Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Death of Definitions: When Society Plays God (Isaiah 5:20–21)

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The Death of Definitions: When Society Plays God (Isaiah 5:20–21) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are back under the banner of
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  reformed thinking today and we have a stack of notes that
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  honestly looks a bit like a crime scene investigation.
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  That's. A good way to put it.
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  We're opening up a file on a text that was written around 740
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  BC. That is what, roughly 2700 years
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  ago? Yeah, a long time.
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  And the thing that hit me right away when I started reading
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  through the sources for the session is how this ancient
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  Hebrew text, it just reads like a medical diagnosis of the
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  Morning News feed. It really does.
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  It's startling. You read it and you realize, you
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  know, the human condition hasn't really shifted all that much.
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  The technology changes, the fashion changes, but the heart
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  of the problem is, well, it's static.
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  We're looking specifically at Isaiah chapter 5, verses 20 and
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  21. And the premise here is just
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  fascinating because it's describing a culture that is
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  confused, but it isn't just confused about small things
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  like, you know, whether to raise taxes or how to zone a new
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  neighborhood. No, no, it's much deeer than
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  that. It's confused about the
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  definitions of reality itself. It's a culture that has lost the
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  ability to distinguish between good and evil.
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  Which is the most dangerous kind of confusion there is.
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  I mean, if you get the tax code wrong, you lose money.
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  If you get the definition of good wrong, you lose your soul
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  and potentially you lose your civilization.
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  Right. And what I want to do is really
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  unpack this because the sources we have today are heavy.
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  They really don't pull any punches.
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  They frame this as a life or death issue for a society.
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  But before we get to the specific accusations Isaiah
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  makes, we have to start with the tone.
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  Yes, the tone is everything. The text opens with a very
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  specific word. In our English translations, it
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  usually says woe, woe to those who call evil good.
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  But the sources point out that the English word woe is.
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  It's a bit weak here. It sounds a bit like
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  Shakespeare. It does.
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  It sounds a little polite, almost quaint.
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  But in the Hebrew the word is Hoy, and you really have to
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  understand the context of the ancient Near East to get the
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  full weight of that. So it's not just.
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  Oh dear. Not at all.
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  Hoy was not just a threat. It wasn't like a parent counting
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  to three to get a child to behave.
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  It was a funeral cry. It was the specific wail that a
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  professional mourner would make when someone had died.
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  Soy. Let me get the scene right.
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  Isaiah's looking at his society, a society that is still
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  functioning. People are going to the market,
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  they're passing laws, they're getting married.
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  Life is going on, business as usual.
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  And he's making a funeral noise over them.
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  That is the picture. That's exactly it.
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  He is pronouncing a funeral dirge over a society that is
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  still walking and talking. I mean, it is a terrifying image
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  if you stop and think about it. He's walking through the streets
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  of Jerusalem, which is bustling with activity, and he's crying
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  out as if he's standing over a. So he's saying they're already
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  dead. He's saying that the culture is
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  sociologically active, but theologically it is a corpse.
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  It is dead. Wow, That sets a pretty serious
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  stage for what we're about to discuss.
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  And I guess the mission of this deep dive then, is to figure out
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  how a society gets to that point.
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  How do you move from just being a regular sinful society?
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  Because I mean every society has sin to being a dead society.
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  And the sources suggest it happens when you start rewriting
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  the dictionary. It's about language.
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  That's the crux of it. It is about the vocabulary of
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  reality. When you change the words, you
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  change the way people perceive the world.
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  And if you change it enough, you kill the culture.
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  So let's look at the context before we zoom in on the
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  specific verses. Isaiah 5 isn't just a random
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  list of complaints. The sources describe it as a
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  covenant lawsuit. Can you can you explain what
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  that means? Yeah, a covenant lawsuit is a
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  formal legal proceeding. And the prophets, God often
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  takes this posture. He's not just, you know, venting
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  frustration or being angry in a chaotic way.
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  It's not. Outburst.
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  It's not an outburst. He is bringing formal charges
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  against his people for violating the contract, the covenant they
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  made with him at Sinai. It is orderly.
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  It is an invitement. It's God stepping into the
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  courtroom as the prosecutor laying out the case.
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  And Isaiah 5 starts with this beautiful to it, just
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  heartbreaking story called the Song of the Vineyard to present
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  the evidence. It's a parable.
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  Essentially. God is depicted as the owner of
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  a vineyard, and the text describes the lavish care he put
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  into it. I mean, he chose a fruitful
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  hill. He cleared out all the stones.
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  He planted the absolute best vines, the choicest vine.
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  The text says the best of the best, the best of the best.
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  He built a watchtower to protect it.
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  He hewed out a wine VAT. He did everything possible to
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  engineer success. So he removed every obstacle and
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  provided every advantage. There were no excuses.
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  He did exactly no excuses. And so naturally, he had an
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  expectation. He expected grapes.
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  He expected a return on his investment.
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  He expected sweet, good grapes. In the metaphor, those grapes
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  are meant to represent justice and righteousness.
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  But when the harvest came, what did he find?
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  The text says he found wild grapes or some translation say
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  sour grapes. The Hebrew implies there were
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  these stinking things worthless for eating or making wine just
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  rot. And in the Hebrew, there's this
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  incredible word play that Isaiah uses.
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  It's phonetic, and it just drives the point home.
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  I want to make sure we get this right because it really
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  highlights the point. Oh, it's brilliant poetry.
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  It's one of the most famous examples in the Old Testament.
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  God looked for mishpat, which means justice.
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  OK. MISHPAT, Justice.
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  But he found mispak, which means bloodshed.
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  Wow. He looked for Tzedeka
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  righteousness, but he heard Zaha a cry of distress.
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  That is incredible Mishpat and mispak.
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  They sound almost the same, like an echo of each other.
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  They do, and that is the stinging rebuke.
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  The society looked like God's people.
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  They sounded like God's people. They had the right vocabulary,
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  maybe even the right rituals. But when you bit into the fruit,
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  it wasn't justice, it was oppression.
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  It wasn't righteousness. It was the scream of the victim.
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  And that leads right into what the source is called.
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  The crescendo of woes. Verse 20 doesn't come out of
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  nowhere. It follows a list of other sins
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  that show a society unraveling. That's right, it's a buildup.
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  You have greedy land grabbers effectively acting like they're
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  the only people on earth, adding house to house, field to field.
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  You have hedonism, people getting up early just to start
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  drinking, chasing pleasure, letting their appetite rule.
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  Them. And there's that vivid image of
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  people harnessing themselves to sin like a cart, pulling it
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  along with ropes of falsehood. Right, drawing iniquity with
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  cords of vanity. It shows effort.
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  This isn't passive. They are working hard at their
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  rebellion and they're sweating to drag this cart of sin around.
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  But all of this leads to the core issue.
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  Which is. You can have a society that has
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  greedy people or drunkards, but verse 20 describes something
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  worse. It describes the intellectual
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  and moral justification of that sin.
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  It describes the point where sin isn't just tolerated.
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  It requires a new vocabulary to be justified.
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  Let's get right into that verse 20.
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  Woe to those who called evil good and good evil, who put
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  darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for
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  sweet and sweet for bitter. The sources break this down as a
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  threefold inversion. Yes, and before we touch the
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  three inversions, notice the grammar.
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  The Hebrew uses a participle hamrim, which means those who
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  are saying this indicates A continuous state.
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  It's habitual. This isn't a guy who makes a
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  mistake one Tuesday and says the wrong thing.
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  This is a group of people whose very identity is wrapped up in
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  flipping reality. It's what they do.
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  It's a settled state, a way of being.
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  OK, so let's tackle the first inversion, the ethical calling
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  evil good and good evil. The sources call this a
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  legislative coup. It's a great phrase for it.
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  It's an attempt to make peace with sin by changing the label
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  on the jar. Think about the conscience God
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  gave us a conscience that acts like a warning light on a
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  dashboard. When we do something evil, raw
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  in Hebrew, the light flashes. It hurts.
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  There's guilt, there's shame. So we have a choice when that
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  light flashes. You have two choices.
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  You either stop doing the evil to turn off the light, or you
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  smash the dashboard. You change the definition of
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  evil so you can feel good about yourself.
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  You relabel the poison as medicine.
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  The sources give some very specific modern examples of
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  this, and again, we're looking at this through the lens of
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  Reformed theology, and the text provided just laying out what
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  the sources say. One example is the issue of
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  life. Right.
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  The ancient world had child sacrifice.
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  The Bible is clear that shedding innocent blood is evil.
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  It's raw. But today, the sources argue, we
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  have sanitized that. We have taken the destruction of
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  the unborn, which the Bible classifieds as raw, and we have
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  renamed it. We call it reproductive justice.
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  We call it healthcare. Exactly.
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  It's a rebranding strategy. By calling it justice, you
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  actually make it sound virtuous. You make it sound like a
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  positive good. And if you can do that, you've
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  completely short circuited the conscience.
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  That is the goal. If you call it killing, your
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  conscience screams. If you call it justice, you can
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  feel righteous. You can March on a parade for it
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  that is calling evil good in its most potent form.
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  The other example the sources highlight is gender ideology.
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  This gets at the second-half of it.
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  Yes, this is where the calling good evil part comes in.
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  The argument here is that we have taken the biological
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  binary, male and female, as created in Genesis, a
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  foundational part of God's good creation, and we now label that
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  standard as oppressive, as hateful.
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  So the standard itself becomes the villain.
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  Correct. If you hold the biological
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  reality that God created 2 sexes, you are branded as
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  hateful. You are called a bigot.
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  You are the evil 1. Meanwhile, the mutilation of
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  healthy bodies, something that throughout all of human history
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  would be seen as a tragedy or a great harm, is now called
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  courageous or affirming. So that's the worldview swap.
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  As one source puts it. You take what God calls good,
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  the created order, and you label it evil, and you take what is
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  objectively harmful, the destruction of that order, and
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  you label it. Good.
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  And if you rename the sin virtue, you silence the
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  conscience. You can feel righteous while
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  doing the very thing God hates. And that is why it's a funeral
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  matter. It is a society that does wrong,
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  knows it can repent. A society that calls wrong right
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  has destroyed the road to repentance.
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  They have burned the bridge. There's nowhere to go.
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  That leads perfectly into the second inversion, which is the
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  epistemological one, darkness versus light.
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  Right. Epistemology just means how we
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  know what we know. It's about our source of truth.
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  In the Bible, light is almost always a symbol for divine
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  revelation. God's truth, His word, darkness
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  is ignorance or sin. So the inversion here is
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  claiming that God's revelation is actually the darkness, and
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  our human ideas are the true light.
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  That's it in a nutshell. The sources point directly to
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  the Enlightenment, and by extension the modern secular
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  university. The narrative for the last few
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  100 years in the West has been essentially if we can just get
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  rid of this superstitious Bible, we can get rid of God's
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  authority. Then we will finally see
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  clearly. We will have the light of
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  reason. They view the Bible as the
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  blindfold, the thing holding us back in the dark.
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  Right. They think that by removing God
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  they're turning on the lights, but Isaiah says no, you were
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  turning off the sun. You think you're escaping a dark
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  room, but you're actually walking out of the sunlight into
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  a cave. The text says they stumble at
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  noon as if it were twilight. What a phrase it means.
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  Even when the truth is blazing like the midday sun, they can't
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  see it, because when you remove the Sun God's word, you don't
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  get more light from other sources, you just get darkness.
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  The irony that the sources point out is that by kicking the Bible
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  out of the Academy in the public square, we haven't produced a
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  Society of brilliant, clear thinking philosophers.
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  We have produced nihilism. We have produced chaos and
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  confusion. We have produced a generation
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  that cannot answer the most basic questions about human
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  identity. What's a man?
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  What is a woman? What is marriage?
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  What is our purpose? Right.
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  We have stripped away the foundation of truth, God's Word,
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  and now we are surprised that the building is collapsing.
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  That is what Isaiah means by putting darkness for light.
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  They have called the darkness of human speculation enlightenment,
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  and they have called the light of God's Word dark ages
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  superstition. That brings us to the third
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  inversion, which is experiential, bitter versus
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  sweet. This one feels more, I don't
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  know, more visceral. It does.
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  It appeals to the senses, to our appetites.
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  And sin always has bait. It has to.
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  If sin look like death immediately, no one would do it.
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  If the rat poison didn't taste good, the rat wouldn't eat it.
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  So sin promises sweetness, autonomy, tastes sweet.
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  Rebellion feels good for a moment.
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  The source uses the sexual revolution as the prime example
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  here. It's a perfect example.
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  It promised sweet freedom. Think about the sales pitch of
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  the 1960s and 70s. Free love.
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  If it feels good, do it. The promise was that if we just
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  got rid of the bitter restrictions of biblical
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  marriage, if we had no fault divorce, if we had total sexual
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  autonomy, we would be happy. It would be sweet.
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  That was the promise. But the source asks what is the
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  after taste 4050 years later? What does it actually taste
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  like? Wormwood, gall, bitterness.
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  We look around at the result. And we see broken homes,
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  fatherless children, an epidemic of loneliness, anxiety,
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  depression. The sources argue that we are
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  living in the hangover of that party.
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  The reality is that sin tastes sweet in the mouth, but it turns
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  bitter in the stomach every time.
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  And conversely, God's law, which the world looks at, is bitter
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  and restrictive. Don't do this.
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  Don't do that is actually described in Psalm 19 as sweeter
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  than honey. Because it aligns with how we
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  are designed. It's like an engine oil.
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  If you put the right oil in the car, it runs smoothly.
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  That is sweet. If you put sugar in the gas
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  tank, it might taste sweet to you, but it destroys the engine
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  from the inside out. So it's a total reversal.
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  Your ethics are flipped, your perception of truth is darkened,
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  and your very taste buds, your affections, are corrupted.
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  You begin to love the poison. It is comprehensive head, heart
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  and senses. It's a total corruption of the
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  human person. So that is the diagnosis of the
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  symptoms, a devastating diagnosis.
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  But Isaiah doesn't stop there. He goes to the root cause in the
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  very next verse, verse 21. Woe to those who are wise in
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  their own eyes. This is the explanation for
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  everything we just talked about. Verse 21 explains verse 20.
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  How do you get to a place where you call evil good?
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  How do you convince yourself that darkness is light?
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  You get there by first becoming wise in your own eyes.
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  The text mentions the grammar here.
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  Again, wise. In their own eyes, the Hebrew is
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  Chakaminbi inahem, which implies subjectivity.
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  They're looking at themselves for the standard.
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  Yes, their own eyes are the reference point.
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  It is the definition of autonomous wisdom.
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  Autos means self. No mas means law, self, law.
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  It is the creature attempting to replace the Creator as the final
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  Court of Appeal. Instead of looking out at God's
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  revelation to find out what is true, I look in at my own
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  reasoning, my own feelings, my own experience.
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  I become the measure of all things.
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  And this connects back to the very beginning, doesn't it?
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  I mean, this goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
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  It is the original Lie. Genesis 3.5.
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  The serpent didn't just tempt them with fruit, he tempted them
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  with epistemology. He tempted them with a way of
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  knowing. He said you will be like God,
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  knowing good and evil. Meaning you will get to define
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  it. You will be the judge.
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  Exactly. You won't need God to tell you
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  what is right. You can decide for yourselves.
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  That is the bait, the sweetness of being your own God.
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  And we swallowed it, Every single one of us.
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  And this is where the Reformed doctrine, the noetic effects of
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  sin, comes in. That's a fancy term, but let's
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  break it down. What does it mean practically?
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  It comes from the Greek word nuss, meaning mind.
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  It means sin isn't just a behavior problem, it's a brain
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  problem. It affects our reasoning.
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  The Reformed view grounded in Scripture is that the mind is
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  not neutral. It is not an unbiased observer.
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  It is hostile to God. We do not think clearly because
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  our thinking apparatus is warped by our desire to be independent
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  from God. So we rationalize our sin.
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  Our own intellect becomes our biggest enemy in a way.
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  We are experts at it. We are the best lawyers for our
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  own sin. If I want to do something that
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  God forbids, my mind will work overtime to construct a
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  philosophical argument for why God is wrong and I am right.
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  My intellect serves my rebellion.
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  It builds the arguments for calling evil good.
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  The source mentions critical theory and postmodernism as the
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  modern sort of academic versions of this.
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  Yes, because those philosophies explicitly deconstruct objective
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  reality. They argue that truth is just a
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  power narrative. They argue that there is no
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  capital T truth, only my truth and your truth.
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  So if I'm wise in my own eyes, I can deconstruct God's law as
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  oppressive and reconstruct a reality that fits my desires.
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  It is self-made wisdom in its most sophisticated form.
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  But there's a problem with self-made wisdom, and it's a big
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  one. Reality doesn't actually change
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  just because we change our definitions.
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  That is the hard stuff. That is the Cliff edge.
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  You can vote that gravity doesn't exist.
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  You can write a dissertation on how gravity is a social
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  construct created by the powerful to oppress the weak.
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  But if you step off a Cliff, you will fall.
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  Reality doesn't care about your vocabulary.
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  This brings us to the theological crisis.
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  God doesn't negotiate definitions.
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  He doesn't hold a committee meeting.
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  He does not. The sources emphasize that good
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  and evil are grounded in God's own unchangeable character.
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  They aren't democratic concepts. We don't get to vote on them.
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  And this is where the law comes in with its full force.
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  The sources reference the Westminster Confession regarding
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  the law. Right.
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  The moral law is binding because it reflects God's nature.
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  And in Reform theology we talk about the uses of the law.
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  The first use is like a mirror, or maybe better a hammer.
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  It smashes our self righteousness.
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  It shows us we're guilty. So when Isaiah pronounces this,
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  whoa, it's a judicial sentence, it's not just a sad observation.
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  It is. The culture isn't just confused
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  or misguided, it is legally condemned by a holy God.
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  The gavel has come down. The verdict is in guilty.
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  And because of Total Depravity and other reformed staple, we
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  can't just educate our way out of this, can't we?
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  We can't just explain to people, hey, you got the definitions
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  wrong and expect them to say, oh thanks for clearing that up.
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  No, because as we said, they prefer the bitter.
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  The heart loves the darkness. Jesus said men love darkness
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  rather than light because their deeds were evil.
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  The problem is spiritual, not informational.
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  We don't need a teacher, we need a resurrection.
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  So we're stuck. We're under a funeral dirge,
• 18:15
  we're dead in our trespasses and sins, and our minds are hostile
• 18:20
  to the only cure. Which is a pretty bleak place to
• 18:23
  be. If the podcast ended here, we
• 18:25
  would all just have to go home and weep.
• 18:27
  But this is a Christian deep dive, so we know the story
• 18:29
  doesn't end in Isaiah 5. It can't.
• 18:31
  Thankfully not. This is where the gospel shines
• 18:33
  the brightest against the blackest backdrop.
• 18:36
  Let's talk about the resolution. The sources call it the Great
• 18:39
  Exchange. How does Jesus Christ answer the
• 18:42
  specific problems of Isaiah 5? This is just beautiful.
• 18:45
  If you look at the accusations 1 by 1, Jesus is the perfect and
• 18:48
  complete answer to each one. Isaiah says woe to those who put
• 18:52
  darkness for light. Jesus steps into history and
• 18:54
  says I am the light of the world.
• 18:57
  He exposes the darkness, but he also saves us from it.
• 19:00
  And for the wise in their own eyes part that root problem.
• 19:03
  Paul calls Christ the wisdom of God in first Corinthians Think
• 19:06
  about Jesus. He is the anti Adam where Adam
• 19:10
  and all of us in him said I want to do it my way, I want to be
• 19:13
  wise in my own eyes. Jesus said in the garden, not my
• 19:16
  will, but yours be done. He lived in perfect, joyful
• 19:20
  submission to the Father's definitions.
• 19:22
  He never tried to rewrite the dictionary.
• 19:24
  He obeyed it perfectly. But it goes deeper than just his
• 19:27
  example, right? It goes to the cross.
• 19:29
  The sources make a really poignant connection between the
• 19:32
  bitter and sweet imagery and Gethsemane.
• 19:35
  This is where it gets incredibly personal.
• 19:37
  In the garden, Jesus prays about a cup.
• 19:39
  He says. My father, if it be possible,
• 19:42
  let this cup pass from me. Have you ever really stopped to
• 19:46
  think about what was in that? Cup.
• 19:47
  The sources say it was the woe. It was the hoi.
• 19:50
  It was the wrath of God. It was the bitterness of Isaiah
• 19:52
  5. It was the distilled essence of
• 19:55
  the curse against a world that calls evil good.
• 19:57
  That cup is the bitterest thing in the universe.
• 19:59
  It's a full weight of the funeral.
• 20:00
  Dirge. And he drank it.
• 20:02
  He. Drank it to the dregs.
• 20:04
  He drank the bitter cup of God's woe, so that we who deserved it
• 20:08
  could taste the sweet wine of justification.
• 20:11
  He took the poison so we can have the feast.
• 20:14
  And the darkness. Matthew tells us that on the
• 20:16
  cross, from the 6th hour until the 9th hour, darkness covered
• 20:21
  the land. Why?
• 20:23
  It wasn't an eclipse. It was because Jesus was
• 20:26
  entering the judicial darkness. He was taking the consequences
• 20:30
  of our epistemological inversion upon himself.
• 20:33
  The woe that belonged to us fell on the substitute.
• 20:36
  He took the funeral dirge so that we could hear the song of
• 20:39
  salvation. That is it.
• 20:40
  That is the only reason we are not consumed.
• 20:41
  He took the Hoy upon himself. That is the hope.
• 20:44
  That is the only way out of the funeral.
• 20:46
  But now we have to land the plane.
• 20:47
  We have this high theology, we have this cultural diagnosis.
• 20:50
  What do we do with it? How do we live in a world like
• 20:52
  this? The sources break the
• 20:54
  application down into head, heart and hands.
• 20:56
  Let's start with the head the intellect.
• 20:58
  The sources call for intellectual militancy.
• 21:01
  That sounds intense. What does it mean?
• 21:02
  It means we have to refuse to compromise on definitions.
• 21:06
  We live in a world that loves nuance, but sometimes nuance is
• 21:09
  just a hiding place for cowardice.
• 21:11
  We have to be willing to call sin sin and to call
• 21:14
  righteousness righteousness unapologetically.
• 21:17
  The source says something striking here.
• 21:20
  Lying to a neighbor about reality is not love.
• 21:24
  That is key. That's a sentence to meditate
• 21:26
  on. We are told today that love
• 21:27
  means affirming people's delusions.
• 21:29
  But if you see a man about to drink poison, love doesn't say
• 21:32
  you do you. Love screams that will kill you.
• 21:36
  If a bridge is out and you tell the driver, well, the bridge
• 21:38
  identifies as intact. You aren't loving them, you are
• 21:41
  killing them. So true love speaks the truth,
• 21:44
  even when it's hard. Believing that God's definitions
• 21:46
  are true and good means we stick to them.
• 21:48
  Even when it's unpopular, even when we get cancelled for it.
• 21:51
  We have to hold the line on what is good and what is evil.
• 21:54
  OK, that's the head. What about the heart?
• 21:56
  If we're militant in our heads, do we become jerks in our
• 21:58
  hearts, condescending and angry? No, and that is the crucial
• 22:02
  balance. The proper response to the
• 22:04
  culture is Hoy grief, not mockery, not smugness.
• 22:09
  We see a lot of mockery online, especially in our circle.
• 22:12
  Sometimes it's easy to do. It is we see Christians making
• 22:15
  fun of the craziness of the world.
• 22:18
  You know, owning the libs, dunking on the confusion.
• 22:21
  But Isaiah didn't laugh. He wailed.
• 22:24
  He sounded a funeral cry. He was broken hearted.
• 22:27
  So we should mourn. We should mourn for a society
• 22:30
  that is committing suicide. We should hate the sin, yes,
• 22:33
  with the holy hatred, but we should weep for the Sinner who
• 22:36
  is deceived by the sweet taste of poison.
• 22:40
  If you don't have tears in your eyes for the lost, you don't
• 22:43
  have the heart of Jesus. He wept over Jerusalem.
• 22:46
  And finally, the hands action. The sources have specific
• 22:50
  marching orders for different groups.
• 22:52
  What about for pastors? Pastors need to be Watchmen on
• 22:55
  the wall. The sources are very explicit
• 22:56
  here. Pastors need to confront modern
• 22:58
  ideologies by name, intersectionality, the LGBTQ
• 23:02
  plus agenda, critical theory, the sources say.
• 23:04
  You cannot be afraid of being called intolerant or unloving.
• 23:07
  You have to identify the specific threats to the flock.
• 23:10
  If you don't warn the sheep that there are wolves and what the
• 23:12
  wolves look like, you aren't a shepherd, you're a hireling.
• 23:16
  You have to love your people enough to tell them the truth
• 23:18
  about the culture they live in. And for parents, this one felt
• 23:23
  particularly pointed. This is a big one.
• 23:26
  You have to categorize your children.
• 23:28
  You have to intentionally teach them the difference between
• 23:31
  sweet and bitter before the world gets a chance to test
• 23:34
  them. The source has a great line
• 23:36
  about education here that really stood out to me.
• 23:38
  You cannot send children to Caesar for their education and
• 23:41
  expect them to return as believers.
• 23:44
  That is a hard word, but the source emphasizes it.
• 23:46
  If the entire educational system is designed to teach the
• 23:49
  inversions, to teach that darkness is light and evil is
• 23:52
  good, you cannot just send your kids there and hope for the
• 23:55
  best. You have to take primary
• 23:57
  responsibility for their spiritual and intellectual
• 23:59
  formation. That is a challenge to the
• 24:02
  modern educational model, for sure.
• 24:04
  And what about for the regular believer, the person in the Pew?
• 24:08
  Repentance. And repentance here looks like
• 24:10
  dethroning the self. It means stopping the habit of
• 24:13
  saying I know better than God. It means submitting my mind, my
• 24:16
  will, my appetites to His Word. It's the third use of the law,
• 24:19
  using God's law as a guide for gratitude and living, not just
• 24:23
  as a hammer. Exactly.
• 24:24
  Allowing the Spirit to renew the mind, as Romans 12 says, so we
• 24:28
  can actually distinguish light from darkness.
• 24:30
  Again, we need to retrain our spiritual taste buds to love
• 24:34
  righteousness and hate evil. This has been a heavy, but I
• 24:38
  think a really necessary, very deep dive.
• 24:40
  As we wrap up, I'm thinking about that image of the funeral
• 24:43
  dirge again. It's just so powerful.
• 24:45
  It is because Isaiah 5.20 O 21 is the Morning News.
• 24:49
  The world is demanding that we participate in its delusion.
• 24:52
  It demands we sign the card that says evil is good.
• 24:56
  But the Roe is a covenant curse. It cannot be voted away.
• 24:59
  It's an objective reality. So the final thought for you,
• 25:01
  the listener, is this. If the woe is God's alarm bell,
• 25:05
  Christ is the rescue. And we must flee from the
• 25:07
  autonomy of Eden, that deep seated desire to define things
• 25:11
  for ourselves and submit to the Lordship of Christ.
• 25:14
  The funeral dirge has been sung over the world.
• 25:16
  It is a dying order. Let the anthem of Hope be sung
• 25:19
  over the church. That is the only place hope is
• 25:21
  found. Thanks for listening to Reformed
• 25:23
  Thinking.