Path of Evangelism: Our Privilege and Command | Behold Your God Podcast

Media Gratiae

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Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratia, and I'm here again with Dr.

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John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and the author of the Behold Your God series. Good morning,

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John. Morning. And by the way, we are in a cold room. Matt's toes are starting to freeze, so we got to move through this.

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Yeah, it's wintertime in Mississippi. We're seeing temperatures in the mid -50s, and we're over it already.

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Today we want to talk about evangelism, and that's a word that gets thrown around a lot.

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If you hang around a church long enough, you're sure to hear it. But the thing is, we may not be very clear on what it is or even what the word means.

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So evangelism is just from the Greek word for gospel, evangelion, and it literally means gospeling.

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So true evangelism is by definition spreading the gospel or spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.

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If we think carefully about evangelism, about guiding souls to Christ, and in its entirety, so not just giving a short witness when that's all we have time to do, or giving even a good gospel track when that's all we have time to do.

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And those are good things to do when that's all the Lord provides for us. But if we think about those situations where we have more extended contact with people, and we want to guide them to Christ, it is a critical task.

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It is how the King has decided to promote His kingdom, His church from generation to generation.

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He has not entrusted this to angels. Although when we look at the work of evangelism, we would think that that's a task that's more fit for angels than for people like us.

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And I think it was Ian Murray that said it's a task that angels would envy, to be able to carry a message from the

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King of all time and space to those who have fought against Him. And the message is not hopeless, not just to people that we love, but to people we don't even know, to bring them the truth.

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But you know, when we think about evangelism, there's really two audiences. There's the

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King that we're speaking on behalf. Is He pleased with what we're saying? And then there's also the people that we're speaking to.

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And so, in a sense, I think of evangelism as involving two sets of conversations.

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We are talking to the King even before we talk to people, or even while we're talking to people.

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Our heart is shooting up a silent prayer. God, please cause these words to have the appropriate weight.

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And we're talking to the unbeliever. And it's a wonderful and mysterious thing.

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Yeah, I think it would be helpful just here at the beginning. You know, there are two words that get used interchangeably, witnessing and evangelizing, or doing evangelism.

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And yet, I think there is a difference. You know, we witness in the sense that we bear witness to this invisible kingdom, that we're a part of it.

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So, there are a lot of ways that we do that. The way that we love one another, you know, the

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Bible says that the world will know that we belong to Him through the way that we love. We bear witness in that way.

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We can bear witness in a, you know, in a work situation where we try to reflect

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Christ to our unbelieving coworkers. We can even witness by telling our testimonies.

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How did the Lord bring us to Himself, you know? But witnessing doesn't equal evangelism unless we are explaining the gospel, unless we're telling people, what is, what has

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Christ done? So, would you think that there's a distinction there? Yeah, though we, you know, in vernacular, we just, we kind of use those interchangeably.

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But I do think you're right. Witnessing would be a subcategory, a small aspect of the bigger picture of evangelism, of bringing the good news from God to people.

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And as one that brings it, there are times where we want to say to people who are looking at us like, you know, really?

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This sounds too good to be true. Or this is just more of that religious stuff. And I appreciate, you know, what you're saying, but my life is a wreck.

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And my marriage is about to just be destroyed. My kids won't talk to me. My own life is riddled with guilt.

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And so, you know, your Sunday talk, I don't see how it could fix a person like me. And you want to stop and say, look,

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I know where you're at because I've been there. And this, let me tell you my eyewitness account of the validity of these things in my own life.

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So it is a, it is a one aspect of evangelism. Yeah. And I just think it's important for us to understand that stopping short of talking to people about what

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Christ has done for sinners and, and the, that that's not sharing the gospel, just sharing your own testimony that, you know,

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God saved me. I used to be this way. Go ahead. Well, I used to be this way. Then, you know, then

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I, you know, I became a Christian and now, you know, things are wonderful. That's great. But what, what did you believe when you believed the gospel?

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It's that explaining, well, what have I come to believe about Christ that I think we have to, you know, focus in on to say that's where evangelism takes place.

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Yeah. And I think of folks inviting people to church or maybe inviting people to a special, a set of special meetings like revival meetings or an evangelistic effort at the church.

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And that is a very good thing to do, but that's not evangelism. It's a, it's saying to your starving neighbor, come,

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I can tell you where you can find food. And that's a, that's a wonderful, merciful thing, but it's not evangelism.

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It's just, it stops short of that. Well, this is the first of several episodes that we want to do on evangelism.

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We'll think of it from different aspects. It is one of the things, one of the many things where believers from past generations can really give us a lot of genuine help.

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So as we, as we work under the things in the coming weeks that sort of fall under the banner of gospeling or evangelism, what are some of the areas that you want to look at?

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Well, we'll be looking at everything from how God does evangelism, which is so significant for us.

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And I think it's probably an area where I did very little thought, um, in the earlier years of my

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Christianity, even in the early years of ministry. Um, how does cooperating with God's spirit as he carries out the work of evangelism, regeneration, the eyes opening, the heart moved, uh, the will freed, how does he do that?

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And then how would that affect the way I talk to a I mean, there are wrong responses to that.

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You know, there's the kind of, um, fatalistic approach that, well, if God's doing evangelism, I can just step aside.

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And, uh, so, you know, we want to avoid wrong application, but we don't want to be ignorant of what the scripture says.

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There's, there's issues of the depth of man's need and how do we help a person see that there is no hope in them fixing themselves.

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And that, that, uh, is a wonderful place to bring the law of God to bear on the soul.

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How do we help the soul struggling with the question of, um, why would God even save a sinner like me?

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Or how do we help a soul struggling with the question of, um, am I supposed to be looking for some big experience?

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Am I looking for the flash from the sky? Can I call myself a Christian? What is the gospel?

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As you mentioned, what are the great facts they need to know? What are they to hope in? And then what is the response to the gospel?

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So there's so many facets, but for, for men from history that can help us, there are a few that I want us to look at.

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One of these is a book called A Cornish Revival, The Life and Times of Samuel Walker of Truro.

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Now Truro is in Southern England and Walker was a friend of George Whitfield. He was a friend of, uh, uh,

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John and Charles Wesley. He was a leader in the evangelical revival in the 18th century.

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He was one of the, one of the more successful in this sense of truly spiritual, successful ministers.

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Uh, so much so that really Wesley and Whitfield looked at the region where he was leading a group of younger ministers to minister.

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And, uh, they kind of just backed off and said, you know, you've got this, you're being careful with these souls.

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We don't need to, we don't need to show up. Um, Walker in the midst of, uh, all these, this extraordinary work of the

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Holy Spirit, Walker had to deal with so many souls asking him the question, how can

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I be right with God? That, um, he developed two different basic approaches.

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One approach was based, uh, on a lack of time. If I don't have that much time, how do

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I make sure that I'm still careful with the soul? And another approach was a bit more of an expanded version.

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Now the younger ministers who alongside Walker were, were faced with these wonderful opportunities, started asking him a lot of questions.

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How are you handling this? And so he wrote this down and sent it to his friends. So that is a, is a very helpful little piece of history.

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Another one is, uh, from Robert Murray McShane. He wrote six letters to a young woman in his church who was really concerned about her soul.

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So she's not indifferent. She's, she's bothered, but he writes six letters and they're in a, in a very theologically consecutive order.

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He begins where he needs to begin and he ends where he needs to end. So he begins with talking about, look,

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I know you feel that you need Christ, but you don't have any idea of how great the need is.

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Let me help you understand the depth of the need. And at the end, he's really giving her comfort. How do you know that you're

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Christ? Uh, so we're going to work through those. We use those letters a lot, uh, with evangelism in the church here.

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If someone comes to me and says, I'm really bothered. Well, we tell them the gospel, but we also say, you know, there's, there's some simple one page each letters that I'd like you to meditate on over the next couple of days.

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Uh, also there's an interesting, um, not well known, uh, document from George Whitfield where he wrote, uh, a prayer for those seeking the new birth.

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He also wrote a prayer of gratitude for those who had him, who had been given the new birth. But we'll look at the, the prayer for those seeking the new birth.

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And we're going to look at how is that a different model than the model that most of us are used to?

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And why is it, is it just because it's 250 years old, you know, kind of King James English, or was there a different view of the way

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God dealt with a soul that was behind a different sinner's prayer, so to speak? Yeah.

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So lots of help from history, but let's go ahead and get into our introduction episode here, just going over some basic things that we're going to need to know about evangelism before we start to discuss it.

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Yeah. Evangelism is so simple that the baby Christian, the newest Christian can turn to their friend and say, this is who

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Jesus Christ is, and this is what he's done. And this is what he calls you to do in response. But it is also so deep, so wonderful.

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It's, it's as complex as the human problem and as full as the, you know, as the infinite mercy of God and the justice of God and the wisdom of God.

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And so we want to be careful as, as we approach those things. When we approach this, though, one thing we're not going to do, we're not going to be able to give five steps to being a good evangelist because there aren't any steps like that.

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But there are biblical principles that we can look at and they fit every situation.

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And so if we can understand them, the great big picture truths, then

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I think that, that we'll be on a, on a good track to be careful evangelist. I want to read a proverb here that we often hear quoted in connection with evangelism.

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It's Proverbs 11, verse 30. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.

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Wonderful portrait there. Righteous life, a life that is right with God, right by the mercy of God, but daily being lived out in that, you know, in accordance with that mercy.

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There is the fruit of life in that tree. And then it says this, and he who is wise wins souls.

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He who is wise wins souls. We could say it this way as well. If you want to win souls, you will need to be spiritually wise.

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And so we're going to need to know two big truths. One, we're going to need to know about God.

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He's the King that we represent. So we need to be very well acquainted with him.

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And then we need to know people, but let's think about knowing God. We need to know the rights and the claims and the expectations of our

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God. When we say that people need to come to the Lord, why? When we say that they're sinners, what makes them a sinner?

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I mean, many people think, well, if I'm not hurting another person, it's not a sin. Well, that would be true perhaps if there weren't a creator who has certain rights and claims upon your life that you've rejected.

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So if we as ambassadors don't understand the breadth, the depth, the height of God's claim upon us, then it's very difficult for us to be careful ambassadors.

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If we don't understand the perfections of God, how big is God? How good is

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God? Then we end up getting into trouble, and we'll talk about that in a minute, about being people -centered evangelists rather than God -centered.

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And then, of course, if we don't understand the work of Christ, why the incarnation? Why the virgin birth?

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Why the obedience? Why the death on the cross? Why a resurrection? Why the rule? How is he prophet, priest, and king?

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How does that affect the way we do evangelism? So if we don't understand the mighty labors, not only of Jesus of Nazareth, the

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Son of God and Son of Man, but of all the persons of God, if we don't understand how Father, Son, and Spirit have labored for the rescue of his people, well, then we're gonna be poor ambassadors.

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Yes, so if we're gonna be good ambassadors for God, if we're gonna witness, if we're gonna spread his gospel, well, then we need to be clear on who he is.

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We need to be clear about what it is that he does, and how he works through people, and how he works in people through the gospel.

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Yeah, and I mentioned that there's a slippery slope that any Christian, every

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Christian, is tempted toward. And we are tempted toward this, because the enemy uses something that is good in us.

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There is a compassion that we have for the loss that we didn't have before. We love our kids, you know, we love our spouse, we love our parents, we have best friends, we have co -workers, and we certainly, it's not that we don't care about people, but when

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God works in the heart, suddenly there is an earnest desire to see people that we don't even know come to know

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God, and to live for his glory, and to know what it is to be loved by him. So because of that compassion, here's the slippery slope.

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When I'm looking at a person, you know, at lunch break at work, and I'm talking to a guy, and he's telling me how his wife has just served papers on him, she's leaving him, she's taking the kids, and he's just, he's melting down.

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So he's a, he's a big strong guy, and I've never seen him show any emotion at all at work, and suddenly he's just a puddle.

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It is very difficult not to have your entire, your heart and mind and soul immediately swing like a pendulum over into his camp, and say, poor guy, what a rotten lady, what a, what a, you know, you've been, you've been given a bad deal in life, and you know, man, you're a victim.

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Well, we want to be compassionate, but if we know God, if we know the work of God on behalf of the sinner, it keeps our hearts allegiance with the offended

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King, and not with the broken sinner, and we are able to be compassionate without adjusting

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God's message, because we're, we feel such pity for the sinner, and we're able to represent

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God in a way that doesn't shift the methods. So we're talking to a person that's brokenhearted, and we are tempted not to say certain things.

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We think, God, do I really need to tell him that actually this is part of their, it's partly their fault.

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I mean, they've not lived for you. They, they've rejected your claims. They don't believe what you say about marriage, about kids, and so the fruit of sin is death and destruction.

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Do I say this? Well, we do have to say those things in order to say the good news, and so if we are captivated by the bigness, and the goodness, and the wisdom of God behind the gospel, then it frees us to stay, hold the course.

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My message and my method remain biblical. They remain true to who

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God is, and they don't become warped by the immense pressure of the brokenness of humanity that's right in front of you.

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Yeah, so maybe one way we could keep those things straight in our minds, just to put them under the category, what kind of ambassador am

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I going to be? Am I going to be a God -centered ambassador, or am I going to be a center, sorry, or am

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I going to be a sinner -centered ambassador? And if we're going to be a God -centered ambassadors, then we're going to have to pursue ever clearer understandings of who this

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King is that we represent. We'll have to study his perfections. We'll have to live in light of those perfections, and really rejoice in those in our own lives.

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You know, you can't fake that when you're talking to somebody in an evangelistic encounter.

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We'll have to really study what are his rights, as you said, and what are the expectations that he has for all of his creation?

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And then, how does he work on behalf of his enemies? What is the gospel? We'll have to be clear on these things.

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And if we're sinner - centered ambassadors, we really do run into trouble. Yeah, now, but when you say that,

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I can imagine a younger Christian or even an older Christian saying, okay, so Matt, John, are you saying that I've got to study a stack of books, and I've got to be a theologian before I can turn to my kid and say to them, this is the only hope you have, or my co -worker?

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What would you say to a person that says, you know, it's going to take me years to become a theologian like that?

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Well, it's not the work of a week, you know, but you can start that now. You know, first, it's a category shift.

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Whose camp am I in here? For whom am I advocating?

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Am I advocating the sinner's rights against this mean God who, you know, is holding him responsible for things that he really couldn't help doing?

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Or am I advocating for the God who is offended, who has all rights? And so, really, it begins with a categorical shift in our minds, and once we've made that shift, well, again, it's not the work of a week, but we can start now, and we can really seek to make our

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Bible reading and the reading that we do in our time of devotion and study the kind of reading that leads to the kind of informed

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God -centeredness that is necessary for us to really tell the truth about who He is.

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Yeah, and with that categorical shift, I think we find that the

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Spirit of God is so quick to help us in our inadequacy when we say to Him, you know,

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I want to be careful. You know, I'm trying to rethink these things, but Joe, sitting across from me, is falling apart, and so, as Joe is trying to get out his problems, he's trying to explain himself,

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I'm crying out to the Lord the entire time. Grant me the wisdom that's needed in this present situation.

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I have labor to understand you, but I feel like I'm just at the first steps. Will you help me to know how knowing you and knowing the gospel will enable me to say things to Joe that are just what

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Christ would want me to say? Yeah, the two -conversation thing that you've mentioned already,

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I mean, that is such a part of every conversation that I have like that. I mean,

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I'm listening. I'm truly listening, but I'm talking the entire time. I'm pleading with the Lord.

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Lord, help me know how to say this, and help me know where the line is, and you know,

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I do want to be like Christ. I want to be compassionate, and I am moved with compassion, but I want to make clear what your rights are here, and He is willing to do that.

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So, there's something else that we want to be learning. How is it that God actually works in a soul to bring that soul to repentance and faith in Christ?

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Right, that's the second great area that we want to be wise in, and that is the nature of man, or that we could say man's need.

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There's a very big gap oftentimes between what man's felt need is and what man's deep abiding need is.

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So, you can be talking to a person as if we use the illustration I gave earlier, a man whose marriage is on the rocks.

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You can try to talk to him about his need, need to know God, need to love his Creator, and apart from the

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Holy Spirit really working, He just wants you to shut up so He can say, no, no, no, no, you didn't hear me.

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Tell me how to fix my marriage. So, in dealing with people's souls, we have to love them enough, not to ignore their present pain, but to say to them, look, we will be talking about that.

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I can't, there are things to say about that, but before we can talk about that, there are some other things.

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It's not just the pain you're feeling. There's something wrong deep within, and if we only put a band -aid on this, if I only give you a spiritual ibuprofen, then

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I wouldn't be a good friend to you. Yeah, the pain that you're feeling, the situation that you're going through in life, it's not happening in a vacuum.

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You know, there's a context that you exist in, and if you're not thinking clearly about that, then we can't think clearly about this pain that you're going through, and so, you know, it really just helps the person understand how did you get here, and why are things the way that they are?

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Yeah, in fact, I would say this. We can waste a lot of time quoting the

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Scripture to people in a way that's unscriptural. We can, in a sense, not understand where they are at, where they're spiritually located.

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All we know is where we want them to be. Okay, I want you to be at peace with God. I want you to be repentant.

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I want you to be believing. I want you to walk with God. I want you to be forgiven. I want you to be headed toward an eternity with the best of beings.

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Where are they? And if you don't know where they're at, it's like we've used this illustration before. It's like trying to give someone directions.

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Before the smartphone, I got lost all the time. Now, I only get lost half the time, but before the smartphone,

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I got lost so much, and I remember when cell phones first came out, and I got lost in the city of Memphis, so I called my friend,

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Rick Couples, who lives in West Memphis, and Rick knows Memphis well, so I called him, and I said to him,

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Rick, I'm lost in Memphis, and so he laughed for a while. Then he said, what are you looking at?

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Now, I told him, I said, here's what I want, here's where I need to get to, all right? How do I get there? Well, his first question obviously was, well, where are you?

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And I said, well, I don't know. He goes, well, what do you see? And I said, well, there's this giant bank that says this, and then there's, oh, there's a street sign that says this, and he goes, okay,

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I know where you're at. Now, if he did not know where I was at, what good would it be for him to describe how to get somewhere?

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And we often do that in our evangelism. We start with people, and we just kind of say, we give them like the

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Romans Road. Okay, God loves sinners. You're a sinner. God loves sinners.

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God has a plan for sinners. This is what God's done for sinners. Would you like to have that right now? And so, it's kind of a generic statement, and a lot of it is very biblical, but not knowing where that person is at, much of our guidance is wasted.

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Yes, I just think that's such a good illustration. You know, your friend's saying, what do you see?

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You know, okay, so you need to get where you're going, right? But what do you see around you? Where you are at that moment matters so much more than where you need to be, you know.

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So, if you think about that, and the way that you would have a conversation with someone evangelistically, we know that where they need to be is reconciled to God through Christ Jesus.

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But where are they? What do they see around them? Well, you know, they may be seeing around them, of course

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God loves me. Who wouldn't love me? You know, I'm the kind of person that needs to be loved. And then you realize, oh,

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I know that neighborhood. That's the neighborhood of self -righteousness. And so, the first step that you need to make is a step right into the law of God that shows you where you really are.

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You know, you have these glasses on that think you're in this great neighborhood, but man, you are not. Or you may find that they're in a place where they're so, you know, what do you see around you?

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Man, I just see ruin and destruction. And this is what I always do. And this is what I will always do because I am fundamentally flawed and I can't do it.

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And then there's a great opportunity for you to come with the love of Christ for, you know, He's a restoring God.

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And so, it's so important to understand. But what if you had to summarize it?

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I know we're going to talk about this a lot more in upcoming episodes. But if you had to summarize it today, what are the two big problems that people need to understand that separate us from God?

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Well, obviously we just say, well, it's sin. But what do we mean? Well, there's the guilt of our sin.

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And that does separate us from a holy, just God who's righteousness, who's justice, who's fairness, never, never makes exceptions.

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And if we have any question about that, we look at the cross. Here is the delight of the

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Father, the eternal Son united to our humanity, the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who has never offended the

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Father, who has eternally delighted in the Father with a perfect, infinite love.

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And now in His earthly life, has always done all that pleases the Father and always hated all that displeased

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His Father. And in an environment that was so against all of that. I mean, we compare the environment that Christ was in, in His obedience to the environment that Adam was in, in his disobedience.

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And then that person stands as our representative. And the Father's justice is not altered at all.

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Bearing our shame and guilt, He's crushed. So we are dealing with a, with a judge who always gives what sin deserves.

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And so we have this issue of guilt. The soul that sins will surely die, the scripture tells us.

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The wages of sin is death, scripture tells us. So living for myself, I have earned a paycheck and we will never, no one will ever say about God at the end of time, you know, you didn't pay up.

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You don't pay right. You know, I worked like this. You didn't give me what I deserve. Unfortunately for the rebel,

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God will pay what we've earned. And it's death, an everlasting separation from God.

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So we need to understand that the people we're talking to, the guilt has brought the death penalty to them.

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They are constantly, John chapter three, they are presently under the wrath of God. But also there's debt.

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Think of it that way. And we say, well, I can, I can pay a little toward that. Well, if we, if we were to think of a person who has a debt that is so big that we can't imagine them ever paying, but let's say they decide to work more than one job, more than two jobs, they don't spend a penny on themselves.

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And so they work and work and work. And you think, well, look, it is theoretically possible that they could pay a little of that debt off.

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Well, think about what we owe God. We owe God perfect love, perfect expressed in a perfect obedience without flaw in thought, motive, word action, no matter the circumstance.

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So have I ever lived a day like that? No, a moment like that. No, no, I've never. But what if I could, what if every day

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I'm 49 years old? So let's say I live to 80. So I've got what? 31 more years.

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What if I had 31 years of perfect obedience, which I've never done once? I haven't paid.

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I haven't paid. I haven't paid for what I've done. If I gave God that kind of obedience today, all

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I've given him is what I owe today. In other words, I, I've just paid today's principle. But what about yesterday's principle?

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I didn't pay extra. You know, I only gave him what I owed him today, but I have got 49 years of debt.

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And so there's no, we need to understand, and we need to help the center understand the guilt means there is no way you can pay now.

30:20

Well, we say, well, what about the law of God? What about the rules of God? Surely if a person's in trouble with God, the best thing to do is start to do everything

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God says to do. So we're going to start keeping all those 600 plus rules. But Paul explains this, especially in Romans, in Romans seven,

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Paul explains that the law is like a light that exposes what's wrong on the inside.

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It also, because of our sinful nature, after it exposes it, it also, it, it, it stirs it up.

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It's like putting a sign up in front of a kid saying, you're not allowed to, you know, no trespassing. And the kid thinks, man, wonder what's back there.

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So he goes, and then Paul says the law condemns. So it exposes, it aggravates my sinful problem.

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Things seem to get worse. And then it condemns me. Or you could say it like this. The law is a spiritual

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MRI or a spiritual x -ray machine. You know, it can scan you and tell you what's wrong with you, but it can't repair you.

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It was not designed for that. It, it's, it shows you what's wrong so that you'll go to your doctor and say, is there any hope for me, doc?

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And the doctor says, actually there is, you know, so you will go to Christ and say, physician of souls, could you heal a person as bad as me?

31:37

So there's the guilt, but yeah. So, so you have these three areas that you've brought up as guilt. Now, how does

31:43

Christ, uh, solve that problem under each one of those? I mean, we have the, the fair penalty.

31:50

You mentioned already that Christ has himself has suffered the penalty of death in the place for all who will come to him in repentance and faith.

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Um, there's our imperfect obedience. There's our, you know, we haven't

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And even if we were able today, we wouldn't be able to do anything about the past. Well, we have the active obedience of Christ that is imputed to us when we believe.

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So all of his, there was never a moment when he didn't love the Lord as God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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And when we believe on him, that's counted as being ours as if we were the ones who have never loved

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God anyway, but, but perfectly. And then clearly the law, you know, there's nothing wrong with the law.

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The law is good. It's perfect. It's the delight of the believer's soul, but at the same time, it's never meant to be a scrub brush.

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We can't use it to clean ourselves up with, but when, when we've been given the righteousness of Christ, the law now becomes the path that we're free to walk on with God.

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We're, we're free to walk in a way that we know pleases him. So, you know, all of those things are, are things that Christ, the person in the work of Christ on our behalf is the only solution for.

33:04

Right. Another major problem that sin brings us other than guilt is pollution.

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That is that Adam passed on something to every one of his race. Adam passed on a heart that is bent toward me.

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And again, me against God, me against my family, me against my coworkers, me against my neighbors, uh, self, or what we call a sinful nature.

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And you know, it's what the theologians call total depravity, which can be misunderstood. When we say that someone is totally depraved, we're not saying that they always act as sinfully as they can.

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You say my grandma is totally depraved. You know, she's not, she's not some serial killer. She's not

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Hitler. Right. She is totally depraved, but she's not as sinful as she can be.

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I'm not as sinful as I can be. And so that's not total depravity. Another thing is that total depravity doesn't mean that we can't do anything.

34:02

That's good. I mean, as you mentioned, like, you know, you can, you can think of people that are in our lives and they, they do acts of kindness.

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Well, does that mean that they're not sinful? No. Total depravity means that every area of the life has in some measure been influenced by the pollution of sin.

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There isn't any area of my life that is free from that. So my religion, my prayer time, my

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Bible reading for me, my preaching, even my good work. Yeah. My, my best works still have the taint of that.

34:38

It's, it's touched every area. Now I know that some areas look clean. When I'm preaching on Sunday morning, that looks a lot cleaner than when

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I'm angry and having an argument with my wife. You know, I'm not ashamed of preaching.

34:53

I'm ashamed if I get angry at my family, but is that area untouched by sin?

35:00

A number of years ago, I was hiking in the Highlands of Scotland and you know, we didn't want to carry a lot of water.

35:08

We carried some of those purification tablets, but those things were nasty. So, um, so we use those in the lower elevation, but all my friends said to me, look, man, you know, we hike in the

35:18

Highlands a lot. If you get up in some higher elevation, water's clear, you know, there's not enough bacteria to hurt you.

35:23

So you can drink straight from the stream. So we did. So we were hiking along and we were going through and I was really thirsty.

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My water bottle was empty and we found a stream coming down the side of the mountain and I bent over to drink from it.

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Now I looked at the stream and I think, man, this is crystal clear water. And as I bend over to get my, a handful of the water, my friend that I was hiking with was higher up and he hollers down, don't drink that.

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And I think, look at it is as clear as can be. And I looked up and he was pointing down and I looked and I could barely see there was this giant dead bloated body of a sheep.

36:00

Now sheep are everywhere, but it had died and fallen across the stream. All the water that I was looking at down here that looks so clean had passed over the rotting body of this bloated sheep.

36:13

All of the water had a pollutant in it, at some measure. And that's the way we are. The outward things we do,

36:20

I may be helping an older lady across the street, you know, I may be preaching a sermon, but the fountain of the heart without the work of Christ, the fountain of the heart is all contaminated, you know?

36:35

Yeah. Yeah. This, this total depravity that we have as, as children of Adam, it also means that we're unresponsive to God.

36:43

There, there's a, there's a deadness in us. And, you know, I've, I've heard the illustration before that a sinner can't find

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God in the same way that a, that a criminal can't find a policeman. You know, it causes us to be, uh, morally opposed to finding the policeman, morally opposed to finding

37:03

God because that pollution is exposed in us. And come on.

37:08

I mean, we take a lot of pride in the good things that we do, especially before we come to Christ, before we see ourselves as we really are, before we side with him against ourselves, we use all of the good things that we do as kind of evidence that we don't actually need to go to God.

37:26

We're kind of doing it okay on our own. And when we come to him in that crystal clear, pure spotlight of who he is, his character and what he requires of his creation shines on us, um, you know, we're running from it the way that, uh, you know, an escapee would run from the spotlight.

37:44

Yes. I think that's exactly what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2. We're spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins.

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The mind, the heart, the will are unresponsive to God like a corpse. And it doesn't matter how loud someone shouts the good news at us apart from the work of God.

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It's, we are unresponsive. We are unresponsive to his claims. We are unresponsive to his beauty.

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We don't get it. We don't get him. We don't get Christianity. You know, it's a mystery to us.

38:14

Um, I think there's one other thing that, that we should consider. And that is when we talk about where a person is knowing where they're at so that we can point them to the destination in a careful way, it's not enough to say that all centers are guilty and all centers are polluted.

38:31

I think that we also need to know, well, where exactly as, as much as, as possible.

38:37

And I think a lot of this comes from just listening to what they're saying. Where are they at spiritually?

38:45

Are they, for instance, as you mentioned, are, are they in a place of, um, of self -righteousness?

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Hey, I'm pretty good. And if you would tell me about your Jesus, I think I could be a little better. He could, I can add

38:56

Christ to all the other good stuff I've already got. Or are they in a, in a kind of a place of atheism?

39:01

Like I look, don't bother telling me about how I can be forgiven for my sins because I don't even believe there is a

39:07

God. Uh, are they in a place of despair? As you mentioned, um, why would

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I sit and listen to you talk about Jesus? Because I've tried that already. It didn't work for me and I don't blame him.

39:18

You know, if, if I were him, I wouldn't forgive me either. So understanding where they're at is helpful.

39:25

If you think of it this way, the gospel is not like an indiscriminate bucket of pills at a pharmacy that they took every medication, the pharmacy threw it in the pill in this big bucket.

39:35

All those pills in that bucket are good medicine, but they're meant for different things.

39:40

They're effective when they're applied in the right way, at the right dose, at the right time. So we don't just, when someone comes to us, we don't just say, well, let me just throw a bunch of Bible verses about Jesus at you.

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And I scoop all these generic Bible verses and just throw it at the person. We listen to where they're at.

39:56

We hear, and we say, I know which of these pills, I know which truth about Christ suits that perfectly.

40:04

Yeah. Yeah. And that might seem like a new idea to you. You might've thought just hand the person a track, go through three or four points, um, you know, give your own testimony and then you've, you've done it, you know, you've evangelized, you've gospeled and that's all there is.

40:20

But really, you know, if we look at the way that the Lord Jesus dealt with all the different people who came to him and the scriptures are clear, here's

40:26

Christ. He's going about preaching the kingdom, preaching the gospel. And, but how he does that is, is shocking to us sometimes.

40:34

So I would just challenge people to, to read the gospels again and see how Jesus deals with different people who are at different places.

40:42

Yeah. You think of his, his, yes, you think of his statement to a very religious teacher, a very noble, admirable, sacrificial, religious man,

40:53

Nicodemus, you're going to have to be birthed all over again. I'm not going to talk to you about faith and repentance.

40:59

I'm, you're going to, I'm not going to tell you what you need to do next. You've already done nine out of 10, but now that I've come, there's one last thing to add to your goodness.

41:08

He says, actually, you'd have to be started all over again or to a woman, the woman at the well, she's had a number of husbands.

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The man she's living with now is not her husband. Obviously she's hoped to fill the chasm of her soul with a relationship.

41:24

If I could only find someone who would love me, who would be my stability. And Christ says to her, there is a water that I could provide for you that if you drank it, you would never thirst again.

41:36

Obviously he's talking spiritually. And when she says, Hey, go ahead and give me a bucket of that water.

41:42

He says, well, go get your husband and we'll talk. I mean, why does he say that? Um, why does, why does she need to hear that at that point?

41:50

And when Christ talks, you know, to the rich, young ruler, uh, amazing statement. So amazing that if it weren't in our

41:57

Bibles in, in, in red letters, you know, we would think, I don't know who that is, but that's not the gospel.

42:03

I want to be right with God. Good. Keep all the rules. And you know, we would jump up if a preacher said that and say,

42:09

Whoa, Whoa, Guys, that's not the gospel. So why does Christ start there? Right.

42:14

That's not the gospel. That's the law. Right. Exactly. Right. And so Jesus knows that different truths are appropriate at different places of a person's spiritual journey that are all part of bringing a person from, you know, from here to God.

42:33

And so understanding that can be very helpful with us when we look at the life of Christ.

42:39

And we'll, we'll take some time to look at this in, in a further episode, Christ's understanding of where a person was spiritually altered what aspect of God's truth was needed in the process of guiding them to the hope of, of reconciliation with God through him.

42:59

And it's not a different gospel. It's a different place in applying the gospel.

43:06

And so that's, I think that that's a very significant biblical truth for Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, it takes wisdom and here's

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Christ who didn't lack any wisdom and, and always did what he heard his father tell him to do.

43:19

And always said what he heard his father say, we'll need help, but he's given us his spirit and he's given us his spirit so that we would be witnesses for him.

43:29

And so we can go to him and we can ask for that. It's exciting to think about looking at all of these things in the coming weeks, as we're starting to sort of map out how we want to approach this process.

43:40

We'd love to hear from you if you have questions and we'll look forward to getting into it in more episodes in the future.

43:47

So thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast. If you're just jumping in now, you can find all of our shows at mediagratia .org

43:55

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44:02

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44:11

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44:49

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45:06

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45:17

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45:36

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