Real Christianity #149： A Call to Speak Reverently of God
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Summary
Pastors need to be careful in how they speak to the Lord. Tim Keller recently tweeted a statement that says, "God's reckless grace is our greatest hope." In this episode of Real Christianity, Pastor Dale Partridge talks about how we should speak reverently to God.
Transcript
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Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week
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I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions. This is
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a 100% listener-supported audio ministry of relearn.org. And for those who don't know,
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our mission at relearn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical,
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confessional, and missional house churches. For more information, just visit relearn.org
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forward slash house. Welcome to Real Christianity. I'm your host, Dale Partridge. As many of you know,
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you can find the show notes for these episodes at our website at relearn.org. Today, we are going
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to be speaking about how our speech should be reverencing the Lord or how we should speak
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reverently of God. Before we begin, I just wanted to mention a few things. One, I wanted to talk
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about one of our programs at standinvictory.org. We've had so many reach out over the last few
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weeks even, asking about issues with pornography. If you're struggling to
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overcome the sin of pornography, we have designed a program. It's a short, very
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affordable program at StandinVictory.org, which is a gospel-centered program, and
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I lead the program. It's sharing part of my own story, and it has helped probably
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close to a thousand people have gone through the program so far, and the fruit is just incredible.
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The testimonials that you have sent me have made me cry. And if you are struggling and battling
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with that, please check out standinvictory.org. Another thing also, just so you guys know,
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I'm over the last several months, I've been having a Lyme flare up for you who have been
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following me for long. If you guys have been around for say a couple of years, you remember
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a few years ago, I got pretty sick and I struggled with chronic illness with Lyme disease and mold
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toxicity. And I had a pretty bad relapse a couple months ago and I'm fighting through that. And the
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Lord's grace has been upon me through this whole process, but I'm not operating at full capacity.
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So I'm just trying to really get the bare minimum requirements done at this point. But I'm
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telling you all this because I could really use your prayers. You know, chronic illness and
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suffering is difficult, even for those of us who have a strong theological framework to look at
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suffering. Uh, but yeah, would just appreciate your prayers, uh, during this time for us and
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our family. Uh, I am making progress, uh, but it's very slow. It'll likely be, um, several more
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months before I'm back up at a pace that was, um, maybe that I had maybe, you know, six to nine
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months ago. Also, if you are somebody who struggles with Lyme disease and chronic illness of some
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sort, mold toxicity, I'm going to be writing a book, Lord willing, within the next year
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on the idea of being Christian with chronic illness or the Christian and chronic illness,
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something along those lines. And would love for you to just email me at
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dale at reformationseminary.com. And just let me know your story. I'd love to maybe talk to you
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at some point for the book. All right. So yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter
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when I noticed a tweet by Tim Keller. And I follow Tim Keller because I generally respect
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his perspective on spiritual matters and theology. I've read several of his books,
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including the meaning of marriage, which I still think is a classic on marriage. But some have
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noticed, including myself, that Tim's theology over the past maybe year or so, at least maybe
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not his theology, but at least his way of communicating it has been less careful than
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previous years. But last night he tweeted a statement that said, God's reckless grace is
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our greatest hope. Now, to be clear, I understand the sentiment and the creative or even poetic
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nature of the word reckless. But what I want to talk about today is how we can be careful,
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and we need to be careful to not project human attributes upon a holy God, especially as pastors
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who are ambassadors of God with an intention of accurately representing him and his gospel to the
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world and to those who are being shepherded in our respective ministries. The word reckless,
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if you just look at the thesaurus, comes up with words like careless, thoughtless, risky,
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without calculation, lacking wisdom. You know, these are obviously inaccurate attributes of
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our God. You know, there's Torrin Wells, I think, wrote a song that talks about the ridiculous grace
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of God. It's not ridiculous. You know, there is someone that even brought up, you know,
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crazy love right from francis chan um again these are creative license or poetic um
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you know instruments of explaining a topic that some people get but some people don't and some
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people are frustrated by them and some people really appreciate them um and so i want to talk
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about this and i know some of you guys are thinking oh man are you really calling out
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tim keller um you know well one thing is this um when you make a public error
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as a pastor on twitter or something like this some other platform it usually requires public
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correction i'm not even correcting um tim keller directly i'm just saying hey this we shouldn't
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think this way um i'm still a supporter of dr keller but i'd say these things to him directly
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in a loving and humble way. I really respect his work. I've surely said irreverent things in my
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life in the past and have been corrected by other people for them. But again, just due to his large
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influence and how many people would have seen this and the fact that I posted it, I want to
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bring some clarity to it. I thought it was important to speak on the matter. And it's not
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just Keller. We obviously have the Reckless Love Song by Corey Asbury, and then obviously the
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Ridiculous Grace, and there's other tons of worship songs that use this kind of irreverence
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in the way that we speak of God. So I just think about Proverbs 9, 10, the fear of the Lord
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is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. I think about the
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third commandment, right? You shall not take the name of your Lord God in vain, for the Lord will
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not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Okay, now you're thinking, well, hey, Tim Keller's
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not taking the Lord's name in vain. Well, when you look at the theological implications of what it
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means to take the Lord's name in vain, it's much larger than just how we would think about it.
