Is Church Discipline only for Serious Crimes or any Offense?

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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The fear of doing something the wrong way shouldn't stop us from doing something the right way. Welcome to the

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Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is the ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Okay, well this week we're going to deal with something, well, we've dealt with it in the past, but it's something no one ever really wants to talk about, church discipline.

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Why are we going to talk about this? Well, I came upon a podcast that I listened to and had a very different take on church discipline.

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I want to go through this because what I found with this was, here was someone who was going through and basically, you shouldn't say that just because they have a different view of church discipline that it's wrong, don't just jump in those type of things, but they may make some valid points.

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So I wanted to hear what they had to say and I will say this, when we look at the church, if you got my book,

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What Do We Believe?, I have a chapter on the church and one of the points that I make out is as the definition of church changes over time, we end up seeing that one of the things by the time of the

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Puritans was when they came to what defined a church, they defined it as a church was where you had

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God's Word preached, it had to be proclaimed from the pulpit. You had to have the ordinances of the church.

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In other words, you had to be practicing baptism and the Lord's Supper. And a third thing that they thought was so important that they put it into the definition of what a church is, was church discipline.

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It was so important that they actually put it up there as something that was necessary to define church.

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When you think about it, church discipline is something no one enjoys. I've counseled plenty of pastors as they've gone through issues and situations dealing with church discipline,

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I don't know a single pastor ever that ever enjoyed or had good sleeps before having to do church discipline.

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It's something no one looks forward to, no one wants to do, something that everyone wants to avoid, yet God would say it's necessary for the church.

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Now when we look at church discipline, the clearest passage that we have is Matthew 18.

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Now, I'm actually going to be headed out to the Philippines in a few weeks, in May, last two weeks of May, I will be doing a conference, a seminar on church discipline, getting a bunch of Filipino pastors together to talk about this, because there's such confusions on this.

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And so, as I'm out there, I plan to go through Matthew 18 in detail, because a lot of people don't always understand it, a lot of people have misunderstandings with all the steps, some people have three steps, there's actually four, so I want to quickly go through those steps and then

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I want to focus on what this other person's view was and why I think that it was not a good or fair representation of what the text says.

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Now, there's four steps, I believe, in Matthew 18. First, if your brother sins against you, you go and tell him, key word in there, alone.

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You go and tell him alone. If your brother doesn't repent, in other words, he recognizes there's a sin issue here, but he refuses to repent, then what you need to do is you need to go and call two or three witnesses.

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Now, those witnesses are there to witness the unrepentance. It is not, guys, you go and you tell them your side of the story, make sure they're in agreement with you, and once they're in agreement with you, then you go.

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No, they should be there to witness unrepentance. In other words, they're there to see that the person was not repentant.

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Then, if they're still unrepentant, then what you want to do is you want to go to the entire church.

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The leadership of the church should go and call everybody to call the person to repentance.

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That's the third step. Only after they refuse the entire church encouraging them to repentance, that's when you put them out of the church.

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Some people just skip that third step and put them right out of the church. Now, we've dealt with this in more detail in episode 24 of the rap report, so if you go through there, we go into a lot more detail.

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If you want more detail on how church discipline should be done, go listen to the rap report episode 24.

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Here's what I thought was interesting with this. I thought what was interesting was this person's position on church discipline focused on the word sin.

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If your brother sins against you, and one thing he did do well, we'll talk about this in a few minutes, is that he did say we should look at this in context.

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Very important to always do that. But here's what he did. He said the word sin really has to do with felonies.

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Now, the word for sin that we have here is the very common word from a common root, meaning to miss the mark.

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This is in the Greek, it's an aorist active subjunctive. Now what does that mean?

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The subjunctive is where I think this individual was getting his position. A subjunctive in the

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Greek is a mood that normally presents the verb action as being probable or intentional.

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And so the subjunctive can also express verbal actions in terms of mere possibilities.

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But I think he's focusing on the one part of it being intentional. Because he's saying it's where for serious things, for felonies.

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But here's the thing, that same Greek word that we have here in Matthew 18 .15,

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we also see elsewhere in scripture, for example, in Romans 2 .12,

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for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.

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That's a general thing when you're looking at it there, but let's get a little bit more specific. Because we will also see that this is used, and the free gift, this is

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Romans 5 .16, and the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin.

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This is speaking back of the sin of Adam. This is going back to what happened in the garden as that first sin.

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We will see this term is also used as for all sin fall short of the glory of God.

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So, when we see that this is a general sin elsewhere, you even see this, and this is the passage

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I think more interesting, is John 9 .2, when Jesus comes upon a blind man, and the disciples asked him,

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Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents? You see, they're asking who sinned.

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Could he have sinned if he's born blind? What sin could he have intentionally done as a felony against another?

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Now, their whole focus on this was that this was a sin that had to be done within community. This was a sin that would be committing an offense, a felony type offense, not a, hey, you offended me,

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I didn't like the way you said that type of thing. It had to be a strong case against someone that's breaking community, and his argument was this all had to be done within community.

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So, the argument that this podcast was making was that you don't do this against someone else.

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In other words, if you have someone who is outside of your own body of believers, your own church, you can't practice church discipline with them because they're not part of the body.

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I think that this process can be applied to everyone. I think it can be something that we can use the principles.

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Now, granted, we can't do those final two steps, really, because they're not part of the same body, but it can be done.

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I have done this where there was someone who was in sin, and he wasn't part of my local body, but he's still part of the universal body.

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I was able to call his pastor, explain the situation, have him meet with the person, and his pastor came to the same conclusion that I did that this person was in sin.

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The person ended up trying to leave the church to avoid the church discipline, but they ended up bringing the church to bring the guy to repentance.

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He wouldn't repent, and they ended up going and having to put him out of the church. Now, they did that locally because of something he was doing online elsewhere.

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He was actually stalking a female and basically causing her to be very nervous for her life for different reasons, and that's something that had to be dealt with.

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And so they dealt with it locally, but yet I'm not part of that body. Can I still follow through the principles?

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Yes, I can. I think that these principles do apply that basically outside the local church because we're all part of the universal church of Christ.

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There's one other aspect of the podcast that got me when we were looking at what he was saying, and that was basically that this just doesn't work.

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He's seen church discipline, it fails, and it hasn't been seen to work well, and therefore it shouldn't be done.

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Well, that's pragmatics. We should not define how the church should function by pragmatics.

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Just because something may not work well in other cases doesn't mean that we don't obey it. I've seen church discipline work well in many cases.

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Here's something that I've seen, though. I've seen preaching not work well by the world's standards.

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Should we give up preaching? Well, there are plenty of churches that do, and they do drama because it's far more entertaining.

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But the Scripture commands us to preach. See, we shouldn't let the world—by the way, the world is not in favor of Jesus Christ.

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They're not going to be supportive of biblical mandates. So when we're going to look to the world and pragmatics to define how the church should function,

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I would think that's a real problem. So when we look at this issue of church discipline, we can't look at it by saying, does it work?

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I think what we have to do is look at it, what does Scripture say? Now, I'll grant, for argument's sake, that in Matthew 18, the church as we know it was not formalized.

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Jesus is speaking here to his disciples prior to Pentecost, prior to what we would think of as the church.

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So some would say that he's speaking of this within the synagogue -type community, or the community of his disciples.

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The question is, when we look at this context, do these principles carry over into the church, and could

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Christ have had this future church in mind? I think he does, because when we look at the context of where he's speaking, when you look at the context, plenty of these other things fit for the church as a whole.

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The issues of pride and humility, he'll deal with an unforgivable servant right after this, dealing with the issue of having someone who owes someone something, but demands, even to pay up when they've been forgiven so much more, that's, we would still say, for the church today.

