10 Years of Beholding God: Paul Washer, pt 2

The Purpose of the Behold Your God Interviews

Welcome to the WHOLE Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and I'm here to commemorate the tenth anniversary coming up for our Behold Your God study, Rethinking God Biblically. Now, whenever you do videos like this with contributors, the interviews are much longer than what we were able to include in the study.

We had to leave by far the majority of their comments out. And so, Teddy has been working over the last weeks, and he will continue to work, to get all these interviews in their entirety available to you.

And we think that, really, that's a great way to celebrate the ten years. And I hope that you will be as benefited by them now as we were ten years ago listening to these men talk about such important topics.

You're about to hear material from the interview with Paul Washer, and I hope that you benefit from the.

Holiness as God's Separateness and Worth

Rest of the interview. When I think of holiness, or let me put it this way, I'll ask people,.

What does it mean that God is holy? And they'll say, well, He's without sin. Then I'll ask them, well, what does it mean that God is righteous? And they'll go, well, He's without sin. And I go, so there's no distinction between the two words.

Of course, there must be a distinction. Although holiness is often used in the context to describe the sinlessness of God, it doesn't start or stop there. Holiness has to do with God's separateness, God's uniqueness.

And if you, again, back to the attributes of God, if you do not understand what holiness is, you will become an eye-dotting, T-crossing legalist. Holiness has to do with God's separateness. You know, there's a great there's more there's greater difference between one and two than there is between two and six trillion, because one is one.

It is unique. God is holy. It means there is no one like him. He's not like us, just bigger and better. He's not like us at all. As Dr. Sproul, I heard him say one time, you know, which is closer to God, a seraphim in heaven or some maybe microbe crawling around on the ground?

And the answer is neither are closer to God. I'm taller. I'm six foot two. Let's say I stand beside a man who is six foot one, and then I boast that I'm closer to the sun, S-U-N, than he is. It's absolutely absurd.

God is separate. God is distinct. Now, as separate, as distinct as God, he is in a singular fashion, infinitely worthy of glory and honor and praise, of my full attention to the point where one one ancient theologian said, any thought, any conversation in which God and Christ are not in the center of it is absolutely absurd.

I mean, he is worthy because of his glory, his majesty, because of who he is. He is worthy of what? Of me separating myself not only from sinful things, but even from good things to go after him, to go after him.

And you see, when I'm teaching my little children, I'm not teaching them that holiness is a set of rules. I'm teaching them this is who God is. There is no greater adventure, no more splendid pursuit than to chase after this magnificent being whose glories know no end.

So I'm afraid that when people talk about holiness, they automatically go to a list of do's and a list of don'ts. Now, don't get me wrong. Christianity has a definite ethic. There are specific commands, there are do's and there are don'ts.

But those those summing all those up do not make holiness. Holiness is a heart fixed upon God, not out of duty, but out of pleasure, out of delight. Why would I want to look at anything else? I mean, even creation, and I'm an outdoorsman, I love to be outside.

Creation, waterfalls, stars, the most magnificent animals are not even the glimpse, the beginning of his glory. And so when I talk about holiness, I've heard many people misinterpret me or say things that I don't say.

I'm not talking so much about rules and all this. I'm talking about a heart given unto God. And the more I know about him, the more I want to be drawn to him. So that even without looking at the do's and don'ts, I'm automatically doing them because my heart and my mind are fixed upon his character and the desire to be like him and the desire to be close to him in walking through this world.

I don't sit there and go, well, according to this rule, this is wrong. And according to this rule, this is right. But I look at what would grieve this magnificent person who is dwelling inside me. If you do not have that as your foundation, then your desire to be holy will turn you into a legalist.

I think that ultimately a man is holy when he loves God as God loves himself. That is when a man is truly holy. God has taken first place in creation. God does everything for himself. It's right for him to do that.

God loves himself. For me to be holy is to love God as God loves himself. Now, when we look at the scriptures, having that as the foundation, then we come to these scriptures and we realize that everything that is written there is written for our benefit, that although all things are lawful, not all things are beneficial for the believer.

And that since still in this body, we can have clouded minds and clouded hearts, we have this scripture to guide us. His word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path to lead us to him and to keep us from soiling ourselves.

