Exhorter Podcast
Welcome to the Exhorter Podcast where we aim to stir up love and good works, through bite-sized biblical discussion. This local effort of the Church of Christ located in Clovis California is hosted by Kyle Goodwin, Paul Nerland, Nate Shankels, and Jon Bradford.
Exhorter Podcast
49 - How Close to Sin Can You Get Without Sinning?
Join us and Tommy Peeler as we talk about when sin first entered the world in Genesis 3. We'll discuss how tempting it is to get close to sin and why that's not a good idea. Let's chat about setting clear boundaries, avoiding messing with sin, and understanding how we deal with it.
We'll also look at Matthew chapters 5 and 6 and use the idea of "glorifying God" as a guide. It'll help us figure out which paths might not be full-on sinful but could still mess with our journey or dim our light.
You can check out Tommy's podcast "Carefully Examining the Text" on all platforms.
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Thanks for listening!
Welcome to the Exordr podcast, where we aim to stir up love and good works through bite-sized biblical discussion. We have a special podcast today. We haven't had any a few weeks. We've had some sicknesses, we've had some events around here, but we're glad to jump back in with a guest brother, tommy Peeler from Avon Heights. Is that how you say it? Yes, avon Heights, brother Christ, and that is in Indiana.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, Avon, indiana, a little bit west of Indiana.
Speaker 1:You know you can listen to Tommy on his own podcast. He has a podcast called Carefully Examining the Text. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, google Spotify, wherever you can hear this podcast. You can hear his podcast because you use Buzzsprout as well. Yes, and that's what we use, and so it allows us to hit all the channels. You've been doing that since March of 21.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we are covering the book of Psalms. I've done a brief introduction, an adequate introduction, but as much as you can get in 15 to 20 minutes. And then I have covered all the Psalms from one to 96. Couple of those require two podcasts, but at least one on all of those Psalms and, lord willing, in the next couple of years have all the Psalms covered.
Speaker 1:I remember when Scott did a series on Psalms here and it lasted like two years. It's a great podcast. I like your tone. I like your very simplicity approach to it. I think everyone will find it very beneficial. So you can go ahead and look that up carefully.
Speaker 1:Examining the text, tommy is here doing a Gospel meeting for us this week and it's called From Sin to Salvation and he's covering the problem with sin and then also provides God's answer to sin through Christ on the cross and our salvation through him. So it's a great series so far and one of the lessons I thought we would talk about a little more in depth together, and that was Sunday night, genesis 3, and it was titled the Problem with Sin. And there you talk about if we play with sin and temptation, we will find it too powerful and sin cannot deliver what it promises, which that was a really great point. Sin turns blessings into curses. We seek to evade responsibility for sin. Some really great points on sin, and I encourage you to go to our YouTube, lois Church of Christ, and to watch all those streams from this week. Tommy, just a little bit about if you want to introduce that topic a little bit more and kind of your approach to Genesis 3.
Speaker 2:One of the one college teacher I had years and years ago stated that if it wasn't for Genesis 3, the Bible would have ended with Genesis 2. And you may say, well, if it wasn't for Genesis 4, the Bible would have ended with Genesis 3. But the point is, if sin had never entered the world, the Bible could have stopped, with man and woman living in peace and paradise in the Garden of Eden. But after sin enters the world in Genesis 3, the rest of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is telling us about God winning man back from sin. We created the problem, god gives a solution.
Speaker 3:I think that's even highlighted by chapter 1. I like to notice words Like in Mark's Gospel immediately, immediately, immediately. Then he went here and immediately he went into this house and immediately he got in the boat. Mark's trying to tell you something by the repetition of that word In Genesis, chapter 1, it's the word good. After each day of creation, god looks at his work and says it is good.
Speaker 3:Of course every preacher has probably used this analogy in their wedding sermon gets to the fact that man is alone and that's not good. So he makes woman and then the world's complete and he says it is very good. So that's the contrast that gets into chapter 3, adam and Eve, and then Cain kills Abel, and then you get the story about Lamech, who's basically just multiplying the sins of Cain, and then you get the flood and everyone's violent and Tower of Babel, and even going back Noah he's a good guy but not perfect, made some mistakes and his kids made some mistakes. So it just the Bible starts with this good work of God in creation, but then it's highlighted by kind of here you go, mankind, you're made in my image, rule over, subdue the creation, and in our hands we do not good things and sin comes into the world. So that's the contrast. I see that even highlights that point further.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about the word good that you highlighted there, kyle, from Genesis 1. Thank you, as it's oged over and over where God's all things were good and very good, and yet you have. In Genesis 3.6,. Eve saw the tree was good for food. The tree that's forbidden is good. It's kind of, in a certain sense, her action is a dangerous parody of God's in Genesis 1.
