WWUTT 2440 Q&A What is Repentance, What is the Gospel, Shiny Happy People, Remembering John MacArthur

Repentance, the Gospel, and the Difference Between Law and Gospel

What does it mean to repent? What does that entail? What does it mean to share the gospel? What elements need to be there to be a gospel presentation? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the word. Thank you for listening and for sharing our podcast with others. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Hey, once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome.

Psalm 119, verse nine, how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? With my whole heart, I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

And our commitment to the word of God is why we do when we understand the text. Happy anniversary, babe.

Happy anniversary.

In more ways than one.

Yes.

This is our actual anniversary.

It is.

15 years today.

Yes.

And I love you as much as I did that day.

I think I love you a little more.

If not more, yeah. I still remember how lovely you looked in your wedding dress coming down the aisle. And you still look lovely as well today.

Oh, well, thank you for saying that because I looked in the mirror right before coming in here and I was like, oh man, I need to just go to bed.

Well, there's a reason why.

My hair's crazy.

Yeah, there's a reason why God has us growing together in marriage. And not, you get married, but you don't get to see this person again for 10 years.

Right, right?

Yes.

We would probably be looking at each other. Going, what happened to you?

I think there's something different.

I didn't have a beard back then. No, you didn't. I've had a beard now. For, let's see, how old is Aria? 10. She's about to turn 11.

She's almost 11, yeah.

So that many years, I've shaved it twice in that period of time.

Yep, that's true.

Only two times.

Yeah.

Is that right, just two times? Yeah, that's right. It was twice.

I think so, yeah.

Yep, anyway, where was I going with that?

No idea. It's our anniversary.

It's our anniversary.

And it's our other anniversary.

For?

The podcast.

The podcast, that's right, yeah. So August, we started doing it 10 years ago. Was it 10 years or did we already do the 10 year? What year is this? This is 25, yes, this is 10 years.

10 years, that's what I was thinking.

We've been on the air for a decade, yes. It is now our 10 year anniversary.

Yes.

So we started the first week of August in 2015.

Right.

That was when the podcast began. And you've been on every single one of them.

Yep.

Ever since.

As the intro and the.

And the outro voice.

Outro, is that what it is?

Intro and outro, that's what I have it labeled as in the computer.

Well, there we go.

I grab your intro and I stick on an outro. And Becky's voice has been there since the very beginning. I had an email recently from somebody that asked me about the archive on the website. So when you go to www .utt .com and you click on the archive tab or the, it's podcast.

You just click on podcast. And then down below has an archive. And I've got all of Proverbs in there, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and some of Luke. So every once in a while, I'll get an email from somebody that asked me, are you ever gonna expound out that archive?

Yeah, at some point.

Yeah, it takes some work.

We'll see whenever I get around to it, but I'm busy with a lot of other stuff. Obviously, because we took July off.

We did.

Thank you for the emails that we got during that period of time.

And thank you for being patient.

Yes, letting us take a break. The intention was, I was gonna have enough of the podcast done for when we went on vacation. It was still gonna continue. You weren't gonna know that we were gone.

That was the intention.

And then when we got back, I think I said on the vacation message, hey, we're gonna resume on such and such a date. And then we got back and you and I were so dog tired. We're like, let's do it next week.

Yeah, it was a lot of work.

And then that turned into next week.

Yep, because then it was prepping for school.

That's right. We were getting the kids ready.

Yes, everybody. School has started in July.

Yes, well, believe it or not, that's happening in more and more places. It's not just Arizona.

Is it really?

Oh, it's just got so crazy to wrap my mind around this.

A pastor friend of mine in Indiana said, even there in Indiana was starting at the end of July.

I think they considered those schools out that way, at least I did in Kansas and Texas, that those were year round schools, quote unquote, year round. Because they took just a short break for this and a short break for that.

It's a little bit longer of a break, but it's still considered short.

Longer fall break, longer Easter break, or longer of a Christmas break.

Right.

And then a longer spring break.

Right, and yet I'm like, no, we don't consider ourselves year round school.

It's just short.

We get June off and like most of July.

Yeah.

Yeah, at the Christian school that we're part of.

Yes.

And Becky is not teaching this year.

