The Laborers' Podcast- The Gospel and Conversion

Good evening everyone. This is the laborers podcast and we are so thankful that you join us and lock arms with us.

Thank you for praying for us and supporting us. We really appreciate it. If you give us a like, follow, share and all that good stuff, we would appreciate that as well.

Thank you for joining us and we're glad to have Tyler with us. Glad to have Paul, the happy Calvinist with us.

Dan, our newcomer, Andy, we're glad to have him with us tonight and Matt who has been with us, but this is the first, hopefully the first full episode he's going to be with us tonight.

We're thankful for these guys joining us. I think it's going to be another great conversation that we're going to have concerning the local church, the health of the local church.

I thought about a question that was, or a comment that was presented in our little group chat earlier today.

Brother Andy, he reminded us that the goal is the local church.

God loves his local church. He formed the local church. He works through the local church. This is not a replacement.

Social media, videos, podcasts are not a replacement of the local church. We're just here for a supplement.

We're here to fellowship. We're here to lock arms, to support, to be out here in the real world with each other.

But we want to point to, of course, God's working in the local church, but it calls me to think a little bit and maybe you guys can reflect on this and we can have this conversation at a different time, but what is a local church?

What consists of a local church? Do we actually have any churches that meet those qualifications today?

Are they far and few between? I was just thinking about all those different questions. I think that will be a great conversation for us to have, but how are you guys doing tonight?

Doing well? Doing well. Doing good. Yes, sir. Good, good, good. Let's jump right into the conversation.

Continue our series on a healthy church. Tonight, we're going to be talking about in a healthy church, what does the gospel, what is the gospel, what does the gospel look like, and conversion, what does that look like?

How is it taught in the local church? I'm going to start at the bottom corner and go with our first question,

Matt, before we do that. Almost slipped up. I wanted to read this passage.

You're going to get the first question, what is the gospel? But I want to read 1 Corinthians chapter 15 in the first several verses.

And this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which

I preach to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved.

If you hold fast the word which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, for I deliver to you as the first importance what

I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve.

And then he speaks of appearing to himself and his humility in Christ.

But there we hear from Paul and his explanation of the gospel. Matt, define for us the gospel.

Well, I like to use, I'll just kind of keep it simple. I'll let some of these other guys maybe get into a little more detail, but I like to use a definition that I take from R .C.

Sproul. He said, simply, the gospel is the good news of the person and the work of Jesus Christ and how those benefits of those things are appropriated to the believer.

And I think we can kind of break that down into four things. We've got God, we've got man, we've got

Christ and man's response. So there's objective content wrapped up, focusing on the person and the work of Christ.

You mentioned good news, and that's what, getting on simple terms here, that's what gospel means.

If we're going to define what the gospel is, it means good news. And then Matt, just to find what that good news is. Andy, what things, and Matt kind of hinted on some of those, but what things cannot be left out?

We want to have a right understanding of the gospel so that we understand God rightly, so that we come to Him rightly.

So what things cannot be left out of the gospel? Well, it's vitally important that we do not fall into the trap of just simply trying to get people to understand that they're broken, in need of the right medication, and they can be made whole in that regard.

We need to understand and, I think, start with the fact that we are not neutral. As Dr. White says very often, there are no neutral worldviews.

We are all rebel sinners. We are enemies of God. We have a debt to our

Creator that cannot be paid. Not only can you not make up for what you already have done, you can't then turn around and make up for what you're going to do in the future.

So the part that can't be left out is starting with the understanding that we are not right with God.

And it isn't just that you're not right with God, it's that you are actually in active rebellion. So much so that Romans 1 talks about part of the judgment that God puts on a nation, on a people, is that the sinners and the unregenerate will actively suppress truth.

And you've got to do something about that. You are going to stand before a holy and perfect God.

And one of the things I tell people a lot is, and I've tried to do this, sit and spend some time comprehending the holiness of God.

It'll send you down a wonderful path. But it also helps you understand how unholy we are.

But I think you've got to start there. You can't leave that part out. I think so many people, and we'll talk about this later with Easy Believism, they want to think that it's a something you do and then you obtain something.

No, it's God literally turning you from an enemy to a friend. I totally agree.

But something that's necessary can be left out is our understanding of who we are.

Absolutely. Anybody else want to chime in on the gospel, what it is, what can't be left out?

The gospel is absolutely everything that everybody said already.

But there's also a little bit more to it than that. Jesus in Matthew 4 .23,

it said that he went throughout Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

Part of the good news is the coming of the kingdom of God. It's more than just an individual salvation.

It's God's rule and reign, his kingship from heaven being placed upon the earth.

So it's not just the redemption of mankind, which it is. It's also a redemption of all of creation.

The good news is that the sin that we engaged in at the first, the sin that mankind spewed upon the world, tainted the world with, all of that is being done away with.

So the evilness, the vileness that we see within ourselves and the wickedness that we see outside of ourselves, all of it is being taken care of and put away as the kingdom of God is brought to earth and grows over the face of the earth.

So yeah, I agree with everything that our brother said, because the way that the kingdom of God spreads across the earth is through the salvation of individual people who are then called together into the church, who then as the church go out and preach the gospel to other folks.