To keep us from from harm. That's the reason why he's given us these these laws and these commands and these precepts. I was talking to a group a while back. It was actually in Europe and. They were they began to kind of even though it was a kind of a large auditorium, some of them actually began to speak to me and they talked about the oppression, they didn't want to be under the oppression of God's law.

And so I asked them, I said, exactly what law is it that God made that you hate so much? Which is the law that restrains your behavior? Let's go through some of them. Don't lie. Is that oppressive to you?

Don't steal another man's wife. Don't move boundary marks. Don't hurt a widow. And then I looked at the whole crowd who was objecting to me and I said, if these laws oppress the behavior and take away the freedom that you have, then what does that say about you?

What kind of person are you? You see, having this right view of holiness, I can now delight in the law of God, not being a legalist, not being approved. But learning that these things are given for my edification, for my help and for the help of my family and my children.

Now, regarding children, this is so very important, especially for homeschoolers. Homeschoolers by and large are serious people and they want to do God's will and they want to teach their children. But I see a grave error that is being committed.

Their Christianity many times devolves into a principle or ethic based religion in which they're communicating to their children the proper way to live instead of communicating to their children the glory of this person of God and the beauty of God and the wonder of a relationship with God.

Christianity, although it has an ethic, is not an ethic based religion. It is a relationship with God. There is wildness. There is wonder in this thing. And so when we talk about holiness and we automatically go to what we shouldn't do.

And what we should do, we've missed everything. We've missed it all. Well,.

A High View of God in the Church and in the Home

First of all, of course, I'm kind of a director of a mission organization and a kind of something of an itinerant preacher. I'm not pastoring at this moment. I have pastored. So I will not be speaking as a pastor, but just speaking as a fellow member in a church.

I can say this. First of all, if you want a congregation to have a high view of God, the leadership must have a high view of God and it must be more than just language to them. It must be real. It's the same way with my children.

You know, I can teach them everything in the scripture, but unless they see the joy and the love and the life of God in me, it's not going to matter. You know, men can talk about a high view of God, about the glories of the gospel, but, you know, if it's a reality in their life, you know, the old preachers used to say revival is not taught, it's caught.

There's some truth in that. And so what could ministers do, pastors do to greatly help their congregation? Make sure they spend much time with God, learning who God is and cultivating within them this high view of God and a high view of the gospel.

Now, another thing that we have to do in the church in order to assure that the people focus upon Christ is. We need to be very careful to exclude. All the things from our from our church life, from our services, from our programs, from our activities that draw attention away from Jesus Christ, the draw attention away from God.

You know, several I heard a man say this and I've heard it said by many times, I do not know who it originated with. I know I'm quoting someone, but he said. Instead of following the theology of Jonathan Edwards, the ministers have followed the pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin.

And that's what we've done. Now, why do we do that when you do not have a high view of God and you do not see the importance of communicating that when you do not have a high view of the gospel and you do not see the importance of communicating that you have nothing.

And the only thing that can keep a group of people together are activities, are promises that can be made apart from God in his gospel. So in order to have a church fixed upon the gospel, fixed upon God, the minister must have a high view of God.

He must have a high view of the gospel. And what he must do is be very cautious as he guards the congregation not to let things in that are going to distract from that. And there are so many. Let me give you an example.

If I go now, this this may be something somewhat controversial to people if they hear this. But when I go to church websites, you know, it's amazing to me. If I was a person who knew nothing about Christianity and I went to most church websites, I would realize that Christianity is all about the congregation.

It's about entering into a community of affirming, smiling, really nice and for the most part, beautiful people. It's all about come and enter into our fellowship, come to a place where your needs will be met, come to a place where you have a loving family around you.

And I'm wondering, is this at all even about God? And the reason why we do that is because a loving, affirming community is not scandalous. What is scandalous? Is a correct biblical teaching of God and his gospel.

So you can see it even on the websites of people. The websites of churches that were substituting something else, and it's for a good cause, it's to draw people in. But the problem is we draw them in and they never go beyond that.

In all these different church growth theories of we'll use certain things like family, like community to draw people in and then take them to God and the gospel, it seems to never work. It's not a good bridge.

I like to say it this way. If you're going to use carnal means to attract carnal men, then you're going to have to continue using carnal means to keep them. And it is only through upfront preaching who God is, what the gospel is, that you're truly going to plant a church, you're truly going to do a work of God in a certain area.

Now, let me say one other thing about this that's very, very important. Because I'm an itinerant preacher, I travel quite a bit and there is a malady that I see in the churches that probably terrifies me more than anything else that I could put my finger on in America.

You go into a church that is, you know, six, seven hundred people, a thousand people, and it's not necessarily a church with a high view of God or that puts a great deal of emphasis on the gospel. You can talk to the pastor.

He will agree with you. But in his daily ministry, it never comes out. And then what happens is this. If you stay long enough in that congregation, you will find that even in that congregation of a thousand people, you'll find maybe 50 or 100 who all they want is to learn about God.

All they want is to hear the gospel. All they want is to learn how to walk in a manner worthy of their vocation. All they want is to worship and pray and meet with God. And they're starving to death in America, throughout churches, all throughout America.

They are starving to death. Why? Because the pastor has put it into his head that he needs to spend almost all his efforts ministering to carnal people and gathering carnal people together and keeping them together.

And so the pastor spends his entire time ministering to the goats and lets Christ's sheep starve to death. And on the day of judgment, it is going to be terrifying what is going to happen to those men.

You can see it. You can see it everywhere. Christ's bride, his little group, his little flock is over there. All they want is him. But the minister in charge is doing nothing but creating a vanity fair in order in order to gather and keep carnal men.

This is a very, very, very dangerous thing. Ministers ought to tremble. Those people who are lay people in the church who have a high view of God and they're in a church where there is apparently a very low view of God and there's no emphasis, really, upon the gospel.

They have a very hard way to go. It's very, very, very difficult for them. And we've seen this throughout all of church history. I think especially of the time of Whitfield. I think the time of Daniel Rowlands and Hal Harris in Wales, that what we had there was churches that were not focused on Christ, that did not have a high view of God.

Ministers who did not have a high view of God and the sheep are starving and God raises up men like Whitfield and they begin to preach a high view of God, a low view of man, the preciousness of the gospel.

And those people are drawn out to them. And what's so sad is they had to be drawn out to them because the ministers would not allow these men into their churches. I see this all over the country. We are constantly getting letters and things from people who say, look, all we want to do in our church, we want to worship God.

We want to learn more about God. We want to advance the kingdom. We want to sacrifice. We want to do missions. We don't want all these other things. We just want God. We have no place to go. What do we do?

And I'm constantly having to admonish people because many people have gotten to the point where they're literally withdrawing from church life and they're meeting together just one family. And then there are others who who I could bless what they're doing in the sense that they're meeting together families and different people in house churches and things.

But we're seeing here in the United States much of what we've seen in every great awakening down through history. It seems that the ministers are the ones who most oppose a church being established only upon the scriptures, a high view of God and the glory of the gospel.

I praise God that in these recent years we have many, I believe we have many good seminaries, but we pass through many years in this country where there were just horrible, horrible training institutions for young men.

And it has done so much damage, so much damage that those men, when they get in the pulpit, they have nothing but pragmatism, nothing but entertainment, nothing but activities, nothing but programs. And that's very, very sad.

And that's why we have to make a return once again to a high view of God. We live in a culture that is marked by specialization, you know, where we used to have just a doctor. Now we have a doctor who specializes in so many different things, where we used to just have a scientist.

Now we have a scientist that specializes in so many things. And that can be very good. I'm not against that. But it seems that we think that every person has a special need. Every group of people is unique.

And that flies in the face to some degree. It flies in the face of the scriptures. The scriptures recognize that man has two problems, only two problems. One is the condemnation of sin. Because he has sinned against a holy God, he stands condemned before him.

The other problem is the power of sin. It is in the gospel that both of these problems are dealt with and removed. And so I do not care whether someone is a construction worker in New York or a salesman in Miami or a 14 year old boy in Idaho or a mother of six.

They all have the same problem. They need to be reconciled to God. They need to be filled with the life of God. They need to enter into a relationship with God and they need to learn to walk with him.

Now, I understand now that there are, you know, people do these demographic studies and they determine what kind of people that they want to reach and then how they should reach that specific people. Again, all of that is a denial of of several things in the scriptures.