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So why would we exclude this one part when everything else before and after this, we would say, is for the church, and the principles still come forward.

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So I would see someone that's trying to argue that Matthew 18 is only for those serious offense, those things that are great offenses against someone, not just a little offense.

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Now I'm not saying you have to go against everything. You don't have to sit there and bring every little thing that someone does up.

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I actually would make an argument that you shouldn't do that. Because if you go to our website at our store, at Striving for Eternity, you'll see that we have a process of reconciliation card, it's a quick reference card.

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And if you were to get that card, it's a very helpful card when you are trying to work through these issues of church discipline.

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But if you get through the card, the first side of that card is all the things you do before going to the person.

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And all those things that you have there are going to be things, is this really a sin? Do I really need to go to the person?

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Is it just a preference issue? Can I let it go? There's not always a need to go to the person.

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There sometimes is a need, and that card helps to determine some of those things. Sometimes you think that there's a sin, and the sin really is with you.

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So these are things you have to evaluate before you go. And to say that it doesn't work, because maybe you've seen abuse,

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I don't think is a valid way of approaching these things. I don't think it's the way we should go about it, because when we do this, what we end up doing is, whether we are doing it purposefully or not, we are letting the world define how the church should function.

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And that is not a good thing to do. So I'm going to bring in a friend as a guest co -host today after this commercial.

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The 5 Solas Podcast, a weekly podcast hosted by James Watkins that is dedicated to the

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Reformed theological distinctives and their continued relevance for the church and world today. Grace alone, faith alone,

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Each week, from the rich insight of Reformation Christianity, we will be showing all the manifold ways in which this material helps challenge and direct the current church in its life of worship and witness, and confront the idols of our age with biblical discernment and a sound apologetic in a manner that is as open and transparent as possible, while challenging you to seek the glory of God in all that you do.

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Solem, Deo, Gloria. All right, that is the 5 Solas Podcast. That is a new podcast on the

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Christian Podcast Community. We like having them with us. A great podcast. If you have not been listening to them, you want to check them out.

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They've been going through, well, the 5 Solas of the Reformation recently. They have got some great content on there, and it is one you definitely want to check out.

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James is doing a great job there. So I have a guest from another podcast, and this guest, you've heard him before, he's been on here before, and if you listen to his podcast, you're going to know that I deserve a little bit of abuse.

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I'm going to say that up front. But he is the host of both

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Growth Project Radio and 5 Minutes with Danny Purvis.

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The only problem is I don't know that he understands what 5 Minutes actually means.

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And therefore, he's come up with a term for me, as he did on his show. He referred to me as a

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Time Lord. Danny, you still won't tell me really what a Time Lord is, because I don't watch

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Doctor Who. So Danny, I gave you a little bit of a hard time on your podcast.

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Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. I sent in a video, because you've been going through the New Testament at a slow pace, a good detailed pace, correct?

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That is true, yes. I've been going through it at a little quicker pace, because my two -minute daily podcast is, you know, the

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Rap Report Daily is only two minutes Monday through Friday, so I've got to be quicker about it. I should let you know that I probably will be finishing up the entire

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Bible this week. If not, I might carry over to early next week. No pressure.

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You just finished 2 Peter. You think this week you could finish up the entire

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New Testament? Well, it won't be this week, but it's very possible we could end up in a tie.

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It could be next week, because we're doing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. Ideally, we're doing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

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John tomorrow, and then we will do Jude and Revelation the following week. So it's possible we could end up in a tie.

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Well, I did say in the comments, because your show is live, so I was watching live and putting comments, and I did say

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I thought it would take you two weeks to actually just to get through Jude by itself. Yeah, yeah.

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That's not to say that it would not be possible for me to take two weeks to go through Jude. I just don't think it's likely that's going to be the case, even though, you know, there have been a few other times

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I thought we would have gotten through things a little quicker, so it is possible, yes. Yeah, you know, and I'm trying to think, you know,

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I was thinking of grouping Jude with 1st Peter, because there's so much similarity there.

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Instead of grouping 1st and 2nd Peter, I am probably going to do like you, I'm probably going to group all three of the

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Johns, and if I do that, I'll be done this week. So then I'll... If you're done this week, you win.

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Yeah. Whatever it is, you win. You win. So your co -host sent a thing on Facebook to bust on me, and I don't know how he did it.

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He made it look like it was actually in a dictionary for time lord, and he defined a time lord as, and he gave some nice Greek for it, so it looks like it came from the scriptures.

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A time lord is a person who takes it upon themselves to monitor the time of others. A fictional character from the show

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Doctor Who, Andrew Rappaport. Yeah, yeah. I don't think he, actually, I don't think he manipulated that at all.

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I think that's actually an actual entry into the dictionary. Yeah, that was pretty good.

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And you know, look, I like your five minutes with Danny Purvis, it's just never been five minutes.

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No, no. We call it five minutes of truth, you're right, and you're right, it has rarely, if ever, been five minutes.

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In my defense, and there are two of them, one, Robert spends a whole lot of time on that intro.

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So, you know, you can't count the intro, you gotta start counting from the moment I start talking, which makes it a little closer to five minutes.

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And the other thing is, you know, since we're talking about Greek, you mentioned some Greek words in your intro, and just now as well, you know as well as I do, there's a difference between chronos and kairos, and that both words defined as time.

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I'm a kairos guy, the quality of what happens in that time, not the time itself, so.

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Yeah, the thing I couldn't believe is you didn't know what a time lord was. Who does not know Doctor Who and what a time lord is?

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You really don't know how pop culture illiterate I am. You know what, I envy you to a certain extent.

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There's a lot of good that comes from that. Yeah, so, yeah, but you know, the five minutes of truth that you have,

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I'm just gonna say, anyone can go and listen to Andrew Rapport's Rapport Daily, and the two minutes is two minutes from start to finish.

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I mean, it includes the intro and the outro. Yeah, yeah, I know, but that's a minute and a half right there, so you really only get like 30 seconds.

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Well no, see, I don't do a long, I mean, my intro is maybe eight seconds. Fair enough.

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You just gotta get Robert Darin working on that. I know, I got it. Maybe it's an editing thing. So, hey, listen, before we get into discussing it, because I wanted to bring you on to discuss church discipline.

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For folks who may not have listened, you and I did a podcast not all that long ago where we talked about your book.

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You have a book that's out called The Marriage Pyramid. Yes. Yes. And so, with that,

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I want to just give a shout out for that and let folks know they can not only go and get that book.

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We do have also the fact that that is something we're giving away. And this is something that we're basically, if people want to share the rap report, whether it's this episode or any of the other episodes, any episode, as long as they share it on social media with hashtag rap report that's wrapped with two

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Ps, that will count any time during the month of May. And sorry, we're in April.

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Any time in the month of April. Not long, though. We're only a few more days in April.

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Yeah. Well, so maybe we should, since I have an insane May, we may have to just extend it so that I can have time to pick the winner.

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That's true. You're going to be pretty busy next month. Yeah. Yeah. So. Well, OK, so we'll do April and May.

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We'll give you till the end of May. And if you want. So there is an episode of The Rap Reporter, episode 53, that is

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The Marriage Pyramid with Danny Purvis. And if you download, if you share that one or this episode, it will count for two points.

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Any other episodes, one point. But just want to give that for folks. So Danny, let's talk about this issue of church discipline.

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I know you got an opportunity to listen to the same podcast that I did overall. Overall, what were your thoughts of their view on discipline and how would that differ from the position you and I would hold to?

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It was very similar to what you were talking about in your introductory segment there.

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One of the things. First of all, let me give credit where credit's due. He emphasized from the very beginning not to take these passages out of context.

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That is good, solid biblical theological advice. We do that way too often.

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As believers, we spend way too much time trying to mind the Bible for quotes as opposed to seeing what it really means within the context it was originally written.

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And so he does that. I think that's one of the first things he says is we have to look at this passage in context. He's exactly right.

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I think he got the context off a little bit, but I do appreciate what he said. There's also another thing that he said that I appreciated.

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And that is that we cannot use a tool like this for any perceived slight.

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It has to be for a legitimate, open, unrepentant sin. His point was, and some of the points that he made, this particular point

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I thought was really interesting. You kind of shy away from doing it because it's been misused in the past. Okay, well,

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I will acknowledge it has probably been misused in the past, I get that. But that's on us to redeem that.

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That's on us to make sure that we do it the right way. Not toss it aside simply because it has been used in the wrong ways.

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But I did see some, I did hear some things that I thought were kind of issues.

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And one of the two biggest reasons why people seem to shy away, at least in my experience, tend to shy away from church discipline is that they don't understand the theology that's related to the idea of church discipline.

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And they see it too much as being a punitive measure. It is not designed to be a punitive measure, not designed to be punishment.

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It's designed for restoration. And so I think a lot of what he was saying was couched in that mindset that this is all punitive.

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This is all from a punishment standpoint. And so I had some issues there with that.

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I didn't see it that way, don't see it that way from a scriptural standpoint. And so there were some issues like that that I thought were a little, they were different than I think the scripture teaches.

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They certainly are different than the way that I would look at it. I'm glad he's bringing it up. It's always good to talk about a subject like this.

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But to come to the conclusion, basically what I, my takeaway in listening to the podcast was we should almost never do church discipline.

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And you're right. There was this aspect of, well, it doesn't work. Well, here's the problem with it not working is exactly what you said before is at that point when we start talking about something not working, it's because we are introducing the world's philosophies into our theological paradigms.

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And we just simply can't do that. One of the biggest problems in evangelicalism over the last 20, 30, could be probably pushing 40 years is that we have invited way too much of the world in to what we do and to how we believe and how we talk about what we believe and how we act as a church and that we've got to stop doing that.

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And I found that to be one of the more significant problems. Yeah, I think what you were saying, because I picked up on a similar thing with you, the fact that to me it seemed like his view of church discipline was more the way the cults use it as a punitive thing.

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It's a control thing. You do what we say or we're going to excommunicate you. Where, when

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I describe it, and if you heard in the monologue section, I'm saying it's all about bringing them back.

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It's the restoration. That's the goal. That's what we see in Thessalonians.

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Even in the context of the Matthew passage, if you go right before Matthew 18, 15 -19, which is the passages you were talking about before, the passage right before that is talking about the believer that wanders away and bringing him back into the fold.

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So again, if you're talking about context, this comes right after that and that's the idea behind it.

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It is not designed, now, could there potentially be a punitive element to it?

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Well, it could. It could eventually get to that point. But three of the first four steps that you're talking about are not punitive at all.

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Really, the only punitive action is when you disassociate that person from the congregation. Correct.

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Yeah, and the thing is that I think if someone has the mindset that church discipline is a punishment, then maybe they come to that view that it's not biblical, because I mean,

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I think some of what he was trying to do was say he doesn't see it lining up scripturally because really his starting point was it's a punishment and God wouldn't punish the church.

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However, God does chastise his children. Yes. We know that from scripture. Yes. So, I think that really the problem that I noticed, and it seems you noticed as well, is the view that he has of what church discipline's purpose is was off.

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I agree. And when you start out with that, what I think is an errant presupposition, then every bit of your exegesis is going to be poured through that filter of being just a bit off.

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And really, you don't have to be off. I'm not a golfer by any stretch of the imagination. I can count on one hand how many times

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I've played it and probably still have fingers left over. But one of the analogies that I have heard come from that is that you could be off a micro inch centimeter from putting on the green, and depending how far away you are from the hole by the time you get there, it could be three or four feet off target.

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And so, I kind of see it that when you start out, even if you're just a little, almost right is not right. And so, when we just start out as almost right, when we get to the conclusion, we could end up being way off.

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My personal opinion, from a biblical standpoint, is that he's just a bit off on that. Yeah.

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And I think that we, as leaders in a church, have to very much be mindful of the fact that we don't want to use pragmatics as the means of determining how the church should function.

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I agree. When he said things like, well, it's been abused, or it never works, he may not have seen it work well, but just because it doesn't work, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing it.

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The question, as I said in the monologue, the question we need to ask is, does God want us to do this?

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Exactly. Is this what God prescribes? Yeah. And if God prescribes it, in my opinion, then it doesn't matter if it works or not.

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And he seemed to be really focusing a lot on the Matthew 18 passage, almost as if to suggest that, and I'm not saying he did do this, but almost it seemed to suggest that that's the only passage in the

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New Testament that refers to it. 1 Corinthians 5, 1 -13, 2

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Corinthians 2, 5 -11, Galatians 6, 1, 2 Thessalonians 3, 6 -15, 1

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Timothy 5, 19 -20, Titus 3, 9 -11. That's just a handful of verses that seem to be specifically talking about this idea of church discipline.

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So it doesn't even wash to say, well, this was before the church, and this was during the rabbinical time and the

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Levitical times, and it doesn't apply. First of all, that's Jesus, something like that.

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That causes a whole lot of other problems. What else are we supposed to look the other way on because it happened during a different culture than ours 2 ,000 years ago?

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So I just think he was just a little off on that, and as a result, his conclusions became pretty far off.

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And one of the things that I think for the church, I think, we need to be mindful of is that the things that God prescribes for us to do in the church are not the ways of the world.

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It's the foolishness of the world. It's the foolish thinking. In our day and age, preaching,

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I have so many people that will ask me when it comes to evangelism, well does it work?

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Is it successful? And I know what they mean by that. What they mean is you go out on the streets of New York City and you stand up on a soapbox and you proclaim the gospel, how many people get saved?

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I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I really don't. I can say that I know over the 12, 13 years that I've been going to Union Square in New York, I know of seven people who have contacted either me, four who contacted me, three who contacted other team members, and mentioned that they got saved.

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But they had to go out of their way to contact us. They had to know our name. Right. Right? Yeah, I've been going there for a long time, but what about the guy who just walks up there the first time, doesn't know who

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I am, doesn't know I'm there every week, and walks off, right? Yeah. He's got no way to contact me.

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He gets saved. How do I know? Yeah. And the reality is, Andrew, it's kind of none of our business, right?

31:47

Yeah. I mean, we're called to proclaim the gospel. That's it. What God does with that proclamation of the gospel, that's between him and the other person involved.

31:56

We don't have to answer questions like, how many people got saved? It doesn't matter if it was one or a thousand, it doesn't matter if it was none or a million.

32:03

That's not what we're called to do. I keep going back to Jeremiah, one of my favorite prophets in the Old Testament, Jeremiah, who was called by God from the very beginning and said, you're going to go out.

32:12

You're going to go in front of these people. You're going to preach my word. Oh, and by the way, not one person is going to listen to you.

32:18

You're going to be an abject failure. They're all going to reject you. And so it's not any of our business what

32:24

God does with his gospel. Our business is the proclamation of the gospel. You know, I teach that in a sermon that I get asked to do a lot is defining success in ministry.

32:33

I look out of Isaiah chapter 6, the passage you just referred to, because here people say, in the world sense, he failed.

32:41

He failed because everybody turned a deaf ear. Yep, absolutely. But that's exactly what God wanted.

