Provoked: Destroying the Idol of “Niceness”

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Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.

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I mean, this is what's wrong with the Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are.

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This is where we hold them. This is where we fight. Officer, you need to repent of your lawless conduct.

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You don't know the law, and yet you pretend to represent it. That's not law enforcement, sir.

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That's being a thug. We will not stop fighting and bothering you all until this monstrous, barbaric practice of legalized abortion ends, and we are teaching our children to do the same.

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God's word says that the shed blood of innocent humans cries out for justice, and mark my words, they will have their day in court.

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Nobody gets saved by being treated nicely. They get saved by hearing the gospel.

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Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. If we don't open our mouths and commend

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Christ, we're not loving Him, no matter what we're doing with our hands.

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Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Provoked. We are so glad that you are here with us.

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It's been a while, and so we're thankful we get to get back in our seats and start talking about stuff. This is my beautiful, incredible, wonderful, super smart, intellectual daughter.

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Daughter? Sister. Sister, that was weird. Thank you. Sweet to meet you.

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And Jake, our brother, is back. We're so appreciative of your brother. How's it going? It's going well.

01:57

Yeah. Sweet. Brother from another mother. That's right. So, what's new?

02:06

Well, it's been a year of trials for us, but God is good. I think on the last one

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I was on, I announced that I was pregnant. And then, sadly, well, then after that we found out we were having twins, and we were very excited.

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But then, in God's sovereignty, He took the baby. So, that was very hard.

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But we're doing well, and God is so good and kind to us. And we're getting through it.

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Yeah. Love you. Love you, too. Yeah, that's rough. But, anyways, God has just been so faithful.

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And, like, we are literally clobbered by the church with love and support. Yeah. You know, like, that part has been amazing.

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And, yeah, it's just, I think on the last one I said, you know, when we had gone through miscarriages before,

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I was in kind of a mega church where I was having a lot of people that cared about me but really didn't know how to speak truth into my life, you know, using the foundation of God as their source of, like, help.

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And so, I think I went through a lot more pain than I needed to. And now I feel like I'm on the opposite side of that where I'm getting so much truth.

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And it still hurts, of course. You know, these things, trials, still hurt. But when you, the sovereignty of God is truly the pillow we rest our head on, like Spurgeon says.

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And it's been beautiful to see God's people just come around our family. And, yeah, so we're getting stronger each day and we're pressing on.

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Yeah. That's wonderful to hear, especially as one of the pastors of our church. The church is doing so well in serving people who are suffering.

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It's funny because Pastor Jeff, Pastor Luke, Pastor James, and I were in a counseling appointment last week, which is rare just because our schedules are so diverse and so packed.

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And we were discipling a young man. And Pastor James said, you know, he stood in front of hundreds, if not thousands of Muslims in Mosque.

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And, you know, he's one of the most successful debaters, I think, in Christian history. He says, but that type of stress, nervousness, and difficulty pales in comparison to the time that he was a chaplain for a church that was really ministering to people in need.

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Cause it's very, very difficult to know what to say and to kind of know how to approach people. He said he could stand in front of any amount of Muslims and debate the most difficult scenarios, but just pouring out your life to help people is really difficult.

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And I've been there too. Multiple bedsides with people dying and kind of just, what do

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I say and what do I do? But just, it's really just loving the people and walking with them through the valley of darkness and the storm, you know, not having to preach or knowing all the answers cause we don't just simply loving people.

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And I'm thankful our church has been doing that. Absolutely. One thing you just reminded me when you said that one of our members said to me this week and I was like,

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Oh, that's so good. I'm going to hold on to that. You know, we read through the valley of vision at church and she said, you know, it's in the valleys that God gives us vision or clarity of who he is.

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And so I'm like, wow, that that's such a powerful truth to hold on to when you're going through valleys, because sometimes when we're in the garden, you know, our eyes can become distracted on just life and blessings.

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But then when we go through valleys, God really makes a lot of things clear. He does. And you look at all throughout the

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Psalms, right? So if we go through suffering, it heightens our perspective in our receptivity of who

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God is. And you see that all throughout, like David just suffering and all the different trials and kind of chapters of his life.

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But he became so keen, so acutely aware of the presence of God and like spiritual issues.

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Yeah. One of our, so we named our babies Arden and Morgan and Arden's name means

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Valley of the Eagle. And that reminds me of Isaiah 40, 31. Yeah.

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So, yeah. So thanks for everybody online and stuff that's been praying and just being so supportive. So, yeah, we love you.

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Well, if you are tuning into our show and you're like, who are these people? What's this show about provoked?

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Do they just want to pick a fight? Well, kinda, I think it's good to pick good battles, right?

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It's not good to be just a scrapper for the sake, for the sake of fighting, but we do want to provoke our brothers and sisters and, and the

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Lord to love and good works. Right? And so it's, it's provoking you to do the right thing and to obey the commands of God.

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It's really focused down in on evangelistic commands, right? So what we want to do is understand that there's a massive genocide happening in our land, which is crazy.

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I had a really, I had a discussion with somebody yesterday about it. It was mind blowing. And that's the murder of the innocent preborn in wombs that happens daily.

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And so what we want to do is try to come alongside the church to equip you to rescue those babies to the best of our ability.

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And then just basic evangelism. How do we go out and share the gospel biblically and effectively?

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That's who we are. And so we're super blessed to be a part of Apologia Studios. So thankful for them.

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And what we need to do is not only consume. And I've said this so many times over and over again, but it's so important.

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Now, Pastor Luke is making me laugh right now. Just come on in. Here he comes. Here he is.

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Oh, that's a good, that's a good face. This is his favorite face.

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Gabe loves it. Our views are just going to shoot through the roof. You gotta come on again. You really are our favorite person in the world.

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Do you know that? Wow. Don't let it get to your big old head there. Anyway.

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Yeah. So we, you go to podcasts and ministries and a lot of times we can just be consumers without being kind of givers and contributors.

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So I just wanted to want to challenge you to go to ApologiaStudios .com, become an all access member in so doing you get incredible education from the people that we think are pretty great who are really studied and experts in their fields.

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And then you give back and you keep the lights on and yada, yada, yada, everything I've said for a couple of years now, but it's super important to say that so that we can keep things going.

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Cause as Apologia Studios advances, which it's incredible. I don't know if you've seen the subscribers, like we had 333 ,000 in November and we have almost 450 ,000 now.

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So that's 120 ,000 in six months. And it took them, I think 10 years to get to a hundred thousand.

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So it's exponentially increased. So you can see God blessing this platform. And I think it's because the truth is getting out far and wide.

08:48

Right. So we would say, please become that all access member, please partner with us so we can continue on with what we're doing.

08:56

All right. So what are we going to be talking about today, folks? We're going to be talking about the 11th commandment as Bodhi Buckham would say.

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Yeah. Yeah. The 11th commandment. People are like, wait a second. I thought there was only 10 commandments. What is the 11th commandment brother?

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The 11th commandment. It's, it's something that I think is more and more pertinent or more and more important to be talking about.

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It's something that maybe some of our listeners have heard of before. It's more of a, like kind of a catch all phrase to describe something that's really detrimental to the

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Christian life, to the church. Obviously we have the 10 commands given by God to Moses. We see that in the scriptures, the book of Exodus, but the 11th commandment, what it really says is it says thou shalt be nice.

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And this is something that I think was coined by Bodhi. He kind of started popularizing the term, but it's an idea that's been around now for a little while.

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And, and I'm excited to dive into that a little bit and talk just about why that's a problem, you know, because we hear the word nice and we think, well, what's wrong with being nice?

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You know, why is, why is that an issue? Why is that an issue in the Christian life, especially aren't Christians supposed to be nice.

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But, but it is problematic in terms of how we define it. So I'm excited to dive into that a little bit and talk about it.

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So we, so do we want to listen to Bodhi before we get in? Yeah, I think it's a good opening clip. Let's go ahead and listen to him because he kind of was kind of the front runner and popularizing, even though it's been around for a while.

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So let's listen to him. I think there are two main reasons that today apologetics has fallen out of favor.

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I think one is sentimentalism, if you will. There is this idea, there is this feel, especially among the younger generations, that anything confrontational, you know, that anything that there is an 11th commandment, the 11th commandment is thou shalt be nice.

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And we don't believe the other 10. Okay. We don't believe the other 10.

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And so anything that's just not nice and nice is defined as weak, soft, mealy mouthed, afraid, cowardly, you know, that's the way we define niceness in Christianity.

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And anything that's sort of confrontational and that would dare to say that someone is wrong, it's just not acceptable.

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This is why pastors stand up today and when they preach on a topic that's controversial, their message usually dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

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I mean, think about it. A guy, you will not hear guys stand up for the most part and preach on the issue of homosexuality without 15 minutes of justification.

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Now I love homosexuals. I have friends who are homosexuals. I am not here to say that, you know, just say what the book says.

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Yeah. But people will be offended and letters will come in.

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And here's what those letters will say. Essentially. I'm more offended by the fact that you confronted that sin than I am, that that sin offends

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God. This is where we live today, especially in younger generations.

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And so the idea of apologetics, the idea of confrontation, the idea of I'm right, you're wrong.

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That just doesn't sit well with us. Yeah. That's really good. I feel like that's a helpful clip to just start out with as we're talking about this, because it kind of sets the direction, you know, he gives the definition as to what nice is.

