.
carrying a wounded Soldier. over his shoulder. And they're running, and he's running, carrying this guy, and the wounded soldier is firing his pistol. At the enemy that's chasing them. And I think this was at the time, I think it was in the European theater, but I'm not positive about that.
But it's just an amazing picture. And somebody put the caption: Toxic Masculinity. And I loved it. It was just, you know, it's such a great. Symbol of, you know, the guy's carrying a wounded man, and the wounded man is still.
doing his duty and fighting the enemy. And that's back when we had a little bit more clarity. Let me go to even a greater place of clarity. We're we're here at Easter. Uh in in another in another week.
And I do you remember that scene in um John, in the Gospel of John, when Jesus is in the garden. And the soldiers come from the temple guards, I think it was, and John 18. And They're they they Jesus steps forward. And It says, Whom do you seek? And they said Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, it's hard for us to imagine because Jesus was not, they didn't have television back then, they didn't have pictures like that.
So, they didn't know really, if they hadn't been close to him, they wouldn't have known what he looked like. Because it was dark at night, and there weren't street lights, and they didn't have it on their phone. They didn't have Ebola. Be on the lookout. They didn't have any of that stuff.
And Jesus says, you know, who do you seek? They said Jesus of Nazareth. And what does Jesus say? He steps forward and he says, I am he. And when he said that they drew back and fell to the ground.
Every You ever thought about that particular passage in Scripture? that his presence was such That they were overpowered by it. I am he. The very presence Of Christ. I am He.
Hey. and they fell to the ground. That's an astonishing moment. Two, two, two. And and And then the second one is when he was brought before Pilate.
And you remember that scene where Pilate is sitting there saying, you know, aren't you going to defend yourself? Are you going to speak? Are you going to say anything? Is it don't you know I have the power? to to kill you, to to to to execute you, I have power over your life.
And Jesus had been beaten. He'd been up all night long. He had been spit on. He had been whipped. All these things that had happened to him.
And they, they really, Mel Gibson did a great job of portraying this in the Passion of the Christ. And I would, every Easter I watch that. I have to kind of go into a room by myself and I just watch it because it's so powerful to watch it. But it just, oh, it's, it's just, I just weep through it. And you see, Jim Coviesel just nailed it.
He just kind of looked kind of sideways at Pilot. And he said, You you have no power over me. Remember what I said in the first block about authority? About understanding authority. And Jesus said to Pilot, You have no authority over me.
You know, you have no idea what's going on here. But Pilate was convinced of his own Yeah. importance as we often do as fallen human beings. and had no clue to who was standing in front of him. And Jesus didn't yell that out.
He didn't get into histrionics or anything else. He just simply said the truth. because he was and he is the truth. And he was a little light That came into the world, and the world knew it not. And that is you know Manhood on the level that it's really hard for us to process, particularly in our culture.
Jesus didn't make any apologies about saying who he was. He didn't try to make you feel better. About who he was. He just said I am he And they fell down the weight of who he is. And this is This is what this sinful world of ours despises.
They they i the world hates this. And as Paul says, such Or some of you And you cringe when you hear it because it's so indicting. Because we have a lot of people out there that preach the gospel. They preach, and I say that by the way, with air quotes: the gospel, the good news. But they never preach.
the need for the gospel. And what Paul did was, he just laid out, this is why. There's a gospel because there's such bad news. The bad news is that sin is a bigger problem than you think it is. Your sin is a bigger problem than you think it is.
My sin is a much bigger problem than I think it is. But the gos the gospel, the great news. Is it the cross? is more amazing than we can ever imagine. The cross is more Astonishing.
The hymn writer wrote, And from my stricken heart with tears. To wonders I confess when he's looking at the cross. The wonders of Redeeming love. and my unworthiness. What an amazing statement.
Sin is a bigger problem. The cross is a bigger deal. But we have won. who said, I am he. We have won Who?
truly was. The Son of God. The son of me. The God Man. And that's Truth Talk Live.
We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to be with you, 866.
34 Truth 866 348 7884. If you want to weigh in on this topic here, I wanted to pivot just a tiny bit, a little bit. By the way, if you want to see some of the commentary that I do, I write each week for Blaze Media and other organization publications, but I put a lot of this out on my substack, caregiver.substack.com, where I unpack things that I spent time with on my radio program, on this program, on my caregiver program, and things that I just don't have time to compress into the hour. And I put it out on Substack video, all that kind of stuff. Caregiver.substack.com.
Take advantage of that. It's out there available for you. We have so many people in this audience who are serving right now as family caregivers. It's a hard thing to do. It is a tough thing to do.
And I recognize the struggle of that. I've been doing it for 40 years. And so I put as much information out there as I possibly can to assist you along the way so that you don't feel that you're so isolated and alone. It's that isolation is caregivers struggle with the three I's, I call them. We lose our independence.
We lose our identity. We stop speaking in first-person singular. When you ask a caregiver, How are you doing?
Well, we just got home from the hospital, or our situation is where he's doing this. And I want caregivers to learn to speak in their own voice. and and then the third eye is we become isolated. And did you ever notice that in Genesis that the first thing that God said that was not good. was before the fall.
It's not good that man is alone. That was before the fall. It's not good that we're alone. It's not good that you're alone. And so I want to be able to offer you what I can.
My podcast, Substack, everything I have, take advantage of it. And caregiver.substack. dot com and if you don't know what substack is it's an kind of like an online newsletter there's video there's print there's audio there's so many different things that i put out there and i hope you will take advantage of that and then i also want to leave you with One thing as we get ready to go into Easter, did you see the shooting at Old Dominion? Um About a week or so ago. Where he was a guy that had been involved with terrorists, got sent to prison, then let out early, and then went back and terrorized again.
