EP 33 MARKS OF A GOOD CHURCH, #goodchurch, #maca, #maga, #sovereigntyofgod,, #eschatology, #bigeva

But these kind of ethical questions affect all of life. And now our country, we're faced with very important ethical decisions, and pastors have to be willing to address them if their church is going to be healthy.

If you have a church where people feel perfectly fine about going and voting for Kamala Harris, a woman who is talking about a federal right to abortion, federal, and who wants to fund

Planned Parenthood for the killing of more babies. If we think it's okay to support that, then there's a fundamental sickness in the church that never told the

Christian that that is absolutely against Christian ethics. And welcome to Tearing Down High Places.

My name's Average Joe. Welcome back to another episode. This time we're in the studio, off the streets, and we have our favorite

Minnesotan, Seth Brickley, in the house. Seth, welcome to Tearing Down High Places.

Yeah, I lived in Minnesota for 30 years, and then Wisconsin for the last seven and a half.

So, but Minnesotan is what we call it. But it's right next door, right? Yeah, we live right on the border,

Minnesotan. Yeah, yeah, just like us being Phillyites, right? East Philly? We're from East Philly.

Yeah. When I was there, that country is so beautiful out there. We went on a hike, like right in between the two states, on the

St. Croix River. Yes. One of the most beautiful hikes you could imagine. It was awesome. That's fantastic.

Seth, so what's today? Seth, as our guest, is going to set the agenda. Seth, what's our agenda today?

Yeah, we're going to look at what does a healthy church look like? Last month, when

I was with you guys, we talked about Big Eva. What is Big Eva? What are the problems?

There's some good in Big Eva, but of course, there's some problems, and there's some unwritten rules that the people in the club of Big Eva have to follow.

So I think a good follow -up to this that people listening might be asking is, well, are there any healthy churches out there?

And the answer is yes, there are. Of course, Christ is building His church. Right. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And so what does a healthy church look like? And this has been a big conversation.

In fact, Big Eva has written on this topic. And here's a book here by Mark Dever.

And Mark Dever, I would consider is someone who's in Big Eva, certainly. His ministry is called

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. He wrote the book called Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. This is a shorter version called

What is a Healthy Church? And in this, he has nine marks, and I'll list these off right here.

Expositional preaching is one, and this is verse by verse preaching through the Bible, which

I and we all say amen to. We do that at Eureka Baptist, and I know you guys do that at Cornerstone.

Biblical theology, what he's saying here is don't take things out of context. We have to understand the passage of scripture in context.

A biblical understanding of the gospel. We need to get the gospel right. And how important that is.

A biblical understanding of conversion, a biblical understanding of evangelism, church membership, church discipline, discipleship and growth, and then biblical church leadership.

Okay, so these were his nine marks, and I think we'd all say amen to these nine marks.

But the question is, is this all that a healthy church is? Is it just okay just to check the boxes of each of these?

Can a church do expository preaching, for example, and actually be a dead church?

Okay, that's a question I think we should ask. What do you guys think about that? Absolutely. I think it's very possible for the love of the believer to grow cold and still have right orthodoxy.

So the Revelation 2 warning, I think it's verse 4, that you have forgotten your first love.

We're told to repent, remember the works you did at first, repent and do those works again.

So I think it's possible to have right thinking and even expository preaching, but for the heart to grow cold.

And what we need at that point is for the Holy Spirit to fan into flame the gifts that are in us.

So we need the right logos, the right logic, the right thinking, but we also need the fire of God.

Second Timothy 1 .6, fan into flame the gifts that are in you. Yeah, amen, amen.

Yeah, Martyn Lloyd -Jones, I know had a famous quote, Logic on Fire. Yes. It was his famous quote.

There's actually a movie that anybody listening to this would do well to go take some time to watch. It's called Logic on Fire.

And it's just like a little YouTube thing you can watch for free. Logic on Fire, the life and legacy of Martyn Lloyd -Jones.

And then we need missions, of course, the Great Commission, Go and Make Disciples of All Nations, very important.

We as churches need to be supporting missionaries. People in our church may even feel the call to go to the mission field and we need to support them in that as well.

Yeah, so there's a lot of different things. You know, church, do you guys have church? Of course you do, right? Church membership at Cornerstone?

Yes. Yeah. Real quick, because on the Church of Ephesus, the love had grown cold.

I think that's really important because we know other believers and recognize people by the way they love one another.

So you're not going to recognize a good church and recognize Jesus, I think, mostly by the preaching or the expository preaching.

You're going to recognize it by the people in the church and how they love one another, loving the brothers and sisters. So I think that is one of the top reasons.

Yes, that's a good point, Jeff. So how would you define his first mark on the nine marks, expositional preaching?

Because I think some people take that to mean different things. I think there's some nuances in that.

Would I be correct in saying that? Yes, expositional preaching. I mean, bare bones, it's just preaching verse by verse through the

Bible. At our church, we've gone through Genesis. We've gone through first and second Peter.

We've gone through Matthew. We've gone through Philippians in my time here. Lord willing, we've done some topical, though.

I would say the steady diet of a church should be expositional preaching because then you can't dodge anything.

I remember preaching through Genesis and you get to Lot and his daughters and you think, okay, we can't dodge this, right?

We're going to go through this and the Lord wants us to see something here. You might want to tell the young kids to leave for that sermon, but we're still going to preach that sermon.

That is so funny you say that because I just heard a preacher at our 12 noon study give a sermon on that very passage.

It was Jeff Bewer. He just did it like 30 minutes ago. So it's so funny that you'd bring that up.

I called on Tim to read it. So Tim had to read that. That's right.

That's wonderful. I preach that. We actually do that passage. My joke was that's not a sermon you're going to candidate at a church on.

We're not starting there, but eventually you get there. There's a problem with expository preaching though because a lot of churches, they do expository preaching and the problem isn't with the exposition of the text.

The problem is with the application of the text. They're not applying it to the times in which we live.

And I think that's a problem that I see. And so people go to church, they like, oh yeah, good exposition. But then they're like, well, how does this fit with the world

I live in? Because we're dealing with a lot of crazy things out there and the

Bible has something to say about it. And even as you're going verse by verse of the Bible, you're going to have application that fits with the text.

Like for example, the Olympic ceremony, the blasphemy that happened in Paris at the opening ceremony, a pastor should mention that from the pulpit.

Amen. Yeah, that's right. Trump assassination, that should be mentioned. The pastor should not say, we're going to avoid that.

It should be mentioned from the pulpit. Especially since it was a miracle. Yeah, it really was.

I feel like a lot of pastors are using expositional preaching to dodge the issues.

It's almost like we got to stay with the text. We know there's a lot going on out there, but let's stick with the text.

And then the people are like, what? And I'm with them. The pastor has a responsibility because I think a pastor is afraid to go down that path because it might be controversial.

They don't want to offend someone. That's my fear. When I first became the youth pastor and I was filling in for Ben Honeyford, and I was teaching and I was doing that expository preaching.

I forget what book I was even going through. I think it was the gospel of Mark. And Jeff had sat in and watched a few times.

And the criticism he gave me, which was very good, was like, I needed to have better application.

I was going through the text, but without application, then the kids aren't taking much away to apply to life.

And that's really important. So now I always make sure there's some sort of takeaway or application to the passage as well.

Amen. I was speaking as the non -pastor here. This came up a couple of times as we're out on the streets and people are complaining that we're spending too much time on not a sermon.

This is a podcast talking about politics. Us average Joes need our pastors to help us see what is and is not biblical in the culture, what is and is not biblical in politics.

How are we supposed to know? And right now, and I don't want to get this episode to go this way, but I think in a near future episode, we're going to have to talk about this

Equality Act because people forget how close we are to the culture trying to outlaw any type of Christian orthodoxy.

I'm not saying they're outlawing Christianity, but they definitely want to outlaw Christian orthodoxy.

Yes, pastors need to reflect the Old Testament prophets, John the

Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles in their preaching. And what

I mean by that is that we need to be a prophetic voice to our communities, to our state, to our nation.

And that's missing in a lot of pulpits all across the country because, and this fits with last month's episode, because a lot of pastors, they've been trained, oh yeah, don't really go down that path.

You're not supposed to do that. That's not for pastors. Stay out of that. Stay in your lane.

A lot of pastors have heard that over the years. And so we are having to kind of reteach ourselves based on what the

Bible says, based on the example we've been set by Scripture to actually address these issues.

And look at John the Baptist, for example. John the Baptist is addressing King Herod, King Herod Antipas.

And what he tells them is, and he tells them this repeatedly, the Greek verb is a continuous pleading with Herod, telling him, it is not lawful for you to have this woman as your wife.

And of course, we know how this ended for John the Baptist. It took a lot of courage for John the Baptist to do that, but he ended up getting his head chopped off telling the truth to this king.

So he was engaging in the public square, which should be our example.

Hey, Seth, I came up with a good question. What's a healthy church look like as far as marriage and discipling couples?

What's that look like? Go for it, guys. No, he said Seth. Did you say

Seth? Actually, you know what? I meant to ask you about feminism. Very specific question. We should have sent him that ahead of time.

