10 Years of Beholding God | Anthony Mathenia, Pt 2

The Problem of Holiness in American Evangelicalism

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and we're doing something a little different again. We're running footage from the interviews that we took when we made the Rethinking God Biblically study.

This year marks the 10th year anniversary and so we want to make available footage that wasn't able to make it into the study. This is the second part of the interview with Anthony Mathenia, pastor and missionary.

And Anthony, actually, we met about 22 years ago when I had come back from Britain and we were able to plant a work here. My wife and myself and a few other families. And while we were here, you know, we're about an hour or so south of Memphis and I had some Christian friends in Memphis and I was preaching for one of them, Jordan Thomas, and Jordan and Anthony were working at the same church.

And so I met Anthony there. Soon after that, a number of us as young ministers began to meet together once a week. And we would meet at a coffee shop and we would read through books that helped us really to rethink our American Christianity.

We read biographies like the life of Robert Murray McShane. We read books by Puritans like John Owen's Communion with God. And just really were free to kind of talk without fearing that we would be in trouble about, you know, what would Christianity look like if we laid it upon a different foundation, a foundation that we felt as much as we could understand would be more biblical, more pleasing to the Lord.

And from that group has come a number of friendships that have lasted. And some of those men have contributed to our studies like Jordan and Anthony. And you're about to watch the second part of Anthony's interview.

One of the major problems in American evangelicalism is the issue of personal holiness. We tend to find ourselves, it seems, in one of two ditches. Either we've thrown out the need for holiness altogether, saying that it's an impossibility or it's not really all that important, that God is a forgiving God, that it's not really that big of an issue for us to live holy lives.

In fact, if we will go ahead and sin a little, we can probably win a few more people and make them see that they're not all that different from us. For me, I find 1 Peter 2 very helpful. Peter actually tells the original recipients of that letter that as strangers in the world, to abstain from fleshly lust, not to be involved in the things of the world, so that the things that they are doing which are right and being slandered as a result by the world, that in the day of visitation, in the final day, they may possibly glorify God in that day because of your constant effort to be holy among them.

That's the great attraction of Christianity, is clean living, being loved by God, being free in Christ to obey the commands that we were commanded to. So often we take and use our freedom, as Peter goes on in that same chapter to say, we use it as a cloak for evil, rather than seeing the freedom that we have in Christ is an absolute freedom to obey Him, free to keep all the commands of God because of the power of the gospel, because of Christ in us who is the hope of glory, because we've been clothed with power from on high to live the Christian life, day in and day out, in every aspect.

The other danger is for us to see that the Bible says, wow, God is serious about holiness and holiness must look like this or act like this. So without there being any reality of change from within, the tendency is that we stamp on or snap on this plastic cover on the outside and we start talking this way or dressing that way or schooling our kids in this fashion or not going to these type places.

Some of those things may be important, and granted they are, but the importance is doing them out of a right motivation, not in order that we might look holy. The holiness of God is very important. Take Aaron's sons, for example.

Aaron was a priest of God. God was serious about how His people ought to worship Him, and Nadab and Abihu presented false fire. They just went with a flippant approach and offered false fire, and God struck them dead.

We don't have that kind of fear in our culture of God. In fact, we would go so far, many of us, as to argue, well, that was the God of the Old Testament. He was the God of wrath. We live in the New Testament age, in a day when God is merciful.

Let's go to Acts chapter 5 and see the mercy that was shown to Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to God. They dropped dead immediately. God isn't a God who changes. He's just as concerned about His holiness today as He's always been.

He's committed to it, and He's commanded us, again, in 1 Peter, to be holy because He's holy. Peter there is quoting from the Old Testament law. It's ridiculous for us to say that God commanded holiness in the Old Testament, but we live in a day of grace.

God doesn't expect that from us anymore, and that's not the case. In fact, it is really a trumped expectation, we might say, in that God does demand holiness, and we have now the ability to be holy because of the work of Christ in us, which is why Peter says there in 1 Peter 1, 15 and 16, Be holy in all of your conduct, in everything that you're doing.

Be holy because God is holy, and he's quoting from that Old Testament Levitical law, reminding the people of the expectations of approaching God in a serious way, not being flippant in our approach, that He's a serious God, that He's holy, and He expects us to approach Him with reverence and with fear in all things.

The Public Reading, Preaching, and Teaching of Scripture

It's important for us in the corporate setting of church to help people focus on the God of the Bible. In order to do that, the Scriptures are very helpful. We don't have to look far to see what Paul commanded Timothy to give the lion's share of his attention to.

The public reading of the Scriptures, exhortation, and teaching. Those are the things that we ought to be about doing. And if you look in the typical American church, the amount of time that is spent on Sunday mornings with actually reading the Scriptures, or expounding on them, preaching them, or teaching them, it's minimal.

In comparison to the time of when you walk in the door at church to the time that you leave, it's a very small percentage that you spend actually doing those things that Paul told Timothy to be committed to.

Give attention to these things. Make this your priority. The reading of the Scriptures publicly, the preaching and teaching of God's Word. But we've let that fall by the wayside. We've given in to things like felt needs or the entertainment aspect, trying to make people feel good or be happy that they're there.

Now, I'm not against singing songs and hymns. Colossians, when Paul wrote to the church at Colossae, he told them, sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Again, those things are used for our teaching.

That would be included in what Paul told Timothy there concerning giving attention to those things. But then you have to ask the question, what about the songs that you're singing? Are they scripturally accurate?

Are they pleasing to the Lord? Are they painting a picture of Christ that is in keeping with what we have displayed on the pages of the Bible? Or is it, again, going back to Psalm 50, is this just a God of your own imagination, thinking that He's altogether like you?

I mean, when we look at the songs that are being sung in our churches, so many of them pale in comparison to the example we have in the Scriptures of the Psalms and the majestic things that are said about God there.

Now, I'm happy and really I thank the Lord that so many people are committed to writing new hymns. I love singing the old hymns, but I also love the new hymns that are being written by people like the Gettys, primarily, who are committed to writing stuff meant to be sung, that's meant to be sung corporately.

I find it really helpful. But the greatest benefit of those new hymns and old hymns are the ones that actually match the character of God that we see displayed in the Bible. So, it's important for us to do what the Bible says to do.

My approach in teaching people in the corporate setting of church an accurate view of God is to give them the view of God that I see on the pages of the Bible, whether that be through reading the Bible publicly, teaching, preaching, or singing songs that are biblically accurate and offer a pleasing aroma unto God.

The danger is us falling into some kind of trap and thinking, well, that's really not what people want. If I read an entire passage this morning, people are going to wonder, why did he read so much? If I preach for 45 minutes or an hour or an hour and a half, people have somewhere to go.

They have lunch, and they're all distracted by everything going on around them because they have no interest in God. That's the major problem. So, we give them what they want, and we've turned to all kinds of things, like interpretive dance or singing songs that have no real meaning, that just make us feel good because of the beat or the melody or whatever.

I'm fine for a song to have a right beat or a good melody, but if that's the only motivation for doing it, to make us feel good, then it's absurd. It's a ridiculous notion. We're there to worship the living God, to know Him, to love Him, to obey Him.

So, we ask all the wrong questions. For men and women who find themselves in churches but not in a leadership position, who would like to promote a biblical view of God, a high view of God, a low view of man, a right view of sin, and an amazing view of what salvation really is, really beginning with restructuring our thinking concerning who God is, will then overflow into our lives.

The decisions that we make within the home, within the workplace, how we lead our families, the prayers that we pray, the conversations that we have, will all be restructured as a result of the restructuring in our minds and in our lives concerning who God is.

And so, my goal as a layperson would be, and was up until the not-so-distant past, was to gain for myself the most accurate understanding of who Christ is, the loftiest views of who God is, based on those that are displayed for us on the pages of the Bible.

And then, as a result, to attempt to apply that to every area of my life, either within the home, within the community, within the job force, the leisure time, how I'm spending my time, my money, all the choices that I'm making, must then flow out of this God that I say that I'm learning about, that I'm being overwhelmed with, that I want to invest my entire life in.

And so, I'm teaching within the home by the things that I do. It doesn't mean I'm sitting down and having a sermon every day with my family, but by the choices that I make, by the way that I discipline my kids, the way that I talk to my wife, the decisions that I make about what we're going to do with our time and our energy and our finances, those things are going to display what I think concerning God.

And so, as a lay person, that's our great goal. As any person, whether as a leader or a non-leader within a church, is to be amazed with the bigness of God, and as a result, for it to infiltrate our lives and then affect our lives in every arena that we find ourselves living.

One Gospel for Every Person

When we, in our churches, begin to segregate or target this group of people or that group of people with a different means or different method or different message, then we have begun to disbelieve the Bible.

Because we begin to put people in different camps, saying that they have different needs. This group of people are over 50. They have different spiritual needs than this group of single moms or young marrieds or adolescents.

When we begin to categorize people that way and attempt to apply the gospel in these different areas, it's right to try to apply the gospel to all of them. The problem is, if they all have different needs, they all have a different solution.

We have to begin to see that human nature, from the beginning to the end of life on this earth, we have one major problem, and that is sin. So, as a result, there's only one solution, and His name is Christ Jesus and the good news that He died to forgive His people from their sins.

It's a huge danger when we begin to target this group in a different way. It's fine for us to go after the more mature folks that are 50 and over. It's fine to go after the young marrieds. But when we begin to identify them as having significant or different spiritual needs from another group, then we've began to misunderstand sin and what the Bible says that sin is.

We're no longer believing that sin has infiltrated all of humanity and that there's only one hope in Christ Jesus. So, whether a young mother, a 65-year-old retired man, a 12-year-old, we need Christ.

No matter where we find ourselves in life, we need Christ. Whether we're changing diapers as a homemaker or sitting in the office as a businessman, our only hope is to apply the gospel of Jesus Christ to our lives.

That is the only thing, the only way that we will find sufficiency for life is in Christ. We don't need anything other than Him. Our greatest need is a more clear and more biblically accurate revelation of Him.

We need Jesus. He's everything that we need. When we think about idolatry existing in American churches, it's a difficult thing for us to grasp. For most of us, when we think about idolatry, that's something that happened during Old Testament times or something that happens in the bush of Africa or in the jungles of South America.

But when we look at what the Bible talks about, when it talks about idolatry, and we look at what's happening in so many of our churches, we see that idolatry is happening all around us. In fact, for many of us, idolatry isn't just happening on Sunday mornings in our churches, but it's happening moment by moment in our hearts.

We're housing what John Calvin called idol factories, and we're continuing to fashion these idols, making everything into idols and worshiping them. In fact, we're all worshipers. All human beings are worshipers.

We worship something. Most of us are very prone to worship ourselves, first and foremost, in some fashion. But we were created to worship something far greater than that. We were created to worship God, created by God to worship Him with our entire lives.

So when we're given to something other than the worship of God, the one true God, it's idolatry. And that's what's happening when our approach in our church services isn't focused on the vertical aspect of who God is.

We begin to ask questions like, what would make us feel good? Or what would be really encouraging to the people? Or what would give a good vibe off by the way that we design our church? When we ask questions like that, those are terrible questions.

And we're doing nothing but exposing the proneness of our hearts to wicked, heinous idolatry. And God isn't pleased with us. We have to begin with the Scriptures, ask the right questions. What is it that God wants?

What does He demand? What does He require? What kind of instructions has He laid out for us in His Word? And then we walk according to those paths. That's the only way that we will guard against going down the same path of people like Nadab and Abihu, who with a flippant approach offered false fire and God struck them down.

God will not receive our worship if we aren't worshiping Him. He isn't pleased when we worship ourselves or anything else. So we have to begin at the root, asking the question, who is God? And follow that with asking the question, what has He said about how we ought to approach Him?

Especially corporately, collectively, in the church service. What has He commanded that we do? What has He warned against us not doing? Let's do what pleases Him. There's great promise in that. If we're willing to go to the lengths to see exactly what God says about Himself and how we ought to be worshiped, then we can take great encouragement that God will then draw near to us in worship.

And then we will see what the psalmist was talking about when he said, the nearness of God is my good. That's a foreign concept for us. In fact, most of us are a little bit happier with ourselves when God is at a safe distance.

We don't want to get too close because then conviction doesn't happen. But when we know the nearness of God, of God drawing near to us because we're living lives with short repentance, believing Him in every aspect, He does draw near.

And James promises us that when we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. But the only way we can draw near to Him is based on the way that He's lined out for us in the Scriptures, in a way that's pleasing to Him, treating Him as holy and reverent.

God says there in Leviticus 10, concerning that story of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, He says, I will be treated as holy. That's still true. I wonder how many of us go into Sunday mornings with that on the forefront of our mind.

We're attempting to worship a God this morning who says, I will be treated as holy. Everything that we do must treat Him as holy, must portray the God of the Bible as He really is, high and lifted up, exalted in the heavens, with the earth as His footstool.

That's great news to the believer because not only is that true, but He's chosen to dwell with those who are contrite and lowly of heart, with the people who are crushed and broken in spirit. He's chosen to draw near to people like that, to lift them up out of the ash heap, to take their feet out of the miry clay and set them on the solid rock and call them His own.

He makes us His own children, sons and daughters of the Most High God. When we as a people attempt to worship God in a way that isn't pleasing to Him, He doesn't accept it. We are so infatuated with ourselves, we think that whatever we do, God must be pleased with it.

But it's simply not true. And we have examples of this time and again in modern day evangelicalism all across our churches. I mean, if you take the issue of worship, it seems quite obvious that God is displeased with so many of the flippant approaches to worship, of singing songs that misrepresent Him, that are more focused on the beat or making people feel good emotionally than actually saying true things about God.

Based on the character of God that we see revealed in the Scriptures, we must also believe that He's not pleased with that type of approach. Or if you take evangelism, evangelism in our country has become not much more than a list of mere half-truths.

Well, what is the point of that? God isn't pleased with us merely presenting the gospel, which is literally good news, as half-truths. There's no good news in that. It's as if we're going to people and saying, I've got some good news and some bad news, which would you like to hear?

No, the gospel is all good news. I mean, it's bad news if we don't respond. But the gospel is meant to provoke a response in us. It's meant to save us from our sins. That's the good news of the gospel.

So it's important in our evangelism to present the entire gospel, the biblical gospel, to command people everywhere to repent and believe the gospel as it is revealed in Christ Jesus. Concerning missions in our society, the importance that is placed on being culturally relevant leads to so many idolatrous results in our culture, whether it's planting churches on the other side of our town or starting new churches on the mission field.

When our main goal is to figure out the cultural situation, where the people are and what's going on and attempting to meet them there, we are going to end up terribly misrepresenting God and falling into idolatrous situations.

Even for the idea of church planting. I mean, there's an idea in our society that church planting isn't really about pasturing. I mean, the things required to be a church planter in our culture are things like being cool or clever.

When the requirements according to the Scripture to start a new church would be the exact requirements to pastor an existing church, the man must be called. The 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 2 passages are relevant for church planting.

There's no need to be cool or clever in those situations. Our goal must be to lead people into complete conformity to the image of Christ, to lead every member into absolute conformity to the image of who Christ is.

There's a huge misunderstanding concerning things that work in our culture. I mean, when we look at churches all across our culture, the ones that appear successful in our eyes, from our estimation, it doesn't mean anything concerning what they are in the eyes of God.

When we take churches that appear to be successful by human standards, that are applying every type of means imaginable and getting lots of people in and lots of people saved, walking an aisle or praying a prayer or whatever is happening in those churches, being baptized, being confirmed, whatever it is, there's a huge danger of us putting a stamp of approval on that just based on what it looks like from the outside.

The only accurate measuring stick for us can be, is this pleasing to the Lord? And the only way for us to know if God is pleased is to consider what God has said in His Word. So, for many of us, we find ourselves in situations where we believe that what God says in His Word is true.

But all around us, the churches around us or the church that we find ourselves in, and we're not in a leadership situation to bring about change or restructuring the thinking, laying new foundations, tearing up the faulty foundations, we find ourselves in those situations and we appear trapped.

And it may feel hopeless or we may say, but it's really working. But look at all these people that are coming. Again, those are the wrong questions. If I were in that situation, I would begin praying, praying that God really would help lay other foundations, that He would dig up the false foundations of other people, the leadership, and He would restructure our thinking, and He would begin to reveal the truths concerning Himself in Scripture, and that He would make clear what His demands and expectations are on us as individuals and as families and as local churches, so that, hopefully, then God would come and tear up from the very foundation that church and begin to lay a good, solid foundation, based only on the Scriptures and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, so that He is what is proclaimed, so that the glory of God is what is heralded from the pulpit week after week, and the felt needs of man are just completely laid aside in order to treat the real needs of man that are exposed so wonderfully in the Scriptures.

Our great need is sin, and the great solution is the gospel of God's glorious Son and who He is and what He's done on our behalf. The doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ has been completely abandoned, it appears, by American evangelicalism.

There's so much talk about this approach or that methodology or this new thing or that new ministry. All of that can be good, but we can't get away from who Jesus is as God's own Son, from the work that He's done in keeping the entire law for us and going to the cross on our behalf and shedding blood that covers our sin, blood that was sufficient to cleanse the whole world from sin, and being buried and being buried, carrying our sins far away and then rising again on the third day and then being seen over a period of several days by hundreds of people and being raised again on high after affirming to us that all authority had been given to Him both on heaven and earth.

He was raised to sit at the right hand of God and given gifts among men, namely the Holy Spirit that He poured out, that we see poured out there at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, and it's that Holy Spirit that still lives in and through the lives of the church members today and churches at large.

And God is still working and saving souls by the power of His Holy Spirit, regenerating people's lives and not just leaving them there after regeneration, but justifying them, bringing them into His presence.

We have more access to God than the Old Testament Israelites. Yes, they could come further than the Gentiles and people like us, but the veil of Christ's flesh has been rent. We have access all the way within as priests of God, a royal priesthood, Peter calls us, quoting from the Old Testament.

Only one person once a year could go into the Holy of Holies in the days of the Old Testament. We have access to the throne room of God through our great high priest, Christ Jesus our Lord, who wasn't just a forerunner, but He's our anchor within the veil who is seated at the right hand of God.

And we're welcome to come and sit at the feet of Jesus day in and day out, moment by moment as it were, basking at all the glory that belongs only to Him and taking full advantage of Him as a Father. We're His children.

We come and offer praises to Him. We make petitions to Him, and He hears us. He listens to us. He's not a God who isn't concerned about us, but He's taken a wonderful interest in each and every one of us.

He's committed to His own glory through us. He promised in the New Covenant, Jeremiah 31, He promised that He would do us good, both us and our children, all the days of our lives. He's a God who cannot lie.

He's a God who never changes. Therefore, we as sons of Jacob will not be consumed. The God who promised that through Jeremiah is the same God that is saving and working all throughout the world today.

It ought to be our great interest. The great work of our lives ought to be to get to know this God and to get to know Him as He's revealed Himself to us on the pages of the Bible and seek to see exactly what He says about how He ought to be worshipped, how He longs to be worshipped by His people, the guidelines that He's given us in approaching Him in a collective or corporate setting week in and week out on Sundays.

We ought to make it our life's goal to please Him in every respect, whether in leading our family or in how we approach our jobs, how we spend our time, our energy, our money. We ought to seek Christ in all of those things, seek to know Him and to make Him known in every aspect of our lives.

I hope you found the second part of Anthony's interview beneficial. That was recorded in the making of the study, Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically. We'll see you next week.