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Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Wherever you are listening to this. This is Kofi Edwine and I'm here with Eddie Casillas. And this is the second episode of the Cutting Room Floor podcast.
Eddie, how you doing, man?
Really good, man. Glad to be here and glad to contribute thoughts and opinions and looking forward to the conversation.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, this is like I said, our second episode. And in our second episode, we want to talk about the message that was preached this past Sunday on what is the purpose of the church. So just to give a bit of a summary of what was said in the message, I said that there are three purposes to the church when we read the Bible, that the church exists for the exaltation of God.
It exists for the edification of God's people and exists for the evangelization of the nations. And so we took some time, we looked at scripture and saw how scripture informs us, I should say, on all three of those purposes.
So nice 60 second summary of what the sermon was about. And so what we're hoping to do is like we did in the last episode, just have some questions, some discussions on what the nature of the church is, what the purpose of the church is, and just kind of have a conversation going on from there.
So Eddie, I know you've got some questions, so let me turn it over to you.
Great.
Thanks, Kofi. A really good sermon, by the way, just learning so much about the nature of the church and why we exist and how we glorify God. One of the first things I'd like to talk about, obviously, is what is the purpose of the church?
And well, there's like what scripture says, what the church is. And then there's like what people say. And at the beginning of your sermon, you mentioned that. And one of them was about the fact that we're not a social gospel church.
And some people don't might not know exactly what that is. And so can you kind of give us a little more information on that? Like, what do you mean by that? Are you saying we shouldn't be social with people?
And so I know there's got to be someone out there who's just wondering about that. So I appreciate your take on that.
Sure. So when we talk about the social gospel, we're not saying that we should not be social with people. The social gospel was a particular term that came around the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century.
It was a way of looking at the Christian mission that basically said that the Christian mission is to bring about the kingdom of God, that the church is an extension of the kingdom of God. And so if the kingdom of God is in society, then it's going to have real world impact on matters of not just men's eternal salvation, because nobody disagrees about that much.
Where the dispute and the debate came in was, OK, what about issues of poverty? What about issues of women's suffrage? You know, the number of issues got larger and larger and larger as time went on. And so what the social gospel said was that the heart of the gospel message is not just or in some cases is not at all about the individual salvation of sinners.
It's about the corporate manifestation of God's kingdom through social activism and basically making the world a better place. One of the big names associated with that was a man called Walter Rauschenbusch.
In fact, he coined the term the social gospel. And really, it came out of theological liberalism. This was not a emphasis of evangelicals or as they were then called fundamentalists. This is a very liberal idea, which makes sense when you think about it, because liberal Christianity doesn't really care about the supernatural.
It's primarily about the faith experience of the worshipper or the professing Christian. That seems to be the primary concern. So you can see how out of that sort of Petri dish, if you will, this thing called the social gospel emerges.
But that's what we mean when we say we're not a social gospel church, that we don't view Christianity either primarily or exclusively in terms of its social impact. Now, where the gospel is, of course, preached and people believe in Jesus, of course, it's going to have an impact on society.
We welcome that. We want that. But there's a difference between having an impact in society because of the preaching of the gospel and the transformation of hearts. That's very different, in my opinion, from, well, we're just going to go ahead and make everything about that.
Those are two very different things, in my opinion.
Maybe you can kind of help me out, because when I think about the social gospel church, I think of churches who want to argue for things like inclusivism, including certain things that scripture plainly condemns and doesn't agree with.
And so we're not saying we're not saying that the gospel is only for the war. We're saying the gospel is inclusive of everybody. Everyone needs the gospel and that transformation of the Lord, regardless of their status.
So any status can come to church and hear the gospel and be saved. Right. And so what's the other side of the social gospel church? What are they saying about us or conservative Christians that might not be correct or maybe a misrepresentation?
So the classic misrepresentation that they put forward was that, you know, you evangelicals, as they said back then, you fundamentalist types, you only care about the salvation of men's souls. You're trying to basically beam people up to heaven as best you can and as quickly as you can.
That's all you care about. You don't care about their physical, temporal suffering. So you don't care about poverty. You don't care about their economic status. You don't care about their social status.
All you care about is their souls. And as long as their souls are safe, you guys are happy to live in your comfortable homes while the poor suffer. That was the misrepresentation they put forward, which wasn't true to begin with, actually.
You know, the historic church has always cared about the poor and the needy and sought to help them as best we can. But where I think the social gospel went awry was they wanted to make caring for the poor and dealing with social ills the primary thing, rather than that being a outworking of our gospel convictions regarding the nature of man, the nature of God and the nature of God's people.
Mm hmm. Awesome. Well, that's really helpful. So thanks for that kind of highlighting that and why we don't or not technically a social gospel church. If anything, we're just a gospel church. Exactly.
For everyone, regardless of status. That's a beautiful, wonderful thing. Well, let's go on to the next one. These questions I'm asking and things I'm bringing up, I call them sort of preliminary remarks before the ceremony started.
Because you like to do that, make sure that you're clear and you give us clarity. So we're not a social gospel church, but we're also not only an evangelism and mission only church. You're trying to strike a sort of balance there.
And so can you kind of highlight that a little more?
Sure. So what you'll typically hear is, you know, our church exists for the purpose of seeing lost people come to Jesus. That's it. So on Sunday, I was a little bit cheeky and I quoted somebody. And I didn't say who I was quoting.
But since this is the current room floor, I'll say who I was quoting. That was a quote from Stephen Furtick. In fact, it was one of the first Stephen Furtick clips to go viral. And he kind of explained, he tried to not explain, he tried to justify what had happened.
Essentially, he was, you know, having a, how do I put it, he was having a rough Sunday. It had been long, all the rest of it. And he didn't mean to say it that way, but he agrees with the sentiment of what he said.
OK, but that makes it any better. But you can actually go to YouTube and you can find that clip. Where he basically like berates, and I left a bunch of it out where he's like berating people in his church to say, we want more Bible study, we want to go deeper.
And he's like, basically, forget you wanting to go deeper, like you're here to basically work. So be quiet. Do as you're told and bring more lost people so that they can come and hear you, come and hear the gospel.
Now, we all want to be evangelistic in our posture. I've talked about it in the context of our own church, you know, a desire for us to be more evangelistic in our efforts by all means. But really, when I say that we are not solely devoted to evangelism and mission, I'm really taking aim at the sort of seeker sensitive, seeker driven churches, because on paper, that's what they say their aim is.
To the exclusion of building up believers, and I would argue even to the exclusion of exalting God. And for anybody who's listening, who thinks I'm being really harsh, here's as I think it was radio host Paul Harvey used to say the rest of the story.
Well, a few years ago now, I was back in London. So this was before 20, honestly, maybe 2011, 2010, maybe earlier than that, even Willow Creek Community Church out in the Chicago area, which is really one of the mother churches of the seeker movement.
