sinners sin, and that's about it. Let's talk about it on key life. This is key life, getting you home with freedom, joy, and faithfulness, and here's Steve Brown with God's roadmap, the Bible. Here's Steve Brown with the teaching for today. Thanks Mike. We are this week in case you're just joining us, beginning a new series, and it's a break from our Old Testament survey, and I haven't forgotten about the Old Testament survey. We'll return to Jeremiah once I tell you everything that I know about good, evil, pain, and suffering, sin and broken ropes in the world. I'm going to take some time to do that. We're going to spend a few weeks on that subject because, frankly, we're going through a tough time right now. You ought to see the letters that we receive, and you combine that with all of the world events that are so horrible right now. It's very important that Christians be informed, and so I'm going to inform you. I'm going to inform myself while I'm doing this, and none of us will be able to say, if you stay with me during this series, nobody ever told me I was surprised. Now, if you were listening at the beginning of this week, I said we were going to be talking about the bad news because you can't hear the good news until you've heard the bad news. Now, the good news is, and I give this to you up front, God is sovereign, He is good, and He's good all the time, even if it doesn't seem that way. But you've got to deal with the reality of a fallen world, and that's what we've been talking about because Adam and Eve Adam a man, and Eve did something really bad a long time ago, we're all suffering the repercussions and the implications of what is called technically the fall. Now, that doesn't mean that you can say, well, it's not my fault. I didn't cause it. Adam and Eve did it, so how can God be angry at me? Well, you sin because you want to sin, and I sin because I want to sin, but we also sin because we have a proclivity, and we're drawn to it, and evil is involved in the world. Now, we took some time yesterday to talk, and also on Monday, about the fact that we live in a fallen world. By world, I mean cosmos. That means it's a place where earthquakes take place, where electrical storms take place, where hurricanes can destroy your house, where bad stuff happens, because the Bible teaches, and we look both in the older testament and in the new testament, we looked at the passages, and I'm not going to go over those with you again. Romans 8, the whole of the eighth chapter, particularly verses 20 through 22, Genesis 3, 17 through 19, Genesis 3, 16, and a bunch of other places say we do not live in a wonderful, nice place. The cosmos is bent and warped, the fall had something to do with that also. And then yesterday, I brought up a subject, I'm going to talk a little bit more about it today, and that is that not only is the cosmos the world affected, by the fall, we are too. That means that we are sinners, and that we sin. I suggested yesterday that there was a time in my life when I thought that if I just worked a little harder, prayed a little bit more, read the Bibles significantly more than I had been reading it, and really tried really hard, I could get rid of all known sin in my life. And then I would be able to help you, the benigned peasants, to be pure, like I'm pure. I still would like to do that, I just can't. I mean, I still with all of my heart want to get rid of any known sin in my life, but I can't. And frankly, a lot of years have passed, and I'm a lot older and a bit wiser than I ever was then. The fathers taught me that he did not reveal the depth of my sin all at once because I couldn't have stood it. I would have been too devastated if he had done that. And so he let me understand his love and his grace before he let me see the extent and the depth of my sin. Listen, if you haven't discovered Thomas the campus imitation of Christ, you've missed one of the great devotional masterpieces of the Christian faith. During his more than 90 years of life, Thomas the campus achieved a depth of meditative understanding rarely seen in the church, often when I'm spiritually dry. I'll open imitation just to find the great blessing and the words of that wise monk. Thomas the campus wrote of our inability to understand our motivations and sin. We cannot trust too much in ourselves, because grace oftentimes is wanting to us and understanding also. There is but little light in us, and that which we have we quickly lose by our negligence. Oftentimes, too, we do not perceive our own inward blindness. How great it is. We often do evil and excuse it worse. We are sometimes moved with passion and think it is zeal. We represent small things in others and pass over greater matters on ourselves. We quickly enough feel and weigh what we suffer at the hands of others, but we mind not what others suffer from us. He that well and rightly considerate his own works will find little cause to judge harshly of other people. Is there evil in the world? Yes, there is. Is the world warped? Yes, there is. Are there terrors that are warped and evil? Yes, there are. But let me metal. We are sinners too. And we never speak from a position of purity. That is the bad news. There is good news about forgiveness and redemption, and we are going to talk about that. But you got to hear the bad news before you hear the good news. You think about that. I am in.
Well, it is Wednesday and always takes some time. At the end of the broadcast on Wednesday, to try to catch up on some of these thousands of questions that we receive. By the way, we have a great website. It is www.keylife.org. And if you go there, you are going to learn a lot more about key life. You can hear today's broadcast and the previous 30 broadcasts that are archived there. And there is a lot of good stuff on our website to get you and those you love home with freedom and joy and faithfulness to Christ as you are crowning achievement. What I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself was that we love to get your questions, but you got to write them down. Send them to key life post office box 5,000, Makeland Florida 32794, key life Canada post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H, 5N3, or you can email us, Steve at keylife.org. But don't use the 1-800 key life number for questions. You can make orders there. You can get our most recent booklet. Does my father know I'm hurt? You can become a part of key life tapes. You can get the magazine free. You can make a contribution, but you got to write the questions down. And you always get a response from me or a staff member on the broadcast or in the magazine. And we think the only dumb questions the one you don't ask. All right, let's get to some of this is from Missouri. When sharing the gospel is it okay to tell people that God loves them. Now let me tell you where this question comes from. It comes from a view of Calvinism that says God only loves, only cares about, only reaches out to, is unconcerned with the people who are not elect. He only loves those who are elect. So you can't just run around indiscriminately saying God loves you. While I understand the theological implications of that, I just simply believe that that is wrong. There is so much scripture in so many places that suggest that God is love and that he loves us. And that's everybody included. So I think yes, you can. Now you say but if, but Steve, if you're a Calvinist and God reaches out to the elect and sends his son to die for the elect and loves the elect, he obviously doesn't love the non-elect. Yes, he does. And the Bible is clear on that. For God so loved the elect that he sent his only begotten- no, I didn't say that. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. It is not his will that any should bury. Now I believe in election, but that's another story and another teaching section altogether. But I want you to also believe in freedom and human responsibility. I can't reconcile all that. But I tell you what I do believe. I believe that if God does elect and I believe he does, that he does it with tears in his eyes. And I believe that when we ask him to explain it to us, he would say if I could have done it any other way, I would have done it because my love and my passion for the entire world is big and true and real. So while that may not be theologically or logically consistent, yeah, I think you can tell people that God loves him. This is from Texas. What are the characteristics of good parents? You know something I've discovered. If you're a parent right now, I wouldn't want to be a Christian and be in your place. I mean, there are thousands of books that tell you what y'all to do and what y'all to be and how y'all to do it. And you can get confused. It's like playing golf when you got 18 things to remember. If you remember to keep your head down and your eye on the ball, you'll be a lot better off than trying to think of the 18,000 other things that you got to do. I'll tell you in previous generations, Christians would have been absolutely overwhelmed and shocked with the burden of what you got to do if you got to be a good parent. I'm not saying that that stuff is bad. There are a lot of good things you can do. A lot of bad things that you do. But let me tell you basically, you love your kids. Just love them. Do the best you can. Love them. Do the best you can. And God will clean up the messes. You say, how do you know that? Because I'm a father and I did good. I've got two daughters and two sons-and-laws and grandchildren and they're all walking with Christ. And I did almost everything wrong. Now my wife did a lot more white than I did. And that's part of the reason. But I did a whole bunch of stuff that was wrong. I didn't know the 10 great principles for being your father. So I guess I violated all of them. I mean, I think of some of the things that I didn't know. I'm not going to tell you what they were. That really weren't good. And I have said, oh, I'm so sorry. I did that. I did that wrong. I've got good kids. And you know why? Because I love them and Jesus loves them. And if that's basic and that's solid, the rest of the stuff is small stuff. All right. In the scriptures, no, I'm not going to have time to do that. And if I lift up the question and they don't give a complete name, you will accuse me of having done a piece or to get you to listen next week at the same time. And I will not have done that. So I refuse to accept the act of musicians or even to bring up another question. And the producer says, I've filled in that time. It's time for me to get out of here. Hey, listen, whenever you're right or cold, be sure and give us the gall letters of this great station. And one other thing before I go, he life is a production of he life network.