Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #149： A Call to Speak Reverently of God

00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week

00:00:13.120 I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions. This is

00:00:19.100 a 100% listener-supported audio ministry of relearn.org. And for those who don't know,

00:00:25.720 our mission at relearn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical,

00:00:31.860 confessional, and missional house churches. For more information, just visit relearn.org

00:00:37.580 forward slash house. Welcome to Real Christianity. I'm your host, Dale Partridge. As many of you know, 0.97

00:00:43.980 you can find the show notes for these episodes at our website at relearn.org. Today, we are going

00:00:49.940 to be speaking about how our speech should be reverencing the Lord or how we should speak

00:00:59.160 reverently of God. Before we begin, I just wanted to mention a few things. One, I wanted to talk

00:01:06.480 about one of our programs at standinvictory.org. We've had so many reach out over the last few

00:01:14.260 weeks even, asking about issues with pornography. If you're struggling to

00:01:20.820 overcome the sin of pornography, we have designed a program. It's a short, very

00:01:27.640 affordable program at StandinVictory.org, which is a gospel-centered program, and

00:01:34.180 I lead the program. It's sharing part of my own story, and it has helped probably

00:01:41.820 close to a thousand people have gone through the program so far, and the fruit is just incredible.

00:01:47.200 The testimonials that you have sent me have made me cry. And if you are struggling and battling

00:01:55.220 with that, please check out standinvictory.org. Another thing also, just so you guys know,

00:02:03.680 I'm over the last several months, I've been having a Lyme flare up for you who have been

00:02:11.600 following me for long. If you guys have been around for say a couple of years, you remember

00:02:15.940 a few years ago, I got pretty sick and I struggled with chronic illness with Lyme disease and mold

00:02:23.060 toxicity. And I had a pretty bad relapse a couple months ago and I'm fighting through that. And the

00:02:32.760 Lord's grace has been upon me through this whole process, but I'm not operating at full capacity.

00:02:39.320 So I'm just trying to really get the bare minimum requirements done at this point. But I'm

00:02:46.020 telling you all this because I could really use your prayers. You know, chronic illness and

00:02:52.340 suffering is difficult, even for those of us who have a strong theological framework to look at

00:03:00.640 suffering. Uh, but yeah, would just appreciate your prayers, uh, during this time for us and

00:03:06.720 our family. Uh, I am making progress, uh, but it's very slow. It'll likely be, um, several more

00:03:14.280 months before I'm back up at a pace that was, um, maybe that I had maybe, you know, six to nine

00:03:21.660 months ago. Also, if you are somebody who struggles with Lyme disease and chronic illness of some

00:03:31.000 sort, mold toxicity, I'm going to be writing a book, Lord willing, within the next year

00:03:37.060 on the idea of being Christian with chronic illness or the Christian and chronic illness,

00:03:43.960 something along those lines. And would love for you to just email me at

00:03:48.520 dale at reformationseminary.com. And just let me know your story. I'd love to maybe talk to you

00:03:58.460 at some point for the book. All right. So yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter

00:04:06.600 when I noticed a tweet by Tim Keller. And I follow Tim Keller because I generally respect

00:04:12.740 his perspective on spiritual matters and theology. I've read several of his books,

00:04:17.140 including the meaning of marriage, which I still think is a classic on marriage. But some have

00:04:22.500 noticed, including myself, that Tim's theology over the past maybe year or so, at least maybe

00:04:29.100 not his theology, but at least his way of communicating it has been less careful than

00:04:35.260 previous years. But last night he tweeted a statement that said, God's reckless grace is

00:04:43.540 our greatest hope. Now, to be clear, I understand the sentiment and the creative or even poetic

00:04:52.260 nature of the word reckless. But what I want to talk about today is how we can be careful,

00:05:00.760 and we need to be careful to not project human attributes upon a holy God, especially as pastors

00:05:08.020 who are ambassadors of God with an intention of accurately representing him and his gospel to the

00:05:15.340 world and to those who are being shepherded in our respective ministries. The word reckless,

00:05:25.820 if you just look at the thesaurus, comes up with words like careless, thoughtless, risky,

00:05:31.300 without calculation, lacking wisdom. You know, these are obviously inaccurate attributes of

00:05:38.960 our God. You know, there's Torrin Wells, I think, wrote a song that talks about the ridiculous grace

00:05:47.020 of God. It's not ridiculous. You know, there is someone that even brought up, you know, 0.59

00:05:53.460 crazy love right from francis chan um again these are creative license or poetic um

00:06:01.700 you know instruments of explaining a topic that some people get but some people don't and some

00:06:07.860 people are frustrated by them and some people really appreciate them um and so i want to talk

00:06:13.540 about this and i know some of you guys are thinking oh man are you really calling out

00:06:18.100 tim keller um you know well one thing is this um when you make a public error

00:06:25.700 as a pastor on twitter or something like this some other platform it usually requires public

00:06:32.820 correction i'm not even correcting um tim keller directly i'm just saying hey this we shouldn't

00:06:39.380 think this way um i'm still a supporter of dr keller but i'd say these things to him directly

00:06:46.500 in a loving and humble way. I really respect his work. I've surely said irreverent things in my

00:06:53.420 life in the past and have been corrected by other people for them. But again, just due to his large

00:07:00.580 influence and how many people would have seen this and the fact that I posted it, I want to

00:07:07.200 bring some clarity to it. I thought it was important to speak on the matter. And it's not

00:07:12.140 just Keller. We obviously have the Reckless Love Song by Corey Asbury, and then obviously the

00:07:17.720 Ridiculous Grace, and there's other tons of worship songs that use this kind of irreverence

00:07:22.220 in the way that we speak of God. So I just think about Proverbs 9, 10, the fear of the Lord

00:07:29.820 is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. I think about the

00:07:37.440 third commandment, right? You shall not take the name of your Lord God in vain, for the Lord will

00:07:42.880 not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Okay, now you're thinking, well, hey, Tim Keller's

00:07:48.380 not taking the Lord's name in vain. Well, when you look at the theological implications of what it

00:07:53.900 means to take the Lord's name in vain, it's much larger than just how we would think about it.