Bill Hybels was the longtime pastor till he was removed for some bad behavior. We won't get into all of that for now. But Willow Creek really influenced a whole generation in the early 90s to pursue the sort of seeker sensitive model.
Well, Bill Hybels started to realize something was wrong in their church. And so he did what most seekers and churches do. He did some market research. In his case, he did a survey and they put out a study called the reveal study.
You can look this up. This isn't conjecture and be made up like they did it. The fact you can probably still find the video of him talking about it. You know, the fascinating thing was about that, Eddie, when they put this study out, they said, we have a problem because they found that though they had lots of people coming to faith in Christ, they put it nowhere near as many people were growing in their faith.
So there was little engagement with scripture. Obviously, they would say that, OK, we offer that stuff, you know, during the week. And if people want to go deeper, they can. But here's the thing. You basically told them they didn't have to.
So they believed you and they didn't. And then years down the pike, you're like, wait a minute, like we've got nobody growing in our church now. Bill Hybels also had a terrible, terrible, terrible answer, in my opinion.
What he said is we need to be better at training people to be self feeders. So in other words, train them in how to study the Bible for themselves, how to pray, how to basically be a good Christian, train them so that they can do that by themselves.
In fact, I'll let you answer this one. What's wrong with that answer?
Oh, man, you don't. You know, God doesn't grow you in an isolated corner, he uses people.
Exactly. Like you basically said, we'll give you the tools to go do that by yourself. And we're just going to keep on doing what we've been doing. Oh, that's what you basically said. We're not going to provide any opportunities for growth.
We're not going to make that a equal priority with evangelism. Funny, the exaltation of God didn't even come up. So it is what it is. But we're not going to make that equal with edification. Oh, no, no, no, no.
That's you do that on your own time. On our time, we're going to focus on evangelism. And when I heard the report on people that Willow Creek is changing, I was like, no, they aren't. The DNA remains the same.
They're just trying to make more of an effort for the stuff outside of Sunday. Well, the reality is when the vast majority of the people at the church only attend on Sunday, what do you think is going to happen?
So that's what I mean when I say we're not just about evangelism and mission, we are about evangelism and mission, but we're not just about that. We're also about seeing those who come to faith in Christ equipped and growed up.
I know it's bad grammar, but great theology and growed up and matured so that they too can serve both their brothers and sisters and the wider world through the proclamation of the gospel. So, again, when we say that, we're not saying no evangelism.
We're just saying that's not the sum total of everything.
Well, you've used the word a few times, probably three or four times, and so I'm just going to play like the audience and assume that there are some people who don't know exactly what the seeker sensitive movements and or churches are.
So what is that?
OK, well, simply put, the seeker sensitive churches said we build churches. And again, I'm kind of broad brushing it, so people who watch this later and want to comment, don't burn the comment section down with I'm broad brushing.
But in broad strokes, the seeker sensitive movement basically said that we primarily want to reach those who are unchurched or dechurched. So since we want to primarily reach them, what we want to do is.
We want to basically build a church that people want to come to. So as the name suggests, we want to be sensitive to those who are seeking the truth. So rather than be like a traditional church with traditional worship and all of those things, you know, we're much more user friendly.
You know, the music we might use, some of them do, and people can argue with me or you want. We can multiply clips till the next morning, if you will, of churches basically that will employ secular music or this big gimmick.
Um, I mean, you just go find the clips. In fact, there's a documentary if you want to see this up close and personal. There was a documentary that was done a few years ago, years ago called Church of Tears.
T-A-R-E-S, Church of Tears. If you look it up on YouTube, I want to say, in fact, give me a moment. Let me double check it. I've got YouTube open right here. It's like all of us, I spend more time on YouTube than I should.
Um, Church of Tears, there you go, Church of Tears documentary.
It is three hours long. OK, so it wasn't quite as long as I thought it was, but three hours long, still a long time. I mean, it's long, but I thought it was four. But you've got three hours of them explaining how it is that the Seeker Sensitive Movement came about.
And they have the clips of, you know, churches having like full on circuses on their stage, getting guys to do like, um, not BMX. What's the one with the really souped up motorbikes? Is it motocross? Yeah, I think so.
I'm like getting a guy to do like tricks on stage. This isn't in that documentary, but years ago there was a prominent preacher from when I grew up that I remember very well, who ziplined into church, like onto the stage, like all these sorts of gimmicks.
And that's a word I'll use a lot when I talk about Seeker Sensitive churches. They like their gimmicks, you know, these little tricks that you do to kind of grab people's attention in a cheap way. Again, not all of them do that, let's be fair, but a lot of them do.
And, you know, their churches aren't churchy, you know, we're not trying to just sing the same songs we've always sung, you know, we'll do secular songs, we'll do secular dances, you know, we'll do actor movies, sermon series and stuff like that.
And everything is super relevant to your everyday life. You know, you can't really, and I'm being somewhat facetious when I say this, but you can't really differentiate it from a TED talk or your favourite YouTuber.
Like, in a nutshell, that's what the Seeker Sensitive church is. It's what can we do to attract those who might potentially be interested versus what I think is the biblical model, which is the church gathers first and foremost for the exaltation of God, then for the edification of God's people, and finally, for evangelism.
Whereby, oh, as a result, I should say, we are conscientious that our worship, first and foremost, doesn't please the people who turn up. It pleases God because we don't worship you, being the general you, we worship God.
So we want our worship to glorify him. We want our worship to build up believers in their faith. That's why the word of God is so central. Go, actually, did we talk about that last week? Yeah, we did.
That, you know, the word of God is central in our worship. We want it to be central in our worship because that's how God's people grow. And also, that's how people who don't know Jesus come to know Jesus.
They come to know him as the gospel is proclaimed and as Jesus is glorified. So that's a very different way of looking at church. It's really asking the question, who does the church exist for? The Seekers Sensitive folks, if they're honest, have to say the church exists for people.
I think a biblical model says the church exists for God and through that people are blessed, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Amen, man. Yeah, absolutely. It just highlights, you know, like how beautiful the church, the biblical church actually is in the midst of so many things that we in our flesh might find attractive, really justifying God's word being proclaimed in a church.
That's attractive. Letting God's word breathe on the congregation. That's amazing. And so it's just so sad how we could be so distracted by everything in the world. You know, if your church looks similar.
Mm hmm.
You know, one more thing, just on that theme. Right. So there's an interesting book that's written, that's been written, I should say, called This Church Went to Market by Gary Gilley. I would make the joke about the nursery rhyme.
For those of you who are watching, we had a bit of a lag, so I made a joke. I thought it was funny, but I'm not going to make it again. Anyway, that book basically deals with this whole Seekers Sensitive church approach, and I think it's a good way to put it, that it's basically driven by whatever the world does out there.