And it ended very tragically. There was, I believe, a lieutenant colonel that was killed, and the assailant was killed. By the students, I think they were able to neutralize him before he caused any more damage. But it's just a horrific scene, and you just groan. when you see this.
But as I was watching this, I heard something. In the FBI press conference, he came out and he said, Um Past behaviour predicted future performance. And that's something that law enforcement officers use. That's an axiom that they hold on to because they look at the past behavior. And You know, this is gonna this is gonna recur again.
It's gonna predict future performance. And we all know what that means. You can, you, as the guy said it, you can almost feel the collective nod when it was said. Nobody's arguing with it. No one's surprised.
And we've heard it way too many times in way too many places, fallen way too many tragedies. But I gotta tell you, that phrase does not stay confined, to a crime scene. Scripture has already traced that pattern back long before law enforcement gave it a name. Apostle Paul described in Romans 7 with unsettling clarity doing what he did not want to do, returning to what he knew he should leave behind. Past performance.
indicates fut past behavior indicates future performance. and the pattern shows up in Quieter ways that are no less real, the grudges we keep, the the the the anger we justify, the habits we keep returning to after promising we wouldn't do it. We manage it, we rename it, we excuse it, yet left alone it returns, and at times we even run to it.
So the question is unavoidable, does our past behaviour predict our future performance. If it does, then we already know the outcome. And that is heartbreaking, and that's the bad news. And it reaches further than any headline out there. That's the bad news.
But There is good news. And that's where Easter comes in. And you know, this is not something new. We're getting ready to have 250 years as a nation, and it is worth remembering. That the men who framed this country understood something about that pattern.
They built a system. that that assumed it. Checks and balances and limits on power all rest on a sober view of human nature because what is true in the human heart will inevitably shape any government. And we see that now. We see a monstrosity in our government of injustice.
And the founders knew that this would happen, and they tried to put a lot of checks and balances. But you see how we've gotten around these checks and balances. Because the human heart is Corrupt. Scripture says this. It's wicked to the core.
Jesus wouldn't even trust himself to anyone else because he knew their hearts. But there is good news. Easter is not about trying harder. What Resurrection Sunday is about is that what was broken is being made new. If my past is all that I have, then that trajectory is going to hold.
Past behavior. and will predict future performance. And if my past is all I have, then I know what my future is going to be. And that's heartbreaking. That is demoralizing.
I'll remain what I've been and the outcome is Clear. But the Gospel tells a different story, not about my record, but about his. Not a cleaned up version of my life, but a different standing altogether. My past. with all of its patterns, was nailed to the cross with Christ, and my future is no longer tied to my performance, But to his The cross is where the debt was paid in the resurrection, where it's where death's power was broken.
That's what I said in the first block about Chuck Norris. Death wears your stain. Death didn't stain Chuck Norris. Death didn't take Chuck Norris. He belonged to Christ.
Easter is not symbolic. It's not a day about eggs and bunnies. It's a disruption in history itself. Death, which is always. confirmed that that pattern would hold.
Was overturned, and the trajectory did not continue. It was broken. If death does not get the final word, then neither does the life that leads to it. Meaning ours, Paul said it plainly: such were some of you. I said that in the last block, but the key word there is were.
And that's what Easter means. It means that I'm not doomed to repeat what once defined me. and neither are you. Behold, if any man is in Christ, he is what?
Well, he's a new creation. That phrase still stands. Past behaviour does predict future performance mine did, too. but Christ's past performance now defines my future. and can define yours.
Easter Sunday, churches around the world declare that he not only carried our sin. But he took our past and gave us his righteousness. That's the double imputation there. He took on our sin, but he gave us his righteousness. The debt had to be paid.
But we can't stand before God unless we're righteous. And that's where the double imputation of that comes in. Christ gave us His righteousness as if we had never sinned. We are standing under him. That's what Paul said, put on Christ.
Put on Christ. Not just a second chance, not a fresh start. This is a new. standing Counted bright before God, Not because of what I've done. But because of what he's done.
And that righteousness now writes the story. going forward. This is what it means as we go into Holy Week. As we think about all that transpired. During that week, starting with Palm Sunday.
and going all the way to the resurrection. Past performance indicates future. behavior. We are not doomed to this. You're not doomed to this.
That's the gospel. You cannot have the good news without having the bad news, and the bad news is our past performance indicates death. And it will result only in death. That's what Scripture says. For the wages of sin are what?
Death. No escaping it. But God Intervene. broke through. The light came into the world.
The darkness didn't even comprehend it. The world can't comprehend this, it can't reconcile it. That's why you have all this confusion in the world, because it can't process. But God is not the author of Confusion.
So That's the message that we go into next week with. Bury that in your heart, stand on it. There are going to be times when you look at yourself and you say, oh. Oh, you just sigh. But don't look to yourself.
Look to Christ. run to Christ. Remember what the hymn writer said, From my stricken heart with tears. Two wonders I confess, the wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness. Go back and look at Isaac Watts when I survey the wondrous cross.
And, you know, I Fanny Crosby wrote, Jesus, keep me near the cross. Near the cross. It's not it's it This is the place we run to. That's where the great exchanged. exchange happened.
And so, as we go out into a world that is confused, let us not be. Let us be strong. Let us be clear. Let us stand firm. Let us not get into histrionics, but let us proclaim boldly.
Because that's truth talk alive. This is Peter Rosenberger. Hey, go out to caregiver.substack.com today. There's more out there for you, and I am grateful to spend this time with you. I'll see you next week.
Thanks so much for listening. Truth Talk Live. I