00:08:00.900 Dr. William Plummer from the 1800s, he wrote a really great statement I'm going to read. He says,

00:08:06.840 anything relating to the true God, his being, his nature, his will, his works, his workmanship,

00:08:14.460 his worship, his service, or his doctrine pertains to God's name. The commandment extends to the

00:08:22.380 state of men's thoughts and hearts, as well as their speech. To take God's name in vain

00:08:28.860 is to use it in any frivolous, false, inconsiderate, irreverent, or otherwise

00:08:34.940 wicked manner. The scope of this commandment is to secure the holy and reverent use of all that

00:08:42.460 by which God makes himself known to his people, and so to guard his sacred name against all that

00:08:50.240 is calculated to make it contemptible. The manner of taking his name is to be grave,

00:08:57.000 I mean, serious, solemn, intelligent, thoughtful, sincere, and with godly fear, end quote.

00:09:06.240 I think Dr. Plummer captures what I'm trying to say without giving you a larger theological

00:09:15.200 discourse on understanding what the Lord's name means when he's telling us not to speak

00:09:23.220 a certain way.

00:09:23.760 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.

00:09:37.220 Jesus, in speaking to the Pharisees, he makes a pretty harsh statement in Matthew 12, 33 through 37.

00:09:45.920 He says, either make the tree good and its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.

00:09:52.000 for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil?

00:09:59.860 For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. For the good person out of his good

00:10:05.700 treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

00:10:11.220 I tell you, on the day of judgment, pay attention here, on the day of judgment, people will give an

00:10:16.760 account for every careless word they speak. For by your words, you will be justified. And by your

00:10:24.940 words, you will be condemned. I want to talk about this. And to be clear, I'm not saying that

00:10:30.040 Dr. Keller is a brood of vipers or that he's an evil man. We've all failed in speaking

00:10:42.340 incorrectly about the Lord or improperly or irreverently we've all said you know

00:10:49.860 OMG we've all we've done these things and the grace of God covers these things

00:10:56.680 for his children dr. Barnes Albert Barnes he writes a little commentary in

00:11:04.060 this passage he says the this literally means in terms of the the actual verse

00:11:09.560 where I'm talking about here, is for every careless word. So that's the commentary. He's

00:11:17.100 saying, this literally means a vain, thoughtless, useless word, a word that accomplishes no good.

00:11:23.460 Here it means evidently wicked, injurious, false, malicious, for such were the words which they had

00:11:30.080 spoken. John Calvin had a really good commentary on this too. He says, quote, now since man is

00:11:37.880 so cautious, is not so cautious in speech or maintain such a wise restraint upon himself

00:11:45.340 as never to allow some idle words to escape him, there remains for all of us absolute despair.

00:11:53.240 If the Lord should treat us with this type of rigor, but as the confident hope of our salvation

00:11:58.940 rests on the assurance that God will not enter into judgment with us, and he references Psalm

00:12:05.080 143 too, but will bury it in his gracious forgetfulness, the sins which deserve innumerable

00:12:12.420 deaths. So Tim Keller is a Christian, which means that that sin has already been atoned for. 0.73

00:12:20.160 And my sin, when I fail to speak correctly or represent the Lord correctly, is already atoned 0.52

00:12:25.480 for. But it doesn't give us this licentious permission to not be careful with our words

00:12:34.320 and to let certain things slip out of our mouths. No, we need to, out of the gratitude of our heart

00:12:40.620 for the salvation that was secured for us on Calvary by Christ, we need to be showing our

00:12:47.040 reverence as our love and respect and gratitude for what's been done for us. And so we do need

00:12:54.300 to be careful on the way that we speak. It's our duty, again, as ambassadors for those of us that

00:12:59.380 are pastors or children of God to accurately represent our heavenly father with words which

00:13:05.940 are true to his character. Words like awesome, words like, you know, I think of relentless.

00:13:14.260 That would have been a much better word. You know, God's, what was the line here? He says,

00:13:19.860 God's reckless grace is our greatest hope. It would be much better if it was God's relentless

00:13:25.680 grace is our greatest hope. And so again, I understand the poetic license and we have in

00:13:32.700 this culture to use colorful language with modern, wider semantic ranges that may allow

00:13:39.540 for people to grasp what's really trying to be said. But the truth is when we speak of God,

00:13:45.320 we must speak the truth. Our God is not reckless. His truth is not reckless. His grace is not

00:13:53.320 reckless. It's perfect. It's holy. It's just. These are the words that we should be using.

00:14:02.100 So that's my short message today. The post is on my Instagram account, and there's hundreds of

00:14:08.980 comments of great discourse, and some people disagreeing and being frustrated, and some people

00:14:13.440 appreciating the conversation, the exhortation, but it's there for you to reference. But my hope

00:14:19.840 is, and my heart is, that everybody walks away today just being careful with their tongue,

00:14:26.140 being careful with what they say, being careful how they represent their King,

00:14:30.960 not just in word, but also in duty and behavior and even their thoughts.

00:14:36.300 And so hopefully that was a helpful note and message for you on this episode. If you're a

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00:15:57.180 to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, and I'll see you next week.

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00:16:40.840 this episode of Real Christianity. We will see you next Wednesday.

Dale Partridge - June 02, 2021

Real Christianity #149： A Call to Speak Reverently of God

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