Current Issues in Evangelicalism

The Gospel Must Not Be Watered Down

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today we have a special treat for you. Dr. Carl Truman is going to be on No Compromise Radio.

I'm not gonna interview him, although I've done that in the past and will in the future, but we're going to play a segment of his message here at Bethlehem Bible Church on a Friday night to leaders. I asked him to talk about current evangelical issues, and he was talking about leadership.

So this week and next, and probably the next three, for three weeks in a row, we'll have Carl talk about this subject so you can get a little taste of what the conference at Bethlehem Bible Church is like.

Don't forget, soon we won't be on the radio. It'll be podcast only, iTunes only, Facebook only, tune in radio only. So this is Mike Abendroth introducing Carl Truman for Part One Leadership Conference at Bethlehem Bible Church.

You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

Prayer and Scripture Reading from 2 Timothy

Well, thank you very much for the invitation to come and spend this weekend with you. I've been great looking forward to seeing Mike again. We struck up a friendship a couple of years ago, I think, when you were the only people who would speak to me after I'd written the book, Republicrat.

I guess coming from Massachusetts gave you something of an advantage on that one. But we soon discovered we had much in common, not only a love for the Lord Jesus Christ, but also a love for classic rock music.

And I was amazed to discover that Mike, the logo for Mike's radio program looks like something that ACDC might have rejected at some point. So even they have standards, one might say. So, seriously, I wonder if we might start our evening by a word of prayer.

Please join with me in prayer. O Lord God, loving Heavenly Father, we come into your presence this evening to acknowledge once again your greatness, that you are indeed a wonderful and a transcendent God.

And though we are so often tempted to stroll casually into your presence, yet we would ask that your Holy Spirit might once again remind us that you are indeed a consuming fire, that you are one in whose presence we are not worthy to stand.

And yet, Lord, you are also one who in the depths of your great condescension and grace has stooped down to us, in and through the person of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have manifested yourself to us.

You have taken our sin upon your shoulders. You have died the death that we deserved. You've risen again to newness of life. So we thank you, Lord, for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the Holy Spirit that testifies in our hearts that these things are so.

And we pray now that you would guide our hearts and minds as we come to reflect upon your word and how it connects, speaks to, interacts with, and should shape our thinking about the contemporary age.

For we pray these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Wonder if you would just turn with me briefly. We'll start with a short scripture reading. I want to read from Paul's second letter to Timothy from verse eight and following.

Actually, no, we'll take that reading from verse three. I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy.

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our savior, Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher which is why I suffer as I do.

But I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. Praise God for his holy word. My brief this evening is to speak on issues facing evangelicalism and I was wrestling the last couple of weeks with exactly what topics I should look at.

I've decided to not so much to look at a direct doctrinal challenges to evangelicalism but to reflect more upon what I think are cultural challenges within the church to the gospel and the good testimony of the gospel today.

Ministerial Integrity as the Church's Major Challenge

And so in the first lecture, well in the second lecture, I want to look at a series of connected themes but in the first lecture, I want to focus on what I think is perhaps the major challenge to the church today and that is ministerial integrity.

I think part of the problem in the church is the integrity or the lack thereof of her ministers. We're going to be returning at various points particularly in the first lecture but also maybe in the second lecture to Paul's pastoral letters, first, second Timothy and the book of Titus because these I think are singularly important and helpful letters for the church in the current culture in which we find ourselves.

Paul is facing as he writes these letters the end of his own time on earth, the end of his own ministry. The term watershed, it's a watershed or it's a defining moment is a very, very, these are very, very cheap terms in contemporary culture.

Almost every week you switch on the news and something will have happened and some newsreader will describe it as a watershed or a defining moment or a moment at which everything is changed. In fact, by and large for most of us, our lives go on pretty much the same even after such defining moments but Paul really is living in a defining moment, a watershed moment.

As Paul writes the pastoral epistles, he knows that he is facing death in the fairly near future and indeed all of the apostles will be dying or coming to their deaths in the fairly near future and that means everything will change for the church.

The church will move from a position where it was led by those who had personal first-hand knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, either those who'd been with Christ during his earthly ministry or one like Paul to whom Christ had revealed himself in a dramatic moment on the Damascus Road but this generation of men who knew Christ first-hand is passing away and that raises questions for Paul about how is the church, how is the safety and well-being of the church to be preserved in the coming months, years and as it is as Christ has not returned centuries?

What is Paul's prescription for the good health of the church? That's why I think these letters are important for us today because that is the challenge in a way that faces every generation. I read an English magazine.

It's a very good magazine. If you get a chance to get a subscription, take it. It's called The Spectator. It's a politically conservative magazine but it's conservative in the British sense of the word.

American conservatism and British conservatism are subtly and sometimes not so subtly different but it's a conservative magazine and a lot of the clientele, a lot of the readership would be fairly wealthy.

That doesn't include seminary professors and lead pastors of one at tiny OPC churches near Philadelphia but a lot of the clientele would be wealthy and they have adverts for very nice things in this magazine and one of them is for a Swiss watch, Patek Philippe and they look rather beautiful in the advertisements.

I remember a couple of Christmases ago when my wife said to me, what were you like for Christmas? I thought, those Patek Philippe watches look very nice. I'll check on the internet and see how much they are.

I think the basic models start at about $90 ,000. I'm living in a house that's worth sort of one basic Patek Philippe watch plus a little bit extra and I decided not to push it with my wife on that front but what's interesting about Patek Philippe is their sales slogan and their sales slogan is this.

You never own a Patek Philippe. You simply look after it for the next generation and I think that's a great sales slogan. I've used it a number of times in sermons. I'm using it again here tonight. No church ever owns the gospel.

We merely look after it for the next generation so the question that Paul faces here is the question that the church faces in every generation. How are we to preserve the gospel best for the future for the next generation?

And various solutions, before we go and look at Paul's solutions, I think we need to be aware that the culture around us is continually trying to press us into its own mould and we have to be very careful, I think, as we think about the future of the church that we don't unwittingly allow the culture around us to press us into thinking about how to preserve the gospel in ways that actually have more to do with the particularities of the specific culture we find ourselves in and less to do with the gospel.

Cultural Pressure to Trust Charismatic Individuals

So now I'm going to talk, just very briefly, some sort of observations on contemporary American culture and I stress that these are descriptive observations. If I was giving this talk in the United Kingdom I would be making different observations.

British culture functions and operates differently so I'm not making criticisms here of American secular culture. I'm not saying it's inferior compared to other cultures around the world. I'm simply describing what I see as some of the salient points or one particular salient point that I think is in danger of having a profound influence upon the church.

And that, I think, is the great focus on heroic individuals. One of the real contrasts between British politics and American politics is, typically in Britain, people always think in terms of voting for parties.

It's one of the reasons why those of you who know your British history will know that in 1945, after victory in Europe has been declared, before, or was it victory in Japan? I can't remember which is first.

Is it VJ Day or VE Day that comes first? VE Day. Victory in Europe is declared and then there's a general election and Churchill loses. And it's always, one of the things, whenever I get into a conversation about the Second World War with American friends, they always say, you've got to explain to me why Churchill loses.

And the answer is, of course, people weren't voting for Churchill. People vote in constituencies for a party. Churchill just represents, actually, one tiny little constituency in the whole of the country.

People tend to vote in Britain for parties. And I would say, on the whole, by and large, one of the great differences I see between British and American culture is the British tend to be suspicious of individuals and rather too trusting of institutions.

And Americans tend to be very suspicious of institutions and rather too trusting of individuals. And it's deeply ingrained in American history, of course, the founding fathers, George Washington. And, of course, as one of my elders said to me recently about the election, he said, it's amazing, he said, every four years, we get to elect the Messiah or the Antichrist.

And I thought that was quite an interesting comment. He's an American as well. That's not coming from a British. He's a hardcore American by birth and conviction, I would say. And I think it's important, therefore, that we are acutely aware in the church that the culture in which we find ourselves with in the United States inclines us to try to find the charismatic individual who will solve the problem.

And that's reinforced, I think, all the way down. Hollywood is a great example of this. Hollywood produces celebrities. And it's interesting, over the years, the alignment that has taken place between Hollywood and Washington.

Such, you know, Clint Eastwood goes and speaks at the Republican Congress Conference. And you get countless Hollywood stars, of course, appearing at the Democratic equivalent. But they have a certain cachet, a certain power.

Well, there was a church in the New Testament times that was looking for charismatic individuals to solve its problems. And it is the church in Corinth. Corinth is a fascinating city in the ancient world.

It was the scene of, we know the Olympic Games. Every four years, we have a sporting jamboree, the Olympics. And it's, of course, it has its distant roots in the sporting events that occurred in ancient Greece.

Well, in ancient Greece, there were more than just the Olympic Games, though. The Olympic Games was only one of the great sporting gatherings. There was also the Isthmian Games. The Isthmian Games took place on the Greek Isthmus.

If you know the geography of Greece, you'll know you've got a northern territory and then almost a southern island, the Peloponnese. And it's joined by a thin strip of land. It's the Isthmus. And on this thin strip of land sits the city of Corinth.

And Corinth was the site of the Isthmian Games. And the Isthmian Games were both very prestigious and also incorporated more than just athletic prowess. One of the most prestigious things that took place in the Isthmian Games was the oratory competition.

It's hard for us to imagine today. We live in a world where the art of public speaking has really disappeared. I have a book at home, Great British Speeches. I'm sure there must be an American equivalent.

And it contains the texts of some of the great political speeches of the last 200 years. Lloyd George is there. Churchill is there. A man called Enoch Powell of more recent vintage is there. And you read these speeches, and they are brilliant examples of political rhetoric.

And you just know they'd be no good today because these speeches are 25, 30, 35, 40 minutes long. Now, of course, you need politicians who can, it doesn't matter how deep or subtle the question is, if you can't answer it in 90 seconds, you're not gonna get elected.

So it's hard for us to imagine a culture where public speaking had huge cachet, but Corinth was one such culture. The rock stars, the film stars of the Corinthian day were the great orators. And the orators were not only men who could speak well, they were also men who looked good as well.

They pumped iron. They had their chests waxed, except they weren't waxed in the ancient world. They used tar. We have accounts of people complaining about the screams of agony that would come from the sort of male grooming studios as these pieces of hot tar were ripped off men's chests.

But it was deeply ingrained in Corinthian culture that the good people sounded great and looked beautiful. Remind you of any contemporary trends. George Orwell comments in the 1930s looking at American magazines on how there are no ugly people in American magazines.

That was in the 1930s. It's amazing when you visit America for the first time because you're like, wow, there are a few ugly people floating around. Students of mine a few years ago, they were complaining Philadelphia was voted physically in terms of the people there, the ugliest city in the United States.

And the Philadelphians were all upset. And I thought it was great because us average looking guys, we look pretty good when we're strolling around the streets of Philadelphia. The competition is sort of somewhat less fierce.

But Corinth in many ways was very similar to America. It looked to powerful, beautiful, aesthetically impressive figures as being something to aspire to. And that of course underlies the problems that Paul analyzes in his first letter to the Corinthians.

Paul's Answer in 1 Corinthians: Weakness, Not Image

Now let's make no mistake, the Corinthian church is one with a lot of problems. It's being torn apart by sexual sin. Remember Corinth is a city on the Isthmus. It's a port city. It's a city that would have been rampant with sexual sin as all port cities are.

The amazing thing about the Corinthian church, if you like, is not so much that the Corinthian church was torn apart by sexual sin, but there was a church there in the first place. You would expect the kind of people that Paul describes who'd been converted in Corinth to struggle with sexual sin because many of them would presumably have come out of backgrounds in the sex trade or something like that.

So it's a church with a lot of problems. And within this church, there are those looking for somebody to solve the problem. And I think that is what lies behind the problems that Paul outlines in the very first chapter.

What does Paul talk about in the very first chapter or two of 1 Corinthians? He talks about the factions that have taken place in Corinth. Some people read 1 Corinthians, they, well, this is Paul criticizing denominations.

Well, for good or ill, denominations generally exist because somebody somewhere believes strongly in something. Paul's not criticizing people in the first chapter of Corinthians for believing too strongly in something.

He's criticizing people for believing too strongly in someone. And as you work through the first letter of the Corinthians you realize that the problem these people have is they're allowing those worldly criteria that come in from their wider culture to shape the kind of person they're looking for to solve or to lead the church to solve the church's problems.

Paul's problems are what? He doesn't look impressive and he doesn't sound impressive. And the point he makes in 1 Corinthians is those two things are not really that important. God is strong through weakness.

You don't need to be physically or oratorically impressive for God to use you greatly. So I want to point your attention then to 1 Corinthians and say this is a good example for us, 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, if you go away and reflect on those, of how the wider culture can creep in and shape the way we think about how the church should be led and what the answer to the church's problems are.

And I think modern American evangelicalism gives plenty of examples of the fact that a Corinthian mentality is kind of kicked in in the church. It's interesting on how many panels on pastoral ministry these days one sees at conferences, there are very few old guys there.

Who wants to sit and listen to the 28-year-old guy talk about pastoral ministry? Wouldn't you much rather listen to somebody like John MacArthur, somebody of decades' experience talk about it? Why is it that so many of the popular evangelical, conservative evangelical webpages are dominated by people in their 20s and 30s?

Well, two reasons. One, they're often the tech-savvy ones, so they're able to set these things up. But two, it plays directly to the biases, the gravitational pull, the prejudices, whatever of the culture.

We live in a culture where youth is prioritized. There is this kind of myth, I think, that exists now that what age does is distort you and make you prejudiced and biased, and that the younger you are, the less obscured your mind is by all the garbage that you pick up as you get experience.

Hard to imagine, isn't it? If I'm going to get my brakes changed at the local car shop, if I go and speak to Rick, the mechanic I trust, and say, can you change my brakes? And he says, oh sure, I'll give it to the 16-year-old guy who's just here working over the summer from school.

He'll do a much better job than me because his mind isn't cluttered by all those years of actually changing brakes and learning about how they work and driving. It's not going to work, is it, in that kind of context.

So why do we think it should work that way in the church? What we often think of now as superannuation or being too old, I suspect the Apostle Paul would simply have regarded as relevant experience that enables you to do the job.

Preserving the Gospel for the Next Generation

So if the problem then is that we've got to be careful that the world does not come to shape how we solve the problem of the church, and I see the primary problem of the church is how do we preserve and communicate the gospel to the next generation?

What does Paul prescribe for this? Well, this is where I think the pastoral epistles are so great. Death is a great prioritizer. Samuel Johnson said, depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Paul is writing here in a way that he's not going to waste words. This might be his last shot to tell his people how they can take reasonable steps to ensuring the communication of the gospel to the next generation.

He's writing to Timothy. Timothy either is in Ephesus or he's about to go to Ephesus and going to stay there. Ephesus is a church which is having problems with false teaching and with worldliness. We don't know the details of the false teaching.

We know that it had something to do with the teaching of the Old Testament, the teaching of the law, that there were these men there who were using the Old Testament to make themselves look clever and actually to obscure in the process the message of the Old Testament.

And we know also that worldliness was creeping in.

That's our time. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.