First of all, the whole purpose of the church. One of the greatest evidences of the supernatural nature of the church is that through the regenerating work of the spirit of God, God would be able to bring all sorts of people who have nothing to do with one another normally to bring them all together living in community.

Now, we've destroyed that. And yet that is clearly what Paul's teaching in his epistles when he says it's no longer Scythian or Greek or Jew. We're all one now in Christ. So when you go out and you try to start a certain church with a certain demographic, what you're doing is you're breaking apart the very reason for which God put the church on this earth to demonstrate his power, not just in reconciling a person with him, but in reconciling all kinds of warring people together with themselves.

So some of the most beautiful churches have people from everywhere. There's a cowboy, there's a biker, there's an African-American, there is a Wall Street executive. There's all these different people.

And now they have something in common that binds them together stronger than blood ties. And that's the purpose of the church. And when you go out there and try to reach a certain demographic, you're destroying it.

Also, you're failing to realize something. If you're going out there thinking that God's going to raise up a church, you have to always realize this, whether you're, as they say, church planting as a missionary or you are preaching to a crowd of people, you are Ezekiel and you are in a valley of dry bones.

And behold, they are very dry. All the studies and demographics, all the understanding of needs of people are not going to bring about the supernatural work required to make those bones live. And that is why a lot of ministers who use this type of thing, they gather together a bunch of people, but they're still dead bones because they thought they could do it through marketing, through human wisdom, through strategy, through understanding culture.

And they're absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong. God builds the church and he showed us what a church would look like when he built it. It would be made up of Jews and Greeks and Scythians and slaves and freemen and all these people coming together.

So we need to realize, first of all, the purpose of the church. Second of all, we need to understand that the church is only a church because of a supernatural work of God that has absolutely nothing to do with demographics.

Another thing that we need to understand is this. Men need truth. But guess what? Women need the exact same truth. It's amazing to me. You know, if you were to go online right now and look up all the different women's conferences around the world, I wonder how many of them would have to do with doctrine.

No, most of them are how to, you know, stick a cherry in your hat and smile or something. You know, it's just a flower in your hat and smile. It's just absolutely absurd. When it comes to women, the greatest need on the mission field, the greatest need here is that they be taught the same truth that men need.

And teenagers, they live in a world of fun. They live in a vanity fair. Don't bring all that into the church so that they'll come. Is the gospel of Jesus Christ not powerful enough? Has God not promised to save young people through the simple preaching of his gospel?

Young people need the same truth that their mothers and fathers need and not just teenagers, but children. And I know for a fact with my own children, you can you can clearly sit down and talk with a seven year old about propitiation.

They need truth. Here's another thing that is very, very last year studying the scriptures, I came to this conclusion. Do you realize that the Bible teaches very clearly through the Old Testament example of the week that we're coming out of Egypt, that they should not be left behind?

Also, in the idea where where Paul addresses elders, that elders are to care for everyone in the flock. Do you realize that most children, most youth never have any contact whatsoever with the guidance of an elder until they become adults?

But they're under the care of Sunday school teachers and they're under the care of youth directors and they're under the care of this person and that person. And there's no influence of an elder in their life, even though supposedly they've been converted at eight.

And that's possible. If they have been converted at eight, they are under the risk. They should be under the responsibility and care of an elder, not an 18 year old who has a wonderful personality and knows how to play games.

And so we've got the church so divided that a great part of the church can never come in contact with the eldership, can never be under their teaching. You've got children's church, youth church, this church.

Where's the elders? Where are the men that are qualified according to first Timothy three and Titus one? And so you've got all these young people and women who are not brought into contact with the spiritual leaders in the church.

And that that is that is a terrible, terrible thing, a terrible thing. And so we see that by dividing up the church, all we're doing is saying God's plan won't work. And so we must get our own. And the most clever guy out there is going to have the biggest church.

And that has been the malady all throughout the scriptures. Do you see that? Digging out cisterns because they've rejected God so they dig out cisterns for themselves that will not hold water. And it brings a barrenness, even though it may look like activity, a true spiritual man walks in there and sees only barrenness.

God does not need to be propped up, his work does not need to be propped up. I was preaching a few years ago with with Conrad and Bayway over in Romania, and he made a statement that I just I'll never forget because someone asked him about using all these techniques and methods and everything else in order to get the gospel out, in order to start placing churches in different parts.

And Conrad looked at them and he said this, he goes. When Paul, the apostle, wanted to start a church. He got the biggest billboard he could find and he wrote on it absolutely the most scandalous thing he could write on it, Christ crucified, and then he walked down the middle of the street.

He said that's how he planted churches. You see. The power of the gospel. Is in the scandal of it. That's the whole purpose of First Corinthians one and two, that that this confidence, the faith, the salvation of people would not rest upon the eloquence or cleverness of men, but upon the power of God that comes through a message that's absolutely impossible apart from the power of God.

So when we do what we do in order to remove the scandal, we remove the power. And that's why these men look back and say the gospel has no power. Well, it's because they've removed the scandal from it and then they have to go to other things which create activity, but not fruit.

I think it is safe to say that Sunday morning in America. Is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week because people are worshiping a God that is a figment of their own imagination, a recreation of self.

Rather than the God of Scripture, and that's idolatry. Now, why do I say that? Go into just a typical evangelical church. And if you could get everyone to sit down with a piece of paper and you ask them, write out the attributes of God, you could even give them the word God is holy.

What does that mean? God is this. What does that mean? What does God say about this? How does God act with regard to this? When you turned in all those papers, you would be astounded. That the God that's being portrayed there, that these people are worshiping oftentimes is not, it doesn't look anything like the God of the Old and New Testaments.

And a minister one time, he said, Paul, I would like for you to come and teach on the attributes of God. And I said, well, brother, that's pretty controversial. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, I just want you to pray about it because I mean, split your church or anything.

I don't want to do that. And he goes, it's a church. We're Christians. How can how can you coming to us teaching on the attributes of God cause problems? And I looked at him, I said, brother. If I begin to teach what the Bible says, not just my interpretation, but just a classical view of God as set forth in our creeds, our confessions and our most beloved books of theology.

If I go into a typical evangelical church and begin to teach what the Bible teaches on God's righteousness, his holiness, his sovereignty, his wrath. If I begin to teach on this, I said you will have members who will stand up and say this.

That is not my God. I could never love a God like that and walk out of this church building. And people listen, when my children were born, they weren't born with knowledge. And it's the same way we have a lot of unconverted people, but even the converted people must be taught who God is.

And if they're not taught, then how will they stand? How will they ever be able to truly worship him or understand their own place in his plan? And I can challenge, I can just go to evangelical church after evangelical church across America and say, how much how much time do you teach on the attributes of God?

The greatest of all knowledge is never taught in your pulpit. I mean, this God who is of infinite glory that we will not be able to track down. We will not be able to get around him even through a thousand eternities.

You've exhausted the teaching on him, I suppose. Or have you ever even begun to teach about God? And so you're going to have all these divergent views among people. Now, another thing about idolatry that sooner or later, and we see this in evangelicalism all over America.

In Romans chapter one, it always comes back essentially to man replacing God. Man is the focus. Humanism, it's all about you. Now, those of us who are against this type of thinking are often misunderstood.

Well, you don't love people or you don't care about the needs of people. Yes, I do love people and I care about the needs of people. I just understand that those people are not going to be healed by becoming more and more self-absorbed.

They're going to be healed by a greater and greater view of God. They're not going to be healed even by having all the little answers in the Bible to their problems. They're going to be healed by this magnificent view of God.

Because there are a lot of times when things that are going to happen in my life, in your life, that even the greatest theologian cannot explain to us. Painful things, horrible things, things that seem, as the hymn writer said, to be a frowning providence.

And even the greatest preachers in the world can say nothing to us. We're in that situation that Job was in. We have no answers. Then what is going to help us? It's not going to be a pat on the back or some trite answer.

It's going to be look to your God. You don't know what he's doing, but you know who he is. And because you know who he is, you can trust in what he's doing. Do you see? So, yeah, idolatry abounds. And even God's own sheep are misguided because the ministers are not giving them solid food.

People say, well, you know, it's difficult to understand this stuff and teach it.

But it's necessary.

Absolutely necessary. I don't have all the answers. That's not what that's not what makes me zealous or keeps me going when everything is just pulled out from under me. It's behold my God. It's the things I do understand.

Calvary.