Woke Church Chapter 6 - How Powerful is this Gospel Anyway?

Prophetic Preaching, the Law of God, and Gospel Content

Woke Church, chapter six. If you've been following this video series, then you know that most of the time I've been saying that the chapter is pretty decent. There's obviously some applications and some specifics that I've been disagreeing with, but the chapters in general have been good.

Last chapter, the Lament chapter, chapter five, was not that way, it was horrible. And in fact, I even described the chapter and the book as a whole as worthless because of chapter five. But chapter six, we're back to the old way.

I mean, in general, the chapter is pretty good. It's about prophetic preaching. And he has a lot of really good things to say about prophetic preaching. And he's not talking about predicting the future.

He's not talking about charismatic prophecy. He's talking about sort of just the standard way that people understand what a preacher is doing when he's preaching. So when a preacher's preaching, he's preaching the word of God.

He's preaching what the Bible says, and he's applying it to our current situation. And so he's using the law of God to apply to our current situation. That's what the old prophets were doing too. I mean, they were speaking as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, the Bible says.

So they were preaching the little word of God back in the Old Testament. But what they were doing was applying the blessings and the curses that God had written down in the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus and all of that.

They were applying the law of God to their current situation. So the prophets back then were doing the same thing that we're doing right now in that way. Although we're not, my words when I'm preaching from the pulpit aren't the literal word of God.

So there's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of, there's some differences, but Dr. Eric Mason, for the most part, gets prophetic preaching correct. And what he says is that it includes gospel content.

So the actual death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's, your preaching has to include that. That's very good. But he also says that it includes gospel implications. So like, you know, how does it apply to the sinful nature of man, individual sins, but also systemic and institutional sins?

And I would say that that's actually true as well. You know, the gospel obviously applies to our institutions because institutions are made up of people and people are sinners. And so we absolutely need to take a look at individual sins, your personal sin, but also the sins in the systems that we create.

Now, I would imagine that Dr. Eric Mason has some things in mind that I would not have in mind. And I think, you know, we need to really take a good look at what you describe as a systemic institutional sin.

But I think this happens already. I mean, I think preachers do address systemic institutional sins. And there are some that are proven, you know what I mean? Like abortion, everyone always talks about abortion because it is a systemic institutional sin.

It's actually provably an institutional sin. It's not this made up kind of institutional sin because all the time we'll hear about how racism is institutional and systemic and intentional. We heard that in the last chapter.

And then you say, okay, prove it. Show me the laws that are racist. Show me whatever, you know, show me the institutional and systemic racism. And it's just sort of like, well, there's these disparities and things like that.

There's could be other reasons for the disparity. So that doesn't prove it. You have to actually have evidence. For abortion, it's very easy. Abortion is legal in all 50 states. That's systemic. That's institutional.

Millions upon millions of babies are killed. That's institutional. You see what I'm saying? Like, so this already happens, I think. And one of the things that he says is that in order to do prophetic preaching perfectly, we have to be like Ezra the scribe who determined in his heart to study the law.

That's what the scripture says about Ezra. I completely agree. I named my son Ezra because I absolutely think that that is critical. So overall, the thrust of this chapter is pretty good. One of the things that he says though is, so listen, he's right about what he says, but he plays himself here.

Let me tell you what I mean. He's talking about the gospel and his little section on the gospel is really good. It's really good. Listen to what he says. He says, the gospel is the power of God to make changes in people.

I agree. We must be filled with faith for this as we preach. It isn't just shouting a message, it is transformational. There is power in the word. Without power, what is preaching? You can speak on justice and race with rhetorical excellence but if the gospel isn't presented, hearts won't change.

That's absolutely true. I completely agree. But the thing is, Dr. Eric Mason has played himself. He's undercut his own message. He's undercut his own message. If you're preaching the gospel to some black folk in your community, that people that are maybe in the Hebrew Israelites or Nation of Islam, because we talked about that in the last chapter, you're preaching the gospel and you're preaching this transformational gospel, the power of the gospel to change people from the inside out to change their old sinful ways into new ways, to make the heart of stone a heart of flesh, things like that.

You're preaching this awesome transformational gospel but then you just got done saying in chapter one that hip hop culture has had a better influence on racial justice than the 2000-year-old church of Jesus Christ.

You just got done saying that and now you're telling me that the gospel is powerful to transform? You played yourself. You've undercut your whole message. If the 2000-year-old church of Jesus Christ is a rampant, racist, evil church but then hip hop culture has done more for race relations than the church, how powerful is this gospel?

How powerful is this gospel? See, this is the problem. I've been saying this for the whole year I've been on YouTube. Look, if this gospel is so powerful and is actually changing hearts, then why does your rhetoric assume that all these white evangelicals are white supremacists?

You know what I mean? I just don't get it. I just don't get it. Because here's the thing, I think a lot of the, especially the white people that are in the social justice movement, a lot of times they'll say that I used to be racist but now I'm not.

Okay, that's great. I believe you. I believe you that you used to be racist but don't project that on all white people. Not all white people are racist the way you used to be. Tim Keller says this. He says that he used to be a racist.

And I think that a lot of this movement really thinks that, well, if I was racist and I'm this great guy, I guess everybody's racist. That's not the case, man. There are plenty of white folks that aren't racist.

You see, here's the thing. You think that all Trump voters are white supremacists, racist? You're wrong. I've heard people say that every seminary essentially is committed to white supremacy. You're absolutely wrong.

See, how powerful is this gospel anyway? That's my question. If you're saying that all these people, all these white folks, all these evangelicals who voted for Trump, they're just racist. I mean, you've undercut your whole message here.

Is the gospel the power of God to make changes in people or is it not, Dr. Eric Mason? Because if the hip hop culture has had a better influence on race relations, then I would say that someone who hears you say that and then hears you teach about the powerful transformation of the gospel, they're not gonna believe you.

If Jay-Z, Money Cash Hoes, is having a better influence on race relations in America. You plagiarized yourself, man. Yes, I agree with you the gospel is the power of God to transform lives. How come the rest of your rhetoric doesn't seem to match up with that?

You know what I mean? Anyway, another thing about this chapter, which I thought was really interesting. This is a section that he titles, Be Clear on the Issues, right? Here's what he says. He says, I want you to listen carefully to this paragraph.

This is amazing. He says, be clear on the issues. Prophetic preaching must be clear on the issues of our day. We have to do our homework. In order to appropriately engage the issues, we must know them.

There are many glaring issues that need a prophetic voice. Now here's the prophetic issues. Listen to this, ready? Here's the prophetic issues that need a, these are the glaring issues that need a prophetic voice.

Tell me which one doesn't fit. Classism, okay. Sexism. Elitism. Poverty. Ignorance. Wealth. And greed. I even put, if you look at, I just, what? Classism, okay, that's a sin. Sexism, that's a sin. And again, it depends on how you're defining this stuff because I have a feeling that Dr. Eric Mason's definitions of these are wanting.

But let's just take it for what it is. Classism's a sin. Sexism's a sin. Elitism is a sin. Poverty, is that a sin? First of all, I don't know. Poverty's a sin. Let's just say that he's unjust poverty.

Ignorance. Wealth. And greed. Wealth? If you're wondering why some people call you a Marxist, that might be it because you think wealth is an issue. I don't know what he means by that. And again, this is very common in this book.

He just goes and says something. I guess unjustly gotten wealth, I guess. That could be a sin if you're stealing. But I don't know, man. I don't know. Anyway, so that's it. The last thing that he says here that I think is interesting is he's talking about how we need to have courage.

We need to contend for the faith. And he's talking about how in the Old Testament, people were standing up to the evil prophets or evil pagan gods of the day. And it took a lot of courage and things like that.

And he says this. He says, we want leaders, we want great leaders who love the people enough and respect people enough to be unbought, unbound, unafraid, and unintimidated to tell the truth. And he acts as if this woke stuff is like this controversial thing.

Well, they need to be courageous in the world to stand up for the woke. And I gotta be honest, you wanna play the game of whose message is more fought against, yours or mine? Is that the game you wanna play?

Because I could get, if I had a job, which I don't, but if I had a job, I could get fired for saying the things that I say. Could you? No. I can't get a conference speaking gig, even if I was a good speaker, which I'm not saying that I am, but I couldn't get an invite.

In fact, I got booted off of blogs for saying the things that I say. Are you? No. I'm pretty sure that my side of this issue is the one that needs to be unbought, unbound, unafraid, and unintimidated to tell the truth, because the reality is you will get, people will swoon over this book.

You see what I'm saying? You're not saying anything controversial to the evangelical intelligentsia. In fact, you will probably get more speaking gigs, even though you're the Angloid guy, even though you say racial slurs in your conference speeches.

You will get more opportunities to spread your message. People like me don't have a platform, and so this whole thing where you're pretending like, oh man, you're the courageous person standing up against all this injustice, nobody's buying it, man.

Nobody's buying it. I thought that was kind of stupid, but anyway, in this chapter, he actually says that he's going to give concrete solutions. He says he's gonna offer clear statements of action in a chapter later, which I'm looking forward to, because that is something that the woke church movement never really does.

They don't really tell you how to fix it. They just complain a lot, tell you what the problems are without making, without any evidence, of course, but they don't really offer solutions. So I'm looking forward to this next chapter or whenever it's coming about these solutions, because here's the thing.

This is going to be interesting to match up what the solutions that he says that we should do with the Bible and the solutions that the Bible suggests, because here's the thing. The Bible commands certain things and does not command other things.

And so we'll see how well they match up. I have a feeling, I have not read the rest of this book, but I have a feeling that they're probably gonna be wanting. Anyway, oh, one last thing before we finish.

I think we get a admission here from Eric Mason that he is a liberal. Listen to this. He talks about how he likes the conservative movement because they take the Bible seriously, but he also likes the liberal movement because they act more Christianly, which I think is probably, look, I don't know what he's talking about because it doesn't really explain it too much.

I think that's probably a very preposterous statement that somehow the liberals who don't know what God says are somehow living better than the conservatives. Again, how powerful is this transformational gospel?

If the liberals don't even have the gospel, how are they able to be transformed? But anyway, listen to this. He says this. Listen to this admission. My theological home of conservative Christianity, so he's saying I am a conservative, has become more confusing as the years have gone on.

Yet the crumbling ethics of liberal Christianity didn't feel like a solid boat to jump into. So he's saying I am a conservative, but I'm a little bit confused. And then he says, so in many ways, I have one foot in conservative Christianity and the other foot in liberal Christianity, but I don't feel fully secure in either boat.

My opinion on that, this is just my interpretation of that, that's just another way to say I'm a liberal. That's just another way to say I'm a liberal because the reality is Christianity and liberalism are two different worldviews.

You cannot keep both. Once you put one foot in liberalism, you're a liberal at that point. You don't have Christianity anymore. And so here's the thing. I think that if you say I'm a liberal Christian or I have one foot in liberal Christianity, you might as well just go all the way and be a liberal because that's the reality.

These are different ways of looking at the world. There's no way to reconcile liberalism and Christianity. It just doesn't work that way. Now he's saying he's still a conservative. I'll take him at his word.

But this whole thing about I've got one foot in liberalism, that's not a good sign. That's a road you do not want to walk down because if you continue down that road, that doesn't lead anywhere good. Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

God bless.