So it's everything that they said, and it's comprehensive of the entire world system that we live in that's being changed into a righteous, it's being redeemed by Christ.

I think it's very cool that you brought that up because in that same passage, in that same chapter that I read from where Paul is reminding them the that they stand on, later on in chapter 15, he speaks of Christ's kingship,

Christ reigning, and he quotes Psalm 110, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

Verse, that was 25, 24, then he comes, then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to God and father who has, who has abolished all rule and authority and power.

So absolutely what you're talking about, the gospel, Jesus, the good news himself is bringing to the individual and to the world, this abolishing of enemies.

Yeah, I think we're going to get into it a little bit later. I think when we forget that aspect of it, it's easy for us to think when we only think of salvation as an individual thing, it's easy for us to, especially when we have a poor view of God anyway, to cheapen salvation, make it a mental ascent, an easy -believed -ism.

But we'll get to that in a little bit. I see what you got. I wrote down those questions I told you I didn't have earlier. Here's an interesting thought related to these questions.

I know throughout the years, many of us have probably been through evangelism training, learning how to share the gospel, and we want to make the gospel short, sweet, and clear.

But also there's this aspect because we're talking about what things can't be left out. Scripture says, everyone who calls on the name of the

Lord shall be saved. Who is the Lord? We want to have the right

Jesus. We have different religions, different cults that use the name

Jesus, but they have a completely different understanding of who Jesus is. So, how do we create that balance?

How do we find that balance between sitting down with somebody and having this long theological exhortation versus a simple gospel presentation?

Because we don't want to present the wrong Jesus, the wrong Father, the wrong God, to somebody.

So, you're asking the difference between a comprehensive teaching of the doctrines of the scriptures versus a short, succinct summary of the gospel presented.

Let's go to Matt here because Matt is an open air preacher.

He works with folks that do this regularly. So, can we ask him here to give us kind of a basis here to kind of start from for a street level, when we're talking about street level, evangelism, communicating the gospel at a street level.

How do you do that, Matt? Matt does a great job, by the way, preaching this clearly. Yeah, I think it is hard.

Like I said, in that situation, you don't want to try to get into a whole lot of details.

Like I said, you could be there for hours with somebody. But again, in my experience and some of the guys that I've been with regularly, we do touch on those.

We speak about God's holiness. We speak about man's sinfulness. We go to the scriptures for each of these topics, and then we discuss what's the result of man's sinfulness.

We've got that separation from God that says it's not anything that we can do on our own to reconcile ourselves to the

Creator. And then we move from there, kind of the bad news per se, into the good news.

We start discussing Christ and the fact that He was the

God -man, that He was fully God, fully human, born of a virgin, that He lived that sinless life that no one else did or could, that He willingly went to the cross, explained substitution, explained atonement, made sure we touch on salvation by grace through faith, death, burial, resurrection.

And I think as Dan mentioned, we also discuss His ascension.

He's currently sitting at the right hand, reigning and ruling over all things.

So again, you want to hit on all those things and explain them,

I think, a little bit. But in my experience, generally, especially if you're able to get somebody in a one -on -one conversation out on the streets,

I mean, you might have five to ten minutes with somebody. So I think you want to hit on all those points and explain them individually.

But again, not talk to like we could talk to each other and go into detail.

But like I said, at the same time, you don't want to just keep it so simple as little cliches and those kind of things.

It's not something you want to cram into 30 seconds with somebody. Because like you say, in order to believe in something, like you said, you got to know what you're believing in.

You can't believe and put your faith in something that you don't have any knowledge of.

So you got to give the people some objective content, some knowledge there for them to hopefully believe in if the

Lord draws them. That's really, really good. Absolutely.

So Matt, what do you think about this observation as far as boundaries to help us present

Jesus correctly? And we were talking about different religions that use the name of Jesus but have a different Jesus than the biblical

Jesus. So how do we stay on track and present the gospel in a succinct, you know, when we have a short time frame?

What would be some boundaries that could keep us on that straight path? And I was thinking about this.

The main difference between biblical Christianity and all other religions is that it's all a work of God.

It's all a work of Jesus Christ. So within our gospel presentation, we are giving him full credit and it's nothing about works, nothing about anything that we can do.

If it's all about grace through faith, it's all of Christ.

Do you think that those are some good boundaries to keep us on the straight path to make sure, even though our presentation may be short and succinct, if we're presenting the

Jesus who gets all the credit and all the glory, do you think that's a good observation?

Absolutely. I think it's good to have a few scripture texts that you, like I said, if you want to put it this way, have in your back pocket that you always go to when you're telling somebody.

Even two or three scriptures you can point to that show who

Christ is and what he did. And I think we, again, we may touch on this some more, but I think we sometimes fall into the trap or some people do that if you're talking to an unbeliever, well, they don't believe in the

Bible. So I'm going to go a different direction. We can't do that. So whether they believe or not, we've got to start their discussion with scripture.

And I know we just, we were out the other night and we were talking to the guy. We just got to the point where,

I mean, we figured out he didn't believe scripture was discounting it.

