WWUTT 1280 Q&A Copeland Dumped from TBN, The Word According to Gen Z, Equipped to Teach the Bible?

WWUTT Podcast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Did you hear about what has happened to Kenneth Copeland's ministry? What is the

00:06

Bible according to Gen Z? How can we find ourselves well -equipped to teach the Word of God to others?

00:12

The answers to these questions when we Understand the Text. This is

00:25

When we Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. That we may have the mind of Christ as we are being made into the image of Christ.

00:34

Check out our new website, Through the Majesty's Men, when you visit www .tt

00:41

.com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. So, yesterday we were in Psalm 142 on the podcast, and the first two verses that we have there,

00:53

David prays, With my voice I cry out to the Lord. With my voice

00:59

I plead for mercy to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him,

01:05

I tell my trouble before the Lord. There's a lot of bickering and arguing going on right now, especially online, but may have even filtered into personal relationships as well, especially with the way things are going on in our culture and in our society.

01:22

You see a lot of fighting, the uncertainty of things, the disruption of normal everyday tasks, all of this can create some unrest.

01:32

And you start to take it out on other people. And there may be people around you who are legitimately acting like fools.

01:40

When I say legitimately, I mean you have cause to say that's foolish behavior. And you probably could make all kinds of complaints about that person and be totally justified in your criticism of those other people.

01:52

But maybe you need to pour out your complaint before the Lord, before it starts coming out your mouth, to other people anyway.

02:01

Because notice here that David says, With my voice I cry out to the Lord. With my voice

02:07

I plead for mercy to the Lord. A lot of us are praying just in our minds, or it's maybe when you go to bed, you know, you lay down in bed and you just think your prayers, which there's nothing wrong with that.

02:18

I mean, you take every thought, you make it obedient to Christ, that's great. But our prayers should also be, there should be a discipline there that we are speaking out loud to God.

02:30

And instead of taking your complaints about other people to other people, causing dissension, slander, gossip, any of those other things, causing yourself to sin, take your complaint before God and pour out your trouble to Him.

02:46

That doesn't mean to gossip to God or to slander to God. But you were rather going to the one who could change hearts and help solve issues.

03:00

Especially your heart. Yeah. Especially your own heart. Exactly. So as you were making that comment, slandering about another person to God, you need to have a right attitude in your heart about that other person.

03:12

Exactly. And maybe that's what you can pray before God. Yeah. Lord, forgive me for the way that I think about this person.

03:18

Yeah. And definitely to open your eyes to any sinful ways in you that you may not be aware of.

03:28

Because I mean, we're blinded of our own things, especially when our mouths are running.

03:35

I mean, really, I talk a lot and I don't really pay attention to half of what

03:40

I say sometimes. I notice that the more I talk, the less

03:46

I pay attention. So when I talk less, the more I pay attention to what I say and the more

03:51

I remember what I say, too. Yes. Well, yeah, that's the instruction in James. Be slow to speak and quick to listen.

03:57

And David also praying, reveal to me hidden faults. So having those things that God would reveal in us so that we may repent and walk in righteousness and think rightly of one another instead of having an attitude of complaining and bickering.

04:13

Right. Complaining about each other, bickering with one another. Take your complaint before God.

04:20

That's right. I think that's a good reminder. I didn't say that yesterday we were in Psalm 142, but a good reminder, especially in these times.

04:28

Today we're going. In these times as in like every four years. Yeah, right.

04:35

Just remember to four years ago about how crazy it was and four years before that and four years before that.

04:44

This is definitely the craziest election year ever. Granted. But I'm just saying that every four years it tends to be a little more loopy than the three years in between.

04:57

That certainly, yes, seems to be the case. So just hang in there, everybody. I hope it certainly doesn't put a damper on the

05:06

Cruciform Conference that's coming to Indianapolis October 23rd and 24th. If you're in the area, check out

05:13

Facebook .com slash Cruciform Con. That's C -R -U -C -I -F -O -R -M -C -O -N.

05:23

The Cruciform Conference. So Facebook .com slash Cruciform Con. And you've got all the information that you need to know there, including registration.

05:31

Holiness is the theme. Speakers include Justin Peters, Anthony Mathenia, myself,

05:38

Brandon Scalf, who's kind of helping to put this whole thing together. Chris Hough. I've met

05:43

Chris a few times. We've talked on Twitter. Dwayne Atkinson, who runs The Bar Biblical and Reformed podcast.

05:49

And Michelle Leslie going to be there as well. Speaking of Michelle Leslie, she and I had an exchange on Twitter earlier this week, and this had to do with the news that TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, is dropping

06:05

Kenneth Copeland from their broadcasting schedule. That's crazy. Now, TBN is just a wealth of heresy.

06:12

Oh, yeah. Wealth. It is a hodgepodge of heretical teachers. There you go. If you want the quintessential televangelists, turn on TBN.

06:23

Don't do it. Don't. What does a televangelist look like?

06:29

Turn on TBN and you'll find out. Daystar is pretty much the same. There's that God TV.

06:35

That one's not great either. Anyway, you would originally think, hey, that sounds like good news.

06:42

Kenneth Copeland, finally, after all these years being dropped from the lineup at TBN, well, he's being replaced with Steven Furtick.

06:50

Yeah. So, you're going from one guy peddling heresy and platforming other heretics to another guy peddling heresy and platforming heretics.

06:58

Only Steven Furtick is probably a little more sneaky about it. Yeah. Copeland's is more blatant and Furtick's is sneaky.

07:09

And Anonymou will like the sneaky reference. Sneaky. He's sneaky. Yeah. He's interesting.

07:18

Not in a good way. You mean Furtick's interesting, not in a good way, not Anonymou. Right.