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And I love what he said. I mean, it's true. Nice, you know, this kind of soft, weak, he says mealy mouth.

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I would also say afraid of confrontation. And even on top of that, we see also this, sometimes there's this hesitation of making any sort of absolute statement as well.

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You know, I just watched the debate that Pastor Jeff and James did with Dean Chatterjee and Jared Anderson there in Utah.

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And that was one of the things that stood out to me about Jared Anderson is he, when he would talk, it's almost like everything he said was,

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I don't know, you know? And of course he would go back on himself and make absolute statements, but he almost like reveled in the fact that he doesn't know anything.

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And certainly there's, we need to have humility, but there are times to say things with certainty and we don't say it on our own authority.

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It's on the authority of the word. You know, Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. Like we, that's his absolutely true statement, you know?

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And we shouldn't have to apologize for doing that versus this kind of like, well, I don't know. I don't want to offend anyone.

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I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So when we get into this idea of like, it's better to be nice, that's why

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Votie says we don't believe the other 10, you know? Cause if you believe the 11th one, it really starts to drive you further away from obeying the other 10.

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In a lot of cases. Sure. Yeah. No, I think it's so pertinent when it comes to evangelism too.

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It's because, and I think John Speed parsed this out. He's got, he wrote a really good book on evangelism. I don't know if you know street preaching.

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It's short, but he was talking about confrontational evangelism is biblical evangelism.

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They're synonymous terms. And so you're actually, but sometimes we listen, we, we, we hear the word confrontational and it's just going fisticuffs with somebody, you know, fighting with something.

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It's not necessarily the issue, but in our evangelism, we are confronting a person and saying,

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Hey, you know, you're a sinner, you're a criminal, right? You're headed to an actual hell without the salvation of Christ.

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Right. So that's where if we are, if we give into this niceness and it's a part of our life, I don't,

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I think it, it runs completely counterintuitive or it's the antithesis of biblical evangelism.

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If you're nice or in biblically nice, like this is talking about mealy mouth, not cowardly, don't want to confront how in the world are you going to evangelize biblically?

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Right. It's just not going to happen. You can't do it. Right. Yeah. But it's so praised by the culture because you know, the idol of the culture is tolerant.

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So I got to tolerate everything. And if I don't tolerate everything and anything, then

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I'm not nice. I'm really canceled type of a thing. Yeah. And it's all just a front cause it's actually unkindness to, uh, affirm something that God hates and to, uh, what we're talking about here is to go against what

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God says, compromise, compromise truth in order to be a man pleaser. So really on a bigger perspective, on an eternal perspective, you are being unkind in compromising the truth to somebody that needs to hear the truth, um, just to be a man pleaser and to have the praises of men.

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Yeah, exactly. I think it's ultimately just very self selfish. Yeah. It's about,

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I don't want to get, you know, I'm really worried about it. It's, it's very self preserving and very selfish.

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I'm so worried about how people are going to perceive me and what they're going to think or say about me. Therefore I'm not going to be confrontational when you need, when

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I need to be. Right. I'm going to kind of, um, you know, just, uh, buckle under the weight of the temptation to be cowardly.

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Yeah. So that's what it really, what it is. It's, it's the worship of self. It's extremely, uh, people pleasing and it's comfort before duty.

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Yeah. Right. Because it's uncomfortable to get out there and tell people about Christ and, you know, go through the essential gospel components, right.

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Confronting their sin and exposing the holiness of God, which exposes their sin. That's, that's not comfortable.

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Look at the book of acts. I mean, these people were horribly tortured. Yeah. Right. Exactly. How in the world can we emulate or exemplify what it means to be a biblical evangelist using the book of acts as our blueprint and then be nice.

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Right. It's not going to happen. So I think, and you wrote it right here. It's a tactic of the enemy. It is. Yeah. It's, it's, it's ultimately,

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I think it's a, the, the idea of the 11th commandment or the idea that we have to be nice, uh, while we're doing, or we're carrying out obedience to Christ, living the

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Christian life. It ultimately is, I think a tactic of the enemy because it silences

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Christians who have that desire to speak the truth. Paul says, speak the truth and love.

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Uh, but it also coddles those who may think they're in the faith, but they're not, you know?

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And I, and I think back in times throughout my own walk with Christ, I've had dear brothers in the faith. I can think of one example just, um, not too long ago where, uh, had a phone call and one of my brothers in Christ, he walked me through something

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I was doing. He's like, Hey, this is, I just don't see this lining up with scripture. You know, I've noticed this in your life.

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I don't see it lining up with scripture. And I got so mad at him in the moment, you know, cause that's our, that's how our flesh wants to respond.

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But later on, I remember thinking back to it and, and realizing that this, I cannot believe the level of courage he had and also love for me to point something out that I couldn't see or that was ignoring.

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He pointed it out and that was a really beautiful opportunity for repentance right there. So what you were saying,

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Desi, it's actually really loving to do this. Uh, it's true. And, but I think there's that barrier of wanting to, you know,

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Paul says, am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

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I would not be a servant of Christ. And I think so often there's that temptation to say, I want to,

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I want to make everybody happy. And then we kind of rationalize it in our mind of like, I don't really have to tell this person that they are a sinner.

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I don't really have to tell this person about the, this idea of God's judgment. I don't have to talk through these things because I just want to be loving to them.

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And that's something we can get into as well as this idea of what, what love even is, you know, it's a bit of a deeper issue.

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Exactly. And then they, I think what they're doing now is they're warping biblical terms, right?

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They're redefining them as a means of justifying inactivity, right?

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As a means of just being derelict to do, well, I'm not doing it this way because I feel though it's being loving and it's just self -convincing.

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Yeah. I'm actually loving somebody by not confronting them. That's the loving thing to do is to accept them and tolerate them.

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You know what I mean? And when you can do that with biblical language, oh man, how are you going to get out of that trap that you've set for yourself?

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Because you feel like you've biblically justified your actions. So twisting scripture, like Satan. Exactly. Yeah.

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So what's wrong with it? We can get more into that. Well, we touched on it already a little bit here, but I think the 11th commandment, what it really does it, it hijacks, it hijacks the definition of love or hijacks the idea of biblical love.

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So I'll go back to Vody again. This was a talk he gave. It wasn't that same clip. It was a different talk he gave.

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He defined biblical love. I thought this was really helpful. He says it's an act of the will. Biblical love is an act of a will accompanied by emotion that acts on behalf of its object.

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And I thought that was great because it doesn't completely get rid of emotion, but it is an act. It's a choice. You think of Christ, the ultimate act of love going to the cross, you know, he's praying in the garden of Gethsemane, father, if it'd be possible, take this cup for me.

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Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. He makes this choice to go to the cross against all, all other feelings inside of him that does not want to endure the wrath of God, completely understandable.

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And yet he makes that choice to go. And greater love has no one than doing that, laying down their life.

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So when we think about love in those terms, and then we think about this, again, a softer definition of love that, that really you said earlier,

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Zach, just becomes tolerance. You know, the 11th commandment warps and it twists the idea of what love really is.

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So one text here that came to mind for me is 1 Corinthians 13, starting in verse four, it says, love is patient and kind.

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Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.

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It's not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

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Now, I think sadly, that passage has gotten hijacked by weddings.

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You know, like we read that, we think that, oh, that's the wedding passage. You know, like people are getting married. The pastor reads that.

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It's funny because this actually has nothing to do with, I don't think it's bad to read at a wedding, but it has nothing to do with marriage.

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You know, it actually is talking about a Christian community and what love ought to look like amongst a gathering of believers.

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And one of these things right here, you know, toward the end, verse six, love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but it rejoices with the truth.

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You know, so often we can just skip right past that. Love rejoices with the truth. And we serve a savior who said that he came not to bring peace, but a sword, that his message is going to divide people.

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So when you have that biblical understanding of love, that it's an act of the will, that it's, that it's actually rejoicing in what is true.

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And yes, it's patient, it's kind. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs. Amen to all those things. But biblical love is so much deeper and more robust.

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And to define it as just tolerance or being nice to someone, it really tries to get away from what love even is, because that's, that's really what we've defined is how unloving of you to say that homosexuality is a sin or how unloving of you really what, what what's being said there is how intolerant of you.

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Right. Yeah. That's powerful. That's really good. So this isn't on here, but I just kind of popped up into my mind.

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I've really been monitoring a lot of the, the masculine influences out there because, you know, our boys and men in our church, young men in our church are just kind of, it's hard not to eat this up because of their phones and just social media.

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And, you know, we're constantly consuming these things, just being so addicted to our phones as a, as a species.

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Yeah. You know, in this time of our human history, we're all addicted to our devices.

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And so I'm always looking at these men and it just seems like, you know, the young men that, that are the men that the young men really idolize are these super gruff, you know, very egotistical, self -centered, you know, just,

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I don't, I can't really, I mean, you know what I'm talking about? Like the Andrew Tate type of individual who his success is built upon his ability to hurt somebody or take advantage of somebody, which he did make a ton of money, you know what

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I mean? And so they really need a good picture of a godly man. I mean, a godly man should be the pursuit of the young man and who he wants to emulate.

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But what do you think about the saying nice guys finish last as we're talking about niceness?

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Yeah. I think it takes a little bit of a different, a different angle to the idea of nice.

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And that phrase, it's funny because in both things we're talking about right here, the 11th commandment and nice guys finish last, nice is both associated with something negative.

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It's like, it's not a good thing to be nice. In that context, I think nice is being used in a different way where you're saying that if you, if you are just a doormat or if you allow someone else to take advantage of you, you need to be the one who's the stronger force.

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You need to be the one who's those types of things. So it's a little bit more, I don't know, kind of like a brute force.

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No, no level of, of really like sensitivity whatsoever. It's just, you need to overtake someone else.

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It's almost like what's coming to my mind is like survival of the fittest. Like I need to be the stronger man in this situation and I need to be the alpha male.

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And if I'm not, and there actually, I think are some biblical elements to that of being a man and being strong and being a leader and those types of things.

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But it's almost like this unrefined version of masculinity that really leads down a wrong trail.

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Like there's a ditch on both sides of the road with that, you know, but it's funny that being nice is, is in both ditches.

25:09

Exactly. That's interesting. Yeah. It just makes me think too, of just like you were saying, Jake, I'm taking words and kind of skewing them to whatever, however you want to use them in that moment, because sometimes people will use the word nice synonymously with meekness and gentleness and men are called to be meek and gentle.

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And some of the most masculine men I know can be very meek and gentle.

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I'm thinking of my husband and my brother and others that I respect are pastors who are very masculine, very like a biblical man, but have this other side to them that's like emulates

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Christ, meek, gentle, bold, uncompromising on the truth. And so of course we want men to emulate that and women.

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But that's not the same as being like this, what Bodhi was talking about being nice at the expense of truth, being meek to be meek and gentle.

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Jesus was perfectly meek and gentle, but never ever compromised truth.

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So it's just, we have to be careful when we get in these discussions and someone tries to hijack the discussion by accusing you of not being nice because you are speaking truth in a way that's going to offend somebody because truth does do that.

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Like you said, to push back and say, wait a minute. No, you're accusing.

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Why are you not accusing me of being nice? Is it because I'm saying what is true? Or am I actually not being nice?

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Because of course we can sin in that area too. We can be not nice. We can be jerks.

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We can be sinfully aggressive just in speaking truth.

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Of course, we've talked about that before. We had a whole episode about street preachers that do it wrong.

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And Christians that you're not being hated because you're standing for truth. And for Jesus, you're being hated because you're a jerk.

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And so, of course, we don't want to say that that doesn't happen or that you're allowed to just be a jerk and attack people.

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As long as what you're saying is true, you can be a jerk and insensitive about their situation.

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No, we're still called to be meek, gentle, loving, kind, but not at the expense.

27:31

Oh, absolutely. Of truth. No, that's really good. Yeah. I think about it a lot, especially because I have young, young boys or young, young men.

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And again, the type of men that they're, they're emulating. And then I'm always kind of like reflective of my own, you know, trying to look at me from the outside and like, what type of a man am

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I portraying? Of course, we're all looking to Christ. We should be looking to Christ as men because he's the quintessential men, man.

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Right. So manhood is synonymous with Christ likeness. And so Christ likeness is a balance of characteristics.

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Right. So, but the worldly man, the man that I think, you know, just guys out there in the culture look to, he's kind of, he's got a couple really strong characteristics and then he, he deems the other ones kind of like a weakness.

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So it would be that they really look for that alpha gruff, strong, never says he's sorry, never admits when he's wrong.

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Right. Kindness is weakness and softness. It's just something that, you know, shouldn't be along to manhood, but that's really antithetical to the

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Christian man. Yeah. And it's kind of a, it's almost just a reaction that swings the pendulum way to the other side too, because what's the antithesis of that kind of behavior personality.

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It's the more effeminate, like kind of gender amorphous, like world that we live in right now, where, you know, we, we say things like boys can be girls and we, as a culture rejoice in that type of behavior.

29:02

I think there's a lot of younger men out there who see that and they say, no, you know, what else can, what else is out there?

29:11

And then that can be the other extreme that they go to. And the truth is that a biblical man is not the first or the second, you know, a biblical man, you look at Christ, he was perfectly meek in all situations.

29:26

He was also, he was also perfectly and righteously indignant in all situations. I've heard back when you had

29:32

Joel Webben on the podcast, I remember him talking about how Jesus embodied all the attributes of God at all times.

29:41

So when he was, you know, talking to the woman caught in adultery, he was being perfectly, you know, holy in that moment.

29:49

He was being just as just as he was gentle. And when he's flipping over the tables, he's being just as gentle as he was.

29:57

Just, he just, Jesus perfectly handled each situation according to what was needed.

30:02

And that's where that tact and wisdom comes into play. So a man is someone who's able to have that meekness and gentleness when the moment calls for it and to stand up and be righteously indignant when the moment calls for it, you know?