32:47

Therefore, just doing what he did, the proclamation, the calling of judgment was exactly what

32:53

God wanted. And he was faithful. And that was successful because we tend to look at success from a worldly standard rather than looking at it as faithfulness.

33:06

Yes, we do. And that is, again, more of the world, I'll tell you. And I'm not casting aspersions.

33:12

And there were some good things that came out of this. But I was at Southwestern Seminary. I graduated in 1994.

33:18

If you know that year or that time period in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s, that was when the whole church growth movement started.

33:27

And look, there were some okay things that came out of that. But one of the significant downsides of that entire movement was, one, from a theology standpoint, it made us a mile wide and an inch deep.

33:40

We don't know what we believe or why it's true because there wasn't a lot of theology was de -emphasized, doctrine was de -emphasized, and feelings were emphasized more than anything else.

33:49

One of the other things is, we started evaluating church through the lens of the world. And that was a mistake that we are still suffering from.

33:58

MacArthur has a book, I think it's called The Vanishing Conscience, I forget which one, but he talks about the fact of pragmatics.

34:05

And that's really what was defining the church a lot. And the thing is, is that for us,

34:13

I believe, we have to be faithful. And why do I practice church discipline?

34:18

Because God says to do it. I mean, I don't enjoy it, it's not something I want to do,

34:23

I don't want to have to go and confront someone. Now, if I'm confronting them because I think you've done something against me, and you're going to make it right, that's a very different attitude than what we're seeing in these different passages when it talks about restoring a brother.

34:39

He's a brother. It's not, you know, and it's interesting because if you look in this passage, if your brother, you know, the word brother is a definite article.

34:52

It's a specific person. This isn't just anybody. This is someone who is a specific, a brother, like the brother.

35:01

So it's someone who you're close to, and it is much easier to ignore.

35:06

I know that many people use the verse that love covers a multitude of sins, and they use that to say, well, we should just ignore these issues.

35:13

Like, let it go. And there are times— Which is not what that passage is saying. Not at all. Not even close. And yet, there are times we can let things go.

35:22

I mean, if you do something to me, and it's not a big deal, I should be able to let it go. If I can't let it go, that might be revealing a pride issue

35:29

I have. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that, again, I want to give credit where it's due.

35:35

One of the things they mentioned in the podcast at the beginning, which I wholeheartedly agree with, and that he is exactly 100 % right on, is we have too many people in the church today.

35:45

Of course, it's outside the church too, but I'm not going to talk about that because we're not worried about that. But inside, it has seeped into the church, as the culture, unfortunately, too often does, is that his point was, just because somebody hurt your feelings, that doesn't mean that church discipline needs to get started.

36:02

You know, you don't have to go after every single person that says something that kind of rubbed you the wrong way.

36:09

And Ravi Zacharias has said many times, one of my favorite sayings of his is, what do we do with a culture that listens with its eyes and reasons with its heart?

36:17

And so, we can't pour these things through the filter of how they made us feel as much as, okay, is this a legitimate grievance?

36:25

Is this a legitimate, sinful thing, openly unrepentant, sinful thing that I need to engage?

36:30

Or is this something I just need to go on with my life about? There are much bigger fish to fry. And he did bring that up, and I want to give him credit for that because that's a legitimate point.

36:40

It is, because there's times where, you know, we sometimes will have, we think someone is thinking something.

36:46

We have a perspective of what someone, why someone did something, and they don't have that same view.

36:52

I've seen this countless times where someone's going to sit there and be like, well, you should have done this because of this.

36:58

And it's like, wait, but I didn't, I wasn't thinking that way. Yeah. So, I want to,

37:04

I want to talk about the role that church discipline has in the church, in the functioning of the church.

37:12

Does it have a purpose for the church? But I want to do that right after, I want to first let your co -host from your podcast explain to us propitiation.

37:24

In this is love, not that we loved God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

37:32

1 John 4 .10 The word propitiation, as used in this verse, is one of my personal favorite words in all of the

37:40

Bible. John Piper, in his book, 50 Reasons Why Christ Came to Die, defines propitiation as, quote, the removal of God's wrath by providing a substitute.

37:51

The substitute is provided by God Himself. The substitute, Jesus Christ, does not just cancel the wrath.

37:58

He absorbs it and diverts it from us to Himself. God's wrath is just, and it was spent, not withdrawn, end quote.

38:07

This very explanation of propitiation is what God used to open my eyes and heart to the gospel.

38:12

Do you know Jesus as your propitiation? This has been another Growing Moment with Robert Houghton.

38:18

And you can learn more about that with, you've listened to Growth Project Radio, where both

38:24

Danny and Robert are on there. When I'm not in the chat room distracting them, they get through much more information.

38:33

Yeah, I kind of, I was beginning to, I was beginning to smell a rat on that one. You know, I knew you were talking about being able to get to finish the entire

38:41

Bible before we would get finished with the New Testament. I kind of felt like you were, you were, you know, you were goading us on purpose last week to intentionally slow us down to ensure that now

38:51

I know you'd never do that. Actually, no, you said that, you said that on the podcast. I went, wow, I never even thought of that.

38:57

That's, I should have tried that. No, actually, that wasn't the thought because there is no fear on my part.

39:06

I have no fear because I don't think that you're going to make it. Even if you join all three

39:12

Johns together, you still have revelation. Yeah, and Jude. Yeah, and Jude's going to take you two weeks.

39:20

No, I was not trying to, because there actually wasn't a competition.

39:26

It was just giving you a hard time. I give you a hard time because of the five minutes of truth. Oh, yeah.

39:31

Usually not five minutes long, but I just figured I'd bust out a, I didn't know that Robert just, he's glued to the chat, you know?

39:42

Yeah, and see, here's where it's good that my eyesight is not as good.

39:48

I can't see the remarks. He can see them on the screen, but I can't, so he gets easily distracted with them.

39:55

Well, what was funny was he was reading different comments, and I'm giving funny comments, and he just started laughing, and then you'd look at him, and he was like, well,

40:04

Andrew's saying it'll take you two weeks to get through, Jude. Then I got accused of throwing you off, and I'm like, hey,

40:12

I wasn't the one reading comments to him. That's true. I just sent in the video.

40:19

So, folks, you'll have to, I'll make sure to drop the link to that episode where Danny was going over 1st and 2nd

40:26

Peter into the show notes of this show so you guys could hear that. It was just, I will admit,

40:32

I was cracking up at that. It was a lot of fun. And he was worried that it might throw you off.

40:38

It threw him off, not you. It way threw him off, yes. So, you know, a lot of people, when we talk about church discipline, they think it's something that's a bygone, something that we don't need anymore.

40:52

I think that there is some things that we can admit changed with the way churches are.

40:58

You know, if you look in the first century, there really was one church in a town. It's not like where in your town, in my town, there's, okay, maybe in your town, there's probably more churches on every street than mine because I'm in Jersey.

41:11

You know, I'm waiting for them to just outlaw them. But, yeah. But, I mean, we have in both of our hometowns, we have plenty of churches.

41:23

You'll have several different kinds of Baptist churches, Lutheran churches, Presbyterian churches. All different varieties.

41:30

Even some that would have the same denominational background, they didn't have that in the first century, right?

41:37

I mean, so you had a church of Corinth. If you didn't like the church of Corinth, you didn't go up the street, you know, to the second church of Corinth.

41:47

Yeah, you want to go into the first Presbyterian of Corinth. Yeah, exactly. And so, there is that aspect where I think the church discipline definitely played a bigger role when you have a village or a town where most people know each other.

42:04

If someone is going through this, everybody is going to know about it. I do think it had a greater impact back then.

42:13

Yeah, and I think that's kind of the picture that we're supposed to have with this. It wasn't that, if people walk away from this idea of church discipline that you have a bunch of people, several people, sitting in judgment over somebody else.

42:29

It was something they did. Well, what about the sin that's in their life? They don't have any right to be sad. That's not, if you think that is missing the point of church discipline.

42:38

Again, it is twofold, at least in my understanding. It is restorative to the person, and it keeps disunity from the body.

42:46

And when you look at how important that is, when you look at the second letter, St. Paul's second letter to the

42:51

Corinthians, really a fascinating letter. They're all fascinating, but really fascinating for the reasons, if you know, Paul founded the church at Corinth, obviously.

42:59

They knew him. They loved him. They had some significant issues there, which is what he wrote 1 Corinthians about.

43:05

Hey, stop acting like the world. You're doing things even the world doesn't do, and they find a point. And so he goes through this list of things.

43:11

Don't sue your brothers. No disruption during the Lord's Supper. All of these types of things.

43:17

And then something interesting happened. We know this because we can infer this from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, which is drastically different than his first.

43:24

Something happened. Either a person came into the body, or it was somebody who was already in the body, maybe that came from within, started bad -mouthing

43:33

Paul, started talking negatively about him, and it affected his relationship with the Corinthians extremely negatively, and negatively affected the body as a whole.

43:42

So much so that Paul, in 2 Corinthians, in chapter 2, talked about a visit that he took there that did not go well.

43:48

And another letter, previous to 2 Corinthians, that he'd written, that was a very painful letter for him to write because of all the things that were going on.

43:57

And so there was a lot of disruption in the body. There was a lot of chaos going on. There was a way it finally got straightened out.

44:02

And part of the reason that Paul wrote 2 Corinthians was because now this had all gotten straightened out, and he was back in good graces with them.

44:10

They were back in good graces with him. Things were going well there now. They had everything he got. But it's a really fascinating part of 2

44:17

Corinthians where Paul mentions the person who caused all the problem. And he said,

44:23

I'm paraphrasing here, but you can read this in 2 Corinthians 2, starting around verse 4, if my memory is serving correctly.

44:30

Basically, what he tells them is, look, you guys punished this guy, and that's good. Don't do anything more because you're going to drive him away.

44:38

Right now, we need to worry about loving him and restoring him back. This was the guy who caused the rift between he and the church that he founded.

44:46

And again, the idea behind the process was restoring that person, which

44:52

Paul emphasized, and healing the body. And so if we keep those in mind, then maybe church discipline isn't as, you know, this boogeyman that people might think it is.

45:03

Pete Well, I think that what we see throughout the scriptures, you see it in the passages you mentioned, 1

45:08

Corinthians 5, the purpose, the purity of the church, 2 Thessalonians, again, the purity of the church.

45:16

If you do not practice church discipline, you don't have a pure church. Pete You look at Acts chapter 5, when you have

45:24

Ananias and Sapphira, what do they do? They lie and deceive, and their lives were taken from them for that, and what happened?

45:33

Everybody was afraid. Jared Yeah. All of a sudden, purity mattered, like these little white lies.

45:39

No, it's a big deal to God. So, the purity of the church has an effect on,

45:46

I think, it has an effect on the way the world views the church. I think that you mentioned the church growth movement and all the stuff that went on back then, and it was an idea to kind of soften the church, make it where the world would be more appealed to the church, the church would be more appealing to the world, and the idea being that we would get more people in, more people, then they could hear the gospel, and yet the reality is,

46:09

I think what happened is they watered down the church, the purity of it, to where they're accepting of sin, they're accepting of bad behavior, because it's more about getting people in the church and getting butts and pews.

46:23

Pete That's exactly right, and one of the biggest problems we had with that was that we made the world comfortable with their sin, which is the exact opposite of what going to church is supposed to be about, to be honest with you.

46:33

That's right, and the thing is that when we do that, now, has the world had a better view of the church since that?

46:40

No, it has a worse view. Now the view is, well, gee, why should

46:45

I bother? Because now they look at the church, and the church looks like the world, because it's not pure.

46:55

And that's what's appealing to people, that when they look at a church that really takes sin serious,

47:00

I'm not saying there's sin police and everyone's looking at everybody's life, but when you have a church that takes sin serious, it is a church where people want to go because it is appealing.

47:13

One of the things, when John MacArthur started the church 50 years ago, when he started over there at Grace Community Church, he implemented church discipline, and people said, you're going to lose the church, everyone's going to leave.

47:26

The exact opposite happened. The church grew. Why? Because those that were genuine believers that want to grow, that want to be around people that are going to encourage and be good for their own spiritual well -being, they're going to see that as a place to go.

47:47

I don't want to go to a church where they're tolerating sin. No, I want to be held accountable.

47:54

I want, if I step out of line for somebody to call me on it. It's interesting, being in the pulpit and preaching and teaching like I have for the last 20 plus years,

48:03

I've had people almost seem hesitant to challenge me on something that I may have said from the pulpit because they like me or they were friends or whatever the case may be.

48:15

I always tell them the same thing. If I'm wrong, you are doing me a favor. You are doing me a favor if you point out where I've been, even if it was accidental errancy.

48:26

If I'm wrong on this, you're helping me by doing this. That's the idea behind church discipline.

48:34

It's just a reminder to me that I am not the same person I was before I came to Christ.

48:43

And as a result, I need to be held accountable for the things that I do that are contrary to what

48:48

God has called me to do. I don't want to live my life that way. So it's interesting. You mentioned the

48:54

Hebrews passage about God chastening or chastising his own. It's to me one of the most fascinating parts of that passage.

49:01

That's in Hebrews 12, I think starting in about verse 3, maybe through 11 or 12. The word that's used there for, you know, don't resist the chastening or discipline of the

49:12

Lord. It is not a word that's anywhere used in the Bible as punishment. In fact, the word is where we get the word from child for child.

49:22

Paiduo, which just means child. So it means teaching a child. There's not now that obviously presupposes discipline and correction, but it is not a negative term in any way, shape or form.

49:34

That's the idea behind church discipline. Can it eventually lead to a person being removed from the congregation?

49:42

Yes. I'll be honest with you. I've been going to church since I was 20 years old. That's when I was saved. 53 years.

49:50

I have never been in a church that's done this church discipline, at least not up to that point. It may have happened in the first two levels, but I've never seen it in another one.

49:57

So it's not something that I have been around really at all. Now, I don't know what that means or they are they hesitant to use it or they just were just really bad about it and they should have been using it.

50:07

I don't know. But the idea behind it is to help people to restore a brother or sister in Christ, not to punish them.

50:15

Well, I'm glad that you mentioned that you're, you know, you want the correction. You know, the other day I saw you going into a store and.

50:24

You've got some pretty good eyesight team from all the way up there in New Jersey. Yeah. Here's the thing.

50:31

That's Google Earth, right? That's where you see it. Yes. Yeah. Where they drive through the streets and catch all kinds of things.

50:37

You know, there is a thing that you brought up and this is the thing I always try to tell people is that discipline, church discipline, is something we should do if we care about somebody.

50:48

Exactly. Because if somebody is in sin and we don't correct it, and I'm sure you've seen this plenty of times like I have, where someone is allowed to sin, they feel enabled because no one's corrected them in the past, and now they feel that no one should correct them because they've been doing it for so long.

51:09

Yes. And you take offense at it. Yeah, and then somehow you're in the wrong for bringing it up.

51:14

The reality is that when someone is allowed to sin, when they're blinded to their sin, or they make excuses for their sin, they justify it, then they are doing themselves spiritual harm.

51:26

They're not going to grow the way they should be growing if they're going to put away that sin.

51:32

So, the best thing we could do is to confront someone on their sin, but it doesn't mean we do it with a baseball bat.

51:40

We do it with love. Exactly, yeah. The whole thing of what we end up seeing is that we do it with love and compassion.

51:48

It's something that, I mean, I think you brought up the Galatians 6 passage, where you bear one another's burdens.

51:55

Yes. But you do that where the stronger should come to the weaker, but it's because he's stronger that he can go to the weaker, often because you've already dealt with it yourself.

52:06

You've already gone through these things. You understand it. It's not a time of beating someone up, but a time of coming alongside and discipling, because we're not going to improve, we're not going to mature if we're being stagnant, if we're being held back because of sin.

52:26

So, the best thing we could do is correct someone. It is loving. Absolutely, and going back to that Hebrews passage where it says, do not resist the chastening of the

52:37

Lord because he disciplines those whom he loves, the passage goes on to say that if we've never been disciplined by God, we are illegitimate.

52:45

We do not belong to him. So, it's out of love that it's done. You're exactly right. If we use that as the paradigm, as the underlying foundational issue and motivation for doing this, that changes everything.

52:57

It changes the way we look at it. It changes the way we do it. It makes us more likely to engage in this process in the correct and biblical way and loving way as opposed to any other way.

53:08

That's right. And, you know, the thing that is that we have to be mindful of the fact that when we carry this out, our heart attitude, our heart attitude is just as much in play as the thing that we're confronting.

53:22

Absolutely. So, you know, church discipline is an important thing. It is something that we do have to practice in the church, but no one enjoys doing it.

53:30

It's something that I think we could probably spend another couple of hours on, and I will be doing this in the

53:37

Philippines because I'm going to spend about three hours discussing this, and it is an important issue.

53:45

And we do have to check our motivation when we do it, but we shouldn't avoid it just because others abuse it or others have a view of punishment for it just because the cults use it as a way of controlling people.

53:57

Those things may be true, but that doesn't mean that we should put aside the Word of God and what it tells us to do just because it doesn't work or we've seen it abused.

54:09

Absolutely. The fear of doing something the wrong way shouldn't stop us from doing something the right way. That's a great line.

54:16

So, here's the thing. I want to encourage you folks to, you know, go and check out for more on this.

54:23

You can check out episode 24 of The Wrap Report. You can see where we've gone into some detail to try to explain some of this stuff.

54:31

I do want to let you know I will be going to the Philippines, and if you can help us out, that would be great.

54:38

I have said this before on this show. Both Justin Peters and myself, because of the need that's over there in the

54:44

Philippines, we've committed to going regardless of whether we can afford to. We're trusting God, but our monthly donors are who help us to do these sort of things.

54:54

And if you can help us, if you can support us so that we can do stuff like this, that basically makes it so we can do more of it.

55:06

And we're going to be going. I will have several conferences. We've got actually four conferences set up in the Philippines.

55:12

I will be doing a conference on church discipline. Justin's going to do a session on child conversion, and that'll be one day.

55:21

Then we go to another. We're going to be doing another conference. It'll be on open air evangelism, and then

55:26

I'm going to be taking a team of folks out to the streets in the Philippines. The next day is another conference where we're going to be dealing with discernment, and then we fly from Manila down to Cebu to do another discernment conference.

55:42

So we're going to have four conferences that we're going to do over two weeks. So be praying for us, but everything is covered once we land in the

55:51

Philippines. The thing is, we got to get there. You could help get this teaching over there.

55:57

If you want to help support us, you can go to strivingforeturning .org slash donate. You can see the

56:03

Patreon link. You could see the PayPal link, whichever you prefer. They're both there. You could donate and help us out.

56:09

You can also go to support Justin. He's also having to pay his own way. You can go to justiniwin .com.

56:17

Why do I send you to that instead of justinpeters .org? Because when you see the little video there, you'll get a good laugh at seeing the contest that Justin and I had back and forth of who could bless each other more.

56:29

If you go there and let them know that you got to justiniwin .com,

56:36

it helps me with bragging rights on the fact that you're blessing him more than I'm receiving.

56:42

So, and if you need explanation, there's a video on that page that explains it. But no, seriously, help to get us over there.

56:49

Now, before we take off, we got a couple more segments here. One that I'm going to have Danny help me out with and one that I'm going to start now, which will be on our, one of our ones we haven't done too often, but I want to get back to.

57:05

Now it's time for name that fallacy.

57:11

All right, so it is time to name that fallacy. And what I want to do is give a fallacy we see very common, especially amongst those that believe in evolution.

57:22

It is called confirmation bias. Now confirmation bias is a specific type of fallacy that occurs when a person is given information and they have a preconceived idea of something and the information basically contradicts the idea.

57:42

So what do they do? They throw out the new information. In other words, the only information that they accept is the information that confirms the bias that they already have.

57:54

Confirmation bias occurs when you see people filtering out facts or opinions that don't fit with their preconceived notions.

58:06

Now we see this very often and let us not think that it is just the evolutionists that do this because you and I as Christians can do this as well.

58:14

We can have preconceived ideas and information comes in and we just reject it.

58:19

What you heard during this show is both Danny and I not applying confirmation bias.

58:27

We could have very easily listened to this podcast and just said, nope, that is wrong because church discipline is the biblical way to do things and just ignored it.

58:36

But that is not what we did. We looked at the things that we heard that were correct. There was a lot that was said that was good in that podcast that we referred to.

58:45

But there's a lot of things in the conclusions and the motivations and the why that we disagree with. But we didn't reject the whole thing just because we have a preconceived idea that we should be doing church discipline.

58:58

That's something that I think a lot of people don't do and I hope that Danny and I could have been an example to you on how to study things out because even within Christianity, we're going to have things that we come to the scriptures, we come to different theological positions with people.

59:14

Maybe you're Baptist and someone else is Presbyterian and you're going to look at some different views. You're going to have differences.

59:21

We shouldn't reject what someone says out of hand just because we think that our preconceived ideas are automatically correct.

59:32

That would be confirmation bias. If someone presents you something and you just immediately reject it without even listening to it, then you may be guilty of confirmation bias.

59:45

So we always want to make sure that we understand the information given to us, that we're fair with the assessment of the information.

59:51

I think that you saw with both Danny and I that we tried to be fair with the other views that we were discussing here, but we're looking at what the scriptures were saying and saying that's really where we're going to try to get the answers.

01:00:03

Now, it would be unfair to say that that other podcast wasn't looking at the scriptures. No, they were. And they were looking at specific words that we addressed to say, well,

01:00:12

I think that the way they're interpreting it, it could be an interpretation. I just don't think it is the interpretation.

01:00:19

See, if I was to just reject it out of hand, that could be confirmation bias. So we want to be mindful of confirmation bias.

01:00:28

The other thing we want to do real quick, and this is where we're going to put Danny to put me on the spot.

01:00:33

This is, I don't think we got to do this last time that Danny was with us. And that is to play a game.

01:00:41

It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

01:00:48

All right. So we've been doing, gotten some interviews in and different things. We haven't been able to play this game in a while. And I don't think I played this with Danny when he was on last time.

01:00:55

So I'm going to explain the rules to Danny and he is going to put me on the spot. The purpose that we play this game is because many people find evangelism easy once we get into spiritual discussions.

01:01:08

But getting into spiritual discussions, well, that's the issue. How do we go from the natural to the spiritual?

01:01:14

Well, you can practice doing that. And that's what this game is about. It is about practicing how to transition from the natural world to the spiritual world.

01:01:25

And what we want to do is help you to do that by making it into a game, something you can play.

01:01:31

We're going to play this now. Danny is going to give me something. I have no idea what this is. He's going to give me something and I have to transition from whatever object or whatever thing he gives me to the gospel as if we're having a conversation on something.

01:01:44

And I have to transition from what he gives me to a gospel presentation. And you get to see if I do it really well or just kind of stammer and think about things and go all over the place until I get an answer.

01:01:58

Sometimes that happens. But when you're in a conversation, you can keep having a conversation, asking questions, continue until you figure out, how am

01:02:05

I going to get to the gospel? If that's your goal, you can always take a conversation to the gospel. It sometimes takes a little bit longer.

01:02:13

So, Danny, if you could give me something and don't give me something from Dr.

01:02:19

Who, which I won't get, because you're probably going to, I should specify because you'd probably say, you know, something from Dr.

01:02:27

Who about a time Lord or something. I don't even know what else is in Dr. Who. And I'd have no clue. I promise.

01:02:32

Even though you're, even though you're, you're, you're doctor in the rules here a little bit, you said anything, but then you're limiting. Okay. Okay.

01:02:38

You can give me. I will stay away from. If you want to go with Dr. Who, you can do it. I will stick to the rules.

01:02:43

I'll stay away from pop culture things. No, no. I understand. I was accused on your show of, of, of being, being a legalist to the rules.

01:02:51

And I see that you want to be a legalist to the rules. So I don't, I don't want to, you know,

01:02:57

I will open it up to anything. Okay. All right. I'll show some mercy though. No pop culture references.

01:03:03

So if I get this right, I can just mention any, what subject, anything I want to make sure.

01:03:08

You got it. So I can ask you, basically, I could ask you a question about how you feel about something and it could be anything

01:03:15

I want and you'll take it from there. That's the, that's my job. We'll see how well

01:03:20

I do. Okay. All right. Let's do this one then. How do you feel about those, those

01:03:26

Tesla electric cars? Well, actually I've never driven one.

01:03:31

I wouldn't mind if anyone out there wants to give me a Tesla, I'm open to it. They kind of blow up though, from what

01:03:38

I understand, they have some issues. You mean with the batteries? Yes. Yeah.

01:03:43

You know, I have, I actually have a friend of mine who was thinking of getting a used Tesla because of the fact he, he drives a thousand miles a week.

01:03:51

Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so when you're driving that much, his argumentation was, if he got to use

01:03:58

Tesla, he can't afford a new one, but if he got to use one, it actually would save him on gas.

01:04:03

And it, it's actually a good stewardship. And he was asking me whether, because he, he is, you know, in ministry and he was concerned if you pull up to a church and you're driving a

01:04:16

Tesla or, or people think, know that you own a Tesla, there's a stigma with that where, oh, that's a lot of money, but if he got it used and got it at a good price, but it's with the amount of driving he does, it would actually save him money.

01:04:30

But here was the one thing that I said to him, here's the question, how long does the battery last? Yes. You know, that's the thing that we haven't really gotten enough data on to see how long is this going to last?

01:04:42

Because you may buy a used one and find out a year later, you're buying a new battery. And then what's the cost of the battery?

01:04:47

Those batteries are expensive. Exactly. That could be the cost of the car. Yeah. And so even though this looked like a really good deal, it looked like something that made a lot of sense on paper because it's saving him money.

01:05:00

It's doing all that. He had to count the cost to say, you know, is it worth it in the long run? Because there's a lot of unknowns that, that I don't know, but there's some things he did know.

01:05:10

He did know eventually the battery was going to go. He just didn't know how long. He knew that that battery was going to be more than he could afford to pay.

01:05:20

So looking at that, he had to make decisions. You know, that's very similar to other things because there are things in our life.

01:05:27

Other areas, we have to count the cost. There's things we know. For example, you and I both know that we're going to die one day.

01:05:34

We don't know when that's going to be, but we have to count the cost for what's going to happen the moment after we die.

01:05:40

Because you and I both know that we break God's law. If we're going to be honest with ourselves, we lie, we steal, we look at with lust.

01:05:47

God says that that's committing adultery of the heart. We break God's law. We'd be guilty in his sight.

01:05:52

We would be deserving of the punishment. And he says the punishment is eternal death. We would deserve that.

01:05:59

But God made a way of escape. God himself came to earth, died on a cross in our place, taking the punishment of sin upon himself that we could be set free.

01:06:09

That's the good news. And so just like we have to count the cost of buying a Tesla, there's some things we know and things we don't know.

01:06:16

The same thing we have to do with death. We know it's coming. We don't know when. But we do know what happens afterwards because our creator told us so.

01:06:26

So that's how I would go from a Tesla. All right. Very good. I'm impressed. That was, you didn't even have to think about that one too hard.

01:06:32

Oh no, I was. No, the thing with this game is that the more we play it, the more we practice this, the better we get.

01:06:41

I'm doing this on the show. I mean, everyone wants to throw something difficult at me. And I would not be able to do that if it wasn't for years, 30 plus years of practice.

01:06:52

Well, yeah, about 28 years of practice. My first pastor used to play this game and all the leaders in the church, part of leadership training that he had, leadership training would start on Sunday night and he would drop an object, a set of keys, a glass of water, something, and you had to turn from whatever he put on the table to a spiritual conversation.

01:07:13

The first time I said, I can't do this. I could, you know, he did it in moments and week after week of doing it, it took me four or five minutes down to two minutes down to a couple, you know, like 30 seconds,

01:07:26

I would start to figure out how to do a transition. And really the only thing it took was practice.

01:07:31

And yet this is the one thing for so many people, they say, I would love to evangelize. I just don't know how to get into a spiritual conversation.

01:07:38

I pray that God will give me an opportunity. I don't pray that God gives me an opportunity to share the gospel anymore because I know that I could transition any conversation to the gospel because of practice, because I've been practicing it.

01:07:50

Now, sometimes it doesn't always work as well. I could tell a story about I was in San Francisco and I'm talking to this young lady, she had purple hair.

01:07:59

I started the conversation asking her, what do you do for a living that you can have purple hair, right? Because not too many businesses are going to let you do that.

01:08:07

And we started a conversation and I thought of one way to transition. It didn't work.

01:08:13

I thought of another way, just having regular conversation with her. Turns out she was waiting for somebody.

01:08:19

I just thought, okay, I'm going to transition. I was just about to transition and the guy she was waiting for walks up and there went the opportunity.

01:08:28

Now, that was a case where I kept trying to think of different ways to transition. I was trying different topics and she just wasn't going in the conversation that way.

01:08:37

And eventually he just says, so what are you doing in California? And so instead of trying to find some tactful way to transition,

01:08:46

I just came right out with it. I said, well, I'm here because I'm a Christian speaker and I'm at a conference and I was speaking on the good news of Jesus Christ and that's actually what

01:08:56

I'd like to talk to you about if I can. A really bad transition, as you might say, but it was the one that was there, you know?

01:09:04

And so, you know, I don't blow, I don't worry about like, oh, I blew it. I didn't give a good transition.

01:09:11

Doesn't matter on how I get to the gospel as long as I get there. And that's been one of the things that has paralyzed people for so, so many years is this unthinking that we can mess this up.

01:09:23

We cannot mess this up. God is sovereign. He is going to use us.

01:09:28

He doesn't want our ability. He has all the ability in the universe. He wants our availability. He's going to use us where we are.

01:09:35

We cannot mess this up. The only way we can mess this up is by not doing it in the first place. We're not responsible for other people's salvation.

01:09:41

We're responsible for proclaiming the gospel and God would use us in those circumstances. So, you know, when you come to the understanding that God is the one who's sovereign, this isn't a sales pitch.

01:09:51

I don't have to close the deal. I don't have to, it's not all of that stuff. I could give the greatest, for lack of a better word, presentation of the gospel to 10 people sitting there and everybody walks away and everybody, you know, never wants to hear it again and never comes to faith.

01:10:03

That's not on me. We cannot hose this up and I can't tell you what a great relief that was for me when

01:10:11

I really came to the point where I understood that God is sovereign over everything, including salvation.

01:10:17

I cannot mess this up. Yeah, that was, I had the same experience where I used to, I had that freeing feeling and realizing it's not up to me to save them.

01:10:24

The fact that I could see people who think it is up to them. I watched a guy when I was over in England at the

01:10:31

Olympics and I saw a guy that was chasing someone down. The guy wanted to leave the conversation, but this guy's like, no, no, no,

01:10:36

I got to convince you. It's like God is sovereign. God will save who he wants to save.

01:10:42

Boy, is that freeing. Oh, because, you know, like you worry, what if I say the wrong thing?

01:10:49

You can't. No, no. I mean, when you say it, that's what God intended for you to say, right?

01:10:55

That's exactly right. God ordained that. And God can ordain, you know, the guy who led me to Christ said something really offensive and stupid.

01:11:02

He said something about knowing how I, my mother passed away, knowing how I could get very emotional about that.

01:11:08

He said something about my mother that was, it was theologically incorrect, but it got me thinking.

01:11:13

So God could use something that could be offensive even. And I know others who've said that, you know.

01:11:20

And I remember a friend of mine who was sharing the gospel at the gas station. I know, okay, in 49 states, you guys don't understand this, but in New Jersey, you're not allowed to pump your own gas.

01:11:31

You can't pump your own gas. I realized that when I went to Princeton Seminary. That really threw me off. Yeah.

01:11:38

And so here he's, you know, so the nice thing you can pull into any gas station, there's someone to share the gospel with. And my friend

01:11:43

Joe was sharing the gospel with this guy. And this guy had just been divorced. He's very emotional about it.

01:11:50

And Joe said something that afterwards, he kind of said he wished he didn't, because he kind of realized it came off really bad.

01:11:58

But he said something about the guy's divorce that really upset the guy. And he basically said, you know, you keep saying you're not a sinner, but the fact that you're divorced shows that your wife disagrees with you.

01:12:13

And the guy went to throw a punch at him. And he ducked under it.

01:12:19

And the guy, he told me the guy actually spun completely around, fell back against the pole, slid down the pole, put his hands in his face and started bawling his eyes.

01:12:30

And the throwing of the punch was the last effort before he just collapsed and just broke down and ended up getting saved.

01:12:40

You know, you could say dumb things. It doesn't mean we should try to say dumb things. No, I agree.

01:12:45

But in an effort of sharing the gospel, God's going to use whatever he wants to use. And it doesn't mean that if I say something stupid, someone didn't get saved because of me.

01:12:56

Exactly. That's exactly right. When I think back to the Pharisee is telling Jesus to tell his disciples to be quiet.

01:13:03

And Jesus said, if they're quiet, even the very rocks will cry out, which means from an ability standpoint, we're about as useful to God as a bunch of rocks.

01:13:10

But he chooses to use us. He uses us in those moments to get his message across and get his message of salvation to those who desperately need to hear it.

01:13:19

That's right. So again, folks, if you want to share this episode or any of the rap report episodes with hashtag rap report, rap with two

01:13:26

Ps, share those on social media at the April and May. We're going to do both months.

01:13:31

So you still have time. We will be giving away two copies of the marriage pyramid.

01:13:37

You say, but I'm not married. If you ever intend to get married, you want to get this book beforehand.

01:13:44

It's going to solve a lot of the problems you're going to have after marriage if you don't understand the principles. So I recommend this book.

01:13:51

I think it's a really good book to get and get a hold of and get the understanding of this down because there's some great principles.

01:13:59

You can go back to the episode where Danny goes through this book. The episode of 53 of the rap report where married the marriage pyramid there, we go through that.

01:14:10

Go check it out. Get you more excited about the book, but then share any episode with hashtag rap report.

01:14:16

You enter to win the contest, and we're going to give away two copies of Danny's book, and we are thankful for Danny for providing those.

01:14:24

I don't. We didn't pay for those. I don't think you donated those. So I should mention that up front that this is from his donation.

01:14:32

So you guys definitely want to go and thank him, especially if you win. Check out growth project radio and five minutes of truth with Danny Purvis to get more of his insights.

01:14:43

Now, Danny, just to conclude, I know next week on my weekly,

01:14:49

I plan to well, I'm not sure actually what I have. I have a couple different things planned, so I don't know which

01:14:54

I'm going to end up doing. I may end up doing some stuff on some cultural issues, but I know what

01:15:02

I'm going to do when I wrap up my week, my daily. Okay, so I think my wife gave me this idea.

01:15:08

I think what I'm going to do for the daily is start doing an attribute of God in two minutes.

01:15:14

So I think I'm going to go through all the attributes of God in two minutes. So Danny, we're going to see now.

01:15:20

Do you think you could do one attribute of God an hour? Yeah, that might be a little difficult.

01:15:29

It might be. We might have to take a couple of episodes for each attribute. All right.

01:15:36

Well, I appreciate you coming on and folks check out not only the,

01:15:41

I should mention you're also pastoring a church. I know I didn't mention that at the beginning. I always mention your podcast, but you don't mention your church.

01:15:47

Yeah, Harmony Community Church in Central Florida, just outside of St.

01:15:53

Cloud, actually a part of St. Cloud, Florida. It's a great little church and we live stream the service every

01:16:01

Sunday at 10 a .m. So if you're not in the local area and will come visit us, you can check out the live stream.

01:16:08

That's at Harmony Community Church in Harmony, Florida. And what's the website? It is

01:16:15

Harmony Community. That's a really good website. I know Robert's the guy that does the technology.

01:16:21

Yeah, he does all that stuff. You know, you guys don't mention the church as much on your podcast.

01:16:28

I know because we wait till the end and by the time, you know, I don't know if you know this, but sometimes we get a little rushed at the end because we're running over a little bit.

01:16:37

I don't know if you knew that or not. No, wait, you run over? You mean you run out of time?

01:16:43

Yeah. So that's because you do this time -blocked show where I could go over a little bit on my hour -long show like we're doing on this episode.

01:16:52

And it's not a problem. I'm not a legalist about this. Yeah, so we always save that till the end.

01:17:01

And then we're so rushed to close out the show that we forget a lot of stuff. And that's one of them.

01:17:06

But it's www .harmonycommunity .church. And so that's the website.

01:17:12

And you can join us there. We have a Facebook page too, Harmony Community Church on Facebook. And you can catch some of the previous messages.

01:17:20

We live stream and record each message every Sunday. And if anyone is going down to, say, Disneyland or Disney World, whichever one it is.

01:17:27

No, Disney World. Disney World. They could stop by for church on Sunday. Absolutely.

01:17:33

Yep. We are about, probably about 40 minutes from Disney World's property.

01:17:40

There you go. Okay. So, you know, folks, if you're in that area, please check out that church because, you know, being that, if you listen to his teaching, you know that you're going to get some solid teaching.

01:17:52

So, Danny, thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you. And we look forward to seeing what you're going to do when you wrap up the

01:17:58

New Testament on Growth Project Radio. Yeah, something that's going to take a long time.

01:18:04

I think any topic with you could take a long time. All right, we'll see.

01:18:11

We're going to have to change some things now, just to show you. All right, folks, until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

01:18:20

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:18:28

Without the law. That's a general thing when you're looking at it there. But let's get a little bit more specific because we will also see that this is used to say in passages where it talks about, um, and I just lost my place.