Sunday Night, March 17, 2019 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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holiness? Yeah, I won't retell the joke for the recording.

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Those laws are given in the area where God says, okay, and obviously there's going to be a breakdown in the family, thereby, should the incestuous relationships continue.

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Now, that is not to say that there wasn't some, the concern that God had in the beginning was for the human race to be fruitful and multiply.

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And so, because we all came from one man, from Adam, from one couple, Adam and Eve, there was going to be the intermarriage early on.

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But that's not the case now. And of course, sin does have an impact on that. And part of what God says, being holy has a practical outcome, like Brother Red said.

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We're not told where Cain got his wife from, but we are told that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters, and each one of those had many sons and daughters, and the world population exploded very fast, and the people lived a very long time.

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So, it's not hard to figure out where Cain got his wife from.

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It's not really a stumbling issue. And you're right in the sense, if God specially created Cain's wife, then we have someone who was not from Adam, someone who was not descended from Adam, someone who was not of the same human race as the rest of us.

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And this opens up all sorts of problems in terms of just defining the gospel.

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All who were in Adam die. All those who are in Christ live. The unity of the human race in Adam is an essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And as soon as there are humans outside of Adam, we have lost the gospel. I would probe with questions, why are you so adamant?

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And then I would also probe with the question about Adam and Eve. If your concern is that Cain is too closely related to his sister, what about Eve being made out of the rib of Adam?

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And if she says that's a special case, you say, well, all of them were special case at the beginning.

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I mean, it's a fairly, and part of this is the practice of reading the scripture plainly and clearly, and not adding in where we're not given that information, and not just reading into the and adding all sorts of ideas in the blank spaces.

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And that's just part of practical reading of the scriptures. That sometimes we're tempted to add things into the

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Bible where we think, well, that makes me feel uncomfortable. I'll add something in there to make it seem better.

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That's a bad way to read the Bible. So just encouraging your friend, well, you know, let's think about it this way and this way, and let her mull over it.

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She's probably not clinging to the special creation of Cain's wife at the expense of the gospel for her own faith.

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She's just trying to make sense of it to make sure that what happened shows that God is good and that God is just and those kinds of things.

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Great. That's a good desire. And since this good

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God who has a great character gave us this word and didn't say one way or the other, she doesn't have to worry about it.

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Oh boy. Hmm.

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What do I know about Rick Warren? Well, let's go to your next question, because what

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I know about Rick Warren would fill a lot of time and instead of me rambling and raging against the man, let's go ahead and what's your specific question?

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Okay. 101 ways to soften your milk toast.

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Okay. So Rick Warren, I think there's some things to know about Rick Warren.

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Okay. So you have to back up to Donald McGavern, who was a third generation missionary to the subcontinent of India.

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His family had grown up there as a missionary, missionary kid.

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He was very committed to the missionary cause. And he noticed that in some mission stations throughout

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India had greater success than other mission stations. And he wanted to know why. And if you know anything about India, you know that everything is run by the caste system.

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The Baha 'i caste is the highest caste. And then there's the untouchables at the very bottom. And there's all these different castes in between.

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And these castes are not supposed to intermarry. Their engagement with one another is under a kind of a strict system.

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Western economies have somewhat mollified some of that, but it's still there. And what

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Donald McGavern noticed was that in the mission stations where it was focused on a single caste system, where there was no mixture of the caste systems together, those mission stations succeeded far greater and far faster.

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For there was no call for someone of this second level caste to interact with and be brother and sister in Christ to someone of this fifth level caste down here.

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And where that hurdle, as he would put it, that hurdle to the gospel was removed, and it was everybody of the same caste, things went really, really well.

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Because everybody was of the same caste, so everybody got along together, so those mission stations exploded in growth versus the other ones that were having trouble.

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He developed what was called the homogeneous unit principle, which basically comes down to this.

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When everybody is just alike, it's easier to get things done. He brought this revelation over to Fuller Seminary in the

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States. And began what is now known as the Church Growth Movement. He was instrumental, as well as Robert Shuler was instrumental, in launching the

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Church Growth Movement. Rick Warren is a disciple of both. Rick Warren was able, and he's a very smart individual, he's able to communicate well, to plan well, to run very large organizations and move things along, very motivational.

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His training for such capacity, he gives all the credit to, get this name right,

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Drucker? What's the name? Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker was looking for a way forward for society, and he looked around, and he put his hope on the corporation.

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If there could be enough unanimity in the corporation to move forward, great things can happen. Peter Drucker is famous for the reason why we have

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McDonald's today. The reason why McDonald's does so well, and other industries like that, is because you can take somebody who is perhaps not very good at anything, maybe has basic level skills or whatever, but if you can have them do this one thing, and they do that, they learn that, simple skill, they can learn that and do that, and you get a whole lot of people doing that, you can run a business.

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If this person leaves, you can find somebody else and plug them right in, and there they go.

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This person doesn't have indispensable skills. This person can be replaced with somebody else just as easy.

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If you set up your business that way, you can just plug people in, and they keep it going. He realized at some point that corporations were a bit soulless, and really weren't the answer, but he turned his attention to religion, and his interest in religion grew.

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He began to realize that some of his principles in the corporation world, the corporate world, can be applied in the religious world.

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This is what was very, this is what Rick Warren was very interested in, and what he realized was this.

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You could take Peter Drucker's philosophy and apply it to the church, and also take the homogeneous unit principle, and what you come up with is this.

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You plant a church with a whole bunch of people who are just alike, so there's no hurdles coming into the gospel. In fact, what you do first of all, is you go survey the neighborhoods around the place that you want to plant your church, and you ask them what kind of church would you like, what kind of music are you interested in, what kind of activities are you interested in, what are the issues that are important to you, and then when you get all that data culled together from your market, then you craft your church based around what the people want.

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His idea is if you can find that one heart issue that you can really reach that person, if you meet that need, if you meet that one heartfelt need deep within that person, you've got them for Christ, which for his idea is basically they'll be a part of your church.

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Saddleback Community Church is famous for when they bring people in, as soon as they can, they give you a job.

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As soon as they can, they give you something that you can invest in and feel like I have a role to play in this huge organization, but I have a part to play, and it's meaningful.

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I've received a little bit of training. I've been told this was very helpful for everybody, and I've been called to invest on a very basic level.

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Well, Rick Warren gets that idea from Peter Drucker, and basically you design a church where you can just kind of plug people in and then you run it.

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Rick Warren is perhaps the leading ecumenicalist of our day.

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By that I mean he's gone beyond interfaith dialogues where he wants to respectfully, how you say, speak very respectfully and honorably to the

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Muslim and to the Hindu and so on and so forth, and everybody has their part to play in helping the people of the earth.

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In Rick Warren's own words, he wants to be done actually with interfaith dialogues, and he wants to go into interfaith projects, and so he has what's called the

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PEACE plan. He has a PEACE plan, P -E -A -C -E plan, and I forget what the acronym completely means, but it basically involves cooperating with all these different types of people, no matter who they are, no matter what faith they are, to bring about peace in troubled areas of the world.

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It's Zimbabwe that basically adopted his PEACE plan as their basic approach.

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I mean, he's got world leaders listening to him about these things, but his idea is that we have to meet the physical needs of the people who are in trouble, and this is what we're called to do.

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He sees himself, and rightly so, as a world leader in terms of the ecumenical movement, in terms of doing compassionate works around the world, and so on and so forth.

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His main book is called The Purpose -Driven Life, and he also wrote a book called The Purpose -Driven Church.

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In these works, his understanding of the gospel is fractured at best.

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If he does understand the gospel, he certainly doesn't communicate it. If you listen to him speak, you're not going to ever hear him say, he's not going to preach the person and work of Christ and call for repentance and faith in him.

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Definitely not going to do that. I've listened to him talk. I've listened to him at the interfaith dialogues with world leaders.

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I've listened to him at the TEDx talks that he's given to pure secularists. He doesn't preach the gospel.

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His main goal is to make sure everybody finds significance and meaning and purpose, which ultimately,

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I'm going to get it wrong, for those who care, he's probably more like Friedrich Schleiermacher than anybody else.

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His whole idea is, I want you to feel like you have a meaningful, purposeful life. If everybody feels like they have a purposeful, meaningful life, everyone's going to be happy, and we've achieved what we want.

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That's my synopsis of Rick Warren. Well, that's the case.

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Most of the case, here's Rick Warren. If you go to Lifeway, if you go to Mardell, they're not going to put books up front by Horatius Bonnard.

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They're going to put books up front by Rick Warren and Sarah Young. Those are what sells.

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So whatever sells best, what goes to the front. I would advise against Sarah Young. I think that you need to counsel your friend about why is it that...

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I have a friend of many years that I talked to the other day, and he was asking for a good book recommendation, something that would help him in his reading of the

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Bible. I said, I'm not being sarcastic at all, but why not read the

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Bible? I'm not being funny, I'm serious. And in Sarah Young's first editions of Jesus Calling, she explained that the

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Bible was dead to her, but that God only spoke in a living way to her when she emptied her mind and went with blank paper and pen and waited for God to speak.

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The name of her book, Jesus Calling, is based on a book by two Catholic monks called God Calling, wherein they were practicing the

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Roman Catholic mysticism called Lectio Divina, in which they empty your mind, you wait for God to speak, and you write down whatever he says, which is basically waiting for your imagination to get bored and start saying, hey, your mind is not supposed to be empty, you're supposed to be doing something, and out comes whatever is in your head.

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As, oh, who's the guy who does all the book reviews? Tim Chalies. As Tim Chalies has noted, the

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Jesus in Jesus Calling sounds like a 50 -year -old white woman from America, because it's

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Sarah Young. The Jesus in Jesus Calling does not sound like the Jesus that we have recorded in inerrant, infallible living scripture here.

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It doesn't sound like that at all. It doesn't use the terms that he uses. It doesn't speak like he speaks here.

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He speaks like Sarah Young speaks. It's because it's Sarah Young. It's not Jesus Christ. Part of that, again, this is to bring it around full circle.

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When your friend is concerned about the blank space between Cain and his wife, and what do we do, and she fills in the gaps, it's the same thing that Sarah Young feels like she needs to do to fill in the gaps, but it's not necessary.

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In Hebrews chapter one, we have some really good news.

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Some really good news in Hebrews one. In Hebrews one, beginning in verse one, says,

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God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days, has spoken to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.

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He is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power.

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When he had made purification of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels as he has inherited a more excellent name than they.

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This is just one of many passages in the Bible that tell us everything that God was saying all along pointed at Christ.

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Christ came, and he said what the father said. In Christ, all the promises of God are yes.

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Second Corinthians 120. We have a sufficient, full, sufficient word.

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All the scriptures, God breathed. How more spiritual can you get? I mean, this is God breathed stuff right here.

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Not usually on the front display case of the Christian bookstore, but right here in the scriptures.

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This is God breathed and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

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We have a desire as believers to know what's true, to know where we're wrong, to know how to get right, how to live

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God's way. We have those desires, don't we? Those are good desires. And the Bible says, the

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Bible fills those needs. So I would be very, very cautious about people who take up industrial corporation strategies and apply them to the church in terms of Rick Warren, somebody who's ecumenicalist and doesn't care to defend the gospel, be very cautious with somebody who now, if you go to her website now, and if you read her disclaimers now, there's a very robust affirmation of the word of God, but that wasn't the reason why she wrote her book.

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The first edition material is still out there and it's never been refuted. And what she does, what

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Sarah Young does, is based on Roman Catholic mysticism. And I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it.

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So your friends are like a lot of us. We want to serve God, we want to love

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God, we want to grow in the Christian faith, and very often the low -hanging fruit that's around, here's this book, here's this devotional, great, here's something that's good, may not, and oftentimes is not the best option.

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Going through all of what I've just said, they probably won't believe a word you're saying, and so on and so forth.

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But what you can do, Joel, is encourage them to pursue that which does help them follow

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Christ, to encourage them in the scriptures. Here's what I noticed. When I was in my undergrad,

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I was at Mid -America Christian University here in Oklahoma City, and they were part of a church group that had no creed, no confession, no church membership, and most of the students there didn't know anything what they believed.

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And everything was mysticism, everything was spirituality, but very little attending to the

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Word of God. And what I noticed was that when we had professors who came in and just opened the

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Bible and taught the scriptures, those who were truly born again in Christ, they just ate it up and they wanted more.

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And so that's what you need to do is, Joel, you be in the Word, and you share the

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Word with them. And if you set the Word before them and they eat it up, along those lines, you can keep encouraging them to keep that up, because they can tell the strength of that, the good of that.

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And if they don't want the scriptures, if they don't want the Word, well, then that's a whole other need, isn't it?

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We're out of time, so I can't give you more questions, Joel. Okay, thank you.