Leaning Wrong

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon everyone. It is Sunday, July the seventh, twenty twenty four. It is currently four thirty seven pm Central Central Time. Man, I mess that all up. Let's just do that all again. I hate when I mess up the intro. I hate, hate, hate, hate it right because when I'm live, I can't. Like, if I'm just recording, I'll be like, well just start over, right, But I'm live, There's no you can't correct it. That makes me so say I want to just stop the broadcast and start over. Let's try it again. Good afternoon everyone. It is Sunday, July the seventh, twenty twenty four. It is currently four thirty seven pm Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Why why how can I mess that? Why? Why could I? Why would I ever mess up an intro? I mean I've said the intro a million times? Why how come? Why can't I just decide to say it correctly? Like? Can I just decide I'm gonna say the intro correctly and then every single time, I will say it correctly, Like and theory you think, just say you're good, this is what you say, You're just gonna do it correctly. But things happen right sometimes beyond

1:32 your control for whatever reason you you're I don't know, something goes wrong, and I'm going to assume it's outside of my control or is it in my control? Can I always say everything perfectly? Now? Sometimes? Well? No, not even that would be in my control? Right? I mean, if I don't say something correctly and it's because I don't know how to pronounce a certain word or say it correctly, that's on me, right, because I I didn't do enough prep or I didn't do enough practice, that would be be on me. But aren't there other times when you're just publicly speaking, you just get your words messed up or you get your pacing wrong?

2:15 I mean, is that is that something you can control? Or maybe maybe it's simple if you'll slow down. But I think even people who isn't there something out of my control? There? Is it? Is it all in my control? Or is it not in my control? How much can I control? Okay, maybe maybe you're not catching on all right, let me let me just try to be Let's try to be more more specific, right, let's be more direct in your Christian life? How perfect, how practically speaking, how righteous can you be? How holy can you be?

3:01 How godly you can be simply by you deciding I'm going to do this and then you do it? Like how much control do you have? Like literally, how much control do you have? And how godly you are? Now, we all know there's a limit, right, because we all say we cannot be perfect. So that means you can't just decide to be perfect, because nobody can be perfect. You cannot be holy as God is holy, because well there's just no way. So like, where is that limit? How how much can you just simply say I decided? And how much of it is out of your control? And why would it be out of your control? Because you possess a sinful nature? Now, I know Christianity, and I've talked about this a lot recently, and I mentioned a lot of this earlier today. If you listen to our two messages I posted from this morning on Psalm eighty three, I think it's part seven and eight. If you go listen to those I mentioned, I kind of talked about some of these same things. But as a Christian, I know, I will put it this way, much of evangelicalism and fundamentalism has kind of disintegrated into simply moralism. It's about moralism. Do this, do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this, do this. But it's always preached with such like the The underlying assumption, the presupposition built into it is I'm going to tell you do this, do this, do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this, and you can do it. You can do that,

4:33 and you can stop that. You can do it just by deciding. Now you may have to be on the lookout for this, or be on the lookout for this, because there's these things that are going to try to encourage you to do the wrong thing or encourage you, you know, not to do the right thing, whatever the case may be. The underlying assumption almost is you can just decide to do it. But we all have to admit, well, there's a limit to that. Now when we take into consideration. Now, I know some Christians will disagree with this, but if we take into consideration, we still possess an old, sinful nature. We still possess the sinful flesh. We still have that that is not eradicated in salvation. And if it's not eradicated in salvation, then how can you just decide how like how good you can be? Are you limited? And how much are you limited? Paul and Roman seven, we know the famous passage the things I want to do, the things he wants to do, he knows to do them, desires to do them. Yet those the things he desires to do he does not do. And those things he does not want to do, those are the very things he does. So that seems to indicate. Now, I know some Christians will say, well that was Paul talking about when he was a lost person, But then we can you know, I don't think that. I think that falls apart. So well, then what is the answer. What is the when it comes to your Christian

6:03 life? How much can you just decide I'm going to do this and I'm not going to do this. And even if you decide I'm not going to do this or I'm going to do this, how much can you really accomplish? Because in some cases you may decide not to do something externally, but in some ways you can talk about the value of it. But from a philological perspective, is there any value because you still may be committing the sin internally. I don't know if I have a good answer here, but I'm thinking about it because right in front of me, Oh, everyone who listens to this podcast, you know what this is. You're all supposed to have one of these last summer, last July July, I told everyone to get a subscription sort of the Lord newspaper right here, hot off the press.