Speaker 3:That's a good point there.
Speaker 1:Well, I kind of want to just focus on one aspect of that lesson. This is what you said. You said one thing Genesis 3 teaches us is if we see how close we can get to sin without going on the edge, if we see how close we can get to sin, we will soon find sin is too powerful for us. And you said that we cannot flirt with temptation. We cannot get as close to it as we can, to the edge, without hoping to not fall over. We must run away from sin, and it gets me really thinking about the practical application of that in our lives. We talked about how we might, as Christians, identify the line of sin, sometimes differently. That's another podcast, let's say that we've identified.
Speaker 1:This is that sin over there, and I don't want to go anywhere near it. What does that really look like in our lives, when I make decisions for my family and my kids? Where am I drawing the line? Is it really far away from that line? Because, you mentioned, once we get to that line, we've already gone too close. We've already gone way too close to that. So the idea is to turn around and run away towards God's righteousness.
Speaker 3:I think this means you need to be thinking a few steps ahead. I think an analogy that might be helpful, something that has always stuck in my mind. Years ago I don't remember how old I was, but I went to the beach with my family and then my aunt and uncle and cousins, and we all went together. I was the youngest brother, but I was still older than all my cousins, so I was still looked up to as an example. In this case, I was setting a bad example.
Speaker 3:I was going out too deep into the surf. My aunt took me by the hand and led me out and said I want to show you something, kyle. She took me out where it was up to her waist, but it was up to my chest. She was holding my hand tight and she said that's what's called the undertow, do you feel this? And I realized that if she let go, I would be impossible to resist that force. I wasn't under the water yet, I wasn't drowning, but I'd already gone far enough that I wasn't going to be able to. That's what would have happened. It was inevitable at that point if she wasn't holding my hand. I think that might be a good way to think about sin that I'm not drowning yet. My head is still above water, but you cross a point where your feet aren't touching anymore and the current is too strong. Yeah, you might keep your head above water for a little bit, but eventually you can't fight a force that strong because you put yourself that far out.
Speaker 2:I can remember reading years ago about Matthew 6.13, where you see in the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus gives an ideal picture of prayer, or a picture of what prayer would look like, and he closes that prayer with lines including these lines do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Do not lead us into temptation. Sometimes we pray that and, as one writer said, we leave sin our forwarding address. This is where you can find me the next time. I think some in the Sermon on the Mount illustrate some of these things. In Kyle's illustration there is a good one. Sometimes we can just be swept away in a current of sin.
Speaker 2:But in Matthew 5, 21, you have heard that it said whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. Now I don't think the point of Jesus is at all to criticize that law of that revelation. But Jesus said there was an aspect of it that was deeper than just preventing someone from taking another's life you shall not commit murder. But he emphasizes in verse 22, I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. And whoever shall say to his brother you good for nothing shall be guilty before the Supreme Court and whoever shall say you fool, shall be guilty enough to go into fiery hell. His point we don't just avoid murder, we avoid those attitudes and actions and words that ultimately display themselves in murder.
Speaker 1:Well, you talked about thinking ahead playing chess, not checkers, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, where will this lead me? What's the eventual outcome of this path?
Speaker 1:Are we good at that as human beings? I don't know. I don't know if that's a natural thing. It's something I think that we, you have to practice and you have to hone. I don't know that that's something we even teach. That's something that you might learn out of living some years how to be preventative towards things right. I work in healthcare and you know how many things would be solved in the world in health if there was more focus on preventative care. It's not any different than our spirituality Leaving no provision right, talking about.
Speaker 2:Romans. I think you're talking about Romans 13.
Speaker 1:Is that leaving no provision?
Speaker 2:for it 14. I believe that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires, and that's something kind of like when we were talking about addiction helps people get over. Addiction is pattern interrupts. It's not leaving any ability to get to that thing. That is the problem, and so what you need to do is put things to block your way to that or remove avenues to get to that temptation. And how important that is is to. It's a change of life.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is always good to think two steps ahead, three steps ahead, as you all are saying, and to realize what is the outcome of taking these different paths. There may be some things that may not be inherently wrong, but may lead us down, lead us in the wrong direction, put us in the wrong company and maybe put us in the wrong place.
Speaker 1:I do find in different conversations with different Christians that we don't see that the same way. A lot of people will draw the lines at the sin I'm just used to, the way I've been raised, is not even approach certain things at all, even if it's not sin, but because it can be associated with that. Some of it is just the way that is my conscience, the way that it's been raised. I also don't know how to explain it all the time to my kids of why I'm doing that, but I do think it's important to get to the root of it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if this is the type thing you're talking about. But a person was telling me recently, a preacher was telling me recently he says my kids are viewed as sometimes strange and awkward even at church because I am just not willing to grant them a cell phone and say just do whatever you want. And now somehow we survived without that. We were growing up. But now doing that to a child at 15 or 16 may sound like it borders on child abuse, but the thing is, it's not that that itself might be wrong, but what temptations may that present to them? That, and I think that's the type of thing that you're asking about, if I'm getting your drift.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, and, for example, we were at Disneyland and we were going on one of those.
Speaker 3:You already crossed the line there, bradford, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:But we've seen like the carnival games type things and my son asked if that was gambling and I said you know it made me stop and think that because I've drawn some conclusions around gambling before to him and then I started thinking, okay, well, if this is and this isn't, and different people will draw the different lines different places, and that's not what we're talking about today. But it made me think. Am I being very intentional about what I deem as a path we don't want to cross?
Speaker 3:and where I want to go. Sounds like our next episode is on gambling, so do an in next week.
Speaker 1:We talked about that before, but like I need to give him an answer for that. And where's the difference there Covetiousness, greed, where those come into it, and how we can avoid covetous and greed based upon not even giving any place for it, even it's?
Speaker 3:not so much whether you at Disneyland let him do that or not, it's so much. It's more about how you explain it, because if he's got that question, I could make the case that I don't think there's anything wrong with it in that setting, because everyone wins at Disneyland, so it's not really a gamble However. So whether it's right or wrong, I think the fact that he's asking the question, you do need a good answer. Whatever your conclusion is, whether you let him play that game or not, you do need to have a good answer if he's asking that question, Otherwise you just come across as being kind of hypocritical. Or if he thinks it's gambling, you need to be able to explain well, this is different and here's why. Otherwise it just looks like. Well, I guess when it's fun, the rules don't apply, so have a good answer for him for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I'm trying to instill principles that he can then apply to things, versus a lot of times, I think, where we might go wrong is we label something very specific as wrong or sin and then you don't really understand why, and then you don't understand how to use that ruler to measure all the other things that you end up interacting with in your life. So I'm trying to instill principles, but it is kind of difficult to do that with this sliding scale of how far away from sin do you get and where people draw that line a little differently, and that's.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I can remember saying to a couple of my college classes after something I forgot the exact event and there were a series of events but a few years ago a series of professional athletes were in consecutive weeks, were arrested at bars 2 am in the morning and I said I never remember reading a story of a professional athlete arrested at 10 am to 12 am after a big disputed Bible study.
Speaker 2:I just don't remember that there are some places and situations that are going to open up trouble for you and there are some situations that are going to open up God, good people and the revelation of God's word from it. And I think, too, part of our job as parents it's not simply to. I think it is to certainly to draw lines and to help them understand why, but maybe even bigger, to desire what is good, what is right, what is holy, what is true. We're not simply trying to get our children to avoid the bad, we're trying to get them to love the good, and often the deeper that love grows, the deeper their love for God, for his word, grows, that they can see that the Bible's an exciting book. Their temptation to some other things diminishes.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think it's the Bible is, to me, always been more than just a rule book, and there are certainly things in there you could look at as this is law, this is a rule, this is an expectation, black and white, that God has for his people, but there is a large part of the New Testament that is also, I would say, principle, guiding principle, and that is so important because you just think about an illustration with driving. I don't know the black and white rules of the road because I've moved through so many different states and they're all a little bit different. I still don't know what to do, and I use I might have used this in a podcast already but I still don't know what to do at a two-way stop where cross traffic doesn't have to stop. If I'm going straight and someone is coming and they're turning left in front of me and we're coming from different sides of the street and both have a stop sign, but cross traffic doesn't, if they're there first, do I wait for them? Or if I'm going straight, do I get right of way? I don't really know what the answer is, but I've never been in a car accident because in those situations I fall back on the guiding principle that was taught to me at Driver's Ed Be defensive and assume that the other person is going to crash into you if you give them the chance. So I fall back on those rules and it's kept me safe. That's a guiding principle. Now there's two scriptures that come to my mind as in these situations, that have given me guidance in as far back as my teenage years and still to this day in my 30s I'm not in my 40s yet, john, not yet, not for a couple more years the first of which is in Matthew, chapter six.
Speaker 3:We've had a lot of sermon on the Mount examples, so why not double down on that? Matthew five and verse 16. You like my gambling reference there? Matthew, chapter five and verse 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. That is an overarching guiding principle in my life. In every situation.
Speaker 3:There might not be a black and white do this or don't do this Bible verse, but this principle is always going to apply. My light needs to shine. God's good works need to shine through my good works in everything I do, and that is almost a summary of my purpose in this world to glorify God. So that's the question I ask. Some things are definitely black and white. This is wrong, that's sin. Some things are people like to call it a gray area and when I get to those gray area things, I ask this question, I run it through this filter. If I do this, is it gonna make my light shine brighter or just a little bit dim? Maybe I could go around and justify it and say it's not sin, but is it gonna maybe cast a little bit of a shadow over the light I'm trying to shine? Well, that answers it for me. That settles it.
Speaker 3:And the other one is an illustration I used at our youth forum a couple of weeks ago on Hebrews, chapter 12 and verse one. We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and run with endurance the race that is set before us. Sin again is there, black and white, and it entangles us. It's a mess. Leave it alone. But what about weight?
Speaker 3:That's the other way I think about it light and weight. If I'm trying to run which I've had those times in my life where I felt like running was a fun thing to do, and I understand that weight slows you down. So that's the other question I ask Is it gonna make my light shine brighter? And if it doesn't, I don't wanna do it. Is it gonna weigh me down? Maybe I could justify it and say it's not technically sin, but is it gonna weigh me down. Is it gonna slow me down, maybe distract me from the course I'm trying to run. Then that answers the question for me, whether it's the words I choose to use in my vocabulary, the clothes I wear, the choices I make and how I'm gonna spend my time throughout the day. Any question you ask, I run it through those filters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not running anymore, though that's not.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I'm getting back in the running. You guys can't see it over the podcast but I've lost a few patterns this year.
Speaker 1:I know you have. You're doing a good job.
Speaker 3:A future episode on physical fitness, Physical fitness.
Speaker 1:When you talked about the laws of the land, I was thinking in California we're taught to be offensive not offensive, but offensive driving. Yeah.
Speaker 2:How does that show itself be offensive? Because I was kind of on the defensive. You just jump out there and go, okay, I got you Maybe a little bit too much.
Speaker 1:No, I like that. And, tommy, you gave the example of David and Besheba and the idea that there were multiple steps there in decisions that he made, where he had opportunity to change and to turn around, but at the end of the day, there were choices.
Speaker 2:Yes, it uses a couple of the same vocabulary. Was John that Genesis 3, verse 6? Does you know saw? Genesis 3 says Eve saw the tree was good for food and she took. And the Bible tells us that David saw a beautiful woman bathing. He saw her. She's beautiful. The word beautiful tov in Hebrew, the same word translated good in Genesis 3, 6, is used here in 2 Samuel 11 and verse 2. And finally, he sent messengers and took her, saw something was good or beautiful and taking it. One writer said sinful man first plays with the idea, he stops to investigate and that he stays to enjoy. He plays with the idea of temptation, Then he acts like he's investigating and searching it out while really being caught in the web of sin, and then finally he is trapped and he takes it. He stays to enjoy the sin.
Speaker 3:And now it's too late. Yes, in contrast, you look at Joseph and Potiphar's wife, joseph. If Joseph had stopped and went through pros and cons about having this affair with my master's wife, that he would have fallen into the same trap. But Joseph already knew and already made up his mind. See, there's what we talked about earlier. Thinking ahead a little bit, yes, you already knew You're off limits.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I can't Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So he just dropped and ran. Dropped what he had and ran away, and because he already had his mind made up. But if you start thinking pros and cons, should I do this? Yes, you might have already crossed the line at that point.
Speaker 2:Yes, Exactly, exactly. And two, if David had stopped. Often, one of the things that makes David so different, and so in view of his whole life, is how frequently the text tells us that David inquires of God. You see that in 1 Samuel 23 quite frequently. You see it in 2 Samuel, chapter five. In 2 Samuel 11, verse three David inquired, but he is not inquiring of God, he's inquiring about the identity of this beautiful woman that he has seen bathing. If, at any point along the way, we stop and seek God and inquire of his will and ask ourselves what is truly pleasing in his sight, that can be a break to stop us before we've gone too far.
Speaker 2:I had a person recently come to me and he is a. I've known him for a long, long time. He is very devout, very godly and, honestly, among the last people I would have ever thought of as giving in to the temptation to lust, particularly at this stage in his life as he is an older person, and he said that he would find things on the internet that weren't necessarily just looking at sinful, but he looked at those and focused on the attractive women and eventually he said, well, I can just do a little bit, this isn't wrong until eventually he was involved and acknowledged when he was talking to me and he was very humble. When he was talking to me it was a past sin that he was trying to deal with and he was telling me about the help he had gotten. But he was saying that he had become addicted to it and he said his wife was very patient with him and tried to win him out of that sin and has helped. He has encountered other men who are Christians, who have the same problem, to whom he is accountable and they are accountable to him and he. But I admired his humility in coming and telling me that and he is not a part of the local congregation that I'm a part of, but I've known him as a faithful Christian for a long time.
