Riot Evangelism with Isaac Banegas and Pastor Joel Webbon

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Well, welcome to another episode of Provoked. This is our first episode of 2021.

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Hi. Hi. So, I'm on the first episode of 2021. Yeah, you are. All right. I'm sitting here with my friend,

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Isaac Banegas. He is a deacon at our church. That's right. And you also pretty much run the show here at Apologia Studios, right?

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Typically, I work behind the camera doing production. Of course, I don't plan out the shows, but mainly any production, camera work, post -production, whatever it may be.

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That's what I'm involved in when it comes to Provoked. Right. I love the show. The content's great. So, I get a firsthand experience every single time we record.

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Oh, thank you. And thanks for filling in. You're filling in for Zach because he's had some sickness in the family, but they're on the mend, but he's still taking care of his family.

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So, my brother from another mother and father is here today. That's right. That's right. And of course, we're praying for Pastor Zach and Jessica.

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Hopefully, by the time this episode airs, they're doing well. Yeah, yeah. Lord willing, that would be great.

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And while Zach's not here, I feel like I just want to talk about how great he is because he will not let me -

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Oh, he's phenomenal. He won't let me compliment him. He is just, he's such a blessing.

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I love him so much. And every Sunday when I'm at church, I get at least one or two people coming up to me saying, your brother is just the best.

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He helps me so much. So, anyways, I just, I love the guy. Zach, we love you. I love you.

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And I'm so thankful that you're my brother and my pastor. Yes. And I miss you being on the show, but I'm excited about today's show.

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Yeah. And yeah, we've almost been doing this for a year. It'll be a year in April. And I think

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April - Wasn't it January last year? Well, I think that's when we started to try to get things rolling. Oh, announced it. Yeah, that's right. Okay, yes. And then our first episode actually aired in April.

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So, the Lord has just done so much already, and we're so encouraged. So, thank you to all of our listeners just for kind of hanging in there with us while we worked out some of the first initial creaks and kind of getting used to this whole podcast thing, but we appreciate your time.

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And if you aren't an All Access member yet, we really encourage you to become one because you're just going to be blessed by all the content -

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Sign up. That you're gonna get. Yeah. And it's getting better with Bonson You, right? Bonson You, I mean, 2021,

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I think we're really gonna take just a huge step forward in our production and our content. If you guys are not an

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All Access member, just like Desi said, I would encourage you to sign up. Great content there from, of course, just being able to access the free content, a lot of free content that we put out there, but also some special content for those who are our supporters.

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We wanna bless you. So we're always thinking about how can we can improve, but a lot of deep theological, rich content.

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And I think 2021 and just kind of where we're headed as a nation, I think we're gonna have to go even deeper.

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Absolutely. So that's gonna be the pursuit. So sign up now and anytime we upload something, you're gonna be blessed.

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Yeah, absolutely. And we are having a Rally for Life, January 22nd.

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January 22nd. Yeah, at the Arizona State Capitol. So do whatever you can to make it out.

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It's gonna be a historic day. We're looking to push a bill of abolition or to support

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Walt Blackman, who's going to be presenting a bill of complete abolition here in Arizona. So do what you can to come out.

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We'd love to see you and it's going to be, and if you can't come out, pray, because this is a big deal.

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So yeah, we're excited about that. And, oh, and you can find out more information on rallyforlifeaz .com

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about that. So January 22nd, Arizona State Capitol. Today, we are honored to have a very special guest on,

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Pastor Joel Webbin. And he is a pastor of Covenant Bible Church in North Austin.

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He's actually just planting that here in April. He's going to start opening, you're gonna start having services.

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He is a pastor, though he was my pastor in San Diego and he's just moved. And he's a very, very special person in my heart.

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And I just love him so much and his wife, Megan, and I'm excited to have him on.

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And he also has an awesome new podcast called Theology Applied, where he's had some very, very heavy hitter guests on.

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He's had Doug Wilson, right? Have you aired the one with Doug Wilson yet, Pastor Joel? Doug will be coming up in about a month, but we just recently had his daughter,

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Rachel Jankovic. We've had Virgil Walker and Daryl Harrison from the Just Thinking podcast.

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So yeah, we've hit on issues, political issues, theological issues, which really, they all kind of blend together.

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Politics tends to flow downstream from culture and culture seems to flow downstream from ultimately what we believe, our theology.

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And so every episode kind of deals with theology and then its implications and applications, hence the name

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Theology Applied. That's awesome. Well, yeah, that was my next, was just for you to introduce yourself.

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So yeah, go ahead and tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, maybe a little brief testimony, kind of what you're doing right now.

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Tell them about Theology Applied, your new church and all that good stuff. Great, yeah.

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Thanks, Desi. Well, I'm honored to be on the show. Definitely miss Zach, wish he could be a part of it, but excited to get to meet

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Isaac, one of the deacons at Apologia. And as Desi said, probably my greatest achievement in life, apart from marrying my wife, was the fact that I used to be

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Desi and her husband Don's pastor. It's not for nothing, but it was years ago at this point.

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Four years now, Desi? How long has it been? Yeah, three, yeah, three years ago. Three, okay, three years.

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So Desi and Don, they kind of led the way with inspiring my wife and I to do what all

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Christians should do, which is to leave California. That's my opinion.

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And so I'm actually, we're doing some writing and things like that about loving California by leaving

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California. And so we're working on some book stuff right now with that.

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I do really wanna encourage Christians. I know that there is a category, obviously, for being a missionary and being in difficult places.

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But one of the key differences, I think, is North Korea and China and Venezuela, the kind of countries that California aspires to become.

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One difference between California and those places is that the people in those places are trapped.

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They can't leave. And so we send missionaries with the good news of the gospel to faithfully preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as God's law, to these people because they need us to come to them because they can't come to us.

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California is unique in the sense that people don't have to be there. And a lot of people that live in California, not everyone, of course, but there are a lot of people who are there precisely because they are pagan, because they are godless, because they are living in rebellion, and they don't want traditional and conservative values.

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They don't want the message of the Bible. They don't want God's ultimate truth. And so there is a certain point where God may call some people to be there, but for my wife and I, we really just felt released from that culture and that context.

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But I do want to be clear that in leaving California, my goal is never to stop loving

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California. And I actually think that there is a way of loving certain people at times by shaking the dust off your feet.

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I think in some ways, the least loving thing that a member of the father's house could have done for the prodigal son when he was in a far distant land, a famine had come across all these different areas, and he was destitute and poor and longing to be filled with the pods that he was feeding to the pigs.

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I think one of the most unloving things that could have happened in that moment is if a member of the father's house had found him and given him another handout, because it's at the end of his rope, it's at the bottom of the barrel that the

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Bible says he came to his senses and realized that he should go back home. And so in some sense,

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I just started to feel convicted that my family and I, along with many other

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Christians, were kind of keeping Californians from coming to their senses by the salt of the earth,

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Christians in California just kind of propping the state up. If every hardworking, diligent, God -fearing

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Christian left California, they'd have to lay in the bed that they'd been making for decades, and there might be some change.

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So that's my opinion. So we moved to the North Austin area of Texas by God's grace.

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Our goal is to plant a new church, Covenant Bible Church. As you said, Desi, we're gonna start holding services in April.

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And my little spiel on why Christians should consider moving from California was persuasive enough to convince another 15 adults to come with us and their children.

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And so we have a church planting team of 17 adults and about a dozen kids, and we're excited to see what the

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Lord has for us. That's exciting. Awesome. Well, I'm excited today to talk about, well, first, you know what?

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I wanna talk about some kind of current events. The name of the show is going to be is

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Riot Evangelism. I can't even talk. Riot Evangelism with Pastor Joel Levin.

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So we're gonna talk about evangelism in the first church of Acts and how

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Jesus did it and how the apostles did it. And actually

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Christians throughout ecclesiastical history, how they did it and how the American Evangelical Church does it now.

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Pastor Joel, you had preached a sermon about this when Dawn and I started going, and I remember it so clearly because we had just come out of a, you know, like a mega non -denomination church.

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It was a good church, sweet people, Christians that I love. But once the Lord opens your eyes to Reformed theology and the doctrines of grace, there's no going back.

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So we had gone to that church. And then shortly after you preached this sermon on Riot Evangelism, and I was just, my jaw was on the floor.

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Like I was just so fired up and so pumped up. There's like this meme of a poor boy with like a soup bowl.

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And he's like, please, son, can I have some more? That's just me. I was so hungry.

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So this sermon was preached while you were attending the church? No, I had left. We had finally, after a lot of prayer and counsel, we had moved to the

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Response Church. And this was probably, I would say, if my memory serves me right, a month or so after that we had moved there.

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And when we were at the, we were just hungry for the Word. We were hungry to just go share the gospel with people.

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And it felt like, and about that church, it was not necessarily the tactic that they did.

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They were more invite people to church type of church. So this was like a drink of cold ice water.

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Imagine on the 120 days out here in Phoenix, it was just so quenching to our souls.

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Yeah, so refreshing. So anyways, I'm very excited to talk about that. And I kind of want to just start off by talking about this week.

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It's been a crazy week. By the time this airs, it'll be a little bit later, but it's January 8th.

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So just two days ago was January 6th, and you were in DC. Yeah, we were. So I want to hear a little bit about that from you.

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And then Joel, we can maybe we just have a discussion on what this looks like moving forward. Yeah, and you guys maybe know more about the details because since being in DC on the 6th,

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I haven't watched any media, any news. I haven't read too much as far as the articles.

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I read something that night that kind of laid out some of the details, but I'd imagine some things have come out since then.

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We were there. We went there because we wanted to provide some type of Christian commentary to the whole situation when it came to that Save the

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Vote rally. We do believe that if there is any type of fraudulent election, then it is something that needs to be addressed because we want justice.

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But ultimately, we wanted to provide Christian commentary as far as when it comes to, like I said, pertaining to any type of fraudulent election, if there is any.

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And of course, there seems to be some evidence that maybe some things had taken place. I don't know if it's enough to overturn any type of vote, but at this point, they're moving forward.

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Biden's gonna be president. But I think just for the whole rally itself, and I think just to the conservative community as well, bringing the gospel even into that context.

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So that was our goal, and also to promote the rally that we're having on January 22nd here at the state capitol in Arizona.

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We didn't know what to expect going into it. Lots of people. I heard there maybe was over 500 ,000 people.

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So it was packed just to see if people didn't know what to expect, didn't know if it was gonna be chaotic, violent, what.

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The rally took place, Trump spoke, he fired up the crowd. The only thing

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I could say as far as from what I heard was just kind of haunting, because the rhetoric that he was using, but also the response from the people.

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At a certain point, people, the whole, I mean, 500 ,000 people just chanting, we love you.

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We love you. To me, it just seemed like there was a ton of idolatry just taking place there.

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And so once he was done speaking, we headed over towards the capitol. We were a little ways from the capitol, heard a bunch of sirens and didn't know what was going on.

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Started asking around and finding out that they breached the capitol. We were kind of removed somewhat from the cast.

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So we moved closer and we were able to see some, just the crowd of people at the front and on the steps of the capitol.

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But I mean, it was an experience and we got some content and I'm hoping that people are gonna enjoy that and hear some of,

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I think, some good insight pertaining to what took place and what's going on in our nation today. But you guys may have more details or what your guys' thoughts are, but that's kind of what

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I experienced. Right, and I was just so thankful because that day,

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I mean, I was searching on the news for anything and of course, my only options are left -wing media, which is dominating everything.

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So you don't really know what the real story is going on. There's some news stations now,

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Newsmax, I think is one of them. There's a handful, I can't remember the other ones, but it was hard to get any information that you could feel like, okay, is this what's actually happening?

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Because you just don't know now. And so I was really thankful that you guys were out there and then Pastor Jeff had done a live stream because I know you guys couldn't go live that day.

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We couldn't, no, there were so many people. I think the towers were just pretty much at capacity when it came to data or something because couldn't text, couldn't go online, nothing.

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Yeah, maybe it was that, but in my mind, I'm like, are they suppressing? There was talks of that, but I'm pretty sure it was just because we have 500 ,000 people in one area.

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Yeah, that's probably it. There's only so much that I guess could be done. Yeah, but anyways, I was really encouraged by Pastor Jeff's Facebook Live he did at the hotel that night.

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And just the part that really hit me too was what you were talking about, the idolatry, that even though this hasn't gone the way that we wanted it to go or that even if there's some unfairness or whatever the situation is,

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Trump is not God, you know? And he was just talking about the people that had the

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Jesus with a MAGA hat on. And it can, I mean, our hearts are idol -making factories, like Calvin said, we so easily will just, we wanna worship something other than God.

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And so we have to be careful not to do that and to turn our eyes from that. And so I was super thankful and encouraged by his just saying that because I think it needs to be said, especially to Christians right now.

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We have to be careful of that. And yeah, anyways, that was kind of my thoughts on the whole situation.

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How about you, Pastor Joel, what were your thoughts? Yeah, pretty crazy times. Trump is certainly not

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God, but he certainly is what we might call a cult personality. And so unfortunately, his following is not merely made up of Bible -believing,

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God -fearing Christians who are gravitating toward him and his administration strictly on the basis of conservative biblical policies.

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I do believe that his administration has promoted and defended certain conservative policies that are much more in line, although not always perfectly, but much more in line with the teaching of Scripture than the opposing political party.

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And so I always think of Timothy Keller, where he kind of, he always does this middle thing.

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He's like, you know, there's Democrats here and there's Republicans here and the gospel's right in between.

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And I would say a hearty no. No, Timothy Keller, once again, wrong. That's not true.

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I think it's very popular for pastors to act as though the truth of God's word, the truth of the gospel, the heart of God, the character of God, the character of Christ is just perfectly in between whatever two options, two cultural options, two political parties, whatever there might be, which ironically, that's a very political thing to do.

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That's what a politician does, right? He wants to keep the widest base of popularity he can.

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So he wants to encompass everyone. If he's going to say anything negative, he wants to equally offend all parties.

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The reality is that republicanism is not synonymous with the gospel. It's not synonymous with the scripture, but for whatever reason, in the sovereignty of God, the

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Republican party is certainly much closer to biblical principles and biblical truth than the

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Democratic party. That is a party of death and murder and theft, civil theft with socialism and all these different things.

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The Democratic party is racist in the truest sense of what it means to be a racist. They stoke division, all these kinds of things.

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And so all that being said, my thoughts is that Trump is not God. The Republican party is ultimately not our savior, not even close.

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I do want to see Christians fighting for conservative values, those things that align with the truth of God's word.

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And I do think that there's idolatry, but I know that there are God -fearing

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Christians that have appreciated Trump. They reject the cult personality. They reject some of the

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Twitter feed and those kinds of things. But there is a sense, I think one of the most insightful things that Trump said throughout his time in office was he said, they don't hate me, they hate you, and I'm just standing in the way.

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And I think that's true. I think the cultural and political left in our nation today hates any conservative, especially a conservative,

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God -fearing, Bible -believing, Bible -preaching Christian. They hate us.

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And all the hatred that we've seen toward Trump ultimately is just him standing in the way.

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And I think when there's a bully on a playground, people like to say that Trump is a bully, and I think he can have some bullyish tendencies.

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But I think the biggest bully, culturally and politically, at least for quite some time in our nation has been the political -cultural left, whether it be

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Hollywood or big tech or it's just the Democratic Party, AOC and the new wave of socialism following in the footsteps of Bernie Sanders and all these people, they're bullies, the way that they handle themselves.

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And when a bunch of powerless people, powerless kids on the playground are getting just obliterated by a bully and somebody stands up and says,

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I'm gonna be a defender of these people who are being pushed around and been pushed around for decades by the culture and by politics and all these things, it's natural, like you said,

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Desi, quoting John Calvin, the heart is an idol -making factory, but it's natural for the human heart to have a sense of loyalty, a sense of affection, a sense of appreciation for that person who's coming to their defense.

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And I think there's just a lot of people in our nation who, I mean, we see what happened at the

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Capitol, that absolutely Christians should condemn what took place. It was insurrection, it was violence, it was rioting in the negative sense, not what we're gonna be talking about, right, evangelism, but rioting in a wicked and sinful sense.

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And so all that should be rightly condemned and not condoned. However, at the same time, I'm sympathetic because when you push people around for decades and you tell them they're stupid and you tell them that they're racist when they're not and you tell them that they're homophobes and they're this and that, you just, you call them names and you make them synonymous with, you know, like they're monsters and you just, you know, you call

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Nazis and, you know, all this kind of rhetoric that we've just had pushing from Hollywood with every movie that comes out, every single left -wing politician, you know, at the cultural level, political level, even progressive liberal churches at a theological level.

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And just for decades, just this bombarding of rhetoric that just, that takes conservative, salt of the earth people and makes them feel stupid, makes them feel evil, makes them, you know, the enemy of everything and the origin of all bad things in this nation.

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And then eventually, yeah, you kind of get bothered by that, you get mad. And then if somebody comes in and steps up and finds himself as the commander in chief in the

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White House and he starts pushing back on the guys who've been pushing you for decades and he actually has a spine and he's not a squishy pseudo conservative like Mitt Romney and he, you know, he actually, and you're like,

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I don't know if he's saved. I tend to think he's not. I don't know if he's regenerate, but for whatever reason, like King Cyrus, you know,

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God in his sovereignty is using this guy to defend biblical principles and more than that, to defend me.

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He's defending me. There's a bully on the playground. He's been pushing my face in the mud for 30 years.

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And this guy is standing up to him and pushing him over. And then, yeah, you get 500 ,000 people shouting, we love you.

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And I'm not saying that's right. And I'm not saying it's not idolatry. I tend to agree with you, Desi, and with you, Isaac.

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My whole point is just to say it's understandable. Yeah, not that it's acceptable, not that it's right, but it's understandable.

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And so all that happened, it's crazy, but I think there's just this, there's this double standard in our culture today and in all the media that like what happened on January 6th is just the most horrible thing in the world.

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It's deplorable. I can't believe that these right -wing nut jobs would do this.

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And it's like, what about the last six months? Like all over the nation, people burning down, but not just breaking a window and climbing inside, but burning down people's businesses, fires in major cities all over the nation, destroying people's livelihood.

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Dozens of people have been killed. What, and so I think as Christians, my final point and my thoughts on this is, this is why we have the

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Bible. This is why we have God. This is why we have an ultimate standard. The left has always a double standard.

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If they didn't have double standards, they had no standards at all. And so as Christians, we deplore, we hate unequal weights and measures.

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We hate double standards. We hate hypocrisy because it lies about God. It says something false about the nature of the triune

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God. And so as Christians, we condemn what took place on January 6th.

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And in the strongest and equally strong terms, we condemn also Black Lives Matter and Antifa and the left and the rights that have happened over the last six months.

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And so we say, both are wrong. And here's why, and here's the standard. But what

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I don't want to do is I don't want to be that squishy pseudo pastor,

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Tim Keller sort, who's gonna speak out on January 6th as a pastor with any kind of platform, any kind of podcast, any kind of Twitter account and use that notoriety and say, we can't believe what happened on January 6th, but act like that's the first thing, the first crazy thing that's happened in our nation.

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And like I was born yesterday, like contrary to what most people's opinions seem to be, like I actually was alive and cognitive for the last six months, right?

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We're not talking about like something historical that happened 50 years ago or a hundred, it was six months ago.

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And it was six months long. I mean, it just, and so I just wanna say that we can't stoop to that level.

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We can't fight fire with fire. What happened on January 6th was insurrection. It was writing in the worst kind.

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It was unbiblical, it was wicked. And likewise, what we've seen on the other side of the political aisle for six months is also wicked and also unbiblical and both parties are guilty.

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And as Christians, I think we have to rise above it. Yeah, yeah, we can't condone lawlessness, you know?

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Yeah, no, I think you're right on, Pastor. It's such a blessing for us to have a written revelation from God who's created all things because in the midst of all this chaos beginning in February of last year up until now, it's the solid

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Christian who has a Christian worldview who's been able to maintain a sense of balance and order and wisdom and insight.

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And there's been consistency all the way through. And it goes back to the fact, like you said, Pastor Joel, because we have the standard that we can appeal to.

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And so we don't have to be tossed to and fro because the media is saying this or this chaos here or this riot here or this incident here.

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We can turn to our source and interpret all things in light of it.

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And of course, even in the midst of the Christian community, there may be some level of disagreement, but it's not gonna be too far off when you talk about somebody appeals to scripture as the final rule of faith and practice.

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So it is a blessing as a Christian for me to know that I can lean upon God to give me insight and to understand and move forward in the midst of this chaos.

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So it is truly a blessing. I think you're right on when you were saying.

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Also too, just what we've had to endure, like you said, it is completely understandable that people who are fallen would not, that they would be subjected to their emotions at a time like this after being bullied for maybe the past four years beyond, whatever it may be.

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And yeah, we'll see what, of course, this brings. 2021 is gonna be definitely,

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I think, a unique year. But exciting too.

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It really is, it's exciting. And I know you guys are gonna talk about, of course, evangelism and what better opportunity do evangelists have than a time like this?

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Because even at the Trump rally too, and that's the thing, I'd imagine there was solid Christians there. I don't know how many people stopped us to say,

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Pastor Jeff, thank you for your ministry. I mean, at least, I would say at least over 50 people stopped us during that whole time just saying, thank you for what you're doing.

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There were some street evangelists there. There were some street preachers there that just was bringing me encouragement.

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There were some people who were hooked up with EAN there preaching and had their signs.

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And so even in the midst of it too, like I said, there was, of course, people who, like you said, want biblical policies, at least that are more in line with the

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Bible, these policies that would give us at least space and time to continue to press forward and hopefully make new ground when it comes to pursuing what we want in this country, in this nation.

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And of course, Trump, he was the one that would, at least in this election, be the one who would give us that space and time more so than, of course,

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Biden. Not that God can't operate in a Biden administration as far as through his church, but yeah, no.

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So thank you for that insight, Pastor Joel. I don't know, I think you guys wanna talk about evangelism at this point, or did you guys wanna continue with that topic?

30:56

Yeah, well, I think I was just gonna kinda lead into it by just saying, I think after everything settled on the 6th,

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I really felt a lot of fear from Christians because we're like, okay, now it's finalized.

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Biden's going to be the president, or Kamala Harris, eventually. Right, at some point. And it was just almost like this just cloud of, okay, this is what we're looking at.

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This is the next four years. What's gonna happen? He was on there calling last night or the night before,

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I don't remember now, I have a four -month -old, so everything kind of blends together. But I was watching this live feed of him calling the people that had broken in, terrorists, and don't you dare call them protesters.

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Well, he was talking about the handful of extremists that went in, but what about the other half a million people or whatever it was that were not there that weren't extremists?

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They were protesters. But it just got me thinking, we're not far behind that he's gonna start saying street preachers are, it's gonna be hate speech.

32:13

And don't call that free speech, it's hate speech. And those of us who go out to the abortion mills, oh, don't you dare call them protesters.

32:23

They're domestic terrorists. He's gonna, it's just the beginning of redefining words.

32:32

And I don't know, I started getting all of these visions of my friends and my loved ones going to jail.

32:40

And, but if that's God's will, then that's the

32:46

Lord's will. And I think now is the time more than ever, in our lifetime anyways, that we need to really go back and reform evangelism and go back to what it really means to evangelize here in America.

33:00

And like I had said in the beginning, it wasn't just the Church of, the First Church in Acts that was going out and proclaiming the good news of the gospel and then getting kicked out.

33:12

And Pastor Joel, I'm gonna let you kind of go into this more, but we look at the scriptures and see they were getting beat and then rejoicing and going on to the next town.

33:23

And then Donna and I were just listening to Fox's Book of Martyrs on the way to San Diego a couple of weeks ago.

33:30

And I mean, it was just Christian after Christian, not only being killed for their faith, but like tortured.

33:39

And just hearing the story after story of people just giving everything, watching their families die.

33:45

I mean, it just goes to show you how weak we are in America, like what wimps we are.

33:51

We think that persecution is when we get blocked on Facebook, but we may be seeing some real persecution.

34:00

Our kids may be seeing persecution like the martyrs. I thought kind of the same thing too, because I knew ultimately the media would kind of twist the narrative.

34:11

Like you said, we have over 500 ,000 people present and yet there's maybe comparatively to that number, a handful that inside is something, of course, that we would condemn as well.

34:23

And I think the idea is that ultimately language causes violence, right?

34:30

So that's gonna be kind of where things go, because that's what they've been saying with Trump from the beginning of his administration is that language causes violence and look at what he said, look at what happened and what followed.

34:44

And then of course, the direct link to that is ultimately the church, the exclusive message that we have or the intolerant message we have, however they wanna spin it.

34:55

But it's interesting that you thought that, because that's exactly what I thought too right after.

35:00

Oh, really? That's interesting. That's a good point, Isaac, like language causes violence, because as Christians, we do believe that.

35:09

We would word it a little bit differently. We would say that language causes action for better or for worse.

35:19

Really what we're talking about is the power of preaching. If we didn't believe in the power of language,

35:25

I mean, that's what we have. We have the word. In the beginning was the word, the logos, the language, the logic.

35:32

It's the word of God, the eternal living word of God, the second member of the Trinity that turned the world upside down.

35:40

And he did it by words. It wasn't his healings, right? All these were signs and wonders that attested to who he was so that people ultimately would listen to him and listen to the message.

35:52

Jesus even says, like for which of these works, you've seen me do many miracles, for which of these works are you trying to kill me?

36:00

And the crowd, the mob responds by saying, none of the works, right? We're fine with the miracles.

36:06

You multiply bread and loaves and fishes all day long, we like free lunch, and you can raise the dead even, those things kind of intimidate us.

36:14

But at the end of the day, it's not the works, it's the word, it's what you say.

36:19

It's because you make yourself by word, by what you say, your message, you make yourself out to be equal with God.

36:25

And so Jesus, ultimately, you don't crucify nice guys, you crucify threats. And what made

36:30

Jesus a threat was what he said. It's not what he did, it's what he said.

36:36

And it's the same with the apostles, and it's the same throughout church history. And it's the blood of the martyrs that's the seedbed for the church, that's where the church flourishes and grows.

36:47

But it's always for the message, it's not what people do. I mean, there are pagans,

36:52

I mean, absolute God -hating pagans who love Mother Teresa, why? Because she was all about action, but she wasn't about message, she wasn't about preaching.

37:03

And so we do believe that words, we wouldn't necessarily say cause, but we do believe that words can inspire and words can incite, right?

37:15

Joe Biden even said that. He said, at best, words can inspire, at worst, they can incite. And that's absolutely true.

37:22

And the reality is, it's just, again, it's that double standard that as Christians, we have to see through. So I would say that Trump is not, right?

37:30

There are primary causes, right? And primary responsibility and secondary causes and secondary response.

37:36

So Trump is not primarily responsible for what happened at the nation's capital. Ultimately, those are big girls and big boys, and they're responsible for what they chose to do.

37:47

But there is a secondary sense, whereas as the leader of the free world, everyone is responsible, not only for what we do, but according to the book of James, according to scripture, we're gonna be held ultimately responsible by God for every idle word that comes out of our mouth.

38:05

And with the more authority we have and more prestige and platform and notoriety and influence, we have even more responsibility.

38:15

Not many should presume to be teachers for they will be held to a higher account. And so Trump, I don't believe as a primary responsibility or a primary cause, but I do believe in a secondary sense that he did incite people by, when you constantly say,

38:33

I won in a landslide, if you count the legal votes, easily won in a landslide, election was stolen from me, total fraud.

38:41

Now, don't get me wrong, neutrality is a myth. And so because I believe that neutrality is a myth,

38:48

I absolutely believe that it is entirely possible that fraud took place. Now, I don't, like you said, Isaac, I don't know what scale,

38:54

I don't know if it was significant enough to overturn the results of the presidential election. But the point is,

39:00

I think there probably was some fraud, but Trump made it sound like it was just this closed case, right, we're gonna release the

39:06

Kraken, okay, we'll release the Kraken, right? We have procedures and we have avenues where you don't just say it on Twitter.

39:15

You go and you make a case in court and he exhausted him and his administration, their lawyers, they exhausted all those legal avenues.

39:23

And the simple point is that they were not able to prove sufficient fraud to even begin to come close to overturning the results of the election.

39:34

Now, that doesn't mean there wasn't proof. It's one thing for there to be evidence and there's another thing to be able to present that evidence, find the evidence, present the evidence in a compelling way.

39:44

We're not omniscient, there's certain things we're never gonna know. Only God's gonna know it. But what I do know is that the language and the rhetoric that Trump was using,

39:55

I've been robbed and I won in a landslide easily, this is completely rigged.

40:01

And he was using language saying we'll never give up, we'll never concede. That kind of language has, words have power.

40:10

A whole force can be set on fire. Life and death are in the tongue. So that exactly, so there's an inciting, but what

40:18

I hope that Christians remember again, unless you were born in the last six months, if you're older than three, then hopefully you should be able to remember that on the other side of the aisle, you have the 1619

40:33

Project, you have every other movie coming out of Hollywood about how America is systematically racist, and that kind of language from Biden to Kamala to all the way down AOC, that language also incited, that incited riots for six months.

40:51

So the point is words do have power. And so the whole idea of free speech versus hate speech,

40:56

I'm with you Desi, it gets me nervous too, thinking about the world that we're gonna live in, especially the world that if God doesn't send revival, the world that our children will live in.

41:06

But at the end of the day, this idea that words are dangerous, words have power, because look what happened on January 6th, the kind of rhetoric coming from Trump and other conservatives, it incited some emotionally unstable right -wing extremists to go and do something violent and dangerous and insurrection.

41:30

And it's like, well, yeah, that's true, but so did the whole everybody's a racist rhetoric.

41:36

And that also gave us six months of mostly peaceful riots and burning down people's livelihoods and businesses and looting and theft and all those kinds of things.

41:48

And so my point is, regardless of what side you're on, language, we've seen in the last year, 2020, and now the beginning of 21, we have seen language on both sides of the aisle, inspiring good and inciting evil.

42:08

And so for Christians, we believe that, we believe preaching does something.

42:15

And the difference though, is that for the Christian, the thing that our words don't cause or influence is violence.

42:25

Our words inspire peace and joy and love and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness.

42:36

And like, we believe words have power. The difference is that whether you're a leftist or whether you're a right -wing nut job, at the end of the day, we've seen those words now, just in the last six months, both of them result in violence.

42:54

But for the Christian, our words, the violence that we wage is the sword of the spirit.

43:03

It's not coercion, it's persuasion. It cuts to the heart and it changes lives.

43:10

It's our kingdom, it's not a kingdom of this world. It's not physical or carnal.

43:16

Our weapons are not carnal, they're not physical, but they are spiritual. And we tear down ideologies and strongholds and false worldviews.

43:27

And so we wage violence as Christians, but it's a spiritual violence. It doesn't send people into the

43:33

Capitol building to cause insurrection, and it doesn't send people out to build some kind of commune in Seattle, Chaz.

43:43

It doesn't do either, but it does something. And so anyways, my whole point is just to say that the idea of words, hate speech causes violence.

43:53

Well, the Christian would say, yes, words do something. Jesus, the word, does something.

44:00

And so absolutely, our preaching does something, and at its worst, it does great evil, but that's never exclusive to one party.

44:11

We've seen it on both sides. We've seen words cause violence on both sides. We've seen words cause good.

44:18

I don't know if I can say on both sides, but on the conservative side. But with the Christian, we see words pierce the hearts of men and ultimately snatch souls from the fire.

44:30

And so, yeah, we believe that preaching matters. We believe that words matter.

44:37

But I think we just gotta put it back on people. When people say, that's hate speech, that hurts people, your words have power.

44:45

We take them to the Book of James. We say, you're absolutely right, words have power. But here's the reality.

44:52

It's not, it's like what Doug Wilson says. It's not whether, but which. It's not whether, but which. Which words?

44:58

That's right. Right, because we're gonna talk. So you can say, this is the orthodoxy for language, right?

45:06

And these are the words that are heresy. These are the words that are, these are the blasphemous words under the new orthodoxy.

45:13

These are the words that are not allowed. But then what you do is you just take that language and you show them all the violence that's come about as a result.

45:24

And you show them, no, your words wage violence. Violence on a million children in their mother's wombs annually, right?

45:31

Violence on this, violence on that. Here's the blood, right? You wanna take secular, religion has caused wars.

45:38

Okay, let's look at Stalin. Let's look at the absence of religion. Let's see how much blood that's caused.

45:44

And then let's go back to Christianity. Let's just say, we're not gonna have a bunch of mutes.

45:49

It's not whether, but which. So we're going to use words, which ones? Which words are the words of life?

45:57

Which words have the most power for life and not death?

46:03

It's our words, or better said, it's his word. It's God's word. God's word is the word of life.

46:10

Amen. No, thank you so much for that clarification. You're so right.

46:16

And I think that's, and if anybody's listening, just listen to what Pastor Joel said. Because you wanna take that and you wanna utilize that.

46:23

Because even as I was speaking too, we can choose, and I should have probably just chose my words a little bit more wisely, because like you said, the reality that there is some type of neutrality out there, it's just, it is a myth.

46:39

As Reformed Christians, we should know this. Romans chapter one. And so it's not, like you said, there's gonna be a grid or some reference point by which somebody interprets what's taking place.

46:55

They're gonna take the data, we see the same data, but yet how we interpret it is gonna be based on, of course, our worldview.

47:01

For us, we have sanctified Christ as Lord in our hearts. And so therefore, when we hear the gospel preached, we say life, goodness, and like you said, joy, and all the fruits of the spirit.

47:12

But those who have rejected Christ, of course, they see it as something that is hostile, because they're at enmity with God.

47:19

And so you are right on in clarifying that. So I do appreciate that, because it's so true.

47:26

And I think that's kind of like a good foundation too, when we talk about what evangelism's gonna cause here in the next few years.

47:34

Right, right. So, and I would say that, just to kind of add to what you were saying,

47:39

Joel, our words do cause violence sometimes though, right? Sometimes we're gonna get punched in the face.

47:45

Sometimes we're, for the Christian, it may incite violence on ourselves. We're not provoking others to -

47:54

We're not brawlers. That's right, yes. We're not provoking others to do lawless, to engage in lawless deeds, but we might incur violence upon ourselves, right?

48:06

And also my other just kind of thought listening to that, the only thing with the whole, with Trump using inciting words,

48:13

I just kind of want to know, when is it appropriate to use words like that?

48:19

Because if the election was truly stolen from him, okay, so let's just say it was, and he knew it.

48:26

I mean, the guy's gotta be pretty upset, right? I don't know. Like we said, we don't know, only

48:32

God knows. God's omniscient. God knows all the details. But when is it the appropriate time to be like, hey everybody, waving a red flag here.

48:41

The media has suppressed all this. They stole this election. Our whole democracy is jeopardized right now.

48:50

When is it appropriate to use language like that? He's upset. People are upset.

48:55

70 million people are upset right now. Is he supposed to just be like, all right, everybody, let's roll over.

49:03

I told my husband, I'm like, more than being afraid of the whole

49:10

Biden -Harris term, which it worries me, but what kind of concerned me more was the media suppression of everything.

49:21

YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, all the major media outlets just.

49:26

Right, well, it's media and tech. Yeah, that's what you're talking about. Right, media and tech. It's one thing for CNN to have a certain spin, a certain narrative.

49:35

Right. We've come to expect that, but yeah, now for the sitting president of the

49:41

United States. To be banned. To be indefinitely banned by Facebook as of today. Right, so that to me is.

49:47

That's crazy. Yeah, I'm like, what are we gonna do? Go back to horse and a little piece of paper, get on a horse, and that's gonna be our new

49:55

Twitter. Yeah. Anyways, I don't wanna get into the weeds with that, but I think there's some legitimate passion there that can be portrayed, but we do need to be careful.

50:09

I agree with everything you said. I was blessed by that explanation by it, but I just,

50:14

I think there is somewhere, some ground in between there where you can be upset without maybe provoking violence, but.

50:25

And I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier as Christians. We have a standard which should dictate how we speak.

50:31

And of course we know that there's room for passion. We know that there's room for a certain righteous indignation, but it's always the scripture that's gonna kind of curb our speech and hopefully prevent us from going where we should not go with our language.

50:46

And I think that's probably the difference too when we talk about somebody like Trump, and let's say somebody who, if there was this fraud, like you said, and our democracy was in jeopardy, as a

50:58

Christian standing up there, we would be upset. There would be passion because we want justice to be brought forth, but I definitely think for any of us to be up there,

51:10

I think the speech would have gone a little bit differently. Right, yeah, right.

51:16

So, well, I wanna move on. That was great. Thank you, Joel, and thank you, Isaac. I just want to talk about, for the

51:25

Christians that are listening, so they're like, okay, tell me, give me a call to action on what evangelism should look like now.

51:34

I mean, I say now, but this is, we just wanna get back to biblical evangelism.

51:40

So maybe, listener, you've been sitting in a church that only tells you you need to focus on charity and benevolence, which are great virtues, those are, but also we are called to preach the good news to everybody, right?

51:57

And even if we're in a culture that is not allowing us to, even if it's gonna get harder for us, we are still called to be obedient in that area.

52:09

Like we've said many times on this show, that doesn't mean everybody's a street preacher. That doesn't mean everybody's out on a soapbox.

52:16

A lot of it is going to be moms, you at home, dads, you at home, or in the workplace, or wherever the

52:23

Lord has you right now, there are people in your life that you can share the gospel with. And so the purpose of our show is just to provoke you to do that, to try to stir you up to boldness, to action.

52:37

It's also to rescue babies and to tear down the idols in your life. But Pastor Joel, in one of your sermons called, let me see here,

52:47

I lost it. The Heart, or no, you called it Reinventing the Wheel of Evangelism.

52:52

You said, the heart of the American church and their view on evangelism is that we have found a better way to do evangelism than Jesus, that we can somehow bear witness to the truth and be liked and not be hated.

53:05

So I wanted you to kind of expound on that and tell us, just explain what it looked like in the early church to do evangelism, what

53:15

Jesus, how Jesus did evangelism and kind of how we've lost our way here in America and how we can get back to biblical evangelism.

53:25

Yeah. Well, there's a quote by Vodibachum, where he says, it's easy to avoid persecution.

53:35

All you have to do is compromise. And that's really the only way to avoid persecution, is to compromise.

53:42

And that's, we know that because, not only because Vodibachum said it, which is a pretty credible source, but because first and foremost,

53:51

Christ said it. Jesus said that a student is not above his teacher. The slave, the servant is not greater than his master.

53:59

If the world hated me, they'll hate you. And so Jesus, again, as we said earlier, he wasn't hated for what he did.

54:08

He was hated for what he said. The message, his preaching, it wasn't his miracles.

54:14

It was his messages, his sermons. And so Jesus ultimately was saying is that if you truly are a student of me,

54:24

Jesus, if you really are a servant, follower of me, Jesus, then you're going to sound like me, not just look like me, with the

54:35

Palestinian version of Mr. Rogers, you know, with your sweater vest and a warm smile, you know, while holding a kitten and petting it gently.

54:43

Like, you're not just gonna be mimes for Jesus acting out the gospel, but you're going to preach it with words.

54:50

Romans chapter 10, verse 14. How will they believe unless they hear? How will they hear unless someone preaches?

54:55

And so the Christian life is embodied by the

55:01

Christian message. And the Christian message is promulgated by Christian words, speaking.

55:08

And so if we're going to be like Christ, we're going to not just look like him, but we're going to sound like him.

55:16

We're not just going to do what he did. We're going to say what he said. And Jesus promised us, so not necessarily, you know, one of my favorite promises, but it's a promise nonetheless, that if we look like him and if we sound like him, we will be persecuted like him.

55:34

The student is not above the teacher. The slave is not greater than the master. If the world hated me, they will hate you.

55:40

So the only way to not be persecuted like Jesus was persecuted is at the end of the day, just to not be very much like Jesus.

55:48

And we live in a world where we've got a lot of people wearing the label of Christ follower, but not really following Christ.

55:58

And so I know this is your heart, Desi, and I have no doubt it's yours as well, Isaac, but we don't want to stir the church up.

56:08

We don't want to incite the church like a bunch of extreme Trump supporters. We're different.

56:15

That's not how we operate it. And so we don't want to incite people, Christians, to think that they're doing the work of an evangelist so long as they're making people mad.

56:26

The goal is not to make people mad. The result often is that people get mad, but the goal is faithfulness.

56:35

That's it. And I think faithfulness, I think that's the best word because it's not even so much, it's not brashness, it's not being extreme, it's not being intense, it's just faithfulness.

56:48

And that's what Jesus ultimately is saying. He's just saying, if you're faithful in being like me, being like Christ, you'll experience what

56:57

Jesus experienced. Jesus was not a radical. He wasn't. He wasn't a radical.

57:04

Jesus just, he came and he spoke the truth. He bore witness to his father.

57:11

He told the world who he was. He came to his own and they knew him not.

57:17

He was despised and rejected by men, but all he did was tell people the truth.

57:25

He wasn't trying to get underneath people's skin. He wasn't throwing unnecessary punches.

57:32

He was just speaking the truth. And faithfulness, Jesus, who is the embodiment, perfect, he exercised perfect faithfulness because Jesus, full of the

57:43

Spirit, as a second member of the Trinity and then filled with the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit of God, he bore all the fruit of the

57:50

Spirit in perfect measure at all times. And so there was never a moment where Jesus was not gentle.

57:56

So John chapter two, when he's fashioning the whip out of cords and throwing over the money changers' tables and driving people out of the temple, that's gentleness.

58:04

That's what gentleness, perfect gentleness looked like in that context. So Jesus, it's not the fruit of the

58:10

Spirit, just for the record. It's not like nine different tools on a tool bench.

58:16

And as we're building a house and we come to each new task, we look at the new task and we see which tool it requires.

58:23

Then we go to the tool bench and we're like, all right, this one needs a hammer. All right, this one needs a screwdriver. All right, this needs a drill bit.

58:30

That's not how the fruit of the Spirit work. The nine fruit of the Spirit that we see in Galatians, it better could be said, for one, it's always collective.

58:40

It's the fruit, the fruits of the Spirit. And really what it's more like, instead of like an apple and an orange and a banana, nine different fruit, it's really like one fruit, but with nine, and it's not an exhaustive list.

58:53

So there could be more, but with at least nine characteristics of that singular fruit.

59:00

So one apple that is, we could say juicy and glossy and crunchy, and you know what

59:08

I mean? And all these different aspects, all these different characteristics of this one fruit. And so the point is this, if we have the

59:14

Spirit of God, and if you're in Christ, you do, and the Spirit of God is dwelling within you, the fruit that is the evidence, the signs, the proof, the manifestation of the

59:26

Spirit. If you have the Spirit, you have the fruit of the Spirit, and you can never have one fruit and not the other.

59:34

And we know that just even from our theology proper, from our doctrine of God, we know from both the

59:41

Westminster Confession and the 1689 London Baptist Confession, I'm Reformed Baptist, so 1689 is where I'm gonna go, but we know in the doctrine of God, of the

59:50

Holy Trinity, that God is a most pure Spirit without body, parts, and passions.

59:57

That second word, parts, what that means in philosophical terms is that God is a simple being.

01:00:02

Now we know that God is the most complex being in all the universe, but philosophically,

01:00:08

He is a simple being. What that means is that He cannot be dissected. He can't be severed or divorced from one part of Himself to the other.

01:00:16

Parts, meaning, not to be too morbid, but Desi, if your left arm was amputated, and it's cut off and it's removed, and then it's incinerated and put into ash and thrown into the

01:00:30

Pacific Ocean, you're still Desi Maze. So even without your arm, you're still Desi Maze. But there is no part of God that could be severed and removed from Him, and He still be

01:00:41

God. All that is in God is God. So in the same way that we say God is love, God is justice,

01:00:47

God is holy, God is righteous, God is grace, God is mercy.

01:00:53

These are not merely attributes that God possesses, but they are, as the

01:01:00

Puritans would say, these are God's perfections. They wouldn't even say His attributes or character.

01:01:06

They are His perfections, and it's who God is. And so my point is this.

01:01:14

The Holy Spirit is God, right? Third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is God. The Christian, their body is now a temple of God, of the third member of the

01:01:26

Trinity, of the Holy Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, is it can't be severed because the

01:01:35

Spirit, it's the fruit, it's the visibility, the visible signs, the manifestations of God, of the

01:01:44

Spirit of God. And so love, joy, peace, patience, you can't have love and not joy.

01:01:50

You can't have patience and not gentleness. So my point is this. As a

01:01:56

Christian, if you have the Spirit, you have the whole Spirit, because there is no divided, severed, dissected

01:02:04

Spirit, because God is a most pure Spirit without body, parts, and passions. So if you get the

01:02:10

Spirit, you get the whole Spirit. And if you get the whole Spirit, that means you get the full manifestation of the

01:02:17

Spirit, which means Jesus, full of the Spirit, was modeling all of the evidences of the

01:02:25

Spirit in full measure, perfectly, at every moment of His ministry.

01:02:31

So when Jesus is yelling at someone, He's showing us perfect gentleness. It's not like Jesus is being gentle with a woman,

01:02:39

John chapter eight, caught in the midst of adultery, and then He's being ferocious over here, then He puts back on His gentleness hat.

01:02:46

Like Jesus is embodying all the fruit of the Spirit at all measure, at all times.

01:02:53

And so too, we, as followers of Christ, now we're not gonna do it perfectly like Jesus, but we too should aspire as a temple of the

01:03:03

Holy Spirit to embody the whole Spirit. And meaning, He can't be dissected,

01:03:11

He can't be chopped up, He can't be, oh, I'm modeling, you know, my spiritual gift as a

01:03:16

Christian is gentleness, you know, so I just don't ever street preach, you know, I don't ever, like, well, there's something there, but at the same time, if you're a

01:03:27

Christian, you have the whole Spirit, if you have the whole Spirit, you have all the manifestations, all the visible signs of the

01:03:33

Spirit. And that's all the fruit is. Fruit, it's just another word for manifestations of the Spirit, signs of the

01:03:39

Spirit. And so the Christian doesn't have love in one moment when it calls for it, and then gentleness in another.

01:03:46

We have love and gentleness and peace and patience and goodness and gentleness, all at the same time, all at the same time.

01:03:53

And so all that being said, in terms of evangelism, in terms of faithfulness, which is another fruit of the

01:03:58

Spirit, all we're called to do is just be faithful. We're not trying to throw extra punches.

01:04:05

We're not trying to incite. We're not trying to antagonize. We're just trying to faithfully embody the

01:04:11

Spirit of God, not merely in deed, but in word, as we preach the gospel, as we preach

01:04:18

God's law and God's gospel, because He loves them both equally. So we preach the law and we preach the gospel.

01:04:25

And as we do so, we're trying to faithfully embody the fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness, and then it's really, it's just up to the context, meaning there are some contexts, because of the sovereignty of God, the one who has elected souls before the foundations of the world, some for salvation, some the reprobate for damnation, but this

01:04:51

God who softens hearts and hardens others, if we're in a context with those who are being drawn by the

01:05:00

Spirit unto salvation, then our faithfulness and our message is welcomed.

01:05:09

And if we're in another context where people are being hardened sovereignly by God, then that's where you get riots.

01:05:17

That's where you get opposition. That's where the apostles get thrown in jail. That's where, and so let me just read a text real quick.

01:05:23

This is Acts chapter 24, getting to just the theme of this episode, right evangelism, verses one through six.

01:05:32

It says, and after five days, the high priest Ananias came down with some elders and a spokesman, one

01:05:39

Tertullius. They lay before the governor their case against Paul. And when they had been summoned,

01:05:45

Tertullius began to accuse him saying, since through you, he's speaking to Felix, since through you, we enjoy much peace.

01:05:53

All right, I could just hear our culture today. Since through you Biden, or since through you, since through you, we enjoy much peace.

01:06:01

And since by your foresight, most excellent Felix, reforms, good liberal policies are being made for this nation in every way and everywhere.

01:06:10

We accept this with all gratitude, verse four now. But to detain you no further,

01:06:16

I have been on this man.

01:06:22

Now he's speaking about Paul, the apostle, a plague, one who stirs up riots.

01:06:28

There's our word, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the

01:06:35

Nazarenes. He even tried to profane the temple, but we seized him. By examining him yourself, you will be able to find out from him about everything of which we accuse him.

01:06:47

Paul was known by his culture as one who stirs up riots.

01:06:53

And this is the same Paul who was modeling gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self -control, love, joy, peace, patience, kind.

01:07:02

And so my point is, it's the context. It's not the

01:07:09

Christian, it's the context. You put a Christian in a context with people whose hearts are being softened and they're drawn by the spirit of God onto salvation.

01:07:19

And you get warm hugs and thank yous and salvation and brotherly affection.

01:07:27

And then you put them in a hostile context with hearts that are being hardened and you get riots and opposition and that's all it is.

01:07:41

And so at the end of the day, my whole point is just to say, it's just faithfulness.

01:07:46

We're not trying, it's not like it's some kind of context going into 2021 with the new presidential administration.

01:07:55

Who can get thrown in jail the most times in 2021? Jeff Durden would probably win, but that's not the goal.

01:08:03

The goal is just faithfulness. And you just let the cards fall as they may.

01:08:09

Like you let God decide. So the last text, real quick, I know I'm talking a lot, but last text. No, keep going. And then I'll turn it to you guys.

01:08:15

But this is one of my favorite, this is I think my favorite passage in the Bible. It's 2 Corinthians 2, verse 14 through 17.

01:08:24

It says, but thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.

01:08:30

And through us, that is Christians, the people of God, he spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him, that is of Christ, everywhere.

01:08:39

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

01:08:47

Verse 16, to one, a fragrance from death to death, to the other, a fragrance from life to life.

01:08:54

Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

01:09:08

What's being said there by the apostle Paul right into the Corinthians is this. First, he says, what we are as followers of Christ, as ambassadors of Christ, representatives of Christ, what we're called to do is to spread the knowledge, the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

01:09:27

So that's the first thing I would say to Christians. Number one, your goal actually isn't to spread the fragrance of the affection or the love or the passion of Christ, but the knowledge of Christ.

01:09:40

I think that the first mistake that people make in evangelism in the evangelical church today is they think that the goal of evangelism is to get people to love

01:09:50

Jesus. It's not, it's to get people to know Jesus. And with that knowledge of Jesus, if we simply get people to accurately know the

01:10:01

Jesus of the Bible, then they'll either love him, hate him, bless him, curse him, follow him, reject him.

01:10:09

And what we see in that text, in 2 Corinthians chapter two, is that to one group of people, again, so it's not the

01:10:15

Christian so much, it's the context that the Christian in the sovereignty of God has placed it. In one context, it says to one, to the one who is perishing, that fragrance of the knowledge of Christ, that's our goal, that's our marching orders.

01:10:29

We're spreading this fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. In one context, with those people who are perishing, it smells like a fragrance of death to death, smells putrid, they hate it, it's just rotten.

01:10:42

And to another, those who are being saved, we smell that same, right?

01:10:47

It's not like we're preaching one message over here and then another message over there. We're just faithful, we're consistent.

01:10:53

In any context, the Lord sovereignly places us in. Same message, same marching orders, same mission, consistent.

01:11:00

Same fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. And so to the one who's being saved, we smell like a life -giving perfume.

01:11:06

And so the old adage goes like this, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, in biblical terms, with evangelism, beauty is in the nose of the beholder.

01:11:16

And what we can say is, depending on the sovereignty of God, those who he is choosing to save and those who he is choosing to allow to perish, that fragrance of the knowledge of Christ will smell one way or another.

01:11:34

It'll smell good or it'll smell bad. And the last thing Paul says in that text, in that passage is this, he says, we are not like, so he says, everything

01:11:43

I've said so far, he says, this is who we are. And then he says, by contrast, this is who we're not.

01:11:49

And he says, we are not like those peddlers. And that word peddler, it's like the, a peddler is a salesman, a pushy, annoying salesman.

01:12:00

It's a solicitor who's going to your front door every single day. And it's a guy who's like sleazy and selling snake oil.

01:12:09

That's a peddler. And so what Paul's saying is this, as evangelists,

01:12:14

New Testament, gospel, real Christian evangelism, book of Acts evangelism, our goal is to be men of sincerity, not salesmen.

01:12:25

See, a salesman won't always tell you the truth because they want you to buy something.

01:12:32

And, but an evangelist, Christian evangelist is not a peddler, is not a sleazy salesman.

01:12:40

And the goal is not to spread the love of Christ everywhere. The fragrance of the love is the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ.

01:12:48

So our goal in evangelism is simply said, it's this, we're not trying to get people to love

01:12:55

Jesus because we're not selling Jesus. We are preaching Jesus with sincerity and faithfulness, trying to get people not to love

01:13:04

Jesus, but rather to know Jesus. And as they come to that knowledge of the son of God, depending on God's sovereign will, whether they're being saved or whether they're perishing, they will either love him or hate him.

01:13:20

And for those who love him, we just made another brother and sister in Christ for eternity. For those who hate him, then we just did right evangelism because we're probably gonna get some retaliation.

01:13:33

That's how it goes. Amen. Amen, yeah. Wow, well, thank you for that. I mean,

01:13:39

I think - That's good stuff. Oh, so good, I'm so blessed and encouraged by that. And then I pray that our listeners, just listen to that over and over because that is a great -

01:13:50

Great reminder in the days and years ahead for us to just focus on that, focus on faithfulness.

01:13:57

And like you said, we're not called to be offensive or to, in our own selves, just being jerks or trying to, like you said, have a contest on who can get thrown into jail and give each other high fives.

01:14:10

Let the cross be the offense, right? We don't need to, that's gonna get people hating us enough.

01:14:16

We don't have to add to it by being jerks and just trying to be mean about it, but to be sincere and to have the fruit of the

01:14:26

Spirit. And I just, I love that, so thank you. And I think we're gonna wrap it up. So I just wanna say thank you,

01:14:32

Pastor Joel, for coming on and blessing us. That was so great. And I hope that people go and check out your new podcast,

01:14:41

Theology Applied. I like what you say in Theology Applied. You say applying God's Word to every aspect of life, and that's what we wanna do on Provoked.

01:14:49

We wanna take that knowledge and that love for God and love for neighbor, and we wanna apply it to our everyday life, and we hope that that would stir us to action as when it comes to evangelism, saving, rescuing babies, and tearing down cultural idols.

01:15:06

So again, Pastor Joel, can you tell our listeners where they can find you on Theology Applied? Absolutely, thanks,

01:15:13

Desi, for having me. Thanks, Isaac, for co -hosting today. So the ministry that I lead, so I'm planting

01:15:22

Covenant Bible Church, and I also lead a ministry called Right Response Ministries. So check out rightresponseministries .com,

01:15:29

or you can download our free app. It's a great way to follow along with all of our content, or you can always just go to our

01:15:35

YouTube channel or any of the social media platforms, Facebook or Instagram. But Right Response Ministries is the name of the ministry, and there's multiple podcasts.

01:15:46

There's a question -like Q &A podcast, and there's the Theology Applied podcast, and that's the one where each episode we have a new guest.

01:15:56

Desi was one of our guests about a month ago, and so we have a guest come on. We pick either a doctrine or a text, and we kind of spend a little bit of time just expounding on what that particular doctrine is or what that particular text is saying, but then we try to focus the majority of our time applying it.

01:16:18

And so I think there's a lot of people in the evangelical church today who will salute the inerrancy of Scripture.

01:16:25

The Bible is the Word of God. It's a double -edged sword, and so we have people who salute the inerrancy of Scripture.

01:16:31

They'll say, that is a sword, and it's a really sharp sword. But what we wanna do is we wanna wield the sword, and so I think of our founders' friends,

01:16:39

Tom Askew and Jared Longshore, they've got a series called Wield the Sword, and I know that's their heart as well is it's not just the inerrancy of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, but it's the sufficiency of Scripture.

01:16:51

It's not just saluting the sword and saying, that's a sword, and it's really sharp, and it's double -edged, and it's authoritative, but it's taking it off the mantle, out of its sheath, and beginning to swing that sword and learning how to use it.

01:17:06

That's what, when we talk about theology applied, we're talking about not just the inerrancy of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, but the sufficiency of Scripture, the use of Scripture, taking

01:17:17

Scripture and applying it to all of life, not just church, and not just marriage, and not just parenting, but politics, and culture, and media, and entertainment, and the marketplace, and all of life.

01:17:32

Amen, that's awesome. And I think people that listen and enjoy our show and the other

01:17:37

Apologia Studios shows would really like theology applied. So be praying for that,

01:17:42

Pastor Joel, and Isaac, thanks for filling in today. Oh, yeah, no, it's my pleasure. Thank you, Pastor Joel.

01:17:49

You've been a blessing. I mean, I could truly say that you've affected my thinking just in this hour -long conversation we've had, and I'm definitely subscribing to that podcast, for sure.

01:17:59

Well, thanks, Isaac, thanks so much. And Isaac, thanks for all you do to keep everything running here.

01:18:04

Oh, I enjoy it. All the shows you hear and see, it's Isaac and Carmen running it, so appreciate it.

01:18:11

No, it's a pleasure. Yeah, and we can't do it without, of course, the listeners and the support from you guys.

01:18:18

So thank you to all who support us and back us. Let's make 2021 just a phenomenal year, and let's continue to move forward.

01:18:28

That's right, amen. So thank you guys for listening to another episode of Provoked. Go to our

01:18:34

Facebook, Instagram, the iTunes, too, if you get a chance, and give us a review and a like if you can, because -

01:18:44

Google Podcast. Right, yeah, like we say, and everyone, it helps us to expand our reach and to try to bless as many people as we possibly can.

01:18:53

So thank you guys, and we'll see you next time. And yeah, don't worry, just go preach the gospel.