7:08 Well, this is really not that hot off the press. This is May twenty second, twenty twenty four, so it's not hot off the press. It's now very cold off the press. But I was sitting here going, you know, have a limited amount of time. What can I do this evening? What should I do? So I sat down in front of the microphone, like, okay, let's see here. We did Psalm eighty three. We did a lot of work on that. Okay, don't want to do I need to go. I need to get the other sort of the Lord newspaper and finish that thing on revival. Okay, we need to do that. Okay, we're doing the live webcast, but that takes a lot of time, right, Like, if I was to do something with a live webcast right now, I'd have to sit here, watch an entire live webcast, take notes, then go live, then talk about it, and that's between That can be like between two and three hours of my time.

7:55 Okay, I need to do that. We got one more week of that. So what do I do? What do I do? Oh? I got this. I got an audio clip here of some politicians speaking out a church and he's talking about some people just need to be killed. And You're like, what in the world is going on there? And the people in the church are ap plotting. It's insane. I've got well, I don't really necessarily want to do that. That's too politics and the political hijacking of the church. I've dealt that with that a million times. So I'm just sitting here trying to decide, and I'll look down and I see these words leaning wrong, leaning wrong. Now. When I first saw it, I thought, I said learning wrong, learning wrong, And I was like, oh, okay, I wonder if they're going to talk about how we learn the Bible incorrectly? Oh, this could be like a hermeneutical discussion. But then when I realized no, it doesn't say learning wrong. It says leaning wrong, leaning wrong. I'm like, okay, okay, leaning wrong?

8:52 What all right? Then I noticed the scripture. They have the scriptures from the Book of Proverbs. I'm like, oh, oh, we've been working on Proverbs this summer. All right, okay, this could go to the Proverb series. Okay, So I opened up my Bible. I knew the scripture, but I wanted to read it anyway. Proverbs chapter three, verse five. I'm going to be reading from the New King James, since that's the Bible sitting in front of me. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, all right? Trust in the Lord with all your heart. That's right there. Okay, we can have a long discussion there, can Do you think you can just decide to trust in the Lord with all your heart?

9:33 Do you think you can ever truly trust God with all of your heart? Considering we still have a sinful nature? I don't know, So okay, all right, next part, And lean not on your own understanding, lean not on your own understanding? All right? Now? Can I just decide, Hey, you know what, I'm not going to lean on my own understanding anymore? And you name the situation. I'm not going to lean on my own understanding. What I'm going to do is take that situation, go to God's word, and God's word tells me to do abcdef and I'm going to go that direction and not my direction. Now, I know we can at least accomplish this, all right. I don't know if I can just decide this, but I think we can all accomplish this. If I know I can do this, lean not on my own understanding, right, lean not on my own understanding, don't do that. I know I can do this whatever the situation is. Whatever the situation is, I can lean not on my own understanding. By doing this, I can judge the situation and determine right and wrong based off what God's word said. Now that doesn't mean I'm going to do right, doesn't mean I'm going to avoid wrong.

11:01 But I can at least lean not on my understanding and admit that from the word of God, this is wrong, this is right. I can at least acknowledge that right. That's lean. If I'm leaning to my own understanding, then I'm gonna justify it. I'm gonna I'm gonna deny the wrong. If I'm leaning. If I'm not leaning to my own understanding, then I can at least acknowledge this is right and this is wrong. Now that does not guarantee. See that's Paul, Hey. The things I don't want to do I do, and the things I want to do I don't do. See, he's not leaning to his own understanding because he's acknowledging there's some things he should not do and there's some things he should do. The things he don't want to do are the things he's doing, and the things he wants to do those are the things he's not doing. He's acknowledging that, so I can at least accomplish that. See it's one thing to say lean not to my own understanding with the implication that we will always do right. But we will not always do right. I mean that we're never going to always do right. We're never even gonna come close. Now, the article kind of took a different approach. You ready lean not unto thine own understanding Proverbs three five B. So they're only quoting part of Proverbs chapter three, verse five. If we have any leaning toward anything, we are sure to fall to the thing towards which we lean if we have any leaning towards anything,

12:35 we are sure to fall to the thing towards which we lean. That's an interesting concept. Hey, if you lean towards anything, you're sure to fall to the thing towards which you lean. Now I gotta stop here and ask this, quite Is this something I can just Okay, just decide I am not going to lean in any way other than towards the direction of God's work. Can you just decide that? Now this goes back to kind of like what I did at the beginning of my intro. Right. I wish I could just decide that I'm always gonna do my intros perfectly. I'm never going to mess up. But I mess them up all the time. I mess up lots of things now in some ways. How much of it is my fault. How many things are outside of my control. But when it comes to Christianity, this is the weird part. Can I just decide that I'm not going to lean towards the wrong thing? Now? The pass says lean not to your own understanding. I think the goal here as I can decide look at whenever I look at a situation, I'm not going to lean to the way I think or the way I feel I'm going to look to God's word doesn't mean I'm going to do the right thing, but I can at least acknowledge what the right thing is. Right, I think that's a we can all accomplish that. We can all accomplish that. I think we can do that. But here's the thing. If we have any leaning towards anything, we are sure to fall towards the thing that are We are sure to