I'm not.

You're retired again.

I am.

I'm still teaching there. Yeah, how many times have you retired now?

No, I'm homeschooling with the preschooler now.

Yeah, who's turning four in a month.

In a month.

A month from today.

Yes, yes. And then Annie, who's a senior this year, she's gonna be doing all the senior activities and graduating.

Yep.

So I wanna be free to be able to be like, okay, let's do this, you know, and not be.

Not teaching somebody else's kids, but I get to be involved with mine. But I'm still teaching there. I'm still doing the Bible class three days a week. And that's a joy. I enjoy doing it. I enjoy teaching the Bible anyway, if you guys haven't been able to tell.

Right.

From.

It's kind of your thing.

Doing this podcast for 10 years now. We're coming up on 2 ,500 episodes, but we're not there yet. I had said because of some delays and things like that, we weren't gonna get to 2 ,500 in the same month that we were celebrating 10 years.

But this is episode 2 ,440.

Ooh, not too bad.

So before we get to the end of the year, we'll hit 2 ,500 episodes.

Lord willing.

Lord willing.

Yeah.

Given that there's not gonna be another leak in this room.

Yeah, you know.

Taking a shower in here, like happened in February.

Oh my goodness.

We had the leaky sink upstairs.

I don't wanna talk about it again.

Hey, there's been a lot of adventures.

Oh, a lot.

On this podcast.

A lot.

10 years.

And you guys have been through it with us.

Some of you from the very beginning. Yeah. That's pretty incredible. How have y 'all listened to 2 ,440 episodes? I don't understand how I've done 2 ,440 episodes, but some of you having listened to that many episodes.

I love it.

That's amazing. We would not be able to do this without you guys.

No, definitely not.

Well, we could. There just wouldn't be anybody listening.

True. But not really.

We could do it without you.

Yeah, I mean, you know.

But we wouldn't want to.

No.

Yeah.

It's knowing that there are people out there listening and you're growing through the ministry and listening to the Bible study. There was an email that I had in here about listening to Luke. And a mom was saying that she was going through Luke with her kids, with the study that we do on here.

And that's awesome. Cause I just sit in a room and talk. And so to hear from you.

Yeah.

It keeps us going.

Makes it a little more real.

Yeah. Helps us to know there are people listening and the word of God is getting out to many people's ears and hearts. And as the Lord said in Isaiah 55, my word will not go out from me void. So even if I'm the only guy sitting in here in this room and talking, and I'm only talking to myself, it's still a ministry unto me.

Yes.

To read the word of God and be giving it that thought and application to it is changing my heart as well. So that's just the power of God's word through his Holy spirit in each one of our lives. We've been jabbering enough here.

Yes.

We've got our wedding anniversary today, 15 years. Oh, in two weeks, my ordination anniversary.

Yeah.

And that will also be 15 years of pastoral ministry. And then of course, 10 years on this podcast. So August is a month full of anniversaries for us. My dad has a birthday. My parents' anniversary is this month.

So yeah, here we go.

Here's August.

Onward and upward. Thank you for giving us the time off. And we're back at it again.

Yes.

I'll be back in Luke, God willing, as you said, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But this being the Friday episode of the broadcast, and we're actually getting it out on Friday this time. We're taking questions from the listeners and you can submit your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Let's go to the voicemail message. You can also go to www .utt .com, click on that voicemail tab and leave us a voicemail. Record it from your phone or your computer. I know that website needs some work and I'm going to do some work on it.

But in the meantime, you can still click buttons on the page and leave us a voicemail. This is from Chris. Here we go.

Good afternoon, Pastor Gabe and Becky. This is Chris from North Carolina. I hope you all have had a great vacation over the last couple of weeks. I wanted to reach out because I recently became aware of the latest season for the Shiny Happy People series on Amazon Prime.

I saw the first one and talked about the abuses of the IVLP and Bill Gothard. There were clearly some problems. But we know that that particular documentary was somewhat hostile as well toward homeschooling in general in conservative Christianity as a whole.

Season two is covering the abuses of a youth evangelism campaign known as Teen Mania that apparently started in the 90s, went through the 2000s. It's no longer functioning. It has significant influence from an Apostle type doctrine.

