Provoked - How to Witness to the False Converts in Your Life

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"'Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

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On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

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And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

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That's Matthew 7, 21 through 23. What's up, everybody? I am Zach and this is

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Desi. Hello. How's it going? It's going well. I'm happy to be here. Sweet. So we are

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Provoked. If this is your first time tuning into this podcast, really simply, we wanna help our

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Christian brothers and sisters preach the gospel better, become equipped to do that successfully and go rescue babies at abortion mills where you're at or where we're at.

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We think the issue of abortion is a pretty important one. Right. Yeah. That's what we wanna do.

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I got a question for you, Des, maybe before I get into my typical spiel. What if a

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Christian responds and says, well, preaching the gospel, it's just not my thing. You go and save babies, but I really don't feel like I need to do that.

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I don't feel like this is really God's calling or purpose for me. What would you say? Yeah. I know there's like a really good response.

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I was trying to think of it. I would just say, what do you mean? That's what we're called to do as Christians.

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It's not your thing. That's like saying my thing isn't worshiping

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Jesus. I don't know, it's just a weird thing to say. That is our calling as Christians. Every Christian is called to share the good news about Christ.

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Yeah. Because once God saves you and gives you a new heart, that is our calling to go in, share the good news with all of creation.

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So it's just, I don't know. I shouldn't say, I've said that before. I said that when

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I was first saved. I was like, oh, it's not like I'm a weirdo evangelist or something because our culture has so taught us that it's a bad thing to share the gospel.

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It's a bad thing to go against anything that's contrary to what popular cultural belief is.

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So I would say it's not unheard of or like it's a natural kind of thing.

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I think when you're first saved to still have the ideology of the world in you, but it is the calling of every

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Christian to share the gospel in some form. It doesn't look the same for everybody, but we are called to share the gospel with people in our life.

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I'm just saying, not everybody's a street preacher. Not everybody's gonna have the same types of obviously influence or caught like special giftings.

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Like there's street preachers and there's moms and you know what I mean? Like there's all sorts of, we're gonna be sharing the gospel in different ways, but it's gonna be the same message.

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That's good. Yeah, and it is weird. That's kind of a weird question coming from the Christian. You know, when you go into the scriptures and Jesus says stuff like, if you would obey my commands, then you will love me.

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And so obedience is like the heart cry of the Christian, like from point one to where you're like, oh,

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I wanna turn from all this lawlessness of my life and I wanna turn to Jesus in obedience. So to say, you know, it's not for me as almost saying like, well,

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God clearly specifies this in his word that I'm to do that. It's a command from Christ. How could I not doing it?

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That's why it's so weird. Right, it's like, you see a house on fire and there's a bunch of people inside and somebody is like, are you gonna go help him?

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Let's go help him. And you're like, not really my thing. Yeah, it's not my thing. Okay, yeah. So it is a command.

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Jesus is Lord. He says, why do you call me Lord and do not do what I say? He says, the basis of our

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Christianity is the Lordship of Jesus. And the scriptures say, we can't say that, but by the Holy Spirit is something the

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Holy Spirit really produces within us. This confession of Jesus's Lordship and its subsequent, you know, subservience to his

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Lordship. Right. But how could we, how could we look at the scriptures and it's clear commands in the example of Jesus and say that's not for me.

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Right, and if we love God with all of our heart, mind and soul and love our neighbor as ourself, how could we not share the most loving, truthful thing that we could share with them?

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Yeah, that's a good point. Okay, what about the question here, the response when it comes to abortion?

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Cause we've actually gotten a lot of people lately have said, you guys are just an abortion church, that's your church and you've made it a primary kind of salvificly binding issue, which we would say, show us where we actually done that.

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Cause that's like wrong though. Yeah. But people could say, hey, you do your abortion thing.

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Why are you making, why are you, and maybe this is better, a more simple way to put it. Why are you putting the issue of abortion on such a high level other than the other issues or other ministries that we can be involved with?

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What would you say? I would just say, well, this is the great evil of our age. This is the preeminent evil that's happening right in front of us.

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Image bearers of God are being destroyed every single day and it's legal and it's happening all day, every day, you know, by the metric ton.

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So it's the, it is the driving force. It is a gospel issue,

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I believe. I believe that, you know, if you're okay with the destruction of human life, then you don't have an understanding of who

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God is and who we are. And yeah, that would be my response, I think. What about you?

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What would you say? In just a second, I got another question. So what if they say, hey, we're just called to preach the gospel.

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You know, why are you trying to change the world? Why are you getting involved with these social issues?

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Aren't you just rearranging the furniture on the Titanic? I mean, aren't we just supposed to go out sharing the gospel, what would you say?

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Right, I would say, well, preaching the gospel changes you so that you love the things that God loves and you hate the things that God hates.

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So when you have a new heart and your eyes are open and your mind, and you love

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God and you love your neighbor, you're going to then focus in on the things that are important to God.

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Yeah, it's good, textbook. And the thing is, maybe a couple of responses from those is we don't only preach the gospel.

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Yeah. I mean, we take our kids to sporting events and use the restroom and eat and -

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Help feed the hungry. Yeah, we do. Give to those in need. Yeah, we do all that. So we don't, to say all we have to do is preach the gospel,

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I think it's a way we pietistically or religiously alleviate ourselves from responsibility.

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Because if we can use pietistic language or the scriptures, you know, preach the gospel, it's almost like a trump card.

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It's like, I'm really using this to get away from what I really need to do. And take this scenario, say we're going to go preach the gospel in Mill Avenue or wherever, strip club.

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We're headed there and the car, Tony calls us and says, hey, some guy really close to you is taking kids into his home and killing them.

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We need your help. We really need your help. There's nobody around here. We know that you're armed, help.

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So what if I, do you think it'd be feasible and rational for me to say, you know what?

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The gospel takes precedence over that. Do you think that we should just continue to go to the mill? Yeah, no, that would be insane, right?

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That would be just crazy. Yeah, that'd be crazy because there are situational occurrences or situational happenstance, whatever it is, that take precedence over other things.

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Right. So I would say because of the urgency of the situation that babies are being slaughtered, human beings are being slaughtered and we can kind of get so jaded to that, so numb to that, that it does take a precedence over these other ministries that people will say, well,

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I'm doing A, B and C, but I would say, well, this is more important than that. Right, and we believe that abortion will be ended by the preaching of the gospel and by God's people going out into the world and preaching the gospel and changing hearts and going and interposing and going to the abortion clinic.

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So it's like, it all goes, how could you say, isn't it about preaching the gospel?

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Well, yeah, we're using the gospel to end abortion among other things, right?

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Absolutely, yeah. So it may be a little bit different of an opening. I just wanted to get into some hot button questions, but thank you for watching us.

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We are so thankful for all the comments and all the shares and everything that goes into making this happen.

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We're so thankful for Pastor Jeff and Pastor Luke and all of the leadership and all the guys here that make it happen on a daily basis.

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We would say, if you could go to Apologia Studios and become an All Access members, because what you do is you don't only receive from all of the hard work that goes in to make this studio happen and all of the content that flows out of becoming an

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All Access member and being joined to the academy there. So you're not only being a consumeristic type of Christian, but you're also being somebody who pours back in.

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So don't just be a taker, be a giver, because as you do that, you'll keep the lights on, you'll keep everything going, which we wanna keep going.

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We don't do this to get rich. We're sucking if we, oh,

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I said the word suck, I'm gonna get comments for that. We're doing really bad if we're doing all this for money, using, as people would say, religious manipulation to get people to give you money, which, yeah, we would be horrible at that.

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We're not doing it for that purpose. We're not doing it for our own vainglory. I think, and I've seen a lot of videos of just men using religious manipulation in the form of the way that they pray.

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And just as a narcissistic means to gain glory for themselves.

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I think there's nothing, I don't know if I hate anything more than that on the planet, is narcissistic religious manipulation just to tell people, hey, give so we can become wealthy.

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Disgusting, yeah. Yeah, it's repulsive to me. So we don't do that. We don't ask for support for those ends.

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We really want the support to come in so the gospel can go out. And also I would say, a lot of people that listen to our show, they'll send us messages like, hey, can you give me some pointers on just getting started?

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And I'm super new to this, and I love getting those messages. But when you have

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Apology Access, you have access to literally thousands of videos of on the street evangelism, sermons, just so much good stuff that's going to equip you to go out so that you can watch that and learn.

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And you can watch the back and forths between Pastor Jeff and pro boards or atheists.

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And just listening to the dialogue, it really helps you to learn. It helps you to learn how to have a biblical response, seeing other

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Christians out doing it, I think gives you boldness to go, you know what? They can do it,

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I can do it too. So I just think it's such a blessing to be able to equip you to do the work of evangelism.

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Oh yeah, it's amazing. And I think, because we biblically counsel probably 90 % of our time, maybe more than that, because the church is growing so much.

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And by and large, you know, ask somebody, why do you come to Apologia? Why do you want to become a member or excuse me?

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How did you hear about us? They're like, well, I was watching Pastor Jeff talk to a Mormon on the street. So that just interaction, bold interaction and didactic interaction that Jeff provides as well as others, which is didactic means teaching.

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It's just so appealing. It's what the Christian church is so hungry for. And I think in a huge way, they're not getting it from their pastors.

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You know, they're not being really led out into the field and they're not seeing that played out and exemplified in the life of their pastors in a didactic way.

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So that's why they're so hungry for it on the YouTube. And then they find it and then they feast and they grow. Which is amazing.

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I mean, of course, Pastor Jeff is second to none in his capability of doing that. But you know, what I really would want to see is their own pastors doing that, leading them out into the trenches, you know, as we're called to do.

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So before we get into the kind of the meat of our topic today, is there anything you wanted to talk about before we get into the?

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I don't think so. Okay, cool. How's your week been? It's been good. You've been busy. Yeah, I mean, I had a really good conversation right a couple hours ago with a young man and super new to a salvation.

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I mean, like a week into it. So he was saying, what do I have to do to be saved? And am

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I supposed to work and gain myself? What is the difference between all these other religions? What's baptism? So it was so refreshing to have somebody so new and to be able to say, well, let's look at what the scriptures say and preach the gospel and say, how do you know that you're saved?

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And talk about, you know, just the fundamentals of the faith in a really new way.

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And I love it for me, cause I say it so many times, it just reminds me of how to go through it.

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But it was super encouraging. So super encouraged by that, discouraged by what's happening in the

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SBC. You wanna explain that a little bit? Yeah, so, you know, the

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SBC had their main convention this week. Don't know too much about it other than the fact there's 20 ,000 to 40 ,000 different pastors who represent millions of Christians.

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The SBC is the biggest denomination in the United States. And so Free the States, some other guys that we know came,

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Darren Stead, you know, people from Operation Save America, they went there. But Bill Askell, he stood up and wanted them to vote on a resolution to really change their stance on abortion from pro -life regulationism and criminalism, which accomplishes nothing to the abolition of abortion.

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And it did pass, which is heroic, like historic event in the

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SBC for that to happen. Right. Because, I'll say this a nice way,

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I guess they've been compromised in their position for so many years. I really wanna say it a tactful way, in a gracious way.

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But to see leaders within the SBC say, ignore this resolution, we find no reason.

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And actually people posting saying, you know what, we need to maintain our incrementalism. And we need to actually not even address, some guy wanted to table the resolution, meaning,

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I don't ever wanna hear again, this plea for the convention to actually consider abortion murder and give equal rights to the person in the womb.

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And then I'm thinking, gosh, my pastor or a leader ever said those words, how can

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I ever treat him as a leader? Yeah, yeah. So it's depressing for that to happen.

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But I'm super thankful for all the work that went in there. But I mean, for me to listen to that,

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I guess as a man and I think you feel the same way. And I had posted about this a few hours ago. I don't think there's anything more disgusting and repulsive and sickening and disheartening and really destructive than a cowardice.

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Yeah, because that spills out into all other debauchery. You know what I mean?

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Oh, totally, yeah. It's cowardice that would allow child sacrifice to happen.

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It's cowardice that brings his wife to the abortion mill. It's cowardice to attack young children or, you know what

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I mean? It's all just spills out into so much sin. Oh, sure, it's cowardice. I mean, look at the cowardice of even those individuals that said, hey, let's not broach this topic.

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Then babies will continue to die. It spreads out.

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And of course, these are spiritual leaders that Christians are looking to and they're saying, oh, really, that's the way I need to act.

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And just kind of, let's just pick, you know, kick this pro -life political football around for the next 80 years and have these babies die.

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That's how destructive it really is. So that's just been kind of discouraging, but hopeful in what

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God's been doing. I'm so thankful for you guys that have been out there. Yeah, definitely. So we are gonna be talking kind of about a controversial issue, actually issues

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I don't think a lot of people talk about. And that is kind of how to share the gospel with a family member or a friend who you believe to be a false convert.

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So how to kind of broach that subject, because I think we all understand. And I've had so many conversations with people and I've said, hey, are your parents saved?

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And they say, oh yeah, my mom, she's definitely saved my dad. I don't know. You know, I really don't know. I don't,

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I don't see that. I'm like, oh yeah. Oh, I don't, you know, there's no real signs of life there. There's no fruit

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I really couldn't tell, you know, based upon an unbeliever and my dad or whoever it may be,

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I really couldn't tell that they're a Christian. And so the Bible is very, very clear that there's gonna be false converts, that there's gonna be tares in the midst of the wheat, tares being false converts and then the wheat being genuine believers.

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And so I think one of the most difficult scenarios or difficult conversations that you can have with a sister, brother, friend is to bring up this situation or to bring up this issue of, hey, you know, based upon your life,

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I'm coming to the conclusion that you really don't know Christ. Can we talk about that? So that is the kind of the meat of what we're gonna talk about today.

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Go ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say, it's interesting that it's a not talked about situation, like, you know, openly, but within Christendom, I feel like it's a really common issue that we're coming to, especially in America, because of what, you know, has been preached for years, the lack of preaching, you know, the lack of faithfulness in the pulpits.

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And now so many people have people around them that are false converts.

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And so it is a common thing. I mean, I get into these conversations all the time.

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We got, what started this was a message we got about somebody asking, how do I approach my family member who's saying they're

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Christian, but these are the things that are coming out of their mouths. And so it's all the time we encounter this.

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It's just not like outwardly spoken because it's so taboo in our culture right now. Christian culture too.

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Oh, and our broader culture. Right, of tolerance and, you know, judge not.

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Yeah, like it's just so taboo to question someone's faith. Oh, exactly, because you're not tolerating them.

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And it's an incredibly uncomfortable conversation. Some of the most explosive conversations that I've had are with people when

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I've had to say, based upon your life, we really need to talk about the nature of true salvation.

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And we have to do it with grace and I won't get too far ahead of myself. But here's the first question I have for you.

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Can we talk to our friends about this type of situation?

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Because I think an initial response and maybe somebody who's even watching this is gonna say, hey, how can you talk to somebody about the nature of their salvation when you can't see their heart?

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Right. What do you think you'd say? That's nowhere in scripture. Right. Yeah. And this might be the most controversial thing that we say in this episode is

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I can't see anywhere in scripture where it says that we cannot see a person's heart.

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Because somebody will say that. How dare you judge me? Right. You're so judgmental. You can't see my heart.

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You don't know who I am. Right. And it's an immediate defensiveness, which I think is really part and parcel, or I think it's really revealing when you defend.

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It's really, kind of even in that, it's revealing something to you. Right. Because when the word of God is brought to a

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Christian and you're challenged by it, the Proverbs says that when we were corrected or reproved that we accept that.

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Right. So if somebody comes to me and says, dude, the word of God says this, I should be saying, you know what, this is what the word of God says.

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Even if your initial reaction is fleshly, maybe in your sin or your pride, you're like, no, you kind of buck up against, but because you have the

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Holy Spirit living in you, you will be corrected. You will be humbled by it.

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And you will say, you know what, I was wrong. Yeah, exactly. And scripture will correct your way of thinking by power of the

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Holy Spirit. Yeah, that's what the Jesus being Lord means. It's like, wait, no, if this is what the word of God says, then

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I really got to take it to heart. And I want to take it to heart because I want my life to fall in line with his will for me.

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If this is what God is saying in his word, then thank you for bringing this to my attention, even though, and I think that was a really good explanation.

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And I think it was really discerning to say, yeah, people are gonna respond fleshly, but ultimately you're gonna take heart to it rather than when the word of God is brought to your attention, just continually defend yourself, continually dig your feet in and say, you know what, the word of God says this, but I think that,

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I mean, that's indicative that you don't know the Lord, but we'll get more into that, kind of the nature of salvation and regeneration.

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But when it comes to that response, you can't see my heart.

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I don't believe that that's biblical and you guys can show comments, but I looked this up and I did a little study and 1

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Samuel 16, seven says this, but the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature.

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And I think this is kind of the verse people are appealing to when they're saying things like this, because I've rejected him for the

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Lord sees not as man sees, man looks on the outward appearance, but the

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Lord looks on the heart. I think people will point to that. I was looking that up right now. And say, well, you can't see the heart.

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Now that's not what is being said there. What is being said is that when we evaluate people or evaluate people that we don't necessarily look at their character, that we really don't pay attention to the inward man.

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I mean, you see that all throughout, you know, the sports industry and the movie industry, people are praising and loving people.

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And it's just based upon their looks. It's based upon like charisma and communication and boldness and really their characters atrocious.

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I mean, they're proud and they're self -serving and they don't care about people and they're wicked. I mean,

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I think that's what it's really talking about. And this has to go with, you know, who we put in places of leadership that we necessarily don't look at the heart, the character, those things that truly are of value.

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We look at external things. For sure, yeah. But according to what Luke says, is that we can know about the person's heart based upon the words that come out of their mouth and the actions that they do.

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Now that's not synonymous with the claim that I can know if a person is saved.

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So we're not saying by saying you can know about the condition of a person's heart that you can ultimately know about their eternal salvation.

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And I had a great conversation with Joy and she was so eloquent in the way that she explained this. She said, you know, we don't see a human life as God sees outside of time.

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He doesn't see a contingency of events. He doesn't see moment after moment. He sees it all beginning, of course, from beginning to the end, the scriptures say.

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So we don't know ultimately when they're gonna come to the Lord if they're not. We can't say, okay,

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I can see your heart, therefore you're not saved. But we should be able to see and know about the heart.

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Look at Luke 6, 43 for 45. I think it's very clear about this is for no one, no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again, does a bad tree bear good fruit.

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For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.

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The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil.

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For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. Very clear, so your mouth and your actions are a window into the status of your heart.

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I mean, I think that's clearly what it's saying. And so what we're getting at is that you can talk to your mom or your dad or your brother, your sister, your friends, whoever it may be, and you can get an evaluation and assessment of the condition of their heart based upon the words that they say.

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If they're not bearing fruit of regeneration, then you can come to the conclusion that they need to examine themselves to see if they're in the faith.

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So we would say, okay, you know, Jimmy, you're professing

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Christ, but I don't see any good fruit. I don't see any real change in your life. And so I'm gonna ask you to examine yourself to see if you're in faith.

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1 Corinthians 13, five says, examine yourselves to see whether you're in the faith, lest you, or it says test yourselves.

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I'm sorry, let me repeat that. So it says examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourselves?

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This is important, that Jesus Christ is in you unless you indeed meet the test.

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So Paul is saying the test is Jesus has to be in you. And if Jesus is in you, of course, by way of the

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Holy Spirit, John chapter seven, Jesus saying the Father and the Son coming and making their home in their heart. That's really,

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I think, definitional of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, God himself in your heart. If God is in you, there's going to be change.

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And so maybe we can get into that. Yeah, yeah, Paul Washer. So I'm gonna show a clip real quick, and I think

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Paul Washer really succinctly explains this. You ride to church late, and I ask you why you're late.

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You say, well, I was coming here, the tire got flat when I was changing it, the lug nut rolled out of my hand, it rolled into the middle of the road, and I wasn't thinking, and I went out there and picked it up, and when

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I picked it up, it stood up five feet in front of me, there was a logging truck weighing 30 tons going at like 120 miles an hour, and it ran me over, and that's why

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I'm late. And I go, anybody who says that, there's only two possibilities. He's a liar, or he's kind of picking out of his mind.

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You know that's true. How can you have an encounter with a logging truck and not be changed? Now what's bigger, a logging truck or God?

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Having an encounter with God, although a person's conversion differs from person to person, different things happen, and we need to be very, very careful how we judge a person's conversion, but to assume that a man can have an encounter with the living

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God in conversion, and it not create something of a crisis leading to change, is absolutely absurd.

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One of the greatest, one of the greatest illustrations of repentance in the entire body, in the entire

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Bible, is the Apostle Paul. Now I want you to think about this. Paul heads off to Damascus, and as he's going down the road, he believes that Jesus Christ is the great, or the person named

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Jesus is the greatest blasphemer that Israel has ever known.

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He believes that the Christians are vile, vermin, and ought to be extinguished in the name of God.

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He has an encounter with the risen Lord. Now I want you to know what happened to this man.

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You remember that three days afterwards, he sat in the dark. He did not eat or drink, he was totally blind, and that represents something very important to us.

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What is repentance? It's when your entire reality has been disintegrated.

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Okay, I think we'll stop it up there. He's going into, of course, Paul's conversion. Goes from a guy that was collecting coats as Christians, or Stephen was being martyred, of course, consenting to the murder of Christians, to now he's completely changed.

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So what's the basis of what he's saying? What's the basis of what he's saying? Is that when you encounter

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God, when you encounter the living God, there is no way that you're gonna come walking out the same person.

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You're gonna be changed. Just listening to that is like bringing tears in my eyes, thinking about my own conversion and when that happened.

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Christians can look back, and even if it's not like I was saved, some people have like, I was saved at this time, but I remember clearly the time in my life when everything was just obliterated.

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It's like everything comes crashing down and God makes you a new person.

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And so how on earth, like he said, it would be absurd to say that somebody could encounter

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God and not be changed. Yeah, that's right. So now we're getting into the nature of regeneration.

29:25

Regeneration is going from death to life. Ephesians two says, as for you, you are dead in your transgressions and sin.

29:31

And then it goes on to say, but God being rich in mercy makes us alive in Jesus. So Christianity is not just some nominal title.

29:38

It's not just some religious tribe that you belong to. It's not salvation by association.

29:44

Mommy and daddy took me to church and then therefore I'm a Christian. Christianity is a born again experience.

29:51

God in his mercy and his grace sovereignly makes you alive. So he takes out the stony heart,

29:58

Ezekiel chapter 26 says, and he gives you this heart of flesh that wants to obey really.

30:03

I guess the number one or maybe the first sign of life when it comes to how do

30:09

I know that I'm a Christian is you have this heart that wants to obey God. And I remember for myself, not that I'm the example, but man, at 18,

30:17

I only wanted to do the smoke, weed and grow it and party. And I just had no concern for the law and the things of God.

30:24

I wanted to do it. A buddy invite me to church. I'm like, you do what you do. I'll do what I do. And then all of a sudden,

30:30

God, by his grace, I mean, we didn't grow up in a Christian home. It's not like I had all these spiritual influences or anybody manipulating me religiously.

30:37

I just was like, I went back to the apartment and the guys were smoking bowls. And I was like, we need to read the

30:45

Bible. I need Christ. I wanna follow Christ. And their eyes just opened up like saucers and they were like dripping hard.

30:51

And I'm like, guys, I gotta make some changes here. I'm following him. I can't walk in the darkness and walk in the light.

30:57

So that there's this, from the heart of the newly saved

31:03

Christian, there's this desire to obey God, to love like Paul Washer would say, to love the things that God loves, love him firstly and hate the things that God hates.

31:14

So this is what regeneration means. And so what we're saying is that when somebody calls himself a

31:21

Christian, maybe to simplify it or consolidate the thought a little bit more, when somebody calls himself a

31:27

Christian and they love the things that God hates and they hate the things that God loves and they really don't have a desire for the word of God or the people of God or him himself or any type of worship, you couldn't tell their lives.

31:40

You couldn't tell the difference between their lives and the lives of an unsaved person. Why would we expect them to be saved?

31:48

Right. And I was a false convert. And I know that what changed in me is prior to my conversion,

31:56

I thought I was a good person. And I didn't want the things of God. I didn't wanna go to church.

32:02

I didn't wanna read the Bible, but I thought I was a good person. I was wise in my own eyes.

32:08

And I thought like, I'm good. But when

32:15

God saved me, I realized I was in trouble and that I was a sinner. And then

32:20

I was all of a sudden hungry for God's word. And like you said, wanted to obey, even though obviously there's sanctification and lots to grow and learn when you're brand new, brand new saved.

32:33

I don't know how to say that. Anyways, you know what I mean? Yeah, newly saved. Newly saved. But yeah, that was for me was,

32:39

I went from thinking I was a good person to knowing, man, I am depraved. I'm a sinner and I've sinned against the

32:46

Holy God and I'm in trouble. Yeah, and that again is another by -product of the spirit of God.

32:53

You know, it's kind of like a tree in your life or maybe it's illustrated as a tree to where the tree is producing these things within you based upon the work of the spirit.

33:02

And that's like enlightenment. Like I'm coming into the knowledge of my sin not based upon anything that's self -generated.

33:09

That's the working of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit in your life. Ultimately, what we're saying is you don't see any fruit of the spirit in the life of an individual.

33:16

How can they possibly be saved? Because the basis of our salvation is the inviting presence of the

33:22

Holy Spirit that he sovereignly just comes into our life, not based upon anything. It is really based upon election and grace and mercy.

33:30

He makes his home in our heart and then he starts to produce these things. Obedience, love for God, love for the word of God.

33:37

Yeah, joy. Look at all the fruits of the spirit. Patience, temperance, self -control, all of these things. And so fruit can be seen.

33:46

I mean, if you've got a tree and it's being called an apple tree, but it's not bearing apples, why would you assume that it's an apple tree?

33:55

Right, you wouldn't. If you've got a Christian who calls himself a Christian, but they're not bearing any fruits of true

34:01

Christianity, of new life, why would you call them a Christian? So now you have to get to the time and the place to where you come to a little orphan

34:11

Annie or whoever you're talking to, like Auntie Susie or Auntie Sally or Samson or something. And you're saying, hey,

34:18

I gotta talk to you. You're calling yourself a Christian, but I'm not seeing any fruit there.

34:24

And here's the other thing too, is between actual Christians, saved

34:31

Christians, regenerate Christians, we are called to rebuke each other, right?

34:37

And point each other to scripture. So now that you're calling yourself a Christian, you've stepped into the ring, right?

34:44

Because that's part of our job as Christians is to rebuke and exhort. And reproof. And reproof, right.

34:50

And we should be able, as Christians, what I'm saying is that even if there's, like you had said, an initial fleshly bucking up against that, there's gotta be, yeah, that's what

35:00

God's word says. Thank you for telling me that. You're right, I needed that correction. I want my life to fall in line with the word of God.

35:07

But if it's a continual defending and living with your feet planted on any other authority other than the word of God, you can't be a

35:17

Christian. What are some signs of life for a true Christian is when

35:23

Jesus is your Lord. He's your master. You're the one that you bow in subservience to his will.

35:30

You wanna do what his word says. You no longer self -govern. You don't live this autonomous life to where, you know what, the

35:37

Bible says this, but I say that. You don't say things like, you know what, the Bible says this, but I disagree with that.

35:44

I only believe certain aspects of the Bible. You know, like Si 10 Bruggencate would say, you no longer become the

35:50

Lord of your reasoning. Jesus becomes the Lord of your reasoning, meaning he's the one that calls the shots. And I believe in totality, what the word of God says, because I don't wanna get off too far here.

35:59

But when you're saying, hey, look at, I disagree with what Paul says, but I'm okay with what Jesus says, then you can't trust any of the

36:07

Bible because now you have become the arbiter over what's true or not in the scriptures. Right, or you take the

36:13

God of the Old Testament and pit him against the God of the New Testament, not understanding the deity of Christ, you know.

36:22

Yeah, the congruence of the covenants. The triune God, you know, the Trinity. Yeah, so you're manipulating that, not thinking about that God never changes.

36:33

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's just a sign, again, that you don't know God, that the spirit of God isn't in you, as the scripture says, giving you the knowledge of the things of God.

36:42

I remember right after I was saved, it was almost as if I was learning scriptural truths before I even read it, which was so weird.

36:49

I can't even, I don't, you know, I'm really skeptical, things like that. But I'd like be meditating in prayer and then

36:55

I'd read Matthew and I'm like, I feel like the spirit of God. In a way, he was teaching me these things as I was reading it, bringing these things to knowledge.

37:03

But when those things are just not grasped, we can know that the person isn't saved. The guy that, you know, lives life according to his dictates, you know, he's the governor of his life and it's not the

37:15

Lord. I mean, you can know that you're not, you're not in Christ, you don't know him. When your value system in life doesn't line up with God's, when you're living, you're the king of your life and he's not the king of yours.

37:30

And so maybe to get into a little bit of a controversial thing, politically is, you know, during the election,

37:37

I was saying things through Facebook, like, hey, look, you have to examine yourself to see if you're in the faith, if you voted for somebody like Biden.

37:45

I didn't say, you're not a Christian if you didn't vote for Trump. Didn't say anything like that. But here you have the leader, one of the most powerful men in the world, if not the most powerful man in the world, the leader of your nation.

37:58

The Bible says when the wicked rule, the people grumble and you know, that righteousness is built upon righteous leaders.

38:06

You know, the health of a nation is built upon a righteous leader. So as a Christian, you would wanna put somebody in a position of power that's righteous.

38:13

Ultimately, we didn't have too much of a choice there. Donald Trump, I don't believe is a righteous man. I don't believe he's a

38:19

Christian. There's no fruit there to really confirm that no matter what anybody says. Yeah. But to knowingly vote checkmark

38:27

Biden, knowing that he sanctions the slaughter of babies and the whole democratic party, really the foundation is built upon the promotion of homosexuality.

38:38

It's really a party that prizes and celebrates those things that God would say is an abominable, not just a sin, but an abominable sin.

38:48

How can you, how can that mix with genuine Christianity? How can that jive with somebody who's genuinely saved?

38:56

What I'm saying is that, no, the heart, your regenerate heart is screaming to you, no, this is wrong, that's evil, that's wicked.

39:03

Don't ever put somebody in that place of leadership. So that's where I'm coming from, you know, and -

39:09

And it's not part and parcel with, you need to be a Republican to be saved. No.

39:15

That is such a mis - It's a misnomer. It's just like, it's a false accusation or not.

39:21

There's all sorts of problems. The conservative party has enough problems of itself. Of course, not all conservatives are saved.

39:28

No, and of course there's probably many saved. And I think the conservative party has a much better platform than the slaughter babies and homosexuality.

39:37

They're not building their platform on that. But, you know, the reason why abortion has continued is a lot, in large part, is because the

39:45

Republican party, you know - Oh, you mean the Democrats? Oh, I understand because of the pro -life. We have the House, we have the

39:51

Senate, we have the presidency, we had SCOTUS and they didn't do anything about it. I mean, you know, so yeah, they're, anyway -

39:57

That's not the answer to end abortion is, yeah, exactly, because look at Ronald Reagan. And, you know, we had many, many

40:05

Republicans that were in office that it's been going on for 40, what, seven years?

40:11

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, that's a good point. We're not saying Republicans are our saviors or they're just the model

40:18

Christians, which many of them are not, you know. But what we are saying, maybe getting back to the main road of the topic, is that it's okay to sit down with your brother or your family member, your friend, your best friend, and just say, and work these things out, saying, look, you know,

40:34

I really got to bring these things to your attention because the worst thing that you can do, the worst thing a person can, someone can have is a false sense of conversion.

40:41

Yeah. You know, oh, I'm a Christian because I said a magic prayer or because like somebody published me, declared that, or my family member said

40:48

I was a Christian, but I really don't have the fruits. And then comes the day of judgment. And he's like, I never knew you.

40:55

Can you imagine those words being spoken to a person? The fear, the horror of that. And so the loving thing that you do is in, and maybe getting into the practicalities of how to share your faith or broach the subject with your loved one is in meekness and humility and, you know, slowness.

41:12

Just say, I want to do this because I love you. I care about you, but I'm commanded, like you said, to reprove and rebuke.

41:20

And based upon the words coming out of your mouth, maybe even the posts that I see on Facebook and your actions, you really are not showing the signs of Christian life here and examine yourself to see if you're in the faith and let me share the true gospel with you in a spirit of love and gentleness, because you're loving them.

41:39

Now they're going to say things like, how dare you judge me? Now here's the thing, the Bible says the spiritual man judges all things.

41:46

The Bible says that we are to make a right judgment. The Bible commands us to judge, but it says don't judge self -righteously.

41:54

I'm not going to go too far into it. I know we've said it before. Matthew 7, one's talking about a self -righteous judgment.

42:00

I'm not judging based upon the standard of God's word. I'm based upon my own bias or an opinion.

42:06

Now we can't judge like that, but we make judgments all the time. We're called to do that. I'm judging you correctly.

42:13

Yeah, I'm judging you, but I'm judging you based upon the word of God, the word of God is saying, and ultimately

42:19

I'm asking you to bring that to bear upon your life. Right, yeah, and do you love

42:25

Christ? Because if you love Christ, you're going to obey him. You're not going to promote the same sin that tortured him.

42:33

You know, I like what Spurgeon says, how could I play with the same, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, how can

42:39

I basically play with the same sin that killed my best friend? Yeah, how can we do that? How can I entertain that?

42:45

How can I promote that? If you love Jesus and he's your Lord and he saved you and you're so thankful, how could you promote the same sin that killed him?

42:56

Right, no, that's absolutely right. And yeah, so that's all we're saying and pretty much in the show is that, you should talk to your wife and I know it's a hard thing to do.

43:09

You should go take her out to dinner or I don't know, you know, cook her dinner and be gentle to her and love her and bring the subject up.

43:19

Hey babe, I got to talk to you. I just don't see the love of God in you, which is the ultimate test.

43:26

John McArthur even said that. He says, when it's all whittled down, do you love God or not? And if you love somebody, you're going to know that you love somebody.

43:32

I don't see the love of God in your life and I would want to share with you the gospel and cause you to examine yourself to see you in the faith.

43:38

They might really respond viciously and it's happened to me before. Incredibly, it's happened to you before.

43:45

I know throughout the years and your discussions with close friends that were demonstrably false converts, but you did it out of a spirit of love and gentleness and it is one of the most loving things that you can do to a person because you're saying,

43:58

I'm not going to let you, I don't know when you're going to die. You could die, you can get cancer, you could walk out in the street and get run over by a tank or probably not a tank unless you're like a third world country or like a steamroller or something, but you could die.

44:11

And I don't want you to face eternity and face the living God, having believed that you're a

44:16

Christian when you bore no fruits of that reality. Right, yeah, and also you're a slave to sin and I want you to be set free because that sin that you're enslaved with is going to lead to death and I want to see you free now and reconciled with God and have peace, so.

44:33

Right, and so maybe I'll just talk directly to the false convert. Yeah. You know, when we talk about regeneration and we talk about the nature of really what it means to be saved, we're not trying to harm you.

44:47

We're not trying to judge you. We're not trying to inflict any type of abuse on you.

44:53

That's not our aim. It's just, we want you to know Christ. We want you to be in the family of God.

45:00

We don't want you to go into eternity with that false sense of conversion. So we would just say examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

45:07

It's like Paul would say, is Jesus in you and is there fruits in your life? And the words that you say and the actions that you make, the decisions that you make in your value system, do they line up with what

45:17

God values in his word? Do you love his word? Do you want to know him? Do you love his people and love the worship and praise of God?

45:26

You know, if this is just not a reality, then we'd ask you to examine yourself in the faith. You know, are you just calling yourself a

45:32

Christian because you want to please people or remain inside of a family or a group? Don't do that.

45:40

You know, the best thing that you can do is actually be honest with yourself and reach out to a Christian and say,

45:46

I don't think I'm saved and I really love your help and I want to hear the true gospel. But typically, you know, if you're not saved in the words that I just said, it'll be, how dare you?

45:57

How dare you judge me? Look at this guy. You know, he thinks he knows me or, you know, he's judging me.

46:03

And typically the unbeliever will not respond with a soft heart. Oh, right.

46:09

It's a hard heart. How dare you say this? And you know what? That's your Christianity, Zach. And that's what your interpretation of the scriptures.

46:16

But I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to call myself a Christian, but really just bear no fruit of it. I'm going to live my life autonomously.

46:22

I'm going to be the king of my life, the queen of my life. I'm going to be the Lord of my life. I'm going to choose what

46:27

Bible verses I think are inspired and what aren't. But the genuine Christian will be softened to this.

46:35

Right. And we'll say, yeah, man, or maybe somebody that God's willing into the kingdom. Man is my life.

46:41

Does it line up with the word of God? Do you have like actual sorrow over your sin?

46:46

Like, can you, do you look at your life and are broken of the sin that you've committed against God and other people?

46:53

And you know what I mean? Like, is there true contrition of sin or is there just justification of that past sin?

46:59

So good. Yeah. That's exactly right. And I think too, like for a Christian that gets asked that, if a truly convert, a true convert, a true follower of Christ gets asked that,

47:13

I think the response should be in humility and to recount, yeah, let me tell you about how

47:20

Jesus saved me. Yeah, maybe I'm sinning over here and I need to repent for that. You're right. But let me recount my testimony.

47:27

Let me tell you about what I was like before and then how Jesus saved me and all the, you know, it just going over your salvation story is not sharing the gospel, but it does, it is witness to what

47:39

Christ has done. It bears testimony to it. Yeah. And so we would say, yeah, we have to bring these subjects up if we love our family members, if we love them, because look at the landscape of the

47:50

American Evangelical Church when it comes to the quality of churches, unfortunately, and the pastorate and the messages being preached.

47:59

You know, there's so many false pastors, false churches, compromised gospel messages. And that's why we say it all the time that the place to evangelize is the pews.

48:08

What does that mean? It's the people, there's so many people sitting in the pews under false shepherds. Right. Not hearing a genuine

48:14

Christian message or the genuine gospel in all of its, you know, components, necessary components.

48:21

And so of course you should expect there to be an incredible heightened populace of unsaved people in the church.

48:27

Right. And so we all, I mean, I can't tell you how many conversations we all have people in our lives that name the name of Christ, but they just don't bear the fruit.

48:35

Right. And so I think it's time for us in love and humility again, and meekness to talk about this.

48:41

Right. To get this out there, because who's talking about this? Nobody? Right, yeah. I mean, maybe amongst husbands and wives, they might say, you know,

48:48

I don't think, I like the names you come up with, Billy Bob, Jojo. It's saved, but you know, yeah, the other thing

48:57

I would say is a lot of people say this, because it gets frustrating. They say, you know, when does it become casting pearls before swine?

49:05

And I liked my old pastor, Joel Webben. He had a really good, you know, exposition of this verse.

49:12

And he said, you know, when you give the gospel to somebody and they reject it, and then you give it to them again, and they continue to trample it underfoot, you know,

49:23

God will do what he's gonna do with that person. The Holy Spirit's gonna move, or the heart's gonna get hardened.

49:29

But if they continue to trample what's holy underfoot, there is a point where you can stop sharing the gospel with them.

49:37

But I would say, you know, always leave that door open if it's possible, because you don't know when

49:43

God may save them, and they may come back and say, you know what, I've got questions about Jesus now.

49:48

It might be decades later. But I think there is a point where after you've shared the gospel and they continue to trample underfoot, that you -

49:57

You've got to. And that's just really good based on really good theology. And I think you had a good point leaving that door open.

50:04

And I think you lead the door open by not burning bridges, you know, by not being self -righteous and just wicked and mean and harsh with, especially your family members.

50:15

Because we know our family members can hurt us the most and we can respond the most, maybe abnormal in the way that we, we can respond very defensively and attack back.

50:24

And we just can't do that. Yeah. As Christians, we have to be able to keep that door open by not burning those bridges.

50:30

That's so awesome. I know, I had a childhood friend recently, just, I had to do this and say, you know what,

50:36

I don't think that you were born again by what's coming out of your mouth right now. She wouldn't look at scripture.

50:42

She wouldn't reason with me. She's promoting the things that God's hates. She's super prideful, hard, hard heart.

50:49

And she's like, you know, I'm blocking you now on Facebook, I'm blocking you on, don't message me anymore.

50:55

I don't want anything to do with you. And I was like, well, the last thing I put before, I'm hoping that she saw it is,

51:01

I'm not blocking you. So if you ever want to talk to me, I'm going to be here for you. And I'm praying for you. And I pray that she comes to the

51:08

Lord. I pray that I get a text that says, I want to talk, you know? So just, and she said some super hurtful things.

51:14

And that's the other thing is, it's so easy when we are offended because these conversations could get dirty, you know, like they'll attack you.

51:23

But still having that mindset of like, you love that person, no matter how they've reviled you, they're, you know, they're at enmity with God right now.

51:33

And so really the attacks against you is their hate towards God. And so you know what's lies ahead for them if they don't repent.

51:42

So let that be a motivator to go, to have pity on them, to have compassion on their soul and say, man,

51:49

Jesus was reviled and he didn't revile and return. So Lord, help me to, even though I'm hurt right now, to still keep that door open.

51:57

And Lord, if it's your will, save them. Good. Absolutely. Good job. You rocked it today.

52:03

Really articulate. Yeah, I did a good job. So hopefully that was helpful for you guys. You can comment in the comment section.

52:09

You can send us a message. We would love to come alongside of you and help you out practically. I know that when we talked about, a little bit about narcissistic pastors, which is something

52:18

I really want to get back into. Got a lot of messages from men. I was able to really help them out and kind of talk about that, even with their pastors.

52:26

And a lot of good fruit, actually, a lot of repentance there, which is amazing. So we want to help you in this area too. You know, if you need help with this and you want to message us, we'd love to have a conversation with you to help you kind of, you know, walk through this with maybe a spouse or a child or a brother or a sister, whoever may be your best friend.

52:43

You know, it's so crucially important. The fact of the matter is, you can know about a person's heart.

52:49

Even though people would tell you, you can't see my heart. Well, actually I can. It's because of the words that you say and the fruit that you produce.

52:55

You're going to produce evil fruit. If you're non -Christian, you're going to produce that good fruit that pertains to spiritual life regeneration.

53:02

If you're a genuine Christian. So let's evangelize the pews and let's start out by just the closest people around us.

53:09

Let's deal with the hate that can come at you and the attack that comes at you because their soul is worth going through those type of uncomfortable situations.

53:18

And as you do that, God will bless you with boldness and confidence. So we love you guys. Thanks for watching. And we'll see you later.