30:16

So absolutely. Jesus was a lion and a lamb. Exactly. And so there's the, your

30:21

Christology is always going to align everything within your life.

30:27

I really think about it. And I'm really struggling to kind of describe it, but your understanding of Christ and the balance of that brings your life into what it should be, or it's going to give you a

30:37

I guess a more impactful or meaningful expression of who

30:43

Jesus is. Now I won't wax long on this, but John chapter one says, Jesus came full of grace and truth, right?

30:49

Full of those things, radically gracious, but also uncompromisingly truth truthful, but you can get it out of balance, right?

30:57

I can be so radically gracious to the expense of truth. You're not really being like Christ in a sense.

31:03

You're partial, partially being like Christ, or I can be so, you know, this is what the truth says without demonstrating radical goodness and kindness and grace to the people that I'm, that I'm speaking to and I'm at a balance there.

31:15

So in everything, if we can get our understanding of Christ in balance, demonstrating that that's our, our

31:22

Christian witness and testimony and impact will be, you know, crazy impactful.

31:28

Yeah. And when, as you were describing that, it made me think of when, you know, when you go to the optometrist and they put the lens up and they're like, it's a better, it's

31:35

B better. And it's blurry until they, you get it right. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I didn't realize how blind

31:41

I was before, you know, when you get in your glasses or your contacts, it, what you were saying makes me think as we correct our thoughts through the lens of scripture, we see life more clearly, you know, as we're dealing with these things.

31:53

And like you were saying, like you balance it. Anyways. Yeah. It just made me think about how scripture will give us a clear understanding of who

32:01

Jesus is so that we can emulate him. Yeah. Emulated and emulate him. Like Jake was saying in a very balanced way.

32:10

But I would say like, when it comes to that, nice guys always finish last thing.

32:15

There's some truth to that in the sense that if our niceness emulates this type of unbiblical, nice, niceness, we will finish kind of last because that type of a nice guy, he's not willing to be confrontational when he needs to be indignantly righteous.

32:30

Like you had said, when he needs to be confront the evils of the day, just stand up as a man should, as a

32:37

Christian man should be in V very forceful, right? Forceful doesn't necessarily mean rough.

32:43

It's like when I am called to do the things that God has commanded me to do, I want to go at it with force, right?

32:49

I want to be an assertive and aggressive protector of my family. And the flock is a shepherd.

32:56

I want to be assertive and aggressive in my ability to provide my family, provide for my family.

33:01

And in the word of God to be the priest of my home, right? Like go at all of that with my might, with strength and fortitude.

33:08

I think that if we, you know, lacks back from that, or if we just kind of retard that or disrupt that or, you know, redefine it and we get into this type of unbiblical man, then we do kind of finish last, right?

33:22

It's not the type of man that men look to. Like we don't look to men who are just, you know, kind of limp wristed.

33:29

It makes me think of the word weasley. Yeah. And you know, and that's when you see also an imbalance.

33:35

A lot of times, if you see a weasley man, a lot of times they have an overbearing wife or a wife that's running the household.

33:44

So it's interesting to me that that balance, you see it a lot where it's the overbearing wife, weasley husband.

33:52

I was also reminded to have them. If you haven't watched the sermon from last week about the scoffer that pastor

33:58

Jeff did, I would highly recommend going back to that. I think it'd probably be close to this video since it was just uploaded, but you know, the wise man will take correction, right?

34:12

You were saying a lot, our culture looks at men that don't ever want to say they're sorry. And they're always right.

34:17

And they're not going to, you know, they see, they see apologizing as a weakness, but really biblically, if you're being confronted and you really are in sin, it is a strength as a man to take that, that correction, because then you'll be the wise man and not the fool.

34:35

So it's just, it's like everything the world sees as a man and strong is like flipped on its head.

34:42

And so I would just say, and we can move down, down this a little bit more quickly, but I would say we shouldn't confuse again, unbiblical self -centered, self -preserving, selfish niceness with biblical kindness.

34:57

Right. Right. We're called to be kind. There's a difference between those two. Niceness is more of this again, soft, weak, afraid of conference, confrontation.

35:07

Whereas kindness is more of this benevolence. It's seeking the good of another person, which sometimes requires offending another person or, or in the moment hurting another person, we see faithful or the wounds of a friend.

35:20

Yeah. There's such a sharp difference between those two, but we can flay them so easily and then, and then, and then problems start to happen.

35:27

So we see, we see one of the issues, it hijacks the definition of love.

35:32

Another thing I was just thinking through this with the 11th commandment is it, it really creates a false unity within the church.

35:40

It does create a false unity because really what, and ultimately

35:45

I think this, the kind of head of the fountain here is, is pastors and what is said or not said in the pulpit, because there are practical implications of this.

35:54

I was just thinking about this the other day where, you know, working really hard as a church to help other local churches and lawmakers and other

36:01

States get these bills of equal protection introduced and Lord willing passed. And there is a team of us who are calling churches, different States.

36:09

And I remember I had a conversation with one pastor and brought up the issue of abortion to him and said, you know, we're working to get this bill passed, would love your support.

36:19

And he wasn't against what we were doing, but he said something to the effect of, well, you know,

36:26

I appreciate that, but we just don't like, I just don't really, we don't talk about that from the pulpit. You know, we just, that's not something we really address.

36:34

And it was an opportunity for me to share some scriptures of, Hey, we're commanded to go rescue those who are being taken away to death.

36:41

We need to preach the gospel. This is an evil God said, you know, so I wasn't trying to pound it on him, but still trying to encourage him with these scriptures.

36:48

But his comment just struck me as like, because so many things are not said, it creates this false sense of unity sometimes where you can be in a building, you know, worshiping on Sunday and someone who's right across the aisle or the row from you, you can look at them and say, we're, we have the same like core

37:09

Orthodox beliefs. We're on the same page or on the same team. And you may be on two completely different teams, you know, and, and any of these more hot button issues, abortion, homosexuality, just God's design for, for sexuality in general.

37:26

Even the authority of the Bible, you know, all of these things, it can be like, yeah, we're in alignment on this, but because these things are never talked about in a lot of, in a lot of places they're either quickly talked about or they're just ignored and saved for one -on -one conversations.

37:40

And that's it. You can, it creates this false sense of unity and that really leads to problems.

37:46

It's like, well, we don't ever have any issues in our church. Well, that itself might be an issue, you know, like if you're not, if you're not regularly having these harder conversations, like Jesus gave us the church discipline process for a reason.

37:59

It's not because it's like a fun thing to do, but in order to preserve what Paul calls the good deposit, the truth of the gospel, the truth of scripture,

38:08

God to have those hard conversations and have to regularly teach on these things. So, so people are discipled in that way.

38:14

Right. Right. Yeah. I, that reminded me of a conversation I had with a pastor of a, you know, a liberal

38:21

Presbyterian church. And I asked him, I said, you know, what do you, what do you, what's your stance on abortion?

38:28

And he said, well, you know, of course we don't think it's good. It's not ideal.

38:33

Yeah. But we're, Jesus came for sinners. And so we just want to love on these women and, you know, it's not an ideal situation, but we just want to love them without judgment.

38:46

I'm like, okay. So do you ever preach against it? Well, you know, that's not really, you know, maybe one -on -one we'll talk to them, but we're really here to just love them and meet them where they're at.

38:57

No, you're a weasel and you're a coward. And how many lives have been lost because of your cowardice?

39:04

Yes. We're talking about souls here, the women that you're just, you're refusing to take a hard stand.

39:11

So they come in on Sunday. Maybe they're considering abortion or maybe they're just confused or maybe they're dead set on it.

39:19

And they're attending a church where they're like, it's not ideal. And so they go in and murder their child.

39:28

They're guilty of murdering their child. Their child's life is lost and their soul is without hope unless they repent and put their faith in Christ.

39:38

But that is a weaselly man. That is a cowardly man. That will not stand for truth because they don't want to upset the people in there by saying that what

39:48

God says, which is thou shall not murder. They're just too afraid. Yeah. And that's the truth.

39:54

And unfortunately in the pulpits and in the American evangelical church, and I don't want to paint with too bright of a brush, but we're so, so worried about losing people.

40:04

So, you know, this is one of the greatest definitions of love is love gives to others at the expense of self.

40:13

Right. So it, it costs us. So when we saying, Oh, we're just loving them. I don't think so.

40:18

Because really you're just concerned about yourself and the way that your people would, would see you and whether or not they leave.

40:25

And a lot of these vocational pastors, it's all they know is being a pastor.

40:31

And so they may have been there for years and it's like, what am I going to do now at 45? If I start, you know, calling a spade a spade in front of the evils of day,

40:41

I'm going to lose my job. And so they do, they put themselves before them. God's, you know, mandate to just be purveyors and proclaimers of the truth.

40:50

Yeah. And I really think then they fall into the category of a false preacher or a wolf because they're like, yeah, they, they go against what they're saying.

41:00

I am a shepherd, but you're not protecting your sheep. You're not laying down your life for the sheep by, by being uncomfortable.

41:10

It makes me think of like my two -year -old Knox, like the other day he wanted to go in the pool without his floaty.

41:16

He doesn't know how to swim. He was super mad that I wasn't going to let him go in there, but I had to grab him and then pick his big little body up and carry him away from the pool.

41:25

And he's kicking and screaming. But if I let him do it, cause I did, I wanted to make him happy. He would have sank to the bottom and drowned.

41:31

It's such a good example. It's so funny. Like you take this principle and put it in any other situation like you just did.

41:38

Very rarely will you find disagreement, you know, like your son is sitting there drowning in the pool.

41:44

He's about to die. And someone's your neighbor sees it and says, Desi, what are you doing? Go get your son.

41:49

And you say, well, you know, I'm just, I really, in this situation just want to love him, you know, and just kind of be there for him.

41:55

I don't want to judge him. I don't really want to be judgmental. He wanted to go in the pool. Like, that's ridiculous. You'd never do that.

42:01

That's what we're talking about. Exactly. Cause you would hate him. If you did that, you wouldn't care about him.

42:06

So it's funny how they say, I love you by not telling you what you need to hear, but you're actually hating them.

42:12

Right. So, all right. What do we want to kind of conclude? Well, I think there's room to just encourage those who are listening here when it comes to the 11th commandment.

42:23

Cause there could be this question of like, what do I do now? You know? Okay. 11th commandments, probably not, not a good thing.

42:29

What do I do? You know, I would say I've thought through this. My encouragement would be to break the 11th commandment, like shatter it, destroy it, grind it up into little bitty pieces of powder, throw it into the, cast it into the sea, like break it.

42:46

The longer that we're nice, Desi just talked about this with the issue of abortion, souls and lives are on the line when you're more afraid of confrontation than you are of speaking the truth and what actually offends

42:58

God. So that's like my, yeah, let's get fired up and go break the 11th commandment.

43:04

But I would also issue something of like a, just not a warning, but just an encouragement to think about as well as this also will cost you.

43:14

You know, I think about, about 10 years ago, Paul Washer did that like two hour sermon on his indictments on the modern church.

43:22

Incredible sermon. It just came out as a book recently and he's making these really powerful claims that in my view are pretty consistent with scripture.

43:32

And there's one point, it's like an hour and a half into it where he's saying all these things and he's getting all these amens and he just stops and he says, do you have any idea what it costs me to say these things?

43:41

Yeah. And I just remember that rocked me because I've, I've felt a small amount of that and I'm dealing, I'm dealing with it just personally of like,

43:49

I want to be someone who stands on the truth, but I'm going to start to get all this feedback, you know, and what do I do with that?

43:55

So just know like, let's go out and not be nice. Let's be kind, let's be loving, you know, truly biblically loving, speak the truth in love, care actually for people's souls, long suffer, walk with them, be, be truly

44:07

Christlike. But if you're not nice in today's culture, you, you will pay for it.

44:13

You know, you'll, you'll be, and Jesus promised this, but you'll be hated. You will be hated by people.

44:19

And, and it's, can be easy to kind of sit in your circles and say, yeah, let's go be hated. But when you actually receive the hate, uh, that's, that's a whole different ball game.

44:29

You know, absolutely true. Any thoughts, last final thoughts? Um, no, I think

44:34

Jake covered it. I'm so thankful for you, brother. Thank you for stepping in and helping us this year.

44:39

That was, yeah. The sovereignty of God. Yeah. Especially with all the stuff we've been going through. Yeah, definitely.

44:45

All right. Yeah. The 11th commandment, um, destroy it. It's destroy it. There is no 11th commandment, right?

44:51

Yeah. Does it exist? Unfortunately, Christians venerate it as if it were a commandment, but, uh, I'll tell you, um, if you're really going to be effective as an evangelist, which

45:00

God commands us all to do, you have to discard this from the outset. Yes. It can't be anything that you think you can bring into your evangelistic, uh, output or the exercising of your evangelistic duty and think that you're going to be effective whatsoever, because we do have to look at people in the faith, speaking the truth, the true truth.

45:19

Like Francis Schaeffer would say in love, right? So we want to speak the truth in love, but you have to be able to tell people,

45:26

Hey, you're, you're a center, right? People will tell you all the time. I'm good. Right? You're not good.

45:32

There's no one good, but God, no one seeks after God. You're not okay without him. You're actually going to spend an everlasting punitive sentence in a place called hall.

45:40

These are important things to say, but if you're too worried about how they're going to think of you and what they're going to say about you, how are you going to be perceived?

45:47

You're never going to get to those, the explanation of the essentials of the gospel, which is absolutely everything that we need to do as evangelists.

45:55

It's just knowing those things and communicating those things with balance with a motive of loving the people that we speak to.

46:01

So destroy the 11th commandment. It shouldn't be a part of how we see things and how we operate as Christians.

46:11

right, guys. Well, thanks so much for tuning in. We we will see you next time. Bye.