During the documentary in the first episode, they mentioned that the headquarters for Teen Mania was in Lindale, Texas, which is your old stomping grounds. So I was curious to know if you had any additional insights or thoughts.

You have even seen this documentary at all. So I hope you all have a good rest of the day. Look forward to hearing from you.

Well, appreciate it, Chris.

Yeah.

Thank you for messaging. I hope everybody got that. I know it was a little bit spotty with the recording. So he mentioned a new season of the documentary on Amazon Prime called Shiny Happy People. And Chris, I listened to this message before we played it here.

And I actually would not have known that there was a second season of Shiny Happy People until you sent me that voicemail. I saw it popping up on our Amazon Prime feed, like it was under recommendated, recommendated.

Recommendated.

Recommended. I felt like it was recommended though, because I had already watched it.

Oh, yeah.

So I was like, why are you recommending this to me again? I was ignoring it, because I've already watched Shiny Happy People. So the reason why it was recommending it again was because it's got a new season.

And I just didn't catch that. So on the vacation that we went on, we went camping for a period of that time for about a week. And we were totally off grid.

Yeah, no signal.

Had no cell signal or anything.

But we weren't like off grid, off grid. We still had electricity and stuff like that, but we had no signal.

Well, we had electricity because your parents' camper was plugged into the electricity. We were in a tent.

We were.

So we ran an extension cord from the trailer into the tent, but we would not have had electricity otherwise.

This is true, this is true. But I mean, all the things that come with a camper, we were able to use their amenities. Facilities as well.

It wasn't too much of a wilderness, if you know what I mean.

However, well, when you say camping off grid, I'm thinking like in the middle of nowhere.

True.

Alaska, you know what I mean?

Actual off grid is having no. Right, nothing. Yeah, it's just having nothing.

You brought everything.

You better hope you brought toilet paper, that kind of. Off grid, yes. It wasn't quite that off grid. It was off grid in the sense nobody could get in touch with us.

Right, at all. And we couldn't get in touch with hardly anybody either.

Yeah.

I told our church, I told the officers, elders and deacons, hey, starting this date, you're not gonna be able to get ahold of me at all. And then I don't get a signal back until this date. So John MacArthur passed away in that period of time.

Yes.

And it was a weird fluke thing, the last night we were camping, where one of the guys with us got a cell signal all of a sudden. And his message is updated.

Yep.

And he said, oh, John MacArthur just passed away. And I didn't believe him. I was like, no, I heard that he was sick, but he didn't just suddenly die. And then sure enough, the next day, when we finally got back into civilization and got a signal again, it was true.

He had passed away. So we're gonna talk about that here in a little bit as well, because that's happened since we've been off air.

Yes, but anyway, back to the whole story.

Yeah, the shiny happy people thing. So Teen Mania, I did not have any experience with Teen Mania living in Lyndale. We only lived in Lyndale for three years. Acquire the Fire in Teen Mania and all that was already done by the time that we were there.

But I did have some experience with Teen Mania. I attended Acquire the Fire when I was in middle school, and I think another one when I was in high school.

Me too.

Did you really?

Yeah.

Yeah, went to Acquire the Fire?

Yeah, I think twice. Both in middle school though.

It's kind of like growing up in some sort of Christian environment, whether you were Catholic or evangelical, you probably had some exposure to Acquire the Fire in the 90s and was it early 2000s? Yeah, so yeah, 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

This was Ron Luce, who was the guy that started Teen Mania and Acquire the Fire. Anytime you went to Acquire the Fire, Ron Luce was the main speaking guy. And you would have Christian rock bands that would be there.

I know that Skillet was involved with them for a little while.

Okay.

I think I saw Pillar there, Newsboys had been with them. So it was always some popular Christian rock band would be the headlining showcase in the Acquire the Fire thing that you went to. And it would probably be a couple of days, or it might be one whole day thing.

Starting in the morning, going throughout the day. Like if you're familiar with what Winter Jam is now, or the Rock and Worship Roadshow, or Toby Mac will do like his big tours where it'll just be $10 to get in the door.

