In the comment section of a post about music, someone commented:

Is there any place in the Bible where God condemns Daisy Dukes? Being a dishwasher at a strip club?

But until we can agree that God’s Word is sufficient to give us the tools to evaluate all aspects of human behavior using the discernment that Paul prayed for on our behalf – even if not specifically addressed in Scripture – there is no point of pursuing this further.   If God provided us specific instruction in the Scriptures regarding every little detail of life, what would be the purpose of having discernment?

Daisy Dukes – not sure – but I think that’s tiny pants. The Bible does condemn indecent exposure. It speaks of women who come “dressed as a prostitute.” Now, it doesn’t address how tiny pants have to be to be indecent. But it does teach a category of illicit dress, even if today we don’t know what exactly was illicit about it. And Jesus taught that looking with the purpose of lust is sin.

So I assume by your response then that you care nothing about discernment, that the only things you don’t do are those things specifically spelled out in the Bible? I can’t see how a Christian could possibly live in that manner.

Regarding Daisy Dukes, you’ve got the (Leviticus 18, the prophets) question of exactly how much nakedness one can uncover before one is being seen as “available for a Biblically unlawful relationship”, to put an idiom around it.  Regarding “being a dishwasher at a strip club”, that’s pretty straightforward as well; you’re enabling the degradation of the women “performing” there, not to mention destroying the minds and morals of the men who watch.

Country music arose in the 1920s from the American South, also the so-called Bible belt, beginning with the first family of country music, The Carter Family.  The Carters were raised under the influence of gospel music, an earlier iteration than even country.  However, their “gospel” also influenced country.  “Gospel,”  which was a distortion, and increasingly so, of the actual saving gospel, originated from late nineteenth century revivalism, even as did the Charismatic movement in the United States.  Revivalism, Gospel, Charismaticism, and Country dovetail at the Carters.  One of the original three Carters, Maybelle, had a daughter, June, who married Johnny Cash, her second husband and his second wife.

One of the most notable of the Carter songs remains one of the most famous ever country songs, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.  The song is sung every year at the induction ceremony of the Country Music Hall of Fame.  Its lyrics concern the death, funeral, and mourning of the narrator’s mother, the hope being that she went to heaven.

Some of the earliest country “hits” were explicitly religious in nature.  The Grand Old Opry, the longest running radio broadcast in United States history, was held at Union Gospel Auditorium in Nashville, TN from 1943 to 1974, with its peaked, stained glass windows and wooden church pews.  The Johnny Cash Show ran 58 episodes from 1979 to 1981, each ending with a “gospel song” in honor to a promise he made his mother.

For education purposes, I watched the just produced Ken Burns’s documentary on PBS, Country Music.  Maybe he misrepresents country.  For the most part, I don’t think so.  Nothing in country is a true gospel.  Country isn’t reverent at all.  I don’t see any indications of biblical sanctification in a single country singer in the history of country music.  Many of the stories are alcohol, fornication, foul language, divorce, drugs, and partying.  For some, church follows on a Sunday morning after a Saturday night of lasciviousness.  It is not a gospel of actual repentance or a true, scriptural Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus is a placebo.

Many country stars and heroes learned music in religious homes and honed in revivalist churches, only to use it for sin and self-gratification.  I don’t know every history, but it would break my heart as a parent.  No Christian, country western star or legend, Kenny Chesney, recorded the song, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, that matches the philosophy of country.  Nancy Pearcy in her book, Total Truth, writes, “Artists are often the barometers of society, and by analyzing the worldviews embedded in their works we can learn a great deal about how to address the modern mind more effectively.”  Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven is a song about a man explaining his life to a preacher, one of alcohol and immorality, and Chesney sings first as the preacher:

“Don’t you wanna hear him call your name
When you’re standin’ at the pearly gates?”
I told the preacher, “Yes I do
But I hope he don’t call today.”

Chesney knows of what he speaks.  That sounds like country to me.  Just keep kicking that can down the road, or even better, conform your view of the grace of God and even God Himself to your licentious desires or tastes.  Michael Ray sings a song, titled, Real Men Love Jesus, with this chorus:

They like Saturday nights out on the town,
Sunday morning coming down,
A pretty girl out on the dance floor spinnin’,
Round and round and round,
Cold beer and a dirty hand,
Calling home every chance they can,
To say, ‘I love you’,
They don’t need a reason,
Real men love Jesus.