Here's the problem. And I don't mean to be rude or demeaning to other churches, but the reality is the world is really good at what it does. Christians are not good at imitating the world. Like they just aren't.
When Christians try to imitate the world, it just looks bad. It looks cheap. It looks terrible. It's just here's the word I like to use. It looks tacky. Like it just does. Like Eddie, you've probably seen these videos, like churches doing like covers of secular songs.
It's always rough when I know the song, because I compare it to the song. I'm like, you guys are nowhere near as good. Just please quit while you're behind. Like, but they keep doing it. Um, and it just goes to show that again, God hasn't called us to copy the world.
I don't care what they do. Like I'm called to glorify God. We may learn wisdom from what the world does. So for example, we're using a platform that isn't made for Christians to record this podcast. Like none of us are going to say, oh, that makes it useless or invaluable, none of us would say that.
But there's a difference between, okay, I'm going to use platforms or techniques, for example, that what we do with live streaming or like setting up our sound system or have you, there's difference between that.
And we're going to do exactly what they do. We're going to borrow from the product of fallen man's ingenuity. Look, I want to say to those who maybe think that's not that big a deal. Actually, I think it's a massive deal because God cares how he's worshiped.
And we have to be very careful that we do not bring our sinful creativity. And that's not to say all creativity would be sinful, but there is some that is. We should not bring our sinful creativity to God and say, God, please accept my sinful creativity because you know, we know better than you, how you want to be worshiped.
Guys don't do it. It's just bad. And unfortunately a great many churches have succumbed to that. They wouldn't quite say it like that. But when you look at the end result and you look at the fruit of that, you're copying the world and you're not even doing a good job of it.
So just don't, if that makes sense.
Yeah, absolutely. There's this one statement that's always going to stick with me. I think I've heard you say it, or maybe it was someone else teaching at the time, but they said, whatever you win people with is what you're going to have to keep them with.
And if it's not the gospel, then you won't keep them with the gospel,.
You know, they'll come for reasons.
So anyway, that's always going to stick with me and it just highlights, you know, the elements of our worship, which is amazing. And so one of your biggest points, or the first point was the exaltation of God.
And that worship is ascribing appropriate honor to God. And then you started just listing off a bunch of verses. Is there a certain reason for that? I mean, why can't I just say, you know, I'm going to be a Christian.
This other person says, this is how we should do it. And I'm trying to get to, you know, the difference between the regulative principle of worship and normative. So can you explain those in regards to the church and what's our practice?
Yeah, sure.
So here's the simplest way I can explain this. Who gets to determine how God is worshipped? That to be, and just to give some context for folks who are listening, I didn't always think the regulative principle was important for a number of reasons.
Part of it was some of the first people I heard it from were really cantankerous and annoying. And I'll just be honest for me, when somebody is cantankerous and annoying, it makes me very unlikely to listen to a word they have to say.
So there was that, but as I began to re-examine scripture and to think logically and carefully about what do we mean when we talk about this idea of a regulative principle? For those of you who maybe aren't familiar with that phrase, the regulative principle of worship came out of the Reformation and Puritan eras.
And it basically said that we basically do the things that God has commanded us to do, and we don't do anything else. In comparison, the normative principle of worship said, well, whatever we can do, whatever is not expressly forbidden in the Bible, even if God says we can't do it.
So do you get that difference? Like the difference between saying, okay, we only do the things that God commands versus we can do everything that God doesn't forbid. Now, I would argue, biblically speaking, when we see how worship is practiced by the people of God, both under the old covenant and in the new covenant, it's very clear that God alone gets to determine how he wants to be worshipped.
So in the old covenant, God gave his covenant people a specific system of worship. I mean, if you read like Leviticus, where I've often joked, people's Bible reading plans go to die. Um, if you read Leviticus, Leviticus is very exacting about what worship looks like.
In fact, even before that, when they're building the tabernacle, Exodus chapter 25 through to 40, when they're building this tabernacle, God says to Moses multiple times, see that you build everything according to the pattern I showed you on the mountain, God basically gave Moses blueprints and said, listen, you build it like this, exactly what I told you to build time and time and time again, God will condemn the people of Israel because they say they're worshipping him, but they're worshipping him according to their own dictates and their own devices.
And God says, I don't want that worship. I want the worship. I told you to give me now, if any human being did that, we call the arrogant because how dare you turn down a gift I'm giving you. And I'm trying to be nice, but when you are the most perfect being, in fact, the only perfect being in creation, I think you get to determine what you like and what you don't like.
And we quite frankly, just do what we're told. And so that's why I started off by saying that worship is ascribing. I've used the word appropriate honor to God. There are some things that you might think are appropriate that God does not deem appropriate.
And so that's why I started off with that listing of verses from the Psalms and even into the new Testament of this language of what is acceptable or what is appropriate, because there are some things that we might think are acceptable or appropriate that when we read the scriptures are very clearly not appropriate.
Awesome. Thank you for that, Kofi. Yeah, I think it's super important that we, we want to honor God and want to worship him and rightfully so the way he wants to. And in return, especially with our order of service and how we do church, having that set structure is actually really sanctifying in our walk with the Lord.
We don't get to worship God just however we want, you know, I mean, we have our desires, we have our thoughts and feelings and they're all tainted by sin and the worship service helps to keep us in the right position before a holy and righteous God.
And we get to approach him as a father because of Christ and that plays out in the worship service. So I look forward to that. And I remember the first time I went into one of your services with the structure, I was a little, just a little bit uncomfortable.
I was like, oh, this isn't how I normally do it. But what I got more out of that was the word of God, which is what I needed and that has so much value and worth.
Yeah, I know I'll say this, that, you know, I'm not sure if we talked about this in the last episode, but, you know, when we talk about worship, you know, we have to make a distinction between what we call the elements of worship and the circumstances of worship.
The elements of worship or Sam Waldron over at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, he calls them the parts of worship. Those are the things that God explicitly says need to be done. So, OK, let's ask the question, what does God tell us to do in worship?
He tells us to pray. He tells us to sing. He tells us to read his word and to hear his word. He tells us to give. He tells us to baptize and he tells us to partake of the Lord's Supper. Those are the elements of rightly ordered worship.
How those elements play out, we call circumstances. So, for example, preaching of the word of God is biblically commanded. I know that's a shock for some people in the 21st century, but it's biblically commanded.
Now, for me to do that most effectively, I need a place to put my Bible and my notes. So we have pulpits, I might have a preference about pulpits, and I actually do have a preference about that, and I could argue it if I feel like it.
But is that a element of worship? No, it's something that exists to facilitate the element of worship, which is preaching. You following me, Eddie?
Mm hmm. Right.
So we call that a circumstance. It's something that is circumstantial to worship. So we need obviously, if we're going to sing, that's an element we're commanded to do that. For us to sing effectively, I think a good case can be made.
You need people to lead and you need some way of keeping us together. Some of us more than others, because some of us just can't sing. Let's just not tell lies. We can't sing. So we need generally people who can lead us in singing so that we all are on time, somewhat in tune.
I mean, God bless it. Some people just can't help it. But as best we can, that we can all be on time, like on time, singing in the same key mostly, and we're singing the same words. So it probably helps then to have some people who are gifted in singing.
Again, that's a circumstance, not an element. It helps to have some way of us having all the words and churches will differ. Some churches have hymnals. I'll be honest, I personally favor hymnals. The problem is if you're adding new songs, it can get a little bit tricky.
But in general, I favor hymnals.
I think it's just easier.
Some churches will just print out different sets of words every week.
We've opted to kind of do the screen thing, which has its advantages and disadvantages. But that's what we've chosen. None of those are sinful. You may have strong preferences one way or another, but those are circumstances.
They're not elements. If we turn up a church on Sunday and from now on, we never sing in church ever again. I would hope everybody says, wait a minute, biblically speaking, that's commanding. What are you doing?
And so one of the things that that distinction does, which is part of the regulative principle, is it protects us from ungodly and unbiblical innovations. So the 1689 and the Westminster, I think in the 1689 is chapter 21, and the Westminster is chapter 20 on the section on Christian liberty, it says that God alone is Lord of the conscience and he, God, who is Lord of the conscience, has left it the conscience free from the commandments and dictates of men or from anything that is not necessarily contained in his word.
So I would encourage those who maybe struggle with this idea of a regulative principle, think of it this way. The regulative principle is God's way of guarding your conscience from doing things in worship that he hasn't commanded.
Think of it that way. Not as I've heard some people complain that I don't believe in a regulative principle because it stifles creativity. Well, what do you mean? Do you mean it doesn't let you do the stuff that you think we should do?
In which case, yeah, we probably should be stifling that. And there may be other things where, you know, we can give some flexibility and not be too rigid about. But again, we're protecting the consciences of God's people as they come to worship.
So we're not sitting there saying, I don't want to do this. Like this feels weird. I mean, I don't know about you, Eddie, but I've been in churches where they've asked us to do some really ridiculous things as part of worship and knowing what I know now I can have all the, well, firstly, I wouldn't go to some of these places if I didn't have to, but even if I did, I can be confident in myself that if they asked me to do something I don't think is biblical, I say, no, I'm not doing it.
And if they get upset about it, they can one, ask me to leave, which is no problem, or two, if they engage me in conversation, I can say, well, I don't see any biblical warrant for this. And God alone is Lord of my conscience.
I'm not doing that. So again, kind of a long spiel on that, but that's what I would say about the regulative principle and the importance of it. It's a means of really protecting the body from all kinds of things being imposed on it, that the Bible never says we should do, which would make, actually make our worship sinful if you think about it, because you're doing things that God didn't tell you to do.
Yeah.
It's just so helpful for the believer and for that believer's walk with the Lord. That's just a good thing. So what, what did you mean when you were talking about the fact that worship is expressed through word and deed?
Sure.
I was trying to really just address what I think is a biblical balance, that worship is not just what we do when we come to church on Sunday. I would say that is our corporate worship or gathered worship, but that is one aspect of worship and it's not just limited to when we sing, um, yeah, like I said, I think it's just unfortunate in church life that at times we will talk about worship as the worship is when we sing and that's it.
No, actually in the context of our worship gatherings, everything we do is worship and then there's this whole other aspect, which we looked at like Romans 12 and first Corinthians 10 31, where all of life is worship in the sense that we live lives that seek to be worthy of God's calling of us and that give him honor and glory.
And so in that sense, all of life is worship. So whether, you know, I'm working hard on preparing messages and training material and stuff, you know, or you're at work or, you know, my wife is on shift at the hospital or whatever that we're doing, all of those things in a sense are acts of worship because they are offered up to God for his glory.
And so what I meant when I said that worship is words and expressed through words and deeds is I'm trying to make it clear that it's not just when we get together and sing some songs, but ultimately the entirety of our lives.
Those Paul says in Romans 12, the sacrificing of our lives, it was living sacrifices that that is an act of worship, a true act of worship.
Awesome. Thank you for that. Um, so this is really obvious, but worship is about, it's about Jesus. Um, and so that was one of your, your points there was worship is focused on the Lord Jesus and it's such an obvious and plain thing, but that's actually massively important considering, you know, where we go from Monday to Sunday, all the distractions of the world.
And so can you just tell us a little bit about, about Christ and the worship and how the different elements of our service is about Christ?
Absolutely. You know, ultimately what we want in worship is not for worship to become about us. So, you know, we both grew up, um, in certain traditions. And in some of those traditions, the way that people measured a good worship service is when the worship service moves you in a particular emotional way.
That's when, that's when we really had worship today. But again, I challenge anybody, show me in the Bible where that's the priority of biblical worship. Like, do I come to every, let me put it this way and Eddie, you can, you know, answer it, I'll answer it plainly for myself.
Do I come to every worship service with the requisite amount of emotional feeling? The answer is no, I don't. Um, I think if most of us are honest, we don't always. Now in God's providence, one of the things that I've learned to do is to discipline myself and to, you know, not just discipline myself, but to bring my heart and prepare my heart for worship so that even if, okay, we're getting ready to start and I'm frazzled or whatever, I can kind of just recenter myself without sounding like a new ager because I'm not a new ager, but, you know, kind of just like regather myself and say, you know, no, this isn't about me.
And so how that fleshes itself out. And then the worship services, we sing songs that aren't about us. Now there's a, let me be clear. There's such a thing as singing about what the Lord has done for us.
I'm not in the camp that says that we don't need to hear any songs about our experience. Just talk about Jesus in every song, because then you need to throw out so much of the salt. So much of the book of Psalms deals with the Psalmist reflecting on and praising God for his experience of God's goodness and mercy, and even his discipline and his chastisement and allowing sufferings and stuff like that, there's no problem with singing songs like that.
And quite frankly, for some of my reformed brethren who kind of, um, I want to be careful with my language here. But some of my reformed brethren who can be really uppity about some of this stuff. I think it's very unhelpful when we make blanket statements like, you know, I don't want to hear songs about me.
I want to hear songs about God. Sometimes there are some songs that can be about your experience of God's goodness that are still faithful and trustworthy and still extol God and don't make everything about you.
Like it's not an either or guys. But in general, we do want our worship to focus on the Lord Jesus. It's all about him. He is the, you know, there's a phrase that I think comes out of the Puritan era.
He's the sum and substance of all things. No, that's why in recent years, you know, I've won, well, I, for a number of reasons, including once being told, I don't preach the gospel and I clearly do. I just decided, you know what?
I want to make it explicit in every sermon. And I mean, the kind of explicit that somebody can't argue with, you know, we went in every service for Jesus to be explicitly exalted for the gospel to be explicitly proclaimed.