Acquire the Fire was kind of like that. So that was my involvement. Any involvement that I had with Teen Mania was just that. And I don't remember that much about it, to be honest with you. Nope. Other than it just feels like that I attended a rock concert.

Yeah, and I got a t-shirt.

Yeah.

Because one of my spelling words was acquire and I couldn't, I was like, hey, let me see how that's spelling it. Just kidding.

You wore the shirt to school and cheated. No, I didn't.

I didn't mean to.

I really didn't. It was not intentional. It just happened to be.

On your shirt.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's funny.

And one of my classmates pointed it out.

I was like, oh, hey, look at that.

I better know how to spell that.

My fault.

I remember Ron Luce walking around with his Bible and teaching. I don't remember what he taught.

No.

I remember afterward getting to wherever we stayed. I don't remember if it was hotel or dorms or what, but, and then spending time with my friend and our Bibles and looking into things, but I don't remember much else.

I am not impressed with the Shiny Happy People documentary. I don't appreciate that there are Christians that get involved in it because they're not gonna paint Christianity in a positive light. The stuff about the Duggars and the stuff about Bill Gothard, that was helpful, was stuff that I didn't know about that.

I knew people that had grown up in the Bill Gothard cult, so to speak. And so anybody that I might encounter who grew up in that, it was helpful in knowing, okay, I know now a little bit about what you went through as a child and the kind of teaching that you were exposed to.

So it was helpful in that sense. So really, I wasn't exposed to Bill Gothard when I was a kid and not realizing that some of my friends actually had been caught up in it and I didn't even know what it was.

So some of the background stuff with Shiny Happy People was helpful in that sense.

Like a resource.

Yeah, right. But it's still, they're made to rip on Christianity. I haven't watched this new season with Acquire the Fire or Teen Mania, as you said, but now that you've mentioned it, I'll go back and watch it and see if there were some things in Teen Mania that I just didn't know about.

That was not one of those ministries that I followed over the years or know much about it. I know that Ron Luce was charismatic. I think that I remember reading a story about him hearing from God to do this.

So he felt like he was on a mission from God to start Teen Mania. But anyway, beyond that, I don't know much about it. And so I'll watch the documentary and we'll find out. I'll give you a report in a future episode.

I got another message from a Chris coming up here, but it's a different Chris. We get a lot of Chris's.

We do.

The next message, this actually came from somebody who watched the video that I did on Jimmy Swaggart.

Okay.

So in the month of July, not only did John MacArthur pass away, but so did Jimmy Swaggart. That was actually at the very start of the month. It was July 1st, so one month ago today. You probably heard the news that Hulk Hogan had died.

Yes.

Another famous celebrity was Ozzy Osbourne.

Yeah.

Not a believer at all. But we're meant to understand that Hulk Hogan was a Christian. That baptism that he had about a year and a half ago was a genuine repentance and baptism.

And his

Oh Christ, oh Lord.

His pastor was solid and talked about, Terry was his name, Hulk Hogan, before he died.

Yeah.

And so, though there are kind of some wicked things in Hulk Hogan's past, I mean, that really comes with the superstardom of professional wrestling or WWE. It was WWF when I was a kid.

Yeah.

I never watched it when it was WWE. But everything that kind of came with that superstardom and some of the, you've probably heard some of the things about Hogan and what he was caught up in and things that he said and stuff he did.

Some of that stuff has probably come out in the days since he died. But as a genuine believer in Christ, who repented of his sin, we as Christians should look at him as a brother that we're gonna be praising God with when we get to heaven someday.

Amen.

So beautiful thing. I remember admiring Hulk Hogan when I was a kid and all the more reason to love him now. That we will get to rejoice together in glory in a God who saves, who even forgives us of gross superstar sins in the past.

You and I may never go through, but Hogan was forgiven of those things and has eternal life with God and not a moment too late. So anyway, where was I going with that? Oh, with the death of Jimmy Swaggart.

So this message came after I did that video and talked about how Swaggart was really disqualified. He made a shipwreck of his ministry and there's nothing about Jimmy Swaggart that you should be looking at as thinking, oh, what an admirable Christian man.

He did wicked depraved things, was constantly going after prostitutes, which he did over and over and over again.

Oh yeah.

