Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / 6 More Ways To Talk About ‘Sin’ || SLP670

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6 More Ways To Talk About ‘Sin’ || SLP670 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: Hello, welcome to the Speak Life podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Glenn from Speak Life, and I'm joined by I'm Naomi, also from Speak Life.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_05: Also from Speak Life.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_05: And uh she, as we learnt last time, is our sin expert.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_07: I feel like you need to stop saying this, but I don't I don't want to be known as the sin expert.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_07: It could be.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_07: When someone thinks about sin, they think of Naomi Brain.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_05: The s the communication of sin.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_05: You're somebody who who has been doing a lot of thinking about the communication of the human problem, especially to Gen Z, and I refuse to say Gen Z, but especially uh to students and on campuses and and and elsewhere in your evangelism.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um what are your reflections on our conversation last time?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: Because we uh we attempted to look at twelve different motifs for sin.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we got through six of them.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um how how was it for you?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_07: We got through six.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um it's I find it helpful and enriching to think through each of these.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_07: I think maybe one of my reflections is that um I think we spoke can you run through which what the six were again?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, good one.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um so we looked at transgression, we looked at sin as a power or a predator, we looked at idolatry, uh, we looked at defilement, and we looked at betrayal.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, okay.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_07: I think on reflection uh with transgression and the idea of crossing a boundary, overstepping a um the line or missing the mark, um I think we did lots of talking about how that that isn't that doesn't provide like the fullness of the picture of sin that we really we really want.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think with each of the others, we maybe didn't uh look at the dangers of just having them on their own as well.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_07: Um and and so I guess it's probably worth saying that for each of these things uh there'll be different phrases and vocab that personally, but also different kind of church circles might gravitate towards talking about.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um and all of them have um problems if you just think about sin in that way.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_07: And all of them have beautiful reflections reflections of the character of God when you think about sin being like that and and um Yeah.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_07: And therefore what is salvation.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_07: So I think that that probably was my reflection.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_05: And and we got to talk about the Lord and his salvation quite a bit as well.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I guess like wh whenever you're talking about sin, you're sort of talking in the negative about salvation.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_05: You're sort of doing the photo negative, aren't you?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um But yeah, we we don't want to just be um monotonous when we talk about sin in one sort of way.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_05: We want to be symphonic or indeed symphonic.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_05: You're very good for putting up with it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_07: Um I feel like that sigh comes out frequently.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_07: Often followed by that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: Dad jokes.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_05: I am a dad.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_05: I'm allowed to I'm allowed to make dad jokes.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I forgot to say earlier, um I only mentioned five of the of the uh Mojits and the other one was death that we that we looked at, and therefore we need we need resurrection.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: But as I think about the twelve, and um we're we're gonna add six to our former six, when I think of all twelve of them, and when I think of the sorts of church circles that I'm in, I think if my tribe leans into one motif for sin more than any other, I would say number seven, rebellion.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_05: Is something that that the I think in the circles I'm most familiar with, that's that's sort of um that's sort of the one thing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_05: And it's it's true, isn't it?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: We we are rebels.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_05: So where where do we get the idea sort of biblically that we are?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I mean, whether you talk about being rebellious children that have run away from home from our father, um, or uh you know, re rebels against the king who is in authority.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um that either way, um the word I guess rebel comes comes through in those metaphors.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um and and it's right to think about God as a father and it's right to think about Jesus as a king.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_07: Um I mean we think about uh I mean there's obviously several places where it it talks about it.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_07: Actually, I think the end of Judges is a really good place to go.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_07: The final verse and there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_07: There is a king in Israel.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_07: There is a king in Israel.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_07: It is the Lord.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um and yet there's this uh denial of that.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_07: And it causes absolute mayhem.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think of Psalm two.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_05: Well, how do the nations conspire and the people's plot in vain?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_05: The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_05: So that's that's very much, you know, we we th there's this sort of rope dangling down from heaven.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_05: We're like, get it off us.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_05: We we want to be kind of we kind of want to be free from that.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_05: And the one enthroned in heaven laughs, the Lord scoffs at them, he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_05: So like rebellion's a pretty good description, I guess.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_07: I I think it's good in as insofar as it reminds us that a a big part a big part of the problem of sin is trying to do away with God.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_07: Living in God's world like he doesn't exist, pretending like we are the gods of our own lives, and and so this dynamic of understanding there is an authority figure that we have just denied ourselves in that place.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_07: I guess that's part of idolatry, but I it does do a good job of explaining a bit of like you know, the the rebellious nature in us kind of thing.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_07: It it does a good job of it reminding us Jesus is king.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_07: I one of the sermons that I really, really remember.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, when you just there's like there's a sermon that just there's something about it.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um it was a Palm Sunday sermon by Dan Haines, that's an old day sermon when I was there in Oxford, and he so beautifully just painted a picture of the triumphal entry of Jesus, and where it says in Matthew 21, um, quoting Old Testament, says the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey on a cult, on a cult to the fold of a beast of burden.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_07: And when we think of Jesus as king and just and that image of the return of the king, they're like, Yeah, they're like, Oh wow, that is a majestic and glorious and exciting, song-filled, feast-filled moment.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_07: The king is coming back.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, this is great, and the promise of the the son of David coming for the daughters of Jerusalem, it's beautiful.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_07: I guess that that's going back into the kind of um love and betrayal type of language.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_07: But yes, the son of David, the king, coming for the daughters of Jerusalem.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_07: And what is this king like?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_07: He is humble, yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_07: I think that's I I think that part is sometimes missed as we think about Jesus as king and us as rebels.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_07: It's like he's just some kind of power authority figure.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_07: But what is he like?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_07: That is the really important part.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_07: He is the most he is the kindest man who has ever walked on this planet.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_07: And by the way, he's king.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_07: Isn't that so good?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_07: That is a great way to see the paradigm of rebellion and and kingship.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_07: What I don't think is particularly helpful in using it as the only paradigm specifically for Gen Z, Gen Z, is that, and I I found I found it this was helpful for me to get my head around when I read um Carl Truman's um Rise and Triumph for the Modern Self, is that authority is now inherently seen as bad.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_07: And rebelling against authority and shaking off the shackles is inherently seen as good.