Open Q&A with Drew Von Nieda & Chris Huff

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and Welcome, welcome to Apologetics Live.

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But no, I am not, whoops, and Andrew definitely told me about that,

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Andrew definitely told me to take that off of mute, or take that off of loop, and I completely forgot about it.

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But no, I am not Andrew Rappaport, I am another Andrew, you guys know me, I am

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Drew from Matter of Theology, and you know, it's that place where theology matters, because everything is a matter of theology.

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And while I am here, I am not here alone. That's right, I am here with the actual true host of Matter of Theology, Mr.

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Chris Hough, my partner in all things Bible. But before I bring him on, Andrew couldn't be here, he is actually in Oklahoma preparing for the

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Cruciform Conference, but he asked us if we would host the show tonight, and you know, of course we were happy to do so, and we're happy to serve.

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Now, Apologetics Live is a podcast ministry from Striving for Eternity that seeks to answer your questions about God and the

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Bible. If you would like to come on the show, ask a question, simply pull up your Google Chrome, go to ApologeticsLive .com,

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click the duck, follow the instructions and make sure that your audio is set up correctly, and we will bring you on.

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Now one topic, Chris and I talked about this, one topic we're not going to be dealing with today, because it's been dealt with the past couple of weeks, is that of the

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Hebrew Israelites. It's been dealt with, we're not going to handle that, we're going to look into other topics and questions that you guys are going to have.

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So with that, I'm going to bring in my partner in all things Bible, Mr. Chris Hough.

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What's up, man? How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm good. What's new? What's exciting?

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Oh, you know, just, you know, doing Bible things with my Bible friends. That's it.

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That's it. We do Bible things with Bible friends because we want to be Bible people. We are. That's our aim in life is to be

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Bible men. That's the goal. Or if you're a lady, be a Bible lady. That's it. That's it, bro.

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That's it. That's it. That's right. So, Chris, let's talk about something that's in the news.

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And this is not quite in the news, but it's something that you have a buddy who is military.

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What are some things y 'all been talking about? Well, I mean, so it started out with a friend of mine by the name of that's right.

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All Dogs. Jason Capes at All Dogs, D -A -W -T. Hosting tonight.

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Thanks, gentlemen. Thanks, brother. We love you, man. So I've got a friend of mine.

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His name is Alex Rodriguez. He is the pastor of Outpost Bible Church in McHenry, Illinois.

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And we just were talking about something that he saw in the fact that now the

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United States Navy has a spokesperson in order to gain more recruits.

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And this person happens to be a drag queen. And so yesterday

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I was filing through Twitter a little bit, and I've been taking a break just quietly.

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Well, I guess it's not quietly anymore. Taking a break from most of the things, social media, except for I've been watching my screen time and stuff like that.

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So just trying to back away from that a little bit. And it's been long. But I was rifling through Twitter, and there's a former

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Navy SEAL and author by the name of Rob O 'Neill, which if you know that name,

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Rob O 'Neill wrote a book. I have it right over here entitled The Operator. He actually is the

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Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden. And he put on Twitter, I'm not going to read the entire tweet because there is some language in there, but he said, all right.

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And I can almost hear him saying this because I do listen to his podcast every now and then. He said, all right, quote, all right.

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The US Navy is now using an enlisted sailor drag queen as a recruiter. I'm done.

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China is going to destroy us. You got this, Navy. And then he said, I can't believe I fought for this stuff.

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And he didn't, of course, say stuff. And he had a few more interactions with this topic yesterday.

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And he said this, and I will quote this, and I agree with this.

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He said, and I quote, the US military needs to be ferocious, not fabulous, period, close quote.

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And so that's it. And I mean, so brother, one of the things that you and I were talking about yesterday,

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I think it was yesterday, was the whole concept of once you go woke, you go broke.

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And I think back to what we saw last, oh gosh, two years ago,

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I don't think it was last year, I think it was two years ago, when the United States Marines were putting out videos and communicating around diversity and inclusion.

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And at the same time, you have places like North Korea, who their videos are much, much different.

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There's a ferociousness and a toughness about that. So there are a couple things about that, that I just wanted to talk about real quick, and then we can chop it up.

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And then if anybody else wants to chop it up, as far as the comments go about this topic, we can do that too.

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But two things, first and foremost, do not fear as far as the military goes.

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And just because the Navy is doing that doesn't mean that there aren't more than capable men and women in the

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United States Navy and the Army and the Air Force and the Coast Guard and the Marines, et cetera, so on and so forth, who are ferocious and not fabulous.

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And I was talking to these guys, I've been repping their stuff, over at GBRS Group, Global Battlefield Research Solutions, DJ Shipley, Cole Fackler, former

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SEAL Team 6 guys, DEVGRU guys, and it's just like they've said, it's like, look, our military is fine. We are good.

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China may have the numbers on us, but as far as the training, as far as the overall, you're just seeing a fringe of what some higher up person in the administration that we have, what they're trying to do.

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So don't worry about that, we're good. But then at the same time, you also have to go, when societies give into ideologies that are contra -Scripture, they're antithetical to what

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Scripture teaches, we see the Lord, and you and I have talked about this on Matter of Theology, when we talked about the wrath of God's abandonment, that you see the

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Lord give people over to a depraved mind, and then you see what happens with that.

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So it's just interesting, man, just the concept of going woke applies to more than just ethnicity.

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The concept of going woke, of course, applies to everything LGBTQIA, the alphabet soup people, and a bunch of other things.

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And it all ultimately leads back to Marxism, Socialism, which, by the way, those concepts are antithetical to Scripture too.

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So that's right. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. And along the same lines of that, there is a famous brewing company that has made their, the face of their brand, right, a transgender,

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Dylan Mulvaney. And you mentioned go woke, go broke. Well, what has happened? They have took a hit financially.

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Big. Big hit. Big. I mean, it's - Bigly. Yeah. Yeah.

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Big. Donald. Yeah. Big. Big. Huge. Huge. Huge. Bigly. Huge. But, you know, we had a -

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Oh, dude. Also in the news, did you hear that President Biden might be getting impeached?

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Apparently there is a document from a whistleblower that says that he was involved in all this criminal activity, exchanging money for political favors.

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And it's almost like we've been saying this for a while. Right. Right.

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You know, and now there's apparently evidence, you know, go figure. Right. And this just made the news yesterday, last night,

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I believe. I did not hear that. And I will be surprised if it actually happens.

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Well, it was, now Fox News did cover it. So Jesse Waters, Sean Hannity, they did cover it.

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Right. And, but apparently Senator Grassley is all over this.

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And apparently he takes whistleblowers very seriously. He should. So he was interviewed about really wanting this document.

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Yeah. KTN Jesus says, yes, I heard about it. Yeah. Yeah. Check out

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Darren Stid, his comment. Yep. Pastor Darren Stid, he says, this is the new -

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Love you brother, by the way. They are just going to impeach each other back and forth. Each time the presidency changes hands, it's a political theater.

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Exactly. I mean, what did we see in 2016 when Trump was elected? Before the ballots were even counted and he was officially looked at as president, they were talking about impeachment.

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Yeah. And he hadn't even done anything. Yeah. Right. You know, so - It's ridiculous. It is, it is ridiculous.

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But we did get this question in here. And this question actually goes with something that I wanted to say regarding Twitter.

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So here's the question. It's from Carol Jill, Carol JL1.

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She says, what is Christian nationalism? What is the church's responsibility for discipleship as far as small groups or -

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Ooh, I love that second question. Yes. The second question I think is very important. And that's actually something that I really wanted to touch on because I want to encourage brothers and sisters, before you get on Twitter or any other social media outlets, spend some serious time in prayer.

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Because it is evident that I've, as I've seen on Twitter, and I haven't, I have not engaged any of these folks, but it's evident that there are some brothers, and I don't know if there are sisters involved too, but I wouldn't doubt it, it's

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Twitter, that need to spend more time, or it's evident that they are spending more time on Twitter than they do in prayer.

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And the whole controversy, the whole debacle is centering around Christian nationalism. And this has been going on for a couple of weeks, right?

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And one of the - For the people that are listening on audio right now, you can't hear the sound of me shaking my head. But it's -

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Can I say something too, bro? Look, I love

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Twitter. If I were to, if someone were to say, hey, what is the social media site you have spent the most time on, and get the most out of personally,

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I would say Twitter. And I know that there are people out there like, bro, absolutely not. And so I'll say that,

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I think it's a good medium, it's a good platform if it's used correctly.

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On this topic of Christian nationalism, here's the problem. One of the problems.

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Oh, yeah, I saw a comment by Darren, but let me keep going. I'm going to look away from the comments for a second, because I'll get

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ADD moment. So here's the issue, is some of the things that we're seeing on both sides of the ball, when it comes to the

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Christian nationalism thing, is what is commonly referred to as self -fulfilling prophecy. In that if you go on Twitter and poke people in a vague, unclear, unhelpful, not edifying or admonishing way, don't be surprised when people clap back.

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And don't cry foul when people clap back. That said, just because someone posts something that you may not agree with, don't read more into what they are saying, and don't fill in the blanks for what they aren't saying.

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And remember to respond, not react. And that goes on both sides of the ball.

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Now, the whole conversation around Christian nationalism, and when this question came up, our brother

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Darren said, Pastor Darren said, he said, oh, goodness, Christian nationalism all over the place right now, LOL. And it is, it really is, because it's not actually a monolithic thing.

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Correct, absolutely. Depending on who you talk about, who you ask, they're going to have a different definition. Well, and see, brother, what's interesting about this is this is one of those topics that has not been clearly defined.

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And it still is not clearly defined. It just depends on who you talk to. But here,

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I'll say this, and then I'll turn it back over to you. All of us who profess faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ should advocate for, and I'm saying this as a historic premillennialist,

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OK, we should advocate for. And be in support of and celebrate when there are those who profess faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, to whom the Lord is sovereignly placed in positions of being able to influence the laws of our country or any country for that matter.

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And they do so in a way that reflects what scripture teaches. We should want that.

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We should desire that. Now, there are nuances and caveats to that, as that's not the most important thing.

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What is the most important thing is that the gospel of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ would shine bright and shine through us, that Christ would save his elect and continue to build his church, because that's the only institution, by the way, that the

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Lord has promised to protect. So when it comes to the topic of Christian nationalism, especially right now, because it's such a hot topic and people are getting their panties in, sorry, getting their underwear in a bunch, sorry, they are on both sides of the ball.

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I'm like, you guys, look, here's what you guys need to do. You guys need to plan time to get together in private and hash this out.

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Quit airing stuff like this in a vague way or in an immature way on social media.

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Just stop. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, I mean, that's absolutely great.

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And getting into the second part of this question here, right? What is the church's responsibility for discipleship as far as small groups and individuals?

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Well, you know what I'm not hearing from the Christian nationalist debate is local churches, right?

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It begins in a local church. I'm hearing it on one side. Right, so probably the side that, whose ministry is devoted to the local church.

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Correct. So now I think you and I would agree, right?

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And eschatologically, we're on different ends, right? But I think we would agree that we would love to see

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America taken for Christ. Absolutely. We would love that, okay? But where does it start?

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It starts in the local church. That's why I want to bring up Darren's comment here that he put, which is on the money, okay?

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We need more self -government before Christians can have any impact on culture, Christian nationalism or not.

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That's it, Pastor. So we need to be first governing ourselves according to the scriptures.

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And then we need to be governing the church according to the scriptures because it's the church that will then have the impact from the people growing in holiness who are affected by the gospel, growing in holiness that are going to have the impact on the community.

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And then it's supposed to grow out from there. If you want a great example of that, here's what you do. Go read

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The Great Awakening by Joseph Tracy. You will see a phenomenal example of what it looks like for the gospel of God, the whole council of scripture to be central first and foremost and to see the

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Holy Spirit move and work as the sword of God, the word that is the sword is wielded and how it affects the churches and then how it affects the communities that the churches are in.

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Right, that's it. So when we go out to proclaim the gospel, we're going out so that the sinner will be saved, right?

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The sinner will be saved. And then what do we want to do? We want to disciple them. We want to bring them into and make sure they're connected with a local church because that local church is really going to have the impact on them.

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The pastoring, the shepherding, the community, they're going to have the impact on and then it branches out from there, right?

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So now let's just go into how missions work, right? Missions is one biblical church raising up elder qualified men, sending them out to plant another biblical church, and then you repeat the process.

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That's how you make Christian nations is by planting biblical local churches.

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That's how it starts. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's primarily your goal.

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Then what you're trying to do is you're trying to come in and be almost like a fascist state, right?

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Well, because what, right. If you try to, if you try to Christianize, quote unquote,

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I'm going to make a statement right here. Um, if you try to Christianize a nation city, whatever, um, without the presence of the gospel and actual biblical discipleship taking place, just flip the social justice coin over.

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Right. And that's what you're doing. Yeah. It's humanistic moralism that has no power to save.

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And it affects, uh, it affects everything temporally, but it doesn't meet the eternal need that we all have.

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And that is how can sinful man be made right with a holy God. That's it. That's it.

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Yep. That's it. Amen. Let me put up what Melissa Owens says. She says, amen. There you go.

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Amen. Amen. Amen. But that, I mean, that's the thing with, uh, with Christian nationalism and Carol, we hope that we answered your question there.

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Um, and that's just one of the things, you know, it's Christian nationalism is something that's all over the place.

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You it's like that question, uh, Carol, Carol, Carol, go, uh, go check out founders ministries and their latest national conference that they did on,

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I believe it was on the doctrine of man. No, I can't remember what it was, what it was on, but, but they addressed this topic, Vodie, and they did a wonderful job and a well rounded job.

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Um, it's go, go listen to, to Dr. Vodie, Dr. Tom Haskell, and just go check out founders ministries.

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They're the, the, the national conference that they had. Um, the last one, I believe it was this year. Yeah, it was this year.

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Um, it was great. It was, it was great. Yeah. It was like February or something like that. Yep. Yep. So, okay.

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Shifting gears a little bit. Let's, uh, let's get into talking about worship because this just everywhere

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I go and probably everywhere you go to, we see false worship.

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We hear people talking about worship falsely. Um, where, where do you think that stems from?

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Um, well, I mean, we, we, we saw that in, you know, when the first murder took place in scripture.

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Um, so it's, that's where it stems from. That's where it started. Um, and wait, you mean it wasn't, you mean the first murder didn't occur from racism?

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Oh gosh. No. Who said that again? We know a pastor. Oh yeah.

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Okay. Dollar general Mark Driscoll, uh, said, yeah, that, so we heard a pastor one time say that the first murder occurred because of racism.

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How terrible. Again, for those of you listening on audio, you can't hear me shaking my head. Well, you might be able to at this point.

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It's pretty loud. That's right. And let me, let me answer. Let me answer this question right here. Brother John, uh, elving question.

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Drew believes post -millennialism. Yes. Yes, he does. Yes. Yes, I do. But let me say that.

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Let me say this about my boy. Um, uh, my, my boy, my boy drew, um, he does, but, um,

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I would put him more in the camp of like a, like somebody who represents post -millennialism, like an

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RC Sproul did, um, versus those out there who don't.

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I mean, I'm not, I'm not caged stage post mill is what you're saying. Correct. You're not caged stage post -millennialism and your responses are thoughtful and you're willing to engage in, you know, uh, academic and thoughtful conversation.

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You know, I try, but, but no, yeah, this false worship, you know, we really see it at, uh, at the first, the first murder.

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Right. And why was that? Because we have Cain and Abel and they're bringing an offering to God.

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Right. And this offering is an offering of worship. Now, the fact that they know to bring an offering of worship means that they have done it before.

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They know what God requires. Right. And what you see is you see Abel bringing the offering that God requires.

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And then you see Cain bringing the offering that he wants to bring.

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The offering from, from the ground rather than the offering of meat that God wants.

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And Abel's is accepted. Cain's is rejected. And then you really, you actually see, you know what you see in there?

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You see the patience and the grace of the Lord. When he rejects

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Cain's offering, because he says he pauses and he says, will you not?

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What will you, will your countenance not be lifted up? If you just do what

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I ask you, right? Will you not be filled with joy? If you just bring what the Lord requires.

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Go ahead. You're going to say something. Well, I was, two things.

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One, Melissa Owens, our dear sister, put a comment. She said, I keep hoping that if Drew keeps drinking that fresca, he'll become a pre -millennial.

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Me too. Me too, sister. But, but no, but, but here's, here's something interesting about, about, about Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter four.

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Of course, I'll be reading from the preferred translation of matter of theology, which is the legacy standard Bible, the

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LSB. Head on over to read .lsb .org, read .lsb

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.org, or go to 316publishing .com and pick up one. They have great sales for mother's day right now. I'm just saying, no, they don't sponsor me or us.

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I just love them. But check this out, bro. Genesis four, verse four,

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Abel on his part also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of the fat portions and Yahweh had regard for Abel and for his offering.

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But for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

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So in reading that, that stands out to me. This is a matter of an offering, a matter of first fruits, a matter of worship before the

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Lord. When we don't, when we don't worship the Lord, according to his word, he has no regard for our offering.

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It's the same thing. Go ahead, man. No, I mean, that's right.

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He, he has no reason to have regard for our offering, right? If we don't bring what he wants, because ultimately if we're not bringing what he wants and we're bringing what we want and we're saying, hey, you should accept this because it's what

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I brought you, right? Just be glad I brought you something is ultimately what he's saying, right?

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And what does that say about how we view God? The God that is deserving of all worship and glory, right?

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And so his offering is rejected. And then we see the self -righteousness of Cain.

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It flares up and results in him killing his brother. And I love you and I love what

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Anthony Mathenia says about this, right? He says, nothing angers the self -righteous more than when they're told that their worship is unacceptable, bro.

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And that's exactly what happened. Anthony Mathenia bringing the heat, bringing the heat, bro.

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That's the truth, man. It's the truth. And you and I have experienced it, right? We have seen the gnashing of teeth that takes place when you point out to someone that, you know, that, you know, that the

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Lord desires you to be regulated by the scriptures. The Lord desires us to be regulated by the scriptures.

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Ergo, we're not going to play X, Y, and Z songs. We're not going to play, you know, we're going to structure what we do in our lives.

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Not just what we do on the Lord's day, but what we do, everything we think, say, and do, we want to structure that around what the scriptures teach and not what we want, quote unquote.

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And, you know, it's, and there's so much to that, right? I mean, there's so much to unpack there, but, you know, when it comes to what we see on the

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Lord's day, I'm, you know, when we were going to talk about this, I pulled up that A .W.

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Tozer quote that I've quoted before. And this is good. It's a little long, so stick with me, but check it out.

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He says this quote, it is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction.

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It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is

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God. One can only conclude that God's professed children are bored with him for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games, and refreshments.

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And any objection to the carryings on of our present golden calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, but we are winning them.

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Are we winning them to what? To true discipleship, to cross carrying, to self -denial, to separation from the world, to crucifixion of the flesh, to holy living, to nobility of character, to a despising of the world's treasures, to hard self -discipline, to love for God, to total committal to Christ?

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Of course, the answer to all these questions is no, period, mic drop, close quote.

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And how true is that? God's professed children are bored with him. They're bored with his word and they're bored with him.

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And that's when you see things take place like Asbury, and they call it a revival.

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It's not a revival, because the gospel wasn't proclaimed.

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It's an emotional prodding. It's an emotional prodding, but what it is, is it's not people seeking for God.

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It's people seeking for an experience. They just want a new experience.

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Well, they are seeking a God. Yeah, a God of themselves. And a God of this age, and a

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God of entertainment, and a God of wanting to have their ears tickled. In every sermon

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I listened to at Asbury, I'm not saying the gospel wasn't preached, because that would just be asinine of me to say. But every one

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I listened to from the main pulpit, the gospel was never proclaimed. So ergo, revival did not happen.

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Right. Period. That's right, yeah. Jason here says, a scheduled revival around the anniversary every year.

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Yeah, they actually try to plan these out every single year for that to happen. But what you're talking about, yeah, people are getting bored with God.

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And they're bored with God because they do not love him. They do not see him as the ultimate treasure of which to be gained.

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And so in worship, right, we have two lines of thought, right?

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We have the regulative principle, which says we are seeking to be regulated by the scriptures.

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And then we have the normative principle. The normative principle says, well, if God doesn't forbid it, then we can do it.

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And with what you see in worship today is a lot of the normative principle because people are bored with God.

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They want a new experience rather than coming to God and bringing him the offering that is regulated by scripture, which means what

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God wants. And scripture actually, we can see it, it actually forbids the normative principle.

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Say that one more time, sorry. Oh, I said scripture actually forbids the normative principle. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It absolutely does.

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Yeah. If we just go over to Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu, we can see that God forbids the normative principle.

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Now I'm reading from the NASB. The foundational text for the LSB. That's right.

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Bond Servant for Jesus asks, what is the normative principle? The normative principle is basically if scripture doesn't forbid it, then we can do it.

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We can bring in things that God doesn't require.

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So normative principle would be, give us some examples, Chris, because my mind is like fried.

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Yeah. So one of the things that Votibacham, he has a great way of explaining this.

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Are you talking about the watches? Yeah. He's like, so for my anniversary, he said, if I go out and want to get my wife a gift,

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I've got two options, right? I can be regulated by what she likes or the normative approach.

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Okay. So the normative, we'll start with normative. The normative is, well,

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I really like watches. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go get her a really nice watch, even if she's not into watches.

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And then he said, but the regulative principle, an example of that, he said, would say, so what I should do is have a degree in my wifeology and I should know her so well that I know exactly what she wants, what she likes and what would bring her joy.

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So that was the way that Voti described the difference between the two. Yeah. So if you think about drama teams, drama teams are normative principle.

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We don't need drama teams. Okay. We don't need any of that nonsense. All we need is we need the word of God, the singing, the sacraments, and prayer.

33:16

Sing the word, pray the word, read the word, preach the word.

33:23

That's it. Simple. That's what we need. Yeah. We can come on the

33:29

Lord's day to worship God with nothing more than our Bibles. Yep. We don't, we don't need any of the extra stuff.

33:37

Now we're not saying that things like bands are, are sinful. We're not, we're not saying anything like that is wrong.

33:45

It's not wrong to have musical accompaniment when you're singing. That's what I do. Right. But when you, when you've got to have the lights, when you've got to have the fog machines, when you've got to have the emotional manipulation, when you've got to have the, the, uh, the dancers on stage as, uh, was lost, but now found says, um, when you've got to have the dancers on stage, when you've got to have the drama team, when you've got to have all this nonsense, when you've got to have a

34:14

Ted talk, when you've got to have unhitched from the old Testament, when you've got to have the Bible says, so isn't good enough when you've got to have crass jokes when preaching through song of Solomon, when you've got to have,

34:25

I can keep going, you know, it's, it's, it's, well, I mean, it's not prohibited.

34:31

So we can do it instead of going, why would I want to spend my time focusing on what

34:36

I can't do instead of trying to find out everything that scripture says that I can and should do.

34:42

Right. That brings joy to the heart of the Lord, where he does accept my offering.

34:47

Um, and it does glorify and edify him. Why would I not want to do that?

34:53

Right. Right. Yeah. Ultimately a normative worship. It's bringing what I think

34:58

God should want rather than bringing what God desires. So that's good.

35:07

Yeah. So now let's get into this text that actually forbids the normative principle. Right.

35:13

Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron took their respective fire pans and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the

35:27

Lord, which he had not commanded them. Okay. So there was a fire that he had commanded and they offered what he did not command.

35:35

And the fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consume them. And they died before the

35:42

Lord. Okay. So now normative principle, if God doesn't forbid it,

35:48

I can therefore do it. Well, God didn't say they couldn't use this. Correct. But it wasn't what he demanded, what he required for worship.

35:59

That's right. And so now here's the crazy thing, right? Let's think about our charismatic friends, our charismatic and our

36:07

Pentecostal friends. Okay. Let's think about, let's take this now into Ananias and Sapphira.

36:17

I believe this is Acts chapter five that I'm thinking of. Okay. They brought an offering of worship in selling their land and then bringing the money to the church.

36:29

Right. This is an, that's an offering of worship. Yep. They lied.

36:35

They did not. They were asked, did you, is this all of it? And they said, oh yeah, this is all the, but no, they kept back some from themselves.

36:42

They died. Okay. So now to my charismatic and Pentecostal friends, if you still believe

36:49

God acts in the same way that he does in the book of Acts, then you should be the most regulative principle people in worship, lest God kill you.

37:03

But they don't, they don't really believe, they don't believe God will still kill people for false worship, right?

37:09

Because they're actually functional cessationists. They only believe God still works through miracles, signs, and wonders, right?

37:18

Not the full, not his full counsel as we saw with Ananias and Sapphira. Uh, and in case you guys just missed it, uh, my boy drew here, just, uh, layeth the smacketh down on the charismatics.

37:32

Um, yeah. Wow. Is right. Uh, bond servant for Jesus. Here's another story. Here's, here's another example of a pragmatism run amok.

37:40

Um, when you look at second Samuel six, then David, uh, again, gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30 ,000 and David, but before you get into that, what is pragmatism?

37:54

What is pragmatism? Um, pragmatism is you do what you do in order to satisfy the felt needs and the desires of whoever you're trying to do it for.

38:05

Well, because it works because it works, it works. It's right. Right. So, uh, verse two of second

38:12

Samuel six and David arose and went, uh, and went with all the people who were with him from Baal Judah to bring up from there, the ark of God, which is called by the name, the very name of Yahweh of hosts who is enthroned above the cherubim.

38:29

And they drove the ark of God on a new cart that they might bring it from the house of a

38:36

Benadab, which was on the hill and Uzzah and Iho, the sons of a

38:42

Benadab were leading the new cart. So they brought it with the ark of God from the house of a

38:47

Benadab, which was on the hill and Iho was walking ahead of the ark. Now, David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before Yahweh with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, with the lyres, the harps, the tambourines, uh, symbols, sorry,

39:04

I lost my place. Verse six. And then they came to the threshing floor of Nakkun and Uzzah reached out towards the ark, uh, towards the ark of God and took hold of it because the oxen nearly upset it.

39:16

It nearly fell off the cart and verse seven. And the anger of Yahweh burned against Uzzah and God struck him down there for his irreverence and he died there by the ark of God.

39:32

Right. And I think of that very famous, very spot on quote by Dr. R .C.

39:38

Sproul speaking to R .C. Again, I miss R .C. Man, but I'm thankful for R .C. When he says

39:43

Uzzah's problem is he thought his hands were cleaner than the dirt. But then we have to also.

39:48

Not just the dirt, but the dirt that God had made. Right. Correct. Made that dirt. Oh, that's good. That's good. But see, the thing is too, is we have to remember that that ark should not have been on a cart in the first place.

39:58

And David knew that. Right. There are, you find very, very specific instructions as far as how the ark of God where the presence of God dwelt was supposed to be carried and supposed to be ushered as it moved a very, very clear instructions.

40:18

So it's interesting to see what happens there because all Uzzah, Uzzah did have a respect and a level of reverence.

40:27

He loved the ark. He loved the Lord. He understood what the ark was, but his irreverence and the way that it was supposed to be handled,

40:38

God struck him dead. That's right. Yeah. Now, now the reason David moved it on a new cart in the first place was because he knew that's how the

40:46

Philistines moved it. Right, right. And because it worked for the Philistines, right? If it works, it's right.

40:52

Pragmatism says because it worked for the Philistines. He said, well, we'll move it this way also. And it takes long.

40:57

It doesn't take as long. Right. It doesn't take as long. It doesn't take as long to move it by cart as it does by carrying it by the poles. And every six steps, you got to put it down.

41:04

That's right. That's right. And worship. Yeah. So, so Uz's death occurred as a result of David's pragmatism.

41:13

Right. And you can find the, uh, a parallel to this in first Chronicles chapter 15, the, the reason why, right.

41:21

And it says, because you did not carry it at the first, the

41:26

Lord, our God made an outburst on us, uh, for we did not seek him according to the ordinances.

41:33

Right. So he knew there was a specific way to carry it and he did not do it.

41:42

That's it. Yep. Yeah. I mean, so, so looking at, looking at how we worship the

41:51

Lord today, right. And, and looking at the, uh, the way that we, that we carry ourselves on the

41:59

Lord's day, but then not just on the Lord's day, the way we, um, the way we carry ourselves in our lives.

42:04

We have to understand that if we don't worship the Lord, according to his word, then we're showing an action that we don't love

42:10

God, but that we, that we functionally hate him. Because what we've done is we've elevated the filthy rags of our righteousness of our attempts and our personal preferences and what we want, or just like what you said, what we think

42:24

God should accept. We lift that up as an offering to worship to a holy and a pure God.

42:31

And, and, and we, we do it in the same way that as a did with zeal.

42:38

And right. You think about that, man, think about, think about that. Just put yourself in that and just, just like pretend you're there in, in, in this, the arc of the covenant is going to fall.

42:47

Right. He reaches out. I mean, it just full send. I mean, one to 10, he went to a 10 on a scale on the, on the violent scale, that fast he moved and he boom, and then he's dead.

42:58

And how, how much zeal and how much passion and that quick, that, that, that I'm going to give it all

43:08

I've got. Look at what takes place at places like Bethel. You know, you don't see a lack of zeal.

43:15

You don't see a lack of passion. You see all of those things, but what you see is a lack of irreverence for the very mind of Christ and the very word of God, as we approach how we worship

43:29

God. That's it. Yeah. And, and ultimately, man, this, and when you talk to people about Bethel, right.

43:41

What is it? First of all, you're going to get an argument from these people.

43:47

You're gonna get cussed out because yeah, because that has happened to us, but it's almost as if Bethel is their

43:55

God. I mean, it's like some of these, so you can't say anything bad about Bethel.

44:02

Nope. Right. It's like you just shot their, their best pig, right. Is almost how they view it.

44:08

If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. I mean, I mean, crazy. So, but a lot of this, a lot of these views of worship, these false views of worship come from a mishandling of, of, of a, of a text in John chapter four, right?

44:25

The woman at the well, and it's, it's this idea of, well, when we worship

44:30

God, we must worship him in spirit and in truth. And usually when people say when people, they focus on the spirit part and then they don't understand what the spirit part means.

44:42

And so they think that if I worship in spirit, it's this, some kind of ecstatic expression.

44:49

Right. That it can just be whatever I want. Right. No, no self -control.

44:55

Right. It's just, and they call it the Holy spirit's just taken over. Right. And just letting me do whatever

45:01

I want. And then that's how you wind up with nonsense, like the Toronto blessing, where people are barking like dogs and shaking and convulsing on the ground or having holy laughter and all this stuff because they don't know how to handle the text.

45:16

But what is John four actually about? Well, let's get into it. So John chapter four, we're going to be looking at the woman of Samaria beginning in verse seven, there came a woman of Samaria to draw water.

45:33

Jesus said to her, give me a drink for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

45:42

Therefore, the Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you being a Jew asked me for a drink since I am a

45:48

Samaritan woman. Okay. This was a no, no Jews had no dealings with Samarians. Right. Verse 10,

45:55

Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it, who it is, who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

46:06

He said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with. And the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?

46:15

You are not greater than our father. Jacob. Are you who gave us the well and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle.

46:23

Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.

46:31

But the water that I will give, uh, him, we'll bring him, uh, uh, we'll bring him a well of water springing up to eternal life and to him, sir, give me this water.

46:44

So I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw. He said to her, go call your husband and come here.

46:51

The woman answered, I have no husband. You are correct.

46:56

You have correctly said, I have no husband. You must be a prophet. You, you have had five husbands and the one whom you, uh, uh, whom you now have is not your husband.

47:09

You, uh, this, you have said truly the woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

47:15

That's probably one of my favorite lines of all. I appreciate it. Well, okay, let's pause it. I mean, bro, it would take us years, years to properly exegete this section of scripture, but something

47:27

I want to point out. Here is what you see in, in, in what

47:33

Jesus Christ has done and what he's doing here is you see a wonderful example of, of, of him preaching the gospel.

47:43

Yep. Um, and you, here, here's what you see, right? You see Jesus engaging her.

47:50

Okay. So he, he, he, he's engaging her. He's not shying away because, because she's a

47:56

Samaritan woman and he is a Jew. All right. There's, there's number one, number two, uh, verse 10.

48:03

He says, um, if you knew the gift of God and who it is, who, who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

48:11

Right? So he starts engaging and talking to her and he, he starts, he starts laying it down. If you only knew what, who, who's asking you, and then look what he does.

48:22

He presents the, the, the, the point, the point is eternal life. Water springing up from the well of eternal life.

48:28

But then what does he do? Right. He points out her sin. He exposes her sin, right?

48:35

He doesn't shy away from that. He doesn't say, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. He's like, no, you're right.

48:41

You've said correctly. I have no husband for you've had five husbands. And the, the one you have now is not your husband. Uh, this, this, you have said truly the woman said, sir,

48:51

I see you're a prophet. So then he goes on to say, and then he goes on to talk about worship, but then you look what happens in this conversion that takes place.

48:59

And they're at the end. And what does he say? Go and send no more. Go and send no more. Go and live a life after holiness.

49:06

Go and live a life, worshiping the Lord in spirit and in truth. So I just wanted to pause there and point that out because a lot of people skip over that and they run right to the spirit and truth thing, but it's like, well, whoa, what's happening here?

49:20

Gospel proclamation and preaching is taking place here. Go ahead. That's right. Yeah. And so, so, so reading this exchange right now, we're about to get into the part where they're talking about worship.

49:33

Yeah. Verse, uh, verse 20. This is, this is the woman talking.

49:39

She says, our fathers worshiped in this mountain. And you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

49:48

Jesus said to her woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the father?

49:56

You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is of the

50:01

Jews. Okay. So boom correction. Okay. That's that, that's a, a stern correction right there.

50:11

And how many people shy away from that? Oh my gosh. I can't offend anyone. Yep. I can't offend anyone.

50:17

Well, we see Jesus say, okay, you worship what you don't know.

50:23

You don't know God. So you can't. So when you're worshiping, you can't worship the right God because you don't know him.

50:28

We worship what we know. Salvation is of the Jews, but an hour is coming.

50:34

And now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, such people, the father seeks to be his worshipers.

50:44

God is spirit. And those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

50:52

And this is where people take this verse and rip it from its context and think that, well, if it says spirit, then that means some kind of ecstatic expression.

51:03

No, we just read the woman has said, we worship in this mountain.

51:10

You worship in Jerusalem. Yep. We worship in this temple. You worship in that temple.

51:17

Jesus is saying, no, a day is coming. And now is when you're not going to go up to this mountain or that mountain.

51:25

You're not going to go to this temple or that temple, but you're going to worship in spirit.

51:31

So in spirit is the location of where you worship. Go ahead. Well, and the word spirit there.

51:39

So the word spirit there is pneuma. Okay. That's what that is.

51:45

But the context here, the context here is important. The context here is not referring to the third person of the

51:52

Trinity, is not referring to the Holy Spirit. And this is one of the reasons that both Drew and I love either the

51:58

NASB 95 or the LSB, because when you see Jesus, son, father, spirit in the

52:06

NASB, the titles of God pronouns, right? He, by the way, he and him, nothing else.

52:12

Just in case anyone out there listening needs that clarification. Yikes. But the word spirit here is lowercase.

52:19

And the reason for that is because the context here and the biblical definition of the word spirit here has to do with this, right?

52:28

The rational spirit that comes from the soul of a man, the rational, hear that word rational spirit that, that influences what you think, say, and do that springs up from the soul of a man, the inner man.

52:49

Okay. It's the same, the same kind of concept as Cardia in the Hebrew, which, which heart, right?

52:56

Hide God's word in your heart that you may not sin against him. It doesn't mean that you're hiding it literally in your heart.

53:01

It's you are hiding it in your mind, in the inner part of who you are, that you may not sin against the

53:08

Lord. So when Jesus has spirit and truth here, he's referring to the rational spirit that you and I have that influences what we think, what we say and what we do now.

53:19

So we worship with that spirit with, with that spirit, but what is it grounded in?

53:28

What is it grounded on? And that's why it's important. The way these words are structured in spirit and in truth, that, that our rational soul has to be influenced by the truth, the truths of God's word that we know, and that's what influences our worship.

53:46

Now, I will say this, one of the things that sometimes you see in some reformed churches and you know,

53:56

I've talked about this. It drives me nuts a little bit is I don't know about you guys, but recently

54:04

Shane and Shane put out a, um, um, a live, uh, Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs record.

54:09

They've got, you know, the hymns records that they've done. I love what they do with the arrangements and how many of those have you and I played together.

54:18

Um, but here's, here's something to, to remember that if you are reformed, um, and I hope and pray that you are,

54:24

I hope you pray that you believe in the doctrines of grace because you see them in the scriptures. Do not let that stifle,

54:35

I guess is the word I'm looking for, or, or, or mellow the spirit with which you worship the

54:42

Lord. When you're singing the word, when you're praying the word, when you're reading the word, you know, you, you, you, you are, our spirit is influenced by the truth and that's why it must be rational and orderly.

54:57

Paul talks about that in Corinthians, but at the same time, let's not swing the pendulum so far the other way that we are afraid to staunch

55:07

Jason cave. Good word, bro. That, that, that it's a, it's a stuffed staunch, you know,

55:14

I'm going to stand at attention like I'm in the military as I sing the praises of no, like it's okay to feel.

55:23

Yeah. But the problem that, that, that not the problem, but, but, but the, the truth of it is, is your, your, your feelings, your emotions and your spirit here that Christ is referring to must be informed by the truth.

55:35

And I'll say this and then I'll turn it back over to you. You know, bro, I've been leading worship. Um, uh, haven't in the last few years, but I've been leading musical worship since 2002 and I have had, uh,

55:52

I'm not going to use the word experience. Uh, I guess I will. I don't like the word, but I've had more emotional reactions in, in singing the word of God.

56:06

Um, deeper emotional reactions when singing the word, praying the word, reading the word, hearing the word preached in my life personally, the more truth

56:14

I know about, about, about the Lord and through his word. So your worship will never go higher as John MacArthur, your worship will never go higher than your theology goes deep.

56:27

And that is the truth. So go ahead, man. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, you, you, you touch on some good points.

56:34

Right. So, so like I was saying, spirit location, but truth is the manner.

56:41

And that's what you're getting at right there. Truth is the manner in which we worship. Now you also bring up another good point about, uh, feeling what we're singing.

56:51

It should have a enlisted, a response from an emotional response, a heartfelt response.

56:58

So, uh, Christianity is an experiential, uh, we'll say religion.

57:08

Okay. It's experiential. Okay. Now what we need to do is we need to do, make sure that we, we stay right in the middle of the path and not fall into two ditches.

57:19

One is the hyper -emotionalism ditch. Okay. The other ditch is the, uh, stoic.

57:28

We would say stoic, almost, uh, uh, hyper academic, uh, knowledge because, because if we have, if we have not just knowledge, but yet not, uh, coupled with, with the grace and truth of God, right.

57:48

And we're just going to be like, you were talking about this kind of the staunch, right.

57:54

That we're going to have, but if we go, but, but if we, if we're in the other ditch, just the experience, well, then we start, we're ignoring truth.

58:03

We're ignoring theology. And we're, we're, we're, we're, that's where we bring in all the pragmatism, all the, we start focusing on self and what we like, and we have to keep feeding that.

58:16

So here's, here's a question. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We have to make sure we stay right in the middle where we, where we're led by truth and our ex, but we still have an experience as to who

58:30

God is according to that truth. Right. Well, so, so here's, here's a, here's a good test of that.

58:37

Right. So how many times, amen, bond server for Jesus said that the theology, uh, your theology is to inform your doxology.

58:45

Amen. Amen. And by the way, Matt Boswell, who's a, uh, he's a pastor of a church now, but I'm great songwriter.

58:51

He wrote the song. His mercy is more with Matt Papa. And by the way, those records that they have are wonderful. But he wrote a book, theology and doxology, doxology and theology.

59:00

Amazing book. I've read it three times. And, and, and there's something in there every time I'm like, Whoa, anyway. Um, so here's a, here's a, and we never did book recommendations.

59:09

We'll have to go back and do that. I've done a couple now. Um, so, um, so here's a, here's a prime example, right?

59:20

So how many times there's two sides of the ditch, right? How many times on a Lord's day morning?

59:25

And I ask myself this question too, all the time, how many times on the Lord's day morning do one of two things happen to you and pay attention the next time this coming

59:34

Lord's day, if you're in church and, and, and they start playing a song, like, uh, for example, what's, uh, uh, what a beautiful name

59:45

Hill song. Okay. Here's a good example. Right. That verse, that second verse. Right.

59:50

Right. Everybody gets caught. What a beautiful name. It is what a beautiful name. It is the name of Jesus Christ. Our King. Right. And we're just like,

59:56

Oh yeah, man, I love that. You didn't want heaven without us. Jesus, you brought heaven down. So it's like, you know, do you, are you, are you thinking about what you're singing?

01:00:05

Because if you are, and you are living in your Bible, when you hear that, you're going to go, wait, what?

01:00:13

No, you know, reckless, gag me reckless love.

01:00:18

Yes. I said, gag me. Absolutely. Um, who does that sound like?

01:00:25

Um, so, um, sorry, inside jokes. Uh, so, you know, that, that song starts playing.

01:00:32

It's a, it's a six, eight time. By the way, there is a science in music that certain grooves, time signatures, hooks, whatever it is, it is designed to tug at your heartstrings.

01:00:48

It's designed to tug at your emotions. It's designed to get you in a trance like state.

01:00:54

It's truth. So it's, it's in six, it's in six, eight, it's in a six, eight time signature, but I'll never forget.

01:01:02

I will never forget when a friend of mine, a brother by the name of Sam Hebb, reckless, bro, don't get me started.

01:01:15

Um, so, um, but my brother, Sam Hebb, he plays bass. He's played bass with me and, and, uh, we we've done a, you and I, I mean, he's played with us.

01:01:24

We've not just at the church we were at, but other churches. He's like, man, have you heard this song when it first came out?

01:01:30

I was like, no. And I said, send me the lyrics. That's the first thing I always say is send me the lyrics. I don't want to hear the music.

01:01:35

I don't want to hear it. I just want to read the lyrics. And I read the lyrics and I'm like, nope. And here's, here's what's dangerous about reckless love.

01:01:46

And I am not afraid to say this. If you like the song, reckless love, you are in sin right now.

01:01:55

If you like the song, reckless love, if it's still in your playlists on Apple or Spotify or Google or wherever, and you listen to it, you are in sin.

01:02:06

The writer of that song is a heretic. The writer of that song blasphemes the name of Christ and the Holy spirit.

01:02:12

And that song is heresy. It's heretical.

01:02:18

Okay. And, and it's deadly because what Corey Asbury does is he takes biblical reformed truth in the verses and then twists it.

01:02:33

Can you not hear the hiss of the serpent to call God and his love reckless? And then to say that God leaves the 99 to come get me.

01:02:43

No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. But that song was written. Here's the thing.

01:02:49

Look, I'm just going full send. Ready? Reckless love was written by Satan himself, period.

01:02:57

Yep. It's meant to distort your view of God. If you like the song, if you play the song, if you listen to the song, you are in sin and need to repent.

01:03:11

It is written to twist scripture, to twist our view of God. And so I'm going to go back to what

01:03:18

I originally was saying. The next time you're in church, do you get caught up because you hear the music first?

01:03:27

Or is your spirit lowercase the rational portion of your soul?

01:03:34

Is it influenced by the truths of what you're singing? Are you giving

01:03:40

God lip service because you like the song? Are you completely checked out mentally? Are you, are you, are you when you're singing songs like his mercy is more right?

01:03:57

Uh, I, I stood neath a debt that I could never afford my sins.

01:04:04

They are many his mercy. I can't see I've goosebumps right now. Just thinking about the words to those songs, that song before the throne of God above,

01:04:15

I have a strong and perfect plea. Bro. That is my favorite. Great high priest, whose name is love ever lives and pleads for me.

01:04:26

If that doesn't make you tear up and just want to fall to your knees or throw your hands in the area, which by the way, it is okay for reformed folks to raise their hands.

01:04:41

Sorry, Scott annual, you and I disagree. It is okay. It is okay, but whatever you do, make sure it's ordered according to scripture and it's influenced by the truth, the accurate biblical truths that we see.

01:05:00

And it's not based upon something trying to be stirred up. Sorry, man.

01:05:06

That's rabbit. Well, well, I mean, cause you're getting into why it's important to vet the songs we sing, right?

01:05:14

No, before we go there, hold on. This is why it's important for the pastor to be involved in what songs you sing.

01:05:23

Because let me, let me ask you a question. Okay. Who is the lead worship, the worship leader in a church?

01:05:31

Holy spirit. Well, after the undershot, the under shepherd under the chief shepherd.

01:05:40

Yeah. Yeah. The pastor. Yeah. Pastor. Yeah. He's, he's, he's the, the top worship leader in the church, right?

01:05:50

Because his job is to shepherd the flock. His job is to protect them. His job is to make sure that what they are singing, what they are hearing, what they are praying is according to the scriptures.

01:06:01

And so what you don't have, or what you're not supposed to have, yeah, it's gotta be there. What you're not supposed to have is some, some rogue worship leader in his skinny jeans and his spiked up hair and his deep

01:06:16

V -neck shirt. Okay. Coming in and saying, bro, dude, bro.

01:06:23

I think we're going to, uh, have you heard the latest elevation songs, man? Like we're going to sing those and they're all bro.

01:06:31

They're all going to be in the key of, I mean, in the key of C and that's how we're going to make sure where's my guitarist, bro.

01:06:38

Make sure you have some solid pads. Okay. Well, let's, let's, let's, let's address a few of those things real quick.

01:06:47

First and foremost, um, if you hold on, wait,

01:06:54

KT and Jesus, some pastors don't want to die on the Hill of music.

01:07:00

So they allow stuff that is from bad sources that we got to describe about worship leaders and what songs do they play?

01:07:09

Why do you gotta, why do you gotta judge the songs we sing? Because you're not going to die on that Hill for your people.

01:07:15

That's why. Any, any Hill. Okay. Any Hill worth dying on is a

01:07:25

Hill that has to do with, with biblical worship, biblical preaching, singing, praying who

01:07:33

Christ truly is. Okay. Those are Hills worth dying on. What is, um, okay.

01:07:44

A couple of things here. A couple of things. Um, we got into it, man. We're getting into, you got me started, bro.

01:07:52

Um, all right. So, so here's, uh, here's a question. What is the role of a pastor?

01:08:04

Wait, are you asking me the role of a, I was like, okay, is this rhetorical?

01:08:14

And I mean, we gotta be careful, Drew, because you know, you, yes, you are an elder and I'm not a pastor and we're talking about this.

01:08:20

So some people may never been a pastor. You've never operated a church. Okay. The role of a pastor is to lead his flock is to guide his flock is to protect his flock, but to teach them according to God's word, because God's word is ultimately our guide for how we are to worship him, how we are to serve him, how we are to live our lives, according to him.

01:08:43

So the pastor's role is to preach and teach and instruct and protect and guide.

01:08:50

He is to drive out the wolves. He is to exhort the will to holiness. He is to proclaim the gospel so that to two people who are in the two groups of people who are in the congregation, the believer, because they go astray and they need to be brought back in line and to the non -believer who is sitting amongst them who needs salvation.

01:09:13

So the pastor's role is, is vast. He is, he is to make sure that they are worshiping accordingly.

01:09:22

He is to counsel. Okay. That a pastor doesn't just say, well, my job is to preach.

01:09:27

No, your job is to also counsel. That's part of shepherding. That's part of this kind of it's in the name.

01:09:34

You just, you just, you just, you just hit the word I was looking for. And our dear sister, Melissa, Melissa Owens said it as well.

01:09:39

Shepherd. Okay. First Peter chapter five, first Peter chapter five shepherd.

01:09:47

Okay. Therefore, I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witnesses of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed.

01:09:54

Shepherd the flock of God. Yeah, I saw it.

01:09:59

I saw it. Chris Honholtz, voice of reason radio, by the way, a, a community podcast.

01:10:07

All you have to do is say the word worship and Chris will go full send.

01:10:13

That's true. So, so the point is, the point is the word shepherd. Okay. The word shepherd.

01:10:19

Okay. In the Greek, what that word means is to feed, to tend, to keep, to rule, to govern, to nourish, to protect.

01:10:38

So all that said, if you're listening to my voice and you are in a church,

01:10:47

I'm going to be very careful here. I'm not going to leave loud. No, that's not what

01:10:54

I'm saying. Sorry. What I am saying is you need to have a conversation with your pastor. If he does not want to fence the table concerning the songs that are being sung right now,

01:11:07

I'm working on brothers and sisters. I'm working on an episode of matter of theology entitled the wiles of Satan through the songs we sing.

01:11:16

And it is one that I've never prepared for an episode like I have for this one.

01:11:23

And Drew knows this and Chris Honholtz knows this. And some of you guys know that I like to prepare. I like to have notes typically just to keep me in a straight line, but I've never prepared for one like this.

01:11:34

But here's the thing, brothers and sisters, how long? So when

01:11:40

I think of pastors and I think of the example, a modern example of a true shepherd, an elder statesman, and I think you know where I'm going with this.

01:11:51

John Snyder. Yeah. Yes. And John MacArthur. But no, no, I would say

01:11:56

John Snyder as well. Yeah. I mean, he's one of my favorites of listening to. Yeah. But I knew where you were going.

01:12:02

So I said him. Yeah, I know. And you chose someone with the first name John, so I love it. So here's the thing.

01:12:10

You know, there's a fantastic example of a shepherd, right?

01:12:15

An elder statesman, someone who has committed their lives to shepherding the flock of God among them and to doing so with gentleness, but also being willing to stand and say, we will be regulated by Scripture, period, paragraph, end of discussion.

01:12:36

So if you're in a church where the pastor, especially if you bring this to their attention and they refuse to, no, we're not going to die on that hill, right?

01:12:50

To use that quote there, we're not going to die on that hill of the music and we're just going to leave it up to the worship guy.

01:13:00

Well, brother pastor, you are the worship guy. Yep. The buck should stop with you because guess what?

01:13:08

On judgment day, the Lord is going to ask that worship leader about that and going to hold him accountable.

01:13:14

But ultimately, you're the one that has to answer for the souls that the

01:13:19

Lord put in your care. If you are in a church, where the pastor refuses to do that,

01:13:30

I would sincerely implore you to spend some serious time praying about whether or not that's the right location for you to be in, because if the pastor is not going to take it seriously and is going to say, why do we need to examine the songs we sing?

01:13:48

Why do we got to talk about worship leaders? It's my comedy hour. Um, you know, then, then you don't have a true pastor and you don't have someone who wants to, um, feed, tend, nourish and protect your soul.

01:14:04

You have someone that is concerned about their platform. You have someone that's concerned about the bottom line and the finances and, you know, well, look at, look at how gracious God has been to us because we have

01:14:16

X, Y, and Z numbers of people instead of going, are we being faithful to what scripture has taught?

01:14:24

Are we seeing people grow in holiness? Do we encourage our people to, to, if they see something or hear something that, do they say something right to take something from the world there?

01:14:35

Um, did, did they, did they bring it to me? Do they ask questions? And is your pastor open to receiving questions?

01:14:41

Because look, if you go to your pastor and you want to ask them questions about anything you've heard from MacArthur or Lawson or the

01:14:47

Bible or anywhere else. And their response is just leave. We don't want you here.

01:14:53

Then go, go. That's not the heart of a shepherd. Right? That's, that's a, that is a heart of a snake to use his words.

01:15:03

That's what that is. So now let me get to the worship leader portion. Hold on.

01:15:11

Let me, let me read it real quick because, because it's absolutely true. And it's kind of what we're talking on too, about kind of these songs, right?

01:15:19

Was lost, but now I'm found says most congregants remember theology from songs rather than sermons.

01:15:26

Come on, man. Now that is, if you think back to the

01:15:32

Wesley brothers, John Wesley and Charles, Charles Wesley wrote a lot of hymns.

01:15:39

He was a songwriter. He wrote a lot of hymns, a lot of poetry. Fantastic writer, um, wrote some wonderful, wonderful hymns.

01:15:48

Charles Wesley actually told his brother, John, he said, he said, people are going to remember me before they remember you because people sing their theology before they hear their theology.

01:16:01

I, I had a quote and I don't, I don't know who said this and I wrote it down when you and I were preparing for reckless love, reckless worship, take two.

01:16:12

And I, and I didn't write down who, uh, who said it, but listen to this quote, people will sing their heresy before they believe it.

01:16:21

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's the same concept. Um, and, and that's why music was given to us.

01:16:27

Uh, if you guys have listened to matter of theology or, or if we've, you know, you've heard us talk about this before, you know, think about the, the

01:16:34

ABC song, everybody, if I said, everybody listening right now, I want you to record yourself singing the

01:16:41

ABCs. Pretty much everybody's going to be, unless you're just trying to be fun, um, is going to be the same tune.

01:16:48

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J. Right. Everybody. I'm still trying to figure out what an element is.

01:16:54

Elemental P. That's right. It's not just elemental, it's elemental peak. Oh gosh.

01:17:00

That nevermind. That reminds me of some jokes in elementary school spell I cup. Ha ha ha. So, um, sorry, um,

01:17:06

I'm in a rare form tonight. I apologize. Um, so, but, but yeah, man, I mean, people will sing their theology.

01:17:13

Absolutely. And I would venture to say that most of the heretical and incorrect theology that comes into most churches enters in through the music.

01:17:24

Yep. I don't have any statistics to back that up, but just based upon experience and the things that we've seen, go ahead.

01:17:29

Well, well, uh, brother John Elvin says I heard some crazy, um, 90 % of all

01:17:37

Christian worship is Bethel and Hillsong. And I would, I would agree. I would throw, I would throw, uh, elevation in there with their, oh, and I think that would bump it up to about 90%.

01:17:46

And when you look at the theology that's taught, uh, yeah, they teach bad theology because they're heretics.

01:17:54

And so, and this is the thing as, as we get into talking about these songs that, you know, all these worship leaders want to play, um, what you, what you do when you put these words on the screen.

01:18:06

Okay. You have the song title, you have the authors, and usually with the authors, it's the ministry that it's by, then you have that CCLI licensing, right?

01:18:18

So when, when you put that before the people, they see the authors and they see the ministry and they go, okay, well, if we're singing this song in church, that means this ministry must be a good ministry to follow.

01:18:31

Right. It gives a stamp of approval. Yeah. Stamp of approval. So now you've pointed them towards that ministry.

01:18:37

And when they go to that ministry, what are they going to hear? They're going to hear bad theology. They're going to hear modalistic views of God, like Stephen Furtick, uh, teaches.

01:18:47

They're going to hear about, um, canonic theology, like Bethel teaches.

01:18:53

They're going to hear about word of faith, like Hillsong teaches. And then not only that, right. You've talked about this before.

01:18:59

I've talked about this before. We may have even talked about it on here, but that licensing number is not free.

01:19:07

You have to pay for that. Yep. Yep. Church has got to pay to be a part of CCLI. And then one of the, one of the contract requirements is you have to report to CCLI the songs that you play each

01:19:17

Lord's day or whenever, by the way, whenever you're gathered, if you're playing that song publicly, it has to be reported to CCLI, which in turn pays royalties to the artists and the songwriters.

01:19:28

So when the songs are written, they are written in ways that are, they're meant to be catchy.

01:19:37

They're meant to be, um, crafted also in a style that's like what you hear in the world as, as music styles change and shift, uh, depending on where you're located in the country or the world, um, those styles are going to change and shift.

01:19:54

The songwriters approach these songs and they approach the production of these songs in ways that's going to reach out and grab you.

01:20:03

They want to why it's a business. It's a business and that right there.

01:20:10

Okay. It's a business. Yes. It's a business. So now I mentioned, uh, that, that CCLI licensing number and you've got to pay for it.

01:20:18

Well, Hillsong music is the biggest moneymaker for Hillsong churches.

01:20:25

Yep. Okay. And Hillsong themselves, they're not like a, a typical 501c3 like most churches.

01:20:32

They are a limited liability company in LLC. Yep. And so they are a for -profit company.

01:20:40

And so now think about this. Think about that documentary that came out on discovery about Hillsong.

01:20:48

In the last episode, there are three episodes in the last one. They talk about the sex abuse scandal from Brian Houston's father.

01:20:59

Where do you think they got the money to cover it up for so long and pay for those lawyers from all the money that comes in from the biggest moneymaker of that?

01:21:11

Um, I don't even, not even going to call it a ministry. I'm going to call it a fraud. The, they got it from their music from, from CCLI licensing and from CD sales and song downloads.

01:21:24

That's where they got it from. Yep. Yep. And Hey, I'll be the first one to say, Hey, during that time, guess who was contributing to that?

01:21:31

Oh yeah. Me too. This guy right here. And the crazy thing, songs in their churches, I'm streaming their songs in my car, on my phone, everywhere else.

01:21:39

Yep. And along the lines of Hillsong as well, a lot of their popular songs, like we'll take some of their older, popular songs, you know, that you and I probably have played a ton.

01:21:50

All of the writers, all of those writers have now apostatized.

01:21:57

Not all of them. Most of them. Not all of them. Got to open a ZOA man.

01:22:02

I need some energy. Oh, I just had to open a fresh Fresca. Oh, here we go. See Melissa. There he goes. He's drinking a

01:22:08

Fresca. Yeah. Uh, some was, uh, was lost, but now I'm found said oceans. Yeah. Yeah.

01:22:14

And well, this gets into the money -making business platform of it, because what you see in a lot of these, uh, a lot of these song organizations, these music organizations is that a lot of them come out, um, with, uh, thematic music and one will write a song that's themes like oceans.

01:22:34

Right. And then all the others will write in the same theme. And then another one will come out with one about deserts or, or about mountains or about, and so you get all these, these rushes of songs that all have the same themes and they're all money -making.

01:22:48

Yeah. I mean, I was just, I was, uh, uh, I watched a, uh, episode of, uh,

01:22:54

Hawaii five. Oh, it's not on anymore, but I was watching an episode of that a couple of weeks ago. Um, uh, and, uh, and there's a, it was

01:23:03

Hillsong. It was Taya, Taya from Hillsong. Um, I don't know the name of the song, but I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that their songs was featured in a, you know, a network television show and that that's the goal for them.

01:23:14

And now look, I mean, here's, here's the thing too, please understand. We're not saying everybody who works in the Christian music industry is, is like this.

01:23:21

Um, I know of, I know of, uh, multiple solid believers that are still, um, in that industry and haven't apostatized and preach the biblical gospel, um, weekend and week out day in and day out, whether they're on tour, whether they're in church or whatever.

01:23:38

So, um, this is not meant to villainize that in them. So we'll, we'll, we'll say that obviously we're using specific examples here.

01:23:44

So don't, again, going back to the whole Twitter thing, don't read it more into what we are saying or don't, um, or don't hear what we're not saying.

01:23:52

Um, let me talk about worship. Yeah. Let me talk about worship leaders for a second.

01:23:58

Um, I wholeheartedly believe, um, and I believe scripture backs this up in multiple places, old and new

01:24:07

Testament that for anyone to hold the title, uh, or, or not even hold the title, but be responsible for organizing and facilitating, uh, worship bond servant for Jesus says is

01:24:23

Matt Papa. Good. He's solid. Um, Matt Papa is solid. Get his stuff. Listen to it.

01:24:28

What's the album that he and Matt Boswell did? What's it called? I'll look it up. I'll have to look it up. Give me a second. Let me, let me finish this thought about worship leaders.

01:24:35

I'll look it up and I'll, I'll share it. Um, it's so good. I listened to it yesterday. It's so good. Um, anyway, worship leaders, if, if you have someone in your church or, or is interested in, or you yourself or, uh, your kid or whoever is interested in being a worship leader in the church,

01:24:53

I wholeheartedly believe in scripture backs me up that in order to facilitate singing the word in order to facilitate the order that takes place on the

01:25:02

Lord's day, that those people must, must, must meet the qualifications of a pastor and elder, according to Titus and Timothy.

01:25:13

No questions asked. Chris, do you mean that that means, do you mean that, uh, that you, that are you saying that a woman cannot lead worship?

01:25:24

What I'm saying is a woman should not be leading the Lord's day service when it comes to the songs that are singing.

01:25:32

Do I, I'm not saying that women can't be on stage singing, right? I'm not staying saying that women shouldn't be on stage, uh, playing music and instruments.

01:25:41

That is not what I'm saying. I know a lot of solid young ladies, old ladies, ladies, period who, um, who understand their place, um, and, and, and play guitar, sing, uh, drums, percussion, all sorts of stuff.

01:25:58

Okay. But the person responsible for that meet must meet, be examined and meet all of the qualifications of an elder period.

01:26:09

Yep. That's right. So if you have somebody in a deep V -neck t -shirt and skinny jeans, um, who, who gives no regard to what the scriptures teach about how the

01:26:24

Lord's worship is to be, is to be ordered. Um, he's not qualified or she is not qualified.

01:26:29

And, um, and, and you need to have some conversations with leadership in that church. I was visiting a church a couple of years ago, uh, when we were looking for a church, we found one now, thankfully, um, where the, the, the main worship director was a woman and they were playing

01:26:45

Bethel and they were playing Hill song and they were playing elevation and everything else. But the, I mean, the pastor's preaching solid, solid, but the answer is no,

01:26:53

I'm not, you know, I kind of fought that a little bit because we had been searching for a church and I'm just like,

01:27:01

Oh my gosh, like started feeling the weight of that. And I was talking to a good friend of mine, you guys know him, Daryl Harrison of the just thinking podcast and was sitting around a table with him and Melissa, his wife.

01:27:11

And I'm like, brother, I just, I mean, I kind of feel like I should stay and just tough it out, you know, and just, just get over myself.

01:27:18

But you know what he said to me? He was like, nope, it's Christ church, Chris. It's not yours.

01:27:23

It's not that pastor's. It's Christ church. And he desires a pure bride. Will we be perfect?

01:27:30

Is there a perfect church? No. R .C. Sproul. I'm going to quote R .C. a lot today. Evidently R .C. Sproul always used to say that if you find a perfect church, as soon as you walk through the doors, it's no longer perfect.

01:27:39

And that's the truth, but it's Christ church. The goal and the aim should be to be structured according to scripture.

01:27:46

Now I'll say this too. We are about to join officially a church where the pastor, the

01:27:54

Lord has gotten a hold of him with the doctrines of grace and he is, and it's a, it's a, it's like an aircraft carrier that he's trying to turn.

01:28:02

And so that does take some shepherding, nourishing, feeding, protecting, caring for everything we read out of first Peter five, that word shepherd.

01:28:12

And so that's what he's doing. And so why? Yes, there are things that, that he knows that it's not, it is not a biblical ecclesiological model yet, but we are moving that direction.

01:28:24

And he is a solid brother, man. I put on Twitter this week. I love one -on -one time with my pastor because it has been just a bomb to the soul.

01:28:34

But yeah, man, we're guys, worship leaders. No, they don't need to be teenagers. They don't need to be.

01:28:40

Well, that's not true. I mean, anyway, they need to be examined and make the qualifications period. Go ahead. A church

01:28:47

I was visiting a couple of years ago, they had brought in this guy to do worship and I was talking with him and I said,

01:28:54

I said, I said, yeah, man. So do you not sing any, any hymns or anything like that?

01:29:00

And he was like, he was like, man, I, I love hymns. I love old stuff like Stephen Curtis Chapman and things like that.

01:29:07

And I was like, bro, no clue. Now, look, I love me some Stephen Curtis Chapman. I'm not going to lie about that.

01:29:13

But I was like, really? Come on, man. But I remember who it was.

01:29:19

Oh, bondservant for Jesus. I just did that. I just did that. Matt Papa.

01:29:25

So there's, there's, well, I've got, I've already got it. Oh, dang it. It's a, an album with Matt Papa and Matt Boswell.

01:29:34

And it's called his mercy is more the hymns of Matt Boswell. So good. So good.

01:29:39

Highly recommend it. And their hymns that they, their hymns that, that their modern hymns that they've written are all in the hymns of that was me.

01:29:49

Were you talking to Donald said he almost choked on a sandwich. You talking about the guy singing saddle up your horses. That was me, bro. Oh, he could.

01:29:55

Maybe it was when I made the Stephen Curtis Chapman remark. Oh, okay. But, but yeah,

01:30:01

I think they're, they're modern hymns are in the, the hymns of grace.

01:30:07

Him no. Yeah. That, and you guys need to get Psalms of grace. If you don't have that too, by the way, I do want that as well.

01:30:13

It's good. I, I, I just got a copy. Um, so, uh, here's some, uh, Bob Coughlin, sovereign grace music.

01:30:20

Um, no, the Stephen Curtis Chapman comment on all said, gotcha. Um, uh, they just haven't, they have a new one.

01:30:26

Unchanging God, uh, songs from the book of Psalms volume two.

01:30:31

And it's very good. Um, but yeah, Matt, Papa and Boswell have done a couple, a couple different records together.

01:30:38

Um, yeah, they're, they're, they're phenomenal. They're just, they're awesome. Those guys are solid.

01:30:44

Good. Uh, hon holds did put a comment up here and I started and I want to, uh, to bring it out because this is, this is huge right here.

01:30:53

He says, and sadly, too many churches will refuse to consider this because they want, uh, the music because it appeals to people.

01:31:02

And when the goal is grow numbers, you don't care about those details.

01:31:07

And that's absolutely right. When, when the person's goal is to get more people to fill the seats, all everything else goes out the window.

01:31:19

You stop caring about those little things. Now I've said this a ton of times to you, the marks of a healthy church is not that you're growing in number.

01:31:33

It's that you're growing in holiness. Amen. That is the mark of a healthy church. So if you have, if you have a church with 500 people in it, but no one is actually living in holiness, what have a healthy church question, right?

01:31:50

What, what, what are, uh, what is the first thing that marks, uh, um, a believer in the

01:31:56

Lord Jesus Christ who you would say is solid. Right. That they're growing in their sanctification, that they're growing in holiness.

01:32:03

Why should the standard for churches, the church, which is made up of people be any different?

01:32:10

That's right. Yeah. Just because your church is a hundred miles wide doesn't mean it's not a half inch deep.

01:32:18

Right. Okay. I'm referencing Tozer there. Yep. Right. So it would be much better instead of having 500 people who are a half inch deep to have five people who, you know, are growing in holiness and walking in the

01:32:34

Lord and actually care. Yep. Yep. Somebody mentioned

01:32:40

Robert, um, uh, W. Robert Godfrey earlier. I have a quote from him, um, about this very topic.

01:32:46

He said this quote, people come to church wanting an experience and seeking the kind of music that gives them the kind of experience and feeling thereafter.

01:32:54

It's not that experiences and feelings are altogether wrong, but if my main reaction to the experience of worship is how

01:33:00

I feel in response to music, I've been distracted from Christ. I've not,

01:33:05

I've not really been drawn to him. I think that you could make the argument that for many in the modern church music has become a new sacrament and they think they can find

01:33:15

God through the music period. That's spot on, man.

01:33:22

That is spot on. And when we do that, brothers and sisters, when we, when, when we do that, because at some point each of us will and is guilty of, um, self -styled pragmatic normative worship in our walk with the

01:33:37

Lord. Everybody is, nobody can say ultimately, nobody can say that they've, they've been immune to that.

01:33:43

But, but the, but the, the problem with that is that when we do so we make

01:33:48

God jealous and it's just like Thomas Watson said in a body of divinity. He said, let us give, uh, let us give

01:33:55

God no caught just cause to be jealous. A good wife will be so discreet and chaste as to give her husband no justification of jealousy.

01:34:03

Let us avoid all sin, especially, especially this of idolatry or image worship period.

01:34:11

Close quote. I mean, we, we, we have to, we, we cannot engage in that. It makes the

01:34:16

Lord jealous and it angers him. And that's, I mean, that's not something you hear a lot anymore, right?

01:34:22

The anger of God. Yeah. Like, I mean, no, no, no, no. God is love.

01:34:27

God is not anger. Don't say that. Yeah. Let me bring, let me bring this up. Bond server, which

01:34:32

Jesus says, wow, I thought it was going to be a subpar show without Andrew. This has been great.

01:34:38

Thank you. Thank you. We're glad we exceed your expectations. Right, right.

01:34:47

Yep. That's funny. But, uh, yeah, man, it's.

01:34:54

I wish more people would take seriously. Worship. And it's so disheartening to see so many people who just want worship to be about themselves.

01:35:10

And, and Bodie's mentioned this too. He's like, well, the teaching is great, but the worship, it's not the music we like.

01:35:22

Yeah. Then you're not worshiping. I'm sorry. Well, but see the, here's the, here's, here's, here's what you, we don't understand and realize.

01:35:29

And I agree with you. I feel like that statement you just made. I wish more people would get it. Um, about worship is the most frequent sin seen and mentioned in the old

01:35:41

Testament is idolatry and nothing's changed.

01:35:48

Nothing has changed. The, the, the, the golden calf wasn't an image to an unknown

01:35:53

God. And the, the golden calf of our day is not an image to the unknown

01:36:00

God. And the golden calf of irreverent, pragmatic normative worship is a golden calf that people have fashioned and called it

01:36:11

Yahweh, which, which, which he does not accept. Right. Worship brothers and sisters.

01:36:18

Worship is not primarily about you and me. It's not, or any other person created in the image of God, period, paragraph into discussion worship in any way, shape, or form that is based upon our preferences.

01:36:32

It's not worship of the triune God, according to the scripture it's, it's, it's worship of self.

01:36:39

Um, it's, you know, uh, Melissa, uh,

01:36:44

Melissa Owens put, put up here earlier. Most of these songs, um, elevate man above God.

01:36:50

And that's absolutely true. Absolutely true. So Andrew told us this a couple of years ago when, uh, we were all talking about worship and he said, when, when he was a pastor, he had a worship leader that these songs and he would say he would sit in the front row.

01:37:09

And when these songs came on and he heard these lyrics, he would look at the worship leader and he would point to me.

01:37:15

He would point to this guy. He would point to himself, point to this guy. And he said, and what he's saying is he's saying is this song about me or is this song about God?

01:37:24

So, uh, I'm going to mention a name here. Um, and I, and I still have friends in, in his circles, uh, but Chris Tomlin, um, so, uh, our son is seven years old.

01:37:37

And, uh, one of the things that we do in the car is, um, we plug in my, my phone. And right now his favorite record to listen to is

01:37:45

Shane and Shane's new Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs record. And his favorite songs on there are all creatures of our

01:37:51

God and King. And you've already won. He, uh, he loves those two. He's like, play it again, play it again. But because you were talking about your son and singing the

01:38:01

Gettys have, uh, an album that's kids singing. Yeah, I know we have. And one of the ones on there is all creatures.

01:38:08

Yeah. So, um, but, uh, I introduced him, um, and I know some of you out there are going to be like, you did what?

01:38:18

After talking about everything you've talked about, I introduced him to old Chris Tomlin. Okay. Uh, songs like not to us, which is based out of Psalm 115, not to us, the

01:38:28

Lord, not to us, but to your name, to the glory because of your love and faithfulness. Yeah. Back when

01:38:34

Chris was writing songs and, and when, when I knew Chris and when I was in the worship ministry at passion city church is as far as set up and tear down and all that.

01:38:43

So when I was involved in that, Chris was very much, I mean, that was the, that was around the time they wrote chosen generation, right?

01:38:49

We are chosen generation out of, out of first Peter. I mean, hello, could that be a more of a performance song?

01:38:56

Um, so, so generation rise up, holy nation. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I used to play us on a ton, but so, so he.

01:39:03

He loved it. He, he, he loved what we were listening to, but, but there's a good example, right? Of, of cause

01:39:09

Chris used to write very God focused songs. I mean, and he would talk about that. He would say, worship is to be

01:39:15

God focused, not man focused. And he, he went through that whole phase of saying, I try to write songs that give the church a voice to express their worship to a big and holy

01:39:27

God. And I'm like, spot on, man. That's awesome. That's awesome. And it's changed.

01:39:33

It's changed a little bit. It, and, and, and unfortunately who he has partnered with has changed and that's why it's changed.

01:39:39

I wholeheartedly believe that. But, um, uh, but, but, but the type of songs, uh, that are sung, they should be

01:39:46

God focused songs. I'm glad that, um, I'm glad I can't remember who said that now, but I'm glad that they, um, that they brought that up.

01:39:53

Um, man, I keep, I keep going back to what you just said about, um, somebody said the glory of God, not to us.

01:40:04

Bonservant for Jesus. Um, yeah, there's anyway, um, I'm going to go off on a rabbit trail on Tomlin.

01:40:11

Um, cause I do love the guy. I really do. And like I said, I have still close friends that are very close with him.

01:40:18

Um, but they know where I stand on this stuff and they're still my friends, which is good. But something you said, bro, that's sticking with me because we have, right.

01:40:28

We're having all this conversations about Christian nationalism. We're having all these conversations about the dangers of wokeness and CRT.

01:40:35

And those are needed conversations. I mean, I used to, I was on the just thinking ministries team for a year and a half, you know, like those are my boys, like, you know, it's needed.

01:40:47

All those conversations are needed, but you don't have a lot of people talking about the issue of false worship and idol worship in the church.

01:40:59

And I'm going to read a quote from me. Um, something I said in that episode, a biblical critique of, uh, or a reckless of reckless worship take two.

01:41:07

I said this in the episode, I said the whole of the modern evangelical church, not just in this country, but as a whole in the world is sick and they've allowed it to be done to them.

01:41:17

They've been infiltrated and invited in wolves that have infected Christ's bride with a disease.

01:41:25

Dare I say a venereal disease as they have joined themselves with harlots bent on prostituting the bride of Christ for sordid gain.

01:41:34

They, the wolves have infected Christ's bride with the doctrine of demons disguised in songs, analytical tools based upon CRTI and et cetera.

01:41:46

And the reason I said they've allowed it to be done to themselves is these wolves. They've been invited in by so -called leaders and shepherds who are nothing of the sort.

01:41:55

There is a sincere lack of true biblical courage and leadership from those who have given themselves the name of pastor.

01:42:04

Those who is JC Ryle said they have a morbid fear of controversy. And when those wolves peddling this damning teaching are found out, those in the church still accept them because of unity and peace in air quotes.

01:42:19

There are still so many who refuse to because of erring on the side of grace also in air quotes to call them out, hold them accountable and or seek to protect and equip the flock to be alert or to be on guard or to watch out to stop listening to and participating in these unfruitful works of darkness, even if you like it.

01:42:44

I mean, that's what we see today. And the results are the results speak for themselves.

01:42:51

The when we, when pastors and not just pastors, when

01:42:58

Christians, when those who call themselves little Christ's, when those, when those who say they love

01:43:07

God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, when those who say they love his word, when those, even those who say that God's word is inerrant, infallible, sufficient, and authoritative, when they refuse to fence the table based on the songs that are being sung, they are swinging the door wide open to all sorts of heresies, all sorts of ideologies to come in and take captive those to whom

01:43:30

Christ has paid for. One of the reasons that you see these ideologies run amok in those professing churches,

01:43:39

I think it starts with their refusal to say, we are going to be regulated by the scriptures and how we worship the

01:43:47

Lord on the Lord's day and be regulated by the scriptures and everything we think, say, and do.

01:43:55

That's it. That's it, man. Going to bring up a couple of comments here. One eternal perspective says,

01:44:05

I am grieved when the church that I've been at for 19 years continues to sing Hillsong, Bethel, and Elevation songs, because I know what these churches stand for, praying for wisdom.

01:44:17

We are praying for that as well. And then our brother

01:44:23

Kofi. My man. I preached a series on worship to start the year at our church.

01:44:30

Nice. To date, I have received more unhappy emails, calls, texts for that series more than any other.

01:44:38

And we are unapologetically reformed. Read that Anthony Mathenia quoting

01:44:43

Andrew. Anthony Mathenia, Paul Washer's pastor says nothing angers the self -righteous more than when they're told their worship is unacceptable to God.

01:44:56

And now think about this. Okay. So Kofi, thank you for doing that, bro. Keep pressing on, man.

01:45:01

That's awesome. Absolutely. Now think about this. Okay. There, because I kind of jokingly, when you were about to talk about John MacArthur, I said

01:45:11

John Snyder. So John Snyder is the pastor of Christ Church, New Albany, in New Albany, Mississippi.

01:45:19

He is the author of the Behold Your God Bible study. If y 'all don't know who

01:45:25

John Snyder is, y 'all sleeping on that boy. That's not good. You need to know who John Snyder is. Yes. And I think he's actually the director of Media Gratia.

01:45:32

So he put out Logic on Fire about Martin Lloyd Jones through the eyes of Spurgeon, the

01:45:39

Puritans documentary. So when they were doing, and you and I, when

01:45:47

Matt Robinson, Matthew Robinson was the director for Media Gratia, we talked to him about this.

01:45:56

And when they were doing the Behold Your God study, the most pushback they got was on the part about worship.

01:46:07

And I'll never forget when Matthew Robinson told this story, he said, when they were talking about worship, people were just saying, well,

01:46:16

I can worship God how I want. I can worship God how I feel. And someone who was a

01:46:23

Buddhist said, well, no, you can't. Because when I was in Buddhism, I would take this bowl of rice and I would put it before this

01:46:33

Buddha every day. And that's how we worshiped. We would do that. And so, but I can't do that now that I'm a

01:46:41

Christian. I must do away with that. And I must come to God and worship

01:46:47

God how he says I must come to him and worship him.

01:46:52

And that's what we must do. And that's what Christians in these churches today don't understand.

01:47:00

And I love what Kofi says here. John Snyder is a gentleman. Oh, Kof, that is a perfect way to describe it, bro.

01:47:07

That is great. It's funny because I had a phone call with John Snyder a couple of years ago.

01:47:13

And I was telling him all this stuff and all this stuff that I was thinking was right. And he was very gently, very softly rebuke, correct, correcting me and rebuking me at the same time.

01:47:26

And I said, hold on, slow down. I'm taking notes. He's such a good dude.

01:47:32

He is without a doubt one of my favorite, favorite pastors to listen to.

01:47:39

Yep. But let's get to some of these because we're running out. Well, first, before we get to some of these comments, let's let's talk about our sponsor,

01:47:50

MyPillow. I have to. I have to talk about my story. You do. You are contractually obligated.

01:47:57

I'm contractually obligated. So if you're not going to get paid. Yeah, but I'm not going to get paid.

01:48:02

So if Chris and I have bored you at all, maybe maybe you have tuned into this show and you are an advocate for Bethel and pragmatic normative worship, and we bored you with all this

01:48:15

Bible talk. Repent. First thing you need to do is repent. The second thing you need to do is get on MyPillow.

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OK, MyPillows are really comfortable. Andrew actually gifted me one a couple of years ago. Actually, it wasn't a couple of years.

01:48:29

Yeah, I guess it was a couple of years ago. Now it's almost two years. Man, that's crazy. It's weird to think about.

01:48:35

But he gave me a MyPillow and I absolutely loved it.

01:48:40

I loved it. And I've said on here so many times, I loved it so much. My wife kept stealing it from me.

01:48:47

And so she kept stealing it. And I would say, give me back my pillow. And she would say, well, then you get me one.

01:48:54

And so I got her a MyPillow. And so we have MyPillows. Andrew goes everywhere with his

01:49:00

MyPillow. And if he can, he tries to take his MyPillow mattress topper with him.

01:49:06

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01:49:24

You got anything to add about a MyPillow? I don't. You did a great job. Oh, thank you.

01:49:29

And Bond Servant for Jesus reminded me of another one.

01:49:36

Now, which is funny because Andrew actually didn't mention this one, but I'm going to throw it up here anyway.

01:49:43

Logos Bible Software is also a sponsor of the show. I have actually started using my

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Logos Bible Software more as I just prepare small little Bible studies and things like that.

01:49:57

And one of my favorite features is the word study tools that you can have because it breaks down the the tenses, the voice of whatever word shows you other places where it's used and how it's used.

01:50:12

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01:50:18

Go to Logos .com and get you a discount on Logos. So now let's get into some of these comments that I kind of starred.

01:50:31

The regular, let's see if I can actually get it to pull up. There we go. Regulative principle of worship.

01:50:37

Yep, we are regulative principle people. That's what you should be. That's what the Bible promotes.

01:50:43

Anything other than regulative principle is only your principle, is only worshiping yourself.

01:50:51

That's all it is, right? So be regulative principle people.

01:50:58

Melissa, she says the Psalms are beautiful examples. Worship should like absolutely.

01:51:06

God gave us a song book. Now, one of the things that's actually really crazy, okay?

01:51:12

The Psalms, singing Psalms is so neglected in church.

01:51:18

Now it's making it's making a comeback. More and more people are starting to sing the Psalms. But it is so neglected in our churches today.

01:51:31

What's up with that, Chris? Oh, I think Chris dropped his headphones. You back with us?

01:51:37

Yep. Sorry. I was getting something in my, my headphone came out. But yeah, there we go.

01:51:44

Psalms of grace. Sorry. Now this, if I'm correct, this Psalms of grace, it doesn't just have

01:51:50

Psalms, but it also has other hymns in there too, right? Correct. Hymns that are based upon the Psalms.

01:51:56

And then the text that they use in scripture is the LSB. But then they'll have the

01:52:02

Psalms themselves, prayers in between devotions. So I've been using it as like,

01:52:08

I'm reading through. Psalm 92 is where I am right now. Like I read, it'll read,

01:52:13

I'll read the Psalm and then they'll have a few songs based upon Psalm 92. Like there's one that's make music to the

01:52:19

Lord. And the second one is how good and pleasant it must be. And so you just read through the lyrics.

01:52:25

If you can't read sheet music, don't worry. Just read through the lyrics of the song and then go look up a solid version.

01:52:31

So of the song, if you want to listen to it, but it's, it's, it's great. You just go to hymns of grace .org.

01:52:37

I think it is. And then that's where you can get the copy of Psalms of grace, which is different than hymns of grace. So yeah.

01:52:42

Yeah. And now there, I do say that Psalms singing Psalms is very neglected in a lot of churches.

01:52:51

Oh yeah. Not many churches today even sing hymns. And what we see in scripture is we see that we are to edify each other with Psalms hymns.

01:53:01

Now admonishing one another. That's right. And so in, in Greek, a lot of times word order is important.

01:53:09

And I've heard Dr. Lawson say this, that, that first position is known as the emphatic position.

01:53:17

So it's, it's the most important position. And so we are to sing Psalms and we are to sing hymns and we are to sing spiritual songs.

01:53:25

And now I have heard people say that, well, that's just three different ways of saying, sing the

01:53:30

Psalms. I would disagree with you. And I would disagree with you on the account of scripture itself.

01:53:37

Yep. Okay. So in Exodus 15, you have the song of Moses. Okay. Um, uh, and in Deuteronomy 31,

01:53:46

Moses is told to teach that song to the people so that they may worship in judges five, you have

01:53:53

Deborah and Barack singing and hit a singing him in first Samuel, uh, two, you have

01:53:59

Hannah who sings a song of Thanksgiving, but then if we go to revelation five, right?

01:54:07

Ooh, yes. Revelation five, John's vision, um, of, uh, uh, the book with seven seals where we see four living creatures and the 24 elders and they're singing a new song.

01:54:21

So, so when we get to heaven, we're also going to be singing songs that we don't even know yet, right?

01:54:29

Sing a new song to the Lord. So it, so scripturally it can't just mean only sing the

01:54:36

Psalms. Even though we love the Psalms and, uh, uh, the church that I'm an elder at now, um, was that is actually the first church that I've ever been to where we've done song singing.

01:54:49

Yep. I mean, I mean, it's wonderful. Um, let me, there was a question about John Snyder.

01:54:56

Yeah. Did you, okay. So on the chat. Okay. For with grace Bible theological seminary.

01:55:02

Uh, I don't know if he still is. I know he was, uh, doing some teaching, uh, online teaching, uh, just for some of the students at one point a couple of years ago.

01:55:13

Um, but I don't know that he is anymore. Yeah, I don't, I don't think so. I don't,

01:55:18

I don't think he is. Um, cause I think, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't, I've not seen anything that would, that would say that.

01:55:25

So, but yeah. KT and Jesus says, speaking of, uh, churches and worship, uh, we walked out, uh, women leading and elevation music lyrics.

01:55:38

Um, I had been cringing. How worship to that.

01:55:43

Good for you. Exactly. Good point. Amen sister. Worship to that. Uh, Kathy Deming says a church with a high view of scripture and Christ will not settle for superficial worship and emotional experiences.

01:55:59

Amen. This is true. That's right. You speak truth, Kathy. Mm -hmm. We am into that.

01:56:06

Now this question here was sent by John earlier. Um, and I wanted to save it till towards the end to kind of deal with it.

01:56:14

So question, drew, do you call yourself a dominionist? Believe the seven mountains mandate is post -millennialism.

01:56:22

The same thing. No, we would not be friends if he did. That's right. Just millennialism is not the same thing as the seven mountain mandate.

01:56:29

Now the, the seven mountain mandate is a newer teaching.

01:56:37

And it actually it's promoted by Bethel and I hop Kansas city, the international house of prayer,

01:56:43

Kansas city, which is led by Mike Bickel. Now the seven mountain mandate was mainly developed by Mike Bickel when he was with the

01:56:51

Kansas city prophets. So it would have been Mike Bickel, Bob Jones. And I think, um,

01:56:57

Oh gosh. Rick joiner, I think was a part of it. Um, I don't have defining deception here where I tell you.

01:57:04

Yeah. But, uh, but the seven mountain mandate basically is it's the says it's the

01:57:10

Christian's job to take dominion over different aspects or areas of, of, of life.

01:57:18

So like entertainment and politics and things like, and once we do that, then we will usher in the coming of Christ.

01:57:26

That is a heresy, 100 % heresy. Um, and that's actually not what post -millennialists believe.

01:57:35

Um, now the thing about seven mountain mandate and Bethel, the vast majority of Bethel's eschatological teaching is actually dispensational premillennialism.

01:57:47

And I know that because I have had friends who have gone to their school, their ministry schools, and that's what they teach as far as eschatology.

01:57:58

Now they do teach, and this is kind of my theory. And I talked to Andrew about this, um, before when, uh, right before Jim and I had our conversation on the show, my theory is that Bethel is trying to take from different portions of, uh, eschatology.

01:58:15

So they take the, there, there is a dominion aspect in post -millennialism, um, but that comes through the proclamation of the gospel.

01:58:23

Um, so we take dominion not by trying to seize these different mountains, but it's just by the preaching of the gospel, the growing of the local church, um, and converting people.

01:58:36

Right. Um, so as we proclaim the gospel, the gospel spreads and it goes forth and a great commission, what we would say will be successful.

01:58:45

And the nations at some point will be, uh, evangelized. So, so there's a difference.

01:58:53

I see your face there, you know, wipe that face off, but so, so there is a

01:58:58

D sort of a dominion is aspect to it, but not the same as a seven mountain mandate.

01:59:03

So I believe they're taking that from post -millennialism there. They utilize the vast diet of their teaching is dispensational premillennialism and, uh, and you know, the spiritualization from all millennialism, because if you know anything about Bethel, everything is over -spiritualized over -spiritualized to the nth degree.

01:59:28

Um, so, but no, they are, they're definitely not the same. Uh, post -millennialists would actually rebuke the seven mountain mandate.

01:59:39

He speaks truth. Ladies and gentlemen, what were you going to say? Were you going to say something? Were you going to throw some kind of snarky remark in there?

01:59:45

I was not, there was no snide or snarkiness going to come from my direction. Oh, okay. I was laughing at the

01:59:50

KT and Jesus responded and said, it's the only face he has. And it reminded me of Top Gun Maverick.

01:59:56

So that's all. Gotcha. Okay. And then we have, uh, Jason cave.

02:00:02

Great show. Very definitive. Thank you. Now, before we get out of here,

02:00:07

I mentioned, uh, well, you and I talked about it. You mentioned it on here book recommendations.

02:00:14

Yeah. You've given a lot. I said, Hey, let's give a book rec, a book recommendation, one a piece and you've thrown out books.

02:00:23

I read a lot of books. And so, and so they come out like the, the, the just pops in there. So, um, okay.

02:00:30

I have to one that I'm almost done with. I started it right after a shepherd's conference in March, uh, keeping the heart.

02:00:37

Uh, John Flavel, um, this book will wreck your heart, but in the best way.

02:00:46

Um, and, uh, it just, it goes through that verse in, uh, Proverbs, you know, uh, guard your heart for as well, spring of your life.

02:00:53

And, um, and I'll just, I'll just leave one little, uh, tidbit. Even Chris Honholtz could read this book.

02:01:00

Uh, I'll say that Chris is like, you know, he's like Puritans. Oh, it hurts my head. Y 'all going to make my wishlist grow.

02:01:06

Aren't you? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Um, and, um, so, uh, but, um, but one of the things that Flavel says in there is, is he points out the guarding the heart, um, is, is the writer is saying it's, it's like that emphatic, that emphatic, like keep keeping the heart guard, guarding the heart.

02:01:28

It's, it's, it's really to emphasize the importance of, uh, of, of guarding one's heart, um, and in all sorts of different scenarios in life, whether you're tempted, whether you're going through dark times, good times, times of ministry, you know, times of whatever it is and, and Flavel impacts it.

02:01:46

And so it's, um, it's an excellent book. It's one of those books that you read and like, you'll read a little bit and you'll need to sit and meditate and chew on and mull over, um, uh, what you're reading and sincerely examine your own heart and ways that you have, uh, that you failed in that.

02:02:04

I started reading this book and, uh, there were things in here that I was reading and then he referenced some scripture and I went and read the scripture and I'm like, yeah,

02:02:11

I got to repent of that right now. Not just to the Lord, but like areas where I've other people where I've, I've let circumstances affect my heart and then

02:02:21

I react or, or don't respond biblically to someone. And so I had to go to them and be like, Hey, I am so sorry for the moments that I've responded in this way.

02:02:30

Here's why I was doing that. Here's why I did that. Will you please forgive me? I've repented to the Lord and, and, and just keep me accountable with it.

02:02:37

And I mean, it's like a week after I started reading it and it was just like, so, um, so it wasn't a dig.

02:02:43

Everybody's commenting about Honholtz. Like it wasn't a dig against Honholtz. Like he's, he's very publicly said, you guys can keep the

02:02:49

Puritans over there. Like it hurts the brain and I just, Oh, like, well, that's why you go with the paperbacks, the

02:02:55

Puritan paperbacks. Yeah. So it wasn't a dig. It wasn't a dig at my boy. Like y 'all don't understand. I talked to Chris Honholtz every day, literally every day,

02:03:03

Chris and I talk. So, um, there, there are three, there are three men in my life that I talked to just about every day, drew

02:03:10

Honholtz and my buddy Alex. So just so nobody thinks

02:03:15

I'm throwing shade at my boy Honholtz there. Yeah. I had a feeling you were going to do keeping the faith or keeping, keeping the heart.

02:03:21

I mean, there are more, I could, I got a whole stacks down here at my feet. So go ahead.

02:03:27

You go, hold on. Jason says you will be fresco for the rapture soon.

02:03:36

Everyone was met. Fresca. Oh goodness. I never started drinking it.

02:03:42

Fresca is great, dude. I had my first fresca at Shepcon when they had these. That was the first time you had it?

02:03:49

Yeah. Bro. Yep. Everybody's like, why did you open it?

02:03:55

Why did you drink it? Number one, it was really good. Number two, I can't fly back with a full can.

02:04:01

Can't take it on the plane. But, uh, so the book I would recommend is this book is

02:04:09

God's battle plan for the mind, the Puritan practice of biblical meditation.

02:04:14

Again, with the Puritan theme, right? Because I mean, if you look this entire bookcase over this shoulder right here is all

02:04:21

Puritans, but hold on. And there's a comment above.

02:04:28

Ooh. Chris Honholtz said that, uh, keeping the heart is 99 cents on Kindle right now. Go get it y 'all.

02:04:34

I think Melissa's referring to this one. No one talks to Andrew. I talk to him when he calls me.

02:04:44

I talk to him when I'm talking to him. I talk to him when I'm talking to him. Like when I'm there, it's like going somewhere.

02:04:51

Like when I'm there, I mean, I guess I'm there. I'm there. But, uh, this book right here.

02:04:58

So the thing about this book, meditation is a lost discipline.

02:05:05

Nowadays, uh, people don't understand it or sometimes they hear the word meditation and they kind of, they think of like new age.

02:05:13

Yeah. Yeah. They think of kind of like Eastern practices of meditation. All right. Um, but keep going, but meditation is spoken of in the

02:05:24

Bible, right? So David says that he meditates on God's law.

02:05:30

And so the thing about meditation is, oh, there you go.

02:05:36

Meditation. Yeah. A Christian on the Mount. Thomas Watson. Yeah. There you go. Meditation is this halfway point between prayer and, um, application of, of, of what we're to be doing.

02:05:52

So it's taking, it's taking the truths that we read in scripture. It's seeking where and how we can apply these truths in our life.

02:06:06

So it's pondering upon these truths, seeing where we can apply, and then we take it into prayer to where we, uh, ask the

02:06:17

Lord that we, that we may actively, uh, live out his scripture and apply those things.

02:06:23

Can I, can I read a quote? Yes, you can. Uh, let me, let me pull up Psalm 119 first.

02:06:28

Cause Watson references it here and I want to get it. I want to get it right. Thomas Watson in a meditation.

02:06:35

He says this, uh, he's quoting Psalm 115 or reference to Psalm 119 verse 15.

02:06:41

I will muse on your precepts and look upon your ways, or I will meditate on your precepts.

02:06:46

Watson says this in this book quote, meditation is chewing upon the truths. We have heard the beast in the old law, which did not chew.

02:06:53

The cud were unclean. The professor who does not by meditation, chew the cud is to be accounted unclean.

02:07:01

Meditation is like the watering of the seed. It makes the fruits of grace to flourish.

02:07:09

There it is. Sorry, go ahead. So, yeah, I w I would strongly recommend getting this book by David Saxton.

02:07:18

It's so good. God's battle plan for the mind and that book by Thomas Watson. And yeah,

02:07:25

Jason says, Watson is a wordsmith. Oh yeah. You know, actually, if you go to manner of theology, we did a dead guy's reader society on Thomas Watson and how, how he uses words.

02:07:39

We talked about that. That's really funny. I like reading books by dead guys. But, uh, get back into practicing meditation, meditating on God's word.

02:07:53

Yep. And then I'm just going to throw this little thing out here. It's called a habitual site of him, uh, the

02:08:01

Christ centered piety of Thomas Goodwin. And it's put together by Joel Beakey and Mark Jones.

02:08:06

And you can use this as a little, just daily devotional, um, just the, the way it magnifies

02:08:12

Christ. Um, I mean, in each chapter is just about maybe two pages long, two or three pages long.

02:08:18

Um, so you can go through it real quickly. Um, but we've talked about a lot of things today,

02:08:26

Chris. We have, we've talked about a lot. We've talked to, especially as it pertains to worship. Right.

02:08:31

And this was really supposed to be an open Q and a, um, but we weren't going to go into any of that. Yeah, we weren't, but people weren't sending in questions.

02:08:38

So, um, pause Chris Honholdt said he was wrong. The Kindle version of keeping the heart is not 99 cents.

02:08:47

It's free. There you go. You have every look y 'all stop what you're doing. Go to Amazon, download that book.

02:08:55

It's free. Okay. Well, hold on. Melissa says, can you guys recommend any good books on prayer?

02:09:01

Yes. There is also important in our worship to God. Go ahead. Um, uh, uh,

02:09:09

I'm trying to remember who the author is, but I can't remember. It's called the hidden life of prayer.

02:09:17

So the hidden life of prayer. I can't remember who wrote it, but Paul Washer has said, this book stays on my desk and whenever there's a book that stays on Paul Washer's desk, that's a book you probably want to have.

02:09:32

And then there is John Bunyan, uh, his, uh, Puritan paperback that you can get on prayer as well.

02:09:39

What do you got? Um, I'm looking at one right now. R .C.

02:09:44

Sproul had a couple that were really good, um, uh, effective prayer.

02:09:50

And then let us pray by R .C. Sproul are our fantastic books.

02:09:55

Uh, and then he has another one, the prayer of the Lord, um, which, which, uh, is also very, very good.

02:10:02

Um, uh, a couple of, uh, uh, resources to assist in your prayer life.

02:10:08

If you're struggling with that for anybody who's struggling with that, um, right here. Uh, David McIntyre.

02:10:14

Yeah. Yep. Um, so, uh, value vision number one, um, value vision is a must have resource for any, this stays in my bag or on my desk next to my

02:10:28

Bible every day. Yep. Mine stays on my desk. A couple more. Um, just again, just in assisting, if you're struggling with, uh, specific things to pray about, pray through, pray for, uh, piercing heaven prayers of the

02:10:40

Puritans, uh, Robert Elmer put this together. Um, so that's a good one. You can, uh, you could get just about all these by the way at Reformation heritage books carries stuff.

02:10:50

And then I haven't, um, gotten into this yet, but the same guy, Robert Elmer put together, uh, prayers of the early church called fount of heaven.

02:10:57

This was in the free resource, um, book that we got at chefs, uh, shepherds conference. Um, so, and the back says, uh, the hearts of the first Christians beat with praise for Christ.

02:11:08

The strength of their devotion is remarkable considering the times of uncertainty and persecution in which they live. Despite all this, the early church flourished sustained by God to whom they prayed.

02:11:18

Um, and it's a collection of carefully selected prayers from the first six centuries of church history.

02:11:25

Um, so there's, there's a new book. There's a, there's a new book that came out.

02:11:31

Okay. Recently. Okay. I William Varner handbook for praying scripture.

02:11:41

Yep. There it is. There it is. Handbook this. Yes. Get three 16 publishing .com.

02:11:47

Go get it. Um, I've got the Kindle version. It is so good.

02:11:53

So good. So good. Um, yes. Invaluable. I would put this right up there with Valley of vision.

02:12:00

Um, and I mean, I've started it over, um, just cause we started a new month. So I'm on the fourth day.

02:12:06

So yeah. Yeah. Really? It's, it's phenomenal. Thank you for saying that, bro. I'm like, well, it, it just hit me.

02:12:12

Cause I, cause I was like, you know, what, what books do I utilize, you know, more practically and Valley of vision.

02:12:21

And then I was like, I know there's another one that I use all the time. And I was like, oh, it's on my phone.

02:12:28

The handbook for praying scripture. There's also one, um, that I can't remember the name of it now.

02:12:37

I'm looking it up. Uh, let me, all right, hang on.

02:12:43

Give me a second. So what it is, by the way, this is a co a collection of, um, John MacArthur's pastoral prayers that his kids put together.

02:12:52

Uh, his kids wanted to do, he didn't want, he actually didn't want to, to do stuff like this. Um, but, um, uh, his kids were like, dad, your pastoral prayers are just so good.

02:13:05

Uh, and so weighty and so neat at the throne of grace. There it is. It's called at the throne of grace. Um, and it's, uh,

02:13:13

I'll just read it real quick throughout the four decades. This was when this was written. He's now over five decades, uh, four decades of pastoral ministry, grace community church prior to his sermon.

02:13:21

Every Sunday morning, John MacArthur has read a portion of scripture and led the congregation in a pastoral prayer. It's a treasured part of the worship service and enjoyed by all who attend

02:13:29

John's family. In particular, his four children have encouraged him to publish a book of selected prayers. He has offered during the

02:13:34

Lord's day worship. Uh, when he, when he resisted the idea for many years, he finally gave in, uh, and it's called at the throne of grace.

02:13:42

So you can get it at gty .org. So good. Yeah, that is good too. I have it in my, we have another office and I have two bookshelves in there and it's in there, but we've talked a lot about worship and we've talked a lot about false worship, especially and how the modern church today is caught up in this false worship.

02:14:06

And ultimately you, I mean, you've said it throughout the show. It's idolatry.

02:14:12

It's the worship of a false God. And so now for those of you who may be caught up in false worship, maybe you are, you attend one of these churches where they have songs like Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation, and you enjoy it.

02:14:33

Well, Chris has already said you're in sin. And, and I would agree because you're following ministries that teach falsely about God.

02:14:47

And I would encourage you to stop and repent, come to the

02:14:53

Lord. Christ came to this earth, born of a virgin, lived the life that we could not live.

02:15:04

And then he went to the cross in our place. He died for our sin.

02:15:10

He satisfied the wrath of God, which is something that we could not do. And then he rose on the third day, conquering death, hell, sin in the grave.

02:15:21

And then he ascended into heaven where he is now sitting at the right hand of the father and he is interceding for us.

02:15:30

He's interceding. He's making a plea for us. And so why on earth would we want to dishonor him by singing songs and bringing worship to him?

02:15:41

That is unacceptable. Christ died for our sins so that we may be reconciled to the father.

02:15:51

And when we gather on the Lord's day, one of the chief ways that we show that we love

02:15:59

Christ is through our worship, especially through song. We sing our praises to him.

02:16:08

We give our thanks to him. And so if you are one of those that are caught in this, this movement of idolatry, of Bethel and Hillsong and these other false teachers, repent.

02:16:26

Turn to the one true living God, the Jesus that is spoken of and taught in the

02:16:33

Bible, not through these false ministries that come up with their own cleverness and their own opinions and their own ideas of who they think

02:16:41

Jesus is. No, Jesus did not set aside his deity to come to earth. Come on, that is not a view that is a false view.

02:16:49

That is the Jesus you are singing of when you sing Bethel. Jesus, when he came was fully

02:16:57

God and fully man. And we must worship him as such.

02:17:04

Yeah, we must worship according to the truth of who God is and who

02:17:09

Christ is. Anything less is dishonoring. Anything less than true worship of the true

02:17:17

Christ, true worship, meaning according to the regulative principle, how God says he wants to be worshiped.

02:17:24

Anything less is dishonoring to Christ and, dare I say, taking his name in vain.

02:17:32

Amen. Yes, it is. So let us come to worship the true

02:17:39

Christ. And if you who are caught in that, repent, turn to the one true

02:17:46

Christ, attend a church that teaches the gospel, teaches the word of God, elevates

02:17:54

Christ rather than man. Come to him, believe, you will find him to be a wonderful savior.

02:18:04

Amen. Come on, man. There have been many who have left the cult of Bethel.

02:18:11

And the nonsense of Hillsong, the false teachings of Stephen. There have been many who have left them and come to know the true saving grace of Jesus Christ.

02:18:23

So come to him and worship him how he has said he desires to be worshiped.

02:18:31

Okay. And with that, we are going to end with this message from Andrew.

02:18:38

And we hope that this episode that Andrew has allowed

02:18:44

Chris and I to host, we hope that it has been edifying to you. We hope that it has been encouraging to you.

02:18:50

And we hope that it has caused you to want to worship Jesus even more in the truth of who he is.

02:18:59

Yep. So we thank you. If you're wrestling with that, by the way, if you're wrestling with that, by the way, reach out to us, like we're all,

02:19:08

I mean, I mean, I've been taking a step back from Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff, like, but we're still,

02:19:14

I'm still on there. Like, you know, reach out and, and I don't know, Drew, if you can get the show notes, maybe we just, maybe even put our email addresses in there.

02:19:22

If people have questions and want to, you know, want to, want to, want to talk and, and, you know, talk about this more, send it.

02:19:29

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we want to thank you for giving us your time.

02:19:35

We want to thank Andrew for allowing us the opportunity to host and be with you and seek to make today, wait, what is it that he says?

02:19:46

Strive to make today an eternal day, striving to make an eternal day, striving for, striving for eternity every day by day, by day, by day, by day.

02:20:02

All other religious systems are based on a system of morality of good works. What makes Christianity unique?

02:20:08

It is not a system of morality. It is about Jesus Christ. Buddha is dead.

02:20:14

Muhammad is dead. Joseph Smith is dead. Mary Baker. Eddie is dead. But Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

02:20:20

If Jesus Christ was not both fully man and fully God, there would be no payment of sin.

02:20:26

This was a debate in the first century. Jesus Christ was fully man. It's important to note that he did not have a human father.

02:20:33

Therefore, he did not inherit a sin nature. Jesus Christ not only had to be fully man, but he also had to be without sin, never breaking any part of God's law.

02:20:43

If, if Jesus was not a man, then people would have no payment of sins. But Jesus Christ is also fully

02:20:49

God. Jesus had to be God in order to pay an eternal fine. Only an eternal being can pay an eternal fine.