And never truly repented of all this. So this person whose name is only thy word had messaged me and said, I listened to the podcast. So not only the video that I did, but listen to the podcast where I responded to comments on the video.

Right.

And he said, you never described what an acceptable repentance just might look like. Exactly what must a man do to demonstrate your standards of repentance that might satisfy any lingering doubt concerning Mr. Swaggart.

I never saw Learjet Tim LaHaye repent of his heresies, perhaps crawling over a broken glass in a freezing rain, wearing only sackcloth up the stone steps to some shrine might cover it. Brother, we accept the grace of God by faith.

Help me see what I might be missing. Jesus called Peter Satan and later everything was Jake by Acts 2. I haven't heard that expression in a long time.

Was Jake?

Everything was Jake. Everything was fine.

Oh, okay, okay.

But you had Jesus reinstate Peter. Like that's clearly at the end of the gospel of John. So it doesn't go from Peter denying Jesus to suddenly everything is Jake in Acts 2.

Right.

Jake wasn't even one of the apostles. I don't know why we keep mentioning Jake.

I was confused at first. I had no idea.

Were you gonna say something else there?

Just, yeah, it's not like he had.

Yeah, talking about Peter.

No, I was talking about Jesus, not, he wasn't just with the wind, like every which way the wind blows, he's gonna, like, oh, I'm feeling this way today.

He didn't just let those things go.

Right. And he didn't just make that claim that, get behind me, Satan, lightly.

Yeah, this was Peter trying to prevent Jesus from going to the cross. And it didn't matter how good his intentions were. He would have said that he loved his Lord. I don't wanna see my Lord die. But if Peter had his way, no matter how good his intentions, we would not be saved.

Amen.

And so Jesus saying to Peter, get behind me, Satan, you are a hindrance to me. For you are not thinking with the mind of God, but with the mind of a man. And then with Peter denying Jesus three times, he did this, even though Jesus told him, you're gonna deny me three times.

And Peter denied that he was gonna do that. No, I never, I would never do this. I would die with you. Even if they all fall away, talking about the other apostles, I will never fall away. And yet sure enough, more intensely every time he did it.

I don't know the man. I do not know the man. I'm telling you, and it says that he swore. I do not know the man. I was never with him. I don't know him. And then the rooster crows and he realizes what he had done.

And he went out and wept bitterly, it says. But going out and weeping bitterly would not have even been enough for repentance.

No.

Because even Judas felt bad for what he did.

I know, that's what I was thinking.

So that would not have been enough. It's seeing that Peter continued to be devoted to the Lord, even after that.

Right.

And then Jesus showing grace to Peter by asking him three times. Peter denied Jesus three times. So now Jesus is asking him three times.

After he rises from the dead.

Yeah, after the resurrection, at the end of the gospel of John, saying, Peter, do you love me? And you just kind of have to wonder, was Peter's response then more intense every time that he answered Jesus?

That's the way I picture it.

Yeah, right, exactly. Just like he became more intense the more he denied. Did he become more intense the more he said, Lord, you know that I love you. Yes, I love you. He got more intense with it. And Jesus saying to him, then feed my sheep, feed my lambs.

So it wasn't just this thing that Peter did. And then he goes out and weeps bitterly. And it's like, okay, well, that's all over. That's what Jimmy Swaggart did. So he got caught with prostitutes. Pictures were taken and he goes on his program and he weeps bitterly over it.

I have sinned against you. Never says what he did.

True.

And that was pointed out in the video. He never actually said, here's what my sin was. And here's what I'm telling you. It is that I did. The congregation was clueless. And so was everybody who was watching that broadcast, which as I said in the video, may have been the most watched sermon on planet earth, at least up to that time.

I don't know. Since then, obviously with the internet, it's easier to get sermons out there than it used to be.

Yeah, no, sure.

But there were millions of people, a potential audience of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions that could have seen that particular sermon. And when they're watching him weep over sin, that he wasn't actually confessing, just saying that he had sinned.

You said that everyone saw the picture.

Well, later. So nobody knew. This had been told to him, we've got you. We've got you with these prostitutes. What were you doing with these prostitutes? And so now knowing that he couldn't do anything else about it, he makes this confession on his program.

But like a vague confession.