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_07: And so if we are using vocab where we're tr we're forcibly trying to flip around like someone's moral like the idea of, well, authority is a bad thing, and I'm trying to persuade you that Jesus is authoritative, and by the way, that's actually a good thing.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_07: It feels like there's a lot of work to be done.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_07: Um and and it's not that we do away with talking about God as authoritative.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_07: No is the need to submit to him.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_07: We need to we do need people to understand that Jesus is.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_07: A friend of mine used to say, like, every student wants a king like Jesus.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_07: Everyone, everyone really wants a king like Jesus.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_07: That's such oh, and isn't it so good that he is king?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_07: But there is a there is an extra barrier now, I think, yeah.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_07: In talking in in terms of um authority and rebellion because it's completely it's completely opposite to the way people think now.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_05: And some of the way that we react to that is that we say, okay, I know you're not going to like submitting to this king.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: Oh.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: But it is the cost.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: It is the price you need to pay.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_05: I know you'll hate this, um, but you'll just have to submit for now.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's the it's the entrance price to heaven.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_05: So just get off the throne of your life and submit and bow the knee, and that's the sort of the it's kind of like it's the cost of salvation more than more than it's this the shape of salvation.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: I I like I'd much rather see it.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_05: Like the shape of my new life in Christ is to gladly have a king like Jesus.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm I just I just love that Psalm 2 finishes with kiss the son, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_05: And and take refuge in him, which is interesting.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_05: So so like, yes, there's the authority of King Jesus in Psalm 2, but the punchline to that is not therefore get off the throne, pull your head in, bow, submit.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's it's something in a sense it's something even more humbling.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_05: Like, you know, it's like love this king, take refuge in this king, run to this king, rather than just bow, which you like you could stay at a distance, couldn't you?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_05: Like, quit the rebellion, okay, I surrender.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_05: This is this is more than I surrender.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_05: This is, you know.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and one of the things I uh have been re really enjoyed dwelling on this year is I guess in some ways it's about the doctrine of God and the Trinity, but just that before before God is a creator over his creation or master over or king over creation, but primarily like God is father, God is relational, there's like a like before God is has things to be authoritative over, he is loving in an equality of the three persons of the Trinity.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_07: Do you know what I mean?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_07: There's something about the the submitting to God as Lord and King in that sense, which actually still isn't the fundamental of who God is.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_07: If you say that out of context, it sounds heretical.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_05: But well no, I think the arch heretical thing is to be an Aryan.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so like I would say like in church history, like the heresy of all heresies is basically to deny the full godhood of Jesus.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_05: Like, like you you say so Arius was this you know heretic in the fourth century, and he was like, Yeah, Jesus Jesus is God, sort of, with a little g maybe, you know, like but he's not as God as God the Father is God.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, yeah.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_05: Who is who you know subordinates himself to God and he like his whole life is submission and he sort of brings you into his life of submission with God.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_05: And Athanasius, the great sort of um hero that that opposed Arius, he said, your number one problem, Arius, is that you look at creation and first, and then you say, I know what God's like, he must be creator.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um he must be uncreated, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_05: Like a king in that sort of sense.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um what you should first do, instead of looking at the world and defining God, you should look at Jesus and define God.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_05: And when you look at Jesus to define God, well, he's the Son.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: So who's God?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: Father.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, yeah.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: And and Athanasius would say every problem we ever have in our gospel preaching or our or our enjoyment of the Christian faith, is because we're not starting with Father.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, that enjoyment part is so key.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_07: And and in some ways, yes, it is it is good and right to to take it as your duty to submit to King Jesus, but but the you know, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_07: Like there's the kind of are you enjoying that king?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_07: Like, yeah, yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: So rebellion is there, it's real, it's biblical.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but you know, perhaps it needs to be considered in the context of like who God is, not not primarily and first of all ruler, but primarily and first of all father.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um and us re and and in a sense, rebelling against such a good father is worse, isn't it?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_07: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_07: And perhaps a kind of like a running away from home um child might be a bet might be a better way to see it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_07: And perhaps for some people, this is a r it still is a really helpful paradigm.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_07: Um but I guess what we're saying is we just need a filler picture.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_07: Because otherwise you end up um with a king maybe a bit like a bit like this.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: A bit like this.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Naomi is our um our musicals um Maestro.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_06: Here we go.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: You'll be back soon, you see.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: You remember you belong to me.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: You'll be back to remember that I served you well.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Empire We could see each other through it all and when pooch to chuck.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: I will stand a fully armed battery.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_07: So when we started talking about these twelve, twelve different motifs for sin, uh, genuinely the first thing that came to mind was I reckon there is a song from a musical for each of these.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_07: And this one was easy to come up with.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um I actually think it captures it really well.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_07: I'm, you know, gonna rule over you.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_07: To remind you of I I love you by the way.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: To remind you of my love.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_05: And and and I think one once again, um, are we meant to submit to King Jesus?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_05: But but if that becomes the ultimate paradigm that sort of orders all the other paradigms, I don't think you get to kiss the sun.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: I don't I don't I don't think if that's the top of the tree, yeah, it's it's hard to then take refuge in King George.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_07: No one no one is running towards him.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_07: Like there's an there's a the problem is that we've run away and uh in our rebellion, and it need our hearts need to be drawn back in a genuine sense like my heart's not drawn to being drawn anyway.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_05: Although you'll see, I mean I mean, Jacob, I was preaching on Jacob recently, and and there is the Lord is catching up with him and mugging him and pinning him to the floor, wrestling with him, and you know, like um immobilizing him in that in that moment, and and then you know, absolutely Jacob is meant to cling to him, and you like turn to the Lord who is after him.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_05: And there it there is that kind of sense that, yeah, King Jesus is pursuing you, run to him.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I think that's absolutely right, but you just you just need to figure out what kind of king we're talking about.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, that's how and it's not just an abstract power.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_05: So, okay, rebellion.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um, we've probably spent all our time on rebellion.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_07: That's true.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_07: Um shall I pick the next one via song?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_07: Are you ready?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_07: Are you ready?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: I've okay, yes.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_05: She is an awful, awful woman, isn't she, Mary Puffin?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_05: When you are she is just so prim and proper and annoyingly perfect.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_05: She's just practically perfect every way, you may say.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, so which one is that?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_07: So is this sickness by any chance?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_07: It is, it's indeed sickness.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_07: Sin as sickness.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_07: Um yeah, yeah, sin as sickness.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_05: Biblically, where do we go to think of sin as sickness?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_07: Biblically, so I I I find that alongside uh talking about sin as betrayal, sin as sickness I've found particularly helpful with students um because Jesus describes himself as a doctor explicitly.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_07: And so whether you go to Mark 2 or maybe uh Luke 5, I'm going to recently, um the story of uh Levi's div dinner party.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_07: Um and so Levi makes Jesus a great feast in his house.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_07: There was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_07: And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_07: Jesus answered them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_07: So Jesus is directly paralleling it in in terms of metaphorical language, sinners and repentance with sick people coming to a doctor.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_07: Um and and so I think we have full license to use this as a description of what sin is like.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_05: And how is that how is that helpful as as I try and figure out I look at my life and I'm unhappy with what I see.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_05: I recognise that God is unhappy with what he sees in that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_05: How does how does the paradigm of of sickness help?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I oh, yeah, I actually find it helpful in various ways.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_07: One is um I I find myself saying quite a lot that if Jesus is like a a Jesus is like a doctor in that sometimes as you come to him you've got an ouch moment because he diagnoses it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_07: So as he's as he exposes the problem, it's it's painful, it's like ouch.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_07: But then you've got the relief of oh, but there's a cure.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_07: And not just a treatment of symptoms, a cure.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_07: Oh man, okay.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_07: So there's so one reason why I find it helpful is just that that's quite a commonplace experience of um life is die.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_07: We kind of like you know, we're grateful for a diagnosis even when it's painful to hear and and relieved when it's like, oh okay, this thing this thing actually has a cure.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_07: Um I find it helpful as a uh so that I guess in that sense it's like a lived experience of something that people can can gravitate to even if they have much of a relationship with King Charles to think about the nature of rebellion.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_07: But they do probably they probably have been to a GP.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right, right, right.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um one reason why sickness is helpful is that sickness can be understood as being like a hereditary genetic condition, yes, or self-inflicted, um, or something that has been passed on or like that has happened to you.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_07: Um so there is kind of different dimensions of understanding what sickness is, which is similar to sin, like it's genetic, it's also self-inflicted.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's you know, yeah, like that's quite helpful.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_07: Um it's also holistic.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_07: We know that wellness is more than just physical, and to be able to say to someone, you know, we don't want to too often be re saying, oh well, let's parallel this to COVID because it's really overused.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_07: But COVID was a helpful moment of even young people who maybe had never set foot in a hospital before and never really experienced or thought about death before, suddenly recognising physical vulnerability and frailty and and also seeing the crazy ripple effects of like one little microbe or whatever, whatever it is.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_07: Like this this one this one little thing has impacted livelihoods, has impacted like the whole world, and it's not just physical sickness, it is how we're doing economically, it's your mental health, it's your you know, it's it's impacted so much.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_07: Political things, all sorts.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_07: And that is also a helpful paradigm for sin.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_07: It's like, okay, well, there is this thing um which has infected everything.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_07: Um this story, yeah, this story of Adam and Eve and the full, it's not just this thing that Yeah.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_05: Patient Zero.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you might not think anything has happened.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_05: When patient zero gets it doesn't look like anything's happened.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_05: On the day you eat it, you'll surely die.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_05: Really?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_07: Like, oh but to then talk about this how human sin has spread and infected all of creation, you know, our our impact, um uh the impact of humanity on the whole of the cosmos, yeah, in terms of what the fool has done.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_07: That is also quite helpful.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_07: Um yeah, and and and but then also I guess it it helps with and perhaps this is one of the dangers, actually, is like I was saying, the kind of holistic side of it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_07: That it's quite hard.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_07: I think in reading through scripture, it's quite hard to get away from the fact that God does reveal his blessing and goodness in like physical ways, in provision of food, in healing of bodies, and um and so I think to use I don't know, like seeing Jesus uh describe himself as A doctor and talk about it in terms of sin and repentance, but then also he does go and physically heal people's bodies.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_07: Like there is something of a come to Jesus and know a healing and a wellness that is more than just he he has you know sorted out the wrath of God thing.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_07: Like it exactly there's a big there's a bigger thing going on.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_07: There's a promise of of um future restoration of all things is like yeah, exactly.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_07: And that that's quite helpful.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_07: But uh but the danger, the danger there perhaps, and is the question is around a bit of a playing to a kind of a therapeutic gospel.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_07: Coming to Jesus for wellness in that in like a kind of I want to feel better about myself and my life.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_05: And it and you could get rid of all language of choice.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's all I'm just it's just all chains, it's no choice.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's all like kind of thing rather than a perpetrator of sin.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_05: But I I love about sickness is it it helps you to get beneath symptoms and to say there's an underlying condition.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_05: So so that the ouch moment, when you get to the ouch moment, it's like, oh, but we can't just solve that ouch moment, can we?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_05: There is a you know, that's a symptom, but there's a there's an underlying, you know, genetic, you know, it's it's passed on kind of cause that goes deep.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_05: And and you know, the conversation about original sin um is uh helped a lot by talking about sickness.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um because as you say, we are holistic people who are born into this world and not all is well.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_05: You know, a baby is born, and we're not saying that that baby is a monster, a moral monster, and nor are we saying that that that baby is, you know, like on the on the point of death, but we are saying that if you mapped that baby's genome, you would discover all sorts of gene deletions and all sorts of predispositions to, you know, heart disease or kidney failure or whatever it uh whatever it is, and that that that child might be sick in one way or another, um, and it will develop and we'll see the way that that child will be sick.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_05: Doesn't mean we don't love that child.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't mean that you know it doesn't mean from one point of view you pick up the child and say, what a perfect little girl, what a perfect little boy.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: You're like um, but they are sick, and they're born sick.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um and uh Christopher Hitchens uh is famous for characterizing original sin as um it's the that dreaded doctrine that we're born sick commanded to be healthy.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_05: Ah and that was that's his sort of understanding, like original sin, you're born sick commanded to be healthy.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_07: As in like a heal yourself.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, sort of, yeah.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_05: Like, yeah, yeah, and then blamed for being what you are and what you could never, you know, not be.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas what we're saying, especially from Luke 5, is is like of course we're born sick.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_05: I'm born dying like worse, I'm born dying.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_05: And we know that physically, I know I'm born dying.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_05: And the Bible is just holistic enough to say, oh yeah, that's a spiritual truth, that's a moral truth as well.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_05: But it's not born sick commanded to be healthy, it's like born sick offered the doctor.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, the doctor's here.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_07: And yeah, there's a uh a poem I sometimes um share that I wrote a while back on this story, and and in it there's a little bit where I say, Doctor, what are you doing here?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_07: It would be foolish to ask.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_07: To heal and restore is his favourite task.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_07: Patient, why don't you cure yourself before you arrive?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_07: How ridiculous.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_07: Of course they have tried, but they cannot heal their sin-sick souls first.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_07: And so there's a like if Jesus is the doctor, then I I and in some ways I get this kind of from um gentle and lowly.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_07: Um is it Dane Holland?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: Dane Holland, yeah.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_07: Like he he's like a magnet to towards this the the sinner, basically.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_07: The the doctor who who wants to be where the sick people are in order to heal.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_07: And again, a reason why I think this is helpful, similar to the betrayal one, is that it gets to not just like the mechanism of salvation, but the heart of God in it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_07: Like Jesus as the doctor who really enjoys getting to heal and restore us.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_07: And loves it when our first step is to say, Do you know, I oh gosh, I I think I think something's wrong.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_07: I think I'm sick and I can't do anything about it, and I need you.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_07: And he's like, Great.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_07: You've come to the right place, you come at the right time.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_05: It's so helpful because I I used to I used to use a lot.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_05: There's a verse in Habakkuk where the Lord says, you know, um, his eyes are too pure to even look upon evil.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I used to use that a lot in evangelism.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_05: And and especially if I'd use sort of the defilement mo motif, the uncleanness motif for sin.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I'd say, Well, we're unclean.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: And God's eyes are too pure to even look upon evil.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_05: And so Jesus needs to come and tidy us up before God can even look at us.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_05: Which at us which was to split the persons of the Trinity.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_05: But one of the problems is if that's your primary if that's that's if that's your primary doctrine of who God is, like he just, oh I I I can't be.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_05: I can't I you know I can't even look upon sin.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_05: Um far more is going on in Habakkuk than that.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's to rip it out of its context, um, because the doctor's eyes uh are not too healthy to look upon sickness, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah the doctor That's what he's doing there.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, the doctor will see you now.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_05: He is drawn, he is drawn to you because of your illness.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_05: And and then and then salvation is is a really healthy thing, right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's a I can see the positivity of coming to Jesus because now as I live out my salvation, I'm living out my healing.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_05: I'm living out wellness in this world.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and to talk about talk about salvation as healing is helpful.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_07: Um I haven't studied Greek.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_07: But it is similarity in the words.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_07: Um yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_07: And yeah, I mean it's part of the as we talk about the language of union with Christ, oneness, wholeness.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_07: That is, you know, there's a there's a healing and a restoring, and yeah, it it it's quite I find it quite helpful.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_07: Good.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_07: Um that's helpful.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_05: So what's our third motif?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_05: Another another musical.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_05: Similar, yeah, okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_07: So going from sickness, let's go for a similar one.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the shine of a thousand spotlights.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is great ashamed.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, this is great ashamed.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_07: This might be a bit harder.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Never be enough.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Never be enough.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, what do you think?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_05: Never be enough.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_07: Never enough, never enough.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_05: Now, I don't think it is gonna be this, but I do I do think one motif we haven't talked about is like dissatisfaction, the God-shaped whole.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_05: Never enough.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_05: Which I I think people in our tribe we hate it when sin is primarily, you know, just the God-shaped whole, and we just think, you know, like Jesus will come into your life and satisfy you forever.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_05: And we're like, no, he's the king.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_05: Bow.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_05: Because we don't like the never enough, but you're not gonna go for never enough, because that wasn't on our list.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_07: No, no, it wasn't dissatisfied.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_07: Well, that that that's true.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_07: I we actually could we could keep coming up with more because there's a lot more dissatisfaction would would be a good one.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um spreads.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_07: Um causes someone to say There's never enough.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so is it addiction?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's addiction.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_05: That was a slightly tenuous one.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_05: But I I love that definition of addiction that you you go to your problem as though it's your solution.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_05: Like you've got a massive problem in your life, and like I know the answer.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_05: More of it.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_05: More of it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_05: And it's never enough.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_05: And so biblically I'm thinking John 8, is it John 8 34?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_05: Whoever sins is a slave to sins.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's it.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_05: That if the sun sets you free, you'll be free indeed.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's that kind of you know, and and it's it's that um image that preachers are always using.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not I'm not sure that this is actually true about how you catch a monkey, but you know you know the story about how you catch a monkey?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_07: I only oh I know it from a funny context.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_07: You go, you go.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, yeah.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_07: Then you show me the funny context.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_05: But but so you you put a jar in the middle of a forest and you put like an apple that the that the monkey really wants at the bottom of the jar.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_05: And the the the aperture, the hole at the top of the jar is only wide enough um to get his arm in as soon as he grasps hold of the apple.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_05: He's stuck, he can't get his hand out, and it's a big heavy jar, and then the hunter comes and and collects the silly monkey who could be free if only he would let go of the forbidden fruit, and yet one.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_05: So what do we like?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, ensnared by our own desires.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, so this does this then also sort of taps into a description of sin like it's slavery.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_07: But I do think there's a difference because um there's the aspect of like loving the thing that's killing you.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_07: In an addiction language.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_07: Um, whereas, you know, the paradigm of slavery being slated, you can you know, I don't think the Israelites loved Pharaoh.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: No, no.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_07: Um, even though they were enslaved.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_07: Um but there is something about the the the talking about addiction as a metaphor for sin is helpful because it gets this time not so much to the heart of God, but the heart of us.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_07: And that we like I I'll maybe use a phrase of you know, um even when so Romans Romans 5, um, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, not once we had cleaned ourselves up, not once we had, you know, come to our senses and sorted out our lives and then come, but while we were still trapped in sin, but specifically while we were still in the middle of our secret sins and loving it, yeah.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_07: Christ died for us, there's something about the love of sin that that addiction speaks into.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_07: That the other ones don't in such a deep way.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because you do the intervention with the drug addict.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_05: You don't wait for the drug addicts to say, you know what, I'm I present myself happily to, you know, if if that happens, praise the Lord.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_05: But but usually you have to do the intervention with the drug addict who's on their way to get their next fix.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um and so the the intervention to save them is not because they desire it.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: They're actually desiring the thing that kills them.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I I think of Ephesians 2, as for you, you were dead in your trans transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world, and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient, all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts like the rest.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_05: We were by nature deserving of wrath.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_05: Now we quoted that last time as regards death, right?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_05: Sin is death.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_05: But the way we live out our living death is that we follow the cravings of our flesh even as we're following the ways of this world and of Satan, the ruler of the kingdom.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_05: So what are we following?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_05: Are we f are we following Satan like, yeah, as we follow our flesh?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_05: Like, like, yeah, yeah.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_05: There's a there's the desire, the desire of my heart is killing me, and I'm just doing what I want to do.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_05: But what I want to do is what the devil wants me to do.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_05: Like what I want to do is deadly and enslaving, and yeah, and and so am I am I enslaved to Pharaoh?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_05: But there's this really weird kind of thing in which I kind of like being a slave better than I like being in the wilderness.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_05: And isn't it interesting that the Israelites, when they're out in the wilderness, they're kind of like it was kind of better with the you know, remember the flesh pots that we were around?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_05: We had meat and we had cucumbers, the garlic, the garlic and the cucumbers and the celery.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_05: It was amazing.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_05: Remember the barbecues they were all saying?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_05: Like they kind of love there was a sense in which they said I love their slavery.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_05: There was a like like no, we don't love Pharaoh, but we kind of love Pharaoh more than we love the wilderness with the Lord.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_05: And we would rather be with Pharaoh in a palace than with the Lord in a wilderness and and and that's a slavery.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_07: I was thinking about um Love Divine, all loves excelling.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_07: Excellent song, where it says, take away the love of sinning.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_07: And that's a re that is a good prayer for us to pray, isn't it?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think and a couple things on why this is a good paradigm for Gen Z or for younger people is um one, it's still so like with a few of these, if you can if you can have both that we are victims and perpetrators, kind of like if if you if you can challenge the well in a lot of things there seems to be everyone is classed either as oppressed or oppressor or victims.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_05: Oppressed or oppressor, yeah.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_07: Um perpetrator.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_07: And so in these if we're able to have a way in that's like a yes, you're a victim, but then it's actually you're not just a victim.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_07: So this is a helpful one of like you're trapped, yes, but you do know you got yourself in that place.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_07: And and you're now helpless, and but you kind of are also to blame.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_07: It's quite helpful.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_05: That's the choices and the chains that are sort of together.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_05: I'm making choices.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_07: Um the other one is that I think um addiction is kind of in our vocab around lots of things beyond just substance abuse, you know.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_07: Like people talk about being addicted to their phones, they talk about having an addictive personality, that kind of thing.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_07: And so it's in our vocab more than maybe some other terminology.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_05: And the danger of leaning in too far to it is uh again, you you become helpless, you know.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_05: I'm you know, I'm I'm an addict, you know, what what am I gonna do?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um and that perhaps salvation becomes um just about my personal liberation.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_05: Like wouldn't you want to be free from your phone?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_05: Like, or wouldn't you want to be free from the things that enslave you?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_07: And it it's probably because addiction is talking about our relationship to s sin rather than our relationship to God in a way in well Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_07: Whereas like um yeah, rebellion or betrayal is that automatically puts your attention on the thing we're estranged from rather than the thing we're trapped by.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_07: Does that make sense?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_05: But the so the full deliverance from slavery to sin is slavery to God, actually.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_05: Well, yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_05: And the full deliverance from Egypt is not, you know, um uh you know, the the Lord says, you know, let my people go so that they may serve me in the wilderness.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's not let my people go to the water.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_07: The I don't know, the freedom and righteousness of God.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, which is why this if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um actually to belong as a son or a daughter to the father is to belong a lot more than to simply be a servant to a master.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_05: There there are sort of there's sort of there are limits to your belongingness in that free relationship.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_07: From addiction to adoption.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, there we go.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_05: That'll preach.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_05: There we go.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_05: That'll preach.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_07: At Speak Life, we want to help deep thinkers navigate modern life, bringing clarity and joy by seeing everything through the lens of Jesus.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we do.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: You'll find us on YouTube, Instagram, all the socials we get around.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: But here on the Speak Life Podcast, we slow down in conversation with each other, guests, and you, our audience.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you hear lots from us, but we would love to hear from you.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_07: So drop us a line, podcast at speaklife.org.uk, and give us your NFL stats, your name, a favourite thing, and location.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_07: So for example.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, my name's Thomas.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: My favourite animal is probably the octopus.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I enjoy listening to the Speak Life Podcast when I'm in my kitchen.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_07: Uh I'm Naomi.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_07: My favourite fiction author is Frederick Bachman, and I am listening from the train.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_07: So give us your NFL stats, name, favourite thing, and location, and then fire away with your question or comment.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's podcast at speaklife.org.uk.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_07: Back to the conversation.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_05: So, what have we had?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_05: We've had um rebellion, we've had sickness, we've had addiction.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_05: Addiction, yeah.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_07: Should we rattle through a couple of them?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, how about this one?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_06: Must be money.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_06: Must be funny.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_05: Memo.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_05: Sin.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_05: We've already done idolatry, haven't we?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_07: Um yeah, we have.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_07: What's this?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, what kind of thing?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_07: You know what this one is.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_07: Um okay, this is again another movie tenure thing.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, go on.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_07: This one is debt.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_07: Debt!