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Dr. William Plummer from the 1800s, he wrote a really great statement I'm going to read. He says,
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anything relating to the true God, his being, his nature, his will, his works, his workmanship,
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his worship, his service, or his doctrine pertains to God's name. The commandment extends to the
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state of men's thoughts and hearts, as well as their speech. To take God's name in vain
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is to use it in any frivolous, false, inconsiderate, irreverent, or otherwise
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wicked manner. The scope of this commandment is to secure the holy and reverent use of all that
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by which God makes himself known to his people, and so to guard his sacred name against all that
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is calculated to make it contemptible. The manner of taking his name is to be grave,
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I mean, serious, solemn, intelligent, thoughtful, sincere, and with godly fear, end quote.
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I think Dr. Plummer captures what I'm trying to say without giving you a larger theological
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discourse on understanding what the Lord's name means when he's telling us not to speak
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We need to be careful with the words that we use, especially when we're describing the character of God or the attributes of the gospel.
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Jesus, in speaking to the Pharisees, he makes a pretty harsh statement in Matthew 12, 33 through 37.
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He says, either make the tree good and its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.
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for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil?
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For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. For the good person out of his good
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treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.
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I tell you, on the day of judgment, pay attention here, on the day of judgment, people will give an
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account for every careless word they speak. For by your words, you will be justified. And by your
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words, you will be condemned. I want to talk about this. And to be clear, I'm not saying that
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Dr. Keller is a brood of vipers or that he's an evil man. We've all failed in speaking
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incorrectly about the Lord or improperly or irreverently we've all said you know
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OMG we've all we've done these things and the grace of God covers these things
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for his children dr. Barnes Albert Barnes he writes a little commentary in
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this passage he says the this literally means in terms of the the actual verse
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where I'm talking about here, is for every careless word. So that's the commentary. He's
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saying, this literally means a vain, thoughtless, useless word, a word that accomplishes no good.
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Here it means evidently wicked, injurious, false, malicious, for such were the words which they had
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spoken. John Calvin had a really good commentary on this too. He says, quote, now since man is
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so cautious, is not so cautious in speech or maintain such a wise restraint upon himself
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as never to allow some idle words to escape him, there remains for all of us absolute despair.
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If the Lord should treat us with this type of rigor, but as the confident hope of our salvation
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rests on the assurance that God will not enter into judgment with us, and he references Psalm
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143 too, but will bury it in his gracious forgetfulness, the sins which deserve innumerable
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deaths. So Tim Keller is a Christian, which means that that sin has already been atoned for.
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And my sin, when I fail to speak correctly or represent the Lord correctly, is already atoned
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for. But it doesn't give us this licentious permission to not be careful with our words
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and to let certain things slip out of our mouths. No, we need to, out of the gratitude of our heart
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for the salvation that was secured for us on Calvary by Christ, we need to be showing our
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reverence as our love and respect and gratitude for what's been done for us. And so we do need
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to be careful on the way that we speak. It's our duty, again, as ambassadors for those of us that
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are pastors or children of God to accurately represent our heavenly father with words which
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are true to his character. Words like awesome, words like, you know, I think of relentless.
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That would have been a much better word. You know, God's, what was the line here? He says,
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God's reckless grace is our greatest hope. It would be much better if it was God's relentless
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grace is our greatest hope. And so again, I understand the poetic license and we have in
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this culture to use colorful language with modern, wider semantic ranges that may allow
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for people to grasp what's really trying to be said. But the truth is when we speak of God,
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we must speak the truth. Our God is not reckless. His truth is not reckless. His grace is not
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reckless. It's perfect. It's holy. It's just. These are the words that we should be using.
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So that's my short message today. The post is on my Instagram account, and there's hundreds of
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comments of great discourse, and some people disagreeing and being frustrated, and some people
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appreciating the conversation, the exhortation, but it's there for you to reference. But my hope
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is, and my heart is, that everybody walks away today just being careful with their tongue,
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being careful with what they say, being careful how they represent their King,
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not just in word, but also in duty and behavior and even their thoughts.
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And so hopefully that was a helpful note and message for you on this episode. If you're a
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to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, and I'll see you next week.
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