Conference Message: Challenging the Pulpits
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Zack dives into a main problem that infects and affects our nation's churches: cowardice
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- 00:00
- Good afternoon, and you guys are the tough OSA -ers out in the blazing sun, preaching the gospel, trying to save babies, and then into the afternoon session.
- 00:13
- So thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it. You know, I don't know if I'm going to get another chance to do this, so before I get into kind of the bulk of the message, my message is very simple towards pastors.
- 00:23
- I really want to take some time to honor Rusty and his wife and the whole of the
- 00:30
- Thomas Nation. The scriptures say in Romans 13, verse 7, And the purpose for honoring, and I think sometimes we can cloak it in these types of things, but it's not for giving
- 00:54
- Rusty or anybody else the glory that only belongs to God. It's not bottom smooching. You know, all these things are really just self -serving and selfish.
- 01:03
- Honoring is a biblical command. And I think what we do and we honor and what we have to do is we have to create a culture of honor, because the culture of honor is not anywhere within the culture.
- 01:14
- It's got to be within the house of God affecting the greater culture outside of us. That's what we try to do at Apology at Church.
- 01:21
- We have biblical manhood training. And of course, I read a lot of your stuff as we try to create a culture of honor within the minds of our sons so that they would do what is right.
- 01:31
- That's really what being honorable is. You're doing what's right no matter what, no matter what the cost is.
- 01:37
- But when we honor someone, we mark them out and we say, this is an honorable guy. We need to do that because we need to point out these men so our sons can look to these men as being examples of, you know, a guy that they can emulate.
- 01:52
- I think it's true that men model their lives after the lives of men that they find worthy to be emulated.
- 02:00
- And Paul teaches us when he says, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.
- 02:05
- I mean, if you look on the TV, there's so many poor examples of men that are being marked out as figures to be emulated.
- 02:14
- And, you know, you look at the men who are the kids and they're just head over heels, kind of in love with these figures.
- 02:20
- And you're like, hey, I know this guy makes a lot of money. I know this guy is successful. But are you really looking at him, you know, to the point of his character?
- 02:30
- That's what makes us honorable. That's what makes us the men that God wants us to be.
- 02:36
- And so I wanted to just talk about a couple of reasons why I would like to honor Rusty. I think it's super suiting, considering the passing of the guard and it's bittersweet for us.
- 02:45
- I know it's going to be difficult, but I couldn't imagine a greater man to follow than Jason Storms, his capability and his just giftedness.
- 02:56
- I couldn't imagine and I'm happy to see where this is going and what God's going to do within his leadership.
- 03:01
- But I do think it's important to take some time and honor Rusty. I think number one, thousands of babies, maybe 10 ,000 babies wouldn't even be alive today if he didn't answer the call to fight for the unborn.
- 03:15
- And, you know, we're never going to know that. But a little background.
- 03:24
- So God used a sermon called Blood Guiltiness and that sermon just awakened so many men, awakened myself, awakened
- 03:30
- Pastor Luke and Pastor Jeff. And because of that, they started a ministry called
- 03:35
- In Abortion Now. And now that's an international ministry, 700 churches, all saving babies.
- 03:41
- Thousands upon thousands of babies are being saved by God through these ministries. So if no
- 03:47
- Rusty Thomas, no In Abortion Now and as well as many other abolitionist ministries,
- 03:53
- God has just used him. Of course, we don't praise Rusty, but God used him as a tool and we honor him for that.
- 03:59
- Number two, Rusty is a man of true grit. And I think if I would want a characteristic just as a dude is grit.
- 04:07
- It's you have to have that, especially doing this ministry, which is a horrible ministry. I mean, does anybody wake up and they're like,
- 04:15
- I really want to go to the mill today and stand there and sweat and deal with people screaming in my face? It's a joy to honor
- 04:22
- God, the camaraderie there. I love it, but it's a tough ministry and you have to have grit.