We gave the truth from there and ultimately had to move on.

But again, I think no matter the situation, who you're talking to, point to scripture for those truths.

Like I said, we've got to know the biblical Jesus, not the Jesus we've made up in our mind.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I don't want to belabor this too, too much, but I think you made an excellent point that we cannot overlook or go past too quickly.

Use scripture. Even if they don't believe in scripture, we believe in the power of God's word. We believe in scripture.

I think that's a point that we should just overemphasize. Use scripture, use scripture, use scripture, because that's

God's speaking to us. Totally agree with that point. Then let's move on to the next question.

So what is... Sorry, can I interject something real quick? Absolutely. I don't really want to talk that much tonight, but what

Matt just said there and what you just, the point that you articulated is so important.

Votibachum, as a matter of fact, he uses the illustration of the example of, you know, if somebody comes up behind you with a gun on the street, right?

Puts it in your back and says, give me your wallet. You turn around immediately, you say, wait, wait,

I don't believe in guns. Right?

And then all of a sudden, as opposed to what most Christians, how most

Christians respond, they get intimidated, they get freaked out, they get scared, and they start trying to, you know, articulate all this, like Matt said, this cliche garbage, right?

So if you turn, somebody's robbing you and you just tell them, I don't believe in guns, and all of a sudden they go, oh, you don't believe in guns.

Well, maybe I'll just quit robbing you. Right? No, as Christians, just because somebody doesn't believe in the

Bible doesn't mean that we stop communicating the scripture to them, because the scriptures teach us that it's by the foolishness of preaching that God chose to save them which believe.

And as Christians, we have only one message, and that is the gospel. Amen. Amen to that.

And by the way, for those of you who are watching, let us know that you're there. Say hello. Ask a question.

We'll try to answer your question. Leave a comment, critique. Just let us know you're there.

We really appreciate it. Love to hear from you. So Dan, what is the gospel call? I think it was,

I think it was Andy that mentioned that as part of the gospel. No, it was

Matt. I'm sorry, Matt. I was talking about from R .C. Sproul, the four different points you made, and the last one was the response.

So when we present the gospel, you know, we're talking about the individual presentation.

What is the gospel call or the response to the gospel? A call to respond to the gospel is,

I don't know, I hate to put it in terms of sales, but if you make a sales pitch and you don't ask to buy your product, then you've not really made a sales pitch.

Now, so much more important, if you tell somebody the truth of the gospel, you need a savior.

Jesus is it. He's died on the cross for your sins. And you don't say, now, what are you going to do with it?

Are you going to believe or not? That is a call to respond.

It's not some vague walk down an aisle or getting pressured into making a decision that's going to look a certain way in front of people.

It's actually having someone come to a point in time where they have to, having thought through everything, have to respond.

And really what that does is it allows, not allows, but it's the point at which we see what the

Holy Spirit is doing. I mean, as long as the person's honest,

I mean, they can lie to us. At that point, you ask somebody, what do you believe?

How do you want to respond to the You can see as the Holy Spirit has been working in their heart, do they still have some hangups in this area or that area?

It helps you to work with them, explain to them, show them the gospel, press it into the areas that may still need pressing.

I guess that's what you're looking for, something like that. Oh yeah, sure. And I think scripture does that itself.

It's like what you're talking about. God commands all men everywhere to repent, so he makes that call. And so do we make that call also?

Call men to repentance, call men to believe? Oh yeah, absolutely.

In fact, we've been, I forget where, New Testament somewhere, it says that we've been given the ministry of reconciliation.

So part of what we do is to call and say, hey, God is calling people to himself.

He's called us to repent of our sin and believe in the gospel. What say you?

Because part of what we're doing is God has done a work and he's given us a ministry to go out there and put it in front of folks, knowing that he's doing all the real heavy lifting in salvation because we're the ones who need saving in the first place.

Right, right. Go ahead. Do you have something to call? Actually, yeah, to read, just to read what

Dan was quoting there. 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 11.

Scripture says, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men that we are well known to God and I also trust are well known in your consciences, but we do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you opportunity to boast on our behalf that you may have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not in heart.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God, or if we are of sound mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us because we judged that one died for all, then all died.

He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.

So we see that compulsion to communicate the truth. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we have known

Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Old things have passed away. All things are become new. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

And then he goes on now, then we are ambassadors for Christ. Absolutely. I want to add,

Liv, just for a second, and Dan, you can start us off, and everybody else is free to jump in here. Kind of related to this topic, we talk about the gospel response, calling people to repentance and faith.

And this has been a controversial topic for years. So how would you respond to somebody who makes this a part of their gospel presentation?

Make Jesus Savior and Lord. Oh, it's,

I mean, I guess there's nothing wrong. It's really awkward because he's already

Lord, and you're not making him Lord. I mean, really, it would be better to say, recognize his status as Lord.

Know him experientially as Savior by repenting of your sins and believing in the gospel.

You don't make him those things. God is what he is. That's why he calls himself,

I am. No, he exists. He is. So we don't make him

Savior and Lord. He is Lord, and we can know him as Savior. And even if we don't know him as Savior, he's still

Savior of men. He still has a people he's saving, drawing to himself.