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, of course, of course.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_07: Um and earlier I decided to check out uh What about Le Miss?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_05: How old yeah, because isn't he in debt?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_05: I I I've bought you.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_05: I've bought you with these candlesticks.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_05: He says to first.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, well, yeah, I I'm going to see LaMiz this summer.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_07: I've actually not seen it.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_07: So maybe we do an episode again after that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_07: That'd be nice.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um, debt.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_07: This morning I was like, okay, debt.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_07: How do I understand debt?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_07: I was like, well, to be honest, the only thing I had to go on is like my student loan.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_07: Any any guesses?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_07: Any guesses?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_07: On how much it is?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's unbelievable.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_07: I actually don't know if I'm supposed to share this publicly.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_07: It's 82,000 pounds.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: Oh.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_07: Isn't that so bad?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_07: But I don't feel it anyway, anyway.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_07: I don't feel like I walk around thinking, gosh, I I owe it to the power.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_07: If debtor's prison existed, you would though.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_07: Well, yeah, yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_07: I owe somebody 82,000 pounds.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_07: I don't walk around thinking that.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_05: Hmm.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe you should.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Was that helpful?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Was that helpful?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um Yeah.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_05: But just but just like to whatever degree we can feel that.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_05: I think I think that is really helpful.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_05: I I I've been really interested by the ways in which our attitudes to money now are so different from the Bible's attitudes to money, such that the debt kind of motif for sin doesn't really bite with us in the same way.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_05: Like if there was debtor's prison, like that there would be if if you had to work off that if if literally if this isn't paid off by next year, you have to go and work for the NHS for you know five years or whatever, you know.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_05: Like that where whereas in the in the Bible to be in debt meant that sort of your whole bot your body and soul, you're sort of you sort of belong to the person who holds holds the debt.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_05: And and that nowadays, you know, I've I've you know my bank account is on a screen.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, just all numbers on the screen.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_05: And like if I you know, if I give you any money, it's just tap, beep, tap, and it's just like whereas because because money has become so liquid and so detached from us as people, this analogy of being forgiven a debt, I think it's it's losing its purchase size because we're just like so the number that was red turns black.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_07: Although they yeah, maybe maybe the concept of debt is still helpful, we just need to think about other language around it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_07: I wonder if the sense of like owing owing something or needing to match up to something, or like there's a kind of a um not being enough.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_07: There's there is something still there that is helpful.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_07: And it'll and it still feels powerful, you know.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_07: Um Colossians 2 14 or 13 14.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_07: You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_07: And then this is the bit, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, there's something really cool about the vis like that image of you know, the a record, almost like a written record of my debt being physically like nailed to the cross.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_07: Even though I don't resonate with the um concept of debt in the same way, there is something that I resonate with about that.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: Do you know what I mean?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I mean, if I just told you that£82,000 was just cancelled, it was, it was, it was nailed.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_05: It was you know, done.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_05: There's there is something about that, isn't there?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_05: Kind of would wouldn't you feel liberated?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I don't really think about my student loan very much.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_07: But again, that's another reason why maybe for youth and students that debt might not be as as helpful.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_07: But another thing to think about is it I think debt uh speaks about, if we think about salvation, it speaks about the mercy of God, you know, cancelling a debt, like writing off the thing.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_07: But but it doesn't, it doesn't speak about the grace of God and his abundant generosity on top of that.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, yes.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't just get you out of the red, he puts you way into the blaze.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_07: And I was talking to um these teenage girls in my church about this, they were asking, saying, like, oh, what's the difference between mercy and grace?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_07: And um and I was saying about, you know, mercy is not getting what we deserve and grace being getting what we don't deserve.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_07: Um but I was talking about the idea of a car.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_07: I said, guys, imagine I have um something's happened to my car, I can't use it and I borrow one of your parents' cars.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_07: And I go and I crash the car and um And it gets completely written off that your parents can't use the car anymore.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_07: What would mercy do?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and we figured out together, okay, mercy would be the parents saying it's okay, you don't have to pay for the car.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_07: And grace would be, but you still don't have a car.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_07: Why don't we buy you a car?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_07: What?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_07: I just crashed your car and now you want to buy me, buy me a car.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_07: What the heck?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_07: So there's there is something about like debt that speaks into forgiveness and mercy, but it's still it falls short of again the heart of God and his abundant generosity and the relational sense as well.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's the thing.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_05: Because money, like if you know,£164,000 is, you know, wired to your account, so that not only do you go into black, but you go into the red, that's sort of it, but but it's so abstract.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_05: Because money has become so liquid and so detached from us.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um whereas if you had been a slave working off that debt and then you become a child and an heir in the family.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_07: And getting an inheritance.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_05: Getting an inheritance.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_07: That's true.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: From out of the out of the red into the black.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_05: I think one one thing about debt that that is helpful is it does um show that forgiveness is costly.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_05: So maybe part of the student loan repayment thing, why that doesn't bite, is because you don't you don't feel like the government is feeling the bite.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_05: The government's not going, where's our 82 grand?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_05: And the bailiffs are not knocking on the door because it's not costing the government anything, they're just gonna print more money.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_05: But but if you know, if I loan you five grand and then I say I forgive you the debt, yeah, well, it's that that that money doesn't go nowhere.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, okay, well, I'm I've I've got to find five grand from somewhere else.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I'm dead.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so the costliness of forgiveness, I think, both interpersonally, but then between us and God is is four grand, I think, when when debt is the motif.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_05: So there's debt and forgiveness.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um, what's number five?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: The unexamined.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_07: So learn to live the unexamined life.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_05: That was crucial.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_05: Learn to live the unexamined life.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Please tell me you've seen this.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_07: Wicked.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, it's wicked.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: Life's more painless.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and wicked.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: Wiping to brain.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: Life's more painless to the brainless.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's so soothing.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_05: Any idea?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_05: So are we doing folly?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_05: We're doing folly.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_05: Foolishness.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_05: Folly, yes.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_05: Sin as folly.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, Jonathan Bailey, what you like, foolish man.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_05: So with that, I I think of I mean, isn't it interesting?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's sort of downstream of the exchanging, you know, God for a lie.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_05: But in Romans 1, they they ex they exchange the wisdom of God and and become fools, you know.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_05: Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like moral human beings.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_05: Mortal human beings.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_05: And birds and animals and reptiles.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_05: And it's it's that sense of yeah.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_05: To exchange righteousness for unrighteousness is also to exchange w wisdom for folly.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_05: And then there's there's kind of a moral stupidity.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_05: There are things that are just morally imbecilic.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and and he goes on to talk about the disorder in creation.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_05: He's just like, guys, what are you doing?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_05: This is dumb.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_07: This is dumb.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's a it's a sin is silly.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, isn't it?
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, kind of.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_05: It's insanity, it's it's stupid, it's silly.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_07: It's self-sabotage.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_05: It's moronic.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_05: Aren't we stupid?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_05: Why why would you?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I think that's that's really important as we talk about sin, is at the end of the day, we don't we don't say to an addict, look, I know this stuff is really great, but if you do this thing called getting clean, then down the road, um, I might I might give you this different blessing off to one side.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's it's like, this is dumb.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, this is wise.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_05: There what what you are up to right now, it's not working.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_05: Doesn't make sense, does it?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um rather than I I think sometimes we can talk about sin and we sort of say, I know it's great, I know you love it, I know it's brilliant, but can you just give it up for a little bit, you know, and then come and walk the way of virtue, and then you might get heaven in the end, and and then then you get all sorts of good stuff.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_05: But can you just can you just leave off the good stuff?
