Why Is Modern Evangelicalism Failing?

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Well, again, welcome everybody. I purposely wanted to get these guys together.

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For us to have an open discussion about Matthew 28, the Great Commission, where as we know,

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Christ says in verse 18, He said, "...all

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authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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

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And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." It's interesting, we had,

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Zach Klonhofer and I had a brief discussion about this last night. And what

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I want to ask you guys, because there's a lot of experience in here with evangelism to cults, you know, addiction, homelessness.

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I know Apologia Radio has even confronted those even within the church that have taught some pretty crazy theology.

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But in the world today, when we look at this, when we look at this command of Christ, evangelism, we see churches pulling away from society, right?

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And they're huddling in their churches and they refuse to go out into the world and do what

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Christ has commanded. So let's talk about that. We have a lot of other topics.

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We've got most of the overall format here, but I just want to have an open discussion about this. What is that? Why is that?

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Why are we seeing the church, just the evangelical church as a whole, doing that, pulling away from society and essentially huddling in what

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I believe they think to believe is protecting themselves from the outside world?

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And anybody can go. Bad eschatology. Yeah, well, I was going to say a couple things.

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I was going to say, so we'll put that first up front, bad eschatology, a bad view of the future, what

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God's intentions are, what he's going to do in the world, what he says he is going to do in the world, not what we hope he does in the world, not sort of just wishful thinking.

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We would really love for God to do this, but what he actually says over and over and over again is what he's going to do in the world. That would be one thing.

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Doug Wilson says, you hit what you aim at. If you believe that the church loses in history, that the gospel fails in history, that the world gets worse and worse, and then

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God will ultimately whisk us away in that kind of a scenario, then you hit what you aim at.

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You'll live that way. And so that's one thing. The other thing, and the reason why

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I say that too is not just because of our current circumstances, but if you look in history, some of the greatest movements of missionary efforts in the world, the greatest missionary efforts in the history of the

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Christian church happened in the last couple hundred years. There was a big burst of it, and that burst came from people who had a view of the future that was total victory, peace of God, salvation, redemption, extending to the ends of the earth, and that motivated those believers to go out and to bring the gospel to very, very difficult places, even like the

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Hawaiian Islands. Something to really think about is as much as it's difficult here now with tribalism still existing, the

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Puritans that came here with the gospel had a victorious view of the future, and they had to confront a tribalism that was much thicker, much deeper, and much more scary, and the opportunity for violence was greater, to an even greater degree, but they had a victorious view of the future.

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So I would say eschatology, like Pastor Luke pointed to. I would say also a bad soteriology, a bad view of salvation and how

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God saves people. So I'll use the word not to try to hurt feelings, but just use the word in terms of what is underneath that.

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Arminianism, the view of man and the gospel, is also an aspect of what's wrong with us.

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We think that how we win people to Christ is dependent upon something to do with us on the way there, the means of it.

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So we use carnal means to attract people. I love what you just said up there. That was fantastic.

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When we employ our methods. We gather the tares. We gather the tares, but we're dependent upon God and his truth and his faithfulness that God is drawing in the wheat, and that's so true.

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You see sort of very, very large churches, but we have to ask the question is what's being said faithful?

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Are these people here understanding the real message of the gospel? Are they submitted to the lordship of Jesus? So I think that if we have an

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Arminian view of men and women, people, human beings, image bearers of God, and the means of how they get converted, we employ methods of attraction that are carnal, and if we don't faithfully proclaim the message itself in terms of how the apostles did.

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So for example, a lot of times you hear evangelicals today talking about the gospel, and when you hear them saying it, you can run through the text of scripture and say now where is that discourse?

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Yeah, exactly. In the New Testament. Where did the apostles ever preach the gospel in that way? And the answer is, and I don't wanna be haughty here in saying this, but the answer is you're not gonna find it.

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It's not there. They don't preach the gospel in the way that you often hear the modern evangelical preaching it.

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So the way that we view human beings and the effect of sin and the means of how

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God saves those people, that all impacts how we actually reach the culture around us. So we oftentimes, we use church as the springboard of salvation for the culture, right?

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If we could just invite people to church, give out free cotton candy and popcorn at the door, then we're gonna have the community coming to us, and this is where they'll hear about Christ.

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And so evangelism isn't happening out in the public square any longer. It's happening in the Christian ghetto. And then when it is happening in the

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Christian ghetto, it's happening with a message that it sounds so suspiciously not like God, right?

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And if you just give Jesus a chance, if you would just say, repeat these words with me, and then you're saved for heaven.

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We have all kinds of ways that we get at what it means to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, but we won't say it like the apostles.

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We won't say it like Jesus. We won't run the risk that Jesus ran when he would have massive crowds following him and he would turn around to them and he would say five sentences that made all 5 ,000 leave, right?

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They're all gone now, and you're left with 12 very confused disciples, and he says to them, do you also want to leave?

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And they say, where are we gonna go? You have the words of eternal life. They understood, but the thousands didn't.

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But Jesus would turn around and he would say things to convince them to leave.

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Like his evangelistic methodology seemed to be talk people out of coming to me.

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But the interesting thing is that the faithful proclamation of the truth and the work of the spirit of God and a person's life that brought them truly to life was what led to genuine disciples and believers of Jesus.

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Now, it might have looked small at the time. It might have only looked like a mustard seed, but that's what happens to mustard seeds.

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They become large trees, right? And so I think there's that aspect. You've got basketology, you've got

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Arminianism. And then I think, by the way, there's many ways we can cut the cake, so I don't want to act like the authority here and say, here are all the reasons why the church.

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I'm just saying, here are some reasons that I can spot and say, I know that's a cause of this.

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And I think another thing is just, and this comes down, I want to point back to me too and say,

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I want to constantly be checking my heart for this. It's pure, selfish, prideful, self -idolatry, cowardice.

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I want to be comfortable. I want to be safe, right? We've sort of propagated this safe Christianity, where it's safe and it's joyful and it's happy and it's good and we're comfortable.

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And we don't want to have the kind of faith that creates conflict to where people around us might actually have very bad things to say about us.

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And we want, you know, the standard seems to be many times when you see sort of the evangelical move forward, and this will be the last thing

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I say, you know, if people are talking bad about us, if they don't like our message, if they're upset with us, well, then we failed in some way.

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But what Jesus says, so contrary, he says, woe to you when all people speak well of you. And if you look at the book of Acts as just a model of how

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God by his spirit was moving within inspired apostles, how did they preach and how did

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God use them? You can't get through the book of Acts without seeing hardship, persecution, threats of death.

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People, I mean, people taking oaths publicly that they're not gonna eat anything until somebody's dead, right?

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Like, I'm not gonna eat anything until Paul's dead. Or people, you know, Paul going into a place,

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I use this example a lot, he goes into a place that would have been seen as disrespectful, arguing that Jesus is the

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Messiah, the church experiences peace, they're built up, they were multiplied, more people came to Jesus, and some people wanted to kill

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Paul. Like, that was a successful mission. People wanted him dead, people came to Jesus, the church was edified and built up, they were empowered by this, like seeing the gospel come into conflict publicly with a false message, the church was like, right, like their chest puffed up because of this.

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So you have all these weird things happening, peace, which is kind of contrary to being proud, but it's there, the church is growing, and some people want him dead.

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The church goes into places and riots break out, you know, and then also other times they're burning all their old witchcraft books, like, you know, public bonfire of the witchcraft stuff.

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So it's like this, all this crazy stuff, but that kind of move forward is so different from what we see today because that is not safe.

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It's not comfortable, it's very dangerous, it comes with pain and hardship, and the truth of the matter is, is that it'd be so much easier from a human perspective to just enter into mission that way, right?

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Like, I mean, when I say, by the way, I wanna make sure, I don't want people to think I'm just being abusive, because I think it's simple to just be abusive in how you talk about people's systems and everything else, but when

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I said offering popcorn and cotton candy at the door I'm saying that because somebody told me as a coach in a denomination to literally advertise to the area around us that we gave away cotton candy and popcorn to everyone at the door.

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So when I use that as an example, it's because it's a real example that was given to me in a denomination who was asking us to be a part of them, and so there's all kinds of ways to do this in an attractive way, in a way that's easy, and everyone likes you, but I think if you're faithful,

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I'll fall on this, what Doug says, Doug's my favorite, but Doug said, when everybody around you is speaking well of you, your pastor dashboard should start blinking, and you go, wait, what am

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I doing so wrong here? And everybody loves this, everybody's just accepting this, because, not because you want to be offensive or reckless and mean -spirited, no

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Christian wants that, and it's sinful if you do, repent in a hurry and shut up. Like, that should be like the thing, but the point is that the gospel,

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Paul says, is offensive to the natural man. The fallen person is gonna hear the gospel and just be offended by it.

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Of course, the spirit of God works in people to raise them out of that, so you should see kind of all of that working. So those are my reasons.

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Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Anybody else? Yeah, I would just say, you know, it's a false pietism, it's just understanding that getting out and affecting the culture, going outside of the four walls of the church is somehow not what we're supposed to do.

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You know, the Christian emphasis of the work of the church, the leaders of the church, are to get you focused inwardly on self.

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And so you see that all throughout the American Evangelical Church, that our job, our success story, is how many people can we get into a service?

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And if we get more and more and more and more, then that's the blessing of God. And I think that leaders strive to do that, and they center their leadership all around that model.

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Of course, like you said, I don't wanna be injurious or just blanket generalization over all the leaders in America, I'm not doing that.

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But it's this false pietism that gets you centered on just us, our own little Christian ghetto subculture, and going outside of the four walls is just something the

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Christian church is not supposed to do. That's false pietism, you know? Pietism is godliness, that's a false pietism.

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And so if you have that philosophically in your mind, and you're a leader, you're gonna be leading all your people.

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So I think the biggest issue, why isn't the church getting out and evangelizing? The leaders aren't doing it. If the elders, leaders are,

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I will not do it, the church is gonna follow suit. We need bullet -catching pastors to go out there on the front lines showing the church, this is how you do it.

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And then the church will follow suit, right? That will happen always. I've tried to start evangelistic teachings and discipleship things in different churches, but if the pastors, the leaders were not on board, did not have that same passion, never would it get into the larger

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Christian body and affect discipleship in the area of evangelism. So we have to have pastors that are faithful to the commands that go out and preach the gospel to all the earth.

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Yeah, yeah. Faithful to the command of Christ. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mm -hmm. I think just tongue -in -cheek, if you're offering cotton candy to get people in your doors, then odds are your doctrine is also too sweet that you preach.

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Thug life. So I would say, maybe just in my experience.

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Zach is a genius. He is. Puns and pictures, he gets it.

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He's just, yeah. Maybe just in my experience, the area that God's called me to serve in right now and evangelize and do work in, my experience is that people so often want to appear to be humble at the expense of sacrificing obedience.

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I think we need to be more concerned with being obedient as we're demonstrating humility, but not allow the desire to appear humble to override the commitment that the

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Lord Jesus has given us. It's like a false humility. Yeah, so I know that's, I struggle with that. You want to be perceived by the world as just being so winsome and so humble that sometimes it prevents you from actually taking a step and saying what needs to be said and also bringing the word of God to bear on the person that you're speaking to because we've just succumbed so much to not doing that.

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That's the way that I think that many churches do is in the area that I'm involved with, people do not bring the scriptures to bear on the unbeliever because they see that as something that they should not do because the unbeliever doesn't understand that.

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And that goes right back to reform soteriology and believing what God says about the fallen heart and the fallen mind of the sinner.

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So in my experience, I would say that's definitely one area. I think another area is the scope of our gospel is much too narrow.

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I think it has become so much about getting people saved for heaven one day and then nothing else, not just in terms of holy living after salvation, but how does the gospel interact with every other area of life too?

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My vocation, my education, my calling, my family role, my role as a husband, father.

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Paul summarizes Jesus as reconciliation of all things, making peace by the blood of his cross.

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The peace that Jesus brings when he nailed sin to the cross is not just salvation for individual sinners.

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It's a comprehensive scope that redeems the entire cosmos. So everything, everything, nothing is left outside of subjection to Jesus.

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The author of Hebrews says that. All the New Testament authors place Jesus on the throne.

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That is where he is. He's seated and he has, past tense, so important, past tense, subjected all things to Jesus.

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And that's what's going on right now. So as Jesus places every enemy underneath his feet, we need to think about what that means in our individual lives for every area, not just the church areas, because we can become so compartmentalized in our gospel.

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It belongs in the spiritual things where just the ministers who are qualified to minister, they're the holy ones in that particular area.

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But the ones in the common place, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, what about these people who are wanting to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ and adorn the doctrine of God in these areas?

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What does the gospel say towards the mother at home, discipling her children, raising them up in the fear and admonition of the

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Lord? What does the gospel say to the one who's working at the Marriott or building things or the architect or the educator?

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How does the gospel speak to that? Because it does. The psalm that we read, Psalm 24, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, right?

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And Jesus, I love how the New Testament authors, when they place

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Jesus on the throne, again, the past tense, putting all things in subjection to him, and in doing so, they left nothing outside of his control.

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All things are under his control. That's where they are, and although we don't yet see all things in subjection to him, we see him.

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We see him reigning. We see him, and for that reason, we have hope to face the future, but also to teach the nations to obey.

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Because, and this is one of my favorite parts, this is the last thing I'll say, Jesus has been seated on the throne, he's the victor, but also, where does

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Paul place us in Ephesians chapter two? Seated with him in heavenly places.

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So what more authority, all authority in the heaven and on earth has been given to me. What more authority do you need to bring the word of God into the world and teach the nations to obey?

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Because you, brothers and sisters, have been seated with Christ in the heavenly places. You've been given all authority to judge, right?

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Jesus says, don't judge by appearances, but judge with righteous judgment, right? Not, judge not therefore, you know, the common verse that the unbeliever tries to use against you, but you have been given all authority in heaven and on earth to judge, it's yours.

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You've been given that, and it's forever sealed. I was just reading Mark, where the transfiguration, when

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Jesus is displayed in his brilliance and his blinding white light, and it says that his robes that he was wearing were so white that they were beyond anything that bleach could do, right?

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That was the extent of purity. And what are the saints given in the book of Revelation?

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White robes. White robes, yeah. Beyond what bleach can cleanse you from. So you've been given this cleansing by Jesus, and you are so whole and pure in his sight, your sins have been forgiven, and like Hebrews says, after he made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

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And so you've been purified, you've been washed, you've been cleansed, your past has been erased, it's been done with, you're in Christ, and so go get the nations, go get the world, in any area that you've been called to minister in.

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That's the great commission. That's powerful. Have the church in their midst. Well, one thing our friend

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Joe Boot always says is, he says, people accuse me of having an over -realized eschatology, and he says, that's not the problem, the problem's you have an under -realized soteriology, right?

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And I remember Jeff and I were there when he told us, so yeah, we're just like, oh man, that's huge. And we had a cool discussion the other day, we were out behind her actually, doing true evangelism and stuff, and I was telling

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Zach, I was kind of bummed, because I brought a lot of people out that day. Zach's like, yeah, but the law of God is still going forth, right?

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And so we started talking about Proverbs 29, 18, which says, where there's no prophetic vision that people cast off restraint.

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And then it says, blessed is the man who keeps the law. And so just being there, proclaiming the law of God, we saw, immediately you had people being convicted just because the law was going forth, the gospel was going forth, and people immediately are convicted by that.

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So just the pure proclamation of God's law is enough to even restrain evil to some degree.

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I was just not going to restrain it completely, but just that alone is going to be enough to affect the culture in that way.

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Can I point to just two passages? So in terms of like, you hit what you aim at, thinking forward, how does the scripture teach this, and what do the apostles say?

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This is powerful, because it's this huge verse in Genesis 49, and it's barely quoted.

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I mean, I barely hear anybody quoting this, but it is so massive. So the Jews would have just feasted on the

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Pentateuch, the law of Moses, right, the Torah, constantly. That was like their light, and the law of God.

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Genesis 49, 10, it says, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

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That was the promise of the coming Messiah. It's all throughout the Torah, right? The Messiah's coming, the seed of the woman, your descendant, your seed will, you know, bless the nations, and all the nations are gonna come.

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So they knew the Messiah was coming, and it's always there at the beginning of the Bible, but it says, until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples, and then you move throughout the

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Bible, and there's many other places, but Psalm chapter two, where the father says to the son, ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession, and he says to the kings of the earth, he says, be wise, obey the son, or you'll perish.

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That's Psalm chapter two, long before Jesus comes, that, again, all the nations belong to him, and then the call of the father is for everybody to obey

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Jesus. And then Jesus finishes his ministry, finishes redemption, rises from the dead, and then

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Matthew 28, what's up, Zeke? Matthew 28, 18 to 20, all authority has been given to me, it has been given to me, therefore go.

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So it's all mine now, I've got it, I'm the ruler of the world. Now go and get the nations.

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But I like what Paul says here, Paul, Romans, he says, chapter one, first couple verses in, he says about Jesus, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

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So that's the first part of Romans, in terms of what is the apostle thinking, how do they view this whole story of Jesus, and the very end of the book of Romans, he says it again.

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At the very end of the book of Romans, he says exactly the same thing about this mystery disclosed, and he says, but it's not been disclosed, and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal

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God, to bring about the obedience of faith. So in the Old Testament, all the nations are gonna obey him, all the nations belong to you,

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Jesus, not everybody obeyed Jesus, Paul opens up his explanation of the gospel with to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name.

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So that's the goal. And if we're thinking like that, like the apostles were, we have to win the world to obedience to Jesus, then we fight like that, then we fight like that.

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And I love Isaiah, chapter nine, it's sort of, you hear it quoted around Christmas, but the government should be upon his shoulders, the increase, you talk about increase, the increase of his government and his people would be no end.

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Right, there's always this, and we talked about this last week, it's total and complete victory, total and complete victory.

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So, and I love what Doug Wilson does, he goes, you know, if nothing more, take us, you know, 500 year snapshots, you know, from the time you have these 12 disciples who obey this command and they go out, you start at that point, and you just start dropping back in 500 year increments and look and see how

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God has expanded his kingdom. It's amazing, it's not stopping, it's increasing, and it won't stop until death has been, you know, all those enemies have been, you know, under his feet.

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So, but again, you know, and it's not to, we're not pointing fingers or picking fights with people, but the church is not doing that, the church is not viewing it that.

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You see it in a lot of churches, it's this message of this thing's gonna, it's turned to hell in a handbasket, and we just need to, again, huddle inside of our churches and just wait for Jesus, because he's gonna save us.

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What do you mean he didn't? I mean, he announces to us in Matthew 28, all authority has been given to him.

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Like, you said it, you know, and that's what you were told all the way through the law, through the

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Old Testament, there's a coming kingdom, there's a coming Messiah, and these are all the things that are gonna happen, you know, when he comes and what the future looks like.

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You know, and that's what people get so consumed with at times, it's like you said earlier, it's the future. You know, what's gonna happen in the future?

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We're already told what's gonna happen in the future in Scripture, it's, again, total and complete victory, but you see what happens when

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God's people turn away, and you saw it with King Saul, right, he's in battle with the

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Philistines, he's not in their favor of God anymore, but he turns to necromancers, he turns to witchcraft, so he knows what's gonna happen in the future, and God is harshly with him, as we know.

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But part of that is what's going on in the church today, is the church is turned away from Scripture, turned away from what

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God truly says, and they're so concerned about what's gonna happen in the future that, you know, it's a mess, it's a mess.

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So, with all that being said, so we see Christ say this, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, tells us to go, but then he also tells us when we go, here's what we're to do, you know, teach them all that I have commanded, okay?

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So what does all that imply? What does that imply? Right, because we get a lot of people that say today, law no longer valid, right, it has no place anymore, it's all about love, and so, and you said, the church follows suit, right, so when you see these depictions of Christ, he's in a white wedding dress, he has a perm, he has blue eyes, and you know,

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I'm serious, he might as well put a flower in his hair, you know, and just, it's a new life, it's all about life, but what

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Christ is saying is teach them all that I have commanded, so what is that?

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What's he saying there, right, he's saying what? What does that include, it includes the law.

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And the entire standard. The entire standard, not just part of it, the entirety of it, right?

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If it's love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus says all along the prophets, hang on to those, so we get all of Old Testament revelation because God's standard has not changed, and we're gonna teach the nations to obey that, which extends, and this is blasphemous within the evangelical community, it extends to the civil magistrate as well.

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Who is the civil magistrate required to obey, in terms of delineation and application of justice, in that particular area, because that is taboo to talk about, right,

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Christians can influence politics up to an extent, but when you start talking about what standard should the government obey, and who are they accountable to, and by what standard should they execute justice, now we're talking about crossing the line, because that's a lesser thing, that's a lesser office, it's a worldly thing, and we need not get involved in that area, so.

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If someone were to say, you know, I think now it's just all about love,

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I would say, granted, I'll give you that, it is, but what are we talking about when we talk about love? That's right. Because if you wanna say that it's all about love,

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I would say, well, I actually agree with you, the love of God poured out in Christ, and forgiving sinners like us, that that's all about love, the two greatest commandments that are valid now, the new covenant is love

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God, love your neighbor, so, okay, granted, I'll give you it is all about love, but what's the definition behind that, because Jesus teaches that all the law and the prophets were hung upon love

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God and love neighbor, so when we talk about what it means to love the world and love neighbor, to love each other, there's an actual, proper,

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God -defined and ordained definition laid down in scripture, and Jesus tells us that goes forth, and it actually says in Isaiah chapter two, when it talks about this amazing prophetic promise from their perspective long into the future, with all kinds of confusing things around it, they knew that the promise was that the nations were gonna stream up to God, that he was gonna draw them up to his holy mountain, they're being pulled up by God, and then it says that the law would go forth from the people of God, so you have this full -orbed gospel that's about redemption, salvation, grace, and faith, and all of what

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Jesus does, all to the glory of God, our souls being saved for eternity with God, but it's not just that, it's more than that, now we have

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Christ reigning as supreme, his rule and favor spreading out throughout the entire world, and in the midst of that, justice starts to spring up, places, right, wherever Jesus' rule extends, now there's love, now there's justice, like wherever God saves and he creates a body of believers in a jungle somewhere, now all of a sudden there's genuine affection for one another, now all of a sudden there's a respect for life in one another, now there's a concern for one another, the law of God starts sprouting and budding everywhere because people are redeemed and saved, but that looks like something particular, it's not just hodgepodge random sort of whatever we feel, it's the teachings of Jesus that we observe and obey that create justice and righteousness in the world, right?

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We're far from where we were just in terms of like the United States of America where our founding was, however, all of the gifts and blessings of the

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Christian church and their work in the world and their propagating God's truth is still blessing the world today, it's still hanging around and blessing the world today, and all the protections on life that we have aside from the major issue of course, the issues of freedom and justice, those didn't exist in a vacuum, they existed because the law came from Zion, it came from the people of God and it's hanging out still, like it's still kind of around, but God promises to bless the world with justice,

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Isaiah 42, that he would establish justice in the earth and he would not grow faint or weary until he had accomplished it, and so that's one of the constituent elements of what

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God was gonna do in the world, and I'll just say this last thing, it's so powerful, the Bible says that all the nations were gonna come to God through Messiah, that salvation was gonna come to the ends of the earth, but it also teaches that his law would go forth and justice would start to actually fill the world because of Messiah, and I love just the last part of Matthew, Matthew 28, 18 through 20, that great commission says actually everything that the

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Old Testament said about the kingdom of the Messiah, he has all authority, right, because why, because of what he accomplished, and he says disciple the nations, teach them to obey, that was part of what the promise was in the

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Messiah's kingdom, all of that is a constituent element of all that God had called together with the promise of the kingdom, in one section,

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Matthew 28, 18 through 20, he has all authority, make disciples, teach them to obey.

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It's powerful. Wrapped up in, and I am with you always. And I'm with you always. Yeah, that's right.

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The whole time. I love it. Any other comments on any of that, guys? Yeah. I was just thinking, remember that one thing

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I was saying to you as we were talking about this the other night? I think it's important for Christians to start feeling their faith, and I mean that in the sense of like, we quote

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Romans one all the time of unbelievers, because what do they do? They profess not to know God, but they can't live that way.

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They deny him by their lives, right, their actions, but sometimes believers, they're not guilty of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, they're guilty of professing the truth in unrighteousness.

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What I mean by that is, you say, I say that I know God, but does my life evidence that?

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So it's the perverse, simple image of the unbeliever who professes not to know God, but yet can't live that way.

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Are you, as the believer, professing to know God, but your life doesn't reflect that? Do you live like Shiloh has come?

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Do you live like Shiloh, the one whose right it is to rule? That's what that word means.

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He whose right it is to rule, do you live like Shiloh is reigning, and that he's on his throne?

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So don't be a functional atheist. Don't profess the truth in unrighteousness.

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Yeah, so there's a real, there's a quote, or true orthodoxy creates orthopraxy, like praxis is the actual practice, living out the

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Christian life, and if it doesn't, then it's dead. It's not true orthodoxy.

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True biblical orthodoxy leads to transformation in my life and the world, and I love how you use the examples of, what'd you say, the baker, the candlestick maker?

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Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Yeah, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Like the faith in Christ and his rule in our lives ought to transform every single thing in the world.

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Everything. Surfing should be better because of Christ, right?

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And that there's a way to take that and bring it under the rule of Christ and make it glorious.

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Music, Christians haven't learned this yet because our music stinks. It's horrible, right?

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In terms of the world standards, they seem like they're more dedicated to artistry and beauty and sequence and all the stuff that has to take place to make it wonderful.

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Like, we ought to be the ones thriving and building and making things glorious and majestic in every single area.

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Because Jesus won, we need to make everything beautiful.

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Yeah, absolutely. We're living in a world right now where, and I'm talking about a country right now where more than ever,

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I think, in the history of our nation, we're seeing, obviously, a radical shift from Christianity, Christian thought, and now we're in a place where to go out and to share the gospel in the culture right now,

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I mean, you're called all kinds of names, right? You're a bigot, you're a liar, you're a racist, you're all these things that get said about us.

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So what does that look like? I mean, we know, because we've experienced it, but I mean, just to the church in general, when we say we need to be going out there in the public square, preaching the gospel, and you know that you're gonna get this backlash, and people are afraid to go out and do that because they don't want to come across as, like you said earlier, as being somehow offensive, but that's just the nature of the gospel.

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But how would you encourage Christians, given the climate that we're in today, in doing exactly that, and having that fortitude to go into the public square and claim the gospel?

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I'll just say, so I'll just try to be brief here. What I would say is I hope that no one would ever think that when we talk about bringing the gospel into the public square, we mean that every

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Christian is called to stand in a street corner and do an open proclamation of the gospel. That's actually not what we mean. We mean that in principle, scripture shows always a proclamation of the truth in the public square, meaning out there, where everybody is gathered, in the world, not here where I am in my secluded little

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Christian community, but out into the world, which means it could be as simple as saying,

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I'm at a coffee shop, and a guy sits down next to me, and I actually tell him the truth and engage with his position, with love and respect and gentleness, but also boldness over that cup of coffee in the public square.

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It could mean standing on that corner and proclaiming the truth. It could mean, like last night, Christian running into a

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Jehovah's Witness right outside a library and engaging with him for an hour and a half, like that's engaging in the public square.

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It could mean on social media, some event happens, and you have an opportunity to speak the truth and communicate the truth of God in the public square, which is now the world of the internet as well.

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But I would just say, fundamentally for me, I'm not special and extraordinary.

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I believe that God says, Philippians 1, 29, number of places, to you it has been gifted, not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for his sake.

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So God says, those two things are gifts from God. Here's your present, one, two. Believe in Jesus, that's a gift from me to you.

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God says, that's my gift to you to believe in Jesus and to suffer for Jesus' sake. So faith is a gift of God.

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Second Timothy 2, 24 to 26, Paul says, the Lord's servant must be patient when wronged, able to teach, and humility correcting those who oppose themselves, if perhaps

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God may grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth. So what I say is that this is, like Zach was saying today, this isn't about us and our manipulation and our skills and our abilities, because that could be intimidating.

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When you have someone that really knows the faith and church history and Greek and Hebrew and all these scriptures, and they're talking about, get out there and reach people with the gospel, you might be thinking,

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I don't know what you know. I don't have any ability to do the sorts of things that you're doing. That can be intimidating, but the beautiful thing is that it's the gospel that is the power of God for salvation.

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It's what God uses through the power of his spirit and his proclamation to ignite life into dead people.

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That's not you, you just, you give the message and God is the one who grants faith.

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He grants repentance. Paul says that, I sowed, he watered, sowed, watered, but God, he bring the increase.

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So for me, what I wanna encourage people in is, look, this isn't about you. And so when you feel afraid and you feel like you don't know anything, the answer is tell the truth.

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You proclaim the excellencies of Christ and his work, you just tell it. And I don't care how goofy it sounds and how much you stutter.

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And if you have, if you lisp it, you tell the truth and God saves sinners all by his work.

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I think a lot of it comes down to just tell the truth, go out there and tell people the truth of love and God will save and save mightily.

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And I love the response has been at times to get people that have this mindset, but we're gonna go out and sow it.

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Like it has, like you said today, like it has something to do with us and it does it. And you'll get into those conversations with other

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Christians and they'll tell you, well, how many people have you brought to Christ? I love your response, every single one of them.

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Yeah, exactly. Every single one of them, all of them, right? Every single one of them sat him before Christ and left him there.

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Turn around, walk away. That's right. Yeah, exactly. I like that, yeah. That's good.

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You're famous for saying that. I love it. That always resonates in the back of my mind when we're doing evangelism.

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Again, not about me, right? But it's about me bringing these people to Christ and letting God do what he's gonna do.

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Awesome. That's exactly right, yeah. You were gonna say something, Jack? No, you're just talking about how can we get people to go out or how can we get people to accept persecution and then that be a normal part of life.

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We have to look, like you were saying, that persecution is, we can rejoice in that. That's what the early church did.

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Acts chapter five, verse 40, it says, and then they called, and the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.

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Then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for shame.

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We live in America. We're not gonna get beat. We almost got beat up today, but we're not gonna normally get beat, but we can look at persecution as far as family.

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I've been in a lot of situations where your family will reject you. Your friends will reject you. There's a level of persecution, nothing like our brothers and sisters around the world are experiencing, right?

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But we look at that as a blessing. And you look at it as though you're doing the right thing. If you're not receiving any persecution in the

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Christian life, something's wrong. If everybody likes you, singing your praises, everything's comfortable, something's wrong.

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You're not proclaiming the gospel because the offense of the gospel is inherently gonna bring upon your life persecution from family, from everybody.

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So we have to do a self -inventory. We have to look at the churches that we're in.

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And I'm gonna be careful about what I say. We have to understand the fellowship that I'm in, what is their philosophy of ministry?

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Why are they doing what they're doing? If we're not fulfilling the great commission, that means Jesus is not our authority.

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He says, all authority has been given to me. But if we're not doing that, he's not our authority.

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We're not acting that out. Having him be our authority means we're submitted to his lordship and his kingship in the way that we do life.

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And we're not doing that. We have to get real with that and say, what has become our authority? Has it become some other standard out there?

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And that means you don't run into your pastor's office like a bull in a china shop and just say, you better change.

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I think that we can come into the presence of our spiritual leadership with meekness and humility. But you really, if that is not going on in your life, there must be a change.

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Great commission fulfillment is gospel, or is Christianity 101, right? It's the basis of our discipleship.

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Joe Booth says that they're the little vice regents of Christ. Yeah, yeah. Priest kings.

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I know we're going over, I just want to hear Luke for a second. Sometimes I, I think

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God for all he's doing in our churches and the fact that he uses people like us that aren't worthy of him. And you know,

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I don't, we don't deserve any of this. And sometimes we do some hard ministry. We do. You know, we'd go to the abortion mill and preach the gospel.

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Like that's hectic and hard, but you see the lives saved. It's worth everything. You go to the Mormon temple, there's a lot of people and they know now we love them and they appreciate us there.

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Because after all these years, they know we've just been so gracious and caring to them. They like us being there rather than nasty, you know, mean spirited individuals.

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But it's still been tough. There's been moments where I was telling a story today about, you know, some big guy that ripped up our tracks and roughed us up and that sort of things, you know, it's happened.

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But so many thousands of people have come to Christ now. So it's all worth it. But sometimes I think of myself and I'm like,

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I'm such a wuss. I'm nowhere near the giants of the faith. That, and I mean that sincerely, like there's people, there's

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Christians now being slaughtered in Africa. You know, just for being Christian. It's like genocide taking place just because they're

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Christian. I'm not, my life's not in danger at this point. Yeah, exactly. People are like, oh, you're doing such hard things for God and amazing.

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It's like, I didn't just watch my child get slaughtered by somebody just because I was a believer. You know, there's so much that even attesting of my own faith,

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I know that God could be doing. But so what I like to do, tell them something that's just practical, is

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I like to reflect on the work of real giants of the faith that have done really difficult things so that I don't see the guy at the coffee shop as such an obstacle and such a difficulty.

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Like opening my mouth shouldn't be that hard because I reflect on the stories of what God has done with giants.