April 20, 2017 Show with Lt. Col. Kevin Jarrard on “In the World But Not of the World: Being ‘John 17 Christians’ in the 21st Century”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, We are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with, and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 20th day of April 2017.

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Before I introduce my co -host and my guest and topic for today,

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I do want to let our listeners know that I have finally posted on the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com,

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in the archive, two old broadcasts of interviews that I had with my dear friend

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William Norman Grigg, who went home to be with the Lord last week on April 12th at the age of 54.

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And as I have mentioned before, William Norman Grigg was a brilliant man,

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I think, probably on the level of genius, without any exaggeration.

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He was an outspoken Christian libertarian, and he, most interestingly, was a

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Mormon convert to Christianity. And many of my listeners may recognize his name because he, at one time, was the senior editor of the

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New American Magazine. Well, William Norman Grigg went home unexpectedly of a heart attack last week, and he has left behind a wife and six children, and if I'm not mistaken, seven siblings, and I believe all of them are still

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Mormon, and I'm sure that the majority of his family is still Mormon, other than his wife and children.

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And I ask of you not only to pray for his wife and children, because obviously they are still in a very deep state of mourning, but also pray for the remainder of his family who are in mourning, but also who are still trapped in a false religion that the

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Lord rescued William Norman Grigg from by his sovereign grace. So the two interviews that I have posted at IronSherpensIronRadio .com

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are his interview that he conducted with me on August 7th, 2007, on the infamous

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Mountain Meadows Massacre. That is the massacre that took place, over a hundred men, women, and children murdered by Mormons, innocent men, women, and children passing through Utah on their way from Arkansas to California, and this was in the 19th century that they were massacred.

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He discussed that incident, which interestingly enough occurred on September 11th in the 1800s.

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And then I also posted his testimony, William Norman Grigg's testimony of his conversion from Mormonism to Biblical Christianity, which

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I recorded or broadcast originally on August 22nd, 2007.

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So I hope that you will listen to those in memory, in loving memory of William Norman Grigg, and pass those

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MP3s on to your family, friends, and loved ones, especially if they're Mormon. I would love to hear reports at some point in the future of Mormons coming to Christ after hearing

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William Norman Grigg's very moving testimony. He actually broke down crying during that interview, which doesn't happen often on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

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So I hope that you all are blessed by that. And today

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I am so delighted to have back on the program, this is the first time he is my guest.

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He had been on the program once before as my co -host when we interviewed Staff Sergeant David Carnes, who is the

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United States Marine that rescued several Transit Authority policemen trapped beneath the rubble of one of the

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World Trade Center towers. And Oliver Stone made a movie of that rescue called

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World Trade Center. And Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard was in studio with me as my co -host that day interviewing

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Staff Sergeant David Carnes. But today, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard is my guest. And he is not only a

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United States Marine, but he is also an elder at Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia.

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And we are going to be discussing the theme in the world, but not of the world, being

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John 17 Christians in the 21st century. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to the studio,

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Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard. Chris, it's good to be here. We had a great visit with Staff Sergeant Carnes back on September the 11th.

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I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him that morning and then hearing his further comments and some of his testimony on your program that afternoon.

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But it is good to be here. And I can't think of a more applicable topic for discussion for believers than being in the world, but not of the world.

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Prepositions have meaning. Take heart, young middle school grammarians. Prepositions have meanings.

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In and of mean very different things. And so there's much meaning hidden in those two -letter words.

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Amen. And in studio with me again is my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello. Am I actually here?

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I'm starting to hear myself now. Well, I can hear you a little bit for some reason. I don't know what happened. And I don't know what may be loose.

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But the volume is not quite what it should be. Well, everybody's used to the fact that I don't talk very much anymore.

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Well, hopefully during a station break we'll be able to resolve that anyway. But I'd like to read

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John 17. And I'm reading from my favorite translation, the

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New American Standard Bible. And John 17, we have the high priestly prayer of Jesus in which he says, well, this is the text here.

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Jesus spoke these things. And lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour has come.

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Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, even as you gave him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him, he may give eternal life.

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This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

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I glorified you on the earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do.

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Now, Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.

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I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world.

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They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

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Now they have come to know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words which you gave me,

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I have given to them. And they received them and truly understood that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me.

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I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me, for they are yours, and all things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine.

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And I have been glorified, I am no longer in the world, and yet they themselves are in the world.

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And I come to you, Holy Father, keep them in your name, the name which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are.

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While I was with them, I was keeping them in your name, which you have given me, and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition, so that the scripture would be fulfilled.

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But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, so that they may have my joy made full in themselves.

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I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

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I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.

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They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth, your word is truth.

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As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

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For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

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I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, even as you,

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Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.

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The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, and they may be one, just as we are one, in them and you in me.

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That they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you have loved me.

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Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world.

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O righteous Father, although the world has not known you, yet I have known you, and these have known that you sent me, and I have made your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which you love me may be in them, and I in them.

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And these are wonderful promises that Christ has prayed to the

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Father and on our behalf. And I know that some would say that perhaps he's specifically praying about the apostles, but he also apparently is including all of those whom the

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Father has given him. I think you're right, Chris. In context there, Jesus is talking about the world all the way back to chapter 15, and so clearly the immediate context is the apostles, the disciples there.

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I think every good student of Scripture will extrapolate that to all believers through all time.

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And then this theme is really continued in John's other writings in the New Testament.

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First John is filled with references to how we should conduct ourselves in the world.

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Two quick thoughts about that. One that's mentioned here is that we should not be surprised when we are hated.

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That theme is closely associated. We will be hated in the world, we meaning

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Christians, because of Christ. And the second idea that I think is so critical for a believer to keep ever in the forefront of their mind is the idea that this is not our home.

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We are passing through. We are indeed pilgrims, sojourners, and so we must loosen our grip on the world and look towards our eternal destination.

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Our home is in heaven, and that is a great encouragement to us. When we face the persecution that we know will come, the hatred that Jesus tells us that we will experience, we should fix our gaze on the celestial city as it is, and let that be our hope.

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Our ultimate hope is not in the things of this world, as comforting as they may seem. And so I've dwelt often on the thought of loosening our grip on this world and looking to the hereafter, looking to Christ as our only hope, not only in the life to come, but in this life as well.

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And as you know, there are people professing to be

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Christians, and many of which genuinely are Christians, who fall perhaps on one side or the other of the spectrum, who have gone too far in one direction or another.

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You have those who are the Amish, for instance, who have really separated themselves far more from the world than Christ ever desired of his people.

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And then you have those on the other side of the spectrum who you can barely distinguish them from the sinners surrounding them.

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And obviously, you're going to have those that perhaps like a pendulum sometimes are on both sides of that spectrum.

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You obviously, you are an enlisted man in the military, you are a

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United States Marine, and you obviously don't believe that this this teaching that we are not to be of the world would lead you so far out of connection with this world that the protection of this nation would be immaterial to you.

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You are in the service. In fact, before we even go on with that, some of our listeners may be wondering if you're an elder in Dawsonville, Georgia, why are you here in Carlisle?

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And that has a lot to do with the United States Army College, War College. That's right,

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Chris. Of course, we know ultimately our orders come from a sovereign God, right?

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They're just some men that work in the Pentagon that think that they're they're assigning people wherever they want, but the

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Lord directs our steps. And so I'm a reserve officer that spent last year away from home with the

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Marine Corps in Jordan. And then another assignment this year, serving on active duty as a student at the

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United States Army War College. There are a handful of Marines who attend the Army War College each year, and that's where we are.

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It's been a intellectually invigorating year. I have enjoyed my studies there very much.

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I would also be remiss if I did not say that my theological instruction is attending

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Grace Baptist Church here in Carlisle has been equally intellectually invigorating, spiritually invigorating.

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We've been greatly blessed by the ministry of Grace Baptist Church, David Campbell, and then the elders once he moved back to the

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UK. So we are thankful that the Lord has brought us here, and we are hoping that he will use this experience for his glory and for our good.

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Amen. In fact, I just today, moments before you came into the studio,

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I received an email from our dear brother David Campbell, who is now the pastor of the

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North Preston Evangelical Church in England. And he wishes you greetings, and he says that he misses his times of fellowship with you.

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And at some point, I will find that email. For some reason, I can't see it right off right immediately while I'm looking for it, but I will forward that to you when

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I find it. But even before we go on any further with this topic, the last time you were on as a co -host,

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I don't believe that we got any sense of your testimony of how you came to Christ. Tell us something about your own religious upbringing, and not only how the

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Lord providentially drew you to a saving knowledge of himself, but also how he placed it upon your heart to join the military, and then also how he placed it upon your heart to be an elder in a church.

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Sure, Chris. Well, we've been very blessed. In the south, in the part of the south that I grew up in, it's almost assumed that everyone growing up in those days was a

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Christian. There was much cultural Christianity. So in those days, if you were not in church, if you did not profess to be a

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Christian, you were on the outside looking in. But the faith in my family was genuine.

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I had the blessing of both sets of my grandparents were godly people. I had godly parents.

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My father was a godly man. My mother, who still lives, is a godly woman, a member of our church back there in Dawsonville.

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So from a very early age, I can remember that church was vitally important to our family.

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The reading of the scriptures, singing of the hymns was what we did as a matter of course. We prayed frequently in our home and with others.

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Everywhere you gathered in the south, there was always prayer. And it was genuine faith,

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I think, in many cases. But certainly, the trappings of Christianity were more important than the vitality of Christianity to much of that part of the country where I grew up in.

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And as that cultural Christianity came under challenge, then I think it caused people to really examine their faith more deeply.

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I knew from an early age I loved the Lord. I loved the scriptures. I had an emotional experience as a very young man, but I'm very careful not to trust in an experience that I had of my own sin and of my need for the atoning work of Christ.

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I think that probably over time, my conversion took place as I came under greater conviction of sin, greater understanding of my need for the atoning work of Christ, that my righteousness was as filthy rags before a holy

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God and my need for Christ. And so I knew I loved the

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Lord. I knew I loved His word. I wanted to please Christ. But my theological development was sort of stuck in that spot.

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I didn't progress much beyond reading the Bible and loving the Bible. There was very little theological education that went on.

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And I really, even up through my marriage, I married my second -grade sweetheart who was a godly young woman.

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And so together, we did the best we could with the little knowledge that we had. Second -grade sweetheart, wow.

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She is a beautiful and godly woman. And early in our marriage,

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Chris, we attended a church through the providence of God, visited a church at our first duty station,

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Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. And I sat behind Colonel Tom Phillips and his family.

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And we had one young son at that time that we were struggling with. He was just a little toddler.

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And as I watched Colonel Phillips and his family, I said to myself, I don't know what he's doing, but I want to know.

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And so he introduced me, as I said, Sir, can you teach me?

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He introduced me to some great books. And that's one of the themes of my life.

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The Lord has used great books to move me. And so he put several of Dr.

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Sproul's books in my hands. One of our first Bible studies as part of that church was

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Francis Schaeffer's How Shall We Then Live? And then those introductions led me to the

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Puritans. And so my theological development moved very quickly to a love of the doctrines of grace and Reformed theology.

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And so I'm very thankful for Tom Phillips and his family and the impact they had on my life.

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And then when we returned home, left active service, we needed to find a church.

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And so there are churches literally on every corner in the Deep South. But by that point in history, and so this is 2001,

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Calvinism had been killed for the most part in Baptist life, certainly, except for a small remnant.

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And so we found Ray Rhodes there in Dawsonville, and Ray and I helped plant

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Grace Community Church. I joined along with Ray in that work. And so quickly we're encouraged as we began to discover that Calvinism wasn't quite as dead as we thought it was, that good men like Tom Askell and the

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Founders Movement and Dr. Al Mohler and Mark Dever and others had been laboring mightily to return the

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Southern Baptist Convention to its roots, which are, of course, unmistakably, there's really no argument in the matter,

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Southern Seminary and Southern Baptists were exclusively, you might say, Calvinist in the early days.

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And so we're thankful to stand with those other men in that tradition of historical

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Orthodox Reformed Christianity. Yeah, in fact, I want to make sure that, I know

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I'll be doing this later, God willing, but I figure I might as well give the website for your church right now.

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Also, it's gracechurchdawsonville .org, gracechurchdawsonville .org,

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and that's D -A -W -S -O -N -V -I -L -L -E for Dawsonville. Also, Ray Rhodes, your pastor, who has been a guest on this program a number of times, he is a published author, and he has a website, booksthatnourish .com,

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booksthatnourish .com, and I know he has a ministry called Nourished in the Word.

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Does he have a separate website for that? For some reason, I'm not coming up with that. Nourishedintheword .org,

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I don't know if that's active anymore, Chris. He mostly just responds to invitations through the church.

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Ray does mostly family conferences, marriage and family conferences have really been what he has done most of his work in.

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You may know, of course, he finished his doctoral work at Southern Seminary on the marriage of Charles and Susanna Spurgeon.

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Yeah, we're going to be speaking about that very soon. Anytime a church sends its pastor or encourages their pastor to continue their education, the church is the greatest recipient of that blessing, and so our church has been the recipient of all of that work and study that Ray did at Southern Seminary, and of course,

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Spurgeon is one of our great heroes, and little was known about the role of Susanna in his ministry, or not as much was known,

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I should say, and so Ray has done much to highlight the importance of his marriage to Susanna and her work in helping her husband, and then the work in her own right after his death of continuing the work of the ministry.

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Well, I will cheer the heart of Pastor Ray Rhodes right now by letting him know that you arrived at my studio wearing khakis, not skinny jeans.

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He was making a joke about, I hope he doesn't show up with skinny jeans, and I know that that must have been a joke, because I can't, in my wildest imagination, picture you being a skinny -jean pastor or elder, let alone marine.

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You'd be accurate in your assessment of my fashion choices, that's right.

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I don't own a pair of those types of pants. I've heard that Ray has some, though.

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But, and I did find David Campbell's email. He says, Do give my warm greetings to Kevin.

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It was a real delight to get to know him and his family in the weeks before we left. That was

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David Campbell, the former pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, now pastoring the

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North Preston Evangelical Church in England. But we're going to go to a break right now, and we will, when we come back, we will be focusing mainly on the subject at hand in the world, but not of the world, being

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John 17 Christians in the 21st century. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages, God willing, with Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today is Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard, who's a

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United States Marine, and he's also an elder at Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia.

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He's in studio with us today as he, for a year with a few months to go, has been and will be working with the

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United States War College here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and I'm delighted to have gotten to know him a little bit and that he has been worshiping at the church where I am a member,

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Grace Baptist Church, here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In studio with me is the Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, and why don't you just try to say a few words.

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Well, let's just see if I'm on yet. You do sound a little better for some reason, I think. A little better, but it's not quite there.

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Yeah, well, I can't tell you why, Buzz, but anyway, we'll try to figure that out sometime.

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Is this a real microphone you gave me? You might want to just put it closer to your mouth, actually.

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I don't think that I'm alone. Yeah, it is a hot mic because I heard it rustling, but anyway, we have a lot more important things to talk about right now than that.

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We are discussing, as I said, in the world and not in the world, but not of the world, and I want to just read another passage of Scripture to kind of drive this subject home here.

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In 1 Corinthians 5, we read, beginning at verse 9, this is the

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Apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth, I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people.

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I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world or with the covetous and swindlers or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.

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But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so -called brother if he is an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or a violer or a drunkard or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

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For what have I to do with judging outsiders?

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Do you not judge those who are within the church, but those who are outside God judges?

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And this is something to remind us that we are not to be as the

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Pharisees, am I correct Lieutenant Colonel Kevin, Jared, that we are not to just view the lost world around us as a pariah and not associate with them in any way, shun them basically, and only hang out with people who agree with us and live like us.

35:57

The warning of not associating with immoral people is one who is a charlatan among us or a wolf in sheep's clothing or someone who is just making a mockery of Christianity who's claiming to be a

36:09

Christian, am I right? I think your earlier description, Chris, is very helpful that you describe the two extremes, the two ditches, if you will, with the road in the center, and one of those ditches is separatism, that we remove ourselves from the world to the greatest degree possible.

36:28

The other ditch is being indistinguishable from the world.

36:34

The question we should often ask ourselves is if we were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict us?

36:43

But the other ditch, the ditch of separatism, I think when we begin to fall into that trap, when we start sliding toward that ditch, we're really denying the gospel.

36:57

That's how serious that error is. Whenever we start to believe that the enemy is out there somewhere, whatever that looks like, and there are enemies in the world,

37:09

Scripture clearly tells us that, but the greatest enemy is our own sin. The heart is a virtual idol factory, and so whatever sin is out there, we should always view the remaining sin in our own hearts as a believer as our greatest enemy, and constantly be seeking to put off the old man and put on the new man.

37:33

The Apostle Paul in Romans 12 says, do not be conformed to this world.

37:39

So we don't want to be indistinguishable to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

37:52

So the two extremes that you described are equally erroneous.

37:58

We don't want to be in either ditch. We want to be in accordance with Scripture. We want to live in accordance with Scripture.

38:05

We want our walk to be in accordance with His Word and to be worthy of the gospel, as Paul explains it.

38:14

So there are dangers on both sides, certainly. And I'm sure that since you providentially in our studio today are in the military, perhaps you could tell us about some of the specific challenges about being in the world and not of the world in the military.

38:35

I don't - I am not in the military. I have never been in the military. But you have an image that Hollywood has - that Hollywood conjures up in your mind.

38:45

I don't know how accurate Hollywood is when they portray the Marines and the military in general.

38:51

And of course, I'm certain that some and television programs are more accurate than others.

38:56

But you have a very rough bunch of men who are certainly disciplined, but when they are given liberty to cut loose, you have this image of, you know, great immorality and perhaps even men of violence and drunkenness and so on.

39:13

And so I don't know if you could tell us about the life of a

39:20

Christian in the Marines specifically. Are you respected for your faith or are you mocked for your faith?

39:29

Is it both? You know, give us some an idea of what it's like to be in the military, especially even coming up from the beginnings of boot camp with that same

39:38

Christian faith and so on and leading you further into the your military career.

39:44

Sure. Now, I think some of those stereotypes are based on truth.

39:50

There is, I think there has always been in martial cultures a degree of immorality that comes from a twisted image of what it means to be a man.

40:02

There is what God has ordained manliness to be and then everything good that the

40:10

Lord decrees, of course, man finds a way to twist that and to turn it and to corrupt the image of what

40:17

God intended into something entirely different. And so while manliness, the complementarianism that God ordained in Genesis has been corrupted by the world, and so many of your stereotypical ideas of masculinity have been corrupted by the world.

40:35

And so what some men think to be manliness, of course, is a corruption of that which

40:41

God intended and it's often marked by immorality of all sorts. Drunkenness, sexual immorality, coarse and filthy language, all of those are ever present to some degree or another,

40:53

I think in a greater degree in the military. And so from my first encounter with military culture,

41:02

I was faced with a dilemma, you know, choices to be made. Would I conform to those around me or would

41:10

I simply walk with Christ? And I think I'm thankful that I was trained up in the way that I should go so that when

41:21

I became older, I won't say old, I was very young when I encountered military culture, that I knew the difference between right and wrong.

41:31

And I knew the lessons that my mother and father had taught me were ringing in my ears, and I was able to discern what

41:41

I ought to do and to stand with Christ. And that sometimes means standing alone. I can remember one deployment,

41:49

I was at a particular camp overseas with several hundred Marines, and I think it's fair to say

41:56

I was the only believer on the camp. There was a chapel service one morning, and I showed up at chapel.

42:05

The chaplain, who was not a believer, was there. And he said, well, since it's just you and I, we'll just cancel things and go back to bed.

42:19

Obviously not a believer. Obviously, for all sorts of reasons, not a believer.

42:25

So I let the chaplain go back to bed, and I got on my knees and prayed and wept and read scripture and worshiped as best

42:33

I could all alone. And so there is some loneliness,

42:40

I think, Chris. But the other aspect of military life is that many of the facades are stripped away.

42:50

And you encounter reality, truth, on a daily basis in a way that sometimes the rest of our culture is shielded from.

42:59

And particularly when you are places where you're in danger, in physical danger, and people begin to consider their ultimate destination.

43:10

I can remember the first time that I was preparing to go into harm's way.

43:17

As we were passing out the ammunition on board the ship where I was, one of my most immoral young Marines came to me and said, sir, is the chaplain going to talk to us before we leave?

43:29

And I said, well, why is it that you want to speak to the chaplain, son? You haven't seemed very interested in him up till now.

43:38

But of course, you know, I said for the chaplain and had him pray for us and pray with us. And so I have found that when you're faced with the ultimate questions of life and death,

43:49

Chris, that it creates opportunities for the gospel to do its work. You know, what will happen if you die tonight?

43:56

Do you know what your ultimate destination will be? And I'm very comfortable sharing with the young men around me that that I rest in the sovereignty of God.

44:08

General Jackson, one of our heroes in the South, used to say that I'm in no more danger on the battlefield than I am sleeping in my bed at night.

44:17

When the Lord is finished with me, he will take me home and not before. And so I think knowing that our ultimate eternal destination gives

44:28

Christians great comfort and peace in the face of danger oftentimes. What you're describing, though, is a temptation that many, many believers have.

44:38

And it may be heightened in the military, I'm not sure, but it's easy to be a chameleon when you're in your place of employment, when everybody's telling the jokes and stuff.

44:51

I mean, some of the guys, they're funny people and they're brilliant, they're crafty, and we all desire to have friends and to be friendly with everybody.

45:03

And there is that tendency to want to blend in, and it's difficult.

45:10

Glad we got your microphone working. Yeah, I noticed it was getting better as I was speaking. One of the ways that I've been able to—truth is always true, right?

45:21

Yes. Despite the world's effort to turn truth into lies, so one of the great issues at the forefront of military culture in 2017 is this issue of sexual assault within the ranks, of course, which

45:37

I view as just a symptom of the chaos of our culture. But one of the ways that you're able to introduce some sanity into this argument is whenever I've been called upon to address this issue with the units that I have led,

45:51

I simply go to biblical truth and say, listen, we're going to operate here like a family.

45:58

That's the language that the Apostle Paul uses in his letters to Timothy, right? Everybody in the world fits into one of several categories for me as a believer and me as a

46:07

Marine. If young men, if you're younger than I am, you are my sons, my brothers, my fathers, the women

46:14

I work with, you are either my daughters or my sisters. There's not really anybody older than me, so I don't have—I've only got one mother anymore, but I've got lots of daughters and lots of sisters.

46:25

And if that's the way we view one another in professional relationships, I mean, those people understand those relationships.

46:33

They have sisters. They have daughters. That's really the essence of the issue.

46:38

And so I think that's an effective way to communicate truth to the culture that we're called to operate and live in is, listen, they need to hear some comforting truth in the midst of just almost unimaginable chaos out there.

46:55

Biblical truth rings true in their hearts. They know that those things are true, and so if that's the way we treat people in the context of scriptural, biblical, familial relationships, sexual assault goes away.

47:10

You would not assault your sister. You would not assault your daughter. So that's a way that I think that we've been able to bring scriptural truth to bear in some of the contemporary arguments or issues that I face as a

47:25

Marine, Chris. C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York wants to know if there is any restriction on evangelism from one

47:32

Marine to another or even by chaplains. C .J. Chris, I have heard accounts of that in other places, but in my experiences,

47:41

I've never seen any hindrance to the gospel, and perhaps that's because of my particular specialty.

47:50

I'm an infantryman, a reconnaissanceman. I've spent all my time in those units. I've never seen any hindrance to the gospel in my personal experience.

47:59

When I'm visiting with Marines, if they are suffering from an issue,

48:05

I'll often ask them, you know, young man, I can direct you to some resources, but would you object to me praying for you?

48:12

I've never had a Marine say, you know, I don't want you to pray for me. They've always invited me to pray and thank me for my prayers.

48:21

For chaplains, I have seen perhaps not overt pressure on them to preach another gospel, but certainly there has been some pressures of different types placed upon them to not be offensive.

48:43

We don't want to offend anyone, and there is a sense in which, of course, that's true. I don't want to be any more offensive.

48:51

Let the gospel be offensive. And it will be if it's correctly spoken.

48:57

That's right. God does not love you. In fact, He hates you.

49:02

That's the message for sinners. If you're an enemy of God, you're facing

49:08

His wrath. That's an offensive sort of statement. The cross is offensive, so let the gospel be offensive.

49:15

I don't add to that offense by doing anything personally, and so I think the greater problem,

49:23

Chris, is not that chaplains can't share the gospel. It's that chaplains won't share the gospel.

49:29

They don't have any desire to share the gospel. They don't believe it. Because they're not believers. I was going to say many of them don't even know it.

49:36

I was deployed most of last year in Jordan.

49:43

Even in the umbrella of evangelical chaplains, I didn't have an evangelical chaplain in the same country that I was in, and so we had a wonderful chaplain that came to visit us twice,

49:59

Christmas and Easter. I wept through each of those services, because as a believer who loves the gospel, loves the

50:07

Lord, you want to gather with God's people. There is no Christian life outside of the context of the church.

50:16

Our faith is a corporate faith. We believe together. I was so very thankful for the chaplain coming and ministering to us during those seasons, but I would say that the problem that we have in the military is the same problem in the

50:33

American church, is that most pastors, certainly many pastors, are not believers, certainly in the historic orthodox

50:43

Christian tradition. We have RJ in White Plains, New York wants to know, have any of your comrades in arms ever viewed

50:51

Christianity as a weakness? Well, there is that view sometimes that Christ, the mistaken meekness for weakness, and so I think to some degree that corrupted view of manliness is really the issue, the heart of that question, right?

51:13

So if we corrupt God's view of male and female, then there's this idea that to be a man you must be strong, whereas Christ is telling us that He has made strong our weakness.

51:30

So there's that seeming conflict there, but I think it is just an apparent conflict, it's not an actual contradiction.

51:40

So I think what your comrades who know you well will see over time is that behind that velvet glove is a fist of iron, there's real strength in the

51:53

Christian faith, it's not apparent strength. Our culture, which makes a caricature of manliness, that's an illusion of strength, the man who would harm those that are weaker than him.

52:06

I mean, that's really the essence of manliness, biblical manliness is one who will protect and defend the weak.

52:15

And so any sort of image of man that involves harming others because he can, or to demonstrate somehow his prowess or his power, is a corruption of the biblical idea of manhood.

52:32

And so there have been times, I think, when there are always those who will mock us for our faith, but even in their mockery,

52:40

I think there is some hidden longing for something more. The things that they are pursuing, of course, will ultimately lead them to emptiness, whereas when they view a person of authentic faith, someone who's placed their faith not in themselves but in Christ, they see the strength.

53:04

Busley, we'll pick up on your comment or question when we return. Okay. Because I don't want to cut you off in mid -sentence.

53:09

If anybody would like to join us, if anybody else would like to join us on the air with an email of your own with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

53:19

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53:25

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53:42

I understand that, so you can remain anonymous if you wish. But if it's not about a personal and private issue, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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01:03:13

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is

01:03:20

Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Gerard, who's not only a United States Marine but he's an elder at Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia.

01:03:28

We're discussing in the world but not of the world being John 17 Christians in the 21st century.

01:03:33

Before I return to our discussion, I just have a couple of important announcements. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals wants me to remind you that this week is the last week for registration for the

01:03:46

Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. The theme of this year's conference is

01:03:52

Recovering the Essence of the Gospel and it's going to be held April 28th through the 30th at the

01:04:00

Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Speakers include

01:04:06

Richard Phillips, Carl Truman, and Dan Doriani. If you would like to register or find out more about the conference, go to alliancenet .org,

01:04:16

alliancenet .org, and then click on Events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:04:24

I will have, God willing, an exhibitor's booth there. So if you are attending, please make an effort to greet me at my exhibitor's booth during a break at the

01:04:34

Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, April 28th through the 30th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

01:04:41

Go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org. And then from Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June the 1st, the

01:04:52

Banner of Truth is having their 2017 United States Ministers Conference on the theme,

01:04:59

The Living and Enduring Word. Speakers include Joel Beeky, Jeff Thomas, William Vandewoord, Mark Johnston, Jonathan Master, Carlton Winn, and Ian Hamilton.

01:05:11

And if you are a leader in your church, whether a pastor or a deacon, or some other role of leadership, and you want to register for this conference, go to banneroftruth .org,

01:05:25

banneroftruth .org, click on Events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference.

01:05:30

Of course, if you live in the United Kingdom, there are several U .K. Ministers Conferences that you can attend, so click on those instead.

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But if you are in the United States or prefer going to the U .S. Ministers Conference, if you're in Canada or somewhere else close by, or reasonably close by, go to banneroftruth .org,

01:05:53

click on Events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference. That's Thursday, I'm sorry, Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June 1st.

01:06:02

And I hope to see you at that conference as well, because I intend to be there, God willing. And also,

01:06:08

I want to remind you very quickly that Iron Trump and Zion Radio is in urgent need of new benefactors and advertisers.

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So whether you are a pastor, a parachurch leader, a business owner, a professional person like a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, a chiropractor, or you're having a special event that you would like publicized on Iron Trump and Zion Radio, give me an email and we'll see what we can work out.

01:07:39

I would love to hear from you, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And that's also the address, the email address you could send in a question for today's guest,

01:07:46

Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Gerard, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:07:52

Before the break, Reverend Buzz Taylor, you had a either a comment or question. Well, yes. Before we get back to the discussion about faith again.

01:08:02

Yeah, I don't know why this keeps happening to you. Yeah, okay. Well, you can hear me though, right? Yeah, yeah.

01:08:08

Oh, there we go. Okay. You did something right there. Yeah, that time I had you on mute. Something I actually prefer.

01:08:15

Dr. Mochris, you did that on purpose. Actually, Old habits die hard.

01:08:21

You're right. People wonder why I'm so quiet on this program because I don't have a mic. But I thought that last question was actually a little bit comical, but the listeners would never see why

01:08:32

I found it comical. Which question was that? The question about whether there's the perception of being weak as a

01:08:39

Christian in the military. And all I can say is when Kevin Gerard walked into this room, he had a presence and he was like, the proverbial

01:08:50

Marine, like, you know, his pictures on the side of the big trucks and all that stuff. You know what I'm saying? And I don't think he would run into a whole lot of that.

01:08:57

How tall are you? I'm shrinking. I think my son is past me.

01:09:02

He's 6 '3", and he's just past me. But, you know, in the discussion about the world, the question, of course, many have is, you know, how close to the line can you get without going over and all?

01:09:17

And I think we need to understand the biblical description of what is actually being told. The world that we're not to be of is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.

01:09:27

And, you know, just thinking about that last one, the boastful pride of life, I won't take too much time to tell you this, but I recall listening to a message by George Gardner many years ago.

01:09:39

I'm not going to get into who he is. It doesn't matter. But he was talking about being invited to a lady's house.

01:09:44

He was called there on official church business. You know, they had a situation in the church that needed to be dealt with. He goes to this woman's house, and she said,

01:09:54

Mrs. So -and -so was actually seen going into the picture show, and this is worldliness and needs to be dealt with.

01:10:03

But he said during the course of the visit, she took him all through the house on a grand tour showing, you know, the family shield and all the accomplishments of, you know, her children and all that.

01:10:13

And he finally said to her, if what Mrs. So -and -so did is true, what she did is maybe carnal, but you're the worldly one, you know?

01:10:24

And he said he didn't get a cup of tea on that one. But, you know, think about it, though. We want the world to think we're smart as Christians, and I think there's where a lot of the temptation to compromise with the world comes from.

01:10:37

I worked for drug rehab at one point for an organization that prided themselves on being so much more successful than the government programs, and then they went and state certified all their counselors.

01:10:51

Why? Right. We want that clout, don't you think? That's right. We want the trappings of the world.

01:10:59

And yeah, the command is not just don't do these things.

01:11:04

It really goes beyond the letter of the law to the spirit of the law. We must be beyond reproach.

01:11:12

And so that, boy, you know, that is Jesus as he body slams the

01:11:19

Pharisees, figuratively speaking, with where his bar is and compared to theirs.

01:11:26

You have heard it said or you have read, but I say to you, right? I say to you, if you've looked at your brother with hate in your heart, you've committed murder.

01:11:34

If you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. And that's the standard for the

01:11:40

Christian, right? We're not just trying to check boxes. I mean, the bar is so much higher for us and to remain beyond reproach as we walk with sinners, as we sit next to them, as we eat with them.

01:11:55

How is it that we remain above reproach? And certainly there are times when we are called to get up physically and move away, to turn our backs on things.

01:12:06

I mean, those are some of the things we're going to have to do. But I find more often that we can kill them with kindness, right?

01:12:15

That's the right response in most cases is to love our neighbors and to shower them with Christian affection, with hospitality.

01:12:26

Hospitality is a lost art in our world, even amongst Christians. I mean, we've got to open our homes as Christians and have unbelievers and be willing to have unbelievers in our homes.

01:12:37

And to be hospitable to them in the right context and to love them, to show them the love of Christ through us.

01:12:46

I mean, we are often the only Christ that many unbelievers will ever see, the shadow of Christ, of course.

01:12:54

But we are called to be like Christ to the watching world. And that's a humbling and terrible, in the best sense of the word, responsibility.

01:13:03

It's a crushing responsibility that we bear. And of course, we can only face it with prayer and supplication and humility.

01:13:11

We do have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He says, what do you say to the unbeliever who asks how a

01:13:17

Christian could be in the military when there is a command not to kill? And also we are to love our enemies, pray for our enemies and do good to our enemies.

01:13:27

Amen. There's a great question. We were just talking during the break about, you know, really,

01:13:33

I don't think it's possible for a Christian to serve in the armed forces if you don't have a solid theological understanding of Romans chapter 13.

01:13:41

And that's really where we get our just war doctrine. The great church father,

01:13:47

Augustine, really expands on that concept. And it was Augustine who really gave the

01:13:53

U .S. military our ethical views of war. And so Paul says that he who bears a sword doesn't do so in vain.

01:14:02

He's meant to be a scourge to evil and a blessing to those that do good. So if people that do good have nothing to fear from a soldier.

01:14:09

And so we are often called on to wield the sword. The question is, why are we wielding the sword?

01:14:16

I mean, violence is amoral. It's neither good nor bad.

01:14:22

It depends on why violence is being employed. And so that's really where we need to have a biblical view of what it is that we're to be about.

01:14:32

And when I pick up my rifle and wade into places, why is it that I am going there and what would cause me to kill someone?

01:14:41

And really, it's a view of Romans 13 that if they are indeed evildoers, then the

01:14:48

Lord has put me in a position to be a scourge to them, to scourge evildoers.

01:14:53

And so I think part of our confusion in American culture and even in the military culture is that we're uncomfortable with words like good and evil,

01:15:03

Chris. I mean, that's it. I mean, we're afraid to call evil evil and good good. And in fact, sometimes we call good evil and evil good.

01:15:11

The Bible tells us that that's what the world will do. But, you know, when you have a solid understanding of Romans 13 and a solid understanding of the commandment that there's a difference in murder and killing, that we can be happy warriors as a believer.

01:15:29

I mean, when I spent last year in Jordan, I told the Jordanians I work with,

01:15:34

I told King Abdullah that the reason that I was there is that I sat and watched, along with my

01:15:40

Marine comrades, ISIS take that young Jordanian pilot and burn him alive.

01:15:47

And as I watched, it took that young pilot 90 seconds to die. I watched it.

01:15:55

And so there's no mistaking what that is. That's not confusion.

01:16:01

That's not a wrong decision. It's just evil. It's pure, unadulterated evil, the like of which we don't often see in such a graphic depiction.

01:16:11

So, you know, I could pick up a rifle and face those men with a happy heart, knowing that we were punishing evil.

01:16:20

And so with that theological underpinning, that's my answer to those that say, you know, how can you wield the sword?

01:16:29

I do so because of Romans 13. And of course, Jesus Christ never told soldiers to cease being soldiers.

01:16:40

He healed a centurion servant and never said to that centurion, you know, go and sin no more, stop being a centurion.

01:16:48

And John the Baptist didn't tell soldiers to stop being soldiers. He said, be content with your wages.

01:16:54

And of course, as far as the distinction between murder and killing is concerned,

01:17:00

God himself commanded the death penalty in the Old Covenant for a number of different crimes.

01:17:08

And yet, in fact, thou shalt not kill was one of them, one of the commandments that would warrant the death penalty.

01:17:16

So obviously, execution and the just killing in war, when it is a just war, those are not something that could be called murder.

01:17:29

And it's clear from the Old Testament, even that the Israelites had armies and so on.

01:17:36

Right, yeah. Before I came here last year, I was beginning to preach through the book of Joshua.

01:17:42

And of course, when you read Joshua's mandate to wipe out the Canaanites at first glance, you think, you know, and that's the world's view of the

01:17:52

Old Testament God, how this bloodthirsty God, how could God command Joshua to wipe out the

01:17:58

Canaanites? And of course, if you examine the religion of the Canaanites that involved burning your infants alive on an altar to a demon

01:18:09

God, so for 400 years, they had burned countless tens of thousands of infants alive.

01:18:18

What I'm struck with is not the wrath of God in wiping them off the face of the earth, but the mercy of God that He delayed judgment for so long that some,

01:18:30

Rahab, for instance, was spared, right? He didn't kill everyone. There was always mercy.

01:18:36

God, in the midst of His wrath, there was mercy. And so that's the great news of the book of Joshua, is not the terrible wrath of God, although that is there, but the great patience of a loving and merciful

01:18:48

God that He would delay judgment to allow any to be saved.

01:18:54

And some people might be wondering, well, wait a minute, what does this have to do with your topic? Well, as you may recall,

01:19:00

I started out the program that there are some on one extreme of separation that do not even permit the members of their churches or their religious group to be in the

01:19:12

United States military. Going to the other area where most of us are more prone to find ourselves sinning is when we are trying to be a light in the darkness.

01:19:28

We don't want to shun every party or gathering that we are invited to when there are unbelievers involved because we know that we are to be lights in the darkness.

01:19:40

We are to not just huddle with those who agree with us all the time, that if we are never in the company of unbelievers, we're not going to be able to effectively communicate truth to them and the gospel.

01:19:55

So this is where it's really more of a difficult issue is when, number one, when to accept invitations at certain events, when to reject those invitations.

01:20:07

And when you're there, how do you respond to what may be said and done and going on around you?

01:20:16

Are we to constantly to be rebuking those who are not even believers when they are using vulgarity, profanity, when they're doing other things?

01:20:27

They might even be snorting cocaine not far from where you're sitting or getting drunk, whatever the case is.

01:20:32

This might even be at your Thanksgiving dinner table. But what are some practical suggestions you have to those issues when we are trying to be in the world but not of the world?

01:20:45

And when we are putting ourselves in places where we may be subject to either sin ourselves or appear to be partaking in sin?

01:20:58

These are not very easy questions at all times. No, and you're right.

01:21:03

That ditch is the one that we are more susceptible to, I think.

01:21:11

So, Chris, it really speaks to the heart. That's where our heart is. That's where our treasures will be also.

01:21:20

I mean, so I'm looking at 1 John chapter 4 here, and the apostle, I'm sorry, chapter 2, the apostle says, do not love the world or the things in the world.

01:21:30

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride and possessions is not from the

01:21:39

Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires.

01:21:45

But whoever does the will of God abides forever. And the power of our example, of course, you've heard that formed in so many different ways.

01:21:56

What we do speaks louder than what we say. Our audio must match our video.

01:22:04

The power of our example is just difficult to overestimate what the impact that that has on those around us.

01:22:13

And that's why what comes out of our mouth is so very important.

01:22:19

What words we choose to say and what words we choose not to say. And then the wisdom that comes from being saturated in Scripture.

01:22:29

So I think that the practical exhortation to the believer out there is that if you are saturating yourself in Scripture, if early in the morning you're rising up out of your bed and you love the word of God, you love

01:22:45

Christ, you love his gospel, and you're bathing in those truths, you're preaching the truth to yourself day in and day out, if you're gathering with God's people.

01:22:57

I told David Campbell when I came to Grace Baptist Church last July, David, I'll be here every time the doors are open because my life depends upon it.

01:23:09

I've been a Christian all of my life practically, but I know the depths of my need to be with God's people.

01:23:17

And so if that's the practice of your life as a believer, then when you're faced with adversity, when you're faced with difficult situations, if they cut us, we're going to bleed

01:23:29

Bible. We're going to have the wisdom and discernment that accompanies a mind that's saturated in Scripture to make wise decisions.

01:23:38

And I think what I want, what I think most Christians, we want a rule book. Give me a rule book. You can't do this.

01:23:45

You can't do that. You can watch that movie, but you can't watch this movie. You can read this book. That would be a lot easier,

01:23:52

I think, in some ways, but that's not what we're called to do in Scripture. I mean, certainly there are things that we don't do as Christians, but the rule book for living that many of us desire to have,

01:24:05

God did not provide to us. Rather, he gave us his word. And if we're saturated by the word of God, then we will have the wisdom that comes from Scripture to guide us when we have to make decisions about what we're to do and not to do in practical matters,

01:24:22

Cruz. A BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania wants to know, is it more a matter of the fact that Christians may be free to partake in activities that the world is involved in that do not involve sin, but that the church should not be necessarily importing those activities into the life of the actual church?

01:24:41

Well, if I was going to do any fiery preaching this afternoon, my criticism would not be of the world.

01:24:50

We shouldn't be surprised when the world acts like the world. My criticism, Cruz, would be for the church.

01:24:57

I mean, why do we have a crisis in marriage in America? Well, because we had a crisis in marriage in the church.

01:25:04

I mean, because the church in America didn't take marriage seriously, how could we possibly expect our culture to take marriage seriously?

01:25:13

I had a conversation. I usually accept most invitations to speak in places, and so I end up speaking in some strange places.

01:25:22

And I was speaking one evening to a church that would not identify itself in the tradition of historical

01:25:30

Orthodox Christianity. And I had a question from someone in the group about why it seemed that so many young people were returning from our wars and struggling with various degrees of post -traumatic stress.

01:25:44

And my answer to her was, well, I think it's because they're so theologically ill -prepared to face the ultimate questions of life and death.

01:25:53

They don't understand just war. They don't understand Romans 13. So when they're faced with great decisions and they're called on to take up the sword, they're theologically ill -prepared.

01:26:04

And I said, rather than teaching children those truths, we have youth groups who are having pizza parties.

01:26:11

Little did I know that at that very moment, the youth group at that church was having a pizza party next door.

01:26:17

And nothing wrong with pizza, nothing wrong with pizza parties, but when that takes the player, supplants rigorous theological instruction.

01:26:28

I mean, our children are starving, Chris, for truth. They're starving for meat. And we're throwing them scraps.

01:26:36

We're throwing them sugar cubes when what they need is meat. And I think that's the danger.

01:26:43

What is responsible for the state of American culture in 2017? The American church is responsible for the state of American culture.

01:26:52

**Matt Stauffer** Do you think a lot of that has to do with the church?

01:26:57

I mean, sometimes the motivations for growth are obviously good because you want people to come to Christ.

01:27:04

You want the lost to be saved. But there can be such a preoccupation or a lopsided focus on growth.

01:27:12

And sometimes that's purely out of greed because you want the money to keep flowing in in greater amounts. That you just want to appeal to the world to be attractive to them.

01:27:25

And therefore, instead of hanging sacks of sheep food out the windows, you hang sacks of goat food out the window to attract the goats.

01:27:37

And as my friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries has said, what you attract them with, you will win them to.

01:27:46

And people are coming to the church, and it's just really a social club with a veneer, a thin veneer of Christianity where Jesus is mentioned,

01:27:57

Jesus is spoken of as being a God of love. And of course, that is true, but he is also a

01:28:03

God of wrath. There is a hell just as much as there is a heaven.

01:28:08

And the only thing that makes grace so amazing, and the forgiveness of God so amazing, and the death of Christ for the redemption of sinners so amazing, is that there is a horrible aspect to life on this earth, and that is that many are going to hell, and that wickedness needs to be repented of.

01:28:36

And the amazing thing is, is that Jesus, in his mercy, forgives and saves the worst of sinners.

01:28:42

Amen. You're exactly right. I mean, that's summation of the gospel. You mentioned earlier during the break, or at the announcement about Banner of Truth, Chris, I mentioned earlier about the impact of books in my life.

01:28:59

And I think every believer is thankful, or ought to be thankful for the influence of books.

01:29:06

I mean, Banner of Truth, the fact that they're here in Carlisle has been another blessing of my year in Carlisle.

01:29:14

Their books have been so influential, and I was in there last week picking up some copies of J .C.

01:29:20

Ryle's Thoughts for Young Men. Oh, yeah. But the influence of good theology,

01:29:27

I mean, we could go over to Banner of Truth and pull all their volumes on the First Great Awakening in America. I mean,

01:29:33

I think that the problem with the American church is we have adopted worldly methodology to try to grow the church.

01:29:41

I mean, we're looking to Madison Avenue to tell us how to grow the church. You know, we say back at Grace that our church is seeker -friendly.

01:29:51

We want to be very friendly to the God who seeks after the lost sheep. That's where we're very seeker -sensitive.

01:30:03

We always want to be sensitive to whatever God is doing. We are not like the worldly vision,

01:30:12

I think, of seeker -sensitive. I mean, Madison Avenue doesn't have anything to tell us about how men are saved.

01:30:21

The Bible tells us how men are saved. And if you look to the great heritage that we have of the

01:30:28

First Great Awakening, as we've been learning in Sunday school at Grace Baptist Church here in Carlisle every

01:30:34

Sunday morning, what was it that brought so many thousands of souls to Christ?

01:30:41

It was the preaching of the Word. I mean, George Whitefield lands in Philadelphia and Benjamin Franklin is marveling that thousands of people are listening to him condemn them.

01:30:55

How would anybody listen to this man who's just condemning them for their sin?

01:31:00

I mean, there's no health and prosperity gospel being preached by George Whitefield as 8 ,000 people stand for hours to listen to him preach.

01:31:10

And how many American Christians would go and hear one of the great preachers preach for hours and stand to hear them?

01:31:20

I mean, the preaching of the Word, I mean, that's what God has used throughout the ages to convert men, and that methodology is biblical.

01:31:32

And so I would encourage the listeners out there that if you don't belong to a church where the preaching of the

01:31:41

Word is primary to your corporate worship, then you should be asking your pastor some hard questions.

01:31:47

I mean, does everything build to that sort of crescendo of the preaching? Does the praying, the scripture, and the singing all build up and culminate with the preaching of God's Word?

01:31:59

And that preaching is gospel -saturated. The good preacher takes his text and runs to the cross, right?

01:32:06

I mean, that's not original to me. I just can't remember who said it, but take your text and run to the cross.

01:32:13

That's what's lacking in our churches, Chris. And we are going to our final break, believe it or not. Time is certainly flying by.

01:32:20

If you'd like to join us now is the time to do it. If you have a question, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:32:27

We only have about 25 minutes left, so email us now if you intend to join us with a question. Don't go away.

01:32:33

God willing, we'll be right back with Kevin Girard. One sure way all

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That's liyfc .org. Welcome back.

01:38:05

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 25 minutes to go is

01:38:11

Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard, who is not only a United States Marine, but he's an elder at Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia.

01:38:20

And in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. We are discussing in the world, but not of the world, being

01:38:27

John 17 Christians in the 21st century. And do you think that one of the things lacking in the church today is that many zealous Christians are making the mistake of putting themselves or painting a picture of themselves or as us, the church, as being these good and righteous and holy people, and you need to be like us, selling the world.

01:39:05

You need to be like us, rather than saying that we have been guilty of the most wretched and despicable sins that the evil heart of man can conceive of, and yet we have been rescued by the grace and mercy of God, and we want you to be rescued, too.

01:39:26

It's like as if we had discovered the cure for cancer or some terminal disease that has been killing people globally, and we have this cure.

01:39:39

We want you to have the cure, too. Isn't that more of the biblical approach that we should have when evangelizing others, rather than saying, you know, at least giving the impression, the false impression, that we are good and righteous and holy and be like us?

01:39:57

Yeah, it's such a great danger, Chris. You're exactly right. I mean, the way I've often described it is the world are dead men walking, and we possess the elixir of life.

01:40:10

The gospel is the elixir of life. I mean, this is living water, right? Jesus is living water, and so when we're engaging the world, and sometimes on contentious issues, we are often accused of being hypocrites.

01:40:25

Well, you're a hypocrite, and rather than being defensive,

01:40:31

I find that the right response to that is to say, you don't know the half of it.

01:40:37

Not only am I a hypocrite, but let me tell you what else I am, right? I mean, I'm indefensible, right?

01:40:45

I mean, I'm not ever going to try to defend myself. Now, I will defend the truth, but not defend me, and so when we're attacked for being a hypocrite, the right response is,

01:40:54

I'm a liar, I'm an adulterer, I'm a murderer. I mean, all of these things, particularly we look at how

01:41:00

Christ said, if you look at your brother with hate in your heart, so the law and the gospel, when we evaluate our lives against the law, we find that we are lawbreakers, and so that's the message to the unbeliever, is that not that we are holier than thou, we are wretched sinners, and if my thoughts could be broadcast on the marquee in town, people would see what a wretched sinner

01:41:27

I am, and what remaining sin still corrupts my mind, and so we just simply point them to Christ.

01:41:34

I mean, there is not hope in me. I'm not asking you to trust in me. Look to Christ. Follow Christ as I have followed

01:41:41

Christ, and you see that first in your own family. I mean, anyone out there that's got small children, you know, our children see our sin.

01:41:52

My wife sees my sin better than anybody, and so as I seek to shepherd my family,

01:41:58

I'm telling them, follow me as I follow Christ, and then frequently repenting of our sin to our wives, to our children, and showing them that we are in need of the gospel.

01:42:12

You know, the gospel is not just for salvation. The gospel is for sanctification. You know, if we want to be more like Christ, we've got to preach the gospel to ourselves, so the gospel is not a one -time dose, right?

01:42:26

We need the elixir of life. We need the living water of the gospel every moment of every day.

01:42:33

How do you take captive your thoughts, Paul says? How do you transform your mind that you meditate on those things that are good, and right, and true, and lovely?

01:42:44

Think on these things. I like to turn that around when I hear the accusation that we're hypocrites,

01:42:50

Christians are hypocrites. It's like, now, wait a minute. We're saying that we're terrible sinners in need of a

01:42:55

Savior, and by saying that, you're telling me I'm a hypocrite. You must think I'm pretty good. Yes.

01:43:03

And the other side of the spectrum on that issue though is we are to be godly.

01:43:10

We are to be repentant people. We're not to wallow in sin. We are to repent of it, and in fact the last statement that Paul makes in that chapter in 1

01:43:20

Corinthians 5 is remove the wicked from among yourselves.

01:43:26

Now, he's not talking about people that are sinners going to church that are being drawn by God, and they are not yet saved, and they may still be unrepentant and still involved in wicked activity.

01:43:39

He's talking about those that are members that need to be disciplined and in fact excommunicated if they're unrepentant.

01:43:45

Right. Now, Chris, again, if we were to give some counsel to your listeners out there about their local churches, if their local church is not practicing church discipline, then

01:43:56

I'd be asking those in authority, what is our position on church discipline?

01:44:02

Now, the Bible teaches us that there's really two forms of discipline, formative and corrective, and so we put the vast amount of our effort and energies in formative discipline, right?

01:44:12

I mean, it's no different than training up a child. If you put all your energy into formative discipline, there's much less that has to be devoted to corrective discipline, but if churches are not willing to execute corrective discipline, to practice corrective discipline, then they're not being faithful to Scripture.

01:44:30

That's my assessment of the situation, and so churches in America have abdicated their responsibility to discipline professing believers who are voluntarily joined to those churches, right?

01:44:43

We're not forcing anyone to join the churches. They're voluntarily entering into this covenant of local membership, and that's one of the reasons that church membership is so vitally important.

01:44:54

When I'm talking to someone about their own testimony, if they tell me that they're a

01:45:00

Christian, then my next question is, where do you go to church? And so many professing

01:45:05

Christians out there don't believe in the importance of local church membership, being vitally connected and committed to a body, and Lone Ranger Christians are like sheep outside of the sheepfold.

01:45:20

As the sun's going down and the wolves are howling, there you are out on the high prairie alone, and that's a mortally dangerous place to be as a believer.

01:45:31

You ought to be looking for a Bible -believing, Gospel -preaching, Evangelical church out there to join yourself to at the earliest opportunity.

01:45:42

There's danger in not being part of a local church, Chris. Yeah, amen, and one of the things that this issue of being in the world and not of the world, one of the reasons why it's not an easy thing to follow and obey in the 21st century is that even in the church, you have radical difference on some important issues.

01:46:07

You have some churches that believe, in fact many churches that would share our

01:46:12

Reformed heritage, they believe that it is a liberty of a

01:46:17

Christian to moderately and responsibly drink alcoholic beverages. There are some who are fundamentalist brethren who think that that is never permissible under any circumstances.

01:46:31

You have Christians that would even condemn you or ridicule you for worldliness or wickedness for going to the opera, let alone some kind of a punk rock concert or a disco or something.

01:46:49

I don't even know if that word is used in the 21st century, but some kind of a club where women are scantily dressed provocatively and erotically dressed, dancing around, and then you have, as I said, even some might object to some of the more reserved forms of music that may have themes that are ungodly, at least on occasion.

01:47:16

So these are not easy questions necessarily to answer, and that's why some do retreat into almost becoming fundamentalist monks.

01:47:25

Sure. What is your practical advice or response to that? Well, I think any of us who are weary of this world, that's the greater temptation for me.

01:47:37

I'd build me a cabin on the side of a mountain down in Georgia. And, you know, the weight of accumulated sin,

01:47:45

Chris, is a crushing burden that we continue to carry in this world.

01:47:51

And so I think as I grow older, that's the temptation for me is to just, you know, wash my hands of it and head back to the farm and lock the gate, right?

01:48:00

But again, I think it's the view that the enemy is out there somewhere instead of right here in my own heart.

01:48:09

I mean, if I were locked away in a cabin on the side of a mountain, I would still have sinful thoughts, right?

01:48:17

I mean, 1 John 5 here about overcoming the world. I think that's really what we're talking about is how do we overcome the world as Christians?

01:48:26

The apostle writes this, for this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.

01:48:33

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

01:48:41

So the believer who has overcome, the believer whose heart is saturated in Scripture, who loves the

01:48:48

Word, who loves Christ, who loves His church, we can wade into some of the darkest, deepest pits of depravity, unsullied in some respects.

01:48:59

And I think we can appreciate beauty and truth in its various forms in the world while also recognizing that that's a shadow and a type, right?

01:49:11

So, I mean, I think we can do many things to the glory of God. We don't separate between the sacred and the secular in the

01:49:19

Christian worldview, right? Everything that we do is done to the glory of God. When I listen to Johnny Cash sing a sad song,

01:49:27

I can do that to the glory of God. I mean, he is actually in pain when he's singing.

01:49:33

I can feel Johnny Cash's pain when he sings the Folsom Prison Blues.

01:49:39

And when Buzz sings, everyone's in pain. That's why

01:49:46

I don't sing. You know, we want to be careful that we don't cause our brother to stumble.

01:49:53

And sometimes we may think we have liberty. We always want to consider others, right? I mean, we want to live otherly minded.

01:50:00

I mean, we consider others as more important than ourselves. And so, you know, we may do some things in the presence of others that we might not do with other people because we're considering others as more important than ourselves.

01:50:14

And so, liberties that we may partake of in different environments, we might refrain from because of love for our brother.

01:50:23

The Christian world is not about us. It's not about me, I, mine. It's about others.

01:50:29

I mean, the one another commands of Scripture. How many sermons could be preached on the one another of Scripture?

01:50:36

And so, considering others as more important than ourselves may mean that I may restrict my own

01:50:42

Christian liberty in some areas because I love my brother more than I love my liberty. And so,

01:50:49

I think the key to walking in the world and not of the world,

01:50:54

Chris, is to love Christ, love the gospel, and be saturated in the Scripture.

01:51:00

I mean, it was said of Bunyan, if you cut Bunyan, he would bleed Bible. And that's what ought to be said of every one of us.

01:51:07

I mean, Scripture ought to be rolling off of our tongues as naturally as speaking.

01:51:14

Everything we speak ought to be saturated with scriptural references.

01:51:20

Most of the culture now won't recognize those references as they once would have. But that ought to be the standard.

01:51:29

I mean, I was reading recently about Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party as he ran for a third party candidate in the election of 1912.

01:51:38

The music that was played as he took the stage at that convention was onward Christian soldiers.

01:51:45

Now, you know, we could debate whether or not Roosevelt was a believer or not, but that was the culture of the day.

01:51:52

I mean, everybody knew that hymn, right? We live in a very different culture now, where even things that we would take for granted is everybody knows this

01:52:03

Scripture verse or that Scripture verse. Many times the references are unnoticed.

01:52:08

Chris Would you say that a warning sign for those on either side of the spectrum when it comes to wrongly approaching in the world and out of the world would be on the one side, the one who wants to retreat from the world and be involved merely in hit -and -run evangelism where they're only handing out tracts and perhaps doing street preaching only or very abruptly saying words of either evangelism or condemnation to the lost acquaintances that they run into providentially.

01:52:50

For them to ask themselves, have I developed loving relationships with the lost who truly know that I care about their never -dying souls?

01:53:01

And then on the other end of the spectrum, those who have developed a lot of relationships and deep friendships with the lost, have their feelings become more important to you than their salvation?

01:53:12

And has their friendship with you become more important to you than their salvation? Would those be like the two ways that a person, a

01:53:21

Christian, might have a red light or they should have a red light going off in their minds that they've violated the true heart of what we are talking about today?

01:53:31

John I think you've accurately portrayed it again, the image of the ditch on either side with the right path down the middle,

01:53:36

Chris. I mean, we can't only, as you described, to be a hit -and -run evangelist.

01:53:44

I mean, we have to, as we go about the normal course of our lives, are we intentionally seeking to form bonds and friendships and relationships with the lost with an eye toward evangelism, right?

01:53:58

I mean, it's not, I'm just going to be this man's friend because he might be of some advantage to me.

01:54:04

Am I thinking about the condition of his soul? I mean, what can I do to help him? What can I do to show

01:54:10

Christ, to show Christ to him, perhaps before I even speak Christ to him? I don't think that relieves us of our responsibility to sometimes preach

01:54:21

Christ to complete strangers when the Lord puts that in our path. You know, sitting on the airplane opening your

01:54:26

Bible, it's like the Ethiopian eunuch, right? You know, maybe the

01:54:31

Lord's going to put someone like that in your path, and do you understand what you're reading there? Chris And of course, if they tell you to get out of the cockpit, you should immediately.

01:54:41

John Right. Yeah, I mean, I find that in the course of relationships, you know, we're always to be speaking

01:54:51

Christ and seeking to help others, to offer them the elixir of life.

01:54:57

And, you know, in speaking the gospel, usually what I do is I follow that up with a book.

01:55:03

I think we were speaking during the break of Thoughts for Young Men, Bishop Ryle's book. Chris, I've given away probably hundreds of copies of that book to young men in my life, and anytime they are seeking answers to the ultimate questions,

01:55:18

I always want to pray with them, share the gospel with them, and then put that book in their hand. John By the way,

01:55:24

I want to give you a new source of that. That's solid -ground -books .com,

01:55:29

since they sponsor my show. They were the first to actually extract Thoughts for Young Men from Ryle's larger work that contained that.

01:55:37

Chris Ah, well, I owe them a debt of gratitude. They even have military guys, soldiers on the cover.

01:55:43

Chris Yeah, I have not seen their version. I need to get some of those. It's just such a powerful, powerful little book, because it's seeped in Scripture, of course.

01:55:53

Read the Gospel of John, read Thoughts for Young Men, and come back and talk to me, and we'll continue this conversation about what it means.

01:56:00

And the ultimate question, the book of Job, if a man dies, shall he live again?

01:56:06

That's like the penultimate question for humanity. If a man dies, shall he live again?

01:56:12

And only the Christian can say to that question, yea and amen. John Amen.

01:56:18

And I have a word of advice to all of you who love to leave tracts on restaurant tables after you're paying your bill.

01:56:27

If you're going to do that, tip well. Nothing is going to nullify the meaning of that tract.

01:56:33

And if you either don't tip the waitress or waiter, or if you give them a horrible tip.

01:56:39

Chris Yeah, your audio is not matching your video. John Well, I'd like you,

01:56:45

Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Girard, to have at least two minutes now of uninterrupted time to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners.

01:56:54

Kevin Sure, Chris. Thank you for that opportunity. This discussion today is just, anytime we open the

01:57:01

Scripture and read the Scripture together, it conjures up in our hearts just a desire to know more of God and know more of His Word and know more of Christ.

01:57:11

And I think my final exhortation would be just from 1 John. By this we know, love, that He lay down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

01:57:24

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before Him.

01:57:30

For whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything.

01:57:38

I think each of us needs to be constantly asking those questions.

01:57:43

How can we have assurance of salvation? Are we keeping the commandments? Do we love God?

01:57:48

Do we love His people? Do we love the Gospel? And by that we may be reassured that we are in Christ Christ.

01:57:56

And I think that will help us give us the spiritual wisdom that we need to navigate between the ditches.

01:58:04

Amen. And I want to make sure again that I repeat the website of the congregation where you are an elder.

01:58:12

That's Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia. If anyone is either living in that area or visiting that area, or you have loved ones in that area, please search out the

01:58:27

Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia. Find out more about them and visit them if you can, and join them if you are without a church home and you live in that area.

01:58:38

GraceChurchDawsonville .org. GraceChurchDawsonville .org.

01:58:44

And once again you can also go to the website of Ray Rhodes.

01:58:51

He has a ministry called, or a website called

01:58:57

BooksThatNourish .com. BooksThatNourish .com.

01:59:03

So you might want to look that up. That's the website of a fellow elder of Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Gerrard's, and that is

01:59:12

Ray Rhodes who's been on this program a number of times. I want to thank everybody who listened to the program today.

01:59:20

I want to thank especially those who took the time to write in questions, and I look forward to hearing from you with your questions tomorrow on Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

01:59:29

But most of all, I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:36

Savior than you are a sinner. Thanks again for your prayers for Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

01:59:43

Thanks again to all of you who have donated to this program, and I eagerly look forward to hearing from any of you who would like to advertise with us to help us remain on the air.