Just because we're ignorant and foolish doesn't mean that God's any less powerful or glorious than what he's done.

So, I mean, I understand where they're coming from, but it's just awkward and a little wrong. Here, here we go.

A sola scriptura, folks. Always going back to the scripture. Acts 2 36, Peter's message at Pentecost.

Let all the house of Israel know, therefore, for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ.

This Jesus whom you have crucified. Philippians states the same thing. Philippians 3 20, 2

Peter 1 11, 2 Peter 2 20, 2 Peter 3 2. All of these going back to the scripture.

If we continually point people back to the text, then what are they going to do?

They can get their sharpie out and mark it out. But guess what? It doesn't change the truth of the word of God.

Well, I mean, that first verse that you read said it perfectly. We don't make him Savior and Lord.

That verse says God made him Lord and Christ. God made him that. And I like that word that you use,

Dan, recognize. And I think that's what the gospel does. That gospel of transformation within us causes us then to recognize his position.

Anybody else want to comment on the lordship, salvation, make him Savior and Lord? Yeah, I'll interject here.

It is the essence of the man -centered gospel to think that man can make God anything. The Bible doesn't seek to prove

God exists. It simply states that he does. That's the nature of presuppositional apologetics.

We are not there to convince anybody that the Bible is true. We're simply to declare to them that the scripture is true.

We declare to them that they are sinners. They're in rebellion against their creator. And without perfect righteousness, they will never see the kingdom of God.

See, we need to make sure we understand our categories correctly. The gospel is not faith.

The gospel is literally good news. Well, what's the good news? The good news is that while God demands perfect righteousness to enter his kingdom, and not only do we not possess it, but we can't even produce it.

The good news is you don't have to because Christ did it for you, and he made atonement for your sins.

So the gospel call, a God -centered understanding of the gospel call will be

God -centered as the scriptures that were read point to. He is Lord. He is the only

Savior. He is the one that brings peace between God and man. You don't make him that when you get saved.

I like the word recognize. You recognize it. You're coming to an understanding of it. Obviously, we know that regeneration has occurred because man cannot produce faith.

Man cannot produce the good works that were created Christ to produce. Man is in his rebellion.

If left in it, he'll die loving his sin, choosing his sin, and producing sin. So our gospel call to people is to repent and believe.

We have muddied the waters. Many have pointed this out. So many cliches.

We've tried to soften it because we know that the actual gospel message of scripture is extremely offensive to the unregenerate.

It's extremely offensive to the unregenerate. You're not only does

God have a kingdom, but I can't get into it based on anything I do because we want to do what we do, and then

God somehow owe us something. And a man -centered understanding of the gospel thinks, especially, and when we get into easy believism, we'll dive into this a little deeper, this understanding that I've done something to become saved.

No. God has saved you because he's Savior and Lord. And to touch briefly on the lordship salvation issue, in scripture, it's not an issue.

There is no controversy. We make a controversy out of it. And so a lot of this comes back to a lot of the

Hiles, Jack Scott, independent fundamentalist Baptist teaching where we want to take everything out of the gospel except for a prayer or an easy believism or a one, two, three, repeat after me, get out your free card, punch your ticket, and you can go off and do whatever you want, even though Paul in Romans 6 makes it pretty clear you can't.

But it goes back to that. We've removed all the offense, and it's just simply God's doing the best he can.

Lord, if only he, if you would just do this or that. Well, that man -centered understanding of it makes

God a colossal failure. The God -centered understanding is that God will accomplish everything he's decreed to accomplish.

All we do is declare that Christ has died for sinners. You're a sinner.

Repent of your sin. Put your faith and trust in the fact that Christ makes atonement for sin, and you can't.

And to me, it's really that simple because scripture knows nothing of the Lord's truth. Christ has all authority in heaven and earth, whether you recognize it to borrow the term or not.

The question is, as Dan pointed out very correctly, when you've been presented with that information, what are you doing about it?

Is the organ working tonight? Wait a minute. Let me... Hey, man.

Andy, let me say this. I'm glad to hear somebody else say can't. That's how

I say that, too. Recognize that the Southern term is cannot. Turn it into can't.

And then you take ain't, and then combine the two. Can't. Can't. Can't do it.

Can't never could. That's right. Oh, all right,

Claude. It's your turn, buddy. How about get Tyler? Tyler? Yeah, it's

Tyler's turn. Or do you have something to say for him? I have the next one saved for him.

Okay. Okay. Go ahead, then. I'm ready. But I don't want you to be afraid to step on any toes, and I know you're not afraid to.

What is this gospel response, this call to the response of the gospel?

What is it not? All the things you've heard over the years. Don't be afraid to step on toes.

It's not a suggestion. It's a command. It's not take it or leave it.

It's accept it or reject it. It's heaven or hell.

It's black and it's white. There's no in between. The gospel call. I would actually push back just slightly on that.

When you said accept or reject it, you're already in a state of rejecting it. You have to come to a place of accepting it.