14:09 fall to the thing towards which we lean. Now that sounds very practical, but here's where I struggle from a thiological perspective. We have a built in lean. Okay, we're like the leaning tower. We have a built in lean. Right, there's something in you and in fact there in fact, I don't even know if it's fair to call it a lean. All right, So I'm holding a pencil directly up. If I lean it a little to the right, Well, that doesn't really describe what's going on inside of me, because I don't have something that's leaning. I have something that's completely fallen. It's not leaning, it's completely collapsed. And that is my nature.

14:54 My nature doesn't just lean towards sin. My nature is sin full so I'm already I'm not just leaning towards sin fullness. I am a sinner. So then can I just decide, well, I'm going to lean the other direction. Well, I can try to decide I can lean the other direction, but the nature inside of me can't. I can't decide that my nature will lean the other direction. And again you go back to Paul. Paul may have decided, hey, I'm going to lean towards the things that I should do, but I end up doing the things that I shouldn't do. Right, Why why is that happening? They provide seven seven biblical examples in which they believe someone was leaning the wrong direction. Now, I am not going to go through all seven of these right now, I'll put to say, I'm not gonna look at each seven in any detail. I'm gonna give these seven to you because this could be something we can look at in this coming week. First, Abraham leaned toward Egypt in unbelief and soon found himself crippled by it. Now, is this just a situation where hey, here's

16:25 Abraham, here's Egypt, and he starts leaning towards Egypt even though he knows he knows he should not do so he's what's causing him to lean to Is that a decision where he can just say, I'm not going to lean, I'm going to follow God. Can you just make that decision? Or what? What? What do you think caused Abraham to lean towards Egypt? What was the cause? Was it external causes? Was it an internal what? What? What? What do you think caused it? That's Genesis twelve ten through twenty So right down, right down, Abraham leaned towards Egypt. Abraham leaned towards Egypt. Genesis twelve ten through twenty. Genesis twelve ten through twenty number two. Lot leaned towards Sodom and compromised and lost all he had gained?

17:22 What caused Lot to lean towards Sodom? Genesis thirteen ten and Genesis nineteen seventeen. So Abraham leaned towards Egypt Genesis twelve ten through twenty. Lot leaned towards Sodom Genesis thirteen ten and Genesis nineteen seventeen. Right now again, can you is this just something like hey, lean not onto your own understanding? See they leaned and they should have just stopped leaning. Is it? I just know I know the moralistic form of Christianity always just makes it like it's just this simple choices. In some ways, I want to believe that, and maybe sometimes I'm making excuses for my own frailty, my own weakness, and my own sin. Maybe I could be better if I would just choose, if I would just decide. Now, the thing is, I do know maybe I could be better. But at the same time, I just know that no matter how better I am, I'm not really better because I'm still going to be a sinner. So I I but in this case, we just want to know, okay. So Abraham leaned towards Egypt Genesis twelve ten through twenty, number two, Lot leaned towards Sodom Genesis thirteen ten and Genesis nineteen seventeen, number three. David lean towards oh unholy desire and laziness.

18:44 And his name has been smirched ever since. Second Samuel eleven two through four. Second Samuel eleven to through four. So Abraham leaned, Lot leaned, David leaned. I think we're getting We're see this is where I know the way this article is presenting it, because the article is just presenting it. Stop leaning lean not. If you don't lean, you won't fall. But my thing is if everyone in the Bible leaned, then was it just as simple as saying lean? Not right? So Abraham leaned, Lot leaned, David leaned again Abraham, Genesis twelve ten through twenty. I want you to look up these references. You can just make it a This week, we're gonna look at leaning. I know we got the live webcast, but we're gonna be throwing in some leaning discussion. I think all right. So Genesis twelve ten through twenty. Number two is Lot. Genesis thirteen ten.

19:48 In Genesis nineteen seventeen, number three, David leaned towards unholy desire. Second Samuel eleven two through four, Number four, jehosah Fat leaned towards worldly ast association with Ahab and nearly lost his life. First Kings twenty two twenty nine through thirty two. So we have Abraham, we have Lot, we have David, and we have Jehosephat one Kings twenty two twenty nine through thirty two. Number five, King Saul leaned towards his own inclination and sparing the Amalekites and lost his kingdom and consequences and consequence. First Samuel fifteen ten through twenty three. So we have Abraham, we have Lot, we have David, we have Jehosephat. We have King Saul, who leaned towards his own inclination and sparing the Amalekites, and lost his kingdom in consequence. First Samuel fifteen ten through twenty three. Next, Hezekiah leaned towards pride when he displayed his richest to the representatives of Babylon and brought distress to his posterity Isaiah thirty nine.