Let him think about it. Let me broaden it a little bit. How are we addressing feminism in a healthy church? I think this is still for Seth.

This is still for me? Okay. We need men to lead the church, right?

And we need to establish very clearly that the biblical model is male leadership.

It's male elders. It's male deacons. That's the example given in Scripture.

So we're supposed to preach the word. We're supposed to shepherd our families. We're supposed to shepherd the people of God within the church.

And it starts with the men. A female -run church is an unhealthy church. And sadly, there's a lot of churches out there like that.

Because the men, I think Satan's, one of his greatest tools is that he goes after the men by telling them, church is for women.

He feminizes church. And a lot of women end up running the church. And then the men are out hunting.

And they're out in the field. And they're out busy with their jobs. And they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

I even think that the praise and worship, many of the songs are overly feminine. And I hope nobody listening likes this particular song.

But the one that says, that is who you are, that's on the radio. And he sings it with such a high voice.

This guy repeats it. That is who you are. And he just does it again and again in this really high girly voice.

And then he lists every possible illness. Jesus is greater than, and my kids are like, he's greater than diphtheria.

He's greater than, they just make up the most bizarre illnesses because we're mocking the song.

But the thing of it is, it's so effeminate. I don't know how else to say it.

But not every praise and worship song, obviously, there's a lot of good stuff on K -Love and Air One and whatnot.

But a lot of them are just really breathy, and just very high and soft.

And contrast that with when Martin Luther was leading the Protestant Reformation, he wrote, A Mighty Fortress is

Our God. Felt that out, and then they're willing to go die because Rome is going to kill you if you deny the

Protestant gospel. I mean, if you deny their false gospel in favor of the Protestant gospel. So yeah, the whole church service can be influenced by a feminine kind of character if we're not careful, and that's not healthy.

MIKE BOLOGNINO Let me ask you guys this question. Is Big Eva raising up effeminate men to be pastors?

PASTOR MIKE Yes. Yes, because they're telling you, you're an extremist if you take a stand.

They shame you against extremism. What they don't realize, I just read an article today, sadly, by an

EFCA pastor who wrote against extremism. But he doesn't realize that it all depends on where the

Overton window is. So the level of acceptability of what he believes in the minds of the people on the left, he's an extremist.

So he doesn't believe that a man should marry a man. He's an extremist to everybody on the left.

And, you know, so many other things. But yet he's going to shame us for taking a stand against abortion, or even more strongly to say, we're against a fetal heartbeat bill.

We want abortion to be illegal whenever a baby is created in the image of God, from conception on, right?

Well, that's an extreme position. But the truth is, we're making a principled stand upon the word of God.

And the result of Big Eva is to make men be more effeminate, to not take a stand, not to be clear, not to be courageous.

Jeff, do you think some of the Big Eva songs, like the songs that promoted by Big Eva, have transitioned from, you know, songs about the blood and the cross and move towards songs where you could take that him or him out and replace your boyfriend's name?

A hundred percent. It's all about the presence of God. It's all about the surrounding love and the feeling of acceptance.

It's emotional. It's very emotional. Yeah, that's right. Songs should be emotional, but yeah, you need battle calls, right?

If you're going to keep the men in the church engaged. And if you have to hit high notes, sorry, you're losing everybody.

Listen, the women in our church, they listen to K -Love and Air One. The men, they listen to Tearing Down High Places.

Is that true? Do we have a more male audience than female? Yeah. No idea.

Write in the comment section. I wanted to say quickly about the point about like, why are you taking so much time on this political podcast?

We just taught expositorily through the Bible from 12 to 1, and then we jump in the car from 1 to 3 .30.

We're out on the streets filming something. Joe, you do all the work. Tim and I just spend two and a half hours in a work week.

But what better use of two and a half hours is there than to stand on the street and share the gospel with how many people did we contact?

A dozen people heard the gospel. We gave out Bibles. People are getting saved or at least blessing that they've come to believe.

Like that one guy in the first shirt with the t -shirt, the longer hair guy. He's an agnostic to the point, well, yeah,

I think I believe that. Like what better use of two hours in the middle of the week is there?

It's not a neglect or something else. And here's what I've discovered. Talking about politics actually can be a door to the gospel.

These two things are not opposed. We have more gospel conversations by initiating this conversation than something else.

That's been my experience, Jeff. I spoke at a school board meeting last fall, and I was able to share the gospel in the presence of the superintendent of the school, the principal of the high school, the principal of the middle school, the principal of the elementary school, the entire school board, and anybody else who was in attendance, which was quite a few people.

I shared the gospel, and I was there standing against the LGBTQ push that was taking place in the school.

So as we go after the idols in our community, it's only natural that we follow it up by inviting people to believe in Jesus Christ as their

Lord and Savior. So yes, the Lord is blessing that. He's opening up those doors, and any pastor who doesn't see that is actually missing out, which is sad.

Back to the title of the episode, politics is a mark of a healthy church.

That's what you're saying? Yeah. Tonight, we're starting a Bible study at my church. So if you're in western

Wisconsin, come on out. You won't be getting this in time, but for next week at 6 .30 central time,

Biblical Ethics in the Public Square, and we're going to go through what is the local church's responsibility, and we're going to go through the issues.

We're going to go after the idols of our day, and we're going to hold our community locally at the state level and at the national level accountable to obey the law of God and to share the gospel.

That's great, Seth. Make sure you get us the link. We'll put it in the notes. Yes, it will be recorded. Here's a great book.

Have you heard of this one? Christian Ethics by Wayne Grudem. Oh, so good.

I learned so much about lying and why it's never okay to lie, as opposed to lying for a better good, like protecting someone that you're harboring from the

Nazis. But these kind of ethical questions affect all of life, and now our country, we're faced with very important ethical decisions, and pastors have to be willing to address them if their church is going to be healthy.

If you have a church where people feel perfectly fine about going and voting for Kamala Harris, a woman who is talking about a federal right to abortion, federal, and who wants to fund

Planned Parenthood for the killing of more babies. If we think it's okay to support that, then there's a fundamental sickness in the church that never told the

Christian that that is absolutely against Christian ethics, that the value of this life in the womb.

If you're afraid to mention things like that, things like politics, I think you're going to have a very soft and weak church.

They're not going to want to actually take a stand and make a difference in the world and make the world a better place because they're going to be so soft, and they're going to be so worldly that they're going to be afraid to talk about things that pastors and Christians ought to be talking about.

You know who sets the tone for that is the pastor. If the pastor is talking about politics, I respect that.

I want to know what the pastor believes. I want to know what the pastor thinks about what's going on in the world. I want to know what the pastor thinks we should do as Christians living in the world.

I respect the pastor that actually makes a decision and does something about it rather than pretend it doesn't exist.

If we don't, they're going to go find a pastor that will. That's right. That's what Joe did. We have a crisis though in the

American Evangelical Church, and the crisis is with the because the people in the church are not going to rise past the level of the pastor and other pastors and elders in that church because they set the example.

1 Peter 5 verses 2 and 3 says, 1

Peter 5 verses 2 and 3 says, How many pastors are in the ministry for the wrong reasons? It might be a career.

Of course, the worst case scenario is that there's a wolf who has this horrible agenda, but if we take a stand on the issues of our day, it puts us in the line of fire, and it takes courage to do that.

But if our people see us taking that stand as pastors, it's going to inspire them to do the same in their own life.

It's going to inspire them to have a difficult conversation with a family member. It's going to inspire them to share the gospel with someone.

It's going to inspire them to actually voice the truth of the Word of God in public.

If we're not doing that, why should we expect them to do that? If we don't do it, they'll be cowardly just like the pastor is cowardly.

I think there's so many churches that are unhealthy because of that very reason. We have cowards in the pulpit.

People don't know cowardice is a sin. I didn't for a long time. I didn't know that.

The Lord will grant a special grace when you step out courageously to do something.

When you experience this irrationality from people who oppose you, and they're angry, and they have no argument, no biblical argument, and no willingness even to sit down and discuss, you realize that you're over the target, that you've touched a nerve.

This kind of opposition is not coming from God. It's not biblical.

There's such passion on the other side. You have to suffer for it, then you get this extra measure of grace that you know that you're suffering for the sake of the name.

When other people see that, they're encouraged to take a stand. Just like you said, Seth, I think courage begets courage.

When you're in a battle and one soldier is willing to cross no man's land, everybody else goes behind him, but nobody's willing to take that first step to go where no one else has gone before.

You need courage, and that's what leadership is. It's being willing to take a bullet or be the first one put in danger.

If you're willing to do that, it will have positive effects on those who are also inspired to be courageous.

I got a question for Joe. What was that verse that Pastor Jeff asked us to memorize?

I think it was Daniel 11 32. The people who know their

God will stand up and take action. Amen. That's right.

That's the second half of it. First one has something to do with flattery or something. Guys, I have a question too.

If people were to ask me, what is the greatest problem with the American church?

I would say cowardly pastors. Wow. I believe that.

I've seen it. People are having to drive 30 miles to go to church because they can't find a pastor who's actually going to tell the truth, who's actually going to put himself on the line.

One of the men who was influential in the Southern Baptist resurgence three decades ago,

Adrian Rogers, he said the problem with today's pastors is that nobody wants to kill them.

Well, that's not true. Shouldn't we be like the prophets of old who risked their lives for God and for the sake of their people?

It's going to happen soon if the Equality Act passes. We just talked about that in the Genesis 19 study about being prophetic means that they're going to want to kill you.

They might not do it physically in America where we have a stronger restraint of evil because of Christian institutions.

It's not like we're living in Kenya or Nigeria would be the most difficult for a

Christian. We'll probably be protected physically from harm, but they will try to kill your reputation.

They will try to cancel you and just wear out your name. Do you think we put too much faith in our institutions though,

Jeff? We're living off the blessings. I think you would agree. We're living off the blessings of past generations.

I think you'd also agree that our institutions are extremely weak. I personally don't think the flock in general has any idea how weak they are.

What do you think? I agree with that. I think that right here in Mount Laurel, the police are generally doing their job.

Especially in the COVID era, because I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but they were not breathing down our neck when we were open and our wicked governor,

Phil Murphy, was saying that the churches need to be closed. The police did not try to enforce a wicked ruler.

They were like the lesser magistrate that interceded. On the other hand, if you call the police here because there's a break -in or something like that, they'll be there in a and come and do what they're supposed to do.

You have people that in this township are doing the Romans 13 thing.

They don't bear the sword for nothing. They will stand against murder and assault and rape and all of the evil things that happen in the world.

We are very blessed. Now, are we living off of borrowed capital? Absolutely. People take that for granted because you even saw the breakdown of the policing in this country in Minneapolis, your neck of the woods,

Seth, after the George Floyd summer of love. People and the police, they began to break down the

Christian role of government that we would fund the police to do what they're empowered to do.

What do you think about that? What was the summer of love like for you in Wisconsin there? Did you ever go to Minneapolis during those days?

We can see the smoke all the way in Wisconsin. No. Actually, that was the area that I used to do evangelism to Somali Muslims.

It was south Minneapolis. It was a war zone. I think about 100 buildings were destroyed by fire.

They were ransacked by robbers. Of course, the police precinct was burned.

And Tim Walz, he waited three days to send the National Guard in.

By the time they were sent in, the damage was already done. Yeah. And the police, their hands were tied by the politicians.

They couldn't do what they needed to do. Did you see what Tim Walz did in COVID?

He actually had police walking the streets, forcing people back into their house, and some of them got shot by paintballs.

The police shot paintballs at American citizens to drive them back into their homes during COVID.

That was under Tim Walz. That is wild. I did not know that. That is crazy.

In the United States of America. So yeah, this country is living off of the borrowed capital of Christianity, which gave freedom and individual rights.

The whole Bill of Rights, all of these things came out of biblical Christian ethics. And now it's starting to break down as the country apostatizes from Christianity.

That was good and normal that people were getting shot by paintballs. But how about the story of Lot when

Lot tried to rescue his son -in -laws and they thought he was a joke because he said that God is going to judge them.

That's us. If we say, no, God doesn't like that. He's going to judge you for that one day. They look at you like you're joking with them.

Really, you have to be willing to be a fool to the world, knowing that God is with you and that God is going to judge the world one day and things are going to be made right.

But right now, the world does not see it the same way as us, although we're seeing it clearly because God has opened up our eyes.

So we've got all these other nine marks to talk about. I don't know if you think we're going to hit a ball, but I wanted to go outside of that list.

I wanted to ask someone on the panel here, what's a healthy church do with psychology?

Great question. Great question. Throw it out. Here's how

I would summarize secular psychology. Go to Genesis chapter three.

Genesis chapter three, Adam sins, God confronts him.

Who does he blame? He blames Eve. That's secular psychology in a nutshell.

Let's blame someone else for our problems because the biggest problem is inside of us.

It's our own sin. This isn't to minimize trauma. People do go through horrible experiences because of abuse caused by others.

We want to recognize that. But a healthy church has biblical counseling. Yes. Yes.

Euthetic. I like the euthetic name better because there's all those integrationists.

I think that's what other average shows don't know. They don't know that there's people out there saying they're doing biblical counseling, but they're integrating a lot of secular psychology in with the biblical counseling.

In fact, some of those very biblical people who may go to a great church will argue that, well, the

Bible doesn't have a solution for trauma. I look at the cross and wince a little bit when they say that, but those are things

I've heard. Euthetic, for those people who don't know, I think it comes from the Greek word that sounds close to euthetic.

That means to exhort from scripture. The idea is just applying scripture to whatever the situation is.

That's biblical counseling as opposed to figuring out all the labels that you could put on it, whether it would be

ADHD or this disorder or that disorder, and then especially prescribing medicine as the solution for everything.

Euthetic counseling is saying, no, God's Word can heal you. Things can change in a day.

It's not always that way. Man, when the Word of God is a light to your path and the light bulb goes off, things can change drastically in a moment by the power of the

Word of God. This is what we need to do. But, Joah, I know of churches that they do biblical counseling.

They do expository preaching. They do all the things. They support missions. They do everything that's in this book, nine marks, but I would still say they're an unhealthy church.

Oh, why? Tell us. I think it's because of the leadership. The leadership, like 1

Peter 5, as I read before, they are not leading by example. So they're not doing those things well.

Yeah. There's two things here. One is the courage piece that we saw earlier.

Jeff and I heard a sermon recently where the pastor said he was encouraging his congregation.

This is actually a free church pastor. He's in the free church leadership to resist the left and the neo -fundamentalism on your right.

So he's doing expository preaching. He's doing biblical counseling. He's doing all of these things. But he's basically telling his church, be a middle -of -the -road

Christian because he has to define what is neo -fundamentalism, and he won't be able to define it.

There is something on the right that we need to stay away from, and that is like the Pharisees added to the Bible.

We see that in our day with one drop of alcohol is sinful. Never play cards, never go to a movie.

There's this extra strictness. That's an unhealthiness by someone who's very conservative.

But if we're not talking about that, and we're talking about people who are standing on the Word of God, then what is the problem?

Well, the problem is that they are comfortable in compromise and all they can do is throw out a label and frankly slander those who are actually standing on the

Word of God, and they call it neo -fundamentalism. Neo -fundamentalism, we're heroes of the past, and if we're being compared to them, amen.

Yeah, Jesus said, you're either with me or against me, and I've heard other pastors say that neutrality is a sin.

The brands of fundamentalism that I find to be hurtful to the church include things like making man -made rules that end up becoming just a real detriment to the church.

So such things as you just can't have a drum in church.

But Psalm 150 says, you know, use the tambourine and other instruments that involve the beat, right?

So, hey, Tim, your wife, just an amazing musician, her singing, right?

I think allowing her to use that gift in church is a beautiful thing, but a fundamentalist church might resist that because the words weren't written, you know, 400 years ago.

Remember on the hike, you were telling me that some of the hymns that we celebrate were themselves written by groups that we should consider out of bounds, yet we still sing those songs.

Which ones were you thinking of? Well, Come Thou Fount, Robert Robinson, and by the end of his life, they weren't even sure if he was a

Christian anymore, and it's one of my favorite songs, but we still sing it. Yeah, and I'm the same way, like,

I don't agree with the theology of every group out there, right? Obviously, but I think we can still sing a song if the song is biblically sound, right?

And it's not somehow a temptation leading people into aberrant practices.

So there's some judiciousness there. You know, the shepherd has to know his people and know what you need to guard from.

You have to be careful. But at the same time, I could probably find something wrong with every author of every song that you put on the table.

It would just take a little bit of digging. There'd be something somewhere. And that's the thing with fundamentalism. It's drawing these lines where they don't need to be drawn.

And then the question is, is what we're doing by drawing a line against abortion, against the transitioning, quote -unquote, of children and adults even, for that matter, from one gender to another, against socialism, against feminism?

Is this fundamentalism? What we stand against, are we fundamentalists or neo -fundamentalists because we stand against these wicked, demonic things that come into the church?

How are we neo -fundamentalists because we're standing on Christian ethics? You're teaching Christian ethics.

That's not what fundamentalism ever was about. MIKE And frankly, people need to understand the history of this.

100 years ago, the fundamentalists fought against the modernists. They stood on the

Word of God. They are the heroes of that story. So flash forward 100 years later, and Jeff and people like me and others are called neo -fundamentalists.

Guess what the fight we're in against now? It's the new left. It's the new modernism. You could say it that way.

JEFF Seth, I'm so glad you brought up history because I think that's one of Jeff's strengths, and I think it's one of the things that I've seen out there that when a pastor gets

American history wrong, European history, history after the cross, after scriptures closed, after revelation, whatever you say that is, they get that wrong, and they get things like Romans 13 wrong.

They think that the American Revolution was sinful, I've heard, because they don't know the history that it led up to.

They think it was just over some tea tax. MIKE We have to understand our place in history and how we tie to the past.

So if we're flashing back to 100 years ago, well, they were fighting. It was a fight over the authority of Scripture, and 100 years later, it's the same fight because social justice is unbiblical.

It was introduced into evangelicalism and the

Evangelical Free Church of America. The book that Jeff wrote was Woke Free Church, and people need to understand the context of that.

I mean, this wasn't some random one -time event, and Jeff actually mentions this in his book. If it would have happened once,

I would not have written the book, but it was an agenda. It was what they were about, and so what does a biblical pastor do?

Titus 1 -9, right? They rebuke those who contradict sound doctrine, but that's not some radical neo -fundamentalist, whatever that means.

It's actually being a biblical shepherd. MIKE Do you guys get frustrated trying to figure out, all right, am

I going to push my flock too far because they have a background that's here, and they need to be over here, but I've got to bring them up a little bit?

Do you guys run into that? I mean, you know what I'm saying? MIKE I've been so amazed by our congregation because I think

I've probably been pretty far outside of the Overton window at times, and they have gone right with me.

I don't get the pushback in our congregation, which is a testament to them, which probably means that they found it in the

Word of God too. They saw how wicked these practices are, and they were all in because it's true.

I haven't gotten pushback from within. MIKE Do you know why, Jeff? Do you know why you haven't gotten pushback?

JEFF Why? MIKE It's because they trust you. You are their shepherd. You're not just a preacher who gets up there once a week.

You know these people. They trust you. They know that you're willing to take a bullet for them, and that's the difference between someone who's just a preacher and someone who's a shepherd, right?

This person is willing to put himself on the line for me, so I'm going to listen to him, right? I think that's why.

MIKE I want to interrupt real quickly. I don't want to just pat you on the back because you just patted me on the back. This is so real.

It's not because you just gave me a compliment. It's because of what I observed when I was in Wisconsin. I was riding around with Seth, and he saw a light on at one of his congregants' house, and he's like, and I thought, wow,

I wish I would do that. I don't know. Our culture might be different. You're out kind of in Wisconsin out there in the boonies, but you pulled up in this guy's driveway, knocked on the door, you, me, and John Harris.

We walked in, and we sang hymns and songs and played the guitar for like three hours, just like, stop.

Watching how you interact with your flock, I could see that you're a pastor that loves them and cares for them, and they trust you.

I saw that the whole week that I was there. Anyway, I didn't just say that because you complimented me, but seriously,

I think that you're on to something. You love your people, and your people love you. They know you.

They don't think that if you're saying something, it's just coming out of left field. There's a biblical reason for this, and they trust you.

MIKE I can tell Tim's that way, just through our interaction. TIM I hope anyone that has hung in there for 43, 44 minutes, and they have a pastor that they trust, that they would share with us their pastor's name.

We want to lift those people up as we're tearing the high places down. We've been asking over and over again for examples of pastors that we can hold up as being great examples and part of our

Blood Red Church troop. We're going to have a Blood Red Church Summit in May, and that's what the culture needs.

The culture needs to know pastors are being faithful and can be trusted, and we want to call out those who are worthy.

So let's get those emails into podcast at cornerstonesj .org.

MIKE I want to mention this, guys, too, that prayer is essential for a healthy church. A pastor's prayer life, we need to be in regular conversation with the

Lord, and that's something that I know I can lose sight of at times, but I want to be held accountable to pray.

When we got there to preach on Sunday, that should be the first time we prayed all week, right? We need to be praying daily.

The pastor needs to have enough time to be able to pray, and we talked about recently, you guys, about how some pastors, when they're preaching a whole sermon off of one verse instead of going expositionally, it takes them like 40 hours to create that sermon.

When do they have time to pray or deeply study God's Word? PASTOR MIKE Amen to that.

I agree with that. My friend Cody Leibold has been writing about this for years, that he thinks it's a real error in expository preaching to take one verse or two verses because you end up hearing the preacher's thoughts and extra biblical things, not necessarily unbiblical things, for the vast majority of the sermon, whereas if you let a larger chunk of Scripture speak, then you really are letting the

Word of God speak more in context. I think a little bit longer, I don't mean like entire chapters, although that's okay sometimes too.

That's how we're doing it through Genesis for our Wednesday study, but in a Sunday morning,

I think five verses, seven verses, 12, 15, or even 20 is not unacceptable, even though kind of the nine marks thing and even our beloved

John MacArthur tends to atomize the text a little bit more. I agree with Joe. I think it's more healthy to take a little bit more at a time.

Hey, Seth, can we kick it back to you for a summary? Why did you want to do this podcast?

What's on your mind and heart? What do you want pastors and churches and Christians to hear?

Yeah. I don't want to be overly judgmental, but I do think there's a poor climate out there.

I think it comes based off of our last month's episode of those problems with Big Eva.

I think young pastors are rising up and they're not being shown really what is a great example.

I think they're seeing more of like a managerial elite as their pastor, and they think that's what a pastor is instead of the guy who is a warrior, who's on the battlefield and is there to take bullets for his people and actually loves his people and knows them well.

That's what we need shepherd to be like. For a church to be healthy, they can't just check the boxes.

Yes, we need to do all those things we listed earlier, but the pastor needs to set the example, and then the people, by God's grace, will follow that example.

I think that's what's going to lead to a healthy church. Maybe I'll close by reading scripture here. Revelation chapter 3, verses 1 through 4,

And to the church in Sardis, the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars,

I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die.

For I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard.

Keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour

I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

So he's talking about here the deadness that a church can have. They might check all the boxes.

They might have the reputation of being alive. They might do expository preaching, biblical counseling, missions, church membership, all of that.

But if there's a life that is missing, oftentimes in these places, I think because the pastor is not setting the example.

He's not putting himself on the line for the people. He doesn't know his people well. In other words, he's not shepherding the way the

Bible has called him the shepherd. And so if we have true shepherds, true biblical shepherds, doing what they're supposed to doing, it's going to create an environment where these people in the church will grow to be healthy, mature

Christians. So this is my plea to churches and the pastors. Amen. I just want to mention

Acts 2, I think is a chapter we can look at the early church. And in the sermon that Peter gave, one of the things he mentions is save yourself from this crooked generation.

So I think we need to warn that the generation is crooked because it's still crooked. But also a little bit later on is verse 42.

And it says, and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread.

And as Seth mentioned, and the prayers. So I think making sure the church is doing those things leads to a strong, strong foundation as well.

Yes. Amen. Yeah. And believer's baptism too, by the way. Sorry if I offended anybody with that comment, but maybe one more thing

I'll add here too. And I think an infant baptism church, I think they can in a lot of ways be healthy, even though I think they get that wrong.

But our church is talking about the end times as well. And what I mean by that is,

I feel like worldly churches, they don't talk about the end of the story because they're not interested in it. So do we long for Christ to come back?

And does that show up in a pastor's preaching? Does that show up in the conversations of the people in the church? There should be a focus on, because this focus is in there in the new

Testament. The return of Christ is talked about all the time in the new Testament. So we should have that in our churches as well.

Amen. I got to ask, I got to ask, but a healthy church needs to not split over that, right? Or wrong?

Good question. Do you want to take that, Jeff? Well, there was a major split in the 1930s between the

Presbyterians who were opposed to Schofield Reference Bible and the Bible Presbyterians who came out from them.

And the Lord really blessed that early movement of the Bible Presbyterians because they emphasized eschatology.

They talked about the second coming a lot and they were pre -mill. So I think if you go pre -mill and you really preach the second coming of Christ and the imminency of that coming, that it could be today, that is part of how we motivate.

And it's God's way of doing it because He does it in the Word of God. I think it's good to do. So, yeah,

I think, I don't know that you, you obviously don't split a church, but like to, to emphasize imminency and the second coming is an important mark of a healthy church.

I think it helps a lot. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. We need to preach, we need to preach the whole counsel of God.

And if we are convinced that I am convinced in the preacher of rapture and the pre -millennial return of Christ, we need to preach that with all of our heart from the pulpit.

And too, we see it playing out in our very eyes, in our world with an economy that's collapsing, a global government that's rising up with, with the globalism.

And we need to connect the dots biblically and say, guys, we don't know when their, when his return is going to be, but look at what's going on in Israel.

And it's just, I mean, we would have to be fools not to see all this going on and not put, connect the dots because Jesus actually rebuked people in his day.

He says, you know, the signs of the weather, but you cannot tell the signs of the times. Right.

So I know this might not be popular with some people listening. Didn't that refer to climate change though?

I don't, I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. But, but we do need to, we do need, we do need to be able to, to not only exegete the

Bible, but exegete the world we live in. And of course we're going to be talking about the end times if, if we're being faithful to scripture.

But we have to be kind to our dispensational partial preterist brothers. So. That's average

Joe, by the way. And we just model that we, we keep him around. Yeah.

And I tell people in my church, I say, you know, this is our position on the end times. And if you can live with that, we're glad to have you as a member, but this is what we teach.

You know, we, to be an elder at our church, we do say you have to, you have to teach this. Otherwise this is going to be confusing.

And, you know, so that's, that's a stand that we take at our church. Interesting. Yeah. Good. Got to take a stand.

Got to take a stand. And what do you do if you see a brother down? Lift them up.