Trevor Cut Off Follow up and Lessons from Philippians

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris. It is Monday as I'm recording this, middle of the afternoon, the 2nd of May, and I have a number of podcasts

I'm gonna be recording actually today because I'm on a trip down south for the next week and doing some projects, but also visiting some friends, and so looking forward to that, but that means

I have a lot of information that I wanna get to you, and some of that information is a little bit discouraging, and I was realizing this as I was putting it together, and so one of the things

I wanna do at the outset is give you a dose of the book of Philippians. I was leading a discussion for someone

I discipled this morning on this book, and I wanna talk a little bit about being grounded in a transcendent perspective, something that I think

Paul had when he looked at his own life and being even tied or linked to a

Philippian jailer, being in jail, being persecuted for the sake of the gospel really, and how he looked at that situation, so I wanna give you some of the hope that I think he had in the book of Philippians, and I want to though start by playing,

I'm gonna do two things in this, we're gonna do that, but I'm gonna also play for you a clip and read a statement from enemies within the church because enemies within the church, for those who don't know, had a booth and a speaking spot at an event put on last

Saturday. Actually, I think the event was hosted on by Citizens for America Foundation, and the event was called

Culture Engagement Summit, and that was Saturday, and I was listening to the live feed, and I talked about this in the last podcast, and you can go there if you wanna see the other videos, but Trevor Loudon, who was speaking on behalf of enemies within the church was cut off from his microphone, and Trevor, for those who don't know,

I've said this stuff before, but I realize I have new listeners all the time, Trevor Loudon is a friend, he is someone that I've gotten to know over the course now of a few years.

Trevor is, as far as I know at this point, he has not made the decision to become a born -again believer, and that's something that you can pray for.

I have shared the message of the gospel with him, we've talked about the law, we've talked about hell, we've talked about all these things, and Trevor is someone who is reading the

Bible, is asking good questions, is very curious about Christianity, certainly has a cultural

Christian outlook, thinks that the United States needs to be a Christian country, and in the sense, and I shouldn't have to unpack that, but in the sense that most of you understand what a

Christian country means, guided by Christian morals, and Trevor wasn't brought into the project,

Enemies Within the Church, because of any of that, though, and he says that in the speech earlier, he was brought in because he's really a whiz, he just understands, he's an expert, really, on Marxism, he reads

Marxist publications, he understands how Marxists operate, he knows the names of prominent Marxists, and he knows how

Marxists get into churches, and so that's really his role in all of this, and so that's my understanding of Trevor, who he is, and he came to this event, he's also a big political speaker on the right, and so he came to speak on behalf of Enemies Within the

Church to promote it, and he gave what I thought was a really good speech, and the movie itself, though, was forbidden by the, not the organizers of the conference, but the hosts of the conference,

Mid -America Baptist Theological Seminary, it was forbidden by them to be shown, by the president,

I'm not sure who exactly all, but certainly the president, and so this became an issue, and I called the president of the seminary and left a message last week and said, hey,

I think it would be great if you talked to the director, the director tried to get ahold of him, as far as I know, no direct communication happened, except Trevor, when he got there on Saturday morning, he talked to the president and asked for an explanation, and the only explanation he got, which really wasn't much of an explanation, it wasn't even an explanation, really, but the only explanation he got was, well, we already showed that movie here to a different audience months ago, in December, and so that's now become kind of an issue, because Trevor, and not, it wasn't really

Trevor, but enemies within the church, the people behind that, Pastor Kerry Gordon and Judd Saul, put out thousands of dollars to get a team there to sell the books, or the movies,

I should say, to get the materials there, the movies, to sell, to get

Trevor there to speak, I mean, it was flight costs, shipping costs, and they took a loss on this, and so they were then told, when they've already committed, that, by the way, we're not gonna let you show the film, and by the way, on Saturday, we're not even gonna let you show the trailer for the film, so this kind of became an issue, and so I talked about that in the last podcast, and I said

I would follow up, so this is what I'm doing first, I'm following up before we get to the Book of Philippians, I wanna show you the video that Enemies Within the

Church put out, and then the statement they put out, and as I'm recording this on the afternoon of Monday, the 2nd, there has been no statements made from MidAmerica, or any of those involved in getting

Trevor offstage, cutting his speech short, or, you know, that's what it looks like, at least, and getting the film banned from the event, so I wanna show you the latest here, and I'm hoping,

I'm really hopeful that there will be a statement made, there will be an apology made, a lot of people came with the expectation of wanting to see the film, and many of them had left by the time

Trevor was going up there, because they realized they weren't gonna be able to see the film, and they were never given an explanation for why, and so Trevor attempts to give them this explanation for why, and that's, unfortunately, makes the seminary look not too good, because they're the ones that banned it, and now we are where we are.

So here's what's happened, you can look at the other videos if you want, by going to my last podcast on this topic, you can listen to those, but here's the moment that Trevor was asked to, and I'm gonna skip ahead here,

I'll skip to the point at which this guy, this pastor, Timothy Pig, comes on stage, and this is what happens.

...in the church, and that is leading to a crisis in our society. Faith and courage go together.

If you have a deep faith, you will be scared of nothing. You will not be scared of the truth, you will not be scared to have your opinions challenged, you will not be scared of civil authorities, or not being invited to the right parties, or not being invited to the right conferences.

You won't care about that, because your eyes are on eternity, not the next party, or the next social occasion.

What do you do? Now you can see, Trevor is, as he's speaking, this gentleman here,

Timothy Pig, is inching closer to him, and it's a little awkward, and I think he's trying to get Trevor's attention, and it's, the whole thing's awkward.

Trevor's still getting applause from the audience, and at this point, though, the live feed has been cut off, so this is, like,

I was streaming this, and I couldn't hear any of what Trevor's saying here, because they had cut it off, the seminary, or the event, I guess the event had turned off the live stream to cut

Trevor off, and so it probably would have been better if they just let him finish, but this is how it goes down.

So, the movie, I urge you all to get it, folks. The movie, we have a stand out in the lobby, and it's right there.

You can get copies of it. I urge you to take it, show it, show it to your church, show it to your pastor, and ask yourself why it was not allowed to be shown in this institution.

All right, thank you. Thank you, just a moment, please. So, I'll end it right now, and I hear everything

I've said here today is the truth. So, I'm going to finish it now. I'm not going to talk the truth, folks.

Please, read the movie. Brothers in Christ can watch this outlet and finish his speech.

I'm finishing now, I'm finishing now. Please, watch the movie. You make your own judgments.

You make exactly your own judgments. I am here to tell the truth as I see it.

I hope you've had something out of what I had to say, but I certainly hope you'll watch the movie and spread it around as much as you can.

Thank you, and thanks for the copies. God bless you. So, you see, it's not a very big crowd there, and Trevor's, man,

I just can't, this was handled so poorly. I don't know what else to say. I just can't,

I don't know what to say. So, let's just read the statement here, and then we'll move on to the

Philippian stuff. The leadership at Mid -America Baptist Theological Seminary just wanted, went to go pull

Trevor Loudon off the stage. Okay, well, they wanted to get him off the stage, right? That's clear.

And they say, this is what they say, the stage, and they cut off the live video feed because he was exposing the fact that they shut down the showing of our film.

To put this whole thing into context, we were called up by the event organizer, Citizens for America, and asked to sponsor the event.

We sponsored the event. Sponsoring the event means they paid money. They paid some money, I don't know how much. Was predicated on the fact that they were going to show the film at the event.

We got word last week that president of the seminary, Dr. Spradlin, called the event organizer and insisted he not show the film at the event.

We went, we spent several days trying to contact Mr. Spradlin and the faculty at the seminary to find out why they were trying to cancel our film at the event.

That wasn't being put on by the seminary itself. We had already purchased plane tickets and shipped things out to Cordova, Tennessee for the event.

I spoke with Trevor about going, and he decided he wanted to go to speak to the crowd. Many people showed up to the event expecting a showing of the film.

No announcement by the event organizer was made that the film wasn't being shown. Trevor decided to explain why the film wasn't being shown and who made the order.

In the middle of Trevor's speech, they rushed the stage and pulled him off and cut the live video feed and proceeded to try and throw out our entire crew from the event.

This is what happens when you speak truth in the Southern Baptist institution. Instead of just owning up to it, they like to hide and play games.

This is why the Southern Baptists, even the ones who claim to be conservative, always lose. The Bible says, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

The honorable thing would have been to provide the real explanations as to why they shut down our film. The honorable thing would have been to let

Trevor finish his speech. The people that showed up to the event were owed a truthful explanation. Everyone on our film team stands on truth.

It just seems that there are too many that are afraid of the event, even if they claim to be on our side. We don't play games, don't care about positions.

We're not respecters of persons. We also do not value gentlemen's agreements over truth. There are thousands of churches across America that are being infiltrated by Marxism.

There are millions of Americans being led astray by a false gospel. Playing games is over. And I think this resonates with a lot of people.

I really think it does. I can tell you firsthand that for me personally,

I've seen this in my own life just within the last year. I've seen three events, two conferences that I was supposed to be at.

And I was scheduled for, people were messaging me, still are in some cases, because one of them has yet to happen.

It's in June in Michigan in Grand Rapids. And I had to take them off my schedule because the organizers planned it with me and everything.

And then before the event, in some cases, it's been very short notice. Basically, I'm too hot to handle.

And I never, I really don't ever get really straight explanations. It's always, yeah, and actually in every case, it has not been a straight explanation.

It has been, well, others are uncomfortable with you, or one person,

I don't even know how many it is sometimes, but in one case I can think of, one person didn't like the way that you, what you said about Al Mohler in this specific case, or they don't like what you say about history, or they, or it's some kind of like controversial thing.

I'm either, it usually falls into the category of you're either a liar or you're a racist or a combination of the two.

But the way it's handled is like, it's attributed to something else. It's attributed to a scheduling conflict, and then

I have to dig to try to figure out what it is. And then I get a whiff of what it is. And I realize there's someone there who doesn't approve of my views on something, or is in some cases, in the case of the upcoming conference, there's a woke friendliness of some kind.

And it's, you know, we can't have you now. And so I've seen this myself, and it does annoy me a little bit, because as a speaker, it's, and not horribly, it doesn't like annoy me horribly, because like,

I don't view, I still have yet to view myself as someone who's a public speaker or even a podcaster.

I know it's weird for some of you, because that's the only thing you know me as. I just don't see myself as that.

And I see what I'm doing as a temporary thing at best. It's, I'm trying to give a supplement, if you will, something that's not being focused on.

It's not a multivitamin. I'm not looking to be on the conference circuit or anything like that. And so for me, it's not like a huge, huge disappointment, but it's more of like a, just a frustration

I have that if these are the conservatives, and I'm telling you, in each case, it's conservatives, supposedly.

If these are the conservatives, then what in the world? Sometimes I've wondered like, why go after the social justice advocates?

And I know the reasons, right? The reasons are because they're spreading a false gospel. The reasons are because they're lying.

They really are lying, and their solutions are doing way more harm than the problems that they seek to remedy.

Their ethics are completely at war with Christian ethics. Their view of truth and confirmation of truth is completely at war with what

Christians believe about epistemology. Their view of reality, their metaphysics is totally off, and it devalues people.

And so I know the reasons, but sometimes I'm just being personal with you all in my audience, because I know you guys are very, very faithful, and I appreciate that, very supportive, and I really appreciate all of you for that.

And it does give me hope, and we're gonna get to Philippians in a minute, and I'll give you more hope, but I just, there are those times where I pause, and I wonder, like,

I know sometimes what I'm doing is benefiting other people, other quote -unquote conservatives in denominations, organizations, et cetera, and I wonder when

I sometimes have to deal with some people that are high up in those groups, I'm like, why am

I even benefiting these people? And I realize that's not the reason I do it, though. That's not the reason you listen either.

It's because we care about all the things I just mentioned, and ultimately, we love Jesus. We care about his truth.

And so when Jesus is under attack, his law's under attack, when his truth is under attack, then we stand up, we have to say something, we have to do something.

And many of you are in situations in local churches and organizations, missions agencies, where you're fighting this in the trenches.

You're the ones that are experiencing the real battle in those arenas. And so that's the reason that I do this kind of thing.

But you watch a clip like that, and I'm just telling you, this is happening more so than you think.

The jostling, the obfuscation, the massaging of things, just the lack of straightforwardness, the vagueness, the personal relationships getting in the way of the truth.

That stuff, it happens so often on the quote -unquote conservative side. It's unbelievable to me.

My eyes have been opened so much just in the last, I'd say, two years especially, really the last year, though, especially.

My eyes have been opened so much to the fact that, you know what, there's a lot of people out there who are saying, sometimes they're even saying the right things against critical race theory in the abstract, or they're really, they're people

I thought I could trust, and then I realized later on, like there's a lot of political maneuvering here, and the politics is insane, and the unwillingness to sometimes name the names is crazy, and who's friends with who feels like I'm in a sandbox, or this is like a high school mean girls drama club or something instead of, not that I know what that's like,

I don't, but it's just, the immaturity is amazing sometimes, and so anyway,

I think in this situation, you're catching a whiff of this, part of what is happening behind the scenes more often is made its way to the top, and it's only made its way to the top because Trevor Loudon would not allow it to be concealed.

He decided that he was gonna let people know what was happening behind the scenes to an extent, and there's a part of me that really appreciates that about him.

That's been a struggle of mine sometimes because I don't want to, if I think someone's on the right side of this, or they understand the truth, and I view them as someone who's moving the needle in the right direction and stuff,

I don't want to rain on that parade at all. I don't, even if people go after me, sometimes behind the scenes, it can be vicious sometimes,

I don't wanna rain on that parade, but there are times, and it takes discernment when you have to expose some of those things, and there are some publicly available things

I am going to be exposing a little bit this week that I just think y 'all need to see. You just need to see, and you need to evaluate, are these the leaders that you want?

PCA people, do you want, I'm gonna talk about a leader in the PCA, do you want this guy for your leader? You're gonna have to evaluate this, and I'm gonna talk more about that later in the week, but anyway, all that to say, politics is going on on both sides of the equation, and we need some real men who just stick up for the truth and have steel spines, not afraid of their own reputation being castigated by the other side, and they're not trying to walk on eggshells to please the woke or to try to maintain relationships that really should probably have ended a while ago, at least the closeness of those relationships should have ended, and they're working together because some of these people are teaching false gospels.

We need people who care more about the truth, and then you can form relationships with people based on something that's actually a real glue.

You stick together based on a shared understanding and valuation of truth, of biblical truth specifically, and of a relationship with Christ that you're gonna defend to the death, and if someone is opposed to any of that, then you confront them humbly at first, but if they refuse to repent, then you're not gonna still be buddy -buddy with that person, buddying up with them, so anyway, that's my unexpected little,

I could probably make a podcast just out of this, but I really wanna do the Philippian stuff. Can we do that? Let's do it. So let's talk about some stuff from the

Bible, specifically from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Philippian church.

Let me see if I can pull this up. I can pull it up. We have the technology. So I'm gonna skim over the surface of this, but the situation

Paul talks about in the book of Philippians is far beyond anything that I think we are experiencing, anyone in this audience.

He talks about that he is imprisoned in the cause of Christ, but yet he says in verse 12 of chapter one, he says,

I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, and he says, my imprisonment has become well -known throughout the whole

Praetorian Guard and to everyone else, and most of the brethren trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.

Now, he says this as an encouragement that, look, I'm setting an example here, and we'll find that at the end as well.

Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ. He's setting an example for how to suffer for the cause of Christ, for the name of Christ, and oftentimes, it's not gonna be about Christ.

It's gonna be, ultimately, we know it's about Christ, but it's gonna be about something else. They're gonna call you a sexist or a racist or a

Christian nationalist or whatever their smear they wanna use. They're gonna try to make it out like it's something having to do with that, but ultimately, we know that when you stand up for God's truth,

God's law, God's ethics, that that's the real reason.

That's the person they really have a problem with. It's not you. It's your Lord, and he says that this is encouraging people.

This is what we need right now to have more courage, to speak the word of God without fear, and I think there's a lesson here for those in denominations and organizations going woke or just caving to corruption.

Say something. Stand up. I've seen so, I mean, the amphibian nature of the men that I have seen is just off the charts.

I cannot believe sometimes how feckless people can be in these organizations, and the thing is, if you do what

Paul did, if you stand up and you say, I'm not budging. I'm gonna say something. I'm gonna stand firm on the word of God, and I'm gonna be public about it.

In some cases, you need to be, but I'm not budging. I'm seeing something that's wrong. It's actually, it's a damnable heresy leading people to hell.

I'm gonna say something about it, and you do that, and then all the long knives come out for you, and let's say the fear is

I'm gonna wind up like Paul. I'm gonna lose my job. I'm gonna, whatever the case is. Paul landed in prison, and yet something actually happened.

What happened? It encouraged other people. The gospel went forward to nonbelievers, but it also encouraged Christians to grow a spine, to have more courage, because they see the courage in you, and you can have courage through these things, and I think of people like Russell Fuller, who was very,

I'm sure it was fearful for him, and he's blacklisting himself to come out and say what he did. I'm sure for Bobby Lopez, it's very similar.

There are people who have had courage, and they don't, oftentimes, they don't get the support from the people on the conservative side with institutional power in any of these organizations.

Oftentimes, it's just they're kind of left to fend for themselves, but guess what? God supplies their needs, and it gives other people inspiration to be courageous.

I know, I mean, look, Bobby Lopez, Russell Fuller, they've encouraged me to not give up, to keep saying what

I'm saying. Verse 15, though, says something interesting. It says, some, to be sure, are preaching Christ, even from envy and strife, but some also from goodwill.

The latter do it out of love, knowing that I'm appointed for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, rather than from pure motives, thinking it'd cause me distress and high imprisonment.

Can you believe that? There's people literally preaching a good message, saying the right things, striking the right notes, and yet their motives are all off.

And I've witnessed this firsthand, and it is destructive, but you know what?

Nothing's changed. I think that's an encouragement for me. Human nature hasn't changed. It's been the same way for 2 ,000 years.

You know, things are getting bad in America. Yeah, there are things getting bad in America, in many ways, but guess what? Things were bad 2 ,000 years ago.

It's always been bad. It's always been bad, and there's always been good. There's always been good things.

We live in a time where, whatever era we live in, we always live in a time when there are people who love the

Lord, and there are people who have courage, and there are people who have good motivations, and there are then those who don't, and are subversive, and make themselves out to be something they're not.

But what's Paul's reaction to that? Verse 18, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth,

Christ is proclaimed, and this I rejoice. So this is the goal that Paul has, to, no matter the circumstance, even if it's causing him harm, even if his reputation is being tarnished, he's in prison, and he's suffering there, he wants to not look at that situation as the barometer by which he judges whether or not

God's will is being done, or whether or not things are successful. He's looking instead at the big picture.

He's transcending it, and he's looking at what's happening in terms of the gospel going forward. Christ is being proclaimed.

Where is Christ's kingdom still being built? You bet it is, and Christ is even, guess what? He's even using people with bad, selfish ambitions to do it, isn't that amazing?

He's using, and I know that there's always a cause, I've seen this, for bitterness.

People can get bitter very easily about when they catch a whiff of this, and they realize that even people that are sometimes doing good things are doing it for the wrong reasons, and they're willing to sometimes destroy people or step on other people to climb the next rung of the ladder, whatever it may be.

And the thing is, Paul's outlook in this was that, you know what, are they preaching Christ? Is Christ being magnified?

What's the situation with Christ? Is he even using them to proclaim his word, his truth?

And that's the encouraging thing to me, is that his word's gonna still go on, no matter what. His word's gonna keep going.

So anyway, man, at this rate, I'm gonna be here forever talking about the book of Philippians, but let me just try to, like I said, skim over the surface here and give you some little nuggets.

He says in verse 21 of chapter one, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And then he gives us a perspective that it's telling to me, because I think of the great commandment, and I think about how we're supposed to love others and love

God, and I fail so miserably at that so often, I really do. I think about myself and what

I want, and Paul has reached a point where, more often than not, it seems, he is thinking of others, and he's thinking of Christ, and to die is gain because he's gonna be with Christ, and he gets to enjoy those blessings.

To live, though, is better for who? For him? No, to remain with the people that he ministers to, the

Philippians, other Christians. That is someone who is practicing the great commandment, and it's an evidence that there's fruit there from a life that's been sanctified, and that's the kind of thing that I compare myself to, not in a bad way, because I fall short, and I realize that, but as a goal to reach for, as something to strive for, as a barometer of, wow, if I get to that point where I can look at death and say, you know what, that's a gain because I get to be with God, but you know what, living is good because I get to serve others.

I mean, that is such a, it's encouraging to know that a human being like Paul, who was once persecuting

Christians, can get to that point, that point of being that unselfish. So let's skip ahead here.

I'm gonna go to chapter two, and he basically says, don't look out for your own personal interests.

Look out for the interests of others. Guess what? That's the attitude Christ Jesus had. So have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you appear as lights in the world.

Now, obviously, when Paul says this, he's not talking about calling out false teachers because he does that very thing in this letter.

He talks about the Judaizers, and he's even talking about, I mean, I just told you about how he talks about those preaching

Christ from bad motives. He mentions negative things, but the whole context here is, verse 13,

God who is at work in you for his good pleasure. Therefore, he says, just do all things without grumbling or disputing.

When you grumble and you dispute, and I'm guilty of this sometimes, and in such a way, if you're doing this kind of thing, and you're doing it because you have an expectation in your mind that you don't really deserve the lot that you've been handed, my car broke down,

I can't believe what's going on. Sometimes things legitimately stink. Talking to a friend earlier or last week, and it just, man, his life, it just grieves me, what he's going through.

And yet God is still in control. And ultimately, we don't wanna, we never wanna get to the point where we just question that, where we,

I think it's sometimes natural to question God, what are you doing? But where we just question his goodness. God's still at work in you.

And even if negative circumstances arise, there's no cause to grumble against him, to act as if he's not in control, or if he is, he's got it out for you or something.

So he talks about, let's go actually to the next chapter three.

He talks about the dogs, the evil doers. His words, not mine. Verse two of chapter three, beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision.

So that shows you that there can be, there's discernment here. There's certainly going after false teaching and false teachers.

I'm just saying that because I've heard people use, hey, you're not supposed to complain. You shouldn't be complaining about that guy who's a false teacher.

It's like, actually, look what Paul does just a few verses after he says not to grumble or complain. He says, whatever things are gained to me, those

I have counted as a loss for the sake of Christ. And he says that, he counts everything as rubbish in comparison to knowing

Jesus Christ. So there's this priority he places on Jesus and knowing

Jesus. And I think despite all the things going on with the institutions that many of you have trusted for so long and even people you've trusted going down this horrible path of false teaching and compromise and everything else,

I think that there's an encouragement that the thing that matters more than anything else is knowing

Jesus Christ. And that is a door that is available to all those who are his. That's not something that can ever be shut, that you can be prevented from because it doesn't belong to a denomination, an organization.

Even your local church doesn't have that kind of power. No one can get in the way of that as a barrier between you and Christ.

You always have that. And so that's an encouraging thing to me is you can always know Christ more.

You can always pursue that. There's always something to do in life that is beneficial, worthwhile, and more satisfying.

It says, brethren, join in following my example and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. So he then compares that to, in verse 18, the many who walk of whom

I often told you and now tell you even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ. So there are enemies within the church.

They're enemies of the cross of Christ whose end is destruction, whose God is their appetite, whose glory is their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

For our citizenship is in heaven. Now, this has been also misused by big Eva types. Often I've seen this where your citizenship is in heaven, you shouldn't care about the

United States or something. And that's ridiculous. Paul cared about his people. He cared about the

Jews. He used his Roman citizenship. Paul would even sacrifice himself for the sake of his brethren.

If he could get to a point where they would receive salvation, and at his expense, he would do it.

So you can't give me that. That's not the interpretation of this. The interpretation of this is that you have a broader perspective of what life's about.

You can see the big picture. You can transcend the present circumstances to see what's going to happen ultimately.

And you can, as an adult does, and as a Christian adult does, you can prioritize the things that actually do matter.

And so that's what Paul is getting at here. There's people who just are thinking about what's the next thing that they can use to get pleasure for themselves?

Or what's the thing that they can use to acquire power? What's the next political move? We should be thinking about the best ways to steward our vote and to steward our resources.

I have some friends running for school board at my church, two people running for school, or one person running for school board, one person who's not, goes to my church, but is a

Christian in the area, running for school board. And I mean, it's a thankless job. You're not paid for it. And they're doing it because, man, they love their children and they want to be a representative for God in that arena.

And praise God for that. That's a good thing. So do all you do to the glory of God.

But the idea, the reason that they're doing it, though, isn't just for their own self -aggrandizement, to get a position for themselves.

That would be setting your mind on earthly things. If you're just, you're doing that as an end in and of itself. I want to get this position because, man, it's just good for me and I love me.

And so this is, these are the kinds of people you don't want in those positions. And so Paul can rejoice that there's those preaching the cross of Christ from these bad motives.

And at the same time, Paul can then tell you, don't follow the people that are like that. Don't follow those guys.

Don't, that's not the example you want to follow. And praise God that God is using them because they're still proclaiming a message, but you should be examining their motives and you should steer clear of holding them up as an example for yourself.

And so contrast what Paul is like with what they're like. Paul is a guy who has an eternal perspective, who loves others, loves the

Lord, and is totally devoted to whatever God's plan is for his life.

Even if it means going to prison, he's going to do what he needs to do for the sake of loving Jesus. These others,

I mean, they're not going to do that. They're not going to take those risks. They're not going to make a choice that will cost them too much because that would promote suffering in their life and they wouldn't be able to achieve their goals, which are for themselves.

That's how you tell the difference. And I tell you, I hate to say this, but you start comparing, you start holding the standard up.

You're going to find there's very few people, the higher level, the higher you get in Christianity and in really all organizations, there's fewer and fewer people that meet, that are very similar to what

Paul is like. And there's a lot of people that are very similar to what these people who preach Christ from bad motives are like.

So he talks about in verse three, let's see, actually verse four, "'Rejoice in the

Lord always. "'Again, I say rejoice. "'Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. "'The Lord is near. "'Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, "'by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, "'let your requests be made known to God.'"

And the Lord, the nearness of the Lord is what I wanna focus on. God, because you feel distant maybe from Christian leaders or even your pastor in some cases, realize the

Lord is still near. And you can pray this. You can be anxious for nothing. You can pray. You can offer up with thanksgiving the requests that you have to the

Lord. And he says that there's peace that's gonna come. And so I've told people before, look,

I shouldn't be, my podcast isn't what should be the only thing in your diet. And it shouldn't be like you just listen to me and like,

I don't know, who else? Like A .D. Robles and Reed Protestia or something. Like that's really bad. If that's like your only source of any

Christian commentary, you need obviously more than that. And I think most people realize that this is more of a supplement, but I think it's very important to make sure that you're setting aside time to do these things, to pray, to set your mind on who's really in control.

And if you don't, you're gonna go crazy. You really will. And you'll be just consumed with the denominational intrigue and the political stuff.

And so this is something that's important. This is one of the reasons I will go out twice a week.

I try to do this at least. And I know I'm a very busy guy, but I try to twice a week to go out to a more secluded place where I'm alone in nature.

I just make time for it because I need to do that. I need to remember who actually created this place, who's in control of it.

And so verse 10, I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have received your concerned.

For me, indeed, you were concerned before but lacked opportunity. So he's rejoicing in others and he says, let's see, there's a verse that I'm looking for here.

Maybe I skipped over it. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure. He has a whole list of things to think on.

The lessons that you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. So I feel like there's something

I'm leaving out that I wanted to include and I'm trying to remember what it was now. Well, I can't remember.

So that's it. That's it for Philippians. I hope that was a helpful reminder for some of you as you're thinking through some of the things that I'm gonna talk about later on this particular week, because some of these things are gonna be a little discouraging for some of you.

And some of the things I talk about can be discouraging because it's like, man, I'm more compromising at that person too. Man, I thought

I could trust that person at least. So just realize that God is still at work and that people do make mistakes.

Paul said he had not even achieved the goal that he was looking for, but he pressed on towards the mark for the goal of the high calling in Christ Jesus.

And that's what we are doing. And so people do make mistakes, but when they do make mistakes and when they sin, the sign of a

Christian is they repent. They repent of that. And so I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing more.

This is one of the things that I wanna see more of from even conservatives in our particular organizations.

If something wrong has happened and it's happened publicly, just apologize publicly, talk about it publicly.

Don't be so consumed with projecting an image or having to look a certain way, because guess what?

We're all human and we all need Jesus. And Jesus is the only perfect one among us. And he's really the only one ultimately that we should have trust in and know that he's got everything figured out.

He's got everything planned, everything that is going to happen that might make us anxious. He's already seen the future.

He knows the future. And he will, for those who seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, will provide for.

And so keep seeking, keep doing the right thing before God, even if it costs you.