21:07 We have Isaiah thirty nine. So we have Abraham, we have Lot, we have David, we have Jehosephat, we have King Saul, we have Hezekiah. And then one more Peter leaned towards self sufficiency in his boasted allegiance to Christ and lost his courage at the taunt of a servant made Luke twenty two, verse thirty three, fifty six, and fifty seven. So we have seven examples of what they refer as someone leaning. Abraham leaned towards Egypt, leaned towards Sodom. David leaned towards unholy desire. Jehosaphat leaned towards worldly association. King Saul leaned towards his own inclination, Hezekiah leaned towards pride, and Peter leaned towards self sufficiency. And that last reference if you want it JUSTI of case you need it. Luke twenty two, thirty three, fifty six, and fifty seven lean not to your own understanding. We are not to do that. Now Again, I'm going to put my hypotheses is we should not lean to our own understanding. We should definitely lean to God's word. But this in no way guarantees that we're going to do the right thing. I think all this can guarantee is if I lean not to my

22:40 understanding, then I am not judging or determining right wrong anything based off my own understanding. I'm going to determine what is right and wrong based off what God's word said. I may not like it, I may not follow it, I may not do it, but at least I can't admit this is what God says, even though I'm doing it the wrong way. He said, well, what does that really accomplish? Well, at least I'm not leaning to my own understanding. Now, in theory, we would like to say, well, if I lean not to my own understanding and I lean to God's word, then I'll do the right thing. But I'm saying that it's not. We can't just decide to do the right thing because there's a limit and how much right we can do. But could we do better?

23:21 I guess we could, But again it's set doing better externally internally. That raises lots of questions. But the leaning part, especially the way the article puts forth, I call into question. Let's think of it this way. Any external leaning. Is it my external leaning that leads me to the fall? Or is it my internal fall, my internal fall, my internal sinfulness, my internal failure that leads to the external leaning. Is it the external leaning that leads to my demise, my fall? Or is it my already sinful, fallen nature that manifests the leaning. I think the leaning is simply a manifestation of the sinful nature that has fallen inside of me. I would not lean towards Egypt. I would not lean towards compromise. I would not lean towards unholy desires. I would not lean towards worldly association. I would not lean to my own inclination. I would not lean to pride, I would not lean to self sufficiency if I wasn't already completely fallen in my nature.

24:56 Now, I say, I can use that as an excuse, But how much can you just decide? How much of the Christian life is just based on you making a decision and being disciplined in your decision? Now, on one hand, I think we could probably do better, But on the other hand, are better. From a philological perspective, is really not that good. But from a human perspective, it can really be pretty good.

25:36 There you have it. That's very simple, very straightforward, right to the point. I want you to look at those examples. Genesis twelve, ten through twenty, Genesis thirteen, verse ten, chapter nineteen, verse seventeen, Tewod Samuel eleven two through four one, Kings twenty two, twenty nine through thirty two, Verse Samuel fifteen, ten through twenty three. I don't know if I gave you that one. I think I did. That's King Saul, and then Isaiah thirty nine, ers has Zekaiyah, and then Luke twenty two, thirty three, fifty six, and fifty seven. That's Peter. Now what I find interesting whether you're in the Old Testament, whether in your New Testament you have people leaning the wrong direction. And I don't think you can just go to all of them lean not. Come on, stand up straight? Can we ever stand up straight when we're already in a sense fallen on the inside. Love to get your thoughts all right, kind of a little Bible study exercise handed to you on a Sunday afternoon, plenty for you to consider. Look at all seven of those examples, and just gather what you can learn from those seven examples. Love to get your thoughts News.

27:00 I F at yahoo dot com. That's news. I F at Yahoo died. Thanks for listening, everyone, Have a great rest of your Sunday, a great rest of your holiday weekend. For some of you, it's been a great holiday weekend. Hopefully you've had a great time. And well we'll see what this new week has in store for us. I don't know what it'll be, but we'll figure something out. Okay, all right, Well we'll have plenty to discuss this week. We will do that, all right. You can email me news if at yahoo dot com. That's news. I F at yahoo dot com. May God bless you as you look up all those scriptures. If you need those scriptures again, repeat it or something.

27:41 Well, you can just you know, go back and listen to this, or you can email me if you need to NEWSI F at yahoo dot com. Everyone have a great day, great evening. God bless