- 04:28
- And I think in the life of Rusty and his unimaginable pain and anguish and trial and attack and persecution and loss, he's just continued to fight and fight and fight, not lacking in zeal.
- 04:41
- It's it's miraculous. It's strengthens your faith because it's a power that only God can provide someone.
- 04:48
- And, you know, God is working through him. And that's the struggle is how do you maintain that zeal and the motivation when you are thrown so many storms, unimaginable difficulties?
- 04:59
- And he's just such an incredible example of how to get through those things. But I don't know about you, but I look at him and I look at guys like John Barros and so many others.
- 05:08
- I'm like, how do you wake up in the morning and put your pants on and just continue to fight this fight that, you know, sometimes you just want to bow out and say, you take care of it,
- 05:17
- Lord. We, of course, we can't do that, but it's grit. It's true grit. It's really I think that true grit is synonymous with staying power.
- 05:26
- And that's what you have to have, a staying power to where regardless of what happens, I'm going to continue forward in this fight.
- 05:34
- And I was thinking about somebody else. You've seen Lonesome Dove, right? Yeah, I remember Gus. Gus is such a cool figure.
- 05:41
- And I don't let the kitties see that yet. But I remember all throughout the movie, he's just there faced with so much death and so much trial.
- 05:48
- But he has just this spirit about him to come and rally alongside of people, even as he's going through the pain.
- 05:55
- And, you know, to keep going and to accomplish the mission that God has given us. And you, you were that type of Gus.
- 06:04
- And I think Rusty has been a fixture of fatherly support.
- 06:10
- When you need him, he's there. We, as pastors of Apologia, we don't, people don't like us a lot.
- 06:17
- And they make it their task to destroy our church. One guy said he wanted to raise our church to the ground.
- 06:23
- We felt the effects of that. And, you know, it's tough. It's you can deal with all the blows coming in externally, but it's hard internally when people, your own sheep, want to take you out.
- 06:34
- And, you know, guys that you think are brother want to take you out. We've called him on the phone and he has just had the words to say to us at that time so that we can continue on and just deal with what we're dealing with.
- 06:46
- And as so many of you guys have have experienced that with him. And even when folks don't return the favor for supporting
- 06:54
- Operation Save America events or supporting what he's doing, he's there for them. And he's pouring out himself and his soul and he's spending the life that God has given him for them and what they're doing.
- 07:06
- And it's it's worthy of being honored, to say the least. He's taught us men and so many here,
- 07:13
- I think all of us here, how to be a true man, how to deal with death, how to deal with suffering, how to suffer well and courageously.
- 07:20
- How to be a long suffering father, how to be Christ like leader, how to lead your family in the midst of unimaginable pain and anguish.
- 07:29
- And this is one of the most important, how to be filled with uncompromising truth. Always saying like he's like he's always said, he's always been a speaker of righteousness, but also how to be gracious and kind at the same time.
- 07:42
- Sometimes we get so out of balance, you know, we can tell them the truth according to God's word, but we can be jerks about it as well.
- 07:51
- You know, he's not like that. I've never seen him like that. It's a balance. And I really believe it's why God has blessed this ministry because of that balance.
- 07:59
- He's taught us how to fight for unity and be a peacemaker. And I think that's one of the chief reasons why this ministry is so blessed and how to stay in the fight.
- 08:08
- You know, true and honorable men are few and far between. And a lot of these guys have jumped the ship, but I'm thankful Rusty has chosen that honorable path for us to really follow.
- 08:21
- You know, you can't choose a life of ease and comfort or apathy and at the same time choose the honorable life.
- 08:29
- It's one or the other. And I think you've demonstrated that, right? It's an honorable life.
- 08:34
- It's a life, you know, where you age a lot faster. Everybody thinks I'm like 65.
- 08:40
- I'm only 42. I'm just fighting for babies. Are you spending your life doing that?