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_05: I know it's bright and shiny and lovely, and you know whereas I th I think like describing sin as just foolishness is just like what are you doing?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_07: And it's probably the main the main reaction when you see someone else's sin.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_07: Or like when you read through the old testament, you're like, Yeah, are you stupid?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_07: Like I'm reading Solomon's story this morning.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_07: And it's like it's the pinnacle of Israel's history, like wealth and riches and like peace on all sides, no, no war.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_07: People are flocking to Israel, flocking to Solomon and being like, Wow, yeah, God has blessed you, the Lord your God is amazing.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_07: And like, and then right like the next thing is then like King Solomon loved many foreign women from the lake nations, which the Lord had said, you shall not marry them.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_07: And it's just like this stark bit when it says he um this is it, yeah.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_07: It says it says the rule, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_07: Um for surely they will turn away your heart after other after their gods, and then it says Solomon clung to these women in love, yeah.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_07: And you're like, Oh my gosh, that is and as an external observer, I can look at Solomon's story and I can say you went from the one who asked the Lord for wisdom to being unbelievably foolish, yeah, and um and I can look at other people's lives and I can say, Oh well, that's silly, isn't it?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_07: And and it is it's then the important part is thinking, oh, I need to look in the mirror.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_07: I am I am really silly every time I do any one of these, you know, different you know, every time I betray God's love in search for other things, every time I put myself in his place, every time I forget that he's a loving father and make him into something else, like oh gosh, I'm so silly.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_05: Right, right, right.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_05: And and at that stage, I do think um it's important that your salvation message is not wise up.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_05: Um because I I I think while while ever Solomon is in his own little world, it all kind of makes sense to him.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_05: His idiocy makes sense to him.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_05: And it's gradual.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_07: It's it it talks about his like when as he gets older.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_05: Um Yeah.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_05: And so when he then writes a book, you know.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um, The Proverbs of Solomon, yeah.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_05: I think we can misread Proverbs as because what we do is we usually dive in from chapter ten, right?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_05: We skip over the first nine chapters, and we just take all this sort of as though it's sort of fortune cookie wisdom.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_05: Like a little a little verse here and there, um, things like uh, you know, a wicked person earns deceptive wages, but the one who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_05: And we sort of read that and away we go.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_07: And and it's like better better the rain on a tin reef or something than a quartersome wife.
• 51:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_07: All these funny little funny little stuff.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_05: As a husband, I'm not allowed to comment on that.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_05: But this is um this is to misread Proverbs, as though it's saying, okay, you are simple and you are bent towards folly.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_05: But here, you know, have have these little nuggets of wisdom.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and and that's what will make you better.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, Solomon is saying to his son, the crown prince, get wisdom.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_05: Whatever else you get, get wisdom.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_05: And then there's this this twinning that going that goes on that wisdom is like the good wife, and folly is like an adulteress, right?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_05: And he's and just as he says, resist the adulteress and like find a good wife, he's like, Reg resist folly and get married to wisdom.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_05: And then in relationship with wisdom, you will start to live out that wisdom.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_05: And that's what chapters eight and nine of Proverbs are about.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_05: It's like wisdom is the co-creator of the universe, we all know who wisdom is like get in relationship, feast with the word, the wisdom, feast with Christ, and then you read from Pro Proverbs chapter 10, and and it's like, well, a wicked person does earn deceptive wages, but the one who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like your folly does work itself out in foolish behaviour, but the wise person does this thing, and it's it's not do this thing and you might one day become wise.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's like in relationship with wisdom, oh well the wise person will do this.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and and the several times where it says like the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_07: So if you're gonna ask, well, how what is it what does it mean to turn from folly and into wisdom?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it begi how does it begin?
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_07: It begins with a recognition of the Lord and a right response to that, yeah.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_07: Um which is part of yeah.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_07: And that that helps to uh that that part helps me to understand why well, basically, why you've put folly as being a metaphor for sin because it's like, oh well, because a lack of fearing the Lord is folly.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_07: And a lack of fearing a lack of reverence and awe and love for the God who made you is sin.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_07: So that that makes sense to me.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why in Proverbs 1 verse 22, wisdom calls aloud to simple people and says, How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_05: How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: Repent at my rebuke, then I will pour out my spirit to you.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_05: Most literally, I'll pour out my spirit to you.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_05: I will make known to you my teachings.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, okay, want to get wise?
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_05: Repent and believe in Jesus, and he'll pour out the spirit of wisdom.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, come to the word.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_05: What is our final motif of sin?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: On the outside, always looking in, will I ever be more than I've always been?
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass, waving through the window.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Try to speak.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanna okay.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_05: So he's an outsider.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_05: Trying to come in.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, getting home.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_05: He's yeah, yeah.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_05: So is it like exile?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_07: It's called waving through a window, yes.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_07: Waving through a window.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_07: Exile.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_07: Exile.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_07: But you've also said uh or like a lostness.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_07: Lostness.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_07: That was that was the one that came to I just love that song.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_05: And it goes together with our first one about rebellion.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_05: Like if you're rebelling against like your father, you've slammed the door and you're in the far country, um, you're then your experiences of lostness.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and also it relates to folly because if you are um if you're walking off a silly path, like the in uh I guess I'm thinking about when Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, the life, folly needs to turn and see Christ as the truth.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_07: The one who is lost needs the way.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_07: And there's something about that.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_07: There's like a similarity.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I I noticed that when I'm preaching and and I just talk about, you know, have you ever been in Tesco's or Sainsbury's or wherever?
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_05: You're in the supermarket, and you know, maybe a girl, she's three years old, she's wandered around the aisle and she's lost her mother.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_05: Like, like her world is ending, like in that in that moment.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_05: And you, you know, you need to be able to tell her she's just two aisles away, she's just picking up the eggs, you'll just be you'll be fine, you'll be fine.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_05: But that everyone resonates with that.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's so it's so interesting.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's such a it's the most simple illustration.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_07: That is good because I was sitting here thinking, how many times do people actually get lost now?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_07: Like I so I do orienteering and I get actually genuinely lost because I'm just out with a map and a compass.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_07: And if I've lost my place on the map in a place I've known them before, in the middle of the woods at night with a head torch, I like I've had genuine experiences of like lostness and being like, I actually really hope a human walks past me and I can ask them where the heck I am.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_07: Um because I might not be getting home until very late right now.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_07: I have no idea where I am.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_07: Um but but when you're very used to a blue dot on a map.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_07: How often do people nowadays feel actually physically, you know, navigationally, geographically lost?
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_05: Unless their battery is gone.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_05: Well, yeah, well, yeah.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_05: And then they're very late.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_07: People feel people feel lost when they don't have their phone on them.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_07: But that's that's like another like there's like a no, actually, actually, you physically do not know where you are.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_07: It's very rare, I think, now.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_05: Um I can think of a this is this is going back 13 years now, and I know it's 13 years because in 2013 uh Australia had a terrible performance against England in the asses.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_05: Stuart Broad took something ridiculous, like seven wickets in the morning, and just like there were and and so I was so crestfallen, but I was also driving back uh and I was in Devon.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_05: I was driving back from this big conference thing and um and didn't have any internet and there was there were road works and it just kept sending me back.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_05: Oh diversion, it was sent me round the same diversion literally five, six times, and I was just screaming in the I don't know how to get home, yeah, I don't know how to get home It was mainly Stuart Broad's fault but it was like it was Yeah and but but that was a real sense of getting getting lost and f and thinking that you do know the way out and actually just going around the same thing.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, well I mean that is also helpful is to think well in our lostness we're looking for signs and we're looking for direction and we all end up following things that aren't the way.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um we all like sheep have gone astray.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, each turns his own way or the the way of the flock who run off the cliff and you follow.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_05: The beautiful thing I think about Lostus is is not that um Jesus just comes as a sign.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_05: You know, like like He is the way.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah, isn't that interesting?
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like he is the way he comprehends the whole distance between you and the Father in himself.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and it's the I mean there's a throwback to the song Um Wake Me Up where it's like all this time I was finding myself, but I didn't know I was lost.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_07: There's like there's there's a thing about um the solution to the lostness isn't well let me tell you where you are on the map.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_07: It's it's uh it's the being found.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_07: So it's not like it's not just that like I've I have lost my location, it's that I am lost.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_07: Something else has lost me.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_07: Well like like the stories of the the three lost things in Luke 15.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_07: Um it's not just that makes sense, yeah.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_05: It's not just the the the rebellious son thinking, oh I'll I know the way back home.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_05: I'll just head back.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_05: Because actually, what repentance looks like in the first two stories is well, the shepherd hoists the stupid sheep on his shoulders and marches him home, or the woman finds the coin.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_05: And that's actually a model of repentance, apparently.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_05: Like in Luke 15.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: Like, what kind of repenting is the coin doing?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah, she's sitting under a slope.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_05: Flossy the sheep.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, the shepherd doesn't come to flossy the sheep and say, um, just keep the you know, keep the river to your rights and you know you'll you'll find your way home.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like he literally sort of carries us home.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_05: And I think I think that's the that's the joy, isn't it?
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_05: That that one from home has come to find us.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_05: And if you're hearing his voice now, this is the good shepherd, you know.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_05: And it's like that's what you need when you're lost, isn't it?
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_07: I think one of the first uh one of the first moments I can remember where I s I it was like a oh my goodness, I think God is working in the life of the person opposite me was I think in my first year of university, going to the the Christian union Christian Union events week with a friend who was from um kind of a nominal Muslim background.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_07: And afterwards we kind of we we walked out and we were sort of chatting a bit and and then she went quiet and I kind of just thought that that she just didn't really have anything else to say.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_07: But then I looked at her and she had like tears in her eyes, and she just said, I just feel um do you do you ever know what it's like?
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_07: Do you just feel lost and like I need to be found?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_07: And I I remember in that moment thinking, Oh my goodness, I what um what do I do?
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_07: I have a physics lecture to go to now.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_07: Um uh and I sort of I think I offered to pray with her.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_07: She had a bunch more questions about that, like, wait, why are you saying Father and Lord and Jesus all in your prayer?
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_07: I don't understand.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_07: And we meant to talk a bit more about it later on.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_07: But I really remember that moment, just those words coming from her mouth, and me thinking she doesn't she's not even read the Bible before.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_07: And that isn't even the vocab that was being used in the talk.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_07: And she's here saying, I feel like I I need to be found.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_07: That was really powerful.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um bit of a lost soul, we sometimes say, you know, oh, you know, poor Brian, he's a bit of a lost soul.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_05: You know.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_05: But in your heart of hearts, do you know that yeah, you're a bit of a lost soul too?
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_07: And it's less about finding your way back home and it's more about the father that runs out of the house to you.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um the the brilliant thing about the lostness and foundness metaphor is that God is the one doing that activity.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_07: Like you said, that coin is just lost behind the sofa, it's not doing anything.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_05: And I think in in the early church, if they if you ask somebody in the early church, okay, go to Luke 15 and what is the picture of salvation?
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_05: I I think they would pick, because of how they would preach, but I think they would pick this the shepherd with the sheep on his shoulders, on his shoulders, like marching him home.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_05: I think modern evangelism tends to picture the kid in the pig sty making a plan.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_05: You know?
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's not how you get found.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you get found with the from the good shepherd.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_05: Well, as we've been saying, as you talk about sin, you end up talking about salvation, you end up talking about the Lord.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_05: And um yeah, it's it it's important to press into, isn't it?
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_05: Like this is this is part of the good news.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_07: Just like the the sickness and doctor metaphor.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_07: If we don't get the right diagnosis, we're not gonna have the right cure.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_05: Brilliant.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_05: Brilliant.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_05: So we'd love to know uh what you think about sin and salvation and what is it that actually uh resonates with people nowadays?
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_05: What is it that has resonated with you?
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_05: You can get in touch with us podcast at speaklife.org.uk.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_05: Let us know uh where you are, what is it, your your NFL comments, your your NFL stats.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and give us your name, gives a favorite thing of yours.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_07: So it might be, you know, my favorite out of these 12 metaphors of sin is.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_07: My favorite sin.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_07: My favorite sin.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_07: What is your um yeah, um, and a location.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_07: Where are you from or where are you listening from?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_05: Brilliant.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_05: And if you want to go to 321course.com, you'll see the way that we uh talk about sin on the 321 course.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_05: It is suspicion leading to selfishness, leading to slavery, leading to self-justification, leading to screw-ups, leading to separation.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_05: That's what sin kind of is.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_05: But it leads to the wonderful news of uh life according to Jesus.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_05: You can go to three21course.com.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_05: And uh that should do us for now.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_05: Gnomes.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_07: Till next time.