23-0924p Transcript

Preacher: Scott Reynolds

(0:56) I’m going to pick up with a short, hopefully, synopsis of this morning’s lesson, (1:04) and then continue on with the main part for tonight, which is malevolent, the rise of malevolent compassion. (1:13) Malevolent meaning evil. (1:15) The rise of evil compassion. (1:19) All right.

(1:19) So Del begins by saying we’ve gone through the first two, and I added a half in there because we did the first half of three this morning. (1:29) So we’ve gone through two, the first two and a half of what I call seven storm fronts that are aligning themselves in our culture. (1:39) The first one we talked about was the rise of the scoffer and the depraved mind, (1:46) in which we talk about the possibilities we see in Proverbs with the progression from the simple-minded to the fool to the scoffer.

(1:54) And it’s possible that we find ourselves in a culture now that is not only with simple minds, but fools, but also with scoffers. (2:04) And the scripture says the scoffer brings deep strife. (2:08) They stir up division.

(2:10) Have you ever heard of identity politics? (2:14) They stir up division. (2:15) They stir up strife. (2:17) They set the city aflame.

(2:20) And he goes on talking about what the depraved mind is, one that is no longer logical or has common sense, (2:27) and God has given them over to a depraved mind. (2:31) Well, this then moves us to the next storm front, which we looked at, and that’s the rise of homo deus, man, God, and neo-christianity. (2:42) We, as a culture, believe and have communicated to one another over years and years and decades the fact that it’s all about me.

(2:50) Eventually, I can think that it’s all about me to the point where I begin to believe that my heart, my emotion, (2:58) my heart is telling me what is true. (3:01) Where do I go for truth? (3:03) Have you ever seen the movies? (3:05) Look inside yourself in my heart. (3:10) I can think that it’s all about me to the point where I believe that my heart is telling me what is true, (3:17) and we have been descended, if you want to see it that way, rather than progressed.

(3:24) Instead of a progression, we’re actually descending to the point where we, as a culture, have begun to think of ourselves as a God, homo deus. (3:36) So that’s the essence of that second storm front. (3:40) We talked about how that has infiltrated the church, neo-christianity, Christianity that’s all about me.

(3:47) So we came to the first part of the third storm entitled, The Loss of the Noble Male and the Virtuous Female. (3:56) It was here that we dove into what could be one of the most dangerous areas in our culture today. (4:03) The reason because those of us who follow a biblical worldview, a biblical understanding, (4:09) not only of who God is, but who man is, and understanding, therefore, of what true human sexuality is about, (4:19) biblical human sexuality, because the Bible will tell us all about it.

(4:24) Most of you, I’m sure, have recognized today that that is under a deep and serious attack. (4:32) Nothing is judged more severely by our culture today than assertions of biblical male and female absolutes. (4:44) So in considering the loss of the noble male, we find a set of passages that spoke about the fall of world empires as they are presented in the scripture.

(4:57) Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt all were world powers, and something is said that is similar of all three of these. (5:05) And we looked at Nahum 3, verse 13, which says, (5:09) Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your…​ (5:18) How many years ago this was written? (5:23) This appears to be common among civilizations about ready to fall.

(5:33) Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt, this is all said of, which can sound as current as to today. (5:40) Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies, and fire has devoured the bars of your gates.

(5:51) And we find the same kind of similar statement that is given to Babylon and Egypt. (5:56) And what we read here is that the men of Nineveh, as the men of Babylon and Egypt, had become feminized. (6:06) And this is a condemnation that is given to men who have become feminized.

(6:12) Again, that’s not dissing of women. It is a dissing of men who have assumed a feminine role. (6:21) And so we talk about the feminization of men and women of our culture as we…​ (6:28) Feminization of men and the feminization of our culture as we talk about the loss of the noble male and the loss of the virtuous female.

(6:40) And the essential nature of mankind, we were told, in Genesis 127, (6:46) God created mankind in His own image. In the image of God, He created them, male and female, He created them. (6:54) And Del says right here in the very beginning, when God talks about what He has done in creating Adam and Eve, (7:01) is that He created them in His own image.

(7:04) And we can say that the male and female are made in one essence, and that essence is that they are made in the image of God. (7:13) And yet, they are diverse in their personhood. They are diverse in that God made them male and He made them female.

(7:22) And the rest of the narrative there in Genesis as well, He says, the rest of the Scripture would tell us that God made the male and female different. (7:34) And they are different not simply because of their reproductive capabilities, but they are different in their purpose and different in their role. (7:42) They were meant to be complementary, which means that God was bringing that diversity together into a unity, as we read in Malachi.

(7:54) So this is the essential nature of man fundamentally, and it’s difficult not to spend time talking about how essential the nature of man is in the male and female way that God made them. (8:05) And there’s also a clue as to why the enemy is taking so much pain to destroy the noble male and the virtuous female, and to destroy the proper relationships that they are to have. (8:20) Why? Because it is part of the essence and foundation of who we are as human beings.

(8:29) Next, we looked at the loss of the noble male and the loss of the virtuous female, and the consequences associated with that. (8:41) Speaking about the noble male and virtuous female in terms of both having two engines, and I put in there, think of these little electric engines that can be linked together that drive them, (8:53) and it will help us to understand their purpose. (8:57) And so the noble male is, first of all, driven by an engine for truth and wisdom and righteousness.

(9:05) He’s driven by this. The noble male seeks truth. He seeks wisdom.

He seeks righteousness, even to the point of giving his life in that pursuit. (9:16) It is not a cold force for righteousness, because the second engine in the noble male is the engine of grace and compassion. (9:26) So he pursues righteousness, but he pursues righteousness that are tethered or constrained to compassion and grace.

(9:38) So the virtuous female has the same two engines, but they are in reverse order. (9:44) She is driven first by grace and compassion. She pursues it, and pursues it with vigor and determination, (9:51) but the grace and compassion are constrained by truth, righteousness, and wisdom.

(9:57) It means that her actions and compassion and grace are bridled or constrained by truth, wisdom, and righteousness, (10:06) and her purpose is to nurture and comfort, and she’s built for this, and she pursues to nurture and to comfort, (10:16) but she does so to nurture that which is good and true and right. (10:22) So there’s a clue about malevolent compassion. (10:28) If your compassion is not to nurture that which is good, true, and right, it’s not good compassion.

(10:43) If that compassion nurtures evil, wrong, misinformation, any of that, it’s evil. (10:55) So keep that in mind. This is the virtuous female.

(10:59) So what happens when a culture rejects the truth of God, rejects the wisdom of God, rejects the righteousness of God, (11:06) and that is no longer pursued in culture? (11:08) Well, when this happens, something happens to the purpose of the male, the noble male. (11:15) If there is no truth, there is no wisdom and righteousness beyond himself, (11:20) then what does the noble male protect and defend? (11:25) Well, what happens is that he then is protecting and defending himself, (11:33) and so it becomes all about him, which fits in with an all-about-me culture, (11:40) and he is no longer the noble male pursuing that which is true and good with wisdom and righteousness bridled by grace and compassion. (11:48) He now becomes either a buffoon or a brute, a beast.

(11:55) Why? Because what has happened is that it’s all about him. (12:00) What happens to the virtuous female in this culture? (12:04) Well, she no longer is virtuous. (12:07) Her drive for compassion and grace is no longer constrained by that which is true, (12:13) by that which is wise, and it’s no longer tethered by righteousness.

(12:19) And so both the male and the female in a culture where the truth of God and God himself and the narrative of God are all rejected (12:26) is that they lose their compass as God has designed them. (12:32) Next, we looked at what Dell calls the brutish male. (12:36) And so his purpose, the brutish male, is still to protect and defend, (12:43) and it has been primarily now focused on himself.

(12:47) His desire now is to dominate. (12:50) He’s no longer led by the zeal for truth, wisdom, and righteousness, (12:53) but now the number one thing that drives him is power and control and domination or subjugation. (13:00) So the brutish male becomes a beast.

(13:03) He becomes a tyrant pursuing and defending his own pleasures. (13:07) And this is what we find. (13:08) We find a brutish male in our culture, for example, in gangs.

(13:16) We find him in gangs. (13:19) We find a brutish male in the one who beats his wife. (13:24) We find it in ISIS.

(13:25) We find it in Eastern Europe today. (13:28) He is absorbed in our culture. (13:30) He’s absorbed in drinking, sports, and video games.

(13:34) Why? (13:35) Because he pursues his own pleasure and brutish pursuits. (13:40) So what happens then to the virtuous female in the culture of the brutish male? (13:46) She becomes secondary in that culture, and the brutish male dominates. (13:51) She increasingly becomes property, and the noble male becomes the toxic male.

(13:58) Grace and compassion are considered a weakness. (14:01) Society declares to the female in that culture that in order to survive, you must become subservient. (14:13) And we looked at a culture in which the male, rather than becoming the brute, becomes a buffoon.

(14:22) And this is what we see in our culture. (14:26) Often represented in TV shows like Everyone Loves Raymond, where the male is simply the buffoon, (14:32) caring only for himself. (14:34) The buffoon is depicted often in commercials and TV shows in our culture.

(14:40) So what happens when the male lives in a culture that rejects what is true and good and beautiful? (14:45) He has nothing to protect and defend except himself. (14:49) Grace and compassion are no longer driving him because he is only acting for himself. (14:55) And the buffoon male abandons his family.

(14:59) He can abandon them physically or he can abandon them mentally and spiritually. (15:04) The buffoonish male is the male who comes home from work, plops down in his chair, (15:09) turns on the TV and plays video games all night or absorbs himself in all kinds of selfish pursuits. (15:16) And what happens to the female in this culture of the male buffoon? (15:21) And I’m submitting, Del says to you, that this is what’s happening in our culture.

(15:28) Without truth and wisdom and righteousness, the grace and compassion that drives her (15:34) is no longer tethered to truth, wisdom, and righteousness. (15:40) Now her compassion becomes an unbridled, unconstrained compassion. (15:52) I will later refer to this as malevolent compassion.

(15:57) But we refer to it now as unbridled compassion. (16:01) In this culture where the male becomes the buffoon, he takes on a secondary role. (16:05) And she increasingly takes lead in the family because he has mostly abandoned the family (16:12) and she takes lead in society.

(16:15) And she does so, why? (16:19) Because what has happened here is that unbridled compassion has become (16:25) the prime ethic of our culture. (16:28) And I submit to you that that is exactly what happened here. (16:31) Unbridled compassion has become the prime ethic in our culture, (16:39) the prime set of rules of what we should be doing to be doing right in the eyes of culture.

(16:48) The noble male is viewed as toxic, and society then declares to the male (16:55) to be significant. (16:58) In this culture, you must become more feminine. (17:03) If he evidences more unbridled compassion, he will become more significant.

(17:10) If he evidences characteristics of the noble male, he will be rejected. (17:18) This is a culture that does not want the noble male. (17:22) It does not want the male defending that which is absolute above and beyond (17:27) because we have rejected all those things.

(17:31) Our culture has rejected a biblical Christian worldview. (17:37) And so this leads us then to what happens in a culture when unbridled compassion (17:44) becomes the prime ethic in the culture. (17:48) And I’ll refer to it now as malevolent compassion because I believe it is evil, (17:57) and I hope to show you that.

(18:00) The rise of false malevolent compassion. (18:05) What’s interesting here when we talk about compassion is that we normally think (18:11) that whenever we use the word compassion, we think that it’s always good. (18:17) That any compassion is right.

(18:20) But I want to caution you that that is wrongful thinking. (18:25) It is not. (18:27) Not all compassion is right.

(18:31) Not all compassion is good. (18:34) In fact, there are times when it becomes evil. (18:38) There are times when it can ruin people.

(18:42) And we’ll look at some of those examples. (18:44) Here is an example of true wise compassion. (18:49) 2 Thessalonians 3 10.

