How influential was John Stott's theology on Alistair Begg's recent gross sin? | EP 3

As soon as he gave that rousing speech, half the room accepted him, and John Stott stood up to rebuke everything he said.

Wow. And he said, that's been tried, that's not what the Reformation is about, and he argued for ecumenism.

Now listen, John Stott is an annihilationist. He does not believe in literal hell, which means he doesn't believe in the authority of scripture.

Yeah. He, he, he was compromised in so many ways. Martin Lloyd Jones and him had this conflict.

In fact, this book I have here from, um, Martin Lloyd Jones, recounts some of this episode.

I just picked it up this morning and read, and it was just, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And welcome to Tearin' Down Hot Places.

Here we are. We're back again, and this is episode three. Uh, for anybody watching, episode one's gonna, uh, it's not there yet, and you might ask that question, but it's because we changed the name and, and we're really trying to focus on some, uh, important issues right now.

Yeah. What's the issue of the day? Well, I think it's just, according to Alistair Begg, it is a tempest in a teapot.

Tempest in a teapot. Yeah. Okay. Which is an expression, well, that idiom means people making much to do about nothing, or it's dismissive.

It's, hey, this is just gonna blow over. It's no, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Right. But I think that the issue of going to a gay wedding is something that's going to affect

Christians for generations to come. And what the evangelical church decides to do at this point is not a tempest in a teapot.

It is a huge deal. So the idea that we addressed last time was that someone, if in their heart they don't agree and the person who's getting married in a gay wedding or transgender wedding, whatever, knows that they disagree, then it's fine to go and give them a gift because it's like you're going to be the light in the darkness and you're just sort of being compassionate and trying to preserve the relationship.

Are you encouraged that there is a controversy that people don't want to soften on this issue?

Oh yeah. Because, I mean, like American Family Radio, they took a hard stand and they actually said, no, if you're going to hold to this position.

Not that you erred in saying it, but if you're not going to repent, if this is your teaching, we're going to take you off the radio.

What do you think about that? I really wish they gave more time to repent because I think that's one of the problems in our culture is we don't give anyone time to repent.

We're doing fire damage right away. The fire's not even out yet and you expect the guy to, you know, have the house rebuilt.

You know what I mean? Like, I just, it's not just in the church, I mean, it's everywhere with the, not legalism or church legalism, but the liability that people think is coming.

Well, it's interesting that Alistair Begg said, I'm not ready to repent, which almost indicates there's something inside of him that knows he should repent.

He's just not ready. But I don't know about you, but whenever you're in sin, there sometimes is this, like you fight it.

You don't want to repent. You justify it. You self -rationalize. And so, yes, giving him a little more time before like canceling him.

I tell my wife frequently, I'm going to need a day. Yeah. I'm going to pray about that. Sometimes. I don't know.

I don't know. And then, you know, she's always right. But yeah, she's never right. Right away. Yeah. She's right.

Like the next day. When your mind is no longer. What does John Laskin call it? Going flatbrain?

Flatbrain. I could use some flatbrain. How about you? How are you doing repenting?

Like before the issue is over, like when's a good time to repent? Oh man, when's a good time to repent?

I think the gospel says now is the day of salvation. So I think the first repentance in coming to the

Lord is there's no better time than now. You don't know if you have tomorrow. You don't know if you have next week.

You don't know if you're going to make it, you know, driving home. So I think the wise thing to do is repent now.

I think people want to put it off, put it off, put it off. Thinking that that's a good idea, but in reality,

I think really one of the problems with waiting to repent is that your heart gets harder and harder and harder. So I think it's harder to repent the longer you don't repent.

So I think that's my view. But there's a different type of repentance of someone that's already saved and clearly doing the wrong thing, being called out for it, and then doubling down on, no,

I still stand with what I said. I don't know. I think, what do you think about that,

Pastor Jeff? Yeah, I mean, I think we were, like Joe said, we're not going to get into cancel culture, you know, and just say, he's a heretic and they're away with him.

We'll never listen to him ever again or anything like that. But the issue is not a tempest in a teapot, right?

So there's undoubtedly somebody sitting five rows back at that gay wedding who is maybe a 20 -year -old kid and has watched this grandmother for 20 years.

They've been friends because they know the person that's getting married. And she's on the front row because that's where grandmas sit at the wedding, right?

Yes, they do. They do. And this person is saying, this five rows back, the person has no clue what she knows or he knows or whatever that dynamic is.

All they know is that this person they respect is sitting there and maybe this person five rows back has been in a struggle with feeling attracted to the same sex and wondering, well, are

Christians intolerant? Because that's kind of how it looks to us. Maybe it is okay. And they see their most trusted example, this grandmother who has been a

Christian witness sitting on the front row and concludes and looks across the room at the person.

I mean, how many people meet at a wedding? You're like encouraging something that leads to eternal damnation.

Romans 1, being given over to what ought not be done to a depraved mind.

It's not a tempest in a teapot. This actually matters intensely. So Tim, what about those classmates of yours?

Remember, last week for the audience, if you watched last week's show, we were talking about your classmates who went against your professor who was speaking truth, but they were all born again believers, but not ready to repent.

Yeah, not many of them. You know, I have to give some props to my good friend,

Malachi Hall, who was sitting next to me, and he's just a truth warrior, and he was one of the ones that said, no, this is wrong.

And he was one of the ones that got invited to a gay wedding, even from his own aunt, who he's still very close with and loves, but he had to break the news to her because he's bold and stood strong and said, no,

I cannot be at that wedding. And he took some bumps. And he took some bumps, yeah. I think he did take some bumps.

But I think that's commendable and what we should be doing, and that was a good model.

So I think he stood strong. And then what about all the other grandmothers and all the other people in the world that do stand strong on that, who now are...

we don't want to confuse anyone for standing strong. Standing strong is what you're supposed to do. They've done well, but they're being painted as Pharisees.

Yeah, they're being painted wrongly. The interesting thing that I heard you just say is Malachi loves his aunt and cares for his aunt and doesn't reject her or cancel her or drive her away.

He dines with... I have a gay aunt. When I'm around her, I hug her. Hey, good to see you.

I should love. I would eat at the table with her. But I wouldn't go to her preaching in her gay church.

I wouldn't go to her officiating a gay wedding. There's a categorical difference between participating in a work of darkness and being unwelcoming and unloving of a person.

So that's why I think people are confusing. In the video we're about to watch, we should cue it up. I want to say this video, when

Alistair Begg preaches, is one of the worst sermons

I have ever heard in my life because his rhetoric is so good.

Alistair Begg's rhetoric in here is amazing. Alistair Begg's... the way he carries his emotion, you can hear the quiver in his voice and it stirs up compassion for him as if he's been victimized by the online mob or something.

The way he interjects humor at just the right time where he'll say something like, now

I'll say something inflammatory and then with this wry smile and everybody laughs, it's such good timing.

And the way he wipes a tear right when he's getting angry and then wipes a tear, he knows how to pull it back.

He is an expert communicator, as everybody knows about Alistair Begg. The problem is, all of that talent, that God -given talent, is used to justify a fundamental rejection of a biblical principle of Ephesians, which is not to have anything to do with works of darkness.

He leaves that untouched and he even doubles down on it. And he says,

I will not repent. So let's get into it. Verse 29,

I never disobeyed you. You never gave me a goat. No, I didn't get what

I deserved. But this your son, can't even bring him to say my brother.

This your son, actually this son of yours who has devoured your property with prostitutes, who said anything about prostitutes.

Pharisees often complain loudly of sins.

They would be quite interested in committing themselves. I never disobeyed you.

You never gave me a goat. So the older brother is the problem. No, I didn't get what I deserved. So is he calling us the older brother?

Yes, we're the older brother. But this your son, can't even bring him to say my brother. This your son, actually this son of yours who has devoured your property with prostitutes, who said anything about prostitutes.

Pharisees often complain loudly of sins.

They would be quite interested in committing themselves. Be very, very careful when you hear your pastor or your teacher or whoever it is lambasting a certain area of life, especially in the realm of morality.

That's exactly what we need to do. Am I wrong? Well, he's going to say right here, if your pastor is going on and on about certain sins or certain areas in life, be careful.

Just listen to this. It's 2019. Time and time again, you will discover that that loud protestation actually, sadly, tragically proved to be a very thin smoke screen for what was actually going on in the hearts of these people.

So if I'm going on about abortion and saying we have got to bring it into abortion in this culture.

Right. That means secretly I want to have abortions or be with women and then cause them to have abortions?

Well, I mean, it's just got to be a popular sin first. I mean, popular to go against that sin.

If it's not popular against that sin. Well, so right now it's popular to mutilate children and we'll stand against that and say this transgendering, this transitioning of children is a gross and vile evil that we've got to bring it into in our culture.

Does that mean I secretly want children to be transitioned or, you know, there's these gay weddings that we're talking about now.

I secretly want to marry a man like what is he going on about? I don't know. That that's an incredible slander that when when pastors make a moral stand that there's some hypocrisy behind that that's driving it.

I'm more concerned with him telling great pastors to keep making no stand.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what happened last time. Right. I was more inclined to say he needs more grace.

We need to slow this down. So this process down is more inclined to go against the radio stations that fired him so quickly.

Right. Right. Versus now him saying, well, don't take a moral stand. Right. Well, because you're a

Pharisee. If you do, you're being fundamentalist. The last thing, by way of observation, is that there is in this a necessity that he refused to accept.

He refused to accept the necessity of what had happened. The Father says to him, Son, you're always with me.

All that is mine is yours. It was fitting. It was necessary. I think in the

NIV or the King James Version, it was necessary to celebrate and be glad. This isn't just something that I dreamt up on the fly.

No. You see, the Son, the religious person unchanged by grace, is always dealing in rewards.

Am I doing well enough? Am I accepted well enough? So either they become horribly arrogant because they think they're doing so well, or they become thoroughly depressed because they know they're not doing well at all.

I didn't get the rewards. I didn't get the thing. Isn't he the one that wants to be accepted?

Because he's the one that made the comment and didn't want to... What was that verse that you talked about?

You're saying he's defending his position, and he's got a purpose behind that, right? He's defending his position, but I'm saying, isn't he the one that...

So what did I... Let's just watch. I'm sorry. What was the verse? Daniel 11? Yeah, Daniel 11.

Yeah. Shoot. I knew it was going to be... I tested you on necessity. I know. Last week,

I got tested. Basically, paraphrase, get up and do something. Call sin out. Don't let your brother suffer because he's sinning.

He's going to destroy his life. Call him out lovingly. But because he wanted to be accepted by the person he didn't want to call out, he didn't call them out, is what

I'm making the point. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I was thinking about this earlier, and he's being quite loving to the grandmother, so he perceives, but he's not loving that grandchild.

Right. There's no love for the grandchild. In other words, in order to make the grandmother get her into her wedding that she wants to go to, we're going to neglect the other person, and we can't do that.

Can we? Who's the Pharisee in his depiction of things?

Anyone who calls out sin. Yeah. Anyone who says, this is not God's will.

Right. That's Pharisaical and narrow. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't get the rewards.

I didn't get the things that I deserve. That's essentially what he's saying. And this son, well, he doesn't understand grace.

He doesn't understand it at all. The younger son had a song to sing that the older son knew nothing about.

In tenderness he sought me, weary and sick with sin, and on his shoulder brought me back to his home again, while angels in his presence sang, until the courts of heaven rang.

Oh, the love that sought me. Oh, the blood that bought me. Oh, the grace that brought me to your fold, to the sheepfold.

Wondrous grace that brought me to the fold. In that conversation with that grandmother,

I was concerned about the well -being of their relationship more than anything else.

Hence my counsel. Don't misunderstand that in any way. 2247.

More than anything else. Your concern about that relationship cannot be more than anything else.

Your concern has to first of all be the glory of God, fidelity to his word, and you cannot compromise that.

You do have concern for a relationship, but if you make that the paramount, if you make that the trump over everything else, that's where you get into this error.

He said it there, more than anything else. Oh. If I was in the receiving end of another question about another situation from another person in another time,

I may answer absolutely differently. But in that case I answered in that way, and I would not answer in any other way, no matter what anybody says on the internet as of the last ten days.

If that were the case, I would never… If that were the case, I should never have said it in the first place.

If people want me to recant and to repent… To repent? I repent daily, because I say a lot of things that I shouldn't say.

I mean, check with Sue, but the fact of the matter is, I'm not ready to repent over this. I don't have to.

Now, let me say something that will be a little explosive. I've lived here for forty years, and those who know me best know that when we talk theology, when we talk stuff,

I've always said I am a little bit out of sync with the

American evangelical world. For this reason, that I am the product of British evangelicalism, represented by John Stott, Martin Lloyd -Jones,

Eric Alexander, Sinclair Ferguson, Derek Prime. I am a product of that.

I have never been a product of American fundamentalism. I come from a world in which…

I used to love fundamentalism. Like, just the term. But then I found out what it really was, and I was like, Ooh, I can't do that.

Well, originally, fundamentalism was against the modernists who were denying the virgin birth.

I like that. Yeah, the resurrection. You like the resurrection? Yeah, yeah. So you're a fundamentalist. Now, fundamentalism did morph into something that was too narrow.

And like Pharisees, many fundamentalists would add things that are not written in the book. For example, that you can't dance, that you have to wear long skirts,

King James only, you know. But fundamentalism, in his mind, is the enemy.

And he says he is not that. Fundamentalism, in his mind, the neo -fundamentalism of those who would call him out for this online, is the older brother in Luke 15.

And he's saying, I'm not that, and I have never been that, because I'm with John Stott.

I've been discipled by John Stott. Well, in the 1960s, Martin Lloyd -Jones gave a speech at this convention.

And he gave an impassioned appeal to stand for the fidelity of God's word, stop compromising over doctrine, and be unified around truth.

As soon as he gave that rousing speech, half the room accepted him, and John Stott stood up to rebuke everything he said.

Wow. And he said, that's been tried, that's not what the Reformation is about, and he argued for ecumenism.

Now listen, John Stott is an annihilationist. He does not believe in literal hell, which means he doesn't believe in the authority of Scripture.

He was compromised in so many ways. Martin Lloyd -Jones and him had this conflict.

In fact, this book I have here from Martin Lloyd -Jones recounts some of this episode.

I just picked it up this morning and read, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, how this goes back to that particular issue.

Wow. Now it seems to me that lying behind these questions is the suggestion that truth is so great and so marvelous that it cannot be defined, and therefore that you cannot say definitively that this view is right and that view is wrong.

The result is that the average man feels that there is no such thing as objective authority.

A certain author, writing about a year ago, made the following statement. The real issue today is between truth and fundamentalism.

Observe the way in which he put it. Fundamentalism, according to that writer, cannot be true because it claims that truth can be reduced to a number of propositions.

Propositional truth. Martin Lloyd -Jones had a major conflict with Stott over this issue back in the 1960s.

In 1981, I believe that's about when Jones died, just before that,

Stott came to him and said, I want reconciliation, and I love you, brother. And Jones, Martin Lloyd -Jones said,

I love you too, and this has never been about personality. This has been about your ecumenism with Rome, your watering down of the gospel, your denial of a literal hell, your rejection of biblical authority.

And this book by Jones, even written back in the 50s, was called Authority, the Authority of Jesus Christ, the

Authority of the Scriptures, the Authority of the Holy Spirit. So, Jones was not willing to reconcile because it wasn't a personal difference.

He was standing for truth. It was not about personality. And it was a sad moment, but see, the problem was

Stott continued on that road. He did the Lausanne Convention of 1974. The false work of that with Billy Graham has had ripple effects that have destroyed evangelicalism.

Wow. And the controversy is between fundamentalism, neo -fundamentalism, which is what they were calling

Martin Lloyd -Jones. They were calling him a fundamentalist. This goes all the way back to the 1960s. And to this day, that's the conflict.

Those who make a bold stand with clear, defined, objective lines will be labeled fundamentalists.

And that's the school of thought from which Begg comes from. Well, no wonder Average Joe was confused on fundamentalism, because I thought fundamentalism was just holding to an orthodox view of Scripture.

Yeah, that's how it originally was. But it became a label. Yeah, then someone else told me, yeah, you added all the legalism that you talked about.

But the thing that got me to think I don't want to be a fundamentalist was really, is it meant cowering away from the culture.

Yes. It meant not, a fundamentalist was someone who didn't confront the culture.

After the Snopes trial, and things like that, in the late 1800s, you know. 1920s, yep.

Oh, was it 1920s? Then we all just, we're going to just go live in our own Christian cloisters.

I think to some measure, the fundamentalist group did that. Like the independent fundamentalist

Baptists, I can't say it, sometimes their own little world. But a lot of them today are the greatest truth warriors.

So we respect many of these IFB churches because a lot of them take a stand nowadays.

So I think there was a time where there was kind of a retreat into like a subculture. But now a lot of the fundamentalists that are overtly fundamentalists are taking the stand.

So it's not really a clear -cut line that way. Yeah, so I'm a certain kind of fundie. Oh yeah? Yeah. What kind of fundie are you?

I want to tear down the culture. Well, not all of it. There's a lot of good stuff in the culture.

And we'll talk about this when we do episode one, and this is episode three. But we're not trying to tear down our brothers.

No. Paul says, I don't want to tear you down, I want to build you up. We're tearing down idols. We're tearing down high places, as we're called to do.

All right, so it seems to me, and this might be out of sync, it might not be, how do we help guys like Alistair Begg not double down on a bad idea?

Because it sounds like you did a 180. You were defending Alistair Begg last week. This week, you hear him quote a guy like Stott, and you're like, oh, wait a minute.

This guy is going the wrong way. I wouldn't even throw Stott out of the kingdom. I wouldn't say he's a son of hell, and he's in hell.

He died around 2011. I think he was a brother who was confused, but his confusion was at a point of material difference.

Just like we recognize... It's not just a disputable... When you preach annihilationism, you are removing the burden of evangelism from every

Christian. To believe in a literal hell matters for Christian life. It's not just this small thing.

And it also shows the denial of the authority of Scripture. So Stott was a problem, and to quote him as your influence shows where you're getting...

Why don't we get back to it? But none of these things are the unforgivable sin.

No. We recognize that there are very bad churches that have people that get saved through God's grace anyway.

You know, where it's... Yes. We love these brothers, and that's why we're willing to say hard things to them.

Yes. Amen. It is possible for people to actually grasp the fact that there are nuances in things.

Those of you who are lawyers understand this. Everything is not so categorically clear that if you put one foot out of this box, you gotta be removed from the box forever.

And so, I went back to prove to myself that that really is the case, and I dug out a book that I had since I was in my twenties,

Christ the Controversialist, by John Stott. And in that book, he is tackling the challenges of living in the world without being capitulating to the thoughts of the world.

And chapter 7—and I'm sure this is going to sell a lot of these books. John is now in heaven, and it won't matter to him, but chapter 7 is on responsibility, colon, withdrawal, or involvement.

So he writes an entire chapter on this question. How in the world do we manage to live in this way?

We have to guard against it. The motivation for purity and holiness of life and circumspection and so on is absolutely unquestionable.

The real challenge comes when we are confronted by issues that don't just fit our clean little categories.

Our clean little categories. It's such a strange portrayal of us, and an uncharitable portrayal of us who criticized him online.

We're the online discernment blogger here, right? To categorize us as Pharisees and as fundamentalists who have our little clean neat categories, and we're not capable of nuance.

He said that earlier, we don't understand the nuances. The truth is we're very nuanced in our thinking, but there are clean neat categories for certain things.

Some things are absolutely morally wrong. To go to a gay wedding is absolutely morally wrong.

It's just a clean neat category because we have biblical authority over our lives.

I think he hasn't read about the clean neat category of covenant in a long time. Yeah, there is a deep misunderstanding of covenant in Begg.

He's almost antinomian at this point. If we can't get our leaders to openly talk about sin in specific categories, how is the average

Joe going to know how to repent? I don't know how to repent then. I need this information. I need it to be clear.

I need it to be led. I need to see it. I need to see examples of pastors living it in their lives.

Then we've got the whole idea of corporate repentance. I'm thinking of the Catholic Church.

I'm thinking of TGC, the Gospel Coalition. How do we, if everybody's going to be so rigid and unwilling to talk about repentance...

They'll repent of getting angry in traffic. I was mad in traffic, and I'm such a sinner.

I may look perfect, but just ask my wife. I'm not. But they refuse to repent. And he literally says,

I'm not ready to repent. He knows his need for repentance.

It's fundamentally why we called this show Tear Down Those High Places. Because ancient

Israel, even though they repented a little bit, they always left a little bit of sin, a little bit of compromise.

And that's not what God wants us to do. Is this why he goes to individuals?

Versus making some announcement on a big loudspeaker. God's announcing something. It's kind of hard when you get into corporate repentance.

Because a corporation is not a moral entity per se. It's a group of individuals.

I'm very big on individualism. But what's going to lead a corporate repentance? For TGC to repent, that was founded by Keller and D .A.

Carson. D .A. Carson is still living. And he's been very much party to the error that's been happening there.

A man like that would actually have to repent of calling Kyle Rittenhouse a mass shooter.

A mass murderer. In one of their articles. They never recanted that. They never repented from that. They abridged the document slightly.

But they always just put things down the memory hole. So to repent as a group would require individuals who lead that group to step up.

And that's the problem. They're the ones leading it astray. I think it's great that we're seeing now a lot in third world countries.

That we're seeing third world countries. Christians calling out us first world countries. Like the

Africans are calling out the Pope. And the Africans had previously called out the

Methodists. When they did some nasty stuff. So I guess that's it for now.

We're not going to tear down all the high places in one episode. But we're going to keep tearing down places.

So see you next time. We've still got to get you a tagline. I need a tagline. Tear down those high places.

Something like that. You want to do another ending? Should I have a tagline? Yeah. Should I do that? Alright.

And until next time. Tear down those high places. I was trying to mimic

Chocolate Knops. I was telling Tim about Chocolate Knops. If you're single, get married.

If you're married, go make some babies. And if you've got babies, don't baptize them yet. Wait until they learn the gospel.

So this is our new tagline. Tear down those high places. All three of us should say it.

Yeah, we should. Tear down those high places. On three. Three, two, one. Tear down those high places.