- 08:49
- It's the honorable life, but it's the extremely painful life. And you guys know that. It's painful to lead your kids the way that you need to and work hard the way that you need to.
- 08:58
- And love your wife the way that you need to and love the church and love Jesus the way that you need to. But that's the path that we must take.
- 09:05
- So I honor you today, Rusty and Kendra and all the Thomas Nation. We love you. I know that you're not hanging up your cowboy hat, but, you know, we love you.
- 09:14
- And I truly do. Yeah, don't hang that up. All right.
- 09:29
- I know you guys are tired and you want to go take a nappy poo before this session. So I'm going to try to go through this really quick.
- 09:35
- I'm going to dial into the pastors now. So just two simple questions. Why should pastors get involved with baby rescuing?
- 09:41
- Why don't pastors get involved with baby rescuing, abortion -related ministry like this?
- 09:47
- But, you know, we got to address the white elephant in the room when we're talking about this type of subject.
- 09:53
- And it's why on God's green earth are we even having to talk about this? And what I mean by that is, isn't it obvious when babies are being butchered systematically, 3 ,000 a day, you know, 9 -11 every single day, isn't it obvious that we should all be in this fight to stop this baby murder?
- 10:10
- So it tells you a lot about the state of the pastorate. I just talked to Dennis a couple minutes ago.
- 10:15
- We invited 560 pastors to be here, just a few. And I know these guys are busy. I'm one of them.
- 10:22
- But it does go to show you the state of things. And we can evaluate the national pastor, the pulpits, without at the same time attacking them.
- 10:29
- We can look at systemic deficiencies within the pastorate to solve them and resolve them without at the same time coming at them.
- 10:37
- So I'm going to challenge you today, but I think I can do that because I am one of you. And challenge you in your deficiencies is what we need to do as men.
- 10:49
- Men to men, right? We don't follow effeminate, limp -wristed men. You know, we follow men like Pastor Matt, who will look at you in the face and tell you what you need to do.
- 11:00
- That's the type of man that is going to motivate men to change. But imagine, just illustratively, imagine a pastor is heading out to preach the gospel at a college, and he's walking up to his spot, and a guy just rushes up to him, and he's screaming at this pastor, saying, hey dude, some guy just hijacked this bus full of toddlers.
- 11:21
- He brought them over to his house, and he's butchering them. I need you to come, and I need you to help me.
- 11:28
- We have to go in there, and we have to help stop this slaughter. It's got to be done. What if that pastor stopped right in the midst of that guy in his urgency, trying to get him to help, and he replied, you know what, you're going to have to sell me on this.
- 11:40
- I don't feel called to this type of rescue effort. I don't know if that's God's calling on my life.
- 11:46
- I don't see that fitting into my skill set that God has given me. What if we get hurt?
- 11:52
- What if I get hurt? What if my congregants disapprove of my actions and leave my church? What if I lose my job?
- 11:58
- Why even bother? We're not going to stop all the child murder. Why even bother to do these type of things? I'm headed to preach the gospel, and that's all
- 12:05
- I'm really called to do. What would that guy say to that pastor in that moment when babies are dying?
- 12:12
- He'd say, you're out of your mind. You're insane. You're not looking at this situation the way that you should.
- 12:19
- You're not understanding the urgency of the situation. All those things that you just said are completely irrelevant because of the nature of the situation that we have to deal with.
- 12:30
- But pastors do respond like this when it comes to the plight of the pre -born, and it's nuts.
- 12:36
- It's insane. It goes to show you, again, the state of the pastor and these glaring deficiencies and weaknesses that we have to deal with as pastors.
- 12:45
- So why should I get prepared and equip my church to fight against abortion and work to save babies?
- 12:52
- Well, number one, because we want to glorify God, and we want to model this to our people.
- 12:57
- So I don't know if you've heard this, but our primary motive to save babies is not because we love the babies.
- 13:05
- That's not our primary motive. Our primary motive is to rescue babies. To rescue babies is because we love
- 13:12
- God and seek to glorify Him. Our secondary motive is because we love our neighbor inside of the womb, and that's huge.
- 13:18
- You know, we focus on babies. We love them. We want to stop this destruction. But it's all for Him.
- 13:25
- It's all got to be vertically motivated if we're going to stay in this for any type of duration or have longevity in the ministry.
- 13:34
- It is horizontally focused, and we're loving our neighbor, of course. We don't want to see them destroyed, but it's got to be because we want to glorify
- 13:42
- Him. And I know you guys have been out there. We had a bunch of zealous, pink -haired pro -aborts out there today.
- 13:49
- And you deal with people, and we deal with people at the mill. And, you know, they come, and they say, You know what?
- 13:54
- We had a guy come a couple weeks ago, and he said, I'm just going to make it my life's mission to be here every single time that you come out here, and I'm going to make it my life's mission to stop you from what you're doing, stop you from hurting women and oppressing women and shaming women and all that nonsense that they come up with.
- 14:10
- They're blind, and we need to speak to them the truth and love. But my simple answer is, Nope, you're not going to do that.
- 14:17
- Oh, yes, I want to be here every single time you come. And, you know, we come multiple times a week. And I say,
- 14:23
- No, that's not going to happen. And I'll let you know if you would like to know the reasons, because you're driven by hate and false pretenses and lies.
- 14:31
- And we're here because we love God and wish to glorify Him. If you think that we're going to move our course here, you've got something coming.
- 14:41
- I mean, you could come here a thousand years, and we'll be here a thousand years in one day, because we do it for Him, because we want to honor and glorify
- 14:49
- Him and worship Him. And that's why we do it. And that's why we as pastors need to do it.
- 14:56
- But we also have to understand abortion. I know you guys know this. It's a blight against His name. It's dragging the name of our
- 15:02
- God and our Savior through the mud. I mean, these babies are image bearers of God. They bear His image. Satan wants to destroy them because he lusts after the image that he can never get.
- 15:11
- I want the throne. I want to ascend to the throne. So we do it because we love
- 15:17
- Him. And we as pastors, we can't sit idly by when the glory of our great
- 15:23
- God is being besmirched and tarnished as these babies are being murdered.
- 15:28
- We can't do it if we love Him. You know, what if somebody came up to you and said some stuff about your mother?
- 15:34
- I mean, there might be teeth missing. We get that. But we allow the name of our
- 15:40
- God to be tarnished and besmirched and be cool with that. Something that we can't do.
- 15:46
- Number two, why should we get involved in this fight? Because we want to actively love God and our neighbors and model that to our people.
- 15:53
- Matthew 22, 37, He said to them, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and your soul and your mind. John 14, 20, excuse me.
- 16:01
- John 14, 21, So he says you were to love me and love your neighbor.
- 16:11
- And Jesus says, whoever has my commandments, that's how you are demonstrating your love towards me. In Psalm 24, and I know we can say this in our sleep.
- 16:20
- But if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
- 16:27
- If you say, Behold, we did not know this. Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it?
- 16:34
- And will he not repay man according to his work? We are commanded to do this work.
- 16:40
- We cannot weasel our way out of this hermeneutically. It's just not going to happen, guys. It's not. To rescue is the
- 16:47
- Hebrew word and it's all. And it means to snatch away and deliver a rescue. It's a deliberate and intentional verb.
- 16:53
- And you can't rescue through prayer alone or hoping it resolves itself or giving money to somebody else to do it.
- 17:00
- It's a direct command that requires action. And if you look throughout all the scriptures and you track down that word, it's about rescuing people from death and destruction.
- 17:12
- So we demonstrate our love towards God by intentionally rescuing these ones from death.
- 17:18
- And this is important. We as pastors are not to only declare the commands of God, but we are to lead our people in the acts of obedience to that command.
- 17:27
- We can do it all the time. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. We need to win the world to Christ. And this is what God commands.
- 17:33
- But I'm going to sit and I'm not going to do it. Are the people of God ever going to do it if the pastors aren't doing it?
- 17:40
- No. Number three, it's why should we get involved in this fight? Because we're called to display true manhood as God's men, not cowardice.
- 17:50
- And I'm going to say this with all the love and gentleness that I can, but it's cowardly to sit by while babies are being murdered.
- 17:57
- It's sheer cowardice. When we know that this is going on and we know it happens inside of clinics, it's not out in the open, but this is happening.
- 18:05
- And like the scriptures say, we know it. So men are checking out of the church because cowards are in the pulpits.
- 18:13
- We wonder why men just come into church and their eyes are glossed over and they're thinking about the next ball game or the meal after.
- 18:19
- Like, you know, why in the world would I follow this guy? He's not even doing what he says. He's not even being a man worthy of being emulated, right?
- 18:29
- Men follow courage. That's what William Wallace said in Graveheart. And that is so true. I mean, that is absolutely true.
- 18:36
- We need to be a pastor of courage who boldly confronts this enemy. And when we do that, we'll watch strong, gifted, quality men rally behind us.
- 18:45
- That's why I went to Apology of Church and followed guys like Pastor Luke and Pastor Jeff, because they're selfless, sacrificial, bold men.
- 18:53
- And I'm like, dude, I want to follow those type of guys. And we have guys every single month coming in just immensely.
- 18:58
- I mean, these guys are smarter than I will ever be. They can preach better than I can ever preach. And God's just bringing them in because they want to follow strong men.
- 19:06
- It's absolutely awesome. And then who else is supposed to do the work of pastors?
- 19:12
- Then who else is supposed to do this work of putting this enemy underneath our feet? Is it our wives?
- 19:18
- Is it the children that they're going to do it? Our posterity? Are we going to really sit by and just say, OK, you guys take care of this great wickedness?
- 19:25
- Just kind of follow my train of thought here. Are unbelievers supposed to accomplish this work?
- 19:32
- Nope. That's not going to happen. Because they're enemies of God. They do the works of their father, the devil.
- 19:37
- John chapter 8, of course, this work of abortion and the work of child murder is exactly what the enemy wants to do.
- 19:44
- And they don't have the capacity to love their neighbor in and out of the womb because the love of God has not been shed abroad in their hearts through regeneration, through the infilling of the
- 19:52
- Holy Spirit. So, yeah, the unbelievers, they're not going to do it. They're the reason why it's happening. Is government supposed to do it?
- 19:59
- No. No, we know that. They're not going to do it. They're the enemies of the pre -born.
- 20:05
- Who said this? The feds are the problem, not the solution. Pastor who? Shalala, right? We know that.
- 20:12
- The feds are the problem. They're not the solution. If you think it's going to be Republican, yada, yada, yada, that's a pipe dream.
- 20:18
- It's not going to happen. It's stupid. Is the church going to stop this slaughter? Absolutely, yes.
- 20:24
- The reason why these death camps are open is because we allow them to. It's because on January 23rd, we just said, well, whatever, you know.
- 20:34
- We just said January 23rd, 1973, whatever. Okay, I'll just go about doing what
- 20:40
- I got to do. What if the church rose up and just said, it's not happening? Government would have said, okay. But we can only look forward.
- 20:49
- Is it going to happen? Yes. It's going to happen in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's going to happen with Christians armed with the true gospel, because that is our weapon.
- 20:59
- That only happens through the gospel being proclaimed at these death camps. And as we go about it, it's going to happen as we're full of the love of God shed abroad in our hearts.
- 21:09
- So how in the world is the church going to do this thing, which is going to happen with absolute certainty?
- 21:16
- We know that. If pastors are not equipping them and showing them how to do it and leading the way, that's how indispensable the pulpit and the pastor is to this mission.
- 21:29
- If the church is going to put it under its feet, and it has to be the church, it's only the church, it's only Christians, sheep will follow their shepherds.
- 21:37
- Absolutely. Have you ever been, and I've been in different pastoral situations, and you try to start a ministry, and you go to the pastors, and you're like,
- 21:45
- I want to go preach the gospel down at the trolley station, and they're like, you know what? You go ahead and do that. How many people show up to that with you?
- 21:53
- Zero. Two? Three, maybe? Yeah, I'll let you go ahead. I'm going to stand off from afar, and I'm going to pray for you for what you do.
- 22:02
- Does that ever get into the life of the sheep when that happens? No, because these sheep are following after the convictions and the desires of their own pastor.
- 22:14
- You will model your pastor and your convictions. That's why so many people in our nation are so materialistic, because all pastors want to do is build big empires, make a lot of money for themselves.
- 22:27
- They're following the lead. So, yeah, that's why we need to be involved.
- 22:33
- If pastors don't lead the way, then slaughter continues. Absolutely. But if pastors, and I want to be not so challenging, but if pastors do get involved, then they equip their people, they lead the way, and this bloodshed will discontinue.
- 22:48
- It absolutely will. So quickly, and hopefully I'm not going too long here, why aren't pastors getting involved with this fight?
- 22:55
- Because they're taught not to. Why are they not getting involved? Because they're taught not to.
- 23:01
- One of my pastors said something very, very key and very, very true. He said, you will be what you know as a spiritual leader.
- 23:10
- So you're going to be the product of your influence and your teaching. So what we see within the
- 23:15
- American Evangelical Church on a national level, it's this vicious cycle of just education and influence, and it's spitting out pastors that are really internally focused on the upkeep of God's worship in house.
- 23:28
- And we've got to do that, absolutely. But when it comes to external, cultural, culture -affecting ministries, nada, zippo, nothing.
- 23:37
- That's a huge glaring deficiency. Nobody ever talks about this. Yeah, it's all about the house, and I get it.
- 23:44
- Again, we need to upkeep the house. We need to lead God's people in worship. We've got to get these people out of the, like Pastor Luke just said, out of the four walls into the culture.
- 23:55
- But because of the way that they've been influenced, it just keeps on going in a circle.
- 24:00
- So they look to spiritual influences who are not good stewards of their influence and teach things like cultural retreat.
- 24:08
- Cultural involvement is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. How incredibly destructive is that type of statement?
- 24:16
- Because you get this guy that all these pastors, thousands of pastors, and I know if you know who I'm talking about, I love the guys, and he's a great guy, but you get all these pastors looking at these guys and like, yeah, that's probably what
- 24:27
- I should do. And then they run their church like that, and the sheep follow their lead. Or what about false pietism?
- 24:33
- I can't speak any better than Pastor Matt can on this. He's got an incredibly good sermon
- 24:38
- I've been listening to all week called The Bane of Pietism. But false pietism is
- 24:43
- Christianity is all about me, myself, and I. It's regulated to the personal, not to the culture.
- 24:51
- And it's actually making virtuous cultural retreat. And as we as pastors can make cultural retreat virtuous, we have done so much damage there, right?
- 25:04
- No preaching of the Gospels going out. No putting to death God's enemies. No nothing whatsoever outside of the four walls of the church.
- 25:11
- And that is absolutely devastating. Number two, why aren't we pastors doing this?
- 25:18
- Because the greater American evangelical church holds tradition really over Scripture. We could say soulless
- 25:24
- Scripture. We can raise our Bibles up above our heads, and we need to do that because that's where we need to exonerate and exalt the
- 25:30
- Word of God. But really, if you look down inside of the church, we're really exalting our tradition over Scripture.
- 25:36
- And that's when our unbalanced or unbiblical traditions come before the clear commands of Scripture. That's when you know that your tradition is way, way greater of a priority for you than the
- 25:49
- Word of God. And that kind of looks like, well, we've done it this way, so we can't do anything else.
- 25:55
- We've done it all these years. We can't do anything else. We can't let anything into our schedule and our philosophy of ministry.
- 26:05
- Or it looks like we've never had the external cultural impact in ministry efforts, so let's just stick to our comfortable religiosity, really.
- 26:11
- And ultimately, why don't we get involved? Because it's not comfortable to. And we as humans, we know that no matter what age or stage or position of our life, we will always acclimate to that which is the most comfortable situation.
- 26:24
- And we do it as pastors. We reduce and we redefine what evangelism is and duty and biblical norms and biblical traditions.
- 26:33
- We adjust those to fit our own desire for comfort and our natural desire to retreat.
- 26:41
- My pastor, Matt, said this. He said, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. I love that guy so much.
- 26:47
- He's got so many awesome quotes. Just an incredible, incredible man. What does that mean? He says you can attend to internal ministries and external ministries at the same time.
- 26:56
- It's not an either or, right? It's a both and. Why don't pastors get involved?
- 27:04
- And I'm almost done here. Because their philosophy of ministry prohibits them from doing so.
- 27:10
- And this is so key. Your philosophy of ministry is what you really think about the manifold mission of God has given us and how you carry that out.
- 27:18
- It's so important because so many people go into a church and they're like, oh, really charismatic, good -looking preacher. Look at the lights and look at the fanfare and look at the buildings they have and all they're doing and the monies.
- 27:29
- That's going to be my church. No. No, that should not be the criteria by which we evaluate a church.
- 27:35
- We should be evaluating churches. What we've got to do is we've got to look into a church and say, church government, is it biblical?
- 27:42
- The qualifications of elders, are these guys actually qualified to lead me or are they not? Are they doing this just as performers or are these true pastors?
- 27:52
- And then philosophy of ministry is really you ask that question when you go into a church, what are these guys really up to?
- 27:58
- What are they really doing? Because we can vocalize as the pastor great things like proclaiming the gospel and revival and furthering the kingdom, but are they actually doing those things?
- 28:10
- Are they actually proclaiming the gospel outside of the four walls of the church? Are they actually going and loving their neighbor in a way like abortion ministry?
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- But what they're actually doing, many of them are just rolling out the red carpet for the unbelievers, and by doing so, they're creating churches of the tares, not the weeds.
- 28:28
- That's why so many people, you know, I'm a Christian, but you shouldn't preach the gospel, or I'm a Christian, but I'm pro -choice.
- 28:34
- Well, why is that? It's because the philosophy of ministry of so many American evangelical churches are creating, they're just relocating unbelievers to a different location, calling them
- 28:43
- Christians when they're not, building their own empires, religiously manipulating people to make money.
- 28:52
- And I think the greatest pandemic and what should be focused on in the church rather than getting your mass on your people, which is ludicrous, is the true pandemic in the church, which is narcissism, right?
- 29:03
- You ever thought about that? This is, I mean, they're saying it's affecting 90 % of pastors is because we treat the pastor like he's some celebrity.
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- Do we honor him? Of course. Does he have a role? Yeah, I'm a pastor, but I'm no better than any one of you.
- 29:17
- I should be more of a servant than any one of you. But we, you know, we kiss the bottoms of pastors.
- 29:25
- It makes them into narcissists, but we think they're more important. We worship them, celebritize them.
- 29:32
- We get an apology at church, we see that, we're like, I just want to throw up. Don't ever do that to me. Don't ever do that to any one of us.
- 29:38
- You know, I mean, remember in scripture, they would bow down to worship an angel? Remember in 1 Kings, an angel killed 150 ,000 people in one night?
- 29:46
- And the angels are like, don't you dare give me the worship that only belongs to him. But we do this to pastors.
- 29:52
- We turn them into raging narcissists. And we wonder, like Pastor Jason talked about last night, why so many men are steeped in the desire for man -pleasing and self -glory.
- 30:04
- It's because of these things. And number four, because they're not being held accountable to biblical standards.
- 30:17
- And what you have to do is hold us pastors accountable to these things. And so you go in and you say, you know, so many people, they go into church, and they're like, well, it's a big church.
- 30:27
- It seems to be doing well. We're not doing anything to reach our neighbors. We're not doing anything to preach the gospel.
- 30:33
- We're not doing anything to put our faith in action and be a doer of the word, not just to hear, but I'm just going to keep on coming and paying this guy to fulfill his mission and his dreams of self -glory.
- 30:43
- So what we have to do is we have to hold our pastors accountable. I'm being rough and hopefully not too rough up here.
- 30:50
- You can challenge me on that. I appreciate that. I love the pastor. Again, I preface this, let's look at the systemic problems to solve them.
- 30:57
- But it's okay in meekness and humility to say, hey, pastor, why aren't we doing these things?
- 31:04
- Can you explain this to me? And I'm not talking about being a bull in a china shop. No, I'm not.
- 31:10
- But we should be able to hold these men accountable. And what we do have to do is we have to get unqualified and pastors who truly are not pastors out of the pulpit as much as we need to get bad politicians out of their place.
- 31:25
- And we're all gung ho about that, right? We do need to hold these men who are not qualified accountable and get them out.
- 31:33
- I'm just going to get in trouble for that. And in conclusion, really,
- 31:38
- God's not begging you as pastors. He's not begging you to be in this fight. No way.
- 31:44
- It's a command. God is going to put this enemy under his feet with his men.
- 31:50
- And these men are always going to be in a minority. And that's wonderful when you and Pastor Troel has got to really get a message called
- 31:57
- Guerrilla Warfare about this. Of course, Gideon's 300, whittled all the way down to there to where you can just rest and say, oh, you don't really want to show up to this.
- 32:07
- Whatever God can use two guys to do to put this all to rest. Right. So we don't worry about that.
- 32:13
- God's going to use his men. And it's always going to be in a minority, but it's always going to be based upon his message, his men, his minority and his message to vanquish his enemies.
- 32:25
- And we can get in on this and enjoy being included in the master's mission and his plan and just march towards victorious or we can not do it.
- 32:35
- But it's it's going to happen. But if you do get your church involved. Babies are going to be saved.
- 32:41
- That's a fact. Souls are going to be saved. That's a fact. God is going to be honored.
- 32:47
- God has been glorified. Your church is going to thrive as you do this. Getting the gospel out of the four walls of your church, loving your neighbor, and you're going to gather so many people around you and you're going to live this
- 33:00
- Christian life. You're going to be this Christian, faithful pastor that you want to be.
- 33:05
- That's eaten at the back of your head. But you don't. You haven't pulled the trigger to do it.
- 33:13
- So we would say thank you for listening to us tattooed pastors up here.
- 33:19
- We love you guys. And if you hear me as a pastor, hopefully you could take this in spirit of love as much as God will do this.
- 33:27
- We do need pastors involved because that's how he does things. It's his means to accomplish his will.
- 33:33
- Get in the fight. All you have to do is go to end abortion. Now message me or Pastor Luke or Pastor Jeff.
- 33:39
- We will help you every single step of the way. That's what we want to do. Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and pray. Father, thank you so much for empowering me to deliver this message.
- 33:47
- And I pray everything that was of me would have been taken away.
- 33:53
- Just fall to the floor. I don't. I want to do this. And in a way that would honor you,
- 33:58
- Lord, in a way that would be loving but challenging to my brothers. I pray it would have challenged them only because these truths can be found in the scriptures.
- 34:05
- Lord, my opinion is worth a hill of beans. So I pray, Lord, that you would motivate more men.
- 34:11
- And as these men step out of the routine of not being involved in the culture, not being involved in trying to save their babies, as they would step out of that and into obedience, that they would experience the joy and the life that comes in the wake of that.