07:24

Correct. Yes. Anonymou's interesting in a good way. Okay. Right.

07:29

There you go. And Furtick is not in a good way. Not so good. Right. Okay. Yes. But anyway, Michelle Leslie, I thought, had a great comment about that.

07:37

All right. So, if you go to the article, if you actually read what's going on there at TBN. I just read headlines.

07:44

Yeah. Well, this was at discern .com. If you just read the headline, you wouldn't know that Steven Furtick is their opt -out.

07:51

Well, I knew because you had posted it and you weren't a part of the headline. I made my own headline.

07:57

The removal of the controversial preacher is part of a series of upcoming programming changes at the network.

08:03

Copeland and TBN have partnered for more than 40 years, airing Copeland's Believer's Voice of Victory.

08:11

How does he feel about that? Is he getting fired or is he like stepping down? Kind of. Well, I mean, he's getting fired from the lineup at TBN, if you want to consider that.

08:19

But not from his own ministry and all of that. That's still going on. Interesting. It's just not on TBN anymore.

08:25

Okay. But, I mean, he's got a massive audience. So, it's not like there aren't other ways for him to get his stuff that he does out in front of people.

08:34

Okay. Here's the statement that came from TBN. In pursuit of a new vision under Matt and Lori Crouch's leadership,

08:43

TBN has been making changes to programming over the last several years, said TBH Marketing Director Nate Daniels in a statement to the

08:50

Christian Post. As a part of this transition, we chose to move away from telethons, upgraded to HD, high definition, expanded our streaming platforms, forged partnerships with family brands like K -Love, oh boy, there's an improvement,

09:05

Museum of the Bible, and others, and have replaced some programs with new original content from voices like Christine Kane, Mike Huckabee, Mike Rowe, and more.

09:15

The removal will take place October the 2nd. Kenneth Copeland's program will be replaced by Stephen Furtick of Elevation Church.

09:22

So, in response to that, in response to TBN's statement, Michelle Leslie commented, a new vision for TBN, translation, number one, we're worldlings, so we idolize youth and immaturity and despise age and maturity, just like the world.

09:40

Number two, Kenneth Copeland's heresy is too blatant. We need a subtler, craftier heretic, so we can deceive more people.

09:49

Yeah, that's spot on. Now what I liked about her first point there, we idolize youth and immaturity and despise age and maturity, just like the world.

10:02

That's really what's going on there at TBN. I think that was very insightful. That's going on everywhere right now.

10:07

Sure, yeah, when she said that about being like the world. That's an insightful thing regarding TBN's statement, because there's no improvement happening there.

10:18

You're going from Copeland to Furtick. There's no improvement. And Copeland still has a massive audience.

10:26

So what does TBN really have to gain from that? It's really nothing but we're trading out the old guy for the young guy.

10:33

Same stuff, but the young guy's doing it instead of the old man. Yeah. And there is a message being communicated there.

10:41

And they probably can pay him less. Furtick? Yeah. Probably so. I don't know that,

10:49

I mean, it depends on how this works, but sometimes the person that is creating the program that is paying for the airtime.

10:58

Now there are some ministries out there you have to pay them to get their ministry on the air. That's what

11:04

I'm thinking. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to be the case here or not. I don't know how all of that works behind the scenes there at TBN.

11:10

If you had asked me 15 years ago when I was in Christian Radio, I probably would have known. And then the system was probably different then, because it wasn't

11:19

Matt Crouch that was kind of the CEO of everything over there now. I predict that Furtick is going to invite

11:25

Copeland to his church to preach as like a gesture of good faith. Or maybe Copeland does that with Furtick.

11:31

There'll be some sort of a passing of the baton to show there's no hard feelings between these two guys, but really it shows there's no difference between these two guys.

11:41

Well, this is Friday and we take questions from the listeners and read them on the air.

11:48

I'm still used to saying on the air. 20 -something years of radio, it's kind of hard to die.

11:55

But we're not really on the air, we're on the internet. Anyway. Recorded. We read your questions here on this program when you send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

12:06

Now we're going to start with something. I did get a couple of emails about this, but somebody emailed me and they sent me the

12:14

Twitter link and I was already tagged in the Twitter discussion regarding this.

12:19

So there is a book that was released by Lifeway and this was just a week ago.

12:27

They released this book called The Word According to Gen Z. Oh no.

12:33

And it's a devotional book. It's 30 devotional lessons and it's

12:38

Bible verses that are put in, well it's supposed to be Gen Z lingo, but I don't know anybody who actually talks this way.

12:49

Now this started as a joke, but the devotional is really serious. What do you mean it started as a joke then?

12:55

Well it was a video series that was The Word According to Gen Z and it was clearly just trying to be funny.

13:04

Okay. It was just a hokey little thing, like you would watch videos on, oh what's that, I don't know, any of the

13:10

Christian YouTube channels that just do hokey little spots and stuff like this.

13:16

Okay. This was kind of like that. And it's fine, you know. It's got a lot of views. The guy who did these videos has about as many views on his videos as we have on what videos.

13:26

Oh okay. But the difference is Lifeway's not coming to me asking me for a devotional book. Right. They took this guy's hokey videos that he made and turned it into a devotional book.

13:37

Before we look at these devotions and how they really mess up the word of God in a very irreverent way, let's hear the video that started it all.

13:48

All right. So this is the word according to Gen Z. Now this is one guy and he is playing both characters, so you're going to hear two voices but it's one guy playing both characters.

13:58

He plays himself and his made up cousin and the cousin is giving the

14:05

Gen Z -ism of the Bible verse that the first guy is reading.

14:10

Okay. Okay, so here we go. Hi y 'all, it's me Carl. So for thousands of years, languages have changed, which means translations of the

14:19

Bible have changed as well. There's tons of different translations for the Bible, ranging from the old

14:24

English of King James to the fictitious futuristic language of the Klingons from Star Trek.

14:30

But one translation of the Bible, which I have yet to come across, is a Generation Z translation. So join me again on how to translate some scripture into Generation Z language with my cousin

14:40

Brock. Thanks for being here Brock. Yeah, or should I say, it's real chill for you to help me out fam.

14:47

What? Nevermind. Alright, we're just going to do a couple verses today

15:03

Brock, so take your time translating it. Yeah. Alright, first one.

15:10

He, the prophet Elisha, went up there from Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out to the city and jeered at him, saying, go up you bald head, go up you bald head.

15:21

And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she -bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of the boys.

15:31

Literally he was cruising and some dudes were roasting his socks off, which made him big mad. So big mama bears came and made the whole squad din -din.

15:38

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

15:43

When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. I used to be a noob, now

15:49

I'm not a noob. What's a noob? You're a noob. Okay. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

16:00

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world, a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden.

16:10

Be salty and lit fam. How'd you change that fast? Yeah, fam always comes prepared with drip and swag. What? And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

16:29

Then Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

16:35

Dude got his ear clapped and Jesus was like, chill fam, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

16:42

Hey, I kind of understood that one. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the

16:50

Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided.

16:56

Moses yeeted the sea. What do you mean he yeeted the sea? Yeet. Did you just change again?

17:02

Nah fam. What the? How are you doing this? The Lord yeeteth and the

17:07

Lord yoketh away. Yoinketh. Past sense of yeet my dude. Can I have my sweater back?

17:13

Nah. Alright. Sorry. Now, Becky was only hearing audio there.

17:19

She wasn't watching the video. Just like the rest of y 'all were not seeing any video there.

17:24

But you got the gist of it, right? Okay. Yeah. I know sometimes it's a little confusing because it's the same guy playing both characters.

17:31

So whose voice am I listening to here? Well, it's the same guy. Right. You understood one and not the other.

17:39

So you kind of got the idea. Right. But you get how it's, you know, it was just like a cutesy video sort of a thing.

17:44

Okay. How would, how would a Gen Z -er speak the Bible in Gen Z language?

17:50

Right. It's funny as a joke. Right. And I don't have, I don't really have any problem with that.

17:55

It's like, you know, the Babylon Bee doing what they do. Right. With satire making fun of things. So something like that could make fun of the way

18:03

Gen Z -ers probably talk right now. Okay. You could consider that satire. But Lifeway got the brilliant idea to take that and make it a devotional book.

18:14

It's 30 devotionals. So you have 30 verses that are spoken like that.

18:20

And then the actual translation of what that is. And then a devotional lesson to go with it.

18:27

Now the book got a lot of publicity yesterday. Just yesterday. All in one day.

18:32

Mm -hmm. Daryl Harrison of Just Thinking. Uh -huh. By the way, they just put out a fantastic episode on Black Lives Matter.

18:39

Yes, they did. It's over two hours long. It was like a series. I think this is episode 102.

18:45

The one they just did on Black Lives Matter. This wasn't a series. They did it all in one episode. Oh, I thought it was a series.

18:51

Well, all of Just Thinking is technically a series. Eh, touche. But yeah,

18:56

Daryl Harrison, Virgil Walker, check it out. We always give those guys mad props at the

19:03

Just Thinking podcast through the Bar Network. Definitely. Anyway, so Daryl Harrison found this

19:08

Bible, the word according to Gen Z. And he started posting it on Facebook.

19:13

Well, that got the attention of Allie Stuckey, which also got the attention of Matt Walsh.

19:19

Okay. And so they're all posting on this book and making fun of it. It became like a viral thing in one day.

19:26

Oh, wow. And all in the same day. This started on Thursday. By the end of Business Thursday, Lifeway had yanked the book entirely.

19:37

Oh, wow. Just a bunch of criticism, and Lifeway just pulled it. Immediately.

19:44

Wow. So, something goes viral like that. The video series goes viral, they make a devotional book about it.

19:51

The criticism goes viral, they immediately pull it. This is demonstrating a double -mindedness on the part of Lifeway.

19:58

They are with the wind. Yes, they are. They're just being tossed to and fro every direction. Oh, my goodness.

20:04

When Daryl presented his first tweet, he just covered day one, because that's the sample that they gave online.

20:11

Uh -huh. So, day one of this devotional is John 1 -1. You remember John 1 -1, right?

20:16

Yes. In the beginning... Was the Word. And the Word... Was with God.

20:22

Right. And the Word was God. Right. I know. Sometimes we get those kind of switched around. Yeah. The Word was God, the Word was with God.

20:28

Yeah. I know. I do that, too. One of those. This is the Gen Z translation of John 1 -1.

20:35

Since day uno, there was Cap G. Big J was chilling with Cap G, and Big J was

20:40

Cap G. Okay. Now, it's actually kind of hard to read, because they put

20:45

Gen Z translation in this old English text. Can you see it? Yeah. Do you see what

20:50

I'm looking at? Yeah. I see it. That's interesting. That's what it actually looks like in the book. Because you would think they would pick something a little bit more modern.

20:58

Right. More hipster. Yeah. Than the old English look. So, it's difficult to read for a couple of reasons.

21:05

It's in Gen Z lingo. Yeah. And it's also in a font that you can barely perceive.

21:12

There were people that were talking about this when Darrell had posted it. There were people that were saying, this is extremely irreverent.

21:18

It's wrong for Lifeway to be doing this. There were others that were defending it. There's this fellow. His name is

21:24

Addison from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He said, this is sad. Carl and his team connect well with students.

21:31

This was meant to be a playful thing, and a lot of hard work and well -intentioned work went into it.

21:38

This hurts the church, and that's sad. Addison is claiming that our criticism of this hurts the church.

21:46

Okay. And he goes on to say, it may not be a benchmark to do something like this, but it certainly isn't negative.

21:53

Jesus connected with people to the point that he was called a drunkard and a friend of sinners. Paul became all things to all men that he might win some.

22:01

The authors love people, love the church, and love Jesus. See, Addison's critique of the criticism that was going on was good until he got to that.

22:11

Yeah. That's what I was thinking, too. I think he was on to something, at least something worth pausing and considering.

22:18

What are our motives here when we criticize something like this? But then when he starts saying that the people who wrote this book are just trying to be all things to all people, no.

22:28

I mean, you're taking that totally out of context. But not only is this irreverent, because that was kind of the biggest criticism that people were making of this, that it's irreverent.

22:37

Not only is it irreverent, but when you look at the serious part of it, like, let's just skip the whole thing of putting a

22:45

Bible verse in Gen Z lingo and take the serious devotional portion that's underneath it.

22:52

When you go through these devotional lessons, you see that it falls way short of how we're supposed to be reading and understanding

23:01

Scripture and how it points us to Christ. These devotionals just don't go far enough.

23:08

Okay. Now, Darrell's criticism of this was that it's pragmatism. It's that practical thing, or just doing everything practical that we can to kind of draw in the biggest audience.

23:18

Right. All these different gimmicks and things like that we can do. That's how I felt about even just the headline of it, just what they were doing with the

23:26

Bible verse. Yeah. They're just trying to be... Just trying to draw it in with something cutesy. Trying to be hipster. Yeah.

23:32

It's a hipster thing. Sorry. Not cutesy. Hipster. Yeah. Sorry. Wrong word.

23:38

So, not questioning the motivation behind doing this, let's consider what's actually being taught in this devotional.

23:46

Here is the serious devotional portion. It's tough to think about what happened before we were born.

23:52

And again, all of this is under John 1 .1. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It's tough to think about what happened before we were born.

24:01

There was a time when people didn't have cars, electricity, TV, or YouTube. But it's even more difficult to think about what will happen when we die.

24:09

We ask, what will the world look like? Will people miss me? What about my family? It can be tough to admit how small the part we play in this whole world really is.

24:18

John shares that Jesus, the Word, was there before us. He had no beginning.

24:24

He was there before the world was formed, and yet we feel him missing in our lives at some of our lowest moments.

24:32

We sense a hole in ourselves that we see as loneliness and seclusion. It can surround us and make us question, is

24:39

God here? Does he even care? The answer is yes. Sometimes we feel that hole because we aren't running after God.

24:46

Sometimes it's because of trauma or hardships. But maybe God sometimes allows us to see that hole so that we realize how much we must, how much we, hmm, there's a typo there.

25:03

There is a typo. How much we much we need him and his words. I don't know what that's trying to say.

25:09

How much we need him and his words. Okay, anyway, so typo aside, what does that sound like to you?

25:17

Do you think that the focus is on Christ? No, that's all about me. Yeah, that's all about me.

25:24

There was no pointing to Christ at all there, except the describing that Jesus has no beginning.

25:32

But there wasn't anything that points to the Savior. God allows us to see a hole so we will realize how much we need him and his words.

25:40

That's not what John 1 is about. John 1 is the exaltation of Christ who is

25:46

God. That's what that verse is saying. He has no beginning. He has no end.

25:52

He was with God in the beginning because he is God. That's what that verse is saying.

25:58

But there's no exaltation of Christ there in any way. It's just all about me.

26:05

So let's look at another one. This is Romans 1 .16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

26:15

Jew first and also to the Greek. Right? You hear me quote that verse probably every other Sunday. I mention it in sermons a lot.

26:24

Now here's the Gen Z translation. Not swerved by these scripts because Cap G be given that get out of jail free card to the whole fam.

26:37

You're concentrating way too hard, babe. Wow. I think I have a headache. Okay.

26:44

Yep. Are you getting what's in there? Yeah. Sure.

26:49

Now notice that the gospel is being described in this

26:55

Gen Z translation as a get out of jail free card. This is what gospel preachers say that the gospel is exactly not.

27:05

We say the gospel is not your get out of hell free card. It's not just as long as I punch this card, boom,

27:12

I'm good. And I know I'm not going to hell. The gospel is Christ. It is to draw you to God through Christ.

27:20

It is the worship of God through Christ. The gospel is the good news of what

27:26

Jesus did on the cross for our sins, rising again from the grave, ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of God.

27:34

All who believe in him are forgiven their sins. And we are fellow heirs with him of the kingdom of God.

27:41

And we will live forever with him instead of perish under the judgment of God because of our sin. That's the gospel.

27:48

But that's not what this says. And in fact, he goes on in the devotional here to fail to define the gospel.

27:55

Here's what he says. We must ask ourselves, what is the gospel? You've definitely heard this word in church.

28:02

Gospel most commonly translates to good news. When looking at scripture, we have to ask, why would someone be ashamed of good news?

28:10

You will find that submitting to the gospel will separate you from the ways of the world. The gospel demands we die to ourselves and allow

28:18

Jesus to control our lives. And when we go against the current of this world, people will make fun of us.

28:25

When we are ridiculed for something we believe, shame can creep in, but God's word is the power of God.

28:32

Once we understand the gospel is God's word, the gospel is the power of God, and those who believe in it have salvation.

28:41

We can finally move past shame completely. Once we begin to believe those things, we gain something extremely powerful, confidence.

28:50

Confidence is one of the most powerful tools we can have when living out the gospel in our own lives.

28:56

They missed it completely. Yes, right. Not anywhere close. God's word.

29:01

I mean, it contains the gospel, but are they really going to read it or are they just going to shake their

29:11

Bible and say, I've got confidence? That's what you get out of that particular lesson. It's still all about you and what you gain.

29:18

And what you gain there is not even salvation. And confidence. Yeah, confidence.

29:24

No. Confidence in what? Stop. Like, you would just take that and see confidence in yourself, not confidence in God.

29:33

When the book of Hebrews talks about confidence, the confidence that we have, it's confidence in Christ and in his word,

29:41

Hebrews 10, 35, do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised for yet a little while.

29:54

And the coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith.

30:00

And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and preserve their souls.

30:11

So he uses the word salvation here. He says the gospel is the power of God and those who believe in it have salvation.

30:17

We can finally move past shame completely. Shame in what?

30:23

And nothing about sin. We allow Jesus to control our lives. We allow him.

30:29

Yeah, I know. I was really taken aback by that.

30:35

I don't know what to say. And when we go against the current of this world, people will make fun of us.

30:40

That's just talking about being countercultural. That's not even talking about being godly or pursuing holiness.

30:47

But yeah, so the point being, this is why this book, I mean, even if you were to look past the irreverence, you still don't get any solid teaching from this.

30:56

And right now Portland is being countercultural. That's really true.

31:02

You can also be so evil that you're countercultural. There's one more that I wanted to read here.

31:08

I think it was, I think it was day 11. This is John 8, 31 and 32.

31:13

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth.

31:21

The truth will set you free. Okay, here's the Gen Z translation. So Big J spoke to the

31:28

God Squad, aka the Chozis, aka the Manifam. If you chill in the script, you're fam.

31:36

And if you know the real talk, I'll drop the cuffs. Here's the devotional portion of it.

31:46

Jesus says the truth will set us free. Free from what? That's a good question. Free from what?

31:52

And it says on there, free from what? So he's not just asking. Yeah, that's right.

31:57

I'm not just asking. That's what's in the devotional. Free from what? Okay, just to clarify. That's right. America is known as land of the free.

32:05

Americans often claim that they can do what they want because it is a free country. So what do people need freedom from?

32:13

In this life, we know that there are more than a few ways to feel guilty and blame ourselves for things that may or may not have been our fault.

32:22

We become captives to our own selfish desires and we've gone too far.

32:28

And when we've gone too far down the wrong path, we feel helpless. Jesus tells us we are enslaved to our own sin.

32:37

That sounds pretty good. We become captive to what we allow into our lives and don't see how we will ever come out on the other side a better person.

32:46

But in this passage, Jesus promises not only a way out, but also freedom from guilt, hatred and shame.

32:56

He promises us freedom, but on one condition, we must abide. Abide means to obey, stand by, uphold and follow.

33:04

We must abide in his words. So it's interesting that he talks about sin there.

33:10

He talks about being enslaved to sin, but then when he says when we attain freedom, our freedom is not freedom from sin.

33:20

Our freedom is not freedom to do righteousness in the way of Christ, but it's freedom from guilt, hatred and shame.

33:30

What were your thoughts as I was reading that? You get to the end of it and you're frustrated. They're so close and then they just totally miss it.

33:38

It's so frustrating. But this was our criticism of Beth Moore as well.

33:45

When we did a critique of some of her teaching, even the more, what you would consider the more solid side of her teaching, it gets close, but it never really takes you there.

33:56

It doesn't. It doesn't finish it. No, it's just moralism.

34:02

Yes. It's like, wow, I feel... Like be a good person. Yeah, exactly. Yes, precisely. Right. It's just, I feel guilty.

34:08

Well, Jesus will help you feel not guilty. Oh, good. I feel... Here's your freedom.

34:14

I feel hated. Well, Jesus will make you feel loved. All of that is driven.

34:20

He will fill that. Exactly. Fill that hole that you're feeling. Right. Yep. Earlier when we were talking about the hole, you feel the hole.

34:26

It's all feelings driven. Yes. Even this was entirely feelings driven.

34:32

We feel helpless. We become captive to what we allow in our lives. We don't see how we'll ever come out on the other side a better person, but Jesus promises not only a way out, but freedom from the things we feel.

34:44

Do we not think anymore for ourselves, people? I mean, really, are we just all feelings?

34:51

Because if we're all feelings, we're all mush. One of the things that we are enslaved to is our own fleshly desires.

35:00

We talk about being enslaved to sin. We're enslaved to our own fleshly desires. That's our feelings.

35:07

Definitely. Our feelings are governed by sin. Now feelings are not wrong.

35:13

It's not wrong to feel things. I feel things. I feel love for my wife. And then

35:18

I love my wife when that feeling is not there. You know what I mean? That could get me in trouble.

35:25

That could. That could. I mean, like in the morning when you're waking me up and I don't want to get up.

35:33

Got it. I'm like, I don't feel like it. But Becky knows that my love is there for her even when

35:40

I'm grumpy about getting up in the morning. Right. Because it's not dependent upon feelings. We're not driven by our feelings.

35:47

So feelings are good. Becky felt indignation toward this particular devotional while I was reading it.

35:55

And there's a reason why we should not like things like this or encourage or promote stuff that's like this.

36:01

But we're not governed by our feelings. We're governed by the word of God. And therefore our feelings are kept in check and should be in submission to God's word.

36:12

Just like we started talking about reading from Psalm 142 that when we are feeling a certain way toward another person that we know we should not feel, take that before the

36:23

Lord. Right. It's just so frustrating. And you don't get freedom from your feelings like waving a

36:33

Bible around saying, I believe in Jesus. Or waving the word according to Gen Z around.

36:41

Oh my goodness. It's the gospel. And the gospel is that Jesus saved us from our sins, that we are not worthy of being saved and going to heaven, that he died on the cross.

36:54

Right. It's also very individualistic. Like we don't have any sense from the devotionals that we're reading here that we're part of something bigger than ourselves.

37:05

We're focusing on Christ. We're also part of his kingdom. So we become part of a kingdom people of God.

37:12

The things that we do, we're not doing on our own. We are doing it with the church.

37:19

We're being sanctified together. We are growing in maturity. We're growing in knowledge of God together.

37:24

We're growing in love together because each other is who we have to love.

37:30

I see how this devotional really reached out to people because this is just, this is tickling the itching ears.

37:37

Yes. But once again, all it took was one day of criticism. You're just talking a few hours of criticism online and Lifeway yanked it.

37:48

And in their statement about yanking it, they said the following, if you've ever been in student ministry, you know that some of the activities you plan don't always bring about the effect you hoped for.

38:00

And that's what happened in this case. Some people, when they saw this product, assumed that Lifeway decided to translate the

38:06

Bible in an irreverent manner in order to reach Gen Z. This was not the case.

38:12

Still, in order to ensure there is no confusion about our reverence for and commitment to the authority and seriousness of the scriptures, we have decided to no longer publish this product.

38:22

We take responsibility for the offense and we apologize. No, they don't take responsibility for the offense because they threw the critics under the bus in their explanation for why they're no longer publishing this product.

38:35

Uh, yeah, they did. Oh my goodness. They said people assume that Lifeway decided to translate the

38:42

Bible in an irreverent manner. No, no, we didn't. From the beginning, that was not ever the criticism that you took the entire

38:47

Bible and translated it into Gen Z language. It's that you took a hokey gimmick and you tried to publish a serious devotional, which does not take the person into an understanding of having the mind of Christ with reverence for his word, inerrant and sufficient for our every need in the first place.

39:10

But Lifeway, they are not taking any responsibility for this. They're not taking any responsibility for it at all.

39:16

They've nixed the product just to try to make the criticism go away. This book went through editors.

39:22

It was talked about for a long time. It was printed with colorful pages.

39:29

This wasn't like a big thrown together self -publishing sort of a deal. There was a lot of work that went into this book and no one thought this was a problem until on August the 20th on Twitter, some people started making criticisms about it.

39:45

A grammatical error. Yeah, and there was a grammatical error in it. So yeah, well done guys with that whole editing process there.

39:54

I just, I have no words. I have no more words. That book deserved to get yanked.

40:01

But unfortunately, you will see more stuff like this from Lifeway. Yeah. Because Lifeway isn't really sorry for what it is they published.

40:08

It's your fault that you didn't take it the right way. But maybe if this happens more often, maybe, just maybe, they will yank more books.

40:20

And through this process, we might get a little bit more sound books left.

40:28

Doubtful, but yeah. I mean, a whole leadership change would have to happen at Lifeway before that would happen.

40:33

Or those persons just straight up repent. And they come to submit to the authority of the word of God, which

40:39

Lifeway is not doing. I mean, Beth Moore's books read just like that. Just like what we were reading there. I know.

40:45

It's not any different. No. This is the kind of moralism that they put out. There was that term that Christian Smith came up with a number of years ago, where he described this sort of Christianity, just like we're reading about here, as moralistic, therapeutic deism.

41:03

It is moralism, meaning you just have to act this way, and you'll be a better person.

41:09

Or you need to think about these things, and it makes you better. It makes you feel better. You don't feel guilt and shame.

41:15

You feel better about yourself. Right. It's therapeutic in that way. Right. See, the

41:20

Bible gives you confidence. So you believe in Jesus so that you can feel more confident about yourself. You can be set free from bad things.

41:29

And you can only think about good things. And then it's deism in that we believe in God because it's convenient for us to believe in God.

41:37

But there's not really a relationship that exists there through Christ, knowing that we are unworthy of God.

41:45

But it's in his mercy that he has shown us grace through the cross of Christ, that by faith in him, our sins are forgiven.

41:54

And we have fellowship with God, with his people now and forevermore. Amen. If you're not—I mean, that's the definition of Christianity.

42:02

Deism is—none of that is in there. Yep. It's just belief in God. You know, you wear your

42:09

WWJD bracelet and your Christian t -shirt because that's what I'm supposed to do as a Christian. Yeah.

42:14

But there's not really a relationship with God. There's not talking to him in prayer, him talking to you through the word, desiring to live as Christ, to pursue holiness, to grow in righteousness, to be with the people of God.

42:30

Beware that you're not falling into like a me and my Bible sort of a Christianity because you'll quickly fall into that deism idea.

42:38

Yeah. Religion's not for me. Yeah, right. Yeah, you'll find yourself saying things like,

42:47

I'm in a relationship, not a religion. Yes. Whereas, truth be told, Christianity is a religion.

42:54

Yes. We have religious practices. Going to church is part of that. Partaking in the Lord's Supper, baptism, regularly meeting with one another, singing songs.

43:04

We have a liturgy and the word of God and confessions of faith and things of that nature. So, yes, this is a religion.

43:11

It's a relationship? Absolutely, it's that. But don't say it's a relationship and not a religion because that wouldn't be true.

43:20

Ed Stetzer, who used to be, let's see if I can get his title right. He was the executive director of Lifeway Research, a division of Lifeway Christian Resources and the

43:32

Lifeway's missiologist in residence. Whatever, I think they just made up a title for Ed Stetzer.

43:38

Okay. To put Ed Stetzer at Lifeway. Anyway, there was at one point where he was involved in all of this and he criticized moralistic therapeutic deism.

43:49

But Lifeway is still that. They're still doing that. Yeah. Here was the comment that Stetzer made.

43:57

He says, many say, and by the way, this article is back from 2016. Many say it's been a tough decade for evangelicals.

44:05

The media says that Christianity is in great decline. The media and some Christian authors predict doom and gloom.

44:11

Yet the actual numbers tell a different story for evangelical Christians. You can read much more about that in these links and he gives the links.

44:19

Yet that doesn't mean all is well. I do think that we are in challenging times. The last 10 years have brought us to that reality.

44:26

There have been a few distractions along the way. The emerging church came promising answers to evangelicals for a third way, but flamed out and now looks more like the avant -garde wing of mainline

44:38

Protestantism. And by the way, Ed Stetzer was completely steeped in to that whole emerging church movement.

44:45

So don't think for a moment that he's acting like he's on the outside describing something that he was never a part of.

44:52

He goes on to say some try to withdraw from culture, but culture just kept coming. If you follow what he's doing lately, then you know he's totally in on the culture right now.

45:02

He's in the social justice movement, the Black Lives Matter stuff. Yeah. That's all Ed Stetzer is totally indulging in the culture.

45:11

Some slowly replaced regular gospel proclamation with moralistic therapeutic deism. Being good makes you a better person and that makes the man upstairs happy.

45:20

So there he's criticizing moralistic therapeutic deism, but that's exactly what we just read.

45:27

Right. From this devotional book that came out of Lifeway. Yes. Still others were so driven by pragmatism that they eventually began to look like a collection of programs and strategies devoid of the message of Jesus.

45:38

That's the publication of this book altogether. Yeah. The very things that he has criticized about what we refer to as Big Eva, which is big evangelicalism.

45:50

Those things that he's criticized, he's part of. He pushes and he does. So we'll hear this kind of criticism come from Lifeway, but they're doing it.

46:02

Yeah. The stuff they're criticizing actually comes from Lifeway. So stay away from Lifeway.

46:09

It's crazy how they're all connected. You don't need a 30 -day devotional book written in Gen Z lingo in order to reach

46:18

Generation Z. Right. You need to teach them the Bible.

46:24

That's what you need to do. And incidentally, I'm going to tell you because when I was a high school student and all of these gimmicks were coming at me as a high school student, and I would see adults use gimmicks like that.

46:37

Like there were other things that were going on in the 90s. Obviously, it wasn't Gen Z lingo books.

46:43

Right. But there was stuff like that. I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. There were gimmicks like these going on 20 plus years ago.

46:51

When adults would use this stuff, I would sit there and I would listen to it and I would go, y 'all are patronizing me.

46:58

You can't be serious. Yeah. I don't talk like this. Me and my friends, we don't act like this.

47:04

So you're pushing this stuff, thinking that it's going to be attractive to us. And it sounds like adults trying to act like us.

47:11

Yeah. It sounds like a parody of us. It doesn't really sound like what my generation is doing and what we're talking about.

47:20

So in this attempt to be relevant to a certain generation, you risk becoming irrelevant.

47:27

The word becomes irreverent and you don't reach that generation. And especially with the content we just read there, you're certainly not reaching that generation for Christ.

47:37

The Bible is already relevant. Yeah. You have to just open the

47:43

Bible and teach them the Bible. Yeah. Stop trying to dress it up, creating these little pragmatic devices and all these other kinds of things.

47:52

They need to know the word of God. Once again, and we've said this many times, Paul Washer has said it.

47:58

I've said it. What you win them with is what you win them to. If you win them with a bunch of gimmicks, you're going to have to maintain those gimmicks in order to keep them there.

48:07

If you win them with the word of God, then they are in the faith for the right reason, with the right focus, under the right authority.

48:15

And they will grow in that. Yeah. They will continue to mature in Christ. And the world and all these worldly mechanisms and devices and philosophies are never going to be enough to satisfy because only

48:27

Christ satisfies. We have to introduce them to Christ. And we do that through the teaching of his word.

48:34

Remember what Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter two. When I came to you, brothers,

48:39

I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

48:45

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

48:51

And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

49:09

Mm -hmm. So it doesn't even, I mean, I'm thinking about somebody who doesn't know the

49:17

Bible well, trying to teach them from the Bible. Like you're trying to think of an example of that?

49:23

No, I'm saying like the people who are trying to push these devotional.

49:30

These gimmicky things. Gimmicky things onto the younger crowds, actually taking their

49:35

Bibles, getting rid of the gimmicky things and taking their Bibles into the younger crowds and doing what you say there that, you know, to do this.

49:46

Right, right. To put it into practice. Yes. What do you suggest? Where do you start?

49:53

Opening up your Bible and doing it. Because I mean, sometimes the word is difficult to explain in places to understand what it's trying to.

50:09

Yeah, there's some things that are difficult. Right. And Peter says this even in 2 Peter 3, 16, where he says, the apostle

50:15

Paul is writing of things that are difficult to understand, which the ignorant and unstable will twist to their own destruction as they do the rest of the scriptures.

50:23

Exactly. So in order to not twist and lead them astray, where do you suggest they begin?

50:31

I think they need to go to church and they need to be discipled by solid men of God who are preaching the word.

50:38

And, you know, they're preaching the word when they're exegetical preachers who clearly love the word of God.

50:44

They teach verse by verse through the Bible. They use scripture to interpret scripture. They talk about sin and repentance.

50:51

They use the law in the right way and they point to the gospel.

50:57

They exalt Christ in their preaching. You find those pastors, you go to those churches, you learn from those men.

51:04

Because the thing with this guy, Carl Hooper, who wrote this particular book, The Word According to Gen Z, you can tell by the way that he wrote those devotionals that he's very immature.

51:15

He just doesn't know it. And he's also doing that little kitschy thing where we're just taking a verse completely out of context for the purpose of creating a cute little devotional thought.

51:25

But you don't really have the meaning or the understanding of what the word is truly communicating there.

51:32

There were some other examples. I read more than just those three days. There are some other examples in there where it was like, see, if you just read the context, that would give you a clearer understanding of what that verse is actually talking about.

51:43

But since we're not treating the Bible that way, since we're taking our scissors to it and we're cutting out pieces that just sound nice and they're convenient to the thought that we want to give, then there's therefore the

51:55

Bible is not sufficient for our every need. It's just useful to us where we find it useful.

52:01

And it seems to me that the only qualification that Carl Hooper had for life weight is that he came up with a cute gimmick.

52:08

It doesn't look to me like he had actual solid men of God who are preachers and teachers of the word looking at Carl, whose real name is

52:18

Josh. He's playing a character. The whole thing's really confusing. But for the sake of the hypothetical, I'm going to stick with Carl looking at Carl and going,

52:25

Carl, I love your desire for ministry, your desire to want to reach youth.

52:31

But you're not there yet. And you need to go through these things first. And you need to be a student for a while.

52:37

And you need to submit yourself to the full counsel, the teaching of the full counsel of God before you are ready to then step up and do this thing that you really want to do.

52:48

If he has that desire that's there to reach youth, that's great. I'm glad he's got that desire there.

52:54

Definitely. But the guy has to be trained for it. And clearly by this devotional, he's not. The only thing that made him qualified for this devotional is that he came up with a neat gimmick that life weight liked.

53:04

And that's really all there was to that. Consider that Paul's last instructions to Timothy were these.

53:10

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

53:28

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth.

53:40

And we understand the truth as being the full counsel of God and will wander off into myths.

53:46

As for you, always be sober minded. Another word for that is temperance.

53:53

Be temperate, meaning don't let your mind be given over to wild and fanciful ideas.

53:59

And when you come up with some gimmicky thing, think about this first.

54:04

Does this point to Christ? Is this really reverent in that it treats

54:09

God's word the right way? When I communicate this to somebody else, is somebody going to hear that I uphold the word of God in a reverent way?

54:20

Or are they going to hear the way that I use the word of God is something kitschy and cutesy and it really doesn't have that reverence as God's true and holy word in the way that I'm communicating it and teaching it to other people?

54:33

You get what I'm saying? Yeah. And you don't get that with this book. So I understand Addison's defense saying, well, he loves youth and he really wants to reach youth.

54:44

Right. But it takes more than feeling and it takes more than desire there. Yeah, there has to be a submission to an obedience to the word of God and an understanding what it says and how to teach it.

54:55

Timothy had received that from Paul. And now in these final instructions that Paul gives

55:00

Timothy, he's saying to him, don't be given over to wild ideas. In fact, in the first letter that he wrote to Timothy, the very first instruction he gives at the start of that letter is don't let anyone else teach who is going off into wandering off into myths and speculations and endless genealogies and things like that.

55:22

Don't let those people teach because they're leaving the sound words of our Lord Christ, which lead to godliness.

55:28

Yeah. And instead, they're teaching on things that people are going to squabble over and it's going to cause division. Yeah. That's what this book caused.

55:36

So Paul, again, says, be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry.

55:45

There needs to be a submission to an understanding of the

55:50

Bible as God's word and a desire to teach that verse by verse, helping others to understand it.

55:56

The teacher has to do that first before he becomes the teacher. Right. That's my recommendation for basically the question you just asked.

56:05

So what do we do? Where do we go from here? Yeah. What do we do? That's great. And I think just by you asking that question and me giving that explanation,

56:14

I need to contact Sunday Cool, who came up with this stuff, their content creators and say to them, if you want to do more than sell a t -shirt or pitch a gimmick, you really want to reach people with the gospel of Christ and do it genuinely, then you need to submit yourself under the full counsel of the word of God.

56:36

Know what it says and how to teach it before you then go out as an immature person and teaches it wrongly.

56:45

That'd be great. Thanks, babe. You're welcome. Well, that's our program for today.

56:51

And if you have any other questions or comments, be sure to list or be sure to contact us via email when we understand the text at gmail .com.

56:58

Let's pray. Yes. Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time together. And I pray that we honor you in all that we say and do the words that come from our mouths be pleasant to God and they give grace to those who hear that we desire your word and that we communicate your word in a right way.

57:17

We're not taking the Bible and we're turning it into a book of moralism or or kitschy little sayings that I need today.

57:24

I got my happy verse calendar and my little proverb or quote is going to get me through the rest of my day.

57:29

But we read the whole thing. We understand the whole counsel of God. We see the truth that leads to salvation and the words that produce in us godliness and sanctification as we continue to walk this way until the day of Christ that we may be presented before you as that spotless pure bride washed with the water of the word.

57:54

Teach us your word and help us to walk in these ways and worship Christ in all that we say and do.

58:02

And it's in his precious and holy name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Maybe if I had a pillow, maybe it'd be comfier.

59:17

Comfier? Comfier. Don't ask. I don't know.

59:24

It's 11. It is 11 o 'clock. Can you make it a full hour? I am ready for bed.

59:38

So I'll just kick my feet up. Yeah, this may be a problem you changing into your PJs before we do this.