Speaker 2:I admire him telling me that and I think it fits hand in glove with the type of thing Jesus said in the Sermon. The Mount that you have heard it said you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks upon a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If you're right, I make you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you. Now, is that literal? No, I don't think so. Origin, at one time in his life, thought so, but I don't think that's the point. But I do believe, as Pollard and Hart once wrote about the Sermon, the Mount, that our battle with sin may be so painful and so difficult that it may make a loss of a body part seem small by comparison, and just a lot of areas like that where we're generally not going to be accountable. I would just encourage us all, before God, to be humble and to realize sins, attracting power and deceiving power, and how, once they'll, they lead to an end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that, like how it was the first point you made about if you can see how you can get close to it, you're already gone. And how just the power of sin is that undertow?
Speaker 3:Like how we're talking about it.
Speaker 1:It's probably one of those reflections that we don't really do. We don't really think how powerful Satan is and how powerful temptation is. We think we're stronger than we really are and we can handle a lot of things. But if we're being honest with ourselves and in your series you said I'm not talking about anything you guys don't already know? We all live this If we're honest with ourselves, we understand where our weak points are, where those flaws in our armor are, and that's where it's going to hit us the most.
Speaker 2:I would say, john, it's not only the power of Satan which is true, but the seductiveness of sin and the pervasiveness of sin. Everyone else, sometimes almost, is to be, and if we're called to walk though a distinct way, follow a different master, and the fact that everyone else is doing it can tear down our barriers. But we are seeking a holy God, not seeking to conform to a society that's forgotten.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we've pulled a lot out of the topic here and, kyle, thanks for some of your practical tips for seeking to glorify God and kind of writing that on your doorpost or your house, thinking about our families and getting them to think about how they're going to glorify God, and I love everything about the conversation there about getting them to love God and want to do His will. Yes, we need to do like eight more podcasts on how we do that, you know, and the ways that we can do that and share practical ways, because I'm sure lots of people are pretty successful in that.
Speaker 2:You know I don't mean this to brag, but I'll tell you that I can remember telling my wife, when our kids were born, that a dream of mine was that one day we'd be sitting there reading the Bible and our kids would be sitting there beside us reading the Bible, not because we've told them to, but because they want to, and we had classes with them. But I'm not talking about right now, just class. I'm talking about us just all sitting there and reading God's Word because we wanted to and it was a blessing it. Many times I've got to live that dream and so I'm thankful for that.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Well, I want to thank Tommy for coming out here for the Gospel meeting and I also want to thank you for being on the podcast with us and I really appreciate your time and, like I said, hopefully everyone will go check out his podcast and check out our YouTube page for a look at the series and listen to the series.
Speaker 3:Well, we thank you for listening today and each week as we try to get episodes out on the Exordia podcast. We thank Tommy for being our guest today, and what a great topic. Just remember shed the weight, let your light shine every question you ask, run it through that filter and make sure you're doing your best to represent God in every interaction you have. Well, thanks for listening and we encourage you, if this has been helpful or useful, to follow our Facebook page, to subscribe to our channel and tune in each week. See you next time.
Speaker 1:It's been a while. Yeah, he's like. What else do I need to say here? So who's caring about the Facebook page?
Speaker 3:I don't know if I'm the best to do the outro.
Speaker 1:You have to make sure that. Well, I can't have you do the intro, because you can never remember it.
Speaker 3:Well, the way I'm sounding, you know. Make sure it's. I thought they tuned into the Alex Jones show Something like that. No, this isn't info. What a voice technosic.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're back.
Speaker 3:You know, batman not the cool voice, not the cool voice modulated bat flak not, not Battinson because his Batman doesn't talk. What's the other guy? Christian Bale, and you'll never have to.
Speaker 2:This isn't a car.
Speaker 1:Kyle, we're probably going to need to be a little more serious than we normally do. Sometimes we're a little more serious but, Nate, nate's I'm going to say Nate's the culprit on that one.
Speaker 3:He's not here, so it's okay.
Speaker 1:If we play with some Tim, if we say I'm a great editor, I'll just get all the stuff out, don't worry.
Speaker 3:When he makes a mistake. That's when I've been the cough I've been saving up, he'll get his clay.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have to talk to him and comment.
