How has the Church Failed?

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00:01

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it! Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

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We're being delusional. Delusional? Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

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You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt.

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Is he hung up on me? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. And that, of course, is the great commission from Matthew chapter 28.

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What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio.

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This is Luke the Bear. I am flying solo today. As you can see, I have nobody with me.

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No Joy, the mama who has a new baby, which we're very grateful for and we're praising God for.

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She is awesome. If you haven't seen her on Facebook, she's a beaut. Georgia Summer Hunter is her name.

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Joy is on maternity leave and Pastor Jeff is in Kauai right now with Pastor Zach.

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So I'm flying solo. And I'm very excited, though, because I have a very special guest with me today who's a very dear friend of ours.

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And I'll get to him here in a second. But today, I specifically I want to talk about what is the mission of the church.

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And I want to look at even more specific than how has the church failed to live up to our calling with the great commission.

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And this is actually a little project I've been working on here for a little while. I did a three -part series in Kauai back in March, I believe, on the mission of the church.

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And we're going to be doing some little videos and stuff. And I may even have a small booklet in the works.

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I'm hoping to get done here next year or so. Anyways, let me go ahead and bring in our special guest,

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P. Andrew Sandlin. Welcome to the show, brother. Thank you, Luke. I love and appreciate you, dear friends at Apologia.

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I'm glad I can be back. I hope we can do it many more times. I look forward to seeing you at the RefCon here in about a month or so, actually.

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Yep, just two days shy of a month. So he mentioned it.

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I'll go ahead and talk about it. We've got ReformCon 2019 coming up here real quick. Like he said, two days shy of a month.

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It'll be here in Mesa. You can get tickets at reformcon .org. Super excited, like Andrew Sandlin said.

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Dr. Sandlin, he will be there. We'll have Dr. Joe Boot, Dr. James White. We'll have John Sampson, Jeff Durbin, Toby Sumter, CrossPolitik, Shialosians.

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And then the last day, of course, we have an in -abortion now day. I will be speaking, Zachary Conover, Pastor Jeff again, and our good friend

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Rusty Thomas. So we have a jam -packed conference. You can, again, get your tickets at reformcon .org.

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And we actually will hopefully be announcing here, maybe even today, a little special something for those who register by a certain date.

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So be watching for that. So, Andrew, what should we call you? What do you want us to call you? You can just call me

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Andrew, but only because you're my friend. I never know, because I know we're like on friend level now.

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We're Facebook officials, so I call you Andrew, but I don't know what you want to be called in the public sphere. You certainly may call me

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Andrew. That's fine with me. So, tell us about yourself. What do you do?

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And then we'll get into the discussion. Alright, just briefly, I am a founder and president of a conservative, distinctively

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Christian think -tank, Christian foundation, called the Center for Cultural Leadership, whose goal, in short, is to influence

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Christians, to influence the culture in distinctively Christian ways, with the goal, ultimately, of bringing all areas of life and thought under the authority of Jesus Christ and the

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Word of God. It's a think -tank. I joke with people, what do tanks do? Well, they run over things and they blow up people.

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Well, that isn't quite what our think -tank does, but we do blow up bad ideas, and we also try to replace them with good, biblical ideas.

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And we do it by writing and by speaking all sorts of books and lectures and traveling and so on.

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We've got two full -time scholars, two part -time scholars. And that's essentially what we do.

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I think that the website probably is up on the graphic, or will be, ChristianCulture .com, easy to remember, all written solidly, so you can find out more about us there.

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And I blog at DocSanlon .com, and you can find out about all the materials there.

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So that's the commercial, Luke. Alright, excellent. Thank you very much, brother. So, to kind of lead into this discussion,

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Well, that graphic does look good. By the way, I need to mention that the thumbnail graphic on YouTube may or may not be the correct graphic.

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Something happened and YouTube was not cooperating, so it might be the graphic from the last show we did.

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But regardless, it doesn't ultimately matter. So, to lead into this discussion,

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I read a small book by our dear friend Joe Boot called For Mission.

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Basically, it was a little short book, I think it was like 60 pages, maybe, something, on basically the mission of the church.

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And I was really just kind of blown away by how profound just that little book was, and been really influenced by that.

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Like I said, I did a three -part series in Kauai. And also, along with that,

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Andrew has been very influential in our ministry, especially in my life, in regards to the conversation of the

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Imperial Gospel. And so, in my mind, that kind of all ties together. And so, like I said,

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I'm working on a small project here. Actually, I interviewed Andrew, when was that? July, in Toronto -ish,

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Toronto -ish, Grimsby. And so, we'll have some stuff, hopefully, here in the next six months or so.

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It's going to be a little bit longer to get to that one, but regardless, I thought it would be a good opportunity, especially with everything going on right now in the news and in our culture as we're gearing up for this next presidential debate.

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There's been a lot of wackiness going on in the last week in regards to climate change.

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And then, also, even within the church, we've seen a lot this year, and especially in the last month or so, in regards to intersectionality and some of this racial divide and stuff like that, and socialism, social justice, all the stuff that's creeping into the church and is affecting the church, and that all kind of ties into this discussion.

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So, to start off, I want to just, I read Matthew 28, like I said at the beginning, and that's the

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Great Commission. Jesus came, or said to the disciples, with all authority, all authority, in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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And then, he doesn't just keep that authority to himself. He's giving that authority, then, to the disciples.

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And he says, go, therefore, we all know, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the

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Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's where people leave off. When you talk about the Great Commission, they read that, and they don't even read the part about authority, right?

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They just go, therefore. Go, make, and teach, right? That's what it's limited to. And it's like, well, hold on. There's more to it than that, because we're not just go, making, and teaching.

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We're doing it with all authority that's been given to us, and we're also then, in verse 20, to teach them all that Christ has commanded.

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And that's the other aspect that's often left off, is we're not teaching all that's been commanded.

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And so, ultimately, that's the mission of the church, right? Is to put all things under the submission of Christ, who is the ruling and reigning king of the universe.

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And so, in a nutshell, that's the Great Commission. That's the mission of the church. Before we then dive into how the church is feeling,

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Andrew, would you like to add anything to that? Well, you've said it pretty well. I mean, the only thing

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I can do, maybe, is elaborate. I think, in modern times, the Great Commission has been reduced to evangelism, which is getting souls saved.

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Of course, that's part of it, but you rightly pointed out there that the goal is to disciple the nations.

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The ethnos, the peoples of the earth. And that's not merely getting them converted, but also teaching them to obey the word of God in all aspects of their lives.

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The other thing you touched on, I really appreciate, is that stress on authority. And to me, that sort of links the

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Great Commission with the cultural mandate of Genesis 1. That man, it's called, godly man and woman, are called to extend a loving, godly dominion over the rest of the earth.

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God's deputizing godly people to do his work in the earth.

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Now, God, of course, is sovereign. He could come down and do everything on his own, but he's chosen not to do that. He's created man in his image, and so he's given man a great deal of authority.

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Under his authority, of course, limited authority, but nonetheless, he's granted authority. Isn't it interesting that there's that same idea, not just there in Genesis 1, but as you indicated,

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Luke, there in Matthew chapter 28, all authority is given to me, and he is transmitting that authority, we could say deputizing us, to exercise the right kind of dominion in the earth.

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In fact, I would say that the Great Commission is the cultural mandate adapted to the post -fall condition.

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Of course, had man never fallen, then there would have been no need for Christ to die and rise again.

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But of course, man did fall, and Christ did come, and shed his blood on the cross, and rose again, and is redeeming us, but he has given us, the

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Church of Jesus Christ, the responsibility to press those redemptive claims on the earth, and by redemption, he's not only redeeming souls, he's redeeming everything, according to Romans chapter 8.

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So the goal of the Church is to press the claims of Jesus Christ, the fully comprehensive redemptive claims of Jesus Christ, in all areas of life.

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Not just snatch a soul here and there, not just get a few people converted, but to press the faith everywhere, so that Christ is understood to be

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Lord everywhere. That, sort of in a nutshell, is what the Great Commission, linked to the cultural mandate, is all about.

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Right, exactly. And to kind of bring this back to the presidential race that's coming up,

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I think I stole this from Doug, our friend Doug Wilson. I think it was him.

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If it wasn't, forgive me, but I think it was him. He said basically, we're not trying to get

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Christ elected, right? That's not what we're doing with the gospel. We're not out there trying to get votes.

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No, he's already ruling and reigning, and our goal is to get people to submit to his lordship, not to vote him as president of the universe.

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Yeah, that's right. Many people don't understand that, but he's correct. Jesus Christ is already king of kings and lord of lords.

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The only issue is whether humans recognize it. Believers, true believers, do recognize it, and they bow the knee to Jesus Christ.

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I mean, the goal of evangelism is to tell the good news. The good news is that all of those who trust in Christ and bow the knee to him will become citizens of his kingdom.

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And so this election or that, though elections are important, doesn't have anything to do with whether Jesus Christ will be installed here or there.

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Jesus Christ was installed when he ascended, according to the book of Daniel. He's installed king of kings and lord of lords.

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Our goal is to press the claim so everybody in politics and everywhere else recognizes the claims of Jesus Christ as our savior king.

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Right, absolutely. Okay, so to kind of switch gears here for a minute, so what

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I really want to talk about is how the church then has failed in our mission, right? Yeah.

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And so specifically, well, we talk about this a lot.

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I would say that ultimately the reason the culture is what it is, the state of the culture, is a failure of the church.

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Yeah, I agree with that. Without getting too far off and going on another tangent, I think you and I would both agree that it has a lot to do with faulty eschatology.

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That's another discussion for another day that we've discussed a lot on this show. But it's been bad eschatology that the church has abandoned the culture because we waited to be raptured off.

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And so we've stopped speaking into the culture, right? And so one verse

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I want to look at here is Matthew 16, 18, and it says,

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And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

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We all know that verse. But I think where the church has gone wrong, even simply in this verse, is we see this verse, and we think that the gates of hell are an offensive front.

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And so we sit, and you have some awesome stuff I want to hear you say, Andrew, but we sit within the closed doors of our church buildings, and I don't want to steal the term.

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I hope you say what I want you to say. But we sit within the church, and we don't go out, and we act as if hell, the gates of hell, are trying to get into the church, right?

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And that's not what gates do. No, no, that's the point. Exactly.

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Gates are not offensive. They're defensive. And the point is that the gates of hell will not stand against the church because the church should be going forth with the gospel, and the gospel should be knocking down the gates of hell.

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And so I was thinking a lot about this, and I was thinking that the problem ultimately is not that the gates of hell have prevailed against the church, but that the gates of the church have failed against the doctrines of hell, and that these derelict gates ultimately are the negligent pastors, right?

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So it starts in the pulpit. It's the pastors that are allowing these doctrines of hell to come through the front doors of the church instead of pushing them out and instead of knocking down the gates of hell with the gospel, with the mission that Christ has given us.

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So go ahead, Andrew. No, no, I didn't want to interrupt you because that was so good, Luke. I agree with all of that.

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Yeah, in fact, you actually touched on the first thing that I was going to say, and that is the failure of pulpits to declare the entire counsel of God and preach the word of God in its totality.

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I mean, there are so many things we could say, but whether it's the sort of divided Bible that's preached, want to cut off the

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Old Testament and even a number of parts of the New Testament and only sort of go like sugar dipping, try to find a little sugar here and there, things that we like in the word of God.

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And the church has been influenced heavily by existentialism and preaching that is designed to make people feel good rather than to obey the law of God.

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And to mention the law of God brings up the whole idea of antinomianism. It's remarkable how many churches are anti -law.

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They do understand we're saved entirely by grace, justified by grace through faith. And, of course, that is true.

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But they think because of that, that the law are good works or something we shouldn't mention very much, but that's false.

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The law of God is a transcription of God's character and His truth and His holiness. And so the law of God is a standard we should live by.

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It also, by the way, in its appropriate sphere, is the standard for civil law.

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Yes. That our civil, positive civil law should be in line with and conform to the civil law of the

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Bible. So there's been a remarkable failure of the pulpits to declare the word in its totality, and as I'm going to address it to ReformCon, to address the word of God and the issues publicly.

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There is the notion that Jesus is Lord in our families and in our churches, but to address issues outside, that's all, quote, political.

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Well, I don't want to say much about abortion because, you know, that's a political issue. I don't want to say much about same -sex marriage.

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Of course, it's not really marriage, but because that's a political issue, or socialism, because that's a political issue.

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Well, those aren't specifically political issues. Those are biblical issues. Those are moral issues.

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And if a pastor doesn't address them, he's not really preaching the word of God in its totality. And Joe Booth and I were talking about this one time in London.

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He made a very, very good point. If that is the church's attitude, the pastor's attitude, we're not going to address anything considered political.

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Then in our time, when everything becomes political, the church will eventually have nothing to preach.

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Because the notion that Jesus Christ is uniquely the Son of God and you must trust in Him to be saved is increasingly becoming a political issue.

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It's considered hate speech. So what is the church going to do? Well, if it's consistent, they'll say, well, we can't really teach or preach that Jesus Christ is the only way.

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Well, then, of course, we've completely lost the faith. And that's where we're heading because of the failure of the church to preach, pulpits in particular, of course, to preach and teach the entire counsel of God.

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Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I got this from Joe, but he says all the time that politics are just legislative morality.

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Right. And so it's not a matter of things being political or not political. It's all moral.

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The question is, which morality are you going to legislate? Yeah, that's right.

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I mean, law itself is an enactment of morality. I mean, why do we have speed limit laws? Well, rightly or wrongly, at least some people are thinking, well, if you go faster, you might kill people.

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Now, I'm not arguing what the speed limit should be, but there is a moral impetus behind that law.

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And that's true of all laws. Even liberal laws, behind them, is a form of morality. False morality, of course, but a morality.

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It's all about what you think is right and wrong. As Christians, we believe the Bible tells us what is right and wrong. Absolutely.

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Absolutely. And so the term I was hoping you were going to use, it's okay that you didn't because I'm going to say it now, but when we interviewed you in July, you were describing the failure of the church as incestuous.

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Can you tell us about that? When you said that, I don't know if you remember because you were looking at the camera. I do remember.

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Jeff and I fell out of our chairs. I'll be happy to elaborate. Go for it. Yes, I want to hear it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

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So this is a problem of many. And we're not, by the way, we're not talking about liberal churches here. We're talking about conservative evangelical churches.

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For so many of them, they see everything. They see the church itself as the kingdom of God and everything inwardly.

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So there are constant capital campaigns, and many of the larger churches, a new Sunday school wing, a new

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Awana program. Everything is designed to turn inward, we would say incestuously, to turn inward on making the church grow internally or offering more programs.

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Now, that's not inherently wrong to have programs in a church, but the objective and goal of the church is to extend the kingdom of God.

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That's the deputizing of Matthew 28, teaching the entire world, all the nations of the world, to bow the knee, to be disciples, to bow the knee to Jesus Christ.

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So a church that sees the church as an end in itself is not fulfilling its calling.

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The end or goal or objective of the church is to press the kingdom of God in society. And if it's become incestuous, then it's not fulfilling what

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God wants, and eventually those churches, and many of them can become large megachurches, but they're just very sickly giants.

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They're just sickly giants, and they're not doing anything. This is why, and I think I mentioned this in July, how is it possible that in those very areas where we have the largest evangelical megachurches, we often have the greatest depravity?

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Cultural depravity, I mean, around the church. How do you explain that? Well, the church is incestuous.

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The church might be getting larger, but it's not having any kingdom impact. Biblically, if the church is having any impact, it's doing what you guys are doing at Apology at the church there, speaking at the city council about abortion and being out on the streets.

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I'm not saying every single church at every single time has to be doing that, but they've got to be doing something to press the claims of Christ in culture.

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Yeah, absolutely. Man, that's good, brother. I don't remember you saying that. You probably did. I must have missed it.

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You were asleep in that part of the interview. I might have been, yeah. That's when I had fallen out of my chair, and so I was getting myself back up.

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I still couldn't believe you said incestuous, and so I was thinking about that, and I missed the other thing, but that's great. That's excellent.

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And that's one reason why I like you so much. You're a bit wordsmith -y. I love wordsmiths, so thank you for that.

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Okay. So anyways, so I like to, kind of what you were talking about is what, again,

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Joe Boot calls churchianity, where it's all about the church and not about the kingdom, right?

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And one term I really love to use because of the idea that it portrays is church militant, and that's a term that the reformers used, and the idea is that the church should be militant, not that we're looking to fight with guns and violence, but the idea is that we're fighting.

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We're in a war. We should be soldiers, and we should be going forth, right? And again, just going back to what

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I was saying earlier about with the gates of hell, the church institution, right, ultimately was not designed nor was it intended to serve as a bunker.

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That's right. Neither was it designed or intended to serve as a last line of defense, but actually the church institution is designed to serve as a war academy, preparing and equipping soldiers to go forth into war, and that's where we get this idea of church militant, right?

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And so the church organism then is intended to advance in war until the enemy is defeated, and that's why scripture says, that's why

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Christ said that the gates of hell won't prevail against the church because we will ultimately defeat them, and that's when, of course, well,

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I'm not going to get into eschatology today, but when that happens, then all enemies will put on Christ's feet.

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So anyways, okay, so let's see what we're doing on time here. Let's go to break.

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I'll let you add to that, and then we'll go to break after that before I switch gears again. No, I'll just say briefly, you're right about church militant.

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I mean, the notion that many people have today sort of continuing on with that metaphor is let's just get inside the four walls of the church and huddle together quietly, and if Satan is coming to beat down our doors, let's just grab a couple of little gospel grenades and throw them over the walls and hope that we hit somebody.

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That's not the biblical notion at all. It's that the church is outpressing the faith everywhere and storming the gates of hell.

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And also, by the way, those that have gone on to meet the Lord, remember, they're called not the church militant, but the church triumphant.

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So that's the notion of victory that you were talking about earlier. So I must say before we go to break, this paradigm is a big paradigm shift for a lot of evangelicals.

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They're going to have to force them to rethink what it means to be a church, in fact, what it might even mean to be a

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Christian. Not whether they're saved or not, they certainly can be that, but to live out the Christian life as they should, this paradigm will cause them to rethink much of what they've known already.

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Yes, absolutely. Excellent, excellent. Okay, well, let's go ahead and go to break then. Isaac, if you want to get that up, and then when we come back, we'll finish this discussion with my good friend

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Andrew Sandlin. We'll see you on the other side. The goal for New St.

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Andrews College as it trains its students is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs, people who will just be bricks in the wall of our society.

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The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

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I want their faith to not just be something that stands, but something around which culture can be built.

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We want students who can think critically about arguments, but also about the culture around them, that can then speak clearly to it, and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message, because that's really what the gospel does.

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The gospel throws down all the arguments against it. It speaks to the hearts of people, it influences, and it changes.

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Go to ApologiaStudios .com, get signed up, partner with us on all access. You get all of the radio programs, you get the

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TV show, you get the after show, including Apologia Academy, and you partner with us in ministry, bringing the gospel around the world.

29:48

What up, what up? Welcome back to Apologia Radio. I am super excited about the show that we're doing today, and it's going really great, and I'm thankful again for my friend

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Andrew Sandlin here to be on the show. So we're just gonna, we're gonna come, pick it right back up where we left off here, and continue again.

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We're talking about how the church has failed its mission ultimately. And so I'm actually gonna,

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I'm gonna read a quote here from Joe Boot. He said, and this is in Mission, his book in Mission.

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He said, the decline of a robust, full, vital, and applied Christianity in the West is clearly evidenced in our society's preponderance of ungodly laws, apostate educational practices, secular political outlook, and overtly neo -pagan arts and entertainment, to name just a few areas.

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Christians have allowed, and sometimes even been instrumental in furthering this decline.

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An impoverished understanding of our mission has increasingly led us to either abandon these key areas of life and culture in the name of true piety, or to uncritically adopt or synthesize them with our faith in the name of relevance or even wisdom.

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In either case, we have tacitly accepted an unbelieving view of the world as normative, and once this has happened, we are in urgent need of fundamental redirection and reformation.

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And so that's what we're talking about today. We need to get back to where the church was 200 or 300 years ago.

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Again, what we mentioned at the beginning, a lot of it is just, like Joe just said there in that quote, it's trying to be too relevant.

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And pastors are trying to be too relevant. Okay, so before I get into this,

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I just thought of something. Speaking of pastors, one thing that's been on my mind a lot the last couple years,

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I've been studying shepherds. When Christ talks about being the good shepherd, what did he mean?

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In biblical times, a shepherd literally was, when Christ says,

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I am the door, they literally were the door to the sheepfold. The pastors would sleep in the doorway to the sheepfold.

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And so if you were either getting in or getting out, you had to go through the shepherd or over him or take him out completely.

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And that's a perfect picture of, just again, how the church has failed because pastors have failed to act as the door to the church, to their congregations.

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And they've just allowed whatever, all the secular liberal leftist nonsense, doctrines of hell to come straight through the door of the church.

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And so what I wanted to get in here a little bit is just, obviously scripture talks about the church or talks about us as Christians being salt and light to the culture.

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And again, I've mentioned that we've retreated into our pietistic bunkers.

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And there's an image that I always like to use. And it's the idea of, it's like the church has, we've pretended to tie our shoes for a really long time.

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It's like you just keep down, you're just down there with your head down. Oh, I'm tying my shoe, I'm busy. Meanwhile, the culture is going to hell in the handbasket, right?

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And we're just, sorry, my shoe's still untied. I'll be back up in a minute. But the reformed tradition refers to the living and breathing church.

33:33

Again, going back to the church militant, we're living, we're breathing, we're active. We should be anyways.

33:40

Unfortunately, again, the church has not been active. It's not been militant in our culture. But what we should do is just being, we should be vigorously involved in our mission, in the culture.

33:55

And you mentioned that, I think before the break, Andrew, just that's one thing we're trying to do here at Apology is be vigorously active in the culture, in the community, with the government, wherever we can, just speaking into the culture.

34:10

And I believe it's Proverbs 24, forgive me, I think I may have forgot the reference, but it says that essentially where there's been no gospel proclamation or no prophetic vision into the culture, then it says the people cast off restraint.

34:31

That's right. And that's what's happened is the church has stopped having a prophetic witness into the culture.

34:38

And now the people have cast off restraint. We see it's some of the craziest stuff going on right now, especially with like the gay agenda and the trans agenda.

34:46

And like you see in trans story time at the live public lab, it's like what has happened is because the people have been given over to the sin,

34:56

Romans one, they've cast off restraint because the church has failed to have a prophetic witness. And one thing

35:02

I think of this is nothing more than spiritualized cowardice. And I'm going to quote you here,

35:09

Andrew. I love this quote from you. You call this a pious goop of spineless religion.

35:17

And then you went on to say this appeasement reinforces the cultural irrelevance of Christianity has become the unintentional ally of secularists and pagans.

35:25

So I want you to talk about that there for a minute. Yeah. There's no question that pietism, and by that I don't mean piety.

35:34

We should be pious before God that is devoted to him and humble before him. Pietism, when you speak about it generically, means limiting the faith to our vertical relationship to God and our family and at most our church.

35:48

The refusal, like you say, to speak prophetically. A pietist will often say we don't want to address those issues because we don't, here it comes,

35:56

Luke, want to be contaminated by the world. We want to be separated from the world. And the other rationale is, well, that's not our responsibility anyway.

36:04

But if we just keep ourselves walled off in the church and in our families and so on, we'll be safe from all of these bad things.

36:12

It doesn't matter that there's all this depravity and abortion and homosexuality and socialism and wokeness and cultural

36:19

Marxism and all this. It doesn't matter that that's out there because we're safe. But there's nothing sacred to the devil, and so what he has done is come into the church.

36:28

Because we refuse to go out and fight him on the territory that he's contesting, he comes in to our territory.

36:35

I like to say that pietism today, Luke, is finally getting its comeuppance. Because essentially what happens is this.

36:42

If you pull yourself back into, refuse to go into the culture, pull yourself back into the church and in the family, you don't become purer.

36:50

You don't become more spiritual. You just allow Jesus Christ, you just allow Satan, rather, to influence all of those areas of life that you've abandoned.

36:59

And those areas become stronger, and then they also start influencing the church. Because people inside the church, because they don't hear prophetic preaching and teaching about all of these issues that I mentioned, again, homosexuality and abortion and socialism and pornography, all this whole secularism, paganism, this whole array of issues, because they're not addressed, because they're too worldly, they pick up sinful, worldly, depraved ideas and bring them back into the church.

37:27

That is how, and pietism, because of its faithlessness, it's unintentional, but nonetheless been faithless, is getting its comeuppance.

37:36

And now you have, even in the prominent conservative reform denominations, the woke -ness worldview, and the socialist worldview, how in the world, even five or ten years ago, we would say, this could never, ever happen.

37:48

How could it happen? Because the church has not been bold in pressing the faith, in pressing biblical law, in pressing the fullness of the gospel.

37:57

Pulpits have been failures, and because of that now, when we should be, and here's the key,

38:02

Luke, if we refuse to fight the devil out in Satan in the culture, we will eventually be fighting him inside the church.

38:11

That's good. He will not respect the four walls of the church, he will not say that the four walls of our family are sacred, nothing is sacred to him.

38:20

So our view is the best defense is a good offense. Yeah, that's good. Every area of life is contested, so we need to contest him everywhere.

38:28

I don't mean every single Christian can do that everywhere, but the church as a whole, every church, every individual has a responsibility to contest

38:36

Satan, wherever God has placed him. And that's not just in the family or in the church. Man, that's good, brother.

38:43

Absolutely, man, that's good. To kind of talk a little bit more about this pious group of spineless religion,

38:50

I was going to say that ultimately, again, this is what the church has become.

38:55

I call this spiritual Jell -O jigglers, right? Yes, yes. And there's the saying, it's impossible to nail

39:06

Jell -O to the wall, like you can't do it. And really that accurately represents a lot of the mainstream pastors we're talking about in our culture.

39:14

They're spiritual Jell -O jigglers. You can't nail them down on any sort of objective standard of God's truth.

39:23

And so I have a quote from Bonson here, going back to being salt and light.

39:29

He said, the salt has lost its saltiness. And our current culture, right, does not have a pleasant taste.

39:38

It doesn't taste good. It doesn't taste salty. It tastes like blood, right?

39:44

So, you know, I always ask the question, have you been punched in the mouth? You bit your lip. Of course we all have. We've all tasted that blood.

39:50

It tastes gross, right? It tastes like iron. But that's precisely the taste that our culture is currently leaving in our mouths, right?

39:58

When we live in this culture of death and the flavor of that culture is bloodlust, then we, the church, we've entirely failed to add the salty flavor, the preserving flavor of the gospel to the culture.

40:15

Yes. And then, sorry, were you going to say something?

40:21

Well, just one quick thing. Yes. I think when a church refuses to address these issues out on the culture and contest the devil out on the culture, then of course we have a new normal.

40:33

Depravity becomes normal and the church becomes desensitized. And that's why I think the majority of Christians and churches in the

40:40

U .S., even conservatives, will say, well, you know, I wouldn't commit abortion myself. I wouldn't recommend it.

40:45

But, you know, I mean, after all, that's the way things are. And unless I get too upset about it, or same -sex marriage, after all,

40:51

I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't recommend it. But, you know, it's probably okay if other people do it. After all, it's their choice.

40:56

You see how if you refuse to battle in the culture, the culture's new normality becomes depravity, and then that becomes normal not just in the culture but to the church, who becomes desensitized to the evil.

41:12

That's what happens. Absolutely. And so from there, I want to look real quickly at Matthew 5 .13.

41:18

And that says, this is Christ. He says, You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

41:25

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

41:31

And again, like Bonson said, the salt has lost its saltiness. We've lost our flavor.

41:37

And Christ here says when salt has lost its flavor, it's good for nothing except to be trampled under the feet of the culture.

41:44

So it should be no surprise to us then when that's what's happening to the church, when we're being trampled under the feet of the culture because we don't taste good anymore.

41:54

We've lost our saltiness, and there's no need for us at that point just going off of what

42:01

Christ here said. And ultimately, because of this, the church, the gospel,

42:09

Christ's kingdom, the Bible, it's become a laughingstock of the culture, again, because we've lost our flavor.

42:15

We're being trampled underfoot of this gross, depraved culture.

42:23

Now, all that to say, although the culture, of course, is culpable for their sin and their desire for death,

42:30

I again would say that the church is at fault because of our lack of salt, of our lack of light, of our lack of flavor.

42:37

We're at fault. And so to get away from the flavor aspect to the preserving aspect, salt's primary purpose ultimately is not to flavor your food, right?

42:51

But it was actually to serve as a preservative. That's what salt does. It preserves life.

42:58

We all know before the refrigerators, they used salt to preserve meat. It literally extended the life of a slaughtered animal right before rot and decay took hold of it.

43:09

So preservatives are added to food to extend its shelf life. Medicine is used to preserve human life.

43:15

And the church's mission then is to preserve and extend the life of the culture through the gospel.

43:22

And because we failed to do this, the culture then, of course, reeks of death and decay.

43:28

So instead of extending life, the culture is literally shortening it. And we list a number of things, a number of ways it's shortening life, right?

43:38

Homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia. Now we have these climate control freaks that are saying that they're not going to have children.

43:47

I'm saying thank you. Don't. Because guess who is having children? It's Christians.

43:52

And we will overtake you sooner. It may take a generation or two, but we will outgrow you.

43:58

So please don't have children. Thank you for that. But the point is they're intentionally shortening their lifespans in order, which without getting too far off track, that gets into the idolatry and worship of the planet and nature and all that.

44:16

But anyways, okay. What are your thoughts on that, Andrew? Whoa, so much there. I know,

44:22

I threw a lot at you. No, no, I just relished listening to you. No, I think that's correct.

44:27

I think the bottom line here is the Church has been responsible. And as much as we might like to skirt the issue of eschatology, you notice really, and much of what we said, eschatology has implicitly been woven into it.

44:41

Because let's think about this for a minute. If you believe that the Church's ultimate goal is escape from the world, to be taken out of the world, to go to some sort of heaven in outer space and leave the world for the

44:54

Antichrist, obviously you're not going to be thinking in terms of salting the culture in any way, or preserving the culture.

45:03

That idea has no meaning whatsoever. But if you recognize that the objective of the

45:10

Church is to influence all of the culture, with the goal being the extension of the kingdom of God in time and history, as I believe the

45:18

Old Testament promises say and a number in the New Testament, if you understand that's what our destiny is, according to the predestined will of God, then you can act very differently than if you think that the

45:31

Bible teaches escape. Now, if you think about it for a minute, Luke, the Bible, with respect to the people of God, is not really about escape.

45:38

It's about battle and engagement. Jesus Christ didn't escape the cross. He got victory through the cross, on the other side.

45:46

And the children of Israel didn't escape battle. God called them to battle. And Isaiah didn't escape battle.

45:52

And Paul didn't escape battle. And you think of almost all the great characters in the

45:57

Bible, they didn't escape. God didn't deliver them from all hardship and battle and difficulty.

46:03

He gave them victory within those battles, and victory at the end. So the notion that we can escape a tribulation and that our goal is basically to get ourselves pietistically ready to meet the

46:14

Lord without fulfilling our responsibility on the earth is to fundamentally misunderstand what the

46:20

Christian religion is all about. And I'm going to address it at the Ref Con, by the way. It's to fundamentally misunderstand what

46:28

Christianity is all about. Christianity is not chiefly about going to heaven when you die, though thank

46:34

God we'll be with the Lord eternally, by the way, on earth. A new heaven and a new earth, not sort of Odin up in heaven floating around.

46:42

But the Bible actually says very little about that. Christianity is basically about extending the kingdom of God, the reign of God, the imperial gospel in this life.

46:52

That's what Christianity is about. And if we're constantly talking about an escapist form of faith, that's not biblical

46:58

Christianity. But sadly, Luke, that's what's being preached on a large number of our conservative churches today.

47:04

Yes, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought up the imperial gospel again. I'm going to get that before we end. But to kind of jump off in what you were just saying, so again, of course, instead of the church speaking into the culture, we've hid from it, right?

47:20

And the longer the church has sat around waiting to be raptured, like you just said, the worse the culture has become, and the worse the culture has become, the more irrelevant the gospel has become.

47:30

And the Proverbs, I was mentioning earlier, I told you wrong, it's Proverbs 19, 18, it says, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.

47:36

I said that, but I forgot to mention the second half. But blessed is he who keeps the law. And again, that's that important thing.

47:44

It's like, oh yeah, there's that law thing. There's that objective standard of truth and objective standard of morality that should be part of the prophetic vision.

47:54

And so this ties back into salt and light here real quick.

48:00

And so again, we are to be the light of the world, salt and light. So we talked about salt being flavor, being preserved in the light of the world.

48:08

We know the verse, we're supposed to be a city on a hill in order to illuminate the way to Christ, right?

48:14

That's our mission. But in selfish fear, we've hidden that lamp under a basket.

48:19

We all know the song. Actually, we haven't hit it under a basket. We've hit it within the four walls of the church. We all know the song. Should we hide it under a bushel?

48:27

No. If you grew up in the church and you were a kid, you know that song. You yell, no. Like we know that it's fun.

48:33

It's a fun song to sing, but we haven't listened to that song. We haven't actually listened to what it says.

48:39

We've hid that light within the four walls of our church and not even put it outside the door so you know where to go.

48:48

And think about the implications of that for a minute, Luke. So we're not just salt, but we're also light. So the idea there,

48:54

Jesus again talks about the darkness in the world. Of course, he's the true light and we reflect his light. So our responsibility as we go out in the world is not simply to live a light -filled life.

49:03

That's true. We have too many Christians that don't live according to God's word and aren't submission to him. But light isn't just turned inward.

49:10

Here's your word again incestuously. Yeah. It's sort of pressed outward. So essentially,

49:15

Jesus Christ is assuming that his disciples will shed light on the situations that confront them.

49:23

All of this darkness, whether it's political darkness or whether it's social darkness or whether it's sexual darkness or whether it's economic darkness or educational darkness, see,

49:32

Christians are the light that dispels this darkness. Yeah. So if we're constantly hiding in our bushel, hiding inside the four walls of the church and in our family, we're not addressing the socialist evils of Elizabeth Warren and we're not taking on the elitist idea of cultural

49:50

Marxism and wokeness and intersectionality in major universities, if we're not shedding light on that darkness, we're not really fulfilling what

49:58

God called us to do. Right. And that's where that metaphor is often misunderstood. It's not just the light of,

50:04

Well, our light is that I live in the right way before God. That's necessary. But shedding light pushes darkness out wherever it is.

50:14

And not just that we ourselves are living a godly life, but we're showing the truth. We're shedding the light of the truth of God on all of these other areas where there's darkness.

50:23

Right. And I love that explanation. And even to take that further, it's not light isn't only pushing out darkness, it's exposing evil.

50:33

That's right. So the evil that's happening in the darkness, when the light hits it, it's exposed.

50:39

And the fact that that evil hasn't been exposed for so long is a testament to the fact that the church has failed to shine forth the light.

50:51

As you well know, and I mean criminals know this, as long as they can get away with things in the darkness, they'll just make bigger plans.

50:57

Well, if we can get away with this without being detected, then we're just going to go rob a bigger bank or we're going to kill more people. But it's when the light shines on them and exposes them where everybody can see it and people start addressing it, that reduces the sin in society.

51:10

And of course that's exactly what the gospel does. It reduces sin, not just in our hearts, but in a culture.

51:16

Yeah, exactly. And a perfect example, practical example, we hear this argument all the time when it comes to the fight to end abortion.

51:25

You hear the pro -aborts say something like, well, if you make abortion illegal, then there's just going to be more back -alley abortions.

51:36

And I'm like, okay, well good, that's where they should be happening. They shouldn't be happening legally in the open.

51:41

Yeah, I mean, the argument's so stupid, what if we make rape or murder illegal? I mean, it's just silly.

51:46

The argument's stupid. Right, yeah, it's stupid, all right. Okay, so let's finish this then on the imperial gospel, which ties into this perfectly.

51:56

Actually, that's how I first heard of you. We've had you on to talk about this. You did a show with Ryan, with Ryan Harris, on the imperial gospel, and I was like, what is this amazing thing

52:07

I just heard? And so I want you to know I have adopted that, and I have taken it now to Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.

52:17

And so, and I'll be talking about it again at an abortion now conference. Well, I'm grateful to you, my friend.

52:24

I really appreciate it and am humbled by it. Well, it's powerful, and so it's my pleasure.

52:29

But the idea then is that the imperial gospel, and I love how you said this, it's designed, the gospel's designed in such a way to eliminate all rivals.

52:41

And if we're not in the business of eliminating rivals, then we have no business preaching the gospel.

52:50

That's right. The gospel is not a message of peaceful coexistence with evil.

52:56

That's what people need to understand. The gospel is designed to get rid of sin. It gets rid of sin, first of all, the guilt of sin before God and our justification, but also the pollution and corruption of sin, and not just in our own lives, but in all areas of life.

53:13

Now think about ancient Israel real quick. Why did God abominate and send his judgment on syncretism and idolatry when

53:21

Israel tried to join itself to other gods? Because he will accept no rivals. So the gospel basically is the message of the king that if you trust in me and bow to my lordship, you'll be saved.

53:34

That's not salvation by works. That's just recognizing that we have to cast ourselves completely on the

53:39

Lord for salvation. The gospel is not a message that, well, I'm going to add Jesus on to my own

53:46

New Age lifestyle. Or I'm going to attach Christianity to my own profligate sexuality.

53:54

I mean, after all, I would like Jesus. He could be like a little talisman. He could sort of help me out of difficult situations.

54:00

There's nothing of that in the gospel. The gospel is designed to transform people and to transform cultures because it's the gospel of the king.

54:07

In fact, that's the first thing we read about Jesus in his preaching. He went over preaching the gospel of the kingdom, not the gospel of fire insurance.

54:16

It's not the gospel to rescue people from hell, though it does that, thank God. It's to cause people to surrender to Christ, the king.

54:25

And not just individuals, but as Matthew 28 says, and you read initially, cultures, nations and cultures.

54:32

And if we're not preaching that gospel and also pastors teaching people that that is the gospel, they fundamentally missed the gospel of Jesus Christ.

54:41

I mean, it's clear in Ephesians 1 and Colossians 2 and Hebrews chapter 1, and I could go on and on.

54:47

A number of verses in the Bible teach this. Yes, excellent. And so I want to piggyback off that a little bit.

54:56

So I love the history you talk about where you get the idea of the gospel being imperial.

55:04

And so historically, you would have the euangelion, right? It's the good news in the

55:11

New Testament. That's the gospel. And you would have, like for Caesar, you literally have the euangelion bearers, the good news bearers who would go before the king announcing the king's coming.

55:22

You know, he's won, he's coming in victory. And that's what we are to be for Christ because Christ has won, he has victorious, and we're to come announcing that.

55:34

And I love why this is imperial is we've probably all heard this religious principle from the

55:43

Roman Empire, and it was regarding Caesar Augustus, but it said, Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name given to men in which they can be saved.

55:53

That's sounding very familiar to the audience, isn't it? Yes, exactly. That's what I was going to say. So as Christians, we go, Oh, that sounds familiar. That's because it sounds a lot like Acts 4 .12,

56:02

which says, And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

56:10

So this was a direct affront to the imperial worship of Caesar.

56:15

So Peter understood exactly what he was saying. The Christians knew exactly what they were saying. The Christians weren't persecuted because they were

56:23

Christians, right? Rome encouraged religious freedom to worship whoever you wanted as long as you would say that Caesar was king,

56:36

Kaiser Curia. Yeah, you're so right, Luke. The issue never was private religion. In fact,

56:41

Rome loved, when they conquered a people, to take the images of the conquered people and put them in their little pantheon.

56:46

Look what we have here. Oh, the more gods, the merrier. I mean, they collected gods like Thalatlius, collect stamps.

56:52

I mean, that wasn't the issue, what you do in your private life between your two years or privately. The issue is, will you swear allegiance and bow the knee to Caesar?

57:01

And the Christian says, We're not revolutionaries. We're not going to get spears and go kill people. But we're certainly not going to bow the knee to Caesar.

57:07

We bow the knee to one, Jesus Christ. And we, Luke, are fighting... I'm ending on a sermon here, Luke. We're fighting that battle today when people come and say,

57:16

You have to bake a cake the way I want it done to celebrate perversion. You have to sell what

57:21

I want you to sell in violation of your convictions, or you're going to suffer the wrath of the state. We have to decide, are we going to bow the knee to Jesus and say,

57:29

Jesus is Lord, or the state is Lord? And the fact is, Jesus is Lord, and we must say that and act it out everywhere.

57:35

Yes. So, ultimately, to bring it into modern terms, what we're being forced to say is,

57:45

Demus carios. Yes. Democracy. The state is king.

57:52

Yes. And is Lord. And so, the church has gone along with that.

57:58

Instead of saying what the apostles, the early disciples said was, We have no king but Christ.

58:04

That's right. And that's what the church should be saying. That's how we fail. We're not saying, We have no king but Christ.

58:10

We're saying, That is what you have just said there. And by the way, a lot of people don't know, we talk about creeds and confessions, and we, of course, have some good ones.

58:19

The actual first creed of the church was, in English, that little creed. It's called, Jesus is

58:24

Lord. That was the first creed of the church. And if you want to reduce it down, and we don't have to, we need really robust creeds, but if someone says in three words, give me your creed, we should say,

58:37

Luke, Jesus is Lord. Amen. Jesus is master. Jesus is king. That is our basic, foundational, fundamental creed.

58:45

And to tie it all back in together as we end the show, right, that's lordship salvation, and that is where the church, again, has failed in the

58:57

Great Commission because we've just preached Jesus is Savior. Not Jesus is

59:03

Lord and Savior. Here's the thing, Luke. Even if we've said he's Lord, he's only Lord of a few narrow areas.

59:09

I love, you remember people sometimes say, I love Jesus is Lord, he's ruling on the throne of my heart.

59:16

And that's good, and he should, but he's not only ruling on the throne of your heart. Right. He's ruling from heaven and everywhere, and we need to let everybody know that.

59:25

Jesus is Lord of everything, not just our hearts. Exactly. Whew. Amen, brother.

59:30

We actually, I don't have it on. We have new shirts if you go to shop .apologiastudios .com,

59:36

and if you come to ReformCon, we'll have them there as well. We have new shirts that say,

59:42

Defying Tyrants Since 2010, Apology of Church, and on it it says, No King But Christ.

59:48

Amen. And so that's what we should be doing if we're actually vigorously carrying out the

59:59

Great Commission. So, Andrew, thank you so much, brother, for being on. This has been such a blessing. Yes, sir. We appreciate you guys,

01:00:06

Apologia, and look forward to seeing you here in about a month. Yes, sir. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. This was a really great episode.

01:00:13

I'm very excited about this. As always, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who's

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