Um, you know, we have so much of the gospel in our service as it is, you know, we have an assurance of pardon. It's mentioned in the sermon. We have the Lord's table. That's a whole other element that I think lots of people miss.
That every time that we have a little stable, we're reminded once again of what Jesus did for us. And so it, you know, I think in a properly ordered worship service, it puts Jesus in the center in such a way that people can clearly come away from that and say, it wasn't about the preacher and it wasn't about me.
It was about Jesus. That's what we want ultimately.
Awesome. Well, I want to, I want to give you two examples of these phrases that I hear that have to do with this, and that kind of goes into the edification of God's people, which is the second point.
So here's the, here's the phrase I hear often in my line of work. So someone goes to church and they get back from church and they say things like, man, Jesus is just, Jesus is all over me right now. I mean, like I just had such a good time.
Um, is the person who says that, is it accurate to say that they were focusing on Christ, um, that Jesus was doing a work in their life at that moment.
In time, that may be the case.
You know, I always want to be careful that we're not too hard on people who use rather unusual or strange wording for things, um, they may just be again, using the words and the vocabulary they have to describe, um, the reality that they're experiencing.
So we, we, we want to be cautious about that. Now, that being said, um, even then you're, you're, you still made about how you feel in response to the worship. So again, I, for this particular person, I'd want to, I'd have to know them,.
Know a little bit of their context.
Like what teaching are they under, you know, how do they understand what biblical worship is? You know, those are some of the questions I'd probably want to ask, um, without making too much of a blanket judgment.
I, so I, I thought it was, I brought that one up, but the second one, the one was kind of around the same line. That's what people say, man, the Holy spirit was just all over the congregation today. You know, he's really, he was like in, in, in through the crowds.
Um, and so it's just, uh, yeah, again, how would you, um, decide that one's.
A, well, I think that one's a little more concrete because, you know, usually not always, but let's say 95 out of a hundred times when someone says that, what they usually mean is like, there was a particular experience.
It felt like electrically charged.
Um, and to that, I want to say a couple of things. First of all, you do not need to be a Christian to experience that. So one of my favorite bands, I might get in some trouble for this, but it is one of my favorite bands is Coldplay, the British band.
I have been to three Coldplay concerts in my life.
Three Coldplay have certain songs that they perform. And Chris Martin, who's the lead singer of Coldplay is an excellent performer, like an excellent singer. He sings some of those that there's one of his songs called fix you.
It's a, one of the more popular songs. Like, I'm not ashamed to say that all three times I have heard him perform that song live in concert. I've cried, not voluntarily by my head, but you've got, you know, a few thousand people, um, I got to see one of their last Wembley gigs before I moved over.
Um, like you're hearing them perform with 10 ,000 people singing these songs. The songs are already super emotional and now you're hearing it. I'll give you a practical example. Um, so I, another musician I really like is a jazz musician.
His name is Jamie Colm from the UK. Um, Jamie Colm did a gig. Um, and he has a song that's a cover of a, I forget who did the song originally. The song's called high and dry. Um, and again, it's one of these songs that if you hear it enough times and loudly enough, like it's really well done, but it can be very emotional.
And Jamie Colm again is an excellent performer. And so like, I went to this gig with Jamie Colm and it was a few thousand people and he basically kind of had people like singing parts to the song. Um, but like, and it was an emotional experience.
Like you feel the goosebumps and the tingliness and all of that stuff. And it's kind of like an emotional high. He ended the concert on that note. Like he'd left the stage and people were still singing.
Um, like 15, 20 minutes afterwards. Like it's an experience, but if I, if I were to strip the audio from that and put certain Christian songs in, people would look at that and couldn't tell you the difference.
And so I'm going to go ahead and ask, are you sure that the Holy ghost or was that a really good band? And I don't mean to be facetious when I ask that, but as someone who loves music, like I love music.
You know, I'm an audiophile, like it's very easy to kind of emotionally like move people. I'm not going to say manipulate because not everyone does it to manipulate, but certain songs will move people emotionally.
There are certain secular songs that I will occasionally hear. And when I hear them, like they're emotionally moving. That doesn't mean it was the Holy ghost, but in church, you'll have people say, Oh, the Holy spirit was really moving.
And he asked him, he was like, yeah, I just felt this experience like I hadn't before. And it's like, again, Holy ghost or slamming band. And I don't mean to be facetious again, when I say that, but I think we have to be very discerning that we don't attribute to the Holy spirit, feelings and actions and, uh, you know, feelings and actions and responses that might be him, but it also might not be.
And so, again, I get very cautious when I hear that language, just because I think it can be very abused. And ultimately what it does is, well, what happens when you don't feel that was God, not present with the Holy spirit, not working through the worship.
And I, and I'd want to ask that person, how is that not living by sight and not living by faith? Because ultimately we're saying, I know when God is moving because I can see it. Well, I can feel it versus no, I trust he's always working because his word says he's working through the worship of his people.
And that's not to say that emotions and feelings are bad.
Not at all.
No God's word through his spirit. Well, I mean, you think about the fact that your sins have been forgiven and and doctrinal truth that really changes your life that should cause some sort of emotion and thought process.
Right.
No, like, um, so I'll give you another example. I don't cry a bunch except where music is concerned. It's kind of interesting. So I got to go to the last together for the gospel conference in April. Um, and so we, you know, it was the first session we were singing together, Matt Merker, who wrote the tune for, he will pull me faster.
Many of us sing in our churches now. Um, he was leading worship or the singing, I should say, not worship. He was leading the singing. And one of my favorite hymns personally is holy, holy, holy, as specifically the end of the first verse, end of the last verse, you know, holy, holy, holy, merciful, almighty God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
Like we're seeing that with like 10 ,000 people. And yeah, I got kind of teary eyed at the end. Like, and that's perfectly appropriate. We're singing about our holy God. Like the God who is merciful and he is mighty.
He's a merciful to us in Christ. He was mighty to save us. Like he is triune like singing. And again, I've heard that so hundreds of times, but just to be meditating on that, to be seeing that with brothers and sisters, many of whom I did not know.
It emotionally moved me. And that wasn't wrong. Now there are some people who would say, see, you're giving way too much credence to your emotions. No, no, no. We don't make decisions based on our emotions, but it's not wrong to respond to appropriate things with the appropriate level of emotion.
I'm sorry.
If the thoughts of Christ dying for you, the thoughts of our triune God being majestic, if the thoughts of the spiritual life doesn't move you, I'm going to go ahead and question what's going on in your own heart, recognizing that granted expressing that looks different for different people.
We all have different backgrounds and makeups and cultural things that we all have to think through. I'm not saying any of that, but if, if you can think about our salvation with all of the gusto of the guy at McDonald's who says you want fries with that, I'm going to go ahead and say something's wrong with you.
And we might need to get to the bottom of what?
Well, let's hit this man you were talking about, and I really want you to go off on this one because it's one of my favorite things to think about, you know, especially in our Christian walk of just how dependent we really are on the Lord.
Day by day, hour by hour, trusting him. So one of your points was that, you know, worship is ruled by a dependence in prayer and man, I don't know. I think there's an assault and attack on prayer. You know, there's the enemy, our flesh in the world.
And so can you help us understand that a little more and how important that is? Local body, you know,.
So James chapter four is a passage that has really influenced my view of prayer in the last couple of years. So James chapter four, especially verse two, the ending line, he says, you do not.
Have because you do not ask.
It's a need. This is the point I made in the sermon on Sunday that it's a needy person who asks. If you don't think you're needy, you don't ask for anything. And like I said, the last couple of years, I've been personally impacted by the fact of just how needy I am.
Like I'm, I'm by nature, I'm a very self-sufficient person. Like I hate asking for help. I think I've joked about it in sermons and I'm semi joking when I say it, like I generally don't like asking for help.
I'm the kind of person who, if I need to do something, I'll roll up my sleeves and go do it by myself unless I honestly can't. And there's something about prayer that by its very nature, humbles you to recognize I can't do this.
That's why I'm praying. And I'm with you. I do think that there is an attack in the modern day on prayer. I think there's also an attack on the word of God, but we're not talking about that, we're talking about prayer.
And I a hundred percent think that there is an attack on prayer in the church. I think there's an attack on corporate prayer in the church. I think, oh, Eddie, you got to help me. I'm going to get myself in trouble here, but, um, I think it is abysmal.
I'm going to try not to get too fired up about this, but I think it's abysmal that so many churches do not have corporate prayer meetings, that somehow we function off this assumption that, hey, we've got it together as a body.
We don't need to gather together and pray and ask for God's blessing. We don't need to ask God to, as it were, revive us spiritually. We don't need to pray that God would bring in lost souls. You know, if we have evangelism and social media, we can get the souls in.
Like we don't need to pray that the person who's preaching is filled with God's spirit and that he proclaims the word of God accurately. After all, he spent how many hours studying this week? Of course he can do it.
We don't need to pray that the kingdom of God would expand, pray for more laborers for the work. If people want to do it, they'll do it. We don't need to ask. And I want to say that is nonsense. But actually God's people are a praying people.
Acts chapter two, verse 42. It says that they, the disciples devoted themselves to the apostles doctrine. So they gave themselves to teaching the next thing in the list to the now some of our translations would say to prayer.
That's not what the original language says. The original language is to the prayers. There were specific prayers that the people of God gathered for. You see an example of this in, when I mentioned this in the sermon, Acts chapter two, Acts chapter four, the people of God gathered together.
When they gather together, they gather for the purpose of praying and asking for God's help in the mission that he's called them to. And I'll be honest, Eddie, I don't understand for the life of me, how so many churches can think they're functioning just fine without regular times of prayer.
Now I can tell you what I've been told because I have had people tell both in our congregation and outside our congregation. Kofi, you make too much of this. I pray on my own. Of course I'm praying. Are you saying that we're not praying?
Here's my response. There's a very big difference between what you do in your private prayer and what we do in corporate prayer, big difference, and God indeed does bless the secret and private prayer of his people, Matthew chapter six.
But read the Psalms and you'll see there's a whole category of language for when the people of God gathered together to pray and the blessing of God that comes through that. So again, for me, there's a reason why I talk about this so much because we're a young church.
And if as a young church, we want to see any sorts of growth numerically and spiritually, that's not going to happen without us giving ourselves earnestly to prayer. That's one reason that, you know, we restarted our prayer meeting that we have on Sunday afternoons before our service, because we can't just come into worship and think, well, we've got all our tech stuff in place.
We've got bulletins. We've got a book table, you know, Kofi, we hope has studied. Like we've got everything together. Like, no, we need to get on our faces and basically beg God that he would pour out his blessing on all of that.
One of my favorite preachers is a man called K Edward Copeland, not to be confused with Kenneth Copeland. Um, Pastor Copeland is pastor of New Zion missionary Baptist church in Rockford, Illinois. And he has a phrase that he uses that has just been burned into my memory, African-American pastor.
He always says we can lay down the wood, but only God can send the fire. Yeah, we can plan and we should plan and prepare Eddie. You know me. I'm all about excellence when we do stuff at church, like we should a hundred percent plan and prepare and seek to do things well.
But if I can be a little bit brusque about this, I am not so stupid as to think that because we planned and prepared really well, that everything will take care of itself.
Nope.
If again, Psalm 11, um, if the Lord doesn't build the house, the laborers labor by in vain.
And the way in which we beg God, as it were, to help build the house is we go before him and praise the Lord. Help us to build this thing.
So yeah, absolutely. Um, I hope I didn't go too long and I hope I didn't offend anybody with what I just said. But we need more than ever a revival of corporate prayer as churches, not just individual prayer, corporate prayer.
And I think part of that is yes. Praying that God would do that. And part of it also is just teaching on corporate prayers. That's what I've been doing in our prayer meetings last few weeks. Just taking the first 10 minutes to explain.
So last Sunday we did why we have prayer meetings this coming Sunday. I want to teach on the difference between corporate prayer and private prayer. You know, all of these things that we need to be thinking about in relation to praying together as God's people, because ultimately, you know, it's pastor John, uh, Redeemer Gilbert, who has said multiple times that a praying people, a culture of prayer, excuse me, is a culture of dependence that if you don't pray, you're basically saying you're not dependent and we are all dependent without God, we can do nothing.
So how about we just act like it and well pray.
Absolutely. I think that's probably one of the biggest things I've learned so far. Maybe you can help me out a little more with this, but, you know, we're assuming that some people know what corporate prayer is, but there's also people who have practiced corporate prayer a certain way, and then they bring it into our context or into our church.
And so is corporate prayer, um, the way it plays out, is it a room full of people who pray individually prayers to God, or is there like an agenda or a, a structure to it, you know, because in my mind, what I've grown up with is we're in a big room full of people and all these, it's like, I'm praying to God individually amongst people, but not all one mind, we're individuals.
No, that's a very good question. Um, I want to say that one of the things we see in scripture is that corporate prayer is representative prayer.
Hmm.
So for example, you look at Acts chapter four and the prayer that they pray after they're released from the high priest, the text says that the people pray together, and then what we get is a summary of what was prayed.
That suggests to me that what was happening was multiple people prayed their prayers all had the same unity of thought and unity of expression. And so Luke, who is more than likely present at this point, well, at least has heard this from eyewitnesses, expresses what was the general corpus of their prayers.
I think the pattern that we see in some churches of, you know, I grew up with it, so I want to be sensitive to it, but you know, we have a prayer meeting of like 50 people and 50 people are praying 50 different prayers all at once.
I don't see that in scripture. I think what we see in scripture is first Corinthians 1440, let all things be done decently and in order that you have one person who is representing, you know, or if we're praying in a corporate group, I believe in multiple people praying, but one at a time that there is order, that there is structure.
Now, order and structure are not things people like in their worship in the 21st century.
We kind of, we have so bought into the myth of romanticism that basically says that, Hey, you just do what you feel. It's too structured. Why can't I just come do what I want? No, Christian worship is orderly, not stuffy to be fair, but it is orderly.
There is structure. And so I think a much more edifying way to view corporate prayer is we come with a specific list of things we're here to pray about. One of the things I think makes so much attempt at corporate prayer on effective is people basically bring their personal prayer requests to a corporate prayer meeting.
It's like, um, there are other avenues for that, you know, our church, we have small groups, probably better for that, you know, you're, you're with somebody and they bring up a personal prayer request, probably a better avenue.
I think in our corporate prayer times, we're praying corporately for the church. So we're thinking about, you know, the preaching of God's word, the worship service we're about to go into, um, the evangelism of, of those who don't know the Lord, um, we're praying for the spread of the gospel in the valley.
We're praying for the spread of the gospel among the nations. It sounds really general, but it's the church praying, which means the church is praying for the things that are important to the church, which would be.
Those things.
Yeah, absolutely. That's a good, good difference that you said there.
Um, yeah.
So the edification of God's people, oh man, that's a big deal. Um, and so you mentioned a couple of things and you're going to have to refresh my memory. I know one was objective edification versus subjective edification.
So can you talk about that a little more?
So, um, first of all, if you're wondering like, where did he get that distinction from, uh, that was a Kofi special. But what I was trying to do was to get my arms around the fact that building up as God's people is taught about in two very different ways.
There's the part of being built up, which involves our understanding and devotion to the word of God. So we looked at first Peter two, two, we looked at Acts chapter 20, verse 32, which I think is a critical passage.
Um, and now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among those who are sanctified. Paul says it's the word of his grace, like in the original language, that's the nearest antecedents, the thing that is referred to last, he says, the word of his grace is what's able to build you up and to give you an inheritance.
So people need the word of God. That's why we preach in general. Again, this series is kind of an exception to our norm, but you know, the staple diet of our church is biblical exposition because people need to hear God's word and that's how people grow.
First Peter two, two, you know, desire the pure milk of the word so that you may grow up into salvation. That's how people grow. They grow as they encounter the word of God. And so that's the objective side.
God has spoken. And as we devote ourselves to what he has said, we grow. But then there's also a, um, subjective element to this, which is believers build one another up in their faith by speaking the truth in love to one another and by take having care and concern for each other.
That's why I talked about the one and others that that list of biblical commands that says, this is how you operate as God's people. And I'm going to come back to the one and others in the final message in this series, when we talk about life in the church, I am convinced that so much of the dysfunction you see in church life with the division and the fighting and the squabbling happens because we're not fulfilling the one and others.
Basically you've made everything about you. And when somebody does something that goes against you, you're unhappy and you let them hear about it. Rather than saying, how can I serve my brother and my sister?
Because it's not about me. It's not about my happiness or my wants. It's about the best for that person. And so that's what I meant when I talked about the objective side, which is the word of God and the study of God's word, the teaching of God's word, engaging around God's word.
And the way I described the relationship was that the objective part of edification or engagement with God's word informs us how to do the subjective part. So if you put it this way, the word of God trains you how to do the job.
And the subjective side is how you do the job.
So that's what I meant when I said objective and subjective edification, word of God and believers using the word of God to minister to one another so that they're built up as they take care and concern for each other.
So would it be accurate to say that another way to describe that would be that we're kind of practicing what we preach or applying our knowledge?
I like that phrase, practicing what we preach. I like that.
I like that.
Yeah, we can run with that. That works.
And it's applying our theology, what we believe about God, but in the.
Midst of that, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Awesome.
I'm glad that I understand that. Um, see here, those are the two big points that I got out of your second point there, so let's go to the next one.
But before we do, I want to add this. Um, and I want to say this, especially for folks who've maybe been coming a while, um, it can be very easy in churches like ours, and I've seen it happen even in the best churches.
It can become very easy for people to take for granted, especially the objective side of things. Where, you know, if you're hearing the word of God faithfully preached week in and week out, you can start to take it for granted.
And I am all too aware of the fact that for some, the more they hear these things, they're like, okay, I've heard it all before, which one is a very dangerous attitude to growth. Um, that will kill spiritual growth like nothing else.
Beginning to think that I have arrived. No, you haven't. None of us have arrived. Until we get to glory. We are always growing. We are always learning. It's like second Peter three 18 says, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Like there's always room for growth, but I want to caution our body. Especially, you know, we, we take preaching seriously. At least I like to think we take preaching seriously. Um, we take the word of God seriously.
We're very doctrinal in how we view things or doctrinal, depending how you like to pronounce that. Um, beloved, let's never get to a place where we take that for granted. Well, we kind of think, oh gosh, I'm sick of this.
Can we just do something else?
No, no, no.
Fight that temptation. And I say that because I know it happens. I have seen it happen to the best of churches where people just kind of take for granted. Always going to have preaching. You always have to talk about the Bible.
You on, can't we just focus on the relational side of things? And my response to that is why can't we focus on both? Because actually the relationships cannot be deepened and strengthened without the word of God.
And so I want to encourage, cause this is a podcast primarily.
For our church family, like redeem.
I want to encourage you take that seriously.
So Kofi, you, um, towards the end of the sermon, you were talking about, uh, you know, evangelizing the nations and that the church is a proclaiming community, uh, but the question I have is about, um, you gave an example between the model, a church versus the model B church.
And you also had a diagram. So I don't know if you, you probably can't pull that up, but can you explain.
That?
I can, um, give me a second. I will pull that up.
Could you just explain that a little more? Um, and I know I have to turn the gospel as well. So, okay.
Give me just a moment. Uh, there we are slides. Uh, there we go. Now I'm going to share my screen and hopefully this should work. Perhaps, uh, let's see.
Yep.
Share screen.
There we go. Uh, yes.
I know it's better with two screens.
I have two screens. Um, no, do not share more. Oh, don't share more audio. We don't need all that. Um, and okay.
You should be able to see that.
Oh, that's awesome.
There we go.
Um, so for the benefit of those of you who will be listening to the audio version of this, um, on Sunday, I flashed up a diagram on screen that says, um, basically there are two types of churches. I call them model a and model B churches in model a it's a sort of approach that says I bring people to church.
That's my job. I'll bring them to church pastor. You've got the gifts you preach. And that's how we do evangelism. So I'll give you an example of this that I've experienced personally. Um, we had a family attend our church and the family was upset with me because I wasn't by their metric.
I wasn't preaching the gospel in every sermon. And one of the reasons they were upset was, well, we have children who hear you preach every week. How are they going to get saved? And I wanted to be respectful of that.
And at the same time, I'm just turn around and say, your children are with me one hour a week. They live with you. So who's really at fault here. Now, I didn't say that you'd be glad to know, because I wanted to exercise some wisdom, um, and that situation turned bad anyway, long story, but it just reflected this mindset that says that the church is where evangelism happens.
So I need to bring, you know, my unsaved loved ones to church. You've got the gift. I don't have the gift. You can proclaim the gospel and people get saved. I can't, I'm sorry. I don't see that in the Bible.
The point I made on Sunday was that when you look at the book of acts, it was never the assumption that people came to them to hear the gospel. The assumption was what we see in model B. The church gathers for worship.
And I didn't get to say this on Sunday. So I'm glad you brought this up. The church gathers for worship and scatters for evangelism. That's the norm. The church doesn't gather for evangelism and then also gather for worship.
No, the church gathers for worship. What we do on a Sunday is for God's people. Primarily what we do outside of the four walls of our worship service on a Sunday is take the gospel, the word of God that we are hearing proclaimed in our worship.
We take that and then we go out to the world that needs to hear the gospel. That to me is a much healthier model than the idea that, well, it's the pastor's job. Now I can tell you the response I've gotten, even from some in our own congregation, when I mentioned this, well, Kofi, I don't have a gifting for that.
I'm not as good to which my response is who in the world told you that the power of the gospel lies in somebody's gifting. Let's call a spade a spade, nobody, you know, it's that one of those memes that says nobody, absolutely nobody like, and then me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Nobody is saying, and nobody should be saying that the power of the gospel resides in somebody's eloquence or ability. I can give you tons of verses of the scripture that say it's the polar opposite. I was just reading this the other day in preparation for our men's training this Sunday, where Paul says that he wanted his preaching not to be enticing words of man's wisdom, but in a demonstration of the spirit so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God, all the eloquence in the world is no match for the power of God.
And so I want ordinary everyday Christians to be encouraged that you can actually proclaim the gospel and that not only can you proclaim the gospel, that God can use you in his sovereign purposes to bring forth fruit from the preaching of the gospel.
And so, no, we need to get away from this idea. It's just, I think it's just poisonous that says, um, the only way in which people get saved is when someone who's really eloquent proclaims the gospel.
No, God puts you in certain people's lives with the knowledge of what he's done in saving you so that you can proclaim the gospel to them. He never says, go tell a professional or go put them in front of a professional.
So the professional can quote unquote, get them saved bad model, bad model. And honestly, that's how you end up with some churches that are very pastor centric and personality driven, because you've basically said the power doesn't reside in the gospel.
The power resides in the preacher. That to me, I have serious problems with serious problems because at that point, when that train leaves the station, it's really hard to get back. Don't believe me. Look at what happened with Mark Driscoll and what happened in Seattle.
Really gifted guy, really, really powerful communicator, but it all became about him and his ability. And when he imploded, unfortunately that church imploded with him. And the sad thing is that could have been very easily avoided on multiple levels, one of which is recognizing that the power of the gospel doesn't reside in the mouth of one person.
It resides in all of God's people. As the spirit of God takes the simple gospel and applies it and convicts and converts sinners. That's where the power is.
Yeah, absolutely.
Amen.
See, I would just want to add to that. I think we take for granted sometimes the providential opportunities that we have to share the gospel with people because we think that might need to look this particular way, or we have to have this particular vernacular when we share the gospel.
It's like God is already providing sovereign opportunities for us with the people that we know and the relationships that we have to say, Hey, Oh, I'm acting and being this way because Christ saved me, you know, like, and to go into that a little further, you know, it's, I just think, you know, we, we have a picture of what we think evangelism is when actually we're living the life of the potential opportunity to share with someone.
And it's not what, it's not incredibly dramatic, you know?
I think one of the great dangers that many of us can have when it comes to this issue of evangelism is that we view evangelism in a very decisionist and results driven way. So it's not enough for many of us to just proclaim the gospel.
It's like, I need to close the deal with the person, not your problem. Now, if the person is clearly under conviction and desires to hear more, that's one thing. And is it still going?
Oh yeah.
You're good.
I was, I saw the wifi symbol come up on the screens. I was like, ah.
So again, like I was saying, the power, you know, the power of the gospel is not determined on, okay, can I make a decision? Can I get them to here and now make this choice?
No.
Power of the gospel resides in the word of God being faithfully proclaimed and us faithfully trusting that the Lord will use his word in the life of the person who just heard the gospel. That was very clear.
The word of God never returns void. It will always accomplish the reason for which it was sent. So if that's the case, that takes pressure off of you and I in evangelism. Just proclaim the message.
You might have to bumble your way through it.
You might not say everything as well as you'd like. You may not be able to answer every question, but here's the wonderful thing. It's not about you.
That's right.
Like it just isn't, it's not about you. It's about the glory of God. And it's about the power of the spirit, taking the word of God and the word of God functioning like that two edged sword and just cutting past all the arguments and all the walls and facades that sinners put up and basically getting through.
God can do that. And since he can do that, and I can't, you know, I can rest easy at night knowing if I was faithful in proclaiming the gospel, God will take care of the rest.
Well, um, I think that's all I have, Kofi.
I mean, again, this was a great fun message for me. Like I said, I thought for me, it was one of the most critical messages preached in the life of our church. And I said to our home group on Wednesday, um, that for me, why I thought it was so critical is because I think it's important for churches to remember why they exist.
Because if a church forgets why it exists, first of all, just start doing all kinds of madness. That's the first thing. And more importantly than just doing all kinds of madness. If a church forgets why it exists, it will start to do things that God never commanded.
And that actually brings God's displeasure on a church. Don't believe me? Read Revelation chapter two, Revelation chapter three. Churches start doing things that they're not commanded to do. Things that actually fight against God's purpose for the church.
And Jesus tells a number of those churches, I'm paraphrasing, keep acting up and I will remove your candle stick out of its place. Now that that's a thought, you know, I'm going to be careful. I was going to say something, but there's not my place to say that.
I will, I'll end it with this. Like, again, we want to be careful that we're glorifying God by doing what he's commanded us to do. And that's where the place of blessing is as God's people. That's where God pours out his blessing and his favor on his people, because we are obedient to him, not because of anything that lies in us, but because of God's mercy and grace that's shown to us.
Well, Eddie, thank you so much for your time. And thanks to everyone who listens to this. This is episode two of the Cutting Room Floor podcast, a ministry of Redeem Bible Fellowship in Medford, Oregon.
If you have questions, for those of you who've heard the messages, send us an email at cuttingroomfloor at redeemermedford .org. That's cuttingroomfloor at redeemermedford .org and Lord willing, we will see you on the next episode.
Take care.