I'm referring back to what Dan was saying, that recognition. Because you talked about James White.

There's no neutral. That's what I was getting at. There's no neutral place, no matter what anybody thinks.

A person has got to come to the place where they're honest enough to say, I accept it or I reject it.

I believe it or I don't. I'm redeemed or I'm damned. So, Claudia, are you saying we don't just give

Jesus a try? Yes, we don't have a sneaker size, you know, the little mini snacks of Jesus.

Just try Jesus. If you don't want him, you don't have to take no more. No, you get all of Jesus or you get none of Jesus.

What about asking Jesus into your heart? Does a person realize that their heart is connected to their body?

Their heart is connected to their head, that you can't know something in the heart until you know it in the head.

That's why it takes the gospel to be saved. I'm not going to start on that one because we'll need the organ quite often.

Rev it up there. Tyler's turn. Any other ones that you've heard over the years?

Incorrect gospel response calls to the gospel. Try Jesus, ask

Jesus into your heart. Well, I've heard a lot of times the whole gift understanding.

And don't misunderstand, people are very well -intentioned when they use this example.

It's a gift and it's a free gift and he's just giving it to you and you simply have to open it and receive it. And that's one of those examples saying when you've removed every bit of the offense and the understanding of why we need to be saved in the first place.

And I get where they're coming from. It is free, but it's actually not because it costs

God everything. It costs him his son. It's free in the sense that you can't earn it, you won't earn it, and God's saving you despite the fact that you hate him and you're living in your rebellion and your sin.

So that's another one I come in contact with sometimes. I'm sure you guys are similar to me.

This is just my opinion. I don't personally jump down somebody's throat or go out of my way to say, hey, you're way off base here.

If I have a relationship with them where I could, I might take them to the side or something. But I think we need to be careful not to embarrass our brothers and sisters in the moment, especially if they're really well -intentioned and trying to witness to somebody.

But it might be that you could have that conversation in a different format or setting. All right,

Tyler, give us some bread of the word and give us some bread of history. This easy -believism that we've heard, it crept in.

Where did it creep in? What is easy -believism, and how did it overtake our churches?

What has been the effect on our churches? Let us know what you're thinking. I think this thing we call easy -believism ultimately is about 500 years in the making.

If we backtrack to that moment we call the Reformation, about 1517, there was this return back to the notion that we can't do anything to earn

God's grace. We cannot make ourselves right with God. We need Christ because we are not

Christ. And there was this massive shift in the way we operate in the church, the way we serve, the way we worship, the way we pray, the way we did everything.

Back to God did what we can't. And then this was spearheaded into the next generation through the

Puritans who, in light of the fact that they couldn't earn anything, applied everything they had to knowing more about this

God who gave everything for the thing we couldn't do. And then the

Puritans were largely run off by tyrannical governments.

So we call this the Great Ejection. Some 200 pastors were forced out of their churches because they wouldn't bow the knee to England.

And so there was this recession of what we call Puritanism, of trying to purify the church and ourselves in light of the gospel.

And there was this recession in the church, and then we had this revival.

We call it the Great Awakening, which was again this return to you can do nothing, but Christ has given everything that is required.

And we saw this with like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield and some of those figures with this.

At the time, the church was very monotonous in its preaching, but you had George Whitefield who would pretty much do all the voices and act out the

Bible on the street corners. And he was very big on emotions and passion and this driving rhetoric.

And he wasn't just emotion, but the reality of God's grace made his heart sore.

And so after those years, we saw this recession and it actually swung the pendulum the other way.

Instead of having that hard, solid intellectual pursuit of God, it all went to emotion.

It all went to the feelings, which was not what Whitefield, I think, had in mind, but that's what it became.

And then you had what some have called the Second Great Awakening, which was not great.

And you had characters like Charles Finney and John Nelson Darby. Sorry, not

Delcey. Sorry, he was later. But Charles Finney was one of them that he was this big revivalist, but he was all emotion.

It was all getting people riled up in their feelings to do X, Y, and Z.

And he and many others proposed this checklist of how to get in with God.

But Finney was coming at it from this angle that it's about you. He didn't believe that Christ was

God. He didn't believe in original sin. He didn't believe in the atoning work of Christ. So you've taken out the whole person work of Christ, and now you're telling people to get saved by Christ.

It doesn't work. And so this is the shift that we saw.

And as this, quote, awakening progressed, this is the church that brought up the next generation and the next generation.

And we've had this cycle going on that this is how they were making disciples was based on that checklist of how to get in with God, how to basically undoing what the

Reformation started, that you can do nothing, but God has done everything. It was, I've done these things, so God give me.

And nowadays, we call that the prosperity gospel, this idea that God owes you money or he owes you wealth or that Jesus died to make you healthy.

And as someone who was largely brought up listening to certain churches that preach that message, this is something

I do not tolerate. This is something I have great issue with because this isn't the gospel.

And the fact that the church has bought into this for so long is very disheartening, that as Andy put so plainly, that it is a man -centered theology.

But the key word in theology is theos, which is

Greek for God. It's literally the study of God. But we've come at it from an anthropological standpoint, that it's about man.

It's not theology that we're teaching, it's anthropology. It's, I can be good,

I can do this, I can make God love me. And this has been the driving force with how we've largely,

I'm speaking in generalizations here, how the church has done evangelism, is you're a good person, you're just broken.

You're a good person, you just have a past. But that's not what, that's not how the apostles did it.

That's not how Jesus did it. The Bible says, because he did this, you can be saved.

My two favorite words in the Bible are in Christ, in Christ.

And that encapsulates the whole thing is how does a wretched, ugly, vile sinner like me be counted as in Christ?

How can that be about me? And in short, it's not because of anything I did. Ephesians 1 says that in love,

Christ predestined us to be, from before the creation of the universe, to be holy and blameless in his sight.

And that's not because of anything I could have wrought forth. That is all God. And building off of what

Dan said, the Bible calls Christ king. And that word Messiah literally means king.

And I actually have a Bible that uses that word Messiah every time you would see

Christ, because he is the anointed king of everything. And so in the

Messiah, in Christ, under that kingship is where Christians live.

Tyler, real quick historical point. Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't it in the

George Finney era where we see the rise of the modern -day altercals as well? Yes. I thought that was the case.

I'm just now getting started studying history in depth, so I'm not as equipped to really speak on that yet.

But I believe I remember reading that a lot of the way we see it conducted sort of found its origins right around in that time frame.

Was that in the turn of the century, 1900? Right around the aftermath of the

Civil War. Okay. Oh, okay. So 1880 -ish. Right. John Nelson Darby might've actually been part of that.

It was a little bit of that too. It was late 1840s. Yeah. Finney did something.

He had something called the anxious bench, and he would have this bench up front.

And if he thought that you were feeling something moving, he'd call you forward and have you sit on this bench and he'd get in your face and try to make you feel awkward enough to where you'd make a profession of faith.

Wow. At least nowadays, they leave you in your seat to try to make you feel awkward.

I see that hand. Yeah. Sing it again.

Oh, I've sat through several of those. Sermon lasts 30 minutes, altar calls an hour. But yeah, that sort of thing.

Yeah, and all that took place maybe an hour and a half from here. He ran up the northern part of central

New York, Charles Finney, the little revival circuits. The time period in which it all happened, it's possible that a young Joseph Smith was even influenced by it.

I don't have any proof of that, but it was all happening at the same time.

So sorry, guys, upstate New York kind of did a number on the rest of the country.

One of the things we talk about when we meet as a church is that we're going to try to undo the work of Charles Finney. It's going to take a lot.

That's why I'm glad I'm down here in North Carolina, where as long as you believe in fried chicken and casseroles, you're saved. Yeah, well, it led to the altar call.

Come on down. Your family will wait on you. Sign this card and you're saved.

You may not make it home tonight. You may not make it home tonight. And it's evolved into smoke, long music, dimmed lights, and taking out hell, taking out repentance.

You touched on that a little bit, Tyler, about changing the words and leaving out words. That happened in a recent convention that I'm familiar with.

It was reported that in one of our traditional hymns, that the word sin was taken out and replaced with mistakes.

And so we're trying to make the gospel more palatable and soft and easy.

In my opinion, a lot of it has to do with as churches grew, we want to have the biggest churches.

We want to have the biggest associations. We want to have the biggest conventions. So what does that take? It takes numbers.

It takes Moses and Nichols. And so to get that, you've got to inflate.

And to do that, you've got to make it easy. And so it's just the greed and the man -centeredness that we've talked about,

I think, have influenced much of that. That's an excellent point to raise because, to me, one of the biggest stains we have on Christianity today is the

Independent Fundamentals Baptist Movement. I can't speak for the Fundamentals Movement and other denominations, but I can speak for it in the

Baptist circles. And Jack Hiles's whole domination of the

Independent Fundamentals Movement was based on the fact that he had 10 ,000 in Sunday school. He had hundreds of pastors go to his church every year because whoever has the biggest church is obviously the most blessed by God because they're saving the most.

To this day, you'll find churches, and I will mention to you now because that's not the point, but there are still churches.

You can see them every Sunday talking about, we had this many saved, we'd baptize this many. And look, I'm all for getting excited when our pastor at my local church is all about, he wants to see people get saved and people get baptized.

But he comes at it from the God -centered understanding that we want that to happen because then we're seeing God work.

But in the Fundamentals Movement, it created a whole culture of, we have to get people saved.

And you have to go soul winning. If you're not going soul winning, you're not trying to get people saved. And I want to say, you couldn't save them to begin with.

And then the retort to that is always, well, you just don't want to try to present the gospel. Like, that's not what we're saying.

We're saying, present it in a God -centered way. When people like Matt and others do their street preaching, yeah, they would love it if the whole crowd got saved, but it's probably not going to happen.

So what Matt and other open air and street preachers are asking themselves in the moment, why does

God have me here for today? Is it to plant a seed? Is it to call and have a confrontation with someone and say, look,

I've just presented this to you. What are you doing with that? Is it to put an arm around them and just weep with them for a while?

You know, there was a lot of man -centeredness that has just permeated.

And when we get to the question about, you know, what does this look like in a healthy church? I mean, I could go for hours on this because it's so...

I cringe sometimes when I listen to sermons or things, and I'm like, what has happened to us?

Where are God's men to stand up and say, this is not the gospel.

This is not why we're here. You don't like the color of the carpet. Okay, change it at your own house.

I don't care. Let it be pink. Let it be purple. Let it be bright gold. Or we're going to have organ. Or we're going to have a piano.

Are we discipling Christians and calling the unregenerate to repent and believe? And that this man -centeredness has completely turned everything around.

What the Bible says we should be doing in reference to the gospel, we're doing the exact opposite. Yeah, yeah.

So if you've trained over a million pastors, you probably should be emulated and looked up to and probably have the best theology, right?

Yes, because he's trained more than all the seminaries combined. That's right. I have a big heart for open air street preachers.

I'm scared to death the thought of doing it. But I have such a heart for them because man, I bet you were going to get to heaven and find out some of the best, most humble saints of God were the ones that stood up in public.

And you don't know who's going by. And to preach the gospel, it takes a courage that sometimes

I have to wonder if I would have. Great courage there. Amen, amen. So relating it to the

Sunday AM service, what's the primary purpose? Is the

AM service, the sermon that we hear, is the primary goal evangelism or is it something else?

Matt, we'll go back to you. I would say the primary goal is not evangelism, but I think that can be incorporated into the service.

The main purpose of the corporate gathering is for the saints.

Corporate gathering is for the believers. You see throughout scripture,

I won't read them, but I've got a couple in 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians. It talks about the edification of the saints, the believers that are there to worship

God. The unbeliever cannot worship God. The corporate gathering is,

I was reading somebody, I can't remember who it was, they said they used the term, it's a time for God's people to come together and commune with God.

The unbeliever cannot commune with God. Do we exclude the unbeliever?

No, they're welcome to come in, but we're not to tailor the service to them.

I think one of your other questions, I don't know if you'll touch on this separate, but I think in preaching, ultimately the preacher after preaching the text somewhere in there should be pointing to Christ and you can use that in an evangelistic way, but again, that's not the primary goal is to reach the unbelievers, to worship with the saints, to come before God, worship

Him, lift each other up, sing songs, preach the word.

So yeah, let them come in, but the unbeliever is not the focus of the corporate gathering.

I heard a clip from Adrian Rogers today and I was telling the guys earlier that I could not find it.

I wanted to play it at this point in the podcast, but I could not find it and I'm gonna butcher what he said, but basically he was telling his congregation, we've got all this great stuff in our church.

We've got all these programs and we wonder why unbelievers are not coming in.

And basically he said, we shouldn't expect them to. He's like, you cannot find a verse saying that we design our church for the unbeliever.

But he said, I can point to you verse after verse after verse that we are to go out to the unbeliever and go out to them and preach the gospel.

So I think you're spot on, Matt. That would have been perfect for Adrian too.

I wish I lived where the happy Calvinist does. I think he and I would be friends. Can I throw something in there?

Absolutely. So I wanna read this bit from Herman Melville's book,

Moby Dick, because I think it's relevant to what Matt and Robert have been saying. And he writes, for I believe that much of a man's character will be found betoken in his backbone.

I would rather feel your spine than your skull. Whoever you are, a thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.

And I read that because A, he's commenting on the spine of a whale, which is a massive animal.

It had to have a massive backbone to support all of that body, this massive thing that God has made.

And B, what is the backbone of God's church? What is that key point of its skeleton that gives us its shape, that holds it together?

It ought to be the gospel in some function. And yes, Matt hit on that, A, we're not just trying to bring the goats in.

We're not tailoring it to the goats. If the unbelievers come in, absolutely, we will share the gospel, but the church is for believers.

But if we can move beyond the gospel, we've misunderstood the entire assignment here.

We hear the gospel every Sunday because we need it every Sunday. Honestly, we need it every day.

There is always some way to tie this back to the person and work of Christ because God wrote the

Bible, Christ is God. Therefore, it's all about Christ in some form or fashion that we can go to Ecclesiastes and see how messed up our world is and how empty it is and realize that Christ makes it full.

Thank you. I was gonna say, I know that's kind of another question, but I think on how do we keep the gospel front and center at the church?

And I think like Tyler was touching on seeing Christ in all scripture. I think that when

I was thinking about that, it just brought to mind the importance, I believe, of expository preaching and going through the text and looking at it.

And where I attend church now, our pastor, he likes to use the term, we need to read the

Bible Christianly. He's going through Deuteronomy right now.

And obviously we wanna read it, preach it in its historical context, who it was written to, all that.

But also now that we have the full revelation of God's word, let's look at that through the lens of Christ.

And ultimately in our sermons, no matter what we're preaching, point it to Christ.

And without consistent expository preaching, when you're just starting on your hobby horse topic, there's a good chance you may not ever get to Christ from that.

And I think I wanted to touch too, I wanna think when Dan was talking about earlier about the part of the gospel, as far as God's kingdom.

I think one thing as far as talking about unbelievers coming in, we kind of lose track of it.

The gospel is not just how we get saved. There is a lot more to it.

I think we too often just, yeah, focus, just laser in on that, getting people saved.

And that's all the gospel is. When it's so much more than that, it is for the believer.

And as Tyler said, we should be hearing the gospel every time we meet as Robert read earlier.

And I know that's Claude's go -to verse is first Corinthians 15, but in verse one and two,

Paul says, it's basically says, not only did the gospel save you in a justification point, but it's the gospel that keeps us saved.

So we need to continually be hearing it, preaching it to ourselves, bringing it to mind all the time because the same work that saved us is currently saving.

It's keeping us safe. It's going to save us in the end. It's all the way there.

It's a one -time shot and we're done. And I appreciate you bringing that question back into the conversation tonight, because I wanted to get that question and we're running out of time.

And I want to be gracious and mindful of everybody's time. These conversations that we have are just so broad and we could have such longer conversations, but thank you for bringing that question back in.

I want to get one more question and I want to ask it to Dan.

And then Claude, if you wouldn't mind presenting the gospel to our viewers and to us, because we need to hear the gospel as well.

And Matt, would you close us in prayer once Claude finishes? But Dan, here's the last question of the night. Approaching the gospel and your children.

Yeah, that one's important. I'm glad you asked the Presbyterian. I did not say that.

Here's the thing. As Christian parents, we ought to be raising our children to believe the gospel.

And that should just be like the baseline, what you tell them from the time they're old enough to understand what anything is.

They're learning what a truck is. They're learning what Jesus is. He should be as much a part of their reality as anything else, because he is, he's their creator.

I asked my two -year -old, a little girl, I said, who made you? She goes, cutest little voice ever.

God made me. You teach them who they are.

I mean, they're going to get themselves into trouble. That's what kids do, like nine times before breakfast.

And in those moments, it's true though. And in those moments when they do wrong, that's the perfect opportunity to show them you've done wrong.

You have to be punished. But it's times like these where I'm going to tell you that you can be forgiven through Christ by trusting in him to forgive you of your sins.

It should be as practical as drinking a glass of water or breathing air.

And that's how we should raise them up. And that doesn't matter if you're

Baptist, Presbyterian, how you view them as being a part of a covenant or not. What you do with your children is you raise them to be believers because in the end, no matter what your convictions are on all the rest of it, you want the end result to be that they trust in Christ.

So you put the gospel in front of them because gospel is the power of God and the salvation to everyone who believes.

So you put the gospel in front of your kids and you don't stop putting in front of your kids even after they believe. Just keep on going.

Keep on running with it. And when they're 40 years old and moving off into a different state or whatever, you preach the gospel to your kids.

Yeah, regardless of your belief on baptism, we want all our children to be part of the new covenant in Jesus' blood.

Right. Yeah, I just imagine driving down the road like I used to do when mine was little and you see a cow in the middle of the field and you ask him, what is that cow?

What does the cow say? And then you just include on in there who made the cow.

So Claude, I'm going to turn it over to you and then brother Matt. So simply and straightforward,

I'll quote scripture here. All things Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11, all things have been handed over to me by my father.

And no one knows the son except the father. And no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom his son chooses to reveal him.

And Jesus said, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

He said, take my yoke upon you. Learn of me for I am meek and lowly. You will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

There's been a lot of, we've done a lot of talking tonight and we've done a lot of, and I'm glad this is recorded.

Let me just say that. Let me just say amen to all that's been said here tonight. But bottom line, the gospel is the power of God and the salvation.

The simple facts are that there's none good, no, not one that we can't earn or merit our way to heaven.

That the only way that a man, woman, boy, or a girl can be redeemed is that when the

Holy Spirit of God regenerates our heart, gives us a new heart and a new mind where we can actually respond appropriately to God.

And the appropriate response to the gospel is this, repent, turn from your sin, believe on Jesus Christ.

I say it all the time. Cast yourself on him wholeheartedly.

Nothing held back. Cast yourself on Christ. Let him be your hope for salvation.

That the reality of the truth of the scripture that teaches us that says Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that our sins were propitiated, that our sins were atoned for on the cross of Christ.

And that he died there, cried, it is finished. He took upon him the wrath of God for our sins.

He was buried. And on the third day, he arose again. He ascended to the father where he ever lives and makes intercession for us.

Go ahead, brother Matt. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for the good news of the message of the gospel that we have discussed tonight, that we read throughout your word, dear

Lord. And just thank you for the beauty that it holds. I just thank you for the opportunity to gather with these other brothers tonight.

I thank you for faithful brothers that love your word, love you, are willing to take the time to have these discussions, to, as we mentioned, even with a corporate service, but in these small groups as well, just to edify each other, that we can learn from one another and hopefully that we can share the truth with others who may be watching as well.

But just thank you for bringing each of us together. I thank you for those who weren't able to meet with us tonight.

I know some different things were going on, but faithful brothers is there as well, dear God. Just thank you for this group and just pray that you might use this discussion to draw someone to yourself, dear

Lord. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys for your help tonight.

Thank you everybody for watching. Remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ.