148: David Knight on What it Means to Be a Christian

to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. All right, for the first time ever on the

Ruled Church Podcast, we are talking from a brother from all the way over the

Atlantic, David Knight. How's it going? Alan, I'm so grateful to be connected with you. What a blessing this is.

What an amazing thing Zoom is, right? To give us this opportunity, praise the Lord. Yes, sir, and that is not a fake accent.

He's not putting that on. That's the real David Knight. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast.

I am your host, Alan Nelson. I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist church here in the little community of Perryville, Arkansas. And I'm talking

David Knight. And David, brother, I'm actually not even sure your area of residence.

So I live in Eastbourne, which is just down the road from Brighton, which people might know because they've got a

Premier League football team, in case anyone's interested in soccer over there. Yeah, so I'm about as south as you can get in the

UK. If you go any further south, you'd end up in a water on your way to France. And nobody wants to end up, no,

I'm just joking. Okay, yeah. So I could ask, my listeners probably get tired of this, but I always like to ask this question.

Did you ever in your life, imagine that one day you would be a guest on the

Ruled Church Podcast? It's beyond my wildest dreams, Alan. David, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do?

We're going to get into your book, what it means to be a Christian today. That's why I asked you to come on.

I read the book. I'm excited about it. We've prayed for it. So, but before we get to the book, why don't you tell us a little bit about who is

David Knight? What do you do? Yeah, thank you. Well, my name's David Knight, like you say,

Alan. I've been married to my wife, Elizabeth, for 23 years. Together we have three sons, from 14 years old all the way up to age 20.

So we're pretty experienced and we've got, being a parent all sorted now, we're experienced.

Of course that's not true. We also have two dogs. I'm the founder, like you say, of Exposit The Words.

That's the ministry that the Lord's really encouraged us with that's been going for about seven years now.

And has been a real gift to me because it's enabled me to be able to make really great friendships with lots of people from all around the world, including yourself.

And then who I wouldn't have had exposure to or contact with, and without that platform. I was a full -time evangelist up until the end of last year for three years, working in the context in Eastbourne, in the

Sussex in the UK, which is hard. Lots of cultural Christianity, and which we're gonna be speaking about in a few moments.

The moment I'm in between two different things. I'm currently in a small

Baptist church, just a couple of miles up from where I live. They currently don't have a pastor, so I'm supporting them by preaching on a regular basis.

But I'm also part of a small group who are praying and meeting regularly about potentially planting a church here in Eastbourne for Lord Wills as well.

So we've got lots of different things going on, lots of exciting things. And yeah, we're really blessed. I should also say as well, because I think it's really important.

I've only been a Christian for 10 years, Alan. Up until that point, I'm 46 years old now.

So I lived without knowing the Lord for 36 years. And my upbringing was one of nominal

Christianity. I used to be taken to our local Baptist church where the gospel wasn't preached from one week to the next.

But I used to go because they allowed me to play the drums there. My mum was a Jehovah Witness. And my life growing up was complicated.

And my dad died 20 years ago. And that led me to thinking that there's no way there can be a

God. And I really went off the rails really with regards to the Lord. And I'm just so thankful because the

Lord saved me 10 years ago, Alan, when I just was not seeking the Lord at all. I was very antagonistic towards there being a

God. And I was just a recipient of his grace and his mercy being poured out in my life when I wasn't even looking for it.

And as a response to that, I've been as passionate as I was trying to make arguments with Christians.

And prior to my conversion, I've been spending the last 10 years as a response to what Jesus did on that cross for me.

I'm wanting to tell everybody about the good news of the gospel. Amen, brother. That fires me up.

That's very encouraging to hear. Our church, we confess the Second London Baptist Confession.

And so we have some connections, I guess, and certainly some historical connections.

The history of that area of the world is pivotal to our history here in America, and even particularly our religious heritage.

And I think about, and obviously it's not just the Reformed Baptists, but there are

Reformed Baptists that directly link to the Second London Baptist Confession and who we are as a church.

And so I'm very interested about thinking through all that. And I guess,

I'm not trying to give it away too much, I guess people probably already know, but would you say that the religious fervor or the doctrinal stance of where you live now is much different than 300 and 400 years ago?

Absolutely. Yeah, it's just very, very confused, like it is where you are in the

Bible. But Alan, I remember speaking to you a couple of years ago about this when you brought your book out. Yes, sir. A Change of Heart. And you go out into the street and you're gonna get two very big reactions.

Anybody who believes in an eternity, the huge majority of those people will think that they're on track to go to a heaven that they know very little about, probably on a cloud playing a harp all day, based on works.

And then those people that, or they think they've been too bad to be safe, but there is such a big problem.

And even with those who go to church, there are so many churches that are just not preaching the gospel and are not teaching the

Bible and have instead turned to compromise and entertainment. And yeah, it's a massive mess.

Do the majority of the people around you, like for example, here, if you were to ask me, do the majority of people around me profess to be

Christians, I would say, yes. We go door to door, we street preach, we talk to people, and 95 % or more would say that they know

Jesus or know the gospel or are Christians. I don't know what it's like there. Is there a lot of professing

Christians? Yeah, I remember you saying that before. Yes, absolutely. And it's one of the motivations for writing this book,

Alan, is because it's becoming more and more of an issue. And certainly with the younger generation, and I'll tell you for why, and again, even this has been corrupted because there's a lot of people in England at the moment saying there's a quiet revival going on and they're seeing church attendance.

That's a metric that they're using. Church attendance means that there's a revival going on.

But what we're actually seeing is political Islam on the rise in the

UK. And therefore what's happening is the younger generation in response to that, those that are not happy with what's happening politically and culturally within the

UK, without any understanding and with complete ignorance, they're thinking, well, a vote against Islam by default means that I must be a

Christian. So they're taking a position where on a ballot box or they would say I'm a Christian because I'm not a

Muslim. They think there's two options, right? And because I live in a historic so -called Christian country, if that's even a thing, we can talk about that later.

They would believe that they are a Christian. And of course, we both know the dangers of that because when you're in the street or when you're doing door work, knocking on doors and speaking to people about the gospel and telling them about the importance of following the

Lord, they will already tell you, I'm already a Christian. And they are often the hardest people to reach because they don't see a need because they believe that they're already part of team

Jesus or whatever it is, but they've been told that they are when they've in their mind become a

Christian without being born again. So I guess that it's not a stretch to say that this is the foundation and motivation for what it means to be a

Christian, the truth about the gospel and real faith. And it's gonna be published, Exposits to Word is you're publishing, is that right?

Yeah, exactly that. So we're basically self -publishing it via Amazon, you know, using, so it's gonna be on Kindle, paperback and also

Audible as well. So there are three different ways to be able to. They can be ordered here too,

US and? Yeah, absolutely. The best way of doing that is, you know, funny enough,

Exposits to Word, I think only about 5 % of our viewers and listeners are actually based in the

UK. So I didn't wanna put the amazon .co .uk link on our channel because it's gonna mean it for you to order the book as an example, it will cost you like $20 postage or four times the cost of a book to get it.

So we've actually set up a website, which is exposittheword .com forward slash book. And then when you're on there, you can actually select your country and then it will allow you to be able to purchase for book through there.

But Alan, the real heart for this book is I want this to be able to get into as many people's hands as possible and I don't want price to be an issue.

So we've set the parameters on the book to be the cheapest it can possibly be, which means from a

Kindle point of view, you can get this book for free if you're on Kindle Unlimited, whatever that means.

I'm not too sure. It's 99 cents if you haven't got that. The paperback version,

I think is gonna be about five or $6, which is the cost price and what Amazon charge. And then the

Kindle, sorry, the Audible price will end up costing you one of your credits if you signed up to Audible and there's no extra charge on that as well.

So we really don't want price to be an issue, but yeah, the best place to get that book if you are in America would be exposittheword .com

forward slash book. Yeah, I will put that on in the show notes. So that should be easy.

So, well, let me, I'm looking at the cover right now and I saw you show me just before we started. It just came in to you, right?

And it feels something special about holding that for the first time, doesn't it? Yeah, who did the cover?

So we, well, we did. Everything has been done in house. So it was really,

I wanted, you know what I was saying earlier about the younger generation and being very confused.

I wanted it to be a cover that was gonna really resonate with younger people. So it's kind of an urban kind of looking setting, isn't it?

With the cross high up and somebody walking, navigating, you know, on a journey with the cross there above them.

And that was kind of the idea of the cover. It's almost like a modern Pilgrim's Progress, you know, cover.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. That's good. All right, so let's talk about it. I read it,

I loved the way that you had written. I loved, you know, just the style even.

I don't know if what I read was actually translated into the book too. I don't know if I was reading just something, an earlier copy or if that's how it went, but just like in the publishing world, it's called typesetting for those wanting to know, but just the way it was typeset and the questions and all those things.

That's very, very well done. Of course, the content is great too. So you wanna talk about, you wanna talk about the book?

Yeah, thank you. So thank you so much. And I mean, thank you for saying that. The idea was, and I think in terms of all the feedback we've got so far, each chapter is quite short, isn't it?

And there are these reflection type questions after each chapter where people, you know, can sit there and either ask themselves the questions, or I'm hoping it will be used in a small group environment as well, or even within, you know, sort of family worship settings where people can ask, you know, and challenge each other with the questions.

We start off with almost three pre -evangelism chapters where people are, you know, we speak about the, you know, why is the world like this?

Is there any hope? You know, and are we placed no hope in the right things? And can the

Christian message be trusted? And this was a little bit of an afterthought because I actually, originally, before I sent you the book,

I went straight into the gospel and common misunderstandings. But after my wife read it and I sent it to a couple of people,

I was getting all of these different ideas. So this will actually be really helpful, first of all, to meet people with where they actually are, because there are a lot of people at the moment, you know, with the way that the world is.

You know, before you even get to the, find a place where you're potentially wanting to understand what the message of the gospel is and what the good news that Christianity and following the

Lord offers. And then what we do is we then, and this is very much born out of the three years where I spent full time as an evangelist in the streets and speaking to lots and lots of people.

And these were the 10 most common kind of reactions I had with regards to the

Christian faith and more specifically around the gospel. I don't know if you want me to quickly just list what those misunderstandings are and if we, you know, we might want to take a couple of them and speak about them.

But we've already covered one, which is, you know, I believe I'm a Christian because I live in a

Christian country. You get that, I'm sure, Alan. You know, I'm a Christian because I live in the Bible Belt and everyone's a

Christian here. You know, there's that. Yeah, no, that would be good to walk through those real quick, but I was just gonna, let me interject here.

Cause like this came to my mind just to let the listeners know, like, this is a great, for all the things you mentioned, a great book, but also this is one of those books that like, if you have a coworker or you have someone, maybe a neighbor and this would be a great book to say, hey, could we meet

Saturday mornings for coffee and go through this book with them? I'm talking about for evangelistically, you know?

So I can see it being used in that way. I think that would be a great idea as well, but yeah, let's walk through those misunderstandings.

Thank you, Alan. And do you know what? That's exactly where this is born out of because these were very real situations that I found myself in on a regular basis in terms of real conversations over a coffee.

So, and I've basically taken all of that experience and gone, wait, what is one book?

What is a tool that I could give to people? And it's gonna pretty much, you know, uncover all of the places that you can hide in terms of presuming an assumption around the

Christian faith. So the first one is I was born in a Christian country. And second, I was christened as a baby.

And third, there was some sort of external decision in terms of either walking an aisle or raising a hand.

You know, a crusade, the amount of times I've spoken to somebody, you know, and they'd say, oh, I went to a Billy Graham crusade in 1985 and, you know, how that's great.

And then you carry on talking about them and realize there's no living faith since 1985. And they're still holding onto that as a reason why they believe that they're a

Christian. Many ways to God. I mean, that would be a good one for us to maybe break down and speak about because here in the context of the

UK, we see, and you'd probably see it on the news, the Church of England in terms of how they keep on bending the knee and, you know, as an example, a couple of weeks ago to break

Ramadan, lots of churches opened up the doors to have a shared meal, an iftar meal with Muslims and share prayers and, you know, and there's this massive problem where, you know, people just want to say there's many different ways to God and deny the exclusivity of Jesus.

And it's crazy. Another misunderstanding in terms of, well, I believe in God, you know, I believe factually that there's a

God and people thinking that that is enough or, you know, that is a Christian faith. Another one is faith is a private thing in terms of, and we see this all the time, you know, how many times would you see on Facebook when there's a disaster happening in the world or somebody has become ill, a famous person, and then suddenly people you've known for 20 years have suddenly said, well,

I'm praying and put the prayer emoji, you know, on Facebook. And, you know, you won't see that again for another five years until there's another disaster.

And it's like, I've got a God that I can get out much like it was in Rome in the first century, right? A God for everything.

I've got a God that I'll polish, you know, get out, polish up and pray to when there's a need. And then the two that we see so often, you know,

I'm a Christian because I'm a good person. I live by Christian morals and, you know, I'm going to,

I'm okay with God because I'm a good person. And then the flip side to that, and it's why it's so important to listen when we are doing any work in evangelism because there's another type of person, less common,

I believe, but people that believe that they're too bad to be saved in terms of, you know,

God's grace isn't sufficient for the lives that they've lived. So that's why it's really important when we're doing evangelism, just by the way that we have that conversation first, because if somebody already is in that place, we can't just assume that actually what we need to do is present the law and tell them that they're a sinner because there are some people out there that already know that and believe that they're too bad, you know, to be saved, which is a reason why we need to, you know, kind of have that conversation before talking about that.

Another one we see a lot is in terms of the gospel with some form of, you know, and certainly sanctification is some sort of works -based programme where there's just a misunderstanding of fruit and it can turn the gospel into a tag team event where, you know, thank you

Jesus for saving me. I'll take over the baton from here. And now I'm relying on my good works and my sanctification as to the reason why

I'm a Christian and remaining to be a Christian. And then of course, the other one, and these are, as I'm saying these,

Alan, I can imagine you're going, yeah, this is happening where I live. Because the 10th one is the one that I know we both share, which is the most popular one.

You turn on any so -called Christian TV channel or you look on the best -selling charts for books, it's for prosperity gospel where God is treated like a genie and God is here to serve me and to bless me and to give me my best life now.

And we of course know that the shipwreck that that leaves people in as well.

So there are the 10 common misunderstandings that we speak about in the book. Yeah, you know, you and I are separated by thousands of miles, but we have a shared union in Christ.

But it's interesting, isn't it, how unbelievers have a bit of a shared union in the fact that the way that their loss and lostness, if you want to use that word, rebellion against our good and gracious King, it manifests itself in similar ways culturally, even though we're in two different countries.

There's lots of similar, all those things that you walk through. And I want our listeners to know too, is that this isn't, if you just think, well, this book is just kind of dealing with people in the

UK. Not at all, because as I was reading, and even as you're listening, hopefully you're hearing this, this is hitting a point right here at home.

Brother, because of your audience as well, I mean, I listen to your podcast regularly and I'm thankful for it as well.

And I know your love for the local church. And I think something that you do really well, and it's often not really spoken about within church, is differentiating between the visible church and the invisible church.

And we know there's a massive difference, right? There's a, and we don't, we have to recognise that when we are out speaking to people, all they, they can't see the wood for the trees.

All they can see is the visible church. They don't know. Much like us, if we was to talk about Islam, it's very unlikely that me and you would be able to start talking about what the

Sunnis believe or what, within their camp, what the nuances are.

So when people, when we're speaking to people, they'll put into the basket of Christianity, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, the prosperity gospel, anything else that calls itself

Christian would all be put into that basket. And I think we are a time, and I heard you say recently in one of your podcasts, like, this isn't a game.

We are not playing a game, you know? And in the pulpit, there is an absolute need for precision in terms of, you know,

I'm sick and tired of going to a church and there would just be these, this general assumption that everybody, because they are sitting there on a

Sunday morning is a Christian. And there's no distinction between, you know, made between if you're born again and if you're not.

And all of the promises that are found in Christ are just liberally scattered, you know, to anybody who's hearing.

And of course, this is a huge, huge problem because this is a huge stream that's feeding into the church, right?

In terms of the visible church, because what's happening is, and this is the journey that's happening here in the

UK, and I know it's probably happening in a lot of churches in America as well. You go from being a visitor to everyone being really excited because we've got a new visitor and making that person feel really welcome.

And that's, of course, that's great. You know, the motive of that is great. They're then assimilated into the church. And over a period of time, when they're hearing the promises that are found in the gospel without telling them that they need to repent and put their faith in Christ, they're just an assimilation, an assumption that they are a

Christian. And of course, given enough time and that person not personally dealing with their salvation, dealing with the

Lord themselves personally, we live in a congregate, many of our churches are congregational.

So over a period of time, those people end up who are not born again, end up going into church membership.

They end up governing the church. They end up preaching. And this cycle just repeats over and over again because there's just not a distinction between the visible church and the invisible church and a call for sinners to repent and put their faith in Christ and the importance of people needing to be born again.

That's so good, brother. I appreciate that. In fact, one of the, your one thing about the book too is highly quotable.

Great, you know, great little one -liners. You do a great job with that, brother. But one of the things that I pulled out and shared on social media is this quote from the book,

Jesus never invited people to follow him quietly from a distance. And I think this kind of goes together with what you're saying.

So Jesus never invited people to follow him quietly from a distance. What do you say in there?

Well, because it's just so safe, isn't it? To, again, if we just look at what I was just saying in terms of evangelism has become, rather than me personally sharing the gospel with someone and telling them their need for Jesus, instead it's become,

I'm going to invite you to church on Sunday. So this is my pastor's job to teach you the gospel. Well, there's a massive assumption there and also a massive problem because most churches here in the

UK, you could invite your friend to come to church for the next 15 years and they're never going to be told the gospel, right?

So that's not going to work. And there's this safe place where people are quite happy to tick a box on a ballot or apply cultural

Christianity to themselves without dealing with their sin, without understanding the holiness of God and the fact that, and again, the visible church just plays into this trap all the time.

Because when we see evangelism on YouTube, Alan, what do we see? Somebody will go up to someone and say, oh,

God loves you and has got such a great plan for your life and maybe does some sort of healing. The fact of the matter is, and I remember you talking about this when we spoke about your book a couple of years ago, we are born enmity with God.

Our biggest problem is we do not have peace with the holy living God of the universe.

We are born in that situation. But most people go around thinking, oh, I am a child of God, and God's my best friend.

And there's this false peace because people have convinced themselves this is what

Christianity is. People are happy to follow Jesus from a distance because it's safe.

But the truth of the matter is, if you understand the gospel, you will flee and you will run to Christ.

You won't want to be at a distance because the Holy Spirit within us, we want to be there side by side with Jesus.

We couldn't get any closer to him because he is our Lord and Savior. And it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel and one that leads to apathy.

And again, it's really dangerous. Well, I was thinking about that too in that quote. It just got my mind going.

But this is the necessity of, if you're following Jesus openly and closely instead of quietly and from a distance, then there is going to be that, as much as a danger of letting false converts in, there's the opposite encouragement that those who are in Christ are going to seek to be part of a visible local congregation.

Right, right. And Alan, the biggest struggle with writing this book, because we deal with the common misunderstandings, then we talk about what the gospel is.

And then, of course, I want to then talk about what it means to be a Christian in terms of, okay, if you've been born again, what happens next, right, in terms of what does a

Christian life look like? And of course, I know how much you love the local church. I do as well. But I was really wrestling with the fact that this book is going to go, hopefully, to every country in the world.

And I can't just blanket tell people, well, now you've read this book, you've been born again, just go to your nearest local church.

Yeah, that's right. Right? Because I'm going to be feeding them to the wolves, most likely, in a lot of contexts.

You know, somebody who's very dear to me, who I love dearly, a Christian who I know who lives in another part of the

UK, she has been looking for a local church for three years. And every

Sunday, drives to a different location, and cannot just find one that teaches the

Bible. And again, like we said about Muslims and not being able to differentiate seeing the wood for the trees as to what they mean.

I could say about the local church, I'm going to go to the local Jehovah Witness congregation or the local

Mormon church. So again, I tried putting into the book in terms of what does it mean to go to a, you know, what does a biblical church look like?

But it just shows you the mess that Christendom is in, the visible church. And we can't just be blase around.

This is, you know, when we, it's just so sad, but we have to nuance the church in terms of, well, yeah, the church is so important that there's also this corrupt element that isn't actually the church.

It might be the church that the world recognizes, but it's actually corrupt, it's apostate in many ways. Over the last couple of years, we had two different families that decided to move to the area because of the church.

And we're a small church, brother, but it just, it kind of blew my mind, but it's really,

Americans don't particularly, don't think of it this way. They move locations because they think about first the job or the proximity to kids or maybe education, you know, college, something like that.

They move to the location because of those things first, and then they hope if they can to find a solid church.

Well, I've known several, we had one brother that was driving over an hour for a while and they ended up moving to a different state, but that just doesn't always work, you know?

And it's got me thinking about the priority of a good solid church is worth relocating for sometimes.

Of course, I don't know about the situation in UK. I imagine, I don't know, brother, for sure, but I imagine in some ways it can kind of be worse, more sparse with finding a solid, not a church building or whatever, but actually finding a church that actually cares about these things that we've been discussing.

Adam, 100%, it's so encouraging to hear that that is a priority for some people, you know?

I just love that. We then have to protect our own hearts because I don't know if you know who

Simon Cowell is. He's a, do you know who he is? Yeah. So you can end up kind of with that kind of heart going into a church, you know, thinking, you know, because the consumer church, you know, we can end up going to a church thinking, oh,

I don't like this, I don't like that. And of course, the priorities are biblical. It's not even about worship style or anything like that.

That's a secondary thing. We can deal with that if a Bible is being taught, you know, and all of the things that we would hold so dear without compromising what the real

Christian faith is, right, and yeah. I mean, what an encouragement for you that people are willing to move to be a part of your church family.

I just, you know, praise the Lord for that, I know. Well, brother, I know we've kind of hit all over the place.

So a couple more questions I do have for you. One is, and maybe we've kind of answered this, but what do you hope, you know, you wrote this book, in your mind, what will make it successful?

So like what metric would you hope to see to say, okay, it was successful? Yeah, sure.

Good question. I don't know if you guys have the Alpha course in America.

It's very popular here. And so is Christianity Explored. Okay. Which of these courses that people put on, you know, within the church.

And it's quite possible, again, it's another stream that leads into the church where people can have the idea that they've been on one of these church courses, you know, through attendance, they've been assimilated into the church and they have been somehow a

Christian without dealing with their sin and without being born again, right? So my hope is that this book will end up being used by pastors to give to people who have gone through these courses where people that are attending churches and, you know, visitors, where people can then give this book.

And like you say, say, look, read this book, and then, you know, let's meet up for a cup of coffee. If there's anything in this book that resonates with you, any of the misunderstandings that you feel that you're wrestling with, let's have a cup of coffee and have a conversation because I'm hoping it would then allow for that conversation to flow easier because it's almost exposing what those potential risks are.

And it would make the conversation a little bit easier. In terms of the metric, I'm just so thankful that the

Lord has, you know, allowed and given me the health and the time to be able to write this book.

And, you know, it's like everything, brother, like when you're doing your podcast and when you're preaching, you know, we just want to be found faithful and obedient to that work.

And then kind of, we want to then just leave it there and have an open hand with it, right? In terms of whatever the

Lord's going to do with it, we are thankful. And it's hopefully a tool that will be used, but, you know, whatever it is, even if it helps one person, then

I don't know, I'm thankful for that. I see, I think we mentioned it, or if we didn't, we need to mention it, but there's an audio book version.

And how did, is that through the Amazon? You can get the audio book?

Is that? Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, the downside to that is it's me reading it, Alan. So if people already had, you know, had enough of me talking for the last half an hour, you know, you might not want to listen to any more with my accent.

But yeah, so basically, you know, we live in a world, don't we? Which is a bit of a two edged sword where it's a real blessing in terms of the technology we have makes us being able to do these things easy.

But of course, we also know there's a lot of force teachers that are using the same things and have big budgets to put out the same content.

But with an audio book, you basically, you know, there's no amazing setup here.

I recorded it on Audacity, which is a free programme on my laptop. I found somebody on Fiverr who was able to do post -production and be able to get it to the very rigid, audible standards, because they use something called

ACX, way above my intelligence, but it needs to be at the right bit rate levels and stuff for them to accept it.

It didn't cost a lot of money for under $100. I was able to get somebody to produce that for me.

And then Audible this morning, funny enough that they accepted it. I got the email through saying, that's going to be live by the time this podcast come out, that would be on the

Amazon listing as well. Yeah, yeah, the podcast is coming out. Let's see, we're recording on the 18th.

So the podcast is coming out the 25th, which is, I need to go ahead and say this, nine months till Christmas.

So everyone be ready. But yeah, so one thing, one other thing

I wanted to mention, but it's definitely before we land the plane, is because we've hit it with your testimony.

And then with some things we've said throughout the podcast, we have hit all around the gospel.

And so I just want to give you a couple of minutes. Okay, brother, this book, what it means to be a

Christian, the truth about the gospel and real faith. So I'll just give you a couple of minutes here.

I mean, I'm not going to cut you off. So however long you take, but give us that gospel brother and explain to our listeners how someone can come to know the

Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you, Alan. It'd be my pleasure to do that. Well, first of all, we need to recognize that God is holy, holy, holy.

And we are not, right? Like we mentioned earlier on in this interview, we are born at enmity with God.

We are not born at peace with God because of what happened in Genesis chapter three. We have a fractured relationship with God.

That is how we're born. That is the condition that we are born into. So our greatest need is reconciliation and peace with the living

God. It isn't for us to own the biggest mansion that we can own or to have five cars or to have the greatest job in the world.

All of those things are temporary. Our greatest need is to have reconciliation and peace with the living

God. And God is so gracious and kind. He showed us our greatest need by revealing the law to us, by giving us the 66 books that we have in the

Bible. He showed us in the Old Testament through his law, that his holiness and the fact that when we look at his law, we then look at our own personal lives.

And they certainly would in the context in the Old Testament as well. You're supposed to look at that law and see

God's holiness and then search our own hearts and say, okay, there's no way

I can live a righteous life. If this is God's holy standard, I have sinned against him, the holy

God of the universe. And there is a consequence to that. That is what the Bible teaches us. So not only do

I not have any peace with the living God of the universe, I have sinned against him and I continue to on a daily basis in both thought and deed.

But the Bible doesn't leave us there. That's the bad news. The gospel means good news. The bad news is I have sinned against the holy

God of the universe. The good news, and again, through the Old Testament and sacrificial system was pointing towards something that was yet to happen in the future.

And the Old Testament prophets spoke about the coming Messiah. And of course that coming Messiah was the perfect son of God who came and lived a perfect, righteous life, sinless life in both thought and deed for 33 years.

And then willingly and lovingly came to die on the

Roman cross for sinners. It was God's redemptive plan from the very beginning of all time that he came to save sinners.

And he came and had God's wrath poured out upon him, paying the penalty, the debt, that both me,

Alan, you, whoever's listening to this podcast, owe against God.

And through the death and through the resurrection of Jesus three days later, that is

God's way of saying this penalty, this payment has been accepted because wrath was poured out upon Jesus.

And through his resurrection, it's a proof and evidence that he was the first to be resurrected.

And we too, who are saved by grace and by faith, by his mercy being revealed to a sinner, just like me and Alan, by being granted faith and repentance in the

Lord Jesus Christ, all because of his grace. And what does that grace mean? It's not something that we earn.

We can't, it's not about our own works. We cannot make ourselves clean. We could not,

God isn't gonna, at the end of our day, judge on a curve where he's gonna consider our good works against our bad works.

We cannot do that. We have sinned against the Holy God. The only way of being saved is by the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And he offers his righteousness as a substitution for our unrighteousness.

And that is the gift. He says on that cross, he took my personal sin, he paid for it, and he offers me his righteousness and by faith, and that is the good news of the gospel.

Amen. Amen, brother. Yeah, look to Christ. I very seriously doubt we have some unregenerate person stumbling upon the

Rural Church Podcast, but if there is a lost person listening, the exhortation to you is look to Christ, repent of your sins, believe the gospel.

Beautiful, brother. Let me ask you this, people ask me this, and sometimes I'm like, I don't know, but anything else in the works?

I mean, you're an author now, brother. Anything else coming to your mind, ready for the next one?

Or are you just gonna stop for a minute? No, I've kind of got the bug for it now.

I mean, the book came together quite quickly, but it's been in the works for the last seven years in my mind, right?

In terms of all the conversations, this is the fruit of all of that. There are two more books that I really wanna write before I die.

One of them is Christianese, in terms of addressing all of the

Christian language that you can pick up via assimilation within the church context. We even parrot it and use it without actually understanding what it actually means often.

And I think that can lead to people who have been in a church context sometimes for years getting to a point where they're like,

I can't really ask what repentance means because I use the word all the time, but I don't actually really know what it means.

So I wanna address that and have that book. I also wanna write a book as well based on the seven letters to the

Church of Revelation three and four with Laodicea and talk about the apostate church. And yeah, that's kind of for selfish reasons, just cause

I wanna spend some time really digging deep into that, but they're gonna be a way of that maybe be next year or the year after Lord William.

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. So if they want to know more about you is the best place to go to exposittheword .com?

Is that the best place? Yes, please Alan. Yeah, so we're on YouTube and that's probably where we're probably most well known at the moment.

I did get suspended on Facebook for doing a daily Bible study. So I'm on a yellow card with that.

I don't know how long I'll be allowed to personally be on there for. Wow. Yeah, so I'm hanging on by a thread there, but if I'm still on there by the time the podcast comes out then by all means, feel free to send a friend request or check out exposittheword on Facebook or on X.

And we're on there as well. I'm trying to work out how TikTok works, but we're on there. Don't really know what I'm doing on there. Yeah, yeah.

Well, and like you said, I mean, it's inexcusable the cost. If you can't do the paperback, then the

Kindle price, you can't beat that. And like you said, I don't know what the Kindle Unlimited means, but if you're on that, you get it for free.

Yeah, exactly that, yeah. I really love the heart of trying to put such resources into people's hands for, yeah, at basically no cost to them.

So that's wonderful, brother. Well, I give you the four. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you feel like you just, you need to make sure people know?

No, I just wanna say thank you for what you do, Alan. You know, your book, A Change of Heart was really resonated with me when

I read that in preparation for our interview on our channel a couple of years ago. And it probably without even realizing maybe helped lay the seeds for me writing this book, which was a reason why

I wanted to reach out to you and send you an early copy. So thank you for your work with that and for the conversation we had as well.

I really did appreciate that. Thank you for your, yeah. Thank you for your friendship as well.

And keep up the great work with your podcast and keep plowing on with your ministry in the church as well, brother.

Amen, thank you. So I'll just plug it one more time here. What it means to be a Christian, the truth about the gospel and real faith by David J.

Knight. Exposit the word is the publisher and this is a great resource. Just to read personally,

I was edified by it. I'm a pastor, I'm a theologian. It's not that I read the book and I was like, oh,

I learned all this new stuff, but it was still very edifying. So all I'm trying to say is no matter what stage of the

Christian life you're on, this, you will find much edification from this book. David mentioned reading it in family worship.

This it's formatted excellently for that because the chapters are quick, the questions at the end.

So you could use it that way. Maybe you have a small group with the men have a group or the ladies have a group, or maybe there's some sort of a mixed group of the church and you wanna go through a book.

This would be an excellent point for that. Evangelistically, you could use it.

You could even actually, if you wanted to buy many copies and use this as a resource to pass out to people.

So you've really written it in such a way that it has a very wide usefulness and very helpful to people of all, whether you are a

Christian, been a Christian a long time, or someone's not a Christian, this book covers all the basis.

So thank you for writing it. Thank you, brother. I should also say as well, actually, if you wanna use it in your church or use it as a giveaway in your church,

I can actually get a discount on author copies where Amazon just charged me for the print cost.

So there's an email address on expositoryword .com forward slash book, where you can send me an email and I can just get suppose book sent to you for cost price without Amazon surcharge on top of that.

So that will work out really, really cheap for you. If you want it to order 10 plus copies, just send me an email and we can work that out.

And I think we're getting up, getting free shipping for that as well. So anything we can do to serve you and make this as helpful and as cheap as possible for you to be able to get your hands on it, then let me know.

Yeah, praise God. Praise God. Thank you for giving me your time today. What time is it there? Like you said, almost two o 'clock.

It's 10 to two in the afternoon. Okay, well, brother, I hope that you're having a wonderful day. It's almost nine o 'clock here.

So we're just getting our day started. Thank you for coming on. Thank you guys for listening. This or whatever time,

I don't know if it's morning. We're recording in the morning. So thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Rural Church Podcast.

And we will catch you next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.