(18:53) Paul says, for even when we were with you, we gave you this rule, this ethic. (19:01) The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. (19:08) Now today, there’s no doubt, you know as well as I do, (19:12) that this verse would be called hateful.

(19:17) Actions that come from this command would be considered unloving, hateful, (19:23) and all kinds of other words. (19:25) And yet this is the Lord’s word through Paul to us. (19:29) And I would submit to you that this is actually an act of compassion (19:34) for the individual who is not willing to work.

(19:39) I’ll let you think in your own mind what happens to people who are not willing to work (19:45) and yet we continue to feed them. (19:47) That leads to the ruin. (19:50) And this is why God has given us the wise, compassionate thing to do.

(19:56) Hebrews 12 verse 6. (19:58) The Lord disciplines the one he loves. (20:03) And in saying, you will not eat or as a parent disciplines their child for their own good. (20:12) Hebrews 12 verse 10 and 11.

(20:15) God disciplines us for our good in order that we may share in his holiness. (20:21) No discipline seems pleasant at that time but painful. (20:26) Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace (20:31) for those who have been trained by it.

(20:37) This is why grace and compassion, for example, in the virtuous female, (20:42) is tethered by truth and wisdom and righteousness. (20:48) Because you will not truly nurture and comfort someone if you do it without wisdom and truth. (20:55) And that may require sometimes to do those things that the world would say is not compassionate.

(21:04) That is why the noble male, driven also by compassion, (21:09) and that his compassion as well is bridled by truth and wisdom. (21:16) So here are some consequences of malevolent compassion in our culture, (21:21) becoming the prime ethic in our social systems. (21:27) We will talk about the state, first of all, (21:29) and what happens in the state when public policy and laws are driven primarily by compassion.

(21:38) And I would submit to you that virtually all of the bills and public policy that are passed (21:44) are driven by compassion. (21:48) Compassion. (21:51) But I would say to you that it is not a good compassion.

(21:56) It is a malevolent compassion. (21:59) And the state itself, if we go back and think about the difference between the noble male (22:05) and the virtuous female, the noble male is built to protect and defend. (22:11) The female is built to nurture and comfort.

(22:14) If we look at the scripture in terms of the state and read Romans Chapter 13, (22:21) the state also has a purpose that aligns itself with the noble male. (22:27) The state’s purpose is to punish evil and condone what is good so that the citizenry can flourish. (22:37) Well, the state then, therefore, is first an act and defend institution as God has designed it.

(22:46) So what happens to the state in the culture that is tipped toward the feminine side, (22:52) tipped toward nurture and comfort? (22:55) We have the state that we have before us today. (22:59) It’s a nanny state. (23:00) It’s a state in which we demand that it comfort us and nurture us.

(23:06) And we are squeamish about the state making any stand regarding that which is evil (23:14) and punishing that which is evil. (23:17) We see that in a lot of things. (23:21) Dell says, I wrote an article about the rise in crime and the cause of the rise in crime.

(23:27) It is a moral issue for sure. (23:31) But one of the things that makes the issue worse is a state that is no longer willing to call crime evil (23:43) and to begin to think of criminals more as the victim. (23:49) And so when you pass laws, for example, in California that reduce theft below $1,000 (23:57) to the equivalent of nothing more than a set of traffic tickets, (24:02) then we’ve seen the rise of very open and blatant crime.

(24:07) Mobs go into stores. (24:09) There was a video of a guy riding into a store on a bicycle with a plastic bag, (24:15) filling everything up that he can and then riding out on his bike between a security guard (24:22) and either a customer or maybe one of the employees who do nothing to stop him. (24:27) This is not the action of a culture that is filled with noble males and virtuous females.

(24:35) It is a culture that has tipped to the nurture and comfort side, and it will result in a ruin. (24:43) If you look at these issues, defunding the police, softened crimes, needles for addicts, border security, (24:54) paid not to work, minimum wage laws, welfare programs, transforming the military into a humanitarian service, (25:02) every one of them, every one of them is driven by the prime ethic of compassion. (25:09) All the arguments regarding securing our borders are always bounded in compassion.

(25:17) So all of these things are the result of the prime ethic in our culture changing drastically (25:23) from a biblical understanding of what the state is supposed to do to be a protect and defend institution. (25:31) It has now become a nurture and comfort institution, (25:35) and we are suffering and will continue to suffer from that. (25:40) The consequences of malevolent compassion in the church.

(25:46) When you look at the church, and maybe because of the time here, (25:52) I’ll let you do your own thinking about what happens when the church exists in a culture such as ours, (25:59) but Paul said that the church is the pillar of truth. (26:02) The church has been given to us inherently, I believe, as a protect and defend institution as well. (26:12) Yes, it does nurture and comfort, and that is done primarily by the saints, the individual members of the church.

(26:22) But the institutional church is to protect and defend, to protect and defend the word of God, (26:28) the truth of God, and declare the truth of God. (26:31) But when the church now tips to the nurture and comfort institution, (26:36) then we would have a church in which we only want to hear smooth words, comforting words, nurturing words, (26:44) and come into a wonderful environment where we are entertained and we become Christian consumers. (26:53) The family, when God created the family, he designed the family.

(26:58) It was designed for the noble male and the virtuous female to become one, as we read in Malachi. (27:07) And why did God make them one? Malachi says, because God was seeking godly offspring. (27:16) And it is the noble male and the virtuous female together in their unity (27:23) that raises little noble males and little virtuous females.

(27:29) But when the culture tips, as it has in our culture, and the controlling female begins to lead them (27:35) and the family and the culture, and her engine of unbridled compassion becomes the prime ethic, (27:43) then what happens is we raise coddled, dysfunctional adult children, (27:49) children who don’t know how to deal with obstacles. (27:53) They don’t know how to deal with someone who says no. (27:58) They believe it’s all about them.

They’ve been raised as if it’s all about them. (28:03) And when things don’t go their way, they fall into either depression or some sort of emotional turmoil, (28:11) possibly even suicide. (28:15) And even in the sphere of labor, we find companies now desperate to signal how compassionate it is (28:24) in a thousand different ways, most of them also unbridled by true wisdom.

(28:31) And let me close with a story from a dear friend. (28:36) When he was young, he had gotten himself onto the wrong path, (28:41) hanging out with the wrong kind of people and sneaking it all behind his parents' back. (28:48) One Friday night, he got caught, and he was going to have to spend the weekend in jail (28:53) until he could go before the judge on Monday.

(28:56) He called home, hoping his mom would answer the phone, (29:00) knowing that if he pleaded with her, she would come bail him out. (29:05) But to his horror, his dad answered. (29:09) When he told his dad what had happened and laid out his sad story about being in a horrible jail, (29:15) his dad asked him when he would see the judge.

(29:19) And his son said, on Monday. (29:22) And his dad told him, well, I’ll see you on Monday. (29:27) My friend told me that his weekend in jail turned his life around.

(29:33) He is a very successful businessman today with a wonderful wife and family, (29:40) and this wouldn’t have happened under unbridled compassion. (29:45) The greatest danger and bottom line, of course, (29:48) is that malevolent compassion destroys our ability to see evil as evil, (29:56) both personally and culturally. (29:59) It blinds us.

(30:00) Sexual depravity is no longer seen through the eyes of wisdom and truth, (30:06) but through the wringing hands of unbridled compassion. (30:11) We coddle evil and that which is ultimately harmful to people (30:16) because we are led to believe it is compassionate and caring. (30:22) Our gates are open wide, (30:25) but it is the remnant that understands what true grace and compassion should look like.

(30:33) It understands that’s us, by the way, the remnant. (30:36) It understands the truth of God and his righteousness and his wisdom (30:41) that must be displayed in the midst of the storm. (30:45) The notion of malevolent compassion is difficult for us (30:49) because we think that all compassionate thoughts, feelings, and actions are good.

(30:54) It’s always good, but we need to rethink this. (30:57) In the beginning, Satan faked a benevolent heart toward an oppressed Eve. (31:04) He’s the one who convinced her, by the way.

(31:06) She was oppressed. (31:08) But it was all a lie. (31:11) Judas feigned a benevolent heart for the poor, (31:14) but the Scripture tells us he really was after the money for himself.

(31:18) The emotion of compassion arises in me when I see a homeless person, (31:24) but if I give in to the emotion without the balance of wisdom and truth, (31:29) I can act in a way that is detrimental to him. (31:35) We are inundated with this ploy constantly. (31:38) Someone is paraded out in front of us in video or print, (31:42) and the plea is based totally on compassion, totally on emotion.

(31:48) It tugs at our heart, but we must always balance that emotion with wisdom and truth, (31:55) or we might be guilty of supporting something malevolent. (32:02) Let me take a brief walk into our next storm front, (32:05) and I want to do that because I want to be sure you understand (32:11) the connection between malevolent compassion (32:14) and what we’re going to talk about when we talk about our next threat, (32:20) the consolidation of massive earthly power. (32:25) And what I want us to understand of the link that is important for us to get, (32:33) and I want to be careful here because I’m going to borrow the imagery of revelation, (32:40) not talking about the end times or eschatology.

(32:44) I’m talking about the imagery that is given to us in revelation of this massive beast, (32:51) and oftentimes we think of this beast as simply being a state, (32:56) but the next time we’re going to talk about that, (33:00) we now live in a culture in which the beast is a consolidation of power now, (33:06) more than the state. (33:10) We now have technological and industrial power that can stop you from buying (33:16) and selling, but what is interesting in the imagery is that there is a harlot (33:21) that is riding on top of that beast. (33:24) It’s a strange image.

(33:26) Why is there a harlot riding on top of a beast? (33:28) What does the harlot represent? (33:32) The harlot represents the evil application of the feminine entity, (33:39) and I would submit to you that we see the same thing happening today. (33:44) What is the evil distortion of the virtuous female? (33:48) That distortion is what we see in malevolent compassion, (33:53) which has become the prime ethic. (33:56) It drives our laws.

(33:58) It’s driving everything that is going on today. (34:02) So that is, I would submit to you, is the modern-day harlot, malevolent compassion. (34:11) We need to keep in mind that we are not going to the storm front as Chicken Little (34:18) crying, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

(34:22) But we’re doing it because we want the remnant of God that is left here (34:27) to understand the times in which we live, to have that wisdom. (34:33) And, yes, our gates are wide open. (34:37) Why? (34:37) Because we have a vast falling away from the noble male.

(34:42) In our culture, yes, we have brutish males in our cities and gangs (34:46) and some of our families and so forth. (34:49) And that on a whole, we have men who have lost that nobleness of their maleness (34:54) and they have become feminized. (34:57) And many men have fallen all over themselves in order to prove how nurturing (35:03) and comforting they are.

(35:05) But it’s we, the remnant of God, that understands what true grace (35:11) and compassion looks like. (35:13) We’re the ones who can offer the world around us true understanding of what (35:19) true relationships are, what true love is. (35:24) We understand the truth of God and his righteousness and the wisdom (35:28) and his true love, love that is steadfast and sacrificial, (35:33) that must be displayed in the midst of the storm.

(35:38) That’s why we’re trying to help people understand how critically important it is (35:44) for us to follow the Lord and to engage those who are providentially that God (35:51) puts around us with true agape love. (35:56) And that love is based upon truth and wisdom and righteousness, (36:01) and it expresses grace and it expresses compassion as well. (36:06) So I close this almost in the form of a prayer.

(36:11) May God give us the grace that we need to become noble men and virtuous women (36:17) or to remain noble men and remain virtuous women in a culture that is trying to (36:24) rip those away from you. (36:26) And may we raise our children to be the same. (36:29) And all this for the glory and honor of the Lord Jesus Christ.

(36:37) Right now we are extending the invitation to anyone who is subject to it. (36:41) If you need to, come while we stand and sing.