The conclusion of the chorus reflects nothing that is sung before it.  Real men dance and drink beer and call home, and, oh, love Jesus — not the Jesus of the Bible.  Trace Adkins in his song, Jesus and Jones, ends with the words:

I need to find a little middle ground
Between ‘let ’er rip’ and settlin’ down

Christianity is not a pursuit of middle ground, although this is what I witness of the professing Christians who are also country music fans.  The faith of the Bible is not a resolution between one side and the other.  It is the choice of just the one and the rejection of the other.

Country music always has been and especially today is an attempt at validating a selfish lifestyle that is in no way biblical or honoring to God.  It cheapens faith and distorts the gospel, leaving its adherents twice the children of hell they once were.

The new gratitude isn’t grateful to or for anyone, including God.  It separates gratitude from an object.  It is a psychological ploy, a game that subjects play in their minds.  It’s looking into the mirror and saying, ala Stuart Smalley, “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”  It is redefining gratitude, actually shaping ingratitude into merely professed, “gratitude.”  It revolves around self, a kind of self-congratulation for being grateful, except to no one.

The Apostle Paul ends the first chapter of Romans in 1:28-32

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Because those Paul describes “did not like to retain God in their knowledge” and were given over by God to and with “a reprobate mind,” they “committed such things” “worthy of death,” as a practice.  This is why in the list of “such things,” we read adjectives, because it describes a lifestyle, not individual acts.  One in the list in verse 31 is “implacable.”  Saved people will not be “implacable.”  So what’s that?  Who is “implacable”?

BDAG, foremost New Testament lexicon, says the Greek word, aspondos, means:  “of one who is unwilling to negotiate a solution to a problem involving a second party, irreconcilable.”  Louw-Nida Lexicon agrees:  “pertaining to being unwilling to be reconciled to others ”  John Gill in his commentary writes:  “when once offended there was no reconciling of them.”

“Implacable” is an English word I have never used in my vocabulary except when I have read aloud Romans 1:31 and explained the word.  I have used “placate” rarely, but I have heard it more too.  It’s a related English word.  Merriam Webster says “placate” means:  “to soothe or mollify especially by concessions.”  Someone implacable can’t be mollified, will not be placated, has decided to stay resentful, unforgiving, and irreconcilable.  This is unchristian behavior, no matter what the proponent says about himself and his belief in Jesus Christ.  No one, who says he wants to grow as a Christian and is close to Christ, remains implacable.  It relates to a lot of other biblical teaching.

The Lord Jesus preached about “implacability” in His Sermon on the Mount.  He was illustrating a lost condition manifested by irreconcilability.  In Matthew 5:21-26, Jesus says that not reconciling with someone is hateful and as much as being guilty of murdering someone.  The foundational point of this is the second table of the law.  If someone loves God, He loves His neighbor.  Love for God manifests itself in loving the neighbor.  A person is required to attempt reconciliation, even looking for mediation if necessary (cf. Philemon).

Other related truths are forgiveness and then the negative traits that are found in the same verses in Romans 1:  “maliciousness,” “despiteful,” “without natural affection,” and “unmerciful.”  If it is children with parents, it is “disobedient to parents.”  Other passages list similar traits, such Ephesians 4:31-32:

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

When God created man, He created man in His image.  He said, “Let us make man in our image,” which shows the relationship within the Godhead — “let us” and “our image.”  The Persons in the Godhead wanted men to be like them.  Jesus brings in this teaching in His prayer in John 17 to the Father.  A fundamental violation of God’s purpose of mankind is an unwillingness to reconcile based upon the truth.  It isn’t just “getting along,” but a surrender to align with God in a relationship with others.

Why does someone remain “implacable,” in rebellion against God and His Word?  He loves himself.  He’s a lover of his own self (2 Timothy 3:2).  His lust or love for the world supersedes his love for people.  He doesn’t want to be hemmed in or pent up or held back from anything that he wants or likes.  He is unthankful.

Implacability should not be allowed in a true church.  It isn’t allowed in ours.  People have to reconcile with one another.  It is at the root of Christian behavior, to both get things settled with other people and to want others to get things settled with you.

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

I have the youtube app on my phone, which feeds me what it thinks I want to watch.  Toward the top of the offerings today as I ate my lunch was a post by Wretched, entitled, “John MacArthur:  Your pastor has NO authority over you.”  Todd Friel played a clip from a Q and A, where a lady asked MacArthur whether pastors have authority in a church:  “To what extent a member of a church is required to obey his pastor, how much authority does a pastor have in the lives of his congregants?”

Hebrews 13:7, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.”
Hebrews 13:17, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.”
1 Thessalonians 5:12, “And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you.”
1 Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour,, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.”
Titus 2:15, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.”

When you read the four gospels, you see several “calls” of the twelve disciples.  There isn’t one of them that says, this is when he was saved.  When was John saved?  Well, it was, um, I’m not sure.  He was saved, but I’m not sure when it was.  What about Peter?  The same.  They were all saved, but Judas, but it isn’t clear what the moment of their salvation was, like someone would know when the Apostle Paul was saved.  That is clear.

I’m guessing that there are readers that think they do know the exact moment when some of the twelve disciples were saved.  For the sake of argument, let’s say that Andrew, John, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel were saved in John 1, which one might call the first call.  I would be fine with that.  I don’t know, but I would be fine with calling those five saved in John 1.  John 1:37 says, “they followed Jesus,” confessed that He was the “Messias,” “the Christ” (1:41), and “thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel” (1:49).  Jesus said, “Follow me,” and they did.

The second calling, however, sounds very similar to the first, just like it was a first calling, and I bring you to Matthew 4, just after Jesus began His ministry (4:17-20):

17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 18 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20 And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

That also sounds like a salvation call, which also reflects what the Lord Jesus taught in Luke 9:23-25:

23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. 25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

“If any man will come after me” is salvation language.  Someone who “comes after Jesus” is a saved person.

I direct you though to the Matthew 4 passage.  When someone follows Jesus, He keeps following Him.  That doesn’t mean he will never sin again, but he’s given up His life.  His life is Christ’s, and the language for that is “deny self,” “take up cross,” “follow me,” and “lose life,” as in Luke 9.  In Matthew 4, Jesus adds, I will make you fishers of men.

I’m asserting that if Peter really started following in John 1 that he would continue following Jesus in Matthew 4.  Someone following will keep following or else he wasn’t saved, and the Lord Jesus Christ will make him a fisher of men.  Following Him meant becoming a fisher of men.  Everyone following Jesus He will make a fisher of men.  One is supposed to assume that genuine believers will be fishers of men.  If they are not fishers of men, this implies that they are not saved.

Most churches have no expectations of their members to evangelize.  Most professing Christians have never won anyone to Christ.  They rarely to never preach the gospel, but their salvation isn’t doubted.

The judgment of someone’s salvation has moved away from what scripture says is following Christ.  Jesus preached the gospel in Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Caesaria-Philippi, Perea, and Tyre and Sidon.  He preached it everywhere, but His “followers” preach it next to nowhere.

Church members, as I see it, are less concerned about following Christ and really helping people in an eternal way, which is actual help, as they are into sentimentality and feelings.  Their Christianity is about whether the church makes them comfortable and happy, a place to make friends in a mainly non-judgmental fashion.  The idea of following Christ is hardly in their vocabulary.  They don’t think they should be expected to be a fisher of men.

Following Christ is not some arbitrary arrangement, based upon a personal whim.  It includes all the Lord and Jesus and Christ activities, what He would be doing that we would be doing if we would be following Him.  Instead, people set up a Christianity that they favor and submit to that.  When real Christianity clashes with the replacement, they treat that like the violation of following Christ.  In fact, it violates them.  They aren’t getting their way.

Some would like following Christ to be the music of their choice, not the kind that pleases God, but some kind of worldly rhythm that’s fun for them, that makes them feel good.  They turn following Christ into that which will still be popular with the world, solving people’s social or societal problems.  Following Christ doesn’t have to be much different than not following Christ.

Can leaders expect fishing for men, or do they need to turn following Christ into something else?  They know.  It’s got to be something else.  They’ve designed church around very few to no people being fishers of men.  What’s really important is not hurting feelings and being sensitive, especially to felt physical or psychological needs.

As a result, people who don’t follow Christ think they follow Christ.  They don’t answer the call, because it is a call to be a fisher of men.  It is a salvation issue.  Salvation is not by works.  You don’t get saved by being a fisher of men.  No.  You come after Christ, deny self, follow Him, and He makes you a fisher of men.  You know that when you follow Him, that He’s called you to be a fisher of men.  You want that, because it’s also what Christ Himself does.

The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 13:14:

Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ
Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof