January 10, 2024 Show with Dr. Steve Pettit on “Combining Music & the Preached Word in Evangelism”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 10th day of January, 2024.

A number of years ago, I had the honor and privilege to attend one of the conferences,

Bible conferences, held in Manhattan by Sermon Audio called the

Foundation Conference, which is an annual conference they conduct. And I remember seeing the man who is my guest today preach, and hearing him preach, and I was extremely edified and powerfully blessed and wonderfully edified and challenged, and I immediately said,

I've got to get this brother on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio as a guest. And I am speaking of none other than Dr.

Steve Pettit, former president of Bob Jones University, now involved in full -time itinerant evangelism with Steve Pettit Ministries.

And today we're going to be addressing the theme, Combining Music and the Preached Word in Evangelism. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Steve Pettit. Thank you, Chris. And it is, it's really a privilege and an honor that we could, we could have a conversation today.

So thank you. Well, if you could, before we get into your personal salvation testimony, which is something that we always do when we have a first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, tell our listeners about Steve Pettit Ministries.

We are, well, just a little background, and we can get into this a little bit more later, but I was a full -time itinerant evangelist from 1995 until 2014, and then at that time

I went to be the president of Bob Jones University until this past May. So we are, we are on the road traveling.

We have a musical team. When I was in evangelism for many years, we would hold week -long, sometimes two -week meetings actually.

And because of the nature of things today, I wasn't, when I launched back out, I wasn't quite sure the approach

I wanted to take. And so we're, we're taking a year of evaluation as we travel and minister, but we're doing, we're doing services, concerts, events, and conferences, and also producing resources.

And our focal point is really, is really the ministry of the gospel and preaching the gospel. And I feel like that's one of the great needs of the hour, and so that's, that's what we're doing.

Well, praise God for that. And if anybody wants to find out more information about Steve Pettit Ministries, you could visit their website.

That's stevepettitministries .com, correct? It's just stevepettit .com, just real simple, stevepettit .com.

stevepettit .com. I'm sorry. Yes, sir. And that's spelt P -E -T -T -I -T, if folks are wondering.

Yes. Yes, sir. And we will repeat that information later on in the program.

Well, as I already mentioned, whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them. And I'd love to hear your story.

Well, Chris, thank you, and I'm, I'm honored to be able to share the work of the Lord in my own life.

I was born in a small town in South Georgia. My grandfather was a, was a physician and he delivered me into this world as a doctor with my, my mother in a little town called

Clifton, Georgia. My grandfather graduated from Emory University and as a young boy,

Emory Medical School, excuse me, and as a young boy, I have memories all the way back to my kindergarten days of attending church.

My grandparents were Methodists and my father's family were

Presbyterians. They were from Kentucky. My mom and dad met when my dad was in the Air Force.

They were married. My father did his graduate work in the University of Georgia in agricultural economics and at the age of three years old, we moved to South Carolina where I grew up and lived all of my life.

I attended church on a regular basis at a Presbyterian church in Columbia.

Dad was a deacon and a Sunday school teacher. And so that, that was a part of my life growing up.

And I have memories, many memories of being in church, traditional

Presbyterian worship. But what I don't remember is

I don't really remember the kind of preaching that was what

I call true gospel preaching, which is preaching to bring people to a recognition of their their sinfulness and the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, his resurrection from the dead, and that salvation required a new birth, a new life, and a call to repentance and faith.

And I just don't, I don't have any recollection of that. This was the PCUSA in which you were raised.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So, you know, the course of the time, I didn't realize it, but it was a, it was a very liberal church, liberal in the sense of, of denying the fundamentals of Christian faith, the inspiration of the

Bible. And, and, you know, I, I, I do,

I do, I'm thankful for at least the foundation that I receive of hearing biblical stories in celebrating the resurrection of Christ and so forth.

When I was in, when I was in high school, I didn't attend church very often. My family had dropped out pretty much.

And so my life is centered around athletics. And I also was involved in the arts and music and drama.

But I, I love, I love football and soccer a whole lot more. I was a student body president in my, well,

I was class president in my public high school for three years. So I was in leadership roles and it was around the age of 17 years old that we had a ministry come into our public school and they would have, it was a parachurch organization, but they didn't have the gospel.

And so I had a number of my friends who were converted and one of them in specific, he and I had been friends ever since elementary school and his life has radically changed.

And I asked him what had happened and he used a term I'd never heard before and he said he had been saved and I didn't understand what that meant.

If you had asked me if I was a Christian, I wouldn't have said yes, because I was in a nominal culture, but there was no saving faith, no new life, new birth.

And so when I saw the transformation of this fellow's life, I knew that there was something that had happened that I had never experienced.

And so I asked him. And so for the first time in my life, I actually started to grasp and understand the gospel of my sinfulness, of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, the penalty of my sin would be eternal death.

It was the first time in my life I really understood that I was lost, I was going to hell. But then

I began to understand that Christ died on the cross for me.

And suddenly it began to make sense, it started clicking. And then that God calls us to faith and my friend asked me, would you like to become a believer?

And I said, no, I'm not ready yet. And I wasn't. And, you know, and of course, at that time, hearing the gospel for the first time,

I had a sense that it would be transformational. And I wasn't ready for a transformation.

I didn't want it. So from that point forward, I was 17. From that point forward,

I didn't get better, I got worse. And I was illegal drinking age in the state of South Carolina, I was 18 years old in 1973 when

I was a senior. And so I was involved in lifestyle of partying and alcohol and so forth.

I graduated from high school and I enrolled as a freshman in college at a school in Charleston, South Carolina called

The Citadel, it's a military school. And that was a pretty rude awakening to life.

It's kind of like going to the Marine Corps boot camp in Parris Island. And The Citadel was notorious for its discipline.

And I played soccer in college as well as I did in high school and played on the varsity soccer team.

And my freshman year, the only other fellow that made the varsity that year was a scholarship player from Buford, South Carolina, whose name was

Maxie Burge. And Maxie had become a believer his senior year of high school. And so he would share the gospel with me back and forth as we would walk to the soccer practices and back.

And he invited me out to some fellowship Christian athlete meetings, which

I was very reluctant to go to because I felt very uncomfortable being around Christians.

But having said all that, there was something happening in my heart, there was a drawing sense of God working in me.

And I would say over the course of my freshman year through really a lot of different events, I remember going back to my hometown of Columbia, going back and seeing people and it was never the same.

I thought, is this what life is all about? If that's what life is meaningless, as Ecclesiastes says, it was vanity.

So during the spring break weekend of 1975, as a freshman in college,

I'd gone to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And on my way back home on the Easter Sunday morning,

I really was being drawn to want to go to church. I couldn't even explain it. I felt like I should be in church.

But what I was really being drawn to is I was being drawn to the Lord. And I turned on the radio that day and I listened to,

I would have listened to the local rock station, but I decided to try to find a church service and I did.

And I don't know the kind of church it was or where it was located. It was just on the radio.

And the pastor preached the gospel and he preached the death, burial, resurrection of Christ. I came under real conviction.

I thought he knew I was driving down the highway and his words were speaking directly to my heart.

And he lifted up Christ on the cross and to be honest with you, I felt like I was sitting at the foot of the cross, that I was looking at Jesus on the cross dying for me.

And then he spoke about his glorious resurrection. And I knew it was true.

And over the radio, he called people to faith and repentance to accept Jesus as their savior.

So driving down that highway, I prayed and I asked the Lord to save me.

And I sincerely meant it. And I would look back as that was the time that I conscientiously received the

Lord. I would say over the next few months, I began to sense a desire for the word.

I wasn't really much in church. I worked that summer in Columbia where I grew up and I would listen to the local

Christian radio station when it would have preaching on it. And then when it went to Christian music,

I'd switch over to the rock station and then I'd go back. But that summer, the Lord allowed me in his providence to break my ankle playing soccer and soccer was an idol in my life.

And so I went through a very painful experience, but that was what really, really got my attention.

And when I went back to school that sophomore year of college, I began to seek out

Christian brothers and began to go to Christian meetings.

And as I obeyed the Lord, my appetites began to change.

And I remember that fall, I went to a Bible study where the individual told them the evidences of salvation from first John.

And I remember sitting there listening carefully and I realized that what happened to a person when they were truly converted had happened in my life.

And I would say that night I gained what I would call a really a wonderful assurance, a full assurance of salvation, of the work of God in my heart and mind.

And so that was my sophomore year of college and I began to grow and my growth came from Christian fellowship and from friendships and from being in the word of God.

Well, hallelujah. And... That was wonderful. Go ahead. That was wonderful.

Yes, God is certainly wonderful. Now, the issue with Bob Jones University, I'm assuming that over the years that they have more...

What's the word I'm looking for? They've softened any antagonism or anti -Calvinistic views to the point where it's tolerated a lot more,

I'm assuming. The thing that's interesting is that even back in the days when

I had friends who were theologically Reformed who were students there, they were forbidden to go to Reformed Baptist churches in the area.

But at the same time, Bob Jones, I could forget if it was two or three, and the school in general had a very warm relationship with Ian Paisley in the

Free Presbyterian Church of North America, which is interesting because they are thoroughly Calvinistic.

But can you tell us something about that, about some of the changes in that area and at least in regards to a tolerance?

Yeah, of course, I came in as a president and I was the first Don Jones president.

And so, I don't know all that was involved at varying times.

I know this, we all understand that the world of technology has changed the landscape on everything and especially in access to information.

So when we consider the influence of your early writers, of your

Lloyd -Joneses, and this is all pre -John MacArthur in that, but your

Lloyd -Joneses and of course Charles Spurge and so forth. And then the writing of the proliferation of books that have been written in the last 40 or 50 years.

And then what you're able to hear on the internet, it flattens, if I could say it this way, it flattens one particular group being stronger over somebody else, if that makes sense.

So everybody has access and access to information.

You know, when I came in as the president, I attended

Bob Jones University. I love my education. I had incredible professors. Bob Jones has already always been sort of been on the road in a lot of positions.

We call it embracing the tensions of sovereignty and responsibility and so forth.

And we always had a very strong position in expository preaching.

So as I've mentioned before, when you work through passages of scripture in an expositional way, whether it's

Romans or Ephesians or so forth, you have to deal with those texts.

You have to address those things. How do you handle those things? And so, you know, you're going to have varying positions, particularly on Calvinism, but definitively believing in the complete fall of man in the garden, the absolute necessity of grace for man to come to Christ, the necessity of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins.

There has to be a work of grace in the human heart or the human being would never turn to God. Right.

So, you know, when I became the president, I took a position that there are going to be differences among good believers.

And a part of our responsibility is to recognize that. And especially gospel preaching people who love

Christ and they love the word. So, you know, in the in the upstate South Carolina, we have some very, very conservative

Presbyterian churches here, very conservative, very Bible preaching oriented. And so and we have we have students come from there.

And so I wanted them to be able to come to Bob Jones, get an education. And if they were if they were of the

Presbyterian persuasion, as opposed maybe to more of a Baptistic persuasion, then

I felt like that that was actually the history of the school from the founders position.

So in the early days, they had, you know, we had we had Presbyterians teaching me. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And. And so it was more it was more what it was, it was non denomination, but they never they never took a position, a reformed position.

And so, you know, I just think as time has gone along, it was the right position to take with good brothers.

Amen. And when I saw you and heard you at the foundations conference in Manhattan, which is a conference, as I said earlier, that is conducted by Sermon Audio and that fine ministry was founded by Stephen Lee, who orchestrates and runs and hosts the foundations conferences, who is a

Bob Jones University graduate as well. When I saw you preach in person at that conference in Manhattan a number of years ago,

I was sitting there and I was saying to myself, this brother, without question, believes in the doctrines of sovereign grace, at least in the in the

Ordo Salutis. You were, it seemed to me clearly preaching that the

Holy Spirit needs to do the work of regeneration before we can please God by having a saving faith.

If I'm not mistaken, it seemed you were clearly teaching that. So I was wondering, how would you describe yourself today theologically?

Oh, I, I, I'm probably because of my background. I, I, I probably am reluctant to to put myself in one particular group.

Right. I, I said to people, I said, here's what I believe. You can put me in a group.

Some people don't like that. You know, I, I understand the nature of the fall.

You know, we start with the fall. I mean, in understanding how man is and the need of man to be able to come to the

Lord. And, you know, people have asked me, do you believe in free will?

And I said, well, that's really a bad question. I said, because everybody has the will to make a choice.

There's no such thing as the inability to make choices. The question is not if man has a free will.

The question is, does man have a good will? And does he have a will that desires, is he predisposed to be obedient to God?

And the answer is absolutely not. That's right. So however, however you come at it, you have to understand that there must be a change.

Man in the fall was is in Adam and in an

Adam also. And man has to come into Christ in order for there to be eternal life.

And man doesn't want that. So God, God's methodology is through the foolishness of the cross.

And it is through the preaching of the cross that God draws men unto himself.

And if I be lifted up, I will draw men to me. So, you know, you in your defining in your definitions of those acts and so forth.

And you come into theological positions. But what saves the man is the up is the uplifted savior on a cross dying for our sins.

And the attraction of the cross is in contradiction to anything any human being would ever want.

Except on the cross, God demonstrates his love and he satisfies his own justice.

And he draws us to himself. So that's what

I believe. Amen. And I know that God has chosen through preaching.

And preaching doesn't make any sense apart from a supernatural work of God in the human heart.

And that that that work of God is effective.

You know, the word draw means to literally drag. God is going to draw you.

And and so anyway. That's that's where I am. And I love to preach the message.

Amen. Well, tell us about this musical ensemble, because before I go to the commercial break, the first commercial break,

I'm going to play one of your songs done, conducted in bluegrass style.

Tell us about this group that that travels with Steve Pettit Ministries as you are conducting evangelistic efforts across our nation.

Tell us about this group. And if I don't even know if your group has a name yet, but let us know about those things.

Yeah, well, I appreciate I appreciate that. I'll back it up. I've always had a great love for music.

My wife was a soloist. And when I traveled as an itinerant evangelist for twenty nine years, we always had we always carried with my wife along with my wife singing.

We always carried an evangelistic. We always carried a musical team and we did multiple recordings.

I think we did 18 recordings over a period of twenty nine years. And it was it was used in our church services and and part of the the atmosphere of the spirit of the services.

This particular group we have now, when I was the president of Bob Jones, I was preaching out every

Sunday. We had three musical groups that traveled with us. And one of them was a bluegrass group that I play the

I play the mandolin, which is a key instrument in the bluegrass genre.

Right. And so we we developed a musical style that we developed.

I mean, it was it was bluegrass, but we kind of did kind of our own thing and the way we developed it.

And we you know, we want to use we want to use appropriate means of bringing people to Christ that are, you know, that are biblical needs.

And of course, the biblical needs is preaching, preaching the word of God. But we also want to be able to build bridges and connect people to the local church.

So we hold gospel concerts where people invite friends to come out and to hear the gospel.

We're very clear. And so we'll do about a 45 minute to one hour concert.

And then after that, I give a gospel message. And so these are excellent musicians.

They're all young. You know, their ages are they range from 20 to 24.

Basically, wow, that is young. And I'm 68, so I'm the odd man out.

But it's it's a wonderful ministry. And and we we like I said, we we are in churches.

We do concerts during the week. We leave Friday for Florida. We will be down there for a couple of months.

We're going to do a missions trip to Haiti. Wow. And we're going to take

Bluegrass to Haiti and play. So that's kind of what we've done. You know, people today, we live in a world where, you know, we have at our fingertips, the best music in the world through things like Amazon and in in Spotify and so forth.

So we have iTunes. You can list the best music in the world. But there's but but there's a difference between that and going to live concerts.

And we're living in a phenomenon today that people love live music. There's a girl named

Taylor Swift and she's filling up football stadiums. And it's all live music. So, you know, you capture a little bit of of the attitudes of people.

And and so we're we're doing what we can to encourage local churches and evangelism.

And and this is one of the means of it. And does the group have a name? Well, we we've batted around the idea so many times we can't.

We just it's just the Steve Pettit band, Steve Pettit group. OK, well, we're going to hear. So we're going to hear all hail the power of Jesus name.

And if you want to send in a question of your own. Our email address is

Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at Gmail dot com.

Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. And this song will go directly into our commercial break.

And we will be back after that commercial break with more of Steve Pettit. And once again, here is all hail the power of Jesus name by the

Steve Pettit band. And every tribe on this.

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That's royaldiadem .com and please mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We have a listener,

Sheila, in Jeffersonville, Indiana. And Sheila asks,

I have very eclectic taste in music and I think that I have more liberty to listen to a wider variety of music outside of a worship service than which would be included in a corporate worship setting.

There have been wars and even church splits and disfellowshipping occurring over the years over music.

When do we know that a matter of music is simply a matter of taste or something that's inappropriate for a

Christian to listen to or to involve in corporate worship? Is that for me,

Chris, to answer? Yes, actually all the questions are for you to answer. Okay, thank you.

I appreciate it. Well, I think that's a very, very important question.

I think it's one that many Christians have asked themselves.

I think living in the world today, obviously we have accessibility to things today that people 100 years ago didn't have.

They didn't have Spotify 100 years ago. They didn't have Spotify 50 years ago. And of course, recorded music is a phenomenon that came about in the 20th century.

So I think anything, you know, when we come to church, we come to worship the

Lord and we want to honor Him. And we want our services to be in such a way that it doesn't reflect the world, that it reflects the glory of the

Lord. And we want to sing about Him. And I realize music is very cultural. If people don't think music is cultural, they haven't traveled yet.

So you can go, you know, if you go to Africa, African music sounds African. And it's true to their culture, not the corruption that is in their culture, but true to the people of that culture.

Music in many ways is like food or like clothing. There's cultural aspects to it.

So I think every believer has to have a discerning conscience about the things that they do in their life.

You know, there's the liberty of the believer, but that liberty is also a conscience matter.

So I think a Christian needs to immerse themselves in the word of God. I think they need to walk with the

Lord. And I think they need to have a discernment about what they listen to.

And is it edifying? Is it building them up? Is it strengthening them? So these are questions that you have to ask about a lot of what we call things in our life that maybe the

Bible doesn't speak about directly. And you have to apply biblical principles.

Does it build us? Does it bind us? Is it something that puts me in a position that I surrender control to?

Does it bless? Does it – so in our own personal life. So I would say you really have to walk with discernment and wisdom.

If you're a parent, you have to decide what you will allow your children to listen to and what they will not listen to.

Because of a matter of influence. And we do live in a world today where the world is screaming at us.

The world's attracting and distracting power is very powerful.

So I think we need to be wise. We need to recognize the corruption that is in the world.

At the same time, we have to recognize that God has created music. And music is a blessing to our souls.

Amen. Do you agree with the listener, Sheila, that the issue of what kind of music should be present or that Christians should listen to may change in regard to one's own private listening, entertainment, and so on?

There is secular music that does not contain offensive lyrics. And there's a difference between that and what we would involve in our normal, regular, scheduled corporate gathering of God's people on the

Lord's Day. There are some who believe in the regulative principle of worship, and they would not want to involve things in a corporate worship that are not specifically prescribed in the

New Testament. They would not want dancing going on in a worship service. They would not want a number of things going on.

But I have a sympathy towards our listener's opinion in that I think that anything that distracts from a reverent mindset toward God—and I do believe that melodies and rhythms can create moods and do create moods.

And so, therefore, if it's distracting one from the reverence that they should be demonstrating toward God and also the ability to understand the lyrics of those songs that are intended to be songs of praise and worship,

I think those things are key in involving the worship wars, if you will.

Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. No, I would actually agree with you. I would agree with the regular principles of worship.

Worship is not what we create. Worship is what God has revealed or how to worship because the nature of man really can't know or understand

God unless he has revelation because whatever he thinks about God is not going to be correct.

So I think in the matter of worship, I think worship should be—I think it should be joyful.

I think it should be reverential. I think it should be humble. I think it should be completely truthful.

And I think that we worship God primarily.

The first and foremost is through hearing, listening, and obeying the truth, the

Word of God. But singing is definitely a part of that, and that is a part of the regular principles of worship.

So I would agree with that. And I think the—you know, we should live our lives before God in all things so that we can live with a good conscience in all that we do.

But as we well know, there are differences in going home and eating a hamburger after church and relaxing than what you would do in a church service.

But in all those things, you want to live your life in obedience to God. So I would—the world that I've come from is very conservative in music, and I'm—that is my leanings in all things.

But so I think there is—there has to be—you have to have wisdom, but I'm in agreement with where you are on that.

Yes, and I would also add that I would—as far as the regular—the corporate gathering of God's people on the

Lord's Day, I think that should be dominated by far, by congregational singing.

And even if a church has traditional music, you know, classically oriented traditional hymns and so forth, if that—if it's dominating a worship service where you have a choir or a praise band or an orchestra doing all of that, and the congregation winds up just being spectators,

I think that could be dangerous as well, even if you're using that old -fashioned music. I agree 100 percent, yeah.

It's the approach—I mean, speaking to yourselves in Psalms and spiritual songs, singing, making melody, art.

So yeah, the congregational form of worship, singing, is the primary thing, absolutely.

We have Smitty in Niskayuna, New York—and I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that city—Niskayuna.

Smitty asks, have unsaved people who love the bluegrass music that you perform, to your knowledge, any of them come to Christ during one of your performances?

As far as I know, yes, I believe they have. You know, because most of our music is gospel -oriented, almost all of it is, but if they come to Christ, it's because they've heard the gospels preached.

And how do you do that when you're having a—do you, like, divide songs with gospel presentations in between, or is all the music up front and the gospel preaching at the end?

How is that typically conducted? It depends on the setting. It depends on the setting, but as a general rule,

I preach a gospel sermon after we sing. I see. So I just give the gospel, yeah.

And is all the music gospel -oriented music, or do you sometimes perform secular songs that are in no way dishonoring to God with no, you know, obviously no vulgar lyrics or anything like that?

Yeah, of course, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. We'll do—it depends on the setting.

If it's clearly a concert and that's why the people have come, then we'll do some—we'll do traditional bluegrass tunes, and there are a lot of wonderful, wonderful songs.

And we'll do fiddle tunes, which is all instrumental stuff. But most of what we do are gospel -oriented.

The songs that you're listening to today, two of the three songs were written by members in the group, and they came out of the

Psalms. So yeah, that's—people are saved by preaching, so that's what we do.

We preach at the end of it. Amen. And we have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who has a question that will require a quick answer, or you could always follow up when we come back from the break.

But Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania says, how do you counteract or respond to critics who say that we should never use any kind of entertainment as a tool to draw the lost to salvation?

I probably would ask, well, then what are you doing? Tell me what you're doing to draw people to Christ, because evangelism is multiple things, but it's building bridges, building relationships, serving people.

When we consider the Lord, he ate with sinners.

He attended the regular things of life that normal people live, like a wedding.

Of course, his ministry was healing as well, the sick and so forth.

And then, of course, his ministry was teaching and proclaiming the good news, the gospel.

In fact, could you pick up where you left off, because we have to go to our midway break right now. Yes, sir.

And please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break is always a little longer than the other breaks in the show. And we are going to lead into our commercial break with our second song for the day by the

Steve Pettit Band, Give Thanks. So we will be back after these messages.

Do not go away. Faithful. He was there when you felt all alone.

Give thanks to the Lord, who is your refuge. An ever present help in times of need.

He bids you be free from doubt and worry. Ancestors come to me and I will give you peace.

Give thanks to the Lord. Give thanks to the

Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever on.

Though the earth pass away, still His mercy will remain.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for He is good. Thanks to the

Lord, who is our victory. Our mighty

God, who's never known defeat. By His power,

He saves His own completely. He frees the captive and He calls the sinner clean.

Give thanks to the Lord. Give thanks to the

Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever.

Though the earth pass away, still His mercy will remain.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for He is good. Give thanks to the

Lord, who is returning. With His heart on fire to dwell with those

He bought like He promised.

We will be His children, He will be our God. Give thanks to the

Lord. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever.

Though the earth pass away, still His mercy will remain.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for He is good.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for He is good.

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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Before I return to Steve Pettit and our conversation today on Iron Sharpens Iron, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

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I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the planet

Earth find churches, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live. That may be you, too, if you're without a church home, so send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr.

Steve Pettit on combining music and the preached word when we evangelize the lost.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And, Steve, can you tell us about perhaps some interesting experiences or anecdotes about things that have happened during your travels while you have been conducting these conferences and evangelistic meetings?

Yes, of course I would love to. Just, again, a little history. I traveled for 30 years as an evangelist, plus this year, so I've got lots of experiences of people coming to the services.

Our services have been for a combination of the edification of the church, so a lot of preaching on spiritual living and devoting one's life to the

Lord, and then also the preaching of the gospel. I've had the privilege of preaching all over the world in many places.

But I remember very clearly speaking in a church, and there was a man that had come to the services, and he came every night.

I think he came four or five or six nights. And I started speaking to him after service one night, and I asked him,

I said, when did you become a believer? He said, when you were speaking.

Wow. He said, because you were preaching the gospel, and I sat there in my seat, and I said in my heart,

I believe this. It wasn't a public show.

He actually came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and received Him as his personal

Savior. So, you know, and I'll share this. This is a bit of a testimony,

Chris. But three years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer and went through a cancer surgery.

And at that time, I had read lots and lots of Spurgeon sermons and books and so forth.

But I made a decision to read Spurgeon every day.

And it's almost a bit like I needed a pastor shepherd to sit next to me, you know, and share truth with me on a regular basis.

So I've been reading my Bible ever since I've been a believer every day, all of my

Christian experience. So this was supplement to reading the

Scripture. So I read through the Bible, and then I have access to all of Spurgeon's sermons.

So I would look at what Spurgeon – what did he preach on those particular texts?

So if I'm reading through, let's say, the ninth chapter of the book of Acts, does he have any sermons from the ninth chapter of the book of Acts?

Well, Spurgeon has sermons from almost every chapter of the Bible. So I would pick and choose and read.

And one of the things that I've discovered in reading is that so much of his sermons were very exhortational and application all the way through calling people to believe.

So, you know, really my sermons are calling people to believe as you preach the gospel, as you're preaching the message of salvation.

So there have been responses, you know, even over the last semester, over the fall schedule that we just had.

So, yeah, I mean, God's going to bless his word, and we have to believe that.

And so anyway, I hope that helps. Yes, and we have a listener question.

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, wants to know, how does a church go about inviting your

Bluegrass group to perform and provide an evangelistic event? They can go online to StevePettit .com,

and there's access there to requests. They can write me, just write me an email.

It's online, and they can write me an email. And then what

I do is I contact them back, and we communicate back and forth of scheduling, and, you know, what are you wanting to accomplish?

When can this work out? So we work through a scheduling process. And we also have

Stephen in Albany, New York, who wants to know, is there a criteria theologically for a church, school, or other organization for you to accept an invitation to have one of your events?

Yeah, I mean, basically, the church needs to, you know, believe in the fundamentals of the

Christian faith, in the inspiration of the Scripture, the atoning work of Christ, the salvation by grace through faith, and faith through repentance, and so forth.

Most of the places that I get invited to are going to be Baptistic, Bible, gospel -preaching churches.

That's, you know, that's why they would want me to come. So, you know, there are peculiarities about churches.

There are some churches that it may not work for me to go, and I wouldn't feel comfortable over maybe some of their emphasis.

But they would have to be doctrinally Bible -believing,

Bible -practicing churches. You said it very well in the interim time of, you know, your recommending churches.

What kind of churches are you going to go to? What do you believe? So they have to be Bible -believing churches.

So, like, for instance, just to give you a hypothetical situation, let's say there is a large liberal church or even some organization that's not a church, but they're going to allow you to say anything that you want to say and sing any kind of song that you want to sing.

I was just curious if you would possibly consider that for evangelistic reasons.

I'll give you an example. About two years ago, I went to a local liberal

Lutheran church in the Elka denomination, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is actually neither evangelical nor Lutheran, but that's the name of the denomination.

And they had this acapella black quartet performing old -school, old -time gospel songs.

And they—I was really impressed by their lead singer in the quartet who boldly preached the gospel in this praise.

It might have been the first time that these people in this liberal Lutheran church ever heard the gospel. I'm just wondering if you would ever take advantage of a situation like that.

Oh, that's a unique question. You know, I would really have to evaluate what's their reasoning.

You know, again, you have to test the spirits.

You have to have discernment. As a general rule, I'm not going to go to a liberal church because, number one, they wouldn't invite me.

Number two, I would be concerned if someone is converted, where are they going to go to church?

Right, yeah, that's a good point. And how are they going to grow? Now, having said that, there are always going to be unique situations where you are put in a position or you have an opportunity to spread the gospel message in light of or in contrast to the place where you're located.

But as a general rule, I'm going to work with people that believe the gospel.

And therefore, we're working to build the Church of Jesus Christ. But, you know, there's been unusual situations, whether, you know, funeral services, unique situations where you find yourself and you're able to share the gospel.

And I attended, when I went to my grandmother's funeral a number of years ago, the church was a very liberal

Presbyterian church. And I was not speaking at it.

The minister was very liberal. But they asked me to read scripture at my grandmother's funeral, which

I, of course, did. And I read John 14, verses 1 through,

I believe, 8. And I read it as strong and as believing as I could.

A man came up to me afterwards. He said, I've never heard anybody read the Bible that way in my whole life.

I said, Sir, I want you to know that from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, I believe that every word that I read was from God.

So, you know, you have to use your situations. But as a general rule, we work with like -minded brothers in the

Lord. Yes. And one thing that pops in my mind that may be more of an appropriate setting for you to consider that is not openly evangelical or Christian at all.

For instance, some kind of a civic center in some community where conservative

Christians are not outcast. And they just allow you to perform at some kind of open air meeting or something like that where you are not.

Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I had I should probably bring this up. You know, with the nature of what we do, we can be invited to genres that are not church.

They're not like you say, they're not they're more secular environments, but they're they're warm hearted towards what we do.

So we were invited this past fall to a place in North Carolina that is a venue for bluegrass musicians.

And the lady that owns it is a professing believer. She said, you can come in. We want you to do a concert for us and you can say whatever you want.

Wow. So I went in and and through the course of the evening was sharing the gospel and conversion experience and singing the music.

So, yeah, there are opportunities I will get like that, too. OK, let's see here.

We have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who asks, can you list some of your favorite bluegrass bands?

Oh, man, there's there's a whole bunch of them out there. We you know, there's your old school.

There's your more high line famous bluegrass groups that are pretty well known.

You know, there you've got Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Del McCurry Band, Allison Krause and Union Station.

You got I mean, they're just there's just so many, many of them out there. We did our recording in Nashville this week and our producer was

Andy Leftwich. Andy is a very vibrant Christian, played the fiddle 15 years for Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder.

And he's won four Grammys for for his his playing.

And we the studio we went in the studio and we had our group there.

But we we brought we supplemented some of the work that we did with some other musicians.

And we had we had in that studio, we had five

Grammy recipients playing on the recording that you're listening to. So, you know, they're they're pretty good.

So they're just there's so many out there and they're at all levels because bluegrass is a bluegrass is different than than a lot of music is.

It's a participant. People participate in it. So if you were to go to a festival, you would see scores and scores of people carrying instruments around and playing in jam sessions and so forth.

So it's it's really it's really folk music is the music of the folks. And and that's why people like it.

Well, actually, this is a question from a listener that is a great segue to what you just said.

Jonah in Torrington, Connecticut, wants to know what exactly are the requirements that constitute a bluegrass song?

Oh, that's that's very debatable. I'm going to give a classic answer and a classic answer is bluegrass has a certain rhythm to it.

And in your classic bluegrass music, you have a you have in they're not necessarily always together, but you have basically have a guitar, a bass, a mandolin, a banjo and a fiddle as a five.

Now, in some places now had a dobro, but they create a certain it's a certain it's a certain rhythm.

It's it's the bass playing along with the mandolin and the mandolin plays the offbeat and the guitar plays the rhythm and it creates a basic rhythm and a chord progression.

And then your banjo and your fiddle are playing a lot of melody. The banjo plays syncopated rhythm.

And it just is a it's a it's a it's just a it's a happy music sound is this.

That's why they call it picking and grinning. So it has a happy it has a it's a rhythmic style to it.

So bluegrass is about timing and well, timing and playing together. You have to play together in a group.

And it's the music that was picked on the front porch of homes and families.

A lot of the music came over from Ireland and Scotland. And it was mixed with there was a lot of gospel music in it.

Gospel harmonies, harmony singing. Yeah, there's a there's a strong similarity between Irish folk music and bluegrass.

Well, it's the roots of it. Yeah. So bluegrass was bluegrass is basically was formulated in the

United States of America. And the father of bluegrass, a man named Bill Monroe, basically took a mixture of of instrumentations and styles and formulated the music of bluegrass.

And but a lot of your harm, your church harmony singings, your Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes.

So it's an Americana music. It's a music from from, you know, it's played all over.

It's played all over the United States. Literally bluegrass played all over the world. You know, a lot of people don't realize that Japanese people play bluegrass.

They love it. It was very, very popular in Eastern Europe, the

Slavics, Slavics, Czechoslovakia, you know,

Europe. So but, you know, it again, we we view everything from the standpoint to give glory to God, to all things and use what we have for his glory and primarily for the purpose of the gospel.

So that's what that's that's hopefully that gives you some idea of it.

And to make our fundamentalist brethren more more pleased, I don't think that there's drums in bluegrass.

There is not drums. There are not. If they're represented, then most bluegrass, true bluegrass musicians are going to look they're going to look down their nose at that one.

So it works pretty well. Now, the truth is, there's a rhythm to it. And the rhythm is it had the rhythm has a has an offbeat to it that's generally used in drums.

But since there's no drums, it's OK. And the bass player kind of keeps that drum beat kind of going.

Actually, the mandolin player does, because the player, the bass plays the first and the third beat, and then the mandolin player plays the second, the fourth beat is that two to four beat is the offbeat is the rhythm rhythm beat to it.

So but it's you know, it's all played with good taste. And in this, it really is very, very musical, very musicality of it's wonderful.

We have Leticia in Windanch, Long Island, New York, who asks,

Have you received much opposition to your bluegrass music from the more fundamentalist wing of the church?

You know, I've been you know, I've been in the ministry for 43 years.

And the reason I say that is because I'm pretty well familiar with all of those people that are in the fundamentalist world.

I'm very familiar. And many of my friends, you know,

I've always tried to do things in good taste, tasteful. So I don't get a lot of opposition.

It's not not not hostility. If it is, they just they just wouldn't do it or they would stay.

They would they they they wouldn't be interested in doing it. You know, because it's it's not it's not a it's not a pop style.

It's not a rock style. It's very different. Yes, it is. Yeah. So it's it's really folk music.

Yes, it is. Well, we are going to play one more song by the

Steve Pettit band. And the title of the song is So Sweet. And that song will lead into our final commercial break.

So if anybody else is interested in sending in a question, please do so very soon because we're rapidly running out of time.

Send it to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence. And now here is

So Sweet by the Steve Pettit band. You don't see in your way.

You will provide. Well, when the cab along a thousand.

We could count a thousand ways. You have answered when we.

Well, you hear our broken. Humble hearts, we raise our hands up to the sky.

We will trust in you when we cannot see. We have learned that the waiting is good.

Though the nation's rage and the tempest. It's so sweet just to trust you.

There's not a promise you don't keep.

Though we cannot see your plan. Hopeful hearts, we know the sun will rise again.

We will trust in you when we cannot see.

We have learned that the waiting is good. Though the nation's rage and the tempest.

It's so sweet just to trust you. Jesus, Jesus, how

I trust you. How I proved you or and or.

Though the nation's rage and the tempest. It's so sweet just to trust you.

We will trust in you when we cannot see.

We have learned that the waiting is good. Though the nation's rage and the tempest.

It's so sweet just to trust you. We are switching to the

NASB. I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmont and Ironworks, New Hampshire.

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Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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May God bless you. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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or call 678 -954 -7831. That's 678 -954 -7831.

If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, an Aryan Sharpens Aryan radio listener, and Mattoy, in County Kildare, Arlington, sent you.

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Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's

God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

God in spirit and truth. They endeavor to maintain a God -centered focus and to protect worship from the intrusion of carnal entertainments and distractions.

Reading, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbc -nj .org.

That's gcbc -nj .org. Or call them at 908 -996 -7654.

That's 908 -996 -7654. Tell Pastor Dunn you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And I want to thank Pastor Alan Dunn of Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey and all the fine folks there for renewing their advertising contract just very recently on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We could not exist without the financial support of fine folks like the saints at Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey.

I also want to remind our listeners who have been hearing the ads for years now for the

Historical Bible Society, please don't forget that that fine organization is founded by its president,

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That is the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates. Please always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And also, folks, if you're a man in ministry leadership, please, if you are interested in attending the next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio biannual free pastor's luncheon featuring guest speaker

Dr. Joel Beeky, who has actually appeared at the same conferences on occasion as my guest today,

Steve Pettit, please send me an email to register. It's absolutely free of charge.

The date is Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania. Everything is free.

Not only the food and the spiritual feast that you will hear from Dr. Beeky when he proclaims the word of God and the fun and the fellowship that you'll experience, but also everybody who attends will receive a heavy sack, perhaps even two heavy sacks, of free brand new books personally selected by me that have been donated by Christian publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom. So if you're a man in ministry leadership, and keep in mind this is for men only, please send me an email to register absolutely free of charge to chrisarnzen at gmail .com

and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in your questions to Steve Pettit.

Before we go off the air momentarily, that is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, city and state and country, a residence.

We have Judge in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Judge asks, do you have any counsel on how we who are in the middle of worship wars and music wars in the church, to strike a balance between not being on the one extreme and anything goes kind of Christian, to the other extreme of strict legalism where we are importing our taste into the matter much more than we care to admit?

Well, I think the nature of your question almost gives an answer.

It's a good question. I think God's people have to be balanced.

When I would approach the local church and the worship of the local church,

I would want my music to, I'm going to err on the conservative side.

That's just what I'm going to do. I want our worship to be

God -centered, God -focused, where we, like has already been discussed, focusing on congregational singing as a group of God's people.

I think there's going to be more liberty among the individual believers outside of the local church on personal taste and preferences, though we all have to have a good conscience and walk in a good conscience before the

Lord. Anything that, any movement that's based on a reaction will always end up in an imbalanced position.

Any movement based on a reaction. And I think you've given the right answers in the nature of your question.

We have to seek to be balanced, and there are going to be differences among Christians. The world that I've lived in, particularly when

I was at Bob Jones, there are going to be differences among Christians. Thank the Lord we can attend a local church where we can serve

God and worship with a good conscience. I love my local church. I love my pastor.

I love the people of our church. And when I go there, I have a joyful and happy spirit in the

Lord. So wonderful preaching. Our worship is simple. We sing unto the

Lord. We love each other. And that's the focus. So that I think

I think it's maintaining the balance. Yes. And even the strictest of fundamentalists have disagreements amongst themselves.

I have a number of. Absolutely. I have a number of very good friends who are fundamentalists.

I'm sorry. I said I have a number of friends who are independent fundamentalist

Baptists. And years ago, when I worked for WMCA Radio, which is an affiliate of the

Salem Media Network, which was founded by two Bob Jones University graduates years ago,

I helped to create for my fundamentalist friends, pastor friends, a program called the

Fundamentalist Baptist Forum. And that was hosted by a different pastor every night of the week.

And so you you had some disagreement amongst these fundamentalist brethren.

When I would when I would go to their meetings that were involved in, you know, talking business and giving updates on things in regard to the actual radio show, the

Fundamental Baptist Forum, they would have very sharp disagreements and heated discussions and bordering on arguments over the music that they permitted to be played in this program, even though that they were all independent independent fundamentalists.

And you'd have some arguing over the sound of the music being too country sounding and and so on.

And, you know, it's it's interesting. The definite that the definition of worldly is a lot broader than one might immediately assume, because and I don't mean to offend any of my fundamentalist brethren, but I've been in fundamentalist

Baptist churches where the music being played and it's not offensive to me. But if you're going to use their litmus test or standard, when

I hear the piano in some of these churches, it sounds exactly like the piano you would hear in a

Western movie when somebody walks into the saloon. So I mean, some of this is really, as the questioner said, as a part of his question, some of it involves more involves our taste than we are willing to admit, doesn't it?

I think so. No question about it. And, you know, our taste, our taste are formulated today very differently than what would have been years past, because we live in a world where we hear music all the time.

It's on the television. It's on the Internet. It's in our automobiles.

So there's going to be a lot of differences. It's impossible not to be. Again, I think

God's people have to be humble. I think they need to walk with the Lord. They need to seek the Lord.

They need to give liberty to the people of God to make the right choices.

Every man shall stand before the Lord and give an accounting for their own life. And then ultimately, there is nothing that we do, nothing that we do, whether it's music or prayer or even the preaching of the word that is going to merit any acceptance before the

Lord apart from and in and through the merits of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. So apart from the blood, apart from the intercession of Christ, apart from his life, anything and everything we do is of no value apart from that.

So we must be humble before Christ in seeking all that we do to honor him. Amen. And I want to remind our listeners if you want more information about Dr.

Steve Pettit and Steve Pettit Ministries, go to StevePettit .com StevePettit .com

and Pettit is spelled P as in Peter, E, T as in Thomas, T as in Thomas, I, T as in Thomas.

StevePettit .com. I want to thank you so much, Dr. Pettit for being such a wonderful guest. I look forward to your return to the show, and I hope that God will enable me to attend one of your events at some point in the near future.

I do definitely want to hear you preach again, and I want to remind all